UK opposition parties have agreed not to back Boris Johnson's demand for a general election before the EU summit in mid-October.
Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP and Plaid Cymru say they will vote against the government or abstain in Monday's vote on whether to hold a snap poll.
But the PM said the parties were making an "extraordinary political mistake".
Meanwhile, a bill designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit has been approved by the House of Lords and will pass into law.
It will force the prime minister to ask the EU for the Brexit deadline to be extended beyond 31 October if no deal is agreed by the UK and Brussels by 19 October.
Mr Johnson wants an election to take place on 15 October, ahead of that date and the EU summit on 17 and 18 October.
He argues that a snap poll will allow the government to "get on" with delivering Brexit by the end of October.
But opposition MPs - who, along with Conservative rebels, have already defeated one attempt by the government to bring in an early election - say Mr Johnson is trying to push through a no-deal exit.
During the past week the prime minister has suffered several defeats over Brexit in Parliament, expelled 21 of his own MPs for rebelling and seen his younger brother, Jo Johnson, resign from government.
In other developments:
Following the meeting of opposition parties on Friday, a Labour Party spokesman said: "Jeremy Corbyn hosted a positive conference call with other opposition party leaders this morning.
"They discussed advancing efforts to prevent a damaging no-deal Brexit and hold a general election once that is secured."
By John Pienaar, BBC deputy political editor
As good weeks go, for Boris Johnson this wasn't one.
Defeated and defeated again in the Commons, choosing to sack more than 20 of his most respected though rebellious colleagues - provoking uproar from Tories who say that was brutally heavy-handed, and now trying to sound conciliatory.
The list of Tory MPs standing down at the next election has continued to grow, and they look like reinforcing Mr Johnson's critics.
And the House of Lords sent legislation to ban no-deal, and maybe force the PM to seek a Brexit extension, to become law.
He won't break his word. Civil servants are clear he can't break the law. Mr Johnson needs a way to force an election, or salvage his plan to deliver Brexit - maybe without getting an EU deal first. In Downing Street there's no sign they've found one.
The options on No 10's table - after another expected defeat on election timing next week - range from quitting office in hope of getting back in, to counting on the EU to deny the UK the Brexit extension the PM doesn't want.
If there's a cunning plan - and many people, in and out of government, don't believe there is - it seems to need more work. And soon.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said he was "desperate for an election", but it could not happen until an extension to Article 50 - the process by which the UK is leaving the EU - had been secured.
"It's not just about our own party interests; it's about our collective national interests," he said. "So we are prepared to work with others to make sure we get the timing right."
He said they wanted to make sure the UK did not "crash out" in a no-deal Brexit.
Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader, said there was an "opportunity to bring down Boris" and "we should take that".
And a Lib Dem spokeswoman said the group was clear that "we are not going to let Boris Johnson cut and run".
"The Liberal Democrat position for a while now is that we won't vote for a general election until we have an extension agreed with the EU. I think the others are coming round to that," she said.
"As a group we will all vote against or abstain on Monday."
But Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Robert Jenrick said the public were "sick of watching politicians bicker" about Brexit and it was time for an election.
He said opposition parties should "stop being cowardly, put the matter to the public, and get resolution at last, so the country can move forward with confidence and optimism for the future".
Mr Johnson has promised the UK will leave the EU "do or die" on 31 October, with or without a deal.
But he said on Friday that he would go to Brussels on 17 October and reach a deal.
He added that resigning as prime minister if he did not get one by then was "not a hypothesis" he would be willing to contemplate.
He also said he was "perplexed" by the decision of opposition parties to "run away" from an election.
"All I see is Corbyn and the SNP clubbing together to try and lock us into the EU when it's time to get this thing done," he said.
"It's the most sensational paradox - never in history has the opposition party been given the chance for election and has turned it down."

An internal UK government memo on the consequences of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal renegotiation singles out the removal of the word "adequate" from the UK-EU Political Declaration to describe mechanisms for enforcing common social, environmental, and labour standards after Brexit.
The word "adequate" appears to have been replaced by the word "appropriate".
Extracts of a note written for the government's cross-Whitehall Economic Partnership Steering Group, and seen by the BBC, say the "parties will include "appropriate" (rather than "adequate") mechanisms for dispute settlement" of key "level playing field commitments" in a future trade deal with the European Union.
The consequence of that change, the note says, is that it means that it is now possible to argue it is "inappropriate for the future UK-EU relationship" that disputes about these commitments on employment, environment, tax, state aid and other standards should be subject to binding arbitration.
The memo, first leaked to the Financial Times and marked "Official Sensitive", contains a series of claimed negotiation wins from the Brexit deal renegotiation, weakening the scope and strength of Level Playing Field Commitments (LPF), a crucial element in a future UK-EU trade arrangement.
"The previous Protocol applied wide-ranging LPF measures on a UK-wide bases as a response to UK access to the EU market through the single customs territory.
"UK negotiators successfully resisted the inclusion of all UK-wide LPF rules" says the memo, with the last four words put in bold for emphasis.
"The only level playing field provisions in the revised Protocol are those necessary to support the operation of the Single Electricity Market and state aid measures that affect trade between NI and the EU," it says.
The title of the memo is "Update to EPSG (Economic Partnership Steering Group) on Level Playing Field Negotiations".
This is the first acknowledgement that changing the Level Playing Field commitments agreed by Theresa May was a specific aim of the PM's renegotiation.
In public, the PM focused on changing what he referred to as "the anti-democratic backstop", which had been rejected by the government's parliamentary allies, the Democratic Unionists.
In the end, the PM's new solution, creating a new trade and regulatory border in the Irish Sea, further alienated the DUP. Backbench eurosceptic Conservative MPs have, however, been won over to the deal.
Theresa May's original 2018 deal included a range of specific enforceable common standards for the UK and the EU within the legally binding Withdrawal Treaty.
Some of these standards were related to EU law, others referred to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), International Labour Organisation and the Council of Europe.
These were all removed, along with the backstop, and the only reference remaining in the overall deal was in the non-binding Political Declaration.
The memo shows that within Whitehall, weakening these provisions was a key part of the renegotiation.
Regarded as an internal success, their removal paves the way for a "much more open starting point for future relationship negotiations" that allow for "a range of landing zones" for a future deal.
"The Political Declaration text provides us with a framework for negotiating FTA-style commitments on Level Playing Field," the memo concludes under the headline "Next Steps".
That is a reference to the fact that, unlike the original Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May, dispute settlement mechanisms have not applied to existing standard EU Free Trade Agreements.
Sam Lowe, trade fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said: "The Level Playing Field commitments in the EU's Free Trade Agreements with Canada and Japan are unenforceable, because they are specifically excluded from the dispute settlement mechanisms. The government appears to be aiming for the same treatment."
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly rejected suggestions there are attempts to relax workplace rights or environmental protections.
"In many areas we have already gone further than the European Union," he said. "We are making hard improvements on worker rights through an increase in the National Living Wage."
The government was also strengthening rules on maritime protection and animal welfare, he added.
On Saturday, ministers said stories about the leaked memo were "not correct" and "way exaggerated".
The government also said: "The UK government has no intention of lowering the standards of workers' rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU.
"UK level playing field commitments will be negotiated in the context of the future UK-EU free trade agreement, where we will achieve a balance of rights and obligations which reflect the scope and depth of the future relationship."

Former Chancellor Philip Hammond has accused the PM of trying to wreck the chance of a new Brexit deal, by making demands the EU could never accept.
In a Times article, Mr Hammond said a no-deal Brexit would be "a betrayal" of the 2016 referendum result.
He told the BBC he was "confident" that Parliament "has the means" to express its opposition to a no-deal exit.
A No 10 source said the UK would leave on 31 October despite Mr Hammond's "best efforts to the contrary".
The source added that Mr Hammond, as chancellor, "did everything he could" to block preparations for leaving and had "undermined negotiations".
The former chancellor rejected this suggestion in a tweet, saying he wanted to deliver Brexit "and voted to do so three times".
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he wants to leave the EU with a deal, but the UK must leave "do or die" by the latest Brexit deadline of 31 October.
He wants the EU to ditch the Irish border backstop plan from the deal negotiated by former PM Theresa May, which was rejected three times by Parliament.
But the EU has continued to insist that deal, including the backstop arrangements, is the only agreement possible.
Many of those who voted against the deal had concerns over the backstop, which if implemented, would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market.
It would also see the UK stay in a single customs territory with the EU, and align with current and future EU rules on competition and state aid.
These arrangements would apply unless and until both the EU and UK agreed they were no longer necessary.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hammond said a no-deal exit would be "just as much a betrayal of the referendum result as not leaving at all".
He said that Mr Johnson's demand for the backstop to be entirely removed from the deal meant a no-deal was inevitable on the current 31 October deadline.
He said that agreeing to changes now would "fragment" the EU, adding: "they are not going to take that risk".
"Pivoting to say the backstop has to go in its entirety - a huge chunk of the withdrawal agreement just scrapped - is effectively a wrecking tactic," he said.
He also told Today that he was "very confident" MPs would be able to pass legislation to express their opposition to a no-deal exit.
However he said he did not favour the tactic of replacing the PM with a national unity government designed to prevent no deal, saying: "I don't think that's the answer".
In his Times article, Mr Hammond said "the unelected people who pull the strings of this government know that this is a demand the EU cannot, and will not, accede to."
BBC political correspondent Tom Barton said that remark was an apparent aim at the prime minister's closest adviser, Dominic Cummings - the former Vote Leave campaign director.
It was a "travesty of the truth", Mr Hammond wrote, to pretend that Leave voters backed a no-deal Brexit in the 2016 referendum.
But Leave-supporting former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, also speaking on the Today programme, said he was "astounded" by Mr Hammond's remarks.
"Talk about hubris. This man did nothing to prepare us for leaving with no deal," he said.
"The fact we are now doing that means we have a much better chance to get some kind of agreement from them because they now know we're going to leave with no deal and he's undermining that."
Mr Hammond's comments come as Downing Street said it expected a group of MPs to try to block a no-deal Brexit by attempting to pass legislation when Parliament returns next month.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Commons Speaker John Bercow told an audience at the Edinburgh Fringe festival that he "strongly" believes the House of Commons "must have its way".
He said he would "fight with every breath in my body" any attempt by the prime minister to suspend Parliament to force through a no-deal against MPs' wishes.
On Tuesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd urged Mr Johnson not to force through a suspension.
She told the BBC: "I remain a great admirer of Parliament and of parliamentary sovereignty and I will continue to argue for the executive of the government that I'm part of to work with Parliament, not against them."
Meanwhile, 20 other senior Tory MPs have written to the prime minister to say his demand to scrap the Irish backstop "set the bar so high that there is no realistic probability of a deal being done".
The MPs said they were "alarmed by the 'Red Lines' you have drawn which, on the face of it appear to eliminate the chance of reaching agreement with the EU".
The group also demands that Mr Johnson declares he is firmly committed to leaving the EU with a deal and is ready to compromise to get one - pointing out those were assurances he gave during the leadership campaign "both publicly and privately".
Seven other former cabinet ministers have signed the letter, including David Lidington, David Gauke, Rory Stewart and Greg Clark, all of whom resigned before Mr Johnson took office.

A no-deal Brexit poses a risk to the public because the UK would lose access to EU-wide security powers and databases, police leaders have warned.
Police and crime commissioners say law enforcement agencies "face a significant loss of operational capacity" if the arrangements stop.
They have asked the home secretary to confirm his contingency plans.
The Home Office says it will continue to make the case for the retention of the capabilities.
In a letter to Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners' cross-party Brexit Working Group stresses the importance of continued co-operation with European policing and justice bodies after March 2019.
It says 32 measures are currently being used on a daily basis including the European Arrest Warrant;  the Schengen Information System -  a database of "real time" alerts about certain individuals - and the European Criminal Records Information System.
"The UK and EU share a common and ever evolving threat picture. We believe that a comprehensive partnership in all areas of policing and security co-operation is of mutual benefit to all," they add.
The commissioners say after discussions with National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs' Council, they understand "considerable additional resource would be required for policing to operate using non-EU tools and that such tools would be sub-optimal - potentially putting operational efficiency and public safety at risk".
They add: "We are therefore concerned that a 'no deal' scenario could cause delays and challenges for UK policing and justice agencies."
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has indicated the UK would not be able to remain part of the European Arrest Warrant after Brexit and said it would not have the same access to organisations such as police agency Europol.
But in June, the prime minister complained EU negotiators were blocking agreement on deals, risking the safety of EU and UK citizens.
A Home Office spokesman told the Guardian: "There is widespread recognition that the UK and EU can most effectively combat security threats when we work together.
"It is important we maintain operational capabilities after Brexit, and we will continue to make this case to the European Commission."
He said the government was confident co-operation would continue but it was also preparing for "every eventuality, including no deal".

The Scottish National Party is calling on Labour to work with other opposition parties to keep Britain in the single market and customs union after Brexit.
Its Commons leader Ian Blackford asked for help to stop the "catastrophic damage" of "extreme" Brexit.
"It is time for MPs of all parties to put politics aside," he said.
Labour says the UK should "stay aligned" to the EU after Brexit and could pay to access the single market like Norway.
Mr Blackford said he would invite other opposition leaders to a summit on 8 January when MPs return from the Christmas recess.
He said: "As we saw with the successful amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill, when opposition parties work together effectively it is possible to secure a parliamentary majority and deliver change in the national interest."
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens have all said they want the UK to stay in the single market and customs union after Brexit - something Prime Minister Theresa May has already ruled out.
Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has also faced criticism over his refusal to support a second referendum on the final terms of the UK's exit from the EU.
He told the i newspaper: "We have had a referendum which came to a decision. The negotiations are still ongoing, albeit well behind schedule, and we've set out the kind of relationship we want to have with Europe in the future."
Tom Brake, Brexit spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said the Labour leadership had "shirked their responsibility" to provide effective opposition to the government.
"The Labour leadership has constantly played a game of smoke and mirrors over their Brexit position.
"But here they are nailing their colours to the mast in support of hard Brexit," he added.

Theresa May will update MPs on Tuesday about recent Brexit talks as she continues to seek support for her deal.
She visited Dublin and Brussels last week seeking EU agreement on changes to the backstop - the "insurance" policy to avoid the return of visible Northern Ireland border checks.
Last month MPs - who will debate Brexit on Thursday - voted for the PM to find alternatives to the current backstop.
But the EU has said it would not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement.
However, efforts to come up with a solution acceptable to both sides continue.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay met a group of Tory MPs working on possible alternatives to the backstop, before he travelled to Brussels and held talks with EU negotiator Michel Barnier.
Following the meeting, Mr Barnier said the talks had been "constructive", but added it was "clear from our side we're not going to reopen the withdrawal agreement, but we will continue our discussions in the coming days".
A statement from the Department for Exiting the European Union said Mr Barclay and Mr Barnier had agreed to further talks "in the coming days". Their teams would continue to work in the meantime "on finding a way forward", it added.
The statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday - a day earlier than had been expected - follows an exchange of letters between Mrs May and Jeremy Corbyn.
The Labour leader wrote to the PM on Wednesday with a list of five demands to secure his party's support for her deal, including a permanent customs union.
The prime minister struck a conciliatory tone in her response overnight and said she looked forward to the two parties meeting again "as soon as possible" to discuss ways forward on Brexit.
But No 10 said it rejected any proposals to remain in a customs union with the EU.
Some of her cabinet members also quashed the idea, with International Trade Secretary Liam Fox calling Mr Corbyn's proposal a "dangerous delusion".
Mrs May told the Labour leader: "It is good to see that we agree that the UK should leave the European Union with a deal and that the urgent task at hand is to find a deal that honours our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland, can command support in Parliament and can be negotiated with the EU - not to seek an election or second referendum."
This is despite Mr Corbyn repeatedly saying there should be a general election if Mrs May cannot get a deal through Parliament. He has also faced pressure from some of his MPs to push for another public vote on Brexit.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer said his "key question" about Mrs May's response was: "Is she prepared to move her red lines and find a consensus?"
"I don't see that in the letter," he said.
"The point of the exercise was to say, look, there is a majority for a close economic relationship, if you're prepared to try to find it, and I've said for some time we should test that by having a vote on a customs union."
Labour MP David Lammy - who supports the "People's Vote" campaign for a new referendum - said Mrs May's letter "makes it clear there is no hope of her agreeing" with Mr Corbyn's demands and said his party should campaign now for a fresh vote.
But fellow Labour MP Lisa Nandy told the BBC's Politics Live that there were between 40 and 60 of her colleagues "who are actively looking for ways to support" a revised Brexit deal.
She said the government needed to "get serious" about policy on a customs union and guarantee to "legislate for the protections around workers' rights".
The anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats said it was "astonishing" the two leaders were starting "serious discussions about delivering disastrous Brexit together" 900 days after the vote to leave the EU.
Brexit spokesman Tom Brake added: "It is time for Jeremy Corbyn to give up the letters and instead draw his attention to Labour Party policy and get behind the campaign for a People's Vote."
The GMB union criticised the government's "dangerous brinkmanship" after Mrs May rejected remaining in a customs union. It has urged the extension of Article 50 - the mechanism by which the UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March.
Meanwhile, speaking in Luxembourg, Mr Barnier said he would judge how interested the UK was in changes to the accompanying political declaration, which sketches out the shape of the future relationship.
He said the EU was waiting for a clear and stable majority to emerge in the House of Commons, not just for the passage of the withdrawal agreement, but for the subsequent legislation too.
Mr Corbyn's letter to the prime minister was "interesting in tone and substance", Mr Barnier said.
Elsewhere, members of the Alternative Arrangements Working Group - including Conservative MPs Steve Baker, Marcus Fysh, Owen Paterson, Damian Green and Nicky Morgan - met government officials in Westminster.
Mr Baker said the talks had been "constructive" and they were "looking forward to hearing how Stephen Barclay gets on with Michel Barnier".
The group has met several times to discuss alternative arrangements to the proposed Irish border "backstop".
By Norman Smith, BBC assistant political editor
It could have been a very different sort of letter.
Mrs May could have just underscored her red lines: No to extending Article 50. No to another referendum. No to a customs union.
Instead, it's a much more conciliatory and consensual letter.
There's praise for Mr Corbyn in accepting the priority now should be on reaching a Brexit deal, rather than pressing for a general election.
Praise too for his acknowledgement that the backstop has got to be changed.
And there's some movement on employment rights and the promise of more cash for hard pressed communities.
Even on the customs union - their key dividing area - Mrs May's language is more nuanced, even though privately her aides insist there can be no question of accepting a permanent customs union.
It's unlikely to be anywhere near enough to win over Mr Corbyn.
But it may be enough for those Labour MPs in leave supporting constituencies, who are looking for political cover to back or abstain on Mrs May's deal.
In his letter, Mr Corbyn asked for five changes to be made to the Brexit deal.
The Labour leader called for a "permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union" with the EU to be introduced to the deal, with the same external tariff.
He said it would give the UK a say on any future trade deals that the EU may strike.
In her reply, Mrs May said the political declaration - the second part of her deal which is a non-legally binding statement on the future relationship between the UK and EU - "explicitly provides for the benefits of a customs union", with no tariffs, fees, charges and restrictions.
But, she said, it also allows for the UK to strike up its own trade deals elsewhere.
She added her reassurance that securing frictionless trade with the EU was "one of our key negotiating objectives".
Speaking in Switzerland, where Mr Fox has just signed a deal to see the country trade with the UK on the same terms it does now, the minister said the idea was "not workable".
Mr Corbyn also wanted the deal to include a promise for the UK to be closely aligned with the Single Market after it leaves the EU, "underpinned by shared institutions and obligations".
Mrs May quoted the EU as saying the current deal provides for the closest relationship possible outside the Single Market.
She added: "I am not sure what exactly you mean when you say 'shared institutions and obligations', but our teams can explore that."
The PM also repeated the EU's warning that completely frictionless trade is only possible if the UK stays in the Single Market.
"This would mean accepting free movement, which Labour's 2017 General Election manifesto made clear you do not support," she added.
Labour has called for the UK to stay in step with the EU on rights and protections for workers, which was included in Mr Corbyn's letter.
On this point, Mrs May said the government had already made commitments on workers' rights, adding: "We are examining opportunities to provide further financial support to communities that feel left behind."
This could be referring to proposals that were said to have been discussed earlier this month from a group of Labour MPs in predominantly Leave-supporting constituencies, to allocate more funds to their communities for big infrastructure projects.
The PM also said that while she had "always been clear that Brexit should not be at the expense of workers' rights or environmental protections", she did not support automatically following EU rules in these areas.
The Labour leader called for a promise to participate in EU agencies and funding programmes on the environment, education and industry regulation after Brexit.
The prime minister said the government supports participation in EU programmes in a number of areas, as set out in the political declaration - which includes areas such as science and innovation, youth, culture and education, and overseas development.
Finally, Mr Corbyn demanded agreements with the EU on security, such as access to the European Arrest Warrant database.
Mrs May said the government "shares your ambition in relation to security arrangements".
She said the political declaration secured agreement on the exchange of Passenger Name Record, DNA, fingerprint and vehicle registration data and on arrangements "akin to the European Arrest Warrant to surrender suspected and convicted persons efficiently and expeditiously."
But, she added, there is a challenge that as a third country outside of the EU, there are restrictions on the UK's ability to participate in some EU tools and measures.
Labour is yet to respond to the letter.

The government has granted a two-week extension in the process to decide who will make UK passports after Brexit.
British company De La Rue - which had lost the £490m contract to French-Dutch Gemalto in March - had requested the longer "standstill period", which has now been agreed by the Home Office.
It means a final decision will now be made on Tuesday 17 April.
De La Rue is also taking initial steps "towards initiating appeal proceedings against the provisional decision".
However, it has refused to clarify what this means legally or how any appeal process might proceed.
The firm says the time extension will give it more time for close scrutiny of the criteria that the Home Office used in coming to its decision to award the contract to Gemalto.
It says it will assess that information and whether it might help it in its arguments.
De La Rue's bid was not the cheapest, but it said it was "the highest quality and technically most secure".
"We have a preferred bidder, which demonstrated it was best able to meet the needs of the passport service, delivering a high quality and secure product and providing best value for money for the taxpayer… that remains the government's position," said the prime minister's official spokesman.
But the extension "will give all bidders the chance to find out more detail and get more information from the Home Office… this is standard process."
The spokesman added: "This has been a rigorous, fair and open process."
The current EU-themed burgundy passport, in use since 1988, will revert to its original blue and gold colour from October 2019. However, people are expected to keep their current passports until they expire.
Before the bidding process extension, a spokesperson for De La Rue had said: "We can accept that we weren't the cheapest, even if our tender represented a significant discount on the current price.
"It has also been suggested that the winning bid was well below our cost price, which causes us to question how sustainable it is."
The decision to give a foreign company the contract had been criticised by pro-Brexit government figures.
Under EU procurement rules, the Home Office was required to open up the bidding process to European firms, although De La Rue has manufactured UK passports since 2009.
The Home Office had said the proposed Gemalto deal could save the taxpayer £100m-£120m and that 70 new jobs would be created in the UK, at sites in Fareham, in Hampshire, and Heywood in Lancashire.
It comes as a Daily Mail petition calling for the Home Office to give the contract to a British firm reached 273,000 signatures.
The Home Office issues more than six million passports annually and is the only provider of passports to British citizens.

The EU's negotiator says he is worried by the UK's post-Brexit proposals for the Northern Ireland border.
Michel Barnier said the UK was asking for EU laws, its customs union and single market to be suspended at a "new external border".
He said the UK wanted Northern Ireland to be a "test case" for future customs arrangements with the EU.
The UK said both sides were "closely aligned" in what they wanted to achieve.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that will share a land border with an EU state after Brexit.
The impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is one of the key issues being discussed in the early stages of UK-EU negotiations.
Fears have been raised that a return to border checks could undermine the Good Friday peace agreement and damage the economy.
The UK - which plans to leave the EU's customs union - has said it wants an "unprecedented solution", avoiding physical checks at the border.
Instead, the government is arguing for a wide-ranging exemption under which small and medium-sized businesses would not have to comply with any new customs tariffs.
Unveiling the EU's position, Mr Barnier said: "What I see in the UK's paper on Ireland and Northern Ireland worries me."
He added: "Creativity and flexibility can't be at the expense of the integrity of the single market and customs union.
"This would be not fair for Ireland and it would not be fair for the European Union."
Mr Barnier said the peace process should be preserved, the common travel area between Ireland and the UK protected and that there should be no return to a "hard border", all of which the UK has also said it is seeking.
"Irish citizens in Northern Ireland must continue to enjoy their rights as EU citizens," Mr Barnier continued, calling for the UK to come up with a "unique" solution.
As the UK had chosen to leave the EU, it was its responsibility to come up with solutions, he said.
The UK government, which released its own position paper on Northern Ireland last month, said there was now a "good basis on which to continue to make swift progress" on the subject.
It welcomed the EU's view there should be no "physical infrastructure" at the border, but added that "unilateral UK flexibility will not be sufficient to meet our shared objectives".
Brussels has refused to discuss the UK's future relationship with the EU - notably how they will trade with each other - until the initial discussion issues, including Northern Ireland, have been settled.
The EU's paper suggests specific provisions being written into the final departure deal to protect cross-border co-operation in areas like health, education, transport and fishing.
The Liberal Democrats said the EU's document "demolishes another of the Leave campaign's fantastical claims - that Brexit would have no impact on the Irish border".
MP Tom Brake said the only solution to the border question was for the UK to stay in the single market and customs union.
Unveiling the Northern Ireland plans at a press conference, Mr Barnier also attacked the UK over one of the sticking points in the Brexit negotiations - the size of any "divorce" bill required as it leaves the EU.
The UK has said it will honour its financial commitments but also that it has a "duty to our taxpayers" to "rigorously" examine the EU's demands.
Mr Barnier said Brussels expected Britain to deliver on commitments made in the multi-year EU budget signed up to by David Cameron and approved by the Westminster Parliament.
"I have been very disappointed by the UK position as expressed last week, because it seems to be backtracking on the original commitment of the UK to honour its international commitments, including the commitments post-Brexit," he said.
"Every euro spent has a specific legal base," he added.
"There is a moral dilemma here. You can't have 27 paying for what was decided by 28. What was decided by the 28 member states has to be borne out by 28 member states, right up to the end. It's as simple as that."
Mr Barnier was also asked about comments which have emerged by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker about Brexit Secretary David Davis.
In newly-published minutes of a 12 July meeting between Mr Juncker and Mr Barnier, Mr Juncker was recorded as questioning the "stability and accountability" of Mr Davis.
Mr Juncker also said Mr Davis's "apparent lack of involvement... risked jeopardising the success of the negotiations".
In the meeting, which came after the first round of negotiations, Mr Barnier was recorded as saying the UK negotiating strategy involved "using past debts as a means of buying future access to parts of the single market, something which the Union could not accept".
Mr Barnier brushed off the comments at a Brussels press conference, insisting he had "cordial" relations with the Brexit secretary and praising his "professionalism".
And the Department for Exiting the European Union responded: "These are clearly out-of-date comments and it is abundantly clear that the secretary of state has been fully engaged and involved throughout the discussions, in the same way as Mr Barnier."
In another position paper from the EU, it called for the UK to continue to honour the protected legal status given to delicacies like Parma ham or Champagne after Brexit.
The European Commission first acted in 1992 to establish a list of products which could only be described by their place of origin if they really were produced in that place.
It also includes UK products like Cornish clotted cream, Dorset Blue cheese, and Jersey Royal potatoes.
Under the EU's intellectual property proposals, the UK would implement the "necessary domestic legislation providing for their continued protection".
The impact of Brexit on food was also considered in the House of Commons, where Labour's Jenny Chapman warned against imposing tariffs on European food imports, and asked whether the government was planning a "return to consuming Spam and tinned peaches".
Brexit Minister Steve Baker assured her this was not the case and described her comments as a "fantastical proposal".

Facebook has suspended a Canadian data firm that played a key role in the campaign for the UK to leave the EU.
The social media giant said AggregateIQ (AIQ) may have improperly received users' data.
It cites reported links with the parent company of Cambridge Analytica (CA), the consultancy accused of improperly accessing the data of millions.
AIQ denies ever being part of CA, its parent company SCL or accessing improperly obtained Facebook data.
The Vote Leave campaign paid AIQ £2.7m ($3.8m) ahead of the 2016 EU referendum.
An ex-volunteer with the campaign has also claimed Vote Leave donated £625,000 to another group to get around campaign spending limits, with most of the money going to AIQ. Vote Leave has denied any wrongdoing.
AIQ's website once quoted Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings saying: "Without a doubt, the Vote Leave campaign owes a great deal of its success to the work of AggregateIQ. We couldn't have done it without them." The quote has since been removed.
In total, AIQ was given £3.5m by groups campaigning for Brexit, including Vote Leave, the Democratic Unionist Party and Veterans for Britain. The UK's Electoral Commission reopened an investigation into Vote Leave's campaign spending in November.
"In light of recent reports that AggregateIQ may be affiliated with SCL and may, as a result, have improperly received FB user data, we have added them to the list of entities we have suspended from our platform while we investigate," a Facebook spokesperson said.
"Our internal review continues, and we will co-operate fully with any investigations by regulatory authorities."
In a message posted to its website, AIQ says it is "100% Canadian owned and operated" and "has never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica or SCL".
It adds: "Aggregate IQ has never managed, nor did we ever have access to, any Facebook data or database allegedly obtained improperly by Cambridge Analytica."
It also denied ever employing Chris Wylie, the Canadian whistleblower who alleged that the data of 50m people was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has since said the number of people affected could be closer to 87m. CA says it obtained the data of no more than 30m people and has deleted all of it.
Analysis by technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones
It was three weeks ago that Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica just hours before a whistleblower's revelations to the Observer newspaper triggered the current scandal over improper use of data.
Christopher Wylie insisted that Aggregate IQ was closely linked to Cambridge Analytica, and supplied documents to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee which he said proved it.
Now Facebook's decision to suspend the Canadian firm from its platform appears to give further validation to Mr Wylie's claims. It also throws the spotlight back onto the potential use of Facebook data during the Brexit campaign.
Facebook says it is looking into whether the data that Cambridge Analytica acquired improperly from as many as 87 million people - 1 million of them in the UK - ended up with Aggregate IQ. The firm worked for both Vote Leave and BeLeave during the EU referendum campaign, but has always insisted it has never been a part of Cambridge Analytica, and has not had access to any of its Facebook data.
AIQ is a small company operating out of Victoria, British Columbia. It uses data to help micro-target voters and was founded by two Canadian political staffers.
Apart from its Brexit work the company has also been accused by Mr Wylie of distributing "incredibly anti-Islamic" content on social media ahead of the 2015 Nigerian presidential election to discredit Muslim opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari, who went on to win the contest.
The BBC has approached AIQ for a response to the Nigeria allegations.
Mr Wylie has said that AIQ was referred to among Cambridge Analytica staff as "our Canadian office". He told the Guardian he helped to set up the firm as a "Canadian entity for people who wanted to work on SCL projects who didn't want to move to London" and that he had known the firm's co-founder, Jeff Silvester, since he was 16.
AIQ says it "has never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica" and that "Chris Wylie has never been employed by AggregateIQ".
Cambridge Analytica is at the centre of a row over whether it used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum.

The Irish government has said Brexit trade deal talks should not proceed until there is a firm commitment to preventing a "hard" Irish border.
Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said the assurance must be written down before the talks move on.
"Before we move to phase two talks on trade, we want taken off the table any suggestion that there will be a physical border," Mr Varadkar said.
He was speaking at a European summit, attended by Prime Minister Theresa May.
Mrs May's spokesperson said both leaders had agreed to work together to find solutions ensuring there is "no return to the borders of the past".
But Sammy Wilson from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) accused the Irish government of trying to "keep the UK chained to the EU".
Earlier, Mr Varadkar's message was echoed by Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who held talks with his UK counterpart, Boris Johnson, in Dublin.
Mr Coveney said there was "a sense of jumping into the dark" for Ireland, as the future operation of its border with Northern Ireland had not been agreed.
"Yes, we all want to move onto phase two of the Brexit negotiations, but we are not in a place right now that allows us to do that," the foreign minister said.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, but Mr Coveney suggested the exit process could take up to five years.
In response, DUP MP Sammy Wilson claimed the Irish government was "fully signed up with the European establishment to thwart the referendum result in the UK to leave the EU."
In a statement, the MP accused Irish ministers of "trying to block the UK moving on to substantive negotiations about leaving the EU, and then suggesting that an interim or transitional period of five years is going to be needed before we can leave".
"The objective is quite clear; keep the UK chained to the EU until after the next election, when the Irish government hope that Corbyn's Brexit-breaking MPs might be in power," Mr Wilson added.
He said it seemed like the Irish government were content to involve themselves in the affairs of another state.
The MP for East Antrim said that the DUP will support the passing of legislation which would mean "deal or no deal, the UK will exit the EU in March 2019".
Despite cordial exchanges between the two foreign ministers, one thing was clear: Ireland and the UK are still at odds about whether enough progress has been made in the EU-UK divorce talks to allow the two sides to move onto discussions about future relationships.
Despite British assertions that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland, Dublin doesn't see how that position can be married with the UK leaving the customs union and the single market.
Nor does Dublin think a two-year transitional deal for business to adjust to Brexit is long enough.
With Taoiseach Leo Varadkar delivering the same message to Theresa May in Sweden, there is a sense that "make-your-mind-up time" for all sides is fast approaching.
During his talks in Dublin, Mr Johnson said it was necessary to move on to the second stage of negotiations, where issues raised by Mr Coveney would be thrashed out.
"Now is the time to make haste on that front," the UK foreign secretary said.
Mr Coveney said he understood the British "aspiration" to avoid a hard border, but more clarity was needed about the future.
"We are in the heat of the negotiations right now and, of course, we want to move on to the negotiations on trade, but there are issues that need more clarity," he said.
"This is a very fundamental change in the relationship between Ireland and Britain and Britain and the EU and it will require significant adjustment.
"The appropriate timetable is closer to four or five years than it is to two."
Mr Coveney added: "We simply don't see how we can avoid border infrastructure.
"Once standards change it creates differences between the two jurisdictions and a different rule book.
"When you have a different rule book you are starting to go down the route of having to have checks."
Asked whether the government was constrained by its confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party, Mr Johnson said that was "not at all an issue".
The DUP agreed to support Theresa May's minority government after June's election in return for £1bn of extra funding for Northern Ireland.
European leaders say talks can only progress if enough progress has been made on the Irish border, citizens' rights and Britain's EU budget contributions.
Meanwhile, Ken Clarke has said the UK remaining in the single market and customs union is vital for peace and stability in Northern Ireland.
It is the obvious solution as no-one wants physical border controls, the former chancellor and now Conservative "rebel" told BBC NI's The View.
"The border problem in Northern Ireland, the supreme importance of keeping the settlement in place, retaining peace in Northern Ireland is probably the single biggest, most important reason why it would be preferable for the United Kingdom as a whole to stay in the single market and the customs union," he said.
"If the Brexiteers, these right-wing nationalists, won't allow us to do that then the best solution after that, I agree with the taoiseach actually, is to have a border down the Irish Sea."

A former Conservative minister has compared Theresa May's Brexit plan to a "ghastly cockroach" and vowed to vote against it in Parliament.
Owen Paterson said the package agreed at Chequers in July would hamper the UK's ability to negotiate free trade deals with other countries.
Senior ministers have been defending the plan, which Eurosceptics say will keep the UK shackled to EU rules.
The chancellor said it "delivers on the decision of the British people".
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Philip Hammond dismissed EU warnings the model would not work, saying: "That's what people said about the light bulb in 1878."
But Mr Paterson, the former Northern Ireland secretary, dismissed it when he appeared alongside other Eurosceptic Tories at a conference fringe event.
The UK should be "actively negotiating" free trade deals with the likes of the United States, he said, but "while Chequers is floating around, like some ghastly cockroach, crawling forwards... they're not going to start talking to us.
"It's absolutely pointless."
He added: "My whip is here taking notes and so I'll say it to him directly - I'm voting down Chequers."
Also on day two of the Tories' conference, three serving EU ambassadors to London publicly criticised Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt for comparing the European Union to the Soviet Union.
Mr Hunt had accused Brussels of seeking to "punish" Britain for wanting to leave the EU and compared it to the USSR trying to stop its citizens leaving.
Ambassadors from Estonia, Latvia and Sweden all tweeted their disapproval, with the tweet from the Latvian ambassador being retweeted by the EU Commission's deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand.
Earlier Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab told the EU to "get serious" if it wants a Brexit deal, warning the UK may have "no choice" but to leave without one.
And Mr Hammond hit back at former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who has led criticism of the Chequers proposals, saying he was a "big picture man" whereas what was needed was "a very detailed and complex negotiation".

Brexit. It's all about Britain, right?
Well, not entirely.
There is the rest of the club to consider - what has become known, rather inelegantly, as the EU-of-27.
They are about to lose - depending on your point of view - a curmudgeonly whinger who was dragging the whole project down or one of their largest economies and the most powerful defence and security power in Europe.
So what to do?
There are those who think, genuinely, good riddance.
"General de Gaulle was right all along," they mutter. "We should never have let them join in the first place.
"Freed from the shackles of British ministers objecting to integration here and integration there, we can get on with it."
Closer co-operation on EU defence policy is high on their list; and it has been given an extra boost by the new president of the United States musing out loud about Nato and whether it is all worth it.
Others are dismayed by the British decision to leave, but after getting over the initial shock - and it really was a shock - they too are determined to make the best of it.
And when it comes to negotiating the UK divorce bill, make no mistake. For the people who matter, the unity of the remaining 27 is more important than trying not to upset the Brits as they wave goodbye.
The bill will be big - up to 60 billion euros - and European diplomats are bracing themselves for what one called "the very real possibility" that the UK will walk out in a huff.
But the likelihood is that after one too many late-night summits - and one too many outraged tabloid headlines - a deal of sorts will emerge from the rubble.
The consequences of Brexit will rumble on for years; there are trade deals that will have to be done. But the EU is in no position to wait for the dust to settle.
In many ways, it has already moved on. So long Britain, and thanks for the memories.
Later this month, leaders of the 27 (the 28th has already sent her apologies) will meet in Rome to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the EU's founding treaty.
I say celebrate, but there is no illusion about the challenges facing the union.
Could the forces that prompted Brexit spread to other countries? Will anti-EU populists continue to rise in France, the Netherlands and parts of Central Europe?
It is certainly not impossible, and EU leaders know it. The idea that the EU could fall apart - unthinkable a few years ago - is now the subject of serious discussion.
Which is why they need a new plan to reinvigorate the project on its 60th birthday, and make it fit for future purpose.
The European Commission has now produced a series of policy options for the best way forward, ranging from shrugging its shoulders to throwing up its hands in horror.
But the most likely solution is to make more use of what is known as multi-speed Europe.
That's the idea that "coalitions of the willing" can move forward on big projects even if others want to linger on the starting line.
It is already happening with the euro, and with the passport-free Schengen area - not all EU countries are members of everything. An inner core may want to push ahead, if (and it's a big if) it can take public opinion along for the ride.
The other Commission proposal that looks to have legs is the idea that Brussels would return some powers to member states, as long as the EU was given greater responsibilities in major policy areas such as trade, migration, security and defence.
Variations on this theme have been around for some time. The EU needs to be big on the big things, they said, and smaller on smaller things.
And the biggest of the big things - in a competitive field - is probably the need to fix the eurozone.
The single currency remains half-formed, and - as a result - not yet secure. There is talk of a eurozone finance minister and a single eurozone budget.
But if you centralise economic power, you have to make sure it is politically accountable.
In an era of populist, anti-establishment rage, that is a difficult balancing act. Much will depend on who wins national elections this year in Germany and, in particular, France.
Political leadership will be at a premium.
But as the UK prepares to leave and enter a whole new world, the status quo is no longer an option for the countries that remain.
The EU either needs to move forward towards closer integration, or transfer significant power back to nation states.
It continues to be a bold experiment in Europe. But the halfway house has been built on sand.

Michel Barnier has dismissed Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals to replace the Irish border backstop as a “trap”.
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The EU negotiator warned a group of senior MEPs that the EU could be locked into a string of commitments if the measure vetoed by the Northern Ireland Assembly. According to a source in the meeting, he said: “The EU would then be trapped with no backstop to preserve the single market after Brexit.” European officials are concerned that the Prime Minister’s demand for a “firm commitment by both parties to never conduct checks at the border in future” would leave the EU powerless to protect its single market if the DUP rejects the backstop.
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, said he was “absolutely not positive about Johnson’s proposals”.He added: “It doesn’t provide the necessary safeguards for Ireland.”Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission’s President, said the UK plan to offer the DUP a veto is “problematic” but promised to work through the issue.Senior EU diplomats have said giving such an influential role to Stormont is “unacceptable”.
Mr Barnier has pleaded for “more time” to look at the proposals before they are rejected out of hand by other EU figures.During private meetings, his Article 50 task force told diplomats that the backstop proposals don’t meet the three necessary criteria.Officials warned claimed proposals don’t protect the EU’s single market, the Good Friday Agreement and questioned whether Mr Johnson can secure a Common’s majority.MUST READ: Queen’s Speech date: When is Queen’s Speech to open Parliament?
EU negotiators also rejected the Government’s request to hold the next round of negotiations in a so-called “tunnel” - a period of secret and intense talks.Capitals have already expressed their frustrations at not being allowed access to the 44-page alternative to the backstop.David Frost, the Prime Minister’s top adviser, will resume talks on Friday in Brussels.DON'T MISSBoris Johnson’s most critical error could still cost Britain Brexit [EXCLUSIVE]Varadkar deals major blow to Boris's Brexit plan [INSIGHT]Five reasons Brexiteers can celebrate Boris's Brexit plan – REVEALED [ANALYSIS]
Domestically, Mr Johnson’s proposals have gone down far better.The DUP has signalled it could accept the new system - even though Northern Ireland would align to the EU’s single market rules for agri-food and industrial goods.Steve Baker, chair of the eurosceptic European Research Group, said he would support the new deal if the DUP followed suit.
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“On the union it's clear to me we don't have a right to trump the DUP,” he said.Meanwhile, Mr Johnson announced a short prorogation to hold a Queen’s speech.Parliament will be suspended from next Tuesday until October 14 to allow a new legislative programme to be set.
Brexit has "turned out less badly than we first thought", David Cameron has said.
The former prime minister was recorded at the World Economic Forum in Davos saying the Leave vote was "a mistake not a disaster".
Mr Cameron called the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, campaigned to stay in and resigned after the Leave side won.
His apparently unguarded comments were highlighted by Channel 5 News.
"As I keep saying, it's a mistake not a disaster," he was heard saying in a conversation with steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.
"It's turned out less badly than we first thought. But it's still going to be difficult."
The Remain campaign during the referendum warned of an immediate economic impact on the UK of a vote to leave the European Union.
In a speech to Vauxhall car workers, in Ellesmere Port, four months before the referendum, he warned voters about the economic shock that he said would be caused by a vote for Brexit.
"Let's just remember what a shock really means. It means pressure on the pound sterling. It means jobs being lost. It means mortgage rates might rise. It means businesses closing. It means hardworking people losing their livelihoods."
He stepped up his warnings as the referendum date approached, warning on 6 June that Brexit would be like putting a "bomb" under the UK economy and telling MPs a week later that "nobody wants to have an emergency Budget, nobody wants to have cuts in public services, nobody wants to have tax increases", but the economic "crisis" that would follow a vote to leave could not be ignored.
"We can avoid all of this by voting Remain next week," he added.
He described a vote to leave the EU as a "self-destruct option" for the UK, after a Treasury analysis warned it would tip the UK into a year-long recession, with up to 820,000 jobs lost within two years.
At other times he sounded more optimistic about the prospect of leaving, saying, in May 2016, "Britain is an amazing country. We can find our way whatever the British people choose."
A leading Brexit supporter, former Conservative and UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, welcomed Mr Cameron's comments.
The BBC's chief political correspondent, Vicki Young, said Tory Brexit cheerleaders she had spoken to were "thrilled", telling her the former PM had come round to their "way of thinking".
But she said one leading Remain campaigner in the party said it was "far too early" to tell what the long-term consequences of leaving the EU would be.
Former Labour MP Gisela Stuart, who now heads pro-Brexit campaign group Change Britain, said the former PM's "scaremongering" about the economic damage of Brexit had proved to be "baseless".
"I hope that pro-EU MPs who continue to do Britain's economy down join Mr Cameron in admitting they're wrong, and focus their energies on getting the best Brexit deal for the UK," she said.
Although the pound fell sharply after the vote, the UK economy has continued to grow, and unemployment has fallen to a 42-year low. Mortgage rates have stayed at generally the same low levels they have been since the financial crisis in 2008.
The UK and the EU are currently negotiating the terms for the UK's exit and future relations, and the date for Brexit has been set for 29 March 2019.

The UK will continue to take part in the Erasmus student exchange programme until at least the end of 2020, the prime minister has said.
Theresa May praised Erasmus+ and confirmed the UK would still be involved after Brexit in March 2019.
Whether it is involved long term is among issues likely to be discussed during the next stage of negotiations.
Erasmus+ sees students study in another European country for between three and 12 months as part of their degree.
The prime minister is in Brussels where she will have dinner with EU leaders on Thursday.
On Friday, without Mrs May, they are expected to formally approve a recommendation that "sufficient progress" has been made in Brexit negotiations so far to move them onto the next stage.
Mrs May agreed a draft deal with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker last week which would mean the UK would continue its funding of EU projects, including Erasmus, until the end of this EU budget period in 2020.
If EU leaders approve the draft deal, Brexit negotiations can begin on the next phase, covering the future relationship between the UK and EU and a two-year transition or implementation deal from March 2019. It is not clear whether this would include Erasmus+.
Mrs May said that British students benefitted from studying in the EU while UK universities were a popular choice for European students.
Speaking during a discussion on education and culture at the summit in Brussels, she added: "I welcome the opportunity to provide clarity to young people and the education sector and reaffirm our commitment to the deep and special relationship we want to build with the EU."

The UK has "danced to the EU's tune" during the Brexit negotiations, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has claimed.
In a debate in Strasbourg, he called the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, "Theresa the appeaser", saying she had "given in on virtually everything".
The European Parliament later voted to endorse an agreement struck by the UK and European Commission which is set to move the talks on to their next phase.
But MEPs also insisted the UK must honour the commitments it has made.
Amid concerns about whether Friday's agreement on citizens' rights, the Northern Ireland border and the so-called "divorce bill" is legally binding, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit spokesman, said he had been reassured the UK would not "back-track" on its commitments.
The agreement should be converted into a legal text in weeks, not months, he added.
In a symbolic but politically significant vote, the European Parliament backed the European Commission's view that sufficient progress had been made on so-called divorce issues to move to talks covering a transition phase and the EU's future relations with the UK.
The EU's negotiator  Michel Barnier said there was "no going back" on Friday's agreement - which is expected to be rubber-stamped by all other 27 EU members later this week.
"It has been noted and recorded and is going to have to be translated into a legally binding withdrawal agreement," he said.
During the debate, several MEPs criticised the UK's Brexit Secretary, David Davis, for suggesting in an interview on Sunday that the first-phase agreement was more of a "statement of intent" than a "legally enforceable thing" - comments he has since backed away from.
German Christian Democrat MEP Manfred Weber, who leads the centre-right EPP group, said the remarks were "not helpful" for building trust between the two sides.
Meanwhile, Mr Farage - who has campaigned for 20 years to take the UK out of the EU - also attacked the British government, saying Mr Barnier "didn't need" to make many concessions to Theresa May.
"I'm not surprised you're all very pleased with Theresa the appeaser - who has given in on virtually everything," he said.
"She has danced to your tune all the way through this. You must be very, very happy indeed."
Warning of a further betrayal of Brexit voters, he said the prospect of a two-year transition after the UK left in March 2019 would be the "biggest deception yet", meaning the UK would have left the EU "in name only".
"I think Brexit at some point in the future may need to be refought all over again," he added.
But defending the British prime minister, Conservative MEP Syed Kamall said both sides had needed to make compromises and concessions in order to "avoid a no-deal situation".
Important progress had been made, he added, when both sides "understood the need for flexibility and focused on building a better future rather than looking back at the past".

Theresa May has said the UK is "on course to deliver on Brexit" as she arrived in Brussels, the day after her first Commons defeat as prime minister.
She said she was "disappointed" at the vote on the EU Withdrawal Bill, but the legislation was making "good progress".
MPs backed an amendment giving them a legal guarantee of a vote on the final Brexit deal struck with Brussels.
EU leaders are expected to formally agree to start the next phase of negotiations on Friday.
The European Commission has said "sufficient progress" has been made on the first phase to move onto discussing the framework of a future relationship between the EU and UK - on issues such as security and trade.
Mrs May told fellow EU leaders at dinner on Thursday that she wanted to get agreement on the "implementation period" as a priority but wanted to talk about trade "as soon as possible".
She said was personally committed to delivering a "smooth Brexit" and she wanted to approach the next phase of talks "with ambition and creativity".
Speaking to reporters earlier, she said: "I'm disappointed with the amendment but actually the EU Withdrawal Bill is making good progress through the House of Commons and we are on course to deliver Brexit."
Asked whether she felt she would have to compromise more to win over rebels from her own party, she told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "We've actually had 36 votes on the EU Withdrawal Bill, and we've won 35 of those votes with an average majority of 22."
Mrs May lost by just four votes, as MPs backed an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill by 309 to 305.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described it as a "humiliating loss of authority" for the PM and warned that his party would vote against another bit of the bill - the plan to put a fixed Brexit date into law.
He said setting an "arbitrary date" was not sensible and there "should be some flexibility".
It will not derail Brexit but MPs who voted against the government hope it will give them a bigger say in the final deal Theresa May strikes with Brussels.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said that as other EU leaders also run minority or coalition governments they would see the vote defeat as a small-scale domestic political issue.
The government had promised a "meaningful vote" for MPs on the final Brexit deal, but this defeat means that promise now has legal force and must happen before any UK-EU deal is implemented in the UK.
Ministers had wanted to be able to start implementing any deal as soon as it was agreed - in case, for instance, it was only agreed at the last minute.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it would embolden the opposition and showed there was a majority in Parliament against a "hard Brexit".
Cabinet Minister Jeremy Hunt told the BBC the vote was "not going to stop Brexit".
Labour joined forces with the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party in a cross-party alliance.
If all Conservative and DUP MPs had voted against the amendment the government would have won. But 11 Conservatives resisted the arm-twisting by their party managers to vote with the opposition.
The Tory rebels were Dominic Grieve, Heidi Allen, Ken Clarke, Jonathan Djanogly, Stephen Hammond, Sir Oliver Heald, Nicky Morgan, Bob Neill, Antoinette Sandbach, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston. Another Conservative MP, John Stevenson, officially abstained by voting for and against the amendment.
Two Eurosceptic Labour MPs - Frank Field and Kate Hoey - voted with the Conservatives and the DUP.
Emotions ran high before, during and after Wednesday's Commons debate, with Eurosceptic Conservatives accusing the rebels of trying to "frustrate" Brexit.
In dramatic scenes, the rebels shouted "too late" as Justice Minister Dominic Raab announced a concession shortly before voting began and Tory whips could be seen attempting to twist the arm of MPs thinking of voting against the government.
Leading rebel Anna Soubry said she had found a woman MP "upset and shaken" on Tuesday evening after a whip tried to persuade her not to revolt. She told MPs on Thursday morning, that none of the rebels took any pleasure in defeating the government, adding that "nobody drank champagne".
After the result was announced, one of the rebels, former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan, tweeted: "Tonight Parliament took control of the EU Withdrawal process."
This did not go down well with Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who called for the deselection of rebel Tories for "undermining the PM", and accused their leader, Dominic Grieve of "treachery".
Rebel Tory Sarah Wollaston hit back on Twitter, saying: "Get over yourself Nadine."
Dominic Grieve tried to calm the mood, insisting he was merely trying to ensure Brexit was carried out in an "orderly, sensible way".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
It's certainly true that the Tory party is so divided over how we leave the EU that the Parliamentary process was always going to be very, very choppy.
But another minister told me the defeat is "bad for Brexit" and was openly frustrated and worried about their colleagues' behaviour.
Read the rest of Laura's blog
Theresa May has travelled to Brussels to attend a dinner with the 27 other EU leaders, at which she will urge them to approve an agreement to move Brexit talks on to a second phase.
They are all but certain to agree.  Talks could then start next month on the two-year transition period the UK wants to ease it out of the EU after it formally leaves in March 2019.
But the EU wants more detail from the UK government before starting talks on a future relations - including trade - with the UK.
Brexit Secretary David Davis has said he wants to complete the "substantive portion" of trade negotiations by March 2019, leaving open the possibility that the detail will be hammered out during the two-year transition period.
The EU Withdrawal Bill is a key part of the government's exit strategy.
Its effects include ending the supremacy of EU law and copying existing EU law into UK law, so the same rules and regulations apply on Brexit day.
MPs have been making hundreds of attempts to change its wording - but Wednesday's vote was the first time one has succeeded.
Unless the government manages to overturn it further down the line, it means a new Act of Parliament will have to be passed before ministers can implement the withdrawal deal struck with Brussels.
Labour's Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer urged David Davis not to undermine Wednesday night's vote when the EU Withdrawal Bill reaches the next stage of its passage into law.
Mr Davis said the vote would lead to a "very compressed timetable" for Brexit legislation and the government "will have to think about how we respond to it".
There is also a row brewing over a vote next week on putting the precise date and time of Britain's exit from the EU - 11pm on 29 March 2019 - into law.
Sir Keir described the vote as the next "accident waiting to happen", telling Mr Davis: "Rather than repeat last night's debacle, will the government now commit to dropping that ill-conceived gimmick?"
Mr Davis told Sir Keir: "Unlike him, I do not view votes of this House of Commons as accidents. They are decisions taken by the House, and that decision we respect, as we will the next one."
Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake also warned the prime minister she was heading for defeat if she did not drop the "silly idea" of enshrining the Brexit date and time in law, adding: "Parliament has now shown it is not prepared to be bullied."


Labour today said it will seek to amend the upcoming vote on triggering Article 50 by demanding MPs be given votes throughout the EU talks. 
It not only threatens to delay Theresa May's timetable for starting Brexit talks but also risks frustrating the entire two-year negotiation with the EU.  
And Jeremy Corbyn also admitted today that Labour MPs will only be 'asked' to vote in favour of triggering Article 50, rather than imposing a three-line whip on his party.
But shadow home secretary Diane Abbott caused further confusion by saying 'we don't know what amendment we're going to move,' before adding: 'But we are clear that we will not vote to bloc it [Article 50].'  

Dozens of pro-Remain MPs pledged to go further than the Labour leadership and vote against starting Brexit talks altogether, despite last June's vote to leave the EU. 
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said Labour will demand the Government allow 'full parliamentary scrutiny throughout the process'. 
He wants 'regular statements' from ministers and frequent votes on the Government's progress. He said that would ensure Britain gets the 'compromise that will work' for both Britain and Europe. 
Mr Corbyn said Labour would use the parliamentary vote on authorising Article 50 to be triggered to 'make demands' on access to Europe's single market and protecting workers' rights.
He insisted Labour would not vote against Article 50, the formal mechanism for leaving the EU, but again refused to say if he will order a three-line whip on his MPs. 
Fresh questions were raised today over whether Jeremy Corbyn voted for Brexit. 
John Longworth - the former director of the British Chambers of Commerce who was forced to quit after saying Britain could have a 'brighter future' outside the EU - said the Labour leader was the 'first person' to congratulate him on his speech in March last year. 
Mr Corbyn was attacked for his lack of enthusiasm for the EU during the referendum despite being part of the Remain campaign. He insisted he voted Remain but even some of his own MPs doubt he did. 
Today Mr Longworth said Labour were 'all over the place' on Brexit. 
And he revealed: 'When I made my fateful speech to the British Chambers of Commerce – which led me to resign and fight the campaign to leave – the first person to come up to me in the green room after I'd made the speech and congratulate me, shake my hand and say what a fantastic speech, was Jeremy Corbyn.
'So that tells you exactly where Labour are on this on this issue.'  
Remarkably Ms Abbott said she was unable to say whether Labour would whip the Article 50 vote. 
She told the BBC: 'We are going to amend it. We can only tell you exactly how we’ll amend it when we understand what sort of legislation the government is bringing forward. 
'And in the course of moving those amendments we will ask the questions that the people of Britain, actually, whether they voted Leave or Remain, want answered.
Asked whether there would be a three-line whip on the vote, she answered: 'I can’t tell you what the whipping will be because we haven’t seen the government’s legislation.'
Tory MP Maria Caulfield said today's comments from the Labour leadership was further proof that the Opposition are 'hopelessly divided and confused over how to respond to the referendum result'.
She said: 'They can't agree over whether we should leave the single market, can't say whether they will have an agreed position in Parliament – and have said this morning they will also find new ways of frustrating the process of leaving.
'Labour are flailing about, irrelevant, incompetent and completely out of touch with ordinary working people.'
MPs will be given the final say on triggering Article 50 if the Government loses its appeal in the Supreme Court.
Judges will announce their decision on Tuesday and if the Government loses, as is expected, ministers will present legislation to the Commons to give the Prime Minister the authority to trigger the clause.
A cross-party group of MPs have told the Observer they will amend any Article 50 Bill to make what they call Mrs May's 'extreme Brexit' with no deal impossible.
Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg told the newspaper he had been talking to MPs from other parties about how to gather support for amendments 'because the situation is so serious we are condemned to work together on amendments that we can all support.'
Prominent Labour parliamentarians such as Lord Hain and Mike Gapes are among those promising to vote against triggering Article 50 and there have been suggestions that dozens of MPs in pro-Remain seats could rebel against the leader over the matter. 
Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller today attacked American tech firms for refusing to hand data to police that could help catch her abusers. 
She said she and her family had received a barrage of death threats since she won her High Court case that ruled the Government could not start Brexit talks without a vote in Parliament.
Ms Miller, the public face of the court case, appeared to single out Facebook for failing to do enough to help police catch internet trolls. 
One opponent posted 'all of my contact details on Facebook so they [the threats] were coming straight to me' she told the BBC today. 
Police have made arrests and have issued six cease and desist letters. 
But Ms Miller said: ‘The problem is that some of it the American technology communication organisations are not great at providing the data they need to track this, which is a big issue in itself so there are 12 or odd cases still being pursued.'
The Government appealed the High Court decision in November that the Prime Minister must win the approval of MPs before triggering Article 50 - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU. 
Supreme Court judges will deliver its verdict on Tuesday.
But the Government expects to lose and ministers have already drafted legislation to rush through Parliament so Theresa May can stick to her timetable of triggering Article 50 by the end of March. 




Meanwhile dozens of Labour MPs have written to the Prime Minister condemning her threat to leave the EU with no trade deal.
Mrs May insisted in her speech last week that she will walk away from negotiations with Brussels if she is only offered a bad deal, threatening to adopt a Singapore-style low-tax, low-regulation economic model to maintain competitiveness.
The group of Labour MPs have attacked Mrs May's idea, saying it would make Britain 'the sweatshop of Europe' with public services, workers' rights and environmental protections all at risk.
The letter was organised by senior Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who chairs Vote Leave Watch and said he would not rebel against Jeremy Corbyn over triggering Brexit. 
Mr Umunna said: 'Personally, as a democrat and having agreed to the rules under which the referendum was fought, I would find it hard to vote against triggering Article 50.
'But the content of the Brexit deal is a different matter - I am not prepared to give the Tories a blank cheque to make life harder for middle and lower income households in my constituency, a sentiment which is shared across the House of Commons.'
The signatories include former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman, two members of the current Labour frontbench, 10 former members of the shadow cabinet, and 15 MPs whose constituencies voted to leave the EU. 
Meanwhile, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said he would fight any attempts to water down human rights or environmental protections once the UK leaves the EU.
The so-called 'Great Repeal Bill', which transposes all EU law into UK law, giving Parliament the power to decide which bits to keep, could include a 'Henry VIII clause' allowing ministers to ditch or change sections through secondary legislation with minimal scrutiny by MPs.

That is because it the Bill is expected to pass before the Prime Minster concludes a final Brexit deal with the Government.
Sir Keir said Labour would fight against any attempts to push through changes without full parliamentary approval.
He told the Independent: 'It would be wrong for these rights to go into our law and then be capable of being amended or removed by statutory instrument.
'I think that's a really important principle that we must fire to the beginning of any discussion on the Great Repeal Bill.' 
 
As a proud member of Her Majesty’s Press, I am reluctant to admit this: but yesterday’s most significant story about the forthcoming Brexit negotiations came not in the British Sunday newspapers, but in Welt am Sonntag.
While our own newspapers made a lot of intimations that Theresa May’s much-anticipated speech on the matter tomorrow will make it clear she is prepared for the UK to leave both the European Single Market and the Brussels-negotiated Customs Union, that German paper had a remarkable on-the-record interview with the Chancellor Philip Hammond.
Hammond had been seen in Germany —and across the Continent — as their biggest ally in the Cabinet against what those bitterly opposed to the UK’s departure from the EU invariably call ‘Hard Brexit’.
Even after the referendum result, Mr Hammond continued to issue gloomy statements about what would ensue (he had been a Remainer) — so much so that one Cabinet minister snapped: ‘It’s as though George Osborne had never left.’
But in his interview for Welt am Sonntag, Mr Hammond dashed the hopes of those who saw the Treasury as a drag anchor against what might be called the Full Brexit. He insisted the leaders of the EU ‘need to respect the British people’s sense that our history and destiny is an engagement with the rest of the world . . . historically we have never been a nation that was focused on continental Europe’.
Threat
And he issued a direct threat of what Britain would do if the EU attempted to restrict in any way our ‘access to the European market’. He declared that rather than ‘lie down and say, too bad, we’ve been wounded — if we are forced to be something different, then we will have to become something different’.
He went on to warn that Germany will pay a high price if that happened: ‘I think Mercedes-Benz and BMW and Volkswagen would also like to sell their cars in the UK market without tariffs. Germany’s biggest bank has a large operation in London and I assume it would like to continue that operation.’
I’m told the Welt am Sonntag journalists were so surprised by the tone of these remarks that they called the Treasury afterwards to check that the Chancellor really wanted to say all this on the record. The response was: Yes, he does.
It has gone off like a bomb in Berlin. The head of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, Norbert Roettgen, accused our Chancellor of ‘making threats damaging the UK itself’. But then he added: ‘We should focus on common interests and compromises.’ Which actually makes a pleasant change from what we have been hearing so far from such sources, consisting entirely of warnings that Britain can expect only pain.
The interesting question is, why has Mr Hammond suddenly changed his tone from warning the British, to warning the Germans? In part, I am sure, it is because the Treasury’s predictions of what would happen to the British economy — simply as a result of voting for Brexit — have been proved scaremongering nonsense.
But it is also, in part, a negotiating tactic. The main reason David Cameron got such a pathetic deal in his so-called ‘renegotiation of our EU membership’ was that he was never prepared to walk away from the table. And Brussels knew it.
It’s not enough for Theresa May to say that if she doesn’t get a bespoke UK/EU free trade deal outside the Single Market and the Customs Union, she will walk away and risk the imposition of tariffs on both sides. She has to mean it — and be believed.
Anathema
Such rough talk from her supposedly ultra-cautious Chancellor gives her much greater credibility in such a stand-off.
But Mr Hammond’s change of tone is not just a negotiating ploy. As he also pointed out to his German interviewers: ‘Since the referendum, we have seen, on the European side, movement away from the UK positions . . . to things that are anathema to the UK: more political integration.’
Some of that ‘movement’ would now be causing political mayhem in the UK, if we had not already voted to leave. Here are just four examples.
Last week, details leaked of an EU White Paper suggesting Brussels be allowed to impose taxes directly on member states, to include a levy on CO2 emissions, an electricity tax and an EU-wide corporate income tax.
Last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that British laws allowing the security services retention of bulk data on calls and emails would not be allowed to stand as they ‘exceeded what is strictly necessary’.
Also last month, Brussels ruled that all members of the Single Market had to impose a requirement that every off-road vehicle — every quadbike, every golf-cart — had to be covered by insurance for ‘third-party injury and damage’. Our own Department for Transport said that it ‘opposed measures which impose an unreasonable burden on the public’ but that it would have to abide by the new rule until Britain exits the EU.
And, only a few days ago, Brussels ruled that even motorists who break the law by driving without insurance should be protected if their car is damaged — so law-abiding drivers face an increase in insurance bills to cover that cost.
Hostility
It is only because we are leaving the EU that these four power-grabs — proposing new EU-wide taxes; adversely affecting MI5’s ability to protect the British people; creating a totally new overhead for farmers and families playing around with quadbikes; and driving up the costs of running a car — have not caused an even sharper spike in the British people’s hostility to our membership.
Yesterday, the former Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, pleaded that Mrs May should go for a ‘Norway model’ — that is, Britain outside the EU, but still members of its Single Market. This is the same Nick Clegg who, before the referendum vote, mocked this ‘solution’: ‘Norway have to pay into EU coffers, they have to obey all EU laws: it all gets decided by everyone else in Brussels and they have to translate it into law in Oslo. They have no power whatever, all the rules get made by foreigners: utter powerlessness.’
So the most eminent representative in Westminster of the die-hard Remainers thinks such ‘powerlessness’ is better than leaving the Single Market — and, as Mrs May put it in her Conservative Party conference speech, getting ‘an agreement between an independent, sovereign United Kingdom and the European Union’.
Sorry, Mr ex-Deputy Prime Minister: you’ve lost the argument, first with the British people and, now, with the Tories who were once on your side.
Living longer? No sweat!
For years, I have had a weekly telling-off from a fine woman called Wendy. Ferociously fit and steel-muscled, every Tuesday morning she stands over me barking commands like a regimental sergeant-major, while I do the exercises she prescribes.
Each week, she asks me what exercises I’ve done since last time, and each week I tell her: ‘None whatsoever.’ Wendy then rebukes me for not doing the right thing by my own health . . . and I have no answer (anyway, I’m panting too much to make sense).
But now I have a newspaper cutting to wave at her, while I gasp and groan. Last week, the Mail reported on a research study of 64,000 British adults over a decade, which showed that just a once-weekly exercise was much more effective than had been supposed as a means of sharply reducing the chance of a premature death from heart disease.
Better still, the researchers stated that this reduction in mortality risk was no less than that experienced by people who exercised every day: ‘Those who exercised once or twice a week but did not meet the recommended levels gained similar health benefits.’
What a relief to be vindicated in my laziness. I feel better already.
Quailing at the charge that it is perpetuating ‘blackface’ — when a white actor puts on make-up to play the part of a black man — Sky Arts has pulled from the schedules its satirical drama in which Joseph Fiennes played the part of Michael Jackson.
It was the late pop-star’s daughter, Paris, protesting that she was ‘incredibly offended’ by the portrayal, which seemed to settle the matter. But would Michael Jackson himself have been offended? He had spent part of his fortune on cosmetic procedures which lightened his skin to appear more, well, like a white man.
I suspect he would have been content to be played by Fiennes. But who knows? He was very strange.
The former Tory Party leader Michael Howard has been roundly criticised for suggesting that Theresa May should be prepared to go to war to protect Gibraltar, as Margaret Thatcher did to defend the Falkland Islands after they had been invaded by Argentina.
He has been lambasted by normally sensible people for supposedly being bellicose and insulting an ally. 
The Spanish Foreign Minister, Alfonso Dastis, sniffed loftily that Britain had ‘lost composure’.
Maybe Lord Howard could have chosen his words more carefully. He was interviewed at home, and was perhaps unguarded. 
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But he was absolutely right to stress how high the stakes have become since Spain insisted it should have a veto over any final post-Brexit deal applying to Gibraltar. 
There are two crucial facts which anyone discussing the future of the British territory should bear in mind. 
One is that the Spanish authorities are absolutely obsessed with it. Gibraltar may be a small place, but gaining control of it is high in their priorities.
The second inescapable truth is that the Foreign Office and many British politicians would be happy to hand Gibraltar over to the Spanish. 
Indeed, in 2002 the Blair government cooked up a plan for joint sovereignty that was only scuppered because it was rejected in a referendum by 99 per cent of Gibraltarians in an 88 per cent turnout.
Let me give some examples of Spain’s fixation with the Rock, which seems sometimes to border on psychosis. 
It was, of course, legally ceded by Spain to Britain in 1713, and became a vital military and naval base for the British Empire.
In 1954, the fascist dictator General Franco revived Spain’s long-dormant claim to the territory after the Queen visited her loyal subjects there. 
She has not visited Gibraltar since because successive British governments have not wished to upset the prickly Spanish.
More than 99 per cent of Gibraltarians voted in 1967 against Spanish sovereignty. 
Naturally, this did not please the undemocratic, nationalist Franco, and the land border with Spain was effectively closed from 1969 to 1982.
Even with Franco’s death and the dawn of a democratic era in Spain, politicians in Madrid did not stop coveting the Rock. 
Queues periodically built up on the border as Spanish customs officials made people’s lives a misery by obstructing them as they tried to pass in and out of the territory — most recently in 2013.
Whenever British warships dock in Gibraltar, Spanish ministers are liable to be thrown into a tizz. 
There was uproar when Charles and Diana boarded the Royal Yacht Britannia off the Rock on their honeymoon in 1981. 
When he heard of their plans in advance, King Juan Carlos I of Spain boycotted their wedding.
So when Alfonso Dastis accuses the British of having ‘lost composure’, I’m afraid I have to pinch myself in disbelief. 
For years the Spanish have been anything but composed. They have been peevish, petty and sometimes bullying.
Speaking personally, if there were a tiny Spanish enclave on the coast of Cornwall, where one could pop over for a tapas and a glass of rioja, I should be delighted. 
But the macho political class in Madrid regard the very existence of Gibraltar as an affront to their honour.
They are also guilty of gross hypocrisy since the same politicians who react hysterically to the British presence in Gibraltar passionately defend Spain’s possession of Ceuta and Melilla, two enclaves in Morocco, whose government believes should be Moroccan.
The latest manifestation of Spain’s inability to accept that 99 per cent of the population of Gibraltar regard themselves as British, not Spanish, is its demand to have a say in the territory’s post-Brexit future. 
This is shameless opportunism, and it is disgraceful that the EU should have allowed it.
It can’t be stated too loudly that all 30,000 Gibraltarians are legally British, and it is the responsibility of the British Government — not Madrid or Brussels — to safeguard their rights after we have left the European Union.
The final piece of evidence that illustrates just how unbalanced the Spanish government has become was illustrated this week by a photograph of a minuscule British patrol boat (all we dare keep in Gibraltar these days) escorting a large Spanish warship out of the enclave’s territorial waters.
Such illegal incursions are frequent. This one was deliberately provocative, timed to take place days after the announcement of Spain’s diplomatic coup in obtaining from Brussels a role in discussions about the territory’s future.
Isn’t it obvious that Madrid is deadly serious — as well as pretty loopy — on this matter? 
I don’t suggest it has any intention of invading Gibraltar. As a democratically elected government, which is moreover a fellow member of the Nato military alliance, it can presumably be expected not to overturn the rule of law. 
But short of armed force, the Spanish government will try almost anything to achieve its ends. 
The trouble is that its preoccupation with Gibraltar is neither reasonable nor measured. 
So it might do something drastic. The more weakness we show, the greater the danger.
Here, I fear, we are vulnerable. For the Spanish may have seen the extreme criticisms of Lord Howard’s intervention as evidence that the British are prepared to be flexible where the future of Gibraltar is concerned.
After all, we have been so in the past, bending over backwards in order not to offend Madrid. 
In 2002, the Labour government accepted the principle of joint sovereignty with the Spanish. 
In the mind of the Foreign Office, this was doubtless one step away from handing over the Rock entirely.
Although the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had intimated there would be a vote on the issue, the British government wanted to present the people with a fait accompli. 
The Gibraltar government wisely decided to go ahead with a referendum of its own. The result was overwhelming. 
I’m sure Theresa May and even Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson are being genuine when they say they will respect the right of the people of Gibraltar to remain British so long as they want to — which is self-evidently for as far as anyone can see.
But there are plenty of people in Whitehall and Labour, and even some Tories, who secretly believe the enclave is an embarrassing anachronism, and the sooner it is returned to Spain the better.
The pusillanimous Foreign Office had similar thoughts about the Falklands in 1981. 
The watering down of British citizenship rights for their inhabitants, as well as the withdrawal of a major supply vessel, persuaded the Argentines that we were no longer committed to defending the islands. 
However, treacherous mandarins had not counted on Margaret Thatcher’s conviction and courage.
We can easily imagine what such people will say when Spain threatens to unpick a Brexit deal unless it can obtain concessions over Gibraltar. 
They will bleat that 30,000 people can’t be allowed to stand in the way of an agreement.
So despite his somewhat clumsy language, I’m on Lord Howard’s side. He realises the enormity of the danger facing our fellow British citizens. 
Never forget: Spain craves Gibraltar, and will move heaven and earth to get it.
The issue could come to a head as soon as today with leading Brexiteers branding the Treasury 'Brexit saboteurs'
PHILIP Hammond is blocking calls to increase spending on No Deal planning at this month’s Budget - as hopes of a Brussels breakthrough grow.
The Chancellor has been urged by some in Government to set aside even more funds to prepare for a collapse in negotiations, beyond the £3 billion he earmarked in 2017.
But Treasury insiders say he is resisting any increase, even if it strengthened Theresa May’s negotiating hand and is likely the cash will never have to be spent.
The issue could come to a head as soon as today as the Cabinet discuss the Budget.
One Cabinet Minister told The Sun “it seems like a no-brainer” as Brexit talks go to the wire, as it would send the message to Brussels that Britain really is ready to walk away.
And a senior Government source added they “definitely need” more cash to prepare for the doomsday scenario of Britain exiting the EU without a trade deal in place next March.
But Treasury sources insisted there was already enough funding for emergency planning scenarios.
Last night leading Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith publicly backed calls for more money, saying: “How can the PM say we are preparing to leave the EU without a deal when her Chancellor is refusing to pay for it?”
And in an extraordinary blast, the former Tory leader added: “If the money isn’t forthcoming the it means the Treasury is acting like government saboteurs - hell bent on wrecking Brexit.”
The spat comes as the business chiefs urged Mr Hammond to use his fiscal statement in two weeks time to radically prepare the country for exit with a £3 billion package.
The CBI’s plans include more than doubling the tax breaks export firms get to invest in their own factories to £500,000 and doubling apprenticeship investment to get Britain Brexit ready.
They also suggest a business rates holiday for any firm that conducts a major overhaul of their store, factory or office.
Boss Carolyn Fairburn said: “As the UK leaves the EU, there is no better moment than this Budget to show the Government is committed to real partnership with business.”
The issue could come to a head as soon as today with leading Brexiteers branding the Treasury 'Brexit saboteurs'
PHILIP Hammond is blocking calls to increase spending on No Deal planning at this month’s Budget - as hopes of a Brussels breakthrough grow.
The Chancellor has been urged by some in Government to set aside even more funds to prepare for a collapse in negotiations, beyond the £3 billion he earmarked in 2017.
But Treasury insiders say he is resisting any increase, even if it strengthened Theresa May’s negotiating hand and is likely the cash will never have to be spent.
The issue could come to a head as soon as today as the Cabinet discuss the Budget.
One Cabinet Minister told The Sun “it seems like a no-brainer” as Brexit talks go to the wire, as it would send the message to Brussels that Britain really is ready to walk away.
And a senior Government source added they “definitely need” more cash to prepare for the doomsday scenario of Britain exiting the EU without a trade deal in place next March.
But Treasury sources insisted there was already enough funding for emergency planning scenarios.
Last night leading Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith publicly backed calls for more money, saying: “How can the PM say we are preparing to leave the EU without a deal when her Chancellor is refusing to pay for it?”
And in an extraordinary blast, the former Tory leader added: “If the money isn’t forthcoming the it means the Treasury is acting like government saboteurs - hell bent on wrecking Brexit.”
The spat comes as the business chiefs urged Mr Hammond to use his fiscal statement in two weeks time to radically prepare the country for exit with a £3 billion package.
The CBI’s plans include more than doubling the tax breaks export firms get to invest in their own factories to £500,000 and doubling apprenticeship investment to get Britain Brexit ready.
They also suggest a business rates holiday for any firm that conducts a major overhaul of their store, factory or office.
Boss Carolyn Fairburn said: “As the UK leaves the EU, there is no better moment than this Budget to show the Government is committed to real partnership with business.”
Lawyers urged the gypsy community to ensure they gather the right paperwork as soon as possible
GYPSIES and travellers have been warned they could be deported after Brexit if they don't have proof they can stay.
Lawyers have urged the community to get their paperwork in order as soon as possible - or risk being thrown out of the country.
The situation could end up seeing travellers forced to leave the UK because they don't have the right documents, in an echo of the Windrush generation scandal.
The Traveller Movement national annual conference heard that gypsies may have difficulty gathering official paperwork to prove they have the right to live here.
Poor literacy, the inability to use computers, the cost of applying and distrust of the state were all cited as barriers to claiming the "settled status" which non-citizens need to have in order to stay in Britain after Brexit.
Lawyer Christopher Desira said travellers should start gathering paperwork such as tax documents, education certificates, bank statements or employment contracts.
He warned that they could end up confined in a detention centre, particularly if they don't have a passport.
Charity worker Sarah Zawacki added: "Our work found that there was also a very low awareness of the need to apply to secure their position in the UK.
"Now they know there is this application, but it's £65 - many are on very low incomes and have very large families and it's just unfeasible.
"Then there is the language barrier - many speak some English but it's not the level needed to access this application."
Around 300,000 members of the Roma community are believed to live in the UK.
Some were born and brought up in the country, but others moved here from other parts of the EU.
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Lawyers urged the gypsy community to ensure they gather the right paperwork as soon as possible
GYPSIES and travellers have been warned they could be deported after Brexit if they don't have proof they can stay.
Lawyers have urged the community to get their paperwork in order as soon as possible - or risk being thrown out of the country.
The situation could end up seeing travellers forced to leave the UK because they don't have the right documents, in an echo of the Windrush generation scandal.
The Traveller Movement national annual conference heard that gypsies may have difficulty gathering official paperwork to prove they have the right to live here.
Poor literacy, the inability to use computers, the cost of applying and distrust of the state were all cited as barriers to claiming the "settled status" which non-citizens need to have in order to stay in Britain after Brexit.
Lawyer Christopher Desira said travellers should start gathering paperwork such as tax documents, education certificates, bank statements or employment contracts.
He warned that they could end up confined in a detention centre, particularly if they don't have a passport.
Charity worker Sarah Zawacki added: "Our work found that there was also a very low awareness of the need to apply to secure their position in the UK.
"Now they know there is this application, but it's £65 - many are on very low incomes and have very large families and it's just unfeasible.
"Then there is the language barrier - many speak some English but it's not the level needed to access this application."
Around 300,000 members of the Roma community are believed to live in the UK.
Some were born and brought up in the country, but others moved here from other parts of the EU.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Brexiteers fear that soon they’ll either have to take the blame for a no-deal Brexit or be bounced into backing a flawed deal — and Theresa May’s 'astonishingly upbeat' mood is a signal
IT is quiet out there, too quiet in the views of many Brexiteers in government.
Their suspicions are raised by the fact that when things go silent in Brussels, that’s when the real negotiating is being done. They fear that right now a deal is being done that they’ll be bounced into supporting.
They worry that since last week’s Cabinet meeting, there hasn’t been any new Brexit offer put either to Cabinet or the inner cabinet, yet technical talks have resumed in Brussels.
They fear that a deal will be agreed. Then, they’ll be faced with a choice of rejecting it and having to take the blame for no deal and the chaos that would involve or accepting the agreement with all its flaws.
This fear of being bounced has been heightened by Theresa May’s mood. Those who have seen her this week describe her as “astonishingly upbeat” and convinced that a deal will soon be done.
I understand that she will update the Cabinet on the state of negotiations on Tuesday.
Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, is more optimistic than most Leavers in Cabinet. He has been reassuring Cabinet colleagues that press reports about where the deal is going to end up aren’t right and that the final phase of the negotiations will be politically — not technically — led. In other words ministers, not civil servants, will be in charge.
But this has not been enough to assuage some of his colleagues’ concerns.
They point out that at crucial points in these negotiations, Downing Street has presented ministers with a done deal and challenged them to quit if they don’t like it. The Chequers plan, which David Davis and Boris Johnson resigned over, was just one example of this approach.
These ministers have concluded that the level of concern the Cabinet expressed about the negotiations means that Mrs May will not come to the Cabinet and ask ministers for permission to make further concessions. Rather, they’ll simply be presented with them.
At the top level of government, they are keen to get the EU to agree to a special Brexit meeting this month.
They believe that will give them more time to get the deal through parliament. An agreement in November would also allow them to avoid some of the most difficult no-deal planning choices. For instance, I understand that at Cabinet on November 13 they must decide whether to book space on ferries to bring in essential supplies in the event of no deal.
Number 10 is confident of getting a Brexit deal through the Commons. One of those who has discussed the matter with Mrs May tells me “you can see how opposition melts away” in the face of worries about both no deal and a Corbyn government.
At the same time, the May circle believe the carrot of a future trade deal with the EU and the Government having more money to spend if the withdrawal agreement is passed will ease its passage.
But Theresa May should beware buyer’s remorse. She may well be able to bounce her Cabinet and the bulk of her MPs into supporting a deal.
But if they end up regretting their vote or are left angry, they’ll know who to blame. Mrs May will find herself facing a confidence vote next spring.
“A MASTERCLASS in how to give people something and p**s them off at the same time” – that’s how one senior Tory describes Philip Hammond telling schools that they could have £400million to buy the “little extras they need”.
Schools funding is one of the issues that cost the Tories most at the last election. But the Budget did little to deal with this question: More than 80 per cent of the extra spending announced went to the NHS and there was more new money for potholes than schools.
Education is threatening to turn into a major political problem for the Tories.
A new TV series called School, starting on Tuesday on BBC2, looks at how schools are struggling to cope with budgetary constraints. At the same time, the Tories and their anonymous Education Secretary Damian Hinds are oddly quiet about their achievements.
The free schools set up under this Government are outperforming all other schools. But the Government barely whispers about this, when it should be shouting it from the rooftops.
Downing Street defends the emphasis on the NHS to Tory MPs by pointing out that their polling shows it is the overwhelming public-spending priority of their supporters. But as one influential Tory complains to me, this ignores the fact that people now only become more likely to vote Tory than Labour at age 47.
“If you want to have some supporters who are less elderly, you might want to push education up the agenda,” he fumes.
The Tories won’t win back their majority without more support from those in their thirties and early forties – and they won’t win over parents with school-age children unless they show them that education is as much of a priority for the Government as it is for them.

THE view in Westminster is that Monday was Philip Hammond’s last Budget. There are whispers in Whitehall that his travel schedule and raised international profile suggest he realises as much.
So, who will replace Hammond as Chancellor? Well, the rumour in government circles is that Amber Rudd, cleared now of blame for the Windrush scandal, might. She is a former banker who knows the Treasury well and would be the first female Chancellor.
Mrs Rudd would, from No10’s point of view, also be less of a threat than other contenders. Her small majority in Hastings and her position on Brexit make her less of a challenge to Mrs May’s position.

JEREMY Hunt is determined to banish the idea that Brits can only speak two languages: English and English slower and louder.
After giving a speech in Japanese in September, he is giving one entirely in French on Thursday.
Let’s hope that Mr Hunt fares better than Tory Blair. When he gave a speech in French to their parliament, there were complaints that his accent owed too much to his time as a barman in Paris.

AN incompetent minister in a competent department can be dealt with.
A hyper-competent minister can stop an incompetent department making too many mistakes.
But put together an incompetent department and an incompetent minister and you have a guaranteed disaster on your hands.
But that is what we have with immigration right now. Caroline Nokes, the Immigration Minister, is one of the weakest members of the Government, while the Home Office is still not fit for purpose ­– as the Windrush scandal showed.
What makes all this so dangerous is that Brexit will have huge consequences for immigration policy.
THIS week has shown why the Tories should be more afraid of John McDonnell than Jeremy Corbyn.
It was Mr McDonnell who realised that Labour would be walking into an elephant trap if they opposed plans to raise the higher rate tax threshold to £50,000.
Mr McDonnell knows that if Labour is to win next time, they’ve got to make people think that only “the rich” and big business will end up paying more tax.

Brexiteers fear that soon they’ll either have to take the blame for a no-deal Brexit or be bounced into backing a flawed deal — and Theresa May’s 'astonishingly upbeat' mood is a signal
IT is quiet out there, too quiet in the views of many Brexiteers in government.
Their suspicions are raised by the fact that when things go silent in Brussels, that’s when the real negotiating is being done. They fear that right now a deal is being done that they’ll be bounced into supporting.
They worry that since last week’s Cabinet meeting, there hasn’t been any new Brexit offer put either to Cabinet or the inner cabinet, yet technical talks have resumed in Brussels.
They fear that a deal will be agreed. Then, they’ll be faced with a choice of rejecting it and having to take the blame for no deal and the chaos that would involve or accepting the agreement with all its flaws.
This fear of being bounced has been heightened by Theresa May’s mood. Those who have seen her this week describe her as “astonishingly upbeat” and convinced that a deal will soon be done.
I understand that she will update the Cabinet on the state of negotiations on Tuesday.
Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, is more optimistic than most Leavers in Cabinet. He has been reassuring Cabinet colleagues that press reports about where the deal is going to end up aren’t right and that the final phase of the negotiations will be politically — not technically — led. In other words ministers, not civil servants, will be in charge.
But this has not been enough to assuage some of his colleagues’ concerns.
They point out that at crucial points in these negotiations, Downing Street has presented ministers with a done deal and challenged them to quit if they don’t like it. The Chequers plan, which David Davis and Boris Johnson resigned over, was just one example of this approach.
These ministers have concluded that the level of concern the Cabinet expressed about the negotiations means that Mrs May will not come to the Cabinet and ask ministers for permission to make further concessions. Rather, they’ll simply be presented with them.
At the top level of government, they are keen to get the EU to agree to a special Brexit meeting this month.
They believe that will give them more time to get the deal through parliament. An agreement in November would also allow them to avoid some of the most difficult no-deal planning choices. For instance, I understand that at Cabinet on November 13 they must decide whether to book space on ferries to bring in essential supplies in the event of no deal.
Number 10 is confident of getting a Brexit deal through the Commons. One of those who has discussed the matter with Mrs May tells me “you can see how opposition melts away” in the face of worries about both no deal and a Corbyn government.
At the same time, the May circle believe the carrot of a future trade deal with the EU and the Government having more money to spend if the withdrawal agreement is passed will ease its passage.
But Theresa May should beware buyer’s remorse. She may well be able to bounce her Cabinet and the bulk of her MPs into supporting a deal.
But if they end up regretting their vote or are left angry, they’ll know who to blame. Mrs May will find herself facing a confidence vote next spring.
“A MASTERCLASS in how to give people something and p**s them off at the same time” – that’s how one senior Tory describes Philip Hammond telling schools that they could have £400million to buy the “little extras they need”.
Schools funding is one of the issues that cost the Tories most at the last election. But the Budget did little to deal with this question: More than 80 per cent of the extra spending announced went to the NHS and there was more new money for potholes than schools.
Education is threatening to turn into a major political problem for the Tories.
A new TV series called School, starting on Tuesday on BBC2, looks at how schools are struggling to cope with budgetary constraints. At the same time, the Tories and their anonymous Education Secretary Damian Hinds are oddly quiet about their achievements.
The free schools set up under this Government are outperforming all other schools. But the Government barely whispers about this, when it should be shouting it from the rooftops.
Downing Street defends the emphasis on the NHS to Tory MPs by pointing out that their polling shows it is the overwhelming public-spending priority of their supporters. But as one influential Tory complains to me, this ignores the fact that people now only become more likely to vote Tory than Labour at age 47.
“If you want to have some supporters who are less elderly, you might want to push education up the agenda,” he fumes.
The Tories won’t win back their majority without more support from those in their thirties and early forties – and they won’t win over parents with school-age children unless they show them that education is as much of a priority for the Government as it is for them.

THE view in Westminster is that Monday was Philip Hammond’s last Budget. There are whispers in Whitehall that his travel schedule and raised international profile suggest he realises as much.
So, who will replace Hammond as Chancellor? Well, the rumour in government circles is that Amber Rudd, cleared now of blame for the Windrush scandal, might. She is a former banker who knows the Treasury well and would be the first female Chancellor.
Mrs Rudd would, from No10’s point of view, also be less of a threat than other contenders. Her small majority in Hastings and her position on Brexit make her less of a challenge to Mrs May’s position.

JEREMY Hunt is determined to banish the idea that Brits can only speak two languages: English and English slower and louder.
After giving a speech in Japanese in September, he is giving one entirely in French on Thursday.
Let’s hope that Mr Hunt fares better than Tory Blair. When he gave a speech in French to their parliament, there were complaints that his accent owed too much to his time as a barman in Paris.

AN incompetent minister in a competent department can be dealt with.
A hyper-competent minister can stop an incompetent department making too many mistakes.
But put together an incompetent department and an incompetent minister and you have a guaranteed disaster on your hands.
But that is what we have with immigration right now. Caroline Nokes, the Immigration Minister, is one of the weakest members of the Government, while the Home Office is still not fit for purpose ­– as the Windrush scandal showed.
What makes all this so dangerous is that Brexit will have huge consequences for immigration policy.
THIS week has shown why the Tories should be more afraid of John McDonnell than Jeremy Corbyn.
It was Mr McDonnell who realised that Labour would be walking into an elephant trap if they opposed plans to raise the higher rate tax threshold to £50,000.
Mr McDonnell knows that if Labour is to win next time, they’ve got to make people think that only “the rich” and big business will end up paying more tax.

Last modified on Tue 8 Jan 2019 11.51 GMT
Moves to ask parents to submit the country of birth of their children this week as part of the school census have caused a significant backlash on social media, with parents being urged to boycott the survey via the #BoycottSchoolCensus hashtag campaign. Here are the answers to some of the key questions about the census and the campaign against it.
State schools in England supply details about their pupils to the Department for Education for what is known as the school census once every term. The census includes details such as age, address and academic attainments, and these are recorded in the national pupil database (NPD). National statistics from the survey are published every year. Here’s the 2016 edition.
Last year, long before the EU referendum, the DfE decided to add new components for the 2016-17 census, including pupils’ country of birth and nationality. It also started to ask schools to judge children’s proficiency in English if it is not their first language. The DfE has collected data on pupils’ ethnicity for many years.
No. There are reports that many schools have reacted to the new questions on birth and nationality by asking to do so, but the DfE says parents are not obliged to comply.
Schools and local authorities are allowed to ask for proof of date of birth during the admissions process, but the DfE’s code specifically states they must not ask for “long” birth certificates or “other documents which include information about the child’s parents”.
At a basic level the DfE uses the school census for funding and planning. Its intention in adding nationality and language ability was to help gauge the “targeting of support” for pupils and schools. Academics and journalists conducting research also make extensive use of the database. Figures showing that grammar schools have a tiny number of pupils on free school meals, for example, are likely to have come via the NPD.
Access to the NPD is restricted, and the restrictions increase with the level of detail. The highest level of access – known as tier one and which could identify individual pupils – is only open to a small number of approved applicants, and details identifying individual pupils cannot be divulged.
Condition of access includes compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998. This means providing proof of registration with the information commissioner’s office, having appropriate security arrangements in place to process the data, using the data only for the specific purpose requested, keeping it only for the specified length of time and not sharing it without prior written approval.
Update: the highest level of access to data is tier one, not tier four as previously stated.
Some people fear the Home Office could use the database to identify foreign-born families, or match the findings to its own immigration database. The timing of the census has heightened this worry.
The change was suggested a year ago, but the subsequent vote in favour of leaving the European Union has left the immigration status of EU nationals living in the UK much less clear than it was 12 months ago. With Liam Fox suggesting that they could be “one of our main cards in the negotiations” for Brexit, and the home secretary, Amber Rudd, suggesting companies could be forced to reveal how many foreign workers they have, the political atmosphere is highly charged.
Campaigners say the Home Office has a record of accessing other government departments’ data, but the DfE’s official line is that the information will not be shared: “These data items will not be passed to the Home Office. They are solely for internal DfE use for analysis, statistics and research,” it said.
It is worth noting that the Home Office could already do something similar through existing HMRC tax records.
Yes, to a point. The DfE’s guidance to schools allows parents and carers to refuse to supply the information on nationality and place of birth. It is the first time parents have been given that right in the school census. The school will still supply all the other data it already collects on pupils.
It’s very much a matter of personal conscience.
It is unlikely the Home Office is trawling the NPD looking for immigrants. It doesn’t currently have the capacity, though it could perhaps in the future. Many school leaders are in favour of the data collection, because it helps them argue for further funding for new places and additional support for those needing to learn English.
Boycotting the data collection would send a strong signal to the DfE that they are being too intrusive in their methodology, and that parents are concerned about the potential abuse of the data in the future. One thing is clear though: no schools should be badgering parents to see passports, and parents are entirely right to be refusing these requests.
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From The Socialist newspaper, 28 September 2016
TUSC parliamentary candidates in 2015, photo Senan   (Click to enlarge)
Jeremy Corbyn's re-election triumph is a significant defeat for the capitalist establishment - the corporate bosses, media tops, and their political representatives, both those outside and inside the Labour Party. Prior to Jeremy's election as leader last summer this elite had achieved unchallenged control of the Labour Party for over 20 years, effectively disenfranchising working class voters by removing any choice at the ballot box.
The capitalists benefitted enormously from the transformation of Labour into Tony Blair's New Labour and they will not lightly accept the new situation. Consolidating Jeremy's victory against their continued opposition - by really transforming Labour into an anti-austerity, socialist, working-class mass movement - is the critical task facing socialists in Britain today.
The first meeting of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) national steering committee after Jeremy Corbyn's re-election takes place on 12 October. The Socialist Party will be presenting proposals on how TUSC can contribute to the central task at hand.
TUSC was established in early 2010 and initially involved the Socialist Party and a number of leading trade unionists participating in a personal capacity.
These included Bob Crow, the general secretary of the 80,000-strong RMT transport workers' union, which had been expelled from the Labour Party in 2004. The RMT's predecessor union was one of the founding organisations of the Labour Party.
In 2012 the RMT's annual delegate general meeting (AGM) agreed that the union would formally participate as a constituent organisation of TUSC, with representatives appointed to the coalition's steering committee. The RMT's continued involvement has been endorsed, not without debate, at every AGM since.
The Socialist Workers' Party was invited into TUSC in 2010 and independent socialists also participate. By providing a common electoral umbrella for trade unionists and working class community campaigners to challenge establishment politicians at the ballot box in defence of core socialist policies, TUSC's aim has been to push forward the process of re-establishing a vehicle for working class political representation.
The TUSC founding statement recognised that there were "different strategic views" about the way to advance this cause, "whether the Labour Party can be reclaimed by the labour movement, or whether a new workers' party needs to be established." But aside from recognising that there would be Labour candidates "who share our socialist aspirations" who would not be challenged by TUSC, to date TUSC has not taken a policy position on what would be required to transform the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn's re-election poses this question point blank.
The Socialist Party is proposing that TUSC makes a clear policy statement that a critical step would be to re-establish within the Labour Party a role for trade unions, the biggest voluntary organisations in Britain, commensurate with their importance as the collective voices of millions of workers.
Under Blair, Brown and Miliband the unions' power within the Labour Party was gutted. The real social weight of the RMT, for example, is shown when it is routinely denounced by the capitalist media as 'holding the country to ransom' every time it is forced to take strike action to defend its members and public safety on the railways.
But if the union was to affiliate to the Labour Party today it would have less say than the House of Lords Labour Group in the party's national policy-making forum! As the RMT's political strategy endorsed by this year's AGM says, Labour does not currently have "structural/constitutional arrangements that would make affiliation in the union's interests."
The Socialist Party is not proposing that TUSC draws up an alternative constitution for the Labour Party. TUSC is a coalition whose component parts have different views. But it could agree a broad policy to take into the labour movement: that the unions must have their collective representation and proportionate weight restored in the formation of Labour Party policy, the selection and re-selection of Labour Party candidates, and the administration of the party locally and nationally.
The RMT rulebook commits the union "to work for the supersession of the capitalist system by a socialistic order of society." There should be no problem for TUSC to also adopt policy that socialists excluded from the Labour Party should be allowed in.
The best way to achieve this - above board and undercutting media scares about 'infiltrators' - would be to allow for affiliation to the Labour Party for socialist parties and organisations. This right should also be extended to anti-austerity, anti-racist, socialist feminist, and Green campaigners and organisations, in a modern version of the early federal structure of the Labour Party which encompassed trade unions, the co-operative movement, women's suffrage campaigners, and a number of independent socialist parties.
But this call obviously raises the question of TUSC's electoral activity.
The Co-operative Party, an independent party separately registered with the Electoral Commission, has an affiliate status agreement with the Labour Party on the basis that it does not contest seats against Labour. The Socialist Party will be proposing at the October steering committee that TUSC should campaign for a similar arrangement for its constituent components.
Since Jeremy Corbyn's initial victory, TUSC has already re-calibrated its electoral activity.
In the May 2016 local elections, for example, no TUSC candidates were even considered to be run without local TUSC groups seeking a dialogue with the sitting Labour councillor or prospective candidate on the critical issue of their preparedness to resist cuts to local council jobs and services (see www.tusc.org.uk/txt/380.pdf for a full report of TUSC's participation in the 2016 elections).
The Socialist Party is proposing that TUSC continues its campaign for Labour councils to join the resistance to the Tories' austerity agenda. TUSC supporters have played an important role in winning backing for a fighting strategy to oppose cuts to local public services in the main local government unions, Unison, Unite, and the GMB, as well as this year's Wales TUC conference.
This campaign should be resumed in the autumn, as councils begin preparing their 2017-18 budgets, with the added urgency of the need to coordinate an organised defiance of the new Housing and Planning Act. Labour councillors should be pushed to fight the Tories or resign and make way for those who will.
However the responsibility for removing alleged 'Labour' representatives who implement Tory policies does not rest with TUSC alone. TUSC candidates have polled over 350,000 votes in various elections since its formation and the prospect of an electoral challenge from the left can add to the pressure on 'Labour' cutters.
But with Jeremy Corbyn's re-affirmed mandate it is not the only way to bring them into line. The councillors on the Labour-controlled Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service Authority, for example, who are planning to sack one in five firefighters and re-employ the rest on worse contracts, should be suspended from the Labour Party unless they back down.
Consequently, the Socialist Party is proposing that TUSC agrees to make no further preparations for contesting the May 2017 local elections in England and Wales pending discussions with Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters on the new possibilities opening up following his re-election victory.
Many other organisational and political steps would need to be taken for the Labour Party to be fully consolidated as a working class, socialist, anti-austerity mass movement. This would include measures to defeat the opposition that will continue to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership from Labour's right.
TUSC's constituent components will have different views on how best a movement can be built that is capable of defeating the pro-capitalist consensus upheld by the establishment politicians, their media, and other institutions.
But October's steering committee discussion, in welcoming Jeremy Corbyn's re-election triumph, provides an opportunity to signal that TUSC will fully participate in that struggle.
The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

Amnesty to conduct research into racism in the UK
‘Some people now feel licensed to express racist views in a way we haven’t seen for decades’ – Kate Allen
Amnesty International today announced a new emergency campaign to combat racism and xenophobia in the UK, prompted by reports of a rise in racial abuse in the wake of the EU referendum.
The announcement comes amid news that reports to police of online hate crimes rose over the weekend since Thursday’s referendum. The UN has also raised concern over the reported rise.
Amnesty will conduct research into the rise in racism and xenophobia across the UK. The new research will examine reports of abuse and their causes, including the public and political discourse around both the EU referendum and the London mayoral election.
Amnesty has issued an urgent call on all local councils to condemn racism in all its forms, and to commit to ensuring that all local bodies and programmes have the support and resources needed to fight and prevent racism and xenophobia. Amnesty aims to get every local council to sign up to the commitment. (www.amnesty.org.uk/againsthate)
Meanwhile Amnesty is encouraging people to show their solidarity with people experiencing abuse, using the #AgainstHate hashtag.
Kate Allen, Amnesty’s UK Director, said:
“Some people now feel licensed to express racist views in a way we haven’t seen for decades.
“The referendum campaign was marked by divisive, xenophobic rhetoric as well as a failure from political leaders to condemn it. We are now reaping the referendum rhetoric whirlwind.
“Amnesty is deeply concerned at reports of verbal abuse, attacks on buildings, racist slogans on t-shirts, calls for people to leave the country and other acts of intimidation and hate.
“People across the UK have suddenly found themselves in a country where they’re unsure of their future, their family’s future and the security of their jobs and homes. They need to be urgently reassured that they can feel safe, protected and welcome here.
“We’re simply not prepared to stand by and let hate become the norm in Britain.”
A member of Amnesty’s Belfast group was verbally racially abused on Saturday night by a man who asked him if he was from the European Union before telling him to “get the fuck out of our country”.
Mohammed Samaana, a nurse in a Belfast hospital, was verbally attacked in a city-centre Belfast bar. He describes the incident:
“On Saturday night, a man I have never met before said to me: “You from the EU? Fuck off back to your country. Get the fuck out of our country.”
“At first I thought he was joking, but then he continued the abuse and started shaking his fists at me. At that point I decided it was better to leave rather than have the incident escalate.
“What makes me really sad is that the three men and three women who were with him didn’t say a word, condoning his racism by their silence. I think everyone now needs to speak out and challenge racism wherever and whenever we see it.”
Mr Samaana is a dual Palestinian-UK citizen who has lived in Northern Ireland for fifteen years and works as a nurse in a Belfast hospital.
Today the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein issued a statement on xenophobic attacks in the United Kingdom:
“I am deeply concerned at reports of attacks and abuses targeting minority communities and foreign citizens in the United Kingdom over the last few days. Racism and xenophobia are completely, totally and utterly unacceptable in any circumstances. I urge the U.K. authorities to act to stop these xenophobic attacks and to ensure that all those suspected of racist and anti-foreigner attacks and abuses are prosecuted.”

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Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has said Spain will reject the draft Brexit withdrawal deal without a clarification of the text on future talks on the status of Gibraltar.
Spain maintains a claim to the peninsula, ceded to the British crown under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.
It wants to ensure that future EU talks with the UK do not cover Gibraltar.
"As things stand today if there are no changes regarding Gibraltar, Spain will vote no on Brexit," said Mr Sánchez.
Throughout the Brexit negotiations, Spain - along with Ireland and Cyprus - has conducted separate talks with the UK about specific border issues.
On Monday Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said that the draft Brexit deal had failed to make clear that talks on Gibraltar were "separate negotiations" and not part of future talks between the UK and EU.
Mr Sánchez added his weight to those remarks on Tuesday at a forum in Madrid, emphasising that any future negotiations on Gibraltar had to be bilateral.
"As a country we cannot assume that whatever happens in the future with Gibraltar would be negotiated by the UK and EU - it will have to be negotiated between Spain and the UK," he said.
Article 184 of the draft Brexit deal says the EU and the UK will seek to "negotiate rapidly the agreements governing their future relationship" between the official day of withdrawal on 29 March 2019 and the end of a transition period in December 2020.
But Spain believes the article in question is ambiguous and wants to ensure that this does not apply to the future of Gibraltar. It insists on its future right to discuss the status of the peninsula bilaterally with the UK, and is seeking clarity that this draft deal will allow it to do so.
Asked about the Spanish objection to Article 184, a European Commission spokesman said they were aware of Spain's concerns. He said the EU's position on Gibraltar had been made clear in April 2017 guidelines, that after Brexit no agreement between the EU and UK could apply to Gibraltar without the agreement of the UK and Spain.
Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo accused Spain of adopting a "well-known tactic" of raising issues at the last minute. He said Spain's position "does little to build mutual confidence and trust going forward".
A spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Theresa May said the draft deal covered Gibraltar as well as "the other overseas territories and the crown dependencies".
"We will get a deal that works for the whole UK family."
By Gavin Lee, Europe reporter
Spain and Britain have been running parallel negotiations over the future of Gibraltar, alongside the main EU-UK Brexit negotiations. Those talks have led to a "protocol" being agreed and three Spanish-British committees being set up to tackle tobacco smuggling, oversee cross-border workers rights, and co-operate on environmental protection and border control.
There seemed to be no drama on the horizon and the Spanish prime minister told me a few weeks ago he had "no significant concerns over Gibraltar", that the "behaviour of the British government was good" and an agreement could be reached.
So what has changed?
The Spanish government says that its "bone of contention" is with one specific article in the draft Withdrawal Agreement that was only added last week, just before it was signed off by the European Commission, and wasn't seen by Spanish negotiators.
A senior Spanish diplomat told me that Spain wanted the following words (or similar) added to Article 184: "This does not apply to Gibraltar, which will be subject to bilateral talks between the UK and Spain."
Underlying all of this is the fact that Spain still disputes that Gibraltar as a British overseas territory. Spanish officials refer to the rock as a "British colony" and, although the Spanish government isn't seeking to use the Brexit talks to push that claim, it is making it clear that any decision over the future of Gibraltar can only happen with the approval of Madrid.
Though Spain ceded the peninsula under the 1713 treaty, it has tried several times to regain control over it.
A referendum in the territory in 1967 saw 99.6% of residents vote to remain British. A proposal for joint sovereignty was also decisively rejected by Gibraltarians in a 2002 vote.
Spain closed its border with Gibraltar after the 1967 vote and did not fully reopen it until 1985, the year before Spain joined the European Economic Community - the forerunner of the EU.
Gibraltar profile

Brexit talks have made "little" progress since March, the EU's chief negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier said there was a "risk of failure" in two key areas - Northern Ireland, and how the agreement will be governed.
He said June's EU summit was a "key rendezvous" to reach a deal that can be ratified before the UK leaves.
And he defended the EU's stance over the UK's involvement in the new Galileo sat-nav system.
The UK has played a key role in the programme's development so far, but faces being shut out of key elements of the programme after Brexit.
UK ministers are now considering setting up a rival version.
Mr Barnier said there had been "misunderstandings" in the coverage of the story, adding: "We are not kicking the UK out of Galileo. The UK decided unilaterally and autonomously to withdraw from the EU. This implies leaving its programmes as well."
EU rules mean the UK and its companies cannot participate in the "development of security sensitive matters", he said, adding that this did not mean the UK could not use an encrypted signal from the system as a third country.
Earlier Science Minister Sam Gyimah said the EU's position was "extremely disappointing".
"The EU is playing hard ball with us," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We have helped to develop the Galileo system. We want to be part of the secure elements of the system and we want UK industry to be able to bid for contracts on a fair basis.
"It is only on those terms that it makes sense for the UK to be involved in the project."
Mr Barnier was speaking after updating the remaining EU member states on the latest in the Brexit negotiations.
Asked about the progress that had been made since March, he said: "I would say little, not very little."
He said the transition period that is expected to follow Brexit day in March 2019 depended on "operational solutions" being found on the issue of Northern Ireland's border with the Republic.
"The clock is ticking" to reach an agreement before October or November which can be ratified by the UK and European Parliaments and the EU Council, he said.
"So, little progress but we are working on technical issues which is always useful.
"None of these issues are negligible. The two key points which remain, where there is risk of failure, are the governance of the agreement and the  Ireland-Northern Ireland issue."
The UK government has yet to settle on the model it wants to replace the customs union in order to avoid checks at Northern Ireland's border with the EU.
Prime Minister Theresa May met Conservative MPs at Downing Street to set out the government's two proposals.
Earlier Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - who has described one, a customs partnership, as "crazy" - to keep discussions private.
"On the EU side, if they see divisions in the open, they will exploit that," Mr Hunt said.
At a press conference with his French counterpart, Mr Johnson was asked why he had not resigned given his differences with the prime minister -  but he did not repeat his criticism of the partnership option and said he thought Mrs May's position was "completely right".
Mrs May's key Brexit committee of senior ministers - which is divided over the customs issue - meets again on Tuesday.

A legal challenge to try to prevent Boris Johnson shutting down parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit has begun in a Scottish court.
A group of MPs and peers wants the Court of Session in Edinburgh to rule that suspending parliament to make the UK leave the EU without a deal is "unlawful and unconstitutional".
The prime minister has repeatedly refused to rule out such a move.
Lord Doherty agreed to hear arguments from both sides in September.
However he refused to accelerate the case through the Scottish courts, with the petitioners voicing fears that they may run out of time before the UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October.
The start of the legal action came as it emerged the UK government expects a group of MPs to try to block a no-deal Brexit by attempting to pass legislation when Parliament returns next month.
A No 10 source said they expected the challenge to come in the second week of September, when MPs are due to debate a report on Northern Ireland.
The source assumes the EU will wait until after that date before engaging in further negotiations.
More than 70 politicians have put their names behind the move, including Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and SNP MP Joanna Cherry.
A challenge brought by the same group of anti-Brexit politicians last year saw the European Court of Justice rule the UK can cancel Brexit without the permission of the other 27 EU members.
Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project which is supporting the latest challenge, said: "A man with no mandate seeks to cancel parliament for fear it will stop him inflicting on an unwilling public an outcome they did not vote for and do not want.
"That's certainly not democracy and I expect our courts to say it's not the law."
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 31 October, with the prime minister pledging that Brexit will definitely happen on that day regardless of whether or not a deal has been agreed with the EU.
Most MPs at Westminster are opposed to a no-deal Brexit, and there has been speculation that Mr Johnson could try to get around this by closing parliament in the run-up to 31 October.
This is known as proroguing, and would require the permission of the Queen.
Mr Johnson argued during the Conservative leadership contest that he would not "take anything off the table", saying it would be "absolutely bizarre" for the UK to "weaken its own position" in negotiations with European leaders.
But the group of pro-Remain politicians involved in the legal action at Scotland's highest court argue that shutting down parliament in this manner would be unlawful.
The case is beginning in the Scottish courts because they sit through the summer, unlike their English counterparts.
During a procedural hearing in Edinburgh, lawyers argued that the case could ultimately be decided in the UK Supreme Court - but only after it has moved through the Scottish system.
Lord Doherty refused a motion from the petitioners to skip the first step of this, saying arguments must be heard in the outer house of the Court of Session before they proceed to the next stage, the inner house.
However he did agree to move swiftly, fixing a full hearing for 6 September.
The Commons Speaker John Bercow has said the idea of the parliamentary session ending in order to force through a no-deal Brexit is "simply not going to happen" and that that was "so blindingly obvious it almost doesn't need to be stated".
One of the petitioners, Edinburgh South Labour MP Ian Murray, said: "When Boris Johnson unveiled his vacuous slogan 'taking back control', voters weren't told that this could mean shutting down parliament.
"The prime minister's undemocratic proposal to hold Westminster in contempt simply can't go unchallenged."

"Waited 12 months for that", the prime minister's chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, has just tweeted.
That's both a compliment to his boss, and a revelation perhaps too.
With the complexities of Brexit, the divisions in her party, the calamity of last year's conference speech, the antics of the former foreign secretary, and of course, her own fragilities, Theresa May has struggled to find her voice - and that's got nothing to do with running out of Strepsils.
Well today she found it, and in the words of one of her cabinet colleagues, not a particularly close ally, "she found her mojo".
From the moment she danced on to the stage - who would have thought we'd ever see that - she looked comfortable in her own skin, actually happy to be there.
It sounds strange, but it is so rare to see her overtly enjoying her job.
On so many occasions the public has seen a politician who seems constricted, conflicted, and ill-at-ease. For voters, frankly, if she doesn't look like she is enjoying being prime minister, why should any of us be happy about the fact she's doing it.
Beyond the vital dynamics of the hall, there was a consistent message - this was May the moderate of summer 2016, not May the leader cleaving to one side of her party, the Eurosceptics who have the power to unseat her. A message to her party and the country that in a time of some anxiety, huge uncertainty, and toxic politics, she'll chart a middle course.
There was a big claim that austerity was over. Given that Chancellor Philip Hammond has not got extra cash to throw around and is already looking to raise tax for the NHS, that was a bold claim that may come to haunt the government.
And a direct appeal to Labour voters, and indeed Labour MPs, who may be uncomfortable with the direction of Jeremy Corbyn's travel. Overtly centre-ground stuff, a pitch for an era after Brexit when, perhaps, perhaps, the tensions and bitterness of the last couple of years could fade. That is a big if.
This was a total contrast to last year's disaster. A good outing on the platform doesn't make any of Mrs May's enormous dilemmas disappear. Nor will it magic away the concerns and criticisms of her handling of Brexit.
There are restive forces in her party. She has no majority in Parliament. The Conservatives have huge questions they can't answer about who they are and what they are for.
The fact remains, many of her colleagues simply can't see her taking them into the next election. But Theresa May looks today less like a leader at the total mercy of events, more like a prime minister who knows what she wants and might, just might, have an idea how to get there.

Multiple cabinet ministers expressed significant doubts about the prime minister's preferred Brexit plan from the start, the BBC has learned.
Parts of Theresa May's plan were described as "worrying", "disappointing" and "concerning" by members of her top team back in July.
Mrs May is struggling to broker an agreement on Brexit with ministers.
Two ministers have told the BBC they believe there is little chance the deal would get Parliament's backing.
One of them said it was "self-harming" for the PM to keep pursuing the same strategy.
Mrs May is trying to arrange an agreement in cabinet on the current negotiations in time for a hoped-for summit in Brussels later this month.
Her preferred plan for future relations with the EU after Brexit were agreed at Chequers - the prime minister's country retreat - in July, in a marathon cabinet meeting lasting nearly 12 hours.
Afterwards, Mrs May said the cabinet had reached a "collective" agreement, although former Brexit secretary David Davis and ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson resigned from the Cabinet in protest at the plans 48 hours later.
And, according to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg, cabinet sources have now revealed there were widespread doubts about various aspects from many other ministers from the start, including from some former Remain supporters.
For many of those present, she said that the Chequers deal was an undesirable compromise, rather than a set of proposals to which they were signing up with enthusiasm.
One cabinet minister said the group endorsed the proposal "with a very heavy heart".
Trade Secretary Liam Fox expressed strong doubts about elements of the plan for trading arrangements as they could harm the ability of the UK to do trade deals after Brexit.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who backed Remain, is understood to have had some similar views, describing the proposal for a common rule book with the EU for parts of the economy as "very worrying" and suggesting that there should be a review of the arrangements after five years.
The leader of the House of Lords, Baroness Evans, is understood to have agreed, telling her colleagues that she found it difficult to accept some aspects of the proposals, and might struggle to explain them in Parliament.
Penny Mordaunt and Esther McVey - Brexiteers who have both been reluctant to give public support for the plan - are said to have expressed significant unhappiness and questioned whether Brexiteer MPs would be able to support such a deal in Parliament.
Meanwhile, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling is said to have warned his colleagues that as many as 40 Eurosceptic MPs might "go on strike".
Sources close to him would not confirm that, but said he had been "extremely cautious from the start" about the Chequers proposal.
And as has previously emerged, the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, said that she "hated" the proposals and called on the prime minister to treat those who had voted for Brexit with respect.
Chancellor Philip Hammond told his colleagues that the government was living on "borrowed time" because some businesses were hesitating over whether to invest in the UK.
He argued for the Chequers approach to bring clarity as soon as possible. But he is understood to have questioned whether such a deal could actually be achieved, warning that the UK would have to persuade EU member states to defy the European Commission which is running the negotiation.
And the Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson - also a former Remainer - said there were many concerns with the paper and it must be made clear it was as far as the government would be willing to compromise.
Several ministers on both sides of the argument are understood to have called on the prime minister to be honest with the public about the shift in position towards a closer arrangement with the EU.
Mrs May is trying to arrange an agreement in cabinet on the current negotiations in time for a hoped-for summit in Brussels later this month.
A Number 10 spokesman said: "Everyone has to move a little to get a deal that works for everyone on both sides of the argument."
But Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it appeared Mrs May had proceeded without the "solid backing" of her cabinet, having also declined to get Parliament's support for her negotiating objectives.
Sir Keir also said the option of a fresh referendum was still "on the table", despite Labour's leader Jeremy Corbyn saying at the weekend that Brexit could not be stopped.
In his column for the Daily Telegraph on Monday, Boris Johnson called the prime minister's deal "a recipe for continued strife, both in the Tory Party and the country".
And former cabinet minister John Whittingdale cast doubt on whether Mrs May could stay in office if Parliament rejected any deal she reached with the EU.
"I think if the PM's Brexit plan doesn't get through Parliament, I think it's quite difficult to see how the prime minister can continue because she has staked her credibility," he told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour.

Often the hype about a political event is in inverse proportion to the drama of what actually comes to pass. Maybe not this time.
Cabinet ministers will today meet at Chequers with the aim of approving the prime minister's blueprint for the UK's future relationship with the EU after Brexit.
But Brexiteer ministers have warned that the 120-page plan as written is flawed. They were discussing late on Thursday how to respond during the cabinet meeting.
And to say that they are a bit miffed with the plan, which they only received in its entirety on Thursday afternoon, is an understatement. There is plenty in there that they don't like, and it's easy to see why.
The BBC understands that the plan includes:
The paper also suggests that, while trade deals with other countries like the US would be possible, they might be harder to do because under rules agreed with the EU, it would be harder to meet other countries' "asks".
One cabinet minister also expressed unhappiness with the proposed customs model - the facilitated customs arrangement - saying that it was like "customs partnership minus" - simply a revision of the customs partnership model that was rejected by the inner Brexit cabinet committee weeks ago.
One senior Tory suggested that "the party wouldn't wear it". A senior Brexiteer minister said that a lot of the document was "problematic", and that there was a "lot of scope for argument".
Essentially, for those who want a dramatic break with the EU, it falls far short, even though Number 10 insists it is merely an evolution of what the prime minister has already promised.
Frankly, from what we have heard, language is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, with much of it "opaque".
It does sketch out a relationship with the EU that is much tighter than Brexiteers had argued for. Would it really be Brexit? Number 10 would say yes, Jacob Rees Mogg would say no.
For the rest of us? That depends what you think the country voted for.
Tension around the meeting is high, with ministers being instructed in an email that they will have to hand in their phones and Apple watches on arrival at Chequers.
Brexiteer ministers shared concerns at a meeting in the foreign secretary's office on Thursday night over the plan, with a source saying "it's not going to fly".
They said that they will "simply reject it if she tries formally to impose it". But another Brexiteer source said they would have to "talk it out" before coming to any conclusions about the plan.
But a cabinet minister who has been pushing for a tight relationship with the EU told the BBC that while the plan was "fiendishly complicated... no one had a better idea".
A former cabinet minister who advocates closer ties to the EU told the BBC that they had urged the prime minister to consider sacking Brexiteers who refuse to sign up.
They suggested that "blood on the carpet" might not be a bad thing. They said they believed the prime minister "has had enough steel put in her spine" to be able to command ministers to back her plan or carry out a reshuffle.
There is however concern in the City, too, over the suggestion of giving up the prospect of a close deal on services to guarantee an end to free movement. One insider suggested that Chancellor Philip Hammond may try to "wedge" services back into the draft agreement on Friday.
Sources on all sides of the argument suggest that it is too early to tell how the talks tomorrow will end. There are demands for "significant redrafting". The discussions start at around 10:00 BST and are expected to wrap up at about 22:00 BST.
Insiders also suggest that with the EU likely to reject much of the plan, the real debate will focus on what to do if and when Brussels says no, with Brexiteers pushing a "Canada plus" model.
Another cabinet minister told the BBC that even though the EU was unlikely to accept it straight off, the point of this week's talks was not to find a final agreement, but simply to "start a conversation" with Brussels so that vital talks on the future relationship can get going.
Until now, the negotiations have focused on the withdrawal agreement - the divorce deal - with no formal engagements over the long-term arrangements. An outline of the political agreement on that deal is supposed to be in place by October.
To have any hope of a genuine and substantial deal by the autumn, the prime minister needs Brussels to take her, and her approach, seriously. If she fails to get agreement, her ability to project the authority that's needed for that to happen will be seriously put into question.
But if she pushes ahead with the plan she will have to face down a powerful and vocal wing in her party.
Some of her colleagues might heave a huge sigh of relief, and think, "about time too". But her party, and the rest of us, have no way of knowing tonight if that decision - which would risk her leadership - is one she is really willing to take.

Theresa May has called for discussions about future NHS funding to remain private after Boris Johnson publicly called for more money after Brexit.
Before Tuesday's cabinet meeting, it was widely reported that the foreign secretary would pitch for a £100m a week "Brexit dividend" for the NHS.
The BBC understands he did not end up mentioning "specific figures".
No 10 said Mrs May chaired a discussion on post-Brexit funding options but made clear conversations should be private.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the PM's remarks on the need for confidentiality were "pointed".
However, she said Mr Johnson was backed by some colleagues while the principle that the NHS would get some of the money which will become available after the UK leaves in March 2019 was agreed.
In the run-up to Tuesday's cabinet meeting - in which Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt gave an update on the "significant" winter pressures" facing the NHS - it was reported that Mr Johnson wanted to kick start a wider debate about NHS funding.
In a highly unusual move, sources told the BBC Mr Johnson would not only call for a £5bn annual injection of funding after Brexit but warn his party against "abandoning the territory" to Labour, which vowed at last year's election to spend £37bn more over the next five years.
If you can't see the NHS Tracker, click or tap here.
A source close to Mr Johnson said he was frustrated at what he perceived as Downing Street's lack of action on the issue given the levels of public anxiety about how the NHS is faring.
During the referendum campaign, Vote Leave - of which Mr Johnson was a leading supporter - claimed £350m went to the EU each week and money could instead go to the NHS, a claim he has repeatedly defended since.
However, when it came to it, the BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said neither Mr Johnson nor any other minister raised a specific figure during what No 10 said was a "wide ranging" hour-long discussion.
Firmly, in one sense.
A No 10 spokesman said the prime minister and "a large number of Cabinet ministers" had made clear that their discussions should take place in private.
On the broader political point, Downing Street said the PM reminded ministers that the government has repeatedly said contributions to the EU budget which end after Brexit would be able to be spent on domestic priorities including the NHS.
"There will also be other calls upon that money but we will discuss those priorities at that time," a spokesman said.
In a further rebuff to Mr Johnson, Chancellor Philip Hammond said he had given the NHS an extra £6bn in November's Budget, including £2.8bn to be spent over the next two years,
Mr Hammond, who was in Brussels for a meeting of EU finance ministers, told reporters Mr Johnson was "the foreign secretary" not health secretary and the right time to revisit the long-term issue of NHS spending was at the next departmental spending review expected early next year.
No, far from it. The BBC understands that Chris Grayling and Michael Gove were among other cabinet ministers to rally round Mr Johnson at Tuesday's meeting.
Growing numbers of Tory MPs are openly expressing their frustration with what they say is No 10's unwillingness to confront the long-term financial challenges facing the health service.
Conservative MP Mark Pritchard told the BBC News Channel the foreign secretary was right to speak out.
"I support Boris, he's right. But I think whether it's Boris or Theresa May or Jeremy Hunt, in the longer term there needs to be political leadership about how we fund the NHS going forward in the twenty-first century."
As for Jeremy Hunt, he said no health secretary would "not support potential extra resources" for the NHS.
Asked how he felt about Mr Johnson being the one to make the case, he said there was "a Brexit debate and an NHS debate and just occasionally these two debates come together".
Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said he welcomed calls for more funding but accused Mr Johnson of seeking to "weaponise" the NHS for his own "tedious political games".
"If the government was really serious about putting money into the NHS, they would have done it in the Budget last autumn," he told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire show. "We did not hear a peep from him then."
The Institute for Fiscal Studies - a think tank - has said the UK will almost certainly have to increase the share of income devoted to health funding to deal with demographic challenges.
Its director Paul Johnson said "that will mean higher taxes" and "governments will need to explain that honestly".
Lib Dem leader Vince Cable suggested Mr Johnson and his colleagues begin this process now.

The future relationship between the UK and the EU will not be negotiated within two years, says the former head of the Foreign Office.
Separation talks could be completed within the two year deadline set out in Article 50, but a future relationship would take longer to negotiate, Sir Simon Fraser told BBC Newsnight.
Sir Simon said "transitional arrangements" would be necessary.
Prime Minister Theresa May will invoke Article 50 on Wednesday.
"It's certain that we won't have resolved everything in the period before the expiry of the Article 50 process," Sir Simon Fraser told BBC Newsnight.
"The EU side want to start with negotiating the terms of the separation... And the British side, on top of that, wants to move rapidly to discuss the future relationship - both political and economic - between Britain and the EU. And that is a very complex second set of negotiations."
Because of the difficulty of defining the future relationship, Sir Simon, who held senior posts in Brussels and Whitehall before becoming the head of the diplomatic service, believes talks will soon shift to the nature of 'transitional arrangements'. This means vital questions about how the UK does business with the EU could be left unresolved far beyond 2019.
Many Brexit supporters had hoped informal negotiations with the EU could start before the Article 50 clock begins ticking this week. Negotiations are limited to two years.
But Sir Simon said the European Commission has thwarted such plans: "There has been a very disciplined position across the EU, and I don't think that there has been a lot of informal behind the scenes discussion of the agenda or of the key issues yet."
Sir Simon is also sceptical that the UK will be able to play off different countries among the EU's 27 countries.
"The UK has got to negotiate with the EU as a whole through the EU's appointed negotiator, which will be essentially led by the Commission."
He added: "I think it would be a mistake to try divide and rule because I don't think that that will work."
While Article 50 allows up to two years to reach an agreement, the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said he wants the outline of a deal to be ready by autumn 2018, in the hope that it can then go before the European Parliament for ratification and member states for agreement well before the deadline is up.
But many diplomats, Sir Simon Fraser among them, believe that there will be no serious political discussions before this autumn, following the German elections.
While Brexit dominates national debate in the UK, it is a secondary issue for many European governments.
This could lead to delays in negotiations with many governments not taking positions until they have to. Combined with the complexity of the Brexit discussions, many diplomats believe that the UK could find itself close to a "cliff edge" without final agreement.
Sir Simon said while it was in the interest of both sides to avoid such a scenario, there was a "risk of political ill will and turbulence - both political and economic" if a deal is not reached within the Article 50 timeframe.
It is for this reason that Mr Barnier may want to make transitional arrangements dependent on a resolution of one of the first items on the EU's divorce agenda: getting the UK to agree to paying a bill of tens of billions into the Commission's coffers.
Mark Urban is diplomatic and defence editor for BBC Newsnight

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has appeared to cast doubt on the government's policy of not being in a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
She told journalists she would not be "drawn" on the issue and said there were discussions to be had about it in cabinet to agree a "final position".
Later she tweeted that she "should have been clearer" but had not wanted to get into "ongoing cabinet discussions".
The PM Theresa May has ruled out being in an EU customs union after Brexit.
The comments came on the day Ms Rudd faced fresh calls to resign over her handling of the Windrush scandal, which has seen relatives of people from Caribbean countries who settled in the UK decades ago being declared illegal immigrants, if they could not prove they had lived continuously in the UK.
She was forced to admit in the House of Commons that immigration removal targets had existed, a day after telling a committee of MPs that there weren't any.
But the issue of whether or not the UK would be in a customs union after Brexit came up as she addressed a lunch for parliamentary journalists
She replied: "I'm not going to be drawn on that. We still have a few discussions to be had in a really positive, consensual and easy way among some of my cabinet colleagues in order to arrive at a final position."
Labour's Sir Keir Starmer said: "Amber Rudd appears to have let slip that discussions around the cabinet table about negotiating a customs union with the EU have not in fact concluded.
"If that is so, then the prime minister should rethink her approach and listen to the growing chorus of voices in Parliament and in the businesses community that believe she has got it wrong on a customs union."
And Tory backbencher Peter Bone tweeted:
Ms Rudd later tweeted a clarification:
The prime minister is under pressure from both sides of the EU debate on the issue of the customs union, which allows for goods to be transported tariff-free between EU member states.
The Financial Times reports that Mrs May is expected to try to secure agreement on an alternative to the customs union, in a Brexit cabinet committee meeting next week.
Ministers were defeated on the issue in the House of Lords last week and the government faces key votes in the Commons next month.
On Thursday, the prime minister's spokesman said: "The government is clear we are leaving the customs union and not joining a customs union."
Brexiteers have criticised a suggested "customs partnership" to replace the current arrangements, while pro-EU campaigners say a customs union is the only way to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland.
MPs debated a non-binding motion on Thursday calling on the government to include in its negotiating objectives with the EU "the establishment of an effective customs union between the two territories".
With few pro-Brexit MPs attending the debate, the motion was approved without a vote, prompting Labour's Chris Leslie to suggest it "was now the default consensus view of this House" and said the government should respond.
Crunch votes are expected next month when Remain-supporting MPs will push for a change of course.
A customs union is when countries agree to apply the same taxes on imports to goods from outside the union.
This means when goods have cleared customs in one country, they can be shipped to others in the union without further tariffs being imposed.
If the UK remains part of the customs union, it would be unable to strike trade deals with countries around the world, but supporters say it would help keep an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
During the debate, Labour's Yvette Cooper said the UK exported more than £230bn of goods and services to the EU every year and warned that to "rip up" existing trade arrangements would be "deeply damaging".
She argued that existing trade deals should be "cherished" as it was becoming harder to negotiate new ones "as communities across different individual countries become more worried about both the losers and the winners of big changes to trade arrangements".
Pro-European Conservative Ken Clarke told MPs: "You will damage the economy of this country... if you suddenly decide to erect new barriers at the border between the UK and our major trading partners."
And former Conservative cabinet minister Nicky Morgan warned: "If we undermine and ignore the evidence for peace in Northern Ireland, and we undermine the business and financial security of the people in this country, we will not be forgiven for a generation."
Labour MP Kate Hoey, one of the few Brexiteers at the debate, said she felt "alone" in the chamber: "There are a lot of people here today who are using the issue of the customs union to start the process again of wanting to stay in the European Union."
She argued that if the UK stayed in the customs union, it would be a "transition" to remaining, and would not allow Britain to "take back control" of its trade.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has backed a customs union, but only if the UK had a say in future EU trade deals.
Mrs May has ruled out joining a customs union but has come up with two options to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
One of them is a "customs partnership" that would involve the UK collecting the EU's tariffs on goods coming from other countries on the EU's behalf.
If those goods didn't leave the UK and UK tariffs were lower, companies could then claim back the difference.
This option has been heavily criticised by some Brexiteers, with influential backbench Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg branding it "completely cretinous".
The other option being proposed by the government would be to minimise checks rather than getting rid of them altogether, by using new technologies and putting in place a trusted trader scheme.

Boris Johnson has warned EU leaders not to give the UK "punishment beatings" for Brexit "in the manner of some World War Two movie".
The foreign secretary said penalising "escape" was "not in the interests of our friends and our partners".
PM Theresa May set out her Brexit strategy, including leaving the EU single market, in a speech on Tuesday.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker promised to work for "good results" from Brexit talks.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has announced it will give its verdict next Tuesday on the government's legal battle over whether MPs must be consulted before Brexit is triggered.
And HSBC announced it was preparing to move 1,000 staff from London to Paris when the UK leaves the EU.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May clashed with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, telling him she had a "plan" and he did not "have a clue".
Mr Corbyn accused her of "threatening to turn Britain into an offshore tax haven".
With just over two months to go before the UK government is due to get Brexit talks under way, Mr Johnson was asked on a trip to India about comments by an aide to French President Francois Hollande, who said the UK should not expect a better trading relationship with the EU after leaving it.
He replied: "If Monsieur Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some World War Two movie, then I don't think that is the way forward.
"I think, actually, it's not in the interests of our friends and our partners."
Downing Street later said Mr Johnson "was not in any way suggesting anyone was a Nazi".
The spokeswoman said the remarks were "all being hyped up" and that the foreign secretary had used a "theatrical comparison", adding: "There is not a government policy of not talking about the War."
But a Labour spokesman said: "The foreign secretary has a habit of making wild and inappropriate comments. Talking about World War Two in that context is another one of those and not something that's going to improve the climate for negotiations."
Former cabinet minister and Brexit campaigner Michael Gove hit back, tweeting that people offended by Mr Johnson's "witty metaphor" were "humourless, deliberately obtuse, snowflakes".
EU leaders have begun to deliver their verdicts on Mrs May's speech, in which she also warned against trying to "punish" the UK for Brexit and hinted she could walk away from talks if not happy, stating that "no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain".
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "The be-all and end-all is that Europe does not let itself be divided, and we will ensure that with very intensive contacts.'' EU governments would consult their business sectors, she added, and she was "not worried that we will not stick together".
Mr Juncker said he would work to ensure Brexit talks are carried out "according to the rules and they yield good results".
He added: "I welcome the clarifications given by Mrs May, but I said to her last night that a speech will not launch the negotiations."
Analysis - By James Landale, BBC diplomatic correspondent
Not surprisingly, uproar has ensued.
Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said Boris Johnson had shown once again that he could be "supremely clever and yet immensely stupid".
To some Britons, Mr Johnson's remarks will be seen as colourful but unexceptional language that echoes the popular World War Two film The Great Escape.
To many of Mr Johnson's generation, these films were part of their childhood and are subject to frequent cultural reference. Former Prime Minister David Cameron has seen The Guns of Navarone more than 17 times and once quoted a line from the film in a party conference speech.
Read James's blog in full
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's lead Brexit negotiator, said: "You can say, 'I want to leave the European Union, I want to leave the judicial courts, I want to leave the customs union.'
"But you cannot at the same time then say, 'Oh, and that little piece that interests me, and that is something that I like.' No way."
However, European Council President Donald Tusk was more conciliatory, tweeting: "We took note of Prime Minister May's warm, balanced words on European integration. Much closer to narrative of Churchill than President-elect Trump."
Downing Street said European leaders spoken to by Mrs May in a series of phone calls had welcomed the "clarity" of her plans.
In its headline, the Times sums up the prime minister's message to the EU as "Give us a fair deal or you'll be crushed".
Meanwhile, the Brexit-supporting Daily Mail draws parallels with Margaret Thatcher, saying Mrs May exhibited the "steel of the new Iron Lady".
The Guardian, which opposed Brexit in the referendum, found the speech a "doubly depressing event" - a reality check for those who want to keep the UK in the single market while being riddled with its own streak of "global fantasy".
The Financial Times praises the prime minister's "bold vision" but warns that the road ahead will be perilous.
The Sun's front page is mocked up as a Biblical tablet of stone bearing the single-word headline "Brexodus".
Read The Papers in full
In her speech, the prime minister suggested the UK could cut its corporate tax rates to compete with the EU if denied access to the single market.
And she promised that Parliament would get to vote on the final Brexit deal.
Asked what would happen if MPs and peers rejected it, Brexit Secretary David Davis told Today: "They won't vote it down. This negotiation will succeed. It will succeed."
The government says it will invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, getting formal Brexit talks with the EU under way, by the end of March, with discussions set to last up to two years after that.
A "catalogue of demands with some threats thrown in" is German news magazine Der Spiegel's description of Theresa May's Brexit speech. It says that her desire to leave the single market while retaining access to trade with Europe shows that her government is "not just nasty but also blind to reality".
Germany's Die Welt also mocks her with the headline "Little Britain" and accuses her of leading the country into "isolation".
In Italy, La Repubblica's front page reads "Brexit: London raises its wall 'away from the EU and the single market'".
France's Liberation remarks that Mrs May's comment that no deal is better than a bad one suggests that she is threatening to turn Britain into a tax haven. "If this is not blackmail, it looks a lot like it," it says.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Corbyn urged Mrs May to "stop her threat of a bargain basement Brexit, a low-paid tax haven on the shores of Europe".
He added: "It won't necessarily damage the EU but it would certainly damage this country."
Mrs May told MPs:  "What I set out yesterday was a plan for a global Britain, bringing prosperity to this country and jobs to people and spreading economic growth across this country."
UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said: "It's clear that Britain is going global, as a result of that momentous [EU referendum] vote on 23 June."

The EU Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, has urged Belgium to grant citizenship to British EU staff worried about their post-Brexit status.
About 1,100 UK citizens work for the EU in Brussels and Luxembourg.
Mr Juncker called Belgium a kind host and asked its prime minister, Charles Michel, to "show the same generosity when it comes to granting Belgian citizenship" to British EU staff.
When the UK leaves the EU next March Britons will lose their EU citizenship.
The UK and EU have already pledged to protect citizens' rights after Brexit, but that does not mean granting nationality.
Article 49 of the EU staff rules states that "an official may be required to resign" if he or she loses their EU citizenship and is no longer a national of an EU member state.
Many British EU staff are longstanding residents with families.
An internal EU Commission document quoted by Politico news last month said Article 49 would not mean British staff losing their EU jobs, apart from cases involving "conflicts of interest or international obligations".
Responding to Mr Juncker's plea during a European Parliament debate, Mr Michel said Belgium's citizenship law in the context of Brexit was "contradictory", but he did not specify the difficulties.
"The government is examining the judicial possibilities on this question, which affects a number of people who have been living in our country for a long time," he said.
European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said later that Mr Juncker's remarks were meant as a reminder for the Belgian leader. "We live up to the promise that our colleagues of British nationality should be given maximum guarantees to stay, not only with their employment but also if they want to stay as Belgian citizens. But this is entirely in the hands of the Belgian government, not ours," he said.
EU citizenship is described in Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and includes the rights to:
Michael Ashbrook of Solidarity, Independence, Democracy (SID), a trade union representing EU staff, told the BBC that "all the British staff are trying for EU citizenship". "They are very worried", he said, referring to the impact of Brexit on their jobs.
"There has been talk of dismissing British 'contract agents' on Brexit day, rather than letting them complete their fixed-term contracts," he said.
Resolving the status of British staff, to keep them in their jobs, would take the Commission "just a few minutes", he said.
Brexit sets a legal precedent for the EU and raises a host of new legal challenges, because no state has left the 28-nation bloc before.
In the debate the Belgian leader clashed with UKIP's Nigel Farage, an anti-EU MEP.
"Belgium is not a nation; it's an artificial creation," Mr Farage said. The Dutch- and French-speaking parts of Belgium "dislike each other intensely", he alleged.
Mr Michel replied ironically: "I'm happy to hear this sound advice from Nigel Farage on the future of Belgium. He has been busy with the future of Britain, with Brexit - and we can see where Britain has got to with that."
To qualify for Belgian citizenship, an applicant must have lived in Belgium for at least five years legally and passed a language test.
Luxembourg requires at least five years' residence and competence in Luxembourgish, a language with only about 390,000 native speakers.

Businesses will not have to carry out new checks on EU staff in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the government says.
"Employers will not be expected to differentiate between resident EU citizens and those arriving after exit," the Home Office said.
On Tuesday, minister Caroline Nokes said employers would have to carry out "rigorous checks" on EU staff who arrived after March 2019.
Labour accused her of misleading Parliament.
Shadow immigration minister Afzal Khan suggested Ms Nokes lacked "even the most basic level of understanding and knowledge" of her own immigration policy and demanded she "come to Parliament to set the record straight".
The government insists EU free movement will end in March 2019, the scheduled date for the UK's departure from the EU.
But in practice, EU nationals will still be able to come and work in the UK, until the end of the planned 21-month "transition period". The only difference is that they will have to register with the authorities.
Ms Nokes was questioned at length on Tuesday about what would happen if there was no "transition period" - because the UK leaves the EU without having agreed a withdrawal deal - and whether employers would be expected to check if potential staff had the right to work in the UK.
Committee chair Yvette Cooper asked how an employer could be expected to differentiate between someone who had arrived in the UK after Brexit - and an EU citizen who had been a long term resident and had the right to work, but had not yet applied for "settled status".
Ms Nokes admitted it would be "almost impossible for an employer to differentiate between a new arrival and somebody who has been here for 10 years and has simply not yet been through the scheme".
But she said: "If somebody has been through the settled status scheme, they will be able to evidence that. If somebody has not been here prior to the end of March next year, then employers will have to make sure that they go through adequately rigorous checks to evidence somebody's right to work."
Her remarks were met with "deep concern" from the Federation of Small Businesses, whose chairman Mike Cherry said:  "The reality is that many of these businesses wouldn't have the first idea of where, or how, to check whether or not their EU staff have the right to work here."
The 3million, which campaigns for the rights of EU citizens in the UK, reported that the Home Office had emailed to confirm current checks "will not change next March in the event we leave the EU without a deal".
And that "EU citizens will continue to be able to evidence their right to work by showing a passport or national identity card." Employers would not be expected to differentiate between "resident EU citizens and those arriving after exit".
On Friday, the Home Office confirmed that statement and added: "We will protect EU citizens' rights when we leave the EU, in both a deal or no deal scenario.
"We are considering a number of options for the unlikely event that we reach March 2019 without a deal, and will set out more information shortly."
Under current rules, employers must carry out "right to work" checks on new staff.
For British citizens, this means providing a passport or birth certificate and a National Insurance number while EU citizens must provide their passport or ID card and people from outside the EU must provide their biometric residence permit.

We all know what it's like - having to play nice with the person you don't have very much in common with, because it's the right thing to do.
Knowing that lots of people you DO like would be upset if you don't put on a show.
Well, how about this: having to "play nice" publicly with a person you don't have very much in common with, when they have said that the way you are trying to do your job doesn't really work.
Add in the embarrassment if they happen to be the leader of the free world.
From the moment of his election, Donald Trump was an awkward friend for Theresa May.
He runs towards a fight. She does everything in public to avoid one.
Well, just before they were due to appear alongside each other on UK soil he publicly, and at length, gave a "both barrels" verdict on her most important policy.
Her approach to Brexit has been to slowly, gently, incrementally, carry the Ming vase across one side of the room to another on a slippery floor.
To talk about being pragmatic, to smooth over the contradictions, to do whatever it takes to get to the other side, without smashing that vase (her party and the country) to bits.
In walks President Trump, to call out one of the claims that No 10 has been making of late - in essence, smashing the vase to bits.
In an interview with The Sun, he shoots down the chances of a trade deal with the US if she sticks to her carefully crafted compromise Brexit plan.
That matters because the government has been clinging to the idea of trade deals with countries outside the EU as one of the benefits of Brexit, and claiming that the choice in the Chequers deal to stay close to the EU doesn't exclude those opportunities.
This isn't about what side anyone was on in the referendum. In fact, Remainers and Leavers unite in saying the Chequers deal can't live up to all it claims.
For former Remainers, it's nuts to think that trade deals with non-EU countries can ever make up for what might be lost.
For some Leavers, it's nuts to claim we can make the most of the world outside if we are still sticking to EU rules.
And President Trump drives a bulldozer through the government's central claims about its compromise - that the UK would be able to get decent trade deals with the wider world, while sticking to the EU rules.
A lot of this visit has been carefully choreographed, as the prime minister and the president dance around each other.
But if the president really wanted to help her build support for her controversial compromise, this isn't the way to do it.

The UK would be welcome to stay in the EU if it changed its mind about Brexit, Donald Tusk has suggested.
The European Council President told MEPs that the UK would leave the bloc unless it had a "change of heart".
"We haven't had a change of heart. Our hearts are still open for you."
The comments were welcomed by MPs who want a referendum on the final Brexit deal but Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the British public had voted in record numbers to leave the EU.
"We have a great future outside the European Union and we should be embracing that," he said.
The government has said there will be no second vote ahead of the UK's exit in March 2019.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has also dismissed the idea while insisting that MPs have a "meaningful vote" in Parliament on the terms of the withdrawal agreement.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage has said the prospect of a second vote cannot be ruled out, although he was confident it would return a larger margin for Leave than in 2016 - when 17.4 million people voted for Brexit.
The EU, he told BBC World Service, was intent on "putting something on the table so unattractive to Britain that Parliament will vote for us to have a second referendum".
As it stands, the UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019.
The two sides reached a deal on so-called "divorce issues", including money and citizens' rights, in December and talks are now moving onto transitional arrangements and future co-operation.
Revised draft EU guidelines obtained by several UK newspapers suggest the EU is toughening its stance on what changes the UK can make on immigration, trade and fishing during a roughly two year transition period.
Speaking in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Tusk said he believed the other 27 EU members would maintain their unity when the talks resumed in March.
"The hardest work is still ahead of us, and time is limited," he said.
"If the UK government sticks to its decision to leave, Brexit will become a reality - with all its negative consequences - in March next year. Unless there is a change of heart among our British friends.
"Wasn't it David Davis himself who said 'if a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy'.
"We, here on the continent, haven't had a change of heart. Our hearts are still open to you."
Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who has said Parliament should have the power to reject any deal reached and force ministers back to the negotiating table, welcomed Mr Tusk's remarks.
Labour MP Daniel Zeichner, a supporter of the Best for Britain group, which was launched last year by pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller, said the option to remain in the EU must be kept open.
"We are stronger together, and it becomes increasingly clear that the current path is extremely damaging," he said.
But Leave Means Leave, which grew out of the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 referendum, said Brussels had a history of not listening to the views of voters.
"Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker need to accept that Britain is a democracy - something the EU knows very little about," said its co-chair Richard Tice.
"The British people voted to leave the EU and this decision will not be reversed, despite their best efforts."
Mr Tusk's sentiments were also dismissed by prominent Brexiteers in the European Parliament.

David Davis has hit out at the EU over its decision to exclude the UK from the Galileo satellite navigation system.
The Brexit secretary accused the European Commission of "shooting itself in the foot just to prove that the gun works".
He said throwing the UK out of Galileo would delay it by three years and cost the EU £1bn more.
The UK has played a major role in developing satellites for Galileo, an alternative to the US GPS system.
But Brussels has cited legal issues about sharing sensitive information with a non-member state for its decision to shut British firms out of the project. Brussels has also said it will restrict access to encrypted signals from Galileo.
The move has sparked a furious reaction from the UK government, which is demanding £1bn back from the EU and has threatened to build a rival satellite system, at an estimated cost of £5bn.
In a speech on post-Brexit security co-operation, Mr Davis said: "We should be able, as trusted allies and friends of Europe to get an agreement that allows sensitive information to be shared."
He said British companies were being discriminated against and blocked from contracts - despite the fact that excluding the UK would delay Galileo by three years or more.
"This is not an issue isolated to Galileo," he added.
"The same is at risk of happening with the new European Defence Fund."
The UK had originally opposed the creation of the European Defence Fund, which co-ordinates joint operations by member states.
The government wants to continue contributing troops, equipment and money to overseas EU military operations after Brexit.
But Mr Davis said the EU's attitude to "third countries" - which the UK will become after Brexit - was standing in the way of that ambition.
"All of these unhelpful precedents and assumptions on how third countries should operate with the EU is hindering projects that would help the entire continent," he said in his speech.
The UK had also opposed the creation of Galileo, when it was first proposed 18 years ago, but Britain's space industry had been a major player in the project, which is meant to be fully operational by 2026.
It comes as the European Commission announced plans to pump an extra €5bn (£4.4bn) into space projects, including Galileo and the Copernicus Earth Observation Programme, which will be delivered in partnership with the European Space Agency.
Britain will remain a member of the European Space Agency, which is not an EU body, after Brexit, and is willing to pay a fee of around £1bn to the European Commission to remain part of its space plans.
But the Commission's spending proposals on are based on the assumption that it will get no more cash from the UK after Brexit.

A Welsh Conservative MP has quit as a minister in anger at concessions being given to Brexiteers by Theresa May.
Guto Bebb resigned as minister for defence procurement in order to vote against the government on amendments it accepted to its Brexit Customs Bill.
MPs voted 305 to 302 on Monday to back a change Remainers said would undermine Mrs May's negotiating position.
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns said he was "very sorry" the Aberconwy MP felt he had to resign over the issue.
Mr Bebb had staunchly defended the prime minister amid the turmoil which has followed the unveiling of her blueprint for post-Brexit relations with the EU.
He branded Boris Johnson's resignation as foreign secretary "a selfish act" and attacked former Brexit Minister David Jones for criticising Mrs May's plan.
Mr Cairns told BBC Radio Wales he was "going to miss" Mr Bebb, who had served under him as a junior Wales Office minister.
Speaking on Good Morning Wales, he said: "Guto was an excellent minister and a close colleague and a good friend.
"I'm very sorry that he felt in order to vote last night that he needed to leave the government."
Glyn Davies, Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire, said: "I am very upset that Guto has felt the need to resign from the government. He is a good friend and was an outstanding minister.
"Guto is a man of deep principle. He is such a talented politician that I cannot believe he will not find another important role in the future."
Leave campaigner and Monmouth Conservative MP David Davies said he was "sad to see him go", adding: "He's a friend and he was doing a really good job in the MoD [Ministry of Defence].
"Guto is strong-minded though and in some ways I'm not surprised."
Mr Bebb was appointed minister for defence procurement in January 2018 after serving as parliamentary under secretary of state at the Wales Office and a government whip from March 2016.
He was elected MP for Aberconwy in May 2010 and voted Remain in the 2016 EU referendum.
The Customs Bill amendment was tabled by Brexiteer Tories and the government's backing of it sparked a backlash from pro-EU Tory MPs, who said the PM had "capitulated".
But Downing Street, which agreed to accept the four amendments, said they were "consistent" with the White Paper where it sets out how it wants to trade with the EU in years to come.
MPs backed the amendment that prevents the UK from collecting taxes on behalf of the EU unless the rest of the EU does the same for the UK.
Applying EU tariffs to products destined for the EU is part of Mrs May's plan to avoid friction at UK borders after Brexit.
Another amendment, to ensure the UK is out of the EU's VAT regime, was backed by 303 to 300.
Clwyd West MP David Jones - a former Brexit minister and Welsh secretary who led the Vote Leave campaign in Wales - said the government was right to listen to its Brexiteer critics but believed "a lot more listening" needed to be done.
Guto Bebb voted Remain in the Brexit referendum and it was no secret he had become increasingly frustrated by the actions of some of the Brexiteers in his party.
He accused former Brexit Minister David Jones of sour grapes after he criticised the prime minister's plan for future trade with the EU.
He also attacked senior cabinet ministers for "inflammatory" and "unworthy" comments after then-Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said threats from business over Brexit were "inappropriate".
But after a string of resignations by Brexiteers, Guto Bebb's decision to leave a job he obviously enjoyed has surprised many.
What may seem strange is that he resigned so he could vote for what was the prime minister's own position a few hours earlier.

The DUP did not like what was proposed on "regulatory alignment", but Brexit Secretary David Davis suggests that the concept will still be key to making progress.
"Regulatory alignment" effectively means continuing to follow at least some of the rules of the EU's single market.
The taoiseach (Irish prime minister) said that the EU and UK had agreed that, short of a comprehensive trade agreement, there would be ongoing alignment between the two parts of Ireland sufficient to avoid a hard border.
In his answer he explained what he understood by the term.
He referred Mrs Cooper to the prime minister's Florence speech, in which Theresa May spoke about how the EU and UK "share a commitment to high regulatory standards".
Mr Davis said the Prime Minister had made the case that the two sides would, in some areas, want to reach the same regulatory outcomes, but by different methods.
This is a concept which the the UK government had previously proposed.
In its paper on Northern Ireland, published earlier this year, it raised the idea of regulatory equivalence on agri-food measures.
It stated that the UK and the EU could agree to achieve "the same outcome and high standards, with scope for flexibility in relation to the method for achieving this".
Mr Davis went on to to say that this sort of alignment would apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, rather than just Northern Ireland.
The Scottish Conservatives leader, Ruth Davidson, expanded on this point in a statement.
"If regulatory alignment in a number of specific areas is the requirement for a frictionless border, then the prime minister should conclude this must be on a UK-wide basis," she said.
So perhaps the government thinks they can persuade the DUP that regulatory alignment will be something for the UK as a whole, not just Northern Ireland.
However, there could be a difficulty with this all-UK approach, as the Institute for Government pointed out in a recent report, subtitled "Can the UK have its Brexit cake and eat it?'"
It points out that while the UK is trying to reassure the EU that it intends to meet the same regulatory outcomes it is also talking about having "flexibility" on the legal rules and standards underpinning them.
The institute suggests that the EU may interpret flexibility as a risk to its environmental, social and health and safety standards.
For example, in August the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said: "The UK wants to take back control, it wants to adopt its own standards and regulations.
"But it also wants to have these standards recognised automatically in the EU... This is simply impossible."
The EU has been consistent in its belief that Northern Ireland will need a special deal to cater to its unique circumstances.
But it has been equally clear that such a deal cannot apply across the UK as a whole.

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has called for a fundamental change in ministers' tone on Brexit, accusing UK negotiators of being "cowed by the EU".
The Eurosceptic backbencher said in a speech that "close alignment" with the EU after Brexit would be unacceptable.
Chancellor Philip Hammond, meanwhile, has said he hopes the UK and EU economies will only move "very modestly" apart after Brexit.
He said they were already "completely interconnected and aligned".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the war of words went right to the heart of Mrs May's struggle to keep her party together over its biggest project - how the UK will leave the EU.
While the majority of ministers thought she was the only person able to do it, the mood in the party had turned sour in recent weeks with one senior Conservative MP saying they were "in the mood for regime change".
The UK is due to leave the European Union in March 2019, and negotiations are taking place between the two sides.
One of the key questions is how close their trading relationship will be once the UK has left.
Mr Rees-Mogg, one of the leading Eurosceptic voices on the Conservative benches, has recently become the chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs.
In his speech, he warned against Brexit being treated like a "damage limitation exercise".
People "did not vote for the management of decline", he said.
"They voted for hope and opportunity and politicians must now deliver it."
The North East Somerset MP said some of the "really obvious opportunities" to improve people's lives from Brexit were at risk, if a model similar to the EU's single market and customs union was adopted.
This would leave the UK "divested of even the limited influence we currently have".
Mr Rees-Mogg also said businesses will suffer unless the UK can set its own regulations, independent of the EU.
And he criticised the UK negotiators, who are led by Brexit Secretary David Davis.
"For too long our negotiators seemed to have been cowed by the EU," he argued.
"Their approach seems to be that we must accept what the EU will allow us to do and build from there. This is no way to negotiate and it is no way for this country to behave."
Mr Rees-Mogg told BBC Radio 5live's Brexitcast that his aim in criticising the government's approach to Brexit was to "support the prime minister against naysayers".
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr Hammond said the UK was not seeking an "off-the-shelf" model to replace its membership of the EU single market and customs union.
The starting point is a position of "high levels of bilateral trade in goods and services," he said.
"So instead of doing what we're normally doing in the trade negotiations - taking two divergent economies with low levels of trade and trying to bring them closer together to enhance that trade - we are taking two completely interconnected and aligned economies with high levels of trade between them, and selectively, moving them, hopefully very modestly, apart.
"And so we should be confident of reaching something much more ambitious than any free trade agreement has ever achieved."
A Cabinet source told the BBC: "The UK is leaving the EU, the sooner Hammond realises that the better. Very modest changes are not what the 52% voted for."
Eurosceptic Tory backbencher Bernard Jenkin told the BBC: "Either the chancellor's been just a little careless in the ambiguity of his remarks or, rather as we suspect, the Treasury's got rather a different agenda. But I think it would be much easier for the prime minister to do her job if everyone just stuck to her script and I think that is what he should do."
He added that while he didn't want one "maybe [the prime minister] needs another reshuffle in order to give herself more ministers who support her policy" but denied he was suggesting Mr Hammond be sacked.
Mr Hammond tweeted:
Former Conservative MP and Scottish secretary Lord Forsyth told the BBC's Question Time that the prime minister "needs to get a grip on the cabinet and the cabinet needs to get behind her".
He added that Mr Hammond seems to be saying "something that's completely at odds with what the prime minister said in her Lancaster House speech."
Downing Street said Theresa May had used major speeches to talk about the "opportunities that Brexit will provide for the country", and that the government was confident of securing these opportunities in the next phase of negotiations.
Asked whether she agreed with Mr Hammond's comments, the spokesman said: "The cabinet has signed up to the vision the PM has set out in her speeches."

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has warned the UK it faces a "very hefty" bill for Brexit.
He promised two years of "tough negotiation", when discussions on leaving terms get under way between the government and the European Union.
Exit will not come "at a discount or at zero cost", he said in a speech to the Belgian Federal Parliament.
Reports suggest the UK could have to pay the EU up to 60 billion euros (£51bn) after Brexit talks start.
Mr Juncker's comments came as the House of Lords held a second day of discussion of the government's European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, which, if passed into law, will allow Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, allowing formal talks with the EU to start.
She is hoping to do this before the end of March, with EU negotiations expected to take up to two years.
Discussions are taking place in Brussels on the size of the bill to be presented to Mrs May when she launches the talks. The amount will cover the UK's share of the cost of projects and programmes it signed up to as a member, as well as pensions for EU officials.
In his speech, Mr Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, said: "It will be a tough negotiation which will take two years to agree on the exit terms. And to agree on the future architecture of relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union we will need years.
"The British people have to know, they know already, that it will not be at a discount or at zero cost. The British must respect commitments they were involved in making. So the bill will be, to put it a bit crudely, very hefty."
Unpicking 43 years of treaties and agreements covering thousands of different subjects was never going to be a straightforward task.
It is further complicated by the fact that it has never been done before and negotiators will, to some extent, be making it up as they go along.
The post-Brexit trade deal is likely to be the most complex part of the negotiation because it needs the unanimous approval of more than 30 national and regional parliaments across Europe, some of whom may want to hold referendums.
All you need to know about Brexit
He added:  "We need to settle our affairs not with our hearts full of a feeling of hostility, but with the knowledge that the continent owes a lot to the UK. Without Churchill, we would not be here - we mustn't forget that, but we mustn't be naive.
"Our British friends will need to understand that we want to continue to develop European integration."
But an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "not very smart" of the European Commission to ram home the cost of Brexit at this stage.
Stephan Mayer, a CDU member of the German Parliament, told the BBC that while Brexit would be "expensive for both the UK and the EU", much would depend on which EU programmes the UK continued to participate in.
"I am not so happy with this aggressive line," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
"I am convinced that Germany has a special interest in stable and good relationships with the UK. I fear in a certain way that this harsh pressure, which is put by the European Commission on the UK, is not in Germany's interests."
Mrs May has already said the UK will leave the European single market, but has promised to push for the "freest possible trade" with European countries.
In a speech in January outlining her priorities for Brexit, she warned the EU that to "punish" the UK for leaving would be "an act of calamitous self-harm".
Earlier this month, the House of Commons overwhelmingly backed the EU Bill and the government has said the Lords must not "frustrate" its passage into law.

This is the resignation letter that Lord Adonis says he sent to Downing Street while quitting as the government's infrastructure adviser.
The Right Hon Lord Adonis
House of Lords, London SW1
The Right Hon Theresa May MP
10 Downing Street
London SW129 December 2017
Dear Prime Minister,
The hardest thing in politics is to bring about lasting change for the better, and I believe in co-operation across parties to achieve it.
In this spirit I was glad to accept reappointment last year as Chair of the independent National Infrastructure Commission, when you also reaffirmed your support for HS2, which will help overcome England's north-south divide when it opens in just eight years time. I would like to thank you for your courtesy in our personal dealings.
The Commission has done good work in the past 27 months, thanks to dedicated public servants and commissioners. Sir John Armitt, my deputy chair, and Phil Graham, chief executive, have been brilliant throughout. I am particularly proud of our plans for equipping the UK with world-class 4G and 5G mobile systems; for Crossrail 2 in London and HS3 to link the Northern cities; and for transformational housing growth in the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor.
I hope these plans are implemented without delay. However, my work at the Commission has become increasingly clouded by disagreement with the Government, and after much consideration I am writing to resign because of fundamental differences which simply cannot be bridged.
The European Union Withdrawal Bill is the worst legislation of my lifetime. It arrives soon in the House of Lords and I feel duty bound to oppose it relentlessly from the Labour benches.
Brexit is a populist and nationalist spasm worthy of Donald Trump. After the narrow referendum vote, a form of associate membership of the EU might have been attempted without rupturing Britain's key trading and political alliances. Instead, by allying with UKIP and the Tory hard right to wrench Britain out of the key economic and political institutions of modern Europe, you are pursuing a course fraught with danger. Even within Ireland, there are set to be barriers between people and trade.
If Brexit happens, taking us back into Europe will become the mission of our children's generation, who will marvel at your acts of destruction.
A responsible government would be leading the British people to stay in Europe while also tackling, with massive vigour, the social and economic problems within Britain which contributed to the Brexit vote. Unfortunately, your policy is the reverse. The Government is hurtling towards the EU's emergency exit with no credible plan for the future of British trade and European co-operation, all the while ignoring - beyond sound bites and inadequate programmes - the crises of housing, education, the NHS, and social and regional inequality which are undermining the fabric of our nation and feeding a populist surge.
What Britain needs in 2018 is a radically reforming government in the tradition of Attlee, working tirelessly to eradicate social problems while strengthening Britain's international alliances. This is a cause I have long advocated, and acted upon in government, and I intend to pursue it with all the energy I can muster.
Britain must be deeply engaged, responsible and consistent as a European power. When in times past we have isolated ourselves from the Continent in the name of "empire" or "sovereignty", we were soon sucked back in. This will inevitably happen again, given our power, trade, democratic values and sheer geography. Putin and the rise of authoritarian nationalism in Poland and Hungry are flashing red lights. As Edmund Burke so wisely wrote, "people will not look forwards to posterity who do not look backwards to their ancestors."
However, I would have been obliged to resign from the Commission at this point anyway because of the Transport Secretary's indefensible decision to bail-out the Stagecoach/Virgin East Coast rail franchise. The bailout will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds, possibly billions if other loss-making rail companies demand equal treatment. It benefits only the billionaire owners of these companies and their shareholders, while pushing rail fares still higher and threatening national infrastructure investment. It is even more inexcusable given the Brexit squeeze on public spending.
The only rationale I can discern for the bailout is as a cynical political manoeuvre by Chris Grayling, a hard right Brexiteer, to avoid following my 2009 precedent when National Express defaulted on its obligations to the state for the same East Coast franchise because it too had overbid for the contract. I set up a successful public operator to take over East Coast services and banned National Express from bidding for new contracts. The same should have been done in this case. Yet, astonishingly, Stagecoach has not only been bailed out: it remains on the shortlist for the next three rail franchises.
The East Coast affair will inevitably come under close scrutiny by the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, and I need to be free to set out serious public interest concerns. I hope the PAC calls Sir Richard Branson and Sir Brian Souter to give evidence. I am ready to share troubling evidence with the PAC and other parliamentary committees investigating the bailout.
As you know, I raised these concerns with the Chancellor and the Transport Secretary as soon as the bailout became apparent from the small print of an odd policy statement on 29 November majoring on reversing Beeching rail closures of the 1960s. I received no response from either Minister beyond inappropriate requests to desist.
Brexit is causing a nervous breakdown across Whitehall and conduct unworthy of Her Majesty's Government. I am told, by those of longer experience, that it resembles Suez and the bitter industrial strife of the 1970s, both of which endangered not only national integrity but the authority of the state itself.
You occupy one of the most powerful offices in the history of the world, the heir of Churchill, Attlee and Gladstone. Whatever our differences, I wish you well in guiding our national destiny at this critical time.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed)
ANDREW ADONIS

The European Parliament has backed a motion setting out its position for the Brexit negotiations by 516 to 133.
Although MEPs will not participate directly in the exit talks they will have to vote in favour of the final deal for it to go ahead.
UKIP's Nigel Farage accused MEPs of trying to impose conditions that were "impossible for Britain to comply with" and likened them to the "mafia".
The motion for debate was supported by the two largest groups of MEPs.
It set out general principles at the start of the two year negotiations for the UK to leave the European Union under the Article 50 process.
At a press conference following the vote, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit negotiator, said the vote meant that "the UK on the one hand and the [European] Commission on the other hand now know the position of the Parliament, what the red lines are".
He said "the interests of our citizens is our first priority" and called for an early resolution of the status of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens elsewhere in Europe.
The motion backs a number of positions taken by EU leaders, including the need for a "phased approach" to negotiations.
This would require progress on the terms of Britain's withdrawal, including settling financial commitments, before talks on a future trading relationship can start.
It also backs the call for transparency in the talks, and for the UK to be considered liable for financial commitments that apply after it leaves the EU.
It also says:
During the debate in Strasbourg Manfred Weber, chairman of the largest group of MEPs, the centre-right European People's Party, said: "Cherry-picking will not happen. A state outside the European Union will not have better conditions than a state inside the European Union."
Gianni Pitella, chairman of the European Socialists and Democrats also argued that the UK "can not benefit from the same conditions as members do" and added: "If you leave the house, you still have to pay the bills."
The motion is not binding on European Commission officials but President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker told MEPs: "The role of this parliament is more important than ever. You must scrutinise and validate the final agreement."
He added: "We will of course negotiate in friendship and openness and not in a hostile mood, with a country that has brought so much to our union and will remain close to hearts long after they have left, but this is now the time for reason over emotion.
"What's at stake here are the lives of millions of people. Millions have family or professional links to the United Kingdom."
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, warned that "a disunited union could actually lead to there being no deal".
He added: "The 'no deal' scenario is not the scenario we are looking for. We are looking for success, not against the United Kingdom but with the United Kingdom."
Helga Stevens from the Conservatives and Reformists group, which includes MEPs from the UK's ruling Conservative Party, said Brexit "should not be a nasty breakup" and cautioned MEPs against "making excessive demands in advance" of Brexit talks.
"If we do anything less, history will judge us harshly as being small and petty," she claimed.
But UKIP MEP Mr Farage argued: "Already you've made a series of demands which are not just unreasonable but in some cases clearly impossible for Britain to comply with."
He accused the EU of seeking to impose a bill of £52bn on the UK and likened this to "a form of ransom demand", adding: "What you could have mentioned is we're actually shareholders in this building and other assets and actually you should be making an offer to us that we can't refuse, to go."
When he accused MEPs of behaving like the mafia, the parliament's Italian president, Antonio Tajani, intervened to object. Mr Farage responded:  "I do understand national sensitivities. I'll change it to gangsters."
The former UKIP leader also insisted that Gibraltar should be a "deal breaker" in any negotiations.
Later, Spanish centre-right MEP Esteban Gonzalez Pons accused the UK government of "preventing Scotland staying part of Europe while at the same time they want... Gibraltar to continue to be a tax haven".
At the post-debate press conference, Mr Tajani emphasised the need to uphold the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and "working for peace".
He also highlighted security co-operation with the UK, saying: "Terrorists know no borders and they do not care about Brexit."

MPs will vote again on how much of a say Parliament should have on Brexit, after another House of Lords defeat for the government.
Peers decided MPs should have to approve whatever the government decided to do next if there was no final agreement with the EU.
Their amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill was backed by 354 votes to 235.
It means the issue is sent back to the House of Commons for a debate on Wednesday.
Leading Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg accused the Lords of being "cavalier" towards the UK's constitution.
The UK is due to leave the European Union in March 2019. And negotiations have been taking place over the terms of its departure.
But there is an ongoing row about what happens if Parliament votes to reject the final deal reached between the two sides - or if no deal is reached.
One side says Parliament should intervene to prevent the UK from "crashing out" of the EU without a deal - but critics say the prospect of this happening would undermine the UK's negotiating hand.
Last week, Theresa May avoided defeat on the issue - but rebels said they were not happy with the concessions they had been offered in return for not voting against the government.
Now, peers have backed an amendment from former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Hailsham, which goes further than the government's proposals on how much power MPs could get.
The 119 majority was 28 more than the last time peers voted on the so-called "meaningful vote" issue.
Lord Hailsham, who described Brexit as a "national calamity" in his speech, said his amendment represented what had been agreed "in good faith" by the would-be Tory rebels, led by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, and Downing Street last week.
"It's a matter of honour," he said.
He also said his proposals were in the "national interest", adding: "In order to safeguard our nation's vital interests, in the event that there be no deal on the table, Parliament should have the authority to intervene."
Lord Hailsham described his amendment as "Grieve Two", meaning it was a new version of proposals tabled last week by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who wants Parliament to get more of a say over Brexit.
It would apply in three scenarios:
Under these circumstances, the government has said, a minister will make a statement in Parliament, setting out the government's next steps.
The government had offered MPs the chance to vote "on neutral terms" on this statement. But the amendment backed by the Lords on Monday goes further, saying the statement would have to be approved by MPs.
Lord Hailsham also criticised what he called "disgraceful" newspaper attacks on Mr Grieve and said it was "perfectly true" that he had held talks with other parties in drawing up his amendment.
"I make absolutely no apology for that," he said.
"This is the high court of Parliament, and we are not party hacks."
Lord Hailsham's fellow Tory peer Lord True said ministers had already "made a serious attempt to compromise" with the rebels' demands.
"People outside Parliament are getting a little bit tired of the parliamentary games," he said.
"They actually want to know when they're going to get Brexit, when it will be delivered and when it will be done."

Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg says people should consider joining Labour in an attempt to prevent Brexit from happening.
In his new book, Mr Clegg said it was "a time of national emergency" and he told people worried about Brexit to "make your voice heard".
He also said joining the Conservatives was "another route to make your views felt".
Mr Clegg, the former deputy PM, lost his seat in June's general election.
He has remained an outspoken critic of the UK's departure from the EU, and his new book is called "How to stop Brexit".
In it, he says it "may seem odd" for a former Lib Dem leader to be advocating joining Labour, adding that he himself would not be doing so.
"But if you are someone who has never joined a party, or perhaps has been inclined to join Labour but has never got round to it, or if you are simply someone who recognises that the importance of Brexit is far greater than individual," he writes.
"At a time of national emergency, and for as long as Parliament is dominated by Labour and Conservative MPs, it is undoubtedly true that what happens within the two larger establishment parties is of the greatest importance.
"So if you can't stomach joining the Labour Party, if you are ideologically inclined in a Conservative direction in any event and if you also believe that Brexit is the issue of our times, then joining the Conservatives is another route to make your views felt."

Nicola Sturgeon has warned Theresa May that she is not "bluffing" on the promise of a second independence referendum if Scotland is "driven off a hard Brexit cliff".
Scotland's first minister told the BBC's Andrew Marr she felt the prime minister had "no plan" in terms of her strategy for the UK leaving the EU.
She said she was prepared to compromise and wants Mrs May to do the same.
The UK government has said a special deal for Scotland is unrealistic.
The prime minister said on Sunday morning the government's thinking on Brexit "isn't muddled at all".
In an interview on Sky News, she said her priority was to get the "best possible deal in terms of our trading relationship with the European Union".
Brexit talks with the EU are expected to begin as early as April.
Scottish opposition parties have called for Ms Sturgeon to rule out a second independence referendum.
Voters in Scotland backed the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38%.
Ms Sturgeon has said she wants the UK to retain membership of the European single market, the so-called soft Brexit option.
She has also indicated a soft Brexit would see the prospect of Scottish independence "put aside" in the short term.
However, in an interview for the Andrew Marr programme, she warned the UK government and Mrs May that "they will be making a big mistake if they think I am in any way bluffing" on the prospect of another Scottish independence referendum.
She said that if the UK opts for leaving the single market then she would "give Scotland the opportunity to decide whether it wants to be driven off a hard Brexit cliff by right-wing Tory Brexiteers or whether it wants to take control of its own future".
Asked if she was looking at a referendum "much quicker" than in five or 10 years' time following a hard Brexit she said: "I would think, yes. But let me not get away from this point, I'm putting to Theresa May a compromise solution."
Ms Sturgeon also told the BBC presenter that discussions with the UK government over the Brexit options had left her "frustrated".
She said: "I don't feel as if I know any more about her (Theresa May's) negotiating objectives than I did six months ago."
Asked if she seriously thinks "there is no plan", the first minister said: "Yes I do".
She added: "I say that with a lot of regret as that puts every part of the UK into a very perilous position."
Nicola Sturgeon has warned she isn't bluffing over a second independence referendum. But she's also been careful to emphasise she is offering a 'compromise' that would take one off the table. For now all options remain in play.
A key influencing decision will be whether Scotland stays in the EU single market, either as part of the UK or in a separate arrangement. Prime Minister Theresa May said today she does not intend to keep bits of membership - instead she wants an ambitious trade deal with Europe.  More details in the next couple of weeks.
But the first minister will also be reluctant to call one unless she's confident she'll win; at the moment polls suggest support for independence has not increased since 2014.
Ms Sturgeon has tried to put the ball in the prime minister's court; asking her will she listen to the views of the Scottish government? If not, Ms Sturgeon thinks Scotland will have to ask itself if it's happy with the decision. Watch this space.
Ms Sturgeon highlighted a meeting at Downing Street in October which also involved the first ministers of Wales and Northern Ireland.
She said: "I'm not exaggerating too much when I say the prime minister sat on the other side of the table at that meeting and said 'Brexit means Brexit' and not a lot more.
"I came out of that meeting more frustrated, after a meeting of that nature, than I have ever been before."
In the interview, the SNP leader also said she accepted "it looks at the moment as though the UK is going to leave the EU".
She called on Theresa May to work towards a "compromise" and "common ground that avoids the worst impacts".
The prime minister has pledged to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - getting leaving talks with the EU under way - by the end of March.
Talks can take up to two years, unless an agreement is reached to prolong the process.
Responding to Ms Sturgeon's comments, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said: "This week we've seen Nicola Sturgeon say that she was going to take a referendum off the table, only for her and Alex Salmond to put it back on the table again today.
"The first minister needs to start acting in the interests of all Scots, not simply playing to her nationalist base."
Kezia Dugale, Scottish Labour leader, accused the SNP of sowing "division and uncertainty".
"With a growing crisis in our NHS and a shameful gap between the richest and the rest in our schools, the challenges facing Scotland are too great for the SNP government to be distracted by another referendum," she said.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said Ms Sturgeon was causing "damaging uncertainty".
He added: "She rightly criticises the prime minister for a lack of clarity on Brexit but the first minister is making matters worse with a similar lack of clarity on independence."
The full interview with Nicola Sturgeon was broadcast on The Andrew Marr Show and will be available later on the BBC iPlayer.

The Polish Prime Minister has said Britain will have to continue making financial contributions to the European Union if it wants to enjoy privileged access to the single market.
Mateusz Morawiecki said the EU would take a tough stance on Britain's desire for a comprehensive free trade deal.
He said he wanted a positive relationship, but that costs would be attached.
But a UK minister told me Britain would not agree to that "at the outset".
When I spoke to Mr Morawiecki in Davos I asked him whether Britain would have to pay to get "a good deal".
"I hope so," he told me.
"There has to be some price for full access and to what extent this access is going to be available has to be made dependent on some other contributions, potentially including this financial contribution."
Such a move could be controversial among many Brexit supporters in Britain - a point Mr Morawiecki agreed with.
"Yes, but you cannot have your cake and eat the same cake," he said.
The Polish PM's comments come a few hours after David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, rejected any plans to continue making contributions.
Mr Davis said Britain was a "proud country" and would not pay "some sort of Danegeld".
A Danegeld was a tax levied on the English to pay off Viking raiders.
Mr Morawiecki, who was formerly an adviser to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said he believed there was a small chance that Britain could remain in the EU.
"I still have a little bit of hope that there will be a way of keeping the UK as part of the EU," he said.
"I fully respect the decision from the referendum, but maybe there will be other ways for the UK [to remain] as part of the EU.
"Because I think it's in the interests of the trans-Atlantic community - the pax-Americana, pax-European peace type of model - and for the rest of the world.
"It is extremely important for security, and global trade, and positive trends in the world."
He said if there was no reversal of the referendum - which the UK government has categorically ruled out - then he hoped "the deal between the UK and EU will be as positive for both parties as possible, because I don't want to punish anybody".
I asked the Polish PM whether Britain could have its own bespoke deal, which Theresa May has signalled she wants.
"I would like to indicate two other nations and countries which are [in a different position] - one of them is part of the EEA [the European Economic Area] like Norway, and they do have some financial contribution for the whole of the EU.
"The other one is where we are today, Switzerland, which has a series of bilateral agreements.
"So I think there are examples of how the new agreement can be shaped so that there is a real convergence, a real integration between the UK and the EU, despite Brexit."
Britain is a net contributor to the EU budget and government sources have told me that it is likely the UK will have to pay for special access - possibly via contributions to specific bodies such as for medicines - despite the public position that no payments will be made.
The issue is very important for Poland as it is a net recipient of EU funds and there are concerns that funding could be cut when Britain leaves the EU.
Dr Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, said that during the Brexit negotiations both sides would set out - often opposing - positions, and that compromises would have to be reached.
"It sounds to me like the opening shots of a negotiation and there is a long way to go in that," he told me in response to Mr Morawiecki's comments.
"There is no way the UK would agree at the outset to do that.
"What we are looking at is a balance.
"The UK will want access [to the EU] in services, particularly financial services.
"The European Union will want access to Britain's goods market, given that they have got a £82bn surplus with the United Kingdom.
"These things will be netted out over trade agreements.
"In a trade agreement both sides have to give something otherwise you don't get an agreement.
"As we have seen with the TPP [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] agreement, it can sometimes take a few little bumps before people get to the final place.
"So I think we don't assume that any opening positions will be the final positions."

The European Parliament has overwhelmingly approved a non-binding resolution that lays out its views on the Brexit negotiations.
The parliament will have no formal role in shaping the Brexit talks. The negotiations will be led by the European Commission on behalf of the EU's remaining 27 member states. Their draft negotiating guidelines were issued last week.
But the parliament's views still matter because under the Article 50 rules it will get a vote on the final EU-UK "divorce" deal and if it does not like what has been agreed it could demand changes and delay the process.
BBC Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris teases out some of the key sentences from the resolution and explains their significance.
 - A revocation of notification needs to be subject to conditions set by all EU-27, so that it cannot be used as a procedural device or abused in an attempt to improve on the current terms of the United Kingdom's membership;
This is interesting. It implies that the European Parliament thinks the UK can change its mind about Article 50 (whereas the UK government has implied the opposite). The truth is that irrevocability is the subject of legal dispute and, as this is a matter of interpreting a European treaty, the ultimate arbiter would be the European Court of Justice. Either way, the parliament makes clear here that it would not allow the UK to plead for a better deal if it tried to return - even the package of measures offered to David Cameron in February 2016 (remember this?) is now null and void.
 - Reiterates the importance of the withdrawal agreement and any possible transitional arrangement(s) entering into force well before the elections to the European Parliament of May 2019;
In theory the two-year Article 50 negotiating period could be extended if all parties agreed, but no-one really wants that to happen. And this is one of the reasons why the timetable is so tight. If the UK was still part of the European Union in May 2019, it might have to hold elections to elect British MEPs, despite being on the verge of leaving. It would raise all sorts of complications that the European Parliament is determined to avoid.
 - Stresses that the United Kingdom must honour all its legal, financial and budgetary obligations, including commitments under the current multiannual financial framework, falling due up to and after the date of its withdrawal;
Another reminder of the looming fight about settling the accounts (also known as the divorce bill). Parliament insists that the UK must honour all its commitments under the current multiannual financial framework - a kind of long-term budget -  which runs until 2020. Because of the way the EU budget process works, that would mean the UK would have to help pay for things like infrastructure projects in poorer EU countries several years after it had left the Union.
 - States that, whatever the outcome of the negotiations on the future European Union-United Kingdom relationship, they cannot involve any trade-off between internal and external security including defence co-operation, on the one hand and the future economic relationship, on the other hand;
I think this is probably cleared up by now, but the implied link between security co-operation and trade in Theresa May's Article 50 letter raised a few eyebrows elsewhere in the EU. Cooler heads suggested it was there for domestic consumption and the UK government said it was all a misunderstanding. But the parliament is putting down an explicit marker that trade-offs between security and the future economic relationship won't be acceptable.
 - Stresses that any future agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom is conditional on the UK's continued adherence to the standards provided by international obligations, including human rights and the Union's legislation and policies, in, among others, the field of the environment, climate change, the fight against tax evasion and avoidance, fair competition, trade and social rights, especially safeguards against social dumping;
The resolution suggests that the future relationship could be built upon an agreement under which the UK would have to accept EU standards over a wide range of policy areas from climate change to tax evasion. In some areas that might be exactly what the UK government wants to do anyway, given that the UK has played a leading role in forging those policy positions in the first place. But domestic politics in the UK means any wholesale acceptance of EU policies could be a tough sell.
 - Believes that transitional arrangements ensuring legal certainty and continuity can only be agreed between the European Union and the United Kingdom if they contain the right balance of rights and obligations for both parties and preserve the integrity of the European Union's legal order, with the Court of Justice of the European Union responsible for settling any legal challenges; believes, moreover, that any such arrangements must also be strictly limited both in time - not exceeding three years - and in scope, as they can never be a substitute for European Union membership;
Two important points here. Firstly, the parliament is determined that the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice would continue to run during any transition period. The draft guidelines produced by the European Council last week made the same point but in less explicit language. If it wants a transition, the UK will have to accept a role for the ECJ. Secondly, the parliament says the transition should last no longer than three years, which is a shorter period than some might think necessary.

Brexit talks will be on a "humongous scale" involving "difficult trade-offs", the UK's ex-EU ambassador says.
Sir Ivan Rogers predicted much of the talks would be "conducted very publicly" with "name-calling" and an "extremely feisty atmosphere".
He added that EU Commission chiefs were saying the UK should pay 40-60bn euros to leave and thought a trade deal could take until the mid-2020s to agree.
Sir Ivan, who had been due to leave his post in October, resigned last month.
In December he attracted criticism from some MPs when his warning to ministers that the European consensus was that a deal might not be done until the early to mid-2020s was revealed by the BBC.
Giving evidence to the Commons European Scrutiny Committee, he said this had come from a briefing he had written for Prime Minister Theresa May in October, based on the views of key figures in the EU and the remaining member states.
He said he did not know how it became public.
The government says it can conclude all separation negotiations, including a new free trade deal, within two years, having given notice of the UK's departure from the EU by the end of March.
Asked about the anticipated timescale, Sir Ivan said a comprehensive free trade agreement such as the one Mrs May was seeking would be the most comprehensive ever negotiated by the EU, and previous agreements have taken "an awful lot of time".
He said he believed an agreement with the UK could be concluded more quickly, but said the Brexit negotiation would be "unprecedentedly large" covering "huge tracts of Whitehall".
"It's a negotiation on the scale that we haven't experienced ever, certainly not since the Second World War."
Sir Ivan said there was a "big financial debate coming up" about the amount to which the UK should be expected to pay as it leaves the EU.
EU commission chief negotiator Michel Barnier and other key figures were "openly" saying the UK's total financial liabilities would be in the order of 40 to 60bn euros, Sir Ivan said, describing this as a "predictably hard line".
From the EU's point of view, UK withdrawal will "explode a bomb" under its seven-year budget, he said.
Sir Ivan told MPs the 27 remaining EU states would spend "an awful lot of time debating with each other" before negotiating with the UK, agreeing a common position.
Asked how confidential the negotiations would be, he said: "I think an awful lot will leak, Brussels is very leaky...stuff will get out, and incessantly in my view."
He added: "Expect an awful lot of this negotiation to be conducted very publicly."
Sir Ivan said that after a "phoney war period" talks "usually end up in a fairly mercantilist fist-fight" before finally resolving themselves in a deal of some sort.
A determination on both sides to make progress would be crucial, he said.
"That involves generating a momentum and generating an atmosphere so that even when we get into name-calling and an extremely feisty atmosphere - and we undoubtedly will in both exit negotiations and future trade and economic negotiations - there is still an atmosphere to proceed and finalise agreement."
He said there was "no doubt" the UK would be able to negotiate free trade deals more quickly than the EU once it leaves, but said it may not have the same "negotiating heft".
Sir Ivan has been replaced by Sir Tim Barrow, a former UK ambassador to Russia.
Giving evidence to a separate Commons committee, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said the suggestion the UK could face a bill upon leaving the EU was "absurd".
"I find it bizarre because the UK is using a legal power that we have under the Lisbon Treaty, a provision that was freely entered into by all our European partners," he said.
"Why should they then turn round to say that we should pay their costs for a process that everybody equally entered into at the time? So it seems to me an absurd argument."

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator has told the UK the time has come for it to "resolve the contradictions" in its Irish border policy.
Michel Barnier was writing in Ireland's Sunday Independent newspaper ahead of a visit to the country on Monday.
He said there will need to be "substantial progress" on the border issue by the next major meeting of EU leaders.
They are due to assess progress on the border issue at a summit in June.
Last week the Brexit Secretary David Davis suggested the EU was trying to create an "artificial deadline" in June as a negotiating tactic.
The Brexit secretary also rejected reports that the European Commission has completely rejected the UK's plans for avoiding customs checks at the Irish border when the UK leaves the customs union.
October is the presumed deadline for a withdrawal agreement which will give the UK a smooth exit path from the EU.
In March, EU leaders agreed to a 21-month Brexit transition period between March 2019 - when the UK officially leaves - and the end of 2020.

The EU summit on Thursday and Friday will discuss a number of pressing issues, including migration, economics, security and Brexit. But what do different countries want from the Brussels talks and where does Brexit stand in their priorities?
It's tempting to imagine what Angela Merkel and Theresa May might say to one another in a private moment on the margins of the summit.
Both leaders, after all, face dissent and open rebellion from within their own ranks. And both are in a bind over borders.
But that's exactly why it's unlikely that the German chancellor will pay much attention to Brexit this week. She's far too busy trying to realise her long-promised European migration strategy - and saving her own political skin.
Her fragile government hangs precariously in the balance.
And it could fall apart if she can't return home with a solution strong enough to see off the rebellion from her interior minister - and coalition partner - who's threatening to unilaterally impose greater migration controls at the German border.
In such serious times here, the problem of Brexit seems far a less significant issue to preoccupied lawmakers.
But it's not that Germany isn't interested. Industry - in particular the mighty car manufacturing lobby - is beside itself at the thought of a no-deal Brexit.
In recent days, Joachim Lang, the director general of the Federation of German Industries, warned that the UK is "hurtling towards a disorderly Brexit". He added that only by remaining in the customs union and single market can the Irish border question be answered.
Most here want more clarity from Britain about how it perceives its future relationship with the EU, but Mrs May will encounter strong resistance to any proposals that even hint at the reinstatement of a border.
Mrs Merkel, on the other hand, whose experience was shaped by her own early life behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, now finds herself in an EU openly discussing how and where to strengthen - or even reimpose - Europe's boundaries.
France is going into this summit with two concerns uppermost in its mind.
The first is President Macron's beloved long-term project to tie the eurozone economies more closely together.
The German chancellor seems to have finally agreed in principle to a watered-down version of his plan, including a common budget for the eurozone and extra measures to help countries facing a recession, though the details are still vague. This summit will be a chance to put their ideas to the other EU countries.
The other issue dominating French minds is migration.
President Macron angered Italy earlier this month by saying it was "irresponsible" and "cynical" to refuse a rescue ship carrying illegal migrants. Italy accused France of hypocrisy, in return.
The issue of how to relieve pressure on the front-line states in Europe's migrant crisis is divisive.
In 2015, the former French government promised to take 30,000 refugees from Greece and Italy, but a year later little more than 1,000 had arrived.  And while the French government backs proposals for closed processing centres in front-line states, it does not want to see them on French territory.
With all this occupying French minds, there's little room to devote much attention to Brexit.
France has stuck pretty firmly to the EU line of "no cherry-picking", saying that freedom of goods, services and people cannot be separated.
But there are those in Paris who believe that appetite is growing to find wiggle room on frictionless goods trading, to protect French exporters to the UK. Though there's little indication that Paris will budge on the issue of a "passport" for the City of London and its financial services.
Spain's new prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has made clear he intends to respect commitments his country has made to the EU and the European project in general.
But with a range of other issues occupying his agenda - particularly increasing numbers of migrants reaching Spanish shores and tensions in Catalonia - Brexit is not a main priority for the socialist premier.
However, he will not be able to ignore the impact the UK's exit could have on Gibraltar, whose British ownership Spain disputes.
At the summit, Mr Sánchez is expected to report on the status of recent negotiations between London and Madrid over Gibraltar's future status. Those talks, due to conclude by October, have focused on the possible shared use of the rock's airport and the exchange of tax information on citizens.
The EU has agreed that Spain can veto a Brexit accord if it is unhappy with the arrangements for Gibraltar.
The summit might offer clues as to whether or not Mr Sánchez intends to continue with the relatively tough line on Gibraltar pursued by the previous Spanish government. Either way, he will want to shore up support from his EU partners on the issue.
To Italy's new populist government, Brexit is a rather distracting sideshow.
It wants to do business with a post-EU UK and it wants to ensure that the rights of Italian citizens living in the UK are protected. But beyond that, Italy's main preoccupation is migration across the Mediterranean.
In this respect, the country has two main objectives: to get EU countries to share the burden of sheltering those who've already reached this continent, and to prevent any more migrants from making the sea journey to Europe.
In particular, Italy wants to get rid of the EU's Dublin Regulation, which calls for migrants to be screened in the first place in which they arrive. Italy believes that this places far too much pressure on front-line countries, including Spain and Greece.
But Italy may face resistance from fellow populist governments in central and eastern Europe, who do not want to take in any more migrants.
Italy's influential Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, also wants the EU to accept an Italian-Libyan plan announced on 25 June to set up migrant holding centres on Libya's southern borders.
In theory, migrants from Africa would be directed to these centres, and prevented from making the journey across the Mediterranean.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban goes into this European summit in confident, but cautious mood.
He feels he's winning the argument on migration, but he knows he hasn't won it yet. Brexit, for him, is already yesterday's story.
His arch-enemy, Angela Merkel, looks wounded. The new government in Rome shares his anti-immigrant rhetoric, as does the government in Vienna.
He can count on Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian Chancellor, to beat the anti-migrant drum for the next six months, as Austria holds the rotating EU presidency.
His allies in Bavaria, Horst Seehofer's CSU, are on the warpath. And the other Visegrad countries are right behind him.
But Mr Orban is playing for time - he sees his real chance after next year's European parliamentary elections, when he counts on a much bigger role for populist parties like his own, and populist leaders like himself, in the running of the European Union.
In the meantime, he still has to face annoying distractions, like criticism in the European Parliament for his crackdown on human rights groups.
He'll be hoping the summit is over as quickly as possible, so he can get back to watching the football. He hasn't missed a match yet, he told Hungarian radio.

"It's all kicking off," an MP texts tonight.
It's not surprising given what's at stake, and that we are seven days away from a critical EU summit. But it's not a drama that can easily be dismissed.
The government's backers the DUP are threatening to pull support if the PM doesn't bend to their position on Brexit. Don't be in any doubt, that could in theory mean the government collapsing because they can't get anything done.
Rather than pulling back from the threat, the DUP will in the next 24 hours be trying to turn the pressure up even further.
And to make the threats real the small Northern Irish party has already tonight decided not to back the government in a vote in the Commons - a reminder that the  government's vulnerability in the Commons is real, it's not some theoretical threat.
It's a warning - not an obscure abstention on a little-noticed piece of legislation. And remember, remember December. It was the DUP (and some very strong Brexiteer voices too) who sank the prime minister's original Brussels agreement, humiliating her before she snatched victory from the jaws of defeat a few days later.
As we enter the next phase of this drama, catch up on the last big denouement here.
In Brussels, contrary to some reports, there has not been some sudden breakthrough on the clashes across the negotiating table.
Well-placed sources on both sides tell me that while the "show is on the road", and officials have been "working well" in the last three days, neither Team Barnier nor Team Robbins are buckling and bending.
So, it follows, neither Team Barnier nor Team Robbins can claim victory, and more importantly, neither Team Barnier nor Team Robbins can say at this moment with complete confidence that the progress they hope for to allow Theresa May to move closer to a Brexit deal has been achieved.
That's not of course to say that it won't or can't still happen.
There is a significant chance that by Monday Dominic Raab and Michel Barnier will be side by side at the podium gleefully reporting the progress their worker bees have been able to make - a springboard for a successful summit a week tonight.  But they are not there yet.
In cabinet too there are plenty of reservations too about the prime minister's direction of travel as well as a loyal brigade.
The jokingly named "Chequers Defence Committee", a group of the most senior ministers and those whose departments are most affected by Brexit, are being called into Number 10 late tomorrow afternoon.
But sources suggest this is not to make any kind of decision about the Brexit deal. It's to keep them broadly on board, and to avoid accusations further down the line that Number 10 has bounced ministers into signing up.
One of the profound criticisms of the prime minister has often been that she and her officials are intensely secretive, and don't seek genuine buy-in from colleagues.
It's not mad to argue that with such divisions in her party that's been the way to survive.
But it has infuriated some of her colleagues. And it also means that objections and concerns have developed rather than been fully argued out and discussed.  It's also why the finger often gets pointed at the officials leading the talks.
Brexiteer knives have been out for Olly Robbins, the lead negotiator, for a long time now. It often seems the Brexit deal is being struck by him and Number 10 with the Brexit department looped in, rather than by the government as a whole.
But as one well-placed source acidly suggests: "Robbins does not get the SW1 politics of this - but it's ultimately her fault for letting a civil service man do a woman's political job."
There are of course plenty of loyalists - plenty of MPs and ministers who think the PM is faced with an absolute nightmare, in office but not in power with no majority, and simply trying to do a sensible best.
But there are concerned Brexiteer ministers, worried former Remainer ministers and as we've discussed many times here, widespread discontent on the Tory backbenches on all sides at the prime minister's hoped-for compromise.
Even some of Theresa May's most ardent backers worry that there's a disconnect that might go badly wrong.
While the government believes they probably do have the numbers when it gets to a final vote as I wrote here, I've heard from former Remainers as well as Brexiteers this week who say the same - "I just can't see how they get anything through."
It was of course always extremely likely that in the closing weeks of this negotiation the situation would be extremely febrile and it would all be "kicking off".
The second last episode in any box set is almost always when the heroes teeter on the edge of disaster before miraculously coming back from the brink.
In a couple of months this might seem like froth. But tonight the prime minister's vital backers are threatening to pull stumps; her cabinet is yet to be convinced; her backbenches certainly can't be relied on and the talks themselves are not sorted.
It certainly is all kicking off, and the government may well get hurt.

The woman who started the record-breaking anti-Brexit petition says she is "shaking like a leaf" after receiving three death threats by phone.
Margaret Georgiadou, 77, began the Revoke Article 50 petition, which had topped four million signatures by Saturday morning.
She said she was "totally amazed" it had become the most popular petition submitted to the Parliament website.
But Mrs Georgiadou said the "horrible" phone calls left her scared and angry.
The retired lecturer says she has also received abuse via her Facebook account.
She said: "I feel terrible, I feel angry with myself because I thought I was tougher than that. But I was scared."
"I haven't even told my husband because he is very old and he would become hysterical."
Mrs Georgiadou said she created the petition to stop people "moaning" about how awful they thought Brexit was going to be.
It has broken the record for the biggest petition on the Parliament's website, previously held by another Brexit-related petition from 2016.
Mrs Georgiadou said she wanted to get as many people as possible to sign it - but she wasn't hoping for a government response.
"Democracy is ruled by society for society, not the majority for the majority," she said.
"I want it to prove it is no longer the will of the people. It was three years ago but the government has become infamous for changing their mind - so why can't the people?
"People should ask themselves, who is it that wants Brexit? It will help Putin, it will help Trump… but will it help us? I doubt it," she continued.
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Since the success of her petition, Mrs Georgiadou has faced criticism over posts she allegedly made on social media, using threatening language about the prime minister. She said she had no memory of the posts.
She said:  "It must have been a cut and paste job. The dates were all wrong."
"My friends thought it was funny. They have made photos of me trying to hold up a rifle with my zimmer-frame... I don't own a zimmer-frame by the way - or a rifle."
Mrs Georgiadou says she cannot attend the march for another EU referendum in London on Saturday but would welcome tributes from the demonstrators.
"I want them to sing a song for me, 'March on, march on, with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone'."

Brexit negotiations "have been difficult" and "no solution has been identified" to the Irish backstop, the European Commission has said.
It comes after the latest talks between UK ministers and EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels.
Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said the talks had taken place in a "constructive atmosphere" but there had been no breakthrough.
The UK is pushing for legally-binding changes to the EU deal.
Mr Schinas was speaking after Mr Barnier briefed the European Commission's weekly meeting on the state of Brexit talks.
Speaking after talks with Mr Barnier, the UK's Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said: "Both sides have exchanged robust, strong views. We're now facing the real discussions. Talks will be resuming soon."
He added: "We're into the meat of the matter, we've put forward very reasonable proposals."
Downing Street echoed Mr Barnier's characterisation of the talks as "difficult", but said the negotiations were "ongoing".
"The EU continues to say that it wants this to be resolved and that it wants the UK to leave with a deal. Parliament has been clear that for this to happen, we require legally-binding changes which mean that the UK can't be trapped in the backstop indefinitely," said the PM's official spokesman.
"That is what we will continue to pursue."
The backstop is an insurance policy - designed to avoid a hard border "under all circumstances" - between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Prime Minister Theresa May is pinning her hopes on getting changes to it that will prevent the UK from being tied to EU customs rules if no permanent trade deal is agreed after Brexit.
She believes this would be enough to get MPs - who last month rejected her deal by an historic margin - to back her deal in a vote she has promised on or before 12 March.
But the EU has consistently refused to rewrite the deal it has struck with Mrs May, which is meant to ensure an orderly departure from the bloc on 29 March and pave the way for trade talks.
And Mr Barnier repeated that message to EU leaders, according to Mr Schinas.
"Discussions have been difficult and no solution has been identified to that is consistent with the withdrawal agreement, including the Northern Ireland protocol which, as you know, will not be reopened," he said at a press conference in Brussels.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming explained that EU sources said the UK side couldn't guarantee that whatever might end up being agreed in Brussels would even get through Parliament.
Mrs May is also hoping to attract votes from Labour MPs in Leave-voting areas of the UK, as she battles to get her deal through the Commons.
She is promising MPs a vote on any changes to workers' rights after Brexit.
No 10 said Parliament would be given a say over whether to adopt any new protections introduced on the continent and to stay aligned with EU standards.
Labour MPs have been seeking assurances the UK will not fall behind EU standards after Brexit.
But trade unions said the MPs should not be "taken in by blatant window dressing" and the assurances on workers' rights were "not worth the paper they are written on".
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has met Conservative MPs who back a close, Norway-style relationship with the EU after Brexit.
He discussed the idea of a "Common Market 2.0" trade-focused model with former ministers Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin.
Mr Boles said the goal was to reach a cross-party compromise to ensure the UK left the EU but in a manner which protected its economic interests.
The Labour spokesman said the meeting was to "discuss how to achieve a deal that would be good for jobs and could bring Leave and Remain voters together".
The meeting comes after Mr Corbyn and the main business organisations - the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chambers of Commerce and Make UK - met on Tuesday to discuss Labour's Brexit plan based on a customs union with the EU.

There have been "fruitful" discussions on Irish issues at the Brexit talks, the EU's chief negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier also said there had been "genuine progress' on the Common Travel Area (CTA).
The CTA is a UK-Ireland arrangement allowing free movement of UK and Irish citizens between the Republic of Ireland, NI and the rest of the UK.
Mr Barnier was speaking in Brussels at the end of the third week of Brexit negotiations with the UK.
There has been slow progress on other major issues, including the size of the so-called Brexit bill the UK will have to pay.
Mr Barnier said negotiations were still "quite far" away from being in a position to begin talks on future trade arrangements.
UK Brexit secretary David Davis said he had a duty to tax payers to "rigorously interrogate" the EU's position on the bill.
But Mr Davis said the talks had been "constructive" overall.
He said there was a "high degree of convergence" on the CTA, and recognition of the need for joint work on other cross border issues.
The Brexit secretary urged the EU to be "more imaginative and flexible" in its approach.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond was in Dublin on Thursday, where he met the Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney.
Mr Coveney said he had "urged" the chancellor to "listen to those who stand to be most negatively impacted by Brexit across these islands".
He said he had emphasised that the UK remaining in the Customs Union and the Single Market was the best way to avoid a hard border.
In article for the Irish Times, Mr Hammond said the UK government was determined "to avoid any physical infrastructure" along either side of the border.
"Our economies are already closely entwined. Our businesses operate across the land and sea borders, and so do our people," he wrote.

The government has distanced itself from a page of Brexit notes caught on camera in Westminster.
The handwritten notes, carried by an aide to Conservative MP Mark Field, included "what's the model? Have your cake and eat it" and "unlikely" in reference to the EU single market.
They were photographed after Mr Field and his aide left a meeting with the Brexit department at 9 Downing Street.
The government said the notes did not reflect its Brexit position.
"These individual notes do not belong to a government official or a special adviser. They do not reflect the government's position in relation to Brexit negotiations," a spokesman said.
The notes, held by Mr Field's chief of staff Julia Dockerill, were captured on a long-lens camera by photographer Steve Back.
"Difficult on article 50 implementation - Barnier wants to see what deal looks like first," they note, in an apparent reference to the lead EU negotiator Michel Barnier.
"Got to be done in parallel - 20 odd negotiations. Keep the two years. Won't provide more detail. We think it's unlikely we'll be offered single market," they also say.
Among the reaction from other EU members, Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel said of the UK stance: "They want to have their cake, eat it, and get a smile from the baker, but not the other things... there are European values which cannot be separated. No cherry-picking."
The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith says the government's response, playing down the picture's significance, underlines just how "awkward" it is, because it does seem to be of a view held "within" the Brexit department.
"The real damage is that phrase 'what is the model? Have cake and eat it.' The damage is the way that will be read by other EU countries," he says.
It is not known who Mr Field - a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and MP for the Cities of London and Westminster - was meeting, or if the page of scribbled notes being carried by his aide is definitely an account of talks at the department handling Britain's departure from the EU.
The notes appear to suggest that a transitional arrangement - which would allow the UK continued access to the single market after Brexit while it negotiates a new trade deal - is also unlikely.
"Transitional - loath to do it. Whitehall will hold onto it. We need to bring an end to negotiations," the paper reads.
The picture is enough to give Downing Street indigestion. But as the last shenanigans over a memo suggested, unless and until Number 10 is willing to share more details of their plans, or at least be clearer about the broad answers to the questions, every scrap or information will be pored over by journalists and interested parties, eager, if not downright desperate, for more information.
If there is a vacuum, others will fill it. Downing Street is well aware of this. And some of the Number 10 team don't think it's a sustainable situation. But in the absence of a traditionally functioning opposition, and look at today's polls which suggest a stonking lead for the Tories, this lack of information does not, at least, appear to be doing much wider harm.
The document also says it is "unlikely" the UK will remain in the single market, and that a transitional arrangement, immediately after Brexit, will not happen either.
It says a deal on manufacturing should be "relatively straightforward", but one on services will be "harder" to achieve.
And in what appears to be a reference to the negotiating team the government will encounter in Brussels, the document says: "Very French. Need fair process guaranteed."
The government has refused to reveal details of its Brexit negotiation strategy in advance, saying it will not offer a "running commentary".
Debate has focused on the level of access the UK could secure to the single market, and whether this would come at the price of greater immigration controls.
For Labour, shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer called for the government "to come clean, to end this unnecessary uncertainty and publish a clear plan for Brexit".
"These disclosures are significant because they suggest that the government is not even going to fight for the single market or customs union in the negotiations. If that is the case, there are huge implications for the economy, for businesses and for jobs in the UK," he said.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: "If this is a strategy it is incoherent. We can't have our cake and eat it and there is no certainty on the single market. This picture shows the government doesn't have a plan or even a clue."

Theresa May has rejected claims she does not believe in Brexit - and insisted she would make a success of it "regardless of the outcome" of talks.
She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show her plan for post-Brexit trade with the EU was not dead, despite it having been rejected by EU leaders.
And she urged the Tory party - in Birmingham for their annual conference - to "come together" and back it.
Boris Johnson has called her so-called Chequers plan "deranged".
In his latest broadside against her Brexit strategy, the former foreign secretary suggested he might be able to strike a better deal than her with Brussels.
He told the Sunday Times : "Unlike the prime minister, I fought for this, I believe in it, I think it's the right thing for our country and I think that what is happening now is, alas, not what people were promised in 2016."
Mr Johnson also set out domestic policy ideas, including building a bridge between Britain and Ireland and putting the HS2 scheme on hold to focus on a rail link in northern England.
Mrs May, who campaigned for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum, hit back at Mr Johnson in her Andrew Marr interview.
She said: "I do believe in Brexit. Crucially, I believe in delivering Brexit in a way that respects the vote and delivers on the vote of the British people while also protecting our union, protecting jobs and ensuring we make a success of Brexit for the future.
"That's why I want us to get a really good free trade deal with the European Union, which is what lies at the heart of the Chequers plan."
But she also said she was prepared for a "no deal" scenario, saying: "We will make a success of Brexit, regardless of the outcome of the negotiations."
The Labour Party has said it will back Mrs May in Parliament if she agrees to their plan for a customs union with the EU and a Brexit deal that guarantees workers' rights and protects jobs.
Mrs May said: "My message to the Labour Party is that they should stop playing politics with Brexit and start acting in the national interest.
"My message to my party is let's come together and get the best deal for Britain."
EU leaders have rejected her Chequers plan because they believe it would undermine the single market by allowing the UK to "cherry pick" bits of EU law it liked and ditch the rest.
Mrs May said: "We think we are putting forward a proposal that will maintain the integrity of the single market."
She said she wanted a more detailed response from the EU on their objections.
Later on Sunday, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt hit back at the EU's negotiation stance in his speech to the party conference.
He said the EU seemed to want to "punish" the UK for leaving, and added: "If you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out of it won't diminish, it will grow and we won't be the only prisoner that will want to escape."
Mr Hunt also addressed EU leaders directly, saying: "If you reject the hand of friendship offered by our prime minister, you turn your back on the partnership that has given Europe more security, more freedom, more prosperity, more opportunities than ever before in history."
In the main conference hall, pro-Brexit former CBI chief Sir Digby Jones gave a watching Mrs May a boost with a speech hailing her for standing up to the EU "bully boys" and attacking Mr Johnson as an "irrelevance".
By Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent, in Birmingham
Just like the Labour conference last week, the Conservatives are keen to show us they have plenty of songs on their playlist.
But just like the Labour conference last week, one record is louder than all the others and seems jammed on repeat: Brexit.
Autumn guarantees two things: leaves falling off trees and Conservative conferences in which there is a series of deftly choreographed Johnsonian interventions, before and during the main event.
Forty-eight hours on from his 4,000 or so words for the Daily Telegraph, one word from Mr Johnson is sufficient to grab a headline or two today: "deranged".
The big question of the next few days, beyond the Brexit noise: does the PM offer any indication, however vague, of the possibility of her shifting on her much criticised Brexit plan?
But former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who like Mr Johnson quit the cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit proposals, told Sky News the Chequers plan "will die" because "it's just wrong".
He said he expected a free trade deal to be struck along the lines of a Canada-style agreement, adding that "we are going to have a very scary few months" as talks with the EU entered their final stages, but that was "normal".
On the Andrew Marr Show, Mrs May also defended the "hostile environment" immigration policies she introduced as home secretary,  which led to people from the so-called Windrush generation losing their jobs, welfare benefits and right to remain in the UK.
She apologised for the fact that many long-standing UK residents of Caribbean origin had been caught by her Immigration Act, but declined to apologise for the policy itself.
Mrs May wants to use the Conservative conference to focus on domestic issues as well as Brexit, after Labour unveiled a string of new policies at its conference last week.
She has announced plans to tackle a big increase in rough sleeping, to be funded by a tax on foreign-owned homes.
The Prime Minister also revealed plans for a Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to showcase the nation in January 2022 - months before the next scheduled general election.
And Health Secretary Matt Hancock said health officials would produce guidelines on the amount of time young people should spend on social media.

British passports will change from burgundy to blue after Britain leaves the EU, the Home Office has said.
Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis said he was delighted to return to the "iconic" blue and gold design which came into use almost 100 years ago.
The new passports will be issued to those renewing or applying for a passport from October 2019.
Burgundy passports were first issued in 1988. The EU has never compelled the UK to change the colour of its passport.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage responded to the announcement by tweeting "Happy Brexmas!"
He added: "In the 2016 referendum, we wanted our passports back. Now we've got them back!"
But Labour MP Mary Creagh tweeted: "No-one under 45 will have owned a blue passport, and most will think they're not worth £50 billion and crashing the economy."
Mr Lewis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he knew many Remain voters who still had an "attachment" and "speak fondly" of the blue passport.
By Dominic Casciani, home affairs correspondent
Did Brussels force the UK to change the colour of its passport? No.
The European Union has never had the power to force the UK to change the colour of the British passport.
Dumping the blue for burgundy was a decision taken by the UK in the 1980s after the then EEC (European Economic Community) member states tried to harmonise designs to make life easier for travellers and border officials.
So this wasn't a decision forced on the UK by Brussels Eurocrats. Ministers could have ignored it.
Croatia retained its blue passport after it joined the EU in 2013.
In a similar vein, the EU has never had the power to order the UK to remove references to Her Majesty The Queen from the passport. It is still a British document, but with added EU wording to guarantee freedom of movement.
The only legal requirement to harmonise EU passports related to security standards, part of a global governmental effort to combat forgery.
If the EU wanted passports to change in any other way, the plans would need each government to agree.
Tory MP Andrew Rosindell, who campaigned to bring back the blue passport, tweeted: "A great Christmas present for those who care about our national identity - the fanatical Remainers hate it, but the restoration of our own British passport is a powerful symbol that Britain is Back!"
However, many other people have mocked the announcement on social media.
Simon Blackwell, a comedy writer, said: "Why do we need any colour passport? We should just be able to shout, "British! Less of your nonsense!" and stroll straight through."
According to the Passport Index, 76 countries have blue passports, including a number of former colonial and Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, the United States, Canada, India and Hong Kong.
Several Caribbean countries also have blue passports, including Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
In Europe, people from Iceland and Bosnia and Herzegovina both carry blue passports, while it is also a popular colour in central and south America - Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Uruguay and Venezuela are among those that have them.
Others include Israel, Iraq, Syria and North Korea.
Stig Abell, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, tweeted: "I've just spent the last 10 minutes screaming 'Take that you burgundy symbol of EU oppression' at my passport.
"It just stares insolently back, as if it is an inanimate and merely functional object and its colour doesn't matter."
The new passports will also have updated security features to protect against fraud, Mr Lewis said.
The Home Office said there was no need for British passport holders to do anything ahead of their current passport renewal date, adding that the changes would be introduced in phases.
When the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, burgundy passports will continue to be issued but with no reference to the European Union.
The blue passports will be issued later the same year, after a new contract for their production is negotiated.
"Leaving the EU gives us a unique opportunity to restore our national identity and forge a new path for ourselves in the world", Mr Lewis said.

The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, has told the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, that Ireland's interests come first in the Brexit negotiations.
Speaking in Dublin, Mr Tusk said nothing must be done to risk the peace process or the Good Friday Agreement.
He said every EU leader he has met has expressed support for Ireland's position.
He called on the British government to produce a "realistic solution" to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Mr Tusk said: "If in London someone assumes that the negotiations will deal with other issues first before moving to the Irish issue, my response would be 'Ireland First'."
Responding to Theresa May's criticism of the draft Withdrawal Agreement which the Commission published on 28 February, Mr Tusk said: "We also have to be clear that any backsliding on the commitment made so far would create the risk to further progress in Brexit negotiations."
"Since my last visit to Dublin I have spoken to virtually every EU leader and everyone without exception declared... that among their priorities are protecting the peace process and avoiding a hard border. The EU stands by Ireland."
Mr Tusk began his comments with some light-hearted weather references saying: "I may be from the east but I am not a beast".
But the tone quickly became more serious as he reaffirmed the EU position on the negotiations:  "We also expect the UK to provide a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border. As long as the UK doesn't present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantial progress in Brexit negotiations."
Mr Varadkar told the news conference: "I've always said that my preference is to avoid a hard border through a wider future relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union.
"We're committed to playing our part in exploring this option, or alternative specific solutions, in a way that respects the structure of these negotiations and that will of course require further detailed progress to be put forward by the UK government.
"However we must have certainty that if a better option proves unachievable, the backstop of maintaining full alignment of Northern Ireland with those rules of the single market and customs union that apply in order to protect north-south co-operation and avoid a hard border."
Mr Tusk also referred to a recent speech by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond in which he called for financial services to be included in a future trade deal.
The EC president said: "Services are about common rules, common supervision and common enforcement, to ensure a level playing field, to ensure the integrity of the single market and ultimately also to ensure financial stability.
"This is why we cannot offer the same in services as we can offer in goods.  It's also why FTAs (free trade agreements) don't have detailed rules for financial services.
"We should all be clear that, also when it comes to financial services, life will be different after Brexit."
Responding to Mr Hammond's assertion that it was in the interest of both Britain and EU to ensure that UK-based financial services companies had easy access to the single market, Mr Tusk said: "I fully respect the Chancellor's competence in defining what is in the UK's interest. He must allow us to define what is in the EU's interest."
Democratic Unionist MEP Diane Dodds said Mr Tusk's comments suggest the EU will again hold up the trade talks if the December fall-back option of alignment is not legally translated.
"Far from putting 'Ireland first' this will generate further frustration among Republic of Ireland businesses dependent on access to their primary marketplace in the UK," she said.
"These include Irish agri-food firms which export around 40% of their produce to Great Britain and Northern Ireland."
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said Mr Tusk's comments showed that "the EU is not messing about".
"It is crystal clear that the EU's commitment to protecting the interests of the island of Ireland is immovable," he said.

A majority of police forces in England and Wales saw record levels of hate crimes in the first full three months following the EU referendum, according to new analysis.
More than 14,000 hate crimes were recorded between July and September.
In 10 forces the number of suspected hate crimes increased by more than 50%, compared to the previous three months.
Police say their own monitoring suggests incidents have levelled out after the summer's spike.
Last October the Home Office published provisional figures which suggested the number of hate crimes in July 2016 had been 41% higher than 12 months earlier.
Those 5,468 reports indicated there had been a spike in reports - supporting anecdotal evidence across the country of an increased number of threatening, violent or abusive incidents.
The fresh data compiled by the Press Association comes from official statistics which include detailed figures for five core crimes which are deemed to be racially or religiously aggravated, ranging from assaults through to criminal damage.
In the three months to September 2016, 33 of the 44 forces in England and Wales saw their highest levels of hate crimes since comparable records began in 2012.
Dorset and Nottinghamshire saw the highest percentage increases in reports - 100% and 75% respectively - compared to the levels seen between March and the end of June. That previous period had included the referendum campaign itself and the week immediately after the vote.
The Metropolitan Police in London recorded the highest number of hates crimes, with 3,356 in that period, while Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire Police recorded 1,033 and 1,013 respectively.
South Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Surrey and City of London Police posted falls in hate crime.
Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, the National Police Chiefs' Council's lead for hate crime, said: "We know that national and global events have the potential to trigger short-terms rises in hate crime and we saw this following the EU referendum last year.
"Police forces took a robust approach to these crimes and reporting returned to previously seen levels.
"These numbers are still far too high.  We have increased the central reporting and monitoring functions to enable us to recognise spikes earlier. This will be used to assess any threats that may arise and inform local police activity."
Analysis by Dominic Casciani, BBC home affairs correspondent
While the overall figure from this analysis comes to 14,300 hate crimes in three months, it can't confidently be claimed as a quarterly national record across the UK because of the complicated way that hate crimes are counted.
There's no doubt there was a spike after the Brexit vote, but the long-term picture won't become clear for months. And if 2016 turns out to be a record year, there still needs to be some caution about what the figures mean.
Sexual offences rose in recent years thanks to more people coming forward to report what had happened to them.
If there is a long-term rise in hate crime recorded by police, it may simply reflect that victims have more confidence that it is worth speaking to the police.
But David Isaac, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, warned that many people remained anxious.
"It must be sensible to prepare for any possible spikes during the Brexit process," he said.
"The triggering of Article 50 is the next major milestone and we must do all we can to discourage hate attacks and to support people who feel at risk."
Fizza Qureshi of Migrants' Rights Network, a campaign group that runs an online service encouraging people to report hate crimes  and have them recorded on a real-time map, said: "The experience of thousands of people in the UK of discrimination, hostility and at times violence is invisible to many people in Britain - but today's figures lay it bare for all to see."

Prime Minister Theresa May has been forced to quit. Parliament is deadlocked. Both the Conservative and Labour parties are deeply divided and deeply unpopular.
What's more, with days to go before there is a new occupant of No 10, no-one has identified a clear route to an agreement that will avoid an outcome pretty much everyone says they want to avoid - a costly and disruptive no-deal Brexit. So, how did the UK end up here?
For the past few months, the BBC's Panorama team has spoken to those with first-hand knowledge of the negotiations - in Brussels, Paris and Dublin as well as Westminster. We've interviewed at length, on and off the record, the men and women who tried and failed to make a Brexit deal that both the UK and the EU could agree to.
This is an account of 10 crucial mistakes, mishaps and misunderstandings that might explain why we haven't left yet.
George Bridges was a new minister in the Brexit department created from scratch in 2016 when Theresa May became prime minister - a job she only got because the UK voted to leave the EU.
At least Bridges had an office. Secretary of State David Davis's political advisers had to share a cupboard, while the department's top official had to change his office three times in one day. It was chaos.
Lord Bridges, who was a junior minister, assumed that the thinking about Brexit must be taking place somewhere else:
"I was very much under the view that there would be somewhere in No 10 a very small, very secret group, putting together an almighty chart, a big plan of how we were going to negotiate and crucially what our overall objectives were. So, the prime minister - rather like a Bond villain - would be sitting with her white cat on her lap with this big plan behind her. I'd love to say that that room existed. I never found it."
He wasn't the only one. In Brussels, top EU officials were waiting to see what the UK would propose.
"We thought they are so brilliant there will be, in some vault somewhere in Westminster, a Harry Potter type book with all the tricks and all the things in it to do."
Frans Timmermans, first vice president of the European Commission, was shocked by what he saw and heard. Or rather what he didn't:
"I thought, 'Oh my God, they haven't got a plan…they haven't got a plan… it's like Lance Corporal Jones'. It was, 'Don't panic, don't panic,' running around like idiots."
The truth is there was no plan for Brexit when the UK voted to leave. David Cameron had no Plan B when he called the EU referendum. One senior official says he stopped civil servants preparing one as he was fearful it might leak.
The main Leave campaign, led by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, had decided not to produce a Plan A. They knew the choices that would have to be made would split their coalition of support.
Theresa May came to office without a plan. Indeed, she barely mentioned Brexit in her speech in Downing Street.
Speaking to the BBC, former French President Francois Hollande says he told his fellow EU leaders straight after the referendum that the UK would have to pay a price:
"Brexit might lead to a slippery slope where others, and particularly those under the sway of populists, might decide to follow what the British have just been doing."
EU leaders sensed that populism was on the march. Brexit was followed by the election of Donald Trump.
When the new US president called the other President Donald - Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council - he asked a question with a hint of menace: "Who's next?"
With elections due in France and the Netherlands in 2017, this was no mere taunt. The leader of the French National Front, Marine Le Pen, was campaigning for "Frexit". Polls suggested victory was likely for the Dutch far right leader Geert Wilders. Hungary, Austria and Italy were already governed by politicians who were highly critical of the EU.
There were tears in the office of Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, when he and his officials heard that the UK had voted to leave.
Juncker's right hand man was a formidable German lawyer called Martin Selmayr, thought by many to be the most important man in Brussels. Giving his first British broadcast interview to Panorama, he says:
"I think the most important thing at this moment in time was to preserve the unity of the other 27 member states - to make sure that in the process that followed, all 27 saw eye to eye …[and] to use this moment not to further weaken the [European] Union, not the beginning of the end, but the start of a new beginning for the European project," says Selmayr.
When Selmayr met the British minister he knew best, David Lidington,  who'd been Minister for Europe for many years and who would go on to become Theresa May's de facto deputy - he spelt out what this would mean. Lidington recalls this conversation:
"He said to me, 'Look David, there's not going to be the traditional EU late into the night, into the wee small hours, horse trading on this. It'll be the Commission that your side talks to. We are not going to give your prime minister the chance to try and pick us off."
The UK was no longer to be treated like a member of the club, in which it could seek to build alliances and divide and rule the 27 countries still inside. It would be treated as if it had already left.
Negotiations would take place not with representatives of every country but with a team led by one man - a suave silver-haired Frenchman called Michel Barnier. In his first British broadcast interview since the negotiations began, he told Panorama:
"Everybody will have to pay a price - EU and UK - because there is no added value to Brexit. Brexit is a negative negotiation. It is a lose-lose game for everybody."
Philip Hammond didn't like what he was hearing. Theresa May was delivering her first speech as prime minister to the Conservative Party Conference in 2016, and her new chancellor of the Exchequer was sitting in the audience.
"I was trying to keep my face dead straight, conscious that there were cameras on me," he says.
May began by saying that "Brexit means Brexit and we're going to make a success of it". That came as no surprise to Hammond. He'd heard her use the phrase many times before.
But then the prime minister continued: "Our laws will be made not in Brussels but in Westminster. The authority of EU law in Britain will end." That meant that the UK would have to leave the single market. It could not stay as close as possible to the EU economically - like Norway or Switzerland.
Hammond says that he had not been consulted about the speech or the policy:
"I didn't know. I think the prime minister felt that as a former remainer she needed to demonstrate her credentials by presenting quite an extreme version of Brexit. Some of the things that were being said were likely to have quite an impact outside the hall."
Senior EU figures were watching and concluded that the prime minister had outlined a series of undeliverable red lines.
The man who'd written the speech was May's powerful chief of staff Nick Timothy. A passionate leaver, he had also dreamed up "Brexit means Brexit" - a phrase that was much less empty than it seemed.
"I plead guilty to that phrase. It was one of the most irritating in British politics.
"Funnily enough it actually meant three different things. Firstly, that she understood that having been a remainer when the country voted to leave she would deliver on that mandate.
"It was [also] a warning to others - I think in particular in Parliament who were already showing signs of not really accepting the result - that Brexit must mean Brexit. Then at a third level that Brexit must meaningfully mean Brexit and couldn't be a kind of shadow membership."
Click here to watch Panorama: Britain's Brexit Crisis on BBC One, 18 July at 21:00
In the same speech, May announced that she would soon begin the formal process of leaving the EU by triggering Article 50. Hammond believes this was a mistake, given that there had been no real debate in the government, let alone the country, about what Brexit should mean.
"With the benefit of hindsight, I can now see that that was wrong," he says. "The real issue is debating with ourselves what kind of Brexit Britain wants.  And we should have done that before we triggered the process."
The chancellor says there was always going to be a tension between protecting the economy and "taking back control" of policies like immigration. It was a tension that was never fully resolved.
"... She hoped to improve her position and make it easier to deliver what people voted for in the referendum but actually the result made that job even more difficult."
Gavin Barwell lost his seat as a Conservative MP when Theresa May called a general election in June 2017. He was hired as her new chief of staff, replacing Nick Timothy - the man blamed by many for her decision to go to the polls. The election  left her with no majority in the House of Commons.
"Those first few weeks were a pretty traumatic experience," says Barwell. "That was apparent from the first day I walked into No 10."
The US President Lyndon B Johnson said: "The first rule of politics - you have to be able to count."
In other words, leaders need to be sure that they have more people backing their policies than opposing them.
The votes of Tory MPs alone would not now give May a majority. She turned to Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for support. What she didn't do - until it was far too late - was to try to woo opposition MPs.  That was what Ted Heath had done before he took Britain into the Common Market in 1973.
Incidentally, it was not just May's closest advisers and cabinet ministers who helped convince her to call an election. Allies of Jean-Claude Juncker, a former prime minister himself, admit that while he would never have advised her to call an election, he did tell her that having her own mandate would help her.
Juncker warned that a tiny majority in a House of Commons that was less enthusiastic about Brexit than the British public would cause real problems when she eventually needed MPs to ratify a Brexit deal with the EU.
"...The UK chose itself the date for leaving in March 2019. This is why every time I just recall the clock is ticking. Be careful eh?"
 Again and again, Michel Barnier reminded British ministers that they would have just two years to reach agreement. It was clearly stated in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that set the rules for how a country could leave the EU.  It allowed Brussels to use time against the UK.
 Senior figures in government have told me that the UK side misunderstood Barnier's real role. He was the public face of the negotiations and the politician who would keep the leaders of the EU's 27 countries on side.
Barnier's deputies did the real negotiating, alongside Martin Selmayr - the man whose nickname in Brussels is "the Monster" - who really decided what could and could not be agreed by the EU.
Selmayr explains the thinking behind the process for the Brexit negotiations, that would give the EU control not just of the timetable but also the agenda and the order [or sequencing] of the talks.
"Brexit will always be a sad event because it's a divorce. First of all you separate the assets… the rights and duties that are stemming from 40 years of a very long and intense and close relationship. Then you see if you remain friends afterwards or if you can remain close friends afterwards."
In 2017, Brexit Secretary David Davis promised a long hot summer when he would fight the idea that the UK would have to agree the Brexit bill it owed - which would run into tens of billions of pounds - before any talks could begin on a future trading relationship with the EU.
In the event the fight never occurred. He claims that he was overruled by May:
"She felt pressurised, unconfident, maybe even insecure after the general election outcome. She gave away the fact that we were going to meet everything they wanted - money and citizens' rights and so on - and get nothing back in return."
David Davis never persuaded the rest of the cabinet, let alone the prime minister herself, to make the threat summed up in another of her oft-repeated phrases - "no deal is better than a bad deal" - appear credible.
"The Treasury in particular would always argue you can't frighten the horses," he says. "Don't talk about it publicly, don't say what needs to be done, don't do the public preparation."
Davis complains that the chancellor was so nervous of spooking business that he stopped the Brexit department sending out letters to tens of thousands of small businesses telling them to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
Hammond counters that he was trying to reassure business to stay in the country and to keep investing, so the last thing he wanted was anything that would have the appearance of no deal.
"There was a tension at the beginning. We didn't want to send business a message that we're going to crash out of the EU and see businesses perhaps relocating - taking jobs out of the United Kingdom."
The official projections were clear. A no-deal Brexit would lead to 10% tariffs on car exports, and 40% tariffs on the sale of lamb, says Hammond, as well as potential chaos at Dover with the French being able to "dial up and dial down" the queues at will to make a political point.
Hammond was not alone. One of the top officials handling Brexit told ministers that threatening no deal was like taking the pin out of a grenade and holding it next to your own head.
When I asked Michel Barnier if May or her ministers had ever made a no deal threat behind closed doors, he replied emphatically, "No", before adding, "I think that the UK side, which is well informed and competent and knows the way we work on the EU side, knew from the very beginning that we've never been impressed by such a threat. It's not useful to use it."
Selmayr agreed. "I don't think it's ever a reality for anybody who is in a responsible position. It has consequences. It ruins your relationship for the future and I don't think anybody responsible on the UK side or the EU side has an interest in that," he said.
In fact, when I asked Selmayr if he thought the UK was prepared for that eventuality, he said he was "very certain" it was not.
"We have seen what has been prepared on our side of the border for a hard Brexit," he said. "We don't see the same level of preparation on the other side of the border.
"... That would be in many ways a symbol of the past of tragedy, of emotion, of terrorism, of murder."
It was not just in Brussels that Brexit was seen as a threat.
In Dublin, Simon Coveney - who is now Ireland's Tanaiste, or deputy head of government - says he feared that there would be a return to a hard Irish border unless the issue was addressed right at the beginning of the negotiations.
Other senior figures in the Irish government have told the BBC that they were concerned that Ireland could be "dragged out" of the EU by its bigger, richer neighbour. That is why the backstop - the issue which came to dog Brexit - was born.
After Brexit, the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic would be the only land border between the EU and the UK. If peace was to continue, everyone agreed that there should be no border controls. However, the EU's desire to protect its single market would mean there had to be checks on certain goods such as farm animals and chemicals that crossed the border.
The argument went that a post-Brexit Britain might do a trade deal with Donald Trump's US and could agree to allow the import of chlorine-washed chicken or hormone-treated meat. Without a border, those banned goods could move from north to south and into the EU, undercutting European food standards and representing cheap and unfair competition to their farmers.
Controls designed to enforce EU rules could become a target for paramilitaries and encourage smuggling which for years was key to the financing of terrorism.
If the UK followed EU rules and regulations, this wouldn't be a problem but Ireland and the EU demanded a guarantee - or a backstop - that whatever trade deal was eventually signed between the two sides there could never be a hard border.
Brexiteers saw this as a trap designed to keep the UK bound to EU rules and in a customs union. Talking to the BBC, the former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, sums up their fears:
"The idea that you could leave the EU, be successful and demonstrate that the EU perhaps wasn't all it was cut out to be was for them the thing that made [the EU]    the most nervous. And the obvious answer to that was to try and lock the United Kingdom in to as many EU rules as possible without any say over them and without any means to escape from that regime, and that's the conundrum of the backstop."
Raab's predecessor David Davis agrees with this position:
"They needed a lever which put us in the wrong and them in the right, I think that's the way they saw it. [With] the Irish border there's a strong political, moral, sentimental argument... based on fiction really, but nevertheless that's how it's used."
In other words the backstop was as much about trade as it was about peace. It was as much about French determination to protect the single market as it was about Irish worries about a new source of conflict. One of May's closest allies told us it was the "operationalisation by Brussels of a French idea dressed in a green jersey".
So why did the prime minister sign up to it? Because the clock was ticking and because she'd agreed to the EU's sequencing of the talks. No backstop meant no progress to talking about trade.
What's more, Theresa May was desperate to get agreement to the Treasury's top priority, which was the demand from big business for an extra two years to adapt to Brexit - the so-called transition period.
Davis blames No 10 for agreeing to the backstop. "They signed up to the backstop because they were desperate to make progress. They basically had a loss of nerve."
When we put to Martin Selmayr that the deal was "swallow what you don't much like on Ireland, and get more time", he replies: "Absolutely."
"Let's get the UK involved with France and Germany. Let's see how the dust settles and let's talk about whether we can come to a new deal for Europe."
Britain's de facto deputy prime minister David Lidington reveals to Panorama that he was made that startling offer by Martin Selmayr. It followed a summit of world leaders at which EU heads found themselves on the same side as Theresa May in a series of arguments with President Trump.
Selmayr explains why the offer was made:
"All the other European leaders were left behind when he [Trump] took the helicopter and they looked each other in the eyes and also at Theresa May and they thought, 'At least we all agree with each other, we are the last bastion of the rules-based international system.' I think that led to many thinking, 'Well, if she comes back tomorrow and has thought again, we wouldn't mind'."
Donald Tusk once joked in public about the idea that Brexit could be reversed saying, "Who knows? You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." However, this is the first time it has been confirmed that an approach and an offer was made by the European Commission to put Brexit on ice.
The offer was rejected and some in the EU came to the view it would be better if the UK left - and left quickly. However, the scale of opposition Theresa May faced in Parliament meant others continued to believe and hope that there would be another referendum and Brexit would not happen. This made them less likely to compromise.
"The two big parties have been trying to outmanoeuvre each other on Brexit, and for a long time Brexit has been used by the opposition party as a way of trying to trigger a general election. For me, as somebody who loves Britain, who's lived there, who's studied there, who has family there, I think it's a tragedy quite frankly, that in the face of this huge decision that the British people have made, that the political system has not been able to unite behind a middle-ground position and unite the country."
Simon Coveney is scathing about the failure of the British Parliament and political system to achieve consensus on Brexit. It's a stark contrast with the unity which has been on show in Dublin.
He blames the opposition Labour Party as well as the Tories. The government's Chief Whip, Julian Smith, says that he has lost a lot of sleep as a result of trying - and failing - to get a deal through the House of Commons.
"I think that there was definitely a shift from some Brexiteers who, if you'd asked them three years ago, would they be happy with the prime minister's deal, they'd have bitten your arm off. They then, during the course of the last year, became, I think, increasingly concerned about different elements of it, seeing some form of threat behind many aspects of it, and there was a kind of purification process - they sort of wanted everything on day one."
The Tories were hopelessly divided over what sort of Brexit deal to pursue. When May finally proposed her "Chequers plan" she did it without ensuring that she had the support of David Davis, her Brexit secretary .
Her allies believe that if Davis had been offered another job, he would have taken it rather than quitting the Cabinet altogether. They believe that Boris Johnson might then have stayed in the government.  As it was he became the figurehead for those wanting to "chuck Chequers" and, eventually, to chuck Theresa May as well.
The chief whip also blames the Speaker for blocking Brexit.  John Bercow ruled that the government could not bring back its withdrawal agreement to the Commons after it had been defeated twice. By this time, even hardliners like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg were prepared to vote with the government. No 10 insiders claim that they had the basis of an agreement which could have got DUP support as well but the vote was never held.
"Parliament is and has been deadlocked for one simple reason," says Julian Smith. "Large groups of MPs have been prepared to gamble that they could force the outcome they wanted - a harder Brexit or another referendum or a general election - rather than backing Theresa May's deal."
"If the only goal of the EU is this market obviously you could think that the German car industry could force the German government to comply with the demands coming out of London, but for Germany the EU is much, much more than a market. It's their destiny, it's not revisiting the horrors of history so even the car industry itself understands that this is fundamentally more important than selling cars to the United Kingdom."
EU leaders such as Frans Timmermans believe that British politicians do not understand the idealism and the history which underlies the European project. He says that "continental Europeans" do not see the EU in the same way as the United Kingdom - "as a market".
Brexiteers like Boris Johnson don't dispute the history but they do doubt that the leaders of any country would willingly harm their own economies. He has said in public that EU countries will want to sell us their cars or cheese or even Prosecco.
Did that claim infuriate Timmermans?
"Yes it did, also, perhaps I'm being a bit harsh but it's about time we became a bit harsh also because I'm not sure he [Johnson] was being genuine, I always have the impression he's playing games."
David Lidington - a lifelong pro-European - agrees that the EU has always seen itself as a political project but says it takes two to create a misunderstanding. He says that EU leaders have too often dismissed British demands as driven purely by short-term political pressures rather than principle:
"They thought Tories were simply pandering to UKIP or the DUP and never understood that Euroscepticism, a desire for sovereignty, support for the Union were real forces that any political leader and party would have to address."
Those misunderstandings have dogged the Brexit negotiations as both sides have miscalculated how the other side will react.
What has not been tested yet is whether the credible threat of no deal, a refusal to compromise on the Irish border and a willingness to withhold the £39bn divorce bill which Britain has agreed to pay will improve or destroy the chances of getting a deal.
We're about to find out.
Additional research and reporting by Britain's Brexit Crisis producer Max Stern

Donald Tusk does a good turn in press conferences, delighting headline writers by channelling song lyrics, making dramatic pauses. He, like his European Council colleagues, is a pro.
Even when he is saying something positive about the Brexit negotiations, he manages to convey his personal sadness about the fact the UK has decided to leave with a rather hang dog expression.
Today therefore, don't be surprised that the headlines out of his press conference to mark the publication of the EU's negotiating guidelines for our future trade relationship with them after Brexit are tough for the UK, his expressions hard reading for the government, and the guidelines themselves showing big gaps between the two sides as, to use his phrase today, we are "drifting apart".
The guidelines include, therefore, what the EU side would see as a reality check for the UK. In Brussels' view, there are, as one insider put it, "some vestiges of la la land" in the UK's position.
Today's paper demonstrates how sceptical the EU 27 is, for example, about the UK's hope to choose to stay in some European agencies.
Again, Mr Tusk has said that the UK's overall hope to pick and choose bits of the European apparatus is a non-starter. But before the next formal round of negotiations have begun it would be a genuine shock if he were to say anything else.
On the UK side, the EU has what one insider suggested were "significant' cojones", to suggest for example that the EU retains fishing rights in UK waters. And while not exactly jumping for joy, nor is the government in meltdown over the EU's opening gambit.
The details of the guidelines are here, complete with Donald Tusk's warnings.
But is this a giant two fingers to Theresa May's entire approach that really changes things for the negotiations? Have they today completely torn up the Mansion House speech?
There are significant differences of course, and I'm not suggesting for one second that the way forward is clear. But no one in government will be hugely surprised by the publication today, nor do they believe that it is time to run up the white flag.
In fact, the two sides notionally agree that they are both looking for an ambitious trade deal. Having repeatedly ruled out staying in the Single Market or the Customs Union, that is what the prime minister says she wants. And the EU has said it is willing to talk on the basis of there being no tariffs or quotas either.
Back in the depths of the referendum campaign, that would have seemed like quite a prize. And crucially, the draft guidelines hold out a small promise of room for manoeuvre, saying "if the UK positions were to evolve, the EU would be prepared to reconsider its offer".
In the coming months that may prove the most important paragraph of all. If the UK is willing to compromise, well the EU might have a rethink too.
The document may well be a reminder that it's the UK that will have to do most of the budging, but the draft guidelines do suggestion there is at least a conversation to be had.

A petition on Parliament's website calling for Brexit to be cancelled has now passed more than 5.7m signatures.
The petition to revoke the Article 50 withdrawal process has gained more than one million signatures since Saturday's march calling for a new EU referendum.
Theresa May has stressed that the UK had already decided to leave the EU in the biggest ever democratic exercise.
But European Council chief Donald Tusk has said revoking Brexit was an option if MPs again rejected the PM's deal.
The UK has to decide its next move by 12 April after the EU agreed a plan to delay Brexit beyond 29 March.
The prime minister hopes to bring the agreement she has negotiated with the EU back to the Commons for the third time but MPs want other options to be considered as well - and on Monday backed a series of votes to find out the kind of Brexit deal they would support.
In December, the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union, the clause which allows a country to leave the bloc.
This means the UK can decide to stay in the EU without the consent of the 27 other member states.
Lib Dem MP Layla Moran has said the petition could "give oxygen" to the campaign for another Brexit referendum, a so-called People's Vote.
However, speaking on Thursday night after the petition reached the two-million mark, Mrs May said the public had already had their say on EU membership.
"They voted in 2016, they voted to leave. I think the time is now to deliver for the British people, the time is now to make the decision," she said.
People signing petitions on the Parliament website are asked to tick a box saying they are a British citizen or UK resident and to confirm their name, email address and postcode to sign.
The petition was started in February and quickly passed the 100,000-signature threshold needed for it to be debated in Parliament. It began to attract thousands of more signatures last week and at one stage caused the petition website to crash.
It reached four million signatures on Saturday, as hundreds of thousands of people marched in central London, making it the most popular to have been submitted to the parliament website.
A petition for a second EU referendum in June 2016 attracted more than four million signatures and was debated in the Commons - but thousands of signatures were removed after it was discovered to have been hijacked by automated bots.
In January, MPs debated whether the UK should leave the EU without a deal, after a petition calling for that got 137,731 signatures.

The UK will be unable to buy privileged access to the single market after it leaves the EU, says one of the top UK officials to have worked in Brussels.
Jonathan Faull, who retired last week, said that access to the single market "is not something that's on sale".
He also warned the UK should not assume it can  broker a deal with Angela Merkel if she wins re-election as German chancellor.
Theresa May plans to trigger the Brexit negotiations by the end of March.
But Mr Faull said that Britain has one important card to play in the EU negotiations - co-operation on European defence.
The warnings by Mr Faull, who served in the European Commission for 38 years, come as the government scrambles to assemble its Brexit negotiating team in the wake of the resignation of the UK's EU ambassador, Sir Ivan Rogers.
He is to be replaced by Sir Tim Barrow, a former UK ambassador to Moscow.
In his interview with BBC Newsnight, Mr Faull cast doubt about an idea, which is being promoted by senior Whitehall officials, that the UK could pay for privileged access to the EU's single market.
This would be designed to circumvent the rules of the single market whose members, including Norway which is outside the EU, have to accept the free movement of people and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, confirmed last month that the government was considering the idea.
Mr Faull said: "Can you buy access to the single market? It's not something that's on sale in that way. I find that rather extraordinary."
The former European Commission official pointed out that Norway is bound by two core rules of the EU - accepting the free movement of people and abiding by the European Court of Justice.
Theresa May has indicated that she would like to have some access to the single market. But the prime minister is to confirm in a speech later this month that the UK will have two fundamental red lines in its Brexit negotiations - control of its borders and freedom from the ECJ.
Mr Faull suggested that if the UK cannot accept the fundamental rules of the single market it would be regarded as a foreign country: "I don't think it is a question of buying your way somehow into the single market."
"You're a member of the single market as a member of the EU or the EEA. Or you're a foreign country outside it, and you conclude agreements with the EU - if you want to and it wants to - regarding the way in which your goods, services, capital and people move around.
"Or you don't and you have one or two international rules which apply and that's it, that's a choice to be made by both sides."
Newsnight was speaking to Mr Faull as part of a profile of Michel Barnier, the former French foreign minister who is the EU's chief Brexit negotiator.
Downing Street expects Barnier to adopt a hardline stance once the Brexit negotiations are formally under way when Theresa May triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
But in private, ministers believe that Angela Merkel will take a more benign approach if she wins re-election as German chancellor later this year.
Mr Faull warns that Theresa May's government could be in danger of repeating the mistake of David Cameron who believed that Mrs Merkel would come to his rescue. Mr Faull was the senior European Commission official involved in the Cameron negotiations.
"I think it would be a mistake to see the EU institutions as somehow wholly different from the 27 countries. These are all actors that will be working together on this," he said.
"I think one should look perhaps at the experience of the negotiations which took place before the referendum. where perhaps some similar thoughts were expressed and turned out not to be fully realised."
Mr Faull's remarks were endorsed by Lord Patten of Barnes. The former European commissioner told Newsnight: "There's an awful lot in the British press about what we'll get from them, what we'll negotiate from them. And I think it overlooks the fact - and I'm not making a 'why we should remain' point - the fact is they'll decide."
"They'll decide and we must hope that we can get as decent a deal as possible. But it's ultimately going to be decided in Paris and Berlin and some of the other member states."
But Mr Faull said that Mr Barnier will be well disposed to the UK in one key area - co-operation on defence led by France and the UK, Europe's two largest defence powers.
He said: "Michel Barnier has done a lot of work in recent years on defence and strategy issues and he believes the UK is absolutely crucial to the defence and security of Europe, the continent."
"And Franco-British cooperation in defence and security matters is extremely important and he will want - and I think all Europeans will want - a way to be found for that to continue."
"But that's more complicated if you're outside the EU, because part of the mechanisms used for this purpose are today EU mechanisms - so all of that will have to be looked into."
Nicholas Watt is political editor for BBC Newsnight

Airbus has warned it could leave the UK if it exits the European Union single market and customs union without a transition deal.
The European planemaker said the warning was not part of "project fear", but was a "dawning reality".
Airbus employs 14,000 people at 25 sites in the UK - around half in Wales.
The UK government said it was confident of getting a good deal for all industries, but the Welsh government said it was "extremely worrying".
In its Brexit "risk assessment" published on Thursday, Airbus said if the UK left the EU next year without a deal - meaning it left both the single market and customs union immediately and without any agreed transition - it would "lead to severe disruption and interruption of UK production".
"This scenario would force Airbus to reconsider its investments in the UK, and its long-term footprint in the country," it added.
The company, which makes wings for the A320, A330/A340, A350 and A380 passenger planes in the UK, also said the current planned transition period, due to end in December 2020, was too short for it to make changes to its supply chain.
As a result, it would "refrain from extending" its UK supplier base. It said it currently had more than 4,000 suppliers in the UK.
The customs union brings together the EU's 28 members in a duty-free area, in which they pay the same rate of duty on non-EU goods
Prime Minister Theresa May has ruled out staying in the customs union. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The UK government is considering two other options: a customs partnership that would remove the need for new customs checks at the border; and a "highly streamlined" customs arrangement that would minimise customs checks rather than getting rid of them altogether.
Michel Barnier, the EU's Brexit negotiator, has said that both options are unrealistic.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Theresa May said: "We are confident that we are going to get a good deal, one that ensures that trade is as free and frictionless as possible, including for the aerospace sector,"
A Welsh government spokesperson said: "We have repeatedly warned that the UK cannot take the huge economic risk of cutting ourselves adrift from the single market and customs union. Particularly in the case of manufacturing sectors, which in Wales are so important in providing high-paid, high-skilled jobs."
Simon Jack, business editor
It has been a source of exasperation for some cabinet members that although many companies have privately expressed concern - even alarm - at the progress of the Brexit negotiations, they have been reluctant to make their fears public, and have even dialled down the shrillness of their warnings when meeting the prime minister in person.
Airbus' decision to warn that future investment in their operations in the UK are under review, while not exactly welcome, is therefore considered by some in government as an honest and helpful declaration of what's at stake for UK workers and the wider economy.
Prominent Brexit supporter Sir Bernard Jenkin described Airbus' comments as the kind of "speculation" seen before, during and after the referendum from large companies. But Airbus' UK boss, Katherine Bennett, told the BBC, "this is not project fear, this is dawning reality".
Tom Williams, chief operating officer of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, said in "any scenario", Brexit had "severe negative consequences" for the UK aerospace industry and Airbus in particular.
Without a deal, he said Airbus believed the impact on its UK operations could be "significant".
"Put simply, a no-deal scenario directly threatens Airbus' future in the UK."
Airbus's main civil aircraft business is based in a suburb of the French city of Toulouse. Apart from France and the UK, it has production and manufacturing facilities in Germany, Spain, China and the US.
Mr Williams told the BBC's Today programme that Airbus was currently working on developing the "next generation" of aircraft wings in the UK.
"We are seriously considering whether we should continue that development or whether we should find alternative solutions," he added.
Conservative MP Stephen Crabb said the warning from Airbus should be a "wake-up call".
Mr Crabb tweeted: "The enormous Airbus factory in North Wales is one of the jewels in the crown of UK manufacturing. This is a wake-up call. A pragmatic, sensible Brexit that protects trade & jobs is vital."
And shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer tweeted: "If proof was needed that the PM's Brexit red lines need to be abandoned (and fast), this is it."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable described the Airbus warning as "the 'Oh my God' moment where something real is happening".
He added: "Airbus are making absolutely clear that if there is a risk of a hard Brexit, they will have to stockpile parts. They can't take the risk.
"A hundred and ten thousand jobs depend on this company.  About one-and-a-half billion in tax revenue that will not go into the NHS.
"We're now beginning to get serious about what Brexit means."

"The last call"... "we cannot wait any more"... "huge and serious" gaps.
European leaders can repeat the same message, louder and louder.
But this EU summit's instructions to Theresa May may as well have been shouted into an empty cupboard.
Because they know what she knows - that the past 24 hours of Brexit conversations are not nearly as important as the next seven days of discussions at home between Number 10 and the rest of the government.
And after more than two years, this time next week ministers should be nearing the conclusion of their country retreat at Chequers.
It's there that the prime minister hopes to find resolution in her team on a more detailed offer to the rest of the EU - easing, if not removing, all the contradictions in the Tories' positions.
Any pretence that the cabinet agrees is long gone.
The government's promised publication of their choices within days, which if comprehensive and detailed as promised, will mark a big step forward, and in theory allow progress towards a final deal.
But if the eventual Brexit white paper is flimsy - still a list of tentative options - patience in Brussels may finally run out.
Sources suggest that if there is no clarity from the UK next week, all that will be available to Britain is a simple free trade deal.
For many months, Theresa May has held the ring while inside her party brawls over Brexit have raged.
If she can't end the fight, by picking a winning side or forcing a persuasive compromise, the EU may call time.
In the next seven days the prime minister has hurdles she must clear to secure her future.

The prospect of Brexit happening without any deal being reached between the UK and the EU is "unthinkable", Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said.
Ms Rudd was responding to a question about the impact on security of nothing being agreed before the UK leaves.
"We will make sure there is something between them and us to maintain our security," she assured MPs.
Earlier Brexit Secretary David Davis defended keeping the "no deal" option open in the on-going negotiations.
After five rounds of Brexit negotiations, the EU has described the talks as in "deadlock" and there has been an increased debate about the possibility of the UK leaving without a deal in place.
One of the UK's aims is for a new security treaty with the EU, and Ms Rudd told the Commons Home Affairs Committee contingency plans were being made in case this was not in place by the UK's departure in March 2019.
Asked whether, if there was "no deal of any form", Britain would be as safe and secure as it currently is, she replied: "I think it is unthinkable there would be no deal.
"It is so much in their interests as well as ours - in their communities', families', tourists' interests to have something in place."
Ms Rudd also said it was "unthinkable" EU citizens would be asked to leave the UK after Brexit, but was unable to offer guarantees while negotiations continue.
Mr Davis was asked about a "no deal" scenario as he updated MPs on Monday's dinner between Theresa May and EU officials.
Reaching agreement with the EU is "by far and away the best option" he said, adding: "The maintenance of the option of no deal is for both negotiating reasons and sensible security - any government doing its job properly will do that."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said there was no reason to fear the impact on the economy of no deal being agreed, saying it "would not be the Armageddon that people project".
He told the BBC: "I think that we need to concentrate on the realities, get rid of the hyperbole around the debate and focus on the fact that if we can get a good agreement with the EU, both Britain and the EU would be better off for it."
A UK-EU free trade deal cannot be discussed until the EU deems sufficient progress has been made on other matters and gives the green light.
In his statement to MPs, Mr Davis said the UK was "reaching the limits of what we can achieve" in Brexit talks without moving on to talk about trade.
He urged EU leaders to give counterpart Michel Barnier the green light at this week's EU summit to begin trade talks.
Mr Barnier said he wanted to speed up talks but "it takes two to accelerate".
This was a reference to comments made by Mrs May after her dinner with the EU's chief negotiator, in which she said the two sides had agreed on the need to "accelerate" the process.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Barnier said a "constructive dynamic" was needed over the next two months but "there was a lot of work to do" and issues must be tackled in the "right order".
"At the moment we are still not yet at the first step which is securing citizen rights, guaranteeing the long term success of the good Friday agreement and finalising the accounts," he said.
The talks - which were held as EU member states prepare to assess progress so far on Thursday - were said to be "constructive and friendly" but the UK's financial settlement with the EU continues to be a sticking point and the EU will not discuss trade until this has been settled.
Along with the UK's "divorce bill", the EU is insisting agreement be reached on citizens' rights and what happens on the Northern Ireland border before agreeing to open talks on the free trade deal Mrs May's government wants to strike.
In his Commons statement, Mr Davis urged the EU to give Mr Barnier a mandate to start discussing its future relations with the UK, including trade and defence, telling MPs he was "ready to move the negotiations on".
He suggested the UK was "reaching the limits of what we can achieve without consideration of the future relationship".
"Our aim remains to provide as much certainty to business and citizens on both sides. To fully provide that certainty, we must be able to talk about the future."
On citizens' rights, he said key issues such as the rules on family reunion, the right to return, the onward movement of British expats in Europe and the right of EU residents to export benefits had still to be settled.
Announcing that EU citizens who currently have permanent residence in the UK would not have to go through the full process of re-applying before Brexit, he said the UK had consistently "gone further and provided more certainty" on their status than the EU had done.
While the UK had "some way to secure the new partnership with the EU", he was "confident we are on the right path".
Speaking in the Commons earlier on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he thought a reported bill of £100bn was too high and urged the EU to "get serious" and agree to settle the citizens' rights question.
For Labour, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said EU and UK citizens were still no wiser over their future while it "appeared the deadlock over the financial settlement is such that the two sides are barely talking".
"Nobody should underestimate the seriousness of the situation we find ourselves in. At the first hurdle, the government has failed to hit a very important target."
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Home Secretary Amber Rudd has hit back at Tory Brexiteers over attacks on the civil service and claims of disunity.
Ms Rudd said backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg was "wrong" to accuse the Treasury of "fiddling the figures" with forecasts showing the UK would be worse off outside the EU.
The leaked forecast that sparked the row was a cross-departmental "tool" to "help inform the debate", she said.
And she said ministers were more united over Brexit than critics claim.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, she said she was "not intimidated" by Brexiteers' warnings over the customs union and that the UK government would not "surrender too quickly" in its battle for a "bespoke" trade deal with the EU.
Negotiations are taking place between the UK and the EU ahead of the UK's scheduled exit in March 2019.
Ahead of a week of key meetings, Theresa May is facing growing calls to set out in detail what she wants to secure - in particular how closely-bound the UK will be to the EU after it leaves.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph,  Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP who was a key Leave campaigner, accused the government of being "vague" and "divided" on the issue.
But Ms Rudd told Andrew Marr she had "a surprise for the Brexiteers", that the key Brexit committee of ministers was "more united than they think".
The cabinet agrees on the need for "frictionless trade", the ability to strike international trade deals and avoid a hard border in Ireland, she said.
And on the key point of the customs union - which currently prevents the UK from striking international trade deals - she suggested "a form of customs agreement" would be needed.
Last week International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said it was "very difficult" to see how staying in a customs union would allow the UK to have an "independent trade policy" after Brexit.
BBC political correspondent Susana Mendonca
The accusations of cabinet divisions and disunity have kept coming from Brexit-supporting MPs over the past week. Now the home secretary has pushed back, saying the cabinet is "more united than they think".
If that is the case, the cabinet will be expected to demonstrate some of that unity this week when discussions between Theresa May, David Davis and EU negotiator Michel Barnier are bound to throw up some bones of contention - the transition deal being the main one. Will the cabinet be singing from the same hymn sheet on that? And what about the customs union, another thorny issue that key ministers have very different views on?
To silence its detractors, the cabinet will have to demonstrate this week it is neither "vague" nor "divided" - but whatever approach it comes up with is likely to lead to divisions with those who think they are going too far or not far enough.
The role of the civil service has been thrust into the limelight in recent days by a leaked analysis predicting an economic hit to the UK after Brexit.
Ms Rudd said the report did not "model everything" and predicted the UK economy would "absolutely grow" after Brexit, but said putting up trade barriers would have "consequences".
Describing the civil service as the envy of the world, she added: "We have to have these forecasts before making decisions."
She said she had been "surprised" at Mr Rees-Mogg's remarks and added that ministerial Brexit colleague Steve Baker - who has clashed with Whitehall unions and apologised to Parliament - had had an "interesting week".
Mr Baker's apology followed a Commons exchange after which he was accused of not challenging Mr Rees-Mogg's suggestion of Treasury bias against Brexit.
On the BBC's Sunday Politics, Conservative Party Chairman Brandon Lewis echoed Ms Rudd in saying Mr Rees-Mogg was wrong and defending Whitehall.
Former top civil servants have also hit back at critics.
Speaking on ITV's Peston on Sunday, ex-cabinet secretary Lord O'Donnell said claims officials were distorting figures were "crazy".
People who do not like their analysis tend to shoot the "messenger", he said.
"We look at the evidence and we go where it is.
"Of course if you are selling snake oil, you don't like the idea of experts testing your products."
His predecessor Andrew Turnbull, who was cabinet secretary under Tony Blair, told the Observer that attacks on the civil service were similar to tactics used by German nationalists between the two world wars.
BBC business reporter Rob Young
Customs union members each apply the same tariff to goods bought from outside the EU. Goods from inside the EU are not subject to tariffs.
Theresa May says Britain is leaving the customs union - so what will replace it?
For a lot of firms, customs rules are just as important as a trade deal. Brexit could disrupt many supply chains, if businesses buy parts from Germany or Italy, for example. Many exporters want a new customs deal with the EU to reduce the need for border checks - limiting queues and paperwork. But this could restrict Britain's ability to strike international trade deals outside the EU.
Some worry this undermines one of the key potential benefits of Brexit.
Customs are also key to the future border with Ireland. No wonder this is one of the thorniest issues arising from Brexit.
The UK and the EU do not currently agree on whether EU citizens moving to the UK during the planned two-year transition period after Brexit should get the same long-term rights as those who arrive before the UK leaves.
Defending the UK's position, Ms Rudd said it was "right to have a distinction between before March 2019 and afterwards".
Chancellor Philip Hammond has been the focus of much of the criticism from Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, and in his Telegraph article Mr Jenkin suggested Mr Hammond was not toeing the party line.
"If ministers are vague or divided, life for officials becomes impossible, as we can see now. Ministerial collective responsibility really matters," he said.
He added: "If the prime minister sticks to one policy and the chancellor keeps advocating another, what are officials meant to do?"
Earlier this month, Mr Hammond suggested the UK's relationship with the EU would change only "very modestly" after Brexit.
But Mr Jenkin urged the prime minister to stick to her position and ensure, among other things, Britain leaves the single market and customs union.
He wrote: "She can only command a majority in Parliament on her present policy.
"Her MPs will back her, because we are overwhelmingly at one with the majority of the British people who now want a clean Brexit and an end to the present uncertainty."

Amber Rudd has quit Boris Johnson's cabinet, with an outspoken attack on the government's approach to Brexit.
The ex-work and pensions secretary said the government was having no "formal negotiations" with the EU about a new deal, only "conversations".
Instead, 80-90% of Brexit work was spent preparing for an "inferior" no-deal option, she said.
But Chancellor Sajid Javid said ministers were "straining every sinew" to get a deal with the EU.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show a "tremendous amount of effort" had gone into securing a revised deal.
Mr Javid added that preparations for a no-deal scenario would "concentrate minds" in Europe regarding working towards a new agreement.
Downing Street says environment minister Therese Coffey will replace Ms Rudd as work and pensions secretary.
BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake said the prime minister spent Sunday meeting his closest advisers at the government's countryside residence Chevening House, in Kent, "perhaps planning the next move".
Ms Rudd told the Sunday Times she would be considering whether to stand as an independent Conservative should there be an general election.
In her resignation letter to the prime minister, Ms Rudd said: "I joined your cabinet in good faith: accepting that no-deal had to be on the table, because it was the means by which we would have the best chance of achieving a new deal to leave on 31 October.
"However, I no longer believe leaving with a deal is the government's main objective."
She called the PM's decision to expel 21 MPs from the parliamentary Conservative party an "act of political vandalism", after her former colleagues rebelled last week over a bill designed to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
"If we become a party which has no place for the type of moderates that I am, the centre-right Conservatives, then we will not win [a general election]," she said.
by John Pienaar, BBC deputy political editor
Amber Rudd's resignation was symptomatic of a deeper struggle going on inside the government and inside the Conservative Party.
Whatever anyone says, a number of ministers are considered to be privately unhappy with the government's strategy and contemplating the possibility of resigning in the wake of Amber Rudd's resignation.
The former chancellor, Philip Hammond, was saying this weekend that usurpers were turning the Tory party into an extreme right-wing sect.
He was clearly referring to people like the prime minister's famously abrasive, divisive adviser, Dominic Cummings.
But there's no sign of the inner circle in No 10 relenting or repenting - just the opposite.
One minister said to me today: "Look at the opinion polls. Tories well ahead - it's working." Losing colleagues, to him, was collateral damage.
Ms Rudd, the MP for Hastings and Rye, who supported Remain in the 2016 referendum, has resigned the Tory whip - meaning she will remain an MP but no longer sit as part of the Conservative party in Parliament.
She told the BBC there was "very little evidence" the government would get a new Brexit deal, and she had only received a "one-page summary" of efforts to get an agreement when she asked for details earlier this week.
She said "proper discussions about policy" had not been taking place, suggesting senior ministers had limited involvement in the PM's decisions.
Cabinet ministers had also not been shown legal advice to the prime minister about his decision to prorogue - or suspend - Parliament from next week until 14 October, Ms Rudd said.
Asked who was running the country, if not the cabinet, she replied: "If I knew that, I would perhaps have had further conversations with the prime minister, or them."
However, Mr Javid said there had been "progress" in talks with the EU about making changes to former PM Theresa May's Brexit deal, which was rejected three times by the House of Commons.
He said the government has "many new ideas" for proposals to break the deadlock over the contentious backstop plan in the deal aiming to preserve seamless border on the island of Ireland.
However he said it would be "madness" to talk through the details of the government's proposals openly.
"Anyone who understands how negotiation works, you would not discuss those in public," he added.
Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Ms Rudd's departure was "desperately sad news", describing her as "one of the most principled and capable ministers I've worked with".
Former Chancellor Philip Hammond tweeted that the Conservative Party had been "taken over by unelected advisors, entryists and usurpers".
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer tweeted that her departure showed Mr Johnson's government was "falling apart".
Labour Party chair Ian Lavery said the resignation was a sign that "no one trusts" Mr Johnson. "The prime minister has run out of authority in record time and his Brexit plan has been exposed as a sham," he said.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford called on the prime minister to resign, arguing he had "no support or credibility left".
But Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Mr Johnson had made clear to all his cabinet ministers they needed to support his policy of leaving the EU by 31 October, in all circumstances.
"We all accepted that, and I think the prime minister was right to restore some discipline - and I think he's right to expect it from his top team," he told Sky News.
In other developments:
Monday
Wednesday:
Thursday:

It's not a snub.
Or a rule-breaker.
Or a witches' cauldron around which anti-UK tactics will be plotted.
Theresa May doesn't invite the European Union to her Brexit strategy discussions - as you might expect - and the EU doesn't invite her to theirs, for the very same reasons.
As a full member (still) of the EU, the UK prime minister is included - as she must be - in today's formal summit of all 28 EU leaders.
Mrs May will be present for discussions on migration, Aleppo, Ukraine trade and Russia sanctions.
But once that is over and summit press conferences have been held, EU leaders will meet without the UK for an "informal dinner" where the menu reads: Brexit from hors d'oeuvres to dessert.
The timing of this dinner is a diary convenience.
Getting 27 world leaders round one table isn't easy, especially when a number of them are fighting for political survival at home.
So, while together in Brussels anyway for the summit, Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Francois Hollande et al agreed to stay a bit longer to talk Article 50, the by-now long-awaited triggering by the UK of formal Brexit talks, that Mrs May promises early next year.
Dinner tonight, my sources tell me, will be all about procedure.
The EU27 (as the leaders minus the UK now call themselves) will formally re-confirm the European Commission as the lead Brexit negotiator for the whole European Union.
Make no mistake, in such a complex and politically important process, Germany, France and other EU countries will keep a very close eye on the Commission but they know it is the only EU institution with the manpower, the expertise (it leads all EU trade negotiations) and a legal mandate (as so-called guardian of EU Treaties) for detailed negotiations.
So much for Brexit procedure; as for content over tonight's nibbles, my sources insist there's little to discuss until the UK government makes a firm commitment to the kind of Brexit it wants.
UK Brexit Secretary, David Davis, for example, just came up with four possible scenarios as regards the European Customs Union.
But EU leaders are clearly nervous.
Brexit has become a political football as populist movements gather strength across Europe.
Many leaders are also irritated with the perceived arrogance of the UK government - whether it's the foreign secretary insisting that EU Single Market rules will be bent for the UK or the Brexit Secretary suggesting an interim trade deal might be accepted out of kindness to the EU, rather than the other way round, which is the perspective of Brussels.
Over and again I'm told: we never wanted the UK to leave. It chose to go. We now need this over and done with so Brexit no longer hangs over all EU affairs.
EU governments insist they want an end deal that's good for everyone. They're keen to keep Britain close. But they do expect the UK to respect EU law. That means, as we've heard: no access to the Single Market if the UK won't accept the right of EU citizens to apply live and work in the UK.
On this point, EU countries and the Commission sing from the same hymn sheet.
They all benefit from the Single Market and they worry about weakening it.
But, desperate as they are to insist that theirs is a fully united front, there will undoubtedly be Brexit bickering amongst tonight's dinner guests.
One high-level source described Article 50 to me as "the mother of all complexities".
Some European Prime Ministers (particularly from the Baltic States and central Europe) worry the Commission will be too hard line. They want open talk of a transition deal and believe Article 50 proceedings should be about the future EU-UK relationship, not just the divorce.
Many EU leaders chatting about Brexit tonight know they're unlikely to see the process through.
Elections are fast-approaching in France, the Netherlands and Germany. Possibly in Italy too.
Today the BBC revealed a memo to the government by a high level British civil servant warning Brexit could take years and even then be voted down by an EU country or institution.
Something the EU warned about from the start.
Still, a Brussels source said to me it'll be far speedier if hard-line Brexiteers win the day and the UK reverts to WTO trade rules.
No transition deal needed then, he said.
Another Brussels voice believed Russia sanctions discussions at today's EU summit would show Theresa May that she has more in common with the EU than she realises.
The year 2017 is going to be a lot about Russia, my contact insisted.
"Prime Minister May will find us a lot more Russia-reliable than the soon-to-be US president, Donald Trump."
"Though the UK never appreciated its EU relationship as 'special'," he noted (not without a note of bitterness).

This didn't seem a comfortable moment for Dominic Raab.
The Brexit secretary campaigned for Leave, and is a true believer in the cause. Yet here he was, setting out plans to cope with a British failure to reach the kind of deal Brexiteers once claimed would be easy to accomplish.
Again and again, the Brexit department's guidance refers to the "unlikely event" of Brexit without an EU deal - but Dominic Raab conceded it could happen.
The risk was real. The International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, has suggested that outcome is more likely than not. The Brexit secretary may disagree on the level of risk, but could not deny that it would lead to higher costs and a fresh burden of red tape on businesses, scientific and medical research and individuals.
In today's first tranche of advisory papers on how to handle a no-deal Brexit, we learned card payments in Europe could cost more, as the EU cap on charges disappeared. That would add to the holiday and travel expenses of millions of Brits.
There was no guarantee yet of Brits and other UK dwellers on the continent having the same access to bank accounts and pension payments. Again Mr Raab was looking on the bright side. Why would the EU refuse to co-operate and risk piling identical burdens on Europeans in Britain.
The list went on. And on. Medicines were being stockpiled - though that didn't rule out the possibility of shortages.
And on the potential effect on UK firms involved in trade with the EU, the message was no less striking for being an inevitable consequence of quitting the EU single market and operating under the rule of the World Trade Organisation in the absence of a free trade agreement. Exporters would face an entirely new system of customs duties and safety declarations at a stroke. Consultants would need to be consulted. Software bought. Contracts rewritten.
Yes, farmers who receive EU subsidies could count on those payments being continued by a newly liberated Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Whether the same farmers would be entirely happy with the new schedule of tariffs on agricultural imports and exports is another matter, and not discussed today.
The list of new home-grown rules and regulatory agencies was huge. Mr Raab's hope was that the EU would co-operate with and recognise this new sprawling network of agencies and authorities, not for Britain's sake, but in its own interests. Maybe. But who knows?
The minister hoped and believed an agreement was still the most likely outcome. The two sides, he said, were "within sight" of a deal. Some close to the process might consider that an optimistic assessment. Theresa May's Chequers plan - a single market for goods but not services among other things - seems to have fallen rather flat in Brussels.
Dover is, after all, "within sight" of Calais. The political distance may turn out to be unbridgeable. So far, there's no sign of Brussels weakening on its negotiating "red lines". Today's "no-deal" plans may seem extensive, and there is much more to come.
To Dominic Raab the idea that everything will work out in the end seems plain common sense. The potential disruption and costs former Remainers and Brexit sceptics see as national self-harm, Brexiteers see as a few bumps in the road en route to a brighter future.
Dominic Raab may be a more comfortable colleague for the prime minister to deal with than his predecessor, David Davis, but he is a true believer nonetheless. You could call his conviction a product of faith. Or, if you prefer, call it wishful thinking.

EU leaders who gathered in Brussels put on a united front to back Theresa May's argument that the withdrawal agreement they endorsed was the "best and only" Brexit deal available.
But there was no sense of celebration, and there were plenty of signs of how tough negotiations on the future EU-UK relationship are likely to be.
Alongside the withdrawal agreement, and the political declaration on future ties, the remaining 27 EU leaders published a separate statement (without the UK) that vowed to protect their own interests, on a range of issues from fishing to fair competition to the rights of citizens.
"The European Council," it said, "will demonstrate particular vigilance as regards safeguarding the rights and interests of citizens, the necessity to maintain ambitious level playing field conditions, and to protect fishing enterprises and coastal communities."
It emphasised in particular that a fisheries agreement that builds on "existing reciprocal access and quota shares" is a matter of priority.
The statement was a clear sign that the UK will not have things all its own way, when it comes to balancing the competing demands of access to EU markets for UK fish produce, and access to UK fishing waters for EU boats.
Several EU leaders highlighted fishing as a particularly sensitive issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said talks on fisheries were "undoubtedly going to be an area where negotiations are going to be tough".
But the bluntest warning came from the French President Emmanuel Macron, who suggested that if the UK was unwilling to compromise in negotiations on fishing, which would need to make rapid progress, then talks on a wider trade deal would be slow.
"We as 27 have a clear position on fair competition, on fish, and on the subject of the EU's regulatory autonomy, and that forms part of our position for the future relationship talks," he said.
The president implied that without sufficient progress on trade, the backstop plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland would have to be implemented, including a temporary customs union for the whole of the UK.
"It is a lever because it is in our mutual interest to have this future relationship," Mr Macron said.
"I can't imagine that the desire of Theresa May or her supporters is to remain for the long term in a customs union, but (instead) to define a proper future relationship that resolves this problem."
It is a warning that the prime minister could have done without, as she seeks to appeal to the British public for support for her deal in advance of a vote in Parliament next month.
But it is also a reminder - if any were needed - that other countries have domestic political concerns that will have to be taken into account.
If anything, the negotiations on the future relationship - which can only begin formally after the UK has left the EU - will be even harder than the 18 months of negotiations that produced the withdrawal agreement which has just been endorsed.

Andrea Leadsom has said that the EU may be prepared to grant the UK a "couple of extra weeks" beyond the 29 March deadline to finalise preparations for Brexit.
The Commons leader said that in light of the UK's strong relationship with its "EU friends", the UK could be allowed more time for an approved deal to pass all its parliamentary stages.
But Ms Leadsom accused the EU of being in denial about the unease in the UK over the Northern Ireland backstop.
In a rebuke of Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond, the Commons leader called on the cabinet to rally behind Theresa May and accept that the UK will leave the EU without a deal if MPs reject her deal.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight, Ms Leadsom said she had "grave concerns" about a bill, proposed by Labour MP Yvette Cooper, which could extend Article 50 by nine months.
But she said that the EU could agree to allow the UK to remain in the EU for a few weeks longer than the March deadline. This could happen if a deal has been reached, but more time is needed for parliament to approve its Brexit legislation.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "There is no change to our position. We are not considering an extension to article 50 and are committed to doing whatever it takes to have the statute books ready for when we leave the EU on March 29th this year."
Ms Leadsom, who is in charge of timetabling government business in the Commons, said: "We can get the legislation through and I think we do, in spite of everything, have a very strong relationship with our EU friends and neighbours and I am absolutely certain that if we needed a couple of extra weeks or something then that would be feasible."
In answer to the suggestion that this would amount to an extension of Article 50, which is due to conclude on 29 March, she said: "It doesn't necessarily mean that. I think we would want to think carefully about it. But as things stand I do feel that we can get, with the support of both Houses - the House of Commons and the House of Lords - with goodwill and a determination we can still get the legislation through in good time."
In the interview, Ms Leadsom highlighted tensions when she was asked about cabinet discipline, after the warnings from Ms Rudd and Mr Hammond about the dangers of a no deal Brexit.
"I'm totally aligned to the prime minister," she said. "I believe that is where collective responsibility should lie.
"So number one, the legal default is we leave the EU on 29 March without a deal, unless there is a deal in place. That hasn't changed. That is the prime minister's view and that's my view.
"Of course, it is also very important that we continue to prepare for all eventualities because we do need to make sure that in all circumstances the UK can continue to thrive and do well in a post EU environment.
"I do encourage my colleagues in cabinet to get behind that sentiment and to make sure that we are all on the same page. We are now in the really final days."
Ms Leadsom was highly critical of the the EU for failing to understand the deep unease in the UK over the Northern Ireland backstop.
In the most contentious area of the deal, the UK and the EU have agreed to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland by binding the former closely to EU rules.
This would apply after the transition period if the UK and the EU have failed to negotiate a future relationship by then.
"Keeping the UK in an unlimited, in time terms, backstop that we can't unilaterally exit from under any circumstances is a real problem for many," she said.
"Resolve that and [many Conservative MPs and the DUP] can support the prime minister's deal.
"The EU need to be listening very carefully to that. They are slightly in denial saying that that is not the issue. It very much is the issue.
"So I am hoping the European Commissioners will look very closely at the backstop and think of a way through this, because the legal default is that we leave the EU on 29 March without a deal unless we can agree a deal."
Ms Leadsom was speaking to Newsnight during a visit to Manchester to highlight her work chairing a cross-government group on early years intervention.
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on iPlayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.

Speaker John Bercow has described the abuse and harassment of MPs outside Parliament as "a type of fascism" and called for a change of policing policy.
He said recent incidents, including Tory MP Anna Soubry being verbally abused on Monday, were "intolerable".
At least 115 MPs have called on police to improve their response to abusive protesters outside Parliament.
The Metropolitan Police has said it is ready to "deal robustly" with any instances of criminal harassment.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the force was assessing whether any crimes had been committed, following a third-party report of a public order offence on College Green, opposite the Houses of Parliament.
He said Scotland Yard will be "enhancing the policing presence" in the run-up to next week's vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal.
Revised advice was issued to MPs by Parliament security on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a man has been arrested on suspicion of trespassing after he tried to get into Parliament.
Armed officers arrested him at about 19:20 GMT on Tuesday after he got through Carriage Gates, at the entrance to the Houses of Parliament. He was taken to a police station, the Metropolitan Police said.
The incident is not being treated as terror-related.
The BBC has no plans to stop broadcasting from College Green but does not intend to report from there every day.
A BBC spokeswoman said: "We are working closely with authorities and other broadcasters to ensure the safety of our reporters and interviewees at all times."
Ms Soubry was shouted at - including being called a liar and a Nazi - during live TV interviews on BBC News and Sky.
The former minister - a supporter of a fresh Brexit referendum - was later called "scum" and jostled as she tried to re-enter the Palace of Westminster.
She criticised police for not intervening and called for the protesters to be prosecuted under public order laws.
Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act means that "threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour" might be deemed a criminal offence.
But Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) and Article 11 (right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association) of the European Convention on Human Rights contain the rights to peaceful protest.
College Green is regularly used by media to interview politicians, as well as being a popular site for protesters to gather.
Ms Soubry told the BBC she had "no problem with people protesting", saying this was a "very small group of far-right extremists who just want to undermine democracy".
The MP for Broxtowe said: "There is a very clear distinction between peaceful, lawful protest and robust debate - holding MPs to account, and it can be face to face - and some of the scenes we have seen in the last six weeks here at Parliament."
The cross-party group of MPs who have signed the letter - which includes those both for and against Brexit - said many of the concerns had been "repeatedly raised" with officers and senior policing staff.
"We write to express our serious concerns about the deteriorating public order and security situation in and around the exterior of the Parliamentary estate including College Green," the letter, co-ordinated by Labour MP Stephen Doughty, read.
"After months of peaceful and calm protests by groups representing a range of political views on Brexit, an ugly element of individuals with strong far-right and extreme right connections - which your officers are well aware of - have increasingly engaged in intimidatory and potentially criminal acts targeting Members of Parliament, journalists, activists and members of the public."
The letter said there appeared to be a "lack of co-ordination in the response from the police and appropriate authorities".
Sky News presenter Kay Burley said the "increasingly vile, aggressive and intimidating" abuse had forced her to change her own route to Parliament and she now had to have security protection.
She told BBC Radio 5 Live she had been interviewed three times by the police about the situation, but the protesters knew their rights and what they could and couldn't get away with.
But she added: "How far does it have to escalate before the police have to take it seriously?"
Labour's Mary Creagh said the "really vile, misogynistic thuggery" that had been seen was not an isolated incident.
She pointed to the murder of MP Jo Cox, who was killed in her West Yorkshire constituency by right-wing extremist Thomas Mair in June 2016.
Commons Speaker John Bercow said he was "concerned" about a "pattern of protest" targeting female MPs and journalists and called it a "type of fascism".
In his letter to the Met Police chief on Tuesday, he said he recognised it was "a difficult job striking the balance between allowing peaceful protests and intervening when things turn sour".
But he added: "It's one thing demonstrating from a distance with placards, or calling out slogans - and another, where the protester invades the personal space of a member, subjects him or her to a tirade of menacing, racist, sexist and misogynistic abuse, and follows them back to their place of work."
Labour MP Jess Phillips, who has previously spoken out against online abuse, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme that some protesters were "organised right-wing groups" trying to "scare our politicians into making decisions based on fringe views".
"People deserve to be safe at work," the Birmingham Yardley MP said. "I didn't come here to be bullied by far-right bullies, far-left bullies, or anyone, we came here to do what we felt was best."
Also on Monday, political commentator Owen Jones published a video on Twitter that he had recorded while being followed and shouted at by a group of protesters outside Parliament.
Last month, a video emerged of prominent Brexiteer Michael Gove being accosted by a protester dressed as Santa as he walked to Parliament.
Mr Bercow said he was aware of protests in recent weeks around the Palace of Westminster "involving aggressive and threatening behaviour towards members by assorted groups that have donned the yellow vests seen in France" - a reference to last year's "gilet jaune" anti-government demonstrations.
By Dominic Casciani, BBC home affairs correspondent
A recognisable figure in the group that surrounded Anna Soubry on Monday is online far-right campaigner James Goddard.
He says there can be no peace while Islam exists in the West and that the establishment is riven with paedophiles. He told police outside Parliament they were "fair game" and "if you want a war, we will give you a war".
Mr Goddard emerged as a DIY far-right campaigner last year as he began to gather followers after campaigning in support of the then-jailed anti-Islam activist, Stephen Lennon aka Tommy Robinson.
Before the incident at Parliament involving Ms Soubry, he'd been helping to organise France-style "yellow vest" protests - including attempts to block bridges in London.
Mr Goddard relies on donations from his followers - he frequently runs crowdfunding appeals for his campaigns.
On Tuesday evening, Facebook confirmed it has closed his account.
"We will not tolerate hate speech on Facebook which creates an environment of intimidation and which may provoke real-world violence," said a spokesman. Minutes later, his separate Paypal crowdfunding page disappeared too.
No 10 said the incident was "unacceptable" and MPs "should be free to do their jobs without any form of intimidation".
The BBC and other broadcasters have set up temporary studios on College Green ahead of the Commons vote on Mrs May's Brexit deal on 15 January.
The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said some MPs had expressed unease privately about being interviewed there, given the frequency and vehemence of the protests.

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of central London in a march against Brexit and Conservative Party leadership hopeful Boris Johnson.
The pro-European March for Change is holding a "No to Boris, Yes to Europe" event, and includes a blimp depicting him.
Campaigners are asking for Mr Johnson to "stop the Brexit chaos".
Either he or Jeremy Hunt will be named as Theresa May's replacement as prime minister next week.
Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson, who has declined to comment on the march, is seen as the frontrunner in the contest.
He said the UK would leave the European Union by 31 October "come what may" under his tenure, while Mr Hunt said he expected this to happen by Christmas.
Mr Johnson has claimed Brexit "done right" could "cement and intensify" the union between the UK nations.
The balloon depicting Mr Johnson has "£350m" emblazed on its front, symbolising the leave campaign's pledge of money towards the NHS during the 2016 referendum.
The March for Change organisers said: "We won't put up with a hard Brexit PM being imposed on the country and hurtling us towards the cliff edge."
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As so often, the cabinet managed to agree on what they don't like - the EU's version of the backstop - but they had a harder time agreeing what they do all like.
And even after more than two hours of talks, there is, as things stand, no "fully formed" UK proposal to get the Brexit talks going again.
There is no miraculous solution that can show the EU that promising a customs union to the whole of the UK can have a time limit that fits with their principles.
Donald Tusk has demanded new facts on Wednesday.
But as Theresa May prepares to go to Brussels, there's no sign of them. And there is no deal on the table right now that would definitely get through Parliament.
What to do then when there isn't agreement? Delay of course!
One insider says the government has no choice but to play it long, in the hope that the passage of time will concentrate minds.
Indications from ministers are that the government is now realistically looking to the deal not being done (if it is) until December. (Meaningful vote with your Christmas turkey anyone?)
One cabinet minister told me the PM was trying to manage expectations, telling colleagues today "not to be downhearted" if there was no summit in November.
And there have been suggestions too for ages that the EU would be ready to offer an extension to the whole process.
It's not clear, however, what facts more time would change. Remember a lot of smart people have been trying to find a way to answer all the conundrums for months and months and months.
Officials on both sides thought they were moving towards a possible arrangement of paragraphs last week but the politics here meant it couldn't be done.
And without new facts, will Theresa May be able to buy herself more time? The first call on that will be made in the next 48 hours by the EU.
The worst case scenario for No 10 is that EU leaders are so fed up with the UK position and what they see as the lack of reality, that on Thursday they formally say they will hold a no-deal summit in November.
That would switch them on to a track that would be hard to get off once in motion. One EU source expressed disbelief that Theresa May thought she could turn up on Wednesday with nothing new. It was simply crazy, in their view, to suggest that the ball can be lobbed back into the EU court.
The best case, and it seems right now unlikely, dream scenario is for the EU to say that, after all, there is a deal in reach, so let's get a date in the diary for the sign-off next month.
What seems more likely is a holding position. EU leaders could give some kind of vague noises that both sides still want to pursue negotiations, so that the talks can get going again.
One Brussels source said that while it is "time for choices", they could give the prime minister space and time to build a majority at home for  a deal.
But her party might not. Even if the EU gives her another few weeks to keep going, another few weeks to find a solution, if this summit goes visibly badly, it is not clear that her backbenchers and the Democratic Unionists will back Theresa May to carry on.
It's becoming increasingly common around Westminster to hear MPs say, "I simply can't see a way through."

Is there a conspiracy between so called "disaster capitalists" who have made big financial bets which will come good if the UK leaves the EU without a deal - and a government that is determined to leave on 31 October - do or die?
There has been a lot speculation, that er… speculators who help fund the Conservative Party are set to win big on their bets against the pound and UK assets if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
The current strain of this theory runs something like this - you Conservatives deliver a no-deal Brexit from which we will profit and we promise to bankroll the party in the coming election and beyond.
There are always plenty of fans of compelling and dramatic narratives like this - but they don't usually include the former chancellor of the exchequer and the former permanent secretary to the treasury - Nick (now Lord) Macpherson.
Philip Hammond said: "Johnson is backed by speculators who have bet billions on a hard Brexit - and there is only one option that works for them: a crash-out no-deal that sends the currency tumbling and inflation soaring."
Lord Macpherson then backed him in the following tweet.
Boris Johnson's own sister Rachel, when trying to explain her brother's do or die approach to leaving on 31 October, said one explanation could be influence "from people who have invested billions shorting the pound and the country in the hope of a no deal Brexit".
What should we make of the clear implication/insinuation that Boris Johnson is being influenced by financial gamblers who stand to make a packet out of no deal?
What we know to be true is that Tory party finances which had begun to struggle under Theresa May are reported to have bounced back under Boris Johnson.
John McDonnell claimed in the House of Commons that backers of no deal had donated £726,000 this year alone - some from hedge funds.
But most of it was not from hedge funds and to put the sums in context, in the first six months of the year, donations to the Tory party totalled more than £9m.
Party officials say the recent uptick in donations is because Johnson is better at shaking the hat - not because he's agreed to seek no deal to enrich a small minority of donors.
The claim that these no deal-backing hedge funds are betting against British companies that will falter come 1 November is also hard to find evidence for. The way most hedge funds work is that they take two positions - one long, one short.
For example, if you think, say, Barclays will do better than, say, Metro Bank over the next few months or years, you back Barclays and you bet against Metro. You make money as long as Barclays goes up more than Metro OR - if they both fall - that Barclays falls less than Metro Bank.
This is not a bet against British banks - it's a bet on two companies' relative performance.
As for the currency, companies of all types make bets against the pound for different reasons. The main reason is as a form of insurance. If I am a US-based multinational that makes, say, 30% of my money in sterling, that contribution will be hit if the pound falls (as most expect will happen after a no-deal Brexit). By taking a bet against sterling, that hit will be offset by the return on that bet and my income will be insured.
But there are hedge funds who place out-and-out bets on currencies. One of them is run by Crispin Odey who made £300m when the pound plunged following the UK referendum result in 2016. He is a no-deal backer, doesn't deny he will prosper if that happens, and contributed £10,000 towards Boris Johnson's campaign.
He described claims that he was trying to influence Johnson as nonsense, insisting he had absolutely no influence over Johnson.
Another hedge fund boss who wished to remain anonymous said the idea that a small group of financiers was pulling the strings to achieve a no deal was ridiculous. Not least, he said, because it would be "bonkers" to bet that a currency that was already at a 30-year low against the rest of the world would go that much lower.
"Most hedge funds are waiting for the moment to buy," he told me, adding that he was certain that Johnson was sincere in his wish for a deal.
They would say that wouldn't they, I hear you say. But it's also worth remembering that for every person who has bet against the pound, there is someone who has taken the other side of that bet. These are usually big international investment banks, the bosses and partners of which often make political donations of their own.
Hedge funds make money by betting the market is wrong - that the price of something is not reflecting what is really going on. It's no secret that many pollsters are hired by hedge funds to conduct political research on which they bet. Paying for better information is not the same as nobbling the result.
The general unease about speculators getting involved in politics is understandable.
As one bank chairman told me: "When hedge fund owners start backing individuals or parties we should worry. It creates at best a perception of conflict of interest. At worst a genuine conflict."
The widespread acceptance of this current conspiracy theory demonstrates that this rings true for many. But, as yet, there has not been enough evidence produced that a few shadowy financiers are pulling the strings of a no-deal Brexit puppet.

The deal the UK government was set to agree with the European Union on Monday came as "a big shock" to the DUP, its leader Arlene Foster has said.
She was speaking to Republic of Ireland national broadcaster RTÉ.
Talks in Brussels halted because the DUP, which props up the Tory minority government, rejected a proposal about the future of the Irish border.
Mrs Foster said the DUP saw the text of the deal on Monday morning, despite asking to see it for five weeks.
"Once we saw the text, we knew it was not going to be acceptable," she said.
Talks between Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker broke up without agreement on Monday.
The crucial sticking point was over how closely aligned Northern Ireland's regulations will be with those in the Republic of Ireland, and the rest of the EU, in order to avoid a "hard" border.
Mrs Foster said her party could not sign up to anything that would allow a border to develop in the Irish Sea and that its red line was any situation where Northern Ireland was different from the rest of the UK.
Ms Foster also said that the British negotiating team indicated to her that it was the Irish government that prevented the DUP from being shown a copy of the text.
However, the Irish government has rejected Ms Foster's claim and said it had "no role whatsoever in the negotiations conducted by the British government".
"It therefore had no involvement in any decision on which documents should go to the DUP," the Irish government said.
Ms Foster also said that she told Mrs May the DUP would not support Brexit legislation in the House of Commons unless the text presented on Monday was changed.
She said that she had a very open conversation with Mrs May after she had made the DUP position clear in a press conference on Monday afternoon.
She said she told Mrs May that "it could have been dealt with differently".
She said the DUP now wishes to look at the text, make it clear what they cannot agree with and try to work through to move on to Phase Two of the talks.
"Nobody wants a hard border on the island of Ireland," she added.
Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar  told the Dáil (Irish parliament) that "the ball is now in London's court".
He said that he accepted that Mrs May was negotiating in good faith but had difficulties.
Earlier on Tuesday, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the Irish government was risking Anglo-Irish relations and co-operation in Northern Ireland with a "reckless and dangerous" attitude to Brexit talks.
Mr Dodds accused the Irish government of "flexing their muscles".
Speaking in the House of Commons Brexit Secretary David Davis told MPs that Northern Ireland would not be "left behind".
He emphatically denied a suggestion that Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and the customs union after Brexit.
The Labour Party described the government's approach to Brexit talks as "embarrassing".
However, Mr Dodds accused the Irish government of a "noticeable change in tone and aggression" since Mr Varadkar and Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney came to power.
by Mark Devenport, BBC News NI political editor
"Rubbish" - the response from a senior DUP source when I put it to them that the party had been kept in the loop about Theresa May's Brexit deal, but got cold feet when the likes of Nicola Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones and Sadiq Khan started demanding the same special treatment for Scotland, Wales and London.
Something doesn't add up.
Last Thursday, DUP leader Arlene Foster declared that her party was "in constant contact on these issues with the government".
Was that via face-to-face meetings of the two parties' "co-ordination committee", or just via telephone conversations? If the latter, the line must have been very crackly.
Mr Dodds added it was clear that the European Union has given a veto to the Irish government and that they were "flexing their muscles and using their current position to try and gain wins for them".
"I don't argue with their desire to advance their interests but they're doing so in a reckless and dangerous way that is putting at risk years of good Anglo-Irish relations and good co-operation within Northern Ireland."
He added: "What matters are the words that are used in text and in international treaties and agreements and it's vitally important that text translates accurately to what are the general principles of political agreement."
The prime minister needs the support of the DUP, which is Northern Ireland's largest party and has 10 MPs at Westminster, because she does not have a majority to win votes in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer claimed in the House of Commons that the Conservatives' agreement with the DUP at Westminster was a "coalition of chaos" and said "the DUP tail is wagging the Tory dog."
But Mr Davis said "the suggestion that we might depart the European Union to leave one part of the United Kingdom behind and still inside the single market and the customs union - that is emphatically not something that the UK government is considering".
"So when the first minister of Wales complains about it or the first minister of Scotland uses it as a reason to start banging the tattered drum of independence or the Mayor of London says it justifies a hard border on the M25, I say they are making a foolish mistake.
"No UK government would allow such a thing let alone a Conservative and Unionist government."

Universities and Science Minister Chris Skidmore has said that the UK will not implement the EU Copyright Directive after the country leaves the EU.
Several companies have criticised the law, which would hold them accountable for not removing copyrighted content uploaded by users, if it is passed.
EU member states have until 7 June 2021 to implement the new reforms, but the UK will have left the EU by then.
The UK was among 19 nations that initially supported the law.
That was in its final European Council vote in April 2019.
Copyright is the legal right that allows an artist to protect how their original work is used.
The EU Copyright Directive that covers how "online content-sharing services" should deal with copyright-protected content, such as television programmes and movies.
It refers to services that primarily exist to give the public access to "protected works or other protected subject-matter uploaded by its users", such as Soundcloud, Dailymotion and YouTube.
It was Article 13 which prompted fears over the future of memes and GIFs - stills, animated or short video clips that go viral - since they mainly rely on copyrighted scenes from TV and film.
Critics claimed Article 13 would make it nearly impossible to upload even the tiniest part of a copyrighted work to Facebook, YouTube, or any other site.
However, specific tweaks to the law in 2019 made memes safe "for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody and pastiche".
Prime Minister Boris Johnson criticised the law in March, claiming that it was "terrible for the internet".
Google had campaigned fiercely against the changes, arguing they would "harm Europe's creative and digital industries" and "change the web as we know it".
YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki had also warned that users in the EU could be cut off from the video platform.
Kathy Berry, a professional support lawyer at Linklaters, welcomed the government's stance on the law, claiming it will "allow the UK to agree to more tech-friendly copyright provisions in free trade deals with other countries".
The law sparked suggestions from its biggest critics that it would end up "killing memes and parodies," despite it permitting the sharing of memes and GIFs.

The Welsh Assembly does not have a legal right to be consulted by UK ministers triggering Brexit, the Supreme Court has ruled.
Senior judges said that the UK government cannot start Article 50 without consulting MPs.
They said assembly members have no veto over the process to leave the EU.
But the Welsh Government's chief legal officer Mick Antoniw called the ruling "a victory" in upholding the sovereignty of Parliament.
Welsh ministers had argued that the assembly should be consulted on starting Brexit. They had intervened in the UK government appeal against an earlier High Court ruling.
Counsel General Mr Antoniw told the assembly on Tuesday that AMs are likely to vote on Brexit, despite the ruling, although he said it was not a veto.
Giving the judgement on Tuesday, President of the Supreme Court Lord Neuberger said: "On the devolution issues, the court unanimously rules that UK ministers are not legally compelled to consult the devolved legislatures before triggering Article 50.
"The devolution statutes were enacted on the assumption that the UK would be a member of the EU, but they do not require it.
"Relations with the EU are a matter for the UK government."
The ruling said the assembly and other devolved legislatures had no veto.
But it did say withdrawal from the EU will change the powers of the governments and assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Welsh Government had argued that if MPs did not vote on Article 50, which was the UK government's original intention, it would undermine the basis for devolution.
Welsh ministers had also argued that this plan would have short-circuited a convention which requires Welsh assembly members to vote on legislation which affects the Welsh devolution settlement.
The Sewel Convention is an arrangement between the UK and Welsh governments where if any new laws come in that affect devolution, they have to be approved by AMs by a vote.
But the Supreme Court ruling sets out that Sewel is a political convention and not a legal one, and so is not a legally enforceable obligation.
The assembly research service states the court is not giving the UK government and Parliament license to ignore Sewel, but it cannot decide disputes about whether it had been applied correctly.
Mr Antoniw, Welsh Government's senior legal advisor and am AM, told BBC Wales the ruling was "certainly a victory in terms of upholding the sovereignty of Parliament".
"We've never argued for a veto, and the court made that point, but what it does do is stress the importance of the Sewel Convention in terms of engagement."
Earlier, speaking to BBC Radio Wales before the judgement, Mr Antoniw defended the £84,000 cost of the Welsh Government's intervention, saying: "The voice of Wales within the UK constitution is priceless."
Plaid Cymru spokesman for external affairs Steffan Lewis said the party would still seek to table a vote in the assembly on the triggering of Article 50.
"It is a simple matter of democracy that the devolved legislatures should have a role in commencing the process of leaving the EU," he said.
UKIP MEP and independent AM Nathan Gill said the Brexit white paper published by the Welsh Government on Monday "will make it into the Guinness Book of Records for having the shortest shelf life ever, 24 hours".
"Because it's now been made obsolete," he claimed.
But Mr Gill - a member of the committee advising First Minister Carwyn Jones on Brexit - said the Supreme Court judgement in favour of parliament was "no surprise".
An UKIP assembly group spokesman said it welcomed the judgement on Article 50 and Parliament, and that any attempt to block Brexit would trigger an immediate general election: "We say bring it on."
"It would be absurd for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland to have a veto over triggering Article 50," he said.
The Welsh Conservatives' Europe spokesman Mark Isherwood, said: "The Welsh Government's tortuous arguments were an expensive sideshow.
"It would have been better if every effort had been focused on delivering a Welsh Government paper on Brexit before the UK government announced its negotiating strategy."
Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Mark Williams welcomed the ruling, saying it showed the sovereignty of parliament was paramount, and that his party will vote against Article 50.
Several Labour MPs have indicated they will disobey any order by party leader Jeremy Corbyn to vote in favour of Article 50.
Pontypridd MP Owen Smith, who backed Remain, suggested there ought to be a fresh referendum on the terms of leaving the EU, fearing the UK was set for the "hardest of hard Brexits" by leaving the single market and the customs union.
"The right thing to do then is to allow the British people once more in an ultra-democratic moment to confirm whether they really want the hard, hard Brexit they are likely to get," he said.

Labour will not support any Brexit deal negotiated by the government unless it meets the party's "six tests", the shadow Brexit secretary has said.
Any deal must include a strong relationship with the EU and the same benefits the UK currently has from the single market, Sir Keir Starmer said.
The UK should "honour our obligations" regarding any "divorce bill", he added.
The government will trigger Article 50 on Wednesday, kick-starting talks aimed at agreeing a Brexit deal with the EU.
The government will then publish its Great Repeal Bill on Thursday. It will propose giving ministers the powers to change some aspects of European laws when they have been incorporated into UK legislation, without needing the approval of Parliament.
Triggering Article 50 begins a two-year negotiation process to attempt to reach a deal before Britain officially leaves the EU in March 2019.
If no deal is agreed, it would mean World Trade Organization rules would be imposed - less favourable terms than trading within the single market.
Outlining Labour's demands in a speech in London, Sir Keir said the prime minister "should be under no illusion" and added that Labour would not support a deal "that fails to reflect core British values and the six tests I have set out today".
"All of us want the best for Britain. But the stakes are high and the prime minister's approach so far does not bode well," he said.
The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said some of the tests were akin to "motherhood and apple pie" and could be met quite easily.
But he said Labour were setting the bar quite high in calling for the UK to retain the "exact same benefits" as currently afforded by membership of the single market and the customs union.
In demanding this, Sir Keir said Labour was only seeking the same objective that Brexit Secretary David Davis had set himself in Parliament.
"The government can't turn around and say this is unachievable because it was David Davis... who said that," he said.
Another key demand is for "fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities".
Sir Keir said he accepted that the EU principle of freedom of movement "has to go" but he insisted a future immigration policy must be one of managed migration which works for businesses and communities.
One of the tests calls for "a strong collaborative future relationship with the EU". He said it was important to state that because "some of the pure Brexiteers actually want us to crash out [without a deal], either at the Article 50 stage in two years or before that".
"This is the worst of all possible outcomes," he added, saying there would be greater certainty if Theresa May agreed to transitional arrangements from 29 March 2019 until a treaty setting out future relations was finally signed.
Responding to Sir Keir's intervention, Conservative MP Maria Caulfield said Labour were divided over the UK's future outside of the EU and merely "sniping from the sidelines".
"They can't even agree on whether they want to control immigration, and have today failed to make ending uncontrolled free movement one of their tests for supporting a deal with the EU," she said.
No 10 said it wanted the "greatest possible access" to the single market.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker suggested last week that the UK may have to pay up to £50bn for privileged access to the single market and customs union.
Asked about this on Sunday, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said business wanted the "widest possible access" to the single market but how much this would cost would form part of the negotiations.
She also dismissed a "no deal" scenario outlined by EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier - with truck queues at Dover, disruption to air traffic and a suspension in the movement of nuclear materials to the UK - as "apocalyptic".
"I think it's fair to say I don't recognise that description... he would say that wouldn't he?" she said.
It has been reported the Great Repeal Bill will include proposals for the government to be given a "new time-limited correcting power" which would allow changes to be made through so-called Henry VIII clauses - without needing the approval of Parliament.
The government says it needs the power to make "technical" changes quickly as a lot of EU law will not work properly without changes being made but Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says he will not allow Parliament to be "overridden" and ministers to issue a "series of diktats".
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If you walk down Whitehall in central London, you cannot escape reminders of wars fought and empires run from this small district on the north bank of the Thames. There are memorials to the fallen, statues of field marshals and even a Turkish cannon captured in some long-forgotten conflict.
Yet the civil service that once gloried in its global administrative stretch is now the smallest it has been since World War Two. And with the government launching the British state on its greatest administrative, economic and legal reform since it committed the nation to total war in 1939, there is a simple question: is Whitehall up for Brexit?
"It's been a scramble but the ducks are in a row," one Cabinet minister told me confidently.
For the scale of the challenge is immense.
Thousands of civil servants to be mobilised and retasked, thousands of laws and regulations to be rewritten or rejected and thousands of people trained and employed to do the many things currently carried out by the European Union.
This endeavour is not only about the two years of initial negotiations with 27 EU member states that will shortly begin, it is also about the mammoth preparations the UK must make for leaving the EU whatever the outcome of the negotiations.
"The challenge of Brexit has few, if any, parallels in its complexity," says Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary. "Its full implications and impact on the political, economic and social life of the country... will probably only become clear from the perspective of future decades."
Perhaps the greatest challenge the civil service has faced was its utter lack of preparation for the British people voting out in the referendum last June. They were expressly forbidden from drawing up any plans by David Cameron's administration and have been playing catch up ever since.
Ministers say the civil service has responded well, creating two new government departments from a standing start. The Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) has something north of 320 staff, the Department for International Trade, several thousand.
Both departments, along with the Foreign Office, have been given an extra £400m by the Treasury over the next four years to pay for their work on Brexit. There were some initial turf wars but officials now say there is greater singularity of purpose.
Much work has been done analysing options, quantifying markets and assessing laws. Huge volumes of paper have been landing on DExEU desks looking at the impact of Brexit on every aspect of the economy.
The aim is to allow David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, to draw up an a la carte menu for the prime minister, setting out potential options and costs so that she can navigate the negotiations ahead.
For there is no doubt that these will be Theresa May's negotiations. The main negotiating team will include Mr Davis, his permanent secretary, Olly Robbins, and Sir Tim Barrow, the UK permanent representative to the EU.
Below them will be civil servants from all affected government departments, summoned in to work on specific "chapters" of the negotiations, on everything from fish to agriculture to financial services. They will be the team dealing with the European Commission negotiators on an almost daily basis.
Yet above them will be Mrs May who will have to drive the talks and make the big calls. But such is the size of the task that even the prime minister will struggle to retain her usual iron grip.
One minister told me: "This is the first big test to see if she can delegate. This is so big that No 10 cannot control it, they cannot be on top of all the detail."
Not all are so sanguine about the preparedness of Whitehall. The National Audit Office says in a new report that, while 1,000 new roles have been created in the civil service to deal with Brexit, a third remain unfilled and most of the new appointees have simply been transferred from other parts of government.
And the Institute for Government warns that departments such as the Home Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are underfunded, cannot afford more staff and will be forced to drop non-Brexit work.
Other insiders warn that, although much work has been done setting out options, less thought has been devoted to how the negotiations will progress themselves and how the government should organise itself. Officials talk of not knowing precisely for what they are preparing because Downing Street refuses to reveal its negotiating plans.
The process, inevitably, will begin with negotiations about the negotiations. Who will talk to whom, about what and in what order? The UK government wants to discuss its divorce from the EU at the same time as its future trade relationship. The EU says the two issues must remain separate.
Then will come the exit agreement itself. Much will be visceral and hard-fought. Protecting the rights of EU nationals in the UK and vice versa sounds easy as both sides say they want this to be resolved early on and want to keep the status quo. But the hugely complex detail will be hard to agree.
Yet sorting that out might be easy compared to agreeing how much money, if any, the UK will owe the EU when it leaves. The government says nothing, the EU is hinting at £50bn. And all this is before any negotiations about any future trade arrangement between the UK and the EU and any transitional process that may be needed.
While this will generate a huge amount of work for some in the civil service, many other officials will be focused instead on preparing the UK for leaving the EU come what may.
Much of this will focus on Westminster. There is the Great Repeal Bill to be written and passed through Parliament to ensure that all EU law is transferred automatically into UK law the moment we leave. The aim is to ensure there is no legal chaos and to allow Parliament all the time it needs gradually to unstitch the UK from four decades of EU legislation.
This will be a massive piece of legislative work that will require officials to re-examine huge swathes of UK law. They will have to decide which bits of EU law to return to Westminster and which bits are devolved, a tricky issue in light of Holyrood's demand for a second independence referendum. The Institute for Government warns there might be a need for further 15 separate Brexit Bills.
In the short term, there are a huge number of separate parliamentary inquiries into Brexit - 55 in all - being carried out by various committees of MPs and peers. Ministers have to reply to each one within 60 days and officials are struggling to meet that deadline.
Then there is the process of the UK re-establishing its status at the World Trade Organization (WTO), something that will be needed even if we get a new trade deal with the EU.
The government hopes to transfer its current EU tariff rates into a new UK-specific schedule of trade commitments. But such a "copy and paste" arrangement will be complicated and will almost certainly face challenge from other WTO members. UK diplomats in Geneva, where the WTO is based, have a hard job of reassurance ahead of them.
And then there is also the process of creating new organisations that will fill the gaps in our national life left as the EU tide ebbs from our shores. Officials will need to set up new customs and immigration systems, neither of which will be simple or easy.
So, as the phoney war ends with the triggering of Article 50, Whitehall is facing perhaps its greatest challenge in a generation.

The UK should be able to unilaterally cancel its withdrawal from the EU, according to a top European law officer.
The non-binding opinion was delivered by an advocate general of the European Court of Justice.
A group of Scottish politicians has asked the court whether the UK can call off Brexit without the consent of other member states.
The Court of Justice (ECJ) will deliver its final ruling at a later date.
The advice from advocate general Manuel Campos Sanchez-Bordona comes as the House of Commons begins five days of debates on Prime Minister Theresa May's proposed Brexit deal, with a vote due to be held next Tuesday.
In a written statement, the ECJ said Mr Campos Sanchez-Bordona's opinion was that if a country decided to leave the EU, it should also have the power to change its mind during the two-year exit process specified in Article 50 of the EU treaty.
And it should be able to do so without needing the consent of the other 27 member states - contrary to what the EU itself has argued.
While the advocate general's opinions are not binding, the court tends to follow them in the majority of its final rulings.
The anti-Brexit politicians and campaigners who have brought the case hope it will give MPs an extra option when considering whether to approve Mrs May's draft deal or not, because it could keep alive the prospect of calling off Brexit - potentially through another referendum.
The ECJ statement said the advocate general had proposed that the Court of Justice should "declare that Article 50 allows the unilateral revocation of the notification of the intention to withdraw from the EU".
It added: "That possibility continues to exist until such time as the withdrawal agreement is formally concluded."
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March next year, but the deal negotiated with the EU has to be backed by a majority MPs if it is to come into force.
Welcoming the advocate general's opinion, SNP MEP Alyn Smith, one of those who brought the case, said it showed that "we now have a roadmap out of the Brexit shambles".
He said parliament was not necessarily facing a choice between accepting Mrs May's deal or leaving the EU with no deal, and that "there are other options, and we can stop the clock."
A cross-party group of politicians and campaigners including Green MSPs Andy Wightman and Ross Greer, MEP Alyn Smith and MP Joanna Cherry of the SNP, and Labour MEPs David Martin and Catherine Stihler brought the case together with lawyer Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project.
They initially took it to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, which ultimately agreed to pass it to the ECJ.
Two attempts by the UK government to appeal against the referral to the European court were rejected, and the case was opposed by the government and the EU institutions in a hearing before all 27 ECJ judges last week.
Hubert Legal, the chief lawyer for the European Council, argued that allowing unilateral withdrawal could create "endless uncertainty" by allowing countries to announce they are leaving the EU in an attempt to secure better membership terms, before cancelling their withdrawal.
The UK government's lawyers argued that the case was purely hypothetical as "the UK does not intend to revoke its notification", and ECJ judges should therefore refuse to rule on it.
They added that the politicians behind the case wanted to use it as "political ammunition to be used in, and to pressure, the UK parliament".
The advocate general's opinion that the UK has the right to unilaterally withdraw Article 50 notification of its intention to leave the EU flies in the face of what the UK government and the EU want.
Although the Advocate General's opinion is non-binding, the ECJ follow his opinions in the majority of cases.
The whole issue of revocation remains hypothetical at present because the government has made it clear there is no possibility of seeking to revoke the notice to leave the EU.
However, the statement raises the question of how the UK might revoke notification.
It would almost certainly need to be done by an act of parliament. If it was done by ministers alone using prerogative powers it would frustrate the will of parliament as expressed in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
It should be noted that the statement and the case concerns revocation of notice to leave, and not a delay or extension of the two-year period provided for under Article 50.
That period can be extended, but only with the agreement of all of the other 27 EU states. Whereas extension of the Article 50 period could become a political necessity, revocation of Article 50 remains something of an academic point at present. However, that would change if there was a second referendum in which the British people voted to remain in the EU.

Prime Minister Theresa May is to officially notify the European Union next Wednesday that the UK is leaving.
Downing Street said she would write a letter to the European Council, adding that it hoped negotiations on the terms of exit and future relations could then begin as quickly as possible.
An EU spokesman said it was "ready and waiting" for the letter.
Mrs May's spokesman also rejected reports an early election may be held, saying: "It's not going to happen."
Under the Article 50 process, talks on the terms of exit and future relations are not allowed until the UK formally tells the EU it is leaving.
If all goes according to the two year negotiations allowed for in the official timetable, Brexit should happen in March 2019.
A No 10 spokesman said the UK's Ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, informed the European Council, headed by President Donald Tusk, earlier on Monday of the date that Article 50 would be triggered.
Mrs May is expected to make a statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday shortly after invoking Article 50, setting out her aims.
A spokesman said the government wants negotiations to start as soon as possible but added that they "fully appreciate it is right that the other 27 EU states have time to agree their position".
The BBC's Ben Wright said he expected the Article 50 letter to be short, possibly extending to two pages at most, and for Mrs May to use it to publicly reiterate her general objectives - such as leaving the single market but reaching a mutually beneficial agreement on trade and other issues.
Speaking in Swansea on Monday, during the first of a series of visits around the UK before she triggers Article 50, Mrs May said she was intent on "delivering on Brexit and getting the right deal".
Last year's referendum result, she added, "was not just about leaving the EU" but was a vote for a "change in the way the country works".
"Part of that is building a strong economy and ensuring that the benefits of economic growth and prosperity are felt across every part of the UK."
Brexit Secretary David Davis said the UK was now "on the threshold of the most important negotiation for this country for a generation".
"The government is clear in its aims," he said. "A deal that works for every nation and region of the UK and indeed for all of Europe - a new, positive partnership between the UK and our friends and allies in the European Union."
In response to the news, Mr Tusk tweeted: "Within 48 hours of the UK triggering Article 50, I will present the draft Brexit guidelines to the EU27 Member States."
Mr Tusk has previously said he expects to call an extraordinary summit of the 27 other members within four to six weeks, to draw up a mandate for the European Commission's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. Under this scenario, talks are likely to begin in earnest in May.
Sir Tim Barrow, the UK's most senior representative at the EU, said the 27 had had plenty of time to prepare for this moment and he expected them to set out their stall "pretty quickly".
"Our mandate is clear, it is to get on with it," he told MPs on the European Scrutiny Committee. "There is a timetable that everyone has bought into it."
Mrs May said last year that she intended to notify the EU of the UK's intention to leave by the end of March. The move was approved by Parliament two weeks ago when peers and MPs passed unchanged a bill giving the prime minister the authority to set the process in motion.
EU leaders have said they want to conclude the talks within 18 months to allow the terms of the UK's exit to be ratified by the UK Parliament and the European Parliament, as well as approved by the necessary majority of EU states.
Mrs May has said MPs and peers will have a vote on the deal she negotiates but she has insisted the UK will leave anyway even if Parliament rejects it. The government has said it expects to secure a positive outcome but made clear there is a chance of there being no formal agreement with Mrs May saying no deal was better than a bad deal.
Ahead of Mrs May naming the date European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was quoted in German newspaper Bild saying the UK may have to abandon hopes of getting a trade deal if it did not agree to the term offered by the EU.
These terms may include a £50bn "divorce bill" and Mr Juncker said Brexit could bring the remaining 27 members closer together: "They will all see from the UK's example that leaving the EU is a bad idea."
Labour's Keir Starmer said the opposition would hold the government to account throughout the process, claiming the prime minister had failed to provide certainty about her plans or prepare for the "clear dangers" of not reaching a deal at all.
The Scottish National Party's Europe spokesperson at Westminster, Stephen Gethins, said: "Today's announcement... shatters beyond repair any notion or position that the Prime Minister is seeking a UK-wide agreement.
"For nine months since the EU referendum, there has been no attempt by the UK government to seek a meaningful discussion or agreement with the devolved administrations."
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, who has called for the public to have their say on the terms of exit in a further referendum, said Mrs May's decision to rule out membership of the single market before negotiations began was proof she was pursuing an "extreme and divisive" Brexit.
"Leaving the single market was not on the ballot paper in the referendum, it is a political choice made by Theresa May," he said.
Later this week, EU leaders will gather in Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, which established the European Economic Community - the initial forerunner to the EU. Mrs May is not attending the event.

Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft says he believes Boris Johnson's Brexit interventions might help Theresa May in her negotiations with the EU.
The former deputy chairman said the PM could tell Brussels: "This is the type of difficulty I have in bringing people into line."
Mr Johnson, the foreign secretary, has been accused of undermining Mrs May by setting out his own vision of Brexit.
But Lord Ashcroft said he could not "see much harm" in his recent comments.
Speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the tycoon said: "Everyone wants the best deal for Britain in EU negotiations - the issue is that everyone has a different view on how they should proceed.
"But it is a complex set of negotiations and I don't believe that a deal will be struck until much nearer the time and there's a lot of play acting going on and positioning.
"I don't see much harm in what Boris has put forward, I don't see it's highly inconsistent. At the same time Theresa can use that as a strength in the EU negotiations by saying 'this is the type of difference I have in bringing people into line'."
After the Conservatives lost their Commons majority in June's general election, much of the talk at conference is about how to address the challenge posed by Jeremy Corbyn and Labour.
Lord Ashcroft said the party needed to "reassemble" and "get its act together", adding that there would be different "nuances" from ministers throughout the Brexit process.
In his latest comments on Brexit, Mr Johnson wrote in The Sun that Mrs May's planned transition phase must not last "a second more" than two years.
The foreign secretary also set out his plan for Brexit in a Daily Telegraph article last month.
This sparked accusations of "backseat driving" and prompted Mrs May to say the government was "driven from the front".

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has told Theresa May it is "important to avoid a hard Brexit", after talks with the UK prime minister.
Mrs May is in Salzburg as part of a mission by UK ministers to sell their post-Brexit trade proposals.
Mr Kurz said he viewed Brexit "negatively" but felt negotiations were going "quite well".
Mrs May then held talks with Czech PM Andrej Babis before heading off on her summer holidays.
Speaking at a brief joint press conference, Mr Kurz, who has just assumed the EU presidency for six months, said: "The Brexit decision is a decision we see very negatively.
"But, of course, it has been taken by the British people so now we have to find a way to deal with it, and from our point of view it is important to avoid a hard Brexit."
He said he hoped the UK's talks with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier would be successful and a "solution" could be found by October.
The BBC understands that Mr Kurz has indicated he supports the idea of EU leaders holding formal Brexit talks at a summit in Salzburg in September.
Mrs May hailed the strength of the UK's relationship with Austria, adding: "We are delivering on a vote of the British people, they chose to leave the EU and we will deliver that."
Later, Mrs May pitched her idea for a post-Brexit free trade area to her Czech counterpart Andrej Babis.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "She highlighted that a UK-EU free trade area would maintain frictionless trade that would enable businesses across Europe to maintain their vital integrated supply chains.
"They agreed it was important to find a solution and that negotiations should continue at pace."
Both the EU and UK say a deal can be done by October - five months before the UK is due to leave the European Union - but have also said preparations are being made in case negotiations end in no deal.
Mr Barnier has already rejected a key element of her proposal for post-Brexit trade with the EU.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has accused the EU of pushing the UK towards a "no deal" scenario because they "keep saying no to everything".
Mr Fox, who is on a trade mission to San Francisco, told Business Insider the UK should leave without a deal if talks break down, rather than requesting an extension of the Article 50 process to continue negotiations, as some have suggested.
"To attempt to extend our membership even longer, many voters would regard as a complete betrayal by the political class, and I think they would be right," he added.
Mrs May's trip to Austria is one of several being made to Europe by British government ministers over the summer to promote her plan, detailed in the Brexit White Paper, to European leaders.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt met his German counterpart in Berlin on Monday and the UK chancellor, home secretary, business secretary and the minister for the Cabinet Office are also meeting counterparts across Europe over the summer.
Following talks in Austria, Mrs May will head to Italy with her husband, Philip, for a week before returning to the UK to work.
She is also due to attend a World War One memorial event marking the centenary of the battle of Amiens, which began on 8 August 1918, before heading off for two weeks' holiday in Switzerland.
Analysis by BBC Diplomatic Correspondent James Robbins
Salzburg in high summer is packed with tourists and music lovers enjoying the annual festival.
Theresa May went to the opera on Friday night, but only after her talks with Mr Kurz and Mr Babis.
The prime minister is hoping to persuade them to urge others in the EU27 to relax their common position - particularly by accepting her proposals for continuing free movement of products after Brexit.
But there's no sign either Austria or the Czech Republic is willing to budge. Eurosceptic feeling may be strong among their populations, but neither leader is contemplating following Britain out of the Union.
Instead, both governments believe Mrs May is still cherry-picking and that Britain must blink first to avoid what they call a catastrophic crash-out they are convinced would hurt the UK far more than the EU.
Mozart's The Magic Flute, in the city of his birth, should have been something of a relief for Mrs May.
The UK's Brexit White Paper, drawn up after agreement with the cabinet at Chequers, proposes close ties in some areas, such as the trade in goods, but Mrs May says it will end free movement of people and the jurisdiction of the European Court, and allow the UK to strike trade deals with other nations.
It would involve the UK collecting some EU tariffs - in a bid to ensure frictionless trade in goods and to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland - under its proposed Facilitated Customs Arrangement for goods and agri-foods.
The plan sparked two UK cabinet resignations - former Brexit Secretary David Davis and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Mr Barnier said on Thursday that the EU "will not delegate the application of its customs policy and rules and VAT and excises duty collection to a non-member who would not be subject to the EU's governance structures".
Any customs arrangement or union "must respect this principle", he said.

At a time of great uncertainty the new chancellor chose to display caution.
Despite long wanting to get his hands on the nation's purse strings, Philip Hammond was not tempted into grand gestures.
There were modest giveaways for those "just about managing" in order to keep true to Theresa May's promise of a Government for all; a reduction in the rate benefits are withdrawn for those working, a ban on letting fees and a boost to the minimum wage - much briefed in advance to perhaps gain some headlines before gloomy forecasts became the story.
There was a shift away from his predecessor's focus on deficit reduction within a set timeframe - instead Mr Hammond said he would deliver a surplus as soon as possible, announcing investment in housing and roads, money for research and development - the focus on boosting productivity.
But this was still a Chancellor keen to limit spending in order to secure stability.
Brexit has made the future unpredictable.
Philip Hammond may have more insight that most into the Government's planned approach to leaving the EU, but he still wanted to ensure he had enough in his back pocket to withstand any shocks that may come.
And with vast increases in borrowing and reduced growth predicted, Mr Hammond limited the giveaways and changed the economic rules to give himself the flexibility to respond.
This was a careful balancing act, an attempt to follow through on promised support for those in society who need it most while keeping the nation's books in order.
At the same time, this was an attempt to recognise the potential economic turbulence Brexit could bring without invoking the ire of backbench Eurosceptics with an overly negative outlook.
Mr Hammond was careful to speak of opportunities as well as challenges, describing a "great nation", resilient and strong.
By his own admission there was no grand "rabbit in the hat". Mr Hammond wasn't out to steal the show, but rather prove he can be the steady hand on the tiller in choppy economic waters.
But for Labour, this was an opportunity to seize on a chink in the government's economic armour, with the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell saying the much-hailed long term economic plan had been an "abject failure".

Chancellor Philip Hammond has called economic forecasts in the Autumn Statement one of a "range of outcomes" after some pro-Brexit MPs criticised them for being too pessimistic.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast more government borrowing and reductions in economic growth after the referendum.
Ex-minister Iain Duncan Smith accused the OBR of "utter doom and gloom".
But Mr Chancellor Hammond said it was good to prepare for a "rainy day".
He added that the government was investing to boost infrastructure and economic productivity and there was a "downward path in borrowing".
BBC economics editor Kamal Ahmed said the chancellor "hopes that the forecasts do prove very gloomy" and he was "setting a bottom line from which he hopes the government can clamber upwards".
During Wednesday's Autumn Statement, Mr Hammond's first since becoming chancellor, he told MPs the UK's deficit would no longer be cleared by 2020.
And the OBR estimated the government would have to borrow £122bn more than forecast in March's Budget, with the referendum result accounting for £58.7bn of this.
The Brexit vote meant potential growth in the current Parliament would be 2.4% lower than forecast in March, according to the OBR who also admitted producing a forecast was "far from straightforward", as it had not been given any extra information from the government about its negotiation plans.
It said: "We have made a judgement - consistent with most external studies - that over the time horizon of our forecast any likely Brexit outcome would lead to lower trade flows, lower investment and lower net inward migration than we would otherwise have seen, and hence lower potential output."
The organisation said the economy would be affected by future choices that the government makes about regulatory and other policies and it "could move in either a growth-enhancing or a growth-impeding direction".
Asked about the OBR's predictions, the former Work and Pensions Secretary and Leave campaigner Mr Duncan Smith told the Daily Telegraph it was "another utter doom and gloom scenario" from the organisation.
The Economists for Brexit group predicted more "humiliating U-turns" from the OBR, saying it had  "assumed a pessimistic outlook for the UK economy outside the EU, based on bad economic policy-making".
Conservative MP John Redwood, who also supported Brexit, added: "Their [GDP growth] forecast probably is too low, their borrowing forecast is far too high, and we'll get good access to the single market once we're out of the EU."
But Downing Street dismissed the criticism, saying the OBR's role was to "provide transparency and credibility".
She added: "They are an independent forecaster. We won't get into second guessing them."
In his statement, Mr Hammond promised to invest £23bn on "innovation and infrastructure" over the next five years, with more money for roads, broadband and regional development.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There's a downward path in borrowing. We need to keep the downward path on borrowing... But we also need to invest in our economy, to generate the revenue that will drive down the debt."
Describing economic forecasting as "not a precise science", Mr Hammond said of the OBR's forecast: "We should think of it as one of the possible range of outcomes we need to plan for."
He added: "We have a very strong foundation on which to build."
Mr Hammond also said: "We should have a plan which both invests in our economy and puts a little aside for the possibility of a slightly more rainy day next year or the year after."
Uncertainty was "not just about" Brexit but the change of US government when Donald Trump takes office and the growth rate of the Chinese economy, he added.
Labour said the Autumn Statement offered no hope for the future after six "wasted" years.
Among Mr Hammond's announcements were:
The speech also triggered questions about the future of the so-called "triple lock" protection for state pensions, while campaigners criticised the lack of extra funding for social care.
The triple-lock guarantees that state pensions rise by the same as average earnings, the consumer price index, or 2.5%, whichever is the highest.
Mr Hammond said the government would meet this pledge, adding: "But as we look ahead to the next Parliament, we will need to ensure we tackle the challenges of rising longevity and fiscal sustainability."
Former work and pensions secretary Stephen Crabb backed a review of the mechanism after 2020.
He told the BBC: "The fiscal impact of the triple lock is not something anyone can dismiss lightly and if we are serious about ensuring that our welfare system remains affordable in the very long term then my own view is that the triple lock has served its purpose and probably needs to get amended, to ensure that we don't have to keep going back to working age families and squeezing the same people's incomes time and again."
Meanwhile health and social care leaders have condemned the statement for a "missed opportunity" to announce new investment.
For Labour, shadow chancellor John McDonnell told BBC One's Breakfast that although he welcomed the government "moving on investment policy" there had been "mismanagement of the economy over the last six years".
"I find it extremely worrying that they've used the last six years with austerity measures and instead of investing they've been cutting, and as a result of that they're unprepared and ill-equipped for Brexit."
The SNP said Mr Hammond had offered little on Brexit, which it called the "elephant in the room".
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "The government's mishandling of Brexit is hitting those on lower and middle incomes the hardest."
He added that "rhetoric" about helping those "just about managing" had not resulted in action, creating "surprising and massive disappointment".
But UKIP said billions were being wasted by the government "delaying" the UK's exit from the EU.
Plaid Cymru said there was little in the statement to help rebuild the Welsh economy and close the wage gap with England.
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The outlook for wages is "dreadful" with the squeeze on pay lasting for more than 10 years, independent economists have said.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said workers would earn less in real wages in 2021 than they did in 2008.
Other analysis shows the biggest losers between now and 2020 will be lower income families, with the poorest third likely to see incomes drop.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said millions of new jobs had been created.
Defending his Autumn Statement plans, the chancellor told Radio 4's Today programme that the government had brought job growth. It was investing for the future, preparing for a "rainy day", and government borrowing was on a "downward path", he added.
In its analysis of the Autumn Statement, the independent think tank, the IFS, said workers would earn less in real wages in 2021 than they did in 2008.
"This has, for sure, been the worst decade for living standards certainly since the last war and probably since the 1920s," said Paul Johnson, director of the IFS.
"We have seen no increase in average incomes so far and it does not look like we are going to get much of an increase over the next four or five years either."
The "outlook for living standards and for the public finances has deteriorated pretty sharply over the last nine months", he added.
Real average earnings - which factor in the rising cost of living - were forecast to rise by less than 5% between now and 2021. That forecast is 3.7% lower than was projected in March.
"Half of the wage growth projected for the next five years back in March is not now projected to happen. On these projections real wages will, remarkably, still be below their 2008 levels in 2021," Mr Johnson said.
"One cannot stress enough how dreadful that is - more than a decade without real earnings growth. We have certainly not seen a period remotely like it in the last 70 years."
The biggest impact on income in recent years, according to the IFS, has been felt by younger workers. Those aged 60 and over, in contrast, have seen living standards rise.
The squeeze on living standards could be worse during this Parliament than between 2010 and 2015, suggests the Resolution Foundation think tank. which campaigns for people on low and middle incomes.
Lower growth in pay, an accelerating rise in the cost of living, and welfare changes such as a freeze on working age benefits all combined to show that incomes on average would only grow by 0.2% a year, it said.
This compares to a rise of 0.5% during the coalition government years - a period of austerity in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
"Taking all this together we can look at the outlook for family incomes in the coming years, and it paints a grim picture," the think tank said.
Significantly, given the government's focus on "just about managing" families, the data shows that lower income families will be worse off.
The Foundation said the poorest 10% would see an income hit of more than 3% by 2020 as a result of tax and welfare policies.
"While top earners were hit the hardest following the financial crisis, the big difference looking forward is that the biggest losers are lower income families, with the entire bottom third of the income distribution set to see incomes fall in the years ahead," the Foundation said.
The Treasury's own analysis, published alongside the Autumn Statement, shows that the poorest 30% of households will see a negative impact on incomes from tax, welfare and public spending measures by 2019-20.
Primarily, this is a result of the main working age benefits and tax credits being frozen in cash terms for four years from April 2016. That includes entitlements such as jobseeker's allowance and income support.
That income freeze is forecast to coincide with an acceleration in inflation, pushing up the cost of living.
The chancellor offered some help to the lowest paid with changes to Universal Credit - the new umbrella benefit gradually being introduced across the UK.
Mr Hammond announced a reduction in the rate at which the benefit is withdrawn from people when they start work.
The Resolution Foundation report said this would have relatively little impact on family finances.
"When set against all other policy changes announced since the 2015 election, the Autumn Statement only undoes 7% of the hit from benefit cuts to the bottom half of the income distribution," it said.
Middle-income families will see some rises in income, but by no more than 1%, the Treasury documents show. The richest 10% will see the biggest hit to incomes.
More broadly, the IFS said that the OBR had forecast that national income in 2020-21 would be £30bn lower than projected in March - the equivalent to £1,000 per household.
Among Mr Hammond's announcements were:
The IFS said that Mr Hammond had clearly put whatever money he had into long-term plans.
"The clear prioritisation by Mr Hammond to direct most of what largesse he felt able to afford to paying for additional investment spending - roads, housing, research and development - to support the economy in the long run, rather than to pay to support the incomes of the "just-about-managing", or indeed public services, in the short run," Mr Johnson said.
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UK aviation regulator the CAA sought a joint no-deal transition plan with its EU counterpart but was rebuffed, correspondence seen by the BBC reveals.
The letters show the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) rejected a British call for a plan in July.
With months to go before the UK could drop out of the EU without a deal, the two bodies are yet to begin formal discussions.
EASA said technical talks could not pre-empt political agreement on Brexit.
In a letter to EASA in June, CAA chief executive Richard Moriarty said a "joint transition plan" was necessary to help assure people of "the on-going integrity of the aviation framework in any future scenario".
It said: "My team is standing by to support these discussions."
In response, EASA executive director Patrick Ky said he understood the request to limit disruption and safety risks.
But he added: "It remains the case that without sufficient clarity on both the outcome of the withdrawal process and the future UK legal framework such discussions would currently be premature."
If the UK leaves the EU without reaching a deal, the EU would not recognise certificates, approvals and licences issued by the CAA.
This could stop new aviation parts made in the UK - like wings constructed by Airbus - being put on EU planes.
British pilots with UK licences flying EU-registered aircraft would need to get second licences from another EU state or transfer their licences there.
The UK wants to participate in EASA after Brexit. Failing that, officials seek a deal where the EU and UK aviation authorities recognise each other's standards.
EASA has recently offered some UK aviation businesses the chance to be approved as "third county" suppliers to the EU, which means they could carry on doing business in the EU.
But not all areas of aviation are covered.
Although there are international agreements, there is no aviation equivalent of the World Trade Organization that would allow flights to continue seamlessly after a no-deal Brexit.
In a statement to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, EASA said Brexit negotiations were ongoing and added: "The outcome of those negotiations cannot be pre-empted, but until more clarity is gained of the terms of UK's withdrawal, discussion about technical details would not be useful since the framework for which we need to prepare is not known.
"Such technical-level discussions cannot pre-empt the overall political agreement, which is the subject of the withdrawal negotiations.
"Once the future framework is clearer, we will be open to engaging also in technical discussions."
The CAA said the UK would recognise safety licences and approvals issued by EASA and it urged EASA to recognise its own after Brexit.
A spokesman said: "We call upon the European Commission to allow EASA to hold discussions with us about the detailed technical arrangements that would apply in a no-deal scenario.
"We are ready to start these talks immediately."

A High Court ruling that Parliament - not the government alone - can trigger Article 50 threatens to delay Theresa May's timetable for leaving the EU, but could it spell the end for Brexit altogether?
Downing Street says it is confident that the Supreme Court will overrule the High Court and allow ministers, rather than MPs, to decide when to begin the formal process of leaving the EU.
But there is no evidence that government lawyers have yet amassed new arguments that might persuade the highest court in the land that the three eminent judges reached the wrong conclusion on Thursday.
So if that ruling stands, then the relevant secretary of state, David Davis - in charge of the process of exiting the EU -  has said his presumption is that an Act of Parliament would be required before triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. No 10 has said that's the 'logical conclusion' of the ruling, too.
Incidentally a former Conservative leader - Iain Duncan Smith - disagrees, and believes a straightforward vote of MPs would satisfy the courts.
But let's assume government ministers are right.
Could the mere act of consulting largely pro-Remain MPs scupper Brexit?
Well, no.
Although the former chancellor Ken Clarke and the former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg have told the BBC that they are prepared to vote against invoking Article 50, enough Remainers are saying they would respect the result of the referendum and vote to start the process of leaving the EU. The government would not lose this vote.
More likely is delay - rather than destruction - of Brexit.
But the opportunities for delay depend in part on the form any legislation would take.
Some pro-Brexit politicians are urging the government to come up with a simple one-line bill triggering Article 50.
The shorter and simpler the legislation, the more difficult it would be for Remainers to put forward elaborate amendments attempting to tie the government's hands in subsequent negotiations with the EU.
The former attorney general Dominic Grieve reckons that amendments could still be permitted, so long as they were addressed to the narrow substance of the bill.
This could allow, for example, an amendment to hold a second referendum on the final deal negotiated by the government, given that those negotiations were triggered by the Article 50 process - the option favoured by the former Labour leadership contender Owen Smith.
Even assuming that all amendments were defeated or ruled out of order, any legislation at all carries a risk for the government.
That's because it needs to be approved not just by the Commons but by the Lords.
And many pro-Remain unelected peers might be less squeamish than MPs about voting against Article 50.
If - and it's a big if - that were to happen, then the government would have to use the Parliament Acts to overrule them. Peers cannot stop legislation outright - they can simply force a rethink.
That would delay the process by about a year - scuppering not Brexit itself, but Theresa May's promise to start the process by the end of March 2017.
It might also extend our membership of the EU until just after the next general election, in the spring of 2020.
Some pro-Brexit Conservatives are already urging the prime minister to call an early election under these circumstances, on a platform of standing up for "the people" against "the peers".
With the party's lead in the polls, they calculate that this would strengthen the government's mandate.
But, given the complications and potential consequences of yesterday's ruling, you can understand why minsters are keeping their fingers firmly crossed that the Supreme Court will overturn it.

The EU must back Theresa May's Brexit plan or risk the UK leaving without a deal, the most senior member of the UK PM's cabinet has said.
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said the European Commission's proposals remained unacceptable.
And he appealed for compromise from the EU side in Brexit talks.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU was ready to offer the UK an unprecedented deal but it must not weaken the single market.
Speaking to a French business conference, Mr Lidington, who is Mrs May's de facto second-in-command, suggested there were only two choices on the table as Brexit talks entered a critical phase.
"With exactly seven months until the end of Article 50 process and less than two months ahead of the October European Council, we face the choice between the pragmatic proposals we are discussing now with the European Commission, or the risk of there being no deal.
"The alternative models do not meet the level of ambition or the outcome we all want to see delivered.
"So, we need the EU to engage with us on our positive vision of the future relationship."
His message was softened from a version of the speech released to journalists beforehand, which had simply warned of "no deal".
Mr Lidington was branded "arrogant" by the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum, which added: "Good deal, bad deal or no deal, Brexit is a big deal and it must be for the people to decide."
It came as Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab denied reports Michel Barnier has turned down UK requests for extended meetings in Brussels.
Mr Raab was said by The Guardian to have been frustrated by the EU chief negotiator's alleged failure to make himself available for talks.
But Mr Raab told a Lords Committee he had a "good professional and personal rapport" with Mr Barnier.
And he would be holding a "long" meeting with him on Friday.
Mr Raab vowed to increase the pace and frequency of talks with Mr Barnier when he took over in July from David Davis, who quit as Brexit Secretary in protest at Theresa May's white paper on trade with the EU when Britain leaves.
"I'm confident that a deal is within our sights," Mr Raab told the Lords EU Committee. "We're bringing ambition, pragmatism, energy and if, and I expect it will be, and if it is matched, we get a deal."
He added: "Firstly, in relation to whatever tittle tattle may appear in whatever newspaper, I shall be over in Brussels tomorrow (Thursday) evening for a long, substantive meeting on Friday, I hope that gives you the facts directly with Michel Barnier."
Britain is on course to leave the EU on 29 March.
Both sides are hoping to agree a divorce deal and a statement on future trading relations by the next EU summit on 17 October - but Mr Raab suggested that deadline could slip, saying there was a "possibility that it may creep beyond" that date.
On the £39bn Brexit "divorce bill", Mr Raab said a no-deal scenario could affect arrangements over payments to the EU.
"I don't think it could be safely assumed on anyone's side that the financial settlement as has been agreed by the withdrawal agreement would then just be paid in precisely the same shape or speed or rate if there was no deal."
And he rejected claims by pro-EU Labour peer Lord Liddle that any deal document was likely to be "vacuous" and "opaque", saying he expected it to contain a "degree of detail" and some "clear choices".
Theresa May's chief Brexit advisor Olly Robbins will no longer have to face questions from MPs or peers, Mr Raab told the committee, which was holding a special meeting during Parliament's summer recess.
The two men were grilled by MPs in a joint appearance before the Commons Brexit committee in July.
But Mr Raab told the Lords EU committee that in future it would be ministers only - and not civil servants - that "come and be accountable" to Parliamentary committees over Brexit.
Meanwhile Mr Barnier, speaking Berlin, said the EU was "prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country".
But, he added, it would not permit anything that weakened the single market.
"We respect Britain's red lines scrupulously. In return, they must respect what we are. Single market means single market ... There is no single market a la carte," he told reporters.
The pound rose 0.6%, to around $1.2950, after the EU chief negotiator's comments.

It's going to be quite a baptism of fire for the UK's new Brexit secretary on his first visit to Brussels in the new job.
He'll hardly have a foot through the door at the European Commission before he's faced with a barrage of questions. The EU wants clarity on the UK's negotiating position: is it based on Theresa May's Chequers cabinet agreement or the subsequent parliamentary amendments? Will the UK position change again in a few days or a week's time?
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier then has another message he's hell-bent on delivering. Work with us, he will say to Dominic Raab, to finish the UK's exit deal - the so-called Withdrawal Agreement - otherwise the chances are rising of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal come March next year.
Now coincidence of coincidences, just as Mr Raab arrives in town, the European Commission will publish a paper instructing EU governments to do more to prepare for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit which - it warns - would have a considerable impact on European businesses and citizens.
The paper mentions amongst other things the potential immediate impact on EU borders - with goods and people from the UK subject to customs checks. It predicts the aviation industry could be severely disrupted- with EU-UK airline and passenger rights agreements no longer valid. It advises that personal data transfers to the UK would be subject to new limitations and that the City of London would no longer have financial passporting rights.
The paper also alerts pharmaceutical companies to the fact that the testing of European medicines could no longer to be carried out in the UK in the case of a no-deal Brexit and it informs that the UK would have to be removed from EU databases.
Contrary to some UK media reports which suggest that the Commission's "preparedness paper" as it's known is being published now as a result of the political turmoil and uncertainty in Westminster, this is something the Commission has been working on for months. The Commission likes to say it began its preparedness research when the UK government began the mantra of "no deal is better than a bad deal" though that, I think, is questionable.
I've seen a draft of the preparedness paper but have been told it is a work in progress and will only be finalised on Thursday morning, just in time for Mr Raab's Brussels arrival.
As one senior EU diplomat put it to me: "When it comes to Brexit, there are no innocent timings."
Having had a lot of background chats with senior European officials of late, I can say with certainty that the Commission paper is not simply a scaremongering exercise.
There is genuine concern in Brussels that:
The EU thinks a Brexit no-deal scenario would be a bureaucratic, practical and financial nightmare for Europe.
So expect Mr Barnier to adopt encouraging tones with Mr Raab, reminding him that the Withdrawal Agreement is already 80% signed off between the EU and UK.
However, the 20% left is challenging to say the least - covering flashpoints like data protection, UK military bases in Cyprus and who should police the withdrawal agreement and subsequent almost two-year transition period.
On the Irish border backstop - where both the EU and UK have undertaken to avoid the re-introduction of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Ireland whatever their post-Brexit relationship looks like - the Commission, I'm told, is working on rewording the protocol in the declared hope that will make it easier for team Theresa May to sign up to.
Former EU trade official Peter Guilford told me this week he believes the Brussels rumours that Brexit talks will go down to the wire this autumn and it would only be when the Commission "saw the whites of UK negotiators' eyes" that they would start making their own compromises instead of always hammering the UK for them.
But EU diplomats wonder: can Theresa May hang on till then?

The UK must come forward with proposals aimed at avoiding a hard border in Ireland, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier said it is, so far, unclear what the UK is willing to commit to in Northern Ireland.
That echoes the position of the Irish government.
It wants the UK to give more commitments before the Brexit talks can begin considering a trade deal.
The prime minister has repeatedly said that the "unique circumstances" of Northern Ireland will require a "specific" solution.
During a speech in Brussels, Mr Barnier focused on the issue of what EU rules may continue to apply in Northern Ireland after Brexit.
He said: "There are over one hundred areas of cross-border co-operation on the island of Ireland.
"Such co-operation depends, in many cases, on the application of common rules and common regulatory space."
He added that the UK has said it would continue to apply some EU rules on its territory after Brexit but it is "unclear what rules will apply in Northern Ireland after Brexit".
UK ministers and unionist politicians have said they will not accept an arrangement which will "endanger the integrity of the UK single market".
However, Mr Barnier said Northern Ireland already has specific rules in some areas that are different to the rest of the UK.
He pointed to the "all-island" single electricity market, or specific regulations for plant health for the whole island of Ireland.
The DUP has criticised Mr Barnier's comments, describing them as an attempt to "bully the UK government toward support for a Brexit border scenario which would weaken Northern Ireland's constitutional position and devastate the local economy".
MEP Diane Dodds said any Brexit deal must reflect the fact that Great Britain is, by far, Northern Ireland's most important marketplace.
"We will not be cut off from the rest of UK either by associate membership of the EU or by regulatory divergence from Great Britain," she said.
"The DUP will exert our influence to ensure this is the case."
On Friday, Prime Minister Theresa May was told she had two weeks to makes progress on the border and the Brexit bill if the EU is to agree to begin Brexit trade talks before the end of the year.
EU Council President Donald Tusk said he was "ready" to move onto the next phase of Brexit talks, covering future relations with the UK.
But he said the UK must show much more progress on the "divorce bill" and the Irish border by early next month.
Mrs May said "good progress" was being made but more needed to be done.

There can be no Brexit withdrawal agreement without a "backstop" option for the Irish border, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier said the Republic of Ireland has the full support of all EU member states and all EU institutions.
The backstop would involve NI, or the UK as a whole, aligning with the EU rules required to support North-South cooperation and an all-island economy.
Mr Barnier was speaking at the start of a two-day visit to Ireland.
The UK has accepted the need for a backstop to be written into the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
But it has not agreed what EU rules it should cover.
At the beginning of the all-island Brexit forum in Dundalk, County Louth, Mr Barnier said he knows that the so-called backstop has been the subject of "heated discussions in the UK".
"To be clear: without a backstop, there can be no withdrawal agreement," said Mr Barnier. "This is an EU issue, not only an Irish issue."
It almost became Brexit bingo - as journalists lost count of how many times Mr Barnier referenced the "backstop" option for the Irish border.
The backstop would mean that in the absence of any other solution, Northern Ireland, or the UK as a whole, would align with EU rules required to support north-south cooperation and an all-island economy.
While in principle the UK signed up to this option, precise detail on it has yet to appear.
Mr Barnier's three points were:
In brief - the backstop was agreed - so let's get on with it.
Mr Barnier also denied claims from Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), that he has been "aggressive" towards Northern Ireland unionists in the Brexit talks.
The DUP leader said earlier that Mr Barnier did not understand the dispute and was not an "honest broker".
In response, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator said he was not ready to engage in "polemics" with Mrs Foster.
Mr Barnier's visit comes amid rising tensions over the future UK-Ireland border.
He told a press conference in Dundalk at the beginning of the all-island Brexit forum that his "door is open" to Mrs Foster and the DUP.
He said he had not approached the negotiations in a "spirit of revenge".
He added that he regretted the UK had voted to leave the EU, and said he was determined to work with the UK to find a solution to the Irish border issue.
The all-island Brexit forum is being hosted by the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar and his deputy, Simon Coveney.
On Sunday, Mr Barnier said the UK was contradicting itself over its Irish border policy.
But Mrs Foster said she believes Mr Barnier does not understand the dispute and is "not an honest broker".
In return, he said that Mrs Foster needed to respect that his role was to negotiate on behalf of the EU and not to act as a mediator.
Meanwhile the Taoiseach again there needed to be "meaningful progress" on the border issue by the June EU summit.
Mr Varadkar said otherwise it would be difficult to get the withdrawal agreement in place by October.
In December, the UK and EU reached a political agreement in which the UK committed to protecting north-south cooperation on the island of Ireland.
It also guaranteed there would be no hard border, including physical infrastructure or related checks and controls.
However, the EU's proposed backstop solution to avoid a hard border - keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union after Brexit - continues to be at odds with what the UK government and the DUP say they would accept.
Mrs Foster told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg the DUP would not accept Northern Ireland being treated differently to the rest of the UK.
She said: "Michel Barnier's trying to present himself as someone who cares deeply about Northern Ireland and if that is the case he needs to hear the fact that we are part of the United Kingdom [and] will remain part of the United Kingdom constitutionally, politically and economically.
"Therefore his proposal of us being in an all-Ireland regulatory scenario with a border down the Irish Sea simply does not work.
"It does not work constitutionally, politically and it certainly does not work from an economic perspective."
Mrs Foster added: "We've tried to get him to understand the unionist position for the people of Northern Ireland but he hasn't really responded and I'm disappointed about that.
"I don't think he does understand the wider unionist culture of Northern Ireland."
The DUP is also expressing annoyance that Mr Varadkar is visiting Northern Ireland later without giving notice.
Mr Barnier is due to meet Mr Varadkar on Monday and will also speak to business leaders on both sides of the Irish border during his trip.

Michel Barnier has clarified remarks he is reported to have made about Brexit.
The EU negotiator was quoted as saying he saw the process as an opportunity to "teach" the British people and others what leaving the single market means.
Mr Barnier said he actually told a meeting it "was an occasion of great explanation for everyone in the EU".
The BBC understands he was talking in Italy about explaining the benefits of the single market to a broad European audience, not just specifically the UK.
The latest round of negotiations over the UK's exit from the EU concluded last week, with the two sides due to officially meet again later this month.
The UK, which is keen to move on from issues directly related to its withdrawal to talk about its future relationship with the EU, has said it would like to "intensify" the pace of talks, with Downing Street saying it is open to holding negotiations on a rolling basis.
There has been unconfirmed speculation that Prime Minister Theresa May is to make a major speech on Brexit later this month in the run-up to the Conservative Party conference.
Speaking at a conference in Italy on Saturday, Mr Barnier said he did not want to punish the UK for voting to leave the EU in last year's referendum.
But he reportedly warned that "there are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn't been explained to the British people".
"We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means," he reportedly told the Ambrosetti forum.
Responding to the remarks, a No 10 spokesman said "the British people have heard those arguments."
Mr Barnier tweeted on Monday that what he had said was that Brexit was an "occasion to explain single market benefits in all countries, including my own".
He added "we do not want to "educate" or "teach lessons".
The former French minister, who met the Irish Republic's Foreign Minister Simon Coveney for talks on Monday, later reiterated these comments when speaking to a BBC reporter outside the European Parliament.
Amid growing tensions between the two sides about the progress of talks and the priority given to different issues, a senior EU official has said talks about the UK's financial obligations after Brexit are going backwards.
Gunther Oettinger, the European Commissioner responsible for the EU budget, said "the Brits have to accept that their obligations are going beyond March 2019".
"In July we had been thinking 'yes, they are on the way to accept it'. Now in the last few days they are coming back," he told a technology conference in Brussels.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said Mr Oettinger had told him he believed that progress made on the issue in the July round of talks had been reversed during last week's session.
A source at the Department for Exiting the EU said it did not recognise this description and that there had been a robust debate about money.
Last week British officials gave a three-hour long presentation on the legal basis of the EU's request for a Brexit financial settlement.

The UK has until the end of 2020 to change its mind about leaving Europe's single market, the European Union's chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier said that if the UK changed its "red lines" during the post-Brexit transition period, the EU would also change its position.
Theresa May says the UK will quit the EU single market and customs union.
She says this is needed to ensure the UK has the power to control borders and do trade deals with other countries.
The UK is set to leave the EU in March 2019, at which point the transition phase - which the UK government calls the implementation phase - will begin. This will last until 31 December 2020, when the final arrangements agreed between the two sides will kick in.
Negotiations are under way between the two sides, but the UK has already said it plans to leave the single market, which provides for frictionless trade across borders and involves the free movement of people between member states.
In an interview with reporters from several European newspapers, Mr Barnier said the UK would not leave the single market and customs union until 31 December, and until this date, "everything is possible".
"If the UK wanted to change its red lines, we would therefore change ours," he said.
Mr Barnier added that he was not expecting this to happen, but that the EU would not be dogmatic.
He suggested the UK could follow a similar model to Norway, which has access to the single market in return for a financial contribution, accepting EU law and allowing the free movement of people.
This is one of those moments where Michel Barnier says things he has said before but in a way that is revealing about how the rest of the Brexit process will unfold.
The EU doesn't think the future relationship with the UK will be finalised by the date of its departure on 29 March 2019.
Which means that during the transition/implementation phase the UK could change its mind - quite significantly - about what it wants and then negotiate on that basis.
It also suggests that the EU wants the document sketching out the shape of the future relationship which will be agreed during the next phase of talks this year to be very, very open - not the detailed blueprint the British government seeks.
On the current trajectory, the UK will be out of the EU in 2019 but the arguments about whether it should remain in the customs union and the single market could carry on right up until a deal on the future relationship is sealed.
The UK government says it wants a comprehensive, bespoke free trade trade deal with the EU to replace its single market membership.
It wants to agree this by the Autumn in time for a "withdrawal agreement" to be ratified by the UK and EU Parliaments by March. But the EU has suggested only a "political declaration" will be possible by this deadline.
On Tuesday, the European Council's president said Brexit makes him "furious".
Speaking in Dublin, Donald Tusk said the UK's departure from the EU was "one of the saddest moments in twenty-first century European history".

They seek it here, they seek it there - but the centrepiece of the government's Brexit legislation, the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, seems to have gone into hiding.
Most Westminster observers expected the Commons to embark on eight days of detailed debate, in Committee of the Whole House, pretty much as soon as their conference recess was over.
Eyebrows were raised when it was not on this week's agenda - and they shot skywards when it was not put on the agenda for next week.
It is not a postponement, because the committee stage has never been scheduled, but something seems to be afoot.
What might it be? Challenged in Commons business questions by the SNP's Pete Wishart, Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom noted that MPs had proposed more than 300 amendments and 54 new clauses to the Bill and these were being studied by ministers.
And there is little doubt that some of these pose a real threat to the government's tenuous Commons majority.
The threat-in-chief is posed by amendments from the Conservative former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, to limit ministers' powers to re-write the law in the process of enacting Brexit.
Remember, this Bill is designed to allow the government to reprocess four decades of accumulated EU law into British law, so that the UK has functional legislation on all kinds of crucial areas, come Brexit Day.
The powers are pretty sweeping, because the Bill provides a toolkit to build an edifice which has not yet been designed - and Mr Grieve's amendments express the qualms of some MPs (including those of many strong Brexiteers) about their extent. He is the man most likely to amend.
I suspect the government is already whispering to him, behind the scenes, to produce an appropriate compromise, probably with the helpful endorsement of the Commons Procedure Select Committee behind it.
Was that the PM's bag-carrier, Seema Kennedy, I spotted in the public galler, when Mr Grieve set out his stall in evidence to the Procedure Committee on Wednesday?
If ministers can craft a compromise amendment, via ProcCom, face can be saved and division averted.
But with plenty more amendments still raining down, Mr Grieve is not the only threat. A recent addition is an amendment co-signed by the Nottinghamshire axis of Conservative ex-chancellor Ken Clarke and Labour's arch-Europhile, Chris Leslie.
This is a cunning production which takes the PM's commitment to a transition from full EU membership to Brexit, made in her Florence speech, and seeks to put it on the face of the Bill.
It follows her words precisely. But the killer point is that, if there's no transition, then a fresh act would be required to trigger Brexit day. In other words, if no transition, then they must come back and ask Parliament "what next?"
Now the government is not legislating against the clock as it was on the Article 50 Bill, when it was racing to get the measure through Commons and Lords before the end of the last Parliamentary year.
But its schedule is clearly slipping a little.
Next week is to be devoted to a little humdrum legislation, an opposition day debate and backbench business - that leaves seven debating weeks before Parliament embarks on its Christmas recess.
Take out one week to debate the Budget, and another for the November mini-half term (when a lot of select committee visits have been scheduled) and you have six weeks in which to cram the promised eight committee stage days devoted to the Bill, and the minimum of two days needed for report stage and third reading. Not impossible - but it does make for a packed Parliamentary programme, with little room for anything else.
There is rising speculation that the continuing delay in getting going reflects ministerial indecision about how to handle the amendments to the Bill - although another theory is that the government is waiting until next week's European summit is done, in the hope that it can firm up the terms of a possible transitional arrangement.
But the heat is on.

John Bercow has vowed "creativity" in Parliament if Boris Johnson ignores a law designed to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The Commons Speaker also said in a speech that the only possible Brexit was one backed by MPs.
A new law, passed before the suspension of Parliament, forces the PM to seek a delay until 31 January 2020, unless a deal or no-deal exit is approved by MPs by 19 October.
The PM has said he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for a delay.
Responding to Mr Bercow's comments, Tory Brexiter MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said the role of the Speaker had become "irretrievably politicised and radicalised".
Meanwhile, Downing Street has announced Mr Johnson will travel to Luxembourg on Monday to hold talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and the country's prime minister Xavier Bettel.
Delivering a lecture in London, Mr Bercow said: "Not obeying the law must surely be a non-starter. Period."
He said it would be a "terrible example to set to the rest of society".
"The only form of Brexit which we will have, whenever that might be, will be a Brexit that the House of Commons has explicitly endorsed," he said.
"Surely, in 2019, in modern Britain, in a parliamentary democracy, we - parliamentarians, legislators - cannot in all conscience be conducting a debate as to whether adherence to the law is or isn't required."
He called it "astonishing" that "anyone has even entertained the notion".
If the government comes close to disobeying the law, Mr Bercow said that Parliament "would want to cut off such a possibility and do so forcefully".
"If that demands additional procedural creativity in order to come to pass, it is a racing certainty that this will happen, and that neither the limitations of the existing rule book nor the ticking of the clock will stop it doing so," he added.
The new law could force a Brexit delay beyond the current 31 October deadline by requiring the prime minister to request an extension to the UK's EU membership.
This would be done by making him write to EU leaders to prolong talks under Article 50 - the part of the EU's Lisbon Treaty which sets out what happens when a country decides that it wants to leave the EU.
The law forcing the PM to seek a delay unless MPs vote for a deal or no deal received royal assent on Monday, the final day that MPs sat in this session.
Parliament was suspended - or prorogued - in the early hours of Tuesday and is not scheduled to return until 14 October.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said the government would abide by the law, but would "test to the limit" what it requires of ministers.
Mr Bercow said: "One should no more refuse to request an extension of Article 50 because of what one might regard as the noble end of departing from the EU as soon as possible, than one could possibly excuse robbing a bank on the basis that the cash stolen would be donated to a charitable cause immediately afterwards."
Sir Bernard, who chairs the constitutional affairs select committee in Parliament, said the Commons should "adapt itself" to a new role for the Speaker.
He accused Mr Bercow of launching a "personal attack" on the prime minister, insisting this would have been "unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago".
The current position allows the occupant "unregulated and untrammelled power", he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"It's a kind of majoritarian dictatorship position," he added.
Another Leave-voting Conservative MP, Michael Fabricant, said Mr Bercow had brought the office of Speaker into disrepute:
However, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said Mr Bercow was simply "exercising his proper role, which is to protect the right of Parliament".
He said a "sizeable number" of MPs across all political parties were against allowing the PM to "push us into a no-deal Brexit".
Such an outcome would be "against the will of Parliament, and I actually think against the will of the people as well," he added.
On Thursday, Mr Johnson insisted the UK "will be ready" to leave the EU by the current deadline without an agreement "if we have to".
In response to the publication of the government's Yellowhammer document, an assessment of a reasonable worst-case scenario in the event of a no-deal Brexit, Mr Johnson reiterated it was "the worst-case scenario".
"In reality we will certainly be ready for a no-deal Brexit if we have to do it and I stress again that's not where we intend to end up," Mr Johnson said.
Mr Bercow has announced he will stand down as Commons Speaker and MP at the next election or on 31 October, whichever comes first.
The House of Commons has confirmed an election to choose his successor will take place on Monday 4 November.
The Speaker's warning came as the EU's chief Brexit negotiator told political leaders in the European Parliament on Thursday that he could not say whether contacts with the UK government would result in a deal by mid-October.
Michel Barnier, in a speech to MEPs, suggested that negotiating a new withdrawal agreement remained uncertain despite discussions between Mr Johnson's team and the EU.
"I cannot tell you objectively whether contacts with the government of Mr Johnson will be able to reach an agreement by mid-October," he said.
"While we have previously reached an agreement, as far as we can speak, we have no reason to be optimistic."
He added: "We will see in the coming weeks if the British are able to make concrete proposals in writing that are legally operational."

The chancellor confirmed to MPs what has been widely known in Westminster for a long time.
Regular readers will know that from time to time I have ranted on about it here.
But Philip Hammond told MPs on Wednesday afternoon that indeed, it is the case that the cabinet has not yet had its big bonanza conversation about the "end state", when the prime minister will have to put her cards on the table finally, and explain the kind of relationship she wants with the EU after we leave, and after the transition period.
She will then have to try to persuade her cabinet colleagues to back her view.
It is a conversation that she has delayed for months, holding it back because she knows the cabinet is divided, and bringing them together could be extremely hard.
It boils down to this. Ministers like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove believe that Britain's future lies in striking out on our own, out of reach of most of the tentacles of the EU's institutions.
It is an over-simplification, but to explain the difference, you can point to the deal that Canada did with the EU, a free trade agreement essentially, where there is co-operation and collaboration to make it easy for business.
But there is nothing like the current situation - whether that's on immigration, rules for industry or the legal system. There is a strong and significant faction inside the Tory party that agrees with them and are extremely well organised and willing to make trouble if they see that possibility being undermined.
That's what explains the co-ordinated cage-rattling by Brexiteers since the first phase deal fell apart on Monday afternoon.
But there are others in Theresa May's team who think the best thing for business, and the best thing for the country is to mirror the EU's arrangements as far as we possibly can. The idea is that even though we will have left the EU, we preserve as much of our trading relationship as possible, even if that means continuing to be bound by many of the EU's rules and routines in all but name.
Again, it's a generalisation, but a relationship like Norway and the EU where they have very close ties (but not much influence) gives you a rough idea. Theresa May always says that she wants a "bespoke deal", but you can get a sense of the two different kinds of options here.
The technical term in Whitehall for the competing visions is "high or low alignment".
While the government disputes that it is only a choice of one or the other, politically in the Tory party it is a question of two "sides". And so far, the prime minister has avoided coming down completely on one side or another. Talk to ministers on different sides privately and they both seem to think Theresa May agrees with them, although they can't be completely sure..
There are intensely strong feelings in both camps, and so far, Theresa May's way of broadly avoiding arguments has been not to have the discussion.
Essentially what could be an enormous row, that might even end up with some members of the Cabinet resigning, has been postponed, rather than resolved.
But the crisis over the DUP has tightened the valve on what's a political pressure cooker. Because, to use the jargon, that dispute is essentially about 'alignment'.
The problem of Northern Ireland is the DUP's deep discomfort that Northern Ireland could be more closely aligned to the rest of the EU, and Dublin, than the rest of the UK. Basically, they don't want to be pulled more tightly to Dublin than to Westminster. It is its own deeply important, and sensitive, issue.
But it has forced the question of alignment more generally out into the open. And it's the first time the truce on the issue has been tested. How closely 'aligned' should  the UK really be outside the EU?
The prime minister had to make a call over the weekend to get to a potential deal to move on to the next phase of the Brexit talks.
But the way that deal held out the possibility of "high alignment", was simply not acceptable to many people in her party, as well as the DUP.
So now, the time is coming, and coming soon, when she will have to answer the question she's avoided answering in detail for many months. And the discussion she has been postponing in Cabinet for over a year.
There's a good reason. It's been to keep a lid on the ideological disputes that she knows exists.
On Wednesday afternoon Number 10 confirmed officially that the cabinet would have the discussion before Christmas. Her allies point again and again to the clues that she has given in her big interventions in the debate - whether the Lancaster House speech or her address in Florence.
On the question of alignment, sources in the Department for Exiting the European Union say that she made her position plain with this simple passage.
"There will be areas which do affect our economic relations where we and our European friends may have different goals; or where we share the same goals but want to achieve them through different means.
"And there will be areas where we want to achieve the same goals in the same ways, because it makes sense for our economies."
But the carefully constructed phrases she has put forward in her major speeches about Brexit have been, in a sense, sophisticated sticking plasters.
They have set out generalities, not specifics, and whether the implications were misunderstood or just ignored at the time, the reality of having to make actual decisions as the negotiations progress mean that sooner or later, she will have to rip them off.

Commons authorities have cast doubt on the idea that public donations could pay for the cost of making Big Ben chime when the UK leaves the EU.
Big Ben has been largely silent since refurbishment of its tower began.
But Boris Johnson has suggested crowdfunding could cover the costs of getting the bell working on 31 January.
The House of Commons Commission has said the estimated cost of up to £500,000 cannot be justified and using donations would be "unprecedented".
An amendment to the PM's Brexit bill, which would have required it to chime on Brexit day at 23:00 GMT, failed last week.
But on Tuesday, Mr Johnson told BBC Breakfast: "We're working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong, because there are some people who want to."
The commission said ongoing work to the Palace of Westminster's Elizabeth Tower meant getting the chimes working again now would cost between £350,000 and £500,000.
The body - a group of MPs and officials responsible for the day-to-day running of Parliament - later issued a second statement raising concerns about any type of crowdfunding.
Any fundraising would have to be "consistent with principles of propriety and proper oversight of public expenditure", it said.
It added that the Commons had a "well-established" process by which it approved spending which allowed it to "preserve its constitutional position in relation to government".
When the restoration work started in 2017, it was agreed that Big Ben should sound for Remembrance Sunday, Armistice Day and New Year's Eve.
According to the commission, this arrangement was made so the project team could plan its works around the dates well in advance.
The House of Commons Commission's estimate for the cost of sounding Big Ben on Brexit day is made up of two separate parts:
The commission says the floor in the belfry has been removed and there would be a significant cost to put in and then remove a temporary floor.
As well as the floor, the £120,000 figure also includes the cost of installing and dismantling the temporary mechanism (an electric bell hammer) to sound the bell.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said: "The Commission believes it is important to weigh up the costs this would involve if Big Ben is to chime on 31 January.
"You are talking about £50,000 a bong. We also have to bear in mind that the only people who will hear it will be those who live near or are visiting Westminster."
However, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage questioned the £500,000 figure, and accused the commission of "obstruction".
In an article for the Telegraph, he wrote: "It tolled on New Year's Eve, on Remembrance Sunday and on Armistice Day.
"Did this cost £500,000 on each occasion? I would love to know the answer."
Brexiteer Mark Francois, one of the Tory MPs behind the failed amendment, has said it would be "inconceivable" if Big Ben did not sound to mark the occasion.
But Labour MP David Lammy said £500,000 was a "huge amount of money to waste on jingoism".
The PM's official spokesman said there was not a "specific government fund" to meet the costs of getting Big Ben to chime on Brexit day.
But he added: "If the public wants Big Ben to bong and the money is raised, then that is great.
"We will make sure that - whatever happens in regard to Big Ben's bongs - January 31 is properly marked."

Incoming UK PM Boris Johnson faces "challenging" times, the EU has warned, as it reacted to his election as new Conservative leader.
Mr Johnson has the immediate task of guiding the UK out of the EU ahead of a 31 October deadline.
He says he wants to renegotiate an agreement with the EU, ditching large parts of the deal outgoing PM Theresa May struck last year.
But EU leaders have said the withdrawal agreement is not up for renegotiation.
The European Commission's newly elected President, Ursula von der Leyen, has however said she is willing to grant the UK another extension to Brexit talks, if London comes up with good reasons.
Congratulating Mr Johnson, Mrs von der Leyen said: "There are many different and difficult topics to tackle together. There are challenging times ahead of us. I think it is very important to build up a strong and a good working relation because we have the duty to deliver something that is good for people in Europe and in the United Kingdom."
The EU's Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is due to meet MEPs on the European Parliament's Brexit Steering Group in an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday to respond to Mr Johnson's election.
US President Donald Trump meanwhile congratulated Mr Johnson on his victory, tweeting:
Later, he said: "We have a really good man is going to be the prime minister of the UK now, Boris Johnson. A good man. He's tough and he's smart. They're saying 'Britain Trump'. They call him 'Britain Trump' and people are saying that's a good thing. They like me over there.
"That's what they wanted. That's what they need... He'll get it done. Boris is good. He's going to do a good job."
In the often divisive Brexit world of "them and us", it is easy to forget that, beyond Brexit, EU leaders still see the UK as a close partner and ally.
Tuesday's messages of congratulation to Boris Johnson from across Europe were a timely reminder.
Whatever happens with Brexit, France, Germany, Poland et al still very much hope to work closely with the UK on international issues like Russia sanctions, Iran and human rights protection.
But EU leaders' welcoming tone does not signal a willingness to accept whatever Prime Minister Johnson might demand in terms of changes to the Brexit deal.
He's right when he says a no-deal Brexit is bad for Brussels, but he overestimates EU wiggle room. Amendments will only be forthcoming if EU leaders deem them workable and are convinced the new prime minister commands a majority in parliament to get the Brexit deal through once and for all.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel congratulated Mr Johnson, saying she would keep pursuing a "strong friendship" with London.
"I congratulate Boris Johnson and look forward to good co-operation. Our countries should continue to share a strong friendship in the future."
In a statement, her CDU party said they expect Mr Johnson "to pursue a responsible policy in Britain's interest. Responsible means - even for a Brexit hardliner - to prevent an unregulated Brexit at all costs".
German industry chiefs have also warned of the dangers of no-deal Brexit. Joachim Lang, CEO of the Association of German Industry, said: "Threats from London to leave the EU with no deal are harmful and will come back like a boomerang. They exacerbate damages that have already affected the economy."
Mr Johnson has pledged the UK will leave the EU on 31 October "do or die", accepting that a no-deal exit will happen if a new agreement cannot be reached by then.
France's President Emmanuel Macron praised outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May's "courage and dignity" and the fact that she had never "blocked the workings of the European Union".
On the new man in charge, he said: "I am looking forward to working with him, not only on European topics and the ongoing Brexit negotiations, but also on important international topics... such as Iran and international security."
Italy's Interior Minister and leader of the Lega (League) party, Matteo Salvini, tweeted: "Good job #BorisJohnson. The fact that on the left they depict him as 'more dangerous than the Lega' makes me like even him more."
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted:
The deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Ireland, Simon Coveney, tweeted:

Boris Johnson has said he "won't be deterred by anybody" from leaving the EU on 31 October.
The prime minister said he was "cautiously optimistic" of getting a Brexit deal, but the UK would leave by the deadline "whatever happens".
EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he did not have "reasons to be optimistic" over getting a deal.
Mr Johnson will meet him and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday for talks.
During the PM's speech, at the Convention of the North in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, he was heckled by an audience member who told him to "get back to Parliament" and "sort out the mess that you have created".
Earlier this week Parliament passed a law forcing Mr Johnson to ask for an extension to Brexit.
He will have to write to the EU on 19 October to ask for an extra three months, unless he returns with a deal - then approved by MPs - or gets the Commons to back a no-deal Brexit.
But despite the new law, Mr Johnson said he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for an extension.
The Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, vowed to act with "creativity" if Mr Johnson ignored the law, saying it would be a "terrible example to set to the rest of society".
MPs managed to pass the law before Parliament was suspended - or prorogued - in the early hours of Tuesday morning until 14 October.
Mr Johnson said the government had made the move so it could hold a Queen's Speech and put forward its new domestic policy agenda.
But opposition MPs claim it was to stop scrutiny in Parliament of his Brexit plans.
Earlier this week, a Scottish court ruled the prorogation was unlawful as it was motivated by an "improper purpose of stymieing Parliament".
The government is appealing against the decision and a ruling will be made by the Supreme Court in London on Tuesday.
Answering questions after his speech, Mr Johnson said: "We are working incredibly hard to get a deal. There is the rough shape of the deal to be done.
"I have been to talk to various other EU leaders, particularly in Germany, in France and in Ireland, where we made a good deal of progress.
"I'm seeing [Mr Juncker and Mr Barnier] on Monday and we will talk about the ideas that we've been working on and we will see where we get."
He added: "I would say I'm cautiously optimistic."
MPs are still demanding Parliament be recalled to scrutinise a number of Brexit-related issues, including the release of so-called "Yellowhammer" papers - a government assessment of a reasonable worst-case scenario in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
But Mr Johnson said that "whatever the shenanigans that may be going on at Westminster", the government would "get on with delivering our agenda and preparing to take this country out of the EU on 31 October".
He added that there would still be "ample time" for MPs to scrutinise any deal reached with the EU, adding that he "very much hoped" to agree one at the EU summit on 17 and 18 October.
The Times newspaper reported that a Brexit deal could be on the horizon as the Northern Irish Democratic Unionists (DUP) - the party which has a confidence and supply deal with the Conservatives - had reportedly agreed to "shift its red lines" over the backstop.
The backstop is the policy in the existing withdrawal agreement - negotiated between former Prime Minister Theresa May and the EU - aimed at preventing a hard border returning to the island of Ireland, but it has proved controversial with a number of pro-Brexit MPs.
However, the reports were rejected by the DUP's leader Arlene Foster, who tweeted: "Anonymous sources lead to nonsense stories."
A UK spokesman in Brussels revealed the negotiating team had "presented some ideas" on an all-island Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary solution - essentially keeping Northern Ireland aligned with EU regulations on animal and food health.
But the DUP has said it would not support any arrangement that could see Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of the UK after Brexit.

Downing Street has hit back at Boris Johnson over his criticism of Theresa May's approach to Brexit, saying she is providing "serious leadership" and "a serious plan".
Mr Johnson has written in the Daily Telegraph that the approach agreed at Chequers "means disaster" for Britain.
The ex-foreign secretary said the PM's plan would hand the EU "victory".
But Mrs May's official spokesman said: "There's no new ideas in this article to respond to."
Downing Street said the prime minister's blueprint for future relations with the EU, hammered out with cabinet members at her country residence in July, was deliverable and could win the support of the House of Commons.
And former home secretary Amber Rudd told the BBC's Politics Live: "Once again, it's a case of leap before you look - there's absolutely no proposal here."
Ms Rudd said the Chequers plan represented "the best shot we have of Brexit that's going to work for the UK".
Mr Johnson resigned from the government in July in protest at the deal agreed by the cabinet at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence, as the UK's preferred way forward in negotiations with Brussels.
Other Tory MPs have also criticised the package, and the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, says he is "strongly opposed" to the proposals.
Mrs May's plan would see the UK agreeing a "common rulebook" with the EU for trading in goods, in an attempt to maintain frictionless trade at the border.
Critics argue this would leave the UK tied to EU rules after it leaves on 29 March 2019, and prevent Britain from striking its own trade deals in years to come.
If the UK and the EU do reach a deal, MPs will then have to approve it.
In his first intervention on the EU debate since quitting the government, Mr Johnson compared negotiations between Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Mr Barnier to a wrestling match.
He wrote: "The whole thing is about as pre-ordained as a bout between Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy; and in this case, I am afraid, the inevitable outcome is a victory for the EU, with the UK lying flat on the canvas and 12 stars circling symbolically over our semi-conscious head."
Mr Johnson said negotiations based on the Chequers plan had so far seen the EU take "every important trick", adding: "The UK has agreed to hand over £40bn of taxpayers' money for two-thirds of diddly squat."
He said by using the strategy - defended by Mrs May in the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend - the UK had "gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank".
If it continued on the same path, Mr Johnson added, the government would "throw away most of the advantages of Brexit".
Mr Johnson also accused some members of the government of using the issue of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland to "stop a proper Brexit", but added: "They have been rumbled."
The "scandal" around the border problem was "not that we have failed, but that we have not even tried", he added.
Mr Johnson argued that a hard border would not be needed after Brexit - because people did not need to be checked due to the Common Travel Area and that any checks on goods could be done away from the border.
In response, Mrs May's official spokesman said: "What we need at this time is serious leadership with a serious plan and that's exactly what the country has with this prime minister and this Brexit plan.
"She is a serious prime minister and she has put forward serious proposals."
But Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of a group of MPs to meet Mr Barnier on Monday, suggested the EU negotiator agreed with him that the Chequers plan was "absolute rubbish" and he preferred the option of a looser arrangement based on Canada's trade agreement with the EU.
"Interestingly, Eurosceptics and Mr Barnier are in greater agreement than Eurosceptics and the government and between Mr Barnier and the government," Mr Rees-Mogg said. "It's very encouraging."
Labour's shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told Politics Live that if Mrs May gave in Brexiteers, "she's going to end up coming back to Parliament with something that's not acceptable to Parliament... so then what happens?"
She added: "To hear some members of the Conservative Party play fast and loose with the [Northern Ireland] peace settlement is disgusting."
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon described Mr Johnson as a "charlatan" who must share in responsibility for the "disaster" of Brexit.
Downing Street also rejected a proposal from former Conservative minister Nick Boles for the UK to stay in the European Economic Area to allow time for a new trade deal to be negotiated.
Mr Boles said the PM's plan, as it stands, has "close to zero" chance of winning support from Parliament while former education secretary Justine Greening told Radio 4's World at One that it was "more unpopular with the British public than the poll tax" and Theresa May should consign it to history.
"She should now accept it has not worked and look for alternative routes through," she said.
On Sunday, the prime minister wrote that she was "confident" a "good deal" could be reached on Brexit.
But she said it was right for the government to prepare for a no-deal scenario - even though this would create "real challenges for both the UK and the EU" in some sectors.

Tory leadership rivals Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are at loggerheads over how the UK should leave the EU.
Both contenders for prime minister claim they can renegotiate a Brexit deal that the EU says is closed.
Mr Johnson said the UK must leave on 31 October "deal or no deal" but Mr Hunt called this a "fake deadline" that could trigger a general election if Parliament rejects a no-deal Brexit.
The winner of the contest will take over from Theresa May on 24 July.
The two men will face more questions from the public on Wednesday in a digital hustings, streamed on the Conservative Party's Facebook and Twitter accounts.
In an interview with Talk Radio, Mr Johnson insisted he would take the UK out of the EU by Halloween "come what may, do or die" and has challenged his opponent to make the same commitment.
Mr Hunt said he was prepared to leave without a deal, but not if there was a "prospect of a better deal".
During a phone-in on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show, the Mr Hunt agreed with a caller who said the EU was "treating us like dirt", adding: "I don't think they've shown respect for us at all."
He has secured the backing of Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson - who supported Sajid Javid and then Michael Gove in previous rounds - because she said he had "put the Union first".
A no-deal exit would see the UK leave the customs union and single market overnight and start trading with the EU on World Trade Organisation rules.
Opponents say it would cause huge disruption at the borders and be catastrophic to many firms reliant on trade with the continent - supporters say any negative effects would be manageable.
The EU has repeatedly insisted it will not re-open negotiations on the withdrawal agreement drawn up between Brussels and Theresa May - rejected three times by MPs.
On Wednesday, a European Commission spokeswoman confirmed that remained the bloc's position even if the only alternative was a no-deal exit.
Earlier, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, who is backing Mr Johnson, said Mr Hunt had shown "weakness" and "naivety" by entertaining the possibility of another extension.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it would be the "EU's choice" to see the UK leave without an agreement, adding: "There is nothing stopping us getting a deal by October, if there's the political will."
He predicted "vanishingly few" Tory MPs would vote to bring down a government pursuing a no-deal exit in a vote of no confidence - even though Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood has said "a dozen or so" Conservatives could support such a move.
It comes as International Trade Secretary Liam Fox - who is backing Mr Hunt - again criticised Mr Johnson's claim that the UK could continue tariff-free trade with the EU in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson has argued that a provision under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - known as GATT 24 - could be used to avoid tariffs for up to 10 years.
But Mr Fox said this would require the agreement of the EU, which Brussels has made clear it would not give.
On Tuesday, Mr Johnson conceded that his plan would require the approval of the rest of the EU, but insisted it was still "an option".
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt say they are serious about pushing for a no-deal Brexit if they are unable to negotiate a better withdrawal agreement with Brussels.
Yet the EU seems unfazed. Why, when we know EU leaders want to avoid a no-deal Brexit?
Part of the reason, at least, is time.
It's summer. European capitals are sweltering under a heatwave with government ministers counting the days until they hit the beach or find some cool mountain air.
The day the Brexit extension runs out - 31 October - seems an eternity away in political terms.
Also, just as Messrs Johnson and Hunt do not accept the EU's word when it says the Withdrawal Agreement cannot and will not be re-negotiated, EU leaders do not take them at their word when they threaten no deal by the end of October.
Former leadership candidate Rory Stewart, who is backing Mr Hunt, said the problem with Mr Johnson's plan was that he was just telling people "what they want to hear".
The international development secretary told the Today programme Mr Johnson was "pretending he has a magic solution" which was "not going to damage them at all", but the reality was he was going to let people down.
He also said he would definitely vote against a Tory government to stop a no-deal Brexit, but would stop short of backing a no confidence vote.
Mr Johnson continues to face scrutiny about Friday's row with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds, which prompted neighbours to call the police.
After days of criticism that he was hiding away, Mr Johnson undertook a series of media and public appearances on Tuesday - but declined to answer questions about the argument.
On Tuesday Mr Hunt told the BBC the next prime minister should be someone who is "trustworthy" and the ability to negotiate a new Brexit deal was about "personality", but stopped short of directly criticising his rival.
The day before, Mr Johnson told the BBC anyone questioning his character was "talking absolute nonsense".

Boris Johnson has criticised the UK government's Brexit talks strategy, saying it lacks "guts" and suggested Donald Trump could do a better job.
The foreign secretary also took a swipe at Chancellor Philip Hammond, calling the Treasury "the heart of Remain", in comments to a private dinner.
He said the Brexit talks were heading for "meltdown" and Leave supporters may not get the deal they expected.
Theresa May said Mr Johnson "had strong views on Brexit but so do I".
Speaking in Canada, where she is attending the G7 summit, the prime minister refused to be drawn on whether the foreign secretary was undermining her, a day after a row with her Brexit Secretary David Davis.
She said the process of leaving the EU was "complex" but her focus was on getting the right deal for Britain and people should judge her on her record in the negotiations so far.
In a recording, obtained by Buzzfeed, Mr Johnson warns the UK could remain "locked in orbit around the EU" and claimed the Irish border issue - one of the main sticking points in talks with Brussels - had been allowed to dictate "the whole of our agenda".
"It's so small and there are so few firms that actually use that border regularly, it's just beyond belief that we're allowing the tail to wag the dog in this way," he said.
The foreign secretary was apparently speaking to around 20 people in a private room after an Institute of Directors reception on Wednesday night.
It follows a day of wrangling over the government's "backstop" plan in the event of no customs deal being agreed before Brexit.
Theresa May was forced to agree to a cut-off date of December 2021 for any interim arrangements after Brexit Secretary David Davis threatened to resign.
But speaking to reporters on route to the G7 summit in Canada, she twice refused to give a "cast-iron guarantee" that the end date would not slip beyond that.
And speaking in Brussels, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the proposal could only apply to Northern Ireland, not the UK as a whole, and questioned whether temporary arrangements were acceptable, telling journalists "backstop means backstop".
In the leaked comments, Mr Johnson said the prime minister was "going to go into a phase where we are much more combative with Brussels".
He added: "You've got to face the fact there may now be a meltdown. OK? I don't want anybody to panic during the meltdown. No panic. Pro bono publico, no bloody panic. It's going to be all right in the end."
Brexit will be "irreversible" and will happen, Mr Johnson said, but the "risk is that it will not be the one we want".
He added: "Unless you make the change, unless you have the guts to go for the independent policy, you're never going to get the economic benefits of Brexit. You'll never get the political benefits of Brexit."
He was said to have described concerns over the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic as "pure millennium bug stuff" and suggested Chancellor Philip Hammond's department was "basically the heart of Remain".
Speaking about the Treasury, he added: "They don't want any disruption of the economy. So they're sacrificing all the medium and long-term gains out of fear of short-term disruption."
In response, Mr Hammond said his "advice to colleagues" was to engage with the EU as his experience was "a collaborative approach is generally more productive than a confrontational approach".
But Brexit-supporting MPs backed Mr Johnson, Peter Bone saying Mrs May "probably agrees with him as well".
The talks, he said, were "being held back by Remain officials who are driving this thing" - suggesting they should all be removed and Brexit Secretary David Davis given a "free hand".
No 10 said there was "rigorous debate" about Brexit but its focus was on delivering the deal the public wanted.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Mr Johnson was "simply not fit for the high office he holds" while Irish leader Leo Varadkar said "when I want to know what the view of the British government is, I listen to the prime minister".
Labour MP Rupa Huq, who campaigns against a "hard" Brexit, said Mr Johnson had been "very dismissive" of the risks to Northern Ireland, treating it - in her words - as a "small country that nobody bothers about".
Mr Johnson was the keynote speaker at Conservative Way Forward's summer reception and took questions for more than an hour, according to Buzzfeed.
Asked about Donald Trump, he reportedly said he was "increasingly admiring" of the US President and was "more and more convinced that there is method in his madness".
"Imagine Trump doing Brexit," he added.
"He'd go in bloody hard... There'd be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he'd gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It's a very, very good thought."

Boris Johnson has refused to deny claims he used an expletive when asked about business concerns about Brexit.
The foreign secretary is reported to have used the swear word at a diplomatic gathering last week.
Asked about this in the Commons, he said he may have "expressed scepticism about some of the views of those who profess to speak up for business".
Theresa May said it was right the government listened to business voices about the terms of the UK's exit.
This story contains language some may find offensive.
Airbus, BMW and Siemens have warned about the impact on their UK-based operations if the UK leaves the EU next March without any agreement.
Their warnings have prompted different responses from ministers.
Business Secretary Greg Clark has said the UK must "take and act on the advice of business" but Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said a warning from Airbus that it could cease operations entirely in the UK, threatening thousands of jobs, was "completely inappropriate".
Asked about corporate concerns over a so-called hard Brexit, at an event for EU diplomats in London last week, Mr Johnson is reported to have replied: "Fuck business."
Mr Johnson, who was reportedly speaking at the time to Rudolf Huygelen, Belgium's ambassador to the EU, was also overheard saying he and others would fight Theresa May's soft Brexit "and win".
The foreign secretary, who was a key figure in the Leave campaign, was pressed on the issue in Parliament by Labour MP Owen Smith, who asked him if the comments were correct and, if so, whether they could be "remotely justified".
"I don't think anybody could doubt the passionate support of this government for business," Mr Johnson said.
"It may be that I have, from time to time, expressed scepticism about some of the views of those who profess to speak up for business."
Mr Johnson's comments about Brexit have frequently proved controversial. He was recorded telling Tory donors last month that the UK's strategy lacked "guts" and suggested US President Donald Trump could do a better job.
The latest remark has angered some Tory MPs, with former Science Minister George Freeman telling BBC Radio 4's World at One programme that the reported comments were not "helpful, responsible or statesmanlike".
The prime minister, who will travel to Brussels on Thursday for a summit of EU leaders, told a chief executives summit hosted by the Times she wanted business to be able to speak to the government.
"It's right that we listen to the voice of business," she said.
"Business is at the heart of how we are going to develop this country," she said. "We want to ensure we are listening to the business voice because business provides the backbone of our economy."
MPs who favour a clean break with the EU after Brexit, in March 29 2019, have called on Mrs May to walk away from negotiations if the EU does not show willingness to begin trade talks immediately.

Boris Johnson has admitted he would need EU co-operation to avoid a hard Irish border or the possibility of crippling tariffs on trade in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, the favourite to be the next PM said: "It's not just up to us."
But he said he did "not believe for a moment" the UK would leave without a deal, although he was willing to do so.
Asked about a row he'd had with his partner, he said it was "simply unfair" to involve "loved ones" in the debate.
Reports of the argument on Friday with his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, dominated headlines over the weekend after the police were called to their address in London.
The interview comes after Sky News said it would have to cancel a head-to-head debate on Tuesday between the two leadership contenders as Mr Johnson had "so far declined" to take part.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd told Radio 4's Today programme she found Mr Johnson's decision to ignore live TV debates "very odd" and urged him "to reconsider".
Following days of criticism that he has been avoiding media scrutiny, Mr Johnson has given a number of other interviews, including with LBC and Talk Radio.
On LBC, he was repeatedly challenged on his personal life and a photograph which showed him and his partner. Asked whether his campaign was behind the release of the picture, Mr Johnson refused to answer.
He told Talk Radio's political editor Ross Kempsell he would "not rest" until the UK had left the EU, insisting Brexit would happen on 31 October "come what may... do or die".
Meanwhile, the other candidate, Jeremy Hunt has promised to boost defence spending by £15bn over the next five years if he becomes prime minister.
In his interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Johnson said the existing deal negotiated by Theresa May "is dead".
He insisted it was possible to broker a new deal with the EU before the end of October because the political landscape had changed in the UK and on the continent.
"I think actually that politics has changed so much since 29 March," he said, referring to the original Brexit deadline.
"I think on both sides of the Channel there's a really different understanding of what is needed."
At the moment, the UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October after the PM's Brexit deal was rejected three times by Parliament, and the EU has previously said the withdrawal agreement reached with the UK cannot be reopened.
Mr Johnson said he would be able to persuade Brussels to resolve the Irish border issue - a key sticking point - despite repeated warnings from EU leaders that that was impossible.
He said there were "abundant, abundant technical fixes" that could be made to avoid border checks.
When challenged that these did not exist yet, Mr Johnson replied: "Well, they do actually... in very large measure they do, you have trusted trader schemes, all sorts of schemes that you could put into place."
But, he admitted, there was "no single magic bullet" to solve the issue.
Mr Johnson's really controversial gamble is to say he could do a new trade deal with EU leaders before the end of October.
And he says he would be able to do that before resolving the most controversial conundrum - how you fix the dilemma over the Irish border.
He clearly believes he has the political skill to pull that off. He and his supporters would say that is a plan.
But it is a plan that is full of ifs and buts - either heroic or foolhardy assumptions to imagine that EU leaders and Parliament would be ready to back his vision - and back it by Halloween - on an extremely tight deadline.
The political pressure is on, not just to get it done quickly, but done in a way that does not harm our relations with the rest of the world and the livelihoods of people living in this country.
In terms of the controversies over his personal life, it is absolutely clear even now - when he is on the threshold of No 10 - that Boris Johnson thinks there are questions he simply does not have to answer.
And for a politician about whose character many people have their doubts, that is going to follow him around unless and until he is willing to give more.
Mr Johnson said if he was elected he would start new talks as soon as he reached Downing Street to discuss a free trade agreement.
He also said he hoped the EU would be willing to grant a period of time where the status quo was maintained for a deal to be finalised after Brexit.
He called this "an implementation period", but accepted this was not the same as the implementation period in the current draft treaty agreed with the EU.
Mr Johnson committed to passing new laws as soon as possible in order to guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.
The former foreign secretary also suggested EU leaders might change their attitude to renegotiation because they had Brexit Party MEPs they did not want in their Parliament, and wanted to get the £39bn that had been promised as part of the so-called divorce bill.
And he said MPs could be more willing to back a revised deal because - after disappointing local and European elections last month - they realised both Labour and the Conservatives would face "real danger of extinction" if Brexit were to be stalled again.
Mr Johnson refused again to give more detail of what happened at his home in the early hours of Friday.
"I do not talk about stuff involving my family, my loved ones," he said.
"And there's a very good reason for that. That is that, if you do, you drag them into things that really is... not fair on them."
Instead of his private life, he said the public actually want to know "what is going on with this guy?"
"Does he, when it comes to trust, when it comes to character, all those things, does he deliver what he says he's going to deliver?"
Despite widespread criticisms from his fellow Conservatives that he cannot be trusted, Mr Johnson said anyone questioning his character was "talking absolute nonsense".
He also refused to respond to accusations from rival Jeremy Hunt that he was being a "coward" for avoiding more head-to-head TV debates, promising that if elected he would "govern from the centre right" because the centre "is where you win".
Ms Rudd, who is supporting Mr Hunt, said Mr Johnson was making a mistake by shying away from the debates and said he needed to "go further" in explaining his Brexit plan.
"This is an incredibly difficult situation and Boris needs to explain how he will deal with both sides of the Conservative Party that have concerns and try and break the impasse with the European Union.
"Enthusiasm and optimism is not sufficient."
Responding to claims that a dozen Tory MPs would be prepared to bring down a government heading to a no-deal Brexit, she said: "I think that's about right. I think it's slightly less than that, but it's certainly more than two."
Correction 7th August 2019: An earlier version of this article referred to crippling tariffs on trade in the event of a no-deal Brexit and has been amended to make clear that Boris Johnson was asked about this as a possibility.

Boris Johnson says the government is "working together" and that he will not be resigning after criticism of his intervention on Brexit.
The foreign secretary has been accused of undermining Theresa May with a 4,000-word article setting out his own post-EU vision.
But he told journalists the government was "a nest of singing birds".
Mr Johnson - along with other ministers - is due to attend the PM's Brexit speech in Florence on Friday.
Asked about his article, Mrs May said she was "getting on with the job" of delivering Brexit.
Earlier the foreign secretary was accused by ex-chancellor Ken Clarke of making a pitch for a future Tory leadership election with his article.
Mr Clarke said that "in normal circumstances" Mr Johnson would have been sacked. Some reports have claimed Mr Johnson will resign if his blueprint for Brexit is not followed.
But speaking in New York, the foreign secretary said "of course not" when asked whether he was going to quit, and predicted the government would "deliver a fantastic Brexit".
Asked whether there was a cabinet split on Europe, Mr Johnson said: "No, we are a government working together.
"We are a nest of singing birds."
Mr Johnson and Mrs May are both attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Asked repeatedly about Mr Johnson and reports of cabinet disunity over Brexit, the PM stressed that the government was united in trying to get the best possible deal.
"What I think the majority of the British public want to see is what we're doing, which is getting on with the job of those negotiations with the European Union and getting on with the job of the best deal for the UK," she told the BBC.
Responding to questions about the so-called divorce bill for the UK to pay on leaving the EU, she said the UK was a "law-abiding nation" and would "stand by our obligations" as well as carrying on contributing to programmes it wants to be a part of after Brexit.
Mr Johnson's article said the UK should not pay for access to the EU single market.
The continuing fallout from the article - published in Saturday's Telegraph - led, on Monday, to Mrs May having to rebut claims that Mr Johnson was trying to become a "back-seat driver" in her cabinet.
The PM, who is due to set out her vision for Brexit in a speech in Florence on Friday, declared: "This government is driven from the front."
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Clarke said that in her speech Mrs May had to set out "for the first time, really" what the UK can "can realistically achieve in negotiations".
That must include "free access to the European market and no new barriers for our trade," he argued, and how best "to avoid economic damage to the country".
"Alongside that, personal publicity and campaigning by the foreign secretary is actually just an irrelevant nuisance."
Mr Clarke said: "Sounding off personally in this way is totally unhelpful and he shouldn't exploit the fact she hasn't got a majority in Parliament.
"He knows perfectly well that normally the foreign secretary would be sacked for doing that - and she, unfortunately, after the general election, is not in the position easily to sack him - which he should stop exploiting."
He also attacked Mr Johnson for repeating "one of the more simplistic and dishonest arguments of the hardline Leavers" in his article - a reference to "taking back control" of £350m a week after Brexit.
The foreign secretary said on Monday that his article was meant to be an "opening drum roll" for the PM's speech.
"Because I was involved in that Brexit campaign, people want to know where we are going," he added.
Mrs May attempted to avoid a public row with her foreign secretary, telling reporters travelling with her on a trade mission to Canada: "Boris is Boris."
Former foreign secretary, Lord Hague, writing in the Daily Telegraph, warned that disunity over Brexit could hand power to Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.
He wrote: "It is putting it a bit too politely to say, in the wake of Boris Johnson's article in this newspaper on Saturday, that the approach of senior ministers to the Brexit negotiations appears to lack co-ordination.
"More bluntly, it is now 15 months since the referendum, and high time that all members of the government were able to express themselves on this subject in the same way as each other, putting forward the same points, as part of an agreed plan."

Boris Johnson has likened the challenge of avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland to the boundaries between different boroughs of London.
The foreign secretary said it was a "very relevant comparison" because money was "invisibly" taken from people travelling between Camden and Westminster when he was London mayor.
London's congestion zone charge does not involve manual checks.
Labour said his comments were "typically facile and tactless".
The Irish opposition Fianna Fail party said it was "extraordinary" to suggest the two borders were the same, while the SDLP said: "Trivialising the very serious concerns relating to Ireland displays a dangerous ignorance that must be challenged."
The future of the Irish border after Brexit has been a key sticking point in talks so far.
The UK plans to leave the EU's customs union but wants to avoid border posts and physical checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mr Johnson, a former London mayor, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there were "all sorts of things you can do" to achieve this.
"We think that we can have very efficient facilitation systems to make sure that there's no need for a hard border, excessive checks at the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Republic," he said.
"There's no border between Islington or Camden and Westminster... but when I was mayor of London we anaesthetically and invisibly took hundreds of millions of pounds from the accounts of people travelling between those two boroughs without any need for border checks whatever."
He added: "It's a very relevant comparison because there's all sorts of scope for pre-booking, electronic checks, all sorts of things that you can do to obviate the need for a hard border to allow us to come out of the customs union, take back control of our trade policy and do trade deals."
Analysis by the BBC's Mark Devenport
How literally should we take the Foreign Secretary's analogy? The collection of the London congestion charge relies on a network of automatic number plate recognition cameras which identifies motorists moving around the city.
However back in August last year, when the UK released a position paper on Northern Ireland after Brexit, government officials briefed journalists that a pledge to "avoid any physical border infrastructure in either the United Kingdom or Ireland, for any purpose (including customs or agri-food checks)" effectively ruled out plans for the installation of cameras near the border, or set back from it.
Instead the clear suggestion was that any technological fix would be more likely to involve firms becoming "authorised economic operators" and filling out customs forms from the comfort of the desks in their office HQs.
The BBC has asked for clarification of whether government policy has shifted on this point. But in the absence of a more detailed response we may note that Downing Street has told lobby correspondents that Mr Johnson "was not offering a technical solution" to the border issue.
Instead, the prime minister's spokesman clarified, "the foreign secretary was making a comparison to demonstrate our overall approach that the 110 million people crossing the border will continue living their lives as before, travelling freely just as Londoners cross boroughs every day".
That defence is not likely to appease Mr Johnson's critics, but it seems fair to say he was trying to get out of a tight spot during a wide ranging Today programme interview, rather than seeking to unveil a wholly new approach to the one set out in last year's position paper.
Labour's shadow Northern Ireland secretary Owen Smith dismissed the comments as "ludicrous".
And he accused Mr Johnson of "glibly dismissing the concerns of thousand of families and businesses who live and work along the border", adding that his remark "insults the intelligence of all who are worrying about how to resolve the border question after Brexit".
Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, vice president of the European Parliament, also questioned the analogy. "The UK is a different country than the Republic of Ireland ... and therefore the comparison doesn't quite fit," she told BBC2's Daily Politics.
The foreign secretary's comments have also sparked a wave of reaction on Twitter:
But former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith backed Mr Johnson.
"What Boris was saying was there are various ways in which you can manage things, like money transfers, checks on cars, checks on lorries - the technology now exists and is being used and is being developed around the world," he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One.
And DUP MP Sammy Wilson said a virtual border already exists.
"There's a different tax regime in Northern Ireland than the Irish Republic - VAT, excise duty is different - yet billions of pounds worth of goods cross that border, taxes are paid and not a lorry is stopped to check the goods because through virtual methods, through IT, through electronic invoicing, those taxes are collected by both the Irish government and the British government," he said.
The first draft of a legally-binding agreement between the UK and the EU, due to be published on Wednesday, is expected to address the issue of Northern Ireland.
The Dublin government says the option of Northern Ireland staying in full regulatory alignment with the European Union after Brexit should be included as a "backstop" - but this is opposed by some Conservative MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party.
Meanwhile former World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy argued that whatever Brexit option was chosen "will necessitate a border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic, because checks will have to be carried out on goods and people.
Instead he suggested to the Commons Brexit committee a "Macau option" for Northern Ireland.
"You should think about giving to Northern Ireland the same autonomous trade capacity that China has given to Macau, which doesn't mean that Macau doesn't belong to China," he said.

The prime minister has said it is "up to the EU, this is their call" if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
Boris Johnson made his first visit to Wales as PM on Tuesday, seeking support from farmers for his Brexit plans.
He held talks with Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford, who said there was a "deeply concerning lack of detail" from the new prime minister.
Mr Johnson said: "We're not aiming for a no-deal Brexit, we don't think that's where we'll end up."
"This is very much up to our friends and partners across the channel," he added.
A Welsh farmer called on Mr Johnson to stop "playing Russian roulette" with the lamb industry over the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
It followed the Farmers' Union of Wales president warning of "civil unrest" in rural areas if no agreement is struck.
Earlier, the prime minister had his first phone call with Irish leader Leo Varadkar since taking office.
The visit to Wales came as the Conservatives fight to hold Brecon and Radnorshire in a by-election on Thursday.
Mr Johnson visited a chicken farm in St Brides Wentlooge, near Newport, before travelling to online retailer BVG Group in Brecon.
He later attended a meeting in the Welsh Assembly with Mark Drakeford, where he was booed by a group of protesters on arrival.
In a news conference afterwards, Mr Drakeford said they had an "engaged discussion" on Brexit.
The Welsh Labour leader said he pressed Mr Johnson to explain the path to a deal with the EU but did not get a "clear sense" from him of what the plan would be.
Mr Drakeford said he emphasised the "catastrophic effect" a no-deal Brexit would have on the Welsh economy, and said the PM provided assurances of support for manufacturing and agriculture in such a scenario.
"But asked to describe the nature of that support, I'm afraid that there is a deeply concerning lack of detail that is available to people whose livelihood is on the line," Mr Drakeford said.
The first minister said the PM told him there would be many new opportunities for Welsh agriculture and businesses, but he had "no sense again" there was detailed thinking behind what "otherwise becomes vacuous optimism".
Mr Drakeford said he warned Mr Johnson "the future of the UK is more at risk today than at any other point in his political lifetime", and said he had put ideas to him on how the Union could be "reinvented".
A Downing Street spokeswoman said the two spoke about the importance of the union and support for farmers in Wales.
She added: "The PM set out how the UK will be leaving the EU on October 31st, come what may, and said he would seek to work with the Welsh Government and other devolved administrations, to make sure communities across the UK are ready to maximise on the opportunities that Brexit will bring."
Many Welsh farmers are heavily reliant on free trade with the EU. If the UK leaves without a deal many would face significant tariffs on their exports to EU countries.
The prime minister did not give any television interviews to Welsh broadcasters on Tuesday.
However, during the farm visit, he told reporters the agriculture sector will "have the support they need" in the event of no-deal.
"We will make sure that they have the support that they need, if there are markets that are going to be tricky that we help them to find new markets, we have interventions that aim to support them and their incomes," Mr Johnson said.
"The most important point is that we don't want tariffs and we don't envisage they will be necessary.
"And I think common sense would dictate it would be better and massively in the interests of our EU friends to have a zero-tariff, zero-quota regime of the kind we currently have."
Mr Johnson suggested funds for "export refunds" would be made available for the Welsh Government to administer.
Asked how the system would work, given agriculture is devolved, he said: "It will be up to the Welsh Government to administer it. We will make sure the funds are available."
A Welsh Government source said they were surprised by the nature of the announcement.
The farming industry is worth more than £6bn to the Welsh economy and supports 14,000 businesses, 45,000 jobs and about 25,000 farmers.
Welsh lamb will face at least 40% tariffs in a no-deal scenario, prompting a sheep farmer to call for Mr Johnson "to stop playing Russian roulette with the industry as he appears to be doing at the moment".
"If we do go out with a no deal, it will be absolutely catastrophic even if it is just for a few months," Helen Roberts, who is also development officer for the National Sheep Association in Wales, told Radio 4's Today programme.
She said her members would protest against a no-deal Brexit, adding: "I think it's time to come and stand up for ourselves, and be counted."
On Monday, the prime minister said there was "every chance" a Brexit deal with the EU could be struck, but the existing agreement with the EU has "got to go".
However senior minister Michael Gove, who has been put in charge of preparing for no deal, has said the UK government was working on the assumption the UK would leave the EU without an agreement.
Ahead of his meeting with Mr Johnson, Mr Drakeford tweeted Brexit "will decimate our agricultural and manufacturing sectors and risks ripping the Union apart".
"The PM must stop playing fast and loose with our country," he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns suggested new global markets, including in Japan, will be available to sheep meat producers.
Mr Cairns told the BBC: "We are now looking to the growth that will come from right around the world, 90% of global growth will come from outside of the EU,
"But we don't want to close our back on the European market either and that's why working hard to get a deal is important, but of course there needs to be a shift in attitude and a positive response to the cause that we're making."
Plaid Cymru Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts pointed out via Twitter the Japanese market had been opened up to Welsh lamb by the EU-Japan trade deal.
Mr Cairns added farmers "can be guaranteed that the same money will be available to ensure that we are protecting this sector".
By Felicity Evans, BBC Wales political editor
It is clear there was no meeting of minds between Mark Drakeford and Boris Johnson.
As well as having "fundamentally different views" on Brexit, the two leaders are very different characters.
The first minister is a details man - after Brexit he wants to know what support will be on offer to Welsh manufacturing and agriculture, when it'll be available and how long for.
But the prime minister paints in bold colours, and he knows that despite concerns over the impact of a no-deal exit in Wales, voters here chose to leave the EU in 2016.
This is the first of many meetings between the two leaders - whether they can find common ground remains to be seen.

Boris Johnson has given key cabinet roles to leading Brexiteers after becoming the UK's new prime minister.
Dominic Raab and Priti Patel return to government as foreign secretary and home secretary respectively.
Sajid Javid has been named as the new chancellor as more than half of Theresa May's old cabinet, including leadership rival Jeremy Hunt, quit or were sacked.
Earlier, Mr Johnson said the Brexit "doomsters and gloomsters" were wrong and the UK would leave on 31 October.
Speaking outside No 10, he said the UK would meet that deadline "no ifs, no buts", adding: "The buck stops with me."
Mr Johnson then turned his attention to a radical overhaul of the government, with 17 of Mrs May's former senior ministers being axed or stepping down.
Announcing his departure, Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt said he had been offered an alternative role but had turned it down.
Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, a leading Brexiteer who is popular across the party, was the most surprising departure. She has been replaced by Ben Wallace, a former soldier and longstanding ally of Mr Johnson's.
Another prominent Brexiteer, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, was also ousted, along with Business Secretary Greg Clark - a vocal opponent of a no-deal Brexit.
All three supported Mr Hunt in the Tory leadership contest.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley, Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright and Communities Secretary James Brokenshire have also gone, along with Chris Grayling, whose record as Transport Secretary was much criticised.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell, who has left his position after four years, joked whether there would be "room" on the backbenches after all the dismissals.
This comes on top of the earlier resignations of four leading ministers, including Chancellor Philip Hammond, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Cabinet Office minister David Lidington.
Conservative MP Nigel Evans described the changes as a "summer's day massacre".
The BBC's chief political correspondent Vicki Young said the sackings suggested Mr Johnson wasn't looking to build bridges across the party.
Instead, she said, he was focused above all else on assembling the team he thought would bring about the results he needed, even if that was controversial.
As the upheaval in government was happening, hundreds of people gathered outside the gates of Downing Street in protest against Mr Johnson's appointment.
Former Home Secretary Sajid Javid - a banker before entering politics - has been given the key role of chancellor, having thrown his weight behind Boris Johnson after being eliminated from the leadership race himself.
Priti Patel - who quit as international development secretary in 2017 after holding unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials - succeeds Mr Javid at the Home Office, where she said she would focus on keeping the UK country safe and fighting "the scourge of crime".
Dominic Raab is a former Brexit secretary, but quit over Mrs May's handling of the process.
He said he was "hugely humbled" by his appointment and said the UK needed to "bring finality" to Brexit so it could focus on the other big challenges.
Other figures involved in the Vote Leave referendum campaign have also been rewarded.
Michael Gove leaves behind his environment brief to become Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a more senior ministerial role but one without a specific portfolio.
Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg becomes leader of the House of Commons - his first government role.
Liz Truss moves from second in command at the Treasury to head the Department for International trade while Steve Barclay has been re-appointed as Brexit Secretary.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd are among the few ministers who backed Remain who have kept their jobs. Ms Rudd also takes on the women and equalities brief.
Meanwhile, there is a speedy return to office for Gavin Williamson as education secretary.
He was sacked as defence secretary less than three months ago after No 10 concluded he was responsible for the leaking of unauthorised information from a National Security Council meeting - which he denied.
Mr Johnson's team has promised a record number of women in the cabinet. Nicky Morgan, Theresa Villiers and Andrea Leadsom have all returned to top jobs, taking on the culture, environment and business briefs respectively.
There are also promotions for Robert Buckland (justice) and Alok Sharma (international development) while former party chairman Grant Shapps, a key member of Boris Johnson's leadership campaign team, makes a comeback at transport.
Former Chief Whip Julian Smith is the new Northern Ireland Secretary, while Dumfries and Galloway MP Alister Jack, who was only elected to Parliament last year, is expected to become Scottish Secretary. Alun Cairns remains as Welsh Secretary.
Earlier, in a 13-minute speech outside Downing Street, Mr Johnson listed a wide range of domestic ambitions, chiefly a promise to sort out care for the elderly "once and for all".
Reforms to the social care sector have eluded previous governments because of their cost and complexity.
"We will fix it once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve," he insisted.
Mr Johnson also pledged to improve infrastructure, recruit 20,000 new police officers and "level up" school spending. He promised reforms to ensure the £20bn in extra funding earmarked for the NHS "really gets to the front line".
And he pledged to boost the UK's biotech and space science sectors, change the tax rules to provide incentives for investment, and do more to promote the welfare of animals.
Setting out his priorities for office, the former London mayor hit out at the "pessimists" who did not believe Brexit could be delivered and called for an end to three years of indecision.
"The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy," he said.
"The time has come to act, to take decisions and change this country for the better."
He said he had "every confidence" the UK would leave the EU in 99 days time with a deal, but preparations for the "remote possibility" of a no-deal Brexit would be accelerated.
Mr Johnson vowed to bring all four nations of the United Kingdom - or what he described as the "awesome foursome" - together in the task of strengthening a post-Brexit country.
"Though I am today building a great team of men and women, I will take personal responsibility for the change I want to see," he concluded.
"Never mind the backstop, the buck stops here."
Labour's Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Johnson's speech was "all rhetoric". New Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said she would welcome a cross-party push to find a solution on social care, but attacked Mr Johnson's "bluster and bravado" over Brexit.
Mr Johnson took over after Theresa May handed in her resignation to the Queen.
Earlier, as she relinquished power after three years, Mrs May said being prime minister had been "the greatest honour" and wished her successor well.
During his journey to Buckingham Palace, Mr Johnson's car was briefly held up by protesters from Greenpeace, who formed a human chain across The Mall.

Boris Johnson has restored the whip to 10 of the 21 Tory MPs who rebelled against him over Brexit last month.
The rebels were expelled from the parliamentary Conservative Party after backing efforts to pass legislation to block a no-deal Brexit.
Ex-ministers including Ed Vaizey and Margot James are among those to be welcomed back.
Former Tory chancellors Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke are among those who remain outside the party.
The move to readmit the rebels came shortly before MPs backed the prime minister's plan to hold an early general election on Thursday, 12 December.
Those who have had the whip restored are now eligible to stand as Conservative candidates at the election if new candidates have not since been chosen.
Some of those who have been welcomed back, including Sir Nicholas and former minister Alistair Burt, have previously said they would be retiring.
As well as Sir Nicholas, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, those readmitted into the party include Greg Clark, who served as a cabinet minister under Theresa May.
Caroline Nokes, Richard Benyon, Stephen Hammond, Steve Brine and Richard Harrington complete the list of those to have been given the whip back.
Ex-chancellors Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke, and former justice secretary David Gauke, are among those not to have had the whip restored.
Sir Oliver Letwin, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Rory Stewart, Guto Bebb, Anne Milton and Antoinette Sandbach also remain as independents.

Boris Johnson has pledged to "hold out the hand" and "go the extra thousand miles" to strike a new Brexit deal.
During a visit to Scotland, the prime minister said the existing withdrawal agreement negotiated with European leaders was "dead" and had "got to go".
However, he said there was "every chance we can get a deal".
But Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said Mr Johnson had set the UK on an "almost inevitable path to a no-deal Brexit".
Preparations for leaving the European Union without a withdrawal deal are being ramped up, with Mr Johnson saying the UK must leave the EU by 31 October.
While in Scotland he met Ms Sturgeon and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson - both of whom have positioned themselves against a no-deal exit.
Two committees have been set up as the UK government intensifies preparations for a possible no-deal exit, including a "daily operations committee" of senior ministers.
Meanwhile, the pound has sunk to a 28-month low against the dollar, apparently due to concerns about Brexit.
Speaking at the Faslane naval base near Glasgow, Mr Johnson said his "assumption is that we can get a new deal", but said it was "responsible for any government to prepare for no deal if we absolutely have to".
He said: "I don't want the UK to be aloof or hanging back, I want us to engage, to hold out the hand, to go the extra thousand miles, and what we want to do is make it absolutely clear that the backstop is no good, it's dead, it's got to go.
"The withdrawal agreement is dead, it's got to go. But there is scope for us to do a new deal.
"We will make it very clear to our friends - we're talking to the Irish today - what the limits are and what we want to do.
"We're very confident that with goodwill on both sides, two mature political entities, the UK and EU, can get this thing done."
Meanwhile, the prime minister's chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, has urged his EU counterparts not to "underestimate" Mr Johnson or his commitment to the 31 October deadline.
Mr Johnson has faced scrutiny over his Brexit strategy from colleagues and opponents alike during his visit to Scotland.
Ms Davidson has previously said Mr Johnson has her "full support" in his efforts to secure a withdrawal agreement with the EU, but that she will not support a no-deal Brexit.
After a meeting at Holyrood, the Scottish Tory leader said the pair had discussed their "shared determination to strengthen the Union", adding Mr Johnson had "made clear the government's preference is to leave the EU with a deal".
Mr Johnson, meanwhile, said he was Ms Davidson's "number one fan".
Analysis by BBC Scotland editor Sarah Smith
Boris Johnson's toughest meeting might not have been with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, but rather Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson.
Ms Davidson made no secret of the fact that she did not want Mr Johnson as PM. And in the few days since he took charge relations have already gone further south.
He ignored his Scottish leader's advice not to sack the Scottish Secretary David Mundell and replace him with the pro-Brexit MP Alister Jack. He then further snubbed the Scottish contingent of parliamentarians when he put an MP who sits for an English seat into the Scotland office as a minister.
Ms Davidson has said publicly that she would not support a no-deal exit from the EU and that as leader of the Scottish party she does not have to sign up to any loyalty pledge to support a no deal.
She believes the PM would have sacked her if he could. But he can't - and she will take full advantage of her ability to speak out.
Ms Sturgeon - who hosted Mr Johnson at her official Bute House residence - has also pledged to fight against a no-deal exit, saying it would cost 100,000 jobs and "plunge the economy into recession".
Speaking after what she described as a "very lively exchange" with Mr Johnson, she also said she believed he was really pursuing a no-deal Brexit.
"He says he wants to get a deal, but what is not clear to me is how he intends to get from the very hard-line, fixed position that he's taken to a position where a deal is possible, if the EU also sticks to the very consistent position it has taken," she said.
"That makes me think that whatever Boris Johnson is saying about his preference being to strike a deal, in reality he is pursuing a no-deal Brexit."
She added that she had made clear to Mr Johnson her opposition to Brexit and no-deal and that the people of Scotland should be able to "choose their own future".
A No 10 spokesman said the PM told Ms Sturgeon he "was a passionate believer in the power of the Union" and "would work tirelessly to strengthen the United Kingdom and improve the lives of people right across Scotland".
Mr Johnson said his preference was to negotiate a new deal that abolished the backstop - but the UK would be leaving the EU on 31 October "come what may", the spokesman added.
Mr Johnson also used his trip to Scotland to announce funding for projects to boost the economy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
However Scottish Finance Secretary Derek Mackay claimed the £300m "isn't new funding" and was already under negotiation before Mr Johnson became prime minister.
Welsh Labour also hit out at the funding plans, calling them "very thin stuff" which would not make up for a "chronic lack of investment".
The UK government, however, insisted the money was new, with Scottish Secretary Alister Jack saying city deals would help "create jobs and boost local economies".
The growth deal plan comes after Mr Johnson announced a £3.6bn towns fund over the weekend, which will initially support 100 places in England.
As part of his visit to Scotland, the prime minister also announced plans for a new Office for Veterans' Affairs within the UK government, to coordinate medical treatment and training and "ensure no veteran is disadvantaged because of their service".
The prime minister also plans to go to Wales to meet members of its farming community and Northern Ireland to discuss ongoing efforts to restore devolution at Stormont.
Who is in charge of what?

The government's final Brexit proposals will include customs checks on the island of Ireland.
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said Boris Johnson's plans will see Northern Ireland "in a different relationship with the EU to the rest of the UK".
Boris Johnson is addressing the Tory conference before submitting the new proposals to the EU.
The European Commission said they will "examine it objectively" and "listen carefully to the UK".
The Commission's president, Jean-Claude Juncker will talk to the PM on the phone later, while negotiating teams will meet in Brussels.
In his first speech at the event as prime minister, he will call it a "fair and reasonable" Brexit compromise, and say only by leaving the EU on 31 October can the UK "move on".
Mr Johnson will also claim the public will no longer be "taken for fools" by those who want to delay or block the process.
Tory Chairman James Cleverly said the UK had been "flexible and pragmatic", and now the EU must be the same.
On the eve of his speech, Mr Johnson told a conference fringe meeting in Manchester, hosted by the DUP, that he hoped to reach a deal with the EU over the course of "the next few days".
The government has insisted it will not negotiate a further delay beyond the Halloween deadline, saying this would be unnecessary and costly for the UK.
However, under the terms of a law passed by Parliament last month, the PM faces having to request another extension unless MPs back the terms of withdrawal by 19 October - two days after a summit of European leaders.
On Tuesday, Mr Johnson dismissed leaked reports that customs posts could be set up on either side of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
He said suggestions the UK wanted "clearance zones" for goods as part of a package of alternative arrangements to replace the Irish backstop were wide of the mark.
While he conceded some customs checks would be needed as the UK leaves the EU's customs union and single market, he said technology could keep them to an "absolute minimum".
The issue of the Irish border - and how to keep it free from border checks when it becomes the frontier between the UK and the EU - has been a key sticking point in Brexit negotiations.
Mr Johnson says the solution reached by the EU and Theresa May, the backstop, is "anti-democratic" and "inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK", claiming it offered no means for the UK to unilaterally exit and no say for the people of Northern Ireland over the rules that would apply there.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the new offer from Mr Johnson included some new customs checks on the island of Ireland, and would leave Northern Ireland in a different relationship with the EU to the rest of the UK in some ways.
She said the plans were "based on the notion of consent", giving more powers to Northern Ireland's devolved Parliament - the Stormont Assembly - to shape its future relationship with the EU - despite the fact the assembly is approaching 1,000 days without sitting.
The proposals also suggest a time period for when the relationship between Northern Ireland and the EU could move on.
But the full and precise details of Mr Johnson's plan twill not be clear until after the prime minister's speech at conference.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme earlier, Mr Cleverly appeared to put the ball in the EU's court.
"We have been in negotiating for some while," he said. "The UK has been flexible, but a negotiation means both parties need to be flexible.
"What we need to see now is the EU be flexible - and if they can be pragmatic and flexible, we can leave with a deal on 31 October. But we are going to leave on 31 October whatever."
Irish Fine Gael senator Neale Richmond told Today that the PM's plans were a "big move" from the withdrawal agreement made by Theresa May.
Mr Richmond said, under the plan, Northern Ireland would leave the customs union and "come out of the single market in all areas, apart from agri-food products and industrial products, and indeed it only stays in those areas for four years".
This, he added, would require "additional checks" on the island of Ireland - something he described as "extremely disappointing".
Laura Kuenssberg said there was a "real expectation and belief" in No 10 that "this is now the crunch point".
She said: "This is the moment…where the EU will have to respond and say [either] there is something that is a basis of a deal here, or not.
"And what Boris Johnson is trying to suggest is if the answer is not, then for him, that means no-deal."
The EU needs to see the precise details of Boris Johnson's proposals, but the direction of travel that has been coming through is different.
The very idea of customs check between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the promise of the use of technologies to ease the process that haven't yet been tried and tested, or don't even exist yet…that is a big no-no for the EU.
The bloc will look at the proposals carefully. They need to try as they do want a deal, and also they need to be seen to be trying.
But it is fundamentally misunderstanding the EU if the prime minister thinks at this stage the 26 EU leaders will turn round on the Irish prime minister and say: "Listen, you are going to have to accept this because we just want to have a deal."
It is also fundamentally misunderstanding the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her attachment to EU unity and the integrity of the single market.
And also it is misunderstanding that the EU sees this in a bigger picture. If suddenly now they were to back down to all of the prime minister's demands how would that look to other trade partners across the globe.
So EU leaders will be very careful not to rubbish the prime minister's ideas, to talk about them as a basis for an agreement, but if it is take it or leave it, they will be leaving at this point.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said it was particularly important Mr Johnson secured the support of the Democratic Unionist Party's 10 MPs.
He said: "I think it is very clear this deal is not going to fly unless Boris Johnson can bring the DUP along with him... one way or another he has to make sure they're on board."
BBC Northern Ireland political editor Mark Devenport said sources from the DUP were supportive of the proposals and had been kept informed during their development.
However, the party's leader, Arlene Foster, declined to say whether she had seen the PM's proposals.
She told the BBC: "What we are doing with this prime minister is working very closely with him and we will continue to work closely with him over the next couple of hours and days.
"I hope we do get a deal that is acceptable to the European Union and one that is good for the whole of the United Kingdom."
Speaking in Manchester, Mr Johnson will suggest voters are "desperate" for the country to focus on other priorities and will contrast his determination to leave on 31 October with the "years of uncertainty" that he says would result from a Labour government promising another referendum.
"What people want, what Leavers want, what Remainers want, what the whole world wants - is to move on," he is expected to say.
"I am afraid that after three-and-a-half years people are beginning to feel that they are being taken for fools.
"They are beginning to suspect that there are forces in this country that simply don't want Brexit delivered at all.
"And if they turn out to be right in that suspicion then I believe there will be grave consequences for trust in democracy.
"Let's get Brexit done on October 31 so in 2020 our country can move on."
Mr Johnson's conference speech is set to clash with Prime Minister's Questions, which is taking place at 12.00 BST.
Normally the Commons goes into recess for the Tory conference, but MPs voted against this amid the bitter fallout from the government's unlawful prorogation of Parliament.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will deputise for the prime minister, facing the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott over the despatch box.
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Boris Johnson has secured the highest number of votes in the first MPs' ballot to select the Conservative Party leader and next prime minister.
Three contenders - Mark Harper, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey - were knocked out in the secret ballot of Tory MPs.
Mr Johnson received 114 votes, significantly more than his nearest rival Jeremy Hunt, who came second with 43. Michael Gove was third with 37.
Seven candidates progress to the next round of voting next week.
The two who prove most popular after the last MPs' ballot will go to Conservative Party members in a final vote later this month.
The winner of the contest to succeed Theresa May is expected to be announced in the week of 22 July.
Sources close to Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg he was "mulling over" whether to withdraw from the contest after coming sixth with 20 votes.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who came fifth with 23 votes, is understood to be staying in the race for now. Some have suggested his candidacy - with support from Mr Hancock - could take on Mr Hunt to become second in the ballot.
Mr Johnson, a former foreign secretary who served for eight years as London mayor, said he was "delighted" to win but warned that his campaign still had "a long way to go".
Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt said: "Boris did well today but what the result shows is, when it comes to the members' stage, I'm the man to take him on."
Environment Secretary Mr Gove said it was "all to play for" and he was "very much looking forward" to candidates' TV debates on Channel 4 on Sunday and on BBC One next Tuesday.
All 313 Conservative MPs voted in the first ballot, including Mrs May, who refused to say whom she had backed.
The fourth-placed candidate, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, said he was "proud and honoured" and he had a "good base to build on".
Mr Javid said: "I look forward to continuing to share my positive vision and my plan for uniting the country."
Mr Hancock thanked his supporters, saying it was "terrific to have more votes from colleagues than I could have hoped for".
And International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, the seventh-placed candidate, told the BBC's Politics Live he was "completely over the Moon" to have got through the first vote.
He said he had had only six declared votes ahead of the poll, but "more than three times that" had voted for him in the secret ballot.
The margin of success took his fellow candidates by surprise - but not the core of Boris Johnson's team.
After many, many weeks of private campaigning, introducing Boris Johnson to the world of the spreadsheet, this morning one of his organisers wrote the number 114 and sealed it in an envelope.
At lunchtime, the announcement revealed the controversial former foreign secretary had indeed received exactly that number.
That is not just a marker of the level of Mr Johnson's support but for the sometimes clownish politician, whose reputation has risen and fallen and then risen again, it's a sign that it is different this time.
Justice Secretary David Gauke said Mr Stewart was now the main challenger to Mr Johnson, saying: "He's really in with a chance and the momentum is with Rory."
But Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who is supporting Mr Hunt's campaign, said the foreign secretary was "attractive to many sides of the party because he's a serious individual".
And schools minister Nick Gibb told BBC Radio 4's World at One that Mr Gove was now "best placed as a Brexiteer to challenge the front runner" Mr Johnson in the final.
Further ballots are scheduled to take place on 18, 19 and 20 June to whittle down the contenders until only two are left.
The final pair will then be put to a vote of members of the wider Conservative Party from 22 June, with the winner expected to be announced about four weeks later.
After being knocked out of the contest, Mr Harper, a former government chief whip, said he continued "to believe we need a credible plan that delivers Brexit" in order to "restore trust".
Mrs Leadsom's campaign team said they were "disappointed" but "wish all the other candidates well".
And Ms McVey, who gained nine votes, coming last in the first round of MPs' ballots, said she was "extremely grateful" to those who had supported her.
Televised candidates' debates are scheduled to take place, but not all the remaining seven have confirmed they are taking part.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, who is backing Mr Hunt, urged them to appear, saying the Conservative Party "needs to remember that we're not just choosing a leader, we're choosing a prime minister and the public need to see them".
And former Brexit secretary David Davis, who is backing Mr Raab, said it was "very important" for the public to hear from the contenders.
Mr Johnson has previously been criticised by some of his rivals for not taking part in media interviews during the campaign.
The leadership race has so far been dominated by Brexit and arguments over whether a deal can be renegotiated with the EU by 31 October, and whether talking up a no-deal Brexit is a plausible promise.
On Tuesday 18 June BBC One will host a live election debate between the Conservative MPs still in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on air, use the form below. It should be open to all of them, not a specific politician.
Tory leadership rivals face first party vote
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Boris Johnson has been elected new Conservative leader in a ballot of party members and will become the next UK prime minister.
He beat Jeremy Hunt comfortably, winning 92,153 votes to his rival's 46,656.
The former London mayor takes over from Theresa May on Wednesday.
In his victory speech, Mr Johnson promised he would "deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn".
Speaking at the Queen Elizabeth II centre in London, he said: "We are going to energise the country.
"We are going to get Brexit done on 31 October and take advantage of all the opportunities it will bring with a new spirit of can do.
"We are once again going to believe in ourselves, and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self doubt and negativity."
Mr Johnson thanked his predecessor, saying it had been "a privilege to serve in her cabinet". He was Mrs May's foreign secretary until resigning over Brexit.
The outgoing PM - who is standing down after a revolt by Conservative MPs over her Brexit policy - congratulated her successor, promising him her "full support from the backbenches".
Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt said he was "very disappointed", but Mr Johnson would do "a great job". He said he had "total, unshakeable confidence in our country" and that was a valuable quality at such a challenging time.
Mr Hunt added: "It was always going to be uphill for us because I was someone who voted Remain and I think lots of party members felt that this was a moment when you just had to have someone who voted for Brexit in the referendum.
"In retrospect, that was a hurdle we were never able to overcome."
Donald Trump told an event in Washington "a really good man is going to be the prime minister of the UK now," and Mr Johnson would "get it done", referring to Brexit.
The president added: "They call him Britain Trump. That's a good thing."
Almost 160,000 Conservative members were eligible to vote in the contest and turnout was 87.4%.
Mr Johnson's share of the vote - 66.4% - was slightly lower than that garnered by David Cameron in the 2005 Tory leadership election (67.6%).
The former London mayor and ex-foreign secretary spoke to staff at Conservative Party HQ after his victory was announced.
He was then given a rousing reception by Tory MPs at a meeting in Parliament, where he urged them to "unite, unite, unite and win".
The BBC's Nick Eardley, who was outside the room, said such gatherings had been gloomy and downbeat for many months, but this one was full of laughter.
One MP told our correspondent: "The BoJo show is up and running." Another said: "The cloud has been lifted."
Mr Johnson will begin announcing his new cabinet on Wednesday, but it has already been confirmed that Mark Spencer, MP for Sherwood in Nottinghamshire, will become chief whip - the person responsible for enforcing party discipline in the Commons.
A number of senior figures have already said they will not serve under Mr Johnson, though, citing their opposition to his stance on Brexit.
He has pledged the UK will leave the EU on 31 October "do or die", accepting that a no-deal exit will happen if a new agreement cannot be reached by then.
Education Minister Anne Milton tweeted her resignation just half an hour before the leadership result was due to be revealed, insisting the UK "must leave the EU in a responsible manner".
And International Development Secretary Rory Stewart confirmed he would be returning to the backbenches, where he would be spending more time "serving Cumbria" and "walking".
David Gauke, another vocal opponent of a no-deal Brexit, announced he was resigning as justice secretary.
They join the likes of Chancellor Philip Hammond, Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan and Culture Minister Margot James who have all said they disagree too strongly with Mr Johnson's Brexit strategy to work closely with him.
Boris Johnson will become our next prime minister.
A sentence that might thrill you. A sentence that might horrify you. A sentence that 12 months ago even his most die-hard fans would have found hard to believe.
But it's not a sentence, unusually maybe for politics, that won't bother you either way.
Because whatever you think of Boris Johnson, he is a politician that is hard to ignore.
With a personality, and perhaps an ego, of a scale that few of his colleagues can match. This is the man who even as a child wanted to be "world king".
Now, he is the Tory king, and the Brexiteers are the court.
Read Laura's blog here
The EU Commission's Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said he was looking forward to working with Mr Johnson "to facilitate the ratification of the withdrawal agreement and achieve an orderly Brexit".
The new Tory leader has previously said the agreement Mrs May reached with the EU was "dead", having been rejected three times by MPs.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit co-ordinator, said the parliament would hold an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday in response to Mr Johnson's election.
Jeremy Corbyn reacted to the result by tweeting that Mr Johnson had "won the support of fewer than 100,000 unrepresentative Conservative Party members".
"The people of our country should decide who becomes the prime minister in a general election," he added.
Speaking to the BBC later, Mr Corbyn said Labour planned to table a motion of no confidence in Mr Johnson. Asked when that would be, he replied: "It will be an interesting surprise for you all."
Wednesday 12:00 BST onwards: Theresa May takes part in her last Prime Minister's Questions. After lunch she will make a short farewell speech outside No. 10 before travelling to see the Queen to tender her resignation.
Boris Johnson will then arrive for an audience at Buckingham Palace where he will be invited to form a government.
After that he will make a speech in Downing Street before entering the building for the first time as prime minister.
Later, he will begin announcing his most senior cabinet appointments, such as chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary, and will make and take his first calls from other world leaders.
Thursday: Mr Johnson is expected to make a statement to Parliament about his Brexit strategy and take questions from MPs. Parliament will break up for its summer recess later.
The new PM will also continue announcing his new cabinet.
Newly-elected Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said Mr Johnson had "shown time and time again that he isn't fit to be the prime minister of our country".
First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon congratulated Mr Johnson, but said she had "profound concerns" about him becoming prime minister.
The new leader also received congratulations from Arlene Foster, the leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, whose support has kept the Conservatives in government since the 2017 general election.
She said the pact - known as a confidence and supply agreement - continued and would be reviewed over the coming weeks "to explore the policy priorities of both parties".
Leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson, who backed Mr Hunt in the campaign, also sent her congratulations, adding that the new PM had "an enormous task ahead of him".
In the often divisive Brexit world of "them and us" it's easy to forget that, beyond Brexit, EU leaders still see the UK as a close partner and ally. Today's messages of congratulation to Boris Johnson from across Europe were a timely reminder.
Whatever happens with Brexit, France, Germany, Poland et al still very much hope to work closely with the UK on international issues like Russia sanctions, Iran, and human rights protection.
But EU leaders' welcoming tone does not signal a willingness to accept whatever Prime Minister Johnson might demand in terms of changes to the Brexit deal.
He's right when he says a no-deal Brexit is bad for Brussels, but he overestimates EU wiggle room. Amendments will only be forthcoming if EU leaders deem them workable and are convinced the new prime minister commands a majority in Parliament to get an agreement through once and for all.

The European Union is "open but not convinced" by the UK PM's new proposals for a Brexit deal with the EU, the president of the European Council says.
Donald Tusk was among several leading EU voices to express doubt over Boris Johnson's withdrawal agreement plan.
The plan would keep Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods but see it leave the customs union.
But what happens to the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland remains a central sticking point.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar said the new plans for the withdrawal agreement were welcome, but "fall short in a number of aspects".
It comes as UK PM Boris Johnson's Europe adviser, David Frost, is to hold another round of talks in Brussels in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has told European diplomats he still has plenty of questions about the British proposal to replace the backstop - the measure designed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit.
He has said he will be in a better position to judge possible future negotiations with the UK once he has spoken to Mr Frost.
On Thursday, Mr Johnson said he had made a "genuine attempt to bridge the chasm" with EU officials before time runs out to reach a deal for the 31 October deadline for the UK to leave the EU.
The UK government says it is aiming to reach a final agreement at an EU summit on 17 October.
EU leaders face a delicate political dance, uncertain if Mr Johnson is open for deeper negotiations or is focusing his attention on a possible election campaign, the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler says.
Whatever happens, she adds, the EU will be reluctant to be seen slamming the door in the face of the UK.
Meanwhile, Scotland's highest civil court is to consider whether Mr Johnson could be jailed if he ignores legislation aimed at preventing no-deal.
The so-called Benn Act requires the government to ask the EU for an extension to the Brexit deadline if it fails to either pass a deal in Parliament, or get MPs to approve no-deal, by 19 October.
However, Mr Johnson has repeatedly insisted he would not ask for a delay as the law requires him to, describing the legislation as a "surrender bill".
Downing Street hopes its new plan will replace the controversial Irish backstop provision that has proved the biggest obstacle to the existing withdrawal agreement.
The backstop was meant to keep a free-flowing border on the island of Ireland but critics - including Mr Johnson - fear it could trap the UK in EU trading rules indefinitely.
Mr Johnson's latest plan seeks to address this with the following:
The new UK proposals envisage two borders - one between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and a second between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, says the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler.
EU negotiators say they have already identified problems with the plans, including the continuing failure to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland and the threat to the single market.
Donald Tusk reacted in a tweet, after speaking to Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar, who is seen as key to agreeing to a withdrawal deal.
For his part, Mr Varadkar voiced concerns over the customs proposals, questioning how Northern Ireland and Ireland could operate under different customs systems without the need for physical checkpoints.
He also questioned the plan to give Northern Ireland's Assembly a veto over entering into a "regulatory zone" with the EU, without the involvement of Ireland or the EU.
The UK has made some progress but "further work is needed", European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said.
Accepting the current proposals would not meet the objectives of the backstop including preventing a hard border, he added.
Meanwhile, the European parliament's Brexit co-ordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, called the plans "unworkable".
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Verhofstadt said the plan represented "a repackaging of old ideas".
Earlier, the European parliament's Brexit committee said the plan didn't match "even remotely" what had already been agreed.

Boris Johnson has faced a double defeat in the Commons after MPs turned down his motion for a general election.
Earlier, MPs backed a bill aimed at blocking a no-deal Brexit if the PM hadn't agreed a plan with the EU ahead of the 31 October deadline.
Mr Johnson said the bill "scuppered" negotiations and the only way forward now was an election.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the PM of "playing a disingenuous game" to force a no-deal Brexit.
He said his party would back an election after the bill had been passed, but not before.
Both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats also criticised the prime minister's motion as a plot to make sure the UK left the EU without a deal.
But supporters of Mr Johnson hit back at opposition members who had been calling for a general election for two years.
Mr Johnson wanted MPs to agree to an early general election on 15 October, saying the bill - which forces him to ask for an extension to the Brexit deadline if no deal had been agreed - left him unable to negotiate a deal.
He needed two thirds of all MPs to vote in favour under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, but the result only saw 298 vote for the motion and 56 against - 136 short of the number he needed.
Labour sources told the BBC the party abstained on the vote, although three MPs appeared to have voted for it and 28 against.
The SNP also abstained.
The bill to block no deal passed all its stages in the Commons in one day, with the support of most opposition parties and 21 Tory rebels, as they tried to push it through ahead of Parliament being suspended next week.
It will now go to the Lords for approval.
Peers are debating a business motion on how to move forward with the bill - but pro-Brexit peers have laid down over 100 amendments to derail its progress.
Speaking after the vote, the PM attacked Mr Corbyn, claiming he was "the first leader of the opposition in the democratic history of our country to refuse the invitation to an election".
He said he "urged [Mr Corbyn's] colleagues to reflect on the unsustainability of this position overnight and in the course of the next few days."
Earlier, the Labour leader said Mr Johnson's offer of an election was "a bit like an offer of an apple to Snow White from the Wicked Queen... offering the poison of a no deal".
He added: "Let this bill [to block a no deal] pass and gain Royal Assent, then we will back an election so we do not crash out."
One senior MP told the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg that Mr Corbyn had said he would not allow Mr Johnson to have an election before 31 October.
The leader of the SNP in Westminster, Ian Blackford, said the debate about an early election was only going ahead because the PM had lost the vote against the bill.
He added: "[Mr Johnson] must accept the will of this House, accept the bill that Parliament has passed, accept your duty as prime minister and go to the European Council on 17 October and negotiate the extension you have been instructed to deliver."
Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, praised the cross-party work on the bill as "putting the national interest first", but condemned Mr Johnson's reaction.
"I am intrigued that as a result of this vote... the prime minister's response is this somehow messes up his plan," she added.
"If he is seriously saying the extent of his plan was to try to bully the EU and only get a good deal by threatening [to] leave without a deal... it is not very well thought through."
But Tory MP Nigel Evans criticised the opposition, telling the Commons: "They have been given an opportunity [for an election] and they are running scared - not just from the prime minister, not just from a general election, but from the people of this country who in 2016 said they wanted to leave the EU."
Earlier, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told Labour MPs the leadership would not back an election until a Brexit delay had been agreed with the EU - making the 15 October proposal impossible.
But the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, tweeted that the opposition parties must "seek to force [an] election" after the bill becomes law but before Parliament is suspended.
She added: "It's starting to feel like Labour doesn't want an election at all and leaving this PM in place knowing he'll try every trick in book to get what he wants would be irresponsible."
The bill says the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit.
Once this deadline has passed, he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020 - and, unusually, the bill actually includes the wording of the letter he would have to write.
If the EU responds by proposing a different date, the PM will have two days to accept that proposal. During that time, MPs - not the government - will have the opportunity to reject the EU's date.
The bill also requires ministers to report to the House of Commons over the next few months. potentially providing more opportunities to take control of the timetable.
Be aware though, this could all change over the next few days because MPs and peers have the power to pass amendments to any law.
Meanwhile, the fallout from No 10's decision to withdraw the party whip from 21 Tory rebels who backed the bill to block no deal has continued to face criticism from others in the party.
A group of around 80 Conservatives have written to the prime minister, calling on him to re-instate the whip to the "principled, hard-working and dedicated" MPs.
In a statement on behalf of the "One Nation Caucus", former minister and Tory MP Damian Green said: "Removing the whip from valued colleagues who have served their country and party with distinction damages our hope of winning the next general election."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken the step of writing to all of the MPs who sit in the House of Commons, outlining his plans to ask for a suspension of Parliament in the first half of September. The move will limit the number of parliamentary days available for opponents of a no-deal Brexit to try to block that possibility.
Dear colleague,
I hope that you had an enjoyable and productive summer recess, with the opportunity for some rest ahead of the return of the House.
I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the Government's plans for its business in Parliament.
As you know, for some time parliamentary business has been sparse.
The current session has lasted more than 340 days and needs to be brought to a close - in almost 400 years only the 2010-12 session comes close, at 250 days.
Bills have been introduced, which, while worthy in their own right, have at times seemed more about filling time in both the Commons and the Lords, while key Brexit legislation has been held back to ensure it could still be considered for carry-over into a second session.
This cannot continue.
I therefore intend to bring forward a new bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda for the renewal of our country after Brexit.
There will be a significant Brexit legislative programme to get through but that should be no excuse for a lack of ambition!
We will help the NHS, fight violent crime, invest in infrastructure and science and cut the cost of living.
This morning I spoke to Her Majesty The Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September, before commencing the second session of this Parliament with a Queen's speech on Monday 14 October.
A central feature of the legislative programme will be the Government's number one legislative priority, if a new deal is forthcoming at EU Council, to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill and move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October.
I fully recognise that the debate on the Queen's Speech will be an opportunity for Members of Parliament to express their view on this Government's legislative agenda and its approach to, and the result of, the European Council on 17-18 October.
It is right that you should have the chance to do so, in a clear and unambiguous manner.
I also believe it is vitally important that the key votes associated with the Queen's Speech and any deal with the EU fall at a time when parliamentarians are best placed to judge the Government's programme.
Parliament will have the opportunity to debate the Government's overall programme, and approach to Brexit, in the run up to EU Council, and then vote on this on 21 and 22 October, once we know the outcome of the Council.
Should I succeed in agreeing a deal with the EU, Parliament will then have the opportunity to pass the Bill required for ratification of the deal ahead of 31 October.
Finally, I want to reiterate to colleagues that these weeks leading up to the European Council on 17/18 October are vitally important for the sake of my negotiations with the EU.
Member States are watching what Parliament does with great interest and it is only by showing unity and resolve that we stand a chance of securing a new deal that can be passed by Parliament.
In the meantime, the Government will take the responsible approach of continuing its preparations for leaving the EU, with or without a deal.
The Leader of the Commons will update the House in the normal fashion with regard to business for the final week.
For now, I can confirm that on Monday 9 September both Houses will debate the motions on the first reports relating to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 (NIEFA).
Following these debates we will begin preparation to end the Parliamentary session ahead of a Queen's Speech.
The Business Managers in both Houses will shortly engage with their opposite numbers, and MPs more widely, on plans for passing a deal should one be forthcoming.
Decisions will also need to be taken about carrying over some of the bills currently before the House, and we will look to work constructively with the Opposition on this front.
If agreement cannot be reached we will look to reintroduce the bills in the next session, and details on this will be set out in the Queen's Speech.
As always my door is open to all colleagues should you wish to discuss this or any other matter.
Yours sincerely,
Boris Johnson

These are the decisions of a prime minister in a hurry.
One who is aware that he's up against the clock.
One who has to pull off - within a few months - what his predecessor could not manage over years.
The team surrounding Boris Johnson has been put together with one goal in mind - to help him keep the promise he's made, to see the country leave the European Union in good time.
Number 10 believes it shows strength of purpose - a new administration determined and willing to take decisions after years of drift and disappointment.
Brexit believers have the top roles. But it is not a cabinet made up purely of the most burning Eurosceptics.
Most of those around the table backed Theresa May's ill-fated deal, so they weren't part of the last stand. They are, in the main, pragmatists not purists - and with prominent former Remainers in there too.
It is perhaps a discernible step to the right - a team that could ready itself to fight a different kind of election, maybe soon, although that's not the intention.
Don't doubt though the scale of the change - one senior Tory described the wholesale clear out as a warped takeover. Another named the new cabinet a Rocky Horror Show.
It's a set of decisions put together to prioritise the task at hand, not to soothe nerves in those who doubt the new prime minister.
But the approach is vintage Johnson - delivered in haste, easy to revile, but a bold statement of intent that's impossible to ignore.

Boris Johnson has delivered his first speech in Downing Street after becoming the UK's new prime minister.
You can read the full text of his speech below.
Good afternoon.
I have just been to see Her Majesty the Queen who has invited me to form a government and I have accepted.
I pay tribute to the fortitude and patience of my predecessor and her deep sense of public service.
But in spite of all her efforts, it has become clear that there are pessimists at home and abroad who think that after three years of indecision, that this country has become a prisoner to the old arguments of 2016 and that in this home of democracy we are incapable of honouring a basic democratic mandate.
And so I am standing before you today to tell you, the British people, that those critics are wrong.
The doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters - they are going to get it wrong again.
The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts, because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31, no ifs or buts.
And we will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximise the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe, based on free trade and mutual support.
I have every confidence that in 99 days' time we will have cracked it. But you know what - we aren't going to wait 99 days, because the British people have had enough of waiting.
The time has come to act, to take decisions, to give strong leadership and to change this country for the better.
And though the Queen has just honoured me with this extraordinary office of state my job is to serve you, the people.
Because if there is one point we politicians need to remember, it is that the people are our bosses.
My job is to make your streets safer - and we are going to begin with another 20,000 police on the streets and we start recruiting forthwith.
My job is to make sure you don't have to wait 3 weeks to see your GP - and we start work this week, with 20 new hospital upgrades, and ensuring that money for the NHS really does get to the front line.
My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.
And so I am announcing now - on the steps of Downing Street - that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.
My job is to make sure your kids get a superb education, wherever they are in the country - and that's why we have already announced that we are going to level up per pupil funding in primary and secondary schools.
And that is the work that begins immediately behind that black door.
And though I am today building a great team of men and women, I will take personal responsibility for the change I want to see.
Never mind the backstop - the buck stops here.
And I will tell you something else about my job. It is to be prime minister of the whole United Kingdom.
And that means uniting our country, answering at last the plea of the forgotten people and the left-behind towns by physically and literally renewing the ties that bind us together.
So that with safer streets and better education and fantastic new road and rail infrastructure and full fibre broadband we level up across Britain with higher wages, and a higher living wage, and higher productivity.
We close the opportunity gap, giving millions of young people the chance to own their own homes and giving business the confidence to invest across the UK.
Because it is time we unleashed the productive power not just of London and the South East, but of every corner of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The awesome foursome that are incarnated in that red, white, and blue flag - who together are so much more than the sum of their parts, and whose brand and political personality is admired and even loved around the world.
For our inventiveness, for our humour, for our universities, our scientists, our armed forces, our diplomacy for the equalities on which we insist - whether race or gender or LGBT or the right of every girl in the world to 12 years of quality education - and for the values we stand for around the world
Everyone knows the values that flag represents.
It stands for freedom and free speech and habeas corpus and the rule of law, and above all it stands for democracy.
And that is why we will come out of the EU on October 31.
Because in the end, Brexit was a fundamental decision by the British people that they wanted their laws made by people that they can elect and they can remove from office.
And we must now respect that decision, and create a new partnership with our European friends -  as warm and as close and as affectionate as possible.
And the first step is to repeat unequivocally our guarantee to the 3.2 million EU nationals now living and working among us, and I say directly to you - thank you for your contribution to our society.
Thank you for your patience, and I can assure you that under this government you will get the absolute certainty of the rights to live and remain.
And next I say to our friends in Ireland, and in Brussels and around the EU: I am convinced that we can do a deal without checks at the Irish border, because we refuse under any circumstances to have such checks and yet without that anti-democratic backstop.
And it is of course vital at the same time that we prepare for the remote possibility that Brussels refuses any further to negotiate, and we are forced to come out with no deal, not because we want that outcome - of course not - but because it is only common sense to prepare.
And let me stress that there is a vital sense in which those preparations cannot be wasted, and that is because under any circumstances we will need to get ready at some point in the near future to come out of the EU customs union and out of regulatory control, fully determined at last to take advantage of Brexit.
Because that is the course on which this country is now set.
With high hearts and growing confidence, we will now accelerate the work of getting ready.
And the ports will be ready and the banks will be ready, and the factories will be ready, and business will be ready, and the hospitals will be ready, and our amazing food and farming sector will be ready and waiting to continue selling ever more, not just here but around the world.
And don't forget that in the event of a no deal outcome, we will have the extra lubrication of the £39 billion, and whatever deal we do we will prepare this autumn for an economic package to boost British business and to lengthen this country's lead as the number one destination in this continent for overseas investment.
And to all those who continue to prophesy disaster, I say yes - there will be difficulties, though I believe that with energy and application they will be far less serious than some have claimed.
But if there is one thing that has really sapped the confidence of business over the last three years, it is not the decisions we have taken - it is our refusal to take decisions.
And to all those who say we cannot be ready, I say do not underestimate this country.
Do not underestimate our powers of organisation and our determination, because we know the enormous strengths of this economy in life sciences, in tech, in academia, in music, the arts, culture, financial services.
It is here in Britain that we are using gene therapy, for the first time, to treat the most common form of blindness.
Here in Britain that we are leading the world in the battery technology that will help cut CO2 and tackle climate change and produce green jobs for the next generation.
And as we prepare for a post-Brexit future, it is time we looked not at the risks but at the opportunities that are upon us.
So let us begin work now to create free ports that will drive growth and thousands of high-skilled jobs in left-behind areas.
Let's start now to liberate the UK's extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules, and let's develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world.
Let's get going now on our own position navigation and timing satellite and earth observation systems - UK assets orbiting in space, with all the long term strategic and commercial benefits for this country.
Let's change the tax rules to provide extra incentives to invest in capital and research.
And let's promote the welfare of animals that has always been so close to the hearts of the British people.
And yes, let's start now on those free trade deals - because it is free trade that has done more than anything else to lift billions out of poverty.
All this and more we can do now and only now, at this extraordinary moment in our history.
And after three years of unfounded self-doubt, it is time to change the record.
To recover our natural and historic role as an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain, generous in temper and engaged with the world.
No one in the last few centuries has succeeded in betting against the pluck and nerve and ambition of this country.
They will not succeed today.
We in this government will work flat out to give this country the leadership it deserves, and that work begins now.
Thank you very much.

Boris Johnson has said the row over the border in Northern Ireland is being used to frustrate Brexit.
The foreign secretary insisted there were "very good solutions" to avoid the need for a hard border.
There is a stand-off on the issue with the EU publishing a legal draft of its Brexit withdrawal agreement.
An option for Northern Ireland to follow EU rules to avoid a "hard border" - if an alternative arrangement is not agreed - has sparked a row.
The Democratic Unionist Party, which offers vital support in key votes to the Tory government, says details of the draft treaty have "fundamentally breached" an agreement reached in Brussels late last year.
Conservative Brexiteers say it is "completely unacceptable" and would effectively annex Northern Ireland.
The European Union's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, unveiling the draft agreement, described this Northern Ireland border option as a "backstop" if no other proposals are found. And a former EU commissioner said it was down to the UK to come up with a solution, warning that "at a high pace we are heading to the cliff edge".
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said it was shaping up to become "the big Brexit bust-up" with both sides of the argument refusing to budge.
Mr Johnson faced criticisism on Tuesday for suggesting in a BBC interview the issue of the border could be managed as easily as London's congestion charging zone.
Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, he said: "What is going on at the moment is that the issue of the Northern Irish border is being used quite a lot politically to try and keep the UK in the customs union - effectively the single market - so we cannot really leave the EU. That is what is going on."
"If the EU or Dublin believes the UK government will be signing up to a border in the Irish Sea, they are deluded," said senior DUP member Sir Jeffrey Donaldson.
Mr Donaldson argued the draft divorce treaty would also undermine the constitutional status of Northern Ireland in the Belfast Agreement.
That 1998 treaty - also known as the Good Friday Agreement - between the British and Irish governments and most political parties in Northern Ireland decided how the region would be governed and brought an end to 30 years of sectarian conflict.
Former Brexit minister David Jones told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the EU was proposing that Northern Ireland stay in the customs union, and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
"That effectively amounts to an annexure of Northern Ireland by the European Union," he said, adding: "I think that it would be pretty catastrophic and I think that the European Union in actually proposing this is behaving wholly irresponsibly."
But former EU trade commissioner Karel de Gucht said: "If you have another solution then please come up with it."
All of the UK's proposals so far have been "mutually incompatible", he added.
And Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told RTE that in order to avoid the backstop being triggered,  "it is up to the UK to bring proposals to the table to make that possible".
He added: "It's not OK for people, whether pro-Brexit politicians in Britain, people or parties in Northern Ireland, to just say 'no' now."
The draft document aims to encapsulate - in legally binding language - agreements already reached on Ireland, citizens' rights and the UK's so-called "divorce bill".
It mandates that during the Brexit transition, which it says should last only until the end of 2020, the UK must continue to comply with all existing EU legislation. It would however lose all voting rights and decision-making power, including on any rules adopted by the 27 remaining member states.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier has said the document will not contain any surprises because it translates the political pledges made by both sides in the talks so far.
"The clock is ticking; time is short," Mr Barnier said at a news conference on Tuesday. "I am concerned."
Theresa May wants trade to be frictionless across the Irish border after Brexit.
But there is plenty of political friction as every potential solution seems to bring a new problem.
In a leaked letter designed to demonstrate that there would be no need for new infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Boris Johnson used a potentially toxic phrase: "even IF there is a hard border".
This allowed critics to suggest that a regime of border checks which would be anathema to republicans, nationalists and the Irish government was being contemplated.
Downing Street swiftly reiterated its commitment to no hard border.
But one of the solutions - indeed, the most detailed option - being put forward by the EU would keep Northern Ireland aligned with EU regulations.
The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson has said the government cannot sign up to what would in effect be a border in the Irish Sea.
And with rebellions threatened by some of her own backbenchers, Mrs May is likely to need the DUP's MPs to deliver the Brexit she's promising.
The prime minister's office has categorically dismissed any prospect of a return to a "hard border" in Ireland as a consequence of Brexit.
The statement on Tuesday evening followed the leak of a letter to the prime minister from Mr Johnson, in which he appeared to contemplate the possibility of future customs border checks, after the UK, including Northern Ireland leaves the EU customs union.
The leaked letter, obtained by Sky News, quoted Mr Johnson telling the prime minister the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland would continue to leave 95% of traffic to pass unchecked.
Following the letter's emergence, Labour called for Mr Johnson - one of the leading Brexiteers in the cabinet - to be dismissed "before he can do any more damage".
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said the letter was "designed to outline how a highly facilitated border would work and help to make a successful Brexit".
"It shows how we could manage a border without infrastructure or related checks and controls while protecting UK, Northern Ireland, Irish and EU interests."

Boris Johnson says there should be "no doubt" the only alternative to the Brexit proposals he will put to Brussels later is no-deal.
Addressing his party conference in Manchester, the PM said his plan would be a "compromise by the UK", but he hoped the EU would "understand that and compromise in their turn".
The European Commission said they will "examine [the proposals] objectively".
The Irish PM said he had not seen the plans but was "not encouraged".
Leo Varadker told the Irish Parliament: "What we are hearing is not encouraging and would not be the basis for agreement."
The UK is set to leave the EU on 31 October.
The government has insisted it will not negotiate a further delay beyond the Halloween deadline, saying this would be unnecessary and costly for the UK.
However, under the terms of a law passed by Parliament last month, the PM faces having to request another extension unless MPs back the terms of withdrawal by 19 October - two days after a summit of European leaders.
The European Commission's President Jean-Claude Juncker and Mr Johnson will speak on the phone later, and the two sides' negotiating teams will also meet.
In his speech, Mr Johnson said no-deal was not an outcome the government was seeking, but "it is an outcome for which we are ready".
On the eve of his speech, Mr Johnson told a conference fringe meeting, hosted by the DUP, that he hoped to reach a deal with the EU over the course of "the next few days".
The issue of the Irish border - and how to keep it free from border checks when it becomes the frontier between the UK and the EU - has been a key sticking point in Brexit negotiations.
Mr Johnson has said the solution reached by the EU and Theresa May, the backstop, is "anti-democratic" and "inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK", claiming it offered no means for the UK to unilaterally exit and no say for the people of Northern Ireland over the rules that would apply there.
The PM used his speech to confirm parts of his offer to the EU.
He said that "under no circumstances" would there be checks at or near the border in Northern Ireland and the proposals would respect the peace process and the Good Friday agreement.
It included promising "a process of renewable democratic consent" for the Stormont Assembly on its relationship with the EU going forward.
He also referred to the use of technological solutions to ensure there was no hard border on the island of Ireland.
He said he did not want a deal to be out of reach "because of what is essentially a technical discussion of the exact nature of future customs checks when that technology is improving the whole time".
Mr Johnson also said he would "protect the existing regulatory arrangements for farmers and other businesses on both sides of the border".
He added: "At the same time we will allow the UK - whole and entire - to withdraw from the EU, with control of our own trade policy from the start."
The PM said this would "protect the union".
Echoing the main slogan of the conference, Mr Johnson said: "Let's get Brexit done on 31 October…to answer the cry of those 17.4 million who voted for Brexit [and] for those millions who may have voted Remain, but are first and foremost democrats and accept the result of the referendum."
He said the Tories were "not an anti-European party" and the UK is "not an anti-European country".
The PM added: "We love Europe. We are European.
"But after 45 years of really dramatic constitutional change, we must have a new relationship with the EU."
This speech was hugely important for Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.
Be in no doubt that amongst those listening most closely, most intently, will be leaders in other European capitals, trying to gauge whether Mr Johnson is serious about a Brexit deal or whether he is paving the way for no-deal and looking to blame the EU.
This was actually a rather surprising speech because there was none of the aggressive, combative language that we had been expecting - none of the in your face, take it or leave it final offer that we were told would form the guts of his argument.
Instead, it seemed Mr Johnson went out of his way to adopt a rather more emollient approach, saying how much he loved Europe, how the Tory Party wasn't an anti-European party and how Britain wasn't an anti-European country.
What that meant was that Mr Johnson didn't endeavour to bring the house down in the conference hall. He didn't go for the easy Brussels bashing, and for the wider viewers in this country, there were no brand new policy announcements.
You sense Mr Johnson has calculated for the next few hours and days that the really crucial audience in terms of his premiership, and for his future, is not here in Manchester - it's in capitals around the EU.
Before Mr Johnson's speech, a European Commission spokeswoman said they would examine the proposals objectively, adding: "We will listen carefully to the UK."
She said the EU wanted to agree a deal with the UK, saying "an orderly withdrawal is far more preferable than a 'no-deal' scenario".
But the spokeswoman also reminded the UK of its "well-known criteria",  saying: "In order for there to be a deal, we must have a legally operational solution that meets all the objectives of the backstop.
"[That means] preventing a hard border, preserving North-South cooperation and the all-island economy, and protecting the EU's Single Market and Ireland's place in it."
Leo Varadker said he would work until the last moment to secure an agreement, but he added: "We will not do so at any cost, and we are ready for no-deal if that's what the British decide to do."
The BBC's Europe editor, Katya Adler said the bloc wanted to do a deal and needed to be seen to try.
But she added it was "fundamentally misunderstanding the EU" if the prime minister believed the other 26 EU leaders will turn round to Ireland and say they have to accept the proposals just they want to have a deal.
There were huge rounds of applause for Mr Johnson from within the conference hall, showing support from his party.
After the speech, one member said the PM was "exactly what we need", while another said she had been "inspired", adding: "We are so fed up with nothing happening, but we feel like something will happen now because we think he will deliver."
Leaving the hall, Tory MP Mims Davies described her leader as "bombastic Boris", saying: "That [speech] was a message to the country, a message to our party and a message to the EU - we are ready to get on with this."
But the PM's plan has been branded as "extreme" and "doomed to failure" by the SNP's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, who said his strategy was leading towards a no-deal.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the prime minister's speech was "absolute bluster" and he described it as a "cynical manipulation to get a no-deal".
Mr McDonnell also that any Brexit deal or no-deal should be put to the people to make the final decision.
The director general of the CBI, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, praised the PM's "optimistic vision for the UK".
But she said his plan "relies on a good Brexit deal".
"The UK is at a crossroads," she said. "[And] the no-deal turning ends in a very different place: a swamp that will slow the UK's every step for years to come."
The PM also used the opportunity to criticise Parliament, saying it "refuses to deliver Brexit, refuses to do anything constructive and refuses to have an election".
He said: "I am afraid that after three and a half years people are beginning to feel that they are being taken for fools."
Mr Johnson said the Tories were "the party of the NHS" because of their belief in capitalism, adding: "We understand the vital symmetry at the heart of the modern British economy between a dynamic enterprise culture and great public services precisely because we are the party of capitalism."
He praised London as its former mayor, but pledged to "unlock talent in every corner of the UK", and ensure safety with his existing policies of 20,000 additional police officers and tackling county lines gangs.
And he repeated more policy announcements from the conference on infrastructure, education, law and order.
Mr Johnson concluded: "Let's get on with sensible moderate one nation but tax-cutting Tory government and, figuratively if not literally, let us send Jeremy Corbyn into orbit where he belongs.
"Let's get Brexit done [and] let's bring our country together."
Mr Johnson's conference speech clashed with Prime Minister's Questions.
Normally the Commons goes into recess for the Tory conference, but MPs voted against this amid the bitter fallout from the government's unlawful prorogation of Parliament.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab deputised for the prime minister, facing the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott over the despatch box.
He told MPs the government will present its written Brexit proposals to them later.
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Boris Johnson has told the BBC that Britain should reject any EU demands for a £50bn "exit bill" and follow the example of former PM Margaret Thatcher.
It has been reported that EU negotiator Michel Barnier has said the UK must continue to pay into the EU until 2020.
Mr Johnson said it was "not reasonable" for the UK to "continue to make vast budget payments" once it left the EU.
He cited Mrs Thatcher's success at the 1984 Fontainebleau Summit, when she threatened to halt payments to the EU.
Laura Kuenssberg: Thatcher to inspire UK 'Brexit bill' talks?
Poland fails to stop Tusk EU re-election
"I think we have illustrious precedent in this matter, and you will doubtless recall the 1984 Fontainebleau Summit in which Mrs Thatcher said she wanted her money back, and I think that is exactly what we will get," he told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg in BBC Two's Brexit: Britain's Biggest Deal.
"It is not reasonable, I don't think, for the UK having left the EU to continue to make vast budget payments, I think everybody understands that and that's the reality."
The UK won the rebate in 1984, after then prime minister Margaret Thatcher threatened to halt payments to the EU budget.
At the time the UK was then the third poorest member of the Community but was on course to become the biggest net contributor to the EU budget.
Asked about Mr Johnson's comments, Mrs May said "there was only ever one Margaret Thatcher" and insisted the British people did not vote for Brexit to keep paying "huge sums" into the EU budget.
The Daily Telegraph has reported that Mr Barnier raised the idea that the UK may have to pay 60bn euros (£52bn) to cover the UK's share of outstanding pension liabilities, loan guarantees and spending on UK-based projects until 2020 - even if it leaves the EU by 2019.
Irish premier Enda Kenny suggested he may back demands for the UK to pay a "divorce bill" when it leaves the EU, telling reporters at the summit on Thursday: "When you sign on for a contract, you commit yourself to participation.
"And obviously the extent of that level of money will be determined. Mr Barnier is the lead negotiator for the European Union and obviously Britain will have a say.
"But that no more than any other problem will have to be faced, it will have to be dealt with and it will be dealt with."
Meanwhile, in London, ministers have cleared time for MPs to vote on reversing Lords Brexit bill amendments.
Commons Leader David Lidington announced that the bill will be debated by MPs on Monday, 13 March.
Ministers hope to overturn peers' calls for a "meaningful" parliamentary vote on the final terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU.
They also want to reverse a Lords defeat on the issue of guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens in the UK.
At the summit, the 28 EU leaders discussed migration, security and economic growth, but the meeting began with a vote backing former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk remaining European Council president - a move opposed by Poland's government.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo had accused predecessor Mr Tusk of interfering in the country's domestic affairs.
The president is elected by the European Council by a qualified majority, which means that no single country can veto it.
At the summit, Mrs May called for more action to counter "Russian disinformation" and "raise the visibility" of Western commitment in the western Balkans, where Moscow faces allegations of helping to plot a coup attempt in Montenegro.
She is leaving the summit on Thursday.
The other 27 leaders are expected to use Friday's informal meeting to discuss the next summit in Rome on 25 March, which will celebrate the EU's 60th anniversary.
A government source suggested Mrs May, who plans to trigger Article 50 this month - the mechanism that kick-starts the UK's departure from the EU - will not be attending the Rome summit.

It is fair to say it has been a confusing day, but what do we actually know tonight?
No 10 have prepared a proposal for a "Temporary Customs Arrangement", where the UK would retain close ties to the EU for an indeterminate period after the end of the transition period - past 2020 - in case none of their hoped for customs fixes come to pass.
They believed they had the support of senior ministers to publish it on Thursday, even without explicit and detailed discussions of the written paper itself in the inner Brexit cabinet, let alone the full gathering of senior ministers.
It became clear, however, and rather surprisingly to the outside observer, that the man in government who is meant to be in charge of the Brexit process was not completely on-board.
So the brakes have been slammed on publishing the paper until meetings and discussions between senior ministers tomorrow.
No 10 is trying to find a way of satisfying Brexit Secretary David Davis, who is not just concerned about the lack of time limit in this particular proposal, but also Downing Street's refusal so far to publish his hoped for Brexit blueprint before the end of this month, and a lack of decision about the government's preferred long term option on customs.
Again, therefore, No 10 has had to row back because it either didn't fully understand the level of unhappiness inside cabinet, or because they were aware of it but believed they could push on regardless - because the imperative of cracking on with the Brexit process is more important than political sensitivities at home.
Brexiteers on the Tory benches would have been likely to erupt at the current proposal with no end date. So, if David Davis' desires can be as one source suggested "managed" tomorrow, his fury may have avoided a wider revolt.
But Theresa May's internal critics believe this is yet another product of her reluctance to face down those in her party who want to impose their vision on her achingly slow journey to compromise.
Again, the government stumbles when trying to resolve its own internal contradictions, before being able to confront the EU 27.
This latest saga may yet be solved in the next 24 hours. But it is not impossible to imagine that it may not, with a potential, if perhaps not yet likely, resignation of David Davis.
And again, the irony is that the UK is tying itself in knots over a position that the EU is likely to reject.

The Liberal Democrats have won the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, leaving new PM Boris Johnson with a working majority in Parliament of one.
Jane Dodds overturned an 8,038 majority to beat Conservative Chris Davies by 1,425 votes.
Mr Davies stood again after being unseated by a petition following his conviction for a false expenses claim.
It was the first electoral test for Mr Johnson just eight days after becoming prime minister.
It was also the quickest by-election defeat for any new prime minister since World War Two.
Now, with the thinnest majority, he will have to rely heavily on the support of his own MPs and his confidence-and-supply partners the DUP to get any legislation passed in key votes.
It was a bad night for Labour, whose vote share dropped by 12.4% as it was beaten into fourth place by the Brexit Party.
The result means the Lib Dems now have 13 MPs.
Ms Dodds, who is the Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, said: "My very first act as your new MP when I get to Westminster will be to find Mr Boris Johnson, wherever he's hiding, and tell him to stop playing with the future of our community and rule out a no-deal Brexit."
Mr Davies congratulated Ms Dodds saying "I wish her well for the future" and paid tribute to his family saying they had "a difficult time over the past few months".
The turnout was 59.6%, down from 74.6% at the general election, but it is the highest for a by-election since Winchester in 1997.
Neither Plaid Cymru nor the Greens fielded candidates, to try to maximise the Remain vote.
Tory party chairman James Cleverly told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was a "very close result in a by-election in which the Lib Dems were expected to romp home comfortably".
In a message to Conservative MPs concerned about the government's Brexit policy he said the new prime minister had received a "clear mandate from parliamentarians" and an "even more thumping victory in the leadership election".
"I do think it's incumbent on all Conservatives to support the prime minister in what has been a long-standing Conservative policy," he said.
But recently-elected Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said: "Boris Johnson's shrinking majority makes it clear that he has no mandate to crash us out of the EU."
She denied the party had "played" the system by striking a deal with Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
"I want to have a different voting system but we're working within the system that we have," she said.
Celebrating victory later on Friday morning with party activists, Ms Swinson said the Lib Dems were "winning again" and she would "fight to keep our country in the European Union".
Ms Dodds, 55, lives in the neighbouring mid Wales constituency of Montgomeryshire and is a child-protection social worker.
The Lib Dems have held the rural seat for all but nine of the last 34 years and lost at the 2015 general election.
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price said the "spirit of co-operation" between the pro-Remain parties had led to Ms Dodds's election, as he called for another EU referendum.
"But if the prime minister is intent on a general election, he should know that Plaid Cymru and the other pro-Remain parties are committed to cooperating so that we beat Brexit once and for all," he said.
Wales Green Party leader Anthony Slaughter said its decision to withdraw from the by-election was "absolutely vindicated" by the result.
"The people of Brecon and Radnorshire have taken the opportunity to cut Boris Johnson's majority in Westminster to a highly unstable one, reducing further the risk of a disastrous crash-out Brexit," he said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called the result "disappointing".
He added: "The Liberal Democrats won it after doing a deal with Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
"I think that a lot of voters were determined to get rid of the Conservative, and they voted accordingly. So we were squeezed, but it's a place we have not held for a very long time. The area has changed a bit."
Prof Laura McAllister, from Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre, said the result should not be read as a "resounding victory" for Remain.
She pointed out that the three Brexit-supporting parties had 2-3,000 votes more than the Remain alliance.
But she added: "There are always nuanced undercurrents to this. The reality is Brexit isn't the only issue people were voting on.
"People were probably voting on rural and local issues. We can never categorically say this was about Brexit."
Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said the Conservatives were enjoying a "Boris bounce" and the result was encouraging for the party despite the loss.
But he added: "In an early general election, at the moment at least, the Conservatives would be at risk of losing."
He said the Lib Dems could pick up 40 or 50 seats, which would make winning a large overall majority "rather more difficult for the Conservatives".
By Jonathan Blake, BBC political correspondent
As the ballots were counted, the candidates looked on - neither the Tories nor the Liberal Democrats dared to claim victory or concede defeat.
One thing was certain, the result when it came would be close.
But a win is a win and the Lib Dems will shout this from the rooftops as proof they can cut through with an anti-Brexit message.
The Remain alliance proved to be a winning formula, as Plaid Cymru and the Green Party stood aside to give the Lib Dems a clear run against the Tories.
If the Brexit Party hadn't been standing, the Conservatives might have clinched it.
Labour will look hard at its disastrous result and wonder what might have been with a clearer message on Brexit.
And for the Tories, the people of Brecon and Radnorshire have delivered an unwelcome verdict on their former MP and the new prime minister.
Boris Johnson's hands were already tied in parliament and the ropes around his wrists have just been pulled a little tighter.
At one stage Labour feared it might lose its deposit and blamed voters switching tactically to the Lib Dems.
A Welsh Labour spokesman said: "We always knew this was going to be a difficult night for us, but we're proud of our positive campaign in Brecon and Radnorshire."
"One thing is clear - voters have rejected Boris Johnson and his divisive, out-of-touch UK Tory government."
Political analyst Prof Roger Awan-Scully, from Cardiff University, said: "Labour need to look very closely at this result. Everything points to not just tactical voting for the Lib Dems but also dissatisfaction with Jeremy Corbyn and [First Minister] Mark Drakeford."
The Brexit Party's Des Parkinson, a retired police chief superintendent, who finished third, said: "If you look at the actual total of the vote, the Brexiteers won.
"It shows where the votes are but the prime minister has to deliver a clear Brexit... if he doesn't, then his government is in dire trouble."
The Monster Raving Loony Party pushed the UKIP candidate into sixth place.
Voters have also given their thoughts on the result.
Farmer Trevor Walters voted for Mr Davies and said the Tories might have won, had the Brexit Party not stood, but called the speculation over a Brexit no-deal fallout "scaremongering".
He added: "We're not going to be left in the lurch. I don't think for one second that'll happen. Something will be done to sweeten the blow of all that and get us engaged with a proper trade deal."
Independent book shop owner Emma Corfield-Walters, who backed the Lib Dems, said: "None of us know what's going to happen in the future.
"I think we're all entirely confused on the Brexit issue and I think this result shows us."

Hospitals are likely to experience delays to cancer testing and treatment regardless of the result of next week's Brexit vote, BBC Newsnight has learned.
The Royal College of Radiologists has told doctors to prepare for possible delays for some drugs used to detect cancer if there is a no-deal Brexit.
It says clinicians should reduce their workload in the days after 29 March, when the UK is due to leave the EU.
The government said it had "robust" plans for however the UK leaves the EU.
MPs will vote on Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement by 12 March.
If Parliament does not vote in favour of her deal and there is no extension of Article 50 - the two-year process for leaving the EU - the UK will leave with no withdrawal agreement, known as a no-deal Brexit.
The five-page guidance to doctors from the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), seen by Newsnight, warns that some radiopharmaceutical suppliers "anticipate there may be some delay to their delivery times".
It advises clinicians to: "Keep [your] workload lighter for the first week following a no-deal Brexit, in order to see more clearly what the impact is likely to be."
It adds: "In the weeks leading up to Brexit you should consider how to prioritise requests based on clinical need, should supplies be compromised."
The guidance refers to the radioisotopes commonly used in the diagnosis and treatment of some cancers.
These cannot be stockpiled in advance because of the rapid decay of their radioactivity and "a one-day delay to delivery would reduce available activity by approximately 20%", according to the guidance from the RCR.
A spokesman for the RCR told Newsnight the organisation now believed it was "inevitable" that uncertainty over Brexit would cause delays to some cancer tests and treatments.
Dr Richard Graham said: "Of course, now there will inevitably be delays to treatment as a result of the Brexit process because we need to start booking our lists for the post-Brexit date.
"We will need to book clinics less heavily so that we've got more wriggle room if we don't have the radioisotopes in order to diagnose and treat the patients."
Dr Graham said the RCR had met with the Department of Health and Social Care several months ago "when they were very optimistic that there would be a deal" and that the guidance would not be necessary.
"But unfortunately now it looks like no deal really is a tangible possibility, so it's vital that we get this guidance out now so patients treatment and diagnosis is disrupted at the bare minimum."
Dr Graham said it would have been "much easier" for medics if they had known that a no-deal Brexit was not going to happen.
"But of course we understand that might be a negotiating strategy to get the best deal for the country.
"Putting patients' health at risk for the sake of getting a good Brexit deal is a difficult priority to balance."
The Department of Health and Social Care has asked radiopharmaceutical suppliers to use air freight in the event of a no-deal Brexit, as that is expected to cause road disruption.
But the guidance states that "some companies feel their plans will ensure no delays but others anticipate there may be some delay to their delivery times".
And on one specific type of treatment, known as radionuclide therapy, it states that "only one supplier has been confident it will be able to deliver therapy doses on particular required days".
The radiologists' warning that it is now too late to escape some disruption - even if Mrs May secures majority Parliamentary support for her withdrawal agreement - follows similar statements from other sectors.
UK-based financial firms have already had to establish offices elsewhere in the EU in case they suddenly find themselves unable to service European clients from 29 March.
And surveys show that stockpiling by manufacturing firms is at the highest level on record due to the fear of a no-deal Brexit.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "Leaving the EU with a deal remains the government's top priority.
"As a responsible government we have robust contingency plans in place so patients can continue to have access to medicines, including medical radioisotopes, whatever the EU Exit outcome.
"We have worked with the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that planes are contracted to bring in medical radioisotopes under the appropriate specialist conditions and suppliers are working closely with the NHS to minimise any potential impact of changes to delivery times."

European Council President Donald Tusk has said he will appeal to EU leaders "to be open to a long extension" of the Brexit deadline, if the UK needs to rethink its strategy and get consensus.
His intervention came as UK MPs voted to seek a delay of the 29 March deadline to leave the EU.
EU leaders meet in Brussels on 21 March and they would have the final say.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said that if her Brexit deal is not approved a longer extension may be necessary.
After two resounding defeats in the House of Commons, she will make another attempt by 20 March to push through her Withdrawal Agreement with the EU.
MPs backed a government motion on Thursday to extend the two-year deadline to 30 June if the Mrs May's deal is passed next week, while noting that a longer extension would be necessary if it is rejected.
All 27 other EU nations would have to agree to an extension, and Mr Tusk, who is the bloc's summit chairman, will hold talks with several leaders ahead of next week's Brussels meeting.
While European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has insisted that any postponement "should be complete before the European elections" at the end of May, Mr Tusk made clear a longer delay was on the cards.
While he did not specify the length of the delay, officials suggested it would have to be at least a year if the UK prime minister's deal was rejected a third time.
Mr Tusk said earlier this year that the EU's hearts were still open to the UK if it changed its mind about Brexit. He provoked an angry reaction from pro-Brexit supporters when he said there was a "special place in hell" for those who had promoted Brexit "without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely".
So at this crucial point, what do Europe's leaders think about extending Article 50, the two-year treaty provision that the UK invoked on 29 March 2017?
Jenny Hill in Berlin
"A lot of the trust is gone." Among business and political figures in Berlin, there's growing frustration, even anger, at developments in Britain.
Nevertheless, Germany is likely to do all it can to help facilitate the orderly Brexit which Angela Merkel insists is still possible.
The German chancellor won't be drawn publicly on whether she would support an extension to Article 50, but it's widely accepted here that she and her government would be willing do so.
There are those who believe that support should be conditional upon Britain's ability to outline its reasons and expectations before such an extension is granted. And there are significant concerns about the impact of a longer extension upon the EU elections but Germany's interests lie in avoiding a no-deal Brexit – and the damage that could wreak on the German economy.
Its government will do what it can to achieve that aim.
Dr Norbert Roettgen, who chairs the foreign affairs committee, urged Britain and the EU to take their time.
"Everything is hectic, hysterical, unclear. Let's slow down and try to get a clear head," he said. "The world will not end if we all take time for a breather, focus on important points."
"If we try to rush a result now it will definitely go wrong."
Hugh Schofield in Paris
As a "frontline" country which effectively shares a border with the UK – thanks to the Channel Tunnel –  France has more to fear than most from a no-deal Brexit.
Yet when it comes to granting London more time, President Emmanuel Macron is expected to insist on conditions.
He will not approve an extension if it simply means putting off the pain.
A "technical" extension of a few weeks would be an easy matter, according to Elvire Fabry of the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris.
Even if the House of Commons had approved Theresa May's plan on Tuesday, such an extension would probably have been inevitable, and automatically approved at the EU summit next week.
"But a longer extension poses all sorts of problems. No-one is comfortable with the idea of the UK taking part in the EU elections in May. It would be a most unwelcome distraction," Ms Fabry said.
"So for a longer extension there would have to be a very clear and precise objective written in - for example new elections in the UK or a new referendum."
She said that Brussels "was pretty favourable" to the idea – but in the last few days things had changed.
"No-one over here is saying, 'let's just get it over with and have a No Deal.' That fatigue seems to be gaining ground in the UK, but not in Europe."
"Here everyone is exhausted and impatient – but we feel there is nothing much more we can do. It's the Brits who have to sort this out among themselves."
Adam Easton in Warsaw
"The British people have decided the UK should leave, it should be concluded. Otherwise it would be a humiliation."
That's how one MEP from the governing party, Ryszard Legutko, put it, adding: "A second referendum or too long an extension would also be a humiliation".
Top officials are a little more gentle.
Poland's foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, has said the UK may need a little more time.
"We are watching what is happening in the UK - the votes, there are certain expectations about how they will end. Maybe we will need to… extend this period a bit, maybe a little more time is needed for reflection," he told reporters in the Polish parliament.
"From our point of view a no-deal Brexit is the worst solution."
For Warsaw, securing the rights of the estimated one million Poles living in the UK has always been and remains the number one priority, and the two governments are in "constant contact".
But Poland is hoping for a deal and a smooth transition period. That's because the UK is Poland's third-largest sales market.
Anna Holligan in Rotterdam
Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok has told the BBC his country would look "with benevolence" at any request to extend Article 50. But "without a clear goal an extension won't solve anything", he warned.
The mantra "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" underpins the Dutch approach, and Mr Blok was at an event showcasing the government's preparations for a no-deal exit.
"I'm looking forward to any solution that will solve the problem, but that has to come from London now."
The Dutch never wanted the UK to leave the EU but respected its choice. Now they view any possible extension a little like tearing off a sticking plaster. Ideally it should be done rapidly to get the pain over with.
"We're living in the reality Brexit has dealt us", says foreign trade minister Sigrid Kaag, gesturing towards a stream of trucks trundling on to a ferry bound for the UK port of Felixstowe.
"(The Netherlands) is your natural gateway to Europe. With a stable government. We're not sitting idle, we're not panicking, we're getting ready for any eventuality."
James Reynolds in Rome
Italy would support an extension of Article 50 on two conditions:
Italy believes that the UK government is genuine when it says it doesn't want No Deal, a senior Italian official, who asked not to be named, told the BBC.
But, at the same time, Italy is not shy about preparing for No Deal. In the next few days, the government is hoping to pass a package of laws aimed at addressing its priorities : citizens' rights, financial stability, help for businesses.
Next week, the Rome government expects to roll out a series of information sessions in ports around the country to explain how No Deal would work.

The international border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is about 310 miles long with, depending on how many tracks you include, as many as 275 crossing points.
In reality, the entire border is a crossing point because, apart from road signs changing from miles per hour to kilometres per hour, there is no physical infrastructure to see.
The concern is that all that could change when the UK leaves the European Union, and Ireland stays as an EU member state.
Part of the concern is political. The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the basic building block of peace in Northern Ireland, removed security checkpoints from the border and helped make it all but invisible. Customs checks could undermine much of that progress.
Like many peace deals, the Good Friday Agreement is a masterpiece of creative ambiguity, allowing different people to take different things from different parts of the text.
Shared membership of the European Union made that much easier to achieve. Ireland wants a clear written commitment that the agreement will be respected in all its parts.
The other concern of course is economic. The economies of Northern Ireland and the Republic are completely interconnected. Huge amounts of goods and services cross the border every day without checks of any kind.
Brexit negotiators are currently looking through more than 140 areas of north-south co-operation, involving everything from the single electricity market to environmental protection.
It is also estimated that at least 30,000 people cross the border every day for work. The movement of people is governed by the Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland, which predates the EU.
Both sides are determined that the Common Travel Area will remain in place, but that in itself doesn't resolve the challenge of a hard border re-emerging.
Because the UK has announced that it is leaving the EU single market and the customs union. That immediately turns the internal border in Ireland into an external border for the single market and the customs union - with all the potential checks that implies.
At the moment, all rules and regulations, north and south, are exactly the same - on food safety, on animal welfare… you name it.
Again, it's a relationship based in large part on agreements covered by joint membership of the EU. As soon as that changes, border checks may have to begin again.
That's why the Irish government wants a written guarantee from the UK that Northern Ireland will continue to follow EU rules - so goods can continue to move freely across the border.
"It seems essential to us," said the Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney earlier this month, "that there is no emergence of regulatory divergence from the rules of the internal market or the customs unions which are necessary for meaningful north-south co-operation, or an all-Ireland economy that is consistent with the Good Friday Agreement."
In other words, both Ireland and the rest of the EU are suggesting that Northern Ireland should stay within the customs union and the single market.
Yes. It would - in effect - push the customs border out into the Irish Sea... an internal customs border, if you like, between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Would that be acceptable to the UK government, or to its Unionist political allies in Northern Ireland, the DUP? In a word, no.
"We respect the European Union desire to protect the legal order of the single market and customs union," the UK's Brexit Secretary David Davis said in Brussels recently.
"But that cannot come at a cost to the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom."
If it did that then, under World Trade Organization rules, it would have to do the same for the rest of the world. The UK economy would be swamped with cheap imports.
The EU would impose checks anyway which might allow the UK government to shift the blame on to Brussels. But that would be a pretty futile gesture.
If it was easy, it would already have been done.
The EU argues that the UK's red lines on Ireland - no border on the one hand, and UK exit from the single market and the customs union on the other - are fundamentally incompatible.
The British government has spoken of technological fixes such as pre-screening of goods, and trusted trader schemes.
The EU says such things could speed up border transit, but it would be nowhere near enough to avoid the return of some border checks.
Alternatively, Irish officials argue that there are already cases of rules and regulations being different in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK, and they point to other examples such as Hong Kong in China where there are different regulatory arrangements within sovereign states.
Intense negotiations are taking place to try to come up with a solution that would ensure a) no divergence of regulations in key areas; and b) the creation of some form of customs partnership on the island of Ireland, which doesn't threaten the constitutional order of the UK.
But if a fix emerges that seems to turn Northern Ireland into a back door route into the single market, then other EU countries will cry foul.
So even if all parties agree in the next two weeks that "sufficient progress" on Ireland has been made, there will be a long way to go before any kind of lasting solution emerges.
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The pavement cafes and bars were packed last Sunday as Brussels basked in an unseasonably warm weekend.
Among the drinkers were diplomats from the EU member states who had been kept in the dark ever since negotiators from the European Commission and UK had entered an intense and secret period of talks, jokingly known as "the tunnel".
"You can have a couple but not too many," advised one official close to the talks, hinting that movement was imminent.
After more than a week of radio silence, the rest of the European machine believed that a provisional agreement on the Brexit divorce treaty was just hours away.
The aperitifs were abandoned after the UK announced that Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab would be in Brussels for face-to-face talks with his opposite number Michel Barnier.
Ambassadors from the 27 other member states were told to prepare for an early-evening briefing. Diplomats said the mood music was good.
But British sources warned the situation was not as positive as it appeared and there were still serious outstanding issues, particularly with the so-called "backstop" - the back-up plan to avoid to a hard border on the island of Ireland that could see Northern Ireland staying in the EU's customs union.
A tweet from Michel Barnier changed the mood.
Negotiations would be "paused" until EU leaders gathered for a Brexit-themed dinner on Wednesday. Both sides sounded seriously depressed.
The Politico website then claimed that officials had reached a deal at a technical level that "collapsed" when the Brexit Secretary became involved.
It made British civil servants desperate to prove that the prime minister's European adviser, Olly Robbins, had not drafted his own deal that had angered his political masters.
By Monday morning, Downing Street had coined a new phrase to explain the stumbling block: the "backstop to the backstop".
It was a way to rebrand the EU's insistence that Northern Ireland should stay in the customs union in the event no other solutions were found to avoid the need to reintroduce a border.
Theresa May reminded the House of Commons of her alternative of a UK-wide customs arrangement with the EU, which had been tabled in the summer as a "Temporary Customs Arrangement".
Previously described as a "bridge" between the post-Brexit transition (or "implementation") phase, it was now "our backstop".
Brussels noted with approval that the prime minister had talked about a process for deciding when it should come to an end instead of a date - a formula that was "event-driven" rather than time-specific.
It was also much closer to the phrase agreed with the EU that any backstop would be in place "unless and until" another solution is found.
And it would be legal for the EU to commit to during the Brexit process whereas a permanent customs solution was not, confirmed a European official who quoted the European treaties.
Meanwhile, it was suggested privately that the two sides had found a way to address the other half of the Irish border problem: keeping Northern Ireland aligned with the rules of the single market needed to avoid checks on the Irish border, but not necessarily avoiding them between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Theresa May also suggested that more progress had been made than people realised in the talks on the future relationship, including on financial services.
The day before EU leaders were to meet, Michel Barnier travelled to Luxembourg to update European affairs ministers.
He made a passing reference to the idea of extending the post-Brexit transition phase but gave few details. The UK seemed relaxed about the story despite the fact it would dominate the rest of the week.
Then came the first of a three-day marathon of seven separate summits in Brussels.
Every EU leader spoke from the same script on Brexit: there was no decisive progress but they wanted to carry on talking.
"Do no harm and avoid anyone feeling offended when they leave," was the slogan.
Theresa May was given a 15-minute slot in which to make her case. A diplomat said she spoke so quickly it was as if she had a plane to catch.
The other leaders dined on pan-fried mushrooms, turbot and sorbet without the prime minister.
Inside the room Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar brandished a copy of an Irish newspaper, with a front page devoted to a murder during the Troubles to demonstrate Ireland's emotional case alongside its economic one.
Outside the room, European officials stuck to their concept of a Northern Ireland-only backstop but said they were prepared to "camouflage" it to make it as palatable as possible to the British.
One compared it to a child being distracted from a bowl of spinach by filling the table with more appetising food.
A potential extension of the transition period was part of this effort.
It was a possibility that Mrs May was "cautiously" open to, an official confirmed. The president of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, said the same.
Dinner ended with the leaders saying there would be no planning for a Brexit summit in November, but leaving the door open to one if the negotiations made progress.
Talk of no deal - often perceived as a hostile act - was kept to a minimum.
And officials reassured British journalists that a late-night drink featuring Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and others - but not Theresa May - was a celebration of the Luxembourgish election results rather than a "screw you" to the UK.
"You guys are so paranoid," said an ambassador.
Disaster had been avoided but the transition proposal had created a domestic political nightmare for the prime minister.
Downing Street was now trying to play the proposal down: "Just an idea…. it'll never be used."
Their focus was getting a legally binding reference to a UK-wide customs arrangement into the paperwork that would comprise the final Brexit deal, and they were exasperated that media coverage of the summit was dominated by the transition issue.
Then there was confusion when European Council President Donald Tusk said during a press conference that the 27 leaders had not discussed the concept, and yet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it would "probably" end up happening.
"Chaotic and un-coordinated" is the way one European diplomat described the Brexit component of the summit.
He blamed too little planning, a lack of precision from the European Commission and not enough co-ordination among the member states.
As the EU's multiple summits came to an end, Theresa May's fellow leaders suggested that the negotiations could not restart until the prime minister acknowledged that the Withdrawal Agreement had to contain an option for the backstop that might apply to Northern Ireland but not the rest of the UK.
The UK would also have to accept that its aspiration of truly friction-less trade could only be achieved by staying in the EU's customs union and sticking to the rules of the single market.
In other words: there are some tasty goodies on offer, but Britain will only be invited back to the table when it is prepared to eat its greens.
Listen to Adam Fleming and the rest of the BBC's Brexitcast team for the lowdown from Brussels and Westminster

Theresa May faces a battle to get a key piece of Brexit legislation through Parliament, opponents have warned.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it was "highly likely" Labour would seek to amend the Repeal Bill, which aims to convert EU legislation into British law.
The SNP, Lib Dems and Green MP Caroline Lucas will also press for changes.
The bill, described by the PM as an "essential step" to EU withdrawal - was the centrepiece of the Queen's Speech.
It will repeal the 1972 European Communities Act, which took Britain into the EU and meant that European law took precedence over laws passed in the British parliament.
It starts its Parliamentary journey next week but it is not likely be debated on the floor of the Commons until the autumn, with some predicting fireworks as MPs on all sides bid to change Mrs May's approach to Brexit in a series of votes.
Last month, 49 Labour MPs defied party leader Jeremy Corbyn by backing a Queen's Speech amendment calling for Britain to stay in the single market and customs union after Brexit.
Conservative backbenchers opposed to what they regard as a "hard Brexit" are also reported to be plotting to force changes to the Repeal Bill.
Labour rebels are understood to be planning to join forces with Tory rebels, the Lib Dems and the SNP to force changes to the Repeal Bill, and future pieces of Brexit legislation.
The Labour leadership backs an exit from the single market but wants to protect EU safeguards on employment rights and the environment - and is concerned these could be scrapped or watered down by the Repeal Bill.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir Keir said the Labour leadership was likely to table amendments that would seek to curb the power of government ministers to amend or scrap EU laws without MPs' scrutiny.
He said: "I think it's highly likely we will want to table that push amendment dealing with the scope of power given to the executive but also to concentrate on issues such as enforcement of rights and protections."
Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas told the programme she was also preparing to amend the Bill, while the SNP's Stephen Gethins said his party "had a responsibility" to work with others over the terms.
Former Brexit minister David Jones, who lost his frontbench role in the post-election reshuffle, said Labour should back the government over the Bill after promising to deliver Brexit in its manifesto.
Pressed on the scale of the challenge, he told the Today programme: "Clearly there is huge pressure, though, having said that, I have no doubt that we will be able to do it."
Of 27 Bills and draft Bills in the Queen's Speech, eight were devoted to leaving the EU.
In addition to the Repeal Bill, there were separate pieces of legislation on  on customs, trade, immigration, fisheries, agriculture, nuclear safeguards and the international sanctions regime.

David Davis, who has been leading UK negotiations to leave the EU, has quit his role as Brexit Secretary
He told the BBC that he was no longer the best person to deliver the PM's Brexit plan - agreed by the cabinet on Friday - as he did not "believe" in it.
He said the "career-ending" decision was a personal one but he felt the UK was "giving away too much and too easily" to the EU in the negotiations.
Mrs May said she did not agree but thanked him for his work.
The resignation is a blow to Mrs May as she seeks to win over Eurosceptic MPs to her proposed Brexit vision, which would form the basis of the UK's position in on-going talks with the EU.
Dominic Raab, who campaigned for Leave during the UK's 2016 EU referendum, has been promoted from housing minister to take over from Mr Davis.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how trade will work between the UK and the EU afterwards.
There have been differences within the Conservative Party over how far the UK should prioritise the economy by compromising on issues such as leaving the remit of the European Court of Justice and ending free movement of people.
Mrs May's Conservative Party only has a majority in Parliament with the support in key votes of the 10 MPs from Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, so any split raises questions about whether her plan could survive a Commons vote - and has also led to renewed questions about whether she will face a challenge to her position.
In a sign of how delicately positioned the numbers are on Brexit strategy it has emerged that the government has taken the unusual step of arranging a briefing for opposition Labour MPs on the detail of the Brexit plan agreed on Friday.
In his resignation letter, Mr Davis told Mrs May that "the current trend of policy and tactics" was making it "look less and less likely" that the UK would leave the customs union and single market.
He said he was "unpersuaded" that the government's negotiating approach "will not just lead to further demands for concessions" from Brussels.
Mr Davis, who was appointed Brexit Secretary in 2016, said: "The general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one."
In her reply, Mrs May said: "I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed at cabinet on Friday."
She said she was "sorry" he was leaving but would "like to thank you warmly for everything you have done... to shape our departure from the EU".
Mr Davis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had objected to Theresa May's plan at the Chequers meeting, telling cabinet colleagues at the outset that he was "the odd man out".
He said it was "not tenable" for him to stay in post and try to persuade Tory MPs to back the policy when he did not think it was "workable".
"The best person to do this is someone who really believes in it, not me."
He said he feared the EU would seek to further water down the UK's plans and his resignation would make it easier for the UK to resist attempts to extract further concessions.
Mr Davis told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg that he had been compromising for two years and that the latest plan was "a compromise too far".
But Mr Davis insisted he continued to back Theresa May, saying that if he "wanted to bring her down", the time would have been after she failed to win last year's general election outright.
A leadership contest now would be "the wrong thing to do", adding: "I won't throw my hat into the ring."
Eurosceptic MP Steve Baker has also resigned. He played a leading role in the Brexit campaign in the run up to the 2016 referendum. He was promoted to the Department for Exiting the EU as a parliamentary under-secretary in June last year.
Conservative MP Peter Bone hailed Mr Davis's resignation as a "principled and brave decision", adding: "The PM's proposals for a Brexit in name only are not acceptable."
Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said: "This is absolute chaos and Theresa May has no authority left."
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
After many months of rumours that he would pull the plug, David Davis has actually quit as Brexit Secretary.
His unhappiness in government has been no secret for some time, but after the prime minister's Chequers agreement with cabinet ministers to pursue closer ties with the EU than he desired, he found his position untenable.
After a visit to Downing Street on Sunday he concluded that he had no choice but to walk.
The move, while not completely surprising, throws doubt on to how secure the government's Brexit strategy is.
Read Laura's full blog here
Mrs May is due to address MPs on Monday afternoon and is expected to tell MPs that the strategy agreed by the cabinet at Chequers on Friday is the "right Brexit" for Britain.
Brexiteer MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said it would be "very difficult" for Mrs May's plans to win the backing of MPs without Mr Davis.
He told BBC 5 Live: "These proposals will have to come to the House of Commons in legislation and the question is 'will they command support from Conservative MPs?'
"And I think without David Davis there, without his imprimatur, it will be very difficult for them to get the support of Conservative MPs and therefore the prime minister would be well advised to reconsider them."
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said she understands Mr Davis was "furious" after a meeting at No 10 earlier on Sunday and "concluded he could not stay in post".
The resignation came as people awaited the verdicts of senior figures from the Brexit side of the 2016 referendum.  There has yet been no on the record comment from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, while Environment Secretary Michael Gove told the BBC on Sunday he was urging Tory MPs to support Mrs May.
One of the leading pro-Remain Conservative MPs Anna Soubry did not refer directly to Mr Davis's resignation, but tweeted it was "not the time for egos, grandstanding and blind ideology".
The director-general of the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, said the resignation was "a blow", adding that business had welcomed the agreement of ministers on Friday.
Meanwhile, some Remain-supporting politicians said the resignation was evidence of the need for a second referendum.
Lord Adonis, a prominent backer of a second vote, tweeted: "People's Vote to put Brexit out of its misery a big step closer after DD's resignation. Now the Brexiteers holding Mrs May hostage are falling out, there isn't a majority for any withdrawal treaty in Parliament."
The Liberal Democrats called on people to sign a petition for a vote on the proposed deal, adding: "The resignation of David Davis is yet more evidence of the chaos of this Tory Brexit. You deserve the final say".
Nigel Farage congratulated Mr Davis for quitting and called for Mrs May to be replaced as prime minister, accusing her of being "duplicitous" and claiming her response "shows she is controlled by the civil service".

MPs are trying to influence the Brexit process in a number of ways, as Theresa May continues her bid to get the EU to change the deal.
The prime minister has asked MPs to approve a motion on Thursday simply acknowledging that process is ongoing and restating their support for the approach.
Several MPs tabled amendments setting out alternative plans and Commons Speaker John Bercow has selected three to be put to a Commons vote.
Even if they won the backing of a majority of MPs, the proposals would not be binding on the government. However, they could put pressure on Mrs May to change course.
She has adopted proposals from two successful backbench amendments tabled in January.
One asked her to seek alternatives to the "backstop", which aims to prevent the return of customs checkpoints on the Irish border in the event that no trade deal has come into force. The other rejected leaving the EU without a formal exit deal.
The selected proposals are below. Use our guide to Brexit jargon or follow the links for further explanation.
Required the government to either give MPs a vote on the withdrawal agreement and political declaration on future UK-EU relations by 27 February, or make a statement saying there is no longer an agreement in principle with Brussels and so allow MPs to vote on - and amend - its planned next steps.
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn's amendment was defeated by 322 votes to 306, giving the government a majority of 16.
Sought to postpone the Brexit date by at least three months.
This had the backing of Liberal Democrats, as well as the SNP contingent.
However, most Labour MPs abstained and so the amendment was defeated by 93 votes to 315.
Instructed the government to publish within seven days "the most recent official briefing document relating to business and trade on the implications of a no-deal Brexit presented to cabinet".
This had the backing of some mostly Remain-supporting Labour and Conservative backbenchers.
But Ms Soubry withdrew the amendment after Brexit Minister Chris Heaton-Harris indicated that Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington would meet her and would be publishing the relevant information.
Ms Soubry welcomed the move but said she reserved the right to lay the amendment again at end of February if the government did not publish the documents.

Prime Minister Theresa May has laughed off journalists' questions about going to war with Spain following the Gibraltar Brexit row.
Mrs May said her approach to negotiations was "definitely jaw jaw".
On Sunday ex-Tory leader Lord Howard said the PM would defend Gibraltar in the same way as Margaret Thatcher defended the Falklands in the 1982 war.
Spain's foreign minister said his government was "surprised by the tone of comments coming out of Britain".
"It seems someone is losing their cool," Alfonso Dastis told a conference in Madrid.
The current row was sparked by draft Brexit negotiating guidelines published by the EU last Friday saying any decisions affecting Gibraltar would be run past Spain.
The guidelines said: "After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom."
Speaking to reporters on a flight to Jordan, Mrs May was asked if - borrowing from a phase used by Winston Churchill - Britain's approach should be described as "jaw jaw, not war war".
"It's definitely jaw jaw," replied the PM, who laughed when asked to rule out a war with Spain.
"What we are doing, with all EU countries in the EU is sitting down and talking to them," she said.
"We're going to be talking to them about getting the best possible deal for the UK and for those countries - Spain included."
Mrs May said British policy on Gibraltar had not, and would not, change.
Gibraltar: key facts
Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo said: "Gibraltar is not a bargaining chip in these negotiations. Gibraltar belongs to the Gibraltarians and we want to stay British."
Mr Picardo urged European Council President Donald Tusk to remove the reference to Gibraltar.
"Mr Tusk, who has been given to using the analogies of the divorce and divorce petition, is behaving like a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children," he said.
The EU's guidelines followed a letter from Mrs May formally triggering Brexit talks, which did not mention Gibraltar directly.
Lord Howard raised the spectre of military action, saying that 35 years ago, "another woman prime minister sent a taskforce halfway across the world to protect another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country.
"And I'm absolutely clear that our current woman prime minister will show the same resolve in relation to Gibraltar as her predecessor did."
After Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982, Margaret Thatcher sent a task force to reclaim the islands, in the South Atlantic.
An estimated 655 Argentine and 255 British servicemen lost their lives in the fighting that followed.
Former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw, whose 2002 referendum asking Gibraltarians if they wanted Britain to share sovereignty with Spain was rejected by 99% to 1%, dismissed the threat of military action as "frankly absurd and reeks of 19th century jingoism", adding that Britain leaving the EU would result in "all sorts of problems" popping up.
"For the Spanish, Gibraltar is an affront to their sense of national identity and their sense of sovereignty - it's a bit like having a part of Dover owned by Spain," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Mr Straw said while Britain was in the EU "we held equal cards with Spain", but once it left, the situation would be reversed, with the 27 EU nations "holding the cards".
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said of Lord Howard's comments: "In only a few days the Conservative right are turning long-term allies into potential enemies."
But Brexit Secretary David Davis, in Spain for meetings with members of its government, said Lord Howard was expressing the "resolve" of the UK in supporting the sovereignty of Gibraltar. He made it clear any talk of Falklands style taskforces "wasn't going to happen".
Former Labour minister Lord Foulkes used House of Lords' question time to ask why Gibraltar had not been mentioned in Mrs May's letter to the EU last week, which triggered the start of Brexit negotiations.
Foreign Office Minister Baroness Anelay of St John's replied, saying the government took the matter "so seriously" it did not want to mention just one aspect of the negotiations in a letter that set out general principles which all applied to Gibraltar.
Spain has long contested Britain's 300 year-rule of Gibraltar, which has a population of about 30,000.

Lots of things can be true at the same time, even though they seem to contradict each other. It happens a lot in politics as, if you read my ramblings here often, you'll know I've said before.
This time, lots of seemingly contradicting strands are combining to create a situation that is potentially dangerous for Theresa May, and not very helpful for the UK's case in the Brexit negotiations.
Yes, it is true that a powerful group of Brexiteers believe that they have been told by No 10, that any effort to water down the government's position on the Customs Union would be treated as a vote of confidence, to bring rebel Remainers to heel.
This is in the context not of this week's vote, which would not have any power to force a change of heart, but a vote that will have that authority next month.
It is also true that those potential rebel Remainers believe they have been assured by the government that they would NOT turn a vote on the customs union into a vote of confidence. They think they can try to shift Theresa May's position without collapsing the government, indeed they say the chatter about a confidence vote is a 'ruse' by the Brexiteers.
Downing Street says publicly that no such decision has been made. It's not surprising that in uncharted territory they don't want to be bound to one position now over a vote that's not for another month.
But it is also true that No 10 cannot sustain a situation where the two opposing sides in the Tory party who are in perma-campaign mode, are continually told the opposite. It is not possible to drive left and right at the same time.
It is also true that the government's public position has been clear for ages - to leave the customs union and pursue two separate potential models, the 'hybrid' and the 'max fac' . If you want to But it is also true that some Cabinet ministers believe that only the second option is remotely viable. Even in No 10 senior figures accept that they are nowhere near being able to prove to the EU that the hybrid model would work.
Even the Brexit Secretary himself, David Davis, questioned its credibility almost as soon as it was published, saying it was "blue sky thinking". Many months on, at least in public, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that would change his or other Brexiteer ministers' views.
That's why there are whispers, as on the front of today's Times, that he and others might try to force the PM to ditch it.
It's also the case that there has not been enough progress towards sorting out the Irish border question. Whether the UK should call the EU's bluff as some Brexiteers suggest, or accept what others see as inevitable and change position, is a different question. For as long as the question is open, the border question is a proxy for the whole debate about the world after Brexit.
Should we mirror the existing arrangements we have to minimise disruption, or go for a more radical break?
The most important truth is that with a divided party and no majority, it's massively difficult for Theresa May to settle that question.
Her survival so far has hinged on only inching forward, but pressure is building through the proxy of the arguments about the customs union, to take a bolder next step.

Is the DUP about to do a 180 and support checks in the Irish Sea as part of a Brexit deal?
Political u-turns aren't unheard of, after all.
But in this case, it seems a good way off.
Newspaper reports that the DUP has privately shifted its red lines on the backstop were quickly - and publicly - panned by senior party figures.
But is that the full story?
It's important to set out what the DUP has said it will accept, and how its tone has changed in recent days, causing a whiff of hope about a potential deal.
The party has always made protecting the union its main priority, delivering Brexit second - and in the early stages of the negotiations insisted there could be no deal that allowed any splits to develop between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
It had, however, said it could accept certain regulatory differences that didn't damage trade with Great Britain or undermine the Union.
The Northern Ireland Assembly would also need to have oversight of the process.
While continuing to oppose the backstop, the party has softened its language, saying it would be open to all-island "arrangements" on food standards and animal health, which could partially remove the need for some checks at the land border.
That would mean Northern Ireland continuing to follow some EU rules and accepting new checks on some goods coming in from Great Britain
They haven't set out precisely what the arrangements could look like - don't expect them to either.
The Times story hinted the DUP could accept EU rules in other areas too - which is perhaps why the party has pushed back so hard.
If the DUP is going to to back anything that even slightly resembles NI only accepting EU rules, they will need to be able to sell it.
Their ideas are being talked about by the prime minister as well.
Boris Johnson has found himself boxed in by Parliament, and by demanding the backstop disappear, he has few options left when it comes to getting a deal by his Halloween deadline.
So is a compromise of sorts coming down the tracks?
There have certainly been warmer words this week from some in Brussels, with Ireland's EU commissioner Phil Hogan saying he believed there is "movement on both sides".
But we still don't know quite how the landing zone for a last-minute deal will look.
Will the DUP and Boris Johnson, despite their protestations, go further than all-island "arrangements" and move towards a Northern Ireland-specific solution?
What will the EU be prepared to sign up to?
If Stormont has the power to refuse to accept new EU regulations on food standards that would fall short of guaranteeing no hard border in the future.
Could Stormont have a consultative role on those EU issues which would apply in Northern Ireland?
Bear in mind that would require Stormont to get back up and running first, but there is a theory that if a deal is reached, there would be a two-year transition period which could allow some breathing space for devolution to be restored in order for Stormont to play its part.
There's also the question of trust: The DUP say they do not believe Boris Johnson will turn his back on them and sign up to anything they disagree with.
Others aren't so sure.
Cynics might say stories in the national press that the DUP is softening are an attempt by someone to bounce the party into accepting something else.
Right now, political tactics are being deployed on all sides.
No-one wants to be seen to budge too much.
Despite what the key players will all say publicly, they know someone will have to give more, and accept more.
Behind the scenes, what is being discussed could be very different - as pressure is applied for an agreement to take shape.
Boris Johnson has said he really wants to leave the EU with a deal on 31 October.
It may now be a question of who can shout louder at him about what that deal should look like, in the seemingly short time that's left.

Boris Johnson has hit the pause button on his Brexit legislation after MPs rejected his plan to get it through the Commons in three days.
MPs backed his Withdrawal Agreement Bill - but minutes later voted against the timetable, leaving it "in limbo".
After the vote, EU Council President Donald Tusk said he would recommend EU leaders backed an extension to the 31 October Brexit deadline.
But a No 10 source said if a delay was granted, the PM would seek an election.
On Saturday, Mr Johnson complied with a law demanding he write to the EU to ask for a three-month extension, but did not sign the letter.
Following the result in the Commons, he said it was Parliament and not the government that had requested an extension.
Mr Johnson said he would reiterate his pledge to EU leaders, telling them it was still his policy to leave by the end of October.
But Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs it was "very hard" to see how the necessary laws could be passed to leave with a deal by the deadline.
A spokesman from the European Commission said: "[The Commission] takes note of tonight's result and expects the UK government to inform us about the next steps."
But Mr Tusk tweeted he would "recommend the EU27 accept the UK request for an extension" in order to "avoid a no-deal Brexit".
The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler said: "[The] temptation amongst most I speak to tonight in EU circles is to grant the 31 Jan extension."
And the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said that meant the government's plan to seek an election was "looking likely".
However, an EU source told BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming the bloc was considering a "flextension" - an extension with a maximum end date, but the flexibility for the UK to leave early if a deal is ratified.
Following Tuesday's Commons votes, a Downing Street source said Parliament "blew its last chance".
They added: "If Parliament's delay is agreed by Brussels, then the only way the country can move on is with an election."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Johnson was "the author of his own misfortune".
He told the Commons that MPs had "refused to be bounced into debating a hugely significantly piece of legislation in just two days, with barely any notice or an analysis of the economic impact of this bill".
But Mr Corbyn offered to enter discussions over a "sensible" timetable for the PM's deal to go through Parliament.
The SNP's leader, Ian Blackford, said it was "another humiliating defeat" for the PM, and MPs had "spoken with a very clear voice to tell the PM he is not on".
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson called on Mr Johnson to "end the brinkmanship and replace it with some statesmanship" in order to secure an extension with the EU.
Boris Johnson agreed his new plan with EU leaders last week, but has repeatedly pledged to leave the bloc by the end of October, with or without a deal.
This is despite him having to ask for an extension to Brexit on Saturday after MPs backed an amendment attempting to block a no-deal.
The bill that would turn his plan into law - the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - was published on Monday evening, and he urged MPs to back a three-day timetable to push it through the Commons ahead of the Halloween deadline.
The PM told Parliament if it "decides to delay everything until January or possibly longer", he would seek an election - but he did not say what the government would do if the EU offered a shorter extension.
MPs did approve the bill on its first hurdle through the Commons - called the second reading - by 329 votes to 299.
But in a vote straight after, they rejected the so-called programme motion, in other words the planned timetable to get the bill through Parliament, by 14 votes after a number of MPs criticised the pace of the legislation.
Mr Johnson told the Commons: "I will speak to EU member states about their intentions [but] until they have reached a decision - until we reach a decision, I will say - we will pause this legislation."
In the meantime, however, he said the government would "take the only responsible course and accelerate our preparations for a no deal outcome".
The PM added: "Let me be clear. Our policy remains that we should not delay [and] that we should leave the EU on 31 October."
If an election were to be triggered this week, the earliest it could take place would be Thursday 28 November, as the law requires 25 days between an election being called in Parliament and polling day.
But Mr Johnson cannot force an election himself and would need the backing of Parliament.
MPs had been due to debate the bill over Wednesday and Thursday, but will now return to discussing the contents of the Queen's Speech - which put forward the government's domestic agenda for the new session of Parliament.
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The government's Brexit bill will enable more British judges to depart from previous rulings of the EU's top court, Downing Street says.
The PM's spokesman said the Withdrawal Agreement Bill would expand this power to courts below the Supreme Court.
He added this would ensure judges at lower courts would not be "inadvertently" tied to the rulings "for years to come".
But others warned the move would cause legal uncertainty.
MPs are set for an initial vote on the withdrawal bill on Friday, after the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority at last week's general election.
Previous rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) are set to be incorporated into the case law followed by British courts after Brexit.
The provision is contained in a separate EU withdrawal law passed in June last year under the premiership of Theresa May.
Previously, only the Supreme Court and the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland would be allowed to depart from these rulings.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman said enabling lower courts to do the same was an "important change" to ensure they do not face a "legal bottleneck".
"We will take back control of our laws and disentangle ourselves from the EU's legal order just as was promised to the British people," he said.
There is no real detail in the government's pledge - but it marks a potentially really significant development.
It means that UK civil courts below the Supreme Court, for example the Court of Appeal, High Court, county courts, and tribunals such as the Employment Appeal Tribunal could depart from ECJ rulings in areas such as workers' rights.
Take for instance the right to paid holidays. The ECJ has interpreted this right more generously than the UK courts: for example, on the inclusion of overtime in holiday pay, and currently its interpretation binds the UK courts.
Following the 11 month transition period after Brexit, the way is open, for example, for an employer to take a case to one of the UK's lower civil courts and invite a judge to apply a more restrictive interpretation to the right to paid holidays.
This would create plenty of work for lawyers, but it opens a can of worms and could affect many workers.
The government's move was welcomed by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, a leading figure in the pro-Brexit European Research Group.
"This is a critical pledge that puts sovereign rights back in the hands of the UK government and of course the British people," he said.
However, crossbench peer Lord Pannick QC, who acted for businesswoman Gina Millar in two cases against the government over its handling of Brexit, cautioned against the measure.
He told the Times, which first reported on the move, that allowing lower courts to depart from ECJ rulings would "cause very considerable legal uncertainty".
The government is hoping to get its Brexit deal through Parliament in the new year, enabling the UK to leave the EU by the end of January.
If passed, the UK would then follow EU rules during an 11-month transition period due to conclude at the end of December 2020.
MPs in the previous Parliament gave initial backing to the PM's Brexit bill but rejected his plan to fast-track the legislation through Parliament in three days in order to leave the EU by the then Brexit deadline of 31 October.
The government has already said the amended version of the withdrawal bill that will come back before MPs on Friday will include a new clause to rule out any extension to the transition period beyond the end of next year.

The UK has two weeks to clarify key issues or make concessions if progress is to be made in Brexit talks, the bloc's chief negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier was speaking after meeting the Brexit secretary for talks on citizens' rights, the Irish border, and the UK's "divorce bill".
David Davis said it was time for both sides "to work to find solutions".
Before the talks, Theresa May said she wanted the UK's exit date set in law, and warned MPs not to block Brexit.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Mr Barnier suggested Britain would have to clarify its position in the next fortnight on what it would pay to settle its obligations to the EU if the talks were to have achieved "sufficient progress" ahead of December's European Council meeting.
"It is just a matter of settling accounts as in any separation," Mr Barnier said.
Mr Barnier also said both sides had to work towards an "objective interpretation" of Prime Minister Theresa May's pledge that no member of the EU would lose out financially as a result of the Brexit vote.
The Brexit secretary insisted good progress was being made across the board, and that the negotiations had narrowed to a "few outstanding, albeit important, issues".
Mr Davis and Mr Barnier agreed there had been progress on the issue of settled status for EU citizens in the UK after Brexit.
Mr Barnier said the UK had provided "useful clarifications" on guaranteeing rights, although more work needed to be done on some points including rights of families and exporting welfare payments.
For the UK's part, Mr Davis said, the government had "listened carefully" to concerns and that there would be a "streamlined and straightforward" process for EU nationals to obtain settled status.
But Mr Davis rejected a suggestion that Northern Ireland could remain within the European customs union.
He was responding to a European Commission paper, which proposed that Northern Ireland may have to remain a member of the EU's single market or customs union, if a so-called "hard border" with the Irish Republic is to be avoided.
Saying there had been "frank discussions" with Mr Barnier and his negotiators on the issue of the Irish border, Mr Davis insisted there could be "no new border" inside the UK.
"We respect the European Union desire to protect the legal order of the single market and the customs union, but that cannot come at cost to the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom," Mr Davis told reporters in Brussels.
"We recognise the need for specific solutions for the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland.  But let me be clear - this cannot amount to creating a new border inside our United Kingdom," he added.
Mr Barnier said the "unique situation" on the island of Ireland required "technical and regulatory solutions necessary to prevent a hard border".
By Adam Fleming, BBC Europe correspondent
Michel Barnier usually says at post-negotiation press conferences that the clock is ticking.
He didn't this time: he gave a specific timeframe. He wants the UK to provide more clarity in the next two weeks on its positions on the rights of EU citizens who wish to remain after Brexit, the plans for the Irish border and principles for calculating Britain's financial obligations.
Although the EU doesn't want a precise figure, it wants the UK to clarify what it's willing to pay to live up to the financial commitments made as a member.
On Ireland, both sides have pledged to protect the peace process but the EU has suggested that might require Northern Ireland sticking to European rules on customs and the single market - rules that the rest of Britain might not follow in future. David Davis rejected that.
UK sources agree it looks like they've been set a deadline but they feel it is a logical reading of the EU's timetable, under which their officials have to begin preparations for the next summit of EU leaders in December fairly soon.
Looking ahead to December's EU summit, Mr Davis pledged the UK was "ready and willing" to engage with Brussels "as often and as quickly as needed".
"But we need to see flexibility, imagination and willingness to make progress on both sides if these negotiations are to succeed and we are able to realise our new deep and special partnership," he said.
Friday's update came as Prime Minister Theresa May announced she wanted the date the UK leaves the EU - 29 March 2019 - enshrined in law.
The prime minister said the decision to put the specific time of Brexit "on the front page" of the Brexit bill showed the government was determined to see the process through.
"Let no-one doubt our determination or question our resolve, Brexit is happening," she wrote.
The draft legislation has already passed its second reading, and now faces several attempts to amend it at the next part of its parliamentary journey - the committee stage.
Mrs May said the government would listen to MPs if they had ideas for improving the bill, but warned against attempts to halt the process.
"We will not tolerate attempts from any quarter to use the process of amendments to this bill as a mechanism to try to block the democratic wishes of the British people by attempting to slow down or stop our departure from the European Union."

European Council President Donald Tusk has said a compromise with the UK over Brexit is "still possible", after Theresa May warned she was prepared to walk away from talks.
In a statement, Mr Tusk said he was a "true admirer" of the PM.
But he defended the EU's approach and said it was in fact Mrs May who had been "tough" and "uncompromising".
Mrs May on Friday demanded more respect from Brussels after EU leaders rejected a major part of her Brexit plan.
She had tried to sell her blueprint, which was agreed by ministers at Chequers, to EU countries at a summit in Salzburg, Austria, this week.
But the EU said the new economic partnership she had put forward "will not work" and risked "undermining the single market".
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 - but the two sides are trying to reach a deal by November so it can be ratified in time.
Mr Tusk issued a statement on Friday evening, hours after Mrs May delivered her own speech in Downing Street in which she said the EU's rejection of her plan without offering an alternative was "unacceptable".
Mr Tusk said EU leaders at the summit had treated her proposals with "all seriousness" and said they were a "step in the right direction".
Britain had known about the EU's reservations over the Chequers plan for weeks, he added.
Mr Tusk said: "While understanding the logic of the negotiations, I remain convinced that a compromise, good for all, is still possible.
"I say these words as a close friend of the UK and a true admirer of PM May."
Mrs May's statement dominates many of Saturday's front pages.
The Express calls her speech her "finest hour" and says she was right to demand respect from the EU and the Daily Mail says Mrs May "confronted the arrogance of the EU elite with unyielding, level-headed reason" and describes the EU's behaviour in Salzburg as "shabby".
The Sun describes it as Mrs May's "Brexit fightback" while the i draws a comparison to Margaret Thatcher with a headline that reads: "May tells EU: I'm not for turning".
But the Daily Telegraph says the prime minister is facing a showdown with her cabinet next week when ministers will call for a "Plan B" alternative to the Chequers proposals.
Italian MEP Roberto Gualtieri, who sits on the European Parliament's Brexit Steering Group, also expressed optimism that a solution will be reached.
He told BBC Newsnight: "I think that no deal is not an option. We are sure that the rationality will prevail."
In her televised statement on Friday, Mrs May said talks had reached an "impasse" and could only be unblocked with "serious engagement" from the EU side.
"Throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect," she said. "The UK expects the same, a good relationship at the end of this process depends on it.
"At this late stage in the negotiations, it is not acceptable to simply reject the other side's proposals without a detailed explanation and counter proposals."
The pound's fall against the dollar and the euro deepened following Mrs May's statement.
Some Brexiteer MPs praised her for her comments. Jacob Rees-Mogg welcomed the "strong and forthright" speech but said she should abandon her Chequers plan and come forward with a Canada-style free trade agreement.
Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen - who previously called for a no-confidence vote on Mrs May - said she needed to "chuck" the Chequers plan.
"I think it could be a very, very rough ride for the prime minister when she finally realises how unpopular her Chequers proposals are, not only within the EU, but within the membership of the Conservative Party out in the constituencies," Mr Bridgen told BBC Newsnight. "It' s a grim time really.
In her speech on Friday, the PM said both sides were still "a long way apart" on two big issues: the post-Brexit economic relationship between the UK and EU, and the "backstop" for the Irish border, if there is a delay in implementing that relationship.
Both the UK and the EU want to avoid a hard border - physical infrastructure like cameras or guard posts - between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic but cannot agree on how.
The two options being offered by the EU for the long-term relationship - for the UK to stay in the European Economic Area and customs union or a basic free trade agreement - were not acceptable, Mrs May said.
Mrs May says her plan for the UK and EU to share a "common rulebook" for goods, but not services, is the only credible way to avoid a hard border.
Arlene Foster, leader of Northern Ireland's DUP, who Mrs May relies on for a Commons majority in key votes, said the prime minister was "right to stand firm in the face of disrespectful, intransigent and disgraceful behaviour by the European Union".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister's negotiating strategy "has been a disaster" and said "political games from both the EU and our government need to end" to avoid a no-deal scenario.
Labour wants to see the UK join a customs union with the EU after Brexit, but remain outside of the single market.

Conservative MPs should back Theresa May's deal this week or risk losing Brexit altogether, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned.
There was "wind in the sails" of those opposing Brexit and the consequences for the party will be "devastating", if it is not delivered, he said.
MPs will vote again on the deal on Tuesday, after rejecting it in January.
Labour's John McDonnell said it looked like the PM had failed to secure any changes and it would be rejected again.
The UK is due to leave on 29 March, although Parliament has yet to agree the terms of withdrawal.
MPs will vote for a second time on Tuesday on the withdrawal deal Mrs May has negotiated with the European Union - after rejecting it by a historic margin in January.
If they reject it again, they will get a vote on leaving without a deal, and if that fails, on delaying the exit date.
Many Conservative Brexiteers voted against the deal in January over concerns about the backstop - a controversial insurance policy designed to prevent physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But there have been few visible signs of progress over the issue in continuing talks between EU and UK officials.
Mr Hunt told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show some MPs wanted to "kill" the deal, in order to delay Brexit, with the ultimate aim of getting another referendum on the issue.
"Within three weeks, those people could have two of those three things," he said, adding that Labour's position made the third more likely.
He said: "We are in very perilous waters, and people who want to make sure that we really do deliver this result need to remember that if it fails... they are going to say: 'There was a party that promised to deliver Brexit, we put them into No 10 and they failed', and the consequences for us as a party, would be devastating."
He added: "We have an opportunity now to leave on March 29, or shortly thereafter. And it's very important that we grasp that opportunity because there is wind in the sails of people trying to stop Brexit."
If Parliament approves Mrs May's withdrawal agreement next week and the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, it will begin a transition period, when the two sides will attempt to agree a comprehensive trade deal.
If a trade deal is not agreed by the end of the transition period, the "backstop" plan is designed to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland.
It would keep the UK in a "single customs territory" with the EU, and leave Northern Ireland in the EU's single market for goods.
But some MPs fear that - in its current form - the backstop may leave the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
On Friday, Mrs May urged the EU to help her get the deal through by resolving concerns about the backstop.
But Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC: "It looks as though she's bringing back the same deal so it looks as though we will have the same result and it will be thrown out."
He said the party's priority this week would be to stop Theresa May "driving through some sort of Brexit deal that will damage our economy and undermine jobs" and if that meant a delay to allow for a discussion about the deal Labour backs instead "so be it".
He also denied that Labour's support for keeping the option of another referendum open had been put on the backburner, adding: "If Parliament can't agree, if we have to break the logjam, yes, we will keep the option available of going back to the people."
And he said he believed that Labour's alternative Brexit deal could be agreed with the EU "within a matter of weeks" but said any delay requested should be "as long as is necessary".
Labour's policy is to seek a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit, which would allow the UK "a say" in future trade deals. Mr McDonnell said the EU had "looked positively" on the proposal.
On Friday, the EU said it would give "legal force" to assurances it has already made about the withdrawal deal and its chief negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted that the UK would be free to leave a proposed single customs territory with the EU - provided Northern Ireland remained within it.
The leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom, said she was deeply disappointed by the EU's proposal, which has already been rejected by the UK government.
The Brexit Secretary it was "not the time to rerun old arguments".

Allowing the UK to unilaterally halt the Brexit process could lead to "disaster", judges at Europe's top court have been warned.
The European Court of Justice is deliberating on whether the UK can call off its withdrawal from the EU without permission from member states.
But lawyers acting for the EU said allowing countries to do so could create "endless uncertainty".
The case has been brought by a group of Scottish politicians who oppose Brexit.
They hope it will give clear guidance to the UK Parliament about the options open to it as MPs vote on the prime minister's Brexit deal - and that it will result in "no Brexit" being an alternative to either "no deal" or Mrs May's deal.
The UK government says it has no intention of calling off Brexit, and says the politicians bringing the case are using it as "ammunition" in their campaign to halt the withdrawal process.
The court also heard from lawyers representing the Council of the European Union and from the European Commission, who both argue that revoking Article 50 is possible - but that it would require unanimous agreement from the other 27 member states.
They are concerned that the case could set a precedent where other countries would be able to formally notify their intention to leave and then seek better terms from the remaining EU countries, before cancelling their withdrawal.
Analysis by Adam Fleming, BBC News in Luxembourg
There were two emotions on display in the ECJ's gold-encrusted courtroom: hope and fear. The UK government was worried that anything said about Brexit by European judges could be used as ammunition in the battle to bring down Theresa May's deal.
The EU fretted about Article 50 being re-written in a way that meant a country could announce it was leaving then change its mind again and again, creating a state of permanent anxiety. Or worse, using it as a tactic to secure a better deal at the EU's expense.
The campaigners who brought the case were just glad that the concept of Brexit being reversed had a very public airing so close to the vote on the deal by MPs.
Hubert Legal, the chief lawyer for the European Council, argued that allowing unilateral withdrawal could therefore lead to "disaster", of which "the main victim could be the European project altogether".
This was echoed by lawyers for the European Commission, who said states could act in an "abusive" manner by stopping and restarting the countdown clock, creating "endless uncertainty" - which the two-year time limit built into Article 50 was designed to guard against.
A four-hour hearing on Tuesday morning saw the full court of 27 judges consider the arguments in the case.
The court has said it will aim to decide "quickly" on the case, but has not yet set a date for doing so.
The case is being considered against the backdrop of Prime Minister Theresa May fighting to sell her draft Brexit deal to MPs, ahead of a vote in the Commons in December.
The UK will leave the EU on 29 March under the terms of "Article 50", a two-year notification of withdrawal which MPs triggered in March last year.
The case has been brought by a cross-party group of Scottish politicians including Green MSPs Andy Wightman and Ross Greer, MEP Alyn Smith and MP Joanna Cherry of the SNP, and Labour MEPs David Martin and Catherine Stihler.
They say it could give MPs an extra option when considering whether to approve the draft deal or not, because it could keep alive the prospect of calling off Brexit
Mr Wightman said the question was "vital", saying that "the chaos around Brexit shows no sign of being resolved" and that the UK parliament "must be fully informed of all of its options".
Aidan O'Neill QC, who is representing the Scottish politicians, told the court that European lawyers were inviting the judges to act "unconstitutionally and in contravention of the rule of law by reinterpreting the treaties".
He said: "It cannot be in the interest of the union as a whole to force a member state to leave the union against the wishes of the people.
"The union's wider interest lies with member states remaining in the EU when their peoples wish to do so."
The UK government has opposed the case being heard from the outset, but failed to prevent it going before judges in Luxembourg after a series of appeals.
The UK government's position is that the court has "long refused for very good reasons" to answer hypothetical questions which could interfere with domestic politics. They argue that because "the UK does not intend to revoke its notification", the question of whether it can do so unilaterally is a hypothetical one.
Ms Cherry raised the case and the issue of revoking Article 50 with Mrs May in the Commons on Monday, prompting the prime minister to say that "it is not going to happen because it is not government policy".
Advocate General Lord Keen, who is representing the UK government, argued in court that the case was being used as "ammunition" by opponents of Brexit, and said the judges should find it inadmissable.

Gina Miller is the businesswoman and campaigner who has twice led legal challenges against the government and won.
Her first victory came in September 2017, when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of giving MPs a say over triggering Article 50 - the legal mechanism taking the UK out of the EU.
Her second came on Tuesday, when the Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful.
Her success in the courts has come at a price - she has become a hate figure for many Brexit supporters and has had to employ round-the-clock security after threats to her life.
She says she does not want to block Brexit, but is standing up for Parliamentary democracy.
Speaking outside the Supreme Court after the ruling on Tuesday, she said: "Today is not a win for any individual or cause, it's a win for Parliamentary sovereignty, the separation of powers and the independence of our British courts.
"Crucially, this ruling confirms that we are a nation governed by the rule of law."
Mrs Miller is not officially aligned to any political party, having spurned the advances of the Liberal Democrats, who rapturously received a speech she gave at their 2018 party conference.
A 54-year-old investment manager and philanthropist, Mrs Miller was born in Guyana and educated in Britain.
She went first to an exclusive all-girls private boarding school, Roedean, on the outskirts of Brighton, at the age of 10, then to Moira House Girls' School, in Eastbourne, East Sussex.
Afterwards, she studied law at the University of East London, but left before completing her degree.
Mrs Miller went on to start a successful marketing consultancy business with clients including private medical specialists in Harley Street in London.
In 2009, she used the money she had made in marketing to co-found an investment firm supporting smaller charities.
"I realised then it was my money, I could do what I wanted with it and so I used that money to get involved in social justice," Mrs Miller told Unfiltered with James O'Brien last year.
And in 2012, the businesswoman began the True and Fair Campaign, which campaigned for greater transparency in the City of London's fund management industry.
According to an interview with the Financial Times in 2016, this led some in the industry to label her the "black widow spider".
Speaking about a time she asked three men at an industry party why they were staring at her, she told the paper: "One of them replied that I was a disgrace and that my lobbying efforts would bring down the entire City."
Mrs Miller launched her first Brexit legal case with London-based Spanish hairdresser Deir Tozetti Dos Santos and the People's Challenge group, set up by Grahame Pigney - a UK citizen who lives in France.
Backed by a crowd-funding campaign, they argued the government could not invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - starting the formal process of the UK leaving the EU - without seeking approval from Parliament.
Mrs Miller argued only Parliament could make a decision leading to the loss of her "rights" under EU law.
But she stressed the challenge was not an attempt to overturn the referendum decision, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are all leavers now."
In November 2016, three High Court judges ruled Parliament had to vote on when the process could begin.
Speaking after her victory, Mrs Miller told the BBC the case was about scrutinising the details of Brexit, such as "how we leave, how they're going to negotiate, the directions of travel the government will take".
And she said the legal challenge was about more than Brexit, arguing that it was "verging on dictatorship" for a prime minister to be able to take away people's rights without Parliament's consent.
The government appealed, and the case went to the Supreme Court the following December, but the 11 judges rejected it by a majority of eight to three.
Following the successful legal challenge, Mrs Miller suffered online abuse, including rape and death threats against her and her family.
She told James O'Brien: "It has changed the way we live our lives, and the conversations we have with the children".
"We use humour a lot because that's the only way to get through it", she told him.
In July 2017, an aristocrat who wrote a Facebook post offering £5,000 to anyone who ran over Mrs Miller was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison.
Describing the businesswoman as a "boat jumper", Rhodri Colwyn Philipps - the 4th Viscount St Davids - wrote: "If this is what we should expect from immigrants, send them back to their stinking jungles."
The peer claimed the comments were "satire" and a "joke".
But the judge, who said the post effectively put a "bounty" on Mrs Miller's head, found him guilty of two charges of making menacing communications.
Later that year, Mrs Miller was named as Britain's most influential black person.
"It's amazing to get an accolade when what I've done has solicited a huge amount of abuse," she said on receiving her title.
"To have somebody acknowledge me is extraordinarily kind and counters a lot of what I still get on a daily basis."
Despite the backlash, Mrs Miller went on to launch a second challenge against the government to "defend Parliamentary sovereignty".
After Mr Johnson announced in August that he would suspend Parliament for five weeks, Mrs Miller challenged the legality of the decision at the High Court.
She argued that Parliament would be "silenced" for an "exceptional" length of time in the critical period before the 31 October Brexit deadline.
She initially lost her case, but in Scotland, a separate legal challenge succeeded, with judges taking the view that the suspension was unlawful.
The UK government appealed to the Supreme Court against the Scottish judgement, and the two cases were then heard together.
The court unanimously ruled in favour of Mrs Miller's appeal and against the government's.
Judges said it was wrong to stop MPs carrying out duties in the run-up to the Brexit deadline on 31 October.
After the ruling Mrs Miller told reporters the ruling showed the government "will push the law, they will push the constitution and they will even bend it to get their own way".

We asked for your questions and received more than 1,100 responses within five hours. Below are some answers to our most frequently asked questions.
The court ruling does not mean the end of Brexit.
The case was about the government's right to trigger the formal two-year process of leaving the EU without there being a vote in Parliament.
The government is going to appeal against the decision, but, as things stand, the ruling means MPs and lords will have to give their go-ahead before Prime Minister Theresa May starts her negotiations on the UK's exit from the European Union.
Theoretically, they could decide not to give the go-ahead - but, in practice, that is seen as highly unlikely given that a majority of people who voted in the June referendum voted for the UK to leave the EU.
Legal affairs commentator Joshua Rozenberg said the decision had been based on the argument the government could not use its executive powers because it would mean effectively overturning an act of Parliament.
Triggering Article 50 would eventually lead to the UK leaving the EU, which effectively takes away rights granted by Parliament, such as the right to free movement in Europe.
The High Court ruling effectively defined the limits of government power by reiterating that Parliament is sovereign - it can create laws and only Parliament can take them away.
We do not know yet, but it may try to repeat the argument that its prerogative powers allow it to trigger Article 50 because that in itself does not mean an immediate change to UK citizens' EU rights.
Paragraph 13 of the ruling essentially states that a parliamentary motion is not enough to satisfy the terms of Brexit.
UK membership is bound not in prerogative power, but in the 1972 EU Communities Act, and therefore needs primary legislation to be taken away.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said: "The judges have laid out what we can't do and not exactly what we can do, but we are presuming it requires an act of Parliament."
The EU referendum was advisory - as was discussed in the court ruling on Thursday.
It points to the "basic constitutional principles of parliamentary sovereignty and representative parliamentary democracy" in the UK, which "led to the conclusion that a referendum on any topic can only be advisory for the lawmakers in Parliament unless very clear language to the contrary is used in the referendum legislation in question".
"No such language is used in the 2015 Referendum Act," it adds.
Possibly, but it would be surprising if it was, according to Joshua Rozenberg, because the case is about the UK's constitutional requirements, not EU law.
The lead claimant in the case is investment manager and philanthropist Gina Miller, who launched the case alongside London-based hairdresser Deir Dos Santos and a group called the People's Challenge Group, which is backed by a crowdfunding campaign. You can Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is usually considered to be the only legal way to leave the EU. It states that a country that decides to leave the EU has two years to negotiate "arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the union". This will involve unravelling UK-EU treaty obligations; such as contributions to EU budgets, and holding talks on future trade relations. However some have suggested that the UK could leave the EU by other means - by amending EU treaties or repealing UK legislation. Douglas Carswell, then a Conservative MP and now UKIP, tried to introduce a European Communities Act 1972 Repeal Bill in 2012.
Although negotiations over international treaties are normally powers reserved to the UK Parliament at Westminster, because leaving the EU could involve the removal of people's rights under EU law, the devolved administrations want to have their say in the Article 50 process.
Ever since devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland began in 1999, Westminster normally seeks the agreement of the devolved parliaments and assemblies if it is legislating on devolved matters. While Westminster debates a bill, legislative consent motions are passed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Political difficulties could arise should they choose to vote on legislative consent motions relating to any bill to enact Article 50.
On Friday the Welsh Assembly's senior legal adviser, Mick Antoniw, said he would seek to make representations to the Supreme Court during the government's appeal about the potential impact on Wales. SNP MPs may decide to vote against triggering Article 50 at Westminster - Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said they would "vote in line with the wishes and the interests of the Scottish people", potentially delaying the process.
A High Court case in Belfast last week saw a cross-party group of MLAs attempt to prevent Article 50 being triggered without a Parliamentary vote or a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly. That case was rejected but those behind it are taking it to the Supreme Court.
Much depends on whether the government wins its appeal to the Supreme Court and, if not, to what extent new legislation about triggering Article 50 is delayed by questions and amendments in Parliament.
Theresa May announced the Great Repeal Bill - which would abolish the 1972 European Communities Act and transpose all relevant EU law on to the UK statute book after the UK leaves the EU - on the day she said she wanted to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017. The High Court ruling that the government cannot enact Article 50 without the backing of Parliament could delay that timetable.
Many British expats were annoyed at not being allowed to vote in the EU referendum and there are moves by the government to scrap, by 2020, a rule that says Brits who have not lived in the UK for 15 years cannot vote in UK elections.
However, this ruling does not stop the 23 June vote to leave coming into force, nor does it mean a second referendum, so expats who wanted to vote to remain in the EU are unlikely to be able to vote on the issue again.
Even if there were a second vote on the issue, the government's "votes for life" proposal refers to UK parliamentary elections and says the "franchise for referendums will continue to be held on a case-by-case basis" - so it is not clear whether, in the event of a hypothetical second vote on Brexit, expats would get a vote anyway.
This has not yet been put to the test as no country has triggered Article 50 before and there seems to be some confusion. The Scottish cross-bench peer who wrote it, Lord Kerr, told the BBC this week he believed it was "not irrevocable" and, even if the process had begun, a member state could still choose to remain in the EU. However the High Court ruling states that it was "common ground" between both sides that Article 50 "cannot be withdrawn once it is given".
Once Article 50 is triggered, the UK has up to two years to negotiate a deal with the EU. But what if it runs out of time?
Robyn Munro, from the Institute for Government, says there are three options: 1) the UK could get an extension on the negotiating period if all EU members agree, 2) the UK could try for an "interim deal" while negotiations continue after two years - perhaps with some access to the single market but losing its influence in the EU and 3) the UK could leave without any agreement, and treaties would cease to apply. This would mean falling back on WTO rules for trade but there would be much uncertainty over other areas such as the rights of UK citizens who live and work in the EU, EU citizens in the UK and whether UK airlines would have the right to fly into EU airspace.

In a crisis there can be opportunity.
This is now a crisis - the rules that traditionally have preserved governments are out of the window.
The prime minister has been defeated again. Her authority - if not all gone - is in shreds.
But for Number 10 there's an opportunity too, because MPs will soon be presented with a new choice - back the PM's deal, which has already been defeated twice, or accept the chance of a delay to Brexit.
This isn't the choice of a government that's in control. But the tactic is to make the best of chaos.
To use nerves among Brexiteers to shove them towards accepting Theresa May's deal in the absence of another solution with no other agreed alternative - yet.
The prime minister is beginning another day not sure of where it will end.
MPs are bristling to push their own different solutions - none of which she or Parliament as a whole, let alone the public, is ready to accept.
Yet even if this pandemonium strangely leads the way to order, to a smooth departure from the European Union, there's a different question: could a functioning administration ever again exist under the present cast?

A new plan for post-Brexit customs arrangements will be a "significant step forward", a Downing Street source has promised.
The proposal, to be presented to ministers on Friday, will offer "the best of both worlds" - an independent trade policy and friction-free trade, the source added.
But no details have yet been revealed about how it will work.
Ministers have so far failed to agree what type of customs model to pursue.
Friday's Chequers summit, which will be followed by a White Paper setting out more details, is aimed at finalising the UK's preferred path which can then be put to the EU.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said some ministers appeared not to have been involved in drawing up the new proposal, which is being called a "third way" after two previous proposals divided opinion.
Earlier, government divisions were underlined when Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson intervened in defence of Eurosceptic backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had been accused by two other foreign office ministers of "threatening" Theresa May over Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations are taking place on what the future relationship between the UK and the EU will look like.
Key things that have yet to be agreed are how the two sides will trade with each other in years to come - and how to avoid new border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic, which is a member of the EU.
Before reaching agreement with the EU, Mrs May needs to resolve splits within her cabinet on the shape of Brexit.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
The immediate problem with the "new plan" is whether or not it really exists.
Because while Number 10 says it does, ask other people in government and they are not quite so sure. Ministers who you might have thought would be aware of the detail like - oh, you might imagine - the Brexit secretary had not agreed the lines, before Number 10 made their intervention.
And it's said tonight that the reason he has not been involved in agreeing the "new plan" is because it does not actually exist yet. The customs decision expected in some parts of government therefore is what has been anticipated for some time as "max fac plus" - a souped up version of the proposal that originally won the day in the Brexit subcommittee what feels like a lifetime ago - with, you assume, a long lead-in time while the technology is made to work.
Baffled? Quite possibly so. But it's perhaps only safe to say that four days before ministers are expected to actually make some final decisions, all is not precisely as you might have expected.
Read the rest of Laura's blog
Earlier, she urged the EU to consider her blueprint for future relations "seriously" as she updated MPs on last week's Brussels summit.
Pressed to give more detail of her plans as she took questions in the Commons, Mrs May said she hoped her vision for the UK's future relations would address the "real differences" on the issue of the Irish border.
"The EU and its member states will want to consider our proposals seriously," she said.
"We both need to show flexibility to build the deep relationship after we have left that is in the interests of both our peoples."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the cabinet was irrevocably split between different Tory factions.
But Mrs May rejected calls to "pick a side" between Remainers and Brexiteers, saying: "I have picked the side of the British people and these are the ones for whom I will deliver."
She is also due to have talks in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of the Chequers meeting.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming
Sources in both the European Council and the European Commission deny they have seen a draft of the UK's Brexit White Paper.
Officials in Brussels predict it will mostly be a compilation of existing British positions - "a best of" is how one described it.
Theresa May "hinted" at the publication of the document when she addressed EU leaders at their summit last week but she did not elaborate on its contents.
Ministers from the remaining 27 member states are planning to respond to the White Paper at a meeting of the General Affairs Council on 20 July.
EU officials expect to be going through the document until the end of July.
The government has so far talked publicly about two potential customs options.
One, a customs partnership, would mean the UK applies the EU's own tariffs and rules of origin to all goods arriving in the country and then hands over what was owed for goods that subsequently end up in the EU.
The other, known as maximum facilitation or max-fac, aimed to employ new technology to remove the need for physical customs checks where possible.
It is understood both options have been deemed practically or politically undeliverable and a third option is on the table, believed to involve "alignment" with the EU in regulations covering trade in goods but a looser relationship for services.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph earlier, Mr Rees-Mogg said he and other members of the 60-strong group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs he leads, known as the European Research Group, would reject a deal that did not amount to a clean break with the EU.
Mr Rees-Mogg said a deal which restricted the UK's ability to make trade agreements with other nations or control migration could not be accepted and Mrs May "must stick to her righteous cause and deliver what she has said she would".
But, speaking in the Commons, pro-EU MP Anna Soubry said the public were tired of what she said were continual "fudges" on key questions and urged Mrs May to stamp her authority once and for all.
And her colleague Nicky Morgan said Mrs May "would not be thanked for the mess we will end up in" if the government did not prioritise the needs of the economy in a "pragmatic, sensible, flexible" Brexit.
The Democratic Unionist Party, whose support Theresa May needs to have a majority in key Commons votes, said it would not support any deal which did not give the UK full control over its borders.
"We don't give blank cheques to anybody," its Westminster leader Nigel Dodds said after meeting the PM for an hour in Downing Street.
"We want to see a proper Brexit which fulfils the referendum result but we have been very clear that it has to be on the basis of the whole of the UK leaving the EU as one."
He accused Dublin and other European capitals of trying to "bully" the UK and using the issue of the Northern Irish border to "create an outcome which is to their liking", adding "they won't succeed in that".

The EU has finally announced its informal approval of a new Brexit extension: a full three months, running until 31 January, as suggested in the UK prime minister's extension request.
But what an excruciatingly long and confusing political dance to get there. And the dance is not over yet.
To become a formal offer, the Brexit extension still needs to be accepted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. This is EU law and an unavoidable part of the procedure. But how uncomfortable for the prime minister who sought to distance himself as much as possible from the extension, previously promising that he would rather die in a ditch than request one.
The EU is also attaching some extra wording to the extension. Brussels wants the UK to realise that this is a "flextension": the UK does not need to stay in the full three months; instead, it can leave as soon as its parliament and the European Parliament have ratified the new Brexit deal. The extension text cites 1 December and 1 January as possible "early out" dates.
The EU extension text also reminds the UK that, until it leaves, it remains a fully paid-up member of the EU, including all the rights and obligations that go along with membership.
A new European Commission starts work in roughly a month's time. The new Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, is insisting the UK nominate a new commissioner so as not to undermine the legal workings of the EU as long as the UK remains in it.
Mr Johnson is obliged by UK law to accept the new Brexit delay. But EU leaders take nothing for granted anymore. Under EU law, a no-deal Brexit is still possible as of midnight Central European Time (23:00 GMT) on Thursday.
Now, if and when the prime minister despatches his ambassador to the EU to submit a letter of UK acceptance of the extension, then Brussels says it still needs another 24 hours. This is because the text was agreed at EU ambassador level. It still needs to be signed off by the "grands fromages" - leaders in all EU capitals.
And why did it take the EU so long to make a decision? Early last week, there were confident assertions being made in Brussels that the UK's three-month extension request would be approved.
Yet what followed was a seemingly shambolic make-it-up-as-you-go-along EU timetable, where "announcement day" moved from last Thursday to Friday to this Tuesday, Wednesday and now Monday.
What initially slowed EU leaders down last week was France, the one EU country deeply opposed to the three-month extension. President Emmanuel Macron agreed with Boris Johnson that a shorter, sharper extension would better focus the minds of MPs in Westminster on the newly negotiated Brexit deal.
After more than three years of Brexit confusion and indecision in Parliament, France feared a longer extension would give MPs the space to keep chasing their tails instead of coming to conclusions.
UK political discourse at the end of last week also interfered with the EU's decision-making process. Government and opposition MPs kept deferring questions about holding a general election, saying: "We'll decide when we hear from the EU about the length of the extension they're going to grant."
EU leaders did not want their decision about a Brexit delay to be politicised. Since a vote was scheduled in Westminster on Monday on Boris Johnson's push to hold a December general election, Brussels said it would announce its extension decision after that.
But two key issues moved ahead of time over the weekend, meaning that, in the end, the EU felt emboldened to make its announcement ahead of the Westminster vote:
And after the extension has been signed off this week, Brussels will watch from the sidelines, arms folded, as the next moves are decided in Westminster.
Hope runs deep in the EU that Brexit will now finally be decided by UK politicians and voters, but there is a lingering sense of doubt here too.
Based on more than three years of false dawns in the process, the EU knows there is a distinct possibility, come January, that the spectre of yet another Brexit extension could rise once again.

A commemorative 50p coin marking the UK's departure from the EU has been unveiled by Chancellor Sajid Javid.
The coins bear the inscription "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" and the date of 31 January.
Mr Javid had first ordered production of the coins in advance of the UK's original 31 October departure date.
But the Brexit delay meant about a million coins had to be melted down and the metal put aside until a new exit date was confirmed.
About three million Brexit coins will enter circulation around the UK from Friday, with a further seven million to be added later in the year.
Mr Javid, who is Master of the Mint, was given the first batch of coins and will present one to Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week.
As part of the launch of the coin, the Royal Mint will open the doors of its south Wales HQ for 24 hours on 31 January (from 00:01 to 23.59) to let people strike their own commemorative Brexit coins.
Mr Javid said: "Leaving the European Union is a turning point in our history and this coin marks the beginning of this new chapter."
The European Parliament is expected to approve the Withdrawal Agreement on Wednesday, after the PM this week signed the treaty paving the way for the UK to leave on 31 January.

It's not even 24 hours since the PM called the general election she said she wouldn't call.
It's the opposite of Gordon Brown's "election that never was", rather the "election that wasn't meant to be".
Much will be written about her motivations for the U-turn, the change of heart that led her to this point. The long-term view of her motivation will in time be coloured by the eventual result of course.
But as the unofficial day one of this campaign draws to a close, some things are clear.
For months there has been a pretty straightforward balance sheet of advantages and disadvantages to holding an early poll. Theresa May believed it tipped to holding firm.
There were plenty of reasons for going early - most temptingly making the most of Labour's weakness to grab dozens of seats.
It would free Theresa May from the strictures of the 2015 manifesto - she's already proved she doesn't feel much constrained by that - which no one who remains in government had involvement in putting together.
It would give her her own mandate, even though PMs are not directly elected. It would draw a line between her leadership and David Cameron's, once and for all.
And with a likely majority, IF the polls are correct, it would make it easier for her to get her Brexit plans through Parliament, give her more freedom to pursue her other - some controversial - plans like reintroducing grammars, and strengthen her hand with EU leaders as she gets down to negotiations.
Going early could also minimise the potential fallout over the Tory expenses saga - a bad hangover from the 2015 election.
In the negative column:
Until only a few days ago it was those arguments that held sway.
Theresa May has shown time and again that she is willing to change her mind when the facts change.
For example, she and her chancellor dropped a major plank of his Budget in only a week when they saw resistance, and the government junked a review of the powers of the House of Lords.
Her public argument for calling an election - that it was resistance from the opposition and the Lords over Brexit - does not quite tell the full story.
Parliament has been tricky for the PM, but certainly not impossible.
Notwithstanding that, nor the factors that have created strong political arguments for taking the plunge in the last couple of months, senior government sources point to a specific factor that changed the prime minister's calculation.
The end of the likely tortuous Article 50 negotiations is a hard deadline set for March 2019.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, that's when the Tories would be starting to prepare for a general election the following year, with what one cabinet minister described as certain "political needs".
In other words, the government would be exposed to hardball from the EU because ministers would be desperate to avoid accepting anything that would be politically unpopular, or hold the Brexit process up, at the start of a crucial election cycle.
As one insider put it: "We'd be vulnerable to the rest of the EU in 2019 because they know we'd have to move fast."
Ministers say that's the central reason for Mrs May's change of heart because "if there was an election in three years, we'd be up against the clock".
By holding the election now, Theresa May hopes she gains a fresh start on the political clock on Brexit, even though the Article 50 process still has a deadline of only two years.
This gives what was described as "flexibility over the logistics of Brexit… we don't have to pretend we can do it all in two years".
That's not to say for a second this means departure from the EU will be held up. The Article 50 process will proceed, the government says, exactly as planned.
But, if the Tories win, an early election may have bought ministers some valuable breathing space to work out what the UK really looks like outside the EU.
They'll have, in theory, three years after exit for things to settle down before the public get another chance to have their say.
That timetabling question was not her only reason, as outlined above.
But after the EU's initial brush off after the Article 50 letter, that argument became more compelling.
The PM's conclusion was that the best way of her going into those negotiations in as strong a position as possible, was by taking advantage of the window between the French and German elections before the EU gets down to proper business.
A hypothetically bigger majority of course also acts to neutralise the cruelly dubbed "Remoaners" in her own party, and the far larger, and much more powerful, group of ardent Leavers who have been able to exert a lot of pressure.
But while the polls suggest an early election could make many of her political problems disappear, polls prove nothing.
Politics in 2017, as we've discussed again and again, is unpredictable and taking bets is a fool's game. The reasons Theresa May hung back from an early election haven't disappeared.
PS: Westminster's guessing game has been who knew, and when.
No one will confirm officially on the record. For what it's worth, sources tell me that David Davis and Philip Hammond were the only ministers who were extensively consulted.
Both Boris Johnson and Amber Rudd were told before Tuesday morning's cabinet meeting. But there were ministers around the cabinet table who had no idea and who were, it's said, visibly shocked when Mrs May told them.
The cabinet was kept in the cabinet room during the announcement, and watched it on TV.
The mood was apparently very enthusiastic, with one moment of huge laughter when the wifi link that was playing her announcement on the screen in the street just outside broke down and the PM suddenly went to black.
Apparently the glitch was sorted within a few seconds, but her colleagues will hope the PM is better at running an election campaign than sorting out the Number 10 broadband.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has insisted that the prime minister's Brexit deal is better than remaining in the EU.
He said the deal respected the result of the 2016 referendum and offered "the best compromise possible".
European Council President Donald Tusk has recommended that the EU approve the deal at a summit on Sunday.
It comes after Spain, which threatened to miss the summit, was reassured over objections it had raised about Gibraltar.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has now received enough reassurances from the UK government over the issue.
Mrs May flies into Brussels later to hold talks with top EU officials, ahead of the summit.
The UK is scheduled to depart the EU on 29 March 2019.
The terms of the UK's withdrawal have been under negotiation since June 2016 following a referendum in which 51.9% voted to leave the EU.
Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the UK Parliament, with many MPs having stated their opposition.
Arlene Foster, the leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has already stated the party will not back the Brexit deal - and is expected to reiterate her position at this weekend's annual conference in Belfast.
She will say the withdrawal agreement contains arrangements that are not in Northern Ireland's long-term economic or strategic interests.
Mrs May relies on the DUP, whose 10 MPs help the minority Conservative government to pass legislation.
The DUP has threatened to look again at the agreement with the Conservatives if the Brexit deal gets through Parliament.
DUP Chief Whip Jeffrey Donaldson denied the party would walk away from its agreement - but told the BBC the party was "very unhappy" with the withdrawal agreement.
Philip Hammond told Today he was hopeful of a solution with the DUP.
The deal on offer was the "best way of Britain leaving the EU with the minimum negative impact on the economy," he said.
The chancellor said the deal was better than remaining in the EU because it honoured the referendum result and offered "the best compromise possible... satisfying both sides" of the Brexit argument.
"If we want this country to be successful in the future, we have got to bring it back together after this process," he said.
By Leila Nathoo, BBC political correspondent
Ministers' hard sell of the Brexit deal continues - this morning it was Philip Hammond's turn.
He's been trying to reassure the DUP over their concerns about the Irish border - but he also had a message for MPs thinking of voting against the deal in the Commons.
Don't - or chaos will be unleashed.
Warnings about the economic consequences of a Parliamentary rejection will remind some of what was dubbed 'Project Fear' during the referendum campaign.
The chancellor's suggestion that there is no alternative can be seen as a dismissal of those critics - the DUP, Tory Brexiteers - who think there is still a chance of renegotiation.
Meanwhile, former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers - a Leave campaigner in 2016 - has said she will vote against the withdrawal agreement.
"I do not believe it is in the national interest," she told Today.
She said "every effort should continue to be made to try and reach a better agreement" but failing that, Theresa May "should walk away".
But Mr Hammond warned that a no-deal Brexit would unleash "economic chaos".
"If the meaningful vote [in Parliament] is lost we are in uncharted territory," he said.
On Saturday, Mrs May will meet the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and European Council President Donald Tusk for talks.
Then on Sunday, EU leaders will meet for the special Brexit summit. They will be asked to approve two key Brexit documents:
There is no formal vote on Sunday but the EU expects to proceed after reaching a consensus.
Spain raised last-minute objections to how the issue of Gibraltar - a British Overseas Territory with 30,000 residents - had been handled in the Brexit talks so far.
Spain has long-held ambitions to bring the territory back under Spanish rule, and there's growing concern about how their economic ties with the territory will be affected by Brexit.
Although one country on its own cannot stop the withdrawal agreement being approved, there is "no way the EU can rubber-stamp a text when an existing member is so strongly opposed", said BBC News Europe editor Katya Adler.
France, Denmark and the Netherlands had raised concerns over what the political declaration said about fishing rights in UK waters - but this issue is understood to have been resolved.
If the EU signs off the withdrawal deal, Mrs May will then need to persuade MPs in her own Parliament to back it.
A vote in Parliament is expected to happen in December.
Labour, the SNP the Liberal Democrats, the DUP and Plaid Cymru have all said they will vote against the government's deal, as well as many Conservatives.
On Friday, the PM said the UK should not hope for a "better deal" from the EU if MPs reject her Brexit agreement.
But she declined to say whether the UK would be better off outside the EU, saying only it would be "different".
Meanwhile, the Telegraph said it has seen leaked Cabinet papers which suggest the PM is planning to "reframe the Brexit debate around migration" - by planning restrictions on low-skilled migrants coming to the UK - in a bid to attract the support of Brexiteers.
Yes. After the 2017 general election, Mrs May's Conservative Party got 318 seats - four short of the number she needed to rule with a majority government.
The DUP formed a confidence and supply agreement with the Tories, promising that its 10 MPs would vote with the government, and therefore enable it to win key votes in Parliament.
The DUP opposes the Brexit deal because of the "backstop" - the last resort back-up plan to make sure a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland never happens.
It will only come into effect if the UK and EU fail to agree a long-term trade deal. But the backstop would mean that Northern Ireland - but not the rest of the UK - would still follow some EU rules on things such as food products.

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has refused to back Chancellor Philip Hammond's warning that a "no-deal" Brexit could damage the economy.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, he said: "This idea that we can predict what our borrowing would be 15 years in advance is just a bit hard to swallow."
Treasury analysis estimates that by 2033 borrowing would be around £80bn a year higher under a "no-deal" scenario.
It also forecasts no deal could mean a 7.7% hit to GDP over the next 15 years.
Asked by Andrew Marr whether he accepted the figures, Mr Fox said: "Can you think back in all your time in politics where the Treasury have made predictions that were correct 15 years out. I can't.
"They didn't predict the financial crisis. No-one could."
Pressed on whether he agreed with the chancellor, Mr Fox said: "I don't believe that it's possible to have a 15-year time horizon on predictions of GDP."
"So the answer's no," said Marr.
Divisions have deepened within the party in recent months as Brexiteers accuse Mr Hammond - who is seen to be pushing for a softer version of Brexit - of embarking on "another instalment of dodgy project fear".
Meanwhile, there is growing pressure on the prime minister to win support for her Brexit plan, known as the Chequers agreement.
The plan would see the UK agreeing a "common rulebook" with the EU for trading in goods, in an attempt to maintain friction-less trade at the border.
But critics say it will leave the UK tied to EU rules and prevent Britain from striking its own trade deals in years to come.
In his interview, Mr Fox said he was behind the Chequers plan and and could not imagine many things worse than remaining in the EU.
By Susana Mendonca, BBC political correspondent
The prime minister may be promising to stand firm on no second referendum but that is not stopping opponents in her own party from gearing up to take down her Chequers plan for Brexit.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox - who's stayed inside the PM's camp - has warned that there's no point in trying to unseat Theresa May because "changing the leader doesn't change the party arithmetic".
While David Davis, who resigned over Chequers, has suggested that the prime minister limited his influence over the negotiation process. He said while he was the Brexit secretary, whether he "controlled events" was "another matter".
Mr Davis has never been one to shy away from making his views known and now that he is on the outside of the tent - he will join the chorus of Brexiteers doing exactly that, as Mrs May heads into the final stretch before she does or does not get a deal on Brexit.
In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, Theresa May has insisted she would not be forced into watering down her Brexit plan during negotiations with the EU.
The PM wrote that she would "not be pushed" into compromises that were not in the "national interest".
But David Davis, the former Brexit secretary who resigned over the Chequers agreement, said the caveat - "except in the national interest" - was an "incredible open sesame to all".
Also interviewed on the Marr show, he admitted he would vote against Mrs May's plan in any Commons vote, saying it would be "almost worse" than staying in the EU.
Another Conservative MP, Nick Boles - a former minister who backed Remain - said the Chequers policy had "failed" and he could no longer support it.
Also writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he said the EU was treating the plan as "an opening bid", and the UK was facing "the humiliation of a deal dictated by Brussels".
In his interview, David Davis said concerns over maintaining a soft border between Northern Ireland border and the Republic had been "heavily overemphasised" in the past.
"This is a much more straightforward issue to deal with if we choose to, if we put the political will behind it, we and the Irish Republic, the two together," he said.
However he said he did agree with Mrs May that a second referendum should not take place.
In her article, she said it would be a "gross betrayal of our democracy and... trust" to "give in" to those calling for another vote.
Her objection to it comes as a movement pressing for another referendum - the People's Vote - continues to gather high profile backers, including Sir Patrick Stewart and BBC football anchor Gary Lineker - as well as donations.
One supporter, Labour MP Chuka Umunna, said the impetus had shifted toward a public vote over the summer and it would be a "betrayal of democracy" for Mrs May "to force a bad deal - or no deal - on Britain without giving the public the chance to have a final say".

The Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) bottom line has always been that any new Brexit arrangements should not separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, economically or constitutionally.
Under the Stormont assembly's cross-community voting rules, contentious measures require a majority of both unionists and nationalists in order to pass.
The DUP had hoped to secure an upfront Stormont vote to approve the new arrangements.
But it's understood that the current proposals would give Stormont a say four years after the end of the transition period - that would mean 2024.
A straightforward numerical majority would keep the special arrangements in place for another four years.
Alternatively, if the arrangements get cross-community consent - in other words, if they're passed by most nationalists and most unionists - they would remain in place for eight years.
But a vote couldn't happen if the assembly wasn't operating.
Shortly afterwards, an election left unionism without a numerical majority in the Stormont chamber for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland.
So for the DUP, the issue of consent - and a fear that Dublin and Brussels would have too big an influence on trading rules - goes to the heart of the party's concerns that Northern Ireland's place in the UK would be weakened.
Several rounds of talks to restore the Stormont Executive haven't succeeded - and few, if any, hold out hope that devolution is returning in the coming weeks.
Her tweet - "No border and no veto" - shows how the complexities of Stormont politics have become increasingly bound up with the UK-EU negotiations.
The technical talk about Brexit and the border focuses on trade, goods regulations, and potential tariffs.
But for politicians in Belfast and Dublin, the significance of those issues is generated by deeper issues - such as identity, nationality, and peacebuilding.

Meetings, on their own, are not a Plan B. Conversations, are not by themselves, compromises.
To get any deal done where there are such clashing views all around, it requires give and take. It feels like a political lifetime since there has been a fundamental dispute in the cabinet, in the Tory party and across Parliament. Theresa May has stubbornly, although understandably, tried to plot a middle course.
But that has failed so spectacularly at this stage. Ultimately she may well be left with the same dilemma of which way to tack.
It's clear, wide open, in public, that the cabinet is at odds with each other. Just listen to David Gauke and Liam Fox on whether a customs union could be a compromise for example.
The answer for her is not suddenly going to emerge from a unified tier of her top team. There are perhaps five or six of the cabinet who would be happy to see that kind of relationship as a way to bring Labour on board.
But there is a group of around the same size who would rather see what they describe as a "managed no deal".
You may well wonder if that isn't a contradiction in terms.
But the principle would be that the UK would pay the divorce bill already agreed and over a two-year period construct a series of side deals on specific issues, rather than try to come up with a whole new comprehensive plan.
There are already intense arguments about whether that's remotely realistic. But the overall point is that the prime minister cannot just therefore look to her top colleagues for an immediate solution.
Before she decides which way to tack, or how far to budge, she may need to ask herself if the talks she wants to hold with other political parties are occasions when she is really open to ideas - or just ways of managing the political situation.
One cabinet minister involved in the talks suggested that many MPs still needed to understand how the agreement they have reached with the EU worked. And that as "project reality" dawned, there could still be a way through of salvaging Mrs May's deal in something like its current form.
And certainly there wasn't much in the PM's lectern statement to suggest she is suddenly ready to move very much. One former minister described it as "still flicking the V at the 48% - she's deluded, she never changes her mind and cannot conceive that others might".
If all that the prime minister intends to do is massage a few egos with these talks, it seems unlikely that she'll find a quick route to success. And Labour may well stay outside the process.
Many members of the public might be furious that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn won't play nice during a time of crisis. He's always said he believes in dialogue, but when it really matters, he says no. But inside the Labour movement there are others who might accuse of him of helping to make Brexit happen if he takes part. Like so many facets of this process, it's not a straightforward political calculation.
But across Parliament, for a very long time now, even some MPs who were on the prime minister's side to start with have been intensely frustrated that she hasn't listened. It will take a lot more than a cup of tea in Downing Street to bring her many critics on board.

The UK and European Commission have reached an agreement that should allow them to move Brexit talks on to the next stage.
Here are some of the key lines in the agreement document.
So here's the first linguistic somersault. This agreement is designed to lock in the progress made so far, and allow technical experts to continue to work on it during the second phase of talks.
But EU negotiations always work on the principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and that raises the prospect that if the second phase runs into trouble, then what has been agreed so far could, in theory, unravel.
That is certainly not the intention on either side, but it underscores that the negotiating process still has a very long way to run - and the hardest part is still to come.
The separation agreement on citizens' rights will not fall under the direct jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (officially called the CJEU but commonly referred to as the ECJ) which was the initial demand from the European Union.
But the ECJ will continue to play a role, because this agreement says UK courts will have to pay "due regard" to its decisions on an indefinite basis.
And for eight years after Brexit, there will be a mechanism for UK courts to refer questions of interpretation directly to the ECJ.
It is a compromise, but the sort of compromise that some supporters of Brexit will find hard to stomach.
This detail on citizens' rights is important.
The agreement will apply to anyone taking up residence before the UK leaves the EU, so people could still take the decision to move next year, or even in early 2019, and they would be fully protected by it. That option will remain open for new arrivals until the day the UK leaves - currently presumed to be 29 March 2019.
In fact the European Commission argues that the "specified date" should be considerably later. In an official communication to the European Council it argues that during a transition all EU citizens should have all their rights upheld. In other words, it says, the "specified date" should not be the actual date of withdrawal, but the final day of a transition period (potentially two years later or even longer).
There are also a lot of technical details hidden in the weeds of the agreement that remain to be negotiated, and that's why some groups representing citizens who are caught up in this dilemma are far from happy.
The reaction of the European Parliament, which has taken a tough line on citizens' rights, will be important because it has to ratify the final agreement.
This is the key phrase in the long section setting out how the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will operate after the UK leaves the EU.
The preference on both sides is for an ambitious free trade agreement, which will address many of the concerns that have been raised (although questions of customs duties would still have to be addressed).
As a backstop though, the UK has guaranteed that it will maintain "full alignment" with the EU's single market and customs rules that govern cross-border trade.
It is a form of words that everyone can (just about) live with for now, but there is plenty of tough negotiating ahead.
It's not entirely clear how full alignment could be maintained without Northern Ireland staying in the single market and the customs union, especially as there is no such thing as partial membership. It is another sign that the competing demands that have been discussed this week have been sidestepped, but not fully resolved.
This sentence about the financial settlement is a bureaucratic masterpiece, and suggests that plenty of detail still needs to be sorted out behind the scenes.
For months, the money appeared to be the most intractable issue in the withdrawal negotiations, but money is easier to finesse than borders or courts.
A method for calculating the bill has been agreed, but the calculation of an exact UK share will depend on exchange rates, on interest rates, on the number of financial commitments that never turn into payments, and more.
The question of how and when payments will be made still needs to resolved, but it will be a schedule lasting for many years to come, and it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever be able to give an exact figure for the size of the divorce bill.
UK sources say it will be up to £40bn, but some EU sources expect it to be higher than that. No-one can say for sure, and both sides want to keep it that way.
Update 11 December 2017: This piece was amended to take account of the European Commission's view on the specified date for EU citizens' rights.
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Tory rebels "could collapse the government" if they vote against a Brexit deal negotiated with the EU, a leading rebel has said.
Dominic Grieve said he wakes up "in a cold sweat" thinking about what could happen if a final deal is rejected.
But he suggested rebels would not back down in a current row with ministers about how much of a say MPs should get.
The EU Withdrawal Bill returns to the Lords and Commons this week, with further rebellions expected.
Last week the government avoided a defeat on the bill after agreeing to hold further talks with rebels.
They want a bigger role for Parliament, should a final Brexit deal be rejected by MPs, or if no deal is reached - the so-called "meaningful vote".
Former Attorney General Mr Grieve told BBC One's Sunday Politics that he thought they had agreed MPs could have an "advisory" vote, that would not order the government to do anything, but would help people to "keep calm" during what would be a "critical situation".
But after two days of talks, Mr Grieve said a government amendment drawn up to avert a rebellion was changed at the last minute and was now "valueless".
He implied rebels would vote against it this week: "I'm absolutely sure that the group is quite determined that the meaningful vote pledge, which was given to us, has got to be fulfilled."
He added: "The alternative is that we've all got to sign up to a slavery clause now, saying whatever the government does, when it comes to January, however potentially catastrophic it might be for my constituents and my country, I'm signing in blood now that I will follow over the edge of a cliff, and that I can tell you, I am not prepared to do."
The government's amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill sets out what must happen in the event of three scenarios: If MPs vote down the UK-EU Brexit deal, if Theresa May announces before 21 January 2019 that no deal has been reached, or if 21st January passes with no deal being struck.
Under these circumstances, a minister must make a statement in Parliament setting out their next steps and give MPs an opportunity to vote.
However, the vote would be on "a motion in neutral terms", merely stating that the House has considered the statement.
Rebels had originally wanted the amendment to say that the government must seek the approval of Parliament for its course of action - and that ministers must be directed by MPs and peers.
When it was put to him that voting against any Brexit deal at "the 11th hour" of negotiations could cause the government to collapse, he replied:  "We could collapse the government and I can assure you, I wake up at 2am in a cold sweat thinking about the problems that we have put on our shoulders."
Last week another Conservative MP, Tom Tugendhat, told Sky News there was "going to be a new government" if MPs rejected the government's Brexit deal.
Solicitor General Robert Buckland said that "however well intentioned" Mr Grieve's plan had been, his worry was that "it actually plays badly in the most important negotiation, which is over in Brussels".
It would imply to the EU, he said, that "there's a third party in this relationship" - Parliament - which could "trump whatever the UK government say".
He said ministers would stick with the new amendment for Monday, adding: "Let's see what the Lords make of it. Of course we have Tuesday to consider matters ahead of the Wednesday vote."
Earlier the prime minister defended her handling of the row.
She told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show she had met Tory rebels and "undertook to consider their concerns".
She admitted there had been "a debate" about what a "meaningful" vote for Parliament meant: "I've listened carefully to the concerns, I've put an amendment down which I think balances this issue of the role of Parliament together with the need for us to ensure we don't overturn the decision of the British people."
But she said Parliament "cannot tie the hands of government in negotiations".
The main purposes of the EU Withdrawal Bill are to end the supremacy of EU law in the UK, and transfer existing EU law into UK law so the same rules and regulations apply on the day after Brexit.
But as it passes through Parliament, MPs and peers have been trying to change it, in some cases adding bits on that would change the government's Brexit strategy.
The government says the whole row is about a "hypothetical" scenario and they are "confident we will agree a good deal with the EU which Parliament will support".

As MPs begin five days of debate on Theresa May's Brexit deal it looks like the prime minister faces the exact situation she called an election last year to try and avoid.
Whether it is the decision on whether the government is in contempt of Parliament (in other words, in lots of embarrassing trouble for ignoring the demand to publish the full Brexit legal advice), or MPs asking for the right to tell ministers what to do if there is a second attempt by the government to get Theresa May's Brexit compromise deal through the Commons (the attempt by Dominic Grieve today, that could take 'no deal' off the table for good), or what seems now, the likely rejection of  Theresa May's agreement with the EU next week, those manoeuvres, those sub-plots in the Brexit drama, amount to one central thing - slowly but surely, Parliament grasping the levers of power - one might even say, taking back control.
To use the posh term, it is the legislature trying to take over the executive, and this is what chills some spines in No 10. With MPs on the Tory benches as well as the opposition looking for ever more arcane ways of tying ministers up in knots, there is a sense whatever happens next Tuesday, what we are seeing is the gumming up of the government, maybe for good.
For many MPs of course, this is a moment, if not to hang out the bunting, to take heart from Parliament's influence, to be reassured about its role, its ability not just to scrutinise legislation, but to make things happen, or more pertinently, to stop them taking place.
But remember, as one government insider put it this morning, "there are no numbers FOR anything" - in essence the idea that the Commons would be able to come together to agree anything quickly on behalf of the country seems optimistic in the extreme.
They'd be able to agree that they should prevent a disorderly 'no deal' exit. The prominent Labour MP, Hilary Benn, is making a formal attempt to guarantee just that.
But beyond that? If the government's plan falls, some MPs will certainly push for another referendum - but a majority for that seems out of reach for now. Some, and there is cross-party support, would try to argue for a Norway-style deal with close economic ties to the EU. There might, just about, be a majority for that.
But that model would not see the UK have total control of its immigration policy. For many, but of course not all, Leave voters, that was the priority in the referendum. It's potentially therefore deeply problematic to go for such an arrangement.
If voters partly voted Leave to demand more say over immigration, what message does Westminster send back to the electorate if they carve up a deal that simply does not do that?
Of course MPs absolutely ought to be voting for what they believe is best, at this huge moment. Some of them may be spooked by the idea of turmoil, or at least on-going confusion.
Many more are poised to make their objections count.
But don't kid yourself that if Parliament takes charge of the process that the situation will become any clearer fast.
By calling the election last year, this kind of Parliamentary mess was exactly what the prime minister was trying to avoid. She had a tiny majority then, and this would have been a hard fight in any case.
But that historic gamble, that she tried and failed, has made this perhaps harder than she could have imagined. With no majority, even tiny numbers of MPs can make a huge amount of noise.

The request for delay is an answer to one question.
When confronted with the possibility of taking the UK out of the EU without a formal deal in place or slamming on the brakes, which way would the prime minister jump?
Would she choose a pure plan - pursuing Brexit over the risk of instability?
Or would Theresa May heed the voices of warning, rather than those in her own party arguing that any short-term pain would be worth long-term gain, and ask for delay, despite the embarrassment of doing so, and the frustration of those who wanted her to keep the promise of leaving on time?
Mrs May kept many in Westminster guessing for a long time.
But her meetings in Europe, her plea on Tuesday, are evidence of the decision she finally took - that almost any entreaties to European leaders are worth it to avoid opening Pandora's Box. Pausing again brings embarrassment and angers many on her own side, but it's a lesser evil than departing with no deal.
If the prime minister is granted a strings-attached delay later, the next question is perhaps as big.
What will she do with the extra time she's been granted? Will it even be up to her?
Cross-party talks with the Labour Party are serious - both sides in the room are taking part in good faith and expect more negotiations on Thursday.
But the more talking they do, the more the scale of the task to bring them together reveals itself.
Forget a quick solution from this joint process, and don't bank on one happening at all.
The divisions may simply be too great - the moment when it might have worked perhaps has passed.
If that fails, then the answer may pass again, back to Parliament - MPs confronted again with the power to choose from a wide array of different choices - with the ability, if not yet the common purpose to choose a version of Brexit for all of us.
And of course, if a long delay is agreed it could push hungry Tories who want a change of leadership again into action.
But the obvious response to another question is crystal clear - who is in charge for today?
It's the EU leaders who will determine the date and nature of this delay - not the country that voted in an effort to pull back control.

The Brexit process has turned into a "nightmare", the prime minister of Luxembourg has said after holding talks with UK PM Boris Johnson.
Xavier Bettel said Mr Johnson had failed to put forward any serious plans to allow a deal by 31 October.
But Mr Johnson, who cancelled his press conference because of the noise from protesters, said "there's been a lot of work" and "papers have been shared".
He urged the EU to make "movement" in its opposition to scrap the backstop.
Mr Johnson said his joint press conference was cancelled over fears the two leaders would have been "drowned out" by pro-EU protesters.
"I don't think it would have been fair to the prime minister of Luxembourg," he said.
"I think there was clearly going to be a lot of noise and I think our points might have been drowned out."
Political editor Laura Kuenssberg said that Number 10 had asked for the press conference to be held inside, according to sources.
Mr Bettel, who conducted the planned press conference alone, said the "only solution" was the existing withdrawal agreement.
He said there were "no concrete proposals at the moment on the table" from the UK and said the EU "needs more than just words".
"We need written proposals and the time is ticking so stop speaking and act," he said.
"But we won't accept any agreement that goes against a single market, who will be against the Good Friday Agreement."
Away from the crowds, Mr Johnson said the EU must make "movement" in its opposition to scrap the Irish backstop, but insisted there was "just the right amount of time" to get a deal done.
When asked what concrete proposals he had made, Mr Johnson said "there's been a lot of work" and "papers have been shared".
"We've got to manage this carefully. Yes, we've got a good chance of a deal. Yes, I can see the shape of it. Everybody could see roughly what could be done," he said.
He reiterated that the UK will come out of the EU on 31 October "deal or no deal".
As soon as we arrived at the office of the prime minister of Luxembourg it became obvious a planned outdoor news conference could not go ahead.
The anti-Brexit protesters in the square numbered fewer than a hundred but their music and megaphones made it sound like a lot more and they occasionally used language you wouldn't want to hear on the news.
Behind the scenes the British and Luxembourgish delegations grappled with a diplomatic dilemma - move the event inside but exclude the majority of the journalists? Gamble that the demonstrators could pipe down for a bit? Silence the host to save the guest's blushes?
The end result saw Mr Johnson do a short interview at the ambassador's residence to be shared with everyone while Mr Bettel took to the stage next to an empty podium.
He used the moment in the spotlight to deliver an impassioned speech, made all the more dramatic by the fact he's famed as one of the EU's most smiley, mild-mannered leaders.
Earlier, both Mr Johnson and Mr Juncker - who met for the first time since the PM took office in July - agreed the discussions between the UK and EU "needed to intensify" and meetings "would soon take place on a daily basis".
But regardless of the outcome, No 10 said the PM would take the UK out of the EU on 31 October.
Downing Street also said Mr Johnson confirmed his commitment to the Good Friday Agreement - the peace deal brokered in Northern Ireland - and still had a "determination to reach a deal with the backstop removed, that UK parliamentarians could support".
Mr Johnson has called the Irish backstop "undemocratic" and said it needed to be removed from any deal with the EU.
A Downing Street spokesperson said Mr Johnson also reiterated he would not request an extension and would take the UK out of the EU on 31 October.
The EU has said it is willing to look at alternatives, but that an insurance policy like the backstop must be in place.
The backstop is the controversial policy in the existing withdrawal agreement, rejected three times by MPs, which would require the UK to follow the EU's customs rules to ensure there are no physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Last week MPs passed a law that would force the prime minister to ask the EU for an extension to the 31 October deadline if a deal was not agreed by 19 October.
But the prime minister's official spokesman said: "The position of the PM is that we comply with the law, but that we are leaving on 31 October whatever the outcome."
They also confirmed that the current date set for a transition period - the time for the UK and EU to negotiate their future relationship after officially leaving - of December 2020 would not be extended.
Over the weekend Mr Johnson told a newspaper that the UK would break out of its "manacles" like cartoon character The Incredible Hulk - with or without a deal.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the issue of whether the UK had the legal right to leave on 31 October - come what may - could end up in court.
Reports have suggested Mr Johnson is considering a plan to keep Northern Ireland more closely aligned to the EU after Brexit, as an alternative to the current Irish backstop.
The Democratic Unionist Party - which supports the Conservatives in Parliament - has rejected any plan that would see Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the UK.
The PM's spokesman would not give details, but said the government had "put forward workable solutions in a number of areas".
Writing in Monday's Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson said he believed he could strike a deal with the EU within weeks and was working "flat out to achieve one".
"If we can make enough progress in the next few days, I intend to go to that crucial summit... and finalise an agreement that will protect the interests of business and citizens on both sides of the channel, and on both sides of the border in Ireland," he wrote.
Many MPs have also questioned how serious the government is about getting a deal, such as former justice secretary David Gauke who said "detailed proposals" had yet to be put forward.
"It still remains the case the UK government has not produced detailed proposals as to how it wants to replace the Irish backstop," he told Radio 4's Today.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the PM would stress he wanted a deal, but there had to be "some finality" to it.
He said claims from the EU side that the UK was dragging its feet were part of the "tactical posturing that goes on in any negotiation".
He told Today the UK had been clear the "anti-democratic backstop" had to be removed from the current withdrawal agreement, and the outline of future trading relationship set out in the political declaration had to be much more ambitious.
"The EU knows our position. Lots of the detail has been talked through at technical and political level," he said. "The framework is very clear.
"But of course the nature of these negotiations is that there will be a tendency to rubbish things we put forward in order to exact further demands. We are not going to get involved in that."
Monday:  Boris Johnson meets European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for Brexit talks in Luxembourg
Tuesday: The Supreme Court begins to consider the legality of Mr Johnson's decision to suspend parliament until 14 October
Wednesday: The European Parliament to debate Brexit

Their offices are full of boxes, they're living in hotels and don't ask them when they're having their leaving drinks. How have the UK's MEPs been coping with the ever-changing Brexit situation?
It's the last day of the European Parliament in Strasbourg before the elections in May, but there's not much last-minute packing for the UK group of MEPs - they've been ready to go for nearly a month.
When the UK voted to leave the EU, the country's representatives in the European Parliament expected to be out of a job on 29 March. Instead they have watched two deadlines pass by as MPs in Westminster failed to agree on the withdrawal deal.
Now a new Brexit date of 31 October means the UK is likely to take part in European elections on 23 May and some MEPs are eyeing an unexpected return to Europe.
But job prospects there could be short-lived. Whenever the UK breaks the Brexit deadlock, they could be sent home. And if the prime minister succeeds in winning support for a deal before polling day, elections could be called off altogether.
MEPs are used to a nomadic life, dividing their time between parliament sessions in Brussels and Strasbourg, as well as their home constituencies in the UK. But many of them feel recent months have taken an already unstable situation to extremes.
Catherine Bearder, Liberal Democrat MEP, says: "Life is never certain as a politician, but this is beyond anything I've ever seen before."
The 70-year-old had been planning a quiet retirement - "painting, gardening, doing yoga" - but said she is back on an election footing now, determined to fight to keep the UK's place at the European table.
For Nathan Gill, a former UKIP and independent MEP who has now joined the newly launched Brexit Party, the delays have been a blow to the cause he spent the last 15 years of his life on.
Speaking from an office filled with packing boxes, he says: "It's unbelievable, it's disgraceful."
He says he was forced to leave his Brussels apartment and move into a hotel after his lease ended. Later he got turfed out of there too.
As UK Prime Minister Theresa May sought the latest extension to Brexit and an emergency EU summit rolled into town, prices rose so much that Mr Gill had to temporarily decamp to Antwerp, some 25 miles (41km) away.
Every country in the EU elects representatives to the parliament, which meets in Strasbourg and Brussels. The UK has 73 MEPs, representing each of its 12 regions for five-year terms.
Their job is to debate and to help decide on EU laws, as well as scrutinising the work of EU institutions.
The last election saw 19 Conservatives elected, 20 from Labour and 24 from UKIP - although 19 UKIP MEPs have since left the party and one was expelled.
The Greens have three MEPs, the SNP has two and there is one each from the Liberal Democrats, Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein, the Ulster Unionist Party and Plaid Cymru.
Labour's David Martin is the UK's longest-serving MEP, first elected in 1984.
The Brexit Party is not the only new party planning to contest these European elections. Change UK - formed by former Labour and Tory MPs, initially under the name The Independent Group - says it had 3,700 people applying to be candidates.
MEPs themselves will receive a transitional allowance when their term ends, equivalent to a month's salary for every year they have served. But across the political spectrum, they are united in feeling that staff have been treated badly.
Each MEP has a budget to hire assistants, with up to three in Brussels as well as staff in their home region. Information about the future for these staff members is scarce and always changing, MEPs say.
Contracts could not be extended until Brexit extensions were officially confirmed by the European Council, usually at the last minute as negotiations went to the wire.
For some staff, the last-minute deadline extensions meant losing redundancy pay as they had already accepted jobs elsewhere. Others who remain are sleeping on sofas as their apartment leases run out.
"It's very brutal from a staff point of view," says Conservative MEP Daniel Dalton. "You're in one day and out the other and your staff are out with you."
Green MEP Jean Lambert says staff had to be made redundant and offices closed as the original Brexit deadline loomed in March. But the party kept in place a contingency plan in case the UK took part in European elections.
"We've got a plan A and a plan B, which is more than the government has," she says - although she plans to retire as an elected representative.
If the UK does elect MEPs, what will they do in a potentially short-lived return to Brussels and Strasbourg?
Some Brexiteer politicians such as Nathan Gill warn that they plan to make the EU nations "regret" the UK MEPs' return.
Mr Gill says the Brexit Party hopes to work with other anti-EU and anti-euro parties across the continent, such as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Italy's anti-immigration League party, to cause disruption.
"We want them to realise they should have just let us go," he says. "They don't need this thorn in their side."
But Conservative MEP Mr Dalton, who backs the government's Brexit withdrawal agreement, says it would be "completely counter-productive".
He says British politicians have often failed to understand that the EU Parliament is based on compromise, so the adversarial politics of Westminster fall flat. "All it does is annoy people," he says. "They're much more likely to get more stubborn."
UKIP MEP Stuart Agnew is another who has postponed retirement to take part in the elections, if they happen. He says he was surprised that Westminster MPs had let the Brexit deadlock get to this point.
"I would have lost a bet. I thought they would have banged heads together, that the Conservatives wouldn't want European elections and neither would Labour. I was wrong," he says.
Other MEPs have made firm decisions not to stand again but have still been left bewildered by recent weeks.
David Martin, Labour MEP, says he intends to do academic lecturing on the EU and trade policy, but had been struggling to agree a start date.
"The Brexit negotiations will be a really good case study in how not to negotiate with the European Union," he says.
He has also been puzzling over a unique issue of etiquette: when should Brexiting MEPs say their goodbyes?
As Mr Martin puts it: "You don't want to have a farewell dinner and say goodbye to everyone, and still be there the next day."

Hundreds of thousands of people have marched in central London calling for another EU referendum, as MPs search for a way out of the Brexit impasse.
Organisers of the "Put It To The People" campaign say more than a million people joined the march before rallying in front of Parliament.
Protesters carrying EU flags and placards called for any Brexit deal be put to another public vote.
On Thursday, European leaders agreed to delay the UK's departure from the EU.
PM Theresa May is coming under pressure to quit after saying she might not put her Brexit deal to a third vote by MPs.
Speakers at the rally included Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, former Tory turned independent MP Anna Soubry and former attorney general Dominic Grieve.
Crowds were told the initial count showed more than a million people had turned up - putting it on a par with the biggest march of the century, the Stop the War march in 2003.
There was no independent verification of the numbers but BBC correspondent Richard Lister, who was at the scene, said it was a "very densely packed" protest and people were still arriving in Parliament Square five hours after the march began.
He said: "The organisers say it was one million-strong, it's very hard to verify those kinds of claims but this was a very significant march, well into the hundreds of thousands."
Labour's Tom Watson told the crowd in Parliament Square that Mrs May's deal was a "lousy" one - whether you voted Leave or Remain.
He said he had this message for her: "I can only vote for a deal if you let the people vote on it too. Prime Minister, you've lost control of this process, you're plunging the country into chaos, let the people take control."
Ms Sturgeon said now was "the moment of maximum opportunity" to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
By Katie Wright, BBC News, in Park Lane
The streets around Park Lane were teeming with people hours ahead of the march's scheduled 1pm start, having come from all corners of the country - and some from further beyond.
The blue and yellow of the EU was splashed all over the ever-expanding crowd, which was full of groups of families, friends, colleagues and political groups.
Many people came draped in flags and carried homemade signs, featuring slogans ranging from playful - "Never gonna give EU up" - to political - "Forget the Ides of March - beware the Brexit of May". And then there were the plain angry - "Brexit is treason".
One member of the crowd, German-born vet Chris Reichmann, described it as a "carnival" atmosphere - with "lots of different nationalities" but "really British in a way".
And it was noisy, with some of London's most recognisable streets overflowing with people marching steadily to a soundtrack of beating drums, whistles and blaring horns.
Occasionally the hordes would erupt into spontaneous cheering, as well as chants of "What do we want? People's vote. When do we want it? Now!"
Game Of Thrones star Lena Headey, Strictly Come Dancing presenter Claudia Winkleman and Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys were among the famous names to take to the streets.
Sadiq Khan joined demonstrators at the front of the march as it began, holding up a "Put it to the People" banner.
He was flanked by Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, who tweeted that there was a "huge turnout of people here from all walks of life".
But veteran Conservative MP John Redwood told the BBC: "We know that 16 million people wanted to stay in the EU, and some of those would still like to stay in the EU, and within that quite a few would like to have another go and have another referendum - but it was always a minority."
The prime minister wrote to all MPs on Friday saying she will ditch plans to put the deal to another so-called meaningful vote on her withdrawal deal if not enough MPs support it.
Unless her deal is passed by MPs, the UK will have to come up with an alternative plan or else face leaving without a deal on 12 April.
Downing Street sources have denied reports in the Times newspaper that discussions are under way about a timetable for the prime minister to step down.
Meanwhile, a record-breaking online petition on Parliament's website calling for Brexit to be cancelled by revoking Article 50 has attracted more than four million signatures.
As the number of signatures on the petition continued to climb, its creator Margaret Georgiadou said she had "received three death threats over the phone", and a "torrent of abuse" via her Facebook account.
Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said the petition could "give oxygen" to the campaign for another Brexit referendum.
The march comes as the pro-Brexit March to Leave, which started in Sunderland a week ago, continues towards London.
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage re-joined the March to Leave in Linby, near Nottingham, on Saturday morning telling around 200 Brexit supporters that Mrs May had reduced the nation "to a state of humiliation".
Speaking from the top of an open-top bus, Mr Farage said those gathering for the People's Vote march in London were not the majority, before leading the marchers through the village.

Sir Vince Cable - the likely next Lib Dem leader - says he is "beginning to think Brexit may never happen".
He said "enormous" divisions in the Labour and the Tory parties and a "deteriorating" economy would make people think again.
"People will realise that we didn't vote to be poorer, and I think the whole question of continued membership will once again arise," he said.
He was speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
His comments were dismissed by leading Eurosceptic Conservative MP Owen Paterson, who said Sir Vince was just "chucking buckets of water around" and ignoring the "huge vote" in favour of leaving in the referendum and at the general election, where the two main parties backed Brexit.
"Vince Cable's party went down in votes, as did the other little parties who want to stay in the European Union," he told the BBC's Sunday Politics.
He added: "I am afraid Vince is behind history. We are going to leave. We are on target."
Sir Vince conceded that the Lib Dem policy on a second referendum on the terms of a Brexit deal "didn't really cut through in the general election".
But he said it could offer voters "a way out when it becomes clear the Brexit is potentially disastrous".
The former business secretary looks set to be crowned Lib Dem leader. He is the only candidate following the resignation of Tim Farron.
Sir Vince told the BBC he wants to work with Labour and Tory MPs to block what he regards as Theresa May's "hard Brexit" policy.
"A lot of people are keeping their heads down," he said, and "we'll see what happens" when MPs returned from their summer break.
But he added: "I'm beginning to think that Brexit may never happen.
"The problems are so enormous, the divisions within the two major parties are so enormous. I can see a scenario in which this doesn't happen."
MPs are set to vote on the Repeal Bill, a key piece of Brexit legislation, in the autumn.
Sir Vince has said he wants to form a cross-party coalition including like-minded Tory and Labour MPs to oppose Britain's exit from the single market - the official policy of both the Conservative and Labour parties.
He said Labour MPs who disagreed with their leader's position were welcome in his party, and predicted Labour's divisions on the issue would get worse.
"Jeremy Corbyn had a good election, for sure, but there is an element of a 'bubble' about it," he told Andrew Marr.
"He managed to attract large numbers of people on the basis that he was leading opposition to Brexit.
"Actually he is very pro-Brexit, and hard Brexit, and I think when that becomes apparent, the divisions in the Labour Party will become more real and the opportunity for us to move into that space will be substantial."
Sir Vince has come under fire for saying Theresa May's comment, in her 2016 Conservative Party conference speech, that "if you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere," was like something out of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Quizzed by Andrew Marr on this, Sir Vince said he had got the wrong dictator: "I got my literary reference wrong - I think it was Stalin who talked about 'rootless cosmopolitans'."
Sir Vince, who won back his Twickenham seat at the general election, is not expected to face a challenger for the Lib Dem leadership but he said would still produce a manifesto. He suggested he would back income tax rises to pay for improvements to health and social care.

Donald Tusk has insisted the EU "does not want to build a wall", but Brexit means "we will be drifting apart".
The EU Council president said Theresa May wanted to "demonstrate at any price that Brexit could be a success", but that was not the EU's objective.
He was unveiling draft guidelines for the EU side of Brexit trade talks.
Mr Tusk said the EU wanted an "ambitious and advanced" free trade deal - and continued access to UK waters for EU fishing vessels.
"Our agreement will not make trade between the UK and EU frictionless or smoother," he said.
"It will make it more complicated and costly than today for all of us. This is the essence of Brexit."
He said it would be the first time in history that a free trade agreement would "loosen, not strengthen, economic ties".
The draft European Council guidelines call for zero-tariff trade in goods - where the EU has a surplus.
The document also says access for services will be limited by the fact that the UK will be outside the EU and will no longer share a common regulatory and judiciary framework.
The draft guidelines repeat EU warnings that there can be "no cherry-picking" of participation in the single market for particular sectors of industry.
The BBC's Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris said the "narrow negotiating mandate set out in these guidelines suggests that the EU doesn't think it will be much more ambitious than other free trade agreements it has negotiated - Canada is the most obvious example".
Mr Tusk said he wanted continued security and research cooperation and to ensure flights were not grounded.
But he added: "No member state is free to pick only those sectors of the internal market they like, or to accept the role of the ECJ only when it suits their interest."
The draft guidelines also say that the EU will "preserve its autonomy as regards its decision-making, which excludes participation of the United Kingdom as a third-country to EU Institutions, agencies or bodies".
Mrs May acknowledged in her Mansion House speech on Brexit on Friday that neither side would get everything they want from negotiations.
But she also stressed that the UK wanted a bespoke trade deal, rather than an "off-the-shelf" model.
"The fact is that every free trade agreement has varying market access depending on the respective interests of the countries involved," she said.
"If this is cherry-picking, then every trade arrangement is cherry-picking."
She also said: "We will also want to explore with the EU, the terms on which the UK could remain part of EU agencies."
This appears to be in conflict with the EU draft guidelines, although BBC Research has found several examples of non-EU members participating - as a member or observer - in EU agencies and bodies, such as the European Environment Agency and the European Medicines Agency.
The EU says it wants to maintain "existing reciprocal access to fishing waters" - a leading concern of the fishing industry in countries bordering the North Sea.
In her Mansion House speech, Mrs May said: "The UK will regain control over our domestic fisheries management rules and access to our waters."
She added that the UK would want to "work together to manage shared stocks in a sustainable way and to agree reciprocal access to waters and a fairer allocation of fishing opportunities for the UK fishing industry".
Brexit Secretary David Davis - quizzed on Tuesday by Brexiteer Labour MP Kate Hoey - insisted the government would not betray UK fishing communities by "trading away fishing rights" for "other things".
Asked about the EU's demand to keep access as it is now, Chancellor Philip Hammond said the UK was "open to discussing with our EU partners about the appropriate arrangements for reciprocal access for our fishermen to EU waters and for EU fishermen to our waters".
Campaign group Fishing for Leave urged the government not to "cave in" to the EU demands, saying: "Nowhere else is access to fisheries included as negotiating collateral for a free trade agreement."
Financial services are not mentioned specifically in the EU draft guidelines, but it is shaping up to be a major sticking point.
UK Chancellor Philip Hammond has told European leaders that it is in the "mutual interest" of both the UK and the EU to include financial services in a free trade agreement.
"Given the shape of the British economy and our trade balance with the EU 27, it's hard to see how any deal that did not include services could look like a fair and balanced settlement," he said in a speech.
"Not only is it possible to include financial services in a trade deal, but this is very much in our mutual interest to do so."
But Donald Tusk appeared to reject the UK proposals. The EU says the UK will be treated like any other "third country" after Brexit.
Asked about the EU guidelines, which also warn of the "negative economic consequences" of Brexit, Mr Hammond said: "It does not surprise me remotely that what they have set out this morning is a very tough position. That's what any competent, skilled and experienced negotiator would do."
EU deal 'must include financial services'
Donald Tusk unveiled his guidelines in a picture-perfect castle in the hills outside Luxembourg.
A nice change to the usual venues in Brussels but the same tough message from the EU that the UK's red lines limit what it can get from the final Brexit deal.
The best that's on offer is a free trade agreement on goods with no tariffs, and access to the European markets for the UK service sector - but under EU rules and with no specific mention of financial services.
I asked a sad-sounding Donald Tusk if his offer came anywhere close to what the prime minister had asked for in her Mansion House speech. His pause was epically long, which suggested he knows it is not.
His document is also pretty gloomy, with a spine-chilling warning about the economic costs to the UK.
But there is also a big offer tucked away in a later paragraph - there are other options available if the government is prepared to compromise on its red lines.
The leaders of the remaining 27 EU states must approve the plans at a Brussels summit on 22 March, setting the template for chief negotiator Michel Barnier for talks with the UK about their future relationship.
The UK is due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019, and both sides have said they would like a deal on their future relationship to be agreed by this autumn to allow time for parliaments to approve the deal before Brexit happens.
The European Parliament has stressed that its preferred option is for the UK to continue to be a member of the single market and customs union after Brexit, in a draft resolution, leaked to the Politico website.
The parliament does not have a formal role in the Brexit negotiations but does have a veto on the final deal.
The European Parliament document, which may be changed before it is adopted, says non-EU members - even if very closely aligned to the bloc - cannot expect the same rights and benefits as EU members.
It also warns that the UK's current "red lines" in Brexit talks "would lead to customs checks and verification which would affect global supply chains and manufacturing processes, even if tariff barriers can be avoided".
It says a "deep and comprehensive" trade deal, of the kind envisioned by Theresa May, must entail "a binding interpretation role" for the European Court of Justice.
MPs in Westminster are, meanwhile, debating a call by Plaid Cymru - who have four MPs in Wales - for UK nationals to be allowed to keep their EU citizenship after Brexit.
Plaid said EU citizenship would give holders the right to travel, live, study and work anywhere in the EU even after the UK leaves next year.
A UK government spokesman said only citizens of EU member states could hold EU citizenship.

A Brexit minister has apologised in Parliament for comments he made about the independence of the civil service.
Steve Baker said he had been told Treasury officials were deliberately trying to influence policy in favour of staying in the EU customs union.
Charles Grant, an EU policy expert said to have been the source of the claims, has since denied telling Mr Baker this.
Mr Baker told MPs he now accepted this and insisted that he had the "highest regard" for the civil service.
In a short speech in the Commons before proceedings began on Friday, Mr Baker said he wanted to set the record straight.
"As I explained yesterday (Thursday) I considered what I understood to be the suggestion being put to me as implausible because of the long standing and well regarded impartiality of the civil service," he said.
After Mr Baker's claims emerged on Thursday, Mr Grant, the Centre for European Reform think tank chief, issued a statement.
He said he recalled telling the minister at an event at the Conservative Party conference that he was aware of Treasury research showing the economic costs of leaving the customs union outweighed the benefits of striking free trade deals.
But he added: "I did not say or imply that the Treasury had deliberately developed a model to show that all non-customs union options were bad, with the intention to influence policy."
An audio recording of Mr Grant's lunch at the Tory conference has since been published online.
In his apology, Mr Baker said: "In the context of that audio I accept that I should have corrected or dismissed the premise of my Hon Friend's question.
"I have apologised to Charles Grant who is an honest and trustworthy man.
"As I have put on record many times I have the highest regard for our hard-working civil servants. I am grateful for this early opportunity to correct the record, and I apologise to the House."
Downing Street said it was "the right thing to do" for Mr Baker to have made a "heartfelt" apology for his comments, adding: "We consider this matter closed."
Theresa May's spokesman said the prime minister had not personally spoken to Mr Baker about the row but No 10 officials did have a word with him after the recording of Mr Grant's lunch emerged.
The row was sparked by Commons exchanges on Thursday at Brexit questions.
Prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg asked Mr Baker to confirm if he had heard Mr Grant that "officials in the Treasury have deliberately developed a model to show that all options other than staying in the customs union were bad and that officials intended to use this to influence policy".
In response, Mr Baker said he was "sorry to say" that Mr Rees-Mogg's account was "essentially correct", adding: "At the time I considered it implausible because my direct experience is that civil servants are extraordinarily careful to uphold the impartiality of the civil service."
Mr Baker, a leading backbench Eurosceptic before his promotion to a ministerial post, was challenged by opposition MPs as he delivered his answer to Mr Rees-Mogg, prompting him to add: "I didn't say it was correct. I said the account that was put to me is correct.
"It was put to me, I considered it an extraordinary allegation, I still consider it an extraordinary allegation."
Following Mr Baker's apology, Mr Rees-Mogg is continuing to insist that the Treasury has questions to answer over its stance on the customs union.
Theresa May has ruled out staying in the customs union - which allows tariff-free trade between its members but prevents them from negotiating their own trade deals - but has not excluded the possibility of some form of customs partnership with the EU after Brexit.

The Brexit vote must not be frustrated and the government needs to maintain an "absolute" focus on delivering it, Theresa May has said.
In a speech to Tory activists the PM said, as her negotiations with the EU reach their final stages, the "worst thing we could do is lose our focus".
It came as three pro-EU cabinet members warned they could vote to delay Brexit to prevent a "disastrous" no-deal.
But Mrs May said there must be no party "purges" over MPs with differing views.
Ahead of crucial votes in the Commons next week, Greg Clark, Amber Rudd and David Gauke told the Daily Mail they would be prepared to defy the prime minister and vote for a delay.
The intervention led to calls for their resignations by Tory Brexiteers.
The UK remains on course to leave the European Union on 29 March.
However, the government has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of the UK leaving without a formal deal, in the event that Mrs May cannot get MPs to approve the deal she negotiated with Brussels in time.
Mrs May's speech to the National Conservative Convention in Oxford on Saturday evening came as MPs prepare for a series of votes on Wednesday which could see Parliament take control of the Brexit process.
Delegates at the convention overwhelmingly backed a symbolic motion saying Brexit should not be delayed, and leaving without an agreement should remain an option.
Mr Clark, the business secretary, along with Ms Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, and the justice secretary, Mr Gauke, had earlier said they would be prepared to defy Mrs May and vote for a delay to Brexit.
They argued there  "simply will not be time to agree a deal and complete all the necessary legislation" unless a deal is approved in the coming days.
An amendment tabled by former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour's Yvette Cooper would give Parliament the opportunity to delay Brexit and prevent a no-deal situation if there is no agreement with the EU by the middle of March.
But Mrs May told activists: "Our focus to deliver Brexit must be absolute.
"We must not, and I will not, frustrate what was the largest democratic exercise in this country's history. In the very final stages of this process, the worst thing we could do is lose our focus."
Mrs May also said there should be no moves to deselect MPs because of their views on Brexit.
The resignations of three pro-Remain Tory MPs - Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston - to join a group of Labour defectors in the new Independent Group reduced the Tories working majority in Parliament to eight.
Mrs May said: "No-one gets more frustrated than I do when people vote against the whip, particularly given the tight Parliamentary arithmetic that we face.
"But we are not a party of purges and retribution. We called a referendum and let people express their views - so we should not be seeking to deselect any of our MPs because of their views on Brexit.
"Our party is rightly a broad church - on that and other issues."
Mrs May is expected to hold talks with European Council president Donald Tusk and other key EU figures in Egypt later during a summit between leaders of EU and Arab league countries.
But Downing Street has played down hopes of a breakthrough on her Brexit deal being reached in Sharm el- Sheikh.
The summit is the first between leaders of EU and Arab league countries and will focus on tackling concerns over security and migration, and boosting trade.

Some of the biggest names in science are pleading for a deal on Brexit to avoid damaging British and European research.
A letter to Theresa May and Jean-Claude-Juncker has been signed by 29 Nobel Laureates and six winners of the prestigious Fields medal.
Science needs "the flow of people and ideas across borders", it says.
It comes as a survey found that many scientists are considering leaving the UK.
Sir Paul Nurse, one of the signatories and a Nobel prize-winner for research into breast cancer, said: "The message is, 'take science seriously'."
Science can help tackle global challenges like treating disease, generating clean energy and guaranteeing food supplies, the letter says - but to do that it needs to bring together the most talented researchers.
And it says Britain and the EU "must now strive to ensure that as little harm as possible is done to research".
Funding and freedom of movement are the two big concerns.
Over the years of Britain's membership of the EU, leading scientists say that the UK has been extremely successful at landing European grants.
Britain's overall financial contributions have been larger than the sums received but the UK's top scientific academy, the Royal Society, calculates that British science as a sector has gained financially.
"...it receives a greater amount of EU funding for research and development than the proportion of its contribution analyses suggests is earmarked for this," it says.
Members states pay their national contributions into a central pot which is then divided between the different spending programmes.
The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) reports an "indicative" figure for the UK's contribution to EU research and development of €5.4bn over the period 2007-2013.
During this time, it says, the UK received €8.8bn in direct EU funding for research, development and innovation activities.
Sir Paul reckons that without a deal, British science could lose about £1bn a year.
There had been hopes that Britain could rapidly negotiate a new science relationship with the EU, with an associate status like that of Switzerland, in which contributions are made and grants received. But that has not happened so far.
The other worry is that without freedom of movement, the brightest scientific talent may be put off by the bureaucracy of having to apply for a visa.
In an internal survey, staff at the Francis Crick Institute in London were asked for their views on Brexit - the Crick is the largest biomedical research centre under one roof in Europe.
Of the roughly 1,000 scientists on the staff, 40% are from EU countries and a priority was to find out what they might do after Brexit.
78% of the EU scientists said they were "less likely" to stay in the UK.
51% of all the institute's scientists - including those from Britain - said they were less likely to stay.
45% of lab heads said Brexit had already affected their work - either recruiting new scientists, being excluded from EU programmes or facing increased costs after the fall in the pound.
97% of those who responded said a no-deal Brexit would be bad for UK science.
One manager of a lab at the institute, Val Maciulyte from Lithuania, told me the "uncertainty" of the Brexit process meant she was considering moving after seven years in Britain.
"I think that definitely makes me think of other places than the UK, I'm thinking about other options in Europe, in central Europe, or even maybe going back to Lithuania," she said.
Jasmin Zohren, a post-doctoral researcher from Germany, said it was difficult to plan because "no one knows what is going to happen" but she wants to live in a country that is in the EU, despite "loving London".
She said: "I'm currently funded by the EU - also for my PhD which I did in the UK - and I know that lots of this money will not arrive in the UK any more. And of course that's a big concern."
A senior scientist, Monica Rodrigo from Spain, said that the uncertainty was having an impact on everyone.
"I think the biggest thing is the level of stress that people are having because it's not only affecting your professional life but it's affecting other things," she said.
"Even if you're a British scientist it's affecting how you carry on your life and what you're going to do in the future - are you going to stay where there's limited funding or go somewhere else?"
I put it to Sir Paul that even without a deal, British science would be strong enough to cope.
"We will of course survive, we will of course receive funding from the government and we will keep going," he says.
"But at the moment Britain is at the top of the tree; we are considered widely around the world to be the best and we are in danger of losing that top position if we don't get this right."
A government spokesman said: "The UK plays a vital role in making Europe a pioneering base for research, and values the contribution that international researchers make to the UK.
"This will not change when we leave the EU.
"We will seek an ambitious relationship on science and innovation with our EU partners, exploring future UK participation in mutually beneficial research programmes, and will continue to support science, research and innovation through our modern industrial strategy.
 "We have a proud record of welcoming the world's brightest scientists and researchers to work and study here, and after we leave the EU we will have an immigration system to support this."

The UK's Brexit negotiations have not begun well amid "differences" inside the cabinet, a former head of the diplomatic service has said.
Sir Simon Fraser, chief mandarin at the Foreign Office until 2015, said the UK side had been "a bit absent" from formal negotiations in Brussels.
Sir Simon, who now advises businesses on Brexit, said he was concerned the UK had not put forward a clear position.
Downing Street said it disagreed strongly with his comments.
The government is expected to publish "position papers" on key issues soon.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour, Sir Simon, who campaigned for Remain ahead of last year's referendum, said he feared divisions within the cabinet were preventing the government from presenting a united front.
"The negotiations have only just begun, I don't think they have begun particularly promisingly, frankly, on the British side," he said.
"We haven't put forward a lot because, as we know, there are differences within the cabinet about the sort of Brexit that we are heading for and until those differences are further resolved I think it's very difficult for us to have a clear position."
He added: "I think so far we haven't put much on the table apart from something on the status of nationals, so we are a bit absent from the formal negotiation."
He called on the government to publish further details about its views on issues, including future customs arrangements and the Northern Irish border in the coming weeks.
"I think we need to demonstrate that we are ready to engage on the substance so that people can understand what is really at stake here and what the options are."
Downing Street rejected Sir Simon's analysis.
"The last two months, we have had a constructive start to the negotiations. We have covered a significant amount of important ground," the prime minister's spokesman said.
"As the secretary of state for exiting the European Union said at the end of the last negotiating round, important progress has been made in understanding one another's positions on key issues."
Last month, Brexit Secretary David Davis said he was confident negotiations would continue as planned after reports Brussels may delay trade talks because of a lack of progress on the "divorce" settlement.
At the weekend, the Sunday Telegraph claimed UK negotiators are now prepared to pay up to £36bn to the EU to settle the so-called Brexit divorce bill.
Downing Street said it did not recognise this figure.
Conservative MP Peter Bone said it would be "totally bizarre" for the UK to give the EU any money, let alone £36bn, adding that such a fee was unlikely to get through Parliament.
Another Eurosceptic MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said there was "no logic" to the figure that was being reported.
Responding to Sir Simon's comments, Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "This government is in the middle of the single biggest economic and diplomatic negotiation in our history.
"Yet while the clock is running down, key cabinet members are still squabbling over what type of Brexit to pursue."
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The EU's chief negotiator said there would be "substantial" consequences from Brexit after the first round of talks with the UK.
Michel Barnier said he was "not in the frame of mind to make concessions or ask for concessions".
UK Brexit Secretary David Davis said talks got off to a "promising start".
The UK appears to have conceded to the EU's preferred order for the talks which will mean trade negotiations do not begin immediately.
Mr Davis and Mr Barnier gave a joint press conference after day one of the talks in Brussels.
The initial focus will be on expat rights, a financial settlement and "other separation issues".
Discussions aimed at preserving the Good Friday Agreement and common travel area in Ireland will also begin, although Mr Davis suggested these issues may not be settled until the end of the process, when the UK's trade relationship with the EU is settled.
The UK had wanted talks on its future relationship with the EU to be considered from the outset, but Mr Barnier said this would only happen once the European Council decided "sufficient progress has been made" on the other issues.
Mr Davis - who had predicted this would be the "row of the summer" - denied suggestions the agreed timetable showed Britain's "weakness" and insisted it was "completely consistent" with the government's aim of parallel trade and exit talks.
"It's not when it starts it's how it finishes that matters," he said.
Asked whether he had made any concessions to the UK in return, Mr Barnier said the UK had decided to leave the EU - not the other way around, and each side had to "assume our responsibility and the consequences of our decisions".
"I am not in a frame of mind to make concessions, or ask for concessions," he said.
"It's not about punishment, it is not about revenge.
"Basically, we are implementing the decision taken by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, and unravel 43 years of patiently-built relations.
"I will do all I can to put emotion to one side and stick to the facts, the figures, and the legal basis, and work with the United Kingdom to find an agreement in that frame of mind."
Laura Kuennsberg, BBC political editor
It's often compared to a divorce - the UK wanted to talk about who gets the house and the CD collection at the same time as settling who pays for the kids' weddings in 20 years' time.
The EU on the other hand have been firm all along that the future arrangements could only be discussed once the terms of the initial split have been agreed.
The debate was called "parallelism versus sequentialism" and from this afternoon's press conference and the announcement of the procedure it is clear that the UK has lost.
Ministers believed they would be able to persuade the EU - the failure to do so has been described as a "total cave-in".
The discussion was even predicted by Mr Davis as likely to be the "row of the summer". The row won't happen because it seems the UK has already given in.
Mr Barnier said a "fair deal" was possible "and far better than no deal". He promised to work with, not against, the UK.
"We must lift the uncertainty caused by Brexit," he said.
The two men - who exchanged gifts at the start of the talks - set out the structure for the initial negotiations. There will be one week of negotiations every month.
Working groups of "senior experts" will be set up to focus on the three main areas.
On citizens' rights, which the UK has said should be an immediate priority, Mr Davis said there was "much common ground".
The UK is set to leave the EU by the end of March 2019, following last year's referendum vote.
Prior to the start of talks, Mr Davis gave his counterpart a first edition of a mountaineering book - a French-language version of Regards vers Annapurna - while Mr Barnier reciprocated with a traditional, hand-carved walking stick from Savoie, complete with leather wrist strap.
Who's who in the UK delegation?
After holding talks with Theresa May in Downing Street, new Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said there must be no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and economic borders must be "invisible".
While he said he regretted Mrs May's decision to leave the single market and customs union, he said the two had a shared objective to minimise disruption to trade after the UK's exit.
Earlier former Marks and Spencer chairman Lord Rose, who chaired the Stronger In campaign last year, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he was reassured that economic considerations were "top of the pile" but ministers needed to be realistic with the public.
Speaking on the same programme, JD Wetherspoon founder Tim Martin - one of the leading pro-Leave business voices - said negotiators had to be open to possible compromises but also prepared to walk away and to default to World Trade Organization rules if necessary.
"I don't think many people feel that staying in the single market and customs union and being subject to EU laws is Brexit.
"I think Brexit is parliamentary sovereignty and an assertion of democracy. Outside that, I think there is a quite a lot of scope," Mr Martin said.
For Labour, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said there was "real confusion" about the government's mandate after the general election result.

The UK's offer on Brexit must be acceptable to the Republic of Ireland before the negotiations can move on, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, has said.
Mr Tusk was speaking after talks with the Irish prime minister in Dublin on Friday.
He said: "The UK's future lies - in some ways - in Dublin".
The European Union has said "sufficient progress" must be made on the Irish border before negotiations can move on.
"The Irish request is the EU's request," Mr Tusk said.
"I realise that for some British politicians this may be hard to understand.
"But such is the logic behind the fact that Ireland is the EU member while the UK is leaving.
"This is why the key to the UK's future lies - in some ways - in Dublin, at least as long as Brexit negotiations continue."
In a press conference with Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar, Mr Tusk said that the UK's decision to leave the EU had created "uncertainty for millions of people".
"The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland is no longer a symbol of division, it is a symbol of cooperation and we cannot allow Brexit to destroy this achievement of the Good Friday Agreement," he said.
By BBC Political Correspondent Adam Fleming
There is a lively debate about whether the Irish government has a veto over the decision - to be taken at the summit of EU leaders on 14 and 15 December - about whether Brexit talks can move to the next phase.
Call it what you like, but now Donald Tusk has told us for sure that the rest of the EU will do what Ireland decides.
There was a put-down for British politicians who may find it "hard to understand" why this is important.
But there was some comfort for the British government: Donald Tusk shares their view that the issue of the border can only be solved when there is more clarity about the UK's future relationship with the EU.
And Mr Tusk ended by saying "the key to the UK's future lies - in some ways - in Dublin." Is this a hint that the Irish government's suggestion that Northern Ireland remain in the EU's single market and customs union is the answer for the whole of the UK?
Or is it just a reminder that Dublin is first among equals among the remaining 27 members of the EU?
"The UK started Brexit and now it is their responsibility to propose a credible commitment to do what is necessary to avoid a hard border.
"As you know, I asked Prime Minister May to put a final offer on the table by the 4th of December so that we can assess whether sufficient progress can be made at the upcoming European Council.
"Let me say very clearly. If the UK offer is unacceptable for Ireland, it will also be unacceptable for the EU."
The taoiseach thanked Mr Tusk for the solidarity demonstrated by all EU partners and called the EU "a family which sticks together".
He said he was optimistic that a deal could be achieved by Monday.
However, he said any UK offer must indicate how a hard border can be avoided and avoid the risk of regulatory divergence.
On Thursday, the DUP's Sammy Wilson said any attempt to "placate Dublin and the EU" could mean a withdrawal of DUP support at Westminster.
He was responding to reports of a possible strategy to deal with the Irish border after Brexit.
The story suggested that British and EU officials could be about to seek separate customs measures for Northern Ireland after the UK leaves the European Union.
The DUP struck a deal with Prime Minister Theresa May's government in June, agreeing to support Tory policies at Westminster, in return for an extra £1bn in government spending for Northern Ireland.

A former top trade adviser to US President Trump has told the BBC "there is a level of panic" around Brexit "that is not justified".
Stephen Vaughn, who served as acting trade representative before becoming general counsel on trade, stressed the UK has "enormous leverage" in a potential trade deal with the US.
On a deal's likelihood, he said the Trump administration is "ready to go".
The UK will be able to strike its own trade deals only after leaving the EU.
As a member of President Trump's negotiating team, Mr Vaughn had a key role in the talks with Canada and China, before leaving the administration in April.
In reference to a potential UK deal, he compared the situation with US-Canada negotiations: "No one would say, 'Canada has to join the US in a union or Canada will get steamrolled by the US'."
"You have an enormous amount of leverage, and we'll see how you use it," he added, speaking in his first broadcast interview since leaving the Office of the US Trade Representative.
On US preparations for a potential deal with the UK, he said that Robert Lighthizer, the current US Trade Representative, had done all the preparations needed.
However, he acknowledged that agreeing a deal could take "months or years".
The US Trade Representative, sometimes shortened to USTR, is the president's top adviser on international trade. The team negotiates directly with foreign governments to create trade agreements and participate in global trade policy organisations.
Concerns have been raised over the impact of a deal on life in the UK, including whether US drugmakers would demand the ability to sell to the NHS.
Another key export for the US is agricultural products, but the fact farming methods in the US don't fall under the EU regulations has led some to worry about food standards.
Mr Vaughn emphasised that the US would like a deal to involve the expansion of farm exports, saying he doesn't think it's "something people should be afraid of".
The trade expert, who now works in the private sector, also played an active role in the Trump administration's trade war with China.
He said that a key aspect of those talks was to make sure the two sides comprehended each other: "You really just want to make sure everybody is understanding the issues and what is at stake."
He added that the talks are very "serious" and there is no "yelling and screaming".
Mr Vaughn stressed that the US is concerned about various Chinese practices and that it wants to see Chinese businesses become more "market-oriented".
He went on to defend the use of tariffs against China: "You're trying to figure out, how do you get leverage on the other people?", he explained, adding that Mr Trump is not satisfied with the status quo he inherited.
On the impact of tariffs, he rejected the idea that the measures may be having a negative effect on US business.
"When you look at the actual data, we have by far the largest economy in the G7 and our manufacturing sector continues to grow," he argued.
US business groups have called for a rethink on tariffs, including the National Retail Federation, which has complained about the administration "doubling down on a flawed tariff strategy".
The former top adviser to President Trump, Gary Cohn, has also warned that the tariffs are backfiring.
Speaking in an earlier interview with the BBC, Mr Cohn criticised the approach the Trump administration is taking against China, saying: "I think everyone loses in a trade war."
Mr Cohn, who served as director of the National Economic Council in the Trump administration, announcing he was resigning after Mr Trump decided to impose import tariffs on steel and aluminium.
Mr Vaughn became the acting USTR on Trump's inauguration day in January 2017, staying on until Mr Lighthizer was confirmed in May 2017. He served as Mr Lighthizer's general counsel until the end of April 2019.
Before entering the White House, he was a partner at US law firm King & Spalding, a role to which he has returned.
On his departure, a statement by Mr Lighthizer read: "Stephen has played a central role in shaping and implementing the President's trade policies."

Theresa May has renewed her efforts to sell her draft Brexit withdrawal agreement - arguing it will stop EU migrants "jumping the queue".
She said migration would become skills-based, with Europeans no longer prioritised over "engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi".
The PM also insisted to business leaders at the CBI that the withdrawal deal had been "agreed in full".
Nicola Sturgeon said the PM's remarks on EU free movement were "offensive".
The Scottish First Minister said for the prime minister to use such language to describe reciprocal arrangements entered into freely by the UK - allowing EU nationals to live and work in the UK and vice-versa - was "really disgraceful".
Meanwhile, the DUP, which is opposed to the Irish border backstop proposal in the withdrawal agreement, abstained on amendments to the Finance Bill in the Commons on Monday evening.
It also supported one amendment proposed by the Labour Party.
The DUP has a so-called confidence-and-supply arrangement to support the Conservative Party, which does not have a majority in the House of Commons, which was secured with a controversial £1bn funding deal for Northern Ireland.
The party's Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, told BBC's Newsnight the abstentions were made because the government had broken a fundamental agreement to deliver Brexit for the people of the UK "as a whole" and to not "separate Northern Ireland constitutionally or economically from the United Kingdom".
The move was designed to send a political message back, he said.
"'Look, we've got an agreement with you, but you've got to keep your side of the bargain, otherwise we don't feel obliged to keep ours.'"
A senior DUP source stressed, however, that this was not the end of the confidence-and-supply agreement between the Conservatives and the DUP.
Also on Monday evening, the government said it would publish an economic analysis comparing the costs and benefits of its Brexit deal with those of the UK staying in the EU.
A cross-party group of MPs had proposed an amendment to the Bill calling on ministers to publish the forecasts.
The government said MPs would be given the analysis before the meaningful vote on the final deal. It will look at a no-deal scenario, a free trade agreement and the government's proposed deal.
The prime minister's appeal to business leaders came as Tory MPs continue to press for late changes to the deal.
Ministers from the remaining 27 EU countries have met in Brussels to work on the political declaration setting out their future relationship with the UK - a meeting which revealed Spanish concern at the wording's impact on Gibraltar's future.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose party is set to reject Mrs May's deal, told the CBI business lobby group's conference that Brexit can be a "catalyst for economic transformation" in the UK.
There has been widespread criticism of the draft 585-page withdrawal agreement - and the short paper setting out what the UK and EU's future relationship could look like - which are set to be finalised and signed off at an EU summit this weekend.
Two of the prime minister's cabinet ministers resigned over the proposed deal, while others are believed to be trying to change its wording.
Speculation continues over whether the number of Tory MPs submitting letters of no-confidence in Mrs May will reach the 48 required to trigger a confidence vote on her leadership of the Conservative Party.
Mrs May told the CBI's annual conference in London that her plan would provide a fair immigration system that would help young people in the UK get jobs and training.
"It will no longer be the case that EU nationals, regardless of the skills or experience they have to offer, can jump the queue ahead of engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi.
"Instead of a system based on where a person is from, we will have one that is built around the talents and skills a person has to offer."
She also said she was not willing to reopen discussions with Brussels over the withdrawal agreement, saying "the core elements of that deal are already in place".
She said that she expected to hammer out a framework for a future trade relationship in Brussels this week, before signing off the deal on Sunday.
CBI president John Allan urged MPs to back Mrs May's deal - despite it not being "perfect" - and warned of the consequences for businesses if the UK were to simply crash out of the EU.
The Labour leader said Mrs May's "botched" deal "breaches the prime minister's own red lines" and "makes no mention of retaining frictionless trade".
Mr Corbyn suggested the EU would consider re-writing the draft agreement "at the 11th hour" if MPs rejected the proposals.
He also suggested the UK's exit from the EU should be a catalyst for far-reaching economic and social change and a "radical programme of investment" in infrastructure, education and skills.
The draft document sets out the terms of the UK's departure, including how much money will be paid to the EU, details of the transition period, and citizens' rights.
The transition period - currently due to last until 31 December 2020 - will mean the UK is officially out of the EU, but still abiding by most of its rules. During this time, the two sides hope to negotiate a permanent trade deal.
The UK and the EU want to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border whatever happens, so they agreed to a "backstop" - described as an insurance policy by Mrs May - aimed at achieving this if the sides cannot agree a trade deal that avoids a physically visible border.
The backstop would mean Northern Ireland would stay more closely aligned to some EU rules, which critics say is unacceptable. And the whole of the UK would be in a single custom territory - effectively keeping the whole of the UK in the EU customs union.
The critics say that during the transition period, the UK will still abide by most of the EU's rules but have no power over setting them - and there is no system for the UK being able to leave any backstop deal without the EU's agreement, so it could become a permanent arrangement.
When asked whether the transition period could last until the end of 2022, Business Secretary Greg Clark told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It would be at our request and that would be a maximum period."
He said it could be extended for a matter of "weeks or months", and added: "If we were six weeks away from concluding a future economic partnership and agreeing that, then it may make sense to extend the transition period."
Later, Mrs May told the CBI conference that it was "important" to be out of the implementation period before the next general election - which is due in June 2022.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, one of the five cabinet ministers who were believed to be trying to change the wording of the deal, said on Monday that the prime minister "has my full support" and she is doing a "very good job".
"I hope people will get behind her as she endeavours to get the very, very best deal for Britain," he said.
But former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson used his column in Monday's Daily Telegraph to renew his criticism of the draft agreement, describing it as a "585-page fig-leaf [that] does nothing to cover the embarrassment of our total defeat".
And former Tory leader Lord Howard told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a vote of confidence would be a distraction.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator, said any suggestions EU nationals had been given preferential treatment were wrong since they were merely "exercising rights which provided freedom and opportunities".
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, called on all parties to "remain calm" and focus on the future agreement.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels after meeting the 27 other EU member states, he said the withdrawal deal was "fair and balanced" but made clear a transition period extension could not be indefinite, "it has to be a fixed period of time".
During Monday's meeting, the Spanish government raised concerns about two articles in the withdrawal agreement (184 and 3), saying that taken together they add up to Gibraltar remaining permanently as UK territory.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming says most member states, along with the European Commission and the European Council, do not agree with Madrid's reading of the text and are seeking to provide reassurance.

Former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine has been sacked as a government adviser after rebelling over Brexit in the House of Lords.
Lord Heseltine backed the demand for a parliamentary vote on the final deal to be written into Brexit legislation.
He learned hours later on Tuesday that he had been fired from five government advisory roles he had held.
He said he accepted Number 10's right to sack him but "sometimes there are issues which transcend party politics".
Asked what he thought his sacking said about the current government, he told BBC Radio 4's Today: "I have never met Theresa May so I can't make a judgement. She's doing very well in the polls... the public approve of what she's doing."
Lord Heseltine, who campaigned to remain in the EU, told the Lords that the UK was facing "the most momentous peacetime decision of our time".
The peer said he was having dinner with his wife when he got a call from the chief whip, and went to the Lords to be told he was being sacked.
Lord Heseltine told the BBC the prime minister was "exercising her perfectly legitimate right to get rid of opposition in any way she finds appropriate".
"Whether it's a wise thing to do is a matter for her not for me," he said.
"I have been hugely proud of the work I have done for David Cameron and now for this prime minister, and if they don't want me to go on they must sack me."
He said it was a "great disappointment" for him as "for six years I have had the incredible privilege of working inside the Whitehall machine with civil servants helping ministers to make decisions".
Lord Heseltine continued: "I did write a newspaper article the other day setting out exactly what I intended to do so I think they could have told me this would be the price, but let me make it quite clear; I would still have voted as I did tonight.
"Sometimes in politics there are issues which transcend party politics; in the end you have to be your own person. I believe our interests are intertwined with Europe. I am not prepared to change.
"Every Conservative prime minister I worked for has told me, including this prime minister before the referendum, that we were essentially seeking British self-interest in Europe.
"It's not perfect but it's much better than anything that happened before the Second World War."
The 83-year-old - who dramatically walked out of Mrs Thatcher's cabinet during a row over Westland helicopters in 1986 - served as a minister in both her and John Major's Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s.
Who is Lord Heseltine?
Nicknamed "Tarzan" because of his combative manner and long blond hair, renowned by the press as a Conservative "big beast", Michael Heseltine has been a major figure on the UK political scene for decades.
Having made a fortune in publishing, he was an MP from 1966 to 2001.
After Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, the ambitious and politically centrist Heseltine became environment secretary and then defence secretary.
But he and his boss had a huge fall-out in 1986, over a complex dispute involving the future of Westland helicopters. He quit and walked out in the middle of a cabinet meeting.
Heseltine remained on the backbenches until, in 1990, with Thatcher apparently losing popularity among the public and her own party, he launched a leadership bid. He didn't win but inflicted enough of a blow on the PM's prestige for her to resign.
John Major won the next contest, but Heseltine, an ardent Europhile, returned to the cabinet, rising to deputy prime minister in the last two years of Major's premiership, a period beset with Conservative disputes over the UK's relationship with the EU.
Heseltine retired as an MP and entered the Lords, where he continued occasionally to speak out on issues dear to his heart - including putting the Remain case during the EU referendum campaign - and also returned to publishing.
Lord Heseltine was brought in by former Prime Minister David Cameron to advise the government on a range of projects, including schemes in east London and Swansea.
He told Today that his roles were taking up three to four days a week.
A Downing Street spokesman said he understood Mrs May had in fact met Lord Heseltine, although he did not confirm whether this was before or after she became prime minister.
In a statement, the government said it had "a clearly stated and consistent position" that the Brexit bill should be passed without amendment.
The chief whip in the Lords asked Lord Heseltine to stand down because he voted against the government's official position, it said, adding: "The government would like to warmly thank Lord Heseltine for his service."
Former Tory chief whip Mark Harper said it was "quite reasonable" to sack Lord Heseltine for opposing government policy.
Brexit Secretary David Davis has said some in the Lords are seeking to "frustrate" Brexit but it was the government's intention to ensure that did not happen.
When the bill returns to the Commons next week ministers will have some persuading to do to reverse the Lords changes, but Theresa May remains on course to trigger Article 50 and begin Brexit negotiations before the end of this month.
Peers voted by 366 votes to 268 in favour of an amendment to the bill to have a "meaningful" parliamentary vote on the final terms of the Brexit deal.
It was the second defeat for the bill in the Lords - the previous one was on the issue of guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens.
After a three-hour debate on Tuesday, the turnout for the vote was the largest in the Lords since 1831, according to Parliament's website.
As well as Lord Heseltine, 12 other Tory peers defied the government to vote in favour of the amendment, including former ministers Lord Deben and Viscount Hailsham.
Mrs May has said she wants to trigger Article 50 by the end of March but the Commons is unlikely to have an opportunity to consider the changes made by the Lords until the middle of next week because four days have been set aside for debate on the Budget.

The government has seen off an attempt to add conditions to its Brexit bill as a Conservative rebellion was avoided.
MPs rejected a bid by Labour's Chris Leslie to force the government to consult Parliament on the deal struck with the EU before it is finalised.
It came after ministers pledged that a "meaningful" vote would be offered.
Labour and some Tories had pushed for MPs to have a decisive say on the final terms, but the 326 to 293 vote meant the bill remained unchanged.
Seven Conservatives rebelled, while six Labour MPs voted with the government.
Several other attempts to amend the draft legislation, which if passed will authorise the prime minister to formally begin Brexit negotiations under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, were also rejected during more than seven hours of debate.
More amendments will be considered on Wednesday before MPs hold a final vote on whether to back the bill.
Theresa May has already promised Parliament will get a say on the final deal, but critics, including some Conservatives, said they wanted more than the "take it or leave it" vote being offered.
Any possibility of a major Conservative rebellion appeared to be halted by comments from Brexit Minister David Jones.
Mr Jones said MPs would get a say on the final draft Brexit agreement before it was voted upon by the European Parliament.
"This will be a meaningful vote," he told MPs.
"It will be the choice of leaving the EU with a negotiated deal or not."
However, some MPs questioned whether any concessions had in fact been offered, with Downing Street playing down claims the government's position had changed.
Asked what would happen if Parliament rejected the Brexit deal or if there was no agreement with the EU to vote upon, Mr Jones said that in each scenario the UK would still leave the EU but "fall back on other arrangements".
This would effectively see the UK default to World Trade Organization trade rules, involving potential tariffs on exports and imports.
Opponents of Brexit have said this would cause real damage to British business, but supporters say the UK can live with the consequences if necessary as the UK would then be free to negotiate its own trade arrangements.
Mr Jones said the government wanted to avoid a situation in which ministers were  sent back to the negotiating table to hammer out a better deal.
This, he said, would be hard given the two-year limit for talks and would also be "the surest way of undermining our negotiating position and delivering a worse deal".
Former chancellor Ken Clarke - the only Tory to vote against kickstarting the Brexit process last week - said Parliament should have the opportunity to shape the final deal, while former SNP leader Alex Salmond said MPs should have a genuine choice without the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over them.
Labour's Chuka Umunna said the choice facing MPs was "unacceptable", ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg described it as a "symbolic handout" while Green Party leader Caroline Lucas said MPs were being "duped".
But Labour's font bench claimed the move as a "significant victory" in response to its repeated demands for a "meaningful" vote at the end of the two-year negotiation process.
The party withdrew its proposed amendment before Mr Leslie's was defeated.
Conservatives Mr Clarke, Bob Neill, Andrew Tyrie, Claire Perry, Anna Soubry, Antoinette Sandbach and Heidi Allen, defied their party whip.
Ms Perry told MPs the tone of the debate "sometimes borders on the hysterical", before adding: "I feel like sometimes I am sitting along with colleagues who are like jihadis in their support for a hard Brexit."
Teasing her colleagues, she said: "No Brexit is hard enough - 'begone you evil Europeans, we never want you to darken our doors again'. People say: 'Steady on, Claire', but I am afraid I heard speeches last week exactly making that point."
On the Labour benches, Frank Field, Ronnie Campbell, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins, Graham Stringer and Gisela Stuart voted with the government.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who backed the Remain side in last year's EU referendum, has ordered his MPs to support the government's bill, whether his party's amendments are accepted or not, in the third reading vote expected on Wednesday.
Mr Corbyn argues that it would be undemocratic to ignore the will of the people, as expressed in last June's EU referendum.
Shadow business secretary Clive Lewis has vowed to oppose the bill unless Labour amendments are passed in the Commons.
Frontbench members of parties are generally expected to resign from their post if they ignore a three-line whip.

Another Brexit referendum will become a "plausible" way forward if there is deadlock in Parliament, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has said.
She told ITV's Peston show while she did not personally support another vote, the case for one would grow if MPs could not agree another solution.
She said she hoped MPs would back Theresa May's deal with the EU next month but it would be "very difficult".
The PM says the UK must be ready to leave without a deal if it is rejected.
Mrs May has repeatedly ruled out holding another referendum, saying it was the government's duty to implement the result of the 2016 Brexit vote.
A Downing Street source said the government was "very clear we are 100% opposed" to another referendum.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but an agreement on the terms of its withdrawal and a declaration on future relations will only come into force if the UK and EU Parliaments approve it.
The Commons vote was due to be held earlier this month but the PM postponed it once it became clear it would be defeated by a large margin.
She has since sought to gain further assurances from EU leaders to allay MPs' concerns.
Ms Rudd told Robert Peston she could not be sure MPs would back the deal. She suggested arguments for another referendum would come into play if they did not and if they rejected other options.
"I have said I don't want a People's Vote or referendum in general but if parliament absolutely failed to reach a consensus I could see there would be a plausible argument for it," she said.
"Parliament has to reach a majority on how it is going to leave the EU. If it fails to do so, I can see the argument for taking it back to the people again as much as it would distress many of my colleagues."
If Mrs May's deal is rejected, the default position is for the UK to leave in March unless the government seeks to extend the Article 50 negotiating process or Parliament intervenes to stop it happening.
Ms Rudd, who has likened the idea of a no-deal exit to a car crash, said it was imperative that MPs "find a way of getting a deal through Parliament".
To that end, she said she backed the idea of testing the will of Parliament through a series of "indicative" votes on "Plan B" options should MPs reject the PM's agreement.
"It would flush out where... the majority is," she said. "So people who hold onto the idea of one option or another would see there is no majority and so they will need to move to their next preference.
"We will hopefully be able to find where the compromise and the consensus is."
Speaking on the same programme, Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said talk of another referendum was "hypothetical" at this stage and would represent a "failure" by Parliament.
She accused the prime minister of trying to scare MPs into backing her deal by delaying the vote on it to the latest possible date.
Earlier on Wednesday, the European Commission announced a series of temporary measures designed to reduce the economic impact if the UK was to leave without a comprehensive legally-binding agreement.
But it made clear that it could not counter all the problems it expects.
The Republic of Ireland has given more details of its own no-deal contingency planning, saying the risk of the UK leaving without an agreement was "very real".
It warns of potentially "severe macroeconomic, trade and sectoral impacts" for Ireland as well as "significant gaps" in policing and judicial co-operation.
In such a scenario, it said its priorities would be to uphold the Common Travel Area between the UK and Ireland, ensure there is no return of physical checks on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland and ensure the "best possible outcome" in terms of trade.
The UK has allocated a further £2bn in funding to government departments to prepare for the possibility and has urged businesses to put their own no-deal plans in motion.

The woman who brought the successful legal challenge against the government over Brexit has accused prominent politicians of behaving "despicably".
Gina Miller told the BBC they had "exacerbated" worries during and after the EU vote and failed to defend her and others with "legitimate concerns" about the process in the face of abuse.
She insists she did not bring her case to thwart the UK's exit from the EU.
But she said some politicians were in "la la land" about what lay in store.
The investment manager was speaking to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg after the Supreme Court upheld her challenge to the government's approach.
By a margin of eight to three, the justices ruled that Parliament must give its consent before Theresa May can start official talks on the terms of the UK's exit.
Ministers say it was right for the court to decide and they will comply with the ruling.
Mrs Miller, who voted to remain in the EU, said she felt vindicated but that her goal all along had been to give a voice to the millions of people with a stake in the process and help deliver "the best Brexit we can get".
"This is about right and wrong, it's wrong that a government think they are above the law. It's right that I can bring this case," she said.
The 51-year old, who was born in Guyana but educated in Britain, suggested the EU referendum had created a climate of fear in which anyone asking questions about Brexit was seen as unpatriotic and "branded as traitors".
"There's this sense that if you ask a question about Brexit then you're not representing Britain," she said. "Asking questions about Brexit is the most patriotic thing you can do."
She added: "People voted because of legitimate concerns. Politicians have behaved despicably because they have exacerbated those anxieties."
Asked if Theresa May and her ministers had behaved "despicably", Ms Miller said it was "wrong of them not to stand up earlier when the judges were being vilified".
"I think it was wrong of them to not actually speak up sooner about abuse for not just myself but for other people who live in the UK."
Mrs Miller, who says she has been subjected to constant abuse including death threats, said she felt her "family and safety have been put in jeopardy".
"The idea that as a woman I had no right to speak out and I'm not bright enough to speak out. And as an ethnic woman I have no place in society. That's worrying."
She said she was still concerned that politicians were "twisting the truth" when it came to the UK's future outside the EU and Mrs May and her ministers needed to "be honest" with the public about what was achievable from the negotiations.
"Even now, some of the things I hear about what is possible, as we progress Brexit, it's as though they are living in some sort of la la land because it's pure fantasy."
She added: "There are 27 other member states on the other side of the table who are not just going to give us what we want. They are not going to give us cherry picking".

The Lord Chancellor has backed the independence of the UK's judiciary but stopped short of condemning attacks on senior judges over the Brexit ruling.
The Bar Council had demanded Liz Truss respond to criticism from some MPs and newspapers over the decision that MPs should vote on triggering Article 50.
The Daily Mail branded judges "Enemies of the people"; the Daily Express said it was "the day democracy died".
Ms Truss said the "impartiality" of the courts was "respected the world over".
On Thursday, the High Court ruled Parliament should vote on when the government can trigger Article 50, beginning the formal process of the UK leaving the EU.
Three judges found that the government could not start the formal process by using the royal prerogative alone, and would need the backing of both the Commons and the Lords.
The government is seeking to overturn the decision at the Supreme Court - the UK's highest court of appeal - next month.
Following fierce criticism of the ruling, the Bar Council of England and Wales - the professional body representing barristers called for Ms Truss to defend the judges "as a matter of urgency".
But its chairwoman Chantal-Aimee Doerries QC said she would have expected the Lord Chancellor - who is responsible for courts, prisons, probation and constitutional affairs - to make a clearer statement on the "unprecedented" attack which  "undermines the rule of law in this country".
She said the court was entitled to rule on the case and she was "surprised by the backlash" because the judges were "doing their job".
The Criminal Bar Association later passed a resolution backing the Bar Council's demands.
In her statement, Ms Truss, who is also justice secretary, said: "The independence of the judiciary is the foundation upon which our rule of law is built and our judiciary is rightly respected the world over for its independence and impartiality.
"In relation to the case heard in the High Court, the government has made it clear it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal process must be followed."
By Ben Wright, BBC News political correspondent
It could not be called a comprehensive response.
Having declined all requests for an interview, the Lord Chancellor Liz Truss put out a three-line statement saying the judiciary was independent and impartial.
Considering the vitriol of some press reaction to the High Court judges decision - "enemies of the people" according to the Daily Mail - and the demands for a defence of the judiciary from Labour and prominent Tory MPs, the government's response was the bare minimum.
We know ministers are angry about the ruling and are appealing to the Supreme Court.
But given a chance to say newspapers and politicians should be very wary about attacking the judiciary the Lord Chancellor demurred.
Nor did she say the courts did have the jurisdiction to rule on this dispute.
However, it be a very brave (or foolish?) minister to criticise the press for writing what they like about Brexit. And many voters will share the anger of some newspapers about the decision of the court.
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon, who had earlier said Ms Truss's silence was "embarrassing", called her statement "too little, much too late" and said she had failed to "adequately stand up to attacks on [the] judiciary".
He said "pressure from the legal profession, professional bodies, politicians and the public has paid off" and Ms Truss had "finally made at least some progress on this issue".
But he added: "All Liz Truss has done is recite the well-known principle of the independence of the judiciary...
"The last few days mean that much of the legal community now has no confidence in the Lord Chancellor to fulfil her statutory duty to protect the independence of the British judiciary."
Writing on Twitter, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron described the response from Ms Truss as a "weak statement from a weak cabinet minister".
Earlier, Tory MP and former Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve, has compared coverage in one UK newspaper to the Nazi party's newspaper.
He told BBC Radio 5 live: "Newspapers in a free society can do what they like.
"But if you did decide to behave immoderately and whip up frenzied hatred you can do that in a free society if you set about it, and newspapers like the Daily Mail are no different from the Voelkischer Beobachter in Nazi Germany if they run headlines of that type."
Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover defended his newspaper's stance, saying he did not believe the judges would "feel frightened or worried" by the criticism.
He said they had made a "decisive intervention" in the political process, and "must expect some comeback".
UKIP MP Douglas Carswell is among those who have attacked the judges, calling them "politicians without accountability".
Meanwhile, Gina Miller, the investment manager and philanthropist who led the legal campaign, has said she plans to report online trolls to police after receiving rape and death threats.
"I am really cross at the politicians and the media who are whipping this up because they are the ones inciting racism and violence and acrimony," she said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, also commented on the row, writing in a tweet: "Horrified by trolling of judges & those going to court; British values call for honest but good disagreeing, need reconciliation not abuse".
He added independent judges were "fundamental to our values" and it was "wrong to attack them for declaring the law",
Prime Minister Theresa May has said she is "confident" the government will win its Supreme Court appeal and is committed to triggering Article 50 by March 2017.

The European Court of Justice has ruled the UK can cancel Brexit without the permission of the other 27 EU members.
The ECJ judges ruled this could be done without altering the terms of Britain's membership.
A group of anti-Brexit politicians argued the UK should be able to unilaterally halt Brexit, but they were opposed by the government and EU.
The decision came as Theresa May announced a Commons vote on whether to approve her deal would be postponed.
MPs had been widely expected on Tuesday to reject the EU withdrawal agreement negotiated by Mrs May.
But she pre-empted their decision, saying the vote would be deferred to a later date so she could seek "further assurances" from EU leaders about the application of the Irish border backstop.
In a subsequent statement to MPs, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said the government noted the ECJ ruling but insisted "our policy has not changed".
He said the UK would be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, under the terms of the EU's Article 50 process, and had "absolutely no intention" of overturning the 2016 Brexit vote.
"The government's firm and long held policy is that we will not revoke the Article 50 notice," he said.
The case was brought by a cross-party group of Scottish politicians and the Good Law Project who wanted to know whether the UK could revoke the decision to leave the EU without getting approval from the other member states.
They believed that if the ruling went in their favour, it could pave the way for an alternative option to Brexit, such as another referendum.
Both the UK government and the EU had been against it going to the ECJ.
The EU warned that it would set a dangerous precedent by encouraging other countries to announce they were leaving in an attempt to secure better membership terms, before cancelling their withdrawal.
The UK government's lawyers also argued that the case was purely hypothetical as "the UK does not intend to revoke its notification" and those politicians behind it wanted to use the case as "political ammunition to be used in, and to pressure, the UK Parliament".
The ECJ ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke its withdrawal from the EU, broadly following the non-binding opinion given last week by a senior ECJ official - the advocate general.
The statement from the court said the ability for a member state to change its mind after telling the EU it wanted to leave would last as long as a withdrawal agreement had not been entered into, or for the two-year period after it had notified the bloc it was leaving.
If that two-year period gets extended, then a member state could change its mind during that extra time too.
The court said the UK would be able to stay on the same terms it has now, so it would not be forced to join the euro or the Schengen area - where there are no passport controls between countries.
But the decision to stay must "follow a democratic process".
The member state would then have to write to the EU to notify them of the "unequivocal and unconditional" decision.
The ECJ said it made the ruling to "clarify the options open to MPs" ahead of voting on Mrs May's deal.
The politicians involved hope the victory will increase the chances of Brexit being called off completely, potentially through another referendum.
Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer - one of the politicians who launched the case - said: "This is a massive moment at the start of a vital week, pointing to a clear way out of the Brexit mess."
And the SNP's Alyn Smith, who was also involved in the case, said: "A bright light has switched on above an exit sign."
Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project which took the case to the court, said that the ruling was "arguably the most important case in modern domestic legal history".
"It is up to MPs to remember what they came into politics for and find the moral courage to put the country's interests before private ambition," he added.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - who backed Remain - said the ruling meant it was "now open to the House of Commons" to extend Article 50 to allow time for another vote.
And Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake tweeted that it was the "best news possible" and said it was now "full steam ahead for a People's Vote".
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, a prominent Brexiteer, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme those calling for a second vote were "people who never accepted that first vote, who didn't accept that democratic mandate and who want to overturn it".
"We don't want to stay in the EU. We voted very clearly, 17.4 million people sent a clear message that we want to leave the European Union, and that means also leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice," he added.
"So, this case is all very well, but it doesn't alter the referendum vote or the clear intention of the government to make sure that we leave on 29 March."
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the BBC people would be "shocked and very angry" if any government delayed leaving the EU and it was "certainly not the intention of the government".
Brexiteer Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg hailed the decision as the right one, but told LBC radio: "I think this government would find it very difficult to remain the government if it went away from what it said in its manifesto and the referendum result."
A spokeswoman for the European Commission said it would "take note" of the judgement, but there was an "agreement on the table".
"As President [Jean-Claude] Juncker said, this deal is the best and only deal possible. We will not renegotiate," he said.
"Our position has therefore not changed and as far as we are concerned the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union on the 29 March 2019."
BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said the ruling made staying in the EU "a real, viable option" and that may "sway a few MPs" in the way they vote.
But he said "a lot would have to change in British politics" to see the UK remain in the EU, with Mrs May and the government having to change its mind to make it a "political reality".

Dundee will not be able to compete in the European Capital of Culture 2023 competition due to Brexit, the European Commission has confirmed.
Five UK cities were bidding to host the title, with the winner expected to be announced next week.
A letter from the European Commission to the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said UK participation "would not be possible".
It said the UK's selection process should "immediately be discontinued".
Dundee's bid team were due to make their final presentation to the competition judges next week.
BBC Scotland understands that the DCMS only received the Commission's letter on Wednesday.
A Dundee 2023 spokesman said that the team was "hugely disappointed" at the European Commission's late decision.
He said: "The timing is disrespectful not only to the citizens of Dundee, but to people from all five bidding cities who have devoted so much time, effort and energy so far in this competition.
"It's a sad irony that one of the key drivers of our bid was a desire to further enhance our cultural links with Europe."
The UK's five final bid proposals were submitted at the end of October.
They were Dundee, Nottingham, Leeds, Milton Keynes, and a joint proposal from Belfast, Londonderry and Strabane.
Dundee's 80-page bid document was understood to include 110 new projects across the city.
Scotland's culture secretary Fiona Hyslop said: "It is now deeply concerning that the amount of time, effort and expense Dundee have put into scoping out their bid could be wasted thanks to the Brexit policy of the UK government .
"We are in urgent contact with the UK government and Dundee to understand the potential implications of this situation and to establish what action the UK Government is going to take to address it."
The DCMS said it "disagreed" with the European Commission's stance and was "deeply disappointed" that the Commission had waited until the UK cities had submitted their bids before "communicating this new position to us".
The UK government said previously that the title was "part of our plan for a dynamic, outward-looking and global Britain" post-Brexit.
However, it had warned bidders that the contest "may be subject to the outcome of those exit negotiations".
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Welsh politicians have clashed over Theresa May's announcement that the UK should leave the EU single market.
In a speech, the prime minister said staying in the single market would mean "not leaving the EU at all".
First Minister Carwyn Jones said he would still push for "full and unfettered access" to the single market, while Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards warned of an "extreme Brexit".
But Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies denied it would damage the economy.
In a long-awaited speech, Mrs May said Parliament would get a vote on the final deal agreed between the UK and the European Union.
She promised an end to "vast contributions" to the EU, and said the devolved administrations would be "fully engaged" in the process of negotiating Brexit.
"I should equally be clear that no decisions currently taken by the devolved administrations will be removed from them," Mrs May.
First Minister Carwyn Jones told AMs that the prime minister spoke to him on the phone before her speech.
"Some of it was welcome ... the tone was better", he said during First Minister's Questions.
But as well as giving the Houses of Parliament a vote on the final Brexit deal, Mr Jones said the Senedd would need one too, as many of the terms would cover policy areas devolved to Wales.
He added: "There will be nothing to stop this Assembly from implementing European directives if it wishes to.  There is no ban on doing that."
Mr Jones said he would continue to make the case to have "full and unfettered access" to the EU single market, despite Mrs May's insistence that the UK would leave.
"What we have to avoid in the next few months and years is anything that impairs the ability of businesses to export from Wales, and therefore makes it more difficult for them to employ people," he said.
Labour's Shadow Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens added:  "With the PM set on a damaging hard Brexit, I'm fearful Wales will be left behind and made to suffer the terrible consequences of this incompetent Tory government."
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns said Brexit gave the UK the opportunity to become "global leaders in free trade".
"There are new opportunities out there, the UK economy is exceptionally strong and both Wales and Welsh businesses are set to benefit from that", he said.
Mr Cairns added that he supported leaving the single market, saying the British people "won't accept and can't accept" the free movement of people.
Andrew RT Davies, who leads the Conservatives in the assembly, denied what he called a "clean Brexit" would be damaging to the Welsh economy.
"This was a hugely welcome speech from the prime minister, providing clarity and certainty ahead of the triggering of Article 50," he said.
"The onus now, in many ways, moves on to the EU itself and leaders on the continent will need to determine for themselves if they want to be part of a new trading agreement with the fifth largest economy in the world."
Mr Edwards, Plaid Cymru spokesman on leaving the EU, said:  "The Prime Minister has put the British State on track for an 'extreme Brexit', isolating Wales and the other UK countries from the rest of the world.
"The Prime Minister has put appeasing her deluded right-wing politicians before protecting the economy and surely the Labour Party must now join Plaid Cymru in voting against triggering Article 50.
"The people voted to leave the EU, not the single market or the customs union.
"Nobody voted to make themselves redundant or give themselves a pay cut. For Wales - a country whose economy is heavily dependent on its exports - isolating ourselves from the single market will be disastrous."
He added that "The serious and disproportionate impact this will have on Wales' economy and devolved functions means that Wales' Parliament must also be asked to endorse the terms of the agreement before it goes ahead, not just Westminster."
UKIP's MEP for Wales Nathan Gill welcomed the speech, saying: "Remaining a member of the single market was never an option as it amounted to no Brexit at all.
"Too many of the 'elite' in media and politics are trying to re-live the referendum, rather than respecting the will of the people and moving forward.
"It's clear to me that the best deal for both Wales and the UK would be a free trade deal between the UK and EU, allowing British companies the freedom to trade with and operate in the single market, and let European businesses do the same here.
"It would also bring back control over immigration and end the supremacy of European courts."
While the prime minister said no decisions currently taken by the Welsh Assembly would be removed after Brexit, the Welsh Government is keen to take control of two major issues currently decided at EU level - farming subsidies and economic aid to Wales' poorest areas.
Asked by UKIP AM Mark Reckless about the repatriation of powers from Brussels, the first minister said:  "If you look at agriculture, we take the decisions on agriculture. If you look at fisheries, we take the decisions on fisheries.
"There is no question of there being some kind of UK-wide agriculture policy that's not devolved on the basis of what the Prime Minister said today.  That's quite clear to me."
He said the people of Wales would not want to see "Brussels bureaucrats replaced with Whitehall bureaucrats."

The government has said it will release information from Brexit impact studies, after Labour won a vote effectively forcing their hand.
Ministers had argued that releasing the economic impact studies would undermine their Brexit negotiating position.
But Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom agreed that Wednesday's vote was "binding" and told MPs: "The information will be forthcoming."
Brexit Secretary David Davis said ministers would be "as open as we can".
He said he was already talking to Hilary Benn, the Labour chairman of the Committee for Exiting the European Union, about "how we handle the confidentiality of the documentation we'll hand over".
The government has been under pressure to release the studies, which show the potential impact of leaving the EU on 58 economic sectors.
On Monday it published the list of sectors that have been looked at, ranging from aerospace and aviation to tourism and legal services. But it had argued that releasing them would undermine its negotiating position.
But on Wednesday Labour used an arcane parliamentary procedure to get the documents released.
It involved tabling a motion that "an humble address be presented to Her Majesty" requiring that the reports "be laid before this House and that the impact assessments arising from those analyses be provided to the Committee on Exiting the European Union".
The government chose not to oppose the motion and it was not initially clear whether it would be binding.
Speaker John Bercow told MPs on Wednesday that this type of motion had "traditionally been regarded as binding or effective" and made clear that the government should respond quickly to the vote.
Brexit Secretary Mr Davis told MPs that discussions were under way with Mr Benn about releasing the the documents but added: "These documents are not some sort of grand plan, they're data about the regulations and the markets of individual sectors which inform our negotiation.
"Of course we will be as open as we can be with the select committee, I fully intend to."
In a letter to Mr Davis, Mr Benn asked him to confirm in writing what arrangements he was making to provide his committee with the impact assessments.
He added that he hoped it would be done "much sooner" than the 12 weeks the government had previously indicated it would take to respond to opposition day debate motions.
Earlier Commons Leader Ms Leadsom was asked when the studies would be released. She replied: "It is absolutely accepted that the motion passed by the House yesterday is binding and that the information will be forthcoming.
"But, as I think as has been made very clear, it is the case that it is difficult to balance the conflicting obligation to protect the public interest through not disclosing information that could harm the national interest and the public interest whilst at the same time ensuring that the resolution of the House passed yesterday is adhered to."

Theresa May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker have agreed to "accelerate" Brexit negotiations - but there was no sign of a breakthrough after their working dinner.
A joint statement said the Brussels talks - which came before EU member states meet to assess progress - were "constructive and friendly".
The UK's financial settlement with the EU continues to be a sticking point.
The EU will not discuss trade until this has been settled.
Mrs May has also spoken to the French and German leaders ahead of the European Council summit.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his UK opposite number, Brexit Secretary David Davis, also joined the working dinner.
"The prime minister and the president of the European Commission reviewed the progress made in the Article 50 negotiations so far and agreed that these efforts should accelerate over the months to come," the statement read.
"The working dinner took place in a constructive and friendly atmosphere."
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
Accelerate, accelerate, accelerate, accelerate.
OK, in theory, if I am driving a car at four miles per hour and I speed up to eight miles per hour, technically I am accelerating.
I may still be basically crawling along. I still may be late - very, very late - for my eventual destination. But, by the very action of pressing the pedal and going faster, I am actually speeding up.
If anyone accuses me of going nowhere, or slowing down - well, look at my speedometer. I am going faster and I have evidence that you are wrong!
That is why, in the next few days, don't be surprised if every Tory politician you see, hear, or read about is using that word (at least those loyal to the government) to claim that there is progress in the Brexit talks, just days after the chief negotiator on the EU side declared a deadlock.
BBC Europe correspondent Kevin Connolly said the joint statement released after the dinner was "a masterpiece of uncommunicative communication".
He said: "It recorded formally that Brexit negotiations are taking place between the EU 27 and the UK - a statement of the obvious that may hint at Brussels' displeasure with British attempts to talk directly to individual member states as well."
He added: "The gnomic communique was perhaps an attempt to avoid a repeat of the fallout from the last bilateral dinner in Downing Street in April after which the EU side was reported to have described the British as 'delusional' and even disparaged the food."
Along with the UK's "divorce bill", the EU is insisting agreement be reached on citizens' rights and what happens on the Northern Irish border before agreeing to open talks on the free trade deal Mrs May's government wants to strike.
Last week an internal draft document suggested the EU was going to begin preparing for the possibility of trade talks beginning in December - provided the UK does more to bridge the gap on these key negotiating points.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Michael Fuchs, the vice chairman of Angela Merkels's Christian Democratic Union party, agreed it was "absolutely necessary" to accelerate the talks, given the two-year timeframe for departure set out by the EU treaties.
But he suggested Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was thwarting Mrs May's attempts to reach a deal on the financial issue.
"I know there are internal problems, whatever she is offering, Boris Johnson is saying it's too much," he said.
"I don't know what his influence (is), it seems to be pretty strong because otherwise she would come up with other proposals I guess and the problem is she has internal trouble in the Tories."
Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Johnson said he thought a reported bill of £100bn was too high, accusing Labour of being willing to "cough up" such a sum.
He said the government was united on its Brexit strategy and urged the EU to "get serious" and agree to settle the citizens' rights question.
Meanwhile, a new report suggests that leaving the EU without a trade deal would lead to a significant rise in living costs for millions of people.
Research by the Resolution Foundation and trade experts at Sussex University calculates that the average household would pay an extra £260 a year for imported goods.
For three million households - those who consume the most imported goods - that figure would nearly double to £500 a year.
The report says that without a Brexit deal, European goods would incur the same tariffs as those imposed on other World Trade Organisation countries, increasing levies on dairy products by 45% and meat products by 37%.
But a government spokesperson said ministers were optimistic about achieving an agreement with the EU that would allow for frictionless trade in goods and services.
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Brexit Secretary David Davis has called on both sides in the negotiations on the UK's departure from the European Union to "get down to business".
Mr Davis was in Brussels to launch the second round of formal talks.
He said his priority was to "lift the uncertainty" for EU citizens living in the UK and Britons living in the EU.
The EU says there must be substantial progress on this - and on a financial settlement and the issue of the Irish border - before trade talks can begin.
Appearing alongside EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, Mr Davis said there had been a good start to the process and it was time to get to the "substance of the matter".
Mr Barnier said the negotiators would "now delve into the heart of the matter".
Talks will cover citizens' rights, finance, Northern Ireland and Euratom, with separate negotiating teams set up for each issue.
A UK government source told the BBC that 98 British officials were in Brussels for the negotiations.
Mr Davis spent two to three hours in the EU quarter, meeting Mr Barnier for between 45 minutes and a hour before returning to London.
The two men are expected to give an update on progress made at a press conference on Thursday.
Earlier this month, Theresa May's offer to give the three million EU citizens in the UK "settled status" after Brexit was immediately dismissed by European Council President Donald Tusk as "below our expectations".
And Mr Barnier has said there were still major differences between the EU and UK on the subject.
Speaking at a separate European Council meeting in Brussels, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson insisted the UK had made a "very fair, serious offer".
By Kevin Connolly, BBC Europe correspondent
The call to "get down to business" from David Davis is meant to signal that the Brexit talks are entering a serious phase after an opening session of pleasantries and procedural discussions.
That might raise eyebrows on the European side where there's a perception that Britain dithered for months after the Brexit referendum before getting down to talks.
The UK says it's prioritising the issue of mutual citizens rights after its opening proposals received a lukewarm response in Brussels.
The atmosphere around this second round of talks may have been improved a little by a government acknowledgement that the UK has obligations to the EU which will survive withdrawal and which need to be resolved.
Mr Johnson has said that Brussels can "go whistle" if it expected the UK to pay an "extortionate" bill as part of the separation.
The government's official position, confirmed in a Parliamentary statement last week, is that it will "work with the EU to determine a fair settlement of the UK's rights and obligations as a departing member state, in accordance with the law and in the spirit of our continuing partnership".
The EU has insisted that citizen rights - along with the "divorce payment" and border issues - must be dealt with before future UK-EU trade can be discussed.
Sir Keir Starmer, Labour's shadow Brexit secretary, criticised Mr Davis for spending "only a few minutes in Brussels before heading back to Whitehall".
"There is no agreed cabinet position on vital Brexit issues, the negotiating team is not prepared and the Prime Minister has lost her authority," he said, calling for engagement "with the substance of talks".
The Liberal Democrats' Brexit spokesperson, Tom Brake, said Mr Davis' brief visit to Brussels - and a lack of briefing papers on the UK side of the table in when the negotiators posed for a photograph - was proof that government preparation for the negotiations was lacking.
"He didn't have any position papers with him because this government has no agreed Brexit position," he said.
Lord O'Donnell, the UK's former top civil servant, suggested the chances of a smooth Brexit were at risk.

Sandwiches would be one of the first victims of a breakdown in the food supply chain in the event of a disorderly no-deal Brexit, according to a senior grocery executive.
"If you look at the ingredients - a bit of lettuce, tomato, maybe avocado, chicken with a bit of mayonnaise - all prepared fresh and kept chilled, sandwiches would be some of the most vulnerable products if food supply chains were interrupted."
The space between two pieces of bread is perhaps unlikely new territory for Brexit contingency planning but it reflects an area of serious concern that government ministers have been quizzed over this week.
Although they have said they hope and expect a deal to be done - they are making emergency preparations for the potential interruption to vital supplies like fresh food now that they have said planning for "no deal" is being stepped up.
Responses from Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab have been slightly evasive on this issue. When asked by MPs whether the government was stockpiling food he said: "It would be wrong to describe it as the government doing stockpiling but we will look at this issue in the round and make sure that there is adequate food supply."
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Publishers warn Brexit could hit exports
BMW joins Airbus in Brexit warning
This has led to images being conjured of massive warehouses being filled with emergency rations to see the nation through as if on a war footing. So, if the government isn't stockpiling food, is anyone else? Is it even necessary?
Food retailers are understandably reluctant to talk openly about empty shelves but this is what I've learned.
First - every major food retailer I've spoken to is quite clear they have NOT been approached by government to start redirecting any food to some sort of emergency reserve.
"It wouldn't work anyway," said one. "Fifty percent of the food we eat is either fresh or chilled - that includes ready meals - so warehousing wouldn't help".
There is another problem according to another.
"There simply isn't any spare slack in the supply chain to do this. There are no slightly-under-packed lorries or empty warehouses available to do this at scale. To suggest it could even be done if required is incredibly naive."
Most agree there is a real potential threat.
The Beast from the East was essentially two days of snow and it resulted in empty shelves starting to appear in some supermarkets. "Crashing out of the EU without a deal could potentially see the ports overwhelmed, with gridlock that could take days to work through and that would be a massive problem."
So neither the government, nor industry, is stockpiling food - but that does not mean that food retailers aren't making contingency plans.
Most of them get a lot of fresh food from the southern hemisphere in winter and the northern hemisphere from spring onwards - some are looking at extending their southern hemisphere sourcing longer into the spring.
That makes sense according to Lord (Mark) Price, former boss of Waitrose and trade minister. "In late March/early April you would be switching from southern to northern hemisphere providers for some produce so it would make sense to stretch that."
Lord Price downplays the chances of shortages of food availability but concedes that prices would probably rise. "If you are suddenly operating on WTO rules (which impose tariffs on most agricultural products) then clearly there are going to be price increases in some goods and the extra demand for supplies from outside the EU will also push up prices."
There is another option to solve a potential food shortage - and one that some grocery executives think will be exercised if the UK looks like it could run out of food. "The soundings we are getting from government is that if we are facing disaster, we could simply extend Article 50 (the two-year Brexit stopwatch that started running when it was triggered in March 2017), said one.
Staying in the EU for a bit longer would keep the chiller cabinet full of sandwiches - but it would doubtless raise the political temperature.

An executive at Airbus says that work on the Galileo sat-nav system will have to be moved out of the UK if the company wins a key contract.
Galileo has become something of a political football in Brexit talks.
The EU says it would have to stop the UK from accessing the encrypted part of the network when it leaves next year.
Colin Paynter, the company's UK managing director, said that EU rules required Airbus to transfer all work to its factories in France and Germany.
Mr Paynter was speaking at a Commons committee hearing on Exiting the European Union on Wednesday.
The system was conceived to give Europe its own satellite-navigation capability - independent of US GPS - for use in positioning and timing applications, such as in finance, telecommunications, the utilities, and to support the emergency services and the military.
The UK has played a key role in the programme, and Airbus is currently bidding for the renewal of a contract covering the Galileo ground control segment - potentially worth about 200 million euros. This work is currently run out of Portsmouth.
About 100 people are currently employed by Airbus on these services. Most would likely have to move to where the work is, but it's possible some could be reallocated to other projects.
"One of the conditions in that bid documentation from the European Space Agency is that all work has to be led by an EU-based company by March '19," Mr Paynter told the committee.
"Effectively that means that for Airbus to bid and win that work, we will effectively novate (move) all of the work from the UK to our factories in France and Germany on day one of that contract."
Asked by Committee chair Hilary Benn MP whether the Brexit transition period could mitigate this condition, Mr Paynter replied: "No, because this area of Galileo - and many areas of Galileo - is classed as a security-sensitive procurement. I believe that isn't covered in the transitional arrangements."
The UK's access to Galileo's encrypted service, which would be required for military and security uses of the system, would be blocked by the EU after Brexit.
This warning prompted the Business Secretary Greg Clark to announce that the government would look into options for developing its own satellite-navigation system.
Asked by Labour MP Pat McFadden whether developing a British sat-nav system was feasible, Mr Paynter replied: "I think the key thing for me is, it's not up to industry to determine whether there's a requirement or need for an independent UK system... I would say that, in terms of feasibility, I think after such a long and deep involvement with the Galileo programme as UK industry, we have all the skills and capabilities needed to support that programme should it come out."
But Dr Bleddyn Bowen, who researches space and defence at the University of Leicester, told the committee: "Technically, yes, it's feasible - Britain could do it. But it will cost a lot of money and it will run over budget."
He added: "You need to look at the other GNSSs - global navigation satellite systems - that have been built. The Americans are currently building their third generation of GPS satellites, which have become notorious for cost overruns and delays because they're encountering new technological problems as they improve the system.
"Britain has just built the satellites for the Galileo system. That means Britain has to build a new satellite-navigation system - not the same one. That will mean new technological developments and innovations as well, which will cause delays."
According to one estimate, the UK has paid about 1.4 billion euros into the 12-14 billion-euro Galileo programme since 2005.
Estimates for the cost of an indigenous system in the range of £3-5bn were probably right, Mr Paynter said. That was money Dr Bowen told the committee could be better spent elsewhere, filling missing capability gaps in the British space programme.
Follow Paul on Twitter.

A post-Brexit UK-EU trade deal might take 10 years to finalise and still fail, the UK's top diplomat in Brussels has privately told the government.
The BBC understands Sir Ivan Rogers warned ministers that the European consensus was that a deal might not be done until the early to mid-2020s.
He also cautioned that an agreement could be rejected ultimately by other EU members' national parliaments.
PM Theresa May said she wanted Brexit to be "smooth and orderly".
In October, Sir Ivan, who conducted David Cameron's negotiation over the UK's relationship with the EU, advised ministers that the view of the 27 other countries was that a free trade agreement could take as long as a decade.
He said that even once concluded, the deal might not survive the process of ratification, which involves every country having to approve the deal in its own parliament.
It is also understood he suggested that the expectation among European leaders was that a free trade deal, rather than continued membership of the single market, was the likely option for the UK after Brexit.
Sir Ivan's private advice contrasts with ministers publicly insisting a deal can be done in the two years allowed by the triggering of Article 50 - the formal start of the process of leaving the EU.
Downing Street said he was relaying other EU members' views, rather than his own or the British government's.
A spokesman said: "It is wrong to suggest this was advice from our ambassador to the EU. Like all ambassadors, part of his role is to report the views of others."
Just how long will it take?
The government is intent on persuading us Brexit can be done smoothly, and to time.
So the suggestion that the UK's most senior diplomat in Brussels has privately told the government that a final trade deal with the rest of the EU might not be done for 10 years, and might ultimately fail, may give rise to more nerves.
EU leaders are meeting in Brussels - and will discuss Brexit negotiations at an end of summit dinner, without UK Prime Minister Theresa May being present.
Arriving in Brussels, Mrs May was asked about the 10-year claim, but concentrated her answer on the subject of immigration, which is what the EU leaders are focusing on during a chunk of their one-day summit.
She added that a smooth UK exit from the EU was "not just in our interests, it's in the interests of the the rest of Europe as well".
International Trade Minister Mark Garnier told the Commons Sir Ivan's views were "words from interlocutors" rather than a strict definition of how long talks will take.
Dominic Raab, a former minister and a Leave campaigner, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Sir Ivan was "scarred by his own pessimistic advice in the past".
"It's reasonable to set out the worst case scenario for a five to 10 year period to iron out a trade deal," he said.
"The key thing is whether we maintain barrier-free trade in the meantime in which case frankly there's no problem - we leave the EU in two years we complete the free trade agreement afterwards."
Former cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell predicted negotiating a final deal would take "at least five years".
"We certainly won't have come to any final arrangements in two years' time," he told BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour.
"We might well get to a point where we can symbolically leave but all sorts of details will still remain to be sorted out."
Remain-backing former Labour minister and European commissioner Lord Mandelson predicted "between five and 10 years" was the most likely timescale, telling a committee of MPs that after a deal is reached on the UK's exit terms, talks on trade arrangements would be harder and take longer.
Downing Street said Thursday's meeting showed the EU was facing up to the reality that the UK was leaving.
It is expected that the other members will discuss who will the lead the EU's negotiating team in Brexit talks.
This is expected to be former EU Commissioner Michel Barnier, who is in charge of the European Commission's Brexit team.
In other Brexit developments, the House of Lords EU financial affairs sub-committee has warned that financial services firms could quit the City of London unless there are transitional arrangements, or a "Brexit bridge" to prevent them moving to New York, Dublin, Frankfurt of Paris.
And European Parliament president Martin Schulz reiterated there would be no negotiation until the UK had officially notified the EU of its departure.
Addressing the 28 EU leaders, he added: "The UK and the EU are, and will remain, closely connected and there are too many lives on the line for an erratic, quick and total separation."
He urged leaders to work towards Brexit "in a spirit of loyal co-operation", adding: "We cannot allow the Brexit process to become an emotional affair, nor should we turn it into a legal maze from which exit is extremely difficult.
"We must not feed populists' unfounded claims that the EU is the master of all evil.  We must also use this moment to concretely reflect on what we want the EU to be in the future and to provide it with the necessary tools."

Detailed plans on the UK's post-Brexit future will not be published until after this month's EU summit.
Theresa May will summon senior ministers to an away day at Chequers in July to settle details of the white paper and find a common way forward.
With ministers aiming to complete the negotiations by October, many expected the plans to be released earlier.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the Tories of "botching Brexit and risking jobs".
The announcement comes after Boris Johnson said the UK's Brexit strategy lacks "guts".
The white paper has been called the government's "most significant publication on the EU since the referendum".
Speaking at the G7 summit in Canada, the prime minister said: "There's going to be a lot of activity in the negotiations over the coming weeks.
One only has to look back at the turbulent week just passed to see the challenge Theresa May will face in uniting her bickering Cabinet at her away day.
It took several meetings with the Brexit Secretary David Davis on Wednesday to quell suggestions he'd resign in frustration with the current status of proposals.
Then a recording of the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson emerged, undermining both the Prime Minister with claims the Brexit talks weren't going well, and also the pro-EU Chancellor Philip Hammond with a claim his Treasury Department was "the heart of remain."
The latter was more than just a limp lettuce leaf based gag (hearts of Romaine/heart of remain - ouch!) - it underlined the serious divisions now being so publicly displayed between senior ministers that would normally be hidden behind the closed doors of the cabinet.
Theresa May might hope taking them all away for a lock-in at Chequers will finally unite all factions behind a set of White Paper proposals - but this week suggests it won't be easy.
"I'll be going to the June European Council where we'll be talking about finalising the withdrawal agreement, but also pressing on the future relationship.
"After that, I'll be bringing my ministers together for an away day at Chequers to finalise the white paper we're going to be publishing.
"And then before Parliament breaks for the summer, we'll be bringing the Trade and Customs Bill back to the House of Commons.
"Throughout all of that time, the negotiations will be continuing."
In response, Mr Corbyn said that Parliament should take control and set negotiating priorities because the "divided and chaotic government" had failed.
"The government promised a 'detailed, ambitious and precise' Brexit White Paper this month setting out their negotiating priorities. Once again it's been postponed," he said,
"The Tories are botching Brexit and risking jobs and our economy in the process."
This week's events have once again highlighted the gulf of opinion in the cabinet over Brexit.
On Thursday, Mrs May was forced to agree to an "expected end date" of December 2021 for any interim arrangements after Brexit Secretary David Davis threatened to resign over the wording of the UK's proposed temporary customs agreement - the so-called backstop.
The proposal would see the UK match EU trade tariffs temporarily in order to avoid a hard Irish border post-Brexit.
That row was followed by comments from the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - recorded at a private dinner - where he warned of a Brexit meltdown, and said issues around the Irish border were mistakenly being allowed to dominate proceedings.
Mr Johnson also branded the Treasury - and, by implication, Chancellor Philip Hammond, "the heart of remain".
Responding to his comments, Mrs May said: "The foreign secretary has strong views on Brexit, but so do I. That's why I'm getting on with delivering Brexit."
But on Friday EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier criticised Mrs May's proposals for a customs arrangement.
He stressed that he was not rejecting the UK prime minister's ideas - but said any "backstop" to prevent a hard Irish border could not be time-limited.
Mr Barnier said the UK paper "raises more questions than it answers" but would be examined "objectively".
Mrs May told the BBC: "This is a negotiation, Michel Barnier has said exactly that point.
"We have put a proposal on the table, on this backstop relating to Northern Ireland, we will now sit down and negotiate it with the European Union."

Any "transitional deal" in the period after Brexit must end by June 2022, the time of the next general election, Philip Hammond has said.
But the chancellor said there must be "business as usual, life as normal" for Britons as the UK left the EU.
"Many things would look similar" the day after Brexit - on 29 March 2019 - as the UK moved gradually towards a new relationship with the EU, he said.
The EU has said it is too soon to discuss a transitional deal.
A European Commission spokesman said: "We are about to discuss the specifics of separation and once this is done to the satisfaction of everyone, we may move to the second step."
The UK is due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019 but there has been increasing talk of a "transitional" or "implementation" stage to smooth the process, before a new long-term relationship with the EU comes into force.
This could mean a period during which some EU rules would continue to apply to the UK after it has technically left the bloc. Newspaper reports have suggested these could include the free movement of people, something that was seen as a key issue in the vote to leave the EU.
Mr Hammond also appeared to acknowledge that it could mean new trade deals with non-EU countries could not be signed during that period.
The chancellor told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the length of any transitional deal would "be driven by technical considerations".
Beneath the surface, Chancellor Philip Hammond had been arguing for a transitional arrangement to avoid choppy waters in 2019. There is no longer any dissent in the ranks - that concept has been agreed by the Cabinet.
In return, the chancellor has acceded to demands by ministers who voted to leave the EU that any transitional phase must be completed by the scheduled date of the next general election - June 2022.
But have other disagreements so far escaped the political sonar?
On Thursday, immigration minister Brandon Lewis said it was a "simple matter of fact" that EU free movement rules would not apply after 2019.
Mr Hammond said this was correct because freedom of movement was an EU concept and the UK would leave the customs union and single market on 29 March 2019.
But he said the question that needed answering was what happened next, so that British people and businesses could "get on with their lives" without "massive disruption".
He said he hoped that, in the immediate aftermath, goods would "continue to flow across the border between the UK and the EU in much the same way as they do now".
On whether EU citizens would continue to be free to enter the UK, he said it would be "some time before we are able to introduce full migration controls between the UK and the European Union".
"That's not a matter of political choice, it's a matter of fact. We have to put in place quite a lot of new infrastructure, we will need a lot of new people, we will need new IT systems... This is going to take a while to deliver."
He said Britons wanted to know they would still be able to "go about their business" after March 2019, from buying European goods to going off on holiday, adding: "The government's job is to make sure that our economy can go on functioning normally, that people can go about their businesses as usual... that is our focus."
Some of Mr Hammond's colleagues who campaigned for a Leave vote have accepted that an "implementation period" after Brexit is likely.
The Conservative MP and Leave campaigner Nigel Evans said any transition period should end as soon as the UK had arrangements in place, saying: "This is not going to be seen as a ruse whereby some people who might have liked us to remain in the European Union can see this as an opportunity to keep us half in.
"That's not going to happen. We are, in all but one or two transitional arrangements, going to have left the European Union by March 2019."
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Labour had been calling for "appropriate transitional arrangements" which the chancellor "now appears to accept".
"However, in light of the clear divisions this week within the Cabinet, I hope the chancellor was not merely speaking in a personal capacity," he said.
"I also hope that this is the final burial of the flawed proposition that 'no deal' is a viable option."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said a transition period was only "kicking the can down the road".
"All the problems associated with a hard Brexit, leaving the single market, leaving the customs union, they will simply be confronted two years later."
Meanwhile, Malta's PM Joseph Muscat has said he is "starting to believe that Brexit will not happen", according to the Guardian.

It could take a further two years for Britain to fully leave the EU and start negotiating new trade deals with other countries, Liam Fox has said.
The international trade secretary told the BBC there could be a two-year "implementation phase" after the UK officially left the EU, in March 2019.
He had "no ideological barrier" to a phase to help business adjust, he said.
Mr Fox denied he was planning for a situation in which the UK left the EU without a deal.
It follows reports of cabinet divisions over Brexit, with Chancellor Philip Hammond saying last month that no deal with the EU "would be a very, very bad outcome".
If the UK leaves the EU without a trade agreement it could default to World Trade Organisation rules, potentially facing tariffs on goods and services traded with the EU.
Mr Fox said the UK could "of course survive with no deal" but he wanted a "full and comprehensive deal" with the EU.
He also said "the free trade agreement that we will have to come to with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history" because the UK already met EU standards.
Some MPs have called for the UK to remain in the EU's single market and customs union after Brexit. Some non-EU European countries, such as Norway, are members of the single market.
Mr Fox said that he did not "have a problem" with a transitional Brexit deal, which he described as an "implementation phase" but insisted: "You can not leave the European Union and be in the single market and the customs union."
Speaking after a speech in Geneva, where he is meeting the WTO's director general, Mr Fox implied that such a phase could last two years.
Earlier this month, Mr Fox told Bloomberg TV he would be "very happy" with a transitional phase lasting "a few months".
He told the BBC: "We're going to leave [the EU] in March 2019.
"But if we can do it in a way that minimises or avoids any disruption to business, that provides them with the greatest amount of certainty and stability, then that's clearly a sensible thing to do.
"And if we have an implementation phase between us leaving the European Union and moving to whatever new arrangement and relationship we have with the EU,  I don't have any problem with that, for me there's no ideological barrier to that."
Mr Fox said he had been waiting to leave the EU "for a very long time, another two years, say, wouldn't be too much to ask".
And he said the UK would want to be able to "negotiate and conclude" trade deals outside the EU after March 2019 - but that was something that would be subject to negotiation.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Mr Fox's apparent acceptance of "some kind of transition" indicated "a change in tone from Brexiteers" since the general election.
Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "I think the penny has finally dropped even with Liam Fox, that what the Brexiteers had presented as a simple, straightforward process that could be completed within a couple of years, now they realise that there's probably going to be a couple of years on top of that, and even that may be an underestimate."
Mr Fox's Labour shadow, Barry Gardiner, said any trade deal with the EU would have a political dimension.
Mr Gardiner said: "Liam Fox seems to be saying it makes economic sense for the EU to give us a good deal and we already have the basis for that, so why don't they just say, 'Right, we'll keep it as it is.'?
"But of course that ignores the fact that the European Union too has its own political objectives, and they are about ever-closer union of the remaining 27 and ensuring that nobody of those 27 feels that they too might get a better deal outside of Europe than inside."
Mr Fox also said earlier that the UK would take up an independent seat on the World Trade Organisation after Brexit and he believed that talks with the WTO indicated that "we will simply replicate our current obligations under the European Union as we move into the United Kingdom as an independent member".

Slowly but surely, like a submarine emerging from murky waters, the government's position on what happens immediately after Brexit is becoming clearer. And the speed of our withdrawal can now be measured, too.
Beneath the surface, Chancellor Philip Hammond had been arguing for a transitional arrangement to avoid choppy waters in 2019. There is no longer any dissent in the ranks - that concept has been agreed by the cabinet.
In return the chancellor has acceded to demands by ministers who voted to leave the EU that any transitional phase must be completed by the scheduled date of the next general election - June 2022.
But have other disagreements so far escaped the political sonar?
Mr Hammond privately believes a new trade deal with the EU simply can't be struck by the time of Brexit, in March 2019. So he would be prepared to leave things much as they are for a time.
While technically the UK would leave the single market and customs union, initially at least extremely similar arrangements would be put in place while a final free trade deal was completed. Then there would be a period where the new arrangements would be phased in.
That is why he uses phrases such as "transitional phase" or "transitional period". And on the record, he has said he wants to ensure things feel like "business as usual" to the British people, the day after the UK leaves.
But others in cabinet, not least Brexit Secretary David Davis, are much more confident that the essentials of any new trading arrangements with the EU could be hammered out by 2019.
So all that's needed isn't so much a "transitional phase" of further negotiation but an "implementation period" that puts any new arrangements in place.
For example, everyone recognises that, outside of the customs union, new staff and IT systems would be required to deliver the new regime and that simply couldn't be done the day after Brexit.
And there are further potential disagreements which could threaten the current esprit de corps - how long would the free movement of labour last after Brexit?
While, technically, free movement ends with EU membership, the government has already agreed there will be a "grace period" when EU citizens can still come to work here freely, so long as they register with the authorities.
A similar system operates in many EU countries now - and they call it "free movement".
The chancellor and Home Secretary Amber Rudd stress that it will take time to better police our borders, and to wean some companies off any over-reliance on migrant labour.
So the exact length of the grace period may yet end up in a graceless political dispute.
Terms of future trade could also cause conflict. Mr Hammond signalled his willingness to put any new trading arrangements with other countries on hold until after the transition.
Frankly the EU would probably demand this but it's hard to see Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, accept any ban on negotiating - rather than implementing - new deals until a transitional phase ends.
Then there is the thorny issue of which body supervises the trading rules between the UK and EU during a period of transition - would the European Court of Justice (ECJ) still have a role?
Mr Hammond has floated the idea of a tribunal, similar to the arrangements in place in European Economic Area countries such as Norway, to settle any disputes.
But if the EU insists on the ECJ, cabinet unity may yet fray. This might even torpedo any hope of a transitional arrangement that the British government could accept.
So while on the surface it may look like the course of HMS Brexit appears clearer, still waters run deep.

Airbus has warned that it could move wing-building out of the UK in the future if there is a no-deal Brexit.
The planemaker's chief executive, Tom Enders, said Airbus "will have to make potentially very harmful decisions for the UK" in the event of no deal.
He said it was a "disgrace" that firms could still not plan for Brexit.
His remarks were welcomed by Business Minister Richard Harrington, who said Airbus was correct to warn of the dangers of a no-deal scenario.
"Crashing out is a disaster for business," Mr Harrington told a meeting at the German embassy on Thursday morning.
"Airbus is correct to say it publicly about and I'm delighted they have done so," he added.
In all, Airbus employs 14,000 people in the UK.
That includes 6,000 jobs at its main wings factory at Broughton in Wales, as well as 3,000 at Filton, near Bristol, where wings are designed and supported.
Mr Enders said: "Please don't listen to the Brexiteers' madness which asserts that, because we have huge plants here, we will not move and we will always be here. They are wrong."
Responding to Airbus's statement, a government spokesperson said: "The UK is a world leader in aerospace. We are the home of the jet engine, the wing factory of the world and are world-renowned for our skills and capabilities in the most technically-advanced parts of aerospace manufacturing.
"It remains our top priority to leave the EU with a good deal; a deal that is good for business, will protect jobs and prosperity, and provide the certainty that business needs."
Airbus's latest intervention follows announcements by two other companies that they were moving their headquarters out of the UK.
Sony said it would transfer its European HQ from the UK to the Netherlands to avoid disruptions caused by Brexit.
And appliance maker Dyson announced it was moving its headquarters to Singapore, from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, although it said the decision had nothing to do with Brexit.
However, another firm, Japanese technology company Fujitsu, told the BBC it had "zero intention" of moving its operations out of London.
Duncan Tait, Fujitsu's European boss, said it had "a thriving business in the UK", adding: "We're recruiting people every week."
Mr Enders said that while the world's second-largest aerospace group could not "pick up and move our large UK factories to other parts of the world immediately", Airbus could be "forced to redirect future investments in the event of a no-deal Brexit".
"And make no mistake, there are plenty of countries out there who would love to build the wings for Airbus aircraft," he added.
"Brexit is threatening to destroy a century of development based on education, research and human capital."
Katherine Bennett, senior vice-president of Airbus in the UK, reinforced Mr Enders' message.
She told the BBC that a no-deal Brexit would be "catastrophic" for her business, with "chaos at the borders" that would hold up delivery of vital components.
This is not the first time that Airbus has warned of the consequences for its business of a no-deal Brexit.
Last year, it issued a risk assessment saying that if the UK left the EU without a withdrawal deal, it "would force Airbus to reconsider its investments in the UK and its long-term footprint in the country".
However, Mr Enders' latest remarks suggest that the firm has toughened its stance since then.
MPs are putting forward alternative plans to Theresa May's Brexit plan after it was voted down by Parliament last week.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March this year.
by Theo Leggett, BBC business correspondent
The gloves are off. That's the clear message from Airbus' pugnacious chief executive, Tom Enders.
Opposition to Brexit from Airbus is not new. The company warned of the potential dangers to its business even before the referendum had taken place.
Since then, the rhetoric has been steadily ramped up. Last year, the company published a "Brexit Risk Assessment", in which it warned that leaving without a deal would be "catastrophic" for its business.
We've had warnings about the risk to future investment before, but now the threat is much more explicit and the language is much more forthright. The failure to come up with a clear plan is a "disgrace". Other countries would "love" to build the aircraft wings currently made at Broughton.
There's even a warning not to listen to "the Brexiteers' madness". The time for diplomacy, it seems, is past.
So what's changed? The company clearly believes that the risk of "no deal" is growing, thanks to the impasse in the House of Commons.
And as a business which relies on the rapid transfer of parts from the UK to assembly lines in France and Germany, it is very exposed to any delays in shipments - or problems getting new safety certification.
Meanwhile, Tom Enders is due to leave his job in April. So perhaps he's in a very good position to talk tough, without worrying whom he's upsetting in the process.

Voting to leave the European Union was a "bad decision" for the UK, the Irish foreign minister has said.
Charlie Flanagan said Brexit could be "painful" for the UK and his country, which he added should not be "placed in a position of more disadvantage".
He also urged negotiators to keep the Common Travel Area between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The comments come after Prime Minister Theresa May met European Council President Donald Tusk in London.
Mr Flanagan told BBC's Newsnight it was "absolutely essential" there was no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland - which is expected to be a key element of Brexit negotiations between the UK and EU.
"The Good Friday Agreement remains the foundation stone of our peace, and anything adverse to that agreement will not be acceptable," he said.
However, despite his criticism of the decision to leave, the Irish minister said he believed there was no intent to punish Britain among EU members, adding that the relationship between the UK and the Republic of Ireland was its "warmest ever".
He said: "I believe [Brexit] was a bad decision, but of course as a democrat I fully respect and recognise the will and wishes of the British people. We've got to deal with that now.
"The Article 50 process has commenced, and I believe it's essential now that we get through the negotiations in such a way that the end result can be as close as possible a relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom, albeit with the UK gone."
On Friday, Mrs May and Mr Tusk met at 10 Downing Street for the first time since Article 50 was triggered, with Gibraltar at the heart of the talks.
In its draft negotiating guidelines, published last week, the EU said decisions affecting Gibraltar - a UK overseas territory - would have to be taken with the agreement of the Spanish government.
This led to former Conservative leader Lord Howard saying the prime minister would defend Gibraltar in the same way Margaret Thatcher defended the Falkland Islands.
Mrs May laughed off the prospect of war with Spain, but after her meeting with Mr Tusk, a Number 10 spokesman said she had been clear she was determined to achieve the "best possible deal" for Gibraltar as well as the UK.
"The PM also made clear that... there would be no negotiation on the sovereignty of Gibraltar without the consent of its people," he added.
EU sources told the Press Association it had been a "good and friendly" meeting.
One source added: "They agreed to stay in regular contact throughout the Brexit process to keep a constructive approach and seek to lower tensions that may arise, also when talks on some issues like Gibraltar inevitably will become difficult."

MPs have overwhelmingly agreed to let the government begin the UK's departure from the EU as they voted for the Brexit bill.
The draft legislation was approved by 494 votes to 122, and now moves to the House of Lords.
Shadow business secretary Clive Lewis was one of 52 Labour MPs to defy party orders to back the bill and he resigned from the front bench.
PM Theresa May wants to trigger formal Brexit talks by the end of March.
She will do this by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, but requires Parliament's permission before doing so.
Mr Lewis, who earlier said he was undecided on whether to support the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, announced his resignation as MPs began voting for the final time.
He said he "cannot, in all good conscience, vote for something I believe will ultimately harm the city I have the honour to represent, love and call home".
Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he understood the difficulties the vote presented some of his MPs but said they had been ordered to back the Article 50 because the party would not "block Brexit".
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who missed last week's initial vote on the bill, backed it this time.
She told the BBC she had "a lot of misgivings about the idea of a Tory Brexit" and predicted the UK would "come to regret it", but added: "I'm a loyal member of the shadow cabinet and I'm loyal to Jeremy Corbyn."
The Labour rebellion was five MPs up on last week's vote, while former Chancellor Ken Clarke was again the only Conservative to vote against the two-clause bill.
During the voting, SNP MPs were reprimanded by deputy speaker Lindsay Hoyle after they started singing Ode to Joy, the European Union anthem.
Afterwards, Brexit Secretary David Davis hailed the "historic vote", adding: "It is now time for everyone, whichever way they voted in the referendum, to unite to make a success of the important task at hand for our country."
Peers will now consider the draft legislation, and a government source told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "If the Lords don't want to face an overwhelming public call to be abolished they must get on and protect democracy and pass this bill."
Earlier the bill survived several attempts to change its wording and add extra conditions.
These included Labour MP Harriet Harman's bid to protect the residence rights of EU citizens in the UK, which was outvoted by 332 votes to 290, with three Conservative MPs rebelling.
A Liberal Democrat bid for a referendum on the terms of the UK leaving the EU was defeated by 340 votes to 33.
Afterwards, Mr Corbyn tweeted: "Real fight starts now. Over next two years Labour will use every opportunity to ensure Brexit protects jobs, living standards and the economy."
But Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused him of giving the Conservatives a "blank cheque".
She tweeted: "You didn't win a single concession but still voted for the bill. Pathetic."
The bill will be debated in the House of Lords after it returns from recess on 20 February.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron vowed the party's peers would seek to amend the bill in the Lords, including another attempt to ensure a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

European Council President Donald Tusk has hinted that the UK should stay in the EU, after the prime minister's Brexit deal was rejected in parliament.
"If a deal is impossible, and no-one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" he tweeted.
MPs voted by 432 votes to 202 to reject the deal, which sets out the terms of Britain's exit from the EU on 29 March.
Other EU officials and politicians reacted with dismay to the result.
It was the largest defeat for a sitting government in history, with 118 of the votes against coming from Prime Minister Theresa May's own Conservative Party.
It has cast more doubt on the Brexit process, and the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has tabled a vote of no confidence in the government.
As well as Mr Tusk's tweet, there has been plenty of comment on Tuesday's vote from across Europe. Here are the key quotes:
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that time was running out for the UK to strike a deal.
"I urge the United Kingdom to clarify its intentions as soon as possible. Time is almost up," he said shortly after the result was announced.
"The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening's vote," he added.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he "profoundly" regretted the vote.
"An orderly withdrawal will remain our absolute priority in the coming weeks," he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
He added that there would be a favourable response if Mrs May were prepared to rethink her position on issues like the single market and customs union.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was still time to negotiate but "we're now waiting on what the prime minister proposes".
Finance Minister and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday was a "bitter day for Europe".
"We are well prepared, but a hard Brexit would be the least attractive choice, for the EU and [UK]," he said.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the leader of the ruling Christian Democrat Union party, echoed this view.
"A hard Brexit will be the worst of all options," she said.
"The pressure is mainly on them," French President Emmanuel Macron said of the UK.
He said a transition period was essential because a no-deal Brexit would be damaging.
"We will have to negotiate a transition period with them because the British cannot afford to no longer have planes taking off or landing at home," he said.
Later a presidential source said France was stepping up preparations for a "no-deal" Brexit.
Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that the Republic was also now preparing for a no-deal Brexit but would work hard to avoid it because it "would not protect the peace in Northern Ireland".
But he said the ball was now in the UK government's court to find a solution.
"We understand the PM will now consult with other parties and other political leaders on an agreed way forward we welcome that," he said.
"The onus is on Westminster to come up with solutions that they can support but they must be solutions that the European Union and Ireland can accept."
Meanwhile Foreign Minister Simon Coveney ruled out any alternative to the agreement reached with the UK over the Irish border.
"We're not going to allow physical border infrastructure to reappear," he told national broadcaster RTE.

The government has survived an attempt by pro-EU Conservative MPs to change its post-Brexit trade strategy.
The MPs wanted the UK to join a customs union if it does not agree a free-trade deal with the EU.
But the government, which says a customs union would stop it striking new trade deals, won by 307 to 301.
Ahead of the vote, Tory MPs were told a defeat would lead to a vote of no confidence in the government, sources told the BBC's John Pienaar.
The government did, however, lose a separate vote on its Trade Bill on the regulation of medicines after Brexit.
MPs backed an amendment by 305 votes to 301 that would keep the UK in the European medicines regulatory network.
There were 12 Tory rebels in both the customs and medicines votes - but the government's total was boosted by four Labour MPs in the customs vote.
The customs union allows for tariff-free trading between members with a common tariff set for imports from the rest of the world.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but the two sides have yet to agree how their final trading relationship will work.
The Commons has been debating two pieces of legislation - on customs and trade - and there have been several attempts to change them by both pro-Brexit and pro-EU MPs.
The latest key vote was on customs, with a debate sparked by Tory MP Stephen Hammond's amendment to the Trade Bill.
It stated that if a free trade area had not been negotiated by 21 January, ministers must change tack and start discussions on joining a customs union.
Labour backs the idea of a customs union with the EU after Brexit - but the government says this would mean the UK is unable to strike its own international trade deals.
During the debate on the Trade Bill, a minister tried to persuade Mr Hammond and his supporters to back down, promising to deal with the "essence" of their concerns when the bill goes to the House of Lords.
Although this was rejected by Mr Hammond, the government won the vote and the bill was later approved by the House of Commons.
The 12 MPs that voted against the government on customs and trade were: Heidi Allan, Guto Bebb, Ken Clarke, Jonathan Djanogly, Dominic Grieve, Stephen Hammond, Philip Lee, Nicky Morgan, Bob Neill, Antoinette Sandbach, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston.
On the other side, four Labour MPs voted with the government: Frank Field, Kate Hoey, John Mann, and Graham Stringer.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable and his predecessor Tim Farron - who were criticised after missing Monday night's knife-edge Brexit votes - were back at Westminster and voted against the government.
But a former Lib Dem minister, Jo Swinson, complained that Tory MP Brandon Lewis participated in the votes despite having agreed to abstain.
Ms Swinson, a Remain supporter who has recently given birth and was unable to vote, tweeted Mr Lewis did not keep to their arrangement to balance out her effective abstention - known as "pairing" - and accused the government of "desperate stuff".
They didn't escape defeat for long.
Having squeaked through last night the government was beaten for only the second time ever in the Commons on key Brexit legislation.
And guess what, it was on a vote they didn't expect to lose - Dr Phillip Lee, who quit the government to speak out on Brexit, put forward his own amendment to protect the links between the UK and the European Medicines Agency to ensure the smooth flow of medicines and new drugs for British patients after Brexit.
And he had enough to support to win it, just. An embarrassment for the government certainly.
It is another reminder of how difficult it is for Theresa May to get her way in the House of Commons where she doesn't have her own majority.
It is serious. A defeat is a problem. But it wasn't a complete disaster tonight for two reasons.
First, the amendment isn't a million miles away from the government's own policy. While not straightforward, the vote hasn't forced a screeching U-turn.
The more important reason is that the vote that followed, on keeping the UK in a customs union, went the other way.
Read Laura's blog
The vote on medicine regulation was only the government's second defeat on Brexit in the House of Commons.
MPs voted for the UK to take "all necessary steps" to participate in the regulatory network operated by the European Medicines Agency after it leaves the EU.
The agency, which evaluates and supervises medicines and helps national authorities authorise the sale of drugs across the EU, is currently based in London but is moving to Amsterdam after Brexit.
There have been warnings that Brexit may cause delays in UK patients getting new drugs.
The government says it is "seeking participation" in the agency after Brexit and would make an "appropriate financial contribution" in return.
But it has not agreed to take "all necessary steps" to secure this.
Responding to the defeat, the government said: "We will now reflect on this amendment and seek to revisit in the Lords."

Michael Gove has warned of the rise of identity politics in Britain, but insisted the Brexit campaign which he helped lead did not fan its flames.
The Tory minister said elements on the left and right wanted to pit groups against each other in a "conflict for recognition, rights and resources".
But he rejected claims Leave voters were also examples of "identitarians".
He told an event in London that Brexit was motivated by a desire to "restore faith in our democratic institutions".
Addressing a conference on the future of the United Kingdom, the environment secretary said the tendency to look at "political questions through the prism of identity" posed a challenge not just to the constitutional order which he said had, for the most part, served the UK so well for hundreds of years but to the concept of individual rights.
"The identitarians want to move away from the liberal principles of equal treatment for all, colour blindness and respect for individual rights," he told the event, hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank.
"Instead they embrace a politics which divides society in contending groups and demands people define themselves by their group membership rather than as autonomous individuals."
On the left of politics, he said this was characterised by an "insistence that an individual should check their privilege before speaking and pipe down if they don't fit in or avoid cultural appropriation - in other words know their place in the world if they want to get a hearing".
Despite the "effective eclipse of UKIP" as a political force, he said the manifestation of identity politics on the right of the political spectrum in the UK and further afield was "equally concerning".
"You hear it when there is an appeal to defend men's rights which is an attempt to make gender a cause of conflict, not an aspect of character," he said.
"Or when some politicians claim our borders should be closed to people because of their faith or religion."
In contrast, he said unionism as a political tradition, while needing to be rejuvenated and kept relevant, was underpinned by principles and institutions which offered a "warm home" to "so many from a distinct and diverse background".
Through its allegiances to "Magna Cartas, Bills of Rights, Great Reform Acts and Golden Jubilees, not tribal, cultural, sexual and divisive totems" - unionism stood in direct opposition to identity politics, he added.
Accusing the SNP of "playing with" identity politics for its own electoral benefit and using Brexit as just one of many "grievances", he said Scottish nationalism "conflates truly progressive politics with superior virtue that can apparently only really come from living north of the border".
But Mr Gove came under fire from former Conservative MP and Lib Dem MSP Keith Raffan who said the Brexit vote, opposed by 62% of those who voted in Scotland, had put a "totally avoidable" strain on the union, as demonstrated by the Scottish Parliament's recent refusal to give its consent to the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Vote Leave's campaign claims about Turkish immigration were "far worse" than anything the SNP had ever come up with, he suggested.
"Haven't you played with identity politics when the Leave campaign stated that 80 million Turks could decamp to England - dog-whistle politics of the nastiest kind," he asked Mr Gove.
The environment secretary, who is Scottish, said he "respectfully disagreed" with claims the Brexit vote was driven by xenophobia or a nostalgia for a return to the the time when Britain was an imperial power.
"People wanted to make sure they had control of their borders, of our taxes, of our laws and all of that was part of a broad campaign to restore faith in our democratic institutions," he said.
Asked directly whether Leave supporters were identitarians, Mr Gove said the "answer to that question is no".
Speaking at the same event, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said English identity should be celebrated more openly as part of the UK projecting an "outward-looking" face to the world after Brexit.
But former Labour cabinet minister Jim Murphy said that while he remained a passionate believer in the union, he feared David Cameron's efforts to make the Conservatives a truly national party had "dissipated" in favour of them embracing a narrower English nationalism.
And the SNP's Pete Wishart poured scorn on the whole idea of an "unionism convention" as well as Mr Gove's claim that the UK had become "more welcoming" to immigrants since the Brexit vote. He tweeted:

MPs have again failed to agree on proposals for the next steps in the Brexit process.
The Commons voted on four alternatives to Theresa May's withdrawal deal, but none gained a majority. One Tory MP resigned the whip in frustration.
Mrs May will now hold a crucial cabinet meeting to decide what to do and whether to put her deal to MPs again.
The UK has until 12 April to either seek a longer extension from the EU or decide to leave without a deal.
The so-called indicative votes on Monday night were not legally binding, so the government would not have been forced to adopt the proposals. But they had been billed as the moment when Parliament might finally compromise.
Mrs May's plan for the UK's departure has been rejected by MPs three times.
As a result of that failure, she was forced to ask the EU to agree to postpone Brexit from the original date of 29 March.
Meanwhile, Parliament took control of the process away from the government in order to hold a series of votes designed to find an alternative way forward.
Last week, eight options were put to MPs, but none was able to command a majority, and on Monday night, a whittled down four were rejected too. They were:
Those pushing for a customs union argued that their option was defeated by the narrowest margin, only three votes.
It would see the UK remain in the same system of tariffs - taxes - on goods as the rest of the EU - potentially simplifying the issue of the Northern Ireland border, but preventing the UK from striking independent trade deals with other countries.
Those in favour of another EU referendum pointed out that the motion calling for that option received the most votes in favour, totalling 280.
Following the failure of his own motion, Common Market 2.0, Conservative former minister Nick Boles resigned from the party.
The MP for Grantham and Stamford said he could "no longer sit for this party", adding: "I have done everything I can to find a compromise."
As he left the Commons, MPs were heard shouting, "don't go Nick", while some MPs from other parties applauded him.
He later tweeted that he would remain an MP and sit in the Commons as "an Independent Progressive Conservative".
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the "only option" left now was to find a way forward that allows the UK to leave the EU with a deal - and the only deal available was the prime minister's.
If that could be done this week, he added, the UK could avoid having to take part in elections to the European Parliament in May.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock agreed it was time for Mrs May's deal to be passed.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that while it was "disappointing" that none of the proposals secured a majority, he said he wanted to remind the Commons that Mrs May's deal had been "overwhelmingly rejected".
He urged MPs to hold a third round of indicative votes on Wednesday in the hope that a majority could yet be found for a way forward.
For months, Parliament has been saying "Let us have a say, let us find the way forward," but in the end they couldn't quite do it. Parliament doesn't know what it wants and we still have lots of different tribes and factions who aren't willing to make peace.
That means that by the day, two things are becoming more likely. One, leaving the EU without a deal. And two, a general election, because we're at an impasse.
One person who doesn't think that would be a good idea is former foreign secretary and Brexiteer Boris Johnson.
He told me going to the polls would "solve nothing" and would "just infuriate people". He also said that only somebody who "really believes in Brexit" should be in charge once Theresa May steps down. I wonder who that could be...
Hear more from Laura and the gang in Brexitcast.
Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb told BBC Look East he was "ashamed to be a member of this Parliament" and hit out at MPs in his own party - five of whom voted against a customs union and four of whom voted against Common Market 2.0.
He said the Commons was "playing with fire and will unleash dark forces unless we learn to compromise".
But prominent Brexiteer Steve Baker said he was "glad the House of Commons has concluded nothing".
He said the prime minister must now go back to the EU and persuade them to rewrite the withdrawal deal - something they have so far refused to do - otherwise the choice was between no deal or no Brexit.
Senior figures in the EU, though, showed their frustration at the latest moves in Westminster.
European Parliament Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt tweeted that by voting down all the options, a "hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable".
BBC Europe editor Kayta Adler said the mood in Brussels was one of disbelief - that the UK still does not seem to know what it wants.
She said EU leaders were also questioning the logic of arguing over things like a customs union or Common Market option at this stage, because right now, the UK has only three options as they see it - no deal, no Brexit or Theresa May's deal - and anything else is a matter for future talks once the UK has actually left.

It was only yesterday that the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, told MPs it just might all be a bit tricky to have a White Paper, a formal document outlining the government's plans for Brexit, and stick to the timetable they want to pursue.
Rebel Remainers though were "delighted", that, stealing Jeremy Corbyn's thunder, a planted question from a loyal Tory MP at PMQs today produced in fact a promise from the Prime Minister that, after all, there will be a White Paper.
It is a climbdown, no question, a last-minute change of heart.
Late last night Brexiteers were being assured there would be no bending, no delay to the government's plans and no giving in to the Remainers.
Even early this morning, government sources were privately suggesting that they were quite happy to have the white paper option up their sleeve, but there were no immediate plans to make that promise.
Then voila, at 1205 GMT, the pledge of a white paper suddenly emerged. As one senior Tory joked, "welcome to the vacillation of the next two years".
It may be being described as a "massive, unplanned" concession but it doesn't seriously hurt the government.
First off, it shows goodwill to the rebel Tory Remainers, many of whom feel their Eurosceptic rivals have had the upper hand of late. Schmoozing matters round these parts.
It takes one of the potential arguments that could have gathered pace off the table, before the Article 50 bill is even published. And, rightly or wrongly, no one expects a white paper will contain anything new that the prime minister has not yet already said.
It's largely a victory for the Remainers about process, rather than substance.
For her critics this is evidence of weakness, that's she has been pushed into changing her mind.
But it doesn't need to change the government's timetable, and today's embarrassment of a climbdown might be worth the goodwill that Number 10 will get in return.

Tony Blair has warned Jeremy Corbyn that Brexit will make it harder for Labour to deliver its promises if it wins power.
The former prime minister said Mr Corbyn would be in "exactly the same position" as the Tories  - distracted by Brexit and short of money.
Speaking to the BBC's John Pienaar, he defended his call for a second EU referendum.
Labour has backed Brexit and ruled out a second referendum if it wins power.
One member of Labour's shadow cabinet told the BBC Mr Blair's intervention was "utterly unhelpful".
"Lots of Labour voters voted for Brexit and this to them sounds like the metropolitan elite ignoring them," he said.
"The whole Tony Blair project was about being on the right side of public opinion. And now look at this. Are you telling me the Tony Blair of 1994 would have said this?"
Britain is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, but Mr Blair said it would be too late to change course by then.
He has repeatedly argued that people are entitled to change their mind - either through another referendum or a general election - once the terms of its departure are clear.
And he urged the current Labour leadership to adopt the same stance.
The former prime minister said he was "committed" to seeing a Labour government elected, but added a "qualification" - which was that "it's going to be extremely difficult in my view for Labour to deliver on its promises if it puts itself in exactly the same position as the Tory government's going to be on Brexit - because it will find it has less money to deal with the country's problems, that it's distracted by dealing with Brexit rather than the health service, jobs and living standards."
The UK would "face a very challenging situation" if it was leaving the EU under a Corbyn government, he added.
Mr Blair said that if people voted again for Brexit, he would not push for a third poll - "that concludes the argument", he said.
But he said that he would not support either of what he saw as the two most likely outcomes of negotiations - a Canada-style free trade deal or the UK being aligned with the EU but having no influence over key decisions.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer says Labour will push for a deal that would preserve as many of the benefits of the single market and customs union as possible, as well as protecting workers' rights and the environment.
But Mr Blair believes this is a "confusing" strategy and is not "credible".
"Far better to fight for the right for the country to re-think, demand that we know the full details of the new relationship before we quit the old one, go to the high ground on opposing Brexit and go after the Tories for their failures to tackle the country's real challenges.
"Make Brexit the Tory Brexit. Make them own it 100%. Show people why Brexit isn't, and never was, the answer."
Mr Blair - a longstanding critic of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - has ditched his business interests to take a more active role in British politics through his Institute for Global Change think tank.
He has previously attacked Mr Corbyn's stance on Brexit - prompting the Labour leader to say Mr Blair should respect the result of the 2016 EU referendum.
Richard Tice, co-chairman of the pro-Brexit Leave Means Leave campaign, said Mr Blair "and his elite gang" were "still determined to stop Brexit" and will lead the UK "to the very bad deal which we had in the single market and the customs union".
In Mr Blair's latest article published on his institute's website, he offered this advice to Jeremy Corbyn and his team: "At every PMQs nail each myth of the Brexit campaign, say why the Tory divisions are weakening our country, something only credible if we are opposed to Brexit, not advocating a different Brexit, and challenge the whole farce head on of a prime minister leading our nation in a direction which even today she can't bring herself to say she would vote for.
"If we do leave Europe, the governing mind will have been that of the Tory right.
"But, if Labour continues to go along with Brexit and insists on leaving the single market, the handmaiden of Brexit will have been the timidity of Labour."
Mr Blair's comments came as his institute issued a document highlighting developments in the UK since the Brexit vote, including a downgrade in economic forecasts.

"Are you trying to provoke the UK government?" was my question today to Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator.
His favourite maxim is "stay calm and keep negotiating" but, I put it to him, he was surely well aware of the explosive reaction that would probably follow in the UK after seeing the European Commission's protocol on the Irish border.
So was this an EU ruse to rouse the UK government into focusing on and speeding up negotiations? After all, Mr Barnier never tires of pointing out that the time to negotiate is running out.
No, he told me. His aim was not to provoke or to create shockwaves. He wanted to make these negotiations a success. But, he added, he had long warned the UK that leaving the EU would have serious consequences.
The commission's proposal for Northern Ireland appeared today as part of its draft UK withdrawal agreement.
This is the European Commission's interpretation - in legally binding language - of the agreements it believes have so far been reached with the UK government. They include the so-called Brexit Bill and the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU after Brexit, and separately outline issues the commission still wants to be negotiated.
No final agreement has yet been reached on the Irish border conundrum and the fudged compromise settled on just before Christmas became painfully exposed on Wednesday.
Both the EU and the UK say they are committed to safeguarding the Good Friday Agreement and avoiding the re-introduction of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
The UK believes this can be done as part of an eventual far-reaching free trade agreement with the EU and with the help of smart technology.
These are known as options A and B on Ireland.
The EU has insisted - and the UK agreed back in December - on an option C as a fallback plan.
This would see full regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU in areas necessary to maintain North-South cross border co-operation.
In the absence to date of any concrete detail from the UK on how options A or B would work, the European Commission has gone to town in this draft withdrawal agreement on option C - including Northern Ireland staying in an EU customs union and in relevant parts of the single market, all under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
Michel Barnier insisted it was the EU's duty to ensure the integrity of the Good Friday Peace Agreement after Brexit, but you couldn't have crossed more UK lines if you'd tried.
And, right on cue, all the main actors delivered the lines you would expect.
Theresa May rejected the commission's text, vigorously defending the territorial integrity of the UK. She is mindful of course of the strong opinion of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which she relies on for support in the UK parliament.
Michel Barnier, meanwhile, defended the position of EU member state Ireland.
But before you go away, head in hands, thinking: we're in another deep Brexit crisis - we are actually slap back in the middle of a negotiation.
There were strong words but no-one slammed any doors today.
The commission's draft text will now be debated and possibly amended by the 27 EU member states before then being presented to the UK government for negotiation.
In the next stage of this drama Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, heads to London to see the prime minister ahead of her Brexit speech on Friday.
The EU says it will be listening closely.
And as a parting shot on Wednesday - in an apparent spirit of compromise even if on a separate Brexit subject - the UK has offered a step towards more rights for EU citizens coming to the UK during the transition.
Still, as one EU diplomat pointed out to me soberly, be under no illusion, the Irish question still has the potential to bring the whole Brexit deal tumbling down.

Downing Street has reassured fans of Strictly Come Dancing that the show is not at risk from Brexit, following claims by Sir Vince Cable.
Sir Vince - who appeared on the the Strictly Christmas special in 2010 - said a "cack-handed" immigration policy could stop dancers from the EU appearing on the show.
The Lib Dem leader made the comments after a meeting with Michel Barnier.
He made the case for a second referendum to the EU negotiator.
Many of the professional dancers on Strictly Come Dancing come from EU countries.
"As British society falls apart it could pose a risk to Strictly,"  Sir Vince, who has said he wants to halt Brexit, told The Telegraph.
"If we have a cack-handed immigration policy like what we have for non-EU citizens, all kinds of perverse decisions could be made,"
But a Downing Street spokesperson said: "I think Strictly will be fine."
The government has faced calls from dance companies, the Musicians' Union and other arts organisations to protect the free movement of performers when the UK leaves the EU in March.
Launched by the BBC in 2004, Strictly Come Dancing has become a firm Saturday night favourite and is currently in its 16th series.

Brexit's fate is "in the hands of our British friends" after EU leaders agreed to delay the departure date by at least two weeks, says Donald Tusk.
If MPs approve Theresa May's withdrawal deal next week, Brexit would be delayed from 29 March until 22 May.
But if they do not, the UK has until 12 April to come up with a new plan.
European Council President Mr Tusk said that until 12 April, "anything is possible" including a much longer delay or cancelling Brexit altogether.
Speaking in Brussels on Friday, he said he was "really happy" the 27 EU leaders had reached a unanimous decision to extend the two-year Article 50 process, under which the UK was due to leave the EU next Friday.
"It means that until 12 April, anything is possible: a deal, a long extension if the United Kingdom decided to rethink its strategy, or revoking Article 50, which is a prerogative of the UK government.
"The fate of Brexit is in the hands of our British friends. As the EU, we are prepared for the worst, but hope for the best. As you know, hope dies last."
According to the final summit conclusions, the UK is expected to "indicate a way forward" before 12 April, if MPs do not approve the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU, which would then be considered by the European Council.
Theresa May has been granted a little breathing space. The EU has allowed a few more days to try to get her deal through the House of Commons.
But it's not the timetable that she chose.
And as things stand, the expectation that the compromise deal will get through is low.
And, more to the point, the government does not believe that it can hold off another attempt by a powerful cross-party group of MPs who are resolved to put Parliament forcibly in charge of the process to find alternatives.
Ministers are therefore today not just wondering about how to manage one last heave for the prime minister's deal, but what they should do next, when - odds on - the whole issue is in the hands of the Commons, not Number 10.
Read Laura's blog
The UK must decide by then whether it will be taking part in European Parliamentary elections from 23-26 May - if it does not, then a long delay would become "impossible", Mr Tusk said.
On Friday, Mrs May's deputy David Lidington met opposition parties to discuss how MPs could vote on alternatives to the government's Brexit plan next week.
These could include options such as holding another referendum, leaving with no deal or pursuing a closer economic arrangement such as the "Common Market 2.0" plan.
MPs are expected to vote on Mrs May's deal for a third time next week, despite Commons Speaker John Bercow ruling that it could not be brought back for another vote without "substantial" changes.
But in a letter to all MPs on Friday evening, Mrs May said it was possible a third vote on the deal may not take place "if it appears there is not sufficient support to bring the deal back next week".
The prime minister offered to talk to MPs over the coming days "as Parliament prepares to take momentous decisions".
She also referred to her televised address on Wednesday, in which she blamed the delay to Brexit on MPs.
Mrs May acknowledged that "a number of colleagues had raised concerns" about her words and it had not been her intention to make a their "difficult job... any more difficult".
Earlier, Business Secretary Greg Clark told the BBC that if they do not back Mrs May's deal, then the government would give Parliament the means to express their views on a series of other options.
He said this meant an attempt by a cross-party group to enable MPs to take control of Commons business, so they can get indicative votes, would not be necessary.
But he said the government's ambition should be to try to build as big a consensus as possible on Brexit, rather than simply "getting it over the line" with a slim majority of one or two votes.
29 March: Current Brexit date in UK law
12 April: If MPs do not approve the withdrawal deal next week - "all options will remain open" until this date. The UK must propose a way forward before this date for consideration by EU leaders
22 May: If MPs do approve the deal next week, Brexit will be delayed until this date
23-26 May: European Parliamentary elections are held across member states
Mrs May has ruled out revoking Article 50, which would cancel Brexit, and has said it would be wrong to ask Britons to vote for candidates for the elections to the European Parliament, due to be held from 23-26 May, three years after they voted to leave the EU.
Her official spokesman said: "There is now a clear point of decision. If we are able to have a successful vote next week then we can pass the necessary legislation for ratifying the agreement and we can, as a country, be outside the European Union two months today."
For now, the UK's departure date is still written in to law as next Friday, 29 March.
But Mrs May is expected to change that by tabling legislation next week and getting it through the Commons and the Lords.
The withdrawal deal sets out the terms of the UK's departure from the bloc, including the "divorce bill", the transition period, citizens' rights and the controversial "backstop" arrangements, aimed at preventing a return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But it must be approved by UK MPs, who have already rejected it twice by large margins.
The Irish premier Leo Varadkar said the choices were now obvious: "It's this agreement, no deal, or the parliament taking indicative votes for a much closer long-term relationship with the EU."
But Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the DUP - whose votes Mrs May relies on to support her minority government - said the prime minister had "missed an opportunity" to propose changes to the withdrawal agreement to help get it through the Commons.
"The prime minister has now agreed with the EU to kick the can down the road for another two weeks and humiliatingly revoke her oft-stated pledge that the UK would leave the EU on 29 March," he said.
"Nothing has changed as far as the withdrawal agreement is concerned."

"The ball is in the government's court" when it comes to a way forward with Brexit, Labour's Sir Keir Starmer says.
Talks between Labour and the government began last week, with Theresa May saying only a cross-party pact would see MPs agree a deal in Parliament.
But the shadow Brexit secretary said Mrs May's team had "not changed its position" on her existing plan.
The PM will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday.
Mrs May's spokesman said she was also making calls to other European leaders from Downing Street on Monday afternoon.
She is due at an emergency summit in Brussels on Wednesday, where EU leaders will expect to hear fresh plans ahead of the UK's scheduled exit date - Friday at 23:00 BST.
Meanwhile, peers are continuing to examine a bill brought by senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper, which aims to force the PM to request a Brexit extension rather than leave the EU without a deal.
Despite communications over the weekend, there were no further talks with Labour scheduled for Monday.
However, Sir Keir - who is part of Labour's negotiating team - added: "I have no doubt things will develop today."
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the party was now "expecting [an] updated proposal" from the government, and more formal talks could take place this afternoon.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Mrs May was leaving "no stone unturned" to try and resolve Brexit, while Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that all sides needed to be "prepared to compromise" to "fulfil the primary objective" of leaving the EU.
But shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald told BBC's Radio 4's Today programme that talks between the parties had "not been entirely productive".
Several Conservatives have also strongly criticised the move, with the former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson using his column in Monday's Daily Telegraph to warn that Tory MPs would not allow Mrs May to "surrender" to Mr Corbyn.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is in Dublin for talks with the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
The pair are expected to discuss developments in London, as well as ongoing planning for a possible no-deal scenario.
On Sunday, Mrs May tweeted a video message, explaining her decision to negotiate with Labour, saying: "People didn't vote on party lines when it came to the Brexit referendum.
"And I think members of the public want to see their politicians working together more often."
If no compromise can be reached with Labour, Mrs May has committed to putting a series of Brexit options to the Commons and being bound by the result.
Sir Keir said the talks had been taking place "in good faith" and that "both sides... have approached this in the spirit of trying to find a way forward".
But he added: "At the moment we are waiting to see what the government is putting on the table as a proposal.
"All they have done so far is indicate various things but not to change the political declaration [the non-legally binding document setting out the UK's future relationship with the EU] so the ball is in the government's court.
"We need to see what they come back with and when we do we will take a collective position on that."
Rebecca Long-Bailey, who is also a member of Labour's negotiating team, described the mood as "positive and hopeful" - but she told the BBC's Andrew Marr show the government's proposals "have not been compliant with the definition of a customs union", which is her party's key demand.
That would allow tariff-free trade in goods with the EU but limit the UK from striking its own deals. Leaving the arrangement was a Conservative manifesto commitment.
However, Solicitor General Robert Buckland told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour that "something approximating a customs arrangement or customs union" was the most likely outcome of the talks.
"In this particular hung Parliament none of us can get perfection, we need to compromise," he added.
Ms Long-Bailey also suggested Labour could be prepared to cancel Brexit by revoking Article 50 - the legal mechanism through which Brexit is taking place - if the UK was heading towards a no-deal scenario on Friday.
Although 12 April remains, in law, the date the UK will leave the EU, Mrs May has already requested that be rescheduled until the end of June.
BBC political correspondent Vicki Young said if EU leaders did not think she had a credible plan to get Parliament behind a deal, they might refuse or insist on a much lengthier extension to the Brexit process.
This outcome is opposed by some Tory Brexiteers as it would mean the UK having to take part in European Parliamentary elections.
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PM Theresa May has struck a last-minute deal with the EU in a bid to move Brexit talks on to the next phase.
There will be no "hard border" with Ireland; and the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU will be protected.
The so-called "divorce bill" will amount to between £35bn and £39bn, Downing Street sources say.
The European Commission president said it was a "breakthrough" and he was confident EU leaders will approve it.
They are due to meet next Thursday for a European Council summit and need to give their backing to the deal if the next phase of negotiations are to begin.
Talks can then move onto a transition deal to cover a period of up to two years after Brexit, and the "framework for the future relationship" - preliminary discussions about a future trade deal, although the EU says a deal can only be finalised once the UK has left the EU.
A final withdrawal treaty and transition deal will have to be ratified by the EU nations and the UK Parliament, before the UK leaves in March 2019.
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, whose opposition on Monday led to talks breaking down,  said there was still "more work to be done" on the border issue and how it votes on the final deal "will depend on its contents". Mrs May depends on the party's support to win key votes in Westminster.
The pound was trading at a six-month high against the euro as news broke of the draft agreement.
The UK government and the EU want to maintain the free flow of goods, without border checks that they fear could threaten a return to The Troubles, but the DUP does not want Northern Ireland to be treated differently to the rest of the UK after Brexit.
The joint EU-UK document says any future deal must protect "North-South co-operation" and hold to the UK's "guarantee of avoiding a hard border".
The agreement also says "no new regulatory barriers" will be allowed between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and that Northern Ireland's businesses will continue to have "unfettered access" to the UK internal market - a passage thought to have been added to meet DUP concerns.
But it also sets out a fallback position if the UK fails to agree a trade deal. This could prove controversial because it says there will continue to be "full alignment" between the EU and Northern Ireland on some elements of cross-border trade, as set out in the Good Friday Agreement.
The DUP would have preferred this not to be in the agreement, says the BBC's Chris Morris, and there could be some hard negotiating to do further down the line.
Agreement has been reached on what happens to the three million EU citizens living in the UK and more than a million UK citizens in EU states after Brexit.
EU citizens currently in the UK would be allowed to continue living and working there - and those already in the country who do not yet have permanent residency would be able to acquire it after Brexit.
Freedom of movement could continue for two years after March 2019, although the UK says new arrivals will have to register.
The plan is that UK citizens in living in an EU country would get the same rights, although they would not retain them if they moved to another EU country.
For eight years after Brexit, UK courts will be able to refer cases involving EU nationals to the European Court of Justice for interpretation.
But the campaign group the 3million, which represents EU citizens in the UK, said there was "still no clarity around the registration criteria for these rights" and said of the eight years: "Our rights should not have an expiry date".
A figure is not mentioned in the text of the agreement but Downing Street sources says it will be between £35bn and £39bn.  It will be paid over four years and the precise figure is unlikely to be known for some time.
EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU had agreed to drop the cost of relocating UK-based EU agencies from the final divorce bill.
The prime minister said it would be "fair to the British taxpayer" and would mean the UK in future "will be able to invest more in our priorities at home, such as housing, schools and the NHS".
Technically a future trade deal cannot be signed while the UK remains a member of the EU but "preliminary and preparatory discussions" can begin.
But the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said the withdrawal treaty and transition deal need to be ready by October 2018 - in order that they can be ratified by March 2019, before the "real negotiation" begins on the future relationship.
Mr Barnier suggested on Friday that the only option for a future trade arrangement was a Canada-style deal, rather than a one based on Norway, which retains free movement and unrestricted access to the single market but pays into the EU budget.
The European Council wants the UK to remain a "member" of the EU's customs union and single market and to remain under the full jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice during the transition period, according to a leaked document.
The DUP, whose opposition on Monday led to talks breaking down, say there have been six "substantial changes" to the text.
Party leader Arlene Foster said they would mean there was "no red line down the Irish Sea" - meaning no customs barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
But BBC Northern Ireland economics editor John Campbell says there is a lot of hard negotiating to come and compromises to be made.
Another interpretation of the deal is that that it still leaves the door open for a special status for Northern Ireland, he adds.
What does Brexit deal mean for NI?
The prime minister made her decisions on Thursday night while the No 10 Downing Street Christmas party carried on.
It isn't celebration on Friday though for her government, but relief.
Theresa May's cabinet colleagues heaped praise on her, with Environment Secretary Michael Gove saying it was a "significant personal political achievement" for Mrs May while Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson tweeted: "Congratulations to PM for her determination in getting today's deal."
But Labour's Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer said Mrs May should "seriously reflect on her approach to the negotiations so far".
He added: "Despite being two months later than originally planned, it is encouraging that the European Commission has recommended sufficient progress in the Brexit negotiations."
European press relieved at Brexit 'white smoke'
DUP Leader Arlene Foster said it meant that Northern Ireland would "not be separated constitutionally, politically, economically or regulatory from the rest of the United Kingdom" and "in all circumstances the United Kingdom will continue to ensure the same unfettered access for Northern Ireland's businesses to the whole of the UK internal market".
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: "Move to phase 2 of talks is good - but the devil is in the detail and things now get really tough."
Lib Dem leader Vince Cable, who backs a referendum on the final deal, said "it reduces the risk of a catastrophic no-deal Brexit" but questioned if it would last or be "torn apart by Theresa May's own MPs".
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the BBC the estimated bill was "way more than we need to pay" and he was unhappy that the European Court of Justice would continue to have a role for up to eight years. "The whole thing is humiliating. We have collapsed at every level."

A plan that keeps the UK in the EU's single market may be backed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a Welsh MP has indicated.
After Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal agreement was defeated twice, MPs will look at other options.
Aberavon's Stephen Kinnock said "Common Market 2.0" puts "flesh on the bones of Labour's formal policy position".
The UK was due to leave the EU on 29 March but after MPs failed to agree on the terms, it has been pushed back.
Meanwhile, Conservative MPs David TC Davies and Robert Buckland have said brokering a deal this week must be a priority.
On Wednesday, MPs are expected to be allowed a vote on a range of Brexit options, in an attempt to achieve majority support for one way forward.
These include cancelling Brexit, holding another referendum - which is favoured by many Labour MPs, and leaving without a deal.
Mr Kinnock has for a long time made calls for the UK to remain as closely aligned to the EU as possible.
He told Sunday Politics Wales the "Common Market 2.0" plan would see a relationship similar to what Norway enjoys with the EU, with access to the single market.
But opponents have said this would leave the UK too closely aligned with the EU's rules such as making financial contributions and an element of freedom of movement.
Mr Kinnock said he had held very "constructive and productive" discussions with Jeremy Corbyn and Labour's Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer.
"I believe that this is a real opportunity to re-set our relationship with the European Union and to have one based on democratic consent," he said.
"We don't want to be part of that deeper, more political union but we want the Common Market, we want that strong market-based relationship."
Meanwhile, solicitor general Robert Buckland said people were "fed up of uncertainty".
"The Europeans are running out of patience. They've spent a lot of time on this," the Llanelli-born, Conservative South Swindon MP told BBC Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement programme.
"They had to wipe out a large part of their agenda. They wanted to talk about China and other issues to do with the internet.
"They've spent a lot of time on Brexit. They want this over."
He said he wanted the votes of MPs on options to be "tempered in the light of that reality".
"They (the EU) have made it clear - the way out is the withdrawal agreement," Mr Buckland added, in a plea for MPs to get behind Mrs May's twice-defeated deal.
And Monmouth MP David TC Davies said Theresa May had to do "whatever it takes" to get a Brexit deal agreed this week - even if it means standing down.

David Davis has warned against "putting politics above prosperity" in Britain's post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
In a speech in Berlin, the UK's Brexit Secretary outlined his hopes for a deal that "allows for the freest possible trade in goods and services".
He also said he thought it "incredibly unlikely" there would be no deal.
The EU says negotiations cannot move on to trade until questions about the UK "divorce bill", citizens' rights and Northern Ireland are resolved.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Mr Davis's speech was delivered politely but implied "pretty significant frustrations on the UK side with the EU's attitude".
In a question and answer session following the speech, a German interviewer got a round of applause for suggesting the UK government looked to be "in chaos".
Mr Davis replied: "One of the issues in modern politics is that all governments have periods of turbulence.
"This is a period of turbulence, it will pass."
In his speech to an economic conference organised by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, he said trade between Germany and the UK was worth 176bn euros a year or "more than a thousand euros to every man, woman and child in each of our countries".
He said the "close economic ties" with the EU "should continue, if not strengthen" after Brexit, and he warned: "Putting politics above prosperity is never a smart choice".
The UK was seeking a "deep and comprehensive free trade agreement" of a scope the EU had never seen before as well as "continued close co-operation in highly regulated areas such as transport, energy and data", he said.
Britain would use an independent trade policy to lead a "race to the top on quality and standards" rather than engage in a "race to the bottom" that would mean lower standards, he told the audience.
He said the EU and UK needed to "think creatively" about their post-Brexit relationship but stressed the need for a "time limited transition period" to implement the new arrangements.
"And that would mean access to the UK and European markets would continue on current terms. Keeping both the rights of a European Union member and the obligations of one, such as the role of the European Court of Justice.
"That also means staying in all the EU regulators and agencies during that limited period. Which would be about two years."
He added that tariff-free trade should be maintained and there must be an "effective dispute mechanism" for any disputes that may arise, that should be neither the UK courts, nor the European Court of Justice.
"It must be appropriate for both sides so that it can give business the confidence it needs that this partnership will endure."
In a question and answer session following his speech, Mr Davis laughed off a question about whether the UK would be prepared to pay 60bn euros to settle its financial obligations.
He said the UK's aim was that "nobody will have to pay more ... nobody will receive less" but would not give a figure that the UK would be prepared to pay.
Asked if he thought the Brexit negotiations would end in "no deal", he said: "I think that's incredibly unlikely."
While the UK government has not put a figure on the amount it is prepared to pay to settle the UK's obligations but it has been estimated at 20bn euros (about £18bn).
The Sun newspaper reported on Thursday that the prime minister was preparing to offer an additional £20bn to the EU to clear the way for talks about a transitional and future trade deal. Downing Street described that as "yet more speculation".
EU sources told the BBC last week that the UK had only two weeks left to make progress on the so-called withdrawal issues, including the amount the UK will pay as it leaves and Mr Davis's EU counterpart Michel Barnier said "time is pressing" to get agreement on the bill.

European Council President Donald Tusk has quoted lyrics from John Lennon's Imagine to suggest the door remains open to the UK staying in the EU.
Ahead of a Brussels summit he said of that prospect: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
Theresa May, who has said the UK will honour the referendum vote to leave, was due to outline her plans for the issue of expats' rights to EU leaders.
Speaking at the summit she hailed the "constructive" start to Brexit talks.
The gathering of 28 EU member states' leaders comes the day after measures to enable Brexit dominated the Queen's Speech. Mrs May's Conservatives are still trying to secure the Commons support needed to pass their programme.
Mrs May told reporters as she arrived: "I'm going to be setting out some of the UK's plans particularly on how we propose to protect the rights of EU citizens and UK citizens as we leave.
"That's been an important issue. We've wanted it to be one of the early issues to be considered in the negotiations. That is now the case. That work is starting."
She also said she would be raising other important issues, including how European leaders could work together to stop the spread of extremism online and ensure there was no "safe space" online for terrorists.
Brexit negotiations began on Monday.
Speaking before the summit, Mr Tusk said: "It is a most difficult process, for which the EU is well prepared. You can hear different predictions coming from different people about the possible outcome of these negotiations - hard Brexit, soft Brexit or no deal.
"Some of my British friends have even asked me whether Brexit could be reversed and whether I could imagine an outcome where the UK stays part of the EU.
"I told them that, in fact, the European Union was built on dreams that seemed impossible to achieve. So, who knows. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
His comments were raised at a press conference in Brussels later with President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, who said: "In Europe, I never have illusions because I don't want to lose them."
But Mr Tusk said: "I still have dreams. Politics without dreams - it would be a nightmare."
"If you had my experience from my part of Europe you would know that miracles do happen and some of my political dreams have come true... but at the same time I am a realist, this is why first of all we should start our negotiations as effectively as possible and the final decision... this is a decision for Britain and UK citizens."
Earlier Chancellor Philip Hammond told BBC Radio 4's Today he wanted an early agreement on the principle of a "transitional" period to reassure business there would not be a "cliff edge" when the UK leaves the EU at the end of March 2019.
He also denied that a series of controversial Conservative manifesto commitments had been dumped in the wake of the disappointing election result.
He told Today that the manifesto was for a five-year period, but the Queen's Speech programme had been for the first two years, which are dominated by the process of Brexit.
Both the UK and the rest of the EU say they want to come to an arrangement to secure the status of about 3.2 million EU nationals living in the UK, and 900,000 Britons overseas, but nothing has been decided so far.
UK opposition parties have urged the government to make a unilateral guarantee to the EU migrants - but ministers have insisted a reciprocal deal is needed to ensure British expats are protected.
Mrs May will not be present when the leaders of the remaining 27 EU states hold a brief discussion about Brexit after her presentation. They are expected to consider the relocation of the two EU agencies governing medicine and banking which are currently based in London.
Of the 27 bills in the Queen's Speech, eight related to Brexit and its impact on immigration, trade and sectors such as fisheries and farming.
At the centre was the so-called Repeal Bill, which will copy over all EU laws into UK law, with Parliament then deciding which bits to retain.
With MPs voting on the speech next week, the Conservatives are hoping an  arrangement with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party will be in place to support their minority government.
But despite both sides saying they were confident of a deal being agreed, sources suggested to the BBC the DUP were "getting to the limits" of what they were requesting in return for supporting the Tories - with the chances of a plausible long-term deal, rather than a short-term bargain to get the Queen's Speech through, diminishing.
As well as clearing the Commons, Brexit legislation will also have to navigate the House of Lords, where the Tories also do not have a majority.
Another potential obstacle could emerge if the approval of the Scottish Parliament is needed for the Repeal Bill.
Speaking in the Commons after the Queen's Speech, Mrs May said there was a "possibility" the bill, which is needed to stop EU law applying in the UK, could require Holyrood's consent.
At the two-day summit, where the agenda is formally dominated by immigration, security and the economy, Mrs May will also brief her counterparts on the UK's commitment to a new £75m plan designed to stem the flow of illegal migrants from Africa to Europe.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says "extra time" may be needed to finalise legislation for Brexit.
Mr Hunt said a possible delay in the UK's departure from the EU beyond the 29 March deadline depended on the progress made in the coming weeks.
The PM is seeking "alternative arrangements" to the backstop, but the EU says it will not renegotiate.
Parliament's February break has been cancelled, which No 10 said showed all steps were being taken to avoid delay.
The UK is due to leave the European Union at 23:00 on 29 March. The backstop is an "insurance" policy to stop the return of checks on goods and people along the Northern Ireland border.
Earlier this month, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said that the EU may be prepared to grant the UK a "couple of extra weeks" beyond the 29 March deadline to finalise preparations for Brexit.
And BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said there had been "growing chatter" about a potential delay and a potential extension to Article 50 - the mechanism by which the UK leaves the EU.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government "has had two-and-a-half years to negotiate and has failed to do so".
But the prime minister's official spokesman said the government remained committed to leaving the EU on 29 March.
"The fact that recess won't be taking place shows you that we are taking all available steps to make sure that 29 March is our exit date," the spokesman said.
Downing Street was also discussing the possibility of Parliament sitting for extra hours in the run up to Brexit, the spokesman said.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the government was "not talking about extensions" to Brexit at the moment, saying the focus should be "getting on with the job of completing the deal".
Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It is true that if we ended up approving the deal in the days before the 29 March, then we might need some extra time to pass critical legislation.
"But if we are able to make progress sooner, then that might not be necessary. We can't know at this stage exactly which of those scenarios would happen."
Theresa May has been talking to a variety of MPs and EU leaders, including President of the European Council Donald Tusk and the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, after MPs voted on Tuesday for her to make changes to the backstop.
Mr Hunt said it was a "challenging situation" and the government was "not ruling out" any  potential solutions to the Irish border issue.
He said the commitment to the Good Friday Agreement - which protects against the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - would need to be demonstrated.
The EU's concerns that the UK could "access the single market by the back door" would also need to be alleviated, he said.
"If we can overcome those two issues, which I think we can, then we will be able to have substantive discussions," he said.
The backstop was one of the main reasons Mrs May's Brexit deal was voted down in Parliament by a record margin earlier in January because critics say a different status for Northern Ireland could threaten the existence of the UK and fear that the backstop could become permanent.
Alternatives to the backstop that the prime minister has said she wants to discuss with EU leaders include:
She also wants to discuss a time limit on the backstop and a "unilateral exit" mechanism - both options ruled out by the EU in the past.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier said on Wednesday that the Irish backstop was "part and parcel" of the UK's Brexit deal and would not be renegotiated.
Several Conservative MPs have been spotted going to meetings in Downing Street, including former Brexit minister Steve Baker, Iain Duncan Smith, Mrs May's close ally Damian Green and Nicky Morgan.
Ms Morgan, a former education secretary, said she was there to discuss a plan known as the "Malthouse Compromise".
Engineered by both Leavers and Remainers, the proposal includes extending the transition period for a year and protecting EU citizens' rights, instead of using the backstop.
Union officials have also been meeting with government officials in the Cabinet Office to discuss Mrs May's Brexit plan.
A Trades Union Congress spokesman said the prime minister's deal came "nowhere close" to offering the safeguards desired for working people.
"The strongest possible protection for workers' rights would come from sticking by single market and customs union rules," he said.
When asked about a Times article that said Mrs May was preparing to entice Labour MPs to vote for her deal with money for constituencies, Labour MP John Mann said a group of 10 met the prime minister two weeks ago.
Mr Mann, who was also spotted in Downing Street on Thursday, told the BBC the group asked for "a significant amount of money" for poorer areas, "so that we can actually move forward as we leave the EU".
But he said he had voted for the deal already, "so I can't be bribed".
"There's no expectation, this isn't transactional politics. We're asking for money for areas that have not had their fair share in the past," he said.
Meanwhile, Mrs Leadsom told MPs that "in light of the significant decisions taken by the House this week" she was giving the House notice that "there are currently no plans to bring forward a motion to agree dates for the February recess".
Parliament had been due to rise for recess on Thursday, 14 February and return on Monday, 25 February.
Mrs Leadsom said she realised it was short notice, but said their constituents "would expect that the House is able to continue to make progress at this important time".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the government of running down the clock on Brexit.
He said: "We delayed the parliamentary vote from 11 December until January - and then lost by the biggest majority ever against a government.
"Now we're going back to Brussels but we are very unclear about what we're going back to Brussels to do and when I asked the prime minister about this yesterday, she was incredibly vague.
"It is possible that there will have to be an extension in order to get an agreement because we cannot leave the EU on March 29 without an agreement. Crashing out would mean problems of transport, problems of medicine supply, problems of supply to the food processing industry that does just in time deliveries - and that simply is not acceptable.
"This government has had two-and-a-half years to negotiate and has failed to do so."

Labour has said leaked government papers "confirm its worst fears" about plans to dilute workers' rights after Brexit.
The documents, revealed by the Financial Times, say that the drafting of commitments on workers' rights and the environment in the Brexit deal "leaves room for interpretation".
Labour said it is a "blueprint" for ending "vital rights and protections".
But Business Minister Kwesi Kwarteng said the claims are "way exaggerated".
The leaked paper suggests that the government believes there is considerable scope to diverge from the EU on employment rights and other regulations after Brexit, despite its pledge to maintain a "level playing field" in Boris Johnson's latest deal.
In Mr Johnson's Brexit deal, references to a level playing field - the idea that the UK and EU countries keep their rules and standards close to prevent one trying to gain a competitive advantage - were removed from the legally binding withdrawal agreement.
Instead, they were put into the non-binding "political declaration", which describes the potential future relationship between the UK and EU.
According to the FT, the leaked document says the UK's and EU's interpretation of the "level playing field" pledge will be "very different", and the text represents a "much more open starting point" for negotiations over a future trade deal.
Purportedly drafted by the Brexit department, the paper appears to contradict promises by the prime minister on Wednesday that the UK is committed to the "highest possible standards" for the environment and rights at work.
It comes as EU leaders consider their decision on a new deadline for Brexit, having agreed to an extension in principle after the UK government admitted it could not meet its 31 October deadline.
The document will fuel fears among some in the EU that Boris Johnson is planning to shape Britain into a Singapore-style economy, with low taxes and light regulation, which could compete against Europe by potentially downgrading rights.
Suggestions that workers' rights could be diluted will also raise concerns among Labour MPs, 19 of whom voted for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to progress in the House of Commons.
Labour shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman said the documents "confirm our worst fears".
She said: "Boris Johnson's Brexit is a blueprint for a deregulated economy, which will see vital rights and protections torn up."
The Brexit department said it did not recognise the document, however.
And Business Minister Kwesi Kwarteng told the BBC the claims were "completely mad" after the government had worked to win the support of Labour MPs.
"It wouldn't make any sense at all to dilute workers' rights in building that coalition to land the bill," he said.
"We have said we will be better than our word. We have said our ambition on securing workers' rights will be stronger than the provision of the bill."
Environmental groups have also raised concerns after the document was leaked, calling on ministers to introduce legal guarantees on current standards in the Environment Bill, which is due to be debated for the first time in the Commons on Monday.
Benjamin Halfpenny from Greener UK, a coalition of groups including the RSPB, Friends of the Earth and the National Trust, said: "The government has had plenty of opportunities to put a commitment to existing standards into law, but has thus far not done so.
"Such a commitment would not prevent future governments from going further on things like water quality and chemical safety, just stop them going backwards."
A Brexit department spokesman said the government "has no intention of lowering the standards of workers' rights or environmental protection after we leave the EU".
He said the UK already exceeds the minimum standards in areas such as maternity leave, shared parental leave and greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has described another Brexit referendum as "the least worst option" and urged his party to throw its weight behind one.
Speaking to the BBC, he said Labour should then fight for Remain, even though "we might lose some votes".
Jeremy Corbyn has resisted calls to fully endorse another public vote, only calling for it in some circumstances.
But Mr Watson said Labour would pay "a very high electoral price" if it did not have "a clear position" on Brexit.
The nuanced position was blamed for Labour's performance at the European elections - it came third behind The Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats, with its share of the vote falling to 14%.
Afterwards, several senior figures criticised a lack of clarity on Brexit, and last week, MPs expressed their frustration at a heated meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
The PLP is still split, though, with some MPs in Leave-supporting areas warning against backing a further public vote.
The shadow cabinet was due to meet on Monday to discuss Brexit, but the meeting has been postponed.
Mr Watson - who has repeatedly put pressure on Mr Corbyn to back a further referendum - told the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg he believed it was now the only choice available.
Theresa May's Brexit deal with the EU has been rejected by Parliament three times and the UK currently has until 31 October to come up with another way to leave.
"Sometimes in politics your choices are the least worst option," Mr Watson said. "It is my honestly held view that Parliament will not be able to get a deal on Brexit and therefore the only choice, reluctantly, is to ask the people to take another look at it."
When asked if he would leave the Labour Party if things did not change, he replied, "I'm never going to leave the Labour Party," but added "sometimes I wonder whether the Labour Party is leaving me."
Earlier, in a speech to the Centre for European Reform, the deputy leader said Labour must be honest about the EU's strengths.
"Pro-European is who we are and who we have always been. Our members are Remain. Our values are Remain. Our hearts are Remain."
He told the BBC Labour "might lost some votes if we change position", but added: "I think it's incumbent on us to give an honest account of ourselves and make the case for why we've changed our position."
Mr Watson is calling for a one-off meeting or ballot of members to be held to vote on a shift in policy - warning Labour could not afford to wait until its party conference in late September.
But as he gave his speech, Labour chairman Ian Lavery - who is against another referendum - tweeted that "ignoring Leave voters" was not a sensible move.
Labour MP John Mann warned adopting an overtly Remain position would lead to Labour losing the next general election "by a significant amount".
He said if Labour "turned its back" on voters in the North who voted Leave, "then Tom Watson won't be deputy, Jeremy Corbyn won't be prime minister."
Labour MP Kerry McCarthy said she would commend Mr Watson for "speaking out", but shadow ministers needed to "meet urgently for a proper discussion on Brexit".
"We need to be clear where Labour stands, and if [the] shadow cabinet can't agree, put it to the members," Ms McCarthy posted on Twitter.
Mr Watson has received support from a number of colleagues, including Jess Phillips and Anna Turley.
Another MP, Siobhain McDonagh, tweeted: "I have had my differences with Tom Watson over the years but this video is brilliant and his argument is bang on! So many Labour members will be cheering him on!"
Laura Kuenssberg says plenty of Labour MPs are worried because they represent constituencies with Leave voters, but there is no question the balance in the party is on the other side.
"There are plenty of senior people - including those absolutely loyal to Jeremy Corbyn - who think it is time for the leadership to make a clearer statement arguing for another referendum and for Britain to stay in EU," she says.
"Some of those think it is vital to do before the summer and they predict we may end up with an election in the autumn with the Tories arguing for Leave and Labour arguing for Remain."
However, Mr Watson said all strands of opinion within the party are entitled to be heard.
He also argued that the "core" EU values of internationalism, solidarity and freedom are also the values of Labour.
"Some people have begun to equate support for Europe with class identity - I don't think that's right or helpful," he said.
"The majority of Labour people are supportive of Europe and that support is not dictated by social class."

Negotiators from the UK and EU are having what has been described as "intense technical discussions" in an attempt to agree a new Brexit deal.
About a dozen British officials, including the UK's EU adviser David Frost, are taking part in the talks at the EU Commission in Brussels.
The meetings are expected to continue through the weekend.
But European Council President Donald Tusk has suggested there is only the slightest chance of an agreement.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 31 October and a European leaders' summit next Thursday and Friday is seen as the last chance to agree a deal before that deadline.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson's revised proposals - designed to avoid concerns about hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit - were criticised by EU leaders at the start of last week.
However, on Thursday, Mr Johnson and the Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar held talks and said they could "see a pathway to a possible deal".
BBC Europe reporter Gavin Lee said there is no scheduled timetable for the discussions in Brussels and neither the UK or EU are offering any detail yet on the apparent common ground that has been found on the Irish border.
Our correspondent said the first public announcement on the talks may come on Monday, after the EU's 27 ambassadors have been updated on the progress so far.
Meanwhile, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer says Labour would take action through the courts if Mr Johnson tries to push through a no-deal Brexit.
Addressing the Co-operative Party conference in Glasgow, Sir Keir said if the PM did not secure a deal at the EU summit on 17 and 18 October, he must comply with the so-called Benn Act passed by MPs in September, which requires him to seek a further delay.
"If he doesn't, we'll enforce the law - in the courts and in Parliament. Whatever it takes, we will prevent a no-deal Brexit," he said.
This weekend's talks in Brussels follow a meeting on Friday between Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, described by both sides as "constructive".
In a statement issued later, the European Commission said: "The EU and the UK have agreed to intensify discussions over the coming days."
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan reiterated that "lots of details" needed to be worked out between both parties but said the "mood music" on negotiations "seems positive".
She added that "speculation doesn't really help" and politicians needed to "stand back and give those negotiations and discussions the best chance of succeeding".
On Friday, Mr Tusk said he had received "promising signals" from the Irish PM, before adding: "Of course there is no guarantee of success and time is practically up, but even the slightest chance must be used".
Mr Johnson also acknowledged there was not "a done deal", saying: "The best thing we can do now is let our negotiators get on with it."
Support from Democratic Unionist Party MPs could be crucial to get a deal through Parliament.
But DUP leader Arlene Foster said: "Anything that traps Northern Ireland in the EU... will not have our support."
Brexiteer Sir John Redwood believes Mr Johnson should "table a free trade agreement" which would "unlock" most of the issues around borders and immigration.
He added: "I think the border issue is greatly exaggerated, because it is in the interest of the European Union and Ireland to exaggerate it."
Ms Morgan was asked on the Today programme about reports of Downing Street briefings that the Tories could contest a general election on a no-deal Brexit ticket, if an agreement cannot be reached.
The Loughborough MP - who voted Remain - did not say whether she would contest an election on such a ticket, but said reports that Mr Johnson is preparing to fight a general election on a no deal platform are "wide of the mark".
Monday 14 October - The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen's Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will then be debated by MPs throughout the week.
Thursday 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday 19 October - Special sitting of Parliament and the date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday 31 October - Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.

The UK and EU say key issues remain unresolved following unscheduled Brexit talks in Brussels.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier met for more than an hour ahead of a crunch EU leaders' summit this week.
Mr Barnier tweeted that issues, such as how to avoid a hard border with Ireland, were "still open".
A UK government spokesman said UK and EU negotiators "have made real progress in a number of key areas".
"However there remain a number of unresolved issues relating to the backstop," he added.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said talks had "made progress" in the last few days - and dismissed reports of a row between Mr Raab and Mr Barnier - but added it was "clear the two sides are stuck" on how the Irish backstop might work.
No further talks are planned before Mr Barnier and Theresa May's summit on Wednesday, she added.
The meeting comes as domestic political pressure on Mrs May increases amid threats of potential cabinet resignations.
In a letter to the prime minister, Scottish Secretary David Mundell and Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson said they would not accept Northern Ireland being treated differently from the rest of the UK in any Brexit deal.
It follows reports that other top ministers have been considering their positions over the weekend ahead of a meeting of the cabinet on Tuesday at which ministers could be asked to give their consent to any agreement.
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
While there may have been a sense in Brussels that Mrs May was moving towards them, if anything the politics at home have become more fraught.
Thursday's cabinet meeting ramped up concerns and gave Brexiteers another excuse to rattle their sabres.
The DUP continues its warnings that it'd sink the administration rather than see the deal it fears done. Several cabinet ministers are thinking about whether they can go on.
And, more to the point, different groups of Tory MPs with gripes about other policies are scenting opportunity as the government is so vulnerable.
Any move for the PM has become both harder, and more urgent.
Her party won't accept a proposal to keep the UK essentially in the customs union. Parliament is likely to block no deal. The EU won't accept her Chequers plan.
Even loyal ministers are deeply worried - "She is like a chess player who only has the king left - all she can do is move one square at a time until she is check-mated."
The Raab-Barnier meeting came amid conflicting signals as to whether the two sides were nearing a deal on the terms of the UK's exit next March.
Diplomats from the remaining 27 EU member states were summoned for an update on the process at 17.30 BST, prompting feverish speculation that a deal had been done.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said that while Mr Raab's visit had an air of drama, it was standard practice in the talks for civil servants to hand over to politicians at key points like this.
Rather than a "victory lap" by Mr Raab, he said the UK's statement that "face-to-face talks were necessary to resolve several big issues" should be taken at face value, and Northern Ireland remained a "sticking point".
The issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will become the UK's border with the EU, is one of the last remaining obstacles to achieving a divorce deal with Brussels.
Wrangling is continuing over the nature of a "backstop" to keep the border open if a wider UK-EU trade arrangement cannot resolve it.
The EU's version, which would see just Northern Ireland remain aligned with Brussels' rules, has been called unacceptable by Mrs May and her Democratic Unionist allies.
And many Conservative MPs are unhappy with the UK government's proposed alternative, which would see the UK temporarily remain in a customs union until the Irish border question is resolved, either through technological solutions or as part of a wider trade agreement.
Brexiteers fear this will leave the UK in indefinite limbo, bound by the EU's rules and limited in the trade deals it can negotiate with other countries.
Writing in the Sunday Times, former Brexit Secretary David Davis urged ministers to "exert their collective authority" and reject the plans at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
But Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has been hosting other European foreign ministers at his Chevening residence, said such calls were "wrong" when "last-minute" talks were going on and Mrs May was "battling for Britain".
"The reason that's wrong is there is no-one who is going to be able to negotiate the right deal for Britain better than Theresa May. This is the time to stand rock solid behind Theresa May."
In their letter to the PM, Mr Mundell and Ms Davidson indicated they would not tolerate a situation in which Northern Ireland remained in the customs union and single market, while the rest of the UK was outside it.
They said the integrity of the UK "remains the single most important issue for us" and cannot be undermined by any withdrawal agreement with the EU.
A source close to Ms Davidson said the issue was a "red line" for her, while a source close to Mr Mundell told the BBC: "If you find yourself not agreeing with government policy" resigning would be the "logical outcome".
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, in an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr show, insisted there were "different ways" to ensure any customs commitments were "credibly time-limited".
And Scottish First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who wants Scotland to remain in the EU, has questioned whether Mr Mundell and Ms Davidson had "the gumption" to resign.

Donald Tusk has issued a "last call" to the UK to "lay the cards on the table" if a Brexit deal is to be done in time.
The European Council president said the "most difficult" issues were unresolved and "quick progress" was needed if agreement was to be reached by October.
Talks continue over the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU in March next year. What happens to the Irish border remains a sticking point.
The UK says both sides want to see a "faster pace" in talks.
But Prime Minister Theresa May has been unable to say much new at this summit - the last one before October - because she has yet to get her cabinet to agree on a blueprint for the UK's future relationship with the EU.
They are due to meet at Chequers next Friday, in what has been billed as a make-or-break meeting. Mrs May has said the UK will then publish a White Paper setting out "in more detail what strong partnership the United Kingdom wants to see with the European Union in the future".
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Mrs May would "come to Germany and we will have a longer debate on this", once the proposals were published.
At the close of the summit, Mr Tusk told reporters there was a "great deal of work ahead" on Brexit and the "most difficult tasks are still unresolved".
"Quick progress" was needed if a deal was to be reached at the next summit.
"This is the last call to lay the cards on the table," he said.
By the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg
European leaders can repeat the same message, louder and louder.
But this EU summit's instructions to Theresa May may as well have been shouted into an empty cupboard.
Because they know what she knows - that the past 24 hours of Brexit conversations are not nearly as important as the next seven days of discussions at home between Number 10 and the rest of the government.
And after more than two years, this time next week ministers should be nearing the conclusion of their country retreat at Chequers.
It's there that the prime minister hopes to find resolution in her team on a more detailed offer to the rest of the EU - easing, if not removing, all the contradictions in the Tories' positions.
He was one of a string of EU chiefs demanding more clarity from the UK prime minister, who left the summit before the 27 other EU leaders discussed Brexit together on Friday.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the British had to "make clear their position" adding: "We cannot go on to live with a split cabinet. They have to say what they want and we will respond to that."
EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier warned: "The time is very short" and that while progress had been made, "huge and serious divergence remains, in particular on Ireland and Northern Ireland".
He also said he hoped to see "workable and realistic" proposals from the UK on what the future relationship between the UK and EU should look like.
He said he was "ready to invite the UK delegation to come back to Brussels next Monday" to continue working on a deal.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said she understood that UK officials had already informed the EU Commission they would not hold talks on Monday and the "mini row over diaries" revealed "how tetchy things are".
European leaders at the summit welcomed progress on the legal text of the withdrawal agreement but noted that "important aspects still need to be agreed" including the territorial application of the deal "notably as regards Gibraltar".  Talks between Spain and the UK over Gibraltar, including access to its airport and the exchange of tax information, continue.
They also expressed concern that "no substantial progress has yet been achieved on agreeing a backstop solution for Ireland/Northern Ireland", if a deal on customs arrangements is not agreed by December 2020. when the transition period is due to end.
And they called on member states and EU institutions "to step up their work on preparedness at all levels and for all outcomes" - the European Commission president has said the EU must prepare for the possibility that no Brexit deal will be reached.
Mrs May's own cabinet is divided over what the UK's customs arrangements after December 2020 should look like, when the transition period agreed with the EU is due to end.
And there are disagreements over the future movement of goods and people across the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But asked if he believed Mrs May could resolve the differences, Mr Juncker told the BBC he knew the prime minister and: "yes ... she will".
On Thursday, Mrs May said a strong future partnership with the EU was in everyone's interests.
"I think both sides are keen to continue that work at a faster pace than we have done up till now and certainly we would welcome that," she said.
She added that the UK would publish a White Paper setting out "in more detail [the] strong partnership the United Kingdom wants to see with the European Union in the future".
But she urged fellow EU leaders to tell their negotiators the UK should be allowed to continue to take part in schemes like the Prum mechanism for sharing DNA profiles, the Second Generation Schengen Information System - a database of "real time" alerts about certain individuals - and the European Criminal Records Information System.
Without UK participation in such schemes, she suggested their collective ability to fight terrorism would be reduced.
Mrs May's Europe adviser Olly Robbins and Brexit Secretary David Davis were due to appear in front of the UK's Brexit select committee next week but it is understood that the appearance has been delayed until after the publication of the White Paper.
Former Brexit minister Lord Bridges, who backed Remain in the EU referendum, told the Evening Standard there was a risk negotiations could become a "rout", if the cabinet could not compromise, first with each other, then with Europe.
"If nothing changes, there's a danger the UK will have to agree to a withdrawal treaty full of meaningless waffle on our future relationship with the EU," warned Lord Bridges.
"With so little leverage in the next phase, the negotiations would become a rout. Worse, uncertainty will drag on, damaging our economy."

Theresa May says she has secured "legally binding" changes to her Brexit deal, a day ahead of MPs voting on it.
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned if the deal was voted down there was "no third chance".
They spoke at a joint press conference in Strasbourg after a late meeting.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister's negotiations had "failed" and the announcements did not contain "anything approaching the changes" she had promised Parliament.
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington announced the changes to the Commons shortly before the press conference, saying they would mean the EU "cannot try to trap the UK in the [Irish] backstop indefinitely".
Mrs May confirmed she would be opening the debate on Tuesday ahead of a so-called "meaningful vote" on her deal, which must be agreed by Parliament to come into force.
Last time her deal was put to Parliament in January, she suffered an historic loss as it was voted down by a margin of 230.
The PM also said her attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, would publish his legal advice on the changes to the deal before the vote.
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Monday morning government blues have been replaced by Tuesday morning nervous hopes.
The government does not suddenly expect its Brexit deal to be ushered through at speed, cheered on by well-wishers.
It does, however, believe that Monday night's double act in Strasbourg by Theresa May and Jean Claude Juncker puts it, to quote one cabinet minister, "back in the races".
The extra assurances wrought from weeks of talks with the EU will move some of the prime minister's objectors from the "no" column to the "yes".
Read Laura's blog here.
Mrs May flew out to the European Parliament late on Monday with her Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay for last-ditch talks ahead of the vote.
In the discussions with Mr Juncker and the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, two documents were agreed by all parties, which Mr Lidington said would "strengthen and improve" both the withdrawal agreement from the EU and the political declaration on the future relationship.
The first is a "joint legally binding instrument" on the withdrawal agreement.
Mrs May said it could be used to start a "formal dispute" against the EU if it tried to keep the UK tied into the backstop - the safety net designed to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland - indefinitely.
The backstop has been criticised by some who believe it will keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely, but the bloc has said "if used [it] will apply temporarily".
The second is a "joint statement" adding to the political declaration - the statement in the deal about the UK and EU's future relationship - to commit to replacing the backstop with alternative arrangements by December 2020.
Another document will also be put forward by the government, known as a "unilateral declaration".
The PM said this would outline the UK's position that there was nothing to prevent it from leaving the backstop arrangement if discussions on a future relationship with the EU break down and there is no prospect on an agreement.
Mrs May said: "MPs were clear that legal changes were needed to the backstop. Today we have secured legal changes.
"Now is the time to come together to back this improved Brexit deal and deliver on the instruction of the British people."
Mr Juncker also warned MPs that they would be putting everything at risk if they voted down the deal.
"In politics sometimes you get a second chance," he said.
"It is what we do with that second chance that counts. There will be no third chance."
He added: "Let us speak crystal clear about the choice - it is this deal or Brexit might not happen at all."
Labour leader Mr Corbyn urged MPs to vote against the deal when it returns to the Commons on Tuesday.
"Since her Brexit deal was so overwhelmingly rejected, the prime minister has recklessly run down the clock, failed to effectively negotiate with the EU and refused to find common ground for a deal Parliament could support," he added.
The Conservatives' partner in Parliament, the DUP, have been outspoken critics of the deal - especially the backstop.
After the announcement, a spokesman said: "These publications need careful analysis. We will be taking appropriate advice, scrutinising the text line by line and forming our own judgement."

Did anything change? Not that much.
But for Downing Street, this has not been a pointless stop-off in the almost never-ending Brexit adventure.
Because, while there hasn't been a breakthrough, the EU has agreed to more talks, which at least opens up the possibility of discussing the changes to the troubled backstop that has caused such political difficulty.
It might not sound like much, but "we can talk", is at least a different message to "this is over" .
In the perception war, which is, of course, part of this whole battle, Theresa May didn't leave Brussels with nothing.
And in these torrid times, given the last summit before Christmas, (remember, nebulous?) going home with a process, if not a promise, counts for something.
That does not, for the avoidance of doubt, remotely make the prime minister's next steps easy.
The EU's suggestion that a compromise with Labour might sound tempting and practical. It's also a step forward for some Tory MPs who are pushing for a softer compromise.
But as we've discussed here so many times, moving to a softer Brexit could result in the downfall of the government, it could be that simple.
David Lidington and Keir Starmer might sit down to talk within days, but there are evidently costs for both of the main Westminster parties if they work together to get this deal through.
On the EU side, where so many governments are coalitions, the idea of cross-party working has an inevitable logic. But at this stage, straightforwardly, that is not the government's chosen way out.
As things stand, the Opposition wants to find compromise and the European Union wants to talk.
Sounds good? It doesn't work like that.
Because the interpretation of the political reality in most of the government, is that Theresa May won't shift to meet Labour, not yet.
And Brussels won't move yet to meet her.
And as the clock runs down, the pressure on the prime minister goes up and up with no obvious way out.
But making a big switch simply carries too many political risks, at this stage.
Just keeping going doesn't sound like a cunning political strategy but perhaps, right now, it's the only and best plan.

The chancellor has warned manufacturers that "there will not be alignment" with the EU after Brexit and insists firms must "adjust" to new regulations.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Sajid Javid admitted not all businesses would benefit from Brexit.
The Food and Drink Federation said it sounded like the "death knell" for frictionless trade with the EU and was likely to cause food prices to rise.
Mr Javid declined to specify which EU rules he wanted to drop.
The automotive, food and drink and pharmaceutical industries all warned the government last year that moving away from key EU rules would be damaging.
But Mr Javid told the paper: "There will be an impact on business one way or the other, some will benefit, some won't."
He said Japan's car industry was an example of a manufacturing sector which found success without following EU rules.
Asked how differing regulations between the UK and EU may impact industries such as automotive and pharmaceuticals, he said: "We're also talking about companies that have known since 2016 that we are leaving the EU.
"Admittedly, they didn't know the exact terms."
Tim Rycroft, chief operating officer of the Food and Drink Federation, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "it sounds awfully like the death knell for the concept of frictionless trade with the EU".
He said it probably meant that food prices would rise when the transition period finishes at the end of this year.
Mr Rycroft acknowledged that some other industries might benefit from UK-specific trade rules. But he said: "We also have to make sure the government clearly understands what the consequences will be for industries like ours if they go ahead and change our trading terms."
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said it welcomed the chancellor's "ambitious" vision but said government should not feel it has an "obligation" to depart from EU rules.
Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director-general, said for many companies, "particularly in some of the most deprived regions of the UK", keeping the same rules would support jobs and maintain competitiveness.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said the automotive industry in the UK and EU was "uniquely integrated" and its priority was to avoid "expensive tariffs and other 'behind the border' barriers".
It said it was vital to have "early sight" of the government's plans so companies could evaluate their impact.
The government has not yet agreed a future trading relationship with the EU - it plans to do so in the 11-month transition period which begins after the UK leaves the bloc on 31 January.
During the transition period the UK will continue to follow EU rules and contribute to its budget.
The chancellor also said he wanted to double the UK's annual economic growth to between 2.7 and 2.8%.
However, the outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, told the Financial Times last week he thought the UK's trend growth rate was much lower, at between 1 and 1.5%.
Mr Javid said the extra growth would come from spending on skills and infrastructure in the Midlands and the north of England - even if they did not offer as much "bang for the buck" as projects in other parts of the country.
Historically low interest rates, which allow the government to borrow money relatively cheaply, were "almost a signal to me from the market - from investors - that here's the cash, use it to do something productive", Mr Javid said.
He pledged to rewrite Treasury investment rules, which have tended to favour government investment in places with high economic growth and high productivity.
Mr Javid said the rules had helped to "entrench" inequality and insisted weaker parts of the country would have first call on the new money.
In November, the Bank of England said a weaker global economy and its new assumptions about Brexit would knock 1% off UK growth over the next three years compared with its previous August forecast.

A government source has told the BBC there will be "no deal tonight", as officials continue to work on the technical details in Brussels.
The UK and EU had been hoping to sign off a revised Brexit deal before Thursday's crunch EU council meeting.
Boris Johnson has been trying to get Tory Brexiteers and the DUP to back his revised plan for Northern Ireland.
The new draft Brexit deal has a mechanism enabling Northern Ireland to approve or reject the border plans.
This would give the Stormont Assembly the chance to vote on Brexit arrangements four years after the transition period ends in 2020.
The EU believes this replaces the controversial Northern Ireland backstop with arrangements that are sustainable over time and are democratically supported, as requested by the UK.
The backstop was designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit and involved the UK potentially retaining a very close relationship with the EU - staying in the customs union - for an indefinite period.
The legal text of the draft still has to be approved by the British government.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said she understood the issues between the UK, EU and Ireland were "pretty much sorted", but that DUP sources were warning there were still gaps between proposals and what the party could support.
The Democratic Unionist Party has propped up the Conservative government since the 2017 general election and their support could be vital if Parliament is to approve any agreement Mr Johnson secures.
Earlier, the PM likened the Brexit talks to climbing Everest, saying the summit was "not far" but still surrounded by "cloud".
He will travel to Brussels to attend the EU Council summit on Thursday.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 31 October and Mr Johnson has repeatedly insisted this will happen, regardless of whether there is a deal or not.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has, meanwhile, been briefing EU ambassadors, ahead of Thursday's summit - the meeting was originally due to take place at lunch time but was put back twice.
Asked afterwards, whether there was a deal, Mr Barnier said: "We are working, we are working."
The issue of the Irish border - and how to handle the flow of goods and people across it once it becomes the border between the UK and the EU after Brexit - has long been a sticking point in the negotiations.
The border is also a matter of great political, security and diplomatic sensitivity in Ireland.
Mr Johnson's proposals for a new Brexit deal hinge on getting rid of the backstop - the solution to border issues agreed by Theresa May which proved unpalatable to many MPs.
However, his plans would see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK - something the DUP, among others, has great concerns about.
The DUP has, in particular, been demanding assurances around the so-called consent mechanism - the idea the prime minister came up with to give communities in Northern Ireland a regular say over whatever comes into effect.
A source told Newsnight's political editor Nick Watt the thinking in Number 10 was that "the DUP never want to own a solution - at some point you have to call their bluff. You just have to hope they will sulkily acquiesce."
The party's leader, Arlene Foster, held talks in Downing Street on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
As well as the DUP, Mr Johnson is also trying to secure support from Tory Brexiteers, most of whom are part of the European Research Group.
Chairman Steve Baker told reporters after a meeting in Downing Street on Wednesday evening his group "hope [to] be with the prime minister, but there are thousands of people out there who are counting on us not to let them down and we are not going to".
"We are just really wishing the prime minister well and hoping he has total success. We know there will be compromises, but we will be looking at this deal in minute detail with a view to supporting it, but until we see that text, we can't say."
As Wednesday draws to a close, a deal is still, DBP - difficult but possible, in case you haven't caught the lingo by now.
I hear from both sides of the Channel that the issues between the UK, Ireland and the EU are pretty much ironed out.
A schedule is in place for EU leaders to be able to sign off a deal tomorrow, discussing it as the first item on the agenda at the summit if the ink is dry.
The government has in place its plan to ask MPs to approve the hypothetical deal in Parliament on Saturday.
Despite all the obstacles, all the warnings about the tightness of the timetable, it is not yet too late.
Boris Johnson faces another deadline on Saturday - the date set out in the so-called Benn Act, which was passed last month by MPs seeking to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
If MPs have not approved a deal - or voted for leaving the EU without one - by Saturday, then Mr Johnson must send a letter to the EU requesting an extension to 31 January 2020.
The prime minister's official spokesman has confirmed the government will table a motion for Parliament to sit this Saturday from 09:00 to 14:00 BST.
That motion would be considered on Thursday.
However, this does not mean the House of Commons will definitely sit on Saturday - the government could table the motion but not push it to a vote.
The expectation on the EU side is that a new Brexit deal text is pretty much ready.
They are now just waiting to hear from the UK side whether it can be signed off.
Even if this text is ready, though, even if it can be signed off by EU leaders, the EU will not yet be breathing a sigh of relief because they have been here before.
Theresa May signed a Brexit deal with the EU and it went on to be rejected multiple times by House of Commons.
The fear is, if a new Brexit text meets the same fate, the UK government will come back to Brussels asking for more concessions.

Contingency plans in case the UK has to leave the EU with no deal in place are "well under way", a minister has said.
Dominic Raab said while the UK had to "strive for the very best outcome" from Brexit negotiations, it had to "prepare for all eventualities".
The Sunday Telegraph claimed there were plans to "unlock" billions of pounds in the new year to prepare for a "no deal" Brexit, if talks make no progress.
Six months of Brexit negotiations have not led to a significant breakthrough.
Last month Prime Minister Theresa May used a speech in Florence to set out proposals for a two-year transition period after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, in a bid to ease the deadlock.
Talks had stalled over key issues including EU citizens' rights, a financial settlement and on the Northern Ireland border.
UK Brexit Secretary David Davis has since said "decisive steps forward" have been made - although EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said there are still "big gaps" between the two sides on some issues.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that, if no further progress is made, Mrs May has decided to commit billions in the new year to spend on things like new technology to speed up customs checks, in case there is no trade deal and the UK has to revert to World Trade Organisation tariffs with the EU.
Appearing on the BBC's Sunday Politics, Justice Minister Mr Raab was asked why there was no visible sign of preparations for no deal - such as the recruitment of more customs officers and more infrastructure at ports.
He said: "This planning goes on, it's right that it does because of the prime minister's clear point of view that we need to search and hope for the best, strive for the very best outcome from these negotiations, but prepare for all eventualities.
"What we don't do is run around advertising it demonstrably. Why? Because we want to send the right, positive tone to our EU partners.
"So we don't go talking about what happens if we end up with no deal, but quietly, assiduously, those preparations will be in place."
He added that the government wanted to see "the best deal I think in terms of trade, security, co-operation" but added: "Those contingency plans are well under way."
Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry told the programme that after Brexit, Britain "should stay as close as we can" to the EU because it is "good for our economy".
"We need to leave the European Union but it is good for our economy - they're our biggest market - that we stay as close as we can.
"And the problem that the British country has is that a good half of the Tory party wants to go sailing off into the mid-Atlantic with no deal at all and that would be disastrous for our country."
EU leaders are due to decide at October's meeting of the European Council whether enough progress has been made on key issues to move on to the UK's post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
Meanwhile two Conservative MEPs who voted to block moves towards trade talks between the UK and European Union have had the party whip removed.
South West MEP Julie Girling and South East MEP Richard Ashworth were suspended from the Conservative Party after supporting a resolution in Strasbourg declaring that "sufficient progress" had not been made in talks to move on to discussions about the future relationship.
In a letter, European Parliament Chief Whip Dan Dalton said: "Given the seriousness of this issue, and your failure to discuss your intention to vote against the agreed position of the Conservative delegation in advance, I am therefore writing to inform you that I am suspending the Conservative whip from you until further notice."
Julie Girling told her local newspaper she had not voted to block trade talks but to "focus the minds of negotiators" and "drive more effective negotiations".
Mr Ashworth reportedly said he was confused by the suspension: "The vote was not about disrupting Brexit and the negotiations. We were asked a technical question about how much progress had been made and the answer for me was not enough."
The fourth round of Brexit negotiations began on 25 September, with the UK due to leave the EU in March 2019.

Donald Tusk has poured cold water on hopes of a Brexit breakthrough at Wednesday's EU summit, saying the Irish border was still a sticking point.
The European Council president said he had "no grounds for optimism" it would be solved at the summit.
And he called on Theresa May to come up with "concrete proposals" to break the "impasse".
The prime minister told her cabinet a deal was within reach if the government "stand together and stand firm".
Asked if she would be coming forward with "concrete proposals" at the summit, Mrs May's official spokesman said: "The prime minister set out her position yesterday (Monday). She looks forward to a face-to-face discussion with him tomorrow.
"There are many areas where we have made progress. More progress is needed on the backstop."
The "backstop" is a fall back plan for avoiding a hard border in Ireland if the two sides can't strike a trade deal in time - but they can't agree on how long it should last and what form it should take.
No new proposals are expected to be tabled or discussed this week and discussions are likely to continue at official level only.
Mrs May had already put forward a "workable solution", Downing Street said.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Mr Tusk said: "As I see it, the only source of hope for a deal for now is the goodwill and determination on both sides.
"However, for a breakthrough to take place besides goodwill we need new facts.
"Tomorrow (Wednesday), I am going to ask Prime Minister May whether she has concrete proposals on how to break the impasse."
He urged Mrs May to present "something creative enough" to break the deadlock.
He said EU leaders would discuss how to step up preparations for a "no-deal scenario", but stressed that did not mean they were not also making "every effort to reach the best agreement possible for all sides".
Both sides in Brexit talks were hoping that a deal on the UK's withdrawal from the EU, including the Irish border question, would be agreed by mid-November in time for it to be ratified by EU members and for MPs at Westminster to vote on it.
The UK and the EU had hoped that enough progress would be made at Wednesday's EU council meeting to call a special summit in November to finalise the terms of the UK's exit.
Asked if the November summit would still go ahead, Mr Tusk said: "It's for the leaders to decide whether we need an extraordinary summit in November or not.
"Logistically, we are ready, but we need the feeling that we are close to a real breakthrough. The clock is ticking."
Downing Street said Mrs May has told cabinet ministers not to be "downhearted" if the European Council does not set a date for a November summit, amid growing expectation in government that any final agreement may be pushed back to December.
The prime minister told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning she could not agree to any deal with the EU which created a new border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK - or one which locked the UK into a customs union with the EU indefinitely.
She says this would be the consequence of the proposals currently on the table from the EU.
The cabinet had discussed a "mechanism" that would avoid an indefinite customs union if a full trade deal cannot be agreed by the end of the 21-month transition period that is due to kick in after the UK leaves on 29 March - the so-called "backstop" plan.
But it was "not a decision-making cabinet", Downing Street said.
However, the EU is considering a proposal for a UK-wide temporary customs arrangement, Mrs May's spokesman added.
The prime minister told ministers progress had been made in Brexit talks on the "future framework" for trade and although there would be challenging moments ahead a deal with Brussels was within reach, Downing Street said.
"I am convinced that if we as a government stand together and stand firm we will achieve this," she said.
Mrs May used Tuesday's cabinet to rally support for her position among senior ministers, amid reports eight of them had met on Monday to discuss their concerns about it.
Downing Street said none of the eight - Dominic Raab, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Penny Mordaunt, Chris Grayling, Liz Truss, Andrea Leadsom and Geoffrey Cox - had threatened to quit at Tuesday's cabinet meeting and it was clear that she had strong support.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, who is travelling to Luxembourg to brief EU leaders ahead of Wednesday's summit, said he hoped a deal with Britain was possible "in the coming weeks".
"We are still not there.
"There are still several issues which remain unresolved, including that of Ireland, and therefore what I understand is that more time is required to find this comprehensive deal and to reach this decisive progress which we need in order to finalise these negotiations on the orderly exit of the United Kingdom."

Unless the UK's withdrawal agreement with Brussels is reopened and the backstop abolished there is no prospect of a deal, Downing Street has said.
The strong statement came after the EU pushed back against Boris Johnson's proposal to implement "alternative arrangements" for the UK-Irish border.
Mr Johnson has said the backstop is "anti-democratic" and must be scrapped.
European Council President Donald Tusk said it was "an insurance to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland".
Meanwhile, the government has announced UK officials will stop attending most EU meetings from 1 September.
The Department for Exiting the European Union said it would "unshackle" them from discussions "about the future of the Union after the UK has left" and allow them to focus on "our immediate national priorities".
Later this week Mr Johnson will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron for the first time since entering No 10.
Ahead of that, in a letter to European Council President Tusk, he called for the backstop to be removed from the withdrawal agreement reached between the EU and his predecessor, Theresa May, arguing it risked undermining the Northern Irish peace process.
Mr Johnson said the reaction to his demand for the backstop to be scrapped had been "a bit negative" but "we will get there".
He said he would enter Brexit talks with EU leaders with "a lot of oomph".
Mr Johnson added: "I think there is a real sense now that something needs to be done with this backstop. We can't get it through Parliament as it is."
He reiterated his view that EU countries were less likely to make concessions to the UK "as long as they think there's a possibility that Parliament will block Brexit".
The border is a matter of great political, security and diplomatic sensitivity, and both the UK and EU agree that whatever happens after Brexit there should be no new physical checks or infrastructure at the frontier.
The backstop is a position of last resort to guarantee that, but if implemented, it would see Northern Ireland stay aligned to some rules of the EU single market.
It would also involve a temporary single customs territory, effectively keeping the whole of the UK in the EU customs union.
Mrs May's withdrawal agreement has been voted down three times by MPs.
A series of voices from the European side rejected Mr Johnson's assertions.
Mr Tusk said those opposing the backstop without "realistic alternatives" supported re-establishing a hard border.
This was the reality "even if they do not admit it", he added.
The European Commission said Mr Johnson's letter did not contain a "legally operational solution" to prevent a hard Irish border.
"It does not set out what any alternative arrangements could be," a spokeswoman said, and "recognises that there is no guarantee such arrangements would be in place by the end of the transitional period".
Guy Verhofstadt, Brexit spokesman for the European Parliament, said the backstop was "a vital insurance policy... supported by the people of the island of Ireland".
And speaking in Iceland, Chancellor Merkel said: "Once we have a practical solution to ensure that the Good Friday Agreement continues to apply, then we don't need the backstop of course."
A Downing Street spokesperson insisted the UK government was "ready to negotiate, in good faith, an alternative to the backstop, with provisions to ensure that the Irish border issues are dealt with where they should always have been: in the negotiations on the future agreement between the UK and the EU".
The question is whether Boris Johnson's letter to the EU is intended as the start of negotiations - or designed to be the end of them.
He's suggested the only way to get a deal is to take the backstop out. Not to time limit it, or modify it, but to bin it.
But if he has a fully-fledged, different plan up his sleeve, why he isn't spelling out more detail of those "alternative arrangements"?
And why can't Downing Street say what additional reassurances would be available to the Irish government in the absence of a backstop, if trade talks falter?
The lack of detail on Plan B has made some critics in his own party wonder if his Plan A is simply to make an offer the EU can't accept and then blame them for no deal.
But No 10 insists he'd do a deal quickly if the EU was more flexible. In other words, Brussels would be expected to blink first as the prospect of no deal approaches.
So far, though, the EU is staring him out.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was unclear what the prime minister thought he was negotiating.
"He needs to recognise that by just holding the threat of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October towards the European Union isn't going to bring about a change, it's going to make things much worse," he said.
"He created this arbitrary date by his behaviour during the Tory Party leadership campaign. He needs to wise up and stop the nonsense of 31 October and start talking seriously."

Parliament has a "clear choice" to stand up for the UK against a draft Brexit deal or allow it to break up the union and make the UK a "vassal" state, DUP MP Nigel Dodds has said.
The Irish border has been the main sticking point in the talks.
The UK and EU have agreed to a "backstop", which would see NI stay aligned to some EU rules if another solution cannot be found.
Mr Dodds told MPs the prime minister had broken promises made to his party.
Several cabinet ministers have resigned, saying the deal presents a threat to the integrity of the union.
Mr Dodds was among MPs criticising the prime minister in the House of Commons amid a backlash over her plan.
The DUP's 10 MPs prop up the Conservative government to ensure it has a majority to pass key legislation in the Commons.
Mr Dodds said he could take Mrs May through the list of promises she made about the future of Northern Ireland but that would be a "waste of time because she clearly doesn't listen".
He put it to MPs: "The choice is now clear, we stand up for the United Kingdom, the whole of the United Kingdom, the integrity of the United Kingdom or we vote for a vassal state with the break-up of the UK."
But the prime minister said it was wrong to imply that she had not considered the interests of the people of Northern Ireland.
The real spat among politicians is over the UK and EU's agreement on the Northern Ireland backstop.
It would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market, if another solution cannot be found by the end of the transition period in December 2020.
That means that goods coming into Northern Ireland would need to be checked to see if they meet EU standards.
It would also involve a temporary single custom territory effectively keeping the whole of the UK in the EU customs union - until both the EU and UK agree that it is no longer necessary.
Mrs May has said there was no deal on the table that did not involve signing up to the backstop - but that it is only an insurance policy.
"I know there are some who said I should simply rip up the UK's commitment to the backstop but this would have been an entirely irresponsible course of action," she said.
Labour has also said it will not approve the plan, with party leader Jeremy Corbyn saying the backstop proposal would create a "de facto border in the Irish Sea".
Mr Corbyn said it locked "Britain into a deal which it cannot leave without the agreement of the EU".
Yes, four resignations by junior and cabinet ministers before 10:30 GMT on Thursday, including the Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab.
The DUP's deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, tweeted thanks to Mr Raab and others for "standing up for the union".
Karen Bradley has denied accusations that the political fall-out over the draft Brexit plan is a "car crash" and said the deal was "good for the union".
She was speaking in Belfast after meeting a number of business leaders to discuss what has been agreed by EU and UK negotiators.
"Nobody said it would be easy," said Mrs Bradley, adding that the majority of the cabinet is still behind the deal.
She gave Mrs May her full support, and said: "This is a woman who gets things done."
The Northern Ireland Secretary also appealed for "cool heads".
"The people of Northern Ireland when they see this deal will see it is a good deal for the whole of the UK and Northern Ireland, and I hope they tell their politicians that," she added.
Asked about whether there are question marks over the future of the government's confidence and supply deal with the DUP, Mrs Bradley said that was a "matter for the parties' chief whips".
Mrs May has faced a huge backlash from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), amid suggestions of moves within the Conservative Party to force a no-confidence vote.
DUP MP Jim Shannon said his party had been "betrayed" by the prime minister.
He told BBC NI's Good Morning Ulster programme that his party feels Theresa May has broken her commitments to them and is "up for an election".
Stephen Farry, the deputy leader of Alliance said it is important that the business community speaks out more loudly in the coming days, as the deal offers them the best of both worlds.
You can But Ulster Unionist leader, Robin Swann, said the draft deal had been "a monumental error of judgement on behalf of the DUP", which would have a devastating long-term impact.
The Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, has said people "should not talk down" the chances of a Brexit deal getting through Parliament.
Mr Coveney told Irish national broadcaster RTÉ that the deal is "the only one on the table".
An emergency EU summit is now due to take place on 25 November to agree the draft text.
After that, Mrs May needs to get MPs to vote for it. The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said that could take place in early December.
There have been a number of calls by senior Conservatives for the prime minister to go and there could yet be more resignations from the cabinet.
Former chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Laurence Robertson said he has written a letter of no confidence in the prime minister to the Conservative Party 's 1922 committee.
If 48 letters are submitted then Theresa May would face a no-confidence vote within the Conservative Party.

MPs, celebrities and business leaders have launched a campaign calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.
The People's Vote - which held a rally in Camden, north London, on Sunday - aims to unite anti-Brexit groups.
Organisers said some 1,200 people were at the event, including MPs from all leading parties. Pro-Brexit campaigners also gathered outside.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have ruled out a second referendum.
Actor Sir Patrick Stewart, who played Charles Xavier in the X-Men films based on the comic books, said the famous character would have voted Remain.
He told the rally: "Unity, common cause, wellbeing of society and debate were paramount to the belief of this fictional character.
 "Our country's future is at stake and we will not stand idly by.
 "That is why I support a people's vote on the final deal."
Britain voted to leave the EU by 51.9% to 48.1% in June 2016.
The UK will formally cease to be an EU member in March 2019, and the two sides hope to reach a final deal on the terms of its exit by October - in time for it to be ratified by UK and European parliaments.
Speaking to the BBC at the event, Labour peer Lord Adonis said: "People want a say... it was a vote in the dark two years ago.
"No-one had any idea what the consequences of Brexit were going to be."
And Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas told attendees that Brexit was "not inevitable", adding: "We'll do everything we can in Parliament for a people's vote. This issue is far too important to leave to the politicians."
Conservative MP Anna Soubry told the crowd the UK was about to embark on a course that would "make you and your grandchildren... less prosperous than you are now".
"I think the best and right thing to do is to put it back to the people and say you can have a vote on this deal," she said.
Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham, said: "We need more Conservative members of Parliament to be as brave as Anna and many others who defied the whip and put their country before their party."
Lib Dem Layla Moran said: "Whether you voted to Leave or Remain... there is nothing more democratic than allowing the people to accept or reject a deal that will affect our country for decades to come."
Meanwhile, pro-Brexit demonstrators also turned up at the launch, and Conservative MP Nadine Dorries argued there was no public appetite for a second referendum.
Appearing alongside Mr Umunna on ITV's Peston on Sunday, she said: "A second referendum, Chukka, which is what you're really campaigning for, is never going to happen. The public don't want it."
Earlier, actor Sir Patrick told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the "terms and conditions" of Brexit were "quite unlike" how they were presented during the run up to the 2016 referendum.
Sir Patrick also said he was motivated by "history and emotion" to want to stay in the EU.
"I'm a war baby and growing up a lot of the world was not good. So the day we joined was one of the most exciting days of my adulthood," he added.
Also speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson responded to the campaign, noting that the people's vote had already taken place:
"They voted with a substantial majority to leave the EU. We're now trying to deliver on that mandate from the people."
Mr Johnson addressed the remarks made by Sir Patrick, who also played the role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
"I think we'll get a great result and we'll be able to have, not only a gigantic free trade deal with our friends and partners across the Channel, but we'll be able to boldly go to areas we perhaps neglected over the past five years."

The EU could be ready to drop some of its "red lines" from the Brexit deal it struck with the UK to "help" save it, Chancellor Philip Hammond has said.
He did not believe the EU would scrap the backstop plan to keep the border open between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
But some EU leaders were "looking at what they can do" to change it.
Andrea Leadsom has, meanwhile, said the EU would delay Brexit for a "couple of weeks" to help get a deal through.
She told the BBC's Newsnight that due to our "very strong relationship" with the EU, a short extension would be "feasible".
But Downing Street said: "There is no change to our position.
"We are not considering an extension to Article 50 and are committed to doing whatever it takes to have the statute books ready for when we leave the EU on 29 March this year."
The UK is set to leave the EU on that date, with or without a deal.
Theresa May is battling to get her plan through Parliament, despite the fact it suffered an historic defeat in the Commons last week - losing by 432 votes to 202.
A major part of the loss was because of the controversial backstop, which is the fallback position for after Brexit to ensure a hard border is not introduced.
Without a hard border, there will be no checks on people or goods passing between the two countries - as it is now.
Critics claim the backstop plan separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK by keeping it more closely aligned to EU rules. But its backers say it will prevent political tensions rising along the border.
Downing Street said it was continuing conversations with MPs to address a range of concerns about the backstop ahead of the plan returning to the Commons on Tuesday - including with hard-line Brexiteers in the Tory Party and the DUP, which supports the government in Parliament but voted against her deal.
Both sets of MPs have said they will not vote for the PM's deal while the backstop is part of it.
No 10 admitted they were "not there yet" with a new proposal to take to Brussels, but said there was a clear message from the EU that they wanted the UK to leave with a deal and, in order to do so, there will have to be some changes.
Some backbench MPs are trying to make the deal more palatable by removing, replacing or time-limiting the backstop, while others are trying to force ministers to delay Britain's departure from the EU for up to a year if MPs can't agree on a deal by 26 February, to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme from Davos earlier, Mr Hammond said leaving with a withdrawal agreement was the "only credible and sustainable way" forward and warned of "very significant disruption" for the UK economy if the country left the EU without a deal.
But he claimed some European politicians were "thinking very hard about where the European Union has drawn its red lines [and] whether they really need to be in the place where they have been drawn".
He added: "What I am hearing from European politicians and commentators is that they do take this issue very seriously, they understand the challenge that we have got at home and generally - not all of them, but many of them - want to help.
"They are not prepared to compromise on the fundamental principles that the EU has set out, but they certainly are looking at whether there is anything they can do without compromising those principles."
French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said it was up to the British government to find a way out of the situation, not EU member states.
He told Today that the backstop issue was "done" and the EU had "nothing to give" on the Brexit deal apart from "clarifications".
Mr Hammond said the French had "always been the hardest in this debate" and talking to other European politicians would offer "a more balanced view".
By Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent
Speak to people from the government in private, and some will tell you they think minds are moving on their own side.
They hope some Brexiteers are open to compromise; willing to climb down, if only they can be provided with a ladder.
And now the chancellor has said in public that perhaps the EU is willing to budge at least a bit too.
On Tuesday, MPs will get a chance to express their views on a range of possible options, which could, depending on how the day plays out, hand the prime minister numerical evidence that Parliament may be able to support a variation of her Brexit deal - if the EU is willing to compromise too.
Publicly, the EU is saying what it has always said - the withdrawal agreement is finished and it isn't being re-opened.
So, the big question will be, is anything Parliament could potentially coalesce around and vote through also palatable to the EU?
We are not likely to get any indication of that until at least the middle of next week.
In an interview with BBC's Newsnight, Mrs Leadsom said she believed the government could still get Mrs May's deal through Parliament before 29 March.
But, she added: "In spite of everything, we have a very strong relationship with our EU friends and neighbours and I am absolutely certain that if we needed a couple of extra weeks or something then that would be feasible.
"We would want to think carefully about it, but as things stand, I do feel that we can get, with the support of both houses - the House of Commons and the House of Lords - with goodwill and a determination, we can still get the legislation through in time."
The deputy leader of the DUP, Nigel Dodds, said he had been "encouraged" by a change in tone from Europe - namely a speech by the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, who said on Wednesday that they would "have to find an operational way" of carrying out checks without putting a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Mr Dodds called it a "new and more realistic approach" and "a long way from the dramatic language EU spokespeople were using this time last year".
But Mark Francois, a Tory MP and vice chairman of the pro-Leave European Research Group, said: "The only thing that we would contemplate is if the entire backstop is removed from the [deal]."
"They'd have to take it out lock, stock and barrel. I don't know whether the EU would be prepared to do that, but if they're not, then we're not going to support it."
On Thursday, the German boss of Airbus, Tom Enders criticised Brexiteer "madness" and said his company might have to make "potentially very harmful decisions for the UK" in the event of it leaving the EU with no deal.
Airbus currently employs 14,000 workers in the UK and every wing on its commercial aircraft is currently made here.
In a video message, Mr Enders said: “Please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that ‘because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here’. They are wrong.”
But Mr Francois hit back in a live interview on BBC News, tearing up Mr Enders' words and saying: "My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German and neither will his son."

Ireland is not alone in Brexit negotiations and will remain backed by all member states, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said.
Mr Juncker was speaking in Dublin on Thursday.
He is in Ireland for a two-day visit as the impasse between the EU and the UK over the Irish border continues.
This week the EU warned that more work was needed on how to deal with the 300-mile frontier post-Brexit.
Mr Juncker started his visit with a meeting with Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar and Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney at Government Buildings in Dublin.
After the meeting, Mr Juncker made clear that a resolution to the border issue was crucial to the withdrawal treaty.
"This is not a bilateral question between Ireland the United Kingdom - this is an issue between the UK and the European Union," he said.
"We want to make it clear again and again that Ireland is not alone.
"We have Ireland backed by 26 member states and the commission - this will not change.
"I am strongly against any temptation to isolate Ireland and not to conclude the deal on Ireland.
"Ireland has to be part of the deal."
Mr Junker will receive an honorary doctorate from the National University of Ireland and attend an official dinner hosted by Mr Varadkar in Dublin Castle later on Thursday.
He will also address a joint sitting of both houses of the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas.
On Friday, he will meet Irish President Michael D Higgins and visit the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), Croke Park, and the GAA museum.
He will also watch a demonstration of Gaelic football and hurling.

Senior Conservatives have signalled they are not prepared to support a no-deal Brexit as they inflicted a defeat on the government in Parliament.
MPs backed an amendment to the Finance Bill, which would limit the scope for tax changes following a no deal unless authorised by MPs, by 303 to 296 votes.
Twenty Tories rebelled and, while its practical effect will be limited, Labour said it was an "important step".
But Brexiteers said the UK would leave the EU on 29 March, come what may.
Before the vote, No 10 said a defeat would be "inconvenient rather than significant", with experts pointing out there were other mechanisms available to government to raise money.
Former cabinet ministers Michael Fallon, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Ken Clarke and Sir Oliver Letwin were among the 20 Conservative MPs who defied the government by backing a cross-party amendment tabled by Yvette Cooper.
Sir Oliver, a government loyalist who has never previously rebelled over Brexit, said he wanted to send a message to opponents of Theresa May's Brexit deal, to be voted on next week.
"I want to make it abundantly clear to my honourable friends who are voting against the prime minister's deal, which I shall be supporting, that the majority in this House will not allow a no-deal exit to occur on the 29 March.
"I will continue to do so right up to the end of March, in the hope that we can put pay to this disastrous proposal."
Mr Corbyn hailed the development as an "important step" towards preventing a no-deal Brexit.
The Labour leader tweeted: "It shows that there is no majority in Parliament, the cabinet or the country for crashing out of the EU without an agreement."
By Vicki Young, BBC chief political correspondent
Downing Street was saying earlier that this would not be catastrophic if it was voted through, as it was a minor issue when it came to tax powers if there was a no-deal scenario.
What this is about is Parliament saying to the government "we can control this process" if it comes to it.
Opponents of a no-deal Brexit will say this shows they have the numbers to stop the government going down that path, although that will be argued against by the Brexiteers.
It also shows the difficulty that Theresa May has when it comes to legislation because she does not have a working majority.
Her arrangement with the DUP meant she was supposed to have a majority but if there are enough Conservative MPs willing to go against their own government, that disappears.
The prime minister could try to turn this around and say to the Brexiteers "you are jeopardising Brexit from happening at all" because there is not a majority for a no-deal Brexit in the Commons.
If you are trying to look for a bright side for the government, that is probably it.
The setback, the government's sixth Commons defeat since July 2017, comes as MPs prepare to resume debate on Wednesday on the PM's proposed Brexit deal, culminating in a vote next week.
It also comes at the end of a day in which senior ministers spoke out about the risks of exiting the EU without any agreement on the terms of withdrawal.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd told the cabinet that the public would take a "dim view" of government if it settled for a disorderly Brexit and suggested it would make the UK less safe.
And Business Secretary Greg Clark said such an outcome "could not be contemplated".
The Commons amendment is designed to make a no-deal exit harder by limiting the Treasury's ability to raise certain taxes after the UK left, without the explicit consent of Parliament.
The technical changes to a crucial piece of government legislation were intended to demonstrate to ministers the strength of opposition to a no-deal Brexit in the Commons.
Ms Cooper said although it would not block a no-deal exit, it "set a precedent" and showed MPs would not allow the UK "to just drift into it by accident".
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the vote was largely symbolic from an administrative point of view, as the powers being taken away from ministers were limited.
But he said it sent a potent message that Tory MPs would "revolt" if the government changed its policy and embraced no deal as its desired outcome.
Treasury minister Robert Jenrick said the government "neither wanted nor expected" a no-deal exit but defended "prudent preparation to provide our taxpayers with the certainty they deserve" and said all the defeat would do would be to make the UK "somewhat less prepared".
Many Tory Brexiteers believe a no-deal exit, which would see the UK trade with the EU on the basis of World Trade Organization rules, is nothing to be feared.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said "scare stories" that it would lead to planes being grounded and ports being gridlocked must be put to bed.
Tuesday's vote, he told Sky News, did not alter the fact that MPs had already passed legislation last year specifying that the UK would leave on 29 March.
"We have legislated to leave the EU, with or without a deal. That is what people voted for."
By the BBC's Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris
There's a big problem facing members of Parliament who want to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
They can't just show there is a majority in the House of Commons against no deal - they need to prove there is a majority in favour of an alternative outcome.
That's because leaving the EU - with or without a deal - is currently the default.
What we're likely to see over the next couple of months is what some are calling "guerrilla warfare by amendment" in the House of Commons.
The trade bill is likely to be another target - it would be needed in the event of no deal, to try to keep the UK trading on the same terms as it has now with the rest of the world.
The idea behind all this parliamentary manoeuvring is to demonstrate that there is a clear majority in the House of Commons against no deal.
But none of it, taken in isolation, will prevent the Article 50 clock ticking away until it stops at the end of March.

MPs have voted on a series of amendments designed to change the direction of Brexit.
Commons Speaker John Bercow selected seven amendments to be debated and voted on.
Here are the amendments, and the results, in the order in which they took place.
Instructed the government to rule out a "disastrous no deal" scenario (this option was supported by some Brexiteers but many MPs feared it would cause chaos at ports and disruption for businesses) and allowed Parliament to consider - and vote on - options including:
Forced the government to make time for MPs to discuss a range of alternatives to the prime minister's Brexit plan on six full days in the Commons before 26 March.
MPs would have been able to table amendments to be voted on at the end of the debate, which could have included alternative Brexit options such as Labour's plan, a second referendum, no deal and the Norway-style relationship preferred by some MPs.
This had the backing of some Labour backbenchers, as well as the SNP's Philippa Whitford, Lib Dem Tom Brake, Plaid Cymru's Jonathan Edwards and Caroline Lucas, of the Greens.
Attempted to rule out the UK leaving the EU without a formal deal by allowing Parliament time to pass a new law.
The bill to bring in the new law would have required Theresa May to seek to postpone Brexit day (currently 29 March) until 31 December, if MPs did not approve her deal by 26 February.
The prime minister would have had to do this by asking the EU to agree to extend the two-year limit on Article 50 - the mechanism paving the way for the UK to leave the EU.
It had the backing of senior Conservative backbenchers such as Nicky Morgan and Oliver Letwin, former Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb and Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake.
The Labour leadership had also decided to get behind this amendment and ordered Labour MPs to vote for it.
But Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he backed limiting any extension to a "short window" of three months to allow time for renegotiation.
Required the government to ask the EU to postpone Brexit day (without specifying for how long).
Seeks to prevent a "no-deal" Brexit by adding to the PM's motion that Parliament "rejects the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement and a Framework for the Future Relationship".
The two MPs are in neighbouring constituencies and have raised concerns over local manufacturing supply chains.
Calls for Parliament to require the backstop to be replaced with "alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border" but otherwise supports the prime minister's deal.
Theresa May ordered Conservative MPs to vote for this amendment.
Some Conservative rebels, who voted against the prime minister two weeks ago, said it was too vague and did not address their other concerns about her deal.
Others, such as former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, said they would support it if Mrs May indicated that she would press the EU to re-open the withdrawal agreement to make changes to the backstop that would be legally binding - something she has told MPs that she will do.
Northern Ireland's DUP, which keeps Mrs May in power, also indicated they would back the Brady amendment.
Neither of the Spelman nor the Brady amendments are binding on the government, although support for them puts political pressure on Theresa May to follow their direction.
Theresa May has already said she will return to Brussels to reopen negotiations on legally-binding alternatives to the "backstop".

There will be a hunt for a new idea.
Some magic new solution that might - maybe, possibly - provide a sudden surprise solution to Brexit's conundrums, in the way exhausted pilgrims might fall jubilantly on the Holy grail proclaiming, at last, that its jewels are beyond compare and a world changing treasure is now in their heroic clutches.
And yes, it is absolutely the case that different technical solutions will be explored again - whether they be ways of carving out potential technological solutions to managing the Irish border or additional paragraphs of legal language that could be constructed to suit all sides.
And, of course, in the next fortnight the government - and everyone in Westminster and in Brussels - will spend a lot of energy trying to work out which other possible ways of fixing the acute problem with the backstop could be done.
Fundamentally though, our politicians have been staring at the same problem for more than two years.
I'm reminded of how many months ago, during one of the other frenzies over how to "solve" the border issue, one official told me that, essentially, all that could really be done was to put the same words in a different order.
The next fortnight's efforts will be a bit more complex than that, but they may prove the old adage: "There is no such thing as an original idea."
Different ways of moving different promises or verbiage around, but a bold brand new solution no one's already thought of? Don't hold your breath.
But the facts of the situation in their most simple way are the same.
The UK is on course to leave the EU. That means the border on the island of Ireland becomes a border between a separate country and an enormous free trade area.
Everyone promises they don't want to have anything like a traditional border - but no one can agree on how to avoid that.
There is only one thing now that is certain to change, and that is the power of time.
The hope may be misplaced, but the hope nonetheless on the UK side is that as the clock ticks down with no solution, eventually, the fear of the consequences of the UK leaving without a deal will concentrate minds.
And the pressure of the approach of a deadline could in turn shift the politics.
Because it is the desire of EU leaders to avoid the worst that will either salvage Theresa May's deal, or not.
Her political drive to get this over the line will determine how radical or tough she is prepared to be.
And for different EU leaders, their own calculations - which are, of course, driven by politics in their home countries, as well as the role of the EU - will shape whether they are willing to flex at all.
Technical and legal rules and agreements are, of course, vitally important in all of this.
But if there was an easy solution in policy and precedent, it perhaps would have been found by now.
It feels like we are now entering into a final staring match, where politics - not policy - will decide who has to look away.
The problem, as ever, for Theresa May is that she is one against 27 others.

The UK could pursue alternative options if Theresa May's Brexit plan is rejected by MPs, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has acknowledged.
She is the first cabinet minister to publicly float the possibility of "plausible" alternatives.
Mrs Rudd told BBC Radio 4's Today programme she still supported the PM's plan  - but "anything could happen" if it did not get through on Tuesday.
She said it could be "chaotic" if Mrs May's deal is rejected.
Mrs Rudd said a so-called "Norway plus" option or another referendum would both be possibilities in such a situation.
A Norway plus arrangement would see the UK remaining in the European Economic Area (EEA) and joining a customs union with the EU.
However the UK would have to accept free movement of people - breaching a previous "red line" laid down by the PM.
Ms Rudd described it as a "plausible", but not a "desirable" option for a Plan B. She also said she was not certain it could be done.
Norway is not a member of the EU but it is part of the EEA.  While a cross-party group of MPs back a similar status for the UK - the government would need to apply to join Norway and three other countries in the European Free Trade Association.
Ms Rudd said the deal Mrs May reached with the EU last month was the "best option".
"What we need is a compromise deal - that's what the prime minister has proposed," she said.
Asked why she had previously refused to speculate on possible alternatives to Mrs May's agreement, Ms Rudd said: "We are getting closer to the vote.
"People are saying why they are not going to vote for it and I'm just pointing out if you don't vote for it, these are the other things that could happen. Are you sure you want them more?"
By Matt Cole, BBC political correspondent
Far and wide this week - ministers have travelled the UK selling the idea of Theresa May's Brexit plan.
The message has been a simple one - there is no alternative.
Until this morning - when the Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd opened the door to a Plan B...  and what might happen if MPs vote down the deal.
To be clear, Mrs Rudd says she still backs - and will vote for - the PM's plan. But she has now become the first voice from within the cabinet to entertain a notion of what happens next if the vote is lost.
What is more, politicians know how their words are weighed. The work and pensions secretary will have been aware that people would interpret raising the prospect of a Norway Plus relationship with the EU as her signalling her support.
Some will find it easy to believe that her declaration that such an arrangement would be "plausible" is none other than an early shot in the looming battle of the Plan Bs.
For there to be a plan B though, plan A must first be voted down.
And despite Mrs Rudd's protestations of faith that the deal's not dead, it's looking highly likely it will be killed off on Tuesday.
Ms Rudd told Today a lot of people had a "perfect vision" of what they think Brexit should look like, "and that perfect is not available".
"I would urge my colleagues to think about, first of all, why people voted to leave the European Union, what their interpretation is of that; and, secondly, what the alternatives are," she said.
She added: "If it doesn't get through, anything could happen...  and none of them are as good as the current arrangement."
Ms Rudd said she hoped an amendment to Tuesday's vote, tabled by former Northern Ireland minister Sir Hugo Swire in an attempt to win over Eurosceptic MPs, "will give some of my colleagues reassurance".
Many MPs have expressed concerns about the so-called backstop arrangement, aimed at preventing a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland if no trade deal is ready before the end of the post-Brexit transition period, in December 2020.
The amendment would enable Parliament to approve a decision to trigger the backstop and put a one-year time limit on it.
On Saturday, Colchester MP Will Quince became the latest Conservative to resign from the government over the backstop question.
Mr Quince stepped down as a ministerial aide to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, telling the Sunday Telegraph he could not support a backstop without an end date.
For what could happen after the vote, read here.
You can read a more detailed explanation of the Norway model here.

Cabinet minister Amber Rudd has told the BBC she is "committed to making sure we avoid" a no deal Brexit and would not rule out resigning over it.
The work and pensions secretary said she was "going to wait and see" whether the prime minister allowed MPs a free vote on potential options next week.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper has tabled an amendment to delay Brexit if no deal is reached by the end of February.
MPs heavily rejected the deal Theresa May agreed with the EU last week.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 29 March and the prime minister has faced repeated calls to rule out the prospect of leaving without a deal, if no agreement can be reached.
She says it is not within the government's power to rule it out - but various backbench MPs will try to move amendments to postpone Brexit if no agreement can be reached, when the Commons votes on a way forward next Tuesday.
Ms Rudd returned to the cabinet in November, less than seven months after quitting as home secretary in April 2018 over the Windrush scandal.
She told the BBC's Newsnight that she wanted MPs to get a free vote on the various amendments - but would not say if she would resign her ministerial post to back an amendment from Labour's Yvette Cooper.
The amendment would give time for a bill to suspend the Article 50 process for leaving the EU to the end of the year, if a new deal has not been agreed with Brussels by the end of February.
Ms Rudd said the "best outcome" was for MPs to support Mrs May's deal and "every day in Parliament we hear about MPs who voted against the withdrawal agreement who are reconsidering".
Pressed on whether she would quit to block no deal, she said: "I think it's too early for anyone to make those sort of commitments because at the moment there is a lot of change going on.
"I have called for a free vote for the amendments on Tuesday and we'll see what position the government takes."
Meanwhile, Chancellor Philip Hammond told an audience of business people on Thursday: "In the 2016 referendum, a promise was made to the majority who voted for Brexit - that they were voting for a more prosperous future.
"Not leaving would be seen as a betrayal of that referendum decision.
"But leaving without a deal would undermine our future prosperity, and would equally represent a betrayal of the promises that were made."
The chancellor, who like Ms Rudd campaigned for a Remain vote during the 2016 EU referendum, said: "The only sustainable solution is a negotiated settlement with the EU."
Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: "The chancellor must now surely consider his position in the government.
"Philip Hammond's comments today demonstrate he has acknowledged the damage a no-deal Brexit would do to our economy, jobs and living standards.
"If the prime minister fails to listen to his warnings and continues to refuse to take no deal off the table there is no other option, he must resign."
It comes as aerospace giant Airbus warns that it could move its wing-building operations out of the UK if no Brexit deal is reached.
Jaguar Land Rover also announced it would extend its annual April shutdown in car production, because of uncertainties around Brexit.
And Business Minister Richard Harrington also spoke out against a no-deal Brexit on Thursday saying: "Crashing out is a disaster for business… Airbus is correct to say it publicly and I'm delighted they have done so."
Later Airbus senior vice president Katherine Bennett was asked on Sky News whether the government had put the company up to issue warnings about the consequences of a no-deal Brexit.
She said: "No, the government didn't. The government have been talking to us and other industry representatives all the time, of course, and we've given them lots of information about the potential impacts.
"But they did say 'could you make sure that you make clear the potential impact of a no deal?', and we are happy to do that because no deal is potentially going to be catastrophic for us."
Theresa May met union leaders on Thursday as she continues to seek support for her Brexit deal, ahead of a crucial Commons vote on Tuesday. Last week the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU was rejected by MPs by a historic margin -  432 votes to 202.
The prime minister is hoping to tweak her deal to address concerns about the "backstop" among her own backbenchers and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which she relies on to keep her in power, ahead of another vote on her proposed way forward next Tuesday.
The backstop is the "insurance policy" in the withdrawal deal, intended to ensure that whatever else happens, there will be no return to a visible border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after the UK leaves the EU. But it has proved controversial with many MPs on her own side who argue it keeps Northern Ireland too closely aligned with the EU, and that the UK could be permanently trapped in the arrangement.
A guide to MPs' Brexit amendments
However as well as Yvette Cooper's amendment, her Labour colleague, Rachel Reeves, has also tabled an amendment to extend Article 50. Other amendments would ask the government to consider a range of options over six full days in Parliament before the March deadline, to set up a "Citizens' Assembly" to give the public more say or to insist on "an expiry date to the backstop".
Plans by a group of Tory and Labour MPs to table an amendment on another EU referendum have been dropped, after they admitted they didn't have sufficient backing from MPs, although the Lib Dems will be tabling an amendment calling for a "People's Vote".
It will be up to Speaker John Bercow to select amendments to put to the vote.

Tory MPs have been urged to rally round Theresa May ahead of a series of crucial parliamentary votes on Brexit.
Former home secretary Amber Rudd and ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith called for "discipline" and "unity of purpose".
Writing in Sunday's Telegraph, they said the EU Withdrawal Bill was key to delivering Brexit and any defeats would help Labour "frustrate" the process.
But ex-chancellor Ken Clarke said Theresa May was being "undermined" by her ministers and had to be "rescued".
Labour are urging Tory rebels to side with them in the Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday as ministers try to overturn more than a dozen amendments made by the House of Lords.
If enough Tory MPs decide to vote with Labour and other opposition parties, the government could be defeated on several key votes, including on amendments intended to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU and to give Parliament a decisive say over the final Brexit deal.
Labour's Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC's Andrew Marr that while it would be difficult for Tory MPs to rebel, they had a "real chance to change the course of the Brexit negotiations".
But in a show of unity, Ms Rudd - a leading Remain supporter in the 2016 referendum - and Mr Duncan Smith, a vocal Brexiteer, said Labour would be quick to exploit any government setback.
"Jeremy Corbyn will do everything he can to stop us," they wrote. "That includes cynically trying to frustrate the Brexit process for his own political ends."
In the joint article, the pair say the withdrawal bill is "not about competing visions of the future but about ensuring legal certainty at our point of departure".
Urging colleagues "to demonstrate discipline and unity of purpose", they said "we cannot allow ourselves to become divided and risk losing the precious chance to go on implementing policies that transform lives".
Housing minister Dominic Raab said he was "reasonably confident" the government, which will have the support of a handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs and the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs, would prevail.
Passing the withdrawal bill would be a "turning point" in the Brexit process, he told the BBC's Sunday Politics, as it would be the basis for a "smooth transition" after the UK leaves.
Potential rebels had to think "very seriously" before defying the government, he added.
Are rebels prepared to strike?
By Susana Mendonca, BBC political correspondent
With its small Commons majority, just a few backbench Tories siding with the opposition could lead to defeats for the government this week.
What isn't clear is whether those backbenchers unhappy with the government's approach on the EU Withdrawal Bill will go as far as to strike the kind of blow that could destabilise a prime minister who's already struggling to keep her Cabinet together after a week of threats of resignations.
The fact that two such high-profile polar opposites on Brexit - Remainer Amber Rudd and Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith - have joined forces to urge their colleagues to vote with the government is a sign of just how worried some on both sides on the Conservative Brexit debate are about the prospect of Theresa May being weakened in EU negotiations, or even toppled.
"Better the devil you know" is a phrase that comes to mind - as neither side wants to end up with a PM who leans more towards the type of Brexit they don't want.
There are Tory backbenchers like Ken Clarke who think the only way to tame the more vociferous Brexiteers on the frontbench is for backbenchers to inflict a blow that they cannot ignore.
So there will some rebels this week despite the warnings to toe the line - but will there be enough of them?
The prime minister, who will address all Tory MPs on Monday, has accused peers of going "far beyond" their role with their amendments to the withdrawal bill.
But former Chancellor Ken Clarke rejected suggestions Mrs May could be forced out if she was defeated - saying she would comfortably win any vote of confidence among Conservative MPs.
"We need to rescue the prime minister from this terrible treatment she is getting from key members of her cabinet," he told Sunday Politics.
He suggested Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who criticised the government's strategy last week, and Brexit Secretary David Davis, who reportedly came close to resigning, were using "Donald Trump methods" to undermine the prime minister.
The veteran europhile said MPs must take "control" of the Brexit process and he would back efforts to strengthen the terms of the "meaningful vote" that Parliament has been promised on the final deal.
"I know we have got to back the prime minister but kicking the can down the road for another month is hopeless," he said.
Speaking earlier to the BBC's Andrew Marr show, Cabinet Office minister David Lidington accepted the parliamentary arithmetic was "difficult" but urged MPs to "get behind" the PM.
But confirming the SNP would vote against the government on all the amendments, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the EU Withdrawal Bill as it stood was "unacceptable".

Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has questioned Speaker John Bercow's impartiality over Brexit.
It followed his criticism of the government's decision to cancel Tuesday's crunch vote on Brexit.
Mr Bercow said that doing so was being "deeply discourteous" to MPs.
A spokeswoman for Mr Bercow hit back at the criticism, saying he had "never allowed his personal views to influence" his chairing of debates and statements in the Commons.
Mrs Leadsom told BBC Radio 4's Today: "He's made his views on Brexit on the record, and the problem with that of course is that the chair's impartiality is absolutely essential."
She was asked whether she believed Mr Bercow's position - chairing debates in the House of Commons - was "tainted", she replied: "He's made his views known on Brexit... it's a matter for him but nevertheless it's a challenge and all colleagues need to form their own view of that."
Last year the Daily Telegraph reported on a video where the Speaker told students: "Personally I voted to Remain. I thought it was better to stay in the European Union than not."
There have been questions over Mr Bercow's neutrality on other issues in the past, including voicing his opposition to the US President speaking in Parliament in February 2017.
There have been reports the Speaker would stand down in the summer of 2019, although he has not commented publicly on the claims, which have been attributed to his 'friends'.
Mr Bercow's stance, in trying to persuade the government to hold a vote on whether to cancel the planned vote on the Brexit deal, was backed by a number of MPs on Monday.
Their current jobs mean they have to work together, and there has been previous friction between Mr Bercow and Mrs Leadsom:
The role of the Commons leader is to organise government business in the House, to chair the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee, and update MPs each Thursday on business for the following week.
The Speaker's main job is to chair debates in the Commons, and to keep MPs in order, as seen during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesdays.
The office holder - an MP who remains politically neutral - can direct MPs to withdraw remarks or be quiet, suspend a sitting of the House, or suspend MPs after 'naming' them for their behaviour.
He can also play a key role when there are disputes over Parliamentary rules and procedure - something which has been increasingly the case during the Brexit process.
Asked for Mrs May's opinion on the impartiality of the speaker, following Mrs Leadsom's comments, Theresa May's official spokesman said: "That's not a question I've ever discussed directly with the prime minister.
"What I would say is that established convention is that the speaker must remain politically impartial at all times. It is for the House to determine if this is not the case."
When asked whether Mrs May believed Mr Bercow should stand aside during the remaining Brexit debate and allow a deputy to take the chair, the PM's spokesman said: "It's for the House to determine these matters."
The Speaker's spokeswoman said: "Impartiality has been the watchword for John Bercow's Speakership. He is fair to all sides - both government and opposition - and to different points of view within and between parties."
She added: "Many would observe that his passionate view that all voices should be heard has led to statements and question times running on longer than anticipated."
During her Today interview, Mrs Leadsom was also asked about Theresa May's handling of the Brexit negotiations, and the decision to scrap the vote on her Brexit deal because she knew it would be defeated.
Questioned about how long Mrs May would remain as prime minister, her former leadership rival said: 'I'm not speculating about the future."
She added: "The prime minister is absolutely doing the right thing; going back to the EU and seeking reassurances, in the form of legally binding reassurances, that provide parliament with the democratic capability of preventing the UK being caught in a backstop."
On Tuesday, Mrs May is holding talks abroad with Dutch PM Mark Rutte, Germany's Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will fight for an "orderly Brexit" until "the very last hour".
Mrs Merkel said that current events were in a "state of flux", adding that European Union leaders would try to react to whatever the UK proposed.
The UK is due to leave the EU in 10 days' time, with or without a deal.
Prime Minister Theresa May is writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to ask for an extension. She will meet EU leaders later this week.
Mrs May's proposed Brexit deal has already been rejected twice by MPs at Westminster.
The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has ruled that Mrs May cannot bring it back for a third vote without "substantial" changes.
Mrs Merkel refused to be drawn on whether she would now support an extension. Addressing a conference in Berlin, she said:
"I will fight for an orderly Brexit on 29 March until the very last hour.
"We don't have that much time left... I must say that I'm not in a position to speculate on what I will do on Thursday because it depends on what Theresa May will tell us."
An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron also said any possible request for an extension would not be automatically accepted.
"An extension is not for certain", the aide said.
"First point: is there a plan, a strategy, to justify an extension?"
Also on Tuesday, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters that if Mrs May requested an extension, it would be for EU leaders to "assess the reason and the usefulness" for such a request.
"EU leaders will need a concrete plan for the UK in order to be able to make an informed decision and key questions will be: does an extension increase the chances for the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement?" he said.
Meanwhile, the European Council has adopted a series of contingency measures in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
The measures are aimed at limiting "the most severe damage caused by a disorderly Brexit", and set out proposals for transport, fisheries, education and social security.
They include ways to minimise disruption to UK students studying in the EU and EU students studying in the UK under the Erasmus+ programme.
By Adam Fleming, BBC News
The EU27 are feeling their way towards ground rules for an extension to the Brexit process. It cannot be an opportunity for the UK to renegotiate the divorce treaty.
Britain will have to take part in the European Parliament elections if an extension extends beyond the summer.
Will the UK have to sign up to a good behaviour clause where it promises not to use its veto over the EU's long-term budget as leverage to get a better deal? And it all has to be for a good reason, like pursuing a different future relationship or for an election or a referendum.
The EU may also ask the prime minister for more proof that Westminster will accept a delay.
This has prompted speculation about the concept of an extension being approved at this week's summit of EU leaders, followed by a parliamentary vote, followed by - wait for it - another summit on the eve of 29 March, which would be billed as the last chance to avoid No Deal.

So what next?
By the landslide standards of previous Brexit votes, this was a narrow defeat for the government.
And they may calculate that they can reel in a few more ex-Tory rebels add a few Labour MPs from Leave seats, and muster a modest majority for Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, in a further vote next week, even without the support of the Northern Ireland DUP.
In an ill-tempered series of points of order after today's votes, Jacob Rees-Mogg indicated that the government would now seek to hold a further "meaningful vote" to win Commons approval for the deal, paving the way for a Withdrawal Agreement Bill to put it into law.
Ah, argued a number of opposition MPs, wouldn't that amount to putting the same issue to the vote twice?
Remember that the Speaker prevented the government from staging a third vote on Theresa May's deal, on the principle that it was out of order for ministers to keep asking the same question again and again, until they got the answer they wanted.
The Speaker, John Bercow, did not give a definitive ruling, saying that he would ponder the matter and take advice.
LIVE: Latest reaction to Johnson's letter >
ANALYSIS: Chances of agreement still strong, says Laura Kuenssberg >
UPSUM: What happened on Saturday? >
EXPLAINED: How another delay would work >
If he allows the vote, Labour MPs in pro-Brexit seats will be under massive pressure.
They would much rather go straight to a Withdrawal Agreement Bill, where they can tinker with the detail to their heart's content - possibly allying with dissident Tories to write a customs union into it.
And for the government, putting down a bill without the support of the DUP would be fraught with danger.
An early indicator will be whether the government can win the programme motion necessary to ensure the Bill gets through in quick time.
Meanwhile, opposition MPs were keen to know whether the PM would follow the terms of the "Benn Act" and write to the EU, to request a further extension of UK membership.
His enigmatic reply that he was not prepared to "negotiate" an extension did not, it seems to me, exclude the possibility of sending the required letter.
There was a very interesting discussion of what might then happen in Lord Pannick's speech to Saturday's sitting of the House of Lords.
He suggested that a flat refusal to send the required letter should provoke the resignation of the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General, but that the Benn Act did not preclude the prime minister from saying to EU leaders he didn't want an extension - there was a very thin line, and the result could be "a very interesting case in the Supreme Court".
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary programme for next week, including that new "meaningful vote" and dicey-looking votes on the Queen's Speech, will have to be rejigged.
With no government majority, and its DUP allies looking very disenchanted, the chances of an amendment being passed are high - spelling further trouble.
Once, such a defeat would have automatically triggered the resignation of the government, but in the era of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act it is unclear what the implications would now be.
One educated guess, from Sir Bernard Jenkin, the senior Conservative who chairs the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, is that the prime minister would be within his rights to demand a formal no-confidence vote in the terms set down in the Fixed-Term Parliament Act - and remain in office unless and until such a vote was passed.
It's going to be an interesting week.
I promised a blog on what's coming up in Parliament next week, and indeed, it is more than half written; the trouble is, as outlined above, the agenda for next week will have to be reshaped. So I will hold off publishing it until I know more. Apologies.

When the party of government is conducting something akin to a political civil - or perhaps that should be uncivil - war, the main party of opposition will seem united by comparison.
Certainly Theresa May's deal has succeeded in bringing her opponents together to denounce it.
But according to the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, the position of both frontbenches on Brexit is "weird".
He believes Theresa May is wasting time seeking to resuscitate a deal that he has pronounced as dead.
And there is the spectacle of the current Labour leader holding back from tabling a confidence motion in a government he wants to remove.
More about that later…
Tony Blair now puts the likelihood of a new referendum at "above the 50% mark". He revealed that he had been speaking to Labour MPs who represent Leave areas in recent weeks.
He's been trying to reassure them that giving people a final say wouldn't  lead to Brexit-backing voters call time on their parliamentary careers.
His argument is that a referendum would be framed as a regretful consequence of a gridlocked parliament. But their fears are not the only, indeed, not the main, barrier to gaining a new referendum.
Labour's official policy is to call for a general election. And, if that doesn't happen, to keep all options on the table - including campaigning for a "public vote".
This just about kept the party united at its annual conference in the autumn, But now the strains are beginning to show.
Again there is unity around calling on Theresa May to bring her deal to Parliament next week rather than waiting until January.
Beyond that, the parliamentary party's apparent solidity begins to fracture.
MPs who back  Tony Blair's position on a referendum  - such as Chuka Umunna - have called on Jeremy Corbyn to table a motion of no confidence in the government.
The calculation is that it would fail because the DUP (on this issue at least) would back the Conservatives.
That would then tick the policy box - Labour has asked for an election, hasn't got it, and now it can move on to at the very least discussing the option of a new referendum.
But because it wouldn't succeed in bringing the government down, Jeremy Corbyn is unlikely to table a formal vote of confidence next week.
He is also not enthusiastic about confronting the prospect of a new referendum as a consequence.
Instead, we may well see a non-binding censure motion being tabled if Theresa May indeed delays the vote on her deal.
So, political damage could be inflicted on the Prime Minister without it rebounding and causing a problem for the Opposition leadership.
But as Tony Blair's  former spin doctor Alastair Campbell - a leading advocate for a new referendum - warned his fellow campaigners: "it may be time to face up to the fact that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn will do everything to make sure a People's Vote won't happen".
Certainly - from a different perspective - that is Labour leaver Kate Hoey's view of Jeremy Corbyn's position too. She and he were both Eurosceptic rebels through the Blair and Brown years.
And while the option of a "public vote" is Labour policy, I understand behind the scenes in the shadow cabinet the issue is proving highly contentious.
I am told that party chairman Ian Lavery and shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon have been arguing strongly against committing the party to a referendum - even further down the line.
Jon Trickett and - perhaps unsurprisingly, given his public statements - the shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner take a similar view.
The shadow education secretary Angela Rayner was never seen as a staunch opponent of the idea but did suggest another referendum could be seen as "undermining democracy" on BBC's Question Time.
The shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said at Labour's conference - without clearing it with his party leader - that Remain should be an option if there were a new referendum.
But I am told privately he has been quite cautious about when to commit to a new vote - and whether it could be won.
The shadow chancellor John McDonnell's relatively warm language towards the referendum option in recent weeks - even agreeing that under certain circumstances it could become "inevitable" - has led to tensions with the leader's office.
Many younger activists in Momentum - the movement John McDonnell and ally Jon Lansman set up  - support the position of "remain and reform" the EU and the left-wing Another Europe Is Possible - along with unions such as the GMB and TSSA - want a new vote.
There are those in Labour's ranks who think there is a "third way" between rejecting the May deal and signing up to a new vote.
The chair of the Commons Brexit committee, Hilary Benn, favours a 'Norway Plus' option - staying economically close to the EU but outside its political structures.
He wants Parliament to be able to vote on this option but I am told that Jeremy Corbyn does not want to embrace this policy, which would involve staying inside the single market.
Tony Blair's prediction is this: He doesn't necessarily think that the current Labour leadership will ever embrace a new popular vote.
But if Parliament rejects every other option, he believes Labour MPs will be faced with a stark choice between extending Article 50 and backing a new referendum, or leaving with no deal.
Under these circumstances, he argues, an "overwhelming" number of Labour MPs would opt for a new vote - and could cite party policy as cover.
Hilary Benn isn't so sure. He also thinks there is a danger that Parliament rejects all options - including his favourite, Norway.
But that this wouldn't necessarily lead to a new referendum. "All of the options have real and genuine difficulties," he told Radio 4's 'Political Thinking' podcast.
"All of the options have real and genuine difficulties. It may be that the prime minister decides 'well, I'm taking my deal to the country.'"
Well that, in its own way, really would be a People's Vote.

Jeremy Corbyn says he will ask his MPs to vote for the Article 50 Brexit process to begin, if the government is forced to seek Parliament's approval.
He said it was "very clear" his party accepted the referendum result.
Some shadow cabinet members are reportedly considering voting against triggering the UK's EU exit negotiations.
The Supreme Court will announce next Tuesday whether the government needs to seek Parliament's approval.
Ministers say they already have enough powers under the Royal Prerogative to go ahead with Brexit.
But campaigners argue that starting Brexit in this way would be undemocratic and unconstitutional.
In June's referendum, 51.9% of voters backed leaving the EU, while 48.1% supported remaining in the 28-nation group.
Mr Corbyn said: "It's very clear the referendum made a decision that Britain is to leave the European Union. It was not to destroy jobs and living standards or communities, but it was to leave the European Union and have a different relationship in the future.
"I have made it very clear that the Labour Party accepts and respects the decision of the British people. We will not block Article 50."
Asked if that meant he would be imposing a three-line whip - the strongest available sanction - on Labour MPs, requiring them to back Article 50, he said: "It means that all Labour MPs will be asked to vote in that direction next week or whenever the vote comes up."
The Guardian reports that four shadow cabinet ministers and several junior Labour spokespeople were considering defying Mr Corbyn and voting against Article 50 being invoked.
The Supreme Court's decision on whether a vote needs to take place follows a government appeal against a High Court ruling last autumn that MPs and peers should have to vote give their approval.
Following Mr Corbyn's comments, Green Party co-leader Caroline  Lucas said he was "trying to deny Labour MPs the chance to make their own principled choice on one of the most important decisions of the UK's recent history".
And Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said Mr Corbyn was "actively helping" the government in its plans to leave the European single market, "at a huge cost to jobs and prosperity".

I'm afraid, yes, it's back to the backstop.
As you'll know, unless it's your first time reading here, the arrangement to guard against going back to the borders of the past in Northern Ireland is at the root of the Tory rebels' complaints about the government's deal.
And frankly, all along it's been the most fundamental Brexit conundrum, with added nightmare political points because Theresa May relies on the Northern Irish unionist DUP.
Number 10's thinking, therefore, has been for many weeks now, solve the backstop and you might go some way to getting their deal through the Commons.
That's still been the stuff of horrors, however, because the EU and Ireland have been stuck together like glue, with both of them absolutely adamant that you can't mess with the backstop - it can't come out of the agreement and even though there's the odd voice like the Polish foreign minister yesterday, trying to be helpful, Brussels' message has been, there is no budging.
But a tiny gap might just have emerged from an unlikely source, the Irish leader Leo Varadkar himself.
Speaking in Dublin this afternoon he was talking in familiar terms about how a hard border wasn't acceptable and couldn't be allowed to happen.
That's why, he repeated forcefully, the backstop was required.
For a reminder of how it's meant to work, you can read my colleague's explanations here.
But he went on to say that if the UK was on the verge of leaving without a formal agreed deal, (remember, if there is no deal, then there is no backstop), then there would be an obligation to find a way, some kind of separate arrangements to protect trade and the peace process.
Note, he was not saying this was what he was hoping or planning for.
And he maintained the backstop was the best way of doing this.
But it matters because some in Westminster, including at the cabinet table, who believe that a separate arrangement to sort out this aspect of the troubled withdrawal agreement, could be a way out of the parliamentary gridlock.
In other words, take this tangle out of the deal, so that MPs can vote for the agreement with its most controversial bit removed, and fix the specific problems of the backstop in a different process.
That is not what Mr Varadkar was advocating.
And when such an idea has been floated previously, only a few days ago, it got short shrift.
But when all camps are so dug into their positions, any hint or word that vaguely raises the prospect of a way through, matters.
An Irish government source told me that if we end up in that kind of situation, the EU would still absolutely have to be involved in such talks - the border in Ireland would become one between the EU and UK and Brussels would have to be at the heart of any discussions.
But as the weeks march on, and the prospect of the turmoil of leaving without an arrangement comes closer, politicians might just feel the pressure in a way that makes the impossible become at least a possibility.

Sir Vince Cable has denied suggesting older Brexit voters were racist.
In a speech at his party's spring conference, the Lib Dem leader said too many older people who voted Leave longed for a world where "faces were white" and were "driven by nostalgia".
Tory MPs have labelled the comments as "wrong" and "unwise".
But Sir Vince called it a "simple truth of the matter" that the majority of the older generation voted Leave while younger people favoured Remain.
In his speech on Sunday, Sir Vince said a "nostalgia for a world where passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink" had driven some older voters to Brexit.
"And it was their votes on one wet day in June which crushed the hopes and aspirations of young people for years to come," he added.
Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme whether he was suggesting older Brexit voters were racist, Sir Vince said: "I didn't suggest that at all."
But he repeated his claim that "nostalgia for that world" was a factor in how people had voted.
"Why else has so much fuss been made about the change in the colour of the passport?" he added.
Conservative MPs have criticised the Lib Dem leader over his speech.
Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Sajid Javid said: "Sir Vince should be trying to bring country together, not seeking to tear it apart."
Tory party chair Brandon Lewis said his comments were "rude" and "offensive".
Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan said "calling 17.4 million people racists is unfair and unwise" and the deputy chairman of the Conservatives, James Cleverly, said "not liking brown faces" was not the reason he voted Brexit.
The Lib Dems are campaigning for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal, which the government opposes.
Sir Vince told his audience in Southport: "I've myself been on a journey. I confess that my own initial reaction to the referendum was to think maybe there was little choice but to pursue Brexit.
"I thought, you know, the public had voted to be poorer - well, that was their right.
"What changed my mind was the evidence that Brexit had overwhelmingly been the choice of the older generation.
"75% of under 25s voted to remain. But 70% of over 65s voted for Brexit," he said.
Sir Vince also took a swipe at his own party's lack of diversity - it has had a lower proportion of non-white MPs and candidates than Labour or the Conservatives in recent years.
"Looking around the auditorium, we are very, very white," he told the party faithful.
"We must prioritise making our party more ethnically diverse."

Boris Johnson has met Emmanuel Macron in Paris for Brexit talks, with the French president saying the UK's vote to quit the EU must be respected.
But he added that the Ireland-Northern Ireland backstop plan was "indispensable" to preserving political stability and the single market.
The backstop, opposed by Mr Johnson, aims to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit.
Mr Johnson said that with "energy and creativity we can find a way forward".
On Wednesday German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the onus was on the UK to find a workable plan.
UK Prime Minister Mr Johnson insists the backstop must be ditched if a no-deal exit from the EU on 31 October is to be avoided.
He argues that it could leave the UK tied to the EU indefinitely, contrary to the result of the 2016 referendum, in which almost 52% of voters opted to leave.
But the EU has repeatedly said the withdrawal deal negotiated by former PM Theresa May, which includes the backstop, cannot be renegotiated.
However, it has previously said it would be willing to "improve" the political declaration - the document that sets out the UK's future relationship with the EU.
The handshake between the PM and the president was warm and long-lasting. But it was the words that mattered.
President Macron said that, while he had been portrayed as the "hard boy" of the EU, he was simply being clear about where he stood.
He described the backstop both as an "indispensable guarantee" of "stability in Ireland" and the means of protecting the integrity of the European single market.
But the expectation that he'd refuse point-blank to renegotiate the Brexit deal didn't materialise.
Instead, he simply warned that any withdrawal agreement that the two sides might reach in the next month wouldn't be very different from the existing one. And he asked for more "visibility" from the UK on its alternative proposals.
It would seem that both Mr Macron and Angela Merkel are determined not to shut the door entirely in Boris Johnson's face, and perhaps equally determined not to be blamed for no deal.
Speaking after he greeted Mr Johnson at Paris's Elysee Palace, Mr Macron said he was "very confident" that the UK and EU would be able to find a solution within 30 days - a timetable suggested by Mrs Merkel - "if there is a good will on both sides".
He said it would not be possible to find a new withdrawal agreement "very different from the existing one" within that time, but added that an answer could be reached "without reshuffling" the current deal.
Mr Macron also denied that he was the "hard boy in the band", following suggestions that he would be tougher on the UK than his German counterpart.
Standing beside Mr Macron, Mr Johnson said he had been "powerfully encouraged" by his conversations with Mrs Merkel in Berlin on Wednesday.
He emphasised his desire for a deal with the EU but added that it was "vital for trust in politics" that the UK left the EU on 31 October.
He also said that "under no circumstances" would the UK put checks or controls on the Ireland-UK border.
The two leaders ate lunch, drank coffee and walked through the Elysee gardens together during their talks, which lasted just under two hours. Mr Johnson then left to fly back to the UK.
If implemented, the backstop would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market, should the UK and the EU not agree a trade deal after Brexit.
It would also see the UK stay in a single customs territory with the EU, and align with current and future EU rules on competition and state aid.
These arrangements would apply until both the EU and UK agreed they were no longer necessary.
Mrs Merkel has argued that the withdrawal agreement does not need to be reopened if a practical solution to the backstop crisis can be found.
Brexit is due to happen on 31 October, with no deal being the default option. The prime minister has said he wants to leave the EU with a deal, but that the UK would be ready if none is reached.
Mr Johnson will attend the G7 summit on Saturday in Biarritz, France, alongside other leaders including US President Donald Trump.
Asked about Mr Macron's comments, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he agreed there should not be a hard border on the island of Ireland.
He described the Irish peace process as "an enormous step forward" which "cannot be negotiated away by Boris Johnson".
Mr Corbyn has cancelled a trip to Ghana, urging MPs to meet him next week to discuss ways to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
He has proposed that MPs should help him defeat the government in a no-confidence motion and install him as a caretaker prime minister.
If he wins the vote, he plans to delay Brexit, call a snap election and campaign for another referendum.
The Liberal Democrats, SNP, Change UK, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party have agreed to the meeting with Mr Corbyn. But Conservative MP Dame Caroline Spelman and independent MP Nick Boles have said they will not attend.
Mr Boles, who quit the Conservatives in April over the party's approach to Brexit, said the Labour leader should prioritise a change in the law to delay leaving the EU ahead of a no-confidence vote.

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier says the Irish backstop is "part and parcel" of the UK's Brexit deal and will not be renegotiated.
Speaking at the European Parliament, Mr Barnier said it was a "realistic solution" to preventing a hard border.
British MPs voted earlier this month against the deal agreed by the UK and EU during 18 months of negotiations.
Instead, on Tuesday, they voted for PM Theresa May to seek "alternative arrangements" to the backstop.
The UK is due to leave the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 29 March. The backstop is an "insurance" policy to stop the return of checks on goods and people along the Northern Ireland border.
As it stands, the backstop would effectively keep the UK inside the EU's customs union, but with Northern Ireland also conforming to some rules of the single market.
It was one of the main reasons Mrs May's Brexit deal was voted down in Parliament by an historic margin earlier in January as critics say a different status for Northern Ireland could threaten the existence of the UK and fear that the backstop could become permanent.
Mrs May has said there are several possible alternatives to the backstop that she wanted to discuss with EU leaders.
These include a "trusted trader" scheme to avoid physical checks on goods flowing through the border, "mutual recognition" of rules with the EU and "technological" solutions.
However, Business Secretary Greg Clark told ITV's Peston programme that he did not think "those technical possibilities are there yet".
Mrs May also wants to discuss a time limit on the backstop and a "unilateral exit" mechanism - both options ruled out by the EU in the past.
The message from the EU though was the backstop remained an integral part of the withdrawal agreement - the so-called "divorce deal" agreeing the terms of the UK's exit from the EU.
Mr Barnier said: "Calmly and clearly, I will say right here and now - with this withdrawal agreement proposed for ratification - we need this backstop as it is.
"Rejecting the backstop as it stands today boils down to rejecting the solution which has been found with the British, but the problem remains."
Mrs May had a 45-minute phone call with the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, on Wednesday evening, described as "open and frank" by one source.
They told BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming that the PM had explained the result of the votes, but Mr Tusk reiterated the withdrawal agreement was not up for renegotiation.
The source also said Mrs May was told the EU could not keep guessing what might work, so it was up to the UK to provide solutions that could get a majority in the Commons.
The Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, also spoke to Mrs May and said the latest developments had "reinforced the need for a backstop which is legally robust and workable in practice".
Earlier, his deputy, Simon Coveney, gave a warning over Mrs May's future plans for the backstop, saying that anyone who allowed the "borders and divisions of the past" to return would be "judged harshly in history".
He added: "There are some things that are more important than economic relationships and this is one of them."
President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said he believed Mrs May's "personal commitment" to avoid "slipping back to darker times past", but he said the "safety net" of the backstop was necessary to prevent it.
He added: "We have no desire to use this safety net, [but] no safety net can be truly safe if it can just be removed at any time."
But UK MEP Nigel Farage attacked the EU, claiming it had pushed Mrs May into the backstop in the first place.
The former UKIP leader told the European Parliament: "I accept [Mrs May] made a dreadful mistake by signing up to the backstop, [but] you summoned her at 04:15 in the morning, she left Downing Street, she went to meet the ultimatum you set her.
"She signed up to something that has proved to be a disaster. She signed up to something that no country, unless it had been defeated in war, would have signed up to.
"We now realise that mistake and the House of Commons, the country is overall looking for a deal."
And Conservative MEP Ashley Fox said the backstop would create a hard border, rather than prevent one, unless it was amended.
At the same time as the European Parliament was discussing Brexit, Mrs May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were holding their long-awaited meeting on the issue, following an earlier clash at Prime Minister's Questions.
In the Commons Mr Corbyn repeatedly urged Mrs May to rule out a no-deal Brexit after a majority of MPs voted against the prospect in another vote on Tuesday.
But Mrs May said: "You cannot just vote to reject no deal, you have to support a deal."
Their later meeting, away from the cameras, was "very cordial", according to a Labour spokesperson.
"There was a useful exchange of views. We made the case for our plan. There was a detailed exchange of views on a customs union and single market relationship."
The pair agreed to meet again soon, the spokesperson added.
The European Parliament's Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, echoed his colleagues by criticising the UK for not being clear about what they wanted from the deal.
He said the two years had been "exhausting" on both sides of the Channel, and called for Mrs May and Mr Corbyn to work together - "not only eating biscuits and drinking tea" - to come to a cross-party solution and to stop "using and abusing Brexit to get rid of each other".
Mr Juncker said the votes in the Commons on Tuesday increased the risk of a "disorderly" Brexit, but he still believed there could be a deal done between the EU and UK, adding: "We will work day and night to make it happen, and to ensure we are ready in case it does not."

EU officials have poured cold water on alternative proposals for the Brexit backstop by a former British European Commission official.
Sir Jonathan Faull had suggested the EU and UK could maintain their own customs and regulatory regimes while using their laws to protect each others' markets.
He also proposed creating "trade centres" away from the Irish border.
This would mean goods would not have to be checked at the frontier.
One senior EU source told BBC News NI the proposals were "inadequate and not anywhere near the landing zone".
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Sir Jonathan said: "The idea is that whatever controls are necessary are done away from the border, leaving the border free and open."
The backstop is a position of last resort to prevent the hardening of the Irish border in the absence of other solutions.
It would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market and the whole of the UK, forming a "temporary single customs territory" with the EU.
The prime minister says the backstop cannot form part of any Brexit deal.
At the centre of the Faull plan is the concept of "dual autonomy" - meaning the EU and UK would maintain their own customs and regulatory regimes but use their laws to protect each others' markets.
The paper states: "Under this proposal it will be a violation of UK law backed up by severe penalties knowingly to export, through the frontier between the North and the Republic, goods which do not comply with the regulatory standards of the EU."
In effect, UK public law would be backing not only the regulatory standards for goods on the UK market, but also goods destined for export to the EU through the frontier with the Republic.
The paper also suggests the establishment of "trade centres" in the UK and Northern Ireland, where goods destined for the EU would be subject to customs clearance and regulatory checks.
However, that would seem to fall well short of the Irish government's position that any solution must not introduce new checks on the island of Ireland - even away from the border.
It points to the 2017 Joint Report of the EU and UK, a interim deal, in which there was a commitment to avoid a hard border, "including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls".
Speaking to the BBC, John McGrane from the British Irish Chamber of Commerce suggested the paper did not fully address the issue of EU law on food standards.
Strict EU rules stipulate that food products entering from a non-member state must be subject to checks at the point of entry into the EU.
Mr McGrane said: "This is not like different VAT rates, animals and animal products have to be checked at the point of import, it's a matter of human health protection."

The EU's chief negotiator has ruled out allowing the UK to collect customs duties on its behalf, a key UK proposal for post-Brexit trade.
Michel Barnier said the UK wanted to "take back control" of its money, law and borders - but so did the EU.
The EU would not delegate "excises duty collection to a non-member", he said.
Both he and UK Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said progress had been made but "obstacles" remained before reaching a deal in October.
Mr Raab said: "We have agreed to meet again in mid-August and then to continue weekly discussions to clear away all the obstacles that line our path, to a strong deal in October - one that works for both sides."
He replaced David Davis, who quit as Brexit secretary in protest at Theresa May's plans for a future economic relationship between the UK and EU, as set out in the White Paper.
That set out in more detail the government's proposed customs system, the Facilitated Customs Arrangement for goods and agri-foods. The UK's plan involves it collecting some EU tariffs - in a bid to ensure frictionless trade in goods and to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Michel Barnier wants the UK to make a choice.
If it wants to have frictionless trade with the EU's single market then it will have to join a customs union, or something like it, which will mean applying the EU's tariffs and reducing the scope for doing free trade deals with others.
If it wants more freedom, it will have to agree arrangements with the EU that will reduce friction but not eliminate it altogether.
It's an old tune that sounds different after the publication of the UK's White Paper, which was supposed to have solved this dilemma.
It also sounds like the UK will propose a revamped version of its idea for avoiding a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland but the two sides are still divided on whether that should have a time-limit or not.
Lost among all of this will be the nugget of good news: Big strides have been made on security co-operation after Brexit.
But Mr Barnier said retaining control of the money, law and borders also applied to the EU's customs policy.
"The EU cannot and the EU will not delegate the application of its customs policy and rules and VAT and excises duty collection to a non-member who would not be subject to the EU's governance structures," he said.
Any customs arrangement or union "must respect this principle", he said.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said Mr Barnier appeared to have delivered a significant blow to Mrs May's controversial proposals, which have already been criticised by pro-Brexit Tory MPs.
Speaking after talks with Mr Raab, Mr Barnier said that Theresa May's Brexit White Paper plan was a "real step forward".
He highlighted agreement on security measures and said both sides wanted a wide-ranging free trade deal.
But he added: "To be frank, we are not at the end of the road yet."
While UK proposals on security marked "a real step forward" and he welcomed the acknowledgement that the European Court of Justice was the only arbiter of EU law, he added: "In contrast, on our future economic relationship, it comes as no surprise that finding common ground between the EU27 and the UK is more difficult."
Brexit Secretary Mr Raab said the UK proposals had been designed "to respect the result of the referendum, and the core principles of the EU".
"We have considered the innovative approaches the EU has taken in the past with other third countries - when the political will has been there," he said.
"In sum, the UK has set out our plans in detail. Those plans are ambitious, principled and pragmatic. I am committed to injecting new energy into these talks, along with Michel."
Turning to Mr Barnier, he said: "Michel, we have work to do."
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but has yet to agree how its final relationship with the bloc will work.
The SNP's Angus MacNeil tweeted that the press conference spelt the end for the prime minister's Chequers plan:
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who is part of the People's Vote campaign for a vote on any final Brexit deal, said: "The White Paper is dead. It has expired. It has ceased to be."
For the Liberal Democrats, Christine Jardine said the prime minister's White Paper was "struggling to survive" .

The UK failed to show solidarity with a Europe reeling from terror attacks when it voted for Brexit in 2016, the EU's chief negotiator has suggested.
The UK "chose to be on their own again" when the need to act together against groups such as Islamic State had never been "so strong", Michel Barnier said.
In Berlin, he said the UK must now leave bodies such as Europol but could still participate in EU-led operations.
No 10 said it intended to still play a "full part" in Europe's security.
Speaking on a visit to Iraq, Theresa May said the UK was playing a leading role in training its army to fight so-called Islamic State and also depriving the militant group of outlets for its propaganda.
There are 1,400 British military and civilian personnel in Iraq, who have helped train and equip 25,000 Iraqi and Kurdish fighters since the UK's combat role ended in 2009.
After meeting British troops near Baghdad, she insisted the UK's defence budget was rising and the UK's capabilities would be continually reviewed.
The UK, which has long-established bilateral defence relations with countries such as France, has said it wants security and intelligence co-operation to continue after Brexit and be bolstered by a new treaty.
But Mr Barnier, a former French foreign minister, said it was clear it would not be business as usual in defence and security as in other matters once the UK had left in March 2019.
In a speech to a German security conference, he said that while the UK would remain a diplomatic and military power by virtue of its membership of Nato and the UN Security Council, it would no longer be involved in European decision-making in defence matters and would "lose some levers for wielding influence".
Reflecting on the "great shock" caused by the Leave vote in the June 2016 referendum, he said it had come "after a series of of attacks on European soil, committed by young people who grew up in Europe, in our countries".
A series of attacks in Paris in November 2015 killed 130 people, while a bombing at Brussels airport and on the city's Metro system in April 2016 left 32 people dead.
The Leave vote, Mr Barnier said, had come "six months after the French minister of defence issued a call for solidarity to all his European counterparts to join forces to fight the terrorism of [the so-called Islamic State]".
"Never had the need to be together, to protect ourselves together, to act together been so strong, so manifest," he said.
"Yet rather than stay shoulder to shoulder with the union, the British chose to be on their own again."
The UK, which has suffered a string of terror attacks in 2017, has been at the forefront of the fight against IS - carrying out air strikes against the militants in Iraq and Syria.
Mr Barnier's comments drew an immediate response from Brexit supporters.
In his speech, Mr Barnier also made clear the EU was taking on greater responsibility for Europe's defence and although the UK still had an important contribution to make, Brexit would leave it on the outside.
The UK, he said, would no longer be able to:
This, he said, was the "logical consequence of the sovereign choice made by the British".
But insisting there must be no "horse-trading" over security in the Brexit negotiations, he said common interests and values dictated the UK and EU would continue to work together, with the UK participating in selective EU operations on a voluntarily basis.
Cooperation, he added, was also vital in areas such as:
"The construction of a 'Europe of Defence' has begun," he said.
"Obviously, we will not wait for the United Kingdom to implement it, but when the time comes we will be ready to cooperate with the United Kingdom.
"This partnership will be in our best interests, since it is what the European citizens expect and it will contribute to the stability and security of our continent and our neighbourhood."
Negotiations on the UK's future relations with the EU, including on defence, have yet to begin.
But Downing Street said: "We've been clear that we want to play a full part in the security of the EU and Europe after we leave, and we think that's in the interests of both Britain and the European Union."

A campaign for another EU referendum - this time on the final Brexit deal - has been launched in London.
Chairman Lord Malloch-Brown, a former Labour minister, said it was "time for the truth" about what leaving the EU would mean.
The group, backed by billionaire George Soros, hopes to build support for a referendum on the deal over the summer.
The prime minister's spokesman said: "There isn't going to be a second referendum."
Best for Britain is targeting Labour MPs, but also needs at least 10 Conservative "rebels" if it is to win a vote in Parliament on an amendment calling for a new referendum - which is opposed by both the Conservative and Labour front benches.
If successful, the group says a "people's vote" on whether to accept the final deal - which would include the option of remaining in the EU - could be held before Brexit in March 2019.
Lord Malloch-Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general, said the "chronic uncertainty" surrounding Brexit talks was harming business and it was "time to settle this once and for all".
He said the campaign would accept the outcome of any referendum but it was "time for the truth and nothing but the truth" on Brexit, rather than "false facts" on the side of buses and "project fear".
Best for Britain says it will be campaigning in 70 "key" constituencies over the summer to urge MPs to back its plan and says it will be "talking to people on the doorstep about how Brexit is affecting them".
Pro-Brexit campaign group Leave.EU have attacked Lord Malloch-Brown as a "puppet for George Soros" and chief "Remoaner," while another group, Leave Means Leave, has launched a fundraising drive among supporters to "secure the swift, clean Brexit you all voted for".
Lord Malloch-Brown denied Best for Britain was a "puppet" of a foreign donor because it took 20% of its funding from Mr Soros - and he insisted he was not embarrassed to take the Hungarian-American tycoon's money.
"Like him, I am very proud of a career spent in international human rights, promoting democracy and trying to secure healthy democratic cultures in countries everywhere.
"I never expected to be doing it back home, but I'm pleased to be doing so."

A Tory ex-minister is trying to put a block on the EU's controversial proposals for a "backstop" to guarantee no hard Irish border after Brexit.
Steve Baker has put down amendments to the Northern Ireland bill, which is to be discussed in Parliament next week.
He wants to make it a legal requirement to get the Stormont Assembly's approval for any plan to treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.
But the devolved government has not sat since power-sharing collapsed in 2017.
The bill aims to give its civil servants greater flexibility in making decisions, in the absence of government.
However, it has drawn the attention of those arguing over plans for the UK's future trading relationship with the EU.
Both the EU and UK are signed up to the need for a "backstop" - effectively an insurance policy to avoid the introduction of checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic - which is an EU member - after Brexit.
During the "transition period" after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019 until 31 December 2020, the UK's relationship with the EU will stay largely the same - something designed to smooth the path to a future permanent relationship between them.
But if there is a gap between the transition period ending, and the "future relationship" coming into force, the backstop would ensure no hard border in the meantime.
The EU and UK are agreed there can be no return to a hard border - but disagree over how the backstop should operate.
The government has proposed a backstop which would effectively keep the whole of the UK in the EU customs union for a limited period, until a comprehensive agreement is reached.
Under the EU's idea of a contingency plan, Northern Ireland would remain in the EU's customs union, large parts of the single market and the EU VAT system - something the UK says is unacceptable as it would create a new border down the Irish Sea, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Mr Baker, the Tory MP for Wycombe and deputy chairman of the Conservative pro-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs. said his amendments would ensure that "emergency powers" could not be used to implement measures in the absence of an assembly.
"Northern Ireland is an integral part of the UK."
"Creating barriers between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, creating a separate regulatory regime or imposing EU laws on Northern Ireland via emergency legislation does not respect Northern Ireland's status in the UK."
BBC political correspondent Jessica Parker said it was unclear what level of support there was for the amendments.
"But negotiators may not welcome any attempt to impose legal limits on the talks which are already at an impasse," she added.
A government statement said the Northern Ireland bill is intended to provide civil servants with the "certainty and clarity" they needed to deliver public services.
"It enables key appointments that cannot currently be made in the absence of Northern Ireland ministers to be made during the period before an executive is next formed," the statement added.
"The bill also creates the necessary time and space to restart political talks with the aim of restoring devolved government as soon as possible."

Boris Johnson has met Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn amid uncertainty over what happens next with Brexit.
The meeting comes after MPs rejected the PM's plan to fast-track a bill to implement his deal through Parliament.
During PMQs, Mr Johnson said MPs had "willed the end but not the means" and it was now the EU's decision whether to grant an extension beyond 31 October.
Mr Corbyn told the Commons MPs must "have the necessary time to improve on this worse-than-terrible treaty".
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg says she understands nothing was agreed at the meeting on Wednesday morning.
Labour was keen to discuss a different timetable for the Brexit bill, while the PM wanted to know what Mr Corbyn would do if the EU refused to grant an extension, she added.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: "Jeremy Corbyn reiterated Labour's offer to the prime minister to agree a reasonable timetable to debate, scrutinise and amend the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, and restated that Labour will support a general election when the threat of a no-deal crash-out is off the table."
No 10 said there had been "no meeting of minds" between the two men and no further talks were currently planned.
The PM announced that he would pause the progress of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) on Tuesday after MPs rejected a plan to pass it in just three days.
EU leaders, meanwhile, are considering whether to grant a delay to the Brexit deadline and what length it should be.
Laura Kuenssberg said a decision was not expected until Friday, leaving Westminster "still in limbo".
Mr Johnson was forced by law to send a letter to Brussels requesting a three-month extension, and No 10 had indicated he would push for a general election if the EU agreed.
His official spokesman said Mr Johnson had spoken to European Council President Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday and stressed to both his continued opposition to a delay.
The 27 EU ambassadors have had a first, informal discussion about a Brexit extension, BBC News Brussels reporter Adam Fleming says.
The ambassadors all agreed on the need to extend the deadline, to avoid a no-deal outcome - but the duration of this possible extension remains under discussion.
In the meantime, President Tusk's consultations with EU leaders will continue.
The EU is in no hurry to settle its attitude towards another Brexit extension because it's under no immediate pressure of time - the current extension runs until midnight on 31 October. The instinct of the European Council is to take the time it needs to reach agreement, even if that's seen as frustrating in Downing Street.
Donald Tusk as President of the Council acts as a kind of convener for the 27 heads of government - each has to be consulted at least once by phone so the process takes a little time even when the matter is straightforward.
The council works by unanimity so whatever it eventually decides will have to be acceptable to all 27 and it's true that there are differences of emphasis - there's a view in Paris, for example, that a shorter extension might concentrate minds in London.
The EU has its own limits to consider as well. First, it doesn't want to look as though it's pressuring Parliament into any particular course of action.
Second, it's clear the EU will never want to look as though it's forcing the UK out of the Brexit door or be the cause of a no-deal Brexit - for that reason, whatever the frustrations, an offer will come.
The attraction of 31 January is that it's a kind of "off-the-shelf" arrangement enshrined in the letter written by Boris Johnson to the European Council at the behest of Parliament.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Johnson said it was "remarkable" that MPs backed the Withdrawal Agreement Bill at its first Commons hurdle, but a "great shame" that MPs did not back his proposed timetable for it.
He said it was "peculiar" that Mr Corbyn appeared to want him to bring back the bill when Labour MPs were told to vote against it on Tuesday.
In reply, the Labour leader said it was Mr Johnson who had "decided to delay his own withdrawal bill" when he made the decision to pause it.
He listed a number of concerns his party had with it, for example around workers' rights, and said Labour had made it clear it wanted to see a customs union built into the deal.
Mr Corbyn also accused Mr Johnson of trying "to prevent genuine democratic scrutiny and debate", adding: "Does the prime minister accept that Parliament should have the necessary time to improve on this worse-than-terrible treaty?"
Mr Johnson rejected criticism that the deal was a threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom, and repeatedly insisted it had been "approved by Parliament" on Tuesday night.
Tuesday's vote on the bill - so-called "second reading" - was only the first stage of Parliamentary scrutiny.
Detailed dissection by MPs at the committee stage would come next - along with attempts to amend the bill - followed by further votes in the House. If it was eventually approved by the Commons a similar process of scrutiny would be carried out by peers in the Lords.
The SNP has indicated it wants an extension to allow for a general election, while the Liberal Democrats say the PM needs to get an extension to allow a further referendum. Both parties would rather the UK revoked Article 50 and stopped the Brexit process.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford urged the prime minister to confirm that the legislation would not be passed unless consent was given by the Scottish Parliament.
But Mr Johnson said the Scottish Parliament had no role in approving the Brexit bill and suggested Mr Blackford "have a word with other opposition parties" to trigger a general election "to settle the matter".
In a statement responding to Mr Johnson's and Mr Corbyn's earlier meeting, Ms Swinson said it was "more clear proof" that the Labour leader wanted to deliver Brexit, after 19 Labour MPs supported the bill's second reading.
"It seems that Jeremy Corbyn has thrown Boris Johnson another lifeline this morning, as six white men met to discuss pushing through a Brexit deal which will wreck our country," she said.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the prime minister needs to have the backing of two-thirds of MPs to hold a snap poll. This has been rejected twice by MPs.
Another route to an election is a one-line bill, that requires only a simple majority, but any such bill is likely to incur a host of amendments, for example, giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote.
There is also the option of a vote of no confidence in the government, and Mr Johnson could even call one himself.
But Parliamentary rules state that if it passes, the Commons has 14 days to form an alternative administration, so the PM would run the risk of being forced out of Downing Street if opposition parties can unite around a different leader.
If an election were to be triggered this week, the earliest it could take place would be Thursday 28 November, as the law requires 25 days between an election being called in Parliament and polling day.
The fact that talks took place between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson suggests that No 10 may not be totally wedded to the idea of a winter general election. Pressed in the Commons the PM did not close the door to bringing back his deal.
And there are those in government who are deeply wary of a winter election. Why? Bluntly, because it is so blooming cold.
No-one is going to thank him if they have to tramp off to the polling station in the bleak midwinter. There's a fear that older voters would be the most likely not to turn up - yet those may be the ones who were keenest to back Brexit.
Then there is the nativity play problem. Many school halls, which are used for polling stations, have been booked up for Christmas activities - and woe betide Mr Johnson if he forces those to be cancelled.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar agree they can "see a pathway to a possible deal" after talks, Downing Street says.
The leaders spoke for over two hours, including a one-to-one discussion during a walk in the grounds of Thornton Manor in north-west England.
Mr Varadkar said Thursday's "positive" meeting was "sufficient to allow negotiations to resume in Brussels".
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will meet the EU's Michel Barnier on Friday.
On Wednesday, EU leaders accused the UK of proposing untested ideas, adding that progress had been limited.
A crunch EU summit next week on 17 and 18 October is seen as the last chance for the UK and EU to agree a deal ahead of 31 October deadline.
After the meeting, Mr Varadkar told reporters the talks were at a "very sensitive stage" but were "very positive and very promising".
He said he was now "convinced" the UK wants an agreement, saying: "I do see a pathway towards an agreement in the coming weeks."
However, issues remain over "consent and democracy" and ensuring there is no customs border, Mr Varadkar said.
The Brexit proposals from Mr Johnson include a provision for the consent of Northern Ireland's politicians to be sought every four years - meaning the arrangement could, in theory, continue indefinitely.
"It remains our position that there can't be a hard border between north and south," Mr Varadkar added.
"No one's cracking open the champagne… don't even pour a pint of warm Guinness," joked one of the few people familiar with what actually happened on Thursday after talks between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar.
Nothing that happened in the privacy of a country house wedding venue on the Wirral means there will be a deal with the EU in the next seven days.
Nothing has made the obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement magically disappear.
But something has changed today.
After days of various EU players publicly scorning the UK's proposals, explaining the objections and lamenting the weaknesses, there is a tangible willingness, on the bloc's side at least, to see seriously if they can work.
We've discussed here so many times why Ireland's attitude matters so much, so the very public positivity from Mr Varadkar - his "maybe", instead of "no" to Mr Johnson's proposals - is extremely important.
There is hardly any detail out there of the compromises or concessions that might be actually in play to make a deal work.
Don't give too much credence to even the best informed speculation that's already whirring online as to how it could happen.
A joint statement said the prime minister and Taoiseach (Irish leader) had a "detailed and constructive discussion".
"Both continue to believe that a deal is in everybody's interest," the statement said. "They agreed that they could see a pathway to a possible deal."
The talks concentrated on "the challenges of customs and consent", Downing Street said.
"They agreed to reflect further on their discussions and that officials would continue to engage intensively on them."
Mr Johnson put forward fresh proposals for a Brexit deal last week, but Mr Varadkar had previously said "big gaps" remained between the UK and the EU.
Cabinet minister Michael Gove, who has responsibility for the UK's no-deal preparations, said: "I have to prepare for every eventuality but I'm hopeful following the good conversation that they had that we can make good progress in the days ahead."
Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith told BBC Northern Ireland's The View he was "delighted to see the positivity that came out of the meeting".
He said the "mood music and developments are really, really positive".
Under Mr Johnson's proposals, which he calls a "broad landing zone" for a new deal with the EU:
The prime minister has insisted the UK will leave the EU with or without a deal at the end of the month.
That is despite the so-called Benn Act - passed by MPs last month - demanding he request a delay to the Article 50 deadline from the EU until January 2020 if a deal has not been agreed before 19 October.
On Wednesday, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom suggested the PM was gearing up to bypass legal obstacles to a no-deal Brexit by sending one letter requesting an extension and, in the same instance, submitting a second memo telling European leaders he does not want one.
Asked on ITV's Peston programme whether the idea of sending two letters to the EU was a possible loophole, Ms Leadsom replied: "Absolutely."
In a speech in Northampton, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reiterated that his party would agree to a general election as soon as no-deal has been taken "off the table", as the PM "can't be trusted not to break the law".
He also accused Mr Johnson of "using the Queen" to deliver a "pre-election Tory party political broadcast" at next week's state opening of Parliament.
He told party supporters that the government had "no obvious means" of getting new laws passed, and holding a Queen's Speech before an election was a "cynical stunt."
Monday 14 October - The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen's Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will then be debated by MPs throughout the week.
Thursday 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday 19 October - Special sitting of Parliament and the date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday 31 October - Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.

The UK's statistics watchdog has stood by its criticism of Boris Johnson in a growing row over the possible financial windfall the NHS may get from Brexit.
Sir David Norgrove said he was "disappointed" the foreign secretary had revived Vote Leave's pledge of £350m a week extra for the NHS.
Mr Johnson hit back at "a wilful distortion of the text of my article", asking for the claim to be withdrawn.
The mention of £350m came in a Daily Telegraph piece by Mr Johnson.
In it, he wrote: "Once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly £350 million per week.
"It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS."
The article, in which he also said he opposed paying the EU to secure temporary access to the single market during a transitional phase after the UK's departure, divided Tory MPs.
Some claimed it undermined Theresa May's leadership ahead of a crucial speech later this week and amounted to a leadership challenge.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd accused her cabinet colleague of being a Brexit "back-seat driver", telling the BBC that while it was fine for Mr Johnson to show his enthusiasm for Brexit, he should remember he was not "driving the car".
Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood criticised what he called "party discord", tweeting: "We are not witnessing our finest hour-at a testing time when poise, purpose and unity are called for."
But a leading figure in last year's Brexit campaign, Environment Secretary Michael Gove, urged people to focus on what Mr Johnson had written, "not the headlines".
"Debate should be forward looking on how to make most of life outside EU - not refighting referendum", he added on Twitter.
By Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent
This is an extraordinary row.
A senior cabinet minister and the most senior civil servant responsible for official statistics, engaged in a public slanging match on a Sunday afternoon.
At lunchtime, Sir David's letter, accusing the foreign secretary of "a clear misuse of official statistics."
Then the first counter attack: a spokesman for Mr Johnson claimed that Sir David was actually complaining about the headlines provoked by the foreign secretary's article.
No he wasn't, responded a spokeswoman for the UK Statistics Authority.
And then Mr Johnson's formal written reply to Sir David accusing him of "a complete misrepresentation of what I said" and asking him "to withdraw it."
Who will people trust the most? The civil servant or the politician?
That is your call.
The chair of the UK Statistics Authority wrote on Sunday to Mr Johnson setting out his concerns about the £350m figure.
The authority, which is an independent statutory body, previously criticised use of the figure - which was displayed on the side of a campaign bus - during the 2016 referendum campaign.
Sir David wrote in the letter: "I am surprised and disappointed that you have chosen to repeat the figure of £350 million per week, in connection with the amount that might be available for extra public spending when we leave the European Union".
The watchdog said the article "confused" the size of the UK's annual gross and net contributions to the EU's budget.
His letter continued: "It also assumes that payments currently made to the UK by the EU, including for example for the support of agriculture and scientific research, will not be paid by the UK government when we leave. It is a clear misuse of official statistics."
In Mr Johnson's reply, he wrote: "I must say that I was surprised and disappointed by your letter of today, since it was based on what appeared to be a wilful distortion of the text of my article.
"You say that I claim that there would be £350 million that 'might be available for extra public spending' when we leave the EU.
"This is a complete misrepresentation of what I said and I would like you to withdraw it."
He continued: "Once we leave the EU we will take back control of all such UK-funded spending, and, although of course I have no doubt that we will continue to spend significantly on UK priorities such as agriculture and research, that spending will be done under UK control.
"As for the rebate - whose value you did not know - it only forms part of the EU's financing arrangements with the agreement of all other EU member states.
"We do not control it ourselves."
Labour MP Yvette Cooper said Mr Johnson "just thinks it's OK to repeatedly lie".
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the foreign secretary's credibility was "shot to pieces".
Several Tory MPs have praised Mr Johnson's vision of what can be achieved after the UK leaves and said his objectives are largely in tune with those of the government.
Writing in the Telegraph, backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said the article was "tremendous" and had "magnificently rejected" the "depressing view" that Britain could not cope without the protection of the European Union.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, Ms Rudd said she did not believe it was a prelude to a leadership challenge.
"I know what an irrepressible enthusiast (Johnson) is about Brexit, and what he's done is set it out there, I think it's absolutely fine, I would expect nothing less from Boris," she said.
But she added: "I don't want him managing the Brexit process, what we have got is Theresa May managing the process, driving the car.
"I am going to make sure, as far as I and the rest of the cabinet is concerned, we help her do that."
Several prominent Leave campaigners have distanced themselves from the £350m figure in the wake of the referendum result although others have continued to insist it is legitimate.
The prime minister is due to make a major speech on Brexit in Florence, amid speculation she is prepared to announce some kind of deal on transitional trade payments.
First she is due to meet Mr Johnson in New York, where the foreign secretary is expected to be in the audience when she addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

Tory rebels and opposition MPs have defeated the government in the first stage of their attempt to pass a law designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
The Commons voted 328 to 301 to take control of the agenda, meaning they can bring forward a bill seeking to delay the UK's exit date.
In response, Boris Johnson said he would bring forward a motion for an early general election.
Jeremy Corbyn said the bill should be passed before an election was held.
In total, 21 Tory MPs, including a number of ex-cabinet ministers, joined opposition parties to defeat the government.
After the vote, Downing Street said those Tory MPs who rebelled would have the whip removed, effectively expelling them from the parliamentary party.
No 10 had hoped the threat of expulsion - and an election - would bring would-be rebels into line.
The longest-serving of the Tory rebels, ex-chancellor Ken Clarke, told BBC Newsnight he was still "a mainstream Conservative" but he didn't recognise his party any more.
The "knockabout character" of the prime minister had "the most right-wing cabinet a Conservative government has ever produced", he said.
The prime minister said the MPs' bill would "hand control" of Brexit negotiations to the EU and bring "more dither, more delay, more confusion".
He told MPs he had no choice but to press ahead with efforts to call an October election, adding: "The people of this country will have to choose."
The result means the MPs will be able to take control of Commons business on Wednesday.
That will give them the chance to introduce a cross-party bill which would force the prime minister to ask for Brexit to be delayed until 31 January, unless MPs approve a new deal, or vote in favour of a no-deal exit, by 19 October.
The BBC understands the government intends to hold an election on 15 October, two days before a crucial EU summit in Brussels.
To call an election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, Mr Johnson would need support from Labour as he requires the backing of two-thirds of the UK's 650 MPs.
But Mr Corbyn said the legislation backed by opposition MPs and Tory rebels should pass before any election was held, to "take no deal off the table".
He added: "There is no majority to leave without a deal within the country".
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said he did not trust Boris Johnson not to call an election for mid-October and then change the date afterwards.
He said the prime minister could "change the date so that during the general election campaign we crash out of the European Union with a no deal".
"We want it bolting down that a no-deal Brexit can't occur, and once that's done, we want a general election as soon as possible," he told the BBC.
The BBC's chief political correspondent, Vicki Young, said the government was framing the situation as the Labour leader trying to block Brexit, and that would be its argument going into a general election.
It's hard to know where to start sometimes.
The pace and gravity of events in Westminster this week is both monumental and dizzying.
A prime minister has lost his wafer of a majority.
But some close to the prime minister believe that from this crisis comes an opportunity - to close the unfinished business of the referendum result in 2016, with the Tory party at last being the bearers of a crystal-clear message on Brexit.
It's a measure of how upside down the political norms are - that the prime minister losing his first vote in office is considered by some of his allies as a benefit.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said he was "delighted" that MPs had expressed a "very clear view" in favour of a law to block no deal.
"Boris Johnson and his government must respect the right of parliamentarians to represent the interests of their constituents," he said.
"Yes, there must be an election, but an election follows on from securing an extension to the [Brexit deadline]."

The prime minister has ruled out a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
During a Facebook live on Wednesday afternoon Boris Johnson said the UK "will not accept" it.
Earlier, DUP leader Arlene Foster said a Northern Ireland-only backstop was anti-democratic, but believed the prime minister "is in the space of trying to find a deal".
There had been speculation the government is re-considering the idea of a so-called Stormont lock to break the impasse.
It would create a formal mechanism for consulting and seeking the approval of Northern Ireland's devolved administration in the backstop, allowing the Stormont parties a say before any divergence between NI and GB would happen, after Brexit.
However the Stormont institutions collapsed in 2017, after a row between the power-sharing parties.
Parliament is currently suspended for five weeks. When sitting, the prime minister answers questions from other MPs on Wednesdays.
During the live stream on Wednesday Mr Johnson said: "The backstop is going to be removed, I very much hope. I insist, it's the only way to get a deal.
"We will not accept either a Northern Ireland only backstop, that simply doesn't work for the UK.
"We've got to come out whole and entire and solve the problems of the Northern Irish border and I'm certain that we can do that. And we're working flat out to do that".
However, speaking earlier on BBC Radio Ulster, Mrs Foster said: "It's not just the DUP that rejects the backstop, it's a much wider coalition that rejects the backstop.
"What we need to do now is reject the backstop, move on and find a deal that works.
"That's what I'm focused on and I think it's what the prime minister is focused on as well."
The backstop is the insurance policy to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit, until a wider solution is found.
Mrs Foster, who met the prime minister on Tuesday, said the government was "exploring" an all-island food standards zone as part of a solution to replace the backstop.
She denied the DUP's influence with the prime minister had waned after he lost his parliamentary majority.
The DUP had been propping up the Conservatives in a confidence-and-supply pact since June 2017, with the votes of its 10 MPs giving the government a majority to get legislation passed in Parliament.
However, last week Mr Johnson lost his majority after 21 Conservative rebels had the whip removed for voting against the party on Brexit legislation.
It means he no longer requires the DUP's votes, but Mrs Foster said her party had a "much wider bond" with Mr Johnson than just the political arrangement.
She said she believed the prime minister was true to his word in ruling out a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
There are suggestions that the government is contemplating such a proposal in order to ensure the UK leaves the EU with a deal by 31 October, but Mrs Foster said that was not true.
She also dismissed suggestions that a solution could end up being the backstop by another name, adding: "It's not just a case of tampering with words."
On Tuesday, the former Taoiseach (Irish PM) Bertie Ahern said consent from Northern Ireland's unionist parties was "essential" if a deal was to be reached.
Her party had engaged in talks with the DUP for many years and this would continue, she added.
But she warned: "There is simply no meeting of minds on the matter of Brexit."
The prime minister has insisted he will not seek an extension to the Brexit deadline if there is no agreement with the EU.
In Dublin on Monday, Mr Johnson said he had an "abundance of proposals" to replace the backstop.
The idea of a NI-only backstop was first suggested early in the Brexit negotiations.
Former PM Theresa May rejected it in 2018 because she relied on the votes of the 10 DUP MPs in Parliament.
The Irish government has said it is willing to look at a "Northern-Ireland specific solution".
On Tuesday, Ireland's EU Commissioner Phil Hogan told RTÉ that there was "movement" on both sides of the Brexit negotiations.

The prime minister has suggested he is open to an all-Ireland food standards zone as part of a solution to replace the Brexit backstop.
Food standards are one of the most difficult border issues.
That is due to strict EU rules that say products from a non-member state must be checked at the point of entry.
If Northern Ireland was to align with the Republic of Ireland, it would effectively continue to follow EU rules.
That would mean that some food products coming from elsewhere in the UK would be subject to new checks and controls at Northern Ireland ports.
It came as Boris Johnson faced MPs in the Commons ahead of a showdown over Brexit.
In a blow to the prime minister, Tory rebels and opposition MPs defeated the government in the first stage of their attempt to pass a law designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson has said he will visit Dublin on Monday to meet Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
The prime minister said he wants to discuss the issue with the EU, and during the meeting with Mr Varadkar next week.
By John Campbell, BBC News NI economics and business editor
Would an all-island food standards zone be the backstop by another name?
Not quite.
The backstop would involve Northern Ireland following a range of single market rules beyond food and agriculture.
There's also the question of consent by unionist parties in Northern Ireland.
The prime minister said an all-island arrangement would have to "clearly enjoy the consent of all parties and institutions with an interest".
That suggests unionists would have to be convinced that the governance of such an arrangement would give them a greater say than have under the current backstop.
And remember, the backstop is only supposed to be temporary.
Would this food standards zone be intended as a permanent arrangement, just like the existing all-island animal health zone?
Mr Johnson said he recognises that "for reasons of geography and economics, agrifood is increasingly managed on a common basis across the island".
He told the Commons: "We are ready to find ways forward that recognises this reality, provided it clearly enjoys the consent of all parties and institutions with an interest."
That suggests any arrangement would need to have the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and other unionists.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds told BBC Newsline that the party would be "willing to sit down and look at what Boris is looking at and what can be done".
"We want to get a deal provided it's within the parameters of ensuring that it's not economically and constitutionally injurious to the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," he added.
The island of Ireland is already a single zone for animal health, which means all livestock coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain is checked on entry.
If it was also to be a single zone for food standards, it would mean that some products coming from elsewhere in the UK would be subject to new checks and controls at Northern Ireland ports.
Earlier this week, a leaked government document suggested an all-Ireland food standards zone is being considered as part of a solution to replace the Brexit backstop.
The document states that alignment of standards between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is seen as "one of the most practical, deliverable and negotiable facilitations".
However, it cautions that such an arrangement comes with many of the same political challenges as the backstop.
In relation to the document, a government spokesperson declined to comment.
"We have been clear that we stand ready to negotiate in good faith an alternative to the backstop, with provisions to ensure that the Irish border issues are dealt with where they should always have been, in the negotiations on the future agreement between the UK and the EU," the spokesperson said.
"We have likewise always said that these issues will require a package of measures addressing different customs and regulatory aspects, rather than just one single solution."
The backstop is a position of last resort to prevent the hardening of the Irish border in the absence of other solutions.
It would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market and the whole of the UK forming a "temporary single customs territory" with the EU.
The prime minister has said the backstop cannot form part of any Brexit deal.
Meanwhile, DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said there was now an inevitability about a general election in the coming weeks after Mr Johnson's government lost its working majority.
On Tuesday night, the Commons voted 328 to 301 to take control of the agenda, meaning they can bring forward a bill seeking to delay the UK's exit date.
In response, the prime minister said he would bring forward a motion for an early general election.
"If the general election is forced because of Brexit, then inevitably Brexit is going to be front and centre in the election," Sir Jeffrey said.

Boris Johnson has said he can see "a way forward" to reaching a deal with the EU in "all our interests" before Brexit is due to happen on 31 October.
But the prime minister warned the cabinet there was still a "significant amount of work" to do, as EU and UK officials continue to hold talks.
Parliament will meet on Saturday and vote on any deal achieved by Mr Johnson at a Brussels summit this week.
Labour said it would "wait and see" but would oppose anything "damaging".
The European Commission echoed the prime minister, saying: "A lot of work remains to be done."
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "We don't think the Tories have moved too far on their deal."
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon told the same programme: "We will not vote for the kind of deal specified by Boris Johnson."
Talks in Brussels between UK and EU officials - described as "intense technical discussions" - continued on Sunday and will re-start on Monday.
House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Brexiteer, told Sky News that "compromise" would be inevitable during negotiations.
He added: "I trust Boris Johnson to ensure the relationship the United Kingdom has with the European Union is one where we are not a vassal state."
Mr Rees-Mogg also said he might have to "eat my words" and support a plan close to the one put forward by former Prime Minister Theresa May, which MPs rejected three times.
By Nick Eardley, BBC political correspondent
Is there going to be a deal then?
Forgive me a politician's answer, but the truth is nobody knows for sure. Not yet.
Both sides are being tight-lipped on the exact discussions happening behind closed doors in Brussels.
Indeed the cabinet was given very little detail about what exactly is being discussed.
Some might see that as a positive sign; nobody is going public on the concerns they have.
That doesn't mean they don't have them, but it suggests there is serious work going in to try to solve them.
I'm told Boris Johnson sounded genuinely confident in the cabinet conference call that a deal can be done.
Others in Westminster are filling up the coldest water they can find to pour all over reports a deal could be coming.
One opposition source told me they have war-gamed six potential outcomes for this mammoth political week.
They didn't give any of them more than a 50% chance.
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, is expected to update ambassadors from the bloc's 27 member countries on Tuesday.
The summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday is seen as the final chance to get a Brexit deal agreed ahead of the deadline of 23:00 GMT on 31 October.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: "The prime minister updated cabinet on the current progress being made in ongoing Brexit negotiations, reiterating that a pathway to a deal could be seen but that there is still a significant amount of work to get there and we must remain prepared to leave on 31 October."
The spokesman said Mr Johnson believed a deal could "respect the Good Friday Agreement", signed in 1998 in an effort to end the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
It could also "get rid of" the backstop - the plan to prevent the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic - which the government says threatens the future of the UK.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson told Sky News that any agreement reached by Mr Johnson should "be put to the public so they can have the final say".
But asked whether more MPs would be likely to support a deal, if the Commons first voted in favour of putting it to a referendum, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "I think many in Parliament, not necessarily Labour MPs - others - might be inclined to support it because they don't really agree with the deal.
"I would caution them on this."
Asked about Labour's stance, Home Secretary Priti Patel replied: "They are clearly playing politics. The British public want to ensure that we get Brexit done."
Mr Johnson's revised proposals - designed to avoid concerns about the backstop - were criticised by EU leaders at the start of last week.
However, on Thursday, Mr Johnson and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar held talks and said they could "see a pathway to a possible deal".
The Benn Act, passed by Parliament last month, requires Mr Johnson to ask EU leaders for a delay to Brexit if a deal has not been reached and agreed to by MPs by 19 October.
The first Queen's Speech of Mr Johnson's premiership, delivered during the State Opening of Parliament on Monday, will see the government highlight its priorities, including on Brexit.
Monday 14 October - The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen's Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will then be debated by MPs throughout the week.
Thursday 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday 19 October - Special sitting of Parliament and the date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday 31 October - Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.

The UK is on the verge of making a historic mistake if it does not "junk the backstop", Boris Johnson has said.
He told the DUP conference the EU had made NI an "indispensable bargaining chip" in the Brexit negotiations.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said a Brexit deal that includes the backstop plan is "not in the national interest".
There has been political opposition among unionists to the government's plan because of the backstop, which aims to avoid a hard Irish border.
It would see only Northern Ireland stay aligned to some EU rules if it took effect.
European Council President Donald Tusk has recommended that the EU approve the Brexit deal at a summit on Sunday.
The DUP is concerned that the backstop could threaten the integrity of the union and place a trade border down the Irish Sea.
Mr Johnson is one of two senior Conservative MPs to appear at the conference this weekend, after Chancellor Philip Hammond spoke on Friday night.
"We must agree that neither side will introduce a hard border in Northern Ireland," he said.
The former foreign secretary said the UK had an "absolute duty to get this right" and that there is still time to work for a better deal.
"In the words of that great Northern Irish singer Van Morrison, it is time we all moved from the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road," he added, to applause.
He said he hoped the DUP and Conservatives could continue working together, "backing our union against all those who would seek to divide us".
by Jayne McCormack, BBC News NI political reporter
What do Star Wars, sardines and the Titanic all have in common?
Answer: They all somehow ended up getting a mention in Boris Johnson's speech at the DUP conference (yes, really).
It certainly wasn't a normal party conference, but these are unusual times. There was standing room only as the politician, who often brings a rock star flavour to events, took to the stage.
That being said, while much of what he said received roars of applause, my colleague Gareth Gordon noticed one woman asleep in the front row.
But even getting Mr Johnson to appear at the conference will be seen as a victory for the DUP, in its attempt to resist the government's path for Brexit. Before party leader Arlene Foster was announced to the stage, one DUP councillor described her as "a lady who's not for turning".
But with Theresa May also holding firm against the DUP's opposition to the backstop so far, soon enough someone's going to have to give.
Mr Johnson also suggested the creation of a secretary of state for "no deal" on World Trade Organisation terms, "with real powers across Whitehall to make things happen".
"I do not believe that we will exit without a deal - that is totally unnecessary - but it is only responsible of government to make the proper preparations," he added.
Mrs Foster told her party's conference that the prime minister had not been able to guarantee that the backstop would not have to be used.
The government has said it is looking at alternative arrangements to ensure the backstop is a last resort.
But, Mrs Foster said there were "many contradictions" in the draft withdrawal agreement.
She said she understood the position of many in the business community, who have urged DUP MPs to back the deal.
But she added that the party could not wish away proposals that it believes are not in the best interests of Northern Ireland's economy or interests.
"The choice is not between this deal and no deal, despite what the government spin machine may say," she said.
Ahead of the party conference, Mrs Foster warned that if the deal gets passed in parliament, her party may have to revisit its confidence-and-supply pact with the Conservatives.
The DUP holds the balance of power at Westminster, as the government relies on the votes of its 10 MPs to have a working majority in parliament.
It signed a confidence and supply pact with the Conservatives in June 2017 and negotiated an extra £1bn in spending for Northern Ireland - but the rift between the parties over the Brexit plan has put the arrangement under significant pressure.
On Saturday, she said "the DUP had never been afraid to say yes when it is right to do so, nor to say no when required".
Earlier, the DUP's deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the party would "stand firm in the face of inevitable onslaught" in opposing the government's Brexit plan.
Mr Dodds told the party's conference: "Prime minister - bin the backstop."
Mr Dodds told the conference that the union is "non-negotiable".
He described Theresa May's draft plan as portraying a "pitiful and pathetic place for the United Kingdom".
The government has insisted that it will not renegotiate the current plan, and has urged MPs to back it or risk a no deal scenario.
Mr Dodds added that the DUP wanted to leave the EU with a deal, but "not a deal at any price".
On Friday, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, told the BBC that the government is looking at ways to provide extra assurances to the DUP over the Irish border backstop.
He was speaking during a visit to an integrated school in Moira, County Down.
The government of Gibraltar is also represented at the DUP conference.
Gibraltar has become involved in the Brexit debate as Spain sought written assurances from the UK that it would be directly consulted over its future trade negotiations with the EU which relate to Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory.
Donald Tusk recommended that the EU approve the Brexit deal after Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez received assurances from the UK government over Gibraltar, and dropped his threat to boycott the summit.
On Saturday, the government of Gibraltar said the territory "will not fold" over Brexit and staunchly supports the union.
Housing and equality minister Samantha Sacramento told the DUP conference Gibraltar would "not be bullied".
The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, was due to attend but could not make it because of the ongoing Brexit negotiations.
Gibraltar voted overwhelmingly (96%) to remain in the EU.

Boris Johnson has said the chances of a Brexit deal are "touch and go" - having previously said the odds of a no-deal Brexit were "a million to one".
In a BBC interview at the G7 summit in France, he said it "all depends on our EU friends and partners".
When pressed on the chances, he said: "I think it's going to be touch and go. But the important thing is to get ready to come out without a deal."
Donald Tusk told the PM the EU is open to alternatives to the backstop.
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said the European Council president and Mr Johnson held talks on Sunday, which were in a "genuinely positive atmosphere".
But she said Mr Tusk repeated the EU's position that any alternatives to the Irish backstop would have to be "realistic" and "immediately operational".
An EU official added the meeting had "mainly restated known positions" and Brussels had been hoping for "new elements to unblock the situation".
The two men clashed on Saturday over who would be "Mr No Deal" - the person to blame in the case of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson has previously said the UK must leave on 31 October "deal or no deal", but that the chances of a no-deal Brexit happening are a "million to one".
Asked if people would still be able to get their medicine if there was a no-deal Brexit, the prime minister told the BBC: "That is certainly a guarantee that we can make."
But he added: "I do not want at this stage to say there won't be unforeseen difficulties."
Speaking at the G7 summit on Sunday, he reiterated his desire to scrap the backstop from the current withdrawal agreement, saying it could keep the UK "locked in" EU rules, if a trade deal is not agreed after Brexit.
He said: "I think in the last few days there has been a dawning realisation in Brussels and other European capitals what the shape of the problem is for the UK."
Mr Johnson said he was an "optimist" and thought the EU would understand there is an "opportunity to do a deal".
The PM also said if there is no deal, the UK would keep a "very substantial" part of the £39bn Theresa May had agreed to pay the EU in her withdrawal agreement.
The G7 summit - a get-together of most of the leaders of the world's largest economies - comes with just over two months until the UK is scheduled to leave the EU at the end of October.
Mrs May struck a withdrawal agreement with the EU - the so-called "divorce deal" - but British MPs rejected the deal three times.
Mr Johnson wants to remove the Irish backstop from the deal but the EU has consistently ruled this out, saying it will not renegotiate the agreement.
If implemented, the backstop - a last resort should the UK and the EU not agree a trade deal after Brexit - would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market.
It would also see the UK stay in a single customs territory with the EU, and align with current and future EU rules on competition and state aid.
This week German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested there could be an alternative to the backstop but the onus was on the UK to find it.
But the next day French President Emmanuel Macron said the backstop was "indispensable" to preserving political stability and the single market.
Also on Sunday, the PM met President Donald Trump to discuss a trade deal between the UK and the US.
Mr Johnson said the US's aim to strike a deal within a year was "going to be tight", adding: "These [Americans] are tough guys."
Meanwhile, former chancellor Philip Hammond has written to the PM about the leaked Operation Yellowhammer documents on preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
He said it was now apparent the document was dated August 2019, and therefore could not have been leaked by a minister from Mrs May's government.

Boris Johnson has signed the Brexit withdrawal agreement in Downing Street.
The prime minister hailed a "fantastic moment" for the country after he put his name to the historic agreement, which paves the way for the UK's exit from the European Union next Friday.
He said he hoped it would "bring to an end far too many years of argument and division".
Earlier on Friday, European leaders signed the document in Brussels, before it was transported to London by train.
The signings mark another step in the ratification process, following Parliament's approval of the Brexit bill earlier this week. The European Parliament will vote on the agreement on 29 January.
Downing Street officials said the PM marked the document with a Parker fountain pen, as is traditional for ceremonial signings in No 10.
It was witnessed by EU and Foreign Office officials, including the PM's Chief Negotiator David Frost, and Downing Street staff.
"The signing is a fantastic moment, which finally delivers the result of the 2016 referendum and brings to an end far too many years of argument and division," Mr Johnson said.
"We can now move forward as one country - with a government focused upon delivering better public services, greater opportunity and unleashing the potential of every corner of our brilliant UK, while building a strong new relationship with the EU as friends and sovereign equals."
Earlier on Friday, the document crossed the channel on a Eurostar train, having been signed in Brussels by the European Council's president Charles Michel and the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
The UK will keep a copy of the agreement while the original will return to Brussels, where it will be stored in an archive along with other historic international agreements.
Next week's European Parliament vote is seen as all but a formality, after it was backed by the parliament's constitutional affairs committee on Thursday.
Mrs von der Leyen and other senior EU figures are sceptical about the UK government's plan to negotiate a comprehensive deal on future relations before the end of 2020. They believe the timetable for that is too tight.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson is upbeat, insisting the UK can now move forward after years of wrangling over Brexit.
Mr Michel, the former Belgian Prime Minister who chairs EU summits, said in a tweet: "Things will inevitably change but our friendship will remain. We start a new chapter as partners and allies."

The PM has said he will give MPs more time to debate his Brexit deal, if they agree to a 12 December election.
Boris Johnson told the BBC he expected the EU to grant an extension to his 31 October deadline, even though he "really" did not want one.
But Jeremy Corbyn said he would not support an election until a no-deal Brexit is "off the table".
EU leaders could give their verdict on delaying Brexit for up to three months on Friday.
Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs the government would on Monday table a motion calling for a general election.
Under the 2011 Fixed-Term Parliament Act, two-thirds of MPs must vote for a general election before one can be held.
In a letter to Labour leader Mr Corbyn, Mr Johnson said his "preferred option" was a short Brexit postponement "say to 15 or 30 November".
But Mr Corbyn said: "Take no-deal off the table and we absolutely support a general election.
"I've been calling for an election ever since the last one because this country needs one to deal with all the social injustice issues - but no-deal must be taken off the table.
"The EU will decide whether there is an extension tomorrow... and then we can decide."
Mr Johnson wrote that, in that case, he would try to get his deal through Parliament again, with Labour's support.
The prime minister added that he "assumes" Mr Corbyn "will cooperate with me to get our new Brexit deal ratified, so we leave with a new deal rather than no deal".
If, as widely expected, the EU's Brexit delay is to the end of January, Mr Johnson said he will hold a Commons vote next week on a 12 December election.
If Labour agrees to this, the government said it will try to get its deal through before Parliament is dissolved for the campaign on 6 November.
Treasury sources told the BBC that the Budget would not now be delivered on 6 November as scheduled.
The prime minister told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "I'm afraid it looks as though our EU friends are going to respond to Parliament's request by having an extension, which I really don't want at all.
"So, the way to get this done, the way to get Brexit done, is, I think, to be reasonable with Parliament and say if they genuinely want more time to study this excellent deal, they can have it but they have to agree to a general election on 12 December."
Asked what he would do if Labour refused to vote for an election, he said: "We would campaign day after day for the people of this country to be released from subjection to a Parliament that has outlived its usefulness."
The prime minister has repeatedly insisted the UK will leave the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal.
But he was forced to send a letter to the EU requesting an extension, under legislation passed by MPs last month.
MPs voted on Tuesday to back the first stage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, putting the deal the PM agreed with Brussels into law - but rejected Mr Johnson's plan to push it through the Commons in three days.
The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler says EU leaders are set to decide on Friday whether to grant the UK a three-month Brexit extension - although the decision could be delayed to Monday.
Most EU nations back it but France "is digging its heels in", she adds.
So there could be an emergency summit in Brussels on Monday to allow leaders to reach agreement face-to-face.
Boris Johnson cannot be remotely sure Labour and the smaller parties will let him have his way. The SNP and the Lib Dems are both tempted to go for an election as soon as a three month delay is agreed.
The Labour Party's official position has always been that they would agree to an election, in fact officially they are chomping at the bit, like the other parties, as long as a delay is agreed.
One senior member of the shadow cabinet predicted they would not be able to withstand the pressure if the Lib Dems and the SNP said yes.
Jeremy Corbyn himself, and certainly one group in his camp, are understood to be very tempted too. But, just as in 2017, lots of Labour MPs are horrified at the idea, partly because of Labour's standing in the polls.
But also, there are senior shadow cabinet ministers who believe the smart thing would be to leave the PM in his purgatory, twisting, unable to get his bill through, unable to get to an election.
In short, the position is fluid, and Labour is having words with itself tonight.
Read the full article

The High Court has thrown out an attempt to prosecute Boris Johnson over claims he lied during the 2016 referendum campaign by saying the UK gave the EU £350m a week.
The Tory leadership hopeful challenged a summons to attend court on three claims of misconduct in public office.
His lawyers said he denied acting improperly or dishonestly.
Marcus Ball, the campaigner who brought the private prosecution, said the matter was "not over".
He crowdfunded more than £300,000 to bring the case.
Mr Johnson, a former Foreign Secretary, was handed a summons to attend Westminster Magistrates' Court on 29 May.
But at a High Court hearing in London, Lady Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Supperstone overturned this decision.
Addressing Mr Johnson's barrister, Adrian Darbishire QC, Lady Justice Rafferty said: "We are persuaded, Mr Darbishire, so you succeed, and the relief that we grant is the quashing of the summonses."
Reasons for the High Court's ruling will be given at a later date.
Mr Ball's lawyers first lodged an application in February to summons Mr Johnson, claiming that, while an MP and mayor of London, he had deliberately misled the public during the 2016 EU referendum campaign, and had repeated the statement during the 2017 general election.
The £350m figure was used by the pro-Brexit Vote Leave group throughout the referendum. It also appeared on the side of the campaign bus, which urged the UK to "fund our NHS instead".
Mr Darbishire said the attempt to prosecute Mr Johnson was "politically motivated and vexatious".
BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman said Mr Johnson's lawyers had sought to say the district judge who issued the summons got the law wrong.
The Uxbridge and South Ruislip MP's legal team argued that the offence of misconduct in public office was about the secret abuse of power and there was nothing secret about Mr Johnson's claim, which they said had been challenged during the campaign.
Mr Johnson did not appear at the High Court hearing and a spokesman said he would not be commenting on the case.
In a statement, his lawyers said they were "disappointed" by the district judge's decision and now "pleased" that the High Court had "rectified that decision so quickly".
Speaking outside court, Mr Ball said he had spent more than the £300,000 he raised on the case, leaving him in "massive debt".
In a statement, he later added that he would "keep fighting".

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has written to European Council President Donald Tusk, calling for the Irish backstop to be scrapped. BBC Northern Ireland's economic and business editor, John Campbell, and the Reality Check team have been looking at some of the key passages and what they mean.
Boris Johnson's focus here is the backstop. That's the insurance policy - agreed by Theresa May and the European Union (EU) - to avoid a hard Irish border.
It would come into effect after Brexit if the UK and the EU failed to reach a trade deal that would keep the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as open as it is now.
It would keep:
Mr Johnson identifies two problems with this.
First, the UK could not unilaterally bring the backstop to an end, unless it could be proven that the EU was acting in bad faith. In March, the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, concluded if the UK and EU negotiated in good faith but still could not reach an agreement on their long-term relationship, the UK would have "no internationally lawful means" of leaving the backstop without EU agreement.
Secondly, there is the issue of EU single market rules continuing to apply in Northern Ireland. Those rules are set in Brussels, rather than Belfast, meaning Northern Ireland voters would have no direct influence. However, the EU can point to a specialised committee of UK and EU representatives that would be set up to oversee the implementation of the backstop and review cross-border cooperation. Reporting to that committee would be a working group to act as a forum for consultation. And taken together, these arrangements could be interpreted as giving the UK a decision-shaping role in regard to EU rules covered by the backstop.
Theresa May accepted a backstop was needed to protect the Good Friday agreement.
Widely seen as marking the effective end of Northern Ireland's Troubles, the agreement established:
But Mr Johnson takes a sharply different view from his predecessor. He has accepted the argument, advanced in a series of papers and articles by Lord Trimble and other senior unionists, that the backstop would breach one of the central principles of the Good Friday agreement - there should be no change in Northern Ireland's constitutional status without the consent of a majority of voters.
Nationalists, on the other hand, say this principle applies to a vote on a united Ireland only.
The border policy most favoured by Brexit supporters, "alternative arrangements" refers to a package of technical and administrative solutions to keep the border open without the UK having to stick closely to EU rules and regulations.
The EU has committed to exploring alternative arrangements - but only once a withdrawal agreement containing the backstop has been passed.
The UK government, meanwhile, has appointed a panel of experts to advise on alternative arrangements - but it has not yet published a report.
Separately, a group led by two Conservative MPs has published an alternative arrangements plan.
It suggested the widespread use of trusted-traders schemes for cross-border businesses, which would minimise the need for any checking of goods.
It also said any customs checks could happen "inland" at warehouses or company premises, using mobile inspection teams.
And use of customs brokers is proposed for small businesses, with the very smallest being exempt from any new procedures.
However, this plan was dismissed by Northern Ireland business groups as unrealistic and lacking credibility.
Mr Johnson repeats the long-standing UK commitment not to have infrastructure at the border.
But in the EU's view the UK has already made a commitment that goes beyond this.
In the joint report of 2017 (effectively an interim deal), the UK committed to no physical infrastructure or "related checks and controls".
For the EU, this means no new checks and controls anywhere on the island of Ireland, be it at facilities away from the border or at company premises.
But Brexit supporters think this commitment went too far and should have been limited to no checks at the border itself. And the wording of his letter suggests Mr Johnson agrees.
Like the rest of the UK Northern Ireland uses the pound, while across the border the euro is the currency.
But the UK and Ireland are currently part of a single EU VAT area.
This means that when a UK product is exported to another EU country, VAT is paid where the product is consumed.
But if the UK left the EU, VAT liabilities would have to be assessed by customs officials at borders - unless some new arrangement is in place.
One solution would be for the UK to have continued access to the EU's VAT Information Exchange System (VIES).
However, that would be an unprecedented arrangement - not even Norway, which has a major VAT deal with the EU, has full access to the VIES.
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A UK minister has attended a European Union meeting for the final time before the country leaves the bloc on Friday.
Speaking after the General Affairs Council meeting in Brussels, Foreign Office Minister Chris Pincher said the UK was "looking forward to the next chapter" in its relations with the EU.
The UK and the EU's 27 remaining countries would "continue to defend shared values" after Brexit, he said.
The European Parliament will hold its vote on the Brexit deal on Wednesday.
It comes after the withdrawal agreement was formally signed by Boris Johnson and EU leaders last week.
Topics discussed at Tuesday's meeting included Croatia's six-month stint in charge of the EU presidency, which officially begins this month.
As he arrived for the meeting, Mr Pincher told reporters: "I'm here to reassert to my EU friends and colleagues that, though we are leaving the EU, we are not leaving Europe.
"Our shared history, our shared values, our commitment to security and prosperity continue as equals - sovereign equals."
He wished his counterparts "the best for the future".
He later tweeted a number of pictures of him talking to his European counterparts.
Outlining Croatia's EU presidency plans, European Affairs Minister Andreja Metelko-Zgombić said ministers were "sad to see a member state leave".
But she added that Brexit should be seen as the "new starting point for building a close relationship and partnership" with the UK in the future.
"The distance between Dover and Calais will not increase over the night on Friday," she told reporters ahead of the meeting.
"We will remain very close geographically, and we should give ourselves the means to achieve a loyal and balanced relationship".
The UK's departure on Friday will be followed by an 11-month transition period, during which the UK will continue to follow EU rules.
The moment is set to be officially marked in London with a light show in Downing Street and a speech from the prime minister.
A special 50p coin will also enter circulation to mark the occasion.

Theresa May's Brexit speech was broadly welcomed by UK business and finance for adding clarity.
But the widespread reaction was that it's the final detail of the EU exit terms that matter, not laying out the direction of travel. Here are some responses from business leaders.
"In business, what you achieve in a negotiation - not what you bid for - is what really matters. The Brexit process is no different. While businesses now have a clearer sense of the prime minister's top-line priorities, they will come away from her speech knowing little more about the likely outcome of the Brexit negotiations than they did yesterday.
"The simple fact is that businesses all across the UK are carrying on. Directly-affected companies are being pragmatic, and are preparing for a range of possible outcomes. Away from Westminster, many businesses are ignoring the Brexit 'noise' completely, and say there needs to be a far bigger focus on getting the basics right here at home."
"Nearly half of managers (49%) believe that Brexit will have a negative impact on economic growth, so it's imperative that we act now if we want UK business to remain dynamic and resilient.
"With the prime minister signalling today that the UK will make a clean break from the EU, it is inevitable that the number of foreign workers coming to the UK will fall after Brexit, so we need to invest heavily in home grown talent now to ensure that we have the skilled workers capable of plugging the gaps."
"I am very encouraged by the vision set out by the prime minister today. The UK voted to leave the European Union and she is determined to make this happen in a way that restores our sovereignty but which ensures the UK becomes a global leader in free trade.
"British business now needs to get behind the government as it sets out to secure the best deal for our country's future. As the prime minister said, we are leaving the EU but we are not leaving Europe - it will remain an important market for British business but we need to be able to trade freely with the rest of the world as well."
"While we have got some more certainty about where the government is heading on this, for us it doesn't make a difference, we are still going to go ahead with our plans to open a subsidiary [inside the EU].
"What we need is the licensing and the regulatory ability to be able to provide insurance to the EU customers that we have. Without access to the single market we are not going to be able to continue to do that for some of our business from London as we have done, traditionally, for many years."
"The Prime Minister has provided important clarity ahead of the triggering of Article 50 and the start of formal Brexit negotiations. ADS will continue to support government as it seeks to secure an ambitious agreement with our EU partners that delivers barrier-free access to trade, skills and simplified regulatory regimes.
"Securing the best deal for the UK and our EU partners will take time and it is essential that there are transitional arrangements in place to avoid disrupting closely integrated supply chains and damaging the UK's global competitiveness."
"Today the prime minister changed the landscape. Ruling out membership of the Single Market has reduced options for maintaining a barrier-free trading relationship between the UK and the EU. But businesses will welcome the greater clarity and the ambition to create a more prosperous, open and global Britain, with the freest possible trade between the UK and the EU.
"The pressure is now on to deliver these objectives and achieve a smooth and orderly exit. Businesses want to make a success of Brexit but will be concerned about falling back on damaging WTO rules."
"We strongly welcome Theresa May's announcement that the UK will leave the Single Market and will not participate in the customs union in its current form. Leaving this protectionist union is the only way for the UK to maximise the economic benefits of leaving the EU, which, through the right policies, we estimate will deliver a 4% GDP Brexit dividend and will lead to consumer prices falling by 8%.
"In order to deliver this maximum economic benefit, it is crucial that the UK achieves a position of tariff free trade across the world as swiftly as possible, whilst avoiding a tit-for-tat tariff war with the EU which will harm consumers and postpone Brexit's economic benefits."
"In order for the government to lay the foundations of a globally competitive Britain, it must bring forward a clear and far-reaching industrial strategy that will enable businesses to seize the many expected opportunities the prime minister believes will arise after we leave the EU.
"In the end it's the detail of the final agreement that will matter and it is important that this will be open to parliamentary scrutiny. Parliament and business will want to see a very clear, evidence-based plan to ensure the UK economy avoids collateral damage arising from our departure."
"The recognition by the prime minister of the importance of single market arrangements for the automotive sector is critical. We need government to deliver a deal which includes participation in the customs union to help safeguard EU trade, trade that is tariff-free and avoids the non-tariff and regulatory barriers that would jeopardise investment, growth and consumer choice.
"Achieving this will not be easy and we must, at all costs, avoid a cliff-edge and reversion to WTO tariffs, which would threaten the viability of the industry."
"This is an aggressive move by the UK, showing little regard for our trading relationship and for relations with other EU member states. Theresa May has signalled a change to the UK business model, away from a collective European rules-based approach, towards a more nationalistic, isolated stance.
"This is likely to lead to a protracted and unwelcome period of uncertainty and instability for business. Ireland is uniquely exposed to the risks given out deep economic ties with the UK."

More than 70 business leaders have signed a letter to the Sunday Times calling for a public vote on the UK's Brexit deal.
The chief executive of Waterstones and former Sainsbury's boss Justin King are among those saying a "destructive hard Brexit" will damage the UK economy.
A group called Business for a People's Vote will launch on Thursday.
A Downing Street source told the BBC the Prime Minister was clear that there would be no new referendum.
The letter was coordinated by The People's Vote campaign, which wants a ballot on whether to accept the terms of the UK's departure from the European Union.
Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks and Martha Lane Fox, the founder of Lastminute.com - who both campaigned for Remain - signed the letter, as did Lord Myners, the former chairman of Marks and Spencer.
It reads: "The business community was promised that, if the country voted to leave, there would continue to be frictionless trade with the EU and the certainty about future relations that we need to invest for the long term.
"Despite the Prime Minister's best efforts, the proposals being discussed by the government and the European Commission fall far short of this.
"The uncertainty over the past two years has already led to a slump in investment."
The letter concludes: "We are now facing either a blindfold or a destructive hard Brexit.
"Given that neither was on the ballot in 2016, we believe the ultimate choice should be handed back to the public with a People's Vote."
Waterstones chief executive James Daunt told the BBC: "All the paper we use is imported. We rely on just-in-time methods and now there are multiple uncertainties."
Prime Minister Theresa May has said asking the public to vote again would be a betrayal of the public's trust.
The Downing Street source told the BBC: "The Prime Minister has been clear - no second referendum.
"We had a people's vote, it was in June 2016."

The UK risks losing jobs and investment without an urgent Brexit transition deal, Britain's five biggest business lobby groups have warned.
In a joint letter being sent to Brexit Secretary David Davis, the groups including the CBI and Institute of Directors, say time is running out.
The head of the CBI said firms wanted an agreement on the transition period by the end of the year.
A government spokesman said the talks were "making real, tangible progress".
The other lobby groups backing the letter are the British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, and the EEF manufacturers' body.
CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn told the BBC: "One of the big messages from firms is 'get on with it' on both sides.
"This is real, this is urgent and a transition agreement by the end of the year would help enormously to keep investment and jobs in the country," she said.
Theresa May has suggested a transition period of about two years, with the UK and EU trading on broadly similar terms to now and payments to Brussels to meet Britain's budget commitments.
But although EU negotiators have agreed to start preliminary work on a future relationship, they still want more concessions on the UK's so-called "divorce payment" before starting talks on trade and transition.
The five business bodies - which together represent firms employing millions of people - are calling for more urgency, with less than a year and a half left until the UK leaves the European Union.
Concern about the loss of UK jobs and investment was underlined last week when the boss of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, tweeted that he will be "spending a lot more time" in Frankfurt.
Earlier this month, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sam Woods, warned that the UK and the EU must agree a transition deal by Christmas or companies would start triggering contingency plans.
And in a survey released on Monday, the EEF said that Brexit uncertainty was holding back the plans of manufacturing firms to invest in new plants and machinery.
Mr Davis is holding Brexit talks in Paris on Monday after France appeared to emerge as the most hardline EU member state when it comes to the divorce bill.
The prime minister is also due to update the Commons on the progress made during last week's summit of EU leaders in Brussels.
It is thought that Mrs May will say that negotiations are "deeply technical", but she has not forgotten that the lives of millions of people are at the heart of the process.
A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union said the prime minister proposed a strictly time-limited implementation period in her Florence speech.
He said: "We are making real and tangible progress in a number of vital areas in negotiations. However, many of the issues that remain are linked to the discussions we need to have on our future relationship.
"That is why we are pleased that the EU has now agreed to start internal preparatory discussions on the framework for transitional arrangements as well as our future partnership."

Firms that rely on EU workers have warned of the "catastrophic" impact of proposals to slash unskilled migration on the day Britain leaves the EU.
Under the draft plan, leaked to the Guardian, firms would have to recruit locally unless they could prove an "economic need" to employ EU citizens.
They could face a skills tax to boost training of UK workers if they still chose to employ unskilled EU staff.
But business groups say a "sudden" cut could cause "massive disruption".
The National Farmers' Union claimed the "entire food supply chain" could be threatened.
NFU deputy president Minette Batters said: "We are calling for an urgent and clear commitment from government to ensure that farmers and growers have access to sufficient numbers of permanent and seasonal workers post-Brexit.
"And we need clarity on the new rules for EU nationals living and working in the UK well before free movement ends in March 2019."
The leaked Home Office document has not been signed off by ministers, who will set out their post-Brexit migration plans later this year.
But Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: "The public voted to leave the European Union. That means freedom of movement has to end."
He said "people with the right skills" would still be "welcome".
But he added: "Equally we have to make sure that British companies are also prepared to train up British workers.
Analysis
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
The prime minister has at least two big reasons for wanting to get this right.
For Theresa May, the referendum result was a clear instruction from the British people that they wanted to reduce the levels of immigration. Politically, therefore, she believes it's a demand she has to meet.
And as home secretary for six years, when the government continually flunked its own immigration target, the new system that will control immigration is finally, perhaps, a chance to meet her own long-missed goal.
So Wednesday's mega-leak from the Home Office of the potential design of the post Brexit system is significant. "The public are very clear, they want to see immigration not stopped but brought properly under control."
His message was echoed by Theresa May at Prime Minister's Questions, who told MPs immigration had to be cut to ease the strain on public services, adding that it "often hits those at the lower end of the income scale hardest in depressing their wages".
The EU has not issued an official response to the leaked document. Unnamed sources have told The Times the EU would block access to the single market during the transition period the UK wants after Brexit if it presses ahead with the proposals.
Michael Fallon said the government would take the views of business into account when drawing up its migration policy.
But business groups have hit back at his suggestion that they are using cheap foreign labour rather than training up British workers.
The British Hospitality Association said: "If these proposals are implemented it could be catastrophic for the UK hospitality industry and for those who enjoy the hospitality it brings."
The BHA claims 75% of waiters, 25% of chefs and 37% of housekeepers in the UK are EU nationals and at least 60,000 new EU workers are needed every year to fill vacancies.
The organisation said it would take 10 years to train up enough British workers to plug the gap and some businesses would fail in the meantime, "taking UK jobs with them".
Ian Wright, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, said: "If this does represent the government's thinking it shows a deep lack of understanding of the vital contribution that EU migrant workers make - at all skill levels - across the food chain."
A trade body representing Britain's manufacturers, the EEF described the leaked proposals as a "mixed bag".
"On the highly skilled side, the system described is one we can work with, after some changes," a spokesman said, but it had "grave concerns" about low-skilled workers, "with many UK manufacturers telling us that they simply don't get jobs applications from prospective UK workers".
The Home Office document obtained by the Guardian, entitled the Border, Immigration and Citizenship System After the UK Leaves the EU, is marked extremely sensitive and dated August 2017.
Among the ideas in it are:
"The government will take a view on the economic and social needs of the country as regards EU migration, rather than leaving this decision entirely to those wishing to come here and employers," the document states.
Low-skilled migrants would be offered residency for a maximum of two years while those in "high-skilled occupations" would be granted permits to work for a longer period of three to five years.
EU citizens coming as tourists, on short-term business trips or visits to friends and family would be able to enter the UK without needing permission, under the draft proposals.
Those staying longer would need to register for a residence permit by showing proof of employment, study or self-sufficiency. Applicants' fingerprints could also be taken.
The document says the new regime would only come fully into force at the end of a transition period, which could last up to three years.
The proposals would not affect EU nationals already living and working in the UK - the government says they should be given the right to apply for "settled status" after five years of being lawful residents, although agreement on this has yet to be reached in Brexit talks.
The leaked document says: "Put plainly, this means that, to be considered valuable to the country as a whole, immigration should benefit not just the migrants themselves but also make existing residents better off."
Sources have told the BBC that the proposals have been updated six times since the leaked document was written in August and although the broad principles in it are correct, it has yet to be discussed by the cabinet.
Lord Green, of the Migration Watch pressure group, said: "These proposals rightly focus on low-skilled migration and by doing so could reduce net migration from the EU by 100,000 a year over time."
UKIP also welcomed the proposals, saying they should be implemented "without fudging" - but Labour MP Yvette Cooper said they appeared to fly in the face of Home Secretary Amber Rudd's commitment earlier this summer to consult on a post-Brexit immigration system.
The TUC said the "back of the envelope plans" would "create an underground economy, encouraging bad bosses to exploit migrants and undercut decent employers offering good jobs".
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable claimed Theresa May had suppressed "up to nine reports" showing immigration did not hit the wages or jobs of existing UK workers when she was home secretary - claims denied by Downing Street.
Italy's minister for European Affairs, Sandro Gozi, has described the proposals as "very restrictive and unacceptable".
He told the BBC News Channel that it was "the wrong direction in our analysis" and "we won't be ready to negotiate along those lines".

The cabinet has decided to "ramp up" preparations for a no-deal Brexit amid uncertainty over the fate of Theresa May's proposed EU exit deal.
It allocated to ministries £2bn set aside in case the UK leaves on 29 March without MPs having accepted any deal.
Letters will be sent to 140,000 firms updating them on what they should do while 3,500 troops will be put on standby to help government departments.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said it amounted to "psychological warfare".
With 101 days left until Brexit and many MPs still opposed to the government's withdrawal agreement, which MPs will vote on in mid-January, ministers met for a longer-than-normal two and a half hour meeting.
They agreed that businesses should activate their own no deal contingency plans, as they think appropriate.
Updated Revenue and Customs information packs will be sent to firms later this week, setting out what changes could be needed at the border.
Consumers are being advised to familiarise themselves with advice published this summer, in areas ranging from booking flights to using credit cards, with more details promised in the coming weeks.
The Treasury said £480m of the £2bn of preparation funding would go to the Home Office, helping it to employ more Border Force officers and boost national security.
Defra would receive £410m, allowing it to focus on ensuring the trade in fish, food products and chemicals remains uninterrupted.
HMRC, which is being allocated £375m, plans to hire more than 3,000 new staff to handle increases in customs activities, as well as investing in new technology at borders.
The next largest allocations will be £190m for the Department for Business and £128m for the Department for International Trade.
Separately, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has told MPs that 3,500 military personnel, including logisticians and engineers as well as infantry units, were ready to be deployed if needed.
About 10% of the force would be reservists who will receive their call up papers in the middle of January so that if needed they would be ready in March.
In other developments:
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the cabinet had agreed that "preparing for a no deal will be an operational priority within government but our overall priority is to secure a deal".
He said no-deal planning "needs to be much more of a priority for businesses" and there would be a "significant increase" in the guidance issued to them over the next 14 weeks, as Brexit day approaches.
E-mails will be sent out to 80,000 of those businesses most like to be affected over the next few days.
In the autumn of 2017, The Treasury earmarked £3bn for no-deal planning between 2018 and 2020.
In March, Chancellor Philip Hammond said half of that had been allocated to 20 government departments, with the Home Office, transport, the environment and business among the largest recipients.
At Tuesday's cabinet meeting ministers approved the second tranche - plus an under-spend from the current year - to go to departments for the 2019/20 year, with the priority areas being borders, security and international trade.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has already ordered full "no deal" planning across the National Health Service, he told the BBC's Newsnight on Monday.
But Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit negotiator, criticised UK ministers, who he said were "glorifying" the prospect of leaving without a comprehensive deal in the hope individual agreements could be reached in areas like transport and livestock movements.
And Labour said a no-deal exit was "not viable" and it would work with other parties to stop it.
"It is testament to the prime minister's failure in these negotiations that the government is now spending billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to prepare for a no-deal Brexit that is rejected by Parliament and many of those sat around the Cabinet table," said shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman.
And the Lib Dems, who are campaigning for another referendum, said the government was "attempting to scare" MPs, businesses and the public with the threat of a no-deal.
"Theresa May is irresponsibly trying to run down the clock so that the only option is to support her discredited deal," Sir Vince Cable said.
MPs will vote on the prime minister's Brexit deal, which sets out the terms of Britain's exit from the EU and includes a declaration on the outline of the future relations, in the middle of January.
The deal will only come into force if both the UK and European parliaments approve it.
The BBC understands Mrs May is planning to use the Commons vote as a "moment of reckoning" for the Brexit process.
Sources have told the BBC that Downing Street will not stand in the way of MPs who seek to amend the government's motion on the Brexit deal to put forward potential alternatives.
The prime minister was previously thought to be against this idea.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure to push for a further vote of no-confidence in the government as a whole.
On Monday night, the Labour leader tabled a motion calling on MPs to declare they have no confidence in the prime minister because she failed to have a vote on her Brexit deal straight away.
No 10 has refused to make time for the motion and Commons Speaker John Bercow confirmed on Tuesday that there were under no obligation to do so.
Other parties - the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens - have called on Mr Corbyn to push for a no-confidence vote against the government as a whole.
Unlike a vote aimed at the prime minister, the government would have to allow a vote on this motion and, if successful, it could force a general election.
Northern Ireland's DUP, whose votes the Conservative government has relied on in big votes since the June 2017 election, said they would not support Labour.
Mrs May also appeared to have the support of pro-Brexit backbench critics who last week failed in a bid to oust her as Tory leader.
One of them, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said he would never vote against Mrs May or a Conservative government. He said on Tuesday evening that he had a "civilised and courteous" meeting with the PM, and that the government was "prudent" to engage in no-deal planning.

The cabinet has reached a "collective" agreement on the basis of the UK's future relationship with the EU after Brexit, Theresa May has said.
Ministers have signed up to a plan to create a free trade area for industrial and agricultural goods with the bloc, based on a "common rule book".
They also supported what could amount to a "combined customs territory".
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said the plan, agreed after a 12-hour meeting, would "anger many Tory Brexiteers".
Our political editor said the prime minister had "picked a side" by opting for a closer relationship with the EU than many colleagues desired - and she now had to sell it to her party and the other European leaders.
No 10, she added, hoped the new commitments would unlock the next phase of talks with the rest of the EU but it was not yet clear how many, or what kind, of objections were raised.
Downing Street said the proposals marked a "substantial evolution" in the UK's position and would resolve outstanding concerns about the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
"This is a proposal that I believe will be good for the UK and good for the EU, and I look forward to it being received positively," Mrs May told the BBC.
One pro-Brexit cabinet minister told the BBC there was "no point" pushing for a vote as "we were well and truly outnumbered by 20 to seven".
Nicholas Watt, political editor of BBC Newsnight, said the minister also warned that "it will be a problem" if there is any attempt to "water down plans even further" should the EU reject the UK's proposals.
The UK said it now wanted to accelerate the negotiations in an effort to secure an agreement by October, but also warned it will step up preparations for leaving on 29 March 2019 without a deal.
The EU's negotiator Michel Barnier, who earlier suggested the EU would be willing to shift its position if the UK relaxed some of its "red lines", tweeted his reaction:
The prime minister had gathered her 26 cabinet ministers together at her country residence to try and resolve differences over the shape of the UK's relations with the EU and break the current deadlock with the EU.
The main details of the Chequers statement are as follows:
Mrs May said this was an "important step" in the process of negotiating the UK's smooth exit from the EU.
"Of course we still have work to do with the EU in ensuring that we get to that end point in October. But this is good we have come today, following our detailed discussions, to a positive future for the UK," she said.
She said the proposals, to be formally published in a white paper next week, would give the UK the freedom to strike trade deals with other countries while maintaining regulatory, environmental and consumer standards.
In a letter sent to all Conservative MPs, she said she had allowed colleagues to express their views while policy was developed but "agreement on this proposal marks the point where this is no longer the case and collective responsibility is fully restored".
There is no mention in the document of either the single market or the customs union, which the UK has committed to leave after the end of a transition period in December 2020.
Under plans for a free trade zone, the UK would be committed legally to following EU law for a large part of the economy, including manufacturing and farming.
While Parliament would retain the right to diverge from EU regulations in these areas, the document makes clear that "choosing not to pass the relevant legislation would have consequences for market access, security co-operation or the frictionless border".
The document also commits the government to step up preparedness for a no-deal scenario, as one of a range of possible outcomes, "given the short period remaining before the necessary conclusion of negotiations".
The CBI employers group welcomed the proposals for a free trade area in goods which it said would provide a "confidence boost" to business.
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said there was "a danger that this is a lowest common denominator plan" designed to hold the cabinet together, rather than "secure the strong negotiating position that we need with the EU".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Once upon a time we were told 'Brexit means Brexit', now we are told it means maintaining a common rulebook for all goods, a joint institutional framework for interpreting the agreement and the UK and EU forming this combined customs territory.
"That looks very much like regulatory alignment, the ECJ (European Court of Justice) and half a customs union to me."
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, who backed Brexit in the referendum, said the deal would end free movement of people and would end the remit of the European Court of Justice in the UK - saying that UK judges always pay regards to other countries' courts, such as Canada or Hong Kong.
He added, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, that the cabinet had agreed to step up preparations for the UK leaving the EU without a Brexit deal.
Fellow cabinet Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom also tweeted her backing for the deal:
Leading Tory backbench Brexiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg told the same programme that it was difficult to say whether or not the agreement was meeting the party's manifesto commitments on Brexit because he had seen only a three page summary rather than the full 100-plus page document.
He said it was "possible", when the detail emerged, that the proposal could be "worse than no deal".
And Sir Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said it could be the case that "Brexiteers have signed up to it knowing perfectly well that it is not going to pass the European Union and they'll then be able to blame Europe for the fact that it won't work".
Pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave said it would represent a "bad deal for the UK" which would "only slide further as the EU takes more and more".
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the plan amounted to a "sell-out to global corporates" and would do nothing for the 90% of British firms which do not export to Europe.
Veteran Eurosceptic Tory MP Sir Bill Cash said he was "deeply disappointed to say the least" about the plans, which he suggested could contradict the terms of the EU Withdrawal Act passed by MPs last month.

The cabinet has backed a draft withdrawal agreement between the UK and the EU, Theresa May has said.
The prime minister was speaking after what she said was a "long, detailed and impassioned debate" in a five-hour cabinet meeting.
She said it was a "decisive step" in the progress of Brexit, and would allow the agreement to be finalised.
The EU's chief negotiator said it was in both sides' interests.
But leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg described it as a "rotten deal".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the cabinet was "certainly not unanimous", with nine ministers speaking out against the deal.
In her statement outside Downing Street, Mrs May said the agreed package was "the result of thousands of hours of hard negotiation with EU officials".
She believed that "this decisive choice is in the best interests of the entire UK", adding: "When you strip away the detail, the choice before us is clear.
"This deal, which delivers on the vote of the referendum, which brings back control of our money, laws and borders, ends free movement, protects jobs, security and our Union; or leave with no deal, or no Brexit at all."
The 585-page draft withdrawal agreement has now been published, alongside a shorter statement setting out what the UK and EU's future relations will look like.
The withdrawal agreement covers so-called "divorce" issues. It includes a commitment to protect the rights of EU nationals in the UK and Britons living in the EU to continue living, working and studying.
There is also a planned 21-month transition period after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, and a "financial settlement" from the UK, thought to be between £35bn and £39bn.
The most contentious part of the negotiations is a "backstop", which aims to guarantee that physical checks will not be reintroduced at the border with the Irish Republic, in the event this is not settled by a UK-EU trade deal.
Both sides have resolved to ensure the backstop is not necessary by coming up with alternative arrangements.
Speaking at a press conference, EU negotiator Michel Barnier said if this is not possible by July 2020, the transition period could be extended - and if it is still not settled by the end of the transition, the backstop would "kick in".
This would involve a joint UK-EU "single customs territory", so customs checks are not needed on the border.
Northern Ireland would stay aligned to the EU single market rules that are "essential for the avoidance of a hard border", Mr Barnier added, saying the backstop plan was based on the UK's proposal.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he did not think the agreement was in the national interest because it "doesn't meet the needs of all parts of Britain".
Labour would reveal during Thursday morning's Commons statement whether it will vote against the agreement, he said.
Some Tory MPs are angry, claiming it could mean the UK is tied to EU rules for years to come.
Earlier a senior Conservative told the BBC there could be a move to a vote of no-confidence in Mrs May, perhaps as soon as Thursday,
Meanwhile Mr Rees-Mogg, who has written to MPs urging them to oppose the proposals, told BBC Radio 5 Live it was "a pretty rotten deal", keeping the UK in the EU's customs union and "splitting up" the UK.
Despite winning the backing of her cabinet, the prime minister faces a battle to get the completed deal through Parliament.
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party - which gives the government the support it needs to win key votes - has joined opposition parties in criticising it.
Senior DUP figures spent an hour in Theresa May's office after the publication of the draft text.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "This proposed deal would be a bad one for Scotland, taking us out of a single market eight times the size of the UK market alone and posing a huge threat to jobs, investment and living standards."
Theresa May is sure to face some hostile questioning when she faces MPs' questions on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the EU has said "decisive progress" has now been made in the negotiations.
This was the test required before it would call a special summit to agree the withdrawal plans, possibly later this month.
After that, the government faces a crunch vote in Parliament where MPs will be asked to approve the plans.
The UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 - at which point, if the withdrawal agreement has been ratified, the transition period begins.
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Cabinet ministers are meeting at Chequers in a bid to thrash out an agreement on the shape of the UK's future relationship with the EU.
Theresa May has said they have "a duty" to reach agreement on Friday, amid splits over how closely the UK should stick to EU rules after Brexit.
She is expected to propose keeping the UK aligned with the EU on trading rules for goods but not services.
An ex-minister warned that would mean "something less than the full Brexit".
If ministers reach an agreement, the EU can then choose to accept or reject their proposals.
Speaking on Friday, the EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said it was "ready to adapt our offer should the UK's red lines change" but insisted there could be no "unravelling" of the single market.
Ministers are expected to be at Chequers, a 16th Century house in Buckinghamshire which is the PM's country residence, until about 22.00 GMT. They had to hand in their phones and any smartwatches on arrival.
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said the proposal would include a common rulebook on some sectors - like industrial goods and agricultural goods - for "practical" supply chain reasons.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm pretty confident we will end up with a concrete position which everybody is able to sign up to."
But Brexiteer ministers are understood to be unhappy. Seven cabinet ministers met at the Foreign Office on Thursday evening to discuss the proposal.
There have also been suggestions that the prime minister's proposal would make a US trade deal more difficult. No 10 says it is "categorically untrue that we will not be able to strike a trade deal with the US".
David Jones, a former minister at the Department for Exiting the EU, said Mrs May's proposal looked set to breach her "red lines" on leaving the customs union, single market and jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg
If this was easy, Theresa May would not need the cloistered environment of Chequers to get her cabinet to agree. She would not need the tranquil quiet of the Buckinghamshire countryside to broker peace.
She is vulnerable because her plan is hardly Brexit to some of those who campaigned to leave.
Vulnerable in her party because her authority is in short supply and there is intense disagreement. Vulnerable then in Parliament because without a majority, a small faction can wreak havoc on either side.
Ahead of the meeting, Mrs May said the cabinet had "a great opportunity - and a duty. To set an ambitious course to enhance our prosperity and security outside the European Union - and to build a country that genuinely works for everyone".
Labour's Sir Keir Starmer said a workable agreement that could be taken to the EU was needed and "simply a truce in the cabinet was not good enough for Britain".
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said time was running out for the UK and the worst outcome would be ministers emerging "arm in arm, saying they've agreed, because that means there's another helping of fudge being served up and what is being put forward is likely to be rejected by Europe".
Meanwhile sources close to David Cameron confirmed the former PM met Boris Johnson on Thursday and discussed Brexit.
But they said there was "no grand view" on the negotiations and disputed reports Mr Cameron had agreed that Theresa May's plan was the "worst of all worlds".
There have been differing views within the cabinet about how closely the UK should stick to EU rules after Brexit, and what compromises should be made to achieve "as frictionless as possible" trade.
The aim is to agree a UK proposal on how future relations should work on Friday, the details of which would then be published in a White Paper net week.
That would then be the subject of negotiations with the EU - which might have different ideas.
Ministers have yet to agree what they want to replace the UK's membership of the EU's customs union, which allows for tariff-free trading between members.
One of the key issues is the need to avoid new border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland when the UK is outside the customs union.
The EU and UK say there can be no return to a hard border. But Eurosceptic MPs say tying the UK to the EU after it leaves will prevent it from striking its own trade deals with other countries.
Meanwhile 46 other Conservative MPs have urged Mrs May to listen to businesses and target a deal which enables "frictionless trade to continue".
The "facilitated customs arrangement" is understood to be a proposal for a post-Brexit customs agreement which would allow the UK the freedom to set its own tariffs on goods arriving into the country.
Technology would be used to determine where the goods will ultimately end up - and therefore whether UK or EU tariffs should be paid.
It would keep the UK aligned to EU regulations in some sectors- such as industrial and agricultural goods - but Parliament would be able to decide where to deviate.
The 120-page plan is also understood to propose an end to the free movement of people but to say the UK would have to accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in some areas.
Details of how the plan would work in practice have yet to be published. But Downing Street says it is confident the arrangement would be partly in place by the end of the proposed transition period in December 2020 - with the system being fully operational by the next general election, due in 2022.
It is not clear whether the EU will agree to it.
The UK is due to leave the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 29 March 2019.
But to allow time for parliaments in the UK and the EU to approve whatever deal is agreed, the aim is for the framework for future relations to be agreed this autumn.
But the UK government has not, as yet, settled on what its post-Brexit relationship with the EU should look like.
EU leaders last week told Mrs May it was time to "lay the cards on the table" if a Brexit deal was to be done on time.
Businesses, including Jaguar Land Rover, Airbus and BMW, have also been stepping up the pressure on the government to provide more detail.

"We're still blathering about the state of the party, not the country."
"It's like the last days of Rome." "It's chaos."
On the outside, the government is poised to send a letter to the European Union ahead of talks in Brussels at some point tomorrow, with the final draft likely to be completed in the morning by the prime minister and her team of advisers.
The letter will spell out the kind of delay the government is seeking to the Brexit process.
The delay, and the next steps in our departure, were the subject of a 90-minute discussion at cabinet this morning.
But ministers and advisers on the inside have a rather different view of what's going on.
The cabinet is still split, with some ministers who believe that a long delay is needed.
So, as one outlined today that the "best thing for the country is for someone else to grab control of the order paper and move to a customs union" - translated, push for a long pause on Brexit so that Parliament can wrangle its way to a softer Brexit.
Others, like the leader of the House, who sources say argued the case with force today, believe that the government should ask for a short delay, then ramp up to leave without a formal arrangement with the EU, having had more time to prepare.
One minister who was in the room suggested the prime minister gave the impression that she would ask the EU for an extension to the end of June, with the option of (you guessed it) a "backstop" option of a delay of up to two years.
But another minister said they left the meeting with the view that there had, in fact, been no judgement really made at all.
Another insider was boiling with frustration that, in their view, yet again, Theresa May was failing to express what she actually wants to do clearly, and allowing the Tory Party, and of course Parliament - and more importantly the rest of the country - twist in the wind while she grinds on.
There is also, as ever, a less theological group of ministers who are trying to help manage the competing factions, although some of their colleagues on the backbenches believe they are just passive passengers.
Just in case you needed reminding, delaying Brexit at all goes against the promise that Mrs May made so many times.
And how long for is of course a question of massive significance to the country, and also, may have a bearing on whether the government has a real chance of finally ramming its EU compromise deal through Parliament before too long.
It is still possible that could happen, and when it does, happen rather fast.
But the latest cabinet nightmare over the delay tests almost to destruction the notion that this administration finds it almost impossible to reach meaningful conclusions on Brexit, so profound are the divisions inside.
Officially, Downing Street sources denied there was any firm conclusion of timelines, although the prime minister has said on many occasions she wants it done as soon as possible and has mentioned the short "technical" extension of 30 June many times.
They say there has been no final decision.
For Mrs May's growing number of critics in her own government, that is exactly the point.

The government says "progress needs to be made urgently" on Brexit talks with Labour - but that arranging time with the opposition has been "difficult".
Senior figures from both sides have been trying to break the deadlock by agreeing a Brexit deal MPs can support.
No 10 said talks had "been difficult in some areas", including "timetabling".
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government "really needs to move on" and change its Brexit agreement to solve the impasse.
He said: "We cannot go on hearing this tired old mantra that the Brexit agreement has to be adhered to."
The deal Theresa May negotiated with the EU has been rejected twice by Parliament, with the withdrawal agreement - the terms on how the UK leaves the bloc, rather than its future relationship with it - defeated a further time.
Weeks of talks resumed between the two parties in Westminster on Tuesday afternoon following the Easter break.
Mrs May's de facto deputy David Lidington was expected to lead for the government.
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, shadow chancellor John McDonnell, shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey and shadow environment secretary Sue Hayman took part on behalf of Labour.
Ahead of the meeting, Sir Keir said "fundamental issues" remained between his party and ministers on a number of key issues.
Some Tory MPs are angry the discussions with Labour are even taking place.
Leading backbencher Nigel Evans called on Mrs May to step down as prime minister "as soon as possible", adding that the PM "had been reaching out to the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, when she should have been reaching out to the people".
Talks between Labour and the government seem to be faltering on two fronts - timing and substance.
Both sides say there has been serious engagement.
But the prime minister wants the talks concluded urgently to give her a chance of cancelling the UK's participation in the European parliamentary elections.
That means getting a deal through Parliament by 22 May.
If it looks like an agreement can't be reached with the opposition quickly, Theresa May wants them jointly to sign up to a series of parliamentary votes that both sides would regard as binding, to try to break the impasse.
But Labour doesn't appear willing to be rushed.
And the main opposition party says Mrs May still needs to erase her red line on a customs union if she is to make progress.
Sources say the issue was discussed at the cabinet today - but, while no votes were taken, there didn't seem to be a majority in favour of doing so.
As things stand, the Brexit deadlock continues - and the European election campaigns are getting under way.
Senior members of the influential 1922 committee of Tory MPs are meeting in Parliament.
Under current party rules, MPs cannot call another no-confidence vote in the prime minister until December - but the committee is expected to discuss whether steps should be taken to try to change that.
The group's joint executive secretary Mr Evans told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the calls for the prime minister to quit had become "a clamour".
"The only way we're going to break this impasse properly is if we have fresh leadership of the Conservative Party," he said.
But prisons minister Rory Stewart said Mrs May was doing a "good job" and deserved "praise not blame".
"It's nothing to do with the individual, it's that people disagree deeply about Brexit," he added.
The comments came after it emerged that Mrs May faces a no-confidence challenge from Tory campaigners.
More than 70 local association chiefs have called for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss her leadership and a non-binding vote is to be held at the National Conservative Convention EGM in May.
If the grass-roots Tory vote showed a lack of confidence - it could put greater pressure on the 1922 Committee to find some way of forcibly removing the PM from office.
That pressure could increase further if the Tories poll badly in local and European elections on 2 and 23 May respectively.
The UK has been given an extension to the Brexit process until 31 October.
Change UK has launched its European election campaign in Bristol, while Nigel Farage's Brexit Party has unveiled more of its candidates in London.

British expats who want Brexit to be halted because of "corrupt practices" during the 2016 referendum have had their case heard in the High Court.
The UK in EU Challenge group says the result should be quashed because of "misconduct" by pro-Leave campaigners.
Mr Justice Ouseley's decision is expected on either Monday or Tuesday.
An earlier attempt to challenge the result was rejected on the grounds that it had not been proven that any wrongdoing affected the vote's outcome.
The case is being brought against the government by four British citizens living on the European continent, Susan Wilson, Elinore Gayson, Carole-Anne Richards and John Shaw.
They say the Article 50 process, by which the UK is leaving the EU, should be halted due to breaches of spending limits and other irregularities by leave-supporting groups during the referendum.
Lawyers for the group say the infractions, which resulted in Vote Leave and Leave.EU being fined £61,000 and £70,000 respectively by the Electoral Commission earlier this year, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the result under the terms of the 1983 Representation of The People Act.
Speaking after the hearing, Susan Wilson said she was hopeful of success.
"We also maintain our firm belief that the referendum result cannot be considered the 'will of the people'," she said.
"The Leave campaign's fraudulent behaviour has been proven by the Electoral Commission and we are continually frustrated that the government fails to acknowledge the impact of this illegality and continues to defend its position."
The campaigners' written arguments were dismissed at a preliminary hearing in September, when Mr Justice Supperstone ruled that the electoral watchdog, in punishing the two leave campaigns, had not established that the referendum result had been "procured by fraud".
Friday's oral hearing enabled the group to make their case in person.
If he decides to grant a judicial review, the campaigners have asked for it be expedited, saying it is a "matter of urgency" the matter is dealt with before the UK's scheduled departure on 29 March 2019.
Government lawyers say Theresa May did not act unlawfully when she triggered Article 50 in March 2017, since that although the Electoral Commission investigations were a matter of public record at the time, their findings that campaign violations had occurred were not known until over a year later.
They also argue there is no evidence of a "causal effect" between breaches of campaign rules and the outcome of the referendum - which saw a 51.9% to 48.1% vote in favour of leaving the EU.
The prime minister has said the referendum was the biggest democratic exercise in UK history, with more than 33 million people taking part, and it is her duty to implement the peoples' wishes.
The official remain campaign, Britain Stronger in Europe, was fined £1,250 last year for not declaring certain invoices correctly while the Liberal Democrats, which backed staying in the EU, were fined £18,000 for not providing acceptable invoices or receipts for 80 payments.
In a separate case, the European Court of Justice will rule on Monday whether the UK has the right to unilaterally rescind Article 50 without the say-so of the EU's 27 other members.

Theresa May's deal has not just been defeated - her plan for her main mission as leader of the country has been crushed by an alliance of her critics who don't even agree amongst themselves.
Now she has another ordeal - an official vote of no confidence in her government being mounted by the opposition party.
That is a legal attempt to push the government to collapse into a general election.
On the runes tonight, it seems unlikely that it will force her into that, but she can't be absolutely sure.
One of the reasons No 10 has found themselves in this desperate position is because their judgements have been the wrong ones on so many occasions so far.
She promised MPs tonight that if she survives the confidence vote, then there will be an attempt to listen to what MPs really want - an effort, at this very late stage, to find common cause in Parliament.
But her team has been quick tonight to suggest that, while she is promising to listen, she has no inkling at this stage of dropping her own firm commitments - making it clear that she wants to stick to setting an independent trade policy, which so far shuts down a chance of moving to a Labour-friendly customs union.
It doesn't sound tonight like she has any enthusiasm for junking her deal. Indeed, a source that was on a conference call with business leaders - hosted by the chancellor and other cabinet ministers - was told they could not renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement.
The plan instead was for a "shake down" of MPs in the next few days to find out what they would tolerate in terms of promises for the longer term future relationship.
As we've discussed here before, the Cabinet doesn't even have a clear view itself on how she should proceed.
Today, the leader of the House of Commons told me it would be Brussels that has to move. But some others are crystal clear that the PM will have to soften her offer, because that's what Parliament will tolerate.
History was made tonight with the scale of this defeat - a higher figure than the wildest of numbers that were gossiped about before the vote.
But the prime minister's dilemma is a more serious version of the same it's always been.
She has no majority of her own in Parliament to make her middle way through stick. And her many critics don't agree on the direction she should take - a more dramatic break with the EU, or a tighter, softer version.
Those two fundamental and clashing positions have always threatened to pull her and the government apart.
Even the PM's allies would acknowledge that the government has made plenty of mistakes.
But that widespread disagreement across the spectrum is Mrs May's nightmare that, right now, is a bad dream without end.

Now the Brexit deal has been signed off in Brussels, attention turns to Westminster.
MPs will get their say on whether they approve of the deal or not. Several days of debate will be followed by what's known as the "meaningful vote". This is expected to take place in the week beginning 10 December.
Any attempt to work out the parliamentary arithmetic can only be an estimate so all numbers should be treated with caution. As things stand, though, there seems to be a majority against the proposed deal.
Theresa May relies on the 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs for her majority in the House of Commons. Their opposition to the proposed deal alone could make winning the vote tricky but the prime minister's problems don't end there.
Some 57 Conservative MPs have signed up to the StandUp4Brexit campaign which argues that the proposed deal leaves the UK too close to the EU. (That includes Charlie Elphicke who is currently suspended from the party but generally votes with the government.)
Added to those are the seven pro-Brexit MPs who resigned from government or party jobs on 15 November. And several more who have publicly stated they are opposed to the deal.
Then there are, perhaps, a further dozen or so Conservative MPs from the Remain wing of the party who support the People's Vote campaign for another referendum or would like a closer relationship with the EU.
All in all, there are around 80-90 Tories currently set to defy the government.
Some of them have only said they can't support the deal which, perhaps, suggests, they might abstain when it comes to the crucial vote. But others are more hardline.
On the other side of the calculation, there are a handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs who might back the deal. And a further group who could vote for it to stop the possible alternative of a "no deal" Brexit.
There's also one Liberal Democrat MP, Stephen Lloyd, who says he'll vote in favour of the deal to fulfil a pledge he made to his constituents.
As things stand, though, this group isn't big enough to outweigh the DUP and Conservative rebels.
Things can change of course. Mrs May will hope to persuade some of the rebels and more opposition MPs. But she has a long way to go.

Sir Oliver Letwin told BBC News on Wednesday morning: "I think it should be possible to forge an arrangement in which we do have frictionless trade in a customs union, for the time being at least."
At the moment, the UK has frictionless trade with other European Union (EU) countries because the EU is both a single market and a customs union.
The customs union means that once goods have cleared customs in one country and the commonly agreed tariffs (charges on imports) have been paid, they can be shipped to others in the union without further tariffs being imposed.
The single-market part means that there is free movement of goods, services, capital and people and all the members follow the same rules, regulations and standards.
Having just one or the other does not give you frictionless trade.
Turkey, for example, has a customs union with the EU, covering most manufactured goods, but is not part of the single market.
The border between Turkey and Bulgaria is far from frictionless. Documentation is needed to cross the border, including things such as export licences, invoices and transport permits.
A report prepared for the European Commission in 2014 suggested a waiting time of about three hours for lorries travelling from Turkey to Bulgaria - but, anecdotally, lorry drivers say they sometimes have to wait for more than 24 hours, in queues several kilometres long.
Norway is part of the single market but not part of the EU or its customs union.
That means that goods exported from Norway into the EU must meet rules of origin requirements, to demonstrate that they do not contain more than the maximum permitted level of parts and components from elsewhere.
Norway's border with Sweden, for example, is one of the most frictionless in the world between two countries that do not have a customs union - but it still takes about 20 minutes on average for a lorry to pass through its main border crossing, at Svinesund.
Sir Oliver told BBC Reality Check: "I am of course assuming that the Chequers arrangement for a single market in goods is also part of the deal, as both Mr Corbyn and Mrs May will wish it to be."
While Theresa May's Chequers agreement did indeed suggest a common rulebook on goods, the political declaration that sets out the starting point for the negotiations on a future relationship says that trade in goods should be "as close as possible", which is not the same as being frictionless.


Major suppliers to care homes and hospitals are stockpiling food to offset the potential disruption of a no-deal Brexit.
Apetito and Bidfood, who between them supply thousands of care providers, said they were holding extra inventory in case of supply chain problems.
Both said they were prepared but Apetito said it feared others were not.
"We are in a strong position," said Apetito UK boss Paul Freeston.
"But some firms would not be able to build up big stocks," like his firm, he said. "Or if they are doing fresh produce they would have to stop. A Hard Brexit could cause them significant economic difficulties."
Apetito provides pre-made meals to more than 400 hospitals and 450 care homes, as well as 100,000 vulnerable people in their homes.
Mr Freeston said it was spending £5m in building its inventory ahead of Brexit - doubling the raw materials it holds from four to eight weeks' of stock and pre-made meals from five to six weeks'.
But if the disruption lasted much longer than 12 to 16 weeks, the firm would have "very real difficulties", because it supplies specialist food for elderly people and those with critical conditions.
But if there are backlogs at UK ports in the event of a no-deal, "the quality of food could suffer and our product range would really narrow", Mr Freeston said.
The other worry is that if the UK suddenly started trading on World Trade Organisation terms with the EU, the cost of raw materials could jump - and Britain imports about a third of its food from the bloc.
The concerns are shared by Bidfood, which supplies the kitchens of 4,000 care homes and 950 hospitals across the UK, as well as schools and prisons.
Jim Gouldie, its supply chain and technical services director, said the firm had "looked carefully" at products needed by sectors with a "duty of care" and invested in additional warehousing.
Meanwhile Anglia Crown, which manufactures meals for 100 hospital sites, told the BBC it was worried about prices rising after Brexit. A spokeswoman said the company was agreeing prices for "as many commodities as possible, especially any bought in from Europe".
Despite the warnings, the National Care Association said most of the care homes it represents are prepared for any no-deal disruption and have enough food stocks in place - even if that means relying on dried or canned food to carry them through.
But boss Nadra Ahmed is worried that any price shocks to suppliers could end up being passed on to providers.
"Care providers are struggling with funding and recruitment issues already so any increases will increase the challenges they face."
The Hospital Caterers Association (HCA), which represents hospital catering companies, says most of his members have been preparing for Brexit for some time. And while he is not overly worried about a no deal, he does expect some short term volatility after Brexit.
"A number are making arrangements to increase their stock holding - either on site or by securing commitments from their long-established suppliers," he says.
"But this clearly is not possible for perishable goods. It is imperative that we ensure continuity of supply to minimise any potential disruption to patients' menus."
A government spokesperson said: "Our priority is to make sure that patients continue to receive the same high standard of care.
"We are working closely with the NHS, Defra and healthcare providers to ensure the uninterrupted supply of food and specialised nutritional products to patients, as part of our preparations for a no-deal EU Exit."

Justice Secretary David Gauke has become the second cabinet minister to suggest Parliament could be given free votes on some Brexit-related issues.
He told the BBC MPs should be able to vote according to their personal views when the next Brexit motion is debated on Tuesday, "to resolve things".
Mr Gauke also reiterated he would consider his position if the government opted for a no deal EU withdrawal.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has adopted a similar stance.
She told the BBC this week that she is "committed to making sure we avoid" a no deal Brexit and would not rule out resigning over it.
But she said allowing a free vote could help establish what Brexit solution could command a majority among MPs.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, Mr Gauke - who like Ms Rudd backed Remain in the referendum - warned that the way the UK leaves the EU should not be "railroaded through" without Parliament giving consent.
Asked whether he backed MPs being given a free vote - even if it potentially led to an extension of Article 50 - Mr Gauke said: "I think there is a case for free votes in this area to resolve things.
"As far as Tuesday is concerned... we need to see what all the amendments are going to be, to see whether Tuesday is a crunch point or not."
On Tuesday, the House of Commons will see MPs vote on Mrs May's next steps for Brexit.
Some groups of MPs have also tabled amendments to her motion to try and change the course of Brexit - including attempts to stop a no-deal Brexit and to extend the deadline for leaving the EU.
Meanwhile, Ireland's minister for European affairs Helen McEntee has said Ireland is not "trying to be awkward" in the row over the controversial backstop in the Brexit deal.
The backstop is a last resort measure to ensure an open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
It would only be used if the UK and EU cannot agree a permanent trade deal by the time the Brexit transition period finishes at the end of 2020.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Ms McEntee said Mrs May's red lines on Brexit have made a backstop "absolutely necessary".
She explained: "The UK have said we're leaving the single market, we're leaving the customs union, and for us that makes it more difficult to avoid a border."
The minister added: "The onus by the UK has been shifted back on Ireland that we should compromise, that we are the ones that are trying to be awkward or difficult.
"We did not vote for Brexit. We don't believe in it.
"But we are protecting a peace process. There is an obligation on the UK to ensure the Good Friday Agreement is protected."
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 29 March, and the prime minister has faced repeated calls to rule out the prospect of leaving without a deal if no agreement can be reached.
Theresa May is continuing to seek support for her Brexit deal ahead of a crucial Commons vote on Tuesday.
On 15 January, the withdrawal deal she negotiated with the EU was rejected by MPs by a historic margin - 432 votes to 202.
Tuesday's vote will see MPs debate and vote on her next steps for Brexit.
Opposition and backbench MPs have been tabling amendments to her motion in a bid to force the government to change direction.
These include attempts to stop a no deal Brexit and to extend the deadline for leaving the EU.
On Friday, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said cabinet ministers should back the prime minister's stance of leaving the option of a no deal on the table.
She also suggested the EU may be prepared to grant the UK a "couple of extra weeks" beyond the 29 March deadline to finalise preparations for Brexit.
However, Ms Leadsom said she had "grave concerns" about a bill, proposed by Labour MP Yvette Cooper, which could extend Article 50 - which triggers the UK's withdrawal from the EU - by nine months.
Mr Gauke agreed with a suggestion that leaving without a deal could be "pretty disastrous" for the UK, saying it would have a "significant impact" on jobs.
He said: "If there is a conscious choice, 'Right, that's it, we're going no deal', that would be something I would find extremely difficult."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says some British people have "illusions" about discussing the UK's future ties with the EU at the same time as nailing down the UK's Brexit terms.
An EU-UK deal can only be discussed once the exit issues - such as UK payments to the EU budget - are resolved, Mrs Merkel told German MPs.
The UK initiated the formal procedure to leave the EU on 29 March.
It sets a two-year deadline for completion of the exit negotiations.
EU leaders are to meet on Saturday to adopt their joint negotiating position on Brexit. They are working on the basis of draft guidelines issued on 31 March.
Official talks will not begin until after the UK general election on 8 June.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May called the early election, saying she needed to strengthen her hand in Brexit negotiations.
The EU wants the terms of the UK's exit to be decided before any discussion of a future trade relationship, while Mrs May wants the two issues to be dealt with simultaneously.
The German chancellor told German MPs it would be "a waste of time" to maintain illusions that the two sets of negotiations could be held simultaneously.
EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the EU would "for sure" reach a free trade deal with the UK after Brexit.
But Mrs Merkel warned that it would be a different relationship, saying: "A third country - which is what the UK will be - cannot and will not have the same rights as an EU member state.
"All 27 EU countries and the EU institutions agree about that," she told the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.
Angela Merkel's priorities are clear: to preserve the integrity of the EU and to secure the rights of its citizens living in the UK.
Her speech today may have sounded tough. In truth she is simply repeating what she's said all along: Britain cannot expect to cherry-pick in these negotiations. EU unity matters here, so she's sticking - more or less - to the Brussels script.
Germany is likely to take a moderately softer stance than, say, France. Sources here indicate there might be, for example, some wriggle room over the figure of the Brexit bill. There is little appetite for a punitive approach - Germany, of course, has an eye to its economic relationship with Britain. Nevertheless even the business lobby here (including the head of the association of Germany's all powerful automotive industry) acknowledge that the EU's interests must come first.
It's also worth noting that Brexit is also not the central focus for Berlin. There is a degree of frustration among politicians who are already preoccupied - not only with other challenges facing Europe, including migration, terror, conflict - but with their own looming general election.
Mrs Merkel said the immediate Brexit priorities to decide on were the rights of EU citizens in the UK and Britons in continental Europe and Britain's ongoing financial obligations.
"We can only do an agreement on the future relationship with Britain when all questions about its exit have been cleared up satisfactorily," she said.
"The sooner the UK government is ready for constructive solutions, the sooner we can meet its wish to talk about the future relationship. But first we need to know how the UK government envisages that relationship. It can only be done in that sequence."
EU officials estimate that the UK faces a bill of €60bn (£51bn; $65bn) because of EU budget rules. UK politicians have said the government will not pay a sum of that size.
Mrs Merkel stressed the need to protect the interests of some 100,000 Germans living in the UK.
But she went on to say "we are also ready to make a fair offer to British citizens in Germany and the rest of Europe.
"They are an important part of our community and should remain so."
Mrs Merkel noted the difficulty of unpicking 44 years' worth of EU legislation that counts the UK as a member state.
The people who will negotiate Brexit
Experts have warned that it usually takes the EU many years to negotiate free trade deals with non-EU countries. The EU-Canada deal, Ceta, was concluded after eight years of talks.

The UK government insists Theresa May's Brexit proposal is a "workable, credible" deal, despite being rejected by EU leaders at a summit in Salzburg.
Minister James Brokenshire said "tough words" were to be expected near the end of negotiations but the government was "resolute" in its bid to get a deal.
He said the so-called Chequers plan "does deliver" and it was now for the EU to "be specific" about its concerns.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
Prime Minister Theresa May says her plan for the UK and EU to share a "common rulebook" for goods, but not services, is the only credible way to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But it is opposed by some within her own party who argue it would compromise the UK's sovereignty, and got a cool reception at this week's EU summit in Salzburg, Austria. Mrs May described her talks there with European Council President Donald Tusk as "frank".
In a news conference, Mr Tusk said that while there were some "positive elements" in the Chequers plan, EU leaders had agreed that the proposals needed to be redrawn: "The suggested framework for economic co-operation will not work, not least because it is undermining the single market."
He followed it up by posting a photograph on Instagram of he and Mrs May looking at cakes with the caption: "A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries."
The EU has argued that the UK cannot "cherry-pick" elements from its rulebook.
On Friday, Communities Secretary Mr Brokenshire, a former Northern Ireland Secretary, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The Chequers deal is a workable, credible deal to meet our ambitions.
"They [the EU] have said that it's about the integrity of the single market and we believe the Chequers deal responds to that, and it's for the EU to engage with what's on the table."
But former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, who campaigned for Brexit, questioned why the UK had gone for a plan which "was so obviously not going to cut the mustard with the EU".
He added that the EU had "behaved appallingly" towards Mrs May and he described Mr Tusk's Instagram photograph as "quite insulting".
The UK and EU are trying to reach a deal in time and want to avoid a hard border - physical infrastructure like cameras or guard posts - between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic but cannot agree on how.
The EU insists on its own "legally binding Irish backstop" - what it describes as an insurance policy to prevent a hard border, if no other solution can be found.
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Theresa May and her government have been trying to pursue a middle way, to find a stance between the basic options - a close "Norway style", or free trade deal roughly like Canada.
It feels that the search for something else has been in vain.
Sources on the EU side express irritation at the UK's approach, at what they see as the strident tone the prime minister took in the last 48 hours.
The European Council is not the same as Prime Minister's Questions, it's suggested.
But to kick out publicly as they did in Salzburg certainly runs the risk of pushing Mrs May too far.
It suggests Northern Ireland should stay aligned with the EU in key areas, in effect staying in the customs union and single market. But the UK says this is unacceptable as it would split Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told BBC Newsnight: "At the moment what the European Union is asking in and around Northern Ireland is simply impossible for any UK government to accept. And actually if they stick with that position, there will be no deal."
Mrs May has said the UK will come forward "shortly" with new proposals on the so-called "backstop" arrangements, but also insisted Chequers was the "only serious and credible proposition" for an overall deal.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: "Now that the EU has explicitly rejected it, the Chequers pretence has to stop.
"At the very least, single market/customs union membership must be back on the table and the Article 50 clock [the time-limited process taking Britain out of the EU] must be stopped to avoid a cliff edge."
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC that if the negotiations ended without a deal, it "would be catastrophic for our economy, plunging it into real crisis".
"Really, the next few weeks should be all about how does the prime minister avoid that," he told the BBC.
"She needs to accept that we need a customs union and a strong single market deal, both for the Northern Ireland border and for our economy."
Leading Conservative Remainer Dominic Grieve said he believed a deal would be offered but one that would be "very difficult" for the UK to accept - "which is why we are going to have to reconsider what we are doing".
He said the EU could only show limited flexibility towards a non-member: "We are asking for something that the EU, as an international treaty organisation, cannot readily give us."
Mr Tusk said on Thursday that October would be the "moment of truth" for reaching a deal, and that "if the conditions are there" an additional summit would be held in November to "formalise" it.
Meanwhile, pro-European Scottish politicians seeking a ruling on whether Brexit can be halted have been given permission to take their case to Europe's highest court.
The cross-party group of politicians argue that Article 50 can be revoked if MPs vote to do so.
They won an appeal at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Scotland's highest court, and the European Court of Justice will be asked to give a definitive ruling.

My deal or no deal! An agreement or Armageddon! Compromise or catastrophe!
This is not of course a subject to be flippant about. And it is easy to see why the government has moved already to presenting the next couple of months of fraught activity in Westminster as already being a decision for MPs - back Theresa May whatever she brings back from Brussels or take a reckless roll of the dice.
There is nothing funny about the forecasts of what could happen if there is no deal.
Number 10 believes that will be the rub, the reality of the situation. But while they might wish they were at the closing stage where those arguments will play, they are not there yet.
There are still forces at play that could shape the outcome of the deal, before the Tory whips can start counting up the votes.
First - some Brexiteers are absolutely serious and organised about trying to force Theresa May to shift her plans. They are already making a lot of political noise.
They will demand much of the oxygen at the Tory conference and could make life for the government extremely hard on what one described as 'any or all' votes in the run-up to the Brexit deal.
It doesn't seem necessarily clear to me why the PM would be able to hold off all their demands this time, when on many previous occasions she has had to budge a little.
In turn, some former Remainers plan to use other legislation coming back to Parliament to have another go at softening the government's position.
There is a putative plan for another amendment to leave the country in the European economic area, starting with changing the Trade Bill in the House of Lords.
One MP involved told me: "Some MPs talk about opposing no deal but what does that really mean? There has to be a fallback plan and this amendment could lead the way to finding a solution."
It doesn't mean that those former Remainers will be successful this time around, but it doesn't mean they won't give it a good try.
Add to that the increasing visibility of those campaigning for a second referendum. They know such a vote could only really come out of the turmoil of a no-deal scenario. But they are trying, extremely hard, to shift the terms of the debate.
Lastly and most importantly, Theresa May's plan is a set of proposals for negotiation.
While we may see friendlier rhetoric this week at an EU leaders' shindig in Salzburg, they are never going to accept her compromise in one big chunk.
There will be a process of push and shove, there will have to be some more compromise. The final terms could make the calculations for MPs very different. Even some government ministers privately say they can't be sure they will back the PM until that much later stage.
In the end Number 10 may well be right - they could get their way in Parliament, pushing through a historic deal not by making a persuasive case for its merits but by talking up the risks of saying no.
Common sense? Or just scare tactics? That's the call MPs may have to face.

Brexiteers have attacked Philip Hammond for reiterating a warning that a "no-deal" Brexit could damage the economy.
The chancellor's warning was published in a letter, hours after the government laid out plans for a "no-deal" Brexit.
Conservative MP Marcus Fysh accused Mr Hammond of embarking on "another instalment of dodgy project fear".
Meanwhile, the World Trade Organization head has told the BBC no deal "would not be the end of the world... but it's not going to be a walk in the park".
In a letter published on the Treasury website, Mr Hammond repeated the findings of the Treasury's provisional Brexit analysis released earlier this year.
That analysis includes a warning that a "no-deal" Brexit could mean a 7.7% hit to GDP over the next 15 years, compared with the "status quo baseline".
Writing to Nicky Morgan, chairwoman of the treasury committee, he said that under a "no-deal" scenario chemicals, food and drink, clothing, manufacturing, cars and retail would be the sectors "most affected negatively in the long run".
He added that the largest negative impacts would be felt "in the north-east [of England] and Northern Ireland".
The letter also said Treasury analysis estimated borrowing would be around £80bn a year higher under a "no-deal" scenario by 2033.
Mr Hammond added that this analysis was now "undergoing a process of refinement" and emphasised that a "no-deal" Brexit was not the government's preferred option and that it was "confident of a agreeing a good deal".
The timing of the letter was criticised, coming so soon after Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab sought to play down the risk of no deal - describing the impact as a "potential short-term disruption".
Prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has written to all Tory local associations urging them to reject the PM's Chequers deal, said leaving on WTO terms was not "as absurdly frightening as the chancellor of the exchequer thinks it may be".
"As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly," he said.
"The naysayers in the Treasury have consistently wanted to paint a bleak picture because they are frightened of taking responsibility for managing the economy without the crutch of the EU. It is a sign of their weakness.
"What Mr Hammond is doing is a reminder of why no-one believes the politicised forecasts of the Treasury. The Treasury is desperate to stop Brexit. Everything the Treasury does has to be read in this light."
But Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, who backs a new referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, said Mr Hammond's comments were timely and they complemented, rather than contradicted, the no-deal analysis.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today that Mr Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group (ERG) of Tory MPs, held too much sway in the party and the "ERG tail is wagging the Conservative dog".
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said there was "nothing new" in the chancellor's comments, telling Today that it was "clear" that leaving the EU without an agreement was "not a desirable outcome".
Asked whether he agreed with his colleague Liam Fox, who claimed earlier this month the odds were 60:40 in favour of a "no-deal" exit, Mr Lidington said he was not a betting man but the odds of a deal were "good".
"We have to do the emergency 'no-deal' planning but it is not in our interests we end up in that position."
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: "A 'no-deal' Brexit has never been viable and would represent a complete failure of the government's negotiating strategy."
Roberto Azevedo, the director-general of the WTO, said there would be an impact from a "no-deal" Brexit, with the possibility of trade "barriers" at the borders and tariffs between the UK and the EU almost certain.
"The EU cannot discriminate amongst the WTO members, so the UK will have to be treated as all the other members, and the other members pay tariffs so the UK will have to pay tariffs as well," he said.
He was also asked whether the UK could unilaterally remove its trade tariffs.
"Technically, yes," he replied. "But not only to the EU, to everybody, so you cannot pick and choose to whom you lower your tariffs.
"If you decide that a particular product, let's say glasses, that they go down to zero, that's perfectly right, any member of the WTO can do that. But that zero applies to everyone else."

The government and Labour have held further talks aimed at breaking the deadlock in Parliament over Brexit.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said discussions with cabinet ministers David Lidington and Michael Gove had been "positive" and "constructive".
He added that a timetable was being worked out for more meetings over the next seven to 10 days.
EU leaders have agreed to delay the UK's departure date from 12 April to 31 October, to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
But Prime Minister Theresa May has said the UK can still leave before 22 May, if Parliament backs the withdrawal agreement she reached with the EU.
This would avoid the UK having to take part in European Parliament elections, currently scheduled for 23 May.
The UK was originally due to leave the EU on 29 March, but its departure date has been delayed twice, after the Commons rejected the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU by large margins.
The meeting between Mr McDonnell, members of Jeremy Corbyn's staff and Mr Gove and Mr Lidington lasted just over an hour.
Asked if the government had moved on its "red lines", Mr McDonnell told reporters: "I'm not going into the detail of it.
"We are trying to be as constructive as we possibly can on all sides... but we will see by the end of next week how far we have got."
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson has been told that the Conservative and Labour delegations have discussed some of the fine detail of the potential changes to the "political declaration" - the non-legally binding part of the Brexit deal, which sets out a blueprint for future relations between the EU and UK.
But he said the two sides were still some way apart on customs arrangements.
Labour wants a new permanent customs union with the EU, which would allow tariff-free trade in goods.
The government has repeatedly ruled out remaining in the EU's customs union, arguing it would prevent the UK from setting its own trade policy.
Under EU rules, the UK will have to hold European Parliament elections in May, or face leaving on 1 June without a deal.
Speaking to the BBC on Friday, Chancellor Philip Hammond said: "Clearly nobody wants to fight the European elections.
"It feels like a pointless exercise and the only way we can avoid that is by getting a deal agreed and done quickly, and if we can do that by 22 May, we can avoid fighting the European parliamentary elections.
"In any case we want to ensure any British MEPs that are elected never have to take their seats in the European Parliament by ensuring this is all done well before the new European Parliament convenes."
Meanwhile, the government says it will "continue to make all necessary preparations" for a no-deal Brexit.
A government source said "plans will evolve and adapt", but would not stop while the chance of leaving the EU without an agreement remained.
The source said that a leaked message which reportedly referred to the "winding down" of no-deal preparation related only to Operation Yellowhammer - the contingency planning programme based on worst-case scenarios - and not no-deal planning in general.
But the government has confirmed it is stopping Operation Brock - the contraflow put on the London-bound carriageway of the M20 in Kent - "in light of the reduced threat of disruption to services across the English Channel in the coming weeks".

Jeremy Corbyn has met other opposition party leaders to discuss ways of averting a no-deal Brexit.
The Labour leader had outlined a plan to become caretaker PM after defeating the government in a no-confidence vote.
But in his invitation letter, he pledged to discuss "all tactics available" to stop the UK leaving the EU on 31 October without a deal.
Tory Party chairman James Cleverly said Mr Corbyn was offering "chaos, delay and uncertainty".
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Change UK, Plaid Cymru and Green Party all accepted the invitation to meet Mr Corbyn and discuss his proposals.
The Labour leader also invited five Conservative MPs opposed to a no-deal exit, but none said they would be attending.
One of them, former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, said he was not able to make it, but was willing to meet Mr Corbyn at another time.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage criticised those attending, saying they were "very out of touch with public opinion" and leaving the EU without an agreement was now "the only acceptable deal".
Mr Corbyn has said if he wins a no-confidence vote, he will delay Brexit, call a snap election and campaign for another referendum.
The Liberal Democrats, and some potential Tory allies opposed to a no-deal exit, have indicated they won't back a plan that leads to him in No 10.
Ahead of the meeting, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson told BBC Breakfast a plan involving Mr Corbyn as interim leader was less likely to succeed.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Tuesday's meeting would be "a pretty frank discussion" about the options available.
"Today is about, can we get a unified approach that we agree? There'll have to be give and take, but we must have a plan that everybody can coalesce around and that we implement as soon as we can next week," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
As well as Mr Corbyn's no-confidence plan, MPs will also discuss taking legislative measures to block a potential no-deal, Sir Keir said.
"I think they're direct, I think they're effective. I want something with a legal edge."
MPs previously passed a law in April to force former PM Theresa May to request an extension of the UK's EU membership beyond the original Brexit deadline of 29 March.
Repeating that approach would require them to first take control of the parliamentary timetable to make time for the law to be debated.
Speaking on Tuesday, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said one way to do that would be to amend a motion debated as part of an emergency debate in the Commons.
Emergency debate motions - topical matters added to business at short notice - are normally considered unamendable, meaning Speaker John Bercow may have to give a ruling that one is.
If successful, Mr Blackford told the BBC, this strategy would allow MPs to pass a law compelling the prime minister to seek a Brexit delay at a summit of EU leaders in mid-October.
Ahead of the meeting, Change UK leader Anna Soubry said passing legislation was the "immediate solution" for avoiding a no-deal exit.
On Monday, PM Boris Johnson said he was "marginally more optimistic" about striking a new Brexit deal with the EU.
Asked at the end of the G7 summit in France about the possibility of MPs thwarting plans to leave the EU at the end of October, Mr Johnson said: "I think it's the job of everybody in Parliament to get this thing done.
"I think it's what the people want, I also think, by the way, it's what our friends and partners on the other side of the Channel want - they want it over."
Mr Johnson says he wants to leave with an agreement, but the UK must leave the EU by the latest deadline of 31 October "do or die".
Although Boris Johnson only has the most emaciated of majorities, the opposition seems to be divided on tactics and outcome.
Mr Corbyn wants to be a caretaker prime minister, he wants to call a general election and campaign for another referendum. But Jo Swinson wants to know, does he really want to stop Brexit? Or whether, in a referendum, he would have a Labour version of leave on the ballot paper?
More crucially, she says the only way for Mr Corbyn to become caretaker leader is to win a vote of no confidence against Mr Johnson. And if Tory rebels won't support Mr Corbyn, she wants to know if he would stand aside for a veteran parliamentarian such as Ken Clarke or Harriet Harman.
Already her attitude has been described as petulant by a senior Labour frontbencher so that doesn't necessarily augur well for today's talks.
The most likely outcome is that MPs will try to seize the parliamentary agenda and legislate against a no deal, but that in itself isn't a watertight solution.
There are two weapons in Mr Johnson's armoury. He has ruled out suspending Parliament in September, but hasn't ruled it out entirely ahead of the 31 October deadline. If he does that, that stops them trying to block no deal at the last minute.
On the other hand, if MPs tell him 'you're going to have to legislate to extend Brexit,' he can say 'I refuse to do it' and call an election.
Writing in the Independent, Mr Corbyn pledged to discuss all options with other party leaders to "stop this no-deal disaster in its tracks".
He said: "[No-deal Brexit] won't return sovereignty, it will put us at the mercy of Trump and the big US corporations dying to get their teeth into our NHS, sound the death knell for our steel industry and strip back our food standards and animal welfare protections."
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, who attended Tuesday's meeting, tweeted: "Boris Johnson's intentions are clear: suspending Parliament, a crash out Brexit and blaming MPs for the chaos".
"We will not be bullied. We will not surrender parliamentary sovereignty to the right wing cabal in No 10. MPs must unite to stop this abuse of executive power."
Former Tory MP Nick Boles - who rejected Mr Corbyn's invitation to talks - tweeted that he would not "countenance" a no-deal exit, or "any undemocratic steps to frustrate the will of Parliament".
Meanwhile, MPs from different parties are later expected to sign a declaration pledging to set up an alternative assembly if the PM prorogues - or suspends - Parliament.
Mr Johnson says he has no plans to do this, but has not ruled out such a move to make sure the UK leaves the EU by the end of October.
Responding to Mr Corbyn's newspaper article, Mr Cleverly said: "The alternative to delivering Brexit is Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street, a man who would wreck the economy, break up our Union, is soft on crime and won't stand up for Britain."
He insisted only Mr Johnson and the Conservatives could provide the leadership needed to deliver Brexit by 31 October, "whatever the circumstances".

Jeremy Corbyn says he told Theresa May "don't bring no deal back to Parliament" in their long-awaited face-to-face meeting on Brexit.
The Labour leader said it was "not acceptable" for the PM to keep the no-deal option on the table after MPs voted against it on Tuesday.
After the meeting, Mrs May tweeted: "The only way to avoid No Deal is to vote for a deal."
MPs will vote on the deal again after she seeks to renegotiate with the EU.
Mr Corbyn said it was a "serious" meeting and Mrs May had "listened".
He had refused to meet Mrs May unless she agreed to rule out a no-deal Brexit, but changed his mind after MPs voted against the idea of leaving the EU on 29 March without a deal on Tuesday evening.
In her tweet, Mrs May said she had been "pleased" to meet Mr Corbyn and had stressed the importance of the UK doing its own trade deals after Brexit.
A Labour spokesperson said the two would meet again "soon" after the 45 minutes of "cordial" talks in the prime minister's Commons office.
Mr Corbyn said: "I set out the Labour case for a comprehensive customs union with the European Union, in order to protect jobs and trade.
"She certainly understood the point that we were making."
He added: "The last words I said to her were 'don't bring no deal back to Parliament' because it's not acceptable - it's not a sensible or serious way of going forward."
He said he was suspicious the government was trying to "run down the clock", and if that appeared to be the case when Parliament discussed Brexit again next month, Labour would "look at all the options on the table at that time".
Asked if Labour would support or table a motion to try and extend Article 50, which would delay the date of Brexit, Mr Corbyn said: "That is a question for 13 February."
He added that it was quite possible the prime minister would return to Parliament next month "with nothing".
Asked if he had a problem with Irish backstop, which Mrs May is seeking to renegotiate with the EU, he said: "I have a problem where the agreement is one-sided."
The two party leaders earlier clashed over Brexit at a noisy Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons.
During the exchange, Mr Corbyn said the prime minister may have succeeded in "temporarily uniting her very divided party" in Tuesday's votes on amendments to her plan, but she had to make "more important compromises" to "unite the country".
Mrs May said Mr Corbyn was a "fine one to talk about coming together", when he had only now agreed to meet her.
She said the majority of MPs had identified the Irish backstop as the main sticking point preventing them from backing her deal, whereas Mr Corbyn's Brexit proposals had been rejected.
"He has no plan for Brexit, no good plan for our economy and no plan for our country," she told MPs.
MPs voted 317 to 301 in favour of changing the backstop plan - the section of Mrs May's deal with the EU designed to avoid the return of Northern Ireland border checks.
Five amendments, including Labour MP Yvette Cooper's bid to delay Brexit if Mrs May does not get her deal through Parliament and Mr Corbyn's own amendment, were defeated on Tuesday.
Mr Corbyn asked Mrs May whether, if she did not agree a deal with Brussels that MPs would support, she would back Labour's proposals for a "a strong single market, comprehensive customs union and the guaranteeing of rights and protections rather than the alternative she has been threatening - to crash out with no-deal".
Mrs May told him: "You cannot just vote to reject no deal, you have to support a deal."
It was a message she repeated to Labour MP Jack Dromey, who together with Tory MP Caroline Spelman got MPs to back a non-binding amendment rejecting a no-deal Brexit on Tuesday.
Later in the session, Nigel Dodds, leader of the Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party at Westminster, described remarks by the  Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney on the UK's approach to Brexit as "highly reckless and extremely dangerous".
Mr Coveney likened the UK's negotiating stance to "either you give me what I want or I'm jumping out the window".
Mr Dodds said that kind of rhetoric needed "to be toned down".
Mrs May said she will speak to Irish premier Leo Varadkar later on Wednesday.
"It is important for us to work with the Irish government on the arrangements that will be in place in the future," she added.
But ahead of the call, Mr Varadkar told the Irish Parliament that the EU stood by the withdrawal agreement and renegotiation was not on the table.
At the moment, the UK is due to leave the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 29 March, with or without a deal.
The UK and the EU negotiated their withdrawal agreement deal over the past 18 months but it needs to be backed by MPs for it to come into force. Earlier this month, MPs voted against the plan Mrs May had proposed by 432 votes to 202.
Mrs May said that, after taking Tuesday's votes into account and talking to the EU, any revised deal would be brought back to the Commons "as soon as possible" for a second "meaningful vote".

Brexit is a "complete mess" and the country "cannot go on like this", Jeremy Corbyn has said in his new year's message to the country.
The Labour leader said Theresa May had let down down both Leave and Remain voters by trying to "drive a bad deal" through Parliament over the UK's exit.
Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable has urged those seeking another referendum to "keep fighting".
No 10 said there was "still work to do" on building support for the PM's deal.
Downing Street said the prime minister had spoken to European leaders over the festive period as she seeks to address the concerns of many Tory MPs about the withdrawal agreement.
MPs are due to vote on the deal in the Commons in mid-January.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but there is uncertainty as to what will happen if MPs reject the UK's withdrawal agreement.
The opposition is seeking to force a general election by voting down the deal and calling a vote of no confidence in the government.
Mr Corbyn, who has said Labour would seek to re-open negotiations with Brussels to pursue a better outcome, said the Conservatives had "plunged the country into crisis".
He accused the government of "trying to drive through a bad deal and letting people down all across the country whether they voted leave or remain".
Only Labour, he claimed, was capable of uniting the UK, with policies to tackle inequality and job insecurity.
"Eight years of damaging Tory failure has left us with a divided country where millions are struggling to make ends meet," he said. "We cannot go on like this.
"Labour is ready to deliver a radical alternative to rebuild and transform our country. We will stand up to the powerful few so the wealth you create is shared fairly not hoarded by a privileged elite.
"We will work to create a society where the talent of everyone is unleashed. That is how we will unite our country."
In his end-of-year message, Sir Vince Cable has insisted Brexit can be stopped as he urged fellow supporters of another referendum on the UK's future in Europe to "keep fighting".
"The history books will look back on the coming three months as critical," he said.
"Are we going to make a terrible mistake, leaving behind our influence in Europe's most successful peace project and the world's biggest marketplace?
"Or are the British people, in the final hours, going to be given a chance to re-consider, in light of all the facts which have come to the surface in the last two years?"
Meanwhile, Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon has sought to assure EU migrants that they would always be welcome in Scotland.
"Our reputation for being an open, warm-hearted, hospitable country has never been more important," the SNP leader said in her Hogmanay message.
"I want to make that especially clear to the hundreds of thousands of nationals from other EU countries, who have done us the honour of choosing Scotland as their home.
"I know that this is a deeply uncertain time for you. But I also want you to know that your contribution to our national life - to our economy, communities and society - is hugely valued."
Mrs May is seeking further "political and legal" assurances from EU leaders over how long the controversial backstop plan to avoid physical checks on the Irish border would last, amid concerns it would tie the UK indefinitely to EU rules.
A No 10 spokesperson said the prime minister had "been in contact with European leaders and that will continue in the lead up to the vote".
"Her focus is certainly on getting the assurances that MPs want ahead of that vote taking place," he added.
"There is still work to do and talks will continue."

Down is up. Up is down. Black is white. And white is black. Friend is foe. Foe is friend. Stop me now, or else I'll go on forever.
But the point is this - the prime minister has had a terrible day today as the government made history in two excruciating ways.
Ministers were found to be in contempt of Parliament - a very serious telling off - and the government had a hat trick of defeats - the first time since the 1970s that's happened.
As you'd expect too, MP after MP after MP rose after Theresa May's remarks to slam her deal as Tory divisions were played out on the green benches, with harsh words exchanged.
But in this topsy-turvy world, the overall outcome of the day for Mrs May's big test a week tonight might have been not all bad.
The amendment from Tory Remain rebel Dominic Grieve is, on the face of it, a strait jacket for Mrs May - a way that MPs can more easily push the government around.
So far, so disaster. Except it could actually peel off some rebels on both sides... possibly.
Former Remain rebels now have a possible route to get what they want if the PM's plan is rejected, as there is a possible - I emphasise the possible - way to get a vote with a majority for a Norway-style agreement or, less likely, a push for another referendum.
That won't go unnoticed by Brexiteers too, who may feel (some of them at least) that Mrs May's deal might be their best bet in that case, rather than risk that softer, squidgier Brexit.
It's possible therefore that today's shenanigans have made it less likely that the prime minister will face a terrible defeat next week because a few wobbly rebels on both sides might come in line.
It's also worth noting the involvement of several former, normally loyal, cabinet ministers such as Sir Oliver Letwin.
He has often been used as a fixer by the chief whip, whispers suggest. It's perfectly possible that his moves today are completely unrelated.
But also not impossible that somehow today's result has been influenced by conversations about finding the prime minister a softer landing.
Suggestions there was any kind of collusion were described as something that's too rude to write here. But nothing much happens around here at the moment without motive and suspicion being questioned.

Freedom of movement, access to healthcare abroad, voting rights - some fundamental aspects of British life in the EU must be clarified before Brexit happens.
A Luxembourg liberal MEP, Charles Goerens, has proposed offering British citizens the option of retaining their EU citizenship for a fee. This "associate EU citizenship" idea could be part of the Brexit negotiations but it raises all sorts of legal questions.
The EU treaties say EU citizenship "does not replace national citizenship" but "is additional to it". So EU citizenship cannot be acquired by giving up UK citizenship.
Once the UK leaves the EU, British citizens will lose their EU citizenship. And once Prime Minister Theresa May triggers the Article 50 withdrawal process, which she aims to do before next April, there will be just two years to resolve citizenship issues.
Citizens' rights have to be part of the Article 50 negotiations because about 1.2 million UK citizens live in other EU countries and three million EU nationals live in the UK. They need to know what, if any, reciprocal rights they will continue to enjoy after Brexit.
Important decisions about jobs, homes, pensions and healthcare could depend on those safeguards.
EU citizenship is described in Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and includes the rights to:
Beyond those rights, EU law also provides many social protections for EU citizens in the areas of healthcare, work and pensions.
An EU citizen can access another EU country's social security system, provided he or she has paid social insurance back home. An example is the EHIC health card - a passport to emergency treatment abroad.
The reciprocal rights are called "EU social security coordination". The rules are complex, as social provision varies greatly from country to country.
Mr Goerens proposes that UK citizens could pay an annual, individual membership fee directly into the EU budget to retain their EU citizenship after Brexit. He did not suggest any figure for that fee.
An associate citizen would retain freedom of movement in the EU, the right to reside in another EU country under existing rules and the right to vote in European elections.
The European Parliament will vote on the proposal next month - it is Amendment 882 in a long report on possible future EU treaty changes.
It has generated much interest on social media and Mr Goerens says many British MEPs have expressed support.
But even if MEPs back the proposal, it still has a long way to go.
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The need for treaty change makes this initiative very hard to achieve by the likely 2019 deadline for Brexit.
It could only become law after a treaty change because it would change the nature of EU citizenship.
But aggrieved pro-EU Britons may welcome the fact that Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt has backed the proposal.
Mr Verhofstadt, an influential liberal, will be the European Parliament's lead negotiator on Brexit.
EU leaders will inevitably have to change the treaties in the next few years because the UK's role will have to be deleted or amended in EU texts.
However, a change to the nature of EU citizenship would require full ratification by all 28 member states - and that could not be done quickly, Prof Catherine Barnard, an expert on EU law, told the BBC.
But the proposal, she said, at least showed a willingness in the EU to "find creative ways to help the 48% who voted to Remain [in the EU]".
Camino Mortera-Martinez, an EU justice expert at the Centre for European Reform, said there was "no appetite for treaty change in Brussels at the moment".
Next year politicians in the Netherlands, France and Germany will focus on general elections. They will want to avoid EU treaty changes, which are notoriously time-consuming and difficult. It took nearly nine years to draft and enact the Lisbon Treaty.
Empowering MEPs to continue representing some UK citizens after Brexit would be another big legal hurdle.
Prof Barnard questioned how an MEP could represent an area where "half the constituents are not even associate EU citizens". "That is a non-starter," she said.
If British "associate EU citizens" were to have continued freedom of movement, the UK would have to offer the EU something in return, both experts argue.
But that is very problematic. The Brexit vote on 23 June made curbing immigration from the EU a top priority for Mrs May's government. Freedom of movement will be one of the thorniest issues.
It would also be hard to get agreement on a fee for EU citizenship, Prof Barnard said. For example Spain, hosting many elderly Britons who use its healthcare system, might demand a high fee.
If it took the form of a new EU tax, it would require extra bureaucrats to collect and allocate the income.
The European Court of Justice would have to oversee associate citizenship - another thorny issue, because the whole idea of Brexit is for the UK to "take back control". So how could an EU court retain jurisdiction over UK citizens?
And it could be discriminatory to offer associate EU citizenship only to UK citizens. Many Serbs and Turks might also demand it, as they would like to join the EU.

The Commons vote on Tuesday will not be delayed, the Brexit Secretary has said, amid growing calls for the PM to go back to Brussels to renegotiate.
Stephen Barclay also said Theresa May could stay in post if, as expected, MPs reject her Brexit plan.
The PM has warned Tory rebels it could lead to a general election, and there was a "very real risk of no Brexit".
Boris Johnson said the PM could stay on if she lost but must renegotiate the deal with Brussels.
The withdrawal deal negotiated between the UK and EU has been endorsed by EU leaders but must also be backed by Parliament.
But the government is widely expected to lose the vote with Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the DUP, the SNP and dozens of Conservative MPs saying they cannot support the deal.
European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted on Sunday it would be "an important week for the fate of Brexit", after a phone call with Theresa May.
Despite newspaper speculation it could be called off, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said: "The vote is going ahead and that's because it's a good deal and it's the only deal".
He warned against suggesting negotiations could be reopened: "The French, the Spanish and others will turn round, if we seek to reopen the negotiation, and ask for more."
And he insisted that Theresa May could remain prime minister, even if her deal is heavily defeated by MPs: "Yes, the prime minister is fighting for us and will continue in post."
Mr Johnson, who quit the cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit strategy, told the BBC he did not want a "no-deal" Brexit or another referendum, but it was not right to say there were no other alternatives.
He said the Northern Ireland "backstop" - effectively an insurance policy to prevent a hard border if no free trade deal is struck in time - put the UK in a "diabolical negotiating position".
MPs could give Mrs May "a powerful mandate to change that backstop" by voting it down on Tuesday, he said.
The border issue should instead be covered in negotiations over a future trading relationship with Europe, he said, and the UK should "incentivise" the EU by withholding "at least half" of the UK's agreed £39bn "divorce" payment, until a free trade is signed at the end of 2020.
He dismissed suggestions he had already offered other Tory MPs jobs if they backed a future leadership bid by him as "nonsense" and said the public wanted to see a plan "to get out of this mess" rather than "stuff about leadership elections and personalities" - although he did not rule out challenging Mrs May for the leadership.
And the former foreign secretary, a key figure in the 2016 campaign to leave the EU, said: "Don't underestimate the deep sense of personal responsibility I feel for Brexit and what's happened.
"It breaks my heart to think that after all we fought for... that we should consign ourselves to a future in which the EU effectively rules us in many respects and yet we have no say around the table in Brussels."
By BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley
Some Conservatives are urging Theresa May to defer Tuesday's vote, fearing a humiliating defeat which would destabilise the government.
They hope more clarity or compromise on the backstop issue can be provided - and some wavering Tories won over.
But others point out that no acceptable compromise has been found so far - and question whether one will be found now.
They also point out that Brussels has shown little enthusiasm for revisiting the backstop. Indeed there are some who believe only a strong rejection of Theresa May's deal will encourage the EU to rethink.
The Brexit Secretary said the vote would go ahead. With some still seeking to persuade the prime minister, it cannot be completely certain the vote will go ahead until Monday.
If the deal is rejected, it is unclear what happens next. Mrs May told the Mail on Sunday it would mean "grave uncertainty for the nation with a very real risk of no Brexit or leaving the European Union with no deal".
Protesters calling for another referendum to decide the issue were joined by politicians from across the political spectrum at a rally on Sunday, including Tory peer Lord Heseltine, Green MP Caroline Lucas, and Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan.
Conservative former minister Philip Lee told the rally in east London: "I think a People's Vote is the best hope that we have of reuniting our country after this sorry episode."
Ms Lucas said the message to Mrs May was: "We don't want your vision of a mean-minded little Britain, with our borders closed and our horizons narrowed."
And Dr Allin-Khan said: "The promises made in 2016 are so far removed from the reality of the 585-page Withdrawal Agreement that it's time to take the Brexit decision back to the people."
She was careful to say that the vote should only take place if there was not a general election - it is Labour Party policy to call for an election and, only if that does not happen, to keep "all options" open, including a referendum.
But Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn told ITV News that he would "have a discussion" with Rosena Allin-Khan, who is a shadow minister, about her appearance at the rally: "She's entitled to her point of view. I would rather she and every other Labour MP spent today and tomorrow and Tuesday concentrating solely on making sure we defeat this deal."
And former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said there was "a very large chunk of people who would feel utterly betrayed" if another referendum was called.
A UKIP-organised "Brexit Betrayal" march also took place in London, amid controversy over leader Gerard Batten's decision to appoint controversial activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser.
On Saturday, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd suggested a so-called "Norway Plus" option - which would see the UK remaining in the European Economic Area and joining a customs union with the EU - could be another possibility, if the deal was rejected.
But Mr Barclay told the BBC: "I don't think it honours the referendum result" - saying it would not give the UK control over immigration.
Esther McVey, who quit the cabinet over the deal, also said Mrs May should "immediately" renegotiate with Brussels, if MPs reject her deal.
Asked if she would consider a leadership bid, she told Sky News it was not about "personalities" and she would back the PM if she renegotiated the deal.
But she did not rule it out, saying she'd give it "serious consideration" if she were asked to stand.
Justice Minister Rory Stewart told the BBC that the government "should come back again" to Parliament if it loses Tuesday's vote, potentially with some "small adjustment" to the deal but suggested some MPs were using the backstop "as an excuse" to reject it.
Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey would not confirm that Labour would immediately put down a motion of no confidence in the prime minister.
She said: "We will have to see what happens on Tuesday... we will have to make an assessment at the time and we will be in discussions with other political parties across the House to assess the best thing to do."
She added that the PM should call a general election, having lost a key proposal, but added "alternatively she could offer to renegotiate around a deal that would provide consensus in Parliament".

A cross-party group of MPs will use next month's landmark Brexit vote to try to ensure the UK cannot leave the EU without a deal.
They want to amend the "meaningful vote" motion to rule out "no deal".
The BBC understands Conservative, Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru and Green politicians are involved.
MPs are due to vote on the prime minister's Brexit agreement with the EU on 11 December.
Theresa May has repeatedly said voting the deal down would risk a "no-deal" Brexit.
But amendments being discussed in Westminster would seek to rule that out. Several sources told the BBC they think such an amendment is the only one that could command a majority.
It would not be legally binding, but a source said if MPs back the amendment it would be a clear "expression of parliamentary opinion".
Another source says it would "knock out" leaving the EU without a deal as a realistic option.
A third source said there was a "growing consensus" against a "no-deal" Brexit.
Up to six amendments will be voted on when MPs pass judgement on the prime minister's Brexit deal.
One has already been tabled by chairman of the Brexit select committee, Hilary Benn, which would rule out no deal and allow MPs to give the government instruction on how to act. That has been backed by Conservatives Dominic Grieve and Sarah Wollaston, as well as Labour's Meg Hillier, Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves.
Separately Labour's front bench has tabled an amendment saying that the party cannot support the agreement, as it fails to provide for a customs union and "strong single market" deal. It also says it opposes a no deal withdrawal, and "resolves to pursue every option" that prevents such a scenario.
There is also likely to be a front bench amendment from the SNP. Some in Parliament think they are unlikely to pass but they hope a cross-party effort will be seen as less partisan and will have more chance of achieving a majority.
The amendments will be selected by Commons Speaker John Bercow, on 11 December - the last of five days of debate on the Brexit agreement.

A cross-party Brexit deal will not get through Parliament unless it is subject to a fresh public vote, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer says.
Talks between Labour and ministers over leaving the EU have been going on for a month with little sign of progress.
Sir Keir told the Guardian that without a new referendum up to 150 Labour MPs would vote against any agreement made.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove suggested Labour needed more time to come to terms with the idea of a deal.
"For some in the Labour Party it will be a significant step to accept supporting Brexit and to come behind the prime minister's approach," he told the BBC.
After talks broke up on Monday evening, a Labour spokesperson said the shadow cabinet would be updated on what had been discussed.
The BBC's Iain Watson said: "It sounds like the plug has not been pulled on these yet, but it doesn't sound as if there's substantial progress to report."
A Downing Street spokesperson said: "In preparation for an update to cabinet tomorrow, today's meeting took stock across the range of issues discussed in talks over the last few weeks".
"We continue to seek to agree a way forward in order to secure our orderly withdrawal from the EU."
The UK was due to leave the EU on 29 March but the deadline was pushed back to 31 October after MPs rejected Theresa May's proposed deal three times.
Talks between the government and Labour aimed at finding a way to end the impasse resumed on Monday, with pressure growing on both sides to show progress or pull out.
No 10 said there was a "clear desire" to get on with the process. Asked if there was a deadline, a spokesman said: "Let's see where we get to this evening."
If there is no agreement, Theresa May has said she will return to Parliament and ask MPs to vote again on a range of possible options.
Parliament failed to unite behind a way forward in a series of "indicative votes" in March, but the PM says the government would now be prepared to accept whatever commanded a majority, so long as Labour did too.
Sir Keir said he would not be afraid to end the talks as soon as this week if the PM did not budge on her so-called red lines - positions that she feels cannot be changed in the Brexit deal.
He suggested a referendum on the final deal had become a red line of its own for many Labour MPs, saying "A significant number, probably 120 if not 150, would not back a deal if it hasn't got a confirmatory vote."
Labour's stated policy is that it supports a further referendum on Brexit under certain circumstances.
It has rejected the idea of campaigning for one in any event but will demand a public vote if it cannot get changes to the government's deal or an election.
Labour's Stephen Kinnock, who backs the UK leaving but retaining the closest possible economic links with the EU, said it would be a "real shame" if the talks were "torpedoed" by his party's insistence on another referendum.
"If you try to insert a second referendum into these talks they won't get through because the Conservatives will not whip their MPs to support it," he told Radio 4's World At One.
However, Labour's deputy leader, Tom Watson, said another public vote was the only "way out" of the current stalemate.
Asked whether Labour wanted to leave or remain in the EU, he told Radio 4's Today: "We are a remain and reform party," but "when it comes to a deal people can form their own view."
In a speech later marking the 25th anniversary of former Labour leader John Smith's death, Mr Watson reflected on Mr Smith's pro-Europeanism and said he would have backed a "People's Vote".
Asked if a deadline should be set for the talks, Mr Gove said the government needed time to properly "understand and explore" Labour's position.
While another referendum would be a "bad idea" he said, Mr Gove declined to rule out any of Labour's main proposals, such as some form of customs union with the EU.
The reality is these talks have been genuine, but very difficult.
Neither side wanted to pull the plug before the local elections 10 days or so ago.
But now, as time goes on, it may well be we are reaching the moment where they have to throw up their hands and say: "We just can't do it."
Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are both on lonely tightropes trying to get across the other side of this slow-moving crisis. I think they would both like it to be over with, maybe with a cross-party deal.
But the prime minister doesn't want to put a huge compromise on the table, she doesn't want another referendum. Jeremy Corbyn doesn't want to help out the government unless he can get genuine changes.
If neither of them feel they can really budge, well, the talks are not going to be able to succeed, and the government will then have to try to move on to votes in Parliament, the next part of the process.
June 2017 - Labour's general election manifesto accepts referendum result
March 2018 - Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Owen Smith sacked for supporting second referendum on final deal
September - Labour agrees if a general election cannot be achieved it "must support all options… including a public vote"
18 November - Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says a new referendum is "an option for the future" but "not an option for today"
28 November - Shadow chancellor John McDonnell says Labour will "inevitably" back a second referendum if unable to secure general election
16 January 2019 - 71 Labour MPs say they support a public vote
6 February - Mr Corbyn writes a letter to Mrs May outlining five changes with no mention of a "People's Vote"
28 February - Labour says it will back a public vote after its proposed Brexit deal is rejected
14 March - Five Labour MPs quit party roles to oppose a further referendum
27 March - The party backs a confirmatory public vote in Parliament's indicative votes on a way forward for Brexit
30 April - Party agrees to demand a public vote if it cannot get changes to the government's deal or an election, as it decides wording to EU election manifesto

The government and Labour are "testing out" each other's ideas as they try to resolve the Brexit deadlock, cabinet minister David Lidington has said.
He told the BBC they had a "fair bit in common" over future customs objectives but further compromise was needed.
While there was no deadline, he said the sides would "take stock" in 10 days and the process could not drag out.
But former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the process was a "recipe for disaster" for his party.
He called for Prime Minister Theresa May to make way for a new Conservative leader next month - but Mr Lidington insisted replacing the prime minister would "not change the arithmetic in Parliament".
Talks between the government and Labour are set to continue over the Easter parliamentary recess in the hope of finding a Brexit agreement that will be acceptable to MPs.
A series of working groups in key areas, such as environmental standards, security and workers' rights, have been set up to try and find common ground.
The EU has insisted the terms of the UK's withdrawal, rejected three times by MPs, cannot be renegotiated - but there is scope to strengthen the political declaration, a document setting out the parameters of the UK's future relations with the EU, ahead of the new Brexit deadline of 31 October.
Mr Lidington, who is regarded as Mrs May's de facto deputy, said he had not set a deadline for the talks to produce a result but the public wanted Parliament to resolve their differences quickly.
"I don't think the question can be allowed to drag out for much longer," he said.
Asked whether the government could drop its opposition to a customs union with the EU, as demanded by Labour, Mr Lidington said both sides had well-known "public positions".
He suggested the two sides were considering whether there was a "mechanism" to deliver the benefits of a customs union, such as tariff and quota-free trade with the EU, while also enabling the UK to have an independent trade policy and input into EU agreements affecting the UK.
"What we have found in terms of objectives… there is a fair bit that both parties would have in common," he said. "If we are going to find an agreement there needs to be movement on both sides.
"I don't want to compromise what is at the moment a space where we are testing with the opposition, and they are testing with us, particular ways in which we could move forward."
But Mr Duncan Smith warned against his party embracing Labour's Brexit policy, telling Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday that he had "real concerns with some of my colleagues going out lauding Jeremy Corbyn".
"We need to be very clear in the course of this that we don't end up letting Jeremy Corbyn dictate to us that we stay in a customs union, or we have some kind of second referendum, or stay aligned with the European single market - all of that given to us by Jeremy Corbyn is a recipe for disaster."
He said there was real grassroots anger at the prospect of the Conservatives having to fight European elections at the end of May and the prime minister should leave Downing Street this summer irrespective of whether the withdrawal agreement had been approved or not.
"She said she would go as and when the agreement was ratified, which was looking at around about May, June. I think those dates still stand," he said.
But Labour's shadow transport Secretary Andy McDonald said the talks would "count for nothing" if the Conservatives changed leader and a hard Brexiteer took over from Mrs May.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has been warned Labour will "haemorrhage" votes in the EU election unless the party explicitly backs a further referendum.
MEP Richard Corbett, leader of the party in the EU Parliament, told the Observer Labour risked losing out to parties committed to a public vote.
"If Labour does not re-confirm its support for a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal in its manifesto, then it will haemorrhage votes to parties who do have a clear message," he said.
"If on the other hand we do offer clarity and a confirmatory ballot we could do very well."
Labour's current policy is to keep all options on the table - including pressing for a further EU referendum.
Labour MP David Lammy told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the current "rows would continue" unless the public had the final say on the issue.
Several members of the shadow cabinet and many backbenchers, particularly in Leave-supporting areas, are opposed to the idea.

If Brexit looks like a political nightmare for Theresa May, it's because it is one; a nightmare she volunteered to endure the day she chose to run for PM.
"It goes with the territory," she told a colleague who offered sympathy recently.
Now she has the job of designing the kind of Brexit her most vocal, and occasionally threatening, Brexiteer Tory colleagues are demanding, then somehow selling it to Parliament, where most MPs and even more peers never liked Brexit at all and seem determined to make that mission impossible.
Search for the government's detailed blueprint for Brexit, a future trade deal and, more urgently, the customs union, and it becomes clear there isn't one.
How could there be?
Brexiteers want out. Full stop.
Or, it's hinted, they'll take Theresa May's scalp.
Most MPs and peers want to stay as close to the customs union as possible, for as long as possible.
There's no way to please them all.
And now, I'm told there's an embryonic, maybe desperate, idea being very quietly discussed among Whitehall mandarins, including UK Brexit negotiators, and privately, a number of ministers and business leaders in the loop: one which hard-line Brexiteers will hate more than most.
Sir Stephen Wall, Britain's former ambassador to the EU and former adviser to Downing Street said he'd heard the proposal amounted to, somehow, trying to stay in a customs deal by another name.
"I'm certainly picking up the idea (of) staying in the customs union," he told me in an interview for BBC Radio Four's World at One.
"Obviously through the transition we would anyway, but potentially beyond the transition... while we seek trade deals," he told me.
"One of the things this process has demonstrated so far - is that positions that we started off with have changed over time, as people have come to grips with the reality and the consequences, and if you're Theresa May you're having to think about the costs to the United Kingdom and how to minimise that cost in economic terms.
"So the idea of thinking about something slightly more long term...is very much there."
Sir Stephen understood the discussion was "in Theresa May's mind", but he didn't know what she'd finally decide.
Sadly, for him and others who share his view, I'm told the prime minister meant what she said when she told Brexiteer Tory MPs they'd get the kind of Brexit they want.
Quite apart from the political minefield at Westminster, it would be hard to persuade Brussels to let Britain stay in some variety of customs deal - whether you call it that or not - while striking outside trade deals, or trying to.
Somehow reaching agreement on migration, something well short of the free movement the EU wants and regaining control of British borders would be another enormous obstacle.
It would be easy, though, compared to persuading Brexiteers it's OK to stay in any customs arrangement.
The prime minister, I'm told, is also every bit as bullish as her Brexit Secretary, David Davis, about the possibility of completing a comprehensive "bespoke" trade agreement with the EU by the end of the Brexit transition period.
Some senior officials privately believe it would take years to strike such an agreement.
The former civil servant who until recently ran the Department of International Trade, Sir Martin Donnelly, told me he believed it would take "five, six, seven years" at least.
That raised the prospect of Britain reaching the end of its transition time with no deal, a new so called "cliff edge".
But in Downing Street they're having none of it. One senior figure argues that European political leaders were often more "can do" - and that would make a difference.
Time's running painfully short.
There's still a huge barrier to a final deal. It sits on the Irish border.
Dublin and Brussels want a British pledge there'll be no hard border on the island of Ireland when the UK leaves the EU even if that means staying a full member of customs union, or creating a new customs border with mainland Britain. It's a Unionists' taboo.
The former Taeseach, Bertie Ahern puts it bluntly.
There'll be no deal unless Theresa May gives ground, he said, and he didn't baulk at the term "fudge".
"Politics and negotiation is about compromise," he said.
"I hope, and I think it's possible, that whatever the name is on it - I know the UK government would have a difficulty saying the 'customs union' is still fully in place - I wouldn't get myself hung up on that - but whatever name you put on it, I think hopefully what will happen, and I think it's a good idea for everybody, if we have a customs union that is not dissimilar from what is presently there.
"That will be a good thing for the EU, a good thing for the UK government for other reasons, but it will solve the Irish question."
The EU summit is just weeks away.
The hope in Team May is that it will be possible to put off the final reckoning until later, probably October when Parliament gives its verdict on the outline Brexit agreement.
Rarely has delay been so vital to forming a plan to redefine Britain and its place in the world.
It may simply be a mark of Carolyn Fairbairn's optimistic outlook, but the Director General of the CBI believes it may yet be possible to win the argument and avoid the kind of customs barriers she believes would be, in her words, disastrous for British business.
"We are very much hoping that's where we end up because businesses across the country - we've talked to thousands of businesses in the last year - the importance of frictionless trade, being able to move goods backwards and forwards without tariffs and rules of origin, and delays abroad, is absolutely fundamental. So we are hoping for a result on this that delivers. We don't care what it's called - but a customs union outcome".
"Forget it" say the Brexiteers, who see all talk of staying in or close to the customs union - any part of the EU - as an act of denial by the remain establishment.
But what if Parliament disagrees - wants a softer Brexit than they can bear?
Tory MP Bernard Jenkin spoke for many of his Brexiteer colleagues when he told me the "remainers" were simply in denial about the fact their predictions of economic harm from the Brexit referendum had failed to materialise.
What if Parliament disagreed?
"Does Parliament really want to pick a fight with the British people," he wondered.
Well, a good many MPs and peers would be perfectly happy to defy Mr Jenkin, and defeat Mrs May for the sake of kicking a "hard Brexit" into touch.
If that also means kicking the prime minister into touch, as far as a lot of her political opponents are concerned, so much the better.
As it is, Theresa May's thinking and the thinking of her Brexiteer colleagues seems to coincide.
It seems the latest, or any, soft Brexit plan won't fly.
If the government's defeated in Parliament, where does that leave Brexit, and Mrs May's premiership?
Well, I don't have a clue. And I'm quite sure no-one at Westminster, in Downing Street or in Brussels has the faintest idea either.
With more wrangling ahead in Cabinet, much more in Brussels and what may be a final reckoning at Westminster in the autumn, it's understandable the government has no detailed plan for the final shape of Brexit.
But with the UK's place in the world being redefined in real time, that doesn't make the situation any more comfortable.

DUP leader Arlene Foster has said her party will "not be able to support" Theresa May's latest proposals aimed at resolving the Brexit deadlock.
The party accused the PM of breaking promises over plans to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The plans were revealed in a letter from Theresa May to Mrs Foster, leaked to the Times.
Downing Street reiterated the PM's commitment to avoiding a hard border.
Mrs May relies on the support of the DUP's 10 MPs in key votes because she does not have a majority in the House of Commons.
Agreeing a backstop - a contingency plan designed to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland until the UK and European Union settle their future relationship - remains the main obstacle in the way of a wider deal between the two sides.
Mrs May describes it in her letter to the DUP as "an insurance policy that no-one in the UK or the EU wants or expects to use".
The DUP leader said the party could not back the deal if it came before Parliament and said the PM "needs to reflect" on that.
Mrs Foster told the BBC that a response to a letter sent to the PM last week "unfortunately does say that she's in a position where she's considering regulatory alignment".
"We would not be able to support this if it came to parliament in the form that it is in the letter," said the DUP leader.
"Now there are stages to go through before it comes to parliament. She still has to have a cabinet meeting in relation to this matter and we believe that there is a chance for her to reflect on the fact that we will not be able to support it in its current form.
Mrs Foster added: "I believe that not only would we not be able to support what she has sent to us but that there are many others that wouldn't be able to support it in her own party as well."
If sufficient progress is made on the issue in the next few days, it is thought a special cabinet meeting could be held early next week for ministers to approve the draft agreement on the terms of the UK's exit.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The government will not agree anything that brings about a hard border on the island of Ireland."
The UK and EU have failed, so far, to reach agreement on how to ensure there are no border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, if a free trade deal is not in place by the end of the post-Brexit "transition period" in December 2020. This is known as the "backstop".
The EU's proposal, to keep Northern Ireland in its customs union and single market, is unacceptable to the UK because it would mean Northern Ireland having different regulations to the rest of the UK.
But the UK's proposal, which would effectively keep the whole of the UK in the EU customs union for a limited period after Brexit, includes an "expected" end date of 2021 - something which is unacceptable to the EU, which says any "backstop" must apply "unless and until" it is no longer needed.
It says its Northern Ireland-only proposal should remain in place, in case the issue of the Irish border was not sorted out by that end date.
The BBC's John Campbell said what was upsetting the DUP in Mrs May's letter was the issue of single market regulations, not customs.
He said the letter suggested the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland may require alignment with EU single market regulations "in some scenarios" adding that any such alignment would have to be "carefully circumscribed to what is strictly necessary to avoid any hard border".
The DUP has interpreted the wording of her letter to mean that the EU's proposal will be in the Brexit divorce deal, despite Mrs May's insistence it will never come into effect.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said the row came down to an issue of trust between Mrs May and her DUP allies, who were suspicious she might sign up to a deal with the EU they did not agree with.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said: "We have always said that we can't accept the [EU] commission proposal for a Northern Ireland-specific solution."
Irish PM Leo Varadkar told a press conference: "The most important thing to me is the objective, and that is to give everyone in Northern Ireland the assurance that a hard border will not develop between north and south, no matter what else may happen in the years ahead.
"That is why we are seeking one that is legally operative and one that gives us that guarantee that is necessary."

The DUP has accused the government of preparing for a Brexit U-turn after the chancellor suggested another referendum would be a "credible proposition".
The DUP has also insisted that it does not support the UK joining a customs union with the EU.
On Wednesday, chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson hinted the DUP might be open to a customs union.
But on Thursday, he criticised "halfway houses" and "staging posts", saying it was not the Brexit people voted for.
Meanwhile, his DUP colleague Sammy Wilson hit out at Chancellor Philip Hammond for suggesting another referendum would be a "credible proposition", before signing off on a deal.
Speaking in the Commons on Thursday, Mr Wilson said: "Are we beginning to see yet the start of another U-turn by a government which has abandoned all of its promises to go forward with a no deal, to have no border down the Irish Sea and to ensure we leave the EU on 29th March?"
Labour has called for a permanent customs union with the EU and is in talks with the government about reaching a compromise.
In a statement on Thursday, Sir Jeffrey called on Prime Minister Theresa May to press the EU for changes to the withdrawal agreement, rather than "subcontract" the negotiations to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
"Whilst the prime minister and her government may consider other options as halfway houses or staging posts, that is not the Brexit which people voted for," he said.
"We will work in Parliament for the referendum result to be properly respected."
The DUP MP added: "It is late in the day, but it is still possible to secure a deal which implements the referendum result and enables the United Kingdom to take back control of its trade, money, laws and borders."
Late on Wednesday, MPs voted by a majority of one to force the prime minister to ask for an extension to the Brexit process, in a bid to avoid any no-deal scenario.
Earlier that evening, Sir Jeffrey said his party would have preferred a form of Brexit that enables the UK to negotiate new trade agreements with other countries.
"That's part of the reason for Brexit and maybe a customs union might be a temporary staging post towards that objective," he told BBC Newsline.
"We will wait to see what the prime minister brings before Parliament but we are very clear, we want a Brexit that delivers for all of the United Kingdom and that keeps the United Kingdom together - that is our objective."
MPs have been debating legislation which would require Mrs May to seek an extension to Article 50 and give the Commons the power to approve or amend whatever was agreed.
Wednesday's knife-edge parliamentary vote to ask the EU for a longer Brexit extension was on a bill brought by Labour's Yvette Cooper.
It was fast-tracked through all Commons stages - a process that can take months - in one day and is now going through the Lords.
It will still be up to the EU to decide whether to grant an extension.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said it was an "article of faith" that the UK must leave the EU to honour the referendum result.
He told the BBC a customs union was "not desirable" but if that was the only way of leaving the EU, he would take it.
The comments come a day after Mrs May said that she will ask the EU for a further extension to Brexit.
Talks between the prime minister and Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday were said to be "constructive".
It is understood that each party has appointed a negotiating team, and they are meeting before a full day of discussions on Thursday.
Mr Corbyn had said he was "very happy" to meet Mrs May, and would ensure plans for a customs union and protection of workers' rights were on the table.
The DUP has supported the government in a confidence-and-supply pact since June 2017, after a snap general election.
But it is at odds with the prime minister and her Brexit deal, because of the Irish border backstop in the withdrawal agreement.
The party opposes the plan because if it took effect, it would lead to trade differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which the DUP said poses a risk to the integrity of the union.
The UK is still scheduled to leave the EU on 12 April, unless the EU agrees to another extension.
But it is likely to demand that the UK takes part in European elections, which are due to take place on 23 May.
However, Mrs May said she wanted any further extension to be "as short as possible" - before 22 May so the UK does not have to take part in the elections.
Both the UK and EU have continued preparations for a no deal, in the event that a breakthrough cannot be reached in time.

The DUP has endorsed Boris Johnson's offer to the European Union.
It includes the creation of an all-island regulatory zone for agriculture, food and all manufactured goods.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said it was a serious and sensible way forward which "allows the people of Northern Ireland a role which they didn't have".
However, the Irish prime minister said the proposals "do not fully meet the agreed objectives of the backstop" - the mechanism they seek to replace.
After speaking with Boris Johnson on Wednesday evening, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar indicated "he would study them in further detail and would consult with the EU institutions, including the Task Force and our EU partners".
The two prime ministers agreed to talk again next week.
The backstop, agreed in Theresa May's withdrawal agreement, is meant to keep a free-flowing border on the island of Ireland, but critics fear it could trap the UK in EU trading rules indefinitely.
The government plan, outlined in a seven-page document published on Wednesday, would see Northern Ireland stay in the European single market for goods, but leave the customs union - resulting in new customs checks.
The Northern Ireland Assembly would get to approve the arrangements first and vote every four years on keeping them.
Speaking in Belfast after returning from the Conservative Party conference Mrs Foster said it gives the people of Northern Ireland "the consent that they didn't have in terms of the anti-democratic nature of the backstop".
"This is a serious and sensible way forward to have engagement with the European Union in a way that allows us all in the United Kingdom to leave the EU," she added.
The UK proposal is that a revived Stormont Assembly and Executive would have to give their consent for the trade arrangements to come into force before the end of a transition period, which is due to last until 2021.
That consent would then have to be renewed every four years.
Under Assembly cross-community voting rules this would give both unionists and nationalists a veto over aligning with the EU.
If the Assembly withheld its consent, Northern Ireland would revert to the trade regulations which apply elsewhere in the UK.
If the arrangements are approved by the Assembly and Executive, Northern Ireland would adopt EU trade regulations.
However, under the UK proposal it would remain within the UK customs territory meaning there will be a requirement for some customs checks on goods moving across the border.
The European Commission said it will "examine [the proposals] objectively".
In his speech to the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday, Mr Johnson described his plan as a "compromise for both sides" which would "protect the union".
His offer is for an "all-island regulatory zone", which would mean Northern Ireland would have to follow EU rules for goods.
There would be additional checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but the UK would not apply further checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Ireland.
Checks relating to the single market are about product standards, to ensure goods comply with EU regulations.
However, Northern Ireland would leave the EU customs union with the rest of the UK, so there would have to be new customs checks between North and South.
Those checks would look at customs documents and the payment of tariffs, which allow goods to cross the border in the first place.
The government proposals suggest the vast majority of checks could be carried out electronically - but thinks a small number of physical checks would have to take place, either at business premises or at points on the supply chain.
Vice President Michelle O'Neill said that the EU must not accept the proposals as they "failed to meet the objectives of the Irish backstop".
She said: "While a no-deal Brexit was avoided in March and April, there is no optimism that this will be the case come 31 October.
"This is catastrophic for citizens and for business."
In his speech to the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday, Mr Johnson described his plan as a "compromise for both sides" which would "protect the union".
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said the proposals were "dead on arrival".
He has called on the leaders of the UK's biggest parties to vote Mr Johnson out of office.
Alliance leader and MEP Naomi Long said: "This proposal is in many ways the worst of both worlds, as we've gone from having no new borders to having two."
Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann claimed the PM's proposals would see Northern Ireland left in a "perpetual cycle of uncertainty".
He said: "The prime minister and the DUP are fooling no-one with these proposals. This new protocol should be deeply concerning for all those who have the long term economic and constitutional welfare of Northern Ireland and its people at heart.
"Northern Ireland would become a hybrid part of the UK with a border up the Irish Sea."

The DUP has held out the prospect of supporting a customs union as talks continue between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn to break the Brexit deadlock.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson made the suggestion to BBC News NI on Wednesday evening.
It came as the Tory and Labour leaders agreed a "programme of work" to try to find a way forward to put to MPs.
Earlier, the DUP called the prime minister's handling of the overall Brexit negotiations "lamentable".
Late on Wednesday, MPs voted by a majority of one to force the prime minister to ask for an extension to the Brexit process, in a bid to avoid any no-deal scenario.
Earlier on Wednesday evening, Sir Jeffrey said his party would have preferred a form of Brexit that enables the UK to negotiate new trade agreements with other countries.
"That's part of the reason for Brexit and maybe a customs union might be a temporary staging post towards that objective," he told BBC Newsline.
"We will wait to see what the prime minister brings before Parliament but we are very clear, we want a Brexit that delivers for all of the United Kingdom and that keeps the United Kingdom together - that is our objective."
The DUP MP earlier told BBC Radio Ulster that regardless of what emerges in the coming days, the DUP's stance on the union was "un-persuadable" and they remained in an "influential position" because of the government's fragile working majority in Parliament.
MPs have been debating legislation which would require Mrs May to seek an extension to Article 50 and give the Commons the power to approve or amend whatever was agreed.
Wednesday's knife-edge parliamentary vote to ask the EU for a longer Brexit extension was on a bill brought by Labour's Yvette Cooper.
It was fast-tracked through all Commons stages - a process that can take months - in one day and is now going through the Lords.
It will still be up to the EU to decide whether to grant an extension.
If the UK joined a customs union with the EU, this would lessen the need for the Irish border backstop, but would not remove it altogether.
On its own, a customs union would unequivocally not eliminate the potential for border checks in Ireland.
Customs are not the only things which could be enforced at the border - checks on food products to see if they meet EU standards would still remain an outstanding issue.
That is a matter that only some sort of continued single market access would grant.
On Monday, the DUP voted against an indicative vote proposing a customs union, but it was not binding.
If Mrs May and Mr Corbyn cannot agree a compromise, the government will put forward its own series of indicative votes - which will be binding - and could include Mrs May's own deal versus a series of other options.
Supporting one union to secure another. Might this be the new DUP tactic?
First, Nigel Dodds said he would rather remain in the EU than risk the union.
Now the party whip is saying a customs union "could be a temporary staging  post" to the "preferred form of Brexit".
On the same day, the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox suggested he, too, could live with a customs union if it helped deliver Brexit.
For the DUP, it's about preserving the union first, delivering Brexit second.
But supporting a customs union in the political declaration, which is not legally binding, may just be a negotiating tactic.
And as a "staging post" it may disappear when Theresa May's replacement takes over the negotiation.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said it was an "article of faith" that the UK must leave the EU to honour the referendum result.
He told the BBC a customs union was "not desirable" but if that was the only way of leaving the EU, he would take it.
The comments come a day after Mrs May said that she will ask the EU for a further extension to Brexit.
Talks between the prime minister and Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday were said to be "constructive".
It is understood that each party has appointed a negotiating team, and they are meeting before a full day of discussions on Thursday.
Mr Corbyn had said he was "very happy" to meet Mrs May, and would ensure plans for a customs union and protection of workers' rights were on the table.
The DUP has supported the government in a confidence-and-supply pact since June 2017, after a snap general election.
But it is at odds with the prime minister and her Brexit deal, because of the Irish border backstop in the withdrawal agreement.
The party opposes the plan because if it took effect, it would lead to trade differences between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, which the DUP said poses a risk to the integrity of the union.
The UK is still scheduled to leave the EU on 12 April, unless the EU agrees to another extension.
But it is likely to demand that the UK takes part in European elections, which are due to take place on 23 May.
However, Mrs May said she wanted any further extension to be "as short as possible" - before 22 May so the UK does not have to take part in the elections.
Both the UK and EU have continued preparations for a no deal, in the event that a breakthrough cannot be reached in time.

The DUP would have to revisit its confidence and supply deal with the Tories if Theresa May's Brexit deal passes through parliament, Arlene Foster has said.
The DUP leader said her agreement with the Conservatives had been intended to provide the UK with national stability and to deliver on Brexit.
She was speaking on Radio Ulster's Inside Politics programme.
The DUP is holding its annual conference this weekend.
"If this is not going to deliver on Brexit then of course that brings us to the situation of looking again at the confidence and supply deal.
"But we are not there yet," she said.
The DUP leader insisted the government should "ditch the Irish backstop" and recognise that, in practice, nobody will implement a hard border on the island of Ireland.
She argued that the prospect of such a hard border has taken on a "mythical status" in the Brexit negotiations.
Mrs Foster argued that the EU Withdrawal Agreement as it stands will not get the support of parliament.
Instead of "wasting time" on the agreement, she said Mrs May should try to secure a better deal.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, is one of two Conservative MPs to attend the DUP party conference in Belfast this weekend.
Mr Hammond spoke at a dinner on Friday night.
Earlier, he told the BBC that the government is looking at ways to provide extra assurances to the DUP over the Irish border backstop.
He was speaking during a visit to an integrated school in Moira, County Down.
Mr Hammond said the government has a number of choices through the "parliamentary process", which include extending the implementation period to avoid having to use the backstop.
"I would much prefer to see us extending the implementation period and I am sure my DUP colleagues would take the same view," he said.
"So we need to look at how we can provide reassurance about how we will use the options that the agreement gives us."
Boris Johnson will give a speech to the conference on Saturday afternoon.
Mrs Foster said the reference to the potential use of technology to monitor cross-border trade in the latest EU-UK Political Declaration does not change her party's objections to Mrs May's Withdrawal Agreement.
She said it would have been much better if both the EU and the UK had explored potential technological solutions to maintaining smooth cross-border trade in the summer of last year, when unionists previously championed the idea.
Mrs  Foster said the withdrawal agreement will be legally binding and have the status of an international treaty, so it remains important to the DUP that nothing contained in it damages the UK constitutionally or economically.
Inside Politics is on BBC Radio Ulster on Friday at 18:05 GMT and Saturday at 13:35 GMT.

Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party is planning to vote against the Budget if Theresa May breaches the party's Brexit red lines, Newsnight has learnt.
The party would end its parliamentary support for the prime minister if she agrees a deal at next week's EU summit that led to additional checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The loss of the DUP, which won ten seats at the last election, would raise severe doubts about the government's ability to pass the Budget which is due to be delivered on 29 October.
Losing a budget vote has traditionally been seen as a withdrawal of confidence in the government. One former Tory cabinet minister told Newsnight: "The DUP should be putting the fear of God into Downing St."
The DUP is growing alarmed because it fears Downing St is edging towards a deal with the EU that may lead to additional regulatory checks on goods travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, has called for such checks to avoid creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. This would be achieved by aligning Northern Ireland with the rules of the single market.
The prime minister has strongly rejected the Barnier plan. But senior DUP sources fear that Downing St may agree to some form of regulatory checks.
One DUP source told Newsnight: "If we are not happy with what happens next week [in Brussels] we won't be bounced into anything. If she doesn't take our concerns on board, we will take the view that Theresa May is not the leader to take us through to a safe Brexit."
The DUP was concerned after Mr Barnier reportedly told the party in Brussels this week that Great Britain is entitled to sign a traditional free trade deal with the EU. But Northern Ireland would have to be separate and subject to the rules of the single market to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The prime minister has consistently said that no UK prime minister would agree to hiving off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. Mel Stride, the financial secretary to the Treasury, insisted that there has been no change in government policy.
Asked about the BBC report that the DUP might vote down the budget, he told Radio 4's The World at One: "I'm not going to speculate on something that just isn't going to happen. We are extremely clear that there will be no border down the Irish Sea."
But the DUP fears that a two-part Brexit deal is emerging that would breach its "nuclear" red line. That is its code for pulling the plug on Theresa May even if that led to Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.
The DUP believe the government's possible Brexit deal would lead to:
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on Iplayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.

It is painful to watch the prime minister "pleading" with EU leaders to grant another extension to the Brexit date, Arlene Foster has said.
The DUP leader told the BBC she found it "humiliating that we are having to go and beg so that we can leave".
On Wednesday, a special EU summit will take place as leaders consider Theresa May's request.
The UK is still scheduled to leave the EU on 12 April, unless a delay is agreed.
Mrs May is meeting German and French leaders on Tuesday afternoon, in a bid to seek support to postpone the Brexit date again.
The prime minister met Angela Merkel in Berlin, and will meet Emmanuel Macron in Paris, as she urges both to back her request to delay Brexit again until 30 June.
After the talks, Ms Merkel said a delay that runs to the end of the year or the start of 2020 was a possibility.
But Mrs Foster criticised the Prime Minister saying she "needed to be strong, she needed to show leadership, and I'm sorry to say that hasn't been evident in this past couple of months".
However, when pressed on the future of the confidence-and-supply pact her party shares with the government, Mrs Foster said who leads the Conservatives is not a matter for the DUP.
She insisted that the DUP would work in the interests of unionism and would work with whoever was prime minister, but she said it was disappointing that the Irish border backstop still had not been dealt with.
"She is the leader of a party that said they would deliver on Brexit and at the moment she is failing to do that," she added.
Meanwhile, the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar has said he is "confident" an extension will be agreed at the EU summit.
Leo Varadkar said the discussions would focus on the length of any extension and the conditions applied to it, such as shaping a new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and electing the next president of the European Commission - and whether the UK could be involved in these decisions.
He said many EU countries were concerned that Brexit was "taking up so much of the EU agenda".
Mr Varadkar added that the Irish government had no objection to a long extension, but he did not want to see that leading to the re-opening of the Withdrawal Agreement.
He said there were certain dates in the text that would expire if the extension was too lengthy, that could lead to the agreement having to be amended.

The Democratic Unionist Party has said there are "still issues to be discussed" with the government as Theresa May continues to try to win support for her Brexit deal.
Mrs May is expected to bring her withdrawal agreement back to the Commons next week for a third vote.
It comes after MPs this week rejected her deal and voted to delay Brexit.
The DUP, which has twice voted against the agreement, said it remained in discussions with the government.
It has been reported by the Spectator magazine that there is a "better than 50:50 chance" the party will support the deal next week.
A DUP spokesman denied reports that extra money for Northern Ireland had been part of the talks, despite the involvement of Chancellor Philip Hammond in discussions on Friday.
The party has previously voted against the deal over concerns around the Northern Ireland backstop - an insurance policy to maintain an open border in Ireland.
The 10 votes provided by the DUP, which props up the government, are thought to be key to the prime minister securing her deal.
A DUP party spokesman said: "We are in discussions with the government to ensure Northern Ireland is not separated out from the rest of the United Kingdom as we leave the European Union. Contrary to some reports, we are not discussing cash.
"There are still issues to be addressed in our discussions."
If the deal fails to gain support, having already been defeated in the Commons by large margins twice, Mrs May has warned a longer extension may be needed, and the UK may have to take part in European elections.
Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics suggested a delay of up to two years could be required if MPs continue to reject Mrs May's withdrawal agreement.
"Number one priority would be the deal that is reached is passed," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"If it is not the case, what we need is clear vision from the UK government how much time UK needs to come up with new proposals, new ideas how we proceed.
"In that case it's not a couple of months, I believe then we are talking about maybe one or two years."
Former Cabinet minister Esther McVey, who resigned over the Brexit agreement, suggested fellow Brexiteers could back Mrs May's "rubbish" deal next week to make sure the UK leaves the EU.
She told BBC Radio 4's Political Thinking With Nick Robinson podcast: "The element now is that people will have to take a bad deal rather than no deal."
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said "quite a number" of MPs would be prepared to support a compromise deal, with the guarantee the deal goes back to the people for a final say on Brexit.
Speaking before an event in Gravesend, Kent, Mr McDonnell said politicians would move "heaven and earth" to prevent the UK from leaving the EU without a deal.
But any final say should not be on the deal Mrs May has agreed, "because it's not credible", he said.
Earlier, Tory MP Nick Boles resigned from his local Conservative association after clashing with the group over Brexit.
Mr Boles, who has spoken out against leaving the EU with no deal, said a "division had opened up" between him and the local association.
Local activists had wanted to deselect him as their candidate in the next general election because of his stance on Brexit.
Chief Whip Julian Smith said Mr Boles was a "valued member of the Conservative parliamentary party, which I hope will continue to benefit from his ideas and drive".
Separately, pro-Brexit marchers, led by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, have begun a two-week journey from Sunderland to London.
About 100 people assembled to start the march. They were joined by counter-protesters, including those from anti-Brexit campaign Led by Donkeys.
Mr Farage aims to walk 100 miles of the 270-mile March to Leave, which is due to arrive in the capital on 29 March.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has voted for a proposal that could delay Brexit until all necessary UK laws are passed in Parliament.
MPs voted by 322 to 306 to pass the so-called Letwin amendment to the government's Brexit deal, inflicting a blow on the prime minster's strategy.
The DUP backs Brexit, but does not support the prime minister's revised proposals for Northern Ireland.
It is not clear when Number 10 will now hold a meaningful vote on its deal.
MPs met on Saturday for a rare sitting, with the government hoping to hold a vote on its Brexit deal - but that vote was pulled after they voted for the Letwin amendment.
Independent unionist MP for North Down, Lady Hermon, backed it as well.
It withholds approval of the deal until the legislation to enact it - known as the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) -  is safely passed: a move that automatically triggers the "Benn Act" to force the prime minister to request a further postponement of Brexit until 31 January.
 A Downing Street source told the BBC Boris Johnson would send a letter to the EU by 00:00 BST to request a Brexit delay but he will not sign it,
The request will be accompanied by a second letter, signed by Mr Johnson, which will say he believes that a delay would be a mistake, the source said.
The prime minister has vowed to bring in legislation on Monday to implement the deal he struck with Brussels this week.
DUP East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson said voting against the government was "the only way" to ensure there was proper scrutiny of the deal.
"We were doing the people of Northern Ireland a favour as well by ensuring that their interests are properly represented," he added.
He said the DUP would now seek changes to the deal, in order address concerns the party has, and suggested the party would vote against the WAB if revisions were not made.
By Jayne McCormack, BBC News NI Political Reporter
Boris Johnson just got a taste of what Theresa May faced from the DUP when she was prime minister.
The party's 10 votes, as well as Lady Hermon's, were decisive in inflicting defeat on the government.
But in less than a year since Mr Johnson gave the keynote speech at the DUP conference, he has seriously fractured the Conservative Party's relationship with Northern Ireland unionism.
The DUP had conceded on regulatory checks in the Irish Sea; in return expecting Mr Johnson to make other commitments to them.
But he didn't.
So the DUP are reminding the PM that, for now at least, they still hold the balance of power in Parliament when it comes to such huge votes.
The DUP is opposed to the consent mechanism in the Brexit deal, which would give the Northern Ireland Assembly a say on whether to continue following EU customs rules.
It would take place by a simply majority vote: pro-EU parties have a narrow majority at Stormont and there would be no unionist veto, as demanded by the DUP.
Earlier Mr Dodds had told Boris Johnson he needed to respect the concerns of unionists - but the prime minister dismissed suggestions that his deal breached the principle of consent.
Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, votes on contentious matters should be backed by a majority of unionists and nationalists.
"In all frankness I do think it a pity that it is thought necessary for one side or the other of the debate in Northern Ireland to have a veto on those arrangements," he told MPs.
He argued that the Brexit referendum had taken place on a straight majority basis, adding: "I think that principle should be applied elsewhere, I see no reason why it should not apply in Northern Ireland as well."
Independent unionist MP for North Down, Lady Hermon, has not confirmed whether she will support the government's plan.
She told Mr Johnson there is "anger" in Northern Ireland's unionist community over his deal - but the PM said he is committed to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, calling it "inviolable".
Meanwhile, in a statement released after the vote, Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said that the European Union and United Kingdom had made a withdrawal agreement last Thursday that defends Ireland's interests.
"To date, no request for an extension has been made by the UK government. Should that happen, President Tusk will consult with all 27 heads of state and government on whether or not we will grant one. An extension can only be granted by unanimity," he said.
"Today's antics and bluster will not allay the fears of Irish workers, business or agri foods  producers and our border communities," she said.
The new Brexit deal would involve Stormont giving ongoing consent to any special arrangements for Northern Ireland via a straight majority, instead of on a cross-community basis.
Northern Ireland would continue to follow EU rules on food safety and product standards and would also leave the EU customs union.
But EU customs procedures would still apply on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain in order to avoid checks at the border.
Stormont would have to approve those arrangements on an ongoing basis.
Approval would involve a straight-forward majority, which would keep the special arrangements in place for four years.
Alternatively, if the arrangements are approved by a majority of nationalists and a majority of unionists, they would remain in place for eight years.
If the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to end the arrangements there would be a two-year notice period, during which the UK and the EU would have to agree ways to protect the peace process and avoid a hard border.
If a vote was not held - by choice or because the assembly was not sitting - then the government has committed to finding an "alternative process".

The withdrawal agreement approved by the UK and EU leaders is "worse than no deal", DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has said.
The DUP, which props up the government, has repeatedly said it will vote against it in Parliament.
There has been political opposition to the plan because of the backstop, which aims to avoid a hard Irish border.
A number of business and farming groups in NI have also urged the DUP to support the deal and provide certainty.
Speaking to BBC 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics, Mr Dodds said his party's "one red line" had been ignored by the government.
The agreement on the backstop would see only Northern Ireland stay aligned to some EU rules, if it took effect.
The DUP is concerned that the backstop could threaten the integrity of the union and place a trade border down the Irish Sea.
"What Theresa may has succeeded in doing is putting a proposition on the table which is worse than no deal and worse than staying in the EU, whatever else is put on the table," said the North Belfast MP.
"The government is going to spend the next fortnight engaged in all sorts of project fear initiatives in order to try to get MPs to vote for something that is clearly unsatisfactory."
The DUP has repeatedly said it will vote against the deal, as it stands, when it comes to Parliament to be ratified in a few weeks' time.
Mr Dodds said his party would not be "bought off", he said, adding that "there is absolutely no way this deal can go through on the basis of side offers."
"The DUP has been very clear all along - we have core beliefs and principles and we're sticking by those," he said.
"It is the least worst option - there is no good Brexit."
"It must be clear that under no scenario will there be a hardening of the border in Ireland or the abandonment of the Good Friday Agreement, which we must all work to fully implement and defend," she added.
Earlier, DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party is "disappointed" with Theresa May and the government's decision to press ahead with the Brexit deal.
Mrs Foster said the the agreement "goes against everything" the DUP had been promised.
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Arlene Foster said: "We're disappointed with the way this has progressed.
"She (Theresa May) is a unionist, but this deal goes against everything she has said about all of that."
Mrs Foster said there is still time to negotiate for a "better deal".
"We should use the time now to look for a third way. I recognise we are negotiating with a fatigue, there comes a time when everybody is tired and just wants to get on with it but we shouldn't accept the outcome for the sake of it," she added.
Several newspapers have reported that the DUP is involved in discussions with several cabinet ministers about a secret "Brexit plan B", if Mrs May's deal does not get passed in the Commons.
Mrs Foster did not explicitly deny the report, but said her party was having "conversations right across government" about the deal.
She also said she did not see any circumstances right now where Mrs May's deal would have enough support to get through parliament.
The DUP holds the balance of power at Westminster, as the government relies on the votes of its 10 MPs to have a working majority in parliament.
It signed a confidence and supply pact with the Conservatives in June 2017 and negotiated an extra £1bn in spending for Northern Ireland - but the rift between the parties over the Brexit plan has put the arrangement under significant pressure.
Mrs Foster has already said if the government's deal gets passed in the Commons, the DUP will have to review the confidence and supply pact.
"We'll review it at that point in time: things are fluid, things change - we'll have to see where we are," she added.
The government has insisted that it will not renegotiate the current plan, and has urged MPs to back it or risk a no deal scenario.

Westminster seems more peaceful tonight.
Maybe I should just stop there. It is Friday night after all, and after the Big Dipper ride of the last few days, maybe for Number 10, and maybe for you, that's enough to be going on with for now.
But Number 10 knows they'd be kidding themselves to imagine that the danger has gone. We simply won't know, probably until Monday, whether there are enough Tory MPs willing to put their names to letters calling for her to go to trigger a vote on confidence in her that might - in theory - force her from office.
It is possible that by the start of next week Theresa May finds herself with a vote that could unseat her.
If she doesn't, or even if she does but then wins such a vote, here's the problem.
More than 20 MPs have put their names out there publicly calling on her to go and screaming protests at her Brexit deal. They might not get their confidence vote. Even if they do, they might not get enough support to oust her.
But it seems impossible for those who have put their names out there to vote for the Brexit deal in a few weeks time.
With the DUP bristling with rage about the deal and how it was arrived at, and very little sign of a cavalry of Labour MPs riding to the rescue, the number of public protests from those Tory MPs makes it seem like Theresa May's agreement is doomed.
In that regard, how on earth does the government plan to get it through? Can they?
There are two factors that Number 10 hopes will come through for them. First off, they hope that once the deal is done officially with the EU, next Sunday (25 November), then the dynamic will change.
Something along the lines of the leaked plan to sell the deal that we saw last week can get going, and when it does, expect it to rev up fast and loud.
As we've discussed before plenty of times, the government machine will crank up fast and furiously to get MPs to back the deal - or else.
And they also hope that more Labour MPs than currently expected will back them in the end. That's not just because they could choose a deal rather than open Pandora's box.
But it's also because there's a belief in Number 10 that Labour's fellow politicians on the left around Europe will make it clear that frankly, this deal is the best the UK will get, and that a hypothetical Labour government couldn't and wouldn't do any better.
Is that realistic, when the opposition party have the temptation of doing maximum damage to the government of the day? Let's see.
For some of the government's critics, it's simply deluded to imagine they will be able to turn this debate around.
The draft deal, only 48 hours after it was published, has been roundly attacked. There are many more MPs on the record now than are needed to defeat the agreement in Parliament.
But it is impossible to be in the minds of the MPs contemplating turning in a letter calling for May to quit over the weekend.
And harder still to be in the minds of those who will have an agonising choice if the deal makes it to the Commons in a few weeks time.
It is calmer in Westminster tonight, but it is messy, and the danger hasn't gone away.

MPs will vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal on Tuesday, 15 January, government sources have confirmed.
The Commons vote was called off last month by the PM, who was facing defeat, but sources have told the BBC the vote will not be delayed again.
It is also understood the government will set out further reassurances on the controversial backstop.
Meanwhile, more than 200 MPs have signed a letter to Theresa May, urging her to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
It comes as a major exercise involving more than 100 lorries is being carried out in Kent to test out how to manage traffic queues near the Channel ports in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The PM's deal - which covers the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU - has already been agreed with EU leaders. But it needs to pass a vote by MPs before it is accepted.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 whether the deal is passed by MPs or not.
Mrs May's deal is facing opposition from many of her own MPs, as well as Labour and other opposition parties including the Remain-supporting Liberal Democrats.
The DUP - which Mrs May's Conservative Party relies on for a majority in Parliament - has said it will not back the deal.
But Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed suggestions that the government had accepted it would lose next week's vote and was planning on returning to Brussels.
"The plan is to win the vote on Tuesday, or whenever it comes," Mr Kwarteng told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He said a week was "a very long time in politics" and he was "very hopeful" the deal would be voted through.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said reassurances on the Irish backstop were likely to include proposals to minimise any regulatory differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Plans to give Stormont a role in deciding whether the backstop should come into force were also likely.
There could be further possible safeguards for Parliament, with MPs perhaps being given a vote before the UK enters the backstop and the right to notify Brussels of the UK's intention to quit the backstop within a specified time period, our correspondent added.
Government sources also said they hope to set out further reassurances from the EU that the backstop is only temporary.
Meanwhile, writing in Daily Telegraph, ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson said the option of leaving the EU with no deal is "closest to what people actually voted for" in the 2016 EU referendum.
And Tory MP Damian Green - also an ex-cabinet minister - said the onus was on the MPs to say what deal they would support.
Tory Dame Caroline Spelman, who organised the MPs' letter with Labour MP Jack Dromey, said "crashing out" of the EU without a deal would cause job losses.
Dame Caroline - a Remain supporter who was environment secretary for two years when David Cameron was prime minister - told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour programme that 209 MPs had signed the letter.
Asked if the prime minister "gets it", Dame Caroline said: "Yes, I definitely think she gets it. She wouldn't have invited us to come in and see her if she didn't."
Dame Caroline said the signatories to her letter included Brexit and Remain supporters - but the letter did not bind them to supporting the PM's withdrawal deal.
Instead, Dame Caroline said, it creates a "platform" which would "stabilise the economy and give reassurance to manufacturing".
"We are united on one thing - we want to protect jobs and livelihoods by making sure we don't crash out without a deal," she said.
The MPs have been invited to meet the prime minister on Tuesday.
Many Conservative MPs continue to believe the deal does not represent the Brexit the country voted for, and some are actively calling for Britain to leave with no deal.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, it would automatically fall back on World Trade Organization rules - which would apply automatically to trade between the UK and EU.
Writing in the Telegraph on Monday, Brexiteer Mr Johnson said of all the options suggested, the no-deal option is "gaining in popularity" and dismissed the warnings against it which he said were "downright apocalyptic".
Mr Johnson said he wants Mrs May to remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement, "to give real legal protection to the UK".
"Failing that, we should approach the challenge of leaving on WTO terms in a way that is realistic and sensible," he said.
On Sunday, Tory MP Peter Bone told Sky News the best way to "get on" with Brexit was to leave without a deal - which would be "absolutely OK".
He said support for leaving without a deal was "hardening".
But speaking on Sunday, Mrs May warned that if Parliament rejects her Brexit deal, the country faces "uncharted territory".
The UK's exit in March was "in danger" if MPs did not vote for it, she added.
As well as the invite to all signatories of the letter to Downing Street, Mrs May has also invited all Tory MPs to drinks receptions on Monday and Wednesday.
BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour is broadcast at 22:00 GMT on Sunday and can be listened to here.

David Davis said he can "live with" a transition period of under two years if that helps to secure an early deal.
The Brexit secretary said the EU and UK will establish a joint committee during the transition period to guarantee a "duty of good faith" by both sides.
He said that outlines of the transition phase would reassure Brexit supporters.
Mr Davis will travel to Brussels on Sunday for a meeting on Monday with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
Prime Minister Theresa May has called for an implementation period of "around two years" after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March next year.
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In an interview with BBC Newsnight, Mr Davis said he was prepared to accept the EU demand that the transition should come to end earlier - in December 2020 - to ensure the transition is concluded at the same time as the EU's seven-year budget cycle.
The Brexit secretary said his main priority was to secure agreement on the implementation period at next week's EU summit in Brussels.
He told Newsnight: "That is more important to me than a few months either way. So I'm not bothered too much about the question of whether it is Christmas 2020 or Easter 2021."
Asked whether he could live with the transition ending in December 2020, he said: "I would live with that. We are still in the middle of a negotiation. Frankly what I would not do is delay the decision [on an implementation period] in order to get a month or two more."
Mr Davis said that the UK's decision to accept the EU's transition timetable will be balanced by the establishment of a new joint committee to ensure both sides observer a "duty of good faith" during the transition.
He downplayed concerns, voiced by the prominent Tory Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg, that the UK would be a "vassal state" during the transition. He said most EU laws take two years to pass - three months longer than the proposed transition timetable.
Mr Davis said: "It is not going to be a big material issue. But we want to have in place, and we will have in place, is a joint committee which will oversee any issues like this that come up and a duty of good faith, good faith on both sides so neither side is disadvantaged. So we won't fall into Mr Rees-Mogg's interesting definition of our position."
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The Brexit secretary was interviewed by Newsnight during a day in which he travelled to Copenhagen and Prague to shore up support for the UK in the Brexit negotiations.
Britain believes that the remaining 27 member states, who have been united behind Brussels in the first phase of negotiations, may have their own concerns which could be helpful to the UK in the final phase of negotiations.
Mr Davis, who has been criticised by the European Commission for visiting EU capitals rather than negotiating in person in Brussels, announced he would meet Michel Barnier in Brussels on Monday.
He said: "On all of these [strands in the negotiations] we started discussions with the Commission in Downing Street about four weeks or so ago.  Since then a team, my team, have been working flat out. Principally in Brussels, and that will continue through this weekend, and I shall join them on Sunday and we'll have another meeting with Michel on Monday."

Cabinet ministers should "exert their collective authority" and rebel against Theresa May's proposed Brexit deal, ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis has said.
The prime minister has suggested a temporary arrangement for the whole UK to remain in the customs union while the Irish border issue is resolved.
Brexiteers fear this may be indefinite, limiting the ability to do trade deals.
But Health Secretary Matt Hancock said there were "different ways" to ensure any commitments were time-limited.
Asked whether any deal would include a date at which the UK would no longer be bound by the rules of the customs union, he told the BBC's Andrew Marr show, "I certainly hope so".
"There are different ways you can make sure something is credibly time-limited and that is what I want to see ", he said.
There was "absolutely no reason" for cabinet ministers to quit over the issue, he suggested, urging them to "pull behind" Mrs May ahead of a crucial summit of EU leaders on Wednesday.
The current Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, went to Brussels on Sunday afternoon to meet with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier ahead of the event.
A Department for Exiting the European Union spokesman said: "With several big issues still to resolve, including the Northern Ireland backstop, it was jointly agreed that face-to-face talks were necessary."
Wednesday's summit will signal whether or not a deal is likely to be struck in the run-up to the UK's scheduled exit on 29 March 2019.
But writing in the Sunday Times, Mr Davis said the PM's plan was unacceptable.
"This is one of the most fundamental decisions that government has taken in modern times," he added.
And Labour, on whom Theresa May may have to rely to win a Parliamentary vote on the deal later this year, said it would not support "any fudge cooked up with Brussels".
"The government are playing chicken on this," Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told the BBC's Andrew Marr show, claiming a choice between no deal and a "bit of Theresa May nonsense" was unacceptable.
"We say no... We are not agreeing to build half a bridge when we do not know where it is going."
Mr Davis resigned from his post in July - days after Mrs May's so-called Chequers deal was agreed by cabinet - saying he did not believe in the plan.
The issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will become the UK's border with the EU, is one of the last remaining obstacles to achieving a divorce deal with Brussels.
Wrangling is continuing over the nature of a "backstop" to keep the border open if a wider UK-EU trade arrangement cannot resolve it.
The EU's version, which would see just Northern Ireland remain aligned with Brussels' rules, has been called unacceptable by Mrs May and her Democratic Unionist allies.
Mr Davis said the government's negotiating strategy had "fundamental flaws", arising from its "unwise decision" to let the EU dictate the principle of the backstop in December, when the two sides agreed a wider settlement on citizens rights and the so-called divorce bill.
By Helen Catt, BBC political correspondent
That David Davis is no fan of Theresa May's Brexit plan is not surprising.
That he's choosing to ratchet up the pressure with a public call to rebellion aimed at her most senior ministers is perhaps more so.
The former Brexit secretary's own resignation from the cabinet in July did not alter the prime minister's course.
But time to reach a deal with the EU is now considerably shorter, and there have been reports that other senior Conservatives have concerns about the back-up plan for the Irish border too.
The key question is perhaps not so much whom his article might persuade, but whether or not it reflects what some in the cabinet may already be thinking.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said it had been a mistake for the prime minister to allow herself to get "boxed in" over the issue of Northern Ireland.
Asked on Sky News' Sophy Ridge show whether he backed calls for a Cabinet rebellion, Mr Duncan Smith said, "when you no longer agree on a fundamental issue, then it's probably time that you found yourself on the back benches".
Negotiations have continued this weekend between the UK and the EU ahead of Wednesday's meeting.
On Saturday evening, German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung reported a deal had already been reached between Mrs May and the EU, and would be announced on Monday.
But a No 10 source told the BBC the report was "100%, categorically untrue" and negotiations were ongoing.
Elsewhere, DUP leader Arlene Foster warned the prime minister on Saturday not to accept a "dodgy" deal with the EU.
Mrs Foster said Mrs May should not back a plan that would "effectively cut Northern Ireland adrift". According to a leaked email reported in the Observer, Mrs Foster is preparing for a no-deal Brexit.
The boss of clothing firm Next has suggested leaving the EU without an over-arching deal would not be a disaster for the retail sector and urged ministers to step up their preparations.
Lord Wolfson, a Conservative peer, told Andrew Marr it need not result in delays at the UK's ports as firms could complete new customs declarations online or at their warehouses while tariffs on EU imports could be set at zero to ensure prices do not go up.
But more than three-quarters of NHS trusts have made no preparations for Brexit whatsoever - according to documents obtained by the People's Vote campaign under Freedom of Information requests.
The group also commissioned a YouGov poll of the UK's doctors and nurses, who - according to the poll - now back another referendum by a margin of three to one.

A European odyssey, which has taken David Davis to more than half of the EU's capital cities this year, is drawing to a close.
This weekend Mr Davis will swap the grandeur of chancelleries across Europe for the more functional surroundings of the EU quarter in Brussels.
The UK Brexit secretary will meet his EU counterpart Michel Barnier in Brussels on Monday.
It will be his first visit to the EU capital this year.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight the Brexit secretary said he was "reasonably confident" the UK will reach agreement on one key area at the heart of the negotiations: a transition phase after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
The UK has given ground by accepting the EU call for the transition to end in December 2020.
Prime Minister Theresa May had suggested a slightly longer transition of "around two years". This concession by the UK is balanced by an agreement that the UK and EU will establish a joint committee to ensure both sides observe a "duty of good faith" during the transition.
An agreement on a transition phase will create space for Mr Davis and Mr Barnier to move to the next stage: agreeing the outlines of a future trading relationship that will kick in once the transition phase ends.
The move to the second phase of negotiations will not, however, be straightforward.
The EU is deeply frustrated that further steps have not been taken to resolve the dilemma over the Irish border. Britain says the Irish border, one of the main issues in phase one, cannot be finally resolved until the nature of the UK's future relationship with the EU has been agreed, at least in outline.
Britain believes that in the first phase of the negotiations, Mr Barnier achieved remarkable unity among EU member states because they each had an interest in agreeing the starter issues: the UK's financial settlement and the rights of EU citizens in the UK.
In the next phase, which will focus on trade and security, member states may have their own interests to champion.
The Brexit secretary believes that his tour of EU capitals will prove invaluable in the second phase of negotiations.
The UK will be able to "change tack" in some areas to address particular concerns of some member states who might, in turn, lend Britain a helping hand in the negotiations.
During his European odyssey, the Davis visits have followed a routine pattern.
After flying in on an RAF plane, he bounds up to each capital's foreign ministry, greets the relevant minister like an old friend, cracks jokes and then settles down to hear the concerns of that country about Brexit.
On his first appointment in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Mr Davis joked to Anders Samuelsen, the Danish foreign minister, about how he has earned a reputation as a Jekyll and Hyde figure.
Mr Davis laughed about how he, a former SAS Reservist who has no need for a coat even in chilly northern Europe, had suffered the humiliation of having his travel plans disrupted by temperatures plummeting to the "minus 20" zone in neighbouring Sweden.
In a Newsnight interview on the final leg of his tour in the Czech capital Prague, the Brexit secretary denied he had been playing "divide and rule" as he flies from capital to capital.
"One of the things I have always said is people like to think negotiations are a sort of battle of machismo. Actually the best negotiations are the ones which find the best outcome for both sides. This is really that," he said.
In Prague, he heard from Martin Stropnický, the foreign minister, how keen the Czech Republic is to protect and enhance billions of pounds in exports to the UK. That will be down to the future trading negotiations, which will be based on EU guidelines that are due to be approved at next week's summit.
Mr Davis is relaxed about the draft guidelines, which raise the prospect of tariff-free trade in goods but also suggest a much harsher regime for services because of the UK's decision not to be bound by the rules of the single market.
The Brexit secretary said the guidelines are broad enough to allow a full-scale negotiation.
"Everybody is interested in having a deal, a deal that actually allows as much trade to continue on the same basis as possible. Of course it will be a tough negotiation. They all are. But I am confident we are going to get there.
"That is the thing that when people look back in 20 or 30 years' time that is the thing they are going to remember most: what was the basis upon which we continued the relationship after we left? It won't be the short term things, it will be that."
In Denmark and in the Czech Republic, a former Warsaw Pact country, Mr Davis found strong support for the UK over Russia. He insisted that the UK's departure from the EU would not make it more difficult to secure such support in the future.
The UK Brexit secretary said: "I don't think they looked at a treaty before they decided what their opinion was. They heard what had happened, they saw what the prime minister said in the House of Commons and they made a judgment.
"They didn't say: 'Am I treaty bound to do this or that?' [On] defence and security, we are a big player."
As he clocks up the (RAF) air miles to win over friends, the Brexit secretary appears to have abandoned his old image as a Westminster bruiser from central casting.
Sitting in a grand reception room of the British embassy in Prague, with its panoramic views of the former seat of Holy Roman Emperors, he is a model of diplomacy, telling Newsnight: "One of my tasks is, we start as friends and allies of all 27 member states. We will stay friends and allies during this process. And after we have left the EU, we will still be friends and allies."

Brexit Secretary David Davis is confident negotiations will continue as planned after reports that Brussels may delay trade talks because of a lack of progress on the "divorce" settlement.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier had wanted progress on the exit payment, citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland border issue by October.
The Daily Telegraph has reported this could now slip back to December.
But the Brexit department says next-stage talks are on course for October.
A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the EU said: "Negotiations to leave the EU are under way and we have already made good progress on a number of issues.
"As the secretary of state said, it is important that both sides demonstrate a dynamic and flexible approach to these negotiations.
"Government officials are working at pace and we are confident we will have made sufficient progress by October to advance the talks to the next phase.
"On the financial settlement, we have been clear that we recognise the UK has obligations to the EU and that the EU also has obligations to the UK."
The upbeat assessment followed a report in the Telegraph which said Mr Barnier had told a private meeting of ambassadors that the next phase of negotiations would be delayed by two months because of the wrangle over how much the UK owes the bloc.
The report said Mr Barnier had claimed the EU would not talk about trade or the UK's future relationship with Brussels until "sufficient progress" had been made on the other "divorce" issues.
European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva would not be drawn on what was said at the meeting with ambassadors.
At a press briefing in Brussels she said Mr Barnier had publicly acknowledged that "so far limited progress has been achieved in the negotiations" but EU officials were ready to work on the issues over the summer if the UK side provided further updates.
She said European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was committed to engaging with the UK.
"President Juncker has asked, specifically, the task force on Article 50 to be ready every day throughout the coming weeks, throughout the month of August, to engage with our British counterparts should the UK wish to substantiate their position on some of the cases where it has not happened yet," she said.
"The commission stands ready - we are ready to work - and I cannot speculate beyond that on any timetable because that will depend on the pace of the progress being made."

Justice Secretary David Gauke has said he would be "very surprised" if the prime minister was prepared to back a no-deal Brexit, if her deal fails.
Mr Gauke also said he would find it "very difficult" to stay in cabinet, if that became government policy.
Cabinet splits have emerged over what should happen if the PM's withdrawal deal is rejected by MPs next month.
Andrea Leadsom has suggested a "managed no deal" Brexit while Amber Rudd said a new referendum was "plausible".
Mr Gauke supported Remain in the 2016 referendum.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who campaigns for another EU referendum, said the justice secretary had "effectively admitted that all the talk of leaving the EU without a deal is nonsense and a false threat designed to scare MPs into voting for the government's Brexit plan".
He added: "At a time when our schools, hospitals and police are desperately underfunded, the £4.2bn being spent preparing for Brexit would be far better spent on our public services."
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but an agreement on the terms of its withdrawal and a declaration on future relations will only come into force if the UK and EU Parliaments approve it.
The Commons vote was due to be held earlier this month but Theresa May postponed it, once it became clear it would be defeated by a large margin.
MPs are due to start debating the deal again on Wednesday 9 January.
If Mrs May's deal is rejected, the default position is for the UK to leave in March unless the government seeks to extend the Article 50 negotiating process or Parliament intervenes to stop it happening.
Mr Gauke, who was interviewed on the BBC's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast, was asked about comments he reportedly made at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, in which he dismissed the idea of a "managed no deal" Brexit as a "unicorn".
He told the BBC: "I think making a conscious decision to proceed with no deal would not be the responsible course of action and I think we would have to look at what other choices were available to us."
Asked if he would remain in the cabinet, he said: "I think it would be very difficult for me in those circumstances."
He said there was a risk of an "accidental no deal" and that "the best way of stopping no deal is to back the prime minister's deal, in my view".
But Mr Gauke said: "I think if it came down to the government saying, consciously, we will just have to do that, I don't think there would be a lot of support for it. I would be very surprised if the prime minister would be prepared to go down that route."
Mrs May has suggested the choice facing MPs is one between her deal, no deal or potentially, no Brexit at all. She has refused to rule out a "no deal" Brexit - under pressure from many MPs to do so.
On Thursday, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom told the BBC a "managed" no deal did not have to mean no withdrawal agreement at all.
The Leave campaigner said it could be a stripped-down agreement incorporating some of the EU's no-deal preparations.
"What I am looking at is trying to find an alternative so that in the event that we cannot agree to this deal there could be a further deal that looks at a more minimalist approach but enables us to leave with some kind of implementation period.
"That avoids a cliff edge, that avoids uncertainty for businesses and travellers and so on."

The EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has called for a "moment of clarity" from the UK as talks resumed.
At the start of a fourth round of talks, Mr Barnier said the process had been going six months and progress on key separation issues was essential.
For the UK, David Davis said Theresa May had shown "leadership and flexibility" in her Florence speech and given reassurances on financial issues.
There were "no excuses for standing in the way of progress", he insisted.
The new round of negotiations is the first chance for the EU team to respond to Mrs May's speech in Italy last week, in which she said the UK wanted a two-year transition period and would honour its financial obligations.
The prime minister aimed to restore momentum to a process that was widely reported to be stalling.
Speaking in Brussels, Mr Barnier said he was "keen and eager" for the UK to translate the "constructive" sentiments in Mrs May's speech into firm negotiating positions on issues such as citizens' rights, the Irish border and financial issues, including the UK's so-called divorce bill.
Remarking that it had been six months since the UK triggered Article 50, he said progress on these three fronts was essential to allow talks to move on to the future of the bilateral trade relationship, as the UK would like.
"We are six months into the process," he said. "We are getting closer to the UK's withdrawal. I think this moment should be a moment of clarity."
Mr Davis said he hoped for progress on all fronts but made clear any agreement on financial matters could only be reached in the context of the UK's future partnership with the EU.
"The UK is absolutely committed to work through the detail. We are laying out concrete proposals and there are no excuses for standing in the way of progress."
In her speech on Friday, Mrs May offered to continue paying into the EU for a two-year transition after the UK leaves in 2019 to ensure the bloc is not left with a budget black hole.
The prime minister sought to reassure member states that they would not lose out financially during the current EU budget period, which runs to 2020.
She also confirmed there would be no restrictions on EU citizens coming to the UK during the transition period, but after Brexit they would be registered as they arrived.
Mr Davis has insisted that Mrs May's speech was not influenced by a 4,000-word article by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in the run-up to the event, setting out his own vision for Brexit.
Meanwhile, the UK and Scottish governments have held a fresh round of talks on Brexit in London.
Scotland's Deputy First Minister John Swinney and Brexit minister Mike Russell met First Secretary of State Damian Green to discuss concerns about the EU Withdrawal Bill.
And Mrs May has held talks in Downing Street with Irish premier Leo Varadkar, in her first meeting with an EU leader since the Florence speech.
Mr Varadkar said his counterpart's proposal for a post-Brexit transitional period was a step in the right direction but it was too early to say whether the UK had made sufficient progress in general.

The UK's attorney general says Brexit negotiations will continue as EU officials call for "acceptable" ideas by Friday to break the impasse.
Geoffrey Cox said plans to solve the deadlock over the Irish backstop were "as clear as day", with just days until MPs vote on the Brexit deal.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom confirmed the vote will be held on 12 March.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned Brexiteers to vote for the deal or face delay to the UK's exit from the EU.
The backstop is an insurance policy designed to prevent physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Cox, who was in Brussels on Tuesday to push for further changes to the Brexit deal, said talks will "almost certainly" continue through the weekend.
He said there had been "careful discussions" with the EU and stressed it was government policy to seek the legal changes to the backstop.
"We are discussing text with the European Union," he said.
"I am surprised to hear the comments that have emerged over the last 48 hours that the proposals are not clear; they are as clear as day, and we are continuing to discuss them."
Earlier Mr Hammond refused to be drawn on how he would vote if Mrs May's deal is defeated.
"If the prime minister's deal does not get approved on Tuesday then it is likely that the House of Commons will vote to extend the Article 50 procedure, to not leave the European Union without a deal, and where we go thereafter is highly uncertain," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"For those people who are passionate about ensuring that we leave the European Union on time it surely must be something that they need to think very, very carefully about now because they run the risk of us moving away from their preferred course of action if we don't get this deal through."
In the Commons, Mr Cox also noted that his proposals to change the backstop had been referred to in some quarters as "Cox's codpiece" - using a term to describe a pouch attached to a man's breeches worn in the 15th and 16th Century.
"What I am concerned to ensure is that what's inside the codpiece is in full working order," he quipped.
But Brexiteer Mark Francois, who is a member of the Eurosceptic group of Conservative MPs, the ERG, said Mr Cox had taken charge of the negotiations and would "effectively be examining his own codpiece in the Commons".
He questioned how Mr Cox could provide objective advice when he was "in effect marking his own homework".
Mr Cox replied that "the law is the law", and that he will judge documents relating to the backstop "entirely and impartially".
What we heard from the chancellor this morning was that he was clear about the uncertainties ahead - and rather unclear (cagey, in fact) about how he might vote when it came to decision-time about a no-deal.
There was an explicit warning to Brexiteers: vote for the prime minister's deal because otherwise, it's delay and a soft Brexit.
As one minister expressed to me yesterday, they believe the vote does have a chance of getting through because Brexiteers will realise - just in time - that it's either the PM's deal next week, or what this minister described as "soft, softer, then meltdown".
But across government, the mood is not optimistic about what's going to happen next week and most ministers are expecting a defeat.
French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau reiterated the EU's position that the withdrawal agreement cannot be reopened and said the deal was the "best possible solution" with the controversial Irish backstop a "last resort solution".
She said: "We don't like the backstop, we don't want to have to implement it, and if we have to, we don't want to stay in the backstop.
"We all agree that it should be temporary."
Meanwhile, former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown has told the BBC he is calling for the UK to seek an extension to the Article 50 process, under which the UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March.
Mr Brown suggested a year-long extension would allow further consultation with the British people. Any extension would require the unanimous agreement of the EU.
He suggested citizens' assemblies could be used - as they were in Ireland ahead of a referendum on abortion - to consult people further on the issues in the absence of any clear majority for a way forward.
"Parliament has proved itself incapable of solving this problem," he said.
"I respect the job that legislators try to do but the country is fed up that Parliament hasn't found an answer. I think the only way that we can get unity in this country is by involving the people in trying to find the solution."
In the Commons, Andrea Leadsom said in the "deeply regrettable case" that the deal is rejected, she will make another statement on Tuesday, to allocate time for the promised votes on leaving without a deal or deferring the UK's exit from the EU beyond the scheduled date of 29 March.
Mrs May is pinning her hopes on getting changes to the backstop that will prevent the UK from being tied to EU customs rules if no permanent trade deal is agreed after Brexit.
Critics say that - if the backstop were used - it would keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
Conservative backbencher Theresa Villiers, a Brexiteer who voted against the withdrawal deal in January, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "As things look at the moment, I don't see that there is a new revised deal coming back from the European Union which implements significant enough changes to the draft withdrawal agreement to change the result [of the Commons vote on the deal]."
Negotiations between British ministers and the EU officials over the past 24 hours have been described as "difficult", with the EU insisting there has been no breakthrough.
Diplomats from the 28 member states were told on Wednesday that Mrs May could meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday if progress was made.
But the BBC's Europe reporter Adam Fleming said talk of a deadline for new proposals and a weekend of negotiations was "a notional timetable" and that more flexibility could be possible.

A No 10 source has said a Brexit deal is "essentially impossible" after a call between the PM and Angela Merkel.
Boris Johnson and the German chancellor spoke earlier about the proposals he had put forward to the EU - but the source said she made clear a deal based on them was "overwhelmingly unlikely".
Mrs Merkel's office said it would not comment on "private" conversations.
But the BBC's Adam Fleming said there was "scepticism" within the EU that Mrs Merkel would have used such language.
And the EU's top official warned the UK against a "stupid blame game".
President of the European Council Donald Tusk sent a public tweet to Mr Johnson, telling him "the future of Europe and the UK" was at stake.
With efforts to get a deal by the end of the month on an apparent knife edge, Mr Johnson and his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar have said they hope to meet later in the week.
But Mr Varadkar told an interviewer on Tuesday evening he thought it would be "very difficult" to secure an agreement by next week.
He said the UK had "repudiated" the deal negotiated previously with Theresa May's government and had "sort of put half of that now back on the table, and are saying that's a concession. And of course it isn't, really".
And following talks in Downing Street, the president of the European Parliament said there had been "no progress" and MEPs would not agree to a compromise deal "at any price".
David Sassoli said the UK's new proposed customs arrangements for Northern Ireland were a "long way from something to which the Parliament could agree".
Amid frantic diplomatic manoeuvring in European capitals, details of a call earlier on Tuesday between the UK and German leaders have reignited tensions across the continent.
The No 10 source suggested Mrs Merkel told her counterpart the only way to break the deadlock was for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union and for it to permanently accept EU single market rules on trade in goods.
This, the source said, marked a shift in Germany's approach and made a negotiated deal "essentially impossible".
The prime minister's official spokesman said the conversation had been "frank" but denied the negotiations were all but over.
Norbert Rottgen, an ally of the chancellor who is chair of the Bundestag's Foreign Affairs Committee, said there was "no new German position".
He tweeted that a deal based on the UK's latest proposals had "been unrealistic from the beginning and yet the EU has been willing to engage".
The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler said it was "no secret" Berlin found the UK's proposed new customs solution for Northern Ireland problematic.
While Berlin had not given up hope, she said the chances of a no-deal exit were rising again as the nature of the UK's proposals made any compromise very difficult.
Under Mr Johnson's proposals, which he calls a "broad landing zone" for a new deal with the EU:
The UK's chief negotiator, David Frost, is continuing to meet EU counterparts in Brussels, but the No 10 source said Tuesday morning's phone call had been a "clarifying moment", adding: "Talks in Brussels are close to breaking down."
They said the UK was not willing to move away from the principle of providing a consent mechanism for Northern Ireland, or the plan for leaving the customs union, and if the EU did not accept those principles, "that will be that" and the plan moving forward would be an "obstructive" strategy towards Brussels.
They also accused the EU of being "willing to torpedo the Good Friday agreement" - the peace process agreed in Northern Ireland in the 1990s - by refusing to accept Mr Johnson's proposals.
Hands up if all this stuff about "spokesman" and "sources" is driving you bonkers? Here's the in-brief explanation of how it works at Westminster.
The prime minister has an official spokesman. They work for the government, not the political party that is in government. They give two briefings a day to reporters when Parliament is sitting and they are on the record. That is to say we report what is said and we report who said it - although by convention we don't actually name the spokesman.
There are two reasons for this: they are speaking on behalf of the PM, not themselves. And sometimes a deputy does the briefing instead.
In addition to the official spokesman, there are other people in Downing Street who will talk to journalists. For some, that is their specific job. For others, it is not.
These people will always talk to us off the record - so we can quote them, but not name them, or do anything that risks identifying them.
Journalists always prefer on the record quotes, but in politics as in life, people are often more candid in private, and so we can get a greater sense of what is going on in return for respecting the terms on which the information has been given to us.
Updating MPs on contingency planning for a no-deal exit, minister Michael Gove said there was still "every chance" of a deal but the EU must engage with the UK's plans.
"In setting out these proposals, we've moved - it is now time for the EU to move too," he said.
Ireland's Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister), Simon Coveney, said a deal was still possible but "not any at cost" - and the UK must accept it had "responsibilities" on the island of Ireland.
The UK and Irish leaders spoke on the phone for 40 minutes on Tuesday, after which No 10 said both sides "strongly reiterated" their desire to reach a deal.
But Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told MPs the government was "intent on collapsing the talks and engaging in a reckless blame game".
"The stark reality is the government put forward proposals that were designed to fail," he said, adding that it was "beneath contempt" that, according to a Downing Street source reported by the Spectator, the UK could withdraw security co-operation from other EU countries if it were forced to remain beyond 31 October.
The PM has insisted the UK will leave the EU on that date, with or without a deal.
That is despite legislation passed by MPs last month, known as the Benn Act, which requires Mr Johnson to write to the EU requesting a further delay if no deal is signed off by Parliament by 19 October - unless MPs agree to a no-deal Brexit.
No-one really wants to comment directly on this phone call - certainly not Berlin - but talking to EU officials and diplomats in Brussels, there is considerable scepticism.
That's because the words attributed to Angela Merkel do not reflect the EU's agreed language.
For one, Mrs Merkel and the EU have repeatedly said they will keep talking to the last second and will not pull the plug before that.
And secondly, the No 10 source claims the EU wants to keep Northern Ireland permanently "trapped" in the customs union - Brussels insists it doesn't want that at all, it just wants the option for Northern Ireland stay inside temporarily until something else is worked out.
So as I say, scepticism. It could be a misinterpretation or it could be a deliberate bit of spin, because we're now entering into a blame game about whose fault it is that progress isn't being made.
The key focus of the new UK plans is to replace the so-called backstop - the policy negotiated by Theresa May and the EU to prevent a hard border returning to the island of Ireland - which has long been a sticking point.
After presenting them, government sources hoped the sides might be able to enter an intense 10-day period of talks almost immediately, but a number of senior EU figures, including Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, warned they did not form the basis for deeper negotiations - even if they believed a deal could still be done.
Mr Varadkar has warned the Johnson plan could actually undermine that principle by giving one party in Northern Ireland a veto over what happens to the country as a whole.
Tuesday 8 October - Last working day in the House of Commons before it is will be prorogued - suspended - ahead of a Queen's Speech to begin a new parliamentary session.
Monday 14 October - The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen's Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will then be debated by MPs throughout the week.
Thursday 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday 19 October - Date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday 31 October - Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.

The deal is done, the pound has been climbing; forget the snow, only sunshine and clear skies ahead for Brexit.
The two hardy political mountaineers have scaled the heights. David Davis and Michel Barnier, representing the UK and the EU, have agreed in principle to the transition deal, or implementation period (whatever you want to call it) - a period of 21 months where the two sides can work out the finer details of the relationship that will evolve over many, many years.
The sighs of relief from No 10 will be so loud they'll be heard in Brussels. The government has something they can say is an agreement, which means progress, and they hope it's an insurance policy against business pulling up stumps and abandoning the UK as the uncertainty around Brexit threatens their ability to make plans.
"Hang on," I rightly hear you say. It is not, that simple.
Yes, the EU and the UK have hammered out a political agreement on what happens as soon as we leave the European Union next year. The short answer is, as the prime minister conceded back in Florence in September, not very much.
And during that period the UK will pay significant amounts of cash for the status quo. But there are three big questions about what has been agreed.
First: As ministers have been perfectly well aware for a long time, there have had to be compromises to get this far. The EU has bent in some areas true, but the UK has done more of the budging. As we reported a few weeks ago for example,  the UK's original hope to make big changes to EU immigration during the transition period, has gone.  The UK has agreed the EU's preferred date of finishing the implementation period at the end of 2020, rather than spring 2021. And in the next few hours the text of today's Brussels statements will be scoured to see where else the big concessions have come.
Second: What is left to resolve? The answer is, a lot. The original plan for the first phase of the talks was to resolve citizens' rights, Ireland and the divorce bill. Well, the cash and citizens' rights are done. That is of course, an achievement of its own. But there is no sign of agreement on the Irish issue, and the UK has had to agree that the controversial backstop remains to solve the problem if everything goes wrong.  And this stage is, remember, only about how we leave - the divorce proceedings not the final agreement that will determine how the UK does business with the EU in the decades to come. This is an important step that is highly likely to be rubber stamped later this week, but it ain't over.
Lastly: How politically acceptable are the fudges agreed so far at home? David Davis has got his "joint committee" that will police the implementation agreement. No 10 hopes this will ease concerns that the UK will essentially have to abide by the EU rules without much of a say - to use the terrible jargon, to be a "rule-taker not a rule-maker". But it is not certain that guarantee will be enough on the Tory backbenches to end claims that the transition will leave us a "vassal state".  And on fishing for example, there is disappointment already that the government has agreed to concede some sovereignty on UK waters during the implementation period that might give rise to demands for a tougher approach in the next part of the negotiations. Don't be surprised for one moment if there are plenty of Brexiteer mutterings that "nothing is agreed, until everything is agreed".
Today though the government will trumpet the fact they have come this far.
Expect ministers to hail the agreement on transition as evidence that Brexit is on track, and to big-up what they see as achievements in the talks - the UK will be able to sign and ratify trade agreements in the transition period for example, to be ready to come into force at midnight on 31 December 2020.
But the agreement has been possible because some of the hard bits have been parked. This a long, a very very long, game.

A legal challenge over Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament has been rejected in the High Court.
The case was brought by businesswoman Gina Miller, who argued the move was "an unlawful abuse of power".
Rejecting Ms Miller's case, Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett said she could immediately appeal because of the important points of law at stake.
The appeal is expected to be heard at the Supreme Court on 17 September.
Ms Miller said she was "very disappointed with the judgment".
She added: "We feel it is absolutely vital that Parliament should be sitting. We are therefore pleased that the judges have given us permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, which we will be doing, and they feel that our case has the merit to be handed up."
A similar legal challenge was rejected at Edinburgh's Court of Session earlier this week.
Following an appeal, judges at Scotland's highest civil court said on Friday a decision would not be made before Wednesday.
The prime minister announced on 28 August he wanted to shut down Parliament, a process known as proroguing, for five weeks ahead of a Queen's Speech on 14 October.
His political opponents argued at the time that Mr Johnson's aim was to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and to stop them passing legislation that would prevent the UK leaving the European Union without a deal on 31 October.
The UK government insisted this was not the case and said the aim of proroguing Parliament was to allow Mr Johnson to set out his legislative plans in the Queen's Speech while still allowing sufficient time for MPs to debate Brexit.
A bill designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit has since been passed by MPs and is expected to gain royal assent before the shutdown next week.
In 2017, Gina Miller won a case which stopped ministers triggering the Article 50 process - by which the UK leaves the EU - without a vote in Parliament.
The latest case brought by Ms Miller was supported by a number of other parties, including former prime minister Sir John Major.
During the hearing, Lord Pannick QC said prorogation breached the legal principle of Parliamentary sovereignty.
He said the PM's decision was "extraordinary" - both because of the "exceptional length" of the suspension and because Parliament would be "silenced" during the critical period leading up to the 31 October deadline.
Mr Johnson's lawyers argued prorogation was a political, not a legal, matter.
Rejecting the case, Lord Burnett said: "We have concluded that, whilst we should grant permission to apply for judicial review, the claim must be dismissed."
The three judges are expected to give their reasons for dismissing the case in writing next week.
We don't know why Gina Miller lost, but we have an idea of what will be before the Supreme Court.
Ms Miller's team accepts Boris Johnson can ask the Queen to shut down Parliament.
But they argued an exceptional five-week prorogation was an abuse of his executive powers.
The problem in challenging that in court is that judges are there to enforce the law.
The government argues that the law is silent on how long a prorogation should be and that it doesn't help the court judge whether Parliament actually wants to sit, or what would constitute "sufficient" time for considering Brexit - or indeed whether the entire affair is simply a giant political argument that's no business of M'Lords and Ladies at all.
And that's why the case is heading to the Supreme Court.
In Scotland, a group of politicians are attempting to overturn a court ruling made on Wednesday that Mr Johnson's plan to shut down parliament ahead of Brexit is, in fact, legal.
Lord Doherty, sitting at the Court of Session, said the prime minister had not broken any laws by asking the Queen for a five-week suspension as it was for Parliament and the electorate to judge the prime minister's actions - not the courts.
The group of more than 70 largely pro-Remain politicians, headed by SNP MP Joanna Cherry, argues that Mr Johnson is exceeding his powers and attempting to undermine democracy by avoiding parliamentary scrutiny before the UK leaves the EU on 31 October.
On Friday, Lord Carloway said the court had some extremely complex issues to decide, and it hoped to be in a position to give its judgment on Wednesday.
In Belfast, a campaigner for victims of the Troubles brought a case on Friday arguing that a no-deal exit from the EU could jeopardise the Northern Ireland peace process.
The lawyers of Raymond McCord - whose son was murdered by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force in 1997 - argued no-deal would endanger the Good Friday Agreement and that suspending Parliament is unconstitutional.
The hearing at the High Court in Belfast was adjourned until Monday.
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She didn't budge. And she was never going to.
After her embarrassment yesterday at the hands of EU leaders, with restive backbenchers at her back, Theresa May was never going to use this highly unusual appearance in Downing Street and dramatically reverse out of her position.
Simply, to back down less than 24 hours later would have looked weak.
And the prime minister has invested huge amounts of time, effort, and political capital into her Chequers plan.
Ministers never believed that it would be the precise form of the final agreement.
But Number 10 believed that in good faith, they had put something credible on the table for discussion.
She has already lost two cabinet ministers over the compromise, and endured weeks of attacks from different wings of her party.
So one, albeit, highly embarrassing diplomatic bust-up was not going to force her to back down.
Her anger was visible though today, explaining again why she believes the two familiar post-Brexit trade options, Norway and Canada, cannot, and will not work for the UK.
And she called for respect from the EU: "Throughout this process I have treated the EU with nothing but respect, the UK expects the same".
A stern tone, strong words.
And in going further on citizens' rights too, perhaps Mrs May has sought to take the high ground, in contrast to what some in the UK are seeing as the EU's poor behaviour yesterday.
But while there is no remote sign from the PM today that she is about to compromise, forces in the EU and in her own party are intent on forcing her to do so.
Her problem is that they want to push her in different directions.
Rhetoric doesn't change the fact that few of the players involved outside Number 10 believe that the suggestions the prime minister has put forward can be the ones that ultimately will win the day.

As Westminster waits and the prime minister calls for an official EU decision to be made, France is acting as a spoke in the wheels. Much as it did back in spring when leaders debated the April Brexit extension.
A consensus is forming amongst most EU countries, including powerful Germany, to grant the three-month delay outlined in Boris Johnson's letter to Brussels requesting a new Brexit extension. They hope to formally announce this on Friday. Ambassadors representing the 27 EU leaders are expected to meet mid-morning in Brussels.
But France worries a 12-week extension could encourage more UK indecisiveness or a general election which may prove inconclusive on Brexit.
President Emmanuel Macron favours a short, sharp Brexit delay; encouraging MPs and the UK government to concentrate on ratifying the newly-negotiated Brexit deal.
Mr Macron is fed up with the more than three-year EU focus on Brexit and the ever-present threat of a no-deal scenario. He'd rather shift attention to reforming the EU itself, to the benefit (he believes) of the countries remaining in it.
Of course, the French president knows Brexit won't be over if and when the UK leaves. Brexit Chapter Two, the negotiations on a comprehensive EU-UK trade deal will likely be lengthy and complex, but they will largely be the competence of the European Commission, landing far more rarely on EU leaders' in-trays.
But will President Macron really veto the three-month extension Germany and others favour? He has already angered a number in the EU of late by putting his foot down on widening the bloc to include two new member states.
If he refuses to agree with an EU majority over the new Brexit extension, then Mr Macron will be using up exactly the kind of good will/openness to consensus decision-making that he needs if he wants to make headway on his EU reform agenda.
Is the length of the Brexit extension really worth that to him?
It could well be that Mr Macron is using the days before the extension decision is formally announced to stamp his feet that:
a)    The UK should not take Brexit extensions for granted and
b)    That the extension time should be used for something concrete.
There is an active EU debate right now (as there was prior to the last Brexit extension being granted) over whether to attach specific conditions. For example, to say that the EU will only grant the extension if the UK begins a new parliamentary timetable aimed at ratifying the Brexit deal or if it holds a general election.
But while it's easy for EU politicians to make assertions like that, it's far more complex to formally put these conditions into writing. It risks looking like Brussels meddling in the domestic politics of a sovereign EU country. So, as with the previous extension, there are unlikely to be formal take-it-or-leave-it conditions attached.
And why are the majority of EU leaders in favour of approving the UK-requested three-month extension? Well, they believe it:
a)    Prevents the EU having to agonise over two extensions in quick succession. A short one to see if the Brexit deal can be ratified in the UK parliament and, if not, then a second extension soon after, to allow the UK to hold elections or a referendum.
b)    Most EU leaders think opting for the extension time asked for by UK (the three months mentioned in the PM's request letter and in the Benn Act compelling him to write that letter) is the most neutral thing Brussels can do, considering the heated political climate in the UK.
Germany, for example, worries that offering more than three months could be viewed in the UK as the EU "trying to keep the UK in as long as possible" while opting for a shorter time could be regarded as an attempt to meddle in UK parliamentary procedure by "forcing" MPs hands over the ratification of the Brexit deal or even as the EU "throwing the UK out".
That explains the EU majority preference for three months but, as with the last Brexit delay, Brussels dubs this a 'flextension'. The UK would not be compelled to remain in the EU for the full extra 12 weeks. It would leave as soon as the UK parliament and the European parliament ratified the Brexit deal.
However, watching the ongoing divisions in Parliament - inside Boris Johnson's Conservative party over whether to prioritise elections vs getting the Brexit deal ratified and also the splits in the Labour party to back, or not to back calling a general election, EU figures mutter in private, that they half expect to be asked for yet another Brexit extension come January.

What just happened? "Simples", the prime minister said (yes, actually seeming to quote a meerkat from a TV advert, welcome to 2019 everyone).
But, if you are finding it not quite so "simples" to work out what's changed in Westminster today, I don't blame you.
Something has changed and, at the same time, not that much has.
No 10 believed that they were going to lose a vote in the Commons on Wednesday on a plan put forward by Labour's Yvette Cooper.
Under that plan, the government would have been forced to put the brakes on Brexit if their compromise deal with the EU was rejected again by Parliament next month.
And, on top of that, it would have given MPs more say over what happens next, designed with the specific aim of giving Parliament a breathing space to pursue consensus for a softer Brexit - a closer relationship with the EU than the PM has agreed.
Add to that pressure, a fair number of ministers were willing to resign if Theresa May didn't say, "OK, if the choice is leaving without a deal, or delaying, I'll delay".
Remember, that's a question that she has avoided for months and months and months, because she regards the promise to leave as planned on 29 March as a solemn one she made to the electorate.
And also, because she believed that being willing to walk away without a deal has been an important element of her negotiating stance.
As the law stands too, the default is that we leave, whatever happens.
But if MPs were going to force her to rule out leaving on time without a deal by trying to change the law, the choice for the prime minister this week was: let the Commons inflict the defeat tomorrow or at least take the decision herself and try to stay in control of events.
One cabinet source disappointed with the decision described it as an "unhappy, but maybe necessary" choice.
What the Cabinet has therefore agreed to do - with one of those threatening to resign saying "it does the trick for now" - is set out a real showdown in the middle of next month.
By 12 March - probably on 12 March, depending what goes on with the negotiations in Brussels - MPs will have another chance to vote on the PM's deal with the EU.
Remember, last month it was kicked out with a thumping defeat.
If the government loses that vote again, the next day, MPs will vote explicitly on whether we should leave the EU without a formal deal or not.
The overwhelming expectation is that MPs collectively would say no to departure without a deal.
If they did reject that idea, there would be another vote on 14 March. This time it would be on whether or not to extend the process for a short time - to delay Brexit for another couple of months while the government keeps trying to untangle the mess.
This is not the same as the prime minister saying that she wants to delay Brexit. She is still insisting that she wants her deal to go through, stick to the timetable and leave at the end of March.
But it is, after many months of promising that we'd leave as planned, the first time she has had to acknowledge it might run very late.
And because Parliament would almost inevitably reject leaving without a deal at the end of March, it changes the choice for MPs in the next fortnight.
No 10 has tried to make the case that MPs will have to choose between the PM's deal, or no deal. Now it's a choice between her deal, no deal, or delay.
Her move today does not change the law and make it impossible for us to leave without a deal at any point.
There's also a really fundamental question about what an extension would actually achieve, when the government, the EU and MPs have been staring at the same set of problems for more than two years and haven't found a happy solution.
The government won't say today what choice they would recommend at the end of March, or what they would do at the end of that extension - leaving with no formal arrangement in place at that point is still a possibility.
But today's move does definitely mean one thing -  it is now extremely unlikely that we will leave at the end of March without a deal, that much at least is "simples".

Former Chancellor George Osborne has said delaying the UK's exit from the EU is now the "most likely" option.
The UK has to choose between no deal - which he compared to Russian roulette - or no Brexit for now, he told the BBC.
But Theresa May says the best option is to approve her withdrawal agreement, which MPs rejected last week.
And International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC that if MPs blocked Brexit it could have "calamitous" and "unforeseen consequences".
Under current law, the UK will exit the EU on 29 March, whether or not a deal has been struck. The decision to leave was taken by 52% to 48% in a referendum in June 2016. Mr Osborne, now a newspaper editor, was chancellor and a key Remain campaigner at the time.
Speaking to BBC business editor Simon Jack in Davos, Mr Osborne said that the prospect of no deal meant "the gun is held to the British economy's head".
"Russian roulette is a game which you should never play because there's a one-in-six chance that the bullet goes into your head," he said.
Mr Osborne, who was sacked by Mrs May when she became prime minister after the referendum, said his successor Philip Hammond had "sensibly" told businesses that leaving without a deal was not a possibility.
"But we now need to hear it from the British prime minister," he said.
Mr Osborne said that although there might be a majority in Parliament to prevent no deal, it was not clear how MPs would achieve it.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC's Newsnight that it was "highly likely" the party would back an amendment put forward by Labour MP Yvette Cooper, with support from MPs in other parties.
It would give time for a bill to suspend the Article 50 process for leaving the EU if a new deal has not been agreed with Brussels by the end of February.
"I think it's increasingly likely already that we'll have to take that option because the government has run the clock down," Mr McDonnell said.
It is one of several alternative plans by MPs that will be put forward when Mrs May returns to the Commons on 29 January to set out her own proposed next steps.
Among the MPs' plans are to consider a range of options over six full days in Parliament before the March deadline or hold a representative "Citizens' Assembly" to give the public more say.
Another proposal seeks to win over some opponents of the prime minister's deal by insisting on "an expiry date to the backstop", the "insurance policy" intended to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The backstop is opposed by some Conservative MPs and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party because it could mean keeping the UK in a customs union with the EU indefinitely and having different rules for different parts of the UK.
But the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar said he could not give up the formal guarantee of the backstop "for a promise that it will be all right on the night".
The European Commission also warned that it was "obvious" that a no-deal Brexit would mean a hard border in Ireland.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who is meeting Mrs May for talks on Wednesday, said she supports seeking an extension to the Brexit deadline.
Meanwhile, Dyson, the company founded by vocal Brexit advocate Sir James Dyson, has announced it is moving headquarters to Singapore.
However, chief executive Jim Rowan said the decision was prompted by growing opportunities in Asia rather than by Brexit.

Theresa May has been granted an extra two weeks to come up with a Brexit solution after talks with EU leaders.
The UK's departure date had originally been set for 29 March.
If Mrs May can get her withdrawal deal through Parliament next week, that date will be pushed back to 22 May to give time to pass the necessary legislation.
If the prime minister can't get the deal through, the UK will have to propose a way forward by 12 April for EU leaders to consider.
European Council President Donald Tusk said all Brexit options would remain open until then.
"The UK government will still have a choice between a deal, no deal, a long extension or revoking Article 50," he said.
"The 12 April is a key date in terms of the UK deciding whether to hold European Parliament elections.
"If it has not decided to do so by then, the option of long extension will automatically become impossible."
Mrs May ruled out revoking Article 50, which would cancel Brexit, and she also said "it would be wrong" to ask Britons to vote for candidates for the elections to the European Parliament, due to be held from 23-26 May, three years after they voted to leave the EU.
The UK's departure date is still written in to law as next Friday, 29 March.
29 March: Current Brexit date in UK law
12 April: If MPs do not approve the withdrawal deal next week - "all options will remain open" until this date. The UK must propose a way forward before this date for consideration by EU leaders.
22 May: If MPs do approve the deal next week, Brexit will be delayed until this date
23-26 May: European Parliamentary elections are held across member states
Mrs May is expected to table secondary legislation - that has to go through the Commons and the Lords by next Friday - to remove 29 March from UK law.
But Downing Street sources say an agreement with the EU to extend the Brexit deadline would be a piece of international law and would take precedence even if Parliament rejected it.
Mrs May said MPs had a "clear choice".
Speaking on Thursday, after waiting for the 27 other EU countries to make their decision at a summit in Brussels, the prime minister said she would now be "working hard to build support for getting the deal through".
The withdrawal deal, negotiated over two years between the UK and EU, sets out the terms of the UK's departure from the bloc, including the "divorce bill", the transition period, citizens' rights and the controversial "backstop" arrangements, aimed at preventing a return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But it must be approved by UK MPs, who have already rejected it twice by large margins.
MPs are expected to vote for a third time on it next week, despite Commons Speaker John Bercow saying what is put forward must be substantially different to be voted on.
Theresa May has been granted a little breathing space. The EU has allowed a few more days to try to get her deal through the House of Commons.
But it's not the timetable that she chose.
And as things stand, the expectation that the compromise deal will get through is low.
And, more to the point, the government does not believe that it can hold off another attempt by a powerful cross-party group of MPs who are resolved to put Parliament forcibly in charge of the process to find alternatives.
Ministers are therefore today not just wondering about how to manage one last heave for the prime minister's deal, but what they should do next, when - odds on - the whole issue is in the hands of the Commons, not Number 10.
Read Laura's blog
Senior Labour MP Hilary Benn has also said that he will table an amendment on Monday, enabling MPs to hold a series of "indicative votes" on Wednesday on alternatives to Mrs May's plan. He said these could include a free trade agreement, a customs union and a referendum.
He told the BBC the EU's decision was "a case of crisis delayed, not crisis ended" as it still looked unlikely that Mrs May's deal would be approved.
"We cannot have a no-deal Brexit in three weeks' time," he said.
The government is also exploring with opposition parties the idea of holding "indicative" votes on alternatives to its own Brexit policy, in an effort to retain some control over the process.
Plaid Cymru's leader at Westminster, Liz Saville Roberts, who has been taking part in the talks, said: "The government is now openly exploring a process to allow Parliament to take control - an effective admission that they have lost all authority.
"We will be continuing to push for a People's Vote as a way out of this Brexit mess."
At a news conference on Thursday night, Mrs May also struck a conciliatory tone when she referred to her speech from Downing Street the previous evening, which had sparked an angry reaction from MPs after she blamed them for the Brexit deadlock.
"Last night I expressed my frustration and I know that MPs are frustrated too," she said. "They have difficult jobs to do."
Speaking to Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast, Business Secretary Greg Clark said that speech "clearly wasn't a great success".
"I don't think it was helpful in resolving the matter. But, listen, none of us is infallible and even prime ministers sometimes don't get the tone quite right," he said.
It comes after a petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked passed three million signatures. A march demanding another referendum is also planned for Saturday in central London.
In her briefing to journalists, Mrs May dismissed calls to revoke Article 50 - the process by which the UK leaves the EU - which would mean Brexit is cancelled.
Mrs May said people had voted to leave and were told their decision would be respected.

Labour has finally pulled the plug on the Brexit talks with the government, at the end of a week in which they appeared to be on life support.
So is it, as some suggest, time to read the last rites on Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement Bill?
Let's be clear - it will be challenging, to say the least, for the legislation to get through the Commons.
But reports of its demise may well have been exaggerated. It may not go down to immediate defeat. And this is why.
A leaked memo from the government side, not agreed by Labour or the cabinet, contained a wheeze that could have been attractive to both leaderships.
Even before the Withdrawal Agreement Bill makes its appearance, the memo suggested there could be a "free vote" in Parliament on another referendum.
This is rather different from what the shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, was suggesting - that there ought to be a "confirmatory" vote, as part of a package, on any agreed deal.
The leaders of both the main parties aren't keen on another public vote, to say the least. So a stand-alone Commons vote on the issue, divorced from the deal, would be more likely to go down to defeat - as it has on previous occasions.
Jeremy Corbyn could say to People's Vote supporters in his ranks: "Oh, I did try for a referendum, but oops, it didn't work - so now let's just leave with the best possible deal."
But it would seem that this approach has been scuppered by Labour's wider negotiating team and, presumably, by the cabinet. I have had a strong steer that this proposal in the leaked government memo won't go ahead in this form.
But this might not be the setback it seems for the prime minister because supporters of another referendum may have no option but to vote initially for her bill.
There will be a vote at what's called, in parliamentary speak, second reading in the first week in June. If the prime minister is defeated at this point, it's basically the end of the road for her deal and her premiership.
But if MPs vote for the bill at second reading, they then get an opportunity to change it - and that would include an amendment on another referendum.
So it's not impossible that some people who hate Theresa May's deal give it their temporary backing so they can discuss improving it, or putting it to a public vote.
Talks with Labour are over - but efforts to win over individual Labour MPs are not. Note the wording of Downing Street's statement that "complete agreement" hasn't been reached.
So expect to see some incentives in - or around - the Brexit bill for opposition MPs to back the government. For example, a commitment to stay in step with the EU on workers' rights and environmental protection.
Allies of Sir Keir have blamed the breakdown of the talks on the PM's inability to get a customs union compromise past her cabinet.
But if she keeps Conservative MPs on board in the legislation by eschewing a customs union but delivers a "comprehensive" (trust me, this word is important to some Labour MPs) temporary arrangement to last until the next election, some soft opposition to her deal may crumble.
Then there is the argument put forward by the former Conservative minister Nick Boles, echoed off the record by some in Downing Street.
If the prime minister's bill gets shot down in flames there is no other readily available vehicle to prevent the default option of no deal. Indeed, No 10 insiders expect to see "vociferous" arguments for no deal if Theresa May's legislation falls.
Some unions, such as the GMB and Unison, favour another referendum. But the leadership of Unite, which is closest to Mr Corbyn, essentially favours leaving with a deal - and Labour MPs will be made well aware of this.
So even if Labour formally opposes the bill at second reading, there could be a sizeable rebellion from those former Remainers representing Leave areas - safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't exactly be upsetting some powerful forces in the party.
And the MPs who support what's called Common Market 2.0 could be crucial to the outcome. These are, broadly speaking, Labour MPs who are neither Corbynistas nor in favour of another referendum - such as Lucy Powell and Stephen Kinnock - and they are very keen to avoid no deal.
However, if the Labour whip is to oppose, expect it to be rigorously enforced irrespective of the views of the party leader's office. So Mrs May's immediate fate may still be in the hands of opposition MPs
The forthcoming leadership contest may firm up opposition to Theresa May's bill on the Conservative benches
By putting the Withdrawal Agreement Bill out of its misery almost as soon as it appears, the prime minister's critics know she will vacate office sooner rather than later.
But some candidates will be keener for her to get Brexit over the line, even with a less than optimal deal, so they don't immediately get bogged down with difficult votes. It would also allow them to make their pitch based on the future relationship with the EU.
So could some of their supporters - irrespective of their public criticism of the deal - quietly vote to get it over the line?
Set against all this, there is plenty of analysis in the public domain which will tell you how impossible it is for a deal to go through.
But right now, No 10 might well see "highly improbable" as grounds for optimism. Hope dies last, does it not?

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab says he quit the cabinet over "fatal flaws" in the draft Brexit agreement with the EU.
And he told the BBC the UK should be ready to risk a no-deal Brexit in the face of EU "blackmail".
Another cabinet minister, Esther McVey, also quit alongside junior ministers Suella Braverman and Shailesh Vara.
PM Theresa May faced nearly three hours of largely hostile questions in the Commons and could potentially face a vote of no confidence from Tory MPs.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said a source had told her Michael Gove has been offered the job of Brexit Secretary and he was understood to be considering it, but to be asking for assurances that he could pursue a different kind of deal.
Leading backbench Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has submitted a letter of no confidence in her to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Tories' backbench 1922 Committee.
A vote will be triggered if 48 Tory MPs write letters to Sir Graham. It is understood 48 letters have not yet been received.
Mr Rees-Mogg told reporters that the negotiations had "given way on all the key points" adding: "The deal risks Brexit because it is not a proper Brexit."
He denied being involved in a coup against the PM, saying he was "working through the procedures of the Conservative Party" which was "entirely constitutional".
Mr Rees-Mogg said he did not have any leadership ambitions of his own but listed Brexiteers Boris Johnson, David Davis, Dominic Raab, Esther McVey and Penny Mordaunt as among those who would be "very capable of leading a proper Brexit".
Downing Street said Mrs May would fight any no-confidence vote.
Asked by Labour MP Mike Gapes if it was time she "stood aside for someone else who could take this country forward in a united way", Mrs May replied: "No."
Chief whip Julian Smith said the prime minister "will not be bullied" into changing course.
And Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan described Mr Rees-Mogg's comments as "deeply destructive" and warned Conservative MPs: "If this government is undermined further, we could destroy the government, we could significantly damage and even destroy the Conservative Party, all of which would be happening in the middle of an unconcluded set of Brexit negotiations."
He added: "We have a massive responsibility to exercise our judgement in a climate of what has to be compromise."
The day after Theresa May announced that she had secured the backing of her cabinet for the withdrawal agreement, she told MPs it was not a final agreement, but brought the UK "close to a Brexit deal".
But she was met with laughter and shouts of "resign" as she said it would allow the UK to leave the EU "in a smooth and orderly way" on 29 March
The prime minister told MPs the agreement would deliver the Brexit people voted for and allow the UK to take back control of its "money, laws and borders".
But Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "This is not the deal the country was promised and Parliament cannot - and I believe will not - accept a false choice between this bad deal and no deal."
Dominic Raab - a Leave supporter promoted to the cabinet to replace David Davis who quit in protest at Mrs May's Brexit plans in July - is the most high-profile minister to quit the government.
He was closely involved in drafting the 585-page document, which sets out the terms of Britain's departure from the EU.
He told the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "I've been fighting for a good Brexit deal but the terms proposed to the cabinet yesterday [Wednesday], I think, had two major and fatal flaws.
"The first is that the terms being offered by the EU threaten the integrity of the United Kingdom and the second is that they would lead to an indefinite if not permanent situation where we're locked into a regime with no say over the rules being applied, with no exit mechanism.
"I think that would be damaging for the economy but devastating for public trust in our democracy."
He said Theresa May needed a Brexit secretary who "will pursue the deal that she wants to put to the country with conviction".
"I don't feel I can do that in good conscience," he added.
He said he held Mrs May in "high esteem" but said: "I do think we need to change course on Brexit".
And he said the government should be willing to risk a no-deal Brexit in the face of what he described as the EU's "blackmail".
The alternative for the prime minister was her inevitable defeat in the Commons, he argued.
Asked if he would put himself forward for leader, if the government falls apart, he did not rule it out but said it would be "irresponsible" to be talking about that now.
In her resignation letter, Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey told Mrs May the agreement does not "honour the result of the referendum, indeed it does not meet the tests you set from the outset of your premiership".
"We have gone from 'no deal is better than a bad deal' to any deal is better than no deal," she added.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, a ministerial aide at the education department, has also quit, as has Ranil Jayawardena, a ministerial aide at the justice department.
Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara was the first to resign over Mrs May's agreement on Thursday morning, saying, it "leaves the UK in a halfway house with no time limit on when we will finally be a sovereign nation". Brexit minister Suella Braverman also quit.
And Rehman Chisti quit as vice chairman of the Conservative Party - partly over the withdrawal agreement.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "After two years of bungled negotiations, the government has produced a botched deal that breaches the prime minister's own red lines and does not meet our six tests.
"The government is in chaos. Their deal risks leaving the country in an indefinite halfway house without a real say."
The SNP's leader at Westminster Ian Blackford said Mrs May was "trying to sell us a deal that is already dead in the water" and expressed outrage that Scotland was not mentioned once in the draft withdrawal agreement.
But the controversial part relates to what will happen to the Irish border.
The agreement includes a "backstop" - a kind of safety net to ensure there is no hard border whatever the outcome of future trade talks between the UK and the EU.
If there is no trade deal in place by the end of the transition period, the backstop will mean that Northern Ireland would stay aligned to some EU rules on things such as food products and goods standards.
It would also involve a temporary single customs territory, effectively keeping the whole of the UK in the EU customs union.
Brexiteers do not like the prospect of potentially being tied to EU customs rules for years or even, as some fear, indefinitely.
And Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party has said it will not tolerate anything that creates a new border down the Irish Sea and they will not vote for the agreement.
Setting out details of the arrangements for a possible "backstop", Mrs May said: "I do not pretend that this has been a comfortable process, or that either we or the EU are entirely happy with some of the arrangements which have been included in it."
But she added that "while some people might pretend otherwise, there is no deal which delivers the Brexit the British people voted for which does not involve this insurance policy".
She insisted it was a last resort and would be time-limited.
Much will depend on whether Mrs May faces a vote of no-confidence in her leadership. If she does, all bets are off.
If not, European Council President Donald Tusk has announced an emergency meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on 25 November, at which the withdrawal agreement and a political declaration on future relations would be finalised and formalised.
The BBC's Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said the UK and the EU will have to agree an ultimate end date for the post-Brexit transition period by the end of next week.
The transition period is due to end in 2020 and can be extended once by mutual agreement.
The text of the draft withdrawal agreement currently says the end date is "20XX".
A senior EU official said the negotiators will have to fill in a specific year by the 25 November summit.
Ultimately any deal would be put to MPs. Tory backbencher Mark Francois told Mrs May earlier that with Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems and scores of Tory MPs planning to vote against it, it is "mathematically impossible to get this deal through the House of Commons".

European Council President Donald Tusk and Prime Minister Boris Johnson have clashed over who would be to blame in the case of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Tusk said Mr Johnson risked being remembered as "Mr No Deal" - but the PM responded by saying it was Mr Tusk who would become "Mr No-Deal Brexit".
The pair are due to meet for talks at the G7 summit in France on Sunday.
Mr Tusk added the EU was "willing to listen" to the PM's ideas for Brexit - as long as they are "realistic".
But speaking at his press conference in Biarritz, Mr Tusk said he would "not co-operate on [a] no-deal".
Since becoming PM, Mr Johnson has said the UK will leave the EU on 31 October.
Mr Johnson has repeatedly stated he would prefer to leave the EU with a deal, but insists the backstop - the insurance policy designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland - must be removed from the withdrawal agreement.
"I've made it absolutely clear I don't want no deal and that we've got to get rid of the backstop from the treaty and if Mr Tusk doesn't want to go down as Mr No-Deal Brexit I hope that point will be borne in mind too," he said.
Earlier in the day, Mr Tusk had used the same moniker when talking about Mr Johnson.
"I still hope Prime Minister Johnson will not like to go down in history as Mr No Deal," he said.
"The EU has always been open to co-operation. One thing I will not co-operate on is a no deal.
"We are willing to listen to ideas that are operational, realistic and acceptable to all EU member states."
Analysis by BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale
When Boris Johnson met President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel this week, he got a relatively positive response.
Both leaders indicated they were willing to listen to any ideas the prime minister may have to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
But Mr Johnson's meeting with Donald Tusk at the G7 summit on Sunday may now prove more problematic.
The spat between both men - both of them warning they could go down in history as Mr No Deal - shows that both sides are engaged in a blame game.
Neither side wishes to be seen as the intransigent partner in a negotiation that leads to no deal.
Mr Macron and Ms Merkel were implicit in this, while Mr Tusk was explicit, prompting an equally blunt response from Mr Johnson.
It is, of course, still possible that some political space may be carved out to allow for a compromise at the last minute. But all the signs still point towards a no-deal Brexit at the end of October.
The G7 summit - a get-together of most of the leaders of the world's largest economies - comes with just over two months until the UK is scheduled to leave the EU at the end of October.
Mr Johnson wants to renegotiate the Irish backstop - a key Brexit sticking point - but the EU has consistently ruled this out.
Speaking on Saturday, Mr Johnson said: "We've made it very clear we won't be instituting any kind of checks or controls at the Northern Irish border. We don't think such controls are necessary.
"There are a large range of alternative arrangements - these we will be discussing in the coming weeks."
If implemented, the backstop - a last resort should the UK and the EU not agree a trade deal after Brexit - would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market.
It would also see the UK stay in a single customs territory with the EU, and align with current and future EU rules on competition and state aid.
At a news conference on Wednesday with Mr Johnson, German Chancellor Merkel suggested an alternative to the backstop might be achievable, adding that the onus was on the UK.
But the next day French President Macron said the backstop was "indispensable" to preserving political stability and the single market.
After visiting his counterparts in Paris and Berlin this week, Mr Johnson said there was "new mood music", but reaching a new deal would not be "a cinch".
He has insisted the UK will leave the EU on 31 October, whether or not a new deal is reached.
Mr Johnson will also meet with US President Donald Trump, who arrived in France around Saturday lunchtime.
Asked if he would be telling Mr Trump not to escalate the US-China trade war, Mr Johnson said: "You bet."
He added one of his priorities for the summit was "the state of global trade".

European Council president Donald Tusk has said not enough progress has been made to move to the next phase of Brexit talks in Brussels.
He said Theresa May's "realistic" speech on Friday showed the UK's "philosophy of having a cake and eating it is finally coming to an end".
But he said "there is not sufficient progress yet".
Mrs May had hoped her offer of a two-year transition period after Brexit would unblock talks in Brussels.
Emerging from Downing Street after talks with Mrs May, Mr Tusk said: "I feel cautiously optimistic about the constructive and more realistic tone in the prime minister's speech in Florence and of our discussion today.
"This shows that the philosophy of having a cake and eating it, is finally at an end. At least I hope so. That's good news.
"But of course no-one will ever tell me that Brexit is a good thing because as I have always said, in fact, Brexit is only about damage control.
"And I didn't change my opinion.  I feel now we will discuss our future relations with the UK once there is so-called sufficient progress.
"The two sides are working and we will work hard at it. But if you ask me and if today member states ask me, I would say there is no sufficient progress yet. But we will work on it."
His words come a month before the European Council will decide whether sufficient progress has been made to begin trade talks, as the UK wants.
Hesitant, understated, but with a very clear message.
In fact, so quietly spoken those of us listening here, crouched beneath the cameras, a metre from his shoes, could barely hear his words.
Two pieces of imagery have been frequently leaned on in updates on the Brexit negotiations.
The EU has a love of noisy timepieces; all those references to ticking clocks.
And the desire of some in the UK to have our cake and eat it crops up quite a bit too.
Mr Tusk's "hope" that the references to gorging on confectionery are over stood out.
But so too did his blunt assessment that more has to be achieved before the talks move on to the future relationship.
So, for the prime minister, did her Florence speech do the business?
From her perspective, it looks like it has worked a bit, but not yet enough.
The council says it first wants more detail on citizen's rights, a financial settlement and the Irish border before turning to the kind of trade deal the UK will have with the EU after it leaves.
Brexit Secretary David Davis, who is taking part in the fourth round of Brexit talks in Brussels, said that Mrs May had shown "leadership and flexibility" in her Florence speech and given reassurances on financial issues.
There were "no excuses for standing in the way of progress", he insisted.
But the EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier called for a "moment of clarity" from the UK.
Speaking in Brussels, Mr Barnier said he was "keen and eager" for the UK to translate the "constructive" sentiments in Mrs May's speech into firm negotiating positions on issues such as citizens' rights, the Irish border and financial issues, including the UK's so-called divorce bill.
Remarking that it had been six months since the UK triggered Article 50, he said progress on these three fronts was essential to allow talks to move on to the future of the bilateral trade relationship, as the UK would like.
"We are six months into the process," he said. "We are getting closer to the UK's withdrawal. I think this moment should be a moment of clarity."
Speaking ahead of her meeting with Mr Tusk, Mrs May said that "by being creative" the UK and the EU can maintain cooperation and partnership when the UK leaves the EU.
And she said that "things have moved on" in terms of the discussions and negotiations in the Brexit talks.

European Council president Donald Tusk says the EU should consider offering the UK a "flexible" delay to Brexit of up to a year, with the option of leaving earlier if a deal is ratified.
He said there was "little reason to believe" a Brexit deal would be approved by the extension deadline UK PM Theresa May has requested - 30 June.
Writing to EU leaders, he said any delay should have conditions attached.
It is up to EU members to vote on the proposals at a summit on Wednesday.
A draft EU document circulated to diplomats ahead of the emergency summit also proposes an extension but leaves the date of the proposed new deadline blank.
The BBC's Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said the document referred to an extension lasting "only as long as is necessary and, in any event, no longer than XX.XX.XXXX and ending earlier if the withdrawal agreement is ratified".
The UK is currently due to leave the EU at 23:00 BST on Friday.
So far, UK MPs have rejected the withdrawal agreement Mrs May reached with other European leaders last year, so she is now asking for the leaving date to be extended.
Meanwhile, Mrs May has been meeting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin for talks ahead of the summit.
Afterwards, Ms Merkel said a delay that ran until the end of this year or the start of 2020 was a possibility.
Mr Tusk said granting the 30 June extension that Mrs May is seeking "would increase the risk of a rolling series of short extensions and emergency summits, creating new cliff-edge dates".
And if the European Council did not agree on an extension at all, "there would be a risk of an accidental no-deal Brexit", he said.
"One possibility would be a flexible extension, which would last only as long as necessary and no longer than one year, as beyond that date we will need to decide unanimously on some key European projects."
Mr Tusk said the EU would need to agree on a number of conditions to be attached to any proposed extension, including that there would be no re-opening of negotiations on the withdrawal agreement.
He said the UK should be treated "with the highest respect" and "neither side should be allowed to feel humiliated".
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said the EU's draft conclusions "should be taken with a big pinch of salt" as EU leaders could "rip up the conclusions and start again" on Wednesday.
She said the fact that the length of delay had been left blank in the conclusions shows EU leaders were still divided on the issue.
Downing Street said Mrs May had discussed the UK's request for an extension of Article 50 - the process by which the UK leaves the EU - until 30 June, with the option to make it shorter if a deal is ratified earlier, with both Ms Merkel and Mr Macron.
The prime minister and Chancellor Merkel agreed on the importance of ensuring Britain's orderly withdrawal, a statement said.
Mrs May and Mr Macron also discussed next month's European Parliamentary elections, with the prime minister saying the government was "working very hard" to avoid the need for the UK to take part as it is supposed to if it is still a member of the EU on 23 May.
Following a meeting of the EU's General Affairs Council in Luxembourg, diplomats said "slightly more than a handful" of member states spoke in favour of delaying Article 50 until 30 June but the majority were in favour of a longer extension.
EU leaders are curious to hear the prime minister's Plan B. They hope there is one, although they're not convinced.
They want to know, if they say, "Yes," to another Brexit extension, what it will be used for.
And they suspect Theresa May wants them to do her dirty work for her.
EU diplomatic sources I have spoken to suggest the prime minister may have officially asked the EU for a short new extension (until 30 June) as that was politically easier for her back home, whereas she believed and hoped (the theory goes) that EU leaders will insist instead on a flexible long extension that she actually needs.
The bottom line is: EU leaders are extremely unlikely to refuse to further extend the Brexit process.
Meanwhile, the latest round of talks between Labour and the Conservatives aimed at breaking the impasse in Parliament have finished for the day with both sides expressing hope there would be progress.
They are hoping to reach compromise changes to the Brexit deal agreed by Mrs May that could be accepted by the Commons, with Labour pushing for the inclusion of a customs union.
That would allow tariff-free trade in goods with the EU but limit the UK from striking its own deals. Leaving the arrangement was a Conservative manifesto commitment.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the talks had been "open and constructive" but the sides differed on a "number of areas".
Labour's shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said they were "hopeful progress will be made".
Further talks will be held on Thursday.
On Tuesday afternoon, MPs also approved a government motion for Mrs May to ask the EU to delay Brexit until June 30, required after a bill from Labour's Yvette Cooper became law.
If Labour and the government cannot agree on a way forward, Mrs May has promised to put a series of Brexit options to the Commons to vote on - with the government to be bound by the result.
These options could include holding another referendum on any Brexit deal agreed by Parliament.

European Council President Donald Tusk has recommended that the EU approve the Brexit deal at a summit on Sunday.
It comes after Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez received assurances from the UK government over Gibraltar, and dropped his threat to boycott the summit.
He said he had received the written guarantees he needed over Spain's role in the future of the British territory.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has arrived in Brussels and held talks with top EU officials, ahead of the summit.
Meanwhile, former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK would become a "satellite state" under the deal.
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The terms of the UK's withdrawal have been under negotiation since June 2016 following a referendum in which 51.9% voted to leave the EU.
Even if the EU approves the deal, it still has to be passed by the UK Parliament, with many MPs having stated their opposition.
Spain had raised last-minute objections ahead of the summit about how the issue of Gibraltar had been handled in the Brexit talks so far.
But EU leaders secured a compromise with the Spanish prime minister, who said that Europe and the UK "had accepted the conditions set down by Spain" and so would "vote in favour of Brexit".
Mr Tusk, who represents EU leaders on the world stage, said he recommended "that we approve on Sunday the outcome of the Brexit negotiations" in a letter to members of the European Council.
He added: "No-one has reasons to be happy. But at least at this critical time, the EU 27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity."
Mrs May met the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Mr Tusk for talks on Saturday evening.
Then on Sunday, EU leaders will meet for the special Brexit summit. They will be asked to approve two key Brexit documents:
There is no formal vote on Sunday but the EU expects to proceed after reaching a consensus.
If the EU signs off the withdrawal deal, Mrs May will then need to persuade MPs in the UK Parliament to back it.
A vote is expected in December. Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and the DUP have all said they will vote against the government's deal, as well as many Conservatives.
BBC News political correspondent Ben Wright has said Mrs May "faces an incredibly hard job" getting the deal passed by MPs.
Spain threatened to derail the Brexit deal over concerns about its role in future trade arrangements involving Gibraltar - a British Overseas Territory with 30,000 residents.
But the UK published a letter it had sent to Spain reassuring it over the withdrawal agreement.
After holding emergency talks with Mr Tusk and Mr Juncker, the Spanish prime minister dropped his threat.
Mr Sanchez said: "Gibraltar is excluded from the general negotiation of the European Union with the United Kingdom.
"This gives the chance to Spain to have direct negotiations with the United Kingdom over Gibraltar."
Spain's foreign minister Josep Borrell said the assurance was "the most important" development since the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which ceded Gibraltar to Britain.
But BBC Europe correspondent Kevin Connolly said that the UK's letter does not contain anything substantially different from the withdrawal agreement.
He said there was a suspicion that Spanish ministers were "showboating a little for the domestic electorate" on the eve of elections in Andalusia, in the south of Spain, where Gibraltar is a significant issue.
Theresa May said discussions with Spain have been "constructive and sensible" but that the UK's position on Gibraltar will not change.
She said: "I'm proud that Gibraltar is British and I will always stand by Gibraltar."
Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo also played down Spain's claims about the UK's guarantees.
He said: "What you have heard from the Spanish prime minister was not a reflection of any new position, however much he tried to present it as such."
The former foreign secretary told Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) conference that the UK was on the verge of "making a historic mistake".
Mr Johnson said the UK had an "absolute duty to get this right" and there was still time to work for a better deal.
Mrs May relies on the support of the DUP's 10 MPs in key votes because she does not have a majority in the House of Commons.
The DUP has threatened to look again at the agreement with the Conservatives if the Brexit deal gets through Parliament.
But Mr Johnson said it was "absolutely vital that we keep this partnership going" to avoid Labour coming to power.
The DUP opposes the Brexit deal because of the "backstop" - the back-up plan to make sure a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland never happens.
It will only come into effect if the UK and EU fail to agree a long-term trade deal. But the backstop would mean that Northern Ireland - but not the rest of the UK - would still follow some EU rules on things such as food products.
DUP leader Arlene Foster told her party conference that the prime minister had not been able to guarantee that the backstop would not have to be used.
She urged the government to secure a better deal for Northern Ireland, adding: "The choice is not between this deal and no deal, despite what the government spin machine may say."
Chancellor Philip Hammond insisted that the prime minister's Brexit deal is better than remaining in the EU.
He said the deal respected the result of the 2016 referendum and offered "the best compromise possible".
He added that he was hopeful of a solution with the DUP.
On Friday, the PM said the UK should not hope for a "better deal" from the EU if MPs reject her Brexit agreement.
But Mrs May declined to say whether the UK would be better off outside the EU, saying only it would be "different".

The EU will "not be intimidated" by threats about the UK leaving with no deal, Donald Tusk has said.
He said suggestions the UK would be better off leaving with no deal, rather than with a bad deal, "increasingly take the form of a threat".
The European Council president told the European Parliament that in the Brexit talks "a no deal scenario would be bad for everyone but above all for the UK".
He said the "goal is a smooth divorce" with the UK and EU as "good friends"
He told the last meeting of the European Parliament before the UK triggers Article 50 that it was "carefully preparing" for Brexit and "it is our wish to make this process constructive and conducted in an orderly manner".
But he warned: "However, the claims, increasingly taking the form of threats that no agreement will be good for the UK, and bad for the EU, need to be addressed.
"I want to be clear that a 'no deal scenario' would be bad for everyone, but above all for the UK, because it would leave a number of issues unresolved.
"We will not be intimidated by threats - and I can assure you they simply will not work.
"Our goal is to have a smooth divorce and a good framework for the future - and it is good to know that Prime Minister Theresa May shares this view."
Mr Tusk also stressed that he would "do everything in my power to make sure that the EU and the UK will be close friends in the future", adding that "Britain will be dearly missed as an EU member state".
"At the same time, I would like to stress again that the EU's door will always remain open for our British friends," he said.
In Westminster meanwhile, Brexit Secretary David Davis told the Commons Exiting the European Union committee he had yet to "quantify" the impact of leaving the EU without a deal.
"I have a fairly clear view of how it will work out, I just haven't quantified it yet. We will get a quantification later on, but it is quite plain how it will work out," he said.
Mr Davis told the MPs it was right to assume leaving the EU without a deal would involve trade tariffs.
Pressed on whether this would be a good thing, he said: "At this stage, until we have worked out all the mitigation procedures, we could not quantify the outcome."
He said this would not be as good as the free trade deal the government was seeking with the EU, but was "not as frightening" as some people think.
The Brexit secretary said it was "very important" that the negotiations are "as far as possible amicable".
"There will be times when the negotiations will get tough I am sure, but tough does not mean spiteful, angry, whatever you want to choose," he said.
Mr Davis said EU nations should be allowed a "considerable amount of slack" because they are disappointed the UK is leaving.
But Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer claimed Mr Davis's comments proved the government had "made no assessment of the economic impact of the prime minister failing to secure a deal".
"What's clear, from the CBI and others, is that there is no result that would be worse for the British economy than leaving with no deal," he said.
"No deal would be the worst possible deal. The government should rule out this dangerous and counter-productive threat before Article 50 is triggered."
The Lib Dems said the government's position on no deal being reached was "the equivalent of driving towards a cliff-edge with a blindfold on".
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says she wants to ask the UK government for permission to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence to protect the nation's interests in the wake of the UK opting to leave the EU.
She said the Brexit vote has left Scotland at a crossroads, with an independence referendum needed to allow the country to choose which path to take.
Mr Davis said the government had promised to seek an agreement with Scotland on its Brexit strategy.
"If one side doesn't want to agree there is no way 'seek to agree' can turn to 'agree'," he added.
The minister also said he expected the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, which cleared the Commons and the Lords earlier this week, to receive Royal Assent and become law on Thursday.
The new law will give Theresa May the power to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and trigger formal Brexit negotiations - a move she is expected to make by the end of March.

The green light to begin talks about a post-Brexit trade deal won't come until December at the earliest, the European Council president has suggested.
Donald Tusk warned that if the current "slow pace" of negotiations continues the UK and the EU "will have to think about where we are heading".
The UK has been hoping EU leaders will decide next week that enough progress has been made to open trade talks.
Brexit Secretary David Davis is in Brussels as negotiations continue.
He held a working lunch with EU lead negotiator Michel Barnier, which the French politician said had been "good" and "constructive".
In an LBC interview, Theresa May - who voted Remain last year - would not say how she would vote if another referendum was held.
"I don't answer hypothetical questions," the PM said.
On the negotiations, she said the two sides were "very close" to a deal on citizens' rights.
But she said she was not able to guarantee the rights of all EU citizens currently living in the UK, since if the UK and the EU were not able to reach a wider deal on the terms of exit, this would impact on welfare payments and other issues.
She rejected suggestions the UK was playing catch-up, saying its negotiators were "exceptionally well prepared" and the reason there would be a pause in talks on Wednesday was the EU had not scheduled them.
The UK is hoping the EU will agree to move on from the initial phase of talks, covering the financial settlement, Northern Ireland and citizens' rights, to discussing future issues like trade.
A decision on whether to agree this will be taken at a European Council summit on 19 October.
But Mr Tusk all but ruled this out in a speech in Brussels, saying: "We are negotiating in good faith, and we still hope that the so-called 'sufficient progress' will be possible by December.
"However, if it turns out that the talks continue at a slow pace, and that `sufficient progress' hasn't been reached, then - together with our UK friends - we will have to think about where we are heading."
The UK is set to leave the European Union at the end of March 2019.
Both EU and UK teams have said the ball is in the other side's court this week - implying that it is the other side that has to make the next concession.
Asked by the BBC whose court he thought "the ball is in", Mr Barnier warned that "Brexit is not a game".
This week's fifth round of talks came as ministers sought to ease disquiet among Brexit-backing MPs about the UK's strategy for a two year "transition" period between being a full EU member and the UK's eventual post-Brexit relations with the EU.
Downing Street said it wanted the process to be "as smooth as possible".
After Mrs May briefed her cabinet on Tuesday, a No 10 spokesman said the government hoped to negotiate a deal with the EU on the terms of exit but was prepared for all eventualities - a reference to what some believe is the growing likelihood of a "no deal" scenario.
Mr Tusk said the EU side was not preparing for such a scenario.
Taking questions from MPs on Monday, Mrs May also confirmed that the UK could remain subject to the rulings of the European Court of Justice during a planned two-year transition period after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
This was criticised by some pro-Leave campaigners, with backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg telling the BBC he was "troubled" by the PM's statement.
"If we're remaining under the jurisdiction of the ECJ then we haven't left the European Union or the date of departure is being delayed," he said.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove - two key figures in last year's Leave campaign - both issued statements backing Mrs May's comments.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said their intervention underlined the government's nervousness about the reaction of Tory Brexiteers over the European Court of Justice's jurisdiction - which for many of them is a "red line".
Mr Johnson, who has been accused of undermining the PM with his recent interventions on Brexit strategy, issued a statement backing her "powerful vision".
On Twitter, Environment Secretary Mr Gove said: "Strong statement from PM on Brexit - let's be pragmatic over implementation to secure maximum freedom to diverge from EU in end state."
Asked on Tuesday about the role of the ECJ during a transitional phase, No 10 said business should only have to adjust to one set of changes following the UK's departure.
But it reiterated the PM's hope that a new dispute resolution system could be devised as quickly as possible to assume the ECJ's functions and settle the matter once and for all.

They weren't off-the-cuff remarks, but a planned outburst.
The softly-spoken politician who holds the authority of all EU countries has just completely condemned a chunk of the British cabinet, wondering aloud: "What that special place in hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely".
Sure, for a long time the EU has been frustrated with how the UK has approached all of this.
And sure, plenty of voters in the UK are annoyed too at how politicians have been handling these negotiations.
But it is quite something for Donald Tusk to have gone in like this, studs up, even though he sometimes reminisces about his time as a football hooligan in his youth.
Be clear, he was not intending to talk about voters who wanted to Leave, but politicians who were involved in the campaign.
He also had pretty stern remarks for those who'd been on the other side of the argument, accusing those who still want the UK to stay in the EU of having "no political force, and no effective leadership".
Mr Tusk will be all too aware that he will provoke tempers at home, even laughing about it as he left the stage with the Taoiseach, the Irish leader, Leo Varadkar.
But if you strip away the planned flash of temper, also in his remarks was an invitation to the prime minister to come forward with a different version of the backstop - a "believable guarantee", a promise that a "common solution is possible".
That is, on the face of it, in tone at least, more of an opening to the UK to put something new on the table than we have seen from the EU side.
Certainly, Theresa May's most pressing job is to put something that could work on the table in Belfast, and in Brussels, and to do it fast.
But don't forget, also at her back, she has Brexiteers whom she needs to manage, whose expectations she needs to contain, whose votes she desperately needs.
And at a time when cool tempers and compromise are absolutely needed, Mr Tusk's remarks are likely to whip up the mood instead.

Theresa May has hailed the draft agreement on post-Brexit relations as "right for the whole of the UK" and insisted a deal "is within our grasp".
The political declaration - outlining how UK-EU trade, security and other issues will work - has been "agreed in principle", the European Council says.
London and Brussels have already agreed the draft terms of the UK's exit from the EU on 29 March 2019.
The prime minister told MPs it would deliver the Brexit people voted for.
The political declaration is a separate document to the 585-page withdrawal agreement, published last week, which covers the UK's £39bn "divorce bill", citizens' rights after Brexit and the thorny issue of the Northern Ireland "backstop" - how to avoid the need for a manned border on the island of Ireland.
The withdrawal agreement is legally-binding - the political declaration is not.
It sets out broad aspirations for the kind of relationship the UK and the EU will have after Brexit. Some of the wording of it is non-committal and allows both sides to keep their options open.
"The negotiations (on the political declaration) are now at a critical moment and all our efforts must be focused on working with our European partners to bring this process to a final conclusion in the interests of all our people," said the PM.
"The British people want Brexit to be settled, they want a good deal that sets us on a course for a brighter future, and they want us to come together as a country and to move on to focus on the big issues at home, like our NHS.
"The deal that will enable us to do this is now within our grasp. In these crucial 72 hours ahead, I will do everything possible to deliver it for the British people."
But Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn described the agreement as "26 pages of waffle" which "could have been written two years ago".
"This is the blindfold Brexit we all feared - a leap in the dark. It falls short of Labour's six tests," he added. "What on earth have the government been doing for the past two years?"
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who is campaigning for another referendum, described it as an "agreement to have an agreement" that was "full of worryingly vague aspirations".
Tensions remain over some parts of the withdrawal agreement.
Spain's prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has said his government is "annoyed" that the divorce agreement does not specify that Gibraltar's future must be decided directly by officials in Madrid and London - and France is understood to have sought amendments to the wording on fishing rights in UK waters.
On Thursday evening, he said further changes must be made to the withdrawal agreement:  "After my conversation with Theresa May, our positions remain far away."
Mrs May said she had spoken to Mr Sanchez and was "confident that on Sunday we will be able to agree a deal for the whole of the United Kingdom family including Gibraltar" - and that the UK's sovereignty over the territory was not under threat.
If all goes as planned, the UK and the EU will use the political declaration as the basis for a trade agreement, to be hammered out during a 21-month transition period that is due to kick-in after Brexit happens on 29 March, during which the UK will continue to be a member of the EU single market and customs union.
The draft document says: "The future relationship will be based on a balance of rights and obligations, taking into account the principles of each party.
"This balance must ensure the autonomy of the union's decision-making and be consistent with the union's principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the single market and the customs union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms.
"It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom."
In the Commons, Mrs May faced calls from Brexiteer Conservative MPs, including former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP, who have threatened to vote down the deal, to ditch the Northern Ireland "backstop" and come forward with the alternatives set out in the political declaration instead.
Opponents of Brexit were also critical of the new document.
Conservative MP Philip Lee, who quit the government in protest at its handling of Brexit, said it "reads like a letter to Santa", while Labour's Chuka Umunna, a leading supporter of the People's Vote campaign for a new referendum, said it was "entirely aspirational and doesn't finalise anything".
Conservatives Sir Nicholas Soames and Nick Herbert were among a handful of MPs to speak out in favour of Mrs May's deal during the debate.
Scottish Conservative MPs are also concerned that the declaration will not protect the interests of the UK fishing industry.
But the government insists the UK's "red lines" on fishing have been protected, and the text acknowledges the UK will be "an independent coastal state" with the rights and responsibilities that entails.
A government source said the EU had wanted "existing reciprocal access to fishing waters and resources [to] be maintained" but this had been rejected.
The SNP's leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, said Scotland's fishing rights had been "thrown overboard like they were discarded fish", adding, "so much for taking back control, more like trading away Scotland's interests".
And Sammy Wilson, Brexit spokesman for the DUP, which has been in a confidence-and-supply agreement with the government, said the "non-binding aspirational agreement" had been drafted to "help the prime minister, rather than mitigate the very damaging and dangerous draft withdrawal agreement".
Several EU countries have raised concerns about Mrs May's planned meeting with Mr Juncker on Saturday night, saying that it should not lead to any changes in the text.
Germany has reiterated that Angela Merkel would not attend Sunday's meeting if the text has not been agreed in advance.
Separately, EU diplomats have said the Spanish government "sees the making of a compromise" on the issue of Gibraltar.

The EU is unlikely to accept the UK's latest proposal for avoiding a "hard border" on the island of Ireland after Brexit, the Irish government has said.
Theresa May has said 80% of firms would face no new customs checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and others would be simplified.
But Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he was not sure it would adequately protect the EU's market.
The proposal, he said, was a "starting point" for talks not a solution.
The British prime minister has ruled out the return of physical infrastructure on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019, insisting that this commitment was "absolutely clear".
But Dublin and Brussels remain to be convinced that this can be avoided after the UK leaves the EU's customs union, unless Northern Ireland continues to abide by its rules and those of the single market.
The "backstop" option agreed by the two sides in December is for Northern Ireland to remain fully aligned with the rules of the customs union - which eliminates tariffs between its members - and the single market, in areas of existing North-South co-operation.
This is unacceptable to the Democratic Unionist Party, which Theresa May relies on for votes in the House of Commons, and to many Conservatives MPs who say it would create a new border in the Irish Sea and amount to Northern Ireland being "annexed".
But Mr Coveney told the BBC's Andrew Marr show this remained the default outcome unless both sides could agree other workable solutions to keep goods and people crossing over a "largely invisible" border.
"Our responsibility is to work positively with Britain to explore solutions but if we can't agree solutions then what we have, of course, is the backstop which is a commitment by the British government to maintain full alignment with the rules of customs union and the single market," he said.
Asked about Theresa May's proposal, in a major speech on Friday, to waive customs checks for 80% of firms doing business across the border, he said it could not be taken for granted.
"This is the mistake that is made in Britain all the time," he said.
"When someone definitively says something will be the case from the British government, people assume that is the negotiated outcome. Of course it is not.
"I am not sure the EU will be able to support a situation whereby 80% of companies that trade north-south and south-north will actually protect the integrity of the EU single market," he said.
"While of course we will explore and look at all the proposed British solutions, they are essentially a starting point in negotiations not an end point." he said.
Mr Coveney said Dublin wanted to avoid a hard border with Northern Ireland as much as London did.
But he insisted that for a single market to function "if goods move from one customs union to another there needs to be some checks" unless some mechanism was negotiated to prevent them.
In Friday's speech, Mrs May said the vast majority of north-south trade was carried out by small and medium-sized business whose economic contribution was not "systemically significant" to the EU market but which would be most affected by custom checks and other red tape.
"We would allow them to continue to operate as they do currently, with no new restrictions," she said.
The DUP said the "sensible" idea should be the basis for negotiations currently going on in Brussels.
Speaking on Sunday, Mrs May said she was pleased that Irish PM Leo Varadkar agreed to sit down alongside the European Commission and UK to look at her proposals in more detail.
"We've got proposals as to how we're going to achieve that, now we're going to be able to sit down and talk with others about how we're going to do that," she told Andrew Marr.
But Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who wants the whole of the UK to remain in the customs union, said the PM was relying on "technological solutions that perhaps do not even exist".
"One of the most shameful features of the whole Brexit process has been the negligent way that the interests of Ireland have just been cast aside," she told ITV's Peston on Sunday.

The EU has defended its right to make plans for a "no-deal" Brexit, amid UK fears firms may lose out as a result.
David Davis has reportedly complained about EU guidance stating the UK would become a "third country" in 2019 with no reference to a possible trade deal.
In a letter to Theresa May, obtained by the FT, the Brexit secretary warned UK firms may have to relocate to Europe or risk seeing contracts terminated.
But the EU said the UK had first raised the possibility of there being no deal.
A spokeswoman rejected suggestions that Britain was being treated differently to other EU members and that its rights were being abused.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The second phase of Brexit negotiations, covering transitional arrangements after the UK leaves and economic and security co-operation in the future, are due to begin soon.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said it is right to plan for all scenarios, including no deal, but she is confident the two sides will reach an agreement on their post-Brexit relations in time for the UK's departure.
But British concerns about the EU's own preparations for Brexit have surfaced with Mr Davis suggesting they are "frequently damaging to UK interests".
In a letter to Mrs May last month, extracts of which have been seen by the Financial Times, he warned it was potentially discriminatory of EU agencies to have issued guidance to businesses stating that the UK would become a "third country" outside the EU without any reference to a future trade deal sought by both sides.
Warning the EU's current stance amounted to "potential breaches of the UK's rights as a member state", he said he would urge the European Commission's Brexit taskforce to withdraw the statements made so far, in light of the agreement reached in December to begin trade negotiations.
A Number 10 spokesman said it did not comment on leaks, but the EU insisted its contingency planning was not a breach of the UK's rights as a full member until the date of its departure.
"We are surprised that the UK is surprised that we are preparing for a scenario announced by the UK government itself," the commission's chief spokeswoman said.
"After all, it was Theresa May herself who said in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, and repeated in her Florence speech in September, that 'no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain, it is right that the government should prepare for every eventuality'.
"So we take these words by the prime minister very seriously, and it is therefore only natural that in this house we also prepare for every eventuality."
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who favours the UK remaining in the single market and customs union, said Mr Davis's words were "extraordinary" given the government had set aside £3.7bn to prepare the UK for the possibility of leaving without an agreement.
And Labour MP Pat McFadden, who supports the Open Britain campaign for close ties with the EU, said the EU's actions should "come as no surprise" as the UK was "implicitly threatening a no-deal scenario" itself.
Meanwhile, the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Plaid Cymru accused Labour of an "abdication of responsibility" for declining to join them in backing single market membership after Brexit.
Following a cross-party meeting in Parliament, they criticised Jeremy Corbyn's pursuit of a "jobs-first" Brexit, arguing it was impossible without backing single market membership, as some Labour MPs are urging.
In response, Labour sources said the single market was "not a membership club that can be joined" and the party's goal was to retain the benefits of the single market through the negotiation.

The UK's freedom to determine its own rules on immigration, trade and fishing in a transition period after Brexit may be further restricted, according to revised EU guidelines on a transition.
Draft EU documents would see full freedom of movement extended until the start of 2021.
The UK would also need "authorisation" to stick with existing EU trade deals.
The BBC's Adam Fleming said the guidelines appeared to be aiming for a "business as usual" transition period".
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but to minimise the disruption to people and businesses the idea is to smooth the way to post-Brexit relations over 18 months to two years - which is referred to as a transitional or implementation period.
But many Conservative MPs, and some ministers, are concerned about the effects that an effective "stand-still agreement" for about two years would have in terms of entrenching the role of the European Court of Justice and curbing the UK's room for manoeuvre in negotiating trade deals.
The other 27 EU countries will meet later this month to finalise their guidelines for Michel Barnier, the EU's Brexit negotiator, ahead of the start of formal talks.
According to a draft copy of the guidelines, reported by the FT and the Guardian, the EU is seeking to tighten the conditions which will apply to the UK during the transitional period which the EU proposes will last up to 31 December 2020.
Among areas where the language has been toughened, the text stipulates that provisions on citizens' rights, agreed as part of a first-stage deal in December, will not kick in until the end of the transition period.
The FT said this meant the UK would not be able to deny work permits to any aspiring EU migrants pending the introduction of new immigration rules.
It also states that the UK will need the EU's permission to roll over international trade agreements with non-EU countries that the UK currently benefits from as an EU member.
On fishing, it proposes that existing quota rules will remain the same during the transition phase, and that any changes arising from "specific consultations" must be in "full respect" of EU law.
Businesses based in, and trading with, the UK want details of a transition agreement to be agreed as soon as possible so they can plan for the future and avoid having to deal with two sets of regulatory changes, a position backed by the Treasury.
But British ministers have also insisted that free movement will end when the UK leaves and that European workers coming to the UK after 29 March 2019 will have to register.
The FT said some UK diplomats believed the revisions were potentially beneficial as, on trade, they referred to the UK striking its own deals while remaining "bound by the obligations" stemming from existing agreements.
Speaking in a debate in the European Parliament, leading MEP Guy Verhofstadt said the rights of EU and British citizens - including on free movement - should continue to apply until the transition period ends.
"It is very important that in these negotiating directives... the new system for EU citizens living in Britain is only coming into place after the transition," he said.
There should be, he argued, "no question" of trying to "make it difficult for EU citizens to obtain their permit to reside in Britain".
Meanwhile, the president of the European Council Donald Tusk urged "more clarity" from the UK about what kind of relationship it wanted with the EU.
"The hardest work is still ahead of us and time is limited," he said, adding that Brexit would happen "unless there is a change of heart amongst our British friends".
British ministers have hit out at the "relative silence" from the EU about its own aspirations for a post-Brexit relationship while there are also concerns that the EU's decision to publish guidance to its agencies about what to do in the result of no Brexit deal being reached risks discriminating against British firms.

The EU is to begin preparing for its post-Brexit trade negotiations with the UK, while refusing to discuss the matter with the British government.
An internal draft document suggests the 27 EU countries should discuss trade among themselves while officials in Brussels prepare the details.
The draft text could yet be revised.
EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said a lack of compromise over the UK's financial commitments was impeding progress - saying "they have to pay".
Speaking in Luxembourg, Mr Juncker used the analogy of someone covering the bill after ordering 28 beers at a bar to explain the EU's position - and added that the Brexit negotiating process was taking longer than expected.
He also dismissed the wrangling over citizens' rights - another sticking point - as "nonsense", calling on the UK to adopt a "common sense" approach and say "things will stay as they are" after Brexit.
Downing Street said "good progress" was being made in the talks.
As the fifth round of talks ended in Brussels on Thursday, the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said there was "deadlock" over the UK's Brexit bill.
He said there had not been enough progress to move to the next stage of post-Brexit trade talks - as the UK had hoped -  but added that he hoped for "decisive progress" by the time of the December summit of the European Council.
The draft paper submitted to the 27 EU states by European Council president Donald Tusk, suggests free trade talks could open in December - should Prime Minister Theresa May improve her offer on what the UK pays when it leaves.
The BBC's Europe correspondent Adam Fleming said the paper contained "something for everyone" - with the reference to trade talks accompanied by a call for the UK to do more to bridge the gap on the key negotiating points.
The document calls for talks - about a transition period and the future relationship - to move to the next phase "as soon as possible".
The draft conclusions - to be put to EU leaders next Friday - also call for more concessions from the UK on its financial obligations and the rights of European nationals who wish to stay after Brexit.
The paper confirms Mr Barnier's assessment, that there has not been "sufficient progress" on three key elements of a withdrawal treaty for leaders to agree to open the trade talks now.
But it says the leaders would welcome developments on these key issues: the rights of three million EU citizens in the UK, protecting peace in Northern Ireland from the effect of a new border and Britain's outstanding "financial obligations".
The council would then pledge to "reassess the state of progress" at their December summit.
Bernd Kolmel, chairman of Germany's Eurosceptic Liberal Conservative Reformers, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there appeared to have been little progress between the first and fifth round of talks - something he described as a "disaster".
He called on the EU to expand the talks to include its future relationships and trade with the UK.
Anders Vistisen, a Danish Eurosceptic MEP and vice-chair of the EU Parliament's foreign affairs committee, agreed, adding: "The most integral thing is the future relationship. If we are making a bad trade deal for Britain we are also hurting ourselves."
The document states that in order "to be fully ready", EU leaders would ask Mr Barnier and his officials to start preparing now for a transition - albeit without actually starting to talk to the UK about it.
"The European Council invites the Council (Article 50) together with the Union negotiator to start internal preparatory discussions," the draft reads.
A Downing Street spokeswoman would not comment on the draft EU document but said Theresa May "has been clear all along that we need to reach a settlement", adding that UK would honour its financial commitments.
Meanwhile, a crucial plank of the government's Brexit legislation faces a raft of attempted amendments by MPs as ministers seek to steer it through Parliament.
The EU (Withdrawal) Bill will end the supremacy of EU law in the UK and incorporate existing Brussels legislation onto the UK statute book.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said going through the proposed changes was "taking a bit of time" as she confirmed there would be no debate on the bill next week.
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The EU "will not be rushed" on a trade deal with the UK after Brexit, according to Ireland's deputy PM.
Boris Johnson says a deal can be agreed by the end of 2020 and has included a pledge in his Brexit bill not to extend any transition period to secure one.
But Simon Coveney says it is "probably going to take longer than a year".
Security Minister Brandon Lewis defended Mr Johnson's deadline, saying he had a "strong record of getting things done".
After the UK leaves the EU on 31 January, it will enter an 11-month transition period, where it will largely follow EU rules but will not have any representation in the bloc's institutions.
This period will come to an end on 31 December and Mr Johnson has ruled out extending it any further if a deal on the future relationship between the UK and EU has not been agreed.
The promise is included in the prime minister's Brexit bill, which was voted through by MPs earlier this week and will now head to the House of Lords before becoming law.
But opposition parties have raised concerns about the hard deadline, saying it creates another way of the UK leaving without a deal.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, Mr Coveney said he accepted the UK was leaving the EU at the end of January, and he hoped for the future deal to "achieve the closest possible relationship" between the two sides.
But he warned there was "no way of the UK... maintaining the same relationship we have today while outside the European Union," adding: "That is the reality of Brexit, I'm afraid."
Mr Coveney said Mr Johnson had "set a very ambitious timetable" in his bill.
"Just because a British parliament decides that British law says something doesn't mean that law applies to the other 27 countries of the European Union," he added.
"The European Union will approach this on the basis of getting the best deal possible, a fair and balanced deal, to ensure the UK and the EU can interact as friends in the future.
"But the EU will not be rushed on this just because Britain passes law."
The deputy prime minister (Tanaiste) said the EU had "constantly warned [Mr Johnson's] timeframe is ambitious, if not unrealistic".
"From an EU perspective, we will try to approach all of these really important and sensitive areas with a sense of partnership and friendship.
"But at the same time, they are complex... [and] in my view, it is probably going to take longer than a year. But we will have to wait and see."
Government minister Mr Lewis admitted the negotiations would be difficult, but he disagreed with Mr Coveney's assessment of the timetable.
"I think we can do it," he told Andrew Marr. "I think it can be done, not just because both parties… are committed to doing it, and want to do it, but we are a country that has already got a known pattern of work with the EU.
"Therefore getting a holistic agreement in the next 12 months is achievable".
Mr Coveney's comments followed a speech by new European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier this week, saying it would be "impossible" to reach a comprehensive trade deal by the end of 2020.
She warned that without an extension to the transition period beyond 2020 "you cannot expect to agree every single aspect of our new partnership". She called the deadline "very tight".
Mrs von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, took over from Jean-Claude Juncker at the start of December. She met Mr Johnson for talks in London last week.

EU leaders have approved guidelines for the negotiation of future relations with the UK after Brexit.
The text on trade, security and other issues was agreed in "less than half a minute", clearing the way for the next phase of Brexit talks to get under way.
The UK is due to leave in March 2019 and negotiators have said they want a deal in place by the end of the year.
Prime Minister Theresa May said she believed there was a new "spirit of co-operation and opportunity".
The formal adoption of the guidelines, although widely expected, is seen as another key step as the Brexit process gathers momentum.
The guidelines give chief negotiator Michel Barnier the mandate to talk directly to the UK about the future relationship with a view to reaching a broad political agreement by October to allow the EU and UK parliaments time to consider it.
European Council President Donald Tusk said the "positive momentum" should be used to settle outstanding issues like avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland.
EU leaders will decide in June whether the "Irish question" has been resolved and will look into a "common declaration on our future", he added.
Mrs May, who was not present when her colleagues met to discuss Brexit, said she believed there was a "new dynamic" in the negotiations.
"I believe we are approaching this with a spirit of co-operation, a spirit of opportunity for the future as well, and we will now be sitting down and determining those workable solutions for Northern Ireland, but also for our future security partnership and economic partnership," she said.
"I believe it is in the best interest of both the UK and the EU that we get a deal that actually is in the interests of both."
By the BBC's Europe reporter Adam Fleming
The remaining 27 leaders have also endorsed an agreement reached earlier this week on a 21-month transition period between March 2019, when the UK officially leaves, and the end of 2020.
During that period, the UK will be able to negotiate, sign and ratify its own trade deals, while EU citizens arriving in the UK will enjoy the same rights and guarantees as those who arrive before Brexit.
A solution to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland has yet to be agreed, with the EU insisting on a "backstop" option of Northern Ireland, in effect, remaining in the customs union.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said he wanted an agreement that keeps the UK "as close as possible" to the EU in order to protect trade and jobs.
But Labour, which supports staying in the customs union, said the UK and EU were a "very long way away" from achieving this at the moment and the PM needed to "finally drop her reckless red lines".
Meanwhile, EU leaders are calling for reciprocal access to UK fishing waters and stocks to be maintained after the end of the transition period.
Asked whether he thought the UK would agree to this, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told BBC Scotland this was the EU's "working basis".
"We are in ongoing discussions with the UK - to try and bring them (to) where we are and they are trying to bring us (to) where they are," he said.
The UK has already agreed to abide by the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy during the transition, sparking anger among fishing groups which want full sovereignty over UK waters upon Brexit.

EU ambassadors have agreed to delay Brexit, but will not make a decision on a new deadline date until next week.
The European Commission said work on this would "continue in the coming days".
The talks came after Chancellor Sajid Javid admitted the government's deadline to deliver Brexit next Thursday "can't be met".
Boris Johnson said he was waiting for the EU to decide "what they want to do".
MPs are expected on Monday to consider the prime minister's call for an early general election.
Mr Johnson says he wants to hold one on 12 December, if the EU offers a Brexit delay until 31 January.
But the chances of enough MPs backing the motion - which requires the support of two-thirds of the House of Commons - appear uncertain, with Labour not committing to how it plans to vote.
Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was only prepared to agree to an election once the PM had completely ruled out "to my satisfaction" the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
"My position is we've got to get no-deal taken off the table first," he told ITV's This Morning programme.
"Providing the prime minister comes to Parliament on Monday and makes it absolutely clear he is going to make sure that there is no crash out - because his deal includes the possibility of a no-deal exit... if he comes on Monday and says that, then OK," he added.
Mr Johnson has said his "preferred option" is a short Brexit postponement to "say to 15 or 30 November".
Following the Brussels meeting, he again urged Mr Corbyn to vote for a snap poll, calling on him to "man up" and agree to his election proposal.
"Nobody will believe that the Labour Party is really going to allow Brexit to happen unless there is a deadline of an election on 12 December," he said.
On Thursday, the government had appeared to threaten a halt to all but essential Commons business if Parliament refused to vote for an election.
However, on Friday a Downing Street spokesperson said that this would only apply to Brexit legislation, and that otherwise the prime minister would continue pursuing his "dynamic and ambitious" domestic agenda "with full vigour" even if MPs do not vote for an election.
By BBC parliamentary correspondent Mark D'Arcy
For many MPs, scrutiny of the detail of legislation is an empty ritual, during which they sign Christmas cards or answer letters, rather than engaging with the process. Others will detect problems which might be critical to their constituents and local interests.
Ram the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the Commons in 36 hours, runs the argument, and there would be little chance to address them, while a more leisurely process could head off any number of problems once the bill becomes law.
But don't ignore the raw electoral strategy that lurks millimetres below the surface of this argument. The Conservatives are seeking to frame the Brexit battle as "the people versus Parliament".
But plenty of Labour MPs say they're simply not prepared to vote for an election at a time and on the ground of the prime minister's choosing.
They want the Conservatives to go into an election with their Brexit Party flank unsecured, and with their internal divisions over Brexit festering visibly.
Read the full article
European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said: "What I can tell you is that the EU 27 have agreed to the principle of an extension and work will now continue in the coming days."
She added that they intended to take a decision without holding an emergency summit.
A source close to French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not believe a Brexit extension was justified unless the UK provided a reason for it.
"We must show the British that it is up to them to clarify the situation and that an extension is not a given," the source said.
BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said a decision on the length of the extension was expected on Monday, but that the announcement could be delayed until Tuesday if the ambassadors struggled to agree a date.
He said there is pressure to avoid a last-minute summit on 30 October, in which leaders would have to prevent the UK leaving without a deal the next day.
Earlier, Mr Javid told BBC Breakfast the government had to "accept we won't be able to leave on 31 October".
He added that ministers "had done everything possible" to leave the EU by the end of the month, but "everyone expects an extension".
Mr Johnson was compelled by a law passed by MPs - known as the Benn Act - to send a letter to the bloc requesting a delay until 31 January 2020.
Before sending the letter on Saturday, he had repeatedly promised the UK would leave the EU on Halloween.

Billions of euros of British taxpayers' money could remain locked into an EU bank for more than thirty years after Brexit, the UK has been warned.
Alexander Stubb, vice president of the European Investment Bank - in which the UK is a 16% shareholder - said it would not be fully repaid until 2054.
He described Brexit as a "travesty" but denied the move was a punishment.
"The EIB has leveraged the economy of the UK many, many fold over the years," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
The UK has 3.5bn euros (£3.1bn) of capital at the bank and a House of Lords report said the UK's investment could be worth 10.1bn (£8.9bn) euros taking into account reserves and profits.
Established in 1958, the EIB uses capital provided by EU countries to make loans at low rates, often for major infrastructure projects.
All 28 EU nations are shareholders in the Luxembourg-based bank, with the UK being the largest alongside Germany, France and Italy.
Mr Stubb, a former prime minister of Finland, told the BBC that the UK's money could be tied up for decades in after it leaves the EU in 2019.
"Everyone on both sides of the negotiating table agree that we have to pay back the 3.5 billion euro, basically in cash, and that will happen over a long period, up until 2054, because that's when the loans are amortised."
He insisted that no-one in the bank wanted to "punish" the UK for leaving and actually wanted to "alleviate the pain" of Brexit.
"I have a British heart pumping, I am married to a Brit, my children have dual nationality and I think Brexit is one of the biggest travesties that we have seen in the modern era," he said.
"So I will do everything in my power to alleviate the pain, but the economic facts are just such that there are no winners in Brexit - apart from perhaps a few lawyers. Unfortunately, we will see this in the coming years."
The BBC's Ross Hawkins said Today had heard how delays in authorising new loans while the UK remains part of the EU could see fewer social homes built.
One housing association, Stonewater, said it may build around 300 fewer homes because its application for £100m to build new properties had ground to a halt.
Its executive director John Bruton told the programme: "The Bank has been waiting for assurances from the UK government before the application can be progressed."

Again and again throughout this Brexit process I've been struck by the chasm in thinking between leading UK politicians and the viewpoint of EU leaders.
But the current state of affairs is particularly surreal.
As the UK's political class twists and turns itself into a spitting Brexit frenzy and the pound fluctuates hysterically on the currency markets, the EU has popped on its blinkers, clapped its hands firmly over its metaphorical ears and is resolutely continuing preparations for a special summit of EU leaders to sign a Brexit deal that many in the UK believe/hope could yet end up in the bin.
So far, nothing - none of the screaming headlines back in the UK - is managing to distract the EU from its focus.
This, first and foremost, is because Theresa May stands firmly behind the Brexit deal. And Europeans view her as the UK's chief Brexit negotiator.
UK cabinet ministers - even Brexit secretaries - can come and go, but as long as the prime minister remains on board, EU leaders believe the seal-the-deal Brexit summit will go ahead.
There is also zero - really, truly, honestly, not just saying it - zero-intention or appetite in Europe to start renegotiating the withdrawal deal with the UK.
For Europe's leaders, the document is the result of 19 months of intense and tense negotiations working towards something (Brexit) that none of them wants and which has already sucked up an enormous amount of time, energy and money across the European capitals in preparation.
Of course, the EU would rather the UK changed its mind and stayed in the club. But if it is leaving then this, they say, is the deal on the table.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, told EU ambassadors on Friday that the European Union should not start a last minute bargaining process.
The EU should protect its principles, he said: meaning standing by the backstop guarantee on the Irish border.
Brussels wants to close this chapter and move on.
But remember: we're talking about the divorce deal here. Not the future EU-UK trade deal.
Sure, EU and UK negotiators are hammering out a document this weekend to outline the kind of relationship they intend to have with one another after Brexit but - spoiler alert - when it comes to the chapter on future economic relations, expect their text to be suitably vague.
And, anyway, this document unlike the Brexit withdrawal agreement is not legally binding.
Detailed negotiations on the new EU-UK trade deal will only begin after Brexit day and the UK is legally, if not politically, free to choose - and change - the kind of economic relationship it wants with the bloc: very close à la EEA (European Economic Area),or a more arm's-length deal like Canada has.
But, since it takes two to tango in negotiations, each choice has consequences under EU law.
More from Katya:Volatile UK politics could bin Brexit deal, worries EU
A Canada-like free-trade agreement can never - whatever David Davis and others promised - offer frictionless trade. And it would lead to a customs border on the island of Ireland unless a separate arrangement is agreed for Northern Ireland.
Whereas being a member of the EEA would mean the UK accepting freedom of movement and paying into the EU budget.
But the by-now hugely controversial EU-UK customs relationship outlined in the Brexit withdrawal treaty need never come about.
It is an on-paper insurance policy to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland since, as already discussed, no-one knows right now what the future economic relationship will look like between the EU and the UK.
The reason it is a UK-wide customs arrangement is because Theresa May, not the EU, wanted it to be.
And, if a new trade deal is ready between the two sides before the end of the transition period - the end of 2020 - then the "backstop" customs partnership would be superseded.
If it isn't ready, the UK government could ask the EU to extend the transition period instead, though that of course has consequences too: ongoing freedom of movement, payments into the EU budget etc.
The options don't look appetising perhaps but, as I have said, if the UK parliament now rejects the Brexit withdrawal deal, hoping to renegotiate a "better" (i.e more successfully cake-and-eat-it) deal, then the EU doesn't want to know.
But they would likely "freeze" the Article 50 process if the UK were to hold a general election or a second referendum.
Out of self-interest, of course.
Firstly, because the EU wants to avoid a costly, chaotic no-deal scenario and, secondly, because as France's Emmanuel Macron has said so often, they will keep the door open until the last moment in case the UK should change its mind about leaving.
But, deep down, Europeans think a nationwide change of heart is unlikely and that the Brexit deal will in the end be signed.
Which is why, in stark contrast to the UK media obsession with the current political turmoil, Brexit is far, far down the running order of evening news programmes across Europe.

Senior Europeans have called on Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to apologise for likening the EU to the Soviet Union.
Mr Hunt's comment, during his Tory conference speech, was about efforts to stop members leaving the bloc.
Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt was among MEPs calling for an apology. Some described the comments as "a new level of populism" and far-right language.
Mr Hunt said he was pointing out the EU negotiators' approach was not consistent with European values.
Three serving EU ambassadors to London publicly criticised the foreign secretary on Monday, saying the comparison was both wrong and insulting to those who had lived through years of Soviet rule.
But UKIP leader Nigel Farage said Mr Hunt was "using my language".
Relations between the UK and the EU were already on edge after European leaders publicly criticised Theresa May's plan for future co-operation after Brexit at a summit in Austria last month.
British ministers had accused the EU of not showing the UK due respect after the PM's plans were mocked on social media during the Salzburg meeting.
Then, on Sunday, Mr Hunt provoked a diplomatic row after accusing the EU of seeking to punish the UK in order to "keep the club together".
His speech recalled a visit to Latvia earlier this summer and the role that the UK and others played in helping it transition from Soviet rule to becoming a modern democracy and market economy.
"What happened to the confidence and ideals of the European dream?" he asked. "The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving."
In response, Baiba Braze, the Latvian ambassador to the UK, said the comparison was misguided as the Soviets "killed, deported, exiled and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Latvia's inhabitants after the illegal occupation in 1940, and ruined lives of three generations, while the EU has brought prosperity, equality, growth, respect".
Her Estonian counterpart, Tiina Intelmann, joined in the criticism, tweeting:
The Swedish ambassador Torbjorn Sohlstrom said the UK rightly deserved respect but the comments were wide of the mark.
The remarks have also raised eyebrows among former senior British diplomats.
Lord Ricketts, who led the Foreign Office between 2006 and 2010, said the only punishment that the UK would suffer from Brexit was "self-inflicted".
"This rubbish is unworthy of a British foreign secretary," he said. "The EU isn't a Soviet-style prison. Its legal order has brought peace and prosperity after a century of war."
And his successor, Sir Simon Fraser, suggested it was a "shocking failure of judgement" by Mr Hunt, who succeeded Boris Johnson in the role in July.
A European Commission spokesman added: "I would say respectfully that we would all benefit - and in particular foreign affairs ministers - from opening a history book from time to time."

What's so striking about this draft Brexit deal the UK media and politicians are all abuzz about, is the marked lack of excitement and/or hysteria in EU circles.
Contrary to the UK narrative, this is not viewed in Brussels as the back-against-the-wall, make-or-break moment.
There's still some time to keep negotiating. EU-UK technical talks are, in fact, ongoing as neither all the "i"s, nor all the "t"s of a deal have yet been dotted or crossed.
The thinking here is: if the UK cabinet or certain EU member states strongly object to specific parts of the draft document (as long as they don't rip up the whole thing), then negotiators can go back to the drawing board.
As I've mentioned before, the EU is clearly more relaxed about timing - as long as a deal is signed before March - than Theresa May at this stage.
You get the feeling that the current sense of pressure and urgency is designed to help the UK prime minister at home.
Storm clouds surrounded her once again last weekend, with cabinet minister Jo Johnson resigning and mutterings of potential mutiny from Brexiteer and Remainer conservative MPs, never mind the Labour Party and the DUP plotting over the eventual Brexit parliamentary vote.
It looked (once again) like the whole thing could unravel on the UK side.
Brussels has repeatedly told Mrs May that - as long as they could agree on the details of a deal amongst themselves - the EU would help her present it however she wished in order to help her sell the package back home.
I think now is one of those moments, which would explain why Brussels kept so silent on Tuesday night - such a politically sensitive night in the UK.
One of my high-level EU contacts even sent me an emoji with a closed zip instead of a mouth - to indicate that he couldn't talk.
These are hours for Downing Street to spin.
This is not to say that the EU is completely chilled about the appearance of a draft Brexit deal - played down to me by a Brussels contact as a "mutual understanding" between EU and UK negotiators.
That's a reminder that this is a technical draft - not yet a political agreement.
While all eyes on Wednesday will be on Number 10 Downing Street and the reaction of the UK cabinet, the governments of all 27 EU countries and the European parliament also want to get their eyes and their mitts on all 500 pages of the document ASAP.
Of key interest to them: the compromise wording over the backstop, that insurance policy for the Irish border.
They, and Ireland in particular, will be relieved to see something Brexiteers will not like at all - that the EU will decide alongside the UK if and when the backstop arrangements need to kick in and also when they can be terminated and superseded by a new EU-UK trade deal.
They will also note that the all-UK customs union with the EU outlined as part of the backstop will be deeper with Northern Ireland than with the rest of the UK. This will be hard for the DUP to swallow.
More important to EU heavyweights France and Germany - and others that trade closely with the UK like Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands - will be to examine the small print of the backstop customs union to ensure the UK would have no competitive advantage over them.
I've spoken to diplomats who worry the European Commission was in such a hurry to get this draft Brexit deal document ready to Theresa May's timetable, that the priorities of some EU member states may have been overlooked.
France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain for example won't be happy that fishing rights in UK waters do not seem to appear in the text.
European capitals want a minimum of seven to 10 days to pore over the draft with a fine-tooth comb.
So, could there still be a special Brexit deal summit called this month as Theresa May so hopes?
It's not impossible - 25 November is being spoken about as a potential date.
Later on Wednesday as the UK cabinet meets in London, the 27 EU ambassadors will gather in Brussels.
To be discussed: the draft Brexit deal, the possibility of a November summit and - as a clear indication of the current uncertainty - ongoing contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit.

Europe's leaders feel they have already lost far too much political time on Brexit.
Again today, Prime Minister Theresa May heads to Paris and Berlin for talks with Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel - this after a number of phone calls on Monday with other EU leaders - with little up her sleeve or in her pocket to share with them.
But far from showing impatience (OK, Berlin and Paris would have been happy with a call rather than a more time-consuming visit), EU leaders have welcomed being in contact with Mrs May ahead of Wednesday's Brexit summit.
She doesn't have a great track record for "getting the tone right on the night" at EU gatherings. And with a no-deal Brexit looming this Friday, the EU thinks this is no time for misunderstandings.
There is little European expectation that cross-party talks with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn will come to fruition this week - if ever.
So, EU leaders are curious to hear the prime minister's Plan B. They hope there is one, although they're not convinced.
They want to know, if they say yes to another Brexit extension, what it will be used for.
And they suspect Theresa May wants them to do her dirty work for her. EU diplomatic sources I have spoken to suggest the prime minister may have officially asked the EU for a short new extension (until 30 June) as that was politically easier for her back home, whereas she believed and hoped (the theory goes) that EU leaders would insist instead on a flexible long extension that she actually needs.
The bottom line is: EU leaders are extremely unlikely to refuse to further extend the Brexit process.
France's Emmanuel Macron has been built up in the press (and he has done much to encourage this image) as the Brexit villain who could veto an extension and force no deal on Friday.
But, while possible, it is unlikely. There is no EU appetite for a chaotic Brexit. And while President Macron relishes playing bad cop, he alone will not want to be responsible for the effects of no deal in Calais and on the Irish border.
The first is bad for France, the other for Ireland (Mr Macron spoke of his solidarity with Ireland while in Dublin only last week) and for the EU as a whole - with a threat to the integrity of the single market along the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after a no-deal Brexit.
Rather than vetoing an extension altogether, Mr Macron is more likely to push for tough conditions to any new Brexit delay, These are:
It's hard to see how the two last conditions could be made legally enforceable. But demanding "tough conditions" has as much to do with Mr Macron putting on his Defender of Europe hat for a wide audience, as anything else.
Aside from extension conditions, EU leaders are still split over how long any new Brexit delay could or should be.
Some feel a short extension would keep up the pressure on MPs to finally come to a Brexit conclusion. Others favour a longer extension - nine months to a year but with the UK able to duck out early after parliament ratifies a Brexit deal (the so-called "flextension").
Bear in mind, EU leaders are beginning to lose credibility at home for allowing the Brexit can to be constantly kicked down the road. Uncertainty is costly for European businesses too.
The Belgian prime minister has asked an inner core of countries most affected by Brexit - including Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and France - to meet a couple of hours before the summit on Wednesday starts to try to iron out some of their differences ahead of time.

EU leaders have agreed to move Brexit talks on to the second phase but called for "further clarity" from the UK about the future relationship it wants.
The first issue to be discussed, early next year, will be the details of an expected two-year transition period after the UK's exit in March 2019.
Talks on trade and security co-operation are set to follow in March.
Theresa May hailed an "important step" on the road but Germany's Angela Merkel said it would get "even tougher".
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, broke the news that the 27 EU leaders were happy to move on to phase two after they met in Brussels.
He congratulated Mrs May on reaching this stage and said the EU would begin internal preparations for the next phase right now as well as "exploratory contacts with the UK to get more clarity on their vision".
While securing a deal in time for the UK's exit in March 2019 was realistic, he suggested that the next phase would be "more challenging and more demanding".
Mrs May said the two sides would begin discussions on future relations straight away and hoped for "rapid progress" on a transitional phase to "give certainty" to business.
"This is an important step on the road to delivering the smooth and orderly Brexit that people voted for in June 2016," she said.
"The UK and EU have shown what can be achieved with commitment and perseverance on both sides."
Labour's international trade spokesman, Barry Gardiner, welcomed the move forward, but said it would be a "real problem" for business if the EU didn't start talking trade for a further three months.
He also said his party would not put a time limit on a post-Brexit transition phase, as the expected two-year period would be "extremely tight".
The EU has published its guidelines for phase two of the negotiations, with discussions on future economic co-operation not likely to begin until March.
The three-page document says the UK will remain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and be required to permit freedom of movement during any transition period.
And agreements on the Irish border, the so-called divorce bill and the rights of EU and UK citizens, agreed by Mrs May last Friday, must be "respected in full and translated faithfully into legal terms as quickly as possible".
The document says: "As the UK will continue to participate in the customs union and the single market during the transition, it will have to continue to comply with EU trade policy."
While the EU is willing to engage in "preliminary and preparatory discussions" on trade as part of building a "close partnership" after the UK's departure, this means any formal agreement "can only be finalised and concluded once the UK has become a third country".
By the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg
After the six months she has had, Theresa May might be entitled to breathe a sigh of relief, as the European Council officially declared that the first phase of our long goodbye from the European Union is over.
Stand back from the daily dramas and perhaps it was always bound to happen.
Both sides are committed to getting an agreement.
The EU and the UK both want a deal to be done, and while there has, inevitably, been grumpiness on both sides, they have, in the main, dealt with each other in good faith.
The document "calls on the UK to provide further clarity on its position on the framework for the future relationship".
But in a passage added during the past week, it invites the EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to "continue internal preparatory discussions" on future relations rather than having to wait until March to do so.
Sources have told the BBC that the government is highly likely to accept an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill next week to see off another potential Commons defeat for Theresa May.
Conservative rebels have been concerned about plans to put the Brexit date and time - 11pm on 29 March 2019 - into law.
Backbenchers, including former minister Oliver Letwin, have tabled an amendment, suggesting a change to the legislation.
Ministers are likely to accept their plan, which is a change that some of the potential rebels have been asking for, the BBC understands.
Senior sources are confident they can see off a defeat, after No 10 said there were no plans to take the date out of the bill.
Responding to the reports, Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer wrote on Twitter: "After a car-crash defeat on Brexit vote, rumours that PM will now U-turn on gimmick exit day amendment: forced to get a Tory MP to amend her own amendment before its put to the vote!"
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU's initial priority was to "formalise the agreement" that had already been reached before moving forward, adding "the second phase will be significantly harder and the first was very difficult".
Praising Mrs May as a "tough, smart and polite" negotiator, he said he was "entirely convinced" that the final agreement reached would be approved by the UK and European Parliaments.
Giving his response, French President Emmanuel Macron said that in moving forward the EU had maintained its unity, protected the integrity of the single market and ensured "compliance with our own rules".
Mrs May is set to discuss her vision of the "end state" for the UK outside the EU at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, having suffered her first Commons Brexit defeat earlier this week.

EU leaders have pulled apart the UK's Brexit proposals, accusing Boris Johnson of putting forward untested ideas to solve the Irish border crisis.
Chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU needed workable solutions "today not tomorrow".
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told MEPs that while he would "not exclude" a deal in the coming days, progress had been limited.
Mr Johnson has said he remains "cautiously optimistic" about a deal.
He will meet his Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, on Thursday to try and break the deadlock, while continuing to insist the UK will leave on 31 October with or without an agreement.
In Westminster, meanwhile, a group of Conservative MPs has been demanding assurances from the PM that he will not take the party into the next general election - whenever it comes - on a straightforward promise to leave with no deal.
And earlier, it emerged MPs would be called to Parliament for a special Saturday sitting on 19 October - the day after a crunch EU summit, which is seen as the last chance for a deal ahead of the Halloween deadline.
The UK put forward fresh proposals for a Brexit deal last week, but so far the reaction from the EU has not been encouraging.
Updating MEPs on the state of talks, Mr Barnier said he believed "with goodwill" on both sides there could be an agreement in the run-up to the summit.
But he said "to put things very frankly and to try to be objective, we are not really in a position where we are able to find an agreement".
As it stood, he said, the UK was proposing replacing an "operable, practical and legal solution" to avoid a hard Irish border with "one that is simply a temporary solution".
Mr Barnier said the UK's suggested alternative to the Irish backstop - which would see customs checks conducted away from the border at business premises or electronically - "had not been tested" and was "largely based" on exemptions for small businesses and technology that "has yet to be developed".
"We need operational real controls, credible controls, we are talking about the credibility of the single market here - its credulity to consumers, to companies, and to third counties that we have agreements with."
Mr Barnier also questioned the viability of the UK's proposals to give the Northern Ireland Assembly a veto over whether it aligned with EU single market rules for goods from 2021 onwards and whether to diverge from them in the future.
However, he did confirm the two sides were looking at "a more important role" for the Northern Irish political institutions.
Under Mr Johnson's proposals, which he calls a "broad landing zone" for a new deal with the EU:
Mr Juncker, meanwhile, took a swipe at the UK in the wake of a political row over the details of Tuesday's phone call between Mr Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Following the call, a No 10 source claimed the German leader had said a deal based on the UK's proposals was "overwhelmingly unlikely" and made new demands which made an agreement "essentially impossible".
"We remain in discussion with the UK," Mr Juncker said. "Personally I don't exclude a deal. I do not accept this blame game that started in London."
During a sometimes bad-tempered debate in the European Parliament, former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, accused Mr Johnson of treating those seeking to prevent a no-deal Brexit as "traitors, collaborators and surrenderers".
"The reason this is happening is very simple. It is a blame game. A blame game against everybody - against the EU, against Ireland, against Mrs Merkel, against the British judicial system, against Labour, against the Lib Dems, even against Mrs May," he said.
"The only person who is not being blamed is Mr Johnson apparently. All the rest are part of the problem."
Lib Dem MEP Jane Brophy urged the EU to give the UK as long an extension as possible to allow time for a general election and a referendum.
But Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage suggested Brussels was no longer negotiating in "good faith" and the UK was fed up with being "talked down to and insulted" by EU leaders.
"You are not looking for solutions. You are looking to put obstacles in our way."
Mr Farage also suggested a no-deal Brexit would be a "winning ticket" at a future general election - a prospect which has reportedly caused some disquiet among Conservative MPs.
At a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with a group of One Nation Tories - led by ex-minister Damian Green - the PM was told that dozens of his MPs would not be willing to support a straightforward manifesto promise to leave without a deal if there was a snap election before the end of the year.
Mr Johnson sought to reassure them he was still very much focused on getting a deal.
But the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said while no decision had been taken, she understood a future manifesto could include a promise to leave with an agreement if possible, alongside a vow to leave anyway "within days or weeks" if the Tories won a Commons majority and there was no chance of a deal.
The prime minister has said he is determined the UK will leave the EU on 31 October, despite legislation, known as the Benn Act, which requires him to write to Brussels requesting a further delay if a deal is not signed off by Parliament by 19 October - or unless MPs agree to a no-deal Brexit.
Scottish judges decided on Wednesday to delay a decision on whether to sign the letter if Mr Johnson refused to do so, saying instead they would wait until the political debate had "played out".
Elsewhere, there was anger among some Brexiteers after European Parliament President David Sassoli met Commons Speaker John Bercow in London.
A statement after the meeting from Mr Sassoli said they both "fully agreed on the important role that our parliaments play in the Brexit process" and the European institution would support any request from the UK for an extension.
Mr Farage said it was "disgraceful" the pair had "agreed to work to prevent a no-deal Brexit".
Conservative MP Marcus Fysh said it was "so far beyond his (Mr Bercow's) constitutional role" and accused him of "colluding with a foreign power".

EU leaders have dismissed talk of renegotiating the draft Brexit deal and warned the UK's political situation could make a "no-deal" more likely.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was "no question" of reopening talks as a document was "on the table".
Meanwhile French PM Edouard Philippe said there was a need to prepare for a no-deal because of UK "uncertainty".
The EU has set out a series of meetings leading up to 25 November when it plans to approve the Brexit agreement.
However leaders admit that there is still much ground to cover after the UK Prime Minister Theresa May won backing on Wednesday from her cabinet for the 585-page draft agreement.
"We still have a long road ahead of us on both sides," the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said.
On Thursday, Mrs Merkel said she was pleased that progress had been made.
But following news of resignations from Mrs May's cabinet, including the UK's Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, she said it was possible that Britain may still leave without a deal.
She also said that there was no appetite for further talks on possible amendments to the current agreement.
"We have a document on the table that Britain and the EU 27 have agreed to, so for me there is no question at the moment whether we negotiate further," she said.
Mr Philippe appeared to echo her sentiment over UK political uncertainty.
"It will escape no-one that the current political situation in Britain could fuel uncertainty... over the ratification of the accord," he said.
The European Parliament's Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt said the deal had been hammered out after two years of "intense negotiations" and he hoped UK MPs would accept that "there is not a lot of room [for] manoeuvre to say, 'OK, let's start again'".
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the deal was "good news for the French economy" but also issued caution, saying the UK must be made to respect all EU rules.
Analysis by BBC Europe editor, Katya Adler
The EU knows there is a very real possibility the Brexit deal could be voted down by the UK Parliament in a few weeks' time.
I put the question to Michel Barnier on Wednesday night at his press conference - but, skilled politician that he is, he refused to engage.
Brussels is very keen indeed not to give the impression that the EU might change or come up with a "better" Brexit deal text if this one ends up being rejected in the House of Commons.
Mr Barnier quoted Theresa May as saying that this is a deal in the UK's interest.
Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila tweeted to say that while Wednesday's developments were important, "decisions on both sides are still needed for a final agreement".
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he was "very pleased" and "optimistic", adding: "We are pinning our hopes on it."
Speaking on Thursday alongside EU Council head Donald Tusk, Mr Barnier said the agreement was fair and balanced, took into account the UK's needs and laid the ground for an "ambitious new partnership".
Mr Tusk praised Mr Barnier's work and said the agreement had "secured the interests of the 27 member states and EU as a whole".
He laid out the timetable for the days ahead.
Mr Tusk said: "Since the very beginning, we have had no doubt that Brexit is a lose-lose situation, and that our negotiations are only about damage control."
Addressing the UK, he added: "As much as I am sad to see you leave, I will do everything to make this farewell the least painful possible, for you and for us."
Mr Barnier later took the document to the European Parliament. Its president, Antonio Tajani, said MEPs would vote on the deal in early 2019.
If the agreement is approved by both sides, a 21-month transition period will kick in, during which a trade deal and the thorny issue of how to ensure there is no physical border between Northern Ireland - part of the UK - and the Republic of Ireland will need to be worked out.
A smooth border-free exchange underpins the peace deal that ended the Northern Ireland conflict.

EU leaders head into this weekend with a heavy heart. They know, in theory, that all Brexit options remain on the table and they haven't entirely given up hope of a negotiated UK departure, but there is little trust here that the prime minister or Parliament will manage to pull it off.
Despite all the drama, the money and time spent by EU leaders on Brexit over the last two years (summits, dedicated governmental departments, no-deal planning), all the hard, hard graft put in by the EU and UK negotiating teams, Europe's leaders are asking themselves what there is to show for it all.
Ongoing Brexit divisions in parliament, in government and in Theresa May's cabinet were on screaming technicolour display again last week.
EU leaders used to use the threat of a no-deal Brexit as a negotiating tactic (as did the UK). They now believe it to be a very real prospect.
That has led to a number of countries - notably France - questioning the logic of delaying Brexit for much longer.
They wonder if the UK will ever unite around a Brexit Way Forward -  be it a softer Brexit, no deal or no Brexit.
Would a Brexit extension, allowing for a general election or a second referendum, really settle the issue, they ask?
Or will the EU and UK end up in a no deal scenario anyway, after countless extra months of agonising (and costly) uncertainty?
France's President Macron - suffering from sagging popularity ratings at home - is hell-bent on breathing life in to the European project.
He is far from excited at the idea of having a recalcitrant UK - with 8.5 toes already out of the club - overshadowing proceedings for the immediate future.
In the next few months, the EU holds decisive elections for the European parliament, where populist nationalists are predicted to make a strong showing. New European Commission and European Council presidents will need to be chosen and the next EU budget should be  decided this autumn. The French president is not alone in worrying that an in-the-process-of leaving UK could throw a spanner in the works if it so chose.
This is not to say that the answer will be no if the prime minister comes to the emergency Brexit summit of EU leaders on 10 April, asking for a longer delay.
But there is a lively debate right now in EU circles about the virtue of granting the UK (by law all EU countries must come to a unanimous decision) a longer Brexit delay vs no deal in April or May. Of course no deal would be costly for the EU too, but for some, it's beginning to look like the best of a bunch of bad options.
Treating a no-deal Brexit as a looming, very real possibility, rather than a distant, highly unlikely prospect, is making the EU take a long, hard look at its own no-deal planning.
At every opportunity, in press statements and tweets, EU leaders boast that they are fully prepared- but that is not entirely true.
Some countries and businesses are better prepared than others, but there are two hot potato political issues that - up until now - EU leaders have shied away from confronting.
No longer.
Spain is now being told to stop trying to score points - however small - over Gibraltar. Madrid's insistence on describing the Rock as a UK colony has held up finalising a document ensuring EU-wide, visa-free travel for UK citizens throughout the EU in case of no deal.
But the EU's main no deal planning concern is the Irish border.
Leaders are beginning to lean on Dublin now to finesse its plans for the border with Northern Ireland in case of a no deal Brexit. The Irish government has kept plans vague until now because the idea of border checks is politically so sensitive on the island. But Brussels believes checks and some physical infrastructure will be needed, even if it's away from the border itself.
Germany's Angela Merkel is scheduled to fly to Dublin next week.
Whatever happens with Brexit, she and other European leaders want to make sure their single market will be protected.

EU leaders have urged Theresa May to do more to break the deadlock in the Brexit negotiations as they gather at a crunch Brussels summit.
Dutch PM Mark Rutte said "a lot more clarity" on the UK's financial offer was needed before talks could progress.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there were "encouraging" signs but that progress so far was "not sufficient" to open trade talks.
However, Mrs Merkel suggested this could happen in December.
Mrs May, who has called for "urgency" in reaching agreement on the issue of citizens' rights, will address EU leaders at the summit later.
At a meeting on Friday, at which the UK will not be present, the 27 leaders are expected to conclude officially that "insufficient progress" has been made on the first topics for discussion to move onto the second phase of trade discussions.
These topics are citizens' rights, the UK's financial obligation and the border in Northern Ireland.
The UK prime minister spoke of her desire for a future partnership with the EU as she arrived in Brussels, but added: "We'll also be looking at the concrete progress that has been made in our exit negotiations and setting out ambitious plans for the weeks ahead.
"I particularly, for example, want to see an urgency in reaching an agreement on citizens' rights."
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Rutte said he welcomed the PM's recent speech in Florence, where she set out what she has described as a "bold and ambitious agenda".
But he said she needed to make "absolutely clear" what she was offering to do in relationship to the UK's financial obligations towards the EU.
"Maybe it's not possible now to name a number but at least to come up with a methodology, a system, a complete proposal to solve this issue," he said.
"As long as that is not happening I don't see how we can move forward."
Analysis by Europe correspondent Kevin Connolly
The October summit was always the first date in the EU calendar on which a gathering of the 27 heads of government could declare themselves satisfied with the Brexit divorce negotiations and agree to start talking about trade.
It's been clear for weeks that they won't do that - but they will offer the UK some encouragement by starting internal discussions about future trade with the UK - ready for any breakthrough at the next summit in December.
Theresa May isn't expected to make any big new proposal in her after-dinner remarks but to underline the quality of the financial offer made in her speech in Florence - worth around £20bn.
The EU side wants more though - more money as well as further movement on citizens rights and the Irish border.
There are almost as many predictions about what happens next as there are diplomats in Brussels; one has suggested that the prospects of a December breakthrough are no better than fifty-fifty but an official close to the talks said the signal on Brexit from this summit would be fundamentally positive.
Before leaving for Brussels, Mrs May used a Facebook post to offer further assurances to the three million or so nationals of other EU countries living in the UK and uncertain about their future after Brexit.
In the open letter, which was also mailed to 100,000 EU nationals, she said those who already had permanent residence would be able to "swap this" for settled status in as hassle-free a way as possible.
The process of applying for permanent residency, for which EU nationals are eligible after five years, has long been criticised as cumbersome and overly bureaucratic. At one point, it involved filling out an 85-page form.
In simplifying it, Mrs May said she was committed to putting "people first" in the negotiations and expected British nationals living on the continent to be treated in the same way.
"I know both sides will consider each other's proposals with an open mind and with flexibility and creativity on both sides, I am confident we can conclude discussions on citizens' rights in the coming weeks," she said.
Nicolas Hatton, of the 3million pressure group formed to fight for the rights of EU nationals in the UK, described the PM's statement as "very positive", but said its timing was "a bit more dubious".
"We should have received that letter maybe 12 months ago so we would not have felt so anxious about our future" he said, adding: "I think the letter was actually addressed to EU leaders."
Meanwhile a group of pro-Brexit Tory and Labour politicians - including former Chancellor Lord Lawson, former Conservative minister Owen Paterson and Labour MP Kate Hoey - is urging Mrs May to walk away from negotiations this week if the EU does not accommodate the UK's wishes.
In the event of no progress at Thursday's meeting, the letter, organised by the Leave Means Leave campaign, says Mrs May should formally declare the UK is working on the assumption it will be reverting to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules on 30 March 2019.
Mr Paterson told the Today programme the UK should not be "terrified" of leaving the EU without a deal in place, saying this appeared "inevitable at the moment" due to the EU's "complete obsession with money" - the so-called Brexit divorce bill.
But Labour's Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, said it would be "irresponsible" to threaten to walk away with the talks only at "phase one".
He added that Labour was not "duty bound" to support any deal the PM secures with Brussels.
Sir Keir and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are also in Brussels for their own talks with EU officials.

EU leaders have gathered in Brussels for a meeting where they are expected to rubber stamp the Brexit transition deal and clear the way for trade talks.
Theresa May said she looked forward to it being endorsed so they could "move on swiftly" to talks about the future UK-EU relationship, including trade.
The EU's Donald Tusk said he had recommended EU leaders welcome the 21-month period "in practice".
But the PM is under pressure not to concede any further on UK fishing.
Arriving in Brussels she said: "I'm looking forward to talking about Brexit. We made considerable progress through the agreement on the implementation period, which will bring certainty to businesses and people.
"I look forward to the European Council endorsing that agreement and moving on swiftly to talk about the future partnership that we all want to build together."
The UK is set to leave the 27-nation bloc on 29 March 2019, but earlier this week Brexit Secretary David Davis and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier struck a deal that would allow for a transition period - which the UK government describes as an implementation period - until December 2020.
Under the terms of that joint legal text, the UK will be able to negotiate, sign and ratify its own trade deals, while EU citizens arriving in the UK will enjoy the same rights and guarantees as those who arrive before Brexit.
To the dismay of some of her Conservative MPs, the UK will effectively remain in the Common Fisheries Policy until the end of 2020, while a solution to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland has yet to be agreed, with the EU insisting on a "backstop" option of Northern Ireland effectively remaining in the customs union and parts of the single market.
The prime minister told the Commons that for the first time in 40 years, Britain would be able to "forge our own way by negotiation our own trade agreements".
However, she faces warnings that the deal could be scuppered by her own MPs unless she tears up "unacceptable" proposals for fishing.
Some 14 of the PM's backbench parliamentary allies - 13 Conservatives and one DUP MP - have signed a joint letter denouncing the draft deal agreed by the government earlier this week.
One of those, the DUP's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson, said Scottish, Northern Irish and English MPs with coastal communities had laid down a "marker" with the prime minister.
He said she needed to make "it quite clear that after the transition period we will have total control of our waters and we'll no long allow the EU to plunder our fishing grounds".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the fishing issue "doesn't feel like an enormous problem" at this moment but "the prime minister doesn't have a majority on her own and if enough of the DUP and enough of those new Scottish MPs really do threaten trouble further down the tracks, she may have no choice but to listen".
Meanwhile, Mr Tusk took to Twitter to urge the other 27 EU leaders to welcome, in principle, the agreement on transition and other matters at a session expected to take place on Friday.
"In practice, the transition phase will allow to delay [sic] all the negative consequences of Brexit by another 21 months," he wrote.
He told reporters he was "absolutely sure" the two sides would find a last solution to prevent the return of physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The Irish government has insisted the UK has provided a "cast-iron guarantee" that will ensure no physical infrastructure, checks or controls at the border after withdrawal.
A written declaration issued by the European Council on the eve of the summit called for "intensified efforts on the remaining withdrawal issues, as well as issues related to the territorial application of the Withdrawal Agreement, notably as regards Gibraltar, and reiterates that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".
There have been complications over the British overseas territory, which will leave the EU on the same day as the UK, in the run-up to Thursday's meeting.
At the UK's request, Gibraltar was specifically mentioned in the transition text but Spain, which maintains a long-standing sovereignty claim, subsequently sought reassurances that its interests would be protected.
Also on Friday, the EU is set to adopt guidelines for its negotiations over its future permanent post-Brexit relationship with the UK.

The heads of the European Commission and Council - Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel - have signed the Withdrawal Agreement, ahead of the UK's exit from the EU on 31 January.
The Queen approved it on Thursday, and next Wednesday the European Parliament is expected to vote for it too.
The UK has agreed to abide by EU rules during a transition period until the end of the year. By 2021 the UK aims to have agreed a deal on future ties.
Brexit ends 46 years in the EU club.
After the document was signed in Brussels it was taken to Downing Street by EU and UK officials, for signing by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, due later on Friday. The agreement will then travel back to Brussels, and a copy of it will remain in London.
Next week's European Parliament vote is seen as all but a formality, after it was backed by the parliament's constitutional affairs committee on Thursday.
Mrs von der Leyen and other senior EU figures are sceptical about the UK government's plan to negotiate a comprehensive deal on future relations before the end of 2020. They believe the timetable for that is too tight.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson is upbeat, insisting the UK can now move forward after years of wrangling over Brexit.
Charles Michel, the former Belgian Prime Minister who chairs EU summits, said in a tweet "things will inevitably change but our friendship will remain.
"We start a new chapter as partners and allies."
The EU Commission official who spent more than three years negotiating Brexit - Michel Barnier - stood behind the two EU leaders at the low-key signing ceremony.
Earlier Mr Johnson said "at times it felt like we would never cross the Brexit finish line, but we've done it.
"Now we can put the rancour and division of the past three years behind us and focus on delivering a bright, exciting future - with better hospitals and schools, safer streets and opportunity spread to every corner of our country."
MPs overruled an attempt by the House of Lords to secure additional rights, including for unaccompanied child refugees, in the Withdrawal Agreement.

The EU's 27 other leaders have met without the UK's Theresa May to discuss their Brexit negotiation plans.
They met informally at the European Council summit in Brussels amid tensions over the handling of talks.
Downing Street said Mrs May had not sought to be present at that meeting and it showed the EU was facing up to the reality that the UK was leaving.
It comes as the UK government plays down a suggestion that negotiating a UK-EU trade deal could take 10 years.
The BBC understands the UK's senior diplomat in the EU warned ministers that the European consensus was that a deal might not be done until the early to mid-2020s.
Arriving in Brussels, Mrs May was asked about the 10-year claim, but concentrated her answer on the subject of immigration, which is what the EU leaders have focused on during a chunk of their one-day summit.
She added that a smooth UK exit from the EU was "not just in our interests, it's in the interests of the the rest of Europe as well".
Despite her absence from the later, informal meeting, Downing Street said Mrs May would play a full role in talks on other issues such as Syria.
This was echoed by European Parliament president Martin Schulz, who told the 28 leaders the UK would still enjoy the "rights and benefits" of EU membership while still fulfilling its "duties".
At the summit, the leaders discussed controlling mass migration into Europe, the EU's relationship with Ukraine, co-operation with Nato and economic matters.
Speaking afterwards, Mrs May said they had also discussed "the appalling situation in Syria".
"We heard from the mayor of eastern Aleppo, he had one plea for us - to allow the safe evacuation of the people in the city," she said.
"President Assad and his backers - Russia and Iran - bear responsibility for the tragedy in Aleppo, they must now allow the United Nations to ensure the safe evacuation of the civilians who are left there.
"The UK is going to provide a further £20m of practical support for those who are most vulnerable. The mayor of eastern Aleppo said to us: 'We can't bring back those we have lost, but we can save those who remain.' And that is what we must now do."
The UK is to send a further 40 officials to Greece to try to speed up asylum claims from Iraqis, Afghans and Eritreans arriving there, in an effort to deter others from coming.
There are already 70 UK caseworkers "experienced" in dealing with the return of asylum-seekers taking part in the trial scheme.
The UK is pressing for more EU-wide action to tackle economic migration at its source, working with countries such as Libya and Egypt to help control their borders.
Mrs May has also held bilateral meetings with the leaders of Latvia and Lithuania as well as the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz.
One of the issues to be discussed by the 27 non-UK EU leaders is who will lead their negotiating team, amid tensions between the different EU institutions.
It is expected to be former EU Commissioner Michel Barnier who is in charge of the European Commission's Brexit team.
Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, who is leading the European Parliament's Brexit taskforce, claimed it could start separate negotiations with the UK unless EU leaders take "its role seriously".
He warned the European Commission not to "sideline" the Parliament.
Mrs May spoke to the new Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni on Wednesday. She has already held face-to-face talks with 23 EU leaders to brief them on the UK's intentions after June's referendum vote to leave the EU.
The prime minister also spoke to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, who confirmed she would update the rest of the EU on the UK's preparations.
A senior EU official said that, by the end of the summit, the 27 would be "procedurally prepared" for the negotiations and there was a consensus that although the process would be led by the Commission, it would be "controlled" by the member states.
It said the 27 were sticking to the principle of "no negotiation without notification", meaning talks could only begin once the UK triggered Article 50.

Low-skilled migration will fall when the UK ends EU free movement access after Brexit, Theresa May has promised.
The prime minister said high-skilled workers would be prioritised with no preferential treatment for people from the EU compared with those from the rest of the world.
But she said a future trade deal with the EU could include an agreement on "mobility" of each other's workers.
Business groups expressed alarm about a crackdown on low-skilled workers.
The Confederation of British Industry said it would make a shortage of care, construction and hospitality workers worse, adding: "Restricting access to the workers the UK needs is self-defeating."
The British Retail Consortium said the policy should be based on the economy's needs rather an "arbitrarily" drawing a line based on salaries or skills.
And Labour said the government was making a "dubious distinction" between low and high-skilled workers - saying care workers were technically "low-skilled" but were "vital to our society".
As it stands, EU freedom of movement allows people from the European Economic Area - all EU countries, as well as Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein - plus Switzerland, to travel and work in the UK without visas, regardless of skills.
For the rest of the world, specific categories of visas are needed to come and work or study in the UK, including one for "skilled workers" - who usually have to earn at least £30,000 and have a job offer.
Currently, no "Tier 3" - low-skilled labour - visas are being given out. The UK defines low skilled roles as ones which do not require post-16 education or more than a short period of on-the-job training.
The post-Brexit immigration plans follow a recommendation by the Migration Advisory Committee, which was also backed by Labour.
The cabinet agreed to the committee's recommendations last week, and a White Paper setting out the details is promised in the autumn.
Under the proposals:
"The new skills-based system will make sure low-skilled immigration is brought down and set the UK on the path to reduce immigration to sustainable levels, as we promised," Mrs May said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she said free movement would end "once and for all" once the UK leaves the EU.
Asked whether exemptions would be made for industries requiring high levels of unskilled labour, she said the plan would recognise "the further needs of the economy" but that there would not be "lots of exemptions" for different sectors.
And asked whether tourists would face extra bureaucracy when they visit EU countries, she said she hoped this would be dealt with in the course of the negotiations with the EU.
The new system would aim to bring net migration to "sustainable levels", she promised - which she has defined as being below 100,000, a target the Tories set years ago but have never met.
The EU's view
The European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt said the EU would not accept a UK immigration system that discriminated based on skills and job type - and that's the centre-piece of Mrs May's proposal.
But it is not clear the extent to which the two sides will ever negotiate over this issue: the Brexit talks so far have been about the rights of people who have already moved and the negotiations about a future trade deal are likely to be about tourists, students and businesspeople - known in the jargon as "mobility" rather than immigration.
In typical fastidious fashion Michel Barnier's team has already thought about all of this, giving a presentation to diplomats in February which said that UK migrants to the EU would be treated like citizens from anywhere else after Brexit.
In a BBC Breakfast TV interview which also covered broader Brexit policy, Mrs May brushed off suggestions that there would have to be a general election or a referendum on any deal struck with the EU:
The government has already announced the rights of EU citizens already living and working in the UK would be safeguarded after Brexit.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, Home Secretary Sajid Javid told them: "Deal or no deal, we want you to stay. We need you to stay. You can stay."
Mr Javid said the UK had an "incredible opportunity" to set out an immigration system "without being constrained by the EU".
The new rules would be "based on merit", he said, promising a system that "That judges people not by where they are from, but on what they can do".
In his conference speech, Mr Javid also said he would raise the standard of English required for people wanting to become British citizens and reform the official 'Life in the UK' test to make it better reflect British values.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator, said the EU would not accept a system "based on discrimination of skills and nationality".
British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson told the BBC it did not make sense to have separate rules for low and high-skilled workers.
"We shouldn't be thinking about it like that, we should be thinking about what it is the economy needs and, from a retail industry point of view, what it is that we as consumers need in our day-to-day lives in buying the products that we are taking for granted," she said.
CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn said the latest proposals had "taken a wrong turn".
"By dismissing the importance of low skilled workers to the UK economy, the government risks harming businesses and living standards now and in the future."
Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith predicted the UK benefits system would remain a "massive pull factor" for unskilled workers coming from the EU to compete with Britons.
Asked about the warnings of shortages in sectors like care homes if this was cut, he said investment in new technology to monitor people in their own homes was needed to reduce dependency on cheap labour.
Alp Mehmet, of the Migration Watch UK campaign group, claimed the proposals were "not likely" to cut net migration because EU migration would be replaced with arrivals from the rest of the world.
"That's taking your foot off the brake and frankly slipping onto the accelerator," he said.

The EU's top Brexit negotiator has said there are still major differences between the EU and UK on the rights of EU citizens living in Britain.
"The British position does not allow those persons concerned to continue to live their lives as they do today," Michel Barnier said.
Mr Barnier said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) must have jurisdiction to guarantee citizens' rights.
He also said it was essential that the UK recognise its financial obligations.
If Britain did not accept it had some financial obligations, there would be no basis to discuss other issues, he said.
Ahead of the second round of talks next week, Mr Barnier said the EU had made its stance on the issues clear and was waiting on Britain to do the same.
"Our team is ready," he said. " I'm ready. I'm very prepared and willing to work on this very quickly - night and day, the weekend."
"We want EU citizens in Britain to have the same rights as British citizens who live in the EU," he told a news conference.
That would require the ECJ to be the "ultimate guarantor" of those rights, he said, because Britain could simply change its laws later, creating uncertainty.
UK law also imposes restrictions in areas such as reuniting families across borders, he said - something which was not applied to UK citizens living in Spain, for example.
Adam Fleming, BBC News, Brussels
Michel Barnier's message to the UK was: it's time to get a move on, to provide more clarity about the British position on a range of issues.
"As soon as possible," was his request, with the EU's chief negotiator joking that he was willing to work over the weekend and on Friday, which is a bank holiday in his native France.
The biggest sticking point appears to be the EU's insistence that Britain settles its outstanding financial obligations. Asked about Boris Johnson's suggestion on Tuesday that the EU could "go whistle", he joked that the only sound he could hear was a clock ticking.
There was copious evidence of the Barnier charm - but he was happy to turn on the menace, repeating several times that the UK would have to face the "consequences" of its choice to depart the EU.
Trying to sound eminently reasonable, he denied that his demand for a financial payment was a "ransom" or a "punishment."
Mr Barnier also said that those rights - along with the "divorce payment" and border issues - must be dealt with before future UK-EU trade could be discussed.
The financial payment the EU says will be owed to cover the UK's commitments is also a key point for Mr Barnier. Estimates have put the amount at anywhere from €60bn to €100bn (£53-89bn).
Asked about UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's comment that the EU could "go whistle" over the demand, Mr Barnier replied: "I'm not hearing any whistling. Just the clock ticking."
He denied that the EU was holding the UK government to ransom, and said it was simply a matter of "trust".
"It is not an exit bill, it is not a ransom - we won't ask for anything else than what the UK has committed to as a member," he said.
Mr Barnier also announced he would meet other key politicians on Thursday who were not part of Theresa May's government - including opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, representatives from the House of Lords, and the first ministers of Scotland and Wales.
"I have always made clear that I will listen to different points on view in the British debate," he said.
"Of course, I will only negotiate with the UK government," he added.

The UK will have to reach a Brexit deal by October 2018, according to the EU's chief negotiator for Brexit.
Michel Barnier told reporters that "time will be short" for negotiations because the proposed deal needed to be ratified as part of the two year process set to be triggered in March.
He said the UK could not "cherry pick" on issues such as the single market.
Earlier, UK Prime Minister Theresa May told the BBC she was aiming for a "red, white and blue Brexit" for the UK.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Mr Barnier said a taskforce of 30 people had been set up to make sure the EU would "be ready" when Article 50 was called.
"Time will be short," he said. "It is clear the period for actual negotiations will be shorter than two years.
"At the beginning, the two years included the time for the council to set guidelines and to authorise negotiations. At the end, the agreement must of course be approved by the Council and European Parliament. Finally the UK will have to approve the agreement - all within the two year period.
"All in all there will be less than 18 months to negotiate. That is short. Should the UK notify by the end of March as Prime Minister Theresa May said she would, it is safe to say negotiations could start a few weeks later and an Article 50 deal reached by October 2018."
Mr Barnier, making his first public speech on the issue, was appointed to the post of chief Brexit negotiator on 1 October this year by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who said he "wanted an experienced politician for this difficult job".
The chief negotiator said he had spent time speaking to European member governments and said the Brexit negotiations had been informed by four main principles.
These included the "determination for unity" and a pledge to not start negotiations before being officially notified by the UK of its desire to leave, via the triggering of Article 50.
He also said: "Being a member of EU comes with rights and benefits. Third countries (non members as the UK will be after Brexit) can never have the same rights and benefits since they are not subject to the same obligations.
"The single market and its four freedoms (which includes freedom of movement) are indivisible. Cherry picking is not an option."
The BBC's Europe correspondent Damian Grammaticas asked Mr Barnier if the UK "paying in" to stay in the single market was a possibility after Brexit Secretary David Davis said last week the government "would consider it".
"There is access to the single market, but this is accompanied by predetermined, very specific contribution to the EU budget," said the chief negotiator.
"That is one of the models that already exists and that is one of the closest models there is to the EU without being a member."
But Mr Barnier added there were various options and until Article 50 had been called, there was little more he could say.
"It is up to the UK to tell us what they have in mind, then it is up to us at the 27 [member states] to say what we are prepared to conceive of."
Mr Barnier said he "didn't like to speculate very much" on what the future relationship between the EU and the UK would be, but it was time to "keep calm and negotiate".
"The sooner, the better," he added. "We all have a common interest in not prolonging the lack of certainty and we for our part need to concentrate on the European agenda on this new page that we will be writing in the history in the construction of the EU.
"There will be rebalancing but my conviction remains the same. Europe has to be the bedrock on which European citizens can lean in order to push ahead and construct the EU further for their safety, security, defence and prosperity."
"It is much better to show solidarity than to stand alone."
Analysis - Damian Grammaticas, BBC Europe correspondent
The EU appears to be signalling loud and clear what is on offer to the UK - and what isn't.
This isn't the EU playing hardball. That's to misread the EU's cues. And it isn't new. EU leaders have reiterated the same principles ever since the UK referendum.
From their point of view, their position is logical and consistent. EU leaders believe they have built the world's most integrated single market. They don't want to unpick parts of it for one nation that is leaving. Preserving their union is their priority.
So, Michel Barnier made clear that the UK cannot expect better terms outside the EU than inside. UK talk of getting a special deal that privileges the car industry or the City of London may not to be acceptable to the EU. As for paying to get access to the Single Market, that's possible Mr Barnier hinted - if, like Norway, you accept the EU's rules.
But 'cherry-picking' won't happen, he said. Importantly too, he indicated, a Brexit deal will cover the exit terms.
The UK's future relationship with the EU will, in all likelihood, have to be settled later, once the UK is out of the EU and has the status of a third country. It's not about driving a hard bargain. The EU is signalling it has its rules and principles, and isn't offering to change them.
Downing Street said it was sticking to its timetable despite the speech from Mr Barnier.
The prime minister's official spokesman said: "In terms of how long the negotiations actually take place, clearly that is a matter that will resolve itself as a result of the negotiations."
He said that the position of the rest of the EU on the timetable was a "matter for them".
But on the 18-month timetable, he said: "It is the first I have heard of it."
Mrs May said getting the right deal for British people would benefit the EU.
Speaking to the BBC's deputy political editor John Pienaar - before Mr Barnier's comments - on her two-day trip to Bahrain, Theresa May said: "People talk about the sort of Brexit that there is going to be. Is it hard or soft? Is it grey or white?
"Actually we want a red, white and blue Brexit; that is the right Brexit for the UK, the right deal for the UK. I believe that a deal that is right for the UK will also be a deal that is right for the EU."
On the issue of revealing more of those plans to Parliament, the prime minister said she still wanted "to keep some cards close to my chest".
But Mrs May said regardless of the outcome of this week's Supreme Court case - on whether the government can trigger Article 50 alone or need parliamentary approval - she would "deliver on the vote of the British people."
Hilary Benn, chairman of the Brexit Select Committee and Labour MP, believes talk of an 18-month time limit will add extra pressure.
He told BBC News: "It means there is going to be a very short time from the triggering of Article 50 to negotiate the divorce arrangements and crucially what our new relationship with Europe is going to be once we have left, when it comes to trade and the single market.
"What I think he has said reinforces the argument that I have been making that we are going to need transitional arrangements [around the negotiations]."
Mr Barnier said a short term agreement "could have some point" in helping move towards a final deal.
But Boris Johnson said 18 months is "ample time" for the UK to negotiate with the EU.
Speaking as he arrived at a NATO meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, the Foreign Secretary said: "With a fair wind and everybody acting in a positive and compromising mood, as I'm sure they will, we can get a great deal for the UK and for the rest of Europe".
When in charge of regional policy, Mr Barnier said he worked on a programme supporting Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement.
When asked by The Irish Times whether he would dismiss the idea of a hard border being put in place post-Brexit, he would not commit either way.
"The UK decision to leave the EU will have consequences, in particular perhaps for what are the EU's external borders today," he said.
"All I can say at this moment in time is I am personally extremely aware of this particular topic. We will throughout these negotiations with the UK and of course with Ireland, do our utmost to uphold the success of the Good Friday Agreement and of course retain the dialogue there."
A former EU commissioner, Mr Barnier led the EU's banking reforms and was dubbed "the most dangerous man in Europe" by some in the financial services industry.
But after he championed capping bankers' bonuses, he won respect as a tough but even-handed negotiator.
Mr Barnier has refused to take part in any pre-negotiations before Article 50 is triggered, but he did meet Brexit Secretary David Davis for coffee last month.
Speaking in November in Brussels, he said: "Don't ask me to tell you what will be at the end of the road, we haven't begun to walk yet."

The meeting comes as the EU negotiator unveiled a draft Brexit agreement on Wednesday morning.
The document proposes a "common regulatory area" on the island of Ireland if solutions cannot be found for the post-Brexit border.
The Prime Minister Theresa May has rejected the proposal.
She said that it threatens the "constitutional integrity" of the United Kingdom.
Unionist politicians have strongly rejected the idea but the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varardkar said it was now up to proponents of Brexit to come up with solutions to ensure that there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after the UK leaves the EU.
The DUP leader Arlene Foster tweeted that the draft text was "constitutionally unacceptable and would be economically catastrophic for Northern Ireland".
The Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swan said the draft proposal was "a complete non-starter for Unionists".
He described the draft agreement as "nothing short of a move by the EU to annex Northern Ireland".
"No British Government could accept this.
"It demonstrates complete and utter contempt for Northern Ireland's constitutional position and also for the Belfast Agreement," he added.
The TUV leader Jim Allister said the draft treaty "seeks to subvert the integrity of the United Kingdom by demanding that Northern Ireland is hived off under EU jurisdiction into its customs union, which, of necessity then requires border checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain".
However the SDLP Brexit spokesperson Claire Hanna said her party "welcomes the EU's cast iron commitment to protecting the Good Friday Agreement and preventing a border in Ireland".
"Despite some utterances on the airwaves from some, there is nothing surprising in this draft withdrawal agreement today - this is essentially what was agreed by the UK and the EU in December.
"The UK Government and the Brexiteers have a choice, they either go for alignment with the Customs Union and the Single Market to protect these islands - or they support the EU on the common regulatory area," she added.
She accused the British government and Brexiteers of debating Brexit "with zero regard for the impact on Ireland".
"And now," she said, "they want to conclude their debate, and make their exit by putting the Good Friday Agreement through the shedder.
"The Tory-DUP axis is satisfied to treat the welfare of the people of this island as collateral damage so long as they can achieve their 'little Englander' Brexit," she added.
She called on the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to convene the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
In reply to Ms McDonald, Taoiseach Leo Varardkar said that the UK government had made a commitment that there would be no border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
"This is the last resort as Prime Minister May describes it, there are alternative solutions," he said.
He said his government and the UK government shared the preferred option of avoiding a hard border in Ireland as well as between the island of Ireland and Great Britain.
"I do not want a border between Letterkenny and Derry any more than I want a border between Larne and Stranraer."
He said that it was now up to "hard-line Brexiteers" and some politicians in Northern Ireland to come up with alternatives saying "just saying no and being angry isn't enough".
"It is up to them now to come up with alternative solutions... in a legal form that can be enforced."

The EU has rejected calls for an agreement to protect UK and EU expats' rights, if there is a no-deal Brexit.
Tory MP Alberto Costa quit his government job to table an amendment calling for the protections.
It was backed by the government in votes on Wednesday, with Mr Costa urging the PM to write to EU chiefs to demand an agreement on rights.
But the European Commission said it would "not negotiate mini deals" as it would imply negotiations had failed.
Theresa May's withdrawal deal includes pledges to protect the rights of UK citizens in EU states and EU citizens in the UK after Brexit.
But MPs have so far rejected Mrs May's deal  - raising the prospect of the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 29 March.
Mr Costa's amendment called for the PM to write to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to seek to guarantee the rights of EU nationals even under a no-deal Brexit.
He had to resign from his unpaid government role as a parliamentary private secretary to Scotland Secretary David Mundell, due to the convention that MPs serving in government should not amend government motions.
The amendment gained support from 141 MPs from different parties, and was accepted by the government.  The amendment was approved unanimously by MPs, without a vote.
Speaking in the Commons , Mr Costa said he had "been a loyal Conservative member. I have never rebelled and have scarcely spoken out of turn".
But, he told MPs that EU citizens' rights "should have been dealt with at the outset of the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU".
And he has accused the UK government of using citizens' rights as a "bargaining chip" in talks with Brussels.
Responding to Mr Costa's amendment, European Commission spokesperson, Mina Andreeva, said "the best way to protect the rights of these 4.5 million people concerned is through the withdrawal agreement.
"We will not negotiate mini deals, because negotiating such mini deals outside the withdrawal agreement would imply that the negotiations have failed.
"The Commission has consistently made clear that rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom and UK nationals in the EU are our top priority, they should not pay the price for Brexit."
The Commission has urged EU member states to take a "generous approach" to UK citizens living abroad, she added.
Theresa May has said EU citizens in the UK will be able to stay even if there is no deal done on Brexit.
EU nationals with a right to permanent residence, which is granted after they have lived in the UK for five years, should not see their rights affected after Brexit.
But there is uncertainty about what no deal would mean for Britons living in France, Spain, Germany and elsewhere.
The priority for most will be to register as residents, but the rules - including deadlines for paperwork - vary from country to country.
Mrs May has promised MPs a meaningful vote on her deal by 12 March - just 17 days before the UK is set to leave the EU.
She has also committed to giving MPs a vote on delaying Brexit, if they reject both her deal and no-deal.

The government's bid to extract the UK from EU law in time for Brexit has passed its first parliamentary test.
MPs backed the EU Withdrawal Bill by 326 votes to 290 despite critics warning that it represented a "power grab" by ministers.
The bill, which will end the supremacy of EU law in the UK, now moves onto its next parliamentary stage.
Ministers sought to reassure MPs by considering calls for safeguards over their use of new powers.
Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed the Commons vote in the early hours of Tuesday morning, saying the bill offered "certainty and clarity" - but Labour described it as an "affront to parliamentary democracy".
Seven Labour MPs defied Jeremy Corbyn's order to oppose the bill - Ronnie Campbell, Frank Field, Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins, John Mann, Dennis Skinner and Graham Stringer. No Conservatives voted against it.
Having cleared the second reading stage, the bill will now face more attempts to change it with MPs, including several senior Conservative backbenchers, publishing a proposed 157 amendments, covering 59 pages.
Previously referred to as the Great Repeal Bill, the EU Withdrawal Bill overturns the 1972 European Communities Act which took the UK into the then European Economic Community.
It will also convert all existing EU laws into UK law, to ensure there are no gaps in legislation on Brexit day.
Critics' concerns centre on ministers giving themselves the power to make changes to laws during this process without consulting MPs.
The government says it needs to be able to make minor technical changes to ensure a smooth transition, but fears were raised that ministers were getting sweeping powers to avoid parliamentary scrutiny.
More than 100 MPs had their say during the two-day second reading debate.
Labour, which denounced the "vague offers" of concessions, mostly voted against the bill.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the bill was a "naked power grab" by the government, adding that "this is a deeply disappointing result".
He said: "Labour will seek to amend and remove the worst aspects from the bill but the flaws are so fundamental it's hard to see how this could ever be made fit for purpose."
Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said MPs who backed the bill should feel "ashamed".
"This is a dark day for the mother of parliaments," he added.
Summing up the Commons debate, Justice Secretary David Lidington had said some criticism had been "exaggerated up to and beyond the point of hyperbole".
He said the bill would "enable us to have a coherent and functioning statute book" on the day the UK leaves the EU.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Conservative MPs concerned about the legislation had already tabled a number of amendments to "remove the excesses of the bill" and to "make considerable improvements".
These include limiting the use of delegated powers, giving Parliament the "final say" on the EU withdrawal agreement and restoring the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
One MP told the BBC: "We hope MPs from all parties who share our concerns and aims to make the bill fit for the purpose of delivering a smooth Brexit will add their names."
SNP MPs, who also voted against the bill, said powers over devolved issues would be seized by Westminster as they were returned from Brussels.
But Mr Lidington denied this, predicting it would result in a "significant increase" in the powers exercised by the devolved administrations.
The bill will now receive line-by-line scrutiny in its committee stage.
MPs voted in favour of the government's proposed timetable for debating legislation - by 318 votes to 301 - guaranteeing 64 hours of debate over eight days.
But Mr Lidington said the government was "willing to consider" extending the allocated time.
The Bill's committee stage will take place when MPs return to parliament after their party conferences.

The European Commission says it has started to implement its preparations for a no-deal Brexit - in case the UK leaves the EU without a plan.
It has announced temporary measures to try to reduce the impact, but says it cannot counter all the problems it expects.
As PM Theresa May's proposed exit plan flounders in Parliament, both sides are preparing for what they see as the worst-case situation.
The UK has allocated £2bn ($2.5bn) in funding to government departments.
The European Commission's measures are designed to limit disruption in certain key areas, such as finance and transport, if Brexit goes ahead in March without a deal.
"These measures will not - and cannot - mitigate the overall impact of a 'no-deal' scenario," it said in a statement.
"This is an exercise in damage limitation," added commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis in a news conference, saying a contingency plan was necessary "given the continued uncertainty in the UK".
The commission's 14 measures cover legislation that will aim to ensure some continuity.
They address eight sectors, taking in issues such as transport and customs, data protection, animal health and plants, climate policy and key financial products.
Among other things, the measures would temporarily allow:
The commission has also urged its 27 remaining member states to take a "generous" approach to the residency rights of UK citizens in the EU following a no-deal Brexit, "provided that this approach is reciprocated by the UK".
The Commission says these measures should not compare with EU membership, or the transition period on offer in the Withdrawal Agreement - which the UK Parliament has yet to vote on.
Brussels says the arrangements will be strictly time-limited, and will be ended without any consultation with the UK.
And it warns that the following will occur from the date of a disorderly UK exit from the EU:
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler says Brussels will be keen to point out that these proposals are not in the UK's favour.
They are to protect EU member states from the more catastrophic aspects of Brexit if no deal is reached, our correspondent explains.
Visas will not be required for UK citizens to spend short periods in EU countries, the commission said.
For stays of over 90 days, a residence permit or a long-stay visa will be required.
Member states have been told to take all necessary legislative and administrative measures so that temporary residence documents can be issued by the withdrawal date.
UK citizens who have lived in an EU state for a period of more than five years must be granted, subject to certain conditions, long-term resident status, the commission said.
This demonstrates where the EU has a limited remit. The proposals on UK citizens living in EU countries rely on the governments concerned because it involves areas of national - not European - power.
However, a pressure group representing Britons living in the EU27 is far from happy:
A senior EU official said the only way of properly looking after citizens was via the withdrawal agreement agreed between the UK government and the EU.
By Adam Fleming, Brussels correspondent
The EU has been slightly more generous than expected in its planning for a no-deal Brexit.
Its proposal that British truckers can carry on trucking in the EU for nine months before they have to apply for scarce international permits will be welcomed by the industry.
Some of the measures will also be in place for longer than previously suggested. For example, the bare-bones aviation legislation will last until March 2020, not December 2019.
Some of the measures recognising the UK's financial regulations as equivalent to the EU's will continue for up to two years.
Brussels isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart. This is the product of calculation of what is in its interests and which vulnerabilities need to be protected.
And the European Commission is clearly concerned about countries doing their own deals with the UK, hence a plea not to.
But the message from Brussels is clear: the deal that's on offer is way, way, way better than no deal at all.
The European Commission's initial guidance on the issue was published in November.
It committed to publishing its draft version by the end of 2018, allowing for eight weeks of consultation, as required by EU treaties.
The issue is heating up because Mrs May's proposed deal, which was agreed with the EU, has so far failed to gain enough support in the UK Parliament, which will vote on it next month.
The deadline for leaving is now 100 days away.
On Tuesday, the cabinet said it had decided to "ramp up" preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
The government has sent letters to 140,000 firms urging them to plan ahead, while 3,500 troops will be put on standby to maintain essential services.
It will also distribute 100-page information packs to businesses on Friday.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March, two years after triggering an EU mechanism known as Article 50, which covers departure from the bloc.

The EU has said it is now up to MPs to decide the next steps for Brexit and it remains "committed" to agreeing a deal in time for the UK to leave this month.
Officials said they had offered fresh assurances on the issue of the Irish backstop ahead of Tuesday's second vote by MPs on Theresa May's deal.
It was "now for the Commons to take an important set of decisions", they said.
Labour and Tory MPs have told the PM she must honour her commitment to put her deal to the vote again on Tuesday.
Amid speculation the vote could be postponed or downgraded, No 10 confirmed it remained the plan to go ahead with another "meaningful vote", with the motion to be debated to be published later on Monday.
Downing Street said the PM's focus was "getting on with the work required to allow MPs to support the deal and to bring this stage of the process to an end".
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the prime minister was "likely" to head to Strasbourg later - where the European Parliament is based.
This was reiterated by Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who told a press conference he "understands" Mrs May is travelling to the city later.
But neither No 10 or the European Commission have confirmed this, with a spokesperson for the latter saying: "We keep talking and working."
The spokesperson did confirm, however, that the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Mrs May had spoken by phone on Monday.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March but MPs rejected the withdrawal deal on offer in January and demanded major changes.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the mood was "bleak" in Brussels after the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, briefed EU ambassadors on the state of play earlier.
Adam Fleming said the member states were told that the UK had rejected the EU's proposed solutions on the backstop because "they wouldn't get the support of the Cabinet".
"There is a widely held view that the UK has not been negotiating in good faith over the last few days," he said, adding that at least one diplomat had mentioned planning for a "post-Theresa May government".
The government has been seeking changes to the Irish backstop, the safety net designed to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland, and only to be used as a last resort.
But the details of it were a sticking point for many MPs when they voted her deal down in January. They worry that - in its current form - the backstop may leave the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
In a statement, the Commission said it had put forward proposals to try and reassure MPs the backstop "if used will apply temporarily".
A spokesman said the EU was willing to meet UK negotiators at any time.
He added: "We are committed to using our best endeavours to find a subsequent agreement that replaces the backstop... We are committed to ratifying this deal before 29 March."
Earlier, Mr Barnier said that talks about the UK's withdrawal from the bloc were now between the British government and MPs.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the chances of Parliament approving Mrs May's deal appeared "very remote" at this stage.
She said it was still possible that the UK would come back with some new assurances from the EU over the backstop which could "get the numbers down" and limit the scale of any defeat.
Mark Francois, a member of the European Research Group of Brexit-backing Tory MPs, said unless "something amazing" materialised, the outcome of Tuesday's vote would be similar to that in January - when the government lost by a record 230 votes.
Former Labour cabinet minister Yvette Cooper said Mrs May "had given...her word" to MPs that this week's votes would happen.
Ms Cooper, who has spearheaded parliamentary efforts to rule out a no-deal exit, called for talks on the withdrawal deal and the UK's exit to be put on hold while the PM tried to build a consensus in Parliament and the country.
"The stakes are far too high to assume she has this under control," she said. "If she won't find a way forward, Parliament has a responsibility to do so instead."
There will be an urgent question from Labour in the Commons later, asking Mrs May for an update on the progress made in achieving legal changes to the withdrawal agreement and the timetable for its approval.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it was "imperative" that Mrs May responded, rather than sending a junior minister.
As things stand, the chances of Theresa May getting approval in the Commons tomorrow for her Brexit compromise, reversing a defeat of more than 200 votes, are very remote.
That said, it is quite possible to get those numbers down. Despite the fact the talks are stuttering with Brussels, it is still likely there will be some kind of piece of paper that emerges from the Berlaymont building - those edifices in Brussels where negotiators have been locked for the past few days.
There is likely to be some kind of reassurance on paper out of those talks, probably at some point later today.
The political point though is this: It is very unlikely - very unlikely - that it's going to be enough to get the kind of revision to the deal that could comfortably reverse the defeat for the prime minister.
That's why some MPs are starting to say, as they did last time, it is unwise for her to keep marching into gunfire to do again what no prime minister had done in recent memory - to go into a crucial vote all but knowing you are going to lose, and lose badly.
And that's why things are so risky this week.

Theresa May's bid to make her Brexit deal more acceptable to MPs has suffered a blow after EU leaders said it was "not open for renegotiation".
She wanted legal assurances on the Irish backstop and had warned the deal itself was "at risk" over the issue.
But European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said there could be clarifications but no renegotiation.
Labour says MPs must vote on the deal next week and it was "unacceptable" for it to be pushed back to January.
"This is becoming a farce," said Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer.
"The prime minister pulled this important vote last week on the basis that she was going to get meaningful changes to her Brexit deal, She has obviously not."
On Thursday evening, Mr Juncker urged the UK to set out more clearly what it wants, adding that the European Commission will publish information on 19 December on its preparations, should the UK leave the EU without a deal in place.
"Our UK friends need to say what they want, instead of asking us to say what we want, and so we would like within a few weeks our UK friends to set out their expectations for us, because this debate is sometimes nebulous and imprecise and I would like clarifications," he said.
Pooled video footage from the summit on Friday showed Mrs May and Mr Juncker engaged in what appeared to be a tense exchange, following his comments.
The Democratic Unionist Party, on whom Theresa May relies for her Commons majority, said the EU's response was unsurprising and Mrs May must not "roll over as has happened previously".
"The EU are doing what they always do," said the party's leader Arlene Foster. "The key question is whether the prime minister will stand up to them."
But Cabinet minister David Lidington described the meeting as a "welcome first step" in showing that the EU was committed "to negotiate a trade deal with the UK speedily".
Mrs May travelled to Brussels to make a special plea to EU leaders after delaying Tuesday's Commons vote on the deal, in anticipation of a heavy defeat.
She then went on to win a confidence vote brought by her own MPs but vowed to listen to the concerns of the 37% of Tory MPs who voted against her and was hoping to address their concerns about the controversial "backstop" plan in the withdrawal agreement.
Critics say the backstop - aimed at preventing a hard border in Northern Ireland - would keep the UK tied to EU rules indefinitely and curb its ability to strike trade deals.
Conservative MPs have demanded changes to make it clear that it could not last forever, and the UK could terminate the arrangement on its own.
If this meeting was meant to provide Theresa May with the beginnings of an escape route from her Brexit conundrum, the signs are nothing less than awful.
At one of her most vulnerable political moments, Number 10 was hopeful at least of an indication of a potential solution to the most intense of a long list of Brexit problems - the controversial so-called backstop, designed to guarantee there would be no hard Irish border.
But right now, that's simply not on offer.
EU leaders made it plain that their warnings - that their divorce deal with Britain was not up for negotiation - were real.
In comments released by Downing Street on Thursday, Mrs May urged EU leaders to help her "get this deal over the line" and said she firmly believed it could get through the Commons, saying: "There is a majority in my Parliament who want to leave with a deal so with the right assurances this deal can be passed. Indeed, it is the only deal capable of getting through my Parliament," she said.
Mrs May urged EU leaders to work with her to "change the perception" of the controversial backstop plan.
But European Council president Donald Tusk said the withdrawal agreement was "not open for renegotiation" although he stressed the backstop was "an insurance policy", saying it was the EU's "firm determination" to work "speedily" on alternative arrangements.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the fact that the EU said it would use its "best endeavours" to get a future trade deal that would get rid of the need for a backstop - even if the backstop came into force - was seen as important by British officials who said it meant the UK could go to an independent arbitration panel if they felt the EU was dragging its feet.
But he said Ireland had requested that the European Council conclusions be toughened up and a paragraph which suggested further work would be done to reassure the UK was removed because "there was no support" for it.
Downing Street has confirmed MPs will not now vote on Mrs May's deal before Christmas, and said the vote would happen "as soon as possible in January".
Conservative Brexiteer Mark Francois told the BBC: "It is as plain as a pikestaff that this will never get through the House of Commons... the prime minister, I'm afraid, is completely boxed in."
The Labour former PM Tony Blair told the BBC he believed a majority of MPs in the Commons would back another referendum on Brexit, if Parliament could not agree on another way forward:
"I think that will happen if it is clear that there is no majority for any one form of Brexit," he told Radio 4's Today.
"We have had 30 months of negotiation and let's be clear - we are in crisis mode on this."

The EU will only agree to a short delay to Brexit if MPs approve the current withdrawal agreement next week, Theresa May has been told.
EU Council President Donald Tusk said an extension, requested by the prime minister on Wednesday, was possible.
Mrs May has written to Mr Tusk requesting a Brexit delay to 30 June, saying she needed more time to get her deal agreed by MPs and passed into law.
The PM will be making a statement from Downing Street at 20:15 GMT.
Mr Tusk said he believed all 27 other EU members, who must sign off on the extension, would agree but it depended on a "positive" vote in the House of Commons.
The length of any extension was open for discussion, he told reporters in Brussels.
The UK is due to leave the EU next Friday, on 29 March.
While a delay until 30 June "had its merits", Mr Tusk also suggested there were "political and legal" questions about delaying Brexit beyond 23 May - when European elections will be held.
While the current withdrawal agreement could not be changed, he suggested additional legal assurances the EU gave Mrs May in Strasbourg last week could be formalised to help get the backing of MPs.
Mr Tusk spoke to Mrs May before his statement.
Meanwhile, an emergency debate took place in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon, with Labour pressing for further detail about the PM's intentions and demanding that any delay is long enough to allow MPs to "break the impasse and find a way forward".
The prime minister is meeting MPs from opposition parties to discuss her letter.
But ahead of the meeting, the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Lib Dem leader Vince Cable MP, Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts and the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas released a joint statement, calling for a longer extension and for Parliament to sit continuously "until it can reach a decision".
At a highly charged Prime Minister's Questions earlier, Mrs May said MPs had "indulged themselves on Europe for too long" and voters "deserved better".
She said she had rejected calls for a longer delay to Brexit because she wanted to avoid the UK taking part in European elections in May, which she said would be "unacceptable" three years after voting to leave the EU.
"It would be a failure to deliver on the referendum decision this House said it would deliver," she told the Commons.
But she added: "As prime minister I could not consider a further delay beyond 30 June."
This was seen by some as an indication that Mrs May would resign rather than seek a further delay.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused her of leading the UK into "crisis, chaos and division".
"We are still legally due to leave the European Union in nine days' time," he told Mrs May at PMQs.
"Months of running down the clock and a concerted campaign of blackmail, bullying and bribery has failed to convince the House or the country that her deal is anything but a damaging national failure and should be rejected."
He urged the prime minister to meet him later on Wednesday to discuss a "compromise to get through this crisis", a plea ignored by the PM.
The Labour leader will travel to Brussels on Thursday to meet the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier. He is also expected to hold talks with several EU 27 leaders.
In her letter to Mr Tusk, the prime minister says she had wanted to hold a Commons vote on her withdrawal agreement this week but had been prevented from doing so by Commons Speaker John Bercow.
But she adds: "It remains my intention to bring the deal back to the House."
If the motion is passed, more time will be needed for Parliament to ratify the deal, she says. There is no mention in the letter of a longer delay, as some had been expecting.
Mrs May, who has been meeting groups of cabinet ministers on Wednesday afternoon, told MPs that an extension beyond 30 June would not "take no-deal off the table" if an agreement had still not been reached.
She has repeatedly insisted the UK would leave the EU on 29 March and she told MPs it had always been her preferred option, but with a withdrawal deal to ensure it was an "orderly" exit.
But she was forced to seek a delay after MPs twice rejected the withdrawal deal she has agreed with the EU by massive margins and voted to reject a no-deal Brexit.
Her plan to hold a third vote on the deal this week were blocked by the Speaker, John Bercow, who said it would break longstanding conventions preventing MPs from being repeatedly asked the same question.
MPs from across the political spectrum lined up to attack Mrs May over her announcement at prime minister's questions.
The SNP's Pete Wishart, who wants another EU referendum, accused her of "caving in to Brexiteers".
He urged her to "develop a backbone and stand up to those who would take this nation to disaster".
Yvette Cooper - one of a string of Labour MPs to call for "indicative votes" on different alternatives to Mrs May's Brexit deal - accused the PM of harming the national interest, adding: "I beg this prime minister to think again."
Mrs May said Commons votes had already been held on different Brexit options and the "one positive thing" that had been agreed was to rule out a no-deal departure on 29 March.
Conservative Brexiteer Peter Bone warned Mrs May she will be "betraying" the public if she continues to seek to delay Brexit.
"If you continue to apply for an extension to Article 50 you will be betraying the British people. If you don't, you will be honouring their instruction.
"Prime minister, it is entirely down to you. History will judge you at this moment. Prime minister, which is it to be?"
Mrs May replied: "I am saying that I think we should look again at being able to leave with a negotiated deal, but in order to do that we need time for this Parliament to ratify a deal, and in order to do that we need an extension until 30 June."

The EU has cast doubt on claims its chief negotiator described the government's Brexit plan as "dead in the water".
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock attributed the remarks - which he said were in French - to Michel Barnier after a meeting in Brussels.
EU Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas urged journalists to wait for a transcript to be published.
The Chequers plan contains some "positive elements", he added.
The UK is leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations are taking place between the two sides.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has been meeting Mr Barnier for more negotiations as the two sides seek to reach an agreement before a summit in October.
In July the government set out how it wants to trade with the EU - and avoid new border checks in Northern Ireland - after a summit at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence.
But the plans have been criticised by Brexiteers and the government faces a battle to persuade Parliament to approve them, even if the EU agrees.
On Monday Mr Barnier met members of the UK's Brexit Committee, which contains both pro and anti-EU MPs.
After the meeting, Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Barnier had agreed with him that the Chequers plan was "complete rubbish" and on Wednesday Mr Kinnock told Mr Raab the EU negotiator said the package was "dead in the water".
Challenged by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab as to the exact wording used by Mr Barnier, Mr Kinnock switched to French, saying he had said: "Les propositions sont mortes" (the proposals are dead).
The committee is expected to publish a transcript of the meeting in the coming days.
Asked about the comments, Mr Schinas said Mr Barnier had been "very clear" in expressing the EU's position.
"I don't think that people present in the room and beyond the room have any doubt on what we said on Chequers - we identified where there were positive elements and we discussed also the possibility for further discussions to address issues that still create problems," he said.
Mr Schinas said the private meeting provided "the perfect recipe for everybody coming out of there and saying what one or the other understood Michel saying".
He added: "Let's wait for the transcript and then let's check the sort of things that are reported of what Michel Barnier said against what he actually really said."
Meanwhile, a paper with details of planning for a no-deal Brexit has been caught on camera in Whitehall.
It reveals government departments are expected to make cuts in other spending to prepare for the possibility of no deal being reached.
Codenamed Operation Yellowhammer, it appears to be run by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which is responsible for emergency planning.
The government says a deal with the EU is the most likely outcome.
But it is also making contingency plans for leaving without one, and recently published a series of papers detailing preparations and offering advice.
The document, captured by photographer Steve Back, was being carried by Treasury Minister John Glen as he left the Cabinet Office.
Downing Street said civil contingencies planning happened routinely in advance of significant events, and that the yellowhammer name had been generated at random.
Asked about the document during a visit to Strathclyde University, Chancellor Philip Hammond - who has previously warned about the economic impact of no deal being reached - said departments had the funding needed to plan for such a scenario.
He added: "In no deal circumstances we would have to refocus government priorities so that government was concentrated on the circumstances that we found ourselves in.
"Let me reiterate again that is not the outcome we are expecting and it's not the outcome we're seeking."
Analysis by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
As an intellectual exercise, none of this brief excerpt is completely surprising.
But it demonstrates the political reality that in government there is concern about what might happen to the financial system, what might happen to transport, air and rail, but still a message to government departments they should try to find cash to spend on 'no deal' preparations from existing budgets, rather than the big cash pot that's been allocated so far.
Read Laura's blog on the leaked paper

A summit of EU member states to discuss Brexit is be held on 29 April, a month after the UK triggers Article 50.
The meeting will be used to agree the guidelines for the EU's negotiating team headed by Michel Barnier.
European Council president Donald Tusk said the priority would be giving "clarity" to EU residents, business and member states about the talks ahead.
Prime Minister Theresa May will officially notify the EU of the UK's intention to leave on 29 March.
She told her cabinet on Tuesday that triggering Article 50 would be an "historic event" and the start of a "bold new chapter... as a prosperous open and global nation".
The letter which she will send to Mr Tusk, will be "one of the most important documents in the country's recent history" and it will set the tone for a new relationship with the EU, she told her senior team of ministers.
April's meeting, which the UK will not attend, will be held just days after the first round of voting in the French presidential election.
Mrs May has said she hopes that talks will get under way as soon as possible although it is thought that they will not begin in earnest until after April's meeting and the final outcome of the French contest is known on 7 May.
In a statement, Mr Tusk said he regretted but respected the UK's decision to leave the EU and wanted the "process of divorce" to be as "painless as possible" for the European Union.
A majority of Leave and Remain voters want Theresa May to secure restrictions on immigration from EU countries in Brexit talks, new research suggests.
The survey - by pollster Professor John Curtice - suggested 82% of Leave voters want EU migrants to be treated the same as those from outside the EU.
More than half of the Remain voters surveyed - 58% - agreed.
The National Centre for Social Research Survey of 2,322 people was carried out in February and early March.
It suggested 88% of those who voted to come out of the EU in last June's referendum wanted to maintain free trade with the EU, with 91% of Remain supporters backing that policy.
Other findings include:
"Our main priority for the negotiations must be to create as much certainty and clarity as possible for all citizens, companies and member states that will be negatively affected by Brexit, as well as our important partners and friends around the world like Japan," he said.
British ministers have said the EU's draft guidelines, which are expected to be published within 48 hours of Article 50 being triggered, will be a "very important" moment of "choreography" in the Brexit process.
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Once talks start, they are expected to focus initially on the rights of EU nationals living in the UK and Britons living on the continent as well as what, if any, payments the UK will have to make to the EU's budget to cover current and future liabilities.
Mr Barnier, a former European Commission official, has called for talks to be completed by October 2018 to give time for any agreement to be ratified before the UK leaves, expected on March 29 2019 under the two-year Article 50 process.
Within days of April's meeting, he is expected to make recommendations to EU leaders on how the talks should be structured to achieve this.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs is to move some jobs away from London and expand its European presence, a senior executive said on Tuesday.
The US bank's European chief executive, Richard Gnodde, said it would begin the process before the UK leaves the European Union but said the numbers involved were "in the hundreds of people as opposed to anything greater than that".
Another senior executive at the bank said last week that London would remain a significant financial hub after Brexit.

The EU says much work still needs to be done on Brexit, despite agreeing a draft withdrawal document with the UK.
"We still have a long road ahead of us on both sides," chief negotiator Michel Barnier said.
The EU has set out a series of meetings leading to one on 25 November where it plans to approve the Brexit agreement.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has won the backing of her cabinet but faces a tough task getting the agreement approved by Parliament.
A sign of that came on Thursday morning when Mr Barnier's UK counterpart, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, resigned saying he could not "in good conscience" support the agreement. He was one of four ministers to quit.
Mrs May later defended the deal in the House of Commons, telling MPs it delivered on the Brexit referendum and provided for an orderly withdrawal.
Mr Barnier was speaking on Thursday morning alongside EU Council head Donald Tusk as the chief negotiator formally handed over the 585-page draft withdrawal agreement.
Mr Barnier said the agreement was fair and balanced, took into account the UK's needs and laid the ground for an "ambitious new partnership".
Mr Tusk praised Mr Barnier's work and said the agreement had "secured the interests of the 27 member states and EU as a whole".
He laid out the timetable for the days ahead.
Mr Tusk said: "Since the very beginning, we have had no doubt that Brexit is a lose-lose situation, and that our negotiations are only about damage control."
Addressing the UK, he added: "As much as I am sad to see you leave, I will do everything to make this farewell the least painful possible, for you and for us."
Mr Barnier later took the document to the European Parliament. Its president, Antonio Tajani, said MEPs would vote on the deal in early 2019.
If the agreement is approved by both sides, a 21-month transition period will kick in, during which a trade deal and the thorny issue of how to ensure there is no physical border between Northern Ireland - part of the UK - and the Republic of Ireland will need to be worked out.
A smooth border-free exchange underpins the peace deal that ended the Northern Ireland conflict.
The draft withdrawal agreement covers so-called "divorce" issues as the UK prepares to leave the EU. It includes a "financial settlement" from the UK, thought to be about £39bn (€45bn; $50bn).
Speaking at a press briefing in Brussels on Wednesday, Mr Barnier addressed one of the major concerns of the divorce, the Irish "hard border" issue.
He said that to avoid the need for physical checks on goods or infrastructure at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the EU would work with the UK to agree a trade deal. However if talks fail, the so-called "backstop" measure would be used.
Both sides have resolved to ensure the backstop is not necessary by coming up with alternative arrangements.
"If we are not ready by 2020, we can extend the provision so we have more time, and if we are still not there with the future agreement after this, the backstop agreement would kick in," he said.
"There will be a UK-wide single customs territory which Northern Ireland will remain in, and Northern Ireland will remain aligned to the rules of a single market essential for avoiding a border including on agriculture policy."
The draft withdrawal agreement states that the transition period may be extended by mutual consent.
Mr Barnier said that any extension would by a one-off, "by a limited period and by joint agreement".
During the transition, the UK will be out of the EU. It will have no voting rights but will continue to abide by the majority of its rules.
There are also special protocols in place for Gibraltar and Cyprus to enable people there "to continue to live as they do today", Mr Barnier added.
Spain has longstanding claims to the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar and the deal sets out bilateral co-operation on customs, policing, trade, taxation and citizens' rights.
The UK has sovereign military bases in Cyprus. EU law will continue to apply at the bases, with the deal securing the rights of the 11,000 Cypriot civilians working there.
Analysis by BBC Europe editor, Katya Adler
The EU knows there is a very real possibility the Brexit deal could be voted down by the UK Parliament in a few weeks' time.
I put the question to Michel Barnier on Wednesday night at his press conference - but, skilled politician that he is, he refused to engage.
Brussels is very keen indeed not to give the impression that the EU might change or come up with a "better" Brexit deal text if this one ends up being rejected in the House of Commons.
Mr Barnier quoted Theresa May as saying that this is a deal in the UK's interest.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday welcomed the draft agreement, saying: "I am very happy that, after lengthy and not always easy negotiations, a proposal could be reached."
The European Parliament's Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt said the deal had been hammered out after two years of "intense negotiations" and he hoped UK MPs would accept that "there is not a lot of room [for] manoeuvre to say, 'OK, let's start again'".
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the deal was "good news for the French economy" but also issued caution, saying the UK must be made to respect all EU rules.
Finland's Prime Minister Juha Sipila tweeted to say that while Wednesday's developments were important, "decisions on both sides are still needed for a final agreement".
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he was "very pleased", adding: "The result is a good one."

European Council President Donald Tusk is proposing to offer the UK a 12-month "flexible" extension to its Brexit date, according to a senior EU source.
His plan, which would need to be agreed by EU leaders at a summit next week, would allow the UK to leave sooner if Parliament ratifies a deal.
The UK's Conservatives and Labour Party are set to continue Brexit talks later.
Theresa May has written to Mr Tusk with the UK's request for a further delay to Brexit until 30 June.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 12 April and, as yet, no withdrawal deal has been approved by MPs.
Downing Street said "technical" talks between Labour and the Conservatives on Thursday had been "productive" and would continue on Friday.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has told the BBC that if they fail, the delay is "likely to be a long one".
Prime Minister Theresa May has said a further postponement to the Brexit date is needed if the UK is to avoid leaving the EU without a deal, a scenario both EU leaders and many British MPs believe would create problems for businesses and cause difficulties at ports.
On Wednesday, MPs voted - by a majority of one - in favour of a backbench bill which would force Mrs May to ask the EU for a further extension.
However, the PM wants to keep any delay as short as possible.
To do that, she and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn would need to agree a proposal for MPs to vote on before 10 April, when EU leaders are expected to consider any extension request at an emergency summit.
If they cannot, Mrs May has said a number of options would be put to MPs "to determine which course to pursue".
Mr Cox told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast that particular scenario would involve accepting whatever postponement the EU offered, which was likely to be "longer than just a few weeks or months".
But Conservative Brexiteer Sir Bernard Jenkin said the EU was "toying" with the UK and the PM was under no obligation to accept the terms of any extension, even if mandated to by MPs.
"The government just wants cover," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. "They want an excuse to do what they are going to do anyway, which is to take us into some kind of extension. The British people don't want that."
But he said an extension of a year or so would be better than leaving on the terms agreed by the PM, accusing her of being "pretty dishonest" about her willingness to countenance a no-deal exit.
Europe's leaders have been split over whether, and how, to grant any extension.
However, BBC Europe editor Katya Adler has been told by a senior EU official that Mr Tusk "believes he's come up with an answer", after several hours of meetings in preparation for the summit.
But his proposal would have to be agreed unanimously by EU leaders next week. The prime minister wrote to Mr Tusk to request the extension ahead of Wednesday's meeting.
You could almost hear the sound of collective eye-rolling across 27 European capitals after Theresa May requested a Brexit extension-time (till 30th June) that Brussels has already repeatedly rejected.
Most EU leaders are leaning toward a longer Brexit delay to avoid being constantly approached by the PM for a rolling series of short extensions... with the threat of a no-deal Brexit always just around the corner.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, believes he has hit on a compromise solution: his "flextension", which would last a year with the UK able to walk away from it as soon as Parliament ratifies the Brexit deal.
But EU leaders are not yet singing from the same hymn sheet on this. Expect closed-door political fireworks, although it's unclear whether it'll be a modest display or an all-out extravaganza - at their emergency Brexit summit next week. Under EU law, they have to hammer out a unanimous position.
The EU has previously said that the UK must decide by 12 April whether it will stand candidates in May's European Parliamentary elections, or else the option of a long extension to Brexit would become impossible.
Talks between Conservative ministers and Labour lasted nearly five hours on Thursday.
Mr Corbyn has written to his MPs saying discussions included customs arrangements, single market alignment, internal security, the need for legal underpinning to any agreements and a "confirmatory" vote.
The main item of business in the last frantic 24 hours has been the cross-party talks between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
From both sides, it sounds like they are serious and genuine, and negotiators got into the guts of both their positions and technical details on Thursday.
Remember, behind the scenes there isn't as much difference between the two sides' versions of Brexit as the hue and cry of Parliament implies.
But the political, not the policy, distance between the two is plainly enormous.
Shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis told the BBC the party would not be talking to the government if a "confirmatory referendum" was not an option.
But 25 Labour MPs - including a number representing Leave-voting seats - have written to Mr Corbyn, saying another referendum should not be included in any compromise Brexit deal.
Asked whether another referendum on any final deal was a credible option, Mr Cox said: "A good deal of persuasion might be needed to satisfy the government that a second referendum would be appropriate. But of course we will consider any suggestion that's made."
If the talks fail, the government faces an additional obstacle in the form of a backbench bill which would force the PM to seek a new delay.
Passed by MPs by one vote on Wednesday, the bill is being scrutinised by the House of Lords, who will next consider the draft legislation on Monday.
Ministers have argued it could increase "the risk of an accidental no-deal" in the event the EU agreed to an extension but argued for a different date than one specified by MPs.
That would mean Mrs May having to bring the issue back to the Commons on 11 April, when European leaders would have returned home, the prime minister's spokesman said.
After a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Dublin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country still hoped for an "orderly Brexit".
"We will do everything in order to prevent... Britain crashing out of the European Union," she said.
"But we have to do this together with Britain and with their position that they will present to us."

Jeremy Corbyn's letter setting out his party's demands for supporting a Brexit deal has been welcomed by the European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator.
Guy Verhofstadt said "the broadest possible majority" was needed for a Brexit deal in the UK.
An EU source said European Council President Donald Tusk said the letter was a "promising way" out of the impasse, in talks with the PM.
But Mr Corbyn's stance has upset Labour supporters of another referendum.
MP Owen Smith has said he and "lots of other people" were considering their future in the party as a result.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March when the two-year limit on withdrawal negotiations under the Article 50 process expires.
But Prime Minister Theresa May is struggling to get the withdrawal deal she has negotiated with the EU through Parliament - MPs rejected it by a historic margin last month.
Mr Corbyn wrote to her on Wednesday spelling out his party's five demands for supporting a deal. These included a "permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union" aligned with the EU's customs rules, but with an agreement "that includes a UK say on future EU trade deals".
The letter does not mention previous demands that any deal must deliver the "exact same benefits" that membership of the single market and customs union currently does - effectively scrapping the party's "six tests" that had been its Brexit policy.
Mrs May has been in Brussels holding talks with Mr Tusk, Mr Verhofstadt, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Mr Verhofstadt told a press conference: "We can't have an agreement with uncertainty in the UK based on majorities of six, seven, eight or nine votes in the House of Commons.
"A cross-party co-operation is the way forward and I think I can say that we welcome also the letter that Jeremy Corbyn has written today to Mrs May to offer such a cross-party exit.
"It's important now that this leads to a position in the UK that has the broadest possible majority, so that we can conclude these negotiations."
However, it was criticised by Labour members of the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum, who said Mr Corbyn had gone back on a commitment to back a public vote, if he cannot force a general election.
Mr Smith, who challenged Mr Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2016, told BBC Radio 5 Live: "At the moment, I may be asked by the Labour Party to row in behind a policy decision that they know, and the government knows, is going to make the people I represent poorer and - more fundamentally actually - is at odds with the internationalist, social democratic values I believe in."
Another pro-EU Labour MP, Chuka Umunna, said: "This is not opposition, it is the facilitation of a deal which will make this country poorer."
But Labour's Stephen Kinnock, who backs the "Norway Plus" model of a close economic partnership with the EU, welcomed Mr Corbyn's letter, tweeting: "This can break the deadlock."
And the Conservative former cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin, who also favours a Norway-style agreement, said it could be the basis of a cross-party deal.
Labour shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC: "What this letter does is to set out in clear terms that the prime minister needs to abandon her Brexit red lines.
"It does not rule out the option of a second referendum - a public vote - and Jeremy Corbyn will be writing to members today to remind them about that."
A senior No 10 source said the government was "looking at those proposals but there are obviously very considerable points of difference that exist between us.
"The PM continues to believe an independent trade policy is one of the key advantages of Brexit."

There is "a lot of uncertainty" about the UK's capacity to patrol fishing waters after a no-deal Brexit, a government memo mistakenly emailed to the BBC has revealed.
The memo, from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, says there are just 12 ships "to monitor a space three times the size of the surface area of the UK".
Meanwhile Michael Gove has said there will be a government support fund to help British businesses in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October. A "divorce" deal - which sets out how the UK leaves - has not been agreed and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to leave whether one is reached or not.
In the event of leaving without a deal, the UK would become an independent coastal state and leave the Common Fisheries Policy, which states the EU's shared rules about how much fish countries can catch and where.
But ministers said they are confident security will be enforced after Brexit.
Defra's internal email mentioned a number of media stories, including one being worked on by a freelance journalist for the Independent.
According to the memo, the story planned to look at the preparation being made to deter EU fishermen from UK waters in the case of a no-deal Brexit, and also whether the UK will enforce the exclusion of foreign vessels.
The note reads: "While our public position on this wider issue is already clear and widely communicated, in that post-Brexit we will be an independent coastal state with control of our waters, both policy and MoD have indicated we are not on an overly strong footing to get ahead of the potential claims that could arise from this story.
"At this stage, there is a lot of uncertainty about the sufficiency of enforcement in a no-deal because we have 12 vessels that need to monitor a space three times the size of the surface area of the UK."
Admiral Lord West, a Labour peer and former First Sea Lord, said the email appeared to show the UK has "insufficient assets to patrol and look after our exclusive economic zone for fisheries, and also our territorial seas".
"This will be thrown into stark relief if we should cease to have an agreement with the EU on fisheries."
He added: "This is something a number of us have been saying for some time now, but it has always been denied by Defra and the government."
However, Barrie Deas, the CEO of the National Federation of Fisherman's Organisations (NFFO), said any EU vessel would be "foolish" to fish in UK waters - even without a deal in place.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Under international law, the UK would automatically become an independent coastal state with the rights and responsibilities of that status and there is an obligation under the UN Law of the Sea for countries that share stocks to co-operate.
"So I think there will be a fisheries agreement post-Brexit between the UK and the EU, but on a different basis from the Common Fisheries Policy."
A government spokesperson confirmed an internal email concerned with the "veracity and details of media enquiries" had been "inadvertently sent outside of Defra".
They said: "Britain is leaving the EU on 31 October with or without a deal.
"We are confident that we will have the ships and the expertise we need to properly enforce security in UK waters."
Mr Gove, the cabinet minister in charge of preparations for a possible no-deal Brexit, spoke openly for the first time about a government support fund for British businesses during a visit to Northern Ireland on Friday.
The support package, known as Operation Kingfisher, will help companies deal with any "bumps in the road" that might occur as a result of a no-deal Brexit.
BBC political correspondent Jessica Parker said the plans predate Boris Johnson's premiership but few details have so far been revealed - including how much money will be made available and where the cash would come from.
According to the Times, the government has compiled a list of companies it believes could be most exposed financially if the UK leaves the EU without a deal and may need of help. It is said to include a number of firms in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

Brexit negotiations with the EU are heading for a "no deal" scenario, Labour's Emily Thornberry has warned.
Shadow foreign secretary Ms Thornberry said the PM's failure to control her party was causing "intransigence" on the UK side, which was a "serious threat to Britain" and its interests.
But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said a failure to agree a deal was "not exactly a nightmare scenario".
The UK was preparing "mitigation" measures for such an outcome, he said.
Meanwhile, the Spanish foreign minister said the lives of UK expats in Spain would not be "disrupted" - even if no Brexit deal is agreed.
Theresa May will update MPs on Monday on the progress made at last week's Brussels summit, where EU leaders agreed to begin scoping work on future trade talks while asking for more concessions from the UK on the opening phase of negotiations.
These talks, covering the UK's "divorce bill", the rights of expats after Brexit and the border in Northern Ireland, have failed to reach agreement so far - leading to a focus on what happens if nothing is put in place by the time the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Ms Thornberry said: "I think what we may be seeing is the Europeans trying to make it clear that it is not their fault that there are these difficulties - the intransigence does not come from their side, it comes from Theresa May's side.
"And in the end I think the reality is the intransigence is on Theresa May's side, because she doesn't have the strength or the authority to be able to control her backbenchers, let alone her cabinet. And I think we are heading for no deal, and I think that that is a serious threat to Britain and it is not in Britain's interests for that to happen.
"We will stop that."
Labour is seeking to work with Tory rebels to amend a key plank of Brexit legislation - the EU Withdrawal Bill - so that Parliament has the power to reject whatever the outcome of the negotiations turns out to be.
Following last week's summit, European Council President Donald Tusk said that although not enough progress had been made to begin trade talks, reports of deadlock may have been exaggerated.
French President Emmanuel Macron said there was still much work to be done on the financial commitment before trade talks can begin, adding: "We are not halfway there."
Speaking on ITV's Peston on Sunday, Mr Fox said a final figure for the UK's financial settlement with the EU cannot come "until we know what the final package looks like", later in the negotiation process.
He also dismissed President Macron's suggestion that "secondary players" in the UK were "bluffing" about the possibility of a no deal outcome, saying this was "completely wrong".
Mr Fox, who is responsible for striking global trade deals after Brexit, said he would prefer a "comprehensive" arrangement to be agreed - but was "not scared" of what would happen if this was not possible.
And he said trade talks would only be complicated if the "European elite" tried to "punish Britain for having the audacity to use our legal rights to leave the European Union".
He said he hoped "economic sense" would prevail, as opposed to the "near-theological" pursuit of closer EU integration.
When she addresses MPs on Monday, Mrs May is expected to reaffirm her commitment to EU nationals living in the UK, saying she will "put people first" in the "deeply technical" talks.
Speaking on the Marr show, Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said expats would be allowed to continue living in Spain even if no Brexit deal was reached.
"I do hope that there will be a deal," he said.
"If there is no deal we will make sure that the lives of ordinary people who are in Spain, the UK people, is not disrupted.
"As you know, the relationship between the UK and Spain is a very close one in terms of economic relations and also social exchanges.
"Over 17 million Brits come to Spain every year and many of them live here or retire here, and we want to keep it that way as much as possible."

Members of the European Parliament have overwhelmingly backed the terms of the UK's departure from the EU.
MEPs ratified the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement by 621 votes to 49 following an emotional debate in Brussels.
After the vote, MEPs marked the UK's exit by singing Auld Lang Syne.
Several British MEPs said they hoped the UK would return one day although Eurosceptics, including the Brexit Party's Nigel Farage, used their final speeches to tear into the EU.
The UK is due to leave the bloc at 23:00 GMT on Friday.
Ratification of the withdrawal agreement, agreed by the UK and EU in October, was not in doubt after it easily cleared its committee stage last week.
Signing the letter confirming the EU's consent, the Parliament's president, David Sassoli, said the two sides must heed the words of the late Labour MP Jo Cox when approaching their future relationship and recognise "there is more that unites us than divides us."
"You are leaving the EU but you will always be part of Europe…It is very hard to say goodbye. That is why, like my colleagues, I will say arrivederci."
Wednesday's session saw those on either side of the Brexit debate, including the UK's 73 MEPs, celebrate or lament the end of British EU membership.
Some MEPs marked the occasion with songs - others wore "always united" scarves.
The Parliament's Brexit spokesman, Guy Verhofstadt, said it was "sad to see a country leaving that has twice given its blood to liberate Europe".
He added that British MEPs had brought "wit, charm, and intelligence" as well as "stubbornness", and would be missed.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said ratification of the withdrawal deal was "only a first step" towards a new partnership between the EU and the UK.
The two should "join forces" in areas such as climate change, she said, and seek a close partnership following the UK's exit on Friday.
"We will always love you and we will not be far," she told the UK in closing.
The EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier also wished the UK well, saying the bloc would approach talks on the future relationship with "patience" and "objectivity" while defending its members' interests.
On the other side, though, Conservative MEP and prominent Eurosceptic Daniel Hannan said opinion in Britain turned against the bloc when it became clear "the aspiration was to have the EU as a quasi-state".
"If at any stage Britain had been able to have a trade-only relationship that would have been enough," he went on, but added: "You are losing a bad tenant and gaining a good neighbour."
Mr Farage - who has been campaigning for the UK's exit since before he was first elected to the Brussels Parliament in 1999 - used his final speech to excoriate the EU.
"I want Brexit to start a debate right across Europe - what do we want from Europe?" he said, arguing that "trade, friendship, co-operation and reciprocity" between nations could be achieved without "all of these institutions and all of this power".
He and his fellow Brexit Party MEPs waved Union flags before walking out of the chamber en masse.
A tearful Molly Scott Cato was applauded and hugged by her colleagues after she spoke of her "grief and regret" at Brexit and the hope she would return to the European Parliament "one day".
"While now is not the time to campaign to rejoin the EU, we must keep the dream alive," the Green Party MEP said.
Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts said the EU must learn lessons from the UK's decision to leave.
He said the bloc had to "regain the hearts and minds of European citizens" by focusing on what it could do for the many, not the few.
Earlier, the S&D coalition, which houses Labour's 10 MEPs, displayed a sign aimed at departing British members, which read: "It's not goodbye, it's au revoir."
On Tuesday evening, several MEPs in the Green group also held a ceremony to mark the UK's departure.
While Brexit Party MEPs spoke of their joy and relief at leaving, others shared messages of sadness on social media as they prepared to vote for the last time.
The Green Party's Alexandra Phillips tweeted: "I'm devastated to be leaving the best job in the world. I get to make real change every day while being surrounded by 27 different languages and cultures."
Liberal Democrats shared pictures of gifts from the pro-European Renew Europe group.
After the UK leaves, there will be an 11-month transition period in which the two sides hope to negotiate their future economic relationship.
Trade talks are expected to begin in earnest in early March. The European Parliament will also get a say in ratifying any future trade deal.
The UK has insisted talks should not extend beyond 31 December 2020 when a transition period - which will see the UK follow EU rules - comes to an end.
President Sassoli told CNN on Tuesday that the timetable for a deal was tight.
He said the UK's exit would be "painful" for the bloc but building a new partnership based upon friendly co-operation and mutual interests was now essential.

Eurostar trains and electricity supplies in Northern Ireland face possible disruption if the UK exits the EU without a deal, the government says.
The latest batch of contingency papers for a no-deal Brexit warn rail services could be suspended without specific agreements with France and Belgium.
The Single Electricity Market on the island of Ireland may cease to operate, hitting consumers on both sides.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK was prepared for all eventualities.
Ministers have insisted they are striving for a negotiated agreement ahead of the UK's exit on 29 March 2019.
But they are continuing to provide information to the public and businesses about the consequences if this does not happen.
The latest tranche of documents, the fourth to be published so far, state that in the event of a no-deal exit, some train operators will have to apply for new licences, certificates and authorisations from an EU rail regulator to continue services.
Operators such as Eurostar, which currently only hold a UK licence, would be affected unless individual agreements are struck with countries on the continent.
The operator runs about 40 direct services a day, via the Channel Tunnel, from London to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other destinations.
Mr Raab said people should not hold off buying rail tickets as the UK would work with its French, Belgian and Dutch counterparts to ensure they were able to travel and goods could be moved.
But Labour said this would "not reassure anyone" as "ministers have barely scratched the surface of what would need to be done in the event of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal".
In a separate development, the M26 in Kent is being shut overnight while work is done to see if it can be used as a "parking lot" for lorries, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, prompting complaints from road hauliers.
The Lib Dems said a no-deal would be a "catastrophe" but people should not be "scared" into settling for what it said was Theresa May's flawed proposed agreement with the EU.
Talks on the terms of the UK's exit are nearing a crunch point, with both sides pushing for an agreement by the middle of November at the latest.
Documents released on Friday warn of the potential fallout to the electricity market in Northern Ireland if the current Single Electricity Market arrangements that apply on a north-south basis cannot be continued.
The Department for Exiting the EU said it was keen to work with Dublin and Brussels to reach an agreement on maintaining existing arrangements whatever the outcome of the negotiations, including no deal.
But it warned that there was a risk Northern Ireland would become separated from the Republic of Ireland, in energy terms, and that this would make the market "less efficient".
In such a situation, it said regulators may have to use "fall-back arrangements" to ensure power is transmitted between Britain and Northern Ireland and to maintain the necessary generating capacity.
Mr Raab said the Single Electricity Market was the product of bilateral co-operation between London and Dublin and he hoped this would continue. Even if it did not, he said the UK would be prepared.
"We have got interconnectors and the regulatory measures that the government can take to make sure that Northern Ireland maintains the energy supply it needs."
On consumer rights, British subscribers to Netflix, Spotify and other online entertainment could see their access to content limited when they travel to the EU's 27 remaining member states, depending on what local rights deals and portability agreements are struck.
There would be no change for package holidaymakers unless their booking is with an EU-based firm and completed outside the UK - when they might not be protected from the firm going bust.
In the event of a no-deal exit, the transportation of horses to the continent could also be disrupted.
Unless the EU agrees to grant the UK "third country status" on the day it leaves, no horses will be allowed to travel to the continent - a potentially huge blow to the racing industry.
The government said it was confident the UK meets the animal health requirements to secure an immediate listing as a third country, making it subject to the same rules as countries like Australia and New Zealand.
But, it added "in the event the UK is not a listed country equine movement to the EU could not take place".
The documents also state that the UK wants to maintain the benefits of the 40 free trade agreements with more than 70 countries that it is party to from being an EU member.
Other subjects covered in Friday's documents include:
Previous no-deal papers have warned of the risks of UK flights to the continent being grounded and Britons visiting the EU facing extra credit card charges.

The UK will be a "laughing stock" in Europe if it cannot police its fishing waters after Brexit, former First Sea Lord Admiral Lord West has said.
He claimed there were few vessels to enforce new regulations for UK inshore fishing waters after it leaves the EU.
And the ex-Falklands veteran, who was once a Labour security minister, said he was "stunned" at the government's "amazing complacency" over the issue.
But minister Lord Gardiner insisted a vessel monitoring system was in place.
Lord West raised the issue just days after the government announced it is to withdraw from the London Fisheries Convention - the deal which allows foreign fisherman access to British waters.
Lord Gardiner, a rural affairs minister, said the Marine Management Organisation would supervise the UK's "exclusive economic zone", which stretches from six to 200 nautical miles - while the Association of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities would cover up to six nautical miles.
But he added that as the UK leaves the EU a review will be needed to reflect on the level of fisheries enforcement required.
That response prompted Lord West to say: "This simple sailor is absolutely stunned by the answer, which shows amazing complacency.
"The bottom line is we have very, very few vessels involved in this. They are not properly centrally coordinated. We've already seen a number of the countries involved saying 'well to hell with what you're saying, we're coming there anyway'.
"We will be made a laughing stock if we apply some rules and cannot enforce them."
Lord West urged ministers to establish "a centralised command system to actually control the various assets we have", adding that "far too few of them seem to be able to focus on things like someone fishing illegally in the six to 12 mile zones".
He said more ships and boats needed to be built "to ensure we can actually enforce it".
The minister said he would like Lord West, who served in the Royal Navy between 1965 and 2006, to go with him to Newcastle to see a new digital vessel monitoring system that can pinpoint "every vessel that's at sea within our waters".
He said there were three offshore patrol vessels in operation, with a further five new river offshore patrol vessels being built that will be used for fisheries protection.
But Labour's rural affairs spokeswoman Baroness Jones of Whitchurch argued that "fish stocks can't be managed unilaterally", adding "there has to be some cooperation with neighbouring countries".
"Fish shoals can sometimes move for hundreds of miles, and indeed our own fishermen fish up to the north of Russia and southern Portugal," she said.
"There's no point in making a unilateral declaration."
But Lord Gardiner said not only would the government be negotiating "with our partners and friends in Europe so we have a sustainable fishing industry" but post-Brexit the UK will "have the ability to decide who fishes in our waters".
He said the chief executive of National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations had welcomed the UK's decision to give notice to the London Fisheries Convention as "an important part of establishing the UK as an independent coastal state with sovereignty over its own exclusive economic zone".
He said fishing is worth £1.3bn to the UK economy, employs 34,600 people and has 6,000 fishing vessels. Each year, 708,000 tonnes of fish are landed, worth £775m.
The government would be "very conscious" of the interests of the coastal and fishing communities of the UK, he added.

Britons living in Spain will not have their lives "disrupted" after Brexit - even if there is no UK-EU deal, the Spanish foreign minister says.
The two sides are yet to reach an agreement about how the rights of expats will be protected after Brexit.
Theresa May has called for "urgency" from the EU side in finding a solution.
And speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Alfonso Dastis sought to reassure more than 300,000 Britons living in Spain.
"I do hope that there will be a deal," the minister said.
"If there is no deal we will make sure that the lives of ordinary people who are in Spain, the UK people, is not disrupted.
"As you know, the relationship between the UK and Spain is a very close one in terms of economic relations and also social exchanges.
"Over 17 million Brits come to Spain every year and many of them live here or retire here and we want to keep it that way as much as possible."
According to the Office for National Statistics, Spain is host to the largest number of British citizens living in the EU (308,805), and just over a third (101,045) are aged 65 and over.
Citizens' rights are one of the first subjects being negotiated in the first round of Brexit talks - which have moved so slowly there has been increased talk of no deal at all being reached between the two sides.
The role of the European Court of Justice in guaranteeing the rights of EU nationals in the UK has been a sticking point. The EU argues this must continue, but ministers say the EU court will no longer have jurisdiction in the UK after Brexit.
Ahead of last week's Brussels summit, Mrs May said the two sides were "in touching distance" of finding an agreement.
On Monday she is expected to tell MPs she will "put people first" in the "complicated and deeply technical" negotiations.

Any agreement to allow an extended Brexit transition should be instead of - not as well as - a "backstop" to avoid the return to border checks in Ireland, the Brexit secretary has said.
The 21-month transition is currently expected to end on 31 December 2020 - but an extension was floated during last week's EU summit.
The idea angered Leave-supporting MPs.
But Dominic Raab says it should be instead of a backstop - the nature of which is also controversial.
It comes after hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through London on Saturday, calling for a referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.
Meanwhile, negotiators are at loggerheads over how best to avoid checks coming in on the Irish border after the UK leaves the EU.
The UK and EU are agreed on the need for a "transition period" - which Theresa May calls an implementation period - designed to smooth the path between the UK leaving the EU on 29 March next year, and a new permanent relationship with the bloc, including a new trading agreement, coming into force.
During that period, which ends on 31 December 2020, the UK's relationship would remain largely the same as at present.
But in case there is a gap between that period ending, and a long-term UK-EU relationship coming into force, the EU has proposed that Northern Ireland remain in the EU customs union for a period to avoid the need for customs checks on the border with the Irish Republic.
The UK government is opposed to this, because it would mean that Northern Ireland had a different set of rules to the rest of the UK - it argues it would effectively create a new border down the Irish Sea.
Prime Minister Theresa May's alternative backstop proposal is that the whole of the UK would temporarily stay in the customs union.
Mrs May suggested last week that the period could be extended by "a matter of months" if it helped to avoid a "hard border" with the Irish Republic.
However, this angered some pro-Brexit campaigners, who said it would leave Brussels with too much power in negotiations.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Raab said there should be no "indefinite limbo" inside the EU's customs union.
But he added: "The prime minister has rightly refused to rule out considering different approaches - including extending the implementation period for a limited period of a few months, as an alternative to the backstop.
"But we won't sacrifice Northern Ireland, and we must have finality to any backstop - whether through a time-limit or a mechanism that enables the UK to leave, in case the EU doesn't live up to its promise to get the future relationship in place swiftly."
It comes as a former Brexit minister is trying to put a legal barrier in the way of the EU's backstop plan by requiring the approval of the Stormont Assembly.
Northern Ireland's devolved government has not sat since power-sharing collapsed in January 2017.
And on Saturday, an estimated 700,000 people marched through central London to demand a referendum on the final Brexit deal.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan - who started the march - was among those who addressed a rally in Parliament Square, along with representatives from the main political parties.
Celebrity speakers included Steve Coogan, Delia Smith and Deborah Meaden.
At the same time, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage led a pro-Brexit rally in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
He said: "The evidence suggests about a third of those that voted remain now say we're democrats and think the government should simply get on with it.
"And that's our message - get on with it, fulfil your promises to us, you said if we voted to leave it would happen, it needs to."

UK companies are likely to speed up plans for a no-deal Brexit in response to Tuesday's votes in Parliament, the head of the CBI has told the BBC.
Carolyn Fairbairn said a plan to renegotiate the UK's withdrawal deal "feels like a real throw of the dice".
"I don't think there will be a single business this morning who is stopping or halting their no-deal planning," she said in response to the idea.
"I fear they may even be accelerating it," she added.
Other business groups endorsed the CBI's view that Parliament's opposition to a no-deal Brexit was welcome, while a Northern Ireland business group said there was "despair" that commitments to protect its members' interests could be removed.
Theresa May is expected to seek further talks with EU leaders in the coming days after MPs voted 317 to 301 in favour of replacing the backstop - the insurance policy designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland in the event of no deal.
The backstop is the main objection that Brexiteers in the Conservative party have to the deal negotiated by Mrs May, which was heavily rejected by MPs earlier this month in the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
The EU has already said it will not change the legal text of the deal.
Ms Fairbairn said the reaction of businesses to the outcome of Tuesday's voting would be one of "rising frustration and concern".
She said Parliament had shown that there was "a consensus against no-deal", but added: "It does nothing to take no-deal off the table and it does feel like hope rather than strategy."
The CBI head said businesses in Northern Ireland were "incredibly concerned" about the turn that events were taking, adding: "The backstop is there for a purpose."
One day, technology might be able to solve the Irish border problem, she said, but until that was possible, there had to be "other arrangements in place".
Ms Fairbairn said many small and medium-sized businesses had done nothing to prepare for the "shock" of a "cliff-edge" departure from the EU on 29 March.
"I think the kind of concerns that people have around disruption are absolutely right," she said. "No deal is just not manageable at this stage."
Stephen Kelly, chief executive of Manufacturing Northern Ireland, told the BBC that firms there were "in despair and really confused" about what was going on.
He said more than 90% of the organisation's members supported the withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, and they felt "let down" by Tuesday's events in Parliament.
He added: "A deal that doesn't work for Northern Ireland isn't a deal."
Other business groups expressed opposition to a no-deal Brexit.
Stephen Phipson, chief executive of the EEF, the manufacturers' organisation, called on Mrs May to "confirm that she will not allow us to slide over the no-deal cliff".
Mike Cherry, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said MPs had "at least made some movement on breaking the Brexit deadlock".
Dr Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "Neither government nor many businesses are ready for a no-deal exit in two months' time, and it must not be allowed to happen by default."
Stephen Martin, director general of the Institute of Directors, said: "While it is something that MPs have managed to form a majority in any vote, the path ahead is still far from clear."

The first applications from EU nationals wanting to stay in the UK after Brexit are being submitted.
A group of university students and NHS workers in the north-west of England are taking part in a trial to test the system before it opens later this year.
The three million or so EU residents in the UK have until the end of June 2021 to register for "settled status".
Ministers, who insist the process will be simple, say the pilot will allow for "necessary adjustments" to be made.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The government has said it wants EU nationals living in the country to be able to stay, with Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab saying last week that this applied whether there was an agreement on the terms of exit or not.
Ministers have said they aim to keep paperwork to a minimum, saying the form that has to be filled in online or via smartphone app will contain only a handful of questions and take a matter of minutes to complete.
Up to 4,000 people, including students from Liverpool universities and staff from 12 NHS trusts, will be the first to have a go during the pilot. They are being guided through the application process by Home Office officials.
Applicants have to provide proof of identity, declare any criminal convictions and upload a photograph - while officials will check employment data and run security checks.
The process - which will cost £65 for adults and £32.50 for children under the age of 16 - will operate on the basis of a presumption that applications will be accepted.
While stopping short of guaranteeing their future, Mr Raab said last week that it was "inconceivable" that non-UK citizens would be asked to leave whatever the outcome of current negotiations with the EU.
Immigration minister Caroline Nokes said the pilot was another step in making it easy for EU nationals to obtain settled status - enabling them to live and work in the UK on the same terms as now.
"From today, we are inviting a small group of EU citizens to make an application to secure their status," she said. "We will use their feedback to make any necessary adjustments ahead of the scheme being fully opened."
The scheme is due to fully open on 30 March, 2019, with settled status granted to EU nationals who have lived in the UK for five years - unless they have serious criminal convictions or for security reasons.
Those who are resident in the UK by 31 December 2020 but who have not lived in the UK for five years will get pre-settled status which allows them to live and work in the UK until they reach the five year mark and can claim settled status.

 Twenty-seven European Union leaders meeting in Brussels formally endorsed the bloc's guidelines on negotiating Brexit on 29 April. Like the draft guidelines issued in March, the approved version is a plan for how the EU wants to manage negotiations with the UK, and says that talks on a trade deal will only start after the brass tacks of separation have been agreed. But a few changes were made to the document between the draft and final version.
Read the full guidelines, here.
Here, the BBC's Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris teases out the key sentences and explains their significance.
The European Council will monitor progress closely and determine when sufficient progress has been achieved to allow negotiations to proceed to the next phase.
What's the significance? This is about whether and when initial talks on separation, or "divorce" arrangements, can move on to discussion of a future trade deal. The UK wanted to talk about trade straight away but the EU is ruling that out. Donald Tusk, the European Council President, said it would be up to the other 27 countries to determine what "sufficient progress" actually means. It could happen in the autumn, he suggested - but this is the EU asserting its control over the process.
...there will be no separate negotiations between individual member states and the United Kingdom…
What's the significance? Will the UK try to divide and rule by exploiting differences of opinion between different member states as the talks progress? This sentence suggests the European Council is well aware of that possibility, and intends to get legally binding language written into negotiating directives to prevent it happening. There is a distinction, of course, between formal "negotiations" and what you might call "informal contacts" - so the UK will try to talk separately to other countries anyway.
The people who will negotiate Brexit
A single financial settlement - including issues resulting from the MFF [Multiannual Financial Framework] as well as those related to the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Development Fund (EDF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) - should ensure that the Union and the United Kingdom both respect the obligations resulting from the whole period of the UK membership in the Union. The settlement should cover all commitments as well as liabilities, including contingent liabilities.
What's the significance?
There is more detail here than in the initial draft about the level of EU expectation when it comes to a financial settlement with the UK. It means the EU expects the UK to fulfil all the obligations it has made in the past, including for bills that will not be paid until after the UK has left the Union. This is confirmation that reaching agreement on how to calculate this financial settlement will be one of the biggest challenges of the initial phase of negotiations.
Any future free trade agreement…must ensure a level playing field in terms of competition and state aid, and must encompass safeguards against unfair competitive advantages…"
Translation: Don't be tempted to undercut the single market by trying to gain a competitive advantage at our expense. You won't get the deep and comprehensive free trade agreement you want if that happens.
"Preserving the integrity of the single market excludes participation based on a sector-by-sector approach."
What's the significance? There had been suggestions in the UK that specific sectors like the car industry could be given some kind of special access to the single market. This sentence rules that out altogether. For the EU it is a non-starter.
Such guarantees must be effective, enforceable, non-discriminatory and comprehensive, including the right to acquire permanent residence after a continuous period of five years of legal residence. Citizens should be able to exercise their rights through smooth and simple administrative procedures.
This reflects concern among EU member states that the UK is underestimating the technical difficulties of reaching an agreement on the issue of citizens' rights. There have to be legal guarantees, one senior official said, not just a gentlemen's agreement. And, at the moment of course, the ultimate legal authority for EU citizens is the European Court of Justice. That makes this a tricky political problem in the UK, not least because some of these issues will still be relevant decades into the future. The EU is also concerned that the UK Home Office is placing and will continue to place bureaucratic obstacles  in the path of EU citizens trying to secure their future - this is a warning shot across British bows.
Any future framework should safeguard financial stability in the Union and respect its regulatory and supervisory regime and standards and their application.
This has been added after pressure from the French and others who are concerned that the UK might be tempted to undercut EU standards in the financial services sector. The language here reinforces the view that the EU will not tolerate the UK trying to gain a competitive advantage through a much looser regulatory regime.

France's president mixed up his English when he said in error that UK visitors would need French visas if there was a no-deal Brexit, aides say.
Emmanuel Macron had meant to say that British people would not need visas in such circumstances.
The confusion came as Mr Macron was speaking to the media in English at the end of an EU summit in Brussels.
UK citizens currently enjoy visa-free travel in the EU, but that could change with Brexit. The UK is set to leave the 28-nation bloc on 29 March 2019.
The BBC's Gavin Lee raised the visa issue with President Macron at Thursday's news conference, after leaders had failed to achieve a breakthrough on Brexit.
By Gavin Lee, BBC News, Brussels
The mix-up came after I asked President Macron whether newspaper reports of UK citizens needing visas for work or holidays in the event of a no-deal was true.
The president's response was that "we will not stop visas, it is fake news, as some other leaders would say", and he went on to say "we will definitely deliver visas for people".
His team now say it was a case of a "second language" slip-up, and that President Macron meant to say "we will not start visas for British people".
They say they would aim for a deal which allows for a "special status" agreement for workers and tourists for both countries, that avoids the need for any "official visa system".
In the event of a no-deal Brexit, Mr Macron said, measures would be taken to cover flights, ferries and businesses as well.
A draft law has been tabled in the upper house of the French parliament that will let the government set new rules for Britons visiting France after Brexit. The draft suggests they will be treated as "third country" visitors - a similar category to Americans or Chinese. The preamble of the bill raises the possibility that visas may be imposed.
But, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the bill also gives the government the power to adapt or suspend the need for visas and residence permits for UK citizens.
A deal remains elusive mainly because of wrangling over the future Northern Ireland border. Brexit risks reinstating physical controls at the border, which were scrapped under the Northern Ireland peace settlement.
The current Brexit plan is for a transition period of 21 months from the end of March, to smooth the UK's path to a future relationship outside the EU.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that transition could be extended "for a few months", if needed. But some Brexit campaigners have reacted angrily to the suggestion.
"I do prefer a deal and I want a deal, but I will never favour a bad deal," Mr Macron said on Thursday.
"In case of no deal our responsibility is to ensure that the life of our people will not be so far impacted."
Mr Macron described the "dynamic" of the Brexit negotiations as "positive because there is a willingness on the British side to find a solution".
He said "now it's for Prime Minister May to propose a solution, but we will not compromise on the key elements of the mandate we gave to [EU negotiator] Michel Barnier".
The French president also denied suggestions that the UK prime minister had been snubbed late on Wednesday, when four EU leaders went out for a drink in the Grand Place in the centre of Brussels.
He told the BBC that Theresa May had left the summit earlier, and said she would certainly be invited in future.
"I am always happy and open to share a drink with the different leaders, so obviously Theresa May will be very much welcome," he said.

Former French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has been appointed by the European Commission to negotiate with Britain over Brexit.
Announcing the appointment, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he "wanted an experienced politician for this difficult job".
Mr Barnier will take up his post on 1 October.
A former EU commissioner, Mr Barnier led the EU's banking reforms - a move unpopular in London's finance district.
In a tweet, Mr Barnier said he was honoured to be appointed to the role.
Mr Barnier will work with his British opposite number, Brexit minister David Davis, who was at the forefront of the campaign to leave the EU.
Negotiations will only begin when Article 50 is triggered.
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Mr Barnier is known as a tough negotiator.
As European commissioner for financial services between 2010 and 2014, he spearheaded the overhaul of EU banking laws in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
These included a swathe of measures, which included capping banker bonuses and a crackdown on short selling - some of which were objected to by the City of London.
Comments on social media by British political editors have already declared the appointment an 'act of war'.
The BBC's chief correspondent Gavin Hewitt points out that Mr Barnier will come with a French, as well as a Brussels, brief:
European Council President Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits, had previously appointed Belgian EU official Didier Seeuws to oversee preparations for the Brexit negotiations.
It was not immediately clear what the relationship between Mr Barnier and Mr Seeuws would be.

French officials have rejected suggestions they could resort to a "go-slow" policy at the port of Calais if there is no Brexit deal.
The UK's Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab warned on Thursday of major disruption in a "worse case scenario", which might force firms to use other ports.
But Xavier Bertrand, president of the Hauts-de-France region, said ensuring "fluidity" of trade was essential.
Another official said closing Calais would be an "economic suicide mission".
There has been widespread concern about the impact of longer border checks at Calais if the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019 without a deal.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling met the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, on Thursday to discuss French and British preparations for such an eventuality amid claims that businesses may be forced to use Dutch and Belgian ports instead to transport goods.
Responding to a question in the House of Commons about no-deal planning on Thursday, Mr Raab appeared to suggest the French could choose to create additional delays.
"We also need to prepare for the worst case scenario where the authorities at Calais are deliberately directing a go-slow approach  by supporting a diversion of the flow to more amenable ports in other countries," he said.
Responding on Twitter, Mr Bertrand said closing the port of Calais or the Channel Tunnel to cross-channel traffic in the event of a no-deal Brexit "was not envisaged".
"Who could believe such a thing? We have to do everything to guarantee fluidity," he wrote.
And Jean-Paul Mulot, who represents Hauts-de-France, France's northern-most region, in the UK said that while there might be delays if the event of a no-deal, it was in France's interest to minimise these.
Brexit-backing MPs, including Dover's Charlie Elphicke, have said talks of gridlock at channel ports are being used politically by opponents of the UK leaving.
At present, the UK's membership of the EU single market and the customs union allows for the free movement of goods, people and services around Europe.
But the UK government has said it is leaving both of these arrangements as part of Brexit.
The UK and the EU are in negotiations on how their final relationship will work but have yet to reach a deal on key issues.
Both sides say they still want to agree a deal before the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019, but are also making plans for what happens without one.
This week the National Audit Office warned that queues and delays were likely at border crossings under a no-deal Brexit, saying exporters did not have time to prepare for new rules.
A "transition" period to cushion the UK's exit from the EU is planned to last until December 2020 - but this is dependent on the two sides reaching agreement on outstanding issues like the Irish border.

A fresh legal challenge to Brexit has been blocked by the High Court.
A group of campaigners who want Britain to stay in the EU single market argued that Parliament must approve the UK's exit from the European Economic Area.
But the judges refused to give the green light for the challenge, saying the judicial review was "premature".
The Supreme Court ruled last month that Parliament must have its say before the government can trigger Article 50 and begin official talks on leaving the EU.
Parliament is in the process of considering legislation which would give Theresa May the authority to notify the EU of the UK's intention to leave by the end of March.
MPs overwhelmingly backed the bill on second reading on Wednesday.
The latest legal challenge was brought by supporters of a so-called "soft Brexit" - which would see the UK remain a member of the EU's internal market.
They include Peter Wilding, chairman of the pro-Europe pressure group British Influence, and lobbyist Adrian Yalland.
The government claimed the case was unarguable since the existing EEA agreement would automatically cease to exist once the UK left the EU.
Under the terms of the EEA, which first came into legal force in 1994, the EU's 28 members and three other signatories are bound to accept the free movement of people, services, goods and capital across their borders.
Dismissing the case, Lord Justice Lloyd Jones and Mr Justice Lewis said the government had not made a decision "as to the mechanism by which the EEA agreement would cease to apply within the UK".
As a result, they said it was not clear at this stage what issues, if any, would fall within the jurisdiction of the courts.
In a joint statement, Mr Wilding and Mr Yalland suggested the government had "used procedure" to thwart them.
They said they would not rule out bringing further proceedings to give all those who would be directly affected by Brexit some form of legal certainty about their rights.
"It is intolerable that those who depend upon their EEA rights to trade with the EEA, or those who are married to EEA citizens, or are EEA citizens resident in the UK, are being used as a negotiating pawn by a government who can choose to act unilaterally to clarify our legal position, but will not," they said.
"The government must stop playing poker with our rights and stop taking liberties with our freedoms."
But a government spokesman welcomed Friday's decision.
"As the prime minister has said, we will not be a member of the single market and we will be seeking a broad new partnership with the EU including a bold and ambitious free trade agreement," he said.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the ruling was "good news".

The UK and the EU will remain the "best of friends" but they will "not be as close as before" after Brexit, the new European Commission president has said.
Speaking ahead of talks with the PM, Ursula von der Leyen warned it would be "impossible" to reach a comprehensive trade deal by the end of 2020.
She said if the deadline was not extended it was not a case of "all or nothing", but of priorities.
Boris Johnson has insisted a deal is possible by December 2020.
After their meeting in No 10, a Downing Street spokesman said talks had been "positive", but the PM had been "clear" the process of negotiation would not be extended.
After its 31 January exit, the UK will enter into an 11-month transition period in which it will largely follow EU rules but will not have any representation in the bloc's institutions. This period will come to an end on 31 December.
Only when the UK leaves the EU can the two sides begin talks on their future economic relationship.
Mr Johnson told Mrs von der Leyen he "wanted a positive new UK and EU partnership, based on friendly co-operation, our shared history, interests and values", as well as a "broad free trade agreement covering goods and services, and cooperation in other areas".
He also said the UK was ready to start negotiations "as soon as possible" after 31 January.
Speaking at the London School of Economics earlier in the day, Mrs von der Leyen said the EU was "ready to negotiate a truly ambitions partnership with UK" but she warned of "tough" talks ahead.
"We will go as far as we can, but the truth is that our partnership cannot and will not be the same as before and it cannot and will not be as close as before because with every choice comes a consequences with every decision comes a trade off."
Mrs von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, took over from Jean-Claude Juncker at the start of December. She was a student at the LSE in the 1970s.
She also attended the same school as Mr Johnson in Belgium - something the prime minister highlighted as they posed for photos in Number 10.
Mrs von der Leyen said she hoped the new trading relationship would be based on "zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping".
But she said: "Without the free movement of people you cannot have the free movement of capital and services.
"The more divergence there is the more distant the partnership will be."
Mrs von der Leyen also warned that without an extension of the transition period beyond 2020  "you cannot expect to agree every single aspect of our new partnership".
She called the deadline "very tight".
Opposition MPs have warned that trade deals typically take years to conclude and the UK risks defaulting to World Trade Organisation rules at the start of 2021, potentially leading to damaging tariffs for some industries.
But Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told BBC Breakfast the UK and EU had agreed in the political declaration to do a trade deal by the end of this year and he was "confident" they would do that.
The meeting between Boris Johnson and new European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is significant in that it's their first face-to-face in their new roles - but today does not mark the start of post-Brexit trade talks.
EU law dictates that trade talks can't start until the UK legally leaves the bloc. Then EU countries must agree a mandate for the EU Commission to negotiate a comprehensive trade agreement on their behalf.
This mandate then has to be formally signed off at minister level by representatives of all EU countries.
All this means, the EU says, is trade talks will start at the beginning of March.
When UK ministers complain that's too long to wait, the EU response is that the UK always pushed for bigger role for national governments in EU decision-making to make it more democratic.
Expect red-line drawing with smiles today between the prime minister and Mrs von der Leyen - presented as "friends telling each other truths".
The EU position is that the prime minister's timetable to get an "ambitious, comprehensive" trade deal agreed and ratified by December is unrealistic.
However, the prime minister will counter this with "truths" of his own, including that negotiations have to be done by December because he won't extend the transition period.
Legislation implementing the terms of Mr Johnson's Brexit deal continues to move through the Commons, with the government easily winning all three votes on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on Tuesday.
The bill will enshrine in law the terms of the transition period, first negotiated by Mr Johnson's predecessor Theresa May, as well as agreements on citizens' rights, customs arrangements in Northern Ireland and the UK's financial settlement.
Attempts by Northern Ireland parties to amend the bill to ensure "unfettered access" for businesses there to the rest of the UK market failed to pass on Wednesday afternoon.
MPs also rejected an attempt by Labour to reinstate child refugee protection rights in the Brexit bill.

An appeal to raise £500,000 by the weekend has been launched to ensure Big Ben chimes when the UK leaves the EU at 23:00 GMT on 31 January.
The famous bell has only rung a few times since renovations began in 2017.
The PM's spokesman highlighted "potential difficulties" in using money raised from public donations.
But the Brexit Party's Richard Tice said it would be "pretty feeble if we can't organise for a bell to chime at this historic moment".
StandUp4Brexit, the organisation behind the crowdfunder, says if it does not reach the target, the money will be donated to veterans' charity Help For Heroes.
More than £155,000 had been raised by Friday morning, with one of the largest single contributions coming from Tory MP Mark Francois, who donated £1,000.
Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom has said she donated £10.
Appealing for contributions, the group writes: "However you may have voted in the referendum, this unique moment is unlikely ever to be repeated...
"If you would like to see it marked by the chiming of the most iconic timepiece in the world, please donate now."
The House of Commons Commission has estimated that getting the bell to ring during renovation works on the Palace of Westminster's Elizabeth Tower, which houses it, would cost between £350,000 and £500,000.
The body - a group of MPs and officials responsible for the day-to-day running of Parliament - said this was because of the costs of bringing back the chiming mechanism and installing a temporary floor, and delays to the conservation work.
On Wednesday the commission said the estimated costs could not be justified, and appeared to cast doubt on the idea that public donations should cover them.
In a statement, the body said using donations for the works would be an "unprecedented approach".
"Any novel form of funding would need to be consistent with principles of propriety and proper oversight of public expenditure," it added.
On Thursday, the PM's spokesman said: "The House of Commons authorities have set out that there may be potential difficulties in accepting money from public donations.
"I think the PM's focus is on the events which he and the government are planning to mark 31 January. It's a significant moment in our history and we want to ensure that's properly recorded."
On Tuesday, Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle said there was a need to "weigh up the costs" involved in making Big Ben chime for Brexit.
"You are talking about £50,000 a bong," he added.
"We also have to bear in mind that the only people who will hear it will be those who live near or are visiting Westminster."
But Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice told the BBC's Today programme he did not believe the figure was correct, pointing out that the bell rang on New Year's Eve.
He also suggested that "bureaucrats in the Houses of Parliament" might stop the money being used, on the grounds that it would not be public money.
He added that if the target was not reached, a recording of Big Ben's chimes would be played through a loudspeaker at a Brexit event organised by Leave Means Leave group in London's Parliament Square.
The event gained "provisional authorisation" from the Office of the London Mayor on Wednesday.
Responding to the call for donations, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Commons: "One shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth."
"If people wish to pay for things, that should be considered as part of their public spiritedness, rather than thinking everything should fall on the hard-pressed taxpayer."

The GMB has become the largest union to date to back a referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, urging Labour to "follow suit".
General Secretary Tim Roache told the BBC "false promises" had been made during the 2016 referendum and it was time to "let the people decide".
But he said that the vote should be on the terms of exit, not on whether Brexit would actually happen, which he said had already been decided.
The UK is to leave on 29 March 2019.
The cross-party People's Vote campaign, which is backed by the Lib Dems and Greens as well as many Labour MPs, has said a referendum must be held on the outcome of the negotiations with the EU, including the option to remain in the bloc.
GMB said it had consulted its 620,000 members before its executive committee chose to endorse the idea of a new referendum.
While it respected the outcome of the 2016 Brexit vote, it said the reality facing the British public was very different from what they voted for.
"People voted for change," Mr Roache said. "They voted to take back control. They did not vote for economic chaos or to put jobs and hard-won rights on the line."
"In trade union terms if we negotiate a pay deal for our members we put that deal back to the members and they decide whether that's acceptable or not.
"We have no faith given what's happened in the last few months in this government delivering a Brexit deal that works for working people.
"If the government are comfortable with that, well let's let the people decide then."
A number of unions, including the TSSA and Royal College of Nursing, have backed a further referendum although Unite, the country's largest, has so far stopped short of doing so.
In July, it said it was "open to the possibility" of another EU referendum "depending on political circumstances" and its priority was planning for a general election.
The Labour leadership has said that a new referendum is not party policy but senior figures have suggested no options should be taken off the table as the negotiations enter a crucial phase and Prime Minister Theresa May attempts to negotiate a deal next month.
Mrs May has insisted there will be no new vote under any circumstances and her Chequers plan for Brexit delivers on the result of the 2016 referendum.
Updating MPs on negotiations on Tuesday, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said "dangling" the prospect of another vote at this stage would invite the EU to give the UK "the very worst terms".

As Brexiteer Conservatives go, George Eustice sits in the mainstream.
Unlike more hardline colleagues, the now former fisheries minister has actually been willing to contemplate a Brexit which leaves the UK quite close the European Union; a relationship with the EU comparable to Norway's, at least for a while.
He resigned today not because he's opposed to the prime minister's vision of Brexit; the deal she's trying to strike in Brussels and get through the Commons.
He supported that vision and he still does.
He resigned because he believes Mrs May's been manoeuvred into putting Brexit itself in doubt.
For George Eustice the breaking point was allowing MPs to vote on whether to rule out a no-deal Brexit, he's one of many Brexiteers who are convinced the danger of a disruptive exit might add to the pressure on the EU to make concessions.
And he's especially upset about Mrs May promising a vote on whether to delay Brexit beyond 29 March, if only for a short time.
The prime minister was driven to volunteer those concessions by the fear of being defeated in the Commons this week, and having to concede them anyway.
Her de-facto deputy David Lidington, and Chief Whip Julian Smith, warned Mrs May plainly that she had no choice.
A core of ministers, senior, junior and their parliamentary aides, were willing to sacrifice their jobs if necessary to bring about that defeat.
She gave in, and hated doing so.
But the fear of George Eustice - shared by other Brexiteers is that once Brexit is delayed, the government loses control.
Brussels would be in a position to dictate terms. A short delay could become a long one. Brexit could be delayed for months, years, indefinitely.
Theresa May has promised MPs a chance to give their verdict on her deal - and to set down their own preferences for Brexit whether she's managed to strike one or not - on or before 12 March.
There's still no new deal, no way of being sure whether she'll finally win support after so many setbacks.
And Mrs May's still hoping Brexiteer ministers back her, for fear of losing control, maybe losing Brexit altogether.
George Eustice's resignation is a demonstration of the anger and frustration of Brexiteer Tories at being placed in such a painfully uncomfortable position.

Gibraltar has accused Spain of manipulating the European Council for its own political interests.
A draft document on the EU's Brexit strategy said no agreement on the EU's future relationship with the UK would apply to Gibraltar without the consent of Spain, giving it a potential veto.
But Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo said this was "unacceptable".
Conservative MPs in the UK have warned that the sovereignty of the UK overseas territory is non-negotiable.
MP Jack Lopresti said Spain was using Brexit as "a fig leaf for trouble making", while fellow Tory Bob Neill tweeted "no sell out".
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson spoke to Mr Picardo as the UK government attempted to reassure Gibraltar and said: "As ever, the UK remains implacable and rock-like in our support for Gibraltar."
An EU source told the BBC the inclusion of the Gibraltar issue in the document had come after lobbying from Spain.
Spain has long contested Britain's 300 year-rule of Gibraltar.
Gibraltarians, who number about 30,000, rejected by 99% to 1% the idea of the UK sharing sovereignty with Spain, in a vote in 2002.
However, Spain has continued to press its territorial claim.
Following last June's EU referendum - in which Gibraltar voted by 96% to 4% to remain in the EU - Spain's then foreign minister suggested shared sovereignty could allow Gibraltarians to maintain some of the benefits of EU membership and enable Spain to "plant its flag" there.
But Alfonso Dastis, his successor, said in January that Spain would not put Gibraltar at the centre of the negotiations and it would be free to leave the EU if it wished.
Gibraltar: key facts
In its draft Brexit negotiating guidelines, the European Council identified future arrangements for Gibraltar as one of its 26 core principles.
It wrote: "After the UK leaves the union, no agreement between the EU and the UK may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without agreement between Spain and the UK."
Brussels officials were quoted by the Guardian as saying the EU was standing up for its members interests.
"That means Spain now," a senior EU official told the newspaper.
"Any extension of the deal [after withdrawal] to Gibraltar... will require the support of Spain. [The text] recognises that there are two parties to this dispute."
But Mr Picardo said: "This draft suggests that Spain is trying to get away with mortgaging the future relationship between the EU and Gibraltar to its usual obsession with our homeland.
"This is a disgraceful attempt by Spain to manipulate the European Council for its own, narrow, political interests.
"Brexit is already complicated enough without Spain trying to complicate it further."
Mr Lopresti, chairman of the UK's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Gibraltar, said there was no question of any negotiation over Gibraltar's future.
He will raise the matter with the secretary general of Nato, of which the UK and Spain are both members.
He said: "It is shameful that the EU have attempted to allow Spain an effective veto over the future of British sovereign territory, flying in the face of the will of the people of Gibraltar."
Mr Neill, chairman of the Commons Justice Select Committee, which examines relations between the UK and its overseas territories, tweeted: "Gibraltar's friends in the UK will be watching this very carefully. There will be no sell-out."
Labour MP Mary Creagh, a supporter of the Open Britain campaign group, said Gibraltarians risked being treated as "pawns" in the Brexit process.
"The Rock depends on free movement of labour from Spain, and on its place in the single market to support its vital services industries," she said.
"'Brextremists' should be ashamed that their actions have destabilised the situation in Gibraltar."
Lord Boswell, chairman of the House of Lords EU Committee, said it was "unfortunate" that the prime minister's Article 50 letter made no mention of Gibraltar and said this meant "the door has been opened for the EU to present it as a disputed territory".
"The reality is that any agreement on the future UK-EU relationship is likely to require the unanimous agreement of all 27 remaining member states, including Spain, as well as the UK," he said.
Gibraltar's government has ruled out any dilution of sovereignty in return for continued access to the European single market or other benefits attached to EU membership.
Key issues in post-Brexit negotiations relating to Gibraltar are likely to be border controls - thousands of workers commute in and out of the territory from the Spanish mainland every day - and airport landing rights.

Michael Gove has said the PM must be given "flexibility" to negotiate a Brexit deal and he would not stop her if it meant paying more to the EU.
"I would not block the prime minister in doing what she believed was right," he told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show.
The so-called divorce bill has been one of the main sticking points in Brexit negotiations so far.
Theresa May has said the UK will honour commitments made but has not put a final figure on what will be paid.
But there have been reports that some Brexiteers are prepared for the UK to pay more than the 20bn euros (about £18bn) that has previously been suggested.
The money is among issues that must be resolved before the EU will agree to move on to talking about a transitional deal and future trade deal.
Last week, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK had two weeks to clarify what it would pay to settle its accounts, if the talks were to make "sufficient progress" before the next big EU leaders' meeting in December.
On Sunday, he told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche he was making plans for the possible failure of talks, adding: "It's not my (preferred) option... but it's a possibility. Everyone needs to plan for it, member states and businesses alike. We too are preparing for it technically."
Leave campaigner and entrepreneur James Dyson, also interviewed on the Marr programme, said it was "quite outrageous" for the EU to demand "billions and billions" before agreeing to negotiate on a future deal.
"I would walk away. I think that's the only way to deal with them," he said.
But Environment Secretary Mr Gove, who headed up the successful Vote Leave campaign during the EU referendum, said: "I can understand James's point of view but on this occasion, respectfully, disagree with him.
"I think it's far better for us to be engaged in these negotiations."
Asked if he would block the prime minister if securing a deal meant the UK had to offer more money, he said: "I certainly would not. I would not block the prime minister in doing what she believed was right."
"We have to make sure that when we are negotiating on money or anything else that we both respect Britain's interests but also make sure, as the prime minister has said, that no EU country is out of pocket as a result of the decisions that we have made."
"My view is the prime minister and [Brexit Secretary] David Davis should be given the flexibility that they need in order to secure that good deal."
Asked about a Mail on Sunday story reporting that both Mr Gove and Mr Johnson had written to the prime minister expressing their "worry" that "in some parts of government the current preparations are not proceeding with anything like sufficient energy".
He told the BBC: "As a departmental minister I have a responsibility .. to make sure that we are ready for any eventuality."
He stressed the cabinet wanted to achieve a "good Brexit deal" but added: "We are also making sure that whatever may happen in these negotiations, that Britain can make the best of them."

Leading Brexiteers in the cabinet have rallied behind Theresa May amid attempts to unseat her by Tory MPs.
Michael Gove said he "absolutely" had confidence in Mrs May as he confirmed he would not be following several other ministers out of the door.
And Liam Fox urged MPs to support the PM's draft Brexit agreement, saying a "deal was better than no deal".
The PM has named health minister Steve Barclay as her new Brexit Secretary following Dominic Raab's exit.
The 46-year old former banking executive backed Leave in the 2016 referendum and has never rebelled against the Tory whip during his eight years in the Parliament.
A mini-reshuffle has also seen Amber Rudd confirmed as the new work and pensions secretary after Esther McVey's resignation on Thursday.
The BBC understands Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom could oversee a meeting over the weekend of pro-Brexit cabinet members who have concerns about the deal.
Mr Gove and Mr Fox are expected be present, along with International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.
The news came as more Conservatives expressed unhappiness with Mrs May's leadership and urged a confidence vote.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said about 20 Tories have, so far, publicly stated they have submitted letters of no confidence in the PM over her handling of Brexit.
This is some way short of the 48 needed to trigger a vote under Conservative Party rules.
One of those to do so, ex-minister Mark Francois, said the draft agreement negotiated by Mrs May with the EU was "truly awful" and the prime minister "just doesn't listen" to concerns within her party.
Ex-Brexit minister Steve Baker told the BBC's Politics Live that although he could not be sure of the number of letters submitted, he believed it was "close" to 48 and a contest was "imminent".
If this happened, he suggested the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs, headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, would "collectively agree" which single candidate was best-placed to deliver the Brexit they wanted and back them.
But Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said Mrs May would win any contest "decisively" and "deserved to" since there was "no plausible alternative" to her approach.
Rumours had been rife that Mr Gove, a key figure in the 2016 Leave campaign, would follow fellow Brexiteers out of the cabinet in protest at the EU withdrawal agreement.
But the environment secretary, who reportedly rejected an offer to make him Brexit secretary after Dominic Raab's exit, told reporters on Friday he was focused on working in cabinet to get "the right deal in the future".
Asked if he had confidence in the PM, Mr Gove said: "I absolutely do."
He added: "I'm also looking forward to continuing to work with all my government colleagues and all my colleagues in parliament in order to make sure that we get the best future for Britain."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told an event in Bristol: "We are not elected to do what we want to do, but to do what is in the national interest."
Speaking in public for the first time since the withdrawal agreement was signed off by cabinet, Mr Fox said he hopes MPs "will take a rational and reasonable view" of the deal.
He added: "I hope across parliament we recognise that a deal is better than no deal, and businesses require certainty - it's in our national interest to provide certainty as soon as possible."
By BBC Assistant Political Editor Norman Smith
Michael Gove is not resigning because he thinks that even at this very late hour, he is the person who can make Theresa May change course with Brexit.
This is a huge relief for Theresa May, who meanwhile has been carrying on with business as usual by trying to sell her deal.
Theresa May has made it absolutely clear that she is going nowhere.
Senior placed Tory MPs are saying they have reached the magic 48 letters needed for a vote of confidence against Theresa May, but Sir Graham Brady - chairman of the 1922 committee - is giving precious little away.
A Conservative party leadership challenge is most definitely looming, if not this morning or this afternoon, by the weekend.
Michael Gove is a bit of a man of mystery, but if he doesn't take the Brexit Secretary role, it begs the question of who would take that job.
Mr Gove's decision to stay was a boost for Mrs May, who followed up a defiant Downing Street press conference on Thursday with a live phone-in on Friday morning on LBC radio, during which two callers said she should stand aside.
She compared herself to her cricketing hero Geoffrey Boycott who she said had "kept at the crease and carried on".
Ex-Culture Secretary John Whittingdale is among the latest Tory MP to demand a vote of confidence in the PM while a number of MPs, including Mr Francois and Adam Holloway, publicly tweeted copies of their letter.
But this prompted a blistering response from veteran Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.
Ambassadors from EU member states also met in Brussels on Friday morning to discuss the agreement.
The bloc's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, paid tribute to Mrs May, but said that the EU had to protect its principles even if there were political problems in the UK.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the consensus from the meeting was that the EU should keep calm and not provoke the situation in the UK.
The government unveiled its long-awaited draft withdrawal agreement on Wednesday, which sets out the terms of the UK's departure from the EU, over 585 pages.
But Mrs May is facing opposition from across the political spectrum to the draft deal, which must be approved by Parliament, with critics saying it will leave the UK indefinitely tied to the EU.
It is also understood that a group of cabinet ministers are also considering whether to try to force Mrs May to make some changes to the withdrawal deal.

Michael Gove has confirmed that some foreign trawlers will still have access to UK waters after Brexit.
Mr Gove, the UK environment secretary, said British fishermen would not have the capacity to land all of the fish in British territorial waters.
And he said that some access would therefore be granted to vessels from other countries.
He was speaking during a fact-finding mission to Denmark, which was largely focused on the Danish food industry.
The Danish fishing industry is currently highly-dependent on fish caught in UK territorial waters.
The meeting was attended by Niels Wichmann, chief executive of the Danish Fishermen organisation, who told BBC Scotland that there was no suggestion from Mr Gove that Denmark would receive preferential treatment.
And he said Mr Gove "did not say numerous countries, he just said other countries" would be granted access.
Mr Wichmann added: "The thing is he was just being realistic and he was saying that we need, within the Brexit negotiations phase, to find out where the final goal is, the final solution to the fisheries.
"The fisheries will be outside the common fisheries policy and we need a transitional period. In that transitional period we will have to have access from other countries."
Mr Wichmann also said that the Danes were seeking a deal that would effectively mean "business as usual" with regard to access to UK fisheries after Brexit.
Mr Gove's remarks in Denmark follow an appearance on the BBC's Andrew Marr show last month, when he said no foreign boats would be allowed to fish within six to 12 miles of the UK coast.
But he said the UK would become an "independent coastal state" after leaving the EU, which would allow it to extend control of its waters up to 200 miles from its coastline.
Mr Gove said this would allow the UK to "take control" of its waters, and then negotiate with other countries to allow them access to British fisheries.
He also described the EU's common fisheries policy as an environmental disaster, and said the government wanted to change that, upon Brexit, to ensure sustainable fish stocks in future.
The common fisheries policy has been extremely unpopular among Scottish fishermen, who are said to have overwhelmingly backed Brexit.
Anger has generally been focused on quotas for fishing catches and on other European fleets being given equal access to fishing grounds in Scottish waters.
Responding to Mr Gove's remarks, Bertie Armstrong of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation said: "It is clear from our meetings with the government that control over our waters will be in our hands after Brexit.
"We will be out of the Common Fisheries Policy and we will decide who fishes where and for what. Our position is straightforward: we must have first call on quota."
But the SNP claimed that the "startling revelations on the Tories' true position over fisheries post-Brexit" showed that "you cannot trust the Tories to stand up for rural Scotland's interests".
SNP MSP Stewart Stevenson said: "Michael Gove must immediately make absolutely clear what the UK government's real position on the future of fisheries is.
"He could start by confirming that devolved powers over fisheries will transfer to Scotland so that we can get on with developing our own management policies which put Scottish fishing interests, offshore and onshore, first."
A spokesman for the UK's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "Leaving the EU means we will take back control of our territorial waters, and for the first time in 50 years we will be able to grant fishing access for other countries on our terms.
"We will allocate quotas on the basis of what is scientifically sustainable, making sure we have a healthy marine environment and profitable fishing industry."

If MPs don't back Theresa May's Brexit deal there could be another EU referendum, Michael Gove has said.
The leading cabinet Brexiteer said Mrs May's deal was not perfect - but if MPs did not vote it through on 11 December there was a risk of "no Brexit at all".
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show there may now be a Commons majority for another referendum.
Labour has said it will attempt to topple Mrs May and force a general election if MPs reject her deal.
If that fails, they will then seek support in the Commons for another referendum.
Michael Gove insisted Mrs May could still win the vote on 11 December despite dozens of her own MPs being against her EU deal.
The environment secretary told the BBC that winning the Commons vote would be "challenging".
But although Mrs May's deal was not perfect, "we have got to recognise that if we don't vote for this, the alternatives are no deal or no Brexit".
"There is a real risk if we don't vote for this deal there may be a majority in the House of Commons for a second referendum," said Mr Gove, a leading figure in the 2016 Leave campaign.
Asked if Mrs May would have to stand down as PM if she lost the vote on her deal in nine days' time, he said: "Absolutely not."
He claimed there was a "strong movement behind the prime minister" among the public.
Labour has said it will table a no confidence motion in the government if MPs vote down the deal in a bid to topple Mrs May and force a general election.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: "If the prime minister has lost a vote of that significance then there has to be a question of confidence in the government.
"I think it's inevitable that we would seek to move that," he added.
Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, if the government loses a vote on a motion of no confidence it has 14 days to pass a second confidence motion, or Parliament is dissolved and a general election is called.
If Labour fails to force a general election it will seek support in the Commons for another EU referendum.
Conservative support for a further referendum is growing - science minister Sam Gyimah quit the government on Saturday to join the People's Vote campaign.
A cross-party group of 17 MPs, in a letter published in the Observer, has also called for Parliament to support another referendum at the earliest opportunity.
But a referendum can only be held if the government legislates for one and a majority of MPs vote for it.
The People's Vote campaign, which is backed by about 30 Labour MPs, a smaller number of Conservatives, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, argue that the public must be given the final say on the terms of Britain's exit, now that they know what the deal is.
Following Michael Gove's comments on the Marr show, Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "The government has made a Horlicks out of Brexit and now one of its chief architects has admitted that the final say might go back to the people."
He said the Lib Dems and "many others" will "demand a People's Vote with an option to remain in the EU".
Labour's shadow international development secretary Barry Gardiner told Andrew Marr he thought "remain and no-deal" would have to be "on the table" in any referendum.
But Sir Keir Starmer told Sky News he would be "worried" about no-deal being on the ballot paper, as it would be "catastrophic" for the country.
Michael Gove claimed the Leave campaign would probably win a fresh referendum by an even larger margin but holding one would "damage faith in democracy and rip apart the social fabric" of the country.
Many Leave voters would see it is a "condescending" move by the political establishment, who would effectively be saying people were "too thick to make a decision" the first time around, he told Andrew Marr.
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
Support for the prime minister's Brexit compromise seems to be shrinking, rather than growing.
If Theresa May acknowledges it in private, she certainly won't touch that notion in public.
The government claims the chances of Britain leaving the EU on 29 March without a deal are more likely if MPs reject Mrs May's deal.
Mr Gove said there would not be another Commons vote on the deal if MPs voted it down on 11 December - something Mrs May has previously refused to rule out.
There has been speculation the prime minister could return to Brussels to ask for the deal to be modified to reflect MPs' concerns before putting it to another Commons vote.
The EU has said the deal it has agreed with Mrs May is their final offer and it will not be renegotiated.
They argue the UK will be kept tied to the EU with no say in its rules until Brussels decides it can leave, under the terms of the Northern Irish "backstop".
Mrs May insists the backstop, which is designed to keep the Irish border open until the UK can agree a free trade deal with the EU, would be temporary.
However, her former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab told the Sunday Times the backstop would last indefinitely - for as long as it takes to negotiate a new UK-EU relationship - "unless the EU allows us to exit".
Michael Gove told Andrew Marr he was also uncomfortable about the "backstop" but it would be temporary.
This was because it would hand the UK economy a "competitive advantage" over the remaining 27 EU nations, he argued.
Opponents of Theresa May's Brexit deal believe the UK's chief law officer, Geoffrey Cox, has advised the government that the Northern Ireland "backstop" would continue indefinitely.
They think this is why the government is refusing to publish Mr Cox's legal advice on the EU withdrawal agreement in full - as it would make it even harder for her to convince MPs to back her deal.
The government insists such legal advice is always confidential - and that MPs will be able to question Mr Cox about it on Monday, when he makes a statement to the Commons. MPs will start five days of debate on the deal on Tuesday.
But Labour is spearheading a cross-party effort - including the government's partners the DUP - to force the legal advice to be published, ahead of the debate.
Sir Keir, a former director of public prosecutions, said the opposition parties would press for contempt of Parliament proceedings if MPs are not shown the advice.
If contempt proceedings were requested, it would be up to Commons Speaker John Bercow to decide whether a debate and vote should be held.

The government has not proposed any changes to the PM's Brexit deal during cross-party talks, says shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer.
Meetings have been taking place between Tory and Labour politicians to find a proposal to put to the Commons before an emergency EU summit next week.
But Sir Keir said the government was not "countenancing any change" on the wording of the existing plan.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "We have made serious proposals."
The government was "prepared to pursue changes to the political declaration", a plan for the future relationship with the EU, to "deliver a deal that is acceptable to both sides", the spokesman said.
Sir Keir said the government's approach was "disappointing", and it would not consider any changes to the "actual wording" of the political declaration. "Compromise requires change," he said.
"We want the talks to continue and we've written in those terms to the government, but we do need change if we're going to compromise."
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 12 April and, as yet, no withdrawal deal has been approved by MPs.
Theresa May has written to European Council President Donald Tusk to request an extension to 30 June.
But she says if the Commons agrees a deal in time, the UK should be able to leave before European parliamentary elections on 23 May.
By Jonathan Blake, BBC political correspondent
Both sides say they are serious about these talks, but there is little to show for that so far.
Perhaps that's no surprise.
After more than two years of negotiations with the EU and months of wrangling in parliament, the idea that the government could sit down with Labour and thrash out a deal that keeps both sides happy in a few days seems optimistic at best.
There appears to be disagreement over what the talks can achieve; changes to the political declaration on the UK's future relationship with the EU, or an additional document to what has already been agreed?
If a deal is done, it may or may not fly. Plenty of Tory MPs are uneasy about working with Labour and the closer ties to the EU it may lead to.
Many Labour MPs want a further referendum regardless of what is agreed - something Jeremy Corbyn has been luke warm on so far.
At this stage a deal looks doubtful. But this is Brexit and stranger things have happened.
Prisons minister Rory Stewart told BBC Radio 4's PM programme that there were "tensions" but there was "quite a lot of life" left in the talks with Labour.
"In truth the positions of the two parties are very, very close and where there's goodwill it should be possible to get this done and get it done relatively quickly," he said.
He insisted that "of course we are prepared to compromise" on the political declaration.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said: "The sense is that the government has only offered clarifications on what might be possible from the existing documents, rather than adjusting any of their actual proposals in the two documents."
She added that both sides agree the talks are not yet over, but there are no firm commitments for when further discussions might take place.
In case no agreement has been reached by 23 May, the prime minister has said the UK would prepare to field candidates in European parliamentary elections.
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler has been told by a senior EU source that European Council President Donald Tusk will propose a 12-month "flexible" extension to Brexit, with the option of cutting it short if the UK Parliament ratifies a deal.
But French President Emmanuel Macron's office said on Friday that it was "premature" to consider another delay.

The government is set to publish the first in a series of technical notices designed to prepare the UK for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
The notices will include advice for businesses, citizens and public bodies.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said securing a deal was still "the most likely outcome" - but added making alternative arrangements was the "responsible" thing to do.
The European Union has already produced 68 technical notices of its own.
Between late August and the end of September, government departments are expected to publish around 70 technical notices.
Mr Raab - who travels to Brussels this week to continue negotiations with the EU - said the advice was necessary to "mitigate the risks and make sure the UK is ready to make a success of Brexit".
He added the government wanted to "clearly set out the steps that people, businesses and public services need to take in the unlikely event that we don't reach an agreement" with the EU.
Downing Street described the advice due on Thursday as "sensible, proportionate, and part of a common sense approach to ensure stability, whatever the outcome of talks".
The day will also see Mr Raab make a speech in Westminster to outline the government's plans for the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal in March next year.
Downing Street said it wanted to ensure "consumers and businesses are not harmed" by the possibility of no deal being agreed.

The government has prepared the legal text of an updated Brexit deal, government sources have told the BBC.
It is expected to make more of the plans public in the next few days, a senior government figure says.
The government has suggested creating "customs clearance zones" in Northern Ireland and Irish Republic, as part of the proposals put to the EU.
But Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney said the plans were a "non-starter".
In a tweet, Mr Coveney said Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland "deserve better" than the proposals, which were originally reported by Irish state broadcaster RTE.
Proposals for reaching a Brexit deal had been expected ahead of a crucial EU summit on 17 October.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson says this will happen whether or not there is a new deal with Brussels.
Mr Johnson says that he would prefer leaving with a deal.
At the Conservative Party conference on Monday, he said: "I'm cautiously optimistic. We have made some pretty big moves, we are waiting to see whether our European friends will help us and whether we can find the right landing zone."
MPs have passed a law, known as the Benn Act, requiring Mr Johnson to seek an extension to the deadline from the bloc if he is unable to pass a deal in Parliament, or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit, by 19 October.
With the detailed proposals on the table, the UK side hopes that by the end of the week, both the EU and UK would be in a period of intense negotiations where both sides thrash out a final text.
But there is no certainty over whether the EU will accept the premise of the plans in order to move to the next phase of talks.
The biggest obstacle to a deal is the backstop - the plan to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
The policy - agreed to by former PM Theresa May in her withdrawal deal with the EU, which was rejected three times by Parliament - is unacceptable to many Conservative MPs.
Since becoming prime minister, Mr Johnson has stressed to EU leaders the backstop would have to be replaced if any deal was to be passed by Parliament.
Mr Johnson has argued that the backstop would keep the UK too closely aligned with EU rules after Brexit.
The EU Commission has said it is willing to look at new proposals but these must achieve the same aims as the backstop - and be legally enforceable.
Sources involved in the negotiations with the EU say the checks proposed would not be at the Irish border, and suggestions there would be a series of checkpoints along the border are a misunderstanding.
The proposals were rejected by political parties in Dublin and non-unionist politicians in Belfast, with the SDLP's Colum Eastwood saying there would be "economic and security challenges that are unacceptable".
"Anything that causes there to be customs, tariffs, checks anywhere represents a hardening of the border," she told Radio 4's Today programme.
"[It] goes against all of the commitments that have been entered into by the British government at the get-go of this Brexit process to protect the Good Friday Agreement, to ensure no hardening of the border, to respect the Irish economy, Irish society - to do nothing that would in anyway threaten or destabilise the situation," she added.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer described the proposals as "utterly unworkable".
Talks have continued between the UK and EU, at a technical level. Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier met on Friday.
The BBC has learnt the proposals will accept the need for customs checks on the island of Ireland - but insist these checks, as the government previously pledged, would be conducted away from the border.
Customs formalities would be carried out mostly where goods originate or at their final destination.
The UK government maintains that any further customs inspections would be very limited - and these could be conducted either at new locations or at existing business premises.
The Irish broadcaster RTE had reported that a "string of customs posts perhaps five to 10 miles away from the frontier" had been floated by the UK.
However, government sources have denied that UK officials had proposed a series of inspection posts on either side of the Irish border.
Leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson told the Today programme the proposals showed Mr Johnson was "not serious" about getting a deal.
"He knows that this is going to be rejected," she said.
Ms Swinson also said cross-party talks continued about how to ensure the Benn Act was "watertight".
She raised concerns that although Mr Johnson has promised to respect the rule of law, he has also promised to deliver Brexit on 31 October, with or without a deal.
"Those two things can't simultaneously be true," she said.

The government is trying to "purge" Tory rebels who oppose it over Brexit, ex-Justice Secretary David Gauke says.
A senior source from the whips' office - which ensures MPs vote on party lines - said those who voted to block no deal would be expelled and deselected.
The threat came as opposition MPs prepared to introduce legislation in an effort to avoid no deal.
Mr Gauke said the PM was seeking to "re-align" and "transform" the Tories "in the direction of The Brexit Party".
The prime minister has said the UK must leave the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal, prompting a number of MPs to unite to try to prevent the UK leaving without an agreement.
Meanwhile, speaking ahead of a meeting of the shadow cabinet, where Labour will finalise plans aimed at stopping no deal, Jeremy Corbyn said an election would be "the democratic way forward".
MPs will this week seek to bring forward legislation against no deal in Parliament, with specific details expected to be outlined on Tuesday.
But in a warning to Tory MPs thinking of supporting such efforts, a senior whips' office source said anyone who failed to vote with the government would lose the whip - meaning they would effectively be expelled from the party - and would not be able to stand as a Conservative candidate in an election.
The source said if Tory MPs fail to vote with the government on Tuesday they will be "destroying" its negotiating position and "handing control of Parliament to Jeremy Corbyn".
There was a chance of reaching a revised Brexit deal on 17 October - the date of the next EU summit - they added, but "only because Brussels realises the prime minister is totally committed to leaving on 31 October".
The Conservatives have a majority of just one, which includes a pact with the Northern Irish DUP, so if any Tory MP is kicked out - has the whip withdrawn - the party will go into a minority government.
Mr Johnson had been due to meet Tory MPs pushing to rule out no deal on Monday, but a source close to the group said the prime minister called off the meeting with no explanation.
Mr Gauke told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I don't think there seems to be a huge effort to persuade people to support the government this week.
"They seem quite prepared for a rebellion and then to purge those who support the rebellion from the party."
He said the government was "almost goading people into voting against" it to pave the way for a general election.
He later told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire he would be prepared to lose his job to vote against no deal, saying: "I have to put what I consider to be the national interest first."
Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, the prime minister could call a general election if two thirds of all MPs vote for one.
One could also be held if a motion of no confidence was passed and no alternative government was confirmed within 14 days.
Conservative MPs who have been vocal about their opposition to a no-deal Brexit include those who were ministers in Theresa May's cabinet only weeks ago.
As well as ex-Justice Secretary David Gauke, the group also includes former Chancellor Philip Hammond and former International Development Secretary Rory Stewart.
Other senior Tories like Ken Clarke and Oliver Letwin, both former ministers, have also said they would defy the government to stop no deal.
Beyond them, there is a much larger group of MPs - several dozen - who have suggested they do not agree with a no-deal Brexit, but have been less vocal about what action they would take. They include the likes of Greg Clark, Claire Perry, Ed Vaizey, Guto Bebb and David Mundell.
Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach, who has also said she would be prepare to lose her job to oppose a no-deal Brexit, told BBC Breakfast she had not been contacted by the whips' office.
"The decision has been made without the government even seeing the legislation that we're likely to be voting on tomorrow, so it seems to me that this is a very deliberate attempt to try and purge the Conservative Party of moderate, sensible voices," she said.
Nick Boles, the independent MP who quit the Conservatives over Brexit, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the party had been "taken over" by the "hard right".
"The Conservative Party has fallen prey to an almost religious obsession with the hardest form of Brexit, which is obviously a Brexit with no deal," he said.
He said this was made clear with the resignation of Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson last week, who he described as a "progressive, modern, liberal Conservative".
Boris Johnson was elected with a promise of sticking to his Brexit deadline, come hell or high water.
If MPs make that impossible this week, he may well choose instead to press the button on another campaign, and go to the country.
I understand calling an election, maybe even this week, is one of the options under consideration.
But his team is well aware that chunks of the electorate might be pretty cross about going to the polls again.
So cranking up the pressure on Tory rebels at the start of this crucial week could create a convenient group of bogeymen who could be chucked out of the party, and take the blame.
On Sunday, cabinet minister Michael Gove refused to guarantee Downing Street would abide by any legislation aimed at stopping no deal.
David Gauke has subsequently written to the attorney general - the government's senior law officer - demanding the government commits to following the rule of law.
Doing otherwise could "undermine the institutions and values we all hold dear", he wrote.
Privately, Mr Johnson's critics are warning they will seek a judicial review of the government's action should ministers choose to flout the will of Parliament by ignoring a no-deal law.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson told the BBC it was "perfectly normal" for a government to take the time to see how any new legislation would impact Brexit negotiations, but insisted: "Every government stands by the law."
He said he did not believe any anti no-deal legislation would be passed by Parliament and hoped that Tory MPs would "rally round" the prime minister this week.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned a general election would be an "elephant trap" Labour must not fall into and Brexit must be "resolved" first.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a speech in Salford he did still want one.
"In that election Labour will give people the chance to take back control and have the final say in a public vote... including the option to Remain," he added.
He also called the prime minister's plans to shut down, or prorogue, Parliament "an attack on democracy that will be resisted".
Mr Johnson has said he asked for the suspension in order to hold a Queen's Speech - which sets out a list of laws the government hopes to get approved by Parliament - on 14 October.
But Labour says the suspension is to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Any new law has to pass all stages of both Houses of Parliament - this usually take weeks but could be done in as little as three days this week.
The bill could be challenged by the government and fall at any stage. It could fail to achieve enough support from either MPs or peers in votes held in the Houses.
This could be a tight timetable as there are as few as four sitting days before Parliament is suspended. This is due to happen between Monday, 9 September, and Thursday, 12 September, under plans announced by the prime minister.
Another hurdle for any bill could come in the Lords. Although opponents to no deal have a large majority, peers wanting to block legislation could talk until there is no time left.

Just hours ahead of UK Prime Minister Theresa May's touch-down here in Brussels, there is evidence - once again - of a yawning gulf between what's being hinted at by her office and the EU's reality.
Downing Street expects a revised Brexit deal in the offing, possibly ready for the House of Commons to vote on early next week. EU chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is still talking about a "worrying political impasse".
Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, says he expects no breakthrough during his meeting with Mrs May - but that is polite language compared to what I'm hearing behind the scenes.
Of course, it depends exactly what she asks for.
If the prime minister is looking for legally-binding assurances that the backstop mechanism to guarantee the Irish border will remain open after Brexit is not a trap or a permanent EU-UK post-Brexit solution, then EU diplomats tell me they could draw that up "anytime, 24/7".
That is, if Mrs May thinks it would be enough to get the Brexit deal through Parliament.
But few, if any, believe that would suffice for all MPs in the European Research Group, plus the DUP, to vote "yes" to the deal next week - never mind all the uncertainty in Parliament now caused by resignations from Labour and Theresa May's Conservative party.
And if the prime minister still wants backstop "assurances" to include a unilateral exit mechanism for the UK or a fixed, immovable end date, then she will meet an EU wall.
This is because the backstop is also a fallback mechanism for the EU to protect its single market.
The idea in Westminster that the EU will "blink in the end" rather than face a no-deal Brexit is correct, in that the EU is more flexible than it has previously indicated.
But the extent of its flexibility is grossly over-estimated by many MPs.
True, the EU has past form in budging at the last minute in high-stake negotiations like the Greek debt crisis - but only when it was deemed to be in the bloc's greater interest.
In the case of Greece, the EU decided to bend the rules to save, in the opinion of its leaders, the wider euro currency.
But watering down or abandoning the backstop mechanism altogether is thought to be damaging to the EU.
However much EU leaders want to avoid a no-deal Brexit, leaving exposed a 500km (310-mile) gap is thought to be far more costly for them in the long term. That is because of the risk of non-EU regulation goods being smuggled into the wider single market via Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
That perceived threat to the single market means the EU will not abandon or fundamentally weaken the backstop unless there is a watertight alternative in place.
Last week, a group of Dutch politicians came back from the UK lamenting what they described as the "lack of knowledge" and "lack of interest" amongst many in Westminster about how the EU works.
The lack-of-knowledge part is also being said in Brussels of the UK's Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, on whom so much Downing Street hope is now riding in order to try to get a deal though Parliament.
While the House of Commons has swirled in increasing turmoil over the last few weeks, little at all has changed in EU-UK talks.
The current impasse over the Brexit deal still comes down to the UK disliking the backstop mechanism.
EU countries dislike it too, by the way, and would rather never use it - but the EU is "only" offering legally-binding clarifications or assurances to express this - as well as ways to avoid triggering the backstop altogether.
One example of the latter would be the UK agreeing to a permanent customs union.
But Downing Street insists those ideas won't fly in the House of Commons.
EU officials believe any breakthrough, if found, will materialise next month. If not, the EU is getting ready to grant an extension to the UK's leaving process - Brexit is due to happen on 29 March. They realise, too, that MPs may call for that extension even earlier.
But the tone is noticeably hardening in Brussels.
EU officials say if no progress is made with the UK, regardless of any extension time, then they will use those extra months to deepen their planning to protect themselves from a no-deal Brexit.
Of course, to an extent, this is fighting talk, designed to increase the pressure on the UK.
So are the repeated declarations of EU unity over Brexit by Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, as he tours European capitals.
That said, I have been struck of late by a growing sense in the EU as time goes by that a no-deal Brexit – though highly undesirable – will be manageable for them, while still very damaging to UK.

The European Council has said that Brexit talks can enter the second phase following last week's agreement.
As a result it has published its guidelines for the next stage of talks.
Here are some of the key phrases from that document.
Don't forget that there are plenty of crucial details that still need to be resolved before negotiations on a withdrawal agreement come to an end.
That means the financial settlement, citizens' rights and of course, the Irish border.
Sufficient progress is not the end of the story, but the text also makes it clear that there will be a concerted effort to lock in what has been agreed so far - and that if the EU detects any reluctance or backsliding from the UK then that will have a negative effect on discussions about the future.
Theresa May has already agreed that a transition of about two years will take place under existing EU rules and regulations, but the EU's text makes crystal clear what it believes that means.
The UK will have to accept all EU law (that's what the acquis means) including new laws passed during the transition itself.
But it will no longer have a seat at the table when those laws are made. To put it brutally - the UK will, for a while, become a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker.
Both sides talk of a strictly time-limited transition period, so there doesn't appear to be much appetite at the moment for extending it.
Quite what happens if a future trade deal isn't ready by the end of the transition, a scenario many experts think is quite possible, will have to be debated in the future.
During the transition, the UK will have to accept the full jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and all four freedoms - including the freedom of movement of people.
The EU says the UK will remain in the single market and the customs union during a transition, while the UK insists that it will leave both on Brexit day.
This could become a semantic argument, because by accepting all rules and regulations - in other words, the status quo - the UK will remain in the single market and the customs union whether it likes it or not.
The British government has suggested that some things - like dispute resolution mechanisms - could change during the transition as agreement is made on future co-operation. But there's little appetite in the EU for that - in its view, you're either in or you're out.
The EU 27 stress that they want a close partnership with the UK in the future, but here they are setting out the limits of what they could mean.
The further away the UK wants to be from the rules and regulations of the single market the less access it will have - there is no such thing as partial membership.
This gets us back to the unresolved debate about what "full alignment" at the Irish border really means in practice.
The phrase "preserve a level playing field" is important too. The EU is anxious to ensure that the UK doesn't try to undercut the EU in any way by having looser regulations in certain key areas, and, if it does, then there will be consequences.
EU negotiators won't have the authority to start discussions with the UK on future relations (including trade and also things like security and foreign policy) until another set of guidelines is adopted in March 2018.
That gives the two sides not much more than six months to agree the text of a broad political declaration on the outlines of the future relationship.
The EU hopes to get that finalised by October 2018, but it emphasises that formal trade negotiations can only begin after the UK has left the EU.
Informal contacts on what the future might look like are probably taking place already, but the EU is still waiting for greater clarity from London about what exactly the UK government hopes to achieve in the long term.
The UK is trying to be as ambitious as possible about what can be done before Brexit actually happens. The EU, though, emphasises that trade talks will have to continue long after the UK has left.
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Any interim deal between the UK and the EU should not be allowed to become "eternal", according to a key figure in the negotiations.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, said any "transitional arrangement" should have a strict time limit.
A House of Lords report has warned of significant tariffs and other barriers to trade unless one is adopted.
And Chancellor Philip Hammond has said an interim arrangement may be needed.
But other ministers have reportedly expressed reservations in private and ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the BBC he feared talk of interim deals was part of "backsliding" and attempts to "delay" the Brexit process.
The UK is scheduled to begin official negotiations on the terms of its exit from the EU by the end of March, when Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will trigger Article 50.
From that moment, the rules say that Britain will have  two years to agree a deal before it leaves the EU.
But getting an agreement on Britain's future trade with the EU may take much longer.
Ministers have hinted they could agree some kind of transitional process to avoid a shock to the economy, with Mr Hammond telling MPs on Monday that this could go some way to ensuring a "smoother transition".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World at One, Mr Verhofstadt said a transitional deal was "certainly possible".
But he warned: "I have seen many times in politics that a so-called transitional agreement becomes an eternal, a definitive, agreement - that has to be avoided."
In a new report on the options for trade after Brexit, the House of Lords EU external affairs committee said the government should set out a clear plan at the start of negotiations, including specific proposals for what form any transitional deal could take.
The peers said that staying in the EU customs union - a move opposed by many Conservative MPs - could be an important element of such a deal.
And they warned that if there were no transition, the UK would have to rely on World Trade Organization rules for its trading arrangements, which would mean British firms facing significant tariffs and other barriers to trade.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said Downing Street was insisting a transitional deal would not be part of a "softening up process" to prepare people for the UK being "entangled" with the EU for years to come.
He added that there was a "tension" between ministers who want to leave the EU first before negotiating, and those like Mr Hammond who think this would be "profoundly risky".
Former Conservative minister Anna Soubry told BBC Radio 4's Today programme a transitional arrangement would offer "real benefits", saying the alternative would involve the UK "dropping off the cliff edge".
She said she and her fellow Remain campaigners accepted the Brexit vote and that it was time for both sides to "come together".
Her fellow Conservative Peter Lilley was more cautious about the prospects of a transitional deal, saying that negotiating one could take as long as reaching a permanent agreement.
Mr Lilley said there was "no reason" the UK could not secure a free trade arrangement with the EU without having to continue with the free movement of people.
Brexit minister David Jones was asked about the possibility of a transitional arrangement as he arrived at an EU summit in Brussels.
"What we've always said is that we don't want to have a disruptive end to Britain's participation in the EU," he said, adding that a "smooth withdrawal" was the government's goal.
But the Leave Means Leave campaign said: "A transitional deal is absolutely unnecessary and poses a huge threat to the UK economy."
It said such an arrangement would involve the UK paying "extortionate sums of money to the EU" and would cause "serious uncertainty".
The government has committed itself to publishing some form of plan before it notifies the EU of its intention to leave but it is unclear how detailed this will be.
Business has expressed concerns about the impact of a "cliff-edge" departure from the EU, leading to speculation about temporary measures to soften the blow - including paying to retain tariff-free access to the single market.
In a speech at Bloomberg in London, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Labour could amend any bill giving the government authority to trigger Article 50 in order to avoid a so-called "hard Brexit" involving quitting the EU single market.
He insisted this could be done without delaying the Brexit process.
Sir Keir said Labour wanted to see tariff-free trade for UK businesses, no new "bureaucratic burdens", protection for the competitiveness of the services and manufacturing sectors and for workplace protections to be maintained.
He also said Labour should not fall into the "trap" of trying to "frustrate" Brexit, saying the stance adopted by the Liberal Democrats - who are promising a second referendum on the terms of the exit package - "cannot heal the rift in our society".
In response, the Conservatives said Labour supported the government's Brexit timetable in public, "but behind closed doors they talk about second referendums and now seek to attach conditions and tie the government's hands".

Chancellor Philip Hammond has said he is "optimistic" Brexit discussions between the government and Labour can reach "some form of agreement".
Mr Hammond said there were "no red lines" in the meetings.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was "waiting to see the red lines move" and had not "noticed any great change in the government's position".
Three days of talks ended on Friday without agreement and Labour said no more talks were planned this weekend.
Downing Street responded by saying it was prepared to pursue alterations to the deal and ready to hold further discussions with Labour over the weekend.
The talks have been taking place to try to find a proposal to put to MPs which could break the Brexit deadlock in the Commons before an emergency EU summit on Wednesday.
Speaking ahead of an EU finance ministers' meeting in Bucharest, Mr Hammond told reporters: "We are expecting to exchange some more text with the Labour Party today, so this is an ongoing process."
Mr Hammond said: "We should complete the process in Parliament... Some people in the Labour Party are making other suggestions to us. Of course, we have to be prepared to discuss them.
"Our approach to these discussions with Labour is we have no red lines. We will go into these talks with an open mind and discuss everything with them in a constructive fashion."
Speaking while campaigning for next month's local elections in Plymouth, Mr Corbyn suggested votes in Parliament were now the most likely way of providing a breakthrough on Brexit, saying his key priority was "to avoid crashing out of the EU with no deal".
Mr Corbyn told the BBC: "We have a party position on the future relationship with Europe... and we will responsibly discharge those duties, but we are determined to make sure there is no crashing out."
The prime minister has been unable to get Parliamentary backing for the withdrawal agreement she secured with the EU in November last year, which sets out the terms of the UK's departure.
Labour has said it wants fundamental changes to a document drawn up at the same time, known as the political declaration. It sets out ambitions for the future relationship between the UK and EU after Brexit - including on trade, regulations, security and fishing rights - but does not legally commit either party.
Shadow home secretary Ms Abbott told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Labour had engaged in the talks "in good faith" and shadow Brexit minister Sir Keir Starmer had written to the government to say he wants them to continue.
She said there was concern that the government has made "no movement" on altering the political declaration and "that is key".
A Downing Street spokesman said after Friday's talks that "serious proposals" were made and it was "prepared to pursue changes to the political declaration in order to deliver a deal that is acceptable to both sides".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg says there was a sense that the government has "only offered clarifications on what might be possible from the existing documents, rather than adjusting any of their actual proposals".
She added that both sides agreed the talks are not yet over, but there were no firm commitments for when further discussions might take place.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 12 April and, as yet, no withdrawal deal has been approved by the House of Commons.
Prime Minister Theresa May has written to European Council President Donald Tusk to request an extension to the Brexit process until 30 June but says if MPs agree a deal, the UK should be able to leave before European parliamentary elections are held on 23 May.
She says the UK would prepare to field candidates in May's European Parliament elections if MPs failed to back a deal.
But education minister Nadhim Zahawi told the Today programme it would be "a suicide note of the Conservative Party if we had to fight the European elections".
He added the elections would pose an "existential threat" to both the Conservatives and Labour if they "haven't been able to deliver Brexit".
Mr Zahawi suggested that if an agreement could not be found from the talks with Labour, MPs should be asked to find a compromise on a deal through a preferential voting system.
Any extension to the UK's departure would have to be unanimously approved by EU leaders.
A senior EU source told BBC Europe editor Katya Adler that Donald Tusk would propose a 12-month "flexible" extension, with the option of the UK leaving sooner once Parliament had ratified a deal.
French Europe minister Amelie de Montchalin said such a delay would require the UK to put forward a proposal with "clear and credible political backing".
"In the absence of such a plan, we would have to acknowledge that the UK chose to leave the EU in a disorderly manner," she added.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told RTE it was unlikely that a UK request for a delay would be vetoed by any EU member nations as it could cause economic hardship in the bloc and "they wouldn't be forgiven for it".
But he said there was growing frustration from some nations which see Brexit as distracting from other things.

Philip Hammond has told business chiefs their Brexit fears can be resolved without staying in the customs union.
The chancellor rejected claims by the CBI president that continued membership was a "plan A" option "already out there" to minimise disruption to trade.
While the UK's post-Brexit customs options were "works in progress", he was sure a solution would be found.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has insisted the UK should leave the customs union "as fast as is reasonably possible".
Speaking on a trip to Argentina, the foreign secretary said the UK should establish its own trade policy outside existing customs arrangements "with all convenient speed".
The UK is leaving the EU in March 2019, which will be followed by a temporary transition phase until the end of 2020.
Most Brexiteers are against Theresa May's preferred option of a "customs partnership", under which the UK would collect tariffs set by the EU customs union on goods coming into the UK.
The alternative proposal would rely on technology and advance checks to minimise, rather than remove, customs checks. The EU has expressed doubts about whether either option would work.
Speaking at the employers' group's annual dinner, outgoing CBI president Paul Drechsler said the lack of political progress on the two proposals was a "hand-brake on our economy that can and must be released".
He urged ministers to be more pragmatic, telling Mr Hammond "there is already a solution out there that is our plan A, to choose to stay in a customs union with the EU, unless and until a better alternative can be found".
Mr Hammond said the government shared the CBI's desire to "minimise frictions and burdens, to avoid new barriers in Ireland and to grow British exports".
"But we do not agree that staying in the customs union is necessary to deliver them," he said.
Building on the two models under consideration, he said ministers were "confident we can develop a solution that will allow us to move forward while meeting your concerns".
Mr Johnson told Bloomberg that the UK needed to have its own trade and commercial policy, including its ability to set its own tariffs on goods from the rest of the world.
"The PM is the custodian of the plan which is to come out of the customs union, out of the single market and to get on with that project with all convenient speed," he said.
"That is what we're going to do. And what people like Argentina, Peru, Chile, outward looking free trading countries, what they want to hear from us is that we're getting on with it, with confidence and brio and zap and dynamism."
The UK has drawn up a "backstop" proposal in case customs arrangements have not been agreed by then, which would keep the UK aligned with the EU's customs union for a limited period.
Theresa May has insisted the plan, designed to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland if the new arrangements are not ready in time. would only apply "in a very limited set of circumstances".
Mr Johnson, who is due to head to Chile on Wednesday on the final leg of his tour of South America, also suggested he would like to have a "Brexit plane" to help him travel the world and promote the government's vision of Global Britain.
While acknowledging that taxpayers would baulk at the cost of buying a jet for ministers, he said he thought the spending would be justified if it was not "exorbitant".

Chancellor Philip Hammond has signalled he would be prepared to vote against a no-deal Brexit in Parliament, claiming it could cost the UK up to £90bn.
Leaving the EU without a legal agreement would be the "wrong" policy and cause a huge "hit" to the public finances, he told MPs.
He said it was "highly unlikely" he would still be in his job after Theresa May stands down next month.
But he said it would be up to MPs to ensure no-deal "doesn't happen".
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell asked Mr Hammond at Treasury questions if he would join Labour in voting against no deal and opposing any attempt by a new prime minister to stop Parliament sitting in order to let a no-deal Brexit go ahead.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom Warehousing Association has told BBC Newsnight that UK warehouses are "full", raising doubts about the ability of UK firms to stockpile goods ahead of a potential no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, the two men vying to succeed Mrs May, have both said they would be willing to take the UK out of the EU without a deal.
Mr Johnson has refused to rule out shutting down - proroguing - Parliament to push it through.
In reply to Mr McDonnell, the chancellor said: "I do agree with him, it would be wrong for a British government to pursue no deal as a policy and I believe it will be for the House of Commons, of which I will continue proudly to be a member, to ensure that doesn't happen."
In the event of no deal, the UK would immediately leave the EU with no agreement about the "divorce" process and leave both the single market and customs union - arrangements designed to help trade between members by eliminating checks and tariffs (taxes on imports).
The chancellor has been a long-term critic of a no-deal exit, making him something of a bogeyman among Brexiteers within his own party.
In recent days, Mr Hammond has questioned both leadership candidates' promises of greater spending and tax cuts if they make it to Downing Street.
He has insisted there is "no pot of money" sitting in the Treasury for extra spending or tax cuts and, in the event of a no-deal exit, all the £26bn "headroom" in the public finances would be absorbed by dealing with the economic upheaval.
"I have no doubt whatsoever that in a no deal exit we will need all of that money, and more, to respond to the immediate impacts of the disruption of a no deal exit," he told MPs.
"And that will mean there is no money available for either tax cuts or spending increases."
"But let me go further - the government's analysis suggests that in a disruptive no-deal exit there will be a hit to the Exchequer of about £90bn. That will also have to be factored in to future spending and tax decisions."
The Treasury has previously said a no-deal exit could lead to a £80bn spike in borrowing.
Speaking after Treasury questions, Mr McDonnell told reporters he felt the chancellor had been "ferocious" in his criticism of no deal and would be "influential" on the matter from the backbenches - if indeed that was where he found himself under a new Tory leader.
He said there was a "solid block" of Conservative MPs who would join Labour and other opposition parties in opposing a no-deal outcome.
Asked how Labour would prevent a no-deal Brexit, Mr McDonnell said the "window of opportunity was short" but the moral authority of Parliament would be in question if MPs repeatedly voted against it and yet the new prime minister went ahead anyway.
Meanwhile, the leadership contenders have been taking part in a hustings in Belfast where they were asked about their attitudes to no deal and their plans to solve the so-far intractable issue of the Irish border.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said the difference between them was largely tonal - Mr Hunt has a tone of regret rather than enthusiasm when it comes to the prospect of no deal, while Mr Johnson seems almost keen to get to that point and the huge opportunities he sees in its aftermath.
Our correspondent also said the feeling in Team Johnson is that the desire among Tory MPs to fight a no deal may be fading.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that businesses are holding off from investing in the UK because of uncertainty about Brexit.
"It is absolutely clear businesses where they have discretion over investment, where they can hold off, are doing so - you can understand why.
"They are waiting for more clarity about what the future relationship with Europe will look like," he said.
The second round of Brexit negotiations take place in Brussels on Monday.
Mr Hammond's comments came as a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) survey suggested that 42% of UK firms believe Brexit has hurt their investment plans.
The CBI called on the government to quickly secure a future EU trade deal.
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Mr Hammond said that government ministers were becoming increasingly convinced of the need for transitional arrangements to reduce disruption as the UK leaves the EU.
"Five weeks ago the idea of a transition period was quite a new concept, I think now you would find that pretty much everybody around the cabinet table accepts that there will be some kind of transition," he said.
"We're into a real process now with the start of negotiations and I think you'll find the cabinet rallying around a position that maximises our negotiating leverage and gets the best possible deal for Britain."
He said a transitional arrangement was "right and sensible both for the UK and EU" and could potentially take a "couple of years".
Analysis: Joe Lynam, BBC business correspondent
When companies make a big investment, they tend to make a big splash about it. Press releases issued, stock exchanges advised and ministerial blessings acquired.
But when businesses decide NOT to invest in new staff, a new production line or even a new product, we rarely get to hear about it.  Companies pausing or cancelling investment  - for whatever reason - is counter-factual.
So surveys and anonymous polling are the next best way to gauge the corporate mood.
Although some Brexiteers regard the CBI as a pro-EU vassal, its survey showing two-fifths of companies pausing their investment plans because of Brexit is not an outlier. It chimes with similar reports from the British Chambers of Commerce, Deloitte and the Institute of Directors.
And who would blame firms for holding off? If their biggest market could soon be in or out of the Single Market, in or out of the Customs Union, and beholden or not to the ECJ, it does matter for their future investment plans.
Brexit minister David Davis is due in Brussels on Monday for the next round of talks with EU officials.
Ministers have talked of a transitional period after the UK leaves the EU to avoid a "cliff edge" scenario, but the length and precise arrangements have yet to be decided.
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics show, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said any transitional period should be "very time-limited", and should allow the UK to strike new trade deals - something it is unable to do as part of the EU's customs union.
Mr Fox accepted it was not clear whether the UK would have the power to finalise deals during this period.
Pressed on whether the UK could even negotiate during the transition, he said: "Well, I'd hope we'd be able to do that and I hope that's one of the conditions we would set."
He added: "It's certainly something I would want to see because otherwise it makes it much more difficult for us to take advantage of the opportunities that Brexit itself would produce."
Rain Newton-Smith, chief economist at the CBI business lobby group, said: "To help British business remain optimistic and keep uncertainty at bay, the government must work quickly to agree the terms of the [Brexit] transition and future trading arrangements.
"That's why the CBI has suggested staying in the single market and a customs union until a final deal comes into force.
"This is the simplest way of ensuring companies don't face a damaging cliff-edge and that trade flows can continue without disruption."
Labour says it would seek to preserve all the benefits of the single market and customs union if it was leading the negotiations.
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told the Sunday Politics that Labour could seek to retain full membership of both bodies.
But she admitted it was "probably unlikely" a deal could be struck giving Labour control over laws and borders at the same time.
"If we could negotiate an agreement on remaining in the single market that dealt with all of those issues, then that would be fantastic," she said.
"Whether that's likely remains to be seen.
"We want to retain the benefits that we currently have within the customs union. We want to have our cake and eat it - as do most parties in Westminster - in terms of being able to negotiate our own trade deals."

Philip Hammond has warned the EU the UK will "go it alone" and build a new satellite navigation system if shut out of the Galileo project after Brexit.
The chancellor said the UK wanted to remain a "core member" of the EU-wide scheme, which it has helped pay for.
But if this was not possible, he said the UK would develop a rival scheme as access to the data satellites provided was vital for national security.
The issue has become an emerging dividing line in the Brexit talks.
The UK has demanded £1bn back from the EU if the bloc carries through on its plan to exclude Britain from Galileo, which was developed by the European Commission and the European Space Agency.
Brussels has cited legal issues about sharing sensitive information with a non-member state - but the UK has said the row could harm wider post-Brexit security co-operation and "risks being interpreted as a lack of trust in the United Kingdom".
Arriving for a meeting of European finance ministers on Friday, Mr Hammond - regarded as the cabinet's chief advocate of the closest possible links with the EU after Brexit - issued a stark warning.
"We need access to a satellite system of this kind, our plan has always been to work as a core member of the Galileo project, contributing financially and technical to the project," he said.
"If that proves impossible then Britain will have to go alone, possibly with partners outside Europe and the US to build a third, competing system. But for national security strategic reasons, we need access to a system and we'll ensure that we get it."
By BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake
There is nothing like a common enemy to unite a divided group.
The EU's threat to freeze the UK out of its satellite navigation system has riled both Brexiteers and Remainers at the very top of government.
Philip Hammond, one of the most Brexit-sceptic figures in the cabinet, has talked of the UK "going it alone" with its own rival project.
In stark contrast, just the day before he'd spoken of "shared challenges" and "unshakeable commitments" between the UK and the EU.
If the line from Brussels that the UK is chasing a "fantasy" was designed to anger the other side it appears, at least in part, to have worked.
But it may also have helped galvanise UK officials' resolve to negotiate hard with the full backing of the cabinet.
Britain's aim of turning Galileo into a shared post-Brexit project is "a big ask" according to the EU, but that is different to saying it cannot or will not happen.
So it may also be the case that the government senses this is a fight it can win, and is upping the ante accordingly.
Labour seized on Mr Hammond's comments, suggesting they showed the government was willing to spend "billions of pounds" on an alternative space programme at a time of continuing austerity in public services.
"It's time the chancellor came down to Earth to prove he is on the same planet as the rest of us," said the shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
Amid growing tensions over post-Brexit security co-operation, a senior EU official on Thursday attacked the UK's "fantasy" approach to negotiations which they described as "let's just keep everything we have now".
Mr Hammond said such comments were "not particularly helpful" given the clock was ticking down to the UK's March 2019 exit and both sides needed to make significant progress by the next month's summit of European leaders.
"There are obviously a wide range of views on both sides but everybody that I've engaged with has been very constructive and very keen to find a way to move forward," he said.
The UK, which has one of Europe's largest military budgets and most sophisticated intelligence operations, has said it wants a separate defence and security treaty with the EU to enshrine existing co-operation.
On Friday, the UK published a paper making clear that agreement on the exchange of classified information was essential for future co-operation in a range of areas, such as common EU security and defence operations.
Among "ongoing commitments" that could be put in doubt include Operation Sophia, the Italian-led naval mission combating illegal migration in the Mediterranean which is being assisted by the Royal Navy and Operation Althea, a peacekeeping mission which upholds the 1995 Dayton Agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"Without access to documents of this kind, the UK would not be able to manage the risk of deployments and would not be able to commit personnel or assets," the document says.
The UK says it is in both sides' interest for it to maintain its "significant" role within the EU's Intelligence and Situation Centre and also points out that the UK's National Cyber Security Centre regularly shares intelligence with EU partners and helps attribute major attacks across the continent.
The UK wants a similar agreement to those the EU has with the US and Canada but says "existing networks" should be used to ensure no interruption in co-operation and that different security protocols should apply depending on how widely information is disseminated.

Philip Hammond's "no risk" approach to Brexit is causing problems for Theresa May, an ex-colleague has said.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast the chancellor was among those advising the prime minister "we can't take that risk and don't do that".
Mr Hammond has said no-one voted for Brexit to end up worse-off.
Meanwhile, leading Brexiteer Liam Fox has said getting MPs' support is vital and any deal can be "revised" later.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019. The negotiations have entered a crucial phase, with the two sides hoping to reach an agreement by the middle of November at the latest.
With the clock ticking, Mr Fox, the international trade secretary, has warned colleagues to focus on getting an agreement that can command the support of Parliament, where Mrs May has a slim majority and has already suffered several defeats over Brexit.
He and Mr Hammond are supporting the PM's Chequers plan for a free trade zone for goods, underpinned by a common rule book, unlike Mr Davis and Brexiteers outside government who say the plan should be ditched in favour of Canada-style free trade deal.
The chancellor is seen by Brexiteers as being too cautious and too ready to believe leading businesses' concerns about the economic impact of the UK leaving the EU without a deal and Treasury forecasts about the negative effect on economic growth and the public finances.
Mr Davis, who quit the cabinet in July in protest at the direction of Brexit policy, suggested that despite being an "old mate of mine", Mr Hammond was acting as a brake on the chances of getting the best possible deal.
Mr Davis told the BBC's Nick Robinson that the chancellor had been among ministers saying "we can't take this risk; we can't take that risk" which, he suggested, had made things more difficult for him, as a negotiator.
"Philip's an old mate of mine. But the truth is that you've got several ministers, not just him, in the background, issuing noises saying 'we don't mean this'. Well we bloody do!'".
However, on a trip to South Korea, Mr Fox said the "reality" facing all those who believed in Brexit was that any deal had to get through the Commons, where the PM relies on the Democratic Unionists for her majority.
"While I may be very sympathetic with those who take an ideologically purist position, we are also politicians whose job it is to deliver," he told Bloomberg.
"We must leave and we must leave on 29 March - not to deliver Brexit is the greatest political risk we could run.
"We should try and get as much of a final deal as we can get by 29 March but it is self-evident that if it is a bilateral treaty, it can be revised later on."
Brexiteers are divided on whether an imperfect deal can be improved after the UK's departure.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove has suggested it can be modified later, but former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has said this is "pie in the sky".
Ahead of the next summit of EU leaders later this month, the main sticking point to an agreement remains finding a solution to the issue of avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Both sides are under pressure to modify their so-called "backstop" proposals to prevent the return of physical checks at the border while protecting the EU's single market and the UK's internal market.
You can listen to the Political Thinking podcast with Nick Robinson

Conservative leadership candidate Matt Hancock has proposed an "Irish Border Council" as part of his Brexit plan.
Mr Hancock said it would aim to find a way to maintain a soft border and allow the UK to have an independent trade policy.
He said the council would be chaired by an independent figure, using the example of Senator George Mitchell's role in the NI peace process.
He added that he would also seek a time limit to the backstop.
The backstop is a position of last resort to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland.
It would see the whole of the UK stay in the EU's customs union and Northern Ireland stay in the single market for goods.
It would apply "unless and until" a deep trade deal or a technological solution, sufficient to keep the border as open is it is now, was agreed.
Mr Hancock claimed the EU has "previously mooted adding a time limit to the backstop".
The Irish government has always strongly resisted a time limit, saying it would undermine the point of the backstop.
Mr Hancock said his border council would involve all parties in Northern Ireland and have a role for the Irish government and EU.
He said it would aim to find a "long-term political, administrative and technological solution".
The proposal from Mr Hancock has a focus on technology, but he said any solution would require the political will and consent of communities on both sides of the border.
Meanwhile, another candidate - Sajid Javid - has said his Brexit plan also hinges on coming up with an alternative to the backstop.
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, he said: "I will focus on the one Brexit deal that has already got through Parliament. That was the withdrawal agreement with a change to the backstop."
He added: "[Ireland] is the tail that wags the dog on this and we need to make sure we can do more to build that goodwill in Ireland and build their confidence.
"What I would do is make a grand gesture to Ireland that we would cover all their costs - the upfront costs, the running costs - of a new digitised border.
"I think it could be done in a couple of years, but I think we could cover their costs."
Later Ireland's Europe Minister Helen McEntee reiterated Ireland's position.
She tweeted a clip of Mr Javid adding the comment: "The Withdrawal Agreement will not change. The backstop cannot change.
"Much of what was in the  Withdrawal Agreement was asked for by UK. They were not bystanders in the two years it took to negotiate.
"Bit of realism needed."

Outlining her plans for the UK leaving the EU, Theresa May said Brexit means leaving that union.
It currently allows tariff and paperwork-free trade between the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
But the prime minister said: "Full membership of the customs union prevents us from negotiating our own comprehensive trade deals."
She said she would now seek to negotiate a new customs deal with the EU, which would allow tariff-free trade to continue.
However, if a deal cannot be achieved it could lead to the return of some form of customs checks along the Irish border.
Posting on social media, Former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness said "a border of the future is coming at us".
What is a customs union and why does it matter?
A customs union is a form of trade agreement between two or more countries.
It means they decide not to impose tariffs (taxes on imports) on each other's goods and agree to impose common external tariffs on goods from countries outside their customs union.
Setting common external tariffs is what distinguishes a customs union from a free trade area.
The key argument for leaving the customs union is that it will allow the UK to negotiate its own trade agreements.
"Warm words, soft words from Theresa May mean nothing."
He added: "Her intentions to leave the Single European Market and her intentions to leave the customs union are going to have a detrimental impact on the economy in the north and across this island.
"It's clear today from Theresa May's Brexit statement that the views and opinions of the people of north have been completely ignored."
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said "nowhere will be more damaged" by the plan outlined by Mrs May than Northern Ireland.
"If the British Government can negotiate special arrangements on the common travel area, they can negotiate special arrangements for trade and customs.
"No free trade customs access across the island means a hard Brexit in Ireland. It means a hard border."
DUP MP Sammy Wilson said the prime minister's statement would give the business community "more certainty".
"I further welcome that the prime minister has set out her plan for an ambitious Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, whilst here in Northern Ireland we will also maintain the Common Travel Area with the Republic," he said.
UUP economy spokesperson Steve Aiken said his party welcomed the prime minister's intention to retain the Common Travel Area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
He also said it was "deeply concerning" that "there is no one expressing the unique needs" of Northern Ireland after the dissolution of the Stormont assembly.
Alliance Party deputy leader Stephen Farry described Mrs May's speech as "catastrophic for Northern Ireland".
"Any departure from the customs union and the single market will necessitate a formal border either across the island of Ireland or down the Irish Sea."
He added: "A one-size-fits-all Brexit is just not practical. There are too many factors and circumstances particular to Northern Ireland.
"Yet, these have not yet been recognised and respected by the UK government."
Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Enda Kenny said he welcomed the "clarity" brought by Mrs May's speech.
However, he was criticised by Micheál Martin, the leader of the Republic's main opposition party Fianna Fail, who said Mrs May may be speaking softly but was acting in her own national interest.
He said Mrs May wanted to have her cake and eat it in her approach to Brexit.
The British and Irish Chamber of Commerce said the prime minister's pledge on leaving the customs union and EU single market would be "alarming for businesses".
The Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association (NIIRTA) said governments in London, Dublin and Belfast must "ensure that Brexit does not result in the hardening of the border and that no barriers whatsoever are placed on trade or workers across the EU".
A group that represents Irish business, IBEC, hit out at the speech on social media saying  "(The) UK's aggressive Brexit approach risks damaging UK-Irish relations."
During her speech earlier on Tuesday, the prime minister said maintaining the common travel area between the UK and Republic of Ireland would be a priority during Brexit negotiations.
She said: "No-one wants a return to the borders of the past.
"Our guiding principle must be to ensure that as we leave the European Union no new barriers to living or doing business within our own union are created.
"The United Kingdom will share a land border with the EU and maintaining that common travel area with the Republic of Ireland will be an important priority for the UK in the talks ahead."
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Irish government said that while the prime minister's comments may be seen as a warning of a "hard Brexit", Dublin has been preparing for all possible models of future UK-EU relations.
Mrs May also said she hopes that the "main parties" in Northern Ireland will form a government as soon as possible in the "spirit of unity".
She added that the UK government had received papers from Scotland and Wales on Brexit, but did not mention receiving any papers from Northern Ireland.
NI Secretary James Brokenshire was legally obliged to call for the 2 March vote on Monday after the executive collapsed over a botched green scheme.
Stormont was plunged into crisis after the resignation of Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister last week.

Did the prime minister just make it worse? It hardly seems that would have been possible.
Her agreement with the EU had been sharply kicked out several times by MPs. She'd promised that she would quit and get out of the way if that bought more support. Then she took the risk of talking to the political enemy to try to get a different deal.
But those measures failed - leaving her hope this time to dangle a bauble to each of Parliament's different Brexit tribes in the much more extensive plan of how she'd actually put our departure into law.
But even before she started talking, many MPs simply weren't listening.
After she finished, public rejections from almost all quarters started to pour in.
Of course, the vote itself on this bundle of measures won't be for at least a week - a lifetime in this hyper-speed world. A lot could change.
But the diplomatic way of describing the situation tonight? Compromising when no one else is interested in consensus is impossible.
The more brutal political interpretation - Theresa May's mishandling of this whole situation has, over many, many months, pulled her deeper and deeper down into a quagmire of her own creation.
An attempt at this stage to ask others for understanding to help her escape is just too late - far, far too late. Now some Conservative minds are turning to whether she can stay on to have this vote at all.

It's all about the money.
The UK and the EU have managed together to make a tiptoe forward in the Brexit talks.
But listening to EU leaders this afternoon it is abundantly clear that unless they change their minds, the UK is going to have to budge on the cash to make enough progress by December to be able to truly get on to the next phase of talks.
Certainly public money is tight in this administration, but frankly a hefty Brexit bill in exchange for a good deal would be the one big payment that the Chancellor Philip Hammond would be happy to sign off.
A move on the money is, therefore, primarily a political problem rather than anything to do with the actual funds.
There are whispers that Theresa May has privately reassured the other leaders that she is willing to put a lot more than the implicit 20 billion euros (£17.8bn) on the table as we leave.
Number 10 doesn't deny this, Mrs May didn't deny it when we asked her in the press conference today, nor did she reject the idea that the bill could be as high as 60 billion euros.
If she has actually given those private reassurances though, there's not much evidence the other EU leaders believe her or think it's enough.
But if she is to make that case more forcefully she has big political problems at home.
A much bigger payment is anathema to many Conservatives, and could frustrate swathes of voters who plumped for Brexit, in part on a promise that the country would get money back.
Number 10 is well aware of this.
One insider told me "it's all about the quantum," what "the party would swallow'.
Could a party with a powerful group of Brexiteers, including ministers who have gone on the record to say we shouldn't be shelling out much, really tolerate the prime minister calling for support to pay tens of billions?
This is not a question for now, but it has been logged for future reference inside Number 10.
Will there be a day when the prime minister decides to make a plain admission to the country, that the potential cost of leaving with no deal is a scarier prospect than having to cough up as much as 60 billion euros? About half what we spend on the NHS, but more than we spend on defence?
Or will she be pushed by those in her party who genuinely believe that is far better to cut our losses and walk out, than commit to an expensive deal.
Carrying her party and her European counterparts at the same time is Theresa May's fundamental challenge - on the face of it almost impossible.
And today's tiptoe forward is no guarantee that ultimately she will be able to go all the way.
PS There's lots of speculation that when the French President said the UK was not even "half way there" he was hinting that the bill could therefore be ultimately at least double 40 billion euros.
It wasn't really clear during the press conference that is what he meant, or whether he was using "half way there" to describe the state of the negotiations.
However, for ages in Westminster there has been an expectation that the eventual bill will be somewhere in that region, somewhere between 40 and 60, so it is not crazy to imagine that Macron's comments are further evidence that's the case.

Senior Tory Lord Heseltine has said he will rebel against the government when peers debate the bill giving Theresa May the authority to trigger Brexit.
He said he would support an opposition amendment in the House of Lords demanding MPs get a meaningful vote on the deal reached with the EU.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he denied this would be a "confrontation".
But Home Secretary Amber Rudd told ITV's Peston on Sunday programme: "I hope he will reconsider."
Last week peers gave an unopposed second reading to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, following a two-day debate involving more than 180 speakers.
MPs have already backed the proposed law, authorising Prime Minister Theresa May to inform the EU of the UK's intention to leave.
Opposition peers want to amend the bill at a later date to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in Britain and the role of Parliament in scrutinising the process.
As the government does not have a majority in the Lords, it is vulnerable to being outvoted if opposition peers - including Labour's 202 and the 102 Lib Dems - join forces.
Mrs May has said she wants to invoke Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty - the formal two-year mechanism by which a member state must leave the EU - by the end of March, and the government has warned the House of Lords not to frustrate the process.
Lord Heseltine wrote in the Mail on Sunday: "The fightback starts here. My opponents will argue that the people have spoken, the [Brexit] mandate secured and the future cast. My experience stands against this argument."
He also wrote: "This is not a confrontation with the government. It is to ensure the Commons can exercise its authority over the defining issue of our time."
The former deputy prime minister, whose leadership challenge to Margaret Thatcher helped trigger her exit from Number 10 in 1990, campaigned for Remain in the run-up to the referendum.
He has been a long-standing supporter of the EU within the Conservative Party and backed the idea of the UK joining the single currency.
Ms Rudd said: "The fact is the House of Commons, which he was such a fantastic member of in his time, did pass it by a big majority
"I hope he will reconsider. There'll be plenty of opportunities to debate."
Labour backed the government in backing the bill in the Commons.
In a speech to the Scottish Labour Party conference in Perth, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "I accept that Brexit has unleashed uncertainty, instability and concern amongst many, many people. But we cannot simply wish away the result.
"Can you imagine the reaction from those 17 million people, including one million from Scotland, who voted to leave the European Union if we simply ignored them?"
However, Gina Miller, the investment manager who brought the successful legal challenge against the government, forcing the Article 50 issue to a vote in Parliament, accused the Commons of "cowardice" in giving the bill a "rubber stamp".
She told the Independent: "I am hoping the Lords actually do what they should be doing constitutionally, exercising their parliamentary sovereignty, being independent, scrutinising the government and looking to put in amendments."
Appearing on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, she also said: "The will of the people does not negate the weight or wisdom of the Houses of Parliament."
But Conservative Party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin told the same programme: "The bill got an overwhelming majority, one of the biggest majorities a bill has got on its third reading in the House of Commons and it's gone to the House of Lords.
"The prime minister has said that there will be a vote once the negotiations are concluded. The prime minister won't conclude the negotiations if she thinks she's got a bad deal."
The Leader of the House of Commons, David Lidington, told BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour: "We'll listen, with respect as always, to the Lords when they debate the bill."
But he added that he hoped peers would not amend it, suggesting that to do so would go against the will of the people: "I still hope that the Lords will, at the end of the day, accept that this bill is in a particular position, unusual position, because of the referendum result."
Richard Tice, co-chairman of the pro-Brexit Leave Means Leave campaign, said: "It is of little surprise that Lord Heseltine - who has historically put the interests of the European Union ahead of those of Britain - will try to sabotage Article 50.
"Lord Heseltine's attempt to weaken the position of the prime minister ahead of negotiations with the EU is a truly unpatriotic act."

Leading German figures have written to the UK asking it to stay in the EU.
The letter, published in the Times, is signed by 31 people, including the leader of the Christian Democratic Union - and likely successor to Angela Merkel - Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and former Arsenal goalkeeper Jens Lehmann.
They cited post-work pints and pantomime as beloved British habits.
But the UK's role in post-war Europe is the focus of the signatories calling for Britain to stay.
"Without your great nation, this Continent would not be what it is today," they wrote.
The letter - also signed by the chief executive of Airbus, Thomas Enders, and punk singer Campino - said the UK had helped define the European Union as a community of "freedom and prosperity".
"After the horrors of the Second World War, Britain did not give up on us," it continued.
"It has welcomed Germany back as a sovereign nation and a European power.
"This we, as Germans, have not forgotten and we are grateful."
The signatories said that they "respect the choice" of British people who want to leave the EU and, if the country wants to leave for good, "it will always have friends in Germany and Europe".
But they said the choice was not irreversible and "our door will always remain open".
The letter concluded: "Britain has become part of who we are as Europeans and therefore we would miss Britain.
"We would miss the legendary British black humour and going to the pub after work hours to drink an ale. We would miss tea with milk and driving on the left-hand side of the road. And we would miss seeing the panto at Christmas.
"But more than anything else, we would miss the British people - our friends across the Channel.
"Therefore Britons should know, from the bottom of our hearts, we want them to stay."

The Brexit Secretary has said he understands Tory "jitters" about EU negotiations but urged MPs to hold their nerve as talks continue.
"The end is in sight in terms of a good deal, the prize we want," Dominic Raab said, asking them to "wait and see".
It comes amid newspaper speculation that Theresa May could face a vote of no confidence from Tory MPs.
On Saturday, protesters marched through London to call for a public vote on whatever Brexit deal is negotiated.
Some Tory MPs were angered last week by a suggestion that the post-Brexit "transition period" - designed to smooth the path between the UK leaving the EU in March 2019 and a future long-term relationship with Brussels - could be extended.
Ex-Tory leader and prominent Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith said that would see the UK paying the EU "tens of billions" more and he said the negotiations "look more like a capitulation".
Moray MP Douglas Ross said Scotland's 13 Conservative MPs would not support a deal if the UK remained part of the Common Fisheries Policy beyond 2020.
And Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen told the Mail on Sunday Theresa May was "drinking in the last chance saloon" and must attend a meeting of the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers this week.
Mr Raab told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that he was "open minded" about the possibility of extending the transition period - which the government calls the implementation period - for about "three months or so" if needed, as long as it was clear how the UK would get out of it, to avoid "any sense that we are left indefinitely in a sort of customs union limbo".
He said: "I think it's understandable there are jitters on all sides of this debate and we need to hold our nerve. The end is in sight in terms of a good deal - the prize we want - a good deal with the EU and I think colleagues should wait and see what that looks like."
He added: "We won't want to bring something back which we aren't confident is a very good deal for the United Kingdom.  But now is the time to play for the team, I think that's the way we get the best deal for the EU and I also think that's what the country expects from us."
Asked if, realistically, the withdrawal agreement could still be being negotiated after November, he replied: "I think if it went any distance beyond that we would have a problem with implementing the deal, and it would almost be the worst-case scenario - we'd have a deal but couldn't implement it in time."
Meanwhile Brexit minister Suella Braverman has told the BBC's Pienaar's Politics that she supports the prime minister, but refused to say whether she would back her in a confidence vote.
She said: "I don't think there will be a vote of confidence in the prime minister and I am supporting the prime minister unequivocally and I want her to get on with the job to deliver Brexit and I know that she will be doing that."
The UK voted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.89% to 48.11% in a referendum in June 2016.
It is due to leave on 29 March 2019 but during the post-Brexit "transition period", set to run until 31 December 2020, the UK-EU relationship will stay largely the same.
If at the end of that period, a long-term "future relationship", including trade deal, is not ready, both sides have agreed on the need for provisions to ensure there is no need for customs checks - a "hard border" - between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, in the interim period.
This is called the "backstop" - but the two sides have yet to agree on what form it should take and how long it could last.
On Saturday, protesters took part in a huge march to London's Parliament Square to call for another referendum - this time on any final Brexit deal that is negotiated. Organisers say it attracted about 700,000 people.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the march reflected "a much bigger group, both Leave and Remain [voters], who are utterly losing confidence in the prime minister's ability" to bring back a good deal.
Asked if Labour MPs would back Mrs May in Parliament, rather than risk a "no deal" exit from the EU, he said: "We do not accept this proposition it's that or no deal, and it's not just us. There's a huge majority in Parliament that will not accept that the alternative to Theresa May's deal, if there is one, is no deal."
He added: "I don't think anybody thinks this 30-year civil war in the Tory party on Europe is going to end before Christmas.
"What we're going to see is even if there's a deal, the Tory party will try to rip it up next year... They will not stop fighting about this.
"We've got to the very serious situation where people are saying 'Is this government actually capable of delivering because it's so divided?'."
There has been criticism of the language reported from unnamed Tory sources about Mrs May's future as Conservative leader about her entering the "killing zone" and telling her to "bring your own noose".
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted:
Former cabinet minister Theresa Villiers, a Brexiteer, described the newspaper comments as "disturbing" while the Conservative peer Lord Lilley told BBC News the language was "unpleasant and objectionable": "On either side, that sort of language should not be used."

The European Union (EU) has agreed a Brexit delay until the end of October and preparations have started to take part in the European elections on 23 May.
Prime Minister Theresa May says if a deal gets through Parliament before that date, the UK will not participate. But it seems likely that the UK will still be in the EU at that point.
The European Parliament is directly elected by EU voters.
It is responsible, along with the Council of Ministers from member states, for making laws (proposed by the European Commission) and approving budgets.
It also plays a role in the EU's relations with other countries, including those wishing to join the bloc.
Its members represent the interests of different countries and different regions within the EU.
Every five years, EU countries go to the polls to elect members of the European Parliament (MEPs).
Each country is allocated a set number of seats, roughly depending on the size of its population. The smallest, Malta (population: around half a million) has six members sitting in the European Parliament while the largest, Germany (population: 82 million) has 96.
At the moment there are 751 MEPs in total and the UK has 73.
Candidates can stand as individuals or they can stand as representatives of one of the UK's political parties.
Once elected, they represent different regions of the country, again according to population. The north-east of England and Northern Ireland have three MEPs each while the south-east of England, including London, has 18.
While most UK MEPs are also members of a national party, once in the European Parliament they sit in one of eight political groups which include MEPs from across the EU who share the same political affiliation.
Member states can run elections to the European Parliament according to their own national laws and traditions, but they must stick to some common rules. MEPs must be elected using a system of proportional representation - so, for example, a party which gains a third of the votes wins a third of the seats.
Turnout in the UK for European Parliament elections is low both by EU standards and by the standards of other UK elections.
The last time they were held in 2014, 36% of those eligible to vote did so, compared with 43% in the EU as a whole.
That compares with 66% turnout at the following year's general election.
In 2016, 56% of the electorate voted in the Scottish Parliament elections, 45% in the Welsh Assembly and 54% in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In local elections in England, turnout varies depending largely on what other elections are taking place on the same day, sometimes dipping as low as the European elections turnout and sometimes rising close to the level of general elections.
The last time European elections were held in 2014, the UK spent £109m on them.
The main costs were running the poll itself (securing polling stations and venues to run counts) and mailing out candidate information and polling cards.
The government has said that if the UK does not end up participating in the 2019 elections, it will reimburse local returning officers - the people responsible for running elections - for any expenses already paid.
The EU is planning to reduce the overall number of seats in the parliament from 751 to 705 when the UK leaves.
There will be a reallocation of 27 of the UK's seats to 14 other member states that are currently underrepresented. And the rest will be set aside with the possibility of being allocated to any new member states that join in the future.
The EU has already passed legislation to do this, but it does not take effect until the UK leaves.
The number of seats is capped in law at 751.
The European Commission had advised that as long as the UK made a decision to take part in the European elections by mid-April, this reallocation would be reversed.
But what if the UK elects MEPs and then passes a deal to leave the EU?
In that case, the UK MEPs would not take their seats, leaving vacancies.
The House of Commons Library says that extra MEPs could potentially be elected on "stand-by" in some member states but not take up their seats until the UK leaves the EU.
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It was an early-hour announcement that allowed many of the UK's business owners to finally get a few hours of restful sleep.
In Brussels on Thursday, the EU granted the UK a six-month extension, thus eliminating the immediate threat of a no-deal Brexit.
But for companies that have been preparing for a sudden exit, it was no more than a temporary reprieve.
"It's a bit of uncertainty that isn't helpful," says Andrew Graham. His 70-year-old company, Graham and Brown Wallpaper, has been stockpiling raw materials for months at its factory in Blackburn.
"Quite frankly, we could do with knowing where we're going," he told the BBC.
"An extension is better than a no deal, but actually we could do with getting the withdrawal deal through so that business can then plan for what it needs to do."
Joy Parkinson, who runs a Bury-based company selling natural beauty products, is more sanguine.
The Faith in Nature boss says Brexit is a hurdle, "but not insurmountable".
"We've been buying additional stock of the lovely fragrances we buy in from Europe, to make sure we were covered if there were issues around ports and blockages," she says.
"We were anticipating that some of our partners in European markets might have wanted to buy extra stock," Ms Parkinson explains, but that scenario never materialised.
"We've not overbought, so we've been fairly sensible and fairly pragmatic, we've not bought six months, 12 months of additional material, so we've managed the cash flow fairly pragmatically."
Nottingham florist and former Apprentice contestant Elizabeth McKenna has felt the impact of Brexit uncertainty much more strongly.
Her business, and her industry, are part of a finely tuned supply chain.
"We order and buy our flowers from Holland online," she explains. Orders need to be confirmed by 10:00 so as to meet auction deadlines in the Netherlands.
The flowers are then transported overnight via rail and ferries, and any delay could mean they arrive wilted or dead.
The initial Brexit date of 29 March, Ms McKenna explains, was just two days before her company's busiest day of the year - Mother's Day.
"That actually created an increase in commodity prices, because of the uncertainty with the exchange rate during that week which has directly affected profits within my industry.
"As far as trying to plan for what is going to happen with Brexit, we are a small industry... and we haven't had enough information to plan."
"Literally all that florists and people working at my level can do, as small independent businesses with 10 people, is wait and see what the government tells us."
Ms McKenna says small business have only received one or two Brexit-related letters from the likes of HMRC,
"We're essentially just saving money, cutting our costs where we can and are waiting to weather whatever is to come."
Other business have already had to absorb large additional costs.
Sloane's Hot Chocolate is made in a studio in Surrey - but sold in Waitrose, Harrods, and overseas to the US, Canada, Singapore, Dubai and Ireland.
It's one of many small businesses for which a further Brexit extension isn't merely a waiting period, but comes at a significant price.
Founder Brian Watt says the company's suffering began the day after the referendum in 2016, when the pound dropped sharply against the dollar.
This led to a 20% increase in the cost of its main ingredient - chocolate. The company chose not to pass that on to customers, instead eating into its profit margins.
Then, with a no-deal looming, Sloane's was told by one supplier that the price of their product would go up by 20% or 30%, forcing Mr Watt to stockpile.
"Whereas we would normally hold maybe one to two weeks supply of those items, we are now holding one to two months," he told the BBC, "because we would find it very difficult to pass on 20 to 30% price increases to our customers."
To help with the upfront costs of buying up supplies such as packaging, Sloane's had to secure a large overdraft from a bank.
But Mr Watt is stoic in the face of many more months of uncertainty.
"We basically made the decision that we are just going to get on with running our business," he says.

He did it, sort of. The prime minister has said he'll ask MPs to back an election in seven weeks time, just in time for Christmas.
The government's laying the motion tonight to hold the vote on Monday, trying to lay down the gauntlet to the opposition parties, who can keep him trapped in Number 10 if they like.
Remember this time last week there was delight in Downing Street that they had overcome expectations and agreed a deal with the EU.
But that euphoria fell away on that side of the argument, when MPs booted out the timetable to debate and pass all the new laws that would actually make Brexit happen.
For some of those objecting, it's a part of the ruse to stop our departure. But many others had what they considered entirely legitimate concerns about the speed with which he was trying to ram it through
Number 10's wheeze now is to dangle the offer of a few extra days of scrutiny to get it through, but only if MPs give in to Boris Johnson's other demand, backing to go to the ballot box soon after.
'Have the extra time you called for, but only if I get my ultimate prize' he's asking Parliament.
Downing Street knows full well however that opposition MPs are unlikely suddenly to swoon for this new timetable, it is hardly much extra time for scrutiny.
And while there are cabinet ministers who reckon it would be better to try as hard as possible with the bill, calmly and on a more conventional timetable, the dominant view in government is that there really is not a serious chance of the Brexit legislation getting through unmangled, so the only way, reluctantly for some, is to push the button for an election.
And this is where it gets very sticky for the government.
What happens next is partly dependent on exactly how the EU responds to the UK request for delay to Brexit.
That will become clear either on Friday or Monday. Although President Macron is understood to be on board for a short extension that would focus the minds, apparently texting as much to the prime minister on Thursday, the wider view in the EU is not expected to fall in line with that.
You can Precisely how they respond will shape the opposition parties' next moves. They might even, whisper it, come up with a fudge.
Boris Johnson cannot be remotely sure Labour and the smaller parties will let him have his way. The SNP and the Lib Dems are both tempted to go for an election as soon as a three month delay is agreed.
The Labour Party's official position has always been that they would agree to an election, in fact officially they are chomping at the bit, like the other parties, as long as a delay is agreed.
One senior member of the shadow cabinet predicted they would not be able to withstand the pressure if the Lib Dems and the SNP said yes.
Jeremy Corbyn himself, and certainly one group in his camp, are understood to be very tempted too. But, just as in 2017, lots of Labour MPs are horrified at the idea, partly because of Labour's standing in the polls.
But also, there are senior shadow cabinet ministers who believe the smart thing would be to leave the PM in his purgatory, twisting, unable to get his bill through, unable to get to an election.
In short, the position is fluid, and Labour is having words with itself tonight.
Plenty of Tory MPs worry that Labour will pursue precisely a delaying tactic - "like a boa constrictor they will slowly squeeze Boris until his novelty fun factor starts to grate".
If Boris Johnson therefore is totally and utterly stuck in a few days time, he in turn vows that he would raise the temperature even higher, to turn an already fraught and bizarre situation into something completely extraordinary, making MPs vote day after day after day on whether or not to have an election, and bringing forward no business to the House of Commons - the government going on a form of political strike.
The belief in Number 10 is that while it might be hellish getting there, in the end the logic moves towards the opposition allowing an election, in the end.
(There are also other ways you might remember to get there - a one line bill, a vote of no confidence - methods that Number 10 would also be willing to try, where they only need a majority of one vote, rather than two-thirds majority he needs under the election legislation.)
Either way, the opposition's final responses to the prime minister's gambit tonight are not final. They will wait to see exactly what the EU says.
What is obvious though is that the prime minister's 'do or die' Brexit deadline has disappeared. Whether his vow to get an election is one he is able to keep is also not in his control.
There will be no budget, there may not be an election, and there may not be Brexit any time soon, and depending what happens next there may not really be a government either in any traditional sense of the word.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned the UK faces "Brexit paralysis" if MPs reject Theresa May's EU deal.
He said two Commons defeats this week showed Parliament was "committed one way or another to try to stop no-deal".
But that would risk "no Brexit", he argued, which would be a "breach of trust" with the public.
Tory rebel Dominic Grieve said it was the duty of MPs to "stop people committing national suicide" by going ahead with a no-deal Brexit.
He told a rally of supporters of another referendum in London that while the prime minister had done her best in negotiating the deal to honour the referendum result, while minimising the damage, the "unpleasant truth" was that "it can satisfy no-one".
"There is only one way out," he said.
"When the prime minister's deal is defeated, what else can we possibly offer to the British public which has any coherence at all but to go back and ask them to reconsider their decision?"
Mr Grieve, who tabled the amendment that led to a government defeat on Wednesday, has been at the forefront of cross-party efforts to ensure MPs have a say in what happens if Mrs May's deal is rejected.
The prime minister is widely expected to lose next Tuesday's vote on the withdrawal deal negotiated between the UK and the EU - with more than 100 Conservative MPs and the DUP, which usually support the Conservatives in Commons votes, among those set to vote against it.
Labour will also oppose the deal but leader Jeremy Corbyn has resisted growing calls from within his own party to get behind another EU referendum, insisting a general election is still his top priority if the deal is rejected.
"We're going to get smashed" - one government insider's apocalyptic prediction about one of the most important votes in recent political history.
As things stand, MPs are on course to kybosh Theresa May's long-argued-over Brexit deal, with a very heavy defeat.
Dozens of her own backbenchers have said publicly they will vote against it.
The opposition parties are adamant they will say "no" too.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hunt said it was clear the Parliamentary arithmetic was "challenging".
LIVE: MPs continue Brexit debate
"We have a government that is committed to delivering Brexit, but it doesn't have a majority and we have seen this week that there is a Speaker who is willing to frustrate the government at every opportunity."
Commons Speaker John Bercow has been accused of bias by some Tory MPs over his decision to break with Parliamentary precedent by allowing a vote on Dominic Grieve's amendment to a government motion, which handed MPs more control over the Brexit process.
Mr Bercow said he was acting in the interests of MPs and had made an "honest judgement".
In a shift of tone, apparently aimed at winning over Brexiteers who are determined to vote Mrs May's deal down, Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt also warned that defeat for the government on Tuesday would not lead to them getting the kind of Brexit they wanted - and could lead to Britain staying in the EU.
"If this deal is rejected, ultimately what we may end up with is not a different type of Brexit but Brexit paralysis.
"And Brexit paralysis ultimately could lead to no Brexit.
"I'm saying this would be (an) incredibly damaging breach of trust and it would also be very bad for Britain's reputation abroad, having decided to leave the EU, if we in the end for whatever reasons found we weren't able to do it."
He acknowledged that MPs opposed to Brexit were flexing their muscles, telling Today: "After this week the idea that Parliament is going to do nothing at all is highly unlikely."
But he rejected the idea of holding a series of votes to find out what kind of Brexit MPs would support, as some have suggested, claiming there was no consensus for any alternative to Mrs May's plan.
"Everyone's had a crack at what they thought was their top outcome but we are all democrats and we have a responsibility to deliver the outcome the British people voted for."
The PM's deal was "not perfect" but it did "broadly deliver Brexit", despite arguments about the Irish backstop, he added, and urged MPs to "come together" to back it.
He was speaking as MPs prepared for the third of five days of debate on Mrs May's deal, with Home Secretary Sajid Javid opening proceedings.
If you feel like you ought to know more about Brexit...
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott pointed to a warning from former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove and former Armed Forces chief, Field Marshal Lord Guthrie that the deal negotiated with the EU would threaten national security.
She told MPs that Labour was "committed to honouring the referendum vote" but added: "This deal, as it stands, potentially abolishes the complex and highly-effective co-operation that has been established between this country and other members of the EU in the areas of freedom, justice and security."
The UK is set to leave the European Union on 29 March.

Theresa May has dismissed speculation she could be ousted as prime minister over her Brexit agreement, saying: "I am going to see this through."
Despite a series of ministers resigning and talk of a no-confidence vote, she vowed to get the deal signed off in Brussels and to put it to MPs.
"The course I have set out is the right one for our country," she said.
The BBC understands Michael Gove has rejected Mrs May's offer to become the new Brexit secretary.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Environment Secretary Mr Gove had said he might accept - if he could try to make changes to the negotiated deal.
Sources said Mrs May made it clear that was not possible. He is now considering his position and contemplating resignation.
Other sources have told the BBC a wider group of ministers were discussing whether to try to force the PM to seek changes to the deal.
Earlier, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey both quit in protest at the withdrawal agreement, along with two junior ministers.
And leading backbench Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg submitted a letter of no confidence in Mrs May to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Tories' backbench 1922 Committee.
A vote will be triggered if 48 Tory MPs write letters to Sir Graham - it is understood 48 letters have not yet been received.
Mrs May spent nearly three hours fielding largely critical questions from MPs before holding a press conference in Downing Street to further answer her critics.
She acknowledged the agreement negotiated with the EU had entailed "difficult and sometimes uncomfortable decisions".
"I understand fully that there are some who are unhappy with those compromises but this deal delivers what people voted for and it is in the national interest," she said.
"We can only secure it, if we unite behind the agreement reached in cabinet yesterday.
"If we do not move forward with that agreement, nobody can know for sure the consequences that will follow.
"It will be to take a path of deep and grave uncertainty when the British people just want us to get on with it. They are looking to the Conservative Party to deliver."
Asked if she would carry on as prime minister if she won a no-confidence vote by a single vote, Mrs May said: "Leadership is about taking the right decisions, not the easy ones."
She said her job was to "bring back a deal that delivers on the vote of the British people".
She added: "I believe this is a deal which does deliver that, which is in the national interest and am I going to see this through? Yes."
The prime minister, a cricket fan, was asked if she would "resign as captain", but told journalists Geoffrey Boycott, famed for his batting marathons, was one of her sporting heroes: "And what do you know about Geoffrey Boycott? Geoffrey Boycott stuck to it and he got the runs in the end."
Amid suggestions she was struggling to fill the two cabinet posts vacated by Dominic Raab and Esther McVey earlier on Thursday, she joked: "I have had, actually, rather a busy day."
The BBC understands that Environment Secretary Michael Gove had been offered the job as Brexit Secretary but had asked for assurances that he could pursue a different kind of deal.
Mrs May said Mr Gove was doing "an excellent job at Defra" adding: "I haven't appointed a new Dexeu [Department for Exiting the European Union] secretary yet and I will be making appointments to the government in due course."
By BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg
The government, for today at least, is at the mercy of events not in control.
Theresa May's vow to stay does not make her deep, deep problems disappear.
With her party in revolt, her colleagues departing - some determined to usher her out of office - we can't, and don't know yet, if Brexit can happen as planned, perhaps, if at all.
This could be a gale that's weathered in a few days, or a serious storm that sweeps the government away.
Read Laura's blog
Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was no appetite for further talks on possible amendments to the current agreement: "We have a document on the table that Britain and the EU 27 have agreed to, so for me there is no question at the moment whether we negotiate further."
Despite a warning from Tory backbencher Mark Francois earlier that it would be "mathematically impossible to get this deal through the House of Commons", Mrs May said she believed, ultimately, her MPs would back it.
"I'm committed, as prime minister, to bringing the best deal back to the UK. I think MPs across my party who look at that deal will recognise the importance of delivering on the vote of the British people and recognise the importance of doing that in a way that does protect people's jobs, protect security and protect the unity of our United Kingdom."
But Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable suggested the prime minister was "in denial": "The facts haven't changed. There is no majority in Parliament for her deal, and she has rightly conceded that "No Brexit" is the real alternative to it."
He said it strengthened the case for another referendum "to break the deadlock and get the country out of this mess".
Earlier Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn described the deal negotiated with the EU as "half-baked" and urged her to withdraw it.
He told MPs: "This is not the deal the country was promised and Parliament cannot - and I believe will not - accept a false choice between this bad deal and no deal."
But Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley defended the prime minister, saying "there is no better person to do this job".
She said collective responsibility meant that ministers who could not support the deal were required to resign, but added: "The majority of the cabinet is behind it. The remaining members of the cabinet are absolutely behind this deal and what we need to do now is get behind the prime minister and get that deal sorted in the November (European) Council."

Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted she had to reach out to Labour in a bid to deliver Brexit or risk letting it "slip through our fingers".
The PM said there was a "stark choice" of either leaving the European Union with a deal or not leaving at all.
And shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey says if no-deal became an option Labour would consider "very, very strongly" voting to cancel Brexit.
Some Tories have criticised the PM for seeking Labour's help on her deal.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said the Tories were working with Labour "through gritted teeth", adding that no deal would be better than cancelling Brexit.
MPs have rejected Mrs May's Brexit plan three times and last week's talks between the two parties were aimed at trying to find a proposal which could break the deadlock in the Commons before an emergency EU summit on Wednesday.
However, the three days of meetings stalled without agreement on Friday.
In a video message posted on Sunday, Mrs May said she could not see MPs accepting her deal "as things stand".
She added that she had been looking for "new ways" to get a deal through Parliament, but it would require "compromise on both sides".
"I think people voted to leave the EU, we have a duty as a Parliament to deliver that," she added.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he was "waiting to see the red lines move" and had not "noticed any great change in the government's position".
He is coming under pressure from his MPs to demand a referendum on any deal he reaches with the government, with 80 signing a letter saying a public vote should be the "bottom line" in the negotiations.
In a statement issued on Saturday night, Mrs May said after doing "everything in my power" to persuade her party - and its backers in Northern Ireland's DUP - to approve the deal she agreed with the EU last year, she "had to take a new approach".
"We have no choice but to reach out across the House of Commons," the PM said, insisting the two main parties agreed on the need to protect jobs and end free movement.
"The referendum was not fought along party lines and people I speak to on the doorstep tell me they expect their politicians to work together when the national interest demands it."
Getting a majority of MPs to back a Brexit deal was the only way for the UK to leave the EU, Mrs May said.
"The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all."
Ms Long-Bailey, who was involved in Labour's meetings with the government, told BBC's Andrew Marr Show they were "very good-natured" and there had been "subsequent exchanges".
She said Labour was yet to see the compromise proposals needed to agree a deal but she was "hopeful that will change in the coming days and we are willing to continue the talks".
However, she added Labour would "keep all options in play to keep no deal off the table", including supporting a vote to revoke Article 50 - the legal mechanism through which Brexit is taking place.
Tory Brexiteers have reacted angrily to the prospect of Mrs May accepting Labour's demands, particularly for a customs union with the EU which would allow tariff-free trade in goods with the bloc but limit the UK from striking its own deals.
Ms Long-Bailey indicated Labour might be willing to be flexible over its support for a customs union but said the government proposals on the issue have "not been compliant with the definition of a customs union".
Interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show, Ms Leadsom reiterated her comments in the Sunday Telegraph that holding another referendum on the UK's departure would be the "ultimate betrayal".
She said that taking part in the European elections in the event of a Brexit delay would be "utterly unacceptable".
Ms Leadsom said: "Specifically provided we are leaving the European Union then it is important that we compromise, that's what this is about and it is through gritted teeth. But nevertheless the most important thing is to actually leave the EU," she said.
The Commons leader also told the BBC's Brexitcast there is the potential for bringing Mrs May's deal back before MPs this week.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 12 April and, as yet, no withdrawal deal has been approved by the House of Commons.
This week Mrs May is to ask Brussels for an extension to 30 June, with the possibility of an earlier departure if a deal is agreed.
Labour says it has had no indication the government will agree to its demand for changes to the political declaration - the section of Mrs May's Brexit deal which outlines the basis for future UK-EU relations.
The document declares mutual ambitions in areas such as trade, regulations, security and fishing rights - but does not legally commit either party.
Leaving the EU's customs union was a Conservative manifesto commitment, and former party whip Michael Fabricant predicted "open revolt" among Tories and Leave voters if MPs agreed to it.
However, Downing Street has described the prospect as "speculation".
Meanwhile, the Sunday Telegraph reported some activists were refusing to campaign for the party, while donations had "dried up".
And former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab writes in the Mail on Sunday that Mrs May's approach "threatens to damage the Conservatives for years".
"There is now a danger that Brexit could be lost and that the government could fall - handing the keys to Downing Street to Corbyn," he says.
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said including Mr Corbyn in the Brexit process was a "mistake" as "he is not sympathetic to the government, obviously, and is a Remainer".
He told Sky News the reason Mrs May has not been able to secure the backing of all Conservative MPs was "her own creation" and because she failed to "deliver" a deal they could support.
Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss dismissed the idea of a long delay to Brexit, which could be ended if Parliament approved a deal.
Ms Truss told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics a so-called flextension "sounds like purgatory", adding: "We haven't yet negotiated the free trade deal we need... So I think the British public are going to be pretty horrified if we go into more limbo than we've already had."
In a letter to Mr Corbyn, some Labour MPs have pointed out that - because the political declaration is not legally binding, and with Mrs May having promised to stand down - a future Tory PM could simply "rip up" any of her commitments.
Four shadow ministers were among 80 signatories of the Love Socialism Hate Brexit campaign letter pressing for a further public vote.
Any compromise deal agreed by Parliament will have "no legitimacy if it is not confirmed by the public", it argues.
However, Labour is split on the subject, with a letter signed by 25 Labour MPs on Thursday arguing the opposite.
They warned it would "divide the country further and add uncertainty for business" and could be "exploited by the far-right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our chances of winning a general election".

Theresa May has bowed to pressure from a group of Tory MPs and ministers and agreed to give Parliament a vote on delaying the UK's departure from the EU on 29 March.
This will take place only if MPs reject her Brexit deal for a second time when they vote on it next Tuesday - and then also say no to the UK leaving the EU without a comprehensive, legally binding agreement, the so-called no-deal scenario.
With just 22 days to go, Parliament has yet to approve the terms of withdrawal negotiated with the EU.
MPs will have another "meaningful vote" on Theresa May's deal on 12 March and insisted that if MPs back her, the UK can still leave as planned just over two weeks later.
In the event of MPs backing a pause in the Brexit process, the PM has said she will seek the "shortest possible" delay, while also refusing to rule out the UK still leaving without a deal later in the year.
So if not 29 March, when could the UK actually end up leaving?
The first thing to point out is that any decision to delay the UK's departure by extending the Article 50 process would have to be agreed by both the UK and every other EU member.
The EU has sent out slightly mixed messages on the question, with some senior figures saying a delay would be sensible while others argue there would have to be a good reason for it.
But assuming the EU agrees to it, the first alternative Brexit date that has been touted is 18 April, which happens to be Maundy Thursday.
The thinking behind this is that it is also the last day in which the European Parliament can vote on issues before it breaks up ahead of May's Europe-wide elections - more about those later.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) also have to approve the deal although unlike MPs, who rejected the agreement by a margin of more than 200 votes, they have yet to consider it.
If the UK and EU run out of time to come up with a solution to address MPs' concerns about the current deal  - and EU leaders won't hold their next summit until 22 March - or if Mrs May loses MV2 by a narrow margin, there could be a short "technical" delay to allow everyone to regroup and make one last push to get it "over the line".
If the UK Parliament finally consents to the withdrawal agreement in late March or early April, it is thought that MEPs will soon follow suit - although expecting them to do so right at the last minute carries obvious risks.
And would this tight-ish timetable give the UK enough time to prepare for an orderly departure?
Irrespective of whether MPs agree to the deal, there are a number of other complicating factors.
First of all, MPs wrote the 29 March exit date into UK law when they passed the EU Withdrawal Bill last year. This would need to be superseded, although this is done relatively easily by way of a statutory instrument.
Furthermore, Mrs May has promised to enshrine the withdrawal agreement in domestic legislation by passing an Act of Parliament. It normally takes months for bills to pass through the Commons and Lords.
Although the PM has indicated the withdrawal and implementation bill could be fast-tracked, some MPs and peers may kick up a fuss saying two weeks does not leave enough time for proper scrutiny.
Thus 23 May or thereabouts has emerged as a possible new Brexit day. This, the thinking goes, would allow the UK two further months to fully prepare itself for leaving.
It would also see the UK leave before the outcome of May's European elections, due to take place between the 23 and 26 May, in which it will not play any part.
Simon Hart, a member of the Brexit Delivery Group of Tory MPs, has proposed tabling an amendment advocating a "strictly time-limited" delay until 23 May although this was withdrawn after Mrs May urged MPs not to "bind her hands".
If there are no signs of the two sides finding a solution to the thorny issue of the Irish backstop, then a slightly longer delay becomes a possibility.
Pushing back Brexit by about three months to the end of June would not be ideal for either side.
But it would be an admission that more time is needed for negotiations, particularly if the EU doesn't fancy, as has been reported, making further concessions that it can't be sure would be accepted by MPs.
Leaving on 23 June, on the third anniversary of the Brexit referendum, would be particularly sweet for many Brexiteers although the issue of ratification by the European Parliament would still be outstanding.
Newly elected MEPs from across Europe aren't due to take their seats until early July although they could conceivably convene a special session earlier or, possibly, approve the Brexit deal retrospectively.
There will be a big incentive to get the whole thing done and dusted before the end of July, both for political and more worldly reasons - no-one will want to see their summer holiday plans disrupted if at all possible.
Once you get past the end of July and the evenings start to draw in, that's when things get trickier.
The EU may be willing to grant one extension to the Brexit process but a series of rolling delays is reportedly not to its liking and a lengthier hiatus may only happen if there were a general election or another referendum.
That said, senior EU officials are reported to have mulled delaying Brexit until 2021 - in the hope the two sides will have negotiated their future relationship by then and this will sort out all the issues relating to the backstop.
But this is likely to be unacceptable to Conservative MPs, and millions of Leave voters, as it would mean the UK was still part of the EU more than five years after it voted to leave in 2016.
There is also the small matter of Europe's parliamentary elections. Could the UK remain in the EU for an indefinite period without sending representatives to Brussels and Strasbourg?
Theresa May has suggested this would not be viable but experts, such as the Institute for Government, have pointed out that there may be ways round this dilemma - in the short term anyway.
These could include the UK's existing MEPs being granted "observer status" with no voting rights or the UK sending national representatives, as Romania and Bulgaria did for four months after they joined in 2007.
Another potential option would be for the UK to re-elect its 73 MEPs - whose seats would otherwise be re-allocated - on an interim basis but to hold the polls at a different time from the rest of the EU.
But the cost of doing this would be controversial and would the Conservatives be willing to put up candidates when they were likely to be accused of betrayal by, among others, Nigel Farage's new Brexit party?

It will be "very difficult" for the UK and the EU to reach a Brexit agreement before the 31 October deadline, Irish leader Leo Varadkar has said.
He told Irish broadcaster RTE "big gaps" remained between the two sides.
Amid claims on Tuesday that talks were close to collapse, he also suggested the language around the discussions had turned toxic "in some quarters".
Mr Varadkar and Boris Johnson are expected to meet for further Brexit talks later this week.
The UK has said the EU needs to "move quickly" to stop it leaving without an agreement at the end of the month.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who spoke with Mr Johnson by phone for about 45 minutes on Tuesday, said he would strive until the "last moment" to reach a deal with the UK, but "not at any cost" to his country, Northern Ireland and the rest of Europe.
He also downplayed the chances of any agreement being struck before the crucial summit of EU leaders on 17 October, during which next steps for Brexit are likely to be decided.
"I think it's going to be very difficult to secure an agreement by next week, quite frankly," Mr Varadkar said.
"Essentially, what the UK has done is repudiated the deal that we negotiated in good faith with prime minister [Theresa] May's government over two years and have sort of put half of that now back on the table, and are saying that's a concession. And of course it isn't really."
Mr Varadkar added that it was his job to hold the UK to commitments it had made since the 2016 referendum to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland and uphold the Good Friday Agreement.
The Irish leader's comments came after a No 10 source claimed on Tuesday that Germany was now making it "essentially impossible" for the UK to leave the EU with a deal.
That assessment followed a "frank" phone call between Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during which they discussed Brexit proposals the UK prime minister put forward last week to the EU.
After the call, a No 10 source said Mrs Merkel had made clear a deal based on the prime minister's plans was "overwhelmingly unlikely" - though the BBC's Adam Fleming said there was "scepticism" within the EU that she would have used such language.
The No 10 source also suggested Mrs Merkel told her counterpart the only way to break the deadlock was for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union and for it to permanently accept EU single market rules on trade in goods.
This, the source said, marked a shift in Germany's approach and made a negotiated deal "essentially impossible".
In response, the EU's top official, European Council President Donald Tusk, accused Mr Johnson of engaging in a "stupid blame game".
In a tweet to the prime minister, he added: "At stake is the future of Europe and the UK, as well as the security and interests of our people.
"You don't want a deal, you don't want an extension, you don't want to revoke, quo vadis (where are you going)?"
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said that if negotiations fail, "the explanation will be found in the British camp (because) the original sin is found on the islands and not on the continent".
Speaking to the French Les Echos newspaper, he added: "A no-deal Brexit would lead to a collapse of the United Kingdom and a weakening of growth on the continent."
In his interview with RTE, Mr Varadkar was asked whether he was concerned the language around the talks was "getting toxic".
"I think it is, from some quarters, but you know I don't play dirty. You know, I don't think most EU leaders do either. We've been very straight up from when the referendum happened."
The prime minister also hosted European Parliament president David Sassoli in Downing Street on Tuesday, but the MEP left saying "no progress" had been made.
Mr Sassoli later told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "Angela Merkel's opinions must be taken seriously. We are all very worried because there are only a few days left.
"Because we understand that going out without an agreement leads to having a real problem, if not a real catastrophe."
Following the meeting, Downing Street said there was "little time" left to negotiate a new legally-binding withdrawal agreement, but Mr Johnson remained committed to doing all he could.
"We need to move quickly and work together to agree a deal," a No 10 spokesman said.
"He [the prime minister] reiterated that if we did not reach an agreement then the UK will leave without a deal on 31 October."
The PM's pledge comes despite legislation passed by MPs last month, known as the Benn Act, which requires Mr Johnson to write to the EU requesting a further delay if no deal is signed off by Parliament by 19 October - unless MPs agree to a no-deal Brexit.
While negotiations are continuing in Brussels, Mr Sassoli said a deal likely to command the support of MEPs was a "long way off".
Meanwhile, 19 Labour MPs have written to the European Commission president Mr Junker calling for a Brexit deal to be made with the government without any further delay.
Caroline Flint, who represents the leave-supporting constituency of Don Valley, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the "uncertainty of Brexit has gone on too long" and the group did not think it was "impossible" to resolve the Irish border issue.
Tuesday 8 October - The House of Commons was prorogued - suspended - ahead of a Queen's Speech to begin a new parliamentary session.
Monday 14 October - The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen's Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will then be debated by MPs throughout the week.
Thursday 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday 19 October - Date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday 31 October - Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.

The Irish prime minister has said he will support an extension of the Brexit deadline until 31 January 2020.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was speaking after talking to European Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday.
The EU is yet to confirm how long it will approve another delay for, following the UK's request on Saturday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson "paused" his Brexit bill on Tuesday after MPs rejected his plan to get it signed off in three days.
It is likely the EU will offer a so-called flextension - with the option that the UK could leave earlier than 31 January if a Brexit deal has been passed by then.
Speaking in the Dáil (Irish parliament), Mr Varadkar said EU leaders could hold an emergency meeting if Mr Tusk did not get consensus for an extension.
"My bags are always packed for Brussels and packed they are again," added the taoiseach.
On Tuesday evening, the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) 10 votes dealt a blow to the PM's plan to fast-track the bill through Parliament.
The party's chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said he believes the "penny has dropped" with the government that it needs the party's votes to pass Brexit legislation.
The votes of the DUP MPs and the independent North Down MP Lady Hermon meant the government lost by 14 votes.
Mr Johnson is awaiting the EU's verdict on approving another extension and Sir Jeffrey said the prime minister should use the time to talk to the party.
"I think he realises now that without the DUP on board getting his bill and his agreement through the House of Commons is going to be hugely challenging for him," he said.
"So I think the sensible thing for the government is to sit down with us and see if we can work this out."
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee chairman Simon Hoare said he was sorry the DUP did not support the withdrawal deal because it was the "best... that one can get as far as Northern Ireland is concerned".
But he added: "The DUP have played a hand of cards - I'm not entirely sure the hand of cards has played out as they anticipated it to be.
"What is now clear is that there is a cross-party alliance to deliver the Brexit deal negotiated by the prime minister and that did not require the DUP to vote for it."
MPs backed Mr Johnson's Withdrawal Agreement Bill on Tuesday but minutes later voted against the timetable, leaving it "in limbo".
The prime minister warned he would push for an election if MPs rejected his timetable and the EU granted a delay.
After the result in the Commons, Mr Johnson said it was Parliament, not the government, that had requested an extension.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds denied reports that some of the party's MPs regretted not voting for the Brexit deal struck by previous prime minister Theresa May.
"Under Theresa May's deal Northern Ireland was part of the EU's customs arrangement, the customs union fully," Mr Dodds said on Wednesday.
"What she had tacked on was a customs partnership... that would then fall away and we would be having precisely the same problem we're having now.
"We foresaw this and that's why we opposed it."
He added: "We never trust anybody, except ourselves and our electorate and in that we've been proved absolutely right."
If an election were to be triggered this week, the earliest it could take place would be Thursday 28 November, as the law requires 25 days between an election being called in Parliament and polling day.
MPs had been due to debate the bill over Wednesday and Thursday but will now return to discussing the contents of the Queen's Speech, which put forward the government's domestic agenda for the new session of Parliament.

There can be no final decisions on the future of the Irish border until the UK and the EU have reached a trade agreement, Liam Fox has said.
The UK's international trade secretary also blamed the EU for Brexit delays.
The comments came after the Irish Republic's EU commissioner said Dublin could veto Brexit trade talks.
The EU has said "sufficient progress" has to be made on the Irish border before negotiations on a future relationship can begin.
Downing Street has said the whole of the UK will leave both the customs union and the single market when it leaves the EU in 2019.
"We don't want there to be a hard border but the UK is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market," Mr Fox told Sky News.
He added: "We can't come to a final answer to the Irish question until we get an idea of the end state. And until we get into discussions with the EU on the end state that will be very difficult - so the quicker we can do that the better, and we are still in a position where the EU doesn't want to do that."
Mr Fox accused the European Commission of having an "obsession" with ever-closer union between EU member states, which was delaying progress in Brexit talks.
Phil Hogan, the EU's agriculture commissioner, told the Observer that staying in the customs union would negate the need for a hard border - with customs posts and possible passport checks - on the island.
He said Dublin would "play tough to the end" over its threat to veto trade talks until it had guarantees over the border.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he was "worried" by Mr Fox's comments, adding that Labour would not take continued membership of the single market and the customs union off the table.
"I think the one thing that we don't want to do is jeopardise any movement quickly, because we need movement to enable us to get into the proper trade negotiations," Mr McDonnell told ITV's Peston on Sunday.
"So I'm hoping that isn't a Downing Street-sanctioned statement that's he's made."
By Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent
It's 310 miles (499km) long - a squiggle on the map that meanders from Carlingford Lough in the east to Lough Foyle in the west.
The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic is the soon-to-be frontier between the UK and the European Union.
And right now it is the most troublesome frontier between Brexit negotiations stalling or progressing.
London and Dublin each say they are committed to maintaining an open border. But Ireland wonders how that will be possible.
Oh and one other thing to throw into the mix - after all the talk of how wobbly Theresa May's government is, so is Ireland's.
There could be a general election there before Christmas.
The EU has given Prime Minister Theresa May until 4 December to come up with further proposals on issues including the border, the Brexit divorce bill and citizens' rights, if European leaders are to agree to moving on to trade talks.
But Mr Hogan accused some in the British government of having what he called "blind faith" about securing a comprehensive free-trade deal after Brexit.
He said it was a "very simple fact" that "if the UK or Northern Ireland remained in the EU customs union, or better still the single market, there would be no border issue".
In these circumstances regulations on either side of the border would remain the same, and so a near-invisible border would be possible.
The Irish government has always insisted there must not be a hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying he must have written assurance from the UK before Brexit talks can move on.
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has said the UK's desire for no hard border on the island of Ireland was "aspirational".
It comes as Ireland's deputy prime minister faces a motion of no confidence over her handling of a case involving a whistle-blower alleging corruption within the police.
The issue could see Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar's coalition government fall and an election held before Christmas.
In her speech in Florence, this September, Mrs May restated that both the UK and EU would not accept any physical infrastructure at the border.
The Democratic Unionist Party said Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK must not be different.
Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP, which is in a confidence-and-supply arrangement with the Conservative government, said she would not support "any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations".
Suggestions for alternate arrangements have included a new partnership that would "align" customs approaches between the UK and the EU, resulting in "no customs border at all between the UK and Ireland".

So many newspaper column inches have been devoted over the last week to a debate over whether or not Boris Johnson has managed to "win a victory" over his EU counterparts, getting them to "budge" over changing the Withdrawal Agreement.
You can in fact argue this both ways.
The "Yes-they've-budged" camp point to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron now saying they will consider any new proposals from the UK on replacing the contentious Irish border backstop (if they are realistic and immediately operable).
This is a marked change from the EU's official position when Boris Johnson became UK Prime Minister: that the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement (containing the backstop) was signed, sealed and carved in stone.
The "No-the-EU-hasn't-really-budged" camp say EU leaders don't believe Boris Johnson has any realistic alternatives to the backstop up his sleeve, so they are trying to take the initiative in the blame game that would inevitably follow a no-deal Brexit by wanting to appear open.
The aim being that Angela Merkel, for example, could turn to German businesses that would lose out in a no-deal scenario and say: "Look, I tried my best. It's Boris Johnson who failed you."
EU figures who've been involved in Brexit negotiations are also keen to point out that being open to alternatives to the Irish backstop is not a change of position for Brussels. It's written into the existing Withdrawal Agreement.
And as for Angela Merkel's positive words to Boris Johnson about finding new solutions, the German media was quick to underline how often she has repeated over the last  few years that she would work "until the last minute to make a deal with the UK," as long as EU single market rules were respected.
Her attitude - in public at least - is unchanged.
Behind the scenes though, EU leaders have been readjusting their view of Boris Johnson somewhat.
During this summer's Conservative party leadership contest to replace Theresa May as prime minister, I heard Boris Johnson described in private conversations in EU circles as "a buffoon" and "a reckless populist willing to drive his country over the cliff-edge of a no-deal Brexit to satisfy his ambition to become prime minister".
I now notice a subtle tone change. In his one-to-one chats in Paris, Berlin and at the G7 with European Council President Donald Tusk, the prime minister has managed to persuade Brussels that:
a) He is serious in his threat to pursue a no-deal Brexit if no agreement with the EU can be found;
and b) He would actively prefer to get a deal through parliament if possible.
But this change in perception does not alter facts on the ground.
EU leaders still think a no-deal Brexit is the most likely option right now.
Time is running out - unless the prime minister were to do a last-minute U-turn and request a new Brexit extension after all.
EU politicians also speak of the numbers not adding up in parliament for Boris Johnson. A reason they give for not being willing to jump forward with a backstop compromise.
"There is little-to-no pressure from the rest of us in the EU on Dublin right now to find and accept a backstop compromise," one high-level EU diplomat told me.
"If we did introduce a time limit - or even if we got rid of the backstop altogether from the Withdrawal Agreement, as Boris Johnson says he wants us to do - what would be the point? The prime minister doesn't have the majority in parliament to guarantee the Brexit deal would then go through and we, the EU, would have sacrificed our principles, our reputation, exposed our single market on the island of Ireland and thrown member state Dublin under a bus voluntarily. We'd be worse off than if we just accept a no-deal Brexit is going to happen."
Boris Johnson's majority of one in parliament means EU leaders understand his focus is now domestic: shoring up his premiership by winning a general election, rather than agreeing a compromise deal with the EU.
Few in the EU are holding their breath that MPs will succeed in stopping a no-deal Brexit in the coming weeks - though if they did, Brussels would be delighted.
I notice rather that a number of European politicians are placing any hopes they have on Boris Johnson to avoid no deal. They speak of the prime minister's ambition to remain in the job and to go down in the history books in a positive way.
One European official remarked: "Johnson can see a no-deal Brexit is bad for his country but we're afraid he's boxed himself in with all his threats and promises at home."
EU leaders will now watch and wait for what early autumn brings in UK politics. The next scene in this Brexit drama will play out in Westminster, not Brussels.

The UK should "explore" allowing qualified free movement of workers from the EU after Brexit, Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer has said.
In a potential softening of Labour's position, Sir Keir called for alignment with the EU's single market.
This could pave the way for EU migrants with jobs to be allowed to settle in the UK, subject to certain conditions and for Britain to accept EU rules restricting state aid.
The shadow cabinet minister made his remarks in an interview with Newsnight during a visit to Belfast after meeting nationalist parties.
He said Labour hoped to negotiate a future relationship with the EU involving a "comprehensive customs union and single market alignment".
This would avoid the need for a backstop, by guaranteeing no hard border in Northern Ireland.
Asked whether he could live with the Norway Plus plan, which would involve free movement of workers, Sir Keir said: "Well that would have to be explored and the precise detail of that."
The Norway Plus or the Common Market 2.0 plan - promoted by Labour MP Lucy Powell and Tory MP Nick Boles - would involve membership of a customs union and the free movement of workers, rather than EU rules allowing free movement of citizens.
Sir Keir said people would be willing to accept the movement of workers subject to restrictions: "If somebody is coming to do a job and it needs to be done and it has been advertised locally beforehand with nobody able to do it, then most people would say I accept that."
"Most people say that if you are coming to join your family that is something I can accept. Most people would say if somebody wants to come here and study and it is genuine then of course please come and study. In fact let's celebrate that," he added.
"So I actually think we get stuck on the freedom of movement discussion too early without saying what does a principled, effective and fair immigration policy look like?
"When we get into that debate we may find we can make better progress than we think."
Prime Minister Theresa May has maintained that free movement will end when the UK leaves the EU.
Sir Keir described free movement as one of two areas - along with staying aligned with the rules of the single market - that would be "sticking points" in negotiations with the EU under his plan.
"There is a negotiation to be had there. But I genuinely think that if 12, 18 months ago we had been clear, as the UK, to say we want a close economic relationship, we want these features - customs union, single market alignment - and the only sticking points now were how exactly do you stay aligned, what is the proposition about freedom of movement but we know what we are trying to achieve - we would be in a materially better place than we are now."
Sir Keir said he did not believe that EU state aid rules would be a problem because they do not "cut across" Labour's 2017 election manifesto.
He also said Labour would have no problems with observing a common playing field with the EU and upholding workplace and environmental rights that keep pace with EU.
Sinn Fein and the SDLP were alarmed last week when Jeremy Corbyn expressed unease at the Northern Ireland backstop which is strongly supported by nationalists.
The backstop is designed to avoid a hard border by tying Northern Ireland closely to the EU, if the UK and Brussels fail to agree a future relationship before the end of a 21-month transition period.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood told Newsnight that Mr Corbyn was in danger of echoing the language of the DUP after the Labour leader warned that Britain could be tied into the backstop indefinitely.
Sir Keir reassured Sinn Fein and the SDLP that Labour remains committed to the backstop, as long as Theresa May maintains her red lines.
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on iPlayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.

Theresa May is cautiously hopeful that her telephone diplomacy with EU leaders over the Christmas break could pay off over the next week.
After calls with Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister believes there is a growing mood in the EU to help the UK avoid a no-deal Brexit scenario.
Nothing is guaranteed, but there is an expectation in Whitehall that if the EU decides to help out, it would make helpful noises on the Northern Ireland backstop on the eve of the parliamentary vote on the prime minister's Brexit deal. The vote is due to take place on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.
The offer, if it comes, would be in writing. "The point is to have something with genuine meaning," one Whitehall source says.
As things stand, the prime minister is heading for a serious parliamentary defeat because she is confronted by two apparently immovable objects. They are: no appetite in the EU to make substantive changes to the Brexit deal, and opposition from the Democratic Unionist Party to parts of the deal regarding Northern Ireland.
But Whitehall is picking up signs of movement in the EU which would, in an ideal world for No 10, persuade the DUP to support the prime minister.
Downing St believes the DUP's influence goes way beyond its ten MPs. Officials regard the Unionists as "dominos" - get them on board and Brexiteer Tories will start to return to the fold, potentially winning over Labour MPs minded to support the prime minister if she is within shouting distance of victory.
The mood is slightly better in Downing St because the prime minister has been left with the clear impression from EU leaders that they are determined to avoid no-deal.
One Whitehall source said: "There is a genuine sense they want to avoid no-deal. How they will help us is the big unanswered question."
The hope is that next Monday or Tuesday - depending on the date of the parliamentary vote - the EU would issue a firm signal that the Northern Ireland backstop would not last indefinitely.
Under the backstop, which is designed to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Northern Ireland would be closely bound into the EU if the UK and the EU fail to agree a comprehensive new relationship by the end of the transition in December 2020.
The backstop is described as a temporary arrangement, but the EU is insisting it would last unless and until a replacement trade deal is agreed.
Over the holiday period the prime minister's chief EU negotiator Olly Robbins revived his idea of the UK and the EU setting a firm start date for the UK's future trade relationship with the EU, with December 2021 the strong preference. The UK believes the EU would find this idea easier to agree to than a firm end date to the backstop.
If the EU were to make a move then two possible scenarios could play out on the eve of the parliamentary vote:
If any such amendment were passed it could overcome the main difficulty the prime minister experienced at last month's EU summit. Many EU leaders said there was no point in making concessions when they would inevitably be rejected by Parliament.
If MPs indicated they were happy with the EU offer but need firmer legal assurances, that could provide the basis for an emergency EU summit to approve the offer. That would be a big step for the EU but there is no other way to provide a commitment with legal force.
In the end, the differences between the UK and the EU may prove to be irreconcilable. The EU wants to avoid a no-deal but it is adamant that the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened as long as Theresa May stands by her red lines, most notably on rejecting free movement of people. Brussels will also not agree to any wording that undermines the agreement.
The DUP is also highly suspicious of the government and the EU. Their strong opposition hardened when the government's legal advice said that in some circumstances Northern Ireland would have to treat Great Britain as a 'third country' - EU parlance for a foreign country.
Until the DUP have assurances that that scenario cannot happen - or at least would have a guarantee that it would only be temporary - it is all but impossible to see them coming on board.
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on iPlayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.

Theresa May has urged MPs to back what she has described as a "new" Brexit deal - but what exactly is different in this updated withdrawal agreement?
The prime minister's "new Brexit deal" isn't all that new.
For a start, the withdrawal agreement itself - which includes the backstop plan for the Irish border - remains exactly the same.
That was always going to be the case. The EU has insisted that there will be no further negotiation on the text.
Instead, the government will seek changes to the accompanying political declaration, which focuses on the future relationship after Brexit.
But, as we've said many times before, it is not a legally binding document.
What Mrs May has offered for the first time is the prospect of a vote on holding a second referendum, and a vote on a temporary customs union.
But she says that will only be the case if MPs are willing to approve the withdrawal agreement bill in the House of Commons in the first week of June.
There are also promises on workers' rights and environmental protection - measures designed to appeal to Labour MPs. But similar promises, albeit in different form, have been made before.
As for Northern Ireland, the PM has said that the government would be under a legal obligation "to seek to conclude alternative arrangements" to the backstop by the end of 2020.
But note the word "seek" - it is an aspiration not a guarantee, and finding alternative arrangements, through the use of technology or other means, has so far proved very challenging.
Mrs May also spoke of a commitment, should the backstop have to come into force, to ensure that Great Britain will stay aligned with Northern Ireland to prevent new checks at the border.
Again, this is something that has been said before.
Nevertheless, the government is portraying this speech as a genuine effort to find compromise.
Others see it as a last roll of the dice.
The trouble is that Brexit has become a binary issue, and almost no-one in politics - whether they voted to leave or remain - seems to want to give up on their vision of how all this should be resolved.
That's why much of the initial reaction to the PM's speech from MPs, from all sides of the House of Commons, including her own backbenches, has ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile.
She will continue to warn that anyone voting against her latest plan risks losing Brexit altogether.
But the biggest problem for Mrs May is that there doesn't appear to be a majority in the Commons for any Brexit option.
That has been clear for many months now.
And nothing in this speech is likely to move the goalposts.
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If you'd listened only to question after question in the Commons on Monday afternoon, protesting loud and long at the prime minister's compromise, you might wonder why she just doesn't pack up and go home.
How on earth can Mrs May turn round the wave of resistance?
Has she finally met her impossible task?
In private, many MPs are even more caustic about this compromise deal getting through than they are in public - and that's saying something.
And among the number of the sceptics are plenty of ministers too.
Whether they are ministers who think the plan will fall and  are then willing to resign and then push for staying in the EU's single market and customs union...
....or whether they are Brexiteers in government who think Theresa May's made her own rotten luck by sticking too close to the EU...
...or even members of another group - those who look at the deal and think it's a grim, but realistic compromise, but then look at the numbers and think it just can't pass.
But while there might be fewer of them, there are still some brave souls in government who think there is a chance the deal can pass.
That's why the PM will be spending every day for the next fortnight determinedly arguing for the deal, and putting the case again and again. And then, yes, again: that in her view this deal is the only show in town.
And while MPs, certainly her supporters, might have grimaced at the torrent of criticism this afternoon, there is no sense at all at this stage that the prime minister has any intention of moving away from her position.
In fact, as the days get more desperate, in some of her public appearances and press conferences, she seems strangely more at ease, joking about forgetting journalists' names. Maybe, at long last, she has been able to settle on a simple Brexit message that she is actually comfortable with: in her view it's this deal or disaster.
And having manoeuvred herself into this position, she has no choice but to keep going. Her political fate rests on whether she can pass the deal. The stability of her government and, she would argue, the country too.
And everything about her track record tells us, as her colleagues privately confirm, the prime minister's style is to be stubborn and unbending; a weakness as well as a strength.
Along with what will undoubtedly be ruthless management of Tory MPs, No 10's plan is to relentlessly and publicly use the fear of the unknown - worries about political chaos - to bring colleagues into line.
It may work. It may well not. But Theresa May will not fail because she didn't try.
We know now the vote that will make history takes place on 11 December.
We may not know until that very moment which way it will go.

The "whole world" wants the UK to avoid a no-deal Brexit, Japan's PM has claimed, after talks with Theresa May.
Shinzo Abe pledged "total support" for the withdrawal agreement she has negotiated with the EU, which faces a crunch vote in the Commons on Tuesday.
Mrs May has been speaking to Labour MPs and union leaders in a bid to try to get her deal through the Commons, where scores of her own MPs oppose it.
It comes as Honda UK announced a six-day post Brexit shut down.
The Japanese-owned car giant said the move was to ensure it could adjust to "all possible outcomes caused by logistics and border issues".
Mrs May said leaving the EU provided "an unprecedented opportunity" for the countries to strengthen relations.
She and Mr Abe pledged to build on the trade agreement between Japan and the EU to secure an "ambitious bilateral arrangement" between Japan and the UK after Brexit.
Mr Abe said: "It is the strong will of Japan to further develop this strong partnership with the UK, to invest more into your country and to enjoy further economic growth with the UK.
"That is why we truly hope that a no-deal Brexit will be avoided, and in fact that is the whole wish of the whole world.
"Japan is in total support of the draft withdrawal agreement worked out between the EU and Prime Minister May, which provides for a transition to ensure legal stability for businesses that have invested into this country."
The UK is set to leave the European Union on 29 March.
The withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU - covering things like the "divorce bill", expat citizens' rights and a 20-month transition period - will only come into force if MPs back it in a vote.
A no-deal Brexit would see the UK leave without a withdrawal agreement and start trading with the EU on the basis of World Trade Organization rules, an outcome favoured by some Brexiteers.
The deal negotiated between the UK and EU looks set to be rejected by MPs next Tuesday, with 110 Conservative MPs having said they will oppose it, Labour set to vote against it and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn calling for a general election "at the earliest opportunity" - should it be voted down.
"A government that cannot get its business through the House of Commons is no government at all," he said.
"We're going to get smashed" - one government insider's apocalyptic prediction about one of the most important votes in recent political history.
As things stand, MPs are on course to kybosh Theresa May's long-argued-over Brexit deal, with a very heavy defeat.
Dozens of her own backbenchers have said publicly they will vote against it.
The opposition parties are adamant they will say "no" too.
Mrs May has been speaking to some Labour MPs and the leaders of two of the UK's biggest trade unions, Len McCluskey of Unite and Tim Roache of the GMB, in a bid to try to build support for the deal.
It has emerged that the government is considering backing an amendment from Labour Leave supporter John Mann, giving extra protections to workers and the environment, in a bid to win support.
Speaking alongside Prime Minister Abe, Mrs May repeated her call to MPs to support her plan in next Tuesday's crunch vote, saying: "The only way to avoid no deal is to have a deal and to agree a deal, and the deal that is on the table...the EU has made clear, is the only deal."
She said the deal allowed for a "more ambitious trading arrangement between the European Union and the United Kingdom than they have entered into with any other third country" which would also allow the UK to "strike good trade deals on our own with countries around the world, like Japan".
Labour MP Martin Whitfield, a supporter of the Best for Britain campaign for another referendum, said: "It is humiliating for the prime minster to be told to her face that the whole world wants to avoid a no-deal scenario, yet she still refuses to rule it out.
"Countries across the globe are looking at Britain in despair. Japan, like our other allies, understands the folly of a no-deal Brexit. Why doesn't Theresa May?"
Meanwhile, during the second of five days of debate on the deal, Conservative MP George Freeman has told MPs he will now vote for it "with a heavy heart", having previously said he could not support it.
He said it "wasn't perfect" but he would back it because "we are now in the dying stages and no deal is unconscionable".
Trade between the UK and Japan hit £28bn last year, and Japanese companies already employ 150,000 people in the UK.
During their meeting in Downing Street, Mrs May and Mr Abe also discussed a number of joint projects, including research around conditions such as dementia and heart failure, the increasing use of big data and artificial intelligence, and environmentally friendly growth.
They also made commitments on security - such as the UK deploying the Royal Navy warship HMS Montrose to the region to enforce sanctions against North Korea.
And as part of a cultural exchange, the National Gallery will send a major exhibition to Japan, including the Sunflowers painting by Vincent Van Gogh.
If you feel like you ought to know more about Brexit...

Top EU officials have expressed optimism that a Brexit deal can be struck by the end of the year.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, said the chance of the UK and the EU reaching a deal has increased in the last few days and could be agreed by November.
Meanwhile, European Council President Donald Tusk said an agreement was possible by the end of 2018.
But Irish PM Leo Varadkar said there is still "a fair bit of work to be done".
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
However, there is still no agreement on some issues, including how to avoid new checks on the Irish border.
Both sides had hoped to finalise the so-called divorce agreement and agree a statement on their future economic co-operation by an EU summit in 11 days' time.
Speaking to the Austrian press on Friday and asked whether an agreement could be reached at the next meeting of European leaders on 17 October, Mr Juncker said: "We are not that far yet. But our will is unbroken to reach agreement with the British government."
He said a deal could be agreed by November.
"I have reason to think that the rapprochement potential between both sides has increased in recent days," Mr Juncker added.
He also reiterated his position that a no-deal scenario "would not be good" for either the UK or the EU.
Speaking on Saturday, European Council President Mr Tusk said: "We will try for it [agreeing a deal] in October... and I think there is a chance to have an accord by the end of the year."
Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan also expressed optimism that a deal could be reached before December.
There were also reports from EU officials of a better atmosphere in talks over the Irish border.
The upbeat assessment of progress in negotiations prompted sterling to rise against the Euro and the US dollar.
But Mr Varadkar warned that the two sides had not crossed the finish line yet and the October summit was "a time to take stock".
He told reporters: "I would be hopeful at that point that there would be decisive progress allowing us to conclude an agreement by November.
"That remains to be seen yet. I think there is a fair bit of work to be done."
He added: "It's increasingly important that we conclude a deal sooner rather than later."
The BBC's Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said officials still "seem to be pushing for the whole withdrawal agreement to basically be done" by the EU summit.
"Although, if we have learned anything from Brexit it's that the timetable is incredibly flexible, to use diplomatic language," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Downing Street distanced itself from suggestions - reported in the Daily Mail newspaper - that they were concerned Mr Juncker was trying to "bounce" the UK into agreeing a Brexit deal by mid-October.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reported senior Conservatives had been in private contact with a number of Labour MPs to persuade them to back Theresa May's Brexit deal.
Some Labour MPs who were mentioned in the article took to Twitter to refute the claims. Rachel Reeves tweeted: "All the Labour MPs listed work hard and fight Tories locally and nationally every day."
It comes weeks after the head of the European Council Donald Tusk said Theresa May's Brexit plans were unworkable.
Both sides had hoped to finalise the so-called divorce agreement and agree a statement on their future economic co-operation by the October summit.
But last month, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said that if both sides were "realistic" there could be an agreement by November, when a special one-off summit has been arranged.
The European Commission is also considering whether to publish an analysis of where the two sides agree on elements of their future relationship.
It could appear alongside the EU's latest contingency plans for a no-deal scenario, which will be released next week.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions, Sir Alan Duncan was also optimistic about the prospects of a deal.
"We are in the art of the possible here, and from what I see in government, I think that we will get a deal, be it in October or November at the two consecutive summits," he said.
Currently, thousands of people cross the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland every day. Goods and services pass between the two areas easily without any restrictions.
As the UK and Ireland are currently part of the EU single market and customs union, products do not need to be inspected for customs and standards, but after Brexit, all that could change. The UK wants to leave both the single market and customs union.
Both the UK and EU have agreed they do not, in all circumstances, want a "hard border" - which means physical checks or installing infrastructure such as cameras or customs posts.
Both sides signed up to that promise in December 2017.
They hope they can achieve that anyway in a future agreement on a new trading relationship after Brexit.
But if there were to be a delay or a failure in reaching such an agreement, they have agreed there needs to be a "backstop" solution - which means a last resort plan - that would keep the Irish border open.
The trouble is the two sides can't agree on what the backstop text should say.
The EU's proposed backstop solution would see Northern Ireland stick to those rules of the customs union and single market that are required for cross-border co-operation to continue.
But the UK government is against this idea, saying it would effectively separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK and create a border in the Irish Sea.
Instead, it would like to see the UK as a whole remaining aligned with the EU customs union for a limited time. But the UK has now signalled that it is "open to looking at some of the options on regulatory checks".
Negotiators are yet to find a solution that is acceptable to both sides.

Jeremy Corbyn has said he is "looking at all the options" to prevent a no-deal Brexit after he met Tory MPs to discuss alternatives to the PM's deal if it rejected again by Parliament.
The Labour leader held talks with ex-Tory ministers Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin, who favour a closer, Norway-style relationship with the EU.
He said he had discussed the so-called "Common Market 2.0 option" but would not commit to backing it at this stage.
The UK is due to leave on 29 March.
MPs will vote on whether to back Theresa May's Brexit deal on Tuesday.
They emphatically rejected the terms of withdrawal negotiated by the prime minister in January.
If they do so again, they will get to choose between leaving without a negotiated agreement or deferring the UK's exit date by an unspecified period.
Conservative MPs have been warned by the chief whip that if they vote down the deal and the negotiations are extended, they risk ending up with a "softer Brexit".
The Labour leadership wants the UK to remain in a customs union with the EU.
Many Labour MPs and some Conservatives back an even closer arrangement with the European Union - dubbed the "Common Market 2.0" plan - which would see the UK remain in the EU's single market by staying part of the European Economic Area.
Mr Corbyn said he had agreed to meet the Conservative MPs because he was adamantly opposed to a no-deal exit and he wanted to hear "what their ideas and options are".
"I am reaching out to all groups in Parliament to try and prevent a no-deal Brexit which I think would be very damaging," he said after the meeting. "We are looking at all the options."
While Labour wanted an agreement encompassing customs union, unhindered access to EU markets and legal protection of workers rights "what exact form that takes is subject to negotiation".
Asked if he would throw his weight behind the Boles-Letwin plan and oblige Labour MPs to vote for it, he said they were "quite a long way from that at this stage".
"We are obviously discussing it but our priority at the moment is preventing a no-deal exit".
In an article for the Mirror newspaper, Mr Corbyn said a close economic relationship was "the best Brexit compromise for both 17 million leave voters and 16 million remain voters".
While he respected the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum, he reiterated that Labour would back another EU referendum "to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit or a disastrous no deal outcome."

Jeremy Corbyn has met the EU's chief negotiator in Brussels to set out Labour's vision for Brexit.
Mr Corbyn told Michel Barnier he was "ready to take up the responsibility for Brexit negotiations" if there was a change in government.
The EU negotiator also held separate meetings with the first ministers of Wales and Scotland, Carwyn Jones and Nicola Sturgeon.
Mr Barnier has stressed he will only negotiate with the UK government.
The Conservatives said Mr Corbyn would "surrender", rather than negotiate with the EU if he was in charge.
Mr Corbyn presented Mr Barnier with an Arsenal football shirt and a copy of the Labour manifesto before the meeting, while Mr Barnier gave the Labour leader a vintage railway poster from his home region in the French alps.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Corbyn said he had told the EU negotiator that "under a Labour government, we will negotiate to make sure we have the trading relationship with Europe that protects industry, protects jobs and protects services".
He added: "We will also make sure Britain doesn't become some sort of low tax regime off the shore of Europe and we will not sign a trade treaty with the USA which is not only at variance with the Paris Climate Agreement but also damaging to living standards and working conditions in Britain."
A second formal round of Brexit negotiations is due to begin on Monday, and Mr Barnier has warned that significant issues remain between the UK and the EU on one of the first issues to be tackled, citizens' rights.
Labour says it would unilaterally guarantee EU nationals' rights and "extend the hand of partnership and friendship" to the rest of the bloc.
"In contrast to the Conservatives' megaphone diplomacy, we will conduct relations with our European neighbours respectfully and in the spirit of friendship," Mr Corbyn said.
"Our strong links with our European sister parties gives Labour an advantage in reaching an outcome that works for both sides."
His visit comes after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the EU could "go whistle" if it wanted an "extortionate" divorce bill from the UK, prompting Mr Barnier to respond: "I'm not hearing any whistling, just the clock ticking."
Mr Jones said he would use his meeting to push for "full and unfettered access" to the EU single market and to avoid no deal being reached.
The Welsh first minister said he hoped to demonstrate to Mr Barnier that there were "parts of the UK that are prepared to engage constructively with the EU 27, rather than indulge in playing to the gallery".
Ms Sturgeon's spokesman said the meeting was "an opportunity to brief Mr Barnier on Scotland's priorities and seek to enhance our understanding of the current EU position as Brexit negotiations continue".
He added: "Our priority is protecting Scotland's vital interests, and building consensus against an extreme Brexit outside the single market, which would be potentially disastrous for jobs, investment and living standards.
"This is not about holding separate Scottish negotiations - we have always accepted that the EU will only negotiate with the UK, which is why we will continue to work hard to influence the UK position."
The Conservatives dismissed Mr Corbyn's trip to Brussels, saying Labour was "hopelessly divided" on key issues like immigration.
"Jeremy Corbyn wouldn't negotiate in Brexit talks, he would surrender. He has made clear Labour would accept any deal on offer - even if it was designed to punish Britain," Tory MP James Cleverly said.

Jeremy Corbyn has met the EU's chief Brexit negotiator in Brussels for what the Labour leader described as an "interesting, useful discussion".
Afterwards, Mr Corbyn said he was not negotiating with Michel Barnier, who he said had offered "no opinion" about Labour's vision for Brexit.
Labour has said it will oppose any deal Theresa May brings to Parliament if it fails to meet its "six tests".
Mr Barnier said he was "continuing to listen to all views on Brexit".
He tweeted:
Mr Corbyn was joined by shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer for the talks, which come after Mr Corbyn told his party conference that he would back Theresa May if she proposed a "sensible" deal that kept the UK in a customs union with the EU.
The PM has repeatedly ruled this out.
Speaking after the meeting with Mr Barnier, Mr Corbyn said: "We've had an interesting, useful discussion with Mr Barnier. We have set out the views of the Labour Party surrounding Brexit following the conference speeches made by Keir Starmer and myself.
"We are obviously not negotiating. We are not in government, we are the opposition.
"But he was interested to know what our views are and the six tests we have laid down by which we will hold our government in future."
Asked if Mr Barnier had offered views on Labour's Brexit plan, Mr Corbyn said: "He made no opinion on this. It's not a negotiation, it's us informing him of what our views are and he telling us what the state of play was on the negotiations."
The Labour leader last met Mr Barnier, who is conducting the negotiations on behalf of the other 27 EU members, in July 2017.
EU officials said the timing of Thursday's meeting, coming just days before the start of the Conservative Party conference, was a coincidence and stressed that it was not part of the negotiations.
The meeting coincided with Mr Corbyn's trip to the Belgian capital to witness a square being renamed in honour of Jo Cox, the Labour MP who was murdered in June 2016.
Speaking ahead of his meeting with Mr Barnier, Mr Corbyn said he would urge EU officials "to do all they can to avoid a 'no-deal' outcome": "Crashing out of Europe with no deal risks being a national disaster."
Mrs May is under pressure to rethink her approach after European leaders warned key parts of her Chequers blueprint, which would keep the UK closely aligned with the EU in trade in goods, for future relations with the EU were not viable.
Up to 40 Tory Brexiteers have said they will oppose her plan if it comes to a vote in Parliament.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said talk of a referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations - which Labour has said must remain an option - was "deeply unhelpful" to getting the best deal for Britain.
But illustrating divisions within the Conservatives, his predecessor Amber Rudd told ITV's Peston that a new public vote was "absolutely" preferable to the UK leaving the EU next March without an agreement.
And backbencher Nadine Dorries said Mrs May should step down as she had become "handcuffed" to the Chequers deal and was not communicating the benefits of Brexit.
In his keynote leader's speech in Liverpool, Mr Corbyn said Labour would oppose a no-deal outcome and would also vote against any deal based on Chequers, as it would be extremely unlikely to meet the party's six tests, which include delivering the "exact same benefits" as members of the Single Market and Customs Union.
But he said if the PM brought home a deal that "includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland", that protects jobs, people's rights at work and environmental and consumer standards, it would get his backing.
Mrs May has rejected staying in any form of customs union, saying it will prevent the UK from signing trade deals with other countries and setting its own tariffs.
Diplomats from the EU's 27 other members were briefed about the bloc's planning for a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday after a leaked document said the work had to intensify because of uncertainty about whether a final deal can be reached and approved by the UK and EU Parliaments.

Prime ministerial hopeful Jeremy Hunt has said he would consider withholding some of the UK's £39bn EU "divorce bill" in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The foreign secretary told the Sunday Times he would not hand over "a penny more than is legally required of us".
His leadership rival Boris Johnson told Sky's Sophy Ridge he would "suspend" the money until the UK got a new deal.
He said he believed the EU would give ground to the UK as it had a "powerful incentive" to avoid a no-deal exit.
With less than a month to go before the new Tory leader is elected, the two contenders have also been setting out details of their proposed new Brexit negotiating teams amid reports that Olly Robins, Theresa May's chief negotiator, is planning to stand down this summer.
On the issue of the UK's "divorce bill", Mr Hunt told the Sunday Times "anyone who thinks I am going to write a blank cheque to the European Union is sorely mistaken".
"As a businessman I always paid my bills. That being said, if we leave without a deal I will not hand over a penny more than is legally required of us."
The Institute for Government (IFG) think tank previously said refusing to pay could lead the EU to launch a legal challenge.
But a House of Lords report into Brexit and the EU budget stated: "While the legal advice we have received differed, the stronger argument suggests that the UK will not be strictly obliged, as a matter of law, to render any payments at all after leaving."
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says Mr Hunt knows that his voting to remain in the EU has not endeared him to some sections of the Conservative membership and is attempting to reassure them of his commitment to Brexit.
Earlier this month, Mr Johnson told the Sunday Times he would "retain" the financial settlement demanded by the EU until he had struck a deal more favourable than Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement, which has been rejected three times by MPs.
In his Sky interview, Mr Johnson said the "drift and dither" of the past three years could not continue and he would take personal responsibility for "leading us out of this mess and getting Brexit done" by the revised deadline of 31 October.
Asked whether he would be willing to suspend Parliament to force through a no-deal exit, he said he did not "like the idea" and was "not remotely attracted to it".
But he said MPs "have got to understand it's their responsibility to get this thing done".
Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson are taking part in 15 hustings across the country as Conservative Party members decide on their party's next leader - and the next UK prime minister.
The 160,000 members will begin voting next week and the winner is expected to be announced on 23 July.
Mr Hunt's campaign team said he was in talks with the former Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, who he hopes could help to draw up plans for a deal similar to Canada's free trade agreement with the EU.
In response, Mr Harper tweeted that he was willing to help whoever won the contest.
Mr Johnson, who has already recruited Health Secretary Matt Hancock into his team, is thought to be drafting in Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg as negotiators.
Mr Robbins, the civil servant who masterminded Theresa May's deal, is expected to step down shortly after the new prime minister enters office at the end of July.
He is the latest in a wave of civil servants to choose to quit rather than negotiate a new deal by within 100 days of either Mr Hunt or Mr Johnson becoming prime minister, to deliver Brexit by the delayed deadline of 31 October.
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Jeremy Hunt has told the EU it faces a "strategic choice" about whether to strike a mutually beneficial deal with the UK.
The foreign secretary is in Helsinki to discuss the UK's Brexit plan at the start of a three-day tour also taking in Latvia, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Mr Hunt said time was "at the point" to move negotiations forward, adding: "We need to take that opportunity."
The EU has said there are obstacles to meeting an October agreement deadline.
Last month, chief negotiator Michel Barnier ruled out allowing the UK to collect customs duties on the EU's behalf, a key UK proposal for post-Brexit trade.
Government ministers say they want to reach a deal with the EU covering issues like trade and border checks, but are also making contingency plans to prepare for leaving with no agreement in place.
Mr Hunt told reporters ahead of his meeting in Finland on Tuesday: "We want to safeguard our operational capacity as we leave the EU, and so we have put forward precise, credible proposals that ensure our ability to act is maintained.
"We are now at the point where the EU also faces strategic choices: with the option to move the negotiations forward and achieve a deal that works in our mutual interests.
"My simple message is that we need to take that opportunity."
The foreign secretary has previously warned of a "very real risk of a Brexit no deal by accident", if EU negotiators refused to change their approach.
Meanwhile, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a "reasonable, negotiated agreement" rather than an "unregulated Brexit".
Speaking at a 'town hall' event in the eastern city of Jena, she said the agreement should not be "static" and that if Britain wanted to continue benefiting from the EU in the future, "it must commit to re-accepting EU rules".
As well as promoting the proposals to the EU, the government is also trying to persuade Conservative MPs and members to back the package agreed at Chequers last month.
It prompted the resignation of key figures including Mr Hunt's predecessor, Boris Johnson, with some Tory Eurosceptics arguing the proposed trading relationship will leave the UK too closely tied to EU rules.

It is an "absolute priority" for the government to leave the EU by 23 May to avoid having to take part in European elections, Jeremy Hunt has said.
The foreign secretary said the public would find it "hugely disappointing" to be asked to send MEPs to Brussels.
Asked if it could be a disaster for the Tories, he told the BBC "in terms of polling it certainly looks that way".
Some local Tory activists have signalled they will not campaign and regard the polls as a "distraction".
Downing Street said that in order to avoid the need for elections, legislation implementing the Brexit withdrawal deal would have to be passed by Parliament by 22 May.
Last week, the EU agreed a new Brexit deadline of 31 October.
Talks between the government and Labour are set to continue over the Easter parliamentary recess in the hope of finding an agreement that will be acceptable to MPs.
A series of working groups in key areas, such as environmental standards, security and workers' rights, have been set up to try and find common ground.
Speaking on a visit to Japan, Mr Hunt said the talks with Labour had been "more constructive than people thought" but "we don't know if they are going to work".
If they did not lead anywhere, he suggested the government may "need to find a way to rebuild the DUP-Conservative coalition", which has come under real strain from Brexit.
The Democratic Unionists are supposed to support the government in key parliamentary votes to give it a majority in the House of Commons.
But they have refused to support the prime minister's withdrawal agreement over concerns with the controversial Irish backstop, which aims to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that continuing Brexit "paralysis" would be "highly damaging" to the UK's global standing and international trading partners "are worried that we will become submerged in the mire of Brexit indecision".
While Japan and other major foreign investors were keen for the UK to "make up its mind" about Brexit, he suggested they would continue to keep faith with the UK even if it left without a deal.
"(Japan) has signed a deal with the EU and, in a no-deal situation, we hope that would roll over and apply for us, although no-deal, I think, is looking much less likely," he said.
"I think they are very keen to protect their trading relationship with the UK, but I think they are also wanting to talk to us about other things."
However, in February, the government released a statement saying it would not be able to replicate the EU's free trade deal with Japan after Brexit.
And Japan has not agreed to continuing existing trade terms in the event of no deal.
Mr Hunt downplayed talk of an imminent Conservative leadership contest, saying it would be a "sidetrack" from Brexit.
The foreign secretary, along with his predecessor Boris Johnson, are among a long list of potential candidates touted to succeed Mrs May when she stands down.
Asked whether the next leader could be someone, like himself, who campaigned to remain in the EU, Mr Hunt replied: "There is one very big difference between me and Boris, which is that I am foreign secretary and I have a very big job to do to try and get this deal over the line and that has to be my focus.
"I think that what matters is we have a cabinet that believes in Brexit."
On the first day of his trip to Japan, Mr Hunt met the country's prime minister Shinzo Abe and other political leaders.
He also took some time out of his political schedule to talk to pupils in a school in Tokyo. Mr Hunt is a fluent Japanese speaker, having taught English as a foreign language in Japan in his 20s.

Jeremy Hunt has said there is no possibility of the government backing a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
The health secretary said the UK wanted "frictionless trade" but would "find a different way" to achieve that.
Tory rebels are attempting to force the government to keep the option of a customs union with the EU on the table and have some cross-party support.
Theresa May will make a speech on the UK's future relationship with the EU next Friday.
And Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is set to outline Labour policy on a customs union on Monday, amid reports that his party's position on it is "evolving".
If he backs membership of a customs union, it could mean Mrs May faces a Commons showdown over the issue - with pro-European Conservative rebels joining forces with Labour MPs.
Conservative MP Anna Soubry says there is cross-party support for an amendment to the Trade Bill, currently going through Parliament, urging the government to pursue as a negotiating objective forming a customs union after Brexit.
A customs union means countries club together and agree to apply the same tariffs to goods from outside the union - but it does not allow members to strike their own trade deals.
Supporters of the UK being in a customs union argue it is vital to protect businesses - but opponents fear it would mean "Brexit in name only" and the UK should make its own arrangements.
Jeremy Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme a customs union was "one way of getting frictionless trade but it is not the only way".
The government wanted to agree "frictionless trade by agreement between two sovereign bodies, the United Kingdom and the European Union", he said.
Asked if there was any possibility of the government coming round to the idea of a customs union with the EU after Brexit, he replied: "No".
The health secretary was not at the meeting of senior ministers at Chequers on Thursday but said a broad agreement had been reached ahead of a discussion by the whole cabinet and the prime minister's speech next Friday.
Despite "divergent views" there was a  "central common understanding is that there will be areas and sectors of industry where we agree to align our regulations with European regulations, such as the automotive industry.
"But it will be on a voluntary basis, we will as a sovereign power have the right to choose to diverge, and what we won't be doing is accepting changes in rules because the EU unilaterally chooses to make those changes," said Mr Hunt.
But pro-EU Labour backbencher Chuka Umunna - an ally of Anna Soubry - warned Theresa May her plan to leave the customs union could be defeated by MPs.
"If they are not going to change their position they are going to lose votes in the House of Commons, it's a straightforward as that."
Former prime minister Tony Blair said if there was an "impasse" in Parliament on the customs union issue, it made the case stronger for a referendum on the final Brexit deal - something dismissed by Labour Brexiteer Kate Hoey as "ridiculous".
He said a customs union would mitigate the problems of a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In an article on his website, he attacked those politicians who, he said, were "prepared to sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement on the altar of Brexit and declare that the peace agreed in Northern Ireland is not, really, worth having anyway".
"This is irresponsibility that is frankly sickening," he said.
Mrs May will meet European Council President Donald Tusk in London on Thursday, the day before her speech.
Meanwhile the Times has reported that the prime minister is planning a U-turn over the right of EU citizens who arrive in the UK after Brexit, but during the "transition period", to remain in the country permanently.
Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg told the BBC that would be "quite wrong": "I'd be astonished if Mrs May would make U-turn of that kind; she is a lady of great backbone and for her to kowtow to the European Union is, I think, unconscionable."

A "lot more work" is required to get MPs to back Theresa May's Brexit deal, Jeremy Hunt has said, amid uncertainty over whether it will be put to a vote for a third time this week.
The foreign secretary said there were "encouraging signs" that opponents of the deal were slowly coming round.
But he said another vote would only be held before Thursday's EU summit if ministers were "confident" of victory.
A number of Brexiteers have signalled they will continue to oppose the deal.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson called for further changes to the terms of withdrawal, which the EU has rejected, while 22 Tory MPs have written to the Daily Telegraph saying that leaving without any agreement - known as a no-deal exit - on 29 March would actually be a "good deal" for the UK.
Although the PM's plan is expected to be voted on for a third time in the coming days, the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the situation remained highly unpredictable.
She said it was "eminently feasible" the PM would delay a vote until after Thursday's summit - at which European leaders will discuss a UK request to extend the Brexit process and delay the UK's departure.
Last week, MPs rejected Theresa May's deal for a second time - this time by 149 votes - and then backed plans to rule out leaving the EU without a deal.
They also voted in favour of an extension to the process - either until 30 June, if the deal is supported before 20 March; or a longer one that could include taking part in European elections if MPs reject her plan again.
All 27 EU member states would have to agree to an extension.
The possibility of Brexit being delayed or overturned in another referendum has seen some MPs reluctantly back Mrs May's deal.
A group of 15 Tory MPs from Leave-backing constituencies, including former Brexit Secretary David Davis, wrote a letter urging colleagues to back the deal to ensure Brexit goes ahead.
Speaking as he arrived in Brussels for a meeting of EU foreign ministers, Mr Hunt welcomed the fact "strong critics" of the deal were now prepared to support it in order to prevent the risk of "paralysis".
"I think there are some cautious signs of encouragement," he said. "But there is a lot more work to do...That is why we will be redoubling our efforts this week."
Asked if a third vote would definitely happen before Thursday's EU summit, he said he hoped it will but "we have to be confident we will get the numbers".
So far the number of Tories publicly switching positions falls far short of the 75 MPs Mrs May needs to switch sides.
Andrea Jenkyns told BBC News she was a "conviction politician...and would not be bullied into backing the deal" while Lee Rowley told Politics Live he could not support the deal as it stood as a "matter of principle".
Writing in his weekly Daily Telegraph column, Mr Johnson warned the UK would be "humiliated" if there was not a radical change of approach.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteers, said he was "waiting to see" whether the Democratic Unionists would swing round behind the deal before deciding which way to vote.
But he said he still believed leaving without any agreement was the "best option", telling LBC "it means... we will have restored our nation's independence".
Senior ministers have indicated the support of the DUP's 10 MPs, whose votes prop up the Conservative government, remains crucial.
No 10 confirmed negotiations with the DUP were continuing, including over the question of how the Northern Ireland Assembly could block any new regulatory barriers to trade with the rest of the UK.
DUP MLA Jim Wells told BBC Radio 4's Today the party still had a "huge difficulty" with the existing backstop arrangements - designed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland but which opponents say will separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
He said: "We could find ourselves locked in there forever in effect - and once you get in, you can never get out."
With UK politics mired in a fog of confusion, the only thing the EU can control this week is choreography at their leaders' summit.
Donald Tusk, European Council President and the representative of all 27 EU countries in Brussels, is visiting a number of capitals to try to co-ordinate a single EU response if or when Mrs May asks for an extension to Article 50.
On Monday, he's in Berlin and Paris - capitals of the EU superpowers, Germany and France. But when it comes to an extension, any of the EU's 27 leaders has a veto. The decision must be unanimous.
This conjures up horror visions in EU leaders' minds over being held to ransom by one of their ranks keen to use this leverage over Brexit to win a concession from Brussels over a separate issue.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned Theresa May against agreeing a Brexit deal with Labour that involves a customs union with the EU.
Mr Hunt suggested that such an agreement would result in even fewer Tory MPs backing a deal in Parliament.
But Jeremy Corbyn insists his support is contingent on ministers accepting the need for a customs union.
Supporters say it would be better for businesses, but opponents feel it stops the UK setting its own trade policy.
Talks between Labour and the government have been taking place for a number of weeks after Mrs May's Brexit deal with the EU was effectively rejected for a third time by MPs.
Downing Street says further talks are being scheduled "in order to bring the process toward a conclusion" - and according to BBC Newsnight's political editor Nicholas Watt, a sense of urgency is growing.
Labour has previously complained that the government appeared unwilling to move on the possibility of a customs union.
But the PM's de facto deputy David Lidington said on Monday that the latest round of talks had been "productive", while Labour described them as "constructive".
All EU members - including the UK at present - are inside the customs union, meaning they do not have to pay taxes, called tariffs, to move goods and services between them.
This keeps cost down and avoids delays, but members have to operate as part of a bloc and cannot do their own trade deals with other countries around the world.
Labour is arguing for the UK to be part of a new form of customs union arrangement where the country could have "a say" in policy despite no longer being in the EU.
Critics say the EU would never agree to that, and in any case, the purpose of Brexit is to break free and remaining in a customs arrangement would go against that.
Leaving the customs union was also a Conservative manifesto commitment at the 2017 general election.
Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If we were proposing - which I very much hope we don't - to sign up to the customs union, then I think there is a risk you would lose more Conservative MPs than you would gain Labour MPs."
However, he said he "definitely" thought the government could secure a deal that MPs would back.
Other cabinet ministers - including International Trade Secretary Liam Fox - have also recently signalled their unease at a customs union agreement.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell tweeted that Mr Hunt's comment did "not inspire confidence that if a deal is agreed it would be successfully entrenched and last any longer than the next Tory leadership election".
Nick Boles, an independent MP who quit the Conservatives over the party's Brexit stance, also criticised Mr Hunt's comments as "ignorant and unhelpful", saying on Twitter that it revealed "naked opportunism" over the Conservative leadership.
Mrs May has said she will resign if her deal is passed through Parliament, leading to the prospect of an imminent leadership contest.
The prime minister is keen to get the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - legislation required to implement the withdrawal deal - through Parliament as soon as possible.
Ministers insist it is still their aim for that to happen by 22 May so the country does not have to take part in elections to the European Parliament a day later.

John Bercow has insisted MPs will have their say over whether the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 31 October.
The Speaker dismissed claims from some Brexiteers that because a no-deal exit is the default position in law, it will "inevitably" happen if no agreement is reached by then with Brussels.
Instead, he said there was "much debate to be had" and it was "unimaginable" that Parliament would be sidelined.
The October deadline was set after MPs repeatedly rejected Theresa May's plan.
The Commons has already voted to block a no-deal exit, but that vote was non-binding.
Mr Bercow's comments come as candidates for the Conservative leadership have been laying out their Brexit positions.
Several of them, including Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, have said they would be willing to leave the EU on a no-deal basis. Others, though, like Jeremy Hunt and Rory Stewart, say that would be unacceptable.
The winner of the contest - not yet formally under way - is expected to be confirmed in July and will also become the UK's next prime minister.
Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, US, Mr Bercow said: "There is a difference between a legal default position and what the interplay of different political forces in Parliament will facilitate.
"The idea that Parliament is going to be evacuated for the centre stage of debate on Brexit is simply unimaginable. The idea the House won't have its say is for the birds."
He continued: "The idea that there is an inevitability of a no-deal Brexit would be a quite wrong suggestion. There is no inevitability whatsoever about that."
Mr Bercow said there was still "a lot still to be said... and policy to be determined."
But he would not predict the outcome, and said Article 50 - the mechanism to leave the EU - was triggered under the last Parliament and "no Parliament can bind the hands of its successor".
"I believe passionately that Parliament must do what Parliament thinks is right," said Mr Bercow.
"MPs have a duty to do what they think is right in terms of voice and vote."

The shadow chancellor says Labour MPs will not be "bribed" into supporting Theresa May's Brexit deal in exchange for funding for their constituencies.
John McDonnell said any such offer would be "pork-barrel politics" and "dangerous for our democracy".
It follows reports that investment could be made in Leave-voting constituencies to secure MPs' votes.
A spokesman for the PM said this week any investment to tackle inequality could not be called "cash for votes".
The government is understood to be considering proposals from a group of Labour MPs in predominantly Leave-supporting constituencies to allocate more funds to their communities for big infrastructure projects.
It is thought the MPs have urged the prime minister to consider re-allocating the EU's regional aid budget away from big cities and local councils and to give the cash direct to smaller communities, often in former steel and coal mining areas.
On Thursday, Labour MP John Mann, who was one of only three Labour MPs to back Mrs May's Brexit deal, told her to "show us the money".
On a visit to Stoke-on-Trent on Saturday, however, Mr McDonnell rejected any link between votes and funding.
He said: "I can't see individual MPs, to be honest, selling their vote in parliament in this way and what most MPs I've spoken to are saying is if there is money to invest it should be invested anyway so just get on with it."
"Don't expect us to be bought and bribed in this way - that's a form of corrupt politics that we don't want to be introduced into our political system."
Mr McDonnell also criticised the government over its "supply and confidence" arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The DUP negotiated a deal for an extra £1bn in spending for Northern Ireland over two years in exchange for supporting Mrs May's minority Conservative government, following the snap election in 2017.
Mr McDonnell said: "It was something like £100m a vote they spent to get the DUP supporting them, so they already introduced that pork-barrel contractual politics.
"I think it degrades our political system and to try and extend it in this way, I think it's dangerous for our democracy."
His comments follow Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery saying that accepting any offer of funding "would be fool's gold".
Mr Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, a former coal mining area in Nottinghamshire, met cabinet office officials in Whitehall earlier this week.
Speaking afterwards, he told reporters: "I want to see, when we leave the European Union, significant investment in new technologies, new jobs, science and industry in areas like mine and all the other areas in the country like mine.
"This isn't transactional politics, this is about getting a national fund... the areas that voted Leave the most are the areas that have not had that investment."
Ministers are continuing to try to win support for the withdrawal deal Mrs May has negotiated with the EU, which was rejected by a historic margin in a Commons vote more than two weeks ago.
A spokesman for the prime minister this week confirmed ministers were looking at a programme of "national renewal" following Brexit to tackle inequality and rebuild communities, but that he "absolutely wouldn't characterise" the reported investment offer as "cash for votes".
This week, a backbench amendment to replace the Irish backstop with "alternative arrangements" in the deal, won the support of the Commons.
The PM says she will now return to Brussels in a bid to re-open negotiations.

Boris Johnson says he is "very confident" MPs will back the Brexit deal he has struck with the EU - despite the DUP's opposition to it.
The prime minister claimed he would win what is expected to be a knife-edge Commons vote on Saturday.
"This is our chance in the UK as democrats to get Brexit done, and come out on 31 October," he said.
The DUP is against concessions he made to the EU on customs checks at points of entry into Northern Ireland.
The party's deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, accused the prime minister of being "too eager by far to get a deal at any cost".
The PM must win support for his deal from Brexiters on his own side, as well as from 23 former Tory MPs who now sit as independents - including 21 whom he kicked out of the Tory parliamentary party last month after they rebelled against him in a bid to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
He must also convince Labour MPs concerned about protection for workers and the environment in the new deal.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Labour would oppose the deal, citing concerns it would allow the UK to move further away from EU regulations in the future.
He said the new agreement "paves the way for a decade of deregulation" and argued it would give the government "licence to slash" worker, environment and consumer protections.
Speaking in Brussels, Mr Johnson denied he would meet the same fate as his predecessor Theresa May, who repeatedly failed to get a Brexit deal through Parliament.
"I am very confident that when my colleagues in Parliament study this agreement that they will want to vote for it on Saturday and in succeeding days," he said at an EU summit in Brussels.
Appealing to the DUP, which the government relies on for support in key Commons votes, he insisted the UK could leave the EU "as one United Kingdom" and "decide our future together".
Mr Dodds earlier said he expected a "massive vote" against Mr Johnson's deal on Saturday in the House of Commons - and the DUP expected to "play a crucial role" in amending the legislation.
The new deal is largely the same as the one agreed by Theresa May last year - but it removes the controversial backstop clause, which critics say could have kept the UK tied indefinitely to EU customs rules.
Northern Ireland would now remain in the UK's customs union, but there would also be customs checks on some goods passing through en route to Ireland and the EU single market.
The DUP said: "This is not acceptable within the internal borders of the United Kingdom."
The party also objects to Northern Ireland potentially being part of a different VAT regime to the rest of the UK and is concerned about the deal violating the Good Friday Agreement's principle of consulting the nationalist and unionist communities on important issues.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker caused a flurry earlier when he said there was no need for a Brexit extension as "we have a deal".
This was seen as a major boost for Mr Johnson, who has always insisted he would not go beyond 31 October - even if he was forced to ask for an extension under the terms of the so-called Benn Act, which kicks in on Saturday if MPs vote his deal down.
But Mr Juncker's EU colleagues were more cautious, with European Council President Donald Tusk saying he would "consult" member states about an extension if necessary.
At a joint press conference, Mr Tusk, Mr Juncker, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar all expressed regret that the UK was leaving the EU.
Mr Tusk said: "On a more personal note, what I feel today, frankly speaking, is sadness, because in my heart I will always be a Remainer, and I hope that our British friends decide to return one day, our door will always be open."
The winning post for votes in the House of Commons is 320 if everyone turns up - seven Sinn Fein MPs don't sit and the Speaker and three deputies don't vote.
There are currently 287 voting Conservative MPs. The prime minister needs to limit any rebellion among them.
Then, if the DUP won't support his deal, he'll need the backing of 23 former Conservative MPs who are currently independents. Most will probably support the deal, but not all.
That's still not quite enough, though, so the PM will also need the backing of some Labour MPs and ex-Labour independents. In March, when MPs voted on Theresa May's deal for the third time, five Labour MPs backed it, plus two ex-Labour independents.
This time it's likely to be a bit higher than that because several MPs have said they would now back a deal.
All this still leaves the vote very close. And it's possible some MPs could abstain, making it even harder to predict the outcome.
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Labour has "run out of excuses" to oppose an early election, Boris Johnson has said, as MPs vote on whether to back his call for a December poll.
The PM said "nobody relished" going to the polls weeks before Christmas but this Parliament had "run its course" and was "incapable" of settling Brexit.
The PM has formally accepted the EU's offer of a Brexit extension until 31 January 2020 agreed earlier on Monday.
In a letter to EU officials, he said it was an "unwanted prolongation".
Urging the EU to rule out any further extension, he said there was time to ratify his Brexit deal but he feared the current Parliament would never do so "as long as it has the option of further delay".
The PM's acceptance means that the UK will not leave the EU on Thursday - despite a "do or die" promise he repeatedly made during this summer's Tory leadership campaign and since taking office in July.
EU Council President Donald Tusk said what was being offered was a "flextension" - meaning the UK could leave before the deadline if a deal was approved by Parliament.
It comes as MPs prepare to vote on the PM's proposals for an early general election on 12 December. The SNP and Lib Dems have also proposed an election - on 9 December. The vote is expected after 1900 GMT.
Speaking in the Commons, Mr Johnson said Labour was the only main opposition party resisting an early election, telling Mr Corbyn that he "can run but he cannot hide" from the electorate.
In response, Mr Corbyn said he backed an election but only after certain conditions were met - including legal confirmation of the extension and reassurances that students wouldn't be "disenfranchised" by the mid-December date because they had left for the Christmas holidays.
"The reason I am so cautious is that I do not trust the prime minister," he said. "Today he wants an election and his bill - not with our endorsement."
A No 10 source said the government would introduce a bill "almost identical" to the Lib Dem/SNP option on Tuesday if Labour voted their plan down later, and "we will have a pre-Christmas election anyway".
The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford said it would only support a poll "on its terms" and suggested this could depend on 16 and 17-year olds and EU nationals being given the vote.
The UK was due to leave the EU on Thursday, but Mr Johnson was required to request an extension after Parliament failed to agree a Brexit deal.
The prime minister had repeatedly said the UK would leave on 31 October deadline with or without a deal, but the law - known as the Benn Act - requires him to accept the EU's extension offer.
The Lib Dem/SNP plan does not include a new timetable for his legislation - the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
They want the 9 December because it would not leave enough time for the bill to become law before Parliament is dissolved - which must happen a minimum of 25 working days before an election.
The BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, said she understands the government has offered to fix the election date on 12 December, but a Lib Dem source told her they were holding firm to their date, adding: "If we are doing this, we are not doing it on the government's terms."
Labour MPs are expected to abstain in the Commons vote on a 12 December election.
It comes as government figures showed a surge in voter registrations, with nearly two million registering in the past eight weeks.
Over half of the applications - 58% - were from voters aged 34 or under, compared to just 7% for those over 65. The swell coincided with Mr Johnson's first proposal, in early September, for a snap election.
The EU has finally announced its informal approval of a new Brexit extension - but what an excruciatingly long and confusing political dance to get there. And the dance is not over yet.
To become a formal offer, the Brexit extension still needs to be accepted by UK PM Boris Johnson. This is EU law and an unavoidable part of the procedure.
But how uncomfortable for the prime minister who sought to distance himself as much as possible from the extension, previously promising that he would rather die in a ditch than request one.
The EU is also attaching some extra wording to the extension - including a reminder for the UK that, until it leaves, it remains a fully paid up member of the EU, including all the rights and obligations that go along with membership.
After the extension has been signed off this week, Brussels will watch, arms folded from the sidelines as the next moves are decided in Westminster.
The SNP and Lib Dems have broken with the Labour position on Brexit to push for an election on 9 December.
Their bill would tweak the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act - the law which sets the time-frame for elections.
If passed, it would enable an election to take place with only a majority of one, rather than two-thirds of MPs.
It would also set the election date in stone and give PM no "wriggle room" to alter the date after MPs had voted, which he could theoretically do under the current legislation.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said while her preference was for another referendum, there was not enough support in Parliament for this as things stood.
A general election, she told MPs, was the only way to stop Mr Johnson pushing through his Brexit deal in the coming weeks "on the back of Labour votes".
She said she would not insist for votes for 16-year olds as the price of her support. "The worst thing we can do for 16 and 17 year olds is to crash out without a deal"," she said.
"Leaving EU is the thing that will wreck their future."
The leader of The Independent Group for Change, former Conservative MP Anna Soubry, sent an email to her party's supporters accusing the SNP and Lib Dems of "turning their backs" on the People's Vote campaign.
The Independent Group for Change has five MPs.
Plaid Cymru, which has four MPs, said another referendum, rather than an election, was the "clearest way to end the Brexit chaos".

Labour would keep the UK in the EU single market and customs union for a transitional period after leaving the EU, the party has said.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer set out Labour's new position in the Observer.
The shift in policy would mean accepting the free movement of labour after leaving the EU in March 2019.
Sir Keir said the transition would be "as short as possible but as long as necessary".
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary David Davis has urged the European Commission to have a flexible approach to talks.
Labour's leadership has been criticised by opponents for a lack of clarity on what deal Britain should seek immediately after leaving the EU.
Sir Keir said a transitional period was needed to avoid a "cliff edge" for the economy, so that goods and services could continue to flow between the EU and UK while negotiations on the permanent deal continued.
"Labour would seek a transitional deal that maintains the same basic terms that we currently enjoy with the EU," he wrote.
"That means we would seek to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market during this period.
"It means we would abide by the common rules of both."
He compared this with the government's preference for "bespoke" transitional arrangements after leaving the EU, which, Sir Keir said, were highly unlikely to be negotiated before March 2019.
He did not say how long the transitional period would be - only that it would be "as short as possible, but as long as is necessary".
By BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake
A significant shift or simply the clarification of a confused picture?
Either way, Labour's plan for a transitional period after the UK leaves the EU only takes us so far.
Yes, we now know that a Labour government would keep the UK in the customs union and single market for some time after March 2019.
But how long for? And what happens after that?
Sir Keir has suggested continued membership of the customs union and single market with stricter controls on immigration.
That idea is likely to go down about as well as a flat beer in Brussels.
In the words of the EU's chief negotiator, "cherry picking is not an option".
Labour's plan will be music to the ears of its remain-voting supporters in London and beyond.
But to those in the party's heartlands, keen to see the back of Brussels, it may sound more like an alarm bell.
The customs union is the EU's tariff-free trading area, which imposes the same taxes on imports from certain countries outside the union.
The single market also includes the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
"Those who campaigned to leave the EU are likely to be concerned that this could see unlimited  migration continue for some time after Brexit," said the BBC's political correspondent Iain Watson.
After the transitional period, Sir Keir said, the new relationship with the EU would "retain the benefits of the customs union and the single market", but how that would be achieved "is secondary to the outcome".
Remaining in a form of customs union with the EU was a "possible end destination" for Labour, he said, but that must be "subject to negotiations".
He said a final deal must address the "need for more effective management of migration".
Jeremy Corbyn's office confirmed that the proposals had been agreed with him and were official policy.
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said it was a "sensible and reasonable" approach to take, and would give working people "certainty" on their jobs and rights at work.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on EU relations, told BBC News the change in policy was "welcome" and urged Labour to commit to staying in the single market after the transition period.
However, a spokesman for Labour Leave, a pro-Brexit movement, warned the party risked losing the 37% of Labour voters who voted to leave the EU.
"Seven out of 10 Labour constituencies voted Leave. Single market membership is EU membership in all but name. Labour must honour the referendum," it tweeted.
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Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said it was "all spin and no principle".
Meanwhile, the SNP's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said Labour was simply delaying the UK's departure from the market, saying: "Labour still face a cliff edge, only later than the Tories."
Former-UKIP leader Nigel Farage tweeted that Mr Corbyn had "betrayed every Labour voter", having said he would support the UK leaving the single market during the general election campaign.
The government has also called for a transition period to help business adjust after Brexit.
But chancellor Philip Hammond and trade secretary Liam Fox said the UK would be "outside the single market and outside the customs union" during this period.
A paper subsequently published by the government said it could ask Brussels to establish a "temporary customs union" after March 2019.
But during this period, it would also expect to be able to negotiate its own international trade deals - something it cannot do as an EU customs union member.
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary David Davis will meet the European Commission's chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday to formally open Brexit discussions.
The government said this week's negotiations were "likely to be technical in nature", ahead of more substantial talks in September.
It said both sides must be "flexible and willing to compromise" when it comes to solving areas where they disagree.

Labour MPs have been warned by their party not to accept money for their constituencies in return for supporting Theresa May's Brexit deal.
Labour chairman Ian Lavery said "taking such a bribe would be fool's gold" given the Tories' record on austerity.
John Mann has urged the PM to "show us the money" with "transformative investment" in areas that voted Leave.
But the Labour MP, who backed Theresa May's Brexit deal, denied it amounted to "transactional politics".
Writing on the Labour List website, Mr Lavery, the former general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers and a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, accused Mrs May of playing "divide and rule" over Brexit.
"If the prime minister wants to talk about ending austerity and protecting rights as we leave the EU, she should do so with the leader of the Labour Party and his team.
"Any Labour MP seriously considering discussions with the PM should remember her record and that of her party going back generations. Quite simply, taking such a bribe would be fool's gold."
The government is understood to be considering proposals from a group of Labour MPs in predominantly Leave-supporting constituencies, to allocate more funds to their communities for big infrastructure projects.
It is thought the MPs have urged the prime minister to consider re-allocating the EU's regional aid budget away from big cities and local councils and to give the cash direct to smaller communities, often in former steel and coal mining areas.
John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, a former coal mining area in Nottinghamshire, met cabinet office officials in Whitehall on Thursday and told reporters: "I want to see, when we leave the European Union, significant investment in new technologies, new jobs, science and industry in areas like mine and all the other areas in the country like mine.
"This isn't transactional politics, this is about getting a national fund ... the areas that voted Leave the most are the areas that have not had that investment."
A couple of weeks ago, a Labour MP confessed quietly that they would vote for Theresa May's Brexit deal in the end.
But they wanted something to show for it, suggesting, half-teasingly, that they wanted the PFI debt of their local hospital paid off.
That MP was frustrated that the government had taken so long, as they saw it, to try to reach out to get them on board.
But they predicted that we would soon see what they described as "transactional politics", in a way that we haven't seen before in this country.
With Number 10 in a frantic hunt for support, maybe that time has arrived.
It comes as ministers continue to try to win support for the withdrawal deal Theresa May has negotiated with the EU, which was rejected by a historic margin in a Commons vote more than two weeks ago. Mr Mann was one of only three Labour MPs to back the deal.
Downing Street says that ministers are looking at a programme of "national renewal" following Brexit, to tackle inequality and rebuild communities but has denied any funding amounted to "cash for votes".
Asked if the government was trying to bribe Labour MPs, Chancellor Philip Hammond said: "No it doesn't work like that I'm afraid.
"What we are doing is looking at some of the drivers behind the Brexit vote.
"What was it that felt that made so many communities feel that they didn't have a stake in the way our economy was operating?
"And making sure we are investing in, for example, former coalfield communities to ensure they can keep up with the changes that are happening across the economy and that they too can share in our future prosperity."
But David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, in north London, tweeted his response to headlines suggesting the PM was preparing to "woo Labour MPs with cash to back Brexit" saying: "Cowards and facilitators. History will be brutal."
And his colleague Chuka Umunna, who like Mr Lammy campaigns for another EU referendum, said on Twitter: "Government by bung is WRONG - whether involving DUP MPs or those from any other party.
"Funding should be based on the needs of the people not on the needs of an incompetent Tory PM to secure the votes of MPs for a deal which will make the UK poorer."
Asked about Mr Lammy's comments, the former Labour MP Frank Field, who now sits as an independent, said: "David would say that, he is in London. He isn't going to get any money and they are well provided for by the amount of rates they get in most areas and the wealth the business community brings to London."
The veteran MP for Birkenhead, on Merseyside, who backs Brexit, told BBC Newsnight Labour MPs representing Leave constituencies "should be fighting me to get to the front of the queue to get those funds".
He added: "That's how politics operates. The Tory party in government is very good at shoving money their way to their constituencies. I wish Labour were as effective."
But Anna Turley, MP for Redcar, a Teesside coastal town, which voted to leave the EU, told the same programme she found the idea "appalling".
"We have had nearly a decade now of austerity that has seen constituencies like mine absolutely hammered, £6bn has come out of public spending in the North by this government and if [there is] a programme or national renewal, I'm afraid it's too little too late."

Talks between Conservative and Labour teams have taken place for a second day, in a bid to end Brexit deadlock.
The discussions, which lasted 4.5 hours, were described as "detailed and productive" by the government.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said earlier that the idea of a "confirmatory" referendum on any Brexit deal would be discussed.
MPs backed a bill on Wednesday which would force the PM to seek a new delay to Brexit.
The House of Lords are debating it in general terms -  but detailed line-by-line scrutiny, when they will have the chance to propose changes to the bill, will not take place until Monday.
Leaving the cross-party talks, Sir Keir did not answer questions about what had been discussed, telling reporters: "We have had further discussions and we will be having further discussions with the government."
A Labour spokesman said the talks "are continuing and the teams are planning to meet again".
A Downing Street spokesman said: "Today both sets of negotiating teams met for four and a half hours of detailed and productive technical talks in the Cabinet Office, supported by the civil service."
The talks were attended on the Labour side by shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey.
The government's negotiating team was senior cabinet minister David Lidington, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, chief whip Julian Smith, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Gavin Barwell - the prime minister's chief of staff.
Thursday's meeting followed discussions between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 12 April, and as yet, no withdrawal deal is in place.
But ministers have warned that the backbench bill - put forward by Labour's Yvette Cooper - could increase "the risk of an accidental no-deal".
No 10 says Ms Cooper's bill, passed by the Commons with a majority of one vote on Wednesday, would deny the PM the power to agree a deal with EU leaders on April 10, as MPs would have to agree to any new Brexit date.
Any Brexit delay will require the unanimous backing of all 28 EU leaders at a summit next Wednesday.
If they agree - but suggest a different date to the one backed by MPs - the prime minister would have to bring it back to the Commons for further approval on Thursday 11 April.
"By April 11, the European Council will have concluded and the leaders will have returned to their member states. In the words of the secretary of state, the bill could increase the risk of an accidental no-deal exit," the prime minister's spokesman said.
The main item of business in the last frantic 24 hours has been the cross-party talks between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
From both sides, it sounds like they are serious and genuine, and negotiators got into the guts of both their positions and technical details on Thursday.
Remember, behind the scenes there isn't as much difference between the two sides' versions of Brexit as the hue and cry of Parliament implies.
But the political, not the policy, distance between the two is plainly enormous.
The backbench bill, which was steered through the Commons in one day, will need the approval of the House of Lords if it is to become law.
Peers were expected to sit late into the night on Thursday as they hold their second reading debate on the bill.
The government's chief whip in the Lords, Lord Taylor said: "The proceedings on Monday the 8th should be concluded in a timely fashion to allow the House of Commons to consider any amendments made by this House."
It is the EU which decides whether to grant an extension, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has met Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar for talks in Dublin.
Mr Varadkar said any further extension "must require and must have a credible and realistic way forward".
Mrs Merkel said she still hoped for an "orderly Brexit" adding: "I can say this from the German side - we will do everything in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit; Britain crashing out of the European Union.
"But we have to do this together with Britain and with their position that they will present to us."
Shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis told BBC Radio 4's World at One that Labour would not be talking to the government if a "confirmatory referendum" wasn't an option.
But it has emerged that party chairman Ian Lavery offered to quit the shadow cabinet, after twice defying orders to vote in favour of another referendum.
And 25 Labour MPs - including former minister Caroline Flint and a number MPs for Leave-voting seats in the North and Midlands - have written to Jeremy Corbyn, saying another referendum should not be included in any compromise Brexit deal.
Meanwhile, Downing Street has announced a series of ministerial appointments, to replace ministers who quit over the government's Brexit strategy and Brexit votes.
Among them, party deputy chairman James Cleverly has been made a Brexit minister; Justin Tomlinson has been appointed as a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions; and Seema Kennedy has been made a health minister.

Labour should "unequivocally back Remain" in a fresh Brexit referendum and only then pursue power in a general election, its deputy has said.
Tom Watson said there was "no such thing as a good Brexit deal" and the 2016 Leave vote had been "invalidated".
Jeremy Corbyn said he did "not accept or agree with" his deputy's view.
"Our priority is to get a general election in order to give the people a chance to elect a government that cares for them," he said.
The Labour leader wants to hold another referendum once Labour has won power, in which voters would have the choice to remain in the EU alongside a "credible" Leave proposal.
However, he has said he would only choose a side once the shape of any revised Brexit deal negotiated by a Labour government became clear.
The BBC's political correspondent, Chris Mason, said Mr Watson was directly elected as deputy leader by party members, not appointed by Mr Corbyn, and so has a right to roam on policy other shadow cabinet ministers might not get away with it.
In a speech in London, Mr Watson said while an autumn general election seemed inevitable "that does not make it desirable".
"Elections should never be single issue campaigns," he argued, suggesting vital issues such as the future of the NHS, economic inequality and crime would be "drowned out" by the prime minister's "do or die" Brexit message.
"The only way to break the Brexit deadlock once and for all is a public vote in a referendum," he said. "A general election might well fail to solve this Brexit chaos."
In the event of another general election in the coming months, Mr Watson said Labour must be "crystal clear" about where it stands on Brexit if it wants to get a hearing for the rest of its domestic policy agenda.
"There is no such thing as a good Brexit deal, which is why I believe we should advocate for Remain. That is what the overwhelming majority of Labour Party members, MPs and trade unions believe."
Mr Watson will said that, though "very difficult", he and many others "respected the result of the 2016 referendum for a long time".
But, he added: "There eventually comes a point when circumstances are so changed, when so much new information has emerged that we didn't have in 2016, when so many people feel differently to how they felt then, that you have to say, no... the only proper way to proceed in such circumstances is to consult the people again."
The Liberal Democrats, who pushed Labour into third place in May's European elections with a strident anti-Brexit message, are pushing for Brexit to be stopped in its tracks by revoking Article 50 - the legal process for the UK's departure.
While stopping short of calling for that himself, Mr Watson said it was not too late for Labour to "win back" Remain voters.
"My experience on the doorstep tells me most of those who've deserted us over our Brexit policy did so with deep regret and would greatly prefer to come back," he added.
"They just want us to take an unequivocal position that whatever happens we'll fight to remain, and to sound like we mean it."
Former Labour leadership contender Owen Smith said Mr Watson was speaking for "the majority of Labour members and Labour voters", and that the party "should be clearing the Brexit issue off the table before we get to an election".
But another Labour MP, Gareth Snell - one of a group of MPs in the party wanting to bring back an amended version of Theresa May's original withdrawal agreement - said the "numbers simply don't exist" in Parliament to approve a further referendum.
He told Today: "The public have no appetite for a second referendum. The doors I knock every week… [voters] are not telling me they want to go back to the divisive referendum [but] they want a decision on this process to be taken as soon as possible."
Just 24 hours after Jeremy Corbyn hammered out a deal with the Labour-supporting unions, his deputy, Tom Watson, shattered any fragile unity.
Mr Watson and many Labour activists want a clearer commitment to campaign on a Remain platform - especially during a snap election.
So, apart from his own scepticism towards an EU that he believes needs reform, what is the thinking behind Jeremy Corbyn's position?
Well, it comes down to four things - psephology, party unity, politics and personal authority.
Unite's Len McCluskey dismissed Mr Watson's intervention, accusing him of "undermining" the leadership and suggesting his views "don't really matter".
The two men, who used to be close friends, fell out spectacularly in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum during an uprising by Labour MPs against Mr Corbyn's leadership.
The union leader suggested Mr Watson was "languishing on the fringes" of the party, adding: "It's sad. Now and again Tom pops up from where he has been hiding and comes up with something… which is normally to try and undermine his leader."
The Conservatives said Mr Watson had made it clear he wanted to "cancel" the 2016 Brexit referendum result.
Labour has voted twice against Boris Johnson's plans for a poll on 15 October.
The party's leadership has insisted it is eager for an election after the risk of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October has been ruled out.

Labour are backing a cross-party bid to ensure the UK cannot leave the EU without a deal.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the amendment to 11 December's Commons vote on the PM's Brexit deal had his "full support".
If MPs back the amendment it will not be binding but Theresa May would find it difficult to ignore.
And it could put Parliament in the driving seat if, as expected, MPs vote down the PM's Brexit deal.
Mrs May has repeatedly warned MPs that the only alternative to her Brexit deal is quitting the EU without a deal on 29 March.
The vast majority of Labour MPs are expected to vote against the deal on 11 December. However, a source has told the BBC there is a "growing consensus" among all MPs against a "no-deal" Brexit.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told ITV's This Morning on Thursday that "nobody is going to allow no deal".
The amendment, tabled by Labour backbencher and chairman of the Brexit select committee, Hilary Benn, is understood to have support from Conservative, Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru and Green politicians.
Mr Benn argues it allows parliament to "take back control".
"For two years, she [Mrs May] said no deal is better than a bad deal," he told Radio 4's World at One.
"But frankly no deal all along has been the worst possible outcome and its really important that we close that off. Because we can't afford to fall over the edge of a cliff at the end of March."
Labour MP Yvette Cooper said the amendment would allow MPs to "properly debate and vote on the next steps, rather than just leaving it all" to the prime minister.
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg says it supports what "some in Number 10 suspect - that is vote falls, Parliament essentially takes over from the executive".
Former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw described the amendment as "a staging post" on the way to a further referendum.
Mr Straw, who was one of the Labour more Eurosceptic voices, says he believes there would be "a huge appetite" for a public vote.
By BBC political correspondent Chris Mason
Enter the four doctors.
A cross party quartet, pondering strategy, talking tactics.
They want another referendum - what campaigners call a People's Vote. So who are they?
Labour's Dr Paul Williams, Conservative GPs turned MPs Philip Lee and Sarah Wollaston, and the SNP's Dr Philippa Whitford.
Messages are zipping between them, trying to work out whether it is worth putting down an amendment to the big Brexit vote in Parliament, so MPs can express their support for another referendum.
I'm told they are in a "genuine dilemma" between wanting to articulate the views of those hundreds of thousands who marched through London calling for a "People's Vote" in October, but not wanting to "scupper the whole process" by failing to get the numbers and allowing opponents to say MPs don't back another referendum.
Senior figures in the People's Vote campaign emphasise that they must strike when their strength is at its greatest: after an expected government defeat on 11 December, when they hope Labour will, after failing to secure a general election, edge towards endorsing another referendum.
Up to six amendments will be voted on when MPs pass judgement on the prime minister's Brexit deal on 11 December.
Labour's front bench has tabled an amendment saying that the party cannot support the agreement, as it fails to provide for a customs union and "strong single market" deal. It also says it opposes a no deal withdrawal, and "resolves to pursue every option" that prevents such a scenario.
There is also likely to be a front bench amendment from the SNP. Some in Parliament think they are unlikely to pass but they hope a cross-party effort will be seen as less partisan and will have more chance of achieving a majority.
The amendments will be selected by Commons Speaker John Bercow, on 11 December - the last of five days of debate on the Brexit agreement.

Jeremy Corbyn has promised a further referendum on Brexit with a "credible Leave option" versus Remain if his party wins the next general election.
He said Labour was "ready" for the campaign, but its "priority" was to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Its manifesto will promise to reach a better Brexit deal, but is not expected to commit to either Leave or Remain.
Some senior party figures - close Corbyn allies - say they will campaign to stay in the EU in any circumstances.
They include shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, who have both said remaining would be the best thing for the UK - even if the other option is a Labour-negotiated Brexit deal.
Union leaders want Leave on the ballot and met Mr Corbyn earlier to discuss the issue.
The BBCs political correspondent, Iain Watson, said senior Labour figures had been arguing that backing Remain would recover ground lost to the pro-EU Liberal Democrats in recent elections.
Pro-Remain Labour activists are also hoping the party's conference later this month will commit the leadership to backing Remain under all circumstances.
But, while Labour-affiliated unions - including Unite, who are one of the party's biggest backers - would rather stay in the EU than have no deal, they believe a Corbyn government should offer voters a choice in a referendum between a negotiated deal and Remain.
Speaking to the TUC conference in Brighton on Tuesday, he said: "Our priority is first to stop no-deal and then to trigger a general election.
"No one can trust the word of a prime minister who is threatening to break the law to force through no deal.
"So a general election is coming, but we won't allow Johnson to dictate the terms."
He added: "We're ready for that election. We're ready to unleash the biggest people-powered campaign we've ever seen.
"And in that election we will commit to a public vote with a credible option to leave and the option to remain."
The basis of Labour's election policy on Brexit became clear today.
Jeremy Corbyn agreed with Labour's significant funders - the affiliated trade unions - that if elected, the party would negotiate a new Brexit deal and put that to a referendum, along with the option to remain.
But the party will not say which option it would back during a general election.
So, during an imminent campaign, the leadership will be unable to tell voters if a future Labour government would advocate coming out or staying in the EU.
The Labour leader has rejected calls from senior figures in the party and grassroots activists to campaign explicitly to Remain during the election, amid fears votes and seats will be lost to the Lib Dems.
Today's union meeting was described as a senior Labour source as "decisive" in determining policy because the unions are formally represented on the committee which draws up the manifesto, so have huge influence over it.
Labour insiders hope to confine any disagreements on Brexit to a referendum, but sources admit the election campaign will be difficult to manage, as some shadow cabinet members have said they'd personally campaign to Remain even against a Labour deal.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Corbyn also promised to "put power in the hands of workers", pledging a future Labour government would enact "the biggest extension of rights for workers that our country has ever seen."
If elected, Labour would set up a specific government department for employment rights, he said, and give the brief to a dedicated cabinet minister.
Enforcement of rights would be boosted by a new agency with the power to enter workplaces and bring prosecutions on behalf of staff, he added.
Conservatives - 288 MPs
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he wants to leave the EU on 31 October "do or die". He says he wants to leave with a deal, but is willing to exit without one to ensure Brexit goes ahead by the current deadline.
SNP - 35 MPs
The SNP is pro-Remain and wants the UK to stay a member of the EU. It has been campaigning for another referendum on Brexit, and if it were to get one, would support Remain.
Liberal Democrats - 17 MPs
The Lib Dems also want to stay in the EU and have another referendum to achieve their goal - to revoke Article 50 (the law that sees the UK having to leave the bloc).
Democratic Unionist Party - 10 MPs
The DUP has a confidence and supply agreement with the Conservatives, giving them their support in the Commons. They are backing the PM's plans to leave the EU with or without a deal at the end of October.
The Independent Group for Change - 5 MPs
This party is made up of MPs who left the Conservatives and Labour because of their positions on Brexit (as well as allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party). They back another referendum, or "People's Vote", and want the UK to remain in the EU.
Plaid Cymru - 4 MPs
The Welsh Party backs remaining in the EU, despite Wales voting out in the referendum. They want a further referendum and to Remain.
Green Party - 1 MP
The party's one MP, Caroline Lucas, has been a vocal campaigner for another referendum and believes the UK should stay in the EU.

Labour MPs who back staying in the EU single market have vowed to keep the pressure up on the government and their own leadership in the Brexit process.
Fifty Labour MPs defied Jeremy Corbyn's orders and backed single market membership in a vote on Thursday.
Three of them were subsequently sacked as frontbenchers.
The BBC understands the rebels think up to 90 Labour MPs back their cause and they could work with Tory MPs who also want a "soft Brexit" in future votes.
Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn both support leaving the EU's internal market as a way of bringing to an end the free movement of EU citizens into the UK.
Labour's manifesto called for the benefits of the single market and customs union to be retained after Brexit.
But some MPs believe this is virtually indistinguishable from the government's position, and want continued membership or access on equivalent terms, without which they say businesses will suffer and jobs will be lost.
Three shadow ministers - Ruth Cadbury, Catherine West and Andy Slaughter - were sacked by Mr Corbyn for defying his orders to abstain in a vote on an amendment to the Queen's Speech, tabled by Labour's Chuka Umunna, which pledged to remain in the single market and customs union.
Stephen Doughty, one of the 50 rebels, told the Guardian the fight was far from over.
"The key issue going forward is the extent to which Conservative MPs who have significant disquiet about the direction of Theresa May's hard Brexit are willing to put their money where their mouth is and stand up for membership of the single market and customs union and other issues in key legislation coming forward."
Another rebel MP told the BBC that there were up to 40 more colleagues who felt the same way but who had decided to sit on their hands in Thursday's vote because it was "premature" and Tory MPs were unlikely to have backed a vote that might have toppled the government.
They would instead "take smaller steps - one thing at a time" and seek to co-ordinating their efforts with the Lib Dems, SNP and likely Tory rebels.
Parliament will be asked to approve eight Brexit-related bills over the next two years, framing new policies on trade, customs procedures and immigration.
Another Labour MP, Wes Streeting, told Radio 4's World at One he was "surprised and disappointed" at Jeremy Corbyn's position, as he did not believe the party could "achieve its objectives of tariff-free, barrier-free access to the single market and a jobs first Brexit, outside of membership of the single market".
There has also been a backlash against Mr Umunna in the wake of the vote, with some senior figures suggesting he had caused unnecessary division at a time when Labour is on a high.
"I just felt that given we'd come out of the general election with such an unexpected result, and there's a real euphoria, to try and divide Labour MPs a week and a half in was a little disappointing," deputy leader Tom Watson said.
And Stephen Kinnock, who like many Labour MPs did not take part in the vote, said the decision to fire the rebels was "regrettable" but "had to be done".
Mr Umunna's amendment was defeated by 322 votes to 101 as most Labour MPs did not take part.
A separate amendment proposed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell - which called for Brexit to deliver the "exact same benefits" as the EU single market and customs union - was defeated by 323 to 297.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, although negotiations on the terms of exit have just begun.

Labour has tabled a cross-party motion to try to stop a future prime minister pushing through a no-deal Brexit against the wishes of MPs.
The party is trying to force a vote to give MPs control of the timetable on 25 June and thereby the power to introduce legislation to avoid no deal.
Labour's Keir Starmer said it was a "safety valve", but Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay criticised the plan.
Some Tory leadership hopefuls have said they would leave the EU without a deal.
Michael Gove said Labour's plans "must be resisted", as while he would prefer to agree a plan with the EU, "we must not rule out no deal."
For other candidates, including Rory Stewart and Mark Harper, the prospect of leaving without a deal is unacceptable.
However, neither man appears prepared to back the opposition motion. Mr Harper said his "instinct" was to oppose it while Mr Stewart - despite saying he was "wholly supportive" of the idea at his campaign launch in London - later tweeted that he would not be voting for it.
But Dominic Raab and Esther McVey have both said they would consider shutting down Parliament early - proroguing - in order to drive through no deal.
Leaving on a no-deal basis - without any agreement on the shape of the future relationship between the UK and EU - could lead to significant disruption.
The EU has previously said border checks would have to be brought in, affecting things like exports and travel and creating uncertainty around the rights of UK citizens living in the EU and vice-versa.
The government normally controls business in the Commons - but MPs have previously seized control to legislate in favour of extending the Brexit process.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir said the motion was a "safety valve" designed to ensure Parliament "cannot be locked out of the Brexit process" in the coming months.
It would allow Parliament to push back against a new prime minister "foolish enough" to pursue a no-deal Brexit without MPs' consent.
That was especially important, Sir Keir argued, because the Tory leadership contest had "become an arms race to promise the most damaging form of Brexit".
Mr Barclay, though, said the motion was a "blind motion" because it did not specify the legislation that would be introduced under its terms.
Labour had previously accused ministers of backing a "blind Brexit" because the future relationship was not spelled out in the withdrawal agreement - but this motion was guilty of the same approach, he said.
He argued it would be a "fundamental change" to the way the House operated and therefore should be opposed.
The motion has cross-party backing, including from one Tory MP - Sir Oliver Letwin - who is supporting Michael Gove in the leadership contest.
It has been signed by Jeremy Corbyn, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, Change UK leader Anna Soubry, Plaid Cymru Westminster leader Liz Saville-Roberts and former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas.
Due to the confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, the Tories have a majority in Parliament of five.
That means it would take only three Conservatives to vote with the Labour motion for it to pass - if all opposition party MPs back it.
Another attempt to re-write the rules, another heave in the procedural tug of war, another day of drama in Parliament. But will it work?
It's not a straight vote for or against a no-deal Brexit - that would not change the fact that it is written in law and agreed with the EU that Brexit will happen on 31 October.
Think of this plan not as a knockout blow in a boxing match, but the first of a complicated sequence of moves in a chess game.
Labour want to pull off something similar to what happened in March, when MPs took control of parliamentary time to force the government to request an extension to the Brexit process from the EU.
Step one is seizing control of business in the House of Commons, and that's clearly the plan this time around.
Beyond that, the details aren't clear.
Compelling the new prime minister to ask the EU to delay Brexit further is the most likely option. But the answer of course, might be "no".
The default position in law is that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October - and if nothing changes, Brexit will happen regardless of whether there is a deal or not.
MPs wanting to stop a new PM leaving without a deal do however have a number of options at their disposal.
One would be to pass legislation requiring the government to seek an extension to the UK's membership. The EU would have to agree to an extension for it to be granted.
However, this would first require MPs to seize control of the parliamentary agenda, as Labour is attempting.
Another would be to use a vote of no confidence to bring down a government committed to pursuing a no-deal exit.
MPs could also use motions or political pressure to try and force the government into changing course.
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Labour MPs remain split over whether to back a further referendum on Brexit.
The party lost ground in the European elections, and some figures have called for a public vote to win back support, especially from Remainers.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said another vote would be "the democratic thing to do" to move Brexit forward.
But Labour MPs representing Leave areas have warned against it, with Lisa Nandy saying it could be "the final breach of trust" with those voters.
The party agreed a policy at its last conference that if Parliament voted down the government's withdrawal deal with the EU - which it has effectively done three times - or talks ended in no-deal, there should be a general election.
But if it could not force one, conference agreed that the party "must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote".
It reiterated this position ahead of the European elections, but Labour's share of the vote fell to 14% and several senior figures criticised a lack of clarity.
Deputy leader Tom Watson said his party's Brexit stance had led to "electoral catastrophe", while former PM Tony Blair said it was not "possible to sit on the fence on Europe and appeal to both sides."
After the results, leader Jeremy Corbyn insisted his policy had been "very clear" all along - but he sent a letter to his MPs, saying it was "clear that the deadlock in Parliament can now only be broken by the issue going back to the people through a general election or a public vote".
On Tuesday, shadow home secretary Ms Abbott said Labour was "moving towards a clearer line".
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There is no inherent contradiction between respecting the result of the referendum and having a 'People's Vote' [or further referendum], not least because it's still not sure how a People's Vote would pan out.
"I've always argued that it's perfectly possible that Leave would win again, but we're supporting a People's Vote strongly now because it's the right thing to do and it's the democratic thing to do."
But Ms Nandy, the Labour MP for Wigan, told Today the European election results showed "very few people have changed their minds", and any shift in her area of the country was towards a no-deal Brexit - backed by Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, which secured 32% of the vote UK-wide.
She added: "There is a huge frustration amongst Labour voters who voted Leave in towns like mine to see leading figures from the Labour Party out calling for a second referendum before there's been any serious attempt to implement the result of the first."
Jeremy Corbyn put out a letter to Labour MPs on Monday night, in which he suggested if they couldn't get a general election then there should be a so-called "confirmatory referendum" on any Brexit deal.
But many Labour folk believe it's gone beyond that - that there's no prospect of a general election, there's no prospect of a deal, and they now need to campaign openly for a referendum and for Remain.
Mr Corbyn and some of his close allies like Unite leader Len McCluskey are very, very wary of doing that because of the impact it will have in northern, Leave-supporting Labour constituencies.
And also they warn if they were another referendum, it is quite possible that the electorate might say, "Well, we've already told you once, we'll tell you again - we want to leave but this time we want no deal."
And in that climate, it seems to me Mr Corbyn is just sort of hunkering down trying to say as little as possible.
We haven't got any sort of absolute clarity from him yet on where he stands, but I think it's only a matter of time, because I have no doubt he is going to be pressed and pressed on this.
Fellow backbencher Jo Platt, who represents Leigh - the neighbouring constituency to Ms Nandy - said the party "must provide answers" for voters, "not ask them to think again".
And Caroline Flint - Labour MP for Don Valley in South Yorkshire -  said another referendum was "seen by many Labour Leave areas as nothing more than a Stop Brexit mechanism".
Unite union leader and Corbyn ally Len McCluskey urged the party not to be "spooked" by the European election results and insisted another referendum "won't solve anything".
"I think [Jeremy] will repel all of those pressures coming from different sides, and he's already indicated he's going to take his time, speak to the members, the public, the unions, so we can work out a way that can take us forward," he said.
After Monday's election results, shadow chancellor John McDonnell - one of Mr Corbyn's closest political allies - told the BBC another referendum may be the only way forward.
Faced with the prospect of a "Brexiteer extremist" running the Conservative Party after the contest to replace Theresa May as leader, Mr McDonnell said Labour must back a fresh public vote to prevent a "catastrophic" no-deal scenario.
Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford joined calls for a further referendum after Labour came third in the country, behind The Brexit Party and Plaid Cymru - making it the first time that Plaid had beaten Labour in a Wales-wide election, and only the second time it had lost such a poll in a century.
He told BBC Radio Wales: "We were doing our best to respect the result of the original referendum... I have now concluded that the only way we can try to guarantee a future for Wales that would not be a catastrophe is to put this decision back to the people in a referendum."
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard also said he was "more and more compelled" to believe that there should be another vote after his party lost both its seat at the European elections.

Labour's governing body has agreed to support a further referendum on Brexit under certain circumstances.
The National Executive Committee met to decide the wording of its manifesto for May's European elections.
It rejected the idea of campaigning for a referendum under all circumstances - as supported by deputy leader Tom Watson and many ordinary members.
But the party will demand a public vote if it cannot get changes to the government's deal or an election.
The National Executive Committee (NEC) oversees the overall direction of the party and is made up of representatives including shadow cabinet members, MPs, councillors and trade unions.
A Labour source said: "The NEC agreed the manifesto which will be fully in line with Labour's existing policy to support Labour's alternative plan and if we can't get the necessary changes to the government's deal, or a general election, to back the option of a public vote."
The decision was sufficiently nuanced, though, that MPs have interpreted it in different ways.
Wes Streeting, who favours another referendum, tweeted that the NEC had "made the right call and confirmed that a public vote will be in our manifesto for the European elections".
Fellow pro-referendum MP Bridget Phillipson said Labour had "done the bare minimum needed" and she could "only hope" it would be enough to win over voters who want another say on Brexit.
On the other side of the party, Gloria De Piero, who is against another vote, also welcomed the decision, arguing it meant the manifesto would "not contain a pledge" to hold a referendum - only keeping it as "an option" if a general election could not be engineered.
The UK will have to take part in European Parliamentary elections on 23 May unless a Brexit deal is accepted by MPs before then.
Labour agreed a policy at its last conference that if Parliament voted down the government's withdrawal deal with the EU - which it has effectively done three times - or talks ended in no-deal, there should be a general election.
But if it could not force one, conference agreed that the party "must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote".
Since then, though, Labour has entered into cross-party talks with the Conservatives to see if they can reach a consensus on how to get a Brexit deal through Parliament so that Britain can leave.
Many Labour members wanted the party to make its agreement to any deal conditional on it being put to a public vote - what Labour calls a "confirmatory ballot".
Labour have not yet made clear what their proposed referendum would be on, but a party briefing paper to MPs published earlier this year said it would need to have "a credible Leave option and Remain" on the ballot paper.
On the surface it doesn't look like Labour's position has changed - but it has a little bit.
Tom Watson, along with some trade unions and some party members, wanted a full-throated commitment to a referendum under all circumstances. What they have ended up with instead is a compromise or a fudge. Labour will call for a referendum if the Conservatives don't make changes to their Brexit deal.
Some pro-referendum MPs aren't too disappointed because they believe the Conservatives won't move far enough and that leaves the door open to a referendum in the end anyway.
Others, though, are disappointed because they think this is a way of avoiding a clear commitment in the run-up to the European elections.
In truth, it puts the ball back into the Tories' court when it comes to those cross-party Brexit talks.
Jeremy Corbyn is saying to Theresa May "if you can compromise with us, we can hold back the tide of demands in our own party for a referendum."
That's the bargain he's offering.
Speaking ahead of the NEC's decision, Tom Watson, the party's deputy leader, said "the context has changed" since the 2018 party conference and Labour should now throw its full support behind a second referendum "to heal the divide in the country".
Afterwards, he described the party's agreed manifesto as "very good" and insisted he was not "disappointed" with the outcome - although he said would say more when the document was published next week.
Manuel Cortes, secretary of the TSSA union which has a seat on the NEC, said he was disappointed that Labour had missed the opportunity to commit to giving voters another say.
The latest talks between the government and Labour on Monday were described as "positive" and "productive" by the two sides.
June 2017 - Labour's general election manifesto accepts referendum result
28 September 2018 - Labour agrees if a general election cannot be achieved it "must support all options… including campaigning for a public vote"
November 2018 - Shadow chancellor John McDonnell says Labour will "inevitably" back a second referendum if unable to secure general election
16 January 2019 - 71 Labour MPs say they support a public vote
6 February 2019 - Mr Corbyn writes a letter to Mrs May seeking five changes to her Brexit policy with no mention of a "People's Vote"
25 February 2019 - Labour says it will back a public vote if its proposed Brexit deal is rejected
14 March 2019 - Labour orders its MPs to abstain on an amendment calling for a second referendum
27 March 2019 - The party instructs its MPs to support Margaret Beckett's amendment which calls for a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal
30 April 2019 - NEC agrees that the European election manifesto will commit to a further referendum under certain circumstances

A shadow minister has quit Labour's front bench after being told to back legislation paving the way for the UK's departure from the EU.
Tulip Siddiq said she "cannot reconcile myself to the front-bench position".
Jeremy Corbyn has imposed a three-line whip on his MPs, telling them to back the newly-published bill.
The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill has been produced after the Supreme Court ruled legislation would be necessary.
In her resignation letter to Mr Corbyn, Ms Siddiq, who had been an early years minister, said: "Leaving the European Union presents enormous uncertainty for my constituents, with most believing that the disadvantages of leaving outweigh any potential benefits."
Despite reports he might rebel, Shadow Business Secretary Clive Lewis said on Thursday he would back the bill.
But he added: "Labour will seek to amend the Bill to prevent the government using Brexit to trash our rights, public services, jobs and living standards while cutting taxes for the wealthiest."
Labour MPs expected to vote against the bill at second reading include former leadership challenger Owen Smith, former culture secretary Ben Bradshaw and Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner.
Mr Corbyn said Labour MPs would face a three-line whip to vote in favour of the bill.
He said he understood the "pressures and issues" members faced, but called on them to "unite" around "important issues" and "not to block Article 50 but to make sure it goes through next week".
Frontbench members of parties are generally expected to resign from their post if they decided to defy a three-line whip.
Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to begin the formal process of quitting the European Union, under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, by the end of March.
The government was forced to draw up the legislation after losing an appeal at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, when judges ruled that Parliament must give permission to start the Brexit process.
The bill is due to be initially debated by MPs on Tuesday - in a sitting that may last until midnight - and clear the Commons on 8 February, after which it will move to the House of Lords.
As well as the bill, on Wednesday Prime Minister Theresa May announced the government would set out more details of its Brexit plans in a formal policy document.
In the House of Commons, MPs urged Mr Davis to commit to publishing the document, known as a White Paper, before the Article 50 bill legislation had passed through Parliament.
Mr Davis said the question involved "slightly separate issues".
The Article 50 bill, he said, was "about carrying out the will of the British people", adding that the White Paper would be published "as expeditiously as possible".
The Liberal Democrats have vowed to oppose Article 50 unless there is a guarantee of another referendum on the final Brexit deal that is agreed with Brussels, while the SNP has vowed to table 50 amendments to the legislation.
Taking questions from MPs, Mr Davis also said he disagreed with EU Commission chief negotiator Michel Barnier's view that trade talks would have to be handled separately from the Article 50 negotiations.
Such a "sequential approach" would be "not practical", he said, adding that he wanted all negotiations to be completed inside two years.

Jeremy Corbyn has challenged the next Tory leader to hold another referendum before taking Britain out of the EU, saying Labour will campaign for Remain.
Mr Corbyn says the party will take this position to stop "no deal or a damaging Tory Brexit".
But he does not say what he would do if he won a general election and was placed in charge of the Brexit process.
Some senior members of his team want him to take a pro-Remain stance in all circumstances.
In an interview with the BBC's John Pienaar, Mr Corbyn said Labour was now the "party of choice" when it came to Brexit.
He said he had done "what I think a leader should do... an awful lot of listening" - to party members, unions and the wider Labour movement - before coming to a revised position.
He said he would "make a case" to Parliament in September to get another referendum and in the meantime, Labour will "do everything we can to take no deal off the table or stop a damaging deal of the sort Hunt or Johnson propose".
Asked if he had changed his position because of pressure from colleagues, Mr Corbyn said: "Not a bit of it. I've been listening and I've enjoyed it."
Mr Corbyn said he could not say what Labour's position would be at a general election, but would decide it "very quickly", depending on the circumstances at the time, whenever one was called.
In a letter to members, he said Labour continued to believe the "compromise plan" set out for Brexit during cross-party talks with the government earlier this year was a "sensible alternative that could bring the country together".
This included a customs union, a strong single market relationship and the protection of environmental regulations and rights at work.
Mr Corbyn's statement followed a shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, and a meeting with trade union leaders on Monday.
The bosses of Labour's five-biggest affiliated unions called for the move the party has made - but also for it to hold a "confirmatory vote" on any new deal it negotiated if Labour won a general election.
The BBC's political correspondent Iain Watson said there was disagreement about the second part of the unions' stance in shadow cabinet, with deputy leader Tom Watson wanting a "straight Remain stance", meaning a decision on it was "kicked down the road".
The deputy leader is among leading figures who have argued that confusion over Labour's message on Brexit contributed to its poor performance in the recent European Parliament elections.
Mr Watson said he was "happy" with the new Brexit position "up to the election", but the party had "yet to cross that bridge" when it comes to its manifesto for the next election.
"Our members have been telling us for some time now that they want us to be a Remain party and that they want us to put the new deal to the people," he added.
"We're now going to campaign for that and I'm very proud that the shadow cabinet have now listened to their concerns."
Shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis said if a snap election was called, Labour would try to renegotiate the Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May, despite saying it "very much looks like" Labour is now the party of Remain.
He told the BBC's Politics Live: "If we win that general election, we will come into power, and if we can renegotiate that deal - a Labour deal - we will, because that's what people asked for."
Some Labour MPs, including Brexit-backing John Mann and Emma Lewell-Buck, said the party could lose votes in Leave-supporting areas as a result of the policy.
Ms Lewell-Buck, who quit her shadow minister role in opposition to a further referendum, said she was "concerned" and had a "heavy heart" over the decision.
"But I am also very clear that I am representing my constituents and I will continue to do that no matter what because they are the people who put me where I am," she said.
By Nick Eardley, BBC political correspondent
There's always a "but", it seems, when it comes to Labour and Brexit. What the party is saying explicitly is that it'll try to force the new PM to hold another referendum and if that happens it will back Remain. But we don't know what Labour would do in the event of a general election.
The feeling among some Labour people is, "If you think it was hard to get here, trying to come to a manifesto position is going to be even harder," so they're just not going there yet.
Sometimes it feels Labour has been dragged kicking and screaming towards positions on Brexit, but it has at least got to a new one today. The question is whether it'll have to go further at some point.
Some on the Remain wing will be delighted with Jeremy Corbyn's shift, but others will feel there's more to do.
Former Labour MP Chris Leslie - who left the party to found Remain-backing Change UK - said Mr Corbyn's stance had "confirmed that if you vote Labour, you'll get Brexit".
He said the position "wasn't good enough", adding: "Brexit - whether a Labour Brexit or a Conservative Brexit - will cost people's jobs, put businesses in jeopardy, and diminish Britain in the eyes of our neighbours.
"Corbyn's refusal to be honest about that fact is a deep betrayal of the people Labour used to represent."
The Liberal Democrat's Brexit spokesperson, Tom Brake, said Labour "are still a party of Brexit".
He added: "Jeremy Corbyn can pretend all he likes that the Labour Party are finally moving towards backing the Liberal Democrat policy of a People's Vote, but it is clear it is still his intention to negotiate a damaging Brexit deal if he gets the keys to No 10."
But Miriam Mirwitch, chair of Young Labour, welcomed the move, adding: "This vital shift shows that Labour is a party centred around democracy that has listened to what it's members have wanted for some time: a People's Vote in which Labour campaigns to Remain."
June 2017 - Labour's general election manifesto accepts referendum result
28 September 2018 - Labour agrees if a general election cannot be achieved it "must support all options… including campaigning for a public vote"
November 2018 - Shadow chancellor John McDonnell says Labour will "inevitably" back a second referendum if unable to secure general election
16 January 2019 - 71 Labour MPs say they support a public vote
6 February 2019 - Mr Corbyn writes a letter to Mrs May seeking five changes to her Brexit policy with no mention of a "People's Vote"
25 February 2019 - Labour says it will back a public vote if its proposed Brexit deal is rejected
14 March 2019 - Labour orders its MPs to abstain on an amendment calling for a second referendum
27 March 2019 - The party instructs its MPs to support Margaret Beckett's amendment which calls for a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal
30 April 2019 - NEC agrees that the European election manifesto will commit to a further referendum under certain circumstances
9 July 2019 - Labour calls on the next PM to hold a referendum and pledges to campaign for Remain against "no deal or a damaging Tory Brexit"

Labour is redrafting European election leaflets after accusations of ignoring a pledge to hold a further Brexit referendum, the BBC has been told.
They will now refer to the party's preparations for a general election, with a referendum if necessary to avoid what it calls a "bad Tory deal".
Jeremy Corbyn says Labour's ruling body will make a decision on Tuesday about backing a public vote on any deal.
About 100 Labour MPs and MEPs want such a promise in the party manifesto.
They wrote to members of the national executive committee before it meets on Tuesday to decide on the manifesto.
Shadow Treasury ministers Clive Lewis and Anneliese Dodds and the shadow minister for disabled people Marsha de Cordova are among the frontbenchers backing the call for a confirmatory vote in any eventuality - not just to avoid a "bad deal".
Some Labour MPs are opposed to holding another EU referendum, however, with nine shadow cabinet members thought to be sceptical about such a move.
It had previously been reported that Labour's leaflets for the 23 May European Parliament elections do not mention pushing for another referendum.
Senior Labour backbencher Hilary Benn had questioned why no mention was made of a "confirmatory referendum" - despite the party twice supporting one in Commons votes.
The party's deputy leader Tom Watson has also argued for Labour to promise another referendum, if it is to counter the electoral challenge posed by Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party.
Labour agreed a policy at its last conference that if Parliament voted down the government's deal or talks end in no deal, there should be a general election.
But if it cannot force one, it added, the party "must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote".
Mr Corbyn said on Saturday: "The national executive will decide on Tuesday what will be in the European election manifesto and we will reflect the decisions made (at) last year's Labour Party conference - which were for a customs union, market access and rights protection within, with, the European Union.
"We would prefer to have a general election, but failing that if we get that agreement we are prepared to consider putting it to a confirmatory vote. That is a decision the national executive of the party will make."
Asked if the promise of a public confirmatory vote would be in election material, he added: "It's important that the party, which is a democratic party structure, makes those decisions. Sadly, or perhaps it's a good thing, I'm not a dictator of the Labour Party."
Analysis by Iain Watson, BBC political correspondent
When some of Labour's early European election literature was leaked, it provoked an internal row at a senior level.
Why? Because it made no mention of another referendum.
A letter from almost 100 MPs and MEPs calling for one has put additional pressure on the leadership.
With the agreement of a senior official in Jeremy Corbyn's office, the campaign literature is now to be rewritten.
There will be a mention of a confirmatory ballot/public vote (translation: a referendum) but only to avoid "a bad Tory deal".
This won't go far enough for those MPs calling for a referendum on any deal. That is, even if Mr Corbyn reaches agreement on a "soft" Brexit with Theresa May, a chunk of his Parliamentary party still want another referendum.
The issue will be hammered out when the ruling national executive meets on Tuesday to decide the manifesto for the European elections.
Some members will argue for no referendum, some will argue for one but with caveats, and others will press for a public vote under all circumstances.
Maybe the printing presses should be mothballed until Wednesday.
A letter, signed by some Labour MPs and MEPs, said: "Our members need to feel supported on doorsteps by a clear manifesto that marks us out as the only viable alternative to Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.
"We need a message of hope and solidarity, and we need to campaign for it without caveats. To motivate our supporters, and to do the right thing by our members and our policy, a clear commitment to a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal must be part of our European election manifesto.
"We understand the many different pressures and views within our movement, but without this clear commitment, we fear that our electoral coalition could fall apart."
Richard Corbett, leader of Labour's MEPs and a member of the NEC, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The problem we face now is that Brexit is turning out to be so different from what was promised three years ago.
"Remember they said it would be easy - it's turning out to be rather complex. They said it would save loads of money that would all go to the NHS - it's turning out to be costly.
"They said it would not damage the economy - we are seeing firms move abroad, jobs lost, especially in manufacturing.
"Because it's so different, it's right that it should go back to the people for a final sign-off."

Leaving the European Union with no deal would have a "very adverse" effect on the UK, the justice secretary has said.
David Gauke said he hoped a deal would be struck within the next 10 days, but if not the government should "act responsibly".
But DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has insisted no deal was better than a bad deal.
Prime Minister Theresa May is seeking changes to the Withdrawal Agreement to help it achieve Parliamentary assent.
Mr Gauke warned on BBC Radio 4's Today programme of "very grave concerns" for the UK's economy, security and the union itself if the UK leaves without a deal.
"Leaving without a deal would have a very adverse effect, to put it mildly, on our economy, on our security and on the integrity of the union," he said.
The justice secretary said he hoped a deal will have been struck by 27 February, when the next round of Brexit votes are scheduled in the Commons.
But he continued: "If not, then we will have to act responsibly and make sure the economy is protected, our security is protected and the integrity of the union is protected.
"I have very grave concerns about the consequences of leaving without a deal."
Mr Gauke has previously suggested Brexit might have to be delayed.
But Mr Dodds told a meeting of party members in Omagh: "We want a Brexit deal, but we are very clear that a no deal is better than a bad deal."
The DUP deputy leader said changes were needed to the so-called Brexit backstop.
The backstop is an insurance policy designed to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic - and the Tories rely on DUP votes to govern.
Mr Dodds said that there is "virtual unanimity in political unionism" that the current backstop imperils the UK.
Meanwhile, Business Minister Richard Harrington said he did not think Theresa May would let Britain leave the bloc without a deal.
He told BBC Radio 4's Week In Westminster: "When it comes to it, she will know the disaster that a hard Brexit would be for the British economy and I don't think she'll do it.
"No government can stand by and watch a country plummet earthwards because of a political dogma of a minority of a minority."
And Margot James became the latest cabinet member to threaten resignation over the possibility of no deal.
The digital minister told Channel 4 News: "I could not be part of a government that allowed this country to leave the European Union without a deal."
The prime minister is soon to return to Brussels to press for changes to the backstop. The EU has consistently ruled out amending the clause.

The government is facing a legal battle over whether the UK stays inside the single market after it has left the EU, the BBC has learned.
Lawyers say uncertainty over the UK's European Economic Area membership means ministers could be stopped from taking Britain out of the single market.
They will argue the UK will not leave the EEA automatically when it leaves the EU and Parliament should decide.
But the government said EEA membership ends when the UK leaves the EU.
The single market allows the tariff-free movement of goods, services, money and people within the EU.
The EEA, set up in the 1990s, extends those benefits to some non-EU members like Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Non-EU members are outside the Common Agricultural Policy and customs union, but get barrier-free trade with the single market in return for paying into some EU budgets and accepting the free movement of workers.
If the courts back the legal challenge and give Parliament the final say over EEA membership, then MPs could vote to ensure that Britain stays in the single market until a long-term trading relationship with the EU has been agreed.
The pro-single market think tank British Influence is writing to Brexit Secretary David Davis to inform him that it will seek a formal judicial review of the government's position.
The group warned that if the government did not get a clear legal opinion it could potentially end up acting outside the law.
All EU member states are in the European Economic Area and it had been assumed that when Britain leaves the EU it would automatically leave the EEA as well.
But some lawyers argue that leaving the EEA would not be automatic and would happen only if Britain formally withdraws by triggering Article 127 of the EEA agreement.
The legal question is focused on whether the UK is a member of the EEA in its own right or because it is a member of the EU.
If MPs do get to decide on Article 127, they could potentially overcome the government's small majority and keep Britain inside the single market after Brexit.
This would infuriate Brexiteers, but pro-EU campaigners say MPs would feel able to do this because people voted, they would argue, in the referendum to leave the EU and not the single market.
Paradoxically, though, the legal uncertainty over EEA membership could also end up being good news for the government.
If its negotiations with the EU went badly, and no deal looked likely, the UK could threaten to stay inside the EEA after Brexit. This would be politically hard for the government to sell as it would still involve EU workers moving freely within the UK. But it might be economically better than having to rely on World Trade Organisation rules which could involve high tariffs and barriers to trade.
The ability to stay on in the single market means Britain could force the EU into accepting a transitional period for the UK to avoid an economic cliff edge. This would be a useful stick for UK negotiators to have up as there appears to be no mechanism for the EEA to force out one of its members.
Professor George Yarrow, chairman of the Regulatory Policy Institute and emeritus professor at Hertford College, Oxford, said: "There is no provision in the EEA Agreement for UK membership to lapse if the UK withdraws from the EU.
"The only exit mechanism specified is Article 127, which would need to be triggered."
In other Brexit developments:
At the the very least this latest challenge could mean a lengthy legal process - potentially via the European Court of Justice - that could delay Brexit negotiations.
If the courts say Article 127 does need to be triggered, there is the question of whether an act of parliament would be needed for it to be authorised.
The government is already fighting in the courts to stop MPs getting the final say over triggering the Article 50 process.
Downing Street said the UK was only party to the EEA agreement through its EU membership and the government's position was clear that "once we leave the EU we will automatically leave the EEA".
The PM's official spokeswoman said Theresa May was focused on delivering the will of the British people with regard to Brexit and preparing for the upcoming negotiations.
Conservative MP and Brexiteer Dominic Raab said: "Rather than coming up with new legal wheezes to try and frustrate the will of the people, these lawyers should be working with us to make a success of Brexit.
"The public have spoken; we should respect the result and get on with it, not try to find new hurdles that undermine the democratic process."

MPs' opposition to a no-deal Brexit has hindered UK efforts to replicate an EU trade deal with Canada, says International Trade Secretary Liam Fox.
On Monday, Buzzfeed News reported that Canada was refusing to extend its existing deal with the EU to the UK if there is no Brexit agreement.
Mr Fox said "mixed signals" from Parliament had made it "very difficult" for ministers during talks.
But Labour said Mr Fox had been "stubborn and ideological".
The EU's deal with Canada, known as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) has been in force provisionally since September 2017.
Some 98% of all tariffs on goods traded between Canada and the EU have become duty free since then.
The UK hoped Canada would agree to "roll over" Ceta in the event of no deal in order to maintain continuity, but it appears those efforts have stalled.
Many MPs, including the chancellor, have insisted they will do everything possible to stop the UK leaving without a deal on 31 October, although both men vying to be the next prime minister say they would be prepared to accept it.
"Countries were negotiating with us on the basis that there would be potential of a no-deal exit," Mr Fox told MPs on the International Trade Committee on Wednesday.
He continued: "The progress was very advanced; in fact we reckoned above 99% of agreement.
"[But] the signals coming from our Parliament were conflicting.
"If Parliament continues to be inconsistent, it's very difficult for the government to maintain a consistent position in terms of negotiations."
He also said government plans to cut tariffs in the event of a no deal had made the Canadians think they would benefit if Ceta were not rolled over.
Around 87% of imports by value would be eligible for zero-tariff access under the temporary scheme.
But the international trade secretary said not agreeing to permanent post-Brexit arrangements would put Canadian exports at risk.
"My advice is still to the Canadian government to seek to make an agreement which covers us in all circumstances", he added.
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said Canada would be at a "significant advantage" if the Ceta deal were not rolled over.
"The government's foolish approach will ensure that they do not have to offer trade preferences in return", he said.
"A no-deal Brexit means that our exporters face being shut out of core markets or having huge tariffs levied on their goods whilst importers into our market will not.
"Quite simply, it will be impossible to compete."
Cetais one of around 40 trade deals the UK is currently a part of due to its EU membership, which covers trade with more than 70 countries around the world.
The UK has so far agreed "continuity" deals with 11 countries and regions to maintain existing trade arrangements as far as possible after leaving the EU.
Last month it also signed an outline free trade agreement seeking to maintain trade arrangements with South Korea.

Any form of customs union with the EU after Brexit would be a "complete sellout" for the UK, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has said.
The UK would find itself in a "worse position" than it is now, he said, if it left the existing arrangement but negotiated a similar new one.
Having to accept EU rules and limits on doing other deals would make the UK "less attractive", he said.
But his former top official has criticised the government's strategy.
Sir Martin Donnelly, who was permanent secretary in the Department for International Trade until last year, said any deals done after Brexit would not compensate for leaving the single market and the customs union.
Giving up access to the EU market and its existing trade agreements was "rather like rejecting a three course meal now in favour of the promise of a packet of crisps later", he said.
Sir Martin, who has previously warned about leaving the single market and has worked for the European Commission in the past, said that negotiating full access to the single market without accepting EU rules would require a "fairy godmother specialised in trade law".
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he did "not agree for a moment" with Sir Martin's verdict, because the "real growth opportunities" were outside the EU.
Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a long-term customs union, as Labour has proposed, would lead to "colony status for the UK", which would not get a say in trade policy.
And Mr Fox hit back at Sir Martin as he took questions after his speech, saying it was "unsurprising that those who spend a lifetime working in the European Union see moving away from the European Union as being threatening".
He added: "The UK Brexit process is, as we've all discovered, a little more complex than a packet of Walkers."
The government has said it wants a customs agreement with the EU - which is the UK's single largest trading partner accounting for 43% of exports - but one that does not stop it from doing free trade deals with other countries.
Mr Fox, one of the most prominent Brexiteers in the cabinet, is the latest minister to set out his stall as part of the government's attempt to map out "the road to Brexit", which is due to happen in March 2019.
His speech came the day after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn set out his approach to Brexit, saying he backed the UK being in a "new and comprehensive" customs union with the EU.
Mr Corbyn says a new customs union will help protect existing jobs and supply chains while giving the UK a say in future deals negotiated by the EU.
But Mr Fox rejected this, saying the UK would have to cede "considerable control" of its trade policy to Brussels in any customs union.
In his speech, at Bloomberg in London, Mr Fox said that changing economic and trade patterns meant the EU was a less significant partner than 15 years ago and the UK must have the freedom to exploit the "opportunities of the future", particularly in services and digital industries.
"As rule takers, without any say in how the rules were made, we would be in a worse position than we are today," he said. "It would be a complete sellout of Britain's national interests."
Citing Turkey's experience of being outside the EU but joined in a customs union with it, he  said that if the UK found itself unable to set its own rules in key sectors of the economy, this would "remove the bulk of incentives" for other countries to enter into comprehensive free trade agreements.
"The inevitable price of trying to negotiate with one arm tied behind our back is that we would become less attractive to potential trade partners and forfeit many of the opportunities that would otherwise be available."
Flexibility, he said, must be the basis of the UK's trade policy if it is to support the fledgling industries that will provide much of the employment and income of the future.
"There is a growing awareness that a full-blown gold-plated free trade agreement may not be the only solution in a fast-changing global economy," he said.
There is a "global trade toolbox" of different options, including "multi-country alliances of the like-minded", he said.
"All of these options are available. But only to countries with independent trade policies."
Labour said it made more sense for the UK to be negotiating new trade deals alongside the EU, adding: "Liam Fox is divorced from reality and isolated from British businesses and workers."
But Conservative MP Nigel Evans told BBC 2's Daily Politics: "When you're doing trade deals between one country and another country, it's a lot easier than when you're doing it with somebody representing 28 countries."
Meanwhile former World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy argued that whatever Brexit option was chosen "will necessitate a border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
"There will have to be a border", he told the Commons Brexit committee, because checks will have to be carried out on goods and people. He suggested a "Macau option" for Northern Ireland.
"You should think about giving to Northern Ireland the same autonomous trade capacity that China has given to Macau, which doesn't mean that Macau doesn't belong to China," he said.
The European Commission will publish the first draft of its proposed withdrawal treaty on Wednesday, which it wants both sides to agree to by the autumn to allow for an orderly departure.

The UK has yet to finalise agreements to replace existing free trade deals the EU has with 40 big economies if there is a no-deal Brexit.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said he "hoped" they would but it depended on whether other countries were "willing to put the work in".
He said more deals were coming, after signing one with Australia.
Concerns have been raised that the UK will leave the EU without a deal that would protect current arrangements.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March, under the Article 50 process and the UK's EU Withdrawal Act, with or without a deal - unless the UK chooses to revoke Article 50 and continues as a member of the EU.
MPs defeated the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU by a huge margin earlier this week, which provided for a "transition period" of 21 months, under which much of the UK's relationship with the EU would remain the same.
In 2017, Mr Fox said that the UK could "replicate the 40 free trade agreements before we leave the EU", so that there would be no disruption to trade.
But with just over two months to go until Brexit, not one has been signed, said the BBC's business correspondent Jonty Bloom.
The Department for International Trade says some agreements are at an advanced stage but none of the 40 free trade deals that the EU has with other countries have so far been rolled over so that they will cover the UK after Brexit.
The closest the UK has come to rolling over a free trade deal is an initial agreement with Switzerland to replicate the existing EU-Switzerland arrangements "as far as possible".  But that deal has not been formally signed yet.
Asked about a report in the Financial Times that Britain would not be close to finalising most of the 40 free trade deals the EU currently has with other countries, Mr Fox told the BBC: "I hope they will be but there are not just dependent on the UK. Our side is ready.
"It's largely dependent on other whether countries believe that there will be no deal and are willing to put the work in to the preparations."
On Friday, he signed a "mutual recognition agreement" with the Australian high commissioner in London - to maintain all current relevant aspects of the agreement it has with the EU. The EU does not have a free trade agreement with Australia.
He said there would be a "pipeline of them to be signed as we go through" and the agreement made it easier for UK goods to comply with Australian standards.
Mr Fox also said that staying in a permanent customs arrangement with the EU would "not be delivering Brexit" as he did not believe it would allow the UK to pursue an independent trade policy.
Some opposition parties have been making the case for a customs union. Theresa May held talks with the leaders of parties including the SNP and the Lib Dems, about a way forward after she won a confidence vote by a narrow margin in the Commons on Wednesday.
She also spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on the telephone on Thursday night, and will be speaking to more EU leaders over the weekend.
But Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wants the UK to be in a permanent customs union with "strong" ties to the single market, has refused to take part in talks with the prime minister until she rules out the prospect of leaving the EU without a deal.
In a letter to Mrs May, Mr Corbyn said her talks were "not genuine". He also accused her of "sticking rigidly" to her withdrawal agreement.
As many as 20 Tory ministers have also said they would quit the government unless the prime minister allows them to try to stop a no deal Brexit, according to the Telegraph.
Mrs May says ruling out no deal is impossible as it is not within the government's power.
Writing in the Financial Times, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the Conservative Party was "riven with division" so Labour would "return to Parliament to promote the compromise we believe is not only in the best interests of our economy but is also capable of securing sufficient support both here and in Brussels".
If Parliament was at an impasse, and Labour could not get a general election "we should also retain the option of seeking a public vote," he added.
Mr Corbyn has come under pressure from dozens of his MPs to back calls for another EU referendum. On Friday a pro-referendum campaign group paid for a wrap-around advertisement in his local newspaper, the Islington Tribune , urging him to back a "public vote on Brexit".
In a speech at JCB Headquarters in Rocester, Staffordshire, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said changing the date of leaving from 29 March would be "shameful", and the public would view it as "an elite conspiracy to thwart Brexit".
He instead urged the government to use Brexit to "unite the country".

Liam Fox's department is busier than it looks. The Department for International Trade has a huge amount to do to keep trade going smoothly, even if we stay in a customs union with the EU during our transition out.
But the trade secretary's department is also doing some emergency planning. What if the talks end acrimoniously? What if we need a radical Plan B?  This planning has been dubbed "Project After" -  a menu of options for life in that world. These are not firm proposals, but blue-sky "what-ifs" for a cliff-edge break with Europe.
These are radical - they include ideas like joining an Asia-focussed trade pact and dropping all our tariffs.
Planning for no-deal is not DIT's most pressing engagement, however - its key priority for now is making our transition out of the EU as seamless as possible.
At the moment, as the prime minister set out today in the Commons, the government intends that there should be a transitional deal which allows us to stay in the EU single market and join a customs union with the EU. This is likely to last for two years or so - and an important part of making that work will fall to DIT.
The point of staying attached to the EU during transition is that it would reduce the hassle involved in UK-EU trade so business would not face a sudden shock on the day after we officially leave the union. It would also mean that countries with EU trade agreements could keep selling us goods on the same terms as before.
So a South Korean-made car could be sold here much as though we were still in the EU. However, the reverse will not automatically be true. Even if we stay within the customs union, we will not be able to export to Korea under the terms of the EU-Korea deal. We would need a separate, bespoke deal with Korea for that during the transition period.
This is why Mr Fox has spoken about having around 40 free trade agreements ready to go on the day after Brexit. These are agreements the EU has with third parties, which cover 60 or so countries. He would like to replicate them - basically, cut-and-paste the terms into a temporary bilateral deal - to avoid transition bumps on day one after Brexit in March 2019.
Those 60-odd countries estimate they receive about $55bn of goods from the UK at the moment. The largest national markets covered by these deals, accounting for around $35bn of goods exports, are Switzerland, Norway, Canada and Korea.
If the agreements are not transferred to the UK, this is likely to cause a dent in that trade - and some of our services trade. Without new deals, some tariffs will rise and, in addition, exports may face regulatory or commercial barriers to getting their products to market.
It may also mean losing potential for future growth: the Canadian deal has only just come into force so has not yet shaped British industry. The Korea deal contains provisions to allow improved access to our financial services sector.
The government told Newsnight today that it remains committed to trying to replicate all 40, but officials with knowledge of progress have told Newsnight that they do not expect to be able to do so. The department is advising ministers to focus their fire on a small number of deals - perhaps as few as four.
There are lots of reasons for scepticism.
We, ideally, would have these deals ready to deploy by the time transition starts. But our negotiating partners may also see little purpose in rushing. After all, if we stay inside the customs union, they will still be able to access our market on close to current terms until transition ends. In some cases, including Korea, rushing might make no sense: the EU deals are not considered a great success for them.
Some treaties may also be politically contentious: a treaty with Israel will be a rallying point for the so-called "BDS" movement, which was quite visible at the Labour conference, and which seeks to boycott the Jewish state. The negotiations with Zimbabwe may also throw up some political problems.
There's another wrinkle, too. Even if we manage these issues, we are almost certain not to resolve problems with what is known as "rules of origin".
To sell a car to Korea under the terms of the EU-Korea deal requires 55% of the content to be EU-made. When we leave the EU, our contribution will not count to that EU-made total, even if we strike a parallel deal with Korea. That will give an incentive for EU-based automakers to switch production to the continent, to make sure that their goods still qualify for the EU-Korea deal.
A big task - but that is not all that DIT has to do.
What about those emergency plans? In common with the rest of government, DIT is considering life without an EU deal. This line of work has been dubbed "Project After".
One of the ideas under consideration is joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a putative trade area of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam (the US withdrew earlier this year). Thought has, separately, been given to joining the North American Free Trade Area - the trade area consisting the US, Canada and Mexico.
There are significant problems with both ideas - TPP is still on the operating table after the US's withdrawal. NAFTA is hardly stable either. And the political choices required to make them work would be brave - but that's an intrinsic factor in trade policy that Westminster has yet to grapple with. There are trade-offs everywhere.
For example, one obvious issue with both is that they contain provisions to allow foreign investors to sue governments for damages in the event that a capricious policy change costs them money. In another context - the EU-US negotiation of the trade deal known as "TTIP" - this type of provision was opposed widely on the British left.
Within "Project After", however, there are other ideas. These include unilateral free trade: dropping our own tariffs. This is an idea that has some defenders in British politics because it would reduce import prices for Britons. Mr Fox recently cracked a joke in a meeting about "the c-word" in trade - "consumers".
Unilateralism, however, is not unproblematic. The promise of a targeted reduction in our tariffs is a chip we can use in negotiations to get other people to open themselves to us. Given that we are a service-heavy economy with strengths in heavily regulated sectors, using the offer of lowering our tariffs on goods to get past non-tariff barriers is an obvious negotiating strategy for us. Removing our tariffs up-front will weaken our position.
And the politics of unilateralism are rough - if we drop steel or agriculture tariffs, for example, it will create a lot of losers.
"Project After" also suggests what is, in effect, a halfway house on that idea: we could set up "Free Ports". That is to say, we could move our customs border back from our waterfronts. So you would only pay duty once goods left a harbour, not when they were landed. You could then create duty-free and tax-free hubs. It is a way to have a bit of unilateral free trade, but not overall.
A CPS paper by Rishi Sunak MP has even suggested we could subsidise companies to set up in free ports, and suggested they could be major manufacturing hubs. But there are problems with this - it's not clear how far our trading partners would allow this to go. Subsidies for exporters - however you dress that up - are not something the world of trade is relaxed about.
The Department for International Trade told Newsnight: "We are confident that we will find a deal that works for Britain and Europe too. But it is our responsibility as a government to prepare for every eventuality, and that is what we are doing."

MEPs have voted to urge the EU not to open the next phase of Brexit talks unless there is a "major breakthrough".
A motion in the European Parliament to back a delay in any decision over trade discussions was backed by 557 MEPs, with 92 against and 29 abstentions.
Several MEPs claimed UK divisions were hampering the process with one urging Theresa May urged to "put Britain first" and avoid internal "quarrels".
But UKIP's Nigel Farage accused the EU of "treating the UK like a hostage".
Tuesday's vote in Strasbourg was not binding, but does represent a chance to "take the political temperature", BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said.
The UK government insists there is a new dynamic in the negotiations since Mrs May's Florence speech last month and "real momentum" behind the process.
The European Parliament, home to 751 MEPs from across the EU, has no formal role in the Brexit negotiations - but will get to approve any final deal agreed between the UK and Brussels.
As the debate opened, a number of MEPs drew attention to what they claimed were divisions in the Conservative government and Mrs May's cabinet over the terms of exit.
Manfred Weber, a German member of the European People's Party grouping, said: "Who do I call in London - Theresa May, Boris Johnson or David Davis? Please don't put your party first.
"We need a clear answer who is responsible for the British position," he added.
Guy Verhofstadt, who leads the Liberal ALDE group and is also the Parliament's chief Brexit spokesman, said he "deplores" the lack of progress so far, blaming open splits among leading British ministers.
"There are differences between Hammond and Fox... and Johnson and May."
He also criticised the UK's proposals for creating a new "settled status" for EU citizens after Brexit - which he said would cause a "huge administrative burden" for those affected.
Addressing the meeting, EU negotiator Michel Barnier suggested there has not been "sufficient progress" in Brexit talks yet to open trade discussions despite Mrs May's speech which "gave us some openings which are starting to be reflected in the negotiations".
MEPs will vote later on a motion saying the UK's approach to financial issues has "seriously impeded" progress, a motion the UK said was drafted before the most recent round of negotiations.
Mr Farage, a key figure in the campaign to leave the EU which won last year's referendum, accused the EU of "treating us (the UK) like a hostage".
"Unless we pay a ransom and meet your demands you won't have an intelligent conversation with us about trade... and no guarantee when we meet your demands you will come to us and have a sensible trade agreement," he said.
The UK is keen to start talking about what kind of trading relationship it will have with the EU after Brexit but it looks increasingly unlikely EU leaders will agree to this when they meet next month.
The EU says this can only happen when the European Council decides there has been "sufficient progress" on three issues: the so-called divorce bill when the UK leaves, the rights for EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU and the Northern Ireland border.
On citizens' rights, the two sides cannot agree on whether UK or EU courts will guarantee European nationals' rights in the UK after Brexit.
The motion - which has been proposed by the main political groupings so is likely to be passed - calls for "reciprocity, equity, symmetry and non-discrimination".
And on another sticking point, the amount of money the UK will pay as it leaves the EU, it says "substantial progress in that area is required before entering into discussions on other issues".
Speaking earlier, Mrs May said her Florence speech had "changed the dial" in the negotiations and European leaders were clear where the UK stood and who was in charge.

MPs have backed Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan for the UK to leave the EU on 31 January.
They voted 358 to 234 - a majority of 124 - in favour of the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, which now goes on to further scrutiny in Parliament.
The bill would also ban an extension of the transition period - during which the UK is out of the EU but follows many of its rules - past 2020.
The PM said the country was now "one step closer to getting Brexit done".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told his MPs to vote against the bill, saying there was "a better and fairer way" to leave the EU - but six of them backed the government.
Mr Johnson insists a trade deal with the EU can be in place by the end of the transition period, but critics say this timescale is unrealistic.
The bill had been expected to pass easily after the Conservatives won an 80-seat majority at last week's general election.
MPs also backed the timetable for further debate on the bill over three days when they return after the Christmas recess - on 7, 8 and 9 January.
The government says it will get the bill into law in time for the 31 January Brexit deadline.
The legislation, which would implement the Brexit agreement the prime minister reached with the EU in October, was introduced in Thursday's Queen's Speech, setting out the government's priorities for the next year.
By John Pienaar, deputy political editor
"Getting Brexit done" turned out to be a useful slogan, and no doubt it helped Boris Johnson win the election.
But almost nothing in politics is truly simple - least of all Brexit.
Today he passed an historic milestone - but the destination is still some way off.
Ruling out any extension to the Brexit transition period might mean Britain leaves with no deal - equally some in government believe it's possible we could see a kind of phased trade deal with the EU, thrashed out over the months and maybe years ahead.
Read the article in full
There are changes to the previous bill, which was backed by the Commons in October, but withdrawn by the government after MPs rejected a three-day deadline for getting it through Parliament.
The changes include:
The bill also loses a previous clause on strengthening workers' rights.
The government now says it will deal with this issue in a separate piece of legislation, but the TUC has warned that the change will help "drive down" working conditions.
Beginning the debate in the Commons, the prime minister said his bill "learns the emphatic lesson of the last Parliament" and "rejects any further delay".
"It ensures we depart on 31 January. At that point Brexit will be done. It will be over," he told MPs.
Labour leader Mr Corbyn said the government's "mishandling of Brexit" had "paralysed the political system," divided communities and was a "national embarrassment".
He said MPs "have to respect the decision" of the EU referendum in 2016 "and move on".
"However, that doesn't mean that we as a party should abandon our basic principles," he said.
"Labour will not support this bill, as we remain certain there is a better and fairer way for this country to leave the EU."
The SNP's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said: "Scotland still totally and utterly rejects Brexit, yet the prime minister is blindly hurtling towards the cliff edge with these Brexit plans that will leave us poorer, leave us worse off."
On the change in the bill that would legally prohibit the government from extending the transition period beyond 31 December 2020, Mr Blackford said: "By placing that deadline, that risk of a no-deal Brexit, that we all fear is very much, is on the table again."
And the Democratic Unionist Party's Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said there was a "major contradiction" in the prime minister's deal "that causes us great concern".
He said, while it mentioned "unfettered access" for Northern Ireland when it comes to trade in the UK, it also had customs arrangements "that inhibit our ability to have that unfettered access".
In the 2016 referendum, the UK voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU. But the subsequent difficulties in getting Brexit through Parliament have caused gridlock at Westminster.
An earlier withdrawal agreement - reached between previous PM Mrs May and the EU - was rejected three times by MPs.

MPs have backed seeking "alternative arrangements" to replace the Irish backstop in Theresa May's Brexit plan.
The proposal - put forward by Tory MP Sir Graham Brady - had the support of the government and won by 16 votes.
Theresa May had urged MPs to vote in favour of it, to give her a mandate to return to Brussels and re-open negotiations in order to secure a "legally binding change".
But the EU has said it will not change the legal text agreed with the UK PM.
MPs voted on a string of amendments to Mrs May's plan to change the direction of Brexit.
Mrs May said that, after taking the votes into account and talking to the EU, her revised deal would be brought back to the Commons "as soon as possible" for a second "meaningful vote".
Another amendment, rejecting a no-deal Brexit, also won the support of Parliament on Tuesday, but the vote was not binding - meaning the date for exit remains 29 March.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said as a result of the message from MPs rejecting no deal, he would now meet the prime minister to discuss the next steps.
He had previously refused to meet her unless she ruled out a no-deal Brexit herself.
Mr Corbyn said: "After months of refusing to take the chaos of no deal off the table, the prime minister must now face the reality that no deal is not an option."
Five other amendments, including Labour MP Yvette Cooper's bid to delay Brexit if Mrs May does not get her deal through Parliament, were defeated.
Tory MP Nick Boles, who worked with her on the amendment, tweeted out a joint statement, saying they "remain deeply concerned that there is no safeguard in place" to stop a no deal and said Mrs May's revised plan would have to "reflect the Commons opposition to no deal".
Mrs May hopes the support for Sir Graham's amendment - which won by 317 votes to 301 - to look at alternatives to the backstop gives her a stronger negotiating position with the EU.
The controversial element of Mrs May's original plan is the insurance policy to prevent checks on goods and people returning to the Northern Ireland border.
It would effectively keep the UK inside the EU's customs union, but with Northern Ireland also conforming to some rules of the single market.
It was one of the main reasons her Brexit deal was voted down in Parliament by an historic margin earlier in January as critics say a different status for Northern Ireland could threaten the existence of the United Kingdom and fear that the backstop could become permanent.
She told the Commons there was now a "substantial and sustainable" majority of MPs supporting leaving the EU with a deal, but admitted renegotiation "will not be easy".
The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Westminster, Nigel Dodds, said it was a "significant night" and his MPs would work with the prime minister "to deliver the right deal for the United Kingdom".
But the leader of the SNP in Westminster, Ian Blackford, said that passing the amendment had seen the government "rip up the Good Friday Agreement" - integral to the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said the Commons had given the prime minister "contradictory instructions to have no deal but pursue a course of action that will lead to a no deal".
Theresa May was heading for another defeat, but she ended up with an unconventional win - a win nonetheless.
The Tory Party that was visibly split in two a fortnight ago is giving the impression of being largely united, even if that is temporary.
Yet the prime minister only won because she gave into Brexiteer and DUP demands, by making a promise that she can't be sure she can keep - one the EU says at the moment is impossible.
This process has for a long time been about No 10 stumbling, often seriously, then getting up again to try to take another step.
There is a valid question - to what end?
Speaking after the result, President of the European Council Donald Tusk said the withdrawal deal was "not open for re-negotiation" and "remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union".
But he said the EU would be willing to look at the political declaration again - the part of the deal that makes a pledge on the future relationship between the UK and the EU - and that the EU would "stand ready" to consider any "reasoned request" for an extension to the leave date of 29 March.
The Brexit Coordinator for the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, welcomed Parliament's rejection of a no deal, but also said there was no majority in the EU to re-open or dilute the withdrawal agreement .
A statement from the Irish government said the withdrawal agreement "is not open for renegotiation... The best way to ensure an orderly withdrawal is to ratify this agreement," the statement said.
And Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz also ruled out further negotiations on the withdrawal agreement.
The prime minister has invited Tory MP Caroline Spelman, Labour MP Jack Dromey and others who tabled amendments to prevent a no deal to discuss how to move forward and secure a deal for Brexit.
She also invited Mr Corbyn for talks and promised the government would "redouble its efforts to get a deal this House can support".
The so-called Brady amendment could pave the way for a plan known as the "Malthouse compromise" as an alternative to the backstop.
Engineered by both Leavers and Remainers - and led by Tory minister Kit Malthouse - the proposal includes extending the transition period for a year and protecting EU citizens' rights, instead of using the backstop.
The deputy chairman of the pro-Leave European Research Group, Tory MP Steve Baker, said he hoped by the group giving its support to the amendment, MPs could "now make rapid progress towards the Malthouse compromise".
But fellow ERG member Mark Francois warned there was no guarantee the group would back the PM, and said he would wait to see what she comes back with from Brussels.
Mrs May's spokesman said she would "engage" with colleagues proposing the compromise, but would also look at other options - including putting a time limit on the backstop and seeking a way to exit it.
The PM's revised deal will return to the Commons to be voted on.
But, if it is again rejected, the government will table an amendable motion - meaning MPs can put forward more amendments as they did earlier - for debate the following day.
And if no new deal is agreed by Parliament by 13 February, she will make a statement and, again, table an amendable motion for debate the next day.

MPs have backed a bid to stop a new prime minister suspending Parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
A majority of 41 approved an amendment that blocks suspension between 9 October and 18 December unless a Northern Ireland executive is formed.
Four cabinet ministers, including Philip Hammond, abstained and 17 Tory MPs rebelled, including minister Margot James, who has resigned.
Leadership contender Boris Johnson has not ruled out suspending Parliament.
His rival Jeremy Hunt has ruled out this move.
Ms James told the BBC attempting to suspend Parliament was "too extreme" adding: "I thought the time was right today to join people who are trying to do something about it."
The four cabinet ministers who abstained are International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Justice Secretary David Gauke, as well as Chancellor Mr Hammond.
Mr Clark defended his decision to abstain arguing: "I couldn't support the idea that we would allow the doors of Parliament to be locked against MPs at this crucially important time - that would be a constitutional outrage."
Mr Hammond tweeted: "It should not be controversial to believe that Parliament be allowed to sit, and have a say, during a key period in our country's history."
A Downing Street spokesman said the prime minister was "obviously disappointed that a number of ministers failed to vote in this afternoon's division".
"No doubt her successor will take this into account when forming their government," the spokesman said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the vote was "an important victory to prevent the Tories from suspending Parliament to force through a disastrous no deal".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the Commons had now made it harder for a new prime minister to suspend Parliament.
If the 31 October deadline is reached without Parliament backing an agreement between the UK government and the EU, the UK is scheduled to leave the EU without a deal.
MPs have consistently voted against a no-deal Brexit, but the prime minister could try to get around that by suspending Parliament - proroguing - in the run-up to the deadline, denying them an opportunity to block it.
The amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill was put forward by MPs including former minister Alistair Burt and Brexit committee chairman and Labour MP Hilary Benn.
It would mean that if Parliament is prorogued when the government publishes reports on the situation in Northern Ireland, MPs must be recalled to debate them.
Mr Burt told the BBC that Parliament had said "very clearly please don't bypass us... Parliament must be sitting in the run up to 31 October".
Mr Benn said: "This is a very significant amendment because it sends a very significant message to the prime minister - if you think you can lock the doors on that chamber and tell us to go away until the 31st October, Parliament will not allow that to happen."
Conservative MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan attacked those of her colleagues who voted against the government, describing the amendments as "cynical and corrosive".
However, she added: "They don't change the underlying legal realities one jot: we are leaving on 31 October with or without a deal."
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds said it was "very disconcerting" to see a bill about Northern Ireland "hijacked for other purposes and particularly to see the debates taking place not even on the issues that directly affect Northern Ireland", like marriage and abortion.
In a taste of what and whom the still hypothetical Boris Johnson premiership is likely to face, the new rebel alliance in Parliament has shown its strength - winning a vote that would make it harder for the next PM to shut down Parliament to get round its likely opposition to leaving the EU without a deal.
And in political terms, it's an all-star cast list, populated with former Remainer ministers - the new "Gaukeward" squad, so-called after the until-recently achingly loyal Justice Secretary, David Gauke.
They are a currently powerful significant slice of the Conservative Party that, with years of ministerial experience between them, is willing to join forces with opposition MPs to make life harder for their next leader.
Those ministers are highly likely to be shoved out of government next week in any case - or, as I understand it, are already planning to congratulate Mr Johnson in one breath next Tuesday, then make it clear with the next that they'd never serve under him, denying the Brexiteers the pleasure of actually witnessing them being sacked.
But today's vote suggests they have no plans to go quietly. They might be losing their comfy ministerial cars and giving up the red boxes, but they will still have votes.
Read Laura's blog here
Leadership contender Mr Hunt admitted that, due to a misunderstanding, he missed the votes. However he said he was opposed to the way MPs had voted arguing Parliament "should not restrict the hands of an incoming government in this way".
When asked about suspending Parliament during his leadership campaign, Mr Johnson said he would "not take anything off the table".
He said he wanted to leave the EU on 31 October "come what may".
MPs also rejected a government attempt to disagree with an amendment put forward by a group of peers, which also bids to stop Parliament being suspended to force through a no-deal Brexit, by 315 votes to 273, a majority of 42.
The bill will now return to the Lords for further consideration.
Former Tory prime minister John Major has said he will seek a judicial review if the next prime minister tries to suspend Parliament.
Campaigner Gina Miller has threatened the same action.

MPs will meet the EU's chief negotiator later to call for UK citizens' rights to be protected in a no-deal Brexit.
The cross-party delegation will meet Michel Barnier in Brussels, and be led by Tory MP Alberto Costa.
He said government could protect the 3.6 million EU nationals in the UK, but did not have the power to do the same for 1.3 million UK citizens in the EU.
Mr Costa said, as it stands, a no-deal Brexit would "terminate the rights of British citizens overnight".
The meeting comes after MPs voted on Thursday to prevent the next prime minister from suspending Parliament in order to push through a no-deal Brexit.
Four cabinet ministers, including Chancellor Philip Hammond, abstained, while 17 Tory MPs rebelled against the government.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has discounted the possibility of suspending Parliament - known as prorogation - if he becomes prime minister, but his rival in the Conservative Party leadership race, Boris Johnson, has refused to do the same.
Health minister Stephen Hammond - who abstained in Thursday's vote - said he would not rule out voting to bring down his own government if its policy became pursuing a no-deal Brexit, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "A lot of people were taught that you must put the interest of the country before yourself."
But leading Brexiteer and Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told the same programme those trying to prevent it were "not saying what they believe", and their intention was to "snub the British voters" and stop Brexit altogether.
Mr Costa resigned from the government in March to put forward an amendment to Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit bill, calling for her to write to the EU to demand protections for UK and EU expats' rights if there was a no-deal Brexit.
It ended up gaining government support, and was passed by MPs.
As a result, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay wrote to Mr Barnier, saying there was growing support for a ring-fenced citizens' rights agreement in the European Parliament, and in June, he visited Brussels to make the case for a separate agreement in case of a no-deal scenario.
But the EU has refused to "negotiate mini deals", insisting the best way to safeguard citizens' rights was to implement the withdrawal agreement negotiated between the bloc and Mrs May - which has been voted down by MPs three times.
Mr Costa told Today the government would be "abrogating its responsibilities" to UK citizens if it did not make bilateral agreements with the different EU countries.
"In the event of no deal, the United Kingdom Parliament can take measures to protect EU nationals in the UK, but we do not have powers to pass legislation extraterritorial, in other words within the EU, to protect our own citizens," he said.
"If Britain chooses to exit without an agreement in place, it would be terminating the rights of British citizens overnight."
He added: "I want to understand from Michel Barnier what his position is in carving out citizens' rights, why he has said, thus far, no to that."
The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU is 31 October, but if it fails to agree a deal to do so, the legal default is to leave with no deal on that date.
Both contenders to be the next prime minister said they want to keep to the date and renegotiate with the EU.
Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson have also said they would keep leaving without a deal on the table to strengthen negotiations, despite Parliament voting to rule the option out.
The EU has consistently said the withdrawal agreement is closed and cannot be changed.
The incoming president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said she hopes the UK remains in the EU, but it was up to British authorities to "sort its side of things on Brexit".
Asked about Mrs von der Leyen's position, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she understood that "if the UK wishes for more time [e.g. another delay to Brexit], then they would have more time", but it was "up to the UK".
She praised her "cooperative relationship" with Theresa May, adding: "She has not had an easy time dealing with this difficult question. I always found her to be a reliable and collegial partner, and I thank her for that."
But she added: "We now have the position that there will be a new PM, and then we have to watch what that person decides."

MPs will have their say on the next steps for Brexit later after European leaders indicated they would consider delaying the UK's departure if a deal is not agreed by 29 March.
Germany's Angela Merkel said if the UK needed more time to get Parliament's approval, she would "not oppose" it.
Theresa May has said MPs will get a vote on delaying Brexit if her deal and a no-deal outcome are both rejected.
MPs will vote on amendments to a government motion in the Commons later.
Wednesday's votes are not on Mrs May's Brexit deal itself - she says that will happen before 12 March.
Instead, MPs are seeking assurances and to hold the PM to her commitment, made on Tuesday, to allow MPs a vote on extending 29 March's Brexit deadline to avoid Britain leaving without a deal.
The prime minister's critics have accused her of "kicking the can down the road" with her pledge to hold more votes before 12 March - just 17 days before Brexit.
But she insisted her efforts to persuade the EU to make concessions had "already begun to bear fruit".
The government has accepted an amendment by Conservative MP Alberto Costa, which seeks to protect the rights of UK citizens in the EU, and vice versa, regardless of the outcome of UK-EU negotiations.
The amendment - which calls on the UK to secure agreement on this at "the earliest opportunity" - had gained significant cross-party backing from 141 MPs - including Labour and the Democratic Unionists.
Despite this, Mr Costa has resigned his job as aide to Scottish Secretary David Mundell, because, he told MPs, of a convention that members of the government should not amend government motions.
He said he "welcomed" the government's support for his amendment but it did not go far enough.
He said he wanted ministers to spell out "exactly what measures" Theresa May will now take to guarantee citizens rights and urged her to write to European Council President Donald Tusk.
He said the rights of the estimated million UK citizens living in the EU, and the three million EU citizens in the UK, "should never have been used as a bargaining chip" in the government's Brexit negotiations.
Green MP Caroline Lucas praised Mr Costa's stand and called for him to be reinstated in the government.
Analysis by Nick Eardley, BBC Political Correspondent
It looks a bit strange, doesn't it?
The government accepts an amendment from a member of the government - but then essentially sacks that member of the government for tabling it in the first place.
I'm told by several people that Alberto Costa was left with no decision but to resign. He met with the prime minister this morning made it clear he wasn't backing down which sealed his fate.
That's left some Tories furious. They point out he has a personal interest in the EU citizens' rights issue given his Italian parentage and say he was simply trying to get assurances he had been offered by Theresa May backed by the Commons. One member of the government said the treatment of Mr Costa had been appalling.
But a senior ally of the PM says Mrs May was left with no choice. It is, they point out, against the rules for members of the government to table amendments to government motions. This is a clear black and white example of breaking, they conclude, unlike some recent comments from cabinet ministers which could be open to interpretation (again their argument, not mine).
Another junior member of the government says that if Mr Costa had moved his amendment as a member of the government tonight - and it had been passed - it would have set a terrible precedent and led to many more similar situations.
Five amendments - out of 12 originally tabled - were selected for debate by Speaker John Bercow.
The Labour leadership's amendment calls on MPs to support its alternative Brexit plan, which would include a "comprehensive customs union" and close alignment with the EU in the future.
If that proposal is voted down, Jeremy Corbyn has said the party would move to formally back another EU referendum "in order to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit" or no-deal outcome.
Mrs May has accused Labour of "playing political games" and argued the best way for the country to move forward is for MPs to approve the revised deal she hopes to bring back.
The SNP amendment insists the UK should not leave the EU in any circumstances without a deal "regardless of any exit date".
On Tuesday, Theresa May promised MPs a vote on delaying Brexit for a short period if MPs reject her deal and leaving without a deal.
This was designed to head off a potential defeat on a cross-party amendment tabled by Labour MP Yvette Cooper, which calls for the same thing.
Ms Cooper has not withdrawn her amendment, because she wants to hold the prime minister to her commitment.
She said: "We will keep up the pressure working cross-party to ensure the commitments are implemented... to avoid any backsliding and to make sure we do not end up with a chaotic no deal."
An amendment by Conservative MP Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour's Jack Dromey amendment - calling for Parliamentary time to make the PM's no-deal vote commitment legally binding - will not be put to the vote, following government assurances.
"The government has just confirmed acceptance of all the proposals in our amendments. There will not now be a no-deal Brexit In 30 days' time because there is not a majority in the House for crashing out without a deal," the MPs said in a joint statement.
The process starts with the government putting down a motion. It is a plain piece of text, asking the House to note the prime minister's most recent Brexit statement - made on Tuesday - and that discussions between the UK and the EU are ongoing.
This then allows MPs to table amendments - alternative options - to that motion, setting out their proposals on what they think should happen next.
Mrs May said any delay to the UK's departure should not go beyond the end of June and "would almost certainly have to be a one-off".
Extending Article 50 would require the unanimous backing of the other 27 EU member states - something they have indicated they would be happy to do.
Speaking on Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would "not oppose" a request from the UK for more time although French President Emmanuel Macron struck a more sceptical note, saying there had to be a "clear objective" behind any extension.
"As our negotiator Michel Barnier has said, we don't need more time but decisions," he said during a meeting in Paris. "The time has come therefore for the British to make choices."

MPs are awaiting the results of votes on eight different proposals for the future of Brexit.
Options they are considering include leaving without a deal, a customs union and a confirmatory referendum.
Speaker John Bercow will announce what support there is for each later after MPs took over the Commons timetable.
Theresa May has promised to stand down as prime minister if her own deal is approved, prompting several Tory Brexiteers to say they will back it.
Meanwhile, MPs have approved the legislation required to change the date of Brexit from 29 March - after the EU agreed to give the UK an extension last week.
Friday had long been the day written into law for the UK to leave the EU but the Commons approved a statutory instrument - by 441 votes to 105 - changing the deadline to 22 May if a withdrawal agreement is passed this week; or 12 April if it is not.
The prime minister is still trying to drum up support for her withdrawal agreement despite it being voted down by a large margin twice and the DUP saying they still cannot vote for it.
The government is seeking the support of MPs for the Commons to convene on Friday, if necessary, amid reports a third vote on the PM's deal could be held then.
But Mr Bercow reiterated his earlier warnings that the PM's deal could not come back for a vote if it had not significantly changed.
He said the government "should not seek to circumvent my ruling" by introducing procedures that could reverse his judgement.
But a Downing Street spokesman said there had been a "significant development" at the summit in Brussels last week, after Mrs May agreed "extra reassurances" over the Irish backstop with the EU, and the date of exit had changed.
MPs are currently voting on a statutory instrument to confirm a delay, after the UK was given until 12 April to propose a different way forward if the current agreement cannot get through Parliament and until 22 May to finalise Brexit if the deal is passed.
Earlier on Wednesday, MPs took control of parliamentary business from the government for several hours as they attempt to find a majority for the next steps in the Brexit process.
Conservative backbencher Sir Oliver Letwin, whose cross-party proposal ushered in today's debate, said the only way leaving the EU with no-deal can be prevented is by crystallising an alternative majority and trying to carry it forward.
He said that if MPs supported the prime minister's deal in another meaningful vote this would be "the easy route".
But he added that he "profoundly hopes" that if on Monday there is a majority view in favour of a particular position, that the government will say that it will carry that forward.
By Ben Wright, BBC political correspondent
Never afraid of stoking controversy, the Speaker has again infuriated many Tory MPs with his latest surprise pronouncement to the Commons.
Just as it seemed the government was poised to try and get its Brexit deal through again, John Bercow took it upon himself to tick ministers off before they had even tried.
Why? Because last week he ruled the deal could not be brought back to the Commons for a third time without "substantial" changes.
No 10 will only bring the deal back for a third vote if it thinks it could pass. That probably requires DUP backing and a guarantee some Labour MPs will vote for it too.
As it stands, there isn't yet a majority for the deal, but the mood is shifting fast.
Groups have put forward different options for the UK's future relationship with the EU, with several based on the assumption Mrs May's withdrawal agreement with the EU will be approved - albeit with changes to the controversial Northern Ireland backstop.
The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, chose eight to be voted on by MPs.
They are:
After a four-hour debate on each proposal, MPs were given a piece of paper listing the options, and had to mark each one with a "yes" or "no".
MPs used both lobbies for completing the ballots in a process that took about half an hour.
Several MPs, including Tory Michael Fabricant and Lib Dem Jo Swinson, posted images of their forms on social media.
The process is likely to continue on Monday as MPs seek to whittle down options which could command majority support in Parliament.
Now: Debate on statutory instrument (SI) bringing Brexit delay into law
21:00: Vote on SI
21:30: The Speaker announces the results of the indicative votes - though he could announce them earlier during SI debate
All times approx
Conservative MPs were given a free vote, meaning they were able to support or reject any proposal without pressure from party whips. Cabinet ministers will be abstaining.
The decision followed warnings that more than a dozen ministers might quit if they were told they had to follow party orders.
Labour MPs are being whipped to support the party's own proposal, as well as motions on a customs union, Common Market 2.0 and a confirmatory public ballot.
Mr Starmer told the Commons any deal "needs further democratic approval" before being enacted.
But the move has angered Labour MPs in Brexit-vote constituencies, with Great Grimsby MP Melanie Onn reportedly resigning as a shadow housing minister.

MPs have given their final backing to the bill that will implement the UK government's Brexit deal.
The Commons voted 330 to 231 in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill and it will now pass to the House of Lords for further scrutiny next week.
If peers choose to amend it will it come back before MPs.
The bill covers "divorce" payments to the EU, citizens' rights, customs arrangements for Northern Ireland and the planned 11-month transition period.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 31 January.
The bill comfortably cleared its third reading in the House of Commons, as expected, with a majority of 99. All 330 votes in favour were Conservative.
It took just three days for the bill to pass the remaining stages in the Commons, after MPs gave their initial approval to the legislation before the Christmas recess.
Theresa May - Boris Johnson's predecessor in Downing Street - repeatedly failed to get her Brexit agreement passed by MPs, which led to her resignation as prime minister.
The latest vote gives approval to the 11-month transition period after 31 January, in which the UK will cease to be an EU member but will continue to follow its rules and contribute to its budget.
The purpose of the transition period is to give time for the UK and EU to negotiate their future relationship, including a trade deal.
Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael said his party would continue to oppose the "dangerous" bill.
"They have voted for a bill that will slash the rights of future generations to live and work across 27 other countries," he said.
"They have voted for a bill that strips away our guaranteed environmental protections, despite the fact that we are facing a climate emergency."
And SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Scotland would "remain an independent European country".
"This is a constitutional crisis, because we will not and we cannot accept what is being done to us," he told MPs.
But Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay has said the bill will deliver on the "overwhelming mandate" his party was given at the general election to take the UK out of the EU on 31 January.
He has also said he is "confident" the UK will be able to negotiate a trade deal with the EU by the end of the year, despite critics saying that the deadline is too tight.
Mr Johnson has also insisted a deal is possible by December 2020 and has said the transition period will not be extended.
He has said the UK is ready to start negotiations "as soon as possible" after 31 January.
On Wednesday, new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warned it would be "impossible" to reach a comprehensive trade deal by the end of 2020.

Labour says the offer of a "take it or leave it" Commons vote on the final Brexit deal is "unacceptable" and MPs, not ministers, must agree the outcome.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it was "unthinkable" that if MPs rejected the agreement the UK just "crashed out" of the EU anyway.
In such an event, ministers should be able to resume negotiations, he said.
Theresa May has promised a "meaningful" vote on the deal but indicated the UK would still leave whatever the outcome.
The prime minister, who has said she is confident she will negotiate a deal that is in the interests of both sides, is currently updating MPs on the latest progress in the Brexit negotiations.
On Friday, the EU agreed to a 21-month transition period after the UK's exit, on 29 March 2019, and approved guidelines for the next phase of talks on its future economic and security relations with the UK.
Mrs May said while "not everyone" would be happy with the "continuation of existing trading arrangements" for 21 months, the period would provide stability for business and help them prepare for the future.
The focus, she said, should now be on securing a future partnership that "will endure for years to come" and while there were some key questions yet to be resolved, she believed the basis for a deal was there.
The EU wants to reach an agreement on the terms of the UK's withdrawal by October, allowing enough time for the UK and EU Parliament to vote on the deal prior to the UK's exit.
Should MPs reject the deal, it is not clear if there would be enough time for ministers to renegotiate a new one ahead of the deadline for leaving - unless the UK and all 27 other EU members agreed to extend the process.
Speaking in Birmingham, Sir Keir said the government's offer of a "take it or leave it" vote was "unacceptable", given the damage leaving without an agreement would do to the British economy and workers.
Labour, he said, would work with other parties to ensure Parliament "brought back control" of the process if the prime minister's deal was not satisfactory, by "strengthening" the terms of the promised vote in the EU Withdrawal Bill.
"If Parliament rejects the prime minister's deal that cannot give licence to her - or the extreme Brexiteers in her party - to allow the UK to crash out without an agreement," he said.
"That would be the worst of all possible worlds."
In such a scenario, Labour would not dictate what Parliament should do although its preference was for ministers to "go back to the negotiating table and work towards securing a deal that works for Britain", Sir Keir said.
"This would provide a safety valve in the Brexit process to safeguard jobs and the economy," he said.
"It would remove the possibility of a 'No' vote leading to a no deal. It would bring back control to Parliament."
Labour's Brexit policy has come under fresh scrutiny since Jeremy Corbyn sacked Owen Smith from the front bench on Friday after he broke ranks by calling for a referendum on the terms of final deal.
Labour has sought to differentiate itself from the government by calling for the UK to agree a new customs union with the EU after its exit, but some MPs want it go further and pledge to give the public the final say.
Responding to the PM's Commons update, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attacked what he said was the government's "posturing and dithering" over Brexit.
Its approach, he claimed, had been characterised by "wild claims and red lines which quickly become climbdowns and broken promises".
He asked what flexibility there was for extending the transition period if necessary and for the UK to remain in the Euratom nuclear association.
For the SNP, its Westminster leader Ian Blackford said the Scottish fishing industry had been "bargained away" in negotiations and left "hamstrung" during the transition period, where existing rules will continue to apply.
The PM said the UK would be leaving the Common Fisheries Policy and taking back control of UK waters and suggested the criticism was "a bit rich" coming from a party that opposes Brexit and wants to remain in the CFP "in perpetuity".

A cross-party group of MPs has put forward a bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit in 10 days' time.
If passed into law, the bill would require the PM to ask for an extension of Article 50 - which mandates the UK's exit from the EU - beyond the current 12 April deadline.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper presented the bill - which supporters hope they can pass through the Commons in one day.
The prime minister is expected to make a statement shortly.
It comes after the cabinet, which remains split over Brexit, met for eight hours in No 10.
The BBC's John Pienaar said Theresa May's ministers considered plans to "ramp up" no-deal Brexit preparations and a snap general election was also discussed.
Ms Cooper's bill would make it UK law for the PM to ask for an extension to prevent a no-deal, but it would be up to the EU to grant it - or not.
In March, MPs voted against leaving the EU without a deal, but it was not legally binding.
Meanwhile, the EU's chief negotiator has said a no-deal Brexit is now more likely but can still be avoided.
Michel Barnier said a long extension to the UK's 12 April exit date had "significant risks for the EU" and a "strong justification would be needed".
France's President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar are meeting in Paris to discuss the impact of Brexit.
President Macron told reporters that the EU "cannot be hostage to the political crisis in the UK", and the government must come forward with "credible" reasons for an extension.
He said these could include an election, second referendum, or alternative proposals for the future relationship, such as a customs union.
Mr Varadkar said the UK was "consumed by Brexit", but the EU should not be.
He said the EU "needs to be open" about any proposals the UK brings, including a longer extension, and they will do what they can to "assist".
But he added: "We gave the UK some time, some space and some opportunity to come up with a way forward... [but] as things stand, they will leave on 12 April without a deal."
Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who supports Ms Cooper's bill, said: "This is a last-ditch attempt to prevent our country being exposed to the risks inherent in a no-deal exit.
"We realise this is difficult. But it is definitely worth trying."
Ms Cooper said the UK was "in a very dangerous situation" and MPs "have a responsibility to make sure we don't end up with a catastrophic no deal".
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's World At One, she added: "We have been attempting to squeeze into just a couple of days a process that really should have been happening for the last two years - a process of trying to build a consensus around the best way forward.
"It is what the prime minister should be doing. It is the prime minister's responsibility to ensure we don't leave the country less safe."
Normally the government chooses which bills to present to Parliament in order for them to become law.
But - much to the government's disapproval - MPs voted to allow backbenchers to take charge of business in the Commons on Wednesday.
This gives backbenchers the opportunity to table their own bills, such as this one from Yvette Cooper.
A copy of the bill shows that they want to push it through the commons in one day.
As the backbenchers will be in charge, they will also be able to vote to set aside more time on another day, if they need to complete the process or hold further indicative votes.
However, the bill would also have to be agreed by the House of Lords and receive Royal Assent before it became law - which if the Commons agrees it on Wednesday, could happen as soon as Thursday.
Brexiteer Tory Sir Bill Cash said trying to go through these stages in one day made it a "reprehensible procedure".
But Speaker John Bercow said that, while it was "an unusual state of affairs", it was "not as unprecedented as he supposes" - citing recent bills on Northern Ireland that have been passed at the same speed.
In the latest round of indicative votes on Monday, MPs voted on four alternatives to the PM's withdrawal deal, but none gained a majority.
MPs rejected a customs union with the EU by three votes. A motion for another referendum got the most votes in favour, but still lost.
The votes were not legally binding, but they had been billed as the moment when Parliament might finally compromise.
The Independent MP Chris Leslie tweeted that MPs would be seeking more time for indicative votes to take place on Monday.
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb said he is considering resigning the whip after his party refused to back proposals for a customs union and Common Market 2.0 on Monday.
He told BBC News: "If you are seen to be unreasonable, not engaging to find solutions, I don't think it is very attractive to the people."
Earlier, Mr Barnier said: "No deal was never our desire or intended scenario but the EU 27 is now prepared. It becomes day after day more likely."
Mrs May's plan for the UK's departure has been rejected by MPs three times.
Last week, Parliament took control of the process away from the government in order to hold a series of votes designed to find an alternative way forward.
Eight options were put to MPs, but none was able to command a majority, and on Monday night, a whittled-down four were rejected too.

MPs are putting forward plans to change the outcome of Brexit ahead of a vote next week on the PM's amended deal.
Theresa May said on Monday she was focused on altering the backstop - the "insurance policy" designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister was in denial about the level of opposition to her deal.
Among the MPs' eight amendments are plans to stop a no-deal Brexit and to extend the deadline for leaving the EU.
But more amendments to change her next steps could be added in the coming days.
MPs are due to vote on Mrs May's proposals for Brexit on 29 January.
On Monday, the PM vowed to seek changes from the EU to the Irish "backstop" -  the measures intended to ensure that whatever else happens, there will be no return to a visible border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after the UK leaves the EU.
Both the UK and the EU believe that bringing back border checks could put the peace process at risk.
Mrs May also scrapped the £65 fee EU citizens were due to pay to secure the right to continue living in the UK after Brexit.
However, she gave few details about how her deal would be changed before next Tuesday's vote.
The European Commission's chief spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, welcomed the dropping of the fee for EU citizens, but said it "does not provide the sort of clarification of intention that we are expecting as soon as possible on the broader picture".
He also said that if a no deal Brexit was to happen, it would be "pretty obvious" that there would be a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland - meaning checks on people and goods travelling between the two.
But the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister), Leo Varadkar, has said "we will have a real dilemma" if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
He said there would have to be negotiations on customs and regulations that meant "full alignment", so there would be no hard border, saying: "We already have that agreement. That is the backstop."
He said nobody else has come up with an alternative and said: "We can't give that up for a promise that it will be all right on the night or will be sorted out over the next two years."
Meanwhile, civil service chief executive John Manzoni has warned that a no-deal Brexit might be a "bit bumpy" and was unlikely to go "swimmingly well".
An internal letter sent to staff at the National Crime Agency has warned of major disruption at ports, and possible transport blockages, fuel and food shortages and public disorder.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, who voted against Mrs May's deal, said the backstop was "unworkable", adding that he also had objections to the £39bn so-called divorce bill the UK was preparing to pay the EU.
Conservative MP Damian Green, a close friend of Mrs May, voted for her deal, but told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme that he accepted the government would have to put forward "something different".
Roland Rudd, chairman of the People's Vote campaign for a fresh referendum said it was time for politicians to "put country before party".
"People had been hoping beyond hope that Theresa May would do that, and unfortunately she came up to speak yesterday and her 'Plan B' was just her 'Plan A' all over again, and it just looked like she was putting her party before country," he told the Today programme.
An official Labour Party amendment says that MPs should be able to vote on options such as the party's preferred outcome of a closer relationship with Europe, with a permanent customs union.
It also asks MPs to decide whether they should hold a further referendum on whatever Brexit plan is approved by the House of Commons.
Mr Corbyn said the amendment allowed MPs "to end this Brexit deadlock" and prevent the "chaos" of leaving the EU without a deal.
But Mrs May warned that another EU referendum could threaten the UK's "social cohesion".
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey said the issue of another referendum was "divisive" for both Labour and the Conservatives.
She would not be drawn on whether her party would back a further public vote, but said the option should be on the table for Parliament to discuss.
Ms Long-Bailey added: "Our job is to bring as many people together as we possibly can and that really is one option of many.
"Our priority always has been to secure a deal that really provides a consensus within Parliament and I think that deal can be found if we are actually given the opportunity to debate various options."
Among the other plans being put forward by MPs are:
Mr Duncan Smith said that plans to allow backbenchers to create legislation would create "mayhem" in the Commons and that anybody who believed the House could act as a government negotiating a trade deal was "living in cloud cuckoo land".
Some ministers are reportedly backing the proposals to block a no-deal Brexit, with the i newspaper and the Times saying that dozens could quit unless they are allowed a free vote on the issue.
The papers said that Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has warned Mrs May that up to 40 ministers could resign.
Speaking to reporters on her way into No 10 for Tuesday's cabinet meeting, Energy Minister Claire Perry said she didn't think there needed to be resignations and that MPs were "coming together" to support Mrs May's deal.
"Anyone in that House that wants to avoid no deal as passionately as I do, wants to deliver Brexit as much as I do and wants to avoid a people's referendum - which I think would be another extension of all of these really tough conversations - needs to come together and support the deal."
About 10,000 customers of Brittany Ferries have had their bookings amended to accommodate extra sailings in case of a no-deal Brexit.
The ferry company said timetables from Portsmouth, Poole and Plymouth were being modified to ensure "critical goods" could still be transported.
Another ferry company, P&O, has said it will re-register its six UK ships under the Cyprus flag ahead of Brexit so the firm can continue to benefit from the tax arrangements of EU states.
"The Cyprus flag is on the 'white list' of both the Paris and Tokyo Memoranda of Understanding, resulting in fewer inspections and delays, and will result in significantly more favourable tonnage tax arrangements as the ships will be flagged in an EU member state," a spokesman said.
And Dyson - whose founder Sir James Dyson has been in favour of Brexit - has announced that it is moving its headquarters to Singapore, from Malmesbury in Wiltshire.
However, chief executive Jim Rowan has said it is not to do with Brexit or tax, saying: "It's to make us future-proof for where we see the biggest opportunities."
Mr Rowan confirmed that Britain's departure from the EU would have little impact on the firm and that they had not made any contingency plans.
Last week MPs rejected the deal negotiated between the UK and EU on the terms of the UK's departure from the bloc by 432 votes to 202 - a majority of 230.
Outlining her proposed way forward on Monday, Mrs May refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit and insisted there was no majority in the House of Commons for another referendum.
But she promised Parliament a "proper say" in the next stage of negotiations on the future relationship between the UK and EU.
She also said she would conduct further talks on the Irish backstop plan, which is designed to prevent the need for a visible border and customs checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
It means Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market and effectively keeps the UK in the customs union until the UK and EU reach a lasting trade agreement.
The backstop is opposed by many Conservative MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party because they fear it could become permanent and because it means different rules for different parts of the UK.

MPs have rejected a Labour-led effort to take control of Parliament's timetable, blocking the latest attempt to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The Commons opposed the move by 309 votes to 298.
If passed, it would have given opponents of a no-deal Brexit the chance to table legislation to thwart the UK leaving without any agreement on the 31 October deadline.
The result of the vote was greeted with cheers from the Tory benches.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn responded by shouting "you won't be cheering in September".
Ten Tory MPs, mostly pro-Europeans, rebelled against the government by backing Labour's motion. Conversely, eight Labour MPs - mostly Eurosceptics or MPs in constituencies which voted Leave at the referendum - defied party instructions and voted against it.
A key factor for the government was the support of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists, who have voted against Theresa May during previous Brexit votes.
No deal would mean the UK leaving the EU without any agreement about the "divorce" process.
Overnight, the country would be out of the single market, customs union and institutions such as the European Court of Justice and Europol.
There are fears about widespread disruption in such an event - to trade, travel and the functioning of the Irish border, in particular.
The opposition said the Commons defeat was disappointing, but it still believed there was a majority in the Commons against a no deal and it remained "determined to win this fight".
"There will be other procedural mechanisms we can use," shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said. "We are already looking at what those other opportunities will be."
No 10 said giving MPs a "blank cheque" to dictate Brexit policy would have set a troubling precedent.
The UK was originally supposed to leave the EU on 29 March.
But the EU decided on a seven-month extension after MPs rejected the terms of withdrawal on three occasions.
Opponents of a no-deal exit are concerned that Theresa May's successor as prime minister could seek to take the UK out of the EU without parliamentary approval for such an outcome.
Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson and several of his rivals have said the UK must leave the EU by the revised date, whether a deal is passed or not.
Wednesday's motion - supported by the Lib Dems, the SNP and Plaid Cymru, as well as some Conservatives, would not, by itself, have ruled out a no deal.
However, its supporters hoped to start a process on 25 June which could culminate with Parliament blocking the UK leaving without an agreement - in effect, tying the next prime minister's hands.
Backing the motion, Conservative ex-minister Sir Oliver Letwin said the case for ensuring Parliament had a "decisive vote" on the next PM's Brexit plan ahead of the 31 October deadline transcended party politics.
Given that leaving without a deal remains the default legal position, he said it was "perfectly possible" for the next PM to usher in a no-deal exit by "simply doing nothing" at all.
Tory Remain supporter and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve said the motion was the "last sensible opportunity" to stop no deal.
He added that in the future, if necessary, he would support efforts to bring down a Conservative government in a vote of no confidence if it was the only way to block such an outcome.
But veteran Eurosceptic Conservative Sir Bill Cash said it was a "phantom motion" which paved the way for "government by Parliament".
"It just simply opens the door for any bill of any kind to take precedence over government business," he told by MPs. "It is inconceivable as a matter of constitutional convention."
After the defeat, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, accused the Conservatives of "putting party loyalty ahead of national interest".
This is not the first time that MPs have attempted to seize control of the Commons order paper in order to shift government policy on Brexit.
MPs voted in March to oblige Mrs May to seek a Brexit delay from the EU.
But efforts by Sir Oliver and others to come up with an alternative Brexit plan failed in April after MPs rejected all the options in a series of indicative votes.

MPs have rejected Theresa May’s EU withdrawal agreement on the day the UK was due to leave the EU.
The government lost by 344 votes to 286, a margin of 58, and means the UK has missed an EU deadline to delay Brexit to 22 May and leave with a deal.
The prime minister said the UK would have to find "an alternative way forward", which was "almost certain" to involve holding European elections.
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn said "this deal now has to change" or the PM must quit.
Meanwhile, thousands of Leave supporters gathered outside Parliament to protest against the delay to Brexit, bringing traffic to a standstill.
Mrs May now has until 12 April to seek a longer extension to the negotiation process to avoid a no-deal Brexit on that date.
With a clear majority in the Commons against a no-deal Brexit, and with MPs holding more votes on alternative plans on Monday, Mrs May said that the UK would have to find "an alternative way forward".
The prime minister said that the outcome was "a matter of profound regret", adding that "I fear we are reaching the limits of this process in this House".
Downing Street said it was still not an "inevitability" that the UK would have to take part in elections to the European Parliament in May.
It is highly likely that at least for another couple of weeks, Theresa May will look through every nook and cranny in Parliament to see if there is a way for her deal to pass through - somehow.
But that's a decision taken in the bunker, and the walls are closing in.
There is little reason tonight to think that, in the end, the burning core of Euroscepticism in the Tory Party will ever accept her deal.
There are few signs that any more than a handful of Labour MPs are really going to take the plunge and ultimately walk through the same lobbies as Theresa May, and Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith.
The prime minister concluded today that our political process is reaching its limits.
But maybe soon it will be her leadership, her deal, that has passed its limits.
A No 10 source indicated that the prime minister would continue to seek support in the Commons for her deal.
"Clearly it was not the result we wanted. But, that said, we have had a number of senior Conservative colleagues who have felt able to vote with the government today. They have done so in higher numbers than previously," the source said.
"Clearly there is more work to do. We are at least going in the right direction."
Downing Street said Mrs May would continue to talk to the Democratic Unionist Party about more reassurances over the Irish backstop, which it says risks splitting Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.
But the DUP's leader at Westminster leader, Nigel Dodds, told the BBC's Newsnight political editor Nick Watt: "I would stay in the European Union and remain, rather than risk Northern Ireland's position. That's how strongly I feel about the Union."
Responding to the vote, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted: "In view of the rejection of the Withdrawal Agreement by the House of Commons, I have decided to call a European Council on 10 April."
In a statement, the European Commission said the UK would have to "indicate a way forward" by 12 April "for consideration by the European Council".
"A 'no-deal' scenario on 12 April is now a likely scenario. The EU has been preparing for this since December 2017 and is now fully prepared for a 'no-deal' scenario at midnight on 12 April. The EU will remain united," the statement said.
"The benefits of the withdrawal agreement, including a transition period, will in no circumstances be replicated in a 'no-deal' scenario. Sectoral mini-deals are not an option."
Despite all the drama, the money and time spent by EU leaders on Brexit (summits, dedicated governmental departments, no-deal planning) and all the hard, hard graft put in by the EU and UK negotiating teams, Europe's leaders are asking themselves what there is to show for it all.
Ongoing Brexit divisions in Parliament, in government and in Theresa May's cabinet were on screaming technicolour display again last week.
EU leaders used to use the threat of a no-deal Brexit as a negotiating tactic (as did the UK). They now believe it to be a very real prospect.
That has led to a number of countries - notably France - questioning the logic of delaying Brexit for much longer.
They wonder if the UK will ever unite around a Brexit Way Forward - be it a softer Brexit, no deal or no Brexit.
Would a Brexit extension, allowing for a general election or a second referendum, really settle the issue, they ask?
Read Katya's blog in full
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The House has been clear, this deal now has to change.
"There has to be an alternative found. And if the prime minister can't accept that then she must go, not at an indeterminate date in the future but now.
"So that we can decide the future of this country through a general election."
Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Brexiteer Conservatives, said it was time for Mrs May to quit.
"This must be the final defeat for Theresa May's deal. It's finished. And we must move on.
"It has not passed. It will not pass. I regret to say it is time for Theresa May to follow through on her words and make way so that a new leader can deliver a withdrawal agreement which will be passed by Parliament."
Mr Baker was one of 34 Conservative rebels to vote against the agreement, along with the Democratic Unionist Party and the Labour Party. Five Labour MPs voted for the agreement.
A number of high profile Tory Brexiteers, including Dominic Raab and Iain Duncan Smith, did vote for the agreement, but it was not enough to prevent another damaging defeat for Mrs May, who had offered to stand down to persuade her critics to back the deal.
This was not a third "meaningful vote" on the PM's EU deal, which also includes a political declaration on future relations between the UK and the EU, and which has previously been rejected by larger margins.
By holding a vote on the withdrawal agreement only, the government had hoped to secure a short delay to Brexit and avoid the UK taking part in May's European elections.
MPs are set to have another go at reaching a Brexit compromise in another series of votes on Monday and Wednesday next week.
If one of the options receives a majority, the government could use it as a basis for negotiating changes to the political declaration.

Theresa May's EU withdrawal deal has been rejected by MPs by an overwhelming majority for a second time, with just 17 days to go to Brexit.
MPs voted down the prime minister's deal by 149 - a smaller margin than when they rejected it in January.
Mrs May said MPs will now get a vote on whether the UK should leave the EU without a deal and, if that fails, on whether Brexit should be delayed.
She said Tory MPs will get a free vote on a no-deal Brexit.
That means they can vote with their conscience rather than following the orders of party managers - an unusual move for a vote on a major policy, with Labour saying it showed she had "given up any pretence of leading the country".
The PM had made a last minute plea to MPs to back her deal after she had secured legal assurances on the Irish backstop from the EU.
But although she managed to convince about 40 Tory MPs to change their mind, it was not nearly enough to overturn the historic 230 vote defeat she suffered in January, throwing her Brexit strategy into fresh disarray.
In a statement after the defeat, Mrs May said: "I continue to believe that by far the best outcome is the UK leaves the European Union in an orderly fashion with a deal.
"And that the deal we have negotiated is the best and indeed only deal available."
Setting out the next steps, she said MPs will vote on Wednesday on whether the UK should leave the EU without a deal or not.
If they vote against a no-deal Brexit, they will vote the following day on whether Article 50 - the legal mechanism taking the UK out of the EU on 29 March - should be extended.
Mrs May said MPs would have to decide whether they want to delay Brexit, hold another referendum, or whether they "want to leave with a deal but not this deal".
She said that the choices facing the UK were "unenviable", but because of the rejection of her deal, "they are choices that must be faced".
Mrs May also told MPs the government would announce details of how the UK will manage its border with Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday.
Mrs May said leaving without a deal remained the UK's default position but Downing Street said she will tell MPs whether she will vote for no-deal when she opens Wednesday's Commons debate on it.
The prime minister did not discuss resigning after her latest defeat because a government led by her had recently won a confidence vote in the Commons, added the PM's spokesman.
She has no plans to return to Brussels to ask for more concessions because, as she told MPs, she still thinks her deal is the best and only one on offer, he added.
What isn't clear is how the prime minister actually intends to dig herself out of this dreadful political hole.
Some of her colleagues around the Cabinet table think it shows she has to tack to a closer deal with the EU.
Some of them believe it's time now to go hell-for-leather to leave without an overarching deal but move to make as much preparation as possible, and fast.
Other ministers believe genuinely, still with around two weeks to go, and an EU summit next week, there is still time to try to manoeuvre her deal through - somehow.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister should now call a general election.
"The government has been defeated again by an enormous majority and it must accept its deal is clearly dead and does not have the support of this House," he told MPs.
He said a no-deal Brexit had to be "taken off the table" - and Labour would continue to push its alternative Brexit proposals. He did not mention the party's commitment to back another referendum.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of Brexiteer MPs, said "the problem with the deal was that it didn't deliver on the commitment to leave the EU cleanly and that the backstop would have kept us in the customs union and de facto in the single market".
The Tory MP, who voted against Mrs May's deal, told BBC News: "The moral authority of 17.4 million people who voted to leave means that very few people are actually standing up and saying they want to reverse Brexit. They're calling for a second referendum, they're calling for delay.
"But actually very few politicians are brave enough to go out and say they want to overturn the referendum result."
Leading Conservative Remainer Dominic Grieve, who backs another referendum, said Mrs May's deal was now "finished".
The Tory MP, who voted against the prime minister's plan, said he was confident the majority of MPs would now vote against a no-deal Brexit - and he hoped they would then vote to ask for an extension to Article 50.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said in a tweet: "The EU has done everything it can to help get the Withdrawal Agreement over the line. The impasse can only be solved in the UK. Our 'no-deal' preparations are now more important than ever before."
A spokesman for European Council president Donald Tusk echoed that message, saying it was "difficult to see what more we can do".
"With only 17 days left to 29 March, today's vote has significantly increased the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit," added the spokesman.
The EU would consider an extension to Brexit if the UK asked for one, he added, but the 27 other EU member states would expect "a credible justification" for it.
The PM's deal was defeated by 391 to 242.
Some 75 Conservative MPs voted against it, compared with 118 who voted against it in January.
The Democratic Unionist Party's 10 MPs also voted against the deal, as did the Labour Party, SNP and other opposition parties.
Three Labour MPs - Kevin Barron, Caroline Flint and John Mann - voted for the prime minister's deal.

Attempts to keep the UK in the European Economic Area after Brexit have been defeated in the House of Commons despite dozens of Labour MPs defying the leader's instructions on the issue.
MPs voted by 327 to 126 against a House of Lords proposal for a close relationship with the EU like Norway's.
Jeremy Corbyn urged his MPs to abstain but 75 voted for and 15 against, while six quit their Labour roles.
MPs overturned six further amendments peers had put forward.
MPs were deciding whether the UK should stay part of the European Economic Area after it leaves the EU - a similar arrangement to non-EU countries Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Like EU members, these countries are part of the EU single market - in return they are obliged to make a financial contribution and accept many EU laws. The free movement of people also applies in the zone as it does in the EU.
Supporters of the EEA argue it would give the UK the closest possible relationship with the EU without actually being a member, as it would offer full access to the single market.
But critics say it would require the UK to adhere to EU rules without having a say in them - and would not be in keeping with the spirit of the 2016 referendum result.
After the House of Lords altered the government's EU Withdrawal Bill in favour of EEA membership, the House of Commons agreed to change it back on Wednesday evening.
The government won the vote comfortably after Labour abstained, although three Tory MPs, Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve, rebelled themselves and backed the motion.
Jeremy Corbyn said EEA membership was "not the right option" for Britain but that he understood the difficulties the issue posed for MPs representing strongly Leave or Remain constituencies.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Labour MP Laura Smith defended her decision to quit as shadow defence minister because she did not want to follow the leader's instruction to abstain.
The MP for Crewe and Nantwich said she wanted to oppose the Lords amendment, saying remaining part of the EEA was not in the interests of her constituents who had voted to leave the EU in 2016.
Ms Smith, who backed Remain in the referendum, said there were "legitimate reasons" why people had backed Brexit, adding: "The country is divided on this issue and we need to start bringing people together."
On the other side of the debate were her Labour colleagues Ged Killen, Tonia Antoniazzi, Anna McMorrin, Ellie Reeves and Rosie Duffield who stepped down as parliamentary private secretaries to support EEA membership.
In her resignation letter to Mr Corbyn, Ms Reeves said her Lewisham West and Penge constituency had voted by two to one to stay in the EU and hundreds had contacted her in support of staying part of the EEA.
Earlier, Labour failed in an attempt to amend the bill with their own alternative motion to guarantee "full access" to European markets after Brexit from outside the EEA. This was defeated by 322 votes to 240..
By political editor Laura Kuenssberg
A wiser head than me - there's dispute over whether it was Mark Twain or Bismarck! - once remarked that laws are like sausages, if you respect them it's best not to watch them being made.
Well the last 48 hours in Westminster may give weight to that. Farce? Fiasco? Or maybe today in Parliament has been in the best tradition of British pantomime.
Or perhaps, this is in fact the completely predictable agony of split political parties, with leaders who struggle to command their troops, just trying to make it through after a huge vote that by its very nature, split the country in two.
The government is trying to pass a new law, called the EU Withdrawal Bill, which it says is needed to ensure a "smooth and orderly Brexit".
Its main purposes are to end the supremacy of EU law in the UK, and transfer existing EU law into UK law so the same rules and regulations apply on the day after Brexit.
But as it passes through Parliament, MPs and peers have been trying to change it, in some cases adding bits on that would change the government's Brexit strategy.
MPs also overturned other changes made to the bill by the Lords, including a requirement for ministers to set out steps to negotiate a customs union with the EU.
The government agreed a compromise with potential Tory rebels earlier this week to work towards a "customs arrangement" with the EU. This won the support of the Commons by 325 votes to 298.
Other changes insisted upon by the Lords relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, principles of EU law to be retained after Brexit and EU environmental principles were also removed.
In response to the votes, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable accused Labour of conspiring with the Conservatives to "wave through a hard Brexit".
But ministers did make one significant policy concession - on refugee policy after Brexit.
They accepted a proposal by Labour MP Yvette Cooper to widen the terms under which unaccompanied child refugees can be reunited with family members living in the UK.
The government had already agreed to allow unaccompanied children to claim asylum in the UK if it was deemed to be in their "best interests".
But, following Ms Cooper's intervention, ministers have agreed to drop a clause stating this could only happen if their family members already in the UK were over 18 years of age.
Solicitor General Robert Buckland said ministers had listened "very carefully" to the views of MPs from different parties and would amend the bill when it returns to the Lords next week.

Theresa May must honour "assurances" she's given that Parliament will get a bigger say on any final Brexit deal, pro-EU Tory MPs say.
The government averted a rebellion on the issue after a meeting between the PM and more than a dozen MPs.
One of the potential rebels, Dominic Grieve, warned there would be consequences for the government if not.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said a government source had told her no actual concessions had been agreed.
And a senior minister, Solicitor General Robert Buckland, said the government had only agreed to "further discussions" about the way in which they could make "a further step forward".
A group of MPs said on Tuesday they were offered, in a last-minute concession, real "input" if no deal with the EU was done by December.
Details of precisely what this will involve could emerge in the coming days when the EU Withdrawal Bill is due to return to the House of Lords.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March next year, after the referendum in 2016 when people voted by 51.9% to 48.1% to leave.
The government is trying to pass a new law, called the EU Withdrawal Bill, which it says is needed to ensure a "smooth and orderly Brexit".
Its main purposes are to end the supremacy of EU law in the UK, and transfer existing EU law into UK law so the same rules and regulations apply on the day after Brexit.
But as it passes through Parliament, MPs and peers have been trying to change it, in some cases adding bits on that would change the government's Brexit strategy.
Given that politicians, like the rest of the country, are divided on what Brexit should look like, this is posing problems for the government as it tries to get the bill through both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The government is currently trying to persuade MPs to undo most of the changes made by the House of Lords, and on Tuesday this involved a tussle over how much of a say Parliament will get if it does not like the deal struck between the UK and the EU.
The government does not want to give MPs and peers the power to say what sort of Brexit deal the UK should strike with the EU, saying this should be left to ministers.
When it came to the key vote, a group of Conservatives who had threatened to rebel agreed at the last minute not to defeat the government after public haggling between ministers and would-be rebels and a meeting between Mrs May and more than a dozen Tory MPs.
But it is not yet clear exactly what the MPs were offered and whether they are happy with what has since been said by ministers.
"I expect the government to honour its commitments and I expect the PM to honour her commitments and I have no reason to distrust the approach she took with us," one of the would-be rebels, Dominic Grieve, told the BBC's Newsnight.
Ahead of the vote Mr Grieve tried to broker a compromise between MPs and ministers which would apply if Parliament rejects the final UK-EU Brexit deal.
Under his proposals, the government would then have to seek MPs' approval for its plan of action through a motion in the House of Commons. It would also have to do this if no deal has been agreed by the end of November 2018.
Ministers have agreed to consider these suggestions - but not a third strand of his proposals which would require the government to "follow any direction" from MPs if there is no deal by 15 February 2019.
Remain-supporting Conservatives Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan were two of the MPs to meet with Mrs May.
Ms Soubry said she trusted Mrs May to "honour the undertaking she gave".
Ms Morgan told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "What was agreed was the prime minister understood that Parliament wants to have a real say, in all circumstances, in relation to what's going to happen in the Brexit deal."
Politics is often about the big picture, but sometimes it is a festival for pedants.
Believe me, in Westminster, there is a very very big difference between the promise of more serious chat about something with the possibility of a change - and a promise actually to do something different, especially if it is made by the occupant of Number 10.
So just hours after the concession, (or non-concession) very, very dark mutterings began from those who had been persuaded by what they thought was a promise.
Read Laura's full blog
Eurosceptic MPs have criticised moves to give Parliament more power as Brexit approaches, saying this would be used to "wreck" the UK's EU departure.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, a leading Brexit backer, said the concessions could "come back to haunt" the government if they amounted to a veto over the terms of the UK's departure.
He told the BBC that rebels were seeking a "wrecking motion", stating: "It not only has the risk of stopping Brexit, it is certainly going to make the negotiating position of the government considerably diminished.
"It is hugely irresponsible, and I can't believe that those that are perpetrating this don't know exactly what they are doing. And, for me, it's a betrayal of the British people."
The EU Withdrawal Bill is now back in the House of Commons, with MPs debating the rest of the Lords amendments.
These include a requirement to seek membership of the European Economic Area - an arrangement like Norway's that would keep the UK part of the EU single market. This is opposed by both the Conservative and Labour leaderships, despite the backing of some pro-EU MPs in both parties.
There is also an amendment requiring the government to report to Parliament on steps taken to negotiate a customs union with the EU.
The government has rejected this one too, and has proposed an alternative amendment referring to a new "customs arrangement" which was thought to have averted the possibility of a rebellion on that subject.
Tempers flared in the Commons as MPs discussed immigration, with Speaker John Bercow appealing to members to "respect" each other's arguments.
Ms Soubry said she was "appalled" at a speech from Labour's Caroline Flint and accused her of not appreciating the value of immigrants.
Ms Flint had argued for new immigration controls, saying people wanted to be able to "turn the tap on and off when we choose".
She said she was not against all immigration but that her constituents wanted a "fair and managed system".
Earlier some MPs claimed an amendment passed on Tuesday night could have implications for the government's preferred trade options after Brexit.
Labour's Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer highlighted the amendment, which committed the government to avoiding any "physical infrastructure, including border posts, or checks and controls" in Northern Ireland after Brexit.
He said this meant one of the government's proposals for replacing the customs union - a technology-based solution to minimise border delays - could be "unlawful" if it involves any border infrastructure checks.
Dominic Grieve agreed, saying: "Not only will we have to stay in a form of customs arrangement amounting to a union, but we're also going to have to have a high level of regulatory alignment because otherwise the life that takes place along the border will be impossible because of different regulations on either side."
Labour's whips' office said it expected eight votes to take place from 19:30BST.

MPs have set out details of their plan to consider other Brexit options, as Theresa May was warned more ministers could quit unless she changes course.
The Commons will begin voting on alternatives on Wednesday, in a process likely to continue into next week.
MPs will fill out a series of ballots testing support for different ideas.
Ex-minister Alistair Burt said the PM must recognise a "different answer" was now needed but ex-Brexit secretary David Davis warned of impending chaos.
As MPs seek to take the initiative from the government, there are signs that some Tory opponents of Mrs May's deal could be steeling themselves to back it if it returns to the Commons for a third time later this week.
Prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg indicated that he could be persuaded, given it now appeared to be a choice between her deal and no Brexit at all.
Ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told the BBC there was "no point" supporting Mrs May's deal "without any sign the UK is going to change its approach in phase two" of the negotiations - otherwise he feared the country would be indefinitely tied to the EU's rules.
But BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the not very subtle subtext of Mr Johnson's remarks was "if the PM promises to go soon, then she might get my vote."
MPs took the unprecedented step of voting to seize control of the parliamentary timetable on Monday, in an attempt to end the deadlock over the terms of the UK's exit.
Groups are now putting forward a variety of different options for the UK's future relationship with the EU.
Several of these are based on the assumption that the existing withdrawal agreement with the EU will be approved, albeit with changes to the controversial Northern Ireland backstop.
Others call for a basic free trade agreement with the EU and another referendum on whether Brexit goes ahead. It will be up to Commons Speaker John Bercow to decide what is voted on.
According to a copy of a business motion released by Labour's Hilary Benn, there will be about five hours of debate on different options.
Voting by paper ballot will take place at about 19:00 GMT, with the results announced by Mr Bercow later that evening.
The process is likely to continue on Monday as MPs seek to whittle down options which could command majority support in Parliament.
The government has until 12 April to propose a different way forward to the EU if it cannot get the current agreement through Parliament.
There is a very strange mood around the place in Westminster, ahead of what could be a very messy and tricky day tomorrow.
MPs will spend much of Wednesday voting on different versions of Brexit. But the government is even at odds with itself over whether they should be given free rein to do so.
One source told me 19 ministers are ready to quit if they aren't allowed to have their say, which could, hypothetically at least, collapse the government itself.
Mr Burt, one of three ministers who quit on Monday to back the so-called "indicative votes" plan, said he still backed the prime minister's deal but she had a duty to look at other options.
"My advice to the prime minister would be to recognise that her duty now is perhaps to find a different answer than the one she has tried to find," he told Laura Kuenssberg.
But David Davis said the PM's deal was better than the alternatives and had a "decent chance" of getting through Parliament if put to the vote again.
"It's not a good deal but the alternative is a complete cascade of chaos," he said. "You are seeing proposals being put up which are all worse than hers."
The PM has signalled she will try to bring her deal, which has been heavily rejected twice, back to the Commons for a third time later this week but only if she believes she can win.
The Democratic Unionists, whose 10 MPs prop up Mrs May's government, urged Tory MPs to "stand firm" in their opposition unless there were "significant changes".
Tuesday: Theresa May met her cabinet. Tuesday had been considered as a possible day for the so-called third meaningful vote on Mrs May's withdrawal deal. But, on Monday, the PM said the deal did not have enough support to get through the Commons "as things stand".
Wednesday: This is when indicative votes will be held - we don't know yet whether MPs will be free to vote how they want or be directed along party lines. The prime minister is also due to address the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers. MPs will also vote on changing the Brexit date in UK law from 29 March.
Thursday: A possible opportunity for meaningful vote three. The prime minister may hope that Brexiteers will finally decide to throw their weight behind her deal.
Friday: This is written into law as the day the UK leaves the EU, although the PM has said she will pass legislation this week to remove it. The earliest Brexit is likely to happen is now 12 April.

Theresa May is giving MPs another chance to vote on Brexit in early June - whether or not the government and Labour have reached a deal by then.
A vote on the bill that would pave the way for Brexit was "imperative" if the UK was to leave the EU before MPs' summer recess, Downing Street said.
Labour sources say they will not back the bill without a cross-party deal.
If Mrs May's plan is defeated, Number 10 said the UK is set for no deal or for Article 50 to be revoked.
That is because the EU will not grant a further extension beyond 31 October, says BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay also said the deal the PM negotiated with the EU would be "dead" if the bill did not pass.
Attempts to find a cross-party compromise began after Mrs May's Brexit deal was rejected three times by MPs.
But government sources have told the BBC that there would not be a further attempt if the plan is rejected.
The vote - which will take place when MPs return from half-term recess - would bring the withdrawal agreement into UK law via the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
The prime minister has negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the EU, which MPs have effectively rejected three times in Commons votes.
No 10 described Tuesday evening's discussions between Mrs May and Mr Corbyn on Brexit as "both useful and constructive".
Mrs May had made clear the government's "determination to bring the talks to a conclusion and deliver on the referendum result to leave the EU", a spokesman said.
A Labour party spokesman said Mr Corbyn had "raised doubts over the credibility of government commitments, following statements by Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers seeking to replace the prime minister".
He said the Labour leader had called for "further movement" from the government and the prime minister's team would bring back "further proposals tomorrow".
Bringing the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill forward would allow the prime minister to push ahead with her ambition of delivering Brexit before the summer - despite the lack of agreement so far in the cross-party talks, said BBC political correspondent Iain Watson.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said: "It is now time for Parliament to make a decision, reflecting the manifestos of both the Conservative and Labour parties at the last general election and to deliver Brexit in the way that the public were promised."
In the 2017 general election, the two main parties promised in their manifestos to respect the result of the Brexit referendum.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said that if MPs do not vote for the government's Brexit plan next month, then it will "take us to either the potential of revocation of Article 50 or leaving without a deal".
He said MPs will have to decide "if they want to vote for Brexit or not".
Brexiteer and Conservative MP Steve Baker said bringing the bill forward "over the heads" of DUP MPs - on whom the government relies for a majority - would "eradicate the government's majority".
"What is the government thinking?" he asked.
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds said: "If the prime minister brings the withdrawal bill to the Commons for a vote, the question will be, 'What has changed?'.
"Unless she can demonstrate something new that addresses the problem of the backstop, then it is highly likely her deal will go down to defeat once again."
The backstop is the controversial part of the withdrawal deal that aims to ensure an open border on the island of Ireland if the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal.
It's not exactly the same thumbs up or thumbs down that another meaningful vote would be. That is a straightforward yes or no to the divorce deal that the prime minister negotiated with the EU.
This time, it will be the Withdrawal Bill which is a whole tome of new laws that will be needed to take us out of the European Union.
The draft of that bill is still being kept under wraps. Very, very few people have seen it. It's much more detailed than just a vote on the agreement would be.
Of course, that gives people more things to object to.
Although Theresa May might have pleaded in cabinet that people on all sides have to move away from absolutism, and move to a mood of compromise, there's not much sign of it.
As and when that bill actually emerges, that may well - in the words of one cabinet minister - make things worse before they can get better.
The UK needs to pass a law to implement the withdrawal agreement - the part of the PM's Brexit deal which will take the country out of the EU - in UK law.
This is a requirement under the terms of previous Brexit legislation passed last year.
The legislation would make the citizens' rights part of the agreement directly enforceable in UK courts, and set their relationship with the EU's Court of Justice.
It will also allow ministers to make "divorce payments" to the EU foreseen under the current deal, and give effect to the so-called backstop plan for the Irish border.
MPs will be able to vote on amendments to the bill, and this could allow ministers to make good on any compromise they reach with Labour in the cross-party talks.
If the bill is introduced in the first week of June it will come seven days after the European Parliament elections -  which Education Secretary Damian Hinds has acknowledged could be "difficult" for the Conservatives.
A state visit by US President Donald Trump and a by-election in Peterborough will also take place that same week.

MPs who do not want the UK to leave the EU without a deal are trying to limit the government's financial powers in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The House of Commons will vote shortly on a cross-party amendment to the Finance Bill, which enacts the Budget.
Several senior figures back the move, but International Trade Secretary Liam Fox called it "irresponsible".
No 10 said it would not stop tax being collected, describing the MPs' move as "more inconvenient than significant".
Downing Street said the amendment, which could be voted on about 19.00 BST, was "not desirable" and Mrs May was striving to get her deal through Parliament.
Meanwhile, minister Richard Harrington said he is prepared to resign to stop the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Harrington suggested to BBC Newsnight that others might follow suit, saying his position was "not an uncommon one".
MPs will seek to turn the screw on ministers with Tuesday's amendment, which is intended to demonstrate to the government the strength of opposition to a no-deal Brexit in the Commons.
If passed, it would mean the government would not be able to raise certain taxes and take other financial steps arising from a no deal - unless Parliament had explicitly authorised the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March whether there is a deal or not.
The deal which Prime Minister Theresa May has negotiated with the EU - which covers the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU - has not been formally approved.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper who, along with Conservative Nicky Morgan, is behind the amendment, said Parliament must act now to rule out a no-deal Brexit in the event of Mrs May's agreement being voted down next week and MPs being unable to agree any other course of action before the UK's exit in March.
She told the BBC: "There is a risk that we end up with no deal by accident, as a result of brinkmanship, delays and drift.
"That's why Parliament has to be sensible and say 'we have to rule out the worst option, the kind of damaging deal that would hit manufacturing industry and would also put our police and security at risk as well".
Labour have said they will back the amendment, prompting speculation that ministers will be forced to accept it in order to avoid a damaging defeat.
But Mr Fox, who backs Mrs May's deal, said it would be "irresponsible to tie the government's hands" at this stage by ruling out any options.
Speaking at a technology fair in California, Mr Fox said it would not take the possibility of a no-deal exit off the table.
"The government has to ensure that all eventualities are covered," he said. "It maybe that we cannot get agreement with the EU and that we have to leave without an agreement in which case the UK has to be prepared."
In other Brexit developments:
MPs will vote on 15 January on whether to accept the legally-binding terms of withdrawal negotiated by Mrs May, as well as a framework of future relations with the EU. Five days of debate in the Commons will begin on Wednesday.
The prime minister has said the UK will be in "uncharted territory" if the deal is not accepted although she has not ruled out asking the Commons to vote on it on several times prior to the 29 March deadline.
Mr Harrington, a minister in the business department, told Newsnight he was confident that Britain would leave the EU with a deal as the stark reality facing the UK became clear.
"We will not be leaving with no deal," he said. "I think people are beginning to realise that it's the prime minister's deal or there may not be a Brexit."
Asked whether he was prepared to resign to stop a no-deal Brexit, he replied: "Definitely, I would... The prime minister knows everybody's views and I think my view is not an uncommon one."
Another minister, Margot James, suggested on Monday that Brexit may have to be delayed and negotiations extended under the Article 50 process if Parliament could not agree on the terms of withdrawal.
The vote on the cross-party amendment is expected at about 19:00 GMT.
Government sources warned over the weekend of "paralysis" and an effective "shutdown" if the Treasury was stripped of the power to pass regulations relating to "no-deal financial provisions" without parliamentary approval.
One leading tax expert said ministers would still be able to make tax changes by introducing new clauses into future Finance Bills or introducing emergency legislation but would find it much "more cumbersome".
"Even if the clause were passed and there was a no-deal Brexit, the system could still function," Andrew Hubbard, a consultant at audit, tax and consulting firm RSM said.
"But there is no doubt that if the clause were passed, it would represent a huge challenge to the authority of the government and increase further pressure to find a negotiated way out of the current deadlock."

MPs have voted by 413 to 202 - a majority of 211 - for Prime Minister Theresa May to ask the EU for a delay to Brexit.
It means the UK may not now leave on 29 March as previously planned.
Mrs May says Brexit could be delayed by three months, to 30 June, if MPs back her  deal in a vote next week.
If they reject her deal again then she says she will seek a longer extension - but any delay has to be agreed by the 27 other EU member states.
Most Conservative MPs voted against delaying Brexit - including seven cabinet members - meaning Mrs May had to rely on Labour and other opposition votes to get it through.
But some Labour frontbenchers resigned to defy party orders to abstain on a vote on holding another referendum.
Shadow housing minister Yvonne Fovargue, shadow education minister Emma Lewell-Buck, shadow business minister Justin Madders, Ruth Smeeth, a shadow ministerial aide, and Labour whip Stephanie Peacock, all quit their roles to oppose one.
Theresa May, who has long insisted that the UK will leave the EU on 29 March with or without a withdrawal deal, voted to delay Brexit.
She had been forced to offer MPs a vote on delaying Brexit after they rejected her withdrawal agreement by a large margin, for a second time, and then voted to reject a no-deal Brexit.
She has warned that extending the departure date beyond three months could harm trust in democracy - and mean that the UK would have to take part in May's European Parliament elections.
Downing Street said the government was still preparing for a no-deal Brexit.
Theresa May is planning to hold another "meaningful vote" on her withdrawal deal by Wednesday - after it was overwhelmingly rejected on two previous occasions.
If she wins that vote, she will ask for a one-off extension to Brexit get the necessary legislation through Parliament at an EU summit on Thursday - if not she could ask for a longer extension.
A spokesman for the European Commission said extending Article 50, the mechanism taking the UK out of the EU on 29 March, would need the "unanimous agreement" of all EU member states.
And it would be for the leaders of those states "to consider such a request, giving priority to the need to ensure the functioning of the EU institutions and taking into account the reasons for and duration of a possible extension".
It is still technically possible that we could leave the EU at the end of this month - the law has not changed.
But politically it is now almost entirely out of reach.
The prime minister is accepting she will miss one of the biggest targets she has ever set herself.
Tonight's vote is awkward for another reason, as it again displays the Conservatives' fundamental divisions.
This is more than a quarrel among friends, but a party that is split down the middle on one of the most vital questions this administration has posed, with cabinet ministers, as well as backbench Brexiteers, lining up to disagree with Theresa May.
Downing Street said this was a "natural consequence" of Mrs May's decision to offer a free vote on an issue where there are "strong views on all sides of the debate".
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss tweeted: "I voted against a delay to Brexit. As a delay was passed by Parliament, I want to see deal agreed ASAP so we can minimise to short, technical, extension."
Seven cabinet ministers - Ms Truss, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson - voted against the government motion.
Health Secretary Matthew Hancock said it would be "extremely difficult" but "still possible to deliver Brexit on 29 March with a deal".
He said there were now two options: "To vote for the deal and leave in orderly way or a long delay and I think that would be a disaster."
MPs earlier rejected an attempt to secure another Brexit referendum by 334 votes to 85.
And they also rejected a cross-party plan to allow MPs to take control of the Brexit process to hold a series of votes on the next steps, by the narrow margin of two votes.
Following the votes, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reiterated his support for a further referendum after earlier ordering his MPs not to vote for one.
He said: "Today I reiterate my conviction that a deal can be agreed based on our alternative plan that can command support across the House.
"I also reiterate our support for a People's Vote - not as a political point-scoring exercise but as a realistic option to break the deadlock."
Labour abstained when MPs voted on the referendum proposal, tabled by Independent Group MP Sarah Wollaston, arguing that now was not the right time to push for a public vote.
But 17 Labour MPs defied party orders and voted to oppose another referendum - while 24 Labour MPs rebelled to vote in favour of one.
Among frontbenchers to quit over the issue, Ms Peacock said: "It is with deep regret I tonight resigned from Labour's front bench, because I believe we should respect the result of the 2016 vote to leave the European Union."
Labour's plan to delay Brexit to allow Parliamentary time for MPs to "find a majority for a different approach" was defeated by 318 to 302 votes.

MPs have voted on the possible next steps for Brexit as they try to break the deadlock in Parliament.
Four options were chosen by the Speaker to be voted on, and results will be announced later.
Labour MPs were urged to back a plan to keep the UK in a Norway-style relationship with the EU.
Under the Common Market 2.0 proposal, the UK would leave the EU, but retain freedom of movement and make contributions to the EU budget.
In a letter to MPs, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn asked them to support the motion, as well as one for a customs union, to "break the deadlock and find the consensus necessary to force a change to the red lines of the prime minister's rejected deal".
The party have also been asked to support a motion calling for a confirmatory referendum on any deal agreed by Parliament - although some rebels may vote against it.
Conservative MPs were given a free vote on the motions - meaning they were not be told by party bosses which way to go - but the cabinet was told to abstain.
During the debate, 11 climate change activists staged a protest in the public gallery, taking their clothes off to reveal slogans painted on their bodies.
Police were called to remove them from the viewing platform.
The Common Market 2.0 motion - put forward by Tory MP Nick Boles - may also be backed by the SNP.
But the PM's spokesman said ending free movement was a "very important factor" for the public when voting for Brexit, so they would oppose it.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, speaking to the BBC's World at One programme, refused to say whether Labour's position on free movement had changed.
When asked if she was compromising on freedom of movement, she said "we are trying to pull the House of Commons together".
None of today's votes on the proposals are legally binding, meaning it will be up to the government if they act on the results.
Theresa May tried to get MPs to back the withdrawal agreement element of her deal on Friday, but lost by 58 votes - having already failed twice to get support for her overall deal in Parliament.
She now has until 12 April to either seek a longer extension to the deadline or decide to leave the EU without a deal.
The cabinet is now split over whether to move to a softer deal that could mean including a customs union in her plan.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC joining a customs union would be a "betrayal of Brexit".
The Speaker John Bercow picked four of the eight amendments put forward for debate:
He did not choose motions calling for a unilateral exit to the backstop, to leave on 12 April without a deal, to hold a referendum in the case of no-deal or to rejoin the European Free Trade Association.
You can MPs have voted on the proposals and were given a piece of paper listing all the options and tick "yes" or "no" on as many as they want.
The House is now suspended as MPs await the result of the vote. It took two hours for the votes to be counted before.
When MPs voted on proposals last week, all eight failed to win a majority in the Commons.
However, the plan for a customs union - allowing UK businesses to move goods around the EU without tariffs, but stopping the UK striking independent trade deals - and a confirmatory referendum came the closest.
A number of cabinet ministers have spoken out against the customs union proposal.
Mr Fox said that if the UK pursued it, the country would have to follow rules set by the EU, adding: "It's time we went back to a proper Brexit."
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said a customs union would "compromise" pledges the party made in their 2017 manifesto, while Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said ministers were "determined" to avoid that happening.
Meanwhile, Tory MP Huw Merriman has written to around 200 of his colleagues who have voted in favour of Mrs May's deal, appealing for them to back the confirmatory referendum motion to prevent the customs union option succeeding.
He said: "It is the only option which keeps the [PM's] deal alive and is not contingent on more EU negotiations."
Digital Minister Margot James also told BBC Two's Politics Live that she is thinking about changing her mind to back a confirmatory referendum.
Labour's Dame Margaret Beckett, who proposed the previous motion for a confirmatory public vote, said she was happy to vote for motions like a customs union, so it could attract scrutiny.
"But they're unlikely to command a stable majority in Parliament unless they are attached to much longer extension that allows enough time for them to be properly scrutinised and negotiated - while not precluding a new public vote," she said.

MPs have voted to take control of the parliamentary timetable in an unprecedented move to try to find a majority for any Brexit option.
The prime minister was dealt a fresh blow as the government was defeated by 329 votes to 302, setting up votes on Wednesday to find out what kind of Brexit has most support among MPs.
Theresa May has said there is no guarantee she will abide by their wish.
Thirty Tory MPs voted against the government, including three ministers.
Richard Harrington, Alistair Burt and Steve Brine resigned to join the rebels, with Mr Harrington accusing the government of "playing roulette with the lives and livelihoods" of Britons.
Former industry minister Mr Harrington said: "It's absurd that now we are in a position of political impasse and... Parliament hasn't actually talked about it on the floor of the House of Commons. That's what I call a democratic deficit."
Mrs May had tried to head off a defeat by offering MPs a series of votes on Brexit alternatives, organised by the government.
She said allowing MPs to take over the Commons agenda would set an "unwelcome precedent".
But supporters of Conservative backbencher Sir Oliver Letwin's cross-party amendment said they did not trust the government to give MPs a say on the full range of Brexit options.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was among them. He said the government "must take the process seriously".
He added: "The government has failed and this House must, and I believe will, succeed."
He said MPs would want to find a consensus on the way forward, including a possible "confirmatory vote" on the PM's deal by the public - something Mrs May told MPs earlier she did not want because Remain would be on the ballot paper.
MPs involved in the bid on Monday night say if there is a majority for a plan that's not the prime minister's deal then there would be "uproar" if Theresa May tried to ignore it.
It is possible, of course, that Brexiteers who have been resisting the prime minister's deal so far take fright at Parliament having more control of the process, and are more likely to come in line.
That's because, generally, the make-up of MPs are more likely to back a softer deal than the one on offer.
So faced with the choice of Theresa May's compromise this week, or a much longer wrangle to a closer relationship with the EU than the prime minister has negotiated, it is not impossible that the numbers will move in her favour.
Read Laura's blog
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer tweeted: "Another humiliating defeat for a prime minister who has lost complete control of her party, her cabinet and of the Brexit process.
"Parliament has fought back - and now has the chance to decide what happens next."
Hilary Benn said MPs have to take responsibility for the Brexit process because the government is not doing its job.
Mr Benn, chairman of the Commons exiting the European Union committee, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If the government isn't going to do its job then Parliament is going to have to take responsibility, and that is what we are doing on Wednesday."
The SNP's Joanna Cherry said: "It isn't just Wednesday. Now that Parliament has control of the order paper... on Wednesday Parliament could award itself another day and so on and so forth.
"The consensus we are now trying to build is something Theresa May should have reached out to try to build two years ago."
Conservative former Brexit Minister Suella Braverman told the BBC's Newsnight it was "a Parliamentary massacre".
"MPs [in the House of Commons] where we know there is a majority against Brexit, who don't want to respect the referendum, who don't want to honour referendum pledges, are seeking to overturn that and it's unacceptable," she said.
Mr Harrington said in his resignation letter that as industry minister, he had been told the government approach was "resulting in cancelled investment decisions, business being placed abroad and a sense of ridicule for British businesses".
The MP said he thought it unlikely the Commons would back revoking Article 50, but another referendum to see "where the public are at" would be "very legitimate".
In a series of so-called indicative votes, MPs will be able to vote on a number of options - likely to include a "softer Brexit", a customs union with the EU and another referendum - designed to test the will of Parliament to see what, if anything, commands a majority.
But the precise format of the votes and how they will work was not set out in the amendment.
And the prime minister said she was "sceptical" about the process - as it was not guaranteed to produce a majority for any one course of action - and she would not commit the government to abiding by the result.
"The votes could lead to an outcome that is un-negotiable with the EU," she told MPs.
Parliament is expected to pass a law this week postponing the Brexit date from 29 March to at least 12 April.
A Department for Exiting the EU spokesman said that when considering Brexit options, MPs should take account of how long negotiating them would take and whether this would require a longer delay and the UK having to take part in European Parliamentary elections.
Those elections are taking place between 23 and 26 May. Both the British government and European Commission believe that if the UK has not exited the EU by the end of May it will be legally required to hold elections.
Mrs May remains committed to winning over MPs to the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with the EU.
She said on Monday it did not have enough support to get through the Commons "as things stand", but she still hoped to persuade enough MPs to back it so she could hold another vote on it this week.
The deal has already been rejected twice by a large margin - and the PM was forced to ask the EU for Brexit to be delayed.
On Monday the government was defeated on its main motion, as amended by Sir Oliver Letwin, by 327 votes to 300, a majority of 27.
The government narrowly defeated a bid by Labour's Dame Margaret Beckett to give MPs a vote on asking for another Brexit extension if a deal has not been approved by 5 April. Dame Margaret's amendment was voted down by 314 to 311, a majority of three.

MPs, including Tories expelled from the party, are preparing legal action in case the PM refuses to seek a delay to Brexit.
A bill requiring Boris Johnson to ask for an extension to the UK's departure date to avoid a no-deal Brexit on 31 October is set to gain royal assent.
But the PM has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask for a delay.
Legal experts have warned the prime minister could go to prison if he refuses to comply with the new law.
MPs have lined up a legal team and are willing to go to court to enforce the law to avoid no deal, if necessary.
Meanwhile, pro and anti-Brexit protesters held demonstrations in Westminster on Saturday, with some people arrested by police.
The cross-party bill - which requires the prime minister to extend the exit deadline until January unless Parliament agrees a deal with the EU by 19 October - was passed on Friday.
Although the government has said it will abide by the law, Mr Johnson described it as obliging him "in theory" to write to Brussels asking for a "pointless delay".
Downing Street said the British public had been clear that they wanted Brexit done.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told BBC News the party was not taking legal action over the legislation, but said it was "aware of the actions that are being discussed and prepared for".
He added that Labour would allow a general election "when we are clear that there will be an end to the danger of no-deal on 31 October".
"We need a clear statement from the prime minister that he is going to abide by that act of Parliament," Mr Corbyn said.
Meanwhile, clashes erupted between pro-Brexit protesters and police in Parliament Square in London.
Several hundred people joined pro and anti-Brexit demonstrations in Westminster.
Pro-leave protesters were seen throwing a metal barricade at officers, while others tried to break the police cordon.
Anti-Brexit MP Anna Soubry, who leads the Independent Group for Change, said she had been due to speak at the March for Change rally in London but told organisers she was too frightened to do so, after consulting with police.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said officers made 16 arrests in connection with the protests.
That included 13 arrests for violent disorder, one for possession of an offensive weapon, one for affray and one for a racially aggravated public order offence.
Some 35 other events were held across the UK and Europe, including a pro-democracy protest in Berlin.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the prime minister said seeking another extension is "something I will never do", fuelling speculation that ministers could try to find a loophole.
But David Lidington, who resigned as Cabinet Office minister in July, in opposition to Mr Johnson's no-deal Brexit strategy, told the BBC's Today programme: "The government is bound by the words of any statute that has been duly enacted by the Queen in Parliament, which is a fundamental principle of our constitution and our ministerial code.
"Defying any law sets a really dangerous precedent."
He added that at a time when other countries were "holding up alternatives to the rule of law and democratic government" it was imperative that British governments always demonstrate they comply with the law.
Mr Lidington, who supported the government in voting for an early general election, urged Mr Johnson to "re-double [his] efforts" in talking to a "wide range" of European leaders to get a Brexit deal he can put before Parliament in October.
Mr Johnson's options are "narrowing" after this week's Brexit defeats, says Dr Hannah White, deputy director of the Institute for Government.
Some possibilities being discussed are:
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve has warned the prime minister "could be sent to prison" if he refuses to obey the law and delay Brexit.
Mr Grieve told BBC News Mr Johnson would be "under an obligation" to abide by the law after it has received royal assent.
"If he doesn't, he can be taken to court which will if necessary issue an injunction ordering him to do it," he said.
"If he doesn't obey the injunction, he could be sent to prison."
Earlier the former director of public prosecutions Lord MacDonald told Sky News a refusal to delay Brexit in the face of court action "would amount to contempt of court which could find that person in prison".
One Tory MP said the idea of Mr Johnson ignoring the legislation was "nonsense".
Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, tweeted: "Even if it was under consideration, which I'm sure it's not, you would see a very significant number of Conservative MPs resigning the whip, including me."
A number of cabinet sources have told the BBC in recent days that they have significant concerns about Number 10's strategy.
It comes in the wake of a series of Parliamentary defeats for the government, beginning after Mr Johnson announced his decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks in September and October.
First, the prime minister lost control of the House of Commons agenda.
That allowed opposition MPs and rebel Tories to put forward the bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit, which Mr Johnson said "scuppered" his negotiations with the EU.
In response, the prime minister expelled 21 of his own MPs for rebelling against the government over the vote and then called for a general election.
But on Friday, Labour, the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Plaid Cymru jointly agreed to reject Mr Johnson's demand for a snap poll before the EU summit in mid-October.
The day before, the prime minister's younger brother, Jo Johnson, resigned as an MP and minister, saying he was "torn between family loyalty and the national interest".
According to the Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson wrote to Conservative Party members on Friday night, saying Labour MPs had "left us no choice" but to call for an election.
He said: "They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do."
No 10 said an election would allow the public to choose between the government's approach - Mr Johnson's commitment to leave on 31 October, either with a re-negotiated deal or no deal - and "more delay, more dither" from Labour.
But opposition MPs say they will only agree to an election when the extension to the Brexit deadline has been secured, to ensure the UK does not "crash out" without a deal.
The bill, presented by Labour MP Hilary Benn, says the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit.
Once this deadline has passed, he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020.
Unusually, the bill stipulates the wording of the letter Mr Johnson would have to write to the president of the European Council.
If the EU responds by proposing a different date, the PM will have two days to accept that proposal.
During that time, MPs - not the government - will have the opportunity to reject that date.
The bill also requires ministers to report to the House of Commons over the next few months. potentially providing more opportunities to take control of the timetable.

The Commons Speaker has refused a government request to hold a "yes" or "no" vote on its Brexit deal.
John Bercow said a motion on the deal had been brought before MPs on Saturday, and it would be "repetitive and disorderly" to debate it again.
Saturday's sitting saw MPs vote to withhold approval of Boris Johnson's deal until it has been passed into law.
The government said it was disappointed, but would go ahead with introducing the necessary legislation.
The prime minister's official spokesman added: "The Speaker has yet again denied us a chance to deliver on the will of British people."
The UK is due to leave the EU in 10 days, and while Mr Johnson and fellow EU leaders have agreed a new deal to allow that to happen, it cannot come into force until it is approved by both the UK and European parliaments.
The government has presented the law which would implement the Brexit deal to the Commons, and it will begin its parliamentary journey on Tuesday.
KEY POINTS: What's new in the deal?
PEOPLE'S VIEW: Do voters support the deal?
EXPLAINED: What is the Withdrawal Agreement Bill?
IN GRAPHICS:  What happens now?
The government wanted to hold a "yes" or "no" vote - a so-called "meaningful vote" - on its deal on Saturday, but MPs instead chose to back an amendment tabled by former Tory Sir Oliver Letwin, which said that could not happen until all necessary Brexit legislation was passed.
That legislation, called the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), has been introduced and will then have to go through full parliamentary scrutiny in both the Commons and the Lords - something which usually takes weeks rather than days.
But Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg announced plans to complete the Commons stages by the end of Thursday. He said the House would not sit on Friday.
The BBC's political editor said the government hoped to push the WAB through by getting MPs to sit until midnight on Tuesday and Wednesday - an aggressive timetable they may well reject.
MPs will vote on a so-called programme motion - which effectively approves or rejects that timetable - on Tuesday.
Labour's shadow Commons leader Valerie Vaz told MPs: "At every stage the government has been running scared of this House and democracy, and it's now attempting to force through a flawed Brexit deal which sells out people's jobs, rights and our communities."
The SNP's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, called on the government "not to bulldoze" the bill through Parliament and give time for "full scrutiny".
BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said the European Parliament would only vote on the Brexit deal when it had reached a stage where it could not be modified any further at Westminster.
Officials believe that means it is virtually impossible for MEPs to approve it this week, but they are open to an extraordinary session of parliament next week, he added.
I know reporters like me love prattling on about "crunch points". And I know there have been one or two instances of it being "crunch point postponed".
But this really now is it for a government trying to deliver Boris Johnson's proposed Brexit deal by 31 October.
The time frame is mega tight - passing a new law, through the Commons and Lords, by a week on Thursday.
Some want to crack on with it, some want to tweak it and some want to wreck it.
What happens in the next few days will determine whether the UK leaves the European Union a week on Thursday and in what way.
And it is likely to shape when the next general election is.
And, perhaps, who wins it.
No 10 was pushing for a second shot at a meaningful vote on Monday, but Mr Bercow told the Commons he would not allow it, and had come to that decision on the basis of a parliamentary convention dating back to 1604.
He cited Parliament's rulebook, Erskine May, which says a motion that is the same "in substance" as a previous one cannot be brought back during the course of a single parliamentary session.
The Speaker also said the circumstances around the motion had not changed, so his ruling was "necessary... to ensure the sensible use of the House's time and proper respect for the decisions that it takes".
But Tory MP and Brexiteer Sir Bernard Jenkin appeared to accused Mr Bercow of bias, saying it was "remarkable" how often the Speaker "pleased one lot and not the other".
"It is most unusual for a Speaker so often to prevent the government having a debate on the matters which the government wish put before the House," he added.
Fellow Tory David TC Davies said: "The only consistency one can find in your rulings is that they always seem to favour one side of the argument and never the government."
But Mr Bercow disagreed, adding: "The consistent thread is I try to do what I think is right by the House of Commons."
The Letwin amendment also meant Mr Johnson was required to ask for an extension to the Brexit deadline, according to the terms of the Benn Act.
The PM sent the necessary letter to the EU but did not sign it, and sent a second letter saying he thought a delay was a mistake.
The deal ditches the backstop - the controversial "insurance policy" designed to prevent a return to physical checks on the Irish border.
Instead it will, in effect, draw a new customs border in the Irish Sea, because goods which could then travel onwards to Ireland will have to pay a duty tax.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay told a Lords committee Northern Irish businesses would also have to complete export declarations to send any goods to the UK.
The whole of the UK will leave the EU customs union, meaning it could strike trade deals with other countries in the future.
But many MPs, including the prime minister's erstwhile allies the DUP, say treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK is unacceptable.
The Treasury Committee has asked the government for an updated analysis of how the new deal may affect the UK economy.
Responding on Monday, Chancellor Sajid Javid said the Treasury would "provide analysis at appropriate points", but it would depend on the next set of negotiations with the EU about the future relationship.
He added: "[But] trust in democracy, and bringing an end to the division that has characterised this debate over the past three years, is something that cannot be measured solely through spreadsheets or impact assessments, important though they are."
The committee's interim chairman, Labour's Catherine McKinnell, said "the dearth of relevant economic analysis" was "deeply concerning" and MPs were being expected to "vote blindly".
The WAB will give legal effect to the withdrawal deal, as well as any agreed transition period, and fulfils requirements on the rights of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit.
It will also allow ministers to make "divorce payments" to the EU foreseen under the current deal.
But MPs will be able to vote on amendments - changes or add-ons - to the bill.
Labour's shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer has said his party will push for a UK-wide customs union with the EU and single market alignment, and back moves to try to put the deal to a referendum.
But the PM's spokesman has reiterated the government's opposition to both proposals.
If the government cannot get the bill through Parliament, the default legal position is for the UK to leave without a deal on 31 October, but that will change if the EU grants an extension.
Monday - first reading - the bill will be introduced and its title read out, usually just a formality.
Tuesday - second reading - MPs' first chance to debate the bill and vote for its continued passage. If passed at second reading, committee stage begins the same day.
Wednesday and Thursday - committee stage - where detailed examination of the bill takes place and specific amendments - on a fresh referendum, for example - can be tabled and voted on. The bill then moves on to report stage, which offers further opportunities for amendments before it moves to third reading. This is MPs' final chance to debate the bill before voting on whether to approve it.
If approved, it then moves to the Lords to begin a similar scrutiny process.

European leaders have expressed sadness at the UK leaving the EU, with France's Emmanuel Macron emphasising Britain's "unrivalled ties" with the French.
Mr Macron said he was "deeply sad" while the EU's Guy Verhofstadt pledged to try and "ensure the EU is a project you'll want to be a part of again".
Celebrations and anti-Brexit protests were held on Friday night to mark the UK's departure.
Ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis said everyone would be a winner in the end.
The UK officially left the European Union on Friday at 23:00 GMT after 47 years of membership, and more than three years after it voted to do so in a referendum.
Brexit parties were held in some pubs and social clubs as well as in London's Parliament Square, as the country counted down to its official departure.
In Scotland, which voted to stay in the EU, candlelit vigils and anti-Brexit rallies were held.
In a message released on social media an hour before the UK left, Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to bring the country together and "take us forward".
"For many people this is an astonishing moment of hope, a moment they thought would never come," he said. "And there are many of course who feel a sense of anxiety and loss."
In an open letter to the British public, French President Mr Macron said he was thinking of the millions of Britons "who still feel deeply attached to the European Union".
"You are leaving the European Union but you are not leaving Europe," he said. "Nor are you becoming detached from France or the friendship of its people.
"The Channel has never managed to separate our destinies; Brexit will not do so, either."
Mr Macron also said the EU must learn lessons from the "shock" of Brexit, adding: "I am convinced therefore that Europe needs new momentum."
And he defended the way France acted in the Brexit negotiations, saying neither the French nor anyone else in the EU was "driven by a desire for revenge or punishment".
Meanwhile, the EU Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Mr Verhofstadt responded to a message which had been projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover by a pro-EU group.
"We will look after your star and work to ensure the EU is a project you'll want to be a part of again soon," he said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Davis - who quit as Brexit secretary in protest at former prime minister Theresa May's Brexit plan - said it would be a "fair race" to reach a trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020 but "it can be done".
The UK is aiming to sign a permanent free trade agreement with the EU, along the lines of the one the EU has with Canada, by the end of the transition period in December.
Mr Davis said reaching a deal was "not a charitable exercise, this is an exercise of both sides recognising their own best interests".
European leaders have warned that the UK faces a tough battle to get a deal by that deadline.
Mairead McGuinness, the vice president of the European Parliament, said progress to agree a trade deal "might be left to the very last minute".
"Normally in trade negotiations we're trying to come together," she told BBC Breakfast. "For the first time we're going try and negotiate a trade agreement where somebody wants to pull away from us. I can't get my head around that and I think it's going to be quite complicated."
We are separate after more than 40 years, but remember much of the status quo will hold for now - the UK and the EU, the awkward couple, finally divorced - but still sharing a house and the bills.
But what the prime minister hails as a new era, a bright new dawn, starts months of hard bargaining with our neighbours across the Channel.
Labour leadership hopeful Emily Thornberry said the exit talks were unlikely to go smoothly and said she expected the country would be "back in no-deal territory by the summer".
The shadow foreign secretary, speaking at an event in Bristol featuring the four Labour leadership candidates, said her party would need a Remain-backing leader who had been "on the right side of the argument all along".
However, the other three candidates - Keir Starmer, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy - said the party needed to move on from debates over Brexit.
Shadow business secretary Ms Long-Bailey said that Labour needed to make sure Boris Johnson negotiated the "best possible trade deal" that could help "rebuild our communities".
Whilst never the most enthusiastic member, the UK was part of the European project for almost half a century.
On a personal level, EU leaders tell me they'll miss having the British sense of humour and no-nonsense attitude at their table.
If they were to be brutally honest they'd have admitted they'll mourn the loss of our not-insignificant contribution to the EU budget too.
But now we've left the "European family" (as Brussels insiders sometimes like to call the EU) and as trade talks begin, how long will it take for warm words to turn into gritted teeth?
UK citizens will notice few immediate changes now that the country is no longer in the European Union.
Most EU laws will continue to be in force - including the free movement of people - until 31 December, when the transition period comes to an end.
Thousands gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit on Friday night, singing patriotic songs and cheering speeches from leading Brexiteers, including Nigel Farage.
The Brexit Party leader said: "This is the greatest moment in the modern history of our great nation."
Pro-EU demonstrators earlier staged a march in Whitehall to bid a "fond farewell" to the union.
Police in Whitehall arrested four men and also charged one man with criminal damage and being drunk and disorderly, while in Glasgow one man was arrested.
Meanwhile, other symbolic moments on a day of mixed emotions included:

Former Labour minister Lord Mandelson has urged peers not to "throw in the towel" when they debate legislation paving the way for Brexit.
He said the Lords should amend a bill to protect the rights of EU citizens to ensure a "meaningful" vote on the final deal before Britain leaves the EU.
He urged fellow Labour peers to show "strength and clarity" over the issue.
Conservative Justice Secretary Liz Truss said Brexit opponents were "fighting yesterday's battles".
The House of Lords - in which the government does not have an in-built majority - will start considering proposed legislation to leave the EU on Monday.
But the former Labour cabinet minister, EU Trade commissioner and Remain campaigner said the "verbal guarantees" the government were offering EU citizens in the UK were insufficient.
Lord Mandelson told the Andrew Marr programme that the Lords should "reinstate" the protections into the bill in the coming weeks.
"The government used its majority to bulldoze the legislation through the House of Commons," he said. "I hope it won't be so successful in the House of Lords," he said.
"At the end of the day the House of Commons, because it is the elected chamber, will prevail but I hope the House of Lords will not throw in the towel early."
But Ms Truss said leaving the EU was the "settled will" of the British people and the House of Lords needed to "get on" with the process.
She told Andrew Marr that once the UK formally notified the EU of its intention to leave by triggering Article 50, she believed the process was "irrevocable".
Earlier this month, MPs overwhelmingly backed a bill to empower Theresa May to begin the Brexit process. The PM wants to do this by the end of March but needs the approval of both Houses of Parliament first.
MPs rejected calls for the status of EU citizens living in the UK and a parliamentary vote on the final terms of exit to be explicitly guaranteed in the bill - although ministers have conceded the Commons will have its say and it fully expects citizens of other EU countries to be able to stay in the UK after Brexit pending negotiations.
Lord Mandelson also said some Leave voters who were having second thoughts at the government's "Brexit at all costs strategy" needed to have their voice heard.
But Ms Truss said Lord Mandelson was speaking as if the referendum "never happened".
She told Andrew Marr that the House of Commons had "conclusively" voted to trigger Article 50, with the majority of Labour MPs backing the government.
"The fact is it is a simple bill on whether we trigger Article 50," she said.
"The British people have voted for that and was clear in the referendum.
"The House of Lords now needs to get on with it. I fully expect the House of Lords will recognise the will of the people and the House of Commons."
Although she voted to remain in the EU last year, Ms Truss said there was now a "new reality" and if a similar vote was held in the future, she would vote to leave.
Tory backbencher Dominic Raab warned the Lords would face a backlash if it tried to hold up the Brexit process.
"Voters will not look kindly on unelected politicians seeking to obstruct both the result of the referendum, and the vote of their elected representatives in the House of Commons earlier this month," he said.

UK manufacturers prepared for Brexit by stockpiling raw materials at a record pace last month, a closely-watched survey has suggested.
The research, by IHS Markit/CIPS, found companies were stockpiling goods in January at the fastest pace in the survey's 27-year history.
Employment in the sector fell, and the survey warned that export orders were "near-stagnant".
It added that there was a risk of the sector slipping into recession.
Overall, the survey's Purchasing Managers' Index fell to 52.8 last month from 54.2 in December, which was a three-month low and the second weakest reading since July 2016.
While the figure above 50 still implies activity in the sector is expanding, IHS Markit/CIPS said manufacturing had made a "lacklustre" start to the year.
With two months to go until the UK is due to leave the EU, the lack of clarity over the terms of the UK's departure means firms are having to make contingency plans.
"The start of 2019 saw UK manufacturers continue their preparations for Brexit," said Rob Dobson, director at IHS Markit.
"Stocks of inputs increased at the sharpest pace in the 27-year history, as buying activity was stepped up to mitigate against potential supply-chain disruptions in coming months.
"There were also signs that inventories of finished goods were being bolstered to ensure warehouses are well stocked to meet ongoing contractual obligations."
An equivalent survey of eurozone manufacturers also found the sector struggling in the 19-nation bloc. The PMI reading of 50.5 for January indicated minimal growth and was the lowest reading since November 2014.
The eurozone survey also found new orders were falling at the fastest rate in nearly six years,
By Dharshini David, BBC economics correspondent
With clarity as yet elusive, manufacturers are intensifying efforts to prepare for a possible a no-deal Brexit. Both raw materials and finished goods are being stockpiled at an unprecedented rate, to avoid disruption to supply chains and gaps on warehouse and shop shelves.
So on the face of it, the overall PMI activity balance for this survey suggests greater manufacturing momentum last month in the UK than in  France or Germany.
But away from the buzz of stockbuilding, orders, particularly for export, are struggling.  Overseas customers may be more reluctant to order goods, in case they face delays or tariffs on delivery in the event of a no-deal.
This survey tends to be more volatile than official manufacturing figures. But there is increasing evidence of dwindling export demand in many sectors. Orders for British malting barley, for example, from the rest of the EU has dried up, as that crop could attract particularly steep charges.
The report referred to some UK supply chains as being "closer to breaking point"
It noted there had been "a marked slowdown" in the growth of new orders, and those companies that did report an increase in output "mainly linked this to stock-building activity".
"January also saw manufacturing jobs being cut for only the second time since mid-2016 as confidence about the outlook slipped to a 30-month low, often reflecting ongoing concerns about Brexit and signs of a European economic slowdown," said Mr Dobson.
"With neither of these headwinds likely to abate in the near-term, there is a clear risk of manufacturing sliding into recession."

Senior Cabinet ministers have insisted the UK is prepared to walk away from Brexit talks without a deal, on the second anniversary of the referendum.
Liam Fox said Theresa May was "not bluffing" over her threat to quit negotiations, while Boris Johnson called for a "full British Brexit".
It comes as anti-Brexit campaigners, who want the public to have the final say on the UK's departure, prepare to march in London later.
They say Brexit is "not a done deal".
People's Vote - which wants a referendum on any exit deal - said people must make their "voices heard" about the "damage" of leaving next year without agreement.
Speakers at the demo will include actor Sir Tony Robinson and campaigner Gina Miller, who fought a successful legal battle last year to ensure the UK could not trigger talks on leaving without the approval of Parliament.
The UK voted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1% in a referendum held on 23 June 2016.
The UK is due to leave on 29 March 2019, 46 years after it first joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner to the EU.
But the People's Vote campaign says this should happen only if the withdrawal deal negotiated by Mrs May and the other 27 EU members is approved in another public vote.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC it was in the interests of both sides to have a deal - but it was "essential" the EU understood that the UK could walk away if the terms offered were not good enough.
"The prime minister has always said no deal is better than a bad deal," Mr Fox said in an interview with the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg, which was recorded on Wednesday - before Friday's warning from Airbus that it might cease manufacturing in the UK in such a scenario.
"It is essential as we enter the next phase of the negotiations that the EU understands that and believes it... I think our negotiating partners would not be wise if they thought our PM was bluffing."
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary David Davis told the Daily Express the prime minister was going to get a "good deal" from Brussels and Brexit was going to be "fantastic".
"The best option is leaving with a good deal but you've got to be able to walk away from the table," he said.
And writing in the Sun, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson warned the prime minister not to allow "bog roll Brexit" that is "soft, yielding and seemingly infinitely long" - calling for a "full British Brexit" instead.
Mr Johnson said people "just want us to get on with it".
By BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley
Two years on from the referendum, there are two very different messages today.
One is that Brexit is not a "done deal".
That's the argument from the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable who will take part in a march in central London today.
On the other side, there is optimism and defiance from key Brexiteers like Boris Johnson.
Mr Johnson says the UK is confident and open.
The government firmly opposes a vote on the final deal - Mr Johnson believes people want the government to just get on with it.
Nine months before the UK is due to officially leave the EU, there are still very different visions.
Labour said Mr Fox's comments about a no-deal Brexit were the "height of irresponsibility".
"The next time Liam Fox parrots the slogan no deal is better than a bad deal he should give some thought to the 14,000 people who work for Airbus, and the thousands of other people who have jobs dependent on trade with Europe," said shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman.
Both the prime minister and Labour leader have rejected calls for another public vote, saying the will of the people expressed in the 2016 ballot was clear, although many Labour MPs now want another referendum.
Organisers of Saturday's demo say people "from all walks of life" will be present, demonstrating the "growing popular demand" for another vote.
Beginning in Pall Mall and ending outside the Houses of Parliament, the protest is part of a "summer of action" by campaign groups designed to increase pressure on Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
By taking the UK out of the EU's single market and customs union, they say the Conservative government "remains intent" on a so-called hard Brexit that will - they say - destroy jobs and damage public services.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Vince Cable, who will be at the march, told BBC Breakfast: "I think the public in general... do see there is a mess."
He added: "We've only got a year to go. And I think for the big companies that employ hundreds of thousands of workers in the UK... they want some clarity about what the trading relationships will be and there is absolutely none whatever."
But Conservative MP Peter Bone - who supports Brexit - said if there were a second vote, the leave campaign would win again.
"The vast, vast majority of people, whether they are Leavers or Remainers, just want us to get on and come out this dreadful European Union super-state," he said.
"There were 17.4 million people that voted for leave and if there are a few thousand in London complaining about it - that doesn't seem to really make much difference."
The government is giving Parliament a vote on the final deal, if one is reached, in the autumn - but it remains unclear what will happen if they reject it.

Tens of thousands of people have marched in central London to demand a final vote on any UK exit deal, on the second anniversary of the Brexit vote.
Organisers of the People's Vote march say Brexit is "not a done deal" and people must "make their voices heard".
Meanwhile, hundreds attended a pro-Brexit counter-protest.
It came as senior Cabinet ministers, including Liam Fox and David Davis, insisted the UK is prepared to walk away from talks without an agreement.
The protest is part of a "summer of action" by campaign groups designed to increase pressure on Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
The organisers have said that at least 100,000 people attended the march.
World War Two veteran Stephen Goodall, 96, led the pro-EU protesters as they headed from Pall Mall to Parliament Square.
There were boos from the crowd as the march approached Downing Street. After showing anger towards the PM, some began to chant "where's Jeremy Corbyn?"
Among those addressing the demonstrators was Gina Miller, who successfully campaigned to ensure the UK could not trigger talks on leaving without the approval of Parliament.
She said: "Together we must stand up, demand our voices are heard, demand a people's vote so that future generations can hear us say we did our bit we stood up and shouted for a country that's together, kinder, tolerant.
"This is not a time to be silent."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said Brexit was "not a done deal" and could be reversed, while Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas told the crowd that Brexit "will be a disaster for this country".
One of the rally organisers, James McGrory from pressure group Open Britain, said there should be "a choice between leaving with the deal that the government negotiates, or staying in the European Union".
Britain is due to leave on 29 March 2019, 46 years after it first joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner to the EU.
The government is giving Parliament a vote on the final deal, if one is reached, in the autumn - but it remains unclear what will happen if they reject it.
Jennifer Scott, BBC News
EU flags slowly filled Pall Mall all morning, and with chants of "people's vote" echoing alongside drum beats and whistles, the protesters made their way towards Parliament.
This protest was a family affair - young children alongside veterans in wheelchairs, and all ages in between.
One 69-year-old woman, Dodo Pearce, said she travelled from Derbyshire to protest for the first time in her life.
And I received an eloquent lecture from an 11-year-old on the problems she thought Brexit would bring.
Despite the cheery demeanour of the marchers, the conversations were less hopeful.
One person said: "If a million people couldn't march to stop Tony Blair going into Iraq, what chance have we got in getting a vote on the deal?"
Protester Colin Hopkins, 62, from Ipswich, said: "It's really important to say we don't dispute the decision, but the process and the destination.
"There isn't any agreement on where we want to go with it, even in the government, and we have a right to a second opinion on that."
Lesley Haas, a teacher from Bury St Edmunds, said: "What is their future? A lot of companies are leaving, so there is going to be an effect on jobs.
"I'm a German teacher and I'm worried the attitude of Brexit will make it harder to learn languages here. If it goes through, we may leave."
Janet Watts, 61, from Suffolk, said she joined the march for her mother - who is from Denmark and arrived in Britain in 1953.
"She had her passport stamped when she got off the boat at Harwich, telling her she could stay," she said. "That has been the same until this referendum happened.
"I think it is disgusting putting families at risk and putting her through this at the age of 83."
But Shazia Hobbs, who attended the pro-Brexit UK Unity and Freedom march, said: "That march is silly. We voted to leave so we should leave.
"What do they want, best of three? We voted for Brexit."
Demonstrators also chanted "we want our country back" and: "What do we want? Brexit. When do we want it? Now."
Conservative MP Peter Bone - who supports Brexit - said if there were a second vote, the leave campaign would win again.
"The vast, vast majority of people, whether they are Leavers or Remainers, just want us to get on and come out this dreadful European Union super-state," he said.
"There were 17.4 million people that voted for leave and if there are a few thousand in London complaining about it - that doesn't seem to really make much difference."

The UK's proposed "backstop" plan for trade with the EU after Brexit has been published after an "expected" end date - of 2021 - was included in it.
It followed crunch meetings between Prime Minister Theresa May and Brexit Secretary David Davis, who insisted a cut-off date be included.
The proposal would see the UK match EU trade tariffs temporarily in order to avoid a hard Irish border post-Brexit.
Brexiteers want to ensure the backstop could not continue indefinitely.
Responding on Twitter, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier set out the criteria on which he would judge the UK's proposal, including the need for a "workable solution" to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
The European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt went further, saying it was "difficult to see" how this could be achieved.
"A backstop that is temporary is not a backstop, unless the definitive arrangement is the same as the backstop," he added.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, and the government is trying to make progress before a crucial meeting of EU leaders later this month.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Mr Davis had "pushed back very hard" against the proposals on Wednesday and had two meetings with the prime minister on Thursday before a deal was agreed.
After the publication, Mr Davis's chief of staff said there had been a "helpful dialogue" and that the document had now been "clarified and amended".
According to the document - which has yet to be agreed with the EU - the "temporary customs arrangement", if it is needed, would be "time-limited".
A long-term "future customs arrangement" will be in place "by the end of December 2021 at the latest", it says.
Another cabinet Brexiteer Liam Fox, who also met the prime minister on Thursday, told the BBC: "As everybody knows from the referendum, opinions and feelings run high on this issue but we've shown we can reach an agreement civilly and collectively."
The Brexit secretary claimed a victory, but in Westminster what starts out as a "win" can, by morning, seem like a hollow victory, writes BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg.
Senior figures in government are questioning whether David Davis really achieved very much.
He may have saved face after making a huge fuss but look carefully at the concession he won, they say, and it doesn't really mean very much.
A few words here, a loosening up of the planned language there, perhaps the victory really was Theresa May's?
Read the rest of Laura's blog
The UK has said it will leave the EU's customs union, which allows trade within the EU without any tariffs or many border checks.
The UK and the EU are yet to agree how trade in goods will operate after Brexit - but they have said that a "backstop" option is needed in case no deal is done, or the technology is not ready in time, to avoid the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The UK has said that the EU's initial "backstop" proposal - effectively keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union - would create what amounted to a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and was not acceptable.
Instead, the UK is proposing a backup plan which would see the whole of the UK temporarily aligned with the EU's customs union after December 2020 - when the 21-month post-Brexit transition period ends.
The plan, which Theresa May has said would only apply in a "limited set of circumstances", would see the UK match EU tariffs in order to avoid border checks.
With the EU sceptical about the two options the UK has suggested to replace its membership of the customs union - and government ministers yet to agree which one to pursue - the backstop is "rapidly becoming the only option on the table", former Brexit minister David Jones told the BBC, "so it must be got right".
He said not having a firm time limit would be "damaging to the country": "It would tie us effectively into the the EU's customs arrangement for an indefinite period".
It would prevent the UK from having its own independent trade policy, he said - customs union members are not allowed to strike their own international trade deals.
It would also mean the UK was still under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, which would be unacceptable to most Conservative MPs, he added.
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
"Wow," gushed a European journalist to me the other day, "normally we look to Italy for political drama and uncertainty but the UK is making a pretty good show of it."
So dizzying and confused is the news coming out of the UK about how the EU-UK relationship could and should work after Brexit, that EU negotiators say they are forced to stand on the sidelines while the British government talks and argues with itself.
"It just can't work," an EU diplomat told me in exasperation this week. "Theresa May has so many nooses dangling around her neck that one of those nooses is sure to hang her."
Read Katya's blog
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming says the EU will apply a series of tests to any proposal about customs from the UK, including how it would interact with the EU's own customs policy, whether it would require the EU to change its rules, and what would happen when new ones were introduced?
The UK government said its latest proposals would deliver on a commitment, made in December, to avoid creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is an EU member.
In response, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said it was "vital" that a legally-binding backstop was found to prevent a hard border.
"Clearly, a great deal of work remains to be done and this needs to be the highest priority for all sides in the weeks ahead."
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, whose support Theresa May relies on for a Commons majority, welcomed the proposal, saying the EU's version of a backstop had been "totally unacceptable".
"We must also remember that the backstop will only be used as a last resort," said the DUP's Nigel Dodds.
"The focus must now be on getting a new trade deal."
Labour MP Hilary Benn, who chairs the Commons Brexit committee, said the government's plans would effectively keep the UK in a customs union with the EU beyond the end of 2020.

Isolated and apparently friendless, Theresa May is retreating to her natural comfort zone.
The prime minister is embarking on yet another push to see if she can win over Brexiteer Tories and the DUP to support an amended version of her Brexit deal.
A senior Tory tells me that May is acting on the advice of her chief whip, Julian Smith.
"The chief whip told the prime minister that if she relies on Labour votes to get her deal through she will split the party," the former frontbencher tells me.
"So she has to do it with Conservative and DUP votes. God knows how she does that."
Labour MPs have accused the prime minister of an irresponsible approach of putting party in front of country after she outlined her strategy in a cabinet conference call on Sunday.
The mood in Downing St appears to be pretty gloomy at the moment. But there are some signs of movement among Brexiteer Tories.
The senior Tory tells me: "The Brexiteers have over-reached themselves and are realising that their zealotry is endangering Brexit. So they need some ladders to climb down."
Ladders are not quite popping up around Westminster, but in the last 48 hours Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson have both indicated they could be more flexible than they appeared in the immediate aftermath of last week's vote.
In a Mail on Sunday article, Rees-Mogg identified the Northern Ireland backstop and the UK's £39bn payment to the EU as the "biggest obstacles". But then he indicated that he could live with the prime minister's deal if the alternative was no Brexit.
In his weekly Daily Telegraph column on Monday, Boris Johnson did not repeat his call of last week for the UK to cut back on the £39bn payment. He instead focused entirely on the Northern Ireland backstop. This is the mechanism to avoid a hard border by binding Northern Ireland closely to the EU if the UK and Brussels fail to agree a future relationship in time.
The former foreign secretary wrote: "Take that backstop out, or at the very least give us a legally binding change - within the text of the agreement - that allows for the UK to come out of its own accord, and then we will be able to say that the agreement is imperfect but at least tolerable."
So the prime minister could probably win over the two most prominent Tory Brexiteers on her backbenches if she managed to secure from the EU what she failed to achieve last year: a unilateral exit mechanism from the backstop.
Downing St is not holding its breath, even though Poland has indicated to the BBC that it supports a time limit to the backstop.
If a popular amendment on the backstop emerged from "clear blue sky" shortly before next Tuesday's Brexit vote, then the prime minister would be able to show the EU there is a deal that could pass, one Whitehall source says. But talks at Westminster will be held in the open well before next Tuesday, allowing the EU to "trash" such a proposal, according to my source - who says there is no sign that Brussels is backing away from its demand for an all weather backstop.
So there is little optimism in Downing St at the moment that the prime minister will eventually prevail. There appears to be a feeling that the prime minister is being buffeted by two forces: an EU which senses that Parliament might eventually take over, and a Parliament which looks increasingly likely to snatch decisive powers from the government.
"With the Speaker on the march there is probably little the government can do," one source laments.
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She was for budging. Today, the prime minister made her priority leaving the EU with a deal, rather than the happy contentment of the Brexiteers in the Tory party.
For so long, Theresa May has been derided by her rivals, inside and outside, for cleaving to the idea that she can get the country and her party through this process intact.
But after her deal was defeated at the hands of Eurosceptics, in the words of one cabinet minister in the room during that marathon session today, she tried delivering Brexit with Tory votes - Tory Brexiteers said "No". Now she's going to try to deliver Brexit with Labour votes. In a way, it is as simple as that.
That could mean, three cabinet sources suggest, accepting many of Labour's demands for the deal - those six tests, which it has often, frankly, been assumed were designed to be impossible to meet. Irony would ring out if in the end they were all delivered because of the desperation of the Tory prime minister.
One cabinet minister told me the offer to Labour is, "You want soft Brexit - here it is. You help shape it." Potentially, there are political smarts here - challenging Jeremy Corbyn to decide, finally, whether he leads a party that really is up for pushing through our departure from the EU, or a group that wants to fight it until its last breath. Either choice for him is complex given that his party is divided too.
And ministers tonight don't hold out huge hope of a genuinely productive cross-party process. Frankly, they don't know if they can trust Mr Corbyn enough to come to a genuine agreement that Labour would stick to.
Of course, for any opposition party the temptation might be always to play for political advantage. We know by now that is not necessarily exactly the same as the best interests of you and me.
And whether it's Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn who sinks this still hypothetical process, it will be Parliament that takes the reins. That could, in turn, challenge reluctant Brexiteers to confront the reality that the prime minister's deal could be the best version of Brexit they are ever going to get - maybe, just maybe, swinging support for Theresa May's withdrawal agreement in the end. Stranger things have happened.
But the prime minister has taken a huge risk with her party, and an implosion may stop any of this process in its tracks. There's what's described as "genuine fury" among Brexiteer ranks and ministers that the PM has made this choice. One senior Tory said she is "making an art form of bad misjudgements - this is not just a Rubens or a Van Gogh, it's the whole Tate Modern".
As ever, there is a very big gamble that has just become a real risk. The prime minister can reach out for support from the other parties - and compromise to get it - and ultimately maybe get her deal through. But if and when she is able to do that, her party may be so split and so fractious that she may not be able to govern or do anything, ever again.
If she were actually to strike some form of weird pact with the Labour Party over Brexit how long could it reasonably last? And how could it function and deliver a sustainable agreement when she has already said that she is leaving and another leader will soon be along to take charge of the second phase of Brexit?
Perhaps right now we can only answer one question that for so long Theresa May has avoided answering. When it came to it, would she choose party unity or leaving the EU WITH a deal? To the irritation of many, but the relief of others, she's chosen trying to get it done with a deal.

Why is Theresa May rushing to Brussels on Wednesday when she has a fair few political headaches to contend with back home, and when she's due back here in just a few days for the seal-the-deal Brexit summit of EU leaders?
The answer: the prime minister wants to show she is fighting until the very last moment to get the best Brexit deal possible out of the EU.
Her Wednesday afternoon visit to see Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, provides her with a floodlit platform to do so.
Now, the plan had been for the two leaders to discuss a draft text of the political declaration on post-Brexit EU-UK relations.
Mrs May wanted to push for even closer trade ties than the EU has been willing to concede so far without the UK staying in the single market.
Essentially she is very, very keen for her Chequers proposal for Brexit (viewed in EU circles as cherry-picking non plus ultra) to be reflected in the document.
However, the Brexit process has now got a lot more complicated - meaning that the draft text on EU-UK future relations hasn't been finished in time for the prime minister to pick over.
You see, it's no longer just a matter of Mrs May wanting more from the EU.
A number of EU countries are suddenly pushing for a lot more from the British prime minister. For France, it's about fishing rights; for Spain, it's about the status of Gibraltar.
Others, meanwhile, such as the Netherlands and Denmark, think she should be getting a whole lot less when it comes to the UK-wide customs union, envisaged as part of the backstop for the Irish border. They want the UK to be tied tighter to EU environment regulations, for example, to avoid UK business having a competitive advantage over Europeans.
As for the PM's Chequers plan for trade and security (much maligned back in the UK, too, of course), Germany has said loud and clear it won't allow the political declaration on future EU-UK relations to be a means of what Berlin describes as "Chequers by the back door".
It is highly unlikely that all this can be sorted out in just one meeting between Mrs May and the European Commission chief.
So the big question is: will the draft text on EU-UK future relations be ready by the end of the week to give EU leaders at least one day to digest it? Or are the stars aligning for a dramatic showdown between those leaders and the UK prime minister at their Sunday summit?
One EU diplomat predicted possible similarities with a nail-biting, marathon summit at the height of the Greek debt crisis.
During the all-night meeting, Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was invited to make his case to eurozone leaders on a number of occasions, before being sent out of the room to allow those leaders to decide the economic fate of his country amongst themselves.
EU rules do not allow Mrs May to negotiate Brexit with EU leaders directly. If a number of issues remain open on Sunday, their Brexit summit could turn out to be a lot, lot longer than the two-hour signing session and photo op originally envisaged.
The last question I'm going to ask in this post now is: could this all be more about optics than nitty-gritty politics?
Grumbling aside, no-one in European circles seriously thinks any EU country will refuse to sign up to the Brexit deal by end of play this weekend.
They're all keen to avoid a no-deal scenario and they want to help Mrs May get the Brexit texts through a vote in the House of Commons.
Engaging in last-minute political fisticuffs with the EU is arguably advantageous for her.
A high-drama, climactic Brexit summit ending in a late night/early morning bleary-eyed but triumphant resolution with EU leaders would allow Mrs May to claim that the final text of the deal was hard fought and hard won… in the fervent hope that will soften the stance of some of her many critics at home.

Theresa May has met EU officials as the two sides scramble to finalise a Brexit deal in time for Sunday's summit of European leaders.
The EU is in a race against time to complete the text of its declaration on future relations with the UK, amid concerns from several member states.
Contentious issues include fishing rights in British waters and Gibraltar.
The European Commission said "very good progress" had been made at Wednesday's meeting but work was continuing.
The PM, who is under pressure from her own MPs not to give any further ground, held talks lasting about an hour with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.
Mr Juncker has cancelled a two-day trip to the Canary Islands, on Thursday and Friday, to deal with "the many important events taking place at the moment".
European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said "sherpas" - officials tasked with doing the detailed work ahead of summits - were due to meet on Friday to work on the final texts of the withdrawal agreement and the future relationship.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Both documents need to be ready by Sunday so that we can sign the exit agreement and accept the declaration on the future relationship."
Asked if the summit could be cancelled, Downing Street said the agenda had been published and it "looked forward to attending".
In other developments:
Before heading for Brussels, Mrs May came under fire from every Brexit faction in the House of Commons at a noisy Prime Minister's Questions - from those who want another referendum, to those who want Britain to leave the EU without a deal.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn zeroed in on comments by new work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd, who said MPs would prevent a no-deal Brexit, apparently putting her at odds with the PM's "no deal is better than a bad deal" stance.
He asked: "Does the prime minister agree there are no circumstances under which Britain would leave with no-deal?"
Mrs May replied "no" and said the alternative to her deal would "either be more uncertainty, more division or", in what looks like the emerging new emphasis from her government, "it could risk no Brexit at all".
Mr Corbyn said that "if the government can't negotiate an alternative then it should make way for those who can and will".
Mrs May replied: "He is opposing a deal he hasn't read, he's promising a deal he can't negotiate, he's telling Leave voters one thing and Remain voters another - whatever (Mr Corbyn) will do, I will act in the national interest."
Mrs May also rejected a call from the SNP's Ian Blackford to renegotiate her Brexit deal to keep the UK in the single market and customs union, saying it would "frustrate the vote of the British people".
And she branded Green MP Caroline Lucas's call for another referendum, on the grounds that public opinion had shifted since the 2016 referendum, "absolutely ridiculous," saying the public had given this Parliament "an instruction" to leave the EU.
Mrs May appears to have faced down the threat of a challenge to her position from Brexiteer critics of the deal, for the time being at least.
However, Tory MPs unhappy with Mrs May's handling of Brexit negotiations want much more clarity on the terms of the UK's future co-operation with the EU if they are to back the final deal.
All sides in the Commons have warned of a "blind Brexit" in which the UK signs up to a series of legally-binding commitments in the draft withdrawal agreement, without similar guarantees over future trading arrangements.
The withdrawal deal was agreed in principle by both Mrs May and the EU last week.
It includes a £39bn "divorce bill" and the controversial customs "backstop" which keeps the UK temporarily in the EU customs union as a way of preventing the return of manned customs posts at the Irish border.
However, the joint political declaration on future relations - still being drafted - would only set out the shape of the UK's trading relationship with the remaining 27-nation bloc, without any legal commitments.
Any binding trade deal would still have to be thrashed out in the 21-month transition period after Britain leaves the EU on 29 March 2019.

Theresa May has lost more ministers to Brexit, and more importantly perhaps, has lost even more control of the process at a time when her government is only just about holding on.
Sir Oliver Letwin's plan passed through the Commons tonight by a clearer margin than expected, a big win for the cross-party group of senior MPs who have been pushing plans of different flavours for a while that would allow Parliament to have more say over what's next.
Officially, what the proposal that won tonight does is give MPs control of the debates in the Commons for a day on Wednesday. They will use that to have a series of votes on different options.
This is exactly what some government ministers wanted and have been arguing for for ages.
But those ministers were opposed by their colleagues sitting round the same top table, who fought the idea from the start.
That's because they fear, as the prime minister does, that allowing the process to go forward cedes what little control they have left and potentially moves Parliament towards choosing a softer Brexit.
Now MPs have won the right to carry out this unusual process, there will be a series of votes in the Commons on Wednesday, where MPs will be able to have their say on a whole range of options - a customs union, a closer relationship with the EU than the PM has argued for, another referendum, and others which could emerge.
But it's important to note those votes won't at this stage force the government to do anything, they won't be binding, and the prime minister has indicated she could not, and would not ever support a plan that wasn't in the Conservative manifesto.
On the other side, MPs involved in the bid tonight say if there is a majority for a plan that's not the prime minister's deal then there would be "uproar" if Theresa May tried to ignore it.
It is possible, of course, that Brexiteers who have been resisting the prime minister's deal so far, take fright at Parliament having more control of the process, and are more likely to come in line. That's because generally, the make-up of MPs are more likely to back a softer deal than the one on offer.
So faced with the choice of Theresa May's compromise this week, or a much longer wrangle to a closer relationship with the EU than the prime minister has negotiated, it is not impossible that the numbers will move in her favour.
But with more former Remainers willing to make their voices heard now in Parliament, the prime minister's battle with her party could get even more intense.
Tonight could be the official start of a journey to a softer Brexit led by a majority in Parliament, Brexiteers beginning to back down in earnest, or the start of the next stage of a standoff between the government and Parliament that could only end with a 'democratic event' - code in Whitehall for what you and I would normally call an election.

Theresa May has refused to rule out another Commons vote on her Brexit deal if MPs reject it the first time.
The PM said she thought she could win the vote on 11 December despite dozens of Tory MPs being against the deal.
In an interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, she urged MPs to "deliver on the vote of the referendum".
EU Council President Donald Tusk warned if MPs rejected the deal, the UK would face a choice between leaving without a deal or not leaving at all.
Under Commons rules, the prime minister is not meant to ask MPs the same question twice - she would have to change the contents of her deal.
Alternatively, if enough MPs indicate they have changed their minds after voting the deal down, it could be held again, but it would be up to the Speaker to decide whether to allow that.
Pressed by Laura Kuenssberg on whether she would attempt to hold another vote, Mrs May - who is in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a G20 summit of world leaders - said: "I'm focused on the vote that is taking place on 11 December and I want everybody who's going to participate, all members of Parliament, to focus on what this vote does."
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he did not now expect any Labour MPs to vote for Mrs May's deal, telling Talk Radio he thinks the party will "hold together".
The Labour leadership has said it is ready to support a cross-party amendment to the vote that would explicitly rule out a no-deal. The amendment would not be binding but it would be hard for the PM to ignore it, if it is passed by Parliament.
European Council President Donald Tusk, meanwhile, has stressed that the deal the EU struck with Theresa May was the "only possible one".
He said: "If this deal is rejected in the Commons, we are left with, as was stressed a few weeks ago from Prime Minister May, an alternative - no deal or no Brexit at all."
But a senior UK official said: "Right from the very outset, Donald Tusk has not hidden the fact that he finds (Brexit) a moment of sadness for himself and for the EU.
"But the prime minister has always been very clear to President Tusk that we are leaving on 29 March next year."
The BBC's Europe Editor Katya Adler
What is the EU up to while a fevered UK Parliament burns with questions and throbs with Brexit conspiracy theories?
Well, the EU is watching and waiting. Arms folded.
"It's groundhog day in this negotiation process," an EU diplomat told me.
"We (the EU) are again on the outside, watching the UK debate with itself, unsure of what direction to head in. They voted to leave. We've even got an exit deal on the table now but still the UK is undecided."
It is widely expected that MPs will reject the EU withdrawal agreement and blueprint for a future trade deal agreed with the EU.
In anticipation of this happening, some MPs are trying to mobilise support for the so-called "Norway Plus" option, which they claim could win support across the House of Commons.
Under their plan, the current withdrawal agreement would be honoured but the UK would seek to rejoin the European Free Trade Association (Efta), which it belonged to before entering the European Economic Community in 1973 - on an indefinite basis.
If Efta's existing members - Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland - agreed, it would allow the UK to retain membership of the customs union and full access to the single market.
Advocates of the plan say the UK would still be outside the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy - but it would also mean continued free movement of people.
Mrs May said this kind of deal would not fulfil the referendum pledge to take back control of the UK's borders, laws and money.
Meanwhile three former Labour foreign secretaries have warned of the damage to British influence around the world if the UK leaves the EU. David Miliband, Jack Straw and Margaret Beckett told the Financial Times they all backed the People's Vote campaign for another referendum.
Although Labour is still committed to keeping all options open, Mr McDonnell said if it came to another referendum, it would be "difficult to see" an option to remain not being included on the ballot paper.
In a speech in Bristol, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox argued that while the deal will not please everyone, critics "are yet to face up to" the "tough choices" she had to make.
He told the BBC the PM was "changing the public mood" and while different approaches would give the UK a freer hand to strike other trade deals, they would come with a "price" in terms of reduced access to EU markets.
The Financial Times says Mrs May is enlisting the support of senior Brexiteers such as Michael Gove and Geoffrey Cox to try to sell her controversial Irish "backstop" plan to sceptical Tory MPs.
Mr Fox said he was not "enthusiastic" about the backstop, which could see the UK enter a customs partnership with the EU until its future relationship is sorted out and without the unilateral right to pull out.
But he insisted the chance of the backstop, described as an "insurance policy" by Mrs May, actually coming into force was slight as it was just as "unpalatable" to other EU members, including the Republic of Ireland.
And Treasury Minister Liz Truss, who is backing Mrs May to get the agreement through Parliament, suggested parts of it could be renegotiated after the UK left the EU.

Theresa May has said the UK should not hope for a "better deal" from the EU if MPs reject her Brexit agreement.
She told a BBC phone-in that there would be just "more division and uncertainty" if Parliament voted against the agreement next month.
But she declined to say whether the UK would be better off outside the EU, saying only it would be "different".
A summit of EU leaders to sign off the deal will go ahead on Sunday despite "unresolved" issues over Gibraltar.
Spain is seeking written assurances from the UK that it will be directly consulted over its future trade negotiations with the EU which relate to Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory.
Its prime minister Pedro Sanchez has said he won't decide whether to attend Sunday's summit until these are provided.
He has said his backing for the overall deal cannot be taken for granted although no one country can block the withdrawal agreement on its own at this stage.
Meanwhile, the leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, has said she will "look again" at her party's deal with the Conservatives if Mrs May's Brexit bill passes through parliament.
"But we are not there yet," Mrs Foster added.
Mrs May told the Emma Barnett Show that her job was to persuade MPs to back her but also to "explain" the merits of the deal to the public.
Asked what her plan B was, if MPs rejected the deal, she suggested there would be little point going back to the EU to ask for further changes.
"I believe if we were to go back to the European Union and say: Well people didn't like that deal, can we have another one? ... I don't think they're going to come to us and say: We'll give you a better deal."
Mrs May, who has previously warned about the dangers of the UK leaving without a deal or not leaving at all, would not be drawn on whether she would quit if MPs refused to back her deal.
Asked what was a more likely outcome in such an event - a no-deal exit or the UK remaining in the EU - she said "from my point of view, personally, there is no question of 'no Brexit' because the government needs to deliver on what people voted on in the referendum in 2016".
Asked by a caller called Michael if the UK would be better off outside the EU under her deal than staying in, she said that as someone who voted to Remain, she had never said the "sky would fall in" if Brexit happens.
"I think we will be better off in a situation which we'll have outside the European Union, where we have control of all those things, and are able to trade around the rest of the world," she said.
She added: "You say: Are we better off?... actually it's a different sort of environment, and a different approach that we'll be taking to things."
Pressed by Emma Barnett to answer the question, she said "it is going to be different," before adding: "We can build a better future outside the European Union."
The UK and EU have agreed in principle the framework for their future relations outlining how UK-EU trade, security and other issues would work.
The document, known as the "political declaration", is not legally-binding but will be the starting point for negotiations on co-operation after the UK leaves. It has been heavily criticised by many MPs for lacking detail.
This is a separate document to the legally-binding withdrawal agreement - setting out the terms of the UK's exit from the EU, including the £39bn "divorce bill", citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland "backstop" to keep the border with the Republic of Ireland open, if trade talks stall.
Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said what was on offer in the political declaration was inferior to EU membership, as it would leave the UK bound by the same rules but without control over them.
Meanwhile, EU officials are meeting to try to put the finishing touches to both the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration.
The future of Gibraltar and its 30,000 residents, 96% whom voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, remains a sticking point.
Spain has long contested Britain's 300 year-rule of the peninsula and there are concerns about how the territory's political status and economic ties with the Spanish mainland will be affected by Brexit.
Catherine Barnard, a professor of EU law and employment law at Trinity College, Cambridge, told the BBC that Spain's room for manoeuvre was limited as the "divorce" document only had to be agreed at EU level by qualified majority voting, meaning 20 of the 27 member states.
Fabian Picardo, the chief minister of Gibraltar, said the territory was perfectly happy to have "direct engagement" with Madrid over future trade relations but would not be "dragged" into doing so

Theresa May has dismissed as "Brussels gossip" an account of a dinner with EC President Jean-Claude Juncker, published in a German newspaper.
The pair reportedly clashed over Mrs May's desire to make Brexit "a success" and whether the issue of protecting the rights of expat UK and EU nationals could be agreed as early as June.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine claims Mr Juncker said: "I leave... 10 times more sceptical than I was before."
But Mrs May said it was "constructive".
And she told the BBC's Ben Wright: "I have to say from what I've seen of this account I think it's Brussels gossip."
Speaking during an election campaign event in Lancashire, she added: "Just look at what the European Commission themselves said immediately after the dinner took place, which was that the talks had been constructive."
The article said that, after last week's dinner, Mr Juncker was shocked at Mrs May's suggestion that a deal on citizens' rights could be achieved so quickly.
The German newspaper report also suggested Mr Juncker said there would be no trade deal between the UK and the rest of the EU if the UK failed to pay the "divorce" bill which it is expected to be asked for.
After bringing out paper copies of Croatia's deal to join the EU and the free trade deal recently signed with Canada to make his point, he said Brexit would be "very complex".
After the PM said she wanted to "make Brexit a success", the newspaper reported that Mr Juncker's response was: "Brexit cannot be a success. The more I hear, the more sceptical I become."
And when she said the UK owes no money to the EU, the president informed her that she was not leaving a "golf club".
The newspaper's Thomas Gutschker, who wrote the article, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme that EU officials "have an interest in conveying their sense of desperation after this dinner".
He added: "I don't think they have an interest in these talks collapsing. But they want to save the talks and they basically want to send a wake-up call to Downing Street."
Jeremy Cliffe, the Berlin bureau chief for the Economist, raised the article on Twitter, posting 30 tweets outlining the dinner's highlights.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's World at One, he said people should take the article "with a pinch of salt" as it had reportedly been leaked by only one side of the talks.
But he added that the Europeans and the British are "in totally different universes" when it comes to their expectations of Brexit negotiations.
"EU nationals... was the first example of several in which the expectations of the two sides seem to be utterly at odds," he said.
The day after the meeting, Mr Juncker reportedly told German chancellor Angela Merkel that Mrs May was "deluding herself" and "living in another galaxy" when it came to the issue of Brexit talks.
Mrs May was asked about that quote during her interview on Sunday's Andrew Marr Show, and responded: "I'm not in a different galaxy. I think what this shows and what some of the other comments we've seen coming from other European leaders show is that there are going to be times when these negotiations are going to be tough.
"That's why you need strong and stable leadership in order to conduct those negotiations and get the best deal for Britain."
The accounts of the dinner - which appear to have come from sources within the European Commission - have been seized upon by opposition parties in the UK.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "These reports have blown a massive hole in the Conservative Party's arguments. It's clear this government has no clue and is taking the country towards a disastrous hard Brexit.
"This election offers us a chance to change the direction of our country, keep Britain in the single market and give the people the final say over what happens next."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said of Mrs May: "She seems to be sending rather mixed messages.
"To start negotiations by threatening to walk away with no deal and set up a low tax economy on the shores of Europe is not a very sensible way of approaching people with whom half of our trade is done at the present time."
The EU set out tough terms for the Brexit negotiations at the weekend - and has followed up with a steady drumbeat of briefing suggesting that the UK is unprepared for the talks to come and harbouring delusions about the possible outcomes.
Officials in Brussels naturally have a vested interest in stressing that leaving the EU is difficult and dangerous - but there's enough detail in the descriptions of a difficult dinner in Downing Street last week to suggest that there are real problems alongside the tactical manoeuvrings.
The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who was a guest of Theresa May, apparently told his host that the more he heard about the British position the more sceptical he was about the prospects of a deal.
British perceptions of the meal have not been leaked in the same level of detail but there's no doubt the European briefings will be seen in the UK as provocative - and designed to stir up fears among British voters about what Brexit is going to mean.
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Theresa May has told EU leaders she can get the Brexit deal through Parliament if they give her legally-binding changes to it.
The UK prime minister - who also vowed to deliver Brexit "on time" - was speaking after a series of meetings with top EU officials in Brussels.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker again ruled out the kind of changes Mrs May wants to see.
But the two sides agreed to further talks to break the deadlock.
Mrs May said she had also spoken to European Council President Donald Tusk about his comments on Wednesday about there being a "special place in hell" for those who campaigned for Brexit without a plan to deliver it safely.
She said Mr Tusk's language "was not helpful" and had "caused widespread dismay in the United Kingdom".
Mrs May said she had told him he should be "focusing" on working with the UK to get a Brexit deal.
Mr Tusk tweeted that there was "no breakthrough in sight" following his talks with the UK prime minister.
Mrs May said she had "set out very clearly the position from Parliament that we must have legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement in order to deal with Parliament's concerns over the backstop".
That, "together with the other work that we're doing on workers' rights and other issues, will deliver a stable majority in Parliament," she said.
Mr Juncker "underlined that the EU27 will not reopen the withdrawal agreement" in their talks, according to a joint statement released by the two sides.
But he "expressed his openness" to adding words to the non-binding future relationship document - that also has to be backed by MPs - to be "more ambitious in terms of content and speed".
Did anything change? Not that much.
But for Downing Street, this has not been a pointless stop-off in the almost never-ending Brexit adventure.
Because, while there hasn't been a breakthrough, the EU has agreed to more talks, which at least opens up the possibility of discussing the changes to the troubled backstop that has caused such political difficulty.
It might not sound like much, but "we can talk", is at least a different message to "this is over" .
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and EU negotiator Michel Barnier will hold talks in Strasbourg on Monday, as the EU and UK Brexit negotiating teams discuss proposed changes to the deal.
Downing Street said these talks would cover "alternative arrangements" for the Irish border, as called for by MPs in a vote last week.
A spokeswoman said other UK ministers, such as Attorney General Geoffrey Cox could be involved.
Mr Cox is "working on working on possible ways in which legal texts could be drafted, that gave effect to the objective we want," Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington told the BBC.
Mrs May and Mr Juncker will meet again before the end of February, to review progress.
The prime minister is expected to put the deal to a vote in the Commons towards the end of February.
Jeremy Corbyn has written to the prime minister setting out his party's price for supporting a Brexit deal and to offer talks to secure "a sensible agreement that can win the support of Parliament and bring the country together".
The Labour leader's five demands include a "permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union" aligned with the EU's customs rules but with an agreement "that includes a UK say on future EU trade deals".
Mr Corbyn also wants close alignment with the EU single market and "dynamic alignment on rights and protections" for workers so that UK standards do not fall behind those of the EU.
He also proposes participation in EU agencies and funding programmes, and agreements on security and keeping access to the European Arrest Warrant.
The letter does not mention previous demands that any deal must deliver the "exact same benefits" that membership of the single market and customs union currently does - effectively scrapping the party's "six tests" that had been its Brexit policy.
The BBC's Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg said Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer would be meeting Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington to discuss the proposals.
But the move was met with dismay by Labour members of the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum, who accused Mr Corbyn of going back on his commitment, made at the party's conference, to back a public vote if he can't force a general election.
Labour MP Owen Smith, who made a failed leadership bid in 2016, has told the BBC he and others were thinking of quitting the party over Mr Corbyn's Brexit stance.
But Labour's Stephen Kinnock, who backs the "Norway Plus" model of a close economic partnership with the EU, welcomed Mr Corbyn's letter, tweeting: "This can break the deadlock."
Mr Lidington said he and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay would be willing to discuss Labour's proposals with Sir Keir and other frontbenchers.
But he said Labour's call to have a say in trade deals while being in a customs union with the EU was "wishful thinking", because Brussels had ruled it out.
The European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt welcomed Mr Corbyn's proposals, saying "the broadest possible majority" was needed for a Brexit deal in the UK and "cross-party co-operation is the way forward".
It was also backed by Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who wants to see the UK in a Norway-style relationship with the EU after Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on Friday 29 March, when the two-year time limit on withdrawal negotiations enforced by the Article 50 process expires.
In January, MPs overwhelmingly rejected the withdrawal deal that the government had negotiated with the EU, backing an amendment for the government to seek "alternative arrangements" to the backstop.
The backstop is an "insurance policy" designed to avoid "under all circumstances" the return of customs checkpoints between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after Brexit.
Many fear creating physical infrastructure along the border could threaten the peace process.
But the Democratic Unionist Party and Brexiteers believe the proposed temporary single customs arrangement could threaten the integrity of the UK, leaving it bound by EU rules if no trade deal is agreed.

Theresa May has insisted she will not be forced into watering down her Brexit plan during negotiations with the EU.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the prime minister says she will "not be pushed" into compromises on her Chequers agreement that are not in the "national interest".
But Mrs May also warns she will not "give in" to those calling for a second referendum on the withdrawal agreement.
She says it would be a "gross betrayal of our democracy and... trust".
The Chequers agreement would see the UK agreeing a "common rulebook" with the EU for trading in goods, in an attempt to maintain friction-less trade at the border.
But critics say it will leave the UK tied to EU rules and prevent Britain from striking its own trade deals in years to come.
The People's Vote, a cross-party group including some MPs, is calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal.
The UK is on course to leave the EU on 29 March but has yet to agree how its final relationship with the bloc will work. The EU has suggested that November is the latest a deal could be finalised.
The government had previously ruled out another referendum.
The prime minister writes that the coming months are "critical in shaping the future of our country", but that she is "clear" about her mission in fulfilling "the democratic decision of the British people".
She adds that following the Chequers agreement in July - which led to the resignation of two cabinet ministers - "real progress" has been made in Brexit negotiations.
While there is more negotiating to be done, Mrs May writes: "We want to leave with a good deal and we are confident we can reach one."
The government has been preparing for a no-deal scenario, even though this would create "real challenges for both the UK and the EU" in some sectors, she says.
But the PM adds: "We would get through it and go on to thrive."
She goes on to insist in her article that her government will not back another vote.
"In the summer of 2016, millions came out to have their say," she writes.
"In many cases for the first time in decades, they trusted that their vote would count; that after years of feeling ignored by politics, their voices would be heard.
"To ask the question all over again would be a gross betrayal of our democracy - and a betrayal of that trust."
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary who quit over the Chequers agreement, said he was also against a second referendum.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, he said he would vote against the Chequers plan in any Commons vote, adding that it would be "almost worse" than staying in the EU.
He said the problems around the Northern Ireland border with the Irish Republic had been "heavily overemphasised" in the past.
"It's a border already - it works perfectly well with careful co-operation between sides," he said, and with "political will" from the UK and the Republic, it could continue to do so.
By Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent
Welcome to the new term in politics - it is getting loud already.
No sooner has the prime minister said she is committed to her Brexit blueprint than one of her previously loyal MPs has suggested signing up to it would be a "humiliation".
And no sooner has she insisted that another Brexit referendum would be a "gross betrayal of our democracy" than one of her own party donors says that is "balderdash".
It seems, to put it mildly, that we are in for quite a political term.
Both the big political parties at Westminster have their fair share of turmoil and the stakes could not be higher.
But if the last few months, or the last few years, have taught us anything, it is that we can be very confident there will be a few bumps in the road - whether a Brexit deal is done or not.
Writing in the same paper, Conservative MP Nick Boles - a former minister who backed Remain - said the Chequers policy had "failed" and he could no longer support it.
He wrote that the EU was treating the plan as "an opening bid", and the UK was facing "the humiliation of a deal dictated by Brussels".
Instead, Mr Boles, who is a member of the Brexit Delivery Group, believes the two-year transition period - which the government describes as an implementation period - should be scrapped and replaced with the UK becoming part of the European Economic Area for three years - giving more time for a trade deal to be negotiated.
"The plan I am setting out represents our only hope of a better Brexit," he added.
The People's Vote launched earlier this year to campaign for a vote on any final Brexit deal, and has a number of high-profile backers, including Sir Patrick Stewart and BBC football anchor Gary Lineker.
It has also secured funding from donors including Julian Dunkerton, co-founder of fashion label Superdry - who has given the largest donation of £1m to the group.
One of its supporters, the Labour MP Chuka Umunna, said the impetus had shifted toward a public vote over the summer and it would be a "betrayal of democracy" for Theresa May "to force a bad deal - or no deal - on Britain without giving the public the chance to have a final say".
The Conservative donor and former Rolls-Royce chairman Sir Simon Robertson has also joined calls for a second referendum, saying he is "deeply depressed" at the tone of the Brexit debate.
"I think it is complete balderdash to say the people have spoken, therefore you can't go back. The people can speak again - why can't we have another vote on it?" he asked, in an interview with the the Observer.
Earlier this week, it was revealed in a leaked memo that the People's Vote wants Labour MPs and activists to submit a motion at the party's conference this month, committing Labour to backing a new referendum on the final deal.
The party's current policy position is to respect the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

"Rich and deep conversations" are needed with devolved governments on the UK's future relationship with the EU, a senior cabinet minister has said.
Michael Gove met ministers from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland ahead of Brexit on Friday.
But Mr Gove did not commit to giving them a formal role in the negotiating process, after the meeting in Cardiff.
Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford said there had been an "engaged discussion" on how to proceed.
With the UK leaving the European Union at 23:00 GMT on Friday, the Welsh and Scottish Governments and Northern Ireland Executive are seeking to influence the nature of the relationship with the bloc.
Britain will follow EU rules and have the same trading relationship as now until the end of the year, during a transition phase.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has insisted a new relationship will be agreed with EU leaders over the next 11 months, but the European Commission has warned that timetable will be extremely challenging.
Speaking to BBC Wales after Tuesday's meeting, held at the Welsh Government headquarters in Cardiff, Mr Gove said he wanted to ensure "we have rich and deep conversations, not just with the Welsh Government but also with our colleagues in Northern Ireland and Scotland".
"Ultimately, it's the UK government that's in the negotiating room, and there was a very clear mandate at the general election," he said.
"People wanted Boris Johnson to deliver Brexit and to unleash Britain's potential.
"Alongside that, it's also important that we make sure that the contributions from politicians across the United Kingdom are there at the heart of our negotiating strategy."
In an upbeat assessment of the meeting, Mr Drakeford said: "I think today we did get a recognition from the UK government that it's good for the UK to go into the negotiations with other parties saying they represent the whole of the UK.
"Therefore we need a structure to allow that to happen, we discussed how that structure could be brought about. There are further discussion we need around it but I thought it was an engaged discussion."

The UK will regain full control over the country's fishing waters for the first time in 40 years after December 2020, Michael Gove has insisted.
The environment secretary said he shared the "disappointment" of fishing communities who hoped this would happen on Brexit day, 29 March 2019.
But Mr Gove urged them to keep their "eyes on the prize" of getting control.
Lib Dem Alistair Carmichael, who raised the issue, said "the mood in fishing communities is one of palpable anger".
The fishing industry had wanted the UK to regain full control over the country's fishing waters on Brexit day, 29 March, 2019.
Instead the deal will see the UK "consulted" on quotas with the situation remaining largely unchanged until 2021.
Mr Gove said the government had pressed for the UK to be an equal partner in fishing negotiations during the 21-month "implementation period" - but the EU had blocked this.
"We were disappointed the EU would not move on this," he told MPs, saying that the UK only had to wait a further year for complete control of its waters.
"In December 2020, we will be negotiating fishing opportunities as a third country, an independent coastal state deciding who can access our waters and on what terms for the first time in over 40 years," he said.
"It's important that all of us, in every area, accept that the implementation period is a necessary step towards securing that prize.
"For our coastal communities it's an opportunity to revive economically, for our marine environment it is an opportunity to be managed sustainably and it's critical that all of us - in the interests of the whole nation - keep our eyes on that prize."
But Mr Carmichael replied: "I have to tell you, if you don't already know it, the mood in fishing communities is one of palpable anger - this is not what they were promised."
He added that if the government can "let us down like this over a deal for the transitional period, how do we know they will not do it again when it comes to the final deal?"
The SNP's Stephen Gethins asked the minister to say "at what point our fishermen became a bargaining chip", adding: "Or has that been the case all along?"
Mr Gove replied: "For a party that has raised grievance to an art form, you have a damn cheek making that case."
Former Tory minister John Redwood pressed him to go back to the EU and say "this deal is unacceptable".
Mr Gove said: "We didn't get everything we wanted, but... it's the view of this government that we need to make sure this implementation succeeds to get the greater prize at the end of it."
Prominent Eurosceptic Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg said he was "slightly concerned" by Mr Gove's tone in relationship to negotiations that the European Commission "would not allow us something in a negotiation".
Mr Gove said the implementation period would allow the government to prepare "for all the benefits Brexit will bring".
The Commons exchanges came as Scottish Conservative MPs who held talks with the prime minister on fishing said she "reassured" them the UK would take control of its waters after the transition period.
Alister Jack, the MP for Dumfries and Galloway, said he felt assured by Mrs May's comments but John Lamont, the MP for Berwickshire. Roxburgh and Selkirk, warned: "The government should be clear that they are on notice - no deal for fishermen, and they will have to think again on the terms of our departure."
The Daily Telegraph reported that Tory critics of the deal are planning to protest on a boat on the Thames by Parliament on Wednesday.
Scotland's First Minister and SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, claimed the concession made to the EU in the transitional period was "shaping up to be a massive sell-out of the Scottish fishing industry by the Tories".
Labour's shadow fisheries minister Holly Lynch said it was "understandable" fishing communities felt "angry and let down".
Bertie Armstrong, head of the Scottish Fishermen's Association, accused the EU of asking "for the bargain of a lifetime" by seeking to keep the UK under Common Fisheries Policy rules for "as long as physically possible".
Compared with Iceland, which is allowed to keep 90% of fish caught in its waters, the UK keeps 40% under the Common Fisheries Policy, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
But Niel Wichmann, head of the Danish Fishermen's Association, said the transition period "is a sensible agreement which gives us time - a couple of years - to work out how we keep our fishing stocks sustainable, how we keep our fisheries sustainable after Brexit".
On Monday, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the legal text of the agreement for the 21 months after Brexit marked a "decisive step" but added that it was "not the end of the road".
The key aspects of the agreement announced in Brussels are:
Other aspects of the post-Brexit relationship yet to be agreed include what happens to the Northern Ireland border in the longer term.

Michael Gove has urged Tory MPs to back a compromise Brexit plan as the best chance of a "proper" exit from the EU.
He told the BBC it was not all he hoped for, but said he was a "realist" and dismissed claims it would leave the UK as a "vassal state".
But he warned the EU had to be more generous or the UK would have no option than to walk away without a deal.
Labour also urged the EU to be more flexible but said Theresa May's customs plan was a "fudge" and would "unravel".
In the Commons on Monday, Theresa May will tell MPs her plan will mean "a complete end to freedom of movement", restore the "supremacy of the British courts" and ensure no more "vast sums of money" would be sent to Brussels.
She is expected to say that since the 2016 referendum decision to leave the EU, "I have listened to every possible idea and every possible version of Brexit. This is the right Brexit".
Several Tory MPs have expressed unease since Friday, when the cabinet approved a document setting out the UK's vision for its future relationship with the EU after it leaves in March 2019.
Under the proposals, yet to be presented to the EU, there would be a free trade area for industrial and agricultural goods, based on a "common rule book" and a "combined customs territory".
Boris Johnson is understood to have strongly criticised the plan during the cabinet meeting at Chequers before signing up to it. He is said to have warned colleagues it could be a "serious inhibitor to free trade" and striking deals with other countries.
The foreign secretary then backed the proposals - despite claiming that defending the plans was like "polishing a turd".
But environment secretary Mr Gove, who campaigned for Brexit alongside Mr Johnson in the 2016 referendum, told the BBC's Andrew Marr show he was satisfied the solution would "honour" the result of the vote.
The free movement of people was ending, he said, and the UK Parliament would have the final say over rules governing a "huge swathe" of the British economy.
"In all the important areas where an independent country chooses to exercise sovereignty, the UK will be able to do so and, in so doing, respect the referendum result and the mandate we were given," he said.
Asked if Mrs May's offer was all he had hoped for, he replied: "No, but then I'm a realist and one of the things about politics is you mustn't, you shouldn't, make the perfect the enemy of the good."
While urging his colleagues to get behind the prime minister as she tries to secure a deal by October, he said the UK must be prepared for this not happening.
"We are being generous to the EU, we are showing flexibility," he said. "If the EU is not generous and flexible, we may have to contemplate walking away without a deal.
"No-one wants to walk away now because we are in the middle of a negotiation - what we need to be able to do is to walk away in March 2019."
After ministers signed up to the deal on Friday night, Mrs May said the time for them to air their concerns in public was over and collective cabinet responsibility had been re-instated - a stance endorsed by Mr Gove.
The prime minister has urged the EU to take her offer seriously. She refused to rule out offering EU citizens some form of special status as part of a proposed new "mobility framework".
But Tory Brexiteers not in the government have spoken out against the plan, warning the UK will have to follow EU laws and European Court of Justice rulings and not have an "effective international trade policy".
Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said the proposed deal was "indefensible" as it was "probably worse than staying in the EU". He suggested his support for the prime minister was not unconditional.
"At the moment, she's not only let the party down, she's let herself down," he told the BBC. "If she sticks with this deal, I have no confidence in it. If she sticks with this, I will have no confidence in her."
And pro-Remain Tory MP Phillip Lee has suggested the offer was the "worst of all worlds" and restated his call for a second referendum - with the option of staying in the EU to be on the ballot paper.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said proposals to avoid customs checks by differentiating between UK and EU-bound goods, in terms of what tariffs should be paid, were "a bureaucratic nightmare".
"This has got fudge written all over it," he told Andrew Marr. "She (Theresa May) has not met our demands. It is going to unravel and she will have to think again."
He urged Mrs May to put her customs proposals to a vote in Parliament in a week's time, suggesting Labour's alternative plan for a comprehensive customs union had the backing of the majority of MPs.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was "game on" for the SNP and others who wanted the UK to remain in the existing customs union and single market.
On the other side of the debate, UKIP leader Gerard Batten said Mrs May was "surrendering" to the EU and "dashing the hopes and dreams of 17.4 million British voters" who backed Brexit in 2016.
The main details from the Chequers statement, to be incorporated in a white paper next week, are:

EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has criticised Theresa May's proposals for a customs arrangement.
He stressed that he was not rejecting the UK prime minister's ideas - but said any "backstop" to prevent a hard Irish border could not be time-limited.
The UK proposal would see the whole UK matching EU trade tariffs for a period, if a trade deal is not reached by 2021.
Mr Barnier said the UK paper "raises more questions than it answers" but would be examined "objectively".
He also said some Brexit supporters wanted to blame Brussels for the UK not keeping some of the benefits of EU membership after Brexit adding: "We are not going to be intimidated by this form of blame game."
The UK proposal was was drawn up after a row in cabinet in which Brexit Secretary David Davis reportedly threatened to resign.
By BBC Political Correspondent Alex Forsyth
This temporary "backstop" is meant to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland by kicking in if alternative customs arrangements can't be negotiated and implemented in time for the end of the transition period in December 2020.
The EU's version would see Northern Ireland stay in the EU customs union, meaning a customs border in the Irish Sea.
That is wholly unacceptable to Theresa May  - and the DUP who back her in parliament.
So the prime minister proposed an alternative which would see the whole of the UK match EU tariffs.
Today Mr Barnier suggested that would be problematic.
And he raised concerns about the fact it would be time-limited; something key Brexiteers are demanding because they don't want the UK to stay closely tied to the EU indefinitely.
So while the EU's chief negotiator didn't rule out the UK's proposal altogether, he certainly poured cold water on it.
So far it seems agreement - even on the fallback option - is proving pretty tricky.
He said the UK's proposals would be measured against three questions - whether it was a "workable solution" to avoiding a hard border, whether it respected the integrity of the single market and customs union and whether it was what he called an "all weather backstop".
The EU's proposal, he told a press conference in Brussels, met these tests and that it was not necessarily "feasible" to extend the EU's offer of continued participation in key elements of the customs union in Northern Ireland to cover the whole of the UK.
"Let me be clear: our backstop cannot be extended to the whole UK. Why? Because it has been designed for the specific situation of Northern Ireland."
He also stressed his preference for the EU's border in the Irish sea plan, saying: "Checks carried out on ferries are less disruptive than along a 500km-long land border."
In addition, these checks can build on arrangements and facilities which already exist between the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland."
He said the "time-limited" nature of the UK proposal - with an "expected" end date of December 2021 - was also problematic.
With a nod to Mrs May's famous "Brexit means Brexit" phrase, Mr Barnier said:  "Backstop means backstop.
"The temporary backstop is not in line with what we want or what Ireland and Northern Ireland want and need."
But later he tweeted that he was not rejecting the UK customs paper:
In a statement issued following Mr Barnier's press conference, Downing Street said: "The prime minister has been clear that we will never accept a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
"We are also committed to maintaining the integrity of our own internal market. That position will not change. The commission's proposals did not achieve this, which is why we have put forward our own backstop solutions for customs."
It added that all sides had agreed to "protect the Belfast Agreement [Good Friday Agreement] in all its parts".
"Michel Barnier has confirmed today that discussions will now continue on our proposal."
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, whose MPs back Mrs May's minority government, responded angrily to Mr Barnier's comments, which they said they showed the EU negotiator had "no respect for the principle of consent or the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom".
Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds said: "This is nothing more than an outrageous attempt to revert to the annexation of Northern Ireland.  We will not accept such a proposal."
At the end of a turbulent week for Mrs May - in which she saw off the threat of a cabinet resignation over the UK's customs paper on Thursday - another cabinet Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, was recorded talking about Brexit in very candid terms at a private dinner.
The foreign secretary said concerns about the Irish border had been overhyped and that Donald Trump might do a better job negotiating Brexit.
In a recording obtained by Buzzfeed, he was said to have described the Irish border issue as "pure millennium bug stuff" and added: "Imagine Trump doing Brexit.
"He'd go in bloody hard... There'd be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he'd gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It's a very, very good thought."
He also took a swipe at Chancellor Philip Hammond, calling the Treasury "the heart of Remain".
Brexit-supporting Tory MPs applauded the foreign secretary but Mr Hammond said his "advice to colleagues" was to engage with the EU and to understand their concerns.

The EU's lead Brexit negotiator has rejected Boris Johnson's demands for the Irish backstop to be scrapped.
Michel Barnier said the backstop - intended to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland - was the "maximum flexibility" the EU could offer.
Mr Johnson has previously told the EU the arrangement must be ditched if a no-deal Brexit was to be avoided.
Meanwhile, the PM has told rebel Tories they face a "fundamental choice" of siding with him or Jeremy Corbyn.
His comments come as some MPs who oppose a no-deal Brexit - including Conservatives - are planning to take action in Parliament next week.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal.
Former justice secretary David Gauke, who voted three times for the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons, will meet the prime minister on Monday to ask about the practicalities of securing a deal.
"I want to hear from him as to what is his plan to deliver a deal, when are we putting forward proposals to deal with this backstop issue - which is the one issue he has identified as the problem within the Withdrawal Agreement," he said during an interview on Sky News' Sophy Ridge show.
"I want to hear how he's going to address that, and I want to hear how he plans to deliver the legislation if we get a deal by 31 October - because at the moment, frankly, I can't see how he's got time to do that."
The backstop is part of the withdrawal agreement negotiated between Brussels and former prime minister Theresa May, which has been rejected by Parliament three times.
If implemented, it would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market, should the UK and the EU not agree a trade deal after Brexit.
Mr Johnson has said there has been some movement from the EU, as he attempts to broker a new deal and remove the arrangement, which he has described as "undemocratic".
However, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Barnier said: "On the EU side, we had intense discussions with EU member states on the need to guarantee the integrity of the EU's single market, while keeping that border fully open.
"In this sense, the backstop is the maximum amount of flexibility that the EU can offer to a non-member state."
Mr Barnier also said he was "not optimistic" about avoiding a no-deal Brexit, but "we should all continue to work with determination".
He added: "The EU is ready to explore all avenues that the UK government may present and that are compatible with the withdrawal agreement."
The EU could not stop the UK from leaving without a deal, he said, but he "would fail to understand the logic of that choice" because "we would still need to solve the same problems after 31 October".
Mr Johnson says he wants to leave the EU on 31 October with a deal, but it is "do or die" and he is willing to leave without one rather than miss the deadline.
That position has prompted a number of opposition MPs to come together to try to block a possible no deal.
MPs opposed to a no-deal Brexit are expected to try and seize control of the Parliamentary agenda this week to push through legislation that would force the PM to seek a Brexit extension beyond 31 October.
But Mr Johnson has warned Tory MPs who are considering lining up with opposition groups that they risk plunging the country into chaos.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, he said: "I just say to everybody in the country, including everyone in Parliament, the fundamental choice is this: Are you going to side with Jeremy Corbyn and those who want to cancel the referendum?
"Are you going to side with those who want to scrub the democratic verdict of the people - and plunge this country into chaos.
"Or are you going to side with those of us who want to get on, deliver the mandate of the people and focus with absolute, laser-like precision on the domestic agenda?"
His comments come after the Sun reported that No 10 would stop any Tory MP who votes to block a no-deal Brexit from standing for the party in a general election.
The report prompted former chancellor Philip Hammond to say it would be "staggeringly hypocritical" for the government to sack Conservative MPs who rebel over its Brexit plans, as eight current cabinet members had themselves defied the party whip this year by voting against Theresa May's Brexit deal.
Speaking on Sky News' Sophy Ridge show, International Development Secretary Alok Sharma said that Mr Johnson must be given time to secure a new deal.
"We want any future agreement not to have the backstop… The reality is that the previous Withdrawal Agreement, which contained the backstop, did not pass on three occasions. It didn't pass then, it won't pass again," he said.
"In fact, having the backstop also potentially makes us rule-takers from the EU forever. That is not what we want. We want that out, we want a deal, but we will be leaving on 31 October - no ifs, no buts."
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the same programme that a cross-party group that includes MPs and legal experts is looking at introducing a legislative measure next week to stop a no-deal Brexit without parliamentary approval.
"The technique of that will be published on Tuesday, and I'm hoping that we'll have a debate in which we can bring the House together," he said.
"The ultimate goal, very straightforwardly, this week, is to ensure that Parliament can have a final say... we cannot have a prime minister overriding Parliament - not just on this issue, on any issue."
On Saturday, demonstrations were held across the UK in response to Mr Johnson's plans to suspend Parliament in the run-up to Brexit.
The prime minister, who announced the move on Wednesday, said it would enable the government to bring forwards new legislation.
But the decision prompted an angry backlash from some politicians and opponents of a no-deal Brexit.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused Mr Johnson of a "smash and grab on our democracy" in order to force through no deal by leaving MPs too little time to pass laws in Parliament aimed at preventing such an outcome.
But Chancellor Sajid Javid defended the decision, adding: "It's right because we are focusing on the people's priorities."
If the prorogation happens as expected, Parliament will be closed for 23 working days.
MPs have to approve recess dates, but they cannot block prorogation.

A Tory MP who has put forward a plan to block a no-deal Brexit says ministers have told him they will quit, if they are ordered to vote against it.
His cross-party bill would force Theresa May to request an extension of Article 50 if she can't get a deal approved by MPs by the end of February.
Mr Boles told the BBC his bill had a "broad base" of support from different sides of the Brexit debate.
And he said he believed a number of ministers backed his plan.
But he believes his constituency party in Grantham and Stamford is looking to oust him as a candidate at the next election.
Asked if he thought local members would de-select him, the Tory backbencher told Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast: "I think if they were asked to now they probably would."
Theresa May has been meeting senior members of other parties to see if there is any room for a compromise after her EU withdrawal deal was overwhelmingly rejected by MPs this week. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to attend talks until the prospect of a no-deal Brexit has been ruled out.
The prime minister will publish a new plan on Monday with a full debate and key vote scheduled for Tuesday, 29 January.
Mr Boles's EU Withdrawal (Number 2) Bill aims to put Parliament in control of the Brexit process, demanding an extension to the Article 50 process to allow negotiations to continue beyond the scheduled date of Brexit on March 29.
But Mr Boles withdrew proposals for the cross-party Commons Liaison Committee of senior backbenchers to draw up an alternative Brexit plan, after its chair Sarah Wollaston indicated that it would not accept the role.
However, Mr Boles the bill would still go ahead and had sponsors from three different parties - the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems.
"This bill is about creating the space for a compromise by ruling out a no-deal Brexit," he told the BBC.
To pass his new bill, Mr Boles will need to suspend the rules in Parliament so that he does not need government support to free up parliamentary time for it.
He could do this by amending the government's business motion which sets out the schedule ahead of the Commons debate on 29 January.
He told the Political Thinking podcast: "We have had indications that many ministers, including cabinet ministers are very, very keen to see it pass and are telling the prime minister that they will not vote against it.
"There is a bandwagon rolling, it's got a lot of momentum behind it and I very much hope that any MP who shares my view that a no-deal Brexit would be a disaster, will jump on board.
"I have been told directly by ministers, not in the cabinet, that they have said that they would resign if they are whipped to vote against it."
While he did not know if any cabinet ministers would quit, he said the transcript reported in the Daily Telegraph of a conversation in which Philip Hammond "made quite plain that he thought this was fantastic".
Mr Boles said he would not change his view on Brexit to please a small number of Conservative members in Grantham and Stamford.
"One hundred people in my local party have written in saying they're outraged by what I'm saying and want to de-select me," he told the podcast.
"And the truth is that many of them used to belong to UKIP only about a year ago.
"They're entirely entitled to their view, they're entitled to be members of the Conservative Party and they're entitled to de-select me.
"But I am not going to change what I believe is in the interest of the 80,000 people that I represent in Parliament because of 100 people in my constituency party."

The government has made a fresh plea to MPs to get behind Theresa May's Brexit deal in Tuesday's crucial Commons vote.
No 10 says it is alarmed by reports MPs plan to take control of Brexit if Mrs May's deal is voted down, although a leading Tory rebel denies such a move.
And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to table a vote of no confidence in the government if she loses, which could trigger a general election.
The PM has warned of a "catastrophic" breach of trust if Brexit is thwarted.
Writing in the Sunday Express, Mrs May told MPs: "It is time to forget the games and do what is right for our country."
About 100 Conservative MPs, and the Democratic Unionist Party's 10 MPs, are currently expected to join Labour and the other opposition parties in voting against the deal.
What is likely to happen next:
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told the BBC's Andrew Marr show there was greater "uncertainty" after Commons Speaker John Bercow's decision last week to allow MPs to change the parliamentary timetable.
He warned "those on the Brexiteer side seeking ideological purity" by voting down Mrs May's deal they risked "leaving the door ajar to ways that increase the risk to Brexit".
"There are lots of different plans being put forward by Members of Parliament that don't respect the result (of the referendum) or risk no deal," he added.
Pressed on what would happen if the deal is defeated, Mr Barclay said he suspected the Commons would support something "along the lines of this deal" but declined to speculate on whether the government had a Brexit "plan B".
Mr Corbyn said Labour would vote against Mrs May's deal and, if she lost, would start moves to trigger a general election.
He told Andrew Marr: "We will table a motion of no confidence in the government at a time of our choosing, but it's going to be soon, don't worry about it."
The Labour leader has said his party does not have the votes in Parliament to win a confidence vote on its own and has appealed to other parties to support it.
Northern Ireland's DUP party, which keeps Mrs May in power, is also planning to vote against her deal but has said it will support Mrs May in a confidence vote.
If a majority of MPs back a no confidence motion, the government - or any anyone else with sufficient support - will get 14 days to try to win another confidence vote. If no-one can do that, a general election will be held.
Mr Corbyn is facing growing calls from within his own party to back a second EU referendum.
He told Andrew Marr he hoped to get a general election first - and ensure that the UK did not leave without a deal.
"My own view is that I'd rather get a negotiated deal now, if we can, to stop the danger of a no-deal exit from the EU on 29 March - which would be catastrophic for industry."
Asked whether Labour would campaign to leave the EU if a general election was called, Mr Corbyn said his party would "decide our manifesto content as soon as we know there's an election coming".
He said he would have to ask the EU to extend Article 50, the legal process taking the UK out of the EU on 29 March, if he won an election, which he said would take place in February or March, to allow time for a new Labour government to negotiate a Brexit deal of its own.
Mr Corbyn wants the UK to be part of a customs union with the EU, with access to the single market.
The UK will leave the EU on 29 March unless there is a new act of Parliament preventing that.
Because the government controls the timetable for Commons business, it was assumed that this would not be possible.
But a group of MPs, including former Tory ministers, are reported by the Sunday Times to be working on a way to allow non-government members to take control of the timetable and bring forward legislation making it illegal to leave the EU without a deal, if Mrs May loses Tuesday's vote.
Downing Street has said it is "extremely concerned" about the reported plot, which it says could potentially overturn centuries of Parliamentary precedent.
A leading Conservative Remainer, who declined to be named, has told the BBC he is not aware of any plans to change Commons rules. He dismissed newspaper stories about backbench plots as "fantasy", designed to frighten Brexiteer Tories into backing Mrs May's deal.
But the SNP's leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, said MPs must now take control of the Brexit process from the government to prevent a no-deal scenario.
He told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme: "The prime minister's got to stop threatening Parliament and indeed, threatening the whole of the United Kingdom, that it's a choice between her deal and no deal - that's not the case."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who like Mr Blackford backs another EU referendum, said: "I think Parliament will take control of this process, will insist that we pursue the option of no Brexit."
Sir Vince said this could happen by cancelling Article 50 - which he noted would be "resented by lots of people" - or via a second referendum.
But former Brexit Secretary David Davis said MPs should vote down Mrs May's deal - and the government should then go back to the EU with "our best and final offer" of a free trade deal with no tariffs, along the lines of the deal the EU has with Canada.
"If the EU insists on no deal, then fine," he says in an article for the Sunday Times.
The government has previously rejected Mr Davis's proposals, which are backed by other Brexiteer Tories, saying they would not solve the Northern Irish border problem.
If you feel like you ought to know more about Brexit...

Details of the government's post-Brexit trade policy have been published.
Ministers say the Trade Bill includes provisions for the UK to implement existing EU trade agreements and help ensure firms can still access foreign government contracts worth £1.3tn.
It will also create a new trade remedies body to defend UK businesses against injurious trade practices.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said firms needed "as much stability as possible" on the day the UK leaves.
But Labour questioned why the bill was being published on the day Parliament rises for a week-long recess, suggesting ministers wanted to "minimise scrutiny".
And unions said workers' rights must not be sacrificed on the altar of doing "dodgy deals" with countries with insufficient employment protections.
The UK cannot sign or negotiate trade deals before its scheduled departure from the EU in March 2019. However, ministers say they can "scope" out future deals with key trade partners, such as the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Despite its publication, the Trade Bill, one of nine pieces of new legislation in the pipeline to prepare the ground for Brexit, will not be debated by MPs until a later date.
Mr Fox said the point of the bill was to "provide as much stability as possible" for businesses on the day Britain leaves the EU and to prevent market instability.
But looking beyond that, the UK wanted to negotiate "more liberal" trade agreements to "provide even better market access than we have through our EU membership".
"One of our worries is that global trade is not opening up," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, and the UK wanted to "use its influence to get a more liberal global trading system" once it had left the EU.
But TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the "ramshackle bill" offered no protection for workers' rights and for public services like the NHS from foreign contractors.
"The Trade Bill must guarantee that the price of entry to a trade deal involving Britain is signing up to the strongest protections for workers and public services," she said.
On the eve of the bill's publication, one of Donald Trump's leading allies said he was optimistic that the UK and US will sign a free trade deal after Brexit.
US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the BBC there had already been a "joint scoping exercise" in Washington in July on a free trade agreement and another similar meeting will be held in London next week.
"We're huge trading partners with each other and our economies are in many ways more similar to each other than either of us is to most of Europe," he said.
"So there's all the logic in the world for the US and the UK to be not only good trading partners, but FTA partners," he said.
Mr Ross, who met Theresa May and other senior ministers during a two-day visit, identified continued "passporting" of financial services, compliance with EU food standards on GM crops and chlorine-washed chicken and future trade tariffs as areas that could pose problems in negotiations between the nations.

Work and Pensions Secretary, Amber Rudd, has said history will take "a dim view" of ministers if the UK leaves the EU without an agreement.
Ms Rudd told a cabinet meeting earlier that the UK would be less safe if there was a no-deal Brexit.
Business Secretary Greg Clark has also told MPs a no-deal exit in March "should not be contemplated".
MPs are set to vote soon on a measure which may restrict the government's tax powers in the event of a no-deal exit.
The government has refused to rule out leaving the EU without an agreement and is continuing to make contingency plans.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the Commons that ministers would be accused of "irresponsibility" if they weren't planning for all eventualities.
In other Brexit developments:
Mrs May appears to be facing a growing backlash against a possible no-deal Brexit - if her agreement is voted down next week.
It is understood during Tuesday's Cabinet that Ms Rudd, a former home secretary who was a leading figure in the 2016 Remain campaign, told MPs history would take a dim view of the government if it accepted no deal and it would leave the UK a less safe country.
"We have to face the world as we find it, not as we wish it to be, and we have to deal with the facts as we find them," she is reported to have said.
While she wanted Brexit to go ahead, she said it was important that Parliament tried to reach as much of a consensus as possible.
"More than ever we need to find the centre, reach across the House and find a majority for what will be agreed. Anything will need legislation."
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said no deal would limit the government's ability to return illegal immigrants to other EU countries.
And Environment Secretary Michael Gove said that those considering rejecting Mrs May's agreement in the hope of securing a better deal "were like swingers in their mid-50s waiting for film star Scarlett Johansson to turn up on a date".
Ms Rudd added "or Pierce Brosnan", only for Justice Secretary David Gauke to quip that it was like "waiting for Scarlett Johansson on a unicorn".
Leading Brexiteer Steve Baker, the ex-minister who was a key figure in the failed attempt to remove Theresa May as Conservative leader last month, tweeted that the swingers' allusion was "not persuasive nor impressive".
On Monday, Business Minister Richard Harrington became the first minister to publicly say he would resign if the government pursued a no-deal exit and told the BBC others could follow suit.
His boss, Business Secretary Greg Clark, told MPs on Tuesday a no-deal exit "should not be contemplated" because of the likely impact on business..
Meanwhile, a cross-party group of MPs, headed by Labour's Yvette Cooper and Conservative Nicky Morgan, will later attempt to make it harder for the UK to leave the EU without a deal.
The MPs have tabled an amendment to the Finance Bill in the hope of stopping the government raising money to implement a no-deal Brexit, without the explicit consent of Parliament.
The technical changes to a crucial piece of government legislation are intended to demonstrate to the government the strength of opposition to a no-deal Brexit in the Commons.
Government sources warned over the weekend of "paralysis" and an effective "shutdown" if the Treasury was stripped of the power to pass regulations relating to "no-deal financial provisions" without parliamentary approval.
Labour have said they will back the amendment, prompting speculation that ministers will be forced to accept it in order to avoid a damaging defeat.
If the government does not back down, a vote on the amendment is expected at about 19:00 GMT.
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March whether there is a deal or not.
The deal which Prime Minister Theresa May has negotiated with the EU - which covers the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU - has not been formally approved.
MPs are expected to vote on 15 January following five days of debate in the Commons.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has said the UK remains committed to leaving on 29 March after the Daily Telegraph said UK officials had been "putting out feelers" about extending Article 50, the mechanism taking the UK out of the EU.
Mr Barclay said he had not spoken to the EU about that and any delay would cause "some very practical issues".
His remarks came the day after Digital Minister Margot James suggesting Article 50 might have to be extended in order to stop a no-deal Brexit if Mrs May's deal is rejected by Parliament.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said extending Article 50 was the "default" back-up plan for the EU if MPs did not agree to the Brexit deal, although he was not aware of any officials who had discussed it at this stage.
A no-deal Brexit would see the UK leave without a withdrawal agreement and start trading with the EU on the basis of World Trade Organization rules, an outcome favoured by some Brexiteers.
David Davis, one of Mr Barclay's predecessors as Brexit secretary, told the BBC the fact that EU officials were talking about re-opening negotiations "tells you that Mr Barclay's assertion that this is the only deal on the table is not, actually, entirely accurate".
"Because what actually is going on, is the Europeans are thinking about the next stage, and the next stage is another round of negotiation," he told Radio 4's Today.
He was speaking after Irish premier Leo Varadkar said the EU would offer the UK government fresh "written" assurances to help Mrs May get her deal through Parliament.

It would take a "miracle" for Brexit talks to progress quickly enough to persuade the EU to start discussing trade soon, a top official has said.
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed progress had been made between the two sides this week.
But asked if it was enough to persuade the EU to agree to open trade talks, as the UK wants, at a summit next month, he replied only if "miracles happen".
But British PM Theresa May said she was "pleased" with recent developments.
Speaking in Estonia, where she is attending an EU security summit, Mrs May said there had been movement on issues such as citizens' rights during the fourth round of Brexit talks which concluded on Thursday.
British negotiators, led by Brexit Secretary David Davis, suggested there had been "decisive" steps forward although his EU counterparts have been more cautious, suggesting there was a lot more work to be done.
At a meeting next month, the other 27 EU leaders could decide whether "sufficient progress" has been made in the talks to date, which have focused on separation issues such as the Irish border and money, to move on to to consider the UK's future relationship with the EU after it leaves in March 2019.
Asked for his view as he arrived at the summit in Tallinn, Mr Juncker replied: "By the end of October we will not have sufficient progress."
While he acknowledged "we are making progress", he said "at the end of this week I am saying there will be no sufficient progress from now until October, unless miracles would happen".
European Council President Donald Tusk - who represents the EU 27 - has already suggested meeting the deadline is unlikely, while the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said a decision on opening the second phase of talks could be "weeks or months" away, amid speculation it could slip to December.
Mrs May was more bullish as she arrived, suggesting that there had been progress in the seven days since she gave a number of guarantees - including on honouring contributions to the EU budget - in a speech in Italy.
"In Florence, I set out the progress that has been made in the negotiations and my vision for a deep and special partnership with the EU," she said.
"I am pleased with the progress in the negotiations, and look forward to developing that special partnership as it's in the interests of EU as well."
Meanwhile, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has suggested this week's Boeing-Bombardier trade dispute illustrated the difficulties the UK could face in doing trade deals with other countries after leaving the EU.
"I think it could well turn out to be a lesson for the UK," he said in Tallinn. "I think it should that we are stronger together as a trading bloc, and that is something for people to consider."
At Friday's summit, Mrs May will make it clear to EU leaders that the UK is ready to continue contributing troops, equipment and money to EU operations and align foreign policy with Brussels where appropriate.
Addressing British troops stationed in the the country earlier, Mrs May said the UK was not leaving Europe and was "unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe's security".
Some 800 troops have been in Tapa since April, alongside Estonian and French forces, as part of a Nato effort to reassure eastern European nations fearful of Russia's increasing assertiveness.

Theresa May has said it is still possible to get the assurances MPs need to back her Brexit deal, despite EU leaders ruling out any renegotiation.
At a summit in Brussels, the UK PM said there was "work to do" but talks on "further clarification" would continue.
She admitted a "robust" discussion with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, after he complained about "nebulous and imprecise debate".
Labour said the withdrawal deal was now "dead in the water".
The UK prime minister travelled to Brussels to make a special plea to EU leaders after delaying Tuesday's Commons vote on the deal, in anticipation of a heavy defeat.
She then went on to win a confidence vote brought by her own MPs but vowed to listen to the concerns of the 37% of Tory MPs who voted against her.
Many of them are concerned that the controversial "backstop" plan in the withdrawal agreement Mrs May has negotiated, which is aimed at preventing a hard border in Northern Ireland, would keep the UK tied to EU rules indefinitely and curb its ability to strike trade deals.
Elsewhere on Friday, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage told a Leave Means Leave rally in London it was time for Brexit supporters to prepare for the possibility of another referendum.
Mr Farage added the treatment of Mrs May in Brussels this week had been a "shaming moment" for both the UK and the EU and that the PM's Brexit deal was now "dead".
Labour MP Kate Hoey and Wetherspoons chairman Tim Martin were among the other speakers at the rally.
After Mrs May addressed EU leaders at the summit on Thursday evening, Mr Juncker urged further clarity from the UK.
He said: "Our UK friends need to say what they want, instead of asking us to say what we want... because this debate is sometimes nebulous and imprecise."
Video footage of the two on Friday morning captured a tense exchange, apparently about his remarks, although the exact words were not audible.
Asked about what she had said to him, Mrs May told reporters: "I had a robust discussion with Jean-Claude Juncker - I think that's the sort of discussion you're able to have when you have developed a working relationship and you work well together.
"And what came out of that was his clarity that actually he'd been talking - when he used that particular phrase - he'd been talking about a general level of debate."
At a later press conference, Mr Juncker described Mrs May as a "good friend" who he admired as a "woman of courage".
He said he hadn't realised nebulous was a word in English and he had been referring, not to her, but to the "overall state of the debate in Britain".
He said: "I can't see where the British parliament is heading. That's why I was saying that it was nebulous - foggy in English - I was not addressing her."
He also said: "We have to bring down the temperature" of the debate amid "attacks coming from Westminster against Europe and the European Commission".
Various EU leaders, including European Council President Donald Tusk, Mr Juncker and Irish PM Leo Varadkar, reiterated on Thursday that there could be no renegotiation of the withdrawal deal.
And a paragraph which had appeared in the draft conclusions at the start of the summit, saying that the EU "stands ready to examine whether any further assurance can be provided" did not appear in the final conclusions.
But Mrs May said that, despite reports that the EU was unwilling to consider further clarification, she had talked to Mr Tusk, Mr Juncker and others that morning which "have shown that further clarification and discussion following the council's conclusions is in fact possible".
She also welcomed commitments by other EU leaders to try to get a new trade deal in place "speedily" so that the backstop would not be needed and said that, as formal conclusions from the summit, they had "legal status".
But she added: "There is work to be done. It is clear we can look at this issue of further clarification. We will be working expeditiously over the coming days to seek those further assurances I believe MPs will need."
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the fact that the EU said it would use its "best endeavours" to get a future trade deal that would get rid of the need for a backstop - even if the backstop came into force - was seen as important by British officials who said it meant the UK could go to an independent arbitration panel if they felt the EU was dragging its feet.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The last 24 hours have confirmed that Theresa May's Brexit deal is dead in the water. The prime minister has utterly failed in her attempts to deliver any meaningful changes to her botched deal.
"Rather than ploughing ahead and dangerously running down the clock, the prime minister needs to put her deal to a vote next week so Parliament can take back control."
And Conservative Brexiteer Mark Francois told the BBC: "It is as plain as a pikestaff that this will never get through the House of Commons... the prime minister, I'm afraid, is completely boxed in."
The Democratic Unionist Party, on whom Theresa May relies for her Commons majority, said she must deliver "legally binding changes" to the withdrawal agreement if she wants her deal to get through Parliament.
Its leader Arlene Foster said the prime minister "has made commitments" to the DUP and "knows what she has to deliver on".
Meanwhile, the UK and Switzerland have provisionally agreed to keep their current trading rules after Brexit, the first of 40 existing EU trade deals with other countries the UK hopes to adopt.
The agreement, which will replicate the EU's current arrangement with Switzerland as closely as possible, is due to come into place at the end of 2020 when the Brexit transition phase ends.
But it could come into force at the end of March if the UK leaves with no deal.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming
Theresa May's mission to Brussels has not been a failure.
She has a written statement from her 27 fellow leaders confirming - reconfirming, really - that the Irish backstop is an insurance policy which would only ever be temporary.
If the backstop is activated, then the EU would use its "best endeavours" to negotiate a trade deal, which would mean it could be deactivated. That wording is crucial, say British officials, because it means the UK could refer the EU to the independent arbitration panel established in the Brexit treaty if London felt Brussels was moving too slowly.
The EU dropped a commitment to look for further ways to help the UK, which means there won't be a formal process to find them.
But it doesn't mean the search couldn't happen informally, or in private, or at the last minute.
The problem is that these commitments are unlikely to impress Theresa May's harshest critics. And they certainly wouldn't fit on the side of the bus as reasons to sign up to Mrs May's Brexit deal.

MPs will get another chance to vote on Brexit this month - even if Theresa May has not been able to negotiate a deal by then.
Housing Secretary James Brokenshire admitted it might not be the final, decisive vote on the PM's deal that Labour and some Tories are demanding.
The prime minister needs to get a deal approved by Parliament by 29 March to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Labour has accused her of "cynically" running down the clock.
Instead of a "meaningful" vote on the prime minister's deal with the EU, MPs could be given another series of non-binding votes on possible Brexit alternatives by 27 February, with the final vote on whether to approve or reject the deal delayed until the following month.
On Wednesday, Mrs May will ask MPs for more time to get legally-binding changes to the controversial Northern Irish backstop, which she believes will be enough to secure a majority in Parliament for her deal.
But the following day, Labour will attempt to force the government to hold the final, "meaningful vote" on Mrs May's Brexit deal by 26 February.
Mr Brokenshire refused to commit to this date in an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, saying there could be more votes on amendments to the proposed deal instead.
"If the meaningful vote has not happened, so in other words things have not concluded, then Parliament would have that further opportunity by no later than 27 February," said Mr Brokenshire.
"I think that gives that sense of timetable, clarity and purpose on what we are doing with the EU - taking that work forward and our determination to get a deal - but equally knowing that role that Parliament very firmly has."
He also ruled out removing the Irish backstop from the government's deal with the EU, as some Conservative MPs are demanding.
He said ministers were exploring a possible time-limit to the backstop, or a legal mechanism allowing the UK to exit the backstop without the agreement of the EU, but he insisted some kind of "insurance policy" was needed to keep the Irish border free-flowing.
But Labour's shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, says he believes the prime minister is "pretending to make progress" on the Irish backstop issue.
He says what she actually intends to do is return to Parliament after the 21/22 March European Council summit the week before Brexit and offer MPs a "binary choice" - her deal or no deal.
"We can't allow that to happen," Sir Keir told The Sunday Times.
"There needs to be a day when Parliament says that's it, enough is enough."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said delaying the final vote on the Brexit deal was "worse than irresponsible" and he "would not be surprised if [Theresa May] faces a massive rebellion by Conservative MPs".
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, who like Sir Vince has campaigned for another EU referendum, called for ministers who were "serious" about preventing a no-deal Brexit to resign and vote against the government.
Fellow Conservative MP Heidi Allen also called for ministerial resignations, saying it was "completely irresponsible" for the government to keep delaying the final Brexit vote.
Labour is proposing its own Brexit plan, which would involve the UK staying in a customs union with the EU, which they say could get the backing of a majority of MPs.
The government has not ruled out supporting this - and has promised a formal response to it and further talks with Labour - but they say it would prevent the UK from making its own trade deals after Brexit.
There are fewer than 50 days until Brexit. The law is already in place which means the UK will leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
Mrs May's Brexit deal - which she spent months negotiating and had agreed with the EU - covers the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations.
But it was rejected by the UK Parliament and if it is not approved by Brexit day, the default position would be a no-deal Brexit.
Last month, Parliament voted in favour of an amendment that supported most of the PM's deal but called for backstop - which is a last-resort option to prevent a hard border in Ireland - to be replaced with "alternative arrangements". The prime minister is now in talks with Brussels to seek these changes to the backstop.
A number of government ministers will also be meeting their counterparts across the continent this week, in order to underline Mrs May's determination to achieve a deal.
Critics of the backstop in Mrs May's current deal say they could tie the UK to EU rules indefinitely or mean Northern Ireland ends up under a different system to the rest of the UK.
But the Irish government and the EU have repeatedly rejected calls for changes.
Other options likely to be debated by MPs on Thursday include extending Article 50, the legal mechanism taking the UK out of the EU on 29 March, to allow more time to reach an agreement with Brussels.

Former education secretary Nicky Morgan has warned pro-Brexit Tories against "sabre-rattling" over the UK's future customs arrangements with the EU.
She said speculation that Theresa May could face a challenge if MPs ended up backing some form of post-Brexit customs union was "deeply unhelpful".
MPs are to debate a backbench motion on Thursday calling for the UK to retain this type of arrangement after Brexit.
Labour says a union of sorts is the way forward but ministers reject this.
Downing Street's position is that staying within the EU customs union or joining some new form of union would restrict the UK's ability to strike trade deals with other countries and therefore be unacceptable.
The government is instead looking at two options after the UK leaves on 29 March 2019 - a new customs partnership with the EU - under which there would continue to be no customs border between the EU and UK - or a "highly streamlined customs arrangement" using technology to facilitate the movement of goods.
Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, plus some Conservatives, believe that only a fully-fledged union will protect existing trade. They say it is also the only viable way to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Thursday's backbench debate was tabled by senior cross-party MPs, including Ms Morgan, after ministers lost a vote on the issue in the Lords last week.
Although the vote will not be binding, it has raised temperatures in the Conservative Party and led to unconfirmed reports that top ministers might quit if the government has to concede defeat on the issue at some point in the future.
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics, Mrs Morgan, the Treasury committee chair who is one of the most pro-EU voices in the party, said the PM's stated objective was to have frictionless trade and MPs should be able to "tease out" the best way to achieve this in a "calm and rational" way.
"If every time Parliament debates this issue or passes an amendment all we end up with is a sort of hysteria and leadership speculation, that is really not in Britain's interests," she said.
"All this sabre-rattling this weekend is not coming from the section of the party that I represent. It is coming from the pro-Brexit section of the party. And it is deeply unhelpful."
Although some MPs have questioned the point of Thursday's debate, Mrs Morgan said the views of businesses and constituents worried about the impact of Brexit on their livelihoods ought to be discussed in Parliament.
But Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss told Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics it was very important that Parliament didn't seek to "bind the prime minister's hands" when it came to negotiations on a future customs framework.
"It's already a negotiation that has a lot of complex aspects to it," she said.
And Justice Secretary David Gauke said the government had to make and win the case that leaving the EU customs union would not result in "unnecessary barriers".
For Labour, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told the BBC's Andrew Marr show the opposition was committed to leaving the EU but doing so in a "pragmatic" way which did not puts jobs at risk.
"I think anybody who has looked into this issue has seen that it is quite clear that there is no other place that we can go than to remain in a customs union with the European Union - nothing else makes sense."
No 10 sources told the Press Association policy had not changed and the UK was leaving the customs union.

The group representing hospitals and ambulance services in England has warned of a lack of "contingency planning" to deal with the impact of a no-deal Brexit on the health service.
In a leaked email to NHS England boss Simon Stevens, NHS Providers says leaving the EU without agreement would immediately be a real risk to services.
The group warns it would make it harder to stop the spread of diseases.
NHS England said preparing for every possible Brexit outcome was a priority.
The Department of Health said it was confident of reaching a Brexit deal that benefits the NHS but was preparing for "the unlikely event of no-deal", to prevent disruption to patients.
It comes as Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab holds the latest round of negotiations with his EU counterpart Michel Barnier.
The UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 and the two sides are currently negotiating the terms of its exit and its future relations in a whole range of issues.
NHS Providers - which represents acute, ambulance, community and mental health services within the health service - has expressed concern about what it says is a lack of engagement with ministers in the email, seen by the BBC.
It has called for NHS England and NHS Improvement - which oversees NHS trusts and providers - to convene a group of trust leaders as a matter of urgency.
In an email sent to NHS chief executive Simon Stevens, also copied in to Mr Raab and Health Secretary Matt Hancock, it calls for a co-ordinated response to confront the challenges that would be presented by a no deal.
Chief executive of NHS Providers Chris Hopson writes that there has been "no formal communication" to trusts from either NHS England or NHS Improvement on this issue.
Without national planning and coordination "there could be both stockpiles and shortages of medicines and medical devices", Mr Hopson says.
He adds that "disease control coordination could also suffer".
Mark Dayan, policy analyst at the Nuffield Trust, said "a large degree of chaos" was "implicit" in a no-deal Brexit and, without a transitional agreement with the EU, it was difficult to predict the impact on supply of medicines.
"There's obviously been talk of stockpiling. There's been talk in some cases of chartered flights to bring over supplies that maybe don't have such a long shelf-life. And although that's drastic action, it's probably quite justified," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
An NHS England spokeswoman said the health service was working with government, planning for different post-Brexit scenarios.
"We will be working with our colleagues and partners across the NHS to ensure plans are well progressed, and will provide the NHS with the support it needs," she said.
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who supports the People's Vote campaign for a referendum on the final Brexit deal, said the NHS letter was a "stark and urgent warning of the impact of a hard Brexit or no deal and of non-existent planning".
Another supporter of the campaign, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, said another referendum would be like seeking "informed consent" from a patient before a major operation.
A series of technical notices - including advice for businesses, citizens and public bodies about a no-deal scenario - will be made public over the next month or so.
Downing Street has described the advice due on Thursday as "sensible, proportionate, and part of a common sense approach to ensure stability, whatever the outcome of talks".
On the same day, Mr Raab will make a speech in Westminster to outline the government's plans for the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal.
The UK is seeking "associate membership" of the European Medicines Agency, which evaluates and supervises medicines and helps national authorities authorise the sale of drugs across the EU's single market.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has passed a motion withholding consent for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union.
The motion put forward by the Executive Office asked MLAs to consider parts of the Brexit bill that affected Northern Ireland.
It passed without a formal division on Monday.
All 18 Westminster MPs from Northern Ireland opposed the prime minister's Brexit deal last month.
The bill includes a role for the assembly in deciding whether Northern Ireland should still follow some EU customs rules.
The motion was to "affirm that the assembly does not agree to give its consent" to that.
A request by the TUV leader Jim Allister for the assembly debate to be delayed until next week was rejected by MLAs.
Mr Allister argued the Executive Office had only submitted the motion on Friday and that there had not been enough time for MLAs to propose amendments.
The Speaker Alex Maskey said it was "regrettable" the motion had not been tabled earlier.
First Minister Arlene Foster apologised for the short notice, but said she felt it was important the assembly had its say on the matter before the EU Withdrawal Bill receives its third reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday.
A former secretary of state has said the government's Brexit plans will do "untold damage" to Northern Ireland businesses.
Labour's Lord Hain said the government was asking small and medium businesses in Northern Ireland to "buy a pig in a poke".
He said NI businesses have been told they would just have to adjust to new regulations, but it was still not clear what those would be.
Lord Hain also accused the government of "trying to have it both ways".
"On the one hand they're saying to businesses in Northern Ireland and to politicians it's important that you reform and make the Northern Ireland economy more competitive - fair enough," he said.
"But then they are imposing enormous shackles on the ability of enterprises to succeed with these uncertain, potentially costly, administerially difficult burdens that they will have to bear for trading across into Great Britain."
He added: "I don't think the government is being fair with Northern Ireland - either its businesses or its politicians - by telling them they have to reform and on the other hand making it more difficult for them to do so by weakening the economy."
After the UK leaves the EU on 31 January, it will enter an 11-month transition period, where it will largely follow EU rules but will not have any representation in the bloc's institutions.
At the end of the transition period, Northern Ireland will continue to follow EU rules on agricultural and manufactured goods, while the rest of the UK will not.
Additionally, the whole of the UK will leave the EU's customs union but Northern Ireland will continue to enforce the EU's customs code at its ports.
This will mean some new checks and processes for goods moving between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK.
The details of those processes have to be negotiated between the EU and UK and new systems for businesses will have to implemented.

Northern Ireland must stay in a "full UK customs union" after Brexit, the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) deputy leader Nigel Dodds has said.
His comment came as UK and EU officials held what were described as "intense" talks in a bid to secure a new deal.
Neither side has given details about the common ground that has reportedly been found on the Irish border issue.
Mr Dodds said: "There is a lot of stuff coming from Brussels, pushed by the Europeans in the last hours.
"One thing is sure - Northern Ireland must remain fully part of the UK customs union and Boris Johnson knows it very well," he told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Negotiations between the UK and the EU are taking part at the EU Commission in Brussels and are expected to continue on Sunday.
A summit of European leaders is due to take place next Thursday and Friday is seen as the last chance to agree a deal before 31 October - the date the UK is due to leave the EU.
Plans by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to avoid concerns about hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit were criticised by EU leaders at the last week.
But he held talks with Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar on Thursday, with both leaders saying they could "see a pathway to a possible deal".
Since then, European Council President Donald Tusk has suggested there was only the slightest chance of an agreement.

Northern Ireland should remain in the single market and customs union after Brexit, four political parties have said.
They said there should be no hard border on the island of Ireland or between Ireland and the UK.
"This is critical to protecting investment, jobs, trade and the hard-won peace," the statement said.
It was signed by the leaders of the four parties: Michelle O'Neill, Steven Agnew, Naomi Long and Colum Eastwood.
The leaders said this week was "another crucial stage in the Brexit negotiations".
"All of the outstanding issues relating to the withdrawal agreement will be considered in relation to Northern Ireland/Ireland and the future relationship," they said.
"Theresa May has agreed that a backstop solution for the border will form part of the legal text of the withdrawal agreement, and that this backstop would apply, unless and until, another solution is found."
The leaders said time was "of the essence" in the run-up to June's meeting of the European Council.
The statement added that the protection of the Good Friday Agreement, including north/south and east/west co-operation, was "critical to maintaining relationships within, and between these islands".
It said that the backstop agreed by both the British Government and the EU27 was "the bottom line in order to safeguard our political and economic stability now and for the future".
Mrs O'Neill told BBC Good Morning Ulster: "In the contexts of Brexit, we need to see the interests of the people here being protected and that's why it's significant that the parties have come together to say very clearly that they have a very strong mandate, that they represent the majority view of the assembly, that people want to stay in the customs union and the single market.
"It's important that, as we reach this crunch time in negotiations, that negotiators hear the voice of the mandate which we've been given."
But DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the statement "is silent about the catastrophic damage that would be done to Northern Ireland" if separated economically from the UK.
The MP added: "It is devoid of reality since even the Labour party has made clear that the UK is leaving the single market and cannot stay in the customs union.  And it is politically ironic since its main author, Sinn Fein, calls for it to be heard while it simultaneously prevents the formation of the Executive, the recall of the assembly, and actually boycotts Westminster where the main decisions are being discussed and decided."
Mr Dodds also said that any "so-called backstop arrangement must be a UK-wide solution" as the DUP's position remains "that there can be no border in the Irish Sea".
The DUP's 10 MPs are helping to keep Prime Minister Theresa May in power as part of a confidence and supply deal.
However, the party has made it clear that if the Irish Sea became a de facto trade border, it would withdraw its support for the Conservative government.
The UK is scheduled to leave the European Union at 23:00 UK time on Friday 29 March 2019.

Ireland's deputy prime minister has ruled out any renegotiation of the Brexit withdrawal deal if Theresa May is replaced as UK prime minister.
Speaking on RTÉ, Tánaiste Simon Coveney said "the personality might change but the facts don't".
He described Mrs May as a "decent person" and strongly criticised Conservative MPs at Westminster.
Mrs May has promised to set a timetable for the election of her successor after the next Brexit vote.
Mr Coveney described political events at Westminster as "extraordinary", as he questioned the logic of politicians who believed a change of leader would deliver changes to the agreement struck by Mrs May.
He said Conservative MPs were "impossible" on the issue of Brexit.
"The EU has said very clearly that the Withdrawal Agreement has been negotiated over two-and-a-half years, it was agreed with the British government and the British cabinet and it's not up for renegotiation, even if there is a new British prime minister," he said.
He told RTÉ's This Week programme that many British politicians "don't, quite frankly, understand the complexity of politics in Northern Ireland".
"They have tried to dumb this debate down into a simplistic argument whereby it's Britain versus the EU, as opposed to two friends tying to navigate through the complexity of a very, very difficult agreement," he added.
Mr Coveney also said the Irish government would continue to focus significant efforts and financial resources towards planning for a no-deal Brexit scenario, following Friday's collapse of Brexit talks in the UK.
He said time was of the essence for the UK to get a deal through Parliament, adding that he was concerned Britain would not "get its act together over summer" and leave without a deal.
On Wednesday, Mrs May announced that MPs would vote on the bill that would pave the way for Brexit in the week beginning 3 June.
If the bill is not passed, the default position is that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October without a deal.
Brexit had been due to take place on 29 March.
But the UK was given an extension until 31 October after MPs three times voted down the withdrawal agreement Mrs May had negotiated with the EU - by margins of 230, 149 and 58 votes.

The government has delivered its new Brexit proposals to the EU, including plans to replace the Irish backstop.
The plan, outlined in a seven-page document, would see Northern Ireland stay in the European single market for goods, but leave the customs union - resulting in new customs checks.
The Northern Ireland Assembly would get to approve the arrangements first and vote every four years on keeping them.
The European Commission said there had been progress but "problems" remained.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the new blueprint did not "fully meet the agreed objectives of the backstop", in terms of upholding the EU's single market, protecting peace in Northern Ireland and supporting economic co-operation with the Republic of Ireland.
But he said he wanted an agreement and talks would continue.
The UK is set to leave the EU on 31 October and the government has insisted it will not negotiate a further delay beyond the Halloween deadline.
Speaking at the Conservative Party conference earlier on Wednesday, Boris Johnson said the only alternative to his Brexit plan was no-deal.
In a letter to European Commission's president, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister said the new proposals "respect the decision taken by the people of the UK to leave the EU, while dealing pragmatically with that decision's consequences in Northern Ireland and in Ireland".
Government sources hoped the UK might be able to enter an intense 10-day period of negotiations with the EU almost immediately, with the aim of coming to a final agreement at an EU summit on 17 October.
Mr Juncker welcomed what he said were "positive advances" in some areas but he said the UK's proposed system of "governance" of the new arrangements was "problematic" - and customs rules remained a concern.
Don't expect the EU to rush to reject the prime minister's proposals even though there are elements that clearly contravene EU red lines, such as the implementation of any kind of customs procedures between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Jean-Claude Juncker spoke today of "concerns" arising from the text but EU leaders won't want to be seen to be the ones closing the door to a deal.
Throughout the Brexit process they've repeatedly kicked the ball back into the UK government's court.
On cue, leaders are "welcoming the delivery of the proposals from the government" and inviting the prime minister to continue negotiations.
The fundamental questions for the EU remain: How much does does the prime minister really want a deal? Is he willing to move from his apparent "take it or leave it" position?
If he is, there will be something to talk about. If not, the EU will try its best to avoid being the ones to say "forget it".
But Mr Johnson should think again if he imagines his proposals, which do include concessions from his side, will prompt EU countries with a lot to lose in a no deal Brexit (like Germany) to try to force Ireland to accept his offer.
Angela Merkel today insisted EU leaders would stick together. With such an important EU member leaving, Mrs Merkel believes unity amongst those left behind is paramount.
Arlene Foster, leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, supported the plan, saying it would allow Northern Ireland to leave the customs union and single market at the same time as the rest of the UK.
Several Conservative MPs who opposed Theresa May's agreement also signalled their likely support, with leading Brexiteer Steve Baker saying he was "cautiously optimistic".
But Sinn Fein said the plans were a "non-starter" and accused the DUP, their former power-sharing partners of "working against the interests of the people" of Northern Ireland.
And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the deal was "not acceptable" and "worse" than Theresa May's agreement, as it "undermined" the Good Friday Agreement that secured peace in Northern Ireland.
The prime minister has set out details of his plan to replace the Irish border "backstop" in the current Brexit agreement.
The backstop is the controversial "insurance policy" that is meant to keep a free-flowing border on the island of Ireland but which critics - including the PM - fear could trap the UK in EU trading rules indefinitely.
Under Mr Johnson's proposals, which he calls a "broad landing zone" for a new deal with the EU:
The government is also promising a "New Deal for Northern Ireland", with financial commitments to help manage the changes.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has spoken to Mr Johnson, said the EU would study the proposals carefully.
She said she "trusted" the bloc's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to maintain European unity.
But opponents of Brexit in Parliament indicated they would not support the proposals, unless they were accompanied by the promise of another referendum.
The Liberal Democrats, who want to stop Brexit, said the proposals would deal a "hammer blow" to the Northern Irish economy.
The Scottish National Party dismissed the proposals as "window dressing".

A new referendum on the UK's relationship with the EU is "an option for the future" but "not an option for today", Jeremy Corbyn has said.
The Labour leader confirmed on Sky News that his party would vote against the draft withdrawal agreement.
Mr Corbyn said Labour "couldn't stop" Brexit because it does not have enough seats in Parliament.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said that ousting her would not make it easier to deliver Brexit.
Asked about calls for a further referendum as demanded by some of his MPs, Mr Corbyn said: "If there was a referendum tomorrow what's it going to be on, what's the question going to be?"
If such a referendum were called, Mr Corbyn, who voted Remain in 2016, said: "I don't know how I am going to vote - what the options would be at that time."
Speaking on the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, the Labour leader said Mrs May's draft deal with the EU was a "one-way agreement" where the EU "calls all the shots".
It also failed to guarantee environmental protections or workers' rights, he said.
"We'll vote against this deal because it doesn't meet our tests. We don't believe it serves the interest of this country, therefore the government have to go back to the EU and renegotiate rapidly."
Mr Corbyn said Labour would focus on negotiating a permanent customs arrangement with the EU, otherwise the UK would "lose on jobs, lose on investment and we lose on future economic development".
But he admitted he had not read all 585 pages of the draft withdrawal agreement, saying: "I've read a lot of it."
On the same programme, Mrs May said further negotiations with the EU were taking place but that MPs should ensure "we deliver what people in this country voted on".
She warned rivals thinking of replacing her as Conservative leader: "It is not going to make the negotiations any easier and it won't change the parliamentary arithmetic."

Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry has told the BBC "all options remain on the table", including a new referendum, if MPs vote down a Brexit deal.
She was asked about party leader Jeremy Corbyn's comment to a German newspaper that Brexit cannot be stopped.
Labour would prefer a general election, she said, but could campaign for "a People's Vote" if it were not possible.
Tory cabinet minister Damian Hinds said MPs must "consider the alternatives" if they vote down the deal.
The government has not yet agreed a withdrawal deal with the European Union, ahead of the UK's exit from the bloc next March.
While the UK government says it is 95% agreed - they have been unable to agree on the mechanism for ensuring that there will be no return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, if a future trade deal is not ready in time.
On Friday, transport minister Jo Johnson, who voted to remain in the EU, quit the government saying he could not support the deal and called for another referendum.
Meanwhile Tory Brexiteer Steve Baker and Sammy Wilson, Brexit spokesman for the DUP - whose party's support Theresa May relies on for key Commons votes - have written a joint article in the Sunday Telegraph warning they are prepared to vote down any deal over proposals to manage the Irish border issue.
On Saturday, Jeremy Corbyn was quoted in Der Spiegel, having been asked if he would stop Brexit, as saying: "We can't stop it, the referendum took place."
Asked if Brexit could be stopped on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Ms Thornberry said the results of the referendum should be "abided by" but there had to be an "injection of democracy" in between that result and going any further. That should be a "meaningful vote" in Parliament, she said.
But she said Theresa May was only offering a choice between the UK "falling off a cliff" - with no deal agreed - or "get on this bridge to nowhere", by backing her deal. She said Labour would refuse to "play that sort of game" and, if the vote was lost, the party wanted a general election.
She added: "If we don't have a general election, which we think we should have, then yes of course all the options remain on the table and we would campaign for there to be a People's Vote but, you know, there are several stages before we get there."
The People's Vote campaign group organised the march in London in October which it said attracted about 700,000 people. The group wants a referendum on the final withdrawal deal.
Ms Thornberry said Mr Corbyn's comments had to be seen in context and he was explaining that: "We had a referendum, that we are democrats over and above everything else."
At the Labour Party conference in September, party members approved a motion that would keep all options - including a fresh referendum - on the table if MPs are deadlocked over Brexit. Mr Corbyn has said he would respect the result of the vote.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer wrote in the Sunday Times: "There is no duty on MPs to surrender to a bad deal."
Instead, he said that MPs would be able to table motions, press amendments and trigger a no-confidence vote in order to prevent the UK leaving without a deal at all.
Sir Keir said: "I remain as convinced as ever that the consequences of no deal would be so severe that it cannot be allowed to happen."
But Education Secretary Damian Hinds told the BBC that people would have to consider a deal as a whole, stating: "They need to think about what the alternatives are as well.
"It is no good just not liking individual aspects. If you're going to take that view, you have got to have in mind a realistic, viable, deliverable alternative.
"I think people are going to be getting behind this deal and saying 'yeah, let's get on with it'."
He added: "It is not necessarily going to be something everybody is going to think is absolutely perfectly what they want.
"But that's the nature of these things, there are some trade-offs."

The government says it will try to get Theresa May's Brexit deal through the Commons, despite Speaker John Bercow throwing the process into doubt.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay suggested a vote could take place next week - after Mrs May has sought a delay to Brexit from the EU.
Mr Bercow has ruled that the PM can not bring her deal back for a third vote without "substantial" changes.
The UK is due to leave the EU in 10 days with or without a deal.
The prime minister had hoped to have another try at getting MPs to back the withdrawal deal she has agreed with the EU this week - but Speaker Bercow effectively torpedoed that with his surprise intervention on Monday.
Stephen Barclay told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the Commons Speaker had made a "serious ruling" and ministers were giving it "serious consideration".
He said it was important to "respect the referee" and abide by his decisions - but, he added, Mr Bercow himself had said, in the past, that if Parliament was guided only by precedent then "nothing ever would change".
Mr Bercow cited a ruling from 1604 to justify his decision to block a third vote, after the PM's deal was rejected for a second time last week, by 149 votes.
Mr Barclay suggested that MPs would "find a way" to get another vote, if the government manages to persuade enough of them, including the 10 Democratic Unionists, to change their mind and back the deal.
He suggested it would also depend on Theresa May getting "clarity" from the EU on the "terms of an extension" to Brexit.
He accepted that there would now have to be a "short extension" to the Article 50 withdrawal process if the deal gets through Parliament, to get the necessary legislation through.
Mrs May is writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to ask for an extension.
The PM has warned Brexiteer Tories that a long extension may be needed if they do not back her deal but Downing Street said it would not reveal what the PM has asked for at this stage.
There would, however, need to be a vote in both Houses of Parliament to change the 29 March departure date, which is written into law, the PM's spokesman said.
Mr Bercow refused to discuss his decision when quizzed by the BBC, as he made his way to Parliament earlier.
Government ministers and MPs have been floating different ideas on how to get a vote on the prime minister's deal, in light of the Speaker's ruling.
Children and Families' minister Nadhim Zahawi told BBC Newsnight that one of the options was for MPs to vote on whether to ignore the 400-year-old convention that Mr Bercow had cited in making his ruling.
Mr Zahawi, who is a Brexiteer, was asked whether the government was going to bypass Mr Bercow's ruling. He said: "Let's see, we have to look at all our options."
Solicitor General Robert Buckland said a vote to overrule the Speaker was the most likely way forward.
He told BBC Radio Wiltshire that if enough MPs show they want another vote on the Brexit deal, it can return to Parliament despite the current block.
He said this would be a more practical solution than asking the Queen to formally close and reopen Parliament, which some have suggested would get round the rule that MPs cannot be repeatedly asked to vote on the same question in a Parliamentary session.
Nikki da Costa, former director of legal affairs at Downing Street, told the Today programme: "I think the PM and the government can still have a third meaningful vote... but it will be extraordinarily difficult to have a fourth meaningful vote so I think MPs really have to think very carefully if that vote does come back."
There is also a question mark over whether any agreement reached by Theresa May in Brussels on extending Brexit would overrule a vote by MPs, as it would have force under international law.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would struggle until the last possible moment to achieve an orderly Brexit, saying the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake.
"I will fight to the last hour of the deadline on 29 March for an orderly exit," she told a press conference in Berlin. "We don't have a lot of time for it but still have a few days."
EU ministers are, meanwhile, meeting in Brussels to prepare for this week's summit.
Germany's Europe minister, Michael Roth, said: "Our patience is really being put to the test at the moment and I can only ask our partners in London to finally make a concrete proposal why they are seeking an extension."
France's Europe minister, Nathalie Loiseau, said:  "'Grant an extension, what for?' is always the question. Time is not a solution... we need a decision from London."
European Commission chief Jean Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, who is holding talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar in Dublin. are due to hold press conferences later.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is due to meet the leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party for talks on Brexit.
The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Lib Dem leader Vince Cable, Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas have all released a joint statement calling for another referendum.
"The best and most democratic way forward is to put the decision back to the people in a new vote - with the option to Remain on the ballot paper," they said.
Mr Corbyn will also meet members of the group of MPs calling for a so-called Norway Plus style of future relationship with the EU.

A cross-party trio of pro-EU politicians jokingly branded themselves "the rebels" before holding talks with the European Commission's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, Tory ex-chancellor Ken Clarke and Labour's Lord Adonis met Mr Barnier in Brussels.
Asked if he was there to stop Brexit, Mr Clegg said: "If only it were that easy."
A European Commission spokesman said Mr Barnier's door was "always open".
But he played down claims of a "shadow negotiation" with the Remain-backers, saying: "There are two negotiators - on the one side the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, David Davis, and on the European side it's the chief negotiator of the EU, Michel Barnier. Nobody else."
As they arrived, Mr Clarke joked that "we are here to talk about cricket" and did not respond to questions about whether he had permission from the government to attend the meeting.
Mr Clegg said they were there to get a "better understanding" about what was going on in the talks, which have yet to reach a breakthrough on issues including citizens' rights and the UK's financial bill.
But on Twitter, Theresa May's former advisor Nick Timothy said their visit "undermines Britain's negotiating position" and UKIP MEP Gerard Batten told the Daily Express the three politicians had "no right to pretend to represent the British public".
In other Brexit news, the government has published a list of the 58 sectors of the economy on which it has assessed the impact of leaving the EU.
Ministers have refused requests to publish the actual reports, saying this could undermine its negotiating position. The list was published in a response by Brexit Secretary David Davis to a House of Lords committee.

Boris Johnson was "too eager by far to get a deal at any cost," the Democratic Unionist Party deputy leader Nigel Dodds has said.
A Brexit deal, between the UK and EU, was struck on Thursday before a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.
The DUP said it is "unable" to back the proposals in the Commons as they are not in the best interests of NI.
The party's support is seen as crucial if the deal is to pass in Parliament before the 31 October deadline.
Speaking alongside DUP leader Arlene Foster, Mr Dodds said the Benn Act, which requires the prime minister to ask for an extension if there is no deal by Saturday, had forced Mr Johnson into "desperation measures".
"If he'd held his nerve - held out - he would have got better concessions which kept the integrity, both economic and constitutional, of the UK," said Mr Dodds.
He said the DUP believed that since it had been proved that the Withdrawal Agreement could be changed, it "should be changed much more for the better".
He added that the issue of consent in the deal is a "major rewriting of the Belfast Agreement" adding it was "something anyone who has any concern for any kind of political process in Northern Ireland should be very, very concerned about".
Mr Dodds also said he expected a "massive vote" against Mr Johnson's deal on Saturday, and said the DUP would not be isolated on that.
The UK and the EU have been working on the legal text of a deal but it will still need the approval of both the UK and European parliaments.
Speaking in Brussels, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier described the consent proposal in the agreement as "a cornerstone of our newly agreed approach".
"Four years after entry into force of the protocol, the elected representatives of Northern Ireland will be able to decide by simple majority whether to continue applying relevant union rules in Northern Ireland or not," he said.
Speaking in Londonderry, the Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith said "we've abandoned nobody" when asked if the government had decided not to rely on the DUP's votes.
Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar, who is in Brussels for the EU summit, said: "It's up to the members of the House of Commons now to decide whether they want a deal."
"The deal agreed today is complex and wide-ranging and all aspects need to be considered in their entirety," she added.
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Robin Swann said the deal would "place Northern Ireland on the window ledge of the union".
He said unionist MPs should "think long and hard" before voting on the deal, adding: "What's more important? The pursuit of a puritanical Brexit or the security and integrity of the union?"
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood appealed to the DUP not to "shoot this down" because the alternative was a no-deal Brexit that would be a "threat to our peace process".
"[The DUP has] a responsibility to the farmers, to the business community, to the ordinary community out there to get this resolved," he added.
Alliance Party leader and MEP Naomi Long said she wanted the prime minister to put the deal to the public in a referendum.
"If the DUP are not willing to provide the arithmetic to get a deal through Parliament then I think Boris Johnson would be right to go to the public."
Conservative MP and Brexit supporter Iain Duncan Smith said he would "reserve judgement" on the deal until he had read the detail of it.
He said: "There are issues - if the DUP aren't backing it, what are their reasons for not backing it?"
The Brexit deal struck in Brussels would involve Stormont giving ongoing consent to any special arrangements for Northern Ireland.
It would not be the unionists' veto demanded by the DUP - instead the arrangements could be approved by a straight majority.
Pro-EU parties have a narrow majority at Stormont.
It would continue to follow EU rules on food safety and product standards.
The DUP has already accepted that Northern Ireland would have to align with some EU rules to avoid a hard border.
Northern Ireland would also leave the EU customs union.
But EU customs procedures would still apply on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain in order to avoid checks at the border.
Stormont would have to approve those arrangements on an ongoing basis.
Approval would involve a straight-forward majority, which would keep the special arrangements in place for four years.
Alternatively, if the arrangements are approved by a majority of nationalists and a majority of unionists, they would remain in place for eight years - that would incentivise a cross-community consensus.
If the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to end the arrangements there would be a two-year notice period, during which the UK and the EU would have to agree ways to protect the peace process and avoid a hard border.
There is no fallback position in case the two sides cannot find a solution.
If a vote was not held - by choice or because the assembly was not sitting - then the government has committed to finding an "alternative process".
The EU believes that replaces the backstop - which would have lasted "unless and until" an alternative was found - with arrangements that are sustainable over time and are democratically supported, as requested by the UK.

Boris Johnson will not make an election pact with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, Downing Street has said.
Mr Farage said his party and the Conservatives should make a deal and "together we would be unstoppable".
But a senior Conservative source said Mr Farage was "not a fit and proper person" and "should never be allowed anywhere near government".
Mr Farage said he was "disappointed" with the response as he was offering a "genuine hand of friendship".
He told the BBC's Andrew Neil show that he did not want a job in the Conservative government and accused the Tories of "petty, tribal, party politics".
"Can't we see that actually if we get a Labour government we're not going to get a meaningful Brexit of any kind at all? This is big chance to unite the Leave vote," he said.
"We've got a solution here."
Mr Johnson argues that an election is now the only way to break the deadlock over Brexit, but MPs have twice rejected his call to hold one.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he is "eager for an election" but wants to see legislation designed to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October implemented first.
Parliament is now prorogued for five weeks and is not scheduled to return until 14 October, when there will be a Queen's Speech outlining Mr Johnson's legislative plans.
Meanwhile, Scotland's highest civil court has ruled that the prime minister's suspension of the UK Parliament was unlawful.
Mr Farage has offered a "non-aggression pact" between his party and the Conservatives, on the condition that Mr Johnson sign up for "a clean-break Brexit" - in other words, no deal.
The aim is try to see off the threat from a "Remain alliance" of opposition parties who oppose Brexit and could depose the Tories.
Mr Farage says he will not field candidates in any of the Conservatives' existing seats and targets if, in return, the Tories stand aside in more than 80 Leave-voting constituencies where they are unlikely to win.
He made the offer in a full-page advert in the Sun and a wraparound advert in the Daily Express on Wednesday.
At the weekend, the Brexit Party leader said the offer was "100% sincere" and would help return Mr Johnson to Downing Street.
He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: "Johnson should cast his mind back to the European elections in May, in which his party came fifth, and ask himself: does he want the Tories to find themselves in a similarly disastrous position when the results of the next general election come in, or does he want to sign a non-aggression pact with me and return to Downing Street?"
When asked about a potential alliance on the Andrew Marr Show, Chancellor Sajid Javid said: "We don't need an electoral alliance with anyone. We can stand on our own two feet, put our message across."

Nigel Farage has said he is going "back on the road" to campaign against the prime minister's Brexit plan.
In the Daily Telegraph, the UKIP MEP said Theresa May's Chequers agreement was a "sell-out" as it included regulatory alignment with the EU.
He wrote he would join pro-Brexit group Leave Means Leave at UK public events.
Meanwhile, ex-civil service head Lord Kerslake has said consequences of a no-deal Brexit would be so serious, MPs would have to reconsider it.
The announcement by former UKIP leader Mr Farage comes after a string of resignations last month over the prime minister's Brexit strategy - including those of David Davis and Boris Johnson.
Mr Davis quit as Brexit secretary saying he did not agree with Mrs May's proposals, while former foreign secretary Mr Johnson accused the prime minister of pursuing a "semi-Brexit".
Mr Farage said "scores of people" had stopped him in the street to ask when he was "coming back".
He added: "Well now you have your answer: I'm back."
The 54-year-old said a "battlebus" had already been hired.
He later told the BBC that Mrs May's proposal was "a complete betrayal of what people voted for".
His comments also come amid calls for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.
Campaign group People's Vote has also criticised the government's handling of negotiations with the European Union.
People's Vote argues the public should be allowed a say on the final deal agreed with the EU.
Lord Kerslake told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that, if the government was unable to strike a deal with Brussels, there would have to be a "pause" in the Article 50 process. under which the UK will leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The crossbench peer said in those circumstances, the European Commission would likely insist on some "re-examination" of the 2016 referendum decision to leave.
"The consequences of a no deal would be so serious as I think Parliament would have to seriously consider whether it could contemplate this," he said.
"The question people need ask themselves is: is this a risk that they think we should be taking?
"If the government can negotiate a good deal, then so be it.
"But if they can't and we end up in this position, then we have to reopen the question of whether we go forward with Brexit at all. It is not too late to do that."
The government is due to publish a series of technical notes on preparations for a no-deal Brexit on areas including farming and financial services. But Lord Kerslake said this was "too little, too late".
On Friday, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted Britain would "survive and prosper" if it left the EU without a trade deal - but added it would be a "big mistake for Europe".

Downing Street has denied the government is split over how to move forward with the Brexit process.
The prime minister has said he will seek a snap general election if the EU decides to delay Brexit until January.
But some ministers are understood to be urging him to make another attempt to get his deal through Parliament first.
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler says the EU will decide on Friday whether to grant an extension and, if so, for how long.
"France is digging its heels in, while Germany and most other EU countries support idea of granting the three-month extension," adds our correspondent.
French President Emmanuel Macon is thought to be concerned that a long extension could lead to more UK indecisiveness or an inconclusive general election.
If France remains opposed to a three-month extension, there could be an emergency summit in Brussels on Monday so leaders reach agreement face-to-face, says Katya Adler.
On Tuesday, MPs backed the prime minister's Brexit deal at its first parliamentary hurdle but rejected his plans to fast-track the legislation.
That defeat effectively ended any realistic prospect of the UK leaving the bloc with a deal by the government's 31 October deadline.
On Saturday, the prime minister was forced by law to send a letter to Brussels requesting a three-month extension.
Neither a motion for an early election nor another attempt to get the Brexit deal through has so far been scheduled for next week's business in Parliament.
Outlining the agenda, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said the government "does not want an extension" and is "making every preparation to leave on 31 October".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was unlikely the government would decide on either option before the EU responded to the extension request.
After Tuesday's Commons defeat on the timetable, Mr Johnson said he would pause the progress of his Withdrawal Agreement Bill while he waited to hear from the EU.
But he insists the UK will still leave in a week's time, with or without a deal - and he says he has told EU leaders that.
If the EU approves the UK's request for a three-month extension, Mr Johnson would have to accept it under legislation passed by MPs last month.
He would also have to accept any alternative duration suggested by EU leaders, unless MPs decide not to agree with it within two days.
Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson's chief adviser, is reported by the Sun to be urging ministers to abandon attempts to get the prime minister's deal through Parliament and go for a December election instead.
But the newspaper says a series of ministers think getting the Brexit deal through Parliament should be the priority.
On Wednesday, Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith suggested the government's top priority, after Tuesday's Commons votes, may not be securing an early general election.
He told the Northern Ireland select committee: "What I want to do is listen to Northern Irish MPs, get a programme motion that is to the satisfaction of a majority of people in this House and resolve this situation.
"That is where I feel our responsibility lies, and we can work together to address many of these issues and ensure this bill is completed.
"I think the prime minister had a big success [on Tuesday], and I hope we can build on that in the coming days and weeks."
On Wednesday, Mr Johnson met Jeremy Corbyn to discuss how to break the Brexit impasse.
The Labour leader was keen to discuss a different timetable for the Brexit bill, while the prime minister wanted to know what Mr Corbyn would do if the EU refused to grant an extension.
But nothing was agreed between the pair and no further talks have been planned.
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told Radio 4's Today programme that Labour would vote for an early election if Mr Johnson pushes for one as soon as an extension is granted by the EU.
"That's our position. But we also want the prime minister to look at the compromise that's been offered that a lot of MPs support, and that's the ability to be able to properly scrutinise the bill," she added.
James Cleverly, Conservative Party chairman, told the Today programme the government was still preparing for a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
"The EU has not agreed an extension and therefore it is absolutely essential that we prepare to leave," he said.
However, Labour MP Lisa Nandy said keeping to next week's deadline was "very unlikely".
The Wigan MP told the Today programme the "general consensus" in her party was that if the government wanted to propose a new schedule for the Commons to debate the bill, "five or six days" would be "sufficient".
Even if Mr Johnson does decide to press for an early election there is no guarantee he will succeed.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the prime minister needs to have the backing of two-thirds of MPs to hold a snap poll. This has been rejected twice by MPs.
Another way would be for the Conservatives to vote for a no-confidence motion in their own government - which Mr Johnson could even call himself - which would only require a simple majority of one.
But Parliamentary rules state that if it passes, the Commons has 14 days to form an alternative administration, so he would run the risk of being forced out of Downing Street if opposition parties can unite around a different leader.
Another route to an election is a one-line bill, that requires only a simple majority, but any such bill is likely to incur a host of amendments, for example, giving 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote.
Traditionally, UK elections are held on a Thursday. So, if an election were triggered in the week beginning 28 October, the earliest date the poll could take place is Thursday, 5 December.
That's because the law requires Parliament to dissolve 25 working days before the election.

The government has rejected claims it is unwilling to negotiate with the EU and wants talks to fail to allow a no-deal Brexit.
It comes after the EU said UK demands to remove the Irish backstop from Theresa May's deal were unacceptable.
EU negotiators told European diplomats there was currently no basis for "meaningful discussions" and talks were back where they were three years ago.
Downing Street said the EU needed to "change its stance".
The European Commission said on Tuesday morning it was willing to hold talks in the coming weeks by phone or in person, "should the UK wish to clarify its position in more detail".
A spokeswoman added the agreement negotiated by Mrs May - rejected three times by MPs - was the "best possible deal", and could not be re-opened.
Many opponents of Mrs May's deal cite concerns over the backstop - an insurance policy to prevent a hard border returning on the island of Ireland - which if implemented, would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market.
It would also involve a temporary single customs territory, effectively keeping the whole of the UK in the EU customs union. These arrangements would apply unless and until both the EU and UK agreed they were no longer necessary.
A No 10 spokesperson said: "The prime minister wants to meet EU leaders and negotiate a new deal - one that abolishes the anti-democratic backstop.
"We will throw ourselves into the negotiations with the greatest energy and the spirit of friendship and we hope the EU will rethink its current refusal to make any changes to the withdrawal agreement."
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to leave the EU by the deadline of 31 October, with or without a deal.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the meeting on Sunday between officials and diplomats was a debrief from discussions last week between the EU, UK Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and Mr Johnson's European envoy, David Frost.
A senior EU diplomat told the meeting a no-deal Brexit appeared to be the UK government's "central scenario", according to the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian.
"It was clear UK does not have another plan. No intention to negotiate, which would require a plan," the diplomat is reported to have said.
Mr Frost reiterated the prime minister's stance that the backstop element of Mrs May's plan must be abolished, and stressed that Mr Johnson's new ministers were not bound by commitments made by the previous government.
He also raised concerns about the UK's "divorce bill" and the proposed role of the European Court of Justice, the EU's top court, after Brexit.
Further talks between the two sides have not been ruled out, and Adam Fleming said the G7 summit in France at the end of August could be the moment of truth - the point at which a no-deal Brexit becomes inevitable.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson is meeting his first foreign leader since entering Downing Street - Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas.
The country's Foreign Minister, Urmas Reinsalu, said earlier that while the "reality" was the withdrawal agreement - including the backstop - had been jointly agreed by EU member states, there was still a need for continued dialogue in the coming weeks to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme alternatives to the backstop could be discussed after the ratification of the withdrawal deal.
The EU is not optimistic about any agreement with the UK.
The message they are getting from Boris Johnson's team is that the UK is not going to sign another deal unless it involves getting rid of the backstop.
But the EU has been clear time and time again that it isn't going to do that - the backstop is an integral part of any withdrawal agreement and it has to stay.
So the conclusion of officials is there is no reason to get back round the table at the moment, for the simple reason that they don't think they can meet the conditions Boris Johnson has set.
There are a couple of months to try to eke something out from one of the sides - to see if somebody blinks and there is some room for negotiation either in Brussels or in London.
But at the moment, many people think the direction of travel is heading towards a no-deal Brexit.
The meeting follows an interview with Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who said he believed Parliament could no longer block the UK from leaving the EU without a deal.
In a no-deal scenario, the UK would immediately leave the EU with no agreement about the "divorce" process, and would exit overnight from the single market and customs union.
Opponents say a no-deal exit would damage the economy and lead to border posts between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Other politicians argue any disruption could be quickly overcome.
Prominent pro-EU Conservative Dominic Grieve has insisted there are still a number of options available to MPs to block a no deal - including bringing down the government with a vote of no confidence.
He told BBC Radio 5Live the idea that Mr Johnson might refuse to resign even if he lost such a vote and another PM secured the confidence of the Commons was "breathtaking, stupid, infantile, and it won't work".
"Quite frankly, I'm astonished to hear these suggestions coming out," he added.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will begin a tour of North America on Tuesday as part of a bid to "fire up" the UK's trade relationships with countries outside the EU.
Mr Raab said the foreign ministers he saw at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Thailand last week expressed a "consistent warmth" for the UK and a "desire to work more closely with us".
However, the former US treasury secretary, Larry Summers, said the UK was "delusional" if it believed it could secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate... it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that's when you strike the hardest bargain."

The cabinet remains fully behind Theresa May's Brexit policy in the face of growing calls within her party to change direction, No 10 has insisted.
The prime minister is sticking by her Chequers plan for future co-operation despite European leaders attacking it.
She met senior ministers as pressure grows on her to ditch it in favour of a Canada-style trade accord.
Meanwhile, ministers have warned of the risk of disruption to flights in the event of the UK leaving without a deal.
The two sides are seeking to negotiate the terms of exit as well as an outline agreement on future co-operation, over the next month or so.
But the talks hit the rocks on Thursday when EU leaders dismissed the basis of the PM's plan - a free trade zone and common rule book for goods with greater divergence for services - as "unworkable".
At a cabinet meeting earlier, Mrs May defended her strategy following calls from leading Brexiteers in her party to keep the option of a Canada-style arrangement on the table as talks enter a crucial phase.
Afterwards, Downing Street said she had told ministers hers was the "only plan on the table" that secured the "frictionless trade" needed to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Mrs May also defended her Brexit trade plans to the European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt, who she hosted in Downing Street.
The prime minister also told him the UK would guarantee the rights of the three million EU citizens living in the UK even if it leaves without a deal.
Mr Verhofstadt described their meeting as an "open an honest exchange".
The government has now published 77 technical notices designed to prepare business and inform the public about what could happen in the "unlikely" event of the UK leaving without a deal.
The latest batch included warnings on aviation, pet transport and coach travel.
Canada's deal with the EU, signed in 2016, removes the vast majority of customs duties on EU exports to Canada and Canadian exports to the EU.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said proposals put forward by the Institute for Economic Affairs on Monday showed there was an alternative to ending up as a vassal state with "colony status" through the Chequers route.
The IEA, a free market think-tank, said Mrs May should change tack and pursue an advanced free trade agreement with the EU, with full reciprocal market access, no tariffs in goods including agriculture and maximum recognition of regulatory standards.
It said new customs processes had to be put in place that could handle a potential five-fold increase in declarations after Brexit, using enhanced technology and information sharing to separate the movement of goods from the processing of forms for as many traders as possible.
What is the so-called Canada option?
Concerns over the Irish border could be "solved", the IEA argued, by bespoke technical solutions, including trusted trader schemes and streamlined procedures for small businesses.
Mr Johnson said the IEA blueprint would allow the UK to "do a big free trade agreement with the EU but also to do free trade deals around the world" while Jacob Rees-Mogg said it could win the backing of the EU, Parliament and also "public opinion".
But former education secretary Nicky Morgan, who favours closer links with the EU after Brexit, said a Canada-style deal would take years to negotiate and might not give the kind of access its supporters hoped for.
Mrs Morgan told Conservative Home that the fallback option was for the UK to rejoin the European Free Trade Association, the so-called Norway option which would give the UK preferential market access although it would be required to accept EU rules, including on freedom of movement.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the cabinet had had a "good, healthy discussion" and ministers would continue to press the EU on some of the criticisms it had made.
"Of course we respect different views across the board but we're not going to suddenly throw up our hands in despair because we've had a bump in the road in these negotiations," he said.

Boris Johnson has urged MPs to "come together" to back the Brexit deal he has secured with the EU, insisting there is "no better outcome".
The prime minister told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg he wanted the country to "move on" from Brexit, which he described as "divisive".
And he said he was hopeful the deal would pass the Commons on Saturday.
The government's former allies in the DUP and every opposition party plans to vote against it.
The new deal, agreed by Mr Johnson and the EU on Thursday, is similar to the one agreed by Theresa May last year - but it removes the controversial backstop clause, which critics say could have kept the UK tied indefinitely to EU customs rules.
Northern Ireland would remain in the UK's customs union under the new agreement, but there would also be customs checks on some goods passing through en route to Ireland and the EU single market.
Mr Johnson and his team are trying to persuade enough Labour rebels, former Conservatives and Brexiteer Tory rebels to get it across the line in Parliament.
He told the BBC's political editor: "I just kind of invite everybody to imagine what it could be like tomorrow (Saturday) evening, if we have settled this, and we have respected the will of the people, because we will then have a chance to to move on.
"I hope that people will think well, you know, what's the balance, what do our constituents really want?
"Do they want us to keep going with this argument, do they want more division and delay? Look, you know, this has been a long exhausting and quite divisive business Brexit."
He repeated his commitment to leave the EU on 31 October, adding: "There's no better outcome than the one I'm advocating tomorrow."
Mr Johnson has repeatedly said Brexit will happen by the end of the month with or without a deal.
But MPs passed a law in September, known as the Benn Act, which requires the PM to send a letter to the EU asking for an extension until January 2020 if a deal is not agreed - or if MPs do not back a no-deal Brexit.
Former Tory Sir Oliver Letwin - who was kicked out of the party for backing the law - has put an amendment down to ensure the extension is asked for even if MPs back the deal in the Commons on Saturday.
He said the government could still leave without a deal on 31 October if the PM's proposals had not passed every stage in Parliament to become law - so the motion would withhold MPs' approval until that final hurdle is passed.
Meanwhile, responding to the deal, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said taking no deal off the table was a "net economic positive".
It really is extremely tight. It would be foolish to make a guess on which way it will go.
What we do know might happen tomorrow is rather than there being a thumbs up or thumbs down vote to the deal, there could be an attempt by some MPs to bring in what they see as an insurance policy.
This could mean another delay in case this deal falls through in the next couple of weeks.
That is potentially being put forward as an amendment so MPs will have a chance to vote on it.
Without going in to all the potential machinations it could mean tomorrow turns, not just into MPs giving an opinion on Boris Johnson's deal, but also wrangling again about a potential delay.
This could make things more fuzzy, and certainly more frustrating for Downing Street.
It will be a showdown of sorts.
Downing Street always knew that Parliament would be a very tricky hurdle.
Mr Johnson was also quizzed about the deal he has struck with the EU to resolve the issues over the Irish border.
He denied breaking a promise to the DUP, saying: "No I don't accept that at all.
"I think that what you have is a fantastic deal for all of the UK, and particularly for Northern Ireland because you've got a single customs territory. Northern Ireland leaves the EU with the rest of the UK."
The DUP has accused Mr Johnson of "selling Northern Ireland short" by accepting checks on some goods passing through Northern Ireland to get a deal with the EU.
The party's Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, has described the deal as "toxic" and is urging Conservative MPs not to back it.
The pro-Brexit European Research Group has previously given its full backing to the DUP.
On Friday evening vice-chairman Mark Francois told the BBC he would be voting for the deal, while another member, Andrew Bridgen, said the "vast majority" of the group "will come to the conclusion that this deal is tolerable".
Labour plans to vote against the government motion, and in a letter to his own MPs Jeremy Corbyn said it was a "worse deal" than the one Theresa May struck with Brussels.
He said the proposals "risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections".
"This sell-out deal won't bring the country together and should be rejected," Mr Corbyn added.
The party also attacked the deal after one Conservative MP, John Baron, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme the UK would be able to leave the EU "on no-deal terms" if trade talks failed at the end of the so-called transition period in December 2020.
Labour chairman Ian Lavery said: "The cat has been let out of the bag... [and] no one should be in any doubt that Johnson's deal is just seen an interim arrangement."
However, the government appears to have moved to try and win the support of some Labour MPs by promising to boost workers' rights and environmental standards after Brexit.
Downing Street said the pledge followed discussions with Labour MPs and would also include a commitment to giving Parliament a say in the future relationship with the EU.
The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford has also tabled an amendment, calling for a three-month extension to Brexit to allow for an early general election.
And Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage called the deal "the second worst deal in history" behind Theresa May's withdrawal agreement.
Commons business will start at 9:30 BST on Saturday - the first weekend sitting since the invasion of the Falklands in 1982.
Mr Johnson will make a statement to the House and face questions from MPs, before they move on to a debate about the deal.
The timing of any votes depends on which amendments are chose by the Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow.

The backstop element of the Brexit plan is "not going to change", Ireland's deputy prime minister has said.
The proposal - aimed at preventing a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland - played a major part in Theresa May's deal being voted down by a historic margin last week.
But Simon Coveney told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the EU would not ratify a deal without it.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock called the comments a "negotiating position".
Mr Hancock also denied reports that the government was "specifically" planning for martial law if the UK left without a deal  - but he did not rule it out.
He said that the government "looks at all the options in all circumstances," but when pressed by Andrew Marr, the health secretary added: "It remains on the statute book, but it isn't the focus of our attention."
Martial law involves the suspension of normal law, and temporary rule by the military. It can include measures such as curfews and travel restrictions.
The UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March, with or without a deal. If a hard border comes about, people and goods passing between Ireland and the UK will need to be checked.
Meanwhile, a leaked diplomatic note seen by the Guardian claims that the president of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, has told Mrs May that to revisit the backstop issue she would need to agree a permanent customs union with the EU.
A customs union would mean that no tariffs would be put on goods travelling between the UK and the 27 member states of the EU, but that the UK could not negotiate its own trade agreements with other countries.
The comments come ahead of a crunch week in Parliament.
Mrs May will return to the Commons on Tuesday for a vote on her deal, which includes the withdrawal agreement - the so-called "divorce deal" on how the UK leaves the EU - and the political declaration - a statement on the future relationship.
It was voted down by 432 to 202 votes last week, with hard-line Brexiteers in her own party and members of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party - on whom Mrs May relies for votes in Parliament - citing the backstop as their main reason for voting against it.
A number of MPs have been tabling amendments in a bid to force the government to change direction.
One amendment, put forward by Labour's Yvette Cooper, seeks to introduce a bill that would allow the government to extend Article 50 - the mechanism by which the UK leaves the EU - by up to nine months in order to get a deal agreed in Westminster.
Also appearing on Andrew Marr, Ms Cooper said she was not seeking to "block Brexit" and said the bill would be amendable - meaning MPs could vote on how long any extension would be.
She appealed for the support of the prime minister and MPs, as well as for the backing of her own party leader Jeremy Corbyn, saying: "We can't keep waiting for other people to sort this out."
"We can't carry on with a kind of game of chicken," she said.
"In the end, someone has to take some responsibility and say, 'if the prime minister runs out of time, she may need some more time'.
"That is not about blocking Brexit, that is about being responsible and making sure you can get a Brexit deal."
The UK is allowed to scrap Article 50 altogether - and halt Brexit - but to extend it, it would need the approval of the EU.
Mr Coveney said Ireland "won't be an obstacle" if the UK wanted to go down the route of extending Article 50, adding: "Ireland wants to help in this process."
"Britain and Ireland are two islands next to each other," he said. "We have to work out these things together and stop talking about games of chicken."
But Mr Hancock said delaying Brexit would not help solve the arguments between MPs.
"You can't just vote for delay," he said. "You've got to vote positively for a deal".
Other amendments being put forward ahead of Tuesday's vote include a plan for putting a time limit on the backstop and another for scrapping it altogether.
These are in answer to critics who dislike the backstop because they believe it keeps the UK too closely aligned to the EU and fear that it could become permanent.
However, Mr Coveney said: "The European Parliament will not ratify a Withdrawal Agreement that doesn't have a backstop in it. It's as simple as that.
"The backstop is already a compromise. It is a series of compromises. It was designed around British red lines."
The former chief constable of the police in Northern Ireland (PSNI) echoed previous warnings that the return of a hard border between the two countries would become a target for dissident republicans.
Speaking to RTE, Sir Hugh Orde said there would be no way to avoid security patrols if the UK left without a deal, and security officers would be "at risk".
Across Sunday's newspapers and political TV programmes, politicians clashed over whether leaving the EU without a deal should remain an option for the government or not.
Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom wrote in the Sunday Times that trying to rule out a no deal was a "thinly veiled attempt to stop Brexit".
But despite his colleague's words, defence minister Tobias Ellwood wrote: "It is simply wrong for government and business to invest any more time and money in a no deal outcome that will make us poorer, weaker and smaller in the eyes of the world.
"It is now time to rule out the very possibility of no deal."
Mr Ellwood also said members of his own party seeking to "crash out" without a deal "risk inflaming a dangerous battle for the soul of the Conservative Party" - saying it could determine the outcome of the next election.
But Education Secretary Damian Hinds told Sky News no deal needed to remain on the table, although it would "not be a good outcome".
In other developments, the government is going to consult Parliament on whether to work extra hours and lose their February half-term break in order to get Brexit delivered by 29 March.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said the government's demand was a way of Mrs May sending a signal to MPs that she intends to stick to the planned March departure.

A no-deal Brexit is now "the only acceptable deal", says Nigel Farage.
The Brexit Party leader said his party would fight in every seat at a general election if the government tried to pass the existing withdrawal agreement.
But he said if Boris Johnson "summoned the courage" to pursue a no deal, The Brexit Party would work with him.
He added: "A Johnson government committed to doing the right thing and The Brexit Party working in tandem would be unstoppable."
The Brexit Party was launched in April this year ahead of the European Parliament elections, and after former Prime Minister Theresa May agreed to extend the Brexit deadline to 31 October.
Mr Johnson has promised the UK will leave on that date "do or die", including without a deal if necessary.
However, the PM has also said he is still pursuing a deal with the EU, urging European counterparts to reopen the withdrawal agreement agreed by Mrs May and make changes - especially to the backstop clause.
The backstop is the so-called insurance policy to preventing a hard border - things like cameras and security posts - returning to the island of Ireland.
If used, it would keep the UK in a very close relationship with the EU until a trade deal permanently avoiding the need for checks was agreed - but critics fear the UK would be trapped in it indefinitely.
Mr Farage was speaking at an event in London which saw hundreds of prospective parliamentary candidates for The Brexit Party gather.
He revealed it had vetted 635 people for any upcoming election - 15 short of ensuring the party can fight every seat - and he believed there was a "better than 50% chance" the country would go to the polls in the autumn.
He warned Mr Johnson not to try to revive the withdrawal agreement - already rejected by MPs in the Commons three times - in any form.
"I want to make this pledge from The Brexit Party," he said.
"The withdrawal agreement is not Brexit. It is a betrayal of what 17.4 million people voted for.
"If you insist on the withdrawal agreement, Mr Johnson, we will fight you in every seat up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom."
However, Mr Farage said he would be willing to work with the Tories if they backed a "clean break" from the EU and supported a no-deal Brexit.
"If Boris Johnson is prepared to do the right thing for the independence of this country, then we would put country before party and do the right thing.
"We would be prepared to work with him, perhaps in the form of a non-aggression pact at the general election.
"The Conservative Party has lost so much trust that the only way they could win a general election is with our support."
The Brexit Party event took place on Tuesday while members of opposition parties in Westminster were meeting to discuss how to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Critics of no deal say it would damage the UK's economy and lead to a hard border returning between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, The Independent Group for Change, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party all accepted an invitation from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to talk about a strategy ahead of MPs returning from recess next week.
Mr Corbyn also invited five Conservative MPs opposed to a no-deal exit, but none attended.
Leader of The Independent Group for Change, Anna Soubry, said the meeting was "excellent" and party leaders had agreed to work together.

A no-deal Brexit is now more likely but can still be avoided, the EU's chief negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier said a long extension to the UK's 12 April exit date had "significant risks for the EU" and a "strong justification would be needed".
Meanwhile, the BBC's John Pienaar said Theresa May's cabinet has considered plans to "ramp up" preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
A snap general election was also discussed in the meeting, he said.
A second two-hour regular cabinet meeting will be held later, with the issues likely to be discussed again.
It comes after MPs voted on four alternatives to the PM's withdrawal deal, but none gained a majority.
In the Commons votes on Monday, MPs rejected a customs union with the EU by three votes. A motion for another referendum got the most votes in favour, but still lost.
The so-called indicative votes were not legally binding, but they had been billed as the moment when Parliament might finally compromise.
That did not happen, and one Tory MP - Nick Boles, who was behind one of the proposals - resigned the whip in frustration.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told MPs that if they wanted to secure a further delay from the EU, the government must put forward a "credible proposition".
One suggestion has been the possibility of a general election - but former foreign secretary Boris Johnson told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg that would be likely to "infuriate" voters.
Instead, Mr Johnson said he believed a new leader and "change in negotiation tactic" could "retrofit" the PM's "terrible" agreement with the EU.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Mr Barnier said: "No deal was never our desire or intended scenario but the EU 27 is now prepared. It becomes day after day more likely."
Mr Barnier told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee that "things are somewhat hanging on the decisions of the House of Commons", and that the deal was negotiated with the UK "not against the UK".
"If we are to avoid a no-deal Brexit, there is only one way forward - they have got to vote on a deal.
"There is only one treaty available - this one," he said, waving the withdrawal agreement.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the way forward was to address the controversial Irish backstop - a measure to avoid the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland.
He said the most "constructive outcome" would be the Malthouse Compromise - which includes extending the transition period for a year until the end of 2021 and protecting EU citizens' rights, instead of using the backstop.
But the Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom said the prime minister's deal was the best option.
"The compromise option, the one that delivers on the EU referendum but at the same time enables us to accommodate the wishes of those who wanted to remain in the EU - that is the best compromise," she said.
Labour MP and chairman of the Brexit select committee Hilary Benn told Today that a confirmatory referendum was the best solution.
"A good leader would be taking that decision and put it back to the people," he said.
"[The] fear is that the PM is not going to move an inch. That is why we are at a moment of crisis."
Mrs May's plan for the UK's departure has been rejected by MPs three times.
Last week, Parliament took control of the process away from the government in order to hold a series of votes designed to find an alternative way forward.
Eight options were put to MPs, but none was able to command a majority, and on Monday night, a whittled-down four were rejected too.
Those pushing for a customs union argued that their option was defeated by the narrowest margin - only three votes.
It would see the UK remain in the same system of tariffs - taxes - on goods as the rest of the EU, potentially simplifying the issue of the Northern Ireland border, but prevent the UK from striking independent trade deals with other countries.
Those in favour of another EU referendum pointed out that the motion calling for that option received the most votes in favour, totalling 280.
For months, Parliament has been saying "Let us have a say, let us find the way forward," but in the end they couldn't quite do it. Parliament doesn't know what it wants and we still have lots of different tribes and factions who aren't willing to make peace.
That means that by the day, two things are becoming more likely. One, leaving the EU without a deal. And two, a general election, because we're at an impasse.
One person who doesn't think that would be a good idea is former foreign secretary and Brexiteer Boris Johnson.
He told me going to the polls would "solve nothing" and would "just infuriate people". He also said that only somebody who "really believes in Brexit" should be in charge once Theresa May steps down. I wonder who that could be...
Hear more from Laura and the gang in Brexitcast

The threat of a no-deal Brexit is "focusing minds" and encouraging compromise, the chancellor has said.
Philip Hammond said the government was "determined to get a deal" before leaving the EU on 29 March but a "very bad" no deal outcome remained possible.
The government said talks on Thursday were "productive" and would "continue urgently at a technical level".
Jeremy Corbyn, who met EU negotiator Michel Barnier earlier, again accused the PM of "running down the clock".
Theresa May met the EU's Jean-Claude Juncker to discuss changes to the existing deal to win MPs' support on Wednesday.
The prime minister said progress had been made on Wednesday over legally binding guarantees about the Irish backstop - the insurance policy to stop a hard border returning to the island of Ireland - but "time is of the essence".
However, Mr Juncker said he was "not very optimistic" about securing a deal.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox were in Brussels on Thursday for talks with Mr Barnier.
They focused on "guarantees relating to the backstop that underline once again its temporary nature and give appropriate legal assurance to both sides, as well as alternative arrangements and the political declaration (the document setting out future UK-EU relations)", a government statement said.
Mr Barclay and Mr Cox will meet Mr Barnier again early next week, it added.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, his Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer and shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti were also in Brussels to discuss their proposals, which include a permanent customs union and a close relationship with the single market.
Speaking after a meeting with Mr Barnier, Mr Corbyn urged Theresa May to "take the threat of no deal off the table", adding that the EU was "very worried about the consequences of it".
He did not rule out further meetings with Theresa May to discuss Labour's Brexit plans, which he says could get the backing of the House of Commons, but he added: "It is very clear that this prime minister, by refusing to change her red lines, is simply running down the clock".
The backstop has become the main sticking point of the prime minister's proposals - with critics fearing the policy would leave the UK tied to a customs union indefinitely - and it played a large part in her plan being voted down by a historic margin in January.
Earlier this month, Parliament voted for Mrs May to seek "alternative arrangements" to replace the backstop but the EU has consistently said it will not re-open the withdrawal agreement - the "divorce" deal where it features.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hammond said government policy on Brexit was "very clear".
"We are determined to get a deal. We recognise that a no-deal Brexit would be a very bad outcome for the UK and we are doing everything we can to avoid that," he said.
"There is always a possibility of no deal as an outcome and that is why the government is carrying out appropriate contingency planning."
However, the chancellor said that the risk was helping push some people towards agreeing with the government's plan.
"I fully recognise that it is very uncomfortable that we are as close to the wire as we are but I am afraid that is just a feature of this kind of negotiation. We are making progress," he added.
Former Tory MP and new member of The Independent Group, Sarah Wollaston, predicted a third of the cabinet would resign if there was a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Hammond would not reveal if he was among that number but said: "My job is to avoid [a no-deal Brexit] and to make sure the government is focused entirely on avoiding that outcome."
Speaking from the European Commission on Thursday, Mr Juncker said he could not rule out a no-deal Brexit, which would have "terrible economic and social consequences both in Britain and the EU".
He added: "The worst can be avoided but I'm not very optimistic when it comes to this issue."
On Sunday, Mrs May will be attending a two-day EU-League of Arab States summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh with about 20 EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
She is expected to hold a series of one-to-one meetings as she continues to push for her deal.

None of MPs' eight proposed Brexit options have secured clear backing in a series of votes in the Commons.
The options - which included a customs union with the EU and a referendum on any deal - were supposed to help find a consensus over how to leave the EU.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the results strengthened ministers' view their deal was "the best option".
The results capped a dramatic Wednesday in which Theresa May promised to stand down as PM if her deal was passed.
The prime minister told a meeting of Tory MPs she would leave office earlier than planned if it guaranteed Parliament's backing for her withdrawal agreement with the EU.
Her announcement prompted a number of Tory opponents of her deal to signal their backing but the Democratic Unionists suggested they would continue to oppose the agreement.
MPs hoped Wednesday's unprecedented series of "indicative votes" would help break the parliamentary deadlock over Brexit.
The failure to identify a clear way forward led to angry exchanges in the Commons with critics of the process saying it had been "an abject failure".
The proposal which came closest to commanding majority support was a cross-party plan - tabled by former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke - for the whole of the UK to join a new customs union with the EU to ensure tariff-free trade after the UK's exit.
Its supporters included five Conservative ministers: Mark Field, Stephen Hammond, Margot James, Anne Milton and Rory Stewart.
All Conservative MPs - excluding cabinet ministers - were given a free vote, meaning they were not ordered to vote in a certain way.
Eight Conservatives voted for a referendum to endorse the deal, the proposal which secured the most affirmative votes. Labour controversially whipped its MPs to back the proposal but 10 shadow ministers abstained and Melanie Onn quit her job to vote against.
Labour's own alternative plan for Brexit - including "close alignment" with the single market and protections for workers' rights - was defeated by 307 votes to 237.
Five other propositions - including backing for a no-deal exit, the so-called Common Market 2.0 plan, a separate proposal to remain in the European Economic Area and one to stop the Brexit process by revoking Article 50 - all failed to secure the backing of a majority of MPs.
Brexiteer Mark Francois said "this attempt to seize the order paper" by MPs had failed and the public would be looking on "with amazement".
But Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who oversaw the unprecedented process of indicative votes, said the lack of a majority for any proposition was "disappointing".
While he said he believed MPs should be allowed to have another go at reaching a consensus on Monday, he said this would not be needed if the PM's deal was approved before then.
Independent Group MP Anna Soubry said more people had voted for the idea of another referendum than voted for Mrs May's deal on the two times it had been put to Parliament.
And Labour MP Dame Margaret Beckett, who put forward the motion for a confirmatory referendum, said the objective had not been to identify a single proposition at this stage but to get a sense of where a compromise may lie by, in her words, "letting a thousand flowers bloom".
The prime minister offered to pay the ultimate price, and leave office - the grandest of gestures any leader ever really has.
For a moment it seemed it might work and line up the support she so desperately needs.
But within a couple of hours her allies in Northern Ireland were refusing to unblock the progress of Theresa May's main mission.
That might not be terminal - one cabinet minister told me the PM may yet have another go at pushing her deal through Parliament against the odds on Friday.
But if Plan A fails, Parliament is not ready with a clear Plan B that could yet succeed.
For our politics, for businesses trying to make decisions, for all of us, divisions and tensions between and inside our government - and our Parliament - are too profound to bring this limbo to an end.
Commons Speaker John Bercow said the process agreed by the House allowed for a second stage of debate on Monday and there was no reason this should not continue.
While it was up to MPs, he said there was an understanding Wednesday's objective was to "shortlist" a number of options before moving on to consider the "most popular".
Mr Barclay appealed to MPs to back the PM's deal "in the national interest" when it returns to the House for a third time - which could happen as soon as Friday.
"The House has considered a wide variety of options as a way forward," he said.
"And it demonstrates there are no easy options here. There is no simple way forward. The deal the government has negotiated is a compromise...That is the nature of complex negotiations.
"The results of the process this House has gone through today strengthens our view that the deal the government has negotiated is the best option."

Theresa May's Brexit deal will not return to the Commons this week unless it has support from the DUP and Tory MPs, the chancellor says.
The PM's plan is expected to be voted on for a third time in the coming days.
But Philip Hammond told the BBC's Andrew Marr that it would only be put to MPs if "enough of our colleagues and the DUP are prepared to support it".
He did not rule out a financial settlement for Northern Ireland if the DUP backed the deal.
The party, which has 10 MPs in the Commons, negotiated £1bn in spending for Northern Ireland as part of a confidence and supply agreement with the Tories - giving the government a working majority.
Mr Hammond said they did not have the numbers "yet" to secure Mrs May's deal, adding: "It is a work in progress".
But he warned that, even with the DUP's support, a "short extension" would be needed to pass legislation in Parliament, adding that it was now "physically impossible" for the UK to leave the EU on 29 March.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said Mrs May risked "destroying all confidence in our political system" if her government was planning to give the DUP "another bung".
The prime minister has asked MPs to make an "honourable compromise" on her deal.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, she said failure to support it would mean "we will not leave the EU for many months, if ever".
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to MPs across the Commons inviting them for talks to find a cross-party compromise.
He also told Sky's Sophie Ridge that Labour MPs could be told to vote in favour of an amendment calling for another referendum next week, and he could propose another vote of no confidence in the government if the PM's deal was voted down for a third time.
Earlier last week MPs rejected Theresa May's deal again - this time by 149 votes - and then backed plans to rule out leaving the EU without a deal.
They also voted in favour of an extension to the process - either until 30 June if Mrs May's deal is supported before 20 March, or a longer one that could include taking part in European elections if MPs reject her plan for a third time.
But legally the UK is still due to leave the EU on 29 March.
All 27 EU member states would have to agree to an extension, and the countries' leaders are expected to discuss it at a summit on Thursday.
Mr Hammond told Andrew Marr that it was now "physically impossible" for the UK to leave on 29 March.
"If the prime minister's deal is able to muster a majority this week and get through, then we will need a short extension," he said.
"But if we are unable to do that - if we are unable to bring a majority together to support what in my view is a very good deal for Britain - then we will have to look at a longer extension and we are in uncharted territory."
Asked if the deal would be voted on again this week, the chancellor said: "The answer to that is no - not definitely.
"We will only bring the deal back if we are confident that enough of our colleagues and the DUP are prepared to support it so we can get it through Parliament.
"We are not just going to keep presenting it if we haven't moved the dial."
A group of 15 Tory MPs from Leave-backing constituencies, including former Brexit Secretary David Davis, have written a letter urging colleagues to back the deal to ensure Brexit goes ahead.
And former Cabinet minister Esther McVey, who resigned over the Brexit agreement, told Sky's Sophy Ridge programme that she would "hold my nose" and vote for the deal after rejecting it twice herself, as it was now a choice between "this deal or no Brexit".
Asked on BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics whether it would be a good idea for Mrs May to confirm she would leave Number 10 by the summer, Ms McVey said only the PM knew what was best for her but she needed "a dignified departure".
Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover, told the BBC there needed to be "a change of leadership" for him to support the deal, while Nigel Evans, Tory MP for Ribble Valley, said Mrs May should quit if there was a long delay to Brexit and the UK ended up contesting European elections.
Mr Corbyn has offered talks with opposition leaders and backbench MPs in an effort to find a Brexit compromise which could replace Mrs May's plan.
The Labour leader has invited Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Plaid's Liz Saville Roberts and Green MP Caroline Lucas.
In his letter, he called for urgent meetings to find a "solution that ends the needless uncertainty and worry" caused by Mrs May's "failed" Brexit negotiations.
Meanwhile, Tory MP Nick Boles has pledged to stay in the Conservative Party, despite quitting his local association over an ongoing row about Brexit.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr that he would be meeting with the chief whip on Monday to find a way forward, but that he was "not going to be bossed around" by local members.

A no-deal Brexit could lead to the break-up of the UK, the ex-president of the European Council has warned.
Herman Van Rompuy told the Observer leaving the EU without a deal posed an "existential threat" to the UK.
He added a no-deal scenario would have a "big impact" on "regions such as Scotland".
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has previously said she will decide whether to back a second referendum on independence by the end of 2018.
Mr Van Rompuy's comments come after the government published its first set of documents setting out no-deal advice for UK businesses and public bodies.
More documents are expected in the coming weeks - and Downing Street has scheduled a cabinet meeting to co-ordinate planning for the middle of September.
Currently, mid-October is seen as the likely deadline for an agreement setting out the terms of UK-EU divorce.
Speaking last week, UK Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said reaching an agreement with the EU was still the most likely outcome - but preparing for other scenarios was the "responsible" thing to do.
Mr Van Rompuy said that discussion amounted to "nationalist rhetoric that belongs to another era".
The former Belgian prime minister added that he believed no-deal comments from government ministers were part of "operation fear", intended to scare the EU into compromising on a deal.
Former UK Brexit secretary, David Davis, has also accused the UK government of scaremongering over the implications of a no-deal Brexit in a tactic which he argues undermines the UK's negotiating position.
Writing in the Sun on Sunday newspaper, he said a warning from Chancellor Philip Hammond that such a scenario could hit GDP by up to 10% was "an attempt to frighten the population into imagining the most terrible consequences of leaving the EU without a deal".
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "We have always said the United Kingdom would continue to thrive in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
"But we are confident of getting a good deal - one that delivers for every part of the United Kingdom and takes back control of our money, laws and our borders. That is what this government will deliver."
Scotland's Brexit secretary, Michael Russell, said Mr Van Rompuy's comments underlined the Scottish government's own warnings about the "catastrophic" implications for jobs, investment and living standards of a no-deal Brexit.
He said: "The UK government should instead commit to staying inside the customs union and single market - the biggest such market in the world, which is around eight times the size of the UK market alone.
 "It is extremely concerning - and irresponsible of the UK government - that the whole basis of our economic relationship with the European Union and critical issues such as customs arrangements have not been agreed, with the clock ticking towards an EU exit in March next year.
 "It is also deeply concerning that the potential chaos of a no-deal Brexit is now seen clearly by just about everyone concerned - including the former president of the EU Council - except the UK government."

If the new UK prime minister wants to "tear up" the existing withdrawal agreement with the EU "we're in trouble", Ireland's deputy PM has said.
Simon Coveney said the decision for a no-deal Brexit would be the UK's but added checks "of some sorts" would be needed in the Irish Republic.
Ireland would have to protect its place in the single market, he told the BBC.
Both men vying to become UK PM say they want to change the withdrawal deal and, in particular, the so-called backstop.
Mr Coveney warned: "That's a little bit like saying, 'Give me what I want or I'm going to burn the house down for everybody.'"
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show he hoped the UK and EU would negotiate a future relationship that would mean the backstop - designed as an insurance policy to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland - could be avoided.
However, he warned it could not be removed from the withdrawal agreement.
"The EU has made it very clear that we want to engage with the new British prime minister, we want to avoid a no-deal Brexit but the solutions that have been put in place to do that haven't changed," Mr Coveney said.
"If the British government forces a no-deal Brexit on everybody else, the Republic of Ireland will have no choice but to protect its own place in the EU single market. That would fundamentally disrupt the all-Ireland economy."
He said the all-Ireland economy had helped maintain peace on the island of Ireland but that protecting it would "not be possible" in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
However, he added that contingency plans were being drawn up with the European Commission to try to minimise the disruption.
But former Tory leader and Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith said both the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the Irish prime minister had told him there would be no hard border with Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
"I asked, well, lay out what your proposals are - and we'd already proposed alternative arrangements - and basically what was described to me was alternative arrangements - the same thing we'd been talking to them about which would alleviate the idea of necessary checks on the island of Ireland based on what exists at the moment," Mr Duncan Smith said.
And DUP leader Arlene Foster said she was "disappointed, but not surprised" by what Mr Coveney had said, and accused him of trying to "look tough" in the eyes of the incoming prime minister.
The DUP, whose 10 MPs are crucial for the Conservative Party's majority, has said it does not want the UK to leave the EU without a deal, but believes ruling out no-deal would damage the UK's negotiating hand.
By Jayne McCormack, BBC Northern Ireland's political reporter
Much of what Simon Coveney had to say today mirrored his warnings in the past.
No time limit on the backstop, there is wiggle room on the political declaration and no deal would be a disaster for the economy.
But there was one key difference this time - his intended recipient of the message.
The Irish government is acutely aware that the incoming prime minister is likely to want to make good on his Brexit strategy.
No deal is still on the table.
The Republic of Ireland has managed to keep the EU on board and its backstop argument has not changed - but can it hold the line?
This was also the clearest interview from Mr Coveney yet - stressing if a no-deal Brexit does happen, the blame rests with Westminster, not Dublin.
DUP leader Arlene Foster hit back that the Irish deputy prime minister was trying to "look tough" to the new PM.
In the coming days, we will likely see much more "tough talk" emerging from both sides.
The withdrawal agreement has been rejected three times by MPs in the Commons, with the backstop a key sticking point among Brexiteers.
The two men vying to become the next prime minister, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, have said the backstop is "dead" - a position seen as increasing the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit.
If MPs fail to support a Brexit deal agreed between UK and EU by 31 October, the legal default is to leave with no deal on that date.
Both contenders to be the next prime minister have said they want to leave on that date and renegotiate with the EU, leaving with a deal.
But Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson have also said they would keep the possibility of no deal on the table to strengthen negotiations, despite Parliament voting to rule the option out.
Mr Johnson has also refused to rule out suspending Parliament to force a no-deal Brexit through.
This week, MPs backed a bid to make it harder for a new prime minister to do this.
A majority of 41 approved the amendment, with four cabinet ministers, including Chancellor Philip Hammond, abstaining.
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A leaked cross-government study warning of the impact of a no-deal Brexit outlines a "worst-case scenario", cabinet minister Michael Gove has said.
Details from the dossier warn of food and medicine shortages if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
Mr Gove, who is responsible for no-deal preparation, said the document was old and Brexit planning had accelerated since Boris Johnson became PM.
But he acknowledged no deal would bring disruption, or "bumps in the road".
The leak comes as Mr Johnson is to meet European leaders later this week.
The prime minister will insist there must be a new Brexit deal when he holds talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron.
According to Operation Yellowhammer, the dossier leaked to the Sunday Times, the UK could face months of disruption at its ports after a no-deal Brexit.
And plans to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic are unlikely to prove sustainable, it adds.
The dossier says leaving the EU without a deal could lead to:
A No 10 source told the BBC the dossier had been leaked by a former minister in an attempt to influence discussions with EU leaders.
They added that the document "is from when ministers were blocking what needed to be done to get ready to leave and the funds were not available".
Responding to the leak, Mr Gove said some of the concerns about a no-deal Brexit had been "exaggerated".
He said: "It's certainly the case that there will be bumps in the road, some element of disruption in the event of no-deal.
"But the document that has appeared in the Sunday Times was an attempt, in the past, to work out what the very, very worst situation would be so that we could take steps to mitigate that.
"And we have taken steps."
Mr Gove also claimed some MPs were "frustrating" the government's chances of securing a new deal with the EU.
He said: "Sadly, there are some in the House of Commons who think they can try to prevent us leaving on October 31st. And as long as they continue to try to make that argument, then that actually gives some heart to some in the European Union that we won't leave on October 31st.
"The sooner that everyone recognises that we will leave on that day, the quicker we can move towards a good deal in everyone's interests."
Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday:  "I think there's a lot of scaremongering around and a lot of people are playing into project fear."
But a former head of the civil service, Lord Kerslake - who described the document as "credible" - said the dossier "lays bare the scale of the risks we are facing with a no-deal Brexit in almost every area".
"These risks are completely insane for this country to be taking and we have to explore every avenue to avoid them," he told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House.
Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney said, in a tweet, that Dublin had "always been clear" a hard border in Ireland "must be avoided".
The Irish backstop - the provision in former prime minister Theresa May's withdrawal agreement that could see Northern Ireland continue to follow some of the same trade rules as the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the EU, thus preventing a hard border - was an "insurance policy" designed to protect the peace process, he said.
Michelle O'Neill, Sinn Fein's deputy leader, accused Mr Johnson of treating the Northern Ireland peace process as a "commodity" in Brexit negotiations.
She said Ireland as a whole had been voicing concerns about a no-deal Brexit for months.
The SNP's Stephen Gethins said the documents lay bare the "sheer havoc Scotland and the UK are hurtling towards".
Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake said they showed the effects of a no-deal Brexit should be taken more seriously.
"The government has simply, I think, pretended that this wasn't an issue," he said
Ministers were in "a real pickle" since "the US has said that if that border is jeopardised, we're not going to get a trade deal with them", he added.
Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that a US-UK trade deal would not get through Congress if Brexit undermined the Good Friday Agreement.
The leak comes as the prime minister prepares to travel to Berlin to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday, before going to Paris to see French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday.
Mr Johnson is expected to say Parliament cannot and will not change the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum and will insist there must be a new deal to replace Mrs May's withdrawal agreement - defeated three times by MPs - if the UK is to leave the EU with a deal.
However, it is thought their discussions will chiefly focus on issues such as foreign policy, security, trade and the environment, ahead of the G7 summit next weekend.
Meanwhile, a cross-party group of more than 100 MPs has urged the prime minister to recall Parliament and let it sit permanently until the UK leaves the EU.
In a letter, MPs say the country is "on the brink of an economic crisis".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also reiterated his call for MPs to work together to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Elsewhere, anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller said the government had "unequivocally" accepted it could not shut down Parliament to clear the way for a no-deal Brexit.
She told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: "What they have said is, unequivocally, they accept that to close down Parliament, to bypass them in terms of Brexit - stopping a no-deal Brexit, in particular - is illegal."
Ms Miller said she would continue to seek further reassurances that MPs would be able to pass legislation to stop a no-deal Brexit.

Trains will be permitted to use the Channel Tunnel for three months if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, under a proposed European Commission law.
The planned legislation, published on Tuesday, will give the UK and France time to renegotiate the terms under which the railway service operates.
The law must be agreed by the European Parliament and EU member states.
Britain leaving the EU with no deal is the default position on 29 March unless a withdrawal agreement can be approved.
Tuesday's proposal is aimed at mitigating the "significant impact" that a no-deal Brexit - the UK leaving the EU without any formal Withdrawal Agreement and no transition period - would have on rail transport and connectivity between the EU and the UK, the commission said.
The proposals "are intended to ensure the continuity limited to cross-border operations and services," it said, warning that "an interruption in these activities would cause significant social and economic problems."
The legislation states that, given the "exceptional" urgency of the situation, the proposal will not be subject to the normal eight-week consultation period.
The commission also emphasised that the period for renegotiation was "strictly limited" and that the UK must maintain safety standards "identical to EU requirements".
It will now work to ensure that the legislative measure is agreed and adopted by the European Parliament so that it is ready to come into force by 30 March 2019 if necessary.
In October, the UK said it was seeking bilateral arrangements with France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Ireland to "facilitate the continued smooth functioning of cross-border rail services".
In recent months the European Council has called for member states to "intensify" preparations for a no-deal outcome.
If this happens, there are a number of laws that need to be passed to ensure continuity in crucial areas.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May says she is currently working to get an improved deal from the EU.
She wants to secure changes to the legal text of the Withdrawal Agreement she had previously agreed with the 27 other member states, after it was rejected by the UK parliament.
The UK government has said that leaving the EU with a deal remains its "top priority".

"Nothing is off the table" when it comes to reassuring MPs over the Northern Ireland backstop, Downing Street sources say.
This could include reopening the EU withdrawal agreement, even though that comes with risk, the sources say.
Theresa May is understood to be pushing the EU for flexibility on the backstop.
This is the clause in the prime minister's EU withdrawal agreement that is meant to prevent the return of border checks in Northern Ireland.
It would see the UK aligned with EU customs rules until a future trade deal is agreed that does not include a physical border between the EU and the UK on the island of Ireland.
The backstop is meant to be a temporary measure but the UK can't leave it without the EU's say-so, under the terms of the withdrawal agreement.
Many MPs fear this will mean the UK will end up indefinitely tied to the EU with no say over its rules - and that is why they are planning to vote against the withdrawal agreement on Tuesday.
Those campaigning for another EU referendum have, meanwhile, been given a boost by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which has ruled that the UK can cancel Brexit without the permission of the other 27 EU members.
Former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, who is campaigning for another referendum, said: "This is confirmation that it is still up to us to decide whether we want to keep the existing deal we've got in the EU rather than accept a bad deal negotiated by the government."
But Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the ruling does not alter the government's intention to leave the EU in March 2019.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We voted very clearly - 17.4 million people sent a clear message that we wanted to leave the European Union and that means also leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
"So, this case is all very well but it doesn't alter either the referendum vote or the clear intention of the government to make sure that we leave on 29 March."
He rejected newspaper reports that Tuesday's Commons vote will be cancelled to prevent the prime minister suffering a defeat of historic proportions that could end her premiership.
Mrs May has previously insisted there can be no deal with the EU without the backstop - and it would be impossible to change the terms of the withdrawal agreement.
She has repeatedly warned her own MPs that a rejection of her deal could lead to a general election - or possibly "no Brexit" at all.
That has so far failed to convince dozens of Tory MPs who are planning to join Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the DUP and the SNP in voting against it.
So, in a change of tone, Downing Street is now saying the withdrawal agreement could be tweaked to reflect concerns about the backstop.
By BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg
On the face of it, it's pretty extraordinary to imagine that the UK government could be genuinely asking to reopen an agreement that took 18 months to put together, has already been through the grinder on multiple occasions and was only concluded a fortnight ago.
But since the ink dried, it has become clear that the chance of getting the deal through Parliament is very small. One minister said: "It's only a deal if it's ratified." Perhaps for wavering MPs, even the sign of the PM continuing to push for more will make a difference.
Read Laura's blog
Mr Gove said the prime minister was "seeking to improve" the agreement but there were "risks" involved.
"If we do attempt a fundamental reopening or renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement, European Union countries, who recognise just how uncomfortable the backstop is for them, may change the withdrawal agreement in a way that may not necessarily be to our advantage," he said.
He said it was "extremely unlikely" that he would mount a Tory leadership challenge if Theresa May stood down or was forced out after losing Tuesday's vote.
On Sunday evening, Mrs May spoke on the phone to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, whose support could be vital if she were to negotiate further with the EU.
She also spoke to the European Council President Donald Tusk, who tweeted it would be "an important week for the fate of Brexit".
Boris Johnson said Mrs May could stay on if she lost Tuesday's vote - but must renegotiate the deal with Brussels.
Mr Johnson, who quit the cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit strategy, told the BBC he did not want a "no-deal" Brexit or another referendum, but it was not right to say there were no alternatives.
He said the Northern Ireland "backstop" put the UK in a "diabolical negotiating position".
MPs could give Mrs May "a powerful mandate to change that backstop" by voting it down on Tuesday, he said.
Former Cabinet minister and Leave campaigner Theresa Villiers has said that the UK could cope with a no-deal scenario if "preparation is stepped up" and the EU co-operated.
Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable believes Brexit may not happen at all.
"Increasingly I doubt it," he said when asked about it becoming a reality, adding it was "more likely that it won't happen".
He added there could be a "hell of a backlash" if Mrs May's "economically damaging" Brexit were to be imposed without another referendum.

Parts of the UK that backed a Leave vote would face the heaviest hit as a result of Brexit, according to estimates by government officials.
The forecasts, seen by MPs, model the 15-year impact of the UK staying in the single market, doing a trade deal with the EU or leaving without a deal.
They suggest that in England, the North East and West Midlands would see the biggest slowdown in growth.
The government said the document did not represent its policy.
It added that the forecasts did not "consider the outcome we are seeking in the negotiations".
And one Eurosceptic Tory MP said the figures were "complete nonsense".
Following a leak of some of the information to Buzzfeed last week, and political pressure to release it, ministers agreed to allow MPs to see the reports on a confidential basis in the House of Commons library.
In each scenario in the forecasts, growth would be lower, by 2%, 5% and 8% respectively, than currently forecast over a 15-year period.
In north-east England growth would be 3% lower if the UK stayed in the single market, 11% under a trade deal and 16% with no trade deal compared with staying in the EU, the forecast says.
The research suggests London - which backed Remain - would fare the best, with reductions of 1%, 2% and 2.5% in each of the three scenarios.
Scotland's estimated hit would be 2.5%, 6% and 9%. Wales would see reductions of 1.5%, 5.5% and 9.5%.
Patrick Minford, of the Economists for Free Trade group, said: "The continued leaks from Whitehall sources about the results of civil servants' latest modelling attempts is, sadly, a continuation of Project Fear's effort to paint Brexit as a damage limitation exercise."
The group has produced its own forecasts, based on "proper, independent free trade policy," which predicts that UK economy would grow by 4% in the long term after Brexit.
Brexit-backing Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Treasury officials of "fiddling the figures" to make all options but staying in the EU look bad.
Whitehall trade unions reacted angrily to this suggestion and government ministers have dismissed his allegation.
The government has said the analysis is preliminary and crucially does not measure the impact of the UK's preferred option of a bespoke and comprehensive trade agreement, covering goods and financial services.
A spokesman said: "As ministers clearly set out in the House, this is provisional internal analysis, part of a broad ongoing programme of analysis, and further work is in progress.
"We are seeking an unprecedented, comprehensive and ambitious economic partnership - one that works for all parts of the UK. We are not expecting a no-deal scenario."
The research suggests that the option of staying in the single market and customs union, which has been rejected by ministers, would be the least damaging but would still see growth across different parts of the country between 1% and 3% lower than current forecasts.
In the event of a limited free trade deal being negotiated, projected growth would be 8% lower in the West Midlands, north-west England and Northern Ireland, by 6% in Scotland and 5.5% in Wales.
Should the UK leave the EU in March 2019 without any kind of deal, it suggests four parts of the UK would see a double digit slowdown in GDP growth.
As well as north-east England, north-west England and Northern Ireland would see a 12% slowdown, while the West Midlands would see a 13% slowdown.
Other official estimates suggest the UK car industry's GDP would shrink by 1% if the UK remained in the EU single market but would lose 8% if there was a free trade agreement and 8.5% if the UK left without a deal and went to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
The figures emerged as representatives of Nissan and other Japanese companies are set to meet Theresa May and Chancellor Philip Hammond on Thursday.
Former attorney general and Conservative MP Dominic Grieve said the figures illustrated the risks of leaving the EU without a deal, which he said would hurt the "poorest and vulnerable" in society.
Even if the UK achieved its stated objective of a deep and special partnership with the EU and trade deals with countries like the US, he said it was likely to yield, at best, a very small economic boost.
But Eurosceptic Conservative MP John Redwood said the risks of a no-deal scenario had been overestimated and the Treasury figures were "complete nonsense".

Theresa May has asked the EU for "one more push" to get her Brexit deal through Parliament and warned that, if it fails, "we may never leave at all".
The prime minister said the UK had tabled "serious" proposals to resolve the deadlock over the Irish backstop.
Warning of a "moment of crisis" if the deal was rejected again, the PM told EU leaders: "Let's get it done."
The EU said it would give "legal force" to assurances already made that the UK could not be stuck in a customs union.
Setting out the EU's position on Twitter, chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said it was "not interested in the blame game" and talks would continue over the weekend.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said what the EU was offering amounted to a "legal beefing-up of existing promises".
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and the DUP, the party Mrs May's government relies on for a majority in Parliament, were both dismissive of Mr Barnier's proposal.
Mr Barclay tweeted: "With a very real deadline looming, now is not the time to rerun old arguments. The UK has put forward clear new proposals. We now need to agree a balanced solution that can work for both sides"
While Nigel Dodds, the deputy leader of the DUP, said Mr Barnier's proposal regarding the backstop "disrespects the constitutional and economic integrity" of the UK, and it was neither "realistic nor sensible".
He said the EU's proposal "demonstrates that they have a one-sided approach and a lack of understanding about the divisions in Northern Ireland".
The UK is due to leave on 29 March, although Parliament has yet to agree the terms of withdrawal.
MPs will vote for a second time on the withdrawal deal Mrs May has negotiated with the EU on Tuesday - after it was defeated by a historic margin in a Commons vote in January.
If they reject it again, they will get the option of either leaving without a deal or delaying the exit date.
In a speech to a green energy firm in Lincolnshire, Mrs May said she understood the "genuine concerns" about the backstop but appealed to MPs to recognise that the deal as a whole respected the 2016 referendum result and would ensure the UK's long-term prosperity.
"Back it and the UK will leave the EU," she said.
"Reject it and no-one knows what will happen. We may not leave the EU for many months. We may leave without the protections a deal provides, we may never leave at all."
It was in neither side's interest to prolong the uncertainty by "carry on arguing" about Brexit, she said, claiming any delay beyond 29 March only risked "creating new problems".
"It needs one more push to address the specific concerns of our Parliament," she said. "So let's not hold back and do what is necessary for MPs to back the deal.
"Because if MPs reject the deal, nothing is certain. It would be at a moment of crisis."
She suggested the British people, to whom Brexit "belonged", had "moved on" and "are ready for this to be settled", adding: "Everyone now wants to get it done."
But former Conservative minister Dominic Grieve, who backs a referendum to endorse the terms of Brexit, said it was "hard to see" how Parliament would agree to the current deal.
Speaking at the Scottish Labour conference, party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister sounded "desperate" in her speech.
"If she cannot get her botched Brexit deal through Parliament next week, it will represent an unprecedented failure in British political history.
"The utter mess the government has made of the Brexit negotiations, and their reckless abandon when it comes to people's jobs and livelihoods, is absolutely unforgiveable.
"Having already failed once to get her deal through, I want to make it clear to the PM that if she fails again, it will be the end of the road for her deal."
The SNP said the deal on offer was "fundamentally flawed" and would damage the Scottish economy.
"Theresa May must stop passing the buck and take personal responsibility for the Brexit crisis created as a result of her own intransigence," said its Westminster leader Ian Blackford.
The first Commons vote, in January, saw the deal rejected by 432 votes to 202, the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
Mrs May is seeking legally enforceable changes to the backstop - a controversial insurance policy designed to prevent physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - but there have been few visible signs of progress.
Leading Brexiteers are looking for reassurances that the backstop - which would see the UK aligned with EU customs rules until the two sides' future relationship is agreed or alternative arrangements worked out - will not endure indefinitely.
On Friday the EU said it was prepared to include a number of existing commitments relating to the application of the backstop in a legally-binding document.
Michel Barnier tweeted that the UK "will not be forced into [a] customs union against its will" as it could choose to exit the proposed "single customs territory" on its own. But Northern Ireland would remain part of the EU's customs territory, subject to many of its rules and regulations - something the government has previously said would threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK.
There will also be a reminder that the UK can suspend parts of the backstop if an independent arbitration panel rules that the EU is not behaving in good faith.
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said it was "not really a concession" as the suggestion that Great Britain could leave the backstop - and become free to diverge from EU rules - while leaving Northern Ireland behind, had already been rejected.
Any extension to the Article 50 process, under which the UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March, would need the unanimous approval of the EU.
Two former prime ministers, Sir John Major and Gordon Brown, have called for a delay of a year to allow for a "public consultation" on the way ahead and to ensure an orderly exit.
But Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson warned against any delay, telling Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast: "Wherever we are, and I very much hope we land it with a deal, but if we don't get a deal and we exit without a deal, Britain will succeed and thrive - I don't have a moment's doubt about that.
"But we need to deliver Brexit and ensure that's it's done. I personally believe 29th March is the best day for making sure that is delivered upon."

An exercise to test plans for border disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit has been described as "too little too late" by hauliers.
A convoy of 89 lorries took part in two test runs from the disused Manston Airport, near Ramsgate in Kent, on a 20-mile route to the Port of Dover.
The Department for Transport said they went well and traffic ran smoothly.
But the Road Haulage Association said the process should have begun months earlier.
Its chief executive Richard Burnett said the trial "cannot possibly duplicate the reality of 4,000 trucks that would be held at Manston Airport in the event of a no-deal Brexit".
"It's too little too late, this process should have started nine months ago," he added.
"At this late stage it looks like window dressing."
Conservative MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, also questioned the usefulness of the test.
"We've got to remember 10,000 lorries visit the Channel ports every single day so a test with less than 100 is not even a drop in the ocean," he said.
"Sending lorries around Kent on a wild goose chase all the way to Manston in the extreme north-east corner and then sending them to the Port of Dover by a small A road is not the right answer."
But Toby Howe, from Kent County Council, said: "What we're learning from this is not based on 1,000 lorries or whatever.
"What we want to know is how quickly they can actually get out of the airport behind us and how quickly they will get to the various points on the stage.
"So whether it's 10 lorries, 20 lorries, 100 lorries, that will give us enough information and will give the Department for Transport enough information to then learn from that."
Up to 150 lorries had originally been expected to take part in the trial, known as Operation Brock, to test the airport site's suitability as a mass HGV holding bay.
The drivers congregated in a large group at the former airfield before being directed by officials from the Department for Transport (DfT), Kent County Council and police officers along the A256 towards Dover.
The first practice run began in rush-hour shortly after 08:00 GMT, with four convoys leaving at intervals between 08:13 and 08:39.
The first of the convoys arrived in Dover at 08:52 where they were directed to do a loop around the Eastern Docks roundabout, travel along Jubilee Way and drive straight back to the airport.
A second test run got under way at 11:00.
Lorry drivers who spoke to the BBC on arrival back at Manston after the first test said there had been "no problems whatsoever".
However, one driver said he thought it had been "a waste of time".
"Someone had to do it didn't they, really? But at the end of the day what will be, will be," he said.
Another driver, Ben Pearce, said the test "seems to be going quite well".
He added: "It will give them a fair idea how the traffic will behave if they do use the space as a holding bay."
Each driver taking part in the exercise was paid £550, the DfT said.
Operation Brock was intended to maintain traffic flow on the M20 and prevent the kind of disruption experienced in 2015 when parts of the motorway were closed to cars for several days.
The trial was organised alongside the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and the Freight Transport Association.
Some people on social media also question the usefulness of the trial.
The exercise coincided with the day many people returned to work and school for the first time since Christmas.
Tracey Ives, who owns haulier INT Logistics, said: "The roads were very quiet today.
"I would have thought we would have got a better, more realistic overview of it all if it hadn't been advertised beforehand."
Prime Minister Theresa May is attempting to persuade MPs to support her draft Brexit deal.
MPs will vote on her deal on 15 January, government sources have confirmed.
Information about BBC links to other news sites

A rise in public disorder, higher food prices and reduced medical supplies are real risks of leaving the EU with no deal, a UK government document says.
Ministers have published details of their Yellowhammer contingency plan, after MPs voted to force its release.
It outlines a series of "reasonable worst case assumptions" for the impact of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the paper confirmed the PM "is prepared to punish those who can least afford it".
Michael Gove, one of Boris Johnson's senior cabinet colleagues who has been given responsibility for no-deal planning, said "revised assumptions" will be published "in due course alongside a document outlining the mitigations the government has put in place and intends to put in place".
However, ministers have blocked the release of communications between No 10 aides about Parliament's suspension.
Mr Gove said MPs' request to see e-mails, texts and WhatsApp messages from Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's chief aide, and eight other advisers in Downing Street were "unreasonable and disproportionate".
Publishing the information, he added, would "contravene the law" and "offend against basic principles of fairness".
The government sought to resist the publication of the Operation Yellowhammer document, but lost a vote on the issue in the Commons on Monday, prior to the suspension of Parliament, so it was compelled it to do so.
The six-page document, dated 2 August and leaked to the Sunday Times last month, warns of disruption at Dover and other channel crossings for at least three months, an increased risk of public disorder, and some shortages of fresh food.
On food, the document says certain types of fresh food supply "will decrease" and "critical dependencies for the food chain" such as key ingredients "may be in shorter supply".
It says these factors would not lead to overall food shortages "but will reduce the availability and choice of products and will increase price, which could impact vulnerable groups".
The document also says low-income groups "will be disproportionately affected by any price rises in food and fuel".
The flow of cross-Channel goods could face "significant disruption lasting up to six months".
"Unmitigated, this will have an impact on the supply of medicines and medical supplies," it says.
"The reliance of medicines and medical products' supply chains on the short straits crossing make them particularly vulnerable to severe extended delays."
Among its other key points are:
The document also warns of potential clashes if foreign fishing vessels enter British territorial waters on the day after the UK's departure and says economic difficulties could be "exacerbated" by flooding or a flu pandemic this winter.
The BBC's Chris Mason said some of the scenarios outlined were "stark", but ministers were insisting the paper was not a prediction about what will happen.
The document, which, until now, was categorised as "official, sensitive", is not an official cabinet paper. It dates from 10 days after Mr Johnson became prime minister.
Retailers said the document confirmed what they have been saying will happen in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
"Fresh food availability will decrease, consumer choice will decrease, and prices will rise," Helen Dickinson of the British Retail Consortium said.
And the British Medical Association described the Yellowhammer file as "alarming" and that it confirmed its warnings about no-deal, including the threat of medical supply shortages.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said: "These documents confirm the severe risks of a no-deal Brexit, which Labour has worked so hard to block.
"It is completely irresponsible for the government to have tried to ignore these stark warnings and prevent the public from seeing the evidence."
MPs voted on Monday to order the release of all internal correspondence and communications, including e-mails, texts and WhatsApp messages, between nine No 10 advisers relating to Parliament's suspension.
But the government has said it will not comply with the MPs' request, citing potential legal breaches of data protection and employment rights.
This is not an "old" Yellowhammer assessment, as was claimed by the government in August.
It is from the latest internal no-deal planning, from August, from well within the time of Boris Johnson's administration.
The government hopes that its recent efforts will change some of the most concerning aspects of what is titled a "reasonable worst case assumptions" document, but they are yet to be able to make those changes.
Everything hinges on the core assumption made about disruption to freight traffic across the Channel - that over half would be stuck for up to two and a half days.
Those assumptions on trade flow have improved recently, but are still poor, and enough to have several highly concerning consequences, from fresh food supply, to stability in Northern Ireland, to social care providers and supplies of medicines for people and animals.
I have also been assured that a widely circulated version of this document, from the same day, had the phrase "base scenario".
It is somewhat confusing that there can be a base case of a worst case planning assumption.
In any event, these are the real, plausible short-term shocks from a no-deal Brexit.
The section on Northern Ireland is particularly concerning. In many respects it is incredible to have such a list of the plausible consequences of what is government policy.
It is not difficult to see why the government resisted its release. It is unlikely to improve the mood of an already sceptical Commons.
But it is really the first tangible, quotable, warts and all assessment of what Whitehall fears could be around the corner.
Mr Gove said the legal advice received by Mr Johnson before requesting the prorogation of Parliament was in the public domain after being disclosed as part of the ongoing court cases, but there was no justification for the "far broader" information being sought.
"To name individuals without any regard for their rights or the consequences of doing so goes far beyond any reasonable right of Parliament under this procedure.
"These individuals have no right of reply, and the procedure used fails to afford them any of the protections that would properly be in place.
"It offends against basic principles of fairness and the Civil Service duty of care towards its employees," he said.
He said it was ministers, not civil servants or special advisers, who were ultimately accountable to Parliament for decisions taken.
The request, therefore was "inappropriate in principle and in practice, would on its own terms purport to require the government to contravene the law, and is singularly unfair to the named individuals".
Correction 2nd October 2019: An earlier version of this story suggested the Yellowhammer document had referred to the potential risk of rioting; it has been amended to more closely reflect the paper's exact wording, which referred to protests and "a rise in public disorder and community tensions".

Jeremy Corbyn says opposition MPs will take the first steps towards trying to pass a law blocking a no-deal Brexit when Parliament returns next week.
The Labour leader was speaking after meeting other opposition leaders to discuss ways of averting a no deal.
The move could force the PM to ask the EU for a further Brexit delay, beyond the current 31 October deadline.
A No 10 source accused the MPs of "seeking to sabotage the UK's position" in talks with Brussels.
Those talks were "now making progress", the source added.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged the EU to re-open the withdrawal deal reached with Theresa May, and to make key changes that would allow it to be passed by Parliament.
But he has insisted the UK will be leaving on 31 October even if no new agreement is reached.
At present, the default position in law is that the UK leaves the EU on 31 October with or without a deal.
MPs opposed to no deal want to pass a new law to change that.
They have already done that once - in April, faced with the possibility of a no-deal exit on the original Brexit date of 29 March, they passed a law forcing Theresa May to ask for an extension to the UK's EU membership.
Repeating that approach would require them to first take control of the parliamentary timetable.
This time round it will be harder because there are limited opportunities do that before 31 October, but one possible option would be as part of an emergency debate - a topical matter added to Commons business at short notice.
MPs plan to apply for an emergency debate as soon as next Tuesday or Wednesday, sources have told the BBC.
It is understood they hope to use the debate to set out a number of dates on which MPs would decide business - meaning Parliament could discuss legislation aimed at stopping no deal.
That could involve cancelling the conference recess in September, although that is not yet confirmed. The MPs are confident the Speaker John Bercow will allow the move.
Tory backbencher and former attorney general Dominic Grieve refused to reveal details of the plan he is backing, but believes enough colleagues on his own benches will join him and the opposition to stop a no-deal Brexit.
"There will be many who will be very, very worried about what the prime minister is doing, but they will also be loyal," he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme.
"But equally... we are facing a deep national crisis and many of my colleagues realise that very well.
"We have to make up our minds - what we are going to say to future generations about what we did during this national crisis?
"I think there are plenty of Conservatives who take the view that a no-deal Brexit would essentially be catastrophic for the country's future and will move to stop it."
Another way of potentially stopping no deal is to try to bring down the Johnson government via a no-confidence vote.
Mr Corbyn had said this was his preferred option, after which he would become interim PM, call a snap election and campaign for another referendum.
However, the Liberal Democrats and some Tory MPs said they would not support any plan that saw Mr Corbyn become prime minister - even on a temporary basis.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said a no-confidence vote "remains a last resort, if you like, to be able to enforce the will of Parliament, but the main proposal is going down the legislative route".
Green MP Caroline Lucas said "the legislative way forward" was "the most secure way to... get rid of that 31 October deadline" and stop a PM "careering towards" no deal.
Mr Corbyn said opposition MPs had agreed to "first" try to avoid no deal using legislation, but using a vote of no confidence to bring down the government at "appropriate time" remained an option.
The meeting was also attended by the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said it had been "positive and productive", adding: "Parliament must grasp this opportunity, unite to stop Boris Johnson shutting down democracy - and be ready to use all mechanisms to block a no-deal disaster, including deploying legislation as a priority."
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price said his party was "committed to work co-operatively with every other opposition party and do everything in our power to avoid a catastrophic crash-out Brexit".
Mr Corbyn did also invite five Tory MPs opposed to a no-deal exit, but none attended.
The Labour leader has since written to 116 Conservative and independent MPs, who have previously voted against no deal, to ask them to join his efforts.
So how might opposition MPs' attempt to use legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit work in practical terms?
The first challenge would be to get some Conservative rebels on board, because some in the Labour Party (namely Brexiteers) simply won't back it.
But with Boris Johnson still insisting he can get a deal, it could well be the case that some Tory rebels unhappy with the prospect of no deal would equally be unhappy to rush into anything that would undermine the PM at this stage.
So, it is not at all certain. And in any case, even if Mr Johnson was faced with being forced to do something against his will, he has the option of calling on MPs to vote for an election (under the Fixed Terms Parliament Act).
Yes, Lib Dem Leader Jo Swinson has urged MPs to block that move specifically if Mr Johnson wants to go to the polls only after Brexit.
But under most circumstances, when a PM throws down the gauntlet for an election, it would be an unusual leader of the opposition who doesn't take that challenge.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, speaking earlier in the day, criticised those who took part, saying they were "very out of touch with public opinion" and leaving the EU without an agreement was now "the only acceptable deal".
A No 10 source said: "It's utterly perverse that Corbyn and his allies are actively seeking to sabotage the UK's position.
"This coalition of anti-democrats should be honest with the British public, they are against us leaving the EU no matter what."
Meanwhile, MPs from different parties have signed a declaration pledging to set up an alternative assembly if the PM prorogues - or suspends - Parliament.
Mr Johnson says he has no plans to do this, but has not ruled out such a move to make sure the UK leaves the EU by the end of October.

Opposition parties will not call for a vote of no confidence in the government to topple the PM this week.
Speaking after cross-party talks, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he will back a motion "at a point we can win it and take no-deal off the table".
The SNP's Ian Blackford said his party was keen to push for an early no confidence vote but wanted to take the other parties with them.
Green Caroline Lucas said the parties were "united about stopping no-deal".
The cross-party group also requested an emergency debate on disclosure of no-deal Brexit planning papers, but this was rejected by the Speaker John Bercow.
Chancellor Sajid Javid has said a no-deal Brexit "may well happen" on 31 October, despite a law aimed at avoiding it.
The law, known as the Benn Act, forces the government to ask for an extension to the Brexit deadline if a deal is not agreed by 19 October, the day after a two-day EU summit.
Mr Corbyn, Mr Blackford, Ms Lucas, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, Plaid Cymru Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts, and Independent Group for Change leader Anna Soubry met in the Labour leader's Westminster office.
The Labour leader said the parties were "absolutely clear we will do all we can within a Parliamentary scenario and within our own parties to prevent this country crashing out on the 31st October without a deal -  that is what is our agreed position".
When asked about options to ensure that including beefing up the Benn act, a motion of no confidence in the government or an emergency debate, Mr Corbyn said: "All those options are in play."
Mr Corbyn said there were "huge political differences" between the parties, "but we have come behind this point to stop a no-deal Brexit".
Opposition parties have been working together over the last few weeks to try and thwart Boris Johnson's Brexit strategy.
But with some worried the PM might be able to get around legislation to avoid no deal next month - there are real disagreements about what to do next.
The SNP spent the past few days trying to drum up support for a confidence vote to bring down the government and install a temporary PM to extend the Brexit deadline.
Other parties have ruled that out today because they can't agree on who should lead it.
There is a clear divide between Labour - who think it should be Jeremy Corbyn - and the Lib Dems, who don't.
So any hopes a big move from opposition parties this week has been sunk - because they just can't agree on what it should be.
Ms Swinson said a "precipitous" vote of no confidence motion could "increase the risk" of a no-deal Brexit and "play into Boris Johnson's hands".
Party whips would meet to consider different scenarios, including the possibility of an "insurance" option of a government of national unity, Ms Swinson added.
This would see a temporary "caretaker" prime minister heading a coalition of opposition parties - Tory veteran Ken Clarke or Labour grandee Margaret Beckett have both been mentioned - but it is likely to be resisted by Labour.
However, Ms Swinson rejected the possibility that her MPs could back Mr Corbyn as an interim prime minister, saying he would not command a majority in the Commons.
"He simply does not have the numbers," Ms Swinson said, referencing the 21 MPs expelled from the Conservative Party and the five within the Independent Group for Change.
"I have been crystal clear but I will do so again - Jeremy Corbyn is not going into Number 10 on the basis of Liberal Democrats' votes."
Ian Blackford, Westminster leader for the SNP - which wants a vote of no confidence as soon as possible - told Sky News: "We have to do everything we can and that includes a motion of no confidence and there's more work to be done on that over the coming days.
"We need to stop Boris Johnson crashing us out [in a no-deal Brexit], that is our priority, that is what unites all of us.
"I've made it clear that we want a motion of no confidence, but we need to do that on a basis that other parties come with us as well."
Earlier, Chancellor Sajid Javid told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "every government should observe all laws at all times", adding: "We're taking a careful look at that law."
"We're also very clear that our policy has not changed. We will leave on October 31," he said.

The PM has said she is trying to get further assurances from the European Union so she can win the Commons vote on her Brexit deal next week.
Theresa May said that after delaying the vote last month, there was "some further movement from the EU" at December's European Council.
But Labour accused ministers of trying to "run down the clock" to "blackmail" the UK into backing a "botched deal".
Labour sources say they will back moves by MPs to frustrate a no-deal exit.
More than 200 MPs have signed a letter to Mrs May, urging her to rule out a no-deal Brexit - which is one where the UK leaves the EU but without any agreed arrangements covering things like how trade or travel will work in the future.
Labour sources told the Guardian that the party would back a cross-party amendment, to be debated on Tuesday, which would stop the government from taking economic measures arising from a no-deal, including raising taxes, unless Parliament had "explicitly" agreed to leave without a deal.
It comes as a major exercise involving more than 100 lorries has been carried out in Kent to test out how to manage traffic queues near the Channel ports in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The prime minister has been hosting critics of her deal, including former foreign secretary Boris Johnson and former leader Iain Duncan Smith, at a reception in Downing Street - the first of a series of events for Tory MPs this week.
Her deal - which covers the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations with the EU - has already been agreed with EU leaders. But it needs to pass a vote by MPs before it is accepted.
Mrs May, who earlier on Monday was at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool to launch a 10-year plan for the NHS, said that after delaying the vote on her Brexit deal last month, there had been "some further movement from the EU" and she continued to speak to European leaders.
"In the coming days what we'll set out is not just about the EU but also about what we can do domestically, so we will be setting out measures which will be specific to Northern Ireland; we will be setting out proposals for a greater role for Parliament as we move into the next stage of negotiations," she said.
"And we're continuing to work on further assurances, on further undertakings from the European Union in relation to the concern that's been expressed by Parliamentarians."
But the EU Commission said there would be no renegotiation. A spokesman said "everything on the table has been approved and... the priority now is to await events" in the UK.
Responding to an urgent question from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who asked for an update on progress made in achieving legal changes to the withdrawal agreement, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the Commons debate would begin on Wednesday.
He said Mrs May had been in contact with "a number of her EU counterparts" over Christmas and said ministers "will be clear on Wednesday" what developments have been made.
"Securing the additional reassurance that Parliament needs remains our priority," he told MPs. "It's a good deal, it's the only deal, and I believe it is the right deal in offering certainty for this country."
But Mr Corbyn called Mrs May's deal a "Frankenstein monster of a deal".
"The government is trying to run down the clock in an attempt to blackmail this House and the country into supporting a botched deal," he said.
"We're now told, if we don't support it, the government is prepared to push our whole economy off a cliff edge."
Government sources have told the BBC the vote on the deal - which will come at the end of five days of debate - is set for Tuesday, 15 January, assuming MPs agree to sit this Friday.
The prime minister's deal is facing opposition from many of her own MPs, as well as Labour and other opposition parties including the Remain-supporting Liberal Democrats.
The DUP - which Mrs May's Conservative Party relies on for a majority in Parliament - has said it will not back the deal.
But Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed suggestions that the government had accepted it would lose next week's vote and was planning on returning to Brussels.
"The plan is to win the vote," Mr Kwarteng told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, adding that a week was "a very long time in politics" and he was "very hopeful" the deal would be voted through.
Fellow minister Margot James also urged MPs to back the deal but warned, if they could not reach agreement, Brexit might have to be delayed to allow for more negotiations.
"We have very little time left," she told the BBC's Politics Live. "We might have to extend Article 50. But I think it's very unlikely Parliament will actually stare down the barrel of that particular gun."
By the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg
One source joked to me that I could just re-open my notebook from the last day before the Christmas break and carry on as if the past fortnight hadn't happened.
The prime minister is still pushing for extra promises from the EU about making the controversial Irish backstop temporary and a bigger role for Parliament and potentially for the Northern Ireland Assembly (which, remember, hasn't sat for a very long time now).
But there is precious little sign of anything that might be described as hefty enough to convince scores of MPs to change their minds and swing in behind her deal.
It is likely that something will emerge, a form of words, a stronger commitment to the hoped for start date for the long-term trade deal perhaps.
But the EU is in no mood for something big that could reopen the withdrawal agreement.

Theresa May must prepare to exit the EU with no deal to have "real leverage" in Brexit negotiations, a letter from 60 politicians and business figures says.
The prime minister should also reserve the right to "take with it the £39bn it has offered to pay as part of a divorce settlement", it says.
Signatories urge the government to accelerate plans to operate under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
Downing Street said it was confident the UK would get a good deal.
Former cabinet ministers, economists and business figures including former chancellor Nigel Lawson, vocal Brexiteer John Redwood, and Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin signed the letter.
It was organised by Economists for Free Trade (EFT) and asks Mrs May to warn the EU that despite its "intransigent and punitive stance" Brexit cannot be stopped.
"We believe you could also make clear that your preferred outcome is a free trade deal between Britain and the EU, an arrangement that is to the mutual benefit of both parties," the letter says.
It goes on to say that even though a free deal trade is "eminently possible", it believed it was "time" to move to a World Trade Deal under WTO rules "in light of the reluctance of the EU swiftly to secure a free trade deal".
Britain is due to leave on 29 March 2019, 46 years after it first joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner to the EU.
BBC political correspondent Ben Wright says the letter is "a sign of how frustrated hardline Brexiteers are becoming".
He adds: "The letter shows how intense the pressure is for Mrs May not to compromise, from some in her own party."
The UK wants to negotiate a "comprehensive, bold and ambitious" free trade agreement with the EU.
If it can't achieve that, there are a number of other possible arrangements of varying depth before the UK reaches the point where it has no preferential trade relationship with the EU other than common membership of the WTO.
If the UK had to trade under WTO rules, tariffs - a tax on traded goods - would be applied to all UK exports.
The average WTO tariff varies from product to product, from 0% on mineral fuels and pharmaceuticals, to around 20-35% on processed food and 45-50% on meat.
Reality Check: Does the UK trade with 'the rest of world' on WTO rules?
The warning from well-known Brexit supporters comes after tens of thousands of people marched in central London, demanding a final vote on any UK exit deal..
On Friday, plane-maker Airbus - which employs 14,000 people in Britain - said it could leave the UK if it exits the single market and customs union with no transition deal.
Car maker BMW also warned that clarity is needed on a trade deal by the end of the summer, potentially affecting the company's 8,000-strong staff in the UK.
In the letter, EFT says Britain can "flourish, even without a free trade deal, because of benefits of leaving the EU".
"This would give the chancellor ample scope to increase spending on priority public services such as the NHS, while reducing the too high UK tax burden."
Earlier this week, Theresa May said a so-called Brexit dividend could be used to fund part of an extra £20bn a year for the health service.
Although the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) calculates the UK will begin saving £3bn a year by 2020, this does not take into account Britain's expected £39bn divorce bill for exiting the EU.
When asked about the EFT's letter, a Downing Street source said: "We are confident of getting a good deal that delivers for every part of the UK and allows us to take back control of our money, rules and borders."

Theresa May has been accused of planning to "throw open" Britain's borders after Brexit, by a cross-party group of pro-European MPs.
It comes after Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said there won't be any border checks at Dover when Britain leaves the EU in March next year.
He said it would be "utterly unrealistic" to have checks and trade would be managed electronically.
The Open Britain group has written to the PM to demand clarification.
In their letter, the Labour, Lib Dem and Green MPs, who campaign against a "hard Brexit", say: "It is extraordinary that a government that says it aims to 'take back control' now admits it is not even going to try to control the transfer of goods across our borders, in the event we leave the customs union.
"This has major implications for our businesses, our infrastructure and our trade."
Such a plan would not avoid a hard border "because the EU would have to enforce checks on goods entering its common market", the MPs say.
And, in the event of no trade deal being reached with the EU, "it would be in breach of WTO rules to apply no tariffs on EU goods whilst continuing to apply tariffs on goods from outside the EU".
The MPs also call for the government to make its post-Brexit border plans public after Sky News reported that companies have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements about briefings on the impact on freight traffic if there is no Brexit agreement as well as other possible scenarios.
The Department for Exiting the EU said while a trade deal was "by far and away the highest probability", it made sense to prepare for all possible outcomes.
The UK currently has a free-flowing border in Kent where lorries travelling within the EU do not complete customs declarations and passport checks are minimal.
Researchers estimate it takes an average of about two minutes for each vehicle at Dover to be processed.
There have been warnings that if additional customs checks are imposed after the UK leaves on 29 March 2019, it will add about 10 miles to the queues at peak times for every additional minute's worth of checks.
A study by Imperial College London earlier this week found that two extra minutes of checks on vehicles could more than triple the existing queues, potentially leading to motorway tailbacks up to 29 miles long.
But Mr Grayling told BBC One's Question Time it was "absolutely clear" that this "cannot happen".
"We will maintain a free flowing border at Dover - we will not impose checks in the port. We don't check lorries now - we're not going to be checking lorries in Dover in the future.
"The only reason we would have queues at the border is if we put in place restrictions that created those queues - we are not going to do that."
The government has said leaving the EU will allow the UK to take back control of its borders.
The UK is set to the leave the customs union, but ministers are hoping to negotiate a new customs partnership with the EU as part of a transition arrangement likely to last about two years after the UK's official exit from the union next March.
Mr Grayling said goods moved seamlessly across national borders elsewhere in the world and there was no reason this would not happen after Brexit.
"Go to our ports on the east coast that take goods from outside the European Union where goods... depart pretty much as soon as they arrive. That is what is going to happen.
"We will manage trade electronically. Trucks will move through the border without stopping. We will manage them electronically. In the way it happens between Canada and the US."
Labour said a new customs union with the EU was the only way to avoid "gridlock" at British ports.
"Chris Grayling let the cat out of the bag by exposing how unprepared the government are for leaving the EU," said shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald.
"The government said leaving the EU is about regaining control of our borders but the transport secretary's plan would achieve the exact opposite."
He warned of chaos unless the UK was able to negotiate a new arrangement replicating all the benefits of the existing customs union, which removes tariffs and other trade barriers between its members.
Under the terms of the Le Touquet agreement, in which juxtaposed border and immigration controls are in force on either side of the Channel, France has the power to carry out checks on outbound vehicles at Dover.
When France increased security checks in the summer of 2016, in the wake of a series of terror attacks in the country, it led to days of lengthy queues on the roads approaching the port as staff shortages meant checks on passenger coaches were taking 40 minutes.

Theresa May has set a date for what's probably her last attempt to pass a Brexit deal - and she's told Labour there's an urgent need to compromise.
The odds of her succeeding are faint - and her time's nearly up.
There's every risk Mrs May will fail, again, to deliver Brexit when she introduces her Brexit legislation in the first week of June.
This will come after what look like being tough European elections and, by the way, during the week of President Trump's official visit to the UK.
Tonight, she also told Jeremy Corbyn time was running out to reach any deal with Labour. But the reality is there has been no breakthrough in those talks, and no obvious reason to expect one.
A cross-party agreement which involved Labour's minimum demand of a customs arrangement with the EU would cause a mutiny among Tory MPs, as Tuesday's letter to the Times newspaper warns vividly.
It would also mean a revolt among Labour MPs if there's no guarantee of a new referendum, and Mr Corbyn has shown very little enthusiasm for that.
Meanwhile, Mrs May's under quite intense pressure. Her most senior MPs, the executive members of the 1922 committee, will press her this week for a timetable to step down.
Local Tory officials will gather in June and consider passing a humiliating vote of no confidence in her. And in the European elections, the polls are looking very promising for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.
So promising that Mrs May's last, best, hope may be that the elections shocks both big parties into backing her.
And if that sounds like clutching at straws, well, Mrs May's in a corner, all but out of time, and reaching and clutching at any hope she can find in what are now the dying days of her premiership.

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are meeting to discuss ongoing Brexit talks between their two parties.
A Labour source told the BBC it was about "keeping in touch" after meetings of both the PM's cabinet and the opposition leader's shadow cabinet.
Earlier, Labour's John McDonnell said there had been no "significant shift" in the government position.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said a compromise was not impossible but talks could not continue "indefinitely".
The discussions have been going on for weeks with little sign of progress.
Following a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley said ministers had agreed they would continue.
Speaking at a Wall Street Journal event in London, the shadow chancellor, Mr McDonnell, criticised a letter from senior Tories to Mrs May urging her not to agree a deal with Labour that includes a customs union.
The letter has been signed by 13 former Tory cabinet ministers and Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee.
Mr McDonnell said Labour had not seen enough movement from ministers to reach a deal - especially on the issue of a customs union with the EU - and insisted Labour had "compromised in some areas", but "we're not near what we want".
He said the letter gave Labour "no security" that any deal done would be honoured in the long-term - especially once Mrs May is replaced as Tory leader.
"We've gone into this in really good faith, we've tried to put party politics to one side," Mr McDonnell added.
"Our big problem now is if we're going to march our troops in Parliament to the top of the hill to vote for a deal and then that's overturned, literally, in weeks, I think that would be a cataclysmic act of bad faith."
But speaking at the same event, Mr Hunt said there was "potential" for a deal because it was in the interests of both main parties to resolve the Brexit impasse.
"Both of us would be crucified by our base if we went into a general election having promised that we would respect the referendum result and not having respected it," he added.
Attempts to find a cross-party compromise began after Theresa May's Brexit deal was rejected three times by MPs.
The inability to agree on a way forward led the UK to miss its 29 March deadline for leaving the EU - the current date for departure is 31 October.
So far both sides have resisted calls to set a deadline on the negotiations.
But the prime minister's official spokesman said the government believed it was "imperative" that the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - the legislation required to leave the EU - was brought to Parliament in time for it pass all its stages by the summer recess.
No date has so far been set for the summer recess, but Parliament usually rises towards the end of July.
The cabinet discussions came as the PM's Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins travelled to Brussels to explore the scope for changes to the political declaration between the UK and the EU.
The document sets out the parameters for the future relationship, and Labour negotiators have insisted that any deal they strike with ministers must be reflected in changes to it.
They want a permanent and comprehensive customs union with the EU after Brexit, meaning there would be no internal tariffs (taxes) on goods sold between the UK and the rest of the bloc.
But it would mean the UK cannot negotiate its own trade deals on goods with other countries around the world, something many Brexit-supporting Tory MPs support.
A Downing Street source told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg that a compromise was being sought with Labour on customs "as an interim position or a stepping stone".
"We will not sign up to a permanent customs union," the source said.
The big question at Westminster is how long can these talks go on for. The answer appears to be, a little while longer. But the odds are stacked against a Tory-Labour compromise.
Labour doesn't think the government has moved far enough. They remain worried that Theresa May's replacement will come in and decide they don't like what has been agreed and try to rip it up.
On the other side, prominent Tories are seething at the idea a customs union could be the price of getting a Brexit deal through.
No 10 sources said this morning the PM won't agree to a permanent customs union - but the idea of a temporary solution is exactly what frightens many on the Labour side.
In this process, taking a step to keep one group happy appears to mean you make another more annoyed.
Cabinet agreed today it was "imperative" that legislation to allow the UK's withdrawal is brought back to Parliament in time to pass before the summer recess. That sets up the prospect of another set of big Brexit votes in the coming weeks.
But for now, there's more talk than action.
Mr McDonnell also said Labour had told ministers they "may well have to concede that there is a public vote of some sort" to get a deal through Parliament.
At the weekend, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said a "significant number, probably 120 if not 150" of Labour MPs would not back deal without a "confirmatory vote".
On the prospect of another referendum, Mr McDonnell said: "My view is that you'd put the deal to the people, but you'd have to also have the option of the status quo.
"Deep in my heart, I'm still a Remainer, but I've got to try and bring together effectively what is a British compromise."
Asked if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was also a Remainer in his heart, the shadow chancellor responded: "Yes."
But Jeremy Hunt said another referendum or a general election were the "least likely outcomes" of the current Brexit stalemate.
"When approximately half your constituents have voted to leave the EU, just imagine their anger if you went on to support a second referendum where you're basically saying 'we think you got it wrong first time'."

Theresa May will ask the EU for an extension to the Brexit deadline to "break the logjam" in Parliament.
The PM says she wants to meet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to agree a plan on the future relationship with the EU.
But she insisted her withdrawal agreement - which was voted down last week - would remain part of the deal.
Mr Corbyn said he was "very happy" to meet Mrs May, and would ensure plans for a customs union and protection of workers' rights were on the table.
The cross-party talks offer has angered Tory Brexiteers, with Boris Johnson accusing ministers of "entrusting the final handling of Brexit to Labour".
The former foreign secretary said Brexit was "becoming soft to the point of disintegration" and he could never agree with staying in a customs union.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it probably means the prime minister is likely to adopt a closer relationship with the EU - a softer Brexit - than she had agreed so far.
The UK has until 12 April to propose a plan to the EU - which must be accepted by them - or it will leave without a deal.
Mrs May agreed a deal with the EU in November 2018, but it has been voted down twice in Parliament by huge margins, and a separate deal just on the withdrawal agreement section lost by 58 votes on Friday.
MPs have also twice held indicative votes to try to find a consensus, but none of the proposals won a majority.
The UK was supposed to leave the EU on 29 March, but Mrs May agreed a short extension after realising Parliament would not agree a deal by the deadline.
In a statement in Downing Street, Mrs May said she wanted any further extension to be "as short as possible" - before 22 May so the UK does not have to take part in European elections.
She said she wanted to agree a new plan with Mr Corbyn and put it to a vote in the Commons before 10 April - when the EU will hold an emergency summit on Brexit.
If she and Mr Corbyn do not agree a single way forward, she proposed putting a number of options to MPs "to determine which course to pursue".
But the EU would still have to agree to any extension.
The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler warned their demands "haven't changed at all", and they are preparing "pretty strict conditions" for any further delay.
"Even though Theresa May says she doesn't want to, EU leaders will ask her to prepare the UK to take part in European Parliamentary elections by the end of May because they don't believe she will be able to get her Brexit house in order before then," she said.
Mr Corbyn said he saw the content of the prime minister's speech only when it went out on TV, but he recognised Mrs May had "made a move" and that he had a "responsibility" to engage in the talks.
Asked by the BBC if he was willing to compromise on his own red lines, he said: "I have been meeting MPs from all parties from the last couple of weeks. Yes, there is some common ground [and] there are some areas it is difficult to agree on.
"But there is far more that unites people on both sides about the kind of society we can be than divides them.
"We will discuss [this] with the prime minister. I don't want to set any limits one way or the other."
Earlier, Mrs May met her cabinet for more than seven hours.
Laura Kuenssberg said there were differing accounts of the level of support for any extension within the cabinet - from four ministers voicing opposition to it to as many as 14 being against it.
Pressed on this, Environment Secretary Michael Gove told the BBC none of the Brexiteers in cabinet were "happy at the situation we find ourselves in" and they would have preferred for Mrs May's withdrawal agreement to be passed by Parliament last week.
But he said there had not been a vote on the issue in the meeting, and there was a "critical consensus" about any extension being as short as possible.
The Leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom, said: "We are trying to find a way to deliver on the referendum to make sure that we leave the European Union with a good deal that enables all of those who voted to leave the EU to be satisfied, but also that protects jobs and our security.
"We continue to do that and that's what cabinet today was all about".
Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said it was "not usually successful for governments to get their business passed on opposition votes when their own party is against it".
The chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group added he "doubts the wisdom" of the decision, saying: "To allow the Labour party to run Brexit, to decide you'd rather be supported by a Marxist than by your own party, is unwise."
Mrs May said she understood some people would prefer to leave without a deal, and she believed the UK "could make a success of no-deal in the long term".
But she added that leaving with a deal was "the best solution".
"This is a difficult time for everyone," she said.
"Passions are running high on all sides of the argument, but we can and must find the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for.
"This is a decisive moment in the story of these islands and it requires national unity to deliver the national interest."
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was another case of the PM "kicking the can", while Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable questioned the point of cross-party talks.
Hilary Benn, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons Brexit committee, said the PM's announcement was "good news" but she must show she was genuinely open to new ideas.
But Brexit-supporting Labour MP Kate Hoey said "whatever compromise" Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn came up with, many MPs would simply not vote for the withdrawal agreement.
The Democratic Unionist Party - who give Mrs May a majority in Parliament but have repeatedly voted against her deal - said the move came as "little surprise" after the PM's "lamentable handling of the negotiations".
The DUP said: "It remains to be seen if sub-contracting out the future of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn, someone whom the Conservatives have demonised for four years, will end happily."
After Mrs May's statement, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, called for patience.
Backbench MPs earlier tabled a bill to try to stop the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 12 April by forcing Mrs May to ask for an extension.
After the PM's statement, Labour's Yvette Cooper said it was "welcome", but added: "We are waiting to find out further details on how the government's proposed process will work, including how decisions will be taken about the length and purpose of an extension, and how indicative votes will work to make sure we don't just end up with no deal a bit later on."
June 2016: UK votes in referendum to leave EU
November 2018: UK agrees withdrawal agreement and framework of future relations with EU
December 2018: Theresa May postpones first meaningful vote on deal to seek further assurances from EU
15 January: House of Commons rejects overall Brexit deal by 230 votes
13 March: MPs vote down Brexit deal for second time by 149 votes
22 March: EU agrees to delay Brexit beyond 29 March - but only to 12 April if UK can't agree deal within a week
29 March: MPs reject withdrawal agreement on its own by 58 votes
2 April: PM says she will seek further "short extension" from the EU

The future of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal hangs in the balance as EU officials say the outcome of talks should be known by the end of the day.
The EU's Donald Tusk said he would have "bet" on a deal 24 hours ago, but "doubts" had appeared on the UK side.
The PM is trying to get Tory Brexiteers and Democratic Unionists on board for his revised plan for Northern Ireland.
Likening talks to climbing Everest, Mr Johnson said the summit was "not far" but still surrounded by "cloud".
He is in a race against time to get a deal before Thursday's crucial EU council meeting.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said she understood the issues between the UK, EU and Ireland were "pretty much sorted", but it was still not clear whether the Northern Irish DUP were ready to sign up or not.
Mr Johnson has been updating his cabinet on the state of the negotiations after further talks with the DUP, whose support could be vital if Parliament is to approve any agreement.
The PM also briefly addressed a meeting of Conservative MPs, comparing the current position to Edmund Hillary's ascent of Mount Everest in 1953.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has just begun to brief EU ambassadors on the status of the talks - the meeting was originally due to take place at lunch time but was put back twice.
The issue of the Irish border - and how to handle the flow of goods and people across it once it becomes the border between the UK and the EU after Brexit - has long been a sticking point in the negotiations.
The border is also a matter of great political, security and diplomatic sensitivity in Ireland.
The backstop - the solution to border issues agreed by Theresa May - proved unpalatable to many MPs so Mr Johnson has come up with new proposals to dispense with it.
However, they would see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK - something the DUP, among others, has great concerns about.
The BBC's Brussels reporter, Adam Fleming, said that during the course of Wednesday there had been a shift in emphasis in the talks away from issues around customs towards matters surrounding the so-called consent mechanism - the idea the prime minister came up with to give communities in Northern Ireland a regular say over whatever comes into effect.
The DUP is understood to be most concerned about this issue too. The party also fears the creation of a "customs border" in the Irish Sea, which would require checks on goods between the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland.
The DUP held their latest round of talks in Downing Street on Wednesday morning. After a 90-minute meeting on Tuesday, they said "it would be fair to indicate gaps remain and further work is required".
Party leader Arlene Foster dismissed suggestions that their concerns had since been allayed.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 31 October and Mr Johnson has repeatedly insisted this will happen, regardless of whether there is a deal or not.
One senior EU diplomat has told journalists in Brussels it is now too late for EU leaders to formally approve a revised Brexit deal at the summit.
They said the most they could do was give a provisional thumbs-up - "a political yes" - to whatever emerges from the talks pending the release of the final legal text.
As I understand it, most of the issues between the UK, the EU and Ireland have pretty much been resolved, but it is still not clear whether the DUP are actually on board.
Like other factions in this drama, they have been in and out of Downing Street - recipients of a charm offensive by Boris Johnson's team.
But unless and until they decide it is worth their while to come on board, then it is just too soon to definitively say this is going to be a moment.
It may well be that later tonight this all snaps into place before European leaders gather in Brussels, and then, maybe, they'll give this a rubber stamp.
But the DUP are not a group of politicians who are a pushover.
And this is still something that is simply not yet in the bag.
The expectation on the EU side is that a new Brexit deal text is pretty much ready.
They are now just waiting to hear from the UK side whether it can be signed off.
Even if this text is ready, though, even if it can be signed off by EU leaders, the EU will not yet be breathing a sigh of relief because they have been here before.
Theresa May signed a Brexit deal with the EU and it went on to be rejected multiple times by House of Commons.
The fear is, if a new Brexit text meets the same fate, the government will come back to Brussels asking for more concessions.
Mr Tusk suggested earlier that an agreement was still possible by the end of the day.
"It is still undergoing changes and the basic foundations of this agreement are ready and theoretically we could accept a deal tomorrow." he told the TVN 24 News Channel.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to believe "the agreement is being finalised".
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also said there was still "a pathway to a possible deal" but "many issues" to resolve.
Thursday's EU summit is crucial because under legislation passed last month - the Benn Act - Mr Johnson is compelled to ask the EU for a delay to Brexit if he does not get a new deal approved by MPs by Saturday.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told MPs on Wednesday that Mr Johnson "will comply with the law" regarding the terms of any further extension.
If Mr Johnson gets an agreement with Brussels, he will ask MPs to back it and agree the next steps in an emergency sitting of Parliament on Saturday.
No 10 has confirmed the government will table a motion in the Commons on Thursday which, if approved by MPs, would pave the way for the first weekend session since 1982.
However, MPs may not be asked to sanction the extra sitting if there is not a successful conclusion to the Brexit talks.
Earlier, former Brexit Secretary David Davis said the support of Tory Eurosceptics could not be taken for granted and the view of the DUP would be important.
14:30 - The PM held a 40-minute cabinet meeting
16:30 - The PM spoke to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers for about eight minutes
17:15 - Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron held joint press conference
18:00 - Michel Barnier is briefing EU ambassadors

Boris Johnson has sent a request to the EU for a delay to Brexit - but without his signature.
The request was accompanied by a second letter, signed by Mr Johnson, saying he believes a delay would be a mistake.
The PM was required by law to ask the EU for an extension to the 31 October deadline after losing a Commons vote.
EU Council President Donald Tusk tweeted that he had received the extension request and would consult EU leaders "on how to react".
Earlier, Mr Johnson rang European leaders, including Mr Tusk, to insist that the letter "is Parliament's letter, not my letter".
Opposition MPs have warned the PM that if he tries to circumvent Parliament's instructions to seek a delay, then he may find himself in the law courts.
Mr Johnson has vowed to press ahead with the legislation to implement his deal next week, but Labour says it will seek to amend it - to add additional measures on issues like workers' rights and environmental protections.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Sky News Sophie Ridge the prime minister could "well be in contempt of Parliament or the courts" by sending a second letter to the EU that "contradicted" the first.
The PM has previously said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask the EU to delay Brexit, and the UK would leave on 31 October "do or die".
But hours after losing a crunch vote in a historic Saturday session in the House of Commons, the prime minister ordered a senior diplomat to send an unsigned photocopy of the request for a delay, which was forced on him by MPs last month.
The second letter from Mr Johnson - signed off this time - makes clear he personally believes a delay would be damaging.
It says the government will press on with efforts to pass the revised Brexit deal agreed with EU leaders last week into law, and that he is confident of doing so by 31 October.
A cover note from Sir Tim Barrow, the UK's representative in Brussels, explained the first letter complied with the law as agreed by Parliament.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg described the decision to send three documents as "controversial", predicting "there will be a fight about whether Boris Johnson is trying to circumvent the court".
"This is heading straight for the court, and it may very quickly end up in the Supreme Court," she added.
Asked on BBC Breakfast whether the PM's move was "childish, Conservative Brexiteer MP Nigel Evans said: "Well he was going to be criticised if he didn't send the letter, because it would have been against the law."
He added that "it's not all in our gift", and that EU leaders may look at both letters and deny the request for a delay.
Extracts from Mr Johnson's letter to Mr Tusk:
"The UK Permanent Representative will... submit the request mandated by the EU (Withdrawal) (No.2) Act 2019 later today. It is, of course, for the European Council to decide when to consider this request and whether to grant it.
"Although I would have preferred a different result today, the Government will press ahead with ratification and introduce the necessary legislation early next week. I remain confident that we will complete that process by 31 October.
"While it is open to the European Council to accede to the request mandated by Parliament or to offer an alternative extension period, I have made clear since becoming Prime Minister... that a further extension would damage the interests of the UK and our EU partners, and the relationship between us.
"We must bring this process to a conclusion so that we can move to the next phase and build our new relationship on the foundations of our long history as neighbours and friends in this continent."
Read the letters in full.
At the first Saturday sitting in the Commons for 37 years, MPs voted in favour of an amendment withholding approval of Mr Johnson's Brexit deal until all the necessary legislation had been passed.
Tabled by Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin, the amendment was intended to ensure that Mr Johnson would comply with the terms of the so-called Benn Act.
Under that act, Mr Johnson had until 23:00 BST on Saturday to send a letter requesting a delay to the UK's departure.
In a letter to MPs and peers on Saturday evening, he said: "I will tell the EU what I have told the British public for my 88 days as prime minister: further delay is not a solution.
"It is quite possible that our friends in the European Union will reject Parliament's request for a further delay (or not take a decision quickly)."
The Commons defeat marked a major setback for the PM - although Mr Johnson said he was not "daunted or dismayed" and remained committed to taking Britain out by the end of the month with his "excellent deal".
John McDonnell said MPs should now have the chance to scrutinise the withdrawal agreement legislation. He said Mr Johnson had removed certain protections contained in Theresa May's deal with the EU and Labour wanted to see those reinstated.
"Do we want to go down the Boris Johnson proposals of diverging from our major trading partner and deregulating our economy, undermining workers' rights, consumer and environment rights? No we don't," he said.
"So what we'll try and do is, of course, try and amend that legislation and see if we can get agreement in Parliament."
Mr McDonnell said Mr Johnson was "behaving a bit like a spoilt brat" by sending an unsigned letter to Brussels.
Anna Soubry, from The Independent Group for Change, accused the prime minister of acting like a "truculent child", while Liberal Democrat Christine Jardine MP said Mr Johnson was going against the will of the Commons.
SNP leader at Westminster Ian Blackford said earlier that if Mr Johnson acted as if he was "above the law", he would find himself in court.
On the EU side, there has been no official response yet to the contents of the letter, except Mr Tusk confirming he received it.
But the French President, Emmanuel Macron, has already signalled that he believed a new Brexit extension was not good for anyone.
Boris Johnson literally spelling out his opposition to prolonging the Brexit process by writing a separate letter to Brussels to say so, makes it easier for his peers Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and others to drag their feet a little.
They prefer first to look to the prime minister to make good on his promise to them that their newly-negotiated Brexit deal will *definitely* be passed by Parliament.
But, if push comes to shove, with the alternative being no deal at all... I cannot imagine the EU slamming the door in the face of the UK now.
They will want to know what [the extension] is for. Are there plans in the UK to hold a general election, a second referendum or a referendum on the new Brexit deal? Or is a bit more time needed to pass Brexit-related legislation?
Read Katya's full analysis
The EU Parliament's Brexit Steering Group will discuss the outcome of the latest UK vote on Monday, said Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt.
He tweeted on Saturday: "Whatever happens next, the marches outside the Parliament show just how important a close EU - UK future relationship is."
Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the Commons, said the government planed to hold a meaningful vote on Monday - although it is not clear whether Commons Speaker John Bercow will allow it.

Boris Johnson will push for a general election if the EU agrees to delay Brexit until January, No 10 has said.
The PM "paused" his Brexit bill on Tuesday after MPs rejected his plan to fast-track it through Parliament.
Now EU leaders will consider whether to grant a delay to the 31 October Brexit deadline and what length it should be.
Mr Johnson was forced by law to send a letter the EU requesting a three-month extension but he insists the UK will still leave at the end of October.
Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar has confirmed he supports the proposal to grant the UK's request for a three month extension.
Mr Johnson may want a general election, but he cannot simply call one, as prime ministers did before the passage of the 2011 Fixed Term Parliament Act.
The move would need the backing of Parliament, and opposition MPs have previously ruled out holding one until the possibility of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October was ruled out altogether.
Justice Secretary Robert Buckland told BBC Breakfast that "regrettably it does seem that a general election is the only way to sort this impasse out".
His opposite number, Labour's Richard Burgon, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme his party would agree to a general election if the EU granted an extension because it meant a no-deal Brexit would certainly be "off the table".
There is also the option of a further referendum, although it would require a Brexit delay and, most likely, a change of government first.
However, Mr Burgon said holding a referendum before an election - a move favoured by some of his Labour colleagues - was "fantasy politics".
The SNP has indicated it wants an extension to allow for a general election, while the Liberal Democrats say the PM needs to get an extension to allow a further referendum. Both parties would rather the UK revoked Article 50 and stopped the Brexit process.
Some Conservative MPs say the government should take the Labour Party up on its offer to come up with a timetable for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill that satisfies all sides.
MPs voted to back the first stage of bill, which would enact Boris Johnson's deal, on Tuesday - the first time Parliament has expressed approval for a Brexit agreement.
They had been due to debate it on Wednesday and Thursday, but after voting against that timetable, they will instead discuss the contents of the Queen's Speech, which sets out the government's plans for the next session of Parliament.
There is a tension in the Tory party today - some would rather try again to get the bill through. Those MPs were cock-a-hoop at the fact they had managed to get 19 Labour MPs to cross the threshold to potentially back this kind of Brexit deal - even though that is a million miles away from it getting safe passage through Parliament.
But in the heart in Downing Street the instinct is: if a delay is agreed they throw everything into an election instead.
No 10's fear is, even if they say "maybe we could pass the bill in a fortnight," that delay might turn into a long one, tangling with Parliament and losing control of the timetable.
Just as Parliament doesn't trust the prime minister, the prime minister and his team don't trust Parliament.
Opposition parties have no interest really in helping Boris Johnson to complete the passage of this bill. They want to disrupt it for perfectly obvious and legitimate political reasons.
So as things stand, the prime minister would rather trigger an election... But it is not in his gift.
On Tuesday, MPs approved the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on its first hurdle through the Commons - called the second reading - by 329 votes to 299.
But minutes later Mr Johnson was defeated - by a majority of 14 - in a second vote on a fast-tracked timetable for the bill.
The prime minister insisted to MPs it was still his policy that the UK should leave the EU on Halloween, but acknowledged he would have wait to hear what other leaders said.
Following Tuesday's votes, Mr Corbyn said his party was prepared to work with the government to agree "a reasonable timetable" to enable the Commons to debate and scrutinise the Brexit legislation properly.
EU Council President Donald Tusk said he would recommend European leaders backed an extension to the Brexit deadline, though he did not say what length it should be. He said he would "propose a written procedure", thus negating the need for another summit meeting.
If the EU accepts the UK request for a straightforward extension to 31 January 2020 then that becomes the new date of Brexit. If the EU proposes a date other than this, even a short "technical extension" of a few days, the prime minister must approve it unless a motion is put before MPs and they decide not to pass it.
If the EU were to reject any extension, that would give MPs a stark choice between Mr Johnson's deal and no-deal.
Germany's Die Welt newspaper sums up EU thoughts on Brexit this morning with the headline: "The only thing that is clear is that Brexit is not happening on 31 October."
EU leaders must now agree on whether to grant the UK another Brexit extension and if so, how long for?
Don't forget every country has a veto on this. But after speaking extensively to EU diplomats and politicians, the consensus EU-side seems to be to say yes.
The EU's decision is expected by the end of the week, but you can expect a lot of EU grumbling beforehand. France's Europe minister was unsurprisingly (France has settled into role of "Brexit bad cop") one of first to speak on the record last night.
She noted that time alone wouldn't solve the UK's Brexit conundrum and the EU would want to hear UK's justification for another extension - i.e. what will be done with the time?
EU leaders are fully aware the PM's hand was forced by Parliament to request a three-month extension. Brussels does not want to get embroiled in heated UK debate, so it seems most likely it will say yes to that rather than "impose" their own "EU extension".
Whatever the time length of the extension granted, this will be another "flextension", meaning the delay can end earlier if and when Parliament ratifies the Brexit deal.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the prime minister needs to have the backing of two thirds of MPs to hold a snap poll. This has been rejected twice by MPs.
Another route to an election is a one-line bill, that requires only a simple majority.
But former Tory MP Ken Clarke told the BBC that any such bill was likely to incur a host of amendments,  given Mr Johnson does not have a majority.
That included attempts to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote - something the government is likely to resist.
There is also the option of a vote of no confidence in the government, something which Jeremy Corbyn says he wants but only once the threat of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October has been removed.
Mr Johnson could even call one in his own government, but Parliamentary rules state that if it passes, the Commons has 14 days to form an alternative administration, so the PM would run the risk of being forced out of Downing Street if opposition parties can unite around a different leader.
If an election were to be triggered this week, the earliest it could take place would be Thursday 28 November, as the law requires 25 days between an election being called in Parliament and polling day.
Many observers think a 5 or 12 December election is more likely - but in general, parties tend to prefer polls in lighter, warmer months when the perceived wisdom is that campaigning is easier and voters are more likely to turn out.

Theresa May will make the case for her new Brexit plan in Parliament later, amid signs that Conservative opposition to her leadership is hardening.
The prime minister will outline changes to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - including a promise to give MPs a vote on holding another referendum.
But shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the offer was "too weak".
Some senior Tories will today ask party bosses for a rule change to allow a no-confidence vote in her leadership.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove defended the PM's plan, urging MPs to "take a little bit of time and step back" to "reflect" on the detail of the bill - due to be published later today.
Fellow cabinet minister and prominent Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom said she was "looking very carefully at the legislation" and "making sure that it delivers Brexit".
MPs have rejected the withdrawal agreement negotiated with the EU three times, and attempts to find a formal compromise with Labour have failed.
On Tuesday, the prime minister asked MPs to take "one last chance" to deliver a negotiated exit - or risk Brexit not happening at all.
But several Tory MPs have criticised her plan. Among them, Nigel Evans will today urge party bosses on the 1922 committee to change party rules to allow for an immediate vote of no-confidence in Mrs May.
Because the PM survived such a vote in December, the current rules say she cannot face another for 12 months.
The committee has said 'no' to such a change before.
But the Conservative Home website has urged people not to vote for the party in Thursday's European elections if Mrs May is still in post "by the end of today".
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says a small number of Labour MPs have gone to a briefing with the government's Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, to discuss the deal.
But a number of the party's MPs have spoken out against the PM's plan, with Sir Keir saying all she had offered was votes on customs arrangements and a further referendum that MPs would be able to get anyway as amendments to the bill.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is not a compromise of policy, it is just saying you can have votes on these things.
"In reality, the prime minister ought to now admit defeat. I think she would do well to just pull the vote and pause, as this is just going to nowhere."
Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Vince Cable, echoed the point, telling Today: "If [Mrs May] said 'we will put forward the Withdrawal Bill subject to a confirmatory referendum'… we would be obliged to support it on that basis, but she is barely saying Parliament can have a vote if it wants to have a referendum.
"[That] is not in her gift, Parliament will do that anyway. What appears to be a concession isn't."
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said if the government tries to delay bringing the bill forward - expected in the week of 3 June - it is "extremely hard to see" how the prime minister stays in post after the Bank Holiday weekend.
Other senior Tories have suggested Mrs May drops her Withdrawal Agreement Bill to avoid defeat and humiliation.
Conservative MP Boris Johnson - who wants to succeed Mrs May as prime minister - said on Twitter: "We are being asked to vote for a customs union and a second referendum. The Bill is directly against our manifesto - and I will not vote for it.
"We can and must do better - and deliver what the people voted for."
Meanwhile Dominic Raab, another leadership hopeful, said Mrs May's deal would "break our clear manifesto promises".
Tory MP Priti Patel accused the "entire cabinet and especially the so-called Brexiteers in office" of being "responsible for the betrayal" of Leave voters.
It's become a painful ritual of a tortuous process: the prime minister unveils a vision for Brexit, and MPs queue up to demolish it in the House of Commons. On Wednesday it looks like it is going to happen again.
If Theresa May's speech yesterday sought to attract switchers - and turn sceptics into endorsers - it failed.
Worse than that for Downing Street, some Conservatives who backed the plan when it was last voted on, now say they'll reject it.
Among many Conservative MPs, there is a bleak, end of days mood. Some wonder if it's even worthwhile putting the bill to a vote.
Others ponder getting rid of the prime minister even sooner than she's promised. But those around Theresa May insist they are not willing to give up at least yet - they are determined her plan will be put to MPs in around a fortnight's time.
Mrs May is bringing the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - legislation required to bring her agreement into UK law - to Parliament in early June.
In an attempt to win over MPs across the House, she announced the following concessions:
In a letter to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, released on Wednesday, Mrs May said: "I have shown today that I am willing to compromise to deliver Brexit for the British people...
"I ask you to compromise too so that we can deliver what both our parties promised in our manifestos and restore faith in our politics."
But Labour has said it is not willing to back the bill at second reading, meaning it could fail at its first parliamentary hurdle.
And some Conservative MPs who backed Theresa May the last time she tried to get her withdrawal agreement through Parliament in March said they could no longer support her.
Tory MP Nadine Dorries said all scenarios led to Mrs May resigning, telling the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire: "I see no way out for the prime minister. I think we might be reaching the end game finally for [Mrs May]."
Meanwhile, Sammy Wilson, the Brexit spokesman for the DUP - whose support the government relies on to get its laws passed - said his party would "not accept this flawed agreement" that they believe would split Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
He told Today: "We have been through all of this before with the prime minister in the negotiations to date. It has been accepted by the government that [there] are flaws they cannot give an answer to.
"We will not vote for our own destruction."

Theresa May has been urged not to allow Eurosceptic MPs in her party to "impose their own conditions" on negotiations amid signs of fresh Tory infighting.
Nineteen Tory MPs who back a "soft Brexit" have written to her saying it is "highly irresponsible" for anyone to dictate terms which may scupper a deal.
It follows some Tories backing the DUP's decision to oppose a draft deal on the future of the Irish border.
The PM has spoken to the DUP's Arlene Foster to try to break the deadlock.
The DUP says there is "more work to be done" if it is to agree to plans for the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after Brexit - a prerequisite for talks to move on to their next phase.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar, who also spoke to Mrs May on Wednesday, said he was willing to consider any new proposals, suggesting the UK might put something forward within the next 24 hours.
And the BBC understands the ambassadors of the 27 EU member states, who received an update from chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier on Wednesday, are "waiting for something from London" in the next 48 hours.
The BBC's Adam Fleming said Mr Barnier and the member states agreed there must be clarity within 48 hours for them to have enough time to consult with their capitals about draft guidelines for phase two of the talks.
At a summit next week, European leaders will decide whether enough progress has been made in the negotiations on Ireland, the UK's "divorce bill" and citizens' rights so far to open trade talks.
In their letter, the 19 MPs - who largely backed Remain in the 2016 referendum - say they support the PM's handling of the negotiations, in particular the "political and practical difficulties" relating to the Irish border.
But they hit out at what they say are attempts by some in their party to paint a no-deal scenario in which the UK failed to agree a trade agreement as "some status quo which the UK simply opts to adopt".
"We wish to make it clear that we are disappointed yet again that some MPs and others seek to impose their own conditions on these negotiations," the MPs, including former cabinet ministers Stephen Crabb, Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan - write.
"In particular, it is highly irresponsible to seek to dictate terms which could lead to the UK walking away from these negotiations."
It urges the PM to "take whatever time is necessary" to get the next stage of negotiations right.
On Tuesday, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith argued the time was fast approaching for the UK to consider walking away from the talks if the EU did not allow negotiators to proceed to the next phase - in which future trade and security relations will take centre stage.
The suggestion of "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the European Union and any continuing role for the European Court of Justice has also concerned some Eurosceptic Conservative MPs.
On Monday Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party - whose support the PM needs to win key votes at Westminster - objected to draft plans drawn up by the UK and the EU.
The DUP said the proposals, which aimed to avoid a "hard border" by aligning regulations on both sides of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, were not acceptable.
This has left the UK government racing to find an agreement suiting all sides in time for next week's summit.
The DUP's deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the Irish government, which has said it wants firm guarantees that a hard border can be avoided, was playing a "dangerous game" with its own economy.
At a press conference with his Dutch counterpart on Wednesday, Irish PM Leo Varadkar insisted he wanted the talks to move beyond consideration of divorce issues to the future.
"Having consulted with people in London, she (Theresa May) wants to come back to us with some text tonight or tomorrow," he said. "I expressed my willingness to consider that."
In a separate development, Chancellor Philip Hammond has suggested the UK could pay the so-called Brexit bill, regardless of whether or not there is a subsequent trade agreement with the EU.
He told MPs on the Treasury Committee he found it "inconceivable" that the UK would "walk away" from its financial obligations as "frankly it would not make us a credible partner for future international agreements".
On the issue of the divorce bill, a No 10 spokesman said the government's position remained that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and that applies to the financial settlement".
Reports have suggested the UK has raised its financial offer to a figure of up to 50bn euros (£44bn).

Theresa May has warned the UK faces "uncharted territory" if Parliament rejects her Brexit deal as she vowed to redouble her efforts to win MPs round.
Next week's vote would "definitely" go ahead, she told the BBC, as she promised new safeguards for Northern Ireland and to look at giving MPs more say in shaping future EU negotiations.
The UK's March exit was "in danger" if MPs did not back the deal, she said.
But one Tory Brexiteer said support for leaving without a deal was "hardening".
And one senior Labour figure said she believed a general election may be inevitable "within months" if there was deadlock in Parliament and Mrs May could not get her deal through.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
A deal on the terms of the UK's divorce and the framework of future relations has been agreed between the prime minister and the EU - but it needs to pass a vote by MPs in Parliament before it is accepted.
MPs are expected to be asked to vote on it on either the 14 or 15 of January.
The crunch vote was due to take place in December but was postponed at the last minute as Mrs May faced almost certain defeat amid opposition from many of her MPs, as well as Labour and other parties.
Asked by the BBC's Andrew Marr if the vote would "definitely" go ahead in the second week of January, she replied "yes, we are going to hold the vote".
She said she truly believed hers was a "good deal" for the country and that it was up to its opponents to spell out the alternatives to it.
Asked what had changed since last month, she said the EU had agreed to some "changes" and she was continuing to talk to European leaders as she tried to give MPs the "confidence" to support the deal.
She promised to give more detail in three areas in the coming days:
She said there were a "number of ways" of giving MPs more input in the next phase of the Brexit process, including allowing them a real say in shaping the "mandate for the negotiations for the future relationship".
Mrs May suggested that if her deal was rejected it would embolden both supporters of a no-deal exit and those who want to remain in the EU via another referendum.
"If the deal is not voted on, then we are going to be in uncharted territory," she said. "I don't think anyone can say what will happen in terms of the reaction we see in Parliament.
"What you have is a Labour leadership... which is opposing any deal to create the greatest chaos possible, people who are promoting a second referendum in order to stop Brexit and people who want to see their perfect Brexit... the danger there is we end up with no Brexit at all."
Asked whether she was prepared to stand down as PM and let someone else take over talks over the future relations if Tory MPs demanded it, Mrs May - who survived a vote of no confidence last month - said the party had made it clear they wanted her to "deliver on Brexit and that is what I am working on doing".
However, the DUP, which props up the government, said the fundamental problems with Mrs May's deal had not changed.
Deputy leader Nigel Dodds said: "The backstop remains the poison which makes any vote for the withdrawal agreement so toxic."
The backstop is a position of last resort, to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal.
Many Conservative MPs continue to believe the deal does not represent the Brexit the country voted for in 2016.
Peter Bone told Sky News the best way to "get on" with Brexit was to leave without a deal,
"If there has been a change it is a hardening of attitudes among MPs to a no deal," he told Sophy Ridge, adding that there was increasing evidence that a no deal outcome was "absolutely OK".
And a succession of other Tory Brexiteers have taken to social media to say "nothing has changed" during the Christmas recess and they remain opposed to the deal.
But opponents of a no-deal exit have given notice they are determined to effectively rule the prospect out.
A cross-party group of Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem MPs are proposing amending the government's Finance Bill, to be debated on Tuesday, so that ministers would only be able to make tax changes in the event of a no-deal exit if Parliament had explicitly authorised them.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper said if the government "would not rule out no deal, Parliament must act".
As part of the government's preparations for a no-deal Brexit, the company Seaborne Freight had been given a contract to run a freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
However the councillor for the harbour area has said the Port of Ramsgate "cannot be ready" for extra ferry services should a no-deal Brexit happen.
By political correspondent Nick Eardley
A new year is about to start at Westminster, but the political battleground feels very familiar.
The PM's message hasn't changed. She still thinks her deal is only one that delivers and rejecting it would lead to uncharted territory.
That's a warning to both sides; those who want another referendum could end up with no deal; those who want no deal could end up with no Brexit at all.
Her critics, though, don't appear to have had any New Year changes of heart either. The DUP and many Tories are still unhappy and as things stand won't back her.
Theresa May is promising to try and win more reassurances from Brussels. But for now it remains hard to see what she could secure that would win enough support for her to win the meaningful vote.
A poll of more than 25,000 Britons published on Sunday suggests Labour would be punished by voters if the party either ends up backing the government's deal or does not actively oppose it.
The YouGov poll, carried out for the People's Vote campaign which is demanding another referendum, suggests 75% of Labour supporters would prefer a final say on Brexit.
But the Labour leadership rejected claims that they were "enabling" Brexit by refusing, at this stage, to explicitly call for another referendum.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said the People's Vote campaign should focus on "changing people's minds" about whether to stay in the EU rather "smacking Labour around the head".
She told the BBC that Labour's focus was getting into power in a general election she now expected to take place "within months"
"If you are a government that does not have the support of Parliament and does not have the support of the people, you cannot drive us over a cliff and think you are going to get away with it," she told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend.
"Our democracy is about whether you have the permission of the public and... whether you can justify what you are doing to our country."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said another referendum was the "least worst option", but he added that "it was going to be very messy whatever happens".

The prime minister would "never agree" to a permanent customs union with the EU, No 10 says, amid concern from ministers about Brexit compromises.
They are thought to fear that Theresa May will agree to such a move, if a trade deal cannot be done in time.
Downing Street insists any post-Brexit customs union would be "time limited".
EU leaders meet next week for what has been described by European Council president Donald Tusk as a "moment of truth for Brexit negotiations".
The EU leaders are not expected to reach agreement with the UK but they say they want to see if "decisive progress" has been made to convene a special summit in November, to finalise a deal.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that a motorway in Kent is being shut overnight as part of contingency preparations in case the Brexit negotiations ultimately fail and the UK leaves the EU in March 2019 without a deal.
And Northern Ireland's DUP, which supports Theresa May's government in key Commons votes, has warned it could vote against her Budget next month, if Brexit negotiations result in trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The UK is due to leave both the customs union and the single market when it leaves the EU in March 2019.
Trying to resolve what should happen on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - an EU member - has been a key sticking point in Brexit negotiations.
The UK and the EU both want to avoid a "hard border" - physical checks or infrastructure - should a long-term trade deal not be concluded before temporary post-Brexit arrangements designed to give businesses time to adjust come to an end in December 2020.
Brussels has suggested that, if that happens, Northern Ireland should stay in the EU customs union - something the UK says is unacceptable as it would effectively create a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, down the Irish Sea.
By BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake
Delving into the detail can be fascinating, if frustrating, for those following Brexit closely.
But the big picture is always important and that has been playing out for all to see over the past 24 hours.
Theresa May, at a crucial stage in the negotiations, is having to work to keep her own side on side.
Days before a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels when both sides will want to show some sign of progress at least, ministers are worried about what the UK could be about to agree to.
Those unsure have a choice, stay and hope for the best or decide they can't support the prime minister's plan after all.
In June the UK government brought forward its proposal for a  "temporary customs arrangement" between the EU and the UK as a whole, which would eliminate the need for tariffs, quotas, rules of origin and customs processes on UK-EU trade.
That included the line that the "UK expects the future arrangement to be in place by the end of December 2021 at the latest", which followed a cabinet row.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was understood that the EU was now prepared to accept the idea of the whole of the UK remaining in the customs union if a trade deal cannot be done during the so-called "transition period". But it is understood they have not accepted that there should be a time limit on it.
Many Conservative Brexiteers argue an open-ended arrangement is unacceptable.
It is understood that cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and Jeremy Hunt expressed concerns about the possibility of such an outcome.
Speaking on Friday, Brexit Secretary Mr Raab said any such arrangement "would have to be finite, it would have to be short and it would have to be, I think, time-limited in order for it to be supported here."
He added: "What we cannot do is see the United Kingdom locked in via the backdoor to a customs union arrangement which would leave us in an indefinite limbo - that would not be leaving the EU."
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The prime minister would never agree to a deal which would trap the UK in a backstop permanently."
She added: "Our position is that this future economic relationship needs to be in place by the end of December 2021 at the latest."
Amid speculation she could resign, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom told the BBC she was "really looking forward to us getting a good deal for the United Kingdom" and that was "all I am focused on".
Asked about the customs union concerns, she added: "We are at the final stages of a really complicated negotiation and I do think we have to give the prime minister the opportunity to be able to do a good deal for the United Kingdom, something that she is absolutely determined to do."
Conservative backbench Brexiteer Andrea Jenkyns tweeted that remaining in a customs union would be the "ultimate betrayal" of Leave voters.
Meanwhile, former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown said on Friday he thought there would be another Brexit referendum "sometime" adding:  "It will, in the end, be the only way to sort out the problem."

MPs have again rejected Boris Johnson's calls for a snap election, as the five-week suspension of Parliament begins.
In all, 293 MPs voted for the prime minister's motion for an early poll, far short of the number needed.
Earlier, opposition MPs confirmed they would not support an October poll, insisting a law blocking a no-deal Brexit must be implemented first.
Parliament was officially suspended - or prorogued - just before 02:00 BST on Tuesday and will reopen on 14 October.
A group of Labour backbenchers protested against the move, appearing to try to block Speaker John Bercow amid raucous scenes in the House of Commons.
Signs saying "silenced" were held up by the group in front of Mr Bercow - who earlier announced his resignation - just as he was due to lead MPs in a procession to the House of Lords to mark the suspension of Parliament.
In a hectic day of political developments:
At present, UK law states that the country will leave the EU on 31 October, regardless of whether a withdrawal deal has been agreed with Brussels or not.
But new legislation, which was granted royal assent on Monday, changes that, and will force the PM to seek a delay to 31 January 2020 unless a deal - or a no-deal exit - is approved by MPs by 19 October.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said although No 10 insisted it was not looking to break the new law, efforts were under way to examine ways of getting around it.
The prime minister said the government would use the time Parliament was suspended to press on with negotiating a deal with the EU, while "preparing to leave without one".
"No matter how many devices this Parliament invents to tie my hands, I will strive to get an agreement in the national interest," he said.
"This government will not delay Brexit any further."
But he was warned that ignoring the new law could prompt a legal challenge while ministers called it "lousy" and said they would "test to the limit" what it required of them.
Mr Johnson told MPs that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had previously said he would back an election if legislation to prevent the government from forcing through a no-deal Brexit on 31 October became law.
"By his own logic, he must now back an election."
But Mr Corbyn told MPs that Labour was "eager for an election - but as keen as we are, we are not prepared to risk inflicting the disaster of no-deal on our communities, our jobs, our services, or indeed our rights".
And he said the prime minister was suspending Parliament to avoid discussions of his plans.
Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, the Independent Group for Change and Plaid Cymru met on Monday morning and agreed not to back the motion for an election.
The prime minister's self-imposed Halloween Brexit deadline looks further out of reach than a few short days ago.
Is it impossible? Absolutely not.
There is the possibility, still, of a deal, with Number 10 today stressing it was still their primary aim.
Whispers again about a Northern Ireland only backstop, and a bigger role for the Stormont assembly, if it ever gets up and running, are doing the rounds.
Some MPs and some diplomats are more cheerful tonight about the possibilities of it working out.
If you squint, you can see the chance of an agreement being wrapped up at pace, although it seems the chances range somewhere between slim and negligible.
MPs backed calls, by 311 votes to 302, for the publication of government communications relating to the suspension of Parliament and no-deal Brexit plans, known as Operation Yellowhammer.
Former Conservative Dominic Grieve, the newly independent MP who tabled the motion, told MPs it was "entirely reasonable" to ask for the disclosure "so the House can understand the risks involved and this can be communicated more widely to the public".
But minister Michael Gove, who is in charge of no-deal preparations, said he had given evidence to the EU select committee on Yellowhammer and he hoped "those assurances were sufficient".
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, meanwhile, questioned the legal right of the government to require employees - including the PM's top aide Dominic Cummings - to open up their private email accounts and personal mobiles to scrutiny.
After the vote, a government spokesman said it would "consider the implications and respond in due course".
Parliament's suspension means MPs will not get another chance to vote for an early election until they return, meaning a poll would not be possible until November at the earliest.
Earlier on Monday, Mr Johnson held talks with Leo Varadkar in Dublin on Monday morning - his first meeting with the Irish prime minister since he entered No 10.
The Irish border has proved a key sticking point in attempts to agree a Brexit deal between the UK and the EU.
Mr Johnson told Mr Varadkar that a no-deal Brexit would represent "a failure of statecraft" for both the British and Irish governments.

Philip Hammond has warned the UK will not be able to control key elements of a no-deal Brexit.
The chancellor told BBC Panorama that if the UK leaves without a deal, then the EU will control many of the levers - including what happens at the French port of Calais.
Ex Brexit Secretary David Davis told the programme that Whitehall never believed a no-deal Brexit would happen.
The EU has set the UK a deadline of 31 October to leave the bloc.
But despite spending £4.2bn on Brexit preparations, Mr Hammond warned that the government has limited influence on how a no-deal scenario might look.
Asked if the UK can control Brexit, he said: "We can't because many of the levers are held by others - the EU 27 or private business. We can seek to persuade them but we can't control it."
He added: "For example, we can make sure that goods flow inwards through the port of Dover without any friction but we can't control the outward flow into the port of Calais," he told Panorama.
"The French can dial that up or dial it down, just the same as the Spanish for years have dialled up or dialled down the length of the queues at the border going into Gibraltar."
French officials have previously rejected suggestions they could resort to a "go-slow" policy at Calais if there is no Brexit deal - insisting that closing the port would be "economic suicide".
Earlier this month, Mr Hammond told MPs a no-deal Brexit could cost the Treasury up to £90bn and said it would be up to them to ensure that "doesn't happen".
He has also said it was "highly unlikely" he would still be in his job after Theresa May stands down next month.
The Panorama programme - entitled Britain's Brexit Crisis - will outline the tensions in government during Theresa May's time at Number 10 when it is broadcast on Thursday.
Mr Davis, who quit as Brexit secretary last year, told the BBC that the Treasury wanted to avoid talking about the prospect of leaving without a deal.
He concluded that many in Whitehall did not believe it would ever happen - despite two years of planning.
"I've got to be able to say to you 'if this doesn't work we'll leave anyway' and you've got to believe it.
"And for you to believe it I've got to believe it. And I don't think Whitehall really ever believed that they would actually carry out the plans we laid so carefully over two years."
Tory leadership favourite Boris Johnson has pledged the UK will leave the EU on 31 October - with or without a deal.
His rival Jeremy Hunt has said he can negotiate a new deal for the UK "by the end of September" - and that he "expects" the UK will leave the EU before Christmas.
Voting among the party's 160,000 or so members is under way, with a winner expected to be announced on 23 July.
Britain's Brexit Crisis is on BBC1 this Thursday, July 18, at 9pm.
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Businesses have warned that food prices may rise and jobs may be affected after the chancellor vowed to end alignment with EU rules after Brexit.
Sajid Javid told the Financial Times the UK would not be a "ruletaker" after Brexit, urging businesses to "adjust".
The Food and Drink Federation said the proposals were likely to cause food prices to rise at the end of this year.
The Confederation of British Industry said for many firms, keeping existing EU rules would support jobs.
The automotive, food and drink and pharmaceutical industries all warned the government last year that moving away from key EU rules would be damaging.
In an interview with Financial Times, the chancellor said the Treasury would not support manufacturers that favour staying aligned with EU rules, as companies had known since 2016 that the UK was going to leave the EU.
"Admittedly they didn't know the exact terms," he said.
The UK's 11-month transition period begins after it leaves the EU on 31 January.
Mr Javid declined to specify which EU rules he wanted to drop, but said some businesses would benefit from Brexit, while others would not.
He added: "There will not be alignment, we will not be a ruletaker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union - and we will do this by the end of the year."
Tim Rycroft, chief operating officer of the Food and Drink Federation, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it sounded like the "death knell" for frictionless trade with the EU.
Acknowledging that some industries might benefit from Brexit, he said: "We also have to make sure the government clearly understands what the consequences will be for industries like ours if they go ahead and change our trading terms."
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said it welcomed the chancellor's "ambitious" vision but said the government should not feel an "obligation" to depart from EU rules.
Carolyn Fairbairn, CBI director-general, said for many companies, "particularly in some of the most deprived regions of the UK", keeping the same rules would support jobs and maintain competitiveness.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said the automotive industry in the UK and EU was "uniquely integrated" and its priority was to avoid "expensive tariffs and other 'behind the border' barriers".
It said it was vital to have "early sight" of the government's plans so companies could evaluate their impact.
And the Chemical Industries Association said: "The industry continues to support regulatory alignment with our European counterparts, which represents the largest single market for our products."
BBC business correspondent Katy Austin pointed out that the association's members were concentrated in the north of England, an area the government is particularly keen to be seen to support.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell tweeted that Conservative promises about frictionless trade with the EU after Brexit were "now exposed as not worth paper they were written on".
By BBC political correspondent Susana Mendonca
This tough tone from the chancellor appears to have a two-pronged intention.
Firstly, there's the message to business, which is, effectively, that Brexit is going to happen so just get on with it.
Getting on the wrong side of businesses has never been familiar ground for the Conservatives, but a majority government gives you the freedom to do the uncomfortable stuff.
It means the Tories can now be emboldened to say some companies will suffer because of Brexit in a way they never would have before. And with the general election now behind them, they can also pay little heed to warnings from the shadow chancellor that no alignment could lead to food shortages and job cuts.
The second motivation for this tough talk is likely to be about positioning ahead of the trade deal yet to be done with the EU.
The rhetoric around not being a "rule-taker" suggests the Conservatives want to be seen as preparing to have a tough battle with the EU to secure a deal without regulations - if they can.
The government has not yet agreed a future trading relationship with the EU - it plans to do so during the 11-month transition period.
During this period the UK will continue to follow EU rules and contribute to its budget.
The chancellor also said he wanted to double the UK's annual economic growth to between 2.7 and 2.8%.
The outgoing governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, told the Financial Times last week he thought the UK's trend growth rate was much lower, at between 1 and 1.5%.
Mr Javid said the extra growth would come from spending on skills and infrastructure in the Midlands and the north of England - even if they did not offer as much "bang for the buck" as projects in other parts of the country.
He also pledged to rewrite Treasury investment rules, which have tended to favour government investment in places with high economic growth and high productivity.

Thousands of Leave supporters have protested at Westminster against the delay to Brexit, on the day the UK had been due to leave the EU.
Some demonstrators reacted with cheers, while others shouted "shame on you", as MPs rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's EU withdrawal agreement.
The March to Leave - which began in Sunderland two weeks ago - arrived in Parliament Square on Friday afternoon.
A separate Make Brexit Happen rally, organised by UKIP, was also held.
The rally was backed by English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, who spoke to crowds, along with UKIP leader Gerard Batten.
Meanwhile, at the March to Leave protest, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Tory Brexiteer MP Mark Francois delivered speeches.
Campaign group Stand Up to Racism also held a counter-protest in Westminster, saying it was there "against the far right who are trying to capitalise on the Brexit crisis".
Some Brexit protesters continued to demonstrate into the evening, and lines of police were deployed to keep the crowds under control.
The Metropolitan Police said five arrests had been made at the demonstrations - although that included one man who was wanted in connection with an offence elsewhere.
Two other people were arrested on suspicion of assault, another on suspicion of assaulting a police officer and someone else on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly.
It comes as MPs on Friday rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal deal, which she negotiated with the EU, by 58 votes.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but both sides agreed to postpone the date last week after Mrs May had twice been unable to get her Brexit deal through the Commons.
Friday's defeat of the withdrawal agreement led to mixed reactions.
Some in the crowd, who saw Mrs May's deal as too soft, welcomed its rejection, while others feared it could lead to another EU referendum.
Former UKIP leader and Brexiteer Nigel Farage spoke at the March to Leave rally - organised by campaign group Leave Means Leave - and was greeted by loud cheers as he took to the stage.
"It's brave of you to come," he told demonstrators. "Because I sense, being in Westminster, that we are in enemy territory.
"There are hundreds of people just over the street that have treated that referendum, and those who voted for it, with total and utter contempt for the past three years."
Mr Farage told Leave supporters "not to be disheartened", and also signalled that he would be willing to stand again as an MEP if the UK takes part in the European Parliament elections in May.
The UK has a new Brexit deadline of 12 April, by which point it needs to have told the EU what its next steps are.
If the UK wants to delay Brexit further, the EU is expected to insist that it takes part in the elections.
By BBC home affairs correspondent Dominic Casciani, in Parliament Square
The mood and atmosphere in Parliament Square is very strange for a demonstration.
There is a really significant police presence, yet a lot of quiet but angry, angry people who believe that Parliament has "betrayed" Brexit.
When the news came through that MPs had, yet again, refused to back the PM's draft deal, the reaction was rather muted.
George, from St Albans, told me he was satisfied, because he hoped the UK could now crash out without a deal, as the public demanded.
One man has a coffin as a prop, declaring the death of democracy. "Bring out your dead," goes the prop's recording.
UKIP leader Gerard Batten told the crowd at the Make Brexit Happen protest: "As of now we do not know when we are going to leave the European Union.
"Theresa May has had, for the third time, her not-really-leaving deal rejected by Parliament."
He added: "What we do know is that if we do not leave the EU it will mark the end of democracy in the UK."
Mr Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon - also took to the stage, addressing the confusion over the latest defeat of the deal: "So Theresa May has lost her vote. Many people will be asking what does that even mean.
"It means we were betrayed. Today is supposed to be our Independence Day."
The BBC's Sarah Walton, who was also at the scene, said there were some pro-Remain campaign groups demonstrating in central London.
"But at the moment here, the majority are pro-Brexit supporters," she said, "some of whom have been telling me that they were always planning on coming to London today, 29 March, but for a celebration to celebrate the day the UK would leave the EU."
"People have been saying they have come here from all across the country. They are angry and frustrated. Some of the rally groups have said they plan to be here well into the evening."
Some of the protesters wore hi-vis yellow vests, like those worn by the "gilets jaunes" anti-government rioters in Paris.
Former black cab driver Colin Grostate, who was at the demonstration, said they were a "symbol from France", adding: "We support the populism.
"Our politicians are not listening. Too many people are trying to stop what people voted for."
The Metropolitan Police said it had "appropriate policing plans" in place.

Some EU countries are pushing for the European Union's no-deal legislation to be more generous to the UK.
The European Commission has proposed "bare bones" arrangements on aviation and road haulage if there is no deal.
The legislation would allow British truckers to carry goods into the EU and British airlines to fly in and out of the EU, from 29 March to 31 December.
But a group of countries want to give UK hauliers the right to operate within the EU as well, known as cabotage.
Some also want British airlines to be able to offer connecting flights within the EU.
Diplomats are also concerned that airlines will not be able to offer new routes or run more services because the number of flights would be capped at 2018 levels.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said: "You can't be out of the EU and be getting the benefits of the single market."
"That is the clear red line of France."
The issues were discussed at a meeting of member states' ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday.
Officials will try to hammer out a compromise at a meeting on Friday and ambassadors will discuss it again next week.
"We've got to strike a balance between being prepared but not sending the message to the UK that no deal would be OK," a diplomat said.
The European Commission, which co-ordinates planning for no deal at a European level, is opposed to expanding the scope of the legislation, saying it would give the UK some of the benefits of membership of the single market.
The commission also urged member states not to engage in bilateral deals with the UK, which some countries have suggested, because much of the responsibility for these issues rests with national governments.
Details of the discussion are contained in a diplomatic note of a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday.
At least one country asked whether the EU should consider additional contingency measures to guarantee co-operation on security issues, such as the Schengen Information System which is used to share information about stolen goods and people of interest.
The news will cheer supporters of a no-deal Brexit, who argue that the EU would be prepared to offer mini-deals with the UK if the withdrawal agreement it has negotiated with the UK is not approved.

Both sides in Brexit talks say progress is being made but without any breakthrough on the crucial issue of the Irish border.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said he was "stubbornly optimistic" about getting a deal after talks in Brussels.
Unresolved issues include intellectual property, data protection and the role of the European Court of Justice.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier said he needed detail from the UK on its plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
He told journalists that remaining "bones of contention" between the two sides were being steadily eliminated with particular progress on issues of security, judicial and defence co-operation after "long" talks on Friday.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
Both sides are hoping to agree a divorce deal and a statement on future trading relations at a summit of EU leaders on 17 October, although Mr Raab said that deadline could be missed slightly.
He told reporters: "We're committed to resolving the deal by (the October council) and ultimately on my side I am stubbornly optimistic that a deal is within our reach."
Mr Barnier said there was a "measure of flexibility" and if the process slipped by a "few days or weeks" it would still be possible for the UK to leave the EU with a deal, if approved by the UK and EU Parliaments, on schedule.
The EU negotiator said the "building blocks" of an agreement were falling into place.
He repeated his offer of an "unprecedented" future partnership with the UK but insisted this depended on an "orderly" withdrawal and settling key outstanding issues.
He said the question of the Irish border had come down to "minutiae" and he needed to see the detail of how the UK proposed to manage cross-border trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the event of there being no other solution - the so-called backstop - would work in practice.
"This backstop is critical," he said. "It is essential to concluding the negotiations. Without a backstop, there will be no agreement."
Mr Raab said he had used Friday's talks to explain in more detail the UK's proposal for its future relationship with the EU, the so-called Chequers plan agreed by Theresa May at her country residence in July.
The PM's blueprint, which would see the UK follow EU rules on trade in goods, is unpopular with many Tory MPs, with leading Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson calling for it to be ditched.
Mr Johnson, who quit the cabinet in July in protest over the PM's proposals, said he agreed with Mrs May's former aide Nick Timothy, who urged her to ditch the plan.
Mr Timothy wrote on Thursday that she would have to make further concessions to get EU backing for it and this would be unacceptable.
And Stuart Jackson, the former Tory MP who until recently was an aide to Dominic Raab's predecessor David Davis, said the Chequers plan "has not really got any friends" on either side.
"For the EU, it's outside their core principles and undermines the integrity of the single market," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. "In the UK, people believe it is Brexit in name only."
The two sides say they have agreed 80% of the withdrawal agreement. The remaining 20% includes:
Mr Raab vowed to increase the frequency of talks with Mr Barnier when he took over the job.
But Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, a supporter of the People's Vote campaign for a referendum on the outcome of the negotiations, said "nothing had changed" since then.
"Dominic Raab may say he is more confident about reaching agreement but he can offer nothing concrete," he said.
"He knows the EU27 are not buying the Chequers car crash - a proposal designed around the need to hold a fractured government together and not on the economic interest and well-being of either the UK or the EU."

The Irish prime minister says Brexit is fraying relations between Ireland and Britain.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said it had also "undermined" the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998 after intense negotiations between the UK government, the Irish government and Northern Ireland political parties.
The UK government says "nothing we agree with the EU will risk a return to a hard border".
The Irish border is one of the biggest sticking points in the Brexit negotiations.
"Anything that pulls the communities apart in Northern Ireland undermines the Good Friday Agreement, and anything that pulls Britain and Ireland apart undermines that relationship," said Mr Varadkar on RTE's Marian Finucane programme.
Earlier, the chair of the Republic of Ireland's Senate Brexit Committee said a return to a hard border threatened the peace process.
Senator Neale Richmond told pro-Brexit Conservative MP Owen Paterson on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that plans for solving the border dispute using "existing practical systems" was "completely unfeasible".
Brexit talks have reached an impasse over the EU's "backstop" plan, which would see Northern Ireland effectively remaining in the customs union and single market unless alternative arrangements were found to prevent a hard border.
The taoiseach's comments came two days after Nobel peace prize winner and Conservative Lord Trimble accused Mr Varadkar's government of "riding roughshod" over the GFA.
Lord Trimble, who helped draw up the landmark agreement, said the Brexit process could result in Northern Ireland ending up as part of an "effective EU protectorate".
Mr Paterson, a former Northern Ireland secretary, reiterated that claim, saying that any backstop which involved the whole UK staying in a customs union would be a "total betrayal" of millions of Leave voters and the 85% of voters at the last general election who backed Tory and Labour manifestos which committed to leaving.
The Irish prime minister said Ireland was entering into a potentially difficult period, even if an agreement was struck.
The UK government said any deal would not " threaten the arrangements under the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, and we continue to work very closely with the Irish Government on this".
"We are also working together to ensure the unique bilateral ties between our countries remain strong into the future," a spokesperson added.
Mr Varadkar also said he had a good relationship with Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
If there was some clarity on Brexit in the next couple of weeks or months, there would be an opportunity to get the executive up and running again, Mr Varadkar added.
The UK and the EU both want to avoid a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which may include physical checks or infrastructure, but cannot agree how.
A key part of the negotiation is the controversial border "backstop".
The backstop is a position of last resort, to protect an open border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal.
In a backstop situation, there could in theory be two types of Irish Sea checks:
The government has been adamant it would never accept Irish Sea customs checks.
But it has also been careful not to completely close down the prospect of regulatory checks.

The Scottish and Welsh governments have threatened to block the key Brexit bill which will convert all existing EU laws into UK law.
The repeal bill, published earlier, is also facing opposition from Labour and other parties in the Commons.
Ministers are "optimistic" about getting it through and have promised an "ongoing intense dialogue" with the devolved administrations.
No 10 said it had to be passed or "there will be no laws" after Brexit.
Brexit Secretary David Davis called it "one of the most significant pieces of legislation that has ever passed through Parliament".
He rejected claims ministers were giving themselves "sweeping powers" to make changes to laws as they are repatriated.
It will be up to MPs if they want a say on the "technical changes" ministers plan to make to legislation, he told the BBC.
Labour says it will not support the bill in its current form and is demanding concessions in six areas, including the incorporation of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights into British law.
The party wants guarantees workers' rights will be protected and also want curbs on the power of government ministers to alter legislation without full parliamentary scrutiny.
Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was in Brussels earlier for a meeting with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, said: "Far too much of it seems to be a process where the government... will be able to bypass Parliament.
"We will make sure there is full parliamentary scrutiny. We have a Parliament where the government doesn't have a majority, we have a country which voted in two ways on Leave or Remain.
 "The majority voted to leave and we respect that, but they didn't vote to lose jobs and they didn't vote to have Parliament ridden roughshod over."
The Conservatives are relying on Democratic Unionist Party support to win key votes after losing their Commons majority in the general election, but could face a revolt from Remain supporting backbenchers.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said there could be "parliamentary guerrilla warfare" on the bill, as opposition parties and "Remainer Tories" try to "put their version of Brexit, not Theresa May's, on to the statute book".
The repeal bill is not expected to be debated by MPs until the Autumn, but will need to have been passed by the time the UK leaves the EU - which is due to happen in March 2019.
But the Scottish and Welsh governments have to give "legislative consent" to the bill before it can become law - something they have said they are not willing to do.
In a joint statement, first ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones, who also met Mr Barnier, described the bill as a "naked power-grab" by Westminster that undermined the principles of devolution.
They say the bill returns powers from Brussels solely to the UK government and Parliament and "imposes new restrictions" on the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.
Ministers at Holyrood will not be able to amend EU rules in devolved areas such as agriculture and fisheries after Brexit until the UK Parliament and Scottish government have reached an agreement on them.
UK Scottish Secretary David Mundell claimed the repeal bill would result in a powers "bonanza" for Holyrood - a comment described as "ludicrous" by the SNP.
Theresa May's official spokeswoman said the repeal bill was a "hugely important piece of legislation" because "we need to have a functioning statute book on the day we leave the EU".
The spokesman said First Secretary of State Damian Green had contacted the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the government was confident of gaining their consent.
Asked if there was a contingency plan if he didn't win their backing, the prime minister's official spokesman said "not that I'm aware of".
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, whose party is seeking to join forces with Labour and Tory rebels, said he was "putting the government on warning", promising a tougher test than than it faced when passing legislation authorising the UK's departure from the EU.
"If you found the Article 50 Bill difficult, you should be under no illusion, this will be hell," he said.
Steve Baker, a minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union, said the government was "ready" for a fight over the bill but would also to "listen to Parliament".
Speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Davies predicted the bill "may get amendments here and there", saying he was open to suggestions from other parties for things that should be included.
"If we've missed something and got something wrong, then we'll debate that in the House of Commons," he said.
"That's how this works."
Mr Davis also insisted contingency plans were being made in case the UK and the EU cannot agree a Brexit deal.
"We are planning for all options," he said.
"The ideal outcome... right through to it not working at all and not getting a negotiated outcome at all."
Asked why Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had said the government had "no plan" for such a scenario, he said: "That's possibly because it's my responsibility to plan for it."

Tory leadership candidate Rory Stewart says his competitors' claims they could negotiate a new Brexit deal before 31 October are "misleading".
Some candidates say they can agree a plan by the deadline set by the EU, but Mr Stewart said there was "not a hope".
Boris Johnson has warned the Tories face "potential extinction" if the UK doesn't leave by then.
Rival Jeremy Hunt said a revised deal could be done by then under a leader with "the right negotiating skills".
The former foreign secretary told a leadership hustings on Tuesday the party would "not be forgiven" if it failed, and said he was the candidate best placed to beat Labour and "put Nigel Farage back in his box".
The comments came as the Eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) of Tory MPs called on leadership contenders to abandon Mrs May's Brexit deal and step up preparations for a no-deal exit in October.
International Development Secretary Mr Stewart told BBC Radio 5 Live's Emma Barnett that anyone promising to renegotiate by October was effectively committing to leaving without a deal because it was impossible.
Meanwhile, in other Tory leadership developments:
The EU has consistently said it is not willing to re-open the current withdrawal agreement negotiated between the bloc and Mrs May, despite it being voted down by MPs three times.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Mr Stewart and Mr Johnson are two of 11 candidates running to become the next leader of the Conservative Party, and the next UK prime minister.
On Tuesday, two pulled out of the leadership race as the party tightened the rules for the contest amid concerns about the size of the field.
Candidates will now need the support of eight MPs to take part in the race, and to secure of 5% of the vote in the first round, and 10% of the vote in the second round, to progress.
Charles Walker, the acting joint-chair of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, said it was "not unreasonable for someone seeking to be leader of the party and prime minister to be able to muster" that level of support.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he expected the Parliamentary side of the leadership contest - where MPs narrow the field down to two final candidates - to take no more than two weeks.
The winner will then be chosen by the wider membership of the Conservative Party.
Mr Johnson suggested the solution to the current deadlock would be to replace the Irish backstop - the controversial insurance policy designed to maintain an open border - with "alternative arrangements".
The EU, though, has said the backstop is a key part of the withdrawal agreement, which it is not willing to reconsider or subject to a time limit.
Mr Johnson, who has insisted the UK must leave by the end of October with or without a deal, said a no-deal exit would cause "some disruption".
But he warned that demands for a further referendum would grow if the country was forced to seek another extension from the EU.
Mr Stewart said "politicians need to stop pretending they are going to get a new deal from Brussels".
"Anyone who knows anything about Europe can assure you there is not the slightest hope of getting a new deal through Europe by 31 October. Not a hope.
"There is a lack of realism."
Earlier, Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt would not be drawn on whether she planned to enter the leadership race, but she claimed that nobody wanted a no-deal Brexit, and the EU "understand they have to move on some things".
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the Brexiteer said: "I stayed in cabinet and fought to try and get a deal and to try and build a consensus, both in my party and but also in Parliament.
"What we have learnt though is if you are trying to get that objective, you can't take no deal off the table."
Fellow Leave-backer and Tory MP Steve Baker told BBC's Politics Live he had not decided whether to run, but said the party needed someone "very direct [and] with a clear plan" for Brexit.
He has published his own plan for leaving the EU, "A Clean Managed Brexit", calling for a future partnership "based not on the close mandatory alignment and single customs territory which the draft agreement was designed to facilitate, but one centred on a mutually-beneficial advanced free trade agreement".
Mr Baker added: "No one voted to ask permission to leave. We voted to leave with the hope of negotiating mutually-beneficial cooperation as an independent country. We continue to hope to do so."
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A public row has broken out at the top of the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum.
Media chief Tom Baldwin has accused chairman Roland Rudd of putting "a wrecking ball" through the campaign.
Mr Baldwin said he had been fired by Mr Rudd - but would be going in to work as normal.
Mr Rudd denied firing Mr Baldwin, saying "he has an opportunity for a different type of role".
He also denied reports of strategic differences within the organisation over his desire to openly campaign for Remain.
On Sunday, the Observer reported others within the group want to concentrate on winning support for another vote among Leave voters and wavering Labour and Tory MPs.
But Mr Rudd told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "There's no row about the Remain side and PV [People's Vote]. Everyone knows where we stand on this".
"This is an absurd argument. Everybody knows perfectly well that we're made up of people who want to vote to Remain. There isn't a problem".
The campaign is supported by five groups - the European Movement UK, the Joint Media Unit, Our Future Our Choice, For our Future's Sake and Wales for Europe and Open Britain - of which Mr Rudd is chair.
Over the weekend, the Financial Times reported that two senior figures of the campaign  - Mr Baldwin, the former top adviser to Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader, and James McGrory, ex-deputy PM Nick Clegg's former top adviser - had been asked to leave by Mr Rudd.
Mr Baldwin told the Today programme that although Mr Rudd "technically controls my contract, he didn't appoint me, he doesn't pay me" and added he was still planning to go into work.
He added it was "extraordinary that Roland Rudd is acting like this is his campaign".
"He is making the mistake a lot of businessmen do when they dabble in politics, which is to think, because they have a certain title and board they own the campaign," he said.
He also accused the Liberal Democrats of "playing some strange games" with the campaign, referring to their bid to have an election on 9 December.
Mr Rudd, who made his fortune as the founder of a financial PR firm, said "there is a problem when someone comes on this show and says the Lib Dems are no longer part of the People's Vote".
"The key thing now is that we have to keep our eyes set on the prize.
"We have every chance of getting that prize which is to get it back to the people - the more people see this deal the more they see its flaws."
Asked if he had fired Mr Baldwin, Mr Rudd responded that "he has an opportunity for a different type of role".
The BBC has been told that both Mr Baldwin and Mr McGrory were at the People's Vote offices on Monday morning, as their 40 staff gathered for a meeting.
Tweeting in support of Mr Baldwin, People's Vote campaigner and ex-adviser to Tony Blair Alastair Campbell said "after his [Mr Rudd's] rare visit to the building today it is to be hoped those actually working for a second referendum rather than talking about it to their business pals (none of whom have made donations for months) can get on with their jobs and put this silly episode behind us".

The government has axed its no-deal Brexit contract with a ferry company which had no ships, after the Irish company backing the deal pulled out.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling had faced criticism for the £13.8m deal with Seaborne Freight, which the BBC found had never run a ferry service.
The government said it is in "advanced talks" to find another ferry firm.
But local MP Craig Mackinlay said this could be the "last throw of the dice" for commercial shipping from Ramsgate.
Meanwhile, Labour has called on Mr Grayling to resign or be sacked, describing him as "the worst secretary of state ever".
Seaborne Freight was awarded the £13.8m contract in December to run a freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend, Belgium, in the event that Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
The government was criticised for choosing Seaborne Freight, a company with no ships or trading history, and for leaving too little time to establish the new ferry service before the Brexit deadline of 29 March.
And local politicians in both Ramsgate and Ostend warned that the ports at both ends of the route will not be ready the deadline.
At the time, the government said it awarded the contract "in the full knowledge" that Seaborne, which was formed in April 2017, was "a new shipping provider" but said the company had been "carefully vetted".
On Saturday, the Daily Telegraph reported that Arklow Shipping, a major Irish shipping firm, withdrew its support from Seaborne "without warning".
The Department for Transport (DfT) said that it had become clear that Seaborne "would not reach its contractual requirements", after Arklow Shipping backed out of the deal.
A spokesman said: "The government is already in advanced talks with a number of companies to secure additional freight capacity - including through the Port of Ramsgate - in the event of a no-deal Brexit."
Thanet District Council - which covers Ramsgate - said it was "disappointing" that Arklow Shipping had pulled out of the deal. It said it was in talks with the DfT about the port's role "in terms of supporting Brexit resilience".
The council has been pumping money into the port to get it ready for ferry services. Earlier this week, it was considering cutting its budget for the port but, at the request of Mr Grayling, delayed its decision.
Ramsgate has not had a regular ferry service since 2013 and needs to be dredged before services can start.
Following the news that Seaborne Freight had lost the contract, the Conservative MP for South Thanet, Mr Mackinlay, said ferry companies had "come and gone over the last few years" but "none of them have come to anything".
"For me, this Seaborne operation was potentially the last throw of the dice for a chance for commercial shipping out of Ramsgate," he said.
"Perhaps it is time that we turned the page on Ramsgate port being for commercial activity and we can start doing something rather more exciting on those acres of land, potentially a marina village, hotels, restaurants, some housing, something really exciting that I think would be more welcomed by many people in Ramsgate."
Andrew Gwynne, the shadow secretary of state for communities and local government, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This is yet again another indication of a government that had no plan for Britain should we leave the European Union without a deal.
"It's another example of a major disaster in the hands of Chris Grayling who must be classed as the worst secretary of state ever."
The government said that no taxpayer money has been transferred to Seaborne.
It added that its confidence in the viability of the deal with Seaborne was based on Arklow Shipping's backing of the company and the assurances it received from them.

Rebel Conservative MPs have joined forces with Labour to inflict a fresh blow on Theresa May's government in a Commons Brexit vote.
It means the government will have to come up with revised plans within three days if Mrs May's EU withdrawal deal is rejected by MPs next week.
It could also open the door to alternatives, such as a referendum.
No 10 said Mrs May's deal was in the national interest but if MPs disagreed, the government would "respond quickly".
The setback for the PM came as MPs started five days of debate on the withdrawal agreement with the EU, and the framework for future relations, ahead of the meaningful vote next Tuesday.
The government was expecting to have 21 days to come up with a "plan B" for Brexit if, as widely expected, Mrs May's deal is voted down.
But MPs backed calls for it to respond within three working Parliamentary days, a deadline likely to fall on Monday 21 January.
Theresa May lost by 11 votes, with 297 MPs siding with the government and 308 against.
Among those voting against were 17 Conservatives, including former ministers Justine Greening, Sam Gyimah and Jo Johnson who want to see another referendum to decide whether the UK should leave or not.
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Former attorney general Dominic Grieve, the Conservative MP who led the rebellion, said he hoped for a "serious dialogue" between government and Parliament on alternatives to Mrs May's deal to avert a possible crisis.
He told ITV's Peston that it would be up to Mrs May to decide what she wanted to do if her deal was rejected, but MPs would be able to vote on any motion she put forward within seven days.
While the PM would have the right to say she wanted the Commons to re-consider her deal, he said MPs could amend the motion, telling her in effect "we want you to do something else".
Fellow rebel Sarah Wollaston said she and other MPs opposed to a no-deal exit were engaged in a "guerrilla campaign" to show that it would never get the consent of Parliament.
By BBC Parliamentary Correspondent Mark D'Arcy
The new Grieve amendment, now passed by MPs, means that in the event the PM loses next week, the Commons will then have a chance to vote on alternative policies - everything from a "managed no-deal" to a further referendum, via a "Norway option" or a reheated version of the current deal, could be on the table.
If a majority could be found for anything, it would not have the force of law - but it would at least indicate a policy which had the support of MPs.
This is, in short, a massive ruling by the Speaker, made, apparently, against the advice of the Commons Clerk, Sir David Natzler.
I don't want to delve too deeply into the arcana of Business of the House motions only amendable by ministers of the Crown, but this drove a coach and horses through accepted normal practice, and will have huge implications for the course of Brexit.
Read Mark's full blog
But Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who favours leaving without a withdrawal agreement, said it would not stop the UK exiting on 29 March.
"It merely requires a motion to be tabled not even debated," he said.
And prisons minister Rory Stewart, who backs the PM's deal, said requiring Mrs May to restart complex negotiations with the EU and come back with changes in three days, was "unreasonable".
He said Mr Grieve was "trying to provide more support for what he wants, which is a second referendum".
Downing Street said it would consider the repercussions of Wednesday's defeat but its intention had always been to "provide certainty" as soon as possible.
Labour has said it will table a motion of no confidence in the government if Mrs May's deal is voted down.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Parliament had to "take control of what happens next" and suggested delaying the date of the UK's exit beyond 29 March might be "inevitable".
He warned the UK's options were narrowing given the need to avoid, at all costs, a no-deal exit which he claimed was "simply not viable for practical reasons".
Commons Speaker John Bercow faced an angry backlash from some Conservative MPs over his decision to allow MPs to vote on the issue.
The MPs claim Mr Bercow broke Commons rules and ignored the advice of his own clerks.
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom was among MPs to challenge his ruling in a series of points of order after Prime Minister's Questions.
They argued that the business motion, tabled by the government, was not amendable and said the Speaker was breaking with precedent.
Mr Bercow said he had made an "honest judgement" after consulting his clerks but rejected calls from Ms Leadsom to publish the advice he had received.
He insisted he was "not setting himself up against the government but championing the rights of the House of Commons", adding that if people wanted to vote against the amendment they could.
But a number of Tory MPs said the decision cast doubt on Mr Bercow's impartiality, with Crispin Blunt questioning whether he remained a "neutral referee of our affairs".
The Commons defeat was the second in the space of 24 hours for the government on Brexit.
On Tuesday, MPs, headed by former Tory ministers Mr Grieve and Oliver Letwin, defied the government on an amendment aimed at making it more difficult to leave the EU without a deal.
The clashes in the Commons came as the PM, who cancelled a vote on her deal last month at the last minute to avoid a humiliating defeat, launched a fresh push to convince MPs.
She is hoping new proposals on Northern Ireland will change enough MPs' minds to save the deal.
Under the plans, the Northern Ireland Assembly would have a say on new EU rules if the backstop plan to prevent physical checks on the Irish border comes into force after Brexit.
But the Democratic Unionist Party, on whom Theresa May relies for her Commons majority, have already rejected the so-called "Stormont lock" plans as "cosmetic" and "meaningless".
Ministers have also accepted calls for MPs to be able to vote next year on alternatives to activating the backstop, such as extending the proposed 21-month transition period.
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A no-deal Brexit would hit UK-EU security ties and have a "real impact" on protecting the public, security minister Ben Wallace has warned.
In a speech to law enforcement leaders, he said close co-operation  was the "heart of effective security".
Mr Wallace said the PM's deal, which MPs vote on next month, would set the foundations for the most comprehensive security relationship in EU history.
But Labour's Diane Abbott said the plan "failed on guarantees for security".
The shadow home secretary's party is to table an amendment to reject the deal  but also "prevent the chaos of the UK crashing out of the EU".
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but, under Theresa May's deal, there would then be a transition period, during which the UK and EU would continue to work together as they do now.
The deal for how the UK will leave the EU is accompanied by a non-binding declaration on the future relationship between the EU and UK after transition has ended, which includes the promise to co-operate on security.
MPs are due to vote on the deal on 11 December. If they reject it - and no other solution is found - the UK could leave without a deal. The current arrangements on security co-operation would then end on 29 March with nothing to replace them.
In the run-up to the vote, the public can expect a steady drumbeat of official warnings about the dangers of a no-deal Brexit, says BBC political reporter Brian Wheeler, as Mrs May and her team try to sell her plan.
A leaked copy of Downing Street's own timetable for media announcements has "security" listed as a Thursday priority with "international trade" scheduled the following day.
Mr Wallace was speaking at the International Security Expo in London, where he said that such a no-deal departure would be a step backwards for security co-operation.
He added that the UK, through the experience of the last few decades, had learnt the value of working with its European partners.
He said: "We and Europe know, from bitter experience, that often when there is a mistake or when something has been missed that we find, time and time again, that it has been due to a failure of co-operation.
"A no-deal situation would have a real impact on our ability to work with our European partners to protect the public."
By Dominic Casciani, BBC home affairs correspondent
The UK wants to maintain all the existing security arrangements - and it knows that the EU wants to maintain this high level of co-operation out of mutual self-interest. But there are problems.
Critics of the government's hopes for post-Brexit security are concerned that the proposed final relationship with the EU - that would kick in in 2021 - is long on aspirations but short on solutions.
It's not remotely clear if the UK will be able to access EU-organised databases, such as those that exchange criminal records, wanted alerts and DNA and fingerprint records, after the transition.
Once transition ends, so does access to the data - unless a security treaty can be agreed.
But even if that treaty is signed, it may come up short. Some nations, like Germany, have constitutional bars on how they can co-operate on security with non EU states.
In his address, Mr Wallace said that Mrs May's agreement would set the foundations for the broadest security relationship the EU has had with another country.
The partnership would include the ability to exchange information on criminals and tackle terrorism, to quickly share data on people travelling to and from the UK to spot potential threats, to exchange DNA and fingerprints, and to fast-track extraditions.
Ms Abbott described the government plans as "dangerously flimsy".
She said: "There is no new security treaty on offer, which is vital for cross-border policing arrangements, especially extradition."
She added that there were "only aspirations for a vague security partnership, no plans for proper security arrangements, including with Europol" and that it was "simply unacceptable".
As the vote on the PM's deal draws closer, details of what will happen in Parliament during the build up were released.
The Commons will debate the agreement for eight hours a day on 4, 5, 6, 10 and 11 December under business proposals set out by the government.
But MPs will be allowed to table six amendments to the Brexit motion, to be chosen by the Speaker of the House of Commons and heard before the vote on 11 December.
Labour has put forward an amendment "rejecting Theresa May's botched Brexit deal" and to stop a no-deal, calling for all options to be left on the table if it gets voted down.
The party's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the deal "is a miserable failure of negotiation by a government that has wasted the last two years fighting with itself, rather than securing a better deal with the EU".
Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis called the amendment "shameful and irresponsible behaviour", adding: "All they are interested in is trying to force a general election."

A powerful cross-party group of MPs is to force a vote on a customs union next week in the House of Commons.
The Liaison Committee, made up of Labour, Conservative and SNP committee chairmen, has tabled a debate calling for "an effective customs union".
Theresa May has pledged to leave the current customs union after Brexit.
Downing Street believes that trying to replicate it when the UK leaves the EU would stop the country from being able to sign its own trade deals.
The news about the Commons vote comes the day after the House of Lords inflicted a defeat on the government over the customs union issue.
The government had hoped to avoid a vote on the issue in the Commons until next month.
But the MPs, including Yvette Cooper, Nicky Morgan, Sarah Wollaston, and Hilary Benn, have secured a debate that will force the issue.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said that although a vote would not be binding on the government, it will ratchet up the pressure on No 10 to shift its position if the Commons agrees.
Conservative backbencher Anna Soubry said that it would "not be a meaningful vote at all" but the debate would be important.
She said the "crunch question" was whether the government would have sufficient MPs prepared to overturn the Lords amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill, when it returned to the Commons.
She told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme the Lords vote had asked the government only to "explore" a customs union.
"There is an increasing number of Conservative MPs... who are worried and now understand the benefits of us having a customs arrangement, not just for the benefit of manufacturers in particular in our country... but also for peace in Northern Ireland.
"I do hope the government will look at the numbers - but look at the strength of the argument - do the right thing and that is not to seek to whip Conservative members of Parliament to take out this eminently sensible and hugely reasonable amendment that the Lords passed last night."
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the Lords defeat on Wednesday should prompt the prime minister to change her approach.
He said: "There's a growing view, I think probably a majority view in Parliament now, that it's in our national interests and economic interests to stay in a customs union with the EU.
"We've got a huge manufacturing sector in the UK that needs to be protected, with many goods going over borders many, many times, and we need to protect that."
Environment Secretary Michael Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the government might face a battle in the Commons to overturn the Lords vote.
He said: "It is the case that there are lots of potential future votes - given the arithmetic in the House of Commons, given the fact that we don't have a majority - which are always going to rely on the persuasive powers of ministers to get colleagues to support the Government."
The Liaison Committee members calling for the motion also include the SNP's Angus McNeil, Lib Dem Norman Lamb, Labour MP Meg Hillier, Conservative Bob Neil, Labour's Rachel Reeves and the SNP's Pete Wishart.

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage suggested earlier he was coming round to the idea of a second EU referendum - what is going on?
To paraphrase the old joke, there are probably two chances of a second EU referendum right now - slim chance and fat chance. Ladbrokes is currently offering odds of 5/1 on it. At 11/8 the bookmakers think it is more likely that no deal will have been agreed before Britain officially leaves the EU on 29 March 2019. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have ruled out a second vote, both essentially arguing that it would be seen as a catastrophic breach of trust with a public already weary of broken promises.
The idea that the political establishment will just keep holding referendums until they get the result they want - or simply ignore the result if they don't like it - was a constant refrain during the Brexit campaign. It has happened before, say Brexiteers.
France and the Netherlands both rejected an EU constitution in 2005 referendums, which led to the document being repackaged and adopted by both countries as the Lisbon Treaty.
Ireland then rejected the Lisbon Treaty in a 2008 referendum - it was the only EU country to hold such a vote - but then accepted it in a second referendum the following year, following pressure from the rest of the EU.
But sometimes the establishment gets the result it wants and still has to face another vote.
The term "neverendum" was coined in the French Canadian province of Quebec, which has twice voted against independence from Canada - the first time in 1980 by a majority of 59%. the second time, in 1995, by a shade over 50%. The prime ministers at the time of the two votes were pro-Canada. The independence campaign has never stopped pushing for a third vote.
The former UKIP leader has angrily denounced "Remoaners" like Tony Blair and Sir John Major for suggesting the public should be given another vote.
"I think there are 17.4m people out there who voted Brexit despite being told it was the wrong thing to do and I really think it would be a big mistake if these people get pushed too far," he said on his LBC radio show in November 2016.
Yet before the referendum, he freely admitted he would have kept pushing for another vote if his side lost by a narrow margin.
"In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it," he told the Daily Mirror.
There is a kind of consistency here - the former UKIP chief will not be satisfied until Brexit has been resoundingly backed by the people, to "finish the whole thing off".
"It may well be that Nigel would get what he wants which is a completely hard Brexit," veteran Tory Eurosceptic Bill Cash told the BBC.
But he added: "I do find his position quite unconvincing and for him to be, as it were, bedfellows with the Liberal Democrats I think is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in British politics."
Perhaps Mr Farage - and one-time UKIP donor Arron Banks who also now backs a second referendum - are missing the spotlight and fancy getting the Brexit band back together for one more tour.
He later clarified his remarks, saying a second referendum was the "last thing" he wanted to see but the Leave side had to be ready for one, as Remainers claimed support for another vote was growing.
For all the sometimes wild claims from both sides, if a second referendum was held now there is no guarantee the outcome would be any different. Polling suggests Britons are becoming increasingly sceptical about the government's handling of Brexit talks "but Leave voters for the most part have not changed their minds about their decision", pollster Sir John Curtice said this week.
But - say Remainers like Tony Blair - why should the 2016 referendum be the final word? That's not how democracy works, they argue.
Mr Blair said in a BBC interview that people should be given a chance to "think again" once they have seen the final exit deal.
He was a bit vague on how this might happen, suggesting it could be via another referendum or a general election, although this, he claimed, was a "second order" issue. Only the Liberal Democrats, with 12 MPs, are openly pushing for a second referendum.
Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. The next scheduled general election is on 5 May 2022.  It would take a change of Labour and/or Tory leadership, not to mention a major policy shift, and, in all likelihood, an early general election. So if there was to be another vote it would probably have to be held this year or, at the very latest, early next year.
The June 2016 question was simple: "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"
The next one, if it is ever posed, might be a bit more convoluted...

On the face of it, there is nothing remotely surprising about Theresa May telling her Cabinet colleagues last night that she wants to have another go at trying to sort out the backstop.
The political implication of that is that she still thinks it is better at this stage for her to pursue a strategy that might just about conceivably see, in the end after a lot more wrangling, a version of her deal squeak through the House of Commons with support from her own MPs and having kissed and made up with the DUP.
Right now that seems a long way off of course, and it might prove impossible.
But the view at the top of government is that, on balance, this is the better choice. There are plenty of MPs and some in government on the other side of this argument who think it is not much short of insane to keep going with a strategy that has been so roundly kicked out by the Commons. You hear a lot of quoting of Einstein, who claimed the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. (Although as so often there is a row over whether he actually said that at all)
And while it's scoffed at, some people in government believe in the end the EU might budge and that Ireland might be persuaded to look at a separate agreement to sort out the backstop. (Don't all scream at once, I know how far off that looks at the moment).
Remember, Theresa May just isn't the kind of politician who was ever going to tear up her Plan A overnight, however irritating it might be to some of her own ministers like the one who told me last week she would have to budge at "five past seven".
This doesn't of course mean in theory that the cross-party process is over. There are more talks between various MPs and senior ministers today.
But one senior MP involved in the process believes the problem is that by suggesting compromise in the Commons in the wake of defeat last week, then telling ministers Plan B is basically Plan A last night, the PM has "burned up the goodwill".
If she wasn't going to budge, what was the point of implying that she might?
In theory the point was, of course, that it's highly likely she will in the end need to compromise, and that every vote will count.
But one source joked that she won't do it until "she's in a half-Nelson" - the reality is by then, those MPs who were willing to help last week may have concluded, as some already have, that if she won't budge, Parliament will simply grab hold of the process when it comes to the vote next week.

"Are they serious?"
Labour and the Conservatives are separately pondering that same question tonight - wondering whether their political rivals really are genuine about finding common cause.
Guess what, just for a change, the leaderships of both of the main Westminster parties are dealing with boiling tensions on their front and back benches.
And they both have reasons to tiptoe towards each other in these cross-party talks, but both sides too have reasons to tread carefully.
In truth, both sides are serious that they could possibly get serious about a deal, but the obstacles are significant.
The Tories have still not, and may never feel able to offer a clear promise of pursuing a customs union.
What sources familiar with the talks say the focus is right now, is trying to point out to Labour that the existing deal contains the possibility of shaping that kind of arrangement in the future.
Irony upon irony, the backstop which the government has been protesting about for so long provides the ingredients for exactly that kind of relationship with the EU in the long term.
That is precisely why Brexiteers hated it so much - because they feared (correctly perhaps) it might be used as the basis on which to build the kind of tight trading deal with the EU they seek to avoid.
For the prime minister to overtly pursue such a deal is already provoking fury in parts of her party - although it's also striking now how frustrated some middle of the road Tory MPs are - fed up of what they see as both "extremes", hogging the oxygen and holding everything up.
But unless and until Theresa May is ready to give a firmer commitment on customs, it is hard to see how Labour would be ready to sign on the dotted line.
Although the two sides will meet again in the next 24 hours, Jeremy Corbyn again has expressed his view that the government hasn't shifted any of those red lines.
And even if that were to happen, there are (at least!) two other big blocks to success.
There is deep anxiety in the Labour Party about being able to trust anything that is agreed.
The government's already promised that they could change the law to give guarantees in the Brexit implementation bill.
But both sides admit privately even if they came up with some kind of "lock", it's just not feasible to rule out any future prime minister ever unpicking the deal.
In a different era this might not be such a problem.
But the prime minister has already said that she will quit, and quit once the deal is done.
So of course, Labour MPs are very nervous about how the promises made in these talks could last.
That's whether the next leader were to be Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab , Jeremy Hunt or frankly, the Queen of Sheba - it's about the permanence of any promise.
And, as I understand it, the two groups, even with serious intention, have not as things stand been able to come up with a formula that guards against this.
Second of all, officials and politicians in the discussions have talked about the possibility of another referendum on the EU - whether you call it a "confirmatory vote", a "ratificatory referendum", or a "people's vote" - another chance for all of us to have a say.
This has not though yet been a big focus of the talks - it seems like an issue that has been danced around the edges.
Here's the thing: a hefty chunk of the Labour Party is adamant that they will only back a deal if it comes with a promise of another referendum.
And that opinion among Labour backbenchers has been hardening, not softening in recent weeks.
So even if the talks can find away around the customs conundrum, and then find a "lock" to make Labour comfortable with any promises that are made, there is a third profound dilemma.
Number 10 has always made it abundantly clear that the prime minister believes that's a nightmare not worth contemplating.
The problem for these talks is that for a big chunk of the parliamentary Labour Party that's the dream they are pursuing.
There are others who disagree, and disagree profoundly.
But in terms of making this process work, the Labour Party's votes can't be delivered in one big chunk.
With huge political imagination, invention, (whose mother after all they say is a necessity, and there's certainly a necessity right now), it is of course possible that this process could get there.
In this long tangled process a lot of things that have seemed impossible can in the end come to pass.
But just as both sides in these talks are serious, the problems are serious too.

Senior Conservative backbencher Sir Graham Brady has told the BBC that he could accept a delay to Brexit - as long as a deal was already agreed.
He said a short delay to the 29 March exit date would be acceptable if needed to get legislation through Parliament.
The government says its position has not changed on the date but Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has suggested "extra time" may be needed.
MPs rejected a bid to postpone Brexit if no deal was reached by 26 February.
That amendment, from the Labour MP Yvette Cooper, would have delayed the 29 March departure date by several months, but it was voted down by 321 to 298 on Tuesday.
But Sir Graham, chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers, told Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast, the Cooper amendment "would have been deeply counter-productive because it moves off the decision point".
Putting off the decision would only lead to more uncertainty, he said.
"I would only countenance a delay if we already had a deal agreed, it's just a matter of doing the necessary work to implement it," said Sir Graham.
"Once we've reached an agreement and we know the terms on which we're leaving, if we decide that we need another two weeks in order to finish the necessary legislation through Parliament, I don't think anybody's going to be too worked up about that, because we will have made a decision."
The UK is due to leave the European Union at 23:00 on 29 March, however MPs have overwhelmingly rejected the withdrawal deal that the government had negotiated with the EU.
On Tuesday they voted for the prime minister to seek "alternative arrangements" to the controversial Irish "backstop" proposal, which is opposed by many Conservative MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party.
The backstop is an "insurance" policy to stop the return of checks on goods and people along the Northern Ireland border, if no deal is reached in time. It would effectively keep the UK inside the EU's customs union, but with Northern Ireland also conforming to some rules of the single market.
Its critics say a different status for Northern Ireland could threaten the existence of the UK and fear that the backstop could become permanent.
But the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Wednesday the backstop was "part and parcel" of the withdrawal deal and would not be renegotiated.
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Hunt said "extra time" may be needed to finalise legislation for Brexit and a possible delay in the UK's departure from the EU depended on the progress made in the coming weeks.
And BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said there had been "growing chatter" about a potential delay and a potential extension to Article 50 - the mechanism by which the UK leaves the EU.
But the prime minister's official spokesman said the government remained committed to leaving the EU on 29 March.
Parliament had been due to rise for recess on Thursday, 14 February and return on Monday, 25 February but that has now been cancelled.
"The fact that recess won't be taking place shows you that we are taking all available steps to make sure that 29 March is our exit date," the spokesman said.
"The prime minister's position of this is unchanged - we will be leaving on the 29th."
Downing Street was also discussing the possibility of Parliament sitting for extra hours in the run up to Brexit, the spokesman said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the government of running down the clock on Brexit.
He said: "It is possible that there will have to be an extension in order to get an agreement because we cannot leave the EU on March 29 without an agreement.
"Crashing out would mean problems of transport, problems of medicine supply, problems of supply to the food processing industry that does just in time deliveries - and that simply is not acceptable.
"This government has had two-and-a-half years to negotiate and has failed to do so."
Meanwhile, Labour MP John Mann has said a group of 10 MPs from his party met the prime minister two weeks ago to ask for "a significant amount of money" for poorer areas, "so that we can actually move forward as we leave the EU".
When asked about a Times article that said Mrs May was preparing to entice Labour MPs to vote for her deal with money for constituencies, Mr Mann told the BBC he had voted for the deal already, "so I can't be bribed".
"There's no expectation, this isn't transactional politics. We're asking for money for areas that have not had their fair share in the past," he said.
Several Conservative MPs have been spotted going to meetings in Downing Street, including former Brexit minister Steve Baker, Iain Duncan Smith, Mrs May's close ally Damian Green and Nicky Morgan.
Ms Morgan, a former education secretary, said she was there to discuss a plan known as the "Malthouse Compromise".
Engineered by both Leavers and Remainers, the proposal includes extending the transition period for a year and protecting EU citizens' rights, instead of using the backstop.
Union officials have also been meeting with government officials in the Cabinet Office to discuss Mrs May's Brexit plan.
But a Trades Union Congress spokesman said the prime minister's deal came "nowhere close" to offering the safeguards desired for working people.

It cannot be said Britain will begin its exit from the EU with no destination in mind.
After today we have the clearest idea of the deal Theresa May wants: UK access to the European Single Market but no membership of it; a tariff-free customs union with the EU but freedom to sign trade deal with other countries; some sort of bridging arrangement between membership of the EU and life outside it to avoid "a disruptive cliff edge", to use Theresa May's phrase; a close security relationship with the EU.
Most strikingly, while the Prime Minister's speech tried to soothe friction between the UK and the EU by stressing the need for friendly mutual co-operation she had a blunt warning for the EU too. Britain will not sign a deal at any price.
"A punitive deal would be a calamitous act of self-harm", she told the audience of EU ambassadors gathered in the splendour of Lancaster House. But it is for the decision to take Britain out of the single market that historians will remember this speech.
The clues had been there for months. While claiming not to want a running commentary Theresa May has said many times Britain's break from the EU must result in control over EU migration and freedom from the jurisdiction of EU law. It was there in her speech to the Conservative Party conference in October.
Those political choices could only mean one outcome: Leaving the European Single Market. It is the most important economic decision Britain has taken for years.
It was at the same venue 28 years ago that Margaret Thatcher made a speech praising the embryonic single market.
"A single market without barriers - visible or invisible - giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of over 300 million of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people", the former prime minster said.
Thatcher pioneered its creation (though later criticised the social dimension of the internal market) and the main political parties have been committed to it ever since.
The 2015 Conservative manifesto contained the following: "We benefit from the Single Market.... We want to preserve the integrity of the Single Market....We want to expand the Single Market". Of course, it also contained the promise of an EU referendum. And the Brexit vote has trumped continued membership of the single market.
The government could have made a different choice. Norway is an example of a country outside the EU that is a member of the single market. However, it has to pay a contribution to the EU budget, accept the freedom of EU citizens to live and work in Norway, is subject to European Court of Justice oversight and has no formal say in EU decision making. For Number 10 that was a non-starter.
For a start, this speech was not a full blueprint for Brexit for the obvious reason that Number 10 does not want to spell out its negotiation strategy before talks with the EU begin.
Crucially, the final shape of Britain's post-Brexit relationship with the EU can only be known after it has been agreed by the remaining 27 member states and European Parliament. They too will approach the talks with demands, red lines and guiding principles.
Today Chancellor Angela Merkel told German businesses that conditions for access to the single market could not be "loosened" otherwise every EU country would try and "cherry pick" a new deal. The big question is how flexible Theresa May's starting principles become when negotiations begin.
And huge unknowns remain. What budget payments will the EU demand for single market access? Will EU workers have some freedom to work in the UK? Will the EU allow partial membership of the customs union?
Today the Prime Minister painted a picture of an orderly Brexit conducted in the spirit of mutual self-interest.
But divorce is rarely so smooth.

There is still time to block a no-deal Brexit, despite claims to the contrary, senior Tory rebel Dominic Grieve says.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, top No 10 advisor Dominic Cummings has told MPs even losing a no-confidence vote could not stop Boris Johnson taking the UK out of the EU on 31 October.
He reportedly said the PM could call an election for after the deadline, with Brexit taking place in the meantime.
But Mr Grieve told the BBC Mr Cummings was a "master of misinformation".
He said that if Mr Johnson lost a no-confidence vote, MPs would have 14 days to form an alternative government.
"[Mr Cummings] has a point, but he may also be missing the point," Mr Grieve - a former attorney general who has repeatedly called for a further referendum - told Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme.
"There are a number of things which the House of Commons can do, including bringing down the government [via a vote of no confidence] and setting up a new government in its place."
This arrangement - known as a government of national unity - would involve a cabinet made up of MPs from multiple parties.
However, Catherine Haddon, from the Institute for Government think tank, said that while Mr Grieve's suggestion was possible, it would rely on Mr Johnson resigning as PM after losing a no-confidence vote - something he is not legally bound to do.
"The problem there is it requires the sitting prime minister to resign, and because it is untested territory we don't know how that might work," she said.
"If you go back over history, certainly when governments have lost confidence that's been the presumption - but the other presumption has been that if they wanted to go to the people they could.
"He could say: 'No, I'm staying as prime minister and we're having a general election.'"
James Cleverly MP, chairman of the Conservative Party, told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme that the government was "not going to initiate a general election" before 31 October.
And Ms Haddon said that, even if Mr Johnson lost a vote of no confidence and did call a general election, he was "perfectly able, constitutionally" to schedule it for after the Brexit deadline.
There could be other ways for MPs to prevent no deal, Ms Haddon added, but she described them as "untested".
"We still don't know if there is something they could try involving an emergency debate," she said, "because the Speaker has previously implied that he thinks there's more scope there in terms of what Parliament can do, but again this is completely untested and falls on the Speaker reinterpreting previous parliamentary practice in a new way."
Like Mr Grieve, Labour's shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said he still believed the government's no-deal Brexit plans could be stopped, though he did not specify how.
"There will be opportunities for us when Parliament returns [from summer recess] in September to stop no-deal," he told Sky.
He added Labour would work "across the parties, because we know there are plenty of Tory MPs who want to block no deal".
Meanwhile, preparations for leaving the EU without a withdrawal deal are being ramped up, with Mr Johnson saying the UK must leave by the 31 October deadline.
The PM has said his preference is to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, remove the backstop and leave with a deal - but EU leaders have repeatedly stated the agreement is not open for renegotiation.

Ministers are trying to rally support for the PM's Brexit deal across the UK but a bid to find a compromise has been dismissed by the DUP and Brexiteers.
With Theresa May widely expected to lose Tuesday's Commons vote, No 10 has dismissed calls for it to be delayed.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said with two days of debate remaining, there was still time to win over MPs.
But a Tory backbench amendment aimed at easing concerns about the controversial "backstop" has met with criticism.
Downing Street has said the vote is still due to take place on Tuesday, despite dozens of Tories threatening to reject the deal, along with the DUP, whose support keeps Mrs May's government in power.
But a senior minister has told the BBC "the only political common sense is to delay" it.
The minister, who preferred not to be named, said: "We need to find a solution and we can't find one by Tuesday."
Matt Hancock, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington and Scottish Secretary David Mundell are among those trying to sell it to the public in visits across the UK.
Amid calls from some Tory and Labour MPs for the UK to pursue an even closer Norway-style relationship with the EU, Mr Lidington said it was wrong to assume there was a "magic alternative" waiting in the wings which retained the existing benefits of membership without the obligations.
"If it is not this deal which the rest of the EU says they are not willing to renegotiate, then either you crash out of the EU without any deal, without any transitional period or you revisit the referendum result of 2016 and you stay in the European Union," he said.
The withdrawal deal negotiated between the UK and EU has been endorsed by EU leaders but must also be backed by Parliament if it is to come into force.
Many MPs have expressed concerns about the backstop, aimed at preventing a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which will remain in the EU, if no trade deal is ready before the end of the post-Brexit transition period.
It would mean Northern Ireland staying aligned to some EU rules, which many MPs say is unacceptable. The UK would also not be able to leave the backstop without EU agreement.
Jeremy Corbyn told Euronews that in a Labour Brexit deal "there certainly wouldn't be a backstop from which you can't escape".
"We will have to come to an agreement on a customs union, a specific customs union with the European Union that does give us the opportunity to have a say in it all, but also guarantees that level of trade," the Labour leader said.
Downing Street has dismissed reports the vote could be delayed. And Mr Hancock told the BBC that "the best thing for the country" was for MPs to back Mrs May's deal.
"My view is we should continue the debate," he said. "We've had three days, there's two days more. I think we should make the argument, make the case and persuade people - that's what you have Parliamentary debate for."
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 live, Education Secretary Damian Hinds acknowledged the government had "a big job on" to win Tuesday's vote, but appealed to MPs to back the deal "in the national interest". And Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss said while the deal on offer was "not perfect" - it delivered on what people voted for.
The prime minister has suggested that MPs could be "given a role" in deciding whether to activate the backstop, and on Thursday night, a Tory backbench amendment was laid down intended to do that.
The amendment - which is understood to have government support - would also give the devolved administrations, particularly the Northern Ireland Assembly, although it is currently suspended, more say in the process.
It would also press the UK and EU to agree a future trade deal within a year of the implementation period ending.
Former Northern Ireland minister Hugo Swire tabled the amendment along with Bob Neill and Richard Graham.
Mr Swire told the BBC that many Tory MPs would like to see the backstop "disappear altogether or be time limited" but the European Commission had said it would not reopen negotiations on the withdrawal agreement, so the amendment was "about the nearest we feel we can probe".
He said it was aimed at "people like me, who would like to be able to support this deal but find they are unable to".
But Conservative Brexiteer Steve Baker dismissed the amendment: "Giving Parliament the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea is desperate and will persuade very few."
And fellow backbencher Peter Bone told the BBC the amendment was "absolutely meaningless".
DUP leader Arlene Foster tweeted: "Domestic legislative tinkering won't cut it. The legally binding international withdrawal treaty would remain fundamentally flawed, as evidenced by the attorney general's legal advice."
Meanwhile, former cabinet minister Justine Greening has told the BBC's Political Thinking podcast that a Conservative Party "that seems consumed by Brexit" would lose the support of "Middle England".
"One of the problems for the Conservative Party is it's now 31 years since we last won a landslide and we need to realise as a party if things don't change, that'll be our last landslide," she said.

There's been something completely surreal about watching Theresa May this week - hobnobbing with world leaders, discussing future trade arrangements and climate change, confronting the Saudi Crown Prince over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
But her efforts on all of those important discussions may prove entirely irrelevant if, in the next nine days, she can't persuade enough of her colleagues at home to come on board.
Because support for the prime minister's Brexit compromise seems to be shrinking, rather than growing.
If Theresa May acknowledges it in private, she certainly won't touch that notion in public.
The prime minister did not even mention the latest minister to quit by name, preferring, perhaps rather nervously, again to defend the agreement that she has reached with the European Union.
She admitted the next fraught week is vital and vowed to keep making the case.
Mrs May will arrive back in the UK at lunchtime on Sunday, facing perhaps the most important week of her career.
And even if she won't countenance conversations about a plan B, her colleagues certainly are.
Cabinet ministers are talking amongst themselves about how to survive if the vote falls.
One senior cabinet minister told me, when the moment comes the prime minister will have to be pragmatic. But for now, she gets "strength from absorbing humiliation".
Number 10's grip is shaky, very shaky - with one senior Tory telling me it almost seems as if "there is no government at all".
But asked if this might be her last overseas trip, the prime minister insisted "there's a lot more for me to do".
A senior member of the government told me not only would she not have discussions about losing the vote - only about how to win it -  but that those who believed that Theresa May would quit if her deal fell were misreading her.
They said that she would "not go until she was forced to go" and, contrary to some of the speculation in Westminster, even a heavy defeat for her plan would not automatically see her depart.
Of course, many of her critics - and the opposition parties - would beg to differ.
Traditionally it's impossible to see how a prime minister of a minority government would be able to survive a defeat of their main policy. But one Number 10 insider commented: "Stranger things have happened - most of them, in the last year."
But while there are conversations, there seems to be no fixed plan.
There is no "active conspiring" about what to do if the vote falls.
But I'm told, if the vote is lost by less than 50, there have been informal discussions about seeking some kind of additional clarifications from the EU then holding another vote relatively soon.
If the defeat were to be more significant than that, which seems feasible, then cabinet might take more time to regroup and work out their next moves.
As has been widely reported, there are big differences in cabinet over what to do next.
And of course, officially, no one in government would reveal any of their planning.
But don't be in any doubt about how important the next week is - for Theresa May, for Westminster, and of course, most importantly of all, for the public.

Parliament must vote on whether the government can start the Brexit process, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The judgement means Theresa May cannot begin talks with the EU until MPs and peers give their backing - although this is expected to happen in time for the government's 31 March deadline.
But the court ruled the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies did not need a say.
Brexit Secretary David Davis promised a parliamentary bill "within days".
Sources have told the BBC the bill - to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and get formal exit negotiations with the EU under way - will be introduced this Thursday, with an expectation that it could pass through the House of Commons in a fortnight.
During the Supreme Court hearing, campaigners argued that denying the UK Parliament a vote was undemocratic and a breach of long-standing constitutional principles.
They said triggering Article 50 would mean overturning existing UK law, so MPs and peers should decide.
But the government argued that, under the Royal Prerogative (powers handed to ministers by the Crown), it could make this move without the need to consult Parliament.
And it said that MPs had voted overwhelmingly to put the issue in the hands of the British people when they backed the calling of last June's referendum in which UK voters backed Brexit by 51.9% to 48.1%.
Reading out the judgement, Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger said: "By a majority of eight to three, the Supreme Court today rules that the government cannot trigger Article 50 without an act of Parliament authorising it to do so."
He added: "Withdrawal effects a fundamental change by cutting off the source of EU law, as well as changing legal rights.
"The UK's constitutional arrangements require such changes to be clearly authorised by Parliament."
The court also rejected, unanimously, arguments that the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly should get to vote on Article 50 before it is triggered.
Lord Neuberger said: "Relations with the EU are a matter for the UK government."
Outlining plans to bring in a "straightforward" parliamentary bill on Article 50, Mr Davis told MPs he was "determined" Brexit would go ahead as voted for in last June's EU membership referendum.
He added: "It's not about whether the UK should leave the European Union. That decision has already been made by people in the United Kingdom."
"There can be no turning back," he said. "The point of no return was passed on 23 June last year."
Outside the Supreme Court, Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the government was "disappointed" but would "comply" and do "all that is necessary" to implement the court's judgement.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The British people voted to leave the EU, and the government will deliver on their verdict - triggering Article 50, as planned, by the end of March. Today's ruling does nothing to change that."
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Leave campaigner, tweeted:  "Supreme Court has spoken. Now Parliament must deliver will of the people - we will trigger A50 by end of March. Forward we go!"
Investment manager Gina Miller, one of the campaigners who brought the case against the government, said Brexit was "the most divisive issue of a generation", but added that her victory was "not about politics, but process".
"I sincerely hope that going forward that people who stand in positions of power and profile are much quicker in condemning those who cross the lines of common decency and mutual respect," she also said.
Her co-campaigner, hairdresser Deir Tozetti Dos Santos, said: "The court has decided that the rights attaching to our membership of the European Union were given by Parliament and can only be taken away by Parliament.
"This is a victory for democracy and the rule of law. We should all welcome it."
"The sighs of relief are real in Whitehall this morning for two reasons.
"The justices held back from insisting that the devolved administrations would have a vote or a say on the process. That was, as described by a member of Team May, the 'nightmare scenario'.
"And second, the Supreme Court also held back from telling the government explicitly what it has to do next. The judgement is clear that it was not for the courts but for politicians to decide how to proceed next.
"That means, possibly as early as tomorrow, ministers will put forward what is expected to be an extremely short piece of legislation in the hope of getting MPs to approve it, perhaps within a fortnight."  Read Laura's blog in full.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "Labour respects the result of the referendum and the will of the British people and will not frustrate the process for invoking Article 50."
But he added that his party would "seek to amend the Article 50 Bill to prevent the Conservatives using Brexit to turn Britain into a bargain basement tax haven off the coast of Europe".
However, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall warned MPs and peers not to hamper the passage of the legislation.
"The will of the people will be heard, and woe betide those politicians or parties that attempt to block, delay, or in any other way subvert that will," he said.
The Scottish National Party said it would put forward 50 "serious and substantive" amendments to the government's parliamentary bill for triggering Article 50.
Among them, it wants Mrs May to set out her negotiating aims in an official document known as a white paper and to consult the Scottish government and other devolved administrations through the UK-wide joint ministerial committee.
Several Conservative MPs, including former ministers Alistair Burt, Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry, also want a white paper, but former party leader Iain Duncan Smith predicted any bill would be "very tight", offering little scope for amendments.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said his MPs and peers would vote against Article 50 unless there was guarantee of the public having a vote on the final deal reached between the UK and EU.
"This momentous judgement is about one thing alone: the rule of law and how the UK, as a champion of that steady, calm form of government, gets on with the business of leaving the EU.
"But what it also makes clear is that membership of the EU is messy in constitutional terms - so only Parliament has the right to pull us out. It can't be done by the stroke of a minister's pen.
"On the devolution side, the government did however win hands down. The court unanimously ruled that the devolved bodies have no real say in leaving the EU: constitutional power - the means to change the fabric of the United Kingdom, rests with the UK Parliament alone."
The Supreme Court's judgement backs that made by the High Court last year, against which the government appealed.
Those who rejected the government's argument were: Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Mance, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson, Lord Sumption and Lord Hodge
Those who decided in favour of it were: Lord Carnwath, Lord Hughes and Lord Reed.
During the four-day Supreme Court hearing in December, the justices heard arguments that Northern Ireland had a unique place in the UK constitution because of the nature of the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the devolved bodies that flowed from it.
Counsel argued that Northern Ireland's constitution could not be changed without a vote by its people.
But in its judgement, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that not only did the devolved bodies have no role in deciding the future of the UK as a whole in the EU, Northern Ireland had no special status beyond this either.
They ruled that, while Northern Ireland's people did indeed have a fundamental constitutional say on being part of the UK, that did not extend to being part of the EU.

Reports of deadlock over Brexit negotiations may have been exaggerated, European Council President Donald Tusk has said after a Brussels summit.
Progress was "not sufficient" to begin trade talks with the UK now but that "doesn't mean there is no progress at all", he said.
EU leaders will discuss the issue internally, paving the way for talks with the UK, possibly in December.
Theresa May said there was "some way to go" but she was "optimistic".
Speaking at the end of a two-day summit, Mr Tusk told reporters: "My impression is that the reports of the deadlock between the EU and the UK have been exaggerated."
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, described the talks as deadlocked earlier this month.
Mr Tusk said he was not at odds with Mr Barnier, but his own role was to be a "positive motivator for the next five or six weeks".
He said he felt there was "goodwill" on both sides "and this is why I, maybe, in my rhetoric, I'm, maybe, a little bit more optimistic than Michel Barnier, but we are also in a different role".
The so-called divorce bill remains a major sticking point in talks with the EU.
French President Emmanuel Macron said there was still much work to be done on the financial commitment before trade talks can begin, adding: "We are not halfway there."
Theresa May declined to say in a press conference after the summit what the UK would be prepared to pay, saying the "final settlement" would come as part of a "final agreement" with the EU.
The UK prime minister did not name any figures but refused to deny that she had told other EU leaders the UK could pay many more billions of pounds than the £20bn she had indicated in her Florence speech last month.
"I have said that ... we will honour the commitments that we have made during our membership," she said. But those commitments were being analysed "line by line" she said, adding: "British taxpayer wouldn't expect its government to do anything else."
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
There are whispers that Theresa May has privately reassured the other leaders that she is willing to put a lot more than the implicit 20 billion euros (£17.8bn) on the table as we leave.
Number 10 doesn't deny this, Mrs May didn't deny it when we asked her in the press conference today, nor did she reject the idea that the bill could be as high as 60 billion euros.
If she has actually given those private reassurances though, there's not much evidence the other EU leaders believe her or think it's enough.
But if she is to make that case more forcefully she has big political problems at home.
Read Laura's blog
She said the two sides were within "touching distance" of a deal on other issues - particularly on citizens' rights.
"I am ambitious and positive for Britain's future and for these negotiations but I know we still have some way to go," she said.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, following last year's referendum result.
It had hoped to move onto phase two of negotiations - covering future trade arrangements - after this week's summit.
But EU leaders took just 90 seconds to officially conclude that not enough progress has been made on the issues of citizens' rights, the UK's financial obligation and the border in Northern Ireland, but "internal preparations" would begin for phase two.
The prime minister made a personal appeal to her 27 EU counterparts at a working dinner on Thursday night, telling them that "we must work together to get to an outcome that we can stand behind and defend to our people".
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said all EU leaders knew Mrs May was in a politically difficult situation and did not want her to go home empty-handed, so had promised they would start talking about trade and transition deals among themselves, as early as Monday.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there were "encouraging" signs of progress in Brexit negotiations and the process was progressing "step by step".
And European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he hoped it would be possible to reach a "fair deal" with Britain.
"Our working assumption is not the 'no-deal' scenario. I hate the 'no-deal' scenario. I don't know what that means," he said.
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What is Theresa May really willing to do if her deal falls in Parliament?
Increasing numbers of EU leaders and her own government ministers believe that she should acknowledge that she might have to delay the UK's departure from the EU if her agreement is rejected by MPs again next month.
The president of the EU Council, Donald Tusk, says it's "rational" to consider.
Extending the process was discussed by Theresa May and Angela Merkel over breakfast this morning - but not with any conclusion.
But the prime minister, herself, will do almost anything to avoid answering the question.
She told me: "I am clear what I am working for is to ensure that we get a deal negotiated with the European Union that addresses the concerns of Parliament, such that Parliament votes for that deal and we are able to leave with a deal."
Before too long, though, Parliament may make her respond.
Even if Theresa May offers worried former Remainers a concession this week, risking the wrath of Brexiteers, a delay would not necessarily be easily accepted by the European Union.
Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, told me the UK would have to ask for an extension and explain what it's for - the EU could not, he warned, just spend another couple of months going round in circles.
Downing Street privately believes they are making genuine progress towards an extra assurance on the controversial Irish backstop, that would make the deal more palatable to Tory backbenchers - hoping that could mean they never have to make the choice of delay, or no deal.
But with time so short now - even if the deal is approved by MPs next month - another few weeks may still be needed to pass all the new laws that are required.

Downing Street is playing down reports of an imminent Brexit deal with the EU, saying talks are still ongoing.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is under pressure to get a fresh agreement by Thursday's EU summit, but his spokesman said there was "more work still to do".
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier had said the two sides must agree the details by the end of Tuesday.
But the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said it was not clear whether a text could be signed off by then.
She said Mr Barnier was due to brief EU ambassadors at 1300 BST on Wednesday, after a possible European Commissioners meeting, meaning a new deal could get the "green light" from Brussels in the afternoon.
The Guardian is reporting that a draft treaty could be published on Wednesday morning, claiming the UK has made further concessions over the issue of customs and the Irish border.
The prime minister's official spokesman said: "Talks remain constructive but there is more work still to do."
Meanwhile, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said talks were "moving in the right direction" but gaps between the sides remained, and it was still unclear whether a deal would be ready in time for the Brussels summit.
His deputy, Tánaiste Simon Coveney, said earlier that "big steps" were needed on Tuesday "to build on progress that has been slow" because there would be no haggling over the details of the text once the summit began.
The two-day EU summit is crucial because, under legislation passed last month - the Benn Act - the PM must get a new deal approved by MPs by Saturday if he is to avoid asking for a delay.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 31 October and Boris Johnson says that deadline must be honoured.
He is trying to hold together a coalition of Conservative Brexiteers and Democratic Unionists in support of his proposed alternative to the Irish backstop - the arrangement designed to keep an open border in Ireland.
The DUP leader, Arlene Foster, had more than an hour of talks in Downing Street on Monday night and met the PM again on Tuesday evening for a further 90 minutes.
Following that meeting, the DUP released a statement saying it would not give "a detailed commentary" but added "it would be fair to indicate gaps remain and further work is required".
Earlier, Mrs Foster had told the BBC her party would "stick with our principles" that Northern Ireland "must remain" within the UK's customs union.
She dismissed as "speculation" claims the new Brexit deal included a possible customs border in the Irish Sea - meaning Northern Ireland would be treated differently from the rest of the UK - saying the DUP could never accept that.
Giving the Northern Ireland Assembly a regular vote on post-Brexit customs arrangements - which is reported to have been ditched in response to Ireland's objections - was also important to the DUP, Mrs Foster said.
She said it was "right to give space and time" to negotiators to try to get a deal, but "everyone knows our position".
Earlier on Tuesday, members of the pro-Brexit European Research Group attended a meeting at No 10, with chairman Steve Baker saying afterwards he was "optimistic" that "a tolerable deal" could be reached.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the widely-held view there was that the UK was unlikely to be leaving on 31 October, and the question was whether an extension could be short in order to iron out some small issues, or had to be much longer to deal with bigger problems.
After updating EU ministers on Tuesday morning, Mr Barnier signalled that he expected the UK to share the legal text of any proposed changes to the withdrawal agreement within hours.
He said there was a "narrow path" to be trod between the EU's objective of protecting the single market and Mr Johnson's goal of keeping Northern Ireland in the UK's customs territory.
While there had been progress, Mr Barnier said there was still a big disagreement about the inclusion of so-called "level playing field" provisions in the political declaration sketching out the two sides' future trade relationship.
These provisions would limit the UK's ability to diverge from the EU across a whole range of areas, including competition policy, employment rights, environmental standards and state aid.
The UK says loosening these conditions is vital if it is to have an independent trade policy, but the EU says the UK cannot have privileged access to the single market market without following its rules as this would give it an unfair advantage.
Asked whether it recognised talk of an EU deadline later on Tuesday, No 10 said Mr Johnson was "aware of the time restraints" and the UK was working hard to secure a deal "as soon as possible".
Regardless of what happens in Brussels, a showdown is anticipated in an emergency sitting of Parliament on Saturday - the first in 37 years, if it goes ahead.
MPs will be able to back or reject any deal presented to them and there will be discussions on what to do next.
Labour has threatened court action to force the PM to obey the Benn Act, amid speculation the PM could seek to sidestep it somehow.
Speaking in Parliament, Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg did not confirm whether the Saturday sitting would definitely go ahead, adding that it would depend on events in Brussels.
Thursday, 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday, 19 October - Special sitting of Parliament expected - and the date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by MPs and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday, 31 October - Date by which the UK is currently due to leave the EU.

Tory MPs have met the government to discuss alternative arrangements to the proposed Irish border "backstop", as three days of talks begin.
The Alternative Arrangements Working Group, with Leave and Remain MPs, met for the first time after the Commons voted to find another way of avoiding the return of Irish border checks.
A government spokesman said the talks had been "detailed and constructive".
But EU leaders have continued to rule out making changes to the backstop.
The Irish PM Leo Varadkar told RTE radio the UK was reviewing ideas that had "already been rejected", and it was "very frustrating" that the UK government was "going back to the idea of technology".
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU would listen to proposals to solve the Irish border "riddle", although they needed to hear how the UK wanted to do it.
The backstop is an insurance policy designed to avoid a hard border "under all circumstances" between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after Brexit.
Number 10 said the working group of Conservative MPs was set up following "significant support" for the so-called "Malthouse Compromise" - named after housing minister Kit Malthouse who encouraged talks between different groups of MPs.
Engineered by both Leavers and Remainers, the proposal includes extending the transition period for a year until the end of 2021 and protecting EU citizens' rights, instead of using the backstop.
Members of the working group include Conservative MPs Steve Baker, Marcus Fysh, Owen Paterson, Damian Green and Nicky Morgan.
The group will hold regular meetings with Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, as well as senior government officials from HMRC, Cabinet Office Europe Unit and Number 10.
Mr Fysh said the group had spoken to the EU and it was "very open" to the proposals, adding that they were not based on new technology.
A Department for Exiting the European Union spokesman said the group had explored the proposal "in detail" on the first day of talks.
The BBC's political correspondent Chris Mason said the government's willingness to provide civil service support to this group of Conservative MPs was an indication of how seriously Downing Street was treating their idea.
The backstop insurance policy would kick in if, after almost two years after Brexit, the two sides had not reached a trade agreement with one another that avoided the need for physical border checks.
It would keep the UK in a "single customs territory" with the EU and leave Northern Ireland effectively in the EU's single market for goods.
Critics fear the UK could be "trapped" in this arrangement for years, leaving it unable to strike its own trade deals on goods with the rest of the world.
Unionists also fear it would drive a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. But by changing the backstop, the PM could win support.
Ex-Northern Ireland first minister Lord Trimble has said he is planning to take the government to court over the Brexit deal, claiming the Northern Ireland protocol - which includes the backstop - breaches the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Mrs May will visit Northern Ireland on Tuesday to deliver a speech on Brexit and meet business leaders.
Alternatives to the backstop that the prime minister has said she wants to discuss with EU leaders include:
Mr Javid told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that an alternative arrangement to the Irish backstop "can be done" using "existing technology".
He said the attorney general was "leading on another strand of work" - looking at whether a "hard time limit or proper exit mechanism" was possible.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on Friday 29 March, when the two-year time limit on withdrawal negotiations enforced by the Article 50 process expires.
Theresa May has said she is "determined" to deliver Brexit on time, but a number of cabinet ministers have indicated they would be willing to agree to a short extension to finalise legislation for Brexit.
However, a plan to delay Brexit for up to nine months to prevent a no deal - put forward by Labour MP Yvette Cooper - was voted down by Parliament.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Kier Starmer said he could not see Mrs May negotiating an alternative to the backstop at this late stage, saying the prime minister had effectively "run down the clock".
Meanwhile, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said contingency plans for Britain's departure from the EU with no deal were "genuinely astonishing", in a speech in the US.
She warned of food shortages and stockpiling of medicine amid a "real and growing risk" of a no deal scenario.
Numerous politicians have shut down the idea of looking at the backstop again, saying there was no desire to re-open negotiations on the withdrawal agreement in Brussels.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the EU was not looking for a substitute solution, because they say they've already investigated every other option that exists and none has the same effect as the backstop.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said there was "full agreement" that the withdrawal agreement "cannot be reopened".
Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney said the withdrawal agreement rejected by MPs already allowed the EU and UK to work on alternative arrangements for the backstop.
He added: "What Ireland is being asked to do by some in Westminster is to essentially do away with an agreed solution between the UK government and EU negotiators and to replace it with wishful thinking and I think that's a very unreasonable request to ask the Irish government to be flexible on."
Speaking during a trip to Japan, German Chancellor Mrs Merkel said: "To solve this riddle, you have to be creative and you have to listen to one another.
"We can have those conversations... But we must hear from Great Britain how they want to do it."
Labour's Hilary Benn met the Secretary General of the European Commission, Martin Selmayr, in Brussels.
Speaking after Monday's meeting, Mr Benn - who chairs the Brexit select committee - said the EU would be prepared to consider an additional legal protocol to the withdrawal agreement if they were convinced it would help a deal get through Parliament.
But Mr Selmayr later tweeted that when asked if such an assurance would help, the response from MPs was "inconclusive".
He added: "The meeting confirmed that the EU did well to start its no deal preparations in December 2017."
Leave supporter and Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns - who was also at the meeting - tweeted afterwards that Mr Selmayr revealed the EU had not been asked to remove the backstop or re-open negotiations by the British government.
By Katya Adler, BBC Europe editor
So. how open does the EU seem almost a week on from parliament narrowly voting in favour of an amendment to find alternatives to the backstop guarantee to keep the Irish border open after Brexit?
After all, with every passing day as we've heard, again and again and again, the clock is ticking towards an increased chance of a no-deal Brexit with all the costs and chaos that could involve.
Well, if I were to speak in weather forecast terms, I might describe current EU attitudes as frosty with a chance of ice.
If Theresa May comes to Brussels later this week, she will be received politely and listened to attentively.
But if her EU ask remains centred around getting a time limit to, or allowing the UK a unilateral get-out mechanism from, the Irish border backstop or if she pushes again for pure technology as a means of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, then the likelihood of her being sent home empty-handed - or as good as - is very high indeed.

As the clock strikes 23:00 GMT on Friday, 31 January, the 73 MEPs who represent Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the European Parliament will bid farewell to their roles.
For some of them, there is only delight and relief as the UK approaches Brexit. For others, there have been tears and goodbye hugs.
"How I am feeling is how somebody feels when you have a redundancy and a bereavement at the same time," says Green MEP Molly Scott Cato, who has represented south-west England since 2014.
It's been a tearful goodbye and a "grim, grim week", she says, during a break from packing up her Strasbourg office.
But, in contrast, Brexit could not have come soon enough for Jake Pugh.
"We are delighted," says the Brexit Party MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber. "We were hired to be fired."
He is one of 29 Brexit Party MEPs who were elected in last May's European elections - a vote many considered as confirmation of the UK's desire to leave the EU.
The poll had also brought hope, however, for pro-EU Liberal Democrat MEPs who also enjoyed a successful campaign, winning 16 seats. They entered the parliament wearing yellow "stop Brexit" t-shirts.
Nine months on there remains a clear divide over Brexit among the MEPs, but the politicians appear united about a feeling of pride at what they have achieved.
"There has been so much warmth and comradeship," says Labour's Seb Dance of his final week in Strasbourg. "Most people are pretty sad about the whole thing."
The Labour MEP for London had previously campaigned for another vote on the UK's membership of the EU.
Speaking to the BBC as he dashes between trains in Paris, he says he is proud of the things that "never got the headlines" during his six years in the role.
He highlights his involvement in the European Parliament's special inquiry committee into the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Ms Scott Cato says she is proud of her work on the issue of sustainable finance and new EU restrictions on the use of antibiotics in farms.
The European Parliament is a "real parliament", she says, expressing her frustration with the UK's first-past-the-post system - which means that parties like hers struggle to get people elected in Westminster.
"We don't get the parliamentary representation we should have."
Green Party colleague Magid Magid says there is a sense of sadness, but he feels "truly grateful and humble for this amazing opportunity".
Mr Pugh says he "fully recognises there are MEPs with different political outlooks who are sad to be leaving" but, he says, the EU "has some real issues".
"However cynical I was about the EU before I got here, it is way worse than I thought," he says.
The Eurozone is a "disaster", he says, and MEPs in Brussels and Strasbourg "are very remote from their electorate".
Brexit is "really good news for the younger generation", he says, adding that he has pursued Brexit for them, so young people can enjoy the same freedom he had growing up.
It's clear that view is shared among his colleagues, a number of whom shared their delight on Twitter at leaving the parliament building in Strasbourg for the final time.
Belinda de Lucy says leaving no more taxpayers' money will be wasted "on this ridiculous vanity project", while Ben Habib says he will not give the parliament "a second thought" after leaving.
"I'm actually just relieved that a democratic mandate's been realised," Brexit Party MEP Claire Fox says.
"I won't miss being in this institution... but of course I have been privileged and enjoyed being here for this historic moment."
And John Longworth, the former Brexit Party MEP turned Conservative, says that his time in the European Parliament has "reinforced" his view that the "whole set-up is bizarre, bureaucratic and wasteful".
They say that they are proud at having achieved what they set out to do - Brexit.
But even arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage - who has been an MEP for south-east England since 1999 - called his time in European Parliament "an amazing journey".
He told his LBC radio show he will miss the "drama" and being "shouted at by (European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator) Guy Verhofstadt" and "mocked by hundreds many times over".
The UK's newly vacated parliament seats will be spread out among the EU's 27 remaining countries - Spain and France will gain five more seats in a process that takes into account the population of a country.
From Friday, the UK MEPs will no longer have to regularly do the four and a half hour journey from London to Strasbourg, via Paris, or the two-hour trip to Brussels.
But many of the pro-EU MEPs are hoping that they can keep the close ties formed with the bloc.
"We have built up relationships with colleagues, lots of them were in tears - not just Brits," Labour's Richard Corbett says.
It has been a sad and emotional time, he adds. But this is also tinged with "a lot of anger and frustration".
Wednesday will be the final time that the UK's MEPs sit in Brussels - when the Parliament is expected to rubber-stamp Boris Johnson's withdrawal deal taking the UK out of the EU.
As a party is held in London's Parliament Square to celebrate Brexit on Friday, a vigil is expected to be held in Brussels.
Some MEPs will then move on to other jobs - the Brexit Party's Jake Pugh says he will return to his business. Others are not sure yet what they will do, but are keen to maintain European relationships.
Labour's Seb Dance says he has a "few ideas" but "nothing 100%", adding "I'm just really proud to have been an MEP".

The post-Brexit customs system favoured by Boris Johnson and other leading Brexiteers could cost businesses up to £20bn a year, officials have suggested.
The chief executive of HM Revenue and Customs told MPs firms would have to pay £32.50 for each customs declaration under the so-called "max fac" solution.
Jon Thompson said any system may take between three and five years to bed in.
No 10 said the £20bn figure was "speculation" but "issues" remained with both options being considered.
The figure is higher than the £13bn UK contribution to the EU in 2016.
Leading Tory Brexiteer John Redwood said he did not accept what he described as the HMRC's "general figures" but told the BBC that "if it is going to cost this much it is the wrong system".
The UK is leaving the EU in March 2019, which is currently expected to be followed by a 21 month transition phase before the longer term post-Brexit system kicks in.
Ministers are currently considering two options to replace the existing customs union with the EU, which involves minimal checks, and which the government is committed to leaving.
Brexiteers are sceptical about what is believed to be Theresa May's preferred option of a "customs partnership", under which the UK would collect tariffs set by the EU customs union on goods coming into the country.
Their proposed alternative "maximum facilitation" proposal would rely on technology and advance verification to minimise, rather than remove, customs checks.
The EU has expressed doubts about whether either option would work.
During questioning by the Treasury Select Committee, Mr Thompson said that if ministers opted for the "max fac" solution this could cost UK and European businesses between £17bn and £20bn each year, reflecting the cost of customs declarations and complying with rules of origin requirements.
At the moment, UK firms exporting to other EU countries or importing goods from the continent are not routinely required to complete goods declaration forms.
Those doing business outside the EU must provide information about the type and value of goods, their destination and their tariff classification so that the right amount of VAT, duty or excise is paid.
Mr Thompson said there were about 200 million exports to the EU each year that could require customs declarations  - and a similar number of imports.
Citing research by the University of Nottingham business school and by KPMG, he said the likely cost of individual declarations was between £20 and £55 - and while an average could not be authoritatively calculated, ministers had been advised a figure of £32.50 was plausible.
Payments on either side of the border could cost £13bn a year in total while it was "reasonable" to assume any rules of origin requirements demanded by the EU could add "several billion pounds".
"You need to think about the highly streamlined customs arrangement costing businesses somewhere in the late teens of billions of pounds, somewhere between £17bn and £20bn," he said.
"And the primary driver here is the fact that there are customs declarations."
In contrast, he said the customs partnership option - which has been described as "crazy" by Boris Johnson and "flawed" by Michael Gove - would cost business a maximum of £3.4bn a year - depending on how much firms chose to claim back in differential tariffs.
It would, he said, take between three to five years to fully implement any new system after Brexit.
While a "functioning border" was possible by the end of the transition period it would not be, in his opinion, be "fully optimal". But he said no new customs infrastructure would be needed in Northern Ireland.
Mr Thompson declined to answer when it was suggested it would be easier if the UK just remained in the customs union - a solution favoured by business but rejected by ministers.
Former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood said the starting point for any new customs system should be existing arrangements for importing goods from outside the EU.
"We have a perfectly good functioning trade system with the rest of the world at the moment," he said. "It does not cost anything like these figures."
The UK, he said, already had a VAT, excise and currency border with the EU based on pre-registration and electronic declarations which, if necessary, could be extended.
"None of these happen physically at the border any more with a man or a woman in a kiosk having to work it out with the lorry waiting.
"It is all done electronically away from the border with electronic manifests and computer registration... If we have to do customs dues as well it is not a greater increase in the complexity."

There is "no way" the Democratic Unionist Party will back Theresa May's Brexit deal, a leading figure has said.
Sammy Wilson told the BBC he was "more alarmed" than ever about what the deal would mean for Northern Ireland.
The DUP, which props up Theresa May's government, has held talks with the PM in recent days as she tries to persuade MPs to back the deal later this month.
The PM is seeking further legal assurances from the EU but it has said negotiations will not be re-opened.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
MPs will decide whether to accept or reject the withdrawal terms negotiated by Mrs May, as well as the framework of future relations, in a vote expected on 15 January.
The vote was due to be held in December but Mrs May postponed it after it became clear she would be heavily defeated.
In the three weeks since then, she has been appealing to EU leaders to do more to allay MPs' concerns over parts of the agreement, particularly the proposed Irish backstop.
This arrangement would see the UK remain closely aligned to EU rules if the two sides' future relationship is not settled by the end of 2020, when the proposed transition period will end, or if another way is not found of preventing physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Mrs May, who had a "friendly phone call" with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Friday, insists it is a contingency plan that all sides agree should not be needed.
But the DUP are adamantly opposed, saying it will create new barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and could end up as the default template for future relations.
Mr Wilson, the DUP's Brexit spokesman, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that little had changed since mid-December and his party believed the backstop was a "con trick" that was being imposed on the UK.
Asked if there was any way the party could support the PM's deal, he replied "no there is not".
"It is not just because of the regulations which Northern Ireland would be subject to with the backstop, but also the fact we would have to treat the rest of the UK as a third country and we would not participate in any trade deals which the UK may enter into the future".
On Thursday, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said the border issue was the only "red line" his country has had in the Brexit negotiations and that would not change.
While he and other EU leaders were prepared to offer assurances and clarifications to help Mrs May get the agreement through Parliament, he said it has "to be a proposal that we can accept".
"It can't be a proposal that contradicts what is already in the withdrawal agreement," he said. "It can't be something that renders the backstop inoperable, for example."
The DUP have said talk of the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland is "nonsense propaganda", since neither London nor Dublin wants it or is willing to construct the infrastructure.
The BBC understands that up to 40 Conservative MPs are likely to vote against the Brexit agreement even if Mrs May secures further concessions on the backstop.
This would mean almost certain defeat for Mrs May, since Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP have all vowed to vote against the deal.
Many Tory members of the European Research Group remain opposed to the UK handing over £39bn, as part of the proposed financial settlement, in return for what they say are vague promises over future trading terms and would prefer the UK to leave without a deal.
Meanwhile, preparations for a possible no-deal exit are being stepped up in a number of areas.
A plan to keep traffic moving around Kent and to minimise disruption and delays at Channel ports is to be tested in the coming days.
More than 100 HGVs will be parked at the disused Manston airport near Ramsgate and then driven the 20 miles down the A256 to the Port of Dover.
The Department for Transport said the manoeuvres, part of Operation Brock, were being carried out so that if they "need to be implemented, the system is fully functional".
And a new government website advising the public and business on how to prepare will be launched on Tuesday.
The Department for Exiting the European Union said the site, which will be available through the gov.uk portal, will contain "some new information".
There will be sections devoted to European nationals living in the UK and British expats living on the Continent.
A spokesman said there would be "advice" on what people need to do in the event of the UK leaving without a deal. The website will also cover other scenarios, including if the UK leaves on the basis of Mrs May's agreement.
The BBC's political correspondent Iain Watson
When Theresa May pulled the "meaningful vote" on Brexit last month, the day before MPs were about to pass their verdict on her deal, Downing Street hoped two things would happen.
First, that the EU would offer some form of legal guarantee that the Northern Irish backstop - the arrangements for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland - would be temporary.
This, in turn, would bring the DUP on board - and unlock further support from previously hostile Conservative backbenchers.
Second, that some sceptical MPs, once away from the febrile atmosphere at Westminster, would quietly reflect over Christmas that the deal wasn't as bad as all that, as it at least guarantees that the UK will leave the EU at the end of March.
So perhaps any rebellion would diminish, if not evaporate.
But neither hope has - yet - been realised, with the vote now less than two weeks away.

As the UK marks one year until Brexit, Brussels negotiators are indulging in a bit of muttering under their breath .
They consider the 12-months-to-go focus misleading for two main reasons:
As for a new EU-UK trade deal and other aspects of the future relationship, estimates as to how long that will all take to finalise vary from months to years.
Why can't it be all done and dusted by Brexit day on 29 March 2019?
Well, under EU law, Brussels can't finalise a new relationship with the UK until it is legally an "outsider" having formally left the club.
So, if all goes according to the EU-UK plan, by March next year they will have a completed withdrawal agreement under their belt, covering the transition period and the so-called divorce issues (the financial settlement to be paid by the UK; rights for EU citizens living in the UK and UK citizens in the EU after Brexit; and a concrete plan to avoid the re-introduction of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic).
This agreement will be a legal text, most of which has already been signed off by both sides.
The key sticking points that remain (and they're not small ones) are the Irish border and governance of the agreement - i.e. the role of the European Court of Justice.
The EU and the UK say they are committed to resolving outstanding problems.
Both sides really want a deal. Political, as well as economic and security, stakes are high.
In addition to the withdrawal agreement, the EU and UK are also working on what's being called a "political declaration" to outline the direction of their future relationship. As a declaration, rather than legal text, EU law does allow this to be negotiated ahead of Brexit day.
Just how much detail goes into the declaration is being debated at the moment between EU member countries.
For Theresa May, performing a delicate balancing act to try and keep her Brexit-divided cabinet and country together, the less detail the better.
It is at this stage of negotiations (as I've mentioned in this blog before) that EU unity will begin to fray as the national interests of different member states come to the fore.
Expect disagreements, though not deep rifts - and watch the EU do its best to keep any infighting behind closed doors as Denmark prioritises fishing rights, Luxembourg focuses on financial services, Spain, Slovakia and Czech Republic push for the freedom of their citizens to come and work in the UK while Poland advocates a close EU-UK security relationship post-Brexit to help bolster the country against its volatile neighbour, Russia.
Speaking to the Polish prime minister recently about Brexit, I was struck by how often he used the word "compromise" - not often heard in Brussels when it comes to negotiations.
A stark contrast to a conversation I had with France's economy minister when I sat down with him.
He said he wanted a fair Brexit but also insisted the EU had no intention of bending its rules to accommodate the UK.
"We have to protect ourselves," he told me.
Big EU powers France and Germany are convinced that they gain more by protecting the EU and its single market for members than they risk losing in establishing weaker trade relations with the UK after Brexit.
Heading into this one-year-to go countdown until Brexit, EU countries are feeling confident.
The mood music with UK negotiators has very much improved and besides, the EU believes it holds the best cards.

Did you watch Theresa May try to make the best of her Swedish photo opportunities yesterday? Or listen to David Davis as he urged the EU side to blink first, rather than the UK side?
They both know that time is short to guarantee the UK gets what it wants and pushes the EU to move to the next stage of vital Brexit talks at the next leaders' jamboree in December.
What's been missing until now is a sense of when the UK will be able to resolve its own short-term position.
Is the cabinet willing to sanction a political move to offer the promise (not the figure) of more money on the table to settle our EU accounts?
And if ministers are willing to do so, what do they expect in return - and when?
It's been all too obvious that the EU side has, for a long time, been clear that they'll only budge when the UK is ready to promise - even vaguely or implicitly - a lot more cash.
The hold-up has in part been that the UK has been pushing to make sure that taxpayers at home don't shell out when they don't have to.
And also because UK and EU officials have taken a very different approach to settling the bill.
But it's also the case that cabinet ministers have not been ready to agree how they want to proceed, and without that political agreement, it's been hard for the negotiations about the money to progress.
However, the crunch is coming fast.
I'm told on Monday there will be a significant meeting of the small cabinet committee that decides the Brexit negotiating strategy.
Several government sources say the meeting of the Brexit strategy group could change the course of our departure.
The question to be answered on Monday could be profound.
One source told me: "People have to decide if they really want to make progress and support this prime minister, or not."
For some in government that tight group of cabinet ministers must on Monday take a decision as vital as that - do they want to do a deal with the EU, or not?
Of course there is bravado on both sides.
As ever, whether thinking of talks on the continent, or in government, take every utterance with a pinch of salt.
Brexiteer ministers believe that they need to be clearer about what the UK would get in return for paying a bigger bill - a view that would no question have sympathy among swathes of taxpayers.
They are not, thus far, ready to sign up to what they see as Number 10's version of the next move - a promise to pay a lot more cash, potentially as much as 50bn-60bn euros.
They do not rule it out completely, but not before it is clear what we get in return.
But the lack of clarity in government about our eventual destination - whether we are closely, or loosely tied to the EU after departure - makes that hard to conclude.
One insider said: "We still have to settle the broader question - what do we actually want? That's the point to consider."
The discussion on Monday could therefore spill into conversations about the future relationship after Brexit, as well as cold hard cash.
For some in government, Monday feels vital. For others, it's OK in theory to let another decision point go past without conclusions.
But if they don't reach any conclusions, some in government believe that sets us on a course to crash out with no deal.
Time is running short for the discussion in government that Theresa May has put off for so long.
But one insider said there is no "limping" on until March: "We have to just decide."
Donald Tusk's deadline is hypothetical, but the pressure to move on is now not just coming from Brussels or Berlin, but from some elements in government.
Theresa May is yet to give her own public view.
But hard conversations don't get easier the longer you wait.

The EU has tried very, very hard throughout this Brexit process to present a cool, calm, united front while political volatility reigns in the UK.
"They want to come across as the adults in the room," one Spanish journalist put it to me.
But sometimes the EU's distant, business-like veneer noticeably cracks.
There are a few memorable examples: President Macron describing Brexiteers who promised the UK a better life outside the EU as liars; Luxembourg's prime minister recently pouring out in public the frustrations with the Brexit process felt privately by many in the EU; and now, on Tuesday, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, responding angrily to Downing Street finger-pointing about the state of Brexit renegotiations by addressing this tweet directly to the prime minister.
Mr Tusk's flash of emotion did not go down well in European government circles at this sensitive juncture, as the EU leaders summit and the 31 October Brexit deadline fast approach.
The EU wants a deal and, if negotiations fail, it wants voters across the EU to believe that Brussels did its best - staying focussed on the facts at the negotiating table, rather than getting involved in cross-Channel mud-slinging.
And bang on cue, not long after Mr Tusk's blame game outburst, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator tweeted that "efforts continue to find an agreement with the UK".
But no-one I speak to in the EU is holding his or her breath.
"We have no idea where the UK government wants to go in the next 20 days," (ie before the 31 October Brexit deadline) a diplomat from northern Europe told me.
He said the EU was still unclear how high getting a Brexit deal featured right now on the prime minister's list of priorities - compared, for example, with winning a general election.
So is the search for a deal now over in EU eyes?
Not really. The EU says it's still open for talks. It hasn't entirely ruled out the possibility of a deal by the end of this month.
Realistically though the prime minister's proposals on how to replace the Irish backstop in a Brexit deal are hugely problematic for Brussels.
While diplomats praise some aspects of Boris Johnson's offer, his insistence that Northern Ireland remains in the UK's customs territory after Brexit leaves the EU with unpalatable choices:
Either a) having customs infrastructure on the island of Ireland, which Dublin says is a no no.
or b) the EU not controlling its customs border which Brussels says would both lead to smuggling and contravene WTO regulations.
One high-level EU diplomat joked: "If that customs border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were left open, as the UK pretty much asks, then I would quit my job and start a smuggling enterprise. Far more lucrative."
But the EU isn't laughing. Or playing politics, insists Brussels. It says its objections to Boris Johnson's customs proposals are practical, not political.
EU technocrats maintain that leaving a post-Brexit customs border open on the island of Ireland would compromise food safety and the safety of children's toys, for example.
They warn that any accident or contamination would affect the whole single market plus the EU's reputation amongst other trading partners.
"We won't do that," said a diplomat from a country traditionally close to the UK. "We can't risk that."
And if the EU did take that risk, then diplomats warn that Dublin would pay the price. Goods entering the single market via Ireland would be regarded with suspicion, they say, and the free movement of goods in the single market would be seriously compromised.
EU sources insist that whatever the Johnson government threatens or however it cajoles,  the EU "can't be bullied" into accepting the prime minister's proposals as they stand.
"It would be easier if this discussion were about money," a European civil servant told me. "Then both sides could haggle and reach agreement but there's no compromising over food safety."
EU diplomats say they accept the principle of two customs systems (EU and UK) on the island of Ireland but that it has to work.
EU leaders still look to the UK to be more flexible in its demands. Though they hear Boris Johnson when he says Northern Ireland must remain in the UK's customs union to preserve UK unity.
As always when it comes to the backstop, Ireland has a big role to play here too.
Since the EU won't compromise the single market, EU diplomats say Brussels will take its cue from Dublin as to how many checks/controls it could stomach on the island of Ireland.
The EU attitude here is: "What's ok for Dublin, works for the rest of us".
But the Johnson government has expressed frustration with the Irish government. Their belief is that Dublin is "holding out" on making compromises since they believe a new Brexit extension is around the corner.
And that is exactly what the EU thinks.
Though no-one I speak to is starry-eyed about the possibility of having more time to talk.
Whether next week or next month, a deal still needs to be found that's acceptable to both sides - and not just to negotiators but to the European and the UK parliaments.
And no-one is sure what that would look like. Which is why the feeling in Brussels is that the chances of no deal have gone up again. Extension or no extension.

She blinked.
Whatever else happens in the next two hours, Theresa May did what she previously said was impossible, and committed herself to try to reopen the divorce deal, the legal text negotiated over two years with 27 other countries.
After a fortnight of swearing it was not going to happen, her dire predicament and continued protest from Eurosceptics moved the prime minister to this point.
This path was probably, in the end, the one that she would always have to choose, having made clear in recent days that she would aim to preserve Tory party unity, to try to stay in power, rather than switch to pursue a closer relationship with the EU.
With the bulk of Brexiteers and the unionist DUP now on side, it was a straightforward political choice - even if, as a policy, it's been dismissed as chasing a fantasy.
Having promised to change part of it, the prime minister is likely to have more support for her deal, by the end of tonight.
But there are still strong demands for her to rule out leaving without a formal deal across Parliament.
There is still no sign that the EU is ready straight away to grant any of the revisions she may demand.
The move, as ever, is designed to get the prime minister more smoothly through the day. But the reversal solves only one of Theresa May's problems, and only solves it for now.

Theresa May has said she is "determined" to deliver Brexit on time, ahead of talks on the Irish backstop.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the prime minister said she would return to Brussels with a "fresh mandate, new ideas and a renewed determination".
MPs have voted to seek an "alternative arrangement" to guarantee the Northern Ireland border stays open after Brexit.
But the Irish deputy prime minister has said "there are no credible alternative arrangements" to the proposal.
The backstop forms part of the withdrawal agreement negotiated by the UK and EU and is aimed at keeping the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic open after Brexit.
BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said that while Mrs May pledged to "go back to Brussels to secure a plan that Parliament can stand behind", the EU remains publicly opposed to changing the backstop.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on Friday 29 March, when the two-year time limit on withdrawal negotiations enforced by the Article 50 process expires.
Some MPs have suggested Britain will need more time to negotiate its exit to avoid crashing out of the EU without a deal.
Mrs May has insisted the departure date will not change, writing in the Telegraph that she would "deliver Brexit on time".
And she said she rejected the suggestion "that seeking alternative arrangements for the backstop constituted 'ripping up the Good Friday Agreement'".
The prime minister added that MPs wanted the government to go back to Brussels to renegotiate the deal after the Commons voted in favour of Tory backbencher Sir Graham Brady's amendment on Tuesday that called for "alternative arrangements" to be found.
Mrs May wrote: "While replacing the backstop with alternative arrangements was one option, [Sir Graham] would also be happy with the current backstop if there was a time limit or unilateral exit mechanism."
Home Secretary Sajid Javid told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that an alternative arrangement to the Irish backstop "can be done" using "existing technology".
Mr Javid said: "I asked Border Force months ago to advise me to look at what alternative arrangements are possible and they've shown me quite clearly you can have no hard border on the island of Ireland and you can use existing technology - that is perfectly possible.
"The only thing that's missing is a bit of good will on the EU side."
And International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said it was "irresponsible" for the EU and the Irish Republic to say they will not discuss changing the backstop in the withdrawal agreement.
He told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "For the Irish it's even more important than for most to talk to us for alternative ways of achieving a no hard border."
He said a no-deal Brexit would have an impact on the EU's economy, saying: "Are they really saying they'd rather be in a no deal position? It's not a responsible position to take."
Mr Fox said Article 50 - the mechanism by which the UK is leaving the EU - should only be extended in the event there was a Brexit deal that needed "a little time to get the legislation through".
To "simply extend" it, without a deal in place, would not "provide the impetus for a deal", he said.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss told John Pienaar on Pienaar's Politics that she was confident a time-limited backstop could be negotiated.
"On the time limit to the backstop there are various people across the EU who have hinted that that could be acceptable," she said.
"The fact is the EU have always claimed that the backstop is a temporary measure."
She added: "I think we are seeing signs of the EU's position softening."
By Tom Edgington, BBC Reality Check
The backstop is an "insurance policy" - designed to avoid a hard border "under all circumstances" between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Under the current Brexit deal, the 310-mile Irish border would become the only land border between the EU and the UK.
This would probably mean checks on goods crossing it, unless both sides could reach a comprehensive trade deal.
If such an agreement could not be reached, then to avoid those checks and border posts or other infrastructure, the backstop would come into force.
It would keep the UK in a "single customs territory" with the EU and leave Northern Ireland effectively in the EU's single market for goods.
A number of MPs fear the UK could be "trapped" in this arrangement for years, leaving it unable to strike its own trade deals on goods with the rest of the world.
Writing in the Sunday Times, deputy Irish prime minister Simon Coveney said: "The EU will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and there will be no withdrawal agreement without the backstop."
Mr Coveney said the backstop was required to "ensure the protection of the Good Friday Agreement" which ended 30 years of armed struggle in Northern Ireland.
He said no alternatives have been put forward "that achieve the shared goal of the UK and EU to avoid a hard border", and the backstop was a "necessary guarantee".
Arlene Foster - leader of the DUP, the party that props up Mrs May's government - said dealing with the "toxicity" of the backstop would allow the EU and UK to move forward towards a Brexit deal.
She said she was hopeful of finding alternatives but it depended on the "willingness" of the Irish government.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday News programme, Mrs Foster said that if the EU wants a deal, it has to be acceptable to both sides.
"I think we really need to focus on trying to get a deal. That's what the DUP want, that's what the government wants and I believe it's what the European Union wants."
She told the BBC's Sunday Politics "nothing good" would come from Brexit.
Meanwhile, some Conservative backbench MPs, including senior Tory Brexiteer Steve Baker, have said they still have other issues with the Brexit deal.
Mr Baker, deputy chairman of the Eurosceptic group the European Research Group (ERG), warned there was "trouble ahead" for the prime minister.
In response to Mrs May's article, he tweeted: "Leave-backing MPs voted to support alternative arrangements in NI but with grave misgivings about the whole agreement.
"Now the PM co-opts us into accepting everything but the backstop and, on the backstop, accepting a codicil."
He said a "further substantial defeat" for the agreement should be expected "if all we see is a codicil - a 'joint interpretive instrument'".
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns tweeted that the UK "deserves a better deal".
"No PM, we said we would support the amendment to send a message to EU re the backstop, we all said there are other issues with WA (withdrawal agreement)," she said.
In January, MPs rejected Mrs May's withdrawal agreement by 432 votes to 202, with nearly 120 Conservative MPs voting against their leader.
After the Commons voted on the Brady amendment, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the backstop is "part and parcel" of the UK's Brexit deal and will not be renegotiated.
Speaking at the European Parliament last week, Mr Barnier said the backstop was a "realistic solution" to preventing a hard border.

Talks between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn to break the Brexit deadlock have been called "constructive".
The two leaders met on Wednesday afternoon and agreed a "programme of work" to try to find a way forward to put to MPs for a vote.
It is understood that each party has appointed a negotiating team, which are meeting tonight before a full day of discussions on Thursday.
A spokesman for No 10 said both sides were "showing flexibility".
And he added that the two parties gave "a commitment to bring the current Brexit uncertainty to a close".
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Corbyn said there had not been "as much change as [he] had expected" in the PM's position.
He said the meeting was "useful, but inconclusive", and talks would continue.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Philip Hammond has said a confirmatory referendum on a Brexit deal was a "perfectly credible" idea.
He told ITV's Peston programme he was not sure if the majority of MPs would back it, but "it deserves to be tested in Parliament".
This evening, MPs have debated legislation which would require Mrs May to seek an extension to Article 50 and give the Commons the power to approve or amend whatever was agreed.
The bill passed its first parliamentary hurdle by 315 to 310 votes, and MPs are now voting on a raft of amendments.
Supporters of the bill, tabled by Labour's Yvette Cooper, are trying to fast-track the bill through the Commons in the space of five hours, in a move which has angered Tory Brexiteers.
Mr Corbyn said he raised a number of issues with Mrs May, including future customs arrangements, trade agreements and the option of giving the public the final say over the deal in another referendum.
The Labour leader is coming under pressure from senior colleagues to make a referendum a condition of signing up to any agreement.
Demanding the shadow cabinet hold a vote on the issue, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said not backing a confirmatory vote would be a "breach" of the policy agreed by party members at its last conference.
The UK has until 12 April to propose a plan to the EU - which must be accepted by the bloc - or it will leave without a deal on that date.
The PM proposed the talks in a statement on Tuesday night. She wants to agree a policy with the Labour leader for MPs to vote on before 10 April - when the EU will hold an emergency summit on Brexit.
If there is no agreement between the two leaders, Mrs May said a number of options would be put to MPs "to determine which course to pursue".
In either event, Mrs May said she would ask the EU for a further short extension to hopefully get an agreement passed by Parliament before 22 May, so the UK does not have to take part in European elections.
The two leaders also met Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
The SNP leader said she had "good" and "open" conversations with both, and while she believed Mr Corbyn would "drive a hard bargain", she was "still not entirely clear" where the prime minister was willing to compromise.
The SNP leader, who backs a further referendum and wants to remain in the EU, told reporters: "My concern is that in the rush to reach some compromise with the clock ticking, what will happen over the next few days... is a bad compromise will be reached."
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, Plaid Cymru and the Independent Group have also held a joint press conference, calling for any decision made by the leaders to be put to a public vote.
But some Tory Brexiteers have condemned the talks, with two ministers resigning over the issue.
Chris Heaton-Harris quit on Wednesday afternoon, claiming his job at the Department for Exiting the European Union had become "irrelevant" if the government is not prepared to leave without a deal.
Wales Minister Nigel Adams also resigned earlier, saying the government was at risk of failing to deliver "the Brexit people voted for".

The prime minister is continuing to consider her next move to break the Brexit deadlock following the latest defeat of her withdrawal plan.
Senior government sources say the "ambition" is still to get Theresa May's deal through the Commons.
But MPs will again vote on alternatives on Monday, a customs union with the EU thought to be MPs' most likely preferred option.
Some senior Brexiteers have warned Mrs May against pursuing such a move.
Following the UK's vote to leave the EU in 2016, Theresa May negotiated a withdrawal deal with the EU.
Although European leaders agreed to the plan, Mrs May has yet to get the deal approved in Parliament.
The prime minister has until 12 April to seek a longer extension to the Article 50 process to avoid the UK leaving without a deal.
Mrs May said the UK would need an "alternative way forward" after her plan was defeated by a majority of 58 on Friday, following earlier defeats by 230 and 149 votes.
The government has so far failed to win over 34 Conservative rebels. Remainers argue for another referendum and Brexiteers say Mrs May's deal leaves the UK too closely aligned to Europe.
Northern Ireland's DUP - which the government relies on for support in votes in the House of Commons - also continues to oppose the deal.
But a No 10 source indicated the prime minister would continue to seek support for her Brexit deal in the Commons and insisted efforts were "going in the right direction".
BBC political correspondent Alex Forsyth described the cabinet as "deeply divided" over what to do next.
Speaking on Sky News, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said under a Labour government it was "likely" that the UK would leave the European Union.
She also accused the prime minister of being "out of control", saying: "Theresa May is stamping her feet and saying I want this, no one else is allowed to do anything else."
It "looks like the time may come" for another attempted no confidence vote in the government, she added.
If passed, this would pave the way for a general election.
The deputy chairman of the Conservative Party James Cleverly told Sky News that his party is doing "sensible pragmatic planning" in case there is a snap general election, but not seeking preparing to call one.
And speaking to the Andrew Marr show, Justice Secretary David Gauke said he did not see how a general election would solve the current deadlock.
He added that if MPs are voting in favour of a softer Brexit it would not be "sustainable" for the government to ignore Parliament.
Tory Brexiteer Steve Baker, who resigned as a Brexit minister over the PM's handling of negotiations, wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that Mrs May's deal "cannot be allowed to go through at any cost".
He said the Conservative Party could split if the prime minister pursued a customs union with the EU as "it would amount to a reversal of the referendum result".
However, he also wrote that on Thursday evening he had decided to support the withdrawal agreement before being talked out of it.
A customs union is one of the options which could be considered by MPs from all parties during a second round of "indicative votes" on Monday.
MPs are to vote on a series of options designed to test the will of Parliament to see what, if anything, commands a majority.
None of MPs' eight proposed options secured a majority in the first set of indicative votes on 27 March, but those which received the most votes were a customs union with the EU and a referendum on any deal.
A customs union would allow businesses to move goods around the EU without tariffs, ie taxes - but membership would bar the UK from striking independent trade deals after Brexit.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn supports a customs union, to protect the issue of avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Sunday Telegraph that the party needs to be led by "someone who has always supported Brexit".
He wrote: "Now is the opportunity for the Tories to move from the current government's position of ameliorating a bad idea that, at its highest level, it never believed in, to one that embraces it."
Meanwhile, a number of senior MPs tipped as future Tory leaders have articles and interviews in the Sunday papers setting out their policies.
Dominic Raab, who quit the cabinet in protest at Mrs May's handling of Brexit, explained how he would tackle knife crime in the Sunday Telegraph.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, called for the Tories to "modernise" in a wide-ranging interview in the Sunday Times.
She highlighted cutting stamp duty for young homebuyers and business tax as key policies.
Former cabinet minister Justine Greening said she "might" run for the Tory leadership.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the Remain campaigner said the party needed a leader for the "2020s, not the 1920s".
If Mrs May wants to hold another vote on her Brexit deal in Parliament, it must comply with Commons Speaker John Bercow's ruling that it can only be brought back with "substantial" changes.
That is why the government separated the withdrawal agreement from the political declaration - on the future relationship with the EU - for Friday's vote.
The withdrawal agreement is the part of the Brexit deal Mrs May struck with Brussels which sets out how much money the UK must pay to the EU as a settlement, details of the transition period and the so-called Irish backstop arrangements.
Following Friday's vote, Mrs May said there would be "grave" implications of rejecting the deal and warned they were "reaching the limits of this process in this House".
Her comments led to speculation the PM could try to call a general election.
But Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan told The Observer: "If we have a general election before Brexit is resolved, it will only make things worse."
Under the terms of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, the prime minister needs a two-thirds majority in order to call an election.

Theresa May has told MPs it remains her "priority" to deliver Brexit, defending the decision to delay the UK's exit from the EU.
The new deadline of 31 October means the UK is likely to have to hold European Parliament elections in May.
The prime minister said that if the deal agreed with the EU was passed, the UK could leave the EU "as soon as possible".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called the latest delay a "diplomatic failure".
The prime minister promised to pursue an "orderly" Brexit, adding that the "whole country" was "frustrated".
Brexit was originally set to happen on 29 March. But after MPs repeatedly rejected Mrs May's withdrawal agreement with the EU, the deadline was put back to 12 April.
The new 31 October deadline averts the prospect of the UK having to leave the EU without a deal this Friday.
The government said on Thursday it would "continue to make all necessary preparations" for a no-deal Brexit, after it was reported that departments had stood down their planning.
A government source said "plans will evolve and adapt" but would not stop, while the chance of leaving the EU without an agreement remained.
The source added that a leaked message referring to the "winding down" of no deal preparation related only to Operation Yellowhammer, the contingency planning operation based on worst-case scenarios - and not no-deal planning in general.
Under EU rules, the UK will have to hold European Parliament elections in May, or face leaving on 1 June without a deal.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Mrs May said she "profoundly" regretted her deal not being agreed to by MPs.
She said: "The whole country is intensely frustrated that this process of leaving the European Union has not been completed."
On the latest delay, she said: "The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear. I believe we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest."
And she told MPs that the UK would hold full EU membership rights during the extension, saying the country "would continue to be bound by all our ongoing obligations as a member state, including the duty of sincere co-operation".
The government is continuing to hold talks with Labour aimed at achieving a consensus on how to break the deadlock in Parliament.
Mrs May and Mr Corbyn had a "short meeting" on Thursday, Labour said.
In Parliament, Mrs May said: "Reaching an agreement will not be easy, because to be successful it will require both sides to make compromises.
"But however challenging it may be politically, I profoundly believe that in this unique situation where the House is deadlocked, it is incumbent on both front benches to seek to work together to deliver what the British people voted for."
In response, Mr Corbyn said: "The second extension in the space of a fortnight represents not only a diplomatic failure but is another milestone in the government's mishandling of the entire Brexit process."
He added: "The prime minister has stuck rigidly to a flawed plan and now the clock has run down, leaving Britain in limbo and adding to the deep uncertainty of business, workers and people all across this country."
Mr Corbyn said cross-party talks were "serious, detailed and ongoing", but warned that the government would "have to compromise".
If no agreement was possible, he said: "We believe all options should remain on the table, including the option of a public vote."
Shortly - Talks continue between the Conservatives and Labour on how to end the Brexit impasse
23 April - MPs return from Parliament's Easter recess
2 May - Local elections take place in England and Northern Ireland
23 May - European Parliament elections are scheduled to happen in the UK, if MPs do not back Theresa May's agreement with the EU in time to avert them
31 October - The UK leaves the EU, unless MPs back the withdrawal agreement in advance of this deadline
Ian Blackford, the SNP's Westminster leader, urged Mrs May to use the extra time to hold a second EU referendum.
"It's now a very real possibility that we can remain in the European Union," he said.
"As of today, there are 204 days until the new Brexit deadline on the 31 October, so will the prime minister now remove the ridiculous excuse that there isn't enough time to hold a second referendum with remain on the ballot paper?"
And Brexiteer Conservative MP Sir Bill Cash accused the prime minister of "abject surrender" to the EU in allowing the delay and said she should resign.
Before the Brussels summit, Mrs May had told leaders she wanted to move the UK's exit date from this Friday to 30 June, with the option of leaving earlier if Parliament ratified her agreement.
European Council President Donald Tusk said future developments were "entirely in the UK's hands", adding: "They can still ratify the withdrawal agreement, in which case the extension can be terminated."
Mr Tusk said the UK could also rethink its strategy or choose to "cancel Brexit altogether", but urged: "Please do not waste this time."
The EU had been split over the length of delay to offer the UK, and by law its other 27 member states had to reach a unanimous decision.

Theresa May has denied claims from DUP leader Arlene Foster that she had "given up" on negotiations before agreeing the Brexit deal.
Mrs Foster said the PM's trip to promote the deal to businesses in Wales and Northern Ireland was a "waste of time" as Parliament would not back it.
Meanwhile, former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon told the BBC the deal was "doomed" and must be renegotiated.
Mrs May insists it protects the "vital interests" of the whole of the UK.
After enduring criticism of the Brexit withdrawal agreement in the Commons on Monday, the prime minister began the next day rejecting US President Donald Trump's suggestions that the deal could threaten future US-UK trade deals.
And as she travelled to Wales and Northern Ireland, promising that her Brexit plans would strengthen "every corner" of the UK, she came under fire from Mrs Foster, whose party has a parliamentary pact to support the Conservative government in key votes.
"The disappointing thing for me is that the prime minister has given up and she is saying... we just have to accept it," Mrs Foster told the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.
"She may have given up on further negotiations and trying to find a better deal but I have not."
Sir Michael Fallon's decision to come out against the deal is another blow to the prime minister, who is struggling to muster support in Parliament ahead of a Commons vote on 11 December.
Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP and Democratic Unionists have all said they will reject the terms of the UK's withdrawal, and future relations negotiated by Mrs May.
Many Tories have also said publicly they are opposed to Mrs May's Brexit deal with the EU. Brexiteers fear it will keep the UK too closely tied to EU rules, making it harder to strike future trade deals with other countries.
If MPs voted against the deal, the government would have up to 21 days to tell the Commons "how it proposes to proceed" and a further seven to move a motion allowing MPs to express their views.
New laws would have to be passed if the UK wanted to avoid the default position of leaving without a deal on 29 March next year.
Sir Michael, who was previously regarded as a loyalist, now argues that Mrs May's deal "would see the UK give up its power to influence EU rules and regulations in return for vague assurances over future trade".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was the "worst of all worlds" and that Mr Trump's criticism of its repercussions for transatlantic relations "could not simply be brushed off".
However, the prime minister is continuing to make the case for the agreement, which she says delivers on the 2016 referendum vote in key areas and is in the national interest.
During a visit to an agricultural show in Builth Wells in Powys, Mrs May said: "We have already been talking to [the US] about the sort of agreement that we could have in the future... that is working very well."
When it was put to her that Mrs Foster had implied she "rolled over", Mrs May replied: "No, we have been resisting many of the things that the European Union wanted to put in this deal. When you negotiate neither side gets 100% of what they want."
Speaking later, in Northern Ireland, Mrs May said she had been given a "clear message" by businesses that the deal was in the national interest as it provided certainty.
"The overwhelming message I get is this is a deal that does deliver for constituents," she added.
Under the proposed agreement, the UK would not be able to bring into force any trade deal with a country outside the EU until the end of the proposed transition period - currently scheduled to last until 31 December 2020.
In reality, any bilateral agreement between the UK and the US is likely to take years to negotiate given its complexity, differing standards in areas such as agriculture, and the fact it would require ratification by the US Congress.
In other developments:
Sir Michael said the 29 March 2019 date for Brexit, which is enshrined in UK law, may have to be pushed back to give negotiators the time to make major improvements to the agreement.
All 28 EU states would need to agree to extend the Article 50 process of negotiations to allow this to happen, something Theresa May has repeatedly ruled out.
Cabinet Office David Lidington said he did not think doing this "would get us anywhere" as the EU had made clear this was the only deal on the table.
He told Today there was no "Plan B" and the agreement was a "decent compromise" which would provide a springboard to the next stage of negotiations on the two sides' future relationship.

Theresa May has said the UK is facing "one of the most significant moments" in its recent history as she prepares to begin the process of leaving the EU.
The prime minister, who will officially tell the EU of the UK's desire to leave on Wednesday, said her goal was a "deep and special partnership" after Brexit.
A "global Britain" could build new alliances outside the EU, she added.
But a group of pro-Remain MPs said she would struggle to meet her goals and must be held accountable if she fails.
Ahead of formally triggering Brexit using Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, Mrs May spoke on the phone to EU Council president Donald Tusk, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
On Wednesday, the prime minister will officially tell the EU's other 27 members that the UK wants to pull out, just over nine months after the British public backed withdrawal by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1% in a referendum.
By triggering Article 50, Mrs May will set in motion a two-year process in which the terms of exit will be negotiated. Unless both sides agree to extend the deadline for talks, the UK will leave on 29 March 2019.
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The two sides will also try to agree the basis of the UK's future relationship with the EU although some experts, including the former top civil servant at the Foreign Office, have said this could take many more years.
Speaking at a Qatari investment forum in Birmingham - where the Gulf State announced £5bn of further investment in the UK - Mrs May said this was "one of the most significant moments the UK has faced for many years".
"Tomorrow we begin the negotiations to secure a new deep and special partnership with the European Union. As we do so I am determined we should also seize this historic opportunity to get out in to the world and to shape an even bigger role for a global Britain.
"This means not just building new alliances but going even further in working with old friends who have stood alongside us for centuries."
A group of MPs who all backed the Remain campaign in last year's poll and are now part of the Open Britain group said the "phoney war" was coming to an end and voters must be able to hold Mrs May to account over whether the UK emerged stronger and more prosperous outside the EU.
Although the group, including former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, ex Conservative education secretary Nicky Morgan and Labour's ex-shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, said they wanted the best outcome for the country, they feared this was unlikely as the PM's approach was fraught with contradictions.
The PM has said the UK will leave the single market but wants the greatest possible access to it and while leaving the customs union as it stands, she wants a similar arrangement that provides "frictionless" trade across borders.
Mrs May, they said, should be judged not only on the promises her government had made in recent months but on the "expectations" they said people had when they voted Leave last year, including that Brexit would lead to a fall in migration and free up extra funding for the NHS and other domestic services.
"A clear direction of travel has been set by the government and it is largely based on that set by the Vote Leave campaign," they said.
"Vote Leave and the government have made specific promises: leaving is a cost-free option, trade will be enhanced not hampered, there will be major savings from the EU budget, core arrangements with the EU, for example over national security, will remain unchanged and the integrity of the UK will be protected".
They added: "There is no mandate for the form Brexit takes. Responsibility for the outcome now rests with those conducting negotiations and those advocating a hard Brexit."
But Mr Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary and leading Brexit supporter, said that the EU had "decided to leave the UK" in the late 1980s when it embarked on what he said was a one-way process of economic and political union.
Writing for the ConservativeHome website, Mr Duncan Smith suggested that, from that moment on, the UK's exit had been largely inevitable and he was confident about what lay ahead.
"We do so with political leaders in the EU beginning to use common sense terms as they now speak of needing good arrangements with the UK to protect their markets and their access to financial services.
"After all, it must be in everyone's interest, as European Commission President Juncker said the other day, for the UK and EU to part as friends, co-operating and trading."
On a visit to Brussels, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the EU should enter the talks with confidence and would be making a mistake if it sought to punish the UK for deciding to leave.
"I say this with friendship and all due respect," the Labour politician said. "But a bad Brexit deal that hurts London would hurt the EU too...There is no need - as some have suggested - for the EU to send a message or to instil fear by punishing the UK.
"Because a proud, optimistic and confident institution does not secure its future by fear."

MPs are voting on a motion that could oust Theresa May's government from power and start moves towards a general election.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who tabled the no confidence motion, said the PM's "zombie" administration had lost the right to govern, and they "should do the right thing and resign".
But Mrs May said a general election was simply not "in the national interest".
It comes 24 hours after MPs voted down the PM's Brexit plans by a huge margin.
Closing the debate, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said: "She is a prime minister without a majority for her flagship policy, with no authority and no plan B."
But Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, said Mrs May had provided "inspirational leadership".
He launched a scathing attack on Mr Corbyn over a number of his positions on national security issues, saying to loud cheers from Conservative MPs that the country could not have confidence in him as a leader.
Mr Corbyn's motion is backed by MPs from the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and Green Party.
But senior Labour figures accept it is not likely to succeed, as she has the backing of Tory rebels and the DUP's 10 MPs, who less than 24 hours ago helped inflict a humiliating defeat on her.
Labour says further no-confidence votes could follow if this one fails.
Mr Corbyn told MPs: "The prime minister has consistently claimed that her deal, which has been decisively rejected, was good for Britain workers and business… she should have nothing to fear by going to the people."
He added that 2011's Fixed-term Parliaments Act "was never intended to prop up a zombie government", saying that the prime minister had "lost control" and suffered an "historic and humiliating defeat".
Mr Watson added: "I don't doubt that [Mrs May] has sincerely attempted to fulfil the task given to us buy the voters in the referendum. I have no doubt too that she has tried her best and given it her all.
"But she has failed and I am afraid the failure is hers and hers alone.
"We know she has worked hard, but the truth is she is too set in her ways, too aloof to lead.
"She lacks the imagination and agility to bring people with her, she lacks the authority on the world stage to negotiate this deal. Ultimately she has failed."
Mrs May told MPs it was Parliament that decided to put the question of European Union membership to the people, "and now Parliament must finish the job".
She said extending Article 50, the legal mechanism taking the UK out of the EU on 29 March, to allow time for an election would mean "delaying Brexit for who knows how long".
She repeated her offer of cross-party talks to find a way forward on Brexit, but has not so far invited the Labour leader to take part in them.
A general election would "deepen divisions when we need unity, it would bring chaos when we need certainty," Mrs May said.
Tory MP for Croydon South, Chris Philip, accused Mr Corbyn of "shameless political opportunism", which put "party interests ahead of national interests".
James Morris, Tory MP for Halesowen and Rowley Regis, said the motion was "merely a tactical device by the opposition to cause chaos".
And Conservative ex-minister Anna Soubry, who wants Mr Corbyn to back another EU referendum, questioned why her party were six points ahead of Labour in a weekend opinion poll, adding: "Could it be because he's the most hopeless Leader of the Opposition that we've ever had?"
But other MPs backed Mr Corbyn, with Labour's Stephen Doughty saying his leader was "absolutely right" to call for a general election "because it is not just the government's record on Brexit which is at stake tonight".
Labour frontbencher Liam Byrne, MP for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, accused Mrs May of building "a cage of red lines" over Brexit.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford accused the government of "seeking to run down the clock" over Brexit and warned that the UK could "crash out" of the EU with no deal.
"The risk of a no deal is something that is unthinkable," he said. "If the government and the prime minister want to drive the bus over the cliff, we will not be in the passenger seat."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said 48% of the population who voted to remain in the EU had been "totally disregarded" by the government and Mrs May had an "unwillingness to listen".
He said a general election provided "another route and a welcome one" that could resolve the issue, and he also called for a "People's Vote".
The leader of Plaid Cymru in Westminster, Liz Saville Roberts, who will vote against the government later, added her support for a "People's Vote", and called for the House to come together to make progress, condemning the "pantomime point scoring" taking place.
The DUP's leader Arlene Foster and its Westminster leader Nigel Dodds have both said they will support the government in the confidence vote.
But, speaking after what she described as a "useful discussion" with the prime minister, Ms Foster said "lessons will need to be learned" from the defeat on the Brexit deal.
"The issue of the backstop needs to be dealt and we will continue to work to that end," she added.
A shift to promising some kind of closer relationship with the EU, whether an actual customs union or something by a similar name, seems to be becoming more likely.
That's not because everyone in the government, let alone in No 10 or in the Cabinet, thinks it's the right thing to do - Liam Fox, whose job it is to pursue an independent trade policy, is not the only one with significant doubts.
But you can see a realistic route of getting that kind of arrangement through the House of Commons.
One former minister involved in trying to persuade the PM to soften up said: "We have three days to push and push her to move, or there won't be anything that can get through."
Read Laura's full blog
David Cameron, who resigned the day after the UK voted in 2016 to leave the EU, said he hoped, and thought, Mrs May would win Wednesday's vote.
Speaking to the BBC he also insisted he did not regret calling the referendum.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says that if the prime minister sees off the challenge, she will begin a series of meetings with "senior Parliamentarians" on Thursday.
He said Mrs May intended to retain her "red lines" - ruling out Labour's demand for a customs union with the EU - with sources suggesting compromising on this would risk cabinet resignations.
However, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Justice Minister David Gauke suggested that the customs union option could not be ruled out, saying: "We have got to engage and we have got to be constructive."
Earlier Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom told the BBC the government was clear that it will not delay or revoke Article 50, although Chancellor Philip Hammond reportedly suggested delaying Brexit in a conference call on Tuesday evening.
By the BBC's head of political research Peter Barnes
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, UK general elections are only supposed to happen every five years. The next one is due in 2022.
But a vote of no confidence lets MPs decide on whether they want the government to continue. The motion must be worded: "That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government."
If a majority of MPs vote for the motion then it starts a 14-day countdown.
If during that time the current government, or any other alternative government cannot win a new vote of confidence, then an early general election would be called.
That election cannot happen for at least 25 working days.
European leaders reacted to Tuesday's vote with dismay but gave no indication they were willing to make concessions.
Several have warned of increased chances of a no-deal Brexit, which many MPs fear will cause chaos at ports and damage industry.
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, said Brussels "profoundly regrets" how the UK's MPs voted and said it was "up to the British authorities" to indicate how it would move forward.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker urged the UK to clarify its intentions, saying: "Time is almost up."
And European Council President Donald Tusk has appeared to suggest that the UK should stay in the EU.
"If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?", he tweeted.
The Commons defeat - the largest in history, by 432 votes to 202 - came as a huge blow for Mrs May.
She had spent two years negotiating the plan aimed at bringing about an orderly Brexit on 29 March, 2019, and setting up a 21-month transition period to negotiate a free-trade deal with Brussels.
But it faced opposition across Parliament, which has never had a majority in favour of Brexit. The UK public voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.
Some Remain MPs oppose the deal because they want a further referendum with the option to scrap Brexit, while others accept Brexit will happen but want the UK to have a closer relationship with the EU than currently proposed.
On the other side are MPs who think Mrs May's deal leaves the UK tied too closely to EU rules, while some want to see a no-deal Brexit, which is where the UK leaves the EU without any special arrangements in place.
A key sticking point on the plan remains the Northern Irish backstop - the fallback plan to avoid any return to physical border checks between the country and Ireland. Many MPs argue it could keep the UK tied to EU customs rules indefinitely.
Click here if you cannot see the look-up. Data from Commons Votes Services.
In the run up to the vote, the prime minister tried to reassure MPs from all sides of the House over the controversial backstop - having received new written assurances from the EU that it would be temporary and, if triggered, would last for "the shortest possible period".
But some 118 Conservative MPs - from both the Leave and Remain wings of Mrs May's party - voted with the opposition parties against her deal, while three Labour MPs supported the deal.

Theresa May and 11 senior ministers have been thrashing out the UK's approach to Brexit in an eight-hour discussion at the PM's country retreat.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said everyone is said to have left Chequers happy implying "baby steps forwards not a huge breakthrough".
The PM will set out the position in a speech next week, after a discussion by the full cabinet.
There have been clear differences between ministers over the way forward.
But Laura Kuenssberg said she had been told the prime minister had "played a blinder" and persuaded Brexiteers to shift their position.
However, a cabinet Brexiteer source had said "divergence has won the day" with mutual recognition between the UK and EU on goods in future, rather than the UK being forced to stick to EU rules.
Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said on BBC Question Time the cabinet would agree on the Brexit position, following the Chequers talks.
"What I can say to you is the outcome of those discussions will come to cabinet in the next few days, and late next week the prime minister will make a statement, a speech and outline what that position is."
Pressed on whether everyone in the cabinet would agree with it, he replied: "Absolutely, yes."
The Brexit sub-committee includes key figures such as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Chancellor Philip Hammond, who were on opposite sides of the EU referendum argument in 2016.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The prime minister and cabinet ministers met at Chequers for eight hours.
"They held discussions including about the automotive sector led by Greg Clark, agrifood led by Michael Gove, digital trade by Liam Fox and a discussion on the overall future economic partnership that was led by the prime minister."
Chief Whip Julian Smith and senior UK diplomats Tim Barrow and Ed Llewellyn were among those present, alongside the cabinet's Brexit sub-committee.
Cream of sweetcorn soup with a ham hock croquette
Guinness short rib of Dexter Beef with onions and parsnip mash
Lemon tart with raspberry sorbet and fresh raspberries
Mrs May still has to get any agreement through the whole cabinet on Tuesday, through her party - and then through 27 other EU member states.
Documents suggest European Commission negotiators will not approve of a UK proposal that seeks to select which EU rules to stick to post-Brexit and which to diverge from.
Slides published online by the commission say such an approach would be "not compatible with the principles" set out in the EU's own guidelines and posed a risk to the "proper functioning" of its single market.
But an EU diplomat told the BBC "we are hoping for a relationship that is as close as possible to the existing relationship", adding that EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier should be given a mandate "to explore all possibilities".
Before the final arrangements with the EU kick in, a temporary transition period is planned - although the details have yet to be negotiated.
On Wednesday, the UK set out its plans for how this "status quo" transition phase should work.
The document suggests the UK will abide by new EU laws and be involved in talks on future fishing quotas, but will not be able to sign trade deals without the EU's permission.
It also says the period should last as long as it takes to "prepare and implement the new processes and new systems".
No 10 denied this meant it would be longer than the planned two years.
But Sir Bill Cash, chairman of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee, warned that the UK could face an extra £4bn-£5bn Brexit "divorce bill" if the post-withdraw transition period extends beyond the EU's preferred end date of 31 December 2020.
He said that the current £35-39bn agreement was intended to cover to the end of the current EU budget period at the end of 2020.
For Labour, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he would like to see "a customs union" option on the table, which would "solve some of the issues around Northern Ireland" and enable the UK to influence future trade negotiations.
Taking questions after a speech in London, he also said Labour would rather have a general election than a second referendum on Britain's EU membership because "there needs to be a wider debate" about the UK's future relationship with Europe.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry also told LBC that while Brexit meant the UK could not be in the customs union, a new agreement was needed: "That we think is likely to be a customs union that will look pretty much like the current customs union."
It could mean the PM faces the prospect of a Commons rebellion as Conservative MP Anna Soubry said she had cross-party support for an amendment to the trade bill, calling for the government to form "a" customs union with the EU after Brexit.

Theresa May is holding last-minute Brexit talks with the French President Emmanuel Macron, with the UK due to leave the EU in three days' time.
The UK PM will urge Mr Macron to back her request to delay Brexit again until 30 June, having earlier met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
After the talks, Ms Merkel said a delay that runs to the end of the year or the start of 2020 was a possibility.
There is a summit on Wednesday when all EU states will vote on an extension.
Cross-party talks in Westminster aimed at breaking the impasse in Parliament finished, with both sides expressing hope there would be progress.
A draft EU document circulated to diplomats ahead of the emergency meeting of EU leaders proposes an extension but leaves the date blank.
The BBC's Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said the document refers to an extension lasting "only as long as is necessary and, in any event, no longer than XX.XX.XXXX and ending earlier if the Withdrawal Agreement is ratified".
European Council president Donald Tusk said there was "little reason to believe" that the ratification process of the withdrawal agreement could be completed by the end of June.
In a letter to EU leaders, he said at Wednesday's summit members should discuss "an alternative, longer extension" that will be flexible and "would last only as long as necessary and no longer than one year".
The UK is currently due to leave the EU at 23:00 BST on Friday.
Downing Street said Mrs May and Ms Merkel discussed the UK's request for an extension of Article 50 - the process by which the UK leaves the EU - to 30 June, with the option to bring this forward if a deal is ratified earlier.
The prime minister and Chancellor Merkel agreed "on the importance of ensuring Britain's orderly withdrawal", a statement said.
Ms Merkel said EU leaders would discuss a "flextension" - a one-year flexible extension - at Wednesday's summit.
Following a meeting of the EU's General Affairs Council in Luxembourg, diplomats said "slightly more than a handful" of member states spoke in favour of a delay to 30 June and a majority were in favour of a longer extension.
Adam Fleming said no maximum end extension date was agreed, although December 2019 and March 2020 were mentioned.
Conditions of a delay were discussed including UK participation in May's European Parliament elections, no re-opening of the withdrawal agreement and how to guarantee the UK's pledge of "sincere co-operation" in ongoing EU business.
So far, MPs have rejected the withdrawal agreement Mrs May reached with other European leaders last year.
One of most contentious parts of the plan is the Irish backstop - an insurance policy that aims to prevent a hard border returning to the island of Ireland.
The EU has continually said it will not re-open the withdrawal agreement for negotiations, but Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom renewed her plea for them to look again.
Meanwhile, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said cross-party talks aimed at breaking the impasse in Parliament had been "open and constructive", but the two sides differed on a "number of areas".
Labour's shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said they were "hopeful progress will be made" and discussions with the government will continue in the "coming days".
Further talks are due to be held on Thursday.
In a leaked letter seen by the Telegraph, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has warned that agreeing with Labour over its demand for a customs union is the "worst of both worlds" and will leave Britain unable to set its own trade policy.
On Tuesday afternoon, MPs approved a government motion asking MPs to approve the PM's request to the EU to delay Brexit, required after a bill from Labour's Yvette Cooper became law.
The final decision on an extension lies with the EU - and the leaders of all the 27 other EU countries have to decide whether to grant or reject an extension.
If the UK is still a member of the EU on 23 May, it will have to take part in European Parliamentary elections.
Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said the UK would "certainly not" leave without a deal on Friday.
But Ireland's Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney said a no-deal Brexit was still possible - even though it would represent "an extraordinary failure of politics".
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU has "hope and expectation" from the cross-party talks happening in Westminster and he would be willing to "improve" the political declaration "within hours".
EU leaders are curious to hear the prime minister's Plan B. They hope there is one, although they're not convinced.
They want to know, if they say yes to another Brexit extension, what it will be used for.
And they suspect Theresa May wants them to do her dirty work for her.
EU diplomatic sources I have spoken to suggest the prime minister may have officially asked the EU for a short new extension (until 30 June) as that was politically easier for her back home, whereas she believed and hoped (the theory goes) that EU leaders will insist instead on a flexible long extension that she actually needs.
The bottom line is: EU leaders are extremely unlikely to refuse to further extend the Brexit process.
If no cross-party compromise can be reached, Mrs May has committed to putting a series of Brexit options to the Commons and being bound by the result.
This could include the option of holding a public vote on any deal agreed by Parliament.
Tory MP and government aide to the chancellor, Huw Merriman, said he backed a "People's Vote" to secure the public's support for the prime minister's deal.
Speaking at a rally for the campaign, he said it was "seriously wrong" that he had been threatened with the sack, and said he wanted another vote in order to "get this country through the mess we are currently in".

Theresa May has responded to criticism from her own MPs over talks with Jeremy Corbyn by saying all MPs have a responsibility to deliver Brexit.
The PM said the public "expect us to reach across this House to find a way through this".
Mr Corbyn said he welcomed the PM's "willingness to compromise to resolve the Brexit deadlock".
The PM's move to hold talks has angered some Brexiteers, with two ministers resigning over it.
Chris Heaton-Harris became the latest to quit on Wednesday afternoon, claiming his job at the Department for Exiting the European Union had become "irrelevant" if the government is not prepared to leave without a deal.
Wales Minister Nigel Adams also resigned his role on Wednesday morning, saying the government was at risk of failing to deliver "the Brexit people voted for".
The PM met Mr Corbyn before holding talks with Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford.
Ms Sturgeon - who also met Mr Corbyn earlier - said she had "good" and "open" conversations with both leaders, and while she believed Mr Corbyn would "drive a hard bargain", she was "still not entirely clear" where the prime minister was willing to compromise.
The SNP leader, who backs a further referendum and wants to remain in the EU, told reporters: "My concern is that in the rush to reach some compromise with the clock ticking, what will happen over the next few days... is a bad compromise will be reached."
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Green Party, Plaid Cymru and the Independent Group have also held a joint press conference, calling for any decision made by the leaders to be put to a public vote.
Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader, Liz Saville-Roberts, said: "People have the opportunity to have another shot at it, [in the Commons], to change their mind.
"Surely if that is how democracy works here, then democracy should go back to the people and people should have their say on whatever model comes forward."
The UK has until 12 April to propose a plan to the EU - which must be accepted by the bloc - or it will leave without a deal on that date.
In a statement on Tuesday night, the PM announced she wanted to meet Mr Corbyn to agree a way forward and put the plan to a vote in the Commons before 10 April - when the EU will hold an emergency summit on Brexit.
She insisted her withdrawal agreement - which was voted down last week - would remain part of the deal.
If there is no agreement between the two leaders, Mrs May said a number of options would be put to MPs "to determine which course to pursue".
In either event, Mrs May said she would ask the EU for a further short extension to hopefully get an agreement passed by Parliament before 22 May, so the UK does not have to take part in European elections.
Brexiteers were quick to express their anger at the prime minister's move.
But at Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May said she wanted to deliver Brexit "in an orderly way" and, to do that, "we have to get an agreement through the House".
And Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay blamed hard Brexiteers in the pro-Leave European Research Group for making the PM move to these talks.
Mrs May told MPs there were a "number of areas" where she agreed with Mr Corbyn in relation to Brexit, including ending free movement.
The Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the talks were "timely", and he hoped Mr Corbyn would "rise to the occasion" and "come up with a compromise plan" with the prime minister.
The PM's negotiated plan includes two sections - the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration.
The withdrawal agreement sets out how the UK would leave the EU, including the money the UK must pay to the EU as a settlement, details of the transition period, and citizens' rights - as well as the controversial Irish backstop that aims to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The political declaration focuses on the future relationship with the bloc and, unlike the withdrawal agreement, is not legally binding.
Mrs May said on Tuesday that any plan she agreed with Mr Corbyn "would have to agree the current withdrawal agreement", but she was ready to discuss the future relationship, i.e. the political declaration.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay also said that was the element Labour had expressed more concern about.
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said there was not much difference between the government's version of Brexit and Labour's version - but there did not seem to be "an enormous amount of confidence" a political consensus could be reached from either party.
The row comes after Mrs May had more than seven hours of talks with her cabinet on Tuesday.
Laura Kuenssberg said there was "rage and dispute" in the cabinet meeting, with "wildly varying accounts" of how many people were for and against different versions of Brexit extensions.
Labour has previously said it has five demand for supporting a Brexit deal, including protecting workers' rights and national security, and securing the same benefits of being in the single market the UK has currently.
Meanwhile, a cross-party group of MPs will attempt to push through legislation to stop a no-deal Brexit.
If agreed, the bill - presented by Labour MP Yvette Cooper - would require the PM by law to ask for an extension of Article 50.
MPs took part in a three-hour debate on a business motion to set out how proceedings would run throughout evening.
But a vote on an amendment to the motion, put forward by Labour's Hilary Benn, calling for time on Monday to hold more indicative votes, resulted in a draw - the first time such a result has happened in 39 years.
The Speaker John Bercow then used his casting vote to reject the amendment, meaning MPs will not have the indicative votes next week.
The overall business motion was passed, but by just one vote - with 312 MPs voting for it, and 311 against.
The SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, Greens and the Independent Group are putting forward an amendment to the bill to again call for a public vote on any outcome to become law.
The approximate timings of the day are:
Other key dates coming up include:

The prime minister has met Leo Varadkar in Dublin for talks focused on Brexit and the political deadlock in Northern Ireland.
Theresa May has now returned to the UK after having dinner with the taoiseach (Irish prime minister).
The talks in Farmleigh House lasted about two hours.
The meeting took place after Mr Varadkar met Northern Ireland's main political parties in Belfast on Friday.
Mrs May was accompanied in Dublin by the UK's Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins and her chief of staff Gavin Barwell.
The Irish government said the two leaders discussed "the latest Brexit developments" as well as the "ongoing political impasse in Northern Ireland".
The meeting comes after the EU said it will hold more talks with the UK to help the prime minister get a Brexit deal through the Commons.
Earlier, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox met his Irish counterpart after travelling to Dublin for talks.
Speaking in Belfast, Mr Varadkar said it was "not a day for negotiations" but it was an opportunity to "share perspectives".
He added that he was looking to restore confidence and trust with the prime minister during their meeting on Friday night.
By Jayne McCormack, BBC News NI political reporter
A Friday night in Dublin for Theresa May as she continues trying to find a way through for her Brexit deal.
The prime minister came face-to-face with her Irish counterpart over a fillet of beef with dauphinoise potatoes and green beans.
It's been a diplomatic whirlwind of a week as Mr Varadkar and Mrs May have bounced from Belfast to Brussels, both seeking backing for their respective positions.
It seems certain that the House of Commons will not pass any Brexit deal that includes the current backstop.
But the Irish government again today insisted it has to stay, with Mr Varadkar adding that he and the EU speak with one voice on this.
On Monday, UK-EU talks begin (again) in Brussels - but there's no sign of a compromise coming down the tracks.
Several cabinet ministers have told the BBC a no-deal Brexit could lead to a vote on Irish unification.
But Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster poured cold water on the prospect, saying that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement sets out "criteria for a border poll, and it hasn't been met - therefore it will not be called".
On Thursday, Mrs May met EU leaders in Brussels in a bid to secure changes to the Irish border backstop in the Brexit agreement.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker ruled out legally-binding changes to the backstop clause in the 585-page withdrawal document.
But he said the EU would be open to adding words to the non-binding future relations document that goes with the withdrawal agreement.
Other officials, including European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt, have said the backstop is "non-negotiable".
On Wednesday, Mr Varadkar held meetings with top EU officials about the backstop and Ireland's plans for a no-deal outcome.
He said that while he was "open to further discussions" with the UK government about post-Brexit relations, the legally-binding withdrawal agreement remained "the best deal possible".
Speaking in Belfast, Mr Varadkar said "time is running out" to agree a deal, but that work needed to continue in order to ensure agreement was reached.
"When it comes to Brexit this is a negotiation that has the UK on one side and EU on the other," he said.
"Any negotiation can only happen with Ireland and the EU working together."
It is the insurance policy to maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland unless and until another solution is found.
The UK and EU made a commitment to avoid physical barriers or checks on the border, if no UK-EU trade deal is agreed before the Brexit transition period ends.
Many people are concerned that the return of such checks would put the peace process at risk.
But there has been opposition to the backstop from the DUP and Brexiteer MPs, who believe its terms could keep the UK tied to EU rules in the long term.
Last month, MPs backed an amendment in Parliament calling for "alternative arrangements" to replace the backstop.
A group of Conservative MPs has held talks aimed at finding other Brexit options that would avoid a hard border.
The taoiseach travelled to Belfast to discuss the "ongoing political impasse", the Irish government said.
Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government for more than two years.
Mr Varadkar, whose trip came days after Theresa May met the parties at Stormont to discuss her bid to make changes to the withdrawal agreement, said he travelled north to "hear the perspective of the main parties".
DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party had a "wide-ranging" discussion with the taoiseach.
Mrs Foster also said some people were engaging in "project fear" with the Brexit negotiations.
The party's deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, said the backstop "is the problem", but would not specify which possible alternative his party is supporting.
She said he had given her an assurance he would remain firm with his stance.
The party also said they have been calling repeatedly for a border poll, and that they had urged Mr Varadkar to begin planning for one.
The Ulster Unionist Party's (UUP) Brexit spokesperson Steve Aiken said there needed to be "level-headed conversations" and that the UUP had told the taoiseach how concerned they are by the terms of the Irish border backstop.
The UUP said it is working on a number of alternative proposals it wants the UK and EU to consider.
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long said they had a very constructive and wide-ranging discussion with Mr Varadkar.
"It's fairly clear those this week suggesting there is some chance of the UK and Irish government doing a side deal without the EU are chasing after a no-way scenario," she said.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said that it had been a "good meeting" and added that he and the taoiseach are "on the same side of this argument".
"We have been watching with some dismay what has been going on in Westminster over the last couple of months," he said.
"I don't think anybody within the Irish government or the European Commission sees any opportunity for diluting the protection of citizens in Northern Ireland."
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and EU negotiator Michel Barnier will hold talks in Strasbourg on Monday, as the EU and UK Brexit negotiating teams discuss proposed changes to the deal.
British sources say the talks will include discussion of the legally-binding withdrawal agreement, the BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said.
An EU source said the further talks are an opportunity to listen to the UK's ideas.
Mrs May and Mr Juncker will meet again before the end of February, to review progress.
The prime minister is expected to put the deal to a vote in the Commons towards the end of February.
She said the plan must change if it is to win the support of MPs who urged her to seek "alternative arrangements" to the backstop when rejecting the deal last month.

Theresa May has met the chairman of an influential committee of backbench Tory MPs, Sir Graham Brady, amid calls for her to set a firm resignation date.
It followed a request from the 1922 Committee for "clarity" on the issue.
No 10 insisted the meeting was routine, but pressure is mounting on the PM, with local Tory associations confirming they will hold a vote of confidence in her leadership on 15 June.
Meanwhile, cross-party talks to break the Brexit deadlock resumed.
In March, Mrs May pledged to stand down if and when Parliament ratified her Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU - but she has not made it clear how long she intends to stay if no deal is reached.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but the deadline was pushed back to 31 October after Parliament was unable to agree a way forward.
Opinion is split even within the 1922 Committee - an elected body of MPs which represents backbenchers and oversees leadership contests.
Treasurer Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said Mrs May should announce a "road map" for her resignation after the European elections, set for 23 May.
But vice-chairman Charles Walker told BBC Radio 4's World at One there was a "blame displacement process" happening within the Conservative Party, laying it on Mrs May's shoulders.
"We all need to take personal responsibility for the fact that we are still in the EU," he said, adding that the idea a new prime minister would be able to sort Brexit out easily was "for the birds".
No confidence vote of Tory MPs: Theresa May won a leadership ballot by 200 to 117 votes on 12 December 2018. Under current party rules, there can't be another vote for a further year so the PM is technically safe until 12 December this year. Many MPs want to change the rules to allow an earlier contest but this would need to be agreed by the 1922 Committee.
No confidence vote in Parliament: The PM would have to resign if she lost a confidence vote in Parliament. Labour tried this manoeuvre in December but Tory MPs and their DUP allies backed the PM. Might some Tories now withhold their support if they think it will usher in a new leader rather than a general election?
Grassroots Tory revolt: Local Conservative associations seem to be turning against the PM, with one - Clwyd South - already passing a motion of no confidence in her. The National Conservative Convention's vote on 15 June is non-binding, though, so the PM could ignore it.
Cabinet revolt: Margaret Thatcher quit in 1990 after a number of ministers told her it was time to go. Could history repeat itself? There has been no sign of that so far and colleagues who want to succeed her - and there are many - may not want to be seen to be the ones wielding the knife or to risk sacrificing their own careers.
Quits of her own accord: The BBC's Norman Smith says there is no way the PM will "walk away" right now, but this could change in the aftermath of a "catastrophic" result in European elections.
Some Brexiteers are angry at Mrs May's efforts to find a compromise with Labour after her deal  with the EU was effectively rejected by MPs three times.
One leading Eurosceptic, Sir Bill Cash, told the Press Association "the time has come" for Mrs May to resign and she "needs to be given a date".
But Chancellor Philip Hammond defended the cross-party talks, suggesting the government had no other option.
He said the "most important thing" was to put in place arrangements to allow low-friction trade between the UK and the EU and "of course" the government should talk to Labour about it.
Pressure is building on Mrs May following last week's local election drubbing, in which the Conservatives lost 1,334 councillors in England.
In an unprecedented move, the National Conservative Convention - the most senior body within the voluntary party - is to hold a vote of confidence in her leadership next month.
It was triggered after 65 local Conservative associations said they had lost trust in the prime minister.
The prime minister has blamed the Brexit impasse for her party's terrible performance last week and urged Labour, which itself lost 82 seats, to compromise to agree a deal.
Will the cross-party talks get anywhere this week?
No 10 is trying to get Labour over the line by presenting the withdrawal agreement as a stepping stone - i.e. hold your nose for now and you can carve out your own deal if you win the next election.
Key to that is the promise of a "temporary customs union" - but Labour sources warn if that's all it is, that's what's already in the withdrawal agreement anyway (plus a few months) and doesn't add up to anything substantially new.
A senior government source says it IS possible, though, to see a way to a deal, but it is unlikely to be resolved this week - and their aim is not to create some kind of May-Corbyn Rose Garden moment (imagine!) but to set out a path to get the Withdrawal Bill to Commons with a fair wind.
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Theresa May has said a "new and improved" Brexit deal will be put to MPs when they vote on the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill in early June.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Mrs May said the bill will be a "bold offer".
Cabinet minister Rory Stewart told the BBC he hoped extra guarantees on workers' rights would enable "sensible" Labour MPs to support the government.
But Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would oppose the bill and it was "very difficult" to see it making progress.
While he would consider new proposals "very carefully", he said what was being talked about did not appear "fundamentally different" from what was already on the table.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said support in Scotland for staying in the EU had strengthened since the 2016 referendum - when 62% of voters backed Remain - and voters should send a clear message about this in Thursday's European elections.
Mrs May announced this week that MPs would vote on the bill - which would bring the withdrawal agreement into UK law - in the week beginning 3 June. If the bill is not passed, the default position is that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October without a deal.
Labour has said it will vote against the bill after talks with the government on trying to agree a compromise acceptable to its MPs broke down.
The bill risks failing to clear its first parliamentary hurdle, with many Conservative Brexiteers, as well as the DUP, SNP and Liberal Democrats, also opposed.
But in her Sunday Times piece, Mrs May said she will "not be simply asking MPs to think again" on the same deal that they have repeatedly rejected - but on "an improved packaged of measures that I believe can win new support".
The PM said she wanted MPs to consider the new deal "with fresh pairs of eyes - and to give it their support".
By Jonathan Blake, political correspondent
With any sales pitch that sounds like it's too good to be true, it's important to check the small print.
And so with Theresa May's promise of a "new and improved" Brexit deal - MPs will be wondering what exactly has changed.
A promise of a further referendum would win plenty of support from Labour but Downing Street's ruled that out.
Changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, including the Northern Ireland backstop, would sway the DUP and many of her own MPs, but the EU won't agree to that.
Additions on workers' rights and environmental protections might be enough to sway a few Labour votes.
And there may be - after a series of votes in Parliament - some movement on the UK's future customs relationship with the EU, but that is as likely to turn off Tory MPs as it is to woo the opposition.
Not for the first time there appear to be no good options for Theresa May.
But a "bold offer" is quite a promise to make, and if her deal has a hope of passing, she will somehow have to live up to it.
Rory Stewart, who is the international development secretary, suggested the two main parties were "about half an inch apart" on the three main issues under discussion - protecting employment rights and environmental standards and having a strong trading relationship with the EU and the rest of the world.
"None of us want to remain in the European Union, none of us want a no-deal Brexit which means logically there has to be a deal," he said.
"We're in the territory of a deal and where we need to focus is Parliament and particularly getting Labour votes across - maybe not Jeremy Corbyn's vote but there are many other moderate, sensible Labour MPs that we should be able to bring across."
While Labour "reserved the right" to consider new proposals, Mr Corbyn said the official talks were at an end and he would not hand ministers a "blank cheque"
Any agreement, he said, must include the scope for future governments to exceed the EU's employment and environmental standards not just keep pace with them.
On the issue of another referendum, he said Labour had kept the option on the table but any vote would have to be on a "credible" deal - which he suggested did not exist right now.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said he would be prepared to support the bill if the government agreed to give the public the final say on the terms of exit in a referendum.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr his party had discussed the "practicalities" of holding another public vote and it was possible before the 31 October deadline.
"We need a proper referendum that will come to a resolution on the issue, with remain on the ballot paper."
But Change UK spokesman Chuka Umunna said there was "simply not enough time" to hold a referendum before 31 October.
Given it was "almost certain" the Withdrawal Agreement Bill would be defeated, he said the only option was for the the UK to stop Brexit by revoking Article 50.
"We are facing a national emergency," he told Andrew Marr.
"What would be undemocratic would be imposing a no-deal Brexit on the British people that there is not a mandate for."
A cabinet meeting on Tuesday is to consider plans for another series of "indicative votes" by MPs to establish which proposals could command a majority.
Asked if he would accept anything backed by Parliament, which has so far failed to unite behind an alternative, Mr Corbyn said it was "very unlikely" to resolve the impasse.
"The government has to come up with legislation, through negotiation with the EU," he said.
"The idea that they can produce a bill at the beginning of June and get it through all its stages by the end of July is very very unlikely."
Brexit had been due to take place on 29 March. But the UK was given an extension until 31 October after MPs three times voted down the withdrawal agreement Mrs May had negotiated with the EU - by margins of 230, 149 and 58 votes.

Theresa May has played down reports that she could force MPs to choose between backing her deal or accepting a delay to EU withdrawal.
ITV News said chief UK negotiator Olly Robbins was overheard in a Brussels bar saying the EU was likely to allow an extension to the Brexit process.
The PM suggested MPs should not rely on "what someone said to someone else as overheard by someone else, in a bar".
"It is very clear the government's position is the same," she said.
"We triggered Article 50 (the process by which the UK leaves the EU)... that had a two-year time limit, that ends on the 29 March.
"We want to leave with a deal, and that's what we are working for."
The prime minister has said she will lift the requirement for a 21-day period before any vote to approve an international treaty, which means she could delay the final Brexit vote until days before the UK is due to leave the EU.
No 10 insists Mrs May still plans to hold a vote on a deal as soon as possible but Labour has accused her of "running down the clock" in an effort to "blackmail" MPs into backing her deal.
And European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted that "no news is not always good news", saying the EU was "still waiting for concrete, realistic proposals from London".
At Prime Minister's Questions, the SNP's Westminster Leader Ian Blackford urged Mrs May to rule out holding a "meaningful vote" on the deal with less than two weeks to go until Brexit.
"The prime minister must stop playing fast and loose - businesses are begging for certainty," he said.
Mrs May said the way to give businesses certainty was to back the deal she had negotiated with the EU.
But Mr Blackford told her she had been "rumbled by your own loose-lipped senior Brexit adviser". It was a reference to the ITV report that Mr Robbins was overheard saying he expected MPs to be presented with a choice of backing either a reworked withdrawal deal, or a potentially significant delay to Brexit.
MPs rejected the deal negotiated with the EU by a historic margin in January and the prime minister says she is seeking legally-binding changes to the controversial "backstop" - the "insurance policy" aimed at avoiding a return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 29 March, whether or not a deal has been approved by the Commons.
On Wednesday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pointed to the decision to scrap a no-deal Brexit contract with a ferry company that had no ships as a "spectacular failure" which was "a symptom of the utter shambles of this government and its no-deal preparations". He described the prime minister's Brexit strategy as "costly, shambolic and deliberately evasive".
Mrs May accused Mr Corbyn of preferring "ambiguity and playing politics to acting in the national interest" saying MPs did not know if he backed another referendum, a deal or Brexit.
"People used to say he was a conviction politician - not any more," she said.
The PM has promised to return to the Commons on 26 February with a further statement - triggering another debate and votes the following day - if a deal has not been secured by that date.
If a deal is agreed, MPs will have a second "meaningful vote", more than a month after Mrs May's deal was rejected in the first one.
No 10 has indicated it is willing to make concessions on protection for workers but Labour's push for a closer future customs relationship than Mrs May proposes, remains a sticking point.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer met Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington and Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay on Wednesday for what he described as "frank and serious discussions". But he said he was given "no suggestion" that the prime minister was "diluting red lines".
He added that he had "set out the Labour Party position, which is the two options: On one hand a close economic relationship, on the other a public vote". He said the battle for now is "to stop the prime minister running down the clock".
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has acknowledged that the prime minister cannot back Labour's Brexit proposals, and said he thinks Parliament is going to end up taking over the Brexit process.
Asked at a Politico event on Wednesday how Labour was going to achieve its plans, including staying in a customs union, because, "you know she can't back it... she'll split her party", Mr Donnell replied: "Yeah... yeah".
"I genuinely think we're now into hard-nosed negotiations between pockets of support in all the different politics," he said.
He accepted that the general election Labour has been calling for was "unlikely".
Labour has tabled an amendment for Thursday that would force the government to come back to Parliament by the end of the month to hold a substantive vote in the Commons on its plan for Brexit.
"Our amendment says there should be a hard stop on February 26. The prime minister must either put up her deal or allow Parliament to take control," said Sir Keir.
Mrs May told MPs on Tuesday she was discussing a number of options with the EU to secure legally-binding changes to the backstop, including replacing it with "alternative arrangements", putting a time limit on how long it can stay in place, or a unilateral exit clause so the UK can leave it at a time of its choosing.
MPs are due to vote again on the Brexit process on Thursday in what was expected to be a routine procedure acknowledging the government's efforts.
However, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted that Mrs May could be faced with another defeat, with influential Brexiteers from the European Research Group of Tory backbenchers indicating that they will refuse to back the government.
They are angry at being asked to support the PM's motion, which combines the view backed by a majority of MPs last month that the government should seek an alternative to the backstop with a separate move to stop Brexit happening without a formal deal.
The group's deputy chairman, Mark Francois, told the BBC members had "pleaded" with Downing Street to change the wording, which he said goes back on what she has previously told MPs.
"We cannot vote for this as it is currently configured because it rules out no deal and removes our negotiating leverage in Brussels."
Most MPs want to avoid a no-deal scenario, fearing chaos at ports and disruption to business. However, some Brexiteers have played down that prospect arguing it is an example of "Project Fear".
Meanwhile, Labour have highlighted a government risk assessment that says "precisely four" of about 40 documents designed to replicate the existing 40 EU free trade agreements have been signed.
The party's trade spokesman Barry Gardiner said of the agreements, which were promised to be ready immediately after Brexit: "Nine are off-track, 19 significantly off-track, four are not possible to be completed by March 2019 and two are not even being negotiated."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox responded: "A number of negotiations are at an advanced stage. As with all international negotiations, and indeed any negotiations, they will go down to the wire."

Theresa May and her cabinet are looking for ways to bring her EU withdrawal agreement back to the Commons for a fourth attempt at winning MPs' backing.
The PM said the UK would need "an alternative way forward" after her plan was defeated by 58 votes on Friday.
MPs from all parties will test support for other options during a second round of "indicative votes" on Monday.
However, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said the government did not support any of those options.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to say whether his party would offer an option to remain in the EU during these votes, but said the obvious choice was "a good economic relationship with Europe".
The latest vote came on the day the UK was supposed to leave the European Union: 29 March. The date was postponed to allow Mrs May more time to find a Brexit solution.
Friday's defeat was the third time MPs have rejected her withdrawal agreement - the first vote was lost by 230 votes, the second by 149.
The government has so far failed to win over 34 Conservative rebels, including both Remainers as well as Tory Brexiteers, who say the deal still leaves the UK too closely aligned to Europe.
Northern Ireland's DUP - which has propped up Mrs May's minority government - also continues to oppose the deal.
But a No 10 source indicated the prime minister would continue to seek support in the Commons and insisted efforts were "going in the right direction".
MPs will hold another set of non-binding votes on various Brexit options in the Commons on Monday.
None of MPs' eight proposed Brexit options secured a majority in the last round of "indicative votes" on 27 March, but the options which received the most votes were a customs union with the EU or a referendum on any deal.
The customs union allows businesses to move goods around the EU without checks or charges. Continued membership would bar the UK from striking independent trade deals after Brexit.
Brandon Lewis told Radio 4's Today programme: "The government's position is very clear - we do not support these options. The government's position is we believe the best way to respect the referendum is to deliver the deal."
He said staying in a customs union with the EU would go against the result of the referendum and the Conservatives' election manifesto.
However, Mr Corbyn said Labour would propose a deal that did involve a customs union with the EU - to protect the issue of avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland.
He said: "I'm convinced at that after spending a lot of time meeting with and talking to officials in Europe."
Nicky Morgan, a former cabinet minister and Tory MP, said one way to end the Brexit deadlock could be a government of national unity - which is a cabinet made up of different parties.
She told Today: "There have been periods in our history when we have had national unity governments or a coalition for a very specific issue."
There is every chance that the prime minister will again - with routes outside the normal boundaries - try to make a version of her Brexit deal the end result of all of this.
Despite a third defeat, despite the embarrassment of repeated losses, don't imagine that she is ready to say a permanent farewell to the compromise deal she brokered with the EU or, straightaway, to her time in office.
There is still a belief in the heart of government that there could be a way round, perhaps to include the prime minister's agreed treaty as one of the options that is subject to a series of votes that will be put in front of the Commons next week.
The aspiration, strange as it sounds, for some time now has been to prove to MPs that the deal is the least worst of all the options...
Earlier this month, EU leaders gave the PM until 12 April to come up with a Brexit solution; if her deal had made it through Parliament on Friday that date would have been pushed back to 22 May to allow time to pass the necessary legislation.
Since the deal was rejected, Mrs May now has until 12 April to seek a longer extension to avoid the UK leaving without a deal.
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said she remained "confident" the government could deliver Brexit, adding that "we have to keep trying".
Tory Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen said leaving the EU without a deal was the best option on the table.
"No deal is the only way we're going to get out, fulfilling our manifesto pledges and the commitment we made to the British people after the referendum," he said.
Mrs May said it was "almost certain" there would have to be an extended delay to Brexit to allow the UK to take part in the European elections at the end of May if her deal does not go through.
But Downing Street later said this was not an "inevitability".
The withdrawal agreement is the part of the Brexit deal Mrs May struck with Brussels which sets out how much money the UK must pay to the EU as a settlement, details of the transition period, and the Irish backstop arrangements.
If Mrs May wants to hold another vote on the deal in Parliament, it has to comply with Commons Speaker John Bercow's ruling that it can only be brought back with "substantial" changes.
This is why the government separated the withdrawal agreement from the political declaration - on the future relationship with the EU - for Friday's vote.
Meanwhile, Leave voters registered their anger at the latest vote rejection with a protest at Westminster.
Thousands gathered outside Parliament to protest against the delay, bringing traffic to a standstill.
Meanwhile Conservative former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who has campaigned for a further referendum on the deal, is facing deselection after losing a vote of no-confidence in his Beaconsfield constituency.
The prominent Remainer, who remains an MP for the time being, clashed with his local Conservative Party over Brexit.
Despite all the drama, the money and time spent by EU leaders on Brexit (summits, dedicated governmental departments, no-deal planning) and all the hard, hard graft put in by the EU and UK negotiating teams, Europe's leaders are asking themselves what there is to show for it all.
Ongoing Brexit divisions in Parliament, in government and in Theresa May's cabinet were on screaming technicolour display again last week.
EU leaders used to use the threat of a no-deal Brexit as a negotiating tactic (as did the UK). They now believe it to be a very real prospect.
That has led to a number of countries - notably France - questioning the logic of delaying Brexit for much longer.
They wonder if the UK will ever unite around a Brexit Way Forward - be it a softer Brexit, no deal or no Brexit.
Would a Brexit extension, allowing for a general election or a second referendum, really settle the issue, they ask?
Read Katya's blog in full

Theresa May has promised MPs a final, decisive vote on her Brexit deal with the EU - but not until she has secured changes to the Irish backstop clause.
The PM said she needed "some time" to get the changes she believes MPs want.
She promised to update MPs again on 26 February and, if she had not got a new deal by then, to give them a say on the next steps in non-binding votes.
Jeremy Corbyn accused her of "running down the clock" in an effort to "blackmail" MPs into backing her deal.
Britain is currently leaving the EU on 29 March, with or without a deal.
Labour claims Mrs May is planning to delay the final, binding vote on the withdrawal deal she has agreed with the EU until the last possible moment, so that MPs will be faced with a stark choice between her deal and no deal.
Labour and some Conservative MPs had been planning to have a fresh go at putting alternatives to Mrs May's deal to the vote on Thursday, in an effort to take control of the Brexit process.
But BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg said Mrs May's announcement of returning to update MPs on 26 February and then more votes on 27 February - if she has still not got a final deal - meant Thursday's expected "high noon" for the prime minister had probably been postponed.
MPs are still expected to debate and vote on amendments to the Brexit deal on Thursday, however, although it will not be known until later what those amendments are likely to be.
Mrs May promised to give MPs a "stronger and clearer role" in the next steps on Brexit and said she would return to the Commons for a meaningful vote on her deal "when we achieve the progress we need".
The PM said she was discussing a number of options with the EU to secure legally-binding changes to the backstop: Replacing it with "alternative arrangements", putting a time limit on how long it can stay in place or a unilateral exit clause so the UK can leave it at a time of its choosing.
The backstop arrangement is the "insurance" policy in Mrs May's deal to avoid a return to border checks on the island of Ireland.
The EU has reiterated it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement.
Mrs May said talks were at a "crucial stage", but she still believed it was possible to get a deal MPs could support.
"We now all need to hold our nerve to get the changes this House requires and deliver Brexit on time," Mrs May told the Commons.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said MPs were being "blackmailed into supporting a deeply flawed deal", calling it "an irresponsible act".
By Daniel Kraemer, BBC Westminster
The prime minister's critics say she is just pretending to try to get changes to the deal she signed with the EU so she can push the final vote on it right down to the wire.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer says what she actually intends to do is return to Parliament after the 21-22 March European Council summit, the week before Brexit, and offer MPs a "binary choice" - her deal or no deal.
Holding such a vote a few days before Britain leaves the EU might scare enough Labour MPs worried about a no-deal Brexit into backing the prime minister to get it through.
The government insists this is not its strategy and it will hold a "meaningful vote" as soon as it gets the changes to the deal it is seeking from Brussels.
Mr Corbyn said Mrs May was "merely engaged in the pretence of working across Parliament to find solutions", but she has "not indicated she will move one iota" on her red lines.
He told MPs: "We were promised a meaningful vote on a deal in December, it didn't happen. We were told to prepare for a further meaningful vote this week after the prime minister again promised to secure significant and legally binding changes to the backstop and that hasn't happened.
"Now the prime minister comes before the House with more excuses and more delays."
The SNP's leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, was reprimanded by Commons Speaker John Bercow for shouting "liar" at the prime minister as she was making her statement.
Mr Blackford agreed to withdraw his remark "in deference" to the Speaker, but did not apologise to Mrs May. MPs are banned by Commons rules from calling other MPs liars in the chamber.
He said Mrs May was "lost in a Brexit fantasy", saying: "We're 45 days from Scotland being dragged out of the European Union against our will - 45 days from economic catastrophe."
Conservative MP Phillip Lee, who campaigns for another EU referendum, told the BBC he expected to see more ministerial resignations at the end of the month, when some of his colleagues "are going to have to make a stand and say: 'I'm sorry this is not acceptable'".
He said the promise of a further Commons vote on 27 February had taken the "fizz" out of Thursday's vote, which meant that the end of the month would "see some action from Conservatives in government".
Mrs May also set out plans to lift a requirement for a 21-day delay before any vote to approve an international treaty, in order to get a Brexit deal ratified in time for 29 March.
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve warned that time was running short for the ratification of a deal under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act.
Mrs May said:  "In most circumstances, that period may be important in order for this House to have an opportunity to study that agreement."
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has, meanwhile, told senior European Parliament members that the UK requires legally-binding changes to the Irish backstop, but kept open the idea that these could be achieved without rewriting the text of the withdrawal agreement.
On a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Barclay said he would continue working with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and he will call him after Thursday's Commons votes.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt met French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau earlier, in Paris.
Following the meetings, a French Foreign ministry statement said France "supports the planned withdrawal agreement" and added that it was "up to the British authorities to clarify their intentions".

Theresa May has urged Jeremy Corbyn to discuss his Brexit plans with her, after he said he would not take part in talks until "no deal" was ruled out.
In a letter to the Labour leader, the PM wrote that ruling out no deal was an "impossible condition" as it was not within the government's power to do it.
She has been meeting other leaders to try to find a compromise on Brexit after her deal was rejected by MPs.
Earlier, Mr Corbyn dismissed the talks as a "stunt".
The PM will publish a new plan on Monday with a full debate and key vote scheduled for Tuesday, 29 January.
Senior politicians on all sides have also been meeting with cabinet ministers to try to find a way forward.
But Mr Corbyn, the leader of the opposition, declined to take part, telling Mrs May to "ditch the red lines" and "get serious about proposals for the future".
In a speech in Hastings Mr Corbyn said: "With no-deal on the table, the prime minister will enter into phony talks just to run down the clock and try to blackmail MPs to vote through her botched deal on a second attempt by threatening the country with the chaos that no-deal would bring."
Mr Corbyn said the "best outcome" was to call a general election to "break the deadlock".
The Labour leader has emailed Labour MPs urging them not to talk to Mrs May until she has ruled out a no-deal Brexit.
His stance has come under fire from Labour MP Mike Gapes, a longstanding critic of Mr Corbyn, who told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "Jeremy Corbyn has been quite happy in the past to talk to Hamas, Hezobollah... I find it extraordinary he's not prepared to go and meet the prime minister."
In her reply, Mrs May said: "I note that you have said that 'ruling out' no deal is a precondition before we can meet, but that is an impossible condition because it is not within the Government's power to rule out no deal.
"Let me explain why. Under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and the Withdrawal Act 2018, we will leave the EU without a deal on 29 March unless Parliament either agrees a deal with the EU or the UK revokes article 50 and chooses to stay in the EU permanently.
"So there are two way to avoid no deal: either vote for a deal, in particular a Withdrawal Agreement, that has been agreed with the EU, or to revoke Article 50 and overturn the referendum result.
"I believe it would be wrong to overturn the referendum result."
She wrote that she would be "happy" to discuss Mr Corbyn's proposals.
On Wednesday night, speaking outside Downing Street after talks with the Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru, Mrs May called on MPs to "put self-interest aside".
"It will not be an easy task, but MPs know they have a duty to act in the national interest, reach a consensus and get this done," she said.
Separately, Downing Street said the government has produced a "very short paper setting out the factual detail on the number of months required" to hold another EU referendum, which suggests it would take "in excess of a year".
The point of the document was to "inform the expected discussion" Mrs May was likely to have with MPs who back another public vote, government sources say.
The prime minister is holding meetings with various party leaders as well as Tory Brexiteers and the DUP - both of whom rejected her withdrawal deal earlier this week - on Thursday.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay are also holding talks with senior opposition politicians, including Labour MPs Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper.
The SNP's Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, said that the extension of Article 50 - the two year mechanism that means the UK leaves the EU on 29 March - the ruling out of a no-deal Brexit, and the option of a second EU referendum would have to form the basis of future discussions.
Party leader and Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that the talks were just "time wasting" if the prime minister was not prepared to consider another referendum, rule out a no-deal Brexit or to extend Article 50.
Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts, said they were "committed to finding a real solution" but "that means taking a no deal Brexit off the table and a People's Vote on our European future".
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, who wants a referendum, said he was encouraged by Mrs May's "willingness to talk about these issues in detail".
Following her meeting on Thursday, Green MP Caroline Lucas said the PM refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
"I repeatedly urged her again and again to take 'no deal' off the table because I think it completely skews the talks because you know that cliff edge is there," she said.
Mrs May was also resisting the option of extending Article 50, Ms Lucas said.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said the prime minister was in "listening mode" and there was optimism that a Brexit deal could still be reached.
She said she made a "clear ask" in relation to the Irish backstop, urging Mrs May to address it "in a satisfactory way".
When asked what the government was willing to compromise on, Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis refused to give specifics.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Mrs May would not consider a customs union and that he did not believe a new referendum was "the right way to go".
Meetings, on their own, are not a Plan B. Conversations, are not by themselves, compromises.
To get any deal done where there are such clashing views all around, it requires give and take. It feels like a political lifetime since there has been a fundamental dispute in the cabinet, in the Tory party and across Parliament. Theresa May has stubbornly, although understandably, tried to plot a middle course.
But that has failed so spectacularly at this stage. Ultimately she may well be left with the same dilemma of which way to tack.
Read full article.
EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has suggested that Brussels was ready to respond to any changes in Mrs May's "red lines", saying: "If they change, we'll change."
He said getting an agreement was "in everybody's interest" and that "something has to change" if it is to be secured.
The prime minister survived a vote of no confidence in her government by 325 to 306 votes - a margin of 19 - thanks to the backing of the 10 members of the DUP. Had they switched allegiance, the government would have lost by one vote.
Click here if you cannot see the look-up tool. Data from Commons Votes Services.
This came after MPs voted against Mrs May's plans for Brexit on Tuesday night by a historic margin when it was rejected by 230 votes -  the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
Former prime minister Tony Blair told BBC Radio 4's Today that an extension to Article 50 was "inevitable" at this point and warned a no-deal Brexit would do "profound damage" to the UK's economy.
There remains deep division among Mrs May's own MPs - including within her cabinet - about possible compromises, such as the option of staying in a customs union.
The Times newspaper claimed Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom and other cabinet Brexiteers want Mrs May to present MPs with a "Plan B" on Monday that would include a promise to impose a time-limit on the Northern Irish backstop - the fallback plan to avoid any return to physical border checks between the country and Ireland - and to negotiate a Canada-style free trade deal.
And the Telegraph reported it had seen a leaked transcript of a conference call in which Chancellor Philip Hammond told business leaders that a no-deal Brexit could be "taken off the table".
Meanwhile, the SNP's Ian Blackford has also written to Mr Corbyn, along with other opposition leaders, to urge him to back another referendum as Labour's official position.
And, in a letter published in the Times newspaper, more than 170 leading business figures called for Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn to back another referendum on withdrawal from the European Union "to stop us crashing out of the EU with no deal at all".
Addressing a Leave Means Leave gathering in Westminster on Thursday evening, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said Brexiteers should "prepare" and "organise" for the possibility of a another referendum.
"If I have to fight again against this lot... it's no more Mr Nice Guy," he said.

The PM has rejected calls to quit over her handling of Brexit, saying it is "not an issue about me".
Theresa May was replying to Tory Brexiteer Andrea Jenkyns, who said she had "failed to deliver on her promises" and had lost public trust.
Calls have been growing for the prime minister to name an exit date.
The PM's spokesman said she had already promised to leave after delivering the first stage of Brexit and was sticking to that "generous and bold offer".
Mrs May has agreed to address a meeting of the 1922 Committee - an elected body of Tory MPs which represents backbenchers and oversees leadership contests - next week.
Its chairman, Sir Graham Brady, told the BBC he had had two "very good meetings" with the PM, organised to raise concerns about her leadership.
He said it was clear she "wishes and is determined to do her best to secure our departure [from the EU]", but the 1922's executive would have the opportunity after next week's meeting "to decide if the assurances they have had [from her] are sufficient or not".
Sir Graham also said he believed the PM would ask the Commons to vote again on the terms of the UK's exit before elections to the European Parliament take place on 23 May.
The withdrawal agreement has effectively been rejected by MPs three times already.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg says the prime minister has bought herself a bit more time.
In March, Mrs May pledged to stand down if and when Parliament ratified her Brexit withdrawal agreement, but she has not made it clear how long she intends to stay if no deal is reached.
Pressure has grown on her since the Tories' local election drubbing last week, and there have been warnings they face a meltdown in elections to the European Parliament too.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May said she was "very sorry" that so many councillors - 1,300, in fact - lost their seats.
But she told Ms Jenkyns the resolution to the Brexit crisis was "not an issue about me or her" - and if it was up to the prime minister, the UK would have already left the EU.
Much of the anger in the parliamentary party is focusing on Mrs May's efforts to find a Brexit compromise with Labour.
Further pressure is also coming from the grassroots, with local Tory associations confirming they will hold a vote of confidence in her leadership on 15 June.
Analysis: By BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake
Sometimes it can seem like Theresa May is surrounded by an invisible force field, deflecting blows from all directions.
Political flaming asteroids which might've seen off a prime minister in simpler times lie smouldering on the floor as she doggedly pushes on.
A failed snap election, no confidence votes, defeat after defeat in Parliament have all left her standing somehow.
But that survival is down in no small part to factors beyond her control; nobody wanting to inherit the mess, Tories terrified of losing power to Labour, and a party increasingly ill at ease with itself.
But if something shifts then her time and her luck may run out.
A candidate to replace her could decide it's now or never, her own MPs may run out of patience entirely or the European election results may simply be too bad to bear.
Holding her hands up and walking away would not be in Theresa May's nature, but just as events have shaped her survival, they may yet lead to her demise.
The 1922 has previously rejected calls to re-write its rules to bring forward another confidence vote in the PM's leadership, meaning that at the moment, the earliest it can happen is in mid-December.
Eurosceptic Conservative MP Peter Bone said "the majority" of Tory MPs "acknowledge she needs to go and needs to go soon".
Tory Brexiteer Sheryll Murray tweeted that she believed the PM "should resign immediately".
Former minister Robert Halfon said Mrs May had to set out a "proper timetable" for departure, but it had to be done in a "dignified way".
Some Conservatives, though, think she should be allowed to stay until the autumn, if necessary, to deliver the UK's exit from the EU.
Mel Stride, financial secretary to the Treasury, said: "At end of the day - if you change the pilot, you are not going to change the weather."
Discussions with Labour could still yield a way forward, he said - although as yet, the talks have not borne fruit.
Negotiations finished on Wednesday without an agreement between the two sides, but Downing Street said there will be more talks "over the coming days".
Conservative MPs have already begun to voice their intentions to stand in a Tory leadership contest once Mrs May leaves, including new International Development Secretary Rory Stewart.
Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom is the latest to indicate an interest, saying she is "seriously considering" standing for a second time - she ran in 2016, but pulled out to give Mrs May a clear run at the job.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but the deadline was pushed back to 31 October after Parliament was unable to agree a way forward.
No confidence vote of Tory MPs: Theresa May won a leadership ballot by 200 to 117 votes on 12 December 2018. Under current party rules, there can't be another vote for a further year so the PM is technically safe until 12 December this year. Many MPs want to change the rules to allow an earlier contest but this would need to be agreed by the 1922 Committee.
No confidence vote in Parliament: The PM would have to resign if she lost a confidence vote in Parliament. Labour tried this manoeuvre in December but Tory MPs and their DUP allies backed the PM. Might some Tories now withhold their support if they think it will usher in a new leader rather than a general election?
Grassroots Tory revolt: Local Conservative associations seem to be turning against the PM, with one - Clwyd South - already passing a motion of no confidence in her. The National Conservative Convention's vote on 15 June is non-binding, though, so the PM could ignore it.
Cabinet revolt: Margaret Thatcher quit in 1990 after a number of ministers told her it was time to go. Could history repeat itself? There has been no sign of that so far and colleagues who want to succeed her - and there are many - may not want to be seen to be the ones wielding the knife or to risk sacrificing their own careers.
Quits of her own accord: The BBC's Norman Smith says there is no way the PM will "walk away" right now, but this could change in the aftermath of a "catastrophic" result in European elections.

Theresa May has asked officials to draw up "revised proposals" for post-Brexit customs arrangements after a key meeting with her most senior ministers.
The Brexit sub committee met to try to agree on a new model to replace the UK's membership of the customs union.
One of the government's preferred options - a "customs partnership" - has faced heavy criticism from Brexiteers.
A succession of senior ministers challenged her over this plan in Wednesday's meeting.
Two separate sources have told the BBC that a narrow majority of ministers expressed fears about the proposal - what some have described as "killing" it.
But Downing Street denied this, saying the meeting acknowledged there were "challenges" to the existing proposals but that both the options put forward so far by the UK are still on the table.
Mrs May has now asked for more work to be done on both options.
Brexit Secretary David Davis told MPs on Thursday that both options had merits and both had drawbacks "which is why we are taking more time over them".
All EU members are part of the customs union, within which there are no internal tariffs (taxes) on goods transported between them. There is also a common tariff agreed on goods entering from outside.
The UK government has said it is leaving the EU customs union so that it can strike its own trade deals around the world, something it cannot do as a member.
This means the UK and the EU will have to agree a new arrangement for what happens at their border post-Brexit.
The UK, which put forward two alternative proposals last year, has yet to confirm its favoured model.
It is under pressure to make progress on the issue before next month's EU summit.
The EU does not appear to be keen on either option.
Earlier Mrs May told MPs there were "a number of ways" to deliver Britain's objectives on customs arrangements after Brexit.
She says the final arrangement must avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic - which is part of the EU - and that a customs border down the Irish Sea would be unacceptable.
On the eve of the Brexit cabinet meeting, Brexiteers urged Mrs May to abandon the partnership option, presenting a 30-page dossier claiming it would make meaningful trade deals "impossible" to forge and render the UK's International Trade Department "obsolete".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Theresa May therefore asked for more work to be done, and for revised proposals to be produced. Essentially, she told colleagues and officials to go away and come back with better ideas.
You can make your own judgement on whether that is a good thing or not. But it does mean that as things stand, the UK government, nearly two years after the referendum, does not have an agreed position on how customs will work after Brexit that has the full backing of the cabinet - let alone Parliament - and let alone the country or the rest of the EU.
That means too that the government is saying to Brussels, where demands are building for more detail: "We're still not quite ready to talk."
Three separate sources have also told me that six ministers out of the 11 on the committee expressed fears about the viability of the customs partnership - yes, the "unicorn" proposal we've discussed here before.
Those ministers included Gavin Williamson and Sajid Javid, who were both Remainers during the referendum, but neither of whom as things stand were ready to back what's thought to be the PM's preferred option.
Read the rest of Laura's blog

Theresa May has said progress has been made in talks about changes to the Brexit deal that could win MPs' backing but admitted "time is of the essence".
The PM met the EU's Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels to discuss legally-binding guarantees over the Irish border.
Earlier, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said "small but important" changes to the backstop would allay MPs' concerns it could be trapped in a customs union.
But Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the chances of a no-deal exit had risen.
Speaking on ITV's Peston show, Mr Javid said it was "fair to say that in the past few weeks the probability of a no-deal Brexit has gone up".
The prime minister is trying to renegotiate the backstop - the insurance policy to prevent the return of physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
It is the most contentious part of the withdrawal agreement Mrs May agreed with the EU in November, which was rejected by Parliament by a large margin last month.
Critics fear the backstop - which could be activated if the two sides do not settle their future partnership by the end of 2020 and choose not to extend the transition period - would leave the UK tied to a customs union indefinitely and see Northern Ireland treated differently.
The EU has consistently said it will not reopen discussions over the withdrawal agreement agreed in November.
Mrs May said the two sides had made progress and that she had made it clear MPs would only accept guarantees that had similar legal force to the agreement.
"We have agreed that work to find a solution will continue at pace, time is of the essence and it is in both our interests that when the UK leaves the EU it does so in an orderly way," she said.
The EU said the discussions, which are also focusing on the use of technology, were constructive but the timing was "tight".
On a visit to Germany earlier, Mr Hunt warned the greatest threat to Brexit was "defeatism" over getting a deal through Parliament.
Speaking after talks with his German counterpart in Berlin, Mr Hunt said it would be a "disaster" for both sides if the UK left the EU without a negotiated agreement on 29 March.
But he said the risk of "paralysis" in the process was equally damaging to business.
Amid speculation that Mrs May could put the deal to Parliament again as soon as next week, Mr Hunt said the role of Attorney General Geoffrey Cox would be vital in the unfolding process.
Mr Cox, who will also be in Brussels for talks later this week, told MPs in December that although the agreement stipulated the backstop would be temporary and only apply until the two sides settled their future relationship, there was no way for the UK to leave it without the approval of EU member states.
MPs gave their backing for Mrs May to renegotiate the policy in a vote earlier this month although many remain unconvinced that the EU can be forced to change its position.
But Mr Hunt said the government was confident, on the basis of discussions with Conservatives and some Labour MPs, that if the issue was resolved then the deal would pass.
"The critical thing is that Geoffrey Cox needs to be able to change his advice to Parliament," he said.
"The current text uses the word temporary to describe the backstop, so what we need to do is put some flesh on the bone of what temporary actually means," he said.
"I think... with political will and conviction we can find a way to solve that problem."

Theresa May says there is a "shared determination" among EU leaders to solve the Irish border problem preventing MPs from backing her deal.
She was speaking after meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
The prime minister says there can be no EU withdrawal deal without a backstop plan for the Irish border.
But she said she was seeking guarantees that it would be "only temporary" to address the concerns of her own MPs.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled Mrs May the "runaway prime minister" and said her trip was a "waste of time and public money".
The prime minister is now in Brussels for meetings with top EU officials Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker,
Mr Tusk, President of the European Council, tweeted: "Long and frank discussion with PM Theresa May ahead of Brexit summit. Clear that EU27 wants to help. The question is how."
Angela Merkel said the deal could not be re-negotiated but she was still optimistic a solution to the Irish border issue could be found.
Critics object to the backstop - a temporary customs arrangement designed to prevent the need for checkpoints at the Irish border if a long-term solution that avoids them cannot be agreed - because it imposes different regulations in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
They also object to the fact that under the terms of the withdrawal agreement, the UK can not exit the backstop without the EU agreeing.
After aborting Tuesday's planned vote on the deal, Mrs May is believed to be considering how to give the UK Parliament a vote on whether to enter the backstop - and an annual vote on whether the country should remain in it.
Ministers have suggested this could be done in an "addendum" to the withdrawal agreement, without changing the main text of it.
Speaking in Brussels, Mrs May said a backstop was "a necessary guarantee for the people of Northern Ireland".
"Whatever relationship you want with Europe in the future, there's no deal available that doesn't have a backstop within it.
"But we don't want the backstop to be used and if it is, we want to be certain that it is only temporary. And it is those assurances that I will be seeking from fellow leaders over the coming days."
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who will welcome Mrs May to Dublin on Wednesday, said he hoped to reassure the UK without changing the fundamental substance of the withdrawal deal, including the backstop.
"Our approach is that we have a deal on the table," he told the Irish Parliament. "Our objective is to get the deal ratified by the House of Commons.
MPs have to give the go-ahead for Mrs May's deal if it is to come into effect when the UK leaves the EU on 29 March.
Downing Street has said a Commons vote will be held on the deal before 21 January and Brexit minister Robin Walker told MPs he hoped it "would be sooner than that".
Mrs Leadsom earlier suggested talks with the EU could go right down to the wire, saying: "The EU is always in a position where it negotiates at the last possible moment."
It is not clear if any changes obtained would be enough to win over Conservative Brexiteers and the Democratic Unionist Party, whose votes Mrs May relies on to win key votes in the Commons, who have called for the entire backstop plan to be dropped.
The prime minister's U-turn sparked anger among MPs on all sides, who had spent three days debating the deal and had been promised the final say on it on Tuesday.
Buzzfeed claimed Mrs May had informed some EU leaders about her plan to abandon the vote on Sunday - well before she told the cabinet.
Speaking during an emergency debate in the Commons on the government's handling of the aborted Brexit vote, Mr Corbyn said such reports were "disturbing" and urged Mrs May to "admit her deal is dead".
"What is she doing in Europe? This runaway prime minister is not even seeking to negotiate. She confirmed she is only seeking reassurances. Our prime minister is traipsing round the continent in pursuit of warm words."
Labour late won a non-binding vote criticising the government's handling of the issue by 299 to zero after Conservative MPs chose not to take part.
Meanwhile, more backbench Tory MPs are considering submitting letters of no confidence in Theresa May in the hope of toppling her and forcing a Tory leadership contest. If she was no longer Conservative Party leader she would also be expected to step down as prime minister.
So far 26 MPs have publicly said they have written such letters - 48 of them are needed to trigger a vote.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said senior Tories were sounding "more confident" that the threshold had been reached.
Separately, Labour is coming under pressure from the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party to call a vote of no confidence among all MPs to try and bring down Theresa May's government - something that can, effectively, only be done by the main opposition party.
The Labour leader told MPs he had no confidence in the government but his party needed "to do the appropriate thing at the appropriate time" if it was to succeed in bringing it down.
By BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley
Parliament feels like a confused and sometimes angry place today. As Theresa May fights for further assurances on the backstop, many are unconvinced. Even among Conservatives loyal to her, the mood is bleak.
One Tory MP who supported the PM's deal told me they didn't have a clue what was happening now. "We're rewriting the pantomime," they added.  Another pondered: "The Conservatives made this muddle - who is going to fix it?" One minister concluded things were at "breaking point".
Brexiteers speak openly of exasperation.
One source, who has been highly critical of the plan but not the PM, told me many were changing their minds now; Mrs May is now seen as the problem.  It's not the first time we've heard such claims - and in the past they haven't materialised.
But this person said a number of Brexit backers who have resisted pressure to send in letters calling for a vote of no confidence in the PM as Tory leader have now changed their minds.
"And it's not just the usual suspects," they added.

Theresa May has insisted the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK will come to an end with Brexit.
As the government published new details of its position, the PM said the UK would "take back control of our laws".
But critics say it will be impossible to avoid European judges having a role in enforcing new agreements drawn up with the EU.
Ministers say the two sides will keep "half an eye" on each other's rulings.
The ECJ is in charge of ensuring member states abide by EU law.
Its rulings are binding on all member states, and it also settles disputes between countries and EU institutions.
In its new policy paper, the government:
The promise to end "direct jurisdiction" in recent policy papers - a phrase not used by Mrs May - has raised questions about what "indirect" jurisdiction the EU court could be left with.
In the latest publication, about how to enforce disputes after Brexit, the government has outlined several models used by other countries that it says show there is no need for the ECJ to be the final arbiter.
But some of these involve the ECJ having an influence on the outcome of disputes, for example by interpreting EU law in a way that binds a disputes panel, or for its past rulings to be taken into account.
Today's paper does not pin the government's colours to any particular mast.
It throws out a number of possible models for how a trade agreement with the EU would work in terms of resolving disputes.
All of the models make it clear that the ECJ will no longer have sole jurisdiction over disputes.
The key question is how much influence the ECJ would retain under a bilateral agreement with the UK.
The EU will not sign up to an agreement which allows to UK to depart from EU law to the UK's advantage and the EU's disadvantage on things like state aid to companies, or emissions standards.
It will want a level playing field in trade and that will mean a lot of EU law as part of the agreement.
The reality is that the more closely the Brexit trade agreement replicates EU law, the greater the influence of the ECJ will be.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government was "clearly backtracking on its earlier red lines and saying there has to be some form of dispute resolution through some form of judicial process".
He added: "We have said that all along."
Asked if Labour would vote against the government's key piece of Brexit legislation, the repeal bill, when MPs returned from their summer break, Mr Corbyn said: "We will make that decision just before the vote."
The pro-EU Open Britain campaign group said the government's policy paper was a "climbdown camouflaged in jingoistic rhetoric".
The group called it "frustratingly vague", adding that in almost every example it provides, the ECJ would have "substantial direct or indirect power over the proposed new relationship between Britain and the EU".
The government said it was not committing to following any of the arrangements set out, ruling out an "off the shelf" model.
And sources played down the significance of the word "direct", saying it meant ECJ rulings would no longer automatically apply to the UK and that the court would no longer be able to strike down domestic UK laws.
Asked about her government's position, Mrs May said: "What we will be able to do is to make our own laws - Parliament will make our laws - it is British judges that will interpret those laws, and it will be the British Supreme Court that will be the ultimate arbiter of those laws."
Earlier Justice Minister Dominic Raab said there would be "divergence" between UK and EU case law after Brexit, adding: "It is precisely because there will be that divergence as we take back control that it makes sense for the UK to keep half an eye on the case law of the EU, and for the EU to keep half an eye on the case law of the UK."
In response, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's lead negotiator, tweeted that the ECJ had to "keep both eyes open" to protect citizens' rights.
The ECJ's remit extends into many of the areas where the UK is hoping to draw up new arrangements with the EU, including trade and citizens' rights.
Mr Raab said "some form of arbitration" would be needed, but that this would not be akin to a European court.
Arbitration is where disputes are settled by a neutral third party. The UK and the EU could each appoint arbitrators and agree on a third, Mr Raab suggested.
The SNP said the government had accepted the UK must continue to take account of judgements from the ECJ so it now needed to "ditch their previous so-called red lines to ensure a deal can be found".
SNP External Affairs Secretary Fiona Hyslop said the best option for Scotland and the rest of the UK was to stay in the EU single market.
Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said Mrs May's "red lines are becoming more blurred by the day", saying the ECJ had "served Britain's interests well" and should not be "trashed".
The European Commission, which is leading the negotiations for the EU, did not comment in response to the government's publication.

Theresa May has told the BBC that MPs will have a choice between her proposed deal with the EU - or no deal at all.
She was also critical of a plan by Brexiteers to resolve the Irish border issue, saying it would create a "hard border 20km inside Ireland".
The prime minister did admit that under "no-deal there would be some short-term disruption".
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said no-deal would be "catastrophic" and people were "too casual about it".
He told Panorama: "It's not viable. It's rhetoric, not reality, and it can't be allowed to happen."
But Mrs May said it was the government's job to "make sure we make a success of no-deal, just as we make a success of getting a good deal."
Her comments were in response to questioning about the Bank of England's governor Mark Carney's warning that a no-deal Brexit could see house prices crash by more than a third.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has said the UK economy will shrink without a Brexit deal.
In its annual assessment of the UK economy, the IMF said that all likely Brexit scenarios would "entail costs", but a disorderly departure could lead to "a significantly worse outcome".
Chancellor Philip Hammond said the government had to listen to the IMF's "clear warnings".
The UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations between the two sides are still taking place.
Mrs May set out her proposals for the key issue of cross-border trade after a Chequers summit in July, but it has been fiercely criticised by some Brexiteers who say plans for a "common rulebook" on goods would compromise the UK's sovereignty.
Speaking to Panorama, Mrs May said that if Parliament does not ratify the Chequers plan "I think that the alternative to that will be having no deal".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Theresa May calculated that faced with a "binary choice" of the Chequers deal or no deal, Brexiteers would not have the "chutzpah to say 'no way'" and Remainers would decide that carrying on fighting the plan would be too risky.
But the risks are that the PM cannot say for certain what the final deal will look like - and some Brexiteers were already determined not to vote for it, she added.
Mr Johnson's column in Monday's Daily Telegraph renewed his attack on the Chequers proposals and the government's plans for avoiding new border checks on the Northern Irish border.
He criticised the UK's decision to agree with the EU on the need for a "backstop" to avoid a hard border irrespective of a trade deal, saying the issue was being used "to coerce the UK into becoming a vassal state of Brussels".
Downing Street responded by saying Mr Johnson had been part of the government that signed up to the backstop plan.
In her Panorama interview, Mrs May said there needed to be "friction-free movement of goods" with no customs or regulatory checks between the UK and EU on the island of Ireland, in order to avoid a hard border there.
Last week a group of Brexiteer Tory MPs said a hard border could be avoided by using "established" technology and "modifying" existing arrangements.
Mr Johnson refers to the suggestions by the European Research Group in his column, saying that "extra checks done away from the border" would prevent the need for physical checks when vehicles move between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
But Mrs May insisted that any system of checks was "still a hard border".
"You don't solve the issue of no hard border by having a hard border 20km inside Ireland," she said.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was an "insult to the intelligence of British voters" for the prime minister to say it was a "choice between either the Chequers fudge or a cataclysmic cliff edge".
Speaking later at a fringe event at the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, Sir Nick claimed European leaders were "seeking to find some way of giving Britain more time" to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg told LBC the prime minister should "try a bit harder" to get a better deal.
Mrs May has found herself embattled with some in her party, after about 50 European Research Group Tory MPs openly discussed how and when they could force her to stand down as prime minister.
On Sunday Brexit-supporting Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the Chequers plan was the right one "for now".
He told the BBC a future prime minister could alter the relationship between the UK and the EU.
Mrs May will attempt to persuade EU leaders of the merits of her plans at a summit in Salzburg on Thursday.
With nearly six months to go until exit from the EU on 29 March 2019, a poll commissioned by BBC Radio 5 Live suggests that the UK remains split over whether Brexit will be positive for the UK.
According to a Comres survey, 50% of British adults feel the overall impact will be negative, whereas 41% think it will be positive.
When asked about the handling of Brexit negotiations, almost 79% of people polled thought that the government had handled them badly, and 63% thought the EU had handled them badly.
The People's Vote campaign, meanwhile, claimed a "fresh wave" of 18-year-olds becoming eligible to vote was "transforming the dynamics of the Brexit debate" because they mostly back staying in the EU.
BBC Panorama, Inside No 10: Deal or No Deal? is on Monday 17 September at 20:30 BST on BBC One as part of a week of in-depth coverage across the BBC to mark Brexit: Six Months to Go.

Theresa May says she will be a "bloody difficult woman" towards European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker during Brexit talks.
The PM revived a line used during her Tory leadership campaign to respond to claims the two clashed over dinner.
She also declined to commit to settling the issue of expats' rights by June.
EU sources claim UK misunderstanding of the talks process, and ignorance about how Brussels works, could lead to no deal being agreed on the UK's exit.
According to German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, the prime minister and Mr Juncker  clashed last Wednesday at Downing Street over Mrs May's desire to make Brexit "a success" and whether the issue of protecting the rights of expat UK and EU nationals could be agreed as early as June.
Speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mrs May said there were a lot of similarities and common ground in the two sides' positions.
She added: "But look, I think what we've seen recently is that at times these negotiations are going to be tough.
"During the Conservative Party leadership campaign I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman. And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker."
The "bloody difficult" quote came from former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke, who was recorded discussing her after a TV interview last year.
Asked about the German newspaper report, Mrs May said: "I don't recall the account that has been given of the meeting that took place, I think that a lot of this is Brussels gossip."
But she said that the talks would be tough and would involve either her or Jeremy Corbyn lining up for the UK against the other 27 EU leaders.
Theresa May's comment is revealing about her strength, and also her weakness. No political leader wants to be seen to be pushed around. When the UK talked tough as a member of the EU the others had no choice but to listen.
But now the UK is on the way out, the incentives for the others to pay attention - let alone do our bidding - is very different.
Refusing to be pushed around is one thing, refusing to show any sign of compromise or listen quite another.
Pressed on whether she did believe the issue of the rights of EU nationals in the UK - and Britons abroad - could be settled in June, she said: "I've always said that I want this to be an issue that we address at an early stage."
"I've always said that there are complexities to this issue and lots of details that will need to be agreed. What people want to know is to have some reassurance about their future. I believe we can give that at an early stage. I've got the will to do this," she added.
She also said she would have "no intention of doing anything other" than serving a full term until 2022 if she wins the 8 June general election.
Opposition parties have accused the Tories of pursuing a "hard Brexit" strategy, with the PM insisting no deal is better than a bad one and planning to withdraw the UK from the EU single market.
The first edition of the London Evening Standard published under the editorship of ex-chancellor George Osborne was headlined "Brussels twists knife on Brexit", with an editorial warning the PM against seeking a "blank cheque" from the EU.
Launching his party's Brexit strategy, ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said Mrs May had "chosen to pursue the most extreme and damaging form" of EU departure.
He said his party would offer another EU referendum in which it would campaign to Remain.
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Theresa May has sought to reassure world leaders that her Brexit deal is "good for the global economy".
The PM was speaking at the G20 summit in Argentina, where she has met leaders for talks on trade deals after Brexit.
She said they were "keen" to sign free trade agreements and wanted certainty, which she pledged her deal would bring.
Asked about her legacy as PM, she said there was "a lot more for me still to do, not least being the prime minister that does take the UK out of the EU".
The G20, which this year holds its summit in Buenos Aires, is made up of the 19 of the world's most industrialised nations, plus the European Union.
It accounts for 85% of the world's economic output and two-thirds of the world's population.
"For the first time in more than four decades, the UK will have an independent trade policy," she told reporters at a press conference.
"That this deal sets a path for the UK to a brighter future has been affirmed by the discussions I've had on trade over the past two days with friends and partners making clear that they are keen to sign and implement ambitious free trade agreements as soon as possible."
The summit came as another government minister, Sam Gyimah, resigned over Mrs May's Brexit deal, saying he would vote against it when the agreement goes before Parliament on 11 December.
Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP and many other Tory MPs have said they will also vote against it.
Asked about the situation back in the UK, Mrs May said: "The next nine days are a really important time for our country leading up to the vote on this deal.
"I will be talking with members of Parliament obviously and explaining to them why I believe this is a good deal for the UK.
"Why it is a deal that delivers on Brexit but it is also a deal that protects jobs and the economy and why passing this deal in the vote that takes place in the House of the Commons will take us to certainty for the future, and that failure to do that would only lead to uncertainty.
"What I've been hearing here at the G20 is the importance of that certainty for the future."
The Brexit deal has already been agreed between the EU and UK.
If MPs reject the deal, a number of things could happen - including leaving with no deal, an attempt to renegotiate or a general election.
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
Asked if this might be her last overseas trip, the prime minister insisted "there's a lot more for me to do".
A senior member of the government told me not only would she not have discussions about losing the vote - only about how to win it -  but that those who believed that Theresa May would quit if her deal fell were misreading her.
They said that she would "not go until she was forced to go" and, contrary to some of the speculation in Westminster, even a heavy defeat for her plan would not automatically see her depart.
Of course, many of her critics - and the opposition parties - would beg to differ.
Mrs May held one-to-one talks with the leaders of Australia, Canada, Japan, Turkey and Chile.
The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, urged her to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Major Japanese companies such as Nissan - which employs 7,000 people at Britain's biggest car factory in Sunderland - and Honda are concerned about the possible impact on their supply chains across Europe.
She said told him she was confident Japanese businesses in the UK would continue to trade well with the EU.
Mrs May also held talks with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who praised her "great determination on one of the most vexed issues I think there is".
The prime minister was also quizzed about her meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - who she shook hands with - on Friday.
She did not say whether she had confronted him directly over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul in October.
"What I said to the Crown Prince yesterday was the importance of a full, credible and transparent investigation that identifies those who were involved and the importance of ensuring that those who were involved are held to account," she said.
"That is the message we have consistently given since the terrible murder of Jamal Khashoggi and it is a message we will continue to give."

Theresa May is seeking Conservative MPs' backing for the cabinet's proposal for UK-EU relations after Brexit.
The plan was agreed by the prime minister's senior ministers at a 12-hour cabinet awayday on Friday.
Mrs May said the plan "will be good for the UK and good for the EU".
But there has been unhappiness among Tory Brexiteers, with Jacob Rees-Mogg telling the BBC that when the detail emerged, it could yet be worse than leaving the EU without a deal.
Mr Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group of Tory MPs, said that so far only the three page summary of the deal had been published, and he would have to wait and see the full 100-plus page document to see whether it was in line with the Conservative election manifesto, or amounted to a "punishment Brexit".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was "not convinced" by the deal, and criticised "leaving out services from trade arrangements in the future... I've got a feeling the whole thing might start to unravel in the next few days".
All Conservative backbench MPs were invited to a briefing with the party's chief whip Julian Smith in Downing Street on Saturday, with about 40 thought to have attended.
The message from those leaving the briefing, such as Tory MP Nigel Evans, was that the proposal was for a "pragmatic" Brexit delivering on the big referendum issues of sovereignty, immigration and the national finances without harming the ability to trade quickly and freely with the EU.
Mr Evans said Mrs May would make a statement to Parliament about the plan on Monday and also address a meeting of all Conservative backbench MPs.
The plan that ministers signed up to on Friday aims to create a free trade area for industrial and agricultural goods with the bloc, based on a "common rule book".
It also supports what could amount to a "combined customs territory" for the UK and EU.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the prime minister had "picked a side" by opting for a closer relationship with the EU than many colleagues desired - and she now had to sell it to her party and the other European leaders.
No 10, she added, hoped the new commitments would unlock the next phase of talks with the rest of the EU but it was not yet clear how many, or what kind, of objections had been raised within the cabinet.
Downing Street said the proposals marked a "substantial evolution" in the UK's position and would resolve outstanding concerns about the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
"This is a proposal that I believe will be good for the UK and good for the EU, and I look forward to it being received positively," Mrs May told the BBC.
One pro-Brexit cabinet minister told the BBC there was "no point" pushing for a vote as "we were well and truly outnumbered by 20 to seven".
The UK said it now wanted to accelerate the negotiations in an effort to secure an agreement by October, but also warned it will step up preparations for leaving on 29 March 2019 without a deal.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who earlier suggested the EU would be willing to shift its position if the UK relaxed some of its "red lines", tweeted to say the plans would be assessed to see if they were "workable and realistic".
The prime minister had gathered her 26 cabinet ministers together at her country residence to try to resolve differences over the shape of the UK's relations with the EU and break the current deadlock with the EU.
The main details of the Chequers statement are as follows:
Mrs May said this was an "important step" in the process of negotiating the UK's smooth exit from the EU.
"Of course we still have work to do with the EU in ensuring that we get to that end point in October. But this is good we have come today, following our detailed discussions, to a positive future for the UK," she said.
She said the proposals, to be formally published in a white paper next week, would give the UK the freedom to strike trade deals with other countries while maintaining regulatory, environmental and consumer standards.
In a letter sent to all Conservative MPs, she said she had allowed colleagues to express their views while policy was developed but "agreement on this proposal marks the point where this is no longer the case and collective responsibility is fully restored".
There is no mention in the document of either the single market or the customs union, which the UK has committed to leave after the end of a transition period in December 2020.
Under plans for a free trade zone, the UK would be committed legally to following EU law for a large part of the economy, including manufacturing and farming.
While Parliament would retain the right to diverge from EU regulations in these areas, the document makes clear that "choosing not to pass the relevant legislation would have consequences for market access, security co-operation or the frictionless border".
The document also commits the government to step up preparedness for a no-deal scenario, as one of a range of possible outcomes, "given the short period remaining before the necessary conclusion of negotiations".
The CBI employers group welcomed the proposals for a free trade area in goods which it said would provide a "confidence boost" to business.
The Federation of Small Businesses said it was "encouraging" to see an agreed negotiating position from government.
But FSB chairman Mike Cherry warned: "The reaction from the rest of the EU is crucial for there to be concrete progress when negotiations restart in just over a week's time. The clock is ticking."
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said there was "a danger that this is a lowest common denominator plan" designed to hold the cabinet together, rather than "secure the strong negotiating position that we need with the EU".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Once upon a time we were told 'Brexit means Brexit', now we are told it means maintaining a common rulebook for all goods, a joint institutional framework for interpreting the agreement and the UK and EU forming this combined customs territory.
"That looks very much like regulatory alignment, the ECJ (European Court of Justice) and half a customs union to me."
Scotland first minister Nicola Sturgeon said the agreement was "hopefully a step forward".
But the SNP's leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, called the agreement "a fudge", adding: "There might be agreement, for now, in the cabinet. The EU will not buy this."
Nigel Dodds, for the Democratic Unionist Party, said:  "The government's commitment at Chequers to the political and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom with no borders between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom is a welcome reaffirmation of what is an absolute priority for us."
Sir Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said it could be the case that "Brexiteers have signed up to it knowing perfectly well that it is not going to pass the European Union and they'll then be able to blame Europe for the fact that it won't work".
Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards said: "This latest proposal continues to cherry pick certain aspects of EU membership in a way that the EU's negotiators have made perfectly clear is unacceptable. More fudge means yet more uncertainty and yet more damage to our economy."
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, who backed Brexit in the referendum, said the deal would end free movement of people and would end the remit of the European Court of Justice in the UK - saying that UK judges always pay regards to other countries' courts, such as Canada or Hong Kong.
He added, on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, that the cabinet had agreed to step up preparations for the UK leaving the EU without a Brexit deal.
Fellow cabinet Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom also tweeted her backing for the deal.
Pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave said it would represent a "bad deal for the UK" which would "only slide further as the EU takes more and more".
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the plan amounted to a "sell-out to global corporates" and would do nothing for the 90% of British firms which do not export to Europe.
Veteran Eurosceptic Tory MP Sir Bill Cash said he was "deeply disappointed to say the least" about the plans, which he suggested could contradict the terms of the EU Withdrawal Act passed by MPs last month.

Prime Minister Theresa May has suffered another Commons defeat after MPs voted down her approach to Brexit talks.
MPs voted by 303 to 258 - a majority of 45 - against a motion endorsing the government's negotiating strategy.
The defeat has no legal force and Downing Street said it would not change the PM's approach to talks with the EU.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn urged Mrs May to "admit her Brexit strategy has failed" and to come forward with a plan Parliament would support.
The defeat came after the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) of Conservative MPs announced it had taken a "collective decision" to abstain, because backing the motion would have amounted to an endorsement of efforts to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
Mrs May has consistently rejected calls to rule out a no-deal Brexit, but Tory Brexiteer rebels believed the wording of what was meant to be a neutral government motion opened the door to that.
The motion reiterated support for the approach to Brexit backed by MPs in votes last month, one of which ruled out a no-deal Brexit.
The voting figures showed it was not just hardline Brexiteers that failed to support the government - a number of Tory Remainers also declined to vote, as more than a fifth of the party in the Commons failed to back the government.
Five Conservative MPs - Brexiteers Peter Bone, Sir Christopher Chope, Philip Hollobone, and Anne Marie Morris, and the pro-Remain Sarah Wollaston - even voted with Labour against the motion.
Downing Street blamed Mr Corbyn for the defeat, saying he had "yet again put partisan considerations ahead of the national interest" by voting against the government's motion.
A No 10 spokesman said the PM would continue to seek legally-binding changes to the controversial Irish backstop, as MPs had instructed her to do in a Commons vote on 29 January.
"While we didn't secure the support of the Commons this evening, the prime minister continues to believe, and the debate itself indicated, that far from objecting to securing changes to the backstop that will allow us to leave with a deal, there was a concern from some Conservative colleagues about taking no deal off the table at this stage," he added.
Plasters lose their stick, revealing the hurt underneath. And the fragile patch that was covering the Tory truce has been well and truly torn.
Just when Theresa May wanted to show the European Union that she could hold her party together to win, she lost.
And at home the prime minister has been shown in no uncertain terms that she simply can't count on the factions in her party to come through for her.
Downing Street had earlier warned that defeat could damage the prime minister's negotiating position, as she seeks to make changes to the controversial backstop "insurance policy" in her deal to avoid customs checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
ERG deputy chairman Steve Baker told BBC News the group still supported efforts to get "alternative arrangements" to replace the controversial Irish backstop plan, describing Mrs May's defeat as a "storm in a teacup".
But business minister Richard Harrington said ERG members should join former UKIP leader Nigel Farage's new Brexit party, telling them: "In my view you're not Conservatives."
In an interview with The House magazine, he urged ministers opposed to a hard Brexit not to "give in" to the ERG by resigning.
He also said he was "disappointed" that Mrs May had not made a statement to the Commons today, and given MPs an outline of a revised deal to vote on.
"We're now told it will be in another two weeks' time so, being very conscious of the damage that not ruling out a hard Brexit is having on business and industry, I'm concerned that it's going to drag on.
"What concerns me most is there is now talk that there won't be a final decision until the next EU Council on 21 March which, as far as business is concerned, is completely unacceptable."
By BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
EU leaders still believe this is not the time to budge.
They see the UK arguing, debating and negotiating with itself again - as it has done so often during the Brexit process - rather than engaging with Brussels.
As a result of all this, the new round of EU-UK negotiations are going nowhere fast.
"Window-dressing" is how one senior EU figure described the talks to me - with each side simply repeating their red lines to the other.
So, the current favourite prediction in Brussels is that things will only be resolved in March.
Read Katya's blog
Commenting on Mrs May's latest defeat, Jeremy Corbyn said: "Two weeks ago, the prime minister told Parliament that her new approach could 'secure a substantial and sustainable majority' in Parliament.
"However, tonight's vote has proved that there is no majority for the prime minister's course of action.
"This can't go on. The government can't keep ignoring Parliament or ploughing on towards 29 March without a coherent plan."
He added that the PM needed to admit her strategy had failed "and come back with a proposal that can truly command majority support in Parliament".
Pro-EU Conservative MP Anna Soubry said: "The prime minister has been dealt yet another body blow. This is really serious stuff.
"What is happening is a profound lack of leadership from the very top of government."
She said it was "chilling" that ministers were still keeping no-deal on the table when they had seen economic analysis showing that it would be "absolutely disastrous" for the country.
"What an absolute fiasco this is," she added, blaming a "lack of leadership in both of our broken parties".
Mrs May has promised MPs a final, decisive vote on her Brexit deal with the EU when she has secured the changes to it that she believes MPs want to see.
She believes she can secure a Commons majority for the deal if she can get legally binding changes to the backstop clause - something the EU has consistently ruled out.
A Labour amendment calling for the final, meaningful vote to be held before 27 February was earlier defeated by 16 votes.
An SNP amendment, backed by the Liberal Democrats and calling for Britain's departure from the EU on 29 March to be delayed by three months, was defeated by 93 votes to 315 after most Labour MPs abstained.
Anna Soubry withdrew an amendment calling on the government to publish the latest cabinet briefing on the economic impact of a no-deal Brexit after ministers agreed to meet her and publish relevant documents. Ms Soubry said she would table it again on 27 February if ministers did not keep to their promise.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay had pledged to call the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier after the vote to discuss the result. The two men are set to resume talks in Brussels early next week.

Theresa May has said the EU must "evolve" its stance on the Irish border as she seeks to persuade fellow leaders about the viability of her Brexit plan.
The PM is using a dinner in Salzburg to make the case for her controversial Chequers strategy for future relations.
Before the event, she said it was the only credible plan to allay concerns on the Irish border and trade disruption.
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who is hosting the event, said both sides needed to make compromises.
The UK and EU both want to avoid a hard border - meaning any physical infrastructure like cameras or guard posts - between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland but can't agree on how.
Mrs May has previously rejected the EU's "backstop" plan - which involves keeping Northern Ireland aligned with its trading rules - saying it would divide up the UK.
Ahead of the Salzburg summit, the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier said most checks could take place away from border areas, an apparent concession to the UK.
Addressing reporters as she arrived for dinner in the Austrian city, Mrs May welcomed what she said was the EU's recognition its initial proposal were "unacceptable".
"If we're going to achieve a successful conclusion then, just as the UK has evolved its position, the EU will need to evolve its position too," she said.
After Brexit, the 310 mile border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will become the UK's border with the EU.
At the moment, thousands of people cross it every day for both work and pleasure - as do goods, like food and medicines, being delivered across the two countries.
As part of the EU single market and customs union, these products do not need to be checked for customs and standards, but when the UK leaves these two arrangements, this all changes.
Nobody wants a hard border for the checks - in fact the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, got rid of security checks as part of the deal, and police in Northern Ireland have warned reinstating them could make crossings targets for violence.
But there is no agreement between the UK and EU, or between Leavers and Remainers, about the answer.
Privately, EU officials say those checks could be carried out by British or EU officials, or by health inspectors rather than customs officials, to "de-dramatise" the border issue.
Mrs May has insisted there needs to be "friction-free movement of goods", with no customs or regulatory checks, between Northern Ireland and the Republic, in order to avoid a hard border there.
There are just over six months to go before the UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
Negotiations are at a critical stage, with both sides hoping for an agreement on the terms of the UK's withdrawal and future trade relations by the start of November at the latest.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Barnier said the talks were in the "home straight" but there were still significant areas of disagreement - such as on the role of the European Court of Justice in enforcing the withdrawal agreement and intellectual property issues, including geographical protections for food and drink.
"October is the key point in time - it is the moment of truth," he added.
The EU is still insisting on its own "legally operationally backstop" - what it describes as an insurance policy to prevent the return of physical infrastructure on the border in the event no other solution can be found.
Brussels put forward a proposal in February that would see Northern Ireland stay aligned with the EU in key areas, effectively staying in the customs union and single market and not needing those border checks.
But the UK insisted this was unacceptable as it would split Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK.
On Tuesday Mr Barnier said the backstop should focus on a "set of technical checks and controls" to make sure standards are met and customs are paid, and not be about a sea or land border.
"We are ready to improve this proposal," he said.
"Work on the EU side is ongoing. We are clarifying which goods arriving in Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK would need to be checked and where, when and by whom these checks could be performed.
"We can also clarify that most checks can take place away from the border at a company premises or at the markets."
BBC Northern Ireland business editor John Campbell said that the fact the EU was prepared to "improve" the language of the backstop was not news as it had been talked about before - so "we need to wait and see what any improvements might amount to".
Speaking in Salzburg, Mr Tusk confirmed a special EU summit dedicated to Brexit would take place in mid-November.
He welcomed some elements of the Chequers proposals - on security and policing - but said that on the Irish border and economic cooperation they will need to be "reworked and further negotiated".
At the dinner in Salzburg, Mrs May is expected to appeal for "goodwill and determination" from the EU, while stressing that "no other country" could accept the EU's backstop plan if they were in the same situation.
The UK put forward rival backstop proposals in June, which would see the whole of the UK staying in a customs union with the EU after the end of the proposed Brexit transition period in December 2020.
It also says its Chequers blueprint for a future trading relationship - involving a "common rulebook" for goods and treating the UK and the EU as a "combined customs territory" - would solve the border question.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the EU had to move closer to the UK's position or it would be a "lose-lose" for both sides.
"Chequers may not be perfect, but it's the most credible plan," he told LBC Radio.
"I think there is an understanding that we're approaching the endpoint of these negotiations, and there will need to be some movement on the EU side."
In an interview with the Daily Express, Mrs May said that going back on the 2016 vote to leave the EU would "destroy trust in politicians".
MPs had decided to give people a vote on EU membership by a large margin, she said: "People weren't saying it's the choice of the public except if we disagree with the answer we'll ask them again."
The People's Vote campaign wants the final terms of Brexit to be put to a referendum with the option of staying in the EU if it is rejected.
"My answer to the People's Vote is that we've had the people's vote - it was the referendum - and now we should deliver on it," the prime minister said.
On Tuesday People's Vote set out ways they said a new referendum could be achieved through votes in Parliament.

Theresa May has indicated she will fight a proposal to give residency rights to EU citizens during the transition period after Brexit.
She said there had to be a difference between those arriving after the UK leaves and those who came before.
She also sought to reassure Tory MPs worried about the length of transition.
The European Parliament's Brexit lead, Guy Verhofstadt, responded by tweeting:  "Citizens' rights during the transition are not negotiable."
He said that "for the transition to work" there could not be "two sets of rights for EU citizens".
And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he opposed the PM's move, which he said would make it "harder for all of us" if it made it harder for EU nationals to come and work in the NHS.
Asked whether he believed he thought Mrs May had bowed to pressure from Brexiteers, the UK opposition leader said: "I think Theresa May is probably looking behind herself all the time.
"What she needs to be concentrating on is protecting jobs and ensuring we have good, tariff-free relations with Europe in the future."
The transition period - also referred to as an implementation period - is seen as a way to minimise disruption when the UK leaves the EU for things like business, holidaymakers and security.
Earlier this week, the EU set out what it was prepared to offer the UK, saying it expected the transition to last from the day of the UK's departure on 29 March 2019 to 31 December 2020.
Some Brexit-supporting MPs are worried that this period could be extended, but speaking during her trade trip to China, Mrs May insisted such an "implementation period" would last about two years.
"We are not talking about something that is going to go on and on... we're leaving the European Union. There is an adjustment period for businesses - and indeed government - for changes that need to be made," she said.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson
Theresa May has been under pressure from pro-Brexit backbenchers to address the question of citizens' rights. They argue that the EU has accepted full citizens' rights would only apply to people who are here before Brexit on 29 March, 2019.
But the EU says arrangements during the transition period have to be negotiated separately and wants full rights to extend until December 2020.
The PM is saying no - it's an important principle that people who arrive during transition are treated differently. In practice, though, the only difference during transition would be that EU citizens arriving then would have to register that they are here.
But government sources say that what rights they have after transition has to be a matter for negotiation. For example, if there's a new system that requires visas or work permits, they may have to apply for one.
In December, the two sides agreed a deal setting out the proposed rights of EU citizens in the UK and British expats on the continent after Brexit.
It says that all EU nationals who have been in the UK for more than five years will be expected to be granted settled status, giving them indefinite leave to remain with the same access to public services as now.
Those who have been resident for a shorter period but who arrive before the Brexit cut-off date, currently expected to be 29 March, 2019, will also be able to stay and get settled status once they have been in the UK for five years.
At the time, Downing Street said it envisaged anyone arriving after Brexit being able to continue to live, work and study in the UK during the transition period but that they would need to register, and the future immigration rules would have to be agreed as part of the wider transition negotiations.
But the EU has since said it expects existing rules on freedom of movement - including the path to permanent residency - to apply in full until the end of the transition phase, which is currently expected to be 31 December 2020.
Mrs May, who is on the second day of a three-day trade trip to China, said she would contest the issue of long-term residency rights when transition negotiations begin in earnest next month.
"When we agreed the citizens' rights deal in December we did so on the basis that people who had come to the UK when we were a member of the EU had set up certain expectations," she said.
"It was right that we have made an agreement that ensured they could continue their life in the way they had wanted to - now for those who come after March 2019 that will be different because they will be coming to a UK that they know will be outside the EU.
"I'm clear there is a difference between those people who came prior to us leaving and those who will come when they know the UK is no longer a member."
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who is travelling with the prime minister, said Mrs May was showing she was willing to push back against the EU amid discontent on the Conservative benches.
But Mrs May is also under pressure from pro-European Conservative MPs who want to maintain close ties with the EU.
Speaking to the Today programme, former chancellor George Osborne questioned whether the prime minister had a Commons majority to leave the EU customs union.
Mr Osborne, who has criticised the prime minister several times since leaving front-line politics, also said an increasing number of Tory MPs were now considering whether the UK should be in the European Free Trade Association, like Norway and Switzerland.
Ministers have already said the UK has to leave the customs union and single market as part of Brexit.
Meanwhile, government analysis has emerged suggesting the cost of cutting EU migration would be much greater than the benefits of a US trade deal.
BuzzFeed News has claimed government studies on the economic impact of Brexit say reducing migration from the bloc into the UK would nullify the benefits of any trade deal struck with Washington.
Ministers agreed on Wednesday to let MPs see another leak from the same impact analysis which suggests the economy would be worse off as a result of a number of possible Brexit scenarios.
Asked about the latest Buzzfeed report in the Commons, Brexit Minister Suella Fernandes said the document was not government policy, and "comes with significant caveats".

Prime Minister Theresa May is writing to the EU to formally ask for Brexit to be postponed.
One ministerial source told the BBC the longer delay could be up to two years, amid reports of a cabinet row, but No 10 said no decision had been made.
EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU would not grant a delay without a "concrete plan" from the UK about what they would do with it.
Under current law the UK will leave the EU with or without a deal in nine days.
MPs rejected the withdrawal deal Mrs May has negotiated with the EU for a second time last week by 149 votes. They also voted in favour of ruling out leaving the EU without a deal, and in favour of extending the Brexit process.
The prime minister had hoped to have another try at getting MPs to back the deal this week - but Speaker John Bercow effectively torpedoed that with his surprise intervention on Monday.
She still hopes to ultimately get it in front of MPs for a third go, but says even if that happens and they vote in favour of it, the UK will need a short extension to get the necessary legislation through Parliament.
A cabinet source told the BBC she therefore plans to ask the EU to agree to postpone the UK's departure until 30 June, but with an option of a longer delay as well.
Mrs May has warned Brexiteer Tories that a longer extension will be needed if her deal does not get through Parliament.
One ministerial source told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg there was "no agreement" around the cabinet table when a delay was discussed.
Another cabinet source said they were frustrated that the PM had not been clear about which delay option she would be arguing for.
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom is said to have criticised colleagues, saying they now amounted to a "Remain cabinet", not a "Brexit cabinet".
Chancellor Philip Hammond said ministers all wanted the "shortest possible delay" but cabinet members "have different approaches to how we should do this".
Any delay will have to be agreed by all 27 EU member states and Mrs May is heading to Brussels on Thursday to discuss the options with fellow leaders.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who campaigned to remain in the EU, told BBC Newsnight that the question of whether to have another referendum was "for a later time".
Although leaving without a deal was still the default position, Mr Blair said a no-deal Brexit "won't happen", adding that the challenge now was making any extension to Article 50 count.
Mr Blair called for a delay of between nine months and a year to "allow Parliament to reach a conclusive opinion on the central Brexit question - soft or hard?"
On Monday, the Speaker said he would not allow a third "meaningful vote" in the coming days on "substantially the same" motion as MPs rejected last week.
Mr Bercow declined to discuss the reasons for his decision when questioned by the BBC, as he made his way in to Parliament the following day.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay suggested a third vote on the Brexit deal could take place next week - after Mrs May has sought a delay.
On Mr Bercow's ruling, he said it was important to "respect the referee" and abide by his decisions - but, he added, the Speaker himself had said in the past that if Parliament was guided only by precedent then "nothing ever would change".
Mr Barclay suggested that MPs would "find a way" to get another vote, if the government manages to persuade enough of them, including the 10 Democratic Unionists, to change their mind and back the deal.
At a news conference in Brussels, Mr Barnier said it was up to the 27 EU leaders to decide whether to grant a delay, based on what was in the "best interest" of the bloc.
But for a longer delay "there needs to be a new event" or a "new political process" - so that "we are not back in the same situation as today".
"Extending the uncertainty without a clear plan would add to the economic cost for our business but will also incur a political cost for the EU," said Mr Barnier.
"It is for the British government and Parliament to decide very quickly what the UK wants to do next."
Mr Barnier also warned that UK MPs voting against "no deal" would not prevent it from happening, saying that "everyone should now finalise all preparations for a no-deal scenario".
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said the EU had "little trust" in the prime minister, with some leaders wanting to see proof from Parliament that MPs would support a longer delay before the EU signed up to it.
She said there was "irritation" that those at Westminster appeared to be "inward-looking" and were not taking into account the cost of a delay to the EU.
And she said the EU's final decision on a delay may not be given this week, with talk of an emergency summit on 28 March.
Earlier, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would struggle until the last possible moment to achieve "an orderly Brexit", saying the interests of Germany, Britain and the EU were at stake.
Taoiseach (Irish PM) Leo Varadkar and European Council president Donald Tusk released a joint statement after their meeting in Dublin.
"They agreed that we must now see what proposals emerge from London in advance of the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday," it said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Speaker's intervention showed Mr Bercow was "ensuring Parliament is taken seriously".
He said he had spoken to Conservative and Labour MPs about a so-called Norway-Plus style of future relationship with the EU - a closer one than Mrs May's deal would bring about - calling it an "interesting idea" which had not got his "complete support".
When asked about another referendum, he said: "The issue has to be put to the people after Parliament has made some kind of decision."
He said a public vote had to be on a range of options, saying: "It cannot just be on Theresa May's deal or Remain - there has to be some choice for the people."
Mr Corbyn also held "constructive" talks with the Westminster leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party about the potential to unite around a closer future relationship with the EU, a Labour spokesman said.
But Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader, suggested the Labour leader had not really engaged during the meeting with the case for giving the public the final say on Brexit.
"We were there to talk about a People's Vote and the only thing I felt he was comfortable talking about was Labour's version of Brexit," she said.

Theresa May is now thought to be in favour of giving MPs a vote on alternatives to her plans when they debate her Brexit deal.
The prime minister was previously thought to be against this idea.
But sources have told the BBC she wants the "meaningful vote" planned for the third week of January to be a "moment of reckoning" for Brexit.
It comes as the cabinet announced it was stepping up preparations in case there is a no-deal Brexit on 29 March.
The votes would be on amendments to the motion on her Brexit deal - and would take place before the key vote on her plan.
The Brexit deal Theresa May has reached with the EU has to be passed by Parliament but most MPs - including many on her own side - are against it.
She had been planning to present Parliament with a choice between her deal and no-deal, hoping that enough MPs would swallow their objections and get behind her version of Brexit.
But MPs are showing few signs of changing their minds - with some hoping that the next step after her deal being rejected would be leaving without a deal, others hoping for a fresh referendum and some backing alternative deals like the ones Norway or Canada have with the EU.
So rather than wait for what seems like an inevitable defeat, she is thought to be planning a new approach.
The prime minister does not believe any of the factions criticising her plan have enough support to get their own version of Brexit through Parliament.
By allowing them to put forward their proposals and vote on them, she is hoping they will be defeated and her plan will emerge by a process of elimination as the best and only alternative to leaving without a deal.
By BBC Deputy Political Editor John Pienaar
On all sides at Westminster, MPs feel sure her plan is doomed to defeat.
Many - including some in her own Cabinet - want other ideas: a Norway-style Brexit which leaves the UK closely tied to the EU, say, or a referendum, or no deal, put to MPs after that happens.
The prime minister's formula might flush out those who are quietly waiting for her plan to fail before offering their own ideas as a solution.
She wants, in effect, a moment of reckoning for Brexit, with all the rival outcomes debated and voted upon when MPs discuss and decide on her plan next month.
If MPs reject every plan - and that is possible - she might just be able to continue the fight for her own.
Several cabinet ministers have publicly suggested alternative next steps if Mrs May's plan is rejected.
At a marathon cabinet meeting earlier:
Mrs May was originally planning to put her plan to a Commons vote last week but pulled it at the last minute over fears it would be defeated, sparking widespread outrage among MPs.
"Last time, for one reason or another, people only set out what they opposed. Next time could be an opportunity for people to set down what they support - and vote on it,"  a senior source close to Mrs May said.
Downing Street is also hoping to get more reassurances from Brussels that any outcome that keeps the UK tied to EU rules - as part of measures to ensure there is no return to a physical Northern Ireland border, will be temporary.

EU leaders will meet at 17:00 BST for an emergency summit in Brussels to decide whether to offer the UK another delay to Brexit.
Theresa May wants to postpone the UK's exit beyond this Friday, until 30 June.
But the EU is expected to offer a longer delay, after European Council President Donald Tusk urged the other 27 leaders to back a flexible extension of up to a year - with conditions.
Mr Tusk added that "neither side should be allowed to feel humiliated".
Leaders will begin arriving at the summit from 16:00.
Earlier, Mrs May appeared in the Commons for the weekly question session with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister's Questions.
That head-to-head followed five days of talks between the government and Labour officials aimed at breaking the Brexit impasse.
The 1922 Committee - made up of Tory backbench MPs - will also meet at 17:00, with some members seeking a firm date for Mrs May to step down as leader of the party.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU at 23:00 BST on Friday, 12 April.
If no extension is granted, the default position would be for the UK to leave on Friday without a deal.
So far, UK MPs have rejected the withdrawal agreement Mrs May reached with other European leaders last year.
But the Commons has also voted against leaving in a no-deal scenario.
To prevent this happening, a group of backbench MPs managed to get a bill through Parliament to force Mrs May to ask for an extension to Article 50 - the process that defines the UK exit date - by law.
Mrs May will ask EU leaders to extend the exit date until 30 June.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the PM had to convince EU leaders about the credibility of talks with Labour and prove they were "a genuine political plan that has a chance of getting the UK out of this maze".
Every EU member state needs to agree on any delay before it can be granted.
So, at the summit - which begins at about 18:00 local time (17:00 BST) on Wednesday evening - Mrs May will formally present her case for a short delay, with the option for the UK to leave earlier if her Brexit deal is ratified.
The other EU leaders will then have dinner without her and discuss how to respond.
EU Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are expected to make statements afterwards.
In a formal letter to the leaders on the eve of the summit, Mr Tusk proposed a longer, flexible extension - although "no longer than one year" - to avoid creating more cliff-edge extensions or emergency summits in the future.
Any delay should have conditions attached, he said - including that there would be no reopening of the withdrawal agreement talks. And the UK would have the option to leave earlier if a Brexit deal was ratified.
Referring to Mrs May's proposal for an extension until the end of June, Mr Tusk said there was "little reason to believe" that Mrs May's deal could be ratified by then.
And if the European Council did not agree on an extension at all, "there would be a risk of an accidental no-deal Brexit", he added.
Mr Tusk also warned that "neither side should be allowed to feel humiliated at any stage in this difficult process".
EU officials have also prepared a draft document for the leaders to discuss at the summit - but the end date of the delay has been left blank for the EU leaders to fill in once deliberations have ended.
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler said the blank space showed EU leaders were still divided on the issue.
BBC Europe correspondent Kevin Connolly said "much has been spelled out in advance", including the condition that if the UK remains a member of the EU at the end of May it will have to hold elections to the European Parliament or be forced to leave immediately.
He added that, during the delay, the UK would be expected to commit to not disrupting EU business, such as the preparation of the next budget, and its influence "would be sharply reduced and its voice muted".
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said neither he nor the PM wanted to see a longer extension, but it was a possibility because MPs had not backed Mrs May's deal.
But others have called for the UK to leave the EU on Friday without an agreement.
Tory Brexiteer Anne Marie Morris told BBC News that exiting on World Trade Organisation rules - the default if the UK leaves without an agreement - was "actually a very good deal" for the country.
Other Leave-supporting backbenchers are seeking an exit day for Mrs May, after she vowed to step down ahead of the second phase of Brexit negotiations.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said although the PM had "hinged" her resignation on MPs supporting her deal, the "reality" is her "firm date of departure" should be in May or June.
"To have a leadership contest in the Conservative Party is going to take the better part of 10 to 11 weeks, and that will take you to the autumn, so this thing is going to have to happen," he told the BBC.
But some in Westminster back a longer extension, saying it would give time for another referendum to take place.
The People's Vote campaign held a rally on Tuesday to drum up support, with former Speaker of the House, Baroness Boothroyd, calling for a public ballot.
Talks between Labour and the Conservatives are scheduled to resume after Mrs May returns from the summit.
The Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, said holding talks with the opposition was "contrary to the normal tradition", but they were taking place "in good faith".
A Labour spokesman said the discussions were being conducted "in a serious, detailed, and engaged way", but they had "yet to see clear evidence of real change and compromise that would be necessary to find agreement".
If the two sides do not come to an agreement, the PM has said she will put a number of options on a way forward to Parliament and make the votes binding.

The UK's trade union movement chief has told Theresa May to "stop playing to the bad boys at the back of the class" over Brexit and "start listening".
Frances O'Grady said she did not get the workers' rights guarantees she wanted in a meeting with the PM.
The UK's most senior union leaders met Mrs May to urge her to rule out a "no deal" Brexit and extend negotiations.
Mrs May is seeking support for her Brexit deal ahead of a crucial Commons vote on Tuesday.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to join the talks until Mrs May rules out the UK leaving the EU with no deal, which he says would bring "chaos" to the country.
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on 29 March.
Mrs May met Ms O'Grady, Unite leader Len McCluskey, Tim Roache of the GMB and Dave Prentis of Unison at Downing Street on Thursday.
TUC General Secretary Ms O'Grady said workers were worried about their jobs and needed reassurances about their future.
"We have a prime minister on a temporary contract - she cannot bind the hands of a future prime minister," she said.
"People wanting her job are on record as saying Brexit is an opportunity to reduce workers' rights.
"The prime minister, frankly, has to stop playing to the bad boys at the back of the class and start listening to where I think Parliament is, which is wanting no deal off the table and more time for genuine talks to take place."
Unite union leader Mr McCluskey, a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, said he was "not full of optimism" after his meeting with Mrs May.
But he said the talks had been a chance to "re-emphasise" that a no-deal Brexit would be "disastrous".
"Is this just a PR stunt for the media… or this a genuine attempt to see if we can talk about issues that matter to us?," he said.
"Warm words are one thing but action is needed."
He said a nine-month delay to Article 50 -  the process taking the UK out of the EU at the end of March - would be "too long", but he would like an extension of three months.
And he said Mr Corbyn was "correct" not to hold Brexit talks with Theresa May because leaders from other parties, such as the SNP and the Lib Dems, had been made to look "rather stupid" for doing so.
It was different for union leaders, he added.
Unison leader Dave Prentis said he believed it to be "in everyone's interest" that Article 50 was extended and urged Mrs May to stop "appeasing the right wing" of her party while Mr Roache also asked for an extension but added that "most important of all" was ruling out the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.
Mrs May is hoping to tweak her deal to address concerns about the "backstop" among her own backbenchers and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which she relies on to keep her in power, ahead of another vote on her proposed way forward next Tuesday.
The backstop is the "insurance policy" in the withdrawal deal, intended to ensure that whatever else happens, there will be no return to a visible border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after the UK leaves the EU.
Both the UK and the EU believe that bringing back border checks could put the peace process at risk but critics say the backstop keeps Northern Ireland too closely aligned with the EU and separate from the rest of the UK - and that the UK could be permanently trapped in it.
However Irish PM Leo Varadkar said the UK would find it "very difficult" to do trade deals after Brexit, if it has not resolved the Irish border issue.
Mrs May has not ruled out the prospect of the UK leaving the EU without a deal and has said the only way to prevent it is to leave with her deal.
But Business Minister Richard Harrington spoke out against a no-deal Brexit, at a meeting of business people at the German embassy on Thursday.
He said: "Crashing out is a disaster for business… Airbus is correct to say it publicly and I'm delighted they have done so."
He said he was "happy" to continue in his role, but added: "I quite understand if the prime minister thinks I'm not the right person to be business minister."
A number of MPs are proposing amendments putting forward alternative plans to the PM's deal with the EU - including seeking an extension to the UK's exit date.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper has tabled one that would give time for a bill to suspend the Article 50 process for leaving the EU to the end of the year if a new deal has not been agreed with Brussels by the end of February.
It is is backed by several Remainer Conservatives and is the only amendment that would be legally binding on the government, if passed.
Her Labour colleague, Rachel Reeves, has also tabled an amendment to extend Article 50.
Other amendments would ask the government to consider a range of options over six full days in Parliament before the March deadline, to set up a "Citizens' Assembly" to give the public more say or to insist on "an expiry date to the backstop".
Plans by a group of Tory and Labour MPs to table an amendment on another EU referendum have been dropped, but the Lib Dems will be tabling an amendment calling for a "People's Vote".
It will be up to Speaker John Bercow to select amendments to put to the vote.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC's Hardtalk he believes it is "highly likely" Labour's front bench will support Ms Cooper's amendment but that it first had to go through the party's  "normal process". Party leader Mr Corbyn said the decision had not yet been made.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier reiterated on Germany's Deutschlandfunk radio that there can be no time-limit on the proposed backstop.
"If nothing moves, if no positive suggestions are put on the table, then we will be heading for a more or less bumpy or accidental no-deal on 30 March," he said.
Mr Barnier also played down suggestions that the two-year Article 50 process ought to be extended, saying: "I personally believe that we do not need so much more time, but that we now need to make decisions, to be taken by the British government and the Parliament of Great Britain."

Prime Minister Theresa May will return to Brussels later to continue Brexit talks with the European Union.
She is trying to renegotiate the Irish backstop - the insurance policy to prevent the return of customs checks on the Irish border.
Mrs May is expected to request legally-binding assurances that the backstop will not extend indefinitely.
However, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said he does not expect a "breakthrough" in talks.
The backstop policy is part of the withdrawal agreement Mrs May agreed with the EU, and became one of the main reasons her Brexit deal was voted down in Parliament in January.
Critics fear it would leave the UK tied to a customs union with the EU indefinitely and see Northern Ireland treated differently.
MPs gave their backing for Mrs May to renegotiate the policy in a vote earlier this month and said she was "working hard to secure the legally binding changes" that Parliament wants.
But the EU has consistently refused to make changes.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said on Tuesday evening the government accepted the EU will not agree to replace the backstop arrangements for the Irish border with technological alternatives in time for the scheduled date of Brexit on 29 March.
The so-called "Malthouse Compromise" - proposed by Remainers and Leavers - included proposals to use technology and checks away from the border to ensure the backstop was never activated.
But Mr Hammond said he hoped the technological solution would form part of negotiations over the following 21 months on the UK's future relationship with the EU.
He added that legally-binding changes to ensure the backstop does not become permanent "would deliver the core of a majority for a deal in the House of Commons".
Leading Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker insisted they were happy with this arrangement, saying the Malthouse proposals were "alive and kicking".
Jeremy Corbyn also announced he would be going to Brussels to meet the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, on Thursday.
The Labour leader said they would discuss his party's Brexit proposals - including a permanent customs union and a strong relationship with the single market - and that it was a "necessity" to take no deal off the table.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay updated the Cabinet on talks with Mr Barnier on Tuesday.
The meeting, on the issue of the Irish backstop, was described as "productive" but Mr Barnier "expressed concerns".
At the time, a European Commission spokesman said: "The EU27 will not reopen the withdrawal agreement.
"We cannot accept a time limit to the backstop or a unilateral exit clause - and further talks will be held this week to see whether a way through can be found that would gain the broadest possible support in the UK parliament and respect the guidelines agreed by the European Council."
The PM has promised that if she is unable to negotiate an amended deal by 26 February then she'll return to Parliament and allow a further day of debate, with further chances for MPs to vote, the following day.

Theresa May is trying to "run down the clock" and minimise Parliament's role in Brexit, a former minister has said.
Jo Johnson - who resigned as transport minister over the PM's handling of negotiations - said MPs should be given a vote on her Brexit deal next week.
His comments come as Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said it is still possible to get "a version" of Mrs May's Brexit deal approved by Parliament.
Another cabinet minister, Amber Rudd, called for cross-party co-operation.
MPs were due to vote on Mrs May's Brexit deal on Tuesday, but it was postponed when the prime minister admitted it would have been "rejected by a significant margin".
Mr Johnson - who is Boris Johnson's brother but voted Remain in the referendum - said he was concerned by the way Downing Street was treating Parliament.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "No 10 could try to leave that vote until the very last minute.
"Effectively, giving the country, giving Parliament, no choice at all except between her deal... and no deal at all."
He added: "It's simply unacceptable to run out the clock and face the country with the prospect of being timed-out."
Labour and the SNP have both said the prime minister should stop wasting time and put the deal to a vote in Parliament.
After postponing the vote in Parliament, Mrs May travelled to Brussels to make a special plea to EU leaders, in a bid to make her deal more acceptable to MPs.
However, the EU said there could be clarification but not renegotiation.
Many of Mrs May's MPs are concerned that the "backstop" - which is aimed at preventing a hard border in Northern Ireland - would keep the UK tied to EU rules and limit its ability to strike trade deals.
On Saturday, Mr Hunt said the EU needed to listen to appeals from the British government to provide "legally enforceable language" that the backstop would be temporary.
He told Radio 4: "The thing that the House of Commons will not accept is any risk of us being permanently trapped through the Northern Irish backstop in the customs union."
He added that the "only way" the deal would get through Parliament was "to have a version of the deal that the government has negotiated".
However, BBC deputy political editor John Pienaar said the problem remained that only "an end date or a key to the exit door" would make it possible for the deal to be supported by MPs.
He added: "The EU has shown no indication, publicly or privately at any point, that it is willing to give that."
Ms Rudd said she supported Mrs May's deal but advocated assembling a "coalition" to avoid what she called "the rocks of no deal".
"We need to find a plan that a majority in Parliament can support," she said.
"We need to try something different. Something that people do in the real world all the time, but which seems so alien in our political culture - to engage with others and be willing to forge a consensus."
One idea, favoured by at least one cabinet minister, is a series of votes on other plans, such as a relationship similar to Norway's with the EU, or another referendum.
By BBC political correspondent Tom Barton
A cabinet split? Certainly, a disagreement between senior ministers over the viability of Theresa May's Brexit deal.
Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, telling Radio 4's Today programme that it will be possible to get "a version" of the prime minister's Brexit deal approved by MPs.
Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, openly musing in the Daily Mail that the government needs need "to try something different" because Parliament is currently headed towards "no compromise, no agreement and no deal".
For the foreign secretary, the risk of no deal works as leverage in the UK's attempt to get the EU to reconsider the detail of the Northern Ireland backstop, warning European leaders that "they can't be sure" Parliament would stop it.
For Amber Rudd, it's something which "for the sake of all our futures, mustn't be allowed to happen".
At a Leave Means Leave rally in London on Friday, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage told the BBC it was "outrageous" another referendum could happen, but added: "I can see where we're going."
Mr Farage added the treatment of Mrs May in Brussels this week had been a "shaming moment" for both the UK and the EU and that the prime minister's Brexit deal was now "dead".
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was time "to stop this pretence" and "bring the vote to Parliament".

Theresa May has urged the EU to get on with discussing her "ambitious but practical" vision for economic relations with the UK after Brexit.
The prime minister told the BBC's Andrew Marr the "right deal for us will be the right deal for them too".
She said she was confident of a deal while accepting the UK could not expect the same market access in some areas.
But the CBI said there were some "big holes" in the UK's plan and action was needed to stop firms moving.
Conservative MPs have largely welcomed the PM's speech on Friday, in which she set out what she said were "the hard facts" on Brexit and the reality that neither side could have exactly what it wanted from the negotiations.
While the UK was leaving the single market and customs union, she said she envisaged continued close co-operation in many areas after the UK leaves on 29 March 2019 - including remaining a member of medicines, aviation and chemicals agencies.
She told Andrew Marr it was important to be "straight" with people that life would be different outside the EU but she believed both sides wanted the same overall outcome.
"It was a vision that was ambitious but was also practically based and therefore a credible vision," she said.
"The EU themselves have said they want an ambitious and wide-ranging arrangement with us in the future...  If we look at our future prosperity and in the other 27 countries, the right deal for us will be the right deal for them too."
While the UK would have the right to diverge from EU rules in some areas, she said it would "make sense" for the UK to keep exactly the same standards in others or achieve the same outcomes by different means.
Financial services, she insisted, would be a key part of what she hopes will be the most comprehensive free trade deal ever struck.
But she said arrangements would have to change once the UK left the single market, such as the end of passporting which allows firms based in the City of London to operate across the EU without the need for licences in individual countries
"If we were to accept passporting, we would just be a rule-taker," she said. "We would have to abide by their rules which were being set elsewhere.
"Given the importance of financial stability, we can't just take the same rules without any say in them."
Asked what she would do if she lost a Commons vote on remaining in the customs union - with some Tory MPs set to side with Labour over the issue - she said she would be making her case to Parliament.
"What I have set out in terms of a future customs arrangement with the EU, I think, is actually what most people want to see," she said.
A customs deal that ensured tariff-free trade and the most "frictionless" passage of goods was in the interests of both sides, she said.
But Carolyn Fairbairn, who heads the CBI employers' group, said thousands of manufacturing businesses would lose out from being outside of the customs union.
"Some of our sectors, automotive, and others, need to stay aligned," she told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5Live. "We would actually argue that many sectors want to stay aligned.
"We do not have any that say they want to diverge greatly."
Banks needed an alternative to passporting, she said, and the UK's outline proposals "need to be followed through very quickly because financial services firms are moving now".
"The speech on Friday was a step forward," she added. "But there are some big holes still. There is no answer still on how we can get frictionless trade."
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said Mrs May had set out "common sense and practical solutions" to many of the concerns that the EU had.
But former EU Commissioner Lord Mandelson said the EU would not "in a month of Sundays" accept a trade relationship based on mutual recognition of standards and the freedom to diverge where the UK wanted to.
"Theresa May is dancing on the head of a pin that simply does not exit and it will be painful for the country as a result," the former Labour cabinet minister told Andrew Marr.

Theresa May has written to all 317 Tory MPs, urging them to unite behind a Brexit deal while warning them "history will judge us all" over the process.
Efforts will resume on Monday to persuade the EU to agree changes to the "backstop" plan to prevent the return of customs checks on the Irish border.
And Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright has hinted MPs' concerns about it could be addressed without reopening the deal.
Labour says the Tories cannot be united and has called for cross-party talks.
The UK remains on course to leave the EU on 29 March. But Mrs May has been unable to convince a majority of MPs to back the withdrawal terms she struck with the EU last year.
The prime minister told MPs in the letter she will return to Brussels to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker this week, and speak to the leaders of every EU member state over the coming days.
Her main goal is to win concessions over the backstop, which is widely disliked by members of her party.
Many fear it will mean the UK staying closely aligned to EU rules for the long term, without Britain being able to end the agreement unilaterally.
But EU leaders have repeatedly said the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.
The Sunday Times reported comments it said were leaked from a WhatsApp group suggesting ex-Brexit minister Steve Baker told fellow Brexiteers that Mrs May's talks with Brussels were a "complete waste of time".
However, Culture Secretary Mr Wright has hinted that there might be "a number of different ways" around the problem.
"I don't think it's the mechanism that matters, it's the objective," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, when asked whether a codicil - a supplementary document explaining or modifying a legal agreement - might work.
"Parliament needs to give the prime minister space to have that conversation with Brussels," he added.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, who has warned the backstop indefinitely commits the UK to EU customs rules if Brexit trade talks break down, will set out what changes would be needed to address concerns in a speech on Tuesday.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay is also due to meet the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier to discuss the controversial policy on Monday.
If MPs do not approve a formal deal, many fear chaos at ports and for business.
And Tobias Ellwood has become the first minister to publicly declare a willingness to rebel against the government if the PM failed to rule out a no-deal scenario.
"There are many ministers, me being one of them, that need to see 'no deal' removed from the table," the defence minister told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics.
Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Andrew Marr that "serious discussion" around building cross-party consensus must happen by the end of the month.
"We have put our proposals on the table; we're willing to negotiate around those," he said. "They're the basis of what we think could secure parliamentary approval, but she has to start negotiating as well."
The PM's negotiating stance has never been "based upon mutual interest or mutual respect" but was "about banging the table and walking away", he added.
Asked about the prospect of a further referendum, Mr McDonnell said the party's priority remained a Brexit deal that protected jobs and the economy.
But he added: "We really are at the end of the line now... If [a deal] doesn't fly within Parliament, yes the option of going back to the people has got to be there."
Campaigners for another referendum on Brexit have said there will be a major protest the weekend before Britain's scheduled departure date on 29 March.
In her letter, Mrs May described the latest Commons defeat over her Brexit strategy, in which dozens of Conservatives abstained on Thursday, as "disappointing".
"I do not underestimate how deeply or how sincerely colleagues hold the views which they do on this important issue - or that we are all motivated by a common desire to do what is best for our country, even if we disagree on the means of doing so," she writes.
"But I believe that a failure to make the compromises necessary to reach and take through Parliament a withdrawal agreement which delivers on the result of the referendum will let down the people who sent us to represent them and risk the bright future that they all deserve."
Analysis by Peter Saull, BBC political reporter
Since Thursday and the 10th defeat in the House of Commons for Theresa May over Brexit, the tensions in the Conservative Party have threatened to boil over.
The war of words has reached ministerial level, with business minister Richard Harrington suggesting some of his pro-Brexit colleagues should join former UKIP leader Nigel Farage's new party.
Therefore while there's nothing new in terms of the substance of this letter, it represents a clear attempt by the prime minister to calm things down.
Theresa May is also making it clear she won't change tactics.
The PM believes the only way to get a deal through the Commons and keep her party together is by securing changes to the backstop, even if the EU shows no sign of budging.

Theresa May has promised Tory MPs she will quit if they back her Brexit deal.
She told backbench Tories: "I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party."
The PM said she knew that Tory MPs did not want her to lead the next phase of Brexit negotiations "and I won't stand in the way of that".
But the DUP said it had not changed its position and would still vote against the deal.
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said the DUP's refusal to back the deal at this stage was a "huge blow" for Number 10.
Many Conservative Brexiteers - including the chairman of the European Research Group Jacob Rees-Mogg - had been waiting to see if the DUP's 10 MPs would back the deal before deciding whether to get behind it - and their decision makes it even more difficult for the deal to pass.
In a statement released after the PM announced her offer to stand down, DUP leader Arlene Foster said the "necessary changes" she wanted to see to the backstop clause in the withdrawal agreement had still not been secured.
She told the BBC the backstop threatened the integrity of the United Kingdom and her party would never "sign up to something that would damage the Union".
Justice Secretary David Gauke said he hoped Parliament would "rally behind" the PM's deal, and he thinks "there is a mood in that direction".
But ERG deputy chairman Steve Baker said after Mrs May's statement that he was "consumed with a ferocious rage after that pantomime".
Speaking at an ERG meeting, Mr Baker attacked those in the party whose "addiction to power without responsibility" had led them to confront MPs with a choice between the PM's deal and no Brexit and that he "may yet resign the whip" than "be part of this", sources said.
Mrs May did not name a departure date at a packed meeting of the 1922 committee of backbench Conservative MPs.
But if the deal is passed, she would resign as party leader after 22 May - the new Brexit date - but stay on as PM until a new leader is elected.
Downing Street said it would be a "different ball game" if the deal was not passed by Parliament.
It came as MPs seized control of the Commons agenda to hold a series votes on alternatives to the deal. None of the eight options won outright support.
Sir Oliver Letwin, who secured the votes, said he wanted to hold more of them on Monday, but he said he hoped MPs would back Theresa May's deal before then.
If the deal doesn't go through then it's not quite clear that Mrs May's offer to go still applies, although it is almost impossible, whether it stands or falls, that she would be able to stay.
The prime minister hopes that by offering to leave Number 10, she'll take the country out of the EU with her, smoothly, without more political turmoil.
And that order, of a sort, will be restored and the uncertainty for all of us will end.
If that happens, we'll see a new leader in Downing Street by mid-July.
But that is still a gamble.
Read Laura's blog
Mrs May told the 300 or so Tory MPs at the meeting "we need to get the deal through and deliver Brexit".
"I ask everyone in this room to back the deal so we can complete our historic duty - to deliver on the decision of the British people and leave the European Union with a smooth and orderly exit."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted that Mrs May's announcement "shows once and for all that her chaotic Brexit negotiations have been about party management, not principles or the public interest".
He added: "A change of government can't be a Tory stitch-up, the people must decide."
George Freeman, the prime minister's former policy adviser, said she had done the "right thing" in announcing her decision to stand down, even though it had been a "sad moment".
The Tory MP told BBC News her speech had been followed by a series of interventions from "very hardline Brexiteers" all saying "prime minister, thank you, I will now vote for this deal".
The PM has said she wants to bring the deal back to the Commons this week, after it was previously rejected twice, by large margins.
Commons Speaker John Bercow ruled last week that the government could not return for a third attempt, unless there had been "substantial" changes to the proposals.
And he warned ministers earlier that they should "not seek to circumvent my ruling" by introducing procedures that could reverse his judgement.
But a Downing Street spokesman said there had been a "significant development" at the summit in Brussels last week, after Mrs May agreed "extra reassurances" over the Irish backstop with the EU, and the date of exit had changed.

Theresa May has told EU leaders that she wants an early deal in Brexit negotiations on the status of Britons in Europe and EU citizens in the UK .
The PM attended a summit of EU leaders in Brussels before leaving while they discussed their approach to Brexit.
The remaining 27 agreed that the European Commission will take the lead role in negotiations.
Meanwhile Chancellor Philip Hammond has played down suggestions it could take ten years to reach a trade deal.
He told the BBC:  "I don't expect that it will take as long as that," following reports that Britain's ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, suggested that others in Europe believed this could be the case.
The prime minister was in Brussels on Thursday for a European Council meeting. She left the summit without answering any questions on Brexit but Irish PM Enda Kenny told reporters that she had given an update on the Supreme Court case the UK government is involved with on whether it can act alone in triggering Article 50 - the formal start of Brexit.
He added: "She would like to have the question of UK citizens living in Europe and European citizens living in the UK dealt with in the early part of discussions that take place."
A Downing St spokesman confirmed on Friday that the prime minister had raised the issue and been clear she would like to see the issue resolved as soon as possible.
He said: "We have been very clear we want to extend those rights to EU citizens here, as long as there are reciprocal arrangements for British citizens across the EU."
The question of what will happen to the estimated 2.9 million citizens of other EU countries who have made their home in the UK in recent years is one of the most controversial arising from the UK's vote to leave the EU in June's referendum.
The government has said it expects an early resolution of the issue once official talks on the terms of the UK's separation from the EU begin, something it plans to happen by next spring.
But it has not given any guarantees on their future status - saying this is impossible without similar safeguards for the estimated 1.2 million Britons living in Spain, France, Italy and other EU countries.
Mr Kenny also told reporters that the Irish Republic would not sign a bilateral trade deal with the UK and the UK had to agree its future relationship with the EU first.
Pictures from the summit which circulated on social media appeared to show Mrs May looking as though she had no one to talk to. However the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler said other clips showed her chatting to EU leaders while German MP Stephan Mayer said reports of the PM being frozen out were "misleading".
Mr Mayer, who is home affairs spokesperson for the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "reasonable" for the 27 EU leaders to meet without Mrs May, following the formal summit, to discuss their approach to Brexit.
The 27 agreed that European Commission official Michel Barnier will lead talks for the EU - although MEPs are said to want a greater say.
European Council president Donald Tusk said the "short, informal meeting" had "reconfirmed our principles, meaning the indivisibility of the four freedoms, the balance of rights and obligations and the rule 'no negotiations without notification'".
European Parliament president Martin Schulz has warned that negotiations could be vetoed if MEPs are not fully involved.
Downing Street meanwhile has indicated that it would be possible to complete a "divorce deal" and a new trade agreement with the EU within the timetabled two years of the UK invoking Article 50 - the formal start of the process of leaving.
But Germany's Mr Mayer said that it would be "a bit naive" to think a trade deal could be done in two years.
"It's very ambitious to finish these negotiations within two years, it's a huge project."
Chancellor Philip Hammond told the BBC the UK would negotiate a Brexit deal and, once that has started, would "in parallel" begin to negotiate new trade arrangements with the EU.
Meanwhile, reports suggest that Britain could face a £50bn bill to leave the EU, including payments to cover pension liabilities for EU staff.
Downing Street said the UK would meet its obligations while in the EU, but any financial settlement after that would be a matter for negotiation.
At the summit, the leaders also discussed Syria, controlling mass migration into Europe, the EU's relationship with Ukraine, co-operation with Nato and economic matters.

The government's Brexit bill has passed through Parliament after Theresa May saw off a revolt by Tory MPs.
Peers accepted the amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill sent to them from the House of Commons, meaning the bill now goes for Royal Assent, becoming law.
Earlier, the government won the vote 319 to 303, after assurances were accepted by would-be rebels that MPs would have a meaningful say.
The PM called it a "crucial step" in delivering a "smooth" Brexit.
Mrs May said: "Today's votes show people in the UK, and to the EU, that the elected representatives in this country are getting on with the job, and delivering on the will of the British people.
"Over the next few weeks we will publish more details of our proposed future relationship with the EU in a White Paper, and will bring the Trade and Customs Bills back to the House of Commons.
"But today has been an important step in delivering the Brexit people voted for, a Brexit that gives Britain a brighter future, a Britain in control of its money, laws, and borders."
Before the Commons vote, Dominic Grieve, leader of the would-be rebels - who wanted to ensure MPs had the power to stop the UK leaving without a deal - said the "sovereignty of Parliament" had been acknowledged.
Both sides have claimed victory with Stephen Hammond, a pro-EU MP who eventually sided with the government, suggesting ministers had agreed to give Parliament a "real say" on top of other concessions.
But international trade secretary Liam Fox said nothing had really changed and the option of a no-deal Brexit had been left firmly on the table.
"There is no change to the fundamental issue here which is the government cannot be forced by Parliament to negotiate something which it does not want to do," he told the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg.
He said the government had "to be able to hold out in our negotiations the prospect of no deal" otherwise the EU would get the upper hand.
On Wednesday evening, following the Commons vote, Leader of the Lords Baroness Evans of Bowes Park said the EU (Withdrawal) Bill had been "debated at length" and was very different as a result of amendments tabled by the Lords.
"I believe our role now is to accept their view as expressed in a vote a few hours ago," she said.
Peers approved the government's proposal without a vote.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019 and negotiations have been taking place over the terms of its departure.
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
The government was worried enough about losing today to budge, even if they only gave an inch.
It might be a concession that only really parliamentary lawyers understand, but the PM had to move, again, despite not wanting to.
And despite the fact that she did compromise even in a meaningless way (yes I can't believe that I did just write that sentence, but it is relevant), the vote was still relatively close, certainly not comfortable enough for the government to relax any time soon.
What's also the case is that the Tory rebels, or potential rebels more like, weren't willing to take dramatic action in enough number to humiliate the PM.
The vote result suggests that they have the hypothetical numbers, but their critics, and their internal opponents in the Tory party would question if they really have the guts.
The government has been at odds with the House of Lords in the long-running row over what happens if the UK cannot reach a deal with the EU, or if MPs reject whatever deal the government agrees with the EU.
The Commons vote had been expected to be tight and the government eventually prevailed by a majority of 16.
Six Tory MPs - Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, Antoinette Sandbach and Phillip Lee - rebelled while four Labour MPs backed the government and six other Labour MPs abstained, as did Kelvin Hopkins, who sits as an independent after having the whip withdrawn.
Ms Wollaston tweeted that she was disappointed with the outcome.
One Labour MP, Naz Shah, voted in a wheelchair after being released from hospital amid Labour claims that normal arrangements sparing unwell MPs from having to enter the chamber had been abandoned.
The debate centred on what happens in three Brexit scenarios:
Under these circumstances, the government has said, a minister will make a statement in Parliament, setting out the proposed next steps.
MPs will then vote on this statement. According to the government, this vote should be "on neutral terms", with MPs simply noting what has been said.
But an amendment backed by the House of Lords on Monday went further, saying MPs should have to "approve" the minister's statement.
The Department for Exiting the European Union has now conceded that it will be up to Commons Speaker John Bercow to decide the matter at the time.
Speaking in the Commons, Dominic Grieve said the issue of the meaningful vote was about giving "assurances to the House and many, many people in the country who are worried about this process and how it will end".
If Parliament wished to "speak with one voice" and exert its influence in the face of a non-deal scenario, it "has the power to do it".
Mr Grieve said he had insisted on a key paragraph in the government statement accepting "it is open to MPs to table motions and debate matters of concern and that, as is the convention, parliamentary time will be provided for this".
Another potential rebel Nicky Morgan said she did not wish to see Mrs May "destabilised or undermined" ahead of next week's summit of EU leaders.
But she warned of further battles to come over the UK's trade and customs arrangements with the EU and suggested relationships between MPs had been "strained almost beyond belief".
And Conservative MP Vicky Ford, another pro-European MP who stuck with the government, said the outcome was "not a mandate for a no-deal Brexit".
She said MPs had secured a "backstop" which meant if Parliament rejected the deal it could trigger "another set of negotiations" between the UK and EU aimed at getting an agreement before the UK left.

Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will not lead the Conservative Party into the next general election.
She said the party would prefer to "to go into that election with another leader", as she arrived in Brussels for an EU summit.
It confirms what she told MPs ahead of a confidence vote triggered by MPs angry at her Brexit policy.
Mrs May won the vote but has vowed to listen to the concerns of the 37% of Tory MPs who voted against her.
The next scheduled general election is in 2022.
Mrs May said: "I've said that in my heart I would love to be able to lead the Conservative Party into the next general election but I think it is right that the party feels that they would prefer to go into that election with another leader."
Asked whether she would quit after Brexit, she declined to discuss dates but added: "What I'm clear about is the next general election is in 2022 and I think it's right that another party leader take us into that general election."
The prime minister said she hoped to "assuage" the concerns of Tory MPs who voted against her by seeking legal "assurances" from EU leaders that the backstop plan to prevent the return of a hard border in Northern Ireland would be temporary.
Critics say Mrs May's backstop plan will keep the UK tied to EU rules indefinitely and curb its ability to strike trade deals.
The EU says it will not renegotiate the backstop, but may agree to give greater assurances on its temporary nature.
It seems unlikely that would win over enough support for her Brexit plan to have a realistic chance of getting through the House of Commons, with tensions heightened in the Conservative Party in the wake of Wednesday evening's confidence vote.
Downing Street confirmed on Thursday that the MPs' "meaningful vote" on the deal will not now take place before Christmas - it was abandoned this week when Mrs May admitted it would have been "rejected by a significant margin".
The PM's spokeswoman said it would happen "as soon as possible in January".
The prime minister's admission that she'll leave office before the next election fended off yesterday's clamour from a chunk of her party to go.
But it hardly makes things easier from today onwards.
Just as she is desperate to get a time limit on the controversial "backstop", she now has a limit on her time in office.
Now it is public, in her own words, questions won't just be about her impossible Brexit agreement but also about how, and when, she will finally go.
Earlier this week, the prime minister travelled to meet EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, to raise the issues surrounding the withdrawal agreement at Westminster one-on-one.
But a trip to meet the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar had to be cancelled because of the leadership vote.
At Thursday's summit, Mrs May has the opportunity to spell out face-to-face the problems she faces to leaders of all the other 27 member states.
The EU leaders will then consider what could be done - without Mrs May in the room.
Theresa May said she had listened to the concerns of the MPs who had voted against her, adding that she knew what was needed to get her deal "over the line".
"I've already met [Irish Premier] Leo Varadkar, I'm going to be addressing the European Council later and I'll be showing the legal and political assurances that I believe we need to assuage the concerns that MPs have on this issue."
She added: "I don't expect an immediate breakthrough but what I do hope is that we can start work as quickly as possible on the assurances that are necessary."
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the rotating six-month presidency of the European Council, said: "I believe that Theresa May knows that there can be no reopening of the withdrawal agreement."
But he said that it might be possible to "provide a little better explanation or definition or go into detail" on the provisions of the agreement.
"Hopefully that will allow Theresa May to bring a vote in January and obtain a majority," he said.
"If the British prime minister thinks one or another additional explanation can be helpful before she brings it to a vote, then we should do that."
Asked what concessions might succeed in winning over Mrs May's domestic critics, Mr Kurz said: "It is difficult to judge, because many of the sceptics do not argue in a way that is really rational."
Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith, a former party leader and a Brexiteer who voted against Mrs May in Wednesday's vote, said he wanted to "send a strong message" to the PM.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We cannot go on just with the idea that a fiddle here and a fiddle there is what the problem is."
Instead, he said Mrs May should say that the £39bn the UK has agreed to pay the EU as part of the divorce deal is "at risk".
"They have got to say to the EU... we are not committed to this £39bn unless we get some resolution."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who is against Brexit, told BBC Breakfast: "We are still back with the problem that the government has a proposal that we can't get through Parliament and we have got to try and break that gridlock."
He called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to "come off the fence" and back another public vote on Brexit.
Labour has said that it will table a no-confidence motion in Theresa May's government that all MPs - not just Conservatives - will be able to vote in - but only when they felt they had a chance of winning it, and forcing a general election.
But the DUP - which props up Mrs May's government - said it would not support such a motion at this stage.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell urged Theresa May to work with Labour on getting a deal with the EU that "will protect jobs and the economy".
He said there was an "overwhelming majority" in the Commons against a no-deal Brexit but the prime minister should now hold a series of votes to establish what other options MPs were willing to accept.
The prime minister won the confidence vote with a majority of 83 - 63% of Conservative MPs backing her and 37% voting against her.
A split was still clear in the Tory party after the result. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who led calls for the confidence vote, said losing the support of a third of her MPs was a "terrible result for the prime minister" and he urged her to resign.
But Nicholas Soames urged Brexiteers to "throw their weight" behind the PM as she sought to address the "grave concerns" many MPs had about aspects of the EU deal.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said his party was also still concerned about the Irish backstop plan, telling BBC News: "I don't think this vote really changes anything very much in terms of the arithmetic."

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal has been rejected by 230 votes - the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
MPs voted by 432 votes to 202 to reject the deal, which sets out the terms of Britain's exit from the EU on 29 March.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has now tabled a vote of no confidence in the government, which could trigger a general election.
The confidence vote is expected to be held at about 1900 GMT on Wednesday.
The defeat is a huge blow for Mrs May, who has spent more than two years hammering out a deal with the EU.
The plan was aimed at bringing about an orderly departure from the EU on 29 March, and setting up a 21-month transition period to negotiate a free trade deal.
The vote was originally due to take place in December, but Mrs May delayed it to try and win the support of more MPs.
The UK is still on course to leave on 29 March but the defeat throws the manner of that departure - and the timing of it - into further doubt.
MPs who want either a further referendum, a softer version of the Brexit proposed by Mrs May, to stop Brexit altogether or to leave without a deal, will ramp up their efforts to get what they want, as a weakened PM offered to listen to their arguments.
History was made tonight with the scale of this defeat - a higher figure than the wildest of numbers that were gossiped about before the vote.
But the prime minister's dilemma is a more serious version of the same it's always been.
She has no majority of her own in Parliament to make her middle way through stick. And her many critics don't agree on the direction she should take - a more dramatic break with the EU, or a tighter, softer version.
Those two fundamental and clashing positions have always threatened to pull her and the government apart.
The Brexit debate has cut across traditional party lines.
Some 118 Conservative MPs - from both the Leave and Remain wings of her party - voted with the opposition parties against Mrs May's deal.
And three Labour MPs supported the prime minister's deal: Ian Austin (Dudley North), Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) and John Mann (Bassetlaw).
The most controversial sticking point was the issue of the Northern Irish backstop - the fallback plan to avoid any return to physical border checks between the country and Ireland.
Mrs May had hoped new assurances from EU leaders this week, saying the backstop would be temporary and, if triggered, would last for "the shortest possible period", would help her garner more support.
But in the debate leading up to the vote, members from all sides of the House said the move did not go far enough.
Click here if you cannot see the look-up. Data from Commons Votes Services.
In normal times, such a crushing defeat on a key piece of government legislation would be expected to be followed by a prime ministerial resignation.
But Mrs May signalled her intention to carry on in a statement immediately after the vote.
"The House has spoken and this government will listen," she told MPs.
She offered cross-party talks to determine a way forward on Brexit, if she succeeded in winning the confidence vote.
Former foreign secretary and leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson said it was a "bigger defeat than people have been expecting" - and it meant Mrs May's deal was now "dead".
But he said it gave the prime minister a "massive mandate to go back to Brussels" to negotiate a better deal, without the controversial Northern Ireland backstop.
And he said he would back Mrs May in Wednesday's confidence vote.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna said that if his leader did not secure a general election, Mr Corbyn should do what the "overwhelming majority" of Labour members want and get behind a further EU referendum.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who also wants a second referendum, said Mrs May's defeat was "the beginning of the end of Brexit" - but conceded that campaigners would not get one without Mr Corbyn's backing.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Mrs May had suffered "a defeat of historic proportions" and called again for the Article 50 "clock to be stopped" in order for another referendum to take place.
"We have reached the point now where it would be unconscionable to kick the can any further down the road," she said.
However, government minister Rory Stewart said there was no majority in the Commons for any Brexit plan, including another referendum.
By the BBC's head of political research Peter Barnes
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, UK general elections are only supposed to happen every five years. The next one is due in 2022.
But a vote of no confidence lets MPs decide on whether they want the government to continue. The motion must be worded: "That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government."
If a majority of MPs vote for the motion then it starts a 14-day countdown.
If during that time the current government, or any other alternative government cannot win a new vote of confidence, then an early general election would be called.
That election cannot happen for at least 25 working days.
MPs are set to debate Labour's no confidence motion for about six hours following Prime Minister's Questions at 1200.
Mr Corbyn said it would allow the House of Commons to "give its verdict on the sheer incompetence of this government".
But DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party, which keeps Mrs May in power, would be supporting her in Wednesday's confidence vote.
She told the BBC MPs had "acted in the best interests of the entire United Kingdom" by voting down the deal.
But she added: "We will give the government the space to set out a plan to secure a better deal."
In her statement to MPs, Mrs May said she planned to return to the Commons next Monday with an alternative plan - if she survives the confidence vote.
She said she would explore any ideas from cross-party talks with the EU, but she remained committed to delivering on the result of the 2016 referendum.
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the risk of a disorderly Brexit had increased as a result of the deal being voted down.
He said the agreement was "the only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal" and that he and President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, had "demonstrated goodwill" with additional clarifications this week to put MPs minds at rest.
"I urge the United Kingdom to clarify its intentions as soon as possible," he said. "Time is almost up."
Mr Tusk said he regretted the outcome of the vote and later tweeted to ask "who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?"
A statement from the Irish government also said it regretted the decision and that it "continues to believe that ratification of this agreement is the best way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the UK".
It also said it will "continue to intensify preparations" for a no deal Brexit.

Theresa May's offer to give EU citizens in the UK "settled status" after Brexit has been described as being "far short of what citizens are entitled to".
MEPs, including European Parliament chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt say the proposal is a "damp squib".
It offers Europeans in the UK fewer rights than Britons in the EU, they say in a joint letter to newspapers.
Cabinet Office minister Damian Green said the "basic rights" of EU citizens living in the UK would be "preserved".
He urged Mr Verhofstadt to "read our proposal", which the UK government insists would allow about three million EU citizens to stay on the same basis as now.
EU migrants who had lived in the UK for five years would be granted access to health, education and other benefits.
But the prime minister's proposals would be dependent on EU states guaranteeing Britons the same rights.
The leaders of the four political groups who have signed the joint letter account for two-thirds of the votes in the European Parliament.
Their letter points out that that they have the power to reject any Brexit deal before it can go ahead because the parliament must approve the withdrawal agreement.
The leaders said they would not endorse anything that removed rights already acquired by citizens.
They said the UK proposal "falls short" because it would take away rights citizens currently have, and create new red tape and uncertainty for millions of people.
The letter said this contradicted promises made by the Leave campaign that EU citizens would be treated no less favourably after Brexit.
By contrast, the letter said the EU's offer - already on the table - was simple, clear and fair because it promised that all citizens, including UK nationals living in Europe, would be treated equally and lose no current rights.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Verhofstadt said EU citizens in the UK - and Britons living on the continent - should keep their current rights, rather than the government "inventing a new status".
What the UK is offering EU citizens?
In full: Safeguarding the position of EU citizens
What is the EU offering UK citizens?
In full: EU's essential principles on citizens' rights
"It creates a type of second class citizenship for European Citizens in the UK," he added. "We don't see why their rights should be diminished and that would be the case in the proposal.
"In the end, it is the European Parliament that will say yes or no, and I can tell you it not will be a yes if the rights of European citizens - and also the rights of UK citizens living on the continent - will be diminished [and] cut off, like it is at the moment."
The letter stated: "The European Parliament will reserve its right to reject any agreement that treats EU citizens, regardless of their nationality, less favourably than they are at present.
"This is a question of the basic fundamental rights and values that are at the heart of the European project."
It added: "In early 2019, MEPs will have a final say on the Brexit deal. We will work closely with the EU negotiator and the 27 member states to help steer negotiations."
A spokesperson for the UK government said the letter contained a "number of inaccuracies" which could cause unnecessary and needless concern to UK and EU citizens.
Mr Green, who as first secretary of state is a close ally of Theresa May's, told BBC Radio 4's Today that it was clear that EU citizens would have to comply with "basic" immigration rules after the UK leaves the EU to establish their identity and nationality.
But he insisted: "That is not an insuperable barrier. We all fill in forms when we go on holiday and have to get visas and all that."
He suggested the UK was doing "precisely" what the EU was calling for.
"Somebody who is here now will keep the rights they already have and we hope that British citizens living in other EU countries will keep the rights they already have...the basic rights will be preserved so that should not be an obstacle to a final deal."
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Theresa May is sticking to her Brexit strategy, despite her party rowing in the wake of her latest Commons defeat.
MPs rejected a motion endorsing her approach by 303 to 258, with 66 Tory MPs abstaining, leading one minister to accuse Brexiteer rebels of "treachery".
Steve Baker, of the backbench European Research Group which led the rebellion, called it a "storm in a teacup".
The PM will return to Brussels "within days", after her Brexit secretary met EU ambassadors in London on Friday.
Steve Barclay will also travel for further talks with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday, with Parliament yet to back a deal ahead of the UK's withdrawal from the bloc on 29 March.
Mrs May is trying to renegotiate the Irish "backstop" after MPs voted to replace it with "alternative arrangements" earlier this month.
Some MPs fear the backstop - the insurance policy to prevent the return of customs checks on the Irish border - will see the UK tied to EU customs rules in the long-term.
Thursday's government motion called for MPs to back its renegotiating strategy, but ERG members believed it also meant endorsing calls to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
They say the option of leaving the EU without a formal deal offers essential "negotiating leverage" in Brussels. But a majority of MPs believe it would cause chaos at ports and massive disruption to business.
The EU has consistently ruled out changes to the backstop.
The latest government defeat has no legal force and Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom told BBC political correspondent Iain Watson the PM would return to Brussels for talks in the coming days.
Ms Leadsom also told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the loss represented "more of a hiccup than the disaster that is being reported".
"[Mrs May] will continue to seek those legally binding changes to the backstop that will enable Parliament to support our deal," she added.
Analysis by BBC political correspondent Iain Watson
Theresa May had a choice.
Abandoned by the ERG, she could have tried to build cross-party consensus by pivoting towards a customs union.
This option is favoured by Labour's frontbench and quite a few Conservatives, and Brussels feels it has potential to deliver a stable parliamentary majority.
But many in her grassroots would have pointed out a broken manifesto promise, and even re-badging it as a "common customs territory" might have caused a split.
So, the PM returns to Brussels to eke out changes to the backstop, and hopes to detach enough Labour MPs to help get a deal over the line by promising new employment laws.
If there is no revised deal before March, however, some ministers might abandon ship and urge her to delay Brexit.
But doing just that might convince some in the ERG to return to the fold, persuaded to back what they see as a bad deal over a delayed, maybe even endangered, Brexit.
Mrs Leadsom blamed Labour for "playing politics" to defeat the government.
But the chair of the Exiting the EU committee, Labour's Hilary Benn, said Mrs May had rejected party leader Jeremy Corbyn's proposed alternatives and instead sought approval from Tory Brexiteers.
"As long as the prime minister continues to try and keep the ERG on-side... we are not going to make any progress," he told Today. "We have to compromise."
Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood told BBC Newsnight the ERG was a "party within a party... flexing its muscle" to take advantage of Mrs May's lack of a Commons majority.
He called the group's actions "irritating, provocative and... unnecessary".
Business Minister Richard Harrington told The House magazine ERG members should defect to Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party - a move the former UKIP leader called "a jolly good idea".
But Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the BBC: "That's not a sensible approach. The Conservative Party is a team - there's far more that unites us than divides us."
Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan called for the Conservatives to take a "collective deep breath" and resolve matters to avoid a no-deal scenario.
Mr Baker, the ERG's deputy chairman, told Today he was "standing up for what the majority of the people voted for", while still "making enormous compromises".
But he added: "[The EU] should also understand that there are those of us unwilling to vote to take a no-deal off the table."
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve accused the Conservative Eurosceptics of being "completely cavalier about the risks" of leaving the EU without a formal withdrawal agreement.
And he suggested a dozen or more ministers - including six in the cabinet - might resign if Mrs May refused to extend Brexit talks beyond 29 March.
Asked whether she would resign if there was not a deal before the end of the month, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said she planned to work with all colleagues to help the PM get her withdrawal agreement through Parliament.
As to whether the ERG were "traitors", she responded: "No, certainly not."
Meanwhile, Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney suggested the UK could expect a "generous response" to any request to extend the withdrawal process beyond 29 March.
Speaking at a Brexit event in Dublin, he said: "With the practicalities around European elections, the establishment of a new European Commission... there is a natural extension date until the end of June perhaps."
However, Irish PM Leo Varadkar said anyone expecting the EU's solidarity over the Irish border issue to crumble at the final hour was in for a "nasty surprise".
By BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
EU leaders still believe this is not the time to budge.
They see the UK arguing, debating and negotiating with itself again - as it has done so often during the Brexit process - rather than engaging with Brussels.
As a result of all this, the new round of EU-UK negotiations are going nowhere fast.
"Window-dressing" is how one senior EU figure described the talks to me, with each side simply repeating their red lines to the other.
So, the current favourite prediction in Brussels is that things will only be resolved in March.
Read Katya's blog

Theresa May is a reserved figure who rarely betrays any emotions and certainly never likes to show any signs of weakness.
But the defection of Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen - three Conservative MPs from the One Nation wing of the party - may have struck a chord.
The prime minister wrote to the trio on Thursday, expressing sadness at their decision - although she did challenge their attack on her leadership.
Mrs May also called in two of the trio's political soulmates, the former ministers Justine Greening and Phillip Lee, for lengthy discussions at Number 10.
Lee, who was once one of the PM's closest friends at Westminster, had not spoken to her since he resigned as a justice minister in July in protest at her handling of Brexit.
Over the last 24 hours, he received texts from the party chairman Brandon Lewis and the chief whip Julian Smith. And then there was the invitation for a 45-minute chat with the prime minister at Number 10 to discuss Brexit and much else beyond.
"Something has happened," one source close to Lee says. "They must be worried."
The odd sign of prime ministerial nerves is explained by the potentially painful challenge facing Mrs May next week.
MPs are guaranteed a fresh Brexit vote next Wednesday. If she is unable to satisfy the likes of Mr Lee and Ms Greening, who are determined to rule out a no-deal Brexit, Mrs May could find her hand is forced by Parliament.
Former Conservative cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin is understood to be confident that, in such circumstances, he would win a vote on a cross-party amendment that could extend Article 50.
The amendment, drawn up with the former Labour cabinet minister Yvette Cooper, would seek to force the PM to avoid a no-deal Brexit by setting aside time for a Parliamentary bill.
If she fails to reach a deal with the EU by the middle of March, the bill would oblige the prime minister to:
A number of ministers are saying in private they would be prepared to lose their jobs to be able to support the Cooper-Letwin amendment.
Other ministers believe that, in the end, an insufficient number of their colleagues would resign to allow the amendment to pass.
The prime minister is taking no chances and is working hard to secure a revised deal with the EU by next Tuesday, the eve of vote.
She met European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels on Wednesday and will talk to EU leaders in the margins of an EU-Arab League summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday and Monday.
Downing Street is looking for changes to Mrs May's Brexit deal on two levels:
The EU is keen to help but has two concerns. It will not offer any legal guarantees that undermine the withdrawal agreement, and it fears that it could make concessions that are then rejected by MPs.
One cabinet minister told me they are confident that the prime minister will secure a deal in time for her to upgrade next week's parliamentary vote to a legally binding "meaningful" vote.
Another minister tells me: "There will be a deal... by 29 March. The EU always goes to the line."
But then the minister added: "Never underestimate the ability of this prime minister to muck things up."
The pointed remarks show that as Brexit nears the endgame, this lonely prime minister struggles to command loyalty even among her ministers.
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Warnings that a no-deal Brexit would be a "huge mistake" for the UK and the EU are "project reality" not "project fear", the foreign secretary has said.
Jeremy Hunt said: "We have to be very honest with ourselves about the choices that we face and we need to have these frank discussions".
Mr Hunt repeated a warning that "as things stand at the moment, we are heading for no deal by accident".
He was speaking after he met his Austrian counterpart Karin Kneissl.
Ms Kneissl said that they were "prepared for the different possible scenarios".
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree on how their future relationship will work.
Key differences between the UK and the EU remain, more than a year after negotiations started.
Mr Hunt said no deal would be a "huge geo-strategic mistake" and would "have a profound impact on the relations between Britain and the EU countries for a generation".
He added: "We don't think this is in anyone's interests."
Asked by the BBC if this was "project fear part two", Mr Hunt said: "This is not project fear, this is project reality."
"We have to make a decision on Britain's future relationship with the EU by the end of this year and we have to be very honest with ourselves about the choices that we face - and we need to have these frank discussions because time is very, very short," Mr Hunt said.
"We are clear that what we want is a friendship that means we can stand as friends with EU countries - just as the friendship between Australia and New Zealand, between Austria and Switzerland.
"Britain will prosper and succeed whatever the outcomes of these talks because we are that kind of country."
He said it was important to point out that there were "very, very serious consequences" for all sides of the argument "if we get this judgement wrong".
The EU and the UK want a deal in place by October.
Government ministers say they want to reach a deal with the EU covering issues like trade and border checks, but are also making contingency plans to prepare for leaving with no agreement in place.
Last week the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, rejected a key part of Mrs May's proposals, which would involve the UK collecting customs duties on its behalf.

EU citizens will have to answer three "simple" questions online if they want to continue living in the UK after Brexit, the home secretary has said.
Sajid Javid said the government's "default" position would be to grant, not refuse, settled status.
People will be asked to prove their ID, whether they have criminal convictions and whether they live in the UK.
Their answers will be checked against government databases and a decision given "very quickly", said Mr Javid.
The scheme will operate online and via a smartphone app, Mr Javid said, and would be "as simple as people can reasonably expect", with most decisions turned around within two weeks or sooner.
Speaking to a House of Lords committee, Mr Javid said there would have to be "a very good reason" why an application would be refused.
The Home Office said the criminal record checks would be about "serious and persistent criminality, not parking fines".
The £170m scheme will be compulsory for all EU citizens living in the UK - the government expects a total of 3.5 million applications.
EU citizens and family members who have been in the UK for five years by the end of 2020 will be able to apply for "settled status", meaning they are free to go on living and working in the UK indefinitely.
Those who have arrived by December 31, 2020, but do not have five years' residence, can seek to stay until they have, at which point they can seek settled status.
The scheme also includes citizens of Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
Applications will cost £65 for adults and £32.50 for children and be free for EU nationals who already have residency or indefinite leave to remain.
Applicants will be asked to provide their biographical information, declare whether they have any criminal records, and upload a facial photograph.
The process requires verification of the applicant's identity and nationality using a passport, ID card or other valid document, which can be done using a smartphone app or through secure post.
The government hopes to start trials within a few weeks, with people allowed to start registering in the autumn.
Mr Javid told the Lords EU Justice sub-committee he wanted it to be fully operational by the "start of next year", adding that he wanted to avoid a "surge" of applicants when the UK leaves the EU in March.
The scheme would run for at least two years after Brexit day, probably to around June 2021, said the home secretary.
The hope is that most applicants will not have to provide supporting documents because their answers will be checked against HM Revenue and Customs and other government databases.
Applicants with Android phones will be able to download an app which can read the chip in their passport to verify their identity - and they will be able to take a "selfie" that can be checked against Home Office records, said Mr Javid.
But he said there was an "an issue at the moment" with Apple device users, who will not be able to make use of this app, and instead will have to send in their passport to prove their identity.
The home secretary said he had raised the issue with Apple on a recent visit to Silicon Valley and the company was "looking at it actively".
Analysis by BBC Home Affairs correspondent Danny Shaw
What the Home Office is embarking on is a hugely complex project within a tight timescale.
When challenged about the potential for it go wrong, officials point to the Passport Office as an example of a service successfully processing millions of cases every year.
But unlike the biometric passport system, the EU registration scheme is being built from scratch.
For hundreds of thousands of EU nationals, who have a straightforward and legitimate employment history in Britain and are comfortable using digital technology, their applications may well be resolved "within days", the time officials rather ambitiously claim cases will take.
But for claimants hoping to bring in relatives, people unfamiliar with computers and those with a more sketchy background in Britain, perhaps involving some cash-in-hand work, the process may be a hurdle they'll struggle with - or avoid altogether.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chair of the Commons home affairs committee, said "far more" answers were needed from the government "about what happens to those who aren't registered by June 2021 through no fault of their own, such as children".
"At the moment it appears that if children aren't registered within the next three years then they will lose their legal rights even though they may have been here all their lives."
SNP home affairs spokeswoman Jo Cherry, speaking in the Commons, said: "There are potentially significant numbers of people who could fall through the cracks here.
"If just 5% of the estimated three million EU citizens living in the UK don't register by the deadline there would be a population of nearly 200,000 left without status."
Former Labour minister Hilary Benn, who chairs the Commons Brexit Committee, asked ministers if the scheme would still stand in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes said: "We have confidence that there will be a deal."
Sajid Javid promised there would be no repeat of the Windrush scandal - which saw people who had lived in the UK for decades threatened with deportation because they did not have the right paperwork - for EU migrants, adding "lessons had been learned".
The new "settled status" scheme would establish the right of EU migrants to remain in the UK, unlike in the case of Windrush families where there was only an assumption they had a right to stay, without any documentary proof, he told the committee.
The home secretary accused EU nations, such as France and Spain, of failing to match the UK's progress on plans for expats after Brexit.
There are about 900,000 UK citizens in the EU, according to ONS figures.
Both sides of the Brexit negotiations have resolved to secure the status of expats by the time the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
But any deal they reach will have to be ratified by the European Parliament and agreed to by member states.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal then the status of British citizens living in the EU member states is less certain.
The UK would expect member states to allow Britons living in the EU the same rights as it plans to grant EU citizens in the UK but it would be down to individual countries to decide what to do.

A group of major European companies has warned the Prime Minister they may cut investment without more clarity over the terms of Britain's EU exit.
Business leaders, including from BP, BMW, Nestle, and Vodafone, told Theresa May that "time is running out".
In a statement after the Downing Street meeting, they said that a trade deal with the EU must be "frictionless as with a customs union".
Downing Street said that the meeting had been "open and productive".
The industry leaders warned that "uncertainty causes less investment."
The group, known as the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), includes BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and his Nestle counterpart Paul Bulcke.
Others at the meeting were the chief executives of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao, and Royal Mail, Moya Greene.
Senior figures from firms including BMW, Phillips, E.On and Ferrovial also attended the meeting with Mrs May and Brexit secretary David Davis.
The ERT represents Europe's 50 largest companies, with combined revenues of 2.25 trillion euros (£2tn) and millions of employees.
In its statement, the ERT said: "The uninterrupted flow of goods is essential to both the EU and UK economies. This must be frictionless as with a customs union.
"We need clarity and certainty, because time is running out. Uncertainty causes less investment."
A Downing Street spokeswoman said that the PM told the business leaders that work was under way on two customs models, "and underlined the importance of ensuring that our future trading arrangements with the EU are as frictionless as possible".
She restated a commitment to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and allowing the UK to pursue an independent trade policy.
"The PM recognised the necessity of providing certainty for businesses, pointing to the agreement of an implementation period at the European Council in March to provide time to allow businesses to prepare for the new arrangements," the spokeswoman said.

The UK will not be allowed to leave the EU without a deal at any point, Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood has suggested.
He told the Political Thinking podcast he and like-minded colleagues will stop a no-deal exit "whenever" - even if Brexit is delayed until the summer.
MPs will get the opportunity to vote on a no-deal exit if Parliament rejects Theresa May's deal again this month.
Mr Ellwood suggested the PM may have to pursue a "softer" Brexit to build a Commons majority for her deal.
Asked by presenter Nick Robinson whether this could mean the UK ultimately staying in some form of customs union with the EU, he replied "possibly".
Mrs May has said she will bring the withdrawal agreement she has negotiated with the EU back to the Commons for a second time by 12 March.
If it is voted down, MPs will have the option of either supporting leaving without a formal agreement or delaying the exit date by extending the Article 50 process.
Mrs May was forced to concede a vote on extending Article 50 after a number of ministers who want to retain a close relationship with the EU after Brexit threatened to resign unless she ruled out the prospect of the UK leaving later this month without a deal.
However, the PM has refused to rule out the UK exiting this summer without an agreement if, as expected, the EU agrees to extend the process by about three months.
Mr Ellwood, who backed the PM's deal in the first Commons vote in January, told the Radio 4 podcast that the UK would be in "uncharted territory" if it did not leave on 29 March.
But he said the days of Mrs May having to "bend over backwards" to placate the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs, many of whom believe a no-deal exit is better for the UK in the long term, were over.
"I hope it is very clear that if it was the European Research Group's intent to take us to no deal, we will stop that, whenever," he said.
"No deal is not good for Britain. It will damage Britain in so many ways. No deal is not something we can contemplate."
Mr Ellwood said he would not quit over the issue and urged Tory MPs who wanted to keep close links to the EU to stay and fight for their beliefs, suggesting the tide was moving in their direction.
"If we are then to seek some form of consensus in Parliament that honours the referendum result then you are probably looking at an even softer form of Brexit than we have currently got," he added.
The PM is seeking to re-work her deal to reassure MPs the UK will not be stuck indefinitely in the backstop, - the controversial agreement to prevent a hard border in Ireland - and have to follow EU customs rules.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the PM must "face down" the EU over the issue and show that the UK would not be "shoved around".
"By suggesting to the EU that we might delay Brexit or take no deal off the table, it weakens the negotiating leverage in delivering the very aims that the government has set out," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"And that's what I think is so frustrating at this point in time."

Labour's deputy leader has stepped up calls for his party to promise a referendum on any Brexit deal in its European elections manifesto.
Tom Watson urged party members to message Labour's ruling national executive committee to call for a "confirmatory ballot" pledge.
The NEC meets on Tuesday to decide on Labour's campaign manifesto.
But frontbencher Barry Gardiner said a referendum on any Brexit deal would be a change in Labour policy.
The shadow international trade secretary told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics that the party's policy agreed at last year's conference was to go for a referendum "to stop a no-deal or a bad Tory Brexit."
He added: "If we are being pushed into a no-deal by this government, we will have a second referendum. But we want to try - and that's why we're in there with the government now - trying to deliver on what people voted for."
Hundreds of thousands of people marched in central London last month to call for another EU referendum.
Labour agreed a policy at its last conference that if Parliament voted down the government's deal or talks end in no-deal, there should be a general election.
But if it cannot force one, it added, the party "must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote".
However, following parliamentary deadlock and a refusal by MPs to approve the withdrawal deal negotiated between the EU and UK, Labour has entered into cross-party talks with the Conservatives to see if they can reach a consensus.
And many Labour members now want the party to make its agreement to any deal conditional on it being put to a public vote - what Labour calls a "confirmatory ballot".
Mr Watson has been among figures calling for that pledge to be included in Labour's European Parliamentary elections campaign, arguing it is needed to counter the electoral challenge posed by Nigel Farage's newly formed Brexit Party.
On Friday it emerged that more than 90 Labour MPs and MEPs had written to the NEC, urging a "clear commitment" to a public vote on any Brexit deal agreed.
Asked whether another referendum was a "red line" for Labour in the talks, shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told Sky News: "We are not being hugely prescriptive on the minute detail of specific elements because we are willing to compromise and we are willing to be flexible".
She said she was "hopeful" that in coming weeks "we will see some movement" in the talks.
If all of the party's criteria was not met, she said "all options are on the table which includes campaigning for a public vote".
And shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show he expected the NEC to "endorse Labour's policy that came out of the conference".
Mr Gwynne said: "I want to ensure that we avoid a bad Tory Brexit or a no-deal scenario. In those circumstances, yes, I think that wasn't on the ballot paper in 2016, we should then perhaps ask the people 'is this actually what you want, a confirmatory vote, do you support what the government's proposition is?'.
"But let's see what comes out of these talks because I hope that the government can move on some of these red lines so that we can get a more sensible approach towards Brexit going forwards."
But Lib Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson, whose party launched its European parliamentary elections campaign on Friday with a "stop Brexit" message, told the BBC: "Every Liberal Democrat vote is a vote to stop Brexit.
"A vote for Labour is a vote for Brexit. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson will use those votes to say the British people want Brexit to happen."
There is some opposition to another referendum within Labour, amid concern about alienating party voters who backed Leave.
Earlier this month 25 Labour backbenchers wrote to Mr Corbyn, urging him to rule one out and arguing that it would "be exploited by the far right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our chances of winning a general election".

Jeremy Hunt has urged Tory MPs to get behind Theresa May - amid a backlash against suggestions the Brexit transition period could be extended.
The foreign secretary said the "great strength" of other EU nations was that they had stayed united in the talks - and he urged Tories to do the same.
The PM had to "maximise her negotiating leverage in Brussels," he added.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell has raised concerns about a longer transition period with No 10.
He told the BBC: "What I want to be quite clear is that we are still leaving the Commons Fisheries Policy at the end of 2020. I think that's a very important thing for fishermen here in Scotland to know and understand."
But he added there was not a "specific proposal" about extending the transition period, it was just "something that has been floated" and said the "prime minister has my full backing in terms of getting a deal".
Former Conservative leader and prominent Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith said it would see the UK paying the EU "tens of billions" more.
He told BBC's Newsnight he could not understand an extension when the UK "still hasn't got anything back in return",  and said the negotiations "look more like a capitulation".
But Mr Hunt said it was precisely because Mrs May had not "capitulated" to EU demands that no agreement had been reached at the European Council summit this week.
And he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The great strength of the EU in these negotiations is that the 27 EU nations have remained united. And we now need to do the same behind Theresa May to maximise her negotiating leverage in Brussels."
Mrs May briefed around 120 business leaders on Brexit negotiations in a conference call on Friday - Downing Street said while businesses were regularly briefed after European Council meetings, this was the first time Mrs May had conducted one personally.
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
As we move towards what the legal deadlines imply are the closing moments of this whole process, some of its moments are becoming pretty strange.
The prime minister had a hint of warmth from some parts of the EU empire for the idea of drawing out the implementation period, to give more time to work out the long term fixes.
But even so, the politics put such a straitjacket on proceedings that she can't even quite manage to be completely clear about that.
So we heard about a proposal that's not a proposal but an "idea that's emerged". An extension to an extension that's not a request for a longer transition period but a desire perhaps to have the option.
It might sound like Kafka. But it's the words of a government struggling to keep a set of almost impossible promises.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and the transition period, which Mrs May prefers to call the implementation period, is designed to smooth the path to a future permanent relationship between the UK and EU.
During this period, which is due to finish on 31 December 2020, the UK's relationship with the EU will stay largely the same. But with the two sides failing to reach agreement yet, Mrs May said this arrangement could be extended "for a few months", if needed.
The UK has signed up to the principle of agreeing an Irish border "backstop" - an insurance policy designed to prevent the need for customs checks - in case there is a gap between the transition period ending and the future permanent relationship coming into force.
The problem is that the two sides have yet to agree what form the backstop will take, and how long it could last.
Mr Hunt said the backstop remained the "key" outstanding issue to negotiating a withdrawal agreement for the UK.
The UK would not agree to allow "customs barriers down the Irish Sea" - the EU has suggested keeping Northern Ireland within EU customs rules for a period - or for the whole of the UK to remain in the customs union "indefinitely".
"Because she has held firm on that that has meant we haven't been able to solve the problem this week. But those are two very important matters of principle for the United Kingdom," he said.
While the issue about the Irish border could be resolved through a free trade deal between the UK and EU, the EU was insisting the UK's withdrawal agreement should be negotiated first, with a "backstop", before the "future relationship" discussion began, he added.
"If we are going to resolve this, we need to make more progress on the future relationship."
Asked if the UK would have to pay more into the EU budget, if the transition period were to be extended, he said: "All those are issues that would have to be discussed" adding that the issues of money and of the Common Fisheries Policy were "very difficult".
Eurosceptic backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said any proposal that meant an extra £15bn a year being paid into the EU budget in return for "a waffly political declaration" would be "very hard to get through the House of Commons".
He told the BBC: "We are going to be tied to the EU for longer if we go along with what the prime minister is saying, without having any votes.
"So we will pay the EU for the privilege of it making our laws and interpreting them through the European Court of Justice for an extended period - that is not a good deal."
EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told France Inter radio on Friday that "90% of the accord on the table has been agreed with Britain" but added: "I'm convinced a deal is necessary, I'm still not sure we'll get one."
Asked if the whole agreement could fail on the issue of avoiding a hard border in Ireland, he replied: "My answer is yes."
In a separate development, Tory MP Johnny Mercer has hit out at the current state of the government, describing it as a "shit show".
In an interview with The House magazine, the former Army officer said he would not have stood as an MP "if the situation was like it is now" and that he was no longer sure that his "set of values and ethos" were still "aligned with the Conservative Party".

In Brussels there is a strong sense that the Conservative Party have not woken up to the trade offs and compromises that will inevitably characterise the talks, writes Nicholas Watt.
The drinks were flowing and the mood was humming as the Tory great and good met to celebrate their election victory this week.
Michael Gove had a telling analogy as he praised Tory thinkers who had steered the party towards the ambition of breaching Labour's "Red Wall".
The likes of the former No 10 aide Will Tanner had provided a form of "in-flight refuelling" for the aircraft of the Tory party.
There was a danger, Gove noted, that after nearly a decade in office, the Conservative Party could run low on the fuel of ideas.
But Will Tanner's Onward think tank had been on hand with its in flight refuelling tanker.
Onward had identified Workington Man, a northern rugby league supporter, as a key target for the Tories. The party duly won Workington for the first time in over 40 years.
The in-flight refuelling had performed a starring role, Gove noted, in helping to deliver an unprecedented fourth successive general election first place with an increased Tory vote each time.
All so happy, all so relaxed as the Tories celebrated their success at the Westminster gathering. But hovering in the air before, and long after that successful political in flight refuelling, is Brexit.
With or without the bongs of Big Ben, Brexit will, in a technical sense, be delivered on 31 January as Britain leaves the EU.
But the Brexit story will be far from over then as attention turns immediately to talks on the UK's future relationship with the EU.
As the Tories have been basking in their election victory, the EU has in recent weeks issued warnings about how tough the talks will be.
In Brussels there is a strong sense that the Tories have not woken up to the trade offs and compromises that will inevitably characterise the talks. Officials believe the UK has only tuned into two aspirations agreed by all - the need for zero tariffs and zero quotas on goods.
These EU officials fear the UK has not focused on a third EU demand - no dumping. That means that if the UK wants zero tariffs and zero quotas it cannot embark on social dumping - gaining a competitive advantage over the EU by cutting labour and environmental standards and lowering taxes.
Senior UK officials say they understand exactly what the EU is saying.
One tells me: "We understand the EU is nervous about having a big economy on its doorstep that could undercut it by reducing standards. But we're not bothered. We want to do our own thing. Lots of our standards will be better."
Cabinet ministers close to the future trade talks believe the UK also has two advantages in the talks:
Failure to reach a deal in the trade talks would have less grave consequences for Britain than a no deal Brexit without a withdrawal agreement last year, according to ministers.
They point out that the three elements at the heart of last year's deal - Northern Ireland, citizens' rights and the UK's exit payment - will stand whatever happens.
The cabinet minister told me:
"Boris can say to the EU: you know I was prepared for the original no deal last year but was thwarted by parliament which blocked no-deal. I am now prepared for a WTO no-deal [trading on WTO terms in the event of no trade deal] which isn't so bad and I can do what I like in Parliament. So it is a credible threat."
These interpretations will be hotly contested by the EU and by pro-Europeans who want to fashion a close relationship with the EU. Brussels will say the EU has an abiding and common interest in preserving the integrity of the single market.
And pro-Europeans will challenge the idea that relying on WTO trading terms for the largest part of the UK's exports would be straightforward.
The opening skirmishes in the next round of Brexit talks have so far been a gentle affair. The Tories are still riding high after their election win but the atmosphere will soon heat up as the pace quickens.
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A Conservative MP says she sees no alternative other than backing another referendum on leaving the EU.
Heidi Allen becomes the latest Tory to support a new vote, saying the "right-wing" of her party had made Theresa May's Chequers Brexit plan - "dead".
"They have behaved unacceptably through this and have completely tied her hands," she told the BBC.
The prime minister has ruled out a referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.
Mrs May's Chequers plan - which would keep the UK closely aligned with the EU in trade in goods - has been heavily criticised by Tory Brexiteers, including Boris Johnson.
Ms Allen - who campaigned to Remain in the EU in 2016 - told Radio 4's Today programme that while she would still support in principle an "11th hour" deal from Mrs May and the EU, "too many" of her party - especially those on the right - would not.
The South Cambridgeshire MP said she had been left with "no alternative other than asking - should we come to that, no deal, that looks like that's what's going to happen - then we need to go back to the public to decide what they want us to do next."
On what a further referendum could look like, Ms Allen suggested that it should include the option of staying in the EU under existing terms.
By Jessica Parker, political correspondent
Heidi Allen joins a handful of Tory backbenchers who've openly said a so-called people's vote may now be needed.
And as someone who supported Remain, her comments may come as no surprise.
But, perhaps more significantly, she is the latest person to suggest that Theresa May's Chequers plan is dead. The blueprint, for our future relationship with the EU, has never been liked by the Leave supporting contingent.
But people like Heidi Allen had previously said that they would at least give Chequers a chance. No more.
It comes as Labour - not to mention the EU - has also declared that the proposals are unworkable in their current form.
And while Number 10 is sticking to its guns, there must be a big question as to how long this situation can be sustained.
The People's Vote campaign group wants to give the public the final say over whether the UK leaves the EU, arguing that voters should be given a choice  between leaving with or without a deal or staying on current terms.
Anna Soubry, Justine Greening and Sarah Wollaston are among the Conservative MPs who have supported a further referendum.
Ms Allen's comments come after ex-PM Sir John Major also made the case for another Brexit vote and highlighted the "completely unacceptable" attacks by certain Tory MPs on Mrs May.
Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson set out his "better Brexit plan" and refused to rule out a leadership challenge.
Last week Labour members voted to keep the option of another referendum on the table if parliament is deadlocked over the final outcome the government's Brexit negotiations.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations on the terms of exit and future co-operation are continuing.
The Conservative party is gathering in Birmingham for its annual conference.

Conservative MP Phillip Lee has defected to the Liberal Democrats ahead of a showdown between Boris Johnson and Tory rebels over Brexit.
Dr Lee, the MP for Bracknell, took his seat on the opposition benches as the PM addressed the Commons.
His defection means Boris Johnson no longer has a working majority.
MPs hoping to pass legislation to block no deal have cleared the first hurdle after Speaker John Bercow granted them an emergency debate.
That debate could last up to three hours, followed by a vote. If the MPs win the vote - defeating the government - they will be able to take control of Commons business on Wednesday.
That will give them the chance to introduce a cross-party bill which would force the prime minister to ask for Brexit to be delayed until 31 January, unless MPs approve a new deal, or vote in favour of a no-deal exit, by 19 October.
It seems right now - although there is still some arm twisting going on behind the scenes - that the government is set to lose the vote.
We are finding ourselves in the middle of a full-throttle confrontation between a Parliament that does not want to allow the country to leave the EU without a deal and a prime minister who secured his place in power promising he would always keep that as an option.
Both of them cannot be the victors here.
And they are both determined to win.
Speaking in the Commons earlier, Mr Johnson told MPs he wanted a negotiated exit from the EU and insisted there was "real momentum" behind the talks with Brussels.
He said he would travel to Dublin on Monday for discussions with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, focused on proposed alternative arrangements to the Irish border backstop - a key sticking point in the negotiations.
Asked to provide evidence of progress by several Tory MPs, he said he would not negotiate in public but reassured them he would give details of the UK's proposals well before the end of September to meet a deadline set by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But he said the moves by MPs, including Conservatives, to pass legislation effectively blocking a no-deal exit on 31 October would "destroy any chance of negotiating a new deal".
If the rebels succeeded in their aims, Mr Johnson said it would force him to go to Brussels to "beg for another pointless delay" to Brexit and he would "never" do that.
"It is Jeremy Corbyn's surrender bill. It means running up the white flag," he added.
No 10 has said the prime minister will push for an election on 14 October if the MPs succeed in blocking no deal.
But asked if he might simply ignore them and press ahead with a no-deal Brexit regardless, he said: "We will of course uphold the constitution and obey the law."
Last-ditch efforts to get the Tory rebels on side have been taking place, but BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the first meeting on Tuesday morning between the prime minister and the group went "less than swimmingly" and was "less than cordial".
Further discussions reportedly began shortly after the PM's Commons statement.
There are thought to be about 15 confirmed rebels. The government had hoped the threat of an election - and of deselection and expulsion from the party - would be enough to bring them into line.
Before Dr Lee's defection, Mr Johnson only had a working majority of one in the Commons.
In a letter to the prime minister, Dr Lee said Brexit divisions had "sadly transformed this once great party into something more akin to a narrow faction in which one's Conservatism is measured by how recklessly one wants to leave the European Union".
"Perhaps more disappointingly, it has become infected by the twin diseases of English nationalism and populism."
He told BBC Radio 4's PM the "bullying" of MPs opposed to no deal showed the "tone and culture" of the Conservative Party had fundamentally changed, and he knew of other like-minded colleagues who were also considering their futures.
Welcoming her latest recruit, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said they would work together to prevent a "disastrous Brexit" which would do untold damage to the NHS and other public services.
Dr Lee's decision to cross the floor - following that of ex-Tory MP Sarah Wollaston last month - was greeted with cheers on the opposition benches.
Amid angry exchanges during the PM's statement on last month's G7 summit, Jeremy Corbyn urged the PM to "reflect on his choice of language" to describe the rebels' bill.
The Labour leader said the UK was "not at war with Europe" and it was a no-deal exit which would see the UK "surrender" jobs, employment standards and social protections.
"His is a government with no mandate, no morals and, as of today, no majority," he added.
The SNP's leader in Parliament, Ian Blackford, said Dr Lee's defection capped what he said was the "shortest-lived honeymoon period ever" for a new prime minister.
He said his party was ready for a general election at any time.
But veteran Tory Ken Clarke, one of those set to rebel later, said the PM's strategy was to "set conditions which make no deal inevitable, to make sure as much blame as possible is attached to the EU, and as quickly as he can fight a flag-waving election before the consequences of a no deal become too obvious to the public".

Leaving the EU by the end of October is a "hard red line" and will happen in "all circumstances", Andrea Leadsom has said in her pitch for leadership.
The ex-Commons leader said she had a plan for a "managed exit", adding that Parliament could "not stop us leaving".
But her rival Mark Harper said it was "not possible" to leave by 31 October, and Rory Stewart said talk of a better deal on the table was a "fairy story".
Ten Conservative candidates are in the race to be leader - and the next PM.
The deadline for Brexit was pushed back to October after MPs rejected Theresa May's withdrawal agreement with Brussels three times.
The European Union has repeatedly said the agreement will not be re-opened, and on Tuesday, president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker stressed that once again.
"This is not a treaty between Theresa May and Juncker, this is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the European Union," he told a Politico event in Brussels.
"It has to be respected by whomsoever will be the next British prime minister."
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said it was a "terrible political miscalculation" for UK politicians to believe they can get a better deal.
"In all circumstances we are leaving the European Union on 31 October," Mrs Leadsom told her official campaign launch. "Our country and our party cannot afford any more indecisiveness."
The Brexiteer MP set out her plan for what she calls a "managed exit" from the EU, which includes striking a "temporary trade agreement" and a plan to negotiate contingency arrangements with Brussels over the summer recess.
She said these could be discussed at a summit with the new incoming EU commissioners and heads of government in September.
But at his official campaign launch, Mr Harper - an outsider in the race - said it was "not possible or credible" to leave on the terms of a new deal by the existing deadline of 31 October. Renegotiating and getting a deal past MPs would take longer, he said.
He said there could be a majority in the Commons to leave without a deal, but only if ministers demonstrated they had "strained every sinew" to get a new one.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Mr Hancock - who is also competing for the top job - told BBC Radio 4's Today programme his plan was "eminently deliverable" by 31 October, as the EU was open to changing the political declaration part of the agreement.
"We need to solve Brexit and we cannot do it by threatening no deal," he said, adding: "Parliament will not allow a no-deal Brexit to happen."
Home Secretary Sajid Javid reiterated that although he wanted a revised deal, "if we got to end of October and the choice was between no deal or no Brexit, I'd pick no deal."
Later in the day, launching his campaign in a circus tent in London, Rory Stewart - another outsider - said he wanted to "take the politics out" of the situation and find a way to get Mrs May's deal through Parliament.
He said he would ramp up pressure on MPs to back it by promising that otherwise, he would convene a "grand jury" of citizens to make recommendations on how to proceed which politicians would have to stick to.
Vowing to hold the UK together and reconcile "extreme Remain and extreme Brexit" arguments, he added: "My project is about one thing - it is about moderation and compromise."
At her official launch, Mrs Leadsom introduced several policies away from Brexit, including using overseas development aid to help poorer countries to decarbonise and helping young people to save for a house deposit with a new scheme.
When questioned on taxes - prompted by Boris Johnson's pledge to cut income tax for those who earn more than £50,000 a year - she said she believed in low taxes.
But tax reform could not get through a hung Parliament, so that "needs to wait".
Taking a swipe at Mr Johnson's idea, Mr Harper said he would focus his tax cuts "at the lower end of the spectrum", adding: "I don't think we should be promising more money to higher rate taxpayers."
He also said the lack of a majority meant certain things would not be deliverable and as Brexit showed, it was "toxic" to make promises and not fulfil them.
The winner of the leadership contest will become next Conservative leader and prime minister. They're due to be in place by the week beginning 22 July.
Mr Javid, who launches his campaign on Wednesday, released a campaign video which BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg described as the first big attempt by a candidate to communicate a personal story, introducing viewers to his family and background.
He also told the Evening Standard he was "very open minded" about having different immigration rules for regions such as London after Brexit, and could scrap Mrs May's policy that EU migrants should earn at least £30,000 to be considered for admission.
Mr Johnson - accused by Michael Gove and other candidates of "hiding in his bunker" because he is yet to a do a major event or TV interview - is also launching his campaign on Wednesday.
It's day two of the official campaign to be the next prime minister.
Andrea Leadsom cheerily launched her campaign, promising she would never utter the phrase "as a mother" that did for her chances last time.
As promised, the former chief whip Mark Harper was jacket off, sleeves rolled up, answering any question that journalists were willing to put.
That included - because the early stages of this campaign are this surreal - predicting in a fight between a lion and a bear that the lion, patriotically, would win. (yes, you read that right).
And TV presenter Lorraine Kelly was back - this time with a slapdown of the whole lot of the political class.
But the hard reality bites today too. Labour has just announced that they are leading another cross-party attempt to grab control of the Commons.
Just in case the candidates needed a reminder of what they'll inherit, the politician who wins this race might find that MPs have changed the law to kill off their solution to Brexit before they even call the removal vans to move their stuff to Number 10.
Ten Conservative candidates will contest Thursday's first round of voting after nominations closed in the contest to succeed Theresa May as Tory leader and prime minister.
Over the next two weeks, Tory MPs will take part in a series of secret ballots to whittle the candidates down to the final two.
The party's 160,000 or so members will then pick a winner in a postal ballot, with the result announced in the penultimate week of July.
On Tuesday 18 June BBC One will host a live election debate between the Conservative MPs still in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on air, use the form below. It should be open to all of them, not a specific politician.
If you are reading this page on the BBC News app, you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question on this topic.

You can't resolve 40 years of differences with an extra 40 minutes.
The cabinet meeting on Friday to get the grumpy group on board with Theresa May's plan for Brexit ran a little longer than her team had hoped, by 40 minutes.
But now they are cock-a-hoop over what they achieved. Tensions in the Tory Party over Europe are still profound.
But the Brexiteers were subdued with some neat Whitehall manoeuvring, and strong political arguments in preparation.
Ministers this week received one paper explaining why a Canada-style trade deal couldn't work because it wouldn't prevent an Irish hard border.
Another then about why the Norway model, the European Economic Area, couldn't work.
A third paper too explaining how leaving with no deal might cause such an economic upset, that the Tories would be punished for a generation.
Then finally late on Thursday before the meeting - ta dah! - a paper proposing the magic solution, well at least the prime minister's compromise.
That layering of arguments was repeated in real life by the sessions on Friday at Chequers.
Experts (they're back apparently) from government explained the problems with the models, and answered questions from the floor.
The idea was to illustrate to those present that, while they might have their own desires, in the end, they were not compatible with the government's priorities.
One cabinet minister described it as "confronting reality rather than the referendum slogans".
Then, voila, they were presented again with the prime minister's "evolved Mansion House" model, the only answer on offer on Friday aside from stalking out.
One of those present said there was an "overwhelming sense" in the room that "we just had to decide".
The middle ground in the cabinet - those who aren't on either ardent wing - were, it's said, tangibly determined to push for a decision with the prime minister more or less giving the impression to ministers that the only way to avoid taking part in that decision was to quit.
With the day designed as it was, only one seemingly workable plan was presented, so despite deep political division it was inevitably agreed.
One cabinet minister joked: "Put people in a room until they are so hot they will agree to anything."
But Friday's scorching temperatures were coincidental. The way the plan was made by Number 10 and their officials absolutely was not.
Every member of the cabinet had their say. Not surprisingly, Brexteers Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, David Davis and Esther McVey are said to have "moaned a bit", by one of their colleagues.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid asked for assurances from the prime minister that there'd be no sliding on the promise to end unlimited EU immigration.
But sources say Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson did not indulge in a fit of political pique, but actually "engaged on the substance", in what another described as a bit of a "symbolic pushback".
Despite all the turbulence of recent months there was no huge face off. All that Brexiteer bravado failed to emerge.
One crucial reason, those present say, is because early in the afternoon Michael Gove, one of their number, said overtly that he'd back the PM's plan.
One minister said: 'He pulled the rug from under Boris and DD's feet." Another said: "He was the decisive voice."
If one of the main voices from the Vote Leave campaign said the deal was a runner, immediately it became harder for the others to resist.
Had the Brexiteers been willing, or able, to put up common resistance, the day could have ended very differently.
But as one Brexit source described it, the way the Chequers summit moved: "The anger had no home."
Michael Gove, who of course is resented by many for knifing Boris Johnson, just gave Eurosceptics another reason to suspect him.
There are difficult questions now for the Brexiteers.
Be in no doubt, Theresa May's plan is a far closer relationship with the EU than they desired. They are not happy but they are also not united.
As a group they are still powerful, they still have the numbers to make life nigh impossible for the prime minister.
Even though their representatives at the cabinet table on Friday didn't bite, they have not disappeared.
There is discussion among them about what to do next.
Some will start the rattling, leadership chatter is likely to surface around the margins. Some may plot to vote against the government soon simply to make a point. Others will argue to let the prime minister have her way, for now.
On Friday the cabinet made a big decision. Theresa May's foes may not have Chequers as a base to hatch their plan, but in the coming days, they are likely to decide.

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has warned that a transition period immediately after Brexit in 2019 is "not a given".
He said "substantial" disagreements remained and he had "some problems understanding the UK's position".
And he said the UK decision to quit the customs union and single market meant Irish border checks were "unavoidable".
David Davis said he was "surprised" to hear Mr Barnier was unclear on the UK's stance on the transition period.
"We are seeking a time-limited period that maintains access to each other's markets on existing terms," said the UK's chief Brexit negotiator.
He suggested there was a "fundamental contradiction" in the approach the European Commission was taking to Brexit talks.
"Today they acknowledged that a way to resolve disputes and infringements is needed.
"Yet at the same time they dismissed the UK's push for reasonable safeguards to ensure our interests are protected. It is not possible to have it both ways."
Mr Davis says businesses need "about two years" with much the same trading rules as they have now to allow them to adjust after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March next year.
And he had hoped to get a deal with the EU on it by this March, so talks could then move on to the bigger issue of the UK's future relationship with the remaining 27 EU nations.
But Mr Barnier, speaking after a week of technical discussions between civil servants on both sides, said that three "substantial" disagreements remained over the transition period.
The pound fell sharply against the dollar and the euro during Mr Barnier's speech before recovering slightly to stand about 0.7% down on the day.
"To be frank, I am surprised by these disagreements. The positions of the EU are very logical, I think," said Mr Barnier.
He said the UK must "accept the ineluctable consequences of its decision to leave the EU, to leave its institutions and its policies".
"If these disagreements persist the transition is not a given."
By BBC Political Correspondent Leila Nathoo
This was a politely delivered but pointed message to Britain: you can't keep up your cake-and-eat-it approach of vowing to leave the single market and customs union while still wanting no checks at the Irish border.
And don't bank on a transition period (which was supposed to be the easy bit to agree) as there's still plenty we don't see eye-to-eye on.
Theresa May has been keeping the government's position deliberately vague as her ministers struggle to agree among themselves on exactly how they see Britain's future ties with the EU.
But the bottom line from Brussels today? Time to talk straight and put flesh on the bones.
Labour's Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the prime minister should take immediate action to avoid a "cliff-edge" for business.
"Theresa May must end the infighting within her cabinet, drop her reckless redlines and accept Labour's proposals for a transitional deal.
"That means seeking to remain in a customs union with the EU and within the single market during that period."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who wants a referendum on any final deal with the EU, said the government "has no plan, no strategy, and no idea".
But Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which supports Theresa May's minority government, accused Mr Barnier of "brandishing the threat of customs controls" when "everyone has committed to avoiding a hard border".
They argued that the best solution was to resolve the issue through a free trade agreement and "fresh customs partnership with Brussels".
Mr Barnier hit back at comments by David Davis, who described a leaked EU document suggesting any dispute with the UK during the transition period could mean UK benefits, such as access to the single market, being suspended as "frankly discourteous".
The EU negotiator said he had "not been in the least discourteous or vindictive" adding: "Quite simply we have to construct a withdrawal agreement which is legally sound and does not give rise to any uncertainty in anyone's mind."
On the thorny issue of the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, Mr Barnier said there was agreement that a hard border must be avoided, but added: "It is important to tell the truth.
"A UK decision to leave the single market and to leave the customs union would make border checks unavoidable."
Prime Minister Theresa May has said the UK will leave the single market and the customs union, although she has yet to spell out in detail what she wants instead.
She secured an agreement on withdrawal - including avoiding the return of a hard Irish border - in December.
But that has now got to be translated into a legal text before it can be ratified by the EU - and Mr Barnier said he wanted to get rid of any ambiguity on the Irish border question.
The withdrawal agreement includes a fall back position if the UK leaves without a deal, which proposes "full regulatory alignment" with the EU.
To some this sounds like staying in the single market and customs union - but other options, preferred by the UK, to avoid border checks are still on the table.
Mr Barnier said the UK has accepted the need to discus how to make "full regulatory alignment" work in practice, while the other options are discussed in parallel.
But he added: "Time is short - very short - and we haven't a minute to lose if we want to succeed. And we do want to succeed in this orderly withdrawal."

Trick or treat? You couldn't quite make it up.
It is approaching 03:00 GMT - it's weird enough at this time of day to be about to see Theresa May speak.
And the new Brexit deadline is, you guessed it, Halloween.
So to get all the terrible metaphors about horror shows, ghosts and ghouls out of the way right now, let's consider straight away some of the reasons why this decision is a treat in one sense, but could be a trick too.
A treat? First and most importantly, the EU has agreed to put the brakes on. We will not leave tomorrow without a deal.
The prime minister's acceptance that leaving the EU without a formal arrangement in place could be a disaster won out.
She has at least avoided the possible turmoil of leaving with no arrangement, which for so long Theresa May claimed to countenance.
The UK now has nearly six more months to work out exactly how it wants to leave the EU.
Of course it gives those trying to block the departure more time to try to make that happen too.
But in its simplest sense, the prime minister asked for a delay so that she didn't open Pandora's Box.
The EU eventually said yes, even on a different timetable. Theresa May is of course likely to still try to move as quickly as possible.
And there are quite a few potential tricks.
This new October deadline might not solve very much at all.
It's longer than those who wanted a short delay hoped. So there won't be immediate pressure on the prime minister's current plan (which might be a vain hope) of getting out of this - finding common ground with the Labour party.
Certainly, everyone in politics involved in Brexit could do with a breather, but a pause of such duration might just enable more delay, as the chance to quicken the tempo fades away.
And with only limited expectations for that process anyway, it's likely sooner or perhaps later that the prime minister will be back in Parliament again asking MPs to coalesce around an option that could command a majority that could last a while.
Again, without time pressure, it's not clear why Parliament would suddenly be in a rush to agree. That's why it's not entirely surprising to hear the EU Council president warn minutes after the agreement that the UK must not waste the extra time it's been given.
This could, although I hate to say it, just make way for months of extra gridlock before the UK and the EU find themselves back here in a similar situation in the autumn.
That's why, potentially, an election might become the way out that few want is still possible.
And don't be in any doubt that those in Parliament and outside pushing for another referendum, or to stop Brexit altogether, will use this opportunity to make their case more and more loudly.
Even Brexiteers in Cabinet, who are completely committed to the cause, acknowledge that the further away from the referendum in 2016, the weaker the mandate for departure becomes.
There is though, still time for a leadership contest in the Tory Party that would leave a new prime minister in charge, to find a new way out.
Even before the official confirmation of the decision came, one minister got in touch to say that now the prime minister can stay on "in name only" with a leadership contest getting going as early as just after Easter and a new leader in place by early summer.
Perhaps, by the time this new deadline approaches, someone else will be trying to untangle the mess.
If that happens, the EU, which deeply fears a more Eurosceptic leader, might just have played a trick on themselves.

Donald Trump has suggested Theresa May's Brexit agreement could threaten a US-UK trade deal.
The US president told reporters the withdrawal agreement "sounds like a great deal for the EU" and meant the UK might not be able to trade with the US.
No 10 insisted it is "very clear" the UK would be able to sign trade deals with countries around the world.
Downing Street added that Mrs May is ready to defend her deal in a TV debate with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
It has been reported the debate could take place on 9 December - two days before the Parliamentary vote on Mrs May's deal.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Mr Trump said: "Right now if you look at the deal, [the UK] may not be able to trade with us. And that wouldn't be a good thing. I don't think they meant that."
It would appear Mr Trump was suggesting the agreement could leave Britain unable to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the United States.
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said Mr Trump's comments "were not unexpected" and negotiations on a trade deal with the US were always going to be "challenging".
"The United States is a tough negotiator," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. "President Trump's always said very plainly 'I put America first'. Well, I'd expect the British prime minister to put British interests first."
The comments came after Mrs May fought off criticism of her Brexit deal from MPs on all sides of the Commons on Monday - insisting the agreement would allow the UK to regain control of laws, money and borders.
In other developments:
By BBC North America editor Jon Sopel
Theresa May took a kicking in the House of Commons and then her closest ally, in the shape of Donald Trump, puts on his size 12 hobnail boots and joins in.
When Donald Trump fired a broadside at Theresa May's Brexit deal there was nothing accidental or off the cuff about it.
Senior members of his administration maintain close contacts with prominent eurosceptics in the Conservative party.
But when the president says the agreement could jeopardise trade with the UK, it's hard to see what he means. During the transition period, business with the US would presumably carry on in exactly the same way as it does now.
Yet all the time that Britain is in some way yoked to EU rules then there are limits to what can be negotiated in terms of a free trade deal - all points that have been made by those who campaigned for a more decisive Brexit.
This intervention, coming post deal and pre-Commons vote, can only be interpreted in one way - the president is siding with the prime minister's critics.
Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP and many Tory MPs have said they will vote against the Brexit deal.
Sir Michel Fallon has launched a scathing attack on Mrs May's Brexit deal, labelling it "doomed".
The senior Conservative and long-standing party loyalist echoed Mr Corbyn's words when he described the deal as "the worst of all worlds".
Asked if the prime minister was now also doomed, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "That's up to my colleagues."
As part of her two-week bid to convince MPs and the British public to back her deal, Mrs May will tell politicians and employers in Wales on Tuesday that they will have more power after Brexit, with more than 150 areas of policy passing to devolved parliaments and assemblies.
She will also highlight the potential benefits to farmers of leaving the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.
Then in Northern Ireland, she will tell representatives of the five main political parties her deal will allow employers to "trade freely across the border with Ireland and have unfettered access to the rest of the United Kingdom's market".
Northern Ireland has featured heavily in discussions about Brexit because both the UK and the EU want to avoid a physical border - with guard posts and checks - between it and the Republic of Ireland. The agreement includes a "backstop" - a fall-back position - that would mean Northern Ireland would still follow some EU rules on things such as food products if a long-term trade deal is not agreed.
The Democratic Unionist Party, which props up Mrs May's government, has accused the PM of breaking her promise that Northern Ireland would never be treated any differently from the rest of the UK - but the PM has said the backstop was an "insurance policy no-one wants to use".
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, under the terms of legislation already passed by Parliament.
Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP and many Tory MPs have said they will vote against the Brexit deal.
Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, said government officials were probably working on a "plan B" in case the deal was rejected but there would be "no whisper of it" publicly until the outcome of the Commons vote.
He told the BBC that while the option of seeking changes to the withdrawal agreement remained on the table, if the defeat was extremely heavy then more radical alternatives, such as extending the talks, would have to be considered.
"If Parliament rejects the deal by a significant majority and no deal is not now unacceptable there is a responsibility on the government to look seriously at options they have previously ruled out," he told Radio 4's Today.

The UK may be forced to change its "economic model" if it is locked out of the single market after Brexit, Chancellor Philip Hammond has said.
Mr Hammond said the government would not "lie down" and would "do whatever we have to do" to remain competitive.
He had been asked by a German newspaper if the UK could become a "tax haven" by further lowering corporation tax.
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn said his comments sounded like "a recipe for some kind of trade war with Europe".
Having so far refused to offer a "running commentary" on her plans, Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to spell out the most detail so far of her Brexit strategy in a speech on Tuesday.
Reports have suggested she will signal pulling out of the EU single market and customs union, although Downing Street described this as "speculation".
In an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag newspaper, Mr Hammond said he was "optimistic" a reciprocal deal on market access could be struck, and that he hoped the UK would "remain in the mainstream of European economic and social thinking".
"But if we are forced to be something different, then we will have to become something different," he said.
"If we have no access to the European market, if we are closed off, if Britain were to leave the European Union without an agreement on market access, then we could suffer from economic damage at least in the short-term.
"In this case, we could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness. And you can be sure we will do whatever we have to do.
"The British people are not going to lie down and say, too bad, we've been wounded. We will change our model, and we will come back, and we will be competitively engaged."
Asked about Mr Hammond's comments during an interview on The Andrew Marr Show Mr Corbyn said "He appears to be making a sort of threat to EU community saying 'well, if you don't give us exactly what we want, we are going to become this sort of strange entity on shore of Europe where there'll be very low levels of corporate taxation, and designed to undermine the effectiveness or otherwise of industry across Europe.'
"It seems to me a recipe for some kind of trade war with Europe in the future. That really isn't a very sensible way forward."
Mr Corbyn also said Mrs May "appears to be heading us in the direction of a sort of bargain basement economy", adding: "It seems to me an extremely risky strategy."
by BBC business correspondent Joe Lynam
According to Philip Hammond, Britain might be "forced" to change its economic model. To what?
For some, the true advantage of leaving the EU would be to tear up the 'rules' and make Britain more like Singapore.
Singapore abides by World Trade Organisation and ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) trade rules, but it's famed for its light touch regulation - especially when it comes to financial services - which some Brexiteers feel is the opposite of EU "meddling".
But turning a large G7 economy with a robust social model into a city state might be difficult. It might involve the government handpicking which industries it thinks will be successes and rapidly neglecting existing sectors.
Millions of people would need to get brand new qualifications while those with undesirable skills would become surplus to requirements. Massive infrastructure projects might be rushed through with minimal consultation.
For a country with Britain's past and present, is that a possible future?
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it appeared Brexit would mean a "low-tax, deregulated race to the bottom", with workers' rights and environmental protections threatened.
She wrote on Twitter: "If that is the case, it raises a more fundamental question - not just are we in/out EU, but what kind of country do we want to be?"
In her speech on Tuesday, the prime minister is expected to call on the country to "put an end to the division" created by the EU referendum result.
She will urge the UK to leave behind words such as "Leaver and Remainer and all the accompanying insults and unite to make a success of Brexit and build a truly global Britain".
Several of Sunday's newspapers claim Mrs May will outline a "hard Brexit" approach, a term used to imply prioritising migration controls over single market access.
Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said he did not think it was a "binary choice" between trade and migration, but added that the "very stark message" from the EU referendum was that "free movement as it exists today cannot continue in to the future".
Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said a "hard Brexit" had not been on the ballot paper in June's referendum and accused the PM of adopting "the Nigel Farage vision" of Brexit.
Mr Farage, the former UKIP leader, told Sky News he had "yet to be convinced" by the PM's approach.

The EU says it is ready to extend the proposed length of the post-Brexit transition period if the UK wants.
The current plan is for a transition period of 21 months to smooth the path from Brexit to the UK and EU's future permanent relationship.
But with the two sides failing to reach a deal yet, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said this arrangement could be extended "for a few months", if needed.
Some Brexit campaigners have reacted angrily to the suggestion.
Mrs May said she was not proposing extending the transition, but that having the option to do so could help solve the current impasse over the Irish border.
An EU source told the BBC there would have to be "financial implications" if the UK did extend the transition period.
EU Council president Donald Tusk spoke to journalists at the end of a Brussels summit where there was no major breakthrough on the key issue of how to avoid new visible border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit.
He said that if "the UK decided an extension of the transition period would be helpful to reach a deal, I am sure the leaders would be ready to consider this positively".
Mr Tusk declared himself in a "much better mood" than after the last summit, in Salzburg.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said extension of the transition period "will probably happen" saying it was a good idea because it would allow more time to draw up a long-term relationship between the UK and the EU.
In her post-summit press conference, Mrs May said the idea of having the option to extend the transition period could be "a further solution" to the search for a "backstop" to ensure no hard border.
"What we are not doing, we are not standing here proposing an extension to the implementation period," she said.
"What we are doing is working to ensure that we have a solution to the backstop issue in Northern Ireland."
Both sides are committed to resolving the outstanding issues as soon as possible, she said, adding there was a "very real sense that people want that deal to be done".
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said: "A lot of things have been agreed but there are still big gaps both in terms of the shape of the future relationship and also the protocol on Northern Ireland and Ireland and the backstop."
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and the transition period, which Mrs May prefers to call the implementation period, is designed to smooth the path to a future permanent relationship.
During this transition period, which is due to finish on 31 December 2020, the UK's relationship with the EU will stay largely the same.
The UK has signed up to the principle of agreeing an Irish border "backstop" - an insurance policy designed to prevent the need for customs checks - in case there is a gap between the transition period and the future permanent relationship coming into force.
The problem is that the two sides have yet to agree what form the backstop will take, and how long it could last.
Nigel Dodds, of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party - whose support the government needs in key votes - said extending the transition phase would cost the UK billions of pounds and not change the "fundamental problem" with the EU's backstop plan.
This is because it involves Northern Ireland staying aligned to EU rules, which the DUP - and the UK government - says is unacceptable because it creates a new border in the Irish sea.
Brexiteers are not impressed, with Conservative backbench MP Jacob Rees-Mogg telling Sky News it was "a rather poor attempt at kicking the can down the road".
The Leave Means Leave campaign said a longer transition would give the EU "zero incentive to negotiate anything and gives Brussels the power to force whatever they want on to the UK".
Downing Street, meanwhile, insisted there was no difference of opinion with International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who said earlier that the prime minister "has been very clear about when the implementation period will come to an end" and "this is about the rules within that implementation period".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, former Conservative minister Nick Boles described extending this period as as "desperate last move" and warned that Mrs May was losing the support of the Tory party.
Another former minister, Remain-voting Nicky Morgan, said an extension would be "unhelpful" and would leave the UK in a "Brexit holding pattern".
Asked earlier whether he would support a longer transition period, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The prime minister has got herself into this mess by failing to reach any meaningful agreements with the EU".
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said the cost of extending the transition period would have to be "teased out" during the negotiations.

The UK government is planning to put out "concrete proposals" next week for reaching a Brexit deal with the EU, the BBC understands.
Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said it was expected they would be revealed after the Tory conference but in time for scrutiny ahead of the EU summit on 17 October.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the "moment of truth" was approaching.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 31 October.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says this will happen whether or not there is a new deal with Brussels - but adds that he would prefer leaving with a deal.
However, MPs have passed a law requiring Mr Johnson to seek an extension to the deadline from the bloc if he is unable to pass a deal in Parliament, or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit, by 19 October.
Meanwhile, Scotland's first minister has warned that Mr Johnson could force through a no-deal Brexit unless the opposition acts.
Nicola Sturgeon said she was "open-minded" about who might emerge to lead a temporary government if Mr Johnson is removed from office in a vote of no confidence.
BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley said he had been told by a senior SNP source that the party's MPs were prepared to put Mr Corbyn in 10 Downing Street "as soon as next week" to extend the Brexit deadline and call an election.
Mr Barclay held talks with the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, on Friday, telling the BBC afterwards: "I think there is still a long way to go. I think we are coming to the moment of truth in these negotiations.
"We are committed to securing a deal. The prime minister has made clear he wants a deal, but there has to be political will on both sides and that's what we are exploring."
The biggest obstacle to a deal is the backstop - the plan to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
The policy - agreed to by former PM Theresa May in her withdrawal deal with the EU, which was rejected three times by Parliament - is unacceptable to many Conservative MPs.
But the European Commission said Mr Barnier had stressed to Mr Barclay during the meeting that it was "essential" there was a "fully operational solution in the withdrawal agreement to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, protect the all-island economy and the integrity of the single market".
"The EU remains open and willing to examine any workable and legally operative proposals that meet all these objectives," a statement issued after the meeting said.
If the UK's new proposals prove acceptable to the EU it would trigger a frantic period of treaty-making.
The experts at the European Commission would have to assess whether they are legally watertight and politically acceptable.
The 27 other member states would have to be consulted and the deal tweaked if they had concerns.
Ideally this would all be done a week before the summit of EU leaders of 17 October.
That's an incredibly - and I mean incredibly - tight timeline by the standards of the Brexit process… by any EU process.
And Brussels diplomats are very gloomy because they say the ideas tabled so far by the UK do not go in the right direction.
Some think that means there's virtually no chance of agreement being reached next month.
Although if the prime minister is only going to unveil his plans when Tory party conference has finished, does that mean he has an ace up his sleeve that he knows will satisfy the EU and antagonise his own party?

Brexit supporters in the cabinet have agreed the UK should offer to pay more money to the EU as it leaves.
But no formal offer will be made until the EU agrees to begin talking about a new trade deal with the UK.
No new figure has been given - but it is thought it could be up to £40bn, which would be double what the UK's offers so far add up to.
The UK and the EU have yet to agree on the so-called "divorce bill" with the UK due to leave the EU in March 2019.
Some Conservative MPs have reacted angrily to the possibility of the UK agreeing to pay more - yesterday one, Nigel Evans, said it would be like a "ransom payment" to the EU while another, Robert Halfon, said it would make voters "go bananas".
But despite this, BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said leading Brexiteers in Theresa May's cabinet, like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, had agreed to support her in paying a "much larger sum" - as long as the EU agrees to begin trade talks, which it has refused to do so far.
And no final figure will be agreed until a trade deal is agreed, he added.
The UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, and served the EU with formal notice of Brexit in March 2017. This began a two-year countdown to the UK's departure day which will be in March 2019.
Before that the two sides have to agree all sorts of things - including what happens to EU citizens living in the UK and British people living in the EU, and how the Northern Ireland border will work.
So the two teams of negotiators have been meeting in Brussels every month.
But there has not been much of a breakthrough so far, with the "divorce bill" proving to be one of the key sticking points.
Part of the problem for Theresa May is that while the EU wants the UK to offer more money, some of her MPs say this would be unacceptable and that the UK should just walk away and leave.
EU leaders are due to decide at a summit on 14 and 15 December whether to allow talks on a future trade relationship to begin.
It was billed as a key meeting where Theresa May would try to get her ministers on side to support her in negotiating cash with the EU.
Downing Street has been tight-lipped about what was actually discussed at the Cabinet Exit and Trade (Strategy and Negotiations) sub-committee, chaired by Prime Minister Theresa May.
But the BBC understands ministers concluded there is the possibility that talks with the EU will move on to the next phase in December but "we are not going to move on our own".
There were also tensions over the future role of the European Court of Justice.
Some believe the court will need to supervise the trading rules between the UK and EU during a period of transition after Britain leaves.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has floated the idea of a tribunal, similar to the arrangements in place in European Economic Area countries such as Norway, to settle any disputes.
But the EU may insist on a continued role for the European Court of Justice.
The EU says the UK needs to settle its accounts before it leaves. It says the UK has made financial commitments that have to be settled as part of an overall withdrawal agreement.
The UK accepts that it has some obligations. And it has promised not to leave any other country out of pocket in the current EU budget period from 2014-20.
But the devil is in the detail.
There are also issues like pensions for EU staff, and how the UK's contribution to these is calculated for years to come, and the question of what happens to building projects - for instance in Spain - that had funding agreed by all EU members including the UK but which will only begin construction after the UK has left.
Large amounts of the EU's budget are spent in two areas - agriculture and fisheries, and development of poorer areas.
Projects include business start-ups, roads and railways, education and health programmes and many others.
While Theresa May is battling to get her party onside, over in Germany there's more upheaval, where coalition talks have broken down, plunging Chancellor Angela Merkel into a political crisis.
This has raised the prospect of more elections in Germany, the EU's largest economy.
How might this affect Brexit? Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen told the BBC there could be "no meaningful negotiations" with the EU until it was resolved, adding: "Why would we want to make concessions now when we don't have to?"
Tory MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith agree - Mr Duncan Smith told The Times the UK should "sit tight".
But on the BBC's Today programme, German minister Christian Schmidt warned Tory Brexiteers not to try to take advantage of the political turmoil in his country to drive a harder bargain.
"I would suggest to all not to count on such a scenario," he said, adding that if the UK leaves the EU without a deal it will be a "disaster" for its economy.
The Sports Minister Tracey Crouch thinks people have had enough of the "daily commentary" on the UK's EU departure.
She tells HuffPost UK people urge her in the street to "ask the BBC to stop reporting on Brexit".
"They want us to do it, they want us to get on with it. I'm not sure they necessarily want the daily commentary on it," she says.
With this in mind, she recently wrote her weekly newspaper column on The Great British Bake Off instead.
"The only Brexit they care about is getting the bread out of the oven in time," it said.

The UK "would regret it forever" if it lost its status as a world leader in car manufacturing after Brexit, Business Secretary Greg Clark has said.
He added it was "concerning" that Toyota UK had told the BBC that if Britain left the EU without a deal it would temporarily halt production at its factory in Burnaston, near Derby.
"We need a deal," Mr Clark said.
The Japanese carmaker said the impact of border delays in the event of a no-deal Brexit could cost jobs.
The Burnaston plant - which makes Toyota's Auris and Avensis - produced nearly 150,000 cars last year of which 90% were exported to the rest of the European Union.
"My view is that if Britain crashes out of the EU at the end of March we will see production stops in our factory," said Marvin Cooke, Toyota's managing director at Burnaston.
Other UK car manufacturers have raised fears about leaving the EU without agreement on how cross-border trade will function, including Honda, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover.
BMW, for example, says it will close its Mini plant in Oxford for a month following Brexit.
The main concerns relate to what carmakers say are supply chain risks in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Toyota's production line is run on a "just-in-time" basis, with parts arriving every 37 minutes from suppliers in both the UK and the EU for cars made to order.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 29 March, there could be disruption at the border which the industry says could lead to delays and shortages of parts.
It would be impossible for Toyota to hold more than a day's worth of inventory at its Derbyshire plant, the company said, and so production would be stopped.
Mr Clark said Theresa May's Chequers plan for future relations with the EU is "precisely calibrated to avoid those checks at the border".
"We need to have a deal... we want to have the best deal that will allow as I say not just the success at present to be enjoyed but for us to grasp this opportunity," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"The evidence from not just Toyota but other manufacturers is that we need to absolutely be able to continue what has been a highly successful set of supply chains."
Toyota was unable to say how long production would be stopped, but in the longer term, warned that added costs would reduce the plant's competitiveness and eventually cost jobs.
Peter Tsouvallaris, who has worked at Burnaston for 24 years and is the Unite union convenor at the plant, said his members are increasingly concerned: "In my experience once these jobs go they never come back.
"And that's why we have to do everything possible to keep these jobs in the area."
A government spokesperson said: "We have put forward a precise and credible plan for our future relationship with the EU.
"As part of this we have proposed a UK-EU free trade area underpinned by a common rulebook on manufactured goods, such as automotives."
Started production December 1992
Employs 2,564 (inc 322 agency)
Produces Auris and Avensis - including pressing body panels, welding and assembly
Site is 580 acres - 2.35 million square metres
Total vehicles produced: 144,077, of which Avensis: 25,057, Auris: 34,899 and Auris Hybrid: 84,121

UK and EU officials have agreed the draft text of a Brexit agreement after months of negotiations.
A cabinet source told the BBC that the document has been agreed at a technical level by officials from both sides after intensive discussions this week.
A special cabinet meeting will be held at 14:00 GMT on Wednesday as Theresa May seeks ministers' backing.
The PM has been meeting ministers in Downing Street for one-to-one talks on the draft agreement.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the agreement contained a UK-wide customs "backstop" aimed at preventing new border checks in Northern Ireland.
There is no additional Northern Ireland-only backstop - but sources wouldn't be drawn on any specific arrangements for Northern Ireland on rules and regulation within the UK-wide one, she added.
This "backstop" has proved to the most contentious part of the withdrawal negotiations, with concerns raised by Brexiteer Tories and the DUP over how it will work.
The pound surged against the dollar and the euro following the negotiations breakthrough - but analysts warned it could be short-lived, with the cabinet and Parliament yet to agree to the plans.
The EU said it would "take stock" on Wednesday, while the Irish government said negotiations were "ongoing and have not concluded".
Leading Brexiteers, such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, immediately criticised what has been reported to be in the draft agreement, saying it would keep the UK under EU control.
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, which gives Theresa May vital support in key votes, said it would be a "very, very hard sell".
But Conservative Chief Whip Julian Smith said he was "confident" it would pass when put to a crucial Commons vote, and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling called for "a little bit of calm" before the cabinet gives its verdict on Wednesday.
Both the UK and EU hope to be able to schedule a special summit of European leaders at the end of November to sign off the deal.
The details of the draft agreement have not been published, so we don't know the small print yet.
But it is made up of a withdrawal agreement - said to run to 500 pages - alongside a statement about what the UK and EU's future relationship will look like.
The withdrawal agreement includes how to guarantee there will not be physical border checks reintroduced in Northern Ireland - the major sticking point in recent weeks.
Some Brexiteers fear the likely arrangement will keep the UK locked into EU trade rules for years to come in order to maintain a frictionless border.
The agreement also includes commitments over citizens' rights after Brexit, a proposed 21-month transition period after the UK's departure on 29 March 2019 and details of the so-called £39bn "divorce bill".
The future relationship statement is expected to be far shorter, with the UK and the EU's long-term trade arrangements yet to be settled.
No 10 said ministers were now being called to a special meeting to "consider the draft agreement the negotiating teams have reached in Brussels, and to decide on next steps".
Before they do so, they will be able to read relevant "documentation".
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
It doesn't seem to me that many of the cabinet are likely to walk on Wednesday over what's in the document.
It's suggested that those with bigger doubts are more likely to cause problems for the prime minister because it won't get through Parliament.
One source told me senior ministers are thinking not just about the wisdom of backing a deal they don't like because it's a sour compromise, but whether it is folly to back a deal they believe can't get through Parliament.
Slamming on the brakes now would force a crisis, but it could be less serious than the political disaster of pursuing this plan to an eventual calamitous defeat that could take them all down.
Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson said the plan would see the UK remain in the customs union and "large parts" of the single market.
He told the BBC it was "utterly unacceptable to anyone who believes in democracy" and he would vote against it.
Mr Rees-Mogg warned of the UK becoming a "vassal state" with Northern Ireland "being ruled from Dublin".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said "given the shambolic nature of the negotiations, this is unlikely to be the good deal for the country."
Pro-EU Conservative MP Justine Greening said the agreement would leave the UK with less influence and undermine its credibility.
Speaking at a rally calling for another EU referendum to be held, she said: "Even if some people in my party can't see this is a bad deal, everyone else around this entire planet can."
Former Transport Minister Jo Johnson told the audience at a packed Westminster Hall that cabinet ministers were "looking deep into their consciences" about whether to support the deal.
Mr Johnson, who quit his ministerial role last week over Brexit policy, added: "The whips are going to tighten the thumbscrews on all our colleagues across Parliament in all parties probably, so it is very hard to predict."
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
Brussels is keeping schtum this evening. This doesn't mean that nothing's going on. Those in the know simply prefer to keep quiet at this sensitive stage.
It seems what is being described to me as a "mutual understanding" has indeed been reached on a technical level between EU and UK Brexit negotiators.
This is not yet a deal. All eyes are now on the UK cabinet. If ministers reject the draft, then it's back to the drawing board.
If they approve it, then the 27 EU ambassadors scheduled to meet tomorrow may be told by the European Commission that decisive progress has been made in negotiations, meaning a Brexit summit could be convened with Theresa May, possibly in less than two weeks' time.
First though, all 27 EU countries and the European Parliament will want to pore over the text. And that won't be with an uncritical eye.
Meanwhile, following pressure from all sides of the Commons, ministers have agreed to provide MPs with a legal assessment of the implications for the UK of the Irish backstop and other controversial aspects of any deal.
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said Attorney General Geoffrey Cox would make a statement to MPs and take questions ahead of the final vote on any Brexit deal.
MPs, he said, would get to see "a full reasoned position statement laying out the government's both political and also legal position on the proposed withdrawal agreement".

European Union leaders have granted the UK a six-month extension to Brexit, after late-night talks in Brussels.
The new deadline - 31 October - averts the prospect of the UK having to leave the EU without a deal on Friday, as MPs are still deadlocked over a deal.
European Council President Donald Tusk said his "message to British friends" was "please do not waste this time".
Theresa May, who had wanted a shorter delay, said the UK would still aim to leave the EU as soon as possible.
The UK must now hold European elections in May, or leave on 1 June without a deal.
The prime minister will later make a statement on the Brussels summit to the House of Commons, while talks with the Labour Party, aimed at reaching consensus on how to handle Brexit, are set to continue.
Mrs May tweeted: "The choices we now face are stark and the timetable is clear. So we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest."
So far, MPs have rejected the withdrawal agreement Mrs May reached with other European leaders last year and they have voted against leaving the EU without a deal.
The EU has ruled out any renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement.
Before the summit, Mrs May had told leaders she wanted to move the UK's exit date from this Friday to 30 June, with the option of leaving earlier if Parliament ratified her agreement.
For Labour, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer called the delay to 31 October "a good thing", saying businesses would be "relieved".
He added: "Negotiations are in good faith. We all feel a deep sense of duty to break the impasse.
"But there's also this question of how on Earth do we ensure that anything this prime minister promises is actually delivered in the future because of course she's already said she's going to step down, probably within months."
One government minister told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg the latest delay to Brexit could mean a Conservative Party leadership contest after Easter, with a new prime minister potentially in place by June.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis said: "There's been no progress whatsoever, really."
He added that it was still "difficult to see how" Mrs May could get her deal with the EU through Parliament and said: "The pressure on her to go will increase dramatically now, I suspect."
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted her "relief" that the UK wouldn't be "crashing out" on Friday, adding that "allowing people to decide if they still want to leave is now imperative".
Donald Tusk emerged from the talks - and a subsequent meeting with Mrs May - to address reporters at a news conference at 02:15 local time (01:15 BST).
"The course of action will be entirely in the UK's hands," he said. "They can still ratify the withdrawal agreement, in which case the extension can be terminated."
Mr Tusk said the UK could also rethink its strategy or choose to "cancel Brexit altogether".
He added: "Let me finish with a message to our British friends: This extension is as flexible as I expected, and a little bit shorter than I expected, but it's still enough to find the best possible solution. Please do not waste this time."
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said: "There will probably be a European election in the UK - that might seem a bit odd, but rules are rules and we must respect European law and then we will see what happens."
Mrs May spoke at 02:45 local time (01:45 BST). She said that, although the delay extends until 31 October, the UK can leave before then if MPs pass her withdrawal deal.
"I know that there is huge frustration from many people that I had to request this extension," she said. "The UK should have left the EU by now and I sincerely regret the fact that I have not yet been able to persuade Parliament to approve a deal."
She added: "I do not pretend the next few weeks will be easy, or there is a simple way to break the deadlock in Parliament. But we have a duty as politicians to find a way to fulfil the democratic decision of the referendum, deliver Brexit and move our country forward. Nothing is more pressing or more vital."
The PM said the UK would "continue to hold full membership rights and obligations [of the EU]" during the delay.
You couldn't quite make it up. The new Brexit deadline is, you guessed it, Halloween.
So to get all the terrible metaphors about horror shows, ghosts and ghouls out of the way right now, let's consider straight away some of the reasons why this decision is a treat in one sense, but could be a trick too.
A treat? First and most importantly, the EU has agreed to put the brakes on. We will not leave tomorrow without a deal.
The prime minister's acceptance that leaving the EU without a formal arrangement in place could be a disaster won out.
And there are quite a few potential tricks. This new October deadline might not solve very much at all.
This could, although I hate to say it, just make way for months of extra gridlock before the UK and the EU find themselves back here in a similar situation in the autumn.
Read Laura's blog here
The EU had been split over the length of delay to offer the UK, and by law its other 27 member states had to reach a unanimous decision.
Although other countries backed a longer delay, French President Emmanuel Macron pushed for a shorter extension. He called the 31 October deadline "a good solution".
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, said the extension gave the UK time "to come to a cross-party agreement".
Fudge and can-kicking are the EU-familiar words that spring to mind at the end of this Brexit summit.
After all the drama and speculation leading up to the meeting, effectively all that happened here is that the threat of a no-deal Brexit has been postponed for another six months.
Time enough for the EU to hold European parliamentary elections, choose a new president of the European Commission and pass a new budget - without EU leaders having to keep one eye at least on the day-to-day dramas in the House of Commons.
Despite EU leaders' rhetoric beforehand, they granted this extension without hearing a convincing plan of Brexit action from Theresa May.
In the summit conclusions there is no evidence of the punitive safeguards mooted to ensure the UK "behaves itself" - refraining from blocking EU decisions - as long as it remains a club member.
Yes, EU leaders worry about who might replace Theresa May as prime minister. Yes, they're concerned these six months could fly past with the UK as divided as ever but their message to the UK tonight was: "We've done our bit. Now you do yours. It's up to you. Please use the time well."

The UK and EU are still at odds over citizens' rights and the amount the UK will pay to leave the bloc, at the end of the second week of Brexit talks.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK had not been clear enough about where it stands on these issues and that was hampering progress.
UK Brexit Secretary David Davis said the negotiations on the so-called divorce bill had been "robust".
He said progress had been made but both sides needed to show "flexibility".
Mr Barnier said: "We require this clarification on the financial settlement, on citizens' rights, on Ireland - with the two key points of the common travel area and the Good Friday Agreement - and the other separation issues where this week's experience has quite simply shown we make better progress where our respective positions are clear."
Mr Davis said: "We have had robust but constructive talks this week. Clearly there's a lot left to talk about and further work before we can resolve this. Ultimately, getting to a solution will require flexibility from both sides."
Michel Barnier said there had been some areas of agreement about how Britons living abroad and EU nationals living in the UK should be treated after Brexit. A jointly agreed "technical note" outlining the UK and EU's positions on citizens' rights has been published.
But there was disagreement over "the rights of future family members" - meaning children born in the future to EU citizens in the UK - and "the exports of certain social benefits".
The EU wants rights currently enjoyed by EU citizens in the UK - access to healthcare, welfare, education - to apply to children and family members, whether they currently live in the UK or not, and to continue in perpetuity, after the death or divorce of the rights-holder.
But it says children born to UK citizens in EU states after the withdrawal date would be considered "family members", not rights holders themselves - the UK says it would allow children born to EU citizens to acquire the same "settled status" or, in some cases, British citizenship.
The UK wants to give all EU nationals living in the UK the same rights as British citizens once they have been resident in the country for five years, as long as they arrived before a specified "cut-off" date, probably 29 March 2017, when Article 50 was triggered. After this date, they could continue to build up their five years' entitlement if necessary.
The EU's position also requires that citizens live in a host country for five years before acquiring permanent residency rights.
In addition, EU nationals who get married after March 2019 would lose the right to bring family members to the UK, unless they pass an income test, like non-EU migrants.
They could also risk losing their right to return to Britain if they leave for more than two years - as would be the case for British citizens in EU countries. The UK says it is prepared to offer some flexibility on this for some citizens on overseas postings or studying abroad and wants the EU to offer the same.
David Davis said the UK had published its approach to citizens' rights since the first round of negotiations, which he described as "both a fair and serious offer" and had now published a joint paper setting out areas of agreement, and issues for further talks.
He said sticking points in the talks included the rights of employees of EU-based companies to work for extended periods in other countries, such as the UK. British officials highlighted that British expats would lose the rights to vote and stand in local elections under the EU plan - while the UK position is to protect the rights of citizens to vote and stand in elections in their host country.
EU negotiators have said that British people living in an EU country would lose their guaranteed rights if they moved to another EU country.
A senior EU source said there was a willingness to be flexible on this point during the negotiations, depending on the UK's position in the next set of talks.
Senior British sources called the proposal "unprecedented" as it would leave British expats with worse rights than those coming from outside the EU and it would be "interesting" to see what the public reaction would be to it.
David Davis and Michel Barnier stood at matching podiums in Brussels, side by side but not entirely in step.
Mr Davis talked breezily about work done constructively and "at pace" and even injected a slightly bantering note into proceedings, quoting back to Mr Barnier his own earlier warning line that "the clock is ticking".
Mr Barnier's take appeared to be slightly less positive and was much more focused on the need for further clarification from the UK side on a whole range of issues - we counted him using the word clarification or variations on it at least eight times in a relatively short news conference.
There are plenty of briefings around on points of detail - would the UK for example have the right to conduct blanket criminal record checks on EU citizens applying for residence in post-Brexit UK.
But the big stumbling blocks are obvious and have been obvious for a while.
One is the "divorce bill" - when will a figure emerge into the public domain and what might the UK be prepared to pay.
The other is the future role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing the rights of EU citizens who remain in the UK - the EU sees that as a basic right but from the British perspective it's being seen as "a very big ask".
Britain has agreed in principle to meet its financial obligations as it leaves the EU, to cover things like the cost of relocating London-based EU agencies and the pensions of EU officials.
But a senior EU source said the UK negotiating team had not said what they might be prepared to pay - and there had been no "serious discussions" about what the bill might include.
David Davis said: "We both recognise the importance of sorting out the obligations we have to one another, both legally and in a spirit of mutual cooperation."
But Michel Barnier has called for "clarification" on where the UK stands.
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said the EU can "go whistle" if it demands an "extortionate" payment but other ministers have struck a more conciliatory tone. Sources have suggested to the BBC the bill could be between 30 and 50 billion euros.
Downing Street said the UK was "looking at the legal commitments" it faces, adding: "There are points of difference and that's one of them."
But there were no plans to produce a position paper on the divorce bill, the No 10 spokesman said.
David Davis rejected the suggestion that there was a lack of clarity from his team on Northern Ireland, saying the two sides had discussed ways of "achieving a flexible and imaginative solution to address the unique circumstances around the border" and preserve the common travel area.
A senior EU source said they were still waiting for concrete proposals from the UK side on the kind of border that is achievable.
This is the biggest current sticking point, according to British officials.
The ECJ settles disputes between member states about the free movement of workers and other cross-border issues.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said the UK will be leaving its jurisdiction.
The UK has floated the idea of a new international body, made up of British and EU judges, or, according to UK officials, "some kind of ombudsman", to settle disputes, but the EU is rejecting this out of hand.
There can't be any agreement on citizens' rights until this one is settled, EU sources say.
The UK wants to carry out criminal record checks on all EU citizens who want to live in the UK. The EU says they should only be carried out where there is a suspicion of wrongdoing.
This will be looked at in more detail during the August talks.
On a trade deal, David Davis said the UK could not accept a "punishment" deal, but added: "Nobody expects a punishment deal. Michel and I are going for a good deal."
Gibraltar did not come up as an issue in the current round of talks, sources say.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the "lack of progress" on issues such as the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in Europe was "deeply concerning" and would cause "anxiety for millions of families".
He questioned whether phase two of the talks could get under way in October as planned, something that would "trigger deep concern for businesses and communities across the UK".
"The reality is that we have a government that is unprepared, divided and incapable of securing a good deal for Britain. We urgently need a fresh approach," he added.
The EU has said talks won't move on to the subject of future trading arrangements until it judges there's been adequate progress on the separation issues.
The two sides are meeting for four days each month, with this week's talks aimed at scoping out points of difference and common ground in those areas that have been identified as requiring urgent attention.
Mr Barnier has said the EU side are hoping to agree the basic terms of a deal on EU citizens and the exit bill in October - which he says would open the way for talks on the UK's future trade relations with the EU to begin in December.
Meanwhile, the UK government has announced that MPs are set to debate the repeal bill - a key piece of Brexit legislation that will transform EU laws into British laws - for two days from 7 September.

The UK won't pay a 100bn-euro (£84bn) "divorce bill" to leave the EU, Brexit Secretary David Davis has said, as the two sides clashed over the issue.
He told ITV's Good Morning Britain the UK would pay what was legally due, in line with its rights and obligations, but "not just what the EU wants".
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said there was no desire to punish the UK but "its accounts must be settled".
While he wanted a "cordial" Brexit, he warned the "clock was ticking" now.
Publishing his Brexit mandate, Mr Barnier said the EU would "put all its efforts" into reaching a deal but said negotiations must start as soon as possible after "ten months of uncertainty" and suggested the outcome of June's general election would not change anything.
While approaching the process in a "cool-headed and solution-oriented" manner, he said it was an illusion to think it would be concluded "quickly and painlessly" or that there would be "no material impact" on lives.
An EU source has told the BBC that officials in Brussels will not enter into a discussion about potential figures for a final bill, likely to be one of the hardest-fought and most sensitive areas of the Brexit process.
On Wednesday, the Financial Times claimed the likely bill had risen sharply from 60bn to 100bn euros, basing its calculations on new data from across Europe.
Mr Barnier said there was no agreed figure but the UK and EU had entered into "mutual commitments" which must be honoured. "There is no Brexit bill. The final settlement is all about settling the accounts."
Mr Davis said the negotiations had not started in earnest but he indicated the UK would set down a marker when it came to talks over the divorce settlement.
"We are not supplicants," he said. "This is a negotiation. They lay down what they want and we lay down what we want."
Various figures ranging from 50bn to 100bn euros had been knocking around, he said, but he had "not seen" any official numbers. Asked directly whether a figure of 100bn euros - was acceptable, he replied: "We will not be paying €100bn."
He added: "We will do it properly. We will take our responsibilities seriously. What we've got to do is discuss in detail what the rights and obligations are.
"We have said we will meet our international obligations, but there will be our international obligations including assets and liabilities and there will be the ones that are correct in law, not just the ones the Commission want."
He subsequently told the BBC that the 100bn euro figure should be viewed "with a pinch of salt" and the negotiations would not "end up there", adding that it was up to the two sides to agree and he did not want the European Court of Justice to become involved.
Many Conservative MPs argue the UK does not owe the EU anything given the size of the contributions it has made over the past 40 years. A recent report by a House of Lords committee argued the UK was not legally obliged to pay a penny although to do this would threaten any chance of a post-Brexit trade deal.
Former Chancellor Lord Lawson, a strong supporter of Brexit, said the UK's withdrawal would have a big impact on the bloc's finances and that was why the EU was "so exercised" about the issue.
He told BBC Radio 4's World at One that the current political climate - with elections in the UK, France and Germany - was not conducive to a "rational" negotiation but once these were all over, the UK should make a "very good" offer to the EU on a range of issues.
If this was rejected, he suggested the UK should effectively suspend talks and "wait patiently" until the time came to leave.
Some sort of financial resolution is seen by the EU as a precondition for opening talks on a trade deal.
There are reports in Brussels that countries like France and Poland could ask the UK to contribute to farm subsidies while the EU may also be planning to refuse to allow the UK a share of the EU's assets including buildings and bank deposits.
Zsolt Darvas, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, said a range of factors would have to be taken into account - including the UK's rebate on budget payments and its share of EU borrowing - but he believed a credible figure would be somewhere between 25bn and 65bn euros.
There have been growing tensions between the UK and EU since a dinner in Downing Street last week, in which European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is reported to have told Theresa May that Brexit could not be a success.
Mr Davis, who was one of ten people present at the dinner, said accounts of the meeting were "gossip and spin" and while there were some differences in key areas, the atmosphere had been "constructive" rather than hostile.
While the process was currently in a "rough and tumble" phase of manoeuvring, he believed a "generous settlement" could be reached over the status of EU nationals living in the UK and Britons living on the continent which guaranteed "pretty much exactly" the same rights they enjoy at the moment.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the 100bn euro figure was the "opening gambit of negotiations" but that commitments that have been made by the UK government must be honoured.
For the Lib Dems, Tim Farron said no divorce bill had ever been mentioned during last year's referendum and it strengthened his party's call for a further vote on the terms of exit.
But UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said talk of a 100bn euro figure was "ridiculous" and the UK "should not be paying anything at all".

Theresa May has written to the European Union to request a further delay to Brexit until 30 June.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 12 April and, as yet, no withdrawal deal has been approved by MPs.
The government has been in talks with the Labour Party to try and find a compromise to put to the Commons.
But shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the Tory negotiating team had offered no changes to Mrs May's original deal.
The PM said from the outset she wanted to keep her withdrawal agreement as part of any plan, but was willing to discuss the UK's future relationship with the EU - addressed in the deal's political declaration.
Sir Keir said the government was "not countenancing any change to the actual wording of the political declaration", adding: "Compromise requires change."
The prime minister has proposed that if UK MPs approve a deal in time, the UK should be able to leave before European Parliamentary elections on 23 May.
But she said the UK would prepare to field candidates in those elections in case no agreement is reached.
It is up to the EU whether to grant an extension to Article 50, the legal process through which the UK is leaving the EU, after MPs repeatedly rejected the withdrawal agreement reached between the UK and the bloc.
The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler has been told by a senior EU source that European Council President Donald Tusk will propose a 12-month "flexible" extension to Brexit, with the option of cutting it short, if the UK Parliament ratifies a deal.
But French President Emmanuel Macron's office said on Friday that it was "premature" to consider another delay while French diplomatic sources described Mr Tusk's suggestion as a "clumsy test balloon".
The prime minister wrote to Mr Tusk to request the extension ahead of an EU summit on 10 April, where EU leaders would have to unanimously agree on any plan to delay the UK's departure.
Mrs May has already requested an extension to the end of June but this was rejected at a summit last month.
Instead, she was offered a short delay to 12 April - the date by which the UK must say whether it intends to take part in the European Parliamentary elections - or until 22 May, if UK MPs had approved the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU. They voted it down for a third time last week.
A Downing Street spokesman said there were "different circumstances now" and the prime minister "has been clear she is seeking a short extension".
The 30 June date is significant.
It's the day before the new European Parliament will hold its first session. So the logic is, that it would allow the UK a bit longer to seal a deal - but without the need for British MEPs to take their seats in a parliament that the UK electorate had voted to leave as long ago as 2016.
But, this being Theresa May, it's a plan she has previously proposed - and which has already been rejected.
It's likely the EU will reject it again and offer a longer extension, with the ability to leave earlier if Parliament agrees a deal.
But by asking for a relatively short extension - even if she is unsuccessful - the prime minister will be hoping to escape the ire of some of her Brexit-supporting backbenchers who are champing at the bit to leave.
And she will try to signal to Leave-supporting voters that her choice is to get out of the EU as soon as is practicable - and that a longer extension will be something that is forced upon her, rather than something which she embraces.
In her letter, the prime minister says she would continue to seek the "rapid approval" of the withdrawal agreement and a "shared vision" for the future relationship between the UK and EU.
She said if cross-party talks with the Labour Party could not establish "a single unified approach" in the UK Parliament - MPs would be asked to vote on a series of Brexit options instead which the government "stands ready to abide by", if Labour commits to doing the same.
The UK proposes an extension to the process until 30 June, she wrote, and "accepts the European Council's view that if the United Kingdom were still a member state of the European Union on 23 May 2019, it would be under a legal obligation to hold the elections".
To this end, she says the UK is "undertaking the lawful and responsible preparations for this contingency".
But she suggests the UK should be able to leave earlier, if the UK Parliament approves a withdrawal deal before then, and cancel preparations for the European Parliamentary elections.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, at a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels, said any extension granted should be the last and final offer, to maintain the EU's credibility.
You could almost hear the sound of collective eye-rolling across 27 European capitals after Theresa May requested a Brexit extension-time that Brussels has already repeatedly rejected.
Most EU leaders are leaning towards a longer Brexit delay, to avoid being constantly approached by the PM for a rolling series of short extensions, with the threat of a no-deal Brexit always just round the corner.
Donald Tusk believes he has hit on a compromise solution: his "flextension" which would last a year, with the UK able to walk away from it, as soon as Parliament ratifies the Brexit deal.
But EU leaders are not yet singing from the same hymn sheet on this.
Expect closed-door political fireworks - though it's unclear whether it'll be a modest display or an all-out extravaganza - at their emergency Brexit summit next week. Under EU law, they have to hammer out a unanimous position.
Read Katya's blog
Talks between Labour and the Conservatives are continuing on Friday.
Speaking to Labour activists in Newport on Friday, Mr Corbyn said the government "haven't appeared to have changed their opinions very much as yet". He said Labour would push to maintain the UK's "market relationship with Europe", including defending rights and regulations.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the UK still hoped to leave "in the next couple of months" but it may have "little choice" but to accept a longer delay if Parliament could not agree a solution.
But Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said the EU "should be careful what it wishes for".
"If we have EU elections, it is likely UKIP, Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage will do well," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One.
Another Tory Eurosceptic, Sir Bernard Jenkin, said he would prefer to stay in the EU for another year than for Britain to accept a "humiliating defeat" of a withdrawal agreement.
The Scottish National Party's Stephen Gethins said that the prime minister's proposal "demonstrates beyond doubt she is putting the interests of her fractured Tory Party above all else".
"It is clear that with the UK Parliament unable to reach a consensus - coupled with everything we now know on the damaging impact Brexit will have on the UK economy, jobs and living standards - it must now be the priority that the issue is brought back to the people in a fresh second EU referendum, with the option to remain on the ballot paper."

The UK has offered a larger potential "divorce bill" to the EU - which could be worth up to 50bn euros (£44bn), the BBC understands.
It was "broadly welcomed", political editor Laura Kuenssberg said, although No 10 has played down reports the final sum could be up to 55bn euros (£49bn).
Asked on a trip to Iraq if a figure had been agreed, Theresa May said talks were continuing.
And the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier said "we are not there" yet.
In September Theresa May suggested the UK was willing to pay about 20bn euros to meet obligations arising from its membership but the EU has been calling for its offer to be increased.
The UK is hoping to move on to talking about trade but the EU will only do this when it deems "sufficient progress" has been made on three areas - the so-called divorce bill, the rights of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit and the Irish border.
The EU says the UK needs to settle its accounts before it leaves. It says the UK has made financial commitments that have to be settled as part of an overall withdrawal agreement.
The UK accepts that it has some obligations. And it has promised not to leave any other country out of pocket in the current EU budget period from 2014-20.
But the devil is in the detail.
There are also longer term issues like pensions for EU staff, and how the UK's contribution to these is calculated for years to come, and the question of what happens to building projects that had funding agreed by all EU members including the UK but which will only begin construction after the UK has left.
Large amounts of the EU's budget are spent in two areas - agriculture and fisheries, and development of poorer areas.
Pressure is mounting to make progress on the Brexit talks before a crunch summit in mid-December, when EU leaders will decide if enough progress has been made on the first set of subjects to open negotiations on a future trade deal between the EU and the UK.
According to the Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times, agreement has now been reached between the two sets of negotiators on how the bill could be calculated.
Speaking in the Commons, Treasury minister Liz Truss declined to comment on what she described as media speculation and insisted any financial settlement was "contingent" on the UK getting the right overall outcome.
But Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK would make a "fair offer" to help break the current deadlock.
"Now is the moment to get the whole ship off the rocks and move it forwards," he said during a trip to Ivory Coast, where he is attending a meeting of European and African leaders.
The BBC understands detailed conversations are still taking place on which specific components will be included in the final bill and how they are calculated. The final bill is likely to be paid over many years rather than in a single upfront sum.
At the moment no.
But there appears to have been an agreement on the way that the amount the UK pays will be calculated and the BBC understands that the range of possible settlements is between approximately 40bn and 55bn euros.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told BBC Radio 4's Today: "There are no numbers for us to discuss this morning. We haven't committed to numbers."
Labour said it was not asking for a precise figure to be published as this was clearly "sensitive".
But it said there needed to be a "transparent process" with the final figure subjected to scrutiny by Parliament and independent bodies.
It is trying to force a vote on this next week.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said the UK - which according the the House of Commons Library paid an estimated £12.2bn to the EU in 2016-17 - would save a "staggering amount of money" after Brexit.
"Leaving the EU is always a bargain because we get our money back," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
But former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the figures being reported would mean "Christmas has come early" for the EU.
The long-time Brexit campaigner told ITV's Good Morning Britain that the UK was "selling out" and that even if such a sum secured tariff-free access to EU markets, this would not be worth it.
But former chancellor Ken Clarke said the UK had to pay its "fair share" and "repudiating" the UK's financial obligations would result in a hard Brexit - damaging jobs and investment.
Remember there also has to be sufficient progress on the issues of citizens' rights and the Irish border for EU leaders to agree to move the talks on in ten days' time.
The first issue should not be a stumbling block - there has been talk of agreement being within "touching distance" but the second issue is now the "main sticking point", the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler says.
The Irish government has said it wants firm guarantees on what kind of border controls there will be after Brexit and it is prepared to wait until next year, if necessary, for them.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said there was some talk in Whitehall of trying to agree a position which would stress agreement in the first two areas and "park" the Irish question until early next year.
But she said EU officials were "pouring a freezing cold bucket of water" over the idea of a staged approach.
In the meantime, she said both sides were discussing whether a joint paper could be produced before next Monday formalising what has been agreed so far so it could not potentially be unpicked at a later date.
MEPs on the European Parliament have warned "considerable problems" remain and that more progress is needed before talks can move to the next phase.
In a letter to chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, the Parliament's Brexit steering group cited differences between the two sides on citizens' rights and said progress had "stalled" on the role of the European Court of Justice.
The European Parliament is not leading the negotiations (that is the job of the European Commission) but it will get to vote on the final deal.

Large parts of the British economy are not ready for a no-deal Brexit, Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said.
Fewer than half of businesses have initiated contingency plans, Mr Carney told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He said the UK would need a transition period to adapt to whatever form of exit from the EU that Parliament chose.
He denied that the Bank's warning that no-deal could lead to a UK recession was intended to scare people into backing his favoured form of Brexit.
Mr Carney told the BBC that "we know from our contacts with business, others know from their contacts, that less than half the businesses in the country have initiated their contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit".
"All the industries, all the infrastructure of the country, are they all ready at this point in time? And, as best as we can tell, the answer is no," Mr Carney said.
It is in the interests of the country that there should be a transition to whatever new relationship the UK has with the EU, he said.
He added: "We know issues around the borders, we go to the ports and we know the issues that are there today. So we need some time to get ready for it."
On Wednesday, MPs warned that there was a "real prospect" of "major disruption" at UK ports in the case of a no-deal Brexit, with government plans "worryingly under-developed".
However, the Department for Transport said the Public Accounts Committee's conclusions "were not accurate".
Conservative MP and Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Mark Carney of talking down the pound on Wednesday, saying the Bank of England's warnings tonight "lack all credibility".
Mr Rees-Mogg said "project fear" had become "project hysteria".
"The overwhelming majority - 87% - of British companies do not trade with the European Union," he said.
"It will not have an effect on them. Leaving the European Union is a real economic opportunity and it's an opportunity that neither the Bank of England nor the Treasury in its forecasts wishes to recognise," Mr Rees-Mogg added.
Mr Carney's comments come after government forecasts warned that the UK would be economically poorer under any form of Brexit, compared with staying in the EU.
Under Theresa May's Chequers Brexit plan, the UK economy could be up to 3.9% smaller after 15 years compared with staying in the EU, government analysis suggested.
With a no-deal Brexit, the hit to the economy would be 9.3%.
"Our deal is the best deal available for jobs and our economy, that allows us to honour the referendum and realise the opportunities of Brexit," Mrs May said at Prime Minister's Questions.
The Bank of England, meanwhile, said on Wednesday that the UK economy could shrink by 8% in the immediate aftermath of Brexit if there was no transition period, house prices could fall by almost a third, and that the pound could fall by a quarter.
The UK's financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has said the risks of the draft Brexit agreement were "preferable to the risks of a no-deal scenario".
"Leaving the EU creates a number of risks for us regardless of the form of exit," the FCA said in a report.
"The implementation period helps address these at the cost of a lower ability to influence regulation during that period. An exit without agreement would carry much higher risk and carry significant uncertainty for us and for firms.
"Against that background, and viewed through the lens of our statutory objectives, the draft Withdrawal Agreement and the outline political declaration are preferable steps."
The FCA was asked by the Treasury Select Committee to consider the impact of Brexit in three areas: a no-deal scenario; the draft withdrawal agreement; and the outline political declaration on the future relationship between the EU and UK.
In a letter to the committee's chairman, Nicky Morgan, FCA chief executive Andrew Bailey said a no-deal scenario "would create significant challenges and risks in terms of firms' readiness, potential market disruption and insufficient public-policy solutions put in place on the side of the EU".

Boris Johnson has said the UK has "crossed the Brexit finish line" after Parliament passed legislation implementing the withdrawal deal.
The EU Bill, which paves the way for the country to leave the bloc on 31 January, is now awaiting royal assent.
The PM said the UK could now "move forwards as one" and put "years of rancour and division behind it".
The EU's top officials are expected to sign the agreement in the coming days, while MEPs will vote on it next week.
The European Parliament will meet on 29 January to debate the agreement, which sets out the terms of the UK's "divorce" settlement with the EU, the rights of EU nationals resident in the UK and British expats on the continent and arrangements for Northern Ireland.
Its ratification is expected to prove a formality.
The UK will officially leave the bloc at 23:00 GMT on 31 January - more than three and a half years after the country voted for Brexit in a referendum in June 2016.
From 1 February, the UK will enter into an 11-month transition period in which it will continue to follow EU rules but without representation in the bloc's institutions.
This arrangement will come to an end on 1 January 2021, by which point the two sides hope to have completed negotiations on their future economic and security partnership, at the heart of which the government believes will be an ambitious free trade deal.
The government's Brexit Bill, which enshrines the agreement reached by Mr Johnson in October, is one step away from becoming law after completing its passage through Parliament without any changes.
MPs overwhelmingly rejected all the changes made to the bill in the House of Lords earlier this week - on citizens' rights, the power of UK courts to diverge from EU law, the independence of the judiciary after Brexit and the consent of the UK's devolved administrations.
MPs also removed an amendment which would have obliged the government to negotiate an agreement with the EU to allow unaccompanied children who have claimed asylum elsewhere but have a relative in the UK to be re-united with their family.
The bill, as agreed by Parliament, would only compel the government to make a statement on the issue within two months.
Ministers insisted they backed the principle of the Dubs amendment, tabled by the Labour peer Lord Dubs, but argued that there was no point legislating before the UK reached an agreement with the EU on future numbers.
Lord Dubs, who has been campaigning on the issue for years, said the outcome was "bitterly disappointing" while Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said the government had shown a "compassion by-pass".
The ratification process will be completed over the next week in time for the 31 January deadline.
Belgian politician Charles Michel, who represents the 27 remaining states as president of the European Council, is expected to sign the document in the coming days as will European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Mr Johnson will also sign officially the agreement on behalf of the UK government.
The prime minister, who became Tory leader in July on the back of a promise to "get Brexit done" and won an overwhelming victory at last month's general election, said Parliamentary approval was a major milestone.
"Parliament has passed the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, meaning we will leave the EU on 31 January and move forwards as one United Kingdom.
"At times it felt like we would never cross the Brexit finish line, but we've done it. Now we can put the rancour and division of the past three years behind us and focus on delivering a bright, exciting future."
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Talks between the UK and the European Union need to "speed up" if a deal on a future relationship can be made in time for Brexit, the EU's negotiator says.
Speaking in Lisbon, Michel Barnier said the UK needed to stop playing "hide and seek" and instead clarify its demands.
It comes as the EU Withdrawal Bill is due to return to the House of Commons, having suffered defeats in the Lords.
The PM faces a rebellion over her move to rule out any future membership of the customs union and single market.
The government fears MPs may follow suit and attempt to amend the bill.
Earlier this week, UK officials warned the EU that its approach to Brexit negotiations risked damaging its security and economic relationship.
Addressing a gathering of jurists in Portugal on Saturday, Mr Barnier called for more clarity on the UK's position, saying an effective negotiation was dependent on knowing what the other side wanted.
He said the EU would be ready to accept movement on Theresa May's "red lines" that insist Brexit must see the UK leave both the European single market and customs union.
"The UK can change its mind," he said, but stressed that "time is tight".
"If the UK wishes to modify its red lines, it will have to tell us so - the sooner the better," he added.
Referencing a row over the UK's potential exclusion from the EU's Galileo project - a multibillion euro plan to build a European GPS system - Mr Barnier said the EU would not be influenced by a "blame game" which seeks to hold the organisation responsible for Brexit's "negative consequences".
The UK said on Friday that it wanted the EU to repay £1bn if it was excluded from the Galileo satellite system,.
"It is the UK which is leaving the EU. It cannot, in the act of leaving, ask us to change what we are and how we function," Mr Barnier said.

The UK must have the power to end any post-Brexit "backstop" customs accord with the EU on its own, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has said.
The Brexiteer said the UK had voted to leave the EU and "that decision can't be subcontracted to somebody else".
The UK and EU want to avoid a hard Irish border after Brexit but cannot agree on how to do so.
The EU has said it cannot agree to any arrangements which could be left unilaterally by the UK.
Prime Minister Theresa May is keen to reach a withdrawal agreement with the EU this month.
But her cabinet has been unable to agree on the mechanism for ensuring that there will be no return to border checks if a future trade deal is not ready in time.
Q&A: The Irish border Brexit backstop
One option could be for the whole of the UK to remain temporarily aligned to the EU's customs union, avoiding the need for customs checks at the border until a free trade deal is ready.
But Leave campaigners want a clear exit strategy from any such arrangement.
Mr Fox told reporters: "We have an instruction from our voters to leave the European Union. That decision can't be subcontracted to somebody else. That needs to be an issue for a sovereign British government to be able to determine."
Earlier this week Simon Coveney, Ireland's foreign minister, tweeted that "a backstop that could be ended by UK unilaterally would never be agreed to" by Ireland or the EU.
In Paris earlier, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said negotiations with the EU were "in the final stage" and he was confident an agreement could be reached.
But asked if a deal could be reached in the next week, he said: "I think seven days is probably pushing it but I am optimistic. I am optimistic that there will be a Brexit deal but I wouldn't want to be drawn on a specific timetable."
Mr Coveney told the Irish Canada Business Association conference in Dublin: "I would urge caution that an imminent breakthrough is not necessarily to be taken for granted, not by a long shot.
"Repeatedly people seem to make the same mistake over and over again, assuming that if the British cabinet agrees something, well, then that's it then, everything is agreed.
"This is a negotiation and needs to be an agreement of course between the British government but also with the European Union and the 27 countries that are represented by Michel Barnier and his negotiating team."
Brexit is due to happen on 29 March 2019, as a result of the referendum in June 2016 in which people voted by 51.9% to 48.1% for the UK to leave the European Union.
Although 95% of a Brexit deal is said to be agreed, the backstop remains a sticking point.
It is effectively an insurance policy that would only be triggered if a future trade deal is not in place by the end of 2020 - or if this final deal does not ensure a "frictionless" border.
This is because there have been warnings that a return of visible border checks could undermine the peace process in Northern Ireland, as well as damaging businesses operating on both sides.
If a Brexit deal is agreed between the UK and the EU, it then has to be approved by the House of Commons and the remaining EU member states.
Earlier, former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who quit the cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit plan in July, told the BBC that defeat in the Commons for the current plan was "looking like a probability", especially if MPs were not shown the full legal advice on the Irish border backstop plan.

Any Brexit deal negotiated with the EU must not "trap" the UK in a customs arrangement it cannot choose to leave, Andrea Leadsom has told the BBC.
The Brexiteer minister urged Tories to back the PM and said she was "sticking in government" to work for a good deal.
But the UK must not be "held against its will" in any "backstop" aimed at avoiding a hard Irish border, she said.
On Friday, pro-Remain minister Jo Johnson quit the government and called for a new referendum on the final deal.
Asked if other ministers might resign, Commons leader Mrs Leadsom told BBC 5 live's Pienaar's Politics she was not expecting any, adding: "I do urge colleagues to support the prime minister.
"We are at a very difficult stage. What we have to do is hold our nerve and keep negotiating, make sure that we are pointing out to our EU friends and neighbours that it's in all of our interests to get a good deal."
The government has not yet agreed a withdrawal deal with the European Union, ahead of the UK's scheduled exit from the bloc next March.
While it says a deal is 95% agreed, they have been unable to agree on a legally binding mechanism for ensuring that there will be no return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, if a future trade deal is not ready in time.
Earlier shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told the BBC "all options remain on the table", including another referendum, if a Brexit deal was voted down in the Commons.
Mrs Leadsom, who Theresa May beat to the Conservative leadership in 2016, said there would not be another referendum if MPs rejected the final withdrawal deal.
But she said she believed "most members of Parliament would vote for a deal rather than no deal".
If sufficient progress is made on the "backstop" it is thought a special cabinet meeting could be held next week for ministers to approve the draft agreement on the terms of the UK's exit.
One option is for the whole of the UK to remain temporarily aligned to the EU's customs union, avoiding the need for customs checks at the border until a free trade deal is ready.
But Leave campaigners want a clear exit strategy from any such arrangement - while the EU says any "backstop" must apply "unless and until" it is no longer needed.
By BBC political correspondent Jessica Parker
MPs on all sides are readily setting out their conditions and caveats when it comes to a potential Brexit deal.
And while Andrea Leadsom made it clear that she still supports Prime Minister Theresa May, there was a hint too that she has her own red lines, saying that the UK must not end up trapped in an EU customs arrangement.
This plays into wider fears in some Conservative quarters that Mrs May could end up accepting a compromise too far on the "backstop" issue, in order to get a withdrawal agreement with the EU over the line.
Mrs Leadsom said while the backstop was not a "likely scenario" - because she believed a trade deal could be reached before it would be necessary - it must be "time limited" and "include the entire UK", rather than just Northern Ireland. And the UK must be able to decide to leave it - without the EU overturning that decision.
She added: "The UK cannot be forced to remain in a customs arrangement. Now how that specifically works is exactly what is being discussed and negotiated on now. The UK cannot be held against its will in a customs arrangement."
Earlier Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: "If you have too hard a line about saying, 'Well we must just have a totally unilateral exit, or there's an absolutely fixed, hard end date,' that is... very, very unlikely that is going to be negotiable with the other side.
"On the other hand, people here rightly want comfort and they should be able to have comfort and confidence that it isn't an open-ended thing."
Meanwhile, General Sir Nick Carter, chief of the defence staff, was asked on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show what the military might be called on to do, in the event the UK leaves the EU with no withdrawal deal in place, saying "we stand ready to help in any way we can".
Defence minister Tobias Ellwood told Sky News the government had to plan for every scenario adding: "There are contingency plans being made, there are discussions being held behind the scenes as to what support our armed forces will do."
Brexit is due to happen on 29 March 2019, as a result of the referendum in June 2016 in which people voted by 51.9% to 48.1% for the UK to leave the European Union.
If a Brexit deal is agreed between the UK and the EU, it then has to be approved by the House of Commons and the remaining EU member states.

There is "still the potential to improve" the draft Brexit deal, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has said.
While she backed Prime Minister Theresa May's efforts to get the "best possible deal", she warned the UK could not be "trapped" in an EU customs union.
The BBC understands that Brexiteer Mrs Leadsom is part of a group of five ministers hoping to amend the deal.
Despite widespread criticism of the draft withdrawal agreement, Mrs May has vowed to "see it through".
The 585-page document sets out the terms of the UK's departure, including details such as how much money will be paid to the EU, details of the transition period and citizens' rights. It is due to be finalised at an EU summit next Sunday, 25 November.
The publication of the draft text prompted the start of a tumultuous few days for Mrs May, with two senior ministers and several other junior ministers and aides resigning.
Some Conservative Brexiteers who are unhappy with the agreement have also been submitting letters of no-confidence in Mrs May. If 48 letters are sent, then a vote will be triggered and she could face a challenge to her leadership.
Mark Francois, one of the 21 Conservative MPs who have publicly said they have sent a letter, said Mrs May's plan would leave the UK "half in and half out" of the EU and everyone knew she would never get it through Parliament.
But Conservative MP Sir Alan Duncan urged his other fellow MPs to "stop and reflect", saying a leadership challenge was not going to get the country a better deal than Mrs May's.
"All it's likely to do is create chaos, break the government, break the party and leave the country in great disarray."
If there were to be a confidence vote in Mrs May's leadership, party veteran Ken Clarke said she would "easily" win it but Nadine Dorries was doubtful, saying "when pen comes to paper" most MPs would vote against her in a secret ballot.
By Susana Mendonça, BBC political correspondent
When they didn't jump ship over Theresa May's Brexit deal you might have thought that meant these key Brexiteers in her cabinet were ready to toe the line in a show of what's supposed to be known as "collective responsibility".
But the fact that they're still manoeuvring to change the details of the prime minister's deal (while declaring their support for her), is yet another sign of the extraordinary political times we are in.
This apparent gang of five inside the cabinet differ in their priorities. Andrea Leadsom - who's understood to be leading them - doesn't want Britain to be trapped in an endless backstop, and wants technological solutions to get around it.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove is worried about treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK. The group is at an "embryonic" stage but will they get their tweaks?
Andrea Leadsom thinks there's "still more to be done" and that they "do still have more time" before the EU Council at the end of the month. But that leaves only just over a week - and the EU doesn't look to be in the market for renegotiation at the moment.
On Friday evening, it emerged that Mrs Leadsom hopes to work with the four other cabinet ministers to change the draft withdrawal deal into something "winnable and supportable".
The four ministers believed to working with Mrs Leadsom are Michael Gove and Liam Fox - who on Friday publicly threw their support behind the PM - plus Penny Mordaunt and Chris Grayling.
Speaking to the BBC in her constituency, Mrs Leadsom said: "What I'm doing is working very hard to support the prime minister in getting the Brexit deal that 17.4 million people voted for.
"I think there's still the potential to improve on the clarification and on some of the measures within it and that's what I'm hoping to be able to help with."
Among her concerns was that "the UK cannot be trapped in a permanent customs arrangement" with the EU, she said.
She added: "I wouldn't describe myself as a plotter. I'm really just trying to make sure that we get the best possible Brexit deal."
The cabinet "gang of five" specifically want to change the part regarding the Irish backstop - which has been one of the main sticking points in talks with Brussels.
Both the UK and the EU want to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border so they agreed to put in place a "backstop" - or back-up plan - in case they cannot reach a long-term trade agreement which does this.
The backstop would mean that Northern Ireland would stay more closely aligned to some EU rules on things like food products and goods standards than the rest of the UK, which critics say is unacceptable.
The UK would not be able to leave the backstop without the EU's consent.
According to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg, the group of ministers want a change in the draft text to include the possibility of new technology or a free trade deal as alternative solutions to the Irish border issue.
The group's plans were described as a "work in progress", and a "last-ditch attempt to find something to put to the Commons".
The deal is expected to be approved at a special EU summit on 25 November, before being voted on by MPs in Parliament.
Ahead of the vote, the EU is saying it intends to stick to the existing text, according to BBC Europe editor Katya Adler. If it is voted down, the EU would be open to "tweaks" but a source close to French President Emmanuel Macron has said "nothing fundamental" could change.
Our correspondent adds that if it came to a general election or another referendum, the EU would likely be open to putting the leaving process on ice to avoid a no-deal Brexit and in the hope the UK might change its mind and stay in the EU.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the EU should not enter "some kind of bargaining process" over parts of the text, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted the EU and the UK had agreed the text so negotiations should not continue.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has suggested that Labour could renegotiate the deal before the UK is due to leave the EU in March next year.
"I think we can do it with good will, we can change the atmosphere of negotiations into one of mutual interest and mutual benefit," he told Sky News.
Meanwhile, the prime minister told the Daily Mail the withdrawal agreement was "not everybody's ideal deal" but said her job was to make "tough decisions" and "find a way through".
She also warned her opponents their alternative Brexit plans would not resolve the Irish backstop issue.
Commenting on the backlash to the deal, Mrs May acknowledged it had been "a pretty heavy couple of days".
She revealed her husband Philip, who she described as her "rock", had helped her through it - at one point pouring her a whisky and making beans on toast.
On Friday night, Mrs May called dozens of constituency chairmen to appeal to them to back her deal and her leadership - and this weekend she is expected to embark on a "social media blitz" to try to sell her plans to people not usually engaged in politics.
Mrs May's comments come after Stephen Barclay was picked as the new Brexit secretary - replacing Dominic Raab who quit on Thursday.
A No 10 spokesman indicated that Mr Barclay, who becomes the third Brexit secretary since the role was created, would focus on domestic preparations for Brexit, rather than the negotiations.
In other developments:
The draft withdrawal agreement for Brexit that Mrs May agreed with her cabinet on Wednesday has been signed off by negotiators from both the UK and EU.

The UK must provide more clarity about its negotiating position on Brexit, the French president has said.
Emmanuel Macron said the issues of EU citizens' rights, the exit bill and the Irish border question must be settled before talks could be held on trade.
On Friday, Theresa May made suggestions including a two-year transition period after Brexit, and that the UK pay the EU for "commitments" previously made.
She hoped this offer, made in a speech in Italy, would unblock Brexit talks.
In the first response by a European leader to the speech, Mr Macron welcomed her initiative, but said the British position still needed to be fleshed out.
"Before we move forward, we wish to clarify the issue of the regulation of European citizens, the financial terms of the exit and the question of Ireland," he said.
"If those three points are not clarified, then we cannot move forward on the rest."
Mrs May said there should be a transition period of "about" two years after March 2019 - when the UK leaves the EU - during which trade should continue on current terms
EU migrants would still be able to live and work in the UK but they would have to register with the authorities, under her proposals.
And she said the UK would pay into the EU budget for decisions made while it was a member, so other member states were not left out of pocket.
She did not specify how much the UK would be prepared to pay during the transition period, but it has been estimated as being at least 20bn euros (about £18bn).
In Germany, the ruling CDU's European spokesman Michael Stuebgen said Mrs May's speech would not provide the "new dynamism" needed as details had not been fleshed out.
And the head of the country's small and medium business association said her speech was a "wasted opportunity".
At home, Mrs May's speech was welcomed by senior Conservative figures including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Chancellor Philip Hammond.
But former Brexit minister Lord Bridges, who resigned from the department in June, said Britain needed to be ready for the scenario where the country crashed out of the EU without a deal.
"What will happen at customs, data, aviation, energy, law? The list goes on and on. I would urge the government to not be too coy about this," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
If the EU senses the UK is not ready to leave without a deal, it would be "captured" at the negotiating table, he said.
Backbench MP Jacob Rees-Mogg criticised the PM's stance on freedom of movement until March 2019, offering the union money, and the role of the European Courts of Justice on Britain.
In her speech, the prime minister suggested there should be a new security agreement and a new model for trade
She said the UK and EU would continue to work together on long-term economic projects and the UK would want to contribute to costs.
When the two-year transition period was up, the UK and EU could move towards a new "deep and special partnership," she said.
By March 2019, neither the UK or EU would be ready to "smoothly" implement new arrangements, Mrs May said, so she suggested current trade terms should remain in place.
That would last until new systems were set up.
It's been pretty well established in Whitehall for many months - the most eager Brexiteers who wanted short, sharp exit lost that battle some time ago.
Her acknowledgment of that pulls against her repeated insistence in the election that the public just want politicians to "get on with it".
And there were new nuggets of information that will influence the talks.
Read Laura's full blog
Mrs May said she hoped to build a "comprehensive and ambitious" new economic partnership with the EU in the long-term.
She reassured EU citizens in the UK that "we want you to stay, we value you" and said she wanted UK courts to take account of rulings by the European Court of Justice.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier described the speech as "constructive" and said the prime minister had shown "a willingness to move forward".
But he said statements must now be translated into a precise negotiating position of the UK government.
And he said he would look at the implications of the UK's pledge that no member state would have to pay more as a result of Brexit.
European Parliament Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said the UK's position was becoming "more realistic" but ruled out the UK registering EU citizens who wanted to stay.
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn acknowledged a transition was needed to provide stability for businesses and workers.
Mr Barnier meets Brexit Secretary David Davis for a fourth round of talks on Monday.

UK officials have warned the EU that its approach to Brexit negotiations risks damaging its security and economic relationship.
It comes as a senior EU official said the UK was living in a "let's just keep everything we have now... fantasy".
A UK official described those remarks as "laughable" and warned against "trying to insult us".
Meanwhile the UK says the EU should repay £1bn if it is excluded from the Galileo satellite navigation system.
In a briefing on Thursday, following three days of Brexit talks, a senior EU official told journalists the UK was in a fantasy that everything could stay as it is, which would mean that the EU would have to change so that Britain could remain the same.
"I'm a bit concerned because the precondition for fruitful discussions has to be the UK accepts the consequences of its own choices," the official said.
"The sooner we move beyond 'let's just keep everything we have now'… the sooner we move away from this fantasy, then the quicker we can make progress."
On the issue of the Irish border, the official said "we are running out of time" and that there had been no agreement, in three days of talks this week, on the "crunch items" of customs and regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
The UK government has proposed a fallback option if the UK and EU cannot agree new customs arrangements in time, to avoid a "hard border" in Ireland. It would see the UK remaining aligned with the EU customs union for "a limited time" after 2020 - something Theresa May has said would only be needed in "a very limited set of circumstances".
But the EU official said any solution must be "Northern Ireland-specific" and they must "do away with fantasy that it can be a whole-of-UK solution" because that would provide a back door for the UK into the EU's single market.
The official also suggested the row over the UK's access to the Galileo system was about the UK wanting to turn it from an EU programme into a joint UK/EU programme which was "a big ask" and would give the UK more influence than some EU member states.
But a UK official said the remarks were simply the EU's "public negotiating position".
He said: 'We presented seven papers this week, in the interests of resolving difficult issues in the interests of both sides, so the claim we aren't providing enough detail is laughable.
"The risk is that, if they follow down this track, putting conditions on our unconditional offers and trying to insult us, the EU will end up with a relationship with its third biggest economy and largest security partner that lets down millions of citizens in the EU and UK."
Brexit Secretary David Davis also tweeted that "a relationship based solely on existing third country precedents, as some seem to be suggesting, would lead to a substantial and avoidable reduction in our shared security capability".
He added: "Our citizens depend on this, let's not let them down."
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said it was meant to be a good week for the British, who had published a series of documents proposing future co-operation on issues ranging from data protection, research and foreign policy to fighting crime.
He added it could be typical posturing before a summit of EU leaders next month, or it could herald another low in the Brexit process.

The Bank of England is to unveil plans allowing European banks to operate in the UK as normal post-Brexit.
The BBC has learned that banks offering wholesale finance - money and services provided to businesses and each other - would operate under existing rules.
It means EU banks operating through branches can continue without creating subsidiaries - an expensive process.
Branches offer an easy way for banks to move money around their international operations.
But they present the risk that, in the event of a financial crisis, funds are quickly repatriated to the foreign bank's headquarters - leaving customers of the UK branch out of pocket.
Subsidiaries are forced to hold their own shock-absorbing capital which can't cut and run - they essentially become UK companies.
Changing from a branch to a subsidiary could cost billions for a bank like Deutsche Bank, for example, which employs 9,000 people in the UK.
Currently, banks based anywhere in the EU can sell services to anywhere else in the EU thanks to an instrument known as a financial services passport.
On Monday, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier was talking tough on UK-based financial services access to the European single market after Brexit.
"There is no place (for financial services). There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn't exist. In leaving the single market, they lose the financial services passport," he said.
Which begs the question - if they are playing hard ball - why are we being so nice in rolling out the red carpet?
Miles Celic, head of the lobbying group TheCityUK, said offering continuity to EU banks was an act of goodwill, but it was also one of enlightened self interest.
"Encouraging EU banks to continue to operate in the UK will help preserve financial stability for the UK and the EU and will help defend London's position as an open global financial centre," he said.
Forcing EU bank branches in the UK to become separately capitalised subsidiaries may well have encouraged European banks to pull out of London - gradually eroding its pre-eminence as a financial centre.
But on the other hand, London acts as the wholesale bank to the EU and access to its expertise and capital is highly prized. Some may see this decision as surrendering a trump card that should have been held back for the tough negotiations ahead.
So, why are we allowing the EU access to this valuable resource while the EU threatens to create barriers the other way?
Government sources said there are three reasons.
First, there are the jobs. Tens of thousands of highly paid people work in the London branches of big EU banks. That also creates knock on jobs in other professions like accountancy and law.
Second, those people pay a lot of tax to the exchequer.
And third, there is another important economic point. Services sold by the UK branch of a French or German bank to a third country like the US, for example, count as UK exports - something the government is keen to maximise.
In a speech back in October, Sam Woods, the head of the Prudential Regulation Authority (the bit of the Bank of England that supervises banks) said the reason the European financial markets work so well is not just due to the "passport" that Michel Barnier insists will be revoked.
He said he hoped "for a strong, co-operative relationship in which wholesale banks can continue to operate across the UK and EU27 in branches... We have embedded a sophisticated framework of supervisory co-operation... There is every reason to think these will continue into the future"
This sentiment echoes what a senior banker told me six months ago - "if the regulators were in charge, and not the politicians, this would all be sorted out in a fortnight."
They are not in charge. But I understand the bank has the blessing of the government in offering this "no new post-Brexit strings attached" access to the world's largest financial centre.

The UK government has set out proposals to ensure trade in goods and services can continue on the day the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
A position paper calls for goods already on the market to be allowed to remain on sale in the UK and EU without additional restrictions.
It also calls for consumer protections to remain in place.
The Brexit department aims to keep pressure on the EU ahead of the third round of talks in Brussels next week.
A second paper calling for a reciprocal agreement to ensure continued confidentiality for official documents shared by Britain with its EU partners while it was a member state has also been published on Monday.
Further papers are due in the coming days, including one on the crucial issue of the European Court of Justice - a sticking point in talks.
Brussels is refusing to discuss future arrangements, such as trade, until citizens' rights, the UK's "divorce bill" and the Northern Ireland border have been settled.
EU leaders reiterated their stance last week as the UK published proposals about new customs arrangements.
Mr Davis said the latest batch of publications would "drive the talks forward" and "show beyond doubt" that enough progress had been made to move to the next stage of talks.
David Davis said: "These papers will help give businesses and consumers certainty and confidence in the UK's status as an economic powerhouse after we have left the EU.
"They also show that as we enter the third round of negotiations, it is clear that our separation from the EU and future relationship are inextricably linked.
"We have already begun to set out what we would like to see from a future relationship on issues such as customs and are ready to begin a formal dialogue on this and other issues."
But European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein said the UK's position papers would not alter the framework for talks drawn up by chief negotiator Michel Barnier and approved by the other 27 EU member states.
"There is a very clear structure in place, set by the EU27, about how these talks should be sequenced and that is exactly what we think should be happening now," Mr Winterstein told a Brussels press conference.
"So the fact that these papers are coming out is, as such, welcome because we see this as a positive step towards now really starting the process of negotiations.
"But as Michel Barnier has said time and again, we have to have sufficient progress first on the three areas of citizens' rights, financial settlement and Ireland, and only then can we move forwards to discussing the future relationship."
He added: "Hopefully we can make fast progress on the three areas I have mentioned because once we have reached sufficient progress there, we can move on to the second stage."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "Both sides need to adopt a flexible approach. We are working at pace. We are confident we will make sufficient progress.
"David Davis has said we want to move to the next stage in October."
Monday's publications urge the EU to widen its "narrow" definition of the availability of goods on the market to also include services, arguing this is the only way to protect consumers and businesses trading before Brexit.
The goods and services paper calls for:
Business group the CBI described Mr Davis's position on trade as a "significant improvement" on EU proposals which would create a "severe cliff-edge" for goods currently on the market.
But CBI campaigns director John Foster said: "The only way to provide companies with the reassurance they need is through the urgent agreement of interim arrangements.
"This would ensure that goods and services can still flow freely, giving companies the certainty they need to invest.
"The simplest way to achieve that is for the UK to stay in the single market and a customs union until a comprehensive new deal is in force."
The most contentious of the week's publications is expected to be about "enforcement and dispute resolution", as it tackles the question of the UK's future relationship with the European Court of Justice.
Theresa May has promised the UK will leave the jurisdiction of the EU court, with the government saying Parliament will "take back control" of its laws.
But the EU has insisted the ECJ must have a role in enforcing citizens' rights, and how to enforce any future trade deal has yet to be agreed.
Other papers expected this week will look at how to maintain the exchange of data with other European countries and future "co-operation" between the different legal systems.

The government has revealed details of its proposed new security treaty between the UK and the EU after Brexit.
Ministers hope the treaty will provide a legal basis for co-operating on law enforcement, security and criminal justice, but did not outline any costs.
Whitehall officials are understood to be optimistic the plans will be agreed.
Both Labour and the Lib Dems criticised a specific proposal to end the direct jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) after the UK's departure.
The government document outlining the plans said the new security treaty would need to be underpinned by a new legal agreement since the UK would leave the ECJ.
But it said it should be possible for the UK to secure an agreement with Europol - the EU intelligence agency - that provides the same benefits as now.
Theresa May has previously said membership of the ECJ, the EU's highest legal authority, was "not going to happen" after Brexit.
But Labour's Yvette Cooper, who chairs the home affairs select committee, said the paper failed to "answer the crucial question" of what could replace the court.
"Where are the proposals for an alternative model of dispute resolution?" she said, adding: "As the paper makes clear, it would be really dangerous to end up with operational gaps in law enforcement and justice."
Lib Dem shadow home secretary, Ed Davey, said the paper was based on "delusion", insisting that leaving the ECJ would be a "major stumbling block" to thrashing out a security agreement.
"Instead of accepting a role for the ECJ, the paper repeats Theresa May's ridiculous red line," he said.
However, the government described the plans as a new, "ambitious" model of co-operation - rejecting the idea of negotiating a number of separate agreements covering each area of law enforcement.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said the paper was an "important milestone" in tackling pan-European threats such as organised crime, child sex abuse, cyber-attacks and terrorism.
In a statement, the agency said there was "broad consensus on the need to retain our ability to share intelligence, biometrics and other data at speed".
Officials say the new treaty would aim to replicate the provisions of the European Arrest Warrant system, under which suspects can be speedily extradited between member states, but it would not necessarily mean Britain belonging to the EAW.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said: "Together with the EU we have developed some of the world's most sophisticated systems in the fight against crime, because cross-border co-operation is absolutely crucial if we're to keep our citizens safe and bring criminals to justice.
"That is why we want to build a new partnership with the EU that goes beyond any existing relationship it has with non-member states, so we can continue countering these cross-border threats together."
Other areas listed in the document that the government wishes to continue to contribute to and benefit from are:
The UK has the largest defence budget in the EU and, along with France, is one of only two countries in the bloc with permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously said Europe can no longer "completely depend" on the US and UK following the election of President Trump and the Brexit vote, while European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker recently called on EU member states to step up their military co-operation.
In her letter formally triggering Brexit in March, Prime Minister Theresa May warned that failure to reach a deal with Brussels would mean "co-operation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened".

The UK will seek "new arrangements" with the EU in order to allow for the continued free flow of personal data, according to a government paper.
It argues the UK starts from "unprecedented" alignment with EU law, but acknowledges collaboration will be needed to protect British interests.
Many UK businesses and law enforcement agencies rely on EU data.
One legal expert said the paper was a "step forward" but overlooked some key points.
The paper puts forward the UK government's position that a UK-EU model for exchanging and protecting data will be essential to maintain a "deep and special partnership" - a phrase used four times in the document.
Regarding how to achieve this, the government suggests that the Information Commissioner be "fully involved" in future EU regulatory discussions.
It also raises the possibility of the UK and EU mutually recognising each other's data protection rules as the basis for allowing the free flow of data to continue.
And there should be an agreed timeline for implementing more long-term arrangements to reassure businesses, the government adds.
"It will help businesses who need to be able to plan their future - they need a sense of what the law will be," said Dr Karen Mc Cullagh, a legal expert at the University of East Anglia.
However, the UK's approach to surveillance might give EU negotiators cause for concern when considering business-as-usual, she added.
"[The paper overlooks] some important facts - the most important one being the Investigatory Powers Act which is likely to present a hurdle."
On the idea that the Information Commissioner should still have access to EU regulatory dialogue, Dr Mc Cullagh said: "There will be a concern that [UK lawmakers] will lose the ability to influence if they're not at the table, if they can't shape future laws."
Earlier this month, the government said that it would implement the EU's overarching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) within British law.
These regulations allow for bigger fines on firms that flout the rules - and it will also be easier for consumers to control information about them online and in databases controlled by companies.
"We want the secure flow of data to be unhindered in the future as we leave the EU," said Matt Hancock, Minister for Digital, on the publication of the paper.
"So a strong future data relationship between the UK and EU, based on aligned data protection rules, is in our mutual interest."
Many UK businesses, law enforcement agencies and research institutions rely on quick and easy access to EU data in order to do their work.
In fact, the UK has the largest internet economy as a percentage of GDP out of all the G20 countries, according to the Boston Consulting Group - and much of that relies on data flowing freely.
A House of Lords report recently found that if data transfers were hindered, "the UK could be put at a competitive disadvantage and the police could lose access to information and intelligence mechanisms".
The GDPR means that - once implemented next year - data transfers across the EU will be updated and aligned between member states.
At the moment, the UK's access to EU data is largely safeguarded, but upon leaving the union and - potentially - the European Economic Area, it will need to show that it still protects data properly.
An assessment that the UK meets data "adequacy" requirements will have to come from the European Commission and it is currently unclear whether such a decision will be made quickly when the UK leaves.
Another important factor is the EU-US Privacy Shield, which was set up to tighten controls after Edward Snowden's revelations about US intelligence agency snooping.
The UK's position has its complexities - not least thanks to the Investigatory Powers Act, which Sir Tim Berners-Lee has called a "security nightmare".
"Unless the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 is amended, it is highly likely that the UK will not be granted an adequacy decision and data flows will be blocked," says Dr Mc Cullagh.
Plus, once out of the EU, the UK will also depart the EU-US Privacy Shield - meaning that the EU could raise concerns about data it passes to the UK.
Might such data, for example, be transferred to the US without EU-worthy oversights?
These are potential stumbling blocks for Britain as it moves out of the EU - but seeks to retain the same access to data that it enjoyed as a member state.

The government says it will propose an "innovative and untested approach" to customs checks as part of its Brexit negotiations.
The model, one of two being put forward in a newly-published paper, would mean no customs checks at UK-EU borders.
The UK's alternative proposal - a more efficient system of border checks - would involve "an increase in administration", it admits.
A key EU figure said the idea of "invisible borders" was a "fantasy".
On Twitter, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's negotiator, added that other issues had to be agreed before negotiations on trade could begin - views echoed by the EU's overall chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.
The UK has already said it will leave the customs union - the EU's tariff-free trading area - after Brexit, and businesses have been calling for clarity on what the replacement system will involve.
The UK's proposals, detailed in what it calls a "future partnership paper", also include the possibility of a "temporary customs union" after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019 to avoid a "cliff-edge" for business as they adapt to the new arrangements.
Countries in the customs union don't impose tariffs - taxes on imports - on each other's goods.
Every country inside the union levies the same tariffs on imports from abroad.
So, for example, a 10% tariff is imposed on some cars imported from outside the customs union, while 7.5% is imposed on roasted coffee.
Other goods - such as soap or slate - have no tariffs.
The UK has said it is leaving the EU's customs union because as a member it is unable to strike trade deals with other countries.
According to the new paper, the UK could ask Brussels to establish a "temporary customs union" after it leaves the EU in March 2019.
But during this period, it would also expect to be able to negotiate its own international trade deals - something it cannot do as an EU customs union member.
Ministers said the use of interim arrangements would mean businesses would only have to adjust once to the new arrangements.
Once this period expires, the UK will look to agree either a "highly streamlined" border with the EU, or a new "partnership" with no customs border at all.
The "partnership" arrangement would be an "innovative and untested approach" which would remove the need for any customs checks between the UK and the EU. This would be because the UK's regime would "align precisely" with the EU's, for goods that will be consumed in the EU.
However, the UK would continue to operate its own checks on goods coming from outside the EU - and the government said safeguards would be needed to prevent goods entering the EU that had not complied with its rules.
These could include a repayment mechanism, which would see importers to the UK pay whichever is the higher tariff, Britain's or the EU's, and then face having to claim money back if their goods were sold to a customer in the region with a lower tariff.
An alternative scenario the government is proposing would involve the UK extending customs checks to EU arrivals - but under a "highly streamlined arrangement" to minimise disruption at ports and airports.
It said it would seek to make the existing system of customs checks "even more efficient", for example using number plate recognition technology at ports, which could be linked to customs declarations for what the vehicles are carrying, meaning the vehicles do not have to be manually stopped and checked.
The UK would also allow some traders to do self assessment, calculating their own customs duties.
However, the government acknowledged this option would still involve "an increase in administration" compared with being in the existing customs union.
All of this will have to be negotiated with the EU - and the two sides have not yet even started discussing trade matters.
Other obstacles - including the size of the UK's "divorce bill" - need to be agreed first.
The government will also set up its own "standalone" system in the event of no deal being reached, which would involve charging customs duty and VAT on imports from the EU, although it says it is keen to avoid this scenario.
Previous estimates by HMRC have predicted a sudden increase in the number of customs declarations after Brexit - subject to any new arrangements agreed with the EU - from a maximum of 55 million to 255 million per year.
David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, said he envisioned the interim customs system being "as close as we can to the current arrangements", but with the UK able to negotiate and sign its own international trade deals.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he did not rule out the UK paying to be part of the arrangement, saying he was not going to conduct negotiations on air.
And he said he did not believe the European Court of Justice would be the arbiter of the temporary arrangement, adding that the government would publish proposals on "international arbitration" next week.
Mr Davis said the transition period should be "something like two years, maybe a bit shorter" but that it had "to be done by the election", meaning 2022 at the latest.
Analysis by the BBC's Eleanor Garnier
These proposals are designed to demonstrate unity - after reported cabinet splits - and show the government has a plan in place.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has got his way in seeking an interim customs arrangement as much like the status quo as possible.
And Liam Fox could potentially win the right to negotiate international trade deals during the transition period.
But this is about much more than domestic political battles - it's about whether the UK can succeed in getting Brussels negotiators to talk about trade at the same time as the so-called divorce arrangements, something they have steadfastly refused to do so far.
The EU is also working on a position paper on the customs union.
Its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, tweeted that customs could not be discussed until the Irish border, citizens' rights and the UK's separation payment had been settled.
A European Commission spokesman added: "As Michel Barnier has said on several occasions, 'frictionless trade' is not possible outside the single market and customs union."
Sir Keir Starmer, Labour's shadow Brexit secretary, said the proposals were "incoherent and inadequate" and were designed to "gloss over deep and continuing divisions within the cabinet".
But his party also faced questions on its position.
Speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 live, shadow international trade minister Bill Esterson would not say whether Labour would remain in the customs union after March 2019.
Asked repeatedly, he said Labour would seek "the same relationship that we have now".
"The detail of whether it's defined as being membership or not isn't the point," he added.
Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon accused the UK of a "daft have cake and eat it" approach.
Pro-EU Conservative MP Anna Soubry said ministers were "moving in the right direction" with their proposals for an interim arrangement.
But she said they should admit that "no new agreement with the EU can fully replace the benefits of customs union membership".
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable accused ministers of "kicking the can down the road" and argued for staying in the customs union.
But the CBI, which represents British businesses, said the proposal was "encouraging".
Its deputy director general, Josh Hardie, added: "The clock is ticking and what matters now is giving companies the confidence to continue investing as quickly as possible."
Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said most businesses were more concerned about future customs arrangements with the EU than future trade deals.
"In the long term, we should aim to avoid imports and exports being subjected to two sets of customs checks, and to ensuring the smoothest possible future trade relationship between the UK and EU."
MEP and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage attacked the government's proposals.
"We might find ourselves 10 years down the road from Brexit having not got what we wanted," he said.
"There's no doubt that during this transitional period, the free movement of people will continue, the European Court of Justice will go on having judgements over British business and, of course, we'll go on paying a membership fee.
"None of those three things are acceptable to Brexit voters in any way at all."
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The EU's Brexit negotiator has said he sees the process as an opportunity to "teach" the British people and others what leaving the single market means.
Michel Barnier said: "There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn't been explained to the British people."
The UK has hit back, saying the EU does "not want to talk about the future".
Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was "frightened" and the UK would not be bounced into a divorce bill deal.
The latest salvos come after a week of talks in Brussels about the UK's withdrawal from the EU - scheduled to take place in March 2019 - which increased tensions between the two sides.
The EU suggested little substantive progress had been made on three key "separation" issues, the size of the UK's financial liabilities to the EU, the future of the Irish border and citizens' rights after Brexit.
Mr Barnier accused the UK of "nostalgia" and cast doubt on whether enough progress had been made to broaden the discussions, in the autumn, to consider the UK's post-Brexit trading relationship with the EU.
This led to a frosty response from British ministers, one of whom, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, said the UK would not be blackmailed into doing a deal on money in order to open discussions on trade.
Speaking at a conference in Italy on Saturday, Mr Barnier said he did not want to punish the UK for leaving but said: "I have a state of mind - not aggressive... but I'm not naïve."
"We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means," he told the Ambrosetti forum.
On the issue of finance, he said the UK must accept some key principles, such as honouring the commitment it made in 2014 to pay 14% of the EU budget until 2020
He said that a future free trade deal would be different to all others in the past and there had to be assurances there would be no unfair competition in the form of social, environmental or fiscal dumping, or state aid.
But speaking to BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Davis insisted the UK would not be pressured into agreeing an EU divorce bill until it is sure the sums being demanded are fair.
He dismissed newspaper reports the UK had secretly agreed to pay a figure of up to £50bn as "nonsense".
The UK was assessing the EU's financial demands on an item-by-item basis in a "very British and pragmatic fashion" - which he said the EU found difficult.
While Mr Davis said he personally liked his counterpart, he said the European Commission risked making itself appear "silly" when it claimed no progress had been made in areas such as access to welfare and healthcare rights across Europe for British expats.
"What he's concerned about of course is he's not getting the answer on money… they've set this up to try and create pressure on us on money… they're trying to play time against money".
He added: "We're going through [the bill] line by line, and they're finding it difficult because we've got good lawyers… He wants to put pressure on us, which is why the stance this week in the press conference. Bluntly, I think it looked a bit silly, because plainly there were things that we've achieved.
"We put people before process, what they're in danger of doing is putting process before people".
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said some of the figures touted for the size of the divorce bill were "extravagant" and the UK would only respect a number that was "serious and validated in law".
"We will certainly honour our legal obligations as we understand them," he said, while stressing the UK would "certainly not pay for access to the European markets".
The continuing tit-for-tat between the two sides comes as Downing Street called for unity among its MPs as they prepare to debate the government's flagship Brexit bill.
The EU Withdrawal Bill will repeal the law that paved the way for the UK to join the European Economic Community in the 1970s and convert 40 years worth of EU statutes into domestic law.
Labour has said it will seek to amend the bill to stop the government from automatically accruing new powers after Brexit.
The opposition is courting europhile Conservative MPs, claiming its position on remaining in the single market and customs union during any Brexit transition is more "clear and coherent" than the Tories.
"To suggest, as some do, that you can have, as it were, bespoke, special arrangements negotiated between now and March 2019 is nonsense, and so this is grown-up politics from the Labour party in the public interest," shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told Andrew Marr.
But Mr Davis said Labour was onto its "perhaps seventh, eighth, ninth" policy on Brexit and the opposition knew the legislation was essential to ensuring legal certainty and practical continuity as the UK takes responsibility for policy in a wide range of areas.
4 September 2017: This story was updated to amend the wording of some direct quotes from Michel Barnier.

Theresa May has said the UK "cannot possibly" remain within the European single market, as staying in it would mean "not leaving the EU at all".
The PM promised to push for the "freest possible trade" with European countries and warned the EU that to try to "punish" the UK would be "an act of calamitous self-harm".
She also said Parliament would vote on the final deal that is agreed.
Labour warned of "enormous dangers" in the prime minister's plans.
And the European Parliament's lead negotiator said there could be no "cherry-picking" by the UK in the talks.
Mrs May used her much-anticipated speech to announce her priorities for Brexit negotiations, including maintaining the common travel area between the UK and Irish Republic and "control" of migration between the UK and the EU.
Negotiations are set to begin after notice under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is served by the end of March.
It was not her intention to "undermine" the EU or the single market, Mrs May said, but she warned against a "punitive" reaction to Brexit, as it would bring "calamitous self-harm for the countries of Europe and it would not be the act of a friend".
She added: "I am equally clear that no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain."
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
Since the referendum she and her ministers have simply refused to be so explicit.
For months, some ministers have privately whispered about complex solutions that might keep elements of membership - the choices not being binary, mechanisms that might give a sort of membership with a different name.
Well, no more. The simple and clear message from Theresa May's speech this morning is that we are out.
Read Laura's blog here
The prime minister had some strong words of advice for the EU and its treatment of member states, arguing it could "hold things together by force, tightening a vice-like grip that ends up crushing into tiny pieces the very things you want to protect" or "respect difference, cherish it even".
But the most keenly awaited part of the speech dealt with the UK's post-Brexit trading relationship with the rest of Europe.
Any agreement with the EU must "allow for the freest possible trade in goods and services", Mrs May said.
"But I want to be clear: what I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market.
"It would, to all intents and purposes, mean not leaving the EU at all.
"That is why both sides in the referendum campaign made it clear that a vote to leave the EU would be a vote to leave the single market."
EU leaders have warned that the UK cannot access the single market, which allows the free movement of goods, services and workers between its members, while at the same time restricting the free movement of people - and the PM has pledged to control EU migration.
Mrs May also indicated the UK's relationship with the customs union - under which EU countries do not impose tariffs on each other's goods, while all imposing the same tariff on goods imported from outside the EU - would change.
She said she did not want the country to be "bound" by the shared external tariffs. Instead, the UK would be "striking our own comprehensive trade agreements with other countries".
To the 27 other EU member states, she said: "We will continue to be reliable partners, willing allies and close friends.
"We want to buy your goods, sell you ours, trade with you as freely as possible, and work with one another to make sure we are all safer, more secure and more prosperous through continued friendship."
Mrs May, who backed Remain in the referendum, called for a "new and equal partnership" with the EU, "not partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union, or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out".
"We do not seek to adopt a model already enjoyed by other countries. We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave."
When asked about the prime minister's promise of a Parliamentary vote following Brexit negotiations, her spokeswoman said: "You can regard it as binding."
Pressed on what would happen if MPs or peers rejected any deal, she replied: "Either way, we will very clearly be leaving the EU."
Until now, Mrs May had revealed little of her strategy for the talks, which could last up to two years - or go on longer if all 28 EU members think this is necessary.
Responding on Twitter, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief negotiator, welcomed Mrs May's "clarity", adding: "But the days of UK cherry-picking and Europe a la carte are over."
In a reference to Mrs May's warning that the UK could "change the basis of Britain's economic model" if denied single market access - taken to mean lowering corporation tax to attract businesses - he added: "Threatening to turn the UK into a deregulated tax heaven will not only hurt British people - it is a counter-productive negotiating tactic."
Mr Verhofstadt added that the views of people who voted Remain must be taken on board.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn argued that the prime minister still needed to "be clearer" about her long-term objectives, and that she wanted to "have her cake and eat it" over the single market.
He added: "I think we have to have a deal that ensures we have access to the market - we have British jobs dependent on that market - that's what we'll be pushing for."
Mr Corbyn also said: "There are enormous dangers in all of this and when she talks about future trade arrangements, all she said was that Donald Trump said we'd be first in the queue - first in the queue for an investor protection-type treaty? I don't know exactly what she has in mind on that."
After Mrs May's speech, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: "Ripping us out of the single market was not something proposed to the British people. This is a theft of democracy."
UKIP leader Paul Nuttall said he feared a "slow-motion Brexit", adding: "We want this done quickly."
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon claimed leaving the single market would be "economically catastrophic".
She hinted at a second independence referendum, saying Scotland - which voted against Brexit - should have "the ability to choose between that and a different future".
In a statement, the Irish government said the UK's "approach is now firmly that of a country which will have left the EU but which seeks to negotiate a new, close relationship with it".
It added it was "acutely aware of the potential risks and challenges for the Irish economy" but also of "the potential economic opportunities that may arise".
Michel Barnier, the European Commission's chief Brexit negotiator, tweeted: "Ready as soon as UK is. Only notification (that is, invoking Article 50) can kick off negotiations."

Taxpayers' money will not be spent on preparing for a "no-deal" Brexit until the "very last moment", Chancellor Philip Hammond has suggested.
He said he was preparing for "no deal" and all other outcomes and would make money available when needed.
But he said he wouldn't take money from other areas, like health or education, now just to "send a message" to the EU.
At PM's questions Theresa May rejected claims she was ramping up "no deal" talk, insisting she wanted agreement.
"We are actively working... with the EU to ensure a good deal, the right deal for Britain for a brighter future for this country," Mrs May told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions.
One ex-minister, David Jones, has said billions should be set aside in November's Budget for a "no deal" scenario, arguing that if this did not happen it would be seen as a "a sign of weakness" by EU leaders who would think the UK was not serious about leaving the EU without a deal.
The chancellor, who has been accused of being too pessimistic about Brexit, told the Treasury committee of MPs a "cloud of uncertainty" over the outcome of negotiations was "acting as a dampener" on the economy.
He said this could only be removed by progress in the talks, which he said was dependent on the EU agreeing to discuss its future relationship with the UK as soon as possible.
He told MPs one worst case scenario for a "no deal", would see no air travel taking place between the UK and the EU on Brexit day - 29 March 2019 - but added that he did not see that as likely to happen, even if the UK/EU talks failed to reach agreement.
Writing in the Times ahead of next month's Budget, Mr Hammond said he had a responsibility to be "realistic" about the challenges of leaving the EU and would spend money only when it was "responsible" to do so.
An extra £412m has already been allocated to government departments to prepare for Brexit over the next four years and Treasury sources suggested more would be made available if negotiations faltered.
Asked about the article as he appeared before the Commons Treasury committee, Mr Hammond said he was "committed" to funding departments for Brexit preparation and he was "rather surprised" that the article might be interpreted as saying that he was reluctant to do so.
"We are prepared to spend when we need to spend against the contingency of a 'no deal' outcome," he said.
"I am clear we have to be prepared for a 'no deal' scenario unless and until we have clear evidence that this is not where we will end up."
"What I am not prepared to do is allocate funds to departments in advance of the need to spend," he added.
"We should look in each area at the last point that spending can begin to ensure we are ready for a day-one 'no deal' scenario.
"Every pound we spend on contingency preparations on a hard customs border is a pound we can't spend on the NHS, social care or education. I don't believe we should be in the business of making potentially nugatory expenditure until the very last moment when we need to do so."
Theresa May was pressed on the issue at Prime Minister's Questions, in which former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith sought assurances "all necessary monies" would be spent preparing for a no deal outcome.
"Where money needs to be spent it will be spent," the prime minister replied, adding that government departments would be given an extra £250m this year to prepare for a range of Brexit outcomes.
Labour's Heidi Alexander accused Mrs May of "running scared" of Tory backbenchers - prompting the PM to reply "the honourable lady could not be more wrong... we are not ramping up a no deal scenario".
On Tuesday, Mrs May - who backed Remain in last year's vote - repeatedly refused to say if she would now vote for Brexit, telling LBC radio: "I don't answer hypothetical questions."
At PMQs, the SNP's Ian Blackford claimed the PM "could not answer a simple question" and urged her to "come off the fence" and recognise the risk to jobs in Scotland from leaving the single market and customs union.
In response, the prime minister said she was clear the UK would be leaving the EU in March 2019 and that there would be no second referendum.
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The UK has been urged to submit fresh proposals within the next 48 hours to break the Brexit impasse.
EU officials said they would work non-stop over the weekend if "acceptable" ideas were received by Friday to break the deadlock over the Irish backstop.
The UK has said "reasonable" proposals to satisfy MPs' concerns about being tied to EU rules had already been made.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned Brexiteers to vote for the PM's deal or face a delay to Brexit.
The PM is seeking legally-enforceable changes to the backstop - an insurance policy designed to prevent physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, but there have been few visible signs of progress.
MPs are due to vote for a second time on the Brexit deal next week. If they reject the deal again, they will get to choose between leaving without a deal or deferring the UK's exit from the EU beyond the scheduled date of 29 March.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hammond refused to be drawn on how he would vote if Mrs May's deal is defeated.
"If the prime minister's deal does not get approved on Tuesday then it is likely that the House of Commons will vote to extend the Article 50 procedure, to not leave the European Union without a deal, and where we go thereafter is highly uncertain," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"For those people who are passionate about ensuring that we leave the European Union on time it surely must be something that they need to think very, very carefully about now because they run risk of us moving away from their preferred course of action if we don't get this deal through."
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
What we heard from the chancellor this morning was that he was clear about the uncertainties ahead - and rather unclear (cagey, in fact) about how he might vote when it came to decision-time about a no-deal.
There was an explicit warning to Brexiteers: vote for the prime minister's deal because otherwise, it's delay and a soft Brexit.
As one minister expressed to me yesterday, they believe the vote does have a chance of getting through because Brexiteers will realise - just in time - that it's either the PM's deal next week, or what this minister described as "soft, softer, then meltdown".
But across government, the mood is not optimistic about what's going to happen next week and most ministers are expecting a defeat.
French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau reiterated the EU's position that the withdrawal agreement cannot be reopened and said the deal was the "best possible solution" with the controversial Irish backstop a "last resort solution".
She said: "We don't like the backstop, we don't want to have to implement it, and if we have to, we don't want to stay in the backstop.
"We all agree that it should be temporary."
Mrs May is pinning her hopes on getting changes to the backstop that will prevent the UK from being tied to EU customs rules if no permanent trade deal is agreed after Brexit.
Critics say that - if the backstop were used - it would keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
Negotiations between British ministers and the EU officials over the past 24 hours have been described as "difficult", with the EU insisting there has been no breakthrough.
Diplomats from the 28 member states were told on Wednesday that Mrs May could meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday if progress was made.
But the BBC's Europe reporter Adam Fleming said talk of a 48-hour deadline for new proposals and a weekend of negotiations was "a notional timetable" and that more flexibility could be possible.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, who is leading the UK team, has conceded that negotiations are at a sensitive point and the exchanges have been "robust".
Mr Cox, who will take questions from MPs on Thursday, has played down reports he has abandoned hopes of getting the EU to agree to a firm end date to the backstop or some kind of exit mechanism - key demands for many Tory Brexiteers.
By BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming
The latest talks aimed at securing legal guarantees about the Irish backstop foundered over a British proposal for the role of the independent arbitration panel which will be set up under the Brexit deal.
It will be made up of judges and lawyers, and will handle disputes between the UK and the EU about the withdrawal agreement.
The British suggested it have a role in deciding whether the backstop should come to an end - if it's ever needed.
But the EU felt that went beyond the panel's remit, which is to ensure each side sticks to the rules - not to make big decisions like the future of the Irish border.
Hence the request for the UK to think again. And quickly.
Jeremy Corbyn has met Conservative MPs to discuss possible alternatives to the PM's deal.
The Labour leader held talks with ex-Tory minister Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin, who favour a closer, Norway-style relationship with the EU.
He said he had discussed the so-called "Common Market 2.0 option" - which would see the UK remain in the EU's single market by staying part of the European Economic Area - but would not commit to backing it at this stage.
The government has suffered the first of what are expected to be a number of defeats in the Lords on a key piece of post-Brexit legislation.
Peers voted to amend the Trade Bill to call on the government to join a new customs union with the EU after Brexit.
The result means MPs now will get a vote on whether to stay in the existing customs union when the legislation returns to the Commons.
Ministers also lost a vote obliging them to get Parliament's approval for its negotiating strategy ahead of the next phase of talks on future relations with the EU.
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn said he had agreed to meet Conservative MPs because he was adamantly opposed to a no-deal exit and he wanted to hear "what their ideas and options are".
While Labour wanted an agreement encompassing a customs union, unhindered access to EU markets and legal protection of workers rights, he said that "what exact form that takes is subject to negotiation".
Mr Boles said the goal was to reach a cross-party compromise to ensure the UK left the EU but in a manner which protected its economic interests.

The UK wants the EU to repay £1bn if it is excluded from the Galileo satellite navigation system after Brexit.
David Davis's Brexit department is also warning the scheme could cost the EU an extra €1bn (£876m) without the UK's continued involvement.
The row could harm wider post-Brexit security co-operation, the department says in a new paper.
UK ministers are angry about the EU's decision to limit access to Galileo, an alternative to the US GPS system.
The UK played a major role in developing satellites for Galileo, which is expected to be fully operational in 2026.
But Brussels has cited legal issues about sharing sensitive information with a non-member state for its decision to shut British firms out of the project. Brussels has also said it will restrict access to encrypted signals from Galileo.
In its position paper, the UK government repeats its threat to build its own satellite navigation system - which has been estimated would cost up to £5bn - as a rival to Galileo.
The paper registers the UK's "strong objection to its ongoing exclusion from security-related discussions" about Galileo, which it says "risks being interpreted as a lack of trust in the United Kingdom".
Downing Street said the UK has held "constructive discussions" with the European Commission on staying in the Galileo satellite navigation project.
But the BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the EU had not accepted UK proposals for continued participation in the technology behind Galileo, nor co-operation on security and data protection.
Asked if the EU would repay the £1bn already invested in Galileo if the UK was excluded from work on the project, European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said: "This issue is being discussed with our British partners, negotiations are ongoing, these are precisely the sort of issues we need to address."
The UK government has also threatened to block Galileo satellites from using ground tracking stations in British overseas territories, such as the Falklands.
The European Commission says the UK will have to apply to use the Public Regulated Service (PRS), a key element of the Galileo system, like any other non-EU country after its March 2019 departure.
A navigation and timing signal intended for use by government agencies, armed forces and "blue light" services, PRS is designed to be available and robust even in times of crisis.
Brussels says the UK cannot immediately have access to it when it leaves the European bloc because it will become a foreign entity and PRS is for EU member states only.
In the Department for Exiting the EU position paper, UK officials warn that excluding the UK from Galileo contravenes the withdrawal deal agreed by Theresa May and the EU in December.
It says: "Excluding industrial participation by UK industry in security-related areas risks delays of up to three years and additional costs of up to €1 billion.
"It will not be straightforward to effectively fulfil all Galileo security work elsewhere."
Sir Ivan Rogers, who quit as the UK's ambassador to the EU last year in protest at the "muddled" Brexit negotiations, suggested the EU was partly motivated by a desire to transfer work on Galileo to firms based in the EU.
In a speech on Wednesday, Sir Ivan said: "The UK genuinely wants to remain a major player in the project, with privileged ongoing access from outside the EU, and views its capabilities and contribution to date as giving it the right to that ticket.
"For the EU, the decision to leave inevitably entails relegation to a different role and status in the project, and, let's be candid, offers scope for EU-located firms to take contractual business away from UK ones."
Sir Ivan also suggested in his speech that some in Brussels might also recall that the British government, under pro-EU Tony Blair, tried to prevent Galileo getting off the ground 18 years ago.
He said it was ironic that "a much more Eurosceptic set of politicians" were now "complaining bitterly" that "post Brexit, the field might be somehow tilted more against the depth of participation we now are enthusiasts for".
Separately, the UK has outlined the extent of existing law enforcement capabilities which would be lost if a bespoke security deal is not agreed after Brexit.
According to details of a presentation seen by the BBC, the UK says there will be "significant gaps" in a wide range of areas including prisoner transfers, asset recovery, sharing of financial intelligence, victim compensation and access to criminal records for child protection vetting.

The UK will not cut tax and regulations after Brexit in a bid to undercut EU rivals, Philip Hammond has suggested.
The chancellor told French newspaper Le Monde that tax raised as a percentage of the British economy "puts us right in the middle" of European countries.
"We don't want that to change, even after we've left the EU," he added.
It has been viewed as a softer tone from Mr Hammond, who in January said the UK would do "whatever we have to do" post-Brexit to stay competitive.
But Labour said Mr Hammond was "in open dispute" with himself.
BBC political correspondent Chris Mason says that having lost their majority at this year's general election, the Conservatives would struggle to persuade the Commons to support slashing taxes and regulation.
In his latest interview, Mr Hammond told Le Monde: "I often hear it said that the UK is considering participating in unfair competition in regulation and tax.
"That is neither our plan nor our vision for the future.
"I would expect us to remain a country with a social, economic and cultural model that is recognisably European."
Our correspondent said those words "appeared to be at odds with some of his own comments earlier this year".
During an interview in January, Mr Hammond was asked by Welt am Sonntag whether the UK could become a tax haven after leaving the EU.
He said he was "optimistic" about securing a good trade deal with the EU but if this did not happen "you can be sure we will do whatever we have to do".
"If we have no access to the European market, if we are closed off, if Britain were to leave the European Union without an agreement on market access, then we could suffer from economic damage at least in the short-term," he said at the time.
"In this case, we could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness."
Labour said Mr Hammond was now contradicting what he had said at the start of the year.
"The truth is that the British people will not believe the fake U-turn of a Tory chancellor in a French newspaper, while he is still going ahead with billions of pounds in corporation tax giveaways in this parliament, and refuses to rule out further cuts," said shadow minister Peter Dowd.
In his latest interview, Mr Hammond also said the UK wanted EU workers be part of the British economy and carry on with their family life in the country, and the same for British expats working in Europe.
He said the bill for Brexit was not a question about money, but how the UK leaves the EU without causing problems for businesses and people.
Breaking up the City of London would benefit New York not Frankfurt or Paris, he added.
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The UK will have to hold European elections, despite hopes from the government a Brexit deal would be done by then, says the PM's de facto deputy.
The vote is due on 23 May, but Theresa May said the UK would not have to take part if MPs agreed a Brexit plan first.
Now, David Lidington says "regrettably" it is "not going to be possible to finish that process" before the date the UK legally has to take part.
He said the government would try to make the delay "as short as possible".
The UK was due to leave the EU on 29 March, but as no deal was agreed by Parliament, the EU extended the deadline to 31 October.
It can leave the bloc earlier, but if the UK has not left by 23 May, it is legally obliged to take part in the EU-wide poll and to send MEPs to Brussels.
Mrs May's spokesman said she "deeply regrets" that the UK did not leave as planned in March and recognised many people felt "great frustration" that the European elections were going ahead.
But she hoped Parliament would agree a Brexit plan before MEPs start their session in July.
The deadline to register for the EU elections was Tuesday 7 May.
The government has resumed talks with Labour to try to break the deadlock in Parliament over the terms of withdrawing from the EU. It has promised that if no compromise is reached it will offer indicative votes on possible next steps to Parliament.
Labour's shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said Tuesday's talks were "very robust", but nothing had been agreed, and the government still needed to move on its "red lines" in order to reach a compromise.
A Labour source told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg that talks had been "tense" with some frustration on the Labour side and said there were still "fundamental" problems and divisions between the two sides.
The government was being "disingenuous" to suggest that ministers were offering a significant new compromise beyond what was already available in the existing agreements with the EU, the source said.
Downing Street said the talks had been "constructive and detailed" and they would continue on Wednesday afternoon.
"Constructive and detailed" - that sounds quite positive - Number 10's description of the talks today.
"Robust" - not quite so chirpy - Labour's use of political speak for what most of us might call a bit tricky.
"Disingenuous" - oh dear - a different Labour source's description of ministers' claim that what they were putting on the table in the cross-party talks today was something genuinely new on the vexed question of customs arrangements after we leave the EU.
As we reported this morning there didn't really seem to be much from the government that was concrete beyond what's already possible under the agreement that's been hammered out with Brussels.
The divorce deal and indeed yes, you guessed it, the backstop, both have forms of temporary customs unions in them to make trade between the UK and the EU easier.
Of course the precise language and mechanisms matter enormously.
But was there some big shiny new offer today? The short answer is: no.
A number of other parties have already announced their candidates and launched their European election campaigns, but the Conservatives have yet to do the same.
Cabinet Office Minister Mr Lidington said: "We very much hoped that we would be able to get our exit sorted… so that those elections did not have to take place, but legally they do have to take place unless our withdrawal has been given legal effect."
Mr Lidington said the government would be "redoubling efforts" in its talks with other parties to find a way forward to "make sure that the delay after [the elections] is as short as possible".
He added: "We would like to be in a situation… certainly to get this done and dusted by the summer recess."
Government sources say if the Brexit process is completed before 30 June, UK MEPs will not take up their seats at all. If it is done and dusted after that date but before Parliament begins its summer recess in July, MEPs will only need to sit for a month, until 1 August.
Sources estimate that the cost of holding the European elections will be roughly £150m.
Analysis: By Chris Morris, BBC Reality Check
Even if an unexpected deal were to emerge in the next few days between the Conservatives and Labour, it would only be a very tentative first step towards Brexit, with no guarantee that it would enjoy a parliamentary majority.
And a first step isn't enough.
The conclusions of last month's EU summit, agreed by all EU leaders including Theresa May, said that if the Brexit withdrawal agreement has not been ratified in parliament by 22 May, the European elections will have to take place in the UK.
The ratification process means Parliament would have to pass a meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement (the deal negotiated between the government and the EU), and then turn it into UK law in the form of a Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
And, as Mr Lidington has now conceded formally, time to do all of that has run out.
Some Brexiteers are angry at Mrs May's efforts to find a compromise with Labour after her deal with the EU was effectively rejected by MPs three times.
One leading Eurosceptic, Sir Bill Cash, told the Press Association "the time has come" for the PM to resign and she "needs to be given a date".
But Chancellor Philip Hammond defended the cross-party talks, suggesting the government had no other option.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg says No 10 is trying to get Labour over the line by presenting the withdrawal agreement as a stepping stone - i.e. hold your nose for now and you can carve out your own deal if you win the next election.
Key to that, she says, is the promise of a "temporary customs union", but Labour sources are warning that would not be enough.
Labour has previously said it wants a permanent customs union - an arrangement not to carry out checks or put tariffs (extra payments) on goods that move around between the UK and the EU after Brexit.
The election in May will see 751 MEPs sent to the European Parliament to make laws and approve budgets for the EU.
Each country is allocated a set number of seats, depending on the size of its population.
The smallest member, Malta (population: around half a million) has six MEPs, while the largest, Germany (population: 82 million) has 96.
The UK is divided into 12 regions, each represented by between three and 10 MEPs depending on population size, ending with a total of 73.
Seats in England, Scotland and Wales are awarded to parties according to their share of the vote, then to the candidates on the lists drawn up by the parties.
Northern Ireland elects MEPs using a single transferable vote system, with voters able to rank candidates in order of preference.
The European Parliament has agreed that 46 of the UK's 73 seats will be abolished after Brexit, and the remaining 27 will be redistributed among countries that have complained of under-representation.
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Free movement of people between the EU and UK will end in March 2019, UK government ministers have said.
From that date EU workers moving to the UK will have to register, at least until a permanent post-Brexit immigration policy is put in place.
But Home Secretary Amber Rudd has sought to reassure business there will not be a "cliff edge" in terms of employing foreign workers after Brexit.
She said policy would be evidence-based and take into account economic impact.
The CBI said businesses "urgently" needed to know what EU migration would look like, both in any "transitional" period after March 2019 and beyond.
Immigration was one of the central topics of last year's EU referendum campaign, and ministers have promised to "take back control" of the UK's borders as they negotiate Brexit.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019, but there has been increasing talk of a "transitional" (or "implementation") stage of around two years to smooth the Brexit process.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Home Office minister Brandon Lewis said details of how the government would manage immigration after Brexit would be revealed in a white paper later this year, and that the immigration bill would go through Parliament in 2018.
Mr Lewis said it was a "simple matter of fact" that EU free movement rules would not apply after 2019.
More detail of what would happen was later provided by the home secretary, with Ms Rudd, speaking during a visit to Troon, South Ayrshire, saying the "implementation phase" would involve new EU workers registering their details when they come to the UK.
She also said the government had promised an "extensive" consultation to listen to the views of businesses, unions and universities.
The Home Office has asked the Migration Advisory Committee to study the "economic and social costs and benefits of EU migration to the UK economy", its impact on competitiveness, and whether there would be benefits to focusing migration on high-skilled jobs. It is due to report back by September 2018 - six months before Brexit.
The home secretary said: "We will ensure we continue to attract those who benefit us economically, socially and culturally.
"But, at the same time, our new immigration system will give us control of the volume of people coming here - giving the public confidence we are applying our own rules on who we want to come to the UK and helping us to bring down net migration to sustainable levels."
Speaking in Sydney, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he was unaware of the report that has been commissioned, adding that immigration had been "fantastic for the energy and dynamism of the economy" but "that doesn't mean that you can't control it".
For Labour, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said there was "far too much heat and not enough light about immigration, so any truly objective and well-informed analysis must be welcome".
But she raised concerns about the timescale for the Migration Advisory Committee report: "Six months before Brexit will not be enough time to structure a new immigration system."
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Sir Ed Davey said the move would "do nothing to reassure the hospitals that are already seeing record numbers of EU nurses leaving, or the companies struggling to recruit the staff they need".
"The NHS, businesses and universities that depend on European citizens need answers now, not in another 14 months' time," he added.
The CBI said commissioning the report was a "sensible first step", adding: "Workers from across Europe strengthen our businesses and help our public services run more smoothly - any new migration system should protect these benefits while restoring public confidence."
But the Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Commons home affairs committee, said it was "staggering" that it had taken the government a year since the EU referendum to commission it.
And property developer Richard Tice, co-chairman of Leave Means Leave, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "This commission should be reporting by this Christmas, not by next September. It's completely unacceptable for this to drag on ... the government needs to rapidly accelerate this."
Manufacturers' organisation EEF said the migration committee was "best placed" to advise on what EU migration should look like after Brexit.
Both EEF and the CBI called for an immediate resolution of the question of the status of EU nationals already living in the UK.

Donald Trump's offer of a "quick, massive, bilateral trade deal" will not be possible if Theresa May's EU withdrawal agreement is approved, the US ambassador to the UK has warned.
President Trump had previously said her Brexit proposal sounded like a "great deal for the EU".
Woody Johnson told the BBC the UK was "in need of leadership" over Brexit.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said Mr Johnson recently said the UK was "the perfect trading partner for the US".
Mr Johnson told Radio 4's Today programme there was still hope for a UK-US trade deal.
"What I'm focusing on here is something the president has also said - that is looking forward to, and hoping, that the environment will lead to the ability for the US to do a quick, very massive bilateral trade deal," he said.
He added it could be "the precursor of future trade deals with other countries around the world for Great Britain that will really take you way, way into an exciting future".
"We're still going through the stages of deciding exactly where the country is going," said Mr Johnson. "If it goes in a way that allows these kinds of agreements to occur then I think that will be very positive in the president's eyes."
Asked if that would go ahead under the current proposed Brexit deal, which MPs are due to vote on in January, he replied: "It doesn't look like it would be possible."
He said ministers - and the prime minister - had to "measure the impact of all the other trade offs" and how different trade agreements would benefit the UK.
Mr Trump has said Mrs May's deal could leave Britain unable to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the US.
Mr Johnson did not give more details about what such a deal would entail.
However, while the UK is either in a transition period after Brexit - or in a temporary customs union - it will not be able to implement its own free trade deals, with the US or any other third country.
Reacting to Mr Johnson's comments on Brexit, the Downing Street spokeswoman said both the UK and the US had been clear that "we want an ambitious trade agreement and we stand ready to conclude such an agreement as a priority after we leave the European Union".
Mr Johnson also said that he had been surprised by the "defeatism" felt in the UK over Brexit.
"All of the reporting looks back and it looks at a very static future, rather than an active British future - about solving problems, entrepreneurialism and taking advantage of opportunities and being very innovative," said Mr Johnson.
"If you look back and try to project the past into the present and future, it's going to be bleak.
"But you're leaving out the great thing that Britain has to offer and that is all of the people and all of their efforts and their ability to solve problems. If you factor that in, I think the future is extremely positive, extremely bright."
He added that it would be "great" if President Trump's postponed state visit could take place in May, around the time of World War Two commemorations - if his schedule, and that of the Queen, allowed.

Boris Johnson and his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar have had their first exchange of views on Brexit in their first phone call since the former Mayor of London became Prime Minister.
Mr Varadkar reiterated that the backstop - the mechanism to avoid an Irish hard border - was needed because of decisions made by the UK.
The taoiseach also invited Mr Johnson to Dublin to discuss Brexit.
The PM again said the backstop must be removed from any deal with the EU.
He insisted the UK will be leaving the EU by the 31 October deadline "no matter what".
But Mr Varadkar maintained there could be no reopening of the withdrawal agreement.
A UK government spokesperson said that during the call both leaders had reiterated their commitment to work together in the spirit of the "warm and deep relationship" the two countries share.
A spokesperson for Mr Varadkar said he had explained to the new prime minister that the EU was "united in its view" on the withdrawal agreement.
Mr Johnson repeated his commitment that the British government would "never put physical checks or infrastructure on the border".
He said any further Brexit negotiations would be approached by his government in a spirit of friendship - but that any deal must be one that "abolishes the backstop".
The backstop is a key piece of the Brexit deal dictating what will happen to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
It is a last resort that guarantees a frictionless border if no better solution is devised in time - by maintaining close ties between the UK and the EU until such a solution is found.
The two men also discussed attempts to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly, which collapsed in January 2017.
Mr Johnson said the current talks have his "unequivocal support" and that he looked forward to visiting Northern Ireland shortly to talk to the leaders of the five main parties about restoring devolution.
The taoiseach restated the need for both governments to be "fully committed" to the Good Friday Agreement and restoring the institutions.
He invited Boris Johnson to Dublin to "share their respective analyses" on Brexit, and to continue discussions about Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement and the Common Travel Area.

The Irish and German leaders have discussed how to help Theresa May get her Brexit deal through Parliament.
Taoiseach (Irish PM) Leo Varadkar said he held a 40-minute phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday morning at her request.
He said they agreed to offer reassurances and guarantees to the UK, but would not change the existing deal.
Meanwhile, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds reiterated objections to the deal during a meeting with Mrs May.
His party, which is propping up Mrs May's government, is strongly opposed to the Irish border backstop element of the draft EU withdrawal agreement and described concerns over a hard border as "nonsense propaganda".
The draft deal requires the support of Parliament, and the prime minister is facing significant opposition from a cross-section of Westminster MPs, including the DUP.
Addressing reporters in Dublin on Thursday afternoon, Mr Varadkar said Brexit "was a problem created in the UK" and it was up to Westminster to offer a solution.
"It was an opportunity to brain storm a bit as to what we could do to assist Prime Minister May in securing ratification of the withdrawal agreement," Mr Varadkar said of his conversation with Mrs Merkel.
Planning for a no-deal Brexit was also discussed during their phone call.
"What we both really agreed was that, once again, this is a problem that's created in London," Mr Varadkar said.
"The inability to ratify the withdrawal agreement is a problem in Westminster, and we're really looking to them for a solution," he said.
"But it has to be a proposal that we can accept. So it can't be a proposal that contradicts what is already in the withdrawal agreement.
"It can't be something that renders the backstop inoperable, for example. So we want to be in a position to give guarantees, give assurances, give clarifications."
The taoiseach added that the Irish border was the only "red line" his country has had in the Brexit negotiations and that would not change.
The DUP criticised the Irish government's strategy after several of its senior figures had lunch with Mrs May on Thursday.
"The Irish Republic's 'no deal' preparations published just before Christmas have laid bare the nonsense propaganda about a hard border," Mr Dodds said.
"No one wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Indeed, its becoming clearer by the day that no one is ever going to construct such a border.
"With this clarity emerging in London, Dublin and Brussels, there is evidently no need for the aspects of the Withdrawal Agreement which have been so vigorously opposed by a broad cross section of the House of Commons."
Mr Dodds repeated his party's claim that the backstop would place a "barrier" between Northern Ireland and its "main trading partner", Great Britain.
"Brussels must now demonstrate that if it truly cares about Northern Ireland, then erecting a new east-west barrier should be no more palatable than having any new north-south barriers," he said.

Theresa May has told MPs there might not be a third vote on her Brexit deal next week if there is insufficient support for it to pass.
If it does not pass, the EU has set a deadline of 12 April for the UK to propose a new plan.
Supporters of another EU referendum are due to march through central London later.
Labour's Tom Watson will speak at the event, pledging to back May's deal if she agrees to hold a referendum on it.
Meanwhile, an online petition calling for the UK to remain in the EU has attracted a record number of signatures.
By 11:32 GMT, the total number of signatures calling for Article 50 to be revoked stood at 4,151,815 - beating the previous record reached by another Brexit-related petition in 2016.
If Mrs May's deal is approved by MPs next week, the EU has agreed to extend the Brexit deadline until 22 May. If it is not - and no alternative plan is put forward - the UK is set to leave the EU on 12 April.
In a letter to all MPs on Friday evening, Mrs May offered to talk to MPs over the coming days "as Parliament prepares to take momentous decisions".
She said there were now four "clear choices". These were:
Children's minister Nadhim Zahawi told the Today programme failing to support Mrs May's deal would lead to a "meltdown in our politics, not just for the Conservative party but for all parties".
He said all the other alternatives would require MPs asking for a much longer extension, which Mrs May has said she is not prepared for.
Indicating he would stand down if Mrs May's deal is not voted for, Mr Zahawi said he "cannot justify" going to his constituents and saying: "We failed to deliver this and that now we are having to stay in the EU and go into European elections."
Mrs May also confirmed in her letter that the government would change the law to officially change the UK's departure date from the EU next week.
Her letter came after the DUP - whose support will be crucial if the government is to win - indicated they still would not back her deal.
Mrs May also referred to her televised address on Wednesday, in which she blamed the delay to Brexit on MPs.
She acknowledged that "a number of colleagues had raised concerns" about her words and said it had not been her intention to make their "difficult job... any more difficult".
Former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme "there was a very strong feeling she'd made an error of judgement" on this.
But dismissing reports of growing pressure on Mrs May to quit, he said: "To change prime minister would be a colossal error - it won't change the numbers [in the vote for Mrs May's deal]".
By Jonathan Blake, political correspondent
Theresa May's admission that there may not be a third vote on her deal after all will focus minds on what an alternative plan might be.
To avoid asking the EU for a longer extension and holding European parliament elections, the prime minister will need a new course of action.
A series of indicative votes in Parliament looks the most likely way to decide that - but there is no agreement on whether the government should lead that process or relinquish control to Parliament.
And when and if a consensus in Parliament emerges, there is no guarantee it will automatically become government policy.
It has taken two years for the government to formulate, negotiate and attempt to get a Brexit deal through Parliament.
Finding an alternative which ministers, MPs and the EU are happy to embrace within the next two weeks will be a very tough task indeed.
Meanwhile, campaigners say they expect hundreds of thousands of people to march through central London as part of the 'Put It To The People' demonstration.
Speakers at a rally afterwards will include Labour's deputy leader, Tom Watson, Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and others.
Mr Watson will say: "I've come to the reluctant view that the only way to resolve this and have legitimacy in the eyes of the public is for the people themselves to sign it off."
James McGrory, the Director of the People's Vote campaign, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Politicians are unable to agree on a way forward so it seems to the People's Vote campaign that the only way forward it to put any Brexit deal - whether it's the government's deal or any alternative form of Brexit - put it to the people."
Ms Sturgeon said now was "the moment of maximum opportunity" to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
A petition on Parliament's website calling for Brexit to be cancelled by revoking Article 50 has attracted more than four million signatures.
Lib Dem MP Layla Moran said the petition could "give oxygen" to the campaign for another Brexit referendum.
Speaking in Brussels on Friday after the European Council agreed to delay the Brexit date, Mr Tusk said that until 12 April, "anything is possible" including a much longer delay or cancelling Brexit altogether.
"The fate of Brexit is in the hands of our British friends. As the EU, we are prepared for the worst, but hope for the best. As you know, hope dies last."
According to the final summit conclusions, the UK is expected to "indicate a way forward" before 12 April, if MPs do not approve the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU, which would then be considered by the European Council.
The UK must decide by then whether it will take part in European Parliamentary elections from 23-26 May - if it does not, then a long delay would become "impossible", Mr Tusk said.
Mrs May will need to table secondary legislation to remove the date March 29 from Brexit laws.
29 March: Current Brexit date in UK law
12 April: If MPs do not approve the withdrawal deal next week - "all options will remain open" until this date. The UK must propose a way forward before this date for consideration by EU leaders
22 May: If MPs do approve the deal next week, Brexit will be delayed until this date
23-26 May: European Parliamentary elections are held across member states

The government will not sign up to a Brexit agreement that breaks up the UK, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom has said.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday that the UK would be free to leave a proposed single customs territory with the EU - provided Northern Ireland remained within it.
The DUP - the party Theresa May relies on for a majority in Parliament - has rejected the proposal.
The plan is designed to avoid physical checks on the Irish border.
The UK is due to leave on 29 March, although Parliament has yet to agree the terms of withdrawal.
The UK and the EU remain at loggerheads over the contentious issue of the Irish backstop - which is designed to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland by keeping the UK aligned with EU customs rules until the two sides' future relationship is agreed or alternative arrangements are worked out.
The Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has suggested there may be a possible technical solution to the border problem "but only if there is trust and goodwill".
On Friday the EU said it was prepared to include a number of existing commitments relating to the application of the backstop in a legally-binding document.
In a series of tweets Mr Barnier said the UK would not be forced into a customs union against its will through the Northern Ireland backstop.
He said it would be able to exit the single customs territory unilaterally if it chose to do so.
But, he added, Northern Ireland would remain part of the EU's customs territory, subject to many of its rules and regulations.
Mrs Leadsom said she was "deeply disappointed" by the proposal.
She told the BBC: "We will not break up the United Kingdom and have a border down the Irish Sea - so, I have to ask myself: what game are [the EU] playing?"
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has also been dismissive of Mr Barnier's proposal.
Mr Barclay tweeted on Friday: "With a very real deadline looming, now is not the time to rerun old arguments.
"The UK has put forward clear new proposals. We now need to agree a balanced solution that can work for both sides."
The DUP said the proposal disrespected the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK, and was neither "realistic nor sensible".
The UK government has previously said it will not agree to anything which threatens the constitutional integrity of the UK.
But Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald backed Mr Barnier's position and said the Irish government needed to "hold firm" regardless of "pressure that might be applied from London".
Meanwhile, a report published on Saturday by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has suggested a "world first" mobile phone identification system could be the way to achieve invisible border controls.
The system would use either the mobile phone network or radio frequency identification to check goods or driver's IDs without them leaving the vehicle, in combination with a trusted trader scheme.
Border surveillance would utilise automated number plate recognition and CCTV.
Lars Karlsson, a former director at the World Customs Organisation, said all the separate elements which made up the proposal  had been tested "somewhere in the world, just not in one single border".
The border in Northern Ireland would be "the first and a leading example in the world of this kind," he added.
However, the committee urged the UK and EU negotiators to agree on a definition of a hard border by 12 March.
"Mistrust over the backstop protocol has been heightened by lack of clarity on what exactly constitutes a 'hard border'," said chairman Andrew Murrison.
"My committee is calling for clarification of the term in a legally explicit way to ensure both parties share the same understanding of how the backstop can be avoided."
"Time is running out to reach common ground," the Conservative MP warned.
MPs are due to vote again on Theresa May's Brexit deal on Tuesday, but so far the UK has not secured any changes to the withdrawal agreement in its negotiations with Brussels.
UK and EU negotiating teams will meet again over the weekend but correspondents say there is little sign of a breakthrough.
The first Commons vote on the deal was rejected by 432 votes to 202 in January, the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
Leading Brexiteers are unlikely to change their position on the deal unless Mrs May can secure promises that the backstop will not endure indefinitely.
Remainer Dominic Grieve, who supports a referendum to endorse the terms of Brexit, said it was "hard to see" how Parliament would agree to the current deal.
The Labour leadership is also unlikely to back Mrs May's deal.

MPs have taken part in a second round of votes on alternative proposals to Theresa May's Brexit deal.
None of the four options chosen by the Speaker, John Bercow, were backed outright by MPs.
The first series of "indicative votes" on various options was first held last week, on 27 March.
None of MPs' eight proposals secured a majority then either.
The House of Commons is attempting to find a strategy that can gain majority support after the prime minister's plans were rejected on three occasions - so far.
Proposer: Ken Clarke, Conservative
Result: 273 votes for and 276 against
This option commits the government to negotiating "a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU" as part of any Brexit deal.
This arrangement would give the UK a closer trading relationship with the EU and reduce the need for some (but not all) checks at the Irish border.
But it would prevent the UK striking independent trade deals with other countries, and has previously been ruled out by Mrs May.
A version of this proposal received the most support in the first round, falling just six votes short of a majority.
Proposer: Nick Boles, Conservative
Result: 261 votes for and 282 votes against
This proposal would mean joining the European Free Trade Association and European Economic Area, with countries such as Norway.
It means the UK would remain part of the EU single market and would retain freedom of movement, so British citizens would keep the right to live and work in the EU and vice-versa.
In the last round, 188 MPs voted for this plan and 283 voted against.
Proposers: Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, Labour
Result: 280 votes for and 292 votes against
This gives the public a vote to approve any Brexit deal passed by Parliament, before it can be implemented.
Tabled last time by Labour former minister Dame Margaret Beckett, this option won the highest number of votes, with 268 MPs for and 295 against.
Proposer: Joanna Cherry, Scottish National Party
Result: 191 votes for and 292 votes against
This option offers a series of steps to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a deal. First, it requires the government to seek an extension if a deal has not been agreed two days before the deadline for leaving.
If the EU does not agree to an extension, on the day before the UK was due to leave, MPs would be asked to choose between a no-deal Brexit or revoking Article 50 to stop Brexit altogether.
In the event of revoking Article 50, an inquiry would be held to find out what type of future relationship with the EU could command majority support in the UK and be acceptable to Brussels.
MPs previously voted against a proposal to cancel Brexit by Joanna Cherry, but have not considered this plan before.
The following four motions were rejected by Mr Bercow.
Proposer: John Baron, Conservative
This proposal aimed to commit the UK to leave the EU on 22 May with an amendment to Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal agreement. That would allow the UK to exit the so-called Irish backstop whenever it wants, without the EU's permission.
The backstop is an insurance policy designed to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic "under all circumstances", if the UK and EU do not manage to agree a permanent trade relationship in time.
Many MPs fear that it could mean the UK is tied to EU rules for years, while the Democratic Unionist Party has voted against it because it would mean Northern Ireland was treated differently from the rest of the UK.
This was a new motion, which was not considered by MPs on 27 March. But the EU has said that the backstop is not up for renegotiation.
Proposer: John Baron, Conservative
This motion asked MPs to support the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 12 April, if they have not agreed to support the prime minister's withdrawal agreement by then.
If the UK did leave the EU with no deal, it would mean initially trading on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, which could mean tariffs on certain goods and extra checks on UK goods entering the EU.
On 27 March, a similar motion was backed by 160 MPs, but opposed by 400.
Proposers: Graham Jones, Labour, and Dominic Grieve, Conservative
This was another proposal for the public to vote on the future of Brexit, but in this case it would only happen if the UK was otherwise going to leave the EU without a deal.
MPs have not voted on this motion before.
Proposer: George Eustice, Conservative
This motion proposes that the UK rejoins the European Free Trade Association as soon as possible, meaning the UK stays in the single market.
It also requires negotiations with the EU over "additional protocols" to resolve the issue of the Irish border and agri-food trade.

A public row has broken out between leading figures in the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum.
The director and head of communications for the campaign both appear to have been sacked, and many of the staff are reported to have walked out in protest.
The People's Vote campaign is an organisation campaigning for a new referendum on the UK's membership of the EU.
The campaign, which was launched in 2018, officially supports a new referendum on any Brexit deal, with the option of remaining in the EU being on the ballot paper.
It is a coalition of five different coalition groups - the European Movement UK, the Joint Media Unit, Our Future Our Choice, For our Future's Sake and Wales for Europe and Open Britain.
The director of the campaign is James McGrory, ex-deputy PM Nick Clegg's former top adviser, and the head of communications is Tom Baldwin, the former top adviser to Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader.
However, on Sunday evening, Roland Rudd, the chairman of Open Britain, the company which runs the People's Vote campaign. sent an email to staff announcing that Mr McGrory and Mr Baldwin were leaving the organisation and being replaced with Patrick Heneghan, a former head of campaigns for the Labour party.
Staff angry at the changes walked out of the People's Vote office, in Millbank tower, on Monday morning.
Prominent supporters such as Alistair Campbell, the former No 10 director of communications under Tony Blair, have questioned whether Mr Rudd even has the power to dismiss Mr McGrory and Mr Baldwin.
The campaign is split on whether it should commit to supporting remaining in the EU in any future referendum.
The Observer has reported that Mr Rudd wants the campaign to pursue a more explicitly pro-Remain position.
Mr McGory and Mr Baldwin feared this would stop the campaign from winning over "soft Leave" voters - and Labour and Conservative MPs who may support a second referendum.
Mr Baldwin defended this position in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme,
"It's not the best way to win the argument with Conservative MPs who back a deal, or Labour MPs that back a deal, or indeed the public, many of who voted leave and still want to leave, to say that this is just a ruse to overturn the result of the last referendum," he said.
Speaking on the same programme, Mr Rudd said: "There's no row about the Remain side and PV [People's Vote]. Everyone knows where we stand on this.
"This is an absurd argument. Everybody knows perfectly well that we're made up of people who want to vote to Remain. There isn't a problem."
This is not the first time internal debates over whether the campaign should explicitly back Remain have become public.
In July, Buzzfeed News published a series of leaked emails and exchanges between senior members and supporters of the campaign revealing tensions over staff and strategy, specifically around whether or not the campaign should take part in an pro-EU march that month.
Six prominent supporters of the campaign emailed Mr Rudd to complain that the infighting meant the organisation was "not fit for purpose".
Divisions over the campaign's strategy are not just limited to whether or not they back Remain.
It was also reported in January that there were internal arguments over when to table an amendment for a second referendum, with some in the campaign wanting MPs to wait until all other options had been rejected.
There have also been clashes over personalities before today, when Mr Baldwin accused Mr Rudd of putting "a wrecking ball" through the campaign.
Mr Rudd, who is standing down as chair of Open Britain, has been criticised for trying to use a new pro-EU group, registered under a new company, Baybridge, as a way to take more control over the Remain campaign in any future referendum.
However, according to The Observer, this new group has been defended by allies as being necessary to bring direction to the campaign.
Mr Rudd's opponents have also previously faced accusations of trying to gain more power within the campaign.
The Mail on Sunday has reported that Mr Campbell had attempted to work with Labour peer Lord Mandelson, both allies of Mr Baldwin, against Mr Rudd.
They were accused of trying to organise a "coup" against Mr Rudd with Mr Campbell writing in one email: "I do not see how this gets done without a public battle and it should happen soon and be fast and brutal".
Mr Rudd is., according to the Politics Home, due to address People's Vote staff tomorrow.

 Prime Minister Theresa May has used a speech in Florence to set out the UK's position on how to move Brexit talks forward. With further negotiations planned next week, what did her speech tell us about the sort of Brexit deal we might end up with? Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris has been scanning the speech.
What's the significance? It's worth noting that a lot of Brexit supporters in the UK jumped on Jean-Claude Juncker's State of the European Union speech last week - in which he set out an ambitious agenda of greater integration - as an example of why they wanted to leave in the first place.
The PM picked up on this - we're getting out of your way while you move in a different direction that we've never felt entirely comfortable with.
That's good for both of us she implied. It slightly ignores the fact that many EU leaders wouldn't agree with Mr Juncker's proposals - but it's a point that will go down well on the Tory backbenches.
What's the significance? The tone matters here. Urging EU leaders to be creative, ambitious and to share a "profound sense of responsibility to make this change work" is a bit of a departure from the language in her last major speech on Brexit at Lancaster House in London in January.
It contained warnings of "an act of calamitous self-harm" for the countries of Europe if they sought to punish the UK, and the famous assertion that "no deal is better than a bad deal" for Britain.
The rest of the EU will take note of this more collaborative appeal but will also be watching to see whether the tone changes again in the prime minister's speech to the Conservative party conference next month.
What's the significance? The prime minister is saying she wants to incorporate an agreement on EU citizens' rights into UK law, and she thinks UK courts should be able to "take into account" the judgements of the European Court of Justice.
It's a real guarantee, she says: "We want you to stay." The trouble is that it's not what the EU is demanding.
The chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier insisted in a speech yesterday that the Court of Justice should remain the ultimate guarantor of any agreement.
The big difficulty here is that jurisdiction is a pretty black-and-white issue - there are few grey areas. As things stand, the UK view is that British courts should have the final say, and the EU sees that as unacceptable.
What's the significance? So the Prime Minister has ruled out a European Economic Area-style solution to a future relationship (this would be like Norway - part of the single market but not part of the EU). Mrs May says it would still be too restrictive for the UK.
And she ruled out an ambitious free trade deal like the one the EU has with Canada - it would take too long and would ignore the fact that we start from a position where all our rules and regulations are the same.
So she wants a unique solution - a new deep and special partnership. But in this speech she hasn't really given more details of exactly what that solution would be.
What's the significance? This is important. It means that during a transition period - the prime minister suggested two years as a possibility - all the rules will remain the same.
That means payments into the EU budget, free movement of people and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice would stay in place.
That's always been the position of the rest of the EU - it now appears that the UK has accepted that there is no way round this.
Mrs May confirmed that there will be no restrictions on EU citizens coming to the UK during the transition, but that after Brexit they will be registered as they arrive. That is something that the UK could already do under current EU rules, but it never has done so.
What's the significance? The prime minister is trying to reassure other member states that no net contributor will have to pay more, and no net recipient will receive less, during the current seven-year budget period, which runs until the end of 2020.
That suggests that the UK will provide the sum of roughly 20bn euros (£18bn) in the two-year transition period that it has now proposed.
What's not yet clear is whether the UK thinks these payments will also cover some of its outstanding debts - debts that the EU insists have to be settled as part of a withdrawal agreement.
The rest of the EU will view the £18bn as payment for the UK being allowed to maintain its current role in the single market.
A lot depends on what exactly Mrs May meant by this key sentence: "The UK will honour commitments made during the period of our membership."
Note she didn't say "all" our commitments.
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The European Union has issued a 16-page document outlining the preparations that need to be made for Brexit. It includes advice on how countries, companies and individuals should prepare for the prospect of the UK leaving with "no deal" in place.
BBC Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris has read the document so you don't have to. Here are some key excerpts, and explanations of what they mean:
From the outset, the EU makes one thing clear - even if negotiations go better than expected, it thinks there will be significant disruption, and everyone needs to be ready for it. (The EU talks about 30 March as exit day, by the way, because the precise time of withdrawal is due to be midnight on 30 March in Central European Time, but 23:00 on 29 March in GMT).
The document emphasises that negotiations on a withdrawal agreement are continuing and that a negotiated settlement is the EU's preferred outcome.
But it also notes that important issues remain unresolved - including on the protection of personal data sent to the UK while it was a member state and on the role of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in policing a withdrawal agreement.
In particular, it states that there has been "no progress" in agreeing a "backstop" solution to avoid the imposition of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The EU notes, as it has done many times before, that time to both reach and ratify an agreement is running short.
This is why preparations for "no deal" are so important.
If there is a deal, there will also be a transition period running until 31 December 2020 during which EU rules and regulations will continue to apply in the UK.
That will give businesses and governments more time to prepare for a new relationship.
Without a deal, the transition (or "implementation period" as the UK government calls it) falls away and the relationship will change abruptly at the end of March next year.
If both sides come to the conclusion several months before the end of March that there will be "no deal", they can at least make some contingency plans to deal with that.
But if there is a last-minute hitch, time will have run out.
So, from the EU's perspective, thinking about "no deal" means "preparing for the worst and hoping for the best".
Much of the UK government would probably look at it in the same way - but there are many Brexiteers who think that "no deal" would be perfectly acceptable as long as sufficient preparations have been made.
This kind of language is scattered throughout the document. "Don't say we didn't warn you," would be another way of putting it.
The document stresses that some things will have to be done whatever the outcome.
One thing it mentions is the need for companies to take steps to ensure that they have the right authorisations and certificates to access the EU market after Brexit.
But contingency planning for "no deal" is the main emphasis - the EU says this is a prudent step because the outcome of negotiations "cannot be predicted".
Among other issues, it notes that there would be no arrangement in place for EU citizens in the UK or UK citizens in the EU.
It says controls at borders "could cause significant delays, eg in road transport, and difficulties for ports", where there could be "long lines of vehicles waiting for customs procedures to be fulfilled".
It also says that the UK would become a third country for trade and regulatory issues, which would "represent a significant drawback compared to the current level of market integration".
It also emphasises that while many measures would have to be taken at EU level, national, regional and local governments also need to step up their levels of preparation to "mitigate the worst impacts of a potential cliff-edge scenario" - cheerful stuff.
And of course a lot of the attention is focused on making sure that individual EU businesses, big and small, are going to be ready for whatever emerges at the end of a highly unpredictable process of negotiation.
The document notes that several EU governments, such as the Irish and the Dutch, have set up online platforms to help their companies prepare for different potential Brexit scenarios.
The document also claims - in a sentence that won't please the UK government - that "many companies are relocating to the EU27" or expanding their operations there.
EU officials insist that they are not trying to add fuel to the fire and that they are simply engaged in prudent planning.
But it's a reminder that there are people in Europe, as well as in the UK, who see Brexit as an opportunity rather than a threat.
The commission has now published 68 notices (anyone with a few hours to spare can read them here) on preparations in specific sectors of the economy, including health and food safety, financial services, customs, transport, and company law.
They set out the legal and technical issues that governments and companies need to take into account and are another glimpse into the complexities of Brexit that stretch into every area of economic life.
In the UK, the government has not yet published any comparable information of its own.
However, on Wednesday, Theresa May told MPs at the Liaison Committee that a similar number of technical notifications about what to do in the event of a "no deal" Brexit will be released during August and September - aimed at businesses and citizens.
In response to the EU document, the Department for Exiting the European Union said "It is the duty of any responsible government to prepare for every eventuality, including the unlikely scenario that we reach March 2019 without agreeing a deal. We have already done a lot of work behind the scenes to prepare for this - it is only natural that our European partners would seek to make similar preparations. We are keen to work closely with the EU on preparedness issues."
There are all sorts of EU databases, including many dealing with policing and internal security issues, to which the UK wants to retain access after Brexit.
But the EU has argued that the UK can't simply pick and choose the bits of membership it likes - and this part of the document emphasises that work is well under way to remove the UK from numerous databases and IT systems once it becomes a "third country".
The commission is also making preparations for changing international agreements that currently involve the UK as a member state. It says it will notify its international partners formally once it has sufficient certainty about the outcome of the current negotiations - not for a while, then.
Finally, the EU document says work is under way to relocate or reassign tasks that are currently performed in the UK - such as the Galileo Security Monitoring Centre (part of the EU's project for satellites in space) or the UK-based EU Reference Laboratories - because it will not be possible "to entrust a third country" with such EU tasks after the withdrawal date.
Two London-based agencies, the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority, are already moving to Amsterdam and Paris respectively.


If the prime minister's team and the government machine of a small country can't agree happily on arrangements for a press conference, then it doesn't exactly feel like anyone is in the mood to edge a little bit closer to a Brexit deal.
"Podiumgate", as it has inevitably been labelled, immediately gave a pantomime distraction - complete with a booing crowd - to Monday's developments in the bigger Brexit story.
It's no secret that the Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel held the views that he was so happy to express.
He has gladly - and candidly - expressed on many occasions his sadness that the UK voted to leave, and his frustration with how UK governments have handled it so far.
But if what happened was an expression of the state of diplomacy between the UK and EU member states, then don't hold your breath for a breakthrough in understanding between the two sides that could lead us all to a new version of a Brexit deal.
As ever with the UK's departure from the EU, there are two dramatically different interpretations of what happened.
If you think that it's a bad idea and Boris Johnson is blundering his way to a crash-out, then the Luxembourg leader's protestation will have given yet more evidence to that cause - the suggestion that the UK has made a terrible mistake, the EU has tried its best, and yet the prime minister is insisting on carrying on and, to boot, failing to offer any real and new options that could provide a civilised exit.
If, on the other hand, you reckon that the EU's leaders have looked for every opportunity to thwart the UK's reasonable efforts to deliver the referendum result, you may well think that it was another episode in the pantomime that demonstrates the continent's unwillingness to acknowledge the UK's decision to leave.
Forget those two sides for a second. What do the last 24 hours tell us about the chances of a deal actually being done?
Podiumgate tells us that both sides find it hard to present a joint front, and perhaps the relations of Brexit are so fractured that political leaders are not willing to observe the normal rules of diplomatic engagement.
And if, in the months to come, either side is looking to apportion blame, Monday's events could play equally strongly into both sides' hands.
More pertinently maybe, when we asked the prime minister how he actually intended to get a deal, he suggested that there was space to revise the arrangements around the controversial backstop but simply wouldn't elaborate on what those details might be.
And when we asked, repeatedly, exactly how he intends to get round Parliament's decision to try to outlaw leaving without a deal he just would not say.
Right now it seems the volume is rising, but the clock is still ticking down.

The draft withdrawal agreement is all about how the UK leaves the European Union. It's not about any permanent future relationship.
It's a long read - 585 pages long - and we've just had a first look at the text. There will be plenty more to say in the days ahead.
But what's in this draft document, that some people thought might never materialise?
Well we've known about a lot of the content for some time.
There are details of the financial settlement (often dubbed the divorce bill) that the two sides agreed some months ago: over time, it means the UK will pay at least £39bn to the EU to cover all its financial obligations.
There's also a long section on citizens' rights after Brexit for EU citizens in the UK and Brits elsewhere in Europe. It maintains their existing residency rights, but big questions remain about a host of issues, including the rights of UK citizens to work across borders elsewhere in the EU.
The legal basis for a transition (or implementation) period, beginning after Brexit. It would be 21 months during which the UK would continue to follow all European Union rules (in order to give governments and businesses more time to prepare for long term change).
That means that during transition, the UK would remain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (in fact, the ECJ is mentioned more than 60 times in this document). The document says that decisions adopted by European Union institutions during this period "shall be binding on and in the United Kingdom".
The transition period is also designed to allow time for the UK and the EU to reach a trade deal. The draft agreement says both sides will use their "best endeavours" to ensure that a long term trade deal is in place by the end of 2020. Significantly, if more time is needed, the option of extending the transition appears in the document (although, it makes it clear that the UK would have to pay for it).
The document doesn't say how long the transition could be extended for (in fact they've left the date blank), only that the Joint Committee may take a decision "extending the transition period up to [31 December 20XX]." UK officials hope that the date will be clarified by the time of the proposed EU summit on 25 November.
If there was no long term trade agreement and no extension of the transition, that's when the so-called "backstop" would kick in. It's the issue that has dominated negotiations for the last few weeks and months: how to ensure that no hard border (with checks or physical infrastructure) emerges after Brexit between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Both sides agreed back in December 2017 that there should be a guarantee to avoid a hard border under all circumstances. That guarantee came to be known as the backstop, but agreeing a legal text proved very difficult.
So what exactly does this draft agreement say about the border, the backstop and the legal guarantees that underpin it?
If a backstop is needed, it will - as expected - take the form of a temporary customs union encompassing not just Northern Ireland but the whole of the UK.
The draft agreement describes this as a "single customs territory".
Northern Ireland, though, will be in a deeper customs relationship with the EU than Great Britain, and even more closely tied to the rules of the EU single market.
One policy area is excluded from these potential customs arrangements: fishing.
That's because the trade-off between access for UK fish produce to EU markets, and access for EU boats to UK waters, is too controversial. The draft agreement simply states that "the Union and the United Kingdom shall use their best endeavours to conclude and ratify" an agreement "on access to waters and fishing opportunities".
There are also details of one of the last issues to be negotiated - the terms on which the UK may be able to leave this temporary customs arrangement in the future.
If either party notifies the other that it wants the backstop to come to an end, a joint ministerial committee will meet within six months to consider the details.
But the backstop (which is part of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland) would only cease to apply if "the Union and the United Kingdom decide jointly" that it is no longer necessary. In other words, the UK will not have a unilateral right to bring those arrangements to an end.
For some Brexiteers, that is simply unacceptable.
But, don't forget, other countries will also have their concerns.
They too will focus on the language surrounding a temporary customs union, to ensure that nothing is hidden there which could, in their view, give the UK rights without responsibilities; and - potentially - a competitive advantage.
The EU insists the draft agreement "includes the corresponding level playing field commitments and appropriate enforcement mechanisms to ensure fair competition between the EU27 and the UK."
So, it's not just in London that this document will be closely scrutinised.
Finally one big question: to what extent could these temporary customs arrangements form the basis for a permanent future relationship, which can only be negotiated formally after Brexit has actually happened?

Parliament might have to decide what to do next if Theresa May's Brexit deal is rejected by MPs, cabinet minister Liam Fox has said.
The senior Brexiteer said the PM's deal was unlikely to pass through Parliament unless the backstop issue was resolved.
He said one option could be a "free vote" for MPs.
An alternative being widely suggested is another referendum - but Mr Fox told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show this was unlikely and would not "heal division".
Other options backed by different groups of MPs include leaving without a deal, another referendum, or Norway or Canada-style alternative deals. Norway has a very close relationship with the EU but is not a member, while Canada has an extensive trade deal with the bloc.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds has also suggested "flushing out" the levels of Parliamentary support for different Brexit options although he told BBC Radio5Live's Pienaar's Politics there was not a majority for any of them.
And Lib Dem MP Tom Brake, who is part of the anti-Brexit "Best for Britain" campaign, said: "When even Dr Fox does not rule out free votes and encourages the idea of indicative votes in Parliament, the Brexit project is clearly in jeopardy."
By BBC political correspondent Chris Mason
What we are witnessing is a bursting out in public of conversations that have been happening for a while, at a senior level, in private.
They can be summarised like this: 'What on earth do we do next?'
One idea, now floated by three cabinet ministers in public, and others privately, is a series of so called "indicative votes".
These would flush out Parliament's view on a range of options which could include different models of Brexit: something akin to Norway's relationship with the EU for instance, or Canada's looser one. Another referendum and no deal are other possibilities.
Some ponder doing this before the vote on the prime minister's deal, in the hope it highlights that her plan is the only workable Brexit deal achievable now.
"Things are not as hopeless as they look," one cabinet minister told me.
But when I wished them a merry Christmas and a happy new year, that word 'happy' was met with a wry smile. None of this is remotely straight forward.
On the possibility of another referendum, International Trade Secretary Mr Fox said one could result in a narrow Remain win on a lower turnout, in which case, "People like me will be immediately demanding that it's best of three - where does that end up?"
It comes after Theresa May accused former Labour PM Tony Blair of undermining Brexit negotiations by calling for another referendum amid continuing calls for one to be held to solve the impasse over the UK's exit from the European Union.
Two of Mrs May's key allies - chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, and her effective second-in-command David Lidington - distanced themselves from reports they were involved in planning for a new referendum.
On Thursday about 10 Labour MPs met Mr Lidington to argue for another public vote.
Mr Lidington tweeted that he had told the Commons last week that another referendum would be "divisive" and would not guarantee a "decisive" ending to the debate.
Mr Barwell also used Twitter to say he did not want another referendum and was not planning one.
Mrs May met EU leaders on Thursday - after postponing a Commons vote on the withdrawal deal she has negotiated, fearing its heavy defeat. The government says the Commons vote will go ahead in January, as talks continue with the EU on the issue of the Irish border "backstop".
The backstop is an insurance policy in the withdrawal deal to prevent the return of a hard border with Northern Ireland if no trade deal is reached - but many of Mrs May's MPs say they cannot support it, arguing it would keep the UK tied to EU rules indefinitely and curb its ability to strike trade deals.
EU leaders have said the deal is "not open for renegotiation" - but that there could be some further clarification.
Mr Fox said talks would continue over Christmas and the new year. He said it was "clear" that the EU understood the problem, and it was now a question of finding a "mechanism" that would remove MPs' concerns, without which, he suggested it would not be worth putting it to a Commons vote "knowing it would be rejected".
If the deal could not get through the Commons, he said: "Parliament would have to decide on the alternatives."
Meanwhile, Labour frontbencher Andrew Gwynne told the BBC his party would be trying to bring the MPs' "meaningful vote" on the deal forward to this week.
The Labour leadership is under pressure from other opposition parties to call for a vote of no confidence in the government.
But Mr Gwynne said: "We can't move to the next stage until Parliament has decided whether or not to back the prime minister's deal."
Asked whether his party would campaign for Brexit under a Labour deal if there were to be another referendum, he said: "Let's wait and see. These things are moving very quickly.
"We are a democratic party and we will put our decision to the party members in a democratic way before we decide what the next steps are."
Labour's official position is to argue for a general election if Mrs May's deal cannot get through the Commons but to keep all options open if that doesn't happen - including another referendum.
Anti-Brexit Labour backbencher Chuka Umunna told the BBC it was time to "clear the decks" and hold the MPs' vote on the deal before moving on to "consider the other options".
He said there was no majority for another referendum in the Commons at the moment but said: "I think the position of members of Parliament will change, according to what happens."

Claim: Labour is proposing a new permanent customs union with the European Union (EU) after Brexit which would allow the UK "a say" in future trade deals.
Reality Check Verdict:  EU law currently does not allow non-EU members to have a formal say or veto in its trade talks. Labour says the EU has shown flexibility in the past and its proposal cannot be ruled out until the party has had a chance to negotiate formally.
 There's renewed focus on Labour's Brexit policy as Theresa May holds discussions with opposition MPs, in the wake of the historic defeat of her Brexit deal.
One area under the spotlight is Labour's plan for the UK to have a new permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit and the power to have a say in future EU trade talks.
The idea that the UK would be allowed such a say has been dismissed by Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary.
He's declared Labour's position "an unprecedented legal and political novelty of the kind that is rightly called a unicorn".
So how realistic is Labour's plan?
The purpose of a customs union is to make trade easier.
Countries in a customs union agree not to impose charges - known as tariffs - or custom checks on each other's goods.
The rules also mean that any goods coming in from the rest of the world pay the same tariff - irrespective of where in the customs union those goods first enter.
This is known as a common tariff.
For example, a car from the US entering the EU customs union currently attracts a tariff of 10% of the car's value. It doesn't matter if the car arrives in France, Spain or anywhere else - the same one-off 10% charge is applied.
That car can then move between all the customs union countries without incurring extra costs or custom checks.
The EU customs union includes the 28 EU member states as well as Monaco.
The EU also has customs union arrangements with non-EU members: Turkey, Andorra and San Marino.
But under (the EU's) customs union rules, members cannot negotiate their own independent trade deals with countries from the rest of the world.
Instead, free trade deals (ie agreements that reduce or eliminate tariffs between countries) can only be negotiated by the EU as a whole.
As a result, Theresa May's government has ruled out remaining in the customs union after Brexit, arguing it would prevent the UK from setting its own trade policy.
At the moment, the EU is negotiating trade agreements with 21 countries.
So what are the chances of Labour's proposal of leaving "the" EU customs union and replacing it with "a" customs union arrangement where the UK could have a say in those talks?
It somewhat depends on what Labour means by a "say".
Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, told the Commons that he favoured: "A new customs union in which the UK would be able to reject any agreement it believed was concluded to its disadvantage."
He told MPs that this position should have been adopted at the start of the Brexit talks.
But allowing the UK a formal role in EU trade talks after Brexit, would not be allowed under current EU rules:
"Trade outside the EU is an exclusive responsibility of the EU.... this means the EU institutions make laws on trade matters, negotiate and conclude international trade agreements," says the European Commission.
Holger Hestermeyer, an expert in international dispute resolution at the British Academy, agrees it would be very difficult:
"To give the UK a say in the EU's talks, the procedure, as set out in EU treaties, would need to be changed.
"A treaty change in that respect will not happen and to give the UK a say without such a change is legally doubtful and politically impossible," he says.
Labour points out that the EU is already in favour of the UK remaining in a customs union after Brexit. Therefore it believes the EU may well be receptive to the idea of the UK also having a say in future trade deals.
Jeremy Corbyn told the BBC that "the EU is well-known for its ability to be flexible".
If a "say" means something less formal, it may be more achievable.
But even then it would still be unique - the EU currently has no relationship with any country like the one Labour is asking for.
A Labour source told Reality Check that determining exactly how the arrangement could work would be subject to any future negotiation with the EU.
Turkey has often been held up as example of a non-EU country entering into a customs union arrangement with the EU.
It's had a customs union deal with the EU since 1995, although it's not as comprehensive as the one Labour is seeking.
That's because Turkey's customs arrangement only applies to industrial products.
This means Turkey has some limited freedom to strike its own trade deals, but only in the areas not covered by its customs union arrangement - such as agriculture.
Turkey can also strike deals around the world on services - as this is not a customs union issue.
It has a number of trade deals with nearby countries, such as Georgia and Lebanon as well countries as far afield as Chile.
However, Turkey is also obliged to apply common external tariffs on industrial products arriving from outside the EU customs union.
This is a very strict rule, according to Catherine Barnard an EU law professor at Cambridge University.
"Under no circumstances may Turkey be authorised to apply a customs tariff which is lower than the common external tariff for any product," she says.
"The arrangement has boosted trade between the two sides," says Alex Stojanovic from the Institute for Government.
However, Mr Stojanovic adds that neither the EU nor Turkey is entirely happy with the current arrangement:
"The EU Parliament has released reports criticising the governance of resolving disputes. From Turkey's point of view, it argues it has little input or say in EU trade policy."
Labour says it has ruled-out a Turkey-style arrangement on the grounds it is "asymmetrical" and only covers certain goods.
However, it remains to be seen whether the EU would accept the type of customs union arrangement the Labour is pursuing instead.
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A revised Brexit deal has been agreed by the UK and EU. What is in it?
Most of the changes - to the deal agreed by Theresa May with EU in November 2018 - are to do with the status of the Irish border after Brexit. This issue has dominated talks for months.
All sides want to avoid the return of a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit - with checks and infrastructure that could be targeted by paramilitary groups.
Coming up with solutions to this - acceptable to all sides - has been very challenging.
The new protocol replaces the controversial Irish backstop plan in Theresa May's deal. Much of the rest of that deal will remain.
Here are some of the key new parts:
The whole of the UK will leave the EU customs union. The customs union is an agreement between EU countries not to charge taxes called tariffs on things coming from other EU countries, and to charge the same tariffs as each other on things coming from outside the EU.
Leaving the customs union means the UK will be able to strike trade deals with other countries in the future.
Legally there will be a customs border between Northern Ireland (which stays in the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (which stays in the EU), but in practice things won't be checked on that border.
The actual checks will be on what is effectively a customs border between Great Britain and the island of Ireland, with goods being checked at "points of entry" into Northern Ireland.
Taxes will only have to be paid on goods being moved from Great Britain to Northern Ireland if those products are considered "at risk" of then being transported into the Republic of Ireland.
A joint committee made up of UK and EU representatives will decide at a later date what goods are considered "at risk".
If taxes are paid on "at risk" goods that do not end up being sent on from Northern Ireland into the EU, the UK would be responsible for whether to refund the money.
Individual travellers won't have their baggage checked and taxes will not have to be paid by individuals sending goods to other people.
Separately, there will be limits agreed by the joint committee on the amount of help the government can give to Northern Irish farmers. The figure will be based on the amount they currently receive from the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.
When it comes to the regulation of goods (that's the rules they have to follow on things like labelling and manufacturing processes) Northern Ireland would keep to EU rules rather than UK rules.
That removes the need for checks on goods including food and agricultural produce at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, because both will be part of an "all-island regulatory zone".
But it adds to the checks between the rest of the UK - which will not necessarily be sticking to EU single market rules - and Northern Ireland.
This will be done by UK officials at "points of entry" into Northern Ireland, but the EU will have the right to have its own officials present.
It seems those EU officials may be able to overrule UK officials. The agreement states that EU representatives will be able to ask UK authorities to take certain steps in individual cases and they will have to do so.
Because Northern Ireland will be set apart from the rest of the UK when it comes to customs and other EU rules, the deal gives its Assembly a vote on these new arrangements.
But this vote would not happen until four years after the end of the transition period (the time after Brexit when everything stays the same to allow everyone to prepare for the changes while the UK's future relationship with the EU is discussed). The transition period is due to run until at least the end of 2020. So the four-year period would run until the end of 2024.
If the Northern Ireland Assembly votes against the new arrangements, they would stop applying two years later, during which time the "joint committee" would make recommendations to the UK and EU on what to do about this.
If there were to be no agreement during this two year period, some form of hard border could re-emerge in Ireland, but it's unlikely that would be allowed to happen.
If the Assembly accepts the continuing provisions by a simple majority, they will then apply for another four years. If the deal has "cross-community support" then they will apply for eight years.
The deal defines cross-community support as more than 50% of unionist and nationalist Assembly members voting in favour, or at least 40% of members from each designation if in total at least 60% of members have voted in favour.
The UK government has said that if the Northern Ireland Assembly is still not sitting at that point, it will make alternative arrangements to make sure a vote can take place.
The new agreement says that EU law on value added tax (VAT - a tax added when you make purchases) will apply in Northern Ireland, but only on goods, not services.
But it also allows Northern Ireland to have different VAT rates to the rest of the UK, which would not normally be allowed under EU law.
For example, if the UK decided to reduce the VAT on household fuel to zero, Northern Ireland would still have to keep it at 5%, which is the EU minimum.
It also means that Northern Ireland may get the same VAT rates on certain goods as the Republic of Ireland, to stop there being an unfair advantage on either side of the border.
Much of Mrs May's original Brexit deal will remain as part of the overall agreement. Some of the key areas are:
The transition - a period of time during which all of the current rules stay the same allowing the UK and the EU to negotiate their future relationship - is due to last until the end of December 2020.
The UK will need to abide by EU rules and pay into the EU budget, but will lose membership of its institutions.
The transition can be extended, but only for a period of one or two years.
Both the UK and EU must agree to any extension.
UK citizens in the EU, and EU citizens in the UK, will retain their residency and social security rights after Brexit.
Freedom of movement rules will continue to apply during transition. This means that UK nationals will be able to live and work in EU countries (and EU nationals will be able to live and work in UK) during this period.
Anyone who remains in the same EU country for five years will be allowed to apply for permanent residence.
(UPDATE: 13 December 2019 - This piece has been updated and reflects the delay of the Brexit date to the end of January 2020.)
The UK will have to settle its financial obligations to the EU.
There is no precise figure but the biggest part of this "divorce bill" will be the UK contributions to the EU budget until the end of the transition period at the end of 2020.
When Brexit was delayed it meant that some of that money was paid as the UK's normal membership contributions, so less of it was part of the divorce bill.
When the Brexit date was 31 October 2019, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated that the bill was about £32.8bn (down from £39bn).
To reach an estimate of what the bill would be for departure on 31 January 2020, you could subtract the £1.62bn that the OBR said was left to pay in membership fees in 2019 and 14% of the £10.69bn for the whole of 2020 (it's more than one twelfth because the EU usually requests a higher proportion of the contributions earlier in the year). That gives a total of just under £30bn.
The OBR expects that most of the money - about three-quarters of the total - would be paid by 2022, with some relatively small payments still being made in the 2060s.
This is addressed in the political declaration. This text, which is not legally binding, has also been revised by UK/EU negotiators.
It says that both sides will work towards a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and a high-level meeting will happen in June 2020 to see how that work is going.
The text also contains a new paragraph on the so-called "level playing field" - the degree to which the UK will agree to stick closely to EU regulations in the future.
The references to a "level playing field" were removed from the legally-binding withdrawal agreement and put in the political declaration, which is not binding.
It says that both sides will keep the same high standards on state aid, competition, social and employment standards, the environment, climate change, and "relevant tax matters".
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The UK left the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 31 January, but that is not the end of the Brexit story.
That's because the UK is now in an 11-month period, known as the transition, that keeps the UK bound to the EU's rules.
So what is the transition and why is it necessary?
The transition (sometimes called the implementation period) will end on 31 December 2020. It cannot be extended beyond that date.
While in transition, the UK remains in both the EU customs union and single market.
That means - until the transition ends - most things will stay the same. This includes:
Despite many things staying the same the UK has already left the EU's political institutions, including the European Parliament and European Commission.
So while the UK will no longer have any voting rights, it will continue to follow EU rules during the transition. For example, the European Court of Justice will have the final say over any legal disputes.
The transition also means the UK will continue to contribute to the EU's budget.
The idea behind the transition period is to give some breathing space while new UK-EU negotiations take place.
These talks will determine what the future relationship will eventually look like.
Negotiations started in March and both sides have agreed to intensify talks over the summer.
Top of the to-do list will be a UK-EU free trade deal. This will be essential if the UK wants to be able to continue to trade with the EU with no tariffs, quotas or other barriers after the transition.
Tariffs are a type of tax, usually paid on imported goods. If goods are subject to quotas, it means there are limits on how many can be traded over a given period.
Both sides will also need to decide how far the UK is allowed to move away from existing EU regulations (known as level playing field rules).
However, a free trade deal will not eliminate all checks between the UK and EU - so businesses will need to prepare.
In 2018, total UK trade (goods and services) was valued at £1.3 trillion, of which the EU made up 49%.
As well as negotiating a UK-EU trade deal, the transition will also allow the UK to hold formal trade talks with other countries - such as the US and Australia. If completed and ready in time, these deals could also take effect at the end of the transition.
The pro-Brexit camp has long argued that allowing the UK freedom to set its own trade policy will benefit the economy - although critics say it's more important to remain close to the EU.
Aside from trade, many other aspects of the future UK-EU relationship will need to be decided. For example:
The UK will also need to design and implement many new systems, such as how it will handle immigration once freedom of movement comes to an end.
At the end of the transition phase, there will be two possible outcomes:
A UK-EU trade deal comes into force
If a UK-EU trade deal is ready by the end of the year, the UK could begin the new trading relationship as soon as the transition ends.
If the trade deal is reached but questions remain in other areas - like the future of security co-operation - than the trade deal might go ahead, with contingency plans used for other parts of the relationship.
However, the EU wants one comprehensive deal covering all aspects of the future relationship while the UK argues there should be a series of separate agreements, including a basic free trade deal.
The UK exits transition with no EU trade deal
Under this scenario, UK and EU negotiators fail to agree and implement a trade deal by 1 January 2021 and no transition extension is agreed.
That would leave the UK trading on WTO (World Trade Organization) terms with the EU. This means that most UK goods would be subject to tariffs until a free trade deal was ready to be brought in.
If other aspects of the future relationship aren't ready, they too would have to proceed on no-deal terms.
The deadline for extending the transition has now passed.

MPs will soon decide the fate of Theresa May's Brexit deal.
There are many views about why they should back or reject the deal, which was struck late last year with the European Union.
But what do voters want MPs to do? And what do they think should happen if the deal is rejected?
Polls suggest the deal has not proved popular with the public.
YouGov has asked people whether they support or oppose it on no fewer than 11 occasions since it was first unveiled in mid-November.
Never have more than 27% said that they support the deal, while at least 42% have always said they are against it.
Other polls show a similar pattern.
Opinium found only one in 10 thinks the deal is good for the UK, while as many as half believe it is bad.
Ipsos MORI has reported only a quarter think it would be a good thing for the UK to leave the EU on the terms of the deal. More than six in 10 believe it would be a bad thing.
It is perhaps unsurprising then that many more voters say MPs should reject the deal than believe they should back it.
More like this
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Not only do Remain supporters seem inclined to reject the deal, but Leave voters do as well.
In its recent polls, YouGov has found an average of 30% of Leave voters back the deal, while 47% are opposed to it.
This arguably makes it harder for the PM to say that her deal fulfils the expectations of those who voted Leave in the referendum.
That said, many voters have not made up their mind about the deal on offer.
YouGov is still finding that about three in 10 still do not know whether they support it or not, well after the deal was revealed.
This suggests some voters could yet be won round to Mrs May's proposal.
While Remain and Leave voters appear to oppose the Brexit deal, they are split over what should be done instead.
Opinium has repeatedly asked voters which of five possible options should be pursued if Parliament were to reject the current deal.
None of the options comes close to being backed by a majority.
The most popular every time - backed on average by just over a quarter - has been to leave without a deal at all.
Meanwhile, the second most popular option each time - supported by just over a fifth - has been to hold a "public vote" on whether to accept the deal or to stay in the EU.
While these options enjoy similar levels of support, they come from very different voter groups.
Leaving without a deal is easily the single most popular option among those who voted Leave, chosen by an average of 46%.
Holding a "public vote" on the deal, with an option to stay in the EU, is favoured among backers of Remain, 38% of whom pick this option.
However, other courses of action also gain support.
Fifteen per cent of all voters prefer attempting to negotiate a better deal, while 12% back Labour's preferred option of holding a general election.
A further 9% support a different "public vote" in which the choice would be either Mrs May's deal or leaving the EU without one.
The idea of a second Brexit vote has attracted particular interest in recent weeks, thanks not least to a high-profile campaign.
However, public support for the idea depends on how the poll question is worded.
Polls asking whether there should be a "public" or "people's vote" - without specifying what the options would be - typically find that the idea is relatively popular.
For example, Survation found that 48% support holding a "people's vote" to gauge the public's reaction to the deal, while 34% are opposed.
Similarly, Populus reported that 44% believe the public should have the "final say" on the deal via a "people's vote", while just 30% are against this.
However, when voters are asked about holding another referendum that might have the effect of reversing Brexit, the proposal attracts less support.
ComRes has reported as many as 50% oppose "holding a second referendum on whether to Remain or Leave", with only 40% in favour.
Similarly, according to polling commissioned by Lord Ashcroft, a former deputy chairman of the Conservative party, 47% are against holding a "second referendum", while 38% are in favour.
In that scenario, voters would choose between leaving the EU under the terms of Mrs May's deal and remaining in the EU.
The wording of the poll question seems to make a significant difference, particularly to Leave voters.
Putting "the people" in charge of Brexit appeals to some Leavers, but a ballot which could potentially reverse the decision does not.
Broadly, the idea of another referendum appears as controversial to voters as Brexit itself continues to be.
When it comes to how people say they would vote if there were another referendum, the country still appears quite evenly divided.
Remain, with an average score of 53% is enjoying just a narrow lead over Leave, which scored 47% in the most recent polls.
Sir John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University, senior fellow at NatCen Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe. He is also chief commentator at WhatUKthinks.org.
Edited by Eleanor Lawrie

So, finally, Theresa May has found a way. Not to get Brexit over the finishing line, obviously. But at least out of the starting block. Or so she hopes.
Not to unite the Cabinet. No-one could do that. But at least to herd most of them into line behind her. Or so she hopes.
And if one or two can't or won't get with the programme - there's the door.
The door, of course, being the door of Chequers, her country retreat, where she'll gather her Cabinet again on Friday and try - very hard, apparently - to get agreement on her plan for a negotiating position which might, just might, fly in Brussels.
How, though? Theresa May's "red-lines" always look and sound very red and very clear. They did again yesterday in the Commons when she pledged Britain to leave the EU, the customs union and the single market.
That, I'm now told by well placed sources, is still the plan. Sort of.
Only the so-called "third option" for Britain's future customs relationship with the EU looks much like an amalgam of the two which ran into a Cabinet road block - and on close examination more like the close "customs partnership", which Mrs May came to prefer, than any other.
Not that it's being sold to Brexiteers like that. And there is a lot in the new plan that might appeal, as it must, to the Brexiteer gallery.
So what's the big idea?
A single market trade deal on goods is the vital component. Business will probably like that, as far as it goes. Though, it won't be called a single market because that sounds too aligned to Brussels. Agri-food trade would be part of that deal too.
It has to be to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland - which is vital if Brexit talks in Brussels are to get anywhere at all.
What then of services? And financial services? The Cabinet is split. Business Secretary Greg Clark's not alone in wanting a single market deal - or whatever it's called - to include services. But that's not, I gather, the plan. City firms saw this coming, and are saying again today they want in.
But Theresa May's way is to make them wait during the Brexit transition while negotiations go on.
The City is undoubtedly concerned about the impact of Brexit, particularly the risk of a "hard Brexit" and negotiations ending in no deal at all. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, expressed the same concerns last week.
But the fact is you don't need a single services market to avoid a hard Irish border. There is still time to negotiate the nature and degree of alignment between the UK and the EU.
Theresa May will stick to her red lines. Only they'll soon start to look a little blurred. No customs union, at least as it's defined now. No customs checks, or tariffs on goods either, but Britain would apply EU level tariffs, except where the UK can seek and sign trade deals beyond Europe (leave aside, for a moment, the view of much derided "experts" that outside trade deals will be low value or, in the case of America, say, tough on the UK and dependent on deregulation - and not just of chlorinated chicken).
Where UK tariffs are lower than the EU's there'd be refunds.
The European Court of Justice has been a huge sticking point. May's solution, I'm told, envisages some middle way; some some form of trade arbitration that ultimately, in some way, recognises, the court's authority.
And as for the big deep red line of freedom of movement of people. There's room for some concession here too, in the name of "labour mobility".
It's been thought that Home Secretary Sajid Javid is against preferential access for EU citizens. But I'm hearing he may be open to the idea if it's part of a decent trade deal.
So, will the Cabinet Brexiteers and sceptics buy it? That's the prime minister's big gamble. Some in government suspect she may duck a decisive confrontation even now.
But assuming she's up for it: Boris must decide whether to work with her, and fight his corner on the inside, or walk and pursue his private interests, somehow becoming Britain's next prime minister conceivably somewhere on the list.
Brexit Secretary David Davis? Hard to know. But he sees his job as a contribution to history and won't, surely, want to give it up if he can avoid it.
His hopes of becoming PM may, like Boris Johnson's, have taken a knock. But then the list of Tories who want to be prime minister is now almost as long as the list of those who don't.
The Tory MPs' shop steward, the Chairman of the Tory 1922 Committee of MPs, Sir Graham Brady has been appealing for order and loyalty in the weekend papers, and recently in a BBC interview.
That's the sort of thing chairmen - and chairwomen if there ever is one - of the "22" are meant to say. But remember Graham Brady is also a passionate Brexiteer. He was being helpful to Mrs May.
There's a plan then. There are still lots of blanks to wrangle over at Chequers before it can be slotted into the gaps in the coming policy Brexit White Paper, and that won't be settled quickly or easily. It's a test of the prime minister's nerve, and the willingness of her Cabinet colleagues to cause trouble.
Brussels won't like much or any of it very much. They will likely fear leaving a Britain-shaped hole in the borders of the EU single market. They won't like the "cherry picking" of the rules which govern single market or customs union membership - however you may choose to describe those arrangements.
Plans, even definitive plans, can change and often do. But at least there is a plan. And that's something. What could go wrong now? Apart from everything.

It feels like Westminster is tumbling towards a political crisis without modern precedent.
On Tuesday 11 December, the House of Commons will conclude five days of debate with a vote on a government motion to approve the EU withdrawal agreement and accompanying political declaration. The terms of the UK's departure from the EU.
But at the moment, it looks as if Theresa May faces an incredibly hard job getting it passed.
She leads a government with a working majority of just 13. Only seven Tory rebels are needed to defeat it.
But according to the latest number-crunching by BBC researchers, 81 Tory MPs have said they object to the deal Mrs May hopes to sign off with EU leaders on Sunday.
With Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and even perhaps the DUP set to vote against the motion too, the withdrawal agreement looks set to be torpedoed in the Commons.
Between now and then Theresa May will exhaustively insist the deal is in the national interest and the only way of ensuring Brexit happens.
But if the withdrawal agreement is defeated, what happens then?
The default position in that scenario would be for the UK to leave without a deal.
Under both EU law and the UK's Withdrawal Act, Brexit day is chiselled into the diary for 11pm on 29 March, 2019.
That's when the EU Treaties will stop applying to the UK.
If Parliament rejects the deal, the same Withdrawal Act sets out what the government must do next.
Ministers would have up to 21 days to make a statement to the Commons on "how it proposes to proceed".
The government would then have a further seven days to move a motion in the Commons, allowing MPs to express their view on the government's course of action.
Crucially though, this would not be opportunity for MPs to throw a road-block in the way of a no-deal Brexit if that's what the government wanted to happen.
Whatever motion the government brings back to Parliament will now have to be amendable, after MPs backed a change to it tabled by Conservative MP Dominic Grieve.
MPs are hoping this will allow them to vote to rule-out a no-deal Brexit.
The government would find it hard to ignore such a vote - but it would not carry the legal force to stop the UK leaving without a deal next March.
Instead, the government would have to put new legislation before Parliament and secure the approval of MPs if it did not want the UK to leave without a deal.
As the clerk of the House of Commons, Sir David Natzler, told a committee of MPs last month, "there is no House procedure that can overcome statute. Statute is overturned by statute."
But in addition to the rigid legal position there would be the frenzied political reality.
The maximum three-week window between the government's deal being defeated and the requirement on ministers to propose a way forward would see several alternative scenarios come into play.
The prime minister could make a second attempt at getting the withdrawal deal through the Commons.
 Sir David Natzler said, in procedural terms, that would be possible.
"The words might be the same but the underlying reality would be self-evidently be different", Sir David said.
Brussels might be persuaded to tweak the political declaration on the future relationship to meet the concerns of MPs.
Theresa May could try to return to Brussels to renegotiate the Northern Irish "backstop" - the main sticking point for many MPs. The government has long insisted this is not an option, because the EU has said the existing deal is final and there is no alternative.
Might Brussels give Mrs May some leeway if she loses the vote by a narrowish margin?
Some MPs hope she could get behind another version of Brexit at this point. There is support on the Tory benches for a membership of the European Free Trade Area, which would see the UK staying closely linked to the EU, like Norway.
This would not be a straightforward move - and would require extensive renegotiation, even if the EU was prepared to contemplate it, and the extension of Article 50, delaying Brexit day.
Then there is Labour's proposal for a permanent customs union - Mrs May has always ruled that out, but if enough MPs get behind it, it might be an option, although, again, it would need Article 50 to be extended to allow for more talks.
Unlikely, given her track record of doggedly ploughing on against the odds - but if she is defeated by a heavy margin on 11 December she may feel she has no other option. There would then be a Tory leadership contest, which would turn into a fight to the death between the Leave and Remain wings of the party, with profound effects on the future of Brexit and, indeed, the country.
Jacob Rees-Mogg's band of Brexiteers famously failed to reach the magic 48 letters of no confidence in the PM to trigger a leadership contest last month.
But if she tries to cling on after a significant defeat on 11 December, more MPs could add their names to the list, forcing a no-confidence vote that she might struggle to win.
MPs might suddenly shift in large numbers towards the idea of another referendum to break the Parliamentary impasse and open the possibility of stopping Brexit.
At the moment, about eight Tory and 44 Labour MPs have publicly committed to another referendum.
Theresa May is dead set against another referendum and it's hard to see an alternative Tory leader picking up that baton.
But the Labour leadership has said all options should remain on the table (including another referendum) and the SNP and Lib Dems say there should be one too.
However, a second referendum can only happen if the government brings forward legislation to hold one and a majority in the Commons supports it. There would have to be legislation. The rules for referendums are set out by the Political Parties, Elections & Referendums Act 2000.
The Electoral Commission's recommendation is that there should be six months between the legislation being passed and referendum day.
This could be shortened but, realistically, not by all that much. The UCL Constitution Unit, a research centre on constitutional change, suggests that could be 22 weeks.
So for the referendum to happen there would have to be a delay to Brexit - and that would require all 27 EU member states and the UK to agree.
This is Labour's preferred outcome to the deal being rejected.
But as Dr Jack Simson Caird from the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law says, "with the ticking clock of Article 50 it's very difficult to see that this represents a solution to the problem" of a deadlocked parliament.
That will be the other critical factor at play.
Unless the government asks for an extension to the negotiating period - ie Brexit being delayed - the time for parliament and the government to agree a way forward is incredibly tight.  The clock won't wait.
There are two routes to a general election through the Fixed Term Parliament Act.
Two-thirds of MPs could vote for one. This is the quickest route - a poll could be held as soon as 25 working days later.
Alternatively MPs could go for a no confidence motion in the government - Labour has said they will table such a motion if Mrs May loses on 11 December.
This is a straight majority rather than requiring two thirds of MPs to vote for it.
This gives two weeks for someone to demonstrate they can command a majority in the Commons. If that does not happen, the 25 working days countdown to a general election kicks in.
Any election now would be on the existing constituency boundaries. The new ones have to be approved by the Commons and the Lords. And that has been put on hold until after Brexit.
Another idea that has been floated is a "negotiated no deal" in the which the UK would ask the EU for a (paid) one year extension of membership before leaving on World Trade Organisation terms.
Some Brexiteers might like the idea but it's hard to see Parliament supporting such a move - with or without an explicit vote.
Because Parliament will have to come to a view.
As Maddy Thimont Jack, from the Institute for Government think tank says: "We do have Parliamentary sovereignty and there are clear ways for Parliament to express a very strong political view.
"I cannot see how a government can get through a legislative programme, for no deal, for example, if you don't have the support of Parliament."
Theresa May might have neutralised the chance of defeat in the Commons if she had found a Parliamentary consensus for the Brexit she planned to negotiate right at the start of the process.
Instead, she faces a fraught few days and a vote that will define the country's future for many years.
Right now, it looks like the government's deal cannot get through the Commons.
But the mood in Westminster could shift quickly in the current pandemonium.

Donald Tusk rejected Theresa May's Brexit proposals at an EU summit this week and posted an Instagram story shortly afterwards.
 "A piece of cake, perhaps?," said the head of the European Council, alongside a picture of him and May at the summit in Austria. "Sorry, no cherries."
This provocative post was Tusk's idea and is part of a wider strategy to appeal to young people via the app, an EU source has told the BBC.
Here are five things to know about how Donald Tusk and other EU leaders use Instagram.
"He's the one coming up with these posts - he has a good sense of what works and what doesn't," says an EU source working with Tusk on social media.
"He's not the biggest social media geek but he likes it.
"He jokes and laughs and wants to show humour. This post was clearly something he was into - we produced the image [of cherries] and he said let's do it!"
The post combines the EU's favourite Brexit cliches. First, the idea that the UK wants to "have its cake and eat it".
Second, that the UK is guilty of "cherry-picking" - keeping the bits of EU membership it likes and ditching the bits it doesn't.
"The cherry-picking one is something we have talked about a lot and finally we had a good pic from a good angle," says an EU source
Many Brexit supporters reacted angrily to Tusk's post on social media.
Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke described the post as "extraordinarily disrespectful".
Pro-Europeans had mixed views, with one describing it as "brilliant trolling" by Mr Tusk, while another said it was "grim and not on, frankly".
A source close to Tusk said the message should not be taken too seriously. "It was an innocent gesture. He is always expressing how sad he is about the U.K. leaving.
"We were taking the difficulty of the situation and giving it a soft touch."
Tusk's team did an in-house analysis of various social media platforms and ultimately decided to focus on Instagram, the BBC understands.
 They found that while Twitter is useful for communicating with journalists, not so many other people people use it regularly.
However, Tusk did post this bombastic video on his Twitter account, showing his Autumn priorities in the style of an action film trailer.
Instagram, on the other hand, is very popular with a range of groups, especially younger people.
"We have political messages but we also want to move away from the cold politician image," an EU source told the BBC.
"For example we launched on his birthday with a picture with his grandchildren, and this kind of personal touch has proven really successful."
 As well as transmitting the EU's core messages, Instagram can also be a place where politicians can joke and show a sense of humour.
"It's more positive, everyone is cheering each other," said an EU source. "We are reaching different audiences and the discussion isn't so violent."
Tusk's Instagram account combines serious messages with light-hearted pictures -  sometimes in the same post, including one notable example from the Salzburg summit.
 "We aren't focusing just on the political angle and we showed that with the ice cream - it's fun but also has a message," said an EU source.
"Eating an ice cream is sweet but the expression is sour, talks are tough but it's important to be managed."
The press teams in the European Parliament and Commission have noticed the effort put into Tusk's Instagram and are paying attention, according to an EU source.
 "All around the EU everyone is on Instagram. It is new and we need to use it."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel was an inspiration for Donald Tusk - she has long been active on Instagram but not Twitter.
"We are still communicating the position of the EU, it still has to reflect this but with more emotion."
 Although Donald Tusk's Instagram account has received a lot of attention from political journalists lately, he has a long way to become the biggest name in his own family.
His daughter Katarzyna, an Instagram influencer in her native Poland, has more than four times as many followers as her dad.
Her account combines "photography, style and daily moments".

Boris Johnson is the UK's new prime minister and will now begin the task of trying to deliver Brexit.
The former foreign secretary has pledged the UK will leave the EU on 31 October, "do or die", accepting that a no-deal Brexit will happen if an agreement cannot be reached by then.
He has called the withdrawal agreement "dead" but says he will "take the bits that are serviceable and get them done" - such as guaranteeing the rights of 3.2 million EU citizens in the UK.
The withdrawal agreement (WA) is the deal negotiated by the UK government and the European Union (EU) to settle the basis on which the UK will leave. As part of it, the UK agreed to pay the EU a "divorce bill" (estimated to be £39bn), guarantee EU citizens' rights and sign up to the Irish backstop - an insurance policy designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
The deal allowed for a transition period after Brexit, during which things like UK-EU trade would stay the same, while both sides worked out their future relationship. But the withdrawal agreement was rejected three times by MPs - leading to Theresa May's downfall.
After Brexit, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland could be in different customs and regulatory regimes, which might mean products being checked at the border. To avoid border posts (which some believe could threaten the peace process), Mrs May and the EU agreed on the backstop. In the event that no free trade deal was agreed that avoided a hard border, this insurance policy would effectively keep the UK and EU in a customs union. This proved controversial because it would stop the UK doing some of its own trade deals.
Mr Johnson is saying the Irish border can be dealt with after the UK leaves the EU, instead of as part of the withdrawal agreement.
Obstacle: The EU has said the Irish backstop cannot be removed from the withdrawal agreement - the deal to delay the UK's exit until the end of October specifically prohibited its renegotiation. If the UK leaves with no deal and seeks a free trade agreement, the EU has said it will not begin negotiations until the issue of the Irish border is settled.
Boris Johnson wants to ditch the Irish backstop - he's called it "a prison". He has said there are "abundant, abundant technical fixes" to avoid checks at the border. He concedes there is "no single magic bullet" but points to a "wealth of solutions" instead.
Obstacle: The UK and the EU have previously looked for technological solutions to the Irish border without success. EU deputy chief negotiator Sabine Weyand said in January: "We looked at every border on this Earth, every border the EU has with a third country - there's simply no way you can do away with checks and controls." There are "alternative arrangements" which could help: trusted trader schemes (where businesses are certified to make sure they meet certain standards) and ways of making customs declarations away from the border, but they wouldn't eliminate the need for checks altogether. After Brexit, the EU would still require inspections of things like animal and plant products entering its single market, and the new entry point to that market would be at the Irish border.
Boris Johnson has said he is prepared to withhold the money the UK has agreed to pay the EU and use it as a negotiating tool to get a better deal. Settling the UK's financial obligations (which include previously agreed contributions to the EU budget and funding things like EU staff pensions) was agreed by Theresa May as part of the withdrawal agreement. The figure for those obligations has been calculated at £39bn.
Obstacle: The EU has said it will not start future trade talks until the issue of money (along with citizens' rights and the Irish border) is settled. Refusing to pay would almost certainly sour relations between the two, and could lead to a legal challenge from the EU.
While accepting that a "disruptive... badly handled" no-deal Brexit would be costly, Mr Johnson said it was "vanishingly inexpensive if you prepare" and added that "much of this work has been done".
Obstacle: Mr Johnson's view of the cost of a no-deal Brexit is at odds with the vast majority of economists, a significant number of his own backbenchers, and organisations such as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which calculates the government's forecasts for the economy. The OBR said no deal would push the UK economy into recession.
Mr Johnson has said he would mitigate the effects of no deal on the UK economy (which he admits would cause "disruption") by relying on a piece of trade law known as Article 24. He originally said this would allow the UK and the EU to have zero tariffs (taxes on imports) on trade while the two sides negotiated a trade deal. This would, in theory, help keep trade flowing and would stop the EU imposing tariffs on goods being imported from the UK (cars, for example, are subject to a 10% import tax from non-EU countries, and on agricultural produce it's even higher).
Obstacle: Boris Johnson was wrong to say Article 24 would automatically allow for a standstill in trade relations, and indeed - when challenged in interviews - he later accepted that it would require the agreement of both sides. Also, Article 24 only covers the trade in goods (not services) and it does not cover non-tariff barriers such as regulations. The EU has ruled out signing any Article 24 agreement immediately after a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson has just over three months until Brexit day. He will become prime minister on 24 July and Parliament begins its summer recess the following day.
A week later there will be a by-election and the rest of August will be pretty quiet, both in Westminster and Brussels. Parliament returns at the start of September but will take another recess later in the month for party conferences.
On 17 October there will be a summit of EU leaders. Brexit is scheduled for 31 October, the day before the new European Commission takes office.
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By the time you read this, Labour delegates might have decided what to do.
Or perhaps not.
Their meetings have form. They've been discussing how to find a decent compromise on a Brexit vote at conference since 18:30 BST. These are issues that have been running hot for months and months, and I am writing this five hours later.
What are they arguing about?
A significant chunk - polling suggests a hefty majority of members - of the party would like to see another vote on the European Union, with the party's leanings overwhelmingly towards Remain.
Jeremy Corbyn vowed he would be a different kind of leader and listen to his party's membership. So what's the problem? Surely he should just say "sure", and acquiesce?
Guess what, it's not nearly so simple. First, repeat again and again, any party's members are not the same as their voters, and potential voters.
That's always so. But it is clear as day now. Because while Labour MPs and members are overwhelmingly among those who voted Remain, millions of people who had voted Labour put their cross in the Leave box.
To campaign immediately for another EU referendum risks infuriating huge swathes of voters, and opens Labour up to accusations from their opponents that they are insulting voters and ignoring democracy.
The second reason why another referendum is only being reluctantly considered is that it's not clear how you actually get there.
Referendums need legislation. They then need a Parliamentary process to decide questions. If there were to be a vote, should it be on the terms of a deal or no deal, or reopen the whole question of staying or leaving?
Should it be straight away? Is it possible to do in the time given that we are due to be leaving the EU in about six months.
Why does Labour think it would be able to get a better deal than the Tories in any case?
Those campaigning for the vote of course say they have answers to those questions. But many senior figures aren't convinced.
One member of the shadow cabinet, frustrated, said it's not realistic to see how it could happen, and the People's Vote campaign is just like "praying for a fairy godmother".
Another told me "it's just a distraction", and could even give Theresa May a way out if she ends up completely stuck.
They believe the party has to be "resolute", and keep pushing, pushing and pushing for a general election instead.
Neither of those are in the party's gift. But even theoretical choices matter in a time of such political turmoil.
And it's an interesting test for a leader who transformed his party based on the promise of giving members more say.
By the early hours, the leadership may have given party members some, but not all of what they want - a compromise motion that will give the party a chance to commit to some kind of vote.
It won't be as explicit as some want.
But remember last year the debate was not even fully permitted on the conference floor. Jeremy Corbyn's supporters were reluctant to allow any divisions to be displayed.
So, however vague the compromise, however late tonight's discussions go, those who've been pushing the party to commit to another referendum for months are encouraged just to have got this far.

Prime Minister Theresa May has been holding talks with MPs in the aftermath of the heavy defeat of her Brexit deal in the Commons - and following a slim victory in a no-confidence vote.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay are also holding talks with senior opposition politicians.
Meetings are being held in No 10 Downing Street and 70 Whitehall, the Cabinet Office.
First up was SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts, and Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who all had talks with the prime minister on Wednesday night.
Mr Blackford said that the extension of Article 50 - the two-year mechanism that means the UK leaves the EU on 29 March - the ruling out of a no-deal Brexit, and the option of another EU referendum would have to form the basis of future discussions.
Ms Saville Roberts said they were "committed to finding a real solution" but "that means taking a no-deal Brexit off the table and a people's vote on our European future".
Sir Vince said he was encouraged by Mrs May's "willingness to talk about these issues in detail". The preferred choice of his party is another referendum.
Labour leader and leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn said he was "quite happy" to talk with Mrs May but she had to rule out a no-deal Brexit first.
Tory colleagues and Brexiteers Owen Paterson, Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Mark Francois and Steve Baker were among the first politicians spotted in Whitehall on Thursday morning, as well as Conservative MP and former Northern Irish Secretary Theresa Villiers. They are all members of the Tories' influential European Research Group (ERG).
Brexiteer John Whittingdale tweeted afterwards that their group's meeting with the prime minister had been "constructive".
Former Conservative cabinet minister Mr Paterson described the meeting as "thoroughly worthwhile", "very constructive" and a "good exchange".
On the subject of taking a no-deal Brexit off the table, he said:  "You will lose all the pressure on the EU if we give up no-deal, WTO (World Trade Organization) terms, and you give up the date. And we just drift on month after month and this whole saga continues."
Sir Graham Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, and Cheryl Gillan, MP for Chesham and Amersham and a vice-chair of the 1922 Committee, were also seen arriving at the Cabinet Office.
They were later photographed leaving Downing Street with other members of the committee, after a meeting with the prime minister.
09:00 GMT - After her meeting with the prime minister, Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's only MP, said Mrs May had refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit and resisted the option of extending Article 50.
"I repeatedly urged her again and again to take no-deal off the table because I think it completely skews the talks - because you know that cliff edge is there," she said.
10:40 - DUP leader Arlene Foster and DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds arrived for their meeting. The prime minister relies on their party's support to prop up her government.
Speaking in Downing Street following their meeting with Mrs May, Ms Foster said the prime minister had been in "listening mode" and there had been optimism that a Brexit deal could still be reached.
She said she had made a "clear ask" in relation to the Irish backstop, urging Mrs May to address it "in a satisfactory way".
Tom Brake, the Lib Dem's Brexit spokesman, Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem's chief whip, and deputy Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson were all spotted arriving to the Cabinet Office.
After his meeting with Mr Lidington, Mr Brake said a no-deal Brexit needed to be off the table.
10:49 - Conservative MP Shailesh Vara arrived at the Cabinet Office.
11:27 - Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price met with Mr Lidington and Mr Gove, who he said had been in "listening mode".
"If the government were to come out on Monday with that position [of another referendum] then the gridlock, the impasse, the logjam would be broken, and we could move forward," Mr Price said.
"We talked in detail about the practicalities of how we could make it [another referendum] happen."
11:30 - Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, who chairs the Treasury Select Committee, arrived at the Cabinet Office.
After 12:00 - Tory MPs Damian Green and Andrew Mitchell spoke to journalists outside the Cabinet Office after their meeting.
"No two members of Parliament think precisely the same way but now we've got to make progress," Mr Mitchell said.
"It's in the national interest and it's the right thing for the prime minister to do, to corral people together and make Parliament focus on what the answer to all of this is and what we agree about, not what we disagree about."
Mr Green, a close ally of Mrs May, criticised Mr Corbyn's decision not to take part in the talks, saying the move was "completely absurd".
John Mann, a Leave-supporting Labour MP and long-term critic of Mr Corbyn, was spotted coming out of the Cabinet Office.
13:05 - Tory MPs George Freeman and James Cartlidge arrived at the Cabinet Office.
13:57 - Labour MPs Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, and Hilary Benn, who chairs the Brexit Select Committee, arrived at the Cabinet Office.
After meeting Mr Lidington, Mr Benn said the government had to rule out a no-deal Brexit as a first step and secondly the prime minister had to change her "red lines".
Ms Cooper said: "The most important thing now is that the government actually listens and it doesn't just think that a defeat that was that huge can simply be dismissed."
They said they had attended the meeting in their capacity as chairs of cross-parliamentary committees, after Mr Corbyn barred Labour MPs from taking part in the talks while a no-deal Brexit remains an option.
14:07 - Tory MPs Peter Bone and Tom Pursglove arrived at the Cabinet Office.
On his way to meet the prime minister, Eurosceptic Mr Bone said he was "hopeful we can get a deal".
15:31 - Tory MPs Tom Pursglove and Julian Lewis were seen leaving the Cabinet Office.
15:50 - Labour MP Stephen Kinnock went into the Cabinet Office.
16:08 - Tory MPs Steve Brine, Richard Harrington, Robert Buckland and Margot James were spotted outside the Cabinet Office.

So the focus of the Brexit talks has shifted slightly as a result of the EU leaders' summit in Brussels.
There is still plenty of tough bargaining ahead in the next few weeks, especially on the question of money.
But there is also going to be more and more talk about preparing for a transition period - for what happens immediately after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
Plenty of people see transition as a way to buy a little more time to sort things out - to finalise negotiations on a future trade deal. But the UK government prefers to calls the transition phase a "period of implementation".
It is not entirely clear what would be implemented.
But the Brexit Secretary David Davis warned this week that without a final deal on a future partnership with the EU - at least in principle - the government would not want to trigger any kind of transition at all.
Does it mean the two sides view the prospects for transition very differently?
The EU27 - the other member states without the UK - have now agreed to start working on new guidelines for their negotiators.
And both the EU and Theresa May (in her Florence speech) have said that any transition/implementation period would take place under "the existing structure of EU rules and regulations".
There will be plenty of technical challenges: what happens, for example, to the UK's role in EU trade agreements with third countries? Those third countries might have their own opinions about that.
But there is also the question of what happens during a transition period itself?
It could mean roughly two more years to continue negotiations on the details of a future partnership with the EU on trade, security and a host of other issues.
The Confederation of British Industry, for example, argues that in order to avoid a "cliff-edge" Brexit, negotiations on a trading agreement should continue during a transition.
But UK government policy is rather different. It still argues that a deal on our "final relationship" with the rest of the EU can be completed before the UK leaves the EU at the end of March 2019.
Most observers are convinced that, for practical reasons, that will not be possible - there is simply too much to do.
But Mr Davis insisted in the House of Commons this week that if the broad outlines of a permanent deal are not in place when the UK leaves, a transition period will not be triggered.
Asked by Conservative MP Rishi Sunak for reassurance that "what is meant to be a transitory state of affairs does not become a permanent bridge to nowhere", Mr Davis said: "We will try to get the nature of the implementation phase agreed as soon as possible, so that businesses can take that into account."
He added: "But he's right that such a transition phase would only be triggered once we've completed the deal itself, we cannot carry on negotiating through that - our negotiating position during the transition phase would not be very strong."
In other words, Mr Davis is saying - in stronger language than the government appears to have used before - that if there is no final deal by March 2019, at least in principle, then the UK would not want to trigger a transition period.
The words "at least in principle" contain a fair amount of wiggle room. And the EU itself would be delighted if the outlines of a future agreement could be agreed so quickly.
It says only that a withdrawal agreement (as opposed to a future trade agreement) has to be finalised in order for there to be a transition. And Article 50 simply says the withdrawal agreement must "take account of the framework for a future relationship".
But Mr Davis appears to be upping the ante. "No final deal" equals "no transition" equals "hard Brexit".
As a negotiating tactic, it may be designed to keep the pressure on. But it may not be what many business leaders want to hear.
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After a public shout-out of "no way!" to renegotiating the Brexit backstop plan or draft withdrawal agreement, the EU now waits for the British prime minister to come to Brussels.
Parliament appeared to lob the ball back in the EU's court last night, with the majority of MPs uniting around a request for alternatives to the backstop.
But the EU is preparing to swing it back to the UK pronto, with a direct question to Theresa May:
"What concrete alternative do you have worked out?"
Remember that EU and UK negotiators spent 18 difficult months trying to come up with a bilaterally acceptable fallback mechanism to keep the Irish border open, in case their (still to be negotiated) post-Brexit trade deal wasn't up and running in time, or didn't fully resolve the issue.
The UK-wide customs aspect of the backstop plan - where the whole of the UK would stay in a customs agreement with the EU to avoid Northern Ireland being "isolated" from Great Britain by remaining under EU regulations to avoid border checks - came at the prime minister's insistence, not the EU's.
No other workable alternative was found and the document was signed off by the cabinet and 27 EU leaders in late November.
Touching the backstop text risks the EU seeming disloyal to member state Ireland, while caving in to departing member UK. That's a message of "weakness" Brussels does not want to send to international trade partners, or to the not-exactly-EU-enthusiastic governments of Poland and Italy, for example.
It also risks contravening the Good Friday Agreement and the integrity of the single market.
But... when push comes to shove, EU leaders want to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
If it comes about, they will be answerable to their voters whose lives and businesses could well be affected.
So, while taking a hard line in public, those leaders are also doing some hard thinking behind closed doors.
This does not mean Brussels will do anything to get a deal.
When it comes to the backstop, EU leaders will resist compromising on core principles. Theresa May has spoken again of seeking a time limit to the backstop or a unilateral exit mechanism for the UK.
EU diplomats tell me she has to be more realistic.
Brussels intends to stonewall her until "the message is driven home", they say. Expect the EU to stand very firm for now and for some tense days ahead.
Brussels' deadline is 29 March, whereas the prime minister, who has promised to hold another vote on the Brexit deal, has a self-imposed deadline of mid-February.
The EU will not rush to help her with that one.
Brussels takes heart from the fact that the Brady amendment on the backstop, passed last night by a majority of MPs, is actually pretty ambiguous.
"If Theresa May seeks changes to the backstop," according to one diplomat I spoke to, "then that might be fine if she widens her thinking as to what constitutes a 'change'."
The amendment talks about finding "alternatives" to the backstop.
And this is something the Withdrawal Agreement already says both the EU and UK would be open to if alternatives became viable.
One thought doing the EU rounds is to attach a list of possible alternatives to the backstop text.
This could include technological solutions the more hard-line conservative MPs are so keen on.
The EU has said time and again that technology alone is not adequate to totally do away with physical checks on the border but the option could be placed on a list of potential alternatives to be judged - as to whether they are actually workable or not - at a later stage were the backstop ever to be needed.
Another idea is to take the UK-wide customs aspect out of the backstop, seeing that it provoked so much opposition in the UK, adding it instead to the above-mentioned list of "alternatives".
There is at the moment a huge amount of resentment in EU circles that so much about Brexit seems to them to be "all about appeasing the Conservative Party": the referendum itself, Theresa May's "red lines" on leaving the customs union and single market, and now the push for more on the divorce deal which UK civil servants negotiated and which the Prime Minister herself signed off on.
EU leaders are in no hurry to convene another Brussels summit - which they would need to do if the withdrawal agreement text were to be changed. The last thing they want is to be holding one every two weeks for Theresa May until Brexit day, should she be pushed by MPs to keep coming back for more.
They hope EU unity - so palpable until now - will hold while the pressure mounts.
At some point in the near future, Europe's leaders will decide the right time has come to engage. To their mind, that's clearly not now.
For the prime minister it will be an uncomfortable wait.

In contrast to the sound and fury coming out of Westminster on Thursday night, the silence on EU leaders' Twitter accounts was deafening.
In part it is surely a stunned silence. Europe's politicians gaze open mouthed at the maelstrom of division and chaos currently whirling through the House of Commons.
Three years after the UK voted to leave the EU - two weeks before the official Brexit day - Parliament appears to be in meltdown with no unifying solution in sight.
EU politicians breathe deep, shuddering sighs at the thought of prolonging the cross-Channel agony of the Brexit process.
So will they or won't they agree to an extension? What conditions could they demand and how long would Brexit be delayed by?
Like so many things to do with Brexit - the answer is: we're not 100% certain.
Earlier this week, a number of EU leaders including France's Emmanuel Macron, Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and Spain's Pedro Sanchez sounded pretty hard-line.
They wouldn't agree to delay Brexit, they said, unless the prime minister came up with a very good reason.
EU leaders are frustrated, irritated and fatigued by the Brexit process but it's also worth bearing in mind that they have two specific audiences in mind these days when they take to the cameras:
- UK MPs whom the EU wishes to pressure into voting for Theresa May's negotiated deal or something else Brussels believes to be realistic
-  EU citizens about to cast their ballots in the upcoming elections for the European parliament. The EU's intended message to them: We're tough on those who mess with our club, so don't vote for Eurosceptic nationalists like Marine Le Pen!
EU leaders' silence after Thursday's vote by the House of Commons to delay Brexit may also have been because they realise - whatever their individual opinions on an extension - that they are obliged by law to come to a unanimous decision. And they won't reach that decision until they are all stuck in a room together, which they will be at an EU summit in a week's time.
In the meantime, former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage says he is lobbying countries to make sure at least one of them vetoes a Brexit delay.
But that rather overplays Mr Farage's power of influence on European governments. His claim is little more than a publicity stunt.
The EU's final decision on an extension will be dictated by political and economic self-interest.
Delaying Brexit will prolong the uncertainty for European businesses and citizens - and ensure that the issue continues to hang over EU affairs.
But EU leaders don't want to be blamed by their voters for a costly no-deal Brexit either. An extension might avoid that.
So, tough talk aside, realpolitik is likely to win the day.
It could be a longer-term extension, favoured by European Council President Donald Tusk in order to give the UK time for a "rethink", he says.
Or a shorter extension, if Mrs May can show next week that she's close to parliament approving her deal.
EU leaders will probably say yes to a Brexit extension, even if it's through gritted teeth, though they may decide not take a final decision next week.

How much of a threat is the Spain/Gibraltar question to the Brexit summit on Sunday?
Well, it could turn out to be either huge or simply a puff of smoke. Madrid and Downing Street say they are working on it.
There's not much time left for the question to assume either form.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May meets EU leaders in Brussels to sign off on the Brexit texts in just over 36 hours.
Grandstanding for his domestic audience aside, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez feels hoodwinked and angry.
Gibraltar is of great national interest, and hurt pride, for many Spaniards. It became official government policy during the Franco dictatorship to get back what Spaniards nickname "El Peñón"  (The Rock).
After the UK's Brexit vote, Spain at the very least saw an opportunity to re-gain considerable influence over Gibraltar.
Eyebrows shot up in the UK at the very start of the Article 50 process when article 24 of the EU's negotiating guidelines stated: "After the United Kingdom leaves the Union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom."
In fact, though, the bilateral UK-Spain talks that then took place in parallel to EU-UK Brexit negotiations went extremely smoothly... until just recently.
Spanish resentment started building after the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his team proposed going into a "tunnel" with UK negotiators - blocking out political and media noise - in an attempt to break the lengthy impasse over the wording of the Irish "backstop" - that guarantee to avoid a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
It is during that tunnel moment that Spain feels it was "betrayed".
By the time EU and UK negotiators emerged, the Irish backstop had become a UK-wide customs area, meaning it was potentially straying into post Brexit trade deal territory.
Yet neither in that text, nor in the draft of the political declaration on EU-UK future relations published on Thursday, is there mention of Gibraltar and the need for Spanish approval.
Prime Minister Sánchez believes the positive attitude Spain had shown in bilateral Brexit talks over Gibraltar is now being abused; that Spanish national interest was sacrificed in the tunnel in order to offer an extra "sweetener" to the UK in wider Brexit negotiations.
European Commission negotiators flatly deny this.
But Spain is not alone in believing that priorities of individual EU countries were ignored during tunnel negotiations.
France, Denmark and the Netherlands felt let down by their EU negotiators over pinning down ongoing fishing rights in UK waters in the political declaration on post Brexit EU-UK relations.
We have now heard that the fishing issue has been "resolved" (for now). The details have yet to emerge.
This means Gibraltar is the only outstanding issue ahead of Sunday's Brexit summit, according to the EU.
Now, Spain's Prime Minister is hugely pro-European. He sees himself as a bit of a Macron number two.
It is not in his nature to scupper EU plans or an EU summit.
Remember when Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini refused to take in migrant boats earlier this year, Mr Sánchez was the first to step in and help in order to avert an EU crisis - and also to win brownie points in Brussels.
Pedro Sánchez is under a lot of domestic pressure. He heads a minority government and has been repeatedly accused by the main conservative opposition of being "soft" over Gibraltar in Brexit negotiations.
He also faces elections in the politically significant Andalucia region on 2 December. A part of Spain that neighbours - you guessed it - The Rock.
It is possible that Spain's prime minister has learned a lesson from Italy's deputy prime minister: that if you dig in your heels in the EU, you can get results.
He knows, of course, that holding the Brexit summit now, in November, was at Theresa's May's insistence; that the EU thought it possible to seal the deal next month instead.
This knowledge is in Mr Sánchez's back pocket.
It's important to bear in mind that while Spain doesn't have an actual veto over the Brexit divorce deal, EU leaders need to reach decisions by consensus at their summits. They don't actually put up their hands to vote.
There is no way they can rubber stamp a text designed for a leaving member (the UK) when an existing member (Spain) is so strongly opposed.
It is true, there is less EU solidarity with Spain over Gibraltar than there was with Ireland over the border issue. But the EU has been so proud about the very unusual unity amongst its members over Brexit, they won't want to give that up at this late stage.
So, in effect, Spain could exercise a moral or political "veto" on Sunday.
Which means that although Spain does not have a formal veto, it could exercise moral and political objections that would effectively stop other countries from voting against it.
EU insiders don't think it will come down to that. They believe this can be solved without reopening the Brexit texts by noting Spain's insistence on continuing UK.-Madrid bilateral talks in a declaration added to the texts or other possible EU formulas.
But even if Spanish opposition melts away before Sunday, the bitterness over Gibraltar, over fishing rights, over ensuring that the UK has no competitive advantages over European businesses in a post-Brexit trade deal, these are examples of the substantial obstacles the UK will face from EU countries in negotiating a trade deal with EU after Brexit.
And that's a deal the parliaments of every single EU country - including Spain's - will need to ratify unanimously.

As we talked about late on Monday, there has been a sense building in Westminster that the prime minister is, maybe by accident, maybe increasingly by design, looking to almost the last possible minute for the definitive Brexit vote.
While ministers speak publicly of "talks" that must be given time to be completed with the EU, and officials continue to chew over the possibility of the "Malthouse compromise" (remember that? It already seems like months ago that it emerged, blinking, into the Brexit saga) more and more MPs believe it is displacement activity - ministers keeping outwardly busy while they run down the clock.
Early on Tuesday morning, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom did not exactly quash that notion in an interview with the Today programme.
She appeared to open up the possibility that MPs might in the end be asked to vote at a moment of peak jeopardy, and that ministers might be willing to let the matter run that long.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the prime minister herself hinted that the government was prepared to do that.
She was answering a technical question about the CRAG (the constitutional reform and governance bill before you ask, Brexit is nothing if not replete with acronyms).
For ages, the existence of that bill has built a theoretical pause between a vote on the deal, and our actual departure from the EU.
But today the prime minister said that process could be put on fast forward.
So, in practice, if she wants to push this vote later, and later, then only to the very last minute (and remember the EU doesn't want to budge until then), that bit of legislation might not be a block, because if MPs approve it, she can get round it.
That's always a big if, of course, but it certainly suggests that the government can at least foresee a situation where they have to take dramatic last-minute action, whatever the existing law says.
What's also emerging though is how former Remainers want to stop that happening.
They won't be using up their energy this week on votes that might not get anywhere.
But their concerns have pushed the PM now to promise a vote will take place on 27 February.
And there will be another go from the prominent Labour frontbencher Yvette Cooper, working with backing from Tories like Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles.
They will again try to force through legislation that would delay Brexit if the government can't get a deal done in time, removing the possibility of that last-minute kamikaze choice.
But that will only work if enough Tory Remainers are ready to vote with them.
And the way the numbers stack up, that probably has to mean ministers being ready to quit.
One member of the government told me on Tuesday: "They have to realise that is it - and if no senior member of the cabinet is willing to do it, then we're heading for that terrible choice."
Another minister, one of those who is thinking about departure, said: "I have to look the PM in the eye and ask what she is really willing to do. But for a number of us it's party versus country, and the Tories don't do well if we put ourselves before the public."
Some of those organising the push to take the March "deal or no deal" choice off the table believe there are at least 10 government ministers who would be ready to quit.
Maybe so.
On past evidence, ministers who see themselves as moderate and pragmatic hang back in the end.
But the end of February really does seem to be the last moment where they could do more to stop no deal than just pass a resolution the government could then ignore.
If they are not willing to give up their ministerial red boxes on 27 February, their chance really will have gone.

What now?
Theresa May has been granted a little breathing space. The EU has allowed a few more days to try to get her deal through the House of Commons.
But it's not the timetable that she chose.
And as things stand, the expectation that the compromise deal will get through is low.
And, more to the point, the government does not believe that it can hold off another attempt by a powerful cross-party group of MPs who are resolved to put Parliament forcibly in charge of the process to find alternatives.
Ministers are therefore today not just wondering about how to manage one last heave for the prime minister's deal, but what they should do next, when - odds on - the whole issue is in the hands of the Commons, not Number 10.
Within days, MPs will push for a series of votes on different versions of Brexit - the "Norway" model, another referendum, Labour's version of Brexit with a customs union, the list goes on.
But here's the dilemma.
Does Theresa May just wait for Parliament to do what one minister describes as "grab control of the order paper"?
Or should they instead try to lead the process, forcing what another member of the cabinet described as a "fresh start", even though it seems "ludicrous" to be resetting the whole process in this way at this stage?
Some in the government believe the best choice is to take charge of this next stage - to lead the process as Parliament and the opposition parties try to find a new compromise.
Sounds like a no brainer.
But there is a real hesitation over whether the Labour frontbench are really interested in trying to find a compromise or will, ultimately, be too tempted by the political opportunity of pulling the rug from under the government at the very last minute.
And given that the majority of MPs are, theoretically, in favour of a softer Brexit than the one the prime minister has negotiated, could Theresa May really preside over a process that would end up there?
But if the government sits back and just lets Parliament get on with it, then Number 10 accepts becoming a passenger - entirely in the hands of the MPs whose behaviour the prime minister so reviled in that controversial address in Number 10 on Wednesday night.
Don't forget - for many Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, the idea of a softer Brexit than the one the prime minister has negotiated is nothing short of an abomination.
(That could, in a hypothetical world, mean that more of them are willing to back Theresa May's deal than currently expected - if it is the "hardest" brexit that is on offer).
So for Theresa May's survival as leader of the Conservative Party, there is a case, strange as it sounds, for her to hang back from leading the next phase.
If Parliament chooses a softer Brexit in the end, it could suit Mrs May not to have her fingerprints on it.
But is it really a tenable leadership strategy, choosing not to lead?
Brexit has done some very strange things to our political process. The reality is though, if Theresa May next week accepts the will of Parliament and it is "soft Brexit", the reaction from the Conservative Party could be explosive.
Frankly, the choices for Theresa May are running out.
Many Tories on all sides of the debate are deeply alarmed by how things have unravelled in the last few days.
One senior, influential, MP who has been studiously loyal to the prime minister is incandescent, saying that she has "angered all the people whose support she needed", and that "she is the most stubborn and ill-suited person for this job".
Another former minister suggests Theresa May's deal still could pass, but only if she tempts Labour rebels across with a promise of a referendum to give the public the chance to rubber stamp it, or "we'll have a new PM with a new plan", and maybe soon.
One current member of the government says "only Number Ten can't see that she is on her way out".
Another minister says the situation is "super dangerous".
All of the fundamental factors that have preserved her so far remain - there is no obvious alternative plan that is certain to get a majority of MPs on side.
There is no obvious leader in waiting that the whole Conservative Party would gladly choose. The Labour Party have their own battles with their own divisions over Brexit.
The traditional claim of TINA - There Is No Alternative - has helped Theresa May hang on.
But now an alternative to her deal is likely to be forced upon her, one that could make her leadership impossible to maintain.
Theresa May arrives back in Number 10 today having won a little bit of extra time, but she has less and less space to breathe.

It is almost the end of another very long and fractious week in Westminster (although their lordships look like they'll be going for quite some time yet).
But the main item of business in the last frantic 24 hours has been the cross-party talks between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
From both sides, it sounds like they are serious and genuine, and negotiators got into the guts of both their positions and technical details on Thursday.
Remember, behind the scenes there isn't as much difference between the two sides' versions of Brexit as the hue and cry of Parliament implies.
But the political, not the policy, distance between the two is plainly enormous. I'm told there might be more contact tonight between the two sides, although not more face to face talks until Friday.
And there is scepticism in Labour circles over whether the government is doing more so far than trying to explain merits of its deal, rather than suggest areas where they might be willing to budge.
Sources involved in the process suggest that there is yet to be the promise of a big move from Theresa May, a promise about the price she is willing to pay for Labour support.
But the talks are not just a stunt and there are suggestions it might be clear by Friday afternoon, if the process will actually be able to deliver an outcome.
Talks, as we know, often turn to more talks, and more talks, and more talks.
You don't need me to remind you, when Theresa May has the option of playing something long, which choice she makes.
There is, though, the obvious deadline of the prime minister's trip to Brussels next week, where she has to present something to her EU counterparts, in order to justify asking for another delay.
But presenting something is not the same as having to deliver a fully worked-out deal with every "i" dotted, every "t" crossed.
It would be an enormous political turnaround if a fully worked out cross-party compromise emerges by then, that can last.
But after months of Brussels pondering openly why the UK has not been able to work in a cross-party way, if Theresa May can show evidence that that process is under way, perhaps that will be enough.
One cabinet minister suggested to me today that, if they can show there isn't a "permanent standoff" in Parliament between the two main parties, then the EU will give the UK more time.
Don't forget though, behind the scenes, some Brexiteers are still trying to organise to push for departure from the EU next week.
Labour has a problem too - a big split over whether they could accept compromise to deliver Brexit, without the promise of another referendum.
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn may have a lot of gaps to bridge between them, but they have gaps among their own sides too.

Clearly Europe was fully expecting the defeat of the Brexit deal in parliament on Tuesday night.
Seconds after the results were announced, pre-prepared tweets expressing disappointment came flooding in from EU leaders.
Here in Brussels, frustration hung in the air. With 73 days to go until Brexit day, Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk appealed (once again) for clarity from the UK.
"MPs keep saying what they don't want," fumed one of their colleagues. "They reject this deal. They reject no deal. They need to decide now what it is they will agree to."
Those in the UK who expect the EU to 'rush to the rescue' with proposed changes to the Brexit agreement are in for a let-down.
Europe's leaders have no agreed Plan B up their sleeve and see no advantage in scrambling to find one.
They believe the debate in the UK still needs to play out.
"It's important not to rush now," urged Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely tipped to become Angela Merkel's successor.
With the prospect of a softer Brexit looming, as well as the possibility, however small, of no Brexit at all, the EU thinks this is not a time to meddle.
It's far more effective to keep up the pressure.
One EU diplomat told me Theresa May should save on the plane fuel and not bother flying out to Brussels any time soon.
"We're not going to hold a special summit or anything," he said.
"There's nothing we Europeans can do today or tomorrow that will solve this. London has to come up with solutions, then we have to decide if we can accept them."
For now the EU insists it hasn't the slightest intention of re-negotiating the divorce deal, known as the Withdrawal Agreement.
Leaders are fully aware many MPs hate the backstop, the Irish border guarantee written in to the agreement, but there's no indication the EU would give it up.
It has insisted over and again that it intends to protect the Northern Ireland peace process, to stand up for the concerns of member state Ireland and - very important indeed to Brussels - to protect the single market (don't forget the land border between the EU and a post-Brexit UK will run down the island of Ireland).
Brussels also interprets the sheer scale of the vote against the Brexit deal on Tuesday as a sign that MPs were rejecting far more than the backstop.
So what now?
EU leaders think it increasingly likely that the Prime Minister will ask them for an extension to the Article 50 leaving process to allow her more time.
And while European hearts sink at the thought of months' more uncertainty, indecision and going around in Brexit-related circles, they will most probably grant the extension.
Preferably no longer than July to avoid having to select new UK MEPs - the European Parliament holds elections this year - but my contacts tell me the EU could extend Article 50 even longer if necessary.
Bottom line: it's worth it to the EU, if it means avoiding a costly, chaotic no deal Brexit which would also hit European citizens and businesses hard.
Back to Tuesday night's vote, EU diplomats tell me the bloc's position should become clearer next week.
It's no mean feat coaxing 27 different leaders towards a common position. And EU countries' unity over Brexit is something Brussels is anxious to maintain.

The government should add a public vote to the Brexit legislation which MPs will vote on next month, the shadow Brexit secretary has told the BBC.
Sir Keir Starmer said including another referendum in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill would "break the impasse".
Talks between Labour and the government to find a compromise Brexit deal broke down on Friday without agreement.
Theresa May has said she would consider putting different Brexit options to MPs to see which ones "command a majority".
Labour's preferred plan is for changes to the government's Brexit deal or an election, but if neither of those are possible, it will support the option of a public vote.
There have been calls for giving the public another say on Brexit. One widely discussed option is for a "confirmatory vote" with the choice between accepting whatever deal the government agrees, or remaining in the EU.
Others argue any new referendum should include the option of leaving the EU without a deal.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir Keir suggested the government should seek "further changes to the political declaration", which sets out the UK's future relationship with the EU after Brexit.
He added: "Or of course they could seek to break the impasse by putting a confirmatory vote on the face of a bill.
"But whatever happens they have to find a way of breaking the impasse. We've got five and a half months which seems like quite a long time but in reality, once we get to the summer recess, we've only got only two weeks in September and two weeks in October."
Brexit had been due to take place on 29 March - but after MPs voted down the deal Mrs May had negotiated with the bloc three times, the EU gave the UK an extension until 31 October.
Mrs May announced this week that MPs will vote on her EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill in the week beginning 3 June.
This will be the second reading vote on the bill, which is the key piece of legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement - the legally binding part of the Brexit deal that covers exit terms - and take the UK out of the EU.
The second reading is the first opportunity for MPs to debate the bill. If it is not passed by Parliament, the default position is that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October without a deal.
Sir Keir said Labour would vote against the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, accusing the government of attempting "an experiment" and bringing the UK to "a cliff edge".
"If that bill goes through second reading and then collapses at third reading we are then up against the cliff edge in October, which is why we've said we'll vote against that at second reading if there isn't an agreed deal before we start," he said.
He denied that would make a no-deal Brexit more likely. "I don't accept that. What we can't do is keep on buying another week at a time which is what the prime minister has been doing for months."
Discussions between the Conservatives and Labour - to see if they could come to an agreement on Brexit despite differences over issues including membership of a customs union and a further referendum - lasted six weeks before ending on Friday.
Sir Keir blamed the collapse of talks with the government on the inability to "future proof" a deal against an "incoming Tory leader" and said although the two sides had conducted the talks "in good faith", they were "a long way apart" on substance.
He said: "During the talks, almost literally as we were sitting in the room talking, cabinet members and wannabe Tory leaders were torpedoing the talks with remarks about not being willing to accept the customs union.
"In terms of the team that we were negotiating with, I'm not blaming them.
"Circling around those that were in the room trying to negotiate were others who didn't want the negotiation to succeed because they had their eye on what was coming next."
Mrs May has previously blamed the collapse on the lack of a "common position" within Labour.
It comes as a poll of Conservative members for The Times suggest former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is the favourite to succeed Mrs May.
A YouGov poll commissioned by the Times suggests Mr Johnson is the first choice for 39% of those Tory party activists who responded.
The former London mayor, who announced his intention to run earlier this week, was three times as popular as the next closest choice, ex-Brexit secretary Dominic Raab (13%).
Of the others, Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Environment Secretary Michael Gove were both on 9%, with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on 8% and Health Secretary Matt Hancock on 1%.
Meanwhile, Mr Hancock told the Daily Telegraph that Mrs May's successor as prime minister should not call a general election until Brexit is completed.
He said an early election risked losing to Labour and "killing Brexit altogether".
He added: "We need to take responsibility for delivering on the referendum result."

The government is aiming to secure a "zero tariff, zero quota" free trade deal with the EU, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has said.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr the UK would not diverge from current EU trade regulations "for the sake of it".
Mr Barclay added the government's objectives for the trade talks would be published after Brexit on 31 January.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will make a speech next month setting out more details, he said.
Mr Barclay's comments come after the US treasury secretary said his country wants to agree to a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK this year.
After Brexit happens at 23:00 GMT on Friday, the UK will be free to negotiate and sign new trade deals with countries with no existing EU deals - like the US.
The UK then enters into an agreed transition period with the EU, which lasts until 31 December 2020. During this time the UK will aim to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU to ensure that UK goods are not subject to tariffs and other trade barriers.
Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr, Mr Barclay said: "We are going to publish our objectives for the negotiation and we will set that out in due course after the 31st.
"The key issue is that we will have control of our rules, we will not be a rule-taker, we will not diverge for the sake of diverging.
"We start from a position of alignment but the key opportunity is that we will be able to set our standards, high standards, on worker's rights, on the environment, on state aid as part of that trade policy."
He said "both sides are committed" to securing a trade deal by the end of December, adding: "It's in both side's interests to keep the flow of goods going."
Irish minister for European affairs, Helen McEntee, told Sophy Ridge on Sky News that "Brexit is really only at half-time, we have a huge amount of work still to do".
"However, the idea that we can negotiate a trade deal with one that is comprehensive, one that provides very little change for our citizens, not just in the UK and Ireland, but the EU as well, within about a 12-month space, it's very difficult."
The new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen  has previously shared concerns about the timeframe, saying it would be "impossible" to reach a comprehensive trade deal by the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, the home secretary told Sophy Ridge UK businesses have been "too reliant on low-skilled cheap labour from the EU".
Priti Patel said the government will be able to control levels of low-skilled migration after Brexit.
She also confirmed that the Migration Advisory Committee will report this week on the UK's future immigration system.
The government was "absolutely determined to change the immigration system, end the complexity of the immigration system, have simpler rules, have a points-based system where we can absolutely have people that bring the right kind of skills for our labour market", she said.
On the UK's post-Brexit relationship with EU rules, Ms Patel appeared to adopt a harder approach than Mr Barclay, saying: "In terms of divergence, we are not having alignment. We will be diverging. We want to take control of our laws, money and our borders."
Last week, Chancellor Sajid Javid said the UK would use the power to diverge from EU rules on trade only when it was in the interests of business.

Two leading Brexiteers have said any delay to Brexit would do "incalculable" harm to public trust in politics.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Tory MP Steve Baker and the DUP's Nigel Dodds said the "extended uncertainty" would be a "political calamity".
On Tuesday, Theresa May will again ask MPs to back her Brexit deal, but if they reject it they may get a chance to vote to delay Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March.
Mr Baker, who is deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group (ERG), and Mr Dodds wrote that, for some, any delay would mean "democracy would be effectively dead".
They said that such an outcome would be "a costly delay for businesses which have prepared to exit on 29 March".
Both were confident that without changes to the deal, Mrs May would be "defeated firmly" again on Tuesday.
MPs rejected the prime minister's deal by 230 votes in January - the largest defeat for a sitting government in history.
If they do the same this week, MPs have been promised a vote on whether the UK should leave without a deal.
If they then reject a no-deal Brexit they could get a vote on Thursday on whether to request a delay to Brexit from the EU.
Speaking on Sky News, Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: "A delay or extension of about three months is probably doable. Beyond that it becomes much more difficult."
He added that Labour's front bench would not put down an amendment to secure another referendum, ahead of the vote on Mrs May's deal on Tuesday. He said any such amendment should come from a backbencher in order to get more widespread support from MPs.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the same programme it was not inevitable that the withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU would be rejected on Tuesday.
He added: "It's in the gift of MPs to get on and deliver on Brexit and I very much hope that that is what people will vote for."
Since January, the prime minister has been trying to seek assurances from the EU about the so-called Irish backstop - an aspect of her plan which is a sticking point for many MPs.
If Parliament approves Mrs May's withdrawal agreement, and the UK leaves the EU on 29 March, it will begin a transition period, when the two sides will attempt to agree a comprehensive trade deal.
If a trade deal is not agreed by the end of the transition period, the backstop is designed to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland.
It would keep the UK in a "single customs territory" with the EU, and leave Northern Ireland in the EU's single market for goods.
But some MPs fear that - in its current form - the backstop may leave the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
They want Mrs May to change this aspect of the deal.
Discussions between the UK government and EU officials on how to resolve the problem continued over the weekend.
On Friday, Mrs May said the UK had put forward "serious" proposals to resolve the deadlock.
The EU said it was prepared to include a number of existing commitments relating to the application of the backstop in a legally-binding document.
Its Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted that the UK "will not be forced into [a] customs union against its will" as it could choose to exit the proposed "single customs territory" on its own. But Northern Ireland would remain part of the EU's customs territory, subject to many of its rules and regulations - something the government has previously said would threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and the DUP, the party Mrs May's government relies on for a majority in Parliament, were both dismissive of the EU's latest proposal.
Meanwhile the US Ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, has urged the British public not to let the "distraction" of the debate over food standards and chlorine-washed chicken block the "huge opportunity" of a trade deal between the countries.
He said the US was the world's largest food importer, but currently bought less than one per cent of its food from the UK.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, he said: "It's time to move on from chlorinated chicken. It's just a bogeyman used to scare you out of doing a great trade deal with America that will give your businesses a huge competitive advantage."

Brexiteers who have questioned the sustainability of the Good Friday Agreement have been branded "reckless" by the Irish deputy prime minister.
Simon Coveney warned they could undermine the foundations of Northern Ireland's "fragile" peace process.
It followed suggestions by number of high-profile Brexiteers that the 1998 deal may no longer be fit for purpose.
Critics include ex-Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, and Labour MP Kate Hoey.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, demands mandatory coalition government involving both unionists and nationalists.
Responding to Mr Coveney's comments, UK Brexit Secretary David Davis said that he was "not conscious of anybody talking down the Good Friday Agreement, adding that "certainly nobody in government has".
Speaking in Vienna, Mr Davis said that "everything we are doing is aiming towards ensuring we meet every aspect of it (the 1998 Agreement), so I don't foresee that being a problem".
The three Brexiteers have expressed support for a rethink of the political arrangements brought about by the Good Friday Agreement after the failure of the latest attempt to restore devolution.
On Friday, Mr Paterson retweeted an article by Telegraph columnist Ruth Dudley Edwards entitled: "The collapse of power sharing in Northern Ireland shows the Good Friday Agreement has outlived its use."
On Sunday, Mr Hannan wrote a column in the same newspaper saying the 1998 power-sharing accord represented "a bribe to two sets of hardliners".
Mr Hannan said his objections to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) "were not on orange or green grounds but on democratic grounds".
Ms Hoey argued that her scepticism of the 1998 accord had "nothing at all to do with Brexit".
She tweeted: "Hiding head in sand over viability of sustainability of mandatory coalition is reckless and wrong."
Ms Hoey was responding to criticism from her Labour Party colleague, Owen Smith, the shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland.
Mr Smith said it was "reckless and utterly wrong to question the value and sustainability of the Good Friday Agreement".
"Their concerted, transparent effort to undermine the GFA is driven by their blind, misplaced faith in Brexit.
"They should know better."
Tanaiste (Irish Deputy Prime Minister) Simon Coveney echoed Mr Smith's comments in a tweet sent to Ms Hoey, Mr Hannon and Mr Paterson on Tuesday.
"Talking down Good Friday Agreement because it raises serious and genuine questions of those pursuing Brexit is not only irresponsible but reckless and potentially undermines the foundations of a fragile peace process in Northern Ireland that should never be taken for granted," Mr Coveney wrote.
He added that the current British and Irish governments remain "absolutely committed to GFA".
Mr Coveney's party colleague, Fine Gael Senator Neale Richmond, was even more forthright in his criticism of Brexiteers.
He tweeted: "Not content with stirring up horrible xenophobia in the campaign, they now want to destroy peace in Ireland for their petty brand of British nationalism!"
Mr Richmond added: "The same people who bleat on about respecting democracy willing to run roughshod over an agreement backed by 71% in the North & 94% here [the Republic of Ireland]."
However, Mr Paterson robustly defended his position, saying: "Brexit is emphatically not a threat to peace in Northern Ireland."
He added that it was "disgraceful that hysterical Remainers and Brussels are weaponising the Irish border issue".
Mr Paterson also pointed to a recent interview with former Ulster Unionist Party leader, Lord Trimble, one of the architects of the 1998 peace deal.
Lord Trimble told BrexitCentral that it was "rubbish that Brexit will undermine the Good Friday Agreement".
Mr Paterson, who served as Northern Ireland secretary from May 2010 to September 2012, now supports calls for interim direct rule from Westminster in the absence of a Northern Ireland Executive.
He said this would also provide time "to discuss practical improvements to Belfast Agreement".
The Conservative MP told those who were angered by Ruth Dudley Edwards' article they "should recognise that NI citizens deserve good government" as their health services were "falling behind the rest of the UK".
In December the UK and the EU reached a deal on Brexit which specifically referenced the Good Friday Agreement.
The deal contained a "fallback" clause regarding Northern Ireland in which the UK undertook, in the absence of other agreed solutions, to "maintain full alignment with those rules of the internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support north-south co-operation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement".
The latest political exchanges come as British and EU officials are working on how to put the Brussels deal into a more legally enforceable form.

Labour has urged the government to nationalise British Steel in order to protect jobs and the steel industry.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the collapse of British Steel would have a "devastating impact" on Scunthorpe.
British Steel is on the verge of administration as it continues to lobby for government backing, sources say.
The UK's second-biggest steel maker had been trying to secure £75m in financial support to help it to address "Brexit-related issues".
If the firm does not get the cash it would put 5,000 jobs at risk and endanger 20,000 in the supply chain.
"If an agreement cannot be struck with British Steel, the government must act to take a public stake in the company to secure the long term future of the steelworks and protect peoples' livelihoods and communities," said Mr Corbyn.
The government said it would leave "no stone unturned" in its support for the steel industry.
British Steel's main plant is at Scunthorpe, but it also has a site in Teesside.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Business Minister Andrew Stephenson said: "I can reassure the House that, subject to strict legal bounds, the government will leave no stone unturned in its support for the steel industry."
UK Steel's director general, Gareth Stace, said: "The statement from the business minister today provided a glimmer of hope for the Scunthorpe site.
"This does provide some breathing space for the company, its employees, and the wider steel sector, providing a potential route towards a stable and sustainable future."
The request for emergency financial support from the government is understood to have been reduced from £75m to about £30m.
In April, British Steel borrowed £100m from the government to enable it to pay an EU carbon bill, so it could avoid a steep fine.
Reports have said that British Steel shareholder Greybull Capital and lenders have agreed to pump new money into the firm.
However, unless a deal is reached by Tuesday afternoon, the firm could go into administration within 48 hours. EY would be expected to be appointed as administrators on Wednesday.
If a company goes into administration, then the insolvency practitioners appointed to run the business will try to rescue it by selling it, or parts of it, as a going concern.
But if that is not possible it will be liquidated, meaning that it will be closed down and its saleable assets will be sold.
For staff in Scunthorpe, it's a waiting game.
The BBC's consumer affairs correspondent Colletta Smith spoke to a British Steel staff member who was too worried to be named. He said that two of his colleagues have just got mortgages and are petrified they won't be able to make payments.
News that the company is in trouble isn't a surprise though, as there are piles of finished steel on the factory floor, with no customers to send it to, he said.
"We're doing a bit at work, but it's mostly sitting around doing nothing as the orders just aren't there".
He said staff feel let down by the owners.
"They've just stripped this company and now they're putting nothing back. Our only hope is a government bailout, but this time it feels different. I don't think they'll save us."
Sources close to Greybull Capital say its lenders have told them that unless they can secure a £30m lifeline they will pull the plug on British Steel tomorrow.
The timing of this could hardly be worse for the government coming as it does right before the European elections.
Cynics might suggest that Greybull is not unhappy with the timescale of the plea.
Business Secretary Greg Clark has a very tough decision, as I've already written.
The question may be whether the government can put this down to Brexit mitigation and tap the same source of contingency funds Chris Grayling disastrously used to procure emergency ferry capacity.
At least there would be an immediate dividend - to stave off the collapse of a firm that employs 4,500 people directly and has 20,000 more at risk in the supply chain.
However, having already lent £100m to cover a genuinely Brexit-related carbon emissions bill - further assistance to a private company struggling in a deeply challenged industry may be a precedent they would rather not set.
Last Thursday, British Steel said it had the backing of shareholders and lenders and that operations were continuing as usual while it sought a "permanent solution" from the government to its financial troubles.
It is understood that along with administration, nationalisation or a management buyout are being discussed as fall-back options for the company.
British Steel's troubles have been linked to a slump in orders from European customers ‎due to uncertainty over the Brexit process.
The firm has also been struggling with the weakness of the pound since the EU referendum in June 2016 and the escalating trade US-China trade war.
One of its biggest customers is Network Rail, 95% of whose rails are supplied by British Steel's Scunthorpe plant.
In 2007, India's Tata conglomerate entered the UK steel market after it bought the Anglo Dutch group, Corus. In 2010, the business was renamed Tata Steel Europe.
After a difficult few years, Tata sold the Scunthorpe long products division to private equity firm Greybull Capital for a nominal £1.
Greybull's rescue came during the depths of the steel crisis in 2016 and saved more than 4,000 jobs.
It then rebranded the company as British Steel and recently returned it to profit.
On Monday, the government, trade unions and employers signed a UK Steel Charter in Parliament.  The charter calls on the government and large companies to buy British to boost UK industry.

Britain's farmers should no longer get "privileged" access to low-skilled, low-paid workers from the EU after Brexit, says a top government adviser.
Alan Manning, who chairs the Migration Advisory Committee, said fruit and vegetable growers would probably "go backwards".
But it would not be the "end of the earth" for the UK economy as a whole.
The National Farmers Union has warned that without seasonal workers crops like strawberries will go unpicked.
The government has said high-skilled workers would be prioritised after Brexit, with no preferential treatment for people from the EU compared with those from the rest of the world.
The policy is based on recommendations drawn up by Mr Manning's committee, which have also been backed by the Labour Party.
Mr Manning said the rules on skilled workers - which say they must earn more than £30,000 a year to get a visa - might be relaxed for a "tiny" number of highly-skilled, low-paid individuals, such as musicians or dancers.
But he said many firms who had benefited from the influx of low-skilled East and Central European workers over the last 14 years would "find life a bit harder" under the proposed new regime.
"Most of them are not musicians, these are people working in warehouses and food manufacturing, in hospitality and so on," he told the Lords EU home affairs sub-committee.
"Our view would be they have had a tailwind since 2004, which those sectors would understandably want to continue, but it's not necessarily clear that that is in the interests of the wider economy and society."
He said seasonal agricultural workers were a special case, because they all came from EU countries (99% according to the Office for National Statistics).
Mr Manning told the Lords committee there was "no realistic prospect" of that work being done by British people.
The government has launched a pilot scheme to allow farmers to recruit 2,500 non-EU migrants to help the industry adjust - a move welcomed by the National Farmers Union, which has been warning of crops being left to rot in the ground.
Mr Manning said the fruit and veg growing sector had "expanded a lot" since the so-called A8 countries, including Poland, joined the EU, with an "extraordinary" increase in the amount of land given over to crops like asparagus, strawberries and other seasonal produce.
"If you cut off the access to that labour those sectors would find it much harder," he said.
"To some extent, it's quite likely that they would contract."
He said agriculture as a whole was a low productivity sector, about 40% of the national average.
"So if you are wanting to make the UK a high wage, high productivity economy, which we generally are, it's not clear that making life very easy for agriculture - giving them privileged access to labour - is a way to achieve that.
"That really wouldn't be the end of the earth for the country as a whole. Obviously the NFU are not going to be very enthusiastic about it."
The Migration Advisory Committee has suggested forcing farmers to pay a higher minimum wage in order to encourage increases in productivity - or charging them for every additional foreign worker they employ.

British citizens should be allowed to keep the benefits of EU membership, according to the chief Brexit negotiator at the European Parliament.
Guy Verhofstadt said allowing individuals to keep rights, such as freedom to travel and vote in European elections should be a priority.
He also warned the European Parliament had veto powers over any deal struck.
Meanwhile EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker has said he hopes the British will one day be persuaded to re-join the EU.
Prime Minister Theresa May wants to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of March, which would pave the way for Brexit negotiations, in which the rights of EU nationals living in the UK and Brits living on the continent will be a key issue.
Mr Verhofstadt, who leads the liberal group of MEPs in the European Parliament, told the BBC that the matter had to be prioritised and "cannot be part of the political games" that have taken place over the last few months.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he had received more than 1,000 letters from UK citizens who did not want to lose their relationship with "European civilisation".
Mostly these were driven by emotion and a feeling that they did not want to lose their European identity post-Brexit, he said, adding that he did not understand why the negative fall-out from the decision had not been discussed during the referendum, which had instead focused on the economics of Britain leaving the EU.
Many of the letters began with the appeal that "'I'm a UK citizen - I don't want to lose my relationship with Europe and European civilisation,'" he said.
"So emotion is now coming up and all those voters will want to remain in the European Union and have the feeling that they are lost, that nobody is defending them anymore, that they are losing a part of that identity - and it's for that reason that I'm trying to convince the European Union, not only the European Parliament, to take on board that feeling of UK citizens.
"I think we need to examine what type of special arrangement we can make for those individual citizens who want to continue their relationship with the EU, and the opposite - it's for both sides."
Mr Verhofstadt said the situation "is a crisis for the EU". "The fact that a large country like Britain is leaving the EU...? It's shown a crisis in the European Union - it's a disaster. That Britain goes out of the EU is a tragedy, a disaster, a catastrophe - you name it."
He said the responsibility now is to look for "a new partnership" between the EU and the UK, but he stressed: "Unfortunately, because of the decision taken by the UK government, it can't be the single market - because they don't accept the full freedom.
"It cannot be the customs union, because they want to make their own trade deals. It cannot be the European Court of Justice - it cannot be the European economic area."
Pressed on whether a good deal could still be reached that can work for both sides, he said: "That's exactly what we're going to try to do."
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters he hoped that the British could one day be persuaded to re-join the EU.
"I don't like Brexit because I would like to be in the same boat as the British," he said. "The day will come when the British will re-enter the boat, I hope.
"But Brexit is not the end of Europe. By contrary, Brexit is encouraging the others to continue, unfortunately without the British.... Brexit, it's not the end - I regret it but we will continue."
During the BBC interview, Mr Verhofstadt insisted that there could be "no hard border" between the Republic of Ireland, that will remain in the EU, and Northern Ireland, which is leaving.
"What can't happen is that we destroy all the efforts that have been undertaken over the last 20 to 30 years to have peace there, so no hard border," he said.
He also warned the European Parliament will have the power of veto any deal brokered between the UK and the European Commission on Brexit.
"We vote no - that is possible," he told Today. "It has happened in a number of other cases that a big international multilateral agreement was voted down by the European Parliament after it was concluded.
"The fact that in the treaty it is stated we have to say yes or no doesn't mean that automatically we vote yes."
Prime Minister Theresa May has indicated that the UK Parliament will vote on the terms of exit before the European Parliament but that the UK will leave the EU anyway, irrespective of whether MPs approve or reject them.
Asked whether the UK would welcome the opportunity for British nationals to retain some of the benefits of EU citizenship after Brexit, No 10 said it was "not something that we have ever proposed or said that we are looking at".
"We will go into negotiations and discuss the ideas put forward by the EU and its various institutions," said a Downing Street spokesman.

David Davis's resignation was met with a collective shrug of the shoulders in Brussels on Monday. "How can we miss a man who was never here?", one EU source commented to me. The Brexit secretary made one visit to Brussels in the last four months.
The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said Europe was deeply troubled not by British cabinet resignations, but by Brexit itself.
"Politicians come and go," he said. "But the problems they have created for the people remain. The mess caused by Brexit is the biggest problem in the history of EU-UK relations. And it is still very far from being solved."
A sense of unease hangs heavy.
"Theresa May is respected in Europe," one contact told me. "But so many times since this Brexit process began, we've had to ask ourselves: will she stay or will she go? And now here we are again."
Political uncertainty in Britain makes the possibility of a no-deal Brexit seem far more likely in the eyes of Brussels bureaucrats.
Not because either side want it, but because time for EU-UK negotiations - as the European Commission never tires of repeating - is simply running out.
And if the prime minister does indeed survive, what then? Most EU sources I spoke to believe she will. One compared the prime minister to Germany's Angela Merkel and said both women were consistently under-estimated.
Listen to Theresa May's impassioned address to Parliament today - promising a return to UK sovereignty after Brexit, yet simultaneously keeping close ties to Europe (no country with an EU association agreement has so far avoided signing up to binding relations), with frictionless trade and a close customs relationship that is not a customs union (honest), while remaining free to strike the UK's own trade deals.
The EU is holding fire for now on her plan.
Leaders are mindful of not wanting to further weaken Theresa May at home by rushing forward with their manifold objections - but it's just a matter of time.
The next Brexit negotiating round is pencilled in for a week today.
Now, Downing Street believes that the hot water the prime minister is in today will shock EU leaders into realising they need to start compromising themselves - not just perpetually demanding capitulations on the UK's red lines.
Privately, key EU figures admit there will be some give from Brussels - eventually. But how much?
Certainly not what would be needed to make Theresa May's proposed third way for Brexit work as she currently presents it.
"On the one hand, it's true what Downing Street says," one EU source told me. "The UK is bigger than Norway and strategically, politically and economically more important to us than Switzerland, yes. But EU countries benefit more from keeping their club - the single market and customs union - intact, than they would do by compromising everything just for the sake of better bilateral relations with the UK after Brexit. You can forget it."
The EU definitely expects more concessions from Theresa May in negotiations if she wants what she describes as a deep and special partnership post Brexit.
But the bottom line in Brussels is: hard or soft, Brexit must be done in time.
Whether Theresa May or another is at the helm in the UK, EU diplomats say they need a leader who has to power to make a deal in Brussels and see it through back home.
Otherwise, they believe a disorderly no-deal Brexit beckons - with all the consequences they think that will have in the UK and across the EU.

Business groups have said they are "devastated" after Parliament's latest rejection of the prime minister's EU withdrawal plan.
They urged MPs and the government to find a solution and stave off the "nightmare" of a no-deal Brexit.
"The UK's reputation, people's jobs and livelihoods are at stake," said CBI deputy director-general Josh Hardie.
And the Institute of Directors' Edwin Morgan said businesses were "sick" of being stuck in "spirit-sapping limbo".
Mr Morgan, the IoD's interim director-general, said: "The Brexit merry-go-round continues to spin, but the fun stopped a long time ago."
MPs are set to have another go at reaching a Brexit compromise in another series of votes on Monday and Wednesday next week.
Stephen Phipson, chief executive of manufacturers' group Make UK, said: "Business is devastated that after two years of negotiations, months of increasing uncertainty and weeks of building frustration, after three attempts the withdrawal deal has not been agreed by the House of Commons.
"This now makes the nightmare of a no-deal scenario more likely than ever."
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said businesses were "paying the price of the political uncertainty".
"There are still options open to MPs and they must get behind one of them," she added.
The Food and Drink Federation's chief executive, Ian Wright, said Parliament had to lead the country out of "our current shambles" by seeking a long extension to the UK's EU exit.
"Business - particularly food and drink - requires a stable operating environment and a clear path forward. On Monday, Parliament must create both," he said.
The ADS Group, which represents the aerospace and defence sectors, said that if there was not sufficient support for Theresa May's deal, the UK should "pause and reset the process".
ADS chief executive Paul Everitt said: "It is for government and Parliament to decide the way forward, but the voice of UK businesses, their employees, customers and suppliers must be given greater priority."
Small business representatives also reacted with dismay to the political deadlock over Brexit.
The national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, Mike Cherry, said: "Our small firms are sick and tired of politicians debating and dithering over Brexit. They are trying to get on with their jobs and it's time that politicians get on and do the same."

Time is running out on Brexit, and the UK should remain in a customs union with the EU, the CBI has warned.
Carolyn Fairbairn, head of the UK business group, said there was a "lack of clarity" surrounding ongoing talks about the future of UK-EU trade.
Speaking on ITV's Peston on Sunday, she also said a customs union would be best for UK economic growth and prosperity.
The UK's Department for Exiting the EU said Brussels had an "ambitious free trade approach" to exit discussions.
"We are confident of negotiating a deep and special economic partnership that includes a good deal for financial services - that will be in the EU's best interests, as well as ours," a spokesman said.
But they added "as the prime minister has already made clear, we will be leaving the single market and the customs union after EU exit day", referring to 29 March 2019.
Being a member of a customs union means that once goods have cleared customs in one country, they can be shipped to others in the union without further tariffs being imposed.
Businesses have been calling for clarity on what a replacement system will involve.
In a speech at Warwick University on Monday CBI director general Ms Fairbairn will elaborate on her concerns, and say progress is needed on a transitional EU trade deal by April.
She will also say the framework for a future business trading relationship with Europe must be set out by October.
Theresa May has already rejected full membership of the customs union as it could prevent the UK striking its own post-Brexit trade deals.
But Ms Fairbairn will say: "There may come a day when the opportunity to fully set independent trade policies outweighs the value of a customs union with the EU.
"A day when investing time in fast-growing economies elsewhere eclipses the value of frictionless trade in Europe. But that day hasn't yet arrived."
Remaining a member of a customs union "for as long as it serves us to do so is consistent with the result of the referendum and would be good for EU firms too" she will add.
Ms Fairbairn will set a 70-day deadline for a written agreement on a transitional trade deal between the UK and EU.
"Decisions must be taken fast, or firms will have no choice but to trigger their plan Bs," she will warn.
"More jobs and investment will leave our shores and future generations will pay the price."
But Richard Tice, Co-Chair of campaign group Leave Means Leave said:  "Only by leaving the customs union can the UK forge new independent trade deals with the rest of the world. Remaining in a customs union with the EU will eliminate major economic benefits of Brexit.
"Remaining in a customs union will handcuff all of British businesses to bureaucratic EU red tape even though approximately 90% do not trade with the EU. This is one of the major benefits of leaving."

Sections of UK industry face extinction unless the UK stays in the EU customs union, the CBI president has said.
He said car firm bosses had come to him saying the industry would suffer unless we get "real frictionless trade".
Paul Drechsler also said there was "zero evidence" that trade deals outside the EU would provide any economic benefit to Britain.
The government said it was "focused on delivering a Brexit that works for the whole of the UK".
But Mr Drechsler blamed a "tidal wave of ideology" for the government's Brexit approach.
"If we do not have a customs union, there are sectors of manufacturing society in the UK which risk becoming extinct," Mr Drechsler said.
"Be in no doubt, that is the reality."
Mr Drechsler, who is due to step down from his role next week, said car industry bosses were concerned that greater costs caused by the imposition of trade tariffs and delays at the border would affect not only individual companies, but also the entire supply chain.
He added that the UK would be much better using the scale of the EU to negotiate trade agreements than going it alone.
"There's zero evidence that independent trade deals will provide any economic benefit to the UK that's material. It's a myth," he said.
Delays to business investment were also affecting the UK economy, he said.
"We already know tens of millions, in fact hundreds of millions have been invested by UK pharmaceutical and finance companies to create continuity post a worse-case Brexit scenario. Tens of millions. What could we have done with that money?" Mr Drechsler said.
The government has not given business the necessary clarity to make investment decisions, he said.
"We have a negotiation within the UK government that's gone on for nearly three years. We still haven't got clarity about the future direction, about where we're heading, what will the future relationship with Europe be, at a level of detail that matters for investment."
Brexit campaigner Patrick Minford, of the Economists for Free Trade group, said the CBI was "the voice of the large industrial vested interests that oppose the competition and productivity growth that free trade under Brexit will bring, as well as the fall in consumer prices that goes with it".
A  Department for Exiting the EU spokesperson said the government would soon publish a White Paper with "detailed explanations of our ambition for a future relationship with the EU".
Correction: This article has been amended to reflect that Mr Drechsler was referring to 'sectors of manufacturing' which 'risk becoming extinct' rather than the car industry specifically.

A vote in Parliament to seek a delay to Brexit could only be "a stay of execution", according to business group the CBI.
Industry bodies saw a glimmer of hope in the vote, but said the UK could still crash out of the EU with no deal.
The British Chambers of Commerce said the vote "leaves firms with no real clarity on the future."
The pound fell a third of a cent against the dollar immediately following the vote.
The fall follows a climb to nine-month highs against the US dollar and a nearly two-year high against the euro after a vote on Wednesday.
The House of Commons voted by a majority of 210 for Theresa May to request an extension to the two-year Brexit negotiation process, pushing the EU exit back from its current 29 March deadline, as long as the 27 other European Union states agree.
The latest vote came after MPs rejected Theresa May's withdrawal agreement for the second time and then ruled out a no-deal Brexit.
Mrs May will now renew efforts to get her Brexit deal approved by Parliament.
She is putting pressure on MPs to back her by threatening a longer delay if they vote against her.
However, business groups remained sceptical about the Brexit process.
Josh Hardie, CBI deputy director-general, said: "After an exasperating few days, Parliament's rejection of no deal and desire for an extension shows there is still some common sense in Westminster. But without a radically new approach, business fears this is simply a stay of execution."
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said: "Britain stands on a knife edge. Parliament must put an end to this uncertainty."
"Without definitive action by MPs in the next six days, we will see the UK crashing out of the EU on 29 March without a deal."
Brexit uncertainty has had mixed effects on the UK economy.
Retail spending slowed sharply towards the end of last year, while surveys suggest an increase in manufacturing has largely been driven by companies speeding up production due to the risk of no-deal disruption.
Business investment has been one casualty of the uncertainty, with a slow down in December recorded by the Office for National Statistics.
It said that investment had fallen quarter on quarter all through the year for the first time since the economic downturn of 2008 to 2009.
The Bank of England ascribed the falls to "rising uncertainty, mostly related to concerns around Brexit".
Business groups have been increasingly exasperated by a lack of progress in Parliament on Brexit.
Dr Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said: "Once again, businesses are left waiting for Parliament to reach a consensus on the way forward and are losing faith that they will achieve this.
"In the meantime, firms are continuing to enact their contingency plans, anxiety amongst many businesses is rising, and customers are being lost.
"Businesses, jobs, investment and our communities are still firmly in the danger zone."
Catherine McGuinness, policy chair of The City of London Corporation said: "The clock is ticking. Further delays will mean households and businesses remain hostage to the crippling economic uncertainty that has already plagued them since the referendum."
Tech industry body TechUK said "We remain days away from a chaotic exit from the EU."

A customs proposal aimed at preventing a hard border in Ireland after Brexit has been agreed by cabinet.
Ministers signed off on the "backstop" that would see the UK match EU tariffs after 2020, if there is no deal on their preferred customs arrangements.
Brexiteers fear the proposal amounts to staying in the customs union longer.
No 10 says the UK would still be able to sign and implement trade deals, and the measure would only last for a matter of months.
The UK is due to leave the European Union in March 2019, after which a 21-month transition period is due to begin, which aims to smooth the way to a post-Brexit relationship between the UK and EU.
Government sources have told the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, that the newly-agreed proposal was very unlikely to be needed - as they are confident a customs deal that avoids bringing back a hard border can be agreed with the EU.
Earlier, Irish PM Leo Varadkar said ensuring there was no hard border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland was "an absolute red line" for the Irish government.
"We need that [backstop] to be part of the withdrawal agreement, and if it's not, then there will be no withdrawal agreement and no transition period."
After meeting Mrs May at an EU summit in Bulgaria on Thursday, he said he expected the UK to table new proposals within weeks but warned: "Resolving the issue of avoiding a hard border requires more than customs."
Mrs May said they had held a "very constructive" meeting, adding: "The commission published a fallback option which was not acceptable to us and we will be bringing forward our own proposal for that fallback option in due course."
She also met European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and European Council President Donald Tusk.
The government's new proposal is expected to be discussed formally in Brussels next week.
Ministers are yet to settle on what permanent model they want to see replace the customs union when the UK leaves the EU.
They are under pressure to decide on their policy before a key EU summit in June.
Labour Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer called the situation "farcical", saying: "The government is fighting over two options, neither of which are going to work, neither of which are acceptable to the EU, and neither of which would have the support of the majority in parliament."
He added: "We need certainty and the right approach is to stay in a customs union with the EU as the long-term objective."
The UK is due to officially leave the EU on 29 March 2019, with a transition period until the end of 2020 intended to smooth the way to the permanent new relationship.
But the two sides have just five months to get an agreement on post-Brexit trade, so it can be ratified before Britain leaves in March next year.
Key to this is how the UK and EU's customs systems will work together in years to come.
Currently, the UK is in the EU's customs union, which means member states all charge the same import duties to countries outside the EU.
It allows member states to trade freely with each other, without burdensome customs checks at borders, but it limits their freedom to strike their own trade deals.
The UK government has said it wants to leave the EU customs union in order to strike its own trade deals with other countries, promising trade will still be as "frictionless" as possible.
But ministers do not agree on how to replace it.
Brexiteers are against Mrs May's preferred option of a "customs partnership", under which the UK would collect tariffs set by the EU customs union on goods coming into the UK on behalf of the EU.
The alternative proposal would rely on technology and advance checks to minimise, rather than remove, customs checks. The EU has expressed doubts about whether either option would work.
On Wednesday, senior ministers acknowledged there has been "serious criticism" of both proposed models.

Apart from Michael Gove only narrowly avoiding a bus on Whitehall as it broke up, on the face of it the meeting tonight was rather uneventful.
No decisions were taken. There were, as yet, no resignations. No-one, I'm told, even had a big strop. Honestly!
But after two years of huffing and puffing and haggling, one thing is becoming clear.
The prime minister has always said that the UK could not accept staying in the customs union.
But there are signs that the UK is considering whether to stay in an almost-identical arrangement for good, if a wider trade deal can't be done.
You guessed it, it's all about Northern Ireland again. And regular readers here will know that avoiding a return to the borders of the past has for months been the biggest headache.
In theory if, as Number 10 hopes, a super-duper trade deal can be done, then you don't have to worry about it.
But there are such doubts about that happening in time, that the backstop argument is politically vital.
Here's what might be good news for the UK.
The negotiators seem to have persuaded the EU that if the trade deal isn't done by the end of 2020, then the whole country, not just Northern Ireland, should stay in what's essentially the customs union (even though it would probably be known by another name).
This hope was set out months ago under the so-called Temporary Customs Arrangement.
There was a row in cabinet then about whether it needed to include a time limit. In the end, it did have one written into it, after threats of resignations.
Back then, the EU just would not accept that kind of arrangement for the whole country. Brussels' alternative backstop proposal would basically carve off Northern Ireland.
They have now, it seems, accepted the notion of a customs union for the whole country as part of the deal.
But they are not budging on giving that to the UK with a time limit too.
For several cabinet ministers, that's simply not acceptable. The Brexit Secretary himself is on the record saying as much.
Brexiteers have long argued that if the UK stays in the customs union, it's hardly like leaving the EU at all.
And at the meeting today, several ministers, including Dominic Raab, Liam Fox, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove made that concern plain, not just because there are questions about whether it's the right thing to do, but also about whether it could clear the House of Commons.
Brexit: All you need to know
And at least one cabinet minister, Andrea Leadsom, is thinking carefully about whether she could put up with such a compromise. Essentially that's code for deciding whether to resign.
At the meeting this afternoon, I'm told the prime minister did not explicitly tell her colleagues she was planning to do this, rather she was sounding them out.
But in other briefings today, officials are understood to have been rather more clear, saying that Number 10 stands ready to accept a backstop with no explicit time limit.
None of this is at this stage being officially confirmed.
But it's clear tonight that Number 10 is considering whether what was once seen as an unpalatable step to take, is the reasonable price for a deal.
One senior government figure suggested to me months ago this was the only eventual outcome. But the prime minister's critics will come roaring out if and when she makes that clear.
PS: Number 10 won't comment officially
PPS: Those of you who have really been paying attention will know this is separate to the other big problem in the potential compromise, increasing the number of checks on goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland.
That's a different headache for Theresa May and no less problematic.

It is pretty clear how it all went wrong yesterday.
But as we left Brussels in the pitch black this morning we're still in the dark about what happens next, and how Theresa May can get this whole process back on track, and smartish.
While it's not the end of the potential overall deal if the two sides can't move on to the next phase of talks at the summit next week, it is what both sides desperately want.
The longer it takes, the more risk there is of course of other parts of yesterday's draft being unpicked. The idea was, remember, to lock in the agreement so far, then get on with the rest. It isn't clear what happens next though.
There are some big political and practical questions to ask. (If you are not very interested in the minutiae of all of this, look away now.... but guess what, it's not just about a fight with her allies in Northern Ireland, but her friends and rivals around the cabinet table too).
1. How can Theresa May get the DUP back on board quickly?
There is a dispute over whether or not they had seen the full text of the draft agreement yesterday.
Some sources say they hadn't seen the whole thing, therefore they hadn't seen the full context of what was being said, and flew off the handle over the initial leaks from Brussels over what had been agreed, the UK government "conceding" on the border as MEPs outside the Commission building told us before May even arrived.
While it's clear the DUP was in close contact with the government it is possible to believe they hadn't seen the whole text complete with the caveats, because even senior officials involved in the talks weren't allowed to have electronic copies of the document, only hard copies.
And as there had been lots and lots of changes to the text over the weekend, it's not impossible to imagine that the final, final, final version that then emerged had not been shown in full to the DUP.
Others in government suggest the DUP had seen it all, and as we reported last night, the Tory chief whip told the PM it was all signed off. If that's the case, it is a much bigger political problem of trust for the PM, if the DUP had been kept in the loop and given their approval, but then threw their toys out of the pram.
It's not clear whether the PM and Arlene Foster will meet in the next couple of days in person, but from late last night talks between the two sides were under way.
But with such strong objections on the record now, it is very difficult to see how the DUP can just say, ok then prime minister, when we said we couldn't back it, we really meant that we could, unless there is a change in the language in the text that has already taken weeks of painful negotiation to agree. It's said there are three different policy options that could provide a fix, but this feels more like a battle of wills.
And don't forget, there are a number of Tory MPs who agree with them. The idea of close "alignment", is anathema to some Conservative Brexiteers too.
There is however a very big difference between allowing Northern Ireland to choose to keep cooperating in some sectors and write that into the deal, and imposing a much bigger change where it essentially stands alone from the rest of the UK, and is pushed much closer to the EU.
2. This morning it feels pretty much impossible for the other side, Dublin, to back down in any way.
Irish leader Leo Varadkar, who is in the middle of a political whirlwind of his own, went public yesterday to make it clear that there was indeed an agreed text, and that there was no way that it could be unpicked.
Beyond the reassurances on policy that the Irish so desired, to change tack politically and suddenly give back the concessions that appear to have been so hard won seems extremely unlikely to happen.
3. It's worth pondering too whether the EU pushed the Republic of Ireland, or the Republic of Ireland pushed the EU, too hard?
The last week or so have been the moment of maximum leverage for the Republic of Ireland and they have squeezed every drop out of it. But if, with the EU's backing, they have pushed May into an impossible trap, no one will win. Several weeks ago a senior government official suggested to me that we should be worried about France and Germany underestimating the PM's political difficulties.
If the calculus became impossible for her to stay at the table, there was, they feared, no guaranteed way of her being being able to "get back in the harness". Because we are leaving the EU, the old expectations that the UK will always be able to keep talking, to keep going, don't apply any more.
4. Is the only way out then for the prime minister to face down her allies?
Perhaps, indeed, but why didn't she do that yesterday? There was not due to be a vote in Parliament on the suggested deal at the end of phase one. There was no moment on this specific issue when she required the DUP's backing. Northern Ireland is yet to receive the bulk of the billion that was promised to them after the DUP did a deal with the government.
One insider wondered aloud yesterday why she just hadn't dared them to take her on. The DUP will try to max out its influence at every stage and won't give up easily. The government knows how hard they can negotiate, after they spun out their confidence and supply agreement with No 10 over many days in the summer.
But when the stakes are high, the one thing the Northern Ireland contingent truly don't want is a Jeremy Corbyn government. And if Brexit is completely derailed, arguably that risk for the DUP and the Tories moves into view. And above all, if all the PM has really promised is voluntary alignment in some sectors that shouldn't be hypothetically impossible to agree, if she really demands it.
5. The amount of trouble the prime minister is in also depends what the cabinet demands to know this morning, and what the promises over "alignment" really amounted to.
While the crucial paragraphs over the Irish border did emerge into the public, the text of the whole document is still a secret.
The suspicion in some circles is that Theresa May and Olly Robbins, her top EU official, might have been suggesting that "regulatory alignment", where the rules in the UK mirror very closely those in the EU, was an option, not just for Northern Ireland, but for the rest of the country, or at least some sectors of the economy.
That had not been scoped out by the Brexit department, it's suggested, let alone signed off by the cabinet.
Round that table, be in no doubt, there are very different views over how close the UK's "alignment" should be. If Brexiteers Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and others feel this morning that the prime minister somehow tried to bounce them into agreeing to a future outside the EU where the UK was permanently bound tightly to Brussels, expect fireworks at home.
That could end up being much more troublesome for Theresa May than the behaviour of the Northern Ireland party whose votes she needs.
No 10 sources say the suggestions that the PM wants alignment for the whole of the UK are wide of the mark. But Brexiteers are likely to demand reassurance.

Can a Conservative and DUP pact possibly govern for the life of this Parliament? They face a long, precarious high wire act if they attempt to do so, and they - and any alternative alliance - will be beset by troubles and entanglements at every turn.
Armed with a combined majority of three MPs, their pact would also be bolstered by the absence of the seven Sinn Fein MPs who continue to refuse to take their seats, and probably by the support of the independent unionist, Lady Sylvia Hermon.
But those numbers assume all MPs toe the party line in every vote. And that looks unlikely.
Imagine you are Tory MPs Zac Goldsmith - with a majority of 45 votes - or Theresa Villiers - who has a majority of 353 - or one of the legion of other Conservatives who have just scraped in - often having seen apparently comfortable majorities dissolve.
Suppose you are asked to support a measure which could have constituency consequences, like a squeeze on school funding, or a hospital downgrade. It's easy for the opposition parties, they can oppose.
However, you face a choice between braving the wrath of the government whips, or providing your local opponents with a new stick with which to beat you.
Nobody knows what those particular individuals would do, when confronted by such a choice, but it is a fair bet that some Conservative MPs might be prepared to defy the whip - and it would only take a handful, fewer even than in the last Parliament.
The same problem applies to infrastructure mega-projects - can a government with such a small majority deliver the next phases of HS2 or Heathrow expansion?
Then we come to Brexit. This election was supposed to be about strengthening the prime minister against inimical anti-Brexit forces in Parliament. Yet she emerges far weaker.
I question whether the new government can cobble together a majority for any version of Brexit - hard, soft, poached, scrambled, or devilled with Tabasco sauce - without losing the support of some Conservative MPs, and potentially losing a Commons vote.
The DUP factor matters here.
Remember the DUP are a Northern Ireland party, with deep concerns about maintaining a "frictionless" border with the Republic of Ireland, which could complicate the ultimate deal, possibly dragging the government into a deal which could arouse the ire of Conservative Brexiteers, if it did not ditch the European Court of Justice, or if it involved unacceptable payments to the EU in return for market access.
The other aggravating factor about the DUP is its coldly transactional approach.
Of course they have a policy agenda - but they also want what the Americans call "pork". Extra funding for all things Northern Ireland, more powers for the NI Executive - if it can be reconstituted - localised tax concessions, you name it. And some of these things would have to come at the expense of English constituencies.
It is worth remembering that the last time a UK government was sustained by Northern Irish votes, it didn't end well.
James Callaghan's minority Labour government of the mid 1970s survived, hand to mouth, for years until Callaghan could no longer stomach the endless deal-making. He might have survived the famous 1979 Commons no confidence debate, if he'd been prepared to fund a gas pipeline to Northern Ireland, but he'd had enough.
Half way through the election campaign I was hearing that the government's chief whip, Gavin Williamson, had embarked on a tour to meet and mark the cards of the candidates who were expected to win in the predicted Tory landslide.
Most will not be arriving, and if he stays in post, his job will be the kind of extreme whipping last seen when Callaghan's legendary parliamentary ringmaster, Walter Harrison (the hero of James Graham's great play This House) ducked, dived, manoeuvred, cajoled and arm-twisted to keep the minority Labour government in power.
On one level it was one of the most brilliant whipping performances in Parliamentary history; on another the spectacle of endless wheeler-dealing may have worsened Labour's ultimate electoral crash, when the government finally fell.
Now, Mr Williamson, or his successor, will have to hold the Tory factions together, possibly through a divisive leadership battle.
He will have to soothe ideological and Brexit divisions, and smooth the ruffled feathers of ministers who were said to be facing removal from the cabinet - as well as ex-ministers dropped when the prime minister took over.
An early test will be the appointments to her new government. Will unifying figures like the 1922 Committee Chairman Graham Brady be brought into the fold? Will dangerous luminaries of the David Cameron years - such as former chief whip Mark Harper - return to government. There are, at least, vacancies to fill.
If the government can dance with sufficient agility, it might be able to survive for a fair while. But there is a difference between survival and governing.
The Brexit clock is ticking, the economy needs attention, and the world is a dangerous place. Decisions are unavoidable, but getting them through the Commons may prove impossible.
And at some point another election may become unavoidable, too.

Cross-party talks are continuing in Whitehall, amid parliamentary deadlock over Theresa May's Brexit deal. So what are the sticking points and can Labour and the Conservatives reach an agreement?
Public statements on the talks have tended to be bland, ranging from "constructive" and "serious" to the slightly more negative: "We have some way to travel."
Behind the scenes, the prospect of a deal, while difficult, is not impossible.
There is a big incentive for both sides to reach agreement: the avoidance of next month's European elections.
Prime Minister Theresa May doesn't want to give a platform to parties such as Nigel Farage's new project which could appeal to Brexit-voting Conservatives.
And, frankly, some of her own activists would be conflicted over how, or whether, to vote.
For Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, awkward questions about a second referendum could be ducked if there is no election campaign.
So the talks are serious and not just political window dressing, and the fact that Mr Corbyn and Mrs May met on Thursday is significant.
The Labour leader's policy guru Andrew Fisher joined shadow chancellor John McDonnell for the cross-party talks on Friday.
But, as I understand it, significant hurdles remain. Some of the detail of possible changes to the Political Declaration - the blueprint for the UK's post-Brexit relationship with the EU - is being discussed.
But sequencing is a problem.
Labour wants to discuss legally binding changes to the document, future-proofing it, where possible, against a change of Conservative leader.
Broadly speaking, the government would rather do "the easy bit" first - discussing legislation to protect  workers' rights.
Resolving this tension is key to a deal.
Labour is also keen to secure agreement on a customs union. It is flexible on what it would be called - an "arrangement", for example - and Mrs May hinted on Thursday that the two sides were close on this.
But they are not yet close enough.
The definition of what a customs union/arrangement does is vital to the Labour side.
But the main constraints to a deal may come from Mrs May and Mr Corbyn's parties, rather than their negotiators.
If there is too much compromise on a customs union, Mrs May risks losing more cabinet ministers.
For Mr Corbyn, the pressure from many Labour members is for him to exact a referendum, in return for passing the deal.
So far, the prime minister isn't budging on this.
One way round this obstacle would be to hold a separate vote in Parliament on a referendum, possibly as an amendment to the forthcoming Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
Both Mrs May and Mr Corbyn - who is not an enthusiast for a public vote - believe this would fall.
But some of the Labour leader's shadow ministers - including some who are firmly on the Left - are pushing for a referendum, or confirmatory ballot, to be tied explicitly to any Brexit deal.
So, getting a deal passed would be totally dependent on approving a public vote at the same time.
I am told shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer is pressing for a ballot to be part of any final package.
If, in the end, these difficulties can't be overcome then the hope is that both sides will at least agree a parliamentary process for discussing and voting on options which might finally break the deadlock.

A storm is brewing as clouds gather over Bristol Port, with the rain set to fall on tens of thousands of vehicles parked in the port's car compounds, ready for export by ship, or destined for UK dealerships.
It is an apt backdrop for the UK automotive sector's current predicament.
"Brexit has derailed the industry," says Sarwant Singh, senior partner and global head of automotive and transportation at consultants Frost & Sullivan.
"The uncertainty causes people not to buy cars."
The number of cars sold in the UK dropped 5.7% in 2017, according to industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders, and ratings agency Moody's predicts a further 5.5% fall this year.
There has been little respite from foreign markets, with exports slipping 1% last year.
Each year, about 80% of the vehicles built in the UK are exported, so smooth international trade relations are vital for the automotive sector's continued prosperity.
But these days, the relations are as choppy as the sea in the Bristol Channel.
Industry executives' main fear is that Brexit will result in heightened barriers to trade, not only with the European Union, but with the rest of the world too, once the transition period ends on 31 December 2020.
The prospect of an escalating trade dispute between the US and its main trading partners, the EU and China, also looms large, after US President Donald Trump's recent threat to tax cars imported into the world's largest market.
"All of Europe is exposed," says Justin Cox, director of global production at consultants LMC Automotive, "but some plants are more exposed than others, and it so happens that several of those are in the UK."
Then there's China, the world's second-largest car market. Trading relations with China are already complicated, and may well be subject to even greater complexity in future.
"A UK-China free trade agreement will be neither easy nor clearly advantageous for the UK," says Bruegel, a European think tank that specialises in economics.
Part of the issue, it says, is that the UK would like to land better trade deals with China when it leaves the bloc than the ones the EU already has in place. But being smaller, the UK will be in a weaker position during trade talks, so there are no guarantees China will be prepared to offer better terms.
On top of this, UK automotive trade with China - and other fast-growing markets such as India, Brazil and Russia - could suffer, depending on the terms of a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, Mr Singh says.
That's because the UK might not be able to piggyback on the EU's existing bilateral trade agreements with third countries, including those entered into since the Brexit vote with Canada and Japan. Instead, it would face years of protracted trade talks with dozens of countries.
Getting a good Brexit deal is also important because of the interdependence of European automotive companies.
"The motor industry has taken advantage of the EU's single market as much as, perhaps more than, any other industry," says Mike Hawes, chief executive of SMMT.
As a result, EU customers buy about €15bn ($18.5bn; £13bn) worth of British-made cars per year, accounting for some 53% of the UK's vehicle exports, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA).
Conversely, EU manufacturers deliver 81% of the cars imported by the UK, to the tune of about €45bn, a trade imbalance that Brexit supporters hope will give the UK leverage during trade talks.
At the same time, about 80% of the parts and components used to build cars in the UK are also imported from the EU, while 70% of the parts and components made in the UK are exported to EU countries.
"Any changes to the deep economic and regulatory integration between the EU and the UK will have an adverse impact on automobile manufacturers with operations in the EU and/or the UK, as well as on the European economy in general," the ACEA says.
Hence, both the UK and the European car industries are keen to see a final UK-EU deal that retains frictionless trade in the long-term.
"Anything short of single market membership could be a problem for the UK," says Simon Dorris, managing partner at Lansdowne Consulting.
Free trade is indeed key to future prosperity, not just within Europe but beyond, according to Prof Patrick Minford of Cardiff University, who chairs Economists for Free Trade, a group of pro-Brexit economists.
Its much debated paper, From Project Fear to Project Prosperity, suggests fears of rising trade barriers for carmakers after Brexit are misplaced.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said that Brexit presents an "opportunity to strike free trade deals around the world".
"Auto manufacturers will improve profitability post-Brexit," Prof Minford predicts.
Source: ACEA
Despite the uncertainty about a future trade deal, a number of big carmakers have committed to building more cars in the UK since the Brexit vote, including Nissan, BMW, Toyota, and last week Vauxhall, which is owned by French group PSA.
But Parliament's cross-party Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee is pessimistic, recently warning that "there are no advantages to be gained from Brexit for the automotive industry for the foreseeable future".
The UK prime minister's desire for free trade is shared by the global motor industry more generally.
Executives are nevertheless pragmatic, and accept that although international trade is governed by rules policed by the World Trade Organization, free trade is rarely a reality.
Trade-distorting subsidies and a variety of measures, such as regulatory barriers, internal tax measures, and intellectual property rights, still impede the free flow of goods, even when trade agreements are in place, according to the European Commission.
The EU, for instance, will not import cars unless they meet EU safety and emissions requirements.
Moreover, trade agreements are generally conditional. For instance, cars exported from the EU must be predominantly made within the EU to be allowed free entry into other markets.
Such "Rules of Origin" could complicate exports for UK carmakers after Brexit, as an estimated 55%-75% of the parts and components that make up a car built in Britain are imported, according to Mr Hawes of SMMT.
More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:
Whatever level of access UK-made cars get to markets around the world after Brexit, the manufacturers ultimately have to try ensure that their vehicles will be popular with overseas buyers.
Mr Hawes says that this is not always easy, citing the fact that the UK's best-selling car is the compact Ford Fiesta, whereas the most popular vehicle in the US is the large Ford F150 pick-up truck.
Consequently, there are reasons to question whether the US market is the most natural one to focus on for UK manufacturers, which tend to produce cars that suit British and European consumers, he observes.
"So it's also about producing the right car for the market," he says, pointing to how Honda is producing the Civic in Swindon for global markets. "They have shown it can be done".

So, he's said it.
Mark Carney made the direct link between "weaker real income growth" and the process of leaving the European Union.
Brexit is likely to make people poorer, the governor of the Bank of England said.
Since the referendum the markets have sold off sterling, making the currency weaker and increasing inflation in the UK.
That means that price rises are now running ahead of wage growth and real incomes are falling again.
Mr Carney's speech at the Mansion House called for an "innovative, co-operative and responsible" approach to Brexit.
"Fragmentation is in no-one's interest," he argued when it came to the key relationship of financial services in particular.
Some might describe that as a plea for a "soft" Brexit - no cliff edge at the end of exit negotiations, rather a "slope" - as the chancellor has described it.
Speaking alongside the governor, Philip Hammond said that no-one voted for Brexit to become poorer.
He also made it clear that he wants to put the economy at the heart of the Brexit negotiations.
Rather than sovereignty or controlling immigration, which are the issues likely to motivate other colleagues in the Cabinet and certainly in the Conservative Party.
The tensions are clear.
The chancellor - strengthened since the general election - gave the greatest detail yet about what his approach might mean for our future relationship with the EU.
Yes, as he said at the weekend, the UK will be leaving the customs union.
But he made the case for a new form of customs agreement with "current border arrangements" - which presumably means agreeing to some form of EU oversight for some years following Britain's exit from the union.
It is nailing down this "transition" or "implementation" period which is important for many businesses.
Some will be relieved that both Mr Carney and Mr Hammond are calling for Britain to play a longer game when it comes to the Brexit process.
Others may fear that tying the UK formally to the EU after Britain leaves the union in March 2019 could mean, for a few years of transition at least, Brexit does not, quite, mean Brexit.

The possibility of a no-deal Brexit is "uncomfortably high" and "highly undesirable", Bank of England governor Mark Carney has told the BBC.
Mr Carney said the prospect of the UK leaving the EU without a deal was "a relatively unlikely possibility, but it is a possibility".
He said it was "absolutely in the interest" of the EU and UK to have a transition period.
Critics poured scorn on the comments, calling them part of "Project Fear".
Mr Carney's warning came ahead of Theresa May's meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron at his summer retreat on a small island off the French Mediterranean coast.
The prime minister is cutting short a holiday in Italy as she continues to seek support among European leaders for her Brexit plans.
The Bank governor told the BBC that the financial system was robust and could withstand any post-Brexit shocks.
"We have made sure that banks have the capital, the liquidity that they need and we have the contingency plans in place," he told the BBC's Today programme.
"There is a very broad range of potential outcomes to these Brexit negotiations and we are entering a crucial phase."
The pound declined on the currency markets in the wake of Mr Carney's comments, falling below the $1.30 mark, but had recovered by early afternoon.
Mr Carney said that if a no-deal Brexit were to happen, it would mean disruption to trade and economic activity, as well as higher prices for a period of time.
"Our job in the Bank of England is to make sure that those things don't happen. It's relatively unlikely but it is a possibility. We don't want to have people worrying that they can't get their money out," he said.
Mr Carney added: "We've put the banks through the wringer to make sure that they have the capital. Whatever the shock could happen from, it could come from a no-deal Brexit, we've gone through all the risks of a no-deal Brexit."
However, he said that even with liquidity and capital, the banks could not solve all Brexit-related financial problems.
"There are a few things the EU government has to solve, " he said.
"The UK has taken all the steps, all the secondary legislation it needs to. The European authorities still have some steps they need to take. We're having conversations and we expect those to be addressed."
Simon Jack, BBC business editor
The governor of the Bank of England doesn't say anything by mistake. Like all central bank chiefs, he knows that his every utterance is subjected to minute scrutiny.
So this warning appears to be a deliberate intervention at a crucial moment in Brexit negotiations from a governor who considers it part of his job to highlight risks to the financial system and the wider economy.
Others consider him too political by half - his previous statements were labelled "beneath the dignity of the bank" by leading Eurosceptic MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Mark Carney has been clear that the banking system is resilient enough to handle a no-deal Brexit, but today he made it just as clear that it's a test we should be very keen to avoid.
As he has pointed out in the past, the UK is the financial hub for the whole of the EU so leaving without a negotiated settlement would have serious consequences for both sides.
As government ministers tour the scorching capitals of Europe, Mark Carney has cranked up the temperature at home.
Critics rounded on the governor, with Jacob Rees-Mogg, who leads the Tory pro-Brexit European Research Group, saying: "Mark Carney has long been the high priest of Project Fear, whose reputation for inaccurate and politically motivated forecasting has damaged the reputation of the Bank of England."
The former work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said: "There is no such thing as a no-deal, as the [World Trade Organization] is where the EU and the UK are already and as a rule-based organisation, both sides would have to abide by those rules.
He said the Treasury and the Bank of England had "struggled to understand how this would work".
And economist Ruth Lea, adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group, tweeted that Mr Carney was crying wolf and few people would listen.
However, Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law at Cambridge University, said Mr Duncan Smith's idea of falling back on WTO rules would not work, because in that case, the UK would not be allowed to let EU goods in tariff-free without extending that to the rest of the world.
She told the BBC's The World At One programme: "That would make it very difficult for us to negotiate trade deals in future, because we'd got nothing to negotiate over. We'd already given up the right to impose tariffs."
Meanwhile, Gen Sir Nick Carter, the new head of the armed forces, was asked on the Today programme about reports that the army was being put on standby for a no-deal Brexit - which could see troops help deliver food, medicines and fuel.
He said: "There hasn't been any request yet as far as I'm aware."
Pressed if there had been any discussions about a no-deal Brexit, the chief of the defence staff added: "The Armed Forces are always doing contingency planning but we've not been asked that specific question."

Chancellor Philip Hammond has backed a transitional deal for Brexit saying it would be "helpful" to allow longer than two years for the UK's EU exit.
Mr Hammond told the Treasury select committee that there was an "emerging view" that having longer would tend towards a "smoother transition" .
There would be "less risks of disruption" including "crucially risks to financial stability", he added.
However, both business and government would have to make changes, he said.
His comments are being seen as the strongest signal yet from the government that the Brexit process could take a lot longer than the two years needed for the official Article 50 exit process to be completed.
On Monday the Treasury Select Committee called for written submissions on transitional arrangements as part of its inquiry into the UK's future economic relationship with the EU.
It defines "transitional arrangements" as being "any arrangement that takes effect between the point at which the UK formally leaves the EU... and the point at which the UK's final, settled relationship with the EU becomes effective."
"I would not want anybody to think this is just about financial services," Mr Hammond told MPs.
"For example, depending on what future customs arrangements are between the UK and European Union, there could be significant physical infrastructure changes that need to be made at ports of entry and exit, not only in the UK but on continental Europe as well," he added.
He said there could also be a need to train large numbers of people in anticipation of a "much more intensive process at borders.
"So it's not just the business sector, it's also the government sector that has to think about how long it takes to make changes, hire people, train people, introduce IT changes.
"And I think the further we go into this discussion, the more likely it is that we will mutually conclude that we need a longer period to deliver," he  added.
The government position is becoming clearer.
By the end of the Article 50 timetable - which Number 10 believes will be March 2019 - the UK will have legally agreed to leave the EU.
But it will not be like jumping off a cliff edge.
Rather, Britain and the EU will still have a close relationship, with many EU rules remaining in place.
They will slowly be unravelled over subsequent years as Brexit is made a reality.
Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie said it sounded like two years was the "bare minimum, we're probably going to need more."
Mr Tyrie also said he had received briefings from firms about the need for transitional arrangements, including one from a major financial institution which said insufficient time to adjust could result in severe disruption to client services, causing financial instability and significant cost to the wider economy in Europe and globally.
Mr Hammond said he was also hearing about concerns in this area, particularly from the financial services sector.
Later he added that there were "compromises between the political will to get things done and to move on and the bureaucratic and/or business desire to have the largest period possible to make any change".

The UK may not have voted for Brexit if it had not been for "cheating" by the Leave campaign, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica has claimed.
Christopher Wylie said Vote Leave and other pro-Brexit groups had a "common plan" to get round spending controls.
He told MPs they all used Aggregate IQ, a "franchise" of the data analytics firm, to target swing voters, using information drawn from CA's databases.
Cambridge Analytica said it had played "no role" in the Brexit referendum.
The firm accused Mr Wylie, who it said had no "direct knowledge" of its work after he left the firm in July 2014, of peddling "false information, speculation, and completely unfounded conspiracy theories".
And Vote Leave have denied accusations that they broke the spending rules during the UK's 2016 referendum on whether or not to stay in the European Union.
Cambridge Analytica, which is facing claims it amassed the data of millions of Facebook users without their consent and used it in political campaigns, is under investigation by the Information Commissioner.
MPs have said Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's decision to decline an invitation to appear before them is "astonishing" amid reports he will testify before a US Congressional committee inquiry into data privacy.
Former Vote Leave volunteer Shahmir Sanni has claimed the official Leave campaign may have used a different pro-Brexit group, BeLeave, to get round spending controls by giving it £625,000 but requiring it to spend the money on Aggregate IQ - a Canadian data firm Vote Leave used for its digital advertising.
Vote Leave, which would have gone over its campaign spending limit of £7m if it had spent the money itself, has denied the claims, which are being investigated by the Electoral Commission.
Vote Leave says that it only donated the money to BeLeave after the Electoral Commission gave it the go-ahead.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, a key Vote Leave figure, dismissed the allegations, adding that the referendum was a "free and fair vote".
He said: "I think that some of the allegations have already been investigated by the Electoral Commission, twice in fact, and it's clear from those investigations that actually there wasn't anything that went on that was wrong."
Appearing before the Commons Media Committee, Mr Wylie said he was "absolutely convinced" that Vote Leave, BeLeave and other groups were working together and had a "common plan".
"All of these companies somehow, for some reason, all decided to use AIQ," he said.
"When you look at the accumulation of evidence, I think it would be completely unreasonable to come to any other conclusion other than this must be co-ordination."
Mr Wylie told MPs he had met Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave's campaign director, in November 2015, and that shortly afterwards the campaign group had hired Aggregate IQ.
He rejected Cambridge Analytica's assertion that it was not linked to Aggregate IQ, saying that although they were separate corporate entities, Aggregate IQ was essentially a "franchise" of Cambridge Analytica and its parent firm SCL Group.
At the time of their meeting, he said, Cambridge Analytica was working for rival Brexit group Leave.EU and Vote Leave had got the "next best thing" by hiring a firm "that can do everything that Cambridge Analytica can do but with a different billing name".
He said he was sure Aggregate IQ had drawn on Cambridge Analytica databases during the referendum, saying it "baffled" him how a firm in the UK for only a couple of months had "created a massive targeting operation" without access to data.
"You can't have targeting software that does not access the database," he said.
The data, he suggested, was used to aim material to between five and seven million people Aggregate IQ believed could be persuaded to vote for Brexit.
"They were targeting a very specific cohort," he said.
"They posited that if x per cent of these people turn out, they can win. I think it is incredibly reasonable to say AIQ played a very significant role in Leave winning."
On the basis of Aggregate IQ's use of data and political activities in other countries, he said questions had to be asked as to whether it was "compliant" with the law during the referendum.
"I think it is completely reasonable to say there could have been a different outcome of the referendum had there not been, in my view, cheating."
Lawyers for Aggregate IQ have said the firm had "never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica" while Mr Cummings said the claims were "factually wrong" and the Electoral Commission had approved donations in the run-up to the referendum.
In a statement, Cambridge Analytica said it had sub-contracted some work to Aggregate IQ in 2014 and 2015 but that claims it worked with them on the EU referendum were "entirely false".
"Beyond an early-stage sales pitch to Vote Leave, Cambridge Analytica had no interaction with that group or any of their vendors," it said.
During a debate later in the Commons, Conservative Sir Edward Leigh suggested the claims of undue influence had been "grossly exaggerated" and the British electorate had had "the good sense to make up their mind" when it came to backing Brexit by a 52% to 48% margin.
But Labour MP Frank Field said that although he supported Brexit, he believed that if offences had been committed "the full weight of the law" should be thrown at anyone found culpable.
Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith said ministers should not pre-empt the findings of the independent Electoral Commission's investigations into whether any campaigners breached political finance rules.

A former Conservative leader has warned Eurosceptics could "endanger everything they're trying to achieve" if they vote down Theresa May's Brexit plans.
Lord Hague said the proposals agreed at Chequers were "the most that can be achieved within the inevitable and inescapable constraints".
Being a "romantic on this issue" was "an indulgence not a policy", he told colleagues.
The foreign and Brexit secretaries have both quit over the plans.
The resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson - who said they could not support Mrs May's proposed trading relationship with the EU - have piled pressure on the PM and prompted speculation about a leadership challenge.
But one Brexiteer Tory MP played down the speculation.
Bernard Jenkin said the European Research Group - led by influential Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg - did not expect more resignations and backed Mrs May's leadership.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how trade will work between the UK and the EU after that.
The delay has been partly blamed on deep disagreements within the Conservative Party over what shape Brexit should take.
This has focused on whether the UK should prioritise business interests and keep a close relationship with the EU in order to maintain trade links - which critics say will mean the UK still abiding by EU rules and leaving "in name only".
In a sign of the dissatisfaction in Tory ranks, MP Henry Smith announced on Twitter he had refused an invitation to watch England's World Cup semi-final clash with Croatia at 10 Downing Street because the prime minister "isn't bringing Brexit home".
And the former adviser to Mr Davis, Stewart Jackson, claimed there was a "plan" to curtail the role of the Brexit department and that Downing Street had blocked his reappointment under new Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab.
In the House of Commons, Labour's Emily Thornberry - standing in for Jeremy Corbyn at Prime Minister's Questions - said the Chequers agreement was a "dog's Brexit" that would "satisfy no-one".
Mrs May's deputy David Lidington urged Labour to "work in the common interest instead of carping from the sidelines".
The strategy announced after Friday's meeting at the PM's Chequers country retreat came after months of cabinet divisions.
More details will be set out on Thursday of the proposed model, which has yet to be negotiated with the EU, but it would see the UK agreeing a "common rulebook" with the EU for trading in goods, in an attempt to minimise friction for trade at borders.
Critics say it will leave the UK tied closely to EU rules and prevent it from striking its own trade deals in years to come.
But Lord Hague said it was the best available option.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said the balance of the House of Commons was a "limiting factor" to what the UK could propose, as was the need of business for frictionless trade across borders.
And the need to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - which is part of the EU - are not an "inconvenient detail, it's a fundamental part of ending centuries of conflict in the British Isles", he said.
Following Mr Johnson and Mr Davis's resignations, two deputy chairmen of the Conservatives - Ben Bradley and Maria Caulfield - quit their posts on Tuesday, claiming the PM's proposals would not harness the benefits of Brexit.
Lord Hague, who despite being a Eurosceptic backed a Remain vote in the 2016 referendum, said that if MPs voted down the UK's final deal with the EU, "that's the point at which they're going to endanger everything they're trying to achieve".
This could mean Brexit being delayed, a change of government or a second referendum, he said.
"It would be hard to say at this moment what the consequences would be, but the consequences would be very serious for delivering Brexit," he said.
Another leader would face "exactly those same constraints", Lord Hague said.
In a Daily Telegraph article, he added: "Being a romantic on this issue is all very well but is of no practical use to the country. It is an indulgence not a policy."
Theresa May defended her plans as she arrived at a Nato summit in Brussels, saying it had been agreed by the government and "delivers on the vote that people gave on Brexit".
"We deliver that Brexit and we do it in a way that protects jobs and livelihoods and meets our commitment to Northern Ireland," she added.

The cost of cherry tomatoes could increase by more than 10% if there is a no deal Brexit, say growers in southern Spain.
Earlier this week, I visited a vast site near Alicante, where 60 million kilograms of cherry tomatoes are grown, picked and shipped every year and a third of them are bound for the UK.
But growers are worried that a no deal Brexit is going to push up the price we pay for them in the shops.
Jorge Brotons is the commercial director for Bonnysa and deals with all the big UK supermarkets. The business has been growing tomatoes for the UK since 1956.
"We're trying to understand what the different scenarios can be. If there is no deal, we'll have to trade in a different way as tariffs will be applied, new inspections and this means we add new processes to current situations," he says.
Ultimately it means more work, more time, more people to make checks and all that means more costs.
"The cost in agriculture and margins are very very tight, and the history of prices shows tomatoes haven't increased in 15 years," he says.
"With all costs increasing our margins are so tight - we can't absorb any more cost and any more costs in that chain means losses and having to decide to do something else."
We start the day at Bonnysa's vast greenhouse complex which spans a huge valley in northern Alicante. The sun shines brightly and the temperature is around 15 degrees, a reminder of why salad growing here is much easier than in the UK in January.
In the greenhouse we visit, we meet two pickers undertaking the fortnightly harvest. Within 15 minutes they've gathered trays of their bright red bounty and it is on to the factory for processing.
The pickers have no idea how many cherry tomatoes pass across the factory floor per year - they laugh when I ask. And it's not hard to understand why. They're everywhere.
One sorting line spreads them, then photographs them and another separates them. We see all of the big UK supermarkets' labels on the boxes bound for the UK, but I can't tell you who they are as the firms requested confidentiality. For them, it is too sensitive to be heard talking about Brexit - even when it's just tomatoes.
Angel Jiminez is director of exports at Trota, a logistics firms that sends 200 lorries of tomatoes to the UK every week.
So how would a no deal Brexit affect their business? "Right now there is no paperwork involved to cross the border and we can cross easily, but more paperwork means delays. Time is money, more days is more time - and it is the final buyer who pays for everything."
He also says the haulier industry is no where near prepared enough: "Brexit is not going to be easy at the beginning."
Uri is one of the many Trota drivers that transport Bonnysa's cherry tomatoes to the UK. It's Monday and he's just about to begin the 2,000km journey from the Alicante plant, across Spain and France, and on to Britain through the Channel Tunnel.
Eurotunnel is the preferred crossing for most perishable food items, and by volume the tunnel carries more food than car parts because of its speed and access to market. For Bonnysa it is vital that it continues to function smoothly after Brexit, whatever deal is achieved.
At least according to the company that operates the tunnel, firms need not worry.
"Here at Eurotunnel we're ready, soft Brexit, hard Brexit we've been preparing for two and a half years. We've taken the worst case scenario as our goal all the way through," says John Keefe, director of public affairs at Eurotunnel.
"We will be able to deliver our transport system from day one from both sides."
I join Uri in the truck from Calais and we head through the tunnel and into Folkestone for the final leg of his journey - on to the supermarket distribution centre. All in all, it takes just over two and a half days to transport a tomato from Bonyssa's vines to sub-zero temperatures in Dartford.
They'll be on the supermarkets on Friday in time for your weekend salad.
There is zero friction on our journey (apart from some snow), but the concern from Spain is that the introduction of new checks and customs at any point in the trip will add new costs if there's a no deal Brexit - and that means higher prices for UK shoppers, a thought shared by Justin King, former boss of Sainsbury's.
"The nature of our very efficient food supply chain is there is little surplus cost or margin along the way," he says. "The more inefficient it becomes, the ability of suppliers and retailers to absorb that is very limited. They will be passed on to consumers and really quite quickly."

John Bercow says he will stand down as Commons Speaker and MP at the next election or on 31 October, whichever comes first.
Speaking in Parliament, Mr Bercow said his 10-year "tenure" was nearing its end and it had been the "greatest honour and privilege" to serve.
If there was no early election, he said 31 October would be the "least disruptive and most democratic" date.
The ex-Tory MP succeeded the late Michael Martin as Speaker in 2009.
He has faced fierce criticism from Brexiteers, who have questioned his impartiality on the issue of Europe and claim he has facilitated efforts by MPs opposed to a no-deal exit to take control of Commons business.
He has also been criticised for not doing more to tackle allegations of bullying and harassment in the House of Commons.
Mr Bercow himself has been accused of mistreating several members of his own staff, which he denies.
In a break from normal convention, Mr Bercow was facing a challenge from the Conservatives in his Buckingham constituency at the next election - whenever it is called.
His wife, Sally, was in the public gallery as he made his announcement - which comes just hours before Parliament is due to be suspended or prorogued for five weeks.
Mr Bercow said he had decided at the time of the 2017 election that this would be his last Parliament as Speaker.
If MPs reject calls for an early election later on Monday, as seems likely, the Speaker said it was important an "experienced figure" chaired debates in the final week of October leading up to the UK's possible exit from the EU.
The period between 14 October - when the Queen will open the new session of Parliament and the government announces its new legislative programme - and 31 October is likely to be among the most eventful and unpredictable in living memory.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he will not ask for a further Brexit delay and the UK must leave the EU on Halloween.
But, unless he negotiates a new deal acceptable to Parliament, he will be legally obliged to seek a delay under the terms of legislation passed by MPs and which gained Royal Assent on Monday.
There has been speculation that, to avoid this, Mr Johnson could resign or force a vote of confidence which, if he lost, would trigger 14 days of negotiations over forming a new government.
Mr Bercow warned that if the appointment of his own successor was left until after the next election, newly-elected MPs might find themselves being "unduly influenced" by party whips in their choice of figure.
"It will mean a ballot is held when all members have some knowledge of the candidates. This is far preferable to a contest at the start of a Parliament where new MPs will not be similarly informed," he told the Commons of his plans.
"We would not want anyone to be whipped senseless, would we?"
In an emotional speech, he said he had been proud to stand up for the interests of MPs and to act as the "backbenchers' backstop".
"Throughout my time as Speaker, I have sought to increase the relative authority of this legislature for which I will make absolutely no apology to anyone, anywhere, at any time."
Mr Bercow received a standing ovation from the Labour benches after announcing his imminent departure, but most Tory MPs stayed in their seats.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn led tributes, saying the Speaker had stood up for and promoted democracy, adding that the "choice and timing" of his exit date was "incomparable".
For the government, Michael Gove said his determination to give MPs increased opportunities to hold the government to account were "in the best tradition of Speakers".
When he was first elected, Mr Bercow said he intended to serve no more than nine years in the job.
The Speaker is chosen by all MPs in the House by secret ballot.
For many years, the role alternated between the two largest parties although this unwritten convention was broken in 2000 when Labour's Michael Martin succeeded his colleague Betty Boothroyd.
Potential Labour successors to Mr Bercow include Commons deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, who announced his candidacy on Twitter.
Labour's Chris Bryant and Conservatives Sir Edward Leigh and Eleanor Laing, also a deputy speaker, have also announced they will stand.
Other possible contenders include Harriet Harman, the former Labour deputy leader and the longest-serving female MP in the House.

The House of Lords voting to reject the government's existing plan for how customs will work after we leave the EU was as surprising as the sun rising in the morning and setting at night.
Why it mattered was the political encouragement and cover it gives to Conservative rebels who are considering defying Theresa May on the issue in the Commons next month.
The extent of the Lords defeat last night gave succour to MPs from different parties who are working closely together to try to change the government's current position of avoiding any form of customs union once we are completely out of the EU.
Ministers had hoped to avoid the nightmare of holding a vote on the issue in the Commons until next month, giving more time to get likely rebels on board, more time to persuade and cajole.
The fact is, as the government knows full well, if there was a one-off vote on the issue with no other strings attached, most MPs would probably choose to stay in some form of customs union.
Despite strong feelings in Number 10 and among Brexiteers that such a policy is unacceptable, the Parliamentary arithmetic on the green benches is against them.
But no more will ministers be able to run from the issue.
It's just emerged that a powerful cross-party group of MPs is to force a vote on a customs union next week.
The Liaison Committee, made up of Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and SNP select committee chairs, has tabled a debate for next week calling for "an effective Customs Union".
The MPs, including Yvette Cooper, Nicky Morgan, Sarah Wollaston, and Hilary Benn, are voices who carry credibility with them.
The vote would not be binding on ministers, but will ratchet up the pressure on Number 10 to shift its position if, as seems likely, the numbers go against the government.
And, remember, there are ministers in government, even though they are probably a minority, who also believe that in the end, staying in some form of customs union is the way to go.

To govern is to choose. The prime minister has now chosen to exercise her power over the constitution, reserved to Westminster under the Scotland Act 1998.
This is about competing power, competing mandates, competing interpretations of the verdicts delivered during the European referendum last year.
Theresa May accords primacy to the Brexit negotiations. She says she does not want even to contemplate the prospect of indyref2 during that period. That means she will not countenance a transfer of powers under Section 30 of the Scotland Act, again at this stage.
Nicola Sturgeon accords primacy to the impact upon Scotland of the Brexit process. She says it is undemocratic for the PM to refuse to give Scotland a meaningful choice - that word again - within a suitable timescale, proximate to the Brexit plans. It is sinking the ship and puncturing Scotland's lifeboat.
But this is also about political confidence. Political calculation. Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, plainly calculates that she will have Scottish public opinion on her side. Or, more precisely, a sufficient quotient of public opinion.
The Tories in Scotland have been through a period where they were the party which dared not speak its name, the toxic party. They now reckon those days are behind them. And why? The Union, post-2014.
Their calculation - and it is an arithmetical sum - is that they can corral behind them the supporters of Union in Scotland. That, just as in the past, in the 1950s for example, they can draw backing from a relatively wide range of Scottish society, predicated upon concrete support for the Union - and fixed opposition to the SNP.
It worked, to a substantial degree, in the last Holyrood elections when they became the largest opposition party. Their calculation is that it will work again, this time.
Will there be anger in some quarters at the Prime Minister's decision? There will indeed. Stand by for demonstrations to that effect at the SNP conference in Aberdeen.
But the calculation by the Tories - and this is less quantifiable, but a calculation nevertheless - is that sufficient numbers of the populace in Scotland will be relieved that they do not have to decide on independence in the next 18 months to two years.
The Tory leadership insists that they are not blocking a referendum entirely. That was Ruth Davidson's answer when she was reminded that she had told my estimable colleague Gordon Brewer in July last year that there should not be a constitutional block placed upon indyref2.
The argument was that they are merely setting terms: evident fairness and discernible popular/political support for a further plebiscite.
However, these are not absolute, they are open to interpretation. It would seem to be that the verdict on these factors would also lie with the Prime Minister. Such is the nature of reserved power.
But, again, the Tory triumvirate - PM, secretary of state, Scottish leader - stress that a referendum might be feasible once Brexit is signed, sealed and settled. David Mundell seemed particularly keen to stress that point.
However, if they won't contemplate Section 30 meantime, then the time needed for legislation, consultation and official preparation would suggest that - by that calendar - any referendum would be deferred until 2020 or possibly later. Possibly after the next Holyrood elections.
Options for the FM? She could sanction an unofficial referendum, without statutory backing. Don't see that happening. It would be a gesture - and Nicola Sturgeon, as the head of a government, is generally averse to gestures. Unless they advance her cause.
She could protest and seek discussions. Some senior Nationalists believe this to be a negotiation ploy by the PM, the prelude to talks.
Will the first minister proceed with the vote next week at Holyrood, demanding a Section 30 transfer in which the Greens are expected to join with the SNP to create a majority? I firmly expect her to do so, to add to the challenge to the PM.
Beyond that, expect the First Minister to cajole, to urge - but also to campaign. To deploy this deferral of an independence referendum as an argument for…an independence referendum. She will seek public support, arguing that Scotland's interests have been ignored. Just as Ruth Davidson will seek public support, arguing that she is protecting those interests.
Final thought. One senior Nationalist suggested to me that delay might, ultimately, be in the SNP's interests: that people were already disquieted by Brexit and would prefer a pause. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, to quote the old song.

Tory MP Nick Boles, who quit his local party on Saturday over his stance on Brexit, says his priority lies with his constituents and he will not be "bossed around by a small number of people".
He told the Andrew Marr Show he thought about standing as an independent MP.
But he said he had decided to remain as he was not "ready to give up on the Conservative Party yet".
Mr Boles, MP for Grantham and Stamford, has been an outspoken critic of leaving the EU with no deal.
The MP - who is in favour of a closer Norway-style relationship with Europe - said he was "proud" of his role in the cross-party campaign to force the prime minister to request an extension to Article 50 beyond 29 March, and to block a no-deal Brexit.
But Councillor Martin Hill, vice president of the Grantham and Stamford Conservative Association, told members they had been "betrayed by their parliamentary representative", calling on him to take the "honourable course" and quit as an MP.
Mr Boles said a "certain amount of pressure was applied" by the local party after he was asked to tell them if he intended to stand as their representative at the next general election.
But he told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "I represent 100,000 people in Parliament. I have roughly 500 members in my local association and roughly 60 people on my executive.
"I'm afraid I'm going to claim the right to interpret what is in the best interest of the 100,000 people I represent and I'm not going to be bossed around by a very small number of people with very ideological views."
Despite leaving the local association, whose members he wrote to this weekend, Mr Boles said he remains loyal to the party.
He said: "I have voted for Theresa May's deal every time it has been offered and I will vote for it again on Tuesday.
"The only thing and, in truth , the real area where I fell out with some members of my association, was in my efforts to stop a no-deal Brexit - and obviously I was very much involved in this plan that reached its fruition last week to stop a no-deal Brexit."
He said he had been told he could continue as a Conservative MP, with his membership being transferred from his local party to the national party. He is to meet the chief whip on Monday.
His announcement came after a busy week in Westminster, when MPs voted to seek a delay to the UK's departure from the EU.
The third "meaningful vote" on Prime Minister Theresa May's deal is expected to take place next week. If it is agreed, she has promised to seek a shorter extension to the departure date.
But if it does not gain support, she has warned a longer extension may be needed - and the UK might have to take part in European elections.

Conservative Eurosceptics have launched a new attempt to change the government's Brexit strategy by targeting a key piece of legislation.
Amendments tabled to the customs bill threaten to undermine Theresa May's plan for future UK-EU relations.
Some Brexiteers are unhappy at the plan, agreed by the cabinet at Chequers last week, saying it will keep the UK tied to EU rules.
The PM says it honours the Leave vote and protects jobs.
With numbers tight in the Commons, the prime minister - who relies on Northern Ireland's DUP to win key votes - would be vulnerable to any rebellion among Eurosceptic MPs as she tries to pass key laws needed for Brexit preparation.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how trade will work between the UK and the EU after that.
The delay has been partly blamed on deep disagreements within the Conservative Party over what shape Brexit should take.
This has focused on whether the UK should prioritise business interests and keep a close relationship with the EU in order to minimise friction for cross-border trade - which critics say will mean the UK still abiding by EU rules and leaving "in name only".
The Chequers proposals, which have yet to be negotiated with the EU, prompted the resignations of Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and David Davis, the Brexit secretary, who both said they could not support them.
Analysis by BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg
Brexiteers are trying to force the government to drop its Chequers compromise, and dangling the threat of voting down legislation if Theresa May doesn't budge.
Brexiteer ministers are this afternoon, I'm told, still trying to get "edits" to the final White Paper, the souped-up version of the Chequers plan.
Their fellow Leavers on the backbenches are clearly going to kick up a stink if Number 10 won't move, and if they choose to, they have the numbers to defeat the government time and again.
Read Laura's full blog
More details will be set out on Thursday. So far Downing Street has said it would see the UK agreeing a "common rulebook" with the EU for trading in goods, in an attempt to minimise friction for trade at borders.
This has angered some Conservative backbenchers, who say it will prevent the UK from having its own independent trade policy, and they want to see the Chequers blueprint rewritten.
The customs bill - formally known as the Taxation (Cross-Border Trade) Bill, will give the government the power to adopt a new customs policy after it leaves the EU.
The legislation returns to the Commons on Monday.
One of the Eurosceptic rebel amendments demands that the UK should not be allowed to collect customs duties on behalf of the EU, unless the EU does the same for the UK.
But in the Chequers agreement, there are plans for a "combined customs territory" where the UK would charge EU tariffs for goods which will end up heading into the EU.
Other amendments would make it impossible for Northern Ireland to be in a separate customs arrangement to the rest of the UK - an arrangement previously suggested by the EU - and would require the UK to have a separate VAT regime from the EU.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who leads the European Research Group of Tory MPs, said the amendment would "put into law the government's often stated position that Northern Ireland should be treated the same way as the rest of the country", and "ensure reciprocity of customs collection, and treating the UK and EU as equals".
"They will put into law the government's stated position that we will not be part of the EU VAT regime," he added.

An agreement has been reached which will see the Democratic Unionist Party back Theresa May's minority government.
The deal, which comes two weeks after the election resulted in a hung Parliament, will see the 10 DUP MPs back the Tories in key Commons votes.
There will be £1bn extra for Northern Ireland over the next two years.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said the "wide-ranging" pact was "good for Northern Ireland and the UK" but one critic said it was a "straight bung".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the deal was "clearly not in the national interest", and Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams said it enabled a "Tory Brexit which threatens the Good Friday Agreement".
It has prompted calls for matching public investment in Wales and Scotland.
A three page document outlining the terms of the agreement has been published in full. The DUP said it would apply for the lifetime of the Parliament, scheduled to last five years, but would also be reviewed at the end of the current session in two years' time.
There will be £1.5bn in funding - consisting of £1bn of new money and £500m of previously announced funds - to be spent over the next two years on infrastructure, health and education in Northern Ireland, money Mrs Foster said was needed to address the challenges from Northern Ireland's "unique history".
As part of the deal, the military covenant will be implemented in full in Northern Ireland, meaning more focus on the treatment of military veterans, while the triple lock guarantee of at least a 2.5% rise in the state pension each year, and winter fuel payments, will be maintained throughout the UK.
Other key points of the agreement include:
Mrs May shook hands with DUP leader Arlene Foster as she and other senior party figures arrived at Downing Street on Monday to finalise the pact. The two leaders then watched as Conservative chief whip Gavin Williamson and his DUP counterpart Jeffrey Donaldson signed the documents in No 10.
Speaking outside Downing Street, Mrs Foster said the agreement would bring stability to the UK government as it embarked on the Brexit process,
"This agreement will operate to deliver a stable government in the United Kingdom's national interest at this vital time," she said.
Analysis by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
The Tories now face a bumpy day of criticism, about how the DUP have been bought off - £100m for each of their ten votes in Parliament. The other devolved nations will cry foul.
Some Tories too are deeply uncomfortable about the association with the DUP brand of unionism. And if the cuts are to be eased in Northern Ireland, what about other parts of the country?
But the money that's been found down the back of the Number 10 sofa for Northern Ireland may be worth it for Theresa May as the price of holding power, for now.
She now has her majority, whatever the cost, and a dividend could be the conclusion of a deal to get power sharing at Stormont up and running too.
Read Laura's blog in full
Welcoming the additional funding for Northern Ireland, she said it would benefit all communities. "Following our discussions the Conservative Party has recognised the case for higher funding in Northern Ireland, given our unique history and indeed circumstances over recent decades."
The UK prime minister said the pact was a "very good one" for the UK as a whole.
"We share many values in terms of wanting to see prosperity across the UK, the value of the union, the important bond between the different parts of the UK," Mrs May said. "We very much want to see that protected and enhanced
First Secretary of State Damian Green, a close ally of Mrs May's, said he hoped the extra money would help revive devolved government in Northern Ireland.
"The money that is attached to this agreement is actually less than the money attached to the original Stormont agreement in 2014," he told the BBC. "We know Northern Ireland has particular needs, because of its history and difficulties.
"There are parts of the Northern Ireland infrastructure that needs particular help and that has been recognised on a continuing basis."
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said most of the money being allocated to Northern Ireland would go to specific projects rather than general spending, meaning it would not necessarily impact on the Barnett formula which determines overall expenditure across the nations of the UK.
She said DUP sources pointed to the creation of a "coordination committee", suggesting this would give them a direct line in to government discussions and that this may prove particularly influential over the Brexit negotiations.
Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government since March and parties have until Thursday to find agreement.
The cash will go to the Northern Ireland executive if the devolved institutions are restored by the deadline of 29 June.
Under the so-called "confidence and supply" arrangement, the DUP will line up behind the government in key votes, such as on the Queen's Speech and Budgets, as well as Brexit and security matters, which are likely to dominate most of the current Parliament.
On other legislation, the DUP's support is not necessarily guaranteed - although the Northern Ireland party is expected to back the majority of the government's programme for the next two years after many of its more controversial policies were dropped.
The support of the DUP will give Mrs May an effective working majority of 13, given that Sinn Fein do not take up their seven seats and Speaker John Bercow and his three deputies - two of whom are Labour MPs - do not take part in votes.
Several senior Tories had advised her to govern without any formal agreement with the DUP, arguing the unionist party would not be prepared to bring Mrs May down and run the risk of triggering a fresh election given their longstanding hostility to Jeremy Corbyn and other senior Labour figures.
Former PM Sir John Major warned that a formal association with the DUP could undermine attempts to restore power-sharing government in Northern Ireland while some MPs said the DUP's socially conservative stance on issues such as gay marriage and abortion could damage the party in the longer term.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones suggested Mrs May was "throwing money at Northern Ireland while ignoring the rest of the UK", in what he called "cash for votes".
"Today's deal represents a straight bung to keep a weak prime minister and a faltering government in office," the Labour politician said.
Mr Corbyn said public service cuts should be stopped "right across the UK, not just in Northern Ireland".
He demanded to know where the extra money for Northern Ireland was coming from, and whether other parts of the UK would get a similar cash injection.
"This Tory-DUP deal is clearly not in the national interest but in May's party's interest to help her cling to power," he added.
Mr Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, said: "The Tory government has slashed more than £1bn from the block grant over the last seven years.
"The allocation of additional funds could help to ease the enormous pressure on our public services.
"The devil is in the detail."
On the plan to implement the military covenant in Northern Ireland, Mr Adams added: "Sinn Fein will resolutely oppose any attempt to give preferential treatment to British forces, either in terms of legacy or the provision of public services."
In the Commons, MPs from other parties lined up to criticise the new arrangements, with the SNP's Pete Wishart saying it was a "pathetic grubby little deal" and accusing the Tories and DUP of "pork barrel politics".
But Nigel Dodds, the DUP's Westminster leader, said his party could publish details of its correspondence with Labour and the SNP at the time of previous elections.
"Some of the faux outrage we have heard is hypocrisy of the highest order," he said.
Mr Dodds said the extra investment would be "for every section of the community in Northern Ireland".

The Conservative Party is being "manipulated" by Brexit "zealots" and the "mainstream majority" of MPs must reassert itself to stop a damaging EU exit, Sir John Major is to argue.
In a lecture in Glasgow, the former prime minister will urge Parliament to "dig deep into its soul" and act before the scheduled departure, on 29 March.
Brexit will cost billions and risk the break-up of the UK, he will say.
Theresa May is continuing talks with the EU to try to salvage her deal.
Parliament rejected the terms of withdrawal negotiated with the EU by a huge margin last month, raising the prospect of the UK leaving without a formal agreement.
Mrs May intends to put the deal to the vote again - although it is unclear when this will happen.
Speaking at the University of Glasgow, Sir John will say he hopes Parliament has the "wisdom and the will to exert its democratic right" to stop a no-deal Brexit in its tracks and give the people another say on whether to leave.
Sir John, who led the country between 1990 and 1997, will urge MPs to act in the UK's economic interest given what he says is the calamitous threat to jobs, investment and the public services from leaving.
"The decision Parliament takes next week can undermine or revive the reputation of representative politics and from that flows so much of our whole way of life," he will say.
"Every so often, in our long history, there has come a moment when Parliament has had to dig deep into its soul. Now is such a moment."
"I believe we have a right to expect members of Parliament to vote for an outcome that best protects the future welfare and prosperity of our nation - without fear or favour and without deference to party allegiance."
Sir John will suggest "fringe opinion" is driving Conservative and Labour policies towards Brexit, attacking "rogues and chancers" in both parties for whom the "truth is nothing more than a plaything".
The "intransigence" of the European Research Group of Conservative MPs is determining policy, with little regard to the "pragmatic and tolerant" brand of Conservatism that attracted him to the party in the 1960s, he will say.
"Some, who can fairly be called zealots, seem incapable of looking beyond the one issue of Europe," he will say. "It is not just that it dominates their thinking, it seems to obsess them."
While expressing admiration for the seven ex-Labour MPs who quit the party on Monday, he will say a "moderate" Labour party is essential if the centre of British politics is not to be overwhelmed by populism.
"When I refer to the centre, I don't mean some amorphous party of moderates and centrists," he will say.
"When I speak of the centre, I mean that our three main national parties - Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat - must each retain a mainstream majority of their own.
"Currently, both the Conservative and Labour parties are being manipulated by fringe opinion.
"Complacent voices dismiss the chances of fringe opinion gaining control of the political agenda.
"Britain is too pragmatic, they say, too stable and our political system too mature. I hope they are right".
The ERG has dismissed Sir John's earlier warnings as sour grapes, accusing him of wanting to overturn the 2016 Brexit referendum vote and ignoring MPs' decision to trigger the two-year process of leaving, in 2017.

Jeremy Corbyn has warned shadow cabinet ministers not to expect to stay in their jobs if they vote against starting the process of leaving the EU.
The Labour leader told ITV it was "impossible" for members of his top team to remain in place if they rebelled against a three-line whip.
Shadow Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens quit last week over the issue - other senior MPs say they will rebel.
Mr Corbyn has ordered all Labour MPs to support the bill triggering Article 50.
Labour backed the campaign to keep the UK in the EU in the referendum in June and many Labour MPs represent constituencies which voted for Remain.
But many seats which voted to leave the EU are also represented by Labour MPs.
Mr Corbyn says he understands the pressures on MPs in pro-Remain constituencies but has called on them to unite around the important issues.
His shadow home secretary Diane Abbott has said that, since a UK-wide referendum with a 72% turnout returned a vote in favour of withdrawing from the EU, it would "be very undermining of democracy" for MPs to vote against beginning the formal process of leaving.
Ms Stevens quit on Friday saying Brexit was a "terrible mistake". Shadow minister Tulip Siddiq also quit last week saying she would vote against the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.
Two Labour whips, Jeff Smith and Thangam Debbonaire, who are in charge of party discipline, have also said they will rebel - though they have not resigned.
Another shadow minister Daniel Zeichner has said he will vote against the bill, as will other MPs including former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw.
Mr Corbyn told ITV's Peston on Sunday: "There was no need for anyone to resign at this stage. It's obviously impossible to carry on being in the shadow cabinet if you vote against a decision made after a very frank and very long discussion of the shadow cabinet earlier this week."
Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson has said divisions in the party will be handled sensitively and suggested some rebels could be back in senior roles "within months".
The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill was introduced after the Supreme Court ruled that parliament - not just the government alone - must vote to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts the formal process of the UK leaving the EU.
Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to begin the formal process of leaving by the end of March.
The bill is due to be debated by MPs on Tuesday - in a sitting that may last until midnight - and clear the Commons on 8 February, after which it will move to the House of Lords.
Labour has demanded changes including giving the Commons a vote on the final Brexit deal before European leaders or MEPs consider it.
The Liberal Democrats have vowed to oppose the triggering of Article 50 unless there is a guarantee of another referendum on the final Brexit deal that is agreed with Brussels, while the SNP has vowed to table 50 amendments to the legislation.

The architect of the Vote Leave campaign says it is possible last year's Brexit vote could turn out to have been an "error".
Ex-campaign director Dominic Cummings said "lots" of things could happen to make him wish his side had lost.
But he also stressed there were more possible outcomes in which leaving would be good for the EU and the UK.
Mr Cummings made the comments in a Twitter exchange with legal commentator David Allen Green.
He tweeted (his Twitter name is @odysseanproject) that there were "more possible branches of future" in which leaving was "a good thing", saying it increased Europe's  "overall ability to adapt more effectively to an uncertain world".
Mr Cummings also warned Brexit negotiations were heading for a "debacle" without "management changes" in Downing Street, although he said warned the importance of the talks was "greatly overstated" compared with domestic reforms that could be carried out.
"Decisions re our own institutions will decide success/failure," he tweeted.
Critics, including pro-Remain Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, seized on his comments.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, and formal negotiations between the two sides have started.
Earlier former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, who campaigned to leave the EU, predicted a £10bn "Brexit dividend" for the UK once it leaves, describing this as a "great chink of light" for current Chancellor Philip Hammond.
"Once we leave there will be this £10bn a year bonus - unless we are foolish enough to negotiate it away," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Leave campaigners have previously cited a £32bn "dividend" in the three years after Brexit, calculated by adding together the UK's net contribution for each year.
The issue of any "divorce bill" the UK might face is expected to be tackled at an early stage of the talks.
Before the negotiations started, the government set out its negotiation aims, including a new "comprehensive" free trade deal with the EU.
Another former chancellor, Labour's Alistair Darling - who campaigned to stay in the EU - said the UK looks "pretty clueless" as it attempts to negotiate its way out.
Lord Darling, whose stark economic warnings before the Brexit vote have not yet materialised, said: "Until we know what the Brexit settlement is, and frankly at the moment we haven't a clue what it is - and every day the government is giving an impression that it hasn't a clue either what it's going to look like - you won't know what the economy is going to do."
He added: "Here we are, shaping the future... and the UK looks pretty clueless at the moment - I don't ever recall a situation where our country has been in that position before."

Judges at the Supreme Court have rejected the Scottish government's argument that Holyrood should get a say on the triggering of Article 50.
The court decided that MPs must have a say on starting the formal process of Brexit via an act of parliament.
However, they also rejected arguments from the Lord Advocate that devolved administrations should also have a say.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has pledged to hold a Holyrood vote on the matter regardless of the ruling.
She said there remained a "clear political obligation" on the UK government to consult devolved administrations, adding that "it is becoming clearer by the day that Scotland's voice is simply not being heard or listened to within the UK".
Ministers wanted to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the formal process for leaving the European Union, without consulting the Westminster parliament.
Campaigners disputed this, saying the referendum result alone does not give ministers the power to change the British constitution and supersede legislation.
The Supreme Court justices backed the challenge by eight votes to three, with President Lord Neuberger summarising their ruling as: "The Government cannot trigger Article 50 without an Act of Parliament authorising it to do so."
With Jeremy Corbyn pledging the support of Labour MPs to backing the government on Article 50, the defeat in court is not expected to derail the Brexit process, although it could pose complications.
The SNP have vowed to vote against invoking Article 50 if it does go to a vote at Westminster, while the Lib Dems have said they will oppose it unless there is a referendum on the final Brexit deal.
Today's Supreme Court ruling delineates precisely where formal, statutory power lies on the issue of reshaping Britain's relationship with the EU.
Europe, as an issue, is reserved to Westminster along with foreign affairs more generally.
It falls to the UK Parliament to implement the expressed popular will of the UK as a whole.
Quite right, say supporters of the Union, advising Nicola Sturgeon to fall into step. Which brings us back to the fundamental issue in Scottish politics.
Ms Sturgeon does not accept a UK mandate but rather seeks the power to implement an independent Scottish mandate.
Two competing options, then. It seems now very likely - perhaps indeed "all but inevitable" - that the people of Scotland will be asked, once more, which constitutional arrangement they favour.
Meanwhile, the Scottish government was also represented in the Supreme Court case, with Lord Advocate James Wolffe arguing Holyrood's consent should also be sought due to the "significant changes" Brexit would have on devolved powers.
Lawyers for the UK government rejected this, saying the argument was "fatally undermined" by the fact that powers over foreign affairs are reserved to Westminster.
The judges unanimously rejected Mr Wolffe's arguments, saying that the principle of legislative consent "does not give rise to a legally enforceable obligation".
They said the Sewel Convention, which provides that Holyrood should be consulted where Westminster legislation cuts across devolved areas, plays "an important role in the operation of the UK constitution", but is not a matter for the courts.
They added: "The devolved legislatures do not have a veto on the UK's decision to withdraw from the EU."
The SNP welcomed the ruling in relation to the Westminster vote, with the party's international affairs spokesman Alex Salmond pledging to introduce 50 amendments to the Article 50 legislation as it passes through parliament.
Later in the day, Ms Sturgeon will convene a meeting of her Standing Council on Europe, a team of legal, economic and diplomatic advisors.
Also in attendance will be External Affairs Secretary Fiona Hyslop, Brexit minister Mike Russell and Europe minister Alasdair Allan.
The first minister, who has said a second Scottish independence referendum is "undoubtedly" closer due to Theresa May's Brexit plans, declared her intention to hold a Holyrood vote on Article 50 regardless of the ruling of the court.
She said: "We are obviously disappointed with the Supreme Court's ruling in respect of the devolved administrations and the legal enforceability of the Sewel Convention.
"It is now crystal clear that the promises made to Scotland by the UK government about the Sewel Convention and the importance of embedding it in statute were not worth the paper they were written on.
"Although the court has concluded that the UK government is not legally obliged to consult the devolved administrations, there remains a clear political obligation to do so.
"The Scottish government will bring forward a Legislative Consent Motion and ensure that the Scottish Parliament has the opportunity to vote on whether or not it consents to the triggering of Article 50."
Ms Sturgeon also said the ruling raises "fundamental issues above and beyond that of EU membership", saying it was "becoming ever clearer" that Scots face a fresh choice over independence.
The Scottish Conservatives called on the SNP to stop trying to "hold the UK to ransom" over Brexit.
Leader Ruth Davidson said: "Whatever side people were on last year, Scotland wants to get on with the negotiations so we can start to leave the uncertainty of the last few years behind us.
"We have all had enough of the nationalists using every diversionary tactic they can to try to use Brexit to manufacture a case for separation.
"The SNP needs to decide: does it want Britain's renegotiation to succeed or fail? If it is the former, it needs to end the attempts to sow division and add to the uncertainty we face, and instead get behind the UK attempt to get the right deal for the whole UK."
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said her party would "continue to work with the Scottish government to get the best deal for Scotland within the UK".
She added: "Both the SNP and the Conservatives are casting about for an expedient political position rather than working in the national interest. Unity cannot be achieved by a politics that sees one half of the country constantly facing off against the other.
"We are divided enough already. That's why there will be no support from Scottish Labour for any SNP plan for a second independence referendum."
Scottish Green co-convener Patrick Harvie said the ruling showed Scotland is "not an equal partner in the UK", saying it was "hard to see any other option" than a second independence referendum.
And Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said the case presented "a huge opportunity" for a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

"Constructive and detailed" - that sounds quite positive - Number 10's description of the talks today.
"Robust" - not quite so chirpy - Labour's use of political speak for what most of us might call a bit tricky.
"Disingenuous" - oh dear - a different Labour source's description of ministers' claim that what they were putting on the table in the cross-party talks today was something genuinely new on the vexed question of customs arrangements after we leave the EU.
As we reported this morning there didn't really seem to be much from the government that was concrete beyond what's already possible under the agreement that's been hammered out with Brussels.
The divorce deal and indeed yes, you guessed it, the backstop, both have forms of temporary customs unions in them to make trade between the UK and the EU easier.
Of course the precise language and mechanisms matter enormously.
But was there some big shiny new offer today? The short answer is: no.
And after hours of talks this afternoon, Labour sources suggest ministers in the end more or less admitted that in pointed discussions.
As we've talked about here before, the cross-party talks process is real.
Plenty of people in the Tory party hate it. Plenty of people in the Labour Party hate it.
But inside both leaders' camps, there is a genuine desire, more intense since they both had a bad night at the polls on Thursday, to see if they can sketch out a joint escape route from the mess of Brexit.
But the historically awful result for the prime minister does not seem to have shocked her into ditching her red lines - at least not yet.
It's important to understand this process is always unlikely to end up with some kind of joint defining pact - sources involved joke about the preposterous idea of some kind of May-Corbyn Rose Garden love-in - fond or awful memories of that summer's day when the Cameron-Clegg bromance was born in public (take your pick which).
The fact the talks have gone on for so long hint that there is serious merit in finding some kind of agreement on some kind of process.
At the very least senior figures in the government hope that the talks might mean Labour would allow the Brexit legislation to move on to its next phase.
In nerd terms, this is to allow the Withdrawal Bill to get through its so-called "second reading", knowing that at the next stage in Parliament where a committee of MPs would pore over every line, multiple layers of objections would be made, suggestions and changes put forward and then voted on, before finally, the bill would have its third reading, when MPs are able to give their final yes or no.
It is hard right now though to make a call on whether that is viable.
One former minister, experienced and not prone to make wild prediction, told me Number 10 was in "la la land" if they believed that could happen.
About half an hour later, another former and experienced minister told me they believe, in fact, it will fly and perhaps by the end of this month.
Whoever you ask, it is clear it is not straightforward.
So when the two teams sit down again on Wednesday afternoon, whether it is "constructive" or "robust", there's still an awful lot to do.

If Brexit is going to end up feeling like a long toe-to-toe boxing match then at last we can say that the first round is over.
Theresa May has come out jabbing - offering crisp points about the UK's plans to leave the single market and its readiness to walk away from a bad deal if that's all that's on offer.
The European side for the moment is still acting as if what we've seen so far this week is just the posturing and chest-beating you see at the pre-fight weigh-in rather than the fight itself.
Their big-hitters - politicians like the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker and his equivalent at the European Council Donald Tusk - have confined themselves to a little nifty defensive work pointing to the likely difficulty of the talks, hoping for a fair outcome and reiterating that until Britain formally triggers the departure process everything is mere shadow boxing.
None of that of course will stop individual MEPs and commentators from offering their assessment of where the balance lies between the EU and the UK after Theresa May's Brexit declaration.
Brexit at-a-glance: What we learned from Theresa May
Why Brexit is still undefined
One German colleague said to me jokingly: "I didn't realise that the EU had decided to leave the UK until I heard your prime minister's speech."
And elsewhere in the corridors of the European Parliament you heard plenty of surprise at the confidence of the tone coming from London, the crispness of the decision to leave the single market and the sudden shafts of clarity after weeks in which the UK had appeared to not know what it wanted.
That's not to say of course that everyone has been impressed, even though Mrs May was praised in some quarters both for realism and for clarity.
It's worth remembering that most mainstream politicians in Europe view Brexit as an act of madness to be spoken of with hostility and incomprehension. Britain in this analysis has taken the decision to walk away from an institution that's been an engine of peace and prosperity.
Hence these remarks from the German MP Norbert Roettgen, who represents Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats.
He said: "The UK's two main economic weaknesses are its considerable trade deficit and a big budget deficit. As such [UK Chancellor Philip] Hammond's threats with duties and tax cuts would primarily damage the UK and should be regarded as an expression of British cluelessness."
That dismissal of an option Britain is keeping in reserve - the option of operating as a low-tax base for business if Europe refuses to cut an attractive deal - would be seen in Strasbourg as one weakness in the Theresa May strategy.
From elsewhere on the German political spectrum came an alternative strand of criticism - not that the UK was trying to set up a kind of low-tax magnet for foreign investment into Europe but simply that it was cutting ties in too brutal a fashion.
Ska Keller represents the German Greens in the European parliament.
She told us: "My overall impression is that May wants to go for a super-hard Brexit. She wants to cut all ties and I don't think that's going to fly well on the rest of the continent. Theresa May didn't really make friends in the last couple of days here in the overall European Union."
To the right of that broad European mainstream of course, things are seen rather differently.
France's far-right National Front looks at the success of the Leave campaign in the UK with a degree of envy. It doesn't like the EU either and would like to see its core treaties renegotiated.
Its senior MEP Bruno Gollnisch said: " I do think that in the end Britain could settle down to a situation rather like what it had before Brexit - after all in those days we managed things like exchanges of school pupils. And the UK will have commercial ties that reflect its specific Anglo-Saxon nature. There is no real reason why not."
So there has been a sense in Strasbourg this week that a phase in a kind of phoney war has finally ended and after months of speculating about what Britain might or might not want, a degree of clarity has emerged about British ambitions towards the single market and to a lesser extent the custom unions.
So far in this cautious round it was the UK which came out swinging rather than the European side.
But there is a very long way to go in this negotiation and by the end of it both sides will have endured defeats and disappointments alongside their occasional moments of triumph.
The UK might feel for now that its ahead on points, but everyone knows there's a long way - a very long way - to go.

 What's in a word? Number 10 will have cheered some of their Brexit backing troops this morning by ruling out, (again), staying in the customs union.
This time they have, for good measure and just to be clear, ruled out not just staying in 'the' customs union, but also remaining in 'a' customs union.
This might sound bonkers to you, but the inclusion of 'a' as a mere possibility had given hope to some MPs that the government was open to the idea of essentially replicating the current arrangements and calling it something else.
An explicit reminder in those terms therefore will be a frustration to that group which have been pushing for a softer approach. In political terms therefore, it is an important signal at the beginning of an important week.
What Sunday's late night statement is not, however, is anything like a new explanation of what the government actually wants to do. It does not mean that there will definitely be a border on the island of Ireland.
It does not mean definitely that there will suddenly be vast lorry parks across the whole of Kent or around the ports at Hull or Holyhead.
The government's overall aims remain the same - no hard border, and trade that is as frictionless as possible after Brexit. But there are emerging signs of the 'c' - the compromise that Theresa May will try to broker with her party, and her cabinet colleagues in the coming weeks to establish the government's actual position.
That is, before of course, Brussels and 27 other countries either say "oui", "non", or "peut-etre".
Back in the summer the UK set out two broad possibilities. The fault line that Theresa May needs to walk carefully over this week is between those in her cabinet who want to crack on as fast as possible with agreeing trade deals with other countries, and those who put the preservation of the existing arrangements above that.
As we saw last week on her trade trip to China, the prime minister does not want to accept publicly that one of these choices trumps the other. But as her colleagues who toured the broadcast studios yesterday displayed, there are divisions in the Tory party over who wants what, so there does have to be compromise.
There are whispers around, as The Times reports, that putting a time limit on to some of the existing arrangements could provide a way through. Interestingly, that's the approach that eventually found favour between Westminster and Brussels over another of the points of contention.
The UK accepted that the European courts would continue to have a role in enforcing the rights of EU nationals who live in the UK, but for a time-limited period of 8 years.
That gave the PM enough wriggle room to contain the wishes of the rest of the EU and her party. Senior figures in Number 10 suggested then the idea of putting time limits could be a useful precedent for other parts of the deal.
This could, perhaps, therefore provide one of the routes out of this tangled part of the Brexit talks. But there are still weeks and months of talking ahead to do.

Boris Johnson should again seek to re-negotiate the Brexit deal if he wants DUP support, Arlene Foster has said.
The DUP leader told the party's conference that the DUP had sent the PM to the "naughty step in Parliament" twice in the last week.
The DUP has twice voted against the government on crucial Brexit votes recently, because of its opposition to Mr Johnson's Brexit strategy.
The party said it would not support the NI arrangements negotiated by the PM.
This is because it "creates a border in the Irish Sea".
The DUP leader told Saturday's annual conference she would encourage the PM to seek further changes to the deal.
"We will not give support to the government when we believe they are fundamentally wrong," she said.
Boris Johnson does not have a Conservative majority in Parliament and the DUP's votes hold the balance of power on key decisions in the Commons.
Mrs Foster accused Number 10 of acting in a way that was "detrimental" to Northern Ireland and was taking the country in the wrong direction.
She also said if the government did not change its strategy that the DUP's 10 MPs would "oppose them and we will use our votes to defeat them".
On Monday, the government will ask MPs to vote in favour of its call for a general election.
Mrs Foster did not say whether the party would vote with the government, but said the DUP was "ready for any general election that may come".
The DUP leader also addressed the Stormont deadlock.
Northern Ireland has been without a government since 2017, when the two main power-sharing parties split in a bitter row.
One of the key sticking points has been the demand from Sinn Fein to legislate for an Irish language act, with the DUP refusing to agree to it.
Mrs Foster said her party remained committed to "legislate in a balanced way for language and culture".
"If we can find a way to craft language and culture laws that facilitates those who speak the language, but does not inappropriately infringe on or threaten others, the DUP will not be found wanting," she added.
"But overall agreement needs to be a two-way street."
Speaking earlier, Nigel Dodds told the conference that the union of the United Kingdom was "non-negotiable" in any Brexit deal.
The party has said it will not support the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland negotiated by Boris Johnson as it "creates a border in the Irish Sea".
The DUP deputy leader urged the prime minister to stick to commitments he made last year, when he said no Conservative government would support such a plan.
The party argued the deal would damage the local economy and undermine the union.
"I say it again clearly for those who have failed to listen… the union of this United Kingdom is non-negotiable," said Mr Dodds.
At last year's conference, Boris Johnson was the keynote speaker.
He told DUP members that no Conservative government should support a plan that would lead to differences between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Mr Dodds accused Mr Johnson and other government ministers of not knowing "what on earth" they had negotiated as part of the revised withdrawal agreement with the EU.
He said the plan, which would see NI businesses having to fill in exit declaration forms on goods going to GB, new checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea and extra administration, as "the worst of all worlds".
The North Belfast MP also said the DUP would not back down from opposing the deal.
"The coming days will not be easy, the pressures will be great," he added.
There was a more muted feel at this year's DUP conference, with no star turn from Boris Johnson.
Instead the party's leadership took turns to chastise him for reneging on Brexit commitments he made when he stood on that very stage last November.
Both Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds seemed angry and emotional during their speeches - as many DUP politicians have sounded in recent days.
Just like last year when it opposed Theresa May's Brexit deal, the DUP is again in a political corner.
But this time, it does not have the ear of many Conservative Brexiteer MPs, who have sided with Boris Johnson and will likely dismiss the DUP's demands.
The DUP has said it will wait until Monday before giving its response to Mr Johnson's call for a general election.
The prime minister wants Westminster parties to agree to an election on 12 December.
The DUP entered a confidence and supply arrangement with the Conservative Party almost two and half years ago and helped prop up the minority government under Mr Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.
The DUP has met Mr Johnson many times since he became prime minister.
At the start of this month, DUP members chanted his name when he addressed their fringe event at the Conservative Party's annual conference in Manchester.
But the relationship soured on 17 October, when Mr Johnson struck a Brexit deal with EU leaders that the DUP said it could not endorse.
All Northern Ireland MPs who take their seats in the Commons - the 10 DUP representatives and independent North Down MP Lady Hermon - opposed the government in votes over the EU withdrawal deal and an accelerated timetable to fast-track the bill through Parliament.

The Irish Government are using Brexit negotiations to put forward their vision for the future of the island of Ireland, Arlene Foster has said.
The DUP leader accused Dublin of not allowing EU negotiations "to move forward until they have certain things they demand".
Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the UK desire for no hard-border in Ireland was "aspirational".
He said there could be no movement to phase two "on the basis of aspiration".
Arlene Foster was speaking to the BBC's Today programme ahead of the DUP's annual conference on Saturday.
She accused the Irish government of having taken an "absolutist position" on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, making it difficult to achieve agreement on its future status without moving on to the next stage of Brexit negotiations on trade.
"You can't have it both ways," she said.
Mrs Foster also said that she could not accept any position after Brexit that would give the perception that Northern Ireland is in any way different from the rest of the United Kingdom.
"We've heard from the foreign minister of the Republic of Ireland, just yesterday, talking about his aspiration for a united Ireland.
"He's of course entitled to have that aspiration but  he should not be using European Union negotiations to talk about those issues - what he should be talking about are trading relations.
"I think what we don't want to see is any perception that Northern Ireland is in anyway different from the rest of the United Kingdom because that would cause us great difficulties in relation to trade because of course the single market that really matters to us is the market of the United Kingdom," she added.
Mrs Foster's comments follow the leaking of an Irish government report branding the UK's approach to Brexit as "chaotic".
Speaking on arrival at an EU summit in Brussels on Friday morning, the Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said that leak was "unfortunate" and "not helpful".
But in relation to phase two of Brexit talks he said; "We have to move on the basis of a credible roadmap or the parameters around which we can design a credible roadmap."

Democratic Unionist Party sources have urged the Conservatives to give a "greater focus" to their negotiations.
A senior DUP source said the party could not be "taken for granted" - adding that if the PM  could not reach a deal, "what does that mean for bigger negotiations she is involved in?"
No deal has been reached after 10 days of talks between the parties.
But sources told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg they believed a deal would still be done.
The Conservatives are hoping the DUP will sustain their minority government.
The warning from a senior DUP source to BBC Northern Ireland political editor Mark Devenport comes the day before the government's Queen's Speech is presented to Parliament.
Although they have not reached a final deal, DUP leader Arlene Foster has said it is "right and proper" that her MPs support the Conservative government's first Queen's Speech.
A Conservative source said it was important the party "gets on with its business" as talks continue by putting forward Wednesday's Queen's Speech.
Earlier cabinet minister Chris Grayling predicted a "sensible" deal would be reached.
The transport secretary said the talks were "going well", adding that the DUP, which has 10 MPs, did not want another election or Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.
Theresa May is seeking to negotiate a so-called "confidence and supply" arrangement whereby the DUP will throw their weight behind the government in key Commons votes, such as on the Queen's Speech and Budgets.
It is a week since DUP leader Arlene Foster visited Downing Street for talks with Theresa May, with reports that a final agreement is being held up by discussions over extra funding for Northern Ireland.
Should Mrs May lose any votes on the Queen's Speech, which are expected to take place next week, it would amount to a vote of no confidence in the government and put its future in doubt.
But Mr Grayling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he did not expect this to happen.
"The talks are going on but one thing I am absolutely certain of is that the DUP do not want to see another election and Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street," he said. "We are having good, constructive discussions and I am confident we will reach a sensible agreement."
Former Prime Minister Sir John Major has urged Theresa May to reconsider her approach, saying a deal with the DUP could threaten the Northern Ireland peace process and "carry baggage" for his party. He has said the Conservatives should be able to govern anyway with the DUP's tacit support.
Asked about the repercussions if there was no agreement, Mr Grayling replied: "I am not pessimistic about this. I think we will have a sensible arrangement.
"We have got some days until we have a vote on the Queen's Speech. It is not on Queen's Speech day. The vote happens many days later as we have an extended debate first and I am sure we will have a sensible arrangement between the parties when that time comes."
The DUP had made it clear, he added, that they did not want "an unstable government undermining our union" and wanted to see us "go ahead with the Brexit negotiations with a sensible government in place".

Theresa May's former right-hand man has criticised colleagues "who won't accept evidence" on Brexit, and suggested more of Whitehall's economic forecasts should be published.
Damian Green rejected "conspiracy theories" that there was a plot to thwart the Leave vote.
And he acknowledged differences of opinion between ministers on Brexit.
Meanwhile ex-Brexit Minister David Jones said the Treasury was trying to "drag out" and "soften" the UK's exit.
Mr Green, the former first secretary of state, was sacked in December after being found to have made "inaccurate and misleading" statements over what he knew about claims pornography was found on his office computer in 2008.
In his first interview since leaving government, he spoke to BBC Radio 4 documentary The Ministry of Leave about the challenges facing the civil service as the UK prepares to leave the EU.
Last month's leak of government forecasts predicting a hit to the economy as a result of Brexit provoked a political row, with some Tory Brexiteers aiming criticism at the civil service.
In the aftermath, Brexit Minister Steve Baker said Whitehall forecasts were never accurate, while prominent backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg accused the Treasury of "fiddling the figures" on Brexit to maintain a close economic relationship with the EU.
Speaking to the BBC's Ben Wright, Mr Green hit back, saying: "I do reject all the conspiracy theories that suggest there's some sort of plot inside the official machine to thwart the will of the people.
"There's a great problem of politicians who won't accept evidence. We can all argue about economic forecasts and none of them are 100% accurate but you have to rely on them and if you reject evidence you don't like then you are likely to end up producing faith based policies."
Asked whether some of his former cabinet colleagues were resistant to the facts and evidence, he replied, "not so much former cabinet colleagues.
"I think there are politicians who would prefer not to have the evidence there."
Earlier this month MPs were allowed to see a set of regional forecasts that predicted hits to economic growth across the UK, based on three possible new trade arrangements.
The government has faced calls to publish all of its analysis of the impact of Brexit in full, but says that to do so at this stage would damage its hand in negotiations.
It also argues that its preferred option of a bespoke trade deal has not been modelled in the leaked forecasts.
Mr Green added: "If analysis is being produced then publish it. And frankly there will be a big political debate it. Let's have this argument in public, that's what democracies do."
He described Brexit as probably the hardest task faced by Whitehall since the Second World War.
Ministers are still discussing "the very big picture. which end state we want" he said, adding: "it's not a surprise to anyone there are differences of view inside the government on that".
Speaking on the same programme, former Brexit minister Mr Jones praised the civil service's response to the challenge of preparing for Brexit, but added: "Probably the last of the Remain tendency are deep within the bowels of the Treasury.
"There is a constitutional aversion in the Treasury to Brexit as a concept and I think in the Treasury there is an effort being made at the moment to try and drag the process out and soften it."
Mr Jones also said that Brexit Secretary David Davis had wanted the Department for Exiting the EU - set up after the Leave vote - to be called "Department X".
He added: "David Davis said subsequently that he preferred Department X because it had suitably sinister overtones which I think appealed to him as a former Special Forces officer."

David Davis, who has quit as Brexit secretary, had one of the toughest jobs in politics - negotiating Britain's exit from the EU - and he also has one of the most colourful CVs.
A former SAS reservist, who grew up on a south London council estate, David Davis is a self-styled political maverick who had carved out a career as a champion of civil liberties before his unexpected return to front-line politics in July 2016 as secretary of state for exiting the EU.
He took to the role of negotiating Brexit with characteristic swagger, brushing off accusations from critics that he was too lazy, or lacked the intellectual depth, for such an apparently complex and nuanced task.
"What's the requirement of my job? I don't have to be very clever. I don't have to know that much. I do just have to be calm," he told LBC radio.
The Brexit secretary job might have been unexpected, but as a long-time opponent of Britain's EU membership it was an opportunity he grabbed with both hands.
He proved more publicly loyal to Theresa May than fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson, earning the trust of the prime minister as her representative in Brussels, in what have turned out to be fraught talks with his opposite number, Michel Barnier.
His former reputation as someone who likes to be the centre of the media's attention - he once dramatically walked out of David Cameron's shadow cabinet and called a by-election - lingers on.
His appearances before Hilary Benn's Brexit select committee have become box-office moments at Westminster.
On one occasion, Mr Benn tried to pin him down about comments he had made in July 2016 - two days before Mrs May drafted him into the cabinet - when he said the UK would be able negotiate a free-trade area "massively larger than the EU" within two years of Brexit.
A laughing Mr Davis said the comments had been made before he had become a minister, later adding: "That was then, this is now."
Some of his former allies on the libertarian left struggled to come to terms with the new, ministerial Mr Davis.
Journalist Henry Porter, who often shared a platform with him at debates and campaign events, wrote in the Observer:  "I came to like him a lot and to admire his bounce and pugnacity.
"Among all the politicians I knew - with the possible exception of [Remain-supporting Tory MP] Dominic Grieve - David possessed the deepest instinct for liberty."
But Brexit clearly mattered far more to Mr Davis than protecting ancient Parliamentary liberties, said Porter, as he lamented the changes he had seen in his friend since taking on ministerial office.
"While I would be happy to be in the jungle or stuck in a lift with him, I would draw the line at being stranded in a planning room with him," he said.
Date of birth: 21 December, 1948 (69)
Most recent post: Secretary of state for exiting the EU, MP for Haltemprice and Howden since 1987
Education: Tooting Bec grammar school, Warwick University (Bsc molecular science and computer science), London Business School, Harvard University management school
Family: Married Doreen in 1973. Three children
Before politics: Senior executive at sugar giant Tate and Lyle
Initially seen as an ultra-Thatcherite, David Davis was elected to Parliament in 1987, at the age of 38, after a career in management with sugar giant Tate and Lyle. But Mr Davis did not fit the traditional mould of a Tory MP.
Despite being a passionate opponent of socialism in all its forms, his political hero is the late Tony Benn, father of Hilary and hero of the radical, Corbynista left.
He had a troubled background. "I was a wild kid," he told an audience at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002, where he shared the stage with Mr Benn, something, he said, that would have made his Labour-voting parents very proud. The two bonded over their shared Euroscepticism - but little else - at that event.
He got into Warwick University on an army scholarship and trained with the SAS as a reservist to help pay his way.
His military background, and fearless attitude, endeared him to Tory grandees such as the late Alan Clark, another of his heroes, as he began his rise through the party ranks in the early 1990s.
Over dinner hosted by Clark at his medieval Saltwood Castle, in Kent, Mr Davis agreed to walk along the crumbling ramparts overlooking the ruins of a chapel.
"[He] did the 'black' route without turning a hair, then retraced his footsteps, hands in pockets - first time that's ever been done!" Clark wrote in his diary.
"He is an extraordinarily optimistic and self-confident person," Tory MP Andrew Mitchell - a long time friend and ally - told the BBC's Newsnight programme's Nick Watt last year.
"I remember one of the Cameroons saying to me in exasperation that he was the only person he knows who did not go to Eton but has the same level of self-confidence you get from an Eton education."
Despite his Eurosceptic views, Mr Davis served as a government whip under pro-EU Prime Minister John Major in the early 1990s, attempting to get rebel Tory MPs to support the Maastricht Treaty, which paved the way for closer European integration.
He later served as Mr Major's Europe minister, helping to negotiate some of the agreements with Brussels he has since been charged with unpicking.
His "hard man" image, working-class background and staunch right-wing credentials made him the frontrunner to replace Michael Howard as Conservative leader in 2005 (he had made an unexpected, and unsuccessful tilt at the job in 2001).
He lost out to David Cameron, who made him shadow home secretary, where he carved out a distinctive niche for himself as a defender of traditional British freedoms, even though the two men had little time for each other.
In 2008, he dramatically resigned his Haltemprice and Howden seat, and his frontbench role, to fight a by-election in protest at Labour's plans for identity cards and 42-day detention without charge.
He won easily but rejected a job in the coalition government in 2010 to continue his civil liberties crusade from the backbenches, often in conflict with then Home Secretary Theresa May.
He was involved in legal action against the government over Mrs May's data-retention plans - dubbed the "snoopers' charter" by critics - when he got the call to join her cabinet.
Mr Davis will celebrate his 70th birthday in December, just over three months before Britain officially leaves the EU at the end of March 2019.

David Davis has said there is "no difference" between him, the chancellor and prime minister following a Tory row over the terms of a Brexit transition.
The Brexit Secretary said all three wanted the UK's exit from the EU in March 2019 to "serve the British economy... and the British people".
There was a "diversity of views" in all parties and EU member states, he said.
Backbench Tories had criticised Philip Hammond for saying that changes to UK-EU relations could be "very modest".
No 10 distanced itself from Mr Hammond's remarks and one Tory MP said he should "stick to the script" the PM had laid out.
Following a speech outlining some of his ambitions for an "implementation period" immediately after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, Mr Davis was asked about the row.
He said: "I'm in politics, people debate and  they have different views and there is a diversity of views on this subject in all parties. That doesn't mean we can't have a coherent and forceful view in the interests of the United Kingdom."
He added: "There is no difference between the chancellor, and myself - and indeed the prime minister - in terms that we both want a Brexit which serves the British economy and which serves the British people. There will be arguments about the tactics but they will change - the options available to us will change throughout the negotiations.
"We want a good Brexit for British business and a good Brexit for the British people and we will deliver that on a frictionless access to the single market and political and economic freedom for us in the future."
In his speech, Mr Davis said that the UK would be able to sign new trade deals in the "implementation" period - thought likely to last up to two years.
The UK would still effectively follow the rules of the EU customs union for the period immediately after Brexit and no trade deals could come into force until it ended.
But he said: "As an independent country - no longer a member of the European Union - the United Kingdom will once again have its own trading policy.
"For the first time in more than 40 years, we will be able to step out and sign new trade deals with old friends, and new allies, around the globe."
He said existing international agreements - which include trade deals with other countries and agreements on aviation and nuclear power - should continue to apply during the period.
The "immediate goal" in negotiations, he added, would be to secure political agreement on an implementation phase by March's European Council summit.
Analysis by BBC Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris
This speech comes three days before the other EU member states are due to publish their formal guidelines (their terms and conditions in other words) for negotiations on the nature of a transition period after Brexit.
Those negotiations are due to begin shortly, and Mr Davis is getting his response in first, as well as trying to address some of the political heat he's now feeling from Brexiteers.
That's why he used the term 'implementation' rather than 'transition' period throughout his speech - it suggests that the UK will be implementing the consequences of Brexit.
EU documents though always refer to a transition because other countries are convinced that negotiations on the future EU-UK relationship will not have been completed by the time the UK leaves.
As well as smoothing the path for business, they argue that a transition is necessary to allow negotiations on future relations to continue.
Failing to reach agreement would mean uncertainty for businesses, resulting in delayed investment and a "stifling of hard-won economic growth".
Mr Davis also stressed the need for an "appropriate process" to allow the UK to resolve any concerns about new EU laws introduced during the implementation phase which were against its interests.
The speech comes amid a row in his party over the government's approach to Brexit negotiations, following Mr Hammond's comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.
Downing Street distanced itself from his remarks although the prime minister's spokesman said on Friday she had full confidence in the chancellor.
Asked whether his comments had been destabilising for the prime minister, Mr Hammond told the BBC: "I think the context is important. I was speaking about our trade relationship with the EU, and it is the government's policy that we want to maintain the maximum possible access to markets and the minimum friction at our borders because that's good for the British economy."
But Eurosceptic Tory backbencher Bernard Jenkin told the BBC it would be easier for the PM if Mr Hammond and other cabinet ministers "stuck to her script" while Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Hammond "must have been affected by high mountain air" in the Swiss resort.
In response to Mr Davis's speech, Hilary Benn, Labour chairman of the Commons Brexit committee, said "what we really needed to hear is what the government's proposals are for the most important trade negotiation of all - with the European Union... On that, we are none the wiser"
And Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said nothing Mr Davis had said "can mask or hide the bitter infighting that is going on in the government about what form Brexit should take".

Brexit Secretary David Davis has described his meeting with the European Parliament's chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt as a "good start".
Although they could not negotiate yet, he said their discussions had been able to cover structures and how both sides propose to approach the Brexit talks.
He said a deal was possible that was in the interests of the EU and the UK.
Mr Verhofstadt said he wanted an exit deal completed before the next European Parliament elections in 2019.
Ahead of their talks the two men laughed off an apparent misunderstanding over Mr Davis's comment - "get thee behind me Satan" - in September when answering a Commons committee question about Mr Verhofstadt.
Mr Verhofstadt was referring to that when he said he was looking forward to a "hell of a conversation".
But ahead of the meeting Mr Davis said his Satan reference was to the person trying to tempt him to comment on Mr Verhofstadt, rather than directed at the former Belgian prime minister.
The European Parliament has to vote on, and could therefore veto, both the terms of the UK's exit and the even bigger subsequent deal to establish Britain's future relationship with the EU.
After the meeting Mr Davis called Mr Verhofstadt "a very nice man" and said that although they could not go into the details of negotiations they could lay the ground work for how the process might work.
BBC Europe correspondent Damian Grammaticas said that how the two men get on could play an important role in the success of the Brexit negotiations - which are due to begin after Theresa May triggers the official two-year process in March.
The heart of the negotiations is likely to be the balance between UK firms being able to trade freely within the European single market, and the UK's desire to end the right of all EU citizens to live and work in the UK.
Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP, the largest grouping in the European Parliament, also had talks with Mr Davis and said that the free movement of people was non-negotiable.
He said: "We need to take into account the interests of 450 million European citizens... What we really expect are clear proposals.
"Today, in my talk with David Davis, unfortunately I haven't really heard anything new. I haven't really heard how the British government want to tackle Brexit or what Brexit really means."
But Mr Davis said: "Our view is that we can get an outcome which will be in the interests of the European Union and in the interests of Britain and which will meet the requirements of the referendum. All of those are possible. That's what the negotiations are about."
Mr Verhofstadt said: "In the meeting I repeated what are, for us, essential key points. That is, that... these negotiations, in the interest of everybody, need to be concluded before the European elections.
"We cannot imagine, or at least it would be very strange, if the UK have to organise elections for the UK parliament after the outcome of the Brexit vote. And it gives us the possibility  of a fresh and new start with new people."

David Davis has urged MPs to back the Brexit bill and insisted the UK would be prepared, if it has to leave the EU with no deal in place.
The Brexit secretary urged MPs not to "tie the prime minister's hands" over MPs getting a final vote on the deal and on EU citizens' rights in the UK.
He said while they were preparing for a "no deal" Brexit he thought it was unlikely negotiations would break down.
The bill returns to MPs on Monday after two defeats in the Lords.
Peers want to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK and to ensure Parliament has a vote on any deal in two years' time.
Labour's Sir Keir Starmer said they would fight to keep the amendments in the Bill, urging the government: "Don't just have this obsession with getting Article 50 triggered this week".
If MPs do pass it, Theresa May could trigger the formal process of Brexit as early as Tuesday.
The prime minister has said she will take the UK out of the EU even if Parliament votes against the deal she is offered.
Mr Davis, who will lead negotiations for the UK, addressed the issues of citizens' rights and a Parliamentary vote in an interview on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show.
"It's inconceivable to me that there wouldn't be a vote on the outcome," he said.
He urged MPs: "Please don't tie the prime minister's hands in the process of doing that, for things which we expect to attain anyway."
Pressed on whether a rejection by Parliament of any deal would send the UK back to the negotiating table, he said: "It's a two-year time [limit] on Article 50 so there'll be a limit to which we can do that.
"What we can't have is either House of Parliament reversing the decision of the British people - they haven't got a veto."
He said citizens' rights in the UK and Europe would be "the first thing" discussed in Brexit talks and said he believed there was a "moral responsibility" to EU citizens but the issue had to be "resolved together" with other EU countries.
He also said the government was working on "a contingency plan" in case a deal could not be reached with the EU - after a report by the Foreign Affairs Committee said it had found no evidence of serious contingency planning by the government.
Mr Davis said he believed it was "not remotely likely" that there would be a complete breakdown in negotiations.
But he said: "The simple truth is, we have been planning for the contingency, all the various outcomes, all the possible outcomes. It's not just my team, it's the whole of Whitehall, it's every single department. But, understand, it's the contingency plan. The aim is to get a good outcome."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, told BBC Radio 5 live's Pienaar's Politics: "Certainly it wouldn't be the end of the world if we had no deal, but it would be preferential to have a deal".
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told ITV's Peston on Sunday: "It would be perfectly OK if we weren't able to get an agreement but I'm sure that we will."
He added: "I don't think the consequences of 'no deal' are by any means as apocalyptic as some people like to pretend."
His comments were dismissed by the Conservative former deputy PM Lord Heseltine as "rubbish".
The Tory grandee, who was sacked last week as a government adviser having voted against the Brexit bill in the Lords, told ITV: "The fact is that a huge number of Conservatives are appalled, they feel they have been betrayed by what is going on now."
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir urged the PM to consider keeping the "really important" Lords amendments - adding that EU citizens in the UK had been "left in limbo".
He told Sky News that the prospect of the UK "crashing out without a deal" would be "a disaster".
"You absolutely have to have a vote in Parliament before that could possibly happen. So we'll be fighting for those tomorrow," he said.
The bill could complete its final stages on Monday if the Lords accepts the decisions made by MPs.
Among potential Conservative rebels is the MP Anna Soubry who told BBC One's Sunday Politics she had not heard any assurances that Parliament would get a vote in the event of no deal being reached.
Without them, she said: "I will either vote against my government which I do not do lightly… or I will abstain, which... has pretty much the same effect."

Theresa May will probably lose a Commons vote on her Brexit deal, former Brexit Secretary David Davis has said.
But Mr Davis - who quit his cabinet role over the Brexit plan in July - said he believed defeat  would prompt the UK and EU to agree a "better deal".
He also said the UK had hundreds of plans ready in case the country leaves the EU without any agreed Brexit deal.
Mr Davis said there might be "some hiccups" but the UK was "a big country" and "we can look after ourselves".
Brexit is due to happen on 29 March 2019, as a result of the referendum in June 2016 in which people voted by 51.9% to 48.1% for the UK to leave the European Union.
Although 95% of a Brexit deal is said to be agreed, the UK and the EU have yet to agree on how to guarantee that there will be no return to a visible border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in future.
Both sides agreed to put in place a "backstop", also referred to as an insurance policy, that would only be triggered if a future trade deal is not in place by the end of 2020 - or if this final deal does not ensure a "frictionless" border.
This is because there have been warnings that a return of visible border checks could undermine the peace process in Northern Ireland, as well as damaging businesses operating on both sides.
One option for the backstop is for the whole of the UK to remain temporarily aligned to the EU's customs union, avoiding the need for customs checks at the border.
But how long this would last, and how the arrangement could be terminated, has not yet been settled. The government is under pressure from some Tories, as well as Labour, to publish the precise legal advice about how the arrangement would work.
If a Brexit deal is agreed between the UK and the EU, it then has to be approved by the House of Commons and the 27 remaining EU member states.
Mr Davis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that defeat in the Commons for the current plan was "looking like a probability", especially if MPs were not shown the full legal advice on the Irish border backstop plan.
He said MPs needed to see the "complete legal advice, not a summary" before voting on such a crucial issue.
Mr Davis added: "Are we going to have to wait until the Irish government says it's OK to leave? If so, that's not acceptable.
"Are we going to have to wait until it's convenient for the (European) Commission to say when we leave? If so, it's not acceptable.
"I suspect that they have not pinned down any of these issues and they need to be pinned down before Parliament votes."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said that the UK government must have the right to decide when to leave any backstop which involves a customs arrangement.
It is understood that the Cabinet has discussed using a mutual (UK and EU) review mechanism to leave any backstop.
When asked if a system requiring a mutually agreed withdrawal from a backstop arrangement would be of concern, Mr Fox said that the government "had an instruction from our voters to leave the European Union and that decision can't be subcontracted to somebody else. That needs to be an issue for a sovereign British government to be able to determine".
UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt delivered a speech in Paris, in French, in which he said the UK and France would remain tied by "bonds of friendship" after Brexit.
On the issue of publishing the full legal advice, he said: "We have an excellent attorney general and he is giving very good legal advice on everything that we are considering signing up to, so we are going into this with our eyes open".
Mr Hunt also said that it was "entirely possible to reach an agreement" within the next three weeks, although to reach agreement within the next week might be "pushing it a bit".
In Dublin, the Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney told the Irish Canada Business Association conference: "I would urge caution that an imminent breakthrough is not necessarily to be taken for granted, not by a long shot.
"Repeatedly people seem to make the same mistake over and over again, assuming that if the British Cabinet agrees something, well, then that's it then, everything is agreed.
"This is a negotiation and needs to be an agreement of course between the British Government but also with the European Union and the 27 countries that are represented by Michel Barnier and his negotiating team.
"So while of course we want progress to be made and we want it to be made as quickly as possible because time is moving on, I would urge caution that people don't get carried away on the back of rumour in the coming days."

Justice Secretary David Gauke says he will resign if the next prime minister chooses to pursue a no-deal Brexit.
Tory leadership favourite Boris Johnson has pledged the UK will leave the EU on 31 October - with or without a deal.
However, Mr Gauke told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that a "sizeable" number of Conservative MPs believed the UK should leave with a deal.
His comments come as Tory MP Sam Gyimah said more than 30 Tory MPs could vote against a no-deal Brexit.
The EU has set the UK a deadline of 31 October to leave the bloc.
Mr Gauke said he believed Parliament "will find a mechanism" between now and 31 October to prevent the UK leaving without a deal.
When asked whether he thought he would be sacked from the cabinet if Mr Johnson became prime minister, he said: "I  suspect that I will possibly have gone before then."
He added: "Assuming that he wins, if Boris's position is that he is going to require every member of the cabinet to sign up to being prepared to leave without a deal on 31 October, to be fair to him I can't support that policy - so I would resign in advance."
Former Tory leadership hopeful Mr Gyimah - who resigned as a minister over Theresa May's Brexit plan - said there were more than 30 Tory MPs looking at legislative options to block a no-deal Brexit.
He told Sky News: "I wouldn't want to announce them before they have been tested as being viable."
"But there is a real concern. The real concern here is not about Leavers or Remainers. The real concern here, is that this is not in the interest of our country."
He added: "What all this is about is staving off economic mayhem."
Pro-Remain Tory MP Dominic Grieve has suggested MPs could use a Commons vote on Northern Ireland on Monday to launch a fresh bid to block a no-deal Brexit.
The government has tabled a Bill to delay any new election to the Northern Ireland Assembly while talks to restore power-sharing are ongoing.
Northern Ireland has been without a functioning government since 2017, when the power-sharing parties split in a bitter row.
Mr Grieve told Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics: "The chances are, if Brexit goes through - a no-deal Brexit - it is going to be the end of Northern Ireland's union with the United Kingdom, with serious political consequences flowing from it.
"That's a Bill that is a perfectly legitimate place to start looking at how one might make sure no-deal Brexits are fully debated before they take place."
Asked about the possible number of MPs who might back such a bid, Mr Grieve said he did not know.
He added: "Like all these things, colleagues are pulled in different directions, perfectly understandably, by various considerations."
Leader of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, Jacob Rees-Mogg, told 5 Live he thought the only way to stop no-deal was to pass a new law.
He added that he would be "very surprised" if that happened.
Mr Johnson has insisted he is not bluffing over his promise to stick to the 31 October deadline for leaving the EU - even if that means walking away without a deal.
Asked in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph if his commitment to 31 October was a bluff, Mr Johnson said: "No ... honestly. Come on. We've got to show a bit more gumption about this."
He added: "It's vital that our partners see that. They have to look deep into our eyes and think 'my god, these Brits actually are going to leave. And they're going to leave on those terms'."
His leadership rival Jeremy Hunt has also said he was willing to leave without a deal, although he told the Sunday Telegraph it was "not the most secure way of guaranteeing Brexit" because MPs would try to block it.
Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt have been travelling around the country as they seek to win backing from Conservative party members, ahead of the vote closing on 22 July.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has come out in support of Mr Johnson, saying the former foreign secretary was "better placed" than Mr Hunt to "deliver what we need to do at this critical time".
Tory MP Mr Rees-Mogg has suggested Mr Javid - along with Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss - are the main candidates to become the next chancellor.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who is supporting Mr Johnson in the leadership contest, said both had "very strong" credentials.

There were "frank discussions" about the Irish border in the latest round of Brexit talks, David Davis has said.
The Brexit Secretary was speaking in Brussels after a meeting with chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier.
Mr Davis said any solution for the border could not be at the expense of the constitutional integrity of the UK.
The EU tabled a paper which suggested Northern Ireland will have to continue to follow many EU rules after Brexit if a hard border is to be avoided.
The paper hinted that Northern Ireland may need to stay in the EU customs union if there are to be no checks at the border.
That is something which the Conservatives and DUP have said they cannot accept as it would effectively create a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Meanwhile, Mr Barnier said the UK has two weeks to clarify what it will pay the EU if progress is to be made in Brexit talks.
Britain and the EU say they are committed to ensuring Brexit does not undermine the Good Friday agreement.
Neither want Brexit to lead to the emergence of a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
"Let me be clear, we cannot have anything resulting in a new border being set up with in the UK," said Mr Davis after the sixth round of UK-EU talks on citizens' rights, the Irish border, and the UK's "divorce bill".
"We remain firmly committed to avoiding any physical infrastructure.
"We respect the EU desires, but they cannot come at the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom."
Mr Davis said the EU and UK teams had drafted joint positions on the common travel area, as well as joint principles and commitments for the second phase of talks.
The EU leaked paper stops short of saying a hard border can only be avoided by the UK or Northern Ireland staying in the single market or customs union.
However, it brings the commission closer to the European Parliament position which "presumes" that the UK or Northern Ireland will have to stay in the internal market and customs union.
It is also the clearest indication that the commission has accepted the Irish position on Brexit and the border issue.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has said the only way of avoiding a hard border in Ireland after Brexit is for the whole of the UK, or Northern Ireland, to follow the rules of the customs union and single market.
Speaking at a meeting of the British-Irish Council in Jersey, Mr Varadkar said his proposal would not mean the UK or Northern Ireland had to be members of the customs union and single market, but "it would mean continuing to apply the rules".
DUP Parliamentary leader and North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds rejected the suggestion that a hard border can only be avoided if the UK or Northern Ireland continue to abide by the rules of the single market and customs union after Brexit.
He said the paper shows the EU is unwilling to engage in negotiations on the border issue in a "meaningful fashion".
"Northern Ireland will not be separated from the rest of the UK as a result of Brexit," he said.
"Brussels must realise this and accept that progress will not be achieved through bully-boy tactics."
Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said talk of individual countries vetoing a move to the next stage of Brexit negotiations is "unhelpful", but progress still had to be made on the border issue.
"There is a way to go between the two negotiating teams to be able to provide credible answers and sufficient progress in the context of the Irish border before we can move on to Phase Two," he told Irish state broadcaster, RTE.
Former Irish Taoiseach and Good Friday Agreement signatory Bertie Ahern told BBC Newsnight that a hard border would be a "huge setback" for the peace process and that a physical border across the island of Ireland would give a "huge incentive" to those that want to cause mischief.

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier says there has not been enough progress to move to the next stage of Brexit talks as the UK wants.
He said there was "new momentum" in the process but there was still "deadlock" over how much the UK pays when it leaves, which he called "disturbing".
Brexit Secretary David Davis said he still hoped for the go-ahead for trade talks when EU leaders meet next week.
The pair were speaking after the fifth round of Brexit talks in Brussels.
Mr Barnier said: "I am not able in the current circumstances to propose next week to the European Council that we should start discussions on the future relationship."
The UK's Brexit Secretary David Davis urged EU leaders at the summit, on 19 and 20 October, to give Mr Barnier a mandate to start trade talks and to "build on the spirit of co-operation we now have".
He said there had been progress on the area of citizens' rights that had moved the two sides "even closer to a deal".
The EU chief negotiator told reporters at the joint press conference he hoped for "decisive progress" by the time of the December summit of the European Council.
He said Theresa May's announcement that Britain would honour financial commitments entered into as an EU member was "important".
But he said there had been no negotiations on the issue this week because the UK was not ready to spell out what it would pay.
"On this question we have reached a state of deadlock which is very disturbing for thousands of project promoters in Europe and it's disturbing also for taxpayers."
Not even Brexit's biggest cheerleader could claim the discussions in Brussels have been going well. And there are visible frustrations on both sides.
But before claiming this morning's drama means the whole thing is doomed there are a few things worth remembering.
At the very start of this whole process, the hope was that in October, the EU would agree to move on to the next phase of the talks, to talk about our future relationship. But for months it has been clear that the chances of that were essentially zero.
It is not, therefore, a surprise to hear Mr Barnier saying right now, he doesn't feel able to press the button on phase 2, however much he enjoyed the drama of saying so today.
Second, behind the scenes, although it has been slow, there has been some progress in the talks but officials in some areas have reached the end of the line until their political masters give them permission to move on.
Read Laura's full blog
The so-called divorce bill covers things like the pensions of former EU staff in the UK, the cost of relocating EU agencies based in the UK and outstanding commitments to EU programmes. The UK has said it will meet its legal requirements and there has been speculation the bill could be anywhere between £50bn and £100bn, spread over a number of years.
BBC Europe Correspondent Kevin Connolly said the UK sees its total financial commitment "as its best negotiating card to be played somewhere near the end of the talks - the EU wants that card to be shown now at a point which is still relatively early in a two-year game".
The UK has also offered to keep paying into the EU budget during a proposed two-year transition period.
The EU had two other issues on which it would not make any "concessions", said Mr Barnier - citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland border.
On the status of the border, Mr Barnier said negotiations had "advanced" during this week's discussions.
But he said there was "more work to do in order to build a full picture of the challenges to North-South co-operation resulting from the UK - and therefore Northern Ireland - leaving the EU legal framework".
Asked about speculation that the UK could exit the EU in March 2019 without a trade deal, Mr Barnier said the EU was ready for "any eventualities" but added: "No deal will be a very bad deal."
Mr Davis said: "It's not what we seek, we want to see a good deal, but we are planning for everything."
Both men said progress had been made on citizens' rights, with Mr Davis saying there would be an agreement "soon" to ensure EU nationals in the UK would be able to enforce their rights through the UK courts.
He said EU citizens would still have to register with the UK authorities but the process would be streamlined to make it as simple and cheap as possible.
According to Mr Davis, the remaining sticking points include:
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "I think it's quite shocking. We're now 15 months on since the referendum and the government seems to have reached deadlock at every stage."
He said "falling out" of the EU without a trade deal would threaten "a lot of jobs all across Britain".
Labour is calling for "emergency" talks between Mr Davis and the EU early next week, to try to break the deadlock ahead of the EU summit.
Earlier this week, European Council President Donald Tusk suggested that the green light to begin talks about a post-Brexit trade deal would not come until December at the earliest.
Meanwhile, draft conclusions for next week's summit of EU leaders - which could yet change - call for internal work to begin on possible transitional arrangements and trade talks with the UK.
That would mean they could move ahead with negotiations on a future relationship, if "sufficient progress has been achieved" in talks.
But the draft conclusions seen by the BBC, if adopted, suggest EU leaders are not yet ready to begin talks with the UK about a post-Brexit transition deal.
Last month Prime Minister Theresa May used a speech in Florence to set out proposals for a two-year transition period after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019, in a bid to ease the deadlock.

Conservative rebel Dominic Grieve has urged the prime minister to delay Brexit if her EU withdrawal deal is rejected by MPs next week.
Mr Grieve, who backs calls for another referendum, said she could remove the 29 March date from UK legislation and ask the EU for more time.
Cabinet ministers who oppose leaving the EU without a deal had a "duty to resign" if she refused to do so.
Ministers warn the UK faces Brexit "paralysis" if the deal is rejected.
And the prime minister's spokesman said on Friday that the government wouldn't extend Article 50, the legal mechanism taking Britain out of the EU on 29 March.
Mr Grieve, who tabled the amendment that led to a government defeat on Wednesday, has been at the forefront of cross-party efforts to ensure MPs have a say in what happens if Mrs May's deal is voted down.
In those circumstances, another of Mr Grieve's amendments means that the Commons will then have a chance to vote on alternative policies - everything from a "managed no-deal" to a further referendum could be on the table.
MPs are widely expected to reject the withdrawal deal negotiated between the EU and UK in a key Commons vote on Tuesday, with more than 100 Conservative MPs among those opposing it.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that the possibility of Brexit not happening at all had increased, with Parliament showing this week it would not accept leaving without a deal.
This he said would be an "incredibly damaging breach of trust and it would also be very bad for Britain's reputation abroad".
But former attorney general Mr Grieve, who earlier addressed a rally of people calling for another referendum, said he hoped that cabinet ministers known to be opposed to a no-deal Brexit would be "frank" with the PM, if - as expected - she loses next week's vote.
"I think the options are very limited and the reality in my view is that the only way out of this difficulty is go back to the public and ask for their opinion," he said.
He said, if MPs reject the deal, the government should act immediately to strike the 29 March Brexit date from UK legislation before going to the EU to ask for an extension of the Article 50 process.
"I believe the EU will extend Article 50 for us but I think they would only do it in a very limited number of circumstances ... and we need to explore what those circumstances may be."
If the prime minister would not agree to do so, he added: "If a cabinet minister feels the government is doing something they can't accept, it is probably their duty to resign".
"My feeling is that this will have its own dynamic and whilst I want to keep the government stable ... I hope the prime minister will listen carefully to what members of Parliament and members of her own government are saying to her."
Earlier he said it was the duty of MPs to "stop people committing national suicide" by going ahead with a no-deal Brexit.
The pound rose on Friday after a report in London's Evening Standard suggested Brexit looked increasingly likely to be delayed.
However, during the third day of Commons debate on Mrs May's withdrawal deal, another senior pro-EU Tory backbencher, Sir Nicholas Soames, warned against moves to extend the Article 50 process.
"I believe it would be quite wrong to postpone the Article 50 deadline and the House must be prepared to earn the undying contempt of the country if it simply does not have the collective will, discipline and sense of duty to come to an agreement", he added.
Meanwhile, as many as 4,000 civil servants are being asked to move from their usual work to prepare for and handle a possible "no deal" Brexit.
The departments which will see staff redeployed include Defence,  International Development, Work and Pensions and the Education department.
The plans involve moving some staff within their department, and transferring others to departments and agencies with the greatest extra no-deal-related workload, such as HMRC and Defra. according to a memo leaked to The Times.
A government spokesman said: "As we get closer to the time where we will leave the EU, it is sensible and right for the Civil Service to accelerate preparations."

Take a breath. That was more or less the prime minister's message to MPs in the Commons today.
We've all just lived through a historic political period when the levels of anger and anxiety and frustration and fury have gone up and up and up and up in Westminster, and maybe beyond.
Up until this moment, the prime minister has simply been unable to deliver the support for her compromise deal with the EU.
Parliament has not managed to agree a consensus around anything else.
And both sides - for it has felt like the Executive versus the Commons - have become more and more irritated as time has ticked down towards this week's deadline.
The Brexit delay that the EU has agreed gives Westminster's village a pause, a moment to take a breath, and maybe to take stock.
The EU has placed a little faith in the idea that there could be a cross-party compromise.
Whispers suggest that ministers will meet Labour counterparts on Friday and are telling business leaders tonight that there could be a bespoke deal for the UK, if those cross-party talks can deliver.
So, the screaming alarm, warning against leaving with no deal in a few hours' time, has been silenced, at least for now.
And while there is, inevitably, rising chatter about ushering Theresa May out of office, it seems clear that none of the candidates who would love to replace her, want to be the person to take over right now.
Whether it is Dominic Raab, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Liz Truss, or someone else on the long list of potential candidates, none appear on the point of jumping forward to say: 'This is a slow-motion disaster, I have a better idea.'
Ironically, none of the people at the top levels of the Tory Party who believe they could lead, want to do it at this moment - where arguably, leadership has never been so in demand.
The prime minister won a delay, and got through yet another bumpy session in Parliament on Thursday without too much harm.
But the policy clashes, the battle of ideas, and yes, the grudge matches, have not been played out to their conclusion.
For Brexit therefore, and for all of us, there is no sign of conclusion.
MPs might come back in ten days, clear-headed and ready for compromise on all sides.
But our political system's track record on Brexit suggests that a moment of harmony is still out of reach.

Well. However she did it, Theresa May managed to roll Donald Trump back from the outright and overt criticism of her, and her most important policy, before their press conference today.
Rather in the manner of a boss telling staff who'd been caught bunking off that they would work extra hours, almost the first words out of the prime minister's mouth were that he did actually agree that the UK and the US would sign a trade deal after Brexit, and enthusiastically so.
The president was not quite so effusive in his statements and betrayed frankly what many members of the public feel about the government's Brexit plans - "I don't know what they're going to do but whatever you do is ok with me".
But he did, it seemed obediently, crank out the prepared line from his notes that the US was committed to doing a deal. Between now and next March you can bet you'll hear those remarks used as evidence by the prime minister of the UK's exciting future outside the EU again, and again, and again, oh and again.
I'm sure you can picture the scene - whether an MP or a journalist asks, 'Prime Minister, this deal means it will be hard to do other trade deals', 'Donald Trump said the contrary, that the US was committed to work to seize the opportunities with a comprehensive deal'.
That doesn't mean that's what will happen. Off script the president's doubts were pretty clear that for a trade deal to work the UK can't sign up to many restrictions. And while she denied it today, the prime minister and her colleagues well know that agreeing the 'common rule book' as we've discussed so much in the last week or so, does make the UK a less attractive trade partner for other countries.
Indeed in officialese the government's own documents acknowledge as much. It is a decision that she has taken, that Donald Trump might not like much, but she has taken it for a reason.
For the choreography of today though to be just awkward, not downright cringeworthy, it was important for Number 10 to pull Donald Trump back from his previous statements.
He, true to form, tried to pretend that he hadn't really said what he said, even though his remarks were made on the record. 'Fake news', it was not. That is important to understand, because it means that the difficulties between our two countries over a tighter trading relationship have not disappeared.
And for Theresa May, the bigger problem is that many in her party agree with him, not his world view, but the fact that her Brexit compromise could cut off some of what Leavers saw as the greatest possibilities of leaving the EU.
This was a difficult day for the PM for sure, but not a disaster. But at a time when she desperately needs friends and allies, the American president is not necessarily one upon whom she can totally rely.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has warned fellow Tory MPs that if they don't ditch Theresa May now she will lead them into the next election, scheduled for 2022.
Few Tories thought this was a "good idea", the Brexiteer MP suggested.
Mr Rees-Mogg wants to oust the PM over her EU withdrawal agreement but has so far failed to get enough colleagues to back his call for a no confidence vote.
Meanwhile, ministers have had to accept Labour amendments to the Finance Bill after the DUP withdrew its backing.
Labour said the government was "falling apart in front of us" after ministers accepted a series of technical changes to the bill to pass the Budget.
They were made after it became clear the Democratic Unionists, on whom Theresa May relies for her Commons majority, again said they would not support the Tories.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he had not given up hope of getting the 48 letters of no confidence in the PM needed to trigger a vote.
"What we are seeing from this government is a deliberate decision not to deliver a proper Brexit," he told reporters at a Westminster news conference.
"We have a government led by Remainers who want to keep us tied into the EU as tightly as possible."
He said the 48 letter threshold might be reached next month when MPs get a "meaningful vote" on the withdrawal agreement.
But he added: "I think (the time) is now, or the prime minister will lead the Conservatives into the next election.
Mrs May's allies insist she would win a no confidence vote and under Conservative rules she would then be immune from a challenge for 12 months.
The PM says her Brexit deal is the best the UK can get from Brussels and it will allow the country to take back control of its "money, laws and borders".
In other developments:
Downing Street said that, during talks with Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, the PM had emphasised that the draft Brexit terms would give Scottish businesses the "clarity and certainty they need to protect jobs and living standards and see us take back control of our waters".
The SNP leader also met Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn earlier to discuss tactics ahead of the Commons vote.
Ms Sturgeon held a separate meeting with Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, Green MP Caroline Lucas and Plaid Cymru's Westminster leader Liz Roberts, who all back another EU referendum.
She told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg she wanted to form a "coalition of opposition" to Mrs May's Brexit plans, and that momentum for another referendum was growing.
She described her talks with Mr Corbyn as "exploratory" and said she did not know whether he would back a referendum.
But she said they both agreed that the PM's Brexit deal is a bad one and that no-deal should not be the only alternative presented to MPs.
A Labour spokesman said: "They discussed their common opposition to Theresa May's botched Brexit deal and determination to work across Parliament to prevent a disastrous no-deal outcome."
As it stands, there appears to be a majority in Parliament against the deal.
And Mrs May is coming under growing pressure from the DUP, whose 10 MPs keep her government in power.
The DUP abstained in Monday night's Budget votes as a warning shot over what they say are her broken promises on Brexit.
After the DUP indicated they would abstain again on further votes on Tuesday, ministers accepted Labour and SNP amendments in order to avoid likely defeat.
These will require the government to conduct a review into the public health impact of gaming, a report into the impact of Brexit on international tax enforcement and a review into the impact of tax avoidance measures on income inequality and child poverty.
Under the terms of their House of Commons deal, agreed after Mrs May lost her Commons majority in last year's general election, the DUP is supposed to back the government on Budget matters and on confidence votes.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said their refusal to do so now was "absolutely staggering", adding that the Conservatives were "in office but not in power".

On 29 March Theresa May sent a six-page letter notifying the EU of the UK's intention to leave. The Article 50 letter contained a clause little discussed at the time - notifying the EU of the UK's withdrawal from the European Atomic Energy Community, also known as Euratom.
But this previously obscure section has now been put under the political spotlight, with some MPs, including a number of Conservatives, gearing up for a fight on the subject. One prominent Leave campaigner has even said the UK should stay in Euratom after Brexit.
On Thursday, the government will clarify its stance on the issue in a position paper. But what is Euratom and why does it matter?
Euratom regulates the nuclear industry across Europe, safeguarding the transport of nuclear materials, disposing of waste, and carrying out research. It was set up in 1957 alongside the European Economic Community (EEC), which eventually morphed into the EU. The 1957 treaty established a "nuclear common market" to enable the free movement of nuclear workers and materials between member states.
The UK joined Euratom when it joined the EEC in 1973. It is a separate legal entity from the EU, but is tied up with its laws and institutions, and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). No country is a full member of Euratom without being a member of the EU.
When EU countries transport nuclear materials or trade them with other countries, Euratom sets the rules. The body also co-ordinates research projects across borders. For example the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, a laboratory near Oxford, is largely funded by the EU and many of its scientists are EU nationals.
Euratom also reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). If the UK were to leave Euratom it would need to come to a new arrangement with the IAEA.
There are two main arguments why Brexit should involve quitting Euratom.
Firstly, staying in would raise lots of tricky legal questions. For example, the Euratom treaty states that it applies only on the territory of EU member states. Legal opinion is divided on whether a country could leave the EU and retain Euratom membership, according to research by the House of Commons library. But the UK government has made up its mind.
"The triggering of Article 50 on Euratom is not because we have a fundamental critique of the way that it works. It was because it was a concomitant decision that was required in triggering Article 50," said Brexit Secretary David Davis.
The second reason for quitting Euratom is the government's interpretation of the Brexit result. Vote Leave campaigned to restore British sovereignty and "take back control" by ending the supremacy of EU law over domestic law.
In her speech to the Conservative Party conference in October, Theresa May made this rather more specific, pledging to ensure "the authority of EU law in this country ended forever". This stance has been called the "ECJ red line" - in other words stopping the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg having any authority in the UK.
The nuclear agreement is underpinned by the ECJ. That means if states signed up to the Euratom treaty breach its terms, they can be hauled before European judges. This could happen to Britain after Brexit, if it remains signed up to Euratom. Full membership would apparently be incompatible with a strict interpretation of the ECJ red line.
Also, the Euratom treaty requires members to allow the free movement of nuclear scientists, which could fall foul of the government's wish to cut net migration drastically from its current level.
Dominic Cummings, who was campaign director of Vote Leave, this week criticised what he called "government morons" who want to withdraw from Euratom. "Tory Party keeps making huge misjudgements re what the REF was about. EURATOM was different treaties, ECJ role no signif problem," he said on Twitter.
Although the agreement is overseen by the ECJ, the court does not intervene very often, according to those who want to stay in.
Conservative MP Ed Vaizey and Labour MP Rachel Reeves published an article in the Sunday Telegraph this week defending Euratom membership. "There appears never to have been an ECJ case involving the UK and Euratom," they said. "Whatever people were voting for last June, it certainly wasn't to junk 60 years of co-operation in this area with our friends and allies."
James Chapman, a former special adviser to David Davis, has also criticised the application of the "ECJ red line" to Euratom: "I would have thought the UK would like to continue welcoming nuclear scientists who are all probably being paid six figures and are paying lots of tax," he told the BBC last month. "But we're withdrawing from it because of this absolutist position on the European court. I think she [the prime minister] could show some flexibility in that area."
Mr Vaizey and Ms Reeves also raised the issue of cancer medication. Euratom supports the "secure and safe supply and use of medical radioisotopes". Radioactive isotopes are essential for various types of cancer treatment but cannot be stockpiled because they decay quickly.
In the UK they are imported, often from Belgium and the Netherlands. Some experts worry that leaving the treaty will delay the delivery of drugs to patients who need them. Global demand for isotopes is rising rapidly, and many of the reactors that produce them are getting old.
The government's answer to this is that medical isotopes are not fissile nuclear material - that is, capable of reacting - so they are not subject to international nuclear safeguards. According to Science Minister Jo Johnson, their availability "should not be impacted by the UK's exit from Euratom".
In February, Parliament passed a bill giving the government permission to trigger Article 50. Labour MPs tried to add an amendment keeping the UK in Euratom, but it was comfortably voted down.
Last month Theresa May's Conservatives lost their majority in the general election, which has emboldened opponents to the government's Brexit stance.
Though the government's position has been firmed up by signing a confidence-and-supply deal with the DUP, it can still lose key votes if just seven Conservatives vote the other way.
Several of Ed Vaizey's colleagues have backed his position on Euratom. Given the Labour manifesto pledge to "retain access" to the nuclear agency, this means the government could well lose a vote on the issue.
Given that Euratom was explicitly mentioned in the Article 50 letter, any reversal of withdrawal would be difficult, and an act of Parliament would probably not be enough.
Changing or reversing the UK's withdrawal from Euratom would probably need to be done formally by the government. If that were to happen, it would raise another contentious legal question - whether the notification of withdrawal from the EU can be amended or revoked. The government really does not want to open that can of worms.
What's more, staying in the nuclear agreement would not be a matter purely for the UK to decide. The EU, which has published a position paper on Britain's departure from Euratom, would also have to agree. That could make things complicated.
Various options have been mooted for an alternative to full Euratom membership. Switzerland, not an EU member, has a special status as an equal partner as an "associated country". This could be an option explored by the UK. But sticking to the ECJ red line might make that path difficult.
Euratom also has looser co-operation agreements with other countries such as the US and Australia. These third-party countries help fund projects such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France, which is run by Euratom. But moving to a looser agreement could cause disruption when the UK is so integrated into the EU's nuclear energy market. Given the long timescale needed for nuclear projects, scientists worry about the uncertainty.
The final arrangements between the UK and Euratom after Brexit will have big repercussions for a country which is committed to atomic energy for the long term - unlike Germany, which ditched nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Last September the government approved a new £18bn power station, financed by the French and Chinese governments, at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Sellafield, where plutonium is reprocessed and stored, is Europe's largest nuclear facility. The Cumbria site has the largest stockpile of civil plutonium in the world. Euratom runs the on-site laboratory there, and also spends a big chunk of its EU-wide resources running safeguard checks there. There's also the centre at Culham, where Euratom plays a big role.
In May the Commons Energy Committee, which has been investigating the impact of Brexit on energy policy, urged the UK to delay leaving Europe's nuclear regulator. Power supplies could be threatened if a new regulator was not ready, it said.
Whatever decision is finally made on Euratom, it will matter for decades to come.

"They need us more than we need them," has been a recurrent theme in the Brexit debate.
After the referendum, the idea has been used to suggest the government could have taken a tougher line in the negotiations over the terms of the UK's departure from the European Union.
Before the vote, it was used to suggest that the UK would have no difficulty retaining full access to the EU market, because it was in the EU's interests to allow it.
German carmakers were often invoked as likely allies in achieving that goal.
In early 2016, David Davis, then a Conservative backbench MP who was later the Cabinet Minister for Brexit, said: "Within minutes of a vote for Brexit the chief executives of Mercedes, BMW, VW and Audi will be knocking down Chancellor Merkel's door demanding that there be no barriers to German access to the British market."
One central element (though not the only one) in the argument is the fact that the UK has a deficit in its trade with 27 EU member countries.
That is: they export more to the UK than the other way round.
So if there were new barriers to trade, the 27 have more sales of goods and services at risk than the UK does.
New barriers could arise as a result of a no-deal Brexit in the near term, or in a negotiated future relationship that gives less market access than currently prevails.
Even the much vaunted "Canada deal" with additions would involve some new hurdles for exporters to jump.
Depending on exactly what deal, if any, is achieved those barriers would include some combination of tariffs (taxes that are applied only to goods traded across borders), customs procedures and regulatory barriers, such as product standards and authorisation to provide services.
The basic facts of the trade balance are that yes, the UK certainly does buy more from the 27 than the other way round.
The UK had a bilateral trade deficit to the tune of £67bn in 2017. That breaks down to a larger deficit of £95bn for goods, but a surplus of £28bn for services.
So in total, the amount of exports potentially at risk from new trade barriers is greater for the 27 than for the UK.
But that is a rather crude measure of how much each side has to lose.
Let's take another example to illustrate the point.
The EU - with a population of more than half a billion and an annual economic activity or GDP of around £15 trillion - has a trade surplus with Andorra, which has a population of about 80,000 and GDP of less than £3bn.
Does that mean that the EU needs Andorra more than Andorra needs the EU? It would, of course, be an absurd suggestion.
Why? Because the EU's economy is so much larger.
For sure, disruptions to that trade would be a serious problem for some Spanish and French businesses and jobs near the border. But for the EU economy as a whole the impact would be tiny.
Now to state the obvious, the UK is not Andorra. It matters far more to the EU as an export market than Andorra does.
That said, a more revealing measure of what is at stake is to look at the amount of trade exposed to some risk of new barriers as a percentage of either a country's total exports or GDP.
Take goods first, as goods and services data is generally collected differently and is often published separately.
The EU 27 accounts for 48% of UK exports of goods, and 8% of GDP (in 2017, from the European Commission database).
When we look at the share of the EU's exports going to the UK there is a choice to make about whether to include trade among the remaining 27 EU countries in total goods exports. If we do include it, the UK share is 6.2%; if we don't it's 18% of the total.  UK exports account for 2.3% of the EU 27 GDP.
You sometimes hear the suggestion that these figures miss an important point because the two biggest players in the EU, Germany and France, are the true political driving forces in the EU. So are they any more reliant on the UK market than the EU average?
For Germany, the figures are 6.6% of goods exports going to the UK, accounting for 2.6% of GDP. The latter figure is slightly above the EU average.
For France, the equivalent figures are 6.7% of exports and 1.4% of GDP, the latter comfortably below the average for the EU as a whole.
The countries that do have a relatively large exposure to the UK are Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
And what about Germany's carmakers? They didn't show up for battle in the way David Davis hoped.  The head of Germany's car industry association Matthias Wissman said last year: "however important the United Kingdom is to us as a market, the cohesion of the EU 27 and their single market are even more important to our industry".
That said, the UK would be a leading export market for the EU 27. For goods in 2017 it was very slightly behind the US, but well ahead of the next largest China. But it is important to remember: internal trade within the EU is really big for the 27.
There is a significant complication underneath these figures, sometimes known as the Rotterdam effect.
Exports are generally recorded as going to their first destination. So if a container goes initially to Rotterdam in the Netherlands (or Antwerp in Belgium or some other ports) and is then transferred for onward transport to somewhere else, it is nonetheless recorded as an export to (or an import from) the Netherlands (or another EU country).
It has proved impossible to quantify this effect with any real precision. It affects figures for trade going into the UK and out.
But even if we make some fairly extreme guesses about its magnitude, the UK still exports more as a share of its own GDP to the EU 27 than the other way round.
For the services trade, the case is even clearer.
The UK economy is both smaller than the EU's and has a services trade surplus.
In 2016, services exports to the EU were 7.2% of UK GDP; for the EU 27 services exports to the UK were 1.1% of their GDP.
All these figures point in the same direction. The UK looks more exposed in the event of disruption to trade relations.
That is not to say the impact on the EU would be trivial, far from it.
The EU 27 would undoubtedly face significant economic harm from major disturbances to their trade with the UK.  But on the basis of the trade data, the "they need us more" claim looks very shaky.
One point to add about the data. You may see figures elsewhere that are somewhat different.
There are inconsistencies in the way trade data are put together in different countries.
Some of the figures involve converting currencies and exchange rates vary. And there variations from year to year.

The anger directed against MPs over Brexit is "not surprising", the PM's adviser, Dominic Cummings, has said.
The former Vote Leave campaign director said the only way the issue of abuse would be solved is if MPs "respect" the result of the EU referendum.
Mr Cummings's remarks came after Boris Johnson defended language he used in Parliament amid criticism from MPs.
The parliamentary tensions have led 120 archbishops and bishops to warn against "further entrenching our divisions".
The intervention followed an ill-tempered debate on Wednesday, as MPs returned to Parliament after the Supreme Court ruled the suspension of Parliament was unlawful.
The prime minister was criticised by a number of MPs for - among other remarks - describing one Labour MP's safety concerns as "humbug" and repeatedly referring to legislation aimed at blocking no-deal as "the surrender bill".
On Thursday, the Commons heard of threats faced by politicians, with independent MP Caroline Nokes describing how someone had called her a "traitor who deserved to be shot" on a walkabout in her constituency.
Speaking at a book launch that evening, Mr Cummings said MPs had spent three years "swerving all over the shop" following the referendum and it was "not surprising some people are angry about it".
He said both Leave and Remain campaigners had received "serious threats" of violence, which he said should be taken seriously.
But he added: "If you are a bunch of politicians and say that we swear we are going to respect the result of a democratic vote, and then after you lose you say, 'We don't want to respect that vote', what do you expect to happen?"
"In the end, the situation can only be resolved by Parliament honouring its promise to respect the result," he said, echoing sentiments expressed by the prime minister in the Commons on Wednesday.
But former Justice Secretary David Gauke told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Some of the language from the prime minister this week has clearly made it harder to win support from Labour MPs for any kind of a deal."
Mr Cummings denied that Downing Street was under pressure following the Supreme Court ruling, a series of parliamentary defeats and the backlash against Mr Johnson's comments.
"This is a walk in the park compared to the referendum. We are enjoying this. We are going to leave and we are going to win," he said.
But, when questioned as he left his home in London on Friday morning, Mr Cummings said: "Who said it would be a walk in the park?"
Told that he had made the remark, he replied: "No."
MPs have expressed concern that Downing Street could seek to bypass legislation - passed earlier this month - to block a no-deal Brexit.
The Benn Act - which Mr Johnson has been referring to as the "surrender act" - says the prime minister will have to ask the EU for an extension to the 31 October Brexit deadline if he is unable to pass a deal in Parliament, or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit, by 19 October.
When Mr Johnson talks about the "surrender bill", he is referring to the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act, also known as the Benn Act after Labour MP Hilary Benn, who introduced the legislation to the Commons.
The act - which became law earlier this month - stipulates the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit.
Once this deadline has passed, he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020 from the EU.
If the EU responds by proposing a different date, the PM will have two days to accept that proposal. But during this two-day period, MPs - not the government - will have the opportunity to reject the EU's date.
Former Prime Minister Sir John Major - who on Thursday accused Mr Johnson of "wilfully" destroying the prospects of a cross-party agreement on Brexit - expressed concern that the government might sidestep the law by suspending the Benn Act until after 31 October.
Sir John said he thought ministers might be planning to do this by passing an Order of Council, which can be approved by Privy Councillors - government ministers - and has the force of law.
Asked if he was looking at using this method to get around the Benn Act, the prime minister said "no".
And senior cabinet minister told the BBC that such a plan would be "too clever by half".
Downing Street has consistently said the government will obey the law, but Mr Johnson has also insisted he will not seek a delay to Brexit, which the act mandates.
Questioned on the government's position, International Development Secretary Alok Sharma told Today: "I'm not going to set out discussions that have occurred in the privacy of cabinet."
He added that the government would "absolutely" comply with the law.
In interviews with the BBC, Mr Johnson acknowledged that "tempers need to come down" in Parliament.
But he added: "I do think in the House of Commons it is important I should be able to talk about the surrender bill, the surrender act, in the way that I did."
Meanwhile, the College of Bishops has called on politicians to "speak to others with respect", adding that the result of the EU referendum "should be honoured".

Dominic Raab has been appointed Brexit secretary by Theresa May after David Davis resigned from the government.
Mr Raab, who is currently housing minister, was a prominent Leave campaigner during the 2016 referendum.
Mr Davis quit late on Sunday night, saying Theresa May had "given away too much too easily".
The 44-year old Mr Raab, a lawyer before becoming an MP in 2010, will now take over day-to-day negotiations with the EU's Michel Barnier.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how trade will work between the UK and the EU afterwards.
There have been differences within the Conservative Party over how far the UK should prioritise the economy by compromising on issues such as leaving the remit of the European Court of Justice and ending free movement of people.
The simple question for Davis, by Laura Kuenssberg
What sticks out the most from my interview with David Davis this morning is a very simple question we asked.
Is the prime minister's plan really leaving the EU? "I don't think so," he said.
That is the sentiment that's widely shared among the Tory party, and perhaps among many voters too. And guess what? It doesn't always matter which side of the referendum they were on either.
Some former Remainers say "look, this is a dodgy compromise, what's the point? If we are going to do this, then for goodness sake let's do it properly or just stay in".
From some Leavers, like Mr Davis, you also get "look, this is a dodgy compromise, what's the point? If we are going to do it, then for goodness sake let's do it properly".
Mrs May's Conservative Party only has a majority in Parliament with the support in key votes of the 10 MPs from Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party, so any split raises questions about whether her plan could survive a Commons vote - and has also led to renewed questions about whether she will face a challenge to her position.
Mr Raab has served in government since after the 2015 election, initially working in the Ministry of Justice before moving to the communities department in January.
The European Commission has declined to comment on the change of personnel, saying it would continue to negotiate with "goodwill" to try and secure an agreement on the terms of the UK's exit and future relations.
Asked how much of a problem Mr Davis's resignation was for the future of the negotiations, a spokesman replied: "It is not for us, we are here to work."
Mr Davis said he could not remain in his post because he no longer believed in the plan for the UK's future relations with the EU which was backed by the cabinet on Friday.
He said he hoped his resignation would make it easier for the UK to resist EU attempts to extract further concessions - but he insisted he was not seeking to undermine or challenge the prime minister.
In an interview with the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Davis said Mr Raab would be "very effective" in the post.
Reflecting on his resignation, he said he had lived with compromises in Brexit policy for two years but there came a point where these went "too far".
"I worry about the fine detail and that it will not work out as we hope," he said.
Asked what he would say to colleagues who thought it was time to remove Theresa May, he replied it was "not a good idea" - insisting that she was a "good prime minister".
Junior Brexit minister Steve Baker, who also resigned overnight, launched an attack on government policy.
He told the BBC's Daily Politics that he had been "blindsided" by the Brexit proposal agreed at Chequers.
Mr Baker also said that he and his team had been preparing a white paper "which did not accord with what has been put to the cabinet at Chequers".
The mood at Westminster, by Iain Watson
The atmosphere is volatile. The long-standing Leave supporters of the European Research Group of Tory MPs will have two meetings today - either side of the PM's address to her own MPs - to discuss next steps.
Views differ on whether the government's position is simply impractical - "the worst of both worlds" - or whether it actually breaches a manifesto commitment by offering a customs union in all but name.
But there is agreement amongst many Brexiteers that the policy should change, and quickly. It is less clear how they will bring that about. If there is not a direct triggering of a leadership contest, what are the options?
One is that Brexiteers go "on strike" and refuse to back government policy in parliament, weakening her premiership unless she changes course.
Another is that backbench Brexiteers put more pressure on like-minded cabinet colleagues to follow David Davis out the door.
Speaking to the BBC last week, Mr Raab said the process of negotiating Brexit was "rocky" but what mattered was getting there in the end, which would require "flexibility and pragmatism".
He told the Political Thinking podcast that he was "relaxed" about the UK leaving without a deal and it was "not something I would fear".
Conservative MPs welcomed the appointment of Mr Raab, who has a black belt in karate, one describing him as a "highly capable" figure with a clear attention to detail.
But Labour said a new man fronting the negotiations "changed nothing".
"The deep division at the heart of the Conservative Party has broken out in public and plunged this government into crisis," said shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer.
"It is now clearer than ever that Theresa May does not have the authority to negotiate for Britain or deliver a Brexit deal that protects jobs and the economy."
Asked whether Mr Raab would be in charge of the talks, No 10 said Mrs May had "always been, from the outset, the lead negotiator".
But a spokesman said there was a "huge body of work to be done, in terms of preparations for the UK leaving the EU and that obviously includes no-deal preparations as well".
Mrs May will address Parliament later on the plan agreed at Chequers on Friday as well as address Tory MPs as she seeks to keep her Brexit strategy on track.
Ahead of Monday's statement, opposition MPs and peers - as well as Tory MPs - are being offered briefings by Downing Street on the detail of the Chequers statement.
A spokesman for the European Research Group of eurosceptic Tory MPs told the BBC that involving opposition MPs had caused considerable anger and was the government's "stupidest mistake".
And Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the group, likened a PM relying on opposition MPs to the children's story in which the gingerbread man accepts the offer of a ride across a river from a fox, only to get eaten by it.

A deal with the EU can be reached by October but the UK is preparing for the possibility of no deal, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has said.
He said he would return to Brussels for talks on Thursday and strain "every sinew" to get "the best deal".
But the government had plans in place in case talks did not end well, he told the BBC.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said there must be a "serious stepping up of negotiations" to avoid no deal.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how trade will work between the UK and the EU afterwards.
Theresa May hopes the government's plan, detailed recently in the Brexit White Paper, will allow the two sides to reach a deal on relations by the autumn.
Downing Street said on Sunday that cabinet ministers would be promoting the plan across Europe over the summer.
Theresa May would "take the lead" by meeting the Austrian chancellor, Czech prime minister and Estonian prime minister next week.
Mrs May said: "We must step up the pace of negotiations and get on to deliver a good deal that will bring greater prosperity and security to both British and European citizens.
"We both know the clock is ticking - let's get on with it."
Mr Raab told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show if the "energy, ambition and pragmatism" the UK brought to negotiations was reciprocated, a deal would be done in October.
He noted that 80% of the withdrawal agreement was already settled.
And he said it was "useful" that EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier had raised questions about the prime minister's blueprint for the UK's future trading relationship with the EU.
"The fact Michel Barnier is not blowing it out of the water but asking questions is a good, positive sign - that's what we negotiate on."
But he said preparations such as hiring extra border staff were being made because "any responsible government" would make sure plans were in place in case negotiations failed.
Technical notices would be released for businesses and citizens affected during the summer to be "very clear about what they should do and what we are doing on their behalf" he added.
Asked about European Commission comments that there were no arrangements in place for UK and EU expats in the event of no deal, Mr Raab said: "Well, I think that's a rather irresponsible thing to be coming from the other side.
"We ought to be trying to reassure citizens on the continent and also here.
"There is obviously an attempt to try and ramp up the pressure."
Analysis by Jonathan Blake, BBC political correspondent
We've heard it often enough: "No deal is better than a bad deal".
But for EU negotiators to believe the UK would walk away without agreement, the government has to be seen to be taking that option seriously.
And so we are told about "planning" and "technical notices" to prepare for a "clean break" Brexit.
Reports of food stockpiles and a motorway becoming a lorry park are dismissed as "unhelpful snippets" but contingency plans will be made nonetheless.
Both sides agree a deal needs to be reached by October, and negotiations are likely to go down to the wire.
So even if a deal appears to be in sight, expect the talk of the UK leaving the EU without one to continue.
He added that the prospect of people being removed from the UK was "far-fetched and fanciful" and said it would be "frankly irrational" for the EU to go for the "worst case scenario" of no deal.
But the UK had to be prepared with things like allocating money, preparing treaty relations, and hiring extra border staff "so that Britain can thrive, whatever happens," he said.
Labour leader Mr Corbyn, on a visit to the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in Dorset, said it seemed the priority was preparation for no deal.
He added that would be "very bad", as "we then go onto World Trade Organization tariff rates that would hit the manufacturing industry and hit the food processing industry, and hit an awful lot of things in Britain very rapidly".
"There has to be a serious stepping-up of negotiations to reach an agreement on customs and on trade."
Earlier, Mr Raab suggested to the Sunday Telegraph that he was still persuading other cabinet ministers that the government's "pragmatic" strategy for leaving the EU was the "best plan" and that the UK could refuse to pay its so-called divorce bill, a payment from the UK to the EU estimated to be about £39bn, if it does not get a trade deal.
Theresa May's proposal for a future trade relationship with the EU sparked two cabinet resignations, including Mr Raab's predecessor David Davis.
The White Paper proposes close ties in some areas, such as the trade in goods, but will end free movement and the jurisdiction of the European Court, and allow the UK to strike trade deals with other nations.
Critics at Westminster say it is an unworkable compromise which would leave the UK being governed by the EU in many areas, but with no say in its rules.
And EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier questioned on Friday whether UK plans for a common rulebook for goods and agri-foods were practical and said the EU would not run the risk of weakening its single market.
Meanwhile, Mr Davis, whose resignation from Mrs May's top team was followed by that of former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, told the Sunday Express the government should "start again" on withdrawal plans.

Theresa May and Donald Trump are holding talks at her country retreat Chequers, following his controversial comments on the PM's Brexit plan.
In an interview with the Sun, Mr Trump said the PM's plan would "probably kill" any trade deal with the US.
But on Friday, he said he and Mrs May had "probably never developed a better relationship" than during this trip - his first to the UK as president.
Meanwhile, a giant blimp of Mr Trump as a baby is floating in central London.
It is part of a demonstration in Parliament Square, one of many due to take place across the UK on Friday.
In his interview with the Sun, Mr Trump also said that former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - who disagrees with the PM on Brexit and resigned this week - would make a "great prime minister", adding "I think he's got what it takes".
He also renewed his criticism of London Mayor Sadiq Khan over last year's terror attacks in London, saying he had done "a terrible job".
Downing Street has not yet reacted to Mr Trump's remarks, but Chancellor Philip Hammond said the talks will be "very positive".
Theresa May has been making the case for a US free trade deal, and says Brexit is an "unprecedented opportunity" to create jobs in the UK and US.
The US president and his wife, Melania, were given a red carpet reception at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire on Thursday evening.
They were at a black-tie dinner with Mrs May as news broke of his interview with the newspaper, which said it was conducted while he was in Brussels.
After it was published, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the president "likes and respects Prime Minister May very much", adding that he had "never said anything bad about her".
Mr Trump - who has been a long-time supporter of Brexit - told The Sun that the UK's blueprint for its post-Brexit relations with the EU was "a much different deal than the people voted on".
He said the Brexit proposals Mrs May and her cabinet thrashed out at the PM's country house Chequers last week "would probably end a major trade relationship with the United States."
"We have enough difficulty with the European Union," he said, saying the EU has "not treated the United States fairly on trading".
He also said Mrs May had not listened to his advice on how to do a Brexit deal, saying: "I would have done it much differently.
"I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn't agree, she didn't listen to me. She wanted to go a different route," he said.
Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun journalist who interviewed Mr Trump, said the US president seemed "sensitive" and knew about the "Trump baby" inflatable.
"He's really quite stung by the criticism he's been getting," said Mr Newton Dunn. "He knew all about the baby blimp. I think it hurt him."
The BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, said Mr Trump's interview had "driven a bulldozer" through Mrs May's claim that the UK would be able to get decent trade deals with the wider world, while sticking to the EU rules.
But Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan said things had "moved on" since Mr Trump's interview - which was carried out before he arrived in the UK - and the mood at Thursday night's dinner was "fantastically positive and did focus a lot on trade".
The government does not see Mr Trump's behaviour as "rude", said Sir Alan, adding: "Donald Trump is a controversialist. That's his style."
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan defended his decision to allow the giant Trump baby inflatable to fly over London, saying: "The idea that we limit the right to protest because it might cause offence to a foreign leader is a slippery slope."
And, responding to Mr Trump's criticism of his response to terrorism, Mr Khan said it was "interesting" that he "is not criticising the mayors of other cities" which have also experienced terror attacks.
Meanwhile, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said the PM "should be standing up to [Mr Trump]" after he "slagged her off", instead of holding his hand.
Mr Trump's comments came on the same day the UK government published its proposal for its long-term relationship with the EU.
The plan is aimed at ensuring trade co-operation, with no hard border for Northern Ireland, and global trade deals for the UK. Mrs May said the plan "absolutely delivers on the Brexit we voted for".
But after ministers reached an agreement on the plan at Chequers a week ago, leading Brexiteers Boris Johnson and David Davis resigned from the cabinet.
Mrs May and Mr Trump are watching a joint counter-terrorism exercise by British and US special forces at a military base.
The pair will then travel to Chequers - the PM's country residence in Buckinghamshire - for talks also being attended by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Extra security is in place to police protests planned for the second day of Mr Trump's visit.
The president and first lady will travel to Windsor on Friday afternoon to meet the Queen, before flying to Scotland to spend the weekend at Mr Trump's Turnberry golf resort. This part of the visit is being considered private.

The UK is "doing great" following its vote to leave the EU, US President-elect Donald Trump has said.
In his first UK interview - with former Justice Secretary Michael Gove for the Times - Mr Trump said he thought the UK was "so smart in getting out".
Mr Trump promised a quick trade deal between the US and the UK after he takes office on Friday.
But the European Commission reacted to the comments by saying no formal talks were allowed before the UK left the EU.
Mr Trump, who also criticised "obsolete" Nato and German Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policies, spoke to the Times and German newspaper Bild ahead of his inauguration on Friday.
Outgoing US President Barack Obama said in April last year that the UK would be "at the back of the queue" if it quit the EU.
Mr Gove - a prominent Leave campaigner during last year's referendum - asked Mr Trump whether the UK was now "at the front of the queue" for a trade deal with the US following the Brexit vote.
"I think you're doing great," Mr Trump said. "I think it's going great."
The president-elect said: "Trump said Brexit is going to happen, and it happened. Everybody thought I was crazy.
"Obama said, 'They'll go to the back of the line,' and then he had to retract his statement."
Mr Trump added: "Countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity, but I do think if they hadn't been forced to take in all of the refugees then you wouldn't have a Brexit."
On a potential US-UK trade deal, he said: "We're gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides."
Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the president-elect wanted a trade deal "signature-ready at the earliest possible opportunity" - former UKIP leader Nigel Farage later said he expected a trade deal within three months of Mr Trump becoming president.
However a European Commission spokeswoman said that "categorically won't be possible" because formal talks "cannot take place in any official capacity until Britain has finished its negotiations with the EU".
Mr Gove, a columnist for the paper, added: "He (Mr Trump) stressed that he believed the European Union would potentially break up in the future and that other countries would leave.
"So in a sense he is both emotionally and financially invested in it."
Arriving at a summit in Brussels, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: "I think it's very good news that the United States of America wants to deal a good free trade deal with us and wants to do it very fast, and it's great to hear that from President-elect Donald Trump.
"Clearly it will have to be a deal that is very much in the interests of both sides, but I have no doubt that it will be."
In his interview, Mr Trump talked about the recent dip in the value of the pound.
"The fact that your pound sterling has gone down?" he said. "Great, because business is unbelievable in a lot of parts in the UK, as you know. I think Brexit is going to end up being a great thing."
The president-elect's views came as Chancellor Philip Hammond said the UK may be forced to change its "economic model" if "closed off" from the European single market.
During the Times/Bild interview, held in Trump Tower, New York, the president-elect said he thought Mrs Merkel was the "by far the most important European leader".
"If you look at the European Union, it's Germany - it's basically a vehicle for Germany," he said.
Mr Trump said Mrs Merkel had made a "big mistake" by admitting more than one million migrants to the country.
"I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from. And nobody even knows where they come from," he added.
Mr Trump also stressed that he would "start off trusting both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mrs Merkel" on taking office, but would "see how long that lasts".
Talking about international security, Mr Trump argued that he had said "a long time ago that Nato had problems".
"One, that it was obsolete because it was designed many many years ago, and number two, that the countries weren't paying what they're supposed to pay."
Last November, Downing Street said Prime Minister Theresa May and Mr Trump had discussed the need for more countries to commit to spending 2% of national income on defence, when speaking on the telephone after the US election.
Mr Trump's comments on the UK and the EU came ahead of the launch of a cross-party campaign called Brexit Together.
It aims to bring together political voices from both sides of the referendum debate to develop a "shared vision" on immigration, the economy and market access, security and sovereignty.
One of the campaign's founders, Labour MP Caroline Flint, said "a lot was said in both campaigns... that left the public feeling quite baffled at some of the rhetoric".
It was "absolutely right we should have a good trading relationship with the EU and, of course, getting a deal with the US would be a fantastic opportunity as well", she added.
A separate report, co-written by Boris Johnson's former economic adviser, Gerard Lyons, says membership of the single market has been a "major drawback" for the UK's service industries. It recommends a "clean Brexit", leaving this and the customs union.
Meanwhile, the man tipped to become Mr Trump's ambassador to the EU has said the president-elect is committed to securing a trade deal with the UK, and preliminary talks could begin ahead of its formal departure from the 28-nation bloc.
Theodore Malloch, a professor at Henley Business School in Reading, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you want to facilitate something it can be done in an expeditious manner, so I would hope on the day Britain triggers Article 50 Mrs May would be able to announce we have just started discussions with the United States."
In his Times/Bild interview, Mr Trump also discussed his Scottish-born mother, saying: "She was so proud of the Queen. She loved the ceremony and the beauty, because nobody does that like the English, and she had great respect for the Queen and liked her.
"Any time the Queen was on television, for an event, my mother would be watching."
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron dismissed Mr Gove's interview with Mr Trump as "a puff piece from a clearly admiring fan".
He added: "I don't know the shape of the Europe that Trump dreams of, but I know it frightens me."

US President Donald Trump has said Boris Johnson would do "a great job" as UK prime minister and they would have "a very good relationship".
"He's a different kind of a guy but they say I'm a different kind of a guy too," Mr Trump told reporters.
Outgoing prime minister Theresa May "has done a very bad job with Brexit", he added.
Mr Johnson is the frontrunner in the contest to become the next Tory leader and UK prime minister.
He and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt are the final two candidates, with the winner announced on 23 July and taking office the next day.
President Trump said he had spoken to Mr Johnson on Thursday, adding: "We get along well."
"I like Boris Johnson, I always have," he told reporters in the Oval Office in Washington DC.
Commenting on the UK's Brexit negotiations, he said: "It's a disaster and it shouldn't be that way."
"I think Boris will straighten it out," he added.
The US president has previously said Mr Johnson would be an "excellent" choice as Conservative leader.
He has also been critical of Mrs May's Brexit policy in the past, saying he was surprised by how "badly" the negotiations had gone.
Some 160,000 Conservative Party members are voting in a postal ballot to elect the next leader. Ballots must be returned by 17:00 BST on Monday.

President Trump has promised a "very big trade deal" with the UK, saying its departure from the EU will be like losing "an anchor round the ankle".
Mr Trump was speaking after a breakfast meeting with Mr Johnson at the G7 summit in Biarritz in France.
But Mr Johnson said the US must open up its markets if a post-Brexit trade deal is to be agreed.
"I don't think we sell a single joint of British lamb in the United States, we don't sell any beef," the PM said.
Mr Johnson's breakfast meeting came before a day of discussions with other world leaders at the summit.
The PM also met European Council President Donald Tusk, a day after the two men clashed over who would be held responsible for a no-deal Brexit.
Speaking to reporters after the working breakfast, Mr Trump said a deal with the UK would happen "quickly".
"We're going to do a very big trade deal, bigger than we've ever had with the UK," he said.
"And now at some point they won't have the obstacle, they won't have the anchor around their ankle, because that's what they have."
Mr Johnson told Mr Trump: "Talking of the anchor, Donald, what we want is for our ships to take freight, say, from New York to Boston, which for the moment they're not able to do."
In a later interview with the BBC, Mr Johnson said agreeing any trade deals with the US within a year "would be tight".
"My own experience of the way Americans work, the size and complexity of the deal we want to do probably means we won't be able to do within a year.
When asked if it could take five years, he replied: "No, we'll do it faster than that.
"We need to do it fast, but to get the whole thing done from soup to nuts within a year is going to be a big ask."
Before his talks with the US President, Mr Johnson spoke about "massive opportunities for the UK to prise open the American market".
As a member of the European Union, the UK cannot make its own trade deals with other countries - and the EU does not have a free trade deal with the US.
The UK has already agreed 13 "continuity" deals with 38 countries that will apply post-Brexit.
Offering an example of an American trade restriction, Mr Johnson said: "Melton Mowbray pork pies, which are sold in Thailand and in Iceland, are currently unable to enter the US market because of, I don't know, some sort of food and drug administration restriction."
He continued: "UK bell peppers cannot get into the US market at all.
"Wine shipments are heavily restricted. If you want to export wine made in England to the US you have to go through a US distributor.
"There is a tax on British micro-breweries in the US that doesn't apply to US micro-breweries in the UK."
The government added that tariffs on some UK goods in the US can reach up to 28% for fashion, 15% for machinery and 35% for food and drink.
David Henig, the UK director of the European Centre For International Political Economy, said the US "would be loathe" to get rid of the barriers intended to protect US producers.
He added: "The US is quite protectionist - the US have never done a trade deal the likes of which Mr Johnson is describing.
"The question is whether the US is prepared to give the UK something and what we would have to give them in return.
"It is less clear what Trump wants in terms of trade altogether."
In June, Mr Trump made comments that the NHS "was on the table" in US-UK trade deal - but later rowed back on his remarks.
At the G7 summit Mr Johnson was asked if he had made it clear the NHS was not on the table.
He replied: "Not only have I made clear of that, the president has made that very, very clear. There is complete unanimity on that point."
Trade deals involve two or more countries agreeing a set of terms by which they buy and sell goods and services from each other.
Deals are designed to increase trade by eliminating or reducing trade barriers. These barriers might include import or export taxes (tariffs), quotas, or differing regulations on things such as safety or labelling.
Last month, President Trump said talks about a "very substantial" trade deal with the UK were already under way.
He said a bilateral post-Brexit deal could lead to a "three to four, five times" increase in current trade - but provided no details about how that would be achieved.
However, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said a UK-US trade deal would not get through Congress if Brexit undermined the Good Friday Agreement.
Ms Pelosi said the UK's exit from the EU could not be allowed to endanger the 1998 Irish peace deal, which the US helped facilitate.

The UK and the EU face a "furious race against time" to finalise Brexit talks before March 2019, the head of the European Council says.
Donald Tusk urged EU leaders to show unity as they try to negotiate what the future relationship will look like and to set up transitional arrangements.
The EU is set to agree this week that enough progress has been made so far to move on from the first phase of talks.
The UK has been told not to "backtrack" on last week's divorce deal.
The comment from EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier came after UK Brexit Secretary David Davis suggested the divorce agreement unveiled by Theresa May amounted to a "statement of intent" rather than a binding agreement.
Mr Davis - the UK's Brexit secretary - said he was quoted out of context.
But European Parliament negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said the "unacceptable remarks" would harm "good faith" in the process.
The UK is set to leave the EU in March 2019, two years after Mrs May served formal notice of Brexit.
Both sides hope to finalise a deal by October 2018 on the future relationship, including trade, so the UK and European Parliaments have time to vote on it before the UK leaves.
In his formal letter on Tuesday inviting leaders to this week's EU summit, Mr Tusk told the 27 member states: "This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key."
On Sunday, Mr Davis said guarantees on the Northern Ireland border - included in a joint EU-UK report published on Friday - were not legally binding unless the two sides reached a final deal.
But he told LBC Radio on Monday they would be honoured whatever happened.
A European Commission spokesman said the first-phase deal on the Northern Ireland border, the divorce bill and citizens' rights did not strictly have the force of law.
"But we see the joint report of Michel Barnier and David Davis as a deal between gentlemen and it is the clear understanding that it is fully backed and endorsed by the UK government."
The Brexit secretary's comments at the weekend about the legality of what's been agreed so far between the UK and the EU have been widely noted in Brussels, and a handful of member states have brought them up with me.
"To say we are annoyed is putting it too strongly, though," said one diplomat. "This is the sort of stuff we expected," said another. "It's never good when someone questions an agreement 24 hours after it was done," a third official suggested.
This forms the backdrop to the discussion taking place among EU ministers about the European Council's draft guidelines for Phase 2 of the Brexit talks.
But it is not clear if it will lead to any changes to the draft text that will be discussed by leaders on Friday morning. The document already states in its first paragraph that progress in phase 2 of the talks is contingent on commitments from phase 1 being kept.
Mr Verhofstadt has tabled two amendments for MEPs to debate on Wednesday, one of which says Mr Davis's comments risk undermining "the good faith that has been built during the negotiations".
Another amendment calls on Britain to "fully respect" last week's Brexit deal and ensure it is "fully translated" into a draft Withdrawal Agreement.
On Monday morning, he tweeted:
And at a press conference in Brussels, he said the UK must "stick to its commitments" and put them into a draft Withdrawal Agreement "as soon as possible" if there is to be progress in the second phase of talks.
Mr Davis replied with two tweets of his own, promising to work with Mr Verhofstadt to allay his concerns:
The European Parliament gets a formal vote on the final Brexit deal but it has also been holding debates and issuing resolutions throughout the process to make its voice heard.
Mr Verhofstadt has introduced the amendments alongside the leaders of four other European Parliament political groups.

The EU will be "defeated" in Brexit negotiations unless it maintains absolute unity, European Council president Donald Tusk has said.
The ex-Polish prime minister told the European Parliament the UK's departure was the EU's "toughest stress test" and it must not be divided at any costs.
"If we fail it then the negotiations will end in our defeat," he told MEPs.
But one German MEP said the EU's stance was "illogical, dangerous and unfair" and UKIP accused the EU of "extortion".
The UK is due to leave the European Union at the end of March 2019 and until Mr Tusk's comments both sides have sought to avoid talking about victory, defeat and winners and losers in the negotiations.
In an update following last week's Brussels summit where the Brexit process was discussed, Mr Tusk said he was "obsessed" with preserving the unity of the other 27 members.
BBC's Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming
Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty allows the UK and the EU to negotiate an orderly withdrawal, a transition period and the shape of the future relationship within a two-year window.
Mr Barnier plans to complete the withdrawal agreement by the autumn of 2018 so it can be ratified by the European Council and the European Parliament.
So we could know the outlines of the future relationship by then.
But under EU law, a trade deal would have to be signed when the UK became a so-called "third country" and it is this that would likely have to be ratified by Parliaments in the member states.
"We must keep our unity regardless of the direction of the talks," Mr Tusk said. "The EU will be able to rise to every scenario as long as we are not divided."
"If we fail it then the negotiations will end in our defeat," he told MEPs.
He added: "It is in fact up to London how this will end: with a good deal, no deal or no Brexit. But in each of these scenarios we will protect our common interest only by being together."
Responding to suggestions that the UK might choose to stop its withdrawal, a Downing Street spokesman said: "Brexit is not going to be reversed."
So far, the Brexit negotiations have focused on the three "separation" issues of how much the UK has to pay to "settle its accounts" when it leaves, what happens to EU citizens in the UK and Britons elsewhere in the EU after Brexit, plus what happens with the Northern Ireland border.
The EU says it will only move on to discuss the UK's future relations with the EU after "sufficient progress" has been made on these three issues.
At last week's summit EU leaders decided more work was needed on these items before trade talks could begin with the UK - although the remaining 27 EU members have agreed to talk about the future options among themselves. The UK wants the second phase to start as soon as possible.
On Monday, Theresa May told MPs she had a "degree of confidence" of making enough progress by December to begin trade talks.
Meanwhile, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has suggested negotiations on a UK-EU trade deal could take three years if they begin in December.
He told the Belgian newspaper L'Echo that the process would not be "without risks" because national parliaments in all the 27 remaining states would "have to give their approval" to any deal.
A spokesman for Mr Barnier confirmed the remarks but stressed anything was possible and it was not a definitive statement that a deal would be done by December 2020.
Speaking in Tuesday's debate, Conservative MEP Syed Kamall, who heads the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, called for more pragmatism and less idealism from the EU in their approach to the talks.
"There needs to be an understanding from the EU 27 where the British people are coming from," he said.
And Hans-Olaf Henkel, a German MEP from the Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament, urged Mr Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to demonstrate more of the "British values of fairness" asking "whether you would agree a price on something you don't know or what you buy for".
For UKIP, MEP Ray Finch warned that the UK would "remain subservient to the EU legally and financially" if talks continued on their current trajectory.
Referring to demands for the UK to pay a so-called divorce settlement, he said: "This extortion will poison UK and EU relations for years to come," adding that the two sides should "shake hands and walk away" now.

European Council President Donald Tusk has spoken of a "special place in hell" for "those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely".
He was speaking after talks with Irish leader Leo Varadkar in Brussels.
Brexit-backing MPs reacted with anger to the comments, accusing Mr Tusk of "arrogance".
Downing Street said it was a question for Mr Tusk "whether he considers the use of that kind of language helpful".
The prime minister's official spokesman said: "We had a robust and lively referendum campaign in this country. In what was the largest democratic exercise in our history, people voted to leave the EU."
He added that everyone should now focus on delivering that.
Mr Tusk's Twitter account tweeted his comments immediately after he made them in a news conference.
And at the end of their news conference, Mr Varadkar was picked up by the microphones telling Mr Tusk: "They'll give you terrible trouble in the British press for that."
Mr Tusk nodded at the comment and both laughed.
Brussels officials were quick to clarify Mr Tusk's remarks, stressing to BBC correspondent Adam Fleming that the Brexiteers' special place in hell would be for when they are dead and "not right now".
Jean-Claude Juncker tried to laugh off the comments at a later press conference with Mr Varadkar, saying the only hell he knew was doing his job as the president of the European Commission.
And Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, referencing Mr Tusk's comments, later tweeted: "Well, I doubt Lucifer would welcome them, as after what they did to Britain, they would even manage to divide hell."
But leading Brexiteers in the UK took to social media to express their anger at Mr Tusk's remarks.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who is now an independent MEP, tweeted: "After Brexit we will be free of unelected, arrogant bullies like you and run our own country. Sounds more like heaven to me."
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, who also campaigned for Britain's exit from the EU, said Mr Tusk should apologise for his "disgraceful" and "spiteful" comments.
"I'm sure that when he reflects on it he may well wish he hadn't done it," she told BBC Radio 4's World at One.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis, when asked on ITV Peston's programme how he felt "when President Tusk practically reserved your place in hell?", said: "Perhaps he'll join us there.
"When people throw insults around it says more about them than the people they're insulting."
The Democratic Unionist Party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said: "This devilish Euro maniac is doing his best to keep the United Kingdom bound by the chains of EU bureaucracy and control.
"It is Tusk and his arrogant EU negotiators who have fanned the flames of fear in an attempt to try and overturn the result of the referendum."
But Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald backed Mr Tusk, arguing that it was the position of "hardline" Brexit-supporting MPs like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg that was "intemperate" and "untenable".
And Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who supports having another EU referendum, said Mr Tusk was "absolutely right" and it was "painful" for leading figures in the Leave campaign, such as Boris Johnson and David Davis, "to have the truth pointed out to them".
Theresa May - who supported the UK staying in the EU during the 2016 EU referendum but has always insisted that Brexit must be delivered because that was what people voted for - is due to arrive in Brussels on Thursday to seek legal changes to the withdrawal deal she signed with the EU. She hopes these changes will help her get it through the UK Parliament.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said the government was likely to publish a new employment bill before the next vote on Mrs May's deal, with the aim to maximise support for it from Labour MPs.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has set out five demands for his party to support a Brexit deal - calling for them to be enshrined as objectives in domestic law.
In a letter to the prime minister, he said Labour wanted a UK-wide customs union, close alignment with the single market, "dynamic alignment" on rights and protections, "clear commitments" on participation in EU agencies and funding programmes and "unambiguous agreements" on the detail of future security arrangements.
He said Labour did not believe that "simply seeking modifications" to the backstop was a sufficient response.
Mr Corbyn added that EU leaders had been clear that changes to the political declaration were possible if a request was made by the UK government "and if the current red lines change".
By BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming
The EU has been absolutely scathing about some of the British political class today.
The dam broke on Donald Tusk's pent-up feelings about the leaders of the Leave campaign.
The Irish prime minister suggested that MPs either didn't know what they were doing or were misled when they voted to look for alternatives to the Irish backstop.
But - and it's a big but - they have all been open to the prime minister coming to Brussels with a solution to break the deadlock.
And while Jean-Claude Juncker ruled out the idea of the UK having the right to pull out of the backstop if it were ever needed, he didn't say anything about the other idea doing the rounds - a time limit.
Donald Tusk said that the other 27 EU members had decided in December that the withdrawal agreement was "not open for renegotiation" - a message echoed by Mr Juncker.
Mr Tusk also had a message for Remain supporters in the UK, with 50 days to go until Brexit happens, with a deal or without one, saying: "I have always been with you, with all my heart".
But he added: "The facts are unmistakable. At the moment, the pro-Brexit stance of the UK prime minister, and the Leader of the Opposition, rules out this question.
"Today, there is no political force and no effective leadership for Remain. I say this without satisfaction, but you can't argue with the facts."
Mr Tusk said the Irish border issue and the need to preserve the peace process remained the EU's "top priority".
He hoped Mrs May would "give us a deliverable guarantee for peace in Northern Ireland and the UK will leave the EU as a trusted friend" that can command a Commons majority.
Mr Varadkar said that while he was "open to further discussions" with the UK government about post-Brexit relations, the legally-binding withdrawal agreement remained "the best deal possible".
And the backstop was needed "as a legal guarantee to ensure that there is no return to a hard border on the island of Ireland".
He later said he will meet Theresa May for talks in Dublin on Friday.
Jean-Claude Juncker said alternative arrangements - the form of words backed by MPs in a vote last week - "can never replace the backstop".
Clarification 27 February 2019: While the summary of this story and opening paragraph made clear that Mr Tusk was referring to a specific group of people - those who promoted Brexit without a plan - the original headlines were misleading and so were amended shortly after publication on 6 February.

Theresa May's proposed new economic partnership with the EU "will not work", the head of the European Council has said.
Donald Tusk said the plans risked undermining the EU's single market.
He was speaking at the end of an EU summit in Salzburg where leaders of the 27 remaining member states discussed Brexit.
Mrs May said her proposals were the "only serious credible" way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
She said she had held "frank" talks with Mr Tusk, adding: "Yes, concerns have been raised and I want to know what those concerns are."
There was "a lot of hard work to be done", she said, but added that the UK was also making preparations in case no deal could be reached.
Mrs May reiterated that she would not accept the EU's "backstop" plan to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, and said the UK would shortly be bringing forward its own proposals.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and both sides are trying to reach a deal in time.
There is still no agreement on some issues, including how to avoid new checks on the Northern Ireland-Republic of Ireland border.
At a press conference, Mr Tusk said there were some "positive elements" in the UK's blueprint for future relations with the EU, which was agreed by ministers at Chequers in July.
But, he added: "The suggested framework for economic cooperation will not work."
Mr Tusk added that October would be the "moment of truth" for reaching a deal, and that "if the conditions are there" an additional summit would be held in November to "formalise" it.
Can the prime minister really cling on to her Chequers plan now?
The EU clearly won't accept it as it stands. Significant chunks of her party won't wear the deal either. The opposition parties won't back her.
Of course there are tactics at play here. One government minister has already suggested that the EU always knows how to overplay their hand.
Sometimes in negotiations, there needs to be a crisis to focus minds.
And in her press conference, Theresa May seemed frustrated that her proposals perhaps have not been properly digested or considered yet.
Of course this is only one day, one set of fraught meetings, in a tangled and lengthy process.
But as things stand, it seems Theresa May is going to have to budge, or walk away.
Read the rest of Laura's blog
The EU leaders had been discussing the UK's plans, which were presented to them by Mrs May on Wednesday evening.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said "substantial progress" was needed on the UK's withdrawal agreement by the next European Council meeting in October, with "still a large piece of work" on the separate issue of future trade relations with the UK.
The 27 remaining EU members were "united that, in the matter of the single market, there can be no compromises," she said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Brexit had been "pushed by certain people who predicted easy solutions".
He added: "Brexit has shown us one thing - and I fully respect British sovereignty in saying this - it has demonstrated that those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well, that it is easy and there will be lots of money, are liars.
"This is all the more true because they left the next day, so they didn't have to manage it."
As well the criticism from the EU, Mrs May's proposal for the UK to sign up to a common rule book for trade in goods and a combined customs territory with the EU is unpopular with many in her own party, who believe it will erode British sovereignty and is not what people voted for when they backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum.
Former Brexit secretary David Davis said although EU leaders "were trying to give some warm words" it was now going to be "very, very difficult" to meet their requirements: "So it's time for a reset, time for a rethink".
And another prominent Brexiteer, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, said Mr Tusk's remarks signalled the end for the Chequers proposals.
"I think Chequers now has no supporters at all," he told the BBC.
"I think the time has come for Mrs May to say 'This is not going to work'."
For Labour, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Mrs May had to "urgently drop her reckless red lines and put forward a credible plan for Brexit".
But DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds blamed the EU for its "unreasonable and inflexible approach" adding: "The UK government must demonstrate a resolute determination not to be bullied."
He said preserving the "political, constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom" was the "absolute priority for us".
Earlier Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Mrs May must delay Brexit beyond next March if there is not a detailed agreement on future trading arrangements.

The UK's approach to the next stage of Brexit negotiations seems to be based on "pure illusion", Donald Tusk says.
The European Council president told a news conference in Brussels that the UK was still trying to "cherry pick" its future relationship with the EU.
Mr Tusk said he could only go on media reports of Brexit talks at the PM's country retreat Chequers on Thursday.
Theresa May is set to deliver a key speech setting out British ambitions on Friday of next week.
Mr Tusk, who is due to meet the PM the day before, said media reports suggested that the "cake philosophy is still alive" in the UK.
He added: "If the media reports are correct I am afraid that the UK position today is based on pure illusion."
He went on to reject - as he has done before - any notion of the UK "cherry picking" aspects of its future relationship with the EU or being able to join a "single market a la carte".
The BBC understands that the 11 senior ministers at Chequers made a breakthrough on so-called "managed divergence", where the UK could select EU rules to stick to post-Brexit.
Mr Tusk said the EU would continue to be "extremely realistic" during the forthcoming negotiations.
The second phase of Brexit negotiations will cover transitional arrangements after the UK leaves and economic and security co-operation in the future.
Mr Tusk, who spoke at an informal meeting of 27 European heads of states and governments, said he would present draft guidelines on the future EU-UK relationship at a summit in March.
"Our intention is to adopt these guidelines, whether the UK is ready with its vision of our future relations, or not," he said.
"Naturally it would be much better if it were. But we cannot stand by and wait."
He said he hoped to have more clarity when he meets the PM in London next week.
The leaders also spoke about the EU's post-2020 budget, the composition of the European Parliament, Turkey and Syria.
The government is set to pursue a policy which puts the UK outside a customs union with the EU - but matching EU rules in some industries in an attempt to achieve "frictionless trade".
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who did not attend the meeting of senior ministers, said despite "divergent views" there was a "central common understanding".
He said some sectors could align regulations with European regulations, adding: "But it will be on a voluntary basis, we will as a sovereign power have the right to choose to diverge."

Downing Street has "wholeheartedly" rejected comments in a memorandum leaked to the press describing cabinet "divisions" over Brexit.
The document, compiled by consultancy firm Deloitte and obtained by the Times newspaper, says Whitehall is working on 500 Brexit-related projects and could need 30,000 extra staff.
But the prime minister's spokeswoman said the work had been "unsolicited".
And Deloitte said there had been no "access" to Number 10 for the report.
No "input from any other government departments" had been received, the company added.
Prime Minister Theresa May wants to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - beginning the formal two-year process for leaving the EU - by the end of March next year.
The government said the leaked memo - entitled "Brexit Update" of 7 November - had been written by a consultant and was not a Cabinet Office document, as reported in earlier versions of this story.
The prime minister's spokeswoman added that someone from the accountancy firm Deloitte  had produced it and "the individual is not working for the Cabinet Office on this". The person had never been inside 10 Downing Street and had not engaged with officials since Theresa May had become prime minister, the spokeswoman said.
The document identifies cabinet splits between Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Brexit Secretary David Davis and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox on one side, and Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark on the other.
It says Mrs May is "acquiring a reputation of drawing in decisions and details to settle matters herself" - an approach it describes as being "unlikely to be sustainable".
It says: "Every department has developed a 'bottom-up' plan of what the impact of Brexit could be - and its plan to cope with the 'worst case'.
"Although necessary, this falls considerably short of having a 'government plan for Brexit' because it has no prioritisation and no link to the overall negotiation strategy."
But the PM's spokeswoman said it was "so far removed from the government's assessment". She also "wholeheartedly" disputed the suggestion in the memo that there was no plan for Brexit.
Late on Tuesday afternoon Deloitte issued a statement about the memo saying: "This was a note intended primarily for internal audiences. It was not commissioned by the Cabinet Office, nor any other government department, and represents a view of the task facing Whitehall.
"This work was conducted without access to Number 10 or input from any other government departments."
Former Conservative Chancellor Ken Clarke, a prominent supporter of the UK staying in the European Union, told BBC Radio 4's The World at One said of the memo: "I think it's probably entirely accurate. It rings very true."
He added: "It's going to take a good six months to work out how to manage the damage [from Brexit]."
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the government's "shambolic" approach to Brexit was failing to equip the UK economy for leaving the EU.
In a speech, he described the chancellor as isolated from cabinet colleagues and "too weak" to make Brexit a success.
However, Mr McDonnell said Labour would not attempt to block or delay the triggering of Article 50 in Parliament.
"To do so would put Labour against the majority will of the British people and on the side of certain corporate elites, who have always had the British people at the back of the queue," he said.
Liberal Democrat EU spokesman Nick Clegg said: "The problem is we don't have any decisions from the government. We don't know what it means when it says, 'Brexit means Brexit.'"
The government is appealing against a High Court ruling that Parliament should have a say before the UK invokes Article 50. The hearing is due to begin at the Supreme Court on 5 December.

Downing Street has insisted Britain will leave the EU customs union after Brexit amid claims of Tory disunity over the UK-EU future relationship.
Theresa May has faced calls to spell out what she wants from the talks ahead of the UK's departure in March 2019.
In a customs union the UK would have tariff-free trade within the EU, but would lose the ability to strike its own deals with other countries.
It comes ahead of a meeting with the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
The prime minister and Brexit Secretary David Davis will meet Mr Barnier ahead of the next round of negotiations getting under way.
Later, talks between officials will focus for the first time on the transitional period planned for after Brexit.
Potential sticking points include citizens' rights, with the UK insisting EU nationals arriving during this time should not have the same rights as those who arrived before Brexit day.
As he set off for London, Mr Barnier said there was "not a moment to lose" in order to secure a deal before the end of the year.
Asked about the UK's position on the customs union, he said Downing Street's "red lines" would be respected but the UK must respect the "rules of the union".
How close the UK will remain to the EU's single market and customs union has been a topic of debate among leading Brexiteers and some of those closest to the prime minister.
Conservative MP Kwasi Kwarteng, who is an aide to Chancellor Philip Hammond, suggested the latest statement on the customs union was "perfectly consistent" with what No 10 had been saying all along, given that Mrs May had been "pretty clear" in her January 2017 Lancaster House speech the UK would be leaving.
Pressed on how he squared this reality with Mr Hammond's stated desire for the UK and EU to move "very modestly" apart in terms of trade, he told BBC Radio 4's Today that "being modestly apart does not mean you have to be in a customs union".
He said the government had to make it clearer its core aim was a free trade deal with the EU.
On Sunday Eurosceptic Tory Bernard Jenkin accused the government of being "vague" and "divided", saying Chancellor Philip Hammond was not sticking to the approach put forward by the prime minister.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd - who was a leading figure in the Remain campaign - played down the divisions in the cabinet, telling the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday: "I have a surprise for the Brexiteers, which is the committee that meets in order to help make these decisions is more united than they think."
Future options?
In a position paper published in August, the UK set out two potential options for future long-term customs operations.
A "partnership" arrangement would see the UK "align precisely" with the EU in terms of imports and exports, removing the need for any customs checks between the two.
The UK would continue to operate its own checks on goods coming from outside the EU - and safeguards would be needed to prevent goods entering the EU that had not complied with its rules.
An alternative scenario would involve the UK extending customs checks to EU arrivals but under a "highly streamlined arrangement" to minimise disruption at ports and airports.
This would seek to make the existing system of customs checks "even more efficient", for example using number plate recognition technology at ports, which could be linked to customs declarations for what the vehicles are carrying, meaning the vehicles do not have to be manually stopped and checked.
Ms Rudd said they agreed on the need for "frictionless trade", the ability to strike international trade deals and to avoid a hard border in Ireland, hitting back at those who question whether such a deal can be secured.
"We want to have a bespoke agreement," she said. "Now we're not going to surrender before we have that battle."
She said Mrs May - who will chair a meeting of the 10-strong Brexit cabinet sub-committee on Wednesday and Thursday - had an "open mind" on how customs will be managed after Brexit.
Quizzed on what the model might look like, she said she was "not intimidated at all" by critics' warnings about customs unions membership.
Labour said it was "foolhardy" to rule out any kind of customs union with the UK's largest trading partner.
"The government must put jobs and the economy first, not their own internal party wrangling," a party spokesman said.

Brexiteer cabinet minister Liam Fox has accused pro-Remain MPs of trying to "steal Brexit", amid backbench moves to take control of the process.
He told the BBC: "You've got a Leave population and a Remain Parliament. Parliament has not got the right to hijack the Brexit process."
There are various backbench moves to prevent the UK leaving the European Union without a deal on 29 March.
Labour's Sir Keir Starmer said the PM should rule out a no-deal Brexit.
He said he believed it was "inevitable" that Article 50 would be delayed and that events in Parliament last week - when MPs heavily rejected the withdrawal deal Theresa May has negotiated with the EU - mean that another referendum was now more likely.
He told the BBC the prime minister must also change her "red lines" adding: "If she won't, it's difficult to see where we go from here."
On Monday, Theresa May will make a statement to MPs setting out how she intends to proceed with Brexit, amid apparent deadlock in Parliament over a way forward.
She will also table a motion to be debated and voted on, on 29 January. It is expected that various MPs will try to amend that motion over the course of the next week to put forward proposals to test the will of the Commons.
International Trade Secretary Mr Fox told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "Parliament has not got the right to hijack the Brexit process because Parliament has said to the people of this country: 'We make a contract with you, you will make the decision and we will honour it.'
"What we are now getting are some of those who were always absolutely opposed to the result of the referendum, trying to hijack Brexit and, in fact, steal the result from the people."
He warned that, if the referendum result was not honoured: "The consequences politically would be astronomical"
Mr Fox also said that he believed the way to break the deadlock was to win over more Conservative MPs to the PM's deal by finding a "different mechanism" to the controversial "backstop" proposal, to prevent a return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Various MPs are likely to try to amend the PM's "neutral" motion - simply saying that the Commons has considered the PM's statement - which Theresa May will put forward on Monday.
One group, including Labour's Yvette Cooper, the Conservative former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, and Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb, among others, want the UK to extend its negotiations with the EU beyond 29 March - if MPs do not approve a withdrawal agreement by 26 February.
MPs voted in favour of invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - which allows the UK and EU two years to negotiate the terms of Brexit - in 2017 and the 29 March date is in UK legislation - the EU Withdrawal Act.
Ms Morgan told Sky News the law would have to be changed if the UK was to be prevented from leaving the EU without a deal in place - and that is where the "very short" bill she is backing came in.
Meanwhile Conservative Remainer Dominic Grieve wants backbench MPs to be able to choose to debate and vote on Brexit issues, one day a week - breaking with the usual practice where the government controls the parliamentary timetable. Mr Grieve said those debates could then give an indication to the government about what the Commons wanted.
"My intention is not to stop Brexit," he told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House.
"My intention has always been to try to ensure that the government is forced to listen to what the majority view of the House of Commons is on this."
But Conservative Brexiteer Peter Bone said Mr Grieve had "lost the plot" and his plan would not get through Parliament.
By Nick Eardley, BBC political correspondent
The government is continuing to look at ideas to end the deadlock in Parliament over Brexit.
The key one Liam Fox was alluding to this morning is finding an alternative to the "backstop".
But some MPs are now so angry with the government, they want to take control.
Dominic Grieve's plan would allow Parliament to put its own ideas forward and be voted on.
The working plan is 300 MPs would have to back a proposal for it to be discussed.
A majority would have to then back it for it to be approved.
The battle for control of Plan B is well under way.
Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is the formal route for any country leaving the EU and it allows for a two-year process of negotiation. At the end of that period "the treaties shall cease to apply to the state in question" unless Article 50 is extended or revoked.
It was backed by MPs and invoked on 29 March 2017, meaning the UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March this year. But the withdrawal agreement reached by the EU and UK was rejected by MPs by 432 votes to 202 on Tuesday. If MPs do not approve a deal, the UK is due to leave the EU without one, which would mean trade reverting to World Trade Organization rules.
To extend Article 50, the UK would first have to make a request to the EU - which could be granted if all EU countries agree at a vote of the EU Council. Then it would have to table a statutory instrument to change the definition of "exit day" in the UK's EU Withdrawal Act. MPs would get a chance to vote on this change.
According to an European Court of Justice ruling in December, the UK could choose to cancel Brexit altogether without seeking the permission of the rest of the EU - something the government says it has no intention of doing.

Two of the world's biggest drugs firms are stockpiling medicines in case of supply disruptions after Brexit.
France's Sanofi is increasing its stocks by four weeks to give it a 14 week supply of medicines.
Switzerland's Novartis said it was also preparing for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
Sanofi, which makes insulin, is worried about any transport delays following Brexit, as most of its supplies have to cross the Channel.
"The uncertainty in the Brexit negotiations means that Sanofi has been planning for a 'no deal' scenario," said Hugo Fry, managing director, Sanofi UK, adding this was in line with recommendations by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
"Patient safety is our main priority and we have made arrangements for additional warehouse capacity in order to stockpile our products, where global supply allows, in the UK and increase UK-based resource to prepare for any changes to customs or regulatory processes," said Mr Fry.
Sanofi's Brexit preparations were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The extra four weeks of supply is being built up as most of Sanofi's supplies arrive in the UK through the Channel Tunnel. Disruption to this route in 2005, when there were strikes in France, led to around four weeks of disruption.
Another area of concern is the need to send batches of medicine back to the continent for quality control, which could become difficult if there is a hard Brexit. This means that some quality controls tasks performed by its Haverhill manufacturing facility in Suffolk will be conducted in the remaining 27 EU countries.
"This will lead to 12 planned job losses across several functions by summer 2020 although we are doing all we can to mitigate redundancies where possible," Mr Fry said.
"Sanofi is confident that its contingency plans will ensure that people in the UK can access the treatments they need after the UK leaves the European Union," said Mr Fry.
Novartis did not disclose the extent of its plans but said that there were no plans to change its 1,500 workers in the UK .
"Alongside most other pharmaceutical companies, Novartis is preparing for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. We are planning to hold increased inventories across our portfolio of medicines from both Novartis and Sandoz," the company said in a statement.
"Novartis has been in close consultation with the UK government about Brexit-related issues since before the 2016 referendum, both directly and via industry associations. We have apprised officials of our preparedness plans and status, including plans to increase our UK inventory holding," it added.
Sanofi said it had written to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
Last week, Mr Hancock said the NHS in England was preparing to stockpile medicines and blood in case the UK left the EU without a deal.  He told the Health Select Committee that he had asked the department to work up options for stockpiling by industry".
Other pharmaceutical companies have also begun to increase their stock piles.  Last month, AstraZeneca said it was increasing drug stockpiles by about 20% in preparation for a no-deal Brexit.
It is not just pharmaceutical companies that are talking about stockpiling.
Plane manufacturer Airbus has said it may have to build supplies as its operates as "just in time" supply chain that replies on frictionless trade across the EU. UK engine maker Rolls-Royce has also warned about the need to stockpile parts.

"It's like musicians in their bow-ties playing on board the Titanic," remarked a friend of mine as I was talking to them about the EU's 60th anniversary celebrations in Rome.
A mild exaggeration, shall we say - but the image sticks in my mind.
Because as the leaders of the EU's 27 countries clink champagne glasses in plush, security-tight surroundings on Saturday - all is not well in the Europe outside their gates: youth unemployment persists (especially in the south), terror attacks, illegal migration, inequalities in the Eurozone, Brexit and a tide of anti-establishment populist nationalism across much of the bloc.
To name a few of the challenges. Not to mention "strongmen" Presidents Trump, Putin and Erdogan who all eye the EU with suspicion and some animosity.
"Yes," conceded European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker to me in an exclusive interview. "We are not in the best form and shape we could be in."
But, he insisted, the EU was still young, adding that what the bloc had achieved in six decades was remarkable - Europe is now a continent of stability and peace.
But that was the vision, the goal after World War Two, I countered.
Surely there's a need for a new vision? Something to capture the public imagination. To re-enchant the disenchanted?
Mr Juncker recently published a White Paper on the future of the EU. where he explored five different scenarios - from increased union to paring pooled powers back to the common market only.
In between, he breathes life into the old idea of a "two-speed Europe" - where some countries share more sovereignty for example over defence or migration, while others opt out.
That proposal appears to be the most popular amongst politicians and civil servants, but to me it sounds like an open admission that there is, in fact, no common EU vision - with everyone doing different things at different times.
All this at a very sensitive moment - when one of the EU's biggest and most influential members, the UK, is about to walk out of the door.
And unity amongst the remaining 27 countries is key for Brussels - to prove to the outside world that the EU still stands strong.
Theresa May's absence at the 60th birthday bash on Saturday will be screamingly noticeable.
"Of course we will miss her," President Juncker told me.
"I am everything but in a hostile mood with Britain. Britain is part of Europe, and I hope to have a friendly relationship with the UK over the next decades."
Well, that of course will depend on what kind of future relationship the UK and EU can hammer out during Brexit negotiations.
I wondered how the EU would balance the competing desires to keep the UK close yet not give it too good a deal so as to avoid the risk of other EU countries walking away?
Mr Juncker admitted he did not want any more "exits": Nexit, Oexit, Dexit, Frexit or otherwise.
That would be the end, he said, if three, four or five more countries left. The EU would collapse.
But he doesn't believe that will happen.
The EU and the Commission, he said, would negotiate with the UK in a friendly way - fair but never naive.
Interesting choice of adverbs there. Echoed precisely in a speech delivered on Thursday by the EU's chief Brexit negotiator - Commission man Michel Barnier.
"Not naive"…
Now, does that refer to talk of the UK aiming to cosy up to individual EU countries (like the Baltic nations with promises of security co-operation) to cajole them into pressing for a good trade deal for Britain?
Or does it perhaps allude to the government rejecting the idea of an "exit bill" as part of the EU divorce?
It's an invoice that Mr Juncker insists must be paid.
"You cannot pretend you were never a member of the union," he practically spluttered.
"The British government and parliament took on certain commitments as EU members and they must be honoured. This isn't a punishment or sanctions against the UK."
Despite mutterings about the Commission drawing up a £50bn ($63bn) bill, Mr Juncker said the precise amount remained to be "scientifically calculated."
But one thing he insisted that could not be haggled over was the fate of the 4.5 million EU citizens living in the UK and British citizens currently living across the EU.
President Juncker said no-one had a right to eject them from their homes and jobs.
"This is not about bargaining," he insisted. "This is about respecting human dignity."
As they  mark the EU's anniversary on Saturday, the bloc's remaining leaders will look with furrowed brows towards the future.
But they may well take heart in a new trend emerging.
While populist nationalist, anti-establishment candidates enjoy strong followings, at the same time unashamed Europhiles like the youthful leader of the Netherlands Green party, the French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron and the German candidate for Chancellor Martin Schulz resonate with the large sections of the public too.
But Mr Juncker and others I've spoken to in the lead-up to the EU's anniversary, like his Vice-President Frans Timmermans and Antonio Tajani, the new President of the European Parliamant, all believe this is no time for complacency.
In just a few days' time Britain will deliver a letter to Brussels, officially triggering the countdown to Brexit.
How will Mr Juncker feel that day, I asked.
"Sad," he replied. "It's a tragedy.
"A failure and a tragedy."

The government's flagship Brexit legislation has officially become law, Speaker John Bercow has announced.
Mr Bercow told MPs the EU Withdrawal Bill had received royal assent - meaning the Queen has agreed to make it into an Act of Parliament.
The legislation enables EU law to be transferred into UK law in an attempt to ensure a smooth Brexit.
It was subject to fierce debate as it passed through Parliament, with many attempts to change its wording.
This culminated in a series of defeats for the government in the House of Lords - but ministers secured the necessary agreement for the legislation to clear the Commons last week.
In the House of Commons, the government was defeated once, in December, over giving Parliament a "meaningful vote" on the final Brexit deal.
The EU Withdrawal Act, as it is now known, will also repeal the 1972 European Communities Act, which took Britain into the EU and meant that European law took precedence over laws passed in the UK Parliament.
The government said that in the coming weeks it would begin using the powers in the new law.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was a "landmark moment" in the Brexit process.
"We will now begin the work of preparing our statute book, using the provisions in this Act, to ensure we are ready for any scenario, giving people and businesses the certainty they need," he added.

The European Union has set out its demands for the temporary transition period after the UK leaves in March 2019.
The EU wants the UK to continue to follow its rules but not be involved in making decisions.
Brexit Secretary David Davis said the UK wanted a "right to object" to new laws passed by the EU during this time.
Downing Street said there would "naturally" be differences between the sides ahead of negotiations.
The UK hopes the two sides can reach agreement by March.
The transition period - also referred to as an implementation period - is seen as a way to minimise disruption when the UK leaves the EU for things like business, holidaymakers and security.
It will also allow more time to finalise the terms of the UK's post-Brexit relations with the EU.
In their guidelines, the EU say:
Speaking at a press conference after EU ministers agreed the negotiating guidelines, chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK would be allowed to attend decision-making meetings on a "limited, exceptional, case  by case basis."
It would be able to negotiate trade deals with other countries but the deals could not come into force until the transition period was over, he added.
This is in line with the UK's negotiating stance, as set out by Mr Davis in a speech on Friday.
Mr Davis also said existing international agreements - which include trade deals with other countries and agreements on aviation and nuclear power - should continue to apply during the period.
Giving evidence to a House of Lords committee on Monday, Mr Davis said the UK wanted a "right to object" to new laws passed by the EU during the transition phase over which it had no say and disagreed with.
"It's not particularly democratic practice to just have the country accept without any say-so, anything - particularly if... the European Union takes it on itself to do something which is actively disadvantageous to a major British industry or something like that," he said.
"So that's why we've raised the matter, and let's see how it goes."
Asked what legal status this would have, he said he wanted such a safeguard included in the withdrawal agreement.
It's the sort of amazing coincidence that the Brexit process throws up all the time.
Minutes after the Brexit Secretary David Davis laid out his concerns about the EU's transition proposals to a House of Lords Committee, Michel Barnier held a press conference where he knocked them down.
For example, David Davis wants a mechanism where the UK has a say on new European laws that might affect Britain while it's not in the club but still subject to the rules. The best Mr Barnier was prepared to offer was consultation "on an exceptional, case-by-case basis agreed by the 27 remaining member states".
And don't dare call it anything as grand as "observer status", he warned.
He dismissed the Brexit secretary's demands that Britain be allowed to negotiate trade deals with other countries during the transition period.
Of course they can, Mr Barnier said. In fact, Britain had better get a move on if it wants to replicate the 750 international agreements that come with EU membership.
True, this is the start of a negotiation but it is not clear that the EU sees anything to negotiate. Mr Barnier feels that he has already made the UK a generous offer that's in Britain's economic interest.
Plus, there was a reminder that the deal on the transition period is linked to a deal on everything else: no agreement on a final Brexit treaty means no transition.
Some in the UK are unhappy at the idea that the UK will have to follow the rules of the single market and the customs union, including freedom of movement for EU citizens, but will lose its voting rights.
Mrs May's Brexit ''inner circle'' of senior ministers met in sub-committee on Monday morning to discuss how the transitional phase could work, including the UK's demand that it be free to negotiate trade deals with other countries during the period.
Earlier a Downing Street spokesman said: ''There is obviously going to be a negotiation on what the implementation period looks like.
''The formal directives will be released this afternoon. This will be a negotiation and there will naturally be some distance in the detail of our starting positions."

EU citizens living in the UK say they are being denied a guarantee of permanent residency because they do not have health insurance.
Under a little-known rule, EU citizens not in work or those looking for work must buy comprehensive insurance.
One man told the Today programme his application had been  rejected, despite living in the UK since the age of 13.
Peers are now trying to change the law. The Home Office said securing the status of EU migrants was a priority.
Since the referendum in June, many EU citizens have applied for documents guaranteeing the right to live permanently in the UK.
But the documents can only be obtained by migrants who have consistently either worked, sought work, or bought the insurance for five years.
The Home Office does not remove people for failing to buy insurance, but will not issue them with the guarantee of permanent residence.
As EU migrants can use the NHS, many did not realise they needed health insurance.
Students and full-time parents are among those affected. They are worried they could be vulnerable after Britain leaves the EU.
Tim Strahlendorf moved to the UK from Germany when he was 13.
He said he had been refused a residency document because he had spent time studying in the UK without paying for health insurance.
He said: "It never would have occurred to me that anything like this could have happened."
Nina Hofmann, a married language tutor who moved from Germany to the UK in 2006, said her solicitor told her not to apply for residency because she would be refused.
She took time out of work to care for her children - Benjamin, 6, and Sophia, 8 - and had not bought health insurance.
She told Today: "It is this fear I could be asked to leave in the end sooner or later.
"Maybe not with a knock on the door but with a letter because I've fallen through the cracks."
Migrants worried
Another failed applicant for a permanent residence document was told by the Home Office she should make arrangements to leave.
The government has since re-worded the letter, and failed applicants are not removed from the country, but many are worried they could be vulnerable after Britain leaves the EU.
Liberal Democrat, Labour and crossbench peers want to amend the bill to include a fast track procedure to give EU migrants a reassurance they can live in the UK.
The rule change would give people from the European Union, European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland the right to live permanently in the UK, without having to prove they bought insurance.
The amendment has been tabled by Liberal Democrat Lord Oates, Labour's Lady Kennedy and crossbench peer Lord Cromwell.
It is one of many amendments tabled, but its backers will hope for a concession from ministers as the Lords consider the Article 50 bill.
A Home Office spokesman said EU citizens made a vital contribution and securing their status - and those of British nationals elsewhere in the EU - was a priority.
He said: "The rights of EU nationals living in the UK remain unchanged while we are a member of the European Union.
"For self-sufficient people or students and their relevant family members, it's always been the case that exercising Treaty rights includes a requirement to have comprehensive sickness insurance and sufficient resources to not become a burden on the social assistance system of the United Kingdom."
According to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, a quarter of applications for permanent residence documents were refused in 2015.
Almost 15,000 EEA nationals received permanent residence documentation in the third quarter of 2016, after the referendum.

"The ball is not in our court. The balls are all stuck in the UK's net."
The EU diplomat I was speaking to was frustrated. Hugely frustrated that the EU's newly negotiated Brexit deal was now stuck in limbo after Tuesday's votes in the House of Commons. He was irritated too that the prime minister said the next move would be decided in Brussels.
"We've done our part," said the diplomat, who represents a key EU country.
"The 'what next' cannot be seen as our responsibility. We negotiated two Brexit deals with two different UK prime ministers over more than three years. Now we're asked to grant yet another Brexit extension. We have to dance like Pinocchio in this game that isn't ours. It's very upsetting."
But like it or not, Brussels is now the focus of attention.
Will the EU grant a new Brexit extension? If so, for how long?
The answer to these questions will most likely influence the next political events in the UK.
For example, if the EU refuses a new extension, MPs might well rush to approve the new Brexit deal, rather than face the possibility of no deal. The EU is hardly likely to run that risk though.
But if the bloc goes for a longer Brexit delay, then Boris Johnson will want to hold a general election (if parliament grants him one).
In Brussels, as European Council president, Donald Tusk, tweeted, some kind of new extension is seen as all but inevitable.
The EU doesn't need to wait for the prime minister to ask for one.  Forced to do so under UK law (even though he made his personal opposition obvious) the prime minister submitted a letter of request at the weekend.
EU leaders are painfully aware that the length of any extension they now grant will be viewed through a political prism in Brexit-divided UK.
A short delay could be seen by those who want to Remain and who hope for a second referendum - as Brussels throwing the UK out on the streets. While a long extension could be perceived by Brexiteers as an EU attempt at holding on to the UK for dear life.
Anxious to come across as being as neutral as possible and to avoid becoming entangled in the bitter UK debate, many EU leaders seem to prefer adopting the UK request outlined in the prime minister's letter: a three month Brexit extension lasting until 31 January, to avoid a no deal scenario.
For the EU, any Brexit delay is a so-called 'flextension' - meaning the extension can fall way ahead of time.
In this case, as soon as parliament ratifies the new Brexit deal. But don't expect the EU to deliver its decision in a hurry. EU leaders are openly fed-up with having to interrupt busy schedules to rush to Brussels for more emergency Brexit summits.
They intend to try to agree the length of this new extension in writing, rather than in person. And this will only work if there are no major disagreements between EU members over the length of the new delay.
In the meantime, you can expect at least some posturing/grandstanding from certain countries like France, which want to keep the pressure up on MPs and the government.
Immediately after Tuesday night's vote for example, the French Europe minister growled that "an extension is requested but with what justifications? Time alone will not bring a solution (to Brexit)."
EU leaders have welcomed the fact that on Tuesday - for the first time ever - a Brexit deal did get the nod from the UK parliament but diplomats point out that the reason they are all especially fatigued and frustrated by the one step forward, at least two steps back Brexit political dance in the UK, is because they fully appreciate this is not even nearly the end of the road.
What the EU and UK are grappling with now is merely the UK's leaving process. Real negotiations on the future trade and security relationship - including painful political trade-offs involving fishing rights, work visas and the UK's ability to do trade with other countries - only begin in earnest after Brexit.
The words of one exasperated EU diplomat from a country traditionally close to the UK were "I feel like this will never end."

Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has issued a plea to EU foreign ministers to avoid a "catastrophic failure in statecraft" over Brexit.
He has urged them in an open letter to reach a compromise with Prime Minister Boris Johnson while they still can.
Delaying Brexit would only increase the chances of a no-deal exit, he warned.
"If they think this is bad - just wait until what happens after Boris wins an election," he told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg in an exclusive interview.
Mr Hunt - who lost out to Mr Johnson in July's Conservative leadership contest - has written to the 27 EU foreign ministers, urging them to show greater flexibility in talks with the UK.
In his interview with Laura Kuenssberg, he said: "I think we could be about to see a catastrophic failure in statecraft, not because of malevolence by the EU. I think they are sincere in wanting a deal.
"But just because they haven't really understood what's happening in British politics right now.
"And there is bureaucratic inertia. If you're trying to get 27 countries to agree a common position the easiest thing is always to do nothing. And that's the risk we face."
Mr Hunt, who backed Remain in the 2016 EU referendum but went on to be a strong supporter of Mrs May's withdrawal agreement, quit the cabinet in July after Mr Johnson attempted to remove him as foreign secretary.
He told the BBC Mr Johnson had made mistakes in his handling of Brexit, although he declined to say what they were, but stressed they both agreed on the need for a speedy resolution to Brexit.
He argued that the EU had been guilty of misreading the political situation in the UK in the past - over David Cameron's ill-fated renegotiation attempt in 2015 and Theresa May's withdrawal agreement - and could do so again.
"My worry is that they're about to make the same profound miscalculation that 'oh we can just hang tight, see if there's an election and if Boris Johnson wins it we can negotiate on the same deal but if he doesn't, so much the better because maybe we'll have a second referendum.'
"If Boris wins, which is what the polls are saying, at the moment, and he comes back with a majority, that British government will be much less willing to compromise," he said.
This, he argues in his open letter to his former EU colleagues, will make a no-deal Brexit more likely - an outcome they had always agreed it was "vital" to avoid.
"I fear a profound and mutual lack of understanding is leading the EU to make the same mistakes over and over again," he writes.
"I am hoping and praying that does not happen because the implications for our future relationship would be extremely grave."
Mr Johnson has said he remains "cautiously optimistic" about a deal, while continuing to insist the UK will leave on 31 October with or without an agreement.
He is set to meet his Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, on Thursday to try and break the deadlock.
Mr Varadkar has expressed concern about Mr Johnson's proposal to give the Northern Ireland Assembly a vote over entering into a "regulatory zone" with the EU, which would involve it leaving the customs union.
Mr Hunt said: "I'm sure they would love to keep Northern Ireland in the single market and customs union in perpetuity.
"But in the end, that is not going to work for the UK, I don't think this is just the strong supporters of Boris Johnson who feel this, this would be to divide up a sovereign country, and that wouldn't be acceptable I don't think any other country in Europe either."
He urged Ireland to take a "statesmanlike approach at this stage" adding that there was a "deal to be done which prevents a hard border on the island of Ireland, which allows regulatory alignment, the smooth flow of people and products across that border, which is so important for the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, it's going to need compromise on all sides".
He added: "It's Ireland's call now because I don't think that the EU are going to budge unless they get that signal from Varadkar."

European Council President Donald Tusk has said that the 27 European Union countries meeting in Brussels to discuss Brexit must remain united.
Mr Tusk, who will chair the special summit, said he had strong support from all the EU institutions as well as the 27 remaining states.
The UK is not taking part in the talks.
The EU leaders are meeting to finalise guidelines ahead of discussions with the UK on both the "divorce deal" and its future relationship with the EU.
The EU will insist that progress must be made in talks on separating the UK from the EU before any discussions can begin about future trade relations.
Official talks between London and the EU will not begin until after the UK general election on 8 June.
Arriving for the talks on Saturday morning, Mr Tusk told reporters: "We need to remain united as EU-27. It is only then that we will be able to conclude the negotiations, which means that our unity is also in the UK's interest."
In an earlier letter to leaders of the EU-27, he wrote that progress on "people, money and Ireland" must come before negotiations on the EU's future relationship with the UK.
The UK government has said it does not want to delay talks on future trade relations.
The summit brings together the heads of state or government of the EU-27 countries to discuss the draft guidelines for Brexit negotiations issued on 31 March.
Brexit: All you need to know
The people who will negotiate Brexit
Brexit - special report
French President Francois Hollande, arriving at the talks, said there would inevitably be "a price and a cost for the UK - it's the choice that was made".
"We must not be punitive, but at the same time it's clear that Europe knows how to defend its interests, and that Britain the UK will have a less good position tomorrow outside the EU than today in the EU."
Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said that there needed to be a solution found with Britain that was a "level playing field" with "no cherry picking" - but "we must not punish" Britain.
Mr Tusk's letter - calling for a "phased" approach to Brexit - echoed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's priorities, which she set out on Thursday.
"Before discussing our future, we must first sort out our past," Mr Tusk said, listing three priorities:
"We will not discuss our future relations with the UK until we have achieved sufficient progress on the main issues relating to the UK's withdrawal from the EU," he said.
Meanwhile, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the UK would not have advantages over 27 EU members once Brexit negotiations were concluded.
"There is no free lunch. Britons must know that," he told Germany's Funke Media Group.
EU officials estimate that the UK faces a bill of €60bn (£51bn; $65bn) because of EU budget rules. UK politicians have said the government will not pay a sum of that size.
Reports say Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Enda Kenny will also ask his EU partners to back the idea of Northern Ireland automatically joining the EU if the province's people vote to unite with the Republic.
The UK Brexit Secretary, David Davis, has said that in the event of such a vote, Northern Ireland could become "part of an existing EU member state".

EU leaders have approved an agreement on the UK's withdrawal and future relations - insisting it is the "best and only deal possible".
After 20 months of negotiations, the 27 leaders gave the deal their blessing after less than an hour's discussion.
They said the deal - which needs to be approved by the UK Parliament - paved the way for an "orderly withdrawal".
Theresa May said the deal "delivered for the British people" and set the UK "on course for a prosperous future".
Speaking in Brussels, she urged both Leave and Remain voters to unite behind the agreement, insisting the British public "do not want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit".
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The EU officially endorsed the terms of the UK's withdrawal during a short meeting, bringing to an end negotiations which began in March 2017.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said anyone in Britain who thought the bloc might offer improved terms if MPs rejected the deal would be "disappointed".
But European Council President Donald Tusk, who broke the news of the agreement on Twitter, said he would not speculate on what would happen in such a situation, saying: "I am not a fortune teller."
The UK Parliament is expected to vote on the deal on 12 December, but its approval is far from guaranteed.
Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP and many Conservatives MPs are set to vote against.
Mrs May has appealed to the public to get behind the agreement - saying that although it involved compromises, it was a "good deal that unlocks a bright future for the UK".
At a news conference in Brussels, she said the agreement would:
The agreement, she added, would not remove Gibraltar from the "UK family" - a reference to a last-minute wrangle with Spain over the territory.
The EU leaders have approved the two key Brexit documents:
There was no formal vote on Sunday, with the EU proceeding by consensus.
Mr Juncker said it was a "sad day" and no-one should be "raising champagne glasses" at the prospect of the UK leaving.
While it was not his place to tell MPs how to vote, he said they should bear in mind that "this is the best deal possible...this is the only deal possible".
His message was echoed by Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar who said "any other deal really only exists in people's imagination".
But Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite suggested there were a number of possible outcomes if the UK Parliament rejected the deal, including an extension of the negotiations, or another referendum.
By Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor
It's a compromise. It was always going to be. It's not a happy compromise either. People on both sides of the Brexit argument are already screaming their protests.
And although the prime minister must be relieved, she didn't exactly say that she was pleased about the deal when I asked her at a news conference this lunchtime.
Instead, she said she was sure the country's best days are ahead.
But however she really feels about it - and with this prime minister it is hard to tell - her strategy for the next couple of weeks is crystal clear.
Her case? This is all there is.
No member states raised objections to the Brexit withdrawal deal and it was approved in a matter of seconds, according to a senior EU official.
Around seven leaders spoke in the session of the 27 member states, mostly to say this was a sad day and they wanted the future relationship with the UK to be as close as possible.
After Mrs May's address, roughly half of the leaders spoke. Several wished her good luck with the meaningful vote in Parliament.
No "what ifs" were discussed.
Mrs May will now need to persuade MPs in the UK Parliament to back it.
She is expected to spend the next fortnight travelling the country trying to sell the deal before a parliamentary vote in the second week of December.
If MPs reject the deal, a number of things could happen - including leaving with no deal, an attempt to renegotiate or a general election.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the parliamentary arithmetic was "looking challenging" and warned "nothing could be ruled out" if Mrs May lost the vote, including the government collapsing.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr that the UK was getting "between 70% and 80%" of what it wanted, while the agreement "mitigated" most of the negative economic impacts.
Asked if the UK would be better off than if it stayed in, he said the country would not be "significantly worse or better off but it does mean we get our independence back".
The agreement will also have to go back to the European Council, where a majority of countries (20 out of 27 states) will need to vote for it.
It will also need to be ratified by the European Parliament, in a vote expected to take place in early 2019.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn responded to Sunday's summit by calling the deal "the worst of all worlds".
He said his party would oppose it, but would work with others "to block a no deal outcome" and ensure "a sensible deal" was on the table.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said he would find it "very, very difficult" to support the agreement as it stood.
"I don't believe that, so far, this deal delivers on what the British people really voted for," he told Sky's Sophy Ridge show. "I think it has ceded too much control."
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon - who wanted to stay in the EU - said it was a "bad deal" and Parliament should consider "better alternatives", such as remaining in the single market and customs union permanently.
And Democratic Unionist leader Arlene Foster - who wants to leave the EU - said her party's parliamentary pact with the Conservatives would be reviewed if MPs approved the deal.
She told the BBC's Andrew Marr show the agreement as it stood would leave Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK "still within European structures with no say in its rules".
Former PM Tony Blair, who backs another referendum, said the deal was "a dodo".

Nicola Sturgeon has warned of broken promises over fishing as EU leaders agreed to Theresa May's Brexit deal.
A document published by the remaining 27 EU countries made clear they hoped to negotiate access to UK waters based on existing rights.
Ms Sturgeon said that could not be squared with promises made to the UK fishing industry.
Theresa May has said her deal would take the UK out of the controversial Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
The prime minister and EU27 leaders approved the Brexit deal on Sunday after less than an hour's discussion at a meeting in Brussels.
But a document published online made clear the remaining EU members were still seeking to negotiate continued access to UK fishing grounds during the two-year transition period.
The document said a fishing deal was a priority and "should build on, inter alia, existing reciprocal access and quota shares".
Scottish Secretary David Mundell has previously said he could not support any extension of CFP rules beyond 2020.
Ms Sturgeon tweeted: "I'll be interested to hear David Mundell explain how this - 'existing reciprocal access and quota shares' - can be squared with the promises made to the Scottish fishing industry. (Hint - it can't)."
The Brexit deal has implications for the debate over Scottish independence and the future of fishing.
The withdrawal agreement does not let Scottish Conservatives off the hook over the fishing industry.
All 13 Scottish Tory MPs demanded exit from the common fisheries policy by 2020 and insisted "access and quota shares cannot be included" in the future economic partnership.
Both the UK and EU say they'll use "best endeavours" to conclude a new fisheries agreement by 2020 but the EU has certainly not given up on keeping its current share of the UK catch.
A statement agreed by the EU27 makes clear they will prioritise an agreement that builds on "existing reciprocal access and quota shares".
In short, the fight over fishing is deferred.
Read Glenn's analysis in full
Mr Mundell later responded, saying any future deal on fishing had still to be agreed, and that the prime minister had made clear she would defend the UK's fishing interests robustly.
He tweeted: "The Prime Minister made clear earlier today, the UK will be an independent coastal state once again, in full sovereign control of our waters, able to decide for ourselves who we allow to fish in them, with that access not tied to any other aspect of our economic partnership."
Nicola Sturgeon has also criticised Theresa May's appeal to the public to get behind the Brexit deal.
In a letter to the nation Mrs May has said leaving the EU next year would be "a moment of renewal and reconciliation for our whole country".
The 800-word message said the UK would "take back control" of laws and money which, it suggested, could be spent on the NHS."
But Ms Sturgeon said that "almost nothing in this desperate letter is true".
She said the UK Parliament should consider "better alternatives", such as remaining in the single market and customs union permanently - and she urged MPs to reject it.
In Brussels, French president Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance his country placed on fishing in future talks.
He said "all of our fishermen will be protected", with the French planning to "defend access as part of the indispensable balance".
The Aberdeen South MP Ross Thomson, the only Scottish Tory who has so far said he will vote against the Brexit deal in the House of Commons, said the EU27 document was "troubling".
He told the BBC's Sunday Politics Scotland: "The arrangement that we have on fisheries has been devastating to fishing communities across Scotland and across the whole of the UK.
"It's in the interest of the EU to keep it going and they want to build on those existing arrangements, so to my mind that can only mean the continuation of some form of common fisheries policy.
"It may not be called that but if it looks like the CFP and behaves like the CFP, it is the CFP."
Mrs May, in her letter to the nation, insisted that the UK would become an independent coastal state with "full control over our waters".
She wrote: "We will be out of EU programmes that do not work in our interests: out of the Common Agricultural Policy that has failed our farmers, and out of the Common Fisheries Policy that has failed our coastal communities."
Labour, however, has written to Scottish Secretary David Mundell asking him to clarify his position in light of the EU document.
Shadow Scottish Secretary  Lesley Laird wrote: "I do not need to tell you that this is a clear breach of your red line on fishing.
"I would therefore be grateful if you were able to clarify that you will not be voting for the deal on this basis.
"If that is the case, I really must ask why you have not resigned your position in the Cabinet?"

David Davis has described a leaked EU paper suggesting it could cut UK access to the single market if there was a post-Brexit row as "discourteous".
A draft document leaked on Wednesday suggested any dispute could mean UK benefits being suspended in the "transition period" after Brexit.
The UK Brexit secretary said it had not been "in good faith" to publish it.
He also said every economic forecast about Brexit had been "proven wrong so far".
Official forecasts out earlier suggested it would mean a slowdown in growth across the UK.
Mr Davis was speaking after the prime minister chaired meetings of the Brexit cabinet committee, aimed at sketching out what the UK wanted its future relationship with the EU to look like.
He said the atmosphere had been "very constructive" and there had been "lots of things resolved" but admitted there was "still progress to be made".
He described the draft section of the withdrawal agreement that leaked out on Wednesday as "hardly a legal document, it was a political document".
"What we're about, is building an implementation period which is to build a bridge to a future where we work well together," he said.
"I do not think it was in good faith to publish a document with frankly discourteous language and implying that they could arbitrarily terminate in effect the implementation period.
"That's not what the aim of this exercise is. It's not in good faith. We think it was unwise to publish that."
The transition - or implementation - period is expected to begin straight after the UK officially leaves the European Union, on 29 March 2019, and end on 31 December 2020.
The UK says this will allow businesses to adapt to its new relationship with the EU.
The EU says its rules should still apply during the transition period, as will rulings of the European Court of Justice.
According to a footnote in the EU papers leaked to journalists in Brussels, if referring a dispute to the EU court during that period took too long, the withdrawal agreement "should provide for a mechanism allowing the union to suspend certain benefits deriving for the United Kingdom from participation in the internal market".
Mr Davis was also asked about UK officials' economic forecasts that model the 15-year impact of the UK:
The government agreed to show them to MPs, following a leak of some of the information to Buzzfeed last week.
The estimates suggested north-east England and the West Midlands would be hardest hit although others would also see a slowdown in growth.
But Mr Davis said: "Every single financial or economic forecast related to Brexit has proven wrong so far, massively wrong - all on the same side, all underestimating the progress of the economy.
"[The] second point is that this is a work in progress. This is not a complete policy document.
"You wouldn't drive a car that is half finished. You shouldn't use a forecast that is half complete."
A Downing street source said the prime minister had told the Brexit cabinet committee that her starting point was to aim for "something that hadn't been done before in order to come to a new relationship that will last a generation or more".
Meanwhile Italian MEP Roberto Gualtieri, who sits on the European Parliament's Brexit steering committee, said it was unlikely, during the transition period, that Britain would have to follow any new EU rules drawn up when it was no longer a member state.
He said it was unlikely there would be time for new legislation to be brought forward within the period - expected to be around two years - because of European Parliament elections in 2019 and the fact a new European Commission would not be in place until autumn that year.
David Davis says the UK will seek an "appropriate process" to object to any new laws introduced during the period.
But Mr Gualtieri said the UK was likely to have had its say as a member state on any new EU rules that come into force during that period.

EU leaders refused to comment on the Brexit tensions inside Theresa May's Conservative Party, but some might say this was the elephant in the room at the Brussels summit.
For decades the UK's disputes with the EU have mainly centred on British payments to Brussels. And now Brexit is that writ large.
In 1979, then-PM Margaret Thatcher famously told EU leaders: "I want my money back". And many Conservatives still fondly remember her stand against Brussels, which won the UK an ongoing budget rebate of several billion pounds annually.
Given that turbulent history, it is no surprise that EU leaders sought to put a positive spin on the complicated Brexit negotiations.
They dismissed talk of a "no-deal" scenario - despite intense speculation in the UK about just such a scenario becoming reality in 2019.
Nicknamed the Brexit "cliff edge", that scenario would mean World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, with the EU imposing tariffs and barriers on the UK's vital services sector.
They assured Mrs May of their determination to make progress before a key December summit, and they will discuss among themselves what sort of trade partnership they could have with the UK post-Brexit.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the difficulty of getting 27 EU nations to agree on new trade terms.
Mrs May's election losses in June left her heading a government reliant on support from right-wing Northern Ireland politicians. Her EU partners know that she is much weakened, but they also know how strong the Leave camp is in the UK, so they want a deal with her.
European Council President Donald Tusk said they had managed to "rebuild this atmosphere of trust and goodwill" with Mrs May, helped by her recent Florence speech.
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said "we are doing all we can to reach a correct, balanced, fair arrangement with the UK".
But he also had some sharp words for the British negotiators.
"I hate the no-deal scenario and nobody knows what that means," he told a news conference. "No member of the UK delegation explained what it meant."
The real haggling over UK commitments to EU finances is only just beginning.
Mrs Merkel said moving to "Phase Two" - trade and the future EU-UK relationship - "depends how much the UK makes progress possible - especially the financial settlement is the top issue".
The clock is ticking, as the UK has to leave at the end of March 2019, and international trade deals are notoriously difficult to negotiate.
 The EU-Canada Ceta deal took seven years to negotiate, and was nearly scuppered at the last moment by MPs in Belgium's Wallonia region.
Mrs May said the UK would "honour the commitments we made in our membership" - but still avoided specifying what her government sees as UK commitments to the EU. So far there is no advance on 20bn euros (£18bn; $23.6bn), a figure already attributed to her.
The so-called divorce bill requires detailed work, going through the figures "line by line", she said. "The British taxpayer wouldn't expect anything else."
But in contrast with the gloomy reports of Brexit "impasse" in the British media recently, Mrs Merkel was upbeat. She saw no reason why the EU's three priorities - citizens' rights, the Northern Ireland border and the financial settlement - could not be resolved, to allow trade talks to start within months.
Mrs May said negotiators were "in touching distance of an agreement" on the thorny issue of citizens' rights.
But the powers of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a post-Brexit UK remain unclear - along with so much else besides.

It's extremely hard to see how a new Brexit deal can still be agreed by this Thursday.
Negotiations continue - but time is tight, and, to use the words of even the most upbeat of those involved, "there's still much work to do".
EU internal talk is focussing now on a possible "holding pattern statement" at this week's EU leaders summit, along the lines of "we've made great progress in negotiations but still need more time".
There are also renewed mutterings about a new Brexit summit maybe towards the end of the month.
So how did we get here?
At the end of last week there was hope in the air. It seemed an understanding had been reached between Boris Johnson and the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Leo Varadkar.
Now there's lots of speculation, smoke and mirrors - but no sign of white smoke that a new Brexit deal is nigh.
"We felt last week that things would now move very quickly," one northern European diplomat told me. "Now we realise we're still pretty far apart."
Replacing the Irish backstop guarantee remains the main stumbling block in ongoing negotiations, particularly when it comes to customs.
The EU's dual priorities complicate things. Brussels wants:
The European Commission says both sides - the EU and UK - are negotiating in good faith, but the not so secret EU hope right now is that time pressure and political pressure will build on Mr Johnson to such an extent this week, that he might yet blur some more of his red lines.
The EU thinking is that the UK prime minister is running out of options. He  promised to do his best to deliver a new Brexit deal this week and he promised not to ask for another Brexit extension.
With so little time to go before the EU summit, Brussels believes the only option for a deal is for Mr Johnson to pivot towards an already set-to-go replacement for the current UK-wide Irish border backstop.
And this is the EU's preferred option: a backstop that would see only Northern Ireland, not the rest of the UK, following EU customs rules after Brexit, while not affecting its territorial identity as part of the UK.
Now for those who've followed the twists and turns of the Brexit process, you'll recognise the EU proposal as what was formally known as the Northern Ireland-only backstop.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson's offer is reminiscent of his predecessor Theresa May's Chequers plan for two customs systems (one EU, one UK) on the island of Ireland.
Each proposal was roundly rejected by the other side.
The difference now is the political will to get a deal done. And not just in Downing Street.
Those in the UK who claim the EU wants another Brexit extension to keep the UK in the bloc as long as possible are mistaken.
EU leaders are fed up with the Brexit process. They want a deal.
Realistically there is no time this week to work out a painstaking middle ground between the EU and UK positions.
And EU leaders are adamant that they won't be negotiating directly with Boris Johnson at the summit.
Germany, France and others say they want a Brexit deal they can live with, rather than something cobbled together in a rush to "get it over with" that could leave problems for the Northern Ireland peace process and/or the single market for years to come.
While the technical details need to be ironed out (and that cannot be taken for granted), the EU political mood is determinedly more can-do now.
If the prime minister balks at doing a U-turn on a Northern Ireland-only backstop, despite being encouraged by still-to-be revealed EU sweeteners, then negotiations towards a hybrid solution will likely pick up again next week.
First, though, all EU eyes would be on Westminster and the extraordinary session of Parliament on Saturday to see if another Brexit extension will be requested, or not.

There has been a sharp drop in nurses registering to work in the UK since the EU referendum, figures suggest.
Last July, 1,304 nurses from the EU joined the Nursing and Midwifery Council register, compared to 46 in April this year, a fall of 96%.
The Health Foundation said the findings could not be more stark and said they should act as a "wake-up call".
But the NMC said the introduction of English language testing for EU nurses is also likely to have played a role.
It comes as the NHS is already struggling with nurse vacancies and, without this supply line, shortages could get worse.
In May, research by the Royal College of Nursing found one in nine posts in England was vacant.
The union said it meant the NHS was 40,000 nurses short of what was needed.
The figures - obtained by the Health Foundation under the Freedom of Information Act - cover the numbers applying to go on the register so they do not necessarily mean they are employed by the NHS.
But they give an indication of the supply line from the EU which provides a significant proportion of the workforce.
Anita Charlesworth, director of research and economics at the Health Foundation, said the drop since the Brexit vote could not be more "stark".
"Without EU nurses, it will be even harder for the NHS and other employers to find the staff they need to provide safe patient care.
"The findings should be a wake-up call to politicians and health service leaders."
The NMC has also drawn attention to the introduction of English language tests, which were brought in for EU nurses for the first time in January 2016 - they were already in use for non-EU nurses.
It normally takes a few months from being tested to making it on to the register so officials believe this could have also played a role in the drop in numbers.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said EU nurses played a "valued" role in the NHS and they would be a priority in Brexit negotiations.
But shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the government was making a mess of things.
"Theresa May's weak and unstable government has pushed NHS services to the brink, and it is patients who will pay the price.
"Our health service has always relied on the contribution of overseas workers, yet these staff are being forced out by this government's neglect and disregard.
"The Tories are overseeing an unforgivable drain of talent out of our country, because of their chaotic attitude to the Brexit negotiations."
And Lib Dem health spokesman Norman Lamb added: "These figures are profoundly worrying and the possible implications for the NHS and patients cannot be underestimated."
Overall there are 650,000 nurses on the register. Just over 36,000 of these have been trained in the EU, 5.5% of the total. Another 67,000 come from outside the EU with the rest from the UK.
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The decline in EU nurses and midwives wanting to work in the UK since the referendum is continuing, figures show.
The trend was first noticed earlier this year, and now a new batch of figures released by the Nursing and Midwifery Council have reinforced the idea that Brexit is having an impact.
In September the register showed just over 36,200 EU nurses and midwives - over 2,700 less than a year before.
But ministers said a rise in training places would compensate for the drop.
That will take some time to start having an impact though, and union leaders believe the government in England may struggle to fill these places as they have removed bursaries for nursing degrees and introduced fees.
The data released by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) cover the number of nurses and midwives registered to work in the UK, not the numbers actually working.
Rises in the numbers of nurses and midwives leaving the register was seen among all types of staff - those trained in the UK, in the EU and in the rest of the world.
If you can't see the NHS Tracker, click or tap here.
But what marked the EU trend out was the rate of change being seen.
There was a 67% rise in the number of EU nurses and midwives leaving the register in the 12 months up to September compared to the same period the year before.
By comparison the number of UK-trained staff leaving the register rose by less than 10%.
That rise in leavers was off-set by just over 1,000 new joiners from the EU, but that in itself was an 89% drop in the numbers who signed up the year before.
The NMC pointed out this change in new joiners was also likely to have been influenced by the introduction of English language testing around the same time as the Brexit vote in the summer of 2016.
Overall, the number of nurses and midwives on the register has started to drop for the first time in a decade.
There were just under 690,000 nurses and midwives registered to work in the UK in September - over 1,600 less than there were the year before.
This comes at a time when unions report there are significant shortages in the number of nurses employed by the NHS.
Research by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said there were over 40,000 unfilled vacancies - one in nine posts.
The NMC said the rising numbers leaving the profession across the board was "worrying" and needed to be responded to.
An ageing workforce, which is seeing growing numbers reach retirement age, and the pressures of working in the health service have been cited as factors for UK-trained nurses leaving the register.
RCN general secretary Janet Davies said it was "no surprise" EU nurses were also turning their backs on the UK given what was happening with Brexit.
"These alarming new figures represent a double whammy for the NHS and patients."
But the Department of Health played down the significance of the overall drop, pointing out it represented a "mere" 0.2% fall in the numbers registered to work.
A spokeswoman said the number of training places would increase by 25% in the coming years and that ministers had been "very clear" that EU nationals would remain a valued part of the workforce after Brexit.

The European Union plans to have a 29-strong team of diplomats in London to represent it after Brexit.
It will be called a "delegation" - not an embassy - and will be part of the EU's foreign policy arm, the European External Action Service (EEAS).
There will also be a mission with five staff in Belfast to oversee the implementation of the withdrawal agreement in Northern Ireland - if there is a Brexit deal.
The plans will be discussed next week.
They will be presented for approval by ambassadors from the 27 remaining EU countries on Wednesday.
The European Commission has offices in all member states. Currently it has a team of 27 staff based at Europe House, in Smith Square, Westminster.
Once the UK leaves the EU in March next year, that office will be replaced by a new London outpost for the EEAS.
It will be about a third of the size of its equivalent in Washington DC, which has 90 personnel - although only 30 of them are classed as European diplomats.
Whether the delegation will stay in the Smith Square building - the former headquarters of the Conservative Party - is not yet known.
However, the European Commission's offices in Scotland and Wales are likely to close.
The new European Union ambassador to the UK will be appointed at a later date by its foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.
Being Brussels' man or woman in London could be a plum job, or the occupant could find themselves sidelined in future negotiations with London.
Earlier this year, the European Commission denied that Martin Selmayr - its secretary-general and a former aide to its president Jean-Claude Juncker - was a potential candidate.
The EU has 140 delegations to countries and organisations, including the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.
Its External Action Service was established by the Lisbon Treaty to develop and deliver the EU's common foreign and security policy.

Draft EU guidelines for Brexit rule out starting free trade talks with the UK before "sufficient progress" is made on other issues.
The paper presented by European Council President Donald Tusk will have to be approved by the 27 member states.
Other issues include the status of three million EU citizens in the UK and a million Britons in the EU.
Separately, another top EU official suggested the bloc could manage without the UK in defence and security matters.
The UK formally triggered the Brexit process on Wednesday after calling for simultaneous talks on exit terms and future trade ties.
At a news conference, Mr Tusk said: "Starting parallel talks on all issues at the same time as suggested by some in the UK will not happen.
"Only once we have achieved sufficient progress on the withdrawal can we discuss the framework for our future relationship."
It is clear the UK will face a tough divorce, the BBC's Gavin Hewitt says, but there were some hints at flexibility from Mr Tusk.
Talks would be "difficult, complex and sometimes even confrontational", Mr Tusk predicted, but the EU would not "pursue a punitive approach".
UK Prime Minister Theresa May formally triggered the Brexit process by sending the Article 50 notification letter to Mr Tusk on Wednesday.
The two are to meet in London ahead of an EU summit on Brexit, which will not include her, on 29 April.
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The draft says the EU's overall objective is "to preserve its interests, those of its member states, its citizens and its businesses".
Calling for a "phased approach giving priority to an orderly withdrawal", it suggests starting with discussions on the separation arrangement. They could then move on to talks about a future trade relationship between the EU and the UK.
The draft raises the issue of what the UK might have to pay to leave the EU, bills earlier estimated to be as much as €60bn (£51bn; $64bn).
In a sign of the bloc's determination to secure a "divorce bill", it says that a "single financial settlement should ensure that the Union and the United Kingdom both respect the obligations undertaken before the date of withdrawal".
The guidelines call for "flexible and imaginative solutions'' on the issue of the UK's land border with the Republic of Ireland, with the aim of "avoiding a hard border".
As for Gibraltar, Spain will have a special say on the future of the disputed British territory, according to the guidelines.
"After the United Kingdom leaves the union, no agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom may apply to the territory of Gibraltar without the agreement between the Kingdom of Spain and the United Kingdom," they state.
Gibraltar's chief minister, Fabian Picardo, accused Spain of manipulating the European Council for its own political interests, saying this was "unacceptable".
Conservative MPs in the UK warned that the sovereignty of the UK overseas territory was non-negotiable.
Mrs May's letter had been interpreted by some as threatening to withdraw co-operation with the EU on security matters.
Speaking at a Nato meeting in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: "The UK contributes today only for 3% of our civilian capabilities in our EU operations and missions, and 5% to the military ones.
"So for sure it's a valued contribution, but for sure a contribution without which the European Union defence and security work can continue perfectly well."
What next? Analysis by BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
This is the start of a two-year, cross-Channel political rollercoaster ride. The EU's draft guidelines for Brexit are uncompromising and firm.
They say they will update them "as necessary" during negotiations, meaning they are ready for anything, including, the text explicitly says, for talks with the UK to fail altogether.
Gone are the words of sadness and regret at Britain's departure. The message is: Roll up your sleeves, we're ready for you.

A "transition period" after the UK leaves the EU should not continue beyond 31 December 2020, Brussels says.
This would put a 21-month limit on the temporary arrangement - the UK says it should last for about two years.
And some business groups have called for a much longer transition period once the UK leaves in March 2019.
The terms of the transition period, which the UK calls an implementation phase, have yet to be negotiated between the two sides.
The EU says the UK will have to continue to follow its rules and cannot adopt an "a la carte" approach.
It has just published its guidelines for the next phase of Brexit negotiations.
These talks will initially focus on agreeing the precise terms of the transition phase, before moving on to the UK and EU's long-term future relationship.
It will be a temporary period after the UK leaves the EU and before the final arrangements kick in. Both sides have talked about having such an arrangement, although they use different names for it.
The UK says the "implementation phase" will avoid a "cliff edge" for businesses on Brexit day.
The European Commission's guidelines state that the UK should continue to follow EU law and stay in the European customs union and single market during the transition phase. Rulings of the European Court of Justice will continue to apply, it says.
"The transition period needs to be clearly defined and precisely limited in time," the EU says.
"The commission recommends that it should not last beyond 31 December 2020."
This date marks the end of the EU's seven-year budget cycle.
Giving evidence to a committee of MPs, Prime Minister Theresa May said a 31 December 2020 cut-off offered a "neatness" for the EU, but suggested the length of the transition phase would be a matter for the negotiations.
Long-term, the UK has already said it plans to leave the customs union and single market and end the supremacy of EU court rulings as part of Brexit.
Some Brexit-supporting Tory MPs have warned the UK could become a "colony" of the EU during the transition period if it continues to closely follow the same rules.
Looking beyond the transition phase, the UK is hoping to strike a "comprehensive" and "bespoke" trade deal with the European Union to replace its membership of the single market and customs union.
Talks on this have not started and the European Union says it will not have been fully agreed by the time the UK leaves in March 2019.
But Mrs May disagrees - asked earlier whether she still believes the entire agreement can be negotiated by Brexit day, she said: "That is what we are working to and that is what I believe we can do."
The prime minister said the UK would "start off at a different point" from other countries because of its current trade relationship with the EU.
The overseas territory of Gibraltar - whose sovereignty is disputed by Spain - has been raised as a potential sticking point in Brexit negotiations.
The EU has said that Spain must agree to any arrangement between the UK and the EU applying to Gibraltar, a stance reiterated in the latest negotiating guidelines.
Asked whether he expected Spain to agree to the transitional arrangement covering Gibraltar, Mr Barnier said decisions on the issue would be "made for the 27, unanimously, by consensus".
Later in Prime Minister's Questions, Theresa May was asked to promise not to enter into any agreement that excluded Gibraltar.
She said the UK would not exclude Gibraltar from either the temporary implementation period or the long-term future agreement with the EU.

The world and her mother, brother, sister and aunts are more than aware by now of the splits in the British government over the kind of relationship the UK should have with Brussels after Brexit. But how united is the EU?
We keep hearing in social and traditional UK media about supposed EU plots, plans and intentions for Brexit. But are all 27 EU countries, plus the European Commission and Parliament, really singing from one hymn sheet?
If they were, it would be an absolute first.
The EU is famous for its internal bickering: small countries resenting larger ones; larger ones trying to dictate; splits between northern and southern Europe, never mind east and west.
As a result, EU countries find it hard to reach consensus over most things - migration, ever closer union, foreign policy. So why should it be any different over Brexit?
In fact, the wisdom across the Channel is that if only Theresa May and her government had had their Brexit ducks in a row from the moment they triggered formal negotiations with Brussels, they would undoubtedly have had the upper hand. One tight, crack team against an overgrown, unwieldy, fractious bunch.
But quite the reverse happened in stage one of Brexit negotiations last year.
The UK side appeared to the Europeans as shambolic, divided and (initially) ill-prepared, while the EU put on a rare show of unity - largely helped by the fact that all EU players were shoulder-to-shoulder in pressurising the UK to honour financial pledges made while still a member.
But fissures in the EU armour are now showing as we approach Brexit negotiations on the future EU-UK relationship.
Working groups from the 27 EU countries meet regularly in Brussels to discuss different aspects of Brexit.
They say they're finding it tough to agree a common position on future relations with the UK, as long as the British government remains opaque over its stance.
Listening to grumbling European players, it would be tempting to paint them as divided too, between the camps of dogmatists and pragmatists: those who value trade, security and other relations with the UK over an EU rule or regulation; and others who believe the integrity of the EU rulebook governing, amongst other things, the European single market, is ultimately the higher prize.
An influential player from a smaller EU country told me: "We all hate that the UK is leaving, but this will always be an important relationship. One contract binding us to the UK will simply be replaced by another. We have to be practical. And positive."
EU big guns France and Germany are proving to be the most hardline. "Paris above all," one EU diplomat told me. "Is this payback for Waterloo? I don't know, but sometimes the rest of us can only roll our eyes."
Now, tempting as it may be to hear comments like that and think 'Aha! The EU really is out to punish the UK for leaving', my sense from meetings with key figures is that the overall mood is one of growing pragmatism and gradual detachment.
In the UK Brexit continues to hoover up the nation's headlines and political energy - despite government attempts to focus on other issues of public concern like health and education.
But in the rest of Europe, there is not so much focus on Brexit.
On Friday the leaders of the 27 EU countries meet to debate life after Brexit (primarily how to plug the hole in the EU budget that the UK will leave behind), rather than discussing what to do about the UK.
Of course the Danes worry about fishing, the Germans about cars, the French about the impact of Brexit on the port of Calais. But for most EU countries, trade with the UK is not the be-all and end-all.
You can expect the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to maintain a hardline stance in Brexit talks for now.
The EU has long dismissed the UK aim of "cherry-picking" sector-by-sector privileged access to the single market.
EU diplomats like to refer to the UK government's "three basket" idea of varying alignment/divergence in regulations as "fit for the waste paper basket".
But remember we haven't yet actually started formal negotiations on EU-UK future relations.
They won't begin until around Easter at the earliest.
In the meantime there's a lot of shadow-boxing going on.
These will be no ordinary trade negotiations between two parties, after all.
Brexit is a political event for the UK and EU.
Both sides will want to demonstrate to their constituents that they hammered out the best possible deal in their interests.
But it's also important to bear in mind that what we are working our way towards here in the Brexit process - ie before the UK leaves in March 2019 - is in EU-speak "a political understanding on the future relationship between the EU and the UK".
Not a final trade deal.
EU law dictates that a member has to leave the bloc and become an outsider or, in EU-speak again, a "third country" before it can hammer out new trade and other relations with the EU again.
So although now feels like crunch time, with speculation of a showdown between in-fighting members of the UK cabinet, and intra-EU differences on Brexit also coming to the fore, arguably in good old Brussels tradition there is a huge opening to kick the can down the road.
That is why EU diplomats are quietly confident now that - from their side at least - a Brexit deal can be struck by March 2019.
Reaching only an "understanding" on the shape of future relations will allow both the UK and the EU more time during the planned (but not yet agreed) transition period after Brexit to hammer out the details on trade, services and more and - maybe - reach a compromise on both sides.
The potential is there, though predictions carry a strong health warning.

The European Union wants to be able to restrict the UK's access to the single market if there is a dispute after Brexit, a leaked document suggests.
The power to suspend "certain benefits" would apply during the post-Brexit transition phase before the final arrangements come into force.
It is revealed in a draft section of the UK and EU's withdrawal agreement, which has yet to be finalised.
The UK said the document simply reflected the EU's "stated directives".
But it provoked an angry reaction from former UKIP leader Nigel Farage who said the transition deal on offer would be tantamount to creating a "Vichy Britain".
Theresa May is to chair the first of two key Brexit meetings with her senior ministers later as the government faces more calls to clarify the UK's position.
The first Brexit cabinet committee will focus on Northern Ireland and immigration, while trade will be discussed on Thursday.
The transition period is expected to begin straight after the UK officially leaves the European Union on 29 March 2019, and end on 31 December 2020.
The UK says this will allow businesses to adapt to its new relationship with the EU.
The EU says its rules should still apply during the transition period, as will rulings of the European Court of Justice.
According to a footnote in the EU papers leaked to journalists in Brussels, if referring a dispute to the EU court would take too long, the withdrawal agreement "should provide for a mechanism allowing the Union to suspend certain benefits deriving for the United Kingdom from participation in the internal market".
It does not go into detail about what disputes could trigger the powers being used, or which parts of the single market could be suspended.
It also says the UK would be consulted about fishing quotas, and would have to pledge not to act against the EU in international organisations.
A Department for Exiting the European Union spokesman said: "This is a draft document produced by the EU that simply reflects their stated directives."
Together with the UK's position as set out last month, it provides a "solid foundation for the negotiations on the implementation period".
The UK plans to continue participating in the single market - which allows frictionless trade and the free movement of people between EU members - during the transition phase, before the final trading relationship - which has yet to be negotiated - comes into force.
Some Conservative MPs are unhappy at the idea of the UK following EU rules but having no say on them, and have warned that when Brexit happens in March 2019 it will be "in name only".
Bernard Jenkin, chair of the Commons Public Administration Committee, said it would be "utterly perverse" if the EU ended up imposing tariffs on British goods given the current levels of alignment between it and the UK.
"This is an indication of how fearful the EU is that they have to make these silly threats," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
"Of course we are going to do rather well outside the EU and we are going to show the EU up as a rather less successful organisation than it is."
And former trade minister Lord Jones, a leading pro-Leave voice within the business community, said it was increasingly clear no deal was better than a bad one.
We've had position papers. We've had guidelines, directives and a joint report.
This is the first draft of legally-binding words that will end up in the withdrawal agreement - the Brexit treaty that will seal the UK's departure from the EU and a document of real historical significance.
EU sources say it proves that they are getting a move on - "Please! No more position papers" - which the UK wants too.
The EU's suggestion, in a footnote, that the UK's access to parts of the single market will be curtailed if the European Court of Justice cannot solve any disputes within the two-ish year timeframe of the transition, will sound threatening to some.
To others it will sound like an obvious back-up plan to deal with the famously long time it takes for the ECJ to make a decision.
The Brits caution that this is a first draft for the EU27 and does not reflect any negotiations over what they prefer to call the implementation phase.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker says he believes Brexit will go ahead and the EU should tackle its looming budget shortfall.
"Don't believe those who say that it's not going to happen and that people in the UK have realised their error... I don't think that's going to be the case," he told a Brussels conference.
The EU budget commissioner said the UK's departure would leave a hole of about €12-13bn (£11-12bn; $14-$16bn).
The UK's exit is set for March 2019.
Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger said the budget gap would have to be closed with 50% spending cuts and 50% fresh money. He suggested a Europe-wide tax on plastic products as a source of extra revenue.
The Commission will publish a proposal in May this year and has urged EU leaders to agree a budget deal by May 2019.
Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable and former Prime Minister Tony Blair are among the prominent voices arguing that Brexit can still be reversed, possibly by holding a new referendum on whatever deal is reached on the UK withdrawal.
The EU is bracing for hard bargaining between the bloc's net contributors and net recipients for the next budget period, 2020-2026. The UK is currently among the major net contributors.
By Adam Fleming, BBC News, Brussels
"There will have to be cuts in some major [EU] programmes - some significant cuts," Mr Oettinger warned.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said Britain will honour its current commitments to the EU budget, until 2020.
The UK is one of 10 member states who pay more into the EU budget than they get out. Only France and Germany contribute more.
According to UK Treasury figures, the UK's net contribution for 2014/15 was £8.8bn. The total contribution was more, but the UK received a £4.6bn rebate. That annual rebate was won by the late Margaret Thatcher.
In 2014/15, Poland was the largest beneficiary, followed by Hungary and Greece.
On Monday the veteran pro-Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage met EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels. "Mr Barnier clearly did not understand why Brexit happened," he said after the meeting.

What on earth happens now? Summits have setbacks. It's written into the script.
It's not unusual even for choreographed emergencies to take place because then, lo and behold, just when all seems lost, the apparent grit and determination of political leaders can rescue victory from the jaws of defeat.
What happened in Salzburg feels different though. That's partly because one of the principal players, the UK, was taken aback by the turn of events.
The hoped-for polite reception turned into a firm, embarrassing rebuff. But it's more acute because the expected platitudes were meant to be an insurance policy for the prime minister to protect her from increasingly vitriolic attacks at home.
If the EU had created a sense of momentum for Theresa May in the last 24 hours, the din of criticism in Westminster might have felt misplaced, even petty.
If the country's leader was making progress internationally, well then, the riposte to her enemies could have been: She has bigger things to worry about than her back benches, there is progress. Look! Progress!
Against the odds, despite the difficulties, she was meant to have been able to claim steady, if slow and troubled steps to the eventual outcome.
And if she had a united party at her back, the prime minister's defiant tone could have even found her favour at home.
She wouldn't be the first leader to try to rally her domestic troops by standing up to the EU, for refusing to roll over, holding firm in the face of continental misgivings, and grumblings about Britain's familiar demands for special treatment from their friends across the Channel.
The EU's rejection of her controversial compromise is so toxic because it leaves her surrounded by foes, and less insulated from criticisms that will come of her approach, and what seems to be the UK's total misreading of the EU's willingness to soften their position.
That's stirring up trouble already with some Tories  pointing fingers of blame. One senior Tory demanded that questions be asked of her senior team, including Olly Robbins, her top European adviser, seen as the architect of the Chequers plan.
There are accusations swirling that the prime minister was "misled by bad advice", having been persuaded to pursue a compromise plan that cost her two cabinet ministers, and now rejected, "has left her humiliated".
Another senior Conservative told me the prime minister had been "in denial - as a strategy that will fail her and it will fail us", saying: "We are two years on and the basic political questions have not been answered."
Theresa May and her government have been trying to pursue a middle way, to find a stance between the basic options - a close "Norway style" deal, or a free trade deal roughly like Canada - a compromise that we've discussed many times here. It feels that the search for something else has been in vain.
But there are questions too about the extent of the EU's pushback.
Sources on the EU side express irritation at the UK's approach, at what they see as a strident tone the prime minister took in the last 48 hours.
The European Council is not the same as Prime Minister's Questions, it's suggested. But to kick out publicly, as they did in Salzburg, certainly runs the risk of pushing Theresa May too far - it gives succour to those arguing at home that the EU isn't capable of playing fair.
In the coming days there will, of course, be hype and clamour on both sides.
But it's true that, instead of throwing the prime minister a lifeline in the run-up to conference, they have chucked petrol on a fire that was already alight.
Some MPs are already suggesting that if the EU is going to react like this, perhaps the government's only choice might be to cut and run.
But take a breath - it is not the case that all is lost.
The overriding incentive on both sides is to try to find a deal.
The consensus is still that somehow, it can be done.
But perhaps what the Salzburg setback has laid bare is the biggest risk to the deal of all.
The two sides seem again and again to misunderstand the other's position. And talks where no-one is really listening maybe can't really be genuine conversations after all.

Liam Fox has called for an end to the "obsession with Europe" in economic matters, saying the focus should be on "growing markets" around the world.
The international trade secretary said because the proportion of the UK's exports that go to the EU was falling, "we've got to be focussing on the growing bits of the global economy".
He was speaking to the BBC during a visit to China alongside Theresa May.
Mr Fox also defended Mrs May from the recent criticism she has faced.
The prime minister has come under pressure from Eurosceptics worried about concessions in the Brexit talks, while other MPs have called for more direction on domestic policies.
Speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Fox praised the prime minister's "vision" and said he wished people saw her the way she was perceived around the world, rather than by "internal tea room discussions in the UK".
As International Trade Secretary, Mr Fox is responsible for striking international trade deals that will come into force when the UK leaves the EU.
He said the UK would be able to "roll over" 40 existing trade deals it is part of as an EU member, as well as reaching its own arrangements with the likes of the United States, India and China.
China, Mr Fox said, was a "real success story" for the UK, with exports rising by 25% in the past year.
"All of this adds up to a much improved trading performance," he said.
And while the UK wants an "open and liberal partnership" with the EU, he added: "We've got to get away from our obsession with Europe in terms of its relation to the global economy - according to the IMF - in fact according to the European Commission - 90% of global growth in the next 10 to 15 years will be outside the European continent, clearly that's where we have to focus our attention."

The government has begun inviting applications for the Turing scheme, which will enable UK students to study in other countries.
The scheme is named after the mathematician Alan Turing, and replaces Erasmus, a European Union (EU) programme which UK students can no longer take part in.
The UK turned down an offer to continue participating in Erasmus after Brexit.
Universities minister Michelle Donelan said the Turing scheme would "enable up to 35,000 students throughout the UK to work or study across the globe".
The new scheme will provide funding "towards placements and exchanges" of students.
Universities and other organisations in the UK can apply for grants to help cover travel expenses and living costs as well as the administrative costs of running the scheme.
Applications have to be made by bodies such as universities, further education colleges and schools. If they are successful, these bodies can invite their own students to apply for individual funding.
The Turing scheme will provide placements across the world.
Erasmus covers placements across the EU and some non-EU countries that pay to be part of the scheme.
Both schemes are open not only to university students but also those in vocational training, apprentices or those who are retraining through a college or school.
Erasmus offers placements for teaching and college staff and youth workers as well, but the Turing scheme will not.
The amount of money you get under Erasmus depends on where you are going and whether you are a student, apprentice, trainee or staff.
The Turing scheme will offer different amounts based on where you are going and for how long.
For example, a university student going to France for six months would get £335 (€390) per month under the Turing scheme, while the Erasmus scheme paid £317 (€370) per month in 2020-21.
UK students did not have to pay tuition fees when studying abroad under Erasmus because the scheme was reciprocal - it allowed EU students to come and study in the UK as well.
The Turing scheme will not pay tuition fees for UK students studying abroad or for students from other countries studying in the UK. Instead, it expects the fees to be waived by the universities that take part.
Universities Minister Michelle Donelan told the Today programme "The way it'll work is our universities will partner with another university and they will waive the fees because they will be exchanging students."
The government has allocated £110m for the first year of the scheme, which starts in 2021/22, but it is not currently funded after that.
Both schemes offer support.
Erasmus pays an additional £103 (€120) per month - a total of £420 (€490) per month for a poorer student going to France for six months in the current academic year.
The Turing scheme would pay £445 (€519) per month to the same student, but also contribute to travel costs (the amount will depend on how far the student is travelling).
It will also provide poorer applicants with additional expenses, such as the costs of visas, passports, and health insurance.
Again, both Erasmus and Turing offer support.
The Turing scheme website says that, unlike Erasmus, it will "cover preparatory visits to carry out risk assessments and ensure participants will be able to equally access and take part in all elements of a placement".
Students at universities in Northern Ireland will be able to participate in either scheme, as part of an arrangement with the Irish government.
Students at universities in Great Britain will only be eligible for Turing.
Some UK students are still participating in Erasmus programmes using funding awarded before the end of 2020, which may allow them to continue until the end of the 2021-22 academic year, but no new funding will be available.
Since Brexit, UK students have had to deal with immigration regulations in the EU.
UK nationals are only able to stay in an EU country for 90 out of every 180 days without a visa (except for Ireland, which will still have free movement with the UK).
The government has published guidance for UK nationals planning to study in the EU, and encourages students consider wider issues such as health and travel insurance.
You can find UK government advice on countries around the world here.
Although coronavirus is now affecting student mobility, figures from before the pandemic showed that about half of UK university students who studied abroad did so through Erasmus.
In 2017, 16,561 UK students participated in Erasmus, while 31,727 EU nationals came to the UK.
"The Erasmus+ programme has delivered and continues to deliver significant benefits to the UK and we need to ensure the positives of the programme are not lost as we move into the next stage," Jane Racz, the director of the programme in the UK, told BBC News last year.
"Since 2014, almost €1bn [£900m] of funding has been distributed to UK Erasmus+ projects, with over 930,000 participants involved."
The National Union of Students has said the government's decision to replace Erasmus will "damage" the potential for many students to study abroad.
"Despite the claims of this government, they have not backed up the new Turing scheme with the funding required to support disadvantaged students to study abroad," Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, NUS vice-president for higher education, said. "This will harm the futures of thousands of students for years to come."
Kate Green MP, Labour's shadow education secretary, said government "rhetoric on the Turing Scheme does not live up to the reality".
Correction: This piece has been updated to make it clear that students from other countries will be able to study in the UK but they will not receive funding under the Turing scheme.
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Esther McVey has declined to back Theresa May's Brexit plans, saying she did not want to add to "speculation".
The work and pensions secretary said she was "fully, 100% behind the prime minister" without endorsing her proposal for future trade with the EU.
Cabinet ministers expressed concern about potential compromises with the EU at a meeting at No 10 on Thursday.
The BBC understands concerns centred around plans to ensure no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The UK and the EU both want to avoid a "hard border" - physical checks or infrastructure between Northern Ireland and Ireland - but cannot agree how.
The EU has proposed a backstop that would mean Northern Ireland staying in the EU customs union - something the UK says would create a border down the Irish Sea.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was understood that the EU was prepared to accept the idea of the whole of the UK remaining in the customs union if no trade deal can be done by the end of 2020, the so-called "transition period".
But the EU would not accept the UK's bid to put an end date on it -  many Brexiteers argue an open-ended arrangement is unacceptable. It is understood that cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and Jeremy Hunt expressed concerns.
Meanwhile Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP, which supports Mrs May's government on key votes, has said Theresa May cannot in good conscience recommend a Brexit deal that places a trade barrier on businesses moving goods from one part of the UK to another.
The DUP has threatened to withdraw its support for the government if it is not happy with the final Brexit deal.
But Tory MP Helen Grant, a Tory vice chairwoman, told the BBC's Politics Live: "I think they're bluffing."
The UK and the EU have yet to strike a deal on how Brexit will work, with less than six months to go before the UK leaves on 29 March.
Mrs May says she is working for a deal and has urged MPs to "put the national interest first" and support it.
Earlier, asked several times if she backed Mrs May's approach, set out in a White Paper in July, Ms McVey told the BBC: "I am completely supportive of the prime minister as she well knows, what I won't do even for you right now is speculate."
The prime minister says her plan (often called the Chequers plan because that is the name of the country residence where it was agreed) for the UK and EU to share a "common rulebook" for goods, but not services, is the only credible way to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But it is opposed by some within her own party who argue it would compromise the UK's sovereignty - former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has led criticism and Brexiteers have backed a "Canada plus plus" deal instead, modelled on Canada's free trade deal with the EU.
Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK's former ambassador to the European Union, dismissed both options in a speech in Cambridge, saying the chances of the EU agreeing to either was "precisely zero" and that there had been "culpable naivety" in the negotiations.
Meanwhile the EU says its negotiators are working "day and night" to try to reach an agreement ahead of Wednesday's summit.
The UK is expected to come up with new proposals as an alternative to the "backstop" put forward by the EU - which the government has rejected, saying it would threaten the integrity of the UK.
Mrs May relies on DUP support in key votes because the Conservatives do not have a majority in the House of Commons.
On Wednesday it was revealed that the DUP was prepared to vote against the Budget on 29 October - which could threaten the future of the government - if there are any new barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK as a result of Brexit.
And in a vote on the Agriculture Bill, it did not back the Conservatives in what DUP sources said was a "warning shot" for the government.
On Wednesday, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said there would have to be checks on goods travelling to Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, because they would effectively be arriving in the EU's single market if there was no hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
"I understand why such procedures are politically sensitive," he said, but added "Brexit was not our choice, it is the choice of the UK."
The EU and UK have agreed that these checks "cannot be performed at the border" and the EU proposes to carry them out "in the least intrusive way possible", he said.
Former Prime Minister Sir John Major, meanwhile, has said he has "great sympathy" for Mrs May, telling the BBC's Political Thinking podcast that "the way she's being treated by some of her colleagues is absolutely outrageous".
He hit out the "not so subliminal bullying" by Tories opposing her strategy in the middle of negotiations and also criticised International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who declined to give the PM's plan her explicit backing when asked earlier this week.
"If people are sitting in cabinet they either support the government's policy or they don't sit in cabinet," Sir John said.

Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit speech is being seen in Europe as the "hard" option of full UK withdrawal - and there is some relief that the British position is clearer now.
"Finally we have a little more clarity re the British plans," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
Germany also wanted a "close and trusting relationship", he said.
The Czech Europe Minister, Tomas Prouza, tweeted: "UK's plan seems a bit ambitious".
"Trade as free as possible, full control on immigration... where is the give for all the take?" he asked.
The Italian daily La Repubblica commented: "Out of the EU, out of common market, out of everything. It appears that Theresa May's intention through negotiations with the EU at the end of March is 'a hard Brexit' - a very hard Brexit indeed."
BBC live coverage in full here.
May: UK must leave EU single market
One of the top EU officials, European Council president Donald Tusk, voiced regret but some relief too in a tweet: "Sad process, surrealistic times but at least more realistic announcement on #Brexit."
Belgian liberal Guy Verhofstadt, named as the European Parliament's lead negotiator on Brexit, warned that any deal for the UK would be worse than EU membership.
He said it was an "illusion" for Mrs May to suggest "that you can go out of the single market, that you can go out of the customs union and that you can cherry-pick, that you can have still a number of advantages - I think that will not happen".
Mrs May's mention of a possible alternative economic model for the UK was a "threat", he said, that could obstruct the negotiations.
Norway's Aftenposten daily said Mrs May's speech signalled "a clear rejection of a Norwegian-type involvement in the [EU] internal market".
Norway has very close ties to the EU - as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) it has open, tariff-free access to the EU single market, though Norwegian fisheries and agriculture are excluded.
The price for that advantage is high Norwegian contributions to the EU budget and automatic acceptance of most EU laws.
"Even though she rejects the term, it is indeed a hard Brexit," commented France's Le Figaro daily.
Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front (FN) in France praised Mrs May's speech.
FN vice-president Florian Philippot tweeted: "Bravo to T. May who respects her people with a 'clear and clean' Brexit. Sovereignty cannot be a half-measure. French independence soon!"
Michael Fuchs, a close conservative ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, accused Mrs May of "cherry-picking" in her speech, Sky News reported in a tweet.
EU politicians have stressed that they will not let the UK "cherry-pick" parts of its EU membership terms.
They insist that the single market's four freedoms - covering goods, services, capital and labour - cannot be diluted.
The Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad called Mrs May's speech "not just a bit of Brexit but the full whack".
"Bye bye EU... the unspoken, big threat from London is creating a tax paradise in front of the gates of Europe," it said.
Sweden's former Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted: "I regret the approach the UK government has taken.
"I think most of the EU would have preferred a closer relationship with the UK."
Sweden has long been one of the UK's closest allies in the EU.

Anti-Brexit campaigners have been given permission to take their case to Europe's highest court as they seek a ruling on whether it can be halted.
The cross-party group of politicians argue that Article 50 can be revoked if MPs vote to do so.
The Court of Session in Edinburgh had previously rejected their bid to have the case referred to European judges.
But they have now won an appeal, and the European Court of Justice will be asked to give a definitive ruling.
The panel of appeal judges at the Court of Session said the "urgency of the issue" - with the UK due to leave the EU on 29 March - meant its request to the European Court was being done under expedited procedure.
The UK government said it was "disappointed" by the decision and was giving it "careful consideration".
But a spokesman stressed that the government remained committed to implementing the result of the EU referendum and "will not be revoking Article 50."
The legal case has been brought by politicians including Scottish Green MSPs Andy Wightman and Ross Greer, Labour MEPs David Martin and Catherine Stihler and SNP MEP Alyn Smith, who have claimed that Brexit is "not inevitable" and "there is still time to change course".
Welcoming the ruling, Mr Greer said: "If negotiations collapse, as appears to be happening, we have to know that a no deal disaster is not the only option on the table."
The politicians have been joined by lawyer Jolyon Maugham QC, the director of the Good Law Project, who said the latest ruling was a "bombshell" that could "decide the fate of the nation" and potentially allow the country to "wake up from the nightmare that is this government's Brexit".
Prime Minister Theresa May has admitted that negotiations with the EU have reached an "impasse" after her Brexit plans were rejected at a summit in Salzburg earlier this week.
But in a speech outside Downing Street she insisted that: "Nobody wants a good deal more than me - but I will not overturn the result of the referendum, nor will I break up my country."
The speech was described as "dreadful" by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who claimed Mrs May's so-called Chequers proposals for Brexit were now a "dead duck" and that Brexit "should not happen" if the PM was not going to keep the country in the single market and customs union.
The petitioners argue that the UK should now effectively be allowed to change its mind on Brexit, without needing the permission of the other 27 EU members.
If it is successful, their case could strengthen the hand of any attempt by MPs to keep the UK in the EU after the final details of its departure terms are known.
This is because it would give parliament the power to unilaterally halt Brexit if it feels any final deal - or no deal - is unacceptable, even if the government wants to leave regardless.
Court of Session judge Lord Boyd ruled in June that the case could not go to the European Court in Luxembourg as it was "hypothetical" and did not reflect political reality as it "seems highly unlikely that this government will revoke the notification".
The campaigners appealed against that decision, and on Friday the court ruled in their favour.
The ruling was delivered by Scotland's most senior judge, Lord Carloway, and his colleagues Lord Menzies and Lord Drummond Young.
The appeal judges said matters had "moved on" since Lord Boyd's original ruling, with the European Union (Withdrawal) Act now setting out how parliamentary approval is to be sought once the negotiations between the UK government and the EU conclude.
Lord Carloway said it was therefore "clear" that MPs at Westminster would be required to vote on any Brexit deal agreed by the EU and the UK government.
He stated: "It seems neither academic nor premature to ask whether it is legally competent to revoke the notification and thus to remain in the EU.
"The matter is uncertain in that it is the subject of a dispute; as this litigation perhaps demonstrates.
"The answer will have the effect of clarifying the options open to MPs in the lead up to what is now an inevitable vote."
The judge also said the European court would not be advising parliament on "what it must or ought to do".
Instead, he said it would be "merely declaring the law as part of its central function", adding that "how parliament chooses to react to that declarator is entirely a matter for that institution".
In their draft reference to the European Court, the judges ask: "Where a member state has notified the European Council of its intention to withdraw from the European Union, does EU law permit that notice to be revoked unilaterally by the notifying member state?
"And, if so, subject to what conditions and with what effect relative to the member state remaining within the EU?"

There were two largely separate battles taking place in the European elections in the UK.
The first was for the support of those who voted Leave in the 2016 referendum, many of whom are disappointed that the UK has not yet left the EU.
The second was for the backing of those who voted Remain, many of whom are hoping that the decision to leave the EU might yet be reversed, perhaps via a second referendum.
The outcome of the first battle was decisive and widely anticipated. The second was rather messier, but might have just as important an impact on the debate about Brexit between now and when the UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October.
Many Leave voters had previously supported UKIP under Nigel Farage's leadership, before backing the Conservatives in the 2017 UK general election.
They switched en masse towards Mr Farage's new organisation, the Brexit Party. With 32% of the vote, its level of support was as much as five points higher than that of UKIP in the last European elections, in 2014.
The Brexit Party performed much better in those areas that voted most heavily for Leave in the 2016 referendum than it did in those places that voted most heavily for Remain.
As a result, the party scored much less well in London (18%) and Scotland (15%) - where a majority voted for Remain - than in the rest of England (36%) and Wales (32%), which had provided the foundations of Leave's success in 2016.
Because of this surge, the Conservatives fell to just 9% of the vote.
Governments often perform badly in European elections, as voters take the opportunity to express their disappointment with its performance without the risk that their vote might put the opposition into government.
Yet the rebuff suffered by the Conservatives was far worse than the previous worst snubbing to have been suffered by a government in a European election. That was the 15% to which Labour sunk in 2009, during the darkest days of Gordon Brown's premiership.
It was also easily the Conservatives' worst ever performance in a nationwide election. Its performance was weak everywhere - the party did not manage to come first in a single council area.
In sharp contrast to the position in the 2017 general election, when it was much stronger in Leave-voting areas than in Remain-inclined ones, the party did equally badly in both.
It is an outcome that would seem to confirm the message of the opinion polls that the party has lost the confidence of many Leave voters.
However, dramatic though it was, the outcome of the battle between the Conservatives and the Brexit Party had been widely forecast by the polls.
Indeed, politicians had already begun to react to it in the period between Thursday's vote and last night's count.
It arguably contributed to the downfall of Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday, while many of the candidates to be her successor are arguing that 31 October should be a firm and final deadline for the UK's exit from the EU.
The European election result will simply ensure that that debate continues.
The second contest in these elections was for the support of those who want to remain in the EU.
The polls had suggested that during the campaign Labour, which has been somewhat equivocal in its support for a second referendum, had been losing the backing of Remain supporters to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
However, there was disagreement as to whether the Lib Dems would challenge Labour for second place.
In the event, the Lib Dems won this battle hands down.
The party won 20% of the vote, its best European election performance ever, while Labour secured just 14%.
Sir Vince Cable's party not only beat Labour but managed to come a clear first in those places that voted most heavily for Remain including, most remarkably, in London.
There is no doubt that the party was the single most popular party among Remain supporters, a position that had hitherto been enjoyed by Labour.
The Lib Dems, who are themselves about to embark on a leadership contest, will hope the outcome signals that the party is finally recovering from the dramatic decline it suffered following its involvement in the 2010-15 coalition.
However, it was not the only party in favour of a second referendum to do well.
So too did the Greens, whose 12% of the vote was its best European election performance since 1989. However, in its case support was only marginally higher in Remain-voting areas.
In Scotland, the SNP, led by Nicola Sturgeon, won no less than 38% of the vote, its best ever European election result. It is an outcome that confirms its dominance of the electoral scene north of the border.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru also enjoyed some success with 20% of the vote, its highest since 1999.
Though nothing like as devastating as the loss suffered by the Conservatives, Labour's poor performance could, in truth, also lead to a rethink just as important as that now going on inside the government.
The party's attempt to keep both its Remain and its Leave supporters on board seems to have resulted in a loss of support among both groups.
Although Labour's vote fell most heavily in the strongest Remain voting areas, its vote also fell, by as much as 11 points, in the most pro-Leave areas.
There have already been signals from Labour that it might now fall in more firmly behind the idea of a "confirmatory vote" in which whatever deal is eventually struck with the EU is put before voters in a second referendum.
It will hope that this stance will help reverse the loss of support to the Lib Dems and Greens, without losing it too much ground among its minority of Leave supporters.
Such a development would certainly ensure that the government and the opposition are further apart on Brexit than at any point since the EU referendum.
More like this
On the other hand, the newest of the pro-second referendum parties, Change UK, led by Heidi Allen, had a bruising night, winning just 3% of the vote.
Even in London, where its hopes were highest, the party managed to win no more than 5% of the vote.
It seems likely that the party will have to seek some form of collaboration with the Lib Dems rather than continue to attempt to compete for much the same body of voters.
Inevitably, the outcome of the two battles led those on the Eurosceptic side of the Brexit argument to say the result showed that the electorate were willing to leave the EU without a deal.
Those in favour of a second referendum claimed the result indicated that voters wanted just that.
In practice, it would seem safer to argue that the outcome confirmed that the electorate is evenly divided as well as polarised between those two options.
Overall, 35% of voters voted for parties comfortable with no deal (the Brexit Party and UKIP).
Equally, 35% backed one of the three UK-wide parties (Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK) that supported a second referendum. If Plaid Cymru (1%) and the SNP (3.5%) are included, the Remain share of the vote is just over 40%, although the SNP is known to secure considerable support from those who voted Leave.
Far from providing a clear verdict, the result simply underlined how difficult it is likely to be to find any outcome to the Brexit process that satisfies a clear majority of voters.
Meanwhile, the poor performance of both the Conservatives and Labour will inevitably raise questions about the future of the country's two-party system.  At 23% their joint tally was well below the previous all-time low of 43.5% in 2009.
European elections are, of course, not the same as a general election; voters have long shown a greater willingness to vote for smaller parties.
However, the issue that caused both parties such difficulties in this election - Brexit - is not going to go away any time soon.
In truth, both the Conservatives and Labour have been on notice that they need to handle the issue much better than they have done so far.
Otherwise, voters might yet turn elsewhere at the next general election too.
About this piece
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from experts working for an outside organisation.
Sir John Curtice is professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde. He worked with Stephen Fisher, associate professor of political sociology, University of Oxford; Patrick English, associate lecturer in data analysis, University of Exeter and Eilidh Macfarlane, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford.

MP Antoinette Sandbach, who was expelled from the parliamentary Conservative Party last month, has joined the Liberal Democrats.
The Remain-voting Cheshire MP was among 21 rebels who lost the Tory whip after rebelling against Boris Johnson in a bid to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
She will stand as a Liberal Democrat candidate in her Eddisbury constituency in December's general election.
Explaining her decision, she said the Tory Party had "moved their values".
Her move makes her the eighth MP to have joined the Lib Dems this year.
Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, she said she had considered not standing for re-election.
"Like many of the MPs that have stood down, I have been subjected to abuse."
"It has been incredibly difficult for my family and for me. But this is a critical time in our nation's history," she said.
Announcing her decision earlier, as campaigning got under way ahead of the 12 December election, Ms Sandbach said: "People have a very clear choice.
"The Conservative Party offers years of uncertainty, whilst the Liberal Democrats will stop Brexit.
"I will stand on my strong local record, helping to secure local investment, fighting for fair funding for our schools and to secure additional funding in local health services.
"Our country deserves so much better than Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn."
Ms Sandbach was not among the 10 rebels readmitted to the party last month, shortly before the Commons backed the legislation to approve the 12 December election.
Earlier this month, she lost a confidence vote among her local party members - she described it as "symbolic" but added that "it most likely means that I am not going to be the Conservative candidate in the next election".
Contesting her Eddisbury seat as a Conservative candidate in 2017, Ms Sandbach won a near-12,000 majority over Labour, with the Lib Dem candidate third with 2,804 votes.
She was among 19 former Tories who backed the prime minister's Brexit deal legislation last week but voted against his proposed three-day timetable for it to be considered in the Commons ahead of the original Brexit deadline of 31 October.
Speaking after joining the Lib Dems, she said she was concerned Mr Johnson's deal was "a trap door to a no-deal Brexit".
She follows MPs Sarah Wollaston, Philip Lee and Sam Gyimah to become the fifth ex-Tory to join the Lib Dems in recent months.
Ex-Conservative Heidi Allen also joined the party earlier this month, after quitting the fledgling Change UK party she joined after leaving the Tories.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said Ms Sandbach was a "passionate campaigner" and would be a "fantastic candidate" in the election.
"Her defection clearly shows that the Liberal Democrats are the strongest party of Remain and attracting support from right across the political spectrum," she added.

Facebook has removed threatening messages posted in reaction to a paid-for advert by a pro-Brexit group.
It said the advert itself, which attacked "Remoaner globalist scumbags" and accused pro-EU MPs of "treason", did not break its community guidelines.
But the social media giant took down posts threatening violence against anti-Brexit politicians, after being alerted to them by BBC News.
The ad, by the "Brexit Defence Force", was seen fewer than 5,000 times.
The site has vowed to do more to crack down on "hate speech" on its platforms but its team of moderators, and the artificial intelligence software it is developing, have sometimes struggled to identify inflammatory content.
The Brexit Defence Force ad was promoted to UK Facebook users on Sunday and Monday, mentioning several politicians by name and accusing them of "crossing the line of treason to our democracy".
"Make some noise on their pages, show them we are watching their treacherous devious antics and they will be held accountable," it says.
Less than £100 was spent promoting the advert but it attracted dozens of comments, some of which advocated violence.
After BBC News approached Facebook for comment, these threatening posts were deleted.
"Any content that violates our Community Standards on violence or harassment is absolutely not permitted on our platform," said a Facebook representative, adding: "This particular ad does not breach our policies."
Facebook recently unveiled new transparency measures for political adverts, following data scandals in the US and UK.
And anyone running ads in the UK now needs to verify their identity and location and carry a "paid for by" disclaimer if the ad references political figures, parties, elections, or laws.
The Brexit Defence Force Facebook page, which BBC News was able to contact through Facebook Messenger, includes this disclaimer, which references the "yellow vest" movement:
But the page gives no further information about identity or location and does not link to a website.
The Facebook representative added: "We have taken an industry-leading position on political ad transparency in the UK, introducing new tools including an archive of all political ads in a searchable ad library for seven years, going beyond what is currently required of us by law and further than anywhere else that allows political advertising."
And this "ad library" shows more than £1m has been spent on UK political ads since October - with two pro-EU groups leading the way.
Anti-Brexit groups People's Vote UK and Best for Britain, which campaign for another referendum, are responsible for about 40% of the total cash spent on UK political Facebook advertising in the past three months.
And a Telegraph investigation last week found Best For Britain adverts linking Brexit to palm oil deforestation and the death of orangutans had been viewed more than a million times.
"This is the same old scaremongering from the same people who didn't want us to leave the EU in the first place," Environment Secretary Michael Gove told the Telegraph.
"It didn't work last time and it won't work this time."
Pro-Brexit groups have spent less money on promoting their cause.
But a BBC News investigation recently revealed one of them had been buying up Google adverts in an attempt to reach the top of the rankings when people put "What is the Brexit deal?" into the search engine, putting it in an online bidding war with the government, which was trying the same tactic.
 In the run-up to a cancelled Brexit vote in December, the government spent over £100,000 of taxpayers' money promoting its deal on Facebook and spent money on Google and Twitter ads.

The "febrile" atmosphere around Brexit could be exploited by far-right extremists, the UK's most senior counter-terrorism officer has warned.
Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said 18 terror plots were foiled in Britain since 2017, four of them far-right.
He said a "far-right drift into extreme right-wing terrorism" was a concern but officers were working to ensure groups did not gain a "foothold".
Mr Basu added leaving the EU with no deal would be "very bad" for policing.
The head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism operations was speaking at the launch of a new cinema advert aimed at encouraging people to report their suspicions about all forms of terrorism.
The 60-second film portrays a series of scenarios, including a man stockpiling hazardous material and another buying weapons.
Mr Basu revealed that a record 700 terror investigations are currently taking place, up from about 500 in March 2017.
Fourteen of the attacks foiled since 2017 involved Islamist suspects, Mr Basu said, adding that he was concerned about the possibility of radicalised fighters returning from abroad.
Another concern was the spread of propaganda online.
Mr Basu said while extreme right-wing activity was still a "relatively small threat", it was also "something we've got to pay very close attention to in this country - that we don't let that kind of far-right drift into extreme right-wing terrorism and we're working very hard to stop that".
Asked about the background of Brexit, Mr Basu told the BBC: "We saw a spike in hate crime after the referendum, that's never really receded.
"So there's always a possibility people are being radicalised by the kind of febrile atmosphere we've got at the moment.
"We want people to report anything that we think is going to lead to violent confrontation and people need to calm down and understand that we are paying very close attention to that and we will stop it wherever we see it."
Mr Basu said there was no intelligence pointing to an increased level of attacks after Brexit, but added: "What's most concerning me... is its potential to divide communities and set communities against each other."
His warning comes as Labour MP Melanie Onn revealed she had been threatened with being "gunned down".
The MP for Great Grimsby quoted the threatening email on Twitter, which was filled with swear words and called her a "traitor".
Ms Onn, who came out against another referendum on Brexit this week, said: "Everyone in Grimsby knows I've never backed down from a debate, even when I've had unpopular POV (including in referendum), but we must be allowed to have an opinion without this nonsense."
The threat against Ms Onn echoes the murder of Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, who was shot and stabbed in 2016. Her killer, Thomas Mair, gave his name in court as "death to traitors, freedom for Britain".
It also follows concerns from a cross-party group of MPs that police were failing to prevent them being abused outside Parliament, with pro-EU Tory MP Anna Soubry being taunted with chants of "Nazi" during a live interview.
Mr Basu also told the BBC the possibility of a no-deal Brexit was "incredibly concerning" for police operations.
Echoing comments from Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick in December, he said the UK and Europe would be in a "very bad place" if police could not exchange data or biometrics on suspected criminals and terrorists.
Mr Basu said the Met was working on contingency arrangements with police forces and agencies in Europe.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said this week that he was confident that with or without a Brexit deal Britain would "continue to be a very safe country".

Nigel Farage has accused Theresa May of "wilfully deceiving" people over her negotiated EU deal.
The Brexit Party leader told the BBC's Andrew Marr the PM's proposed Brexit deal was a "new European treaty".
In a tense interview, Mr Farage said he would demand his party became part of the government negotiating team if it was successful in the forthcoming European elections.
Elections to the European Parliament take place on 23 May.
Asked why he did not advocate a no-deal Brexit at the time of the EU referendum in 2016, Mr Farage said: "Because it was obvious that we could do a free trade deal.
"The problem is the prime minister never asked for it, so we finished up in the mess that we're in," he said.
"She chose to go for this close and special partnership. Basically right from the start she was happy for us to be kept very close to the customs union.
"So where we are now, the only way the democratic will of the people can be delivered is to leave on a WTO (World Trade Organization) deal."
The interview on the BBC programme also saw Mr Farage asked about past comments on NHS privatisation, climate change, gun control, immigration and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Responding angrily to the line of questioning, he said: "This is absolutely ludicrous, I've never in my life seen a more ridiculous interview than this.
"You're in denial, the BBC is in denial, the Tory and Labour parties are in denial.
"I think you're all in for a bigger surprise on Thursday week [the EU elections] than you can even imagine."
Mr Farage's fellow guests on the Marr programme included Education Secretary Damian Hinds, who said the European Parliament elections would be seen by some people as a protest vote.
"For some people this is the ultimate protest vote opportunity. Actually, ironically this is, in a sense, for some people, this is the second referendum," he said.
Mr Farage said he believed that if there was a second referendum, the campaign to leave the EU would win by a bigger margin.
He said he was "mentally preparing myself for one", adding: "I'm thinking we may well have it forced upon us."
Lib Dem deputy leader and People's Vote supporter Jo Swinson said Mr Farage had refused to "own up to well-documented and abhorrent views on NHS privatisation, his admiration for Vladimir Putin and his denial of the facts about climate change".
She said: "Despite his claims to the contrary, everyone remembers that he promised in 2016 that there would be an amazing cost-free Brexit deal available to Britain if we voted to leave the EU.
"To say today that he always advocated 'no deal' is a mark of just how shameless he is, and how little he cares for the jobs and livelihoods of the people of this country."

A UK port and Danish ferry operator DFDS have agreed to increase roll-on, roll-off, capacity by more than 40% to help freight shipping after Brexit.
Felixstowe Port's chief executive, Clemence Cheng, said the deal with DFDS comes as "shippers seek to minimise risks to their supply chains resulting from Brexit."
One freight transporter said the expansion could help ease bottlenecks.
New bridges, tractor units and trailer parking facilities will also be built.
The investment comes as suppliers on both sides of the Channel look for alternatives to Dover once the UK leaves the European Union in March.
"Demand on DFDS' service to Rotterdam has been growing steadily for a number of years and we are delighted to have agreed a new contract with them to secure the service at Felixstowe for another 15 years," added Mr Cheng.
"Dover is a port where the cargo tends to be accompanied by the driver so if there are delays, you get bottlenecks," Tim Wray of Multimodal Logistics said.
"Felixstowe is primarily an unaccompanied port where cargo arrives without a lorry, is taken from the boat to the port and on to a holding area. A vehicle then applies for the cargo and takes it away."
Hutchison Ports added it was seeing "increasing interest in both roll-on, roll-off and short sea container connections" at all three of its UK ports, which include Harwich and London Thamesport.
Niels Smedegaard, president of DFDS, said the contract was "striving to provide necessary capacity to continue... even in a possible post-Brexit world."
Information about BBC links to other news sites

Thousands of cross-channel ferry passengers have had their bookings amended to accommodate extra sailings in case of a no-deal Brexit.
Brittany Ferries said timetables from Portsmouth, Poole and Plymouth were being modified to ensure "critical goods" could still be transported.
Some passengers took to social media after the firm got in touch to tell them their trips had been cancelled.
Brittany Ferries said about 10,000 customers were affected.
In December, the government announced it was awarding £102.9m to three suppliers to provide extra capacity to ease congestion at Dover if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal on 29 March.
French company Brittany Ferries was awarded £46.6m, £42.5m was awarded to Danish shipping firm DFDS and £13.8m to British firm Seaborne Freight.
A statement on Brittany's website said: "The contract guarantees space on some of our ships and Channel routes for the delivery of critical goods post-Brexit, like medicines.
"It has been described as a kind of insurance, or safety net, to help ensure the smooth transit of these critical goods in the event of a no-deal Brexit after the 29th March."
A spokesman said about 5,000 bookings - 10,000 passengers - were affected.
He said: "In most cases it's no change or a small change. But In some cases it can involve moving from an overnight sailing to a morning or afternoon sailing or vice versa.
"We apologise in advance for any inconvenience that these changes may cause, but hope that the additional sailings will offer customers more choice."
The affected Brittany routes (and ships) are:
The company said it had modified its schedules and was contacting all affected customers.

Ferry and freight firms will be urged to plan alternative routes for drugs and other vital supplies if a no-deal Brexit blocks cross-Channel traffic.
The suppliers will be told to use Belgian and Dutch ports if blockages at Calais threaten to delay shipments.
The news emerged after a "passionate" cabinet meeting in which ministers were told about contingencies for no deal.
Meanwhile, a government watchdog is warning new UK border controls may not be ready in a no-deal situation.
Cabinet ministers are receiving weekly updates about preparations for Brexit until the UK leaves the EU next March.
After Tuesday's cabinet meeting a senior government source denied there were plans to buy or charter vessels to keep the NHS working or to guarantee food supplies.
Instead, private carriers would be expected to carry out their normal roles, the BBC has been told.
But there are worries among ministers and officials that the sudden introduction of border checks at Calais could cause sudden and serious backlogs.
The Sun reported that ministers had been warned that France could effectively shut down Calais, which it said would have a devastating effect on food exporters and manufacturers reliant on the port.
And BBC Newsnight's political editor Nick Watt said there was a discussion at the cabinet meeting that there could be a 75-80% drop-off on traffic across the Calais-Dover route, causing a huge impact on supplies including food.
The BBC's deputy political editor, John Pienaar, said one source described the meeting as "passionate".
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was said to have expressed concern that the UK must not be trapped indefinitely in the so-called "backstop" customs union arrangement with the EU, which could hamper the UK from striking wider trade deals.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox compared that status to being trapped in Dante's "first circle of hell".
The BBC's deputy political editor says the mood among ministers at the meeting was more evidence of the prime minister's limited room for manoeuvre in the Brexit talks, as she prepares to address Tory backbenchers on Wednesday.
Theresa May's appearance before the 1922 Committee will see her face some MPs who have been critical of her Brexit plans and leadership.
It comes as a National Audit Office report says the the UK needs to replace IT systems, boost Border Force staffing levels and build new infrastructure to track goods.
The government said it was confident of striking a "good" deal with the EU for as "frictionless" trade as possible.
It said that plans were already 95% complete.
The government has already asked firms to start stockpiling a six-week supply of drugs and if necessary plan to fly in medicines which cannot be stockpiled because of their short shelf life.
The UK imports 37 million packs of medicine each month from the EU. Concern has been raised that prolonged disruption at the borders could disrupt the supply chain.
On Tuesday, Martin Sawer, of the Healthcare Distributors Association, told MPs that the pharmaceutical  industry was "very concerned" about a no-deal as it could have "catastrophic" consequences for the supply of drugs.
He warned it could lead to patients being put on drugs that they are not currently prescribed.
The Department for Transport said that while it was confident of the UK reaching an agreement with the EU on the terms of its exit, it was sensible to plan for all possible outcomes.
"We are continuing to work closely with partners on contingency plans to ensure that trade can continue to move as freely as possible between the UK and Europe," a spokesman said.
But Labour MP David Lammy, who supports a new referendum on the outcome of the negotiations with the option of remaining in the EU, said Brexit had become "like a declaration of war on ourselves".
France has also stepped up its planning for a no-deal Brexit, publishing a draft law last week which would give the government powers to deal with visas, transport and other services.
The UK is due to leave on 29 March 2019 but during the post-Brexit "transition period", set to run until 31 December 2020, the UK-EU relationship will stay largely the same.
Mrs May has insisted that if an extension is necessary it should only last a few months.
However, the Times newspaper says a leaked document given to ministers warns the transition period tying the UK to Brussels until the end of 2020 "could, in theory" turn into a long-running arrangement over "many years".
A Downing Street spokesman said this was "nothing more than a partial reflection of advice to ministers, and not of decisions taken".
He said Mrs May had made her position "absolutely clear" on Monday when she told the Commons she intended any such backstop arrangement to be temporary, and would end "well before" the next election.

New EU rules on fishing quotas could have a "grave" impact on the UK's fishing industry, a House of Lords committee has said - just a day before the new policy is introduced.
Under previous rules, crews often discarded, into the sea, fish that took them over their quota for that species.
But under the new policy, fishers must bring the full haul back to shore. This change is to stop fish being wasted.
The legislation has been called "badly designed" by UK industry bodies.
The House of Lords EU Energy and Environment sub-committee heard evidence that the legislation could mean fishermen hitting their annual quotas much earlier in the year and have to stop fishing.
The committee was told this would be particularly problematic in "mixed fisheries" where it would be hard for boats to avoid catching a fish species for which they have a very low quota.
Once they reached their quota for a particular species, fishers would be forced to choose between halting operations for the rest of the year or breaking the law by continuing to fish for other species and discarding anything over quota.
The committee also said it had worries about how the rules - which come into effect in full after a four-year phasing-in period - would be enforced.
It said patrol vessels would only be able to cover a small percentage of boats, creating a temptation for fishers to break the rules.
Committee member Lord Krebs said: "It is deeply concerning that so many people - fishers, environmental groups, even the enforcement agencies themselves - do not think these new rules can be implemented from January 1."
He added: "Most people we spoke to thought nothing would change - fishers will continue to discard, knowing the chances of being caught are slim to none and that to comply with the law could bankrupt them."
Barrie Deas, the chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, said the rules were "badly designed" and would result in boats having to stop fishing for long stretches after reaching quotas on specific species.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was working with the industry to address the challenges posed by the new sustainable fishing policy.
The committee is due to publish its report on the implementation and enforcement of the EU "landing obligation" in February.

I've got five take-outs from the Article 50 bill so far.
There may be 101 pages of amendments down so far, but the government is in no mood to take any of them on board; on the contrary, their aim is to repel boarders, to the point where they would even resist the one amendment being mooted by the Brexiteer camp, which would aim to forbid ministers from accepting any extra time to extend the two year negotiating window specified by the EU's Lisbon Treaty. Ministers do believe that the EU's Michel Barnier's strategy is to enmesh the UK in a long-term negotiating limbo, perhaps including a post-Brexit transitional deal, but they don't want their hands tied.
Many of the amendments, thus far, look like the product of an amendment generating bot, standard stuff about laying reports and regular debates. But ministers are wary of some of the substantive ones setting conditions - and in particular of the emotive issue of EU nationals resident in Britain, a matter now featuring regularly in most MPs' constituency surgeries. There is strong pressure for some kind of unilateral move for the UK to guarantee their right to remain - but, the government retorts, if that was passed, its backers would be to blame if one or two European states didn't reciprocate and allow UK nationals to stay within their borders.
In the debate, Labour's frontbench Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, looked and sounded like a lawyer delivering a plea in mitigation on behalf of a convicted prisoner. Early in his speech, he appealed to the Commons for a courteous hearing - something his opposite number, David Davis, would never have got away with. It just about worked, because the House genuinely wanted to hear what he had to say, but he does suffer from the lawyer-turned politician's tendency to address MPs as if they were the Court of Appeal. But leaving aside the style points, forging a line on Brexit which can stitch together the strongly pro-Brexit and strongly pro-Remain elements of Labour's heartland, let alone unify the deeply divided Parliamentary Labour Party, may prove an impossible challenge.
Whether it's in the leadership ratings in Conservative Home, where he has now edged ahead of the prime minister herself, or in the growls of approval from his colleagues in the regular statements in the chamber, the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, increasingly commands the status of second minister in this government. This is not a wholly comfortable place to be - flying perilously near to the Sun - but as someone reconciled, not that long ago, to seeing out their parliamentary career on the backbenches, I suspect Mr Davis can bear it.
The Lib Dems have sought to position themselves as the last champions of the Remain cause (although two of their MPs, Norman Lamb and Greg Mulholland have promised to abstain on the Article 50 Bill). But they can't claim to be the arch-opponents of Brexit and fail to maintain a presence for the big debates on it - and their leader, Tim Farron, had a chastening time at PMQs when this was pointed out. In truth, their much-reduced parliamentary party has been pretty bad at showing the flag, since the last election. It's rare to see all nine Lib Dem MPs on the green benches. This is one area where they are not very good at remaining.

Former Conservative MP Sam Gyimah has joined the Liberal Democrats.
Six MPs have defected to the party in recent weeks, including former Tory MP Philip Lee, and ex-Labour MPs Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna.
Mr Gyimah was one of the 21 Tories who had the Conservative whip removed after rebelling against Boris Johnson in a bid to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Last December, the East Surrey MP quit as science and universities minister in a row over Theresa May's Brexit deal.
The 43-year-old briefly stood in the race to become Conservative Party leader after Mrs May quit.
The Lib Dems currently have 18 MPs, having been boosted by a victory in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election and the defections.
Mr Gyimah told BBC News that "the hard Brexiteers have won in the Conservative party - it is a hard Brexit party".
"There just aren't enough Conservatives like me," he said, explaining his decision to join the Liberal Democrats.
"If I want to fight for the values for which I came into politics.. the values of tolerance, the values of being sensible and pragmatic and acting in the interest of the country, then the Liberal Democrats is where I can do that from."
Not long ago at Westminster, if you were on the hunt for a smile, you wouldn't bother with the Lib Dems.
There weren't many of them, for a start, and those left were the last survivors of a near apocalypse for the party; shrivelled, ignored and drowned out.
Not any more.
They are bouncy, tiggerish and expanding.
They hope their clarity on Brexit - win an election and scrap it - will win favour with Remain inclined voters who may find Labour's pitch rather more ambiguous.
But their newbies face a big challenge: can they, realistically, win the seats they currently hold as Liberal Democrats?
Or will they go hunting for more fertile Lib Dem territory elsewhere - potentially dislodging long standing local party stalwarts?
Addressing the Liberal Democrats conference in Bournemouth, Mr Gyimah said: "There is now no orderly way for the UK to leave the EU on October 31.
"If the prime minister got a deal at the European Council on October 17 and 18, it would not be possible for us to leave on October 31 in an orderly way."
He added that the government has been left in a position where "no-deal" is the only outcome that can be delivered.
He said he had been "disheartened" by the way the whipping process "had been framed... for us MPs to choose our careers, in other words our own salaries, over putting the country first."
Mr Gyimah, who has been sitting as an Independent after losing the Conservative whip, has been a prominent advocate for a second referendum.
He previously signalled his intention to stand as an independent candidate in East Surrey in the event of a snap general election.
Mr Gyimah was born in Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire.
When he was six years old, his parents split up and he moved with his mother to her native Ghana, while his father remained in the UK.
He attended Achimota school, a state school in the capital of Accra, before returning to the UK to complete his GCSEs and A-levels at Freman College, a comprehensive in Hertfordshire.
Mr Gyimah went on to win a place at Somerville College, Oxford, to read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE), and served as president of the Oxford Union in 1997.
An Arsenal fan, he worked for Goldman Sachs for five years as an investment banker before moving into politics, standing unsuccessfully for Camden council elections in 2006.
In 2010 he became the MP for East Surrey and had been in Westminster for two years when he was made parliamentary private secretary to the then PM David Cameron.
He went on to become a government whip in 2013 and childcare and education minister a year later, before becoming prisons minister in 2016 and universities minister after that.
The married father-of-two quit as universities minister in December last year over Theresa May's Brexit deal.
He was introduced to delegates at the conference by the party's leader Jo Swinson as the "newest Liberal Democrat MP".
Speaking to the conference, Mr Gyimah said he did not take the decision to join the Lib Dems lightly and had started reconsidering his position in the Tories while Mrs May negotiated her deal with the EU.
But he said his concerns with the Conservative party now "go beyond Brexit".
"The values we have taken for granted for so long in our country... are under threat," Mr Gyimah said. "What Jo and I discussed are the Liberal Democrats have a unique opportunity to fight to defend those values and create a new force in British politics. That is why I find myself here today."
He said "the problem is not just on the Conservative side. When I look across the aisle, I also see on the Labour benches the same issue I have seen on the Conservative side, a doctrinaire, intolerant approach which means centrists are being squeezed out".
Mr Gyimah's move was welcomed by Lib Dem MPs.
Mr Umunna tweeted he was "absolutely delighted" and Layla Moran said: "Welcome... So delighted to have you on the team".
Chris White, a former government adviser, told the BBC it was "extremely disappointing" to see Mr Gyimah join the Lib Dems because he "stood on a manifesto pledge to deliver the referendum and here he is switching to a party which is manifestly not going to do that".
A bid by Mr Johnson for an autumn general election has so far been rejected by MPs who wanted to first make sure a bill designed to avoid a no-deal Brexit became law.
But since the bill, which seeks to force Mr Johnson to ask for a extension to the deadline, has been given Royal Assent, opposition MPs are preparing to start their general election campaigns.
As the Lib Dem conference opened, Ms Swinson said the party's anti-Brexit message should be "unequivocal" in a general election campaign.
She expressed her hopes that members would back her policy proposal of scrapping Brexit without another referendum.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has urged "swift clarification" on Brexit after the resignation of UK Prime Minister Theresa May.
He stressed the need to "maintain the smooth functioning of the EU", as the European Commission ruled out any change to Brexit policy.
Mrs May is stepping down after failing to get her Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament three times.
Mr Macron also joined EU leaders in paying tribute to Mrs May's "courage".
The Withdrawal Agreement was reached with the EU in November after arduous negotiations.
The European Commission made clear it would work with Theresa May's successor but that there would not be any changes to the Withdrawal Agreement.
"[EU Commission] President [Jean-Claude] Juncker followed Prime Minister May's announcement this morning without personal joy," said Commission spokesperson Mina Andreeva.
"The president very much liked and appreciated working with Prime Minister May and, as he has said before, Theresa May is a woman of courage for whom he has great respect.
"He will equally respect and establish working relations with any new prime minister, whoever they may be, without stopping his conversations with Prime Minister May. And our position on the Withdrawal Agreement and anything else has been set out. There is no change to that."
In an interview before Mrs May's resignation, Mr Juncker asked: "How could anybody else achieve what she couldn't?"
The UK's previous prime minister, David Cameron, clashed with Mr Juncker over the EU budget and other issues before arguing - unsuccessfully - to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum.
Reflecting on that vote, Mr Juncker told the German public broadcaster ARD: "If you tell people for 40 or 45 years 'we're in it, but not really in it', we're part-time Europeans and we don't like these full-time Europeans, then you should not be surprised if people follow simple slogans once they're asked to vote in a referendum."
He also accepted that the EU had "failed" by not adopting "the position that was necessary". "Abstention is not a position," he said.
A statement from the French president's office said: "The principles of the EU will continue to apply, with the priority on the smooth functioning of the EU, and this requires a rapid clarification.
"At a time of an important choice, votes of rejection that do not offer an alternative project will lead to an impasse."
In other EU reaction:
By Adam Fleming, BBC News, Brussels
The EU establishment, like everyone, marvelled at Theresa May's amazing ability to stay standing.
"If you're a lion tamer you're going to get bitten," said one diplomat this morning. They were grateful that she respected the rules of the negotiations and didn't rock the boat on other EU business.
EU leaders would bolster her position when things got tough - a photo-op here, some complimentary words there. But they weren't prepared to compromise on the big one - the backstop to prevent a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland - because they think it's already a compromise.
They think it took her too long to realise - or admit - that the UK's economy required something that looked like a customs union. And they were amazed at her regular misreading of her own party and parliament.
EU Brexit negotiators have been war-gaming potential replacements for weeks and the scenario that seems to have been considered most seriously is a Prime Minister Boris Johnson asking for changes to the backstop that cannot be granted, and then blaming the EU.
But there's been no formal discussion about what comes next. That will probably happen at a summit of leaders next week, supposedly about appointments to the EU's top jobs and now inevitably about Brexit.
Mr Juncker will be replaced by a new Commission chief - not yet chosen - in November. New leaders will be chosen for all the EU institutions after the 23-26 May European elections.
He belongs to the centre-right European People's Party, the bloc which won the last European elections in 2014.
He voiced hope that the UK would leave the EU by 31 October - the new deadline set by EU leaders. The UK did not meet the planned 29 March deadline as exit terms had not been ratified.
Mr Juncker denied that the UK Brexit vote was a personal defeat for him.
"Nobody listens to me in Britain anyway. They should, but they don't. There was nobody in Britain who confronted the lie with the incontrovertible truth," he said.

Boris Johnson spoke to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg about Brexit, borders and his personal behaviour during the Conservatives conference in Manchester.
Here is the full transcript of the interview.
Laura Kuenssberg: Prime Minister, in the last few weeks, you've lost major votes in the Commons, you've chucked some MPs out of your own party, the highest court in the land has found you broke the law and gave the wrong advice to the Queen. How do you think this is going?
Prime Minister: Well, I think that it's going about as well as could be, especially, if not slightly better.
LK: Really?
PM: Yeah. Because look, this was always going to be a very difficult time. What we've got, basically, is a situation in which the people voted for leaving the EU in the greatest expression of popular will in favour of any party or proposition in history. And, yes, there are many people in all sorts of positions, who don't think that was the right way to go. And I am tasked with getting it over the line, getting Brexit done by October 31. And I think we always knew that as we came up to that deadline, things would get choppy, but...
LK: You are blaming all of your woes on people who are trying to stop Brexit?
PM: No, I think it's just the just the predicament, is just the it's just the situation, that we're in as a country. And I think that things are actually much much better than they, than the political situation, might lead you to believe. Unemployment is at record lows. Foreign direct investment is at record highs. We're seeing this country at the cutting edge of innovation in everything from battery technology to bio science, we are doing fantastically well in so many ways. And if only we could all come together, get Brexit over the line, I think that fevers would cool, tempers would come down. And it would be a great thing.
LK: But you're suggesting that people ought to come together, when transparently, you have been trying to create this idea of them and us, you who want to get Brexit done, which you said every possible opportunity. And the people on the other side, which you've just suggested, are only trying to hold you up and stop Brexit. And that's transparent, you're trying to create a situation of them and us are you not?
PM: I think that the truth is, there's no way of getting Brexit done without, as it were, displeasing people who don't want Brexit to get done - no way of delivering Brexit, sort of 52% Brexit and 48% Remain, that's just logically impossible. And so that I think is, is the problem. But I think once we get it done, and once we can begin building a new partnership with our new friends, once we can start thinking about how we can do things differently, how we can interact with the rest of the world, how we can recover on our impetus, our mojos, as a global outward looking... I think things will will go really well for us. And they already are going very well for us.
LK: But as things stand, are you prime minister sitting there and saying that the last couple of months is anything like a normal situation?
PM: No, because obviously what the UK is going through is a big constitutional change. The extrication, after 45 years of our legal system, from the orbit of European law, which is you know, has become very, very pervasive. It's a very complicated thing to do. And the most complex thing is clearly trying to unravel our relationship with the EU customs union and the EU single market, and the empire of the EU law as it were.
LK: Let's talk about that. So let's be completely clear, under the proposals that you were about to take to Brussels, there would be extra checks on the island of Ireland, how and where?
PM: Well, I mean, if I made the the proposals are not yet made, I probably ought to make them to the EU...
LK: But you know there are suggestions of what is out there, which you deny. So how would you describe what you will put forward?
PM: What I can say is that, and I think this is crucial for everybody to understand, because it's just the limit of what a sovereign country can can do. If the EU is going to insist on customs checks as we come out as it as it is, then we will have to accept that reality. And there will have to be a system, for customs checks away from the border. Now, we think those checks can be absolutely minimal and non-intrusive and won't involve new infrastructure. But that is absolutely, Laura, that is where the argument is going to be. And that's where the negotiation will be will be tough
LK: To be really clear about that. It wouldn't be the EU insisting on checks happening somewhere. If we are in two different economic systems, Of course, there would have to be checks. And that seems to be, the idea of that seems to be toxic to a lot of people. So isn't this just you putting forward similar proposals to what have been suggested that been turned down so many times?
PM: Well, let's see where we get to. And as you know, we made some very constructive and far-reaching proposals...
LK: ... that you haven't published them?
PM: Well, well, we actually the I think that they're quite widely known to minimise the checks for agri-foods for cattle for food. So that stuff moving around the island of Ireland doesn't need to have any checks at all. And that's a huge volume of the north-south trade. Just to set this in context for you this argument, it's important to understand that trade north-south of the border, is dwarfed by trade east-west, i.e. from Northern Ireland to GB. So it would be wrong to, as it were, to create a series of custom to keep Northern Ireland in a customs union with the EU and to create new checks down the Irish Sea for customs....
LK: So you are ruling out checks in the Irish Sea, because that is something that has done the rounds as an idea every now and again.
PM: Well, there already are some checks, as you know,
LK: But extra new checks?
PM: That is epidemiological purposes. Insofar as we've made, I mean, we're really getting into the weeds now. But insofar as we've made it, far as we've made a big move on sanitary, which we have, then that will logically imply some more checks down the Irish Sea. But we think that's liveable with provided it's done in the right way.
LK: If there isn't a deal whose fault will it be?
PM: Well, I'm, you know, I don't want to get into a blame game. But I think that the UK has really moved a long, long way. And what I think we can do, is we can sort out the issue of the UK leaving the EU whole and entire. We can protect the Good Friday process. We can protect the peace process in, in, in Northern Ireland. We can ensure that there aren't checks at the border, no physical, no interruption of trade or movement of people. Absolutely not. And we can also protect the benefits that Ireland has got over the years from the EU single market.
LK: But given the scepticism and concern on the other side about what they've heard so far from your government repeatedly saying it does not go nearly far enough. You really believe that what you're about to put on the table could win the EU round? You do?
PM: Yes, I absolutely do. Yes. And I urge you, Laura to keep hope alive and not, to not, listen...
LK: This is not about people feeling hopeful. This is about whether or not the government can come up with a deal with the European Union, to protect the economy to protect people's jobs and livelihoods. This is not about telling people to cheer up, this couldn't be more serious.
PM: I know. But it's also a question of getting Brexit done by October 31. And doing it in a way that protects the unity and integrity of the United Kingdom. And we are entitled to protect our customs union, and we are entitled to exit as a sovereign state. And, and we can do it in such a way as to preserve the, as I said, all those benefits that Ireland has. So with great, with great respect to, to all those who are currently anxious about it, and particularly in in Ireland, we do think that our proposals are good and creative. But but I accept also, Laura, that, you know, there may be hard yards ahead.
LK: And if we end up, contrary to what you desire, still in the European Union after October 31, you said that the UK would be truculent, suggesting that somehow we would not be a co-operative friend and partner to the EU. What would you do, play rough?
PM: Well... (sighs) I... it goes without saying that the UK would be held against the will of its government and indeed against the will of the of the people of the UK who'd voted to leave. And I think that would be a very unhappy and unfortunate situation. I don't think that is where our EU friends and partners want us to be. So I'm hopeful that we'll get a deal. I'm sorry to sound hopeful. But I think I feel, I'm sorry, if you think that hope is not called for these circumstances. But I do think there is a good chance, gonna put it no higher than that, but a good chance of getting a deal. And we're going to work very hard to do that.
LK: Now you have also this week had to deal with allegations about your own behaviour in the past. And yesterday, you denied that you touched a women inappropriately at lunch, she said you did, is she lying?
PM: I don't want to minimise the importance of this issue or people's concerns about this kind of thing. But in this case, it is simply not true.
LK: So she is lying?
PM: Look, I'm not going to go into whatever when people make these kinds of, of allegations and always be taken very, very seriously. But in this case, it is not true.
LK: Do you remember the event in question?
PM: There is not much more I can say.
LK: Do you remember the event in question?
PM: There is not much more I can say. It is not true.
LK: Well, if there is, because also some people would think in this kind of situation, there should be some kind of investigation, questions should be asked. Should people try to find out what happened because we have completely a "he says, she says" situation here?
PM: I can tell you it is not true. And what I want to do is get on with delivering on what I think is the, I must say, important issue of our domestic agenda, getting not just getting Brexit done, but...
LK: But shouldn't this be cleared up somehow? I mean, you hold the highest political office in the land, this allegation has not been retracted. You yourself wrote almost a year ago, "to all those who worry if we might be a teensy bit unfair on the male sex, I say forget it, put a sock in it. We need that feminist rage." You wrote that these kinds of allegations should be taken seriously.
PM: They should be. But I'm just telling you, I'm just telling Laura, that there's not much more I can say about this issue. Since I've said it several times. But what I can say is that we are focused on delivering on our domestic agenda, I'm very proud of what we're doing on the living wage, which is a massive expansion of the living wage. Taking huge numbers of people out of low pay, effectively abolishing low pay over time and will take the living wage down to people who will receive it at 21...
LK: But do you worry about what female voters think of you?
PM: Yes, of course, Of course. And I think that these are important issues. But I can't really can't give you any more on that subject than what I've already said. Perhaps I could I could remind you that when I, when you ask about, about female voters, we are doing. When I was running in London, we had an administration that was very, very largely women-led and I was very proud of that. We have large numbers of women in the cabinet today. I think we're as many as that are that has ever been. Home secretary, business secretary and so on. And we're very, very, very proud of that. And when I was foreign secretary, my signature policy, most important thing we did was to campaign for 12 years of quality education for every girl in the world. That's a fantastic thing to...
LK: Finally... is the job harder than you thought it might be?
PM: It's a wonderful job. And I...
LK: Wasn't my question. Is it harder than you thought it might be?
PM: Well, I don't want to sound... I don't want to, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a wonderful job. It's a yes, it's a hard job. But I think that every day we are making progress. And I think we can get Brexit done. And I think we can get the country to... I know we can get Brexit done. I think we can get the country to focus on what we're trying to do for people who care about the NHS, for people who care about their kids' education for people who want to see the opportunity extended across this country through infrastructure, education and technology. I think this is going to be a fantastic government and we want to get on and deliver for the people of this country.
LK: Thank you very much.

 A number of obscure pieces of trade law have taken on near mythical status in the Brexit debate.
One of them is Article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt). - Article XXIV for the purists.
Supporters of a no-deal Brexit say it would allow the UK to continue to trade with the EU without tariffs (taxes on goods crossing borders) for up to 10 years, while the two sides negotiated a permanent future trade agreement.
Boris Johnson said in the BBC's leadership debate: "There will be no tariffs, there will be no quotas because what we want to do is to get a standstill in our current arrangements under Gatt 24, or whatever it happens to be, until such a time as we have negotiated the [free trade agreement]."
But Bank of England governor Mark Carney told BBC News: "The Gatt rules are clear... Gatt 24 applies if you have an agreement, not if you've decided not to have an agreement, or you have been unable to come to an agreement.
"We should be clear that not having an agreement with the European Union means that there are tariffs."
So what is this all about?
The key point is that you need a trade agreement in order to make use of Article 24, and the EU would be under no obligation to agree anything with the UK in the aftermath of a no-deal Brexit.
In other words, if the UK leaves the EU with no deal, and therefore no trade agreement, it will not be able to use Article 24. Instead it will fall back on the basic rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) - the building blocks of international trade.
The WTO has 164 members and each of them has a list of tariffs and quotas (limits on the amount of goods traded) that they apply to other countries.
In the event of no deal, the UK could choose to continue applying zero tariffs to goods being imported from the EU in order to minimise disruption to trade and prices.
But under rules set out in Article 1 of Gatt (which are commonly known as Most Favoured Nation (MFN) rules), it would have to offer the same terms to the rest of the world.
So what is the problem with that? If no-one had to pay anything to get goods into the UK, it would certainly mean cheaper imports. But it would also put a lot of British companies, that were unable to compete with cheap imports, out of business.
It is also worth remembering that there would be no obligation on other countries to offer the UK the same tariff-free access in return.
There are of course ways to bypass MFN rules and do specific deals - and this is where Article 24 comes in.
It allows countries or trade blocs to agree lower (or zero) tariff rates with other countries or blocs, if they set up a customs union or a free trade area, or if they have an interim agreement - which acts as a stepping stone to a permanent agreement in the future.
That is how international trade works, and the WTO's own database shows that 311 free trade agreements have been notified under Article 24.
This is outlined in an explainer from the pro-Brexit group Lawyers for Britain. But they are clear that there does need to be an agreement - it is not automatic.
The UK leaving the EU with no deal suggests there would be… well, no deal.
Or to put it in the words of Peter Ungphakorn, a former WTO secretariat official: "No deal means there is no agreement with the EU and therefore Gatt Article 24 doesn't apply."
And, to state the obvious, to have a deal, you need both sides to agree - the UK cannot invoke Article 24 on its own.
Supporters of a no-deal Brexit are betting that the EU would be keen to do a quick, basic trade deal if the UK leaves without any withdrawal agreement. But that is not what the EU itself is saying.
The EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said no future trade talks can begin until agreement is reached on three key issues: citizens' rights, the Irish border and the UK's financial obligations.
And EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom has said that the idea Article 24 could be used to avoid tariffs without an agreement was "completely wrong".
"They will have to trade with us and other countries, until there are trade agreements - and we hope that will be a trade agreement - on the 'most favoured nation' basis. And that will mean new tariffs," she said.
The other broad point to consider is that Article 24 applies to the trade in goods only. It has no effect on the trade in services, or on other important issues such as regulations and standards.
It has been applied to "interim agreements" only on rare occasions since the WTO was established in 1995 and never to anything approaching the scale of the UK-EU trade relationship.
Anyone looking for more detail on Article 24 could do a lot worse than read this explanatory piece from the House of Commons Library.
It even quotes Theresa May saying: "The question of Gatt 24 is perhaps not quite as simple as some may have understood it to be."
But that may not stop it being cited as a solution on a regular basis.
This piece was first published on 13 March 2019. It has been updated to reflect comments about the use of Article 24.
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Brexit is a major issue at the UK general election - here's what we know about where the main parties across the UK stand.
In short: Prime Minister Theresa May was against Brexit before the EU referendum but now says there can be no turning back and that "Brexit means Brexit". The reason she gave for calling a general election was to strengthen her hand in negotiations with the EU.
How the party sees Brexit: The Conservatives' priorities were set out in a 12 point plan published in January and the letter formally invoking Brexit in March.
Key elements include:
What we don't know: The Conservatives have not said how they will control migration from the EU after Brexit. They have also not committed to the size of any separation payment they would accept, beyond saying the UK would meet its international obligations.
They have not specified which matters returning from Brussels will be handed to devolved administrations and which will be kept at Westminster.
Negotiating style: Mrs May has talked tough towards the EU in recent weeks, claiming some key figures were trying to interfere in the general election and promising to be a "bloody difficult woman" during negotiations.
Where the MPs stand: More Tory MPs backed Remain than Leave in last year's referendum - but they now strongly support the UK leaving - in February, only one voted against the government beginning Brexit by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
Risks and rewards: Theresa May would use an election victory to say the country is uniting around her approach to Brexit, and has moved on from the divisions of the referendum campaign. But her uncompromising approach to leaving could upset some of the 48% who wanted to stay in, with the Lib Dems hoping to capitalise in areas - like London's Richmond Park in last year's by-election - that backed Remain.
In short: The Labour Party campaigned against Brexit in the referendum but now says the result must be honoured, and is aiming for a "close new relationship with the EU" with workers' rights protected.
How the party sees Brexit: Labour has set out several demands and tests it says Brexit must meet:
What we don't know: Like the Conservatives, Labour has yet to spell out how it will manage migration after Brexit, and has not been drawn on the size of "divorce bill" it would be willing to pay.
Negotiating style: Jeremy Corbyn says he is aiming for "sensible and serious negotiations" and will not be "threatening Europe".
Where the MPs stand: The vast majority of Labour MPs backed Remain ahead of the referendum - but most followed party orders to allow Article 50 to be invoked in February's vote.
Risks and rewards: Labour is hoping its acceptance of the result will fend off attacks from the Tories and UKIP in Leave-backing areas - including Stoke Central where it won February's by-election. But there are divisions among MPs on the best way forward, and Labour faces the challenge of having to appeal to both sides of a polarising debate.
In short: The Liberal Democrats are strongly pro-EU, and have promised to stop what they call a "disastrous hard Brexit".
How they see Brexit: Central to the Lib Dems' offer is another referendum - this time on the terms of the final Brexit deal - in which the party would campaign to stay in the EU.
The Lib Dems also say they will fight with "every fibre of their being" to protect existing aspects of EU membership, such as the single market, customs union and the free movement of people.
They would guarantee EU citizens' rights and remain in Europe-wide schemes like Erasmus.
Where the MPs stand: All of the Lib Dem MPs backed staying in the EU, and seven out of nine opposed triggering Article 50, with two abstaining.
Risks and rewards: The Lib Dems are hoping their pro-EU pitch will help them gather voters in pro-Remain areas, as when they captured Richmond Park in London in December's by-election. But according to estimates based on the referendum results, two of their sitting MPs represent areas that backed Leave last June - which might make the party's second referendum policy a tough sell on the doorstep.
In short: SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon wants Scotland to have a special status after Brexit and for a second independence referendum to take place before the UK leaves.
How they see Brexit: The SNP's manifesto says it will demand a place for the Scottish government at the Brexit negotiating table.
It says it will fight to keep Scotland in the EU single market. The SNP says it will also press the UK government to guarantee the status of NHS workers from mainland Europe, and oppose any attempt to treat the fishing industry as a "bargaining chip".
Once negotiations are complete, and before the UK has left, the SNP wants a referendum on Scottish independence to take place.
Where the MPs stand: The SNP's 54 MPs voted en masse against triggering Article 50 and are expected to maintain their vocal opposition to Brexit in the next Parliament.
Risks and rewards: The SNP will hope to harness Scotland's support for remaining in the EU (it voted Remain by 62% to 38%). But a significant minority of its supporters are thought to have backed Leave - while the Tories are said to be targeting the Moray seat of SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson, where Remain only narrowly saw off the Leave campaign in the EU referendum.
In short: UKIP has long campaigned to leave the EU - and having finished on the winning side in the referendum, is now styling itself as the "guard dog of Brexit".
How they see Brexit: The party has set six "key tests" for Brexit: Supremacy of Parliament, full control of migration, a "maritime exclusive economic zone" around the UK's coastline, a seat on the World Trade Organisation, no "divorce" payment to the EU and for Brexit to be "done and dusted" by the end of 2019.
Green Party of England and Wales joint leader Caroline Lucas has called for a second EU referendum on the Brexit deal reached with Brussels, and the Greens have promised "full opposition" to what they call "extreme Brexit".
Plaid Cymru, which campaigned to stay in the EU, says it accepts that the people of Wales voted to leave, but says single market membership should be preserved to protect Welsh jobs.
The DUP campaigned in favour of leaving the EU - and, in its manifesto for this year's Assembly elections, said it wanted to see a "positive" relationship with the rest of Europe, involving "mutual access to our markets to pursue common interests".
Having campaigned to stay in the EU, the SDLP's MPs have opposed the invoking of Article 50, saying it is being done "against the will of people in Northern Ireland", where most people voted to Remain in the EU.
Before the referendum, the Ulster Unionist party said that on balance, it was better for Northern Ireland to stay in the EU - although not all its members agreed. It says it would honour the referendum result, and wants "unfettered" access to the single market and no hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
Sinn Fein has accused the Conservative government of "seeking to impose Brexit on Ireland". It wants Northern Ireland to have a "designated special status" inside the EU.

Boris Johnson has rejected the suggestion from Nigel Farage and Donald Trump that he should work with the Brexit Party during the election.
The Tory leader told the BBC he was "always grateful for advice" but he would not enter into election pacts.
His comments come after the US president said Mr Farage and Mr Johnson would be "an unstoppable force".
Downing Street sources say there are no circumstances in which the Tories would work with the Brexit Party.
In an interview with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, the prime minister said the "difficulty" of doing deals with "any other party" was that it "simply risks putting Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10".
"The problem with that is that his [Mr Corbyn's] plan for Brexit is basically yet more dither and delay," Mr Johnson said.
Mr Johnson also said there was "no question of negotiating on the NHS" as part of any future trade deal with the US, but he did not rule out expanding the amount of private provision in the health service in the future.
But Labour's shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said the public "can't trust the Tories on the NHS", saying they would "increase privatisation even further and do a deal with Donald Trump".
When pushed on whether he would rule out a deal with Mr Farage, Mr Johnson replied: "I want to be very, very clear that voting for any other party than this government, this Conservative government… is basically tantamount to putting Jeremy Corbyn in."
The UK is going to the polls on 12 December following a further delay to the UK's departure from the EU, to 31 January 2020.
The BBC will be talking to other party leaders during the course of the campaign.
US president Donald Trump told Nigel Farage's LBC show on Thursday that the Brexit Party leader should team up with Mr Johnson to do "something terrific" and he also criticised the prime minister's EU withdrawal agreement.
Meanwhile, Mr Farage has called on the prime minister to drop his Brexit deal, unite in a "Leave alliance" or face a Brexit Party candidate in every seat in the election.
Mr Johnson said there were "lots of reasons" why he thought a Labour government would be a "disaster".
He said he Labour government would lead to a renegotiation with Brussels on a Brexit deal, then another referendum.
"Why go through that nightmare again?" he said.
The prime minister also suggested that the US president was wrong to believe a trade deal would be impossible with the UK after Brexit.
Mr Johnson said his "proper Brexit" deal "enables us to do proper all-singing, all-dancing free-trade deals".
"It delivers exactly what we wanted, what I wanted, when I campaigned in 2016 to come out the European Union," Mr Johnson said.
When asked about the criticism from Mr Trump, Mr Johnson said: "I am always grateful for advice from wherever it comes and we have great relations as you know with the US and many many other countries.
"But on the technicalities of the deal anybody who looks at it can see that the UK has full control."
The prime minister is never short of a word or two, never short of a colourful phrase or a metaphor.
When we sat down this afternoon there was no suggestion of him being the Hulk, but Remain-tending MPs were accused of "rope-a-doping" the government, planning eventually to batter the prime minister and his Brexit deal into submission until he would have had to give up.
But in Downing Street there is a serious awareness that trademark Johnson verbal gymnastics are no guarantee of success at the ballot box in six weeks' time, no guarantee at all.
That's not just because there are even friends, like Donald Trump, and of course foes, like Jeremy Corbyn, whose words and actions will hamper his attempt to secure a majority to call his own.
But also because this is a snap election, not a routine poll, and the public is hardly in a forgiving mood of our politicians right now.
Mr Johnson said he hoped the government could get Brexit "over the line" by the middle of January if he won a majority, claiming the current Parliament would never have passed his deal.
He said he'd had "no choice" but to call a general election, saying: "Nobody wants an election but we've got to do it now.
"This is a Parliament that is basically full of MPs who voted Remain.
"They voted Remain and they will continue to block Brexit if they're given the chance - we need a new mandate, we need to refresh our Parliament."
Mr Johnson said his government was determined to increase taxpayer funding of the NHS but said: "Of course there are dentists and optometrists and so on who are providers to the NHS, of course, that's how it works," he said.
"But... I believe passionately in an NHS free at the point of use for everybody in this country."
Labour's Mr Ashworth said: "Forced NHS privatisation has doubled under the Conservatives and Boris Johnson has refused to rule out expanding this further.
"You can't trust the Tories on the NHS. They will increase privatisation even further and do a deal with Donald Trump that will see as much as £500m more a week sent to US corporations."

Donald Trump has criticised Boris Johnson's Brexit deal with the EU, saying it restricts the US's ability to do future trade with the UK.
Speaking to LBC, he said that, without the deal, the two countries could "do many times the numbers" than now.
The US president also took a swipe at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, saying he would be "so bad" as prime minister.
Mr Corbyn accused him of "trying to interfere" in the UK general election to boost "his friend Boris Johnson".
The UK is officially going to the polls on 12 December after the early election bill became law when it was given royal assent on Thursday.
It follows a further delay to the UK's departure from the EU, to 31 January 2020.
In August, Mr Trump promised a "very big trade deal" with the UK and predicted that leaving the EU would be like losing "an anchor round the ankle".
But speaking to friend and supporter Nigel Farage on LBC, Mr Trump was critical of the withdrawal agreement Mr Johnson recently reached with EU leaders.
Mr Trump told LBC: "We want to do trade with UK and they want to do trade with us.
"To be honest with you... this deal... under certain aspects of the (Brexit) deal... you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't trade.
"We can't make a trade deal with the UK because I think we can do many times the numbers that we're doing right now and certainly much bigger numbers than you are doing under the European Union."
by Jessica Parker, BBC political correspondent
Diplomatic norms dictate that leaders don't wade into the electoral events of other countries.
But of course this isn't the first time that an American president has decided to cross that particular transatlantic channel.
During the 2016 referendum, Barack Obama said that Brexit would put the UK at the "back of the queue" for trade deals.
In June, Donald Trump offered his views on the Conservative leadership contest.
Now, in this fairly wide-ranging discussion, he's talked about both Boris Johnson's Brexit deal and Jeremy Corbyn's suitability for the role of PM.
But the Labour leader doesn't appear too put out - even retweeting the relevant part of the interview.
The truth is that Mr Corbyn is more than OK with putting some distance between himself and Donald Trump; the US President isn't exactly a poster boy for socialism.
And while his comments on the implications of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal on US-UK trade may cause Downing Street some discomfort, some mystery surrounds exactly where Mr Trump believes difficulties may arise as he didn't elaborate.
The prime minister aims to get his deal through Parliament if he wins the general election.
However, Mr Trump also praised Mr Johnson as "the exact right guy for the times".
In response, a Downing Street spokesman said Mr Johnson's Brexit deal with the EU "ensures that we take back control of our laws, trade, borders and money".
"Under this new deal, the whole of the UK will leave the EU customs union, which means we can strike our own free trade deals around the world from which every part of the UK will benefit."
Mr Trump also said Mr Farage, who leads the Brexit Party and is planning to stand in the general election, and Mr Johnson should "get together" to create "an unstoppable force" in UK politics.
The president, who has previously expressed his backing for Brexit, added: "And Corbyn would be so bad for your country, so bad. He'd take you in such a bad way. He'd take you into such bad places.
"But your country has tremendous potential. It's a great country."
Mr Corbyn and Mr Johnson are battling it out for the keys to 10 Downing Street, with the Conservative leader promising to get the UK out of the EU as soon as possible, and the Labour leader promising another referendum.
Kicking off Labour's general election campaign, Mr Corbyn earlier warned a post-Brexit trade deal with Mr Trump's administration would give US companies greater access to the NHS, and allow them to profit from it at UK taxpayers' expense.
The prime minister's planned agreement, he said, would "mean yet more NHS money taken away from patients and handed to shareholders."
However, Mr Trump dismissed the Labour leader's claim, saying: "Not at all. We wouldn't even be involved in that, no.
"It's not for us to have anything to do with your health care system. No, we're just talking about trade."
The UK government has said that, under any future trade deal with the US, it wants protections for the NHS.
Elsewhere, Mr Johnson blamed Mr Corbyn for the delay to Brexit.
He said he was "incredibly frustrated" that the 31 October deadline had to be extended, but a Conservative election win would remove the "logjam".
Both leaders, and those of other parties, are beginning six weeks of campaigning.
It comes as John Bercow's 10-year reign as Speaker of the House of Commons came to an end.
He presided over business in the chamber for the final time before his successor is chosen on Monday.

Nigel Farage has called on Boris Johnson to drop his Brexit deal or face his party's candidates in every seat.
Speaking at the Brexit Party's election campaign launch, he called on the PM to "build a Leave alliance" and seek a free trade agreement with the EU.
If Mr Johnson refuses, Mr Farage said he already had 500 candidates he could field against the Tories in seats across England, Scotland and Wales.
The Conservatives have consistently ruled out a formal pact with the party.
A Tory source told the BBC: "A vote for Farage risks letting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street via the back door. It will not get Brexit done and it will create another gridlocked Parliament that doesn't work."
It comes after President Donald Trump said Mr Farage and Boris Johnson should team up as "an unstoppable force".
Recent opinion polls have shown the Conservatives with a double-digit lead over Labour.
Polling expert Sir John Curtice said Boris Johnson had received a boost after he negotiated a deal with the EU and brought the deal back to Parliament before 31 October deadline.
However, MPs turned down his plan to pass the deal in three days, leading to a three month extension to the deadline - something vocal Brexiteers, including Mr Farage, have criticised the PM for.
Having not got Brexit through by Halloween, some Tories fear that Mr Farage's candidates could split the pro-Brexit vote and prevent their party from winning a majority in 12 December poll.
Mr Farage used the launch to condemn the PM's deal, urging him to "drop [it] because it is not Brexit".
Instead, Mr Farage urged him to pursue a free trade agreement with the EU - similar to the deal the bloc has with Canada - and to impose a new deadline of 1 July 2020 to get it signed off.
If an agreement was not done by then, the UK should leave the EU without a deal and move to World Trade Organisation trading rules.
"I would view that as totally reasonable," he said. "That really would be Brexit."
But Mr Farage said if Mr Johnson did not pursue the route, the Brexit Party would contest every seat in the country - with 500 candidates ready to sign the forms to stand on Monday.
"The Brexit Party would be the only party standing at these elections that actually represents Brexit," he said.
But Tory Brexiteer Mark Francois said Mr Farage's pitch for an alliance had "screwed it up".
"If you genuinely want to work with another party, you don't go on live national television and call them liars," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One.
He said the PM's agreement with the EU was not a "perfect deal", adding: "We are not in Valhalla here. But the deal takes us out of the European Union.
"Nigel is a very talented politician but anyone who works with him will tell you he is his own worst enemy and his ego has got the better of him."
Nigel Farage has, in effect, given Boris Johnson an ultimatum - abandon your central Brexit policy or the Brexit Party will challenge your deal at every opportunity across the country.
With the prime minister highly likely to refuse, it seems Mr Farage will have to live up to his promise of fielding 500 or more candidates in this election by Monday - and his claim that he has the resources to do so.
That's a tall order for a party that only launched in April.
He's no doubt buoyed by the Brexit Party's success in the European elections earlier this year.
But in the past, when at the helm of UKIP, Mr Farage has struggled to turn popular support into Westminster seats.
He has been targeting Labour leave areas in Wales, the Midlands and the North of England - the very seats Mr Johnson has in his sights.
But the risk for both parties is by splitting the Leave vote they give Jeremy Corbyn an unintended boost.
Mr Farage also attacked Labour for a "complete and utter betrayal on Brexit" - and said his party would target Labour seats in the Midlands and North of England.
He said Labour's plan to renegotiate a deal then put it to a referendum was offering a choice of "remain or effectively remain".
Mr Farage said there were five million Labour voters who had supported Leave in the 2016 EU referendum - although that is likely to be an overestimate - meaning his party "posed a very major problem" for Jeremy Corbyn.
"So many Labour Leave seats are represented by Remain members of Parliament," he said. "We view those constituencies around the country among our top targets."
He ridiculed the reported Conservative plan to target "Workington man" - Leave-supporting traditional Labour voters in northern towns - saying Tories needed to get out of London more.
Nigel Farage claimed in his speech that when UKIP did well under his leadership, it was doing more damage to Labour than the Conservatives.
Yet, he seems to think the threat of standing everywhere is going to have an impact on the Tories' Brexit stance by making them afraid they are going to lose out.
At the end of the day, what Nigel Farage is promising is to fight this election across the piece and on a stance which the Brexit Party has been very clear about for a while.
The interesting question there is how successful he is going to be persuading the Leave voters of this argument.
Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party have a lead as they have been gradually squeezing the Brexit Party vote, with Leave voters coming to them.
Relatively few Leave voters seem to blame Mr Johnson for the fact that he failed to meet the 31 October deadline.
But on the other hand, it is also clear from the polling there is a substantial body of Leave voters who would prefer to exit without a deal rather than supporting the PM's plan.
So, you can see how Mr Farage may be able to push some people back in his direction.
On the other side of the Brexit debate, Remain-supporting parties have been negotiating electoral pacts in certain constituencies.
The potential agreements would see the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru stand aside for each other to ensure the election of as many MPs who back a second Brexit referendum as possible.
Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley said it was "no secret" that the his party was "talking to the Lib Dems and Plaid" but "nothing has been finalised".
Elsewhere on the election trail:

At first glance, Labour's campaign launch appeared like a replay of its 2017 election launch.
Back then, Jeremy Corbyn attacked vested interests - and pledged that his party would be battling for the many not the few.
Businessman Mike Ashley has had the honour - if that's the word - of featuring in Labour's rogues' gallery of "bad bosses" in both the 2017 general election campaign launch and again today.
But the tone, if anything, is more strident now.
Channelling the left-wing folk singer Pete Seeger, the Labour leader repeatedly - and rhetorically - asked his audience whose side they were on.
He made it clear his party was against "dodgy landlords", big polluters, tax dodgers, rich media magnates.
It looks like this will be something of an insurrectionary campaign.
Partly, this is to inoculate the party against the Conservative charge that it is siding with the political class against the people on Brexit - causing "dither and delay".
So Jeremy Corbyn is trying to get his retaliation in first - by arguing it is Boris Johnson and Tories' financial backers who are really part of a privileged elite.
But Labour's tone is a form of attack as well as defence.
As in 2017, Labour is aiming to win over younger voters and those who rarely vote - and who need to be convinced that politics can make a difference.
Hence the clear blue - or red - water between Labour and their opponents.
And it's part of a wider strategy to try to appeal to potential Labour voters beyond the Brexit debate.
Jeremy Corbyn for some time has argued that while working class voters may be divided on the EU, they can be united in support of better working conditions, fairer taxes, and more investment in public services.
The strategy is to try almost to divorce Brexit from the other issues, arguing that can be settled further down the line in a referendum with a "credible" Leave option and Remain on the ballot.
In Leave areas - where Labour is seriously worried about suffering losses - the hope is that however much the party's voters or ex-voters want Brexit done, they will prioritise other issues directly affecting their lives.
So, Labour strategists believe it is essential on the wider non Brexit agenda to have as distinctive a message as possible.
Now, some Labour MPs argue that - with circumstances rather different now than in 2017 -  Labour could have played this election differently.
With an exodus of former Remainers from the Conservative ranks, technically the party could have blurred its more radical edge - don't forget, in 2017, the leadership claimed their manifesto's policies were in the tradition of mainstream European social democracy - and made a pitch for the centre ground,
But that is unlikely to have passed the authenticity test with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm.
And some in Labour's ranks have been saying privately that the uncompromising messaging and the forthcoming radical manifesto are designed to shore up, rather than greatly expand, the Labour contingent in Parliament.
After all, the campaign launch was in Battersea - a marginal they hope to hold, rather than a seat they aspire to win.
Policies that will motivate the party's foot soldiers will help in the defence of some seats won by very slim majorities last time round.
And there are sophisticated methods being deployed by the left-wing group Momentum to move activists around to where they are most needed.
There are, of course, different measures of what winning looks like.
For Boris Johnson an overall majority is essential.
If Labour, though, can become not outright winners but the largest party in a hung Parliament, it could very likely form a minority government with tacit support from the SNP and, possibly, the Liberal Democrats in order to deliver a new EU referendum.
But, of course, Jeremy Corbyn insists he is fighting to win and that most opinion polls are probably as misleading now as they were two and a half years ago.
And that even more now than then, middle as well as working-class voters do not feel, in their day-to-day lives, that austerity is over - whatever spending pledges are being made by the prime minister.
So the potential reservoir of support could be greater than the current state of the polls suggest.
But some challenges lie ahead for Labour - including how far the Brexit issue really can be contained within a "cordon sanitaire".
And there remains a question - whatever the rhetoric - about just how radical Labour will be.
Will a conference policy on abolishing private schools, and another on extending the free movement, really make it in to the manifesto?
This is an election many Labour MPs didn't appear to want, with widespread abstentions in Tuesday evening's vote.
But some of those closest to Jeremy Corbyn were champing at the bit for an election.
They believe if Labour are currently being seen as also-rans, opponents will become complacent and in the end - however radical the party's message - progressive centre-left voters will be forced to back them if they want to stop Boris Johnson.
In this election, though, there is no such thing as a sure thing.

Nigel Farage says there needs to be "some kind of alliance" between the Tories and the Brexit Party for the upcoming election.
Reports have suggested Mr Farage's party would stand down hundreds of election candidates for December's poll to stop a split in the pro-Brexit vote.
The Conservatives have consistently ruled out a formal pact with the party.
It comes after President Donald Trump said Mr Farage and Boris Johnson should team up as "an unstoppable force".
The Brexit Party's launch for its official election campaign has just begun and Mr Farage is expected to announce the party's strategy.
Chairman of the party, Richard Tice, said: "We have a major role to play in the outcome of this general election."
The Brexit Party's MEP for the North West of England, Claire Fox, said she was "really excited by this election because voters can take centre stage again".
In August, Mr Farage tweeted the party had "635 men and women from all walks of life who are prepared to fight a general election".
And in September, the party issued a list of 409 candidates standing in England, Scotland and Wales.
Mr Farage has been critical of Mr Johnson's failure to deliver on his promise that the UK would leave the EU on 31 October.
But earlier this week, the Telegraph reported the Brexit Party was considering removing candidates to help the Conservatives win a majority of seats in 12 December's election to ensure the UK leaves the EU.
Instead, it said, they would focus their energies on Labour-held seats which voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum.
Mr Farage called the reports "idle speculation".
But speaking about his party's launch on Friday morning, he told LBC radio: "Most of what I will be saying will be about Boris' deal and the need, in my view, for some kind of alliance."
He refused to comment on whether the Brexit Party would be fielding "20 or 200 candidates".
On the other side of the Brexit debate, Remain-supporting parties have been negotiating electoral pacts in certain constituencies.
The potential agreements would see the Liberal Democrats, Greens and Plaid Cymru stand aside for each other to ensure the election of as many MPs who back a second Brexit referendum as possible.
Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley said it was "no secret" that the his party was "talking to the Lib Dems and Plaid" but "nothing has been finalised".

Nigel Farage has said he will not be standing as a candidate in the general election on 12 December.
The Brexit Party leader told the BBC's Andrew Marr he had thought "very hard" but had decided he could "serve the cause better" by supporting his party's 600 candidates "across the UK".
"I don't want to be in politics for the rest of my life," he said.
Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Farage's decision was "a bit weird" given the Brexit Party hopes to stand in most places.
The Labour leader said: "It's obviously his decision. It's a bit weird to lead a political party that is apparently contesting all or most of the seats up in the election and he himself is not offering himself for election."
Mr Farage, who has stood unsuccessfully for Parliament seven times and currently sits in the European Parliament, also also criticised the PM's Brexit deal..
The 55-year-old told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show the deal agreed earlier this month was "virtually worse that being in the EU".
"If Boris Johnson was going for a genuine Brexit, we wouldn't need to fight against him in this election," he said.
On Friday, the prime minister rejected an alliance with Mr Farage's Brexit Party, telling BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg doing deals with "any other party... simply risks putting Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10".
Mr Farage had called on the prime minister to drop his Brexit deal, unite in a "Leave alliance" or face a Brexit Party candidate in every seat in the election.
He told the Marr show: "I always thought that to win an election, get a big majority so we can get a proper Brexit, a coming-together would be the objective.
"I still hope and pray it happens but it doesn't look like it will."
Mr Johnson maintains that the only way out of the EU is to "go with the deal we've got".
The prime minister told Sophy Ridge on Sky that he was "deeply, deeply disappointed" to miss the 31 October deadline to secure Brexit, calling it "a matter of deep regret".
The PM had previously said he would rather "die in a ditch" than ask the EU to delay Brexit beyond Halloween.
Mr Johnson told the programme that he was sorry, and took responsibility, for missing the date, but accused Parliament of failing to implement his deal.
He also said Donald Trump was "patently in error" when the US president warned the government's Brexit deal would hamper a UK-US trade deal.
Mr Farage said Mr Johnson's deal "kills off any chance of genuine independence".
"If Boris is determined to stick to this new EU treaty, then that is not Brexit," he said.
By political correspondent Jessica Parker
Political opponents of Nigel Farage will accuse him of running scared after he said he would not stand as a candidate in December's poll.
They will suggest he's not going to run because he thinks he's not going to win.
But the flip side is that rather than concentrating on one constituency where he personally might try to win, Mr Farage is making it clear he's going to try to make Boris Johnson's life pretty difficult.
That's if this so-called Leave alliance doesn't happen - and it doesn't look like it will.
The Brexit Party leader has made it clear he has no interest in getting on board with Mr Johnson's deal at all.
It's likely Mr Farage will spend a lot of the campaign really criticising it, whereas the Tory party leader will say he's got an oven-ready deal to present and get through Parliament within weeks.
Treasury minister Rishi Sunak hit back at the criticism of the deal, telling the Andrew Marr show: "I campaigned for Leave, I spent a lot of time talking to my constituents and others across the North East and in Yorkshire - what do they want from Brexit?
"They want to end free movement and replace it with a points system, they want to end the fact that money keeps going to the EU year after year, they want to make sure we're in control of our laws, and also they want us to have an independent trade policy. These are all things the prime minister's deal delivers.
"What I would say to Nigel Farage is, sometimes in politics, as in life, you've got to take yes for an answer."
Also appearing on the programme, shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggested that a Labour government would seek to end privatised contracts in the NHS.
He said that, as the contracts ran out, the work should be brought in-house, and that the public didn't want money "being poured into the pockets of profiteers".
Pushed on whether an incoming Labour government would see the eradication of all privatisation in the NHS, Mr McDonnell said "we'll see how those contracts run out."
The Conservatives have strongly denied that the NHS is "up for sale".
Asked if Labour would scrap the expansion of Heathrow airport, Mr McDonnell said the party would make the decision based on a set of criteria covering the environmental, economic and social impact of the project.
"On the current criteria, we've said very clearly, Heathrow expansion doesn't qualify."
And on taxes, he said Labour would increase income tax for the top 5% of earners and raise corporation tax in order to pay for "investments in schools and training".

The general election could be "a moment for seismic change", when "a new and different politics" emerges, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson has said.
In a speech at the party's campaign launch, she said she could do "a better job" than either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.
In response, the Conservatives said a vote for the Lib Dems "risks putting" Mr Corbyn into Downing Street.
The UK will go to the polls on 12 December.
Elsewhere in the election campaign:
The political parties are ramping up their campaigning, ahead of the official start to the five-week election period at just after midnight on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the Lib Dems said they would take legal action against ITV over its plans for a head-to-head election debate including only Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, saying the decision to exclude its leader was "outrageous".
The party's lawyers have written to the broadcaster to give it "the opportunity to correct this serious mistake".
ITV has said it intends to offer viewers balanced election coverage.
Speaking in London, Ms Swinson said: "Our country needs us to be more ambitious right now - and we are rising to that challenge.
"It is not about the red team or the blue team, because on this issue they merge into one - both Labour and the Conservatives want to negotiate and deliver Brexit.
"I never thought that I would stand here and say that I'm a candidate to be prime minister, but when I look at Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, I am absolutely certain I could do a better job than either of them."
Ms Swinson said Mr Johnson had "lied to the Queen, lied to Parliament and lied to the country" and "was not fit to to be prime minister".
And she accused the Labour leader of failing to "give a straight answer on the biggest issues facing this country".
The Lib Dems currently have 20 MPs - out of a possible 650 - and they are especially hopeful of gaining seats in London and south-west England, but they would need a dramatic shift in the electoral landscape if they were to win a majority.
However, responding to questions from journalists, Ms Swinson said "stranger things have happened" and pointed to the SNP's success in the 2015 general election.
By chief political correspondent Vicki Young
Jo Swinson says she wants to be prime minister - but how credible is that?
The Lib Dems are not at the moment even the third largest party in the UK.
Ms Swinson cites the example of the SNP surge in 2015, when the party won almost every seat in Scotland - and she personally lost her seat to the SNP candidate.
She argues that politics is volatile, it is in flux, and things have changed because of Brexit - people are voting for very different reasons. Therefore, there is no reason why the party can't be incredibly ambitious, she argues.
But the problem for the Liberal Democrats is that the way their votes are distributed around the country, it is much harder for them to win seats than for other parties.
In 2010, they won seven million votes but got fewer than 60 seats.
The Lib Dem leader was introduced by one of the party's newer MPs, Luciana Berger, who used to be in the Labour Party but quit over the issue of anti-Semitism - something Ms Swinson accused Mr Corbyn of failing to "root out".
Asked whether her party could support a Labour government in the event of a hung Parliament, Ms Swinson said: "I am absolutely, categorically ruling out Lib Dem votes putting Jeremy Corbyn in No 10."
The Lib Dem leader said her party was "the only party standing up to stop Brexit and build a brighter future for the UK".
She argued that stopping Brexit would deliver a £50bn "Remain bonus" for public services over the next five years
The Liberal Democrats have pledged to cancel Brexit altogether if they win power at the next general election.
If they do not win a majority at the election they would support another referendum.
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, told the BBC many Remain supporters were "uncomfortable" with the Lib Dems' plan to effectively "rub out" the 2016 referendum result and believed EU membership had to be "argued for and won" in another public vote.
The party said the £50bn figure - the amount that it has calculated will be saved over the next five years by staying in the EU - is based on the UK economy being 1.9% larger in 2024-25.
It reflects the extra tax income over the next five years and is based on a 0.4% average annual boost to GDP if the UK stays in the EU.
Deputy leader Sir Ed Davey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the Lib Dems "actually think these are quite cautious figures", adding that all the independent forecasters "were clear that there will be a big boost if we stay".
Paul Johnson, from the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, said it was a reasonable calculation in line with their own forecasts, adding: "We could expect the economy to be bigger if we were to remain and this assumes a relatively modest effect if anything, although obviously subject to a huge amount of uncertainty".
BBC Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris said the vast majority of forecasts do expect the economy would be bigger if the UK were to stay in the EU.
But he said the size of that "bonus" cannot be predicted with any certainty, and £50bn was not a hugely significant amount in terms of overall government expenditure.

Ruth Davidson and Michael Gove have teamed up to call for the UK to leave the common fisheries policy (CFP) when Britain leaves the European Union.
The Scottish Conservative leader and UK environment secretary say it is "vital" that the country regains control over its own fisheries management.
It came as Scottish fishermen demanded the UK operated as a "fully-functioning coastal state" after leaving the EU.
The SNP warned the future of Scotland's fishing communities was "at risk".
Ministers in London could "trade away our valuable fishing rights" in Brexit negotiations to protect other sectors, Scotland's fisheries secretary Fergus Ewing added.
The UK government wants to agree reciprocal access to fishing waters with the EU.
In a joint statement, Ms Davidson and Mr Gove say: "We believe it is vital that we regain control over our own fisheries management.
"We want to use the opportunity of Brexit to secure a sustainable marine environment for the next generation.
"As proud Scots, we feel a particular debt to fishing communities who are looking to government to deliver a better deal for them. We agree we must deliver a fairer allocation for the British fleet in our own waters.
"As we leave the EU, we want the UK to become an independent coastal state, negotiating access annually with our neighbours. And during the implementation period we will ensure that British fishermen's interests are properly safeguarded."
The politicians were on opposing sides in the EU referendum campaign in 2016, but say they are united in their determination to ensure "Brexit delivers for Britain's fishing communities".
The statement continues: "The Prime Minister has been clear: Britain will leave the CFP as of March 2019. We both support her wholeheartedly.
"Whatever differences we had on Brexit, we both agree that our fishing industry stands to benefit from our departure from the common fisheries policy. We are both committed to doing all we can to make those benefits real."
The intervention follows the recent publication of draft guidelines for the EU side of Brexit trade talks, which seek "existing reciprocal access to fishing waters".
The politicians spoke out as the Scottish Fishermen's Federation (SFF) set out its "red lines" which the industry is warning the UK government not to cross in Brexit negotiations with the EU.
The SFF is demanding an immediate exit from the CFP in March 2019, "ensuring the EU does not have the right to grant access and set fishing opportunity and management rules within UK waters during the implementation period".
Chief executive Bertie Armstrong said: "In her Mansion House speech, the Prime Minister spoke of ensuring 'fairer shares' for our fishermen - that must mean an immediate end to the current situation in which EU vessels are entitled, gratis, to 60% of the fish in UK waters while our own vessels are allowed to catch just 40%."
The Scottish government called on UK ministers to "urgently explain" how their position on CFP would benefit Scottish fishermen.
Fergus Ewing said: "The UK government continues to put the future of Scotland's fishing communities at risk - no-one should be in any doubt that ministers in London are prepared to trade away our valuable fishing rights to protect sectors which are more important to them.
"The UK government's position will result in a situation where the UK could be forced to apply the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy after Brexit but would have no influence at all over fish quotas or access to Scottish waters.
"They must urgently explain how such a situation would be advantageous to Scottish fishermen in any way, shape or form."
A UK government spokesman said: "When we leave the European Union, we will leave the common fisheries policy and regain control of access to our waters.
"As part of a new economic partnership we want to continue to work with the EU to manage shared stocks in a sustainable way and to agree reciprocal access to waters and a fairer allocation of fishing opportunities for the UK fishing industry."

Michael Gove has hit out at the way social media "corrupts and distorts" political reporting and decision making following a row about animal welfare.
The environment secretary said attacks on MPs over a vote on EU laws on animal "sentience" were "absolutely wrong".
The Commons vote sparked protests and social media campaign backed by high-profile figures such as Ben Fogle.
The explorer has apologised for posting "misleading threads" but defended sharing details on "important stories".
Last week MPs voted not to incorporate part of an EU treaty recognising that animals could feel emotion and pain into the EU Withdrawal Bill.
Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas had tabled the amendment to the EU bill, which would have transferred the EU protocol on animal sentience - the ability to experience feelings - into domestic law.
But ministers argued that the recognition of animals' sentience already existed in UK law and MPs rejected the amendment.
Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "On social media there was a suggestion that somehow the MPs had voted against the principle that animals are sentient beings, that did not happen, that is absolutely wrong."
"There is an unhappy tendency now for people to believe that the raw and authentic voice of what's shared on social media is more reliable than what is said in Hansard or on the BBC.
UK law 'to recognise animal feelings'
"More than that there is a particular concern somehow, a belief somehow that outside the European Union our democratic institutions can't do better than we did in the EU. We've got to challenge both those points."
He said Parliament was "an effective and vigorous institution which can ensure protection for human rights and animal rights".
"We've also got to stand up against the way in which social media corrupts and distorts both reporting and decision making... It's important that all of us do that and that some of us who shared some of these messages on social media have been generous enough to acknowledge ... that they may have unwittingly passed these messages on."
Among others who shared material posted by campaign groups which criticised MPs were the comedian Sue Perkins and Countdown host Rachel Riley.
Mr Fogle said he accepted the government's arguments but insisted it was not only up to social media users to spread inaccurate reports, pointing out that a number of established newspapers published stories based on the same information.
Mr Gove said there would not be a "gap" in animal welfare provisions as a result of the vote, once the UK left the EU, because the UK would "ensure we have stronger protection written into law". He argued that the EU legislation was "poorly designed" and said there was "no way in which animal protection can be diminished in any way, in any shape, or in any form".
But Ms Lucas said the government had been "backpedalling" since the vote: "What I was told in the chamber was that they had no need to take any account of my amendment because this principle of animal sentience was already recognised in UK law in the Animal Welfare Act of 2006.
"Now that is patently untrue, wrong and I am very glad in the last 24 hours Michael Gove and others have been rapidly backpedalling and admitting that that's not true."
And David Cameron's ex-director of communications suggested Mr Gove reflect on the impact of social media during the EU referendum - in which he was a passionate Leave campaigner.
British Veterinary Association senior vice president Gudrun Ravetz told the BBC that there was a "significant difference" between the Article 13 EU protocol, which put a duty on the state to pay full regard to animal welfare when formulating and implementing policies, and the UK legislation, the 2006 Animal Welfare Act, which put the duty on the owner.
The first was "explicit" about "animal sentience", the latter was only "implicit about sentience of animals and vertebrates".
"That is a very important principle, we have the duty of animal welfare for the owner and keeper under the Animal Welfare Act, and that will continue but what we want to see is that duty to the state," she added.
Mr Gove was a relatively late convert to social media, only joining Twitter in June 2016 after he was sacked as a minister by Theresa May.
But he has continued to tweet since rejoining the cabinet this summer.
Hansard is the name given to the daily verbatim transcripts of parliamentary debates in Westminster, which have been officially printed since 1909 and are available online too.

The government is facing an unprecedented backlash from five key industries over Boris Johnson's plans for post-Brexit trading arrangements.
The aerospace, automotive, chemicals, food and drink and pharmaceutical sectors warn they could pose "serious risk to manufacturing competitiveness".
Collectively, the sectors employ 1.1 million people, contributing £98bn to the UK economy each year.
The group has sent a letter to the government highlighting its concerns.
The BBC has seen extracts of the letter, which was sent this week to Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove.
While such bodies have in the past made clear their concern at the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, this is the first time they have directly expressed to government their joint concern about a possible Brexit deal, after mostly supporting Theresa May's negotiated proposal.
The letter outlines their growing concern that Boris Johnson's Brexit negotiators have dropped existing commitments to maintain regulatory alignment in relevant sectors. The manufacturers' key concern is that they may no longer participate in specific EU regulatory institutions after any Brexit deal.
The group is asking for a "reassurance" that industry interests are still being prioritised by EU negotiators, and the letter warns of the "damage which would be done by the current approach on regulatory divergence".
It says: "Pan-European regulatory alignment has been a success in our industries, supporting continued creation and retention of highly skilled manufacturing jobs in the UK.
"It is important this regulatory alignment should continue after Brexit as a critical element of the UK's future relationship with the EU".
A government spokesperson said the UK was "seeking a best in class" free trade agreement drawing on existing EU deals.
"We have been clear that we are committed to maintaining high standards after we leave the EU," the spokesperson said.
However the public and private noises emerging from London and Brussels is that the government has markedly changed its plan for a future relationship. They say the new proposal has low alignment with EU regulations, and does not have level playing field conditions attached on the environmental, social and labour standards, as proposed in Theresa May's deal.
After failing to get reassurances in recent weeks, particularly on the membership of key EU agencies, various sectors joined forces to warn the government directly.
The letter says that the serious risk to manufacturing "will result in huge new costs and disruption to UK firms".
"It would be disruptive to our complex international supply chains and has the potential to risk consumer and food safety, and confidence, access to overseas markets for UK exporters and vital future investment in innovation in this country."
This letter sees the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the Chemical Industries Association, the Food and Drink Federation, and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry join an existing call from the aerospace industry, reported by the BBC earlier on Friday.
The aerospace industry body the ADS wrote to the government asking for "reassurance" that there would be "continued membership of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and alignment with EU chemicals regulations" which "are vital for our sector".
Repeated attempts to get clarity on this issue have not reassured the aerospace and other industries on this topic.
Other industries have asked for similar reassurances, only to be told in recent weeks that the government is seeking a "best in class" free trade agreement, where the UK would set its own regulatory standards.
The government has acknowledged that it wants to take the "level playing field" arrangements out of the political declaration that promised alignment on environmental, social, labour and some tax measures.
These were also seen as crucial to ongoing industrial regulatory co-operation, and preventing the introduction of many types of checks on trade.
But the government fears such measures agreed by Theresa May will restrict the ability of a post-Brexit government to strike meaningful trade deals with other countries such as the US.
A source close to the talks acknowledged to the BBC that among changes being negotiated in the political declaration, these references to EU agencies could get scrapped.
Even as most of the negotiating attention remains on Northern Ireland, the change in approach from the Johnson government suggest a significantly different, more diverged end-point for Brexit for England, Scotland and Wales, than envisaged under Theresa May.
A number of Labour MPs who say they want to support a deal have already expressed a desire for a deal with less scope for regulatory divergence.

A number of EU diplomats believe the UK government is having second thoughts about its threat to leave the bloc without a trade deal should negotiations break down, the BBC understands.
They say, in private, that the government fears the economy could be left in "havoc" if Britain left without agreeing any preferential access to EU markets.
But a government spokesman said they "did not recognise" the claims being made by the EU diplomats.
Theresa May warned in January that no deal would be better than a bad deal, should the EU try to impose a punitive trade deal.
The threat was seen by EU diplomats as lacking credibility because of the huge costs that might be imposed on the British economy without an agreement.
UK firms would have to follow World Trade Organisation rules, which would mean paying more tariffs on some goods and facing non-tariff barriers such as increased red tape.
One EU diplomat said he had urged the government not to repeat the "no deal" threat in its letter triggering Article 50 this week.
"They have realised that 'no deal is better than a bad deal' won't fly," he said.
"They are worried about people in this country who have an ideological and political intention of creating chaos," the diplomat added.
"The civil service has told them it would create havoc."
As an example, he said the number of customs checks on goods would rise from 17 million per year to 350 million.
Diplomats also suggested the government was becoming more pragmatic - in private - about some of its other Brexit demands.
One said that officials "don't exclude that the UK, as part of a transitional arrangement, could stay in the customs union for a limited period of time."
The diplomat said officials accepted this would allow them more time to sort of any future border arrangement for Northern Ireland.
Diplomats added they were also sensing a change in the government's rhetoric about curbing immigration from the EU.
"The British do realise that [immigration curbs] are a bad idea for British society and economy," one said. "They will focus more on control and not quantitative limits."
They added that the UK would "talk themselves out of the 100,000 thing", in reference to a government pledge to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by 2020.
Diplomats also pointed out that economic growth was picking up on the continent, meaning there would be greater competition for labour.
Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK would be "perfectly OK" if there was no agreement with the EU and the consequences were not "by any means as apocalyptic as some people like to protest."
But the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, later told MPs that the government had not made an overall assessment of what "no deal" would cost the British economy.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, warned in the FT this week that no deal would have "severe consequences for our people and our economies. It would undoubtedly leave the UK worse off".
He predicted burdensome customs checks, lorry queues at Dover, disruption to air traffic into the UK and extreme uncertainty for four million expat UK and EU citizens across the continent.
This week, the manufacturers' lobbying organisation, EEF, urged the PM to drop her threat to leave without a deal.
They said no deal would be a "risky and expensive blow" that could result in tariffs averaging more than five percent on their members' exports to the EU.
For its part, the government said it was confident of "delivering the right deal for the UK".
A spokesman said: "We are planning for and expecting a constructive negotiation and a deal on a positive new partnership that works for both the UK and the EU.
"We have also said we would not accept a bad deal which seeks to punish the UK, and that no deal is better than a bad deal."

The government's "shambolic" approach to Brexit is failing to equip the UK economy for leaving the EU, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said.
Mr McDonnell accused Chancellor Philip Hammond of being isolated from cabinet colleagues and said he was too "weak" to make Brexit a success.
He also said Labour would not vote to block Brexit or push for a second referendum.
Treasury minister David Gauke said Labour had "zero" economic credibility.
In a speech in central London, Mr McDonnell accused ministers of plotting a "closed-minded Brexit" that "works only for bankers and the rich, instead of one that's based on fairness and works for the rest of us".
Setting out Labour's position ahead of the Autumn Statement - to be made next Wednesday - he said the government's approach will "continue to undermine the ambitions of working people", he said.
Mr McDonnell said: "We need a credible fiscal framework that supports Brexit; we need actual support for those in work on low and middle incomes; and we need secure and properly funded public services.
"We want to see an end to austerity, with the NHS and social care properly funded and ESA (employment and support allowance) and Universal Credit cuts reversed.
"We want to see an end to tax giveaways for the wealthy. And we need a serious commitment from government to invest across the whole of our country."
Labour, Mr McDonnell said, would "offer a positive, ambitious vision instead of leaving the field open to divisive Trump-style politics".
"This means we must not try to re-fight the referendum or push for a second vote and if Article 50 needs to be triggered in Parliament Labour will not seek to block or delay it."
Tom Bateman, BBC political correspondent
Since the EU referendum, the Treasury has steered away from the tougher deficit reduction rules imposed by former Chancellor George Osborne.
It has chosen instead to speak of a "pragmatic" approach to balancing the books, given what Philip Hammond described as the "turbulence" that Brexit may bring.
But his Labour opponent today condemned this approach as weak, arguing the government must go further and end austerity rather than postpone it.
Mr McDonnell also called for a focus on borrowing to create jobs and infrastructure - a policy he has previously said would go alongside a rule to balance day-to-day taxation and spending.
Labour knows its task is to present itself to voters as credible on the economy, as the battle lines are set out before the first major economic announcement of Theresa May's government next week.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke said Labour had "zero credibility when it comes to the economy".
"They drove Britain to the brink of bankruptcy last time, opposed everything we did to clear up the mess - and now all they offer is a recipe for economic ruin.
"Ordinary working people would pay the price for Jeremy Corbyn's fantasy economics."
Green Party joint leader Caroline Lucas also attacked Mr McDonnell, accusing him of a "capitulation" over Article 50, which formally begins Brexit talks.
"The government should not be able to ride roughshod over Parliament - and MPs should be demanding more details from ministers before standing aside and letting them pursue Brexit entirely on Tory terms," she said.
It comes as the Institute of Directors  called on Mr Hammond to "act decisively" and use the Autumn Statement to introduce tax breaks to boost investment.
It released survey figures indicating business confidence had declined in recent weeks, with 50% of the 1,071 respondents asked between 12 and 27 October saying they were pessimistic about the economy over the next 12 months. Some 30% said they were optimistic.
The institute's director general Simon Walker said: "This is a moment for the government to act decisively to make it easier for firms to expand and find more opportunities.
"We know that there isn't a limitless source of funds, so we urge the chancellor to make tax changes that incentivise investment, alongside targeted infrastructure investment."

The government will pay £33m to Eurotunnel in an agreement to settle a lawsuit over extra ferry services in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
In December, the Department for Transport (DfT) contracted three suppliers to provide additional freight capacity on ferries for lorries.
But Eurotunnel said the contracts were handed out in a "secretive" way.
As part of the agreement, Eurotunnel has agreed to make some improvements to its terminal.
One of the firms awarded a ferry contract, Seaborne Freight, has already had its deal cancelled after the Irish company backing it pulled out.
Shortly after it was awarded the contract, the BBC found out that Seaborne had no ships and had never run a ferry service.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has been heavily criticised for the Seaborne deal, which would have been worth £13.8m.
In January, Eurotunnel wrote to Mr Grayling to complain that it had not been considered when the contracts were awarded.
It argued that unlike Seaborne, it has actually run a cross-Channel ferry service (MyFerryLink, which closed in 2015) and should have been approached.
In a statement accompanying the agreement, Mr Grayling said: "While it is disappointing that Eurotunnel chose to take legal action on contracts in place to ensure the smooth supply of vital medicines, I am pleased that this agreement will ensure the Channel Tunnel is ready for a post-Brexit world."
Under the agreement Eurotunnel will make improvements at its terminal in Folkestone, including installing new scanners and changing traffic routing to ease congestion.
Andy McDonald MP, Labour's shadow transport secretary said that Mr Grayling had shown "misjudgement" in awarding the ferry contracts.
Criticising his record, including problems on the railways, he said: "This trail of destruction has gone on long enough. It's time for Chris Grayling to go."
By Alex Forsyth, BBC political correspondent
The procurement of extra ferry services has proved highly problematic. First the fact a contract given to a firm with no ships was later cancelled, and now the decision to settle with Eurotunnel rather than face a lengthy legal fight.
Critics say it shows that, despite the government's insistence that it is preparing for a possible no-deal Brexit, plans have fallen short.
Others point the finger at the transport secretary himself.
Labour has repeatedly called for Chris Grayling to resign, citing what the party describes as a series of failures including the introduction of a new rail timetable that led to delays and cancellations and criticism of probation reforms introduced while he was justice secretary.
But while there is a chorus of criticism aimed at Mr Grayling, No 10 maintains the prime minister has confidence in him. Theresa May can ill afford further disruption in government, or to lose a loyal minister.
The idea behind the extra ferry services was to raise freight capacity at ports other than Dover, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Brittany Ferries, DFDS and Seaborne Freight were awarded contracts, worth more than £100m, to provide additional capacity for lorries.
There was particular concern over maintaining the supply of medicines to the NHS.
Speaking on Friday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: "While we never give guarantees, I'm confident that, if everyone - including suppliers, freight companies, international partners, and the health and care system - does what they need to do, the supply of medicines and medical products should be uninterrupted if we leave without a deal."
A Eurotunnel spokesman said that the deal would ensure that the Channel Tunnel would be the "preferred route" for goods to travel between the EU and the UK.
The company said the money would allow the "development of infrastructure, security and border measures that will guarantee the flow of vehicles carrying urgent and vital goods and that will keep supply chains essential to both industry and consumers moving".
By Joe Miller, BBC business reporter
It was the now notorious contract with Seaborne Freight that catapulted the government's no-deal Brexit contracts into the headlines, but it's the handling of the entire procurement process that has cost taxpayers some £33m.
Eurotunnel argues it would have been a strong contender for a contract, having run a ferry service as recently as 2015.
But the Department for Transport said the "urgency" of the situation forced it to hurry through the awarding of contingency planning contracts.
However, had it gone to court, Eurotunnel was going to argue that the DfT had ample time for a full, public tender process, and could have foreseen all Brexit eventualities from at least the date on which Article 50 was triggered in 2017.
Sources familiar with the case say the government was essentially "held over a barrel" by Eurotunnel, and was left with little choice but to settle.
And Andrew Dean, from law firm Clifford Chance, warns this may not be the end of the matter.
Mr Dean, who used to advise the government and is a procurement specialist, says:  "If Eurotunnel were required to develop or redevelop infrastructure that delivers or supports a public function as part of this settlement, there is a risk it could be construed as another piece of public procurement without open and transparent competition.
"In which case the government would be back to square one, with other potential providers able to challenge the process."

The government is being sued for its decision to charter firms to run extra ferries, including one with no ships, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Channel Tunnel operator Eurotunnel, said the contracts, revealed after Christmas, were decided in a "secretive and flawed procurement process".
The move comes days after Seaborne, one of the firms chosen, had its contract axed after its funding fell through.
The government said it had carried out a "competitive procurement process".
"The Department for Transport acted transparently and competitively throughout the process of securing extra freight.
"This was done by approaching ferry operators and encouraging bids that could be fairly assessed against each other," a spokeswoman said.
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At a High Court hearing in London, Eurotunnel claimed the government contracts, announced on 29 December, were awarded without any public notice.
Eurotunnel's barrister Daniel Beard QC said Eurotunnel only found out "when contract notices were published three days after Christmas".
He said it was "quite remarkable" his client had not been informed given its recent history in running cross-Channel services.
Ewan West, representing Transport Secretary Chris Grayling in court, said the government's procurement process was only for "maritime freight" services and that Eurotunnel "could never have provided that capacity" and "could not have complied" with the terms of the contracts.
Judge Peter Fraser ruled a four-day trial will begin on 1 March given the "obvious" urgency of the case and the "very important public interest matters" involved.
When the Department for Transport announced the contracts in December, in documents outlining the agreements it stated that an "unforeseeable" situation of "extreme urgency" meant there was no time for the contracts to be put out to tender - the standard practice for public procurements.
However, the BBC understands that a number of firms were considered and there was a private negotiation process.
Three suppliers were awarded a total of £102.9m in late December, aimed at easing "severe congestion" at Dover, in the case of a no-deal Brexit:
The decision to award a contract to Seaborne, a firm with no ships which the BBC found had never run a ferry service before, has been heavily criticised.
After Seaborne's contract collapsed Mr Grayling faced calls for his resignation, with Labour accusing him of "rewriting the textbook on incompetence.".
But Prime Minister Theresa May has said she continues to have full confidence in him.

The minority Conservative government has survived its first major test after its Queen's Speech cleared the Commons.
MPs backed the legislative programme - stripped back after the Tories lost their majority - by 323 to 309.
But the government had to make a late pledge on funding abortions in England for women from Northern Ireland, amid fears of a Conservative rebellion.
The Democratic Unionist Party's 10 MPs had agreed to support the government as part of a deal with the Tories.
Three Labour frontbenchers - shadow ministers Ruth Cadbury, Catherine West and Andy Slaughter - were sacked by the leadership while shadow transport minister Daniel Zeichner had resigned.
The sackings relate to the MPs' support for Labour MP Chuka Umunna's amendment during the Queen's Speech debate, which was defeated.
The amendment aimed to preserve the UK's EU single market membership. This is not Labour policy, and the party's MPs were told to abstain but 50 rebelled.
The government averted a possible rebellion by announcing women from Northern Ireland would get free access to abortions on the NHS in England.
Abortions are only allowed in Northern Ireland if a woman's life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious risk to her physical or mental health - while they can travel to England to have one privately, they have had to pay for the procedure.
Labour MP Stella Creasy had tabled an amendment which had attracted cross-party backing - but she agreed to withdraw it when the government announced its concession.
Labour's amendment, which was defeated by 323 to 297, called for Brexit to deliver the "exact same benefits" as the EU single market and customs union, as well as scrapping tuition fees, increasing public spending and ending the public sector pay cap.
Proposing it earlier, shadow chancellor John McDonnell described the Queen's Speech as a "threadbare scrap of a document" with many of the Tories' key pledges removed since the general election.
He also claimed the cabinet was divided over Brexit, with "weekly changes of direction".
Chancellor Philip Hammond challenged him to a "grown-up" debate about public spending, accusing Labour of asking voters "would they like someone else to pay higher taxes?"
During the debate, one Tory MP, Heidi Allen, criticised the arrangement between her party and the DUP, saying she could "barely put into words" her "anger" at the £1bn deal.
Ms Allen, who also criticised the Tories' general election campaign, said she wanted to put on record her "distaste for the use of public funds to garner political control" and warned that "never again" should a government prioritise spending in such a way.

A second referendum would be divisive but a price worth paying to prevent the "catastrophic damage" of a no-deal Brexit, Greater Manchester's mayor has said.
Andy Burnham said he would support a fresh vote only as a "last resort" to prevent the UK leaving the European Union with no agreement.
He said it could "widen" divisions and even "create social unrest".
The government said it was "confident of a mutually advantageous deal".
Speaking at Westminster, Mr Burnham argued if Parliament was heading towards a no-deal Brexit then the EU should be asked to postpone the March 2019 departure deadline to allow further negotiations.
If that fails and a deal acceptable to Parliament cannot be agreed between the UK and Brussels, a second referendum should be held, the former Labour cabinet minister said.
"I have to think seriously about what a second vote would mean on the streets of Greater Manchester," he said.
"If we thought the first was bad, the second would be a whole lot worse.
"It won't heal divisions but widen them, it would be angrier, create social unrest and open up a massive opportunity for the populist far right in a way we are seeing elsewhere in Europe and the USA."
Mr Burnham said the alt-right could be pushing the no-deal agenda "to exploit splits in British society".
However, he also said he was not supporting the People's Vote campaign for a referendum, and only advocated a second vote if the alternative was leaving with no deal.
He continued: "A second vote would further erode trust in Parliament and politicians, but that price is worth paying to stop the catastrophic damage to jobs that would come with a no-deal Brexit."
Mr Burnham, who is campaigning for extra powers to be given to the devolved regions and cities, said the 2016 Brexit referendum result was as much an "instruction for Westminster to review its relationship with the rest of England" as a message to Brussels.
"If the phrase 'take back control' is to mean anything, it must mean substantial devolution of power and resources out of Westminster to all of the English regions," he said.
A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union said: "As a result of the significant progress made in negotiations, we remain confident we will agree a mutually advantageous deal with the EU."
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Caroline Lucas has asked 10 female politicians from all parties to join her in forming an "emergency cabinet" in a bid to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Writing in the Guardian, the Green Party MP said the all-women cabinet could "bring a different perspective".
Ms Lucas, whose party wants another Brexit referendum, said the aim would be to force a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
She would then hope to form a "national unity government".
This arrangement - when a group of MPs of multiple parties choose to work together and form a government - has not been seen since the Second World War.
In her Guardian article, Ms Lucas - a former Green Party leader - said the national unity government would "press the pause button" and organise another referendum offering a choice between staying in the EU or the government's Brexit plan, whether that is an agreed deal or no deal.
"In my experience, women tend to be less tribal, they tend to find it easier to establish trust more quickly," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
She also added that her proposed unity government would have to be led by a female Labour MP, as they would be representing the largest opposition party.
But her idea was criticised by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, who tweeted: "Is there anything more sexist than claiming your gender determines your worldview/behaviour/attitude?"
Among the women Ms Lucas has invited to join her are Labour's shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Conservative MP Justine Greening, and Plaid Cymru Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts.
The others are: Heidi Allen, Kirsty Blackman, Yvette Cooper, Sylvia Hermon, and Anna Soubry. She has asked to meet the 10 women in the coming days.
On Monday, Ms Lucas told the BBC she had received responses from five of the women she has written to, expressing differing levels of interest.
She added she wasn't completely against involving men - for instance accepting that a key anti-Brexit campaigner like Dominic Grieve could be given a cabinet seat.
Ms Thornberry tweeted a reply to say she would not be able to take part in the planned talks because she is currently on holiday.
She added that returning the issue of Brexit "to the people" was the "best route to go down at this point".
"My fear with the other suggested route - imposing some alternative coalition government without any reference to the public - would risk worsening the feelings of anger and resentment towards 'Westminster' that have led us into this Brexit mess," she added.
Ms Saville Roberts welcomed Ms Lucas's bid to break the deadlock over Brexit, but said she was "not entirely comfortable" that only women would be involved.
Ms Lucas's suggestion has also attracted widespread discussion on social media, with many people expressing criticism.
Labour's shadow home secretary Diane Abbott tweeted it "won't work... whatever the gender of the participants".
Labour MP Clive Lewis called it a "very interesting proposal", but asked: "Where are the BAME women politicians?"
Ms Lucas replied to him, saying she agreed that the list should be opened out further and she would love Ms Abbott to be involved.

Guy Verhofstadt has said he does not "know" if Brexit will go ahead.
Questioned on this during a visit to London, the leader of the liberal group in the European Parliament told reporters: "Ask Theresa May."
Meanwhile, European Council President Donald Tusk said there was a "20 to 30%" chance Brexit would not happen.
But Home Secretary Sajid Javid told the BBC it was "still possible" to get Theresa May's withdrawal agreement with the EU through Parliament.
The House of Commons has rejected it three times, with the deadline for Brexit being delayed from 29 March to 31 October.
Mr Verhofstadt, who is the European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator as well as leader of the Alliance for Liberals and Democrats in Europe, campaigned in London on behalf of the Liberal Democrats ahead of European elections on 23 May.
Asked whether the UK would leave the EU, he replied: "I don't know. It's a question to ask Mrs May at Westminster."
He also said the Brexit process so far "had done more damage than has ever been predicted" and that "people can change their opinion".
Meanwhile, Mr Tusk told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza: "Today the chance that Brexit will not happen is, in my opinion, 20 to 30%. That's a lot."
But Mr Javid told the BBC's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast: "What would make me happy is that we get this deal through. What would make me happiest is that we do it with my colleagues.
"It is still possible to get this through with support from Conservative MPs and the DUP and support this deal as it is and without any further changes and any further compromises."
If this did not happen, he warned, MPs could seek to revoke the Article 50 process by which the UK is leaving the EU, in order to stop an exit without a trade deal with the EU.
"I can absolutely see MPs trying to come together to pass legislation to force the government's hand to try and revoke," he added. "That would be an absolute disaster."
Cross-party talks between the government and Labour have been taking place to try to solve the Brexit impasse.
However, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said on Thursday that discussions had been difficult and that "so far there have been no big offers".
Meanwhile, a city financier who has previously donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservative Party has been revealed as a key funder of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.
Jeremy Hosking told the Daily Telegraph he has donated £200,000 to the Brexit Party in recent weeks, urging those who want a "proper conservative party" to offer support too.
He told the paper the Conservatives had taken people for "fools", adding: "I look at Nigel Farage and I see a political leader who is the only person in a leadership position who has been telling us the truth for 25 years."
Mr Hosking donated around £350,000 to Conservatives at the last general election, sources close to him said. He was also a key funder of pro-Brexit groups ahead of the 2016 referendum.
Mr Farage has previously been reluctant to name his major donors - saying it was "irrelevant".

The chancellor has called on Tory leadership candidates to "stop and think" about their spending promises.
Both Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson have announced a raft of policies during the contest, including cutting taxes and increasing spending on public services.
But Philip Hammond said they needed to "be honest" as the policies "greatly exceed" the Treasury's coffers.
He also said available money would be needed to support the UK economy in the case of a no-deal Brexit.
Asked by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg if the candidates were being honest with the electorate, he said: "I think they need to be very careful about setting out these ambitions and being clear about the consequences of them."
The warning comes after Mr Hunt said he would decide by the end of September whether there was a "realistic chance" of reaching a new deal with the EU were he to become PM.
The foreign secretary said he would deliver a provisional "no-deal Brexit budget" in early September, but abandon talks at the end of the month if there was no "immediate prospect" of progress - instead moving to a no-deal footing.
His rival Boris Johnson has vowed to leave "come what may" by 31 October.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Mr Johnson said it was important to have a "hard deadline" for leaving, adding that previous no-deal preparations had "sagged back down" after exit dates were not met.
The Conservative Party's 160,000 members will begin voting next week and Theresa May's successor is expected to be announced on 23 July.
Mr Hammond said the Treasury had "built up fiscal headroom to protect against the cost of a no-deal Brexit" and that money could be released "if we have a smooth Brexit with a transition period in an orderly way".
But he said the current proposals on the table from Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson would already require increased borrowing beyond the government cap, or spending cuts or tax rises elsewhere - even without a no-deal Brexit-shaped "hole" in the public finances.
Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson have been busy spraying around hypothetical cash - whether on defence, on care for the elderly, on schools, for more police, the list goes on.
It is not politically surprising that they both want to signal they would turn on the spending taps a bit after a long, long period of cuts. But one of their erstwhile colleagues seems to have had enough.
After making some carefully crafted warnings in the last couple of weeks, Chancellor Philip Hammond has tried to call a halt, telling the BBC that both of the candidates have to resist the temptation of a bidding war, worrying that the party's reputation is at risk too.
Mr Hammond told me the candidates needed to "stop and think". And that by his calculation, both of the candidates' plans "greatly exceeds" the amount of wriggle room they will inherit from No 11 if they are lucky enough to be the one that moves in next door.
Mr Hammond also said the headroom wasn't "a pot of money sitting in the Treasury", but a way of borrowing more without breaching government limits.
"Whether it is a leadership competition or a general election, there is always a temptation to get into a bidding war about spending more and cutting taxes," he said.
"But you can't do both, and if we're not careful, all we end up doing is borrowing more, spending more on interest, instead of on our schools, hospitals and our police, and delivering a bigger burden of debt to our children and grandchildren."
He said the candidates' policies were "sensible and interesting ideas", but said the government had "built up a reputation for fiscal responsibility... and it is very important we don't throw that away".
"We have to live within our means and people have to be honest about the consequences of either spending more money or of cutting taxes that will have implications for borrowing or spending elsewhere," he added.
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington has also warned the candidates about their spending promises, saying they had to "raise the money honestly from somewhere".
The de-facto deputy prime minister said: "While in a short term crisis you can ease up on the borrowing, money borrowed has to be repaid by the next generation with interest - so you shouldn't take on extra borrowing lightly, nor should we be wanting to impose more taxes on people already working very hard.
"Sound money and restraint in public spending remains a good Tory principle."
He said the "stewardship" of Mr Hammond meant "money is available" to "cushion the impact" of a no-deal Brexit.
But, he added: "I don't think any of us should pretend that no-deal would be easy even with the most meticulous and thorough planning."
Mr Hunt has said he wants to negotiate a new deal with the EU and would be building a team to create an "alternative exit deal" to be published by the end of August.
He would then engage with other EU leaders, but keep up preparations at home for a no-deal Brexit.
But BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the timeline Mr Hunt was setting out was very tight - especially given the notice the government's fiscal watchdog, the OBR, usually needs to prepare for a Budget.
Earlier, one of Mr Johnson's leading backers, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, told the Times the days of public sector "pay freezes" under Theresa May and David Cameron would be over if Mr Johnson was elected.
But during a campaign visit in Kent on Monday, Mr Johnson declined to make a detailed pledge on public sector pay, saying only that remuneration should be "decent".
A no-deal exit on 31 October remains the default position in UK law after MPs rejected the deal Mrs May had agreed with Brussels three times.
If that does happen, the UK will automatically begin trading with the EU under the basic World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.
Under these rules, the tariffs - the taxes on imported and exported goods - will be different to what the UK currently trades under.

It is time to get Brexit "off the table" so that Britain can focus on other issues, the chancellor has said.
Philip Hammond told the BBC that getting a deal done soon would release the "bandwidth" needed to take key economic decisions facing the country.
He called the UK's involvement in May's European elections "pointless" and hoped a deal would be done before then.
Mr Hammond was speaking in Washington, where he is attending World Bank and IMF meetings.
The chancellor said talking to the Labour Party about finding a way forward to resolve the Parliamentary impasse was not his "preferred route".
But it offered a new way forward to achieve a Brexit deal, after which he could concentrate on issues such spending and "where our economy is going over the next few years".
"I would like us to spend more of our bandwidth focused on growing our economy," he told the BBC's economics correspondent Dharshini David. "Until a deal is done we cannot make decisions about the spending review."
If a deal on leaving the EU cannot be agreed by the end of May, the UK is committed to fighting the European elections.
"Clearly nobody wants to fight the European elections. It feels like a pointless exercise, and the only way we can avoid that is by getting a deal agreed and done quickly.
"If we can do that by 22 May, we can avoid fighting the European parliamentary elections.
"In any case, we want to ensure any British MEPs that are elected never have to take their seats in the European Parliament by ensuring this is all done well before the new European Parliament convenes," he said.
The chancellor is in Washington at the World Bank and IMF spring meetings.
He rejected suggestions that the handling of Brexit negotiations was being seen overseas as a national humiliation.
"Britain is known as a bastion of democracy, and how we manage a challenging and complex issue like this is of huge interest," he said.
"In a year's time, when this is behind us and people are focussed on other things, all this will be forgotten."

The Treasury is not "the enemy of Brexit", Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has insisted.
In a speech in the City of London, Mr Hammond said the UK needed to protect patterns of trade with the EU that had been "built over decades".
The chancellor also used his Mansion House speech to confirm taxes will have to go up to boost spending on the NHS.
But he said the increase would be partly funded by lower contributions to Brussels post-Brexit.
In the past the chancellor has come under fire from supporters of Brexit.
Earlier this month Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called the Treasury "the heart of Remain", in comments to a private dinner.
However, addressing a City audience on Thursday, Mr Hammond said the "immediate key" to the UK and London's economic success was "ensuring we get a good Brexit deal".
He said the goal was a partnership that "recognises that our European neighbours are our most important trading partners, and that Dover to Calais is the busiest trading corridor in Europe".
As the UK leaves the EU, he said the new relationship should "maintain low friction borders and open markets".
He went on: "That does not make the Treasury, on my watch, 'the enemy of Brexit'; rather, it makes it the champion of prosperity for the British people outside the EU, but working and trading closely with it."
Mr Hammond also said the £20bn five-year NHS funding package announced by the prime minister this week would be partly funded by lower contributions to Brussels.
However, he also said the government would stick to its fiscal rules and "continue to reduce debt".
As a result taxpayers will have to "contribute a bit more", he added.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Theresa May announced a boost in NHS spending, which will see NHS England's budget increase by £20bn by 2023.
The plan also means more money will be given to the rest of the UK - about £4bn - although it will be up to the Welsh and Scottish governments to decide how that is spent.
Mr Hammond said the NHS was the government's "number one priority for the forthcoming spending review".
"So, as the Prime Minister said, taxpayers will have to contribute a bit more, in a fair and balanced way, to support the NHS that we all use."

Most of the MPs elected last week want to avoid a so-called "hard Brexit", pro-EU politicians claim.
Having called Thursday's election to seek an increased mandate for her Brexit strategy, Theresa May ended up losing seats and her Commons majority.
Conservative ex-minister Anna Soubry said: "The people have spoken - and they have rejected a hard Brexit."
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the government's view of Brexit had not changed.
Negotiations with Brussels on the UK's departure from the EU are due to start on 19 June, and Mrs May is now seeking the backing of the Democratic Unionist Party to prop up her minority government.
The DUP supports Brexit - but also wants to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland and to maintain as far as possible the current access to EU markets - both of which would be jeopardised if the UK leaves without a deal in place, an outcome known as a "hard Brexit".
Ex-chancellor George Osborne said the DUP's position made Ms May's "central claim" - that no deal is better than a bad deal - "undeliverable".
And Ms Soubry - a leading figure in the Remain campaign before last year's EU referendum - told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme that Mrs May would have to listen to businesses and "wise owls" in her government who are calling for the single market to be a priority over immigration curbs.
This is not the approach adopted by the PM, who plans to withdraw from the single market and customs union and bring net migration below 100,000.
On the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, the pro-EU former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine described Brexit as "the cancer gnawing at the Conservative Party" and urged a "period of contemplation" on the subject before negotiations begin.
The "right leader of the Conservative Party", he claimed, could appeal to German and French presidents for a deal to keep us "within the European family" while addressing immigration concerns.
But Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell told ITV's Peston on Sunday that full single market membership was not "on the table" and would be seen by voters as not respecting the referendum result.
Speaking on Marr, Sir Michael said the government wanted maximum access to the EU single market and an "arrangement on immigration".
He said he believed there was a majority in the Commons for such an approach.
"I think everybody wants to see an agreement in the end that does respect what the British people voted for last year - makes sure that our cooperation with Europe continues, our trade with Europe continues, our security cooperation with Europe continues," he said.
Leave-backing Conservative MP Dominic Raab told the Sunday Politics the country was "quite clear that they want us to make a success of Brexit".

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to persuade MPs to back a deal to take the UK out of the EU.
Doing so would implement the result of the referendum of June 2016, in which 52% of voters backed Leave and 48% Remain.
But where do voters stand on Brexit now, after more than three years of debate and negotiation?
First, no single course of action is preferred by a majority of voters.
For example, polling firm Kantar has asked voters on a number of occasions which of four possible outcomes they prefer.
The most popular choice has been to remain in the EU. However, this secured the support of only about one in three.
The next most popular, leaving without a deal, is preferred by slightly less than a quarter.
Much the same picture has been painted by another survey. BMG asked people which of five alternatives they would prefer if a deal is not agreed by the end of this month. None has come even close to being backed by more than half of voters.
Should no agreement be reached, the single most popular option is to leave the EU without a deal. Even so, it is still only backed by about one in three.
Both of the next most popular options - holding another referendum and reversing Brexit without a referendum, are only chosen by about one in five.
Three polls, by Opinium, Panelbase and ComRes have asked people what they thought of proposals for a deal put forward by Mr Johnson.
All three found that slightly more voters were in favour of them than against. However, they were still backed by well under half.
In Opinium's poll, just 27% thought the proposals would represent a good deal, while 22% reckoned they would represent a bad one.
Most people either said it would neither be good nor bad, or that they did not know.
Both Panelbase and ComRes found that 31%-32% support the proposals, while 27%-28% oppose them. But in both cases 41% said they did not know.
Against this backdrop, what voters will make of any compromise deal that Mr Johnson might strike with the EU is far from clear.
Second, those who voted Remain and those who backed Leave have very different preferences.
The single most popular option among Leave voters is to exit the EU without a deal. According to Kantar, at least half of them prefer that course of action.
Only about three in 10 pick either of the deals put before them by Kantar: the agreement Mrs May negotiated with the EU, or a "soft" Brexit under which the UK will still be part of the single market and customs union.
Meanwhile, in the event of no deal, on average nearly seven in 10 Leave voters tell BMG they back leaving without one.
In contrast, most of those who voted Remain believe that Brexit should be reversed. On average two in three of them tell Kantar they think Article 50 should be revoked.
BMG offered its respondents both the possibility of holding another referendum and of reversing Brexit without a ballot.
On average, nearly four in 10 Remain voters say Brexit should simply be reversed, while about three in 10 opt for another vote.
Third, very few voters on either side of the argument have changed their minds about whether the UK should leave the EU. The country appears to be just as divided as it was three years ago.
On average, during the last month, polls that ask people how they would vote in another referendum suggest that 88% of those who backed Remain would do so again. Among those who voted Leave, 86% have not changed their minds.
These figures have changed very little during the last two years.
True, most polls suggest - and have done so for some time - that the balance of opinion might be tilted narrowly in favour of remaining a member of the EU. On average, this is by 53% to 47%.
However, this lead for Remain rests primarily on the views expressed by those who did not vote three years ago - and perhaps might not do so again.
In truth, nobody can be sure what would happen if there were to be another referendum.
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Fourth, voters are divided about whether any agreement that might be reached with the EU should be put to a referendum.
The balance of opinion differs from poll to poll.
When people are asked about a "public vote" they are more likely to show support for another ballot than when asked about a "referendum" on the UK's membership of the EU.
But they all agree that those who voted Remain are much keener on another vote than those who backed Leave.
All five of the polls put support for another ballot among Remain voters at over two-thirds.
In contrast, four of them find that fewer than 20% of Leave supporters are in favour of the idea. The fifth, by Kantar, puts it only somewhat higher, at 37%.
So those who voted Remain are much more likely than those who voted Leave to welcome a ballot that might overturn the result of three years ago.
Whatever the outcome this week, the division between Remainers and Leavers does not look as though it is going to be easy to heal.
About this piece
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from an expert working for an outside organisation.
Further details of the research on which it is based are available here.
Sir John Curtice is professor of politics, Strathclyde University, and senior research fellow at NatCen Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe.
*Full wording of questions for the chart "attitudes towards a second referendum". Kantar: Should the final deal/agreement reached by the government be put to a public vote?; YouGov: Would you support or oppose a public vote on Brexit?; Deltapoll: Would you support or oppose a second referendum on British membership of the European Union?; Panelbase: Do you think there should be a new referendum on Brexit?; BMG: To what extent do you support or oppose [holding] a second in-out EU referendum?
Edited by Duncan Walker
Charts by David Brown and Dominic Bailey

A conservative think tank is calling for Tory grandee Lord Heseltine to have the whip withdrawn for his "sniping" about Brexit.
Members of the Bow Group have accused the former deputy prime minister of "outright sabotage" and want him expelled from the Tories' Lords group.
It comes after he suggested a Labour government would be preferable to the "long-term disaster" of Brexit.
Lord Heseltine is a high-profile critic of leaving the EU.
Comments made by Lord Heseltine more than a month ago have triggered a backlash from the Bow Group after they were reported in The Guardian and other newspapers this week.
The Bow Group includes big name Tory Brexiteers Lord Tebbit, its chairman, and Lord Lamont, a senior patron.
Speaking to the Limehouse Podcast about the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government, Lord Heseltine said: "We've survived Labour governments before.
"Their damage tends to be short-term and capable of rectification.
"Brexit is not short-term and is not easily capable of rectification.
"There will be those who question whether the short-term pain justifies the avoidance of the long-term disaster."
Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, a Bow Group board member, said: "His lack of respect and loyalty towards the Conservative Party is deeply regrettable."
And the group's chairman, Ben Harris-Quinney, added: "Heseltine has made clear it is his aim to prevent Brexit at all costs, including the sabotage of his own party and nation, the Conservative Party must therefore withdraw the whip and end the inevitable continuation of his sniping from inside the tent."
The Bow Group describes itself as "the United Kingdom's oldest conservative think tank" which "represents all strands of conservative opinion".
Ahead of the 2015 general election, Mr Harris-Quinney was rebuked by its patrons when he urged Tory supporters in some areas to "lend their votes to UKIP" to help prevent a Labour government.

Honda has confirmed it will close its Swindon car plant in 2021, with the loss of about 3,500 jobs.
The Japanese company builds 160,000 Honda Civics a year in Swindon, its only car factory in the EU.
Honda said the move was due to global changes in the car industry and the need to launch electric vehicles, and it had nothing to do with Brexit.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said the decision was "devastating" for Swindon and the UK.
A fall in demand for diesel cars and tougher emissions regulations have shaken up the car industry.
Ian Howells, senior vice-president for Honda in Europe, told the BBC: "We're seeing unprecedented change in the industry on a global scale. We have to move very swiftly to electrification of our vehicles because of demand of our customers and legislation.
"This is not a Brexit-related issue for us, it's being made on the global-related changes I've spoken about.
"We've always seen Brexit as something we'll get through, but these changes globally are something we will have to respond to. We deeply regret the impact it will have on the Swindon community."
Mr Howells said that, in the light of changes in the industry, the company had to "look very closely" at where it was putting its investment.
The company sells many more vehicles in North America, Japan and China than it does in Europe.
"It has to be in a marketplace of a size for Honda, where it makes investment worthwhile.
"The conclusion coming out of that is that that doesn't include Swindon - the relative size of the marketplace in Europe is significantly different."
Honda said it would begin consulting immediately about the proposed closure with potentially affected employees.
A union source told the BBC that Honda had sent the workforce at its Swindon factory home for the day.
Honda also announced it would stop making the Civic at its plant in Turkey in 2021. Its European HQ will continue to be located in the UK after the changes.
Earlier this month, Nissan switched plans to build its X-Trail SUV from the UK to Japan.
At that time the firm's Europe chairman, Gianluca de Ficchy, said that "the continued uncertainty around the UK's future relationship with the EU is not helping companies like ours to plan for the future".
Dominic O'Connell, Today business presenter
Honda says the Swindon closure is not Brexit-related. Is this the unvarnished truth, or is the company simply trying to avoid a political storm?
Honda has in the past been vocal about the difficulties a disorderly Brexit would bring, and the timing of the announcement, a little more than a month before the UK leaves the European Union, is curious.
But the Honda statement makes no mention of Brexit at all, instead pointing to the greater forces that are reshaping the car industry.
Honda is not, on the world stage, a big player, being dwarfed by the likes of Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors and Ford.
It needs to find the resources to invest in electric power plants and autonomous vehicles - a strain that has already led to its larger rivals closing plants and cutting jobs.
Honda said it needed to invest in these new frontiers and concentrate its production resources where it could be sure there would be high volumes.
Swindon, which has had one of its two production lines shut for several years and which makes only 160,000 cars a year, does not fit that future. Nor does an even smaller plant in Turkey.
Brexit issues may be lurking in the background, but Honda's real reasons for closing Swindon are about the future of the global car industry, not Britain's future relationship with Europe.
The EU and Japan recently struck a trade deal which lowers tariffs on both parties' car exports to zero.
BBC business editor Simon Jack said the trade deal means there is a dwindling rationale to base manufacturing inside the EU.
He said production at Swindon had also been in decline for some time, with the plant currently running at about half its capacity.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said he would convene a taskforce with local MPs, civic and business leaders, as well as trade union representatives, to help Honda workers get new skilled jobs.
"The automotive industry is undergoing a rapid transition to new technology," he said.
"The UK is one of the leaders in the development of these technologies and so it is deeply disappointing that this decision has been taken now."
Unite union official Alan Tomala said employees at the Swindon factory felt "betrayed" by the closure announcement.
"They feel that the company owes them a little more than hearing the news in the media.
"I left work yesterday to 57 missed calls and around 130 emails, and not one from Honda.  It surprises me and I'm angered by it."
Outside the factory gates, employee Chris, whose son also works at the plant, told the BBC he was "extremely disappointed".
"I've been here 19 years and it's devastating for all involved," he said.
"You've only got to look across the road at the large warehouses here too, I don't know what the jobs will be replaced with."
Local employment agencies have begun setting up meetings to prepare employees.
Kath Curr, managing director of C&D Recruitment in Swindon, said the closure was "devastating for the town as a whole", but Honda workers' skills were "completely transferrable" .
In a joint statement, Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, Phil Smith, chief executive of Business West, and Paul Britton, chief executive of Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the planned closure of the Swindon plant would have a major impact, not only on Honda staff but also on the company's supply chain.
"Given the size of the operation, there will be a wide and diverse network of regional suppliers that will now be hugely concerned about their future business prospects.
"Employers, government and local authorities must do all they can to deliver tangible assistance and guidance for the people and communities that will be affected by an announcement of this scale," they added.

With two months to go until the UK is due to leave the EU, how are firms and the UK economy faring?
The economy's "resilience through the turbulence of the Brexit process has been particularly noteworthy", according to Chancellor Philip Hammond.
But some businesses claim to have been put under unprecedented pressure.
What is going on?
It's impossible to put absolute numbers on how jobs, output and investment have been affected so far.
No one knows how these will have fared had the outcome to the referendum in 2016 been different.
Other factors have influenced the business environment - not least slower growth in the likes of China and Europe
But there is a range of evidence that can give us an idea of how UK companies are faring.
On the face of it: no.
The number of people employed is at an all-time high. But there's a lot going on under the surface.
Banks' contingency plans mean setting up alternative bases in the likes of Frankfurt, Paris or Dublin. Individual banks are coy about revealing too much.
But reports about banks such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Bank of America moving, or creating, hundreds rather than thousands of jobs at those sites suggest the total affected in the City is much smaller than the 65,000 or so predicted by some immediately after the referendum.
London's Lord Mayor has said that the total by 29 March is likely to be below 13,000.
What we don't know is if jobs created in European cities such as Paris and Frankfurt are at the expense of potential ones here - or the final implications of the future trading relationship with the EU, whenever that is agreed.
While some - including JLR and Ford - have cited Brexit when cutting jobs, it has been a contributing rather than a deciding factor.
Car companies are facing a seismic shock in the face of slowing global demand, oversupply and the shift away from diesel.
In advance of departure, it is rare for firms to blame Brexit alone for job cuts. Chef and restaurant owner Jamie Oliver faced derision for doing so within a few months of the referendum, with critics instead blaming his business model.
As the uncertainty continues, companies may be putting hiring plans on hold - not least as they ramp up spending on no-deal contingency plans. How that impacts overall employment won't be known for a while.
There has probably never been a better time to be a trade negotiator - or a business adviser.
Overall employment has continued to rise to record levels since the referendum in June 2016.
In total, £95m worth of contracts were awarded last year to consultancy firms to advise the public sector on Brexit.
And 20,000 more civil servants have been employed since the referendum, in a reversal to earlier trends.
They are concentrated in the departments  most affected by Brexit.
And that's just the public sector.
Some companies continue to hire apace for other reasons. Telecoms giant Openreach, for example, has said that it will hire a further 3,000 engineers to support its rollout of full fibre broadband.
Business investment is stagnant and more than 10% lower than official forecasts had predicted prior to the referendum.
A lifting of the uncertainty could persuade firms to start spending again - a "deal dividend".
But investment  has been relatively sluggish since the financial crisis.
Firms instead opted to hang on to workers, as they are relatively cheap. They may be continuing this strategy, which could help explain why job creation has remained so resilient.
And as businesses enact contingency plans, money earmarked for investment may have been diverted.
Drugmaker AstraZeneca has spent £40m building extra testing facilities as it increases its drugs stockpile.
Some are forging ahead with plans for a variety of reasons.
Sony is moving its electronics HQ to the Netherlands, to pre-empt any customs problems.
James Dyson claims he's moving his company's base to Singapore to be closer to its fastest growing markets.
But luxury brand Chanel cited the same reason for moving its global business functions to London.
Drugmakers aren't the only ones stockpiling.
Associated British Foods, the company behind Twinings tea and Ryvita, has bought up extra machinery and packaging to prevent disruption to supply chains.
Mondelez, the makers of Cadburys, is stocking up on ingredients and the finished article.
More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:
With Majestic Wine buying an extra £8m in drinks, and Nestle investing in more coffee, there is a reduced risk of us having to forego some of life's luxuries.
Of course, these extra stocks may not be needed - and so the effort and money that's gone into organising and storing them will have been wasted.
But at this point, many companies feel they have no choice.
The UK's exit from the EU may be two months away but for some Brexit has in effect already happened.
Orders are often put in months in advance.
Those for British malting barley from the EU have dried up.
Barley, which is the UK's second largest arable export, could attract tariffs of around 50% of the current market price.
And it's not just food. At September's London Fashion Week, buyers were voicing concerns about placing orders for the spring that might face disruption.
Many of the impacts of the run-up to Brexit, as far as business is concerned, are likely to be temporary, reflecting contingencies or uncertainty.
The overall impact on the economy will become a bit clearer when GDP figures are released in about a week.
And what follows next will depend on Westminster's actions.
The impact of those, in whatever direction, may dwarf what we've seen so far.

Just how long will it take?
The government is intent on persuading us Brexit can be done smoothly, and to time.
So the suggestion that the UK's most senior diplomat in Brussels has privately told the government that a final trade deal with the rest of the EU might not be done for 10 years, and might ultimately fail, may give rise to more nerves.
The BBC understands that Sir Ivan Rogers, the British ambassador to the EU, warned ministers that the European consensus was that a trade deal might not be concluded until the early to mid-2020s at the earliest - possibly a decade after the referendum.
And Sir Ivan, who conducted David Cameron's pre-referendum renegotiation, warned that approving an agreement in every country's domestic parliament - the process of ratification - might prove impossible.
That's despite the public hope from ministers that a trade agreement can be done before we leave the union.
Officially Number 10 says it doesn't recognise the advice. They are confident of negotiating a deal in the interests of the UK and the EU.
Sources say Sir Ivan was representing others' views, rather than reflecting the view of the British government.
But as Theresa May arrives at only her second EU summit as prime minister, where she won't be in the room when the other 27 leaders discuss Brexit over dinner, this is perhaps a reality check of just how hard these negotiations might prove.

The former US President Lyndon Baines Johnson said the first rule of politics is being able to count.
And looking at the numbers in the Commons Theresa May must wonder how on earth she can get a Brexit deal through Parliament, even if she breaks the impasse in Brussels.
As it stands, Tory Brexiteers say they have dozens of MPs ready to vote against the emerging deal.
The DUP's 10 MPs are incandescent about the current proposals for the Irish border and may be tempted to join them.
And crucially, Labour has six tests to judge any Brexit deal by which the government seems certain to fail.
The Labour leadership's strategy is to vote against the Brexit deal in the hope a general election will follow.
If it doesn't, Jeremy Corbyn says "all options are on the table" and several of his MPs believe at that point another referendum will come into play.
However, a split is emerging on the Labour backbenches which may prove vitally important in the final vote on the Brexit deal.
In an interview for the World at One on Radio 4, Labour MP Gareth Snell warned his party not to be the "midwife" of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Snell represents part of Stoke-on-Trent that voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU and is adamant the party must honour its manifesto promise to leave the EU.
"I don't think that we should dismiss at this point supporting any deal just because it is coming from the government," said Mr Snell.
"I think the Labour Party has to be very careful that we are not unwittingly becoming the midwife to a no-deal Brexit baby, if by voting down the deal that comes forward the only alternative is crashing out next March with a no-deal."
Mr Snell's view follows comments on Sunday by Labour MP Caroline Flint, who asked "if a reasonable deal is on the table, the question for my Labour colleagues is why wouldn't you support a deal?".
I understand the issue was raised at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last Monday and conversations are certainly going on between Labour MPs.
The big question of course is how many Labour MPs might be tempted to vote for a Brexit deal or abstain - in defiance of the party?
And would they balance out the number of Tories who seem likely to vote against the government?
At the moment, that seems very unlikely.
Eight Labour MPs told the BBC, off the record, they would consider voting for the deal brought back to the Commons.
Since that deal is not nailed down, the numbers are fluid.
But if it contains a plan to keep the EU and UK economically close after Brexit (yet still falls short of Labour's six tests) the opposition might start to fracture - particularly if the vote occurs in December or January, with time almost up.
Add in the handful of Labour Brexiteers and these would potentially be very useful recruits for the government.
But other Labour MPs are appalled at the prospect some of their number might vote for the deal emerging in Brussels.
Ben Bradshaw said fellow Labour MPs should not fall what he called Theresa May's "false choice" between the deal on the table or nothing at all.
"There is no obligation on Labour MPs to vote for a deal they know will hurt their constituents, make them poorer, particularly some of those heartland leave - Labour constituencies that will be most badly affected by a hard Brexit or a no-deal Brexit," he said.
Mr Bradshaw's hope is that in the political chaos that would follow the Commons rejecting the deal, Parliament would swing behind calls for another referendum.
The looming vote on any Brexit deal will be momentous.
The outcome is impossible to predict, so too the ramifications of it being rejected.
MPs will wrestle with conscience, party instruction, their constituents' views and the referendum result.
There will be unlikely alliances in the division lobbies and the decision of just a few MPs could make a big difference.
So in the coming weeks, listen carefully to Labour MPs representing constituencies in the party's midland and northern heartlands that voted decisively to leave. The government's whips certainly will be.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are pitching to Conservative Party members in Northern Ireland as they battle to become the next prime minister.
But what are their plans for Brexit, the backstop and the border?
Both men have been clear that the backstop should be removed from the withdrawal deal, or at least radically changed.
The backstop was the most controversial part of the deal Theresa May negotiated with the EU.
It is a position of last resort to prevent any new checks or controls on the Irish border after Brexit.
The UK and EU would prefer to maintain the border status quo through a comprehensive trade deal.
If such an agreement cannot be reached, or if a technological solution does not emerge, the backstop would come into force.
It would keep the UK in a single customs territory with the EU, and leave Northern Ireland in the EU's single market for goods.
That would mean goods crossing the border would not be subject to checks for customs or product standards.
Many Conservative MPs fear the UK could be "trapped" in that arrangement for years, leaving it unable to strike its own trade deals on goods with the rest of the world.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which props up the government, also do not want to see Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK.
Both men say they would seek a renegotiation, although EU leaders have consistently said the withdrawal deal will not be reopened and the backstop must remain in place.
Jeremy Hunt has suggested EU leaders have told him privately that they would be prepared to look again at "the whole package" if the UK has some new ideas.
He would add the DUP to his negotiating team and give three weeks for talks with the EU and then decide by 30 September whether a deal can be done.
Mr Johnson has suggested that the backstop be removed from the withdrawal deal and the Irish border issue be resolved in the second phase of Brexit talks which concern a trade deal.
He told the Sunday Times that is "logically" where the border should be discussed "and where it should have been all along".
That would have to involve some sort of standstill agreement to ensure no change at the border while the final deal is worked on.
Both men are agreed that a deal on so-called alternative arrangements is the key to replacing the backstop.
Alternative arrangements are ways of maintaining a soft border without regulatory alignment between the UK and the EU.
It is normally used to refer to a package of technical, technological and administrative solutions.
A lengthy alternative arrangements plan was recently published by the Prosperity UK think tank.
It was praised by both candidates.
Mr Hunt described it as a "useful and thorough contribution," while Mr Johnson said it demonstrated that there were "plenty of checks that you can do away from the border if you had to do them without any kind of hard infrastructure at the Northern Ireland frontier."
However, the Prosperity UK report makes a number of assumptions which are worth examining.
Firstly, there is an important definition, or redefinition. In 2017, the EU-UK joint report said the UK was committed to avoiding a hard border, including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls.
The EU view was this meant the status quo must be maintained with no new procedures at all relating to the border. The UK appeared to go along with this.
However the Prosperity UK report essentially concludes this is too restrictive and it should only mean no new checks and controls at the border.
The inevitable checks and controls will happen elsewhere.
There is also the expectation that the Irish government, political nationalism and some businesses would have to take a bit of pain.
The Irish government would have to back down on no checks and controls, nationalism would have to accept a new distinction between the two states and some Northern Ireland traders would have to bear new costs and trade frictions.
The report also suggests that on the very tricky issue of food standards the best, perhaps only, solution is to have some system of shared rules.
It alights on a convoluted UK-Irish food standards zone, which they say will be 'difficult' to negotiate.
That is perhaps an understatement as it would seem to compromise Ireland's place in the EU single market.
So alternative arrangements are not straightforward.
Mr Johnson has acknowledged they do not provide a "single magic bullet" while Mr Hunt says they can only work with "goodwill and flexibility on all sides."
The EU has committed to exploring alternative arrangements, but only once a withdrawal agreement containing the backstop is passed.
At a recent EU summit, the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) said that alternative arrangements would not be able to replace the backstop in time for the UK's planned exit date.
Leo Varadkar said: "We can't accept that alternative arrangements are an alternative to a backstop unless we see what they are, know how they would work and see them demonstrated."
"That hasn't been done yet and I don't see that being done this side of October 31, which is why we certainly can't accept the deletion of the backstop."

Commons votes are normally as mannered and sequenced as a minuet, but the "indicative votes" on alternative Brexit options will be different, and MPs will have to learn some new steps.
The debate will begin with a hard start time of 2pm - it might be a little earlier, but will not be any later.
This was laid down in the motion from Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin and others to ensure that time was not taken away from it by, for example, a sudden rash of ministerial statements or urgent questions.
Up to the first hour can be taken up by debate on a Business of the House motion, setting out the ground rules for the debate itself - which could see, for example, attempts to amend the voting system between the various options, or maybe separate out means from ends, so that different variants of Brexit were considered, but options like a second referendum were not mixed in.
That might be problematic, if, say, some MPs wanted to approve the prime minister's Brexit deal only subject to a referendum...
Again, there is a hard time limit, to stop MPs filibustering about procedure rather than getting onto the meat of the debate.
Once the Business of the House motion and any amendments to it are dealt with, Mr Speaker will announce which amendments he has selected for debate.
This will be an important moment, because the credibility of the entire exercise rests on MPs having a broad choice of options, and any selection seen to exclude part of the spectrum of possible choices would defeat the point of having indicative votes.
The selection of amendments would be based on (highly flexible) criteria, like the breadth of support, and the distinctiveness of each possible alternative; it is unlikely that the Speaker would choose two almost identical propositions for example.
But he would be keen to avoid swamping MPs with too many alternatives.
Much will depend on the precise terms of the final, possibly amended, Business of the House motion - the motion itself would probably emanate from the group behind Monday's Letwin amendment, but there is nothing to stop someone else, including the government, tabling their own rival version.
It would then be for the Speaker to select.
In the main debate the expectation is that there would be movers speaking for each proposition, and MPs could then debate them all together - and there would probably be speakers from the Opposition and the government winding up.
The voting is expected to take place over half an hour, from the end of the debate at 7pm. It will probably take place in the "No" lobby, immediately next to the Commons Chamber.
MPs will vote, not by filing through the lobbies, as usual, but by filling out a ballot paper.
They would be invited to vote Yes or No to each alternative on offer, and the totals for and against each of them would then be counted by the clerks.
And because the ballot papers would be signed by the MP completing them, the result will eventually be a full list of who is for and against each option.
The sitting of the Commons will be suspended for that half hour - but it will doubtless take rather longer for the results of the vote to emerge.
When MPs get back into the Chamber they will have 90 minutes to debate the statutory instrument which postpones Brexit Day - a debate which is pretty sure to result in a traditional Commons vote.
It is possible that the Speaker may be able to announce the results of the indicative votes in the middle of this debate.
The other little detail tucked away at the end of the Business of the House motion proposed for Wednesday is a proposal to provide another opportunity for MPs to take control of the Commons agenda on the following Monday 1 April - so be prepared for a repeat performance.

Few issues divide opinions between different age groups quite as sharply as Brexit. And it could be that the differences are becoming even more pronounced.
Voters remain evenly divided about the issue, just as they were at the time of the EU referendum two years ago.
If there were to be a second referendum now, 52% would vote Remain and 48% Leave, an average of polls over the past three months suggests.
So, it is a stable picture, albeit one that reverses the position in 2016.
But the opinions of voters vary dramatically across different groups - none more so than between young and old.
Just over 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted in the referendum backed Remain, four major academic and commercial polls conducted shortly after the ballot agree, with just under 30% backing Leave.
In contrast, only 40% of those aged 65 and over supported Remain, while 60% placed their cross against Leave.
These younger and older voters may be even more polarised now.
A total of 82% of 18 to 24-year-olds with a voting preference say they would vote Remain in a second referendum, an average of polls conducted in the past three months suggests, while only 18% of this age group say they would vote Leave.
In contrast, two-thirds of those aged 65 and over would back Leave, while only one-third would favour Remain.
And it is not only the youngest and the oldest voters who have very different views about Brexit. Every age group is different.
The younger someone is, the more likely they are to favour Remain over Leave.
As a result, the UK is divided into the under-45s who, on balance, favour staying in the EU, and the over-45s, who want to leave.
More like this
This pattern reflects very different outlooks about some of the central issues in the Brexit debate.
On immigration, the most recent British Social Attitudes survey shows that 61% of those aged 18 to 34 think that immigration enriches Britain's cultural life.
In contrast, only 38% of those aged 55 and over feel that way.
When it comes to the economy, 54% of 18 to 34-year-olds disagreed with the statement "Britain will be economically better off post-Brexit" in polling by ORB International between May and July. Half that number, 27%, thought the country would be better off.
Among those aged 55 and over, the balance of opinion is almost exactly the opposite - 54% agree that Britain will be better off, while 30% disagree.
Consequently, younger people are also less concerned about an end to free movement - the right of EU citizens to come to Britain to live and work - and more concerned for Britain to remain part of the EU single market.
When asked if they would choose to stay in the single market even if it means allowing free movement, 50% of 18 to 34-year-olds said they would do so, compared with 35% of 55 to 64-year-olds.
This difference of outlook is reflected in attitudes towards holding a second referendum.
Younger people are much keener on the idea of revisiting the Brexit vote.
Asked whether there should be a referendum on whether to accept the terms of Britain's exit from the EU once they have been agreed, about half of 18 to 24 year-olds say they are in favour of another poll.
Only three in 10 of those aged 65 and over hold that view.
However, only half of 18 to 24-year-olds said that they would be certain to vote in a second EU referendum, according to recent polls by Survation. This compares with 84% of those aged 65 and over.
So if there were another ballot, it is far from certain that young people would necessarily take the opportunity to register their distinctive views.
About this piece
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from an expert working for an outside organisation.
Sir John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University, senior research fellow at the NatCen Social Research, a senior fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe and chief commentator at WhatUKthinks.org.
Edited by Duncan Walker

Jeremy Hunt has clarified his comments about a no-deal Brexit, saying Britain "would survive and prosper" - but it would be a "big mistake for Europe".
On Thursday he told ITV News a "messy" no-deal Brexit "would be a mistake we would regret for generations".
But he later tweeted that his words "should not be misrepresented" and the UK would only "sign up to a deal that respects the referendum result".
Tory MP Nigel Evans said: "We don't need any lectures from Remainers."
The backbencher, who campaigned for Brexit, told the BBC: "He's got his own views. He voted remain. The prime minister needs to ensure, as she promised, that Brexiteers are in charge of our leaving the European Union."
And fellow Conservative Brexiteer Conor Burns told the Telegraph: "The thing that we want to avoid for 'generations to come' is being locked into a permanent orbit around the EU where we end up with a deal but don't have a seat around the table".
It comes as Brexit talks resumed in Brussels between UK and EU officials, amid growing speculation about the possibility of the UK leaving the European Union without a deal in March 2019.
On Friday, Danish finance minister Kristian Jensen told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Theresa May's Brexit plan drawn up at Chequers was a "realistic proposal for good negotiations".
But asked about comments by Latvia's foreign minister, that the chance of a no-deal Brexit was "50-50", he said: "I also believe that 50-50 is a very good assessment because time is running out and we need to move really fast if we've got to strike a deal that is positive both for the UK and EU."
Mr Hunt told ITV on Thursday that he believed the government's Chequers plan was the "framework on which I believe the ultimate deal will be based".
But he said, although the UK must be "prepared for all outcomes", if the UK were to leave without a negotiated deal: "It would be a mistake we would regret for generations, if we were to see a fissure, if we had a messy, ugly divorce.
"Inevitably that would change British attitudes towards Europe."
On Friday, he tweeted: "Important not to misrepresent my words. Britain would survive and prosper without a deal... but it would be a big mistake for Europe because of inevitable impact on long-term partnership with UK. We will only sign up to deal that respects referendum result."
Business Secretary Greg Clarke, who has been meeting counterparts in Austria and Finland, said on Thursday he was "confident" a "mutually beneficial deal" could be reached.
But he said that if the European Commission did not "respond positively and constructively" to the UK's proposal, "the disruption and impact on our continent's businesses, economies, and millions of hard-working families across the UK and EU will be significant and lasting".
The government has been touting its plans for Brexit agreed in July at Chequers - the prime minister's country residence in Buckinghamshire - to the EU and its leaders over the summer.
But the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has appeared to rule out a key UK proposal - allowing the UK to collect EU customs duties on its behalf - in July.
Meanwhile, Buzzfeed News is reporting that it has seen a list of 84 areas of British Life - from organic food production to travelling with pets - which would be affected, should the UK leave the EU without a negotiated withdrawal.
The government is expected to publish a number of technical documents on the consequences of leaving with no deal in the coming weeks.
Former Brexit minister David Jones told the BBC's World at One it was a "great shame" they had not been published earlier as "people do need assurance that leaving the European Union without a negotiated agreement is not necessarily going to be the end of the world - in fact, far from it."
He added: "I think that what we need to do is to see these technical notices presented in neutral terms so that both businesses and the wider country can understand what the consequences would be."
Brexit talks resumed in Brussels this week between UK and EU officials, with the focus on the Irish border - a key sticking point - and future relations.
A European Commission spokesman said: "As this week's round is at technical level, there won't be a meeting between Michel Barnier and Dominic Raab.
"We will confirm in due course whether a subsequent meeting has been arranged."

Ex-Prime Minister Sir John Major has been accused of "an absolute dismissal" of democracy after he suggested there should be a second Brexit vote.
Iain Duncan Smith, Leave campaigner and another ex-Conservative leader, said: "You can't claim democracy when you want it and reject it when you don't."
He spoke out after Sir John also warned against Brexit being dictated by the "tyranny of the majority".
Mr Duncan Smith said: "We had a vote, that vote now has to be acted on."
The dispute came after Sir John, Conservative prime minister between 1990 and 1997, called for the 48% of people who voted against Brexit in June's referendum to have their views considered.
"The tyranny of the majority has never applied in a democracy - and it should not apply in this particular democracy," he said.
He argued that Parliament would have to ratify whatever deal is finally reached by the Brexit negotiators and there could be a case for a second referendum, depending on the deal on offer.
Mr Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 5 live's Emma Barnett: "The idea we delay everything just simply because they disagree with the original result does seem to me an absolute dismissal of democracy.
"And that's what I thought John Major's comments were today. The tyranny of the majority? What's the tyranny?"
Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP and leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign, also dismissed Sir John's talk of a second referendum.
"The idea this particular genie can be put back in the bottle after the British people have voted in a year-long debate - that we are now going to vote to stay in the EU - is absolute rubbish," he said.
Mr Jenkin argued that the UK could have avoided Brexit if Sir John had held a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, which was responsible for the creation of the European Union almost 25 years ago.
"If he had stopped the Maastricht Treaty, there would have been no monetary union, there would have been no eurozone crisis, no bailouts, no centralisation of power in the EU - we might even still be a member of the EU," he told the BBC.
"And it's because he gave in on the Maastricht Treaty that we've had to finish up leaving the EU."
Liberal Democrat MP Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, weighed in to add that while the government had a mandate to leave the EU, it did not have a mandate on "how" to leave.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World at One, he criticised what he called the "almost hysterical fervour of the hard Brexiteers" to turn Britain into "a low regulation, low tax, enlarged offshore Singapore for which they have no mandate".
He insisted it was "quite right that people, particularly from the centre ground point of British politics, say: 'Hang on a minute, that's actually not what people necessarily voted for on 23 June'."
He added: "Brexit yes, but not this very hard ideological Brexit that they seem determined to pursue."

Three days after Theresa May called the general election, I interviewed the chancellor about what we could expect from any new Tory government.
On tax the signal was clear.
Philip Hammond was no fan of the triple tax lock David Cameron promised voters before the 2015 election - no increase in income tax, national insurance contributions or VAT.
He suggested the lock should be dropped, and it was.
Towards the end of the interview I turned to immigration and, given the events of last Thursday, it is worth going back to the exchange.
And understanding that Mr Hammond's backing for an immigration target of "tens of thousands" per year is at best luke-warm.
I asked the chancellor: "Immigration is a big issue for businesses - skilled and less-skilled immigration coming into the country. Do you agree that immigration in the UK should be brought down to the tens of thousands even though many businesses say that will damage economic growth?"
Mr Hammond replied: "What businesses want to do is bring skilled migrants in, move skilled migrants around their global businesses to do the jobs that are open in the UK.
"No businesses are unable to bring skilled workers into the UK to work in their companies because we have run out of space on a visa cap.
"At the moment we cannot control migration from the European Union into the UK. That situation will end.
"We will regain control of our borders and we will use that control to manage the migration system in the interests of our economy and our society. "
Me: "Do you think it should be brought down to the tens of thousands a year, immigration in the UK?"
Mr Hammond: "We've got to get migration back to sustainable levels; we've got to focus on skilled migration. The Prime Minister has made it very clear that she believes that needs to be tens of thousands a year."
Me: "Do you believe it?"
Mr Hammond: "The Prime Minister has been very clear that is the target that we are going for - tens of thousands."
Mr Hammond is a careful man.
And the fact that he refused to say directly that he supported the target is worthy of note.
Those close to the chancellor have revealed his concern.
Far from putting up barriers to immigration, many in the Treasury believe that Britain will be engaged in a "global battle for immigrants" to support the economy.
Now, that is not to say that Mr Hammond is in favour of free movement of people from the EU.
As he made clear to me, "that situation will end".
And nothing has changed sufficiently enough since last Thursday to alter that.
Which seems to me to rule out unfettered membership of the single market unless the European Union decides to reform one of the four principles of membership - open borders.
And the chance of that appears vanishingly small.
What has changed is that Mr Hammond is much strengthened in government - as Theresa May has been weakened.
Many in Number 10 were no fans of the Treasury and wanted to curtail its influence at the centre.
That power relationship has shifted.
And Mr Hammond's reluctance to back an immigration numbers target has become much more significant.
"Jobs and skills" to support the economy will be a new mantra in the Brexit discussions - pushed by the chancellor.
Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of the CBI writing in this morning's Financial Times, talks about the need for "access to the skills and labour companies need to grow".
My colleague Simon Jack reports this morning that businesses feel their voice should now be heard more loudly.
Michael Gove's reappearance in the Cabinet provides another "pro-skills" voice.
Yes, Mr Gove is a firm Brexiter, but of the "open-but-controlled borders" variety.
"People who come here who have got skills that can contribute to our economy are welcome," he said during the referendum campaign.
There is much talk that a "soft" Brexit may now be more likely given the perceived weakness of the Prime Minister.
As far as "soft" means an economically closer relationship with the EU - and a more porous approach to immigration controls - that certainly appears to be the case as far as the chancellor is concerned.

Immigration should rise and fall depending on the UK's needs after it has left the EU, the Brexit secretary says.
David Davis said a "sustainable" system would take into account the needs of the NHS and different industries.
He also said the government had a "huge contingency plan" for the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Mr Davis was speaking on a special edition of BBC Question Time ahead of Wednesday's formal Brexit notification.
The government has yet to specify how the UK's immigration system will work once it is no longer bound by EU free movement rules, but has promised to restore "control" to borders with new curbs in place.
Mr Davis said the new system would be "properly managed".
It would be for the home secretary to decide the system to be used, he said, but added: "I cannot imagine that the policy will be anything other than that which is in the national interest.
"Which means that from time to time we will need more, from time to time we will need less.
"That is how it will no doubt work and that will be in everybody's interests - the migrants and the citizens of the UK."
The Brexit secretary was urged by a German NHS worker in the audience to "do the decent thing" and guarantee EU nationals the right to stay in the UK.
He promised the issue would be a priority when talks begin.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Theresa May will invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which begins the negotiation process.
During the Britain after Brexit debate the panellists, who included former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond and Labour Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer, were asked what would happen if no deal was reached.
Mr Davis said the government had spent the nine months since June's Brexit vote preparing a plan.
He said it was not a scenario the government wanted to see, but added: "We have got a huge contingency plan, exercised across all of these issues, every department of government."
Mr Salmond said the government's view that no deal is better than a bad deal was "nonsensical".
But UKIP's Suzanne Evans criticised "hyperbole" about "crashing out" of the EU.
Mr Davis also said the UK would abide by its obligations when it comes to settling outstanding liabilities with the EU, but played down claims these could amount to £50bn.
Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said the EU was "simply going to ask us to settle the tab before we leave", and Mr Starmer said the UK had to honour its debts "otherwise no country is going to want to deal with us" in future trade negotiations.
But a man in the audience compared the EU's demands with "the bully in the playground taking our lunch money".
On Wednesday, the prime minister will send a letter to the president of the European Council telling him officially that the UK wants to leave.
Triggering Article 50, the letter will set in motion a two-year process in which the terms of the UK's departure from the EU will be hammered out, as will the outline of the UK's future relationship with the remaining 27 EU members.
As things stand, the UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 although this deadline could be extended if both sides agree.
More than 33.5 million people voted in a referendum last June on the UK's future in the EU. They voted to leave by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1%.

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg sat down for an interview with Prime Minister Boris Johnson after his meeting with the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.
Here is the full transcript of what they said.
Laura Kuenssberg: You've just been with [European Commission president] Jean-Claude Juncker.
Do you feel you've made any progress since seeing him. I mean he could be the deal maker?
Boris Johnson: Yes. I mean obviously I've talked to him several times since becoming prime minister, but he's... I've known Jean-Claude for many, many years and he is a very, highly, highly intelligent guy and I think that he would like to get a deal if we possibly can, but clearly it's going to take some work.
We think that there are, we can satisfy the European Commission and our friends on the key points. Can we protect the single market the integrity the single market? Can we ensure there's no checks at the border in Northern Ireland? Can we protect all the achievements of the Good Friday Agreement and peace in Northern Ireland? Yes I think we can, while simultaneously allowing the whole of the UK to withdraw.
It will now take an accelerated timetable of work to, to get that done. And it maybe - you know - just have to say that it may be that we have to come out without an agreement if necessary on 31 October.
LK: And we will come to that in a second.
But just in the last few minutes, the [European] Commission has put a statement out, saying after your lunch that they still are yet to see proposals that they think are viable and workable.
So it doesn't feel like this is going anywhere at the moment?
BJ: Well, it's certainly the case that the Commission is still officially sticking on their position that the backstop has got to be there.
But clearly if they think that we can come up with alternatives, then I think they're on the mark.
I think the big picture is that the Commission would like to do a deal.
[Pause to adjust the microphone]
LK: I mean the Commission has immediately after your lunch put out a statement saying they still haven't seen viable workable proposals.
Do you feel they're listening or is this that they're saying something else behind closed doors to what they say publicly?
BJ: No, I think the Commission, I think Jean-Claude himself certainly would like to do a deal and would like the UK to, and would like to settle this if he possibly can.
They have their own constraints. They've got the European Parliament they've got to deal with. I think there's a deal there to be done and of the kind that I've described.
But clearly if we can't get movement from them on that crucial issue of whether the EU can continue to control the UK and our trade policy and our regulation - which is how it would work under the current Withdrawal Agreement - we won't be able to get that through the House of Commons, no way.
And we'll have an exit with no-deal on 31 October. That's not what I want. It's not what they want. And we're going to work very hard to avoid it. But, but that's the reality.
LK: But what is the broad shape of a deal that you think is there? I mean we've heard many times from you and ministers that there is a landing zone.
As simply as you can, what is the nature of the deal you think you can get?
BJ: I mean, I think that the important thing here is not to be... I mean, there is a negotiation going on, has been for a long time now about how to do this.
So there's a limit to how much the details benefit from publicity before we've actually done the deal. But the shape of it is, the shape it is...
LK: Slice and dice the backstop as it exists?
BJ: The shape of it is all about who decides.
Fundamentally, the problem with the backstop, as you remember, is that it's a device by which the EU can continue after we've left to control our trade laws, control our tariffs, control huge chunks of our regulation, and we have to keep accepting laws from Brussels long after we've left with no say on those laws.
Now that just doesn't work. It doesn't work for the whole of the UK and it doesn't work for Northern Ireland. So we have to find a way to avoid that situation.
LK: But what is that way? Because what you're saying there is just articulating the problem that's been articulated forever, about the backstop and people's concern that Northern Ireland would still have to and the rest of the UK would have to go along with EU rules.
But can you foresee a solution, for example, when in some areas, Northern Ireland would follow EU rules and the rest of the UK would not?
BJ: What we want to see is a solution where the decision is taken by the UK and clearly that's the problem with the, with the backstop. It basically leaves the decision making up to Brussels and that's no good.
LK: What's the actual solution that you're proposing? Is it giving more power to Stormont, for example, that's being talked about a lot, that the Northern Irish assembly might be given a lock on opting out or opting in on EU regulation?
BJ: These are certainly some of the ideas that are being talked about and as are the ideas that you're familiar with to do with maximum facilitations, to do with checks away from the border, all sorts of ways in which you can avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
This is all doable. It's all doable with energy and goodwill.
But I mentioned the other day when I was in in Dublin, you know the famous dictum attributed I think probably incorrectly to Ian Paisley the elder, [in] Northern Ireland the people are British, but the cattle are Irish, you know there's a there's a germ of an idea there.
LK: But it's just the germ of an idea...
BJ: There's a lot of thinking going on about how to get an agreement that gets the UK out whole and entire, but also protects that Northern Irish border, protects that peace process and protects all the gains that Ireland has got from its membership of the EU single market.
So, I'm, you know, I mean, more or less where I was the other day. I'm cautiously optimistic, cautious.
But it is vital that we're ready to come out on 31 October.
And of course what the... parliamentarians threatening to extend and all that kind of thing. They hear that they listened to that over here, but I didn't think it substantially changes their calculations.
LK: MPs though haven't just threatened to extend, MPs have changed the law to try to stop you taking the UK out without a deal at the end of October.
How do you propose to get round that? Because you keep saying you've got no intention of delay...
BJ: I won't. Here's, here's what I want. I will uphold the constitution, I will obey the law, but we will come out on 31 October.
LK: But how if MPs have changed the law to stop you doing that?
BJ: We're going to come out on 31 October and it's vital that people understand that the UK will not extend.
We won't go on remaining in the EU beyond October. What on earth is the point? Do you know how much it costs?
LK: But how will you do that if MPs have changed the law to stop you?
Are you looking for a way round the law? Because that's what it sounds like...
BJ: We will obey the law but we will come out - and - we will come out I should say on 31 October.
LK: But that means you are looking for a way round the law.
I mean, to be really clear about this, Parliament has changed the law to make it almost impossible to take us out of the EU without a deal at the end of October. But you say that you will not do it.
That means that you must be looking for a way around the law?
BJ: Well, you know those are your words. What we're going to do is come out on 31 October deal or no-deal. And staying in beyond 31 October completely... crackers.
You're spending £1bn a month for the privilege remaining in the... what is the point?
The people of this country want us to get on and leave the EU and deliver on the mandate of the people.
And staying in costs £250m a week, which is which is roughly the same as what it would cost to build a new hospital every week.
That's what Jeremy Corbyn and the opposition parties seem to think is a good idea. I don't think it's a good idea.
LK: You used to say it cost £350m a week, now you're saying £250m a week?
BJ: I think the priorities of the British people are to come out and that's what we're going to do.
LK: But do you really think that you want to be the kind of prime minister that is looking of ways of sneaking around the law to keep to your political promise?
I mean, everybody knows how strongly you feel...
BJ: These are all your words.
LK: But how will you do it then?
Will you challenge it in court? Will you take Parliament to court?
BJ: Our first priority, if I may say so, just to try and look on the bright side for a second or two, is to come out with a deal and that's what we're working to achieve. And I think we have every prospect of doing that.
LK: But if you don't, I mean you are looking, you know the law has been changed to try to make this impossible.
If you want to look for a way round it, many people believe that means you must be preparing somehow to ignore the law or to challenge that because it's a new area of law.
Would you seek to challenge the law in court? Will the government take Parliament to court?
BJ: What we're going to do is work very hard to get a deal that will allow us to come out.
I see no point whatever in staying on in the EU beyond 31 October and we're going to come out. And actually that is what our friends and partners in the EU would like too. And I think that they've had a bellyful of all this stuff.
You know they want to develop a new relationship with the UK. They're fed up with these endless negotiations, endless delays. They've now delayed twice before to achieve what is completely unclear to me.
LK: And you're completely clear that politically the promise you gave to your party was to leave on 31 October. And that was clear as crystal.
But since you've been in office you've suspended Parliament. You say you might find a way around the way that Parliament might change the law...
BJ: Well, that's what you've just said.
LK: Well, you haven't denied it prime minister. I mean it does seem since you've been in office that, some of the things that you have done, you seem to believe the conventions and rules somehow don't apply to you really?
BJ: Obviously I humbly, respectfully, disagree. If you're talking about having a Queen's Speech, I think that was the right thing to do. This Parliament has gone on for longer than any time since the Civil War.
It's right to have a Queen's Speech, it's right to set out our ambitious agenda for the country. There's all sorts of things we want to do. Whether it's investing in health care and putting police on the streets.
We've got a fantastic agenda for investing in science. A huge, huge agenda for this country. On the environment, on housing we have big, big projects.
We need a Queen's Speech. And by the way, all this mumbo jumbo about how Parliament is being deprived of the opportunity to scrutinise Brexit. What a load of claptrap.
Actually, Parliament I think has lost about four or five days. I don't think Parliament has sat during the period from late September beginning of October for about 120 years.
With great respect, I don't think people are aware of that fact. I think people think that we've somehow stopped Parliament from scrutinising Brexit. What absolute nonsense.
Parliament will be able to scrutinise the deal that I hope we will be able to do both before and after the European Council on 17 October.
LK: But when it comes to sticking to the promise you made to leave on 31 October...
BJ: We're going to do that.
LK: Is there a line that you would not cross?
BJ: Well yes, obviously I didn't want to go beyond 31 October. I think that would be a mistake.
LK: In order to stick to that goal, is there anything that you would not do?
Would you rule out suspending parliament again?
BJ: As I say, we're going to uphold the constitution and we're going to obey the law. And it's very important to realise that actually, I think our friends and partners in the EU are keen to work with us to get a deal.
That's what I've been doing here with Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier. We've been working very hard. We've had a good productive exchange.
Has there been a total breakthrough? I wouldn't say so. But I would say that a huge amount of work is now going to be done to sort it out.
Am I more optimistic than I was when I, when we took office? This morning? I would say a little bit, but not much, just a little bit.
Because I think that there's a, perhaps an even greater willingness on the part of the Commission to engage than I had, than I had thought.
So, so yes. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not counting my chickens. And it is absolutely vital, it's absolutely vital for people to understand that the UK is ready to come out with no-deal if we have to.
LK: Do you feel that the UK is stable right now? I mean, it looks like chaos, doesn't it?
BJ: No, I think it's extremely stable. We've got unemployment at record lows. We have record levels of investment from overseas - one point £3tn pounds. There's no other country in Europe that gets these levels of investment.
If people genuinely thought, if people genuinely thought that there was some political risk in the UK, would they be investing in this in this country in the way that they are?
LK: Does it look politically stable?
BJ: This is an immensely, but it is an immensely stable country. We are going through what is, after all, a quite difficult exercise in democracy.
Which is, what happened is that the people of this country decided after 45 years of EU membership that that highly intricate relationship was one that they no longer wished to pursue. And that has had a great deal of consequence.
The disentangling of that relationship is obviously complex, but it can be done and it is being done. And we will get on with it successfully.
And I think people should be very optimistic about the future of this country, because it's a fantastic country. It is the leader and the cutting edge of most of the 21st century technology in Europe.  And a place that attracts, not just huge quantities of inward investment, but the best and brightest from around the world.
And what we will, what we will ensure as we become, as we take advantage of Brexit, is that we remain not just open to our friends in the rest of the EU, but we reach out now to the rest of the world and take advantage of the opportunities the Brexit offers.
And I think actually what the people of our country want is a little less of this sort of gloom and kind of, you know, I think most people think that, honestly it's just nonsensical to think that democracy in the UK is any way endangered or the UK economy is in any way endangered.
We're going through a period of constitutional adjustment caused by the decision of the people to leave the EU. That was always going to be logistically and practically difficult to accomplish.
But we're going to do it and we're going it by 31 October, and we will be in very good shape whether we get a deal or not.
And if we don't get a deal, I'm still, as I say, cautiously optimistic that we will. If we don't get a deal, we will come out nonetheless
LK: One of the people who is extremely gloomy about what's happened is your old friend and rival and colleague David Cameron.
Now he says that the Leave campaign that you led lied.
He said that you behaved appallingly and he's a prime minister, a Tory prime minister, who left behind a total mess over Europe.
Are you worried you might face the same fate?
BJ: I have nothing but admiration. Look I don't want to say anything further about David Cameron and his memoirs than what I said the other day, which is I have the highest respect and affection, regard for him.
He and I worked together for many years and I think he has a legacy, in terms of turning around the economic chaos that Labour left, helping to introduce a jobs miracle in this country, turning the economy around, I think he can be very very proud of.
So that's my view on Dave and what he's got to say.
LK: He's been pretty brutal about you...
BJ: Well. Really? I mean you know. I think that he has a lot to be proud of and there you go.

Three Tory MPs have resigned from the party to join an independent group, set up by former Labour MPs.
Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen wrote a joint letter to Theresa May to confirm their departure.
The three held a press conference, criticising the government for letting the "hard-line anti-EU awkward squad" take over the party.
The PM said she was "saddened", but her party would "always offer... decent, moderate and patriotic politics".
The pro-Remain trio will join the new Independent Group - made up of eight Labour MPs who resigned from their party over its handling of Brexit and anti-Semitism - saying it represented "the centre ground of British politics".
At a press conference on Wednesday, Ms Soubry criticised Theresa May for being "in the grip" of the Democratic Unionist Party and the pro-Leave European Research Group, and allowing Brexit to "define and shape" the Conservative Party.
She said: "The battle is over, the other side has won.
"The right wing, the hard-line anti-EU awkward squad that have destroyed every leader for the last 40 years are now running the Conservative Party from top to toe. They are the Conservative Party."
Ms Wollaston said she felt "great sadness" at quitting the party, but said Mrs May "simply hasn't delivered on the pledge she made on the steps of Downing Street to tackle the burning injustices in our society".
And Ms Allen highlighted her concerns around poverty, as well as Brexit, saying: "I can no longer represent a government and a party who can't open its eyes to the suffering endured by the most vulnerable in society - suffering which we have deepened whilst having the power to fix."
The three MPs said they will support the government on areas such as the economy, security and improvements to public services, and Ms Soubry defended the record of the coalition government - including the "necessary" austerity measures taken by chancellor George Osborne.
But they felt "honour bound to put our constituents' and country's interests first" over Brexit.
Watched by the eight other members of The Independent Group on the front row at the press conference, Ms Allen said she was "excited" about the future, adding: "I want to be part of something better, a party that people vote for because they want to, not because they feel they have to."
The departure of the three MPs - who all support the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum - has reduced the government's working majority to nine MPs, and Ms Allen claimed there were "absolutely" other colleagues "keen" to join the group.
And the Independent Group now has more MPs in Parliament than the Democratic Unionist Party and equals the number of Liberal Democrats.
Today's departures are evidence of how serious Conservative divisions have become.
Right now, as with Labour, it's a splinter, not a split. But don't underestimate how hard a decision it is for any MP to abandon their tribe.
These departures illustrate, therefore, a real problem for the governing party.
Like Labour, the Tories have big questions they can't answer at the moment - profound quandaries that it's not clear their leaderships are ready, or perhaps even capable right now of meeting.
Mrs May said the UK's membership of the EU had been "a source of disagreement both in our party and our country for a long time", so "ending that membership after four decades was never going to be easy".
But, she added: "By delivering on our manifesto commitment and implementing the decision of the British people we are doing the right thing for our country."
Former Prime Minister David Cameron said he respected the decision of the three MPs, but disagreed with them, calling for "strong voices at every level of the party calling for modern, compassionate Conservatism."
Mr Cameron added: "Our party has long been able to contain different views on Europe. Everyone must ensure that can continue to be the case."
A Labour spokesman criticised The Independent Group, saying they had formed "what is effectively an establishment coalition based on the failed and rejected policies of the past", such as austerity, corporate tax cuts and privatisation.
But Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said his party would "hold out the hand of friendship" to the group and said they already had "a good working relationship" with the MPs.
The Conservative party's deputy chairman, Tory MP James Cleverly, told BBC Radio 5 Live that the resignations were "very sad and disappointing", which was echoed by Communities Secretary James Brokenshire. But he added that the focus "has to remain on delivering Brexit" and the Conservative party was "a broad church and will remain so".
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said it was a "great shame to have lost the commitment and undeniable talent" of the three MPs.
Remain-backing Tory MP Nicky Morgan said the party "should regret losing three such talented women from the Conservative Party".
Former Cabinet office minister, Damian Green, tweeted that he hoped the three MPs rejoined the party one day.
Some Labour MPs have been criticising their former colleagues for joining forces with ex-Conservatives.
Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said it was "a new low" to see the MP of her home town, Ann Coffey, welcoming an MP responsible for government cuts, adding: "I'm utterly disgusted."
Scottish Labour MP Danielle Rowley also questioned her former colleagues, tweeting: "How people who once called themselves Labour can cosy up next to the likes of Soubry, smiling and laughing, is absolutely beyond me.
"I guess we now know how their policies and values differ from Labour."
Others have been criticising the group for not holding by-elections to win back their seats as independent MPs.
Douglas Carswell, who resigned from the Conservatives to join UKIP in 2014, tweeted: "When I changed parties it didn't occur to me to not hold a by election.  If my own electorate weren't supportive, what was the point?"
However, Ms Allen rejected calls for them to step down to contest by-elections, saying: "This is what the big parties do. They want to crush the birth of democracy. They want to crush people like us trying to change things for this country.
"This is the game, of course, they will play but we are better than that, and we think our constituents and the country deserve better than that."

The UK government has been told by Ireland to "stand by its commitments" on avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said an arrangement with a time limit would not be "worth the paper it's written on".
The border issue is the main barrier to progress between the two sides.
With time running out, Theresa May, who briefs her cabinet on Tuesday, has to get both the EU and her MPs on side.
The European Union's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said divorce negotiations with the UK are not driven by a sense of revenge and that a no-deal, or a "hard" Brexit, would be a leap into the unknown for Britons living in the EU and EU citizens in the UK.
Speaking at an event in Brussels, Mr Barnier also said any Brexit deal had to maintain an open Irish border to protect peace on the island that has seen decades of sectarian violence.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March, and although 95% of the deal is said to be complete, the tricky bit is proving to be how to honour the commitment by both sides to guarantee no new hard border in Ireland.
It is an issue because after Brexit it will become the UK's land border with the rest of the EU, which has a single market and customs union so products do not need to be checked when they pass between member states.
There have been warnings that a hard border would undermine the peace process in Northern Ireland.
But unless negotiators can make decisive progress on how to guarantee no new visible checks, a special summit to finalise the UK's withdrawal will not take place.
There is disagreement on whether the "backstop" they have agreed to put in place should apply to Northern Ireland, or the whole of the UK - and on whether it can be time-limited or revoked by the UK.
Tory Brexiteers are concerned the UK could end up locked in a customs union with the EU without a fixed end point.
Writing in The Sun, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said this would be an "absolute stinker" of a deal and warned of a "surrender to Brussels" with the UK staying tied to EU rules in years to come.
Mrs May has insisted that any arrangement would be "strictly time limited".
This, however, is not the view of the EU.
On Twitter, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said a time-limited arrangement - or one that could be unilaterally ended by the UK - would never get EU backing.
"Still necessary to repeat this, it seems," added the EU's deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand.
And Mr Varadkar said the UK had agreed to a legally-binding "backstop" to apply "unless and until" it is superseded by a new agreement.
"I think it's reasonable for us to expect a country like the United Kingdom and a government like the UK government to stand by its commitments," he said.
Mr Varadkar described the UK as a "divided kingdom" over Brexit, saying this made it "very difficult to come to an agreement".
While the EU has objected to a time-limited UK-wide arrangement, its suggestion of a backstop that is specific to Northern Ireland has been ruled out by Mrs May who says it would undermine the integrity of the UK by creating a new border down the Irish Sea.
The prime minister says she does not think a "backstop" arrangement will be necessary as she wants to solve the border problem through the UK's long-term trade relationship with the EU, which has yet to be agreed.
Mrs May spoke to Mr Varadkar by phone on Monday morning "to take stock of the progress being made", Downing Street said, adding that: "In order to ensure that the backstop, if ever needed, would be temporary, the prime minister said that there would need to be a mechanism through which the backstop could be brought to an end."
The Irish government said Mrs May had "raised the possibility of a review mechanism for the backstop", and that Mr Varadkar had "indicated an openness to consider proposals for a review, provided that it was clear that the outcome of any such review could not involve a unilateral decision to end the backstop".
Meanwhile, 1,400 lawyers have signed a letter calling for another EU referendum to be held.
Among the signatories of the letter are Labour peer Baroness Kennedy QC, former Court of Appeal judge Konrad Schiemann and David Edward, a former judge at the European Court of Justice.
They say questions over the validity of the 2016 vote mean it should not be the public's final word, any more than the 1975 referendum on membership of what was then the European Economic Community.
In the earlier referendum, voters faced a clear choice between alternatives once negotiations had been completed, the lawyers said.
By contrast, during the 2016 vote, "the nature of the negotiation process and its outcome were unknown", said the letter.
"Voters faced a choice between a known reality and an unknown alternative. In the campaign, un-testable claims took the place of facts and reality."
The UK government has said asking the public to vote again would be a betrayal of the public's trust after the result of the referendum in 2016.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Exiting the European Union said that the government was confident of a "mutually advantageous" deal with the EU.
"The people of the United Kingdom have already had their say in one of the biggest democratic exercises this country has ever seen and the Prime Minister has made it clear that there is not going to be a second referendum," she said.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has warned that the UK "cannot afford" to leave the EU without a deal.
Speaking to the Today programme Mr Coveney described talk of the UK "crashing out of the EU" as "bravado".
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 but has yet to agree how its final relationship with the bloc will work.
The White Paper on the UK's future relationship with the EU was published earlier this month.
Mr Coveney said the negative implications of a no deal Brexit are "very significant for Ireland and for the UK".
"I don't believe Britain crashing out of the EU without any agreed process is likely to happen.
"There is an obligation on me, and others, to instil some positivity into this negotiation process rather than political standoffs which is what we've seen to date".
Ireland's deputy prime minister said his government would back moves to lengthen the negotiating period by extending Article 50 if the UK government requested it, adding the deadline would only be extended if it was "necessary to get a sensible agreement".
Chancellor Philip Hammond said the UK was "well positioned" to get a good deal, and that he did not believe that there was a legal basis to delay Britain leaving the European Union.
Welcoming the publication of the White Paper, Mr Coveney said it gives the negotiating teams a degree of clarity.
"For much of the last six months effectively Britain has been negotiating with itself on Brexit.
"Now at least we have a White Paper where there's a clear British government position and the negotiation between the EU and the UK really starts now in earnest," he added.
Mr Coveney dismissed as a "simplistic notion" the idea that the only infrastructure in the event of a hard border would be from the EU.
"If the commitments given in December are followed through on then there will be no need for that external border of the EU to result in physical infrastructure.
"We will ensure that the commitments that we have been given around guarantees of no border structure or related checks and controls on the island of Ireland on the Irish border is followed through on," he added.

The big sticking point in the Brexit negotiations has been described as a "red herring" by one of the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs propping up Theresa May's minority government.
Sammy Wilson told the BBC World Service there was no "real problem".
The EU says there must be an arrangement to prevent physical checks on the 310-mile border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
So far, London and Brussels have failed to settle the issue.
This raises the prospect of the UK leaving the EU with no deal in March 2019.
Mr Wilson, the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) MP for East Antrim and the party's Brexit spokesman, said: "This is a red herring that's been thrown in to either string out the negotiations until there's a change in government in the UK, or to make the price of leaving the EU the break-up of the UK, or to keep the UK in the customs union and the single market".
The MP pointed to comments from the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), Leo Varadkar, who said he had been given assurances about the border by the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.
In July Mr Varadkar said: "President Juncker and my EU colleagues have on many occasions said that they wouldn't require us to put in place a physical infrastructure and customs checks on the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland."
President Juncker's office refused to say whether he had made such an assurance, saying simply it would not comment on the ongoing negotiations.
Sammy Wilson added: "There's no real problem, as the EU have now confirmed. If they say in the event of no deal, we'll not be putting up any border, then what's the issue?"
A spokesperson for the Taoiseach said: "The British government, the Irish government and the European Union have all made clear, repeatedly, their determination to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland following the UK's withdrawal from the EU."
So why all the discussion then?
The EU wants a so-called backstop arrangement, an insurance policy, to ensure the border on the island of Ireland continues to be open if the UK and EU can't agree a future trade deal or a technological solution.
That could include keeping Northern Ireland in the EU customs union and tied to some rules of the single market.
Theresa May has previously said any proposals for a common area across the Northern Ireland border would "undermine the UK common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom".
And DUP MPs have warned they would vote against any Brexit deal that treats Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK.
"We don't want to change the government; we simply want to change its policy.
"If that means the current leader falls by the wayside, that's an issue for the Conservative Party, not for us," said Mr Wilson.
Ireland's deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, told the BBC in October that the UK must stick to promises around the border backstop that it made last year, saying, "Britain has signed up to in writing... a backstop".
"We do need to insist on the commitments the prime minister has made to Ireland and to the EU around providing guarantees there could never be physical border infrastructure," he said.
"There needs to be a backstop unless and until something better can be negotiated," Mr Coveney said.
When discussing Theresa May's agreement to a backstop for Northern Ireland last year, Sammy Wilson said, "The mind boggles that anyone can be so stupid".
Theresa May recently said 95% of the Brexit deal has been agreed.
Sammy Wilson said that claim should be treated cautiously.
"Although the prime minister might think she's 95% of the way there, the captain of the Titanic thought he was 95% of the way to his destination.
"He didn't quite reach it because an iceberg hit them on the way there. There are huge icebergs sitting in the way of this deal at present," he said.
At the moment, people, goods and services move freely across the land border in Ireland.
The UK and Ireland are both part of the EU, so products do not need to be checked to make sure they comply with customs and standards rules.
If there is no Brexit deal, companies exporting goods to the EU "will be required to follow customs procedures in the same way that they currently do when exporting goods to a non-EU country," according to UK government advice for businesses.
A lot of this work would be done electronically, away from the border.
The guidance says exporters will need to apply for a UK Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) number, consider engaging the services of a customs broker, submit export declarations to HMRC and apply for any relevant export licences.
The Irish Revenue has issued similar advice to companies about new customs processes.
"In the post-Brexit era the administrative and fiscal burden on the traders involved cannot be underestimated," an advice document states.
Under World Trade Organisation rules, countries cannot normally discriminate between their trading partners unless there is a formal trade deal.
So a no-deal Brexit would mean, for example, that Irish products would have to be treated the same way as goods from the US or China.
"Grant someone a special favour and you have to do the same for all other WTO members," says the organisation.
That reduces the ability of the UK and the Republic of Ireland to treat each other's products more favourably than those from other nations.
That is why talks about the Irish border are seen as so important.

The Irish government is to hold an all-island forum examining the implications of Brexit later on Monday.
The meeting will be hosted by the Taoiseach (Irish prime minister), Leo Varadkar, and his deputy, Simon Coveney.
It will be the fourth time the forum has met since it was set up following the EU referendum in June 2016.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who supported Brexit, has always said there is no need for the forum.
Monday's meeting will take place at the Dundalk Institute of Technology, with representatives from the other main political parties expected to attend.
The EU's Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, will also attend the event to give an update on the state of the overall negotiations.
Mr Barnier will also visit Northern Ireland on Monday and Tuesday, and he will meet politicians and cross-border business owners in Londonderry, Letterkenny and Dungannon to discuss what impact - if any - a future deal with the UK could have on border towns and cities.
The question of what will happen to the Irish border after Brexit has been a sticking point throughout the talks, with no solution so far.
The Irish government first proposed an all-island forum in the wake of the EU referendum result in June 2016.
It said its priorities for the forum are the Irish economy and trade with the UK, the peace process and Northern Ireland and the Common Travel Area (CTA) between Ireland and the UK.
Last week, tensions grew between the Irish government and the DUP, after the party's deputy leader Nigel Dodds accused the Irish government of being "aggressive" in its approach to Brexit.
Although the UK voted overall to leave the EU, a 56% majority in Northern Ireland wanted to remain.

The number of British applications for an Irish passport has boomed following the UK's vote to leave the European Union.
Some UK residents are entitled to an Irish passport if their parents or grandparents were born in Ireland.
In 2015, the year before the Brexit vote, more than 46,000 applications were lodged from Britain - excluding Northern Ireland.
By the end of 2017 that number had nearly doubled to 81,000.
In an earlier version of this story, the BBC wrongly reported there had also been a surge in the number of rejections of British applicants.
A discrepancy between the number of applications made and passports issued through the London embassy amounted to some 15,000 people. However, Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said that figure did not represent the number of passport applications refused.
Instead it reflects the fact that not all applications from residents are submitted via the London embassy, it said.
The actual number of rejected applications is not clear. Applications can be rejected for a range of reasons including incomplete applications or uncertain identity.
Citizens of the Republic of Ireland, an EU member state, will retain visa-free travel benefits after Brexit, no matter the outcome of the UK's negotiations with the EU.
In the first five months of this year, almost 45,000 British people had requested an Irish passport,  according to figures from Neale Richmond, Chair of the Irish Senate's Brexit committee.
London's Irish embassy has issued more than 176,000 since 2016 - more than 10 times that of any other office.
Mr Richmond said embassy staff were expecting 2018 to be the busiest year ever.
Each application for a standard 10-year passport costs €80 (£71).
You can claim an Irish passport (or Irish citizenship) if:
Several other exemptions apply for those resident in Ireland for extended periods, adoptions, children of refugees, and other special circumstances.
There has also been a surge in applications from Northern Ireland, where most UK citizens are automatically entitled to an Irish passport if they so wish.
Senator Richmond's figures show that applications from there grew from 53,715 in 2015 to 82,274 in 2017.
Excluding Northern Ireland, Mr Richmond said at least 10% of Britain's population were thought to qualify for an Irish passport.
"In light of Brexit many including a number of my own family members are staking their claim," he said - and "there is no sign of this rush for Irish passports abating."

The UK should not seek convergence with EU regulations after Brexit, the DUP's Ian Paisley has said.
A Times newspaper story says Britain is prepared to offer to avoid any divergence in trade rules between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The paper says it would devolve a package of powers to Northern Ireland to enable customs convergence on areas like agriculture and energy.
Mr Paisley said matching "red tape" was not the way ahead.
According to the paper, the government's offer would enable customs convergence in areas such as agriculture and energy.
It adds that sources in Dublin said there had been "movement" on the issue, and there was confidence a deal could be reached at the EU summit in December.
"We are not about convergence here, we are about co-operation," said the North Antrim MP.
"(Northern Ireland) will continue to trade with out biggest partner, which is the rest of the UK and I imagine that given the UK is one of the Republic of Ireland's largest trading partners that (the Republic) will want to continue to trade with us.
"We're not about stopping that, but I'll tell you what, if you try to prevent part of the United Kingdom from leaving the EU, or trip us up, that will reflect very badly on the deals that we do after we leave."
Mr Paisley is one of 10 DUP pro-Brexit MPs who are propping up Theresa May's minority government on key votes.
The EU is concerned about how it can protect the integrity of the single market if goods which do not comply with its standards are imported across a future open border within Ireland.
However, unionists and government ministers have strongly resisted the idea that there should be any checks on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain - claiming this would disrupt the UK's own home market.
The suggestion of regulatory changes were welcomed by Joe O'Reilly, Fine Gael spokesman on foreign affairs and trade in the Irish Senate, who said they would represent "a massive move towards a frictionless border".
"To have a different tariff regime would very adversely affect agriculture and a lot of other local industries and have a huge effect in a border context," he added.
Some sources have urged caution about the Times report, which implies the devolution of extra powers to a Northern Ireland executive that currently does not exist.
The EU has said "sufficient progress" has to be made on the Irish border before negotiations on a future relationship can begin.
Downing Street has said the whole of the UK will leave both the customs union and the single market when it leaves the EU in 2019.
European Council President Donald Tusk is set to meet Irish prime minister (taoiseach) Leo Varadkar in Dublin on Friday, while British Prime Minister Theresa May is due to have talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday.
Irish minister for agriculture, Michael Creed, said on Thursday that the talks on Brexit were at a critical point and described it as "squeaky bum time".
He told Irish national broadcaster RTÉ that the border was the most complex issue and it was incumbent on the British government to deliver a roadmap on how a "frictionless border" can be achieved.
Addressing the issue, Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said Mrs May had "been very clear in saying that as we leave the European Union, we leave the single market and we leave the customs union".
"But we know that there need to be specific outcomes to meet the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland and the island of Ireland as a whole," he added.
"That's why we have focused on a number of different issues on the way in which the trade approaches work and we want a bold and ambitious free trade agreement and equally looking at the customs arrangements with either a highly streamlined customs approach or, indeed, a new customs partnership with the EU. "

When Theresa May pulled the "meaningful vote" on Brexit last month, the day before MPs were about to pass their verdict on her deal, Downing Street hoped two things would happen.
First, that the EU would offer some form of legal guarantee that the Northern Irish backstop - the arrangements for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland - would be temporary.
This, in turn, would bring the DUP on board - and unlock further support from previously hostile Conservative backbenchers.
Second, that some sceptical MPs, once away from the febrile atmosphere at Westminster, would quietly reflect over Christmas that the deal wasn't as bad as all that, as it at least guarantees that the UK will leave the EU at the end of March.
So perhaps any rebellion would diminish, if not evaporate.
But neither hope has - yet - been realised, with the vote now less than two weeks away.
So as things stand, the prime minister is once again facing defeat.
But her difficulties could run even deeper than assumed.
It was undoubtedly disappointing for Downing Street that the DUP's Westminster leader Nigel Dodds declared that the Withdrawal Agreement "flies in the face" of the government's commitments on Northern Ireland following his meetings with Theresa May and the Conservative chief whip Julian Smith this week.
The government quite simply couldn't tell him that that the EU, at this stage, was willing to go any further than offering "reassurances" and "clarifications" on the temporary nature of the backstop, rather than legal guarantees.
But even if the EU does move significantly in the next ten days, the prime minister could still be facing defeat.
What the DUP's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday was significant.
He said he was "alarmed" that the Northern Irish backstop could become the "settled arrangement" on Brexit.
Let's unpick this for a moment - because it goes to the core of Theresa May's difficulties.
The DUP want to make sure the backstop is temporary and that the UK, including Northern Ireland, can exit from it without EU approval.
If the EU can guarantee this, it's possible the DUP's MPs may grit their teeth and back - or abstain on - the deal, as would some long-standing Leave campaigners on the Conservative benches.
But, as I understand it, up to 40 Conservative MPs still wouldn't back the deal because they, like Sammy Wilson, are worried about what the "settled arrangement" on Brexit might look like.
They believe that the way the government will avoid a hard border in Ireland - and avoid triggering the backstop - is by agreeing a permanent trade deal that actually looks a lot like the backstop in any case.
That is, the whole of the UK, not just Northern Ireland, would mirror some EU regulations on goods and stay close to the EU's customs arrangements.
This would, they fear, then constrain the UK's ability to do future trade deals with the rest of the world.
This suspicion is fuelled by the following words in the political declaration document - the blueprint for the post-Brexit relationship with the EU:
"The economic partnership should ensure….ambitious customs arrangements that.. build and improve on the single customs territory provided for in the Withdrawal Agreement."
Downing Street officials have pointed out - until they are almost blue in the face - that the political declaration also specifically mentions an "independent trade policy" for the UK.
But this doesn't appear to have neutralised some backbench concerns.
The prime minister will launch a "charm offensive" with Conservative MPs next week to try to allay any suspicions - though whether they will be charmed or offended is still an open question.
Such is the lack of trust amongst a small but potentially crucial contingent of her MPs, I am told that in order for them to vote for her deal, she would need to convince them that she wouldn't handle the future trade negotiations after Brexit.
And/or give them a firm date for her departure from office.
Downing Street - and more widely, the government's - tactic is to raise the possibility of No Brexit unless long-standing Leave campaigners hold their noses and vote for her deal.
This process has already begun. But expect it to be ramped up next week.
The PM's allies will argue that unless the deal is settled soon, then opponents of Brexit and supporters of a new referendum will try to amend forthcoming non-Brexit legislation to make it contingent on a public vote taking place.
And MPs who don't want a referendum but do want Theresa May's deal fundamentally renegotiated will be told that would mean extending Article 50 and therefore, in No 10's eyes, breaking faith with leave-supporting voters.
So far these arguments don't seem to have worked.
Some of her MPs will doubtlessly be poring over a YouGov survey published today. This was commissioned by London's Queen Mary University and Sussex University as part of a wider project into party members' attitudes and views.
It suggested more than half of Conservative members - 53% - believe Mrs May's deal doesn't respect the result of the referendum. And 59% of them oppose her deal, while 38% support it.
No 10 would argue that there is private polling which suggests her deal is more popular with the wider public.
The You Gov survey itself suggests that 46% of likely Conservative voters (as opposed to members) back the deal, with a smaller number - 38% -opposing.
There is another potential fly in the ointment for the prime minister - although here, adversity could be turned to advantage.
It is assumed that the Lords will insert an amendment in to legislation on trade which would require the prime minister to negotiate a customs union with the EU.
The government, in the normal run of things, would then vote this change down when the legislation returns to the Commons.
But with Labour formally backing a customs union - and some Conservative MPs who backed Remain in the referendum also very warm to the idea - government sources are concerned that the Commons might not overturn it.
So the argument that is likely to be made by government whips to the Brexiteer opponents of Theresa May's deal is this: Unless they grab the prime minister's deal before the trade legislation comes to the Commons, they might be landed with a customs union.
And this wouldn't just constrain, but prevent, future independent trade deals.
But the most likely option for at least reducing the size of any defeat on the deal is further movement from Brussels.
The prime minister is talking the EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker later and I am told she will be talking to other EU 27 leaders over the next ten days.
There is a feeling in Whitehall that it may take more than one attempt to get the deal through parliament.
One government insider likened the prime minister's situation to a game of American football.
Things can look chaotic at any given moment but as long as you don't give the ball away to your opponents you can move incrementally towards your goal.
But she has already had to make one backward pass - delaying the vote on her deal - and may need some trick play to get her deal over the line.
As MPs return to parliament next week, the prospect of a prime ministerial victory appears some way off.

Is it really leaving at all?
"I don't think so."
Forget the politicking and the crazy, bitter briefings.
If the past few weeks has been like watching the Conservative Party have a nervous breakdown in front of our eyes, this morning they are truly losing the plot.
Set aside the psychodrama about minicab cards, late night phone calls, toasts over dinner at Chequers, a foreign secretary no one can find. More of that later no doubt.
What sticks out the most from my interview with David Davis this morning is a very simple question we asked. Is the prime minister's plan really leaving the EU?
"I don't think so", he said.
That is the sentiment that's widely shared among the Tory party, and perhaps among many voters too. And guess what? It doesn't always matter which side of the referendum they were on either.
Some former Remainers say "look, this is a dodgy compromise, what's the point? If we are going to do this, then for goodness sake let's do it properly or just stay in".
From some Leavers, like Mr Davis, you also get "look, this is a dodgy compromise, what's the point? If we are going to do it, then for goodness sake let's do it properly".
Yes, I did mean to write the same line twice just then. We are a million miles from Tory unity, but weirdly there is some agreement at the fringes of the party that the current compromise is, as compromises so often are, something that pleases hardly anyone.
And it would be better for No 10 just to go the "full Norway", a close relationship with the EU not a Viking experience, or the "Canada plus", a free trade agreement not a ten-day tour of the Rockies, or frankly, not leave at all.
David Davis' resignation on its own - so far - is not going to bring down the government. It could well unleash a host of events that leads us to that place, but we're still a long way from that.
But what it does do is take the lid off the boiling pot of frustration, angst, ambition and despair you find in pockets of the governing party and a sense on both sides that this kind of Brexit might not be worth it. That's not to say most Tory MPs are in the mood for a giant ruckus.
Most of them in fact probably back the Chequers compromise, grateful at last that the Cabinet - well most of them - found agreement.
And believing, quite possibly correctly, that the vast majority of the public aren't paying attention to much of the flouncing in any case, so can ministers please, please, please, please, get on with it and just shut up.
For Number 10, the Chequers plan is a clever enough compromise they believe can get the EU on to the next phase of negotiations.
Remember - all of this is happening in order that officials can get down to actually negotiating the nitty-gritty of the long term relationship.
It is perfectly possible that within 72 hours or so it is situation normal, well normal-ish.
But David Davis was an "active backbencher", who delighted in making waves on the issues he cares about for many years.
If he thinks Theresa May's Brexit does not mean Brexit, expect plenty of trouble ahead even if today's particular storm passes before the heat wave breaks.

In the last six days  you might have been enraged, you might have been shocked, you might have been excited, or you might have just shrugged your shoulders.
But we are watching a conflict over an issue that is based on what one cabinet minister described as "love and passion" - politically, at least.
The grinding three years of the previous period of Brexit conflict has been superseded in the last week by a hyper-speed helter-skelter, with a new administration, long aware their stance could end up in a battle in the courts.
As MPs reluctantly pack up for a break of five weeks after the prime minister sent them packing, can we conclude anything lasting from this bout?
Boris Johnson has undeniably had a rude awakening of how Parliament will respond to him.
It's been a shocker in terms of early defeats for the new prime minister, an unsurprising but dramatic series of clashes between a leader who wants to keep the option of leaving the EU without a deal on the table, and most MPs who don't want to allow him to open that Pandora's box.
Number 10 has also indulged in tactics that have alarmed many Conservatives, including some of Boris Johnson's team who sit around his cabinet table.
If you had followed the way that Vote Leave ran its campaign, the subsequent appointment of Dominic Cummings and some of its former staffers, again, that shouldn't surprise you.
But there are unquestionably plenty of Conservative MPs who have been horrified that it's this version of Boris Johnson, a politician with many guises, that's in charge at Number 10.
And some of those tactics have been, at least temporarily, destructive, with a voluntary surrender of his own majority. (Interestingly, there's a whisper that a way back could soon emerge for some of the 21 MPs who were booted out.)
That "long shopping list" of errors, according to one member of the cabinet, means the prime minister's self-imposed Halloween Brexit deadline looks further out of reach than a few short days ago.
Is it impossible? Absolutely not.
There is the possibility, still, of a deal, with Number 10 today stressing it was still their primary aim.
Whispers again about a Northern Ireland only backstop, and a bigger role for the Stormont assembly, if it ever gets up and running, are doing the rounds.
Some MPs, and some diplomats are more cheerful now about the possibilities of it working out.
If you squint you can see the chance of an agreement being wrapped up at pace, although it seems the chances range somewhere between slim and negligible.
It is still possible too, as Number 10 bombastically suggests, that they could just ignore the demand from Parliament that he seeks a delay if there is no-deal.
This is not as straightforward as ignoring a parking ticket, of course.
But if the prime minister asks formally, but politically makes it clear he doesn't want it and would do nothing with it, would the EU really force such a policy on an unwilling government with no political reason given? What if the EU was to offer only an extension of several years?
These are not predictions, but they are imponderables, talking about a political landscape that is some weeks off, and there are all sorts of political gymnastics to come before then that could again turn the situation on its head.
And for all that Parliament protests, some Brexiteers, including in Number 10, glory in 'evidence' they could use in an eventual election campaign that tries to pit MPs against the people.
No question, however, it's been a bruising period for the prime minister, which could be the beginning of a very rapid downfall.
But just as so many things in politics have changed in the last few years, some of the old truths remain.
A week is still a long time in politics - the seven weeks before Halloween another age.

The EU's "relative silence" about the kind of post-Brexit relations it wants with the UK must end, Philip Hammond is to tell German business leaders.
There is "little, if any signal" from the EU about its priorities for talks on future co-operation due to begin in March, the chancellor is claiming.
"They say it takes two to tango," he will say in in Berlin. "Both sides need to be clear about what they want."
The EU has warned the UK cannot cherry-pick the kind of arrangement it wants.
The second phase of Brexit negotiations, covering transitional arrangements after the UK leaves in March 2019 and future economic and security co-operation, are set to begin officially in March.
However, internal discussions within the EU about the framework of future relations have already begun following December's first-phase agreement on so-called divorce issues, like money and citizens' rights.
Mr Hammond and Brexit Secretary David Davis are aiming to lay down a marker for the talks ahead when they address the Die Welt Economic Summit.
In his speech, the chancellor will say the EU must "put behind" it any talk of punishing the UK for voting to leave the 28-member bloc and concentrate on maximising the mutual benefits of close co-operation in areas such as defence, education, science, technology and culture.
"I know the repeated complaint from Brussels has been that the UK "hasn't made up its mind what type of relationship it wants," he will say.
"But in London, many feel that we have little, if any, signal of what future relationship the EU27 would like to have with a post-Brexit Britain."
Earlier on Wednesday, in a joint-article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, the two men argued that financial services were pivotal to the "bespoke" Brexit trade deal wanted by the UK.
They acknowledge that their stated objective of leaving the EU's internal market and customs union means the UK will not be able to enjoy all the benefits it currently does as a member of the EU after leaving.
Kamal Ahmed, BBC business editor
He is taking his message to the heart of Europe.
In a speech to business leaders in Berlin tonight, the chancellor will say it is time for the European Union to engage more positively in the Brexit negotiations. And stop talking about "punishing" the UK over Brexit.
After months of grumpy noises from Brussels over a perceived lack of clarity from the UK, Philip Hammond will say that Britain needs to hear about the ambition the EU has for a deep trading relationship with the UK.
My sources point out that with Australia, Canada and America all making positive overtures about free trade agreements with Britain, the lack of a similar offer from the EU could lead to unintended consequences.
Logically, "no deal" could be one of those. And certainly the present tone of the debate from the EU is damaging the chances of a positive outcome of the Brexit negotiations, my sources say.
Read Kamal's full blog
But they insist the EU's desire to protect the integrity of the single market for its other 27 members is "not inconsistent" with the UK's desire for the most comprehensive agreement possible.
"It makes no sense to either Germany or Britain to put in place unnecessary barriers to trade in goods and services that would only damage businesses and economic growth on both sides of the Channel," they write.
"So as Brexit talks now turn to trade, the UK will look to negotiate a new economic partnership with the EU - the most ambitious in the world - that recognises the extraordinary levels of interconnectedness and co-operation that already exist between us.
"We should use the imagination and ingenuity that our two countries and the EU have shown in the past, to craft a bespoke solution."
The UK's preferred model for a post-Brexit deal is what Mr Davis has described as Canada plus, plus, plus - a reference to Canada's low-tariff free trade deal with the EU but with services included as well as goods.
The two men make clear in the article that unrestricted trade in services - which makes up about 80% of the UK economy - will be pivotal to any successful deal, as will financial and regulatory co-operation within Europe.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has warned the UK it cannot hope to get a special deal for the City of London and that its options have narrowed as a result of it turning its back on the single market.
UK-based banks and financial firms are worried they will lose the passporting rights that allow them to trade freely in the EU after Brexit - an outcome that is likely to see firms moving jobs to the continent.
Separately, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has urged Conservative backbenchers to not view everything through the "prism of Brexit", says BBC political correspondent Iain Watson.
Dr Fox told the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs on Wednesday to focus on the "bigger picture", pointing to an increase in UK manufacturing orders and expectations that the economy will grow in the next quarter.
He said there was a political danger in suggesting events were "because of" or "despite" Brexit because the government could lose credit for the economic recovery - that it would not "own" the recovery.
He is also believed to have told his Conservative colleagues that Labour remained in a state of confusion on Brexit and that some of their voting record on the withdrawal bill could be used as a weapon against them in key constituencies.

The minister responsible for Brexit has told the EU to "get real" and reach a deal with the UK.
Dominic Raab also said EU chiefs had disrespected Theresa May with "jibes" at a recent summit.
He said the UK would leave without a deal rather than be "bullied" into signing a "one-sided" arrangement.
Meanwhile EU figures hit back after Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt likened it to a Soviet-era prison, comments diplomats called "insulting".
In a speech to the Conservative conference on Sunday, Mr Hunt compared what he said were the EU's attempts to stop members leaving with the actions of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
His words were criticised by a number of European politicians and diplomats while a European Commission spokesman suggested everyone "could benefit from opening a history book from time to time".
Speaking in Birmingham on Monday, Mr Raab said the government's proposed deal with the EU was not "perfect" but he urged Tory Eurosceptics who are campaigning for the plan to be ditched to get behind it.
And Chancellor Philip Hammond predicted that there would be an economic bounce if and when a Brexit deal was agreed by the UK and the EU.
He reminded people saying that a deal could not be struck that people had had the same scepticism about the electric light bulb ever working.
With less than six months to go before Brexit day, the UK and the EU have not yet reached a deal on how separation will be managed and what their new relationship will look like.
Mr Raab said that if the EU insisted on trying to "lock us in via the back door" of its customs union and single market, the UK could be left with "no choice" but to leave without a deal.
The "whole of the government machine is busy preparing for no deal" - not because they want it to happen or because it's likely, but "because it might happen", he said.
He dismissed "lurid predictions from the prophets of doom" about no-deal, including planes being grounded and ports blocked.
Even if the UK did not reach an agreement with the EU, he said: "I find it hard to believe that they would, for narrow political ends, seek to punish Britain in such a crass and counterproductive way."
Mr Raab criticised the EU over its reaction to Theresa May's proposals at last month's summit in Salzburg.
"Our Prime Minister has been constructive and respectful," he said.
"In return we heard jibes from senior leaders, and we saw a starkly one-sided approach to negotiation."
Brexiteers feel it keeps the UK far too close to Brussels and doesn't fulfil the Leave campaign's promise during the 2016 referendum campaign to "take back control".
EU leaders have rejected the plan because they believe it would undermine the single market by allowing the UK to "cherry pick" from EU law.
Theresa May says the ball is now in the EU's court and she wants a more detailed response from them on their objections.
The government has said it will not agree to anything that divides Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK nor makes the country a member of the European Economic Area like Norway.
One of the most vocal critics of the government's Brexit approach has been former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who branded Theresa May's plan "deranged" in a newspaper interview at the weekend.
Despite not being in Birmingham, Mr Johnson made an eye-catching appearance as he was photographed running through fields near his Oxfordshire home.
Given that Mrs May famously said her naughtiest moment was running through fields of wheat as a child, some pundits are wondering whether this was an attempt to "troll" the PM by the former Leave campaign frontman, who resigned in protest at the Chequers plan in July.
Jeremy Hunt has seemingly provoked a diplomatic row after accusing the EU of seeking to punish the UK in order to "keep the club together".
In Sunday's speech, he recalled a visit to Latvia earlier this summer and the role that the UK and others played in helping it transition from Soviet rule to becoming a modern democracy and market economy.
"What happened to the confidence and ideals of the European dream?", he asked. "The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving."
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator, tweeted that the remarks were "outrageous and offensive".
And EU Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis suggested Mr Hunt needed a history lesson.
Also on the conference stage on Monday, Mr Hammond warned that slow wage growth and job insecurity meant too many people feared they were being left behind.
He announced the government's intention to increase the number of people who can access science and technology courses and spend about £30m on encouraging big business to mentor small firms.
His plans also included a £125m package allowing large employers to transfer up to 25% of their apprenticeship levy funds to businesses in their supply chain from April next year.
The apprenticeship levy is a tax on large companies intended to pay for training at smaller companies, but uptake of the new policy has been slow.
Mr Hammond rejected suggestions that Brexit had caused an irreparable rift between his party and business, telling activists the Conservatives were and "always will be the party of business".

Prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has accused Treasury officials of "fiddling the figures" on Brexit to keep the UK in the European Union customs union.
It comes amid claims, which the Treasury has denied, that it had deliberately created an economic model that made all other options look bad.
The FDA union, which represents civil servants, attacked the MP for peddling "unsubstantiated conspiracy theories".
The Treasury said it was working hard to deliver the best deal for Britain.
Conservative MP Mr Rees-Mogg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you look at the forecasts the Treasury made before the referendum, they were a humiliation.
"They were clearly politically influenced."
But FDA general secretary David Penman said the comments were "clear evidence" that the MP was "prepared to sacrifice anyone or anything on the altar of his own ideology".
He told the BBC Theresa May had to "get a grip on both her ministers - who are peddling these myths as well - and on Conservative politicians".
He said it should be the prime minister or Cabinet ministers defending the civil service - not him, and called for an end to "constant swiping at the messenger" which was undermining trust in the government and the civil service.
The Treasury said that both the prime minister and the chancellor have repeatedly stated the UK will be leaving the single market and the customs union and that "any suggestion to the contrary is simply false".
Mr Rees-Mogg said former chancellor George Osborne had set up the Office for Budget Responsibility, which provides independent analysis of the UK's public finances, because Treasury forecasts "had been politicised".
"And it was thought they were unreliable on political grounds," he added.
"With the referendum and with the EU, the Treasury has gone back to making forecasts.
"It was politically advantageous for them in the past. It is the same now.
"So yes, I do think they are fiddling the figures."
By BBC political correspondent Matthew Cole
This is more than a row about a backbench MP challenging Treasury figures he doesn't like.
Jacob Rees-Mogg leads a section of MPs on whom Theresa May's future might depend.
That bloc - the Tories' European Research Group - are vehemently opposed to the UK staying in ANY form of customs union with the EU after Brexit.
This week, key ministerial meetings will take place on that very subject, with Theresa May known to be against staying in THE customs union, but open-minded to setting up a less expansive arrangement.
So Jacob Rees-Mogg's intervention could be taken as upping the ante, exerting extra pressure on Mrs May ahead of this big week, which could provide crucial answers to our future relations with the EU, and to the prime minister's future.
His comments came after Theresa May, on the final day of her official visit to China, appeared to suggest some sort of customs agreement with the EU could be possible - even though ministers have said Britain will leave the existing customs union.
Mr Rees-Mogg stated any such deal would be unacceptable to Tory Brexiteers as it would prevent the UK from striking free trade deals with other countries.
"We need to be free to do deals with the rest of the world," he said.
"We must be out of the protectionist common external tariff which mainly protects inefficient EU industries at the cost to British consumers."
It is the second time this week that Mr Rees-Mogg has condemned civil servants' economic forecast concerning the impact of Brexit.
The row began on Tuesday with a report leaked to Buzzfeed which said growth would be lower in each of three different Brexit outcomes than if the UK had stayed in the EU.
The government said its preferred option however - a bespoke deal covering trade and financial services - was not among those analysed in the leaked paper.
But in the Commons on Thursday, Mr Rees-Mogg asked Brexit minister Steve Baker to confirm whether he had heard that officials were deliberately trying to influence policy in favour of staying in the EU customs union.
He attributed the remarks to Charles Grant, the head of the Centre for European Reform.
On Friday, Mr Baker apologised to MPs for saying Mr Rees-Mogg's account of the remarks was "essentially correct".
Mr Grant had denied making them and an audio recording emerged where he did not say what was attributed to him.
However, Mr Rees-Mogg said he stood by his original claim.
Mr Grant told the BBC he was surprised that Mr Rees-Mogg had not apologised to him.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable called Mr Rees-Mogg's claims about the Treasury "absolutely outrageous".
"The government should be thinking about all possibilities and how to minimise the damage from Brexit," he said.
"Serious Conservatives inside and outside government are saying that whatever happens with Brexit, we should remain in a customs union.
"The Treasury would be failing in its duty if it didn't examine that possibility seriously; we should be inside a customs union whatever happens."

A man who sent "threatening" emails to seven MPs, including two ex-cabinet members, has been jailed for 42 weeks.
Jarod Kirkman, 51, used a fake email address to target a cross-party selection, including Nicky Morgan, Yvette Cooper and Heidi Allen.
Kirkman, of Torquay Drive, Luton, had admitted sending malicious communications at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 8 April.
Ms Morgan said the messages were death threats "related to Brexit".
Prosecutors said malicious emails were sent to Labour MPs Ms Cooper and Jenny Chapman, Conservative Ms Morgan, former Tory Nick Boles, as well as Sarah Wollaston, and Heidi Allen interim leader of the Independent Group.
Kirkman also pleaded guilty to a charge of racially or religiously aggravated intentional harassment against Labour MP David Lammy.
The messages were sent between 4 December and 21 January, police said.
The court heard his first email was sent to Ms Allen, MP for South Cambridgeshire on the 4 December 2018.
Using the address mp@deadpoliticianwalking.com, Kirkman contacted Mrs Allen via her constituency "contact form".
In it he wrote, "your days are numbered" before musing about whether she would die from polonium or Novichok poisoning.
Following subsequent emails sent to six other MPs, he was arrested on 29 January of this year.
Kirkman told police he was "just being a stupid idiot over Brexit" and had "no intention of carrying out the threats".
The court heard he described himself  as a "passionate pro-leaver"
Following sentencing, Ms Allen said: "MPs are doing a job like everybody else and we deserve to feel safe in our work.
"I hope this judgement will act as a powerful message to anybody who thinks that they can threaten us anonymously or otherwise."
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The president of the European Commission has said claims he wants to create a European "superstate" are "total nonsense".
Jean-Claude Juncker said some Britons wrongly saw him as a "stupid, stubborn federalist".
He was responding to a speech about Brexit by UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Mr Johnson said the EU wanted to create an "overarching European state" and that integration was deepening.
"British politicians, Labour and Tory, have always found that ambition very difficult," Mr Johnson said.
"It is hard to make it cohere with our particular traditions of independent parliamentary and legal systems that go back centuries."
Asked about the foreign secretary's remarks, Mr Juncker replied: "Some in the British political society are against the truth, pretending that I am a stupid, stubborn federalist, that I am in favour of a European superstate.
"I am strictly against a European superstate. We are not the United States of America, we are the European Union, which is a rich body because we have these 27, or 28, nations.
"The European Union cannot be built against the European nations, so this is total nonsense."
Analysis by BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming
As Boris Johnson spoke, the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was holding a press conference in Brussels, completely by coincidence.
He was in typically jolly mood, joking about the drinks EU leaders order at European summits. But the laughing stopped when a British journalist asked him about the foreign secretary's suggestion that there was a plan to build an EU superstate.
"Total nonsense," said President Juncker, who complained that the British political class always misrepresents him.
But he had just spoken about plans for a bigger EU budget and his dream of a directly-elected president of the EU, which some might say made Boris Johnson's point for him.
The foreign secretary's speech has been noted in Brussels - particularly his reference to organic carrots - but negotiators are waiting for the UK to adopt a formal position about its post-Brexit relationship with the European Union.

Jeremy Corbyn is "open to" using legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit if his plan to overthrow the government in a vote of no confidence fails, the BBC has learned.
The Labour leader is understood to have had a discussion with the SNP on Friday over passing a law to extend Article 50, which would delay leaving the EU.
Several Labour figures believe the plan could gain a majority in the Commons.
PM Boris Johnson says the UK will leave the EU on 31 October "do or die".
He added that, even though he wants a deal with Brussels, Brexit will go ahead if one is not agreed.
Mr Johnson argues that it is vital to honour the 2016 referendum, in which 52% of voters supported leaving the EU.
But opponents say leaving without a deal will damage the economy and is not wanted by many of the voters who backed Brexit.
Labour's existing plan is to bring down Mr Johnson's government in a no-confidence vote in the Commons after MPs return in September and install Mr Corbyn as temporary prime minister.
However this has been met with opposition by several Remain-supporting Conservative MPs who want to stop no deal, but do not want to put the Labour leader in Downing Street.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson has also said she would not support making Mr Corbyn prime minister.
She has suggested the possibility of installing either former Conservative Chancellor Ken Clarke or ex-Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman in Downing Street instead.
BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley said it was being suggested within Labour that a no-confidence motion in Mr Johnson's government and moves to extend Article 50 could run in tandem, with the latter operating as back-up to the main plan.
Opposition figures are drawing up proposals to seize control of the parliamentary agenda when MPs return from recess.
They would then try to pass a law mandating the prime minister to seek a further extension to the Brexit process to avoid no deal.
Those involved in the plan have suggested the law would be co-signed by opposition leaders and prominent Tory rebels to maximise its appeal. A source said: "We need to coalesce around legislation".
Downing Street has said Mr Corbyn will "overrule the referendum and wreck the economy" if he became prime minister.
A No 10 spokesman said: "Jeremy Corbyn believes that the people are the servants and politicians can cancel public votes they don't like."
Mr Johnson has also said the EU has become less willing to compromise on a new deal with the UK because of the opposition to leaving in Parliament.
He said this increased the likelihood of the UK being "forced to leave with a no deal" in October.
If the government loses a no-confidence motion, it would trigger a critical 14-day period, after which a general election could be triggered.
If Mr Johnson failed to win such a vote, then a general election would be called.
There are no firm rules about who else, if anyone, should get the chance to form an alternative government during this time.
The leader of the opposition is clearly a likely candidate, but that is not an inevitable outcome.
The Cabinet Manual - a document which sets out the main rules covering the working of government - suggests that the principles applied should be similar to those after an election in which no one party wins a majority.
That means that the old prime minister should only resign if and when it's clear that somebody is more likely to have the support of MPs.
So it is possible that the existing prime minister would stay in place, or that more than one leader would get a chance.
Mr Johnson has a working majority of just one in the House of Commons, with the backing of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party.
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has backed the UK being in a permanent customs union with the EU in a speech setting out his approach to Brexit.
He said this would avoid the need for a "hard border" in Northern Ireland and ensure free-flowing trade for business.
The policy shift could lead to Labour siding with Tory rebels to defeat Theresa May on her Brexit strategy.
But a customs union after Brexit would be a "complete sell out", International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will argue.
Mr Corbyn insisted in an interview with BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg that his speech was a "firming up" of Labour's existing policy, which was to back customs union membership during the planned two-year transition period after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
In his speech, at Coventry University, Mr Corbyn said Labour would be "looking for a Brexit that puts the working people first".
In a shift from the party's policy at last year's general election, he said the UK should strike a new customs deal with the EU at the end of transition.
"Labour would seek a final deal that gives full access to European markets and maintains the benefits of the single market and the customs union," he said.
"We have long argued that a customs union is a viable option for the final deal.
"So Labour would seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland."
The prime minister has insisted the UK will leave both the single market and the customs union, allowing it to negotiate its own post-Brexit trade deals.
Mrs May will give details in a speech on Friday of how her plan for a "managed diversion" from the EU will work in practice, after first briefing the cabinet.
The Conservatives accused Mr Corbyn of "betraying millions of Labour voters" who had backed Brexit.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said Labour's "confused policy would be bad for jobs and wages".
And in a speech on Tuesday, he will say the UK would find itself in a "worse position" than it is now if it leaves the existing customs union but negotiates a similar arrangement.
A customs union allows free-flowing trade between member nations without making companies pay export taxes, or tariffs, at the border.
However, the members normally have joint trade agreements with countries not in their customs union.
A single market is a deeper form of co-operation, which effectively merges the economies of member states together, allowing the free movement of goods, services, money and people as if they were part of a single country.
Mr Corbyn rejected calls from pro-EU figures like Lord Mandelson and a number of his own backbenchers to commit to staying in the EU single market, saying instead that he wanted a "close relationship" with it.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer has not ruled out continuing with free movement of people between the UK and the EU in some form after Brexit, under Labour's plans, but he told BBC News it would have to be negotiated - as would any financial contribution the UK would make.
He said the UK could work "jointly" with the EU after Brexit to strike trade deals with other nations - something the government insists is not possible.
Analysis By BBC political correspondent Ian Watson
So the dividing lines are clear politically - if less clear in practice. Clear politically, because the government is committed to coming out of the customs union. And in contrast Labour now says it wants to negotiate "a new comprehensive customs union" with the EU.
That puts clear blue water between opposition and government - and may signal to Remain voters that Labour wants a 'softer' Brexit, staying closer to the EU.
But in practice, there may be fewer differences than meets the eye.  Jeremy Corbyn wants a customs union that would still give the UK a say in EU-led trade deals - which the EU may resist.
And Theresa May has spoken of a new "customs arrangement," which would, er, allow independent trade deals.  But it's currently in the government and opposition's political interests to emphasise the differences,  not the similarities.
Jeremy Corbyn refused to be drawn on whether his policy shift was an attempt to remove Theresa May from office and force a general election.
Tory rebels have been tight-lipped about whether they would vote against Mrs May if it came down to a confidence vote in her premiership, saying that was unlikely to happen.
But Labour MP Frank Field, who backed Leave and said Mr Corbyn was once more Eurosceptic than him, told the BBC that being in a customs union or the single market would be a "deceit" and dismissed suggestions Tory rebels could join with Labour to defeat the government as "fairy tales" and they would win any vote by a large majority.
Mr Corbyn was an opponent of the EU when he was a backbench Labour MP, as he explained in his speech.
"I have long opposed the embedding of free market orthodoxy and the democratic deficit in the European Union, and that is why I campaigned to 'remain and reform' in the referendum campaign."
He said scepticism was "healthy" but "often the term 'Eurosceptic' in reality became synonymous with 'anti-European' and I am not anti-European at all, I want to see close and progressive cooperation with the whole of Europe after Brexit".
He said this "new relationship" he wanted to negotiate with the EU would ensure Labour could deliver on its plans to nationalise public utilities, invest in industry and curb the outsourcing of public services.
Mr Corbyn's speech was welcomed by Britain's largest trade unions while industry body, the CBI, said staying in a customs union would "grow trade without accepting freedom of movement or payments to the EU".
Pro-European Labour MPs said he had not gone far enough and urged him to commit to staying in the single market.
But former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said it was the "first step in a complete Labour sell-out" while the DUP, the party Mrs May relies on to win key votes in the Commons, said it was "cheap political opportunism".
Liberal Democrats leader Sir Vince Cable tweeted that Mr Corbyn's customs union stance was a "small step to sanity", but added: "In #SingleMarket he is still following @theresa-may cake and eat it policy. Just wants red cherries rather than blue raisins."

Jeremy Corbyn is coming under pressure amid divisions over Labour's Brexit strategy as leading figures call for the party to back staying in the EU.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said Labour must "say no" to leaving the EU at its party conference.
And deputy leader Tom Watson said it must settle its position as "a Remain party" once and for all this week.
But Unite leader Len McCluskey said anyone who could not support Jeremy Corbyn's position should stand aside.
He said talk of divisions were "fake news" given that Labour had a policy of giving the public the final say in another referendum which the shadow cabinet could unite around.
The party's NEC, or governing body, has agreed a motion which calls for the party to renegotiate the current terms of exit and then give voters the choice to back the new Brexit deal or to remain in the EU.
Mr Corbyn has persistently refused to be drawn on which way he would campaign in another vote, saying it would depend on the kind of agreement he struck.
Labour will also decide the terms of further motions on Brexit, which could call for the party to endorse a remain stance outright.
The exact wording of the motion to be debated will be decided later on Sunday and voted on Monday.
Mr Corbyn is under growing pressure to declare his hand from pro-EU figures in the party.
Addressing a rally organised by the Progress group in Brighton, Mr Watson - who saw off an attempt to oust him on Saturday - said the "simple truth is whatever anyone says - Labour is a remain party".
Calling on the leadership to "to settle once and for all our position", he said by backing remain "I'm sure we can deliver a Labour government".
And Ms Thornberry questioned "why on earth" Labour would be complicit in allowing the UK to leave the EU.
"Are we going to celebrate a Labour version of Brexit? No. We must have the Labour Party this week saying no to Brexit and we must lead the campaign to remain."
You might think policy is made on the conference floor but what goes behind closed doors - in smoke free rooms these days - is often more important.
Representatives from constituencies and from trade unions try to distil disparate motions on the same topic down in to just one, on which they can all agree - and this is then put to the conference for approval the following day in the full knowledge that it will pass.
But on Brexit, this usual template isn't working.
The gap between the leadership and many in the grassroots has proved difficult to bridge.
Labour's ruling national executive - which includes representatives of the big unions - has agreed a statement which would not commit the party to backing leave or remain until after any snap election.
On Sunday night, though, grassroots delegates are expected to agree a motion, which would commit the party to campaigning to remain in the EU during the election.
The pro-remain Mayor of London Sadiq Khan told me he would be urging delegates to stand firm on this and not to accept a fudge.
And I understand it, the call from Len McCluskey of Unite - for remainers to back down in the interests of party unity - is likely to go unheeded.
So as things stand, the differences between the leadership and much of the rank and file will be displayed in the full glare of publicity.
However, the unions account for 50% of the votes at Labour conference - and if they continue to stand firmly behind Jeremy Corbyn then the overtly pro-remain position will be defeated.
The political price could be high, though, and there will undoubtedly be further appeals for the remain motion to be withdrawn.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, Mr Corbyn acknowledged that most Labour supporters backed staying in the EU.
But he said the party needed to show more understanding of why the country voted leave and even if the UK were to remain in the EU, there needed to be serious reform.
Mr McCluskey, a key ally of Mr Corbyn, appealed for loyalty on the issue, saying the party must go into the looming general election "united".
"When we have a policy on Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn makes it clear that that is the policy, then that's what leading members of the shadow cabinet should argue for," he told Sky News.
"If they find they can't argue for it because they feel strongly, well, of course they have that right but they should step aside from the shadow cabinet…and they can argue whatever they want."

Jeremy Corbyn has refused to follow two senior colleagues who say they would back Remain in any further Brexit referendum.
His close allies Diane Abbott and John McDonnell both say they would campaign for Remain, regardless of the other options on the ballot paper.
But the Labour leader chose only to say he would campaign for Remain if the alternative was no deal.
Earlier, Ms Abbott said Mr Corbyn would "follow what the party says".
The Labour leader has been under pressure for months to give his full-throated support to continued EU membership.
More and more of his senior colleagues have come round to that position, some blaming lacklustre election results for the party earlier this year on its Brexit equivocation.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Corbyn was asked whether he too would campaign for Remain, even against an alternative Brexit deal negotiated by any future Labour government.
He replied: "What we've said is, if it's no deal or Remain, we'll campaign for Remain."
Pressed for further clarification, he repeated: "Between no deal and remain, I'll argue for remain."
Mr Corbyn has outlined a plan to stop a no-deal Brexit, which involves defeating the government in a no-confidence vote then becoming a caretaker PM.
If he succeeds, he hopes to head a temporary government which would delay the Brexit date and hold a general election.
In that general election, Labour would call for a "public vote" - a referendum - on the terms of leaving the European Union.
In the public vote he has said he wants "credible options for both sides", including the option to remain.
It is not yet clear whether any Labour government would try to reopen negotiations with the EU over a deal to leave, or proceed straight to a referendum.
The party has told the BBC it would decide this when it produced its manifesto, which it will need to publish if a general election is called.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson tweeted that Mr Corbyn would not "fight for Remain".
"He wants to deliver a Labour Brexit, because he is a Brexiteer," she said.
Earlier, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott confirmed she would "personally" campaign for Remain in the event another referendum is held.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme remaining would be the "best option for the country and my constituents".
"The party and the shadow cabinet will have to debate this and arrive at a position - whatever the position is Jeremy will follow what the party says."
On Monday, shadow chancellor John McDonnell made the same commitment, adding he couldn't envisage another option with the "same benefits as Remain".
Asked whether the party could even stay neutral in a referendum, he replied: "That's one of the issues we've got to debate in the party."
"I know people get frustrated with this […] but we're a democratic party," he added.
"If you sign up to democratic rules, you have to abide by them."
Mr Corbyn's "credible leave option" would presumably resemble Labour's previous policy of maintaining a close relationship with Brussels.
But Diane Abbott also suggested her leader would "follow what the party says" - so at this year's annual conference there will be a concerted push to get the party to commit to Remain
But some powerful voices - including the leadership of the giant Unite union - are still likely to resist.
Labour insiders expect an early election. Remainers - including Ms Abbott - fear an equivocal policy will gift votes to the Lib Dems.
Labour Leavers say an all-out Remain position will gift votes to the Brexit Party.
Not an easy choice.
But with more of Jeremy Corbyn's usual allies - including John McDonnell - now backing Remain, it feels that this option is gaining momentum.

Jeremy Corbyn risks jeopardising a vote of no confidence in the government by insisting he becomes caretaker PM, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson has said.
If he wins a no-confidence vote, the Labour leader plans to form an emergency government and then delay Brexit to avoid a no-deal scenario.
But in a new letter, Ms Swinson said Mr Corbyn's insistence on being interim leader meant there was a danger not enough MPs would support the vote.
Labour did not respond to the letter.
Instead, the party referred to comments made by its shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, who on Sunday described Ms Swinson as "extremely petulant" for dismissing Mr Corbyn's initial proposal to lead a temporary government.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly insisted that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal.
On Sunday, he told the BBC the chances of securing a new Brexit deal were "touch and go", having previously said the odds of no deal were "a million to one".
Ahead of cross-party talks on how to avoid no deal - due to take place on Tuesday - Ms Swinson said the discussions should examine how to seize control of Commons business, oust Mr Johnson and install an emergency "government of national unity".
In her letter to Mr Corbyn, Ms Swinson added: "Insisting you lead that emergency government will therefore jeopardise the chances of a no confidence vote gaining enough support to pass in the first place.
"As you have said that you would do anything to avoid no deal, I hope you are open to a discussion about how conceding this point may open the door to a no-confidence vote succeeding. Its success must be the priority."
Earlier this month, Mr Corbyn outlined his plans to avert a no-deal Brexit - which involve him becoming a caretaker prime minister - but was met with resistance from some key potential allies.
Ms Swinson and Conservatives opposed to no deal were among those who rejected the idea of Mr Corbyn being interim leader, but Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon criticised the Lib Dem leader's stance, adding that "nothing should be ruled out".
Mr Corbyn said he would call a no-confidence vote at the "earliest opportunity when we can be confident of success". That cannot happen before 3 September, when MPs return from summer recess.
In order for such a vote to succeed, Labour would require support from across the House of Commons, including the Lib Dems, the SNP and Conservative rebels.
Ms Swinson has suggested Tory MP Ken Clarke and former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman as possible caretaker leaders, and both have expressed willingness to do the role, she said.
In her letter, Ms Swinson also called on Mr Corbyn to "clarify" his position on whether he was opposed to Brexit altogether.
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Change UK, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party have all accepted the invitation to meet Mr Corbyn to discuss proposals for an alternative government to be formed when Parliament returns in September.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Labour's Barry Gardiner told Sophy Ridge on Sky News on Sunday Labour was offering a "failsafe procedure to stop no deal" by holding a vote of no confidence followed by a temporary government to set up a general election.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think it is more likely Parliament will force Boris Johnson to delay a no deal and the question is whether in these circumstances he will think it is the right thing to call an election.
"My view is that an election at this point will not solve the problem we have - and the problem we have is making sure that we do not inflict harm on ourselves, by leaving the EU with no deal."

Three Labour frontbenchers have been sacked for defying Jeremy Corbyn and backing a call for the UK to stay in the single market after Brexit.
Ruth Cadbury, Catherine West and Andy Slaughter had supported Chuka Umunna's amendment to the Queen's Speech.
Staying in the single market is not Labour policy and Mr Corbyn had ordered his MPs to abstain - but 50 rebelled.
His deputy Tom Watson said he was disappointed with Mr Umunna for trying to "divide" Labour MPs with the vote.
Mr Watson added: "I just felt that given we'd come out of the general election with such an unexpected result, and there's a real euphoria, to try and divide Labour MPs a week and a half in was a little disappointing.
"But, you know, we're still buzzing, we still want to hold the government to account, we'll get over it and move on."
Ms Cadbury said she was aware that, as she was breaking the Whip, she could not retain her frontbench role.
"I had no doubt that I had to support the amendment moved by Labour colleagues with cross-party support.
"The amendment ruled out withdrawing from the EU without a deal, sought a parliamentary vote on the final negotiations, and proposed remaining in the customs union and single market.
"Only then can we protect jobs, trade and certainty for business, as well as protecting the rights of EU citizens, with reciprocal rights for UK citizens."
Forty-nine Labour MPs voted for the amendment while a 50th - Heidi Alexander - acted as a teller, one of the MPs who count the votes.
Daniel Zeichner quit as shadow transport minister to take part in the vote.
He said in a statement he was resigning "with great regret" but added: "My position on Europe has always been clear. I am a passionate pro-European and a straight-forward politician."
Despite the support of the Lib Dems and SNP, Mr Umunna's amendment was defeated by 322 votes to 101, majority 221, during a series of final votes on the government's Queen's Speech.
Among the Labour MPs who backed it was Stella Creasy, who appeared on the BBC's Question Time on Thursday.
She said she had done so because she wanted single market membership to be "part of the [Brexit] negotiations... because the economic and social cost of these things is going to be horrific" - arguing 650,000 jobs in London alone depended on the single market.
"I want all of these options on the table," she said, arguing there were "101 different combinations" that could see the UK leave the EU while remaining in the single market.
Labour's Wes Streeting, who backed the amendment, said the vote had "clarified" Labour's official position but he was "surprised and disappointed" at the outcome.
"I don't believe that Labour can achieve our objectives of tariff-free, barrier-free access to the single market, and a jobs-first Brexit, outside of membership of the the single market," he told Radio 4's World at One.
But Stephen Kinnock, who like many Labour MPs did not take part in the vote, said the decision to fire the rebels was "regrettable" but "had to be done".
"I suppose I'm quite old-fashioned on this stuff," he told the BBC. "If you have a frontbench amendment and a backbench amendment and you are whipped in a certain way, if you are a frontbencher and you don't follow the whip there is only one conclusion that can be drawn from that."
Mr Corbyn has committed to leaving the single market after Brexit. A Labour amendment proposed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell was defeated by 323 to 297.
It called for Brexit to deliver the "exact same benefits" as the EU single market and customs union, as well as scrapping tuition fees, increasing public spending and ending the public sector pay cap.
Labour MP Hilary Benn told the BBC: "I think we recognise that membership of the single market creates a difficulty because... you can't control free movement if you are in the single market.
"The policy on which we fought the election was to say that we wish to retain the benefits of the single market and the customs union.
"I think if the reference to the single market had not been in Chuka's amendment then you would've seen a different outcome."
Unison's general secretary Dave Prentis was very critical of Mr Umunna's amendment, saying it was "totally inappropriate for Labour MPs to create a split over Europe" and "utterly self-defeating to become bogged down in the worst kind of gesture politics".
The government survived its first major Parliamentary test when MPs voted 323 to 309 in favour of the Queen's Speech - the government's package of legislation - which was stripped back after the Tories lost their Commons majority.
The Democratic Unionist Party's 10 MPs had agreed to support the measures as part of a deal with the Tories.

Theresa May is to call on rival parties to "contribute and not just criticise" as she signals a post-election change in her style of government.
In a speech on Tuesday the PM will say she still wants to change the country, but will say that losing her majority means a new approach is needed.
Labour says it shows the Conservatives have run out of ideas.
But First Secretary of State Damian Green said it was a "grown-up way of doing politics".
Ministers loyal to Mrs May have dismissed reports of plots to remove her as drink-fuelled "gossip", but Labour remains on an election footing, with leader Jeremy Corbyn saying he hopes for a fresh poll in September.
Mrs May will return to the message from her first day in Downing Street last July, when she succeeded David Cameron, and vow to lead what she called a "one nation" government that works for all and not just the "privileged few".
The speech is being seen by some as a "re-launch" or "fightback" after Mrs May lost her majority - and much of her authority - in the snap election last month.
Theresa May's speech is a pitch for cross-party consensus.
"Come forward with your own views and ideas about how we can tackle" the challenges the country faces, Mrs May will say, adding: "We may not agree on everything, but ideas can be clarified and improved and a better way forward found."
Bluntly, it is an explicit acknowledgement of her fragility; her authority and majority shrivelled.
Government sources say it is a mature approach that maintains a commitment to taking on big, difficult and complex challenges; not just Brexit but reform of social care, too, for instance.
Labour says Mrs May's speech proves the Conservatives have "completely run out of ideas" and were reduced to "begging" for policy proposals from them.
In her speech, the PM will say that although the result of June's election was not what she wanted, "those defining beliefs remain, my commitment to change in Britain is undimmed".
Her "belief in the potential of the British people and what we can achieve together as a nation remains steadfast, and the determination I have to get to grips with the challenges posed by a changing world never more sure", she will say.
She will unveil a review - of casual and low-paid work - by Matthew Taylor, a former top adviser to Tony Blair, which she commissioned when she became prime minister.
It is thought Mr Taylor, who has been examining the use of zero-hours contracts and the rise in app-based firms such as Uber and Deliveroo, will stop short of calling for a compulsory minimum wage for those employed in the so-called gig economy, who do not have guaranteed hours or pay rates.
But he is expected to propose a series of extra rights for those in insecure jobs and could also recommend shaking up the tax system to reduce the gap between employees and the self-employed.
He is also likely to call for measures to improve job satisfaction for people working in minimum wage jobs, according to The Guardian.
In her speech, Mrs May will say: "When I commissioned this report I led a majority government in the House of Commons. The reality I now face as prime minister is rather different.
"In this new context, it will be even more important to make the case for our policies and our values, and to win the battle of ideas both in Parliament as well as in the country.
"So I say to the other parties in the House of Commons... come forward with your own views and ideas about how we can tackle these challenges as a country.
"We may not agree on everything, but through debate and discussion - the hallmarks of our parliamentary democracy - ideas can be clarified and improved and a better way forward found."
She will acknowledge the fragile nature of her position in the Commons but insist it will not stop her taking "the bold action necessary to secure a better future".
Speaking at a press conference with Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull on Monday, Mrs May said she had sought input from other parties in the past on issues like counter-terrorism and modern slavery.
She also said she was happy to work with Labour's Yvette Cooper and others in a cross-party approach to tackling intimidation and online abuse of MPs and others involved in the political process.
Asked if her desire for co-operation extended to Brexit, including on the government's Repeal Bill when it is published later this week, the prime minister said she was seeking the "broadest possible consensus" surrounding the terms of the UK's exit.
But former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said people would take the calls for cross-party working with "a lorry load of salt" - and he questioned why Mrs May had not raised the issue a year ago when she entered Number 10.
"The reason she wasn't asking for it then was she didn't need to," he said.
Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "A call for Labour to contribute is superfluous. On the single biggest issue of our generation, Brexit, Corbyn isn't contributing, he is cheerleading."
Scottish Government Brexit minister Michael Russell said: "If the prime minister is genuinely interested in creating a consensus then Scotland should have a seat at the negotiations to leave the EU."
But Mr Green, who has known Mrs May since university and is effectively her deputy prime minister, said the public would welcome a move away from politics in which parties "just sit in the trenches and shell each other".
"Politicians of all parties are invited to contribute their ideas - that's a grown up way of doing politics," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He said Mrs May was motivated by "her duty" to carry on, adding: "She still has the same ambitions for this country as she had a year ago and she's determined to put them into practice for the good of this country - that's what drives her."
Asked if the PM could be tempted to step down after her summer holiday, he said: "No. She thinks not just that it's her duty, but she has a programme for Britain that encompasses not just a good Brexit deal, but also a domestic agenda that will spread prosperity around this country, make this a fairer society, tackle some of the injustices that we still have in our society - and that fire burns within her as strongly as ever."
The BBC's assistant political editor, Norman Smith, said that the Conservatives and Labour were "poles apart" on many significant policy areas.
He told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "More brutally, Jeremy Corbyn is not minded to help Theresa May. He smells blood in the water.
"He wants to do everything he can to stampede Mrs May into another election, so the idea he might somehow seek to cooperate with her, I think, is bordering on the fanciful."
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has welcomed the prime minister's election announcement, calling it a "chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first".
Mr Corbyn said the Tories had "failed to rebuild the economy" and that he would be campaigning on housing, education and the NHS.
Theresa May says she wants a general election to take place on 8 June.
MPs will vote on Wednesday to approve her plan.
Explaining her decision to hold the vote, Theresa May said Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership following the EU referendum.
Asked whether he was the next prime minister, Mr Corbyn added: "If we win the election, yes - and I want to lead a government that will transform this country, give real hope to everybody, and above all bring about a principle of justice for everybody and economic opportunities for everybody."
The Labour leader, who was elected to replace Ed Miliband after Labour lost the 2015 election, said this time the party would be challenging the "economic narrative" that requires "huge cuts" to pay for the banking crisis.
Mr Corbyn also said Labour had been setting out policies offering a "clear and credible choice for the country", adding: "We look forward to showing how Labour will stand up for the people of Britain."
Labour's shadow cabinet met in the aftermath of Mrs May's announcement.
Former home secretary Alan Johnson said he would not be seeking re-election in the Hull West and Hessle seat he has represented since 1997.
And Tom Blenkinsop, who has been MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland since 2010, said he would not be standing for re-election, citing "irreconcilable differences" with the party's leadership.

A Labour government would seek to ensure "we build things here that for too long have been built abroad", party leader Jeremy Corbyn has said.
He told the EEF manufacturers organisation that new train carriages, defence, NHS and new passports were areas where money was spent abroad.
Mr Corbyn also said he would end the "racket" of public sector outsourcing.
He said that on Brexit the UK needed a new customs union with the EU to avoid ending "in hock to Donald Trump".
Mr Corbyn, launching his Build it in Britain campaign in Birmingham, said: "For the last 40 years... we've been told that it's good - advanced even - for our country to manufacture less and less and rely instead on cheap labour abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector.
"A lack of support for manufacturing industry is sucking the dynamism out of our economy, pay from the pockets of our workers and any hope of secure, well-paid jobs from a generation of young people."
He added: "Labour is determined to see public contracts provide public benefit, using our money to nurture and grow our industries, our people and to expand our tax base."
Mr Corbyn said Labour would intervene to bring quality jobs to all regions, saying that his party would opt out of parts of world trade rules if necessary to ensure jobs went to local people, rather than sit back "and manage decline".
On Brexit, Mr Corbyn said the fall in the value of the pound as a result of Brexit had not provided the benefits to exporters it should have, because the Conservatives had "sold out" manufacturers.
He said the prime minister "and her warring Cabinet should think again, even at this late stage, and reconsider the option of negotiating a brand new customs union".
"This decision doesn't need to be a matter of ideology... it ought to be a matter of practical common sense."
Otherwise a "botched" Brexit "will sell our manufacturers short with the fantasy of a free trading buccaneering future, which in reality would be a nightmare of our public services sold to multinational companies and our country in hock to Donald Trump, while we are all told to eat chlorinated chicken."
For the Conservatives, Robert Jenrick, exchequer secretary to the Treasury, said: "This is laughable coming from the Labour Party who oversaw millions of jobs lost and a record decline in manufacturing.
"We know from last time Labour don't know how to handle the economy and now their plan would mean higher prices for families and lower wages for workers.
"Under the Conservatives, exports are up, there's more business investment, more manufacturing jobs and employment is at a record high - meaning more people have the security of a regular pay packet."
The Lib Dems Brexit spokesman Tom Brake accused Mr Corbyn of living in a world of "alternative facts" by talking about the benefits of Brexit, adding he was "laying the path for the Tories' chaotic Brexit".
Stephen Martin, director general of the Institute of Directors, called Mr Corbyn's plans "protectionism".
He said: "For all the criticism of America's current approach to trade in this speech, the proposals of subsidies and 'buying British' are just as protectionist as tariffs.
"Britain has many fantastic manufacturing firms, but the fetishisation of factories and production lines over all other parts of the economy is misguided. We should not be ashamed of our world-class creative, digital and professional services."

The resignation of shadow business secretary Clive Lewis to vote against the Brexit bill was "not a disaster", Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said.
The party backed the government in Wednesday's vote, but 52 MPs rebelled.
Mr Lewis quit, saying he could not "in all conscience" support triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, getting talks with the EU under way.
But Mr Corbyn told the BBC that Labour had been right to "respect" the result of last year's EU referendum.
He dismissed as "fake news" and "absolute nonsense" suggestions that he was considering his own future as Labour leader.
And he added that Donald Trump "should not be coming to the UK", after it was announced recently that the US president had been invited to make a state visit later this year.
The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill was approved by 494 votes to 122 on Wednesday, and now moves to the House of Lords.
Mr Lewis, who earlier said he was undecided on whether to support the bill, announced his resignation as MPs began voting for the final time on Wednesday.
In a letter to Mr Corbyn, he wrote that he was leaving the shadow cabinet "with a very heavy heart", but Labour had not won "the protections the people of this country need" during the Commons debates on Brexit.
Mr Lewis added: "I know you understand the deep divide this issue has opened up in the country and it is to your credit that you have lead the debate in our party such an open and comradely way."
Asked on BBC Breakfast about Mr Lewis's departure, Mr Corbyn said: "It's not a disaster. The majority of Labour MPs voted to trigger Article 50. Fifty-odd voted against it, mainly on the basis of their strong message from their own constituents.
"My argument is it was a national vote, it was a national referendum, and Parliament has to respect that."
He added that the party would continue "demanding from the government social justice in Britain".
One of the stars of the 2015 parliamentary intake, Clive Lewis is seen by many on Labour's left as a potential successor to Jeremy Corbyn.
He was born in London and grew up on a council estate in Northampton, moving on to become a BBC TV reporter.
Mr Lewis has quickly established himself as one of the most high-profile Corbynite MPs, rising from backbencher to shadow defence secretary in a matter of months. He became shadow business secretary last October.
Mr Lewis's resignation from Labour's frontbench team occurs as the party continues to grapple with the UK's exit from the European Union.
In a interview with the Guardian in August, the MP for Norwich South said: "I've been thrust too quickly into the shadow cabinet. I want to be in my constituency. I want to be a constituency MP."
His exit from the shadow cabinet means he can do just that.
Asked about the US president's planned state visit, Mr Corbyn said: "My position is Donald Trump should not be coming to the UK.
"I think we have to have relations with the USA. I'm not sure he's going to want to have a meeting with us."
He added: "The point is Donald Trump has been promoting something that undermines international law. He's been promoting misogyny. He's been making some awful statements in the USA. He's threatened to build a wall against Mexico.
"Our government seems to think this is a man they should do deals with."
Mr Corbyn also said: "I think it would be right to meet the president of the USA, but I think it would be wrong for him to come here."

Jeremy Corbyn says Labour is "not supporting or calling for a second referendum" on the UK's EU membership.
The party leader reiterated his call for MPs to have a "meaningful vote" on the final Brexit deal.
Meanwhile, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said that if 90% of people were calling for another vote, it would present a challenge "for all of us who are democrats".
But as things stand the UK is leaving the EU, she said.
Mr Corbyn also hit back at critics within the party calling for the UK to remain in the EU single market and customs union after Brexit.
"The single market is dependent on membership of the European Union," he said.
But he said the existing arrangements needed improvement.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have said the 2016 vote to leave the EU should be honoured.
But some in the pro-EU campaign, like the Liberal Democrats and former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, want another referendum before the UK leaves the EU, which is due to happen in March 2019.
And last week former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said a second vote might be needed to end the "whinging and whining" of anti-Brexit campaigners.
Mr Corbyn was asked about this issue on ITV's Peston on Sunday.
"We are not supporting or calling for a second referendum," he said.
"What we have called for is a meaningful vote in Parliament."
When it was put to Mr Corbyn that he was not saying he would never support another referendum, the Labour leader said: "We are not calling for one either".
On the BBC's Andrew Marr show, Ms Thornbery was asked about demands for a second nationwide vote.
"If 90% of the population was now saying we must stay in the European Union and we must not leave then that would be a challenge that would be there for all of us who are democrats," she said.
"But, at the moment, and as things currently stand, we proceed in good faith, we do as we are instructed and we are leaving the European Union."
While the result of the referendum means the UK must leave, she added that "we have to look after the economy which, in my view, means that we don't go very far".
Conservative deputy chairman James Cleverly said the two Labour politicians had "failed to rule out a second referendum".
"Every step of the way Labour are trying to frustrate the Brexit process rather than make a success of it," he said.
Mr Corbyn is facing calls from within Labour - as well as other opposition parties - to commit to keeping Labour in the EU single market and customs union after Brexit.
This is the goal of an amendment to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill being backed by the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Greens which returns to the Commons this week.
Labour has said it wants the "closest possible ties" with EU markets after Brexit.
Mr Corbyn said the UK would "obviously" have to be in "a customs union" with the EU after Brexit, but suggested the existing arrangements needed improvements.
But he expressed reservations about the EU single market, which allows for goods to be traded freely between EU members.
"There are aspects of the single market one wants to think about such as the restrictions on state aid to industry, which is something that I would wish to challenge," he said.
He also called for changes to the EU customs union, which sets common external tariffs for countries outside the EU, suggesting it was "in come cases protectionist against developing countries".
In his ITV interview, Mr Corbyn also criticised Donald Trump, accusing him of making "endless offensive remarks" about women, minorities and different faiths.
Labour has been strongly critical of the US president and the decision to invite him on a state visit to the UK.
Asked whether the UK's relationship with the US was the most important relationship it had with another country, the Labour leader replied: "No. I think there are many important relationships.
"The US one is obviously culturally and economically significant and important.
"Also the trading relationships we have around the world with obviously the EU, but also with India and China and the rest of the world are very important.
"Also our relationship with international institutions such as the United Nations is very important."
Last week Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accused Mr Corbyn and London mayor Sadiq Khan of putting the UK-US relationship "at risk" with their criticism of Mr Trump.

Jeremy Corbyn says Labour is the "party of choice" when it comes to Brexit.
He told BBC deputy political editor John Pienaar he would "make a case" to Parliament in September to get another referendum after "an awful lot of listening to an awful lot of people".
He said Labour would back Remain against no deal or a Tory deal, but denied bowing to pressure from colleagues to take a pro-EU stance.
"We will give people the choice on this," he added.
"That is surely something that is very important."
Earlier, in a letter to members, Mr Corbyn called for the next prime minister - Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt - to hold a further referendum on Brexit, and promised his party would campaign for Remain to stop "no deal or a damaging Tory Brexit".
It follows a meeting with unions earlier this week, who agreed a position to hold another public vote and to fight for Remain.
But their leaders also said Labour should negotiate their own Brexit deal if they were to win the next general election and also put that to a vote - with Remain as an option on the ballot.
Mr Corbyn has not gone that far - refusing to say at this stage what he would do if he makes it to Downing Street.
The Labour leader said the party had pledged to respect the referendum in 2016 and had done so by voting to trigger Article 50 and fighting the last general election campaign on that promise.
But after Labour went into talks with the government, "it became very clear they simply could not deliver".
He said he now believed both Tory leadership candidates were "vying with each other in the extremities of no deal" which he saw as "very dangerous" for the UK.
So, Mr Corbyn said he would try to go to Parliament in July to call for a referendum - or again in September if there was not enough time before recess.
"What I have tried to do is to reflect a majority and consensus position and I believe I have achieved that," he said.
He added that he was very grateful to those who had "made a little bit of a jump to get to a decision we can all live with".
Asked if he had changed his position because of pressure from colleagues, Mr Corbyn said: "Not a bit of it. I've been listening and I've enjoyed it."
He added: "What I have done is what I think a leader should do and that is spend some time listening to people.
"Many of my colleagues have found this a very frustrating experience because they have said, 'why don't you just tell us what to think?'
"But I said no, I want to take the movement with me, I want to take the the membership with me, I want to take the unions with me, I want to take the public with us if we can, because this is a very important time for this country."
Pushed on whether he would support the union's position of negotiating a new deal were he to get into No 10 - and putting it to a public vote - Mr Corbyn said it was too early to say, and more listening needed to take place.
"The next election will come when it comes," he said. "It could be this October, it could be next year, it could be even 2022.
"We have a very large party, a very large membership and many parts to our party and our movement and we have a democratic process.
"We will decide very quickly at the start of that campaign, because we don't know by that stage whether we would have left the EU, still be in the EU or part of a Parliamentary struggle with Johnson or Hunt trying to take us over a cliff edge."

The UK government would have to return to the EU negotiating table if Parliament rejects its Brexit deal, Jeremy Corbyn has told the BBC.
Mr Corbyn said Labour would decide whether to back the deal based on its six tests - which the party says the government is currently nowhere near meeting.
He denied this made the possibility of no Brexit deal more likely.
He also refused to say how he would vote if there is another EU referendum.
"It's a hypothetical question," he said.
Mr Corbyn was speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg ahead of his speech at the Labour conference in Liverpool on Wednesday.
Also at the party conference, Labour delegates approved a motion that would keep all options - including a fresh referendum - on the table if MPs are deadlocked over Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations are still taking place between the two sides.
Parliament is set to vote on the outcome of the talks, with Prime Minister Theresa May saying this will be a choice between her deal and leaving without one.
Earlier, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer it looked "increasingly likely" Labour's tests would not be met and it would vote against the deal in Parliament.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Corbyn said he did not know what the deal would look like, but if it was rejected by MPs, the government "will have to go back to the EU and say 'our parliament can't agree to this'".
He predicted the government would "collapse itself" and cause a general election.
Mr Corbyn denied he was pushing the UK closer to leaving without a deal - a scenario Labour has repeatedly warned about - saying: "What we're making more likely is that we will force a deal that protects jobs and living standards on both sides of the Channel."
He added: "What are we supposed to do - keep quiet and say nothing and leave it to the incompetence of this government?"
Speaking on a visit to New York, Prime Minister Theresa May told the BBC Labour was "playing politics" over the final UK-EU deal.
"The Labour Party are saying they will vote against any deal that I bring back from Europe, regardless of how good it is for the United Kingdom, and they would support any deal that Europe gave to us, regardless of how bad it was for the United Kingdom," she said.
"That's not working for the national interest - that's playing politics."
Labour says it could call for another EU referendum if the Brexit deal is rejected and there is no general election - and it is not ruling out that one option could be to stay in the EU.
Theresa May has ruled out a public vote on the outcome of her Brexit negotiations - but it is not yet clear what will happen if Parliament votes it down.
Pro-EU campaigners say MPs will have "multiple opportunities" to legislate for a so-called "People's Vote", including by amending laws that have been promised to implement the UK's withdrawal.
Mr Corbyn denied leaving the door open to this scenario was letting down Leave voters, saying Labour was telling them "that we will deal with the situation as it comes up and we will understand, many of them, the reasons why they voted Leave".
The Labour leader cited de-industrialisation and anger at the loss of quality skilled jobs as factors behind the 2016 referendum result.
On the possibility of another referendum, he added: "We haven't said there's going to be anything yet.
"What we've said is all options must be considered if and when this government collapses or its negotiations collapse - the options are still there."

Labour's shadow chancellor says he does not trust Theresa May after details from cross-party talks on Brexit were leaked to the press.
The PM has called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to "put their differences aside" and agree a Brexit deal.
But John McDonnell said she had "blown the confidentiality" of the talks and "jeopardised the negotiations".
The UK was due to leave the EU on 29 March, but it was delayed to 31 October after MPs failed to agree a deal.
Mrs May put the plan she had negotiated with the EU to Parliament three times, but it did not have the support of the Commons.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Mrs May said Mr Corbyn should "listen to what voters said" in Thursday's local elections - which saw the Conservatives lose 1,334 councillors and Labour fail to make expected gains, instead losing 82 seats.
The Liberal Democrats benefited from Tory losses, gaining 703 seats, with the Greens and independents also making gains.
The prime minister blamed the Brexit impasse for the losses - but said the elections gave "fresh urgency" to find a way to "break the deadlock".
Mrs May also said she hoped to find a "unified, cross-party position" with Labour - despite admitting that her colleagues "find this decision uncomfortable" and that "frankly, it is not what I wanted either".
Mr McDonnell agreed that the message from the polls was to "get on with it" and come to an agreement over Brexit quickly.
But while he said the talks between the two parties would continue on Tuesday, he said they had been undermined after an article in the Sunday Times detailed where Mrs May was willing to compromise - namely on customs, goods alignment and workers' rights.
The paper also said the PM could put forward plans for a comprehensive, but temporary, customs arrangement with the EU that would last until the next general election.
Mr McDonnell told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: "We have maintained confidentiality as that is what we were asked to do. We haven't briefed the media.
"So it is disappointing the prime minister has broken that, and I think it is an act of bad faith.
"I fully understand now why she couldn't negotiate a decent deal with our European partners if she behaves in this way."
Asked if he trusted the prime minister, the shadow chancellor said: "No. Sorry. Not after this weekend when she has blown the confidentiality we had, and I actually think she has jeopardised the negotiation for her own personal protection."
By Nick Eardley, BBC political correspondent
Clearly both sides think there is fresh impetus to get a deal after the local elections.
The government seems prepared to move towards Labour's position, but it's far from clear that it will be enough.
There's a real fear on the Labour side that if this isn't a permanent arrangement, a new Tory leader - perhaps Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab - could come along and try to change it.
So success isn't guaranteed when the two sides get back around the table on Tuesday, and both sides need to know they can take a big chunk of their parties with them.
If Theresa May faces losing dozens of Tories opposed to a customs union, or Jeremy Corbyn faces losing dozens of labour MPs who want another referendum, they might not have the numbers to get this through the Commons.
And in that case, a compromise is useless.
Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers, told the Daily Telegraph that staying in a customs union could lead to a "catastrophic split" in the Conservative Party.
And Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme that millions of people would give up on Labour and the Conservatives if they agreed a deal, adding it would be the "final betrayal".
But the new International Development Secretary Rory Stewart told BBC Radio 5 live's Pienaar's Politics the Tories might have to "take some short-term pain" to finish the job.
The leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, also said her party needed to "start walking ourselves back" from the extremes of the argument to find a compromise, telling the BBC's Andrew Marr "there is a deal to be done" with Labour.
Meanwhile, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said it was "absolutely right" for the talks to continue, but told Pienaar's Politics: "I don't think we should be in any doubt that the Labour Party membership and vast numbers of my colleagues in Parliament don't want us to just sign off on a Tory Brexit.
"They don't want us to bail the prime minister out of the problem of her own making and a very large number of our members think the people should decide on what that deal looks like."
The comments come after the People's Vote campaign - which wants a referendum on a final Brexit deal - published a letter signed by more than 100 opposition MPs saying any new, agreed deal should be put to the public for a vote.
Labour MP Bridget Phillipson, who backs the campaign, told Sky's Sophy Ridge: "I think we have reached a stage now that whatever deal is agreed... it has to go back to the British people.
"Something stitched up, cobbled together in Westminster will not be sustainable in the long run. I want to check it is what people want now."

Boris Johnson has insisted he "deplores any threats to anybody, particularly female MPs", after he described one MP's safety concerns as "humbug".
The PM also said that "tempers need to come down" in Parliament.
It follows a stormy debate as MPs returned to Parliament after a Supreme Court decision that the suspension of Parliament was unlawful.
Mr Johnson defended his description of a law seeking to block a no-deal Brexit as "the surrender bill".
The law, known as the Benn bill, forces the government to ask for an extension to the Brexit deadline.
During a number of interviews with BBC political editors, the PM argued it would "take away the power of the government... to decide how long it would remain in the EU".
Speaking to the BBC political editor for the North West of England, Nina Warhurst, the prime minister said: "I totally deplore any threats to anybody, particularly female MPs, and a lot of work is being done to stop that and give people the security that they need.
"But I do think in the House of Commons it is important I should be able to talk about the surrender bill, the surrender act, in the way that I did."
He argued the law would "take away the power of this government, and the power of this country to decide how long it would remain in the EU and give that power to the EU and that's really quite an extraordinary thing".
When Mr Johnson talks about the "surrender bill", he is referring to the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act, also known as the Benn bill.
The act - which became law earlier this month - stipulates the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit.
Once this deadline has passed, he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020 from the EU.
If the EU responds by proposing a different date, the PM will have two days to accept that proposal. But during this two-day period, MPs - not the government - will have the opportunity to reject the EU's date.
MPs on Thursday debated an urgent question over "the use of language" during Wednesday's ill-tempered debate.
Speaker John Bercow began the day's proceedings, by asking MPs from all sides of the house to temper their language and to "treat each other as opponents, not enemies".
In the heated debate that followed, several MPs said the prime minister should apologise for saying the best way to honour Jo Cox, the MP murdered during the EU referendum campaign, was to "get Brexit done".
Labour MP Jess Phillips said saying sorry would be the "bravest" thing for Mr Johnson to do.
Shadow cabinet office minister Cat Smith compared the language being used to that of drill artists, a type of rap which has been linked to gangs and violence.
"How are we as politicians in any position to accuse drill artists of glorifying violence when politicians themselves are not held responsible for the violent language they use and the impact it has on the culture and climate of debate?" she asked.
MPs also detailed some of the threats they had faced, with Tory MP Caroline Noakes describing how someone called her a "traitor who deserved to be shot" on a walkabout in her constituency.
Meanwhile, the longest-serving male and female MPs in the Commons - Ken Clarke and Harriet Harman - have asked for a Speaker's Conference, or meetings chaired by the Speaker, to discuss threats to MPs.
MPs returned to Parliament on Wednesday, following the Supreme Court ruling that the prorogation of Parliament was unlawful.
Labour MP Paula Sherriff said she had received death threats which often quoted the prime minister's words, including "surrender act", and called on him to moderate his language.
In response, Mr Johnson said: "I have to say, Mr Speaker, I've never heard such humbug in all my life."
The prime minister also later said: "Believe me: the best way to ensure that every parliamentarian is properly safe and to dial down the current anxiety in this country is to get Brexit done."
Speaking at a book launch on Thursday evening, the prime minister's adviser Dominic Cummings said it was "not surprising" that some voters were angry.
"The MPs said we will have a referendum, we will respect the result and then they spent three years swerving all over the shop," he said.
"In the end the situation can only be resolved by Parliament honouring its promise to respect the result."
Mr Cummings - who was the campaign director at Vote Leave - also attempted to paint a picture of calm at No 10, saying: "This is a walk in the park compared to the referendum."
Meanwhile, Rachel Johnson, the prime minister's sister, told BBC Radio 4's World at One that her brother was using the Commons as a "bully pulpit".
Ms Johnson, who stood for pro-European party Change UK - which has since altered its name to The Independent Group for Change - in June's European elections, added: "It's not the brother I see at home. It's a different person."
Elsewhere, former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major has criticised Mr Johnson and warned that a "general election would solve nothing" in the Brexit crisis.
Mr Johnson has been calling for an early general election, but under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act he needs the support of two-thirds of MPs. He has twice failed to achieve this.
Speaking to the Centre for European Reform, Sir John said an election "would merely fuel the current feeling of disillusionment and disunity".
He also said he feared the government would seek to bypass the Benn Act, by suspending it until after 31 October when the UK is set to leave the EU.
He said he thinks they will do this by trying to pass an Order of Council, which can be approved by Privy Councillors - government ministers - without involving the Queen.
"I should warn the prime minister that - if this route is taken - it will be in flagrant defiance of Parliament and utterly disrespectful to the Supreme Court," he said.

Boris Johnson has denied lying to the Queen over the advice he gave her over the five-week suspension of Parliament.
The prime minister was speaking after Scotland's highest civil court ruled on Wednesday the shutdown was unlawful.
Asked whether he had lied to the monarch about his reasons for the suspension, he replied: "Absolutely not."
He added: "The High Court in England plainly agrees with us, but the Supreme Court will have to decide."
The power to suspend - or prorogue - Parliament lies with the Queen, who conventionally acts on the advice of the prime minister.
The current five-week suspension began in the early hours of Tuesday, and MPs are not scheduled to return until 14 October.
Labour has said it is "more important than ever" that Parliament is recalled after the government published the Yellowhammer document, an assessment of a reasonable worst-case scenario in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, the EU has said it is willing to revisit the proposal of a Northern Ireland-only backstop to break the Brexit deadlock, despite Mr Johnson ruling this out.
The President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, said there would be no agreement without a backstop - which aims to avoid a hard Irish border after Brexit - in some form.
But the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier told MEPs that the "situation in the UK remains serious and uncertain", saying: "We do not have reasons to be optimistic".
He also warned the UK could still leave without a deal, despite Parliament introducing a law to avoid the scenario.
The Yellowhammer document - published on Wednesday after MPs forced its release - warned of food and fuel shortages in a no-deal scenario.
But Mr Johnson insisted the UK "will be ready" to leave the EU by the current 31 October deadline without an agreement "if we have to".
"What you're looking at here is just the sensible preparations - the worst-case scenario - that you'd expect any government to do," he said.
"In reality we will certainly be ready for a no-deal Brexit if we have to do it and I stress again that's not where we intend to end up."
But shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he was "angry" that MPs would not be able to debate the planning document during the suspension.
If you had a usual prime minister who'd been accused overnight of misleading MPs, of breaking the law, having been forced to publish a government report warning of riots and food shortages and telling porkies to the Queen; you would imagine they would emerge a broken, humbled, crushed individual.
Not so Boris Johnson. He emerged characteristically brimming with optimism and confidence.
No deal? He insisted he had got in place the necessary preparations to avoid the sort of dire scenarios forecast.
An agreement with the EU? Yes he was hopeful of getting an agreement.
And telling lies to the Queen? Absolutely not.
But the difficulty is optimism and confidence only get you so far. MPs want details. They want details about what he's actually doing to avoid the grim no-deal forecast and what he's doing to get an arrangement with the EU
And they want details - or the truth - about why he chose to prorogue Parliament.
Which means if the judges decide on Tuesday that Parliament should be recalled then I suspect Boris Johnson's going to need an awful lot more than bullish bravado.
In a unanimous ruling on Wednesday, the Court of Session in Edinburgh said Mr Johnson's decision to order the suspension was motivated by the "improper purpose of stymieing Parliament".
It came after a legal challenge launched by more than 70 largely pro-Remain MPs and peers, headed by SNP MP Joanna Cherry.
But a ruling last week from the High Court in London had dismissed a similar challenge brought by businesswoman and campaigner Gina Miller.
In their rejection of her claim, the judges argued the suspension of Parliament was a "purely political" move and was therefore "not a matter for the courts".
Mr Johnson has suggested it was "nonsense" to suggest the move was an attempt to undermine democracy, insisting it is normal practice for a new PM.
Prorogation normally takes place every year, but the length and timing of the current suspension - in the run-up to Brexit - has attracted controversy.
Opposition parties have accused the prime minister of ordering it to prevent criticism of its Brexit strategy and contingency plans for a no-deal exit.
They backed a move to order the release of communications between No 10 aides about the decision to order the suspension.
But the government has blocked their release, saying the request to see e-mails, texts and WhatsApp messages from Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's chief aide, and eight other advisers in Downing Street was "unreasonable and disproportionate".
The Yellowhammer file, which is redacted in parts and almost identical to a version leaked to the Sunday Times last month, says in a reasonable worst-case scenario a no-deal Brexit could lead to:
The document also says some businesses could cease trading, and the black market could grow in response to disruption along the UK's border with Ireland.
"This will be particularly severe in border communities, where both criminal and dissident groups already operate with greater threat and impunity," it added.
It also raised the prospect of "protests and direct action" in Northern Ireland as a result of disruption to key sectors.
Michael Gove, the cabinet minister with responsibility for no-deal planning, told the BBC the government had taken "considerable steps" to ensure the safest possible departure after a no-deal Brexit in the six weeks since 2 August, the date which appears on the document.
On Wednesday, he said "revised assumptions" will be published "in due course alongside a document outlining the mitigations the government has put in place and intends to put in place".

PM Johnson said he had come to Scotland to renew the ties that bind the United Kingdom. Yet his trickiest task may be to try and restore the ties between him and the leadership of his Scottish party.
On Monday, during his first trip to Scotland as prime minister, Mr Johnson met the first minister of Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon was expected to tell him that Scotland did not vote for Brexit and they certainly didn't vote for a "catastrophic no deal Brexit."
But his toughest meeting might not have been with the FM, but with the Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson.
Ms Davidson made no secret of the fact that she did not want Mr Johnson as PM.
And in the few days since he took charge relations have already gone further south.
He ignored his Scottish leader's advice not to sack the Scottish Secretary David Mundell and replace him with the pro-Brexit MP Alister Jack.
He then further snubbed the Scottish contingent of parliamentarians when he put an MP who sits for an English seat into the Scotland office as a minister.
Ms Davidson has said publicly that she would not support a no-deal exit from the EU and that as leader of the Scottish party she does not have to sign up to any loyalty pledge to support a no deal.
She believes the PM would have sacked her if he could. But he can't - and she will take full advantage of her ability to speak out in public.
Ms Davidson is highly regarded by Tories as she led the party from having one MP in Scotland to 13.
But not all of those MPs are lining up behind her - most of them will support the PM if push comes to shove. Contrast that with Scottish Conservative MSPs who are more loyal to Ms Davidson. However, they don't have any votes in the House of Commons.
Talk of the Scottish Conservatives forming a breakaway party is premature. Ms Davidson says she will not allow it to happen on her watch. And a Scottish separation is not exactly a good look for a party that is supposed to be wholeheartedly supporting the Union between Scotland and the rest of the UK.
It may not solve any issues for the Tories in Scotland anyway. As one former Tory strategist put it to me - when they rebranded Marathon bars as Snickers they still had peanuts inside and if you have a nut allergy they are still a problem

A no-deal Brexit would be a failure that both the British and Irish governments would be responsible for, Boris Johnson has said.
The prime minister was in Dublin for his first meeting with Irish PM Leo Varadkar since he entered Number 10.
The government has confirmed Parliament will be suspended later after a vote on holding an early general election.
Opposition parties will not back the vote, meaning there will be no election in October as the PM had hoped.
Mr Johnson said he believed a Brexit deal was still possible by the EU summit in October, but Taoiseach Varadkar said there was no such thing as a "clean break" between the UK and the EU.
Mr Johnson has ruled out asking the EU to delay the Brexit deadline of 31 October, although the Irish government has said it would support another extension.
But Mr Johnson told reporters in Dublin he was "absolutely undaunted" about what might happen in Parliament.
The prime minister also said he had looked at the consequences of a no-deal Brexit, and "wanted to find a deal".
The two leaders spoke privately for half an hour before joining their delegations for another half-hour meeting, said a joint statement.
"While they agreed that the discussions are at an early stage, common ground was established in some areas although significant gaps remain," it added.
"We must restore Stormont and we must come out [of the EU] on 31 October, or else permanent damage will be done in the UK to trust in our democratic system," he added.
During their press conference, Mr Varadkar used a classical reference about his British counterpart that gained attention.
"Negotiating FTAs [free trade agreements] with the EU and US and securing their ratification in less than three years is going to be a Herculean task for you," he said.
"We want to be your friend and ally, your Athena, in doing so."
In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena did assist Hercules as an ally - but it was by knocking him out and stopping him from killing his family when he went mad.
By Jayne McCormack, BBC News NI Political Reporter
Boris Johnson arrived in Dublin trying to strike a more conciliatory tone than in previous weeks.
Perhaps brought to bear by cabinet ministers concerned about no deal, Mr Johnson insisted he wants an agreement.
But trust is a crucial tenet of any political relationship.
A stony-faced Leo Varadkar said a deal was still possible, but warned that promises from the UK wouldn't cut it.
The Irish government is also watching Westminster closely, knowing the prime minister is currently boxed in by opposition parties, with few options left.
A breakthrough was never going to happen today, but what went on behind closed doors around this key meeting could pave the way for movement.
The taoiseach invited Mr Johnson to Dublin two months ago, shortly after he was installed in Downing Street, to discuss Brexit.
The Irish government maintains that the backstop - the mechanism to avoid an Irish hard border - is needed in any withdrawal agreement, because of decisions made by the UK.
But Mr Johnson has said he will not sign up to a deal unless the backstop is removed, because it is "anti-democratic".
There is also speculation that the government could propose returning to a backstop that would only apply to Northern Ireland, with the possibility of a role for the Stormont assembly before it could be triggered or new EU rules would take effect.
However, DUP leader Arlene Foster told the BBC she is convinced that Boris Johnson will not pursue the NI-only backstop.
She also said she was encouraged to hear both the British and Irish prime ministers "dialling down the rhetoric" and wanting to find a Brexit deal.
Parliament will be suspended when business in the Commons finishes later on Monday, after MPs have voted again on whether to hold an early general election.
Before Parliament is prorogued, MPs will debate progress reports updating them on efforts to restore the Stormont assembly.
Unless power-sharing talks succeed before Brexit happens, Mr Smith has said direct rule powers from Westminster will need to be implemented at pace.
Meanwhile, legislation designed to delay a no-deal Brexit and force the prime minister to request an extension to the EU deadline received royal assent on Monday afternoon and has become law.
However, Mr Johnson has said he will not ask the EU for another extension, so it is unclear what might happen next.
The government will move another motion asking MPs to vote for a general election on Monday too, but it is unlikely to pass because opposition parties have agreed to reject the demand, saying Mr Johnson is trying to force through a no-deal exit.
The backstop is a key piece of the Brexit deal dictating what will happen to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
It is a last resort that guarantees a frictionless border if no better solution is devised in time - by maintaining close ties between the UK and the EU until such a solution is found.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said he hopes that the UK will rejoin the European Union at some point in future.
Mr Juncker, the most senior official in Brussels, said he did not like Brexit because he wanted "to be in the same boat as the British".
"The day will come when the British will re-enter the boat, I hope," he said following an EU summit.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said: "The ship will have sunk by then."
The UK is expected to trigger the formal Brexit process this month, beginning a two-year negotiation process of withdrawal.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said if the UK invoked Article 50 next week, an extraordinary meeting of the other 27 EU states would be held on 6 April.
"We are well prepared and we shall wait with interest," she said.
Prime Minister Theresa May attended the Brussels meeting on Thursday, but left early as the remaining 27 members stayed on to discuss the future of the European Union.
She told reporters before leaving:  "At this summit we've shown once again how Britain will continue to play a leading role in Europe long after we have left the EU" - citing the examples of security cooperation and hosting a summit for the Western Balkans.
European Council President Donald Tusk said the EU would be ready to respond within two days of Mrs May triggering Brexit: "We are well prepared for the whole procedure and I have no doubt that we will be ready in 48 hours."
Meanwhile the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt has said he would like a "special arrangement" for UK citizens who want to continue their relationship with the EU, so they can continue to keep some rights, such as freedom to travel.
The UK voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU in last year's referendum.

Downing Street has rejected Justine Greening's call for a fresh referendum on the UK's exit from the EU, saying it will not happen "in any circumstances".
The former education secretary argued the final Brexit decision should be given back to the people and out of the hands of "deadlocked politicians".
She called for three options to be on the ballot paper: the prime minister's Chequers deal, staying in the EU or a clean break from Europe with no deal.
The UK is due to leave in March 2019.
Amid continuing Tory divisions over Mrs May's strategy, the government has accepted changes to legislation for customs arrangements after the UK leaves to avoid a Commons rebellion by Brexit-backing MPs.
No 10 said the amendments to the Customs Bill, including one that would preclude the UK from collecting tariffs on goods bound for EU countries, were "consistent" with the blueprint agreed by the cabinet.
Asked during a Commons statement on last week's Nato summit whether she was "rolling over", Mrs May said she would continue to "listen to the concerns" of colleagues regarding Brexit-related legislation.
Ms Greening, who resigned after the cabinet reshuffle in January, said the referendum should offer a first and second preference vote so that a consensus can be reached.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Ms Greening said the government's proposals were a "genuine clever attempt at a compromise that could work" but "suits no-one".
The MP for Putney said: "The reality is Parliament is now stalemated. Whatever the proposal on the table, there will be MPs who vote it down. But Britain needs to find a route forward."
Ms Greening, who supported Remain in the EU referendum, is the highest profile ex-Cabinet minister to call for a second referendum.
She said there were other senior Conservatives who agreed with her stance, adding that people who supported Leave in the referendum would also feel the government's approach is "not what they voted for".
In her article in the Times, she lambasted the PM's Brexit blueprint, saying: "We'll be dragging Remain voters out of the EU for a deal that means still complying with many EU rules, but now with no say on shaping them.
"It's not what they want, and on top of that when they hear that Leave voters are unhappy, they ask, 'What's the point?'
"For Leavers, this deal simply does not deliver the proper break from the European Union that they wanted."
By Chris Mason, BBC political correspondent
Combine a hung parliament with Brexit, and when you scan your eye around the House of Commons, you sometimes wonder if they can collectively agree on anything.
The one thing there is certainly not much public support for right now among MPs is another referendum.
Whatever the view of an individual MP on Brexit, most see making the case for another schlep to the polling station a hard argument to flog.
And so while those doing so are a pretty small tribe, and it is a million miles from a majority view, there is pride among them that they can add another name to their gang.
But it is worth remembering that Justine Greening is a pro-European in a marginal seat - Putney in London - that voted heavily to Remain.
Ms Greening, who grew up in Rotherham, where 68% people voted to leave the EU, said the parliamentary stalemate "risks a no-confidence vote and, worse, a Corbyn government, which would be disastrous for the economy".
She had previously suggested a future generation of MPs will seek to "improve or undo" Brexit if it does not work for young people.
Fellow Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, who backed Leave in the referendum, said he agreed with Ms Greening that the PM's plan was "dead" but described her call for a second vote as "a little ill-thought-out".
"If we wanted to extend the uncertainty for another long period this is one way of doing it," he told Today.
Mrs May has ruled out a second vote, as has Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, although a number of senior Labour figures are backing the cross-party People's Vote campaign for a final vote on any exit deal.
Pro-EU Conservative MP Dominic Grieve told BBC Radio 4's The World at One programme the possibility of holding a second referendum should not be excluded but Mrs May was "entitled to try to develop" her Chequers plan.
"My primary political duty at the moment is to try and help get this country through a Brexit process that is endangering its stability and its wellbeing," he said.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said another referendum was "heading much closer" but could be avoided if the Tories changed leader, adding there was "uproar out there" about the prime minister's proposals.
Suella Braverman, who used to lead a Eurosceptic group of Tory MPs and is now a minister in the Brexit department, said there were "obviously strong views" within her party and described the Chequers plan as a "starting point" for negotiations with the EU.
But the disagreements in the party have also led to another resignation from the government.
Scott Mann has quit his job as a parliamentary private secretary at the Treasury, saying Mrs May's plan was "in direct conflict" with the views of his Leave-voting constituents in north Cornwall and he did not want to deliver a "watered-down Brexit" to them.

Britain and Spain can overcome their differences and maintain strong ties after Brexit, the king of Spain has said in a speech at Westminster.
King Felipe VI said he believed they could begin "the necessary dialogue" to form an arrangement over Gibraltar.
But the government of Gibraltar said the king's focus on a dialogue between London and Madrid was "undemocratic".
The start of a three-day state visit to the UK by the king and queen of Spain ended with a Buckingham Palace banquet.
King Felipe made his comments on Gibraltar in a speech in the Palace of Westminster.
While discussing Britain's decision to leave the EU, he said: "To overcome our differences will be greater in the case of Gibraltar. I am confident through the necessary dialogue and effort, our two governments will be able to work... towards arrangements that are acceptable to all involved."
The government of Gibraltar said it would have to be involved in any discussion between Spain and the UK.
It added that two referenda in 1967 and 2002 showed the people of Gibraltar voted to remain British.
Chief minister Fabian Picardo QC said: "We have no desire to part of Spain or to come under Spanish sovereignty in any shape or form.
"In the times in which we live, territories cannot be traded from one monarch to another like pawns in a chess game."
During the speech, King Felipe said Britain and Spain were "profoundly intertwined" and he respected the UK's decision to leave the EU.
Hundreds of thousands of Britons live in Spain, and a similar number of Spaniards live in the UK, King Felipe told MP and peers.
They "form a sound foundation for our relations," he added.
"These citizens have a legitimate expectation of stable living conditions for their families," he said.
The king highlighted the two countries' important trading arrangements, adding that Britain is "the second largest investor in our country".
At the banquet later hosted by the Queen and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace, the British monarch acknowledged the two countries had not always seen "eye to eye".
In a speech, she also said: "A relationship like ours founded on such great strengths and common interests will ensure that both our nations prosper now and in the future whatever challenges arise."
The banquet menu began with poached fillet of salmon trout with fennel. It was followed by a medallion of Scottish beef with bone marrow and truffles, with a sauce made from Madeira, and a dark chocolate and raspberry tart for dessert.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Princess Royal, the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex also attended.
Earlier the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh greeted King Felipe and Queen Letizia at Horse Guards Parade, in a traditional welcoming ceremony.
The trip is the first state visit by a Spanish king to the UK since Felipe's father, Juan Carlos, came 31 years ago.
The Queen gifted King Felipe copies of love letters from his great-grandmother to King Alfonso XIII.
Queen Victoria's grand-daughter Princess Victoria Eugenie met King Alfonso on a state visit to Britain in 1905.
The pair married and Princess Victoria Eugenie became Queen Ena of Spain, making King Felipe a descendant of Queen Victoria.
The wind died down and the sun broke through the clouds just as the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh stepped on to the dais at Horse Guards.
Every visiting head of state gets the same welcome - their national anthem and the chance to inspect the guard of honour with Prince Philip. With his retirement imminent, this could be the last time he performed that particular public duty.
Then King Felipe stepped into a carriage with the Queen for the traditional procession down the Mall accompanied by the Household Cavalry. The Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Letizia travelled in a separate carriage.
It was a chance for Britain to show off how well it can do "pomp".
On Thursday, Prince Harry will accompany the royal visitors to Westminster Abbey.
King Felipe will lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior and the prince will join them on a short tour of the abbey, including the Tomb of Eleanor "Leonor" of Castile - the 13th-Century Spanish princess who married Edward I.

Dozens of Labour MPs might be prepared to go against the party's leadership if there is a vote on starting the Brexit process, the BBC understands.
Jeremy Corbyn has said all his MPs will be told to approve the triggering of Article 50 because they should accept the result of last year's referendum.
Lib Dem Tim Farron says generations to come will not forgive that position.
The Supreme Court will announce next Tuesday whether the government needs to seek Parliament's approval.
Ministers say they already have enough powers under the Royal Prerogative to go ahead with Brexit.
But campaigners argue that starting Brexit in this way would be undemocratic and unconstitutional.
In June's referendum, 51.9% of voters backed leaving the EU, while 48.1% supported remaining in the 28-nation group.
Mr Corbyn said he did not think it was right to block Article 50 in the wake of the referendum result.
"It's up to us to use the opportunity that's provided to stop the Tories from doing this bargain basement, low tax haven on the shores of Europe," he told the BBC.
"What I'm saying to all of my MPs is we've supported the principle of holding the referendum, the referendum was held, it delivered a result - I don't think it's right to block Article 50 negotiations.
"It's absolutely right that we're involved in these negotiations and making the case for a fairer and socially just Britain."
Asked if that meant he would be imposing a three-line whip - the strongest available sanction - on Labour MPs, requiring them to back Article 50, he said: "It means that all Labour MPs will be asked to vote in that direction next week or whenever the vote comes up."
However, a senior Labour source has told the BBC between 60 and 80 of the party's MPs might be ready to defy the leadership if there is a vote in Parliament.
Shadow business secretary Clive Lewis said the government's current position is "unacceptable" and he wants further assurances.
Another Labour MP told the BBC there would be a "swathe" of resignations from the front bench if Mr Corbyn instructed his MPs to vote for Brexit.
The MP said that for colleagues in constituencies that voted strongly for Remain it would be "suicide" to back Article 50.
And Labour's Mike Gapes, who has been outspoken in his criticism of Mr Corbyn in the past, told the Ilford Recorder he would not be toeing the party line.
"I am going to vote against triggering Article 50 and let me be clear, I am going to be as loyal to Jeremy Corbyn as he was to previous Labour leaders," he said.
"I will show the same loyalty he did when he voted, 500 times, against the Labour whip under successive party leaders. The people of Britain did not vote to become poorer and I will not vote in favour of any deal that would see us leave the single market."
BBC political correspondent Ben Wright said nobody expected Parliament to stop Brexit being triggered, but Mr Corbyn could struggle to keep his party's position coherent, whether he insists on a three-line whip or not.
Lib Dem leader Mr Farron accused Labour of "lamely" giving up against the government's drive for a hard Brexit.
He said he believed Mr Corbyn had put the party on the wrong side of the biggest political issue in a generation.
"I think what Labour has done is to believe this is too difficult for them politically, let's just wait for it to go away, and the meeker we are, the quicker it will go away," he told the Guardian.
"I think that's the calculation they've made, and this and future generations are not going to forgive them for that.
"It's not divisive to hold the government to account, and not just to lamely give up as we go over a cliff, and that is what Labour are doing - they are being the most ineffective opposition in living memory."
Mr Farron added that his party, which has just nine MPs, would not consider an electoral deal with Labour because Mr Corbyn is "electorally toxic".
Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas claimed Mr Corbyn was "trying to deny Labour MPs the chance to make their own principled choice on one of the most important decisions of the UK's recent history".

A butterfly flaps its wings with hardly a care in the world and innocently triggers a tornado, goes the theory.
The diehard Remain supporters advocating a further EU referendum are hardly retiring butterflies and their campaign is no political tornado.
But their call for voters to be given another say on the EU is now, at the very least, a gentle breeze whistling through British politics. It will be felt by all sides in the final phase of the Brexit negotiations.
A compromise motion, thrashed out during late night negotiations at the Labour conference in Liverpool, now specifically ties a reluctant Labour leadership to another referendum.
The party would back such a move if the leadership's preferred option of a general election failed.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, dashed the hopes of pro-Europeans in the party by suggesting on the Today programme that the option to Remain in the EU should not be on the ballot paper.
The choice should instead be about the proposed Brexit deal.
But the loose wording of the Labour party does not rule out a Remain option on the ballot paper and McDonnell conceded that it would be up to Parliament to decide the wording.
The wrangling has led to much soul searching in the new Labour movement taking shape under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. The Momentum group, established to shore up his leadership at the grassroots, has been torn between pro-European instincts and loyalty to Corbyn.
He is heir to the Bennite tradition which regards the founding principles of the EU as anathema to Socialism.
Momentum was thinking of taking a neutral position had the motion been difficult for Jeremy Corbyn. One Momentum source told me that, while the organisation is strongly pro-European, it would do nothing to jeopardise its main goal; the election of a truly Socialist government.
The People's Vote campaign are reasonably content. They know their greatest weakness in Liverpool is they are seen as a bunch of unreconstructed Blairites seeking to thwart the will of the people on the EU and undermine Corbyn in the bargain.
The campaign believe they have shown they have far wider support. They hope to have created a space in November for Labour to be able to endorse a referendum on the grounds that warring Conservative MPs agree on one thing - there must be no general election before 2022.
And they believe that the motion leaves open the possibility of an option to Remain in the EU on the ballot paper. One source in the People's Vote campaign told me: "The door is now wide open."
The numbers in parliament suggest that if Labour endorses a further referendum it would be difficult to pass the legislation without a sizeable contingent of Tory MPs defying Theresa May.
But the events in Liverpool now set the stage for the issue of a further referendum to become everyone's favourite weapon in the final phase of the Brexit negotiations.
To pro-Europeans it is an escape hatch if Theresa May fails to negotiate a deal with the EU or she negotiates a deal that is rejected by Parliament.
To Brexiteers the People's Vote campaign does their work for them. Leavers have consistently said that the pro-European side represents an out of touch elite afraid to accept the judgment of the people. And along comes a well funded campaign seeking to overturn the results of a referendum they won by more than a million votes.
Theresa May is using the threat of another referendum to warn Brexiteers opposed to her plan to be careful what they wish for.
Brexiteers invited to dinner in Downing Street recently were reportedly told if the prime minister's plans collapse then the commons speaker John Bercow will help create the conditions to vote through a further referendum.
The EU is, of course, watching events very closely. Some EU leaders said at last week's summit that they would be happy to extend the article 50 negotiations to allow a further referendum to take place.
Innocently or not that sort of talks infuriates Theresa May who says the mere talk of a vote allows the EU to hold back in the hope the UK changes its mind.
An innocent butterfly going about its business may never unleash a tornado over British politics. But it is certainly changing the weather.
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on Iplayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.

Labour delegates have approved a motion that would keep all options - including a fresh referendum - on the table if MPs are deadlocked over Brexit.
It was passed by a show of hands at the party conference in Liverpool.
The vast majority were in favour of the motion, with only a small number against.
Leader Jeremy Corbyn - who has previously ruled out another EU referendum - has said he will respect the result of the vote.
Sir Keir Starmer said earlier that the option of staying in the EU would be on the ballot paper in any future referendum if Labour gets its way.
In his party conference speech, the shadow Brexit secretary said all options should be kept on the table, including a so-called People's Vote, to "stop a destructive Tory Brexit".
But a senior Unite official said another vote would "reopen the wounds of Brexit" not heal them.
Labour's policy had been to force an election if MPs are deadlocked over Brexit but members succeeded in getting a debate on getting a fresh referendum on to the agenda at the conference.
Sir Keir told Labour activists if a general election was not possible "then other options must be kept open".
"That includes campaigning for a public vote," he said.
"It is right for Parliament to have the first say but if we need to break the impasse, our options must include campaigning for a public vote and nobody is ruling out Remain as an option."
Monday saw confusion over whether the leadership thought any fresh referendum should include staying in the EU as an option.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he thought any vote should be on the terms of a Brexit deal - rather than on remaining in the EU.
But he later said "all options" were on the table - a point reinforced by Sir Keir.
Labour - which wants the UK to remain in a customs union but not the single market - has not ruled out voting for any deal Mrs May brings back from Brussels, ahead of the UK's 29 March departure date.
But Sir Keir said the six tests his party has set - including guarantees on workers' rights and retaining the economic benefits of existing market arrangements - were unlikely to be met.
"Some have said Labour could vote for any deal the Tories reach. Some have said we may abstain. Some have said we may vote for a vague deal," he said.
"So, let me be very clear - right here, right now: if Theresa May brings back a deal that does not meet our tests - and that looks increasingly likely - Labour will vote against it. No ifs, no buts.
"And if the prime minister thinks we'll wave through a vague deal asking us to leap blindfolded into the unknown, she can think again."
But Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner said any vote on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations could not be a re-run of the 2016 in-out referendum.
"Despite what Keir said earlier, it's a public vote on the terms of our departure," he said.
"We desperately need a better, fairer society - we need to heal the wounds of Brexit, not reopen them, and only our movement, united with a proud socialist government, is capable of doing that."
The Labour Leave campaign group, which backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum, said Sir Keir was "playing with fire" and talk of a referendum made Labour look like "the party of Remain".
"We're damaging the Labour brand and alienating our supporters," said its general secretary Brendan Chilton.
"We have already had a vote on the UK's membership of the EU; it's been done and dusted. The Labour Party and its members must accept this and move on."
The prime minister's Chequers plan, which would see the UK staying closely aligned to the EU in some areas, such as the trade in goods, has been criticised by EU leaders and many of her own MPs.
The Conservatives accused Labour of "playing political games".
"Labour seem determined to take us all back to square one by rejecting a deal out of hand then trying to delay Brexit and re-run the referendum," said Brexit minister Robin Walker.

Labour's Brexit spokesman has insisted the party could back another referendum that offered voters the chance to stay in the EU.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party was "certainly not ruling out" such a move.
He was speaking after shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he thought any vote should be on the terms of a Brexit deal rather than staying in the EU.
Mr McDonnell later said "all options" were on the table if it came to another referendum.
On Tuesday, Labour's conference in Liverpool will debate and vote on a motion to keep a new referendum "on the table" if Labour is unable to force a general election.
Key delegates - including Sir Keir and leading figures from some trade unions - decided the text at a meeting which lasted several hours on Sunday evening.
The final draft for the vote says: "If we cannot get a general election, Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote."
Since the draft was finalised, key figures have faced questions on whether it will include the option to stay in the EU.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr McDonnell said that Labour would continue to respect the 2016 referendum, in which people voted by 51.9% to 48.1% for the UK to leave the European Union, adding: "If we are going to respect the referendum it will be about the deal."
And he said a general election was needed so a Labour government could strike a Brexit deal with the EU which "brings the country together".
But later, Sir Keir told the BBC the party was deliberately not being "prescriptive" about the question that could be posed in another referendum, saying it was "certainly not ruling out" the option to stay in the EU.
Backbench MP David Lammy, a prominent campaigner for a second referendum, said it would be "farcical" to have a vote without the option of remaining in the EU.
After the late-night meeting on Sunday night, a Labour source told the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg: "There was consensus in the room opposing the Tories' chaotic approach to the Brexit negotiations... and that a general election should be called as soon as any deal is voted down by parliament.
"It was then agreed that if we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote."
The Labour Party has never formally rejected the option of a so-called people's vote on Brexit, but both Mr Corbyn and his deputy, Tom Watson, have indicated they would prefer it to be resolved by a general election.
On Twitter, Prime Minister Theresa May said Labour's approach sought to "Britain back to square one - betraying all those who voted in the 2016 EU referendum".
By Iain Watson, BBC political correspondent
After what I am told was six re-drafts and five and a half hours of discussion, wording that could bridge the gap between campaigners for a new referendum and a reluctant leadership was agreed.
But what was left out of the conference motion is as important as what went in.
The leadership had to agree that wording which restricted a future referendum to "the terms of Brexit" had to go.
This means that the party could, in theory, back a referendum that gave voters the option of remaining in the EU and not just a vote on the final deal.
Campaigners for a new vote see this as significant step forward.
But allies of Jeremy Corbyn say the wording doesn't commit him to backing a referendum as it is still only "an option on the table" if Theresa May refuses calls for a general election.
So still a fudge of sorts - but one with a slightly sweeter taste for supporters of a new vote who firmly believe that "all options" will become their option.
However, even the hint of a new referendum will allow the Conservatives to claim that Labour weren't serious enough about respecting the previous one.
Pressed on the issue on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Mr Corbyn, who has said he is not calling for another referendum, said "our preference" is for a general election.
He said that would then allow a Labour government to negotiate the UK's future relationship with Europe.
"Let's see what comes out of conference. Obviously I'm bound by the democracy of our party," he added.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab ruled out a snap election this autumn, saying the idea was "for the birds".
The UK is due to leave in March 2019 and Theresa May has been negotiating with other EU leaders on the UK's future relationship with the bloc.
Talks hit a stumbling block at a summit in Salzburg on Thursday when EU leaders rejected Mrs May's plan for Brexit - known as the Chequers agreement, and she warned them she was ready to walk away rather than accept a "bad deal".
By Newsnight political editor Nick Watt
The wrangling has led to much soul searching in the new Labour movement taking shape under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. The Momentum group, established to shore up his leadership at the grassroots, has been torn between pro-European instincts and loyalty to Corbyn.
He is heir to the Bennite tradition which regards the founding principles of the EU as anathema to Socialism.
Momentum was thinking of taking a neutral position had the motion been difficult for Jeremy Corbyn. One Momentum source told me that, while the organisation is strongly pro-European, it would do nothing to jeopardise its main goal; the election of a truly Socialist government.
The People's Vote campaign are reasonably content. They know their greatest weakness in Liverpool is they are seen as a bunch of unreconstructed Blairites seeking to thwart the will of the people on the EU and undermine Corbyn in the bargain.
The campaign believe they have shown they have far wider support. They hope to have created a space in November for Labour to be able to endorse a referendum on the grounds that warring Conservative MPs agree on one thing - there must be no general election before 2022.

Labour could form the next government without a general election if MPs don't back Theresa May's Brexit deal, John McDonnell has suggested.
The shadow chancellor said Labour should be offered the chance to form a minority administration if Mrs May keeps losing Commons votes.
The party would then seek to get majority for its version of Brexit.
Failing that, he said, there should be a general election and the final option would be another EU referendum.
Theresa May is heading to Brussels for talks with EU leaders and is hoping they will finalise the Brexit withdrawal agreement on Sunday. MPs will then get a vote on the deal.
As things stand, it appears there is no majority for Mrs May's deal in the Commons - but ministers hope enough MPs will swing behind it to get it through because the only alternative is no deal or "no Brexit".
Labour and the other opposition parties are trying to find a way to present MPs with other options.
Mr McDonnell said there could be a series of votes and it was "very difficult to predict" what the final outcome would be - but, echoing Conservative cabinet minister Amber Rudd, he said he did not think there was a majority for a no-deal Brexit.
He said: "My own view is we haven't explored sufficiently, neither has the media, these concepts, the constitution, our custom and practice,
"If it's a minority government and they can't obtain a majority in parliament, usually it's then the right, the duty of the Monarch to offer to the Opposition the opportunity to form a government and that would be a minority government, and see if they can secure a majority in parliament.
"I think we can secure a majority in parliament for some of the proposals we're putting forward."
He said opposition parties were normally asked to form a government when a minority government was losing votes in the House of Commons.
This was already happening as the Democratic Unionist Party withdrew its support for Mrs May in Budget votes in protest at her EU withdrawal agreement, he said.
"However, I think the test is whether the government is losing consistent votes on the issue of the deal itself," he argued.
In that case, he argued, Labour should be given a chance to try and get a majority for its plans.
"Failing that I think a general election is the route we need, and obviously, if we can't secure that then a further referendum."
At the moment Labour was working an amendments to the meaningful vote, that will give MPs an "opportunity to avoid no deal at all costs - and I think there is a vast majority of MPs that would support that".
He said he hoped "to demonstrate over the next couple of weeks that there is a consensus in Parliament for a new approach".
The shadow chancellor was sceptical about the chances of Brexit being stopped by another referendum, as some of his party's own MPs in the People's Vote campaign are hoping.
"My fear is that if we did have another referendum, we might get the same or similar result and the country will still be divided. Somehow we have got to try and bring the country back together again."
If there was another referendum, putting the option of staying in the EU on the ballot paper should be "part of the discussion", he told the event.
He said Labour would seek to negotiate a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit, which he said would remove the need for a Northern Ireland "backstop" that has caused so much controversy.

Labour will back Conservative rebels over Brexit unless the prime minister accepts changes to its repeal bill, the party's shadow Brexit secretary says.
Sir Keir Starmer wants six changes to the bill, which aims to transfer EU legislation into British law.
If these are not accepted Labour will back Tory rebels in an attempt to force a vote on the final EU deal, he said.
The government said it would listen to MPs about possible improvements to the bill but would not let it be "wrecked".
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The loss of the government's Commons majority in the June general election means a relatively small revolt by Conservative MPs could derail the legislation.
Hundreds of amendments to the bill have already been tabled by Tory rebels, as well as opposition MPs.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Sir Keir said the government had withheld the legislation from the House of Commons for two weeks running because it fears defeat on at least 13 amendments at the hands of Tory rebels.
He said it was "clear" that ministers could not proceed with the bill as it stands and threatened to "work with all sides" to get his changes made - unless ministers adopted them and end the "paralysis".
Sir Keir demanded that:
The shadow Brexit secretary wrote: "I believe there is a consensus in Parliament for these changes.
"And there is certainly no majority for weakening rights, silencing Parliament and sidelining the devolved administrations.
"There is a way through this paralysis.
"Labour will work with all sides to make that happen."
Sir Keir's intervention comes days after EU leaders agreed to begin scoping work on trade talks.
But they also made clear Britain must make further concessions on its divorce bill to unlock talks on a future trading relationship.
Brexit Secretary David Davis will travel to Paris for Brexit talks on Monday after France appeared to emerge as the most hardline EU member state on the exit bill.
The prime minister is due to update the Commons on Monday on the progress made during the summit on Thursday and Friday.
Mrs May is expected to say that while negotiations on Brexit are "deeply technical" she has never forgotten that millions of people are at the heart of the process and they remain her "first priority".
She will also say that the millions of European citizens living in the UK make an "extraordinary contribution" to our society and that "we want them to stay".
A government spokesman said the repeal bill was "essential" to deliver on the result of the referendum while ensuring the maximum possible legal certainty for businesses and citizens.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, following last year's referendum result.

Jeremy Corbyn has sought to play down divisions within his top team after one of his closest aides said he would quit and criticised the party's leadership.
Andrew Fisher's exit comes after a failed bid to oust deputy leader Tom Watson, as Labour conference begins.
Mr Corbyn said he got on well with both men and Mr Fisher was "extremely distressed" when he wrote a memo saying the leader's office was "incompetent".
He said he would serve five years if elected PM, adding: "Why wouldn't I?"
On the second day of its conference, Labour is unveiling plans to scrap Ofsted and replace it with a new school inspection system.
Mr Corbyn said the regulator was too "assertive" and its system of oversight needed to be more "supportive" of schools and pupils.
Labour is also promising to axe prescription charges in England if the party wins power, taking it in line with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where they are already free.
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, its leader dismissed talk he could stand down as Labour leader in the next year or so as "wishful thinking".
He also defended the party's Brexit policy - to be debated later - amid calls for him to come out unambiguously to remain in the EU rather than sit on the fence.
While most Labour supporters wanted to remain in the EU, he said the party must respect the result of the Brexit referendum and do more to understand why people voted to leave.
If it wins power, Labour would negotiate a new Brexit deal in three months, which would then be put to the people in a referendum within six months, with the option to leave or remain.
Mr Corbyn would not be drawn on which side he would back, saying "let's see" what kind of new deal he was able to negotiate with the EU.
However, he suggested he would ultimately go along with whatever party members decided at a special conference which could be held to settle the issue.
At a fringe event at the party's conference, deputy leader Tom Watson said Labour was a "remain party" and should lead the campaign to remain in the EU in a second referendum.
"By backing a people's vote, by backing remain, I am sure we can deliver the Labour government the people of this country so badly need," he said.
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says the NEC, Labour's governing body, agreed Brexit proposals on Sunday.
Labour conference will be voting on that motion and a Brexit motion on an issue put forward by members on Monday.
Ahead of next week's Supreme Court's ruling on whether the suspension of Parliament is lawful or not, Mr Corbyn said if the judges found against Boris Johnson, MPs must be recalled.
If that happened, he said he would "take immediate action" in Parliament along with other opposition parties to put pressure on the prime minister.
But Conservative chairman James Cleverly said Mr Corbyn could not say whether he would back Brexit even if the party negotiated its own deal.
"Jeremy Corbyn can't even make up his mind on the most important issue facing the country. He would delay Brexit until at least 2020 and even longer if the EU demand it."
Mr Corbyn was dealt a blow on Saturday when it emerged one of his aides, head of policy Andrew Fisher, revealed he will quit his post by the end of the year.
He said he wanted "to spend more time with his young family", but the Sunday Times claims he warned Mr Corbyn would not win the next general election and criticised the leader's office "lack of professionalism, competence and human decency".
Mr Corbyn acknowledged Mr Fisher, who helped write the 2017 manifesto, had expressed concerns about the party's direction and he had spoken to him "at length" about it.
He said Mr Fisher was "extremely distressed" when he made the comments, suggesting it was the sort of disagreement which happened in many workplaces.
"He is a great colleague, he is a great friend. We get along absolutely very well. He has promised whatever happens in the future, we will work together on policy issues."
Amid continuing fallout from the bid to oust Mr Watson, Mr Corbyn also said he was not told beforehand of Friday's move by left-wingers on Labour's ruling body to abolish the role.
The party will now consult on replacing the single role with two deputies - one of whom will be a woman.
Mr Corbyn, who has been at odds with his deputy over Brexit, said he got on "absolutely fine" with him and suggested his intervention had "put the issue to bed".

Holding another referendum on the UK's EU membership could lead to "civil disobedience", a shadow minister says.
Labour's Barry Gardiner said calls for another vote undermined "the whole principle of democracy in this country", warning voters could turn to "more socially disruptive ways of expressing their views".
Both Labour and the Conservatives have ruled out another referendum.
But some MPs want a vote on the final Brexit deal.
One of the supporters of the People's Vote campaign, Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, said Mr Gardiner was ignoring "the democratic right of the people to change their minds".
The UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, and this is due to happen in March 2019. Negotiations are taking place on what their final relationship will look like.
The government has promised MPs a "meaningful vote" on any deal reached with Brussels - but the People's Vote campaign think this should be the subject of a new nationwide referendum.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, said that while he had campaigned for a Remain vote, there was "more to this than simple economics - there is also the social, the democratic principles at play here".
Remain and Leave campaigners had told people that voting in the 2016 referendum would determine the UK's future for the next 40 or 50 years, he said.
"We meant it," he added.
Warning against Remain campaigners telling people they were "stupid enough to do what you wanted rather than what we wanted", he said: "You never give as much succour to the extreme right as when you cut off the mechanism of democratic change.
"If people want to be able to achieve change through democratic means, if they feel that that is being denied to them, they then turn to other more socially disruptive ways of expressing their views, and that is the danger here."
Holding another referendum would be "playing with the foundations of our country in a way that is really, really damaging," he added.
"We have to respect people's vote in that referendum. We told them we would, we must do it."
Pressed on whether he believed another referendum could prompt violence on the streets, Mr Gardiner insisted he "didn't say that" but added: "In any situation, if people feel the route to change is no longer a democratic route, then you look to social disruption, perhaps civil disobedience in a different way".
Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said he was "appalled" at Mr Gardiner's comments:
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was pressed on Mr Gardiner's remarks during a visit to New Lanark as part of a four-day trip to Scotland.
"There are no plans for anyone to hold a second referendum," he said.
"What we have to do, I think, is concentrate on the relationship we have with the European Union in the future, but we're obviously part of the continent of Europe and we have to have a trading relationship with all countries in Europe."
Mr Corbyn also said the government should not be preparing for no Brexit deal being reached, saying that instead "we should be making sure that there is an agreement and there is a deal so there isn't a cliff edge".
The government has said it believes a deal to be the most likely outcome of the negotiations but that it is also putting in place contingency plans in case this doesn't happen.

Owen Smith says he "stood by his principles" in calling for another EU referendum - a move which resulted in his sacking from Labour's shadow cabinet.
The former shadow Northern Ireland secretary said Jeremy Corbyn had made a "mistake" in firing him.
He also said the party should "shift its position" on Brexit.
Mr Smith was asked to stand down on Friday after he wrote an article for the Guardian calling for a second vote.
Speaking about his sacking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "I think it is a mistake, for Jeremy Corbyn in particular, who has always understood the value of people standing by their principles.
"It is the position that he has often adopted, and it is certainly a value in him that others have extolled."
"In truth I think that is all I have done. I have stood by my principles."
Mr Smith said leaving the EU was "the biggest economic crisis that our country will have faced for many, many generations" and he believed Labour should stand against it.
Referring to Mr Corbyn's views on Brexit as "a more Eurosceptic position", he added: "It's the first instance that I can think of in living memory of a government pursuing a policy that they know is going to make our economy smaller and reduce people's livelihoods and life chances and I cannot understand why we in Labour would support that."
Party figures have criticised Mr Corbyn's decision to sack Mr Smith, with Labour peer Peter Hain describing the dismissal as a "Stalinist purge".
The former Northern Ireland secretary said Mr Smith was widely respected for his work in the role.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna said it was "extraordinary" that the shadow minister had been sacked for advocating a Brexit policy which, he said, had wide support in the party.
Fellow MP Anna Turley said Mr Smith's departure was "disappointing" and he would be a loss to the front bench, while former cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw told Mr Smith he was "very sorry" to see him go.
By Jonathan Blake, BBC political correspondent
In a phone call from Jeremy Corbyn and what a source described as a "civil conversation", Owen Smith was told he was being sacked.
Mr Smith's comments on Brexit policy were seemingly a step too far for the party leadership, who'd welcomed him back into the fold after his leadership challenge in 2016.
The angry response from some MPs has again laid bare their opposition to Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
But Mr Corbyn's grip on power in the party has never been stronger.
The fact that he can make this move without fear of open rebellion, is a demonstration of that.
However shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said although Mr Smith was "a valued colleague", he could not sit on the opposition front bench while advancing "a position which was simply not Labour Party policy".
Ms Abbott, who in November told constituents she would push for a referendum on the final Brexit deal - before clarifying she wanted a Parliamentary vote - said Mr Smith would be able to "make a contribution to the debate" outside the shadow cabinet.
BBC Newsnight's political editor Nick Watt said supporters of Mr Corbyn thought Mr Smith "wasn't very collegiate" and had defied collective responsibility.
Mr Watt also reported that friends of Mr Smith complained that journalists knew about the sacking before Mr Corbyn phoned him - a claim disputed by the Labour leader's office.
Mr Smith has been replaced by Rochdale MP and shadow housing minister Tony Lloyd.
Mr Corbyn said that Mr Lloyd was "highly experienced" and "committed to ensuring that peace in Northern Ireland is maintained", as well as helping to steer the devolution deal "back on track".
In a tweet, Mr Smith said his concerns about Brexit, which he outlined in a Guardian article, were shared by other supporters and members of the Labour party.
In the article, Mr Smith called for Labour to back membership of the EU single market.
The Labour leader announced last month that the party wanted the UK to be a permanent member of a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
But Mr Smith, who unsuccessfully challenged Mr Corbyn for the party leadership in 2016, insisted Labour needed to do more than "just back a soft Brexit or guarantee a soft border in Ireland".
He wrote: "If we insist on leaving the EU then there is realistically only one way to honour our obligations under the Good Friday Agreement and that is to remain members of both the customs union and the single market."
Labour's shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer has said the party was "not calling for a referendum at this stage".

We have just witnessed a classic conference '360'.
It's a row in these heady days where one major player in the bubble promises something, then a rival says something rather different.
Then, whoops, fearing a story about splits and dissent within a matter of hours, there is what is officially called a "clarification" - in other words one of those involved in the clash eats their words.
As we reported last night, before midnight, Labour delegates agreed there would be a compromise to hold out the possibility of having another referendum.
It was difficult to decide because the party leadership is conscious of not hacking off millions of Labour voters who want to leave, but also have to try to keep the membership - who, if they had a choice, would probably stop Brexit dead in its tracks tomorrow - happy.
That's why there was so much discussion last night over the wording. But by midnight, allies of Keir Starmer and the Labour elements in the campaign for another vote were content.
Not only did they have the idea on the agenda, but they had been able to keep the promise vague enough that if the circumstances emerge, there could be another referendum with, crucially, the option of staying in the EU on the ballot.
But at 7:30am the shadow chancellor piled in telling the BBC that it was important to "respect the referendum", explaining that in his view another public vote should be on the terms of the deal.
Was he trying to kill off the idea of another vote on stay or leave? It seemed that way. Then Tom Watson, who had been part of the push to change the policy, didn't quite agree with him.
He told me a couple of hours later there was an "inevitable logic" to in or out being part of this hypothetical vote. Then Keir Starmer, who was in the room for all of those hours, came striding across the conference plaza to make absolutely clear that deliberately, and explicitly, the agreement in the room was to leave the option of holding another EU referendum on staying in or leaving on the table (in the end).
Then lo and behold, perhaps thinking of the headlines his own dramatic speech this afternoon might generate, John McDonnell popped up again, to say that after all, guess what, "all options", including a vote, perhaps, one day, to stay in the EU, are after all still on the table.
So, as you were.
The 360 is complete. Labour is still inching towards the possibility of a second public vote that might include staying in the European Union.
But the reluctance of Jeremy Corbyn's close allies seems clear. Conference will vote for the promise of that possibility, but that's a long way from vowing the party would make it happen.

Talks between Labour and the government aimed at breaking the Brexit impasse have ended without an agreement.
Jeremy Corbyn said the discussions had "gone as far as they can", blaming what he called the government's "increasing weakness and instability".
Theresa May said the lack of a "common position" within Labour over a further referendum had made talks "difficult".
The prime minister said she would now consider putting options to MPs on Brexit that may "command a majority".
But Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called the end of the talks a "very negative development".
Mrs May has promised to set a timetable for leaving Downing Street following a House of Commons vote on her EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill in the week beginning 3 June.
Brexit had been due to take place on 29 March - but after MPs voted down the deal Mrs May had negotiated with the bloc three times, the EU gave the UK an extension until 31 October.
This prompted negotiations between the Conservatives and Labour to see if the parties could come to a Brexit agreement, despite differences over issues including membership of a customs union and a further referendum.
The forthcoming leadership contest may firm up opposition to Theresa May's bill on the Conservative benches
By putting the Withdrawal Agreement Bill out of its misery almost as soon as it appears, the prime minister's critics know she will vacate office sooner rather than later.
But some candidates will be keener for her to get Brexit over the line, even with a less than optimal deal, so they don't immediately get bogged down with difficult votes. It would also allow them to make their pitch based on the future relationship with the EU.
So could some of their supporters - irrespective of their public criticism of the deal - quietly vote to get it over the line?
Read the full article
But in a letter to the prime minister, Labour leader Mr Corbyn wrote: "I believe the talks between us about finding a compromise agreement on leaving the European Union have now gone as far as they can."
The move towards choosing her replacement meant "the position of the government has become ever more unstable".
He later said his party had negotiated "in good faith and very seriously, and put forward a lot of very detailed arguments", which he thought was "the responsible thing to do".
He added: "The issue [is] that the government has not fundamentally shifted its view and the divisions in the Conservative Party mean the government is negotiating with no authority and no ability that I can see to actually deliver anything."
Speaking after meeting Tory activists in Bristol, Mrs May said: "There have been areas where we have been able to find common ground, but other issues have proved to be more difficult.
"In particular, we haven't been able to overcome the fact that there isn't a common position in Labour about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum to reverse it."
She said the government would consider what had come out of the meetings with Labour and "consider whether we have some votes to see if the ideas that have come through command a majority in the House of Commons".
Labour's favoured plan includes a permanent customs union with the EU, meaning no internal tariffs (taxes) on goods sold between the UK and the rest of the bloc.
It also keeps the option of a further referendum on the table, giving the public a say on the deal agreed by Parliament.
Both scenarios have caused anger among Brexit-backing Conservatives, who claim a customs union would prevent the UK from negotiating its own trade deals around the world after leaving the EU, and who believe another public vote is undemocratic.
Some MPs have also criticised Mrs May for even entering into talks with Labour, but the prime minister said the government had "no choice but to reach out across the House of Commons".
Before the talks with Labour, the prime minister - whose Conservative Party does not have a majority in the Commons - failed to get her deal through three times, by margins of 230, 149 and 58 votes.
The DUP, which supports her government on certain issues, opposes Mrs May's agreement with the EU over its implications for Northern Ireland.
Following the collapse of the discussions with Labour, DUP leader Arlene Foster said: "This round of talks has wasted time rather than making progress and reducing uncertainty. It was always doomed to failure."
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the PM was "trying to blame everyone but herself for the collapse of cross-party talks".
He tweeted: "She knows the reality is she couldn't carry her own side or offer a realistic compromise. Any deal agreed wouldn't last a day under a new Tory leader."
But Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said the government had moved in some areas - specifically on workers' rights and environmental standards - and had been "having discussions around where we were on customs arrangements".
He said senior Labour figures like Sir Keir had been insisting on a further referendum on any deal, adding: "It begs the question why have they taken six [or] seven weeks for talks?"
Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable criticised both of the main parties, tweeting: "The weakness of the government and the vacillation of the Labour Party put their talks on very shaky ground from the beginning."
The director general of the CBI business group, Carolyn Fairbairn, called the end of the talks "another day of failed politics" and "another dispiriting day".
She called for Parliament's recess at the end of this month to be cancelled, adding: "This is no time for holidays. It's time to get on with it."
On Thursday, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson became the latest MP to put his name forward as a possible successor to Mrs May.
Asked by reporters on Friday if he would be running for the leadership, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said it was now time for colleagues to "focus" on delivering Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn's policy on Brexit has triumphed at Labour conference, as members endorsed his stance to stay neutral while negotiating a new deal.
The party voted against a motion which would have seen Labour backing Remain in any future referendum.
But there was confusion as the votes were called, as the chair of the proceedings faced calls for a recount.
Labour's position on Brexit has dominated the conference agenda, with huge disagreements over the issue.
The party's draft plan for its Brexit policy, put forward by Mr Corbyn, suggests that, if Labour wins power in a general election, it would remain neutral while negotiating a new deal with the EU within three months.
It would then hold a referendum within six months, and the party would decide which side to back ahead of that at a special conference.
Grassroots activists at the conference have been pushing for an unambiguous stance, tabling a motion calling for Labour to campaign "energetically" to Remain.
But this motion was rejected in a show of hands while a motion setting out the leadership's official position and another endorsing its handling of Brexit were overwhelmingly passed.
After the results were announced by trade union official Wendy Nichols, there were charged scenes in the conference hall.
Several delegates called for the votes to be counted individually, suggesting the outcome of the Remain motion was much closer than officials had suggested.
One delegate said there had to be an official card vote as "this is one of the most important decisions Labour is going to take in the next decade".
The result is a major boost for Jeremy Corbyn, who was backed by the majority of Labour's 12 affiliated unions, including Unite and the GMB.
Unison had broken ranks with other unions to back the Remain motion.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said he was disappointed by the result of the vote, and that he would campaign for Remain.
"Would I have liked us to have gone a bit further and won that vote? Of course I would - but I don't want to take away from the fact that is quite considerable movement," he said.
The leader of the Unite union, Len McCluskey, said the vote showed ordinary members coming behind the Labour leader's stance in a show of loyalty.
"What you've seen here is a massive show of support for Jeremy Corbyn," he said, adding that it was "time to unite".
The vote was decisive - the Labour leadership position on Brexit triumphed.
Those calling for a more robust Remain stance at the likely snap election were defeated.
But the manner of the triumph was immediately called in to question.
The vote wasn't a secret ballot, it was a show of hands.
Calls for a card vote - where the vote of each delegate is individually counted in secret - were dismissed by the chair.
That's not to say there wasn't clear show of support for the leadership.
But some remainers maintain that the vote would at least have been closer if it wasn't conducted in public.
That's because the debate  became - for some delegates - a demonstration of support for the leadership, close to an election, rather than a pure test of opinion on Brexit.
The conventional wisdom was that Jeremy Corbyn might have to rely on the big unions - with 50% of conference votes - to win.
But some unions chose to defy him, making a defeat possible.
In the end a section of the grassroots - the ordinary members - did not prioritise their own pro-Remain position and rallied round Jeremy Corbyn.
Remainers are now accentuating, for them, the positive - that the party is now unambiguously backing a new referendum, with Remain as an option.
Nonetheless, Labour will go in to the election unable to say whether it will officially back leave or remain in a subsequent referendum.
But after a difficult few days, most of those close to Jeremy Corbyn are relieved tonight, and some are jubilant.
Andrew Lewin, the founder of Remain Labour, said the vote represented the "grassroots against the party machine - and the machine won".
"If this fudge is the Labour policy at the next general election, we will drive Remain voters away."
Another campaigner, Michael Chessum, from Another Europe is Possible, said: "Labour members, 90% of whom want to stay in the EU, will be deeply disappointed with this decision."
But Labour MPs remain divided over the issue.
Speaking before the vote, shadow Treasury minister Annaliese Dodds said the economic consequences of Brexit were "so severe" that she believed Labour must back remain in another referendum.
"Is it going to be easy?" she told the BBC's Carolyn Quinn. "No it is not, because people are passionate in both directions."
But Stephen Kinnock, the MP for Aberavon, told a fringe meeting organised by the Social Market Foundation that Labour had had "more Brexit positions than the Karma Sutra".
Describing the first two days of conference as an "utter shambles", he said Labour should have stuck with its 2017 manifesto pledge to honour the referendum result and moving away from this this would not go down well in Leave constituencies.
"Our position on Brexit is being treated with ridicule on the doorsteps in my constituency," he said.
Away from Brexit, Labour has announced a pledge to introduce free personal care in England for over-65s, so they will not have to pay for help with dressing, washing and meals.
In his speech, Mr McDonnell also pledged to end in-work poverty within five years and to move to a four day, or 32-hour, working week within a decade without any cut to pay.
These are the latest of several new policies likely to feature in the party's next election manifesto, including pledges to:

If you follow politics and were lucky enough to have been enjoying a summer break (and I hope so, I was!), it's over.
In the next few hours, after formal calls and a Privy Council meeting at Balmoral, No 10's plan that puts them on a full collision course with Parliament will be in train.
The prime minister says 14 October will be the day when he sets out his plans for the NHS, for tackling crime, and for aggressive tax cuts.
This has been an extraordinarily long parliamentary session, and governments have the right to shut up shop and return to announce their proposals in a new one with all the golden carriages, fancy Westminster costumes, banging of doors and splendour that goes with it.
But that new timetable means Parliament will be suspended for longer than had been expected - likely now to be prorogued, to use the technical term, around 10 September, instead of going into recess on 14 September ahead of conference season.
It's only a matter of days. But those are days that might matter enormously, because the crucial and controversial political side effect is that MPs will have less time to try to change the law to stop Boris Johnson taking the UK out of the EU if he can't agree a new deal with Brussels by the end of October.
MPs, including many senior Tories, have already been trying to find a way to take that option off the table, fearing the turmoil.
Mr Johnson's move to reduce the time Parliament has to make its moves has been described by some of his opponents as a constitutional outrage.
And it might embolden those who were trying to stiffen the spines of former Remain MPs looking for ways to block it - maybe by trying to rush through emergency laws next week or maybe even by a rapid vote of no confidence that could bring down the government.
But Mr Johnson secured his place in No 10 by promising he'd do whatever it takes to leave the EU on Halloween.
This decisive and intensely risky plan will satisfy many of those who backed him.
But some others in his government are worried - moving now, even with the accompanying controversy, he sets the stage and the terms for an epic fight with MPs on all sides.

An application to join the Conservative Party by Leave.EU co-founder and former UKIP donor Arron Banks has been turned down, the Tories have said.
Mr Banks and the pro-Brexit group's communications director, Andy Wigmore, both announced on social media that they were joining the party.
The pair said they had received a confirmation email welcoming them.
But a Conservative Party spokesperson later said their "applications for membership... have not been approved".
The BBC understands from Tory sources the pair were were judged "likely to bring the party into disrepute".
Earlier this week Mr Banks called on supporters of his pro-Brexit Leave.EU group to join the Conservative Party so they can vote in the party's next leadership election.
He posted a series of tweets about joining the Tories - including one saying he had made the move "to ensure he has a vote on the inevitable leadership contest. Let's back a Brexiteer and make this country great again!"
Mr Wigmore tweeted a copy of a letter from Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis stating that their membership was "activated" and they would be able to take part in candidate selection and future leadership elections after three months.
The 52-year-old is a multi-millionaire who co-founded the Leave.EU campaign.
Having made his money in vehicle insurance, he was one of the largest donors to the UK Independence Party and gave £9m to Leave.EU which he has said came from his personal wealth.
In May Leave.EU was fined £70,000 for breaches of election law in the 2016 EU referendum by, according to the Electoral Commission, failing to report "at least" £77,380 it spent.
He has also been grilled by MPs about his influence on global politics with Mr Banks laughing off the idea he was an "evil genius with a white cat".
Anyone can apply to join the Conservative Party with standard membership costing £25 a year (it is £5 for under 22s and £15 for members of the armed forces).
Applicants fill in a form which is then reviewed by the party.
If accepted, members will receive confirmation in writing "as soon as possible", but the party "reserves the right to not accept a donation or application for membership".
The Conservatives will not accept applications from people who have been suspended from or expelled from the party.
There is no appeals process.

Boris Johnson's claim that world trade rules could be used after Brexit to avoid tariffs "isn't true", cabinet minister Liam Fox has said.
The international trade secretary, who is backing Jeremy Hunt for leader, said the EU will apply trade tariffs.
Mr Fox, a Brexiteer, said he would prefer to leave with a deal and Mr Hunt has a "good chance" of getting one.
Tory MP Liz Truss, who is backing Mr Johnson, said not leaving the EU on 31 October would be a "disaster".
It has been three years since the UK voted to leave the EU in a referendum.
Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Fox rejected Mr Johnson's claim that the UK could secure a 10-year standstill in current arrangements using an article of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade known as "Gatt 24".
"It isn't true, that's the problem," he said.
Mr Fox said Mr Johnson's argument that a new free trade agreement could be negotiated during an implementation period "doesn't actually hold".
"If you don't get the withdrawal agreement through Parliament, there is no implementation period during which we can do anything at all," he said.
"Secondly, if we leave the European Union without a deal the EU will apply tariffs to the UK because you can only have exemptions, as described, if you already have a trade agreement to go to.
"Clearly if we leave without a deal it's self-evident we don't have that agreement, so Article 24 doesn't hold in that circumstance."
But he said a no-deal Brexit is the "legal default position" and the UK will have "no negotiating capital" if it is ruled out.
Justice Secretary David Gauke, who had been backing Rory Stewart for leader until the international development secretary's elimination, also criticised Mr Johnson's Brexit plan, saying it was not "credible".
And Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday that choosing Mr Johnson as prime minister would be "disastrous" for the Conservatives, particularly in Scotland - which voted to remain in the EU.
When asked what she thought of SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford's comments during PMQs last week that Mr Johnson was a "racist", she said: "I agree with Ian Blackford's comments."
She said Mr Johnson has "made overtly racist comments" during his career.
But also speaking on Sky News, Conservative MP Rishi Sunak, who is backing Mr Johnson, defended the leadership hopeful.
He said Mr Johnson was not racist and has "apologised for any offence caused" by his comments over the years.
Elsewhere, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss, told BBC 5 Live's Pienaar Politics that Brexit was a matter for the executive and not for Parliament - which rejected Theresa May's Brexit deal three times.
She also criticised Mr Hunt, accusing him of "kicking the can down the road" on Brexit, which "would be a disaster".
She said Mr Johnson would seek to re-negotiate with the EU and would be "much clearer that we are prepared to leave on 31 October".
Mr Hunt has said he would delay leaving on 31 October only if a potential deal with the EU was in the pipeline.
While Mr Johnson has been more outspoken on the subject, Mr Fox said he had not heard Mr Johnson say he would definitely leave on 31 October, even if a new deal was within reach.
The EU has repeatedly said the withdrawal agreement will not be renegotiated.

Liam Fox has downplayed talk that a future US-UK trade deal after Brexit could be threatened by disagreements over chlorinated chicken imports.
The international trade secretary said the issue of whether the current UK ban on chlorine-washed poultry would be lifted was "a detail of the very end stage of one sector" of future talks.
The EU bans imports on health grounds but free market groups want a rethink.
Downing Street said any trade deal must work for both consumers and farmers.
Mr Fox is in Washington DC for two days of talks with US officials about the existing transatlantic trade relationship and how this will change once the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
Although the UK cannot seal a free trade deal of its own with the US until it leaves the EU, both sides have expressed a desire to make quick progress and to scope out some of the barriers to an expedited deal.
The EU currently bans imports of poultry meat which is rinsed in chlorine and it will be up to the UK to decide, after it leaves the EU, whether this ban stays in place.
Environmental campaigners have expressed concerns that the UK's desire for a quick deal could pave the way for the ban to be lifted as well as a loosening of other restrictions on imports of unlabelled genetically modified (GM) foods and beef from cattle implanted with growth hormones.
Concerns about differing EU and US standards were among issues that resulted in the two sides failing to agree a comprehensive trade and investment partnership last year.
In the US, it is legal to wash chicken carcasses in strongly chlorinated water.
Producers argue that it mitigates the spread of microbial contamination from the animal's digestive tract to the meat while regulators agree
The practice is banned in the EU on health grounds, arguing it could increase the risk of bacterial-based diseases such as salmonella on the grounds that dirty abattoirs with sloppy standards would rely on it as a decontaminant rather than making sure their basic hygiene protocols were up to scratch.
There are also concerns that such "washes" would be used by less scrupulous meat processing plants to increase the shelf-life of meat, making it appear fresher than it really is.
Asked whether he would be happy eating chlorinated chicken, Mr Fox suggested that the British media was "obsessed" by the issue and asked whether reporters would be shunning US chicken during their visit.
In what he described as the "complex" process of negotiating an over-arching deal to advance the mutual prosperity of the US and UK people, he suggested the issue ranked low down on his list of current priorities.
Speaking more broadly, Mr Fox said discussions about global trade too often focused around talk about the interests of producers and jobs rather than the needs of consumers as people.
"We have to make the case for free trade and consumer gains," he said.
On Sunday, he conceded that reciprocal access to markets for agri-food products were one of the hardest-fought elements of trade deals and often among the last areas to be agreed.
There have been reports of disagreement in the Cabinet over the issue of chicken imports.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove has said the UK will retain existing standards of environmental and animal welfare outside of the EU and that his goal was to improve them further.
Speaking last week, he said there would be "no compromise" on standards and that he believed being a world leader in free trade and animal welfare should not be incompatible.
Free market economists have called for the UK to permit imports of chlorinated chicken as a goodwill gesture to help facilitate a comprehensive trade deal.
The Adam Smith Institute said there was no evidence that eating chlorinated chicken in moderation posed any risk to human health.
In a report published on Monday, it said lifting restrictions would be good for hard-pressed consumers as a kilo of chicken was 21% cheaper in the US than its UK equivalent.
"Trade critics like to suggest that signing a deal with the USA will mean that Brits will be forced to eat unsafe produce," said its author Peter Spence.
"In reality, chlorinated chicken is so harmless that even the EU's own scientific advisers have declared that it is "of no safety concern."
"Agreeing to US poultry imports would help to secure a quick US trade deal, and bring down costs for British households. European opposition to US agricultural exports has held up trade talks for years."
Asked whether the government was guaranteeing to maintain EU-level food standards after Brexit, a Downing Street spokesman said: "Our position when it comes to food is that maintaining the safety and public confidence in the food we eat is of the highest priority
"Any future trade deal must work for UK farmers, businesses and consumers."

Liam Fox is to raise concerns in cabinet at the failure of his party to highlight the "totemic" issue of an independent trade policy in a nationwide leaflet for the European elections.
The international trade secretary confirmed that he is facing an "argument" in cabinet to prevent Theresa May conceding a customs union to the Labour party.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight Dr Fox also said he expects voters to use the European Parliamentary elections to register a protest at the UK's failure to leave the EU.
The cabinet minister added that if the UK fails to ratify the prime minister's Brexit deal by the EU's October deadline then the UK should be prepared to leave the EU without a deal rather than revoking article 50.
Dr Fox was speaking to Newsnight during a visit to Iceland to drum up new trade deals with countries outside the EU after Brexit.
Commenting on the US-China trade talks taking place today in Washington, Fox also said "in a trade war, there are never any winners. There are only casualties"
The international trade secretary indicated he had concerns after the Times reported that the Tory election leaflet for the European elections failed to make any mention of an independent trade policy.
Downing Street has said that one of the benefits of leaving the EU - and thereby leaving the customs union - will be the ability of the UK to sign its own trade deals.
The leaflet said the prime minister is working "tirelessly" to pass a "workable deal" which would allow the UK to take back control of its money, laws and borders; to leave the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy; and to protect jobs, security and the UK.
He said: "Well I certainly will be wanting to be raising at cabinet that we retain that as a central plank of our European policy: that having an independent trade policy, enabling Britain to navigate the shifting seas in trade policy, is an essential prerequisite for taking back control."
Dr Fox added: "I haven't seen the leaflet. But I would say that [an independent trade policy] was one of the totemic elements of leaving the EU. And the prime minister has been very clear that an independent trade policy is one of the key asks in this.
"It has to be a real independent trade policy not something that is called an independent trade policy but isn't. [That] is why I can't accept membership of a customs union on a permanent basis because that would not be an independent trade policy."
An independent trade policy is a sensitive issue at the moment for Brexiteers because Labour is demanding in the cross party talks that the UK should agree a permanent customs union with the EU.
Senior Tories say that the prime minister is offering Labour a customs arrangement which would preserve core elements of the customs union until the 2022 election.
Asked if he would resign if the prime minister conceded a customs union, Dr Fox said: "Oh I have no intention of losing that argument. It is far too important.
"That is why I decided to remain in the cabinet and fight for those elements I believe in, including that a customs union would not be a good idea for the UK.
"Any argument around a customs union I want to be there at the table making the case why it is bad for the UK."
In his interview Dr Fox said Britain should be prepared to leave the EU next October if the EU refuses to extend article 50 again.
At that point the UK would be faced with the choice of leaving with no deal or halting Brexit by revoking article 50.
"The EU may decide that it is time for us to leave and they don't want any extension beyond that period.
"The longer we take in this process the more the chances are of revocation and simply defying the voters and not having Brexit at all or leaving without a deal.
"I don't find leaving without a deal particularly palatable but I find it much more palatable than not leaving at all."
Dr Fox said he expects Conservative voters to register a protest in the European elections though he confirmed he would be voting for his party.
"Voters will rightly be frustrated that they are being asked to vote for an institution they have already voted to leave," he said.
"So I wouldn't be surprised if voters use it as a protest."
In a swipe at Nigel Farage's Brexit party, he said: "It is very easy to be a one policy party when you don't have any responsibility for actually being the government."
The international trade secretary said he hoped Brexit would provide an opportunity to improve links with Iceland which is not in the customs union but which is in the single market through the European Free Trade Association.
He said: "Iceland is a very important partner for the UK, it is an important NATO partner, potentially in terms of energy security and of course it is estimated that up to 95% of British fish and chip shops are dependent upon cod and haddock produced by Iceland."

A cabinet Brexiteer has voiced fears that Remain supporters in parliament will seek to overturn the referendum result over the next week.
Liam Fox told BBC Newsnight that a large number of MPs want to keep the UK "locked in the EU", adding there needs to be an end to the "self-induced pessimism" which is denying the opportunities offered by Brexit.
Dr Fox also called on the EU to show greater flexibility as he called on Brussels to move away from defending "the purity of the European project".
And the cabinet minister, who was close to Margaret Thatcher, hinted that he would have endorsed Theresa May's Brexit deal.
Dr Fox said it would be wrong to second guess the late prime minister. But he added: "Mrs Thatcher made a lot of compromises in terms of our relationship with Europe.
"This is the time for Britain to reclaim our freedom and to be able to use that in a positive way to help shape the prosperity, the stability and the security in which future generations of Britons will live."
The international trade secretary, who was speaking to Newsnight during a visit to the headquarters of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva, voiced fears that Remain MPs may seek to wrest control of Brexit from the government next week.
Theresa May is due to hold a second "meaningful" vote on her Brexit deal next Tuesday.
If that falls there will be a vote on whether to support a no deal Brexit. If that is rejected, MPs will be given the chance to vote on whether to extend article 50, with the possibility of pro-Europeans seeking to table amendments to push for a softer Brexit.
Dr Fox said he supports the prime minister's deal because it is the best way of honouring the referendum while leaving the EU in an orderly way. But he added: "The thing that I fear is that...there will be a risk that we might not deliver Brexit at all.
"In Parliament there are a large number of MPs who do not see it as their primary objective to deliver the referendum and would want to keep us locked to the EU."
The minister criticised commentators and politicians who have railed against Brexit.
He said: "This mood of self-induced pessimism that has pervaded a great deal of the commentariat in recent times, and indeed some of the political system, is hugely damaging.
"It is time we actually took a positive view of where Britain is and what Britain's opportunities could be. We are not some insignificant little country. We are the fifth biggest economy in the world."
Dr Fox acknowledged that the UK's negotiations with the EU were tough and would go close to the wire. But he called on the EU to show greater flexibility.
The minister said: "There needs to be a concentrating of minds not on the purity of the European project but on jobs, prosperity and trade for the real citizens of Europe."
Dr Fox also pleaded with Tory Brexiteers opposed to the prime minister's deal to show flexibility. "You can never allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Many of us have made compromises throughout this process."
Dr Fox visited the WTO in Geneva amid reports that the cabinet has agreed to lift up to 90% of the UK's trade tariffs in the event of no deal.
He declined to confirm the reports in the FT and on Sky News but added: "What we will want to is, in the event of no deal, show that we have a clear idea of how we can maximise the opportunities and mitigate the difficulties. We are well agreed on that."
The international trade secretary, who met delegations from the Commonwealth and the Caribbean, said he sensed strong interest in the UK beyond Brexit. "There is a world beyond Europe and there will be a time beyond Brexit.
"We need to start to discuss what the opportunities are for the UK as we move into that new world what role we will have in shaping the global trading future."
You can watch Newsnight on BBC 2 weekdays 22:30 or on iPlayer. Subscribe to the programme on YouTube or follow them on Twitter.

Liam Fox says the chance of a no-deal Brexit is growing, blaming the "intransigence" of the European Commission.
The international trade secretary and Brexiteer put the chance of failing to come to an agreement at "60-40".
He told the Sunday Times that Brussels' chief negotiator had dismissed the UK's Chequers proposals simply because "we have never done it before".
No 10 insists the government remains confident it can get a good deal.
Mr Fox told the paper that he had not thought the likelihood of no-deal was higher than 50-50, but the risk had increased.
He said the EU had to decide whether to act in the economic best interests of its people, or to go on pursuing an approach determined by an obsession with the purity of its rules.
"I think the intransigence of the commission is pushing us towards no deal," he said.
The government has been touting its plans for Brexit agreed at Chequers - the prime minister's country residence in Buckinghamshire - to the EU and its leaders, including the French President Emmanuel Macron, whom Theresa May met on Friday.
But Mr Fox claimed Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, had already dismissed the proposals, which "makes the chance of no deal greater".
He said: "We have set out the basis in which a deal can happen but if the EU decides that the theological obsession of the unelected is to take priority over the economic wellbeing of the people of Europe then it's a bureaucrats' Brexit - not a people's Brexit - then there is only going to be one outcome."
Mr Fox said if the EU did not like the proposal, they should "show us one that they can suggest that would be acceptable to us".
He added: "It's up to the EU27 to determine whether they want the EU Commission's ideological purity to be maintained at the expense of their real economies."
On Friday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, warned that the possibility of a no-deal Brexit was "uncomfortably high".
Mr Carney said that if a no-deal Brexit were to happen, it would mean disruption to trade and economic activity, as well as higher prices for a period of time.
But he said that the UK financial system was robust and could withstand any post-Brexit shocks.
The comments led to a decline in the pound on the currency markets and saw him labelled as "the high priest of Project Fear" by Leave-backing MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Meanwhile, another prominent Brexiteer, former minister Priti Patel, has called on Mrs May to have the "backbone and confidence" to back Britain in the negotiations with the EU.
Writing for the Telegraph's website, she said the UK was in a "strong position" when it came to a future trade deal because "we are dynamic, competitive and growing" - while the EU "desperately needs our money".
But unlike Mr Fox, Ms Patel does not back the Chequers deal, which has already led to a number of resignations from the government - including David Davis as Brexit secretary and Boris Johnson as foreign secretary.
She wrote: "It will leave us half in and half out, still bound to EU regulations and constraints.
"[It will be] the worst of both worlds - effectively out of Europe but still run by Europe."
The UK and EU say they want agreement before the exit on 29 March 2019.

The Liberal Democrats' chief whip says he "messed up" by allowing party leader Sir Vince Cable and his predecessor Tim Farron to skip Monday night's knife-edge vote on Brexit.
They could have cut the government's winning margin on the Customs Bill from three votes to just one.
Mr Farron said he had "called it wrong" and was sorry for what had happened.
And chief whip Alistair Carmichael said he had expected the vote to be "lost by hundreds".
In a statement tweeted by Sir Vince, Mr Carmichael said the government's winning margin should have been just one.
"By the time it became apparent that the vote was going to be close - it was too late to get two of our MPs, Vince and Tim, back in time to vote," he said.
"I'm taking responsibility and redoubling my efforts to stop Brexit."
A party source described Sir Vince's absence as a "bit unfortunate" and that he was elsewhere at a confidential political meeting "outside of the parliamentary estate".
Mr Farron was booked to give a talk, Illiberal Truths, about the furore over whether he believed gay sex was a sin during the last general election.
He tweeted that the Conservatives "don't deserve any luck".
All the party's other MPs - with the exception of new mum Jo Swinson who was 'paired' with an MP who didn't vote for the other side - cast their ballot against the government on amendments to legislation defining the UK's customs arrangements with the EU after it leaves in March 2019.
The amendments, tabled by Eurosceptic Tory MPs, were accepted by ministers - prompting a backlash by pro-European Tories, 14 of whom ended up voting against the government.
With Labour also voting against, the government scraped home in two votes by a margin of three.
The Lib Dems have been calling for a referendum on the final Brexit deal, with senior figures backing the cross-party People's Vote campaign.

The Liberal Democrats are on a mission to go from "protest back to power", the party's departing leader, Sir Vince Cable, has said.
In a speech in York, Sir Vince called for the party to continue arguing for the benefits of staying in the EU.
He also accused Prime Minister Theresa May of prioritising Conservative Party unity over maintaining peace in Northern Ireland.
Sir Vince, 75, will step down in May after leading the Lib Dems since 2017.
Speaking on Sunday at the party's spring conference, Sir Vince said "we are Remain", adding: "Whatever happens in the next few weeks of parliamentary twists and turns, we must argue - since no-one else can be relied upon to do so - that none of the several mutually exclusive versions of Brexit on offer - soft or hard - are as good as the deal we currently have."
Next week, Mrs May is expected to bring her withdrawal agreement back to the Commons for a third time after it was twice voted down by large margins.
Mrs May's efforts to win over Tory Eurosceptics to back the deal have focused on attempts to revise the backstop, the measures in the Brexit deal aimed at preventing the return of a hard border in Ireland.
"The intensity of the campaign to remove it speaks volumes about the underlying motives of those who demanded Brexit and now demand a 'clear Brexit'," Sir Vince said.
"They simply deny our history, which is entwined with that of Ireland."
Sir Vince also targeted Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley personally for criticism, following a series of gaffes.
Ms Bradley previously said that deaths caused by the security forces in Northern Ireland during the Troubles were "not crimes" - comments she ended up apologising for.
She also admitted to initially not understanding that nationalists did not vote for unionist parties during elections.
"It really is quite shocking that this government is so lacking in talent that it employs a secretary of state for Northern Ireland who says she doesn't understand sectarian voting patterns and then compounds this public declaration of ignorance with a blatantly and naively one-sided view of the killings in the Troubles," Sir Vince said.
"Ms Bradley has revealed an ugly truth: that peace in Ireland matters less than peace in the Conservative Party."
Sir Vince, who clashed repeatedly with Mrs May over immigration policy while they sat around the Cabinet table during the coalition years, used his speech to return to the issue, saying it highlights a divide in British politics.
"Our mission to move from survival to success, from protest back to power, takes place in a world where liberal values are under siege and in retreat.
"Nothing quite defines liberalism like its opposite, illustrated by Theresa May's policies on immigration."
The Lib Dems have 11 MPs - down from the 57 they had in 2010.
The party has struggled electorally since 2010, when it formed a coalition government with the Conservatives.
Sir Vince, a former business secretary under the Coalition government, will step down after the English local elections in May.
Leading candidates to replace him include the current deputy leader, Jo Swinson, relative newcomer Layla Moran and former environment secretary Ed Davey.

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to cancel Brexit if they come to power at the next general election.
Members voted for the new policy at their party conference in Bournemouth by an overwhelming majority.
Previously, the party has backed another referendum or "People's Vote", saying they would campaign to Remain.
After the vote, their leader Jo Swinson, said: "We will do all we can to fight for our place in Europe, and to stop Brexit altogether."
The commitment only comes into force if the party wins the election as a majority government.
Ms Swinson also confirmed that before an election is called, the Lib Dems would continue to work with other opposition parties to campaign for a further referendum, and to prevent a "dangerous" no-deal Brexit.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We still want to have a People's Vote. We've been arguing for that for the last three-and-a-half years - [to put] the Brexit deal to the public in a referendum.
"[But] when we have an election, if we haven't had a People's Vote, people will be looking to resolve the issue of Brexit, and there are so many people in this country who are so sick of hearing about it.
"They want to get on with their lives and want the government to get on with making their lives better."
In his first speech to conference as a Lib Dem MP, Chuka Umunna - who left Labour over its Brexit stance - said it would give the party a "clear, unequivocal position".
He said: "This [policy] will stop this national embarrassment and enable us to focus on the things that really matter."
But fellow Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb said the policy saw his party "playing with fire".
He told the Today programme that the polarisation between Leave and Remain was "incredibly dangerous", adding: "If we take this to the very limit in a situation where one side is vanquished entirely, I think there's a real danger that we break the social contract in our country.
"And I think that we all have a responsibility of reuniting the country in a common endeavour."
The government says it is trying to get a deal with the EU so it can leave on 31 October - the current deadline agreed with the EU.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said the "entire machinery of government" was focused on securing that deal.
The PM is due to meet European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in Luxembourg later, as negotiations aimed at securing a deal continue.
MPs passed a new law earlier this month that forces Boris Johnson to ask the EU for an extension to the deadline if a deal isn't agreed by 19 October - two days after a key EU summit.
But the prime minister has said he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for a delay, and the UK will leave the EU at the end of next month "whatever happens".
The Lib Dems' motion said that if the party became the government at the next general election, it would revoke Article 50 - the law that ensures the UK leaves the EU.
Earlier, Ms Swinson told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: "If people put [the Lib Dems] into government... the stop Brexit party, then stopping Brexit is exactly what people will get.
"Everybody can see we are stuck, that Brexit is in a mess. There needs to be a way out of that."
Moving the motion in Bournemouth, Sir Vince Cable said: "Brexit will make us poorer and risks breaking up our United Kingdom.
"We must stop it and we will."
He added: "Jo [Swinson] is ready to steer us back into government as our new captain.
"And now, I am full of confidence and hope for our party and for our country."
Analysis by BBC political correspondent Jonathan Blake
In Brexit terms, revoking Article 50 could be considered the nuclear option, stopping dead the process of leaving the EU.
It's just what the Liberal Democrats want and now they've adopted a policy to do exactly that - if they win a general election.
But the most important word in the last sentence is "if".
If they don't find themselves in government they will, we can assume, revert to campaigning for a further referendum as the best way to reverse the result of the last one.
So, this policy allows the party to send a message to voters that they are as opposed to Brexit as it's possible to be.
But it's not without risk for a party with the word "democrat" in its name to promise to overturn the result of a referendum without putting that question to the electorate again.
The Lib Dems are enjoying a resurgence on the back of their anti-Brexit stance.
The party currently has 18 MPs, having been boosted by a victory in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, along with defections from both Labour and the Conservatives over the summer.
The latest to join the ranks is former Conservative Sam Gyimah, who had the Tory whip removed earlier this month when he voted to block a no-deal Brexit.

Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson says she hopes to convince members to back a policy of scrapping Brexit without another referendum, as the party's conference begins in Bournemouth.
Ms Swinson says holding the referendum got the UK "into a mess".
And she believes revoking Article 50 - the formal process to leave the EU - is the only satisfactory way out.
Ms Swinson said the party's anti-Brexit message should be "unequivocal" in a general election campaign.
She told the BBC: "The Liberal Democrats are crystal clear. We want to stop Brexit... If a Liberal Democrat majority government is elected, then we should revoke Article 50 and I think it's about being straightforward and honest with the British public about that."
Up until now, the party's policy on Brexit has been to campaign for another referendum - in which it would again call for the UK to stay in the EU.
But if Lib Dem members vote to back their leader's policy proposal on Sunday, revoking Article 50 would be written into the next election manifesto.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Lib Dem deputy leader Ed Davey said a referendum would have been the best way to solve the problem, but "people want an end to this, and the only way you can stop Brexit in a democratic exercise like a general election is to say you would revoke".
Meanwhile, amid reports that a new version of Theresa May's Brexit deal could be supported by MPs, former Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the party would insist that it be put to a referendum, with an option to remain in the EU.
In an interview with the Guardian, Ms Swinson ruled out any kind of coalition with the Conservatives or Labour.
She said neither Conservative leader Boris Johnson nor Labour's Jeremy Corbyn were fit to be prime minister.
Mr Johnson did not care about anyone but himself, she said, and she criticised Mr Corbyn's failure to tackle anti-Semitism in his own party.
Parliament has so far denied Prime Minister Boris Johnson's request for an autumn election, because opposition parties wanted to first make sure a bill designed to avoid a no-deal Brexit became law.
But since the bill, which seeks to force Mr Johnson to ask for an extension to the deadline, has been given Royal Assent, opposition MPs are preparing to start their general election campaigns.
Revoking Article 50 would effectively undo the legal mechanism under the EU's Lisbon Treaty that was triggered to start Britain's withdrawal from the European Union. Lord John Kerr, the British diplomat who was involved in drafting Article 50, has publicly said the clause is reversible.
Lib Dem environment spokeswoman Wera Hobhouse, who was one of the first delegates to address delegates at the Bournemouth International Centre, criticised the government's record on the climate.
She said while the Tories had committed the UK to net-zero emissions by 2050, its policy on fracking was "madness" and they were action like "climate change deniers" with a reported plan to cut fuel duty.
Ms Swinson is expected to take questions from delegates on Sunday, following a speech by her predecessor Sir Vince Cable.  It is likely to be Mr Cable's last conference as a Lib Dem MP as he has said he will not contest his Twickenham seat at the next election.
Ms Swinson's main speech will be held on Tuesday, the last day of the conference, after a tribute to the party's former leader, Paddy Ashdown, who died in December.
Chuka Umunna, the former Labour MP who joined the Lib Dems three months ago, will speak on Monday in his role as foreign affairs spokesman.
The Lib Dems are enjoying a resurgence on the back of its anti-Brexit stance. The party currently has 17 MPs, having been boosted by a victory in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election and defections from both Labour and the Conservatives over the summer.

Neither the prime minister nor the Labour leader has anywhere to hide.
After nine years in government it's not surprising that the Conservatives have lost a significant chunk of seats.
But the sheer number that have disappeared and the loss of control of authorities will hurt - especially with so many activists identifying Theresa May's handling of Brexit as a root of the problem, not just a general malaise.
The perceived personal nature of the failure is more of an indignity than an encounter with a heckler in tweeds.
And for Jeremy Corbyn, it IS surprising and disappointing that Labour has simply failed to make any significant capital from such a divided and chaotic government.
However ardently his devotees swear loyalty, the party has fallen back - on this set of results at least - seeming further rather than closer from winning power in a general election he so often claims to crave.
Take a breath. Local ballots do not translate directly into the next general election. It bears repeating time and again that specific rows over green belt building, local party spats, even simple quirks of geography all apply too.
But such an enormous set of results does give a sense of the public's political taste at this moment. And it provides a bitter flavour for the two big UK parties - locked in an uncomfortable embrace with historically feeble levels of support.
The public will also have given both of them anxiety about the potential of the Lib Dems to creep back into their territory after a strong show.  And the sour mood around Brexit adds more pressure to Labour and the Tories in their own ranks too.
For Mrs May it directly and overtly gives ammunition for convinced Tory Eurosceptics to demand a more rapid departure from the EU, whatever happens.
The delay, they believe has been toxic, so the solution is to speed on. And for Labour's many supporters of a second referendum, the significant advance of the Lib Dems and the Greens is evidence that a clear demand for another say is the only way to carve out a convincing identity.
That geographical pattern is very  marked, although unwise maybe to assume it can last, or a howl for another referendum is what it overwhelmingly means.
Because while our departure from the EU has just shaped yet another chapter of our politics in an unconventional way, two of the old rules do still apply.
After months of grisly pantomime, the rejection of both parties may well also be a simple judgement on both main parties' competence.
Voters quite plainly like politicians who look like they know what they are doing. And the public does not like parties that spend vast amounts of time fighting amongst themselves.
Whether government or opposition, we want them to care about us, rather than be expected to care  about them.
No surprise for today at least, that the Labour and Tory leaderships are both outwardly trying to push harder for a joint deal that could find a way out for them both - damned or saved together.
But their local election anguish doesn't make a deal any easier to achieve.
So our two big political parties are both finding there's been a cost to conflict and messy internal compromise.
And will look ahead nervously to the European elections when two new parties created specifically to advance clear ways out of the Brexit stalemate could divide the public more cleanly, and mete out a much more painful punishment to them.

The Conservatives have lost 1,334 councillors, with Theresa May saying voters wanted the main parties to "get on" with Brexit.
Labour also lost 82 seats in the English local elections, in which it had been expected to make gains.
But the strongly pro-EU Lib Dems gained 703 seats, with leader Sir Vince Cable calling every vote received "a vote for stopping Brexit".
The Greens and independents also made gains, as UKIP lost seats.
All 248 English councils holding elections have now announced their full results.
While the scale of the Conservative election losses is larger than expected, Labour had predicted it would gain seats, having suffered losses the last time these council seats were contested, in 2015.
The Green Party has added 194 councillors, while the number of independent councillors has risen by 612.
UKIP, which enjoyed large gains in 2015, lost 145 seats.
Results from Northern Ireland's 11 councils are also being announced. No local elections are taking place in Scotland and Wales.
After nine years in government it's not surprising that the Conservatives have lost a significant chunk of seats.
But the sheer number that have disappeared and the loss of control of authorities will hurt - especially with so many activists identifying Theresa May's handling of Brexit as a root of the problem, not just a general malaise.
The perceived personal nature of the failure is more of an indignity than an encounter with a heckler in tweeds.
And for Jeremy Corbyn, it is surprising and disappointing that Labour has simply failed to make any significant capital from such a divided and chaotic government.
However ardently his devotees swear loyalty, the party has fallen back - on this set of results at least - seeming further, rather than closer, from winning power in a general election he so often claims to crave.
MPs have yet to agree on a deal for leaving the European Union, and, as a result, the deadline of Brexit has been pushed back from 29 March to 31 October.
While local elections give voters the chance to choose the decision-makers who affect their communities, the national issue has loomed large on the doorstep.
Mrs May, appearing at the Welsh Conservative conference, said voters had sent the "simple message" that her party and Labour had to "get on" with delivering Brexit.
"These were always going to be difficult elections for us," the prime minister added, "and there were some challenging results for us last night, but it was a bad night for Labour, too."
A heckler shouted at the prime minister: "Why don't you resign?" He was then ushered out of the conference hall in Llangollen, North Wales, as the audience chanted: "Out, out, out."
BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said that while the Conservatives had lost "more than 10 times as many councillors", it was "remarkable" that Labour, "around the mid-term of a not-very-popular government - has not made net gains".
Speaking in Greater Manchester, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he "wanted to do better" and conceded voters who disagreed with its backing for Brexit had deserted the party.
But Lib Dem leader Sir Vince, attending a rally in Chelmsford, Essex, where his party took control of the council, said it had been a "brilliant" result and that "every vote for the Liberal Democrats was a vote for stopping Brexit".
The BBC projects that, if the local election results it analysed were replicated across Britain, both the Conservatives and Labour would get 28% of the total vote.
The data, based on 650 wards in which detailed voting figures were collected, suggests the Lib Dems would get 19% and other parties and independents 25%.
Polling expert Prof Sir John Curtice said the days of the Conservatives and Labour dominating the electoral landscape, as happened in the 2017 election when they won 80% of the vote between them, "may be over".
He said it was only the second time in history that the two main parties' projected national share of the vote had fallen below 30%.
The only other occasion was in 2013, when UKIP performed strongly in local elections.
Prof Curtice also said the Conservatives and Labour had both lost ground since last year's local elections when both were estimated to be on 35%.
While the Lib Dem figure was the highest since 2010, when they agreed to join the coalition government with the Conservatives, he said it was still well below the 24% the party regularly achieved in the 1990s and 2000s.
Green Party co-leader Sian Berry told the BBC the Greens were not simply benefiting from a protest vote over Brexit - their gains reflected "huge new concerns" about climate change as well as the strength of their local campaigning on a range of issues.
For UKIP, Lawrence Webb, a former London mayoral candidate who is standing in this month's European elections, said the party's "fortunes were on the up", despite the fall in its number of councillors.
This is the biggest set of local elections in England's four-year electoral cycle, with more than 8,400 seats being contested. A further 462 seats are up for grabs in Northern Ireland.
Six mayoral elections have also taken place, with Labour's Jamie Driscoll winning the contest to become the first ever North of Tyne mayor.
Labour candidates also won in Leicester and Mansfield but the party out lost to independents in Middlesbrough and Copeland.
Either search using your postcode or council name or click around the map to show local results.

The local election results are disappointing for both the Conservatives and for Labour, while the Liberal Democrats, Greens and independents prospered, writes Prof Sir John Curtice and colleagues on the BBC's local elections team.
"A plague on both your houses." That seems to have been the key message to emerge from the ballot boxes.
On the basis of the detailed voting figures in 40 local authorities, we estimate that if the pattern of voting in the local council elections were to be replicated across the whole of Great Britain, both the Conservatives and Labour would have won 28% of the vote. This is only the second time that this calculation has put both those parties below 30%.
The elections always looked set to be difficult for the Conservatives. The party was defending seats that were mostly last up for grabs four years ago, on the same day David Cameron won the 2015 general election. That, coupled with the party's recent freefall in the polls, clearly pointed to significant Conservative losses.
And that proved to be the case. The party has suffered net losses of more than 1300 seats. On average the party's share of the vote was down by six points, both compared with 2015 and with last year's local election results.
However, despite the government's difficulties, Labour also slipped back - on average, by no less than seven points compared with last year's local election results. As a result, the party has found itself suffering net losses of around 80 seats, when opposition parties are normally expected to post gains.
The party's performance would seem to confirm the message of a number of polls that Labour's support has been slipping in the wake of the Brexit impasse, a fall in Jeremy Corbyn's popularity, and a continuing row about anti-Semitism. Compared with last year, the party lost ground more heavily in Leave-voting areas than in Remain-voting ones, a pattern that it shared with the Conservatives (who in previous years have tended to perform better in such areas). This has been seized on by pro-Leave Labour MPs as evidence that the party should reach an agreement with the government which would pave the way for the UK to leave the EU.
What the two parties also had in common was a tendency for their support to fall more heavily in their heartlands. Labour's vote fell back most heavily in the north, the Conservatives in the south. Equally, Labour's vote fell more heavily in wards where it was previously strong, while the Conservative vote fell most heavily where they were strongest.
It was as though voters vented their frustration with the Brexit process by punishing whichever party represented the political establishment locally.
This mood perhaps also helps account for the remarkable success of independent candidates. Those not standing on a party label were on average winning as much as a quarter of the vote where they stood. More than 900 independent councillors have been elected - a net gain of more than 500.
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats, who before they entered into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010 were often a vehicle for protest votes, also appear to have profited from voters' disenchantment with the two largest parties.
The party, which has made net gains of more than 600 seats, advanced particularly strongly in Conservative-held wards where it was previously in second place. Double digit swings from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats were common in such seats. The party seemed to be successful in reinvigorating some of the bastions of local strength where its support had been badly eroded in the wake of the coalition government. This pattern added significantly to the tally of Conservative losses.
In contrast, and despite the party's pro-Remain stance, there was only limited evidence that the Lib Dems' advance was stronger in areas that voted heavily for Remain in the 2016 referendum. For example, while support for the party rose on average by three points on last year in areas where more than half voted for Remain, it also increased by two points in areas where the Remain vote was less than 45%.
Thanks in part to the fact that in 2015 the Liberal Democrats had recorded its worst ever local election performance, the party was able to make so many gains, due to an increase in its vote since then, of eight points. More significant, perhaps, was the fact that its vote was also up by three points on last year's local elections.
When the party's performance is projected into a national vote, it is estimated to be worth 19% of the vote. This represents its best local election performance since the party entered into coalition in 2010, but was still well below the party's performance in any round of local votes between 1993 and 2010. Overall, the party's performance is best seen as evidence of a partial recovery from the depths to which the party sank during the coalition years.
At the same time, the Greens had one of their best local election results ever. The party made net gains of more than 180 seats. The Greens posted an average of 12% of the vote in the wards they contested, up five points on their performance where they stood four years ago. That equals the party's previous highest average, 12% in 2009, when local elections were held on the same day as European Parliament elections. The party may have been helped by the recent protests about climate change.
Fighting just one in six wards, there was little opportunity for UKIP to make much impact on these elections. Where it did stand, the party's vote was down by four  points on its relative high point of 2015, but up eight points on its poor position last year. However, the challenge from the Eurosceptic parties may be more formidable in the European elections in three weeks time, when Nigel Farage's Brexit Party is on the ballot paper.
About this piece
This analysis piece was commissioned by the BBC from an expert working for an outside organisation.
Sir John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University, senior fellow at NatCen Social Research and The UK in a Changing Europe. He is also chief commentator at WhatUKthinks.org.
He worked with Stephen Fisher, associate professor of political sociology, University of Oxford; Robert Ford, professor of politics, University of Manchester and Patrick English, associate lecturer in data analysis, University of Exeter.

Labour has suffered a net loss of council seats - starting from the low base of 2015 in many cases.
The Conservatives have lost more than 10 times as many councillors, but what is remarkable is that the main party of opposition - around the mid-term of a not-very-popular government - has not made net gains.
It seems reasonable to assume that some votes have been lost by Labour in Leave areas because - as the leader of Sunderland City Council Graeme Miller has said - the party hasn't decisively ruled out another referendum.
(It has retained it as an option, if the Conservatives are unwilling to change their deal).
But if you take a close look at the figures in Sunderland, the complexity of Labour's political problems are revealed.
Its vote fell by nearly 17 points there - while UKIP's went up by 4.5.
The pro-Remain Lib Dems saw their vote rise by nearly 10 points and the Greens by 8.5.
Indeed, the combined vote of the Lib Dems and Greens was 21.4%, not far off UKIP's 23.9%.
The swing from Labour to the Lib Dems was about 13%  and to the Greens 10%.
Those in Labour's ranks who wanted a stronger commitment to another referendum on any Brexit deal are arguing now that the party is losing support in some Leave areas by failing to appeal enough to those who voted Remain.
Defections to the Lib Dems and the Greens suppressed the Labour vote, and further flatters UKIP's performance.
In leave-supporting Derby, where Jeremy Corbyn's party lost six seats and UKIP gained two, the swing from Labour to Lib Dems was 6%.
But those who support Labour's current policy - a heavily caveated commitment to a referendum on Brexit under certain circumstances rather than a public vote in all circumstances - say this is too simplistic an analysis.
In truth, we can't discern the underlying motives of Labour/Lib Dem switchers in every part of the country unless we ask them.
There are genuinely local factors at play in some areas - unsurprising, perhaps, as these are indeed local elections.
And some on Labour's left have another theory. They say the party is vulnerable to a protest vote because some Labour councils have had to cut services due to constrained budgets.
In some cases the Lib Dems are the beneficiaries
Others on the left say the party can't get a hearing for its anti-austerity message as the Brexit debate muffles all else.
They are actually quite keen for their party leadership to reach a deal with the government soon to get Brexit over the line and - they believe - this will then neutralise the political toxicity of the issue.
But there is little doubt politicians will proclaim to know the will of the people, without necessarily exploring deeper motivations - and the results will be interpreted in a way which advances their own arguments.

The BBC has obtained a more localised breakdown of votes from nearly half of the local authorities which counted EU referendum ballots last June.
This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are:
A statistical analysis of the data obtained for over a thousand individual local government wards confirms how the strength of the local Leave vote was strongly associated with lower educational qualifications.
Wards where the population had fewer qualifications tended to have a higher Leave vote, as shown in the chart. If the proportion of the local electorate with a degree or similar qualification was one percentage point lower, then on average the leave vote was higher by nearly one percentage point.
Using ward-level data means we can compare voting figures in this way to the local demographic information collected in the 2011 census. Of the main census statistics, this is the one with the greatest association with how people voted.
In statistical terms the level of educational qualifications explains about two-thirds of the variation in the results between different wards.
The correlation is strong, whether based on assessing graduate and equivalent qualifications or lower-level ones.
This ward-by-ward analysis covers 1,070 individual wards in England and Wales whose boundaries had not changed since the 2011 census, about one in nine of the UK's wards. We had very little ward-level data from Scotland, and none from Northern Ireland.
It should be noted, however, that many ward counts also included some postal votes from across the counting area, and therefore some variation between wards will have been masked by the random allocation of postal votes for counting. This makes the results less accurate geographically, but we can still use the information to explore broad national and local patterns.
Adding age as a second factor significantly helps to further explain voting patterns. Older populations were more likely to vote Leave. Education and age combined account for nearly 80% of the voting variation between wards.
Ethnicity is a smaller factor, but one which also contributed to the results. Adding that in means that now 83% of the variation in the vote between wards is explained. White populations were generally more pro-Leave, and ethnic minorities less so.  However, there were some interesting differences between London and elsewhere.
The ethnic dimension is particularly interesting when examining the outliers on the graph that compares the Leave vote to levels of education.
There are numerous wards towards the bottom left of the graph where electorates with lower educational qualifications nevertheless produced low Leave and high Remain votes. This is where the link between low qualifications and Leave voting breaks down.
It turns out that these exceptional wards have high ethnic minority populations, particularly in Birmingham and Haringey in north London.
In contrast, there are virtually no dramatic outliers on the other side of the line, where comparatively highly educated populations voted Leave. Only one point on the graph stands out - this is Osterley and Spring Grove in Hounslow, west London, a mainly ethnic minority ward which had a Leave vote of 63%. While this figure does include some postal votes, they are not nearly enough to explain away this unusual outcome.
In fact, in Ealing and Hounslow, west London boroughs with many voters of Asian origin, the ethnic correlation was in the other direction to the national picture: a higher number of Asian voters was associated with a higher Leave vote.
This powerful link to educational attainment could stem from the lower qualified tending to feel less confident about their prospects and ability to compete for work in a competitive globalised economy with high levels of migration.
On the other hand some commentators see it as primarily reflecting a "culture war" or "values conflict", rather than issues of economics and inequality. Research shows that non-graduates tend to take less liberal positions than graduates on a range of social issues from immigration and multi-culturalism to the death penalty.
The former campaign director of Vote Leave, Dominic Cummings, argues that the better educated are more prone to holding irrational political opinions because they are more driven by fashion and a group mentality.
Of course this assessment does not imply that Leave voters were almost all poorly educated and old, and Remain voters well educated and young. The Leave side obviously attracted support from many middle class professionals, graduates and younger people. Otherwise it couldn't have won.
While there was undoubtedly a lot of voting which cut across these criteria, the point of this analysis is to explore how different social groups most probably voted - and it is clear that education, age and ethnicity were crucial influences.
After these three key factors are taken into account, adding in further demographic measures from the census does little to increase the explanation of UK-wide voting patterns.
However, this does not reflect the distinctively more pro-Remain voting in Scotland, since we are short of Scottish data at this geographical level. It is clear as well that in a few specific locations high student numbers were also very relevant.
To a certain extent, using the level of educational qualifications as a measure combines both class and age factors, with working class and older adults both tending to be less well qualified.
But the association between education and the voting results is stronger than the association between social or occupational class and the results. This is still true after taking the age of the local population into account.
This suggests that voters with lower qualifications were more likely to back Leave than the better qualified, even when they were in the same social or occupational class.
The existence of a significant connection between Leave voting and lower educational qualifications had already been suggested by analysis of the published referendum results from the official counting areas.
The data we have obtained strengthens this conclusion, because voting patterns can now be compared to social statistics from the 2011 census at a much more detailed geographical level than by the earlier studies.
The BBC analysis is also consistent with opinion polling (for example, from Lord Ashcroft, Ipsos Mori and YouGov) that tried to identify the characteristics of Leave and Remain voters.
The data we have collected can be used to illustrate the sort of places where the Leave and Remain camps did particularly well: it is hard to imagine a more glaring social contrast than that between the deprived, poorly educated housing estates of Brambles and Thorntree in Middlesbrough, and the privileged elite colleges of Market ward in central Cambridge.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that most of the voting figures mentioned below also include some postal votes, so they should be treated as approximate rather than precise.  It is also important to note that the examples are limited to the places for which we were able to obtain localised information, which was only a minority of areas. The rest of the country may well contain even starker instances.
Of the 1,283 individual wards for which we have data, the highest Leave vote was 82.5% in Brambles and Thorntree, a section of east Middlesbrough with many social problems. Ward boundaries have changed since the 2011 census, but in that survey the Thorntree part of the area had the lowest proportion of people with a degree or similar qualification of anywhere in England and Wales, at only 5%. And according to Middlesbrough council, the figure for the current Brambles and Thorntree ward is even lower, at just 4%.
Second highest was 80.3% in Waterlees Village, a poor locality within Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. This area has seen a major influx of East European migrants who have been doing low-paid work in nearby food processing factories and farms, with tensions between them and British residents.
Other wards with available data which had the strongest Leave votes were congregated in Middlesbrough, Canvey Island in Essex, Skegness in coastal Lincolnshire, and Havering in east London.
The highest Remain vote was 87.8% in Market ward in central Cambridge, an area with numerous colleges and a high student population, in a city which was strongly pro-Remain.
This was followed by Ashley ward  (85.6%) in central Bristol, a district featuring ethnic diversity, gentrification and alternative culture.
Next highest was Northumberland Park (85.0%) in Haringey, north London, which has a substantial black population.
Other wards with available data which had the strongest Remain votes were generally located in Cambridge, Bristol and the multi-ethnic London boroughs of Haringey and Lambeth.
The count for Ashburton in Croydon, south London, split 50-50 exactly, with both Leave and Remain getting 3,885 votes, but that did include some postal ballots.
As for being nearest to the overall result, the combined count of Tulketh and University, neighbouring wards near the centre of Preston, was 51.92% for leave, very close to the UK wide figure of 51.89%. The individual ward of Barnwood in Gloucester had Leave at 51.94%. Both figures however contain some postal votes.
Given that a few councils provided even more detailed data down to the level of polling districts, it is possible to identify some very small localities that were nicely representative of the national picture.
The 527 voters in the neighbouring districts of Kirk Langley and Mackworth in Amber Valley in Derbyshire, whose two ballot boxes were counted together, produced a leave proportion of 51.99%. And this figure is not contaminated by any postal votes.
So journalists (or anyone else for that matter) who seek a microcosm of the UK should perhaps visit the Mundy Arms pub in Mackworth, the location for that district's polling station.
Similarly, the 427 voters in the combined neighbouring polling districts of Chiddingstone Hoath and Hever Four Elms to the south of Sevenoaks in Kent delivered a leave vote of 51.6% (again, without any postal votes).
The data obtained points to 269 areas of various sizes (wards, clusters of wards or constituencies) which had a different Leave/Remain outcome compared to the official counting area of which they were part.
This consists of 150 areas which backed Remain but were part of Leave-voting counting areas; and 119 in the other direction.
The detailed information therefore gives us an understanding of how the electorate voted which is more variegated than the officially published results.
Every one of Scotland's 32 counting areas came down on the Remain side. Yet, despite the fact that most Scottish councils did not give us much detailed information, we can nevertheless identify a few smaller parts of the country which actually backed Leave.
A cluster of six wards in the Banff and Buchan area in north Aberdeenshire had a strong Leave majority of 61%. There is much local discontent within the fishing industry of this coastal district about the EU's common fisheries policy.
An Taobh Siar agus Nis, a ward at the northern end of the Isle of Lewis in Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles), also voted Leave, if very narrowly.
And at a smaller geographical level, in Shetland the 567 voters in the combined polling districts of Whalsay and South Unst had an extremely high Leave vote of 81%. The island of Whalsay is a fishing community, where EU rules have been controversial and in 2012 numerous skippers were heavily fined for major breaches of fishing quotas.
Ealing and Hounslow are neighbouring multi-ethnic boroughs in the west of London with large Asian populations, where - in contrast to the national picture - non-white ethnicity was associated with voting Leave, particularly in Ealing. Both boroughs shared a varied internal pattern of prosperous largely white areas voting strongly Remain, poorer largely white areas preferring Leave, and the Asian areas tending to be more evenly split.
Ealing voted 60% Remain, with Southfield ward hitting 76%, but in contrast the Southall wards which are over 90% ethnic minority were close to 50-50.
In Hounslow the richer wards in Chiswick in the east of the area voted heavily Remain (73%), but the poorer largely white wards at the opposite western end in Feltham and Bedfont voted Leave (64-66%). Osterley and Spring Grove was also 63% Leave, the highest Leave vote in any individual ward in the UK with a non-white majority for which we have data.
The south London borough of Bromley narrowly voted Remain. Those parts which did not do so by a significant margin were the Cray Valley wards, largely poor white working class areas; and Biggin Hill and Darwin wards, locations to the south which contain more open countryside and lie outside the built-up commuter belt.
In Croydon in south London, places which voted Leave by substantial amounts were New Addington and Fieldway, neighbouring wards with large council estates.
Beyond the areas with the strongest backing for Leave and Remain, examining the detailed breakdown of votes in various places gives greater insight into the pattern of support for the two sides - as can be seen from the following examples.
In several places (for example, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Portsmouth) there was a strong contrast between the Leave-voting populations of large, rundown, predominantly white, housing estates in the urban periphery, versus Remain-voting populations in inner city areas with large numbers of ethnic minorities and sometimes students.
Birmingham had several wards with large Remain votes, although the city as a whole narrowly voted Leave.  These pro-Remain wards tended to be the more highly educated, better off localities, or minority ethnic areas which strongly backed Remain despite low levels of educational qualifications. I have written about this before.
In Blackburn with Darwen, Bastwell ward had the highest Remain vote at 65%, compared to only 44% in the area as a whole. This ward has an ethnic minority proportion of over 90%. Other Blackburn wards which voted Remain were also ones with high minority populations.
Bradford voted to Leave (54%), but the area included some starkly contrasting places which went over 60% Remain: the prosperous, genteel, spa town of Ilkley, and strongly ethnic minority wards in the city, such as Manningham and Toller.
Bristol voted strongly Remain on the whole (62%), but there were some striking exceptions, particularly the large, deprived, mainly white estates to the south of the city. Hartcliffe and Withywood backed Leave at 67%. Similar neighbouring wards (Hengrove and Whitchurch Park, Filwood, Bishopsworth and Stockwood) also voted Leave, as did the more industrial area of Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston to the north west of the city.
As a county Cornwall voted to Leave. But one of its six parliamentary constituencies, Truro and Falmouth, voted 53% to Remain, possibly linked to a significant student population.
In Lincoln, which voted 57% to Leave, Carholme ward stands out as very different - it voted 63% to Remain. This ward includes Lincoln University, and 43% of the residents are students
Middlesbrough voted 65% to Leave. As already noted, it had several wards with extremely high leave votes of over 75%. But one ward, Linthorpe, voted very narrowly to Remain - a comparatively well-to-do inner suburb which includes an art college; and another ward, Central, which contains Teesside University, nearly did.
Mole Valley in Surrey exhibited a dramatic contrast between two neighbouring districts with very different demographics and housing. The highest Remain vote was in the very prosperous location of Dorking South, which voted 63% Remain, but the neighbouring ward of Holmwoods, dominated by large estates on the edge of the town of Dorking, voted 57% Leave, the area's highest Leave vote.
Nottingham voted narrowly to Leave, but the inner city ward of Radford and Park voted 68% Remain. This has both a comparatively high proportion of ethnic minorities and considerable numbers of students from two nearby universities. There was a lot of variation within the area. Bulwell - a market town to the north of the city with many social problems - voted 69% Leave
There was also a high Leave vote in the housing estate locations of the Clifton wards in the south of Nottingham.
Oldham voted to Leave at 61%, but Werneth, the city ward with the highest ethnic minority population, voted Remain (57%). Other wards with high minority populations also voted Remain.
In Oxford the cluster of polling districts which included Blackbird Leys and other deprived estates on the southern edge of the city voted to Leave at 51%. In contrast the central areas containing colleges, university buildings and student accommodation voted to Remain at over 80%.
Plymouth voted 60% Leave, but Drake ward which includes the university had the city's highest Remain vote at 56%.
Portsmouth was another place with wide variation. Paulsgrove ward, with its large estate on the edge of the city, had the highest Leave vote at 70%, whereas at the other end of the spectrum Central Southsea, an inner city ward and student area, voted 57% Remain.
Rochdale voted 60% Leave. The place which bucked this trend by voting 59% Remain, Milkstone and Deeplish, was the most predominantly ethnic minority ward. Central Rochdale had the second highest Remain vote and is the other ward that is mainly not white.
Walsall voted strongly Leave (68%). The only ward which voted Remain, Paddock, is both a comparatively prosperous and multi-ethnic locality.
A few councils released their data at remarkably localised levels, down even to individual polling districts (ie ballot boxes) in the case of Blackburn with Darwen and Bracknell Forest, or clusters of two/three/four districts, in the case of Amber Valley, Brentwood, Sevenoaks, Shetland, South Oxfordshire, and Tewkesbury.
This provides very local and specific data, in some cases just for neighbourhoods of hundreds of voters.
At its most detailed this reveals that the 110 people who cast their votes in the ballot box at St. Alban's Primary School in central Blackburn split 56-52 in favour of Remain, with two spoilt papers.
It also discloses stark contrasts in some neighbouring locations. The 953 people who voted at Little Harwood community centre in north Blackburn had a Leave vote of only 31%, while the 336 electors who voted in the neighbouring ballot box at Roe Lee Park primary school produced a Leave percentage over twice as high, at 64%.
The very detailed data we obtained also provides some rare evidence on the views of postal compared to non-postal voters. Campaign strategists have often deliberated on whether the two groups vote differently and should be given separate targeted messages.
Most places mixed boxes of postal and non-postal votes for counting, so generally it's not possible to draw comparative conclusions. However there were a few exceptions which recorded them separately, or included a very small number of non-postal votes with the postals.
These figures indicate that postal voters were narrowly less likely to back Leave than voters in polling stations. Data covering five counting areas with about 260,000 votes shows that in these places the roughly one in five electors who voted by post backed Leave at 55.4%, one percentage point lower than the local non-postal support for Leave of 56.4%.
The counting areas involved are Amber Valley, East Cambridgeshire, Gwynedd, Hyndburn and North Warwickshire.
Since the referendum the BBC has been trying to get the most detailed, localised voting data we could from each of the counting areas.  This was a major data collection exercise carried out by my colleague George Greenwood.
We managed to obtain voting figures broken down into smaller geographical units for 178 of the 399 referendum counting areas (380 councils in England, Wales and Scotland, with a separate tally in Gibraltar, while in Northern Ireland results were issued for the 18 constituencies).
This varied between data for individual local government wards, wards grouped into clusters, and constituency level data. In a few cases the results supplied were even more localised than ward level. Overall the extra data covers a wide range of different areas and kinds of councils across the UK.
Electoral returning officers are not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, so releasing the information was up to the discretion of councils. While some were very willing, in other cases it required a lot of persistence and persuasion.
Some councils could not supply any detailed data because they mixed all ballot boxes prior to counting; some did possess more local figures but simply refused to disclose them to us. Others did provide data, but the combinations in which ballot boxes were mixed before counting were too complex to fit ward boundaries neatly.
A few places such as Birmingham released their ward by ward data following the referendum on their own initiative, but in most cases the information had to be obtained by us requesting it directly, and sometimes repeatedly, from the authority.

The government's infrastructure adviser has announced he is quitting his role, describing Brexit as a "populist and nationalist spasm".
Lord Adonis said Prime Minister Theresa May was "pursuing a course fraught with danger" over the UK's EU departure.
The ex-Labour minister is already a high-profile campaigner against Brexit.
A government source said: "He's been moving closer towards the exit door with each new onslaught he makes against Brexit."
The source added: "He's now walked through the door before he was pushed."
But Lord Adonis later insisted it had been his decision to leave, as his "differences with the government had become too great".
Lord Adonis, who was transport secretary under Gordon Brown between 2009 and 2010, has chaired the National Infrastructure Commission since 2015.
The commission produces a report in every Parliament advising the government on spending in areas such as transport connections and energy.
Lord Adonis sparked anger earlier this year when he compared Brexit to the appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s, and has repeatedly called for last year's referendum vote to be reversed.
In his resignation letter, he accused Mrs May of "allying with UKIP and the Tory hard right to wrench Britain out of the key economic and political institutions of modern Europe", saying the UK was "hurtling towards the EU's emergency exit with no credible plan for the future of British trade and European co-operation".
"If Brexit happens, taking us back into Europe will become the mission of our children's generation, who will marvel at your acts of destruction," he said.
"A responsible government would be leading the British people to stay in Europe while also tackling, with massive vigour, the social and economic problems within Britain which contributed to the Brexit vote."
Lord Adonis said he planned to oppose "relentlessly" the government's EU (Withdrawal) Bill in the House of Lords.
As well as Brexit, he said the recent decision to end the East Coast rail franchise three years early, would also have forced him to quit, describing it as a bailout costing hundreds of millions of pounds.
MP Iain Duncan Smith said the departure of Lord Adonis was "long overdue".
He added: "It's a bit rich for him to pontificate on what he calls populism, but what most would refer to as democracy, when he himself has never been elected by a public vote. He has instead relied on preferment from others."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable described Lord Adonis's resignation as "a great shame", saying it showed that Brexit was being "badly mishandled".
He added that the Lib Dems would work with Lord Adonis "in fighting to end the hard Brexit that the government is recklessly pursuing".
A Labour spokesman said the government couldn't even "command the confidence of its own advisers".

Former Bank of England governor Lord King has blasted Brexit preparations as "incompetent".
The Brexit supporter said it "beggared belief" that the world's sixth-biggest economy should be talking of stockpiling food and medicines.
This left the government without a credible bargaining position, he said.
A spokesperson for the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) said that getting a good deal with the EU was "by far, the most likely outcome".
Lord King said that "a government that cannot take action to prevent some of these catastrophic outcomes illustrates a whole lack of preparation".
"It doesn't tell us anything about whether the policy of staying in the EU is good or bad, it tells us everything about the incompetence of the preparation for it."
In a BBC interview to discuss the 10 years since the economic crisis - due to be aired next week - Lord King spent a significant amount of time saying the 11th hour preparation for a no-deal Brexit has undermined the government's negotiating position.
He added: "We haven't had a credible bargaining position, because we hadn't put in place measures where we could say to our colleagues in Europe, 'Look, we'd like a free-trade deal, we think that you would probably like one too, but if we can't agree, don't be under any misapprehension, we have put in place the measures that would enable us to leave without one.'"
In response, the government said it was "focused on negotiating a deal of unprecedented scope and ambition".
"We have already made significant progress," the DExEU spokesperson added. "The vast majority of the Withdrawal Agreement has now been agreed, and we are making further progress on the outstanding separation issues".
But Lord King predicts that we will find ourselves with what's been dubbed as Brino - Brexit in name only - which he said was the worst of all worlds. It's also a state of affairs that he fears could drag on for years.
"I think the biggest risk to the UK, and this is what worries me most, is that this issue isn't going to go away, you know the referendum hasn't decided it, because both camps feel that they haven't got what they wanted."
Lord King expressed regret and surprise that it was more difficult for a single country to present a united front than the other 27 EU members.
He said: "They must have been really worried that they had 27 countries to try to corral, how could they have a united negotiating position, they were dealing with a country that was one country, made a clear decision, voted to leave, it knew what it wanted to do, how on earth could the EU manage to negotiate against this one decisive group on the other side of the Channel?
"Well, the reality's been completely the opposite. The EU has been united, has been clear, has been patient and it's the UK that's been divided without any clear strategy at all for how to get to where we want to go."
He also said he found the current level of debate around Brexit "depressing" and said it obscured the real challenges ahead.
"The biggest economic problems facing the UK are, we save too little, we haven't worked out how to save for retirement, the pension system is facing I think a real challenge, we haven't worked out how to save enough for the NHS and finance it, we haven't worked out how we're going to save enough to provide care for the elderly.
"These are the big economic challenges we face, but are they being discussed at present in an open way?
"No, because the political debate has been completely taken up by Brexit," he said. "It's a discussion where both sides seem to be throwing insults at each other."
Lord King might argue he is being much more even-handed, with stinging criticism for all involved.
His comments come as Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham calls for Brexit to be postponed, if a no-deal scenario seems likely.
In a speech on Wednesday, the former Labour minister will say that although "a price would undoubtedly be paid in terms of social cohesion," a suspension of the process would be necessary to avoid damaging jobs.

Italian former journalist David-Maria Sassoli has been selected as the new president of the European Parliament.
Mr Sassoli, 63, received the support of 345 out of a total of 667 MEPs in the second round of voting in Strasbourg.
The centre-left politician beat three other candidates and will assume the role of assembly speaker immediately.
The vote comes a day after EU leaders agreed nominations for the bloc's top jobs, with a woman for the first time proposed as European Commission chief.
In a speech following Wednesday's result, Mr Sassoli spoke of an "imperfect" union in need of reform, calling for the EU to return to the spirit of its founding fathers, who swapped warfare and nationalism for peace and equality.
"We need to strengthen our capacity to play a leading role in democracy," he said, focusing particularly on the need for reform to the EU's system for asylum seekers. "You can't continue to kick this down the road. We don't want citizens asking 'where's Europe' every time an emergency happens."
He then described Brexit as "painful", adding: "The European Parliament will guarantee the independence of European citizens - only they are able to determine their history."
Mr Sassoli replaces another Italian, ex-army officer Antonio Tajani.
The night before, marathon talks over who will take over the EU's top jobs came to a close with the surprise choice of German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen to replace Jean-Claude Juncker.
Her nomination has to be approved by a majority of MEPs in a vote to be held in Strasbourg on 15 July.
Mrs von der Leyen was due to visit MEPs on Wednesday to discuss her nomination. If her candidacy is rejected, national leaders will have a month to nominate a replacement.
On the face of it, it's a historic double first for Europe, the nomination of two women, Ursula von der Leyen and Christine Lagarde, to lead the European Commission and the European Central Bank respectively.
For some media, however, it's very much a return to business as usual after turbulent times.
It amounts to a successful operation by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to "solder the Franco-German tandem back together again", according to right-leaning French daily Le Figaro.
Italy's left-leaning daily Il Messagero detects a level of cynicism worthy of the historical film The Leopard. In that film, a noble family grapples with revolutionary times by adopting the principle that "for things to remain the same, everything must change".
"Behind the new feminine face of the community leadership," the paper writes, "is a Leopard-style operation in the sense that the change is a return to the Franco-German monopoly über alles", Il Messagero deliberately uses the German term for "above all else", with its Nazi-era connotations.
Christine Lagarde, the French current head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has been nominated as the first woman to lead the European Central Bank (ECB).
Belgian liberal Prime Minister Charles Michel has been chosen to replace European Council President Donald Tusk.
Spain's foreign minister Josep Borrell is nominated as EU foreign policy chief. A Catalan economist, he held the post of European Parliament president from 2004-2007.
On Wednesday, members of the European Parliament elected in May voted in a secret ballot for their choice of one of four candidates.
Ahead of the vote, contenders for the position were each given a few minutes to pitch their ideas to fellow MEPs in the Strasbourg assembly:

A Conservative MP has been suspended from the party after it emerged she used a racist expression during a public discussion about Brexit.
Anne Marie Morris, the MP for Newton Abbot, used the phrase at an event in London to describe the prospect of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
She told the BBC: "The comment was totally unintentional. I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused."
The Conservative Party later confirmed she had had the whip withdrawn.
Announcing the suspension, Theresa May said she was "shocked" by the "completely unacceptable" language.
"I immediately asked the chief whip to suspend the party whip," she said in a statement.
"Language like this has absolutely no place in politics or in today's society."
The BBC understands the prime minister and Conservative Chief Whip Gavin Williamson met to discuss the matter once Mrs May finished her Commons statement on last weekend's G20 summit.
According to a recording published on the Huffington Post website, Ms Morris was discussing the impact of Brexit on the UK's financial services industry at an event organised by the Politeia think tank, which was attended by other MPs.
Suggesting that just 7% of financial services would be affected by Brexit, she reportedly said: "Now I am sure there will be many people who will challenge that but my response and my request is look at the detail - it isn't all doom and gloom."
She went on: "Now we get to the real nigger in the woodpile, which is in two years what happens if there is no deal."
The phrase originated in the American Deep South in the mid-19th Century and is thought to have referred to slaves having to conceal themselves as they sought to flee north and secure their freedom.
It was subsequently used in the 20th Century - including by a number of leading novelists - as a metaphor to describe a hidden fact or problem.
The Lib Dems had called on Theresa May to withdraw the whip from Ms Morris, who was first elected to Parliament in 2010 and was subsequently re-elected in 2015 and earlier this year.
Leader Tim Farron said he was "shocked" and called for her to be suspended from the parliamentary party.
"This disgusting comment belongs in the era of the Jim Crow laws and has no place in our Parliament," he said.
Labour's Andrew Gwynne said Ms Morris had used "outrageous and completely unacceptable" language.
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas called on Ms Morris to resign as an MP, telling Sky News: "There is no place for her in the House of Commons."
She also claimed that other Conservative MPs at the meeting "apparently did not bat an eyelid" at Ms Morris's language.
"At the very least, there ought to be a conversation between Theresa May and the others in that room so that they're very clear going forward that if ever that kind of language is heard in the earshot, it has to be condemned immediately," Ms Lucas said.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna tweeted: "Speechless, not just at the remark being made but also at the reported lack of a reaction from the Tories there. Utterly appalling."
Politeia's website said MPs Sir William Cash, Kwasi Kwarteng and John Redwood also took part, though Mr Kwarteng told the BBC he was not there. The BBC has contacted the other MPs for comment.
Ms Morris did face criticism from Tory colleagues, one of whom, Heidi Allen, tweeted: "I'm afraid an apology is not good enough - we must show zero tolerance for racism. MPs must lead by example."
Fellow Conservative MP Helen Grant tweeted: "Inconceivable for an MP using that expression to be incognisant of its history, impact and complete unacceptability. So ashamed!"
In 2008, Conservative peer and party spokesman Lord Dixon-Smith apologised for using the same phrase in the House of Lords, saying that it was not appropriate and that he had "left his brains behind".
The peer was not dismissed.

A Labour MP has claimed it was "the better educated people" who voted remain in the EU referendum.
Barry Sheerman, who has held the Huddersfield seat since 1979, made his comments during  the BBC's Sunday Politics programme.
Mr Sheerman said: "You can actually see the pattern, nearly all the university towns voted remain."
Pudsey Conservative MP Stuart Andrew, who was also taking part in the debate, described the remarks as "snobbery".
Mr Sheerman made the comment during a discussion of the letter sent last week to universities by Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris asking for the names of professors teaching courses involving Brexit.
The Labour MP claimed Mr Heaton-Harris was indulging in "McCarthyite sort of tactics".
In response, Mr Andrew described sending the letter as "probably not" the best thing to do, but denied the letter was an attempt to intimidate lecturers.
He said Mr Heaton-Harris "was genuinely trying to find out was was being discussed in our universities".
Mr Sheerman claimed the letter was an attempt to "frighten campuses".
"This man who went to Wolverhampton Polytechnic, who does he think he is trying to frighten my university in Huddersfield," said Mr Sheerman.
"The truth is that when you look at who voted to remain, most of them were the better educated people in our country."
Mr Andrew said: "I am astounded by this snobbery.
"The fact that Chris went to some polytechnic is some problem."
Information about BBC links to other news sites

MPs have voted to back the government's plan to start formal talks on Brexit by the end of March next year.
They also supported a Labour motion calling for Parliament to "properly scrutinise" the government in its proposals for leaving the EU.
The votes followed a compromise between Labour and the Conservatives, who had argued over the questions to be put.
The House of Commons' decisions are not binding on ministers.
MPs backed Labour's motion, saying the government should publish a plan and it was "Parliament's responsibility to properly scrutinise the government" over Brexit, by 448 votes to 75 - a margin of 373.
This followed another vote over the government's amendment to the motion, which added the proviso that its timetable for triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, getting formal talks with the EU under way, should be respected.
MPs backed this by 461 votes to 89 - a margin of 372.
Analysis - Alex Forsyth, BBC political correspondent
Within minutes of the vote, one dedicated Brexiteer had labelled it an historic moment. Iain Duncan Smith said for the first time the majority of parliamentarians had voted to leave the EU.
Technically MPs have only backed the government's plan to start the process of leaving by the end of March next year. Nonetheless it is a statement of Parliament's intent.
Some have accused pro-Remain MPs of wanting to backtrack on Brexit, but tonight's result shows most parliamentarians are willing to respect the result of the referendum.
Instead the arguments are over exactly what Brexit will mean and the extent to which Parliament will have a say in shaping that.
In that respect, both the government and the opposition will claim victory over tonight's result: Labour for getting the government to agree to publish a Brexit plan of sorts which will be subject to scrutiny, ministers for getting MPs' backing for their timetable.
This was not a binding vote, but for both sides it counts. With further parliamentary skirmishes inevitable, positioning and political power play are vital - especially when the stakes are so high.
After Labour proposed its motion, Prime Minister Theresa May had reportedly faced a rebellion by up to 40 Conservative MPs.
So, on Tuesday she offered to support it, in return for the Labour leadership backing a compromise government amendment to support the Brexit timetable.
During Wednesday's debate, Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the government had refused "on every occasion" to give details of its plans, saying information about its negotiating stance was important because it "sets the scene" for Brexit.
He said there must not be "a situation where the government seeks a vote in a vacuum, or produces a late, vague plan".
But Brexit Secretary David Davis responded: "The simple fact is that the mandate (in June's referendum) was to leave the European Union - full stop. We need to keep that in mind when we are going through that process."
He added: "This is a negotiation; it's not a policy statement. And, therefore, where you are aiming for may not be the exact place you end up."
The government's amendment was opposed by 23 Labour MPs and one Conservative - former chancellor Ken Clarke.
Five Liberal Democrat MPs, three Plaid Cymru MPs and 51 SNP MPs also voted against it.
And Labour's motion was opposed by nine of its own MPs:
Ms Siddiq, Ms West and Mr Zeichner all serve in party leader Jeremy Corbyn's frontbench team.
The government's Brexit timetable means the UK will leave the EU in 2019, with negotiations lasting up to two years.
In June's referendum, UK voters backed leaving the EU by 51.9% to 48.1%.

Parliament can stop the UK leaving the EU without negotiating a deal, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said.
There was not a Commons majority for such an outcome, he told the BBC, and Labour would work with other parties to stop the "damage" it would cause.
He urged ministers to "come to their senses" and publish legal advice about what was owed in financial liabilities.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the UK will "succeed come what may" but he was confident of a "sensible deal".
Dismissing Mr McDonnell's comments as "complete nonsense", he told the Andrew Marr show on BBC One that it was a "legal reality" that the UK would be leaving at the end of March 2019 after Article 50 was triggered earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Brexit minister Robin Walker has suggested the three million citizens of other EU countries currently living in the UK will be able to stay regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, telling Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5 live "yes, people will be allowed to stay".
Prime Minister Theresa May has said she believes the two sides will reach a deal but the UK must prepare for all eventualities.
As it stands, the UK will leave the EU in March 2019 whether it agrees a deal on the terms of withdrawal or not.
But Mr McDonnell said he could "not countenance" such a situation and Parliament had the power to force the government to conceded a "meaningful vote" on the terms of exit, by amending the EU Withdrawal Bill or other relevant legislation related to Brexit.
"I don't think no deal is a realistic option," he said. "There are enough sensible people in the House of Commons to say 'this cannot happen, we cannot damage our country in this way'."
Urging ministers to stop "fighting" among themselves and focus on what was best for the economy, he added: "They should come to their senses, behave responsibly and look after the interests of the country."
He called on ministers to publish legal advice about the size of the so-called divorce bill, saying the UK should honour its obligations but the final figure should not be anywhere near the £60bn quoted in some quarters.
The government has appointed a Brexit "contingency minister" and will spend £250m this year on preparing for the UK's exit, including the possibility of it leaving without an official deal.
Speaking on the same programme, Mr Grayling said talks were always going to be "long and challenging" and it was fanciful to suggest the two sides would "shake hands and do a deal in half an hour".
While he believed that the two sides would ultimately reach agreement, he said Labour was wrong to argue for a deal in any circumstances and he was not personally afraid of the UK leaving the EU without one.
"Britain will succeed come what may but I don't think we will come to that. I think we will agree a sensible trading partnership... because it is in both of our interests for this to happen."
He rejected suggestions that flights would be grounded - as one major airline has suggested - in the event of a no-deal Brexit, insisting "people will be able to carry on making their bookings".
Asked about reported cabinet divisions, Mr Grayling said ministers were "not clones" but there was a spirit of collaboration and Philip Hammond, criticised in recent days for being too gloomy, should remain as chancellor.
Amid talk of supporters of a "soft Brexit" joining forces to put pressure on the government, ex-Tory education secretary Nicky Morgan said most MPs wanted "a sensible deal that protects our economy and supports jobs".
While the UK would be "resilient" whatever happened, she told ITV's Peston on Sunday that she was dismayed that some of her colleagues were talking up a no-deal Brexit as a "favourable outcome".

Parliament will not allow the UK to leave the European Union without a negotiated agreement, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has claimed.
Asked during a BBC interview whether MPs could prevent a no-deal exit, he replied "absolutely".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn suggested on Friday Brexit could not be stopped because the people had voted to leave.
But Sir Keir said if 400 or so MPs were opposed to a no-deal exit, they would be able to force the government's hand.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said no-one really knew what would happen if Parliament voted down any agreement reached between the UK and the EU in the coming weeks and it could open a "Pandora's Box".
One former cabinet minister, John Whittingdale, has suggested that Theresa May would have to step down if she "staked her credibility" on a deal which did not command the confidence of MPs.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The two sides are trying to hammer out an agreement on the terms of the UK's exit in the coming days which could be put to a special summit of the 28 EU leaders at the end of November.
The EU's negotiator Michel Barnier told European ministers on Monday that intense negotiating efforts were continuing but no agreement had been reached and the EU must prepare for every possible scenario.
Arriving for the meeting in Brussels, Brexit minister Lord Callanan said the UK was trying hard to get a deal but claimed it had not set a "particular deadline" and we "have to take time to make sure its right".
But the BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said if no agreement was reached imminently, the reality was that things would get "more ominous" for Mrs May.
While the UK's no deal preparations would have to be intensified, he said there were fears it would be harder to get MPs' support if the crunch Commons vote on accepting or rejecting the deal did not happen until the start of 2019.
Labour leaders have said they are unlikely to support any agreement as it stands, with Sir Keir telling BBC Radio 4's Today that "there is no duty to vote for the wrong deal".
The opposition has said it will press for a general election in the event of Parliament rejecting a deal but - if that does not happen - "all options" should remain on the table, including the possibility of a new Brexit referendum.
Asked whether MPs would be able to force such an outcome, he said they would use the parliamentary process to "assert themselves" and, at the very least, "indicate" what should happen in the event of a deadlock.
He suggested Mrs May herself would not be prepared to see the UK leave without a deal.
"I am confident that the majority in Parliament will not countenance a no deal," he told BBC Radio 4's Today. "So the question is can Parliament stop no deal if it becomes necessary? Absolutely.
"If there was a motion that 400-plus MPs supported saying we do not countenance a no-deal, then the prime minister would have to go forward in the teeth of Parliament.
"Of course I am critical of the prime minister on a number of fronts but I don't think she would simply take us out of the EU without a deal in the teeth of the vast majority in Parliament.
"She has got a deep sense of duty. She knows the ruptures that would cause, not just on trade, but on security and counter-terrorism. She knows that."
Sir Keir acknowledged continuing divisions within Labour over the question of another referendum but insisted that the party had decided at its conference in September that it should not be ruled out.
"On this question of options on the table, we had a long, long discussion about it and we did agree all options to remain on the table including the option of a public vote.
"The Labour Party has had a healthy discussion. But did we reach an agreement? Yes we did. Are we sticking to it? Yes we are. Neither Jeremy nor anyone else has altered that position, that is the position of the Labour Party."

Pro-European Conservative MPs could join forces with Labour to block the kind of Brexit Theresa May wants, a Tory rebel has warned the PM.
Anna Soubry claimed there would be a Commons majority against leaving the single market and customs union.
Labour's Chuka Umunna, appearing alongside Ms Soubry on the Andrew Marr show, agreed with her comments.
MPs have been promised a "meaningful vote" on the terms of Brexit before it happens in March next year.
"If this government doesn't get this right," said Ms Soubry, "the majority of members of parliament, putting their constituents first, will find themselves unable to vote for a withdrawal agreement."
Theresa May is set to deliver a major speech within the next three weeks outlining the future relationship Britain wants to have with the EU.
The prime minister has ruled out continued membership of the single market and customs union.
But Ms Soubry, one of 11 pro-European Conservative MPs who defeated the government in December on the right to get a vote on any final Brexit deal, said the PM's stance was a "huge mistake".
"Not only is it bad for our economy but it also fundamentally undermines the [Northern Ireland] peace process that was achieved and this is really important," she told Andrew Marr.
She said she wanted the UK to remain in the European Free Trade Area, like Norway, which would allow access to the single market without being a member of the EU.
Asked by Andrew Marr if they believed they had a majority in the House of Commons to defeat "the kind of Brexit the prime minister wants", Ms Soubry said: "If she's not careful, yes."
Mr Umunna said: "There is no majority in the House of Commons for us simply to jump off a cliff."
When Andrew Marr suggested to Ms Soubry that she was politically closer to Mr Umunna than she was to leading Brexiteer and Conservative colleague Jacob Rees-Mogg, she said: "I'm not denying that."
Asked if she thought Brexit would definitely happen, Ms Soubry said: "I genuinely don't know what is going to happen."
Responding to whether it might be stopped, she said: "Well I'll tell you who might stop it, and that's the people of this country.
"We won't stop it. It is the people. We gave the people a referendum to start this process."
Mr Umunna said he also backed another referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal - something his party leader Jeremy Corbyn has appeared to rule out.
He claimed the Labour leader - who last month rejected calls to attend a cross-party summit on avoiding a "hard Brexit" - was "open minded" about staying in the single market.
"I cannot conceive of circumstances where Labour MPs are marshalled to go through the lobby and vote against us staying in the customs union and the single market, with the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove," said Mr Umunna.
Both MPs insisted they were acting in the "national interest," which they said transcended party politics.
Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell said another Brexit referendum would cause divisions and a "better route" would be to have a general election.
"Better we have a general election. On the issue, and all the other issues, because you then have a wider debate as well," he told told ITV's Peston On Sunday.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, who is campaigning for another referendum, said: "It is good to see cross-party cooperation between Tory and Labour rebels."
He said he was "optimistic that the rebellions in both Tory and Labour parties will spread in coming weeks", and that his party was working with them in the House of Lords.

There is a risk MPs could "steal Brexit from the British people" if Theresa May's proposed deal is rejected, a senior cabinet minister has warned.
Liam Fox said there was "natural Remain majority" in Parliament and any attempt to overturn the 2016 referendum vote would be a "democratic affront".
It came after MPs voted to exert more influence should the PM's deal fall.
Ministers will again battle to win over MPs to Theresa May's withdrawal deal after three government defeats.
Security will be the focus of the second of five days of debate in the Commons, where Tuesday's marathon session extended into the early hours.
Ahead of Prime Minister's Questions at noon, the government published its Brexit legal advice - a move which came after MPs voted to find the government in contempt of Parliament for ignoring a Commons vote demanding publication.
The PM's deal has been endorsed by EU leaders but must also be backed by the UK Parliament if it is to come into force. MPs will decide whether to reject or accept it next Tuesday, 11 December.
The UK is due to leave the European Union on 29 March, 2019. Ministers say that if MPs reject their deal they increase the chances of the UK leaving without a deal, or not leaving the EU at all.
Ministers will plough on with attempts to win over MPs on Wednesday, with eight hours of debate on the security and immigration aspects of the withdrawal agreement.
Meanwhile, Mrs May is expected to continue trying to convince small groups of her MPs to back the plan in private meetings.
Mrs May will face Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at prime minister's questions, at noon, before the Brexit debate gets under way.
Senior Brexiteers in the cabinet have warned that the UK may not leave the EU if Mrs May's deal is voted down.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox suggested the PM's deal was the only way of guaranteeing the UK leaves the EU, as scheduled, on 29 March 2019.
"When you are in prison and someone offers you a key, you take it," he told a committee of MPs.
While a no-deal exit would be "disorderly", he suggested the UK being kept in the EU against the will of the British people would be even more damaging.
"I think that there is a real danger that the House of Commons which has a natural remain majority may attempt to steal Brexit from British people which would be a democratic affront."
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the deal on the table was in the best interests of the country.
"Everyone has to think at this momentous moment - do we want to ensure that Brexit gets over the line? Do we want to deliver on the verdict of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the European Union because if we don't back the prime minister, we risk there being no Brexit and that I think would be a fatal blow to faith in democracy."
But a former Conservative chief whip has said he expects the PM to lose the vote.
Mark Harper, who backed Remain in the referendum told the Daily Telegraph he would vote against the withdrawal agreement, and predicted the deal would be rejected by 80 of his party colleagues.
He urged the prime minister to renegotiate the deal, insisting the current plan would leave the UK worse off.
First, the government lost a bid to have the legal advice issue dealt with separately by the Privileges Committee of MPs.
In a second defeat, ministers were found in contempt of parliament and forced to concede they would have to publish that advice in full, having previously argued this would break convention and was not in the national interest.
Most significantly, the third defeat was over changes to the parliamentary process in the event that the Commons votes down Mrs May's deal.
Instead of being confined to merely "taking note" of what the government tells them, MPs would also be able to exert more influence by voting on what they want the government to do next.
This could potentially see Parliament wrest control of the Brexit process from ministers if, as expected, MPs push for a "Plan B" alternative to Mrs May's deal and seek to prevent any chance of Britain leaving the EU without a deal in place.
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who brought the motion, told Channel 4 News it would "allow the UK time to consider its options", including re-starting negotiations with the EU or giving the public the final say.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: "The Commons is now very likely to defeat the government again next week on the Brexit deal, at which point the country must be given a 'People's Vote', and asked to choose between the deal or remaining in the EU."
By BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg
Former Remain rebels now have a possible route to get what they want if the PM's plan is rejected, as there is a possible - I emphasise the possible - way to get a vote with a majority for a Norway-style agreement or, less likely, a push for another referendum.
That won't go unnoticed by Brexiteers too, who may feel (some of them at least) that Mrs May's deal might be their best bet in that case, rather than risk that softer, squidgier Brexit.
It's possible therefore that Tuesday's shenanigans have made it less likely that the prime minister will face a terrible defeat next week because a few wobbly rebels on both sides might come in line.
When she finally kicked off the debate about the deal itself, Mrs May insisted the UK would enjoy a "better future" outside the EU.
She said the "honourable compromise" on offer was "not the one-way street" many had portrayed it to be and that the EU had made it clear that the agreement would not be improved on.
"I never said this deal was perfect, it was never going to be. That is the nature of a negotiation," she said.
"We should not let the search for a perfect Brexit prevent a good Brexit."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was a bad deal for the UK and that his party would seek a vote of no confidence in the government if it was thrown out by MPs.
"I hope and expect this House will reject that deal," he said.
"At that point, the government has lost the confidence of the House. Either they have to get a better deal from the EU or give way to those who will."
Nigel Dodds, leader of the DUP in Westminster, said the agreement "falls short" of delivering Brexit "as one United Kingdom" and would mean entering "a twilight world where the EU is given unprecedented powers over the UK".
Ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson dismissed the deal as a "paint and plaster pseudo-Brexit" and said its supporters would be "turning their backs" on the 17.4 million Leave voters.
The leader of the SNP at Westminster, Ian Blackford, said the "cold, hard truth" was that the deal represented "a moment of self-harm in our history".
"It is not too late to turn back," he said. "Fundamentally, there is no option that is going to be better for our economy, jobs, and for our communities than staying in the European Union."
However, in closing the debate shortly after 01:00 GMT on Wednesday, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay argued the deal would bring "real changes which will improve the livelihoods of people up and down the country".

MPs will get another chance to vote for an early election on Monday, the government has announced.
It comes after the House of Commons rejected Boris Johnson's plan for a snap election on 15 October in a vote on Wednesday.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said Labour wanted an election, but its priority was stopping a no-deal Brexit.
The PM later said he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than go to Brussels to ask for a further delay to Brexit.
He added that he wanted to give the country a choice.
"We either go forward with our plan to get a deal, take the country out on 31 October which we can or else somebody else should be allowed to see if they can keep us in beyond 31 October," Mr Johnson said.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's brother Jo Johnson - who backed Remain in the 2016 EU referendum - has quit as Tory MP and minister, saying he is "torn between family and national interest".
And independent MP Luciana Berger, who left the Labour Party for Change UK earlier this year, has joined the Liberal Democrats, saying she is acting "in the national interest, to offer a vital, positive alternative to Johnson and Corbyn".
The fresh vote on an early election is scheduled just before Parliament is due to be prorogued - or suspended - from next week until 14 October.
Announcing the vote, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said the suspension would begin on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday but did not say precisely when.
The government-controlled commission responsible for setting the date has not yet made a decision, he added.
Opposition parties are holding talks about how to respond to the prime minister's call for a mid-October election, amid concern over whether it should be delayed until after an extension has been agreed to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
A bill aimed at preventing a no-deal Brexit was approved by the Commons on Wednesday and a deal was agreed in the early hours of Thursday that Tory peers would not attempt to filibuster - talk it out - in the Lords.
The government says this bill will now complete its passage through the Lords on Friday.
Number 10 said the bill "would in essence overturn the biggest democratic vote in our history - the 2016 referendum". It added: "The PM will not do this."
Labour and other opposition MPs say they will not back the prime minister's call to have a general election while the option of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October remains open to Mr Johnson.
Mr McDonnell told the BBC that Labour would only agree once it had ensured the legislation to protect against a no-deal Brexit, but he would prefer to have an election "later rather than sooner".
He said Labour was "consulting" with other opposition parties "to determine the date" of a general election.
"The problem that we've got is that we cannot at the moment have any confidence in Boris Johnson abiding by any commitment or deal that we could construct," he said. "So we are now consulting on whether it's better to go long, therefore, rather than to go short."
He acknowledged there were splits in Labour about the timing of a general election, saying the leadership was in contact with legal experts and other opposition parties about what to do.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said she believed Mr Johnson could try to press ahead with a no-deal Brexit, despite the legislation.
"I do have confidence that the bill will get through the House of Lords," she said.
"But in the current circumstances where we find ourselves, where we've got a prime minister seemingly prepared to do anything to rip up the traditions of parliamentary democracy, then I also think that we need to be very aware of the risks."
Meanwhile, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has warned Mr Johnson that he "cannot win an election, whenever it comes, if the Brexit Party stands against him".
However, if they were to make a pact during a general election "with a clear policy, we'd be unstoppable", he told BBC Breakfast.
Elsewhere, legal challenges against Mr Johnson's plan to shut down Parliament next week are taking place.
The High Court in England will consider a judicial review request from Gina Miller, the businesswoman who successfully challenged the government over the triggering of the Article 50 process to start the Brexit countdown. She will be joined by former Prime Minister Sir John Major.
In Scotland, there is an appeal against a ruling that said the prime minister had not broken any laws by asking the Queen to suspend Parliament.
And in Belfast, a judicial review against the government by a campaigner arguing that no deal could jeopardise the Northern Ireland peace process, has been fast-tracked and will be heard later.
In the Lords, peers sat until 01:30 BST, holding a series of amendment votes that appeared to support predictions of a marathon filibuster session - designed to derail the bill.
But then Lord Ashton of Hyde announced that all stages of the bill would be completed in the Lords by 17:00 BST on Friday.
The proposed legislation was passed by MPs on Wednesday, inflicting a defeat on Mr Johnson.
The bill says the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit - and after that he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020.
However, an extension would require the agreement of the EU, a point which Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming says is being made "quite strenuously" by EU officials.
And Michel Barnier, the chief European Brexit negotiator, is reported to have told European diplomats that negotiations with London over the terms of Britain's withdrawal from the EU are in a state of paralysis.
He also advised that the UK appeared intent on reducing the level of ambition in the political declaration that will steer the next stage of the negotiations.
Responding to the comments, Downing Street said it rejected Mr Barnier's assessment.
The PM's official spokesman said: "Both sides agree to continue talks tomorrow after constructive discussions yesterday and we have seen from EU leaders that there is a willingness to find and agree solutions to the problems we have with the old deal."

MPs are voting on whether to allow the government to get negotiations for Brexit under way.
With Labour also backing the European Union Bill, the Commons is expected to pass it by a large majority, with the result expected at about 1930 GMT.
But several Labour MPs are expected to rebel by voting against it. Rachael Maskell and Dawn Butler have just quit Jeremy Corbyn's front bench to do so.
The SNP also opposes the bill, which has been debated for two days.
If it passes, it will undergo more scrutiny in the Commons and Lords before passing into law.
MPs voted down an SNP amendment aimed at scuppering the bill.
Prime Minister Theresa May says she wants to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, enabling negotiations with the EU to get under way, by 31 March.
Labour shadow environment secretary Rachael Maskell and equalities spokeswoman Dawn Butler announced they were resigning from leader Jeremy Corbyn's team so that they could vote against the European Union Bill.
During the debate earlier, former Chancellor George Osborne said the government had chosen "not to make the economy the priority in this negotiation, they have prioritised immigration control", while the EU's priority would be to "maintain the integrity of the remaining 27 members of the European Union".
He predicted the talks with the EU would be bitter, and a trade-off between "access and money".
Mr Osborne said he had "passionately" campaigned for a Remain vote in the EU referendum and had sacrificed his position in government for the cause.
But he said for Parliament not to allow Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to be invoked would "alienate people who already feel alienated" and could cause a "deep constitutional crisis".
Before that, MPs were told that European Commission chiefs plan to ask the UK to pay up to 60bn euros for its separation from the EU.
Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK's former ambassador to the EU, told a Commons committee that the commission's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and other key figures were "openly" saying the UK's total financial liabilities would be in the order of 40 to 60bn euros.
He said the "unreasonable" figure represented a "predictably hard line".
In other Brexit news, Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed a White Paper setting out her Brexit strategy would be published on Thursday.
The official document, which will include a desire to secure the status of EU nationals in the UK and Britons abroad, is separate to the Brexit bill being debated by MPs.
Mr Corbyn faces a rebellion by a number of his MPs, including several frontbenchers, while the SNP and Liberal Democrats are also promising to oppose ministers.
The Labour leader has imposed a three-line whip - the strongest possible sanction - on his MPs to back the bill, which is only two lines long.
If the vote goes the government's way, the bill will return to the Commons next week for the committee stage, when opposition parties will try to push through a series of amendments.
The bill was published last week, after the Supreme Court decided MPs and peers must have a say before Article 50 could be triggered.
It rejected the government's argument that Mrs May had sufficient powers to trigger Brexit without consulting Parliament.

Boris Johnson has refused to moderate his language during a heated debate in the Commons, despite a barrage of criticism from opposition benches.
Labour's Paula Sherriff referred to Jo Cox, the MP murdered in 2016, as she pleaded with him to refrain from using "dangerous" words like "surrender".
He described her intervention as "humbug" and repeated the word again.
The SNP's Nicola Sturgeon said there was "a gaping moral vacuum where the office of prime minister used to be".
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg described scenes in Parliament as an "absolute bear pit".
Mr Johnson was repeatedly challenged over his use of the word "surrender" to describe legislation passed earlier this month which aims to block a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
Ms Sherriff, the Labour MP for Dewsbury, told the Commons the prime minister had "continually used pejorative language to describe an Act of Parliament passed by this House".
Pointing to a plaque in the chamber, commemorating Mrs Cox, who was murdered by a right-wing extremist, she said:  "We should not resort to using offensive, dangerous or inflammatory language for legislation that we do not like, and we stand here under the shield of our departed friend with many of us in this place subject to death threats and abuse every single day."
"They often quote his words 'Surrender Act', 'betrayal', 'traitor' and I for one am sick of it.
"We must moderate our language, and it has to come from the prime minister first."
In response, Mr Johnson said: "I have to say, Mr Speaker, I've never heard such humbug in all my life."
Tracy Brabin, who was elected as MP for Batley and Spen after Ms Cox was murdered, also urged the prime minister to moderate his language "so that we will all feel secure when we're going about our jobs".
Mr Johnson replied that "the best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox and indeed the best way to bring this country together would be, I think, to get Brexit done".
Mrs Cox's husband, Brendan, later tweeted he felt "sick at Jo's name being used in this way".
The best way to honour her is to "stand up for what we believe in, passionately and with determination", he tweeted.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said the prime minister was an "utter disgrace" for his response to the questions on his language.
She told MPs: "I today have reported to the police a threat against my child. That has been dismissed as 'humbug'.
"This is a disgraceful state of affairs and we must be able to find a way to conduct ourselves better."
Leader of the Independent Group for Change, Anna Soubry, said it "takes a lot to reduce this honourable member to tears" but she said she is "not alone tonight".
"There are others I believe who have left the estate, such has been the distress," she told MPs.
"In this, the most peculiar and extraordinary of political times, the language that is used is incredibly important.
"We have evidence, whatever side of the debate you are on, when you use word like 'surrender', 'capitulation', and others use the word 'traitor' and 'treason', there is a direct consequence.
"It means my mother receives a threat to her safety. It means my partner receives a death threat."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn urged the Speaker to unite the party leaders "to issue a joint declaration opposing any form of abusive language or threats and to put this message out to our entire community that we have to treat each other with respect".
Speaker John Bercow said he was "very open to convening a meeting of senior colleagues for the purpose of a House-wide public statement".
Conservative MP Stephen Crabb told BBC Newsnight that he was "shocked by the way [the PM] responded to the remarks about Jo Cox".
He said Mr Johnson had "strong support among Conservative MPs... but he also has a duty as prime minister to try to bring unity to our country and reduce the level of poison in our politics".
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan said the prime minister was "aware and sympathetic" to the threats MPs have received.
"But at a time of strong feelings we all need to remind ourselves of the effect of everything we say on those watching us," she tweeted.

MSPs have voted to say Holyrood "does not consent" to UK Brexit legislation.
The Withdrawal Agreement Bill - which will take the UK out of the EU - is currently passing through Westminster.
The UK government wanted MSPs to give their formal consent to the bill, but all parties bar the Conservatives ultimately spoke out against it.
Scottish Brexit secretary Mike Russell said voters north of the border had repeatedly said "very clearly" that "they do not want to leave the EU".
His motion rejecting the Brexit legislation passed by 92 votes to 29, with Labour, the Greens and Lib Dems all backing the SNP administration.
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack has indicated that the bill will proceed regardless, saying the UK government would "respect the democratic outcome" of the 2016 referendum.
The Scottish government has long refused to put forward Brexit legislation for consent votes at Holyrood, after the original EU Withdrawal Act passed into law despite opposition from MSPs.
Members instead debated a memorandum detailing the Scottish government's opposition to the legislation, which states that "the best option for the UK as a whole, and for Scotland, is to remain in the EU, as voted for by the people of Scotland".
Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh said he would write to counterparts in the UK's other parliaments to note that Holyrood had withheld its consent for the legislation.
Mr Russell led the debate for the SNP, saying that "Scotland has rejected Brexit, and those who espouse Brexit are also being rejected by Scotland".
He said: "Scotland has had enough of being spoken for and enough of being spoken over. It's had enough of Brexit, and we should say that loudly and clearly as a country and a parliament."
Scottish Conservative constitution spokesman Adam Tomkins said the SNP would have opposed the bill no matter what it contained, adding: "You cannot be opposed to a no-deal Brexit and at the same time oppose any and every available deal that would avoid it."
Scottish Labour's Alex Rowley said there was a "very real prospect" of the UK exiting the EU without a trade deal after the transition period, saying: "While Brexit will now happen, it will not be over with for a very long time."
Patrick Harvie said there was "no way the Scottish Greens could back this bill", adding that "the unspoken reality of course is the the UK government honestly doesn't give a damn if MSPs give consent or not".
And Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie said he would "continue to make the case to stop Brexit", saying the UK's exit from the EU had already "divided our country, damaged our economy and diminished our place in the world".
At Westminster, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack was asked whether the UK government would "respect" MSPs' rejection of the legislation.
He replied: "What we are respecting is the democratic outcome of referendums, which the SNP does not respect.
"The referendum in 2016 was a United Kingdom referendum, and we voted to leave the European Union. We are respecting that."
Under the Sewel convention, Westminster would "not normally" legislate across devolved areas without the consent of MSPs.
However Mr Jack insisted that the Brexit legislation was not normal, adding: "This is a constitutional matter, and they are not normally under the remit of the Scottish Parliament".
Scottish and UK ministers are set to meet for Brexit talks at a Joint Ministerial Council summit in London on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested the UK could get a special trade deal with the EU after Brexit.
But he warned that Britain would not have full access to the single market without accepting its rules.
Speaking to Andrew Marr, he warned - as Brussels has already done - that the UK could not "cherry-pick" the elements it liked.
A deal might fall somewhere between the single market and a trade agreement, he said.
Mr Macron's comments came during his first visit to the UK since becoming French president, where he held talks with Prime Minister Theresa May.
In the interview, to be broadcast on Sunday, the leader said the UK should not gain access to the single market without accepting its "preconditions", which include freedom of movement across the EU, budget contributions and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
"There should be no cherry-picking in the single market because that's a dismantling of the single market," he said.
"As soon as you decide not to join the [EU] preconditions, it's not a full access.
"What is important is to not make people believe that it is possible to [have your cake and eat it]."
He said the UK could have "deeper relations" with the EU than other countries, as with Norway, but ruled out full single market access as "you decided to leave".
Speaking in a separate interview, with German newspaper Bild, Mrs May insisted any new deal between the UK and the EU was "not about cherry-picking".
"We want to negotiate a comprehensive free trade agreement and a security partnership," she said.
"Because we don't start from the position of, say, Canada or Norway - there are significant and long-grown economic links between us.
"What I want and hope is that the importance of a lasting good relationship for people on both sides of the Channel is recognised."
By BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
Essentially President Macron is looking for a negotiated Brexit deal that is in France's interest. And this is what the British government is hoping: that each EU country will now push its own agenda in trade talks, allowing the UK to get the bespoke deal it wants.
But the cold water on that argument is that every EU member benefits from the European single market. They don't want rules to be broken just for the UK if that might hurt them in the long run.
President Macron believes EU interests are France's interests. He aims to "make France great again" and wants his country to be the most influential in Europe (taking from Germany, which is now hobbled by domestic political problems).
He won't endanger his grand plan by advocating special deals for the UK that might damage the EU as a whole.
Mr Macron said access to the EU for the UK's financial services sector was "not feasible" if the UK did not accept the obligations of the single market.
But he insisted he did not want to "unplug" the City from the EU, adding: "It doesn't make sense, because it's part of the whole financing of our European Union."
He told Marr it was not too late for the UK to change its mind about remaining - describing the 2016 referendum as a "mistake".
"I do respect this vote, I do regret this vote, and I would love to welcome you again," he said.
"It's a mistake when you just ask 'yes' or 'no' when you don't ask people how to improve the situation and explain how to improve it."
Mr Macron said he believed the Brexit vote mainly came from the middle and working classes, and older people, who "decided that the recent decade was not in their favour".
"When I look at your debate it was too much favourable just for the City and less favourable for the rest of the country," he said.
But, speaking to Bild, Mrs May once again flatly denied there would be a second referendum: "Parliament gave the British public the choice and they made their decision. I think it's important that politicians then deliver on that."
On his first visit to the UK this week, President Macron signed a treaty with the Prime Minister to speed up the processing of migrants in Calais.
Mrs May praised the "uniquely close relationship" between the two nations.
She said both leaders remained committed to the Le Touquet border agreement which established French border controls in Britain and UK controls in Calais. The UK also announced an extra £44.5m to be spent on beefing up Channel border security.
The visit was punctuated by a smiling selfie taken of Mr Macron and Mrs May, at an evening reception in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
During the trip there was chatter about whether UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had discussed building a bridge across the English Channel, between France and the UK.
But Downing Street has said there are "no specific plans" for such a project.
The full interview with French President Emmanuel Macron will be broadcast on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday at 09:00 GMT. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer after it is broadcast.

The EU will decide at the end of the week whether a Brexit deal is going to be possible, French President Emmanuel Macron has told Boris Johnson.
President Macron said talks should now proceed swiftly to see if an agreement could "respect" EU principles.
Mr Johnson said the EU should not be "lured" into thinking there would be a delay to Brexit beyond 31 October.
The PM will hold further calls with EU leaders on Monday to discuss his latest proposals for the Irish border.
Downing Street said Mr Johnson was expected to hold phone calls with the leaders of Sweden, Denmark and Poland, after speaking to Mr Macron on Sunday.
The prime minister told the French president over the phone he believed a deal could be achieved, but that the EU must match compromises made by the UK.
A French government official said President Macron told Mr Johnson "that the negotiations should continue swiftly with Michel Barnier's team in coming days, in order to evaluate at the end of the week whether a deal is possible that respects European Union principles".
The comments come ahead of a key few days of negotiations as both parties try to find a new agreement in time for a summit of European leaders on 17 and 18 October.
On Monday, Mr Johnson's Europe adviser, David Frost, will hold further discussions with the European Commission, while Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will visit EU capitals.
Arrangements for preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland continue to be a sticking point, with the EU calling for "fundamental changes" to the UK's latest proposals.
A senior Number 10 source said: "The UK has made a big, important offer but it's time for the Commission to show a willingness to compromise too. If not the UK will leave with no deal."
It's good to talk.
But was there a meeting of minds between the prime minister and the French president?
Boris Johnson's aim was to disabuse President Macron of any suspicion that parliament simply wouldn't allow the UK to leave the EU at the end of the month without a deal.
So this really could be the 'final opportunity' to seal one.
The prime minister will deliver a similar message to other EU leaders.
So far, though, Mr Johnson's proposals are yet to open the door to more intensive negotiations.
From the Elysee Palace's account of the call, Macron's message to the PM seemed to be: First, work through the EU negotiator, Michel Barnier - don't work on individual leaders.
And second, if you don't move a bit more towards the EU's position  by the end of the week, then it's no deal.
So far, then, any talks seem to resemble the denouement of Reservoir Dogs - more stand-off than mutual understanding.
Under the Benn Act, passed last month, the prime minister must write to the EU requesting a Brexit extension if no deal is signed off by Parliament by 19 October, unless MPs agree to a no-deal Brexit.
Government papers submitted to a Scottish court said that Mr Johnson will comply, despite his assertion that there will be "no more dither or delay".
The Number 10 source called the legislation a "surrender act" and said its authors were "undermining negotiations".
"If EU leaders are betting that it will prevent no deal, that would be a historic misunderstanding," they said.
Under Mr Johnson's proposals, which he calls a "broad landing zone" for a new deal with the EU:
Mr Johnson has claimed his plans will be supported by Parliament.
At the weekend he said his untested plan to use technology to eliminate customs border checks would take the UK out of EU trade rules while respecting the Northern Ireland peace process.
He claimed MPs from "every wing of the Conservative Party", Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party and from Labour have said "our proposed deal looks like one they can get behind".
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay said talks were under way with Labour and other opposition MPs aimed at securing their support for a new deal.
He said ministers were "considering" the idea of putting the PM's proposals to a vote in Parliament to test support for them ahead of the EU summit.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn is set to meet the leaders of other opposition parties to scrutinise the government's new Brexit proposals.
The cross-party meeting between Labour, the SNP, Lib Dems, Greens and others on Monday will decide the next steps to "hold the government to account".
Monday 7 October - Opposition leaders meet to discuss the PM's border proposals. In Edinburgh, the Court of Session could rule on the sanctions Boris Johnson would face if he contravened the law compelling him to seek a Brexit delay.
Tuesday 8 October - Last working day in the House of Commons before it is due to be prorogued - suspended - ahead of a Queen's Speech to begin a new parliamentary session.
Monday 14 October - The Commons is due to return, and the government will use the Queen's Speech to set out its legislative agenda. The speech will be then be debated by MPs throughout the week.
Thursday 17 October - Crucial two-day summit of EU leaders begins in Brussels. This is the last such meeting currently scheduled before the Brexit deadline.
Saturday 19 October - Date by which the PM must ask the EU for another delay to Brexit under the Benn Act, if no Brexit deal has been approved by Parliament and they have not agreed to the UK leaving with no-deal.
Thursday 31 October - Date by which the UK is due to leave the EU, with or without a withdrawal agreement.

Former prime minister Sir John Major has told the BBC he would seek a judicial review in the courts if the new prime minister tried to suspend Parliament to deliver a no-deal Brexit.
Sir John said such a move would be "utterly and totally unacceptable".
Using a judicial review, anyone can apply to challenge the lawfulness of decisions made by the government.
Boris Johnson - the frontrunner in the Tory leadership race - has refused to rule out proroguing Parliament.
A source close to Boris Johnson told the BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith that Sir John "has gone completely bonkers" and had "clearly been driven completely mad by Brexit".
They said the threat of court action was "absurd" and risked dragging the Queen into politics.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but this date was delayed after MPs repeatedly rejected Theresa May's deal. Currently, the date for exit is 31 October.
If that date is reached without a deal being agreed on the separation process, then the UK will leave without one.
MPs have consistently voted against this option, but the prime minister could try to get around that by closing Parliament - proroguing - in the run-up to Brexit day, denying them an opportunity to block it.
Prorogation ends a parliamentary session, meaning MPs can no longer vote on legislation. A new session opens with the State Opening of Parliament and the Queen's Speech.
The question of prorogation was raised during a lTV debate between Mr Johnson and his rival in the race to lead the Conservative Party Jeremy Hunt.
Mr Hunt categorically ruled it out but Mr Johnson said he would "not take anything off the table".
Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, Sir John said: "In order to close down Parliament, the prime minister would have to go to Her Majesty the Queen and ask for her permission."
He said it would be "inconceivable" the Queen would refuse his request and that she would be put "amidst a constitutional controversy".
"The Queen's decision cannot be challenged in law, but the prime minister's advice to the Queen can, I believe, be challenged in law - and I for one would be prepared to seek judicial review to prevent Parliament being bypassed," he said.
Sir John also criticised the "artificial" Brexit deadline of 31 October which he said "had a great deal more to do with the election of leader for the Conservative Party than the interests of the country".
"National leaders look first at the interests of the country - not first at the interests of themselves," he added.
Conservative MP and Boris Johnson supporter Chris Philp described Sir John's threat as "a stunt" adding "I don't think it is a serious proposition".
He told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Prorogation is not the plan A or even plan B or plan C.  The main plan is to get a deal agreed with the European Union."
However, Labour peer and Remain supporter Lord Falconer said Sir John had "accurately set out the legal position".
The former justice secretary said that "to advise the Queen to prevent Parliament from doing its job would be to cut out the most basic part of our constitution and therefore would be unlawful."
Sir John's comments give you an idea of the distrust, hostility and division now gripping the Tory party in this contest.
That prospect of a judicial review opens up an entirely new front in the campaign to halt no deal.
We know already a number of Tory MPs - like Dominic Grieve - are trying to devise parliamentary mechanisms to thwart no deal - so far with no success.
Now we have John Major opening up an entirely new judicial route to stop Boris Johnson from proroguing parliament.
It points to the key dividing line in the party. It is not the backstop, not the Northern Ireland border, not the date we leave.
The real dividing line is over attitudes to no deal. It is clear Boris Johnson's supporters are pretty sanguine about it.
On the other hand figures like John Major and Philip Hammond believe there are profound risks - and that is the crunch dividing line.

The government should rethink its Brexit strategy, following last week's election, according to the engineering industry organisation, the EEF.
It said without a more pro-business stance, the resulting political instability may force more firms to alter their plans "away from the UK".
The EEF is the latest business organisation to call for a rethink of the government's Brexit plans.
It wants access to the single market to be at the heart of Brexit negotiations.
The EEF said even before the election firms were already altering or thinking about changing their business plans because of the Brexit vote.
Terry Scuoler, EEF chief executive, said the government had already "wasted a year" and needed to "move away from its previous rhetoric and start repairing relations with EU partners".
For the EEF that meant putting access to the single market and staying in a customs union at the centre of the government's negotiations and involving business groups in the talks over trade.
It is also calling for a "suitable" transition period to be "firmly back on the table" as part of the Brexit talks.
On Monday Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, called for the government to "reset" Brexit negotiations, which are due to start next week.
Meanwhile, the uncertainty caused by the general election has led business confidence to sink "through the floor", according to the Institute of Directors.
A snap poll of 700 members of the lobby group found a "dramatic drop" in confidence following the hung parliament.
The main priority for the new government should be striking a new trade deal with the European Union, according to the IoD.
Business groups such as the CBI and EEF believe the election result has weakened the hand of those wanting a "hard Brexit", which would involve leaving not just the EU but also the single market, customs union and escaping the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
They favour a deal that would give British business much the same access to the rest of the EU as they enjoy now and seem to be freshly emboldened to press their case.

Martin Selmayr has been appointed Secretary-General of the Commission, the organisation that monitors whether countries are sticking to EU rules, dreams up new laws and runs the Brexit talks day-to-day.
Normal service in the Brussels bubble temporarily came to a halt when journalists became consumed by the saga.
The 40-something former lawyer and media executive from Germany joined the European Commission as a press officer in 2004.
He helped run Jean-Claude Juncker's successful campaign to be selected as president of the commission in 2014 and later became his head of cabinet, Brussels-speak for chief of staff.
He has earned multiple nicknames, like the Monster or the Beast of the Berlaymont, the name of the building where he works.
It depends who you ask.
Admirers, like his mentor the German MEP Elmar Brok, describe a hard-working strategic genius with political nous, who gets much better results than your average official.
Detractors say his take-no-prisoners attitude goes too far. Asked about his fierce reputation, Mr Selmayr himself said: "You can't run the European Commission like a Montessori school," referring to the education system that favours child development over passing exams.
Brussels-based journalists love to talk about him. Endlessly.
Selmayr-slanging has reached new heights.
At a surprise press conference in February, Jean-Claude Juncker announced he had been keeping a secret: the commission's top civil servant, the secretary-general, was retiring. Martin Selmayr would take his place.
It emerged that Mr Selmayr had applied for the role of deputy secretary-general, got that job and was then instantly promoted.
But there's more.
It has been suggested that the only other candidate in the race to become deputy withdrew their application, meaning Mr Selmayr had a clear run to the top.
It has been alleged that members of the European Commission were offered more generous severance packages as inducements to smooth Mr Selmayr's path, which is vigorously denied.
It is claimed that he even plans to knock down walls in the commission's management suite to cement his power.
The European Commission's spokespeople have endured hours of questioning about the promotion. And I mean hours.
Many of the stories are "post-truth", they claim. Especially the one about commissioners' retirement pay-offs.
And they say the recruitment process was followed "religiously" which prompted a social-media meme of Mr Selmayr dressed as a nun (I told you journalists were obsessed).
The European Parliament holding a debate about it on Monday. A motion calls for a formal inquiry into the appointment and more transparency in the recruitment process in general.
"The way Martin Selmayr was appointed puts the European institutions into disrespect. If this procedure was corresponding to the rules, the rules have to be changed," said Green MEP Sven Giegold.
To MEPs outside the most powerful parliamentary groups it looks like jobs for the boys.
To campaigning reporters it smells bad. To less zealous journalists it is great gossip.
To Brexiteers it is a "coup" that proves the EU's structures are opaque and undemocratic.
To me, it is the latest twist in a long-running tussle over where power lies in Europe: with the member states or with an increasingly political commission that seeks to protect the very idea of the EU.

Italian PM Matteo Renzi's referendum defeat on Sunday has left Italy facing political and economic uncertainty.
Mr Renzi announced he was stepping down after his constitution reform plan was rejected by voters.
He met President Sergio Mattarella and will offer him his resignation later. Mr Mattarella must decide whether to appoint a new PM or hold elections.
There are concerns the instability may trigger a deeper crisis for Italy's already vulnerable banking sector.
A consortium organising a possible bailout for one leading bank, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, is meeting on Monday to consider whether to pursue the rescue bid.
With most ballots counted, the No vote leads with 60% against 40% for Yes, with a 70% turnout.
Mr Renzi staked his political future on his attempt to change Italy's cumbersome political system. He wanted to strengthen central government and weaken the Senate, the upper house of parliament.
His opponents - including some within his own party - had argued that the reforms would give the prime minister too much power. The electorate agreed.
But the referendum was more than a vote on constitutional reform, it was widely regarded as a chance to reject establishment politics.
It was a resounding victory for the No camp, a medley of populist parties headed by the Five Star Movement, which capitalised on Mr Renzi's declining popularity, years of economic stagnation, and the problems caused by tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Italy from Africa.
EU leaders won't have slept much on Sunday night. Angst about Italy makes an uncomfortable bedfellow and there's plenty for them to worry about.  Particularly in Brussels.
Prime Minister Renzi was the only premier left in Europe with a vision for the EU's future. Angela Merkel is too busy crisis-managing while much of France is in thrall to Front National eurosceptics.
But Matteo Renzi is no more. The self-styled reformer with his promise to stabilise politics and kick-start the Italian economy has managed quite the reverse.
Italy wakes up on Monday to the threat of a banking crisis, political turmoil, and a group of anti-establishment populists banging on the doors of government. Eurozone beware and EU be warned. Italy is the euro currency's third largest economy and it's in for a bumpy ride. And there are more unpredictable votes to come in 2017: in France, Germany, the Netherlands and perhaps here in Italy too.
The No vote's victory was even bigger than the last opinion poll in November had predicted.
Five Star says it is getting ready to govern Italy. Its leader Beppe Grillo said an election should be called "within a week".
Another opposition leader Matteo Salvini, of the anti-immigrant Northern League, called the referendum a "victory of the people against the strong powers of three-quarters of the world".
Mr Renzi will hand in his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella after the final cabinet meeting.
The president may ask him to stay on at least until parliament has passed a budget bill due later this month.
In spite of the pressure from the opposition, early elections are thought to be unlikely.
Instead, the president may appoint a caretaker administration led by Mr Renzi's Democratic Party, which would carry on until an election due in the spring of 2018.
Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan is the favourite to succeed Mr Renzi as prime minister.
The result is being seen as a blow to the EU, although there is no question of Italy following the UK out of the door.
Both Five Star and the Northern League are opposed to the eurozone but not to membership of the EU itself.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the group of 19 eurozone countries, denied any impending crisis.
"It doesn't really change the situation economically in Italy or in the Italian banks. The problems that we have today are the problems that we had yesterday," he said.
Meanwhile a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said she "took note with regret" of Mr Renzi's resignation but Germany would offer to work closely with the next Italian government.
But the leader of far-right Front National in France, Marine Le Pen, tweeted: "The Italians have disavowed the EU and Renzi. We must listen to this thirst for freedom of nations."
Markets seemed to have taken Mr Renzi's departure in their stride. Stocks and the euro fell in early trading in Asia but there were no signs of panic, as the possibility of his resignation had already been factored in.
But the referendum result could have longer-term implications.
There have been growing concerns over financial stability in the eurozone's third largest economy.
Italy's economy is 12% smaller than when the financial crisis began in 2008.
The banks remain weak and the country's debt-to-GDP ratio, at 133%, is second only to Greece's.
There is a risk that the failure of a major bank could set off a wider crisis, but repairing the banks becomes more difficult amid political uncertainty.
One of the threatened banks is the world's oldest and Italy's third-largest, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which has been ordered by the European Central Bank to reduce its holdings of bad debt.
The bank is trying to raise new capital to the tune of €5bn (£4.2bn; $5.3bn), but a consortium which had hoped to organise a rescue plan will meet on Monday morning to review its options.
With Mr Renzi gone, and populist parties on the rise, the question is whether Italy can keep a lid on the problems.

Theresa May's speech was another key milestone in the Brexit process and for once business leaders did not leave totally disappointed.
What business will most appreciate is that this was not a complacent speech.
It acknowledged the scale and complexity of the task in hand and made some pragmatic concessions to the realities of trade with the EU.
Most of those concessions will please the business community, but some may not satisfy members of her party.
Perhaps the most eye-catching passage for business was the prime minister's indication that the UK would be prepared to pay to remain a member of some European regulatory agencies, such as the European Medicines Agency or the European Aviation Safety Authority.
As the regulations change, the UK parliament could choose to enact an identical law - or not - but failing to do so would be in the knowledge that it might affect our membership of the agency.
So parliament remains sovereign but in practice would probably not use that sovereignty in case we got booted out of the agency. That will sound suspiciously like rule taking to some Brexit firebrands.
She also accepted that on goods regulations, UK standards would have to be at least as high as the EU's - so, no bonfire of regulation that frankly no one in the business world wanted anyway.
On services, which accounts for about three quarters of the UK economy, she conceded that services had never been included in any meaningful way in previous deals and this accepted this part would be tough.
The tone was strongest on financial services. She said that London was the most important financial centre in the world and the UK taxpayers take the risk of being its home - so the UK could never be a rule taker.
She called for a collaborative, objective framework that was mutually agreed and permanent. That would mean "equivalence" (which the EU already grants to some third countries) is probably not good enough as it can be terminated at short notice. She said Phillip Hammond would expand upon the UK's ideas on this shortly.
On customs, it seems that a new "partnership" with the EU has become the favourite option. This would require the UK to enforce both its own customs arrangements and act as agent for the EU when goods arrive in the UK bound for the EU.
This option sounds mindbogglingly complex and business will need to see much more detail to be convinced that the government has a solid answer to a very important question for them - and the future of the border on island of Ireland.
As Adam Marshall of the BCC said: "The prime minister was clearer and more realistic than ever before on the political choices and economic trade-offs ahead."
The financial services lobby group, TheCityUK, praised her for making "a detailed and practical proposition and it should put to rest any suggestion that the UK has not made its intentions and ambitions clear".
Was it cherry picking? To an extent - but she had a neat if simplistic answer to this. Every trade deal involves a bit of cherry picking and the EU does it too in its differing approaches to its deals with South Korea and Canada.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted:
Mrs May also said the two sides were close to agreement on an implementation period. Some members of her own party would rather not agree to that until they know what they are implementing - but it will be music to the ears of many businesses who are close to pulling the trigger on contingency plans in case of a no deal scenario.
That threat seemed to be in retreat in the prime minister's tone. While Nigel Farage called it a negotiating mistake, it will be a relief to most businesses.

Theresa May has held talks about Brexit with Northern Ireland's five main political parties at Stormont.
The PM was on a two-day visit to try to reassure people she can secure a Brexit deal that avoids a hard border.
Speaking on Wednesday, European Council President Donald Tusk said the EU would "insist" on the Irish backstop.
Mr Tusk also said that there was a "special place in hell" for "those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it safely".
He was speaking after talks with Taoiseach (Irish PM) Leo Varadkar in Brussels.
In response to Mr Tusk's remarks, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley said "it is a delicate time and it is important we all consider our words carefully".
Mrs May is due to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday in an effort to secure changes to her Brexit deal.
The EU has maintained it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, including the Irish border backstop.
On Tuesday, Mrs May told business leaders in Belfast that she wants changes to the controversial backstop but she suggested that she is not seeking to remove it from her Brexit deal.
Analysis by Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News Political Editor
Tomorrow she will be in Brussels, asking again for the EU to amend the policy, seeking either a time limit or a legal upgrade to the promise that both sides will only use it if they really, really, really have to, and they don't expect it to last for ever.
In short, Wednesday has been a chance for the PM to test out what she'll ask for; tomorrow is an opportunity to sell it as hard as she can in Brussels.
Remember she has asked for these changes before and been turned down.
And she's heard before from both sides in Northern Ireland how dug in their positions are.
So can she do anything other than take one more turn around the same carousel while the clock ticks down?
Mrs May held meetings about Brexit and Northern Ireland's political deadlock with Stormont's five biggest political parties:
It sparked a snap election but, since then, various talks processes have collapsed and the Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley had to take control of financial matters and pass Stormont's budget bills through Westminster.
DUP
Leader Arlene Foster reiterated the party's opposition to the backstop and said Mrs May must "stand strong" in her talks with the EU.
Mrs Foster also said Mr Tusk's comments were "deliberately provocative and disrespectful" and that the pressure is mounting among EU leaders.
Brexit spokesperson Sammy Wilson responded to Mr Tusk's comments by calling him a "devilish euro maniac", and accused the European Council president of having "fanned the flames of fear" to try and overturn the referendum result.
President Mary Lou McDonald said Donald Tusk's words were "accurately reflecting the outrage" people in NI feel about how Brexit has been handled.
She added that the party's meeting with the PM was direct, but offered nothing new and she accused Mrs May of having "no honour".
Ms McDonald also reiterated the party's support for the backstop and that a border poll should take place if there is a no-deal Brexit.
The idea of a border poll was met sceptically on Tuesday by Tony Lloyd, Northern Ireland's shadow secretary of state, who said it was "not the most obvious thing we should rush into".
UUP
Leader Robin Swann said his party would not accept a time-limited backstop, something the PM suggested when his party met her.
He added that Mrs May wanted to focus on Brexit and the UUP had to "drag" her to a place where they could raise the restoration of Stormont.
Mr Swann said his party told her they wanted direct rule implemented in Northern Ireland if there is a no-deal Brexit.
SDLP
Leader Colum Eastwood said that his party had told Mrs May that it is now time to "put up or shut up".
He said it was clear the backstop was the only viable solution, save keeping the UK in the single market and the customs union.
He added that he had been "infuriated" when the government voted in favour of an amendment last week that called for alternative arrangements to replace the backstop.
Alliance Party
Leader Naomi Long said the time for "assurances" about Brexit from the government was over, describing her party's talks with Mrs May as "constructive but very direct".
Ms Long reiterated that the party had heard nothing new from Mrs May and that it still backed the Brexit deal that included the backstop.
The backstop is a commitment to avoid physical barriers or checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, if no UK-EU trade deal is agreed before the Brexit transition period ends.
Many people fear the return of customs checks would put the peace process at risk.
In Tuesday's speech in Belfast, Mrs May said: "There is no suggestion that we are not going to ensure in the future there is provision for this insurance policy... the backstop."
However, she indicated she would seek changes to address concerns raised by MPs about its "potential indefinite nature" when they overwhelmingly rejected her Brexit deal.
Last week, MPs voted for an amendment tabled by Conservative grandee Sir Graham Brady - and backed by the PM - which "requires the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border".
Many fear the "temporary single customs territory" created under the backstop plan would keep the UK tied to EU rules in the long term.
Downing Street has insisted the government is still considering alternatives.
On Wednesday, the Alternative Arrangements Working Group, comprised of Leave and Remain MPs, will conclude three days of talks aimed at finding other Brexit options that would avoid a hard border.
MPs have been looking at "alternative arrangements" to the backstop, which Mrs May has said she will discuss with EU leaders. They include:
The UK is due to leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on Friday 29 March, when the two-year limit on withdrawal negotiations enforced by the Article 50 process expires.
If MPs approve a deal with Brussels, the parties will then have until the end of 2020 to negotiate a future trade deal.
If that is not in place by the end of this transition period, the backstop kicks in.
Without a deal, however, there would be no backstop and no transition period.
The prime minister has said she is "determined" to deliver Brexit on time but a number of cabinet ministers have indicated they would be willing to agree to a short extension to finalise legislation for Brexit.

Theresa May has warned opponents of her Brexit deal that they risk "letting the British people down" as Labour said the prime minister faced a "humiliating defeat" in Tuesday's crunch vote.
She urged critics to give the deal "a second look", insisting new assurances on the Irish border had "legal force".
She said the "history books" would judge if MPs delivered on Brexit while safeguarding the economy and security.
But Jeremy Corbyn said the PM had "completely and utterly failed".
And the SNP said the PM was "in fantasy land and the government should stop threatening no-deal".
MPs will vote on the terms of the UK's withdrawal from the EU and declaration on future relations on Tuesday evening.
Labour and the other opposition parties will vote against the deal while about 100 Conservative MPs, and the Democratic Unionist Party's 10 MPs, could also join them.
Both Mrs May and Mr Corbyn met their backbenchers after the PM's Commons statement on Monday night - the PM to appeal once more for their support and the Labour leader to reiterate his plan to call for a general election if the deal is rejected.
Mr Corbyn also told his MPs a no-confidence vote in the prime minister would be "coming soon", according to BBC political correspondent Iain Watson.
Assistant whip Gareth Johnson has become the latest member of the government to quit his job over the deal, saying in his resignation letter to the PM that it would be "detrimental to our nation's interests".
He added: "The time has come to place my loyalty to my country above my loyalty to the government."
Ahead of the vote, Mrs May briefed MPs on the controversial issue of the "backstop" - the fallback plan to avoid any return to physical Northern Ireland border checks.
She said her "absolute conviction" was that the UK and EU would be able to finalise their future relationship by the end of 2020, meaning the backstop would never be needed.
She published a joint letter from European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in which they stressed their "firm commitment" to working towards such an agreement - and said if the backstop were to be used it would be for the "shortest possible period".
However, they said they could not add anything to change the terms of the deal negotiated with Mrs May.
The PM told MPs: "I say to members on all sides of this house, whatever you may have previously concluded, over these next 24 hours, give this deal a second look.
"It is not perfect, but when the history books are written, people will look at the decision of this House tomorrow and ask 'did we deliver on the country's vote to leave the EU, did we safeguard our economy, security or union or did we let the British people down'."
Five Conservative Brexiteer MPs who have been critics of the withdrawal agreement have now said they will support the government in the vote on Tuesday, including Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and former Public Accounts Committee chairman Sir Edward Leigh.
But former Labour leader Ed Miliband said the PM must make the government "the servant of the House" if the deal was rejected, giving Parliament an "open and honest process" to express their will.
By Alex Forsyth, BBC political correspondent
The letter from Presidents Juncker and Tusk was deliberately released at the moment No 10 hoped it might have the most impact - the eve of the crucial Brexit vote.
But regardless of the timing, the attempt to reassure hasn't done enough to convince many senior Brexiteers to swing behind the prime minister's deal.
The contentious Northern Ireland backstop remains the biggest sticking point, and nothing short of a legally watertight guarantee that it can't go on indefinitely will be enough for many of those with concerns.
At this stage, the EU has made clear it won't reopen the negotiated Withdrawal Agreement to include such a guarantee.
So, however warm the words of reassurance offered today, it seems they won't be enough to persuade many opponents to Mrs May's deal to change their mind.
The so-called Irish backstop will see the UK and EU share a single customs territory until they settle their future relationship or come up with another solution to stop a hard border.
Many Tory MPs, as well as the Democratic Unionists, are adamantly opposed to it.
The EU has given fresh written assurances about how the backstop might be triggered and how long it would last. The key points, in the letter from top officials Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker to the PM, are:
"Were the backstop to enter into force in whole or in part, it is intended to apply only temporarily, unless and until it is superseded by a subsequent agreement," they said.
"The Commission is committed to providing the necessary political impetus and resources to help achieving the objective of making this period as short as possible," it said.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the assurances offered "legal force" to the UK, but admitted they did not alter the "fundamental meanings" in the Withdrawal Agreement - namely that the UK is indefinitely committed to the backstop if it comes into force, as neither side can unilaterally withdraw from it.
Mr Corbyn said it amounted to nothing more than "warm words and aspirations" while the DUP's deputy leader Nigel Dodds said there were no "legally binding assurances" as talked about by the PM in December.
"In fact, there is nothing new," he said.
Here is what is likely to happen:
The UK will leave the EU on 29 March unless there is a new act of Parliament preventing that.
Three senior Conservative backbenchers - Nick Boles, Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan - have proposed a "European Union Withdrawal Number 2 Bill" if she fails a second time, giving ministers three weeks to get a plan B through Parliament.
If this doesn't work, they propose that the Liaison Committee - made up of the chairmen and chairwomen of all the Commons select committees - should be given "the responsibility to try and come up with its own compromise deal, which would have to go back to the House for a vote".
Downing Street has said it is "extremely concerned" about the plot, which it says could potentially overturn centuries of Parliamentary precedent.
A cross-party group of anti-Brexit politicians have also published proposed legislation to bring about a second referendum on leaving the EU, asking the public whether they want to remain in the EU or leave under the prime minister's deal.
The MPs behind the draft legislation point out that Article 50 - the two-year process by which an EU member leaves the bloc - would have to be extended in order for another poll to take place, meaning the UK would remain a member beyond 29 March.

Theresa May's former chief of staff has told the BBC she always saw Brexit as a "damage limitation exercise".
In his first TV interview, Nick Timothy suggested the PM and other ministers' attitude meant the government has "not been prepared to take the steps" needed to make the most of Brexit.
And he warned the government's mishandling of it risked "opening up space for a populist right wing party".
His comments are in forthcoming BBC Two documentary Inside the Brexit Storm.
Mr Timothy, who is considered to have been one of Theresa May's most influential advisers, said that the prime minister should have been clearer that different sides of the Tory Party would have to compromise much earlier on.
"One of the difficulties she's had is that she's tried to take every part of the party with her at different points.
"It would have been better to be clearer that not everybody in the party was going to get what they wanted."
He added: "I think one of the reasons we are where we are is that many ministers, and I would include Theresa in this, struggle to see any economic upside to Brexit.
"They see it as a damage limitation exercise.
"If you see it in that way then inevitably you're not going to be prepared to take the steps that would enable you to fully realise the economic opportunities of leaving."
Mr Timothy, a Brexiteer, also said that many MPs write off Leave voters as "being racist, stupid or too old to have a stake in the future", and warned that the government's mishandling of Brexit risked "opening up space for a populist right wing party…this is one of the dangers of where we are right now".
Mr Timothy, who many MPs consider to have been responsible for some of the mistakes of the 2017 general election campaign also said that Theresa May's premiership had "not been bad, but unlucky".
In response, Business Secretary Greg Clark told BBC Midlands Today: "I think Theresa May and ministers right from the outset recognised that there'd been this big debate about Brexit in the referendum and the British people made their decision and it needed to be implemented, but to be done so in a way that made sure that we could continue to enjoy the prosperity that we've had."
The interview with Nick Timothy is part of Inside the Brexit Storm, a behind-the-scenes programme following the BBC 's Laura Kuenssberg through the twists and turns of the Brexit process to be transmitted shortly.

Theresa May has said she will put together a government with the support of the Democratic Unionists to guide the UK through crucial Brexit talks.
Speaking after visiting Buckingham Palace, she said only her party had the "legitimacy" to govern, despite falling eight seats short of a majority.
Later, she said she "obviously wanted a different result" and felt "sorry" for colleagues who lost their seats.
But Labour said they were the "real winners".
The Lib Dems said Mrs May should be "ashamed" of carrying on.
The Tories needed 326 seats to win another majority but they fell short and must rely on the DUP to continue to rule.
In a short statement outside Downing Street after an audience with the Queen, Mrs May said she would join with her DUP "friends" to "get to work" on Brexit.
Referring to the "strong relationship" she had with the DUP but giving little detail of how their arrangement might work, she said she intended to form a government which could "provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country".
"Our two parties have enjoyed a strong relationship over many years," she said.
"And this gives me the confidence to believe that we will be able to work together in the interests of the whole United Kingdom."
It is thought Mrs May will seek some kind of informal arrangement with the DUP that could see it "lend" its support to the Tories on a vote-by-vote basis, known as "confidence and supply".
Later, she told reporters that she had "wanted to achieve a larger majority but that was not the result".
"I'm sorry for all those candidates... who weren't successful, and also particularly sorry for MPs and ministers who'd contributed so much to our country, and who lost their seats and didn't deserve to lose their seats.
"As I reflect on the results, I will reflect on what I need to do in the future to take the party forward."
DUP leader Arlene Foster confirmed that she had spoken to Mrs May and that they would speak further to "explore how it may be possible to bring stability to this nation at this time of great challenge".
While always striving for the "best deal" for Northern Ireland and its people, she said her party would always have the best interests of the UK at heart.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson has since sought assurances from Mrs May that any deal with the DUP will not affect LGBTI rights across the UK. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where same-sex marriage is not legal.
A source close to Ms Davidson, who is gay, told the BBC: "The PM needs to remember there are more Scottish Conservatives than DUP MPs."
Who are the DUP?
The DUP are pro-union (not Europe but UK), pro-Brexit and socially conservative.
The party, which returned 10 MPs to Westminster, has garnered a reputation for its strong, sometimes controversial views.
It opposes same-sex marriage and is anti-abortion - abortion remains illegal in Northern Ireland, except in specific medical cases.
One MP is a devout climate change denier, while a former MP once called for creationism - the belief that human life did not evolve over millions of years but was created by God - to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.
During the election campaign, the DUP's Emma Little-Pengelly was endorsed by the three biggest loyalist paramilitary organisations.
Who's in the Cabinet?
In an ongoing Cabinet reshuffle, five cabinet ministers are certain to stay: Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon; Brexit Secretary David Davis; Home Secretary Amber Rudd; Chancellor Philip Hammond and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Mr Hammond said, in a tweet, that he was "pleased to be reappointed so we can now get on and negotiate a Brexit deal that supports British jobs, business and prosperity". Mr Johnson tweeted that he was "delighted", adding "lots of great work to do for greatest country on earth".
However, those rarely seen on the campaign trail, including Andrea Leadsom, Priti Patel and Liam Fox, could be out, says BBC political correspondent Eleanor Garnier.
Comebacks from Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove and prominent leave campaigner Dominic Raab were being floated, she adds.
Where does this leave Labour?
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has denounced Mrs May's plan to head up a minority government, calling for her to "make way" for a government that would be "truly representative of the people of this country".
He said Labour was ready to form a minority government of its own, after far exceeding expectations by picking up 30 seats in England, Wales and Scotland.
But even if it joined together in a so-called progressive alliance with the SNP, Lib Dems, Green Party and Plaid Cymru, it would only reach 314 seats - short of the 326 figure needed.
"We are ready to serve the people who have put their trust in us," he said, while stressing he would not enter into any "pacts or deals" with other parties.
Former Labour cabinet minister Lord Mandelson said the "surprise" result was a political "earthquake",  and he'd been "wrong" to criticise Mr Corbyn's leadership of the party.
There are three posts that Mr Corbyn now needs to fill in the shadow cabinet, but sources say an announcement is not likely until Sunday at the earliest.
Streatham MP Chuka Umunna, a leading figure on the right of the party, has said he would accept a role in the shadow cabinet.
What about Scotland?
The SNP remains the largest party in Scotland but lost 21 seats to the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems.
Leading figures in the party such as Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson were defeated.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said her party's plans for a second independence referendum were "undoubtedly" a factor in the results, and she would "reflect carefully".
Ruth Davidson - whose Scottish Conservatives went from one seat to 13 - said Ms Sturgeon should now take a second referendum "off the table".
How did the parties fare?
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said the PM has returned to No 10 a "diminished figure", having ended up with 13 fewer seats than when she called the election in April.
She had called the election with the stated reason that it would strengthen her hand in negotiations for the UK to leave the EU - the talks are due to start on 19 June.
But the Tories are on 318 seats, ahead of Labour on 262 following its late win in Kensington, the SNP 35 and the Lib Dems on 12. The DUP won 10 seats.
As it stands, the Tories and the DUP would have 328 MPs in the Commons, giving it a wafer-thin majority although as Sinn Fein will not be taking its seven seats, the new administration will have slightly more room for manoeuvre.
Reaction to Theresa May's performance
After losing her majority, Mr Corbyn called on the prime minister to quit and Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said she should resign "if she has an ounce of self-respect".
Some in her own party have also called for her resignation, with Anna Soubry saying she should consider her position after a "disastrous" campaign.
However, other MPs have urged her to stay on - Iain Duncan Smith said a leadership contest would be a "catastrophe".
Tory MP Philip Davies said his party had made "a pig's ear" of the campaign, and fellow Tory MP Nigel Evans said his party had "shot ourselves in the head".
Mrs May's former director of communications, Katie Perrior, said the party should never have run a Presidential-style campaign when the leader is "shy" and doesn't like doing interviews.
The Green Party, which held its one seat at the election but saw its total vote halve, said a Conservative government propped up by the DUP would be a "coalition of chaos".
"The DUP, I don't think, are the kind of people you want calling the shots," co-leader Jonathan Bartley said.
Downing Street said Mrs May received congratulatory calls from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said he was pleased that she would continue to be a close partner, and US President Donald Trump, who agreed with her that they looked forward to close co-operation.
Where does this leave Brexit and the Conservative manifesto?
Britain's exit from the European Union has been plunged into uncertainty, says BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale.
The government - and the DUP - may have to rethink their strategy, and the EU will be dismayed to be facing a divided British parliament in a divided Britain, he adds.
European Council president Donald Tusk says there is now "no time to lose" over Brexit and the European Parliament's chief negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, said the result was an "own goal" which made negotiations more "complicated".
BBC analysts says the Conservative's election manifesto may also be in jeopardy.
Policies, such as new grammar schools and social care reforms, are likely to get ditched, they say. Without a majority in the Commons, members of the Lords might feel entitled to block them.
Also, within the Conservative party, there is a widespread perception that the manifesto was a disaster which they need to distance themselves from, they add.
Other big shocks and surprises
In a night of high drama, former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg lost his seat while current leader Tim Farron clung on by less than 800 votes in his Cumbrian constituency.
Vince Cable and Jo Swinson are among the Lib Dems returning to the Commons after winning back their former seats.
UKIP leader Paul Nuttall quit after his party failed to win any seats and saw its vote collapse across the country. Former party chairman Steve Crowther will lead the party on an interim basis.
Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, which gained three seats taking its total to seven, said it had been a "very good election for republicanism", and appealed for "calm reflection" on how to go forward.
In more results from the night:

Prime Minister Theresa May has urged the first ministers of Scotland and Wales to back her Brexit deal.
At a Downing Street summit, the leaders of the devolved administrations discussed the UK's impending exit from the European Union.
Mrs May said her plan "delivers for the whole of the UK", urging others to "pull together" behind it.
But Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said MPs should study other plans, such as a new Brexit referendum.
Members in both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly have overwhelmingly voted against Mrs May's deal.
MPs are set to hold their "meaningful" vote on the withdrawal agreement, hammered out with European negotiators, in January 2019.
Ministers from around the UK gathered for the meeting in London on Wednesday afternoon, with Brexit high on the agenda. Mrs May and a team of her ministers were joined by Ms Sturgeon and the newly appointed Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford.
There was also discussion of immigration after the government published a White Paper of its plans for rules after the UK leaves the EU.
Mrs May has been facing a battle to win support for her Brexit plans, with critics on her own back benches as well as across the opposition.
The prime minister said she was "confident that what we have agreed delivers for the whole of the UK".
She said: "This deal honours the result of the referendum - taking back control of our money, laws and borders, protecting jobs and livelihoods, and freeing the UK to strike new trade deals with countries around the world.
"That's why it is more important than ever that the devolved administrations get behind this deal and listen to businesses and industry bodies across all four nations who have been clear that it provides the certainty they need."
Following the meeting, Ms Sturgeon said SNP MPs would not be voting for Mrs May's deal, and called on the prime minister to extend the current Brexit deadline of 29 March.
She said: "We have argued that Article 50 should be extended, so that no-deal is absolutely taken off the table and that time is then given for parliament to look at the alternatives to the deal.
"Our preference of course is for another EU referendum, to give people across the UK the opportunity, knowing what they now know after the last two and a half years, to change their minds."
Ms Sturgeon also said she had made her views about immigration "very clear to the prime minister" at the meeting.
She said: "This paper says that the proposals would reduce EU migration into Scotland by 85%. So it would be devastating for jobs, the economy, for living standards, the income of the country, and it would also deprive us of people who make a big and positive contribution to life in Scotland."
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has argued that the new system would be based on the skills, rather than origin, of migrants and show the UK was "open for business".
Mr Javid said the plans did not include a "specific target" for reducing numbers coming into the UK but would bring net migration down to "sustainable levels".
Meanwhile, the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens tabled a vote of no confidence in the UK government following a meeting on Tuesday evening.
The parties want the government to debate the motion before parliament rises for the Christmas recess, but it is thought the government is only obliged to give time to motions tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition - Labour's Jeremy Corbyn - who has so far failed to do so.
And Chancellor Phillip Hammond has confirmed the Scottish government will be allocated £55m for Brexit preparations in 2019/20, as part of its £2bn spend.
The Welsh Government will receive £31m while the Northern Ireland Executive will be granted £20m.

This summit was, in some ways, quite predictable.
Not a crisis moment like Salzburg. Not a success where Theresa May could walk away with something that felt like a significant achievement.
As we know, both sides, in principle, want a deal. So last night and through this afternoon the EU and the UK agreed to keep the show on the road.
But as we move towards what the legal deadlines imply are the closing moments of this whole process, some of its moments are becoming pretty strange.
The prime minister had a hint of warmth from some parts of the EU empire for the idea of drawing out the implementation period, to give more time to work out the long term fixes.
But even so, the politics put such a straitjacket on proceedings that she can't even quite manage to be completely clear about that.
So we heard today about a proposal that's not a proposal but an "idea that's emerged". An extension to an extension that's not a request for a longer transition period but a desire perhaps to have the option.
It might sound like Kafka. But it's the words of a government struggling to keep a set of almost impossible promises.
The sound of a prime minister desperately trying to keep to the contradictory pledges that she has made in order to survive.
The circumstances for Theresa May in Brussels have not got worse in the last 24 hours. But they are hardly better. And when she gets home, a nightmare awaits.
There's upset about the parliamentary games ministers are proposing.
And irritation and disbelief at the proposal of an extension.
One former loyal Remainer Brexit minister, Lord Bridges, told me the idea of a longer transition is dead on arrival.
Each new compromise brings a confrontation with her party.
When Theresa May's promises are broken, ministers know there's a risk that it will break her government, and her leadership too.

The talking in Brussels is done. After nearly two years of negotiations, arguments - and the inevitable moments where it felt like the process would explode - there is, now, a deal.
It's a compromise. It was always going to be. It's not a happy compromise either. People on both sides of the Brexit argument are already screaming their protests.
And although the prime minister must be relieved, she didn't exactly say that she was pleased about the deal when I asked her at a news conference this lunchtime.
Instead, she said she was sure the country's best days are ahead.
But however she really feels about it - and with this prime minister it is hard to tell - her strategy for the next couple of weeks is crystal clear. Her case? This is all there is.
With the explicit backing of almost every European leader who has opened their mouth today, this is the "only deal", the "best possible deal", "the max".
The message to MPs from Theresa May and her counterparts: don't kid yourselves if you think something else might magically appear if you vote it down.
And the message to the public? Just let me get on with it, then we can all stop talking about Brexit - please.
Again today she used the platform to "talk directly to the British public", to explain how her (now rather pink) red lines, on "money, laws and borders", have been followed.
It's her Brexit with caveats, with a lot to be sorted out about the future, in the future. You can remind yourself what's actually in the deal here.
And No 10 is all too aware that dozens and dozens of their own MPs hate it. Theresa May has reached her imperfect compromise at a moment when in Parliament both sides are hardening against the idea of compromising at all.
For two years Theresa May has survived by tacking one way, then another. But now the deal is on paper, in black and white, that approach can't go on.
A senior government figure said privately that No 10 was past the point of trying to please everyone. And of course, everyone in government is all too aware that it is likely that the deal will be rejected by Parliament in any case.
But the only potential route through for the prime minister is through the middle, to look like, as one senior Whitehall official describes it, "the adult in a world of children".
However the prime minister looks, however she sounds in the next fortnight, the levels of unhappiness at home are so profound that her pleas may fall on deaf ears.
If the deal falls, she - and her government - may fall with it. Scrape it through then she'll have pulled off a feat far harder than getting the actual deal done.
PS: Here's a great explanation from my colleague Ben Wright about what might happen if the vote, which we expect on 12 December, doesn't pass the deal.

Labour should 'get on with' changing its Brexit policy to support a second referendum, the shadow chancellor has told the BBC.
John McDonnell said Jeremy Corbyn was "rightfully" trying to build consensus, but added the party needed to reach a position "sooner rather than later".
"I want to campaign for Remain," he said.
He also denied he had called for the Labour leader's advisors to be sacked, as reported in the Sunday Times.
Labour had previously promised a vote on Brexit in certain circumstances, specifically if it could not get its own deal with the EU passed by MPs or if there was no general election.
Following the party's poor performance in the European elections in May, Mr Corbyn appeared to go further, suggesting there "had to be a public vote" on any deal agreed with Brussels.
He has recently come under pressure from his own MPs to confirm that the party would call for another referendum, and would campaign to remain in the EU.
Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, Mr McDonnell confirmed that he, personally, would campaign to Remain if there was a second referendum.
He said he wanted to "get on with it", but added that Mr Corbyn was "much wiser" and wanted to "build consensus and then go for it".
"That's what he's doing at the moment," he added.
"Jeremy and I go back 40 years, we're the closest of friends. We've minded each other's back throughout that period. Yes, we'll disagree on things, and then we'll come to an agreement."
Asked if he and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott had called for Mr Corbyn's advisors - Karie Murphy and Seumas Milne - to be sacked, Mr McDonnell replied such stories were "rubbish".
Meanwhile, Labour's Barry Gardiner told Sky News' Sophy Ridge that his party is in talks with Conservative MPs who might support a no-confidence motion in the government in order to stop a no-deal Brexit. Conservative MP and ex-minister Sam Gyimah suggested "30 plus" Tory MPs would seek to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Mr McDonnell was also asked about reports in the Sunday Times that up to half a dozen Labour staff have ignored non-disclosure agreements (NDA) to speak to BBC journalists working on a Panorama programme about Labour and anti-Semitism.
According to the Times, Labour, through the law firm Carter Ruck, has warned there could be legal action against those staff members.
Mr McDonnell said the Labour Party was "reminding them of their confidentiality agreement".
He argued this was important in cases where employees "are dealing with individual cases, individual information and individual members".
However, he added the party would "always protect anyone subject to harassment".
A number of Labour MPs criticised the reported action, including deputy leader Tom Watson who said "using expensive media lawyers in an attempt to silence staff members is as futile as it is stupid".
Labour MP Wes Streeting tweeted "Labour opposes NDAs, yet seems to impose them. I'm protected by parliamentary privilege. I'll whistleblow in the House of Commons for anyone who needs me to do so. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. No more excuses or hiding places. You should promise the same Jeremy Corbyn."
Mr Gardiner, shadow international trade secretary, has attacked the forthcoming Panorama programme - which will be aired next week - as neither balanced or impartial.
In response the BBC said: "The Labour Party is criticising a programme they have not seen.
"We are confident the programme will adhere to the BBC's editorial guidelines. In line with those, the Labour Party has been given the opportunity to respond to the allegations."
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Labour would vote against a government plan designed to resolve the impasse in the Brexit negotiations on Northern Ireland, the shadow chancellor said.
John McDonnell has told Newsnight that Labour would reject any customs arrangement with the EU unless it was established on a permanent basis.
Theresa May hopes to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland through a temporary UK-wide customs arrangement.
Mrs May plans to have an agreement with EU leaders by the end of this month.
Such a move from Labour would raise the chances of Parliament rejecting her withdrawal agreement.
It is understood the prime minister believes that an agreement with EU leaders needs to be reached no later than the final week of November to allow it to pass parliamentary hurdles in Westminster and Strasbourg.
That means a deal needs to be agreed with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier by around 21 November to give the EU a week to prepare for an emergency summit of EU leaders.
Mrs May is due to brief the cabinet on Brexit on Tuesday morning.
The prime minister's customs arrangement is known informally in No 10 as a customs union.
Downing Street is facing calls from ministers for the UK to be allowed to end it unilaterally, a demand that has been rejected by the EU and Dublin.
The No 10 initiative for an all-UK customs arrangement is designed to replace an EU proposal to create separate customs territories for Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The prime minister has rejected this on the grounds that it would lead to an internal UK border down the Irish Sea.
Asked by Newsnight whether Labour could vote for a deal in which the whole of the UK was placed in a customs union with the EU for a temporary period, Mr McDonnell said: "I can't see it because I think it would be the worst of all worlds. What I'm getting from business leaders, trade union leaders and others is they want permanence, they want stability."
Labour, which has advocated UK membership of a customs union for the past year, has said that it would vote down the prime minister's Brexit deal unless it passes six tests set by the party.
These include delivering the "exact same benefits" as the UK enjoys as a member of the single market and the customs union.
The shadow chancellor's remarks to Newsnight show that he wants permanent membership of a customs union to apply in all circumstances. This includes what is intended by No 10 to be a temporary "backstop" period after the end of the transition period in December 2020, if a future trading relationship has not been finalised by then.
"If the government says 'well a customs union for a couple of years or maybe customs union until we decide there won't be one,' well actually, that doesn't give the stability for investment for anyone," McDonnell said.
"What I'm worried about is Theresa May comes back from Europe waving a piece of paper - and it won't be Winston Churchill, it'll be more like Neville Chamberlain. What we'll see is peace in our time that will then disintegrate over time.
"I'd rather she just came back and told us. If she can get a deal that protects jobs and the economy we'll vote for it, but it can't be half in half out.
"If she can't deliver, we can't vote for it - move to one side and let us do the negotiations."
The shadow chancellor indicated that if Parliament rejects a Brexit deal proposed by Theresa May, the EU might be prepared to renegotiate with a new UK government.
Labour believes that if Parliament votes down a Brexit deal a general election should be held.
"All the messages that we get back over this whole period is that our European partners desperately want what we want: a deal that will protect their jobs and their economies in the same way that we want to," he said.
"If they recognise the deal is unacceptable to Parliament I think that opens up a vista of the opportunity of real negotiations... In the EU you negotiate on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect. You don't negotiate on the basis of banging on the table, threatening to walk out every five minutes."
Watch the full interview on Newsnight on Monday, 22:30 on BBC Two or online.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested an alternative to the Irish border backstop - a key Brexit sticking point - could be found within 30 days.
Speaking at a news conference alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Berlin, she stressed it would be up to the UK to offer a workable plan.
The PM said he was "more than happy" with that "blistering timetable".
He accepted the "onus" was on the UK, but said he believed there was "ample scope" for a new deal to be reached.
In his first overseas visit to a fellow leader, Mr Johnson is meeting Mrs Merkel after he told the EU the backstop - which aims to prevent a hard Irish border after Brexit - must be ditched if a no-deal exit was to be avoided.
He will meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, before attending the G7 summit on Saturday alongside other leaders including US President Donald Trump.
The EU has repeatedly said the withdrawal deal negotiated by former PM Theresa May, which includes the backstop, cannot be renegotiated.
And - despite Mrs Merkel's comments - that message was echoed by Mr Macron on Wednesday evening.
"Renegotiation of the terms currently proposed by the British is not an option that exists, and that has always been made clear by [EU] President Tusk," he told reporters in Paris.
At the news conference, the German chancellor said a realistic alternative to the plan would require "absolute clarity" on the post-Brexit future relationship between the UK and the EU.
"The backstop has always been a fall-back option until this issue is solved," she said.
"It was said we will probably find a solution in two years. But we could also find one in the next 30 days, why not?"
Mr Johnson replied: "You rightly say the onus is on us to produce those solutions, those ideas [...] and that is what we want to do.
"You have set a very blistering timetable of 30 days - if I understood you correctly, I am more than happy with that," he added.
He added that alternatives to the backstop had not been "actively proposed" under his predecessor Theresa May - but he was pressed by Mrs Merkel to spell out what such alternatives might look like.
The prime minister has insisted he wants the UK to leave the EU with a renegotiated withdrawal deal, but the UK must leave on 31 October "do or die".
If implemented, the backstop would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market, should the UK and the EU not agree a trade deal after Brexit.
It would also see the UK stay in a single customs territory with the EU, and align with current and future EU rules on competition and state aid.
These arrangements would apply until both the EU and UK agreed they were no longer necessary. Brexit supporters fear this could leave the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
Mr Johnson called the backstop "anti-democratic" and "unviable".
Should we be optimistic about the scope for a Brexit breakthrough after Angela Merkel suggested a solution to remove the need for the backstop could be found - possibly even within just 30 days?
Boris Johnson will certainly be pleased the German chancellor has left a door open.
But don't get carried away. There's a reason Europe is so adamant the backstop has to stay in the Brexit deal - it just doesn't believe there is a workable alternative available right now.
Boris Johnson says it's his job to find a solution and accepted a deadline of 30 days to come up with one.
The pressure is firmly on the UK to find that solution - and it's going to be a huge challenge to put it mildly.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has cancelled a trip to Ghana later this week, urging opposition MPs to meet urgently to discuss ways to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford has confirmed he would attend the meeting next Tuesday, but warned the Labour leader that "all options must be on the table".
Mr Corbyn has proposed that in order to prevent a no-deal exit, opposition MPs should help him defeat the government in a no-confidence motion and install him as a caretaker PM.
If he wins the vote, he plans to delay Brexit, call a snap election and campaign for another referendum.
But the Liberal Democrats, and some potential Tory allies opposed to a no-deal exit, have indicated they won't back a plan that leads to Mr Corbyn in No 10.

The government needs to seek the "maximum possible consensus" on Brexit in the light of the general election result, Michael Gove says.
The new environment secretary, a leading figure in the campaign to leave the EU, said the referendum result should be "honoured in the right way".
The Tories no longer have a Commons majority with EU negotiations set to begin next week.
There have been calls for a cross-party commission to seek agreement.
In the Daily Telegraph, Former Conservative leader William Hague said a "change of style and substance" was now needed, suggesting a commission, also including business leaders and trade unions, to find areas of agreement.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has also called for a cross-party approach, and Labour's Yvette Cooper said a commission was needed to avoid Brexit being "caught up in the inevitable Hung Parliament political rows".
Theresa May set out the government's strategy last year and started the clock on the UK's final departure from the EU in March.
Downing Street has said there will be no changes to this approach, despite the Tories looking like they will have to rely on the Democratic Unionist Party - which backs Brexit but has specific demands including close trade with the EU - to stay in power.
Mr Gove noted that most votes at the election had been cast for either the Conservatives or Labour, who both support leaving the EU and ending freedom of movement, but added: "It is important to recognise we were not returned with a majority."
The government should "proceed with the maximum possible consensus", he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme, and "make sure that Remainers' concerns are part of our conversation".
Following reports of talks between some Remain-backing Conservative and Labour MPs, he rejected a "softening" of the government's approach, but said there were a "significant number of questions as we leave about the shape that we want our country to take".
But he played down Lord Hague's suggestion of a commission - "this idea is very much his copyright", he added.
Another ex-Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, dismissed suggestions of a change in the Conservatives' approach as "made-up nonsense".
He told the BBC the DUP had supported the government's strategy before the general election and "the vast majority of the Conservative Party believes this is a settled issue".
Aside from Brexit, it has also been reported that the DUP's opposition to some austerity measures could trigger a rethink in the government's economic strategy.
Asked about this, Mr Gove said ministers had to "reflect on what the election result told us about the way that people want to see the economy managed in the future".
He said there was a need to ensure public spending was kept at a sustainable level but stressed that "we also need to take account of legitimate public concerns about ensuring that we properly fund public services in the future".
The former education secretary, who clashed with Mrs May when both were ministers and was then sacked by her when she arrived in Downing Street, declared himself a "huge fan" of the PM.
He also rejected criticism of his environmental credentials by some campaigners, saying he had spoken in 2006 in favour of a bill making it easier to fight climate change and attributing his later voting record to having been following the whip in government.
"My own approach has always been to argue for strong action to deal with man-made climate change," he added.

The government has published a new law that says it must treat animals as "sentient beings" when it makes laws.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove promised to "make Brexit work not just for citizens but for the animals we love and cherish too".
The draft law also increases the maximum sentence for serious animal cruelty to five years in jail.
The Green Party said the government had done a "screeching U-turn".
The move follows last month's animal sentience "fake news" row involving a celebrity-backed social media campaign.
After MPs voted not to incorporate part of an EU treaty recognising that animals could feel emotion and pain into the EU Withdrawal Bill, some widely-shared reports and petitions suggested it had been a vote against the idea of animal sentience itself.
High-profile figures such as explorer Ben Fogle shared the stories. He later apologised for posting "misleading threads" but defended sharing details on "important stories".
In the aftermath Mr Gove hit out at the way social media "corrupts and distorts" political reporting and promised new UK legislation to ensure the principle of animal sentience is recognised.
The draft bill says the government "must have regard to the welfare needs of animals as sentient beings in formulating and implementing government policy".
Mr Gove said: "Animals are sentient beings who feel pain and suffering, so we are writing that principle into law and ensuring that we protect their welfare.
"Our plans will also increase sentences for those who commit the most heinous acts of animal cruelty to five years in jail.
"We are a nation of animal lovers so we will make Brexit work not just for citizens but for the animals we love and cherish too."
Speaking in a House of Commons debate, Environment Minister Therese Coffey said that "contrary to the fake news that was spread recently" the "direct effect of animal sentience" was already recognised "throughout the statute book" but the new measure would put animals' capability of feeling pain or pleasure "more clearly than ever before in domestic law".
David Bowles, the RSPCA's head of public affairs, said the plans were "potentially great news" for animals post-Brexit.
He said: "To include the recognition of animal sentience as well as increasing animal cruelty sentencing to five years into the new 2018 Animal Welfare Bill is a very bold and welcome move by the government."
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, whose amendment to the EU bill sparked the debate about animal sentience, said the government had "performed a screeching U-turn" after previously insisting it was covered by existing UK law.
"There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this legislation wouldn't have emerged now without the pressure of thousands of people who have taken action after the government voted against my amendment," she said.
Labour's Sue Hayman, shadow environment, food and rural affairs secretary, said: "This is a rushed and haphazard attempt to backtrack on the government's mistake of not including animal sentience in the EU Withdrawal Bill.
"There are serious questions about whether this Bill is equivalent to current EU standards given that it does not appear to cover wild animals - giving this Tory government freedom to pursue their pro-fox hunting and reckless badger culling agenda across England."

The UK should not accept imports of chlorinated chickens as part of any future trade deal with the US, Michael Gove has said.
The environment secretary told the BBC that the UK would not "compromise" on or "dilute" its animal welfare standards in the interests of trade.
The EU currently bans chlorine-washed chickens on welfare grounds.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has questioned this but downplayed the potential for UK-US disagreement.
It will be up to the UK to decide whether to retain the ban once it leaves the EU in March 2019.
Labour said the government's "casual and inconsistent" approach risked undermining British farmers.
On a visit to Washington on Monday, Mr Fox said chlorinated chicken was just one detail in one sector that would only be addressed at the end of discussions about a free trade deal - which are likely to be years away.
He has suggested there are no food safety issues regarding chlorine-washed chickens, a view shared by many UK experts.
In the US, it is legal to wash chicken carcasses in strongly chlorinated water.
Producers argue that it stops the spread of microbial contamination from the animal's digestive tract to the meat, a method approved by US regulators.
But the practice has been banned in the EU since 1997, where only washing with cold air or water is allowed.
The EU argues that chlorine washes could increase the risk of bacterial-based diseases such as salmonella on the grounds that dirty abattoirs with sloppy standards would rely on it as a decontaminant rather than making sure their basic hygiene protocols were up to scratch.
There are also concerns that such "washes" would be used by less scrupulous meat processing plants to increase the shelf-life of meat, making it appear fresher than it really is.
Agriculture is likely to be one of the sticking points in talks over a deal, amid concerns about differing farming and welfare practices, such the use of growth hormones given to cows and cattle.
Asked whether lifting the ban on chlorinated chickens was a price to be paid for sealing a post-Brexit deal with the US, Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today: "No. I have made it perfectly clear we are not going to dilute our high environmental standards or our animal welfare standards in the pursuit of a trade deal.
"We need to ensure that we do not compromise those standards. And we need to be in a position as we leave the European Union to be leaders in environmental and in animal welfare standards."
On whether poultry could scupper a US trade deal, he added: "The Trade Secretary, quite rightly, pointed out that, of course, this issue is important, but we mustn't concentrate just on this one issue when we look at the huge potential that a trade deal can bring."
While membership of the EU meant the UK had to accept some environmental obligations "which do not work in the interests of the environment", he said the UK had been a world leader in environmental standards for decades and that would continue after Brexit.
Mr Fox, who concluded a four-day trip to the US on Wednesday, has said the UK will not be lowering its food safety or animal welfare standards after Brexit but decisions on US chicken imports and other consumer protection issues should be based on scientific advice.
"There is no health issue with that - the European Union has said that it is perfectly safe," he said. "The issue lies around some of the secondary issues of animal welfare and it's perfectly reasonable for people to raise that, but it will come much further down the road."
A Lords report on Wednesday warned that UK farmers' livelihoods could be threatened by an influx of cheaper food imports from the US. It said there was evidence that UK consumers would be willing to pay more for food reared to higher standards but it remained to be seen if this would happen in practice.
For Labour, shadow environment secretary Sue Hayman said the cabinet was in disarray over the issue.
"Theresa May must set the record straight by publicly supporting British poultry farmers and committing to protect the British public from substandard food produce in a race-to-the-bottom Brexit," she said.
But Conservative MP John Redwood said British farmers were already losing out to cheaper competition from the European continent, where welfare standards - both in terms of the rearing and transport of animals - were not as high as in the UK.
"When we leave the EU we will be free to set our own standards, which will be higher than EU minimum requirements," he wrote on his blog. "This makes animal welfare an odd argument for people to use who want us to stay in the EU system."

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said he is "strongly" opposed to key parts of Theresa May's proposals for a future trade deal.
This morning the prime minister said she would not compromise on the UK government's Chequers plan.
But Mr Barnier said plans for a "common rulebook" for goods but not services were not in the EU's interests.
"Our own ecosystem has grown over decades," he said. "You can not play with it by picking pieces."
While he has previously expressed criticism about Mrs May's Chequers plan, sources close to Mr Barnier told the BBC he has not been this explicit before.
In response, the UK government insisted its plans were "precise and pragmatic" and would work for the UK and the EU.
The negotiations between the UK and the EU have an informal October deadline, but Mr Barnier said this could be extended to mid-November.
In an interview with the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Mr Barnier said Mrs May's plans "would be the end of the single market and the European project".
"The British have a choice," he said.
"They could stay in the single market, like Norway, which is also not a member of the EU - but they would then have to take over all the associated rules and contributions to European solidarity. It is your choice.
"But if we let the British pick the raisins out of our rules, that would have serious consequences.
"Then all sorts of other third countries could insist that we offer them the same benefits."
He said another problem was that many goods now come with services attached - meaning they were hard to separate in a trade deal.
"We have a coherent market for goods, services, capital and people - our own ecosystem that has grown over decades," he said.
"You can not play with it by picking pieces. There is another reason why I strongly oppose the British proposal.
"There are services in every product. In your mobile phone, for example, it is 20 to 40 percent of the total value."
Mr Barnier's comments were published on the same day Mrs May wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that she was "confident" a "good deal" could be reached.
But she said it was right for the government to prepare for a no-deal scenario - even though this would create "real challenges for both the UK and the EU" in some sectors.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned a no-deal Brexit would be a "big mistake for Europe", although Britain "would survive and prosper".
Various business groups have warned about the possible impact on the UK of no-deal Brexit.
The World Trade Organization - under whose rules the EU and UK would trade if no deal was agreed - said it "would not be end of the world... but it's not going to be a walk in the park".
Responding to Mr Barnier's remarks, a government spokeswoman said: "We are confident that we have put forward a proposal that is precise, pragmatic and that will work for the UK and the EU.
"This proposal achieves a new balance of rights and obligations that fulfils our joint ambition to establish a deep and special partnership once the UK has left the EU while preserving the constitutional integrity of the UK. There is no other proposal that does that.
"Our negotiating teams have upped the intensity, and we continue to move at pace to reach - as Mr Barnier says - an ambitious partnership, which will work in the mutual interests of citizens and businesses in the UK and in the EU."
The so-called Chequers plan was agreed at the prime minister's country residence in July. It led to the resignations of Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Mr Barnier has previously criticised the proposals, ruling out allowing the UK to collect customs duties on behalf of the EU.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March but has yet to agree how its final relationship with the bloc will work.

The UK's David Davis and his EU opposite number have discussed the thorny issue of a post-Brexit "backstop" plan for the Northern Ireland border.
Mr Davis met Michel Barnier in Brussels for what the UK side described as a "stock-take" of progress made so far.
The EU has set out several objections to the UK's proposals, saying they would lead to a "hard border" in Northern Ireland.
It has also raised fraud concerns.
The UK published its "backstop" plans last week, after a reported tussle over the wording between Mr Davis and Prime Minister Theresa May.
The aim of the backstop is to avoid border checks if the UK and the EU have not finalised a new trade relationship by December 2020, when the post-Brexit transition period is due to end.
The government's suggestion to avoid a physical border is that the UK temporarily aligns with the EU's customs union.
But last week Mr Barnier raised questions about how this would work, and now, in a series of internal slides published by the European Commission, the EU has criticised the proposal.
The UK's so-called "temporary customs partnership" would involve a "piecemeal application" of EU rules, and poses "serious risks of fraud", they say.
The EU documents also claim the UK plans would lead to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic because they do not cover regulatory checks.
And on the UK's insistence that the arrangement should be time-limited, the EU questions whether this can be a proper backstop, and says it would be a "complex and unprecedented arrangement" for a short duration.
The EU's own backstop proposals - already rejected by the UK government - would be a "timely and workable solution", the commission claims.
The UK says its plan, which would only apply in "specific and narrow circumstances" delivers on a commitment made in December to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.

Michel Barnier has said Theresa May's plan for a future trade relationship with the EU could weaken the single market and create burdens for business.
The EU Brexit negotiator said the White Paper opened "the way to a constructive discussion" but must be "workable".
He questioned whether UK plans for a common rulebook for goods and agri-foods were practical.
Earlier, Theresa May urged the EU to "evolve" its position on Brexit and not fall back on unworkable proposals.
Mrs May is hoping the White Paper - which sparked two cabinet resignations - will allow the two sides to reach a deal on post-Brexit relations by the autumn, so the UK can avoid leaving the EU without a deal in March next year.
The White Paper proposes close ties in some areas, such as the trade in goods, but Mrs May says it will end free movement and the jurisdiction of the European Court, and allow the UK to strike trade deals with other nations.
Critics at Westminster say it is an unworkable compromise which would leave the UK being governed by the EU in many areas, but with no say in its rules.
Mr Barnier did not reject the White Paper out of hand, saying "several elements" of it were "very useful".
But there were parts that Brussels did not understand which would need further clarification.
He said his main aim was to protect the integrity of the EU single market, and the UK proposals - which would see frictionless trade in goods but not services - risked undermining that.
"We are not going to negotiate on the basis of the White Paper because that's the British paper but we could use many elements of the White Paper," said Mr Barnier.
"There's not an awful lot of justification for the EU running the risk of weakening the single market.
"That is our main asset. There's no justification for us to create additional burdens on business just because the UK wants to leave."
Mr Barnier questioned the UK's plans for a "common rulebook" for EU-UK trade as it only referred to goods checked at the border, not areas like pesticide use, adding: "How can we protect consumers in Europe?"
He also questioned whether the plans were workable without additional bureaucracy and said there were "practical problems" about how tariffs would be determined and collected - under the UK's plan, EU member states would collect tariffs on the UK's behalf and vice versa.
But Mr Barnier suggested the EU's controversial "backstop" proposal aimed at avoiding a hard Irish border could be changed: "There will be a deal if there is an agreement on the backstop.
"It's not necessarily our backstop. We can work on this, amend it, improve our backstop ... But we need an operational backstop now, in the Withdrawal Agreement, and not later."
Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg described Mr Barnier's speech as "aggressive" in a tweet:
On a visit to Belfast on Friday, Theresa May said the "seamless border" between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic was "a foundation stone on which the Belfast [Good Friday] Agreement rests" and the concept of a hard border was now "almost inconceivable".
But she reiterated her opposition to the EU's "backstop" proposal, that would see Northern Ireland effectively staying in the single market for goods and the customs union, as "something I will never accept and I believe no British prime minister could ever accept".
And she dismissed suggestions made by former foreign secretary Boris Johnson that technology could be used to avoid the need for a hard border: "No technology solution to address these issues has been designed yet or implemented anywhere in the world, let alone in such a unique and highly sensitive context as the Northern Ireland border."
She said the White Paper was a "significant development" of the UK's position and offered a "coherent package".
"It is now for the EU to respond - not simply to fall back on to previous positions which have already been proven unworkable, but to evolve their position in kind.
"And, on that basis, I look forward to resuming constructive discussions."
Ireland's Foreign Minister Simon Coveney told Ireland's RTE radio there had been a "lukewarm" response in Brussels to the UK White Paper.
He added: "We don't have any British proposal in terms of a functioning backstop in its entirety. We have bits and pieces of ideas."

Environment minister George Eustice has quit the government over Theresa May's promise to allow MPs a vote on delaying Brexit, if her deal is rejected.
The MP said it would be "dangerous" to go to the EU "cap in hand at the 11th hour and beg for an extension".
He feared it could mean a long delay or that Brexit "may never happen at all" and said the UK must be prepared to walk away without a deal.
The PM said she was focused on leaving the EU with a deal on 29 March.
Mr Eustice is a longstanding Brexiteer, who stood as a UKIP MEP candidate before joining the Conservatives.
He told the BBC he would back the withdrawal deal the prime minister has negotiated with the EU, despite some reservations.
"I do think it's preferable to have an orderly Brexit and crucially, it's preferable to get Brexit done," he said.
"We have to get legally out of the European Union as quickly as possible within this window. If we don't and we end up with a long delay of two years, as some would like, then I really do fear we will be in a disastrous situation and Brexit may never happen at all."
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, who himself quit the government in November, suggested any delay to Brexit would reward the EU for its "intransigence" and reduce the chances of getting a deal.
"The issue with delay is at this point in time it weakens our leverage - why would the EU make concessions now?" he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
"I think from the EU's point of view it signals to them that actually their intransigence pays off and that's the wrong message for the UK to be sending to Brussels at this moment."
Mr Eustice, the MP for Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall, is the 14th member of Theresa May's government to resign over Brexit and said he was doing so with "tremendous sadness".
But in his resignation letter, he said he feared that the EU would end up "dictating the terms of any extension requested and the final humiliation of our country".
He added: "We cannot negotiate a successful Brexit unless we are prepared to walk through the door."
By the BBC's Deputy Political Editor John Pienaar
George Eustice resigned because he believes Mrs May's been manoeuvred into putting Brexit itself in doubt.
For him, the breaking point was allowing MPs to vote on whether to rule out a no-deal Brexit, he's one of many Brexiteers who are convinced the danger of a disruptive exit might add to the pressure on the EU to make concessions.
And he's especially upset about Mrs May promising a vote on whether to delay Brexit beyond 29 March, if only for a short time.
The prime minister was driven to volunteer those concessions by the fear of being defeated in the Commons this week, and having to concede them anyway.
Her de-facto deputy David Lidington, and Chief Whip Julian Smith, warned Mrs May plainly that she had no choice.
A core of ministers, senior, junior and their parliamentary aides, were willing to sacrifice their jobs if necessary to bring about that defeat.
She gave in, and hated doing so.
But the fear of George Eustice - shared by other Brexiteers is that once Brexit is delayed, the government loses control.
Read John's blog
Mr Eustice's resignation comes after Theresa May's decision on Tuesday to allow MPs a vote on delaying the UK's departure from the EU, or ruling out a no-deal Brexit, if they again reject the withdrawal deal she has negotiated with the European Union.
The UK scheduled departure date from the EU is still 29 March - but that could be delayed if Theresa May fails to get her deal through Parliament in a vote she has promised will take place on or before 12 March.
In her reply, the prime minister said she was sorry he was resigning and praised his work as the longest serving minister at the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs since the department was created, in 2001.
She said: "I agree with you that Parliament must now come together and honour the referendum result by voting for a deal which will give businesses and citizens the certainty they need and deserve.
"Our absolute focus should be on getting a deal that can command support in Parliament and leaving on 29 March.
"It is within our grasp and I am grateful to have your continued support in that important mission."
Praising Mr Eustice on Twitter, his former boss Environment Secretary Michael Gove said he would be "very much missed".
And former foreign secretary Boris Johnson praised the MP as "brave and right":
But the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford said: "Another day, another resignation from the UK government. Any illusion to strong and stable ended before it began but this is beyond parody."

Jo Johnson has quit as transport minister and called for the public to have a fresh say on Brexit.
The MP, who is Boris Johnson's brother but voted Remain in the referendum, said the  deal being negotiated with the EU "will be a terrible mistake".
Arguing Britain was "on the brink of the greatest crisis" since World War Two, he said what was on offer wasn't "anything like what was promised".
Downing Street thanked him for his work but ruled out another referendum.
Jo Johnson voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum while his brother Boris, who quit as foreign secretary in July, was a leading Brexiteer.
His brother praised his decision, saying they were "united in dismay" at the PM's handling of the negotiations.
Cabinet ministers have been invited this week to read the UK's draft withdrawal deal with the EU. Theresa May has said the withdrawal deal is 95% done - but there is no agreement yet on how to guarantee no hard border in Northern Ireland.
On Friday the DUP, whose support Theresa May relies on for votes in the Commons, said they cannot support any deal which included the possibility that Northern Ireland would be treated differently from the rest of the UK.
Mr Johnson, the MP for Orpington in Greater London, said the choice being finalised was either:
He described this as "a failure of British statecraft unseen since the Suez crisis" but said even a no-deal Brexit "may well be better than the never-ending purgatory" being put forward by the prime minister.
But in a warning to his brother and fellow Brexiteers, he added: "Inflicting such serious economic and political harm on the country will leave an indelible impression of incompetence in the minds of the public."
The "democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say", he argued.
Analysis by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
For some time, Jo Johnson has struggled with the unfolding reality of Brexit.
A well-respected and liked member of the government, he has decided that what was promised to people during the referendum campaign is now so different to what is on the table that he has quit the government instead.
He's not the first, nor the best-known minister to resign over Brexit. But to leave at this moment, right when Theresa May is trying to stitch together a final deal, could have a serious impact.
Read Laura's full blog
He added: "This would not be about re-running the 2016 referendum, but about asking people whether they want to go ahead with Brexit now that we know the deal that is actually available to us, whether we should leave without any deal at all or whether people on balance would rather stick with the deal we already have inside the European Union.
"Britain stands on the brink of the greatest crisis since the Second World War. My loyalty to the party is undimmed. I have never rebelled on any issue before now.
"But my duty to my constituents and our great nation has forced me to act."
In response, a Downing Street spokesman said: "The referendum in 2016 was the biggest democratic exercise in this country's history. We will not under any circumstances have a second referendum.
"The prime minister thanks Jo Johnson for his work in government."
Mr Johnson is the sixth minister in Theresa May's government to resign specifically over Brexit, following David Davis, Boris Johnson, Philip Lee, Steve Baker and Guto Bebb.
For Labour, Shadow Brexit Minister Jenny Chapman said Mrs May had "lost all authority and is incapable of negotiating a Brexit deal within her own party, let alone with the EU".
But asked in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel whether he would stop Brexit if he had the chance, Jeremy Corbyn replied: "We can't stop it, the referendum took place."
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, whose party supports calls for a "People's Vote" on the final deal, said: "We warmly welcome Jo Johnson's support of the campaign to give the people the final say on the deal and a chance to exit from Brexit.
"This is a fascinating situation in which Jo and his sister are united in opposing their brother Boris and his Brexit plans."
Brexiteer Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns tweeted that she did not agree with him about another referendum - but his intervention highlighted unease on both sides of the debate, with the PM's efforts to secure a deal.
And pro-Remain Conservative Anna Soubry supported his decision and said it was time for another referendum.
David Davis, who quit as Brexit Secretary over Mrs May's Chequers Brexit plan, tweeted:

The cabinet is divided over how to handle the process of asking MPs to vote on alternative Brexit plans.
The government has promised to give the Commons the chance to vote on different versions of Brexit if the prime minister's deal is rejected again.
But the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said it had not been decided in government whether the votes should be binding or not and what role ministers would play.
MPs believe the process can help break the current parliamentary deadlock.
It has been reported MPs could potentially consider up to six options, including remaining in the customs union and single market, a no-deal exit or cancelling Brexit, to gauge support for alternative courses of action.
Cabinet minister Greg Clark said it would be the "right step" if the prime minister's deal failed again.
He told Nick Robinson's Political Thinking podcast it was not good enough for any plan to "get over the line" and there needed to be as wide a consensus as possible behind the terms of withdrawal and the UK's future relations with the EU.
"Something that passes with a majority of one or two, I think, is not doing what we need to do which is to try to build as many people as possible together," he told Nick Robinson's Political Thinking Podcast.
In the coming days, as many as six other options, in addition to Mrs May's deal, could be voted on:
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wants his alternative plan for a customs union and guarantees on workers rights to be among those voted on, said there was support for a different way forward.
Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who is spearheading the move with senior Labour MPs including Hilary Benn, said he believed enough MPs would back an amendment to a government motion on Monday to trigger the so-called "indicative" votes later in the week.
But Conservative Brexiteer Marcus Fysh said the idea of giving MPs a menu of options after two years of negotiations was "ludicrous and childish", while ex-minister Steve Baker said it would end in "national humiliation".
The EU has given the UK until 12 April to decide on a way forward in an attempt to break the current impasse.
By the BBC's parliamentary correspondent Mark D'Arcy
If the Letwin amendment passes on Monday, it could allow a rough and ready version of the "indicative votes" process MPs have been discussing for some time now.
Alongside the PM's deal, as many as six other options could be voted on, including:
It is possible other options which could command reasonable levels of support might be added to the mix.
At the end all would be voted on simultaneously. MPs would fill out a ballot paper on each, voting for or against, and the relative support could then be seen.
Crucially, all the ballot-filling would be done at the same time; it would not be a case of MPs voting on one option, hearing the result, and then voting on the next. So there would be no tactical voting between options.
On Thursday, EU leaders agreed to push back the date of Brexit from 29 March until 22 May if Parliament approves the withdrawal agreement at the third time of asking.
However, they said the UK would need to come up with a plan B within three weeks if MPs throw out Mrs May's deal yet again.
Sir Oliver and Mr Benn hope that Plan B could emerge from indicative votes - with MPs effectively asked to choose from a menu of different options, to see which one gets the most backing.
MPs will debate the next steps for Brexit on Monday, as the government scrambles to persuade enough of them to back the prime minister's deal to hold another vote on it later in the week.
The indicative votes would not be binding on ministers.
But they would signal the degree of support among MPs for alternative options for the UK's future relationship with the EU.
After meeting ministers on Friday, Sir Oliver said he believed those searching for a cross-party compromise "have the numbers" to guarantee indicative votes will go ahead on Wednesday.
"We are seeking to crystallise a majority in some form of proposition so we have a way forward," he said.
MPs narrowly failed in an attempt to seize control of the Parliamentary agenda earlier this month to get indicative votes on to the Commons agenda.

A cabinet minister says he is "confident" his colleagues will settle their differences over Brexit at a crunch summit at Chequers on Friday.
James Brokenshire said there were "strong views" on both sides but predicted the away-day would yield a "clear direction" from the UK.
Ministers are under increasing pressure to spell out what type of relationship with the EU the UK should pursue.
EU chiefs demanded clarity from the UK at last week's Brussels summit.
Theresa May has promised more details in a White Paper that will be published after Friday's cabinet get-together at her official country residence.
The UK is leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, and negotiations are taking place on what their future relationship will look like.
But there is disagreement on the UK side about what sort of trading relationship to pursue with the EU, and how closely aligned they should be in years to come.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Brokenshire, the secretary of state for local government and housing, said: "I think there's no doubt that there are strong views on either side and that's what I would expect as we lead into the discussions on Friday.
"But, equally, I remain confident that we will come out from that meeting with that clear direction, the White Paper that will follow, and actually setting out our vision for our future with our EU partners."
After Brexit day in March 2019, a temporary transition period is planned until the end of 2020 to allow an "orderly withdrawal" for the UK.
Business Secretary Greg Clark did not rule out an extension to this arrangement, telling Sky News the government had to be "guided by the evidence" and avoid "frictions" at the border.
He said the government would assess how long a new customs system would take to put in place, adding that "it seems to me that any reasonable person would have to be guided by the facts and the evidence".
Ministers have yet to agree on how to replace the UK's membership of the EU customs union - on Saturday it was revealed Environment Secretary Michael Gove had physically torn apart a report on Theresa May's preferred "partnership" arrangement.
Brexiteer Conservative MPs have said they will not accept any extension to the transition phase.
More than 30 have signed a letter to Mrs May urging her to face down people trying to "undermine" the 2016 vote to leave the EU.
Their other demands include not replicating the EU's customs union and an end to the free movement of EU citizens.
"Our departure must be absolute," the MPs say.
"We must not remain entangled with the EU's institutions if this restricts our ability to exercise our sovereignty as an independent nation.  Anything less will be a weakening of our democracy. Britain must stand firm."
Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns, who delivered the letter to the PM, tweeted: "We must be clear to those in the cabinet and on the back benches, we will not sit back & allow a small minority to dominate."
Eurosceptic former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said Theresa May "probably doesn't need letters... to tell her what to do".
He added: "I just think we simply have to get behind her and say, 'let's get her over there and tell the European Union they need to do a trade agreement with us and do it pretty quickly'."
But pro-EU Labour MP Alison McGovern said there was a "serious" price attached to the government's negotiating red lines like leaving the EU's single market and customs union.
And she said the Chequers meeting was vital.
"We now need to know what it is the cabinet is trying to achieve - so this cannot be more important."
There are also Brexit divisions within the Labour Party, with Jeremy Corbyn urged by some of his MPs to back staying in the EU's single market or support another referendum on the final deal.
Campaigners for a so-called "People's Vote" have published a survey of members of Unite - the trade union that is Labour's biggest donor - where a majority were in favour of a second referendum.
Of almost 1,000 polled by YouGov, 57% backed a second referendum compared with 34% who were against, while respondents believed, by a margin of by a margin of 58% to 21%, that leaving the single market would make Britain worse off.
The People's Vote campaign said its survey provided "clear evidence that workers are turning decisively against the bad Brexit deal emerging from political machinations in Westminster and botched negotiations in Brussels".
Mr Corbyn told the BBC's Sunday Politics: "It's not our policy to have a second referendum - it's our policy to respect the result of the referendum but to have serious negotiations with the EU to gain a customs union and access to the single market to protect jobs in this country."
He added that one of the reasons people voted to leave the EU was because of the UK's "deeply unequal society where many former industrial areas lose out very badly because they haven't had the investment they need".

The government says it will not publish a leaked report document predicting an economic hit from Brexit.
Brexit Minister Steve Baker said the document was at a "preliminary" stage and releasing it in full could damage the UK's negotiations with the EU.
According to BuzzFeed, the report said growth would be lower in each of three different Brexit outcomes than if the UK had stayed in the EU.
Labour has called for it to be published and debated in Parliament.
According to Buzzfeed, the leaked document, titled EU Exit Analysis - Cross Whitehall Briefing and drawn up for the Department for Exiting the EU, suggests almost every part of the economy would suffer.
It looked at scenarios ranging from leaving with no deal to remaining within the EU single market.
Responding to an urgent question in the Commons, Mr Baker said the document was "not anywhere near being approved by ministers" and that ministers in his team had only just seen it.
He described the document as a "preliminary attempt to improve on the flawed analysis around the EU referendum" and said it did not assess the government's preferred option of a bespoke free trade deal.
It "does not yet take account of the opportunities of leaving the EU", he said, adding that civil service forecasts were "always wrong, and wrong for good reasons".
Responding to calls for it to be published, Mr Baker said MPs would get as much information as possible before they vote on the final Brexit deal but said: "We don't propose to go into these negotiations having revealed all of our thinking."
And as Brexiteer MPs hit out at the leaking of the document, he said there was "clearly" a campaign to overturn the 2016 EU referendum by some people in the media and the House of Commons.
One Conservative MP, Antoinette Sandbach, told Mr Baker she took exception to being told it was not in the national interest for her to see the document.
And responding for Labour, Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer said the emergence of the report was "piling absurdity on absurdity" with the government having previously denied the existence of Brexit impact assessments.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "For months, Theresa May's government have refused to produce any detailed analysis of the potential impact of various Brexit scenarios - now we know why they have so desperately engaged in a cover-up."
The BBC understands the Treasury contributed to the document but sources say it is part of a much wider range of work going on in Whitehall.
The report suggests UK economic growth would be 8% lower than current forecasts, in 15 years' time, if the country left the bloc with no deal and reverted to World Trade Organisation rules.
It says growth would be 5% lower if Britain negotiated a free trade deal and 2% lower even if the UK were to continue to adhere to the rules of the single market.
All scenarios assume a new deal with the US.
Conservative MP Philip Davies blamed the report on "London-centric remoaners" in the civil service "who didn't want us to leave the European Union in the first place and put together some dodgy figures to back up their case".
Earlier Conservative MP and leave campaigner Iain Duncan Smith told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the document should be taken "with a pinch of salt" as almost every single forecast on Brexit has been wrong.
A government source said the report "contains a significant number of caveats and is hugely dependant on a wide range of assumptions".
The FDA, which represents senior civil servants, reacted angrily to Mr Baker's dismissal of the leaked study.
"We have just witnessed the extraordinary scene of a serving minister telling the House that, whatever analysis his own department comes up with, he simply won't believe it," said the union's general secretary Dave Penman.
Meanwhile, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has denied telling Tory Brexiteers to prepare for disappointment.
Speaking to The Sun about pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May, he criticised Tory MPs involved with negative briefings, saying "nothing that would happen would change the parliamentary arithmetic".
"We don't have a working majority, other than with the support of the Democratic Unionists, and we need to accept the reality of that. I know that there are always disappointed individuals but they're going to have to live with disappointment."
Mr Fox told the BBC his warning was to Mrs May's critics that they will be "disappointed" in their efforts to topple her or secure cabinet positions for themselves.

The government has avoided a major defeat on its Brexit bill by 324 votes to 298 after a late concession.
Ministers saw off a move to give MPs the decisive say on what happens over Brexit if they do not agree with the deal negotiated by the UK government.
Following a meeting with Theresa May, Tory MPs said they had been promised "input" into what the government would do if the UK faced a no-deal scenario.
But one minister told the BBC he would commit only to "further discussions".
Solicitor General Robert Buckland said the government remained "open-minded", but this may or may not result in it coming forward with new proposals in the coming days.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said she had been told by a government source that no actual concessions had been agreed and the only agreement was to keep talking.
Tuesday's Commons debate marked the start of the government's attempts to undo most of the changes to its EU Withdrawal Bill that were put forward by the House of Lords.
The most contentious was the bid to give Parliament the power to tell the government what to do if the Brexit deal was voted down or no agreement was reached.
While in the end, only two Tory MPs - Ken Clarke and Anna Soubry - voted against the government, there were clashes over how much of a say Parliament should get as the UK leaves the EU, with one side accusing the other of trying to "wreck" Brexit - and being accused in turn of being "zealots" who wanted to sideline Parliament.
Seeking to placate would-be Conservative rebels, government frontbenchers offered to meet them to discuss their concerns, and agreed to "engage positively" on a "compromise" put forward by one of them, former attorney general Dominic Grieve.
Details of precisely what this will involve will be agreed in the coming days when the bill is due to return to the House of Lords and ministers could table a fresh amendment.
Analysis by BBC Parliamentary correspondent Mark D'Arcy
The government would not have sought a deal if it thought it had the votes to win, and they clearly blinked.
The decision to seek a compromise marked an important victory for the soft Brexit/Remainer/"realist" Tory rebels, who have been promised an amendment giving them most of what they want.
Read Mark's full blog
Mr Grieve said he had "confidence and trust" in Theresa May to address the concerns of more than a dozen MPs who are reported to have held last-minute talks with the prime minister in her Commons office during the debate.
He said if the UK and EU were unable to agree a deal in the autumn, or if MPs rejected the deal on offer as inadequate, there would be a "national crisis", with the real prospect of the UK leaving in March 2019 without an agreement.
In such a situation, he said, Parliament should be able to flex its muscles by requiring ministers to come forward with a plan of action, which MPs would be able to debate and vote on.
Several Tory MPs, including Heidi Allen, have suggested ministers have accepted this.
But the government is not believed to be willing to agree to Mr Grieve's call for MPs to effectively take control of negotiations in the last resort if no deal is agreed by February 2019.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the influential European Research Group of MPs, told the BBC a concession of this kind would have been "revolutionary" as the Commons could not override the government when it came to negotiating international treaties.
The leading Brexiteer said Mrs May had "paid attention to both sides" and the unity displayed by his party would strengthen the PM's hand in negotiations in the run-up to June's EU leaders' summit.
Fellow Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash said he was pleased the Lords amendment, which he said would have given Parliament an effective veto over Brexit, had been "soundly and significantly defeated".
Labour, five of whose MPs defied the leadership by voting with the government, said the prime minister may have avoided a "humiliating defeat" but the fight to ensure Parliament had a "proper role" in shaping the outcome of negotiations would continue.
"We will wait and see the details of this concession and will hold ministers to account to ensure it lives up to the promises they have made to Parliament," said the party's Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer.
Earlier, the government suffered its first ministerial resignation over Brexit as Phillip Lee quit the Ministry of Justice so he could speak out freely.
Mr Lee said Parliament was being sidelined, and called for another referendum to be held when the final direction of Brexit became clear.
Revealing he had abstained in the Commons vote on Parliament's role, he said he was "delighted" at the government's concession, adding: "This justifies my decision to resign and makes it a lot less painful."
The government, meanwhile, has reversed a series of other changes made by the Lords to the EU Withdrawal Bill, including reinstating the precise day of departure - 29 March 2019 - in the proposed legislation.
A government amendment on the Irish border, guaranteeing there will be no new border arrangements without the agreement of the UK and Irish authorities, was also approved by MPs.

Now he's gone and done it.
For a long time it had been clear Boris Johnson was not happy with the prime minister's Brexit strategy.
His dissatisfaction was more than just the odd off-colour remark, although goodness knows there were enough of those.
His departure is a huge story and turns what might have been a couple of days of significant turmoil, into a significant crisis for Theresa May and the whole Brexit project.
He was Brexit's main cheerleader, the politician most associated with making it happen, and one of the best known politicians in the country, for good or ill.
It's enough of a mess on its own.
But a well-connected source has just told me it could be more serious than that.
They said it is a concerted push to force the prime minister to drop her Chequers compromise.
"If she doesn't drop Chequers there will be another," they said, "then another, then another, then another."
But if she can't force a compromise through her party that itself took months to stitch together, the prime minister's authority would be significantly diminished.
As Mr Johnson is hemmed in by paparazzi and camera crews outside his official residence that will soon be no longer his home, Theresa May is also a hostage with no obvious means of escape.

"Extensive" planning is under way to prepare the health service for a no-deal Brexit scenario, the NHS England chief executive says.
Simon Stevens said immediate planning was taking place around the supply of medicines and equipment.
"Nobody's pretending this is a desirable situation, but if that's where we get to it will not have been unforeseen," he said.
Ministers say they do not want a "no-deal" scenario.
"I believe that is an option that can be very firmly avoided," Housing Secretary James Brokenshire told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, and negotiations are taking place about what their future relationship will look like.
In recent days there have been several warnings that time is running out to reach agreement before the autumn, so that a deal can be ratified by politicians.
Theresa May's cabinet will gather at Chequers on Friday to try to agree a "clear direction" that the UK wants to follow in trade talks.
Last October Mr Stevens told MPs he had not been asked by the government to examine the potential impact of the UK leaving in March 2019 with no deal in place.
Asked about this scenario, he told Andrew Marr: "There is immediate planning which the health department, with other parts of government, are undertaking around securing medicine supply and equipment under different scenarios.
"That will obviously crystallise when it's clear later this autumn what the UK's position will be."
He also said every hospital had been asked to "reach out" to EU nationals working there with information about how to apply to stay in the UK.
There have been warnings about the UK leaving Euratom, which regulates Europe's nuclear industry, including the supply of medical isotopes which are essential for various types of cancer treatment.
Prime Minister Theresa May has called for the UK to have a "close association" with Euratom after Brexit.
She has also said the UK will seek "associate membership" of the European Medicines Agency, which evaluates and supervises medicines and helps national authorities authorise the sale of drugs across the EU's single market.

The NHS in England is preparing to stockpile medicines and blood products in case of a "no deal" Brexit, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said.
He said he was confident a deal would be reached but it was "responsible" to prepare for all outcomes.
He told the Health Select Committee he had met medical industry leaders to "accelerate" preparations since taking over as health secretary two weeks ago.
The government is stepping up planning for a "no deal" Brexit.
But ministers have so far rejected talk of shortages and queues of lorries at ports if the EU and UK can not reach a deal by March next year, when the UK officially leaves the bloc.
Both the government and the EU have insisted they want to avoid a "no deal" Brexit but key differences remain as they enter the critical phase of talks. The UK is sticking by its insistence that "no deal is better than a bad deal".
Mr Hancock said: "We are working right across government to ensure that the health sector and the industry are prepared and that people's health will be safeguarded in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
"This includes the chain of medical supplies, vaccines, medical devices, clinical consumables, blood products.
"And I have asked the department to work up options for stockpiling by industry.
"We are working with industry for the potential need for stockpiling in the event of a no-deal Brexit."
The health and social care secretary said such planning carried a "cost implication".
"We are also focusing on the importance of a continuous supply of medicines that have a short shelf life - so some of the medicines most difficult to provide in a no-deal scenario where there is difficult access through ports will need to be flown in.
"I hope that even under a no-deal scenario that there will still be smooth movement in through ports."
He said the government would also be setting out "contingency plans" for people booking holidays in EU countries who might need medical insurance in the event of a no deal scenario.
Labour's shadow health minister Justin Madders said: "We need a Brexit deal which puts patients first but now we know that the NHS is having to stockpile medicines because of this government's chaotic handling of Brexit.
"This is the terrifying reality of this government's failure to prioritise the NHS in the Brexit negotiations."
Simon Stevens, NHS England's chief executive, said earlier this month that "extensive" planning for a no deal Brexit was under way, around the supply of medicines and equipment.
Government departments are planning to issue guidance to businesses and consumers over the summer break on how to cope with a no deal Brexit.
Brexit Minister Lord Callanan dismissed claims there were plans to stockpile food.
"I am not aware of any plans for stockpiling food. It seems to me to be a fairly ridiculous scare story," he told the House of Lords.
"There are many countries outside of the European Union that manage to feed their citizens perfectly satisfactorily without the benefit of EU processes."
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab told MPs the government would take steps to ensure an "adequate food supply".

The UK's new Brexit secretary has offered to meet Michel Barnier throughout August to "intensify" talks and "get some energy" into them.
Dominic Raab said his first meeting with the EU's chief negotiator in Brussels had been "constructive".
He replaced David Davis, who quit in protest at Theresa May's trade policy.
It comes as the IMF says some EU countries will suffer significant economic damage if the UK leaves without a trade deal.
Both the UK and EU are stepping up preparations for a "no deal" Brexit.
The two sides insist it is not what they want - and that reaching a deal by the autumn is still very much on the cards.
But they have yet to agree how their final relationship will work, with key issues around cross-border trade unresolved, and the UK's official departure date of 29 March 2019 fast approaching.
The UK government is standing by its belief that "no deal is better than a bad deal" - and is set to issue advice to businesses on how to cope with that eventuality.
The European Commission has issued a paper instructing other EU states to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
Possible consequences, the paper says, include disruption to the aviation industry and goods from the UK being subject to custom checks.
According to the IMF analysis, the organisation's first since the UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, 0.7% of the EU workforce could lose their jobs and economic growth could fall by 1.5%.
Ireland, which has the closest trade ties with the UK, would be the worst hit, according to the IMF report.
Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar has said his government is making contingency plans for "the unlikely event of a no-deal hard Brexit".
Mr Varadkar said that - even if there is a deal - Ireland will need 1,000 new customs officers and veterinary inspectors to deal with changes in trade rules with the UK.
By BBC Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris
If both sides come to the conclusion several months before the end of March that there will be "no deal", they can at least make some contingency plans to deal with that.
But if there is a last-minute hitch, time will have run out. So, from the EU's perspective, thinking about "no deal" means "preparing for the worst and hoping for the best".
Much of the UK government would probably look at it in the same way - but there are many Brexiteers who think that "no deal" would be perfectly acceptable as long as sufficient preparations have been made.
Read Chris's full piece
Speaking to MPs before setting off for Brussels, Mr Raab said he hoped Mr Barnier would "fully support" the proposals for post-Brexit trade with the EU in the government's White Paper.
And addressing the press as he began his first meeting with Mr Barnier, the MP -  who was a leading figure in the 2016 campaign to leave the EU - vowed to get "best deal for Britain" and to tackle talks with "renewed energy, vigour and vim".
Mr Barnier said it was a "matter of urgency" to agree on a "backstop" plan to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland if no deal is agreed - and said a "close partnership" on security was "more important than ever given the geopolitical context".
Mr Raab's trip to Brussels comes with debate raging within the Conservative Party about what Brexit should look like.
On Wednesday, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - who also quit over the proposals presented to the cabinet at Chequers - used his resignation speech to accuse Theresa May of "dithering" over the UK's strategy for leaving the EU.
"It is not too late to save Brexit", he said, calling for the government to "change tack".
Former Remain supporters, on the other hand, were furious when the government changed its Customs Bill this week to comply with the demands of a Eurosceptic group of Tory MPs.
The EU says it will analyse the Chequers proposals, which were set out in full in a White Paper, before coming up with a response.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator has described how a Brexit backstop would affect movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The backstop will apply if the Irish border cannot be kept frictionless in the context of a wider deal.
Michel Barnier said animals and some food products would have to be checked at ports.
However he said other products could be dealt with by scanning barcodes on lorries or shipping containers.
There could also be "market surveillance" checks carried out in Northern Ireland by officials, like trading standards officers.
Mr Barnier said checks would be carried out "in the least intrusive way possible".
"I understand why such procedures are politically sensitive but... Brexit was not our choice, it is the choice of the UK," he said.
"Our proposal tries to help the UK in managing the negative fallout of Brexit in Northern Ireland in a way that respects the territorial integrity of the UK."
The DUP have repeatedly warned they will not support any Brexit deal that could lead to new economic barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Earlier this week the party leader Arlene Foster said:  "The United Kingdom single market must be protected with no new borders between Northern Ireland and Great Britain being created.
"From day one this has been the DUP's only red line."
The backstop arrangement is effectively an insurance policy to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
It is what will happen if a deal is agreed but the border cannot be kept as frictionless as it is now.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.

MPs could end up supporting another Brexit referendum if "none of the other options work", Tony Blair has said.
The ex-prime minister said there could be majority support for a new EU poll if Parliament ended up "gridlocked".
He urged Theresa May to "facilitate" the process by "running all options" by MPs first, including Norway and Canada-style alternatives as well as her deal.
But Labour frontbencher Angela Rayner says another referendum could increase division in the UK.
The shadow education secretary told the BBC's Question Time that holding a further Brexit vote would "undermine democracy".
"People made the decision and you can't keep going back saying, 'Would you like to answer it a different way?'"
And Hilary Benn, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons Brexit committee, has also distanced himself from calls within his party for another vote, telling BBC Radio 4's Political Thinking podcast that politicians have a "responsibility to give effect to the result of the last referendum".
But he told presenter Nick Robinson: "If the deal goes down… it may be that the prime minister decides, 'Well, I'm taking my deal to the country.'"
The government is opposed to any further referendum, saying the public made a clear choice when they voted in 2016 to leave by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1%.
Labour's position, which was approved by members at its party conference, is not to rule out any options if Parliament cannot agree a Brexit deal.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Labour's goal was to force a general election but if this was not possible, another referendum "had to be available" as an option.
The prime minister abandoned plans to hold a vote earlier this week on the withdrawal deal she has negotiated with the EU after admitting it would be heavily defeated.
She is currently in Brussels appealing to fellow EU leaders to soften their stance on the Irish backstop.
The PM insists her deal can pass if the EU is willing to give "political and legal assurances" on how the backstop - a contingency plan to ensure there is no hard border on the island of Ireland while the two sides settle a future trade deal - might come into force and how long it would last.
Mr Blair said he admired Mrs May's determination but suggested that, with so many MPs opposed to the backstop and other parts of the deal, this was becoming a weakness and she must realise she was "in a hole... and there is literally no point in carrying on digging".
Ahead of a speech in London later setting out the case for a "People's Vote", he said giving the final say to the people would become the "logical" outcome if every other option were to be exhausted.
"There will be a majority in Parliament, in the end, for a referendum if no other option of Brexit works," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"The real reason we should have another referendum is that we have had 30 months of negotiation and let's be clear, we are in crisis mode on this.
"The government is in a mess. Parliament cannot agree. Our knowledge has been vastly enlarged of what leaving the European Union will mean.
"If you look at all of this mess how can it be undemocratic to say to the British people, 'OK in light of all of this, do you want to proceed or do you want to stay?'"
Both the UK and EU are stepping up no-deal planning in case no agreement can be reached ahead of the UK's scheduled departure on 29 March.
Some Tory MPs, reportedly including some ministers, support a "managed no deal", in which the UK would reach agreements with the EU in key sectors, such as transport, and the UK would move to trade with the EU on World Trade Organization rules.
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said this was "not the government's policy" and ministers were focused on getting Commons backing for the deal in a vote now expected in mid-January.
Asked whether Parliament should hold a series of indicative votes on what the future course of action should be, he said the government first had to deliver on its promise that MPs would finish their debate on the proposed Brexit deal and vote on it.
Were the proposed deal to be defeated, he said the cabinet and prime minister would need to take stock and "go to Parliament accordingly".

Former Conservative MP Nick Boles has accused the cabinet of being "cowardly and selfish" for failing to challenge Theresa May's approach to Brexit.
Mr Boles, who quit the parliamentary party on Monday, said the PM had "misunderstood and mismanaged" the whole process of leaving the EU.
And he told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg no-one in the cabinet "had earned the right" to succeed her.
The Tory Party "did not really exist any more", he also suggested.
Mr Boles was part of a cross-party group of MPs co-ordinating efforts to find a compromise in Parliament around a Brexit proposal that would retain access to the single market.
After his Common Market 2.0 plan was rejected by MPs for the second time on Monday, he accused his party of "failing to compromise".
He said he could no longer represent them in the Commons and would sit as an independent.
Mr Boles, the MP for Grantham and Stamford, told the BBC his former party was gripped by a combination of "cowardice and dogma".
He said the prime minister had been totally preoccupied with the wishes of her party and had never attempted to "construct or understand what a deal would look like to bring the country together".
Senior ministers had shown a "collective failure to lead and unite" and had "all put their interests first".
"There are fine people in cabinet but this is the worst cabinet in recorded history," he said. "None has earned the right to lead the country after Brexit."
He suggested Brexit would be the equivalent of a "meteor strike" on the British political system and none of the major parties would be immune from the repercussions.
But he also admitted that MPs who wanted closer economic links with the EU had failed to coalesce early enough around an alternative to the PM's deal and had "missed the boat".
The MP quit his local constituency party last month amid a campaign by some party members to deselect him as their candidate for the next election.

Tory MP Nick Boles is resigning from his local Conservative association after clashing with them over Brexit.
Mr Boles, who wants to remain as MP for Grantham and Stamford, has spoken out about leaving the EU with no deal.
Local activists had wanted to deselect him as their candidate in the next general election because of his stance.
In his letter, seen by the BBC, he said he was resigning with immediate effect and that a "division had opened up" between him and the local association.
He wrote: "I regret that my relationship with you should end in this way. But a politician without principles is worthless.
"I am in no doubt about my duty, which is to be true to my convictions and to dedicate the rest of my time in Parliament to the best interests of the people I was elected to serve."
Mr Boles said he wanted to continue to "take the Conservative whip" at Westminster if it is offered "on acceptable terms" - meaning he would still vote with the party.
Councillor Martin Hill, vice president of the Grantham and Stamford Conservative Association, told members they had been "betrayed by their parliamentary representative" and called on him to take the "honourable course" and quit as an MP.
He wrote: "As you are all aware, Nick has been at odds with the local party and the prime minister for some time, so this announcement does not come as a complete surprise, but the timing does leave a lot to be desired."
He said the process of selecting a new candidate would start at the group's AGM later this month.
Chief Whip Julian Smith said Mr Boles was a "valued member of the Conservative parliamentary party which I hope will continue to benefit from his ideas and drive".
His announcement comes after a busy week in Westminster, when MPs voted to seek a delay to the UK's departure from the EU, due to take place on 29 March.
The third "meaningful vote" on Prime Minister Theresa May's deal is expected to take place next week. If it is agreed, she has promised to seek a short extension to the departure date. But if it doesn't gain support, she has warned a longer extension may be needed - and the UK might have to take part in European elections.
To find out how your MP voted this week, use the look-up below.
Click here if you cannot see the look-up. Data from Commons Votes Services.
Mr Boles had voted in favour of extending Article 50 in the Commons this week, and in favour of Mrs May's Brexit deal.
In his letter, he said: "While I have consistently argued that Brexit must be delivered, and have voted for the prime minister's deal every time she has brought it to the House of Commons, I am certain that crashing out of the EU without a deal would do great harm to the British people and have done everything in my power to prevent it."
Mr Boles said he was "proud" of his role in the cross-party campaign to force Mrs May to request an extension to Article 50 beyond 29 March and block a no-deal Brexit.
"In securing substantial Commons majorities in favour of both propositions last week, I believe we have done the country a great service," he added.
Mr Boles is keen on a closer Norway-style relationship with Europe after leaving the EU.
But Mr Hill told the BBC: "Talk to the man and woman on the street and they're also quite angry that their MP seems to be going back on what he promised to do at the general election. He signed up to the manifesto about coming out of the single market and the customs union."
Meanwhile, pro-Brexit marchers, led by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, have begun a two-week journey from Sunderland to London.
About 100 people had assembled to start the march. They were joined by counter-protesters, including those from anti-Brexit campaign Led by Donkeys.
Mr Farage aims to walk 100 of the 270-mile March to Leave, which is due to arrive in the capital on 29 March.
Separately, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said politicians will move "heaven and earth" to prevent the UK from leaving the EU without a deal.
Speaking before an event in Gravesend, Kent, Mr McDonnell said "quite a number" of MPs would be prepared to support a compromise deal, with the guarantee the deal goes back to the people for a final say on Brexit.
Any final say should not be on the deal Mrs May has agreed, "because it's not credible", he said.

Scotland's first minister has told the BBC she wants to find a referendum date that both sides can agree on.
Nicola Sturgeon said she was "up for continued discussion" with Theresa May on the matter.
The prime minister insisted this week that "now was not the time" to hold a second independence referendum.
And she indicated that the UK government would not give approval to the SNP's preferred timetable of between autumn 2018 and spring 2019.
Ms Sturgeon believed it was imperative for a vote on Scotland's constitutional future to take place once a deal had been agreed on the UK exiting the European Union.
The  focus on a Scottish independence referendum comes as the SNP meet for its spring conference in Aberdeen.
On the first day of the gathering, the party's deputy leader Angus Robertson said it would be "totally unacceptable" for Westminster to deny a referendum before Brexit was finalised.
In his speech, the SNP MP said: "Let there be no doubt - Scotland will have its referendum and the people of this country will have their choice. They will not be denied their say."
Ahead of her keynote speech on Saturday, Ms Sturgeon spoke to the BBC's Sarah Smith.
She said: "We [Ms Sturgeon and Mrs May] have got a disagreement. What I am saying today is let us try and work our way through that disagreement.
"Now, I am no paragon of virtue about these things - it takes two to have a relationship, I absolutely accept that. But I have tried really really hard to find compromise with the PM over the last few months."
Ms Sturgeon added: "So let her [Mrs May] set out when she thinks it would be right and then let's have a discussion about it - who knows we might be a matter of weeks or months apart.
"I am up for continued discussion, but people will recognise in any walk of life - not just in politics - you can't have discussion and reach compromise with people who are not prepared to enter into discussion and are not prepared to countenance compromise and that so far has been my experience of the PM."
By BBC Scotland's political editor Brian Taylor
I do not believe that the first minister is attracted to the idea of a non-consensual referendum. I believe she would see it as gesture politics, not the actions of a long-standing elected government. I believe further she would question what it would achieve, given that it might face a boycott from supporters of the Union.
So might she engineer an early Holyrood election? Might she seek an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament in order, presumably, to bring the Prime Minister to the negotiating table?
She might. It is feasible. But, again, I think it is highly unlikely.
Broadly, there are three objections:
By the BBC's Scotland editor Sarah Smith
Speaking to me today, Ms Sturgeon indicated she might be prepared to discuss the timing of another vote with Mrs May.
The Scottish government want a referendum between Autumn 2018 and Spring 2019.
It looks like they would be prepared to negotiate a different, later, date.
However, it is not yet clear that the UK government are prepared to talk about a date.
The PM did say "now is not the time" for another referendum. She didn't say never. So, will she talk about holding a vote in the future?
That seems to be the question today.
The SNP conference got under way just 24 hours after the Scottish and UK governments clashed over a second referendum.
Ms Sturgeon insisted that a referendum should go ahead on her timescale.
It followed Mrs May rejecting calls for a second independence vote before Brexit.
Meanwhile, Mrs May used a speech in Wales to defend the UK.
She said the "precious bond" between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was much more that just "constitutional artefact".
Mrs May went on to tell a gathering of Conservatives in Cardiff that a second Scottish independence referendum would be "bad for Scotland, bad for the United Kingdom, and bad for us all".
The prime minister added: "The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom.
"Every person, every family, every business, every community the length and breadth of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
"As the prime minister of this United Kingdom, I will always ensure the voices and interests of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are represented as we negotiate to leave the EU."
Mrs May had already accused the SNP of forcing a "fundamentally unfair" independence referendum that would damage Brexit negotiations.
Writing in the Times, she said: "The SNP is trying to force the UK government to agree to something that is fundamentally unfair to the Scottish people.
"It wants to ask them to make a crucial decision without the necessary information.
"They would not know what the new partnership with the EU would look like, or what the alternative of an independent Scotland would be. It would simply not be fair."
The article follows a television interview on Thursday, in which she said "all our energies" should be focused on negotiations with the European Union.
At the SNP conference later, Deputy First Minister John Swinney will address domestic Scottish matters as the parties in Scotland prepare for May's local government elections.
Mr Swinney said the spring conference, which will be attended by 2,500 delegates, would "underline our party's top priorities of education, the economy and our public services".

Ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage has launched his new Brexit Party, saying he wants a "democratic revolution" in UK politics.
Speaking in Coventry, he said May's expected European elections were the party's "first step" but its "first task" was to "change politics".
"I said that if I did come back into the political fray it would be no more Mr Nice Guy and I mean it," he said.
But UKIP dismissed the Brexit Party as a "vehicle" for Mr Farage.
The launch comes after Prime Minister Theresa May agreed a Brexit delay to 31 October with the EU, with the option of leaving earlier if her withdrawal agreement is approved by Parliament.
This means the UK is likely to have to hold European Parliament elections on 23 May.
Mr Farage said the Brexit Party had an "impressive list" of 70 candidates for the elections. Among those revealed at the launch was Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of leading Conservative Brexiteer MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Mr Farage said: "This party is not here just to fight the European elections... this party is not just to express our anger - 23 May is the first step of the Brexit Party. We will change politics for good."
He said he was "angry, but this is not a negative emotion, this is a positive emotion".
The party had already received £750,000 online over 10 days, he said, made up of small donations of up to £500.
Ms Rees-Mogg said she had stuck with the Conservatives "through thick and thin", but added: "We've got to rescue our democracy, we have got to show that the people of this country have a say in how we are run."
Annunziata Rees-Mogg joined the Conservative Party, at the age of five, in 1984. She says she canvassed for the party from the age of eight.
The sister of Conservative Brexiteer MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, Ms Rees-Mogg stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate in the 2005 and 2010 general elections.
The freelance journalist has written for the Daily Telegraph, MoneyWeek and the European.
Earlier, Mr Farage told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "In terms of policy, there's no difference (to UKIP), but in terms of personnel there is a vast difference.
"UKIP did struggle to get enough good people into it but unfortunately what it's chosen to do is allow the far right to join it and take it over and I'm afraid the brand is now tarnished."
He promised the Brexit Party would be "deeply intolerant of all intolerance" and would represent a cross-section of society.
UKIP leader Gerard Batten tweeted that Mr Farage's suggestion that there was no difference in policy between UKIP and the Brexit Party was "a lie".
He said: "UKIP has a manifesto and policies. Farage's party is just a vehicle for him."
He said the Brexit Party's "only purpose is to re-elect him (Mr Farage)" and was a "Tory/Establishment safety valve".
The Electoral Commission has issued European Parliamentary elections guidance for returning officers to advise them "on the rules should the elections go ahead" and to ensure they "have as much certainty as possible in developing contingency plans".

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has said he is open to an electoral pact with the Conservative Party - if Boris Johnson is genuine about taking the UK out of the EU on 31 October.
Mr Farage said Mr Johnson would need to call an election if he wanted a no-deal Brexit, in order to "change the arithmetic" in the Commons.
He said there was then a "possibility" of a pact between the parties.
But he added: "I don't believe a single word the Conservative Party tell us."
An electoral pact usually involves not fielding candidates in specific areas, in order to allow another party a better chance of winning.
A pact between the Brexit Party and the Conservatives could avoid splitting the pro-Brexit vote - but Mr Johnson has previously said he does not believe the Tories should do deals with any other party.
The Brexit Party was the clear winner in the UK's European elections in May, taking almost 32% of the vote in Great Britain, with the Conservatives winning only 9%.
Mr Farage said: "Theresa May told us 108 times we were leaving on March 29 and we didn't, so just because Boris says we're leaving on the 31 October doesn't mean we're going to."
"We would need to believe them and at the moment that's not very easy," he added.
Mr Johnson - who was elected Tory leader and the UK's next prime minister on Tuesday - has pledged the UK will leave the EU on 31 October "do or die", and with or without a deal.
Asked at a Tory leadership hustings last week whether he could work with the Brexit Party, Mr Johnson said: "I don't believe that we should do deals with any party."

Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage says he is close to backing a second EU referendum to end the "whinging and whining" of anti-Brexit campaigners.
Mr Farage told Channel 5's The Wright Stuff a fresh vote could "kill off" the Remain campaign for a generation.
He later clarified his remarks saying it was the "last thing" he wanted but Leave voters had to be prepared and he was confident they would win again.
Pro-EU campaigners said "support is growing" for another referendum.
And co-founder of the Leave.EU referendum campaign group, Arron Banks, said that to avoid sleepwalking "into a faux Brexit" people should "go back the polls and let the people shout from the rooftops their support of a true Brexit".
But Mr Farage's former UKIP colleagues dismissed his suggestion.
And Downing Street said: "We will not be having a second referendum."
Mr Farage was one of the leading figures in the Leave campaign, which won the referendum with 51.9% of votes.
The result in June 2016 means that the UK is leaving the European Union, with the date for departure set as 29 March 2019. Negotiations are currently taking place between the UK and the EU about a post_Brexit relationship.
During a debate about Brexit on the Channel 5 programme, Mr Farage said: "What is for certain is that the [Nick] Cleggs, the [Tony] Blairs, the [Lord] Adonises will never ever, ever, give up.
"They will go on whinging and whining and moaning all the way through this process.
"So maybe, just maybe, I'm reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum on EU membership... and we may just finish the whole thing off.
"And Blair can disappear off into total obscurity."
He said "the percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round".
His UKIP colleagues did not agree:
The party's former deputy chairwoman Suzanne Evans described his comments as "epically stupid".
"Even putting aside the astronomical and completely unjustified public cost of a second referendum, Farage's comments are an open goal for the Remain camp," she wrote on the Brexit Central website.
But the other side of the Brexit debate were more enthusiastic.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, of the Open Britain campaign for close ties with the EU, said: "For perhaps the first time in his life, Nigel Farage is making a valid point.
"In a democracy like ours, the British people have every right to keep an open mind about Brexit."
The Lib Dems vowed that in any referendum, they would be "leading the charge" to keep Britain in the EU.
The party's Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "But Farage shouldn't be so confident of winning, people are now far more aware of the costs of Brexit and the fabrications of the Leave campaign.... what will the Leave campaign bus have written on it next time: 'let's not fund our NHS, but pay a £39bn Brexit divorce bill instead'?"
Speaking on his LBC radio show later on Thursday, Mr Farage said that his meeting with Michel Barnier in Brussels on Monday had convinced him that the EU's chief Brexit negotiator was "not going to give us a good deal."
He believed it would be rejected by Parliament, where he counted more Tory rebels than Labour Brexiteers ready to defy their own side.
"I am saying this to Leavers: Don't be complacent," he said.
"There may well be one last dramatic battle that will take place in all this."

"Another big seismic shock" could hit British politics at the next election, Nigel Farage has warned Theresa May if Brexit is not delivered by 2020.
The interim UKIP leader said he suspected the Conservative Government "is not fit for the legacy of Brexit".
He made the remarks at a reception in London's Ritz Hotel to celebrate his contribution to the Brexit victory.
In a nod to Donald Trump's call for him to be UK ambassador to the US, he handed out Ferrero Rocher chocolates.
The sweet treats were famously offered in an advert set at an "ambassador's reception" and included the oft-quoted line: "You are really spoiling us."
Downing Street has already rejected Mr Trump's claim that Mr Farage would do a "great job" as ambassador by saying "there is no vacancy".
And Chancellor Philip Hammond said Mr Farage should not "hold his breath" if he expected a call for him to help with UK-US relations.
Mr Farage was introduced for his speech by Leave.EU spokesman Andy Wigmore, with a call for attention from "Ladies, Gents, Lords and... diplomats".
Mr Farage told the gathering: "We've got a problem. In America the revolution is total. Not only have the people spoken and won, but the old administration, Obama and all those ghastly people, are out and the Trump people are in.
"In this country, the people have spoken, but the same players have just been shuffled around the chess board and we are still being run by the career professional political class.
"I am not sure what is going to happen over the course of the next couple of years but I suspect there's another big seismic shock in British politics perhaps going to come at the next election.
"I suspect that the Conservative Party is not fit for the legacy of Brexit. I suspect there is going to be a genuine realignment of British politics over the course of the next three or four years.
"It is unfinished business - the people have spoken but the establishment don't want to listen. There are great battles to be fought and I'm going to go on fighting those battles."
The reception at the Ritz was hosted by millionaire Arron Banks, who was thanked by Mr Farage for bankrolling the Leave.EU campaign.
 On speed dial?
Also present were Conservative MPs Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone, Labour Leave campaigner and donor John Mills and UKIP leadership candidate Paul Nuttall.
Asked if he would back Mr Farage to be the UK ambassador to the US, Mr Rees-Mogg said: "Mr Farage's relationship with Mr Trump could be beneficial for the country but I am not sure he should be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.
"Mr Farage is certainly extraordinary in his own way but I think that being plenipotentiary as well may be a bit too much."
Mr Hammond also dampened any ambassadorial ambitions Mr Farage might have in an interview with ITV's Good Morning Britain.
"It isn't for other countries to decide who we appoint as ambassadors - and if I ever need any advice from Nigel Farage, I've got his number and I'll give him a call," he said. "Tell him not to hold his breath."
Mr Farage, who has denied reports that he plans to emigrate to the US, recalled that he had joined Mr Banks and other leading Brexiteers at the Ritz on the morning after the 23 June referendum for a victory breakfast of Champagne and kippers - a reference to the nickname for UKIP supporters.
He said: "When people look back in 100 or 200 years, 2016 will be seen as one of the great historic years - a year of big political revolution.
"Brexit was the first brick knocked out of the establishment wall and then look what we got on 8 November. The election of 'The Donald' was something of a completely different order."
To cheers he said: "For those of you who aren't particularly happy with what happened in 2016, I've got some really bad news for you - it's going to get a bloody sight worse next year."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has warned of disturbances on the streets if Parliament tries to block Brexit.
He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show there would be "political anger the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed".
The comments follow the High Court ruling that MPs and peers must have a vote ahead of the government triggering official talks with the European Union.
The campaigner who brought the case said it had given "clarity".
Mr Farage is in charge of UKIP on an interim basis, as the party looks for its next full-time leader, following the resignation of Diane James after just 18 days in the job.
The judges who ruled on Thursday that the government must seek MPs' approval to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - getting formal Brexit negotiations with the EU under way - have been criticised in some newspapers, the Daily Mail calling them "enemies of the people".
Mr Farage said: "We may have seen Bob Geldof and 40,000 people in Parliament Square moaning about Brexit.
"Believe you me, if the people in this country think they're going to be cheated, they're going to be betrayed, then we will see political anger the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed in this country. Those newspaper headlines are reflecting that."
Asked by Andrew Marr if there was a danger of "disturbance in the streets and so on" if Parliament thwarted Brexit, Mr Farage replied: "Yes, I think that's right."
He added: "The temperature of this is very, very high.
"Now, I'm going to say to everybody watching this who was on the Brexit side - let's try and get even, let's have peaceful protests and let's make sure in any form of election we don't support people who want to overturn this process."
Also appearing on Andrew Marr, investment manager Gina Miller, who brought the High Court case against the government, insisted the UK had a representative democracy which ensured politicians had to debate issues.
"Do we want a country where we have no process?" she asked, adding: "The case is that [Mrs May] cannot use something called the Royal Prerogative to do it because we do not live in a tin-pot dictatorship."
She told Mr Farage: "That's what you argued for the whole way through [the Brexit referendum campaign] - parliamentary sovereignty."
He replied: "No, no. This is not about whether Parliament is sovereign; it's about whether the British people are sovereign."
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron criticised Mr Farage over his warnings of disturbances, saying "all responsible politicians" must distance themselves from UKIP's leader.
He said: "This is the politics of the gutter. All that has happened is that British judges in a British court have interpreted British laws.
"Nigel Farage should welcome that. British citizens aren't talking about taking to the street, only Nigel Farage is.
"Responsible leaders have a duty to calm tempers, heal division and work together to keep Britain open, tolerant and united."
Meanwhile, Mr Farage told Andrew Neil he was "sick" of and "finished" with party politics but would continue campaigning on "issues" after leaving frontline politics.
Several contenders have quit the leadership contest, leaving Suzanne Evans, Paul Nuttall and John Rees-Evans.
Mr Farage described the situation as a "soap opera" over a "terrible few weeks", but said the party was still well-placed in the opinion polls.

There was a definite "battle of the tones" at the seal-the-deal Brexit summit with Theresa May.
EU leaders were determinedly sombre, while the UK prime minister had to sound upbeat and positive about her country's Brussels-free future.
It shouldn't be under-estimated. Sunday was a huge day for the EU, signing off on the divorce papers of a departing key member state for the first time in the history of the bloc.
In the eyes of many, Brexit counts as an EU failure. At the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron reminded the press of the fragility of European Union. Which is why, time and again, EU leaders in Brussels continue to make so much of the (unusual) show of unity the Brexit process has provoked in EU ranks.
For now, of course, all European eyes turn to the UK to see if the hard-negotiated Brexit deal passes through the House of Commons.
If it doesn't, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, insists there will be no deal.
"This is the deal. This is THE deal," he told me emphatically, ruling out the possibility of renegotiating the Brexit texts.
If he's true to his word, and parliament votes down the divorce deal, then all 19 months of painful EU-UK negotiations were for naught. And both sides could find themselves staring at the cost and potential chaos of what the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier calls a non-orderly Brexit.
EU leaders are hell-bent on avoiding that.
So much so, that as much as  EU leaders regret Brexit, and as often as they have spoken at every EU summit so far since the Brexit vote about the door still being open for the UK to change its mind, there was none of that talk on Sunday. Instead, they were fully on message with Theresa May - to help her sell her deal back home.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte remarked that Mrs May had "fought hard" and that the result was a good deal. Meanwhile, Mr Barnier said these had been "extraordinary", "complex" and "difficult" negotiations, resulting in an "unprecedented and ambitious partnership".
All that talk of fair and fabulous deals somehow rings rather hollow, though, when the EU has made clear from the start that it would never concede a deal to the UK that made life look as good - or even better - outside, rather than inside, their club.
But of course, this is not the final deal. The story of the EU and UK's tempestuous relationship is far from over.
Maybe there will be a second vote on the Brexit deal in the UK parliament, or a second referendum, or a general election. Until we know, we cannot be 100%  sure how the EU will react.
But if, as seems likely, Brexit does indeed go ahead, it is only then that the detailed negotiations for a future EU-UK trade deal begin in earnest.
And Mr Macron reminded us all at the Sunday summit of the horse-trading, arm-twisting and conflicting national interests of EU countries that will challenge those negotiations.
The French president essentially threatened the success of a future EU-UK trade deal if the UK didn't guarantee access for French fishermen to UK waters after Brexit.
Now this should shock no-one. Fish, Gibraltar, the EU trying to tie the UK to its competition rules, even the Irish border backstop are all issues that were dealt with just enough to complete the Brexit deal texts but, in reality, the can was kicked down the road to the future trade negotiations.
To sum up: these 19 months of endless wrangling over the Brexit divorce deal... they were a just a taster of what is yet to come.

Downing Street say there are no plans to use the Army to maintain food and other supplies in the event of the UK leaving the EU with no Brexit deal.
No 10 is expected to publish around 70 separate papers with advice about the implications of no deal.
The papers are due to be published in August and September - and will contain information for different industries.
They are also expected to contain advice for consumers - for example about travelling around the EU.
However No 10 dismissed newspaper reports that the Army might be called in to ensure food and medical supplies are maintained in more remote communities.
A spokesman said: "This is about putting in place sensible preparations in the unlikely event of no deal."
"There are no plans to involve the Army. I don't know where that speculation came from."
The prime minister's spokesman added: "We have been absolutely clear that it's in the interests not just of ourselves but the EU to get a deal.
"In the event of 'no deal' there will of course be consequences for the European Union."
The spokesman added that the plans were aimed at ensuring an "orderly" Brexit even if there is no agreement with Brussels.
"We are working towards getting a deal but the prime minister is clear that we will put in place all the necessary steps to ensure the UK has a bright future."
The spokesman also dismissed suggestions that the original plan to publish the papers over the course of the summer had been shelved.
This had provoked alarm among some Brexiteers who described it as "Project fear Mark 2" designed to frighten people away from accepting no deal.
The prime minister is on holiday in the Italian Lakes, leaving her effective deputy David Lidington as the senior government figure in the UK.
Downing Street defended ministers taking holidays despite the tense state of the Brexit talks, saying: "The prime minister and other ministers are always fully engaged with their briefs."

Downing Street has dismissed any prospect of a return to a "hard border" on the island of Ireland after Brexit.
It followed the leak of a letter from Boris Johnson in which he appeared to contemplate future customs border checks after the UK leaves the EU.
In the letter, obtained by Sky News, the foreign secretary tells Theresa May 95% of traffic would still pass unchecked if there was a hard border.
It comes as the EU is set to publish a draft of its Brexit withdrawal treaty.
The 120-page document, to be unveiled on Wednesday, will refer to three possible options for avoiding physical infrastructure on the Irish border but the only one to be fleshed out will be the government's least-favourite: Northern Ireland staying aligned with European rules and regulations.
The document, marking another major milestone on the UK's road to Brexit, will encapsulate in legally binding text agreements already reached on Ireland, citizens' rights and the UK's so-called "divorce bill".
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said it would form the basis of further negotiations with the UK in areas like the transition and could still be tweaked by the 27 remaining member states.
According to reports by Irish broadcaster RTE, the text - which EU negotiator Michel Barnier has said will not contain any surprises - will say that Northern Ireland may be considered part of European Union customs territory after Brexit, alluding to a single regulatory space on the island of Ireland with no internal barriers.
Earlier on Tuesday, the foreign secretary was criticised by opponents for suggesting in a BBC interview the issue of the border could be managed as easily as London's congestion charging zone.
In his letter to the prime minister, Mr Johnson seeks to play down the "exaggerated impression" of "how important checks are" at EU external borders.
He also appears to contemplate a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, writing: "Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95% + of goods pass the border [without] checks."
He may have thought he was being helpful. Boris Johnson was offering his views on how to deal with the thorny issue of the Irish border.
But today he seemed to put both feet in it.
First foot. He seemed to trivialise centuries of Irish history by suggesting the status of the Irish border was no more important than a borough boundary in London, where the congestion charge is policed electronically.
Second, while his paper didn't contemplate new infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic he used the potentially toxic phrase "if" in connection with a hard border.
This allowed opponents to suggest he - maybe even the government - was contemplating a regime of border checks that would be anathema to republicans and nationalists - and why No 10 moved so quickly to confirm the policy hadn't changed.
As the old wartime adage goes "Loose Lips Sink Ships".
Mr Johnson's loose language is unlikely to cost lives but could erode much needed goodwill just as the EU draws up a legal text on the post-Brexit Irish border which will also prove controversial.
Following the letter's emergence, Labour called for Mr Johnson - one of the leading Brexiteers in the cabinet - to be dismissed "before he can do any more damage".
"This man's ego, and his Brexit at any cost strategy cannot be allowed to jeopardise peace," said shadow Northern Ireland secretary Owen Smith.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said the letter was "designed to outline how a highly facilitated border would work and help to make a successful Brexit".
"The letter points out there is a border now, and the task the (cabinet Brexit) committee face is stopping this becoming significantly harder," he said.
"It shows how we could manage a border without infrastructure or related checks and controls while protecting UK, Northern Ireland, Irish and EU interests."
He added: "We will not accept any physical infrastructure at the border, and will instead seek alternatives that allow us to leave the customs union and take back control of our money, borders, laws and trading policy."
No 10 said it had made it clear "on numerous occasions" the UK government will not contemplate a hard border after the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019.

Downing Street has sought to play down a warning from a government source that the House of Lords could be abolished if peers try to block the Brexit bill.
The bill - to give the government the authority to trigger Article 50 - was approved by 494 votes to 122 in the Commons, and now moves to the Lords.
A government source said the Lords will face an "overwhelming" public call to be abolished if it opposes the bill.
Brexit Secretary David Davis called on peers to "do their patriotic duty".
Prime Minister Theresa May wants to invoke Article 50 - the starting gun on the two-year process of the UK leaving the EU - by the end of March.
However, after a Supreme Court ruling last month, she first requires Parliament's permission.
Mr Davis said the government had seen off a series of attempts to amend the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill before MPs overwhelmingly voted on Wednesday in favour of passing it unamended.
The bill must now be approved by peers, who will begin debating it after the Lords returns from recess on 20 February.
The Liberal Democrats have vowed to continue trying to amend the legislation after it comes to the Lords, while pro-Europe Tory and Labour peers may also try and make changes to the bill.
Mr Davis said he expected the House of Lords to "do its job and to do its patriotic duty and actually give us the right to go on and negotiate that new relationship".
However, a government source told BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg on Wednesday: "If the Lords don't want to face an overwhelming public call to be abolished they must get on and protect democracy and pass this bill."
On Thursday morning a No 10 source distanced Downing Street from that view, saying peers had an important role in scrutinising and debating the bill "and we welcome them exercising this role".
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said:  "It suggests ministers are mindful that threatening peers may simply fuel opposition - and prompt a constitutional clash - that would be a massive distraction from delivering Brexit."
Shadow business secretary Clive Lewis was one of 52 Labour MPs to defy party orders to back the bill in the Commons and he resigned from the front bench.
He said he could not back the bill, given his Norwich constituency voted 56.2% to 43.8% to remain in the EU in June's referendum.
Eleven Labour junior shadow ministers and three party whips also voted against the bill.
Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he understood the difficulties the vote presented some of his MPs but said they had been ordered to back the Article 50 because the party would not "block Brexit".
Mr Corbyn will make decisions on whether to sack frontbenchers who defied the whip and who will replace the shadow cabinet ministers who resigned in the next few days, a Labour source said.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who last week blamed a migraine for a failure to attend a key vote on the bill, backed the triggering of Article 50.
She told BBC's Newsnight: "I respect the result of the referendum and no-one wanted to thwart it in a perverse kind of way.
"But we need to be clear, this is not a Tony Benn Brexit, this is Donald Trump Brexit, and it's got a very ugly side."
Former Chancellor Ken Clarke was again the only Conservative to vote against the two-clause bill.
Earlier the bill survived several attempts to change its wording and add extra conditions.
These included Labour MP Harriet Harman's bid to protect the residence rights of EU citizens in the UK, which was outvoted by 332 votes to 290, with three Conservative MPs rebelling.

Suggestions that freedom of movement will continue after the UK leaves the EU are wrong, Downing Street has said.
On Friday, Chancellor Philip Hammond warned full controls could take "some time", prompting speculation free movement may continue in all but name after the UK leaves in March 2019.
But amid claims of splits in cabinet, No 10 has moved to make clear free movement will end when the UK leaves.
It said: "It would be wrong to suggest it... will continue as it is now."
Downing Street's move followed days of uncertainty over future immigration policy during any transitional phase after Brexit.
The PM's spokesman said plans for a registration system for migrants arriving after March 2019 had been set out last week, and Prime Minister Theresa May had raised, as long ago as January, the prospect of a transition period before the post-Brexit system was implemented.
At the moment, citizens from the other 27 EU member states have the right to come and work and live in the UK.
Ministers have said Brexit will enable the UK to control who comes to the country and in what numbers but there has been debate within government about how quickly this will happen and what its impact will be.
Mr Hammond has said the cabinet is united behind the need for a transitional period of up to three years after Brexit, a period of time in which he said many arrangements would "remain very similar to how they were the day before we exited the European Union".
He has said his goal is to minimise the level of disruption to British business and consumers, by retaining access to European markets both for goods and workers.
But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has warned that allowing unregulated EU immigration to continue would be a betrayal of last year's referendum result, while a former Brexit minister, David Jones, suggested some ministers were being "kept out of the loop" by No 10 and the Treasury.
No 10 said the shape of post-Brexit immigration controls would become clearer in due course, with legislation due to be presented to Parliament later this year.
"It would be wrong to speculate on what these might look like or to suggest that freedom of movement will continue," the spokesman said.
"Free movement will end in March 2019. We've published proposals on citizen's rights. Last week the home secretary set out a registration system for EU nationals arriving post March 2019."
By assistant political editor Norman Smith
We've had days of rival ministers setting out their different views, with former Remain ministers the loudest - the chancellor saying there might have to be a three year transitional period after the UK leaves and the home secretary saying EU migrants will still be able to come to the UK  provided they register.
Downing Street has now decided that enough is enough and that it is time to stop the bickering. Number 10 says the plan is as Theresa May set out in her big speech at the start of the year. But will this attempt by No 10 to reassert control work?
There are two reasons why this might prove tricky.
The first is the diminution in Mrs May's authority after the election; the second is that there remain very profound differences between the ideologues, who believe the UK must leave to regain sovereignty, and the pragmatists who think the UK's economic well-being comes first.
Downing Street also rejected the possibility of an "off-the-shelf" trade deal with the EU such as that enjoyed by Norway and other members of the European free trade association - which grants them access to the single market. The idea has been floated by Mr Hammond among others.
Cabinet ministers have also sought to play down talks of rifts and factions within Theresa May's top team over the terms of any transitional deal.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said future immigration rules would be decided as part of the current Brexit negotiations and dismissed suggestions there were "arguments raging around the cabinet table" while Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted the NHS must still be able to recruit new staff from across Europe.
Lib Dem leader Vince Cable has claimed there is a "deep, unbridgeable chasm" between what he has characterised as Brexit "fundamentalists and pragmatists" within the government while Labour's Peter Dowd said the government had "broken down into farce".

A clock counting down to the moment the UK leaves the EU on 31 January will be projected on to Downing Street as part of government plans to mark Brexit Day.
The clock will tick down to 23:00 GMT, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson will give a "special" address to the nation in the evening, the government said.
A special 50p coin will also enter circulation to mark the occasion.
But the plans do not include Big Ben chiming, after Commons authorities said the cost could not be justified.
A campaign to find the £500,000 needed to make Big Ben ring when the UK leaves the EU has raised more than £200,000, but the House of Commons Commission cast doubt on whether it was permitted to use public donations to cover the costs.
Millionaire businessman Arron Banks and the Leave Means Leave group donated £50,000 to the campaign.
Downing Street has said the prime minister will chair a cabinet meeting in the north of England during the day, to discuss spreading "prosperity and opportunity".
He will then make a special address to the nation in the evening.
Mr Johnson is expected to be one of the first people to receive one of the newly-minted 50p coins, which will bear the motto "peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations".
Buildings around Whitehall will be lit up to mark Brexit, with the government saying that, "in response to public calls, the Union Jack will be flown on all of the flag poles in Parliament Square".
The government says it will use the "significant moment in our history" to "heal divisions, re-unite communities and look forward to the country that we want to build over the next decade."
However, hopes have faded that Big Ben - which is currently out of action due to renovation work going on at the Houses of Parliament - will chime to mark the moment the UK leaves the EU.
Earlier this week, Mr Johnson told BBC Breakfast he wanted the public to raise funds to ensure this can happen.
But Downing Street later distanced itself from the campaign, with a spokesman saying the prime minister's focus was on the government plan for marking the day, and that Big Ben was a matter for MPs.
The House of Commons Commission estimates the cost will be up to £500,000, and it has raised concerns over the "unprecedented approach" of using donations to fund the project.
It says this would involve bringing back the chiming mechanism and installing a temporary floor, resulting in delays to the conservation work.
The campaign group Stand Up 4 Brexit set up an online appeal to raise the money, collecting more than £200,000 by Friday evening.
Conservative MP Mark Francois told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that the pro-Brexit Leave Means Leave campaign and Mr Banks had donated £50,000.
He queried whether the cost of getting the bell to ring again was really £500,000, adding that he believed officials had "deliberately inflated the figure" because "they don't want to do it".
It comes as Downing Street has said EU citizens will not automatically be deported if they fail to sign up to the settled status scheme by the 2021.
Under the settlement scheme, EU citizens living in the UK can apply to stay in the country after Brexit.
So far the number of applicants to the scheme has hit more than 2.7 million.

So, is the EU jumping up and down with glee at the prospect of indicative votes in Westminster on Wednesday?
For months, even years now, Brussels has been urging the UK to "tell us what you want, what you really, really want!"
And yet there is no sudden outbreak of Brexit joy across the Channel.
EU governments know well enough by now that Wednesday's votes may not end up providing a clear picture of Brexit.
Even if they did, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker will point out that the EU's only "interlocutor" – or opposite number – remains Her Majesty's government, led by Theresa May, and not UK MPs.
Would she be willing to shuttle as a go-between on behalf of Parliament, which has chosen to ignore her negotiated Brexit deal?
Not likely.
So the EU sees yet more uncertainty ahead.
And that's bad for business, off-putting for international investors, it costs a fortune in no-deal planning and can affect opinion polls in European countries most affected by Brexit.
Which is not to say the EU prioritises certainty enough to pursue a no-deal Brexit.
Some in the European Commission may feel that way, along with a number of European diplomats based here in Brussels.
They say they are fed-up with the UK's Brexit chaos infecting the rest of the continent. They speak with yearning of EU life after Brexit, and describe a no-deal scenario as "damaging" and "suboptimal" – but ultimately something the EU will survive.
One of the favourite statistics doing the rounds it that, while the UK relies on the EU for 49% of its trade, only around 10% of EU trade is with the UK.
But this "bring-it-on" attitude towards no deal is very much absent in European capitals.
As we saw at last week's summit, EU leaders believe it in their interest to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Or, at the very least, to avoid being blamed in the worst-case scenario.
As one high-level Brussels official put it: "We want to be seen to have made the maximum effort so that, if the UK doesn't find a Brexit solution, it's not because of us."
It's also a fool's errand to go searching for rifts between EU countries over Brexit at this stage.
MEPs are not very relevant here. It's the national leaders of the 27 EU countries that count. And amongst them, as (pretty much) always, it's the net payers into the EU budget that hold most influence.
Germany and France above all.
Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron also have their domestic audiences in mind when they speak about Brexit. Their parties are contesting fast-approaching elections for the European Parliament too, and their political styles are intentionally very different.
At last week's summit, for example, Emmanuel Macron was happy to play "bad cop" on Brexit, according to one EU diplomat I spoke to. Angela Merkel generally prefers to appear more conciliatory.
Tempting as it may be to look for clear black and whites in the EU, when UK politics is such a mess, European opinion is nuanced too. But the big players are not pulling in wildly different directions.
They are united in preferring to avoid a no-deal Brexit if they can, in wishing that Parliament would pass the prime minister's negotiated Brexit deal - sooner rather than later - and in hoping for a close relationship with the UK on the other side.
An inconclusive second referendum or general election would be a nightmare for the EU – keeping Brexit looming over EU affairs for the foreseeable future.
Revoking Article 50 is described in Brussels as "the nuclear option" and is viewed as very unlikely as things stand.
For now the EU does as Theresa May does: it takes one Brexit week, one Brexit day at a time.
Brussels has told the prime minister if she is unable get her deal passed through parliament by 12 April, she needs to give them several days' warning as to what her Plan B might be.
Few in the EU think she has one.
EU leaders are pencilling in a possible Brexit summit around that time, in order for the prime minister to request a longer Brexit delay – or another short one until 22 May, to get the deal passed or to make last-minute preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
Ask EU diplomats and officials about their plans beyond that and they start to go a bit cross-eyed.

Scottish ministers have rejected the latest bid to settle the dispute over post-Brexit powers, despite the Welsh and UK governments striking a deal.
The UK government is to publish changes to the EU Withdrawal Bill in an effort to end the long-running row with the devolved administrations.
Welsh ministers reached an agreement with their UK counterparts on Tuesday.
But the Scottish government said there was still a "key sticking point" and called for further changes to be made.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has written to Prime Minister Theresa May accepting that "substantial progress" had been made in talks, and setting out potential ways to settle the "remaining issue".
Scottish Secretary David Mundell said he was disappointed by the Scottish government's decision, but said his "door remains open" for further talks.
The UK and devolved administrations have been entangled in a long-running dispute about how powers currently exercised from Brussels will work post-Brexit.
All agree that some powers should be built into UK-wide frameworks, so the same rules and regulations in areas such as food labelling are used across the country.
But there has been disagreement over whether the devolved administrations should only be consulted about any changes, or whether they need to formally give their consent.
Ministers from Edinburgh and Cardiff had previously coordinated opposition to what they termed a "power grab", issuing joint statements and passing their own Brexit bills on the same day.
However the Welsh government confirmed on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with the UK government after "compromise on both sides".
Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford said the deal meant powers that were currently devolved "remain devolved" .
And he said that "all powers and policy areas rest in Cardiff, unless specified to be temporarily held by the UK government".
He added: "These will be areas where we all agree common, UK-wide rules are needed for a functioning UK internal market."
Scottish Brexit minister Mike Russell told MSPs that there was still a "key sticking point" for his government on a "fundamental point of principle" over devolution.
He said ministers had given the latest amendments "serious and respectful consideration", but said they "continue to give Westminster the power to prevent the Scottish Parliament from passing laws in certain devolved policy areas".
He said: "The effect of the UK government's latest proposal remains this: the Scottish Parliament's powers could be restricted without consent. This is not something the Scottish government could recommend the Parliament approves."
In her letter to the prime minister, Ms Sturgeon suggested two methods of settling the dispute - by deleting the offending clause from the UK government's EU Withdrawal Bill altogether, or by sticking with the present system of the UK government seeking the express consent of Holyrood for legislating in devolved areas.
Further talks between ministers are expected next week, with Mr Russell setting a deadline of the final reading of the Withdrawal Bill in the House of Lords - the middle of next month - for changes to be agreed.
If they are not, then ministers will not put forward the Withdrawal Bill for a consent vote at Holyrood. MSPs have already prepared for this possibility by passing their own legislation as a stop-gap measure, although UK law officers have formally challenged it in the Supreme Court.
The UK government views the position put forward by Mr Russell as potentially giving devolved ministers a "veto" over certain powers.
Lord Keen, the advocate general for Scotland, told peers earlier in the year that needing formal consent for changes to power-sharing frameworks would be "a fundamental change in the devolved competence".
He said: "If we have a black and white, sharp-edged consent mechanism for the devolved administrations, then we have the basis for what has been termed the veto problem.
"We have the situation in which, beyond the existing devolved competence, any one of these assembles could proceed to legislate within its devolved competence in a manner that impacted upon those in another country within the United Kingdom. We cannot go down that road."
The Scottish Conservatives said the fact the Welsh government had struck a deal meant the SNP was "utterly isolated and exposed".
The party's constitution spokesman, Adam Tomkins, said the Scottish government had rejected the deal for "narrow political reasons", namely "obsession with a second independence referendum".
Labour's Brexit spokesman Neil Findlay said it "would be wrong for the SNP government to play politics with devolution in order to further their goal of independence".
UK government sources told BBC Scotland they were convinced that they had reached a deal with Mr Russell, only for Ms Sturgeon to "scupper" it at the last moment.
Mr Russell flatly denied that he had been "overruled" by the first minister, saying he stood "foursquare behind" the government's position on devolved powers and insisting his relationship with Ms Sturgeon was "fine".
The Greens meanwhile continued to oppose the Brexit legislation outright, with co-convener Patrick Harvie saying MSPs "must dig our heels in and refuse to give consent to the EU Withdrawal Bill".
And the Lib Dems said Mr Russell had "behaved in a misleading fashion" by claiming not to know what was going on between the Welsh and UK governments.
Mr Russell had told MSPs that Scottish and Welsh ministers would continue to work together regardless of what decisions they took over the deal.

The former boss of supermarket chain Waitrose has warned that a "no deal" Brexit would push up the cost of fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products.
Lord Price, a former Conservative trade minister, said fresh food could not be stockpiled like packets or tins.
The government says it will act to secure food supplies if the UK leaves without a deal in March.
It comes as Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resumes talks with EU negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels.
Both sides are focused on getting a deal by October that can be ratified by the UK Parliament and the EU member states before Britain officially leaves on 29 March next year.
But they are also stepping up preparations for the consequences of talks breaking down without a deal.
Lord Price, who quit the government in September, said: "What you will see is, rather than a pinch on supply - although that is highly likely - a pretty significant increase in the cost of fruit and veg, the cost of meat and the cost of dairy products."
He said the UK only produces about 25% of the fruit and vegetables it consumes and, while the winter season for imports from places like South America and New Zealand could be extended slightly to cover the UK's EU departure, supermarkets would have to find new supply routes.
"They may think about air freight, they may think about shipping," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"But all these things are going to add cost and they are going to add to the cost of a tariff that will be applied because the EU has pretty penal tariffs on food, to protect European farmers."
France's European affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau told Today a "no deal" Brexit would mean "traffic jams in Calais and in each and every European port welcoming goods and people coming from the United Kingdom".
She added: "We would all suffer. The worst would be for the United Kingdom."
Some UK ministers have dismissed talk of food shortages in the shops in the event of there being no deal.
"I am not aware of any plans for stockpiling food. It seems to me to be a fairly ridiculous scare story," Brexit Minister Lord Callanan told the House of Lords last week.
"There are many countries outside of the European Union that manage to feed their citizens perfectly satisfactorily without the benefit of EU processes."
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab told MPs on Tuesday the government would take steps to ensure an "adequate food supply".
In an interview with Channel 5's 5 News on Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May did not deny that stockpiling was happening, saying the government is being "responsible and sensible" while still trying to get a good deal with the EU.
Mrs May has taken personal control of Brexit negotiations, which are being run by a unit in the Cabinet Office reporting directly to her.
Mr Raab is holding face-to-face talks with Mr Barnier at the end of the latest round of Brexit negotiations, along with senior civil servant Olly Robbins.

Both the UK and EU have expressed frustration at the pace of Brexit talks amid disagreement over the size of the UK's "divorce bill".
EU negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK did not feel "legally obliged to honour its obligations" after Brexit.
He said "no decisive progress" had been made on key issues, following the third round of talks.
But Brexit Secretary David Davis said the UK had a "duty to our taxpayers" to "rigorously" examine the EU's demands.
And he urged the EU to be "more imaginative and flexible" in its approach.
During a joint press conference, Mr Barnier acknowledged there had been some "fruitful" discussions on the issues surrounding the relationship between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, but he struck a pessimistic tone overall.
He stressed that he was "impatient… I am not angry… I am impatient and determined" about the progress of negotiations, adding that "time is flying" and the EU was willing to intensify the "rhythm" of talks.
Behind their polished podium performances, it's clear there are major gaps between the stance of Michel Barnier and David Davis which are not being bridged.
Money is the big sticking point of course, although the phraseology around the issue is a little more elegant than that, and the language at these moments can give you a real feel for the underlying atmosphere.
Mr Barnier says that after this week "it's clear that the UK doesn't feel legally obliged to honour its obligations".
Mr Davis claims it's natural that the UK would want to "interrogate rigorously" any demand placed on its taxpayers. But he is also careful to note that Britain is a country that meets its obligations - moral as well as legal; it just expects them to be properly specified.
The UK wants to begin trade talks as soon as possible, but Brussels insists that discussions about the future relationship after Brexit can only begin once "sufficient progress" has been made on the arrangements for withdrawal - including on the so-called "divorce fee".
Mr Barnier said that at the current rate of progress, he was quite far from being able to recommend opening parallel talks on a future trade relationship with the UK.
He cited two areas where "trust" needed to be built between the two sides - on citizens' rights and the financial settlement, stressing that 27 members of the bloc should not have to pay for obligations taken by 28.
Claiming there had been a shift in the UK government's approach, he said: "In July the UK recognised that it has obligations beyond the Brexit date but this week the UK explained that these obligations will be limited to the last payment to the EU project before departure."
No figure has yet been put on the payment, but European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has suggested it could come in at around 60 billion euro (£55bn), while unconfirmed reports have put it as high as 100 billion euro (£92bn).
Mr Davis defended the "rigorous" line-by-line examination of the EU's demands carried out by British officials in response to the "unspecified but undoubtedly large" sum demanded by Brussels.
He added: "It will, of course, lead to difficult exchanges - nobody will pretend it was anything but a tough exchange this week - but I think the British taxpayer would expect nothing less."
Mr Davis also told reporters the talks had exposed how the UK approach was "substantially more flexible and pragmatic than that of the EU".
"This week we have had long and detailed discussions across multiple areas and I think it's fair to say we have seen some concrete progress, and Michel referred to one but there's more than that," he said.
"However, as I said at the start of the week, it's only through flexibility and imagination that we will achieve a deal that works truly for both sides.
"In some areas we have found this from the [European] Commission's side, which I welcome, but there remains some way to go."
He added: "Beyond the debates about process and technicalities, at the heart of this process, must be a desire to deliver the best outcome for the people and the businesses of the European Union and the United Kingdom," he added - particularly on citizens' rights.

It is "obvious" there will be a hard border in Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the European Commission's chief spokesman has said.
Margaritis Schinas made the comments at the commission's daily media briefing.
If he was pushed to speculate what might happen in a no-deal scenario, he said, it was "pretty obvious you will have a hard border".
However, the Irish government has repeated its stance that it will "not accept a hard border on this island".
In a statement, the office of Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar said: "Regardless of Brexit, the British government will always have responsibilities as co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement to ensure that, even in a no deal, there will not be a return to a border."
In June 2016 the UK voted to leave the EU and negotiations have been taking place since then on the terms of the UK's withdrawal.
Unless the EU and UK strike a deal that is accepted by the British parliament, the default position will be for the UK to leave the EU without a deal on 29 March.
Mr Varadkar's statement added that avoiding a hard border would be "more difficult to achieve without the withdrawal agreement and would require very difficult discussions with our EU partners".
"Working out suitable customs and trade arrangements compatible with our EU membership will require detailed discussion with the commission, while the UK will also need to live up to its responsibilities.
"We are under no illusions about how challenging that would be," Mr Varadkar's office added, but it also reiterated its position that the Irish government is "not planning" for a hard border.
Speaking later in the Dáil (Irish parliament) Mr Varadkar said the Irish government would have "a real dilemma" if the UK leaves without a deal:
"We would have to negotiate an agreement on customs and regulations that meant full alignment so there would be no hard border.
"We already have that agreement, and that is the backstop," he said.
He also said that in a no-deal scenario Ireland would have obligations to protect the single market, the United Kingdom would have obligations to protect World Trade Organisation rules and both states would have an obligation to honour the Good Friday Agreement, protect the peace process and honour their commitments to the people of Northern Ireland that there will not be a hard border.
Last week, the UK prime minister said the EU had made it "clear there will be no flexibility on border checks in no deal".
"The Irish government will be expected to apply EU checks in full," added Theresa May.
Mr Schinas told reporters at Tuesday's briefing: "If you'd like to push me and speculate on what might happen in a no-deal scenario in Ireland, I think it's pretty obvious - you will have a hard border.
"And our commitment to the Good Friday Agreement and everything that we have been doing for years with our tools, instruments and programmes will have to take, inevitably, into account this fact.
"So, of course we are for peace; of course we stand behind the Good Friday Agreement but that's what a withdrawal... that's a no-deal scenario, that's what it [would] entail.
"So I will not now speculate on this plan B because, as I said seconds ago, we are for plan A, which is set by the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration as a package."
Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has described Mr Schinas's comments as "a lot of bluff".
The party's Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, said he believed the EU was trying to "up the ante" as the Brexit deadlock continues.
He said his party would not be scared into voting for the deal that includes the current Irish "backstop" - the controversial insurance policy designed to prevent a hard border if the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal.
The DUP MP acknowledged there would be pressure on the Irish government now, but he urged the British government not to listen to what the EU has said about a hard border.
"Good luck to them (the EU) if they think they can put a hard border up," Mr Wilson added.
"We'll see it for bluff come 1 April, if there is no deal."
It is written into law that the UK will be leaving  the EU on March 29, but the deadline could be extended
Last week, the withdrawal agreement was overwhelmingly rejected by Westminster,, with MPs voting against Mrs May's preferred deal by 432 votes to 202.
It was the largest defeat for a sitting British government in history.
Mrs May was asked to come up with an alternative option and MPs are now due to vote on an amended version of her deal on 29 January.
On Monday, the prime minister told the House of Commons she will go back to EU leaders in a bid to secure changes to the Irish backstop.
However, there is little consensus in the Commons for any one solution to Brexit, and so MPs are currently putting forward a range of other options ahead of the 29 January vote.
Among the amendments suggested so far are plans to prevent a no-deal Brexit and to extend the deadline for leaving the EU.
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee chairman Andrew Murrison has submitted an amendment which seeks to time-limit the backstop.

A no-deal Brexit is "no problem", Nigel Farage has said at a rally of the Leave Means Leave campaign group.
The former UKIP leader told an audience in Bolton the current government negotiations on Brexit could plausibly end in an agreement.
But "far from being a cliff edge", the UK would prosper without one, he said.
Ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis told the rally the PM's plans were a "weak compromise" and the government had to deliver Brexit "without dilution".
Mr Farage said the majority of the "political class" did not respect the Brexit vote and the "endless negative narrative" needed to be countered "again".
"They do not want to give us Brexit," he told the rally at the University of Bolton Stadium, the first in a number of Leave Means Leave events across the country.
The MEP said of the EU: "They are a bunch of gangsters. We will explain a free trade deal is possible, if that's what the gangsters in Brussels want.
"If they don't, that is fine, if they don't we will leave with no deal. No deal, no problem."
Theresa May's plan for Brexit - known as the Chequers agreement - was rejected by EU leaders as unworkable at a summit in Salzburg on Thursday.
Mrs May later said the EU's rejection of her plan without offering an alternative was "unacceptable" and made it clear she was ready to walk away from the negotiations rather than accept a "bad deal".
Mr Farage criticised the Chequers proposals, saying they were "dead" and do not work for the EU or the UK.
Mr Davis had been leading the UK negotiations to leave the EU but quit the cabinet in July, saying he did not "believe" in the Chequers plan.
He told Saturday's rally: "We have nothing to fear and that is the reason why we should only accept a clean and clear Brexit, not some fudge."
Mr Davis also said he viewed the EU's treatment of Mrs May "with contempt", adding: "Bad manners and discourtesy are not the hallmarks of great men."
He continued: "And if you think you can bully our country, all I can suggest is that you read some history books."
Labour MP Kate Hoey also spoke at the rally, saying: "We don't need another vote - we just want to leave."
"Our vote matters and we won't allow it to be stolen from us," she said.
She also said Brussels had never negotiated Brexit in "good faith".
"They underestimate how strong we are when we are up against it," she added.
It was a full house at the University of Bolton Stadium. An audience of more than 2,000 people squeezed into what was decked out like a ballroom. A stall selling Leave Means Leave baseball hats did excellent trade.
In Bolton, 58% voted to leave the EU in June 2016 and, as they queued to get in, many told how passionate they were to secure the kind of Brexit they voted for.
They said they felt the result of the referendum was not being taken seriously enough.
The audience had come from around the country, some waved union flags; others wore them.
The loudest of the applause was reserved for Nigel Farage who started by saying: "I didn't think I'd have to do this again." That got laughs.
Earlier he took an open top bus into Bolton to speak to shoppers and market traders, the media in tow.
It all felt a bit like going back to the referendum campaign.

A no-deal Brexit threatens the UK's food security and will lead to higher prices and empty shelves in the short-term, retailers are warning.
Sainsbury's, Asda and McDonald's are among those warning stockpiling fresh food is impossible and that the UK is very reliant on the EU for produce.
The warning comes in a letter from the British Retail Consortium and is signed by several of the major food retailers.
It comes ahead of crucial votes in Parliament on Tuesday.
Retailers have told me that they fear shelves would be left empty if there were significant disruptions to supplies.
The letter from the retailers, and seen by the BBC, says there will be "significant risks" to maintaining the choice, quality and shelf life of food.
"We are extremely concerned that our customers will be among the first to experience the realities of a no deal Brexit," the letter says.
MPs will consider a series of amendments to Theresa May's plans that could shape the future direction of Brexit.
While it will not be MPs' final verdict on the deal, they will vote on the amendments and, if one is passed, it will illustrate what changes to the deal might be enough to get a modified version of the deal through Parliament.
Retailers have been reluctant to intervene in the Brexit debate but are doing so now as the UK's departure date from the EU approaches.
In the letter, they urge MPs to work together "urgently to find a solution that avoids the shock of a no-deal Brexit".
The letter uses the government's own estimate that freight through Calais may fall 87% from current levels, threatening the availability and shelf life of many products.
It expresses worry over tariffs, with only 10% of the UK's food imports currently subject to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
If the UK were to revert to WTO rules, the retailers warn that would "greatly increase import costs that would in turn put upward pressure on food prices".
The other signatories to the letter include the chief executives of M&S, KFC, Co-Op, and Lidl.
The letter spells out the UK's food relationship with Europe, with nearly one third of the food in the UK coming from the EU.
"In March, the situation becomes more acute as UK produce is out of season," the letter says.
At that time of year, 90% of lettuces, 80% of tomatoes and 70% of soft fruit sold in the UK is grown in the EU, the letter says.
"As this produce is fresh and perishable, it needs to be moved quickly from farms to our stores," the retailers say.
Their letter says that stockpiling fresh food is impossible and that the complex, just-in-time supply chain through which food is imported into the UK will be "significantly disrupted" in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
It adds it is difficult to stockpile any more produce as "all frozen and chilled storage is already been used".
"While we have been working closely with our suppliers on contingency plans, it is not possible to mitigate all the risks to our supply chains and we fear significant disruption as a result if there is no Brexit deal," the retailers say in the letter to MPs.
The retailers say that while they are looking for alternate supply routes, there are limited options and not enough ferries.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "The UK has a high level of food security built upon a diverse range of sources including strong domestic production and imports from other countries. This will continue to be the case whether we leave the EU with or without a deal."
They added the government had "well established" ways of working with the food industry to prevent disruption.
The letter comes after a report from MPs on the Exiting the EU Committee said the government must rule out a no-deal Brexit.
Committee chairman Hilary Benn said: "The suggestion that the UK might opt for a no-deal outcome but assume that the EU will continue to act in a co-operative manner to avoid disruption, cannot seriously constitute the policy of any responsible government."
However, a Tory member of the committee, Craig Mackinlay, said he "disowned" the report findings as "just more Project Fear from a group of MPs who have never wanted the UK to leave the EU".
A number of amendments are being voted on by MPs on Tuesday - although the Irish deputy PM says changes to the backstop - aimed at preventing a hard border - would not be acceptable.
The backstop is the "insurance policy" in the withdrawal deal, intended to ensure there will be no return to a visible border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic after the UK leaves the EU.

Concerns have been raised over the readiness of a British firm contracted by the government to run extra ferries in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Seaborne Freight was awarded a £13.8m contract this week to run a freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend.
The firm has never run a ferry service and a local councillor said it would be impossible to launch before Brexit.
The government said it had awarded the contract in "the full knowledge that Seaborne is a new shipping provider".
The Department for Transport said that "the extra capacity and vessels would be provided as part of its first services".
"As with all contracts, we carefully vetted the company's commercial, technical and financial position in detail before making the award," it added.
Conservative Kent county councillor Paul Messenger said it was impossible for the government to have carried out sufficient checks on the firm.
"It has no ships and no trading history so how can due diligence be done?" he asked.
Mr Messenger said he didn't believe that it was possible to set up a new ferry service between Ramsgate and Ostend by 29 March - the date when the UK is due to leave the European Union.
The narrow berths for ships at the Port of Ramsgate mean there are only a few suitable commercial vessels, most of which are currently already in service, he said.
Ferry services have not operated from Ramsgate Port since 2013 after cross-channel operator TransEuropa collapsed, owing around £3.3m to Thanet District Council.
Mr Messenger said he was "perplexed" at the choice of Seaborne Freight to run the service.
"Why choose a company that never moved a single truck in their entire history and give them £14m? I don't understand the logic of that," he said.
But Seaborne Freight, which was formed less than two years ago to revive the Ramsgate-Ostend line, insisted it will launch its freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend before 29 March.
Chief executive Ben Sharp said the firm had been founded by seasoned shipping veterans.
He declined to give details on which ships it planned to use for the service, saying the information was commercially sensitive, but said they planned to start operations with two ships before "very quickly" increasing to four by late summer.
He said dredging in Ramsgate Port would start on 4 January in preparation for the freight service.
The firm said it had originally intended to start the service in mid-February but this had now been delayed until late March for operational reasons.
It said directors and shareholders had been working during the past two years to restart the service.
"This phase has included locating suitable vessels, making arrangements with the ports of Ostend and Ramsgate, building the infrastructure, as well as crewing the ferries once they start operating," the firm's statement added.
The government has also awarded additional, much larger ferry contracts to French company Brittany Ferries and Danish shipping firm DFDS, worth £46.6m and £42.5m (€47.3m) respectively.
The new contracts are part of the government's contingency planning, which aims to ease the potential for severe congestion at main port Dover if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal.
The department has warned that increased border checks by EU countries in the case of a no-deal Brexit could "cause delivery of critical goods to be delayed", and "significant wider disruption to the UK economy and to the road network in Kent".
By Joe Miller, BBC business correspondent
The government has for some time now acknowledged that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, contingency plans at ports other than Dover would need to be in place.
But it appears that Transport Secretary Chris Grayling's department only started awarding contracts to shipping firms a few weeks ago, with no time left, it says, for a full public tender process.
And while the two large international firms enlisted to provide extra capacity have existing fleets and large operations, Seaborne does not, and has given few details on how it will get a service up and running in a matter of months.
The Department for Transport also wasn't too keen on making much noise about these plans - it quietly posted notices of the awards on an EU portal on Christmas Eve, and the BBC was only alerted to them by a data firm, Tussell.
And it's worth noting that without the award to Seaborne, the government would be in a position where the two beneficiaries of a no-deal Brexit were a Danish and a French firm - based, of course, in the EU.
The Department for Transport says the new contracts will provide "significant extra capacity" to UK ports in the event of a no-deal Brexit,
The BBC understands that the three firms chosen are likely to retain a portion of their award even if their services are no longer needed, due to a deal being reached with Brussels.
However, in that event, the government would then seek to sell the extra capacity back to the market.
Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, a supporter of the Best for Britain campaign for a second referendum, said: "Never has it been clearer that our government is selling us down the river over Brexit.
"A firm that has never run a ferry service before has been awarded a multi-million pound contract and they don't even have any ships. This idea should have been sunk before it saw the light of day."
Ed Davey, home affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, said reports that the government had signed a contract with "a ferry company with no ferries" summed up the government's "farcical" approach to Brexit.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March - following the result of the 2016 referendum.
It and the EU have agreed a withdrawal agreement - or "divorce deal" - and a political declaration outlining ambition for future talks - but it needs to be agreed by Parliament for it to come into force.
A vote by MPs on the deal had been scheduled for 11 December, but Prime Minister Theresa May postponed it until January when it became clear her deal would be rejected, leading to widespread anger in the Commons.

The government is now "working on the assumption" of a no-deal Brexit, Michael Gove has said.
Mr Gove said his team still aimed to come to an agreement with Brussels but, writing in the Sunday Times, he added: "No deal is now a very real prospect."
The prime minister has made Mr Gove responsible for preparing for no-deal.
Treasury sources say they expect more than £1bn of extra funding to be made available later this week for no-deal planning and preparation.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Chancellor Sajid Javid said there would be "significant extra funding" for 500 new Border Force officers and "possible" improved infrastructure at British ports.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told Mr Gove to chair no-deal meetings seven days a week until Brexit is delivered, according to the Sunday Times.
Mr Gove said tweaks to Theresa May's withdrawal agreement - which was approved by the EU but resoundingly rejected by Parliament - would not be enough.
"You can't just reheat the dish that's been sent back and expect that will make it more palatable," he wrote.
He added he hoped EU leaders might yet open up to the idea of striking a new deal, "but we must operate on the assumption that they will not".
"While we are optimistic about the future, we are realistic about the need to plan for every eventuality."
Mr Gove highlighted a major flaw of Mrs May's deal as the Irish backstop plan - a measure designed to prevent the introduction of a hard border on the island of Ireland.
So far the backstop has proved a sticking point in the Brexit negotiations.
A no-deal Brexit would mean the UK leaving the EU and cutting ties immediately, with no agreement in place.
The UK would follow World Trade Organization rules if it wanted to trade with the EU and other countries, while also trying to negotiate free-trade deals.
But with Britain outside the EU, there could be physical checkpoints to monitor people and goods crossing in and out of the UK.
Speaking to Sky's Sophy Ridge, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would do everything to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
He reiterated his call for a new referendum - insisting he would still hold one if Labour were in power - and said, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, Labour would campaign to remain in the EU.
Mr Corbyn also said he would look at whether to call a no-confidence vote in the government after Parliament returns in September.
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson told Sky that, in the event of a general election, her party's message would be: "Stop Brexit, stop Boris and start renewing our country."
Mr Gove is one of several new ministers pressing on with Brexit preparations since joining Mr Johnson's cabinet earlier this week.
Newly appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, told Sky: "We're turbo-charging preparations for no-deal, that is now the government's number one priority."
He said if the EU would not reopen discussions about the Irish backstop plan then "it's right that we prepare properly, with conviction, and importantly with the financial resources that the Treasury will now supply properly".
Who is in charge of what?
Meanwhile, there have been reports of more dissatisfaction within the Conservative Party, as MPs opposed to a no-deal Brexit continue to consider ways to avoid it.
The Observer alleges former chancellor Philip Hammond held private talks with Labour's Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer before Mr Johnson became prime minister.
The pair met shortly after Mr Hammond resigned from the government, the paper said.
Mr Starmer told the paper that work to build "a strong cross-party alliance" to prevent a no-deal Brexit would "intensify over the summer".
But despite several Tory MPs voicing their opposition to Mr Johnson in his first week in Downing Street, an opinion poll has suggested a recent boost in support for the party.
Since Mr Johnson took office on Wednesday the Conservatives have gained 10 points to stand at 30%, a survey for the Mail on Sunday showed.

The M26 in Kent is being shut overnight while work is done to see if it can be used as a "parking lot" for lorries, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
It will be closed from 2200 BST until 0530 BST until 15 October and again between 19 November and 21 December.
Local Tory MP Tom Tugendhat questioned why work began with "no consultation" - despite assurances none was planned.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said was part of "no-deal" contingency plans but he thought it would not be needed.
The M26 is a 10-mile stretch of road connecting the M25 at Sevenoaks and the M20 near West Malling.
Sections of the M20 in Kent can be closed under Operation Stack, when lorries are forced to queue because of disruption to rail or ferry journeys.
And there have been concerns that a no-deal Brexit could mean lorries getting stuck at the nearby port of Dover because of customs delays.
Mr Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge and Malling, which covers the eastern half of the M26, told the Commons he had been assured that works were not planned as recently as last week - only to find out on Wednesday night that they were going ahead.
He told MPs: "It's come to a pretty pass when a member finds out that works have begun on a motorway to turn that motorway into a parking lot without consultation either with the local community or with surrounding members.
"The M26 works started last night. I wrote (to Mr Grayling) in April, asking whether or not this would happen.
"I was assured the works were not planned and only yesterday (Wednesday) was it confirmed to me that Highways England had said that is exactly what was planned, despite having told me the reverse a week earlier."
Mr Grayling replied that he would be happy to meet the MP to discuss the issue, but added: "I do not expect any of the contingencies that we have in place for a no-deal Brexit to be needed because I'm confident we will reach a sensible agreement."
Operation Stack is currently used on closed sections of the M20 in Kent, where lorries park while waiting to cross the English Channel when traffic is disrupted.
A new strategy, Operation Brock, due to start in early 2019, plans to use a contraflow to keep the roads open when problems arise.
Paul Carter, the Conservative leader of Kent County Council, said turning sections of the M26 into a lorry park would be complex and cause "significant problems".
"It is possible to close part of the M26 but my mantra is that we must keep our roads open to the public no matter what is thrown at us," he told Kent Online.
Highways England said traffic was relatively light on the M26 overnight and drivers were being informed of alternative routes during the closure period.
"As part of wider resilience planning, Highways England has been asked by the Department for Transport to develop plans to utilise the M26 to hold heavy goods vehicles, should further capacity be required in the future," a spokesman added.
"We will be undertaking site surveys on the M26 during October leading to the installation of two gates in the central reservation to support the safe management of freight in the future, if needed."

Preparing for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit should be "the top priority" for civil servants, Boris Johnson has told them in a letter.
The PM said he would prefer to get a deal with the EU, but he said he recognised this "may not happen".
Earlier Jeremy Corbyn had urged the UK's top civil servant to intervene to prevent a no-deal Brexit happening during a general election campaign.
It comes amid speculation MPs could back a no-confidence motion in the PM.
In his letter to civil servants, Mr Johnson said the UK must be prepared to leave the EU by the latest Brexit deadline of 31 October "whatever the circumstances".
"That is why preparing urgently and rapidly for the possibility of an exit without a deal will be my top priority, and it will be the top priority for the civil service too."
It is understood that government special advisers also received an email last night from the PM's senior adviser Eddie Lister instructing them not to take annual leave until after 31 October.
Mr Johnson's message to civil servants follows a similar letter sent by Chancellor Sajid Javid earlier this month to HM Revenue and Customs.
Mr Javid also ordered the tax authority to make preparing for no-deal its "absolute top priority", including helping the public to prepare for the possibility.
He said this should include making sure IT systems are ready, helping businesses with a helpline, and contacting traders directly.
In his letter to Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, Mr Corbyn said it would be an "anti-democratic abuse of power" if the PM allowed a no-deal to occur by default during a general election campaign, if the government was defeated in a vote of no confidence.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said it is "almost inevitable" that Labour would push for such a vote when the Commons returns from its summer recess on 3 September.
It is thought MPs opposed to no-deal could back the vote in a bid to prevent the UK leaving the EU without an agreement - leading to a general election being called.
Election rules say Parliament should be dissolved 25 working days before polling day - so some people are concerned Mr Johnson could allow a no-deal Brexit to happen while MPs are not sitting.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Johnson's senior adviser at No 10, Dominic Cummings, has told MPs even losing such a vote could not stop the PM taking the UK out of the EU on 31 October.
He reportedly said Mr Johnson could call an election for after the deadline, with Brexit taking place in the meantime.
Theresa May's Brexit deal was rejected three times by MPs and, as things stand, the UK will leave the EU on 31 October whether it has agreed a new one or not.
Mr Johnson has urged the EU to make changes to the deal, but has said the UK must leave by this deadline with or without an agreement.
Many of those who voted against the deal had concerns over the backstop, which if implemented, would see Northern Ireland staying aligned to some rules of the EU single market.
It would also see the UK stay in a single customs territory with the EU, and align with current and future EU rules on competition and state aid.
These arrangements would apply unless and until both the EU and UK agreed they were no longer necessary.
On Thursday Mr Johnson again urged the EU to compromise on the Irish border backstop plan, designed to guarantee there will not be a hard Irish border after Brexit.
However, the EU has continued to insist that the withdrawal deal agreed by Mrs May last year, including the backstop, cannot be renegotiated.
Meanwhile, a transport minister has said he supports the government position of leaving the EU in all circumstances, following comments he made about a no-deal Brexit.
George Freeman told HuffPost UK's Commons People podcast it would be an "absolute disaster" for the UK in the long term if it only traded with the EU on WTO [World Trade Organization] terms, without its own free trade deal with the bloc.
But he later tweeted to say he "totally supports" the position that the UK should leave with no deal on 31 October, "if the EU is unwilling to negotiate".
In response, Downing Street told the BBC that Mr Freeman has the "full support of the prime minister".

Bodies may remain uncollected and children might miss exams due to gridlocked roads in the event of a no-deal Brexit, a council has warned.
In a damning report, Kent County Council warned about the effect on other key services.
It said refuse could blight the streets and food deliveries could be disrupted as the county copes with 10,000 lorries parked or stacked on its roads.
A government spokesman said it was providing support to local authorities.
The 17-page report - an update on no-deal contingency planning -  laid bare the possible Brexit scenarios for the county, with "prolonged disruption" predicted to affect several vital services.
It could result in staff shortages in areas such as social care, as well as problems for people trying to get to hospital and disruption to the delivery of medicines, the council said.
The coroner service "could face difficulties with the transport of the deceased to post mortem or body storage facilities... and travel by pathologists to mortuary to conduct post mortems".
It goes on to say: "Schools could be compromised if staff and pupils cannot effectively travel to exams."
Talking about waste management, the report said: "District and borough collection services may be delayed and disrupted if there is significant traffic congestion, which could lead to a build up of waste awaiting collection."
Changes in the border at the cross-Channel terminals are likely to cause traffic congestion, with Kent's roads forecast to feel the brunt.
The council warned it could exceed that of the problems experienced in 2015, when almost 7,000 HGVs were contained on the M20 in Kent as part of Operation Stack.
Richard Burnett, chief executive of the the Road Haulage Association, said the customs process in the event of a no-deal was "alarming".
He said: "If there's a slowing of that... people won't get the stuff when they want it because it won't be there.
"That's going to be catastrophic for us and the nation."
A government spokesman said: "We have been working closely with Kent County Council - and all other local authorities - to make sure they have the support and resources they need to cope with Brexit in any scenario.
"That includes keeping the county's vital road networks moving so that local people, businesses, schools, and visitors face as little disruption as possible."
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Britain leaving the European Union has been described as akin to attempting to remove an egg from an omelette.
Today's "no deal" papers reveal the complicated exercise could carry significant costs for consumers and businesses if Britain and the EU fail to agree on a transition period and a subsequent trading agreement.
Those increased costs would be very likely to have a negative impact on the economy and could mean higher prices in the shops as firms pass on the higher costs of doing business.
Which is why the government keeps insisting that it is pushing for a "successful" deal with the EU.
And the EU says that is also its preferred outcome - Britain is a major customer for many EU goods and services.
Many firms I speak to are not preparing for a "no deal" because they simply do not believe that it will happen, such is the disruption that could be caused.
The details on "no deal" published by the government are sobering.
Just take one - trade across the border between the UK and the EU post-Brexit if there is no agreement.
If there is no deal and Britain reverts to "third country" status, the government has provided a long list of preparations firms that export and import to and from the EU will be required to undertake.
Customs declarations would be needed, tariffs (import and export taxes) "may also become due" and the government also says firms are likely to need to invest in new computer systems to track goods.
"If the UK left the EU on 29 March 2019 without a deal there would be immediate changes to the procedures that apply to businesses trading with the EU. It would mean that the free circulation of goods between the UK and EU would cease," the government says.
The import and export of food would be particularly affected.
Food companies would have to register with a new (and as yet non-existent) UK authority which would be needed to replace the EU's "TRACES" system that tracks the trade and certification process for animals, food, feed and plants across Europe.
"The new burdens potentially facing food and drink exporters and importers set out today will frighten many SME [small and medium-sized] food businesses," the Food and Drink Federation's chief executive, Ian Wright, said.
That is the crux of the problem.
Leaving the single market and the customs union without a deal means significantly higher barriers to trade with the EU.
And higher costs for firms that are engaged in that trade.
Consumers could find going on holiday and making card payments for EU products more expensive because Britain would no longer be part of the EU's payments process.
Some of the overall costs to the economy might be mitigated over the medium term by increased trading opportunities with nations outside the EU.
And the government has signalled that in some areas - such as the need for upfront payments of VAT on imports - it is doing its best to smooth the impact on cash flow by allowing for delayed payment systems.
That has been welcomed by business groups.
But what is key from the documents published today is pretty straightforward.
The costs of a no-deal situation are likely to be substantial.
And consumers and businesses would be the ones paying the bill.

Dover and other Channel ports face disruption for up to six months if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, ministers have said.
The "worst case scenario" warning comes after analysis of likely traffic flows, if customs checks are delayed.
Lorries carrying medicine could get priority at ports and planes used to fly in drugs, ministers said.
But Tory Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen said it was "Project Fear on steroids," ahead of Tuesday's big Brexit vote.
He told the BBC: "It's the last throw of the dice from the prime minister who is desperate to get MPs to vote for her withdrawal agreement."
The prime minister's claim that the alternative to the withdrawal agreement she has negotiated with the EU is a no-deal Brexit, has so far failed to convince many of her own MPs.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock was among ministers trying to promote the deal on Friday, ahead of Tuesday's Commons vote, which the PM is widely expected to lose.
He told the BBC: "I don't know how likely 'no deal' is. It is what happens automatically unless Parliament passes something else.
"I very strongly feel that the best thing for the country, not just for the health service but for the country as a whole, is for Theresa May's deal to pass."
Updated advice to government departments from officials warns there could be six months of reduced access and delays at Dover and Folkestone, if the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019 without a deal.
By BBC Health Editor Hugh Pym
Drug companies were told in August by the government to create stockpiles in the UK with six weeks worth of supplies.
That has largely been achieved although there has not been so much progress with medical devices.
But pharma bosses believe the government should do more to ensure continuity of supply and ministers should give more detail of plans to fast-track lorries through ports.
Some may be suspicious about the timing of this with political debate over Brexit raging - government sources say the warning is based on analysis of trading patterns by officials which could not be withheld from Whitehall departments.
Mr Hancock has written to health leaders, telling them to check their plans for ensuring the continued supply of medicines.
Current advice is that there should be a six-week stockpile of medicines in the UK to cover the possibility of disruption after a no-deal Brexit. About 90% of medicines imported by the UK and the Republic of Ireland come in through Dover.
The health secretary said the "worst-case planning assumption" meant that "whilst the six-week stockpiling activities remain a critical part of our contingency plans, this now needs to be supplemented with additional actions".
He said the NHS should prepare to use alternative routes in the event of disruption on cross-channel routes, including the use of planes to fly in supplies.
He wrote that if France or other EU countries imposed additional border checks in a no-deal scenario, the impact was "likely to be felt mostly on the short straits crossings into Dover and Folkestone" affecting both exports and imports, with "significantly reduced access" for up to six months.
"This is very much a worst-case scenario. In a 'no deal' exit from the EU we would, of course, be pressing member states hard to introduce pragmatic arrangements to ensure the continued full flow of goods which would be to their benefit as well as ours."
Mike Thompson, chief executive of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), said the government warning was "stark" adding that "stockpiling more medicines is not the solution to this problem".
He welcomed the intention to prioritise the flow of medicines and vaccines, but added, with just four months to go, "we need the government to take immediate action to open up alternative supply routes between the UK and Europe and tell companies so that they can make plans".
Kent County Council has warned that dead bodies may remain uncollected and children might miss exams due to gridlocked roads in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
In an update on its contingency planning, the local authority said refuse could blight the streets and food deliveries could be disrupted as the county copes with 10,000 lorries parked or stacked on its roads.
Council leader Paul Carter said preparations had been made for potential difficulties but added: "We now need far more input and information from national government in how they are going to work with us.
"There must be a national freight transport plan which, when necessary, can hold lorries back from coming into Kent in the first place should the need arise."
The withdrawal deal negotiated between the UK and EU has been endorsed by EU leaders but must also be backed by Parliament if it is to come into force.
With many of her own MPs opposing the deal, particularly the controversial issue of the "backstop", aimed at preventing the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Mrs May is expected to lose Tuesday's vote on the deal.
One senior minister has told the BBC "the only political common sense is to delay" it - but Downing Street has said it will go ahead as planned.

Northern Ireland may be considered part of European Union customs territory post-Brexit, Irish national broadcaster RTE is reporting.
It is part of a draft legal text to be published by the European Commission on Wednesday, RTE reports.
The text will allude to a single regulatory space on the island of Ireland with no internal barriers, adds the broadcaster.
The report cites "a well-placed EU source".
The scenario would reflect the so-called "default" or "backstop" option contained in the December agreement between the EU and the UK on how to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
On Wednesday, the EU is expected to publish a text which will translate the political pledges made by both sides at the end of 2017 into legally-binding treaty language.
It will concern only divorce-related issues - not the future relationship.
Three separate well-placed sources have confirmed the general content of the draft to RTE News.
According to RTE's sources, the draft text will also state that, under the backstop option, joint EU-UK customs teams will be required to apply checks on goods coming from the UK into the new regulatory space, but will not specify where those checks will take place.
The text will also say that the two other options preferred by the UK to avoid a hard border are also available, and that if agreement is reached on those options, the above scenario would not apply.
Those options include avoiding a hard border through a future EU-UK free trade agreement, or through specific proposals made by the UK government.
It is understood that the draft will not spell out that Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market.
However, that will be implied by a series of annexes which will say that individual pieces of EU single market legislation "will be applicable".
The text will have considerable detail on how the movement of goods, north and south, will be facilitated without any border checks, RTE also reports.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has made clear if the Irish Sea became a de facto trade border, it would withdraw its support for the Conservative government.
"It would represent a break-up of the United Kingdom," the party's Sammy Wilson said.
"For the Irish government, which prattles on all of the time about the importance of the Belfast Agreement, - part of the Belfast Agreement was that there can be no change in the constitutional position of Northern Ireland without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.
"Yet here we now have the EU, prompted by the Irish government, seeking to bring about that constitutional change."
The DUP's 10 MPs are helping to keep Prime Minister Theresa May in power as part of a confidence and supply deal.
"But if reports are true that it has something around the north remaining within the customs union, this of course is to be welcomed. But it's only a start," he said.
"We need to have membership, not just of the customs union, but of the single market and we need to ensure our human rights are protected under the European courts of justice."
EU negotiator Michel Barnier said earlier that there would be "no surprises" in Wednesday's 120-page document.
He said it was the EU's responsibility to include the "backstop" option of Northern Ireland maintaining full regulatory alignment with the Republic in areas of existing North-South co-operation if no other solutions could be made to work.
While all three options would be mentioned in the 120-page document, he said it would be the backstop one which would be "operationalised" into legally binding text.
The other options would be worked on as soon as the UK provided more details, he said.
The paper would also set out the EU's position on the post-Brexit transition period, and would cover citizens' rights and financial issues too, he said.
Meanwhile, the prime minister's office has categorically dismissed any prospect of a return to a "hard border" in Ireland as a consequence of Brexit.
The statement followed the leak of a letter to the prime minister from Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in which he appeared to contemplate the possibility of future customs border checks, after the UK, including Northern Ireland leaves the EU customs union.
A spokesman said: "We have made it clear on numerous occasions we will not contemplate a hard border on the island of Ireland".
The leaked letter, obtained by Sky News, quoted Mr Johnson telling the prime minister the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland would continue to leave 95% of traffic to pass unchecked.
Earlier, Mr Johnson was criticised after he likened the challenge of avoiding a hard border in Northern Ireland to the boundaries between different boroughs of London - implying a system similar to London's congestion charge could operate along the border.
The foreign secretary said it was a "very relevant comparison" because money was "invisibly" taken from people travelling between Camden and Westminster when he was London mayor.

Brexiteers will have some concerns with Theresa May's latest Brexit speech but "now is not the time to nitpick", Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has said.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the prominent Eurosceptic praised the prime minister and urged the EU to respond with "wisdom and not aggression".
On Friday, Mrs May warned "no-one will get everything they want" from talks.
EU officials are now scrutinising Mrs May's speech ahead of a fresh round of negotiations next week.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, told the BBC's Today programme the prime minister had shown in her speech it was possible to have "frictionless trade" with the European Union while leaving the single market and the customs union.
Speaking at London's Mansion House, Mrs May set out the UK's hopes for a future EU economic partnership, calling for "pragmatic common sense" in negotiations.
Single market access would be "less than it is now", she said, and the UK would have to pay into some EU agencies.
But she said she would not threaten to walk out of talks and in a message to the EU added: "Let's get on with it."
She said all sides of the argument had to now face "hard facts".
Mr Rees-Mogg praised her "good speech", saying it delivered on the government's promise to take the UK out of the customs union, the single market and the European Court of Justice.
"There are inevitably a few small points that will concern Leave campaigners but we must all recognise that everyone will have to give up something to get a deal, so now is not the time to nitpick," he wrote.
Mrs May's address was also cautiously welcomed by pro-European Conservatives.
Writing in the same paper, Tory Remainer Nicky Morgan said her speech was a "welcome dose of realism".
"The EU can't say they don't know what the UK wants anymore," she added.
Mr Hunt told the BBC Mrs May had successfully brought Leavers and Remainers together.
She had explained in the speech, he said, how there would be "pragmatic alignment of our regulations" that would be of the same high standards as in European countries, but on a voluntary basis.
Parliament would have the final say and the UK could always choose to have less market access.
He said he was certain the negotiations would "go to the wire".
Speaking on BBC's Newsnight the vice-president of the European Parliament, the Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, said the speech showed the realities of Brexit "were dawning" in the UK.
She said some of Mrs May's proposals amounted to the UK wanting "to be part of the European Union" Not time to nitpick on Brexit - Rees-Moggin all but name.
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said he feared the constraints of leaving the customs union and the single market have not been fully recognised by Mrs May's government.
"Brexit is due to happen in a little over 12 months, so time is short," he said.
In her speech, Mrs May said she was confident remaining differences over a draft EU legal agreement could be resolved, allowing trade talks to get under way.
She said life would be different for the UK outside the EU's single market: "In certain ways, our access to each other's markets will be less than it is now."
The UK could not expect to "enjoy all the benefits without all of the obligations" of membership.
Another "hard fact" would be the UK would still continue to be affected by EU law and some decisions of the European Court of Justice - such as the ECJ rules on whether EU agreements are legal.
However, she stressed the "jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK must end".
The UK may choose to remain "in step" with EU regulations in areas like state aid and competition, in order to get "good access" to markets, she said.
The hard fact for the EU was that the UK would want its own bespoke trade deal, not an "off-the-shelf model".
BBC political correspondent Alex Forsyth said "the real test will be whether this speech was enough to convince critics that Mrs May's ambition for Brexit is credible and achievable without alienating her own MPs".

Now what? The prime minister didn't delay the vote because she wanted to.
She and her team made the decision because the option of a horrendous defeat was more grim than the humiliation of delay.
Cabinet ministers were arguing that even in these strange political times, some of the traditional political rules do still apply - don't call a vote that you can't win, and don't ask a question that you don't know the answer to.
So Theresa May made it through another day. What now though? The very act of postponing the vote, in and of itself, has been another knock to the PM's credibility.
Anyone listening to even a fraction of Monday's debate, while the PM stood there taking question after question after question, could not help but conclude that.
The questioning was not just hostile, but also incredulous. The implication - how on earth, despite all the difficulties, has Theresa May allowed it to come to this?
Tonight she is on her way to press the flesh once more with other European leaders. She'll see the normally friendly Dutch, the important Germans, and then is likely to arrive in Brussels to see the EU top brass.
It's pretty clear already though that they are not in the market for making big changes - helpful verbal clarifications, or linguistic gymnastics perhaps - but a dramatic renegotiation of the divorce deal - forget it.
What is the point then? Having one more heave might blunt at least some of the criticism. If Tory MPs have been saying she has to have another go, well, she is having another go, and some of those who were calling for that old chestnut "she must do more", may be satisfied.
But as things stand, it seems unlikely that she'll be able to return to Parliament with anything that's very different to the agreement as negotiated. One source closely involved in the talks told me "there is never going to be a withdrawal agreement without a backstop".
And it feels right now that Brexiteer and Remainer MPs are so entrenched in their positions that if there can't be a dramatic change, the numbers whenever a vote's called are very much against her.
If there is no prospect of a real change then all that's been achieved is to postpone a likely defeat.
And again that puts all the choices that will then become urgent and immediate about a real Plan B for the prime minister on hold.
Right now she is trying to maintain her case that it's her deal or no deal, or no Brexit, ruling out another referendum again, at least under her leadership, and trying again to stick to the course.
In blunt terms, though, perhaps it's as a senior Tory MP told me - the decision is just about trying to "protect her bunker".
For today, to delay was to survive. And even though Parliament, and no doubt many more members of the public, more importantly, will be aghast at yet another delay in this long drawn-out saga, there is no plan, nor anything ready or with enough agreement from enough MPs to take its place.

A giant 13-mile "lorry park" on the M20 could last for years if there is a no-deal Brexit, a council has warned.
An assessment by Dover council has expressed concern over how ports would cope with the potential situation.
The document is critical of the slow pace of work on a "temporary" scheme, named Operation Brock, and said "there does not appear to be a Plan B".
A government spokesman said it was working with "a range of partners on contingency plans".
Operation Stack is currently used on closed sections of the M20 in Kent, where lorries park while waiting to cross the English Channel when traffic is disrupted.
The new strategy, Operation Brock, plans to use a contraflow to keep the roads open when problems arise.
The Dover council report stated: "A 13-mile stretch of the coast-bound section of the M20, between junction eight near Maidstone and junction nine near Ashford, will be earmarked to hold heavy goods vehicles, in what will effectively become a giant temporary lorry park holding around 2,000 lorries.
"It is likely a permanent solution will not be in place for many years if enacted through current planning processes and procedures."
The report, released under a Freedom of Information request, said "there could be gridlock around the town" if Brexit "ends up creating regulatory and tariff barriers between the UK and the EU".
"Customs checks on imports from outside the common market can take between five minutes to 45 minutes per vehicle," it added.
"Port officials have warned that increasing the average time it takes to clear customs by as little as two minutes could lead to 17-mile traffic jams."
A government spokesman said: "As the prime minister has set out, after Brexit we will not only seek to forge new trade relationships with partners around the world but also maintain frictionless trade in goods between the UK and EU.
"While we remain confident of reaching an agreement with the EU to achieve this, it is only sensible to prepare for a range of scenarios.
"That is why the Department for Transport is working closely with a range of partners on contingency plans to ensure freight can continue to move as freely as possible between the UK and Europe."
The spokesman also insisted that work on Operation Brock would have taken place regardless of Brexit to improve contingency arrangements for a range of scenarios which could result in cross-Channel disruption.
Highways England said it recently consulted on a permanent solution and is considering responses.
In the meantime, it said Operation Brock would create up to 2,000 on-road lorry holding spaces between junctions 8 and 9 on the M20.
It said it would offer "significant benefit" compared to Operation Stack, as it would keep traffic flowing in both directions.
Deployment of the temporary solution is planned for a maximum duration of up to six months, it added.
Conservative MP for Dover Charlie Elphicke tweeted that the report underlined the case for investment in border infrastructure and roads.
He added: "The government has not done enough to prepare in the two years since the EU referendum."
Kent County Council set out its position on preparations for Brexit earlier this month.
It warned that any increased border and customs checks could lead to delays and long queues of port freight traffic.
It added: "We need to avoid the dire consequences experienced in 2015 which impacted on the Kent economy and and more broadly on the national economy."
It said there needed to be a "robust, workable implementation plan that utilises all available resources" and urged the government to consider making further resources available.
Additional powers in legislation should also be considered, it added, to ensure that all agencies have the necessary authority to take action to ensure the free-flow of traffic.
More than 10,000 freight vehicles pass through Dover on peak days as it handles one sixth of the UK's total trade in goods with a value of £119bn per year.
In 2015, queues of 4,600 lorries stretched back 30 miles and the daily cost to the UK economy was estimated at £250m.
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Almost £29m has been granted to Kent County Council for infrastructure improvements ahead of Brexit day on 29 March.
Council transport boss Mike Whiting said the grant would make Kent's roads ready for the effects of a no-deal Brexit as part of Operation Brock.
Carriageway strengthening is the priority but £5m will go on improving the disused Manston Airport.
The grant is based on 10,500 lorries using the Port of Dover daily.
Mr Whiting said: "This is very much an insurance policy, if there is no deal we want Kent to be as prepared as possible.
"It's a very tight timetable - it's an enormous task."
Heidi Skinner at the Freight Transport Association (FTA) said the funding was "welcome news".
She added: "A no-deal departure from the EU will present significant challenges, and this investment for the transport network will provide welcome protection for the vital link for the UK's trading relationships - 17% of the UK's trade goes through Dover.
"The transport infrastructure must be robust enough to meet the demands of the supply chain."
Dover Tap (Traffic Assessment Project) controls traffic bound for the port by separating lorry drivers on the A20 into a queue on the left-hand lane.
Under Operation Brock, when the volume of traffic becomes too large, a section of the M20 would become a contraflow system on one side of the carriageway. Lorries would queue on the opposite carriageway.
Road improvements will prioritise alternative routes used by HGVs when Tap and the Manston airfield options are deployed, such as the A299.
The A20 and A25 will be improved, ready for closures to the M26.
The A256 is also set to have a Tap in place, as per the Operation Brock trial run.
The £5m ring fenced for Manston will create a new access point and more hard standing areas.
A Department of Transport spokeswoman said it was working to "ensure that in the event of a no-deal, both local traffic and freight can continue to flow".
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Boris Johnson says he has been "a model of restraint" when it comes to language around the Brexit debate.
The PM was accused of dismissing abuse fears of female MPs as "humbug" during a heated Commons debate this week.
Mr Johnson said there had been a "misunderstanding" over his intention - which he apologised for.
But he claimed there was a "cloud of indignation" around the use of terms like "surrender" to distract from MPs' desire to frustrate Brexit.
Labour's Angela Rayner said Mr Johnson should be "absolutely, utterly ashamed of himself".
The shadow education secretary said the PM had "a direct strategy to divide our country", which she called "really damaging", but added that MPs on both sides of the Commons needed to "dial down that language and act responsibly".
Mr Johnson spoke to the BBC's Andrew Marr ahead of the start of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.
The annual gathering follows a turbulent week for the PM - facing stormy scenes in Westminster after a ruling by the Supreme Court that his suspension of Parliament was unlawful.
Rows later broke out over Mr Johnson's Commons conduct - and that of his Attorney General Geoffrey Cox - and questions are also continuing over his links with US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri.
But he will use the conference to try to focus on delivering Brexit and making funding promises for public services.
On the opening day, ministers have promised to spend billions on hospital projects across England in the next decade.
But opposition MPs back in London could stage a no-confidence vote in the government some time this week.
No 10 failed to secure a recess for the conference, meaning Tory MPs could face travelling between Manchester and Westminster for crucial votes while it takes place.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also expected to bring opposition leaders together at a meeting on Monday to plan their next steps to avert a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Corbyn has said he would be ready to become a caretaker PM if Mr Johnson was forced from No 10.
Greater Manchester Police said they were expecting tens of thousands of protesters to attend two rallies on Sunday against Brexit and austerity.
A small number of demonstrators also gathered outside the conference venue on Saturday night when Mr Johnson arrived with his partner, Carrie Symonds.
Speaking to Andrew Marr, Mr Johnson defended his decision to repeatedly refer to the Benn Act - which is designed to force the PM to seek an extension rather than lead the country into a no-deal Brexit - as "the surrender bill".
Last week, Labour's Paula Sheriff said threats made to her and other MPs often quoted his "dangerous" language of "surrender" and "betrayal".
She also referred to the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016, but Mr Johnson replied: "I've never heard such humbug in all my life."
The PM said any such threats were "deplorable" but he did not regret "using the word surrender to describe the surrender act".
"Military metaphors are old, standard, Parliamentary terms," he continued.
"I think everybody should calm down," he said, but asked whether that included him, he added: "I think I've been the model of restraint."
The Jo Cox Foundation - set up in memory of the murdered MP - has called on all political parties to agree to a code of conduct to help protect MPs.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the UK's most senior Catholic clergyman, warned some of the language being used could encourage violent extremists.
He told BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme political leaders had a particular responsibility to be respectful in public discourse.
Commons Speaker John Bercow will hold an emergency meeting on Monday with party leaders over the use of "inflammatory language" in Parliament.
When Mr Johnson talks about the "surrender bill", he is referring to the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act, also known as the Benn Act after Labour MP Hilary Benn, who introduced the legislation to the Commons.
The act - which became law earlier this month - stipulates the prime minister will have until 19 October to either pass a deal in Parliament or get MPs to approve a no-deal Brexit.
Once this deadline has passed, he will have to request an extension to the UK's departure date to 31 January 2020 from the EU.
If the EU responds by proposing a different date, the PM will have two days to accept that proposal. But during this two-day period, MPs - not the government - will have the opportunity to reject the EU's date.
On Brexit, Mr Johnson said he still thought there was a "good chance" of getting a deal with the EU and the government was "working incredibly hard".
Success depended on "the common sense of our EU partners", he argued, but said talks were "not being helped" by the Benn Act.
"If they suspect or think there is a realistic chance the UK can be kept in [the EU], that clearly takes away a lot of our negotiating freedom."
The PM insisted that "of course" the UK could still leave without a deal on 31 October despite the act - although he would not be drawn on how that could happen.
Mr Johnson also ruled out bringing back the withdrawal agreement negotiated between Theresa May and the EU, and dismissed suggestions he could resign rather than ask for an extension.
There's no sign whatsoever of Boris Johnson retreating from his strategy - the approach he's taken since he moved into Downing Street. And as far as many people in his team, and the wider party, are concerned their only real path to success is to stick to trying get Brexit done by 31 October.
The tricky thing is, though, that it looks very unlikely - maybe even impossible. And there are plenty of people in Westminster who say they're prepared to do everything necessary to stop Mr Johnson doing what he wants to do - taking the UK out without a deal on that date if one isn't agreed.
Party conferences are pretty much always like being in a parallel universe, but this week is going to be something else.
Parliament will still be sitting while the Conservatives are gathering here in Manchester and it could certainly be a surreal and bumpy few days.
Meanwhile, the Sunday Times has fresh allegations about the American businesswoman at the centre of claims about her links to the prime minister.
The paper claims Jennifer Arcuri told four friends that she had an affair with Mr Johnson while he was mayor of London.
On Friday, the Greater London Authority (GLA) referred Mr Johnson to the police watchdog over allegations Ms Arcuri, a US technology entrepreneur, received favourable treatment because of her friendship with him.
She joined trade missions led by Mr Johnson while he was mayor and her company received several thousand pounds in sponsorship grants.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct will now consider whether there are grounds to investigate the prime minister for the criminal offence of misconduct in public office.
But Mr Johnson insisted he had "no interest to declare" when pressed by Andrew Marr over whether he made his personal relationship with her known at the time.
"Everything was was done with full propriety," he added.
The PM also appeared to claim the story was politically motivated, saying someone in his position "expects a lot of shot and shell".
As well as promises on hospitals, the government is also announcing a new approach to NHS mental health treatment to be trialled in 12 areas of England - with housing and job support alongside psychological help.
Chancellor Sajid Javid is expected to speak on Monday and Home Secretary Priti Patel - talking about tackling crime - on Tuesday.
Animal welfare policies, environmental plans - including a proposed £1bn fund to boost the electric motor industry and a pledge to plant one million new trees - are on the agenda.

Theresa May will have to "listen to other parties" as she reviews her Brexit strategy in the wake of the election, David Cameron has said.
The Financial Times reported the former PM saying there would be pressure for a "softer" exit from the EU after his party did not win an election majority.
Speaking in Poland, he said his successor should "consult more widely" both inside Parliament and beyond.
It comes as Mrs May tries to seal a deal with the DUP to govern.
Downing Street has so far rebuffed calls for major changes to its Brexit blueprint and ruled out the prospect of cross-party talks ahead of the start of official negotiations with the EU next week.
Speaking in Paris after meeting French President Emmanuel Macron, Mrs May said there was a "unity of purpose" to get on with the process, reiterating that she wanted to maintain a "close relationship" with the EU.
She is currently trying to negotiate the terms of a deal with the Democratic Unionists that will give her a majority in the Commons and enable her to pass a Queen's Speech - in which Brexit legislation will figure prominently.
The Conservatives are having to seek a guarantee of support from the Northern Ireland party after failing to win enough seats to govern on their own.
The two sides will continue what sources have described as "positive" talks on Wednesday, with the expectation that an agreement on a so-called "confidence and supply agreement" is imminent.
Amid calls from opposition MPs for a rethink on Brexit, ministers have pointed out that the Conservative and Labour leaderships both agree that the UK needs to leave the single market to end free movement.
But the PM is facing growing calls for other options to be put back on the agenda, including potentially remaining in the customs union, accepting a transitional role for the European Court of Justice, ruling out leaving without a deal and seeking some concessions on immigration.
According to the Financial Times, Mr Cameron, who campaigned for a Remain vote and quit after losing the referendum, told a business conference in Lodz the Tories' failure to win a majority had changed the outlook.
"It's going to be difficult, there's no doubt about that, but perhaps an opportunity to consult more widely with the other parties on how best we can achieve it," he said.
"Over Brexit, she is going to have to talk more widely, listen to other parties."
He said there would be pressure from Ruth Davidson's new group of Scottish Conservative MPs - 13 of whom were elected to Parliament - to revisit aspects of Brexit to place greater emphasis on economic considerations.
"There's no doubt that there is a new player on the stage. Scotland voted against Brexit. I think most of the Scottish Conservatives will want to see perhaps some changes with the policy going forward."
Leading Brexiteers in the government have insisted that there will no U-turn on the single market and they remain hopeful of getting a deal that will secure the maximum market access.
Steve Baker, a Eurosceptic backbencher who has been made a minister in the Brexit department, said his aim was as "softest exit consistent with actually leaving and controlling laws, money, borders and trade".
The Times is reporting that Chancellor Philip Hammond is pushing for the UK to remain in the customs union to minimise the impact of withdrawal on trade.
Labour MP Hilary Benn, who is seeking re-election as chair of the Brexit select committee, told BBC's Newsnight this was "the first and clearest sensible step to take" to support business.
Speaking on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the possibility of the UK remaining in the EU remained an option until Brexit negotiations have concluded.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have categorically ruled this option out.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke said that the French President was "wrong" and that the UK was now destined to leave the EU.
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said the British people had expressed a clear view last year that uncontrolled immigration from the EU must come to an end.
He tweeted: "Westminster politicians are positioning for a 'soft Brexit'. That would mean the continuation of open borders."
But Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, whose party has proposed a cross party joint cabinet committee on Brexit, said Mr Macron's comments "show there is a chance for the British people to reject a bad Brexit deal and stay in the EU if that is what they decide".
As the PM fights to regain the initiative after her election setback, a former colleague of hers has warned the Conservatives are on "death row" and face "years of opposition" if they don't broaden their appeal.
In an article for the Sun, Robert Halfon - who was sacked as a skills minister on Tuesday - said the party's manifesto had been "devoid of ideas" to help working families burdened by years of austerity.
Among other ideas, he said the party should change its name to the Conservative Workers Party and develop a campaigning arm along the lines of Momentum or Vote Leave.

The government has published its blueprint for UK relations with the EU, with Theresa May saying it "delivers on the Brexit people voted for".
The long-awaited White Paper is aimed at ensuring trade co-operation, with no hard border for Northern Ireland, and global trade deals for the UK.
But Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said it was a "bad deal for Britain".
And US President Donald Trump said the proposals would "probably kill" a trade deal with his country.
The White Paper fleshes out the Chequers agreement that sparked the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis.
The UK is hoping the EU will back the proposals so an exit deal can be struck by the autumn, ahead of the UK's official departure from the EU in March.
New Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, formerly a leading figure in the Leave campaign, said the White Paper was a blueprint for a "principled, pragmatic and ambitious future partnership between the UK and the EU".
"Now, it is time for the EU to respond in kind, we approach these negotiations with a spirit of pragmatism, compromise and, indeed, friendship, I hope. I trust that the EU will engage with our proposals in the same spirit," he told MPs.
Asked in Brussels about US President Donald Trump's claim that the British people were not getting the Brexit they voted for, Mrs May said: "We have come to an agreement on the proposal we are putting to the European Union which absolutely delivers on the Brexit we voted for.
 "They voted for us to take back control of our money, our law and our borders. That is exactly what we will do."
Leading Tory rebel Jacob Rees-Mogg said: "There are very few signs of the prime minister's famous red lines.
"It is a pale imitation of the paper prepared by David Davis, a bad deal for Britain. It is not something I would vote for, nor is it what the British people voted for."
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith told ministers he had "deep misgivings" about the White Paper.
"I voted to leave not to half leave," he said.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said he would analyse the details with the European Parliament and member states and was "looking forward" to negotiations with the UK next week.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, said he welcomed the UK's proposal for a future "association agreement" with the EU - an idea he has been promoting for some time.
He added: "We will analyse the White Paper in light of our priorities: citizens' rights, an operational backstop for Ireland and a deep economic relationship based on the integrity of the union and internal market."
CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn said "many of the intentions are reassuring" but "there are gaps in these proposals and more detail is needed on EU VAT, some services sectors and the new customs system".
"It's vitally important UK negotiators get their heads down and work with businesses to grapple with the detail and get it right," she added.
Federation of Small Businesses national chairman Mike Cherry said: "With just 37 weeks before we leave the European Union, we need to see tangible and comprehensive details on these proposals and how they will impact small businesses."
Former chief executive of UK Trade and Investment Sir Andrew Cahn told the BBC the City would be hurt by the lack of a deal on financial services, stating: "It means the City is going to have to change. It's going to have to change quite radically.
 "We will clearly lose business, some business, to Europe. But I think the City will adjust and find a way forward."
Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, said the White Paper was "a fudge, which pleases no one and is politically undeliverable".
Some MPs are already calling it a "hard Brexit" for services, even though, overall, the deal suggests much closer ties to the rest of the EU than many Brexiteers had desired.
For the prime minister and the government it's an important step in spelling out the reality of leaving - more political freedom does, this paper suggests, come at a cost.
And it is a compromise, which by its very nature, can't please everyone.
Read Laura' full blog
Dominic Raab's first speech as Brexit Secretary was halted shortly after it had begun, as MPs shouted that they had not seen the White Paper.
Mr Raab said the paper would be made available "as soon as is practicably possible".
Former Labour minister Ben Bradshaw could be seen throwing copies of the document to MPs on his own bench.
At which point, Speaker Bercow decided to suspend sitting for five minutes to give MPs time to read it.
Labour's Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Raab had "not got off to a very good start", adding: "The utter shambles of the last 20 minutes that led to the suspension of the House during a statement is clear evidence of why the government is in such a mess."
Sir Keir told MPs: "Across business communities, among trade unions and I genuinely believe across this House there is growing unity that the UK should remain economically close to the EU - and that means negotiating a comprehensive customs union with the EU27, and a single market deal with the right balance of rights and obligations tailored to the UK."
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who, is campaigning for a referendum on the final EU deal - in contrast to his party's leadership - said the White Paper was "totally unworkable and a bad deal for Britain".
It sets out four areas of future co-operation:
The document repeatedly acknowledges that the UK will have more barriers to trade in some areas than there are today.
It sets out plans for what is described as an "association agreement",  with "joint institutional arrangements" between the EU and the UK.
The paper says that the UK will end the free of movement of people, but suggests EU citizens would be allowed to come to the UK without visas to do "paid work in limited and clearly defined circumstances".
No more detail of this was given by officials on Thursday morning, says BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg, but they rejected suggestions that it could open the door to freedom of movement for workers.
The paper also suggests that there could be "reciprocal" arrangements with the EU for the payment of certain limited benefits or social security.
Again, officials denied that this would mean widespread access to the UK benefits systems for EU nationals after Brexit, says our correspondent.
Both of these elements will be subject to the upcoming negotiation.
As the Chequers agreement set out on Friday, the UK would accept a "common rule book" for trade in goods, but not services.
The government's aim is to preserve free trade in that part of the economy and avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
The White Paper also proposes the setting up of a "governing body", made up of UK and EU ministers, and then a "joint committee" of officials, which would enforce the agreement.
Officially, the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK would come to an end.
British citizens or businesses would no longer be able to take issues to the European Court of Justice - and the court would no longer be able to make judgements on UK cases.
But the White Paper accepts that the European Court of Justice will be "the interpreter of EU rules" that the UK has agreed to follow in the "common rule book".
The White Paper also sets out in more detail the government's proposed customs system, the Facilitated Customs Arrangement for goods and agri-foods, where it plans for the UK to collect some EU tariffs.
The paper confirms that the UK will not seek "mutual recognition" in the services sector, which makes up the vast majority of the economy.
A leaked version of an earlier draft of the White Paper, put together by the Brexit department under David Davis, envisaged that there would be such an arrangement.
Some MPs have already expressed concern that by pursuing a looser arrangement with the rest of the EU on services it means a "hard Brexit" for the majority of the economy while the goods sector stays closely tied to the single market, although technically not inside it.

Jo Johnson, the younger brother of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is resigning as an MP and minister, saying he is "torn between family loyalty and the national interest".
The business minister and Tory MP for Orpington, south-east London, cited an "unresolvable tension" in his role.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was "unbelievable timing".
Mr Johnson voted Remain in the 2016 EU membership referendum, while his brother co-led the Leave campaign.
Mr Johnson's resignation follows the removal of the Tory whip from 21 MPs this week for supporting moves to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Our political editor tweeted that Mr Johnson was "understood to be upset about the purge of colleagues" and that the brothers were "in very different places" on Brexit.
Speaking at an event in West Yorkshire, Boris Johnson called his brother a "fantastic guy" and a "brilliant minister".
But he added that he had a "different approach to me about the European Union".
Jo Johnson resigned as a minister last year in protest at Theresa May's Brexit deal with the EU. But he re-entered government during the summer, after Conservative Party members elected his brother as leader.
Jo Johnson's resignation also comes as the government announced it would give MPs another chance to vote for an early election on Monday.
The fresh vote on an early election is scheduled just before Parliament is due to be prorogued - or suspended - from next week until 14 October.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The PM, as both a politician and brother, understands this will not have been an easy matter for Jo. The constituents of Orpington could not have asked for a better representative."
Former cabinet minister David Gauke, one of the MPs who lost the Conservative whip, tweeted: "Lots of MPs have had to wrestle with conflicting loyalties in recent weeks. None more so than Jo. This is a big loss to Parliament, the government and the Conservative Party."
Labour's shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said: "Boris Johnson poses such a threat that even his own brother doesn't trust him."
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said the resignation showed the "centre of gravity in the Conservative party is shifting rapidly".
But, in a tweet, Rachel Johnson, the Remain-supporting sister of Boris and Jo Johnson, said "the family avoids the topic of Brexit, especially at meals, as we don't want to gang up on the PM".
Jo Johnson appeared at several of his brother's campaign events during the Conservative Party leadership contest.
In 2013, Boris Johnson predicted Jo Johnson was himself "very likely" to become prime minister, telling The Australian newspaper: "He'd be brilliant."
At the last general election, Jo Johnson held the Orpington seat by a 19,461 majority.
He is expected to stand down at the next general election, rather than leaving Parliament immediately and prompting a by-election.
Northern Ireland Minister Nick Hurd also announced that he would not stand as an MP in the next election.
He said politics had become "dominated by the ongoing division over Brexit". He also said his life had been "changed profoundly by the birth of my two youngest children".

Boris Johnson has said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than ask the EU to delay Brexit beyond 31 October.
But the PM declined to say if he would resign if a postponement - which he has repeatedly ruled out - had to happen.
Mr Johnson has said he would be prepared to leave the EU without a deal, but Labour says stopping a no-deal Brexit is its priority.
The prime minister's younger brother, Jo Johnson, announced earlier that he was standing down as a minister and MP.
Speaking in West Yorkshire, Boris Johnson said Jo Johnson, who backed Remain in the 2016 referendum, was a "fantastic guy" but they had had "differences" over the EU.
Announcing his resignation earlier in the day, the MP for Orpington, south-east London, said he had been "torn between family loyalty and the national interest".
During his speech at a police training centre in Wakefield, the prime minister reiterated his call for an election, which he wants to take place on 15 October.
He argued it was "the only way to get this thing [Brexit] moving".
"We either go forward with our plan to get a deal, take the country out on 31 October which we can or else somebody else should be allowed to see if they can keep us in beyond 31 October," Mr Johnson said.
He told the audience he hated "banging on about Brexit" but accused MPs of having "torpedoed" the UK's negotiating position with the EU by voting for a Labour-backed bill designed to block a no-deal exit on 31 October.
The legislation would force the prime minister to delay Brexit until January 2020, unless MPs approve either a new deal or a no-deal exit by 19 October.
However, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has accused the PM of having "no plan to get a new deal".
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said the prime minister's comments were "deeply troubling", and the PM would soon be legally forced to seek a Brexit delay.
The House of Commons rejected Mr Johnson's plan for a snap election in a vote on Wednesday.
But the government has announced that MPs will get another chance to back this plan next Monday.
The fresh vote on an early election is scheduled just before Parliament is due to be prorogued - or suspended - from next week until 14 October.
Opposition parties are holding talks about how to respond to the prime minister's call for a mid-October election, amid concern over whether it should be delayed until after an extension has been agreed to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
Meanwhile, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has warned Mr Johnson that he "cannot win an election, whenever it comes, if the Brexit Party stands against him".
However, if they were to make a pact during a general election "with a clear policy, we'd be unstoppable", he told the BBC.
Yvette Cooper, Labour MP and chairwoman of the Home Affairs Committee, criticised the PM for using police officers as a backdrop to his speech.
"This is an abuse of power by Boris Johnson, making so many police stop their training and work to be part of his political stunt," she said.
West Yorkshire Police chief constable John Robins said he was pleased the force was "chosen as the focal point of the national recruitment campaign" and welcomed Mr Johnson's pledge to increase police funding.
One of the student officers standing behind the prime minister appeared to become unwell during his speech and question-and-answer session.
Twenty minutes in, she sat down with her head bowed, at which point Mr Johnson apologised and said: "That is the signal for me to actively wind up."

"I'm not sure that we can look the nation in the eye and say that was a good day."
That's how a Conservative MP has described the torrid scenes in the Commons in the last 24 hours.
Did the prime minister alight on the frustration of many members of the public who may feel that Parliament has simply failed to keep the promise it made to carry out their wishes expressed in the referendum - yes.
Did Boris Johnson confirm his determination to push on with keeping the vow he made to take the UK out of the EU at the end of next month - yes.
But did the scenes in Parliament suggest that his determination tips into a potentially destructive disdain - yes, to that too.
Boris Johnson's decision has long been clear - he would seek to use everything within his grasp to stick to the Brexit deadline he set.
If that meant knocking some plaster off the ceiling, rattling some cages in a fractious and perhaps failing Parliament, so be it.
It is not as if, his allies argue, this Parliament has any measurable or reliable level of support from the public at large.
Their calculation is that swathes of voters, whatever they chose in 2016, have simply had enough of MPs' inability to decide.
After three years of political strife, following a clear, if narrow, result in the referendum, it is of course the case there are plenty of voters who blame politicians collectively for the mess we all witness.
So, as Boris Johnson and Number 10 have been obviously doing since taking office, Parliament's failure is a political target.
Whatever you think of that interpretation, for most of tonight's debate, this still relatively new prime minister was combatively, precisely on his chosen message.
Accordingly, he decided to stir his benches with rancour rather than make any effort to soothe nerves on all sides, let alone show remorse for his defeat.
Yet, even for a politician whose tactics include provocation, it is worth asking if he went too far.
Outrage is a common currency these days, but MPs' jaws dropped as he ramped up the rhetoric in responses to questions - suggesting first that it was "humbug" for a Labour MP to demand he temper his language, to try to protect MPs' safety.
Then, he went on to say that the appropriate legacy for the MP who was murdered during the referendum, Jo Cox, was for MPs to complete the Brexit process.
No surprise that Labour MPs howled in protest, some left the Commons in disbelief.
And there may be few Tory MPs willing, as the day goes on, to defend how far he went.
The cabinet minister Nicky Morgan too, who expressed her concern on Twitter, is not the only Tory MP who was unhappy at what happened.
There is pushback from the other side, of course.
One minister said, in sadness rather than anger, that Labour was deploying "double standards" after several years of calling the Leave side "racists and criminals".
There should be no surprise there was reaction like this.
Others in government believe that we are seeing the raw conflict that had to play out, the fight Theresa May delayed but couldn't make disappear.
And, rightly or wrongly, politics moves so fast in this era, it's impossible to tell if tonight's cries of horror in SW1 will fade fast to nothing, or indeed, how far they have reached beyond Westminster's bubble.
As ever, forgive but note the caveat that the situation is ever shifting and could transform within days.
For now, though, it is almost impossible to imagine this group of politicians being able to agree on much.
The attitude Boris Johnson displayed has made the divisions more stark.
And in the unlikely event this prime minister strikes a deal, it seems harder in this moment to imagine that he'd have more than a handful of Labour MPs on side.
And if you were hoping that, eventually, our politicians were moving towards a way of working together, Parliament tonight was a place of fear and loathing, not a place of debate and discussion that could provide a solution for us all.

The prime minister's decision to suspend Parliament has prompted an angry backlash from MPs and opponents of a no-deal Brexit.
It sparked protests across the country, a legal challenge and a petition with more than a million signatures.
The government said the five-week suspension in September and October will still allow time to debate Brexit.
Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said the outrage was "phoney", and that the move was "constitutional and proper".
"The candyfloss of outrage we've had over the last 24 hours, which I think is almost entirely confected, is from people who never wanted to leave the European Union," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"This is the greatest period of anger for them, or of confected anger, because after 31 October we will have left," he added.
Conservative peer Lord Young of Cookham has resigned from his role as government whip in the House of Lords in protest at suspension, known as prorogation.
In his resignation letter, he said the timing and length of the suspension "risks undermining the fundamental role of Parliament at a critical time in our history".
Meanwhile, Ruth Davidson has also confirmed she is quitting as leader of the Scottish Conservatives after eight years in the job.
In a statement she said "much had changed" both politically and personally during that time, which had led her to tender her resignation.
Ms Davidson - who backed Remain in the 2016 EU referendum - added she had never sought to hide the "conflict" she felt over Brexit, and urged Mr Johnson to get a Brexit deal.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a Queen's Speech would take place after the suspension, on 14 October, to outline his "very exciting agenda".
Cabinet minister Michael Gove said the suspension, which was approved by the Queen on Wednesday, was "certainly not" a political move to obstruct opposition to the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Mr Rees-Mogg said this parliamentary session had been one of the longest in almost 400 years, so it was right to suspend it and start a new session.
MPs voted by 498 votes to 114 to leave the EU by triggering Article 50 in February 2017. That began the countdown to the UK's departure, which is now just over two months away.
But Ruth Fox - director of parliamentary experts the Hansard Society - said this prorogation was "significantly longer than we would normally have" for the purpose of starting a new parliamentary session.
Ms Fox said that depending on the day the suspension began - and on whether MPs would have voted to have a party conference recess at all - the prorogation could "potentially halve" the number of days MPs have to scrutinise the government's Brexit position.
The prime minister says he wants to leave the EU at the end of October with a deal, but is willing to leave without one rather than miss the deadline.
On Wednesday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described Mr Johnson's move as "a smash-and-grab on our democracy" in order to force through no-deal by leaving MPs without enough time to pass laws in Parliament.
Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller - who previously won a legal battle against ministers over Article 50 - has made a judicial review application to the courts about Mr Johnson's decision.
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said Labour would be looking at calling for an emergency debate.
"We will seek to try and put through the appropriate legislation in this constrained timetable that the government has now put before us," he said.
Conservative MP Ken Clarke called Mr Johnson's move "outrageous conduct", while David Lidington, who served as Cabinet Office Minister under former PM Theresa May, said it would limit the ability of MPs to hold the government to account.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, told BBC Newsnight that the prime minister "is prepared to deny people their voice through their representatives in Parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit".
Others, though, have defended the plan.
Former Cabinet Office minster Damian Green tweeted that there was time to ratify a deal with the EU before 31 October, saying: "This is all normal Parliamentary democracy, which shows that the talk of coups and dictatorship is massively overblown."
The leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, also welcomed the decision, but said the terms of her party's agreement with the Conservatives would now be reviewed.
On Wednesday evening, protesters gathered in Westminster chanting "stop the coup", carrying anti-Brexit placards and EU flags.
The demonstration - organised hours beforehand - started outside Parliament before spreading towards Downing Street.
Meanwhile, an e-petition on the government's website demanding Parliament not be suspended reached more than a million signatures in less than a day.
A snap YouGov poll conducted on Wednesday suggests 47% of British adults thought the decision was unacceptable, with 27% saying it was acceptable and 27% unsure.
But it suggested the suspension was supported by 51% of people who voted Leave, with 52% of Conservative voters also approving of the move.
Richard Miles was one of a number of voters in Harborne, Birmingham, who said they supported the prime minister's decision.
He told the BBC: "[MPs] just want to undermine the democratic vote that has already taken place [the referendum]. It's very very dangerous what they're doing."
Three Conservative members of the Queen's Privy Council took the request to suspend Parliament to the monarch's Scottish residence in Balmoral on Wednesday morning on behalf of the prime minister.
It has now been approved, allowing the government to suspend Parliament no earlier than Monday 9 September and no later than Thursday 12 September, until Monday 14 October.
Mr Johnson wrote to MPs to outline his plan, calling on Parliament to show "unity and resolve" in the run up to 31 October so the government "stands a chance of securing a new deal" with the EU.
Scotland's top civil court is considering a challenge to the suspension of Parliament, led by the SNP's justice spokeswoman, Joanna Cherry.
It is not possible to mount a legal challenge to the Queen's exercise of her personal prerogative powers.
Campaigner Gina Miller has made an application to the courts, seeking permission for a judicial review of the PM's decision.
She told the BBC the case would question Mr Johnson's advice to the Queen and challenge whether he was using his powers to suspend Parliament and call a Queen's speech legally.
Former Prime Minister John Major had previously threatened to go to the courts to stop Mr Johnson if he shut down Parliament to deliver a no-deal Brexit.
After the announcement, Sir John said he had "no doubt" Mr Johnson's motive was to "bypass a sovereign Parliament that opposes his policy on Brexit", and he would continue to seek legal advice.
However you dress this up, with pinstripe politesse and all the eloquence of the new leader of the House of Commons, welcome to the new reality.
There is a band of Brexiteers at the top of government who are committed to sticking to their Brexit deadline whatever it takes - even if it means tearing up conventions that many other people see as valuable.
We are going to see others spluttering in their wake: "They wouldn't dare do that, would they?"
But, oh yes, they would.
It is worth saying some of those who are most outraged have been pretty good at bending the rules themselves.
But this move by the government does not go without considerable risk - and it hastens the very likely possibility of an election.
As one member of the cabinet said to me on Wednesday, everybody knows it is coming, it is just a question of when.
But the real question, as ever for the broader Brexit process, is what will be left of our political conventions when one day, eventually, this is all over.
Shutting down Parliament - known as prorogation - happens after the prime minister advises the Queen to do it.
BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond said it was established precedent to prorogue Parliament before a Queen's Speech. But the suspension is generally shorter and rarely takes place at such a constitutionally charged time.
Parliament is normally suspended - or prorogued - for a short period before a new parliamentary session begins, during which time no debates and votes are held.
It is different to "dissolving" Parliament, where all MPs give up their seats to campaign in a general election.
If this prorogation happens as expected, it will see Parliament closed for 23 working days.
MPs cannot block prorogation.
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Parliament will be suspended just days after MPs return to work in September - and only a few weeks before the Brexit deadline.
Boris Johnson said a Queen's Speech would take place after the suspension, on 14 October, to outline his "very exciting agenda".
But it means the time MPs have to pass laws to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October would be cut.
House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said it was a "constitutional outrage".
The Speaker, who does not traditionally comment on political announcements, continued: "However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of [suspending Parliament] now would be to stop [MPs] debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "Suspending Parliament is not acceptable, it is not on. What the prime minister is doing is a smash and grab on our democracy to force through a no deal," he said.
He said when MPs return to the Commons next Tuesday, "the first thing we'll do is attempt legislation to prevent what [the PM] is doing", followed by a vote of no confidence "at some point".
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Westminster on Wednesday evening chanting "stop the coup" and carrying anti-Brexit placards and EU flags.
The demonstration, which was organised hours beforehand, started outside Parliament before spreading towards Downing Street.
At the scene, BBC correspondent Richard Galpin described the atmosphere as peaceful and lively.
He said "good-natured" protesters on College Green broke through barriers which had been in place to separate live TV crews from members of the public - before traffic on Parliament Square was blocked by some people who sat down in the road.
Several protesters he spoke to indicated this was only the beginning of the disruption, with more demonstrations being organised for the weekend.
Three Conservative members of the Queen's Privy Council took the request to suspend Parliament to the monarch's Scottish residence in Balmoral on Wednesday morning on behalf of the prime minister.
It has now been approved, allowing the government to suspend Parliament no earlier than Monday 9 September and no later than Thursday 12 September, until Monday 14 October.
Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was at the meeting with the Queen, said the move was a "completely proper constitutional procedure."
Earlier, Mr Johnson said suggestions the suspension was motivated by a desire to force through a no deal were "completely untrue".
He said he did not want to wait until after Brexit "before getting on with our plans to take this country forward", and insisted there would still be "ample time" for MPs to debate the UK's departure.
"We need new legislation. We've got to be bringing forward new and important bills and that's why we are going to have a Queen's Speech," Mr Johnson added.
Shutting down Parliament - known as prorogation - happens after the prime minister advises the Queen to do it.
The decision to do it now is highly controversial because opponents say it would stop MPs being able to play their full democratic part in the Brexit process.
A number of high profile figures, including former Prime Minister John Major, have threatened to go to the courts to stop it, and a legal challenge led by the SNP's justice spokeswoman, Joanna Cherry, is already working its way through the Scottish courts.
After the announcement, Sir John said he had "no doubt" Mr Johnson's motive was to "bypass a sovereign Parliament that opposes his policy on Brexit", and he would continue to seek legal advice.
BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond said it was established precedent to prorogue Parliament before a Queen's Speech, albeit generally more briefly, and rarely, if ever, at such a constitutionally charged time.
He said it was "Her Majesty's Government" in name only and it was her role to take the advice of her ministers, so she would prorogue Parliament if asked to.
It is not possible to mount a legal challenge to the Queen's exercise of her personal prerogative powers.
But anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller - who previously won a legal battle against ministers over Article 50 - has made a judicial review application to the courts about Mr Johnson's decision.
She told the BBC's Clive Coleman: "If the intention of using this prorogation - and the effect - is that it limits Parliament sovereignty, then we believe that's illegal and unconstitutional."
This has been an extraordinarily long Parliamentary session, and governments have the right to shut up shop and return to announce their proposals in a new one, with all the golden carriages, fancy Westminster costumes, banging of doors and splendour that goes with it.
But that new timetable means Parliament will be suspended for longer than had been expected - it's only a matter of days, but those are days that might matter enormously.
Boris Johnson secured his place in No 10 by promising he'd do whatever it takes to leave the EU at Halloween, so this decisive and intensely risky plan will satisfy many of those who backed him.
But some others in his government are worried - moving now, even with the accompanying controversy, he sets the stage and the terms for an epic fight with MPs on all sides.
The PM says he wants to leave the EU on 31 October with a deal, but it is "do or die" and he is willing to leave without one rather than miss the deadline.
That position has prompted a number of opposition MPs to come together to try to block a possible no deal, and on Tuesday they announced that they intended to use parliamentary process to do so.
But with Parliament set to be suspended, opponents have only a few days next week to push for their changes.
Senior Tory backbencher and former attorney general Dominic Grieve said the move by Mr Johnson could lead to a vote of no confidence - something opposition parties have left on the table as another option to stop no deal.
"There is plenty of time to do that if necessary [and] I will certainly vote to bring down a Conservative government that persists in a course of action which is so unconstitutional," he said.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said MPs must come together to stop the plan next week, or "today will go down in history as a dark one indeed for UK democracy".
Mr Johnson has written to MPs to outline his plan, adding: "There will be a significant Brexit legislative programme to get through but that should be no excuse for a lack of ambition!"
He mentioned the NHS, tackling crime, infrastructure investment and the cost of living as important issues.
He also called on Parliament to show "unity and resolve" in the run up to the 31 October so the government "stands a chance of securing a new deal" with the EU.
But a senior EU source told the BBC's Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming the bloc's position was clear and was not contingent on the machinations of the UK Parliament.
There has been considerable anger at Mr Johnson's move from across the political spectrum.
Former Tory Chancellor Philip Hammond called it "profoundly undemocratic".
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, said it was a "dangerous and unacceptable course of action".
"He knows the people would not choose a no deal and that elected representatives wouldn't allow it. He is trying to stifle their voices," she said.
The leader of the SNP in Westminster, Ian Blackford, accused Mr Johnson of "acting like a dictator", while First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford said he wanted to "close the doors" on democracy.
Others, though, have defended the plan.
Conservative Party Chairman James Cleverly said setting out a legislative programme via a Queen's Speech was what "all new governments do".
US President Donald Trump tweeted his support for Mr Johnson, saying it "would be very hard" for Mr Corbyn to seek a no-confidence vote against the PM, "especially in light of the fact that Boris is exactly what the UK has been looking for".
Brexit Party MEP Alex Phillips said MPs "only had themselves to blame" for the move.
She told BBC News: "They have made themselves the obstacle in front of delivering the referendum result. Boris Johnson is saying he now needs to remove that obstacle, and quite right too."
The leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, also welcomed the decision to suspend Parliament and have a Queen's Speech, but said the terms of her party's confidence and supply agreement with the Conservatives would now be reviewed.
"This will be an opportunity to ensure our priorities align with those of the government," she added.
Parliament is normally suspended - or prorogued - for a short period before a new session begins. It is done by the Queen, on the advice of the prime minister.
Parliamentary sessions normally last a year, but the current one has been going on for more than two years - ever since the June 2017 election.
When Parliament is prorogued, no debates and votes are held - and most laws that haven't completed their passage through Parliament die a death.
This is different to "dissolving" Parliament - where all MPs give up their seats to campaign in a general election.
The last two times Parliament was suspended for a Queen's Speech that was not after a general election the closures lasted for four and 13 working days respectively.
If this prorogation happens as expected, it will see Parliament closed for 23 working days.
MPs have to approve recess dates, but they cannot block prorogation.

Demonstrations have been taking place across the UK against Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament in the run-up to Brexit.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in cities including Manchester, Leeds, York and Belfast.
Parts of central London were brought to a standstill, as people chanted: "Boris Johnson, shame on you."
A small group of counter-protesters, marching in support of the prime minister, also arrived in Westminster.
Mr Johnson's plan to prorogue Parliament prompted an angry backlash from MPs and opponents of a no-deal Brexit when he announced it on Wednesday.
If the prorogation happens as expected, Parliament will be closed for 23 working days.
Critics view the length and timing of the suspension - coming just weeks before the Brexit deadline on 31 October - as controversial.
Protests were held place in more than 30 towns and cities across the UK, including Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge, Exeter, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.
In London, demonstrators stopped traffic in Whitehall and the West End.
They also staged a sit-down protest in the roads around Trafalgar Square, before marching to Buckingham Palace shouting: "Whose democracy? Our democracy."
The Met Police said it had made three arrests but gave no further details.
The Green Party said London Assembly member Caroline Russell was among those arrested.
Sian Berry, co-leader of the Green Party, tweeted she was "proud of Caroline standing up for democracy".
NHS pharmacist Bridie Walton, 55, said she had never been to a demonstration before, but joined the protest in Exeter to oppose Mr Johnson's plan.
"These are the actions of a man who is afraid his arguments will not stand scrutiny," she said.
In Liverpool, Paula Carlyle said she was "proud" to stand alongside protesters "who voted both Remain and Leave".
"We will not be silenced," she said. "Without us you have no power and we will continue to show ours until Mr Johnson is stopped."
In Oxford, crowds holding banners gathered outside Balliol College, where Mr Johnson studied at university.
Named "Stop the Coup", the protests are organised by anti-Brexit campaign group Another Europe is Possible.
Small protests also took place in Amsterdam, Berlin and the Latvian capital Riga.
Speaking at a rally in Glasgow, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the protesters' message to the prime minister was: "No way do you take us out without a deal."
"Demonstrations are taking place everywhere because people are angered and outraged about what is happening," he added.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott both addressed crowds in London.
Speaking from a stage near Downing Street, Ms Abbott told protesters: "We cannot allow Boris Johnson to shut down Parliament and to shut down the voice of ordinary British people."
Meanwhile in Bristol, former Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams said by suspending Parliament, Mr Johnson had left MPs "with about four days to make the most important decision of any of our lifetimes".
Chancellor Sajid Javid, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, defended the prime minister's decision to suspend Parliament.
He said: "It's quite usual this time of year for Parliament to go in to a recess. It's perfectly correct and appropriate to prorogue Parliament.
"I think it's absolutely right that this prime minister and his government get the chance to set up their agenda."
It's a far cry from the numbers that we saw marching through Westminster earlier this year. I think we'd probably measure this one in the thousands [in central London].
But there are deeply-held passions here, different kinds of passions. Some are here because they don't like Boris Johnson's government, some because they are worried about proroguing Parliament, some because they don't want no deal, some because they don't want Brexit at all.
There's been a lot of talk about democracy from the people I've spoken to here today, but actually I think what it comes down to is a country which is riven by very different definitions about what democracy actually means.
The Jo Cox Foundation, which was set up in the wake of the Labour MP's murder in 2016, warned that anger over Brexit "should not spill over into something more dangerous".
Meanwhile, a petition against the prime minister's plan to suspend Parliament has received more than 1.5 million signatures.
And on Friday, former Tory Prime Minister Sir John Major announced he will join forces with anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller to oppose the decision to suspend Parliament in the courts.
He believes Mr Johnson's move to suspend Parliament is aimed at preventing MPs from opposing a no-deal Brexit.
The prime minister has dismissed suggestions that suspending Parliament is motivated by a desire to force through a no deal, calling them "completely untrue".
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: "The idea this is some kind of constitutional outrage is nonsense."

A Tory MP's suggestion that the economic impact of a no-deal Brexit on the Republic of Ireland could encourage the EU to drop the backstop has been widely criticised.
However, Priti Patel said her comments "have been taken out of context".
A government report, leaked to the Times, indicated that there could be food shortages in Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
It said the economic impact on Ireland would be worse than in the UK.
The report indicated that there would be a 7% drop in GDP for Ireland.
The equivalent UK drop would be 5%.
Speaking to The Times, Conservative MP Priti Patel said such warnings should have been used in negotiations as leverage against the Republic of Ireland to encourage them to drop the backstop.
"This paper appears to show the government were well aware Ireland will face significant issues in a no-deal scenario. Why hasn't this point been pressed home during negotiations?
"There is still time to go back to Brussels and get a better deal."
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, the Tanáiste (Ireland's deputy prime minister) Simon Coveney said Ms Patel's comments were "ridiculous".
Her words were interpreted by some as insensitive given Ireland's history.
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long tweeted: "This kind of comment from MPs like Priti Patel demonstrate not only profound ignorance of and insensitivity about our history but also reckless indifference to the impact on relations today."
Elsewhere on Twitter, SDLP MLA Claire Hanna delivered a sharp rebuke to Ms Patel's comments.
"The warped and spectacularly ignorant mind of Brexit, alongside the evil approach to Ireland is the failure to grasp that this is about the most food secure island in the world," the South Belfast MLA wrote.
Priti Patel resigned as UK international development secretary in November last year amid controversy over her unauthorised meetings with Israeli officials.
The BBC asked Ms Patel for a response to the criticism but none was received.

Protesters seeking a referendum on the final Brexit deal have attended a rally which organisers say was the biggest demonstration of its kind.
Young voters led the People's Vote march to London's Parliament Square, which supporters say attracted approximately 700,000 protesters.
It also had support from a number of MPs who want a fresh vote.
This is something which has already been ruled out by Prime Minister Theresa May.
The People's Vote campaign said stewards on the route estimated 700,000 were taking part.
The Metropolitan Police said it was not able to estimate the size of the crowd.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan - who started the march - was among those who addressed Parliament Square, along with representatives from the main political parties. Celebrity speakers included Steve Coogan, Delia Smith and Deborah Meaden.
London Mayor Mr Khan told the crowd: "What's really important is that those that say that a public vote is undemocratic, is unpatriotic, realise that in fact, the exact opposite is the truth.
"What could be more democratic, what could be more British, than trusting the judgement of the British people."
The march was held at the same time as a pro-Brexit rally in Harrogate, organised by the group Leave Means Leave and led by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
Mr Farage said: "The evidence suggests about a third of those that voted remain now say we're democrats and think the government should simply get on with it.
"And that's our message - get on with it, fulfil your promises to us, you said if we voted to leave it would happen, it needs to."
People gathered on Park Lane for hours before the march.  Many held home-made signs and banners with slogans like "the wrexiteers", "Brexit stole my future" and "Even Baldrick had a plan".
As the crowds began to form, the sheer scale of the protest became clear. Thousands of people stretched filled the street, some were singing, others were playing instruments, while many plastic whistles blared out.
There were lots of young families there, some with children wrapped in EU flags. Many told me they'd gone because they were worried about their families' future.
Some people marched in groups - there were NHS staff, political parties, members of the LGBT community and dog owners. Many took the opportunity to dress up their pets for the protest.
The start of the march was delayed due to the number of people there.  It was a good natured and friendly march through some of London's most famous streets before the hundreds of thousands of people arrived at Parliament Square.
By that stage the march was so large that not everyone could fit in the square and demonstrators spilled out onto nearby streets.
The marchers are hoping people power will persuade the British government to hold a referendum on the final Brexit deal. They will have to wait and see if the government was listening.
The British public voted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.89% to 48.11% in a referendum in June 2016.
The UK is scheduled to leave on 29 March 2019, under the terms of the two-year Article 50 process.
Labour's Lord Adonis, a campaigner for People's Vote - which wants a referendum on the outcome of the negotiations with the EU - said: "Brexit's becoming a dog's dinner.
"This week's fresh chaos and confusion over Brexit negotiations has exposed how even the best deal now available will be a bad one for Britain."
Richard Tice, founder of Leave Means Leave and former co-chair of Leave.EU, told BBC Breakfast: "The idea that you should have a second referendum would be incredibly damaging - most of all to the trust in democracy from people up and down this country."
Some 150 coach loads of people from across the UK - including as far away from London as Orkney - travelled to the March for the Future, which started in Park Lane.
TV chef Delia Smith told the crowds that Brexit was "the most important issue in our lifetime", adding: "My message to MPs is please sort this out. Let the people you serve have their say."
Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis attended with his wife Lorraine Ashbourne and 14-year-old son Louis.
"The will of the people is now, it's people expressing their points of view in a more informed state," he said.
And First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon sent a message of support to the rally, saying the SNP would support a vote that would give the option of staying in the EU.
#PeoplesVoteMarch was trending on Twitter on Saturday, with lots of young people - some of those who were not eligible to vote in the 2016 referendum - heading on the march.
Emily Longman, 20, one of the students leading the march behind a People's Vote banner, was four months too young to vote in the 2016 referendum.
She studies Spanish and is due to study abroad next year, but said "no-one knows what will happen with Erasmus funding".
Aleta Doyle, 46, from Peterborough, who attended with her 12-year-old son Leo, said she was marching "for my children's future and European unity".
And Leo Buckley, 16, from Hampshire, said: "Young people stand to lose the most. I'm going to be poorer and not have the same career opportunities."
At the other end of the age spectrum, Joe Trickey from Croydon celebrated his 83rd birthday at the march. He said: "I believe very strongly in the EU as a place of peace and strength."
Dr Mike Galsworthy, from NHS Against Brexit, told BBC News: "Whether you voted leave, or whether you voted remain - when a contract comes back, you do have the right to read the small print and say actually 'no, no. no, this isn't what we want to be signing up for'."
Campaign supporter Alastair Campbell, former Downing Street director of communications, said: "The Brexit that was promised, and the Brexit that was campaigned successfully for, doesn't exist."
He added: "I don't think you can re-run the referendum. I think we have to accept that we lost that debate. I think the question has to be on the nature of the deal."
Saturday's event followed a march in London in June, on the second anniversary of the Brexit vote.

MPs will have "multiple" opportunities to give the public the final say over whether the UK leaves the EU, the People's Vote campaign group has said.
Theresa May has ruled out a referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations under any circumstances.
But People's Vote said there were six plausible scenarios in which Parliament could legislate for another vote.
It said there should be a choice for voters between leaving with or without a deal or staying on current terms.
The prime minister says the UK made its choice to leave in 2016 and that her plan for future co-operation with the EU - based on the Chequers blueprint agreed in July - respects the referendum result.
She has said the choice facing Parliament is between leaving with or without a comprehensive agreement.
But in a report called Roadmap to a People's Vote the group campaigning for a referendum on any Brexit deal said there were no practical or legal barriers to giving the public the final say through a referendum and urged MPs not to hide behind "logistical arguments".
The British public voted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.89% to 48.11% in a referendum in June 2016.
The UK is scheduled to leave on 29 March 2019, under the terms of the two-year Article 50 process.
Negotiations on the terms of the UK's withdrawal, the so-called divorce settlement, as well as the shape of future relations between the two sides are now at a critical stage.
European leaders meeting in Salzburg on Wednesday are expected to agree to hold a special summit in November at which any deal sealed in the next six weeks could be approved.
Parliament will then be expected to vote on the terms of any agreement before the end of the year.
People's Vote said this Commons showdown, when it happened, could be a catalyst for securing a referendum.
The six ways it believes a referendum could be delivered are:
Lord Kerr, the former top civil servant who wrote the report, said MPs who wanted a referendum faced a "high bar" given the government's control of the Parliamentary timetable.
But he pointed out that Mrs May, who relies on the Democratic Unionist Party for her slim Commons majority, had already suffered two Brexit defeats and if Parliament did not act "it will not be due to procedural impediments or a lack of time but because MPs have not chosen to take these opportunities".
The cross-bench peer said the government could easily seek an extension of the Article 50 process to allow for a referendum by "withdrawing" the letter sent on 29 March 2017 notifying the EU of its intention to leave.
"The die is not irrevocably cast," he wrote.
"There is still time. If there is a majority in Parliament for a People's Vote, there are multiple routes to securing one and, as the process unfolds, more opportunities for the House of Commons to assert its will may emerge."
In terms of what question would be asked, People's Vote said it did not rule out having three options on the ballot paper - namely any deal agreed by the two sides, leaving without a deal or staying in on current terms.
But it said this was unlikely to get the backing of MPs and a "binary choice" between two options would be clearer, simpler and quicker.
While there was a case for giving 16-year olds the vote and allowing EU nationals living in the UK to take part, it said there might be "practical limits" on any changes to the franchise given the timescale involved.
The Lib Dems, the SNP and a growing number of Labour MPs back the idea of a referendum but Jeremy Corbyn has not committed to one as yet and only a handful of Tories support it.

Labour has narrowly seen off a Brexit Party challenge to hold on to its Peterborough seat in a by-election.
Union activist Lisa Forbes retained the constituency for Labour, taking 31% of the vote and beating the Brexit Party's Mike Greene (29%) by 683 votes.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called it an "incredible" win for the "politics of hope over the politics of fear".
But Nigel Farage, who founded the Brexit Party less than two months ago, called its showing "very significant".
The Conservatives came third with 21%, while the Liberal Democrats were fourth with 12%, followed by the Green Party on 3%.
The Peterborough by-election was called after Fiona Onasanya - who won for Labour in 2017 but was convicted of lying over a speeding offence and thrown out of the party - became the first MP to be ousted under recall rules.
In her victory speech, Ms Forbes said, to cheers from her supporters, that "the politics of hope can win regardless of the odds".
"Despite the differing opinions across our city, the fact that the Brexit Party have been rejected here in Peterborough shows that the politics of division will not win," she said.
The Brexit Party had been the bookmakers' favourite to take the Cambridgeshire seat - which would have been its first at Westminster - following its success in the recent European elections.
Joining Labour's victory celebrations on a visit to the city, Mr Corbyn said: "All the experts wrote Lisa Forbes off. All the experts wrote Labour off. Write Labour off at your peril."
The Labour leader said the party had triumphed due to its anti-austerity message and its opposition to a "cliff-edge" no-deal Brexit that would threaten jobs and investment.
He challenged whoever succeeds Theresa May as Conservative leader to call an immediate general election.
Despite the Brexit Party's failure to take the seat, leader Mr Farage said he was "pretty buoyed", as it had "come from nowhere and produced a massive result".
He rejected claims that its focus on a single issue limited its appeal, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme we have a "very strong, simple message that people believe in".
Mr Farage later handed in a letter to Downing Street calling for his party's MEPs to be included in the UK's Brexit negotiating team.
He told reporters he believed the NHS should be included in future US trade negotiations despite the political outcry when Donald Trump raised the possibility earlier this week - comments which the US president subsequently appeared to row back on.
The Brexit Party has made a huge impression - but history is written by the winners.
Had Nigel Farage's party actually won this narrowly, he would have had much more momentum to argue not just to get Brexit done by the end of October, but to have huge influence potentially over how the Conservatives choose their leader.
Had Labour lost narrowly, there would have been a big demand from the rank and file for Jeremy Corbyn to sharpen his Brexit act and to call for a referendum under all circumstances. That has not happened either.
The conclusion that the Labour leadership is drawing from this is that people actually wanted to talk about things other than Brexit.
By talking about council cuts, crime, and education, they managed not to fight on the same territory as their opponents and were able to carve out their own distinctive message, get out their core vote and sneak over the line.
Conservative leadership candidate Boris Johnson tweeted his "commiserations" to Tory candidate Paul Bristow, who, he said, "did not deserve to come third", while fellow contenders Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock and Jeremy Hunt said the result showed the threat from Labour.
Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said the "clear message" from its poor performance in Peterborough as well as in recent council and European elections was the public wanted the government to deliver on the Brexit referendum result.
Polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice said the Peterborough by-election had not been as "dramatic" as the UK-wide European elections last month, in which the Brexit Party and Liberal Democrats came first and second.
But he added that the combined results had been "enough to disturb the regular rhythms of two-party politics".
Ms Forbes caused controversy during the campaign when she liked a social media post which said Theresa May had a "Zionist slave masters agenda".
Labour said she had liked a video expressing solidarity with the victims of March's terror attacks on mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch "without reading the accompanying text, which Facebook users know is an easy thing to do".
"She has fully accounted for this genuine mistake and apologised," a party source said.
But the Jewish Labour Movement called for Ms Forbes to have the Labour whip suspended, meaning she would have to sit in the Commons as an independent MP.
Meanwhile, Labour Against Antisemitism asked for her to be suspended from the party, calling her election a "dark day" for Labour.

The UK will need a transition period to help businesses adjust after Brexit, the chancellor and the international trade secretary have said.
In a joint Sunday Telegraph article, Philip Hammond and Liam Fox stressed any deal would not be indefinite or a "back door" to staying in the EU.
Their comments are being seen as an attempt to show unity between rival sides in Theresa May's cabinet.
The Liberal Democrats said Mr Hammond had "been brought back in line".
"What this is about is getting Philip Hammond back on track with a hard Brexit program," Tom Brake, the party's foreign affairs spokesman, said.
"What we don't know from this letter is exactly how this is going to work. It's also not clear how long the transition period is going to be."
The letter comes as ministers start to set out their detailed aims for Brexit.
A series of papers is being published, including one this week covering what will happen to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after the UK has left the EU.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Hammond and Mr Fox said the UK definitely would leave both the customs union and the single market when it exits the EU in March 2019.
They said a "time-limited" transition period would "further our national interest and give business greater certainty" - but warned it would not stop Brexit.
"We are both clear that during this period the UK will be outside the single market and outside the customs union and will be a 'third-country' not party to EU treaties," they said.
They said the UK's borders "must continue to operate smoothly", that goods bought on the internet "must still cross borders", and "businesses must still be able to supply their customers across the EU" in the weeks and months after Brexit.
The two leading politicians said the government wanted to ensure there would not be a "cliff edge".
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said leaving the single market and the customs union would be a "dreadful mistake for the future of our economy, for jobs and prosperity in Britain".
BBC political correspondent Ben Wright said Mr Hammond - who is seen to favour a "softer" approach to Brexit - and Mr Fox, one of the most prominent pro-Brexit ministers, had "previously appeared at loggerheads" over the government's strategy on leaving the EU.
Mr Hammond has raised the prospect of a Brexit deal that saw little immediate change on issues such as immigration - something Brexiteers have rejected.
Our correspondent said their article was an attempt to "prove cabinet unity on Brexit".
Conservative MP and Brexit minister David Jones said the letter showed Mr Hammond had "rowed back from his previous position".
But Stephen Gethins, from the SNP, said there was "no masking the fact there are deep divisions within cabinet over Brexit  - and still no apparent plan almost 14 months on from the vote".
Meanwhile, former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called for politicians on all sides to unite to fight back against the "worst consequences" of Brexit.
He described the outcome of last year's referendum as an "unparalleled act of economic self-harm".
Writing in the Observer, he said: "People say we must respect the referendum. We should. But democracy did not end on June 23, 2016.
"The referendum will be no excuse if the country is driven off a cliff."
Negotiations between Brexit Secretary David Davis and EU officials are set to resume at the end of this month.
Mr Davis said the publication of the papers outlining the government's aims for Brexit would mark "an important next step" towards delivering the referendum vote to leave the EU.

Wednesday sees the next stage in the difficult process of the government agreeing its approach to trade with the European Union.
Theresa May will host a meeting of her Brexit cabinet - the inner sanctum that attempts to thrash out the knottiest issues left on the table.
One is the future customs relationship between the UK and EU.
That will be a vital part of any future trade deal as the UK exports 50% of its goods to the EU.
The government has said it wants to leave the EU single market and the customs union and at the same time retain an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The big and highly complicated question is how?
I am told that the chancellor will use the meeting tomorrow to argue in favour of a close "customs partnership" with the EU, or at least not rule it out at this early stage.
Senior sources have told me that Philip Hammond sees advantages in the proposal that would mean the UK could set its own tariffs but would also be obliged to mirror European Union customs rules.
He is likely to receive support from the business secretary, Greg Clark.
The arrangement would mean the UK collecting tariffs on behalf of the EU for any goods coming to the UK that were subsequently destined for any other union member state.
Businesses would claim back any tariff rebates from the government if the goods stayed in the UK.
Although technically difficult - some say impossible - officials believe such a partnership could "solve" the Irish border question as there would be no hard customs border between the UK and the EU.
It still leaves open the problem of what happens if there are substantive regulatory differences between the UK and the EU beyond tariff arrangements.
Whitehall sources I have spoken to say a customs partnership would help the many British businesses that only export to the EU.
It would also leave the UK free to sign trade deals with other countries, a key plank of the government's Brexit strategy.
Sources said a fourth advantage is that it would be for the UK to sort out the very difficult technical and infrastructure issues alone as they would all fall on the British side of the border.
Mr Hammond's position is likely to cause controversy within the Conservative Party.
Brexit-backing MPs believe the partnership model may be used as a back door route to rejoining the customs union.
"Some of the people proposing it know such an immensely complicated - and untried - arrangement is guaranteed to end in chaotic failure," said David Jones, the former Brexit minister, last month.
"At which point they will conclude we have no choice but to rejoin the fully fledged customs union."
The second option put forward by the government - and to be discussed at Wednesday's Cabinet meeting - is called "maximum facilitation" or a "highly streamlined customs arrangement".
Under the "maxfac" model - supported by many pro-Brexit MPs - any customs checks needed at borders between the EU and the UK once Britain has left the EU would be as friction free as possible.
Technology and trusted trader status licences would be used to smooth the flow of goods and services, its proponents argue.
Its backers also say it would be a more definitive break with the EU and is more technically feasible as it would in part be operationally based on arrangements Britain already has with non-EU nations.
Critics say it would not solve the Irish border question as there would still need to be tariff checks.
The whole debate on Wednesday will ultimately be a rather surreal affair.
Senior figures I have spoken to admit that both models are untried, possibly unworkable and it could take years to build either system.
The EU is yet to be convinced that they are viable alternatives to its own "backstop" solution to the Irish border question - placing a customs border in the Irish Sea and approaching the whole island of Ireland as a single trading entity.
Theresa May has said that the government would never agree to such a plan.
What is clear is that there is still a very significant amount of work to be done if any customs policy is to be agreed by both the government and the EU, which wants there to be "substantial progress" by June.
Without agreement, the conclusion of Britain's overall withdrawal deal - due to be signed in October or December - would be in jeopardy.

The chancellor has labelled the European Union's Brexit negotiators as "the enemy" - a remark he subsequently described as a "poor choice of words".
During a television interview, Philip Hammond also called the negotiators "the opponents" and said they should "behave like grown-ups".
But he tweeted later: "I was making the point that we are united at home. I regret I used a poor choice of words."
Mr Hammond is in Washington for an International Monetary Fund meeting.
He has been criticised for saying that the Brexit process has created uncertainty, and this week a former chancellor claimed he was trying to sabotage the talks.
During a series of media interviews in Washington, Mr Hammond told Sky News that "passions are high" in the party "but we are all going to the same place".
But he added: "The enemy, the opponents, are out there on the other side of the table. Those are the people that we have to negotiate with to get the very best deal for Britain."
Despite his regrets, Mr Hammond's comments drew fire from political opponents. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said it was an "inept approach from a failing government. Insulting the EU is not the way to protect our economic interests".
During his interviews, the chancellor also has described as "bizarre" and "absurd" accusations he is talking down the economy.
Mr Hammond said he was a realist and that he wanted to "protect and prepare" the economy for the challenges ahead.
The chancellor said: "It is absurd to pretend that the process we are engaged in hasn't created some uncertainty. But the underlying economy remains robust.
"I am committed to delivering a Brexit deal that works for Britain," he added.
He refused to answer how he would vote if another referendum was held now. "We've had the referendum," he said. "You know how I voted in it."
This week, former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson called for Mr Hammond to be sacked, saying he was unhelpful to the Brexit process.
Lord Lawson said: "What he [Mr Hammond] is doing is very close to sabotage".
Responding to these comments, Mr Hammond said: "Lord Lawson is entitled to his view on this and many other subjects and isn't afraid to express it, but I think he's wrong."
The chancellor, who has been accused of being too pessimistic about Brexit, told the Treasury Committee of MPs this week that a "cloud of uncertainty" over the outcome of negotiations was "acting as a dampener" on the economy.
But speaking on Friday, Mr Hammond said he was optimistic about the UK's economic future and was in Washington to promote it.
"What I'm doing here in Washington is talking Britain up, talking about Britain's future as a champion of free trade in the global economy, seeking further moves on liberalisation on trade in services which will hugely benefit our economy."
He added that Britain had "a very bright future ahead", but added that it was "undoubtedly true" that the process of negotiations had created uncertainty for business.
"If you talk to businesses, they would like us to get it done quickly so that they know clearly what our future relationship with the European Union is going to look like."
Mr Hammond said the Cabinet was united behind Prime Minister Theresa May's recent speech in Florence setting out her Brexit plans.
"We know what our proposal is, we put it on the table effectively. Now we want the European Union to engage with it… challenge us… but let's behave like grown-ups." he said.
Mr Hammond said the government would not spend taxpayers' money preparing for a "no-deal" Brexit until the "very last moment".
He said he would not take money from budgets for other areas such as health or education just to "send a message" to the EU.
One former minister, David Jones, has said billions of pounds should be set aside in November's Budget for a "no deal" scenario.
He argued that if this did not happen it would be seen as a "a sign of weakness" by EU leaders, who would think the UK was not serious about leaving the EU without a deal.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has indicated he may vote to bring down the next PM to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Asked whether he would back a motion of no-confidence in the government, he said he could "not exclude anything".
Mr Hammond also said he would do "everything in my power" to stop a future prime minister suspending Parliament to get a no-deal Brexit.
He was one of four cabinet ministers who abstained from a vote blocking the possibility of this happening.
The Commons vote was brought forward on Thursday by MPs who fear the next Conservative leader and prime minister will make the move - known as "prorogation" - to push through a no-deal Brexit and cut them out of the process.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has discounted the possibility if he becomes prime minister, but his rival in the Conservative Party leadership race, Boris Johnson, has refused to give the same assurance.
In an interview with Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, Mr Hammond said he would "take steps to avoid an exit without agreement apart from an explicit parliamentary approval".
Speaking on Tuesday at the G7 conference in Paris, he told the French and German newspapers: "There should be a new and sincere attempt to reach a consensus.
"If we do not find a solution with the members, we may have to ask the British to give their opinion again, in one form or another."
Asked if he would rule out supporting a motion of no confidence - which, if successful, would bring down the government - he said: "I do not exclude anything for the moment."
It is a chance for MPs to hold a vote on whether they want the government to continue - and it has the power to trigger a general election.
Any MP can propose a motion of no confidence, but that doesn't mean it would be debated.
However, if the leader of the opposition introduces the motion, convention means the government will provide time for a debate to take place.
Mr Hammond also said another extension to Brexit was "absolutely necessary" in practice, as there was not enough time to renegotiate with the EU ahead of 31 October deadline.
He added: "If the next government is sincere in its desire to reach an agreement with Europe, it must try to get more time. If it does not, the British parliament will insist on getting a new postponement.
"I will remain a member of the House of Commons. I will do everything in my power from my position to make sure that parliament blocks a Brexit without agreement."
By Jessica Parker, political correspondent
The so-called "awkward squad" - a group of Conservative Eurosceptic MPs - has for a long time made life tricky for David Cameron and Theresa May.
With the pro-Brexit Boris Johnson apparently on the cusp of becoming PM, the expectation is that a chunk of the group could get government jobs. And the rest will surely hold fire on their new boss, at least for a while.
Taking their place… the "Gaukeward squad", named after current Justice Secretary David Gauke.
The current projection is that it will be made up of Mr Gauke, Chancellor Philip Hammond and a good handful of other Tory MPs who avidly oppose a no-deal Brexit.
Just how Gaukeward will they be? Mr Hammond's comments on potentially supporting a no-confidence vote suggest he - in principle at least - is willing to go pretty far to make his point.
But is this just tough talk in order to let off some loud warning shots? We won't know until the crunch moment - if and a when Parliament finds itself confronted with the very real and immediate prospect of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Hammond said Mr Johnson, the frontrunner in the Tory leadership race,  was "a more complex personality than it sometimes seems", and was "a mainstream Conservative on all topics except Brexit".
But he pleaded for the EU to have patience with some of Mr Johnson's Brexit-backing supporters in the Conservative Party who were being "deliberately noisy, rude and inconsiderate... to make the Europeans so tired that they ask us to leave".
He added: "Please, do not listen to the the few noise-makers."
Pro-Remain Tory Dominic Grieve told the BBC that he thought a "substantial number" of his party would be willing to support a vote of no confidence in the government to stop a no-deal Brexit.
He said: "I'm going to be working with colleagues who share my view that no deal would be very bad for the country to try to make sure that the government cannot push us into no deal without Parliament having consented to it."
Health minister Stephen Hammond - who abstained in Thursday's vote - said he would not rule out supporting a no-confidence vote in his own government if its policy became pursuing a no-deal Brexit, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "A lot of people were taught that you must put the interest of the country before yourself."
But leading Brexiteer and Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told the same programme those trying to prevent it were "not saying what they believe", and their intention was to "snub the British voters" and stop Brexit altogether.
He did, however, say prorogation was a possibility "for a day or two" to stop parliamentary procedures being "upended" by backbenchers trying to block the UK leaving the EU.
If MPs fail to support a Brexit deal agreed between UK and EU by 31 October, the legal default is to leave with no deal on that date.
Both contenders to be the next prime minister said they want to keep to the date and renegotiate with the EU, leaving with a deal.
But Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson have also said they would keep no deal on the table to strengthen negotiations, despite Parliament voting to rule the option out.
The EU has consistently said the withdrawal agreement is closed and cannot be changed.
The incoming president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said she hopes the UK remains in the EU, but it was up to British authorities to "sort its side of things on Brexit".
Asked about Mrs von der Leyen's position, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday she understood that "if the UK wishes for more time [e.g. another delay to Brexit], then they would have more time", but it was "up to the UK".
She praised her "cooperative relationship" with Theresa May, adding: "She has not had an easy time dealing with this difficult question. I always found her to be a reliable and collegial partner, and I thank her for that."
But she added: "We now have the position that there will be a new PM, and then we have to watch what that person decides."

The government will set a new Budget if it is unable to reach a Brexit deal with the EU, the chancellor has said.
Philip Hammond said a no-deal Brexit would require a "different response", with "fiscal buffers" being maintained to provide support for the economy.
Mr Hammond was speaking on the eve of his Budget, which he will present to the Commons on Monday.
He also hinted at more funds for the universal credit rollout, after claims that millions of homes will lose money.
The spending plans take place at a time of uncertainty over Brexit, with no deal in place five months before the UK's departure date.
Questioned about the impact of a no-deal Brexit, Mr Hammond told Sky News' Ridge on Sunday programme: "We would need to look at a different strategy and frankly we'd need to have a new Budget that set out a different strategy for the future."
Mr Hammond said the Budget forecasts to be used on Monday were based on an "average-type free trade deal" being agreed between the two sides.
But if the UK leaves without a deal, the government would have to "revisit where we are", he told the BBC's Marr Show.
The chancellor added: "I have got fiscal reserves that would enable me to intervene."
Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he was "deeply worried" that the government was edging towards a no-deal Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May has recently promised "an end to austerity", the cuts made to public spending since 2010.
Asked about this pledge, Mr Hammond said detailed information would have to wait for next year's spending review.
"Once we get a good deal from the European Union and the smooth exit from the EU we will be able to show the British people that the fruits of their hard work are now at last in sight," he said.
A deal based on the government's preferred model - which has been criticised by the EU and some Tory MPs - would "minimise the negative effect" of leaving, he said.
But Mr Hammond warned he could not say at this stage whether the overall impact would be positive or negative for the UK.
Labour has dismissed the government's austerity promise.
Mr McDonnell said Labour would spend £50bn to "start the process" of reversing spending cuts, a process he said would take until the end of the next Parliament.
This would be done in a "realistic and responsible" way, he said.
The government has also been under pressure to commit extra funds to the flagship universal credit reform, amid reports that millions of households face losing money under the new system.
Conservative MPs have been among those demanding more money to protect people moving onto the new payment, which replaces six benefits and merges them into a single payment.
Asked about this, Mr Hammond told the BBC's Marr Show he had used previous Budgets to put money into the project, adding: "When we see things that need addressing, we address them."
Labour says the universal credit should be scrapped, and Mr McDonnell called for the Budget to be voted down if the government does not agree to halt its repeatedly delayed rollout across the UK.
Other expected Budget announcements include a £30bn package for England's roads, £900m in business rates relief for small business and £650m to rejuvenate high streets.

A former government minister has lost a vote of no confidence in him by his local Conservative association.
Phillip Lee, MP for Bracknell, said the move had been "inspired" by the single issue of Brexit.
Bracknell Conservative Association called the vote after 53 members signed a petition.
The ex-justice minister, who supported Remain in the 2016 EU referendum, said the government's approach would damage businesses in his constituency.
Dr Lee then became the first government minister to resign over Brexit.
Association chairman Gerry Barber said: "The result of the vote was that a majority of members present were in agreement with the motion, which was therefore passed, and the result has been communicated to Dr Lee and to the full membership.
"I will be discussing the meeting with Phillip later this week."
Dr Lee said he would not be "forced into taking a decision" on his future by an "orchestrated, destructive campaign from outside the party".
He previously claimed more than half those who signed the petition had joined the association less than a year ago.
He said: "In the future, I may or may not decide that I can continue serving as a Conservative Member of Parliament, and the Bracknell Conservative Association may or may not decide that they wish to readopt me as the Conservative Party's candidate.
"But one thing is for sure, we will not be forced into taking a decision one way or the other by this orchestrated, destructive campaign from outside the party."
Those behind the campaign had "done nothing but spread hatred, intimidation and distrust over a single issue", Dr Lee said.
"[But the] people of the Bracknell constituency can rely on my absolute commitment to serving our area's best interests in Parliament, without fear or favour, and then take into account my full record at the next general election."
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The UK is to offer Gibraltar continued barrier-free access to finance markets after Brexit, the BBC understands.
The UK is negotiating for Gibraltar to be treated the same as Britain when it leaves the EU in March 2019.
But the EU insists Madrid can stop a transitional deal or future trade relationship applying to Gibraltar unless there is a Spain-UK agreement.
Gibraltar fears Spain could use this veto to force talks about the Rock's constitutional future.
At the very least, it fears there could be talks about closer cooperation with Spain.
If Britain refused, then Gibraltar could fall out of the EU next March without a transitional deal and lose its access to the British financial markets.
Ministers are to give the commitment to financial market access at a meeting in London of the so-called Joint Ministerial Council with the Gibraltar government.
Gibraltar is hoping to get some formal reassurance that it will retain access come what may.
This matters not just because most of its financial trade is with the UK but also because its insurance sector is important to Britain.
The Gibraltar government says that one in five British drivers insure their cars with firms based in Gibraltar. For insurers to offer annual policies with certainty, they need some kind of reassurance before the end of this month.
The Lib Dem leader, Sir Vince Cable, told the BBC Theresa May should make rejecting Spain's veto a red line in her negotiations.
The prime minister, he said, had ignored the people of Gibraltar and taken her eye off a key national interest.
He said: "If the government is going to take a tough line on Brexit in these negotiations, this is one of the things they should be tough about.
"Currently they have been very, very weak and created an enormous sense of anxiety and insecurity".
He added: "It is an issue of fundamental principle. Gibraltar has been attached to the UK for two centuries.
"We have seen off repeated demands by Spain to have control over the Rock. We should not allow Brexit to be used as a cloak for giving away what is a substantial British commitment."
A UK government spokesmansaid: "The EU's guidelines are a matter for the EU and the other member states.
"The prime minister has said that as we negotiate these matters we will be negotiating to ensure that the relationships are there for Gibraltar as well.
"We are not going to exclude Gibraltar from our negotiations for either the implementation period or the future agreement."
Former Labour Europe minister Lord Hain suggested that one solution to any co-sovereignty suggestions could be turning Gibraltar into a "micro state" like Andorra, the Vatican City and San Marino.
But Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said this was not an option and insisted sovereignty could not be bartered away.
"We're very linked to the UK, we see the world through British eyes and we don't want to change that," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"But at the same time, we believe we should be engaging more closely with Spain. I think we can create, even despite Brexit, a rainbow of opportunities for people who live in the bay of Gibraltar and the wealth that Gibraltar creates."
Samantha Barrassa, who runs the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission insisted the UK market "is important" to the financial services sector in Gibraltar, with services companies employing thousands of people in the UK.
But former Spanish EU minister Diego Lopez Garrido said it was "unacceptable that Britain says 'no matter about Gibraltar - business as usual. Nothing to talk (about).'"
"The British government should negotiate with the Spanish government about Gibraltar."
And Charles Powell, from the Elcano Royal Institute think-tank, said Britain now has to accept the European Commission will be on Spain's side in the future because it is an EU member, while the UK will not be, post-Brexit.
He said the Spanish public "cannot understand this obsession with Gibraltar and this total lack of concern about the Brits who live in Spain and the consequences Brexit will have on them".

The pound's fall against the dollar and the euro has deepened following Theresa May's assertion after an EU summit that "no deal is better than a bad deal".
Sterling was already trading lower after EU leaders warned the UK must make compromises on trade and the Irish border to secure a Brexit trade deal.
After the Prime Minister said the UK and EU were at an "impasse" the pound fell further.
The pound dropped from 1% to 1.5% lower against the dollar to $1.3068.
By the end of US trading, the pound was on track for its biggest daily drop against the dollar so far this year.
Against the euro, the pound was down 1.1% at €1.1144 after Mrs May's statement.
"The rhetoric that 'no deal is better than a bad deal' is startling, and undermines recent hopes that a deal could be finalised soon," said Hamish Muress, currency analyst at OFX.
Business bodies reacted with alarm to the latest development.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) warned that the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a trade deal was a big concern for firms.
"Many firms are hugely worried about a messy and disorderly outcome, and the potential impact on their ability to trade and grow. Others could be caught flat-footed. Both sides must make every effort to avoid this scenario," said BCC director general Adam Marshall.
Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, said negotiators on both sides had to change tack.
"The stakes could not be higher. Jobs, wages and living standards are at risk, on both sides of the Channel.
"With time slipping away, employers and employees alike need to see constructive dialogue. Pragmatism must come before politics. Every day lost in rhetoric is lost investment and lost jobs," she added.
Mrs May's statement followed a cool reception for her Chequers plan at a summit of EU leaders in Salzburg.
She said the two sides were still "a long way apart" on the post-Brexit economic relationship.
The two options being offered by the EU - for the UK to stay in the European Economic Area and customs union or a basic free trade agreement - were not acceptable, she said.
She said EU leaders needed to come up with new alternatives to her Brexit proposals if both sides were to break the current deadlock.
"It is not acceptable to simply reject the other side's proposals without a detailed explanation and counter-proposals," Mrs May said.

The pound has risen after MPs voted to reject Theresa May's Brexit deal by 230 votes.
The vote opens up a range of outcomes, including no deal, a renegotiation of Mrs May's deal, or a second referendum.
Sterling rose 0.05% to $1.287 after declines of more than 1% earlier in the day.
The currency slumped 7% in 2018 reflecting uncertainty about the terms of the UK's exit from the European Union.
MPs voted by 432 votes to 202 to reject the deal, the heaviest defeat for a sitting government in history.
"A defeat has been broadly anticipated in markets since the agreement with the EU was closed in November 2018 and caused several members of the government to resign," said Richard Falkenhall, senior FX strategist at SEB.
But business groups said their members' patience was wearing thin.
"There are no more words to describe the frustration, impatience, and growing anger amongst business after two and a half years on a high-stakes political rollercoaster ride that shows no sign of stopping," said Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce.
He implored MPs to come to an agreement, and was joined in this plea by business groups including the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors and the Confederation of British Industry.
Some investors see the chances of a no-deal Brexit diminishing as parliament exerts more authority over the process.
"The probability of a no deal has diminished while the chances of a delay in Article 50, a second referendum or even, at the margin, no Brexit at all, have all increased. The consequence of those scenarios has encouraged sterling to rally despite the PM suffering the worst parliamentary result in a century," said Jeremy Stretch of CIBC Capital Markets.
On Friday, hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, a major donor to the Brexit campaign, said he now expected the project to be abandoned altogether and that he is positioning for the pound to strengthen.
The markets were prepared for her to lose - but the scale of her defeat took most by surprise.
But more surprising still was the fact that the pound - the first financial responder to political events - gained in value after the vote - despite many, most, confidently predicting a crushing defeat would send it down.
So what to make of it? Using the benefit of hindsight, some are saying that the recent display of animosity in the House of Commons to the idea of a no-deal Brexit, something markets are most wary of - has convinced them that outcome is very unlikely.
The other new line is that this crushing defeat for her Brexit deal, makes no Brexit - at least not on 29 March - a growing possibility. That's financial markets, which respond in seconds.
Real businesses are not so sure.  With 72 days to go before the UK is due to leave the EU another milestone has come and gone with the future no clearer and planning for no deal more urgent.
But others are concerned the rejection of Mrs May's plan makes a no-deal Brexit more likely as other options become fewer in number.
"A no-deal Brexit means the public will face higher prices and less choice on the shelves," said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium.
"British businesses desperately need certainty about the UK's future trading relationship with the EU and will be severely disadvantaged by a no deal. The time for Parliamentary games is over."
While there is speculation that Britain's exit from the EU must now be suspended as the most-developed plan has been scrapped, businesses may not be counting on this, particularly complicated ones like banks.
"Firms in the finance industry have put contingency plans in place to minimise disruption for their customers in a 'no deal' scenario but critical cliff-edge risks remain, including on the transfer of personal data and the operation of cross-border contracts," said Stephen Jones, chief executive of UK Finance.
Omar Ali, UK financial services leader at accountants EY, added: "Firms have no choice but to fully implement their no-deal plans."

President Donald Trump has predicted a "tremendous increase" in UK-US trade, after talks with Theresa May.
He also said the US and UK were "joined at the hip" on military matters, while Mrs May said they stood "shoulder to shoulder" in facing shared threats.
In a series of warm exchanges in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump also told the UK PM:  "We love your country."
He also rejected "false rumours" of differences, saying that the two leaders "like each other a lot".
And Downing Street said later that they had asked officials to work on "finalising the details of a visit by the president to the UK later this year".
It was their first meeting since clashing over the US president's retweets of far-right videos in November.
And earlier this month Mr Trump cancelled a visit to the UK, criticising the location of the new US embassy in London.
But after their meeting, Mr Trump told Mrs May at their news conference: "I have great respect for everything you are doing, we love your country, I think it's really great."
The two leaders met in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, with post-Brexit trade relations between the two countries high on the agenda.
Mr Trump said: "One thing that will be taking place over a number of years will be trade. Trade is going to increase many times.
"I look forward to that... the discussions... that will be taking place are going to lead to tremendous increases in trade between our two countries which is great for both in terms of jobs. We look forward to that and we are starting that process, pretty much as we speak."
He added the US would be "there to fight for you - you know that" and the two were "joined at the hip when it comes to the military".
Mrs May replied that the "really special relationship" between the UK and US continued and they stood "shoulder to shoulder because we are facing the same challenges across the world".
"Alongside that working for a good trade relationship for the future which will be for both our benefits, so the UK and the US both do well out of this - and it's been great to see you today."
In response to reporters' questions, both leaders said they would "talk about" his state visit to the UK - offered by Mrs May when she visited him in Washington shortly after he became US president. No date has been set.
Downing Street later confirmed that the visit officials were discussing this year would be a working, not a state, visit.
But BBC North America editor Jon Sopel said the British would be pleased with the press call. The mood music had been good and the Americans were talking positively about a trade deal.
A Downing Street spokesman said the two leaders had also discussed the Bombardier trade dispute and that Mrs May had "reiterated" the importance of the firm to Northern Ireland, Iran, Syria and Brexit negotiations.
The UK prime minister had earlier addressed the World Economic Forum about the need to put more pressure on tech giants to deal with extremist content and tackle child abuse and modern slavery on social networks. She said shareholders should use their influence to "ensure these issues are taken seriously".
"No-one wants to be known as the terrorist platform, or the first-choice app for paedophiles," she said.
She said some progress had been made but more must be done "so that ultimately this content is removed automatically".
She acknowledged people's concerns about the impact of technology on jobs - pointing to Uber as an example of a company that had "got things wrong along the way".
The ride-hailing firm should not be shut down but should address concerns about safety and workers' rights and enforce standards "that can make this technology work for customers and employees alike", she said.
Mrs May said that employment law must keep pace with the way technology is changing jobs and while it must protect the "flexibility" companies valued, it must not be "a one way street deal that can become exploitative."
The UK is in the process of leaving the European Union - the day set for Brexit is 29 March, 2019, so is expected to negotiate its own trade deals in future, rather than being part of the deals drawn up on behalf of  all EU member states.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has carried out a reshuffle of ministers in cabinet positions, two months after winning the general election.
There was speculation ahead of the reshuffle about how diverse the new Cabinet would be, particularly considering women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Who's in what job? Here's a guide to the people that make up Mr Johnson's cabinet, with the latest new faces and who's changed places.
Note: BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) is a term widely used in the UK to describe people of non-white descent, as defined by the Institute of Race Relations.
This is the second reshuffle for Mr Johnson, who became prime minister last July after winning a Conservative leadership election.
Big names to have left cabinet on Thursday included Chancellor Sajid Javid, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom.
The make-up of the cabinet has also changed. The proportion of women in it has increased - but the actual number has fallen from eight to seven because some positions were closed.
Members of the cabinet are more than 10 times more likely to have gone to a private school than members of the public.
Under Mr Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, 70% of cabinet had not been privately educated, whereas almost 70% of Mr Johnson's new cabinet have.
According to the Sutton Trust social mobility charity, every prime minister since 1937 who attended university was educated at Oxford - except for Gordon Brown.  Half of Mr Johnson's cabinet went to Oxford or Cambridge universities.
This compares with 27% of all Conservative MPs and 18% of Labour MPs.
Sir Peter Lampl, founder and chairman of the Sutton Trust, said December's election led to a seismic shift in the political landscape and Conservative MPs now represent a more diverse range of constituencies than before.
"Yet in terms of educational background, the make-up of Johnson's cabinet is still over 60% from independent schools," he said. "Today's findings underline how unevenly spread the opportunities are to enter the elites and this is something Boris Johnson must address."
Michael Gove is by far the most experienced of Mr Johnson's new top team. The ministers who have had 204 days of cabinet experience are new faces appointed by the PM when he took power in July last year.
Click here if you cannot see the Cabinet Guide.
Theresa May has set out her desire to create a "more united" Britain, in a speech in Cardiff.
The prime minister told the Conservatives' spring conference that Britons are "at heart one people" be they Welsh, English, Scottish or from Northern Ireland.
It follows Nicola Sturgeon's demands for a second independence referendum for Scotland.
Mrs May has already rejected the call from Scotland's first minister.
Scotland voted to remain in the UK in 2014 but the SNP administration in Edinburgh wants a fresh vote as the UK plans to leave the European Union.
Scottish voters opted by a majority to remain in the EU, with England and Wales voting to leave.
Mrs May said on Thursday it was "not the right time" for another independence referendum.
In her conference speech on Friday, the prime minister described her triggering of the Article 50 process for Brexit as one of the "great national moments that define the character of a nation".
With a "road before us" that "may be uncertain at times", the UK could "look forward with optimism and hope, or give in to the politics of fear and despair", she said.
"I choose to believe in Britain and that our best days lie ahead," she said.
The Brexit vote in 2016 was also a vote for changing the way the country works, Mrs May added.
"It means forging a more united nation, as we put the values of fairness, responsibility and citizenship at the heart of everything we do, and we strengthen the bonds of our precious union too," she told the conference.
"It means building a stronger, fairer Britain that our children and grandchildren will be proud to call home."
The union is "more than just a constitutional artefact," she added. "It is a union between all of our citizens, whoever we are and wherever we're from."
The prime minister also promised to take account of competing demands from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as the negotiations begin on leaving the EU, saying: "We are four nations but at heart we are one people."
Opening the conference earlier, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies said Labour ministers' plans to scrap the right to buy council homes in Wales would end "one of the greatest aspirational policies this country has ever seen".
Meanwhile education spokesman Darren Millar joked about being dubbed "Millar the Cereal Killer" because of his opposition to free school breakfasts.
The AM for Clwyd South said he had been compared to "Thatcher the so-called Milk Snatcher", before saying he was proud to have been compared to the former prime minister.
Analysis by BBC Wales political editor Nick Servini
This was a Theresa May speech delivered to an audience of the Welsh Tory faithful, but in reality was directed further afield and in particular to a Scottish audience contemplating the prospect of another independence referendum.
The gloves came off as the prime minister visibly became more animated as she called the SNP and Plaid Cymru "obsessives" with tunnel vision.
In fact, Jeremy Corbyn was barely mentioned as nationalist-bashing became the tactic of choice instead from a roll-call of senior party figures.
This conference may have been in Cardiff but there was little to give it a Welsh dynamic, with the focus turned to May's twin battle of Brexit negotiations while trying to hold Britain together.

Theresa May is being urged to walk away from Brexit negotiations this week if EU leaders refuse to start trade talks.
The call comes from a group of pro-Brexit Tory and Labour politicians, including former Chancellor Lord Lawson, as well as business leaders.
The prime minister is to push for the deadlocked talks to move to the next phase at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.
But EU officials are not expecting any movement at the summit.
But European Council President Donald Tusk is expected to propose to the 27 EU leaders that they begin talks amongst themselves about Britain's future relationship with the EU, when it leaves the bloc in March 2019.
In a letter to Theresa May, organised by the Leave Means Leave campaign, the leading Brexiteers say the government "has been more than patient" towards the EU and "decisive action" was now needed to end the "highly damaging" levels of uncertainty facing businesses.
In the event of no progress at Thursday's European Council meeting, the letter says, Mrs May should formally declare that the UK is working on the assumption that it will be reverting to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules on 30 March, 2019.
Early notification of such a move would allow the UK to "concentrate our resources on resolving administrative issues" and prepare to "crystallise the economic opportunities" of Brexit, it adds.
The letter is signed by Lord Lawson, Conservative former ministers Owen Paterson and Peter Lilley, Labour MPs Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer and Kelvin Hopkins, Wetherspoons pub boss Tim Martin and home shopping magnate and Labour donor John Mills, as well as pro-Brexit academics and former military figures.
The UK government says it does want to leave the EU without a deal in place and is targeting a new free trade arrangement to replace its current single market membership.
But speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Paterson said it appeared unlikely that a trade deal would be struck with the EU "because they are flatly refusing to talk about it".
Instead, he said, there was a "complete obsession with money" - the amount the UK is required to pay as it leaves the EU.
It was "inevitable at the moment, it is an ineluctable certainty we are going to end up with WTO at the end of this anyway" so it was better to "state that now" and give business time to prepare, he added.
But Labour's Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer said: "This is the first phase of the first set of negotiations and talking of walking away at this stage is irresponsible."

More than 60 Brexit-supporting Tory MPs have written to Theresa May to insist the UK make a clean break with the EU.
The MPs say the UK must not be stopped from negotiating trade deals with other countries, once it leaves the EU, and must gain full "regulatory autonomy".
The letter was sent by the European Research Group of Tory backbenchers, headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Opposition critics accused the PM of being "too weak" to confront the "hard Brexiteers" in her own party.
The letter, signed by 62 MPs including several ex-ministers and former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, includes a number of "suggestions" for securing a successful Brexit.
It backs the PM's vision for Brexit, as set out in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, including leaving the customs union and single market.
But it says she "must" ensure the UK can change its laws without authorisation from the EU from the moment it leaves in March 2019.
The MPs also insist the UK must be "free to start its own trade negotiations" during the planned two-year transition period that would kick in after Brexit day.
And it urges the UK government to resist EU efforts to set the timetable for Brexit negotiations.
"The UK should negotiate as an equal partner. Ministers may not want or be able to accept the EU's timing and mandates as fixed, and should be able to set out alternative terms including, for example, building an agreement based on our World Trade Organisation membership instead," says the letter.
It comes ahead of a crunch cabinet meeting on Thursday to thrash out an agreement on how to proceed in negotiations with the EU.
The government is also set to publish its its response to the EU's proposals for how the two-year transition period after Brexit should work later on Wednesday.
The UK wants a mechanism to object to new European legislation introduced during the implementation phase.
The prime minister had suggested that EU nationals who arrive during the transition period should not have the right to settle permanently in the UK.
Analysis by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
With no majority, she knows that she needs to keep the dozens and dozens of Brexit-backing Tory MPs broadly with her for her own government's survival.
They have accepted some shifts from the government that they used to find intolerable - a Brexit departure lounge of a couple of years rather than a sharp exit, and a bill of tens of billions.
But they are not, as this letter makes clear, up for swallowing many more compromises when it comes to getting trade deals done immediately after Brexit.
Read Laura's full blog
Labour claimed the MPs' letter "exposes the deep divisions that run through the heart of this Tory government".
Shadow Brexit minister Paul Blomfield  said: "It is clearer than ever that Theresa May cannot deliver the Brexit deal Britain needs.
"She is too weak to face down the fanatics in her own party and to deliver a final deal that protects jobs and the economy."
The SNP's Stephen Gethins said: "It is clear from this list of demands that the Tories don't want either a transition deal or a ‎future relationship with the EU."
Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said it appeared the prime minister had "one arm tied behind her back by the Tory militants who are now nakedly acting like a party within a party".
In other Brexit news, a group of pro-Leave economists claim to have "comprehensively debunked" leaked government forecasts predicting a hit to the UK economy outside the EU.
The Whitehall forecasts - which predicted lower growth across the UK as a result of Brexit - sparked a row when they emerged last month.
Now Economists for Free Trade have published their "alternative" calculations, saying the civil servants' version ignored what they said were the "clear objectives" set out by Mrs May of free trade with Europe and the rest of the world.
Using government models, this would suggest a 2% rise in GDP over 15 years, the group claimed.
Mr Duncan Smith said the report "deserves to be taken very seriously".
Mrs May is meeting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for talks in Downing Street and is expected to update him on Brexit progress.

A campaign group fighting to keep the UK in the EU has received £400,000 from billionaire investor George Soros.
Mr Soros made his donation to Best for Britain through one of his foundations.
The Daily Telegraph says the group will launch advertising later this month to rally public opinion and convince MPs to vote against the final Brexit deal.
Best for Britain chairman Lord Malloch-Brown, a former Labour minister, said Mr Soros was a "valued" supporter but small donors had contributed more.
Mr Soros, a Hungarian-born US citizen, made a fortune in 1992 betting against sterling on Black Wednesday, forcing then-PM John Major to take the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
He has previously suggested it was possible that the UK would apply to rejoin the European Union soon after Brexit.
According to the Telegraph, the donation was made through Mr Soros's Open Society Foundation
Best for Britain was co-founded by Gina Miller, who took the UK government to court in 2016 over its triggering of the Article 50 process to leave the EU. A judge ruled Parliament must give its consent before Theresa May can start official talks on the terms of the UK's exit. Mrs Miller left Best for Britain last June.
Lord Malloch-Brown confirmed Mr Soros's contribution but said some of the campaign's other major donors had given more.
He added Best for Britain had followed rules governing financial contributions.
He said: "We have never hidden our agenda; we have been campaigning hard to win a meaningful vote on Brexit, which we did, and to keep all options on the table, including staying in the European Union."
He said the campaign was a "democratic and patriotic effort to recover our future and we welcome support for our efforts from many quarters".
The involvement of Mr Soros was reported in the Daily Telegraph in a story co-written by Theresa May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy.
In an article in the paper, Mr Timothy maintained the objective of the campaign was "to convince MPs to vote against the deal Theresa May negotiates with Brussels, regardless of its content".
He said: "Malloch-Brown and his backers believe that, if Parliament rejects the Brexit deal, the government will fall, and Brexit can then be stopped."

Protesters have thrown dead fish into the Thames outside Parliament as they oppose the Brexit transition deal.
The fishing industry and many coastal MPs are unhappy that the UK will not regain control of the country's fishing waters on Brexit day, 29 March 2019.
Instead it will be subject to EU rules for 21 months until December 2020.
Michael Gove has said he shares the "disappointment" but urged people to keep their "eyes on the prize" of getting full control of UK waters back.
In a sign of government unease about the reaction, Theresa May met MPs with fishing ports in their seats on Tuesday in an attempt to explain their approach.
Speaking from the fishing trawler, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage told Sky News the government did not have the "guts" to stand up to the EU.
"They told us they would take back control in 2019 - that is not happening. We are now told at the start of 2021 it may happen," he said.
"I don't think this government has got the guts or the strength to stand up and take back our territorial waters."
Conservative backbencher Ross Thomson, who is MP for Aberdeen South, said he was "really disappointed" fishing communities will not regain control of UK waters as soon as it leaves the 27-nation bloc.
Speaking from the fishing trawler, he said: "Literally within seconds of our leaving (the EU), we're handing all of that back."
Mr Thomson, who was among the delegation of MPs to see Mrs May, said that while it was a "productive" meeting, "we were very, very clear that we'll only support an end deal if it delivers for our fishing communities - and we have been absolutely clear that this is a red line for us".
Mrs May is hoping the deal will be signed off at a meeting of leaders at the European Council summit in Brussels this week, clearing the way for crucial talks on post-Brexit trade to begin in earnest.
But 14 MPs, including leading backbench Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, said the proposal for Britain effectively to remain in the EU's Common Fisheries Policy for almost two years after Brexit day in March 2019, with no say over the allocation of quotas, would not command the support of the Commons.
"These demands are completely unacceptable and would be rejected by the House of Commons," they said.
Speaking from the quayside in Westminster, Mr Rees-Mogg said the EU "desperately needs our money" so the negotiating strength was with the UK.
He added: "Am I pleased with the transition deal? No, I can't begin to pretend to be. I don't like the transition deal, but I can live with it."

12:00 GMT: I've just been speaking to Dominic Raab, the now former Brexit Secretary. His verdict on the prime minister's deal is damning.
He told me that because of the way the agreement treats Northern Ireland and the rest of the country differently - and the way the country couldn't decide on its own to leave the so-called backstop - that the draft deal is a betrayal of people's trust.
Mr Raab, who says he told the chief whip straight after cabinet yesterday that he would quit, says the prime minister can still change course, and should be ready to walk away with no deal.
He insists the short-term disruption that might entail - which many of his colleagues think would be catastrophic - would be worth it. Better in his view to tolerate short-term pain, than lock ourselves into a dreadful arrangement for years and years to come.
That prospect horrifies others in the government, and on the backbenches too. But it's a risk worth taking he says - claiming it's the best way to proceed, to be willing to risk no deal in the face of what he describes as the EU's "blackmail".
The alternative for the prime minister, carrying on like this, he says, is inevitable defeat in the Commons and who knows what would happen then. Might he put himself forward if it all falls apart?
His answer was it is "irresponsible" to be talking about that right now. But notably, not ruling himself out and knowing, perhaps in a few days' or weeks' time, he might have to give a very different answer.
10:00 GMT: A resignation in itself is not a surprise - but the departure of the Brexit secretary might be the domino that causes everything else to fall.
It's not just that it was his job to make the policy work. It's because he has just given unhappy Brexiteers someone to rally round, and someone who sees himself as a potential challenger to the PM.
After his departure, it becomes extremely difficult for other Brexiteers unhappy about the deal to stay on.
And in the last few minutes Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey has decided to leave the government.
There is speculation about International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt too, although sources close to her say a departure today is far from definite.
Meanwhile, No 10 is busy trying to explain its policy this morning to opposition politicians and then to Parliament in the next hour.
But there have been three resignations from government - Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara was the first to quit - and it's not even 10:00 GMT.
It's too early to say if this morning's storm will be a hurricane that will sweep the policy, and maybe the prime minister away.

When British Prime Minister Theresa May first trailed the Conservative Party's proposals for EU citizens living in the UK at last week's EU summit, the initial response from her fellow leaders was hardly enthusiastic.
Now they've seen the details, they haven't changed their tune.
There is actually a fair amount of common ground between the two sides, but the details - naturally - matter.
The EU's goal on citizens' rights, said its chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, is "the same level of protection as [is offered] in EU law".
"More ambition, clarity and guarantees needed than in today's UK position," Mr Barnier tweeted.
This is a crucial point for the European negotiating team.
However pleased it may be that the UK has finally produced a detailed policy document on one aspect of Brexit, this proposal falls short of what it wants in several respects.
The EU's Essential Principles on Citizens' Rights argued that the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and British citizens elsewhere in the EU, should not change as a result of Brexit.
All their rights should be respected.
The British proposal, on the other hand, entails the loss of some of those rights - the legal protection of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), for example, or the unconditional right to bring family members into the UK from third countries.
The cut-off date for eligibility for settled status also needs to be clarified. The UK proposal suggests that the cut-off could be as early as 29 March 2017, the day when Article 50 was triggered.
But it is unlikely that the EU would be willing to agree to any date that has already passed. It would mean - in effect - that some citizens would lose some of their rights while the UK was still a member of the EU.
Opposition to such an idea would be seen in many EU capitals not just as a point of principle, but as a matter of EU law.
It is more likely that British negotiators will eventually agree to settle on their other suggested date - the date on which the UK actually leaves the EU, which is currently due to be 29 March 2019.
If the UK shows flexibility on the cut-off date, it will expect equal flexibility on other matters from the EU. But trust between the negotiating teams appears to be in rather short supply.
It will need to be established quickly because a similar mood of compromise will be needed to reach agreement on the legal system that will underpin any agreement.
The British side insists that the ECJ will have no jurisdiction in the UK after Brexit. The EU insists that the ECJ must continue to offer legal protection for their citizens in the UK, just as it does now.
The obvious answer to this conundrum is to create a joint UK-EU arbitration panel that will ensure that the terms of an agreement are respected under international law. But this will require both sides to alter fairly entrenched positions.
Well, the UK proposal does contain a few carrots.
It accepts that child benefit payments will still be paid for the children of EU workers in the UK whose families live abroad. This was a right that David Cameron tried but failed to abolish.
It advocates a "grace period" of two years to allow EU citizens to get their status in order. It is an idea that could dovetail conveniently with the need for transitional arrangements, to ensure that the British exit from the EU takes place without sudden shocks.
As for British citizens who have retired abroad, the UK proposal offers the reassurance that the government will continue to export and "uprate" the UK state pension within the EU.
So if, for example, you live in Spain, you will still get annual pension increases - something that is not always guaranteed if you live elsewhere in the world.
There is also a promise to simplify bureaucratic procedures for people applying for settled status in the future. But many of them will be furious that they have just spent time and money to obtain permanent residence in the UK, only to find out that they need to start again from scratch.
"How can you promise to give people certainty and then tell tens of thousands that their permanent residence is going to be invalidated?" says Ian Robinson, a partner at the immigration law firm Fragomen.
"It would have been just as easy to continue to recognise permanent residence already granted but just stop accepting new applications," Mr Robinson adds.
The UK may argue that its proposal at least tries to offer something to everyone. But so far it doesn't do enough to satisfy the EU.
So even if the basis for a deal can be envisaged on this one aspect of Brexit, there is plenty of bridge-building still to be done.
When the UK proposal was first trailed, it was described as a generous offer. That was quickly amended to a "fair and serious" one.
Because the EU doesn't see this as a generous offer, and it has been prepared to say so. It involves millions of EU citizens losing some of the rights they currently enjoy, and for EU leaders that is no cause for celebration.
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The claim: Prime Minister Theresa May says there is no turning back from the triggering of Article 50, which starts the process of leaving the EU.
Reality Check verdict: The government is clear that it respects the result of the referendum, so it argues that any debate is theoretical. However, the question of whether Article 50 is irrevocable is the subject of legal dispute.
Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was written with a deliberate lack of clarity - it does not say whether it can be revoked once it has been triggered.
As a result, the UK government has been unable to make any definitive legal statements on the issue.
The Justice Secretary, Liz Truss, has said "My understanding is that it is irrevocable," while the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, said in December 2016: "Is it irrevocable? I don't know."
In the recent UK Supreme Court case on Article 50, both sides assumed that it was irrevocable and the court judgement concluded: "We are content to proceed on the basis that that is correct, without expressing any view of our own."
So this is not an issue that has been formally tested in a UK court.
But European Council President Donald Tusk has said that he believes Article 50 can be reversed.
When asked if the UK could unilaterally withdraw its Article 50 notification during the next two years, he said, "Formally, legally, yes."
Lord Kerr - the former British ambassador to the EU, who helped draft Article 50 - agreed.
"You can change your mind while the process is going on," he said.
He acknowledged that this might annoy the rest of the EU, and be seen as a huge waste of time.
"They might try to extract a political price," Lord Kerr said, "but legally they couldn't insist that you leave."
The distinction between political and legal opinion on this issue is critical. The politics might become way too complicated if the UK tried to change its mind.
But who might have the final legal say on what could yet become a critical question?
Article 50 is a piece of European law, so the ultimate arbiter on this issue is the European Court of Justice.
There is an ongoing case in Dublin at the moment that is seeking to refer the question of irrevocability to the European Court to get a definitive answer.
One other point is worth bearing in mind: everyone is talking about a two-year period for negotiating under Article 50, at the end of which the UK would leave the EU.
But Article 50 does provide for that two-year period to be extended, if all 28 EU countries, including the UK, agreed.
No-one is advocating that, but it remains a legal possibility.
The argument that Article 50 cannot be reversed once it has been triggered has not been tested in court.
The rest of the EU has said it does not want the UK to leave, but - politically speaking - it would be very difficult to revoke notification of Article 50, and the current UK government says it has no intention of doing so.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has launched a campaign to try to persuade the British people to change their minds about leaving the European Union. It comes just weeks before the government intends to trigger the departure mechanism. In a speech in London, he said that he respected the will of the people, but voters hadn't been given details about the terms on which Britain would exit the EU.
Mr Blair argued that what he called the "cost" of Brexit was only now becoming clear. The referendum vote, he said, was based on "imperfect knowledge" which would now become "informed knowledge".
It's true that we don't yet know the details of the UK's future relationship with the rest of the EU - that will depend on the deal that is negotiated - but lots was said during the referendum campaign about what Brexit would mean in more general terms. In particular, leading figures in both campaigns said leaving the EU would entail leaving the single market.
Mr Blair suggested that immigration was the main issue that propelled Leave to victory in the referendum campaign. But, he argued, the effect of quitting would probably have only a modest impact on overall immigration levels.
He pointed out that just over half of migration into the UK comes from outside the EU. That's confirmed by official statistics from the ONS. In the year to June 2016 net migration - the difference between the number of people who arrived and the number of people who left - was 196,000 from outside the EU, compared with 189,000 from inside the EU.
The same is true for the gross migration statistics - ie just looking at how many citizens from different parts of the world arrived in the UK.
Again, there were slightly more from outside the EU (289,000) than from inside (284,000) along with a smaller number of British citizens returning to live in the UK (77,000). And only an estimated 82,000 or 12.6% of the 650,000 total were EU citizens who arrived looking for work.
Theresa May has ruled out introducing a points-based migration system but the government hasn't published details of what it does want to implement. If the new system continues to allow in EU migrants with job offers, as well as students and people coming to join spouses, then Mr Blair's 12% would be, broadly speaking, correct.
There could be a bigger impact if the government opts for a capped number of work permits. But about half of total migration will be unaffected no matter what arrangements are made with the EU.
This isn't really a fair quotation. It's a reference to an interview given by Philip Hammond on ITV's Peston on Sunday on 26 June.
Mr Hammond said: "I believe it's essential that we protect our access to the single European market. Whether we like it or not, our economy, over 40 years, has become shaped by that access, and to lose that access now would be catastrophic."
But note that he was talking about access to the single market. That's not the same as membership. You don't have to be a member of the single market to have access to it, although the level of access that Britain would have after leaving the single market would depend on what trade relationship was negotiated.
It's true that the pound has fallen against the dollar and the euro since the referendum, although not by quite as much as Mr Blair said. It has recovered from its lowest point. Against the dollar, the pound is currently down about 16% compared with its pre-referendum level. Against the euro, it's about 10.5% down.
It's also worth noting that the pound/euro exchange rate was at a similar level to now between 2009 and the middle of 2011, so it's hardly unprecedented. Against the dollar, though, the pound has hit multi-decade lows in recent months.

This was a wide-ranging speech setting out Labour's views of Britain's place in the world after Brexit. But the main focus was on the UK's future economic relationship with the European Union. The BBC's Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris has been looking at a few key quotes from the speech.
This was the key passage of Jeremy Corbyn's speech - putting clear water between Labour and the government.
He wants to stay in a customs union to avoid the imposition of tariffs on goods traded within Europe, and to help solve the Brexit conundrum at the Irish border.
As a member of the EU, the UK is currently in the customs union, which means that all countries impose a common external tariff - in effect the same tax - on goods being brought in from elsewhere in the world. Once those goods have crossed the external border, there are no further tariffs to move them around inside the customs union.
Mr Corbyn wants to replicate most of that in a new customs union, which would certainly help companies who rely on moving goods across EU borders several times in their manufacturing process.
But it wouldn't entirely solve the problem in Ireland, because some of the border issues - such as food safety or animal welfare - involve regulations that are nothing to do with the customs relationship.
Here Mr Corbyn addresses the government's primary reason for opposing the formation of a new customs union: that it would stop the UK doing trade deals around the world.
He says he wants to ensure that the UK will be able to negotiate new trade deals "in the national interest".
Although he is not explicit about what this involves in practice, it appears to mean that Labour wants the UK to be involved in negotiating those trade deals alongside the EU. He is not suggesting that the UK would be an entirely separate entity in international trade.
Membership of a customs union constrains your ability to sign your own trade deals, because you can't alter external tariffs. But you can negotiate on services, or on harmonising regulations with other countries.
Mr Corbyn argues that this is a compromise worth making, and it is another significant departure from government policy. The Conservatives accuse him of wanting to have his cake and eat it - a familiar theme.
This is Mr Corbyn's political pitch, trying to peel enough Tory MPs away from the government to be able to defeat it in Parliament on the question of a customs union. He is trying to position Labour in the middle ground - supporting what appears to be a softer version of Brexit rather than what he would see as a hard ideological one.
Of course anything Labour proposes, just like anything the government has proposed, does not have to win the approval of Parliament alone. It would also have to be negotiated with the rest of the EU, which remains suspicious of any UK effort to cherry-pick the best bits.
Mr Corbyn was very clear about this - attacking the government for starting with what he called rigid red lines on immigration and only afterwards working out what it meant for the economy. He says it is very clear that free movement of people from the EU would come to an end.
There would, he says, be reasonable management of immigration, but the economy should always come first.
This is a delicate balancing act. Without free movement of people, the UK will not get the same access to the single market that it has now.
On the other hand, Labour can't ignore the "take back control" message entirely. But it is interesting to note that there was no mention at all in this speech of the future role of the European Court of Justice.
It has always been clear that Jeremy Corbyn has never been a massive EU enthusiast. He says he campaigned for "Remain with reform" - which sounds suspiciously like David Cameron.
But he was trying to appeal to both Remain and Leave voters in this speech, arguing that Brexit would lead neither to disaster nor to a land of milk and honey.
Like the prime minister, he is trying to claim the Brexit middle ground. But, also like the prime minister, that doesn't mean he can sit on the fence, with little more than a year to go before Brexit is due to happen.
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After months of talking we've finally got our first look at a draft of the agreement which is designed to take the UK out of the European Union. This is a long and complex legal document. It is the European Commission's draft of a withdrawal agreement, which still has to be discussed with the 27 EU member states and the European Parliament before it gets formally sent to the UK authorities for negotiation.
The document is based on the joint report that was agreed by EU and UK negotiators in December but it goes into more detail and translates some of the commitments made into formal legal text.
Here are a few excerpts, with the key phrases in bold type.
Most of the headlines are being generated by what the document says about steps that need to be taken to avoid the reimposition of a hard border in Ireland.
In effect, it creates a customs union between Northern Ireland and the EU - in fact it says specifically that Northern Ireland "shall be considered to be part of the customs territory of the Union".
That of course leads back to the question of whether there would have to be a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK instead - something the government has already rejected emphatically.
But it is important to stress that Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, describes the text on Ireland as a "backstop". Three options were set out in the agreement in December but no progress has been made on the other two.
If another solution can be found for the Irish border during overall negotiations on the future relationship between the UK and the EU, the backstop can be deleted.
But if the proposal on the Irish border did come into effect, EU institutions would be given the authority to enforce it, and Northern Ireland would be under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
It is another red line for the government, and another sign of how difficult it is going to be to find a solution at the Irish border.
Other roles for the ECJ, with potential influence over the UK for many years, are also scattered throughout the text - including the proposal that it should be the ultimate arbiter of the withdrawal agreement itself. All of this is rejected by the UK.
There is a huge amount of detail in this text about the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens elsewhere in the EU after Brexit. But here is something that will dismay a lot of Brits living elsewhere in Europe - their rights will apply only in the country in which they live.
They will lose the right to further free movement in the future. It is only a draft but many UK citizens who have chosen to live elsewhere in the EU fear their rights are being forgotten.
This punishment clause has caused controversy before and will probably do so again. Basically, if the UK misbehaves during a transition period after Brexit, some of its rights to participate fully in the single market could be suspended.
Any suspension, the text suggests, would not exceed three months but could be renewed. It's not exactly what businesses desperate for some certainty want to hear.
Vassal state, anyone?
Finally, a reminder of how much still has to be done. The UK will lose access to a whole series of databases and networks that it has become accustomed to using.
The text does say there can be some exceptions but access to any of them will have to be negotiated (in the field of internal security and police co-operation, for example).  This is another reason why a transition period is important, because it will give more time for this kind of detailed work to be done.
But Michel Barnier has said that technical negotiations this week have confirmed that several clear differences of opinion remain about the terms and conditions for a transition - and, in his words, "transition is not a given".


The Labour Party is going into the 2019 general election with a promise to "get Brexit sorted" in six months.
So, what exactly is its plan?
If it wins the election, Labour wants to renegotiate Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal and put it to another public vote.
Rather than backing either Leave or Remain during the election campaign, the party will remain neutral until a later date.
Should a referendum under a Labour government be held, voters would be able to choose between a "credible Leave option" and Remain.
The party would organise the referendum within six months and decide which position to back at a special conference in the build up.
Experts at the Constitution Unit at University College London say it would take a minimum of 22 weeks to organise another referendum.
Labour's Brexit stance was adopted after Labour's delegates voted for it at the party conference in September.
Delegates rejected a motion which called on the party to back Remain outright in all circumstances.
It was voted down despite receiving support from senior figures - such as shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry.
Until July, Labour had resisted outright support for another referendum. Its deputy leader, Tom Watson, said "ambiguity" over the party's Brexit policy had cost it votes at the European elections in May.
Mr Corbyn says Labour will negotiate a Brexit deal which maintains a very close trading relationship with the EU. This would be achieved by staying in a customs union and keeping close alignment to the single market.
That would mean the UK would be able to continue trading with the EU without tariffs (taxes on imports) being applied.
However, being in a customs union would prevent the UK from striking its own trade deals with other countries on goods, such as the US.
Under the deal negotiated by Mr Johnson, the UK would leave both the single market and customs union. This would require checks to take place on some goods travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Labour believes it would take no longer than three months the renegotiate the current Brexit deal.
Just like the Conservative Party, Labour has had to deal with internal divisions over its Brexit policy.
Many Labour MPs who represent parts of the country where most people voted Leave have previously expressed unhappiness with the party's shift on supporting a referendum.
More than 25 Labour MPs wrote to Mr Corbyn in June, saying another public vote would be "toxic to our bedrock Labour voters" and urged the party leadership to back a Brexit deal.
On the other hand, shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, are among those to say remaining would be the best thing for the UK - even if the other option is a Labour-negotiated Brexit deal.


Peers have been urged to "respect" voters' decision to leave the EU as they began debating the Brexit bill.
With Prime Minister Theresa May taking the unusual step of sitting in the Lords to watch the opening speeches, Leader of the House Baroness Evans said peers must not "frustrate" Brexit.
But Labour said "reasonable changes" could take place to the bill.
MPs have already backed the proposed law, authorising Mrs May to inform the EU of the UK's intention to leave.
The government does not have a majority in the House of Lords where a record 190 peers are due to speak over two days.
The sitting was extended to midnight on Monday to allow more peers to speak and the debate will continue on Tuesday.
Opposition and crossbench peers are seeking guarantees about the rights of EU citizens in Britain and the role of parliament in scrutinising the process.
Mrs May has said she wants to invoke Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty - the formal two-year mechanism by which a state must leave the EU - by the end of March, and the government has warned the House of Lords not to frustrate the process.
The prime minister decided to sit in the Lords chamber itself to listen to the start of the debate. Her official spokesman said this was "in recognition of the importance of this bill as it proceeds through the Lords".
Opening proceedings, Lady Evans said the government had promised to deliver on the result of last year's referendum, in which 51.9% of voters backed Brexit.
She said: "This bill is not about revisiting the debate." She added: "Noble Lords respect the primacy of the elected House and the decision of the British people on 23 June last year."
Lady Evans also said: "This bill is not the place to try and shape the terms of our exit, restrict the government's hand before in enters into complex negotiations or attempt to re-run the referendum."
For Labour, Lords opposition leader Baroness Smith of Basildon said the government would not be given a "blank cheque" and that "if sovereignty is to mean anything, it has to mean parliamentary responsibility".
She promised to make ministers consider "reasonable changes" and this was not "delaying the process" but "part of the process" of Brexit.
But Lord Newby, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords, said the bill could be changed and sent back to the House of Commons for reconsideration, arguing there was a "world of difference between blocking... and seeking to amend it".
The government's approach was "little short of disastrous" and "to sit on our hands in these circumstances is unthinkable and unconscionable", he added.
UKIP's Lord Stevens of Ludgate said the prime minister "should be congratulated" for "honouring" the commitment to leave the EU, following the referendum.
But he told peers it was better to "leave the EU quickly", rather than enter negotiations with member states on a post-Brexit deal.
And Labour peer Lord Howarth of Newport, who backed Brexit, said: "All of us should respect the democratic decision to leave. If we do not, public disaffection from politics will become a crisis. Those who meditate a second referendum are playing with fire."
By Ben Wright, political correspondent
Peers will not block Brexit. But nor are they likely to wave this bill through without asking the Commons to think again about a number of issues.
Peers are certainly keen to have their say in this week's two-day debate.
The committee stage scrutiny - and possible votes - will come the week after.
And with many non-party cross-benchers in the picture the government cannot be certain of defeating all the changes peers will be pushing for. That would mean the Commons could have to consider the bill again.
However, there is no sign the unelected Lords want to go into battle with MPs and the government over Brexit - or meddle with the referendum's mandate.
Labour has said it will not frustrate Theresa May's plan to trigger the start of Brexit by the end of next month.
The government has set aside five days in total to discuss the various stages of the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill - starting with its Second Reading, in which peers debate the general principles of the bill.
The Second Reading debate is due to conclude on Tuesday evening - possibly with a vote, but only if peers break with their usual practice of allowing government legislation through unopposed at this stage.
Although amendments are not voted on at this stage, speeches will be closely watched for signs of the mood of peers on the two key ones of parliament having a "final meaningful vote" on the draft Brexit agreement - and guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens in the UK.
Detailed scrutiny of the bill at committee stage is due to take place on 27 February and 1 March. If the bill is not amended, then it could theoretically be approved by the Lords at Third Reading on 7 March, becoming law shortly afterwards.
If peers do make changes to the bill, it would put them on a collision course with MPs - who overwhelmingly passed the bill unaltered and would be expected to overturn any Lords amendments.
Although the Conservatives have the largest number of peers in the Lords, with 252 members, they are vulnerable to being outvoted if opposition peers - including 202 Labour peers and 102 Lib Dems - join forces.
Much will hinge of the actions of the 178 crossbenchers in the Lords - who are not aligned to any party and do not take a party whip.
Once Article 50 is invoked, there will be up to two years of talks on the terms of the UK's departure and its future relationship with the EU unless all 28 member states agree to extend the deadline.

Ministers have sought to reassure peers about the status of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit as they face possible defeat over the issue in the Lords.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has written to peers to say the UK cannot offer a unilateral guarantee on residency but it will be a priority once talks begin.
She also said peers would have a say on future changes to migration rules.
The Lords could inflict a defeat on the government when amendments to the Brexit bill are debated on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, MPs passed unamended a bill which would give Theresa May the power to begin the Brexit process.
They accepted assurances from ministers that protecting the rights of the 3 million EU nationals living in the UK would be a priority for ministers.
But many peers want the government to go further and state that all EU nationals lawfully in the UK at the time the UK exits the EU should be allowed to stay.
In a letter to peers, Ms Rudd said such a guarantee, however "well-intentioned", would not help the hundreds of thousands of UK citizens living on the Continent as it could leave them in potential limbo if reciprocal assurances were not given by the EU's 27 other member states.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
The letter is not that different to what was sent to MPs previously to try to ease their minds, as the Article 50 legislation made its way through the House of Commons.
It does though appear to kill off the idea that Theresa May will arbitrarily set a cut off date for EU immigration without having to get MPs or peers onside first. But it is unlikely to spare the government's blushes tomorrow. Without a further more dramatic concession, they are set to lose.
That will set in train the first 'ping' of the potential 'ping pong' - the Parliamentary process where the Lords reject something in the red chamber, sending it back down the corridors to the green benches - daring, imploring perhaps, backbenchers to join with them and push back at the government.
There is no sign at the moment that ministers want to budge on this issue
"We need to act fairly and provide certainty for both groups of people as quickly as possible and that will remain the government's position," she wrote.
She suggested the inability to reach a mutual agreement was more a question of timing than principle and the UK and EU had a "common goal" in doing so if, as expected, the UK notifies the EU of its intention to leave by the end of March.
"There is absolutely no question of treating EU citizens with anything other than the utmost respect," she wrote.
"That's why we will be making securing their status a priority as soon as we trigger Article 50 and the negotiations begin.
"I know some colleagues are concerned about how long this might take to resolve, but the government remains committed to providing reassurance to EU nationals here and UK nationals in the EU as a priority once Article 50 has been triggered."
Ms Rudd said that any changes to the status of existing EU residents and those coming from Europe in future would have to be approved by Parliament.
"This will be done through a separate Immigration Bill and subsequent secondary legislation so nothing will change for any EU citizen, whether already resident in the UK or moving from the EU, without Parliament's approval."
She added: "This isn't just about ensuring British businesses and our public sector have access to the right workers.
"We owe it to those many European citizens who have contributed so much to this country to resolve this issue as soon as possible and give them the security they need to continue to contribute to this country."
Last week, peers gave an unopposed second reading to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.
But the government - which does not have a majority in the Lords - is potentially more vulnerable to defeat now that specific amendments are being discussed.
The Supreme Court ruled in January that the government requires the prior approval of both Houses of Parliament before it can trigger Article 50.

Sam Gyimah has become the first Tory leadership candidate to back a further referendum on Brexit.
The former universities minister is the 13th candidate to join the race, which will also choose the UK's next PM.
Mr Gyimah - who quit over Theresa May's Brexit plan - said he would vote Remain in such a poll, but would not "actively campaign" if he became prime minister.
Meanwhile, other contenders to succeed Mrs May have been setting out their Brexit plans.
Former Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said she would seek a "managed exit" by 31 October - the deadline the EU has set for leaving the bloc.
She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that Mrs May's negotiated plan was "dead", as the EU would not re-open it and Parliament would not vote for it.
Mrs Leadsom said she would instead introduce legislation to guarantee citizens' rights, ramp up preparations for all Brexit scenarios and explore alternatives to the Irish border backstop plan.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who is also running in the Tory leadership race, said he "passionately" wanted to leave the EU with a deal, but it was "responsible" to prepare for a no-deal exit.
His pitch for the top job was a "modern digitised border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which he said would "unlock a Brexit deal".
Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show, Mr Javid said he would try to renegotiate the Irish border backstop plan and offer to pay Ireland for work towards a digital border, saying it was "morally right".
He also said there should not be another general election before Brexit is delivered, but admitted he "may not be able to stop it" if the government were defeated in a vote of no confidence.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Mr Javid is one of the leadership candidates who have said they are prepared to leave the EU without a deal if necessary.
But his rival, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, said leaving without a deal is "not an available choice" to the next PM, as Parliament "will never allow it to happen".
In a letter to MPs, he set out his strategy for delivering Brexit, including a pledge to negotiate an "end point" to the backstop plan.
He also says he would unilaterally guarantee the rights of EU citizens, and set up an "Irish Border Council" to explore how technology can be used to avoid a hard border.
The backstop is a backup plan to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland in case the UK leaves the EU without an all-encompassing deal.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has previously insisted the backstop plan would not be renegotiated, saying it is "part and parcel" of the UK's Brexit deal.
On Sunday, Irish European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee said the backstop plan and withdrawal agreement will not be changed.
"Much of what is in the withdrawal agreement was asked for by the UK," she tweeted.
"They were not bystanders in the two years it took to negotiate. Bit of realism needed."
Rory Stewart - who has also launched his own leadership bid - said candidates should "stop pretending that there is some different deal out there", and focus instead on getting the current agreement through Parliament.
"There is literally no evidence at all that Europe will give us a different deal", the international development secretary wrote on Twitter.
Speaking to BBC News, Mr Gyimah said he was putting himself forward to "broaden the race" for the Conservative leadership.
The East Surrey MP said existing candidates had either been pledging to "reawaken the deal that is dead" or "bunching around" the option of a no-deal exit.
Mr Gyimah quit the government last December over Mrs May's Brexit plan, saying that he intended to vote against the deal and advocate another referendum.
He added that another referendum could be a way to "break through" the impasse in Parliament, although he said that a no-deal Brexit would be an "abject failure".
Conservative MPs will take part in a series of votes to narrow down all the candidates to a final two.
These two MPs will then face a vote of the full party leadership.
Most members of political parties in the UK are pretty middle-class, but Conservative Party members are the most middle-class of all: 86% fall into the ABC1 category.
Around a quarter of them are, or were, self-employed and nearly half of them work, or used to, in the private sector.
Nearly four out of 10 put their annual income at over £30,000, and one in 20 put it at over £100,000. As such, Tory members are considerably better-off than most voters.

DUP MP Sammy Wilson has warned that his party's deal to support the Conservative government could be jeopardised by the Brexit negotiations.
He said any attempt to "placate Dublin and the EU" could mean a withdrawal of DUP support at Westminster.
He was responding to reports of a possible strategy to deal with the Irish border after Brexit.
Former DUP leader and first minister Peter Robinson also responded, saying "the south needs to wind its neck in".
He said Dublin politicians had taken to "lecturing the UK," doing "significant harm to north/south relations".
"Sensible solutions can be found and positive outcomes are more likely to be reached if a spirit of friendship and mutual understanding exists," he said.
A story, published earlier in the Times newspaper, reported that British and EU officials could be about to seek separate customs measures for Northern Ireland after the UK leaves the European Union.
This could avoid any divergence in trade rules between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mr Wilson said that the UK government would "have to recognise that if this is about treating Northern Ireland differently, or leaving us half in the EU, dragging along behind regulations which change in Dublin, it's not on".
Earlier on Thursday, DUP leader Arlene Foster said that the government had a "clear understanding that the DUP will not countenance any arrangement that could lead to a new border being created in the Irish Sea".
Mr Wilson said the proposal mooted in The Times report was unworkable, and revealed the DUP would be seeking clarification from the government on its accuracy.
The DUP struck a deal with the Conservative government in June, agreeing to support Tory policies at Westminster, in return for an extra £1bn in government spending for Northern Ireland.
Mr Wilson said his party will be "making clear to the government we have a confidence and supply arrangement with them".
The East Antrim MP added that "if there is any hint that in order to placate Dublin and the EU, they're prepared to have Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of the UK, then they can't rely on our vote".
Mr Wilson was speaking in a BBC interview in his East Antrim constituency on Thursday afternoon.
The DUP has consistently opposed calls for Northern Ireland to be granted "special status" within the EU, in a bid to resolve border issues.
The party has accused Irish nationalists of using the special status campaign as "an opportunity separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom, with a border in the Irish Sea".
Under the type of plan mooted in The Times report, regulations relating to customs would be harmonised on both sides of the Irish border.
It would allow a freer flow of traffic and goods, in line with the UK's aim of making the crossing as "frictionless" as possible.

Parliament has been sitting on a Saturday for the first time in 37 years to debate and vote on Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.
MPs have supported a motion tabled by Independent MP Sir Oliver Letwin that "withholds approval" for Boris Johnson's Brexit deal until legislation implementing it has been passed.
It was very close - the government lost by just 16 votes, by 322 to 306.
It was due to be followed by a vote on the main government motion - whether or not to back the deal. But the motion, as amended, was approved by MPs without a vote, as the government effectively accepted defeat.
A cross-party amendment on preventing a no-deal Brexit and holding a second referendum was not put to the vote either, after the government pulled the motion it was attached to.
Under the terms of the so-called Benn Act, the prime minister must send a letter to Brussels requesting a three-month Brexit delay by 2300 BST.
But Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "I will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so."
He added: "I continue in the very strong belief that the best thing for the UK, and for the whole of Europe is for us to leave with this new deal on 31 October, and to anticipate the questions that are coming from the benches opposite, I will not negotiate a delay with the EU."
A Number 10 source said: "Parliament has voted to delay Brexit yet again.
"The prime minister will not ask for an extension - he will tell EU leaders there should be no delays, they should reject Parliament's letter asking for a delay, and we should get Brexit done on 31 October with our new deal so the country can move on."
The House of Commons Twitter account posted that the government now "must ask for an extension of Article 50 under the Benn Act and set out how it intends to proceed".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told MPs: "Today is an historic day for parliament because it said it will not be blackmailed by a prime minister who is apparently prepared once again to defy a law passed by this parliament.
"I invite him to think very carefully about the remarks he just made about refusing, apparently, to apply for the extension which the EU number two Act requires him to do."
SNP justice and home affairs spokesperson Joanna Cherry tweeted: "So Boris Johnson loses again today but is threatening not to comply with BennAct or promises made to Scottish court.
"Just as well we are due back in court on Monday & Mr Speaker has just confirmed to me that he'll sign Extension letter if court so requires."
No. The government plans to push ahead with the legislation enacting the treaty agreed by Boris Johnson in Brussels - the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on Monday.
They also want to hold another "meaningful vote" on the Brexit deal on Monday.
Commons Speaker John Bercow will not allow the government to ask the same question of MPs again - but he said he would give the matter consideration before giving a ruling on it on Monday.
By BBC Parliamentary Correspondent Mark D'Arcy
If John Bercow allows the "meaningful vote", Labour MPs in pro-Brexit seats will be under massive pressure.
They would much rather go straight to a Withdrawal Agreement Bill, where they can tinker with the detail to their heart's content - possibly allying with dissident Tories to write a customs union into it.
And for the government, putting down a bill without the support of the DUP would be fraught with danger.
An early indicator will be whether the government can win the programme motion necessary to ensure the Bill gets through in quick time.
Read Mark's full blog

British and French fishermen have clashed in the Channel, over alleged "looting" of the scallop fishing grounds there by British boats. Tense exchanges were filmed on Tuesday, off the coast of Normandy, after years of carefully managed truce between the two sides.  What lies behind the fresh tensions, and what impact will Brexit have on relations between them?
In times of cross-Channel tension, it's been a handy and well-worn reflex in some quarters to blame the meddlesome bureaucracy of the EU - its agricultural subsidies; its detailed trading standards; its fishing quotas.
For more than a decade, the friction between British and French fishermen around the Bay of Seine, off the coast of Normandy, has been over scallops.
The French fishing industry is bound by an agreement with its government in Paris not to fish for scallops in the area between May and October, in order to conserve fish stocks. The British - who are also allowed to fish the area under EU access rights - are under no such restrictions from their own government.
Et voilà: an ongoing battle that's been wearily termed "the scallop wars".
For the past few years, a carefully constructed truce has kept the peace over this watery battlefield. The British agreed to ban their larger fishing vessels from the area until October, in keeping with French restrictions, on the understanding that smaller British boats could fish there all year round.
But with the big boats out of the way during the summer months, the Regional Committee for Maritime Fishing in Normandy says that the number of smaller boats coming across the Channel is growing. This year, they asked that all British boats stay away from the scallop fishing grounds until they could share the catch, from October onwards.
But smaller British fishermen are already feeling hard done by, because the vast majority of their EU fishing quotas go to larger British industrial fishing fleets, and many struggle to make a profit. Scallops, on the other hand, are not restricted by standard EU quotas.  Larger vessels have limits on the number of days they can fish for them, but boats under 10m (32ft) have an open invitation - a small but important symbolic advantage.
So, their answer to the new terms of the truce?  Non.
With no gentlemen's agreement in place, British vessels have had free rein to stir up the stormy waters of Normandy's scallop grounds. And in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the French took things into their own hands.
So far, no-one has been hurt, but the dispute remains unresolved. Both sides have agreed to meet, to try to find a solution.
One local fisherman told Le Monde newspaper that a hard Brexit would solve it once and for all - by denying the British automatic access to fish in EU waters.
But the rules restricting French scallop fishermen in the Bay of Seine have nothing to do with the EU. And even if their British rivals leave the bloc, France's fisheries ministry points out, that area is open to other EU members who have the freedom to fish there all year round.
Even for British fishermen - who are reported to have voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, with the aim of regaining control over their own national fishing grounds - Brexit may not be the cure-all.
EU vessels will no longer have automatic access to British fishing waters after Brexit, but the war over quotas between big industrial vessels and local fishermen is an internal British one.
It's the authorities in London, not Brussels, who set the rules under which industrial fishing companies dominate the market, and allow the "leasing" of fishing quotas by big companies, while some other EU governments, like France, do not.
Brexit may look like a handy solution for fishermen on both sides of the Channel, but - as one journalist put it recently - it could well be a red herring.

The Scottish and Welsh governments are to be allowed to have a say in the Supreme Court battle over how Brexit should be triggered.
The government is appealing against a High Court ruling that MPs must get a vote on triggering Article 50.
The Supreme Court confirmed that Wales and Scotland's senior law officers will be allowed to take part in the appeal.
UK PM Theresa May said on Friday that work was "on track" to begin the formal process of Brexit by April 2017.
At a joint press briefing with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, following a meeting with EU leaders in Berlin, Mrs May said: "We stand ready to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017 and I want to see this as a smooth process, an orderly process, working towards a solution that's in the interests of both the UK and also in the interests of our European partners."
McCord Brexit case can go to Supreme Court
The judges ruling on Brexit case
She was speaking after the Supreme Court confirmed that Scotland's senior law officer, the Lord Advocate, had been invited to address the court on the relevance of points of Scots law. The Counsel General for Wales will make arguments about the importance of parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law.
The Supreme Court hearing is expected to start on 5 December and last four days, with the decision expected in the new year.
Analysis
Tom Bateman, BBC political correspondent
The government has been clear in its belief that the referendum result gives it the authority to use its executive powers to trigger the EU exit process.
But the Scottish government believes this is unlawful, claiming that invoking Article 50 would involve a "fundamental alteration" in the UK's constitutional arrangements and the rights of Scottish people - who voted to remain in the EU - about which the Hollyrood parliament should be consulted.
It is far from clear how much legal weight these arguments will carry in this complex constitutional case in front of 11 Supreme Court judges.
But the politics are easier to predict: If the government's appeal fails, Parliament is likely to become the next battleground over the timing and - potentially - the terms of Brexit.
It is a fight Downing Street is desperate to avoid - amid the increasingly toxic atmosphere between those tussling for control of Britain's departure from the EU.
A government spokesman said it was "a matter for the Supreme Court which applications to intervene are accepted".
"The UK government's position remains the same, and we will be taking strong legal arguments to court next month," he said.
Scotland's Brexit minister Michael Russell welcomed the decision, but added: "We continue to call on the UK government to drop the appeal and to accept that Parliament has the right to determine the triggering of Article 50.
"We recognise the decision of people in England and Wales to support Brexit, but the views of people in Scotland cannot simply be brushed aside."
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, which describes itself as "fighting for the rights and welfare of some of the most vulnerable and under-represented workers in the UK", has also been given permission to make submissions to the Supreme Court.
The Attorney General for Northern Ireland has made a reference to the court on devolution issues and did not need permission to intervene. Separately another Brexit case brought by victims' campaigner Raymond McCord in Belfast has also been referred to the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month three High Court judges ruled that the prime minister did not have the power to use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to start the two-year process of negotiating Brexit, without the prior authority of Parliament.
Mrs May and her ministers are now asking the Supreme Court to overturn that unanimous decision.
Labour has said it will not attempt to delay or scupper this process if a vote goes ahead.
But Lib Dem leader Tim Farron has said his party will vote against triggering Article 50, unless they are promised a second referendum on the UK's Brexit deal with EU leaders. Some Labour MPs have said they are also willing to oppose it.
Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, believes that the consent of the Scottish Parliament and the UK's other devolved parliaments and assemblies should also be sought before Article 50 is triggered.
Mick Antoniw AM, Counsel General for Wales, said previously: "This case raises issues of profound importance not only in relation to the concept of parliamentary sovereignty, but also in relation to the wider constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom and the legal framework for devolution."
The legal challenge over Brexit was brought by investment fund manager and philanthropist Gina Miller, along with London-based Spanish hairdresser Deir Dos Santos and the People's Challenge group, set up by Grahame Pigney and backed by a crowd-funding campaign.
After Lord Toulson's retirement this summer, the appeal will be heard by all 11 remaining Supreme Court justices, led by their President Lord Neuberger.

The UK government is to reject calls for a Scottish independence referendum before Brexit after Theresa May said "now is not the time".
The prime minister said the focus should be on getting the best Brexit deal for the whole of the UK.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said Nicola Sturgeon's demand for a vote by the spring of 2019 would be rejected "conclusively".
Ms Sturgeon said blocking a referendum would be a "democratic outrage".
Ms Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, told BBC Scotland: "It is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the right to block the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish government and the majority in the Scottish Parliament.
"You know history may look back on today and see it as the day the fate of the union was sealed."
Ms Sturgeon has called for a referendum to be held in the autumn of 2018 or the spring of the following year, to coincide with the conclusion of the UK's Brexit negotiations with the EU.
But Mrs May said her message to Ms Sturgeon was clear - "now is not the time".
The prime minister added: "I think we should be working to get the right deal for Scotland and the UK with our future partnership with the European Union.
"It would be unfair to the people of Scotland that they would be being asked to make a crucial decision without the information they need to make that decision."
The prime minister also said the country should be "working together, not pulling apart".
Ms Davidson later told a media conference in Edinburgh that the people of Scotland should have the right to see how the UK was working after leaving the EU before deciding whether or not they wanted independence.
She added: "People should only be asked to make a judgment on whether to leave or remain within a 300-year-old union of nations when they have seen for themselves how that union is functioning following Brexit.
"They should also know what the alternative entails and we have seen no clarity from the SNP on even the basic questions of their proposition."
Scottish Secretary David Mundell said: "The proposal brought forward is not fair, people will not be able to make an informed choice.
"Neither is there public or political support for such a referendum.
"Therefore we will not be entering into discussions or negotiations about a Section 30 agreement and any request at this time will be declined."
By BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor
The Tory triumvirate - PM, secretary of state, Scottish leader - stress that a referendum might be feasible once Brexit is signed, sealed and settled. David Mundell seemed particularly keen to stress that point.
However, if they won't contemplate Section 30 meantime, then the time needed for legislation, consultation and official preparation would suggest that - by that calendar - any referendum would be deferred until 2020 or possibly later. Possibly after the next Holyrood elections.
Options for the FM? She could sanction an unofficial referendum, without statutory backing. Don't see that happening. It would be a gesture - and Nicola Sturgeon, as the head of a government, is generally averse to gestures. Unless they advance her cause.
She could protest and seek discussions. Some senior Nationalists believe this to be a negotiation ploy by the PM, the prelude to talks.
Will the first minister proceed with the vote next week at Holyrood, demanding a Section 30 transfer in which the Greens are expected to join with the SNP to create a majority? I firmly expect her to do so, to add to the challenge to the PM.
Scotland voted by 55% to 45% to remain in the UK in a referendum in September 2014 - but Ms Sturgeon says a second vote is needed to allow the country to choose what path to take following last year's Brexit vote.
MSPs are due to vote next Wednesday on whether to seek a section 30 order from the UK government, which would be needed to make any referendum legally binding.
The parliament currently has a pro-independence majority, with the Scottish Greens pledging to support the minority SNP government in the vote.

Here is the full text of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, asking for a Section 30 order to allow Holyrood to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence.
Dear Theresa,
When we met in Glasgow on Monday, I wished you well for the negotiations that lie ahead now that you have formally invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. I want to reiterate those good wishes now.
I very much hope that you succeed in realising your ambitions for the terms of the UK's future relationship with the EU. A good deal for the UK is clearly in Scotland's interests whatever constitutional future we choose.
It is for that reason that I intend that the Scottish government will play a full and constructive role in securing such an outcome.
I expressed my frustration on Monday that the process leading up to the invoking of Article 50 had failed to involve the devolved administrations in any meaningful way - a view that I know is shared by the First Minister of Wales.
Far from securing a UK-wide approach ahead of invoking Article 50 - as you committed to do last July - the voices of the devolved administrations were largely ignored and all attempts at compromise rejected, in most cases with no prior consultation.
As we move forward into a new phase, we need to agree a more direct role and influence for the devolved administrations, reflecting the key interests that are at stake for all of us.
However, whatever outcome is secured, it seems inevitable that it will remove the UK, not just from the EU, but also from the single market.
As you are aware, that is not an outcome that the people of Scotland voted for. It is also an outcome that will have significant implications for our economy, society and place in the world.
In these very changed circumstances, the people of Scotland must have the right to choose our own future - in short, to exercise our right of self determination.
Indeed I noted the importance you attached to the principle of self determination in your letter to President Tusk.
As you are aware, the Scottish Parliament has now determined by a clear majority that there should be an independence referendum.
The purpose of such a referendum is to give people in Scotland the choice of following the UK out of the EU and single market on the terms you negotiate, or becoming an independent country, able to chart our own course and build a genuine partnership of equals with the other nations of the UK.
A copy of the motion passed by Parliament on 28 March 2017 is attached.
The decision of the Scottish Parliament has been made in line with the tradition of popular sovereignty in Scotland - that the people of Scotland should be able to determine the form of government most suited to their needs - and with the clear commitment in the manifesto on which my government was re-elected last May.
I am therefore writing to begin early discussions between our governments to agree an Order under section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998 that would enable a referendum to be legislated for by the Scottish Parliament.
I have, of course, noted and carefully considered your public position.
However, it seems that we are in agreement on the essential matters.
For example we agree that now is not the time for a referendum.
You confirmed to me on Monday, and repeated in your letter invoking Article 50, that you intend the terms of both the UK's exit from the EU and of a future trade deal to be agreed before March 2019 and in time for ratification by other member states - in other words, between the autumn of next year and the spring of 2019.
As you are aware, this is the timescale endorsed by the Scottish Parliament for a referendum.
As I have said previously, if the timetable you have set out changes, we will require to consider the implications for the timing of a referendum. However, it seems reasonable at this stage to work on the basis of your stated timetable.
We are also in agreement that - unlike the EU referendum - the choice must be an informed one. That means that both the terms of Brexit and the implications and opportunities of independence must be clear in advance of the referendum.
It is also worth noting that the clear precedent of the 2012 Edinburgh Agreement should make reaching agreement on this occasion a relatively straightforward process - addressing any concern you may have that discussions would be time-consuming for your government when they are also preparing for EU negotiations.
In light of the above, there appears to be no rational reason for you to stand in the way of the will of the Scottish Parliament and I hope you will not do so.
However, in anticipation of your refusal to enter into discussions at this stage, it is important for me to be clear about my position.
It is my firm view that the mandate of the Scottish Parliament must be respected and progressed.
The question is not if, but how.
I hope that will be by constructive discussion between our governments.
However, if that is not yet possible, I will set out to the Scottish Parliament the steps I intend to take to ensure that progress is made towards a referendum.
Again, I wish you well for all that lies ahead and stand ready to discuss both a section 30 order and the Scottish government's role in securing the best outcome for all parts of the UK.
I am copying this letter to the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament and to Bruce Crawford, convener of the Parliament's Finance and Constitution Committee.
Nicola Sturgeon
'No rational reason' to block indyref2

Seven MPs have resigned from the Labour Party in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's approach to Brexit and anti-Semitism.
They are: Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes, Gavin Shuker and Ann Coffey.
Ms Berger said Labour had become institutionally anti-Semitic and she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to stay.
Mr Corbyn said he was "disappointed" the MPs had felt unable to continue working for the policies that "inspired millions" at the 2017 election.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the "honourable thing for them to do" would be to stand down as MPs and seek to return to Parliament in by-elections.
Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, in a video message on Facebook, urged the "hard left" to stop celebrating the departure of the seven MPs, saying it was "a moment for regret and reflection not for a mood of anger or a tone of triumph".
"Betrayal narratives and shouting insults at the departed might make some feel better briefly but it does nothing to address the reasons that good colleagues might want to leave," said Mr Watson.
He said Luciana Berger's decision to quit was a "wake-up call for the Labour Party" over anti-Semitism, saying: "We were slow to acknowledge we had a problem and even slower to deal with it."
Labour had to "broaden out" and become more tolerant, he said, adding: "I love this party. But sometimes I no longer recognise it, that is why I do not regard those who have resigned today as traitors."
The seven MPs, who all back a further EU referendum, are not launching a new political party - they will sit in Parliament as the Independent Group.
But Chuka Umunna said they had "taken the first step" and urged other Labour MPs - and members of other parties - to join them in "building a new politics".
"It is time we dumped this country's old-fashioned politics and created an alternative that does justice to who we are today and gives this country a politics fit for the here and now - the 21st Century," he said at a launch event in central London.
He said there would be "no merger" with the Liberal Democrats, who have 11 MPs, and the group wanted to "build a new alternative".
The group rejected comparisons with the Social Democratic Party - which broke away from the Labour Party in the early 1980s but eventually merged with the Liberal Party - saying it was a different era and they would not be contesting by-elections.
In a founding statement on its website, the group sets out its approach to the economy, public services and security, as well as Brexit.
One of the seven MPs, Angela Smith, has, meanwhile, had to apologise after being criticised for a comment about skin colour on BBC Two's Politics Live programme.
In a discussion about race, the MP appeared to say: "It's not just about being black or a funny tinge."
She has since posted a video on Twitter apologising for the comment, adding: "I am very upset that I misspoke so badly."
By BBC Political Correspondent Iain Watson
Defections to the Independent Group are likely to increase - but it will need to attract some of those beyond Labour to become a proper "centre party".
Two more MPs were undecided about whether to be at the launch, one of them was 90% but clearly not 100% there.
And more still may be persuaded to go unless they see a more robust response to anti-Semitism.
But strong supporters of the Blair/Brown governments such as Peter Kyle and Ben Bradshaw are staying to fight their corner on Brexit and it's likely in the short term the numbers who do go will be small.
This is no simple centrists v left, or indeed, ultra left split.
However, the reaction of left-wing activists to today's drama could be crucial.
If they feel fired up to de-select those who share the politics of the defectors but who have no intention of leaving Labour, the splinter could yet become a more sizeable split.
Each of the seven took turns to explain their personal reasons for quitting the party.
Ms Berger said: "I am leaving behind a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation."
Chris Leslie said Labour under Mr Corbyn had been "hijacked by the machine politics of the hard left".
Mike Gapes said he was "sickened that Labour is now perceived by many as a racist, anti-Semitic party" and "furious that the Labour leadership is complicit in facilitating Brexit".
Senior Labour figures, including former leader Ed Miliband and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, expressed their dismay at the split, with Mr Khan saying on Facebook that the seven MPs were friends of his but he would not be joining their new group and it was a "desperately sad day".
In a statement, Jeremy Corbyn said: "I am disappointed that these MPs have felt unable to continue to work together for the Labour policies that inspired millions at the last election and saw us increase our vote by the largest share since 1945."
GMB leader Tim Roache described the MPs' actions as "unforgiveable", adding that they were "hardly the Magnificent Seven".
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, a close ally of Mr Corbyn, said there was a "strong whiff of hypocrisy" about the resigning MPs because they had stood on a manifesto at the 2017 general election that "promised to respect the 2016 referendum taking us out of Europe".
Jon Lansman, the founder of the pro-Corbyn Momentum campaign group, said he had "personal sympathy" for Ms Berger because of the "hate and abuse" she had suffered.
But he said the other six MPs were malcontents opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, telling BBC Radio 4's World at One: "These are people who are not heavyweights and do not have clear policies."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said the split was "not unexpected, or unwelcome" and his party was open to "working with like-minded groups and individuals in order to give the people the final say on Brexit, with the option to remain in the EU".
Conservative Party Chairman Brandon Lewis said the resignations had confirmed that Labour "has become the Jeremy Corbyn Party - failing to take action on everything from tackling anti-Jewish racism to keeping our country safe".
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, whose new Brexit Party launched earlier this year, tweeted: "This moment may not look very exciting but it is the beginning of something bigger in British politics - realignment."
The resignation of seven Labour MPs leaves Jeremy Corbyn with 248 MPs under his leadership. For now, the new group will sit as independents, but could soon form a new political party.
Five other MPs are already sitting as independents after leaving the Labour Party for various reasons, but they are not part of an organised group.
Separately, Peterborough MP Fiona Onasanya was kicked out of the party when she was jailed in January.
There are two other independent MPs - former Lib Dem Stephen Lloyd, who quit his party because he disagrees with them on Brexit, and North Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon - a former Ulster Unionist.
Not necessarily.
Parties are membership organisations that are registered with the Electoral Commission and stand candidates in elections. They also have a leader.
One major advantage of forming a party - rather than just a Parliamentary group - is that you qualify for government money to help with research, which may be a factor in the new group taking the next step.
Under the rules of Parliament, none of the MPs who have resigned from Labour today have to put themselves forward for re-election in their constituencies.

Jo Stevens has quit as Jeremy Corbyn's shadow Welsh secretary after he forced Labour MPs to back the Article 50 bill.
The Cardiff Central MP said she believed Brexit was "a terrible mistake" and said she "cannot reconcile my overwhelming view" that to endorse the bill would make it inevitable.
She is the first member of the shadow cabinet to quit over the issue.
Party leader Mr Corbyn said MPs in pro-EU constituencies were "understandably torn" over the vote.
Her resignation follows that of Tulip Siddiq, who quit as shadow early years minister on Thursday after the Labour leadership imposed a "three-line whip".
Frontbench members of parties are generally expected to resign from their posts if they choose to defy a three-line whip, which is the strongest form of discipline political party leaders can impose.
Ms Stevens set out her opposition to triggering Article 50 in a resignation letter.
She wrote that the government had offered "no guarantees" that "single market access, employment, environmental and consumer rights, security and judicial safeguards" would be protected after Brexit.
Labour's Brexit bind is not hard to grasp.
The vast majority of Labour MPs campaigned to keep Britain in the EU. But most now represent constituencies that voted to leave.
And as Parliament prepares to vote on triggering divorce talks with Brussels, Labour MPs are being ordered to approve the start of Brexit by a party leader who spent his backbench career ignoring similar demands for discipline.
The Cardiff Central MP also said a lack of "guarantees for the people of Wales" contributed to her decision to defy her party leadership.
Cardiff voted to remain in the EU during the 2016 referendum, and remains a target of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats.
Jeremy Corbyn responded to Ms Stevens's resignation saying: "I understand the difficulties that Jo, and other MPs, have when facing the Article 50 Bill. Those MPs with strong Remain constituencies are understandably torn."
He continued: "We have said all along that Labour will not frustrate the triggering of Article 50 and to that end we are asking all MPs to vote for the Bill at its second reading next week."
Two Labour whips - MPs in charge of parliamentary party discipline - have said they will vote against the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, despite the order to support it.
Jeff Smith and Thangam Debbonaire have said they will vote against it although neither have resigned their posts as party whips.
Another shadow minister Daniel Zeichner has also said he will vote against the bill, as will other MPs including former Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw.
The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill was introduced after the Supreme Court ruled that parliament - not just the government alone - must vote to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts the formal process of the UK leaving the EU.
Mr Corbyn has said he understands the pressures faced - many Labour MPs represent constituencies which voted to remain in the European Union - but called on them to "unite" around "important issues".
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said voting against the bill would "be very undermining of democracy".
"MPs voted for a referendum, there was an extraordinary high turn out - 72% - 17m people voted to leave. Many of them in some of our poorest areas," she told the BBC.
She added: "How would it look if a bunch of politicians and commentators in London turned round and said: 'We know you voted to leave but we're just going to ignore you?'"
But senior Labour backbencher Meg Hillier told the BBC some of her east London constituents were "horrified" at Mr Corbyn's stance.
"Certainly in Hackney the rage in the room was palpable - and people are really concerned. My constituency voted 78% to remain [in the EU] and while a lot of those people recognise the outcome of the referendum, we just don't want a blank cheque."
Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to begin the formal process of quitting the European Union by the end of March.
The bill is due to be initially debated by MPs on Tuesday - in a sitting that may last until midnight - and clear the Commons on 8 February, after which it will move to the House of Lords.
The Liberal Democrats have vowed to oppose Article 50 unless there is a guarantee of another referendum on the final Brexit deal that is agreed with Brussels, while the SNP has vowed to table 50 amendments to the legislation.

The Irish foreign minister says he is of "one mind" with the EU's Brexit negotiators.
Simon Coveney made the comments after meeting with Michel Barnier in Brussels on Monday.
On Wednesday, the EU is expected to publish a text which will translate December's deal between the UK and EU into a legally binding agreement.
Mr Coveney said people could expect a document that was "faithful and true" to the pledges made at the end of 2017.
Meanwhile, Ireland's taoiseach (prime minister) has said full regulatory alignment should be "spelled out" in this week's draft EU withdrawal agreement.
Leo Varadkar held a telephone conversation with the Prime Minister on Monday evening.
In the December deal, the UK pledged there would be no hard Irish border in any post-Brexit circumstances.
Since then, however, the two sides have had different interpretations of what was agreed.
The sticking point concerns a UK pledge to follow EU rules relating to cross-border co-operation.
The UK agreed that, in the absence of an overall deal, it will continue to fully align with the rules of the customs union and single market that are necessary for cross-border co-operation and the protection of the all-island economy.
Mr Barnier has said there would be "a large number of rules where this coherence or alignment" would be needed.
However, UK ministers, including the Brexit Secretary David Davis, have suggested the areas requiring alignment would be minimal.
The UK's preference is to solve the border issue in the context of an overall trade deal.
On Monday, the tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) said the legally-binding document, due to be released later this week, would focus on the "backstop" of Northern Ireland remaining aligned with EU rules, because the UK had not yet given information about its preferred solutions for avoiding a hard border.
Mr Coveney said he had a "very good meeting" with Mr Barnier, adding: "It's true to say the Irish government and the Barnier task force are of one mind in terms of how the text should look this week."
When asked if there would be an option A or B concerning the Irish border issue contained within Wednesday's document, Mr Coveney said: "The problem with putting any text around option A or option B is that we don't know what they are yet.
"So, what was agreed in December is that, in the absence of a text on A and B, that we would have a default position so that we would understand how, in the absence of a political agreement on an alternative, the issues of Ireland and Northern Ireland could be resolved in terms of maintaining a largely invisible border to protect the all-island economy on the island of Ireland.
"And so, you can't put a text around an option A until you have an option A. We don't have one yet."
Being outside a customs union has two main issues, tariffs & rules of origin. Does that product really originate from where you claim and thus qualify for low or no tariffs?
Both options will impose real costs on businesses but needn't necessarily mean systematic checks at the border. There would still have to be spot checks but technical and administrative arrangements can minimise these.
But if you stay in a customs union these problems disappear.
That said simply being in a customs union won't eliminate all border checks. That's because the current frictionless border involves the interplay of the customs union and the single market.
In very simple terms the single market deals with product standards: Do these products crossing our borders comply with our standards and therefore can they be sold to our consumers?
The EU is very strict on this, particularly on agri-food products.
Products of animal origin from outside the single market are subject to systematic checks at designated border inspection posts - this applies even to countries with which the EU has a trade deal.
So short of an unprecedented deal for mutual recognition on agri-food standards Northern Ireland and by extension the UK, would have to stay locked into single market rules & enforcement mechanisms to avoid checks.
Also on Monday, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he favours the UK staying in a customs union with the EU.
Shadow Brexit Secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show the UK will leave the customs union in March 2019 - but Labour would seek to negotiate a new treaty that will "do the work of the customs union".
Sir Keir said this was "the only way realistically to get tariff-free access" to EU markets for UK manufacturers and to avoid the return of a "hard border" in Northern Ireland.
On Friday, Prime Minister Theresa May is due to give a major speech outlining the future relationship the UK would like with the EU.

Party President Mary Lou McDonald made the comments after she and her party colleagues met Michel Barnier in Brussels.
It follows comments from Prime Minister Theresa May that she did not want to see a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Ms McDonald said the issue was now "in Mrs May's court".
She said the British government had to come up with Plan A and Plan B, and there could be be no overall agreement on Brexit unless the issue of the border was solved.
She said there was now a challenge for Mr Barnier to "hold steady", but that "he gets it" on the issue of Brexit and the border.
Mrs May has also said she did not want a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The prime minister was responding to a legal text published by the EU as part of the Brexit negotiations with the UK.
The EU's draft legal agreement proposes a "common regulatory area" after Brexit on the island of Ireland - in effect keeping Northern Ireland in a customs union - if no other solution is found.
The party wants to know how Brexit will affect cross-border workers and will insist that the 1998 Good Friday Agreement must be protected.
The Irish border question is at the heart of EU-UK discussions and although a number of options have been tabled, there is no agreed plan of what life will look like after Brexit.
On Tuesday, he will get a very different perspective when he hosts the DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds in Brussels.
The DUP opposes special status for Northern Ireland and are against staying in the customs union or single market.
The party insists that recent EU proposals would break up the UK.
Nigel Dodds has said an internal border would be "catastrophic" for Northern Ireland to be "cut off" from UK.
Last week, Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar said he remained "concerned that some of the constraints of leaving the customs union and the single market are still not fully recognised".
He added: "We will now need to see more detailed and realistic proposals from the UK. Brexit is due to happen in a little over 12 months, so time is short."

The UK's ambassador to the European Union, Sir Ivan Rogers, has resigned. Here is his message to staff in full. We have highlighted key passages in bold, and added BBC political reporter Justin Parkinson's commentary in italics.
Dear All,
Happy New Year! I hope that you have all had/are still having, a great break, and that you will come back refreshed and ready for an exciting year ahead.
I am writing to you all on the first day back to tell you that I am today resigning as Permanent Representative.
As most of you will know, I started here in November 2013. My four-year tour is therefore due to end in October - although in practice if we had been doing the Presidency my time here would have been extended by a few months.
As we look ahead to the likely timetable for the next few years, and with the invocation of Article 50 coming up shortly, it is obvious that it will be best if the top team in situ at the time that Article 50 is invoked remains there till the end of the process and can also see through the negotiations for any new deal between the UK and the EU27.
It would obviously make no sense for my role to change hands later this year.
I have therefore decided to step down now, having done everything that I could in the last six months to contribute my experience, expertise and address book to get the new team at political and official level under way.
This will permit a new appointee to be in place by the time Article 50 is invoked.
Importantly, it will also enable that person to play a role in the appointment of Shan's replacement as DPR. (Shan Morgan was Deputy Permanent Representative)
I know from experience - both my own hugely positive experience of working in partnership with Shan, and from seeing past, less happy, examples - how imperative it is that the PR and DPR  operate as a team, if UKREP is to function as well as I believe it has done over the last few years.
I want to put on record how grateful I am to Shan for the great working relationship we have had.
She will be hugely missed in UKREP, and by many others here in Brussels, but she will be a tremendous asset to the Welsh government.
From my soundings before Christmas, I am optimistic that there will be a very good field of candidates for the DPR role.
But it is right that these two roles now get considered and filled alongside each other, and for my successor to play the leading role in making the DPR appointment.
I shall therefore stand aside from the process at this point.
I know that this news will add, temporarily, to the uncertainty that I know, from our many discussions in the autumn, you are all feeling about the role of UKREP in the coming months and years of negotiations over "Brexit".
I am sorry about that, but I hope that it will help produce earlier and greater clarity on the role that UKREP should play.
My own view remains as it has always been. We do not yet know what the government will set as negotiating objectives for the UK's relationship with the EU after exit.
Justin Parkinson: This could be read as a hurry-up to the UK government to decide what it actually wants from Brexit talks, expected to start as early as April. This differs from criticism from some MPs that not enough is being divulged - Sir Ivan is implying a lack of direction at the heart of government, rather than vagueness in its public message. And he is suggesting that UK diplomats in Brussels need to be better informed.
There is much we will not know until later this year about the political shape of the EU itself, and who the political protagonists in any negotiation with the UK will be.
But in any negotiation which addresses the new relationship, the technical expertise, the detailed knowledge of positions on the other side of the table - and the reasons for them, and the divisions amongst them - and the negotiating experience and savvy that the people in this building bring, make it essential for all parts of UKREP to be centrally involved in the negotiations if the UK is to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the Commission or in the Council.
JP: Sir Ivan is suggesting there's a danger the UK could be outclassed in the Brexit talks - and lose out as a result. Diplomats must be better prepared, he is apparently arguing.
The government will only achieve the best for the country if it harnesses the best experience we have - a large proportion of which is concentrated in UKREP - and negotiates resolutely.
Senior ministers, who will decide on our positions, issue by issue, also need from you detailed, unvarnished - even where this is uncomfortable -  and nuanced understanding of the views, interests and incentives of the other 27.
JP: Sir Ivan is saying that only civil servants, rather than campaigners and activists, can provide a true picture of the complexities ahead.
The structure of the UK's negotiating team and the allocation of roles and responsibilities to support that team, needs rapid resolution.
The working methods which enable the team in London and Brussels to function seamlessly need also to be strengthened.
The great strength of the UK system - at least as it has been perceived by all others in the EU - has always been its unique combination of policy depth, expertise and coherence, message co-ordination and discipline, and the ability to negotiate with skill and determination.
UKREP has always been key to all of that. We shall need it more than ever in the years ahead.
As I have argued consistently at every level since June, many opportunities for the UK in the future will derive from the mere fact of having left and being free to take a different path.
But others will depend entirely on the precise shape of deals we can negotiate in the years ahead.
Contrary to the beliefs of some, free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities: increasing market access to other markets and consumer choice in our own, depends on the deals, multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral that we strike, and the terms that we agree.
JP: Sir Ivan does not name those he is effectively accusing of over-optimism and naivety, but this could be read as a criticism of pro-Brexit ministers - those said to favour a "hard Brexit", under which the UK could leave the European single market and customs union and be subject to the rules of the World Trade Organization. There is much hard work ahead, it suggests.
I shall advise my successor to continue to make these points.
Meanwhile, I would urge you all to stick with it, to keep on working at intensifying your links with opposite numbers in DEXEU [Department for Exiting the EU] and line ministries and to keep on contributing your expertise to the policy-making process as negotiating objectives get drawn up.
The famed UKREP combination of immense creativity with realism ground in negotiating experience, is needed more than ever right now.
On a personal level, leaving UKREP will be a tremendous wrench. I have had the great good fortune, and the immense privilege, in my civil service career, to have held some really interesting and challenging roles: to have served four successive UK prime ministers very closely; to have been EU, G20 and G8 Sherpa; to have chaired a G8 Presidency and to have taken part in some of the most fraught, and fascinating, EU negotiations of the last 25 years - in areas from tax, to the MFF to the renegotiation.
Of all of these posts, I have enjoyed being the Permanent Representative more than any other I have ever held.
That is, overwhelmingly, because of all of you and what you all make UKREP: a supremely professional place, with a fantastic co-operative culture, which brings together talented people whether locally employed or UK-based and uniquely brings together people from the home civil service with those from the Foreign Office.
UKREP sets itself demanding standards, but people also take the time to support each other which also helps make it an amazingly fun and stimulating place to work.
I am grateful for everything you have all done over the last few years to make this such a fantastic operation.
For my part, I hope that in my day-to-day dealings with you I have demonstrated the values which I have always espoused as a public servant.
I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.
I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.
JP: The most-reported part of Sir Ivan's email, this implies that more planning is needed, and that ministers are unwilling to listen to the advice civil servants are offering. It gives a strong hint that his colleagues feel intimidated.
I hope that you will continue to be interested in the views of others, even where you disagree with them, and in understanding why others act and think in the way that they do.
I hope that you will always provide the best advice and counsel you can to the politicians that our people have elected, and be proud of the essential role we play in the service of a great democracy.
Ivan

Britons are being offered an "unreal and over-optimistic" vision of what Brexit will look like, Sir John Major has warned.
The former Tory prime minister also called for "more charm and a lot less cheap rhetoric" from the UK government towards the rest of the EU.
And he said the costs of leaving would be "substantial" and "unpalatable".
Downing Street said the government was determined to make a success of the UK's departure from the EU.
Conservative former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said it was a "peculiar speech in the sense that it looked backwards the whole time".
He told BBC Newsnight: "It was almost like a re-fight of the referendum... strangely bitter really, and almost really the speech of someone who simply refuses to accept that the British people should have made a decision such as they did."
Prime Minister Theresa May plans to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which begins two years of formal negotiations, by the end of March.
She has already confirmed the UK will not remain a member of the EU single market but will instead seek a new free trade deal with the remaining members.
In a speech in London, Sir John, who campaigned for a Remain vote in June's referendum, claimed there was "little chance" the advantages of being part of the EU single market could be replicated once the UK leaves.
"I have watched with growing concern as the British people have been led to expect a future that seems to be unreal and over-optimistic," he said.
"Obstacles are brushed aside as of no consequence, whilst opportunities are inflated beyond any reasonable expectation of delivery."
For Theresa May, also an unflashy leader who was propelled to No 10 by a surprising political moment, Europe will be defining in a way no others could even have anticipated.
In Sir John's carefully calibrated speech, there are plenty of messages for her, some of which may be welcome, some not.
First off, having campaigned to stay in the European Union, with sober warnings particularly about the consequences for the Northern Irish peace process, it's no surprise that Sir John says that in his view, Brexit will be a "historic mistake".
It is notable, although again not surprising, that he cautions that the UK will be a diminished diplomatic force in the world after we walk away from the EU, with a warning too that we will be less useful to our most important ally, the US, as a consequence.
Also, even as the PM who lived through the Commons trauma of trying to deliver the Maastricht Treaty, it is logical that he calls for Parliament to have a full role in shaping the negotiations over our place in Europe.
What may be harder for No 10 to dismiss is Sir John's obvious political concern about how the public is being treated in the months after the referendum decision.
Sir John said Brexit talks require "statesmanship of a high order" and warned of a "real risk" of the exit deal falling "well below the hopes and expectations" that have been raised, saying he doubted the "rosy confidence being offered to the British people".
"In my own experience, the most successful results are obtained when talks are conducted with goodwill: it is much easier to reach agreement with a friend than a quarrelsome neighbour.
"Behind the diplomatic civilities, the atmosphere is already sour. A little more charm, and a lot less cheap rhetoric, would do much to protect the UK's interests."
He also said the "cheerleaders" for Brexit had shown a "disregard that amounts to contempt" towards those that backed the losing side.
And he said the UK would become "far more dependent" on the US after it leaves the EU, describing President Donald Trump as "less predictable, less reliable and less attuned to our free market and socially liberal instincts than any of his predecessors".
Sir John, who as prime minister between 1990 and 1997 oversaw the start of the Northern Ireland peace process, warned that "uncertainties over border restrictions" after Brexit were "a serious threat to the UK, to the peace process and for Ireland, North and South".
The ex-PM, who faced battles with Eurosceptic MPs during his time in Downing Street, also said Mrs May would have to "face down" people calling for "total disengagement" from Europe.
But the Leave Means Leave campaign hit back, recalling Sir John's famous "don't bind my hands" plea to Tory Eurosceptics ahead of EU talks and saying he was now "seeking to do just this to the British prime minister ahead of negotiations with the EU".
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg added: "It was a craven and defeated speech of a bitter man who was heavily defeated by the electorate for his own failings in Europe in 1997, was defeated again last June and now wishes to take out his failures on Mrs May."

Downing Street has called the UK's new ambassador to the European Union a "seasoned and tough negotiator", who will bring "energy" to Brexit talks.
Sir Tim Barrow takes on the role with discussions with the EU expected to start soon and promised to work for the "right outcome".
He replaces Sir Ivan Rogers, who quit earlier this week, accusing ministers of "muddled thinking".
Some MPs have accused Sir Ivan of being "half-hearted" towards Brexit.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to give what is being billed as a "major" speech on Brexit within the next few weeks.
Sir Tim, UK ambassador in Moscow from 2011 to 2015 and an adviser to several previous foreign secretaries, said he was "honoured" to be appointed permanent representative to the EU and promised to work for "the right outcome" for the UK after Brexit.
Downing Street said he had "extensive experience of securing UK objectives in Brussels" and would "bring his trademark energy and creativity to this job".
John Pienaar, BBC deputy political editor
The resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers has revealed more than the difficulty and complexity of Britain's EU divorce.
It has highlighted wider strains in Whitehall between some mandarins and some ministers, up to and including Theresa May.
Mandarins and ambassadors perennially advise more junior mandarins on the importance of speaking truth to power.
On this occasion, Sir Ivan's leaked farewell memo can fairly be read as a protest and a warning. Concern is growing among some high-ranking officials that ministers don't understand or won't admit the scale of the task they're facing.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis both welcomed Sir Tim's appointment and Tom Fletcher, a former UK ambassador to Lebanon, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "It's the toughest negotiation in our lifetimes and I think he is up to it. I have seen him in Brussels. He knows the corridors, he knows the characters.
"But actually more importantly I saw him in Moscow where he was incredibly resilient as ambassador there, dealing with (Vladimir) Putin in a very testing time in our relationship and Tim had a reputation of being bulletproof out there."
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage was less enthusiastic, tweeting: "Good to see that the government have replaced a knighted career diplomat with... a knighted career diplomat."
However, BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale said Sir Tim's record was less likely to be criticised by Brexit supporters than those of some other potential candidates, as it "would be very hard to say that Sir Tim Barrow is an out-and-out pro-European".
Brexit negotiations could begin as early as this April, with the UK government promising to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - which triggers the process - by the end of March.
Erna Solberg, the prime minister of Norway - which is not in the EU but is part of its single market and allows free movement of EU workers - said she feared a "very hard Brexit", involving leaving the single market and the customs union.
She also said: "And we do feel that sometimes when we are discussing with Britain, that their speed is limited by the fact that it is such a long time since they have negotiated (outside the EU)."
In his resignation email to fellow UK diplomats in Brussels, Sir Ivan urged them to challenge "ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking" and "never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power". He said he did not yet know the government's negotiating plans for Brexit.
Sir Ivan had previously warned ministers that EU-UK trade talks could take a decade to complete, advice revealed by the BBC last month.
Pro-EU MPs have described the loss of his experience shortly before Brexit talks as a blow to the government's negotiating strategy, but anti-EU MPs have played down the importance of his resignation.
Labour has demanded a statement from the government when Parliament returns from its Christmas and New Year break next Monday.
Former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, who backed Brexit, was among those criticising Sir Ivan, saying that when a civil servant "starts going public", ministers "can no longer trust that individual".
But pro-EU Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames tweeted: "IDS attack on Ivan Rogers unforgivable am ashamed a colleague could be so ignorant and rude about an Official of such distinction #buttonup."

It's good and sensible to plan.
If they weren't taking it seriously, as the government was very regularly criticised for failing to do, careering into a 'no deal' scenario would be pretty irresponsible, and planning properly for no deal has also been prized by Brexiteers as evidence that the PM might actually walk away if the offer on the table is simply not good enough.
A literal snapshot of some of that planning today has given a slice of insight into the kind of preparation that's taking place inside the Treasury, so called 'Operation Yellowhammer'.
As an intellectual exercise, none of this brief excerpt is completely surprising.
It demonstrates the political reality that in government there is concern about what might happen to the financial system, as well as transport, air and rail.
But it is still a message to government departments they should try to find cash to spend on "no deal" preparations from existing budgets, rather than the big cash pot that's been allocated so far.
That could give yet another reason for Brexiteers to get riled. But in this hot political climate, that's not hard to do. The Treasury officially won't comment on the leak.
Here is the text of the snap, captured by the sharp-eyed Westminster photographer @politicalpics:
HMT briefing - Operation Yellowhammer - 04 September 2018
Operation Yellowhammer: no deal contingency planning
 Summary of issue
•This meeting will consider progress on the Government's plans for mitigating the immediate impacts of a No Deal Brexit.
•The Civil Contingencies Secretariat held a two-day workshop last week to review departments' plans, assumptions, interdependencies and next steps.
 HMT objectives
1.Emphasise the importance of building XWH [cross Whitehall] communications architecture that can help maintain confidence in the event of contingency plans being triggered - particularly important for financial services.
2.Explain that departments should be raising Yellowhammer costs through the normal channels - through their spending teams for in-year pressures, and in their bids for 19/20 Brexit allocations for spending that year. Their first call should be internal prioritisation.
3.Reaffirm the need for consistent planning assumptions across plans […] aviation and rail access to the EU.
4.Remind departments of the need to consider the financial […] commercial firms that play a role in their contingency plans.

Listen carefully. The strange sound of rushing air you can hear in the background, as Britain continues its slow march towards Brexit, is a deep collective sigh of relief.
Ministers, officials and business leaders - the latter group puffing out their cheeks more than anyone - wanted, needed, to see their wish of a Brexit transition period fulfilled.
So one obstacle cleared, or more accurately, skipped around.
The danger that's kept much of business and many MPs at Westminster awake at night, fear of the UK tumbling off a cliff edge into its post-Brexit future next March, has receded. Not disappeared. Receded.
Now Theresa May and the UK negotiating team can focus on the task ahead. Urgently.
A sigh of relief is time consuming, and there's no time or breath to spare.
Team-UK will need plenty of both as it confronts the next stage of the process; contemplates wholly unresolved issues like the Irish border - in truth barely even addressed in negotiations - and the talks about talks which have yet to begin on the future trading relationship.
The uncomfortable truth is that the issue of the Irish border, or the conflict to come over the shape of a future trade deal, could yet blow the Brexit plan into fragments, and see the prime minister and perhaps even her government disappear into the resulting political crater.
Brexiteer ministers and MPs are having none of it.
They sound optimistic because they are. And, who knows? It could all work out in the end.
Among business leaders, especially in the City, there is mild surprise that firms have defied earlier apocalyptic predictions.
Even former Remain-supporting MPs have noted a certain cautious confidence that the infrastructure of the Square Mile - the concentration of legal and technical expertise, to say nothing of schools, homes and the rather appealing lifestyle available in London (to those who can afford it) might just see the City through.
And, who knows? EU negotiators might just give a little on the mutual recognition of rules and standards companies crave.
That's the optimistic view. Remember, Brussels has already dangled the thought there could be no tariffs imposed on exports of goods. It's a start.
Others remain deeply worried. The head of the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, told me a trade deal comparable to the EU's agreement with Canada would be disastrous.
Services denied access, exporters forced to deal with costly and wearying paperwork and checks on the rules of origin of goods and the like.
But maybe, somehow, Theresa May may yet pass on the legacy of a politically arduous but complete Brexit.
Those trade discussions will be hazardous. The prime minister has conceded Britain cannot expect to win everything it wants by way of market access, has even conceding access to markets here and in Europe will be diminished.
Dissident Tory MPs insist their determination to resist what they would see as a poor deal has grown.
More ominously for the government, they are also convinced their numbers have grown to the point they could defeat Theresa May by joining with Jeremy Corbyn's repositioned Labour Party in the coming vote on whether the government should seek to remain inside the EU customs union.
If that vote - possibly some time after 3 May's English local elections - is lost, ministers can be expected to shrug it off.
The dissidents fully expect the government to try.
But a defeat would also be a dangerous marker ahead of the later promised "meaningful vote" on the outline of a trade deal - if one exists - in the Autumn.
Lose that vote, and the prime minister's authority will suffer a huge and perhaps mortal blow.
Could she survive?
Certainly government whips would use the prospect of a prime ministerial defenestration - and even the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street - to pile pressure on potential rebels.
As for the Irish border issue, the calculation among Brexiteers and the MPs of the Democratic Unionist Party (who were kept in close and constant touch with the government's thinking ahead of the March EU summit) is that if and when it comes to the crunch, Dublin will blink first.
Britain has not accepted the "backstop" option in the EU withdrawal text that says Northern Ireland will remain in a customs union if all other ideas for avoiding a hard border with the Republic fail.
Some still undefined backstop, yes, just not that one.
UK negotiators will now take their published plan to enforce rules away from the border to Brussels.
Brexit Secretary David Davis would also like to see most Irish traders exempted from border controls altogether.
An alternative is for the UK to enforce the EU's external border, and allow those trading with the UK on lower tariffs, or none at all, to reclaim duties paid.
Overall, the guiding ambition remains a frictionless trade deal with the EU that renders border controls redundant.
So far, Brussels has sounded cool on all of it. Something has to give.
And with the DUP adamant they will never, ever, live with a settlement that separates out Northern Ireland, and with Tory colleagues equally adamant that the UK must leave the customs union and the single market, it cannot be the prime minister.
This obstacle too may yet conceivably send the Brexit plan up in smoke. Another mushroom cloud. Another crater.
 In the meantime, those most sceptical about the value of Brexit believe the government should give up any idea of being willing to walk away from negotiations with no deal.
Dissidents insist Parliament would never allow that in any case.
Ministers such as David Davis insist they must be prepared for any eventuality, and whatever happens in negotiations, or even in Parliament, Brexit will happen.
There is, in the end, more at stake here than Mrs May's future or that of her administration.
There is also no shortage of undeclared potential candidates quietly dreaming of taking over her job.
Sometimes, actually quite often, you have to wonder why?

When it comes to Brexit, there are two parties here in Liverpool this week.
First, former Remainers, thrilled by Labour's flirting with the idea of another referendum - cheering to the rafters, delighted by the prospect of another vote. Their new hero is the shadow brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer - who has cajoled the party leadership to sharpen the lines of its ambiguity.
Then the other flank - Jeremy Corbyn himself, visibly lukewarm about the idea, saying not much has really changed.
Members and some MPs are deeply anxious that even sketching out the possibility of another referendum sticks two fingers up to millions of voters who want to leave the EU.
Labour might ultimately be punished by voters who are desperate for the party to try to stop us leaving the EU.
But the party could lose out just as painfully at the hands of many members of the public who chose Brexit in the referendum.
What message does Labour send to them if they eventually want another go?
The party has managed to craft a new formal position that leaves several Brexit options open.
And the leader was cautious in how he approached it today, refusing to say on which side he would campaign if there were another Brexit vote.
But the new emphasis at the party conference in Liverpool also leaves them open to attack.
Mr Corbyn seemed frustrated today, at having to engage in the hypothetical - but that is politics right now.
The biggest question for all its players on Brexit  - is "what if?".
What if Theresa May can't do a deal with the EU?
What if the deal fails in Parliament?
And what happens if our politicians fail to meet the challenge that the public set them in 2016?

"The test of a first-rate intelligence," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Crack-Up, "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
Today the British government and the European Union are making a fist of passing that test.
Reading the joint report between the UK and the EU, it is clear that the most important section when considering the economics of Brexit is the section on Ireland.
The document commits both sides to an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and that there will be "no new regulatory barriers" between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It also commits to the UK leaving the EU's single market and customs union.
These two positions appear to be in contradiction.
If Britain does become a "third country" - that is trading with the EU as other non-EU countries outside the single market and the customs union do - then border controls will be necessary.
And that open border will become very much more closed.
There is at least a partial way around this conundrum.
And it necessitates the comprehensive free trade deal the British government has said it wants.
And at least closely mirroring customs arrangements we presently adhere to as members of the EU's customs union.
That equates for many with a "soft Brexit" and is the trajectory many economists argue would be best for the UK economy.
This is because, if there is no free trade agreement, it is difficult to see how Theresa May's government could maintain "full alignment with the rules of the internal market and the customs union which support north-south co-operation [on the island of Ireland]" which the joint report commits the PM to.
And still say that Britain has left the EU.
This document has been described as the "withdrawal deal".
But it is actually far more importantly a signal of what the future might hold.
And that appears to be a relationship where the UK closely follows the EU's single market and customs union rules despite not being a formal member of either.
Which might very well constrain Britain's ability to sign free trade deals with other countries outside the EU.
The government will have to find a way through that if it is not to make Liam Fox's job as international trade secretary redundant.
And in its deliberate ambiguity (every side needs to be able to claim victory) today's joint agreement leaves that debate for another day.
The EU has said it wants to move urgently onto discussing and agreeing transition arrangements to be applied once Britain has officially left the union in March 2019.
That now looks like being Phase II of this process.
And from there, onto mapping out an agreement on free trade which will be put in place after the transition period has expired.
That's Phase III.
That has been seen as good news by businesses which need clarity on the trade rules they will be required to play by.
And the more "frictionless" that trade is, many believe, the better for the economy.
What today's deal has revealed is that there is a genuine desire - it appears from both sides - to get that free trade deal nailed down.
"One should be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise," Fitzgerald wrote.
Today, the UK and the EU have moved the process of Brexit significantly forward.
Even if the end point is still shrouded in much uncertainty.

Liberal Democrat, some Labour and SDLP MPs have told the BBC they are prepared to vote against triggering Article 50.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said his party would oppose it, unless they were promised a second referendum on the UK's Brexit deal with EU leaders.
Several Labour MPs are also willing to vote against it, despite the Labour Party pledging not to do so.
The government says Lib Dem and Labour MPs are "trying to thwart and reverse the referendum result".
With the support of Conservative MPs and the support or abstention of most Labour MPs, the bill is well placed to pass through the Commons.
But the opposition of some MPs is likely to embolden critics in the House of Lords.
The Liberal Democrats have long called for a referendum on the outcome of the government's negotiations with EU, but only now have they said they will definitely vote against Article 50 if their demand is not met.
Mr Farron, whose party has eight MPs in the Commons, told BBC Radio 4's Today: "Article 50 would proceed but only if there is a referendum on the terms of the deal and if the British people are not respected then, yes, that is a red line and we would vote against the government."
For Labour, shadow minister Catherine West, former leadership contender Owen Smith and south London MP Helen Hayes all made clear they were prepared to vote against Article 50 - which begins formal exit negotiations with the EU - if amendments were not accepted.
Former Labour minister David Lammy and shadow transport minister Daniel Zeichner have said they would oppose Article 50. Opposition whip Thangam Debbonaire said she would also vote against it, if a vote were held imminently.
The SNP's 54 MPs may join them. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said they will not vote for anything that undermines the will of the Scottish people, and has previously said they will vote against a bill to write EU provisions into British law to prepare for Brexit.
Dulwich Labour MP Hayes said she was prepared to defy Labour whips to oppose the measure unless the government promised a second referendum.
She said: "I had somebody in my surgery last week who was in tears because of Brexit and I see genuine distress amongst my constituents about what this path means.
"I would not be representing them if I voted to trigger Article 50 on the basis of no information from the government about the path that they would then take us on."
In posts on Twitter and Facebook earlier this week, shadow Foreign Office minister Catherine West wrote: "As I have said before, I stand with the people of Hornsey & Wood Green, and I will vote against Brexit in Parliament."
Owen Smith confirmed to Today that if his bid for a second referendum failed, he was likely to oppose the bill.
The SDLP's three MPs will also oppose the measure.
Ministers said MPs voting against Article 50 would effectively be trying to re-run the referendum in the hope of a "different answer".
"Parliament voted by a margin of six to one to put the decision on whether to remain in or leave the EU in the hands of the British people," said Brexit minister David Jones.
"Only the Conservatives can be trusted to respect the outcome of the referendum and make a success of Brexit."
Last week the High Court ruled Parliament must be consulted about leaving the European Union.
Unless the Supreme Court overturns the judgement in December, a bill to invoke Article 50 is expected in the new year.
Labour made clear its official position would be not to frustrate the process of leaving the EU after a newspaper report said the party leader Jeremy Corbyn intended to force a general election unless ministers caved in to demands.
After the story broke Labour sources said that while it would seek to amend the bill, it would provide "unconditional" support.
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said Labour would not frustrate the process and would not vote down Article 50.
However, Labour and Liberal Democrat peers will try to amend the bill in the House of Lords. So too will one Conservative peer - Baroness Wheatcroft.

Sony will move its European headquarters from the UK to the Netherlands to avoid disruptions caused by Brexit.
The company said the move would help it avoid customs issues tied to Britain's exit from the EU.
Despite the move, Sony won't shift personnel and operations from the existing UK operations.
It is the latest Japanese company to flag a move to the continent in response to Brexit.
And on Tuesday appliance maker Dyson announced it was moving its headquarters to Singapore, from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, although it said it had nothing to do with Brexit.
The UK is on course to leave the European Union in March, but there is uncertainty over the process following the vote in the UK parliament to reject a deal agreed by the British prime minister with the EU.
On a recent trip to the UK, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed concern over a no-deal Brexit.
He said it could hurt Japanese companies, which employ up to 150,000 people in the UK.
In a statement Sony said the move would mean "we can continue our business as usual without disruption once the UK leaves the EU. All our existing European business functions, facilities, departments, sites and location of our people will remain unchanged from today."
Sony spokesperson Takashi Iida said the move would make Sony a "company based in the EU" so the common customs procedures will apply to Sony's European operations after Britain leaves the bloc.
Sony's rival Panasonic has already moved its headquarters to Amsterdam, mostly because of tax issues potentially created by Brexit.
Both companies say the decision is unlikely to have a major impact on jobs in the UK.
When Panasonic announced its move, it said "fewer than approximately 10" people would be affected out of a staff of 30.
Several Japanese firms, including Daiwa Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, have said they plan to move their main EU bases out of London.
Nomura Holdings has set up new offices for certain operations in Paris and Frankfurt as part of its Brexit preparations, but says it headquarters remain in London.
Japanese bank Norinchukin announced earlier this month that it would set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in the Netherlands in response to Brexit and other economic changes in Europe.
A number of Japanese carmakers have also expressed concern over the impact of a hard Brexit.
Toyota has warned that a no-deal Brexit would affect investment and would temporarily halt output at its plant in Burnaston.
Honda  has already planned a six day halt in April to plan for "all possible outcomes caused by logistics and border issues".

Spain hopes to reach an agreement with the UK over Gibraltar by the summer, its foreign minister has said.
Alfonso Dastis said Spain would "defend our position" but the two sides were "working towards" an agreement as soon as possible.
The UK says "informal" talks are going on about Gibraltar's post-Brexit future with Spain.
Spain has a long-standing territorial claim on Gibraltar, a UK overseas territory on the Iberian Peninsula.
Mr Dastis has previously said that sovereignty would not be an issue in Brexit negotiations.
Instead Madrid wants joint management of Gibraltar's airport and more co-operation on tax fraud and border controls.
Asked if he was hopeful agreement could be reached before October - when the UK and EU hope to reach a Brexit deal that can then be ratified by EU states - Mr  Dastis told the BBC: "We are definitely determined to defend our position so I don't exclude anything.
"But we are definitely working towards having an agreement before October, even if possible by the summer, and we hope... that there is also, from the British side, a position which works towards that end."
The EU has said that no future Brexit trade deal may apply to Gibraltar without a bilateral agreement between Spain and the UK.
Mr Dastis said the two sides had met three or four times already this year: "We are having very constructive conversations."
Spain wants joint management of Gibraltar's airport, which is located on a disputed strip of land connecting Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland.
Mr Dastis said that while Spain "cannot accept" British jurisdiction over the land, it wanted to use the airport "to the benefit of the population of Gibraltar".
Asked what joint management would mean, he said: "We will have to work out what the exact terms will be.
"We have tried twice. Once it was rejected by the UK, the second time it was rejected by us - maybe third time lucky?"
Responding to Mr Dastis's comments, a spokesman for the UK government said: "We are having a wide range of discussions with member states, including Spain, about our departure from the EU, including the practical implications for Gibraltar.
"Discussions are continuing with the Government of Gibraltar and our European partners on how to address the specific challenges and opportunities here."
The Government of Gibraltar did not respond directly to Mr Dastis's comments, but in a speech last week, its chief minister Fabian Picardo said Gibraltar had agreed "key fundamentals" with the UK for after Brexit - including the continuation of current trade arrangements.
He added that Gibraltar would seek to establish "new lines of co-operation with the EU" and in particular, Spain, "not because we feel threatened, but because that is our nature".
"And we will continue to seek to construct new synergies for the future and avoid unnecessary confrontation because it has always been our approach."
He added that while Spain had a list of "historic irritants" it wanted to resolve, Gibraltar had its own list of issues that it wanted addressed - including removing Gibraltar from "financial services blacklists" and better traffic flows at the border.
"One of these is also, for us, the future arrangements that might be agreed by us for the exploitation of our £84m airport pursuant to an agreement with Spain, as well as the ability to access the EU Single Sky [an initiative aimed at streamlining air traffic management in the bloc] , even after we leave the EU".
Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht but Spain has continued to press its claim - which is rejected by both the UK and Gibraltar itself.
Gibraltarians rejected by 99% to 1% the idea of the UK sharing sovereignty with Spain in a vote in 2002 and in a previous referendum in 1967.
But Gibraltar voted by 96% to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum.

A Standard Chartered bank executive says tough demands by EU regulators could mean more jobs being moved from the UK overseas than currently thought.
Europe and Americas boss Tracy Clarke says the relatively small size of the bank in the EU market means it would not "be moving hundreds of people".
But she says the impact on banks with large EU services may be "significant".
Standard Chartered is to spend about £15m turning its Frankfurt office into a European base due to Brexit.
The bank plans to create a subsidiary at its German branch in order to maintain access to the European market after the UK withdraws from the European Union.
It has been waiting nearly nine months for EU officials to approve the relevant banking licence, which it originally expected to receive by the spring.
Ms Clarke told the Press Association: "Because we were one of the first [to apply for a licence] there was no precedent for us, or for them. It's been a learning process on both sides."
The European Central Bank has said it will not tolerate so-called brass plate operations - that is where companies have a presence in a host country in name only.
Mr Clarke says it means banks such as the UK-headquartered Standard Chartered may end up moving more jobs due to Brexit than originally planned, in order to meet European banking compliance rules.
"For us, it still won't be hundreds more people because of the size and scale of our business, so you might be talking a few more for us.
"But if they're taking this approach with all other banks who are much bigger than we are in terms of their European business, that could be more significant," she warned.
The ECB would not comment on Standard Chartered but said it is "keen to prevent banks from creating empty shells when granting licences to international banks setting up new subsidiaries in the euro area in the context of Brexit".
It added there were a number of criteria to be considered when assessing licence applications, including that subsidiaries have adequate local management capabilities, and can provide accurate data on their local activities.

Stephen Barclay has been picked as the new Brexit secretary, as Theresa May seeks to fill her cabinet after several of her top team quit.
The MP for North East Cambridgeshire - who is a Leave supporter - had been a health minister since January.
He replaces Dominic Raab, who resigned on Thursday over Mrs May's withdrawal agreement for Brexit.
A No 10 spokesman indicated that Mr Barclay would focus on the domestic preparations rather than negotiations.
Mr Barclay's promotion comes after a tumultuous few days for Mrs May, after two senior ministers and several other junior ministers and aides quit following the publication of the proposed Brexit agreement.
And some Conservative Brexiteers who are unhappy with the deal have also been submitting letters of no-confidence in Mrs May. If 48 letters are sent, then a vote will be triggered and Mrs May could face a challenge to her leadership.
But shortly before Mr Barclay's appointment, two leading Brexiteers in the cabinet, Environment Secretary Michael Gove and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox publicly threw their support behind her.
In a tweet, Mr Barclay said he was "looking forward" to getting to work.
Mr Barclay becomes the third Brexit Secretary since the role was created, after Mr Raab and David Davis - who resigned over Mrs May's Brexit plans in July.
He has been congratulated on Twitter by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss, who said he was "a star" when he worked in her department.
But Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: "Stephen Barclay's appointment changes absolutely nothing.
"After two years of negotiation, the prime minister has failed to deliver a Brexit deal that can command the support of Parliament.
"A new face in the Brexit department will do nothing to bring this divided government back together."
Environment Secretary Michael Gove - who the BBC understood had at one point been contemplating his position before rallying behind Mrs May - is understood to have turned down the role of Brexit secretary following Mr Raab's departure.
Stephen Barclay - or Steve Barclay as he calls himself on Twitter - is a former banker and has also held the posts of City minister and a whip at the Treasury.
BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said Mr Barclay was not a household name and it was a big promotion for him.
But he also described the 46-year-old as ultra-loyal, having never rebelled against the government.
Vicky Ford, a fellow Tory MP and a friend of Mr Barclay, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme he is known for listening "very, very hard and getting things done".
Mr Barclay, who is said to be a close friend of Theresa May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell, is married and has two children.
Meanwhile, Amber Rudd has been named the new work and pensions secretary - replacing Esther McVey, the second senior minister who resigned over the PM's Brexit plans on Thursday.
Ms Rudd said she was "delighted" to be given the role, and saw it as her job to "try to iron out" the issues with Universal Credit.
In her first interview in her new job, Ms Rudd called on any colleagues planning to submit letters of no-confidence in Mrs May to "think again".
"This is not a time for changing our leader," she said.
"This is a time for pulling together, for making sure we remember who we are here to serve, who we are here to help: that's the whole of the country."
Stephen Hammond will take over from Mr Barclay at the department for health and social care.
The government also announced replacements for two junior ministers who resigned over Mrs May's deal.
John Penrose will join the Northern Ireland office, replacing Shailesh Vara, and Kwasi Kwarteng will go to the Department for Exiting the EU, replacing Suella Braverman.
Mrs May agreed a draft withdrawal agreement for Brexit with her cabinet on Wednesday, which had already been signed off by negotiators from both the UK and EU.
But the deal led to a backlash from some Brexit-supporting MPs, including Mr Raab and Ms McVey.
Around 20 Tory MPs have publicly called for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, with more thought to have written to the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee to call for a vote on her leadership.
But Mrs May responded to critics saying she will stay in No 10 and see the deal through.

Lib Dem MP Stephen Lloyd has quit the party's group in Parliament so he can vote for Theresa May's Brexit deal.
The Eastbourne MP says he remains a member of the party, but wants to keep his promise to voters to respect the result of the referendum.
"I have decided that the only honourable thing for me to do is resign the party whip in Parliament," he said.
His departure reduces the number of Lib Dems MPs to 11. The party opposes Brexit and backs a further referendum.
The party's position is that they will vote against the Brexit deal Theresa May has negotiated with the EU, when MPs vote on it next Tuesday.
In a statement Mr Lloyd said: "I have come to the conclusion that I cannot honestly uphold the commitment I made... to accept the result of the referendum, vote for the deal the prime minister brought back from the EU and not back calls for a second referendum - whilst supporting the Lib Dem parliamentary party's formal position of voting against Theresa May's deal and advocating a 'People's Vote'.
"Although I have resigned the Whip, I continue to be a member of the Liberal Democrats, have nothing but respect and affection for the party leader, Sir Vince Cable MP, my Parliamentary colleagues and the Lib Dems.
"I will not cease fighting hard for liberal values, both locally and nationally."
While Mr Lloyd campaigned for a Remain vote in the 2016 EU Referendum, Eastbourne backed Leave by 57% - higher than the national average of 52%. In the 2017 snap election, Mr Lloyd beat his Conservative rival Caroline Ansell by 1,609 votes, having lost it to her in 2015.
A Liberal Democrat statement said: "We respect what we know was a difficult decision for Stephen ahead of next week's vote and are sorry to see him go. Liberal Democrats are clear that we will be voting against Theresa May's deal.
"The Liberal Democrats have campaigned for an exit from Brexit and a people's vote where people can choose to remain in the European Union...  we will continue to fight for this in Parliament."

Liam Fox and David Davis have called for an end to pessimism over Brexit and for the British public to "keep their eyes on the prize" on offer.
The international trade secretary hit out at "negative" attitudes in certain quarters and urged people to be more upbeat about the UK's prospects.
"We are not passengers in our own destiny," he told the Tory conference.
In his speech, Mr Davis said the UK would still be "good Europeans" in all respects after leaving.
Mr Davis, Mr Fox and foreign secretary Boris Johnson - dubbed the three Brexiteers - all made eagerly-awaited speeches to conference on Tuesday afternoon.
Earlier on Tuesday, MEPs in the European Parliament claimed cabinet divisions were hampering the UK's approach to negotiations and urged EU leaders to postpone a decision on extending the talks to discuss trade.
While the negotiations were proving difficult and at times fractious, Mr Davis said his job was to keep calm and he urged Tory activists to "keep their eyes on the prize" on offer following the UK's exit from the EU.
Brexit, he said, was a "one-off time-limited extraordinary opportunity" to shape the country's future.
"An opportunity to make sure that all the decisions about the future of this country are taken by our parliament, our courts, our institutions," he said.
"Decisions about how to spend our taxes - made here in Britain. Decisions about who comes into the country - made here in Britain. All our laws - made here in Britain.
"We need to get Britain standing on its own two feet - facing outwards to the world."
Criticising what he said was Labour's flip-flopping on Europe, he said the Brexit talks were perhaps the most "complex" negotiations ever and that one mistake could cost the UK billions in lost business.
While he was committed to getting a deal with the EU, he said the UK was prepared for alternative scenarios and contingency planning was taking place for no agreement being reached.
While he was prepared to work with other parties to improve the government's EU Withdrawal Bill, which will convert existing EU laws into British law, he said he would not let the bill be "wrecked".
He countered claims that the UK was not a "good European", saying the UK was at the forefront of defending Europe's borders, taking the lead in tackling terrorism and a leading sponsor of humanitarian aid.
Mr Fox said all the UK's international partners wanted to do business with it but he warned advanced economies which had benefited from free markets and unrestricted trade not to "pull up the drawbridge", amid what he said was a worrying growth in protectionism.
"We need to stop the negative, undermining, self-defeating pessimism that is too prevalent in certain quarters and be bold, be brave and rise to the global challenges, together," he argued.
Labour's shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, said: "Fox has had more than a year to bring forward a trade white paper that sets out a proper road map for business export and inward investment.
"Today would have been a sensible time to introduce some of its key ideas. Instead we got meaningless bravado from the government's most policy-light minister."

A £1.6bn government fund has been launched to boost less well-off towns in England after Brexit.
The pot is split into £1bn, divided in England using a needs-based formula, and £600m communities can bid for.
More than half of the money, to be spread over seven years, will go to the north of England and the Midlands.
Labour called it a bribe to influence MPs to back the PM's Brexit deal and critics say it does not cover cuts to local authority funding.
The Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government said there will be additional announcements "in due course" for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
In January, MPs rejected the withdrawal deal Theresa May has reached with the EU by 230 votes - the biggest defeat for a sitting government in history.
To win another vote, which Mrs May has promised will be on or before 12 March, she could find herself relying on the votes of Labour MPs from Leave-voting parts of the country.
John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, a former coal mining area in Nottinghamshire, told the PM last month to "show us the money" with "transformative investment" in areas that voted to leave.
The Labour MP, who backed Mrs May's Brexit deal at the first vote, denied it amounted to "transactional politics".
But John McDonnell, Labour's shadow chancellor, said the fund "smacks of desperation from a government reduced to bribing MPs to vote for their damaging flagship Brexit legislation".
The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said the money will be targeted on coastal communities, market towns, and de-industrialised towns, which meets the demands of some Labour MPs, who say regeneration funding tends to go to big cities.
The funding will go to specific projects like a new university campus or railway station, our correspondent added.
Dismissing the claim that the funding aimed to entice Labour MPs, Housing and Communities Secretary James Brokenshire insisted the cash would be made available even if the withdrawal agreement was rejected and denied the funding was a bribe.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "This funding is there regardless of the outcome, but obviously we want to see a deal happening, we believe that is what is in the best interests of our country."
He said the money would "supplement the work of councils" and could be "transformative" and was there "to see that towns grow".
However, Labour MP Alex Sobel, of the cross-party People's Vote campaign, which wants a new referendum on Brexit, said it was "a drop in the ocean" compared with the cost of leaving the EU.
He said the annual loss to local economies would be more than enough to wipe out any potential return from this scheme.
Labour's Ruth Smeeth, the MP for Leave-supporting Stoke-on-Trent, described the amount of money as "extraordinarily pathetic".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour programme, she said: "If you're talking about national renewal, this is less money than is being taken out of my economy by the introduction of [new welfare system] universal credit over the next four years."
Labour and Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Gareth Snell said the announcement was a "huge disappointment", tweeting: "The entire allocation for the West Midlands over four years is less than the total value of cuts faced by Stoke-on-Trent City Council alone over the same period."
Anna Turley, Labour MP for Redcar, has described the funding as "a shameless little bung."
She told BBC Radio 5 Live that £90m had been lost from her local council over nine years of austerity and the money was "bobbins" and was "shameless and embarrassing".
And Labour's Rhondda MP Chris Bryant tweeted: "And not a penny for Wales. The trouble with bribes is they embody injustice."
But the prime minister insisted: "Communities across the country voted for Brexit as an expression of their desire to see change - that must be a change for the better, with more opportunity and greater control.
"These towns have a glorious heritage, huge potential and, with the right help, a bright future ahead of them."
She said prosperity had been "unfairly spread" for "too long".
By BBC political correspondent Iain Watson
A month ago John Mann - who voted to leave the EU - told the BBC there was a "good dialogue" going on with the government.
And he was hopeful Mrs May would come back with "something significant" for his, and other, areas outside London.
He and a group of Labour MPs from Leave areas were demanding the protection of employment rights after Brexit - and assurances poorer areas wouldn't lose out when EU regional funding ended.
The cash on offer from the government is equivalent to less than 2% of English local authority spending.
Theresa May says she is simply making good a promise she made in her first speech as prime minister to help "ordinary working class families".
But the Labour leadership see this as a "bribe" to tempt some of their own MPs to break ranks and back Mrs May's deal.
The former Conservative, now Independent, MP Anna Soubry claims it's an attempt to buy votes.
But the government insists the true beneficiaries will be residents of coastal and industrial communities who feel left behind.
The £1.6bn Stronger Towns Fund will be broken down into £600m, which communities in any part of England can bid for, and £1bn allocated using a needs-based formula to the following areas:
"The formula allocations are based on a combination of productivity, income, skills, deprivation metrics and proportion of the population living in towns," a department spokesperson said.
"This targets funding at those places with economies that are performing relatively less well to the England average."
London is not included in the list, but towns within Greater London can bid for a share of the £600m pot, the department spokesperson added.
The government said communities would be able to draw up job-boosting plans for their town, with the support and advice of their Local Enterprise Partnerships.
It added that it would also seek to ensure towns in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would benefit from the new funding.

Scotland's first minister has signed a letter formally asking for powers to hold a second Scottish independence referendum.
The Scottish Parliament voted by 69 to 59 on Tuesday in favour of seeking permission for another referendum.
Nicola Sturgeon argues Scotland should have the choice on what path to follow in the wake of the Brexit vote.
The UK government has already indicated that any referendum should wait until the Brexit process has been completed.
Prime Minister Theresa May, who met Ms Sturgeon for talks in Glasgow on Monday, has repeatedly insisted that "now is not the time".
She argues that the focus should be on getting the best Brexit deal for the whole of the UK, and Scottish voters can only make an informed choice once the terms are clear.
By Sarah Smith, Scotland editor
Sitting on the sofa, her shoes kicked off, putting the final touches to that letter
It couldn't be more different from the very formal portrait of Theresa May signing the Article 50 letter in Downing Street. Very different images - and that is no accident.
But while the picture may look quite casual, the contents of this letter are  not.
In it the first minister asserts that she has a clear mandate to ask for another referendum since the Scottish parliament voted to back her on Tuesday.
And she repeats her request for a vote in 18-24 months time. She says by then the shape of the Brexit deal will be clear.
But she knows what the prime minister is going to say in reply.
Constitutional matters are reserved to Westminster so the Scottish government must ask for the powers to hold such a vote to be transferred to Holyrood under a Section 30 order, as was done before the 2014 referendum.
The Scottish government released a photo of Nicola Sturgeon drafting the letter to Theresa May, with her feet curled up on a sofa at her official residence, Bute House in Edinburgh.
The letter is expected to be sent to Downing Street on Friday.
Ms Sturgeon is seeking a referendum between the autumn next year and spring 2019 - but has indicated she would be willing to negotiate the timing.
If, as expected, the request is declined, Ms Sturgeon has said she will set out her government's next steps in April, when MSPs return to the Scottish Parliament after the Easter recess.
The two-day debate at Holyrood on an independence referendum began last week but was suspended as news of the terror attack at Westminster emerged.
When it resumed on Tuesday, the minority SNP government was backed by the pro-independence Scottish Greens in the vote, with the Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems opposed.
Scottish voters rejected independence by 55% to 45% in a referendum in 2014, but Ms Sturgeon believes the UK voting to leave the EU is a material change in circumstances which means people should again be asked the question.
While the UK as a whole voted to leave, Scotland voted by 62% to 38% to remain in the EU.
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When Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, described the Treasury as the "heart of Remain" he was only partially correct.
When a Cabinet minister said directly to me when asked about relations with Philip Hammond, "Well, he's a Remainer", that person missed the target.
Mr Hammond and the Treasury have long since given up on any idea that the UK can remain a member of the European Union.
But, at heart, the most powerful department in government - and many forget that is still true despite the "spreadsheet Phil" dismissal of his critics - believes that the closest possible relationship with the European Union is the only way to reduce the potential of lasting economic damage to Britain post-Brexit.
Whilst others such as Mr Johnson and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, have dominated the headlines, the Treasury has played it differently.
Submarine would be a good descriptor.
Under the surface, the department has focused its most senior people on persuading departments across government of two things.
First, that the economic and trading links between Britain and the rest of the EU are so deep and intractable that a sharp and irrevocable split would carry perilous risk.
From that argument came agreement to a "transition period" following the UK's official departure from the EU next March.
Second, that open economies such as Britain depend on goods being traded freely across borders and that the way to achieve this with the UK's biggest customer, the EU, was via some form of customs deal.
From that argument came the "facilitated customs arrangement" the Cabinet is discussing at Chequers today.
A system that ties the UK so closely to EU regulations and processes that free-trade deals with other counties, such as America, become difficult to the point of impossible.
In its arguments for the softest of soft Brexits, the Treasury has had some allies.
The first is not a person, but a thing - the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Only via close alignment with the EU can there be any hope that the border can be kept free of customs checks, a key requirement, given the Good Friday agreement, of both the UK government and the EU.
The second is Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, who spoke yesterday of the need to listen "with the greatest respect" to companies such as Jaguar Land Rover when it said that billions of pounds of investment were at risk and jobs could be lost if barriers were suddenly thrown up between Britain and the EU.
In his interview with me in Newcastle yesterday, Mr Clark also executed a subtle but significant change of language.
Not that, when it came to goods, Britain would attempt a deal with the EU as friction free "as possible".
But that it would attempt a deal that was friction free, period.
That means some form of customs union on goods with the EU.
Third is economic growth, which the Bank of England has said is up to two percentage points below where it was expected to be had Brexit uncertainty not weighed on business investment decisions and consumer spending power.
The real world effects of the referendum, the Bank said, were "material".
Of course, the Treasury has not yet "won" anything.
The Cabinet has not agreed to the latest Brexit plan.
Opponents of Mr Hammond's approach say that "close alignment" means the result of the referendum has not been respected and opportunities to exploit new global trade deals could be lost.
The "facilitated customs arrangement" relies on technological gymnastics so intricate the systems do not yet exist and no other country in the world has attempted to follow a similar path.
The European Union is wary of any deal that could be portrayed as giving Britain "preferential treatment".
The "having cake and eating it" problem still remains.
But, given that just over a year ago the headlines were talking of Theresa May's plans to sack the Chancellor, Mr Hammond will be at Chequers knowing that the Treasury's submarine approach appears to have secured at least the beach-head towards the softest of soft Brexits.

The Supreme Court has dismissed the government's appeal in a landmark case about Brexit, meaning Parliament will be required to give its approval before official talks on leaving the EU can begin.
The ruling is a significant, although not totally unexpected, setback for Theresa May.
What will the prime minister do next and what impact will the ruling have on the process of leaving the EU, following last year's referendum vote?
The highest court in the UK dismissed the government's argument that it has the power to begin official Brexit negotiations with the rest of the EU without Parliament's prior agreement.
By a margin of eight to three, the 11 justices upheld November's High Court ruling which stated that it would be unlawful for the government to rely on executive powers known as the royal prerogative to implement the outcome of last year's referendum.
It said a law would have to be passed to authorise Article 50 but the precise form such legislation should take was "entirely a matter" for Parliament.
Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the government would "comply with the judgement of the court and do all that is necessary to implement it".
In a statement to Parliament setting out details of the government's legislative response, David Davis said he intended to publish an outline bill "within days".
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the details could be announced as early as Thursday, with a view to staging the first vote next week and getting it through the Commons within a couple of weeks.
We will get more details from the government later this week, with draft legislation already said to have been prepared in preparation for the appeal being rejected.
The new bill is expected to be short, with the government's lawyer suggesting during the hearing that "one-line" legislation could be put forward.
Both the House of Commons and House of Lords will have to vote in favour of it.
Separately, the government has agreed to produce an official policy document known as a White Paper explaining its objectives for the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
Ministers initially resisted the move, saying it would take too long, but Theresa May has agreed to it. The concession is being seen as a victory for opposition parties and a group of former Tory ministers who oppose a so-called "hard Brexit" and want to examine the government's plans in greater detail.
The bill will be given special priority by Parliament, whose order of business is still largely controlled by ministers.
While Tory MPs would like to see it fast-tracked through Parliament, many Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs will want as much time as possible to discuss a variety of issues and to make amendments.
The SNP responded to the ruling by saying it would table 50 "serious and substantive" amendments.
Labour said it too would seek to amend the bill but would not "frustrate" the Brexit process.
However it pans out, BBC Parliamentary correspondent Mark D'Arcy says the bill could pass through the Commons before the half-term recess in the middle of February, giving ample time for the Lords to then consider it and for it to become law before the end of March.
While there are some MPs who want the process to be delayed, they are vastly outnumbered by those who want the government to get on with it so that the UK will have left the EU by the time of the next election - scheduled for May 2020.
In theory, yes there is. But in reality it is extremely unlikely to happen.
Few, if any, Conservative MPs are likely to vote against Article 50. In fact, only one - the europhile former chancellor Ken Clarke - has said he will do so.
Given that the Tories have a working majority of 15 in the Commons, this means that the bill is guaranteed to pass - especially since a majority of Labour MPs have said they will not stand in the way of the process and many will actually vote for Article 50.
Although the Lib Dems, the SNP and some Labour MPs are likely to vote against, this will make little difference. What will be more interesting is if a coalition of pro-European Conservatives and opposition MPs join forces to win concessions, over the extent of Parliamentary scrutiny of the two-year process.
Events in the Lords - where the government does not have a working majority and there are 178 non-affiliated cross-bench peers - could be more unpredictable. Mark D'Arcy says there are murmurings of an organised attempt to resist Article 50 and a "doomed last stand" by diehard Remainers.
But amid warnings that any attempt to block Brexit could trigger a general election, in which the future of the Lords would be a major issue - it is likely that the skirmishes will amount to just that and the government will eventually get its way.
The Supreme Court case wasn't just a battle over the powers of the executive and the legislature.
The justices heard a number of separate but related challenges to the government's Brexit approach, centred around the involvement of the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
But the court unanimously ruled that devolved administrations did not need to be consulted, and did not have a right to veto Article 50.
The government has previously said Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be kept fully involved.

Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks was unlawful, the Supreme Court has ruled.
Judges said it was wrong to stop MPs carrying out duties in the run-up to the Brexit deadline on 31 October.
The PM, who has faced calls to resign, said he "profoundly disagreed" with the ruling but would "respect" it.
The Labour conference finished early following the ruling and MPs are returning to Westminster ready for Parliament to reconvene on Wednesday.
A senior government official said the prime minister spoke to the Queen after the Supreme Court ruling, but would not reveal the details of the conversation.
It comes after the court ruled it was impossible to conclude there had been any reason  "let alone a good reason - to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks".
Mr Johnson, who returns to London from New York on Wednesday, also chaired a 30-minute phone call with his cabinet.
A source told the BBC that the Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg said to other cabinet ministers on the call that the action by the court had amounted to a "constitutional coup".
The prime minister insisted he wanted to outline his government's policies in a Queen's Speech on 14 October, and to do that, Parliament must be prorogued and a new session started.
But critics said he was trying to stop MPs scrutinising his Brexit plans and the suspension was far longer than necessary.
During a speech in New York, the PM said he "refused to be deterred" from getting on with "an exciting and dynamic domestic agenda", and to do that he would need a Queen's Speech.
The court ruling does not prevent him from proroguing again in order to hold one, as long as it does not stop Parliament carrying out its duties "without reasonable justification".
A No 10 source said the Supreme Court had "made a serious mistake in extending its reach to these political matters", and had "made it clear that its reasons [were] connected to the Parliamentary disputes over, and timetable for" Brexit.
But Supreme Court president Lady Hale emphasised in the ruling that the case was "not about when and on what terms" the UK left the EU - it was about the decision to suspend Parliament.
Delivering the justices' conclusions, she said: "The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification."
Lady Hale said the unanimous decision of the 11 justices meant Parliament had effectively not been prorogued - the decision was null and of no effect.
Speaker of the Commons John Bercow said MPs needed to return "in light of the explicit judgement", and he had "instructed the House of Commons authorities to prepare... for the resumption of business" from 11:30 BST on Wednesday.
He said prime minister's questions would not go ahead, but there would be "full scope" for urgent questions, ministerial statements and applications for emergency debates.
Short of the inscrutable Lady Hale, with the giant diamond spider on her lapel, declaring Boris Johnson to be Pinocchio, this judgement is just about as bad for the government as it gets.
Mr Johnson is, as is abundantly clear, prepared to run a general election campaign that pits Parliament against the people. And so what, according to that view of the world, if that includes the judges as part of the establishment standing in his way?
But there is a difference between being ruthless and reckless.
And the scope and strength of this judgement cannot just be dismissed as some pesky judges sticking their noses in.
Reacting to the ruling, Mr Johnson said it was an "unusual judgement", adding: "The prerogative of prorogation has been used for centuries without this kind of challenge.
"There are a lot of people who basically want to stop this country from coming out of the EU and we have a Parliament that is unable to be prorogued and doesn't want to have an election. I think it is time we took things forward."
The PM said getting a deal was "not made much easier with these sort of things in Parliament or the courts", but insisted the UK would still leave on 31 October.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was due to close the Labour Party conference in Brighton with a speech on Wednesday, but brought it forward to Tuesday afternoon so he could return to Westminster.
He told cheering delegates: "Tomorrow Parliament will return. The government will be held to account for what it has done. Boris Johnson has been found to have misled the country. This unelected prime minister should now resign."
Lawyers for the government had argued the decision to prorogue was one for Parliament, not the courts.
But the justices disagreed, unanimously deciding it was "justiciable", and there was "no doubt that the courts have jurisdiction to decide upon the existence and limits of a prerogative power".
The court also criticised the length of the suspension, with Lady Hale saying it was "impossible for us to conclude, on the evidence which has been put before us, that there was any reason - let alone a good reason - to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament for five weeks".
A spokesperson from the Attorney General's office said the government had acted in "good faith and in the belief that its approach was both lawful and constitutional".
"These are complex matters on which senior and distinguished lawyers have disagreed," a statement said.
"The Divisional Court led by the Lord Chief Justice agreed unanimously with the government's legal position, as did the Outer House in Scotland.
"We are disappointed that in the end the Supreme Court took a different view. We respect the judgment of the Supreme Court."
Wow! This is legal, constitutional and political dynamite.
It is worth just taking a breath and considering that a prime minister of the United Kingdom has been found by the highest court in the land to have acted unlawfully in shutting down the sovereign body in our constitution, Parliament, at a time of national crisis.
The court may have fallen short of saying Boris Johnson had an improper motive of stymieing or frustrating parliamentary scrutiny, but the damage is done, he has been found to have acted unlawfully and stopped Parliament from doing its job without any legal justification.
And the court has quashed both his advice to the Queen and the Order in Council which officially suspended parliament.
That means Parliament was never prorogued and so we assume that MPs are free to re-enter the Commons.
This is the most dramatic example yet of independent judges, through the mechanism of judicial review, stopping the government in its tracks because what it has done is unlawful.
Be you ever so mighty, the law is above you - even if you are the prime minister.
Unprecedented, extraordinary, ground breaking - it is difficult to overestimate the constitutional and political significance of today's ruling.
The ruling was made after a three-day hearing at the Supreme Court last week which dealt with two appeals - one from campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller, the second from the government.
Mrs Miller was appealing against the English High Court's decision that the prorogation was "purely political" and not a matter for the courts.
The government was appealing against the ruling by Scotland's Court of Session that the prorogation was "unlawful" and had been used to "stymie" Parliament.
The court ruled in favour of Mrs Miller's appeal and against the government's.
Speaking outside the court, Mrs Miller said the ruling "speaks volumes".
"This prime minister must open the doors of Parliament tomorrow. MPs must get back and be brave and bold in holding this unscrupulous government to account," she added.
The SNP's Joanna Cherry, who led the Scottish case, called for Mr Johnson to resign as a result of the ruling.
"The highest court in the United Kingdom has unanimously found that his advice to prorogue this Parliament, his advice given to Her Majesty the Queen, was unlawful," she said.
"His position is untenable and he should have the guts, for once, to do the decent thing and resign."
Former Prime Minister Sir John Major - one of the sponsors of the prorogation appeal - said it gave him "no pleasure to be pitted against a government and prime minister of my own party".
"No prime minister must ever treat the monarch or Parliament in this way again."
Mr Johnson was backed by US President Donald Trump at a joint press conference at the United Nations in New York.
"I'll tell you, I know him well, he's not going anywhere," said Mr Trump, after a US reporter quizzed the prime minister on whether he was going to resign.
But reaction at home was far more negative. Scotland's First Minister, the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon, said the ruling was the most significant constitutional judgement in her lifetime, and it would be "unthinkable" for Mr Johnson to remain in office.
Wales' First Minister, Labour's Mark Drakeford, said the court's decision had been a "victory for the rule of law" and the PM had "tried to play fast and loose with our constitution".
In Northern Ireland, the leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, said the ruling must be respected, while Sinn Fein's vice president, Michelle O'Neill, said Mr Johnson should resign.
Other figures have taken to Twitter to support the court's decision, including former Tory minister Amber Rudd, who resigned her post - and the party whip - over the government's approach to Brexit.
The leader of The Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, said Mr Johnson must, "as a matter of honour", offer his resignation to MPs in Parliament on Wednesday.
The decision to prorogue Parliament had been a "disaster", he added, and there must be a general election "before very long because Parliament and the government have ceased to function".
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who has been an outspoken critic of the suspension, said he was "not surprised" by the judgement because of the "gross misbehaviour by the prime minister".
He told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme he was "delighted" the Supreme Court had "stopped this unconstitutional act in its tracks".
But Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said the court's decision was "the worst possible outcome for our democracy" and "an absolute disgrace".
He told the same programme: "What we've got is a Parliament that's completely out of step with sentiment of the country."
Fellow Tory MP and chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group Steve Baker said the ruling was an "earthquake moment".
He described the Commons as a "rotten Parliament" facing a "crisis", and called for a general election so a government with a majority could move forward.
Prorogation is a power that rests with the Queen, carried out by her on the advice of the prime minister.
And at the end of August - shortly before MPs returned from their summer recess - Mr Johnson called Her Majesty to advise she suspend Parliament between 9 September until 14 October.
MPs had been expecting to be in recess for some of these weeks for their party conferences.
But unlike prorogation, a recess must be agreed by a vote, and a number of MPs said they would have voted against it to ensure they could scrutinise Mr Johnson's Brexit plans.
The decision to prorogue prompted an uproar from the Commons, especially from MPs who had planned to take control of Parliament to force through a law to block a no-deal Brexit after Mr Johnson said the UK would leave the EU with or without a deal on the Halloween deadline.
Despite only sitting for a week, they did manage to pass that law ahead of prorogation and it received royal assent on 9 September.
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The Supreme Court ruling that the prime minister's suspension of Parliament was void and his advice to the Queen unlawful, raises all sorts of questions for the EU - will their Brexit negotiating partner Boris Johnson stay in his job? When might the UK hold a general election?
Privately the court ruling has been described to me by EU sources as "an embarrassment" and "a humiliation" for Boris Johnson but this isn't the first time the EU has found itself faced with similar questions about possibly imminent elections and Mr Johnson's longevity as prime minister.
Yet then, as now, the EU has taken the decision to put its metaphorical hands over its metaphorical ears in an attempt to block out the noise.
Why? Because EU leaders view the Supreme Court ruling and what follows next in the UK as an unpredictable domestic political affair. They regard themselves as onlookers to that drama - which is why German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have stayed silent, and why the European Commission refused to comment on the ruling on Tuesday, however hard UK journalists pushed.
Brussels prefers to focus on where it can play a part - negotiations. And there, in the short term at least, Tuesday's ruling changes little. EU leaders still want a Brexit deal and, under EU law, their negotiating partner is Her Majesty's government, still headed by Boris Johnson.
EU-UK technical talks are pressing ahead on Wednesday in Brussels, regardless of what might be going on in a parallel universe in London, when MPs are reunited with the prime minister in Parliament.
But is the Supreme Court ruling a demotivating factor for the EU in engaging with the Johnson government?
In fact, EU politicians say the most demotivating factor for them is the lack of a guarantee that the majority of MPs would definitely approve a new Brexit deal, even if they made big compromises.
But, although EU leaders says they are "open" to another Brexit extension, such is the impatience with the more than three-year-long Brexit debate, they would love to agree a new deal with Boris Johnson by mid-October as he hopes to do.
And yet, scepticism is rife in Brussels.
One diplomat from a country traditionally very close to the UK told me: "The prospects of an October deal already weren't good. They're now complicated further by UK domestic issues. Time, as we always say, is running out."
EU diplomats argue that the current UK ideas on how to replace the Irish backstop in a new Brexit deal may be a start. But as the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said on Tuesday in Berlin, in EU eyes the UK proposals fall far short of the "technically detailed, legally operable, concrete solutions" they are calling for.
Pushback from journalists and/or the UK government that the EU needs to compromise, too, is rejected at this stage in Brussels.
The stock reply is that before anyone in the EU thinks of compromise, they need realistic UK proposals to negotiate over.
As for assertions by UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and others that the EU always blinks at five minutes to midnight, EU contacts say this shows a misunderstanding of how the EU works.
One EU diplomat from a small member state commented to me: "We only compromise when that compromise doesn't cause us great harm."
Brussels believes it couldn't protect the single market, the Northern Ireland peace process or EU member state Ireland if it agreed to current UK proposals on how to replace the backstop.
And EU sources claim the two sides are still too far apart for it to make sense to "go into a tunnel" of intense negotiations with a media blackout at this stage.
EU governments admit that a new Brexit extension would be likely to take the pressure off both sides to make the compromises necessary to agree a new deal.
However, the bottom line is that Europe's leaders are unsure whether Boris Johnson would be willing to make Brexit compromises anyway, if he knows that he's heading into a general election.

Before everything gets swept up in a force 10 political storm, stop for a moment to think about what has just happened.
The highest court in the land has just ruled that the serving prime minister broke the law. He gave the Queen advice that was unlawful.
Therefore his decision to suspend Parliament was also against the law, so is now null and void.
Short of the inscrutable Lady Hale, with the giant diamond spider on her lapel, declaring Boris Johnson to be Pinocchio, this judgement is just about as bad for the government as it gets.
Mr Johnson is, as is abundantly clear, prepared to run a general election campaign that pits Parliament against the people. And so what, according to that view of the world, if that includes the judges as part of the establishment standing in his way?
But there is a difference between being ruthless and reckless. And the scope and strength of this judgement cannot just be dismissed as some pesky judges sticking their noses in.
Just a few weeks ago, the advice of government lawyers was said to be that it was unlikely the judges would want to step into such explosive territory. They were wrong. For the very many people in the Conservative Party who have doubts about Boris Johnson but wanted to give him the chance, this is a nightmare.
But back to that political storm which is, no surprise, already raging. To shouts of "Johnson out! Johnson out!" on the Labour conference floor, Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister should consider his position - in other words, he should quit.
The SNP and Liberal Democrats are calling on him to go now too.
The prime minister is in New York at the United Nations, and his team is yet to respond. But the idea that he would walk is far-fetched (for now). What seems certain, though, is that MPs will be sitting again in Parliament on Wednesday.
The Commons Speaker has already said they should convene urgently. Some MPs have, out of principle, already gone back to sit on the green benches. It is a different question, of course, to ask, for what purpose, what will they discuss.
There isn't suddenly going to be a majority in Parliament for a way out of this mess. And Boris Johnson will inevitably try to use this to his political advantage.
Do not underestimate how aggressive Number 10 might be willing to be in response to the judgement. It is possible they will fly straight back from New York to face the music - armed with what strategy is harder to read.
But the decision to suspend Parliament may just have blown up in Number 10's face.
In his two months in power, Boris Johnson has lost his first six Commons votes, broken the law by suspending Parliament, and misled the monarch.
Even for a politician who seems to enjoy breaking the rules, that is a serious charge that, only two months into office, even the most brazen Johnson backer cannot simply shrug off.

Westminster is buzzing with talk of splits, general elections, second referendums and even the formation of new political parties as Brexit strains traditional loyalties to breaking point.
With votes on any deal struck by Theresa May with the EU expected to happen this autumn, here is a guide to the main factions in the Commons:
Government ministers, basically - there are just over 100 them out of a total of 316 Tory MPs - and those backbenchers who support Theresa May's Brexit policies, or at least are not willing to vote against them and threaten her leadership.
Most Tory MPs fall into this category but it is not enough for Mrs May to be sure of winning key Commons votes, even with the support of the DUP's 10 MPs, who unlike Mrs May backed Leave in the EU referendum.
Ten members of Mrs May's government have quit in recent months - most of them because they are against her Chequers plan for post-Brexit trade, although Defence Minister Guto Bebb quit because he is in favour of it. Mr Bebb thought she had caved in to the hard Brexiteers (see below) over customs legislation. He has now joined the People's Vote campaign (see below).
Sixty Conservative MPs, headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured above), are members of the European Research Group - a pro-Brexit lobby, who are against Theresa May's plans for trading arrangements with the EU.
They are well-organised and highly motivated and the PM's continued survival in Number 10 is, largely, in their hands.
The rebel ranks were swollen by ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, former Brexit Secretary David Davis and his deputy Steve Baker, who all quit in protest at her blueprint for post-Brexit trade with the EU hammered out at her country residence Chequers, in July.
Mr Baker claims as many as 80 Conservative MPs are prepared to vote against the Chequers plan. He has warned about a "catastrophic split" in the Conservative Party if it is not able to unite around a different vision. Mr Johnson has thrown grenades - and a "suicide vest" - into the debate from the pages of national newspapers, with increasingly strident attacks on the Chequers proposal, prompting an angry backlash from Theresa May loyalists.
The Dominic Grieve gang. Like most of his cohorts, who number about a dozen and include former minister Nicky Morgan (seated behind Mr Grieve in the picture above) who led an unsuccessful rebellion in the customs vote, the former attorney general is not a natural rebel.
Mr Grieve and his supporters inflicted the government's first Brexit defeat, in December, securing a "meaningful vote" for MPs on the final deal with Brussels, but some wonder whether his gang have the killer instinct of their pro-Brexit rivals when that final showdown happens in the autumn. Mr Grieve has said he will quit the party if Boris Johnson becomes prime minister, in reaction to a row over the former foreign secretary's comments about the burka.
Conservative MP Anna Soubry, a close ally of Labour's Chuka Umunna in the People's Vote campaign for another EU referendum (see below), has called in the past for the creation of a new centre-ground party.
She also backed a call by fellow Conservative Sir Nicholas Soames - a longstanding pro-European and the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill - for a "government of national unity", made up of senior figures from different parties to sort out Brexit, although that idea seems to have disappeared from the radar.
But it is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the UK's traditional centre party, who has emerged as the biggest cheerleader for a new centre party.
Sir Vince Cable is openly encouraging disaffected anti-Brexit Labour and Tory MPs to form new groups and work with the Lib Dems to colonise what he believes is the vast territory that has opened up in British politics as Labour moves to the left under Jeremy Corbyn and Tory Brexiteers push their party to the right.
Sir Vince, who has said he will stand down as Lib Dem leader once Brexit has been "resolved or stopped", admits his party, with just 12 MPs, has struggled to achieve the rapid growth in support it wanted despite being the only national party campaigning for a second referendum and has set out plans to transform into a "movement for moderates".
Former Education Secretary Justine Greening is the most senior Conservative to have called for a referendum on the final Brexit deal. She was backed by Heidi Allen and Anna Soubry, and another prominent backbencher, Sarah Wollaston, has also joined the People's Vote campaign. along with Phillip Lee and Guto Bebb.
Jeremy Corbyn's supporters insist the party has never been more united behind its leader - despite a bitter and divisive row about anti-Semitism that dragged on for months over the summer.
The vast majority of the shadow cabinet - about 30 MPs - and most of the 47 new Labour MPs elected last year, in addition to a handful of long-serving left wing backbenchers, are fiercely loyal to the leader and back his Brexit stance.
But many, maybe even the majority, of the 257 Labour MPs, including the self-styled "moderates" who served in government during the Blair/Brown era, remain unhappy with the direction the party is going in.
Some Corbyn critics have faced no confidence votes from their local parties, a sign they could face de-selection before the next general election.
Jeremy Corbyn's backing for Brexit and refusal to throw his weight behind calls for a second referendum, after campaigning for Remain in the referendum, are a major sore point among "moderate" Labour MPs, who suspect he remains a Eurosceptic at heart.
The cross-party People's Vote campaign for a second referendum is backed by about 30 Labour MPs, including prominent figures such as Chuka Umunna (pictured above), Chris Leslie and Stephen Doughty.
They outnumber members of other parties in the group, which also includes Lib Dems, Green MP Caroline Lucas, five Conservative MPs and Plaid Cymru's four MPs.
These MPs tend to eschew party labels when commenting on Brexit. The Labour members are in open revolt against their party leadership's opposition to a second referendum - but they insist they are not operating as a party within a party.
Chuka Umunna has written to members of his local party in Streatham, South London, to deny speculation he is involved in talks about the formation of a new party. The idea that the People's Vote is the forerunner of a such a party is "patently absurd", he writes.
But he has also claimed Jeremy Corbyn's supporters are trying to force "moderate" MPs like himself out of Labour, something the party leadership says is simply not the case.
Like the members of the People's Vote campaign, the SNP's 35 MPs, led by Ian Blackford (pictured) are against Brexit and want the UK to stay in the EU single market and customs union.
They have said they won't stand in the way of a second referendum but have not committed to voting for one. One reason for this is that Scotland voted for Remain in 2016 and it did not make any difference to the result.
They are likely to vote against anything resembling a "hard Brexit".
Kate Hoey (pictured), John Mann, Frank Field and Graham Stringer - along with the currently independent Kelvin Hopkins - voted with the government in key Brexit votes, helping to ensure Theresa May's survival.
This is the core of a group who say they are standing up for the millions of Labour supporters who voted to Leave the EU.
Mr Field has resigned the Labour whip in Parliament - and is fighting to remain a member of the party - after claiming it has become a "force for anti-Semitism in British politics".
The MP's opponents say he jumped before he was pushed after losing a confidence vote organised by local activists in Birkenhead angry at his support for the government in Brexit votes, which they believe robbed Labour of the chance to force a general election it could have won.
Ms Hoey is also facing calls to be expelled from Labour and has lost a confidence vote in her local Vauxhall Labour Party. Graham Stringer won a confidence vote in his Blackley and Broughton Labour branch.

Forget for a moment the "will they, won't they" numbers game.
Unless and until the head honcho of the Tories' backbench committee receives 48 letters there won't be a vote of no confidence in the prime minister.
As far as we know tonight the total has not yet been reached.
One of those who has submitted their letter told me in no uncertain terms "where are the others?" - frustrated that many of his colleagues seem to have promised to be part of the action, but reinforcements are yet to arrive.
If and when that threat can more clearly be seen to have retreated, there's a lot to be said about the true power of backbench Brexiteers. But as of the time of writing we are not there yet and who knows, in a matter of hours, the putsch could suddenly be back on.
Something very worrying however for Number 10 has just happened for real, more important in this moment than the potential threat from their own backbenches.
The DUP, crucial to Theresa May holding on to power, has just abstained in votes on the finance bill. In other words, they decided not to back the prime minister on the Budget.
Why? We know that the DUP is furious about the compromises that Number 10 has made to get their draft deal with the EU.
And they want to show, loudly and clearly, that they are not on board.
A senior DUP source has just told me tonight's votes were deliberately designed to "send a message to Theresa May that if she wants to continue down the road of the withdrawal agreement and its effect on the Union then there will be repercussions in the Commons".
"She could be leading them to a very bad place," they continued. "Tory MPs need to realise that their jobs, their majorities, their careers depend on a good working relationship with the DUP and May doesn't appear to be listening."
Ouch. The DUP says this is not the end of the arrangement of so called "confidence and supply" agreement, where the government can formally rely on support from the Northern Irish unionists' 10 votes.
But the fabric of that arrangement is certainly torn... And once faith is broken between the two, it's hard to see how it could be restored.
Remember, there's a really straightforward reason why this matters so much. Theresa May does not have enough votes on her own to pass the Brexit deal.
The partnership with the DUP was set up to try to make sure she could. If it collapses completely then her central task becomes yet more seemingly impossible, even if those 48 letters never come.

Ministers want you to ignore the Tory psychodrama, but frankly, that is what it feels like we are stuck in the middle of.
This is an attempt at a basic summary of what happened - from what I've been told - after a barmy afternoon.
For this to make sense, here's a reminder of what happened earlier in the week.
By about 1400 BST the haggling between Dominic Grieve and the solicitor general, representing the government, was pretty much concluded to Grieve's satisfaction.
The Remain-leaning potential rebels had a version of the promised compromise that saved Theresa May's bacon earlier in the week. And they were happy with it.
By 1600 BST, that was not the case.
Those pushing for a change were told the government wanted something else, to make the motion "unamendable".
Forget the technicalities, that would basically mean the final "meaningful" vote would, in effect, be a take-it-or-leave-it vote, a potential vote of no confidence in the prime minister.
I'm told they made it crystal clear they would never accept it.
But then, "inexplicably", that ended up in the final version that was published, before they had seen it.
Their suspicion: Brexiteers had put the kybosh on it all.
A senior Brexiteer told me that they were not the ones who had put a spanner in the works. They say they only saw it at the last minute, and weren't involved in haggling over the deal.
Others beg to differ though, suggesting that they were told the problem was that "Jacob [Rees-Mogg], needed to see it" and it has been suggested that Brexit Secretary David Davis was instrumental in changing the plan.
What does that all mean though?
The hardcore Remainer rebels are apoplectic, feeling they have been betrayed by the prime minister, who has broken the promise she gave them to avoid defeat.
And it sets the scene for another showdown in Parliament next week when the prime minister may find out which side of her party has the stronger resolve.
What happened today is likely to have pushed the two sides further apart.
This whole process is meant to be about the political divorce between the EU and the UK.
At times it is the negotiation between the two sides of the Tory party that are more bitter than any of that could be.

The UK and EU have agreed on a "large part" of the agreement that will lead to the "orderly withdrawal" of the UK.
Negotiators Michel Barnier and David Davis said the deal on what the UK calls the implementation period was a "decisive step" in the Brexit process.
But issues still to be resolved include the Northern Ireland border.
And Scotland's fishing industry has reacted angrily to the deal, which will see the UK "consulted" on quotas and access to its waters until 2021.
Brexit Secretary Mr Davis said Monday's transition agreement, which is conditional on both sides agreeing a final withdrawal treaty, would smooth the path to a future permanent relationship.
Mr Barnier said the legal text marked a "decisive step" but added that it was "not the end of the road".
The key aspects of the agreement announced in Brussels are:
The EU says this so-called "backstop option" for Northern Ireland was a key part of December's phase one agreement with the UK and must continue to apply "unless and until another solution is found".
Theresa May has suggested this outcome - which is favoured by Dublin - would be unacceptable as it would effectively shift the existing land border to the Irish Sea and compromise UK sovereignty.
In a letter to the European Council President Donald Tusk, the prime minister said "more work" was needed on certain commitments included in December's agreement and she continued to believe safeguards for Ireland could be agreed as part of the overall future economic and security partnership.
Should this not prove possible, she said she was committed to discussing "additional specific solutions" in parallel with the existing legal process for the UK's withdrawal.
Both the UK and the EU hope the terms of an agreement on the transitional period can be signed off by Mrs May's fellow 27 leaders at the EU summit this week.
The UK has said it had secured a number of improvements to the text, including an explicit reference to Gibraltar being covered by the agreement and the creation of a joint committee to oversee the process.
"We must seize the moment and carry on the momentum of the last few weeks," Mr Davis said. "The deal today should give us confidence that a good deal for the UK and EU is closer than ever before."
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said the agreement was "a step in the right direction" but Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that the agreement for fishing during the implementation period was "shaping up to be a massive sell-out of the Scottish fishing industry by the Tories".
She added: "The promises that were made to them during #EUref and since are already being broken - as many of us warned they would be."
Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, said the agreement fell "far short of an acceptable deal" giving the UK full control of its waters from the moment it leaves.
"We will leave the EU and leave the Common Fisheries Policy, but hand back sovereignty over our seas a few seconds later," he said. "Our fishing communities' fortunes will still be subject to the whim and largesse of the EU for another two years."
Downing Street said that because fishing quotas are worked out on an annual basis, for the period from 2020 onwards, the UK would be "negotiating fishing opportunities as an independent coastal state deciding who can access our waters and on what terms".
Monday's document clearly states the European Court of Justice will have "jurisdiction" over matters relating to EU law and EU citizens during the transition - once regarded as a "red line" by many Brexit-supporting MPs.
As well as questions about Northern Ireland, there are unresolved issues about what role, if any, the ECJ will have after the transition and other governance issues.
The UK and EU hope that if a transition deal is agreed, then negotiations can focus on what sort of permanent future relationship the two sides will have - with the aim of a deal being agreed in the autumn to allow time for EU member states and the UK Parliament to ratify it before Brexit next March.

With rumour swirling, gossip in the air about the cabinet, it is hard to work out what is really going on. Since Mrs May didn't really win the prize she was expecting, ministers have become an unruly lot. Tomorrow, they're all going to get a telling off (with apologies to the truth).
Why is she so cross?
David wants her job, although he says that he doesn't and isn't thinking about it, it's only his friends getting excited.
Boris wants the job too, although he says he doesn't want it yet, and guess what, it's only his friends getting a bit excited.
This excitement sometimes involves those friends saying rude things about the other one.
Neither of them, nor any of their friends, want Philip to get the job.
Some of Philip's friends want him to get the job, but maybe he's not so sure. What he really wants is to stay in charge of the money, whoever has the big job.
Philip doesn't trust or like Michael very much.
Neither, really, does Theresa like Michael very much. But lots of people think he is clever and he likes Brexit.
So does Boris, who used to like Michael a lot.
Then Michael was really mean to Boris and it hurt his feelings a lot. They'll probably never go to each other's houses again for dinner but they may not quite feel like poisoning the other's dinner.
Then there's Liam, who also likes Brexit a lot.
He likes running for the big job. He says he doesn't want that opportunity to come up, but if it does, he might well have another go because he likes doing it so much.
There's also Andrea, who smiles a lot and likes Brexit, a lot. She didn't really enjoy going for the big job last time, but if it happens again, the chance to run again might make her smile, a lot.
Then there's the newer gang, like Priti, who also likes Brexit and might like to try for the big job one day.
So might Sajid, who doesn't really like Brexit that much, but might want to join in the big race too.
And don't forget Amber, who Philip and David are apparently trying to get into their gang - but it's tricky because she doesn't like Brexit and could also fancy having a go at the top post too one day, although she'd probably need to make a few more friends in her home town.
And there's Patrick, who didn't like Brexit either. No one really wants to be friends with him at the moment. He was meant to be in charge of trying to win the big prize but that didn't quite go according to plan.
Then there are Greg, Karen, Justine, Michael number two, David number two, Jeremy,David number three, Alun and yes, David number four.
None of them really like Brexit very much.
Most of them (apart from David number three) would also like Philip (remember him?) to write some bigger cheques for their departments.
But he isn't really in the mood to do that, remember. He wants to stay in charge of the money, whoever has the big job.
Then there is James, who also didn't like the idea of Brexit but has an almost even harder project in Belfast.
There are also Liz and Brandon. She used to have to worry about cheese, he now has to worry about immigration.
Neither of them really liked Brexit either but are, you guessed it "getting on with the job".
And Chris, who really loves the idea of Brexit and is in charge of trains. He says he doesn't want Philip or Boris or David (number one) to be making trouble.
There's also Natalie, who has to explain to another lot who get to wear red velvet cloaks (honest) what all of the above are trying to achieve. (That's a good question)
Then there is Damien, who really didn't like the idea of Brexit but who is really important because Theresa isn't cross with him.
In fact, she trusts him and my goodness, that doesn't happen very often.
Last of course there is Theresa who, while being cross with this lot, is probably still cross with herself, and most likely peeved with Nick and Fi, but that's another story.
The public might well think they all must try much harder.

After many months of rumours that he would pull the plug, David Davis has actually quit as Brexit Secretary.
His unhappiness in government has been no secret for some time, but after the prime minister's Chequers agreement with cabinet ministers to pursue closer ties with the EU than he desired, he found his position untenable.
After a visit to Downing Street on Sunday he concluded that he had no choice but to walk. Junior ministerial colleague Steve Baker has also quit alongside him from the Brexit department. David Davis' move, while not completely surprising, throws doubt on to how secure the government's Brexit strategy is.
Some of Theresa May's colleagues had urged her to face down her Brexiteer ministers but Number 10 had hoped to keep them all on side, and a carefully designed strategy to move them to her position brokered an agreement in cabinet at the end of their day-long meeting at Chequers on Friday .
But Mr Davis, who was meant to be responsible for Brexit policy, felt,  according to colleagues, that he was "wondering if he really had a proper job" after Number 10 chose to follow a very different path to the now former Brexit secretary's intention.
Mr Davis has been frustrated for some time after the most senior official at the Department for Exiting the EU - Olly Robbins - was moved into Number 10 to work directly for Theresa May.
To some former Remainers, Mr Davis' departure could even be considered a temporary relief. One of his fellow ministers remarked, "it's just a personal outburst", adding: "He is not exactly the cleverest, he has always struggled to muscle into any of the complicated arguments."
But conditions in the Tory party are febrile. Theresa May had carefully constructed her cabinet with a balance of Brexiteers and former Remainers. With no majority, and unhappiness on the back benches, it adds instability at a time when the prime minister was pursuing calm.
And when she was hoping to project an image to Brussels of authority and stability, it is a headache she could well do without. He could provide a rallying point from outside government for those forces in the Tory party who believe the Brexit plan the prime minister is pursuing is not the Brexit that a clear but narrow majority of the public chose.
Westminster being Westminster, eyes will immediately turn to who will replace him. The most likely candidate it seems at this stage is Michael Gove who has pitched himself as the Brexiteer that "remainers can do business with".
His public appearances defending the Brexit policy over the weekend make him certainly near the top of the list for one of the most important jobs in government.

The good, the bad and the ugly - the story of this summit so far.
Theresa May can claim something already. EU leaders have agreed that the negotiations can continue, officials can get back to the extremely difficult task of solving conundrums that have been preoccupying them for two years.
For EU leaders to have said any less than that would have been a horror show for Number 10.
But the bad? After listening to Theresa May and then talking amongst themselves after she left, her counterparts decided that there simply hasn't been enough progress to be able to reach anything like a deal.
The prime minister did not turn up with "new facts" that could have changed the dynamic. Yes, the two sides have moved closer together on many of the sticking points in the last few weeks. But the division over Ireland is still plain and there is no way out of it yet.
The ugly? Well a senior EU official revealed after the dinner that the prime minister told the others that she was "ready" to consider a longer implementation period after Brexit than is currently planned - essentially she'd think about both sides having longer to work out all the complexities of how the relationship between the EU and UK will work well after Brexit.
To many people that will sound perfectly sensible. But to others, including many Tory MPs, it would mean the UK being trapped in the status quo until 2022.
And more to the point, potentially having to promise to pay the EU billions more, without quite knowing for what.
Number 10 won't confirm the prime minister's comments. But the president of the European Parliament said on the record that it had been discussed. And sources at Downing Street repeatedly refused to rule it out.
But there's one giant problem. It's hard to see how it could get through the House of Commons. One former Remainer MP told me "it just wouldn't fly".
Iain Duncan Smith, the prominent Brexiteer, said "why are we agreeing to extend for another year when we have nothing back in return".
Nick Boles, an influential former minister, wrote on Twitter, "good luck with that".
Remember getting Brussels on board is one thing. Theresa May has a harder job at home. And if she is looking for big rebellions, staying tied to the EU for longer is one way of making that happen.

Maybe it was the moment when the former education secretary, Justine Greening, intervened on her former ministerial colleague, Dominic Grieve, that the government realised the game was up.
She was so supportive towards the former attorney general, as he argued for Parliament to have a "meaningful vote" on the terms of the Brexit deal, that it seemed probable she would join the Euro-rebels in voting for it….
For some time the government Chief Whip Julian Smith had been flitting round the Chamber talking to his troops - then he went and had a word with the Solicitor General, Robert Buckland, the government's in-house legal eagle, who is dealing with the techie legal aspects of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill.
Soon after, Mr Buckland intervened on Mr Grieve to suggest talks over a compromise deal. It appeared that the head count had been done, and the concession followed.
Most dangerous
The meaningful vote is probably the most dangerous of the Lords amendments to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill - because it tees up an unpredictable vote on the final terms of Brexit, towards the end of this year, and opens up the possibility that MPs could demand that ministers change policy, in the event the terms were rejected by the House, or no deal was reached in the talks with the EU….. they could even demand (drumroll) a second referendum…
The government would not have sought a deal if it thought it had the votes to win, and they clearly blinked.
The decision to seek a compromise marked an important victory for the soft Brexit/Remainer/"realist" Tory rebels, who have been promised an amendment giving them most of what they want.
As I write the full terms of the deal have yet to be revealed, but there is briefing ministers have conceded that a motion, which could be amended, would be put before MPs, in event a final divorce deal is voted down.
In other words, in the event of a divorce deal that the Commons refused to accept, MPs would be able to set a new course for Brexit.
This whole idea was denounced by Brexiteers as a Trojan horse for Remainers, and for a second referendum, so that concession could well produce some blowback. But for now, the government seems to have prevented an embarrassing defeat, and the Tory rebels have avoided the unpleasantness of colluding in the defeat of their Prime Minister.
One of the leading Tory rebels has told the BBC "the government has bent not broken" but it leaves the "fight for another day".
But ministers now know that a narrow but decisive Commons majority can be assembled against them on critical Brexit issues, and that its next outing could well be on a more substantive vote on a customs union.
Will that knowledge mean a softer Brexit strategy will now emerge?

There is one vital paragraph to pay particular attention to in the speech by Philip Hammond on Wednesday.
Its significance should not be under-estimated for it is about one of the few sectors where the UK has a substantial trade surplus with the European Union - financial services.
It is the sector which Britain wants to be a key part of any ambitious free trade deal with the EU.
And the EU, so far, suggests it won't be.
In his speech on UK-EU co-operation post-Brexit, the Chancellor will refer to past attempts at forging a free trade agreement between the US and Europe.
"The EU itself pursued ambitious financial services co-operation in its proposals for TTIP [the now aborted Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership]," Mr Hammond will say.
"Which it described as a partnership that would be: 'more than a traditional free trade agreement'."
Mr Hammond is arguing that if the EU tried it before with a nation which doesn't have regulatory alignment on financial services - America - then surely it can do so with a country that it at present does - the UK.
But the Chancellor is also saying a lot more than that.
Because the person who proposed "regulatory co-operation" on financial services as part of the EU-US free trade negotiations was one Michel Barnier.
The European Commission's chief Brexit negotiator was then - in 2014 - head of the EC's internal markets and services division.
"We want to include regulatory cooperation on financial services in the TTIP," he said at the time.
What he described as "inter-operable" regulation would mean close alignment without the need for either side to be a "rule taker".
Some in government suggest that this formulation runs counter to the mood music Mr Barnier has created around the chances of financial services being part of any free trade deal between the UK and the EU.
"I remind you that I'm not aware of any free-trade deal in the past between the European Union and third countries that would have allowed privileged access for financial services," Mr Barnier told a news conference in Brussels in December.
That came a few days after an interview with several European newspapers in which Mr Barnier said: "There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn't exist."
Well, Mr Hammond is suggesting in his speech, the EC proposed it should exist between the EU and the US before the TTIP deal ran into the sand of President Donald Trump's America First policy on free trade.
The EC can counter that the two scenarios do not bear comparison.
Regulatory co-operation is very different from being a member of a financial services single market as the UK is at present.
And if Britain thinks it is going to replicate that, it has another think coming.
Passporting agreements - which allow banks to operate freely across EU borders with a single national licence - are not going to be extended to the UK outside the EU.
There may be some regulatory "equivalence" agreements between the UK and the EU on financial services, allowing for some banking operations to continue between the two sides.
As Mr Hammond says, that is mutually beneficial.
But, the EU is arguing at this stage, that is a long way from a comprehensive free trade deal on financial services.
The Chancellor has taken up a strong and oppositional stance against those who say that because there has never been a free trade deal including financial services agreed by the EU - which is true - there never will be.
The "sceptics" as Mr Hammond describes them.
The Chancellor - and in this he is supported by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney - argues the two statements do not logically follow.
For if they did, the EU would only do exactly the same trade deal time after time.
Which is not true when you look at the relationship between the EU and, say, Switzerland, Canada and Turkey, Mr Hammond argues.
Each of those arrangements is "bespoke" the Chancellor says.
Mr Barnier has a straightforward retort.
This may not be an issue of having your cake and eat it.
Theresa May appears to accept, for example, that some City access to the EU will be curtailed.
But it is no time to compare apples - TTIP - and pears - a comprehensive free trade deal including financial services between the UK and the EU.

The ramifications might be seismic, but the question at issue in this momentous legal dispute could not have been clearer.
The Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas put it in this way: "The sole question in this case is whether, as a matter of the constitutional law of the United Kingdom, the Crown - acting through the executive government of the day - is entitled to use its prerogative powers to give notice under Article 50 for the United Kingdom to cease to be a member of the European Union."
He stressed that it was a "pure question of law" with "no bearing" on the merits of the UK withdrawing from the EU.
Many of today's papers took issue with that.
In beginning his judgment, Lord Thomas firmly asserts the critical importance in our law of the sovereignty of parliament: "The most fundamental rule of UK constitutional law is that the Crown in Parliament is sovereign and that legislation enacted by the Crown with the consent of both Houses of Parliament is supreme."
He quotes a predecessor, Lord Bingham, who said: "The bedrock of the British constitution is... the supremacy of the Crown in Parliament."
He then turns to the Crown's prerogative powers.
These are a collection of executive powers derived from the Crown from medieval times.
Once exercised by all-powerful kings and queens, they have been dramatically reduced over centuries and the residue are now vested in the hands of ministers.
Exercising them is controversial because they have the effect of by-passing our "supreme" Parliament.
Lord Thomas says: "An important aspect of the fundamental principle of Parliamentary sovereignty is that primary legislation is not subject to displacement by the Crown through the exercise of its prerogative powers."
So, prerogative powers are strictly limited and in the relationship between them and Parliament it is Parliament that very firmly has the upper hand, because, "This subordination of the Crown [ie the executive government] to law is the foundation of the rule of law in the United Kingdom", he says.
In other words, Parliament is king - top dog of the constitution.
The government cannot use executive powers to override legislation. Only legislation can override legislation.
That, in essence, was the argument of Gina Miller, the investment manager who was the lead claimant in the case.
So when can ministers use prerogative powers?
It is agreed and part of our law that they can be used in international relations and the making and unmaking of international treaties.
That is permissible because generally exercising these powers in this arena has no effect on domestic law, so there is no collision with parliamentary legislation, and parliamentary sovereignty is not affected.
The government argued that using prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 was a "classic exercise of the royal prerogative", and that if Parliament had not wanted it used it would have said so in the 2015 European Union Referendum Act.
Where the government came a cropper is that it fully accepted that triggering Article 50 by using prerogative powers would have the effect of changing domestic law.
By enacting the 1972 European Communities Act (the 1972 Act), which took the UK into what was then the European Economic Community, now the EU, Parliament made EU law part of our law.
Rights enjoyed by you and me were written into our law via the 1972 Act.
However, the government argued that Parliament must have intended that ministers would keep the prerogative power to withdraw from EU treaties and so would continue to have the power to choose whether EU law - including the rights given to us under it - should continue to have effect in domestic law.
Gina Miller's lawyers argued that once Article 50 is triggered some rights, such as the right to vote in EU elections and to petition the European Court of Justice, would be extinguished forever.
They claimed that it was not enough for the government to assert that many rights would be restored later in the Great Repeal Bill.
The court categorically disagreed with the government.
Lord Thomas concluded that, "Parliament intended EU rights to have effect in domestic law and that this effect should not be capable of being undone or overridden by action taken by the Crown in exercise of its prerogative powers."
Slam dunk!
"The Crown cannot, through the exercise of its prerogative powers, alter the domestic law of the United Kingdom and modify rights acquired in domestic law under the ECA 1972 or the other legal effects of that Act.
"We agree with the claimants that, on this further basis, the Crown cannot give notice under Article 50(2)."
Slam, slam, dunk, dunk.
The judgment did not go on to say specifically that an act of Parliament is needed to give ministers the authority to trigger Article 50.
The judges were understandably keen to keep some constitutional distance and not be seen to be telling Parliament precisely how to exercise its sovereignty.
However, it is almost impossible to see how Parliament could give its authority to ministers to serve notice under Article 50 without full-blown primary legislation, ie an act of Parliament.
What is now an epic legal battle reveals arguably the great constitutional clash of our time.
A government used to getting its way has been stopped in its tracks by independent judges, unelected and who some regard as unaccountable, but who through the mechanism of judicial review can defy ministers, if what they are proposing is unlawful.
The judges may have been deciding a purely legal point, but it is a legal point with massive political consequences.
These tectonic plates of our constitution will grind up against each other again next month when the government appeals to the Supreme Court.
For the first time ever, all 11 permanent justices, including those from Northern Ireland and Scotland, are likely to sit - underlining the importance of what is at stake.
If the High Court's ruling is overturned, the government's problems in triggering Article 50 probably disappear.
If it is upheld and the government is forced to bring in an act of Parliament to give it the authority to trigger our withdrawal from the EU, the timing and manner of Brexit is thrown into confusion.
There is an intriguing further option.
The Supreme Court could in theory refer the question of the construction of Article 50 to the European Court of Justice, which is in effect the EU's Supreme Court.
But asking that court to adjudicate on the mechanism for the UK departing the EU, and by implication consider issues relating to the sovereignty of Parliament, would be so drenched in irony it would be almost unthinkable.

Forget what might happen when the tellers read out the numbers on Tuesday night, let's think about what's at stake.
With Brexit, it's nearly always subjective, but according to MPs and ministers of different flavours, these are some of the factors that matter and that the result might influence.
Disagree at will of course - you may read these and scoff, or you may even have your own.
But the meaningful vote may well end up having multiple meanings...
1) Let's start with the least likely outcome. A miracle could take place overnight and scores of MPs might suddenly find themselves swinging behind the prime minister's plan.
The vote goes through, she shouts hurray, and the process moves on smoothly.
We leave the EU as planned in less than three months, and Theresa May's place in history is secure (no laughing at the back).
2) The defeat is disastrous and a combination of pressure from some ministers and MPs forces the PM to reach across the aisle.
Depending on the scale of the defeat, and the reaction of Labour front and backbenchers, Westminster might be ushered into a different phase of bargaining across the benches.
One Labour MP told me today: "At some stage I will vote for the deal, but I will need something specific to show for it. We are about to enter an era of transactional politics."
Cross-party working may not be some kind of high-minded pursuit.
3) The scale of the likely loss might prompt the kind of parliamentary takeover that's been much discussed in the last couple of days.
Arguably this might be one of the most long-lasting impacts.
Rewriting the parliamentary rulebook may inevitably be largely of interest to nerds like me, but the kind of suggestions these extraordinary times are prompting might reshape the relationship between the government and MPs for years to come - and that matters.
4) Given that the balance in Parliament is definitely for a softer Brexit with closer ties to the EU, (arguably) the defeat on Tuesday might lead to a less dramatic break with the EU than the deal on the table promises.
One member of the cabinet tonight told me: "The longer this goes on, the softer Brexit gets."
Before you scream, I know that is not a view that is shared universally. But it is sincerely held by plenty of people around the place who point rather frustratedly to the irony.
As another member of cabinet said: "The hardline Brexiteers will push us toward a softer Brexit by digging in their resistance."
5) Technically speaking, if you don't assume (and assumptions are dangerous) that Parliament can and would block no deal, the rejection of the plan would move us closer to leaving without a deal.
That's not just because Eurosceptics are showing very little sign of budging, but remember the process is on a clock.
Article 50 has to come to a conclusion by the end of March and, as the law currently stands, we are leaving with or without an agreement.
Some other ministers in the cabinet believe very firmly once the vote is lost the PM has not much choice other than to up no-deal prep again in the hope, not of going that way, but of trying for another EU concession.
One told me it is the "only logical conclusion" to keep going steadily and hope the EU will break - a continuation of the high-stakes poker game.
6) Jeremy Corbyn will either delight or disappoint his ranks by having the bottle to force a confidence vote, or delaying again, waiting for a magic moment.
But he seems unlikely to take the bold step many of his members want and to move to offering another referendum.
7) For those campaigning for another European referendum, too, the scale of the defeat, and Tuesday night's front bench responses to it, are vital.
The outcome of the vote will affect whether we leave the EU on time, and less likely, whether we could be given another say on whether we leave at all.
And when those truths eventually reveal themselves, they in turn could have an impact on the fabric of the UK itself.
What happens in Northern Ireland, or to the case for Scottish independence, are part of what is at stake in the long term.
8) Lastly, after more than two years of endless discussions, as and when the vote goes down on this hard-fought compromise, Westminster's factions and rival camps might finally have to do more than talk amongst themselves, and actually bend or break.
The divisions are so intense in both the main political parties that it could also be the moment some of the divisions turn into real splits.
That really would be history happening in front of our eyes.

Theresa May has been applauded by Tory MPs after making a "heartfelt" appeal for unity over Brexit and urging her critics to get behind her.
The prime minister has been addressing all her MPs in Parliament, many of whom are seeking a change of approach.
Asked by one MP what concessions she had made to the EU, she set out areas where the EU had itself given ground.
Former minister Amber Rudd said the PM "won the room" while another MP said it was a "petting zoo, not a lion's den".
The sound of desks and doors being thumped could be heard coming from the Commons room where the 1922 committee - an elected body of MPs which represents backbenchers and also oversees leadership contests - met privately.
Comments by unnamed Tory MPs over the weekend suggested the PM would be fighting for her political life at the meeting and was on the edge of the "killing zone".
However, Tory MP Michael Fabricant told journalists waiting outside that the atmosphere inside the meeting was "not a lion's den but a petting zoo".
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the PM's remarks were "very good" while former home secretary Amber Rudd said Mrs May "was able to win the room, despite being frank about difficulties still there".
"She looked like she really meant it," she told the BBC. "It felt heartfelt."
And Basildon MP John Baron said "the mood was, let's get behind the PM and get this over the line".
But not all MPs were happy, one suggesting the odds of her surviving another week were 50:50 while another said what mattered was the mood in the party not orchestrated shows of support.
Mrs May is reported to have told MPs that she had won a number of concessions from the EU, including the role of the European Court of Justice in enforcing the rights of EU citizens in the UK.
She also rejected suggestions that her top European adviser, Olly Robbins, was "freelancing" when the UK agreed to consider extending the post-Brexit transition period beyond 2020.
Talks on the UK's exit from the EU are said to be 95% complete, but have stalled over the Irish border issue.
The UK prime minister has said that having the option of extending the transition could provide the "safety net" or "backstop" needed to guarantee no new visible border checks where Northern Ireland meets the Republic.
But her plans have come in for criticism among Tory ranks, with a social media campaign called "Standup4Brexit" claiming to have 50 MPs backing its call for Mrs May to "chuck" her current strategy.
The prime minister has said any temporary measure used to avoid a hard border would have to end by the next general election, which is due in 2022.
At the weekend, anonymous quotes about Mrs May in the Sunday newspapers sparked a backlash from MPs of all parties.
The Sunday Times quoted a Tory backbencher saying: "The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. She'll be dead soon."
Another said she should "bring her own noose" to the 1922 Committee meeting. Tory MPs said those behind the quotes were "spineless cowards" who should be thrown out of the party.
Meanwhile, EU politicians in Strasbourg have been debating Brexit, with European Council President Donald Tusk saying more time was needed to find a solution.
"Therefore, there is no other way but to continue the talks," he told MEPs.
Mr Tusk said Mrs May had mentioned the option of extending the transition period planned after Brexit, saying that if it helped reach a deal, "I'm sure that the leaders would be ready to consider it positively".
Irish Sinn Fein MEP Lynn Boylan said the UK government was trying to "understate" the issue of the Irish border, and is "yet to understand" a deal cannot be reached without agreement on an Irish backstop.
And Spanish MEP Esteban Gonzalez Pons called for an extension of the transition phase to allow time for a second, "definitive", referendum.
But former UKIP leader Nigel Farage blamed the UK civil service for the delays in reaching a deal, saying senior officials were "out to sabotage Brexit".

Theresa May has accused European politicians of making "threats" against Britain to try to influence the general election result.
The PM launched a stinging attack on the "bureaucrats of Brussels" in a speech outside 10 Downing Street after meeting the Queen.
She said some in Brussels wanted Brexit talks to fail.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said she was "playing party games with Brexit" to try to win the general election.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said it was "irresponsible" of her to "poison" the atmosphere with the EU.
A senior EU source told the BBC the PM's suggestion that officials were trying to affect the election result was "pure fantasy".
Parliament was dissolved at midnight, meaning the election is formally under way, and the PM made her speech after visiting the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
She said events of the past few days had shown "just how tough" Brexit talks are likely to be.
"Britain's negotiating position in Europe has been misrepresented in the continental press," she said, in a reference to a German newspaper's account of her dinner with the EU Commission chief.
"The European Commission's negotiating stance has hardened. Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials.
"All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June."
Mrs May said she wanted to reach a Brexit deal, and for the EU to succeed: "But the events of the last few days have shown that - whatever our wishes, and however reasonable the positions of Europe's other leaders - there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed."
The PM also warned of "serious" consequences if the Brexit talks failed, which would be felt by "ordinary, working people across the country".
"If we don't get the negotiation right, your economic security and prosperity will be put at risk and the opportunities you seek for your families will simply not happen.
"If we do not stand up and get this negotiation right we risk the secure and well-paid jobs we want for our children and our children's children too.
"If we don't get the negotiation right, if we let the bureaucrats of Brussels run over us, we will lose the chance to build a fairer society with real opportunity for all."
She was criticised by Ms Sturgeon, who tweeted: "UK needs best possible Brexit deal and has limited leverage, so for PM to poison atmosphere for partisan reasons is deeply irresponsible.... Having called election for reasons of party not national interest, PM now seems intent on fighting campaign in same way."
Mr Corbyn added: "By winding up the public confrontation with Brussels, the prime minister wants to wrap the Conservative party in the union jack and distract attention from her government's economic failure and rundown of our public services.
"But Brexit is too important to be used as a political game in this election."
Lib Dem Nick Clegg attacked her "desperate, bizarre statement", and UKIP's Patrick O'Flynn said millions of his party's voters remained worried the UK would leave the EU "with the worst possible terms".
Analysis by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Theresa May just used one of the most powerful microphones in the country for blunt diplomacy indeed.
It's worth pointing out she made careful aim at the EU institutions, rather than the individual leaders, with whom she'll have to deal one on one.
But forget that nuance for a moment - this was quite some statement, quite an accusation to make. It seems the prime minister is intent on playing the Brexit card for all it's worth in the next election.
Mrs May's statement came during a day in which the UK's Brexit secretary and the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier had appeared at odds over the size of the "Brexit bill" the UK would owe when it left the European Union.
The Financial Times claimed the likely bill had risen sharply from 60bn to 100bn euros, basing its calculations on new data from across Europe.
Mr Barnier said there was no agreed figure but the UK and EU had entered into "mutual commitments" which must be honoured.
Mr Davis said the UK would pay what was legally due, in line with its rights and obligations, but "not just what the EU wants".
On Tuesday, Mrs May told the BBC she would be a "bloody difficult woman" towards Mr Juncker during Brexit talks.
Asked about her comment, Mr Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr said: "President Juncker said today that she is an impressive woman and that she is a very impressive negotiator."
He added: "Brexit will never become a success, of course, because it is a sad and sorry event. But as I have set out, it can be managed in a professional and pragmatic way."
The dissolution of Parliament means there are no MPs - only candidates - until polling day.
However, government ministers retain their roles and continue their work.
MPs are allowed access to Parliament for just a few days in order to remove papers from their offices, but facilities provided by the House of Commons are no longer available to them.  It was the shortest Parliament since 1974.

Theresa May has promised to set a timetable for the election of her successor after the next Brexit vote in the first week of June.
The agreement follows a meeting between the prime minister and senior Tory MPs who are demanding a date for her departure from Downing Street.
If she loses the vote on her Brexit plan, already rejected three times, sources told the BBC she would resign.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has said he will run for leader once Mrs May goes.
The prime minister survived a confidence vote by Conservative MPs at the end of last year and party rules mean she cannot formally be challenged again until December.
But Mrs May has come under increasing pressure to leave Downing Street this summer, amid the Brexit impasse and poor results for the Conservatives in the recent local elections in England.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said senior sources had told her it was "inconceivable" the prime minister could remain in office if MPs rejected her Brexit plans for a fourth time.
"Discussing an election timetable" doesn't sound that exciting.
But the paragraph tucked into the short formal letter from Sir Graham Brady to Tory MPs all but marks the end of Theresa May's premiership and the beginning of the official hunt for the next leader of the country.
After the lines in the short note restate the prime minister's determination to get Brexit done, it confirms in black and white that after the next big vote, in the first week of June, the prime minister will make plans with the party for choosing a successor.
Right now, the expectation is that vote will be lost (although it is not impossible, of course, that Number 10 could turn it round).
And the conversation that's been arranged won't just be a gentle chat about what to do next.
Senior sources have told me that means, even though the letter doesn't spell it out, that if her Brexit plan is defeated again, Mrs May will announce she is going.
The chairman of the 1922 committee of Conservative MPs, Sir Graham Brady, said he had reached an agreement over the prime minister's future during "very frank" talks in Parliament.
He said the committee's executive and Mrs May would meet again to discuss her future following the first debate and vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in the week beginning 3 June.
Sir Graham said there was now "greater clarity" about the situation.
Asked if that meant the prime minister would quit immediately if MPs rejected her Brexit plans once more, he said that scenario went "beyond" what had been agreed.
MPs have rejected the prime minister's Brexit agreement with the EU three times.
But she will have another go at gaining their support in the week beginning 3 June, when the Commons votes for the first time on the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill - legislation needed to implement her deal with the EU.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has joined the growing list of Conservatives who say they will stand for leader when Mrs May announces her departure.
He told a business conference in Manchester: "Of course I am going to go for it."
Conservative MP Grant Shapps welcomed the announcement that a timetable would be set out for Mrs May's departure, suggesting it would inject greater ambition and dynamism into the Brexit process.
The former party chairman told BBC News the Brexit bill had no chance of passing in its current state but holding another vote would allow Mrs May to demonstrate she had "tried everything".
"It is right to bring this whole saga to a conclusion," he said.
But fellow Tory Phillip Lee, who backs another Brexit referendum, said replacing the prime minister would not "solve the crisis" the UK found itself in or build a parliamentary majority for the terms of the UK's departure.
"Forcing the PM's resignation and spending this summer locked in a leadership election where candidates trade ever more fantastic visions of unicorn Brexits…is neither in the interests of the Conservative Party nor of the United Kingdom," he said.
Last month, the 1922 Committee executive narrowly decided against changing the party's leadership rules to allow an early challenge to Mrs May.
Local Tory associations have confirmed they will hold a vote of confidence in her leadership on 15 June, although its result will not be binding.
Much of the anger in the Conservative parliamentary party is focusing on the prime minister's talks with Labour, aimed at reaching a cross-party compromise to get her deal through the Commons.
BBC Newsnight political editor Nick Watt said he understood the talks will "soon be drawing to a close" adding that Tory whips had "given up on this phase of the negotiations and are looking to pack the legislation with goodies for Brexiteers".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would not support the Withdrawal Agreement Bill unless it guaranteed membership of a customs union with the EU, and protected workers' rights, consumer rights and environmental rights.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said his party would "happily support" the legislation, provided it was subject to a "confirmatory public vote".

It has become something of a weekend ritual that hardline Brexiteers breathe fire and brimstone and declare they are on the verge of triggering a vote of confidence in Theresa May.
On Monday mornings the chairman of the 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady inspects his office safe and finds a pile of letters in the corner falls short of the magic number - 48 - needed to trigger a vote.
And so the prime minister limps on for another week until the ritual starts out all over again.
This time, however, there is a different feel. Theresa May managed to achieve the extraordinary feat last week of uniting Remain and Leave Tories in despair after she floated the idea of extending the transition period after the UK leaves the EU. There are now Remain Tories saying the time has come for her to go.
Until now three factors have ensured that the prime minister has been safe from the sniping. If any of these change then the weekend ritual may have a different ending when Sir Graham opens his safe in the coming weeks.
The three factors are:
For the moment these three factors are likely to mean that Theresa May will hang on. But the mood is changing. If you examine the three factors in reverse you can see how events could move against the prime minister:
The odds are that Theresa May will soldier on for the moment. She did after all exceed expectations in her recent Conservative party conference speech.
But Margaret Thatcher was cheered at the end of her speech to the 1990 conference. The following month she was out.

Theresa May has asked MPs to make an "honourable compromise" as she seeks to persuade them to back her Brexit deal at the third time of asking.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the prime minister said failure to support the deal would mean "we will not leave the EU for many months, if ever".
Mrs May is expected to bring her withdrawal agreement back to the Commons next week for a third vote.
It comes after MPs this week rejected her deal and voted to delay Brexit.
Former Cabinet minister Esther McVey, who resigned over the Brexit agreement, told Sky's Sophie Ridge programme that she would "hold my nose" and vote for the deal after rejecting it twice herself, as it was now a choice between "this deal or no Brexit".
And a letter signed by 15 Tory MPs from Leave-backing constituencies, including former Brexit Secretary David Davis, also urged colleagues to back the deal.
But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox warned the vote could be pulled, telling Sophie Ridge it was "difficult to justify having a vote if we knew we were going to lose it".
The EU will decide the terms and conditions of any extension. Legally, the UK is still due to leave the EU on 29 March.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to MPs across the Commons inviting them for talks to find a cross-party compromise.
He also told Sky that while he "has to see the wording of it", Labour MPs would be told to vote in favour of an amendment calling for another referendum next week, and he said he may propose another vote of no confidence in the government if the PM's deal is voted down again.
Mrs May says if Parliament votes for her withdrawal deal before an EU leaders' summit on Thursday, the UK will seek a short delay to Brexit to pass the necessary legislation.
"That is not an ideal outcome - we could and should have been leaving the EU on 29 March," she said.
"But it is something the British people would accept if it led swiftly to delivering Brexit. The alternative if Parliament cannot agree the deal by that time is much worse."
If a deal is not agreed before Thursday, EU leaders are contemplating a much longer delay.
Mrs May said it would be a "potent symbol of Parliament's collective political failure" if a delay to Brexit meant the UK was forced to take part in May's European elections - almost three years after voting to leave the EU.
On Tuesday, MPs overwhelmingly rejected Mrs May's withdrawal agreement for a second time - by 149 votes.
In her article, Mrs May said she had more to do to convince dozens of Tory MPs to back the deal - as well as getting Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party to drop their opposition.
She wrote: "I am convinced that the time to define ourselves by how we voted in 2016 must now end.
"We can only put those old labels aside if we stand together as democrats and patriots, pragmatically making the honourable compromises necessary to heal division and move forward."
The DUP, which has twice voted against the agreement, said there were "still issues to be discussed" and it remained in talks with the government.
The 10 votes provided by the DUP, which props up the Conservative government, are thought to be key to the prime minister securing her deal.
In the letter from Conservative MPs asking others to back the deal, the group claimed there were people "who will stop at nothing to prevent Britain leaving the EU", adding they would vote for the deal to ensure Brexit went ahead.
"We urge colleagues who, like us, wish to deliver Brexit, to vote for the deal and ensure we leave the EU as soon as possible," they said.
"We need to leave now, take the risk of 'no Brexit' off the table, and then continue to fight for the best future relationship as an independent nation."
Mr Corbyn has offered talks with opposition leaders and backbench MPs in an effort to find a Brexit compromise which could replace Mrs May's plan.
The Labour leader has invited Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Plaid's Liz Saville Roberts and Green MP Caroline Lucas.
In his letter, he called for urgent meetings to find a "solution that ends the needless uncertainty and worry" caused by Mrs May's "failed" Brexit negotiations.
Meanwhile, Tory MP Nick Boles has pledged to stay in the Conservative Party, despite quitting his local association over an ongoing row about Brexit.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr that he would be meeting with the chief whip on Monday to find a way forward, but that he was "not going to be bossed around" by local members.
Mr Boles, who campaigned to stop a no-deal Brexit, said: "I will be my own kind of Conservative. Not an ideological reactionary Conservative."

Theresa May had to battle losing her voice and being interrupted on stage by a comedian as she sought to reassert her Conservative leadership.
Mrs May, who at one point was handed a throat sweet by the chancellor, did make it to the end of a speech in which she vowed to "renew the British dream".
She announced plans for more council houses and a cap on energy prices.
But they were overshadowed by the problems she had delivering the set-piece speech in Manchester.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the annual conference "was meant to be about restoring Theresa May's authority - it may prove instead to have been further undermined".
Mrs May was interrupted early on in her speech by comedian Simon Brodkin - also known as Lee Nelson - who managed to make it to the podium to hand her a P45, a redundancy notice, saying to her that "Boris asked me to give you this".
After he was removed and she got encouraging cheers from the audience she joked that the only P45 she wanted to give out was to Jeremy Corbyn.
But she struggled to finish the speech because of a croaky voice, having to stop several times to drink water.
Sources close to the prime minister have said that the PM had caught the "conference cold", and that her many interviews and meetings this week have taken their toll on her voice.
They say the prankster who interrupted her speech has been arrested for a breach of the peace and there will be a thorough investigation of security.
To add to her woes, some of the letters fell off the conference stage backdrop. By the end it read: "Building a country that works or everyon."
In normal political times, it is probably the case that what one minister described as a "tragedy" today would have led to a prime minister being forced out or quitting.
But these aren't normal times. Allies of Theresa May say today she has shown her resilience and determination in spades, demonstrating exactly why she deserves to stay in the job.
A senior colleague of hers told me she importantly did manage to put forward a coherent vision and talked about her personal beliefs. More than that, for those who want her gone there are three obstacles.
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said of the prime minister's performance: "If ever there was a metaphor for battling through adversity, that was it."
In the speech itself, Mrs May delivered a call for a "modern, compassionate Britain" and focused on her personal commitment to social justice and fairness.
She also apologised to activists in Manchester for an election campaign that had been "too scripted, too presidential".
And she said the "British dream" that "life should be better for the next generation" was out of reach for too many people, something she vowed to dedicate her premiership to fixing.
Mrs May began her speech by outlining the reasons why she joined the Conservative Party more than 40 years ago, stressing that the things that have made her most proud in politics have not been the positions she has held, but "knowing that I made a difference - helped those who cannot be heard".
She announced that there would be an independent review of the Mental Health Act, to tackle injustice, and would press for justice to be done for the families of those killed and injured in the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
"That's what I'm in this for," she said.
Turning to Brexit, Mrs May said she was "confident that we will find a deal that works for Britain and Europe". She also reassured European citizens living in the UK that "you are welcome here" and urged negotiators to reach agreement on this policy "because we want you to stay".
Mrs May said it had "always been a great sadness for Philip and me that we were never blessed with children", but she said this did not stop her wanting to help young people on to the housing ladder.
Hailing plans to "reignite home ownership" in Britain, she said the government plans to invest an additional £2bn in affordable housing, taking the total budget up to almost £9bn.
If ministers made the land available and gave young people the skills to build the houses, she challenged house builders to ensure they "build the homes our country needs".
Simon Brodkin is an English comedian more commonly known by his TV character name Lee Nelson. Handing the prime minister a P45 was far from his first.
His most famous interruption came at Glastonbury in 2015 when he ran onstage as Kanye West was performing. He pulled a similar stunt on The X Factor in 2014, running onstage as the Stereo Kicks were playing.
He also threw US dollar bills over former Fifa president Sepp Blatter during the football organisation's bidding scandal.
The BBC's assistant political editor Norman Smith said the focus on council housing underlines Mrs May's readiness to intervene and use the public sector to build houses in a way not seen since the 1950s.
Mrs May announced that the government will next week publish draft legislation to impose a cap on energy prices. Downing Street says it will apply to all standard variable rates.
Having seen her Commons majority vanish after June's general election and facing calls to sack Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson over his interventions on Brexit, Mrs May attempted to use the conference to unite the party behind her "mission" to transform Britain.
She said it would not be easy, but "it has never been my style to hide from a challenge, to shrink from a task, to retreat in the face of difficulty, to give up and turn away."
"And it is when tested the most that we reach deep within ourselves and find that our capacity to rise to the challenge before us may well be limitless."
The disruptions to the speech dominated discussion afterwards, but for Labour, shadow chancellor John McDonnell saying that there had been £15bn of pledges made by the end of the speech showing "the Tory magical money tree returns".
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable called it "the speech of a brave prime minister struggling on, while her disloyal Cabinet colleagues openly plot against her".

Theresa May has tried to reassure businesses fearing a sudden change in rules once the UK leaves the EU.
Speaking at the CBI conference, Mrs May promised early agreement on the status of UK nationals in Europe and EU nationals in the UK.
"People don't want a cliff-edge; they want to know with some certainty how things are going to go," she said.
Several business lobby groups have pushed for an interim deal to let them trade in the same way post-Brexit.
Mrs May said she understood companies' concerns and was "conscious that there will be issues that will need to be looked at".
"That will be part of the work that we do in terms of the negotiation that we are undertaking with the European Union," she added.
She also pledged to provide clarity on the government's plans where possible, but said there would not be "a running commentary on every twist and turn".
Downing Street declined to say whether Mrs May's comments about avoiding a "cliff-edge" meant she was seeking a transitional deal to cover the period between the UK's departure from the EU and the start of a new trade deal.
"She was reflecting the views we have expressed already about how we secure the best deal for the UK and how we seek to provide certainty where we can to businesses and people across the UK of the steps moving forward," the PM's official spokeswoman said.
In the wide-ranging speech, Mrs May also pledged to:
The prime minister also insisted she still favoured worker representation on company boards, dismissing suggestions that comments she made during the speech marked a watering-down of the idea.
There have been widespread reports since the summer that Mrs May wanted to see workers on boards as part of a corporate governance shake-up, an idea that had caused unease among companies and, according to the Financial Times, disagreements in Cabinet.
However, the prime minister told the CBI that there were "other routes" to providing worker representation on boards, including advisory councils or panels.
"It will be a question of finding the model that works," she said.
Mrs May promised to shake-up governance as part of her Conservative Party leadership campaign in July, and repeated the promise at last month's party conference when she said she planned to have "not just consumers represented on company boards, but workers as well".
And later, on Sky News, when asked if her conference speech marked a watering down of the idea, Mrs May said. "No, what I've always said is that we want to look at ways in which we can improve corporate governance, looking at a number of areas, including workers' representation on boards. You can do that in a number of ways.
"We want to work with business on this and that's why we'll be consulting later this year on the various ways in which we can do it to find a model that works," she said.
Did the PM arrive at the CBI conference with an olive branch or just another stick? A little bit of both.
Business groups have been wary of Theresa May ever since her blistering attack on the massive pay differentials, tax avoidance and treatment of workers she identified in some corners of British business.
Today, she offered a more conciliatory tone. As well as weakening her commitment to put workers on company boards, saying only their voice should be represented - she insisted her agenda was unequivocally pro-business.
However, there was no escaping the big question as spelled out by the CBI's President, Paul Dreschler: "What happens the day after we leave the EU? Government has a responsibility to keep uncertainty to a minimum. We understand, in negotiations, the need for discretion, we're not asking for a running commentary but we are looking for clarity and above all a plan."
Business folk were pleased to hear her say, when questioned, that she understood their fears over a potential cliff edge of trading and regulatory uncertainty the day after Britain leaves the EU but weren't so pleased she declined to reassure them with details of her plan.
If business leaders were hoping to be treated to the same fireside chat that seemed to comfort the boss of Nissan, they would have left disappointed.
£2bn of new money for research and development was welcomed and business leaders seemed to accept the essential premise of the grand bargain she is offering - the government invests to boost productivity and cut corporation tax in exchange for help in tackling the worst excesses of capitalism.
'Clear promise'
However, trade unions said they were disappointed by Mrs May's remarks.
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "Theresa May made a clear promise to have workers represented on company boards. The proposals in her speech do not deliver on this.
"This is not the way to show that you want to govern for ordinary working people."
But CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said "different approaches will work for different businesses" on employee engagement.
"A starting point is firms being able to outline and explain what approach they are taking - whether that's employees on boards, employee committees, dedicated representatives, or other models that genuinely address the issue."
What May did and didn't say at CBI
What is the Autumn Statement?
A difficult trick to pull off
Views from UK business
Financial upheaval ahead for families
Mrs May also promised to boost productivity and cut corporation tax in exchange for help from businesses in tackling issues such as executive pay and shareholder accountability.
"Just as the government must open its mind to a new approach, so the business community must too," she said.
The promises made by the prime minister include a "patient capital review" to help firms secure long-term investment. The review will be chaired by Sir Damon Buffini, the former head of private equity group Permira.
Mrs May also said the government would review the support given to innovative firms through the tax system "because my aim is not simply for the UK to have the lowest corporate tax rate in the G20, but also one that is profoundly pro-innovation."
Corporation tax is already due to fall from its current 20% rate to 17% by 2020.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn addressed the conference later in the day criticising the government's "shambolic"  approach to Brexit which he said was hampering business's ability to plan. He set out Labour's approach to working with business, which he said would be characterised by "good intervention".
He said Labour's policies would involve "some increase in corporation tax" and said the suggestion that the UK should aim to reduce corporation tax to 15% or below was "reckless short-term grandstanding."
He called for more investment in housing, research and development and infrastructure, a higher minimum wage and measures to prevent undercutting of workers' pay and conditions.

Prime Minister Theresa May has called off Tuesday's crucial vote on her Brexit deal so she can go back to Brussels and ask for changes to it.
As it stands the deal "would be rejected by a significant margin" if MPs voted on it, she admitted.
But she said she was confident of getting "reassurances" from the EU on the Northern Ireland border plan.
But European Council President Donald Tusk said the remaining 27 EU countries would not "renegotiate" the deal.
While EU leaders would be willing to "discuss how to facilitate UK ratification" of the withdrawal agreement at Thursday's summit in Brussels, he suggested the controversial Northern Irish backstop, which the DUP and many Tories want removed, would remain in place.
The prime minister's U-turn came after she and senior ministers had spent days insisting the vote would go ahead, despite the scale of opposition from MPs being obvious.
It prompted angry scenes in the Commons, with MPs from all sides complaining that the government had denied them the right to have any say in the move.
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, who accused Mrs May of "losing control of events" and "disregarding" MPs, was granted an emergency debate in the Commons on Tuesday while Commons Speaker John Bercow said the government's handling of the issue had been "regrettable".
And Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, was expelled from the Commons after grabbing the ceremonial mace and trying to take it out of the chamber.
He was stopped by an officer of the House who returned it to its place on the table.
Theresa May refused to say when the Commons vote on her deal would now be held - saying it would depend how long fresh talks with the EU last.
Some MPs called for it to come back to the Commons before Christmas, but Mrs May would only say the final deadline for the vote was 21 January.
She said the the UK's departure date from the EU - 29 March next year - was written into law and the government was "committed" to delivering on it.
Conservative Remainer Justine Greening said she hoped the PM would not wait until 28 March before holding the vote.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been hoping to force a general election if Mrs May had lost Tuesday's planned vote, by tabling a vote of no confidence.
In his reaction to Mrs May's announcement that the vote would be delayed, he urged the PM to stand down because her government was now in "chaos".
But Labour has rejected calls from the SNP, the Lib Dems and some of its own MPs, to hold a vote of no confidence in the prime minister on Tuesday.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: "We will put down a motion of no confidence when we judge it most likely to be successful.
"It is clear to us that Theresa May will not renegotiate the deal when she goes to Brussels, and will only be asking for reassurances from EU leaders.
"When she brings the same deal back to the House of Commons without significant changes, others across the House will be faced with that reality.
"At that point, she will have decisively and unquestionably lost the confidence of Parliament on the most important issue facing the country, and Parliament will be more likely to bring about the general election our country needs to end this damaging deadlock."
Dozens of Conservative MPs had been planning to join forces with Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the DUP to vote down Mrs May's deal.
The Tory rebels and the DUP do not like the Northern Ireland "backstop", a legally-binding proposal for a customs arrangement with the EU, which would come into force if the two sides cannot agree a future relationship which avoids the return of a visible Northern Ireland border.
Tory MPs say it is unacceptable because it would result in new regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and could continue indefinitely, because the UK would not be able to leave without the EU's approval.
The prime minister vowed to put the deal to a vote but said there was no point at this stage because it would have been defeated.
She told MPs she would be speaking to EU leaders ahead of a summit later this week, about the "clear concerns" expressed by MPs about the backstop.
And she would also be "looking closely at new ways of empowering the House of Commons to ensure that any provision for a backstop has democratic legitimacy".
Mrs May wants to enable MPs to place obligations on the government "to ensure that the backstop cannot be in place indefinitely".
She again rejected all other alternatives that have been proposed to her deal - including a further referendum and leaving without a deal.
Her deal "gives us control of our borders, our money and our laws - it protects jobs, security and our Union", she said.
"It is the right deal for Britain. I am determined to do all I can to secure the reassurances this House requires, to get this deal over the line and deliver for the British people," she added.
Asked by Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable if EU leaders would be ready to ditch the backstop, she said they had shown they were aware of MPs' concerns that the backstop should be temporary.
"A number of European leaders I've spoken to have indicated that they are open to discussions to find a way to provide reassurance to members of this House on that point," she added.
Leading Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said in a statement that Mrs May lacked the "gumption" to put her "undeliverable" deal before MPs.
"This is not governing, it risks putting Jeremy Corbyn into government by failing to deliver Brexit. We cannot continue like this. The prime minister must either govern or quit."
Mr Rees-Mogg is trying to get enough Tory MPs to submit letters of no confidence in the PM to trigger a leadership contest.
Graham Brady, who receives those letters as chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, said some MPs were angry and others were "fidgety" but many were glad not to be "going through the motions of a needless defeat".
"We've just seen the PM doing the right thing but also quite bravely standing up... and making her case to an angry opposition," he added.
The deputy leader of the DUP - the Northern Ireland party whose backing Theresa May needs to win key votes - Nigel Dodds, said the situation was "quite frankly a bit of a shambles" and the PM was paying the price for crossing her "red lines" when it came to Northern Ireland.
He told Mrs May: "Come back with the changes to the withdrawal agreement or it will be voted down."
DUP leader Arlene Foster said she had told the prime minister in a phone call that the "backstop must go".
Theresa May's deal has been agreed with the EU - but it needs to be backed by the UK Parliament if it is to become law ahead of the UK's departure.
Mrs May has also been speaking to EU leaders about re-opening the withdrawal agreement, something both sides have previously ruled out.
European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said the EU would not renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement.
"As President Juncker said, this deal is the best and only deal possible," she said.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said Mrs May was "trying get more legal oomph behind the language" in the withdrawal agreement about the EU using "best endeavours" to get a trade deal which would remove the need for the backstop to be used.

Theresa May has attacked one of her predecessors - accusing Tony Blair of "undermining" the Brexit talks by calling for another referendum.
She called his comments an "insult to the office he once held" and said MPs could not "abdicate responsibility" to deliver Brexit by holding a new poll.
In London last week, Mr Blair said MPs might back a new vote if "none of the other options work".
In response to Mrs May, he insisted that a new referendum was democratic.
"Far from being anti-democratic it would be the opposite, as indeed many senior figures in her party from past and present have been saying," he said.
On Thursday about 10 Labour MPs met David Lidington - who is Mrs May's de facto second-in-command - to argue for another public vote.
Sources close to Mr Lidington said it was "pretty standard stuff" and he was not "planning for or advocating a second referendum".
Many senior Labour figures are deeply uneasy about endorsing another referendum.
The government is also opposed to any further referendum, saying the public made a clear choice when they voted in 2016 to leave by a margin of 51.9% to 48.1%.
BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said Mrs May's criticism of the former Labour prime minister was striking for its anger.
Mrs May said: "For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office he once held and the people he once served.
She added: "We cannot, as he would, abdicate responsibility for this decision.
"Parliament has a democratic duty to deliver what the British people voted for."
Meanwhile, the PM's chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, has responded to reports in the Mail on Sunday that he told colleagues another referendum was "the only way out of this", saying on Twitter: "Happy to confirm I am not planning a 2nd referendum with political opponents (or anyone else, to anticipate the next question)."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, who campaigned to leave the EU, said that if another referendum was held "people like me will be immediately demanding, it's best of three. Where does that end up?"
MPs were due to vote on Mrs May's Brexit deal last Tuesday, but it was postponed when the prime minister admitted it would have been "rejected by a significant margin".
After postponing the vote in Parliament, Mrs May travelled to Brussels to make a special plea to European Union leaders, in a bid to make her deal more acceptable to MPs.
However, the EU said there could be clarification but not renegotiation.
The Labour leadership has been under pressure to call a vote of no confidence in the government.
But Labour frontbencher Andrew Gwynne told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "We can't move to the next stage until Parliament has decided whether or not to back the prime minister's deal."
He said the party would be using "parliamentary tactics" to try to bring the MPs' "meaningful vote" on the deal - which was delayed by the government last week in expectation of a heavy defeat - forward to this week.
Asked whether his party would campaign for Brexit under a Labour deal if there were to be another referendum on the issue, he said: "Let's wait and see. These things are moving very quickly.
"We are a democratic party and we will put our decision to the party members in a democratic way before we decide what the next steps are."
Many of Mrs May's Conservative MPs are concerned that the "backstop" - which is aimed at preventing a hard border in Northern Ireland - would keep the UK tied to EU rules and limit its ability to strike trade deals.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds has told the BBC a second referendum would not end the deadlock over Brexit but might simply extend the impasse.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, he urged politicians to back the PM's plan, describing it as "balanced" and the "best of both worlds".
Mr Hinds accused some in Parliament of "wishful thinking" in believing they will get something closer to their own view by rejecting Mrs May's deal, adding: "There is really no reason to believe that's true."
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said the UK will "flourish and prosper" even if it leaves the EU with no deal.
"We've faced much bigger challenges in our history," he said.
"But we shouldn't pretend that there wouldn't be disruption, there wouldn't be risk, and there wouldn't be impact and that's why as a responsible government we have to make all the preparations necessary
He also said he wanted a "crack" at succeeding Mrs May after the PM takes the country through "this challenging next few months".
His comments come after Mrs May made it clear she would step down before the next general election - due in 2022.

Prime Minister Theresa May could set a date for her resignation in the coming days, the chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee has said.
The PM said she will step down when her Brexit deal is ratified by Parliament - but some MPs want a fixed date.
Sir Graham Brady said he expected a "clear understanding" of that timetable once she has met the committee, which she would do on Wednesday.
He also said he expected Brexit talks with Labour to "peter out" within days.
And Sir Graham also refused to rule out running himself to replace Mrs May.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's The Week in Westminster, he said the 1922 Committee had asked her to give "clarity" about her plans for the future, and she had "offered to come and meet with the executive".
"It would be strange for that not to result in a clear understanding [of when she will leave] at the end of the meeting," he added.
The 1922 Committee represents backbench Tory MPs and oversees the party's leadership contests.
On why the PM had so far been unwilling to set a date to step down, Sir Graham said: "I do understand the reticence about doing it.
"I don't think it's about an intention for staying indefinitely as prime minister or leader of the Conservative Party.
"I think the reticence is the concern that by promising to go on a certain timetable, it might make it less likely she would secure Parliamentary approval for the withdrawal agreement, rather than more likely."
He was also asked about the cross-party talks between the government and Labour over Mrs May's Brexit deal, which has been rejected three times.
Sir Graham said: "I find it very hard to see how that route can lead to any sensible resolution.
"If the customs union is agreed without a second referendum then half the Labour Party won't vote for whatever comes through regardless, and if a customs union is agreed then most of the Conservative Party isn't going to support it.
"So, I can't see that is a very productive route to follow, and I may be wrong, but I suspect it will peter out in the next few days without having come to any significant conclusion."
When quizzed about running for the party leadership, Sir Graham said: "It would take an awful lot of people to persuade me.
"I'm not sure many people are straining at the leash at the moment to take on what is an extraordinarily difficult situation."
In March, Mrs May pledged to stand down if and when Parliament ratified her Brexit withdrawal agreement, but did not make it clear how long she intends to stay if no deal was reached.
Pressure has grown on her since the Tories' local election drubbing, and there have been warnings the party faces a meltdown in elections to the European Parliament as well.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but the deadline was pushed back to 31 October after Parliament was unable to agree a way forward.

A "backstop" plan to keep the UK aligned with the EU's customs union after 2020 would only apply "in a very limited set of circumstances", Theresa May has said.
The proposal was drawn up to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland if the UK and EU cannot agree new arrangements in time.
Earlier Boris Johnson said Brexiteers need not worry about a "betrayal".
He said Mrs May would be "true to her promises" and deliver a deal.
The UK is leaving the EU in March 2019, which will be followed by a temporary transition phase until the end of 2020.
But ministers have yet to agree what they want to replace the UK's membership of the EU's customs union, which allows for tariff-free trading between members.
With no decision reached between the two alternative proposals the UK is considering, senior ministers signed off on a third, temporary, "backstop" option - which government sources say is very unlikely to be needed - at a meeting last week.
It would see the UK match EU tariffs in order to avoid border checks.
The government says this would allow the UK to sign and implement its own trade deals, something which it cannot do in the customs union.
But some Brexiteers who want a clean break from the EU fear it could turn into a long-term arrangement - last week backbench MP Jacob Rees-Mogg warned that people did not vote for a "perpetual purgatory".
Speaking in Macclesfield, Mrs May said the EU's own "backstop" - keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union - had been unacceptable so the UK had drawn up an alternative.
"Nobody wants this to be the solution that is achieved," she said.
"If it's necessary it will be in a very limited set of circumstances for a limited time."
The prime minister said she wanted to solve the customs issue "through our overall relationship with the European Union".
Earlier, speaking to reporters during a tour of Latin America, Mr Johnson - who led the campaign to leave the EU in 2016 - said: "Brexiteers fearing betrayal over the customs backstop must understand that the PM has been very clear that neither option is an outcome we desire - we want a deal with the EU and she will deliver it.
"I'm convinced that the prime minister will be true to her promises of a Brexit deal that sees Britain come out of the customs union and single market, have borders as frictionless as possible, reject European Court of Justice interference, control immigration and free to conduct unhindered free trade deals across the world.
"We must now give the prime minister time and space to negotiate this Brexit vision."
One of Mr Johnson's fellow Brexit campaigners, Environment Secretary Michael Gove, said the "whole point" of the backstop arrangement was "that it's intended not to be implemented but is there just in case".
The "strictly time-limited" arrangement would ensure a free flow of goods across the Irish border if the UK and EU cannot agree alternative arrangements, he said.
Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said there had to be clarity about how long any such arrangement would last, telling an event in London "there has to be a backstop to the backstop".
None of the UK's customs proposals have been agreed with the EU yet.
Most Brexiteers are against Mrs May's preferred option of a "customs partnership", under which the UK would collect tariffs set by the EU customs union on goods coming into the UK.
If the goods subsequently ended up in the EU the UK would pass the collected tariffs on to the EU. If the goods stayed in the UK, firms would be able to claim back the difference if the UK tariff on those goods was lower.
The alternative proposal would rely on technology and advance checks to minimise, rather than remove, customs checks. The EU has expressed doubts about whether either option would work.
Mr Johnson's five-day visit, taking in Peru, Argentina and Chile, is designed to pave the way for post-Brexit deals.
"Already during my time in South America I've been bowled over by the optimism and excitement from nations keen to forge deeper ties and new trading relationships with the UK," he said.

Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal bill will not be published or debated until early June, the government says.
The prime minister is under pressure to resign following a backlash from her own MPs against her pledged "new deal" on Brexit.
Andrea Leadsom quit as Commons Leader, saying she could not announce the bill which had "new elements that I fundamentally oppose".
She has been replaced by Treasury minister Mel Stride.
Downing Street has confirmed that the prime minister met Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Home Secretary Sajid Javid at No 10 on Thursday morning and would "give full consideration their views" about the bill.
Mrs May had told the Commons that the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - the legislation needed to implement the agreement between the UK and EU - would be published on Friday so MPs would have "the maximum possible time to study its detail".
Mrs Leadsom had been due to announce when it would be introduced to Parliament on Thursday, but resigned on Wednesday night.
Standing in for her, government whip Mark Spencer told MPs: "We will update the House on the publication and introduction of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on our return from the Whitsun recess."
He added that the government planned to publish the bill in the first week of June.
"We had hoped to hold second reading on Friday 7 June," he added. "At the moment, we have not secured agreement to this in the usual channels. Of course we will update the House when we return from recess."
Second reading is when MPs get a first chance to debate legislation, before deciding whether it should proceed to detailed scrutiny.
Responding for Labour, shadow Commons leader Valerie Vaz said: "The prime minister has once again put her own political survival ahead of the national interest.
"It is clear that the prime minister does not command a majority in her approach to Brexit and she has failed to accept this political reality."
US President Donald Trump is due to make a three-day state visit to the UK from 3 to 5 June.
Asked who would be in 10 Downing Street when he arrives, Mr Hunt said: "Theresa May will be prime minister to welcome him and rightly so."
It is possible for Mrs May to quit as Conservative leader before Mr Trump's visit, but continue as prime minister on a caretaker basis.
Mrs Leadsom said on Thursday she had "no doubts that I made the right decision" adding: "I felt I couldn't, in all conscience, stand up and deliver the business statement today with a Withdrawal Agreement Bill in it that I couldn't support elements of."
She did not answer questions about whether she was planning to run for the leadership.
The UK needs to pass a law to implement the withdrawal agreement - the part of the PM's Brexit deal which will take the country out of the EU - in UK law.
In a mini-reshuffle prompted by Mrs Leadsom's resignation, Mel Stride, who had been Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has replaced her as Commons leader.
He has been replaced on the Treasury team by Jesse Norman, whose previous role as a transport minister has been filled by Michael Ellis. Rebecca Pow has been made a junior minister at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, replacing Mr Ellis.
On Wednesday, members of the Conservatives' backbench 1922 Committee held a secret ballot on whether to change party rules, to allow the prime minister to face a vote of no confidence immediately.
Mrs May is due to meet the chairman of the committee, Sir Graham Brady, on Friday.
The results, in sealed envelopes, will be opened if Mrs May does not agree to stand down by 10 June.
Mrs May survived a no-confidence vote of Conservative MPs in December. Under existing rules, she cannot be challenged again until December this year.

Ministers say no part of the UK will be treated differently in the Brexit talks as Labour branded their approach an "embarrassment".
No agreement has been reached with the EU after a DUP backlash against proposals for the Irish border.
Brexit Secretary David Davis told MPs the government was close to concluding the first phase of talks.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said the text of the deal was a "big shock" and "it was not going to be acceptable."
She told the Republic of Ireland national broadcaster RTÉ that her party only saw the text on Monday morning, despite asking to see it for five weeks.
Theresa May, speaking as she welcomed Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to Downing Street, said talks with the EU had " made a lot of progress".
"There are still a couple of issues we need to work on. But we'll be reconvening in Brussels later this week as we look ahead to the December European Council," she said.
Mrs Foster was invited to hold talks with Mrs May in London on Tuesday, but the party's Westminster leader met the government's chief whip instead.
The meeting lasted for several hours, but sources suggested to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg that there was not much sign of a breakthrough yet, with a DUP insider saying the deal needed "radical surgery", rather than a few word changes.
A phone call between Mrs May and Mrs Foster had then been expected this evening, but sources added that it would not go ahead, suggesting it had never been arranged.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019 and Mrs May is under pressure to reach agreement on the Northern Ireland border so negotiations can move forward.
The prime minister needs the support of the DUP - the Democratic Unionist Party - which is Northern Ireland's largest party and has 10 MPs at Westminster, because she does not have a majority to win votes in the House of Commons.
Responding to an urgent question from Labour in the Commons on Tuesday, Mr Davis defended the controversial proposal for "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - intended to avoid the need for border checks after Brexit - saying this would apply to the whole of the UK.
The DUP is unhappy about any agreement which treats Northern Ireland differently.
It would not mean "having exactly the same rules" as the EU, Mr Davis said, but would involve "sometimes having mutually recognised rules".
Backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg warned that having "regulatory divergence" from the EU after Brexit was a "red line".
Labour's Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer said that when the DUP objected to the draft agreement, "fantasy met brutal reality", adding: "The DUP tail is wagging the Tory dog."
Mr Starmer also called for the government to drop its plan to enshrine the 29 March 2019 Brexit date in UK law.
Meanwhile, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith suggested the UK should walk away from the negotiations if the EU does not change its position.
But Tory MP and former cabinet minister, Nicky Morgan, said his comments were "madness" and walking away would "betrays the futures of millions of young people and those who never wanted to leave in the first place".
Dublin - which as an EU member is part of its single market and customs union - has been calling for written guarantees that a "hard border" involving customs checks on the island of Ireland will be avoided after Brexit
It is concerned this could undermine the 1998 peace treaty - the Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
Mr Davis said that while the "integrity" of the single market and customs union must be respected after Brexit, it was "equally clear we must respect the integrity of the United Kingdom" and individual nations could not have separate arrangements.
Mrs May needs to show "sufficient progress" has been made so far on "divorce" issues before European leaders meet on 14 December to decide whether to allow talks on future trade relations to begin.
The three issues that need to be resolved are the Northern Ireland border, citizens' rights and the amount of money the UK will pay as it leaves.
Talks between Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker broke up without agreement on Monday, after the DUP objected to a draft agreement on the future of the Irish border.
Key to the row is how closely aligned Northern Ireland's regulations will be with those of the Republic of Ireland, and the rest of the EU, in order to avoid a "hard" border.
Ireland's deputy prime minister Simon Coveney said Dublin would not budge from its position on the border.
The EU is treating the row as a "domestic British political issue", BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said.
"The show is now in London," said a European Commission spokesman.
Downing Street has insisted the border was not the only outstanding problem and disagreement remains over the role of the European Court of Justice in overseeing EU citizens' rights in the UK after Brexit.

Another gathering in Downing Street has come and gone, imagined at one point to be a "crunch meeting" at which Cabinet colleagues might thrash out their differences on the destination of Brexit.
In fact, it was nothing of the kind. The only crunching to be seen or heard was the gentle crump of the metaphorical tin can labelled "Britain's future after Brexit" being kicked, unopened, further down the road.
Did we seriously expect anything else?
Boris Johnson, and Brexiteers like him, believe that Brexit opens up a world of new opportunities.
Former Remainers including Phillip Hammond, the chancellor, are believed to quietly fear it could usher in an era of national decline.
There is no reconciling these views.
So ministers on both sides, and colleagues in between, have chosen with lesser or greater enthusiasm to embrace the government's stated ambition to pursue the goal of "frictionless trade" with the EU, with few if any tariff or non-tariff barriers, while simultaneously shuffling off the obligations that go with membership of the EU customs union and single market.
No matter that the chancellor is suspected by many in Whitehall and at Westminster to fear this is unachievable, and to secretly nurse the dream of an eventual rethink, or perhaps the hope that a Brexit transition might somehow go on and on.
Never mind that some senior Brexiteers are known to be quietly enthusiastic about the possibility of Brexit negotiations ending with no-deal with the EU, and with Britain trading in future on World Trade Organisation rules, until agreements can be struck with nations around the world.
For now, the goal of a future in which the UK both has its cake and eats it serves as the fulcrum upon which two opposing views can balance.
When Amber Rudd told Brexiteers via the BBC's Andrew Marr Show the cabinet was "more united than they think", this was surely what she meant.
Meanwhile, the paper published by HMRC officials last August set out practical means of managing cross-border trade, while leaving the tricky business of striking a trade deal with the EU, or failing to do so, to their political masters.
The practical talk in cabinet, I'm told by one senior minister, encompassed the UK's future relationship with the EU on the point of alignment of trading rules and regulations.
There's broad agreement among ministers that Britain should set its own rules and standards, and not automatically accept diktats from Brussels.
Yet it is also recognised that trade with Europe requires compliance with the standards enshrined in those same rules.
The distinction may seem rather Jesuitical to some.
But to Brexit enthusiasts, and to 10 Downing Street, it is a matter of sovereignty and goes to the heart of Brexit as an idea.
British and EU trading standards are perfectly aligned now, it's argued, and there's no intention on the British side to lower those standards, still less to go down the route to what Brussels calls "social dumping" and reduce workers' rights.
Arguments over any divergence in regulations could go to some form of arbitration.
"The Treasury just wants to stay in or close to a customs union," said a minister, "but they won't win that one".
And what about the European Commission?
"They just want to stay in control."
So, the moment of decision awaits further down the road.
Brexiteer ministers insist talk in Brussels that the UK cannot cherry pick, cannot enjoy free access to markets without accepting free movement of people and the jurisdiction of the European Court is merely a negotiating position.
"It's the starting position, not the end. Michel Barnier (the EU's chief negotiator) does not speak for the entire European Union...can you imagine the Netherlands wanting to put up barriers?"
Theresa May told MPs at Prime Minister's Questions: "As I have said right from the very beginning, we will hear noises off and all sorts of things being said about positions, but what matters is the position that we take in the negotiations as we sit down to negotiate the best deal.
"We have shown that we can do that; we did it December and we will do it again."
In other words, "trust me".
But the pressure on Mrs May to mark out her own preferred destination keeps mounting - especially from Brexiteers who'd like her to tell Brussels to accept Britain's terms or live with no deal at all.
The moment she does so the Cold War in her party between rival ministers and rival factions would likely warm up very quickly.
There is also a more urgent problem: securing a Brexit transition at the European Council on 22 March.
Without an agreement, Britain will suddenly be (forgive the mixed metaphor) looking down the barrel of a Brexit cliff-edge.
Fears among business leaders would reach a new pitch, threatening investment and jobs. And the government would need to prepare itself, and warn the businesses it has been trying to reassure that a hard Brexit was at least a real possibility.
Obstacles to a transition deal have not yet been resolved.
They include the rights of EU migrants who arrive in Britain after the transition. There is still no clear or detailed answer to the problem of the border on the island of Ireland.
Downing Street says trading regimes will remain aligned. Dublin is widely believed to want to push the UK to maintain a customs union. Any new, or old obstacle, could appear, or reappear. Who knows? Gibraltar?
Ultimately, the mythical tin can marked "Britain's future after Brexit" must come home to roost (to mix another metaphor).
In the Autumn, clear positions will be required on both the UK and EU side if there is to be a document - at the very least setting out "heads of agreement" on the future relationship.
At that point Parliament will have its say.
A "meaningful vote" is promised. On its outcome rests Brexit, Tory unity, Theresa May's future and conceivably that of the government.
A cabinet minister observed recently that the prime minister seemed to be privately philosophical about the state of her premiership and her government: "She said 'it goes with the territory'"
Perhaps, in another life, Mrs May commanded a bomb disposal unit.

Theresa May has promised MPs a vote on delaying the UK's departure from the EU or ruling out a no-deal Brexit, if they reject her deal next month.
Mrs May made a statement to MPs about Brexit on Tuesday, amid the threat of a revolt by Remain-supporting ministers.
The PM has promised MPs a meaningful vote on her Brexit deal by 12 March.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the prime minister of another "grotesquely reckless" Brexit delay.
The prime minister said she will put her withdrawal agreement  - including any changes she has agreed with the EU - to a meaningful vote by 12 March.
If that fails, MPs will be offered two separate votes:
"Let me be clear, I do not want to see Article 50 extended," she told MPs.
"Our absolute focus should be on working to get a deal and leaving on 29 March."
Any extension should not go beyond the end of June and "would almost certainly have to be a one-off", she added.
Mrs May said an extension "cannot take no deal off the table", adding:  "The only way to do that is to revoke Article 50, which I shall not do, or agree a deal."
Extending Article 50 would require the unanimous backing of the other 27 EU member states and, she said, she had not had conversations about it with them.
Mrs May repeatedly declined to say whether she would vote against a no-deal Brexit, and whether Tory MPs would be whipped to vote for or against it.
By the BBC's deputy political editor John Pienaar
Theresa May's big concession - and it was a significant tactical retreat - was about buying herself more time.
So now, under the threat of maybe 15 to 20 ministers rebelling, the prime minister's promised MPs an opportunity next month to rule out a no-deal Brexit, and force a "limited" delay in leaving the EU.
Without that promise, there's every chance those unhappy ministers would have joined other MPs in voting to rule out no-deal and delay Brexit anyway.
She did not offer ministers freedom to vote as they choose. So now the (potential) rebels must decide whether to hold fire for a fortnight, while she tries to get terms in Brussels she can sell to the Commons - hoping Brexiteers ultimately back her deal as the best Brexit available.
Call it "running down the clock", or "kicking the can down the road", if you like.
But kicking and running has been Mrs May's best hope for months.
Several Remain-backing ministers were threatening to resign, so that they could vote for a cross-party amendment aimed at ruling out a no-deal Brexit, when MPs vote on a government motion on Wednesday.
Conservative Caroline Spelman and Labour's Jack Dromey said they "welcomed" the PM's statement but they would still table amendments paving the way for a bill to extend Article 50.
They will then "seek assurances from ministers during [the] debate to secure confirmation of the prime minister's commitments, which we hope will mean we will not push our amendments to a vote", the pair said in a joint statement.
Another of the MPs behind the amendment, Conservative Sir Oliver Letwin, had earlier said there was no need for it now, because the prime minister's statement "does what is needed to prevent a no-deal exit on 29 March".
But opponents of Mrs May who support another EU referendum said she had still not ruled out a no-deal Brexit.
The Independent Group's Anna Soubry, who quit the Conservatives in protest at their Brexit policy, said it was a "shameful moment" and "nothing has changed".
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group of Leave-backing Conservative MPs, said: "My suspicion is that any delay to Brexit is a plot to stop Brexit.
"This would be the most grievous error that politicians could commit."
Speaking after a meeting with Theresa May, DUP Leader Arlene Foster said the PM had to deliver on her commitment to get legally-binding changes to her EU withdrawal agreement.
"Experience in Northern Ireland has shown that extending deadlines does nothing to encourage a deal," she said.
The EU had it "in their hands" to avoid a no-deal Brexit, she added, and come up with a deal which MPs can support.
"It's time for Dublin and Brussels to be in a deal-making mode," she said.
Jeremy Corbyn said he had "lost count" of the prime minister's explanations for her "grotesquely reckless" Brexit delays.
"The prime minister continues to say it is her deal or no deal, but this House has decisively rejected her deal and has clearly rejected no deal," he told MPs.
"It is the prime minister's obstinacy that is blocking a resolution."
Mr Corbyn says Labour will get behind another EU referendum if the party can't get its own Brexit proposals through Parliament on Wednesday.
If Mrs May's Brexit deal gets through Parliament next month, Labour wants it to be put to a public vote - with remaining in the EU as the other option.
The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Mrs May "could not be trusted" not to "dodge" another meaningful vote.
He said: "It's the height of irresponsibility for any government to threaten its citizens with these consequences.
"Rule out no deal, extend Article 50, but do it today - this should not be left until the middle of March."
But Mrs May surprised the House by quoting a TV advert in her response: "If he wants to end the uncertainty and deal with the issues he raised...then he should vote for a deal. Simples."

Theresa May has officially stepped down as the leader of the Conservative Party, but will remain as prime minister until her successor is chosen.
She has handed in her private resignation letter to the backbench 1922 Committee, two weeks after announcing her intention to leave.
Eleven Conservative MPs are vying to replace her as party leader and, ultimately, prime minister.
The winner of the contest is expected to be announced in the week of 22 July.
Mrs May, who has said it was a matter of deep regret that she had been unable to deliver Brexit, remains acting party leader during the leadership election process.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives fell to third place in the Peterborough by-election, behind winners Labour and the Brexit Party in second place, in what is traditionally a Tory-Labour marginal seat.
Mrs May's time as leader has been dominated by Brexit, with her party divided over the issue, and the failure to get her deal through Parliament.
The UK was originally meant to leave the European Union on 29 March but that was then pushed back to 12 April and eventually 31 October.
When Mrs May announced her resignation, she said it was time for a new prime minister to try to deliver Brexit.
BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley said Mrs May is expected to announce a number of domestic policies before her final departure, with sources saying she is aiming for an announcement a week on issues like the environment and women in the workplace.
On Friday, Mrs May handed in her resignation letter to the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservative MPs. Number 10 said the letter was short and formal.
The committee said it was now inviting nominations from those Conservative MPs "who wish to stand for election as the next party leader".
Leadership nominations close at 17:00 on Monday, a statement said.
By Tom Edgington, BBC Reality Check
Constitutionally speaking, Theresa May keeps the same powers. But in the eyes of MPs she may lack the authority to introduce any radical policies between now and handing the reins over to a new prime minister.
While Mrs May is still free to make policy or funding announcements, any pledges would eventually need to be made into law. According to Catherine Haddon, from the Institute for Government think tank, there's no guarantee MPs would give Mrs May's announcements the green light - especially with such a small working majority.
Aside from policy, Mrs May will continue to represent the UK abroad and she is still free to make public appointments and make changes to her team of ministers.
She will be able reward some of those she has worked with - including knighthoods and appointments to the House of Lords. But the resignation honours list has been controversial in the past - so it will be interesting to see how many appointments Mrs May makes.
Leadership candidates need eight MPs to back them. MPs will then vote for their preferred candidates in a series of secret ballots held on 13, 18, 19 and 20 June.
The final two will be put to a vote of members of the wider Conservative Party from 22 June, with the winner expected to be announced about four weeks later.
Speaking to BBC Politics Live, leadership contender Sam Gyimah said he had considered dropping out of the Conservative Party leadership race but insisted he would "get to the starting line" by Monday.
Three of his rivals, former Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, former Government Chief Whip Mark Harper and International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, have also said they have the eight nominations needed.
While the contest does not officially start until Mrs May steps down, candidates have already been jostling for position.
How the next prime minister gets a Brexit deal through Parliament and whether they would countenance a no-deal exit has been the dominant question of the campaign so far.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Dominic Raab's suggestion at a hustings on Wednesday that he would be prepared to shut down Parliament - the process known as prorogation - to ensure the UK leaves the EU on 31 October has been criticised by his rivals. And Commons Speaker John Bercow said on Thursday it was "simply not going to happen".
Conservative leadership contender Michael Gove has said the UK must not be bound by a "fixed" date if it needs slightly more time to get a deal.
Others, such as Mr Raab and Boris Johnson, insist the UK must leave on 31 October, whether it has approved a deal with Brussels or not.
Former trade minister Lord Digby Jones has called on Mrs May's successor to provide more "stability" for UK businesses over Brexit.
He told the BBC's Wake Up to Money programme that they should ensure the UK leaves the EU on 31 October, "preferably with a deal - but without a deal rather than not coming out".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "I don't know who the new leader is going to be, but it seems to be a choice between no deal, no deal and no deal, as far as I can understand it."
On Tuesday 18 June BBC One will be hosting a live election debate between the Conservative MPs who are still in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on air, use the form below. It should be open to all of them, not a specific politician.
If you are reading this page on the BBC News app, you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question on this topic.

Theresa May has said she will quit as Conservative leader on 7 June, paving the way for a contest to decide a new prime minister.
In an emotional statement, she said she had done her best to deliver Brexit and it was a matter of "deep regret" that she had been unable to do so.
Mrs May said she would continue to serve as PM while a Conservative leadership contest took place.
The party said it hoped a new leader could be in place by the end of July.
It means Mrs May will still be prime minister when US President Donald Trump makes his state visit to the UK at the start of June.
Asked about the prime minister's announcement, Mr Trump said: "I feel badly for Theresa. I like her very much. She's a good woman. She worked very hard. She's very strong."
Mrs May said she would step down as Tory leader on 7 June and had agreed with the chairman of Tory backbenchers that the contest to replace her should begin the following week.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has become the latest MP to say that he will run, joining Boris Johnson, Esther McVey and Rory Stewart.
More than a dozen other MPs are believed to be seriously considering entering the contest.
At the start she boasted about not being a creature of Westminster's bars and cliques.
But it meant this very private politician had few true friends to help when things turned sour, and neither the powers of patronage, nor the capability to schmooze or arm twist to get people around to her point of view.
Few of her cabinet colleagues, even now, know her well at all, one saying that "as things got harder the circle got smaller". Another revealed that "there was no trust, and no faith".
Settling the Tories' decades-long dispute over Europe was always perhaps beyond just one leader. But the wounds have got more painful under her leadership, rather than fading away.
Read Laura's blog
In her statement, delivered in Downing Street, Mrs May said she had done "everything I can" to convince MPs to support the withdrawal deal she had negotiated with the European Union but it was now in the "best interests of the country for a new prime minister to lead that effort".
She added that, in order to deliver Brexit, her successor would have to build agreement in Parliament.
"Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise," she said.
Mrs May's voice shook as she ended her speech saying: "I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold. The second female prime minister, but certainly not the last.
"I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love."
The prime minister had faced a backlash from her MPs after announcing her latest Brexit plan earlier this week, which included concessions aimed at attracting cross-party support.
The Conservative Party said the likely timetable for the leadership contest was that nominations would close during the week beginning 10 June, with candidates whittled down to the final two to by the end of the month.
Those names would then be put to a vote of party members before the end of July.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who is seen as the front-runner to succeed Mrs May, told an economic conference in Switzerland on Friday: "We will leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal."
He said a new leader would have "the opportunity to do things differently".
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mrs May had been "right to resign" and that the Conservative Party was now "disintegrating".
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called her a "true public servant" and Chancellor Philip Hammond said it had been a "privilege" to serve alongside her.
Mrs May's predecessor, David Cameron - who resigned as prime minister after campaigning for Remain and losing the referendum - said she should be thanked for her "tireless efforts".
He added: "I know how painful it is to accept that your time is up and a new leader is required. She has made the right decision - and I hope that the spirit of compromise is continued."
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wished Mrs May well despite "profound disagreements" but added: "The prospect of an even more hardline Brexiteer now becoming PM and threatening a no-deal exit is deeply concerning."
Democratic Unionist Party Leader Arlene Foster, whose party supported Mrs May's government in power after the Conservatives lost their majority in the 2017 election, praised Mrs May's "dutiful approach on national issues".
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said Mrs May's compromises with the right-wing of her party had been blame for her departure, adding: "The best and only option remains to take Brexit back to the people. I believe the public would now choose to stop Brexit."
But Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage said two Conservative leaders whose "instincts were pro-EU" had now gone and the party either "learns that lesson, or it dies".

Theresa May has held meetings with leading Tory Remainers, amid speculation about further defections.
Justine Greening and Phillip Lee say Mrs May has ignored requests from pro-EU Tory MPs in favour of Brexiteers.
The pair had separate meetings with the PM in Downing Street.
Meanwhile, one ex-Labour member of the new Independent Group of MPs has said it could help keep Mrs May in power on condition that she agreed to another EU referendum with Remain as an option.
However, the PM was focused on her own party on Thursday, as she met cabinet ministers David Gauke and Greg Clark.
The pair have warned of the dangers to business of leaving the EU without a formal deal, an option which Brexiteers in the European Research Group of Conservative MPs insist must be preserved as negotiating leverage in Brussels.
The government said on Thursday that talks would continue "urgently" at a technical level, following "productive" meetings involving Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
In the UK, ex-Labour MP Gavin Shuker told The Huffington Post members of the new Independent Group had first made the offer of a potential confidence and supply agreement - like the one the DUP has with the government - last month in a meeting with the PM's second-in-command David Lidington.
Then-Labour MPs Chris Leslie, Luciana Berger and Chuka Umunna, along with then-Tory Anna Soubry, who have all joined the group this week, were also at the meeting.
Mr Shuker said he had told Mr Lidington he would support any type of deal provided there was a "confirmatory referendum" to get public backing but that the offer was rejected.
The leaders of both main parties are battling to prevent more defections after eight Labour MPs and three Tories broke away to form a new "centrist" group in Parliament.
Theresa May has written to the three Tory defectors - Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston - to reject what she describes as the "picture they paint of the party", saying its record on the NHS, employment and diversity proved it was "moderate" and "open-hearted".
The prime minister offered to "continue to work together on issues" where they agree - but told the three she rejected "the parallel you draw with the way Jeremy Corbyn and the hard left have warped a once-proud Labour Party".
In response to their claim that local Tory associations are being taken over by former UKIP members, Mrs May said: "An open, broad party should always welcome new members and supporters with a range of views, including those who have previously supported other parties."
But she said local party branches had been warned to ensure new members support the party's "values and objectives".
Ex-Tory MP Heidi Allen, one of the three defectors from the party, told ITV's Peston programme "a third" of Conservative MPs were fed up with the party's direction.
Ms Greening and Mr Lee, who quit as a justice minister over Brexit, have been named by Ms Allen as potential future defectors to the Independent Group.
The Right to Vote group, which is chaired by Mr Lee, said he had discussed the campaign's calls for a pause in the Brexit process and a possible second referendum with Mrs May.
"Talks were open and we are encouraged she listened to our case," the group said.
Mr Lee has said one of the reasons the Tory MPs decided to quit the party was the access the Brexiteer European Research Group got to the prime minister, who he said had refused to meet his wing of the party.
Justine Greening - a former education secretary - told the Today programme she had been tempted to break away from the Conservative Party and join the Independent Group.
"It is something that I have considered, but I have reached a different conclusion for the moment," Ms Greening told Today.
"I don't think I would be able to stay part of a party that was simply a Brexit party that had crashed us out of the European Union."
The Independent Group was set up by eight defecting Labour MPs unhappy with their party's handling of Brexit and anti-Semitism.
They were later joined by three pro-Remain Tories - who accuse the Conservative leadership of allowing right-wing hardliners to shape the party's approach to Brexit and other matters.
Labour's Ian Austin also expressed sympathy with the Independent Group's aims, saying he would think "long and hard" about his future in the Labour Party.
Shadow home Secretary Diane Abbott told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "I am very sad that the Labour members of this new independent organisation have gone.
"Up until the last minute, people were talking to them, trying to persuade them not to take the step they have taken."
She said she hoped they would continue to work with Labour on issues like homelessness, the benefit system, the NHS and "most of all fighting this Tory Brexit".
Meanwhile, Labour have contacted the Information Commissioner over alleged attempts to access personal data held by the party.
It is understood there are concerns an MP accessed party systems to contact members after reports of their resignation on Tuesday night.
Enfield North MP Joan Ryan, who announced she was quitting Labour in an interview with the Times published on Tuesday evening, said: "Neither I nor my office have accessed or used any Labour Party data since I resigned the Labour Whip and my membership of the Labour Party."

Theresa May insisted "very good progress" was being made in Brexit negotiations - as the DUP said there was "more work to be done".
Mrs May appeared in Prime Minister's Questions after a phone call with DUP leader Arlene Foster, who has refused to support draft plans for the border.
One Tory MP said the PM's "red lines" on Brexit looked "a little bit pink".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government should "get out of the way" if it couldn't negotiate a deal.
On Monday Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party - whose support the PM needs to win key votes at Westminster - objected to draft plans drawn up by the UK and the EU.
The DUP said the proposals, which aimed to avoid a "hard border" by aligning regulations on both sides of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, were not acceptable. Dublin says it wants firm guarantees that a hard border can be avoided.
This has left the UK government racing to find an agreement suiting all sides in time for next week's EU summit.
Following Mrs May's call with Ms Foster, a DUP spokesman said discussions were continuing and there was "more work to be done".
Mrs May also spoke on the phone with Ireland's Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who "reiterated the firm Irish position", according to his spokesman.
Mr Varadkar also told parliamentarians in the Irish Dail that talks on the Irish border question could resume in the New Year if agreement could not be reached next week.
In response, Downing Street said it was focused on next week's summit, and the DUP's Nigel Dodds said the comments increased the likelihood of no trade deal being reached.
"Mr Varadkar may try to appear calm on the surface, but he is playing a dangerous game - not with us but with his own economy," he said.
In PMQs, Mrs May was asked by DUP MP Jim Shannon to ensure there would be no "constitutional, political or regulatory" barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
She said the short answer was yes, adding that the Brexit settlement would respect the UK's "constitutional integrity" and "internal market".
She said that finding a way to leave the customs union and single market while avoiding a hard border was the "whole point" of Brexit negotiations about future relations.
But the EU says talks about the future can only happen when enough progress has been made in agreeing what will happen at the Northern Ireland border.
The suggestion of "regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the European Union - which emerged on Monday - has concerned some Eurosceptic Conservative MPs.
During PMQs backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg proposed a new coat of red paint for Mrs May's negotiating "red lines".
She responded by referring to her previous speeches setting out her negotiating goals, adding: "Those principles remain."
Labour says the option of staying in the EU's customs union long-term should be kept "on the table" in negotiations and has criticised the government for ruling this out.
At the 14-15 December summit, European leaders will decide whether enough progress has been made in the negotiations on Ireland, the UK's "divorce bill" and citizens' rights so far to open trade talks.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has suggested the UK could pay the so-called Brexit bill, regardless of whether or not there is a subsequent trade agreement with the EU.
He told MPs on the Commons Treasury Committee that he found it "inconceivable" that the UK would "walk away from an obligation that we recognised as an obligation".
"That's just not a credible scenario," he added. "That's not the kind of country we are. And frankly it would not make us a credible partner for future international agreements."
A No 10 spokesman said the government's position remained that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and that applies to the financial settlement".
Reports have suggested the UK has raised its financial offer to a figure of up to 50bn euros (£44bn).

The European Union must "evolve" its position on Brexit and not fall back on unworkable proposals regarding the Irish border, Theresa May has said.
The prime minister made the remarks in Belfast on Friday, during a two-day visit to Northern Ireland.
The issue of the Irish border has been the key sticking point in Brexit talks so far.
The UK and EU have agreed that there should be no hard border in Ireland, but are at odds over how to achieve it.
The backstop solution is effectively an insurance policy -  to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland if appropriate customs arrangements cannot be agreed by the EU and UK in time for the end of the transition period in December 2020.
The EU has proposed a backstop that would mean Northern Ireland staying in the EU customs union, large parts of the single market and the EU VAT system.
However, the UK said that would effectively create a border down the Irish Sea.
On Friday, Mrs May again repeated her opposition to that, saying: "The economic and constitutional dislocation of a formal 'third country' customs border within our own country is something I will never accept and believe no British prime minister could ever accept".
She also said both sides in the negotiation  "share a determination never to see a hard border in Northern Ireland".
"And no technology solution to address these issues has been designed yet, or implemented anywhere in the world, let alone in such a unique and highly sensitive context as the Northern Ireland border".
However, EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has questioned Mrs May's plan for a future trade relationship with the EU, saying it could weaken the single market and create burdens for business.
He said the UK's Brexit White Paper, published on 12 July, opened "the way to a constructive discussion" but must be "workable".
Mr Barnier questioned whether plans for a common rulebook for goods and agri-foods were practical.
Earlier this week, the government backed an amendment to its Customs Bill that would make it illegal for Northern Ireland to be outside the UK's customs territory.
Mrs May said the EU's backstop proposal would be a breach of the Belfast Agreement - and that her plan, agreed by the Cabinet at Chequers earlier this month, was the best way forward.
"What I've said to the EU is that the legal text they've produced is not acceptable, that's why we proposed an alternative to that," she said.
She said there now needed to be a renewed focus on EU-UK negotiations with "increased pace and intensity".
The prime minister also met several of the political parties in Northern Ireland.
"In fact it's now clear the British prime minister has come here to pick a fight with Ireland and to pick a fight with the EU," Mrs McDonald said.
However, the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, defended the prime minister.
"What she has done is set out her agenda, that's very important. She talked about working together to find solutions, and the need to work collaboratively," she said.
Theresa May wants a backstop that would see the whole of the UK staying in the customs union for a limited period of time after the transition period - something the EU has said is unacceptable.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley told BBC's Good Morning Ulster programme the government was committed to getting a legal text for a backstop.
Earlier, the Irish Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) Simon Coveney tweeted that if the UK did not accept the EU wording on a backstop in the draft withdrawal agreement, they would have to propose an  alternative that would deliver the same result.
Reacting to his comments, Mrs Bradley said while the EU had put forward a legal text, "we do not accept it".
"We've put forward a counter proposal and we're now working on how we get a backstop that we are committed to delivering but it has to be a backstop that respects the integrity of the whole UK and does not put a border in the Irish sea."
The Shadow Secretary of State, Tony Lloyd, told the BBC Labour had always been "very clear" that the UK should be part of the customs union.
EU and UK negotiators have been meeting in Brussels this week to discuss the border issue.
Friday's speech in Northern Ireland marks the prime minister's first major attempt to sell the Chequers agreement since it was reached by her cabinet earlier this month.
She is due to tour other parts of the UK over the summer in an attempt to persuade businesses and citizens of its benefits.
Both the UK and EU are stepping up preparations for a "no deal" Brexit.
The two sides insist it is not what they want - and that reaching a deal by the autumn is still very much on the cards.
But they have yet to agree how their final relationship will work, with key issues around cross-border trade unresolved, and the UK's official departure date of 29 March 2019 fast approaching.
The Republic of Ireland will remain within the EU and Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar has said his government is making contingency plans for "the unlikely event of a no-deal hard Brexit".
Mrs May also addressed the impasse at Stormont.
She added that until devolution is restored, the government would fulfil its responsibilities but warned interventions from Westminster were "no substitute" in the long-term.

Theresa May has said she wants EU citizens living in the UK to stay after Brexit as she announced plans designed to put their "anxiety to rest".
All EU nationals lawfully resident for at least five years will be able to apply for "settled status" and be able to bring over spouses and children.
Those who come after an as-yet-unagreed date will have two years to "regularise their status" but with no guarantees.
Jeremy Corbyn said the offer was "not generous" and "too little, too late".
Labour said the UK should have made a unilateral guarantee of security to EU citizens in the aftermath of last year's Brexit vote.
The EU's chief negotiator said the proposals did not go far enough.
A 15-page document outlining the detail of the UK's offer to EU citizens was published as Theresa May briefed MPs on the outcome of Friday's EU summit - at which she first set out her plans.
She told the Commons that she wanted to give reassurance and certainty to the 3.2 million EU citizens in the UK - as well as citizens of the three EEA countries and Switzerland - who she said were an "integral part of the economic and cultural fabric" of the UK.
But she said any deal on their future legal status and rights must be reciprocal and also give certainty to the 1.2 million British expats living on the continent after the UK leaves the EU - expected to be on 29 March 2019.
The key points of the UK's proposals are:
The prime minister told MPs that those granted settled status, equivalent to having indefinite leave to remain, would be "treated as if they were UK citizens for healthcare, benefits and pensions".
Mrs May said the process of application would be simplified and a "light touch" approach adopted. The existing application process for permanent residency, which involves filling out a 85-page form, has been widely criticised.
"Under these plans, no EU citizen currently in the UK lawfully will be asked to leave at the point the UK leaves the EU," Mrs May said.
By Danny Shaw, BBC home affairs correspondent
Officials anticipate that the process of administering "settled status" will be a huge challenge, with some 3.2 million potential applications.
Those EU nationals who've been assigned residency cards already will have to apply again under the new system, though the process for them is expected to be "streamlined".
It's thought applications for settled status will start to be processed from mid-2018.
Officials say they intend to put in place a new, online, simplified system - but say they are used to dealing with large volumes of applications - 2.5 million visas each year and seven million passports.

Read Danny's blog
Mrs May said spouses, children and other family members currently living overseas would be able to come to the UK and apply for settled status on the same basis as their partners and relatives.
Pressed by several Labour MPs, she suggested there would be no income barriers for anyone whose relatives have been in the UK for more than five years while, for others, existing rules applying to the foreign dependents of British citizens would be in force in future.
"There will be no extra requirements," she said. "We are not talking about splitting up families."
She also insisted the UK should police the new rules rather than the European Court of Justice.
But Mr Corbyn said the question of citizens' rights should have been dealt with in isolation rather than being dragged into the "delicate and complex" matrix of trade and other Brexit-related issues now being discussed.
"The truth is it is too little, too late. That could have been done and should have been done a year ago when Labour put that very proposal to the House of Commons. This isn't a generous offer. This is confirmation the government is prepared to use people as bargaining chips."
The SNP's Ian Blackford said there were still "more questions than answers" about how EU citizens living in Scotland would be affected.
And the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said it could not understand why those who already had permanent residence were being asked to re-apply to obtain the new status.
"These are people who have already proven their right to be here to the government's satisfaction under a very stringent process," said its chief executive Saira Grant.
"It is astonishing that the government wants to take on the expense and administrative hassle of reprocessing all of those applications under a new scheme."
Reacting on Twitter, Michel Barnier, who is leading the Brexit negotiations for the EU, said his goal was the same level of protection that citizens currently have under EU law.
He added: "More ambition, clarity and guarantees needed than in today's UK position."
Another key EU figure, Guy Verhofstadt, who is negotiating on behalf of the European Parliament, warned that any changes to free movement laws before the UK has left would break EU law.

Theresa May has suffered three Brexit defeats in the Commons as she set out to sell her EU deal to sceptical MPs.
Ministers have agreed to publish the government's full legal advice on the deal after MPs found them in contempt of Parliament for issuing a summary.
And MPs backed calls for the Commons to have a direct say in what happens if the PM's deal is rejected next Tuesday.
Mrs May said MPs had a duty to deliver on the 2016 Brexit vote and the deal on offer was an "honourable compromise".
She was addressing the Commons at the start of a five-day debate on her proposed agreement on the terms of the UK's withdrawal and future relations with the EU.
The agreement has been endorsed by EU leaders but must also be backed by the UK Parliament if it is to come into force. MPs will decide whether to reject or accept it on Tuesday 11 December.
Mrs May said Brexit divisions had become "corrosive" to UK politics and the public believed the issue had "gone on long enough" and must be resolved.
In other Brexit-related developments:
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg
The prime minister has had a terrible day today as the government made history in two excruciating ways.
Ministers were found to be in contempt of Parliament - a very serious telling off - and the government had a hat trick of defeats - the first time since the 1970s that's happened.
As you'd expect too, MP after MP after MP rose after Theresa May's remarks to slam her deal as Tory divisions were played out on the green benches, with harsh words exchanged.
But in this topsy-turvy world, the overall outcome of the day for Mrs May's big test a week tonight might have been not all bad...
By 311 votes to 293, the Commons supported a motion demanding full disclosure of the legal advice given to cabinet before the Brexit deal was agreed.
The move was backed by six opposition parties, including Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party which has a parliamentary pact with the Conservatives.
It came after Attorney General Geoffrey Cox published a summary of the advice on Monday and answered MPs questions for three hours - but argued that full publication would not be in the national interest.
Labour had accused ministers of "wilfully refusing to comply" with a binding Commons vote last month demanding they provided the attorney general's full and final advice.
After Labour demanded the advice should be released ahead of next Tuesday's key vote on Mrs May's deal, Commons Speaker John Bercow said it was "unimaginable" this would not happen.
In response, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said she would "respond" on Wednesday, but would ask the Commons Privileges Committee to consider the constitutional repercussions.
An attempt by ministers to refer the whole issue, including the government's conduct, to the committee of MPs was earlier defeated by four votes.
The privileges committee will now decide which ministers should be held accountable and what sanction to apply, with options ranging from a reprimand to the more unlikely scenario of a minister being suspended from the Commons.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the result left the government "on the ropes", adding: "Theresa May's majority has evaporated, and the credibility of her deal is evaporating with it."
The prime minister suffered a further setback on Tuesday as MPs backed, by 321 votes to 299, changes to the parliamentary process should the Commons vote down her deal next week.
If that happens, the government has 21 days in which to return to the House and set out what it plans to do next.
But Tory Dominic Grieve's motion means that instead of MPs being confined to merely taking note of what the government tells them, the Commons would be able to exert more influence by voting on what they wanted the government to do as well.
Tuesday's vote, in which 26 Tory MPs rebelled, could potentially tilt the balance of power between government and Parliament if, as expected, MPs push for a "Plan B" alternative to Mrs May's deal and also seek to prevent any chance of a no-deal exit.
Mr Grieve, who has expressed support for another Brexit referendum, told Channel 4 News he was not seeking to "guarantee a particular outcome" if Mrs May's deal went down.
But he said it would "allow the UK time to consider its options", including potentially re-starting negotiations with the EU or giving the public the final say.
As she sought the backing of the Commons for her Brexit deal, the prime minister said she was confident the UK would enjoy a "better future" outside the European Union.
She said the "honourable compromise" on offer was "not the one-way street" many had portrayed it to be and that the EU had made it clear that the agreement would not be improved on.
"I never said this deal was perfect, it was never going to be. That is the nature of a negotiation," she said.
"We should not let the search for a perfect Brexit prevent a good Brexit... I promise you today that this is the very best deal for the British people and I ask you to back it in the best interest of our constituents and our country."
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was a bad deal for the UK and Labour would seek a vote of no confidence in Mrs May if she could not get it through Parliament.
"This House will make its decision next Tuesday," he said. "I hope and expect this House will reject that deal.
"At that point, the government has lost the confidence of the House. Either they have to get a better deal from the EU or give way to those who will."
Nigel Dodds, the leader of the DUP in Westminster, said the agreement "falls short" of delivering Brexit "as one United Kingdom" and would mean entering "a twilight world where the EU is given unprecedented powers over the UK".
"We would have to rely on the goodwill of others to ever leave this arrangement," he said.
"So... the UK's future as a strong and independent global trading nation standing together is in real and imminent jeopardy - an outcome that doesn't honour the referendum or take back control of our laws, our money and our borders."
Ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson dismissed the deal as a "paint and plaster pseudo-Brexit" and said its supporters would be "turning their backs" on the 17.4 million Leave voters.
"If we try to cheat them now, as I fear we are, they will spot it and will never forgive us," he said.
The leader of the SNP in Westminster, Ian Blackford, said beneath the "theatre" of the past few months was the "cold, hard truth" that this deal was "a moment of self-harm in our history".
He said it was "difficult" and "a real sorrow" to even respond to a motion that could see the UK leave the EU - an institution that he called the "greatest peace project in our lifetime".
"It is not too late to turn back. Fundamentally, there is no option that is going to be better for our economy, jobs, and for our communities than staying in the European Union.
"And it is the height of irresponsibility of any government to bring forward a proposition that is going to make its people poorer."
However, in closing the debate shortly after 01:00 GMT on Wednesday, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay argued the deal would bring "real changes which will improve the livelihoods of people up and down the country".
"This deal is a choice between the certainty of continued co-operation or the potentially damaging fracture of no deal, or indeed the instability of a second referendum vote," he said.
"Rejecting this deal would create even more uncertainty at a time when we owe it to our constituents to show clarity and conviction."

Theresa May is taking personal control of Brexit talks with the EU, with Dominic Raab deputising for her.
Mr Raab was drafted in as Brexit Secretary to replace David Davis, who quit in protest at the prime minister's proposals for post-Brexit trade.
A special unit in Mrs May's office has played an increasing role in Brexit talks during recent months.
Tuesday's announcement, in a written statement by Mrs May, formalises that shift in responsibility.
Labour's Shadow Brexit Minister Jenny Chapman said: "Dominic Raab has been sidelined by the prime minister before he has even had the chance to get his feet under the table."
Mr Raab, who was a leading figure in the Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum, insisted he had not been sidelined, telling MPs it had always been the case that Mrs May was in overall charge of the talks and the announcement amounted to some "shifting of the Whitehall deckchairs".
He said the prime minister had suggested the changes to him on the day he was offered David Davis's job and he had agreed to them.
He acknowledged there had previously been "tensions" between his department and the Cabinet Office and the changes would ensure there was "one chain of command" to "get the best possible deal".
Stewart Jackson, who was chief of staff for David Davis before he resigned two weeks ago, has previously accused Number 10 of running a "shadow, parallel operation" and keeping officials and ministers from the Brexit department "in the dark" about Brexit proposals.
The Europe Unit led by senior civil servant Olly Robbins in the Cabinet Office, which reports directly to the prime minister, will have "overall responsibility for the preparation and conduct of the negotiations", Mrs May said in her written statement.
"DExEU (the Department for Exiting the EU) will continue to lead on all of the government's preparations for Brexit: domestic preparations in both a deal and a no-deal scenario, all of the necessary legislation, and preparations for the negotiations to implement the detail of the Future Framework.
"I will lead the negotiations with the European Union, with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union deputising on my behalf."
Mrs May said that DExEU would recruit some new staff to work on preparations for Brexit, while a number of Cabinet Office officials would move over to the department.
There will be no net reduction to staff numbers in Mr Raab's department, she said.
Mr Raab told MPs on the Brexit committee, he would be going back out to Brussels shortly to continue talks with EU negotiator Michel Barnier, alongside Mr Robbins.
Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay suggested a "coup" had taken place to take control of the Brexit process away from David Davis.
Mr Robbins said: "I honestly don't recognise the picture you are painting."
It comes as the government published a White Paper saying how the UK's EU withdrawal agreement will be put into law.
Mr Raab said the proposed Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill would deliver a "smooth and orderly" Brexit.
He said it would kick in only once MPs had given their backing to any deal struck with Brussels in the autumn. If there is no deal it will not be enacted.
The legislation would amend some parts of the EU Withdrawal Bill, passed last month after a series of knife-edge votes, to ensure the UK statute book continues to function during the 21 month transition period.
It would not end the supremacy of EU law altogether on 29 March next year, as promised in the EU Withdrawal Bill, with the continued jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice until December 2020, among other things.
Labour's Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it was now clear that the EU Withdrawal Act "will need major surgery," adding that the 29 March Brexit day was a "gimmick" which had come "unstuck".
"I can't remember legislation which has needed such great revision and amendment before the relevant parts have even come into force," he told MPs.
The new bill would create a financial authority to manage "divorce" payments, which will total between £35bn and £39bn, to the EU - and aim to protect citizens' rights.
Mr Raab told MPs: "It provides the clarity and certainty to EU citizens living here and UK nationals abroad that their rights will be properly protected.
"It will enact a time-limited implementation period, giving businesses greater certainty, giving the public finality with respect to our relationship with the EU and it provides for the appropriate means for paying the financial settlement.
"Above all, with 80% of the withdrawal agreement settled with our EU friends, the white paper is another key milestone on the UK's path to leaving the EU."
He said the publication of the white paper will allow "maximum scrutiny" of the government's plans by Parliament.
"It also sends a clear signal to the European Union that the United Kingdom is a reliable, dependable negotiating partner, delivering on the commitments it has made across the negotiation table," he told MPs.
In a separate development, the UK government guaranteed funding for EU programmes run by UK charities, businesses and universities up to the end of 2020, even if the UK left without a deal.

Prime Minister Theresa May is to face an unprecedented no-confidence challenge - from Conservative grassroots campaigners.
More than 70 local association chiefs - angry at her handling of Brexit - have called for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss her leadership.
A non-binding vote will be held at that National Conservative Convention EGM.
Dinah Glover, chairwoman of the London East Area Conservatives, said there was "despair in the party".
She told the BBC: "I'm afraid the prime minister is conducting negotiations in such a way that the party does not approve."
The Conservative Party's 800 highest-ranking officers, including those chairing the local associations, will take part in the vote.
Mrs May survived a vote of confidence of her MPs in December - although 117 Conservatives voted against her.
By Nick Eardley, BBC political correspondent
Did you enjoy the Easter Brexit truce? Don't expect it to last.
Westminster will return tomorrow with many familiar tensions.
Some Conservatives are angry at the prime minister's Brexit strategy and angry that she's holding talks with Labour.
Any vote of no-confidence by local party campaigners won't be binding. But if it did pass it would be another example of the pressure in the party.
In Parliament, there are continued calls from some for a rule change to allow another confidence vote by MPs (at the moment Mrs May is safe until December, one year on from the unsuccessful challenge at the end of 2018).
One well-placed Tory said many have had enough.
Mrs May does still have backers and seems determined to get on with the job.
But any Easter calm looks set to be short-lived.
Under party rules, MPs cannot call another no-confidence vote until December 2019.
However, an EGM has to convene if more than 65 local associations demand one via a petition.
The current petition, which has passed the signature threshold, states: "We no longer feel that Mrs May is the right person to continue as prime minister to lead us forward in the [Brexit] negotiations.
"We therefore, with great reluctance, ask that she considers her position and resigns, to allow the Conservative Party to choose another leader, and the country to move forward and negotiate our exit from the EU."
It is believed to be the first time the procedure has been used.

Donald Tusk has said Theresa May needs to come up with "a better idea" than the EU's controversial plan to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland.
The PM has rejected keeping Northern Ireland in the EU's customs area saying this would split the UK in two.
But the European Council president said one of the "possible negative consequences" of the kind of Brexit Mrs May wants would be a hard border.
The two met in No 10 ahead of a big Brexit speech on Friday by Mrs May.
Mrs May, who chaired a meeting of the cabinet before her talks with Mr Tusk, has already pledged not to accept the draft withdrawal treaty published on Wednesday by the EU.
She reiterated this position to Mr Tusk during what Downing Street said was a "positive and constructive meeting".
The prime minister wants to resolve the Northern Ireland question "through the overall relationship between the UK and the EU", Downing Street said.
An EU source said the main focus had been the nature of the UK and EU's future relationship and that all the EU's remaining members supported its chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
The UK and the EU agree on wanting to avoid a return to a physical border - with border posts and checks - in Northern Ireland.
The UK has suggested new IT systems could be introduced to avoid the need for physical border checks but has yet to spell out how this would work in practice.
But the draft EU treaty also includes the option of a "common regulatory area" after Brexit on the island of Ireland - in effect keeping Northern Ireland in a customs union - if no other solution is found.
Both the EU and the Irish government say it is up to the UK to come up with concrete alternatives to what they describe as a "backstop" option.
Mrs May says the EU proposal would "threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK" by creating a border down the Irish Sea.
In a speech in Brussels before travelling to London Mr Tusk said he was "absolutely sure that all the essential elements of the draft" would be accepted by the 27 remaining EU members.
And he said Mrs May's decision to rule out membership of the single market and customs union had been acknowledged "without enthusiasm and without satisfaction".
The PM has said she wants a deal which will allow trade to be "as frictionless as possible".
But Mr Tusk warned: "There can be no frictionless trade outside of the customs union and the single market. Friction is an inevitable side-effect of Brexit by nature."
Mr Barnier has also been addressing the issue in a speech at the business conference in Brussels.
As a result of the UK's stated negotiation red lines, he said, the only option remaining was a free trade agreement in the vein of the deals the EU already has with other third countries.
He dismissed hopes of a "mutual recognition" arrangement on trade standards, saying this was impossible because of the UK's refusal to accept European Court of Justice oversight.
And in a message to other EU leaders, he said the "economic benefits of staying together" were "far bigger" than any negative knock-on impact from Brexit.
Mr Barnier also said Northern Ireland was a "sensitive" issue and that the problem was down to the UK's decision to leave the single market and customs union.
The EU will look at UK proposals "in a very constructive way", he said, adding: "Any vision of the future must take into account the fact that the EU cannot and will not compromise on its founding principles."
Irish senator Neale Richmond, European affairs spokesman for the Fine Gael party that leads the government, said Britain has provided "zero detail" on its proposed alternatives to keeping Northern Ireland in a customs area with the EU to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
Veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash told the BBC's Newsnight there were "technical ways" of managing the Irish border and accused the EU of trying to create a "constitutional crisis" for the UK.
Cabinet ministers have suggested Friday's speech by Mrs May will give the EU the clarity that it has been seeking about what kind of trade relationship the UK wants after its departure on 29 March 2019.
In an apparent concession to the EU ahead of the speech, the government said EU nationals coming to the UK during a transition period after Brexit, expected to last two years, would be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain.
Mrs May has said her long-term goal is a "bespoke economic partnership", underpinned by a comprehensive free trade agreement guaranteeing tariff-free access to EU markets for British goods and services.
Earlier former prime minister Tony Blair urged the EU to put forward new ideas to address "genuine underlying grievances beneath the Brexit vote, especially around immigration" - saying this could lead voters to change their minds on leaving.
In a new report, the Commons Business Committee warned failure to reach any kind of deal would be damaging for the car industry and only close alignment with the EU would ensure its survival.
But on Tuesday the industry received a vote of confidence when Toyota said it would build the next generation of its Auris hatchback at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire, safeguarding more than 3,000 jobs.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has announced plans to call a snap general election on 8 June.
She said Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership following the EU referendum.
Explaining the decision, Mrs May said: "The country is coming together but Westminster is not."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party wanted the election, calling it a chance to get a government that puts "the majority first".
The prime minister will refuse to take part in televised leader debates ahead of the vote, Number 10 sources said.
Mr Corbyn said Mrs May should not be "dodging" a head-to-head encounter, and the Lib Dems urged broadcasters to "empty-chair" the prime minister - hold a debate without her.
Live TV debates took place for the first time in a UK general election in 2010, and the experiment was repeated in 2015 using a range of different formats.
A BBC spokesman said that it was too early to say whether the broadcaster would put in a bid to stage a debate.
There will be a vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday to approve the election plan - the prime minister needs two thirds of MPs to vote in favour to bring forward the next scheduled election date of 2020.
Explaining her change of heart on an early election, Mrs May said: "I have concluded the only way to guarantee certainty and security for years ahead is to hold this election."
She accused Britain's other political parties of "game playing", adding that this risks "our ability to make a success of Brexit and it will cause damaging uncertainty and instability to the country".
"So we need a general election and we need one now. We have at this moment a one-off chance to get this done  while the European Union agrees its negotiating position and before the detailed talks begin.
"I have only recently and reluctantly come to this conclusion. Since I became prime minister I've said there should be no election until 2020, but now I have concluded that the only way to guarantee certainty and security for the years ahead is to hold this election and seek your support for the decisions we must take."
In a statement outside Number 10, Mrs May said Labour had threatened to vote against the final Brexit agreement and cited opposition to her plans from the Scottish National Party, the Lib Dems and "unelected" members of the House of Lords.
"If we don't hold a general election now, their political game-playing will continue and the negotiations with the European Union will reach their most difficult stage in the run-up to the next scheduled election," she said.
Senior government sources point to a specific factor that changed the prime minister's calculation on an early election.
The end of the likely tortuous Article 50 negotiations is a hard deadline set for March 2019.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, that's when the Tories would be starting to prepare for a general election the following year, with what one cabinet minister described as certain "political needs".
In other words, the government would be exposed to hardball from the EU because ministers would be desperate to avoid accepting anything that would be politically unpopular, or hold the Brexit process up, at the start of a crucial election cycle.
Ministers say that's the central reason for May's change of heart because "if there was an election in three years, we'd be up against the clock".
Read Laura's latest blog in full
The PM challenged the opposition parties: "Let us tomorrow vote for an election - let us put forward our plans for Brexit and our alternative programmes for government and then let the people decide.
"The decision facing the country will be all about leadership. It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government, led by Jeremy Corbyn, propped up by the Liberal Democrats - who want to reopen the divisions of the referendum - and Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP."
Mr Corbyn said he welcomed the prime minister's decision, saying it would "give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first", saying that this would include dealing with "the crisis" in housing, education funding and the NHS and pushing for an "economy that works for all".
He told the BBC: "I'm starting straight away and I'm looking forward to it and we'll take our message to every single part of this country... We're campaigning to win this election - that's the only question now."
Asked if he will be the next prime minister, the Labour leader said: "If we win the election - yes - and I want to lead a government that will transform this country, give real hope to everybody and above all bring about a principle of justice for everybody and economic opportunities for everybody."
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would be fighting the election "to win".
"I think the prime minister has called this election for selfish, narrow, party political interests, but she has called it and therefore I relish the prospect of getting out to stand up for Scotland's interests and values, standing up for Scotland's voice being heard and standing against the ability of a right-wing Conservative Party to impose whatever policies it wants on Scotland."
In his response to Mrs May's announcement, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron tweeted: "This is your chance to change the direction of your country. If you want to avoid a disastrous hard Brexit. If you want to keep Britain in the single market. If you want a Britain that is open, tolerant and united, this is your chance."
He also accused the PM of "bottling" the TV debates and urged broadcasters to "empty chair" her if she refused to take part.
Mrs May spoke to the Queen on the phone on Easter Monday to let her know of the election plan, the prime minister's official spokesman said. She also got the full backing of the cabinet before calling the election.
Former prime minister David Cameron called Theresa May's decision to hold a snap general election "brave and right". In a tweet, he added: "My very best wishes to all Conservative candidates."
Another ex-PM, Tony Blair, said voters need to put election candidates under "sustained pressure" to say whether or not they would vote against a Brexit deal which does not deliver the same benefits as single market membership - or against a "damaging" decision to leave without a deal.
"This should cross party lines," he added.
British business groups gave a mixed response to the prime minister's sudden call for a general election, as the pound jumped on the news and shares fell.
European Council President Donald Tusk's spokesman said the 27 other EU states would forge ahead with Brexit, saying the UK election would not change their plans.
He added: "We expect to have the Brexit guidelines adopted by the European Council on 29 April and following that the Brexit negotiating directives ready on 22 May. This will allow the EU27 to start negotiations."

Ministers will be told by Theresa May they should be keeping cabinet discussions private, Number 10 says.
Following several leaks and briefings over the weekend, ministers will be "reminded" of their responsibilities when cabinet meets on Tuesday.
On Sunday Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested colleagues opposed to his approach to Brexit had been briefing against him.
It followed press reports of his cabinet remarks on public sector pay.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said several factors were at play, including some ministers' belief Mr Hammond was trying to slow down the Brexit process, and Mrs May's weakened position after the general election.
"With the PM's authority so reduced it's like the teacher has left the classroom and the teenagers have started a big rumble - and they are partly scrapping with each other because several of them fancy taking the controls themselves," she added.
Mrs May's spokesman declined to discuss the content of the leaks, but told reporters: "Of course, cabinet must be able to hold discussions of government policy in private and the prime minister will be reminding her colleagues of that at the cabinet meeting tomorrow."
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling attempted to play down suggestions of cabinet splits over Brexit and criticised those who have been briefing about its meetings.
"I don't see these great divisions that are suggested to me in the Sunday newspapers and I have to say I think all of this is somewhat overplayed," he added.
One backbencher, Nadine Dorries, tweeted that she would rather see ministers sacked than another leadership contest.
Responding to the leaks on Sunday, Mr Hammond refused to comment on newspaper reports that he said public sector workers were "overpaid" and told his colleagues to "focus on the job at hand".
Another minister, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, attacked the "self-indulgence" of those doing the leaking, adding that it had left Tory backbenchers "furious".

Leading Brexiteers in the cabinet have rallied behind Theresa May amid attempts to unseat her by Tory MPs.
Michael Gove said he "absolutely" had confidence in Mrs May as he confirmed he would not be following several other ministers out of the door.
And Liam Fox urged MPs to support the PM's draft Brexit agreement, saying a "deal was better than no deal".
The PM has named health minister Steve Barclay as her new Brexit Secretary following Dominic Raab's exit.
The 46-year old former banking executive backed Leave in the 2016 referendum and has never rebelled against the Tory whip during his eight years in the Parliament.
A mini-reshuffle has also seen Amber Rudd confirmed as the new work and pensions secretary after Esther McVey's resignation on Thursday.
The BBC understands Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom could oversee a meeting over the weekend of pro-Brexit cabinet members who have concerns about the deal.
Mr Gove and Mr Fox are expected be present, along with International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.
The news came as more Conservatives expressed unhappiness with Mrs May's leadership and urged a confidence vote.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said about 20 Tories have, so far, publicly stated they have submitted letters of no confidence in the PM over her handling of Brexit.
This is some way short of the 48 needed to trigger a vote under Conservative Party rules.
One of those to do so, ex-minister Mark Francois, said the draft agreement negotiated by Mrs May with the EU was "truly awful" and the prime minister "just doesn't listen" to concerns within her party.
Ex-Brexit minister Steve Baker told the BBC's Politics Live that although he could not be sure of the number of letters submitted, he believed it was "close" to 48 and a contest was "imminent".
If this happened, he suggested the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs, headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, would "collectively agree" which single candidate was best-placed to deliver the Brexit they wanted and back them.
But Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said Mrs May would win any contest "decisively" and "deserved to" since there was "no plausible alternative" to her approach.
Rumours had been rife that Mr Gove, a key figure in the 2016 Leave campaign, would follow fellow Brexiteers out of the cabinet in protest at the EU withdrawal agreement.
But the environment secretary, who reportedly rejected an offer to make him Brexit secretary after Dominic Raab's exit, told reporters on Friday he was focused on working in cabinet to get "the right deal in the future".
Asked if he had confidence in the PM, Mr Gove said: "I absolutely do."
He added: "I'm also looking forward to continuing to work with all my government colleagues and all my colleagues in parliament in order to make sure that we get the best future for Britain."
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox told an event in Bristol: "We are not elected to do what we want to do, but to do what is in the national interest."
Speaking in public for the first time since the withdrawal agreement was signed off by cabinet, Mr Fox said he hopes MPs "will take a rational and reasonable view" of the deal.
He added: "I hope across parliament we recognise that a deal is better than no deal, and businesses require certainty - it's in our national interest to provide certainty as soon as possible."
By BBC Assistant Political Editor Norman Smith
Michael Gove is not resigning because he thinks that even at this very late hour, he is the person who can make Theresa May change course with Brexit.
This is a huge relief for Theresa May, who meanwhile has been carrying on with business as usual by trying to sell her deal.
Theresa May has made it absolutely clear that she is going nowhere.
Senior placed Tory MPs are saying they have reached the magic 48 letters needed for a vote of confidence against Theresa May, but Sir Graham Brady - chairman of the 1922 committee - is giving precious little away.
A Conservative party leadership challenge is most definitely looming, if not this morning or this afternoon, by the weekend.
Michael Gove is a bit of a man of mystery, but if he doesn't take the Brexit Secretary role, it begs the question of who would take that job.
Mr Gove's decision to stay was a boost for Mrs May, who followed up a defiant Downing Street press conference on Thursday with a live phone-in on Friday morning on LBC radio, during which two callers said she should stand aside.
She compared herself to her cricketing hero Geoffrey Boycott who she said had "kept at the crease and carried on".
Ex-Culture Secretary John Whittingdale is among the latest Tory MP to demand a vote of confidence in the PM while a number of MPs, including Mr Francois and Adam Holloway, publicly tweeted copies of their letter.
But this prompted a blistering response from veteran Conservative MP Nicholas Soames.
I am truly dismayed at the dismal behaviour of some of my Colleagues parading their letters to Graham Brady on TV  in a vulgar and pathetic display of inferior virtue signalling #getagripwhatabouttheNationalInterest
Ambassadors from EU member states also met in Brussels on Friday morning to discuss the agreement.
The bloc's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, paid tribute to Mrs May, but said that the EU had to protect its principles even if there were political problems in the UK.
BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the consensus from the meeting was that the EU should keep calm and not provoke the situation in the UK.
The government unveiled its long-awaited draft withdrawal agreement on Wednesday, which sets out the terms of the UK's departure from the EU, over 585 pages.
But Mrs May is facing opposition from across the political spectrum to the draft deal, which must be approved by Parliament, with critics saying it will leave the UK indefinitely tied to the EU.
It is also understood that a group of cabinet ministers are also considering whether to try to force Mrs May to make some changes to the withdrawal deal.
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Theresa May is coming under increasing pressure to set out where she stands on Britain's future trade agreements.
Speaking at the end of a trade visit to China, the PM said Britain would not face a choice between a free trade deal with the EU after Brexit and striking deals with the rest of the world.
It comes as she has faced criticism from Eurosceptic Tory MPs that she is heading for a "Brexit in name only".
Full negotiations on the UK's 2019 exit are to resume on Monday.
Brexit Secretary David Davis will meet his EU counterpart Michel Barnier in London on Monday for the first time this year, with officials from both sides continuing technical discussions during the week.
During the prime minister's three-day visit to China, Downing Street said more than £9bn of business deals were signed and it agreed to a joint investment and trade review as the "first step" to an "ambitious" post-Brexit deal with the world's second largest economy.
However, Mrs May has faced growing criticism from MPs, including many in her own party, who have called for her to be more specific about her priorities on UK's future trade arrangements with the EU.
In an interview with Bloomberg News, Liam Fox, who was with Mrs May in China, said the UK cannot be involved in any customs union with the EU following Brexit.
Number 10 said the international trade secretary was speaking for the government - but also said the details of future arrangements with Brussels were a matter for negotiation.
"It is fair to say the prime minister has an open mind when it comes to these negotiations," a Downing Street spokesman said.
By Iain Watson, BBC political correspondent
While Theresa May has been away - successfully signing trade deals -  I have been assessing the battles she faces on the home front, within her own party.
What is most striking is that some who supported her have, at the very least, become wobblier. One ex-minister said he felt "badly let down". She has been accused of blocking, not delivering, radical change.
A former supporter questioned her lack of decisiveness: "She has more reviews than a film critic would produce in a lifetime."
A Remainer who despises Boris Johnson wondered if - to coin a phrase - the foreign secretary's "bad leadership would be better than no leadership".
Council candidates fear poor results in London's May elections and think this could be a trigger for the PM to go.
And a Conservative-supporting business leader felt - though he didn't advocate it - that her opponents "will pull the pin from the grenade".
Downing Street believes the feeding frenzy of speculation will abate when more progress is made on EU withdrawal. But they are aware of the challenges at home as well as abroad.
Speaking to the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg, the prime minister said she had already spelled out what she wants from the deal and did not believe the UK would have to choose between Europe and the rest of the world.
"I don't believe that those are the alternatives," she said.
"What the British people voted for is for us to take back control of our money, our borders and our laws and that's exactly what we are going to do.
"We also want to ensure that we can trade across borders."
By Kerry Allen, China Media Analyst, BBC Monitoring
Mainland Chinese media have praised Theresa May's 31 January-2 February visit from start to finish.
Official broadcaster CCTV says that the nickname media have given her - "Auntie May" - shows that she has become "one of the family" and newspapers have heralded her trip as showing that Sino-UK ties signal new heights for bilateral cultural exchanges, and post-Brexit trade deals.
They have also given a nod to Mrs May for, reportedly, not raising human rights issues in Hong Kong during her stay.
Nationalist newspaper Global Times commends the UK prime minister for "not making any comment contrary to the goals of her China trip", saying "the losses outweigh the gains if she appeases the British media at the cost of the visit's friendly atmosphere".
Independent Hong Kong and Taiwanese media have been critical of the Prime Minister for not raising the contentious issue of pro-democracy protests.
Publications including influential paper South China Morning Post quote former British governor Chris Patten, who said the Hong Kong dialogue was "critical" to granting assurances that developing ties with the mainland won't come at Hong Kong's expense.
The prime minister has come under pressure from Eurosceptics worried about potential concessions by the UK in the Brexit talks.
Last week, Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested Britain's relationship with the EU would change only "very modestly" after Brexit.
However, cabinet members - including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson - have warned the UK will lose the main advantages of Brexit if it remains bound by trade rules of the single market and customs union.
They have called for the prime minister to be clearer about her own position.
She told the BBC her goal in upcoming talks with Europe was to strike a deal that "is going to be good for trade between the UK and EU and good for jobs in Britain".
She added: "It means a free trade agreement with the EU. We are now starting to negotiate that free trade agreement with the EU."
She has repeatedly said Brexit will mean leaving the single market and customs union.
Asked again about her own future as prime minister, Mrs May said: "I'm not a quitter. I'm in this because there is a job to be done here and that's delivering for the British people and doing that in a way that ensures the future prosperity of our country."

Theresa May has outlined plans to set the UK's departure date and time from the EU in law, warning she will not "tolerate" any attempt to block Brexit.
She said the EU Withdrawal Bill would be amended to formally commit to Brexit at 23:00 GMT on Friday 29 March 2019.
The bill will be scrutinised by MPs next week - but the PM warned against attempts to stop it or slow it down.
Mrs May was writing in the Daily Telegraph as a fresh round of Brexit negotiations are due to begin later.
The UK is due to leave the European Union after 2016's referendum in which 51.9% of voters backed Brexit.
The prime minister said the decision to put the specific time of Brexit "on the front page" of the Brexit bill showed the government was determined to see the process through.
"Let no-one doubt our determination or question our resolve, Brexit is happening," she wrote.
"It will be there in black and white on the front page of this historic piece of legislation: the United Kingdom will be leaving the EU on March 29, 2019 at 11pm GMT."
The draft legislation has already passed its second reading, and now faces several attempts to amend it at the next part of its parliamentary journey - the committee stage.
Mrs May said most people wanted politicians to "come together" to negotiate a good Brexit deal, adding that MPs "on all sides" should help scrutinise the bill.
She said the government would listen to MPs if they had ideas for improving the bill, but warned against attempts to halt the process.
"We will not tolerate attempts from any quarter to use the process of amendments to this Bill as a mechanism to try to block the democratic wishes of the British people by attempting to slow down or stop our departure from the European Union."
MPs have previously been told there have been 300 amendments and 54 new clauses proposed.
The PM said the "historic" bill was "fundamental to delivering a smooth and orderly Brexit" and would give "the greatest possible clarity and certainty for all businesses and families across the country".
Labour MP and remain campaigner, Chuka Umunna, said many experts believed the March 2019 leaving date did not give much time for negotiations.
He told BBC Radio 5 live: "Lord Bridges said he could not see the government being able to negotiate the transition arrangement, like the bridge to us leaving, and the divorce bill, by 2019.  So we may actually need more time."
Lord Kerr, the former diplomat who helped draft Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the mechanism the UK has used to exit the EU - said putting the Brexit date on the bill did not mean the withdrawal process was irreversible.
The cross-bench peer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that decisions such as these were being made in Westminster, and "had nothing to do with the treaty, and they have nothing to do with the views of our partners in Brussels".
But the Conservative MP and leave campaigner, Peter Bone, welcomed the decision to enshrine the leaving date in law, saying it was a "really big, important step".
It comes as a leaked account of a meeting of EU diplomats this week suggested that Northern Ireland may have to abide by the EU's rules on the customs union and single market after Brexit - in order to avoid the introduction of border checks.
Both Britain and the EU say they are committed to ensuring that Brexit does not undermine the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement or lead to the emergence of hard-border with the Republic of Ireland.
However, BBC correspondent Adam Fleming said the commission's suggestion appeared to be at odds with comments made by the Northern Ireland Secretary, James Brokenshire, this week.
Mr Brokenshire said it was "difficult to imagine" Northern Ireland remaining in either the customs union or the single market after Brexit.

Theresa May's Brexit deal is "doomed" and must be renegotiated, ex-defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon has said.
Sir Michael launched a scathing attack on the proposed EU agreement, saying it was the "worst of all worlds" and the PM's future was "up to colleagues".
The prime minister is visiting Wales and Northern Ireland to argue her deal will bring certainty to business.
DUP leader Arlene Foster told BBC News the trip was a "waste of time" as Parliament would not support her deal.
Mrs Foster, whose party has a parliamentary pact with the Conservatives to support the government, said Mrs May had "given up" on trying to secure a better deal for Northern Ireland.
While people were "fed up" with the Brexit process dragging on, that was not a good enough reason "to accept what's on the table", she told the BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.
Parliament will vote on whether to accept or reject the terms of the UK's withdrawal and future relations negotiated by Mrs May on 11 December.
Sir Michael's decision to come out against the deal is a blow to the prime minister, who is struggling to muster support in Parliament for it.
Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP and the Democratic Unionists have said they will vote against the deal while many Tories have said publicly they are opposed.
Opponents of the deal say it will keep the UK too closely tied to EU rules and make it harder to strike future trade deals with other countries and minimise their value.
US President Donald Trump has suggested the withdrawal agreement "sounds like a great deal for the EU" and might hamper a future trade deal with the UK but Mrs May said this was not the case.
In other developments:
Sir Michael Fallon, who served as defence secretary under David Cameron and Theresa May before having to resign a year ago, told MPs on Monday the agreement was a "huge gamble" as it would see the UK give up its power to influence EU rules and regulations in return for vague assurances over future trade arrangements.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today that "this is not a good deal and we need a better deal", saying that Mr Trump's criticism of its repercussions for transatlantic relations "could not simply be brushed off".
"My fear is that this deal gives us the worst of all worlds," he said. "No guarantee of smooth trade in the future and no ability to reduce the tariffs that we need to conclude trade deals with the rest of the world.
"So, unless the House of Commons can be persuaded somehow that those are possible then I think, yes, the deal is doomed."
Asked if Mrs May was also doomed, he replied "that's up to my colleagues", while stressing that a change of leader would not necessarily address the difficulties the UK now found itself in.
When it was put to him that did not sound like an endorsement of Mrs May, he replied "take it any way you want".
The prominent Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin said there was a lot of "personal sympathy" for Mrs May but her authority when it came to the Brexit agreement was "collapsing".
Sir Michael said the 29 March 2019 date for Brexit, which is enshrined in UK law, may have to be pushed back to give negotiators the time to make major improvements to the agreement.
All 28 EU states would need to agree to extend the Article 50 process of negotiations to allow this to happen, something Theresa May has repeatedly ruled out.
Cabinet Office David Lidington said he did not think doing this "would get us anywhere" as the EU had made clear this was the only deal on the table.
He told Today there was no "Plan B" and the agreement was a "decent compromise" which would provide a springboard to the next stage of negotiations on the two sides' future relationship.
The prime minister is continuing to making the case for the agreement, which she says delivers on the 2016 referendum vote in key areas and is in the national interest.
Responding to Mr Trump's comments, Downing Street has insisted the UK will be able to pursue an independent trade policy under the terms of the political declaration on future relations.
During a visit to an agricultural show in Builth Wells, Powys, Mrs May said: "As regards the United States, we have already been talking to them about the sort of agreement that we could have in the future.
"We have a working group set up and that is working very well, has met several times and is continuing to work with the US on this."
Under the proposed agreement, the UK would not be able to complete any trade deal with a country outside the EU until the end of the proposed transition period - currently scheduled to last until 31 December 2020.
In reality, any bilateral agreement between the UK and the US is likely to take years to negotiate given its complexity, differing standards in areas such as agriculture, and the fact it would require ratification by the US Congress.

"The next General Election should be in 2020."
The words of Theresa May who has just executed an enormous political reversal.
For months she and her team have played down the prospect of an early poll.
The reasons were simple. They didn't want to cause instability during Brexit negotiations.
They didn't want to go through the technical process of getting round the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.
They didn't want the unpredictability of an election race.
And many in the Conservative Party believed there is so little chance of the Labour Party getting its act together before 2020 that they could carry on until then and still expect a sizeable majority.
There was also, for Theresa May, the desire to show that she will be a prime minister who sticks to her word.
But the relentless political logic proved too tempting to hold to all of that.
Dealing day-to-day with a small majority has given Conservative backbenchers significant power to force the government to back down on a variety of issues.
Election campaigns can be deeply unpredictable but opinion polls suggest a Tory majority that would make that problem disappear.
And while prime ministers are not directly elected, as she approaches the Brexit negotiations, the PM's hand in negotiations in Brussels - as well as in Westminster - would be fundamentally strengthened with an election mandate she believes she can win.
There are plenty of risks.
If the last few years have shown anything it's the politics of this era is extremely hard to predict.
With ministers in the dark until this morning, what is certain is that Theresa May is hard to read.

Prime Minister Theresa May has announced a plan to call a snap general election on 8 June. Here is the statement she made outside Number 10 in full:
"I have just chaired a meeting of the cabinet, where we agreed that the government should call a general election, to be held on 8 June.
"I want to explain the reasons for that decision, what will happen next and the choice facing the British people when you come to vote in this election.
"Last summer, after the country voted to leave the European Union, Britain needed certainty, stability and strong leadership, and since I became prime minister the government has delivered precisely that.
"Despite predictions of immediate financial and economic danger, since the referendum we have seen consumer confidence remain high, record numbers of jobs, and economic growth that has exceeded all expectations.
"We have also delivered on the mandate that we were handed by the referendum result. Britain is leaving the European Union and there can be no turning back.
"And as we look to the future, the Government has the right plan for negotiating our new relationship with Europe.
"We want a deep and special partnership between a strong and successful European Union and a United Kingdom that is free to chart its own way in the world.
"That means we will regain control of our own money, our own laws and our own borders and we will be free to strike trade deals with old friends and new partners all around the world.
"This is the right approach, and it is in the national interest. But the other political parties oppose it.
"At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division. The country is coming together, but Westminster is not.
"In recent weeks Labour has threatened to vote against the final agreement we reach with the European Union. The Liberal Democrats have said they want to grind the business of government to a standstill.
"The Scottish National Party say they will vote against the legislation that formally repeals Britain's membership of the European Union. And unelected members of the House of Lords have vowed to fight us every step of the way.
"Our opponents believe because the government's majority is so small, that our resolve will weaken and that they can force us to change course. They are wrong.
"They underestimate our determination to get the job done and I am not prepared to let them endanger the security of millions of working people across the country.
"Because what they are doing jeopardises the work we must do to prepare for Brexit at home and it weakens the government's negotiating position in Europe.
"If we do not hold a general election now their political game-playing will continue, and the negotiations with the European Union will reach their most difficult stage in the run-up to the next scheduled election.
"Division in Westminster will risk our ability to make a success of Brexit and it will cause damaging uncertainty and instability to the country.
"So we need a general election and we need one now, because we have at this moment a one-off chance to get this done while the European Union agrees its negotiating position and before the detailed talks begin.
"I have only recently and reluctantly come to this conclusion. Since I became prime minister I have said that there should be no election until 2020, but now I have concluded that the only way to guarantee certainty and stability for the years ahead is to hold this election and seek your support for the decisions I must take.
"And so tomorrow I will move a motion in the House of Commons calling for a general election to be held on 8 June. That motion, as set out by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, will require a two-thirds majority of the House of Commons.
"So I have a simple challenge to the opposition parties, you have criticised the government's vision for Brexit, you have challenged our objectives, you have threatened to block the legislation we put before Parliament.
"This is your moment to show you mean it, to show you are not opposing the government for the sake of it, to show that you do not treat politics as a game.
"Let us tomorrow vote for an election, let us put forward our plans for Brexit and our alternative programmes for government and then let the people decide.
"And the decision facing the country will be all about leadership. It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government, led by Jeremy Corbyn, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, who want to reopen the divisions of the referendum, and Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
"Every vote for the Conservatives will make it harder for opposition politicians who want to stop me from getting the job done.
"Every vote for the Conservatives will make me stronger when I negotiate for Britain with the prime ministers, presidents and chancellors of the European Union.
"Every vote for the Conservatives means we can stick to our plan for a stronger Britain and take the right long-term decisions for a more secure future.
"It was with reluctance that I decided the country needs this election, but it is with strong conviction that I say it is necessary to secure the strong and stable leadership the country needs to see us through Brexit and beyond.
"So, tomorrow, let the House of Commons vote for an election, let everybody put forward their proposals for Brexit and their programmes for government, and let us remove the risk of uncertainty and instability and continue to give the country the strong and stable leadership it demands."

For all the talk of the negotiations between Team May and Team Corbyn being "constructive and serious", Labour's leader always seemed somehow more likely to back away from a Brexit compromise with the prime minister than embrace one.
Some of his Labour critics still suspect - though he and his close aides deny it - that he's a lifelong Eurosceptic who would be content with a Brexit that also taints the Conservatives and takes him closer to power.
Mrs May's options are, of course, all but exhausted. Another, final, round of voting to see if any solution gains traction is one of them.
But will Tory rebels suddenly change their minds after three defeats?
Or will Labour MPs, feeling the pressure to deliver Brexit, break ranks and ride to Mrs May's rescue? Some maybe, but enough?
The prime minister has yet to name the date for her departure, but the Tory leadership contest is running at full tilt, as it has, in truth, for some time.
The next leader is more than likely to promise a harder Brexit - maybe with no deal at all. Parliament might oppose that but only the government could, at a single stroke, stop it happening.
So Mrs May's last remaining hope of achieving her "mission impossible" before leaving may just be that heightened fear of a no-deal Brexit changes Tory and Labour minds when the legislation to take the UK out is voted on in early June.
Stubbornness. Duty. A steady diet of faint hope. They'll all feature strongly in Theresa May's soon-to-be-written political epitaph. The chapter about the UK and its future place is the world is still being penned.

Theresa May called on politicians to be "careful about language" they use after words directed at her over Brexit.
In an article in the Sunday Times, a Tory backbencher was quoted as saying: "The moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted. She'll be dead soon."
The PM was also told to "bring her own noose" to a meeting later this week.
Mrs May acknowledged "passionate beliefs" on Brexit, but said those in public life should watch their words.
MPs from all sides have condemned the quotes, with Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston calling those responsible "spineless cowards", adding: "Have they learned nothing following the assassination of Jo Cox?"
Labour MP Mrs Cox was murdered in her West Yorkshire constituency by right-wing extremist Thomas Mair, a week before the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
Fellow Conservative MP Heidi Allen told BBC 2's Politics Live that whoever said it is "worthy of having the whip removed and being thrown out the party".
In a debate in the House of Commons on Monday to update MPs on the latest progress on the Brexit negotiations, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he hoped it would be conducted "without some of the language reported in the press over the weekend."
In response, Mrs May said: "I think it is incumbent on all of us in public life to be careful about the language we use.
"There are passionate beliefs and passionate views held on this subject [Brexit] and other subjects.
"But whatever the subject is, we should all be careful about our language."
SNP leader Ian Blackford also used some of his time in the debate to criticise the language, calling it "crass and violent", as well as "abhorrent and irresponsible".
He added: "Those responsible need to withdraw and apologise. Such language has no part to play in our public discourse."
Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the Commons Home Affairs committee, said the unnamed backbencher who made the comments should be publicly named to stop them from doing it again.
"This is vile and dehumanising language towards a woman MP, towards a prime minister who, no matter how much you might disagree with her, is someone who is doing a job in public life," she said.
"Nobody should be subject to that kind of violent language, which I think is normalising violence in public debate at a time when we lost Jo Cox, we have had threats against Rosie Cooper, we have had other violent death threats against women MPs."
Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, also condemned the use of language:
Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about the language, Brexit-backing Conservative MP Mark Francois said it was "unacceptable", but that he would not tell Chief Whip Julian Smith how to do his job.
Instead, he criticised a "bunker mentality" in Downing Street, adding: "The problem is that there is a lot of frustration on the backbenches at the moment, both among Leavers and Remainers, at the general state of play.
"When you try to convey that to No 10, no-one is listening."
This led to a fresh wave of criticism from his colleagues, including Remain-backing Tory Anna Soubry.
Fellow Brexiteer Tory Andrew Bridgen said the language was "unhelpful" and warned his Leave-supporting colleagues that it risked increasing support for Mrs May.
He told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "At the moment that [language] is unhelpful. It won't persuade colleagues to back a change of leadership.
"It's actually going to be counterproductive at this point."
Asked how Theresa May viewed the use of such language, her official spokesman said: "I don't intend to dignify those specific anonymous comments with a response.
"The prime minister has always been very clear that we must set a tone in public discourse that is neither dehumanising nor derogatory.
"Personal vitriol has no place in our politics."

The prime minister has said voters want the Brexit issue resolved so the country can "move on".
Theresa May was speaking at the Scottish Conservative conference as she faced renewed calls to quit.
The deadlock over her Brexit deal has been blamed for the Conservatives losing more than 1,000 seats in English council elections.
But Mrs May insisted that she remains determined to deliver a deal that will ensure the UK has a "bright future".
The backlash against the two main Westminster parties over the Brexit deadlock has also seen Labour lose more 100 seats.
But the Liberal Democrats and Greens, who both back another referendum on Brexit, have made big gains.
Talks between the Conservatives and Labour aimed at finding a way forward on Brexit started a month ago and are ongoing - although it is not clear how much progress has been made, and both parties remain deeply divided over the best way forward.
Some Conservative councillors have openly blamed Mrs May for their election - with one council leader who lost his majority calling on her to "consider her position".
In her conference speech, Mrs May told delegates that all 13 Scottish Conservative MPs had backed her Brexit deal when parliament voted on it in March.
She added: "If others had followed-suit, we would be leaving the EU on 22 May. But they did not, and we have had to face up to that fact.
"We have had to reach out to the official opposition to secure cross-party support for a deal. That work continues with one clear aim - to get a deal over the line in parliament.
"Across the UK, people want to see the issue of Brexit resolved and for our country to move forward. That is our goal and it is one we are determined to deliver."
Mrs May also said politicians calling for "re-runs" of the Brexit or independence referendums should instead "accept the decision of the people".
She went on to claim that this "old fashioned belief" was a major difference between her and Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who wants to hold a second independence referendum in the next two years.
The UK government has already ruled out granting the consent that Ms Sturgeon says would be needed to ensure a referendum was legal.
Mrs May said Ms Sturgeon wants to "re-run the independence referendum because she did not like the decision of the people of Scotland" and to "re-run the EU referendum because she did not like the decision of the people of the UK".
The prime minister added: "She saw Brexit as an opportunity to further her party's obsession with one thing and one thing only - independence.
"Just imagine if Scotland had a government that put as much energy into improving Scotland's hospitals as the SNP put into chasing independence.
"A government as focused on boosting Scotland's economy as the SNP is on internal debates about the hypothetical currency of an independent Scotland.
"Or a first minister who actually lived up to her promises to restore Scotland's education system, instead of letting its standing slip in the international rankings."
Mrs May also used her speech to announce that the UK government was backing plans to create an underwater engineering base in Aberdeen to boost the oil and gas industries.
It is hoped the creation of the underwater hub will build on Scotland's expertise in subsea robotics, remotely-operated vessels and help the oil and gas sector diversify away from fossil fuels.
The two-day conference will hear from Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson on Saturday in what will be her first speech since returning from maternity leave after the birth of her son in October.
Speaking ahead of the conference, Ms Davidson insisted that Mrs May was not to blame for the Brexit deadlock as she had done her job by negotiating a deal with the other 27 EU members.
She added: "I think even her harshest critics would have accepted that Prime Minister May has worked exceptionally hard with an almost impossible job.
"There is competing views on what Brexit means within all of the political parties out there, so it's not just a Tory issue, although I'm not covering over the cracks and there are definitely different views within the Conservatives.
"I think the frustration for voters is they've seen vote after vote after vote in the House of Commons, all of which showing what there isn't a majority for, but none of which is showing what there is a majority for.
"And the frustration is they see the voices that are getting louder are the ones at the edges."
Ms Davidson, who backed Remain ahead of the EU referendum, said she hoped the local government elections would "really focus minds" among the negotiating teams so they could reach an agreement that could get through the House of Commons.
But she said another referendum on Brexit would not be helpful to the current political situation - and could instead inflame it further.
Ms Davidson has been tipped as a future leader of the UK Conservative Party, but has previously ruled out ever taking on the job - saying that her ambition is instead to replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister of Scotland.
And she said she would not be using her first day back from maternity leave to "lay down the law" on where Mrs May should give ground in the Brexit talks.

Theresa May has said that Brexit means there will be more money available to spend on the NHS and schools.
The prime minister told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg Brexit "would deliver a country that will be different" but with the chance "of a bright future".
The PM visited England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with one year to go to the UK leaving the EU.
Meanwhile ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair said Brexit could still be stopped, saying it was "not too late".
Mr Blair, a strong backer of UK membership of the EU, told BBC Radio 4's Today the "sensible" option was to "take a final decision" once the terms of the deal have been set out.
On 29 March 2019, the UK will formally leave the EU and is due to enter a 21-month transition period during which much of the current arrangements continue, before the final permanent post-membership relationship is due to kick-in.
Since formal negotiations began between the two sides last June, an agreement has been struck on a Brexit "divorce bill" - but the crucial issue of how they will trade together in the longer term has yet to be settled.
In her interview with the BBC's political editor, Mrs May was asked if there would be a "Brexit dividend".
She replied: "Of course when we leave the European Union, we'll no longer be spending vast sums of money, year in and year out, sending that money to the European Union, so there will be money available here in the UK to spend on our priorities like the NHS and schools."
Mrs May said she was confident of securing a deal which was good for all parts of the UK.
Asked if she thought Brexit was worth it, she added: "I think there are real opportunities for the UK, I think there's a bright future out there and, yes, I think Brexit is going to deliver a country that will be different, for us to be an independent nation for the future."
The issue of whether there would be a Brexit dividend was a contentious issue during the 2016 EU referendum. The Leave campaign said money sent to the EU should be spent on the NHS instead, while the Remain side said the economic impact of leaving would mean less money being available to spend on public services.
At some stage - most likely in October - the PM will have to put an outline of the Brexit deal to Parliament, with some opponents seeing that as a chance to force a rethink.
The government only has a majority in the Commons with the support of DUP MPs so Labour's position in that vote will be important.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told BBC Radio 4's Today programme Labour's "tests" on any proposed deal were "nowhere near being met" and insisted Labour would not vote for the deal unless "the government are sensible and they negotiate properly... [so we can] get a deal that meets the six tests".
Mrs May began her tour by visiting a textile factory in Ayrshire with other stops at a parent and toddler group in Newcastle, lunch with farmers near Belfast before meeting businesses in Barry, south Wales.
She vowed to regain control of "our laws, our borders and our money" and that the UK will "thrive as a strong and united country that works for everyone, no matter whether you voted Leave or Remain".
The prime minister has been accused of a power grab by the Scottish and Welsh governments over plans to repatriate some powers from Brussels to Westminster rather than to the devolved administrations.
She insisted each of the devolved administrations would see "an increase in their decision-making powers" and that her government remained "absolutely committed" to the devolution settlements.
But Wales' First Minister Carwyn Jones warned that Mrs May's Brexit plan would "do serious damage to our economy".
And Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she wanted to see progress in the talks over devolving powers to UK nations from Brussels.
"This is about powers over the environment, agriculture, fishing, justice - perhaps whether in future trade deals, our health service could be put up for grabs," she said.
"These things really matter and that's why this is such an issue of importance for us."
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
As was crystal clear with a focus group in Coventry last night, for many voters, Brexit was a demand for something else, a response to big promises made by politicians.
With only a year to go, and the government's main achievement so far being establishing a grace period that will pretty much keep us in the EU for another couple of years, I can't help using the phrase that haunted the prime minister in the election: "Nothing has changed."
And nothing will change any time soon either. But the argument over how to keep perhaps the biggest of those promises is alive and kicking.
Without mentioning the bus (yes, that bus), the boldest promise in the referendum that sticks in people's minds was to provide more money for the NHS.
The PM also promised to "protect the integrity of the United Kingdom as a whole", restating her opposition to a controversial EU "backstop" option which effectively keeps Northern Ireland inside its customs union.

Theresa May has told her critics that getting rid of her as PM would not make delivering Brexit any easier.
Mrs May defended last week's draft agreement for leaving the EU and said there was a "critical" week ahead.
She suggested agreeing more details of UK's future relationship with the EU, ahead of an expected summit next week, could satisfy the concerns of some of the Tory MPs opposed to her plans.
Ex-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK was being "bullied" by the EU.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party could get a better deal in time for Brexit, which is due to happen on 29 March.
There has been widespread criticism of the 585-page withdrawal agreement - published alongside a  shorter document setting out what the UK and EU's future relationship could look like - which is set be signed off at a summit next week.
There is also doubt over whether it can win the approval of the House of Commons.
Some cabinet ministers have resigned, including Mr Raab, and others are believed to be trying to change its wording.
In other developments:
Mrs May told Sky News's Ridge on Sunday it had been a "tough week" but that she would not be distracted. She added the next seven days "are going to be critical" for the UK's future.
Asked whether Sir Graham Brady - chairman of the backbench 1922 committee - had received the 48 letters needed to trigger a confidence vote in her leadership, she replied: "As far as I know, no - it has not."
And in a warning to those pushing for a change of leader, she said: "It is not going to make the negotiations any easier and it won't change the parliamentary arithmetic."
Mrs May said negotiations were still taking place to put more detail into the future deal proposals, saying it was this part that "delivers on the Brexit vote".
She also said she would be meeting European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels ahead of the summit.
BBC Europe editor Katya Adler
The European Commission says Mrs May will only meet Mr Juncker when concrete progress has been made on the content of the political declaration document on the future relationship.
Those negotiations have been going on this weekend and had been expected to conclude on Tuesday - let's see.
EU sources are clearly spelling out that the PM's visit would be to finalise this political declaration - and not to re-open the withdrawal deal approved last week by the cabinet.
Despite the political turmoil in the UK, the EU intends the Brexit summit between EU leaders and the PM to go ahead next Sunday unless she is kicked out of her job, or she suddenly politically denounces the divorce deal she has been trying to sell.
Don't forget - the withdrawal agreement will be legally binding. The political declaration on the future will not. It can be altered after Brexit, because it is only then that the detailed EU-UK negotiations on a future trade deal begin in earnest.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has been meeting diplomats from the 27 remaining EU member states.
The EU has now proposed 31 December 2022 as the ultimate end date for a possible extension to the transition period.
This period, during which the UK will have left but arrangements will largely continue as they are, is currently forecast to finish by the end of 2020.
The draft withdrawal agreement includes the option of extending it if more time is needed to reach a trade deal - but rather than specifying an end date, says a decision may be taken "extending the transition period up to [31 December 20XX]."
Also in the meeting there was a divide between states that want an ambitious trading relationship with the UK and those who want Britain's access to the single market to be more constrained, BBC Brussels correspondent Adam Fleming said.
The UK wants to maintain the status quo on internal security, which is also "a problem," ambassadors were told.
And Spain raised serious concerns about Gibraltar, which officials fear could grow in the coming days, he added.
A diplomat said the message from the EU's Brexit negotiators to the member states was: "Keep a lid on your concerns for now and we'll deal with them in the negotiations on the future relationship."
Sir Graham told BBC Radio 5 Live's Pienaar's Politics he would not reveal how many letters he had received - saying he had not even told his wife, who is his parliamentary assistant.
"I get asked in the supermarket, in the street," he said.
Sir Graham said he found the suggestion he had received 48 letters but not acted on it to be "slightly offensive".
"It's critical that people trust my integrity in this," he said.
Sir Graham also told the BBC's Sunday Politics North West it was "very likely" Mrs May would win a vote of no-confidence if there was one.
It is difficult to see how the 25 November EU summit could go ahead if Mrs May were to lose a confidence vote next week.
It is up to Sir Graham to decide when such a vote would be held, but he has said the process will move quickly.
The last time a Tory leader was ousted by their own MPs, in 2003, Iain Duncan Smith faced a confidence vote the next day.
If Mrs May were to lose that confidence vote it would spark a leadership election but she would not be allowed to run. She would remain prime minister until the contest was over unless she opted to resign and hand over to a caretaker prime minister.
In either circumstance, her version of Brexit would be in doubt.
European Council President Donald Tusk has said the summit will go ahead unless something "extraordinary" happens - he did not elaborate on what that might be.
Mr Raab, who negotiated with the EU's Michel Barnier, explained his decision to quit on the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
With "two or three points" being changed he could support the government's proposals, he said.
He said he did not know who had inserted a clause on customs relations into the future partnership document but said it was a "clear breach" of the Conservative manifesto.
"The difficulty for me is that I was being asked to go over to Brussels and sign on the bottom line... on a deal which I said in good conscience I did not feel was right for the country," he said.
"I do think we are being bullied, I do think we are being subjected to what is pretty close to blackmail frankly.
"I do think there is a point at which, we probably should have done it before, where we just say 'I'm sorry this is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we cannot accept those dictated terms'."
The draft document sets out the terms of the UK's departure, including details such as how much money will be paid to the EU, details of the transition period and citizens' rights.
Both the UK and the EU want to avoid a hard Northern Ireland border so they agreed to include in the deal a "backstop" - or back-up plan - in case they cannot reach a long-term trade agreement which does this.
This would mean Northern Ireland would stay more closely aligned to some EU rules, which critics say is unacceptable.
And the UK would not be able to leave the backstop without the EU's consent.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Brexiteer MP Zac Goldsmith said under the PM's plan "in effect, Britain would remain in the EU, but without having any say".
He added: "Had that been the choice, I personally would have voted to remain."
Labour leader Mr Corbyn says his party, which has 257 MPs, will not support the deal.
He told Sky News the "one-way agreement" on Northern Ireland was "not acceptable", and there were no guarantees on workers' rights and environmental protections.
If it was voted down in the Commons, he said the government should go back to the EU and "renegotiate, rapidly".
Mr Corbyn insisted Labour would be able to negotiate a better deal, saying the proposed transition period - which will only happen if there is a withdrawal agreement - offered "some opportunities" for this.
He also said another referendum - as demanded by some of his MPs - was "an option for the future but not an option for today".
He said he voted Remain in the 2016 referendum but if there were to be another "I don't know how I would vote - what the options would be at that time".
He also revealed that he had not yet read all of the 585 page draft EU withdrawal agreement.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said the EU must treat the UK with more "respect" in Brexit negotiations.
In a statement at Downing Street she said for EU leaders to reject her plan with no alternative at this "late stage of negotiations" was "not acceptable".
She said talks had reached an "impasse" and could only be unblocked with "serious engagement" from the EU side.
European Council President Donald Tusk said a "compromise" was possible but the UK proposals had to be "reworked".
The pound's fall against the dollar and the euro deepened following Mrs May's statement.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.
The two sides are trying to reach a deal by November so it can be ratified in time.
They want to avoid a hard border - physical infrastructure like cameras or guard posts - between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic but cannot agree on how.
Mrs May says her plan for the UK and EU to share a "common rulebook" for goods, but not services, is the only credible way to avoid a hard border.
She tried to sell the plan directly to EU leaders at a summit in Salzburg, Austria, this week.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Tusk said that while there were some "positive elements" in Mrs May's proposals, EU leaders had agreed that "the suggested framework for economic co-operation will not work, not least because it is undermining the single market".
In response to Mrs May's latest statement, he said the UK's stance at the summit "was surprisingly tough and, in fact, uncompromising" but that he remained "convinced that a compromise, good for all, is still possible".
On Friday, the prime minister said: "Throughout this process, I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same, a good relationship at the end of this process depends on it.
"At this late stage in the negotiations, it is not acceptable to simply reject the other side's proposals without a detailed explanation and counter proposals."
A stern tone, strong words.
But while there is no remote sign from the PM today that she is about to compromise, forces in the EU and in her own party are intent on forcing her to do so.
Her problem is that they want to push her in different directions.
Rhetoric doesn't change the fact that few of the players involved outside Number 10 believe that the suggestions the prime minister has put forward can be the ones that ultimately will win the day.
Read Laura's blog
She said the two sides were still "a long way apart" on two big issues: the post-Brexit economic relationship between the UK and EU, and the "backstop" for the Irish border, if there is a delay in implementing that relationship.
The two options being offered by the EU for the long-term relationship - for the UK to stay in the European Economic Area and customs union or a basic free trade agreement - were not acceptable, she added.
The first would "make a mockery of the referendum" she said, while the second would mean Northern Ireland would be "permanently separated economically from the rest of the UK by a border down the Irish Sea."
Mrs May said no UK prime minister would ever agree to that: "If the EU believe I will, they are making a fundamental mistake."
The prime minister attempted to reassure EU citizens living in the UK that, in the event no deal can be reached "your rights will be protected".
She said "no-one wants a good deal more than me", adding: "But the EU should be clear: I will not overturn the result of the referendum. Nor will I break up my country."
The BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler said EU diplomats did not consider that their officials working on Brexit negotiations had been disrespectful.
They said they had listened to the UK position and are offering a unique partnership post-Brexit, but will not agree to anything that would harm the EU.
She added that the prime minister's statement was being viewed in Brussels as a "tubthumper" designed to bolster her political position at home.
Mr Tusk followed up his remarks on Thursday by posting a photograph on Instagram of Mrs May and himself looking at cakes with the caption: "A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries."
The EU has argued that the UK cannot "cherry-pick" elements from its rulebook.
That was criticised by some Conservatives, including Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith who described it as "quite insulting".
Mr Tusk's team says the Instagram presence is aimed at reaching out to a younger audience.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister's negotiating strategy "has been a disaster" and said "political games from both the EU and our government need to end" to avoid a no-deal scenario.
"The Tories have spent more time arguing among themselves than negotiating with the EU. From day one, the prime minister has looked incapable of delivering a good Brexit deal for Britain," he said.
Labour wants to see the UK join a customs union with the EU after Brexit, but remain outside of the single market.
Arlene Foster, leader of Northern Ireland's DUP, who Mrs May relies on for a Commons majority in key votes, said the prime minister was "right to stand firm in the face of disrespectful, intransigent and disgraceful behaviour by the European Union".
She added that the UK would "not countenance any new regulatory or customs barriers" between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Leading Conservative Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg welcomed the "strong and forthright" speech from the prime minister but said she should abandon her Chequers plan and come forward with a Canada-style free trade agreement.
"This is the most realistic approach and similar to the EU's proposal."
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that while the EU position had been "bluntly expressed" it was not new - it was just that the prime minister "hasn't been listening".
She tweeted:
The Lib Dems said Parliament should be recalled to sort out the "mess," with leader Sir Vince Cable describing the Chequers plan as "dead as a Dodo":

Theresa May has said she has the "full support of her cabinet" after a former party chairman said there should be a Conservative leadership contest.
The PM insisted she was providing the "calm leadership" the country needed.
Grant Shapps says about 30 Tory MPs back his call for a leadership contest in the wake of the general election results and conference mishaps.
But his claims prompted a backlash from loyal backbenchers, several of whom called on him to "shut up".
There has been leadership speculation since Mrs May's decision to call a snap general election backfired and the Conservatives lost their majority.
The Conservative conference this week was meant to be a chance to assert her authority over the party, but her big speech was plagued by a series of mishaps, as she struggled with a persistent cough, was interrupted by a prankster and some of the letters fell off the conference stage backdrop behind her.
Asked about leadership speculation as she attended a charity event in her constituency, Mrs May said: "What the country needs is calm leadership and that's what I am providing with the full support of my cabinet."
She said her recent speech in Florence had given "real momentum" to Brexit negotiations and she was intending to update MPs next week on her plans to help "ordinary working families" with a cap on energy bills.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove was among cabinet ministers and MPs publicly defending Mrs May on Friday morning, as the story broke that Mr Shapps was the senior Tory behind a bid to persuade her to go.
Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4 the prime minister was a "fantastic" leader, had widespread support, and should stay "as long as she wants".
He said that the "overwhelming majority of MPs and the entirety of the cabinet" backed the prime minister.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd wrote an article in the Telegraph urging the prime minister to stay, while First Secretary of State Damian Green said on the BBC's Question Time the prime minister "was determined as ever to get on with her job - she sees it as her duty to do so".
Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, hit out at those plotting to oust Mrs May as prime minister.
Speaking to the BBC's Political Thinking podcast, she said: "I have to say, I've not got much time for them...
"I really don't think that having a bit of a cold... when you are trying to make a speech changes the fundamentals of whether Theresa May is the right person to lead the country."
There is, this morning, an operation being mounted by the government to try to show that nothing has changed in the Conservative Party in the last few days.
That Theresa May's leadership remains on track and she is, to use another of her famous phrases, just, "getting on with the job".
Except, as happened the last time she proclaimed "nothing has changed", something rather fundamental has, after all.
For the doubts that have been building about her in the party for months are now out there in the wide open.
To trigger a vote of confidence in the party leader, 48 of the 316 Conservative MPs would need to write to the chairman of the backbench 1922 committee.
A leadership contest would only be triggered if Mrs May lost that vote, or chose to quit.
Mr Shapps, who was co-chair of the party between 2012 and 2015, said no letter had been sent and said his intention had been to gather signatures privately and persuade Mrs May to stand down.
But he claimed party whips had taken the "extraordinary" step of making it public by naming him as the ringleader of a plot to oust the PM in a story in the Times.
He told the BBC: "I think it's time we actually tackle this issue of leadership and so do many colleagues.
"We wanted to present that to Theresa May privately. Now I'm afraid it's being done a bit more publicly."
He added: "The country needs leadership. It needs leadership at this time in particular. I think the conference and the lead-up through the summer has shown that that's not going to happen. I think it's time that we have a leadership election now, or at least let's set out that timetable."
But Conservative MP Nigel Evans told the BBC's Daily Politics that if Grant Shapps "can't get 48 signatures, he should just shut up: "In my chats to MPs at Westminster nobody wants an early leadership election. We just simply don't want that."
Fellow MP James Cleverly tweeted: "I've always liked Grant Shapps but he really is doing himself, the party and (most importantly) the country no favours at all. Just stop."
Among other MPs criticising Mr Shapps was Charles Walker, vice chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 committee, who suggested the plot was going to "fizzle out".
"No 10 must be delighted to learn that it's Grant Shapps leading this alleged coup," he said. "Grant has many talents but one thing he doesn't have is a following in the party."
Former minister Ed Vaizey was the first MP to publicly suggest Mrs May should quit on Thursday, telling the BBC: "I think there will be quite a few people who will now be pretty firmly of the view that she should resign."

Senior Tories have ruled out changing their rules to allow an early challenge to Theresa May's leadership, but have asked for more clarity about how long she will remain in office.
Under current rules, MPs cannot hold a new confidence vote in her leadership until December - 12 months on from last year's vote which she won.
The 1922 Committee rejected bringing forward this deadline at a meeting.
But chair Graham Brady said MPs asked for a "clear roadmap" about her future.
And amid signs of a growing grassroots revolt against Mrs May, the Clwyd South Conservative Association has passed a motion of no confidence in the prime minister.
In a ballot of its members, only 3.7% supported Mrs May, while 88.8% said they had no confidence in her.
Last month, Mrs May pledged to stand down if and when Parliament ratified her Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU.
Some long-standing Leave campaigners want her to announce a date now, irrespective of whether a Brexit deal is completed.
Joint executive secretary of the 1922 Nigel Evans was among them, insisting on Tuesday that the calls for her to quit had become "a clamour".
Following a meeting of all Tory MPs, Sir Graham said colleagues concerned about Mrs May's leadership were free to express their concerns to him, which would be "communicated" to Downing Street.
In light of the PM's commitment to stand down if Parliament approved a Brexit deal, he said MPs were seeking "similar clarity from her" about what would happen "in other circumstances".
"I think the 1922 executive is asking on behalf of the Conservative Party in Parliament that we should have a clear road map forward," he told the BBC.
"We haven't set out a timetable, we asked her to set out a clear timetable, just to give some certainty and clarity to colleagues in Parliament and the wider Conservative Party and to the country most importantly."
Former minister Robert Halfon said it would have been "entirely wrong" to have staged another vote right now given the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.
"The rules are the rules," he told BBC News. "We are the Conservative Party, not a Stalinist Party, where you suddenly rip up the rule book and change them if you don't like them."
"It would have been behaving like a dictatorship, not the Conservative Party."
Speaking before Wednesday's meeting, a Downing Street spokesman said the prime minister had given a commitment to stand down "earlier than she would have liked" and would not lead negotiations on the UK's future relations with the EU.
But he said this did "not necessarily mean" she would quit straight away if Brexit happened on 31 October, the new deadline set by the EU for the UK's exit.
The party's most senior backbenchers met twice behind closed doors but were split on whether to change its leadership rules.
Sources suggest there was a slim majority in favour of the status quo.
But while Conservative MPs decided not to change the rules, grandee Sir Graham Brady said they wanted more clarity from the PM on when she would stand down.
Some MPs are keen that the PM signals a willingness to go soon after next month's unwanted European elections. So this could be a coup postponed - not a coup averted.
Mrs May survived a vote of no confidence in her on 12 December 2018 by 200 to 117 votes.
The ballot was triggered after 48 Tory MPs wrote to the 1922 committee's chair Sir Graham Brady to say they had lost faith in her, exceeding the threshold required.
Some of those who wanted to change the Conservative rules argued another vote of confidence should be permitted after six months, rather than a year, if a relatively high number of MPs - 30% or 40% - call for it.
But other members of 1922 Committee, who started discussing the issue on Tuesday, were sceptical of long-term rule changes to address a very specific circumstance.
They were also worried about showing further party divisions ahead of local elections next week and the potential European elections on 23 May.

Theresa May has told the Conservatives they must be the "party for everyone" and said austerity was ending in her party conference speech in Birmingham.
The prime minister said that a decade on from the financial crash, "there are better days ahead", signalling an increase in public spending.
She also defended her under-fire Brexit strategy, saying she was "standing up for Britain".
And she announced new borrowing powers for councils to build more homes.
A cap on the amount councils can borrow to fund new developments "doesn't make sense" and would be scrapped, she said.
Other promises included a "step change" in how cancer is diagnosed with a strategy aimed at increasing early detection rates, plus another freeze in fuel duty.
The prime minister - whose dancing in Kenya made headlines in August - danced on to the stage to the sounds of Abba, and immediately sought to make light of last year's difficult speech.
She joked that if she had a cough this time, it was only because she had been up all night gluing the letters on to the backdrop.
The Tory conference has been dominated by Brexit, with former foreign secretary Boris Johnson launching a fresh broadside against her Chequers plan - it is known by the country residence where it was agreed in July - for trade with the EU.
And as she prepared to deliver the speech, Conservative MP James Duddridge announced he had submitted a letter to the backbench 1922 Committee calling for a leadership contest.
In her speech there was no mention of "Chequers" specifically - with Mrs May describing her plan as a "free trade deal that provides for frictionless trade in goods".
Defending it, she warned delegates that pursuing "our own visions of the perfect Brexit" could lead to "no Brexit at all".
On austerity, Mrs May said people needed to know "that the end is in sight".
The Tories could not just "clean up a mess" they should "steer a course to a better future", she said.
"Sound finances are essential, but they are not the limit of our ambition. Because you made sacrifices, there are better days ahead."
At next year's Spending Review she said "debt as a share of the economy will continue to go down, support for public services will go up".
"Because, a decade after the financial crash, people need to know that the austerity it led to is over and that their hard work has paid off."
In her speech, Mrs May said the Tories must be "a party not for the few, not even for the many but for everyone who is willing to work hard and do their best".
"Our best days lie ahead of us", she said, adding: "Don't let anyone tell you we don't have what it takes."
She also condemned the personal abuse of politicians, speaking up for Labour's Diane Abbott and calling for an end to "the bitterness and bile which is poisoning our politics".
Mrs May made repeated attacks on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's politics, criticising his opposition to military action and claiming he would raise taxes "higher and higher".
But the Tories needed to "do more than criticise" Labour, she said, vowing to "make markets work in the interests of ordinary people again".
She said she wanted to help people on low incomes, ruling out any increase in fuel duty in the Budget on 29 October.
Theresa May's performance
With the complexities of Brexit, the divisions in her party, the calamity of last year's conference speech, the antics of the former foreign secretary, and of course, her own fragilities, Theresa May has struggled to find her voice - and that's got nothing to do with running out of Strepsils.
Well today she found it, and in the words of one of her cabinet colleagues, not a particularly close ally, said "she found her mojo". From the moment she danced on to the stage (who would have thought we'd ever see that), she looked comfortable in her own skin, actually happy to be there.
It sounds strange, but it is so rare to see her overtly enjoying her job. On so many occasions the public has seen a politician who seems constricted, conflicted, and ill-at-ease. For voters, frankly, if she doesn't look like she is enjoying being prime minister, why should any of us be happy about the fact she's doing it. Read Laura's full blog.
The 'end of austerity'
Philip Hammond is always wary of announcing the "end of austerity", given the fragility of economic growth and the fact that many cuts, such as to benefits, have yet to work through the system.
People are still feeling the pain. He is keener to emphasise that the effort expended bringing the public finances back towards balance - where the government raises in revenues the same at it spends on services - will not be put at risk with some form of "spending splurge".
The PM just made that task harder. Read Kamal's full blog.
The housing proposal
Lifting the cap on how much English local authorities can borrow to build traditional council houses could have a significant impact on the supply of homes for social rent.
Currently, town halls have a housing debt of about £26bn, the value of their existing stock acting as collateral.  Doing away with the cap would conservatively allow an extra £10-15bn of borrowing.  This money could be used to build an extra 15-20,000 new council homes a year over ten years.
Given that the latest annual figure for completed social rent homes is less than 6,000, this might well quadruple supply in the medium term. Even that increase would not get close to meeting demand for social housing, however.
The extra borrowing will count against the government's balance sheet and may well mean some tough decisions on cuts to budgets elsewhere, although there are arguments that the money could be seen as an investment rather than a subsidy because the new housing would provide a reliable income stream. Since 2012, council housing in England has realised a net rental surplus.
The extra borrowing would be ring-fenced for housing but it is unclear whether all of the new stock would be for social rent.  Some shared-ownership homes might be included, for example.
Although the extra borrowing freedom could come into force after early as next year, with planning and land acquisition to be sorted out, it is unlikely the boost to social housing supply will come to pass for some years.
The NHS plan
The pledge to create a new cancer strategy is not surprising - it was already one of the priority areas for the 10-year plan NHS England boss Simon Stevens has been asked to draw up in return for the £20bn funding rise the health service has been promised by 2023.
Her high profile promise was to increase early detection - defined as at stages one and two - from 50% to 75% by 2028.
Progress is already being made towards this. The existing cancer strategy has already made that a priority and in the last four years there has been an 11% improvement, meaning the NHS is already well on course to achieve this target.
Beyond that, there were few details on what it would mean for services so it looks like we will have to wait until the 10-year NHS plan is published, expected to be November, before we know more.
In response, Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell said Mrs May's claim on austerity was a "con" unless the chancellor takes immediate action.
He said: "If the prime minister wants to back up her words with action, Philip Hammond should announce immediately that the cuts scheduled for the next four years will be cancelled."
The SNP's Ian Blackford said Mrs May had "danced around the key issues - the disastrous impact of Tory austerity and a Tory hard Brexit".
"There is a massive gulf between her rhetoric and the reality of what is now facing the UK," he added.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said: "As somebody who takes dancing seriously, I was delighted to see Theresa May show that she is developing her new hobby. But she was dancing on the head of a pin, confronted by an audience full of people plotting to oust her."
The Local Government Association, which has been calling for an end to the cap on borrowing for house-building, welcomed the council spending announcement.
"Many of the projects that are already under way could quickly be scaled up," Conservative councillor David Simmonds, the body's deputy chairman, said.
"Councils have been asking for this for a long time and clearly the announcement today is something that means we can get on with the job."
The CBI - which criticised Mrs May's immigration plans on Tuesday - welcomed her call to "back business" and urged MPs to support her Brexit plan to get a deal "over the line".

Donald Trump told Theresa May she should sue the EU rather than negotiate over Brexit, she has told the BBC.
The US president said on Friday at a joint news conference he had given Mrs May a suggestion - but she had found it too "brutal".
Asked by the BBC's Andrew Marr what he had said, she replied: "He told me I should sue the EU - not go into negotiations."
It came as another government member resigned over her Brexit plans.
Robert Courts said he quit as a parliamentary private secretary - an unpaid ministerial aide - at the Foreign Office to "express discontent" with Mrs May's policy before key Brexit votes on Monday.
"I had to think who I wanted to see in the mirror for the rest of my life," he said in tweet.
He could not tell his constituents he supported Mrs May's proposals "in their current form," he added.
Mr Courts replaced David Cameron as the Conservative MP for Witney, Oxfordshire in 2016.
Defending her Brexit blueprint on the Andrew Marr show, the prime minister said it would allow the UK to strike trade deals with other nations, end free movement of people, and end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
A White Paper published on Thursday fleshed out details of her plan, which advocates close links with the EU on trade in goods, but not services.
Before the paper was published, Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson resigned, along with several junior government figures, saying it would not deliver the Brexit people voted for in the 2016 referendum.
Mrs May laughed off the president's legal action suggestion, but added: "Interestingly, what the president also said at that press conference was 'don't walk away'.
"Don't walk away from those negotiations because then you'll be stuck. So I want us to be able to sit down to negotiate the best deal for Britain."
Donald Trump declined to spell out what his advice to Mrs May had been, in an interview with US TV network CBS, but added: "Maybe she'll take it, it's something she could do if she wanted to.
"But it was strong advice. And I think it probably would have worked."
Ahead of his meeting with Mrs May, Mr Trump told the Sun newspaper her Brexit proposals would "probably kill" a trade deal with his country.
But hours later he said a US-UK trade deal would "absolutely be possible".
Leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has called the White Paper a "bad deal for Britain".
He told the BBC's Sunday Politics: "The government unfortunately believes that Brexit is not a good thing in itself, it seems to think it has to be tempered by non-Brexit."
He said Mrs May, who campaigned to keep Britain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, had failed to grasp the "enormously positive" opportunities offered.
He described her as a "Remainer who has remained a Remainer".
He also said she would have to change her policy in order to get it through Parliament, without having to rely on Labour votes.
Mrs May urged Brexiteers in her own party to "keep their eye on the prize" of Brexit - and said her plan was the only workable way to deliver it.
Analysis by BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman
Frankly, it is difficult to see any grounds for the UK suing the EU.
Like any other member state, the UK can sue the EU in relation to any specific measure it has taken which breaches EU law.
Such action would be heard at the European Court of Justice, the ultimate arbiter of EU law.
An example would be if the UK was denied agricultural subsidies, or structural funds to which it was entitled under EU law.
The Conservative government of David Cameron successfully sued when the European Central Bank said it would only license financial institutions within the Eurozone as clearing houses for transactions in euros.
The UK and the EU have not reached a Brexit agreement yet, so there can be no action for breach of that agreement.
Parties to a negotiation are under what are known as "procedural duties" - for instance, to act in good faith.
But it is very difficult to bring an action, within a negotiation, on that basis. Some would say that even attempting to do so would seriously harm the negotiation.
Mrs May's message comes ahead of crucial Commons votes on trade and customs policy in the coming week, with Tory Brexiteers tabling a series of amendments to the legislation.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he was not expecting either the Customs Bill or the Trade Bill to be voted down at this stage. There are also likely to be amendments tabled by Remain supporting MPs.
Mrs May told Andrew Marr: "Some people are saying they want to vote in the Trade Bill to keep us in the customs union. I say that's not acceptable, that's not what the British people voted for.
"Others are saying that perhaps we cannot have the bill at all. That would be damaging to our 'no deal' preparations.
"So let's just keep our eyes on the prize here. The prize is delivering leaving the European Union in a way that's in our national interest."
Mrs May insists her plans would allow the UK to strike its own trade deals, despite agreeing a "common rulebook" with the EU on cross-border trade.
She said such rules were needed to protect jobs in firms with supply chains that crossed borders and deal with the Irish border issue.
Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said Mrs May's "so-called plan" did not "stand up to scrutiny".
"No-one - not the public, Parliament or the Conservative party - is happy with Theresa May's offer. This has descended into a shambles," he said.
Labour MP Ian Murray, a member of the People's Vote campaign, said the British people needed a vote on the final deal.
Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson said it was not the party's policy to back another referendum - but said it should not be ruled out.

The UK cannot expect to hold on to "bits" of its membership after leaving the EU, Theresa May has said.
The prime minister's comment came after she was asked whether she would "prioritise" controlling immigration over staying in the single market.
She told Sky News her approach was not "muddled", following criticism by the UK's former EU ambassador.
Mrs May, whose critics have demanded more detail of her aims, promised to provide this in "the coming weeks".
But Labour urged the prime minister to give "more clarity" ahead of the "most important negotiations for a generation".
Brexit talks with the EU are expected to begin as early as April.
There has been much debate in recent weeks about the nature of the deal the government is aiming for, in particular whether controls on the movement of EU citizens will mean the UK leaves the European single market and customs union.
By Susana Mendonca, BBC political correspondent
Theresa May doesn't like to give a running commentary on Brexit, so you have to read between the lines on this one.
While she didn't go as far as to say she would ditch single market access in favour of being free to control EU immigration, she certainly appeared to hint at it.
Mrs May said the UK would have control of its borders and the best possible trade deal with the EU. She didn't commit to maintaining "single market access", and she suggested that people who thought the country could keep "bits of EU membership" were missing the point that it "would be leaving".
This failure to commit to the single market will be music to the ears of Brexiteers. To Remainers it will raise concerns that a "hard Brexit" could be on the offing.
But, as with so much in the Brexit debate, clarity over the UK's position in the negotiations, due to start very soon, remains lacking.
Sir Ivan Rogers, who resigned as the UK's ambassador to the EU last week, criticised "muddled thinking" among ministers.
But Mrs May told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "Anybody who looks at this question of free movement and trade as a sort of zero-sum game is approaching it in the wrong way.
"I'm ambitious for what we can get for the UK in terms of our relationship with the European Union because I also think that's going to be good for the European Union. Our thinking on this isn't muddled at all."
However, it was "important to take some time" to look at the "complexity of the issues", she added.
The prime minister has promised to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - getting formal Brexit negotiations with the EU under way - by the end of March.
Asked whether she was "prepared to prioritise full control over immigration above membership of the single market", Mrs May said: "Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the EU, but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership of the EU.
"We are leaving. We are coming out. We are not going to be a member of the EU any longer.
"So the question is what is the right relationship for the UK to have with the European Union when we are outside. We will be able to have control of our borders, control of our laws.
"This is what people were voting for on 23 June.
"But of course we still want the best possible deal for us, companies to be able to trade, UK companies to be able to trade in and operate within the European Union and also European companies to be able to trade with the UK and operate within the UK."
In the referendum last summer, voters opted by 51.9% to 48.1% in favour of Brexit.
Mrs May told Sky: "Over the coming weeks, I'll be setting out more details of my plan for Britain. Yes, that's about getting the right deal for Brexit, but it is also about economic reform...
"It's about getting the right deal internationally, but it's also about a fair deal at home."
Following Mrs May's interview, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC: "She had one question put to her three times and still didn't answer it, which is, 'Are you prioritising immigration over access to the single market?'
"That was the question she didn't want to answer. And I think now, 10 to 11 weeks from the triggering of Article 50, and the most important negotiations for a generation, we need more clarity than that, and we haven't got it."
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said Mrs May's comments "confirmed she is taking us towards a disastrous hard Brexit that will leave our country poorer and more divided".
But Richard Tice, co-chairman of the Leave Means Leave campaign, said: "We welcome the prime minister's commitment to taking back control of Britain's borders, therefore ending preferential treatment for EU citizens.
"She is right that issues of trade and immigration are not binary because when Britain leaves the single market and the customs union, though freedom of movement will cease, Britain's ability to trade with the EU and access the single market will continue."
Labour MP and leading supporter of pro-EU Open Britain group, Chuka Umunna, said:"Any trading arrangement outside the single market would erect barriers with our largest trading partner and would be disastrous for the UK economy, jobs and businesses."
Europhile former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "Theresa needs to address the more serious question of the muddle [Sir Ivan is] complaining about, see whether she agrees with him and decide whether she can improve the way in which she organises the government to get to a proper conclusion."

Conservative MPs Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are going head-to-head to become the next Tory leader and prime minister.
After getting the backing of Tory MPs, they are now waiting to hear whether they have won the support of around 160,000 Conservative Party members in the ballot for the top job.
Voting closes at 17:00 BST with the winner to be announced on Tuesday morning.
But where do the potential new prime ministers stand on key issues?
Here's a quick guide to their positions on Brexit, immigration, tax, spending, health and social care and education.
More than half the ballot papers sent to the homes of party members are thought to have been returned so far, and the winner will be announced on 23 July.
In a recent Conservative Home poll of 1,300 party members, Mr Johnson came out on top.
The bookmakers are offering odds on who the next leader will be and Mr Johnson is the clear favourite.
The two candidates have been taking part in a series of hustings or debates to try to win over party members. The last one was on Wednesday, 17 July.
Out of the two, Jeremy Hunt, who replaced Mr Johnson as foreign secretary last year, has more experience in government and has held more cabinet posts.
He was made culture secretary under the coalition government in 2010 and oversaw the 2012 London Olympics before becoming health secretary.
In 2018, Mr Hunt became the longest-serving health secretary, and arguably one of the most controversial, since the NHS was created, completing six years in the role.
During his tenure, Mr Hunt clashed with unions over contracts for junior doctors, who took part in a series of walkouts in 2015.
Mr Johnson was the MP for Henley for seven years before being elected Mayor of London in 2008. He returned to Parliament as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in 2015.
On a personal level, the two candidates have similar backgrounds - being educated at private schools and both attending Oxford University.
Mr Johnson was born in New York to English parents, giving him dual nationality. But he later renounced his US citizenship.
Tory MPs voted five times to choose their preferred candidates.
In the fifth and final round of voting, Boris Johnson came out on top with 160 out of the 313 votes cast. One ballot paper was spoiled.
Jeremy Hunt was second with 77 votes and Michael Gove was eliminated after securing the support of 75 fellow MPs.
But 10 candidates started the race on 10 June.
Mark Harper, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey were eliminated in the first round after failing to get the necessary 17 votes.
Matt Hancock, who won 20 votes, later withdrew from the contest, pledging his support for Boris Johnson.
Dominic Raab was eliminated in round two, after falling three votes short of the required 33.
Rory Stewart's campaign came to an end after he finished last in the third ballot.
Sajid Javid and Michael Gove were knocked out after they finished last in last two successive ballots.
Speaker John Bercow has thrown the UK's Brexit plans into further confusion by ruling out another vote on the PM's deal unless MPs are given a new motion.
In a surprise ruling, he said he would not allow a third "meaningful vote" in the coming days on "substantially the same" motion as MPs rejected last week.
With 11 days to go before the UK is due to leave the EU, ministers have warned of a looming "constitutional crisis".
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 29 March.
Theresa May has negotiated the withdrawal deal with the EU but it must also be agreed by MPs.
They have voted against it twice, and the government has been considering a third attempt to get it through Parliament.
Mr Bercow cited a convention dating back to 1604 that a defeated motion could not be brought back in the same form during the course of a parliamentary session.
He said the second vote on the prime minister's deal last week was "in order" as it was substantially different to the first, but any further votes must pass the "test" he set out to be allowed.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the speaker's intervention does not stop Brexit from happening, but it makes it "extremely unlikely" that the government will put another vote on the deal to Parliament this week.
She said this makes it less likely the prime minister will ask EU leaders at a summit this week for a short extension - which Mrs May had said she would do if her deal got through Parliament.
This in turn makes it more likely there will be a longer delay to Brexit, she added.
She said: "The conclusion that most people in Westminster would reach from that means that we're heading - it's likely - towards a closer relationship with the European Union, a softer Brexit than the one Theresa May has set out."
However, she added: "That said, the government does believe that, although they're not clear about what it might be yet,  there is a way round this complication - but it is another significant obstacle for Number 10 tonight and it has, in the words of one senior official, made things significantly more complicated."
Mr Bercow's statement appeared to take Downing Street by surprise, with the prime minister's official spokesman saying it had not been warned of its contents "or indeed the fact that he was making one".
Later, a Number 10 spokesman said the statement had been noted and required "proper consideration".
The role of the speaker, who is the highest authority of the House of Commons, includes controlling debates, calling MPs to speak and choosing which amendments can be debated.
Analysis by BBC political correspondent Iain Watson
How can the government get another vote on Theresa May's deal?
Well, first of all, rules are there to be changed.
If MPs suspend or change the "standing orders" of Parliament, they could get the Brexit deal back on the agenda.
Secondly, the government could change the proposition on offer.
The former Attorney General Dominic Grieve has suggested that something "substantially" different would be to ask Parliament to vote for the deal subject to a referendum.
Or change the Parliament?
If MPs can't discuss the same thing in the same session of Parliament, why not simply start a new one?
Read Iain's complete analysis here.
The prime minister had been expected to submit her Brexit deal for MPs to vote on for a third time this week - a week after they rejected it by 149 votes - and ahead of the EU summit on Thursday.
Last week MPs also voted in favour of ruling out leaving the EU without a deal, and in favour of extending the Brexit process - though an extension would have to be agreed by all 27 EU member states.
Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng has confirmed Mrs May will be writing to European Council President Donald Tusk to ask to postpone the UK's exit date.
If the EU agreed, the government would ask both Houses of Parliament to approve the change, he said.
Mr Kwarteng said the length of the extension would depend on "whether the meaningful vote goes through or not".
"If we have a deal... we will ask for a short extension," he said.
"Now if for whatever reason that vote doesn't happen, or is frustrated or is voted down, we will probably ask for a long extension of the period - and that would be a matter for the EU and for our government to decide."
European leaders are expected to discuss the UK request to extend the Brexit process and delay the UK's departure at the summit on Thursday.
Shadow Brexit minister Matthew Pennycook said the fact that Article 50 needed to be extended was "a mark of this government's failure".
Meanwhile, the government has been trying to convince the DUP and Tory Brexiteers, who have both voiced concerns about the backstop - the controversial arrangement to prevent physical checks on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland - to vote in favour of the deal.
The DUP has opposed the deal up to now and are seeking further "clarifications" on the government's legal advice about the backstop, and how the UK could exit it.
Ministers and MPs supportive of Mrs May's deal expressed anger at the timing of Mr Bercow's intervention.
Conservative MP James Gray, who plans to vote for the deal after rejecting it twice, said he was "absolutely furious"; while fellow Tory Greg Hands suggested Mr Bercow was the only person in the country who was "accountable to nobody".
Solicitor General Robert Buckland warned there was now a "constitutional crisis" and suggested the onus was on the EU to come up with "new solutions" to enable MPs to vote on the deal again.
"Frankly we could have done without this, but it is something we are going to have to deal with," he said.
He suggested "there were ways around this" - including potentially cutting short the current session of Parliament, a move which would lead to calls for a general election.
Some opponents of the PM's Brexit deal welcomed the Speaker's ruling.
Conservative former cabinet minister Owen Paterson said it was a "game-changer" and would "concentrate minds" ahead of Thursday's EU summit.
Sir Bill Cash, chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, said it seemed to make an "enormous amount of sense" given that the Brexit deal has been defeated twice and there would need to be a "substantial difference" to allow a third vote.
But the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford suggested there was now a "constitutional crisis" and he suggested the prime minister should "immediately" call a meeting of opposition leaders.
And Brexiteer Nadhim Zahawi, Tory minister for children and families, told BBC Newsnight that the Speaker had "made it now much more difficult to have the short extension" and a meaningful vote, "therefore the longer extension is now clearly on the table. I don't believe that's a good thing".
By BBC Brussels reporter Adam Fleming
The EU's official position is that they are waiting for Theresa May to come to a summit in Brussels on Thursday with a clear statement about how she plans to proceed, and there definitely won't be any more negotiations when she gets here.
Unofficially, EU officials wonder if the government can get itself out of this situation, either with Parliamentary wizardry or by coming up with UK-only additions to the package, such as new guarantees about the role of Northern Ireland's Stormont Assembly in the future.
And could the joint UK/EU decision about an extension to the Brexit process, due to be taken on Thursday, be appended to the deal and then count as something new enough to justify another vote in the Commons?
But explain to diplomats that the solution might be the Queen closing Parliament and re-opening a new session with a speech and their reactions are priceless.

The UK will have to "face the consequences" if it opts to leave without a deal, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier told BBC Panorama the thrice-rejected agreement negotiated by Theresa May was the "only way to leave the EU in an orderly manner".
He also insisted Mrs May and her ministers "never" told him during Brexit talks she might opt for no deal.
Publicly, Mrs May has always insisted no deal is better than a bad deal.
Meanwhile, the Office for Budget Responsibility has said the UK will fall into recession next year if there is a no-deal Brexit.
The fiscal watchdog said economic growth would fall by 2% by the end of 2020 if it left the bloc without an agreement.
In his first UK broadcast interview - conducted in May before the start of the Conservative leadership contest - Mr Barnier was asked what would happen if the UK "just tore up the membership card" for the EU.
"The UK will have to face the consequences," he replied.
Asked whether the UK had ever genuinely threatened to leave in such a way with no deal, Mr Barnier said: "I think that the UK side, which is well informed and competent and knows the way we work on the EU side, knew from the very beginning that we've never been impressed by such a threat.
"It's not useful to use it."
Panorama: Britain's Brexit Crisis will be broadcast on Thursday at 21:00 BST.
Conservative Party leadership contender Jeremy Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the fact the EU "never believed that no deal was a credible threat" was "one of our mistakes in the last two years".
He said while there will be economic consequences to no deal, "we are much better prepared for no deal than we were before".
He said the issue of the Northern Ireland border could be solved with "existing technology" and the controversial Irish backstop, which aims to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, "isn't going to happen".
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, a key figure in Boris Johnson's leadership campaign, accused Mr Barnier of trying to "threaten" the UK.
He said Mr Barnier's remarks were an indictment of Britain's negotiating strategy and showed "how useless" Mrs May's approach had been.
Leadership frontrunner Mr Johnson was asked for an interview by Panorama, but he declined.
Elsewhere in the programme, Mrs May's de facto deputy David Lidington revealed that a senior EU official made a secret offer to the UK to put Brexit on hold for five years and negotiate a "new deal for Europe".
Mr Lidington said the offer was passed on in 2018 by Martin Selmayr, a senior aide to EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
"Martin sort of said, 'Look, why don't we have a deal whereby we just put all this on ice for five years?'
"Let's see how things go, let's get the UK involved with France and Germany, let's see how the dust settles and let's talk about whether we can come to a new deal for Europe.'"
In his own interview for the programme - also recorded in May - Mr Selmayr said he was "very certain" the UK was not ready to leave without a deal before the original Brexit deadline in March this year.
"We have seen what has been prepared on our side of the border for a hard Brexit. We don't see the same level of preparation on the other side of the border," he added.
In another interview for the programme, the EU Commission's First Vice-President, Frans Timmermans, said UK ministers were "running around like idiots" when they arrived to negotiate Brexit in 2017.
Mr Timmermans said while he expected a "Harry Potter-like book of tricks" from ministers, instead they were like a character from from Dad's Army.
In an interview in March 2019 with the BBC's Nick Robinson, Mr Timmermans said he found it "shocking" how unprepared the UK team was when it began negotiations.
"We thought they are so brilliant," he said. "That in some vault somewhere in Westminster there will be a Harry Potter-like book with all the tricks and all the things in it to do."
But after seeing the then-Brexit Secretary David Davis - who resigned over his disagreements with the deal - speaking in public, his mind changed.
"I saw him not coming, not negotiating, grandstanding elsewhere [and] I thought, 'Oh my God, they haven't got a plan, they haven't got a plan.'
"That was really shocking, frankly, because the damage if you don't have a plan...
"Time's running out and you don't have a plan. It's like Lance Corporal Jones, you know, 'Don't panic, don't panic!' Running around like idiots."
Mr Timmermans - interviewed two months before Mrs May announced her resignation - also criticised Boris Johnson's approach to Brexit negotiations from when they began.
"Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, but it is about time we became a bit harsh. I am not sure he was being genuine," he said.
"I have always had the impression he is playing games."
Negotiations between the UK and EU began in 2017 after Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the Article 50 process to leave the bloc.
At the end of 2018, a withdrawal agreement was settled between the two sides and EU officials said the matter was closed.
But MPs voted against the plan three times, which led to a number of delays to the exit date - now set for 31 October.

Tony Blair has said it is his "mission" to persuade Britons to "rise up" and change their minds on Brexit.
Speaking in the City of London, the former prime minister claimed that people voted in the referendum "without knowledge of the true terms of Brexit".
He urged "a way out from the present rush over the cliff's edge".
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said the comments were arrogant and undemocratic but Lib Dem Nick Clegg said he "agreed with every word".
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said Mr Blair was "yesterday's man" while Downing Street said it was "absolutely committed" to seeing Brexit through.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson added: "I urge the British people to rise up and turn off the TV next time Blair comes on with his condescending campaign."
Prime Minister Theresa May wants to trigger formal Brexit talks by the end of March - a move which was backed in the House of Commons by MPs last week.
Mr Blair, who was UK prime minister between 1997 and 2007, used the speech to the pro-European campaign group Open Britain to argue that leaving the EU would be "painful" for Britain and Europe and the benefits would be "largely illusory".
Mr Blair, who campaigned to remain in the EU, said that while he accepted that people voted to leave by 52% to 48%, he would recommend looking again at Brexit when "we have a clear sense of where we're going".
Pressed on whether he thought there should be a second referendum, he said: "All I'm saying is a very, very simple thing, that this is the beginning of the debate - that if a significant part of that 52% show real change of mind, however you measure it, we should have the opportunity to reconsider this decision.
"Whether you do it through another referendum or another method, that's a second order question.
"But this issue is the single most important decision this country has taken since the Second World War and debate can't now be shut down about it."
Analysis by political correspondent Tom Bateman
Tony Blair's warnings about the risks of Brexit might have made some viewers believe the referendum campaign was still being fought.
But his central political point takes us onto new ground - that the voters could still change their minds about leaving the EU and Remainers should persuade them to do so.
It will be seen by some as a call to arms - Tony Blair's Brexit insurrection.
Brexiteer MPs were unsurprisingly excoriating, with the foreign secretary hinting at what Mr Blair's opponents see as his toxicity after the Iraq war.
But importantly the former PM's speech raises a tactical question for Remainer MPs wondering what to do next: fight for Brexit on their terms or fight Brexit itself.
In the absence of an effective opposition, he said pro-Europeans needed to build a "movement " reaching across party lines, he said, adding the institute he is launching would play its part in developing the arguments to rethink the country's position.
"The debilitation of the Labour Party is the facilitator of Brexit. I hate to say that, but it is true."
While he fully accepted immigration was "a substantial issue", he said it had become the "primary consideration" for the government and suggested the public were more concerned about arrivals from outside the EU.
Mr Blair has faced criticism in the past for his government's decision to allow people from Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to work in Britain without restrictions, while most EU states imposed transitional controls to slow the rate of migration.
Mr Blair stressed that the Conservative government only "has bandwidth for only one thing - Brexit", at the cost of the NHS, education, investment in communities, the rise in serious crime, the increased burden of social care and control of immigration.
"This is a government for Brexit, of Brexit and dominated by Brexit, he said, adding that the issue was the government's "waking thought, the daily grind, the meditation before sleep and the stuff of its dreams or nightmares".
Iain Duncan Smith, who was a prominent Leave campaigner, said Mr Blair had shown the political elite was completely out of touch with the British people.
He compared Mr Blair returning to the political scene to the British horror comedy "Shaun of the Dead", with "his hands outstretched to tell the British people they were too stupid to be able to understand what they were voting on", adding that this "is both arrogant and a form of bullying".
And Mr Farage described Mr Blair as a "former heavyweight champion coming out of retirement" who would "end up on the canvas".
Kate Hoey, a prominent Leave campaigner and Labour former minister, told the BBC she did not think anyone would take Mr Blair's "patronising" opinion seriously.
"I'm really quite sad that he doesn't feel that as a former prime minister - he's travelled all round the world, he's made himself lots of money - he's come back. Why doesn't he just now go and find himself a job?"
But Alan Johnson, who led Labour's campaign to keep Britain in the EU - urged people to listen to the message, not the messenger.
Stressing he would not rule out a second referendum, Mr Johnson said people are concerned that Britain could end up as a "low tax, anything goes, race-to-the-bottom kind of country" post Brexit.
Supporters of leaving the EU argue it will free up the UK to trade better globally and give the government better control of immigration.
Earlier this month, MPs overwhelmingly agreed, by 494 votes to 122, to let the government begin the UK's departure from the EU by voting for the Brexit bill.
The Commons vote prompted splits in the Labour party. Despite calls by leader Jeremy Corbyn for his party to back the government, 52 MPs rebelled.
Lib Dem attempts to amend the bill to include a provision for another referendum were defeated by 340 votes to 33.

Some EU leaders may be prepared to compromise on the free movement of people to help Britain stay in the single market, Tony Blair has said.
He told the Today programme one option was for Britain "staying within a reformed EU".
The ex-PM said he would not disclose conversations he had had in Europe - but insisted he was not speaking "on a whim".
The government insists Brexit will give the UK greater control of its borders.
Labour's shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said Mr Blair "hadn't really listened to the nature of the debate going on in the pubs, the clubs and school gates".
"We have to respect the referendum result," Mr McDonnell said, adding that Labour could "negotiate access to the single market".
Mr Blair spoke to the BBC after he argued in an article for his own institute that there was room for compromise on free movement of people.
He told Today the situation in Europe was different to when Britain voted to leave the EU - a move Mr Blair described as "the most serious it's taken since the Second World War".
He said France's new president, Emmanuel Macron - whose political party was formed last year - was proposing "far-reaching reforms" for the EU.
"Europe itself is now looking at its own reform programme," Mr Blair said.
"They will have an inner circle in the EU that will be part of the eurozone and an outer circle."
When pressed on what evidence there was to suggest European nations would compromise, Mr Blair said: "I'm not going to disclose conversations I've had within Europe, but I'm not saying this literally on the basis of a whim.
"They will make reforms that I think will make it much more comfortable for Britain to fit itself in that outer circle."
He said "majorities" of people in France, Germany and the UK supported changes around benefits and with regards to those who come to Europe without a job.
"I'm not saying these could be negotiated," Mr Blair said.
"I'm simply saying if we were looking at this from the point of view of the interests of the country, one option within this negotiation would be Britain staying within a reformed European Union."
He said the majority of EU migrants in the UK are "people we want in this country".
EU leaders have previously said the UK must accept free movement of people if it wants to stay inside the single market.
But in his article for the Institute for Global Change, Mr Blair said senior figures had told him they were willing to consider changes to one of the key principles of the single market.
"The French and Germans share some of the British worries, notably around immigration, and would compromise on freedom of movement," he wrote.
But last week the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the freedom of movement of people, goods, services and capital - the key principles of the single market - were "indivisible".
Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged to control EU migration and has reiterated her commitment to reducing net migration to the tens of thousands.
She has said that outside the single market, and without rules on freedom of movement, the UK will be able to make its own decisions on immigration.
Mr Blair also said more was known now about the effects of the Brexit process on the UK.
"We know our currency is down significantly, that's a prediction by the international markets as to our future prosperity. We know businesses are already moving jobs out of the country.
"We know last year we were the fastest-growing economy in the G7. We're now the slowest."
Mr Blair accepted Labour was behind its leader Jeremy Corbyn "for now".
But he warned if Brexit was combined with leaving the single market, and "the largest spending programme Labour had ever proposed" the country "would be in a very serious situation."
Mr Blair said leaving the single market was a "damaging position" shared by Labour and he urged the party's leadership to champion a "radically distinct" position on Europe.
But Jeremy Corbyn said Labour's position on free movement was "very clear", adding: "We would protect EU nationals' rights to remain here, including the rights of family reunion."
Responding to Mr Blair's comments, the party leader said: "I think our economy will do very well under a Labour government.
"It will be an investment-led economy that works for all - so we won't have zero-hour contracts, insecure employment.
"We won't have communities being left behind."
Mr Blair has previously said Brexit was an issue he felt so strongly about, that it tempted him to return to politics.
But Labour MP Frank Field, who backed Brexit, said he did not think Mr Blair was "a person to influence public opinion now".
"We're now set on the course of leaving [the EU]. We actually need a safe harbour to continue those negotiations when we're out.
"And I wouldn't actually be believing those people who are set on destroying our attempts to leave, who are now appearing as wolves in sheep's clothing."
Richard Tice, of pro-Brexit group Leave Means Leave, said Mr Blair's comments "demonstrate how out of touch he is with British voters".
"The former prime minister believes that freedom of movement is the only issue with the EU, when in reality the British people also voted to leave in order to take back control of our laws and money and no longer be dictated to by the European Court of Justice," he added.
Conservative MEP David Campbell Bannerman said Mr Blair's assertion that Britain could find a way to remain within a reformed EU was a "dodgy claim, as opposed to a dodgy dossier".
"We've heard this all before. David Cameron was given such assurances and in the end the EU did nothing for him.
"If they do nothing for Cameron, they're not going to do anything for Blair, I'm afraid."

Tony Blair has urged European leaders to reform the EU so British people "change their mind" about Brexit.
The former prime minister argued that if "comprehensive" immigration reforms are offered, voters will realise their "genuine underlying grievances" can be addressed.
He thinks Brexit can then be "averted" via another referendum, this time on the final deal reached with the EU.
Mr Blair, who opposed Brexit, also said Northern Ireland could be at risk.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "I find it not just disappointing but sickening that people should really be prepared to sacrifice peace in Northern Ireland on the altar of Brexit."
Brexit campaigners dismissed his remarks.
"Former prime ministers who no longer believe in our great nation are engaged in a desperate last ditch attempt to defy the largest democratic mandate ever in the UK," said Leave Means Leave's Richard Tice.
"Disgracefully, they are using the Irish border as their proxy, ignoring the technological solutions that solve the issue."
Mr Blair's speech, in Brussels, was the second warning about leaving the EU by a former prime minister in two days, following Sir John Major's intervention on Wednesday.
He said that Labour should "say what it really believes" on Brexit - which was that leaving the EU will "make problems worse".
If he was still in charge, he said, "I would be hammering the Tories all the time" on the "destructive impact" of Brexit.
"We could be making that case so forcefully," he added.
Mr Blair earlier set out the three steps he said could lead to a "reconsideration of Brexit".
These are firstly showing voters that Brexit "has turned out much more complex and costly than they had thought", secondly, responding to their grievances, especially around immigration, and thirdly the EU accepting the vote as a "wake-up call" to change.
"Reform in Europe is key to getting Britain to change its mind," he told the European Policy Centre think tank, calling for "a comprehensive plan on immigration control, which preserves Europe's values but is consistent with the concerns of its people and includes sensitivity to the challenges of the freedom of movement principle".
He also wants a "roadmap for future European reform".
Conservative MP Nigel Huddleston hit back, tweeting: "As Tony Blair lectures today's politicians on what we should be doing on Brexit one wonders if he has the self-awareness to realise one of the key reasons we are leaving the EU is because of his inability to control immigration when he was PM for a decade."
Mr Blair's views on Brexit are not shared by the present-day leadership of the Labour Party - Jeremy Corbyn says the result should be respected and is not calling for a second referendum.
Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Blair said Mr Corbyn's recent commitment to a customs union with the EU was "sensible", but warned Labour will "very soon find that we've got to move further in order to escape the dilemma ourselves".
On Friday Prime Minister Theresa May will deliver a major speech setting out the UK's strategy for the next phase of the negotiations, including striking a new free trade deal with Brussels.
On Wednesday she attacked EU proposals for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union, saying they undermined the UK's constitutional integrity.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has suggested the row about Northern Ireland is being stoked by people who want to "frustrate" Brexit.

Tory ministers have rallied round Theresa May after her conference speech on Wednesday was marred by mishaps.
First Secretary of State Damian Green said it was "nonsense" to suggest she should quit because her speech was interrupted by a cough and a prankster.
He said the prime minister was "as determined as ever" to get on with the job. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said Mrs May was doing an "excellent job".
But ex-minister Ed Vaizey said "quite a few people" wanted her to quit.
The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg said that while many MPs wanted her to stay as leader, there were "emerging plots".
These involved Tory MPs trying to gather support to approach Mrs May privately and persuade her to stand aside.
This group will only act if they feel they have the numbers to do so "quickly and cleanly", the BBC political editor added, saying: "It is just not clear at the moment where the numbers really lie."
Speaking on BBC Radio Oxford, Mr Vaizey, who was sacked as a culture minister when Mrs May became leader in 2016, said most people were being "pretty loyal" in public but were "very concerned" in private. He added: "I think there will be quite a few people who will now be pretty firmly of the view that she should resign."
Politics is certainly cruel, and clearly the prime minister was the victim of some appallingly bad luck.
A former minister told me that after the election and Grenfell it would only have taken one more event to trigger her exit and this "was the event".
In normal political times, it is probably the case that what one minister described as a "tragedy" would have led to a prime minister being forced out or quitting.
But these aren't normal times. Allies of Theresa May say Wednesday's events have shown her resilience and determination in spades, demonstrating exactly why she deserves to stay in the job.
But speaking on BBC One's Question Time Mr Green said: "I know that she is as determined as ever to get on with her job - she sees it as her duty to do so. She will carry on and she will make a success of this government".
He said it was "complete nonsense" to suggest that having a cold or having an "unfunny pillock" interrupt her speech meant she was the wrong person for the job.
The PM's speech was seen as her opportunity to assert her authority, after her decision to call a snap election backfired.
She apologised to activists and put forward new policies, including an extra £2bn to build 25,000 new council houses and social homes for rent by 2021 and draft legislation for a cap on standard tariff energy bills, which she said were part of her mission to improve people's lives and promote a "British dream".
But a nagging cough and croaky voice forced the PM to stop on more than one occasion. Prankster Simon Brodkin - also known as his TV persona Lee Nelson - was arrested by Greater Manchester Police after briefly interrupting the PM and giving her and a mock P45 redundancy notice he claimed was from Boris Johnson.
To add to Mrs May's woes, some of the letters fell off the conference stage backdrop behind her. By the end it read: "Building a country that works or everyon."
Cabinet ministers including Mr Johnson, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt have praised the speech and a No 10 source said colleagues had been "offering support" and declared "resignation is not an issue" for Mrs May.
But backbench Tory MP Mark Pritchard said on Twitter that a "small number" of colleagues were raising questions over her leadership in text messages.
Mr Pritchard, one of Mrs May's trade envoys, warned those "circling above" that there was only one message: "There is no vacancy at No 10."
And his colleague Charles Walker, vice chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, praised Mrs May's "heroic" efforts on stage, telling the BBC: "You are actually allowed to be ill occasionally and that's what she was, ill - and she was ill because she's been working so damn hard on behalf of this country."
Ex-chancellor Lord Lamont warned against "political instability" during the "massively important" Brexit negotiations.
"I think what people ought to remember before they pitch in is that we are facing a very serious situation at the moment," he said.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Business Secretary Greg Clark said people admired the "poise" and "guts" the PM showed to get through her speech.
He also said the fact that a comedian was able to get within yards of the prime minister showed a "weakness in the system".
Security at future Conservative events is to be reviewed. The prankster, Mr Brodkin, was later released by police who said he had "legitimate accreditation" to attend the event.
Former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft said there was an air of a party that did not "know what it is doing".
But Business Minister Margot James told the BBC's Daily Politics she believed the coverage of the speech had been "pretty vicious" and Theresa May was "a very good prime minister".
Asked about reports of MPs plotting against her, Ms James said: "I think there will be a small minority of disaffected colleagues who are angry, bitter for whatever personal reasons they've got, and I do hope my other colleagues will have the sense to disown them."

Conservative MP Stephen Phillips has quit over "irreconcilable policy differences" with the government.
The MP, who has held the Lincolnshire seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham since 2010, backed leaving the EU but has accused ministers of ignoring Parliament since the Brexit vote.
He said he was "unable properly to represent the people who elected me".
It comes as Theresa May said she was confident she would win a legal battle over her approach to Brexit talks.
On Thursday, three High Court judges ruled the government cannot officially notify the EU of its intention to leave, thus beginning formal talks, without Parliament's support.
In a series of phone calls, the prime minister told European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and Germany's Angela Merkel that the government believed it would win its Supreme Court appeal against the ruling and she was committed to triggering Article 50 by March 2017.
Although Mr Phillips represents a safe Conservative seat, his surprise departure increases the pressure on Mrs May's government - which has a working majority of 17.
It is not yet clear whether Mr Phillips, who won the seat last year with a majority of more than 24,000, will stand as an independent in a future by-election although this is thought to be unlikely.
by Ross Hawkins, BBC political correspondent
The government's values were no longer his values. On child refugees, on the use of aid money, on the handling of Brexit, he dissented from a party he thought was heading inexorably to the right.
That is the view from sources close to Stephen Phillips. One said he twice rejected a meeting with the prime minister.
Will other Tories follow? Some on the party's left tell me they'd rather stay and fight. Others reflect ruefully that unlike him they have no well-paid alternative career as a barrister.
A by-election in a safe seat won't much trouble party bosses. But while Downing Street doesn't want one, the departure of - yet another - Tory MP means the voices calling for a swift general election will grow a little louder.
The politician, who is a barrister and part-time Crown Court judge, is the second Conservative MP to stand down in as many weeks - Zac Goldsmith last week forced a by-election over his opposition to expanding Heathrow airport.
Sources say Mr Phillips informed party whips earlier this week that he would resign as an MP because he felt his values were not the values of the government.
He has been critical of the government's approach to Brexit since June's Leave vote, accusing Theresa May of trying to "ignore the views" of Parliament and avoiding scrutiny of the government's negotiating position.
In a recent newspaper article, he suggested the government was "lurching to the right" and that its attempt to start negotiations with the EU without the explicit approval of Parliament was "divisive and plain wrong".
In a statement, he did not spell out the specific reasons for his resignation but said: "It has become clear to me over the last few months that my growing and very significant policy differences with the current government mean that I am unable properly to represent the people who elected me".
However, in a letter to his constituency chairman, Mr Phillips attacked the government for "shirking" responsibility for unaccompanied child refugees and changes in the way international aid is spent.
Mr Phillips said: "Some will label me a quitter or, no doubt, worse. Those are labels with which I can live. The label Conservative no longer is."
In last year's election, Mr Phillips won a majority of 24,115, with 56% of the vote. Labour finished second, closely followed by UKIP.
Labour said the impending by-election would be "more about Tory failure and in-fighting than what is in the best interests of the country".
"It's clear that even Theresa May's own MPs realise that she has failed to lay out a convincing plan to deliver for Britain," said national campaign co-ordinator Jon Trickett.
UKIP leadership contender Suzanne Evans has said she would like to be considered to be the party's candidate in the by-election.
Asked about the resignation during a visit to Berlin, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson suggested it was part of the prevailing "sturm und drang" (storm and stress) over Brexit - a reference to the movement of 18th Century German writers who gave free expression to emotions and ideas which sought to break with tradition.
He told reporters he did not believe that the legal battle over Parliament's role would "interfere" with the UK's Brexit timetable - insisting that the High Court ruling was "one stage" in the legal process and the British people had made their views clear.
Mrs May has also been seeking to reassure EU leaders about the UK's commitment to Brexit following Thursday's legal setback.
No 10 said she had explained the government was "disappointed" by the ruling but felt it "had strong legal arguments ahead of the case moving to the Supreme Court".
The European Commission said the timetable for beginning talks was in the UK's hands.
"The president explicitly said the legal order and the constitutional order of the UK will be respected and we won't speculate on a possible delay," a spokeswoman said.
The UK voted by 52% to 48% to leave the European Union in a referendum on 23 June.
The EU's other 27 member states have said negotiations about the terms of the UK's exit - due to last two years - cannot begin until Article 50 has been invoked.

A Eurosceptic Tory MP has been accused of compiling a "hit list" of university professors who teach Brexit courses.
Downing Street has distanced itself from government whip Chris Heaton-Harris, who wrote to universities asking for the names of professors.
Lecturers reacted with fury to the letter, calling it a "sinister" attempt to censor them and accusing him of conducting a "McCarthyite" witch hunt.
Mr Heaton-Harris said he believed in "open" debate on Brexit.
The government whip tweeted: "To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit."
Mr Heaton-Harris is a member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Conservative MPs.
Labour accused the MP of seeking to draw up "what looks like a register of Brexit heretics" and branded the government response to it a "shambles".
The Liberal Democrats said the letter was "chilling" and that Mr Heaton-Harris should stand down from the government, adding that ministers should reassure universities that they were not expected to comply with his demands.
Downing Street said Mr Heaton-Harris had written to universities in his capacity as an MP and not as a representative of government.
The prime minister's official spokesman said Theresa May respected the freedom and independence of universities and the role they played in providing open and stimulating debate.
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom insisted Mr Heaton-Harris had not sent a "threatening letter" to universities, although she could not say why he had sought the information.
She told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "It does seem to me to be a bit odd that universities should react in such a negative way to a fairly courteous request."
Sally Hunt, chairwoman of lecturers' union the University and College Union, said: "Our society will suffer if politicians seek to police what universities can and cannot teach.
"This attempt by Chris Heaton-Harris to compile a hit list of professors has the acrid whiff of McCarthyism about it and (universities minister) Jo Johnson must disown it in the strongest terms."
University lecturers took to twitter to mock Mr Heaton-Harris and the government over the letter.
Professor David Green, vice-chancellor at the University of Worcester, said: "When I read this extraordinary letter on Parliamentary paper from a serving MP, I felt a chill down my spine. Was this the beginnings of a very British McCarthyism?"
He said he feared he would be denounced in Parliament by Mr Heaton-Harris as an "enemy of the people" if he did not supply the list - something he said he had no intention of doing.
He added: "I realised that his letter just asking for information appears so innocent but is really so, so dangerous.
"Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and Newspeak, naturally justified as 'the will of the British people'."
The Guardian revealed that Mr Heaton-Harris wrote to university vice-chancellors at the start of this month asking for the names of professors "involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit".
The MP's letter also asks for a "copy of the syllabus" and online links to lectures on Brexit.
Lord Patten, the chancellor of Oxford University, and former chairman of the BBC Trust, described Mr Heaton-Harris's letter as an "extraordinary example of outrageous and foolish behaviour - offensive and idiotic Leninism".
The peer, a longstanding supporter of Britain's membership of the EU, told BBC Radio 4's The World At One: "I couldn't believe that it had come from a Conservative MP.
"I think he must be an agent of Mr Corbyn intent on further increasing the number of young people who want to vote Labour."
He said he was sure most university vice-chancellors would drop the letter "in the waste-paper basket" and he accused Mr Heaton-Harris of an affront to free speech and of treating UK universities like "Chinese re-education camps".
McCarthyism refers to US Senator Joseph McCarthy who led attempts to purge alleged Communists in public life the 1950s.

Dozens of Eurosceptic Tory MPs are warning ministers not to use a post-Brexit transitional period to stay in the EU "by stealth".
They say to remain in the single market for a period would be a "historic mistake", in a letter seen by the BBC.
MP Suella Fernandes, who circulated the letter, said its demands were all "consistent with government policy".
Downing Street said an "implementation period" was government policy but had not yet been agreed or negotiated.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has already said the UK will quit the EU's single market and customs union when it leaves in March 2019.
A so-called transitional period, after the UK leaves the EU but before new arrangements come into force, is intended to avoid a "cliff-edge" scenario for businesses and citizens.
The government has said this must come to an end by June 2022, when the next general election is due, and is hoping for a new free trade deal to replace the UK's single market membership.
After a summer where Tory supporters of a more gradual Brexit were heartened by statements from ministers, now comes the, probably inevitable, pushback.
A letter leaked to the BBC, signed by dozens of Tory MPs, was scheduled for the pages of a Sunday newspaper, demanding that Theresa May stand firm, and stick to her original plan for Brexit.
The letter will be seen as a warning to ministers too, particularly Chancellor Philip Hammond who Eurosceptics see as trying to water down Mrs May's original Brexit plan to leave the single market and customs union.
The MPs' letter has been obtained by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, who says it is designed to send a message to ministers "not to soften the government's plans".
One source told her it was a warning to "people like Hammond who think the election result means a softer Brexit".
But a Remain-supporting MP said the signatories were trying to "tie the government's hands on any transitional deal, destroying any chance of continuing the benefits of the customs union and the single market".
Already signed by nearly 40 Conservatives, it was drawn up for publication in a Sunday newspaper.
It says: "Continued membership of the single market, even as part of a transitional arrangement, would quite simply mean EU membership by another name - and we cannot allow our country to be kept in the EU by stealth.
"The government must respect the will of the British people, and that means leaving the Single Market at the same time as we leave the EU."
The letter also demands that the government adds clauses to any transition deal to establish a "clearly-defined timetable" for leaving the single market and customs union.
It also calls for the UK to be able to "unilaterally withdraw" from the transitional deal.
Suella Fernandes, who is a junior government aide, told the BBC that the letter stated that "we are in favour of" leaving the single market, the customs union, taking back control of laws and a time-limited transition period: "All of that is consistent with government policy."
A Downing Street spokeswoman said the implementation period had not yet been agreed, announced or negotiated. "We have been perfectly clear that we want an implementation period. That's government policy," she said.
"People have their opinions, but we have set out what our intentions are."
Unlike the government, Labour has said it would keep the UK in the single market and customs union for a transitional period which would be "as short as possible but as long as necessary".
Speaking in the Commons on Thursday morning, Brexit Secretary David Davis said Labour's proposals would be "the worst of all outcomes".

The headline act - Boris Johnson's speech - may be three days away, but what better opener for a Tory Party conference tag-lined "Get Brexit Done" than three of its biggest cheerleaders.
Such a trio was presented to members on Sunday afternoon in the form of Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Barclay.
Mr Gove - no-deal planner in-chief and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - kicked off the session with a little doom and gloom.
He said the government was facing "a paralysed Parliament" - echoing the words of the attorney general earlier this week - and "polarised politics", all because the referendum result had not been delivered after more than three years.
Mr Gove said the only party to lift this fog was his very own.
"I've known Boris for more than 30 years, and while we haven't always agreed on everything, let me tell you this," he told the audience.
"Boris is brave, he is determined, he loves this country, and he delivers."
Sniggers rose from a crowd familiar with his sometimes frayed relationship with the prime minister.
But after ensuring he was on his boss's Christmas card list, Mr Gove went on to describe how the pair were definitely on the same page when it came to leaving the EU on 31 October - no ifs, no buts.
He did admit, however, that it may not all be smooth sailing, and leaving without a deal, as the government - at least - is prepared to do, would present "some challenges".
But, despite "new tariffs", "new checks on trade" and potential issues for UK citizens abroad, he said the UK had ramped up its preparations, adding: "While the difficulties caused by leaving without a deal will pass, the damage to our democracy in not getting Brexit done would endure, and resound, for much longer."
His speech brought waves of applause from those in the hall - the assembled members undoubtedly want to get Brexit done.
But the mention of no deal did prompt a few bristles and there were some hands thrust grumpily into pockets.
There are certainly members, even if they appear as a minority, who want out but not at any cost.
The Leader of the House, Mr Rees-Mogg, was next to take the podium and got a standing ovation before uttering a word.
The speech was "classic Mogg", as one party member put it, offering history lessons, literary refreshers and high-brow jokes to please the crowd.
Reports earlier this week that the bespectacled MP had called the Supreme Court decision to rule the suspension of Parliament unlawful a "constitutional coup" caused controversy.
But he decided to invoke a similar sentiment all over again, describing attempts by opposition parties to form a government of national unity as a "Remoaner coup".
Mr Rees-Mogg said they left the government feeling like "Gulliver tied down in Lilliput", fighting against "fumbling, fettling, flitting politicians" who have the "unworthy aim" of stopping Brexit.
He then turned his sharp tongue to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow.
"As a parliamentarian I have been, and in some ways remain, an admirer of the Speaker," said Mr Rees-Mogg. "But now he has flown too close to the sun.
"His recent mistakes have damaged the standing of the House in the eyes of the public to its lowest point in modern history."
But despite all of dramatic rhetoric, Mr Rees-Mogg sought to reassure delegates.
"Fear nothing that they try to do, fear nothing of their schemes and their stratagems," he said.
"Because ultimately we will have a general election and parties that deny democracy get into great trouble when people have the chance to vote."
Last up was the Brexit secretary himself, Mr Barclay.
It was not an enviable task to follow two stalwarts of the Leave campaign, but he had the experience of the Brussels negotiations (and the ticket stubs to prove it) to see him through.
Like an underdog edging towards the front of the race, he was optimistic - even if the noises from the EU haven't been especially positive.
"The Irish deputy prime minister said on Wednesday that 'there are solutions to this but it is a matter of political will' - I agree," he said.
"The Commission has said that it is open to 'creative and flexible solutions on the border in Northern Ireland' - I am too.
"And President Juncker said he is 'not wedded to the backstop' - Nor are we. So let's abolish it."
The crux of his message - we want a deal, we're working hard to get it, but in the end, no deal? No matter.
Outside the conference confines, though, it matters very much. And while everyone stayed on message (and warm and dry) indoors, on the streets of Manchester it was a decidedly less pro-Tory affair.
The grey skies and drizzle didn't stop thousands of protesters telling Mr Johnson exactly what they thought of him and his Brexit plan.
A giant inflatable modelled on the prime minister was even on show to poke fun - dressed in blue shorts with the word "Nigel" on it and a t-shirt emblazoned with a certain Brexit bus.
Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner was one of the better-known faces at the rally, carrying her banner saying: "No More Austerity".
Others proclaimed "Tories Out" and "Defy Tory Rule", while draped in EU flags.
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told the crowd: "The time for party self-interest is over. Everybody from every party must unite to stop a no-deal Brexit."

Two Tory leadership candidates have clashed over whether they would shut down Parliament early to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Esther McVey said the measure was part of a "toolkit" that could be used to ensure Brexit is delivered on time.
But Michael Gove said such a move would be "wrong" and contradict "the best traditions of British democracy".
Eleven Conservative MPs are vying to replace Theresa May as party leader and, ultimately, prime minister.
The candidates have been laying out their policies on Brexit and other issues before nominations close at 17:00 BST on Monday. They need eight MPs to back them or they are eliminated from the contest.
Jeremy Hunt, another leadership contender, said the EU would be "willing to negotiate" on the Brexit deal if the UK takes the "right approach".
Speaking on Sky News on Sunday, the foreign secretary said he had spoken with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and suggested she was open to looking at new solutions for the Irish border issue in talks.
"She said that [...] with a new British prime minister, we would want to look at any solutions you have," he added.
Asked whether she would consider using ending the current session of Parliament - a process known as prorogation - to force through a no-deal Brexit, Ms McVey said it would not be her "priority" and she would "not be looking to do that" as prime minister.
But the former work and pensions secretary told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I've said I'd use every tool at my disposal, so that would include that."
She also said MPs who wanted to "frustrate" the Brexit process had "ripped up the rule book" and were guilty of "tearing up 400 years of history".
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said MPs who had voted to start Brexit talks by triggering Article 50 should respect the result of the vote to leave the EU, but halting Parliament would "not be true to the best traditions of British democracy".
Earlier, he said that he would replace VAT with a "lower, simpler, sales tax" in an interview in the Sunday Telegraph.
Could prorogation be used to push through no deal?
If a new prime minister is concerned about MPs blocking the UK's exit from the EU, they could advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament.
This would send MPs away so that they cannot do anything in the Commons to hold up Brexit.
However, it would be an unprecedented move in modern times to use this power for political reasons, rather than to end a session in preparation for a new Queen's Speech.
Fellow Tory leadership candidate Dominic Raab has also suggested he would be prepared to shut down Parliament to ensure the UK leaves the EU on 31 October.
The suggestion has led to criticism from a number of MPs, with Commons Speaker John Bercow saying prorogation to enforce a no-deal exit is "simply not going to happen".
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson - in his first major interview of the campaign - compared the Labour and Brexit Party leaders to sea monsters from Greek mythology.
"I truly believe only I can steer the country between the Scylla and Charybdis of Corbyn and Farage and on to calmer water," he told the Sunday Times.
Mr Johnson said as prime minister, he would refuse to pay the EU a £39bn settlement until there was "greater clarity" about a future relationship.
He also said he would scrap the Irish backstop and would only settle the border issue when Brussels was ready to agree to a deal.
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Housing Secretary James Brokenshire have all declared their support for Mr Johnson's leadership bid.
The former foreign secretary has also won the backing of Brexit Minister James Cleverly, who became the first Tory MP to pull out of the leadership race on Tuesday.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, another MP hoping to become Tory leader, told Sky News his offer to pay Ireland for new technology to ensure a frictionless Irish border would "change the dynamic" in Brexit talks.
Mr Javid also said he would pay for a "multi-billion pound" spending increase in education by slowing down government debt repayment.
He said that could free between £15bn and £25bn a year, some of which would go to the education system.
Mr Javid has won the backing of Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who wrote in the Scottish Mail on Sunday that he had a vision to unite a "divided Britain".
In his Sky interview, Jeremy Hunt also repeated his support for lowering the standard legal time limit for abortion from the current 24 to 12 weeks, but added that it would not be government policy to change the law if he became PM.
After nominations close on Monday, MPs will then vote for their preferred candidates in a series of secret ballots held on 13, 18, 19 and 20 June.
The final two will be put to a vote of members of the wider Conservative Party from 22 June, with the winner expected to be announced about four weeks later.

Not delivering Brexit at all would be "significantly more damaging" than no deal, Conservative leadership candidate James Cleverly has said.
However, the Brexit minister added that leaving the EU without a deal was "not my preferred outcome".
"I am Brexit tooth and claw, but we need to be pragmatic and sensible and leave with a deal," he told the BBC.
Meanwhile another leadership hopeful, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, has vowed to recruit 20,000 new police officers.
Writing in the Sun, Mr Javid says: "More police on the beat means less crime on our streets. Not exactly rocket science is it?"
BBC Reality Check says, under the Conservative and coalition governments, the number of police offices has fallen by somewhere between 19,000 and 22,000.
The contest to replace Theresa May has not officially begun, but the list of hopefuls already setting out their stalls is growing by the day.
A key dividing line appears to be between those who have indicated they would consider leaving the EU on 31 October - the current deadline - without a deal, and those who feel that would be unacceptable.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Cleverly - the latest to enter the race - said his party's "political reputation would be damaged" if Brexit was not delivered.
"The idea that we revert to a pre-referendum reality [if it does not happen] is for the birds."
On the possibility of no deal, he insisted it would bring "uncertainty" and difficulty", but would not be the disaster many fear.
When asked about his lack of experience - Mr Cleverly became an MP in 2015 and has only been a minister for a few months - he said "two of our most successful prime ministers" out of the last four had been those with "zero government experience", referring to Tony Blair and David Cameron.
He also welcomed the large number of MPs vying to become leader, arguing that when Mrs May was elected she had been "uncontested and untested" because rivals dropped out - and later turned out not to "fit well with the role of prime minister".
Analysis by BBC political correspondent Norman Smith
The more the merrier? Or is this Tory leadership race descending into farce?
Already there are 11 candidates. But there are more who look like they are waiting in the wings. Priti Patel, Sir Graham Brady, Jesse Norman. Steve Baker. And maybe more.
Now at one level you can say this is all well and good. Outsiders. No hopers. They often end up winning political contests nowadays. Think Jeremy Corbyn, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump. So why shouldn't these little-known Tories have a go?
It also reflects a real impatience among a new generation of Tories, fed up with an old guard, still clogging up all the top jobs in government. But there is a risk with this huge cast list of candidates.
First, that it turns this saga into a rambling, shambling bore and that voters simply turn off, bored by the cacophony of competing voices.
Secondly, that there is no clarity or real focus on the key issues and potential prime ministers.
And lastly that it devalues the importance of this contest if it becomes an exercise in career promotion for lesser-known Tory MPs.
As Jacob Rees-Mogg observed, perhaps its time for some self restraint.
Mr Cleverly was also asked about the possibility of becoming the UK's first black prime minister.
He said it was not something he thought much about, but was "very proud that the Conservative Party looks like it might have the first prime minister from a BME background".
In an open letter earlier, the MP for Braintree in Essex spoke about the need to unite the party, arguing: "We cannot bring the country back together unless the party of government is united, and the party cannot unite if it is led from its fringes."
He added: "To inspire the British people we need to look different, sound different, and offer something new. I believe I can do that."
As the campaign progresses, leadership candidates are signing a "clean campaign" pledge.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Mr Javid have promised not to "speak ill of fellow Conservatives".
Mr Raab said the campaign should be a "battle of ideas not of personalities".
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and Housing Minister Kit Malthouse have also committed to the pledge.
On Tuesday, Mrs May urged her successor to seek a consensus on Brexit in Parliament, while senior EU figures reiterated that the UK-EU withdrawal agreement could not be re-opened - despite promises by leadership hopefuls to do so.
Along with Mr Cleverly, the confirmed candidates to replace Mrs May are:
The winner, expected to be named by late July, will also become prime minister.
Other MPs are considering running, including Treasury Minister Jesse Norman.
The deadline to put their names forward is the week commencing 10 June, and they must have at least two of their colleagues supporting them.
In June, the BBC will hold a series of special programmes on the race.
All candidates still standing by mid-June will be invited to a hustings event on BBC One and the final two will go head-to-head in a Question Time Special.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.

Tory leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt has warned that his party will be committing "political suicide" if it tries to push through a no-deal Brexit.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the move to no deal would result in a general election, which could see Labour take power.
The foreign secretary is one of 10 people seeking to replace Theresa May.
Another contender, Esther McVey, said "political suicide" would be not leaving the EU on 31 October.
The UK's departure was pushed back to that date after the country missed the previous deadline of 29 March.
The official race to be Conservative Party leader gets under way in early June, after Theresa May stands down - but jostling between candidates has already begun.
The winner, expected to be named by late July, will also become prime minister.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hunt said he wanted to change the withdrawal agreement that Mrs May negotiated with the EU - despite the bloc repeatedly refusing to re-open talks on the document.
He also pledged to create a new UK negotiating team - drawn from all sides of the Tory Party, plus members of Northern Ireland's DUP - to "give the EU the confidence that any offer can be delivered through Parliament".
Several leadership contenders, including Boris Johnson, have said they would be prepared to leave on 31 October without a deal with Brussels.
But, writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Hunt warned that a prime minister advocating that option would risk losing a confidence vote in Parliament - thereby effectively committing to a general election in which the Tories would mostly likely be "annihilated".
It would "probably put Jeremy Corbyn in No 10 by Christmas", he added.
Tory backbencher and leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Hunt's proposal for a new negotiating team was a "very well intentioned offer", but there may not be time to put together such a group before 31 October.
Mr Rees-Mogg also said any Tories prepared to vote against their own government for pursuing a no-deal exit must understand they would be "putting Jeremy Corbyn into office".
The latest candidate to announce his leadership bid, Housing Minister Kit Malthouse, told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme he would like to "get some movement on the withdrawal agreement or a new withdrawal agreement" - and if a new PM approached Brussels "with the right tone" and negotiating team, there was "the prospect of getting a deal".
But he said the EU could refuse to play ball, thereby "effectively choosing no deal on our behalf".
And Mr Malthouse added: "Those people who say no deal would be a catastrophe and those people who say it would be a walk in the park are both wrong - it is somewhere in the middle."
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has also released a video, saying as leader he would focus on "fairness" - from cutting taxes for the lowest paid and lowering the cost of living, to increasing opportunities for young people.
"We live in an age when the actions of competent leaders and good government can and should go a long way to making the world a fairer place," he said.
"And that driving conviction, that things can and will be fairer, should be at the heart of what the future of the Conservative Party is all about."
Fellow hopeful Michael Gove has pledged to allow up to three million EU nationals in the UK at the time of the referendum an easier path to citizenship after Brexit.
As part of the plan, he would remove the requirement for them to provide proof of their right to be here - getting rid of the so-called "settled status" scheme.
A source close to the environment secretary said: "This is simply the right thing to do - honouring the promise of Vote Leave that EU nationals studying, working and living in the UK were welcome to stay."
Meanwhile, International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, is promising a "listening exercise" on Brexit if he wins the leadership race.
And the Sun reports that rival contender Health Secretary Matt Hancock has written to ITV, BBC, Sky and Channel 4 to ask them to broadcast a live debate between those vying for the job.
The declared candidates to replace Mrs May are:

Michael Gove will allow EU nationals living in the UK at the time of the referendum to apply free of charge for citizenship if he becomes PM.
The Brexit-supporting environment secretary, who is running to replace Theresa May, will make an "open and generous" offer, sources said.
A Tory rival, International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, promised a "listening exercise" on Brexit.
So far, 10 Conservative MPs have said they will contest the party leadership.
The official race gets under way in early June, after Theresa May stands down - but jostling between candidates has begun. The winner, expected to be named by late July, will also become prime minister.
Sources close to Mr Gove, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum, have told the BBC he is ready to accept proposals put forward by the Conservative MP Alberto Costa, who quit his government post over ministers' attitude to EU nationals living in the UK.
If chosen as the next Tory leader, it is said he would remove the requirement of EU citizens to provide proof of their right to be in the UK, getting rid of the "settled status" scheme.
Those living in the country would require documentation only for specific purposes, rather than being required to register.
Mr Costa welcomed Mr Gove's proposal, calling it "the morally right thing to do"
A source close to the environment secretary said: "This is simply the right thing to do - honouring the promise of Vote Leave that EU nationals studying, working and living in the UK were welcome to stay."
The leadership contest comes after Mrs May tried and failed three times to get her Brexit withdrawal agreement through the House of Commons.
She announced her resignation last week following an outcry within her party when she proposed a fourth vote by MPs.
The Conservatives suffered heavy losses in Thursday's European elections.
Mr Stewart said: "I would like thousands of conversations up and down the country, co-ordinated on social media with all the results being brought together digitally.
"And then we come back into Parliament and we move very quickly to ban conversation about no deal, ban conversation about second referendum and focus on getting a deal done."
Meanwhile, housing minister Kit Malthouse has become the latest Conservative MP to join the race to become party leader.
Writing in the Sun newspaper on Tuesday, Mr Malthouse said the campaign "cannot be about the same old faces" and described himself as "the new face, with fresh new ideas".
The other declared candidates to replace Mrs May are:

Four men are left in the race to be next prime minister after Rory Stewart was knocked out.
The international development secretary was eliminated after coming last with 27 votes, 10 fewer than last time.
He said his warnings about a no-deal Brexit "probably proved to be truths people weren't quite ready to hear".
Boris Johnson topped the vote again with 143 votes, 17 more than last time. Jeremy Hunt came second with 54, Michael Gove got 51 and Sajid Javid 38.
A fourth round of voting will take place on Thursday.
Mr Stewart started as a rank outsider in the race but gained support on the back of an unusual campaign strategy.
Touring the country for pop-up meetings, which were promoted and recorded on social media, he drew large crowds and won the backing of several senior cabinet ministers.
He had accused other candidates, including Mr Johnson, of lacking realism over Brexit and making undeliverable promises.
After his elimination, he tweeted that he had been "inspired" by the support he received which had rekindled his faith and belief in politics.
Mr Stewart's vote tally fell from Tuesday - following a live BBC TV debate in which he summed up his own performance as "lacklustre".
There have also been suggestions of tactical voting - "dark arts" as he called them - with candidates lending votes to others in order to help eliminate certain rivals.
One MP supporting Mr Stewart claimed he had been "let down" by "thieving, mendacious, lying" colleagues who had switched.
Following his exit, Mr Stewart - MP for Penrith and The Border - told the BBC he was "disappointed" and believed his party "didn't seem ready to hear his message" about Brexit and the need to seek out the centre ground.
He said his arguments during the campaign that an alternative Brexit deal was not on offer from the EU, and a no deal would be catastrophic, were "probably truths people were not quite ready to hear, but I still think they are truths".
He defended his attacks on Mr Johnson, saying the gravity of the situation meant it was right to warn that the frontrunner risked "letting down" his supporters over Brexit.
"These are the times to ask these questions, but I agree they are uncomfortable questions," he said.
"People felt they were exposing divisions in the party they were not comfortable with.
"My conclusion is that you don't unify a family or a party by pretending to agree when you disagree. You unify through honesty and trust."
Mr Stewart, who has ruled out serving under Mr Johnson because of their differences over Brexit, added "I appear to have written my cabinet resignation letter."
He said he had not decided who to now support.
Home Secretary Mr Javid, who leapfrogged Mr Stewart in Wednesday's poll after gaining five votes on his second round tally, thanked Mr Stewart for his contribution to the campaign.
Mr Javid said he was pleased to make it through into the next round, adding that he could provide "constructive competition" to frontrunner Boris Johnson if he made it into the final two.
"People are crying out for change, if we don't offer change ourselves, they'll vote for change in the form of Corbyn - and I can be that agent of change", he said.
Reacting to his third consecutive second place, Mr Hunt said the "stakes were too high to allow someone to sail through untested".
Liam Fox, who is backing Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt, said the surviving candidates were the four most experienced men in the field and this is what people expected all along.
Tory MP Johnny Mercer, who is backing Mr Johnson, insisted there was "no complacency" despite his large lead, telling BBC News "there is still work to do".
Education Secretary Damian Hinds said Mr Gove had "closed the gap" on Mr Hunt in second place and was gaining momentum.
He said the environment secretary had the experience, the vision and the plan to deliver Brexit that could unite the country.
Unless another candidate drops out, there will be a fifth ballot on Thursday evening to determine the final two candidates who will go forward into a run-off of the party's 160,000 or so members.
The winner will be announced in the week of 22 July.

Contenders to replace Theresa May as Conservative leader have clashed over delivering Brexit during a TV debate.
The MPs argued over whether a new deal could be renegotiated with the EU, and the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.
Boris Johnson came under fire for not taking part in the Channel 4 debate but defended his stance, suggesting it would "be slightly cacophonous".
His leadership bid has been backed by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who dropped out of the race on Friday.
Some of the sharpest exchanges came over whether Parliament should be shut down - prorogued - in order to push through a no-deal Brexit by 31 October - something four of the five candidates argued against.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but EU leaders agreed to delay the date to October after MPs repeatedly rejected Theresa May's Brexit deal.
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart said proroguing Parliament was a "deeply disturbing" option and Home Secretary Sajid Javid warned "you don't deliver democracy by trashing our democracy".
However ex-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab refused to rule it out, saying "every time one of these candidates take an option away… we weaken our chances of getting the best deal."
Channel 4's debate attracted an audience of 1.3 million and 7.8% of the audience share. The programme was up against Soccer Aid on ITV, Countryfile on BBC One and Top Gear on BBC Two.
Analysis by BBC political correspondent Ben Wright
No stand-out winner and a debate that won't trouble the absent front-runner Boris Johnson.
His team thought there was nothing to be gained from pitching up for this blue-on-blue skirmish which was mostly good natured but repeatedly raised questions the candidates struggled to answer.
How can the next prime minister renegotiate a deal with the EU? How can it be done by October? How could the UK leave without a deal if MPs refuse?
At one end of the debate, Dominic Raab was rounded on for saying he would be prepared to try and suspend parliament if it was the only way to get the UK out without a deal at the end of October.
In the opposite corner, Rory Stewart was the only one who said a renegotiation with the EU in the next four months was a fantasy promise.
At some point this week one of the five will break out and become the challenger to Boris Johnson for the ballot of Tory members.
The candidates at the debate before a studio audience in east London also argued over whether a no-deal Brexit should be considered.
Mr Javid said no deal was the "last thing" he wanted, but added: "You do plan for no deal precisely because you want a deal."
Mr Raab said Britain would be able to "manage those risks" associated with leaving the EU without a deal.
However, Mr Stewart said "I think a no-deal Brexit is a complete nonsense," adding "it would be deeply damaging for our economy."
The candidates were united in condemnation of the Labour leader with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt accusing Jeremy Corbyn of being "against aspiration".
Environment Secretary Michael Gove argued that he was the candidate Mr Corbyn would be most scared of facing at Prime Minister's Questions.
Mr Johnson, the front-runner in the leadership race, was represented at the debate by an empty lectern.
And Mr Hunt attacked his failure to appear.
"Where's Boris?" he asked, adding "if his team won't allow him out with five fairly friendly colleagues, how is he going to deal with 27 European countries?"
Mr Stewart also made a pointed dig at his absent colleague, saying he hoped "one of us" - referring to the MPs who had attended the debate - becomes prime minister.
Speaking to Radio 4's World at One on Friday, Mr Johnson said he was "pretty bewildered" by claims he was dodging scrutiny and said the public had had "quite a lot of blue-on-blue action, frankly, over the last three years".
He said the best time to take part was on Tuesday after the second ballot and would be at the BBC debate on Tuesday, hosted by Emily Maitlis.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock - who withdrew from the leadership race after the first ballot - has backed Mr Johnson "as the best candidate to unite the Conservative Party" as has Esther McVey, who was eliminated in the first round.
Writing in the Times, Mr Hancock said Mr Johnson had a "unique personality", adding: "I have confidence Boris will be a One Nation prime minister because that's how he ran London - consistently - for eight years."
Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today he was "naturally disappointed" that Mr Hancock had chosen to endorse his rival rather than himself.
While Mr Johnson remained the frontrunner, Mr Gove said "we need to make sure he is tested" and he believed he could make it to the final two as a "strong alternative" who was equipped to "be prime minister from day one".
The TV debate also saw politicians being asked about their priorities apart from Brexit.
Mr Javid chose funding education and further education colleges, saying: "We have cut back too much in that space."
Mr Raab said he wanted to improve state schools and offer more choices for young apprenticeships, while Mr Gove said children would be his top priority and emphasised the importance of protecting the environment for the future.
Mr Hunt told the audience "every Conservative has two desires: cut taxes and spend more on public services." He also said he would focus on literacy and the social care system.
Mr Stewart said his central priority would be fixing adult social care, describing the issue as "the great unfinished revolution".
Asked about their weaknesses, Mr Gove said he was impatient, while Mr Raab said he was "a restless soul" who "always wanted to make things better".
Mr Javid admitted to being stubborn while Mr Stewart said there were "many things he didn't know about the world". However, he added that "we need leaders who listen" and criticised "macho posturing".
Mr Hunt joked that his biggest weakness was "getting my wife's nationality wrong" - but on a more serious note, said in his battle with junior doctors as health secretary, he could have been "better at communicating" what he was trying to do.
The candidates will now go on to take part in further ballots until only two remain.
The final pair will be put to a vote of the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party from 22 June. The winner is expected to be announced about four weeks later.

The EU "would be willing to renegotiate" a Brexit deal, says Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt, adding "they want to solve the problem".
The EU has previously said the withdrawal agreement reached with the UK cannot be reopened.
Unlike the race frontrunner, Boris Johnson, Mr Hunt did not commit to leaving the EU on 31 October.
Meanwhile, fellow leadership contender Rory Stewart insisted "there is no new negotiation with Europe".
He said the EU had made it clear they would not revisit the withdrawal agreement. Instead he proposed setting up a citizens' jury to break the Brexit impasse.
Under his plan, a group of 50,000 people would be selected randomly from the electoral register. Those people would get a phone call in late July to check they were available to participate.
A polling company would then whittle the number down, making sure the final group was representative of the country. That group would be given three weeks to make recommendations which Parliament would then be able to approve or reject.
Dominic Raab - also running to replace Theresa May and become the next prime minister - told Sky News' Ridge on Sunday programme the Conservative Party "will be toast unless we are out by October".
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but EU leaders agreed to delay the date, after MPs repeatedly rejected Theresa May's Brexit deal.
The current date for leaving the EU is 31 October.
Brexit: Where do Conservative leadership candidates stand?
Mr Hunt told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show the EU is open to solutions surrounding the Northern Ireland backstop.
"They say if they were approached by a British prime minister who had ideas on how to solve the Northern Ireland backstop, they would be willing to renegotiate the package."
He also said it would be wrong to commit to leaving the EU by 31 October, but added "if there was no prospect of a deal," he would be prepared to leave the EU without a deal.
Analysis by BBC political correspondent Nick Eardley
With Boris Johnson so far ahead when it comes to support from Tory MPs, the other candidates are increasingly pitching to be the other person on the ballot of Tory members.
Jeremy Hunt's claim he can renegotiate the deal will seem overly optimistic to many, and completely impossible to some.
His refusal to guarantee the UK will leave this year will also concern many Tories - who worry about the process going on and on and on.
Hence Dominic Raab's warning his party will be toast unless it delivers in October.
But listen carefully and he's also turning his fire on Mr Johnson - questioning whether the frontrunner has a proper plan on Brexit.
That point is made much more directly by Rory Stewart who says simply that he doesn't think Mr Johnson can deliver.
In this race, it's fast becoming about how to stay in the race with Mr Johnson - even if that involves trying to trip him up.
Mr Hunt said Boris Johnson was "effectively committing the country to no-deal or an election" by saying he would definitely leave the EU on 31 October,
The foreign secretary also said he had "profound issues" with Theresa May's approach to getting a deal through Parliament.
"I did not think we should be trying to persuade Parliament to accept the backstop," he said.
Dismissing the idea of getting new deal from the EU, Mr Stewart said other candidates "who are promising what they can't deliver are going to let people down terribly".
He said the tactic of threatening no deal in order to secure a better deal with the EU was unrealistic.
"The EU is not scared of it because it is not a credible threat," he said.
He challenged Mr Johnson - who won support from 114 MPs in the first leadership ballot - to reveal his Brexit tactics in the BBC debate on Tuesday.
"As soon as I sit down with him and ask how are you going to deliver Brexit, then it begins to come off the rails," he told Marr.
Mr Stewart has ruled out serving in Boris Johnson's cabinet, if the ex-London Mayor becomes prime minister.
On Tuesday 18 June BBC One will host a live election debate between the Conservative MPs who remain in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on-air, use the form below. It should be addressed to all of them, not a specific politician.
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Tory leadership rivals have clashed in a live BBC TV debate on whether the UK can leave the EU, no matter what, by the 31 October deadline.
Asked for a guarantee he would do this, Boris Johnson described the deadline as "eminently feasible".
Sajid Javid said it "focused minds", but Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt said extra time might be needed.
Rory Stewart accused his colleagues of lacking realism - of "staring at the wall and saying 'believe in Britain'".
The five men vying to be Conservative Party leader - and the UK's next prime minister - were taking part in a live debate on BBC One on Tuesday night.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab was earlier eliminated in the second round of voting, when Conservative MPs held a secret ballot.
The third round of voting will take place later, between 15:00 and 17:00 BST. The result is expected at 18:00 BST and the MP with the lowest number of votes will be out of the race.
During Tuesday's hour-long debate, all five men ruled out calling a general election until Brexit was resolved.
But the encounter exposed divisions in their approaches to Brexit and whether they could accept the UK leaving the EU without an agreement.
The candidates, who faced questions from members of the public on issues ranging from climate change to Islamophobia, also disagreed over whether to prioritise tax cuts or increased spending on public services after the UK leaves the EU.
Mr Johnson, the frontrunner in the contest, was taking part in his first debate of the campaign after he skipped Sunday's Channel 4 encounter.
Rory Stewart, reflecting on the debate on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, said he had found it a "frustrating" format and wished he had pressed Mr Johnson further to explain how he would get a no-deal Brexit through without the consent of Parliament.
Looking ahead to the vote later, he said he had received a "couple of positive responses" to appeals for support from MPs who had previously given their backing to Dominic Raab.
Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi, who has switched his support from Mr Raab to Mr Johnson, said he "certainly believed" the UK would leave the EU by 31 October under Mr Johnson.
Pressed on why Mr Johnson did not "guarantee" that on live TV, Mr Zahawi said: "If the other side don't believe you will leave on 31 October on WTO terms then they will not come forward with a deal."
He added that EU negotiators would take Mr Johnson "very seriously because they know he will prepare the country".
Jeremy Hunt said the EU needed to be able to trust the person they negotiate with. "I believe they would trust Jeremy Hunt, they would sit around the table, they would listen," he told the Today programme.
Asked if he was missing the charisma needed to win the leadership race, he said he had been underestimated all his life - in politics and in setting up his own successful business - and planned to surprise people.
The former foreign secretary said the British people were "fed up" with the current deadlock over Brexit and the Tories would pay a "really serious price" if this continued.
He warned of a "catastrophic loss of confidence in politics" if the latest Brexit deadline was not met. Asked if he could guarantee this, he replied that "October 31 is eminently feasible".
"If we allow 31 October to come and go as we let March come and go, I think the public would look on us with increasing mystification," Mr Johnson said.
He also suggested there was no issue with continuing free trade after Brexit - citing something called Article 24 of GATT - but as BBC Reality Check points out, that relies on the UK and EU both signing up and in the event of no deal, that will not happen.
Mr Javid, who came fifth in Tuesday's second round of voting, said a deadline was needed to "focus minds" in both the EU and the UK.
"We have to learn from our mistakes," he said. "One of the mistakes we have made is having a flexible deadline."
He suggested the route to getting a Brexit deal through Parliament was by re-presenting Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement but without the controversial Irish backstop.
Mr Gove said an "arbitrary" deadline was counter-productive and if he was prime minister he would be prepared to delay Brexit by a matter of days to finalise a deal.
"You sometimes have extra time in football matches in order to slot home the winner."
Mr Hunt said he would back a no-deal exit as a "last resort" but if the UK was close to finalising a deal with the EU he would extend the talks to prevent the disruption a no-deal exit would cause to business.
Both Mr Hunt and Mr Javid suggested new technology could potentially solve the intractable Irish border issue, but the EU has said there is currently none in use anywhere in the world that can keep it as open after Brexit as it is now.
Mr Stewart said he would not allow a "damaging and unnecessary" no-deal exit and his rivals could not explain how they could possibly do this "against the consent of Parliament".
He suggested he was seeking the most realistic "door" out of the EU while "everyone else was staring at the wall and saying believe in Britain".
EU politicians across the continent were dipping in and out of the debate. The comments I've heard so far off-the-record have not been particularly complimentary.
The EU simply thinks that most of those leadership candidates are not being realistic.
EU leaders are preparing a united, determined front when it comes to the idea of renegotiating the Brexit deal, and the answer is no.
Even if, come the autumn, the EU were to be tempted to reopen some of those questions such as the Irish backstop, those conversations could never be finished by 31 October - the date by which most of those leadership candidates want to leave the EU.
That's why this evening the EU thinks the idea of a no-deal Brexit is becoming increasingly likely.
Moving beyond Brexit, the candidates clashed over their economic plans and whether to prioritise higher spending on public services or tax cuts.
There were sharp exchanges between Mr Stewart and other contenders, Michael Gove accusing him of having "no plan" for how to run the economy or public services.
"Bringing people together is not enough," he told Mr Stewart, who has emerged as the surprise contender in the race.
However, after the debate Mr Stewart admitted his performance had been lacklustre, adding he did not think the "strange" format worked for him.
Mr Gove also took aim at Mr Johnson's plans to give a tax cut to those earning more than £50,000 a year, saying the focus should be on "helping the poorest in society".
Helping middle-earners was "sensible", Mr Johnson responded.
Mr Stewart said promising tax cuts was "wrong" given the uncertainty around Brexit.
He called for a "revolution" in care for the elderly, calling current provision a "disgrace".
Mr Hunt, who was health secretary for six years, also called for increased investment, suggesting cuts to care budgets under the current government had gone "too far".
Mr Johnson reiterated that it was his "ambition" to cut taxes for higher earners, but as political correspondent Chris Mason pointed out, that seemed less committal than a "promise" to do it.
Plenty expected lots of ganging up on Boris Johnson tonight from his rivals.
But what was striking - after the Stewart surge in votes between rounds one and two in Parliament - is there was at least as much, if not more, ganging up on Rory Stewart.
Why?
Look at the numbers.
There were just 13 votes separating Jeremy Hunt, who finished second, and Sajid Javid, who finished fifth in the leadership ballot.
In other words, all of them, other than Boris Johnson, are potentially vulnerable to relatively small shifts in votes.
And Mr Stewart, in the build up to tonight, had the momentum.
Meanwhile, speaking to Newsnight after the debate, Mr Gove said he believed he had won the debate because of what he said were his "detailed answers" and "clear plan" on Brexit.
Of his rivals, he said there were "some other great people" but added: "They will all be fantastic members of my team."
Amid claims that the Conservatives have failed to tackle Islamophobia in the party, the candidates were pressed by an imam to accept that "words have consequences".
Mr Johnson said he apologised if anything he had written, during 20 to 30 years as a journalist, or had said during his political career had caused offence.
But he defended his conduct as foreign secretary in relation to the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who remains in jail in Iran on spying charges.
He suggested his claim in 2017 that the dual British-Iranian national was actually working as a journalist in the country - which the Iranian authorities cited as a reason to increase her sentence - "did not make any difference".
"If you point the finger at the UK, all you are doing is exculpating those who are truly responsible," he said.
Mr Javid challenged the other candidates to agree to an external inquiry into Islamophobia in the Tory Party - which they all appeared to do.
Referring to Donald Trump's string of attacks on London's Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan, he said politicians should be "brave enough" to call out Islamophobia wherever it came from.

"Nothing has changed." Remember that?
There is, this morning, an operation being mounted by the government to try to show that nothing has changed in the Conservative Party in the last few days, that Theresa May's leadership remains on track and she is, to use another of her famous phrases, just, "getting on with the job".
Except, as happened the last time she proclaimed "nothing has changed", something rather fundamental has, after all.
For the doubts that have been building about her in the party for months are now out there in the wide open.
Yes, they have only been articulated by two former ministers, Grant Shapps and Ed Vaizey. Yes they were both close to David Cameron. Yes they were both Remainers too, which allows a conspiracy theory to take hold that the efforts to get rid of Theresa May are really a guise for stopping Brexit.
(Having talked to those involved for some time, the doubts are about competence and authority, not Brexit and there is at least one senior Brexiteer among their number).
And yes, most importantly of all, just as it was on the morning after the election, there is still no obvious successor to Theresa May, who commands broad support right across the Tory Party.
If there had been, it's likely that she would have gone then. That is really why those around Theresa May believe they have got the plot under control.
But the public, and now the prime minister's opponents across the table in the Brexit talks are aware that some of her colleagues simply don't think that she is up to the job.
Remarks by Mr Vaizey and Mr Shapps can't be unsaid. The private questions are now out there in the ether and can't be taken back.
Even if the plot has been killed off at birth, it's another crack in her authority, already so fractured after the election.
It doesn't mean she'll have to go now, or indeed anytime soon. Other leaders have survived countless attempts to shove them out.
But even many of Theresa May's supporters know that something is deeply wrong, however many times they tell themselves, "nothing has changed".

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has told a Conservative Party leadership hustings that as Brexit approaches, the Northern Irish backstop "has to change or has to go".
He and Boris Johnson made their pitch to be the next PM to Conservative Party members in Northern Ireland.
The two candidates for the Tory leadership have been taking part in a series of party events across the UK.
The current EU withdrawal agreement was "a dead letter", said Mr Johnson.
He said the backstop presented the UK with the "unacceptable choice" between "abandoning the ability to govern ourselves" or to "give up control of the government of Northern Ireland".
The backstop - the most controversial part of the deal Theresa May negotiated with the EU - is a position of last resort to prevent any new checks or controls on the Irish border after Brexit.
The UK and EU would prefer to maintain the border status quo through a comprehensive trade deal.
Mr Johnson met with DUP leader Arlene Foster at Stormont after the hustings.
He reaffirmed his promise of there being no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Mrs Foster said they had a "useful discussion about restoring devolution and delivering on the EU referendum result".
By Jayne McCormack, BBC News NI political reporter
It was described as the Northern Ireland version of "Tories got talent" by host, broadcaster Iain Dale.
But Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson stuck to their scripts on Brexit and the backstop - which seemed to go down well with the Northern Ireland Conservatives in the room.
However, they diverged on restoring the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Mr Hunt said he would be "personally" involved, while Mr Johnson told the parties just to "get on with it".
The 500 NI Conservative members will all get their say on who becomes the next PM -  but it's the DUP vote that the two men are really courting.
They both agreed that winning over their unionist allies is vital for a Tory majority in Parliament.
That's something the new prime minister will have to address quickly, by renewing the £1bn confidence and supply pact when he enters No 10 later this month.
The Conservative Party's 160,000 members will begin voting next week and Mrs May's successor is expected to be announced on 23 July.
Mr Hunt was first to take to the stage at the event.
"We are never going to have a deal to leave the EU with the backstop," he said.
Mr Hunt has said he would decide by the end of September whether there was a "realistic chance" of reaching a new Brexit deal with the EU.
He said he would deliver a provisional "no-deal Brexit budget" in early September and then give the EU three weeks.
"The fundamental issue with the backstop is not the principle that we shouldn't have border infrastructure on the island of Ireland - that's accepted by all sides," he said.
"The principle is the backstop which traps us into following EU customs tariffs until the EU gives us permission to leave the customs union... we have to find a different solution."
He said he believed the answer was a technology-led solution, as modelled in Germany.
He told Sky News earlier that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was willing to look at any new proposals put forward by the next prime minister.
For his part, Mr Johnson said the backstop presented the UK with an unacceptable choice and that "the UK as a whole should come out of the EU".
Mr Johnson has vowed to leave the EU "come what may" by 31 October.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, he said it was important to have a "hard deadline" for leaving, adding that previous no-deal preparations had "sagged back down" after exit dates were not met.
Mr Hunt said his campaign was based on trying to fire up the economy, increasing defence spending, abolishing illiteracy and supporting young people.
Were he from Northern Ireland, he would want the law changed on both abortion and same-sex marriage, he said, but added that both matters were issues for a devolved government.
Unlike other parts of the UK, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland.
Currently, a termination is only permitted in Northern Ireland if a woman's life is at risk or if there is a risk of permanent and serious damage to her mental or physical health.
Northern Ireland is also the only part of the UK where same-sex marriage is illegal.
Mr Johnson also said the NI abortion issue should be debated at Stormont.
"I don't think that the UK should be imposing something that should be decided here."
During a vote in November 2015, Northern Ireland assembly members supported same-sex marriage by a slim majority of 53 votes to 52.
Both would-be prime ministers pledged to put renewed efforts to get Stormont up and running.
"It is totally unacceptable that politicians that are paid to run the NHS and schools, and promote inward investment are not turning up to work and doing their job," said Mr Hunt.
Mr Johnson said if he was leader, he "would do whatever I can personally to energise" power-sharing talks which are currently stalled.
"Everyone needs to recognise that it is the citizens and voters of Northern Ireland that are losing out."
Following the hustings event, Mr Johnson tweeted that it was a "pleasure to meet" DUP leader Arlene Foster "to discuss restoring and protecting the governance of Northern Ireland".
In 2017, the Conservative Party entered into a confidence-and-supply pact with the DUP.
The Conservatives needed the votes of the DUP's 10 MPs in order to have a working Commons majority after the 2017 Westminster election, but had to agree to an extra £1bn in spending for Northern Ireland.
At the hustings event, Mr Johnson was asked about his attendance at a DUP conference last year.
Mr Hunt said he would "infinitely prefer if we had Conservative MPs in Northern Ireland so we didn't have to rely on other parties for that majority but to govern is to accept the world as it is".
The candidates are set to face each other in an ITV debate on 9 July and at an event hosted by the Sun newspaper and talkRADIO on 15 July.
Mr Hunt tweeted on Tuesday that he had been invited to a live BBC TV debate against Mr Johnson on 16 July.
He argued that about 90% of Conservative members would have already voted in the leadership race by then.
Meanwhile, former party leader William Hague, who served as leader of the opposition between 1997 and 2001, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that both candidates had "great merits" but added that he believed Mr Hunt would make the better prime minister.

Jeremy Hunt has promised Boris Johnson "the fight of his life" as the two compete to become the next Conservative leader and PM.
Mr Johnson said he was "honoured" to get the backing of 160 MPs in the final ballot of the party's MPs - more than half of the total.
Mr Hunt got 77 votes - two more votes than the next candidate Michael Gove.
Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt now face a vote involving up to 160,000 Tory members, with a result due by late July.
All 313 Conservative MPs took part in the final ballot in the House of Commons, with one paper spoilt.
Mr Johnson's victory in the latest round of the contest had been widely expected, but Environment Secretary Mr Gove and Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt had been engaged for several days in a fight for second place.
In the penultimate MPs' ballot, earlier on Thursday, Mr Gove overtook his rival, only to see his lead reversed in the final vote.
Before the final vote, a source close to Mr Hunt warned against reigniting the "personal psychodrama" between Mr Gove and Mr Johnson - who spearheaded the Vote Leave campaign together in 2016, but fell out after Mr Gove abandoned Mr Johnson's previous leadership bid to launch his own.
Following the result of the final ballot, Mr Johnson tweeted that he was "deeply honoured" by his level of support.
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt, acknowledged Mr Johnson as frontrunner to become party leader and prime minister, tweeting that he was the "underdog" but in politics "surprises happen".
He went on to praise Mr Gove as one of the "brightest stars in the Conservative team" and pledged to "give Boris the fight of his life."
Mr Gove congratulated his rivals and said he was "naturally disappointed but so proud of the campaign we ran".
His campaign manager, Mel Stride, said he believed that Mr Gove's admission that he had taken cocaine during the 1990s had damaged his bid, adding: "It stalled us and meant momentum was lost at that time."
There's no doubt that Mr Johnson is, at this stage (and there's a long way to go), widely expected to end up in Number 10.
But this result is an enormous relief to his camp, for the simple reason that they think Mr Hunt is easier to beat.
Forget any differences in style between the two challengers and their comparative talents - Jeremy Hunt voted Remain in the EU referendum.
And for many Tory members it is a priority for the next leader to have been committed to that cause, rather than a recent convert, however zealous.
Read Laura's blog in full
Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt will now take part in hustings in front of Conservative Party members around the country, before the votes are counted, with the final result to be announced during the week of 22 July.
They will also take part in a head-to-head debate on ITV on 9 July, following previous leadership debates hosted by Channel 4 and the BBC.
Mr Hunt has been in the cabinet since 2010. Before he became Foreign Secretary, he was the UK's longest-serving Health Secretary. Former Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson, who quit the cabinet last year over Theresa May's Brexit strategy is one of the UK's most recognisable politicians and was Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016.
The Conservatives said there had been 20,000 applications for places at the 16 leadership hustings around the UK. Party chairman Brandon Lewis congratulated the final two contenders.
He said: "We are conscious that the Conservatives are not just selecting a new leader but also the next prime minister, and we take that responsibility extremely seriously at such an important time for our nation."
Labour's national campaigns co-ordinator Andrew Gwynne said: "What a choice: the man who broke the NHS or the man who wants to sell it to Donald Trump.
"A handful of unrepresentative Conservative members should not be choosing our next prime minister. People should decide through a general election."
The ballot of MPs earlier on Thursday saw Home Secretary Sajid Javid eliminated from the contest.

Boris Johnson has said he is "not aiming for a no-deal outcome" for Brexit at the launch of his campaign for the Tory leadership.
But he said the threat of no deal was a "vital" negotiation tool and the UK "must do better" than the current deal.
At his campaign launch, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said Mr Johnson was "yesterday's news".
He argued the party should not vote for "the same old insiders" and a leader from a "new generation" was needed.
Meanwhile, Labour's cross-party motion aimed at stopping a no-deal Brexit being pushed through by a future prime minister was rejected by MPs.
The Commons opposed the move by 309 votes to 298.
Mr Johnson and Mr Javid are the last of the 10 candidates in the contest to officially launch their campaigns for the job of Conservative Party leader - and prime minister - ahead of Thursday's first ballot of Tory MPs.
Mr Javid focused much of his speech on his personal back story and own experience of exclusion, insisting it gave him an understanding of how to make people feel "included and welcome" in the Tory Party.
"I have the background, ideas and positive vision for the future [to] keep Jeremy Corbyn far away from 10 Downing Street," he said.
In a swipe at his rivals, he argued: "We can't risk going with [the] short-term comfort zone choice."
On Brexit, he said he could "make post-Brexit Britain what many naysayers say it can't be", and had a "credible plan to leave by the end of October".
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who introduced him at Wednesday's event, said Mr Javid would give voters a "greater reason to feel pride" in the UK.
Earlier, she told the BBC she would not support leaving the EU without a deal, but Mr Javid had the most credible plan to get a deal through Parliament.
Mr Javid has said he would be prepared to leave without a deal if the alternative was no Brexit at all.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Mr Johnson is regarded as the frontrunner in the contest, with many more endorsements from Tory MPs than any other candidate.
He has kept a low profile in the race to succeed Theresa May so far, his only significant intervention being a pledge - immediately criticised by his rivals - to cut income tax bills for people earning more than £50,000 a year.
At Wednesday's launch, the former foreign secretary - who quit cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit policy - said it was "right for our great country to prepare" for a no-deal outcome.
He said any delay to Brexit would "further alienate not just our natural supporters but anyone who believes that politicians should deliver on their promises".
And he warned his party it would "kick the bucket" if it went into the next election having failed to carry out the mandate given to it by the British people.
"Delay means defeat, delay means Corbyn," he said, saying the UK must leave the EU on 31 October.
By Norman Smith, BBC assistant political editor
The speech was classic Boris Johnson - a real pick-me-up performance calling for courage and conviction.
But there was no clarity on what his Brexit plan might be or how he might go about putting together a new deal that the EU would be prepared to negotiate on.
He did say he would keep no deal on the table though, and said it was "astonishing" Theresa May had taken it off.
We did get the character question too - a blunt one about the remark he had made about Muslim women wearing the burka looking like letter boxes.
He knew those questions were coming, and his answer was to say that he was plain speaking, and that people like it when you don't shield everything in carefully calibrated phrases.
It seemed to me that this was a man absolutely not apologising for how he does politics.
Several of Mr Johnson's rivals, including Rory Stewart and Matt Hancock, have said they would not countenance leaving the EU at all without some form of legally-binding agreement on the shape of the future relationship because of the economic disruption it would cause.
Others, including Michael Gove and Mark Harper, have indicated they would be prepared to seek a further extension from the EU to finalise a better deal.
Brexiteers such as Dominic Raab and Esther McVey have said the priority must be honouring the 2016 referendum result and the UK should be prepared to accept no deal.
Chancellor Philip Hammond - who is not running for leader - said it was "impossible" to leave the EU by 31 October and it was "not sensible" for leadership hopefuls to "box themselves into a corner on this" as Parliament "will not allow a no-deal exit".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said a no-deal Brexit would be "disastrous", telling MPs: "I think some of [the PM's] colleagues need reminding of that."
At his launch Mr Johnson was also pressed by journalists on his use of language - including when he wrote in his Daily Telegraph column that Muslim women wearing the burka looked like "letterboxes".
Mr Johnson apologised for "the offence I have caused", but said: "I will continue to speak as directly as I can."
One of the reasons the public "feels alienated" from politicians is because "we are muffling and veiling our language", he added.
He also appeared to dodge a question asking him about a previous confession he had taken cocaine while at university.
Mr Johnson said: "I think what most people in this country want us to really focus on in this campaign, if I may say so, is what we can do for them and what our plans are for this great country of ours."
On Tuesday 18 June BBC One will host a live election debate between the Conservative MPs still in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on air, use the form below. It should be open to all of them, not a specific politician.
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Former Conservative leadership contender Esther McVey has thrown her support behind Boris Johnson's bid.
Ms McVey - eliminated in the first ballot - told the Sunday Telegraph she was backing him because he had promised to deliver Brexit by 31 October.
Mr Johnson is the clear frontrunner to replace Theresa May but his rivals have insisted they will not drop out.
He is the only one of the six remaining candidates who will not take part in the first TV debate on Channel 4 later.
His team reportedly have reservations about its proposed format, but Mr Johnson has agreed to take part in the BBC's debate on Tuesday.
BBC political correspondent Ben Wright said there was "intense arm-twisting and lobbying under way" ahead of the second ballot of Tory MPs on Tuesday.
He said Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who pulled out of the leadership race on Friday, was understood to be considering whether to back Mr Johnson or Michael Gove.
Mr Gove finished third in round one behind Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, but has told the Sunday Times he is the "comeback kid".
The environment secretary also said he would be happy to serve under Mr Johnson, whose leadership bid he scuppered in 2016.
"I would absolutely work with Boris in any way that he wanted to work with me," he said. "No question. It is a different time requiring a different approach."
Mr Hunt insisted he had still not given up hope of winning in the final postal ballot of party members, despite being a distant second to Mr Johnson in the first round.
"I am the insurgent in this race," he told The Mail on Sunday.
"I am in it to win it because we have to give the country better choices given the crisis that we're in now."
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said voters were looking for a "change" - something only he and Mr Johnson offered.
He told the Sunday Times: "We need change. And Boris is change. But I'm change too. And there are only two change candidates in the remaining six - and that's Boris and me."
He also took a swipe at Mr Hunt, who he said was "an asset to the party" but didn't represent change.
Meanwhile fellow contender, Rory Stewart, responded to a Sunday Times headline saying that the leadership rivals were eyeing cabinet roles under Mr Johnson by tweeting: "This may be true of some contenders but it isn't true of me."
The international development secretary added: "I want to give members and the public a real choice of two quite different futures for the Conservative party. I don't want to be in a Boris cabinet."
Mr Johnson gained 114 votes in the first ballot - more than double his nearest rival, Mr Hunt.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Ms McVey said she would "wholeheartedly support" Mr Johnson after he agreed to incorporate aspects of her "blue-collar conservatism" ideas - such as investing money into public services - into his plans for government.
She added: "He has promised to deliver Brexit on 31 October, deal or no deal, and has shown time and time again that he is a dynamic leader, capable of building a strong team around him that will deliver on his promises.
"Our country is crying out for strong, optimistic leadership and Boris is the man best equipped to take us out of the EU."
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The leadership candidates' hardening of position on the controversial Irish backstop is "significant", ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve says.
The views of Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson expressed at a debate seem to rule out any compromise, the MP added.
They both declared the backstop "dead" and rejected the idea of a time limit, which the BBC's Norman Smith said was a "huge heave" towards no deal.
But Mr Grieve warned that a government seeking no deal would collapse.
The Remain-supporting MP said he believed more Conservative colleagues, including current front benchers, would join him in attempts to prevent the UK leaving on 31 October without a deal.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said she was "surprised" by the contenders' comments on the backstop, but believed they would "find they have to compromise".
The cabinet minister, who has been convinced by her preferred candidate Mr Hunt that no-deal should remain on the table, told Politico: "I think their views will collide with the reality when, whichever one wins, starts negotiating and starts dealing with a Parliament which may be more difficult than they think to engage with."
The backstop, included in the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May and the EU, is designed as an insurance policy to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit.
But this deal was rejected three times by MPs in the Commons, with the backstop a key sticking point.
Critics fear it would be used to permanently trap the UK in the EU customs union, preventing the country from striking its own trade deals.
Other MPs have said the backstop would only be acceptable if it had a strict time limit, or if the UK had a unilateral right to end the arrangement.
The EU has repeatedly said it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and insisted the backstop must be part of any deal agreed.
Ursula Von der Leyen - who MEPs have elected to be the next European Commission president - told MEPs on Tuesday: "The Withdrawal Agreement provides certainty where Brexit created uncertainty, preserving the rights of citizens and in preserving peace and stability on the island of Ireland."
To groans from Brexit Party MEPs in the chamber, she added, "However, I stand ready for further extension of the withdrawal date should more time be required for a good reason."
At a head-to-head leadership debate run by the Sun on Monday, Mr Johnson said he would not be seeking a time limit to the backstop, insisting: "It needs to come out."
He said the UK must say "no to time limits or unilateral escape hatches or all those kind of elaborate devices, glosses, codicils and so on that you could apply to the backstop".
Mr Hunt also said the backstop was "dead" and rejected the idea of a time limit.
"The backstop, as it is, is dead, so I agree with Boris - I don't think tweaking it with a time limit will do the trick, we've got to find a new way," he said.
"But the thing that mustn't die... is a cast-iron commitment to the Republic of Ireland that we will not have border infrastructure."
By Norman Smith, BBC assistant political editor
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have given the UK another almighty heave in the direction of no deal. By ruling out any reworking of the backstop, they have closed off what some regarded as the best route to securing a Brexit deal.
Even some leading Brexiteers had mooted the idea of trying to secure an end date for the backstop. A compromise, they argued, which it might have been possible to sell to Parliament. And which the EU - having already said the backstop would be temporary - might have been prepared to concede.
Now, however, Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson have declared the backstop "dead". It means that whoever becomes PM will have to try and construct an entirely new Brexit deal in just three months. It also pre-supposes the EU will be willing to negotiate a fresh deal.
Of course, it's possible this is all bluff, designed to force the EU to blink. If they don't, however, then it's hard to see a likely alternative to no deal.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, pro-EU Tory MP and People's Vote campaign co-chairman Mr Grieve said: "I think it is significant because I have in the past heard it suggested… that there might be some possibility of compromise by the backstop being tweaked and on the face of it, it entirely rules it out."
He said blocking no deal "might be quite difficult" on a technical level - meaning that bringing down the government could be the only option in a confidence vote.
"If a government persists in trying to carry out a no-deal Brexit, I think that administration is going to fall," he said.
"By the end of next week there are going to be more Conservatives who have indicated very clearly that no-deal is unacceptable and I notice that many of them will no longer be on the front bench."
Meanwhile, Mr Grieve and Labour former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett have launched a report that argues a series of possible Brexit outcomes will probably lead to further political deadlock, including renegotiating the backstop.
The report from the People's Vote campaign says that another referendum is the "most popular way of resolving the Brexit crisis" and the "only legitimate and democratic solution available".
The result of the contest to succeed Theresa May as prime minister will be announced on 23 July, with the winner taking office a day later.
Some 160,000 Conservative Party members are voting in a postal ballot to elect the next leader.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have made their pitch to be the next prime minister at the first of 16 Conservative Party hustings.
The two contenders for Number 10 laid out their vision for the country at a conference in Birmingham.
Mr Johnson said these were "dark days" for his party, but insisted he could turn things around.
But his rival warned members not to elect the "wrong person" and risk "catastrophe".
Mr Johnson said the most important thing was to "get Brexit done".
He said: "My ambition is to unite this country and our society... let's take Britain forward.
"We need to discover a new confidence in our country."
The former mayor of London featured on most of Saturday's newspaper front pages following reports by the Guardian that police were called to his London home after neighbours reported "slamming and banging" in the early hours of Friday morning.
The Metropolitan Police Service have said they will not be taking any further action following the episode.
Asked by the hustings moderator, LBC presenter Iain Dale, whether character mattered when choosing a prime minister, Mr Johnson said: "I don't think people want to hear about that."
Accused of ducking questions, Mr Johnson said: "People are entitled to ask me what I want to do for the country."
His rival, Mr Hunt, said the UK was in a "very serious situation".
He continued: "Get things wrong and and there will be no Conservative government, and maybe even no Conservative Party.
"Get things right and we can deliver Brexit, unite the party and send [Labour leader Jeremy] Corbyn packing."
But he warned that if Tory party members elected the "wrong person" as leader then "catastrophe awaits".
Mr Johnson, meanwhile, said he would prepare for a no-deal Brexit if he became PM.
He said: "We must be able to come out on WTO terms, so that for the first time in these negotiations we carry conviction.
"And it is precisely because we will be preparing between now and 31 October for a no-deal Brexit that we will get the deal we need."
He repeated his previous claim that it was "eminently feasible" for the UK to leave the EU by 31 October, saying he intended to make it happen.
That is the date that the EU's membership extension runs out, and if nothing has changed, the UK leaves without a deal.
Theresa May officially stood down as Tory leader on 7 June and will cease to be prime minister in the week commencing 22 July.
An initial list of 10 candidates to replace her was whittled down to Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson in a vote by Tory MPs.
In the fifth and final round on Thursday, Boris Johnson came out on top with 160 out of the 313 votes cast. Mr Hunt received 77 votes and Michael Gove was knocked out with 75.
One questioner at the hustings wanted to know whether Mr Johnson's approach to British business in the context of Brexit was as "cavalier and careless" as previously, when he used an expletive.
He replied: "I believe passionately in UK businesses, and as foreign secretary I spent a lot of my time promoting UK businesses at home abroad."
Jeremy Hunt insisted he would leave the EU with no deal if necessary.
He said: "I would do so with a heavy heart. But if we have to in the end I would do that."
Of a mooted renegotiation with Brussels, he said: "If we send the wrong person there's going to be no negotiation, no trust, no deal, and if Parliament stops that, maybe no Brexit.
"Send the right person and there's a deal to be done."
And challenged over the fact he campaigned for Remain in 2016, the would-be premier said: "Look at my record since that referendum.
"I have been very clear on every occasion... I have voted for Brexit."
In another jibe at his rival, Mr Hunt warned members not to elect a Conservative "populist" to oppose "hard-left populist" Jeremy Corbyn.
Referring to himself, he said: "Or we could do better and choose our own Jeremy."
He continued: "If Corbyn gets into Downing Street there will never be Brexit.
"That's why it's so important that we hold together our Conservative and DUP family and deliver Brexit."
Mr Hunt said he would increase defence spending and called for Conservatives to have a "social mission", focusing on social care for older people.
He also vowed to get more young people voting Tory.
And he promised: "I will never provoke a general election before we have left the EU."
Members will receive their ballots between 6 and 8 July, with the new leader expected to be announced in the week beginning 22 July.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have clashed on Brexit and UK relations with Donald Trump in a lively and occasionally bad-tempered TV debate.
Mr Hunt accused his rival of not being willing to "put his neck on the line" by saying he would quit as PM if he did not hit the 31 October deadline.
Mr Johnson said he admired his rival's ability "to change his mind" so often - a dig at the fact Mr Hunt voted Remain.
Mr Johnson declined to condemn Mr Trump for his response to the emails row.
He refused to confirm whether he would keep the UK's top diplomat in the US, Sir Kim Darroch, in his post until his scheduled retirement in December, after Mr Trump said he was no longer prepared to deal with him.
The US president has lambasted Sir Kim, and criticised Theresa May, after the diplomat described the White House as "inept and dysfunctional" in leaked cables.
While stressing the value of the "special relationship" with the US, Mr Johnson insisted that only he, as prime minister, would take "important and politically sensitive" decisions such as who should represent the UK in the US.
During the first head-to-head debate of the leadership campaign, the two clashed over their different Brexit strategies, political styles and why they were best equipped to be prime minister.
The exchanges were pointed and personal in nature at times, with former Mayor of London Mr Johnson dismissing his opponent's "managerial" style of politics and accusing him of flip-flopping on certain issues.
Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt said the UK needed a leader not a "newspaper columnist" - a reference to his rival's work for the Daily Telegraph.
He joked that he admired Mr Johnson's "ability to answer the question", adding: "He puts a smile on your face and you forget what the question was, a great quality for a politician but not necessarily a prime minister."
After an opening speech from each contender, the foreign secretary immediately went on the attack over Brexit, pressing his rival on whether he would quit Downing Street if he failed to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October.
He said by failing to answer the question, Mr Johnson - who previously said the deadline was a "do or die" issue for him - showed he was motivated by personal ambition not leadership.
"It is not do or die," Mr Hunt said. "It is Boris in Number 10 that matters."
Accusing his rival of not being straight with the electorate, he said: "Being prime minister is about telling people what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear."
Mr Johnson, in turn, said it was clear his rival was "not absolutely committed" to the deadline himself, branding him "defeatist".
He urged Mr Hunt to guarantee that Brexit would happen by Christmas, adding that the EU would not take a "papier mache deadline" seriously.
"If we are going to have a 31 October deadline, we must stick to it," he said. "The EU will understand we are ready and will give us the deal we need.
"I don't want to hold out to the EU the prospect that they might encourage my resignation by refusing to agree a deal.
"I think it is extraordinary we should be telling the British electorate we are willing to kick the can down the road.
"I would like to know how many more days my opponent would be willing to delay."
Both men have said they would be prepared to leave the EU without a deal, but Mr Johnson has been far more relaxed about the impact that could have.
Mr Hunt suggested his rival was "minimising the risk of a no-deal Brexit" and "peddling optimism", but Mr Johnson said the UK had had a "bellyful of defeatism" and the UK could look forward to a bright future outside the EU.
The pair also disagreed over whether they might be prepared to suspend Parliament to force through a no-deal exit - so-called prorogation.
While Mr Hunt categorically ruled this out, Mr Johnson said he would "not take anything off the table".
Both teams will leave Salford content with their candidates' performance.
The gaffe prone former foreign secretary avoided slipping on any banana skins, and managing not to commit on some of the more controversial issues before him.
And the current foreign secretary managed to land his blows on his opponent.
There was perhaps though no jaw dropper, no moment that turned this race upside down.
Mr Johnson arrived the favourite and leaves in the same position. Mr Hunt turned up keen to show that he is ready to use sharp elbows to scrap and to make himself heard with attacks on his rival that are a contrast to his normal careful style.
Their respective status as the front runner and challenger may not have changed.
Yet while Jeremy Hunt may not, from this performance alone, manage to stop Boris Johnson's journey to No 10, he has at least shown that if he gets there, he is likely to face a very tricky time.
On the escalating diplomatic row with the US, Mr Hunt said the president's criticism of Sir Kim Darroch had been ill-judged and he would, if he became PM, not be forced into recalling the diplomat early.
He also took issue with Mr Trump for saying the prime minister had failed to listen to his advice and been made to look "foolish" over Brexit.
"His comments about Theresa May were unacceptable and I don't think he should have made them," he said, remarks which prompted audience applause.
Mr Johnson said the US president had been "dragged into a British political debate" not of his making, but did suggest his outburst on Twitter - in which he called Sir Kim a "pompous fool" - had "not necessarily been the right thing to do".
While civil servants must be able to give confidential advice, he declined to comment on Sir Kim's future, only asking Mr Hunt to rule out "extending his term out of sympathy".
Both men have been criticised for making uncosted spending promises and offers of tax cuts during the campaign.
Mr Hunt sought to make capital out of Mr Johnson's pledge to give a tax cut to higher earners by raising the threshold at which people pay 40% tax from £50,000 to £80,000.
"It was a mistake, tax cuts for the rich," he said. "I have spent my life trying to persuade people that we are not the party of the rich."
Mr Johnson defended what he said was a "package" of measures to reduce the tax burden for both low and middle earners and which he said would boost the economy.
The show, entitled Britain's Next Prime Minister: The ITV Debate, was hosted by journalist Julie Etchingham in front of a studio audience of 200 people at MediaCityUK in Salford.
It took place as 160,000 or so party members get the chance to vote by post on who should succeed Theresa May.
The winner and next PM will be revealed on 23 July - it will be the first time a sitting prime minister has been chosen by party members.

Blimey.
If you are looking for drama, the Conservative Party rarely disappoints.
If you are looking for stability these days, that's a different matter.
To absolutely no one's surprise, Boris Johnson's march to Number 10 has taken a giant stride.
Love him or loathe him, he is the biggest political star in this contest, and he persuaded his colleagues by a handsome margin that he's meant for the highest office in the land.
The number of votes he received increased again, up to 160 this time, more than half of the parliamentary party.
The gasps in central lobby when the result emerged though were not because of his stellar lead, but down to the wafer-thin margin in the race to be his challenger.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Mr Johnson's companion on the referendum campaign trail before he sabotaged his leadership bid, received 75 votes.
That's quite something when you consider just 10 days ago he was under the cosh over revelations of taking cocaine when he was working as a journalist.
But Jeremy Hunt, the former Remainer and current Foreign Secretary, won 77 votes - so close you can almost hear the squeak.
Now, there's no doubt that Mr Johnson is, at this stage (and there's a long way to go), widely expected to end up in Number 10.
But this result is an enormous relief to his camp, for the simple reason that they think Mr Hunt is easier to beat.
Forget any differences in style between the two challengers and their comparative talents - Jeremy Hunt voted Remain in the EU referendum.
And for many Tory members it is a priority for the next leader to have been committed to that cause, rather than a recent convert, however zealous.
Of course, pay attention to recent political history. Upsets are the norm. Outsiders become insiders. Strange things happen, and that's before you price in Mr Johnson's ability to cause havoc for himself.
But this result has left Mr Johnson's camp hugely relieved.
One of his most committed backers was laughing with joy and savouring not a little bit of revenge when I talked to them.
Memories and suspicion linger long around here. And the narrow margin between Mr Gove and Mr Hunt has created doubts of its own.
Rumours are swirling that Mr Johnson's camp were engaged in skulduggery all day, that they would have pushed some of their own supporters to back Mr Hunt, to try to stop Mr Gove from coming second.
The message from on high in Mr Johnson's campaign is that the candidate himself was clear that absolutely must not happen, that he'd frown on any attempt to engineer the result.
Eyebrows have been raised, though. At least four of Sajid Javid's supporters declared online they would switch their support to Mr Johnson. But his actual tally only went up by three in the final ballot.
Were their arms twisted to "lend" their actual votes to Mr Hunt to keep Mr Gove off the ballot?
One member of the cabinet said there had been "more churn than a washing machine". It was a secret ballot, so we will never know exactly what happened. But corralling votes is the fundamental art of getting politics done.
But now this episode is over, we know which pair of politicians will vie to run the country.
The favourite, a public school and Oxford-educated former cabinet minister, who has survived more serious scrapes than Theresa May's had hot dinners.
The other, a millionaire public school-educated Oxford graduate, who's been in the cabinet for nearly a decade who tonight, has branded himself "the underdog".
And remember it's Tory members, not the rest of us, who'll make the final call.

Boris Johnson, the front-runner in the Tory leadership race, has said the party could be "fired from running the country" if it does not deliver Brexit.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said voters in the EU election issued a "crushing rebuke" to the Conservatives.
Fellow candidate, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, said the party faces an "existential risk" over Brexit.
Eight candidates have declared they are standing for leader, after Theresa May said she would resign.
Mr Johnson said voters had issued the party with a "final warning" as the Tories came fourth in Hillingdon, where he is an MP, and the Brexit Party emerged with the largest number of MEPs overall.
He said: "If we go on like this, we will be fired: dismissed from the job of running the country."
Mr Hunt said on Twitter that the "painful result" meant there was an "existential risk to our party unless we now come together and get Brexit done".
With some results still to declare, the overnight count has seen Conservative voters deserting the party, with the party scoring less than 10% of the total vote - compared to nearly 25% in the last EU election.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said it was the worst performance for the Conservatives as a party since 1832.
Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi said the results were a "wake-up call" for MPs to deliver Brexit and the Conservatives would be "in trouble" if they failed to do so.
Mr Johnson said the message from the results was clear for the Conservatives and the party risked a "permanent haemorrhage" of support.
The only way to avoid that outcome, he said, was to "come out of the EU; and that means doing it properly".
The leadership race began when Mrs May announced she would stand down as Tory leader on 7 June, saying it was time for another prime minister to try to deliver Brexit.
So far eight candidates have said they want to run for the Tory leadership.
Environment secretary Michael Gove and former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab declared on Sunday, joining Matt Hancock, Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom and Rory Stewart.
Attitudes toward a no-deal Brexit are sharply divided, with several candidates saying they are prepared to let the UK leave the EU on the new deadline on 31 October without a deal if necessary.
In his Telegraph column, Mr Johnson said that "no one sensible" would aim exclusively for a no-deal Brexit.
But he added that "no one responsible would take no-deal off the table".
Mr Raab told the BBC he would fight for a "fairer" Brexit deal with the EU - but if that were not possible, the UK would leave with no deal in October.
And Mr Gove confirmed he would run to "deliver Brexit" and unite the party.
Other candidates have stressed the need to get a Brexit deal passed in Parliament.
Writing in the Times, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Conservatives had to deliver Brexit through  Parliament, "whether we like it or not".
He added: "The brutal truth is that plans that cannot command the confidence of Parliament would risk a general election.
"We would be punished for our failure to deliver Brexit and under any leader this would risk Corbyn by Christmas."

The Conservatives face "potential extinction" if they do not get Brexit done, Boris Johnson has warned.
The former foreign secretary told a leadership hustings the party will "not be forgiven" if it does not take the UK out of the EU by 31 October as planned.
He said he was best placed to beat Labour and "put Nigel Farage back in his box" but reportedly ruled out a snap general election if he becomes PM.
Mr Johnson is one of 11 candidates vying to succeed Theresa May as leader.
His comments came as the Eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) called on leadership contenders to abandon Mrs May's Brexit deal.
A paper published by the influential ERG said the next prime minister should sign up to the 31 October deadline and step up preparations for a no-deal exit on World Trade Organisation terms.
On Tuesday, two candidates pulled out of the leadership race as the party tightened the rules for the contest amid concerns about the size of the field.
Candidates will now need the support of eight MPs to take part in the race, and secure of 5% of the vote in the first round, and 10% of the vote in the second round, to progress.
Charles Walker, the acting joint-chair of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, said it was "not unreasonable for someone seeking to be leader of the party and prime minister to be able to muster" that level of support.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he expected the Parliamentary side of the leadership contest - where MPs narrow the field down to two final candidates - to take no more than two weeks.
The winner will then be chosen by the wider membership of the Conservative Party.
Mr Johnson, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and ex-Commons leader Andrea Leadsom addressed the One Nation Conservative Caucus of Tory MPs in Parliament at the first hustings of the campaign.
The group, which opposes a no-deal Brexit, has invited all the candidates to appear before them to make their case for the top job.
Mr Johnson, regarded as the frontrunner in the contest, said the party was facing an "existential crisis" following its drubbing in last month's European elections.
"We will not be forgiven if we do not deliver Brexit on October 31," he said.
"We need to realise the depth of the problems we face. Unless we get on and do this thing, we will be punished for a very long time. There is a very real choice between getting Brexit done and the potential extinction of this great party."
His warning was echoed by fellow leadership hopeful Ms Leadsom, who said a delay to the UK's exit from the EU could "spell the end" for the party.
Mr Johnson suggested the solution to the current deadlock would be to replace the Irish backstop - the controversial insurance policy designed to maintain an open border - with "alternative arrangements" so as to facilitate a "managed exit" from the EU.
The EU has said the backstop must remain in the withdrawal agreement and has resisted calls from Tories and the DUP for a time limit, or exit date, to be put on it.
The Tory leadership hustings hosted by the One Nation Caucus of Conservative MPs began with reporters, me included, starting to loiter outside.
Between us and the action inside, there were two heavy wooden doors and a pretty thick wall - and some parliamentary security staff not particularly keen on us leaning too obviously against either the doors or the wall.
A rather forthright conversation then began between us lot in the press pack and Conservative Party officials about why we weren't allowed in - given those in the room were discussing who should be our prime minister by the end of next month.
Mr Johnson, who has insisted the UK must leave by the end of October with or without a deal, said a no-deal exit would cause "some disruption".
But he warned that demands for another referendum on the UK's future in Europe would grow if the UK was forced to seek another extension from the EU.
He insisted: "I believe I am best placed to lift this party, beat Jeremy Corbyn and excite people about conservatism and conservative values."
Home Secretary Sajid Javid told the meeting that if his party "don't look like change, voters will go for change in the form of (Jeremy) Corbyn".
He stressed that the party should not seek to emulate Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, insisting "we will not beat the Brexit Party by becoming the Brexit Party".
In a reference to Benjamin Disraeli's "one nation" political philosophy, he added: "One nation is a term that was coined by a prime minister who was a bit of an outsider. Pick a prime minister who is also a bit of an outsider."
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart told the event: "I began this race believing I should be a truth-teller on principle - ironically I have discovered that it is very popular - and the only way to avoid an election and win the next one is by being straight with people.
"No more unicorns, no more red lines, no more promises we can't deliver. That's how we get Brexit done, defeat Corbyn and unify the country."
He also told MPs he would not sign a confidence and supply deal with the DUP in exchange for funding, as Mrs May did.
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt would not be drawn on whether she planned to enter the leadership race.
But she claimed that nobody wanted a no-deal Brexit, and the EU "understand they have to move on some things".
She told the programme: "I stayed in cabinet and fought to try and get a deal and to try and build a consensus, both in my party and but also in Parliament.
"What we have learnt though is if you are trying to get that objective, you can't take no deal off the table."
Ms Mordaunt added: "In recent days, in my discussions that I have had with people on the EU side of the negotiating table, I am really optimistic and I think they understand they have to move on some things.
"I voted to Leave and I still remain optimistic that we can get a good deal for the UK."

Housing Minister Kit Malthouse has become the second MP to pull out of the Conservative leadership race.
He said it had become clear in the last few days there was an "appetite for this contest to be over quickly".
Earlier, Brexit Minister James Cleverly became the first to withdraw from the contest, less than a week after declaring his intention to stand.
It leaves 11 Tory MPs competing for the top job. Theresa May stands down as leader on Friday.
She will remain PM until a successor is named by the week beginning 22 July.
The Conservative Party board has agreed to change the rules for the leadership election to speed up the process.
Mr Malthouse said he entered the contest "believing that I could make a real difference in delivering a Brexit that would command the support of the House of Commons".
But he said his experience in politics had made him a "realist", and there was a desire "for the nation to have a new leader in place as soon as possible".
His name was given to the so-called Malthouse Compromise - a proposal drawn up by backbenchers from Leave and Remain wings of the Tory Party, which would have implemented Mrs May's Brexit deal with the controversial Irish backstop replaced by "alternative arrangements".
In a statement, Mr Cleverly said it had "become clear" it was "highly unlikely" he would progress to the final two candidates that will appear on the ballot paper.
"Unfortunately and with a heavy heart I've decided to withdraw from the race."
He said he had hoped to be "the face and voice of" of a new conversation within the party and had asked colleagues "to make a leap of faith, skip a generation and vote for a relatively new MP".
"It is clear that despite much support, particularly from our party's grassroots, MPs weren't comfortable with such a move and it has become clear that it is highly unlikely that I would progress to the final two candidates."
The winner of the contest to lead the Conservative Party will become the next prime minister.
Under new rules for the contest, candidates must now gain the backing of eight other colleagues by the week commencing 10 June if they want to stand.
Candidates would have needed only two MPs supporting them to put themselves forward under the previous rules.
After nominations close, all 313 Conservative MPs will vote for their preferred candidate in a series of polls that will whittle down the contenders one by one until only two are left.
Due to another rule change, candidates will need to win the votes of at least 17 MPs in the first ballot and 33 MPs in the second to proceed.
If all the candidates exceed this threshold, the person with the fewest votes will be eliminated, a process that will continue in subsequent rounds until only two remain.
The wider Tory membership of 124,000 will then choose between the final two candidates.

Matt Hancock has quit the contest to become Conservative leader - and prime minister - a day after coming sixth in the first ballot of the party's MPs.
The health secretary did not endorse any of his former rivals, but told the BBC he was "talking" to them all.
Mr Hancock, who had been the youngest contender, said he was "focused on the future" but the party needed a leader to succeed in "the here and now".
Boris Johnson won the first Tory MPs' ballot by a big margin, with 114 votes.
His nearest rival, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, got 43 votes.
The final two contenders remaining after further MPs' ballots next week will go to a party-wide vote.
But cabinet minister David Lidington - who had backed Mr Hancock - told the BBC's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast: "The Conservative Party started having elections for its leaders in 1965. Only once in that time has the favourite won and that was when Michael Howard was unopposed.
"I think it's still very open and no candidate can take things for granted - and shouldn't."
Three candidates - Mark Harper, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey - were knocked out in the first round, in which Mr Hancock, aged 40, received 20 votes.
His decision to withdraw from the race means six candidates remain.
Mr Hancock told BBC deputy political editor John Pienaar: "I've been incredibly encouraged and humbled by the amount of support that I've had in this campaign.
"I've tried to make the argument about the values that the Conservative Party needs to hold dear, of free enterprise and support for a free society and being open and optimistic and enthusiastic about the future."
He added: "But the party clearly is looking for a candidate to deal with the here and now. I very much put myself forward as the candidate focused on the future.
"And so I've decided to withdraw from the race and instead see how best I can advance those values within the party and the big and difficult tasks we've got ahead."
Mr Hancock said the remaining candidates all had "admirable qualities" and that all should take part in televised debates: "The nature of this contest isn't just to be the leader of the Conservative Party. It's to be the next prime minister, and so that scrutiny is important."
He added: "We stand at a defining moment in our country's history and we need to deliver Brexit, and then we need to cast forward and bring the country together. That's the goal."
Further ballots are scheduled to take place next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to whittle down the contenders until only two are left. The process could be speeded up if anyone else drops out.
The final pair will be put to a vote of the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party from 22 June. The winner is expected to be announced about four weeks later.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson, the former Foreign Secretary and London Mayor, has confirmed that he will take part in a televised debate with other candidates on the BBC on Tuesday - although it is not known whether he will join Sunday's debate on Channel 4.
He picked up support from businessman Lord Sugar - who quit as a Labour peer in 2015 and sits as a crossbencher:
Fellow leadership contender Dominic Raab, a former Brexit Secretary, called for a "proper debate", saying: "I'm looking forward to the first televised debates on Sunday and I hope that everyone gets involved - we should have a proper debate on the vision for the country."
On Tuesday 18 June, BBC One will host a live election debate between the Conservative MPs still in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on air, use the form below. It should be open to all of them, not a specific politician.
If you are reading this page on the BBC News app, you will need to visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question on this topic.

Dominic Raab has been making his pitch to become Conservative leader, as Michael Gove becomes the eighth MP to join the race to succeed Theresa May.
Mr Raab told the BBC he would fight for a "fairer" Brexit deal with the EU - but if that were not possible, the UK would leave with no deal in October.
Mr Gove confirmed he would run to "deliver Brexit" and unite the party.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said it would be a "dangerous strategy" to ignore Parliament, which has opposed no-deal.
Boris Johnson, the favourite in the contest, outlined his approach to Brexit in his column in Monday's Daily Telegraph, saying: "No one sensible would aim exclusively for a no-deal outcome. No one responsible would take no-deal off the table."
On Friday, Mrs May announced she would be standing down as Tory leader on 7 June, saying it was time for another prime minister to try to deliver Brexit.
It came after a backlash by her MPs against her plan to get the withdrawal deal she had negotiated with the EU through the Commons, which has already rejected it three times.
The UK is now set to leave the European Union on 31 October, after the original Brexit date of 29 March was delayed twice owing to the parliamentary deadlock.
The delay has meant the UK has had to take part in elections to the European Parliament, three years after it voted to leave the bloc.
Mr Gove, the environment secretary, confirmed on Sunday that he would run for leader, saying: "I believe that I'm ready to unite the Conservative and Unionist Party, ready to deliver Brexit, and ready to lead this great country."
Speaking to Nick Robinson for BBC Radio 4 podcast Political Thinking at Hay Festival, Mr Gove explained why he was running, saying: "The particular mix of experience I have means I can make a contribution."
Mr Gove also said he had changed his mind from 2016 - when he described himself as being "incapable" of being Tory leader - adding he had "evolved as a politician".
While he did not set out his leadership proposal, he did say that the future prime minister would need an eye for detail, as the "process for taking us out of the European Union requires that".
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and former Commons leader Andrea Leadsom revealed their leadership bids in the Sunday newspapers.
Mr Raab told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that the UK's previous negotiations with the EU over the withdrawal agreement had not been "resolute" enough, and a no-deal Brexit had been taken "off the table".
"I would fight for a fairer deal in Brussels with negotiations to change the backstop arrangements, and if not I would be clear that we would leave on WTO [World Trade Organization] terms in October."
He added: "I don't want a WTO Brexit but I think unless you are willing to keep our promises as politicians… we put ourselves in a much weaker position in terms of getting a deal."
He said there was "no case for a further extension" past the current date the UK is due to leave the EU, 31 October.
But Chancellor Philip Hammond called for compromise, saying the suggestion that it was possible to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement was a "fig leaf" for "what is actually a policy of leaving on no-deal terms".
That policy was clearly opposed by Parliament, he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
"This is a parliamentary democracy. A prime minister who ignores Parliament cannot expect to survive very long," he warned.
Former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "31 October is the key date and we are coming out then, and if that means without a deal then that's what it means.
"We won't be asking for any more extensions. If Europe wants to come back to us, the door is open if they want a better deal."
Asked if she favoured a no-deal Brexit, Ms Leadsom said: "Of course, in order to succeed in a negotiation you have to be prepared to leave without a deal, but I have a three-point plan for Brexit, for how we get out of the European Union.
"I'm very optimistic about it. My role as leader of the Commons means that I've had a very good insight into what needs to be done, and I look forward to setting that out once the campaign starts."
They have joined Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, his predecessor Boris Johnson, International Development Secretary Rory Stewart, and Health Secretary Matt Hancock in the battle for the leadership.
Tory MPs have until the week beginning 10 June to put their name forward, and the party hopes a new leader will be in place by the end of July.
Members will have the final say on who wins, after the shortlist is whittled down to two by a series of votes by Tory MPs.
In the Sunday Telegraph, party chairman Brandon Lewis said the party membership had swelled by 36,000 in the last year - bringing the total to more than 160,000.
Mrs May will continue as prime minister while the leadership contest takes place.
By Vicki Young, BBC chief political correspondent
How the UK leaves the EU has consumed British politics for three years and anyone who wants to be prime minister now has to explain how they can succeed where Theresa May failed.
All the contenders in this race face the same dilemma.
The first hurdle is to persuade a deeply divided parliamentary party that they have a solution that breaks the stalemate but keeps the party intact.
Next they must appeal to the Tory membership - and many of them have no problem with a no-deal Brexit.
Finally they will have to govern, and that means winning the confidence of the House of Commons.
MPs have already voted overwhelmingly against leaving the EU without a deal and it would take only a handful of Conservative MPs to bring down a prime minister who tried to do so.
Some candidates have stressed the need to get a Brexit deal through Parliament.
Mr Hunt told the Sunday Times he had the business experience to secure an agreement. "Doing deals is my bread and butter," he said.
And in a direct criticism of Boris Johnson, Mr Stewart said: "I would not serve in the cabinet of someone explicitly pushing for a no-deal Brexit."
Mr Hancock said Mrs May's successor must be "brutally honest" about the "trade-offs" required to get a deal through Parliament.
Environment Secretary Mr Gove said it would be better for the UK "if we secure a deal and leave the EU in an orderly way" but added that he had "come to grips" with preparing for a no-deal outcome.
Meanwhile, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson told the Observer that his party must fully commit to supporting another referendum.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5Live's Pienaar's Politics, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said the "usual suspects" would blame leader Jeremy Corbyn if Labour performed poorly in the European elections.
He said: "Tom Watson's already out, surprise surprise, trying to take on the role of Prince Machiavelli, but I've got news for Tom. Machiavelli was effective. He's a poor imitation of that. If he's trying to turn Labour members against Corbyn and in his favour, then he's going to lose disastrously.
"Now is the time to hold your nerve, because a general election - which is the only thing that will resolve this situation - is closer now than anything."

Rivals for the Conservative leadership have said there must be no uncontested "coronation" for leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson.
Several candidates said the party needed to learn from the experience of electing Theresa May unopposed in 2016.
"Let's not make the same mistake again," said Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
It comes as Mr Johnson expressed fears about damaging "blue-on-blue" attacks in forthcoming TV debates.
While he has agreed to take part in the BBC's debate on Tuesday, Mr Johnson will not be taking part in Sunday's debate on Channel 4, with his team reportedly having reservations about its proposed format.
Mr Johnson was criticised for avoiding scrutiny and taking a "presidential" approach to the contest to be the next Tory leader and prime minister by International Development Secretary, and fellow contender, Rory Stewart.
"The whole genius of British politics is that we don't behave like American presidents, sweeping up in a motorcade. We're all about talking to people," Mr Stewart said.
Mr Stewart said that Conservative members "deserved to have a choice" in the final ballot and "coronations are not the way to do democratic politics".
His comments were echoed by Mr Javid, as he arrived at a London meeting for leadership candidates to speak to party members.
"We had a coronation the last time. That didn't work out well, so let's not make the same mistake again," said Mr Javid.
Senior Conservative Party figures were reportedly drawing up plans for other candidates to withdraw from the contest after Mr Johnson gained 114 votes in the first ballot - more than double his nearest rival, Mr Hunt.
The Daily Telegraph said that the Tory whips' office drew up the plan to avoid weeks of internal party conflict.
It would mean Mr Johnson would be the only candidate to go forward to the final postal ballot of party members, making his election a formality.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told the BBC that most people wished "there had been more scrutiny" in 2016. He pledged to emulate David Cameron in the 2005 leadership contest, who came from behind to earn a victory that "shocked everyone".
Mr Johnson avoided reporters as he arrived at the meeting - a hustings organised by the National Conservative Convention, where he and other leadership candidates will address potential voters.
Earlier, former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said the next party leader needed to be thoroughly tested in the heat of debate.
"Everyone is going to have to demonstrate that they have not just the vision, but the nerve and mettle to deal with the EU and with a minority government," he told The Daily Telegraph.
"If you can't take the heat of the TV studios, what chance of taking the heat of the negotiating chamber in Brussels?"
He also contrasted his own background as the grammar school-educated son of a refugee with the "privileged elite", and said he would be more likely to unite working class and middle class voters.

Conservative leadership contenders have clashed over Brexit as the race to succeed Theresa May in No 10 begins.
Rory Stewart said he would not serve under rival Boris Johnson because of his backing for a no-deal exit.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, the fifth Tory to enter the race, said Mrs May's successor must be more "brutally honest" about the "trade-offs" required to get a deal through Parliament.
The leadership contest will determine who is the UK's next prime minister.
Party bosses expect a new leader to be chosen by the end of July.
Mrs May confirmed on Friday that she will resign as party leader on 7 June, but will continue as PM while the leadership contest takes place.
She agreed with chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, that the process to choose a new leader should begin the week after she stands down.
Five candidates have, so far, confirmed their intention to stand:
Announcing his candidacy, Mr Hancock ruled out a snap general election in order to resolve the Brexit stalemate, saying this would be "disastrous for the country" and would risk seeing the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in power "by Christmas".
Instead, he said his focus would be on getting a Brexit deal through the current Parliament and "levelling" with MPs about what this would mean for the UK.
Mr Hancock told Radio 4's Today there was no point in becoming prime minister unless he was straightforward about the trade offs - "between sovereignty and market access and the trade-offs to get a deal through this Parliament".
He also said the party needed a "leader for the future not just for now", capable of appealing to younger voters.
"We need to move on from the horrible politics of the last three years," he said.
"We need a fresh start and a fresh face to ensure this country wins the battles of the 2020s and remains prosperous for many years to come."
Mr Stewart called for politicians to tell the truth about where they stood on Brexit and suggested, for that reason, he could not serve in a cabinet under Boris Johnson.
"It pains me to say it," he told BBC News.
"Boris has many, many qualities but I talked to him a few days ago and I thought he had said to me that he was not going for a no-deal exit.
"He has now come out and said yesterday that he is going for something which I believe is undeliverable, unnecessary and is going to damage our country and economy."
Mr Stewart later tweeted that Jiminy Cricket - a fictional character who plays Pinocchio's conscience in the Walt Disney film - would sometimes "make a better leader than Pinocchio".
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith criticised Mr Stewart's comments, stressing that MPs needed to "bring the party together" and deliver Brexit.
He told the BBC that candidates standing for the leadership should accept that if they were successful, they would need to "reach out to everybody in the party".
If unsuccessful, they should pledge to "serve whoever gets elected and to serve them to get this Brexit deal done," he added.
Mr Johnson told an economic conference in Switzerland on Friday that a new leader would have "the opportunity to do things differently".
"We will leave the EU on 31 October, deal or no deal. The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal."
Most bookmakers have Mr Johnson as favourite, in front of former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who are yet to declare.
More than a dozen more senior Conservatives are believed to be seriously considering running - including Sir Graham, who has resigned as chair of the 1922 Committee.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has ruled herself out, telling the BBC the party and the country wants "someone who is more enthusiastic about Brexit than I am".
Asked who she would support, she told Radio 4's Today she would "not malign" any of the candidates but would prefer someone who "wants to find a compromise" on Brexit and be realistic about what can be achieved".
Meanwhile, Conservative MP Steve Double criticised those who were not willing to countenance a no-deal Brexit under a new leader.
Tory MPs have until the week commencing 10 June to put their name forward, and any of them can stand - as long as they have the backing of two parliamentary colleagues.
The candidates will be whittled down until two remain, and in July all party members will vote to decide on the winner.
The Conservative Party had 124,000 members, as of March last year. The last leader elected by the membership was David Cameron in 2005, as Theresa May was unopposed in 2016.
It will be the first time Conservative members have directly elected a prime minister, as opposed to a leader of the opposition.
Announcing her departure in Downing Street on Friday, Mrs May urged her successor to "seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum" and seeks "consensus" in Parliament.
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggested Labour might need to harden its position on another Brexit referendum if the Tories elected someone willing to pursue a no-deal exit.
Mr McDonnell told Today that "some form of public vote" would definitely be needed in that situation and he would seek to talk to MPs from all parties to potentially try and bring down a government that tried to take the UK out without a deal.
Most members of most parties in the UK are pretty middle-class. But Conservative Party members are the most middle-class of all: 86% fall into the ABC1 category.
Around a quarter of them are, or were, self-employed and nearly half of them work, or used to, in the private sector.
Nearly four out of 10 put their annual income at over £30,000, and one in 20 put it at over £100,000. As such, Tory members are considerably better-off than most voters.

Sajid Javid has been knocked out of the Tory leadership race, leaving three contenders vying for the job and to be the next prime minister.
The home secretary received 34 votes, coming behind Jeremy Hunt with 59.
Michael Gove received 61 votes, leapfrogging Mr Hunt to gain second place; while frontrunner Boris Johnson got 157 votes from MPs.
MPs have voted in a fifth ballot to select the final two candidates.
The remaining two MPs will compete in a run-off of the party's 160,000 or so members, and the winner will be announced in the week of 22 July.
The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said: "The question is now, where do Mr Javid's votes go? His supporters have been an interesting mixed bag so it is not easy to read where they go."
Mr Javid is not expected to endorse anyone publicly this afternoon.
Leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson - a key supporter of Sajid Javid - said she now wanted Mr Gove in the final two, describing him as "smart, articulate and always on top of detail". Ms Davidson is not an MP and therefore does not get a vote in the fifth ballot.
Mr Javid said he was "truly humbled by the support I have received".
"If my ambition and conduct in this contest has set an example for anyone, then it has been more than worth it," he said. "These are very challenging times ahead for our party and our government... the Conservatives must continue to be a broad church."
Addressing his comments to "kids who look and feel a bit different to their classmates" he said: "Don't let anyone try and cut you down to size or say you aren't a big enough figure to aim high.
"You have as much right as anyone to a seat at the top table."
Mr Johnson, a former Foreign Secretary, said he was "incredibly grateful" for the support of more than half of all Conservative MP, adding that "we have much more work to do".
Environment Secretary Mr Gove jumped into second place, overtaking Foreign Secretary Mr Hunt, who had been second in each of the three previous rounds of voting.
Mr Gove said he was "absolutely delighted" adding: "If I make the final two I look forward to having a civilised debate of ideas about the future of our country."
Mr Hunt said: "The critical decision now for all colleagues is what choice do we present to the country.
"Choose me for unity over division, and I will put Boris through his paces and then bring our party and country back together."
A source close to Mr Hunt told the BBC: "Boris and Michael are great candidates but we have seen their personal psychodrama before. Jeremy Hunt is the candidate who can best unify the party."
Of the 313 Conservative MPs who voted, there were two spoilt ballots.

Liam Fox is very relieved.
The international trade secretary said he couldn't possibly contemplate two former journalists in the final.
After voting for Jeremy Hunt, he told some of us gathered outside the parliamentary polling booth that it was the party's job to "provide good governance - not entertainment".
Privately, Team Hunt successfully urged Conservative MPs to avoid a "psychodrama" as the final two compete for the votes of Conservative members.
The Gove team failed to persuade enough MPs to put two veterans of Vote Leave in the final.
Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have history.
Apparently best buddies during the EU referendum campaign, the relationship soured in the subsequent leadership contest in 2016.
Mr Gove knifed Mr Johnson in the front when he abandoned the latter's campaign and launched his own.
There were suggestions that team Boris saw Mr Hunt as an easier candidate to beat and that some of his supporters lent votes to the current foreign secretary to help him see off Mr Gove's ambitions.
A key Johnson aide denied this - but said he couldn't speak for others. And with Mr Johnson's own vote going up and demonstrating momentum, it's a difficult charge to prove.
So there is only one Leaver in the contest.
But Mr Hunt will portray himself as a born-again Brexiteer, who would contemplate no deal - and, as an apparently more competent minister, someone who also has more chance of delivering a deal.
The candidates' differences on Brexit seem in truth minuscule, each professing they want a deal that bins the backstop, or time limits it, despite likely opposition from Brussels.
Mr Johnson says it's "feasible" to leave on 31 October, while Mr Hunt is prepared to take a little longer if a deal seems close.
Beyond Brexit, Mr Hunt will suggest that he is a champion of the least well-off, the better to contrast with Mr Johnson's ambition to take more people out of the higher tax band.
He will be willing to admit past mistakes and pledge to put them right, for example, suggesting that social care has been underfunded.
And he will point to prominent Remainers and Brexiteers on his team to suggest he can bring the party and country back together.
But Mr Johnson has two clear advantages with the members.
First, he will cite polling to say only he has the chance of beating Labour if there is an early election. a distinct possibility for a leader of a minority government.
Second, he has the ability to make the party feel good about itself. He paints a big picture in vivid primary colours.
Mr Hunt has survived running the big-spending frontline Department of Health and Social Care but he may need to display more inspiration than perspiration as the contest moves to the country and the two candidates go head to head in 16 hustings.
Mr Johnson certainly has plenty of political opponents but often his worst enemy is himself.
Mr Hunt will be hoping his gaffe prone competitor will lose the plot and then lose the contest.
But so far Mr Johnson has reined in his characteristic eloquence, and exercised a quality many had thought would always elude him: discipline.
The stakes are high - the prize is the premiership, not just the Conservative leadership - so it would be surprising if the forthcoming contest didn't throw up heat as well as light.

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt will go head-to-head to become Conservative leader amid claims tactical voting led to Michael Gove's exit from the race.
Mr Johnson's team has denied such tactics - but at least one backer suggested some MPs may have switched votes to end Mr Gove's campaign.
Mr Hunt promised Mr Johnson "the fight of his life" in the coming weeks.
They have to convince the 160,000 party members to vote for them, with the contest ending in late July.
Mr Johnson had been widely expected to be one of the final two candidates, having topped all four previous ballots of Conservative MPs, with Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt vying for second spot.
Two ballots were held on Thursday, resulting in the elimination of Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Mr Gove.
As soon as the final parliamentary ballot result was announced on Thursday, MPs began speculating there may have been foul play after analysing the number of votes cast for each candidate.
Five MPs who had supported Mr Javid - Chris Philp, Chris Skidmore, Mims Davies, Kevin Foster and Mike Wood - promised to switch to Mr Johnson in the final secret ballot.
But Mr Johnson's vote increased by just three.
Simon Clarke, who is backing Mr Johnson, suggested some MPs may have "freelanced" outside the official campaign.
"I think some people might have taken it upon themselves to try and steer the outcome," he said.
Mr Johnson and Mr Gove fell out during the 2016 leadership contest - which saw Theresa May become prime minister - when Mr Gove abandoned Mr Johnson's bid to be leader to launch his own.
After Thursday's results, some of Mr Gove's supporters claimed Mr Johnson's backers may have voted for Mr Hunt to eliminate their candidate.
However, Mr Gove's campaign manager, Mel Stride, dismissed suggestions there had been a vote-switching operation, saying: "It doesn't seem to me on first observation of this that there has been.
"Because we didn't see a situation where, as some had speculated, a very large number of votes might have transferred from, say, Boris Johnson to Jeremy Hunt.
"It would appear to me everybody has behaved pretty much as one would hope they would."
Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, who supports Mr Johnson, also denied there had been an "underhand operation".
"I am pretty close to Mr Johnson and to the operation and the campaign and I just haven't seen it," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Sir Alan Duncan, who is supporting Mr Hunt, told Channel 4 News: "There's talk of one team using proxies designed for their candidate being used for another to boost them.
"Well, you know, this happens in all leadership contests."
Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt will now take part in hustings in front of Conservative Party members around the country, before members' postal votes are counted, with the final result to be announced during the week of 22 July.
There will be a head-to-head debate on ITV on 9 July.
There's no doubt that Mr Johnson is, at this stage (and there's a long way to go), widely expected to end up in Number 10.
But this result is an enormous relief to his camp, for the simple reason that they think Mr Hunt is easier to beat.
Forget any differences in style between the two challengers and their comparative talents - Jeremy Hunt voted Remain in the EU referendum.
And for many Tory members it is a priority for the next leader to have been committed to that cause, rather than a recent convert, however zealous.
Read Laura's blog in full
Following the result on Thursday, Mr Johnson tweeted he was "deeply honoured" to get the backing of 160 MPs - more than half of the total.
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt acknowledged Mr Johnson was the frontrunner to become party leader and prime minister, tweeting that he was the "underdog" but saying that, in politics, "surprises happen".

A war of words is escalating between the DUP and the Conservative Party over Brexit.
It comes after East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson warned his party would withdraw support from the government if it did not approve of the Brexit deal.
Theresa May relies on DUP support in key votes because she does not have a majority in the House of Commons.
A number of Conservative MPs have used social media to criticise Mr Wilson's remarks.
MP Nick Boles MP tweeted: "A word in your shell-like, @eastantrimmp [Sammy Wilson].
"Conservative leaders are chosen by Conservative MPs and Conservative Party members. Not by MPs of any other party.
"And we respond no better to threats than proud Ulster men or women do."
Mr Boles' Conservative colleague Heidi Allen tweeted a reference to the confidence-and-supply arrangement between the two parties, and the £1bn deal that arrangement guarantees for Northern Ireland.
The MP for South Cambridgeshire tweeted: "I really don't wish to be rude to Sammy (genuinely), but it does beg the question, why the heck did we pay £1bn for this! Hate to say I told you so..."
On Thursday, Helen Grant, Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald, told the BBC's Politics Live she didn't believe the DUP threat to withhold votes was serious.
The MP, who is vice chairwoman of the Conservative Party, said she thought the DUP was bluffing.
Government sources indicate that £430m of the £1bn cash related to the DUP's confidence-and-supply agreement has been allocated to departments in Northern Ireland and is expected to be spent by the end of this financial year.
The figure includes £100m for health transformation, £200m in capital money for the Department for Infrastructure, £80m to alleviate general pressures in health and education and £20m to tackle deprivation.
Just more than half of the confidence-and-supply cash - £570m - is yet to be allocated in this way, although much of it has been earmarked for a range of areas.
On Thursday, The Sun newspaper quoted Downing Street sources as saying that any move by the DUP to vote against the budget due at the end of this month "would be a clear breach of the Tory-DUP confidence and supply agreement - meaning Ulster would also have to pay back its £1bn bonus from the government".
DUP MP Emma Little- Pengelly retorted that her party would not back any Brexit deal that did not benefit Northern Ireland.
"Whether Theresa May is the leader of the Conservative Party is a matter for the Conservative Party," she told BBC Radio Ulster's Inside Politics programme.
The South Belfast MP added that if a "sensible Brexit" was not delivered, the DUP's support for Mrs May would not be forthcoming.
Referring to the confidence-and-supply arrangement, she added that in the circumstances of a bad Brexit deal, there would be "no confidence".
Her comments come as DUP MPs and MLAs hold an away day in a County Armagh hotel to discuss party matters, including Brexit.
On Friday, a Downing Street spokesperson said that the prime minister would "never agree" to a permanent customs union with the EU.
Meanwhile, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has said that optimism about an imminent breakthrough in Brexit talks reported in newspapers in recent days is "probably not well founded" and people should be realistic about timeframes.
He said, however, that he hoped negotiators would be able to make "a big step forward" next week.
"The negotiating teams will hopefully have some political recommendations to feed political leaders early next week," he said.

Donald Trump has given his first UK interview since being elected US president, speaking to Conservative MP and Times writer Michael Gove. Here are a selection key quotes, and some of the reaction to them.
"I'm a big fan of the UK, uh, we're gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly - good for both sides."
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says: "It's great to hear that from President-elect Donald Trump. Clearly it will have to be a deal that's very much in the interest of both sides, but I have no doubt that it will be."
The Financial Times's Shawn Donnan argues that Mr Trump and Theresa May could be in for a "rude awakening", with any deal potentially taking years and some UK economic sectors, such as farming, questioning whether the terms of US-UK free trade would benefit them.
Theresa May's spokeswoman says: "We welcome the commitment to have a deal quickly and it highlights one of the opportunities of leaving the EU. We welcome the enthusiasm and energy the president-elect is showing."
"Basically [the EU is] a vehicle for Germany. That's why I thought the UK was so smart in getting out and you were there and you guys wrote it — put it on the front page: 'Trump said that Brexit is gonna happen'."
The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland writes that Mr Trump gave "the Brexiteers just enough to keep them happy", adding that, when asked directly about a trade deal, Mr Gove was given a "non-answer: 'I think you're doing great!'"
The Daily Telegraph says: "The comments in The Times newspaper will be a boost for Mrs May, who is preparing a major speech on Tuesday to set out her plans for Brexit."
"It's obsolete because it wasn't taking care of terror."
"And the other thing is the countries aren't paying their fair share so we're supposed to protect countries but a lot of these countries aren't paying what they're supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States. With that being said, Nato is very important to me."
Conservative MP Michael Fabricant tweets: "#Trump is NOT anti #Nato. However, like the #UK, he believes more countries like the #UK should pay their fair whack into Nato."
German foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier says: "His comments have caused worry and concern even here in Brussels. I've just had a conversation with the Secretary-General of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, who has expressed concern at the comments made by Donald Trump that Nato is obsolete. This is in contradiction with what the incoming American defence minister said in his hearing in Washington only some days ago and we have to see what will be the consequences for American policy."
Nicholas Burns, professor of the practice of diplomacy and international relations at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, tweets: "Europe is our largest trade partner, largest investor in our economy and strongest ally-NATO. And Trump just declared it obsolete?"
"Well, I'll be there - we'll be there soon - I would say we'll be here for a little while but and it looks like she'll be here first. How is she doing over there, by the way?"
Guardian political editor Heather Stewart writes: "Michael Gove's latest excursion into controversy, pipping the prime minister - and her Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson - to a personal meeting with Donald Trump, is just the latest in a series of headaches created for May by the powerful figures she dispatched to the back benches."
Theresa May's spokeswoman says: "We have already established good relations with the president-elect. The prime minister has spoken on the phone, her team has gone out there for discussions, the foreign secretary has had discussions." She adds: "If the British press succeeds in interviewing world leaders, we should be proud."
"Well, I start off trusting both [Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel} - but let's see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all."
The Independent says: "President-elect Donald Trump has avoided saying who he trusts more - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a long-time US-ally, or Russian President Vladimir Putin."
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's Security Council, says: "If Donald Trump's administration is interested we will be ready to resume full-format consultations with our American partners through the Russian Federation's Security Council."
Angela Merkel says: "I am personally waiting for the inauguration of the US president. Then of course we will work with him on all levels."

Donald Trump's criticism of Theresa May's Brexit strategy has sparked a backlash from UK politicians - including some government ministers.
The US President said the PM's plan would "probably kill" a UK-US trade deal.
He also said Boris Johnson would make a "great prime minister".
Some Tories are furious at his "deeply insulting" remarks, but backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg thought what he said was "perfectly reasonable".
Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan said he did not think Mr Trump's remarks were rude.
"Donald Trump is in many ways a controversialist," he told the BBC.
"That's his style, that's the colour that he brings to the world stage."
But another Conservative minister, Sam Gyimah, whose brief covers universities and skills, did not agree, questioning the president's manners:
His government colleague, Digital Minister Margot James, took issue with the comments about Boris Johnson, who she said "would make a terrible PM":
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston said Mr Trump had been "deeply insulting" and criticised his "dog whistle politics about immigration".
"And though of course Theresa May will continue to extend a very polite welcome to him in his capacity as president of the United States, I think she should pretty much tell him where he can stick his dog whistle," she told the BBC.
In his interview with The Sun, the US president said immigration had "changed the fabric of Europe", adding that "unless you act very quickly, it's never going to be what it was and I don't mean that in a positive way".
He added: "I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn't exist 10 or 15 years ago."
Ms Wollaston also accused the president of a "bullying approach", with "infantilising imagery" of holding Theresa May's hand, saying the prime minister had shown "great statesmanship" in response.
Another Tory MP, Anna Soubry, said the president "diminishes the standing of the great country he is meant to lead".
Chancellor Philip Hammond was optimistic, saying the US president had been "nodding furiously" while Mrs May was speaking during Thursday night's dinner with Blenheim Palace and had yet to talk to her about the plans, which were published on Thursday in a White Paper.
"I know she's looking forward to the opportunity to discuss with the president how we can take forward the big opportunities for increasing trade and investment between the UK and the United States that she mentioned last night during the dinner at Blenheim," he told reporters in Brussels, where he is attending a finance ministers' meeting.
But opposition parties reacted scathingly to Mr Trump's intervention.
Labour's shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry accused the President of "childish behaviour of the worst sort".
She said she felt sorry for Mrs May, adding: "Donald Trump ought to have listened to his mother. I am assuming that his mum told him that when you go to someone's house you do not insult the host."
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said the US president "now chooses our leaders".
But influential Conservative backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg, who opposes Mrs May's plan for post-Brexit trade with the EU, said many Conservative MPs shared his view.
"The UK wants to do a trade deal with Donald Trump, and he said if you want to do a trade deal with the United States this isn't the way to do it," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"That's a matter of US foreign policy."
He said it was different to when former US president Barack Obama tried to help the Remain campaign during the 2016 EU referendum campaign by saying the UK would be at the "back of the queue" for a trade deal with the US if left the EU.
Mr Trump's predecessor had "interfered" in a UK election, said Mr Rees-Mogg.
Another Eurosceptic Conservative MP, Nigel Evans, told the BBC the US president "loves our country".

US President Donald Trump has stepped up his attack on the UK's ambassador in Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, saying "we will no longer deal with him".
In withering comments on Twitter, Mr Trump also lashed out at Theresa May, saying it was "good news" that Britain would soon have a new prime minister.
Sir Kim, in emails leaked on Sunday, described Mr Trump's administration as dysfunctional and inept.
Mrs May said she had "full faith" in Sir Kim but did not agree with him.
Her spokesman had described the leak as "absolutely unacceptable", and said the prime minister's office had made contact with the White House.
Mr Trump had already responded to the leaked emails by saying "we're not big fans of that man and he has not served the UK well".
In Monday's series of tweets he said Sir Kim was "not liked or well thought of within the US".
Apparently angered by Mrs May's support for the ambassador, he again lashed out at her handling of Brexit, describing it as "a mess".
Mrs May stepped down after failing to have a Brexit deal approved by parliament and the governing Conservative Party is choosing between two remaining candidates - Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt - to replace her.
The US state department declined to comment on President Trump's remarks.
Analysis by James Landale, BBC diplomatic correspondent
By saying he won't deal with Sir Kim Darroch any more, Donald Trump is apparently all but declaring the ambassador to be persona non grata. That is the formal legal process by which a host government expels a foreign diplomat.
The key question now is what the president means by the word "deal". If the royal "we" used by Mr Trump means that his entire administration will no longer deal with Sir Kim or any of his staff then the British government may have to decide to fast track the retirement of their man in Washington.
Sir Kim, who is an honourable man and was stepping down anyway in a few months, may decide to resign. If, however, Mr Trump merely means he won't deal personally with Sir Kim then the ambassador may stay on until the new prime minister can make his own appointment.
This all presents the British government with an awkward dilemma - to buckle under US pressure and bring Sir Kim home, risking accusations of abject weakness, or to stand firm and defend their ambassador for doing his job and telling the truth as he sees it, risking even further damage to the UK/US relationship.
In the emails leaked to the Mail on Sunday, Sir Kim said: "We don't really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept."
He questioned whether this White House "will ever look competent" but also warned that the US president should not be written off.
The emails, dating from 2017, said rumours of "infighting and chaos" in the White House were mostly true and policy on sensitive issues such as Iran was "incoherent, chaotic".
Sir Kim said Mr Trump was "dazzled" by his state visit to the UK in June, but warned that his administration would remain self-interested, adding: "This is still the land of America First."
Sir Kim represents the Queen and UK government interests in the US.
Born in South Stanley, County Durham, in 1954, he attended Durham University where he read zoology.
During a 42-year diplomatic career, he has specialised in national security issues and European Union policy.
In 2007, Sir Kim served in Brussels as the UK permanent representative to the EU.
He was the prime minister's national security adviser between 2012 and 2015, dealing with issues such as the rise of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, Russian annexation of Crimea, the nuclear threat from Iran and the collapse of government authority in Libya.
He became ambassador to the US in January 2016, a year before Donald Trump's presidential inauguration.

Nigel Farage should be involved in the government's Brexit negotiations and the UK should be prepared to leave the EU with no deal, Donald Trump has said.
In a Sunday Times interview, the US president was critical of government's Brexit negotiations, saying it left the EU "with all the cards."
The interview comes before his state visit to the UK begins on Monday.
On Saturday Mr Trump also said Boris Johnson would be an "excellent" Conservative Party leader.
Breaking with diplomatic convention, Mr Trump said the leader of the Brexit Party - an arch critic of Prime Minister Theresa May - "has a lot to offer" in negotiations with the EU, and should be included.
"Think how well they would do if they did," he added.
He also said the UK should walk away if it does not get what it wants from EU negotiations.
"If you don't get the deal you want, if you don't get a fair deal, then you walk away."
Meanwhile, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has marked Mr Trump's visit by calling him "one of the most egregious examples of a growing global threat".
In an article for the Observer, Mr Khan said: "The far right is on the rise around the world, threatening our hard-won rights and freedoms and the values that have defined our liberal, democratic societies for more than 70 years."
In April, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was boycotting Mr Trump's state banquet at Buckingham Palace, in protest at the president's "racist and misogynistic rhetoric".
But the US Ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, said he believed "everything is going to go great" on the trip.
Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Johnson also talked about potential future trade agreements between the two countries after Brexit.
He said the UK would not have to accept US agriculture standards to get a deal - although he said the "American food supply is as safe as anything in Europe".
And while he called the NHS the "pride of the country", he said that in order to strike a deal, "all things that are traded would be on the table" - including healthcare.
The US president also reiterated his praise for Boris Johnson - who is willing to leave the EU with no deal.
Mr Johnson is one of the candidates in Tory leadership contest to replace Prime Minister Theresa May.
Sajid Javid, Esther McVey and Dominic Raab have said the UK should leave the EU on the current planned departure date of 31 October with or without an agreement.
But Rory Stewart does not back a no-deal Brexit - and Matt Hancock says politicians must be honest about the trade-offs involved in getting a deal approved by MPs.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said trying to push through a no-deal Brexit would be committing "political suicide", although he agreed the option had to remain on the negotiating table.
To compensate for lost trade with the EU, Mr Trump vowed to "go all out" to secure a free trade deal between the UK and US within months of Britain leaving the bloc.
The first day of Mr Trump's state visit to the UK will include a private lunch with the Queen, tea with the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, and the state banquet at Buckingham Palace.
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Donald Trump has said he is working on a "major trade deal" with the UK.
The US President tweeted that a bilateral trade agreement with the UK after it leaves the EU in 2019 could be "very big and exciting" for jobs.
Mr Trump, who backed Brexit, also took a swipe at the EU accusing it of a "very protectionist" stance to the US.
The US President, whose officials are meeting British counterparts this week, has been accused of protectionist rhetoric by his political opponents.
The UK's International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is currently in Washington discussing the potential for a UK-US trade deal after the UK's withdrawal from the EU in March 2019. No deal can be signed until after then.
Mr Trump has said he would like to see a speedy deal although free trade agreements typically take many years to conclude and any agreement, which will have to be approved by Congress, is likely to involve hard negotiations over tariff and non tariff barriers in areas such as agriculture and automotive.
On Monday, Mr Fox published details of commercial ties between the UK and every congressional district in the US as a working party of officials met to discuss a future trade deal for the first time. Two-way trade between the two countries already totals £150bn.
Mr Fox is also discussing other issues, including the continuation of existing trade and investment accords, with trade secretary Wilbur Ross and the US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer.
At a breakfast meeting for members of the House of Representatives, Mr Fox said his twin objectives were to provide certainty for foreign investors ahead of Brexit and to expand the volume and value of trade with the US.
"The EU itself estimates that 90% of global growth in the next decade will come from outside Europe, and I believe as the head of an international economic department that this is an exciting opportunity for the UK to work even more closely with our largest single trading partner the US," he said.
Sir Vince Cable, the new leader of the UK parliament's fourth largest party, the Liberal Democrats, said a US-UK trade deal could bring significant benefits - but he called on the government to guarantee parliament would get a vote on it first.
"Liam Fox and Boris Johnson must not be able to stitch up trade deals abroad and impose them on the country," he said.
"It is parliament, not Liam Fox, that should be the final arbiter on whether to sacrifice our standards to strike a deal with Trump."

US President Donald Trump has said talks about a "very substantial" trade deal with the UK are under way.
He said a bilateral post-Brexit deal could lead to a "three to four, five times" increase in current trade.
There are no details about how this would be achieved.
After a phone call with Boris Johnson on Friday, Mr Trump said the new prime minister would be "great". He added US-UK trade had previously been "impeded" by Britain's membership of the EU.
Once the UK leaves, he said, the UK can expect to do "much more" trade with the US, he said.
Mr Johnson and Mr Trump said they would begin formal negotiations "as soon as possible" after the UK leaves the EU.
While the UK is in the EU, it cannot sign its own trade deals. Brexit is due to happen on 31 October.
Trade deals involve two or more countries agreeing a set of terms by which they buy and sell goods and services from each other.
Deals are designed to increase trade by eliminating or reducing trade barriers. These barriers might include import or export taxes (tariffs), quotas, or differing regulations on things such as safety or labelling.
In short, because the US and EU do not have one.
The EU customs union forbids members negotiating trade agreements separately from the EU. Instead, trade agreements are negotiated collectively.
In 2013, under President Barack Obama, the US and the EU launched a programme of negotiations known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP.
That proposed trade agreement was put on hold by the US after Mr Trump was elected as president, but the EU has approved new talks.
The EU-Canada agreement - which removed 99% of tariffs - was seven years in the making, while the EU-South America deal agreed in June took 20 years to negotiate.
The EU and US have been having a stop-start conversation about trade for years but a fresh round of formal talks were only recently approved by the EU.
So even though both Mr Trump and Mr Johnson seem keen to do a deal, it could still take years, although - in theory - it is easier to negotiate with one country than a multi-national bloc.
Barack Obama said in 2016 a UK-US trade deal could take 10 years to negotiate if the UK left the EU.
The US is a major trade and investment partner for the UK - by some measures the biggest of all.
According to the Office for National Statistics' latest available figures, the US (including Puerto Rico) is our top trading partner.
Total trade (imports and exports) between the UK and US was worth £183.2bn in 2017, which made up 14.6% of total UK trade.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative estimated the total trade figure for 2018 at $262.3bn (£211.9bn).
The US Chamber of Commerce says the UK is the US' seventh largest trading partner and the fourth largest export destination for American goods and services.
As a member of the EU, the UK is part of about 40 trade agreements the EU has with more than 70 countries.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal it would lose these trade deals immediately - worth about 11% of total UK trade.
So far the UK has agreed "continuity" deals with 12 countries and regions: Central America, Andean countries, Norway and Iceland, Caribbean countries, Pacific Islands, Liechtenstein , Israel, Palestinian Authority, Switzerland, the Faroe Islands, Eastern and Southern Africa and Chile.
These areas account for 64% of trade currently covered by EU agreements for which the UK is seeking continuity, the government says. The agreements mostly replicate EU trade deals.
In addition, the UK has also announced a deal in principle with South Korea, which is "expected to be signed shortly".

Australia is "very keen" to secure a trade deal with the UK post Brexit "as quickly as possible", Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull has said.
Mr Turnbull told journalists at No 10: "We move quickly. Australians are fleet of foot. We don't muck around. We're very simple. So we will move as quickly as the UK will move."
Ahead of the Downing Street talks, the two leaders visited Borough Market.
Two Australians died in June's van and knife attacks in south-east London.
During a Downing Street press conference, Mr Turnbull said Australia "had been the first on the phone" to call for a free trade agreement with the UK following Britain's decision to leave the EU.
He said Australia stands "ready to enter into a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom as soon as the UK is able to do so - so once that Brexit has been achieved, then we look forward to speedily concluding a free trade agreement".
Mr Turnbull said he hoped the EU deal could be finalised before the expected date of Brexit in March 2019.
He said a UK agreement could follow swiftly: "My government's position is very simply this: economic prosperity has been demonstrated to be delivered by free trade and open markets - that is one of the major reasons why Australia has had 26 years of uninterrupted economic growth."
He said Mrs May's vision for post-Brexit Britain "is one filled with optimism". "It's not a counsel of despair as some people have said."
Turning to the PM, he added: "I know Theresa that you believe passionately that the British people can do anything, can achieve anything and that your post-Brexit Britain will be a Britain with big horizons, big opportunities, free trade, open markets.
"You're right, that is the future. That's where our prosperity has been delivered and I know that it's where your prosperity will come."
Mrs May said a trade deal with Australia was a "priority" for the UK after Brexit, to expand on the £14bn-worth of trade between the two nations.
"We've both made clear our intention to continue to deepen our trade and investment relationship as the UK leaves the EU," she said.
"Our Brexit negotiations have started well, and I have made clear to prime minister Turnbull that an ambitious and comprehensive bilateral trade deal with Australia remains a priority for the UK."
Earlier, the two prime ministers - who were at Oxford University at the same time - visited the scene of the Borough Market atrocity to be briefed by police officers and paramedics who rushed to the aid of victims and survivors.
They also spoke to traders in the market, one of London's most popular visitor attractions.
The two earlier met Church leaders at nearby Southwark Cathedral, including the Reverend Canon Michael Rawson, the Sub Dean of the cathedral.
The UK and Australia have strong commercial, cultural and security links through the Commonwealth and the "five eyes" intelligence alliance.
Although the UK cannot negotiate trade deals with other countries until after Brexit, Australia is one of the countries with which Whitehall officials have set up a working party to look at the issues involved.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will be travelling to Australia in the coming months.

The UK will be kicked out of the European Arrest Warrant deal after Brexit, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said.
The warrant allows EU members to request the arrest and detention of criminals in other countries without extradition talks between them.
The UK wants to stay part of the system when it leaves the EU next March.
But Mr Barnier said the UK could not, because of its desire to leave the EU's court and free movement scheme.
The EU would consider setting up a "streamlined" extradition process with the UK instead, said Mr Barnier.
His words are not likely to go down well with the UK's Brexit Secretary David Davis, who earlier this month singled the European Arrest Warrant out as one of the cornerstones of post-Brexit security co-operation with the EU.
He said it had "brought dangerous people swiftly to justice" and "played a crucial role in supporting police co-operation, not least in Northern Ireland and Ireland".
Mr Barnier said "facts have consequences" and the UK's decision to leave the EU and its single market meant things could not stay the way they were now.
He said the UK's decision to opt out of free movement rules and largely end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice "means that the UK cannot take part in the European Arrest Warrant".
He suggested it would not be "fair" for the UK to keep all the benefits of EU membership.
"They want to maintain all the benefits of the current relationship, while leaving the EU regulatory, supervision, and application framework," he said.
"And they try to blame us for the consequences of their choice. Once again, we will not be drawn into this blame game. It would mean wasting time we don't have."
Mr Barnier said that aside from the European Court of Justice the arrest warrant was also underpinned by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and by the concept of EU citizenship.
He added: "Today we know that the UK is not ready to accept the free movement of people, the jurisdiction of the court and the Charter of Fundamental Rights - for the charter, this was confirmed last week by the House of Commons.
"This means that the UK cannot take part in the European Arrest Warrant."
The EU's remaining 27 countries would continue to share information from passenger name records and the UK would not have automatic access to EU-only police databases or those of countries in the Schengen zone, he said in a speech in Vienna.
Similarly, while the UK would be shown analysis done by Europol relating to live criminal investigations, it would not be able to "shape the direction" of the EU's law enforcement agency or other EU bodies.
Shared efforts to counter money-laundering and terrorist finance must continue, Mr Barnier said, but judicial co-operation in criminal matters could not extend to continued membership of the European Arrest Warrant.
Successive UK governments have remained strong supporters of the European Arrest Warrant - which came into force in 2004 - despite calls from some Tory MPs for it to be renegotiated or reformed.
According to the National Crime Agency, other EU members requested the arrest of 14,279 UK-based suspects in 2015-6, up from 1,865 in 2004. The UK made 241 such requests in 2015-6, leading to 150 arrests.
Speaking at the same event as Mr Barnier, leading MEP Guy Verhofstadt said "solutions were possible" to ensure public safety was not compromised by Brexit but he made clear the status quo was not an option.
"They cannot be simply based on continuing the same processes as before," he said.
In response, the Department for Exiting the European Union said protecting the public was an "absolute priority".
"Any drop in the breadth and quality of co-operation would have a direct impact on public safety and on our collective ability to deliver justice across Europe," a spokesman said.
Earlier this year the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said non-participation in the scheme was "probably the biggest practical vulnerability" facing law enforcement in Northern Ireland post-Brexit.
George Hamilton told a House of Lords committee there would be "very real operational consequences if there are no alternative arrangements in place around exchange of material and people by way of a European arrest warrant".

The European press appear to have shown little sympathy for the 'no-deal' Brexit guidance published by UK Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab on 23 August.
The mainstream media see the plans as a means to both reassure and frighten the British public, as a negotiating tool with Brussels, and as an admission of ensuing chaos should a deal not be struck.
The German press provided extensive coverage on Raab's publication of several advice papers on a possible no-deal Brexit. Most dailies summarised the content of Raab's notices, but also observed that these papers offer "too little, too late".
The prevailing feeling on the European continent is that "it is the Brits' own fault that they created for themselves such chaos", but "this attitude is arrogant" and "detrimental", journalist Stephanie Bolzen said in a column for conservative daily Die Welt on 24 August. If a no-deal Brexit leads to the end of the free market, this will create "shock waves well beyond Europe", Bolzen said.
"The Brits are staring into the Brexit abyss" was the headline to journalist Markus Becker's article for centre-left news magazine Spiegel Online on 23 August. Becker said that the UK's notes on the no-deal scenario "come very late" and that "it is doubtful that British companies will be able to implement the government's advice in time".
Brexit Secretary Raab used his speech announcing the no-deal papers to "make clear who would be to blame if the talks were to fail", journalist Bjoern Finke said in a column for centre-left daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung on 23 August. Raab blames the EU for being "simply not pragmatic enough", Finke said. The secretary's statement is "bizarre", Finke added, because "after all, it is his chief Theresa May who wasted precious time" by only presenting "halfway realistic" economic plans two years after the referendum.
Raab's call for as much post-Brexit continuity as possible "will in many cases only be possible with the Europeans' cooperation", said leading financial daily Handelsblatt on 23 August. Because "the fronts in Brussels and London have hardened", there is an "increasing likelihood that the talks will end without a deal", Handelsblatt added.
Centre-right daily Die Zeit reported on 23 August that Dominic Raab's no-deal papers are an attempt "to prevent chaos". If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the economic consequences "may well be considerable", Die Zeit concluded.
Noting that "the risks of chaos are real" because of the sheer volume of preparation needed for Brexit, the leading French dailies see the British government preparing for a dire scenario without a deal and using the "no-deal" guidance as a means to pressure Brussels.
Under the headline "London preparing for a dark scenario of a no-deal divorce", centre-left Le Monde saw a no-deal Brexit as a possible scenario, saying that "the risk of failed negotiations increased during the last two months", despite Raab's assurances that it is "improbable". "The risks are real," the paper said.
Right-leaning Le Figaro also saw a no-deal Brexit as "a much darker reality" than what the British government promises, one which "would affect the lives of businesses and consumers in a much deeper way".
Le Figaro quoted the National Union Farmers of Scotland as saying that "A no-deal Brexit would instantly transform the UK into a third-world country."
Weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur said "London is preparing for the worst".
Italian newspapers have said that British citizens and businesses would pay more in taxes and face more bureaucracy, including tougher customs controls, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
"More spending, more bureaucracy. At least in the beginning," a London correspondent of centrist Corriere della Sera summed up Raab's instructions. He said Raab was "still convinced that an agreement would be reached". However, the correspondent also cited the Economist as saying that London has no good cards to play if no agreement is reached with the EU.
"29 March 2019 is approaching, and an exit without a parachute could complicate life for British citizens and businesses," liberal Repubblica said. Raab's "guide forecast the main dangers to them", said the newspaper. These include "costlier credit cards, transactions at prehistoric speeds, more customs controls, and possibly medicines in short supply".
Conservative Foglio mentioned Raab's report only briefly, saying that "London has warned companies of Brexit risks". The newspaper said that if no agreement were reached, UK companies dealing with the EU could face higher taxes and bureaucratic problems.
The Spanish press seemed particularly negative about the guidance, arguing that the document was designed to intimidate the British public and revealed the weakness in PM Theresa May's Brexit campaign.
In an editorial headlined "Divorce without a pact", centre-left El Pais described May's campaign as "surrealistic", since none of Brexit negotiators spoke in favour of the UK's leaving the EU without an agreement.
"It should be added that the difficulties for citizens from the wild [no-deal] exit are close to the ones from the hard Brexit with a soft appearance. This campaign seems to show, unintentionally, that the best alternative for the British is to remain in the EU; then, as a lesser priority, to stay as close as possible; and finally, the farther they are, the worse it is for them," El Pais said.
The centre-right daily El Mundo said that Raab's speech on a "no-deal" Brexit seemed to be aimed at intimidating the British rather than reassuring them. It added that Theresa May's strategy has been clear since the start of summer holidays: to warn UK citizens, politicians and businesses of the risks of leaving the EU without a deal.
"London preparing for the 'war of Brexit'," the conservative daily La Razon said. "The British government has published guidelines to warn its citizens of the possible consequences of leaving the EU without an agreement," it added.
"London gets ready for radical Brexit and without an agreement with the EU," the popular daily ABC noted. "The truth is that from Brussels this proposal can be seen as an attempt to shift to the European Commission the responsibility for the consequences of a possible lack of agreement in exit negotiations," it said.
Dutch media noted that the advice papers are both a form of reassurance to UK citizens and a way of putting pressure on the EU by showing the UK is willing to walk away from negotiations.
"London does not just want to reassure UK citizens, but also to pressure Brussels into making concessions", public broadcaster NOS quoted its correspondent Suse van Kleef as saying on 23 August. By discussing a no-deal scenario as "a serious possibility", the UK wants the EU to realise "that they are also willing to walk away from the negotiations", Suse van Kleef said.
Centre-left daily Volkskrant offered a similar assessment, noting on 23 August that Raab's no-deal plans are not just reassurance, "but also a negotiating technique". The UK wants to show "that there are limits to its willingness to make concessions".
Raab's no-deal papers show "once again that there is minimal space for negotiating a Brexit that does not leave the United Kingdom devastated", said centre-right financial daily NRC on 23 August.
Leading Christian daily Trouw said on 23 August that this is the "first time London has described down to the smallest details what consequences a disorderly departure from the EU will have". The daily noted that a no-deal Brexit will mean "a very large amount of additional red tape" for UK businesses trading with Europe.
The Belgian press responded widely, advising on the consequences of a no-deal Brexit and noting that Raab's papers are an attempt to reassure the public. But they also warn the EU about the limits of UK flexibility on the final Brexit deal.
Centre-left daily De Morgen noted that the British government is "trying to show that it is prepared for everything", but that the presentation of the no-deal papers is "probably also in part a negotiation tactic" to show EU negotiators that "there are limits" to Britain's "flexibility". The daily quoted Flemish Prime Minister Geert Bourgeois as saying that "hopefully, British citizens, companies, farmers, and universities will make the voice of reason heard" against a no-deal Brexit that would be costly to Belgium as well as to the UK.
Brexit Secretary Raab's warnings about a no-deal Brexit may be a shock, "but his message is nonetheless that the UK is willing to play hardball in the negotiations", journalist Bart Sturtewegen said in a column for centre-right daily De Standaard. "Only the future can show" what the damage for Belgium will be, "but it is certain that it will be a lose-lose story", he noted.
Economic daily L'Echo noted that Raab's announcement mainly showed "that if the negotiations failed, London would take any measures to limit commercial losses without waiting to hear the opinion of the 27" remaining EU member states.
The UK government is trying to "prevent, attenuate, and manage the risk of any short-term disruption", French-language Le Vif reported.  The weekly added that meanwhile, "less than one person in two" in the UK believes that a no-deal Brexit would be damaging to the country, according to a KPMG study.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.

The UK government has insisted its Brexit agreement will protect the fishing industry despite claims it is preparing to "sell out" fishermen.
The government's draft agreement on post-Brexit relations says the UK will be an "independent coastal nation".
The Scottish Fishermen's Federation gave the document a cautious welcome when it was published on Thursday.
But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon predicted the industry would be used as a "bargaining chip" in the future.
And Scottish Conservative MP Ross Thomson, a prominent Brexiteer who has been an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Theresa May's approach to Brexit, said the agreement was "unacceptable" as it meant "sovereignty over our waters" would be "sacrificed for a trade deal".
The EU's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is deeply unpopular with Scottish fishermen who want the UK to be negotiating access and quota rights as an independent coastal state by the end of 2020.
All 13 Scottish Conservative MPs - including Scottish Secretary David Mundell - warned Mrs May last week that anything less than this would be a "betrayal of Scotland".
They said they could not support any deal with the EU that would "prevent the UK from independently negotiating access and quota shares" as this would mean "we would not be leaving the CFP in practice".
The final draft of the political declaration - a text outlining the future relationship between the EU and the UK after Brexit - contains neutral language about fishing.
It says both sides will "use their best endeavours" to conclude talks in time for the UK to leave, and adds that they should cooperate on access to waters and quota shares "within the context of the overall economic partnership".
Mr Thomson and Ms Sturgeon both argue that the latter point shows ministers could use fishing as a "bargaining chip" in negotiations with Europe post-Brexit, and both have called on Mr Mundell to consider his position.
The first minister told MSPs that the declaration "represents another Tory sell out of Scottish fishermen".
She said: "What we see is that the Scottish fishing industry will be used as a bargaining chip in wider trade talks.
"In terms of David Mundell's position I would simply say this - his position is a matter for him, but if David Mundell is still in office by the end of today in light of this political declaration he will have forfeited forever any last remaining scrap of principle or credibility that he had."
The Scottish Secretary hit back, saying he was "not taking lessons on standing up for fishermen from Nicola Sturgeon".
He said: "The prime minister has fiercely resisted the efforts of EU states to make an explicit link between access to our waters and access to markets.
"We will negotiate and decide, as an independent coastal state, on access and quota on an annual basis, just like Norway and Iceland do now.
"The surest way to guarantee the EU access to Scottish waters would be to rejoin the CFP - exactly what Nicola Sturgeon is demanding."
Mrs May told MPs later in the day that "the fisheries agreement is not something we will be trading off against any other priorities".
The government has won some backing from the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, with chief executive Bertie Armstrong saying the declaration "gives the UK the power to assert its position as an independent coastal state with practical sovereignty over our waters and natural resources".
However he added that "we know that several EU nations will not give up their attempts to link access with trade in order to retain absolute rights to fish around our coastline".
He added: "We will continue to seek assurances from the UK government that it will remain steadfast. We will not rest until the future arrangements are signed, sealed and delivered and we secure this critical control over access to our waters and who catches what stocks, where and when."
Labour meanwhile has criticised the political declaration as "26 vague and ambitious pages of buzzwords".
Shadow Scottish Secretary Lesley Laird said the document "makes a mockery" of the "red line" set down by the Scottish Tories, saying that "David Mundell must resign with immediate effect, and his colleagues must make clear that they will not support this half-baked deal".

The UK and EU have failed to reach an agreement to move to the next stage of Brexit talks, Theresa May has said.
The prime minister said talks would reconvene "before the end of the week" and she was "confident we will conclude this positively".
The talks are understood to have broken down after the Democratic Unionist Party refused to accept concessions on the Irish border issue.
Downing Street said that was not the only outstanding problem.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said a deal had been done, but the UK appeared to change its mind over the Irish border question after pressure from the DUP.
"I am surprised and disappointed that the British government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today," he told a press conference in Dublin.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said: "Is it a complete disaster? No. Does it mean this whole process is totally doomed? No, it does not. Is it a pretty significant disappointment? Yes, it is.
"Officially, the line out of government tonight is that Number 10 was not taking a deal for granted... but a government source has actually told me that as recently as this morning the prime minister was told that the DUP had been squared off."
Northern Ireland's DUP has 10 MPs at Westminster, and their support is vital to the government.
This is because the Conservatives are without a Commons majority since June's general election, and rely on a deal with the DUP to ensure they can survive key votes.
How the talks broke down
Mrs May is understood to have broken off from talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Junker to speak to DUP leader Arlene Foster.
The UK had reportedly been prepared to accept that Northern Ireland may remain in the EU's customs union and single market in all but name.
But Mrs Foster then said her party "will not accept any form of regulatory divergence" that separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
"During the call it was made plain to the PM that the DUP had significant concerns about the deal being discussed that gave concessions to the Dublin government," said the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg.
"I understand Mrs Foster told Theresa May that she would not be able to support such a deal.
"It's been suggested too that there are 20 or so Conservative MPs who had serious misgivings about the compromises that were understood to be on the table."
DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party would not accept any Brexit deal that "separates" Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
Her party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson claimed Brussels has been trying to "bounce the prime minister into acceding to the shape of a deal they want" and many of her own backbenchers would not accept it.
He said the DUP objected to the form of words used in a draft document, which he said referred to "regulatory alignment" and "no regulatory divergence" between Northern Ireland and the EU.
Both phrases were "simply EU speak for keeping Northern Ireland in the European market" and "in effect, part of the United Kingdom would be kept within the single market," he said.
Asked if the DUP would pull out of the confidence and supply agreement they have with the Conservative government in Westminster over this issue, he said: "I think that her (Theresa May) problem isn't going to be just with the DUP".
Leo Varadkar says he wants a written guarantee that there will be no return to a "hard border" between the Republic and Northern Ireland - and this is what he thought he had got.
"I am surprised and disappointed that the British government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today," he said.
"I accept that the prime minister has asked for more time and I know that she faces many challenges, and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith.
"But my position and that of the Irish government is unequivocal: Ireland wants to proceed to phase two.
"However, we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees that there will not be a hard border in Ireland under any circumstances."
He said it was important to listen to the DUP, but also to bear in mind the position of other parties in Northern Ireland - and it should not be forgotten that the majority in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU.
Speaking at a joint press conference in Brussels with Mr Juncker, Mrs May said: "We have been negotiating hard. And a lot of progress has been made. And on many of the issues there is a common understanding.
"And it is clear, crucially, that we want to move forward together.
"But on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation."
The European Commission President said "it was not possible to reach complete agreement today" despite their "best efforts".
But he added: "I have to say that we were narrowing our positions to a huge extent today, thanks to the British prime minister, thanks to the willingness of the European Commission to have a fair deal with Britain.
"I'm still confident that we can reach sufficient progress before the European Council of 15 December.
"This is not a failure, this is the start of the very last round.
"I'm very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "The real reason for today's failure is the grubby deal the government did with the DUP after the election."
He added that "Labour has been clear from the outset that we need a jobs-first Brexit deal that works for the whole of the United Kingdom".
Conservative MPs emerging from a Downing Street briefing on the talks said they had been told Mrs May had not agreed the proposal on regulatory alignment put forward by the Irish government.
Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said that the Conservatives were "as one" with the DUP on the importance of keeping the United Kingdom together, and the mood among Tory MPs in the meeting was "contented, not divisive or unhappy".
Backbench Remain supporter Anna Soubry said no Conservative MP wanted Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the UK, which she said would be "a gift" to the Scottish National Party.
The "simple solution" would be for the whole of the UK to remain in the single market and customs union, she added.
Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "As each day goes by, it becomes clearer that the best deal for everyone is to stay in Europe. The people of the UK must be given a vote on the deal and an opportunity to exit from Brexit."
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that if Northern Ireland was allowed to operate under different rules there was "surely no good practical reason" why other parts of the UK could not do the same - a message echoed by Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
The EU says it will only recommend the start of talks about future trade arrangements when it deems "sufficient progress" has been made on three issues - the status of expat citizens, the "divorce" bill and the Northern Ireland border.
The UK has been set a deadline of this week to come forward with an improved offer on them, and hopes that the go-ahead for future talks will then be given at an EU leaders' summit on 14-15 December.
On the "divorce bill", the UK is understood to have recently increased its offer, which could be worth up to 50bn euros (£44bn).
On the issue of rights for the three million EU citizens in Britain, the UK has agreed that those who already have permanent residence will not have to pay to apply for settled status.
Those making a first time application for the right to stay after Brexit, however, will face a charge - reportedly similar to the cost of applying for a passport.
Settled status will grant those who have spent five years in the UK equal rights on healthcare, education, benefits and pensions to British citizens.
Ministers have already suggested people legally resident in the UK before an as yet unspecified cut-off date will be allowed to stay and they want to make the process "as easy as renewing a driving licence".

The UK has signed a "continuity" trade agreement with South Korea, allowing businesses to keep trading freely after Brexit.
International Trade Secretary Liz Truss signed the agreement with her South Korean counterpart Yoo Myung-hee in London.
The two countries agreed to a preliminary deal in June, marking the first post-Brexit deal secured in Asia.
Trade between the UK and South Korea totalled £14.6bn ($17.7bn) in 2018.
The agreement is roughly in line with the terms of the existing Korea-EU free trade deal.
The UK has sought to secure agreements with its trading partners as it prepares to leave the European Union in October.
"My priority is to make sure that British businesses are fully prepared for Brexit and ready to trade on Thursday 31 October," Ms Truss said in a statement.
Ms Yoo said the agreement would "remove much Brexit uncertainty" from the economic partnership between the two countries.
South Korea is a global leader in electronics, steel and the auto industry, and its exports to the UK reached £5.2bn last year.
Asia's fourth largest economy exports mostly cars and ships to Britain, while it imports crude oil, cars and whisky.
Ms Truss said the agreement would allow firms such as luxury carmaker Bentley to "keep trading as they do today, and they will be able to take advantage of the opportunities that Brexit offers".
Warren Clarke, Bentley brand manager for South Korea welcomed the "stability" brought by the deal.
"As the first luxury car brand to enter the market in 2006 Bentley Motors sees South Korea as very significant to our future business plans."
The UK is pushing to reach agreements with its trading partners as the Brexit deadline looms.
So far, the UK has signed 13 trade continuity agreements with 38 countries, including Israel, Norway and Chile.

The government has refused to comment on a leaked report branding its approach to Brexit as "chaotic".
The internal Irish government paper, obtained by RTÉ, documents EU figures' scathing assessments of cabinet members such as Brexit Secretary David Davis.
A Czech minister is quoted as describing Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson as "unimpressive".
The minister also warns of "political confusion" about the UK Government's approach to leaving the EU.
Downing Street said the government was working hard on its preparations for Brexit.
It had "a good and constructive" relationship with the Irish government, said a spokesperson.
Some in Europe have long been frustrated about the British government's approach to Brexit. But what was private has now become more public.
The Irish government refused to comment on the leak.
But some British MPs and officials suspect the Irish are using this moment of maximum leverage before a crucial EU summit next month to harden their position and put more pressure on the UK.
And some believe the leak should be seen in that context.
Downing Street insisted there was a good and constructive relationship between London and Dublin. But right now it is a relationship that is being tested.
The Irish government refused to comment on the leaked document, which was published by the country's national broadcaster RTÉ on Thursday.
"A core part of the work of our embassies and other missions abroad is to report on the views of our partners on what is a strategically vital issue for Ireland," said an Irish government spokesperson.
"These routine reports are internal and confidential and are not intended for the public domain."
RTE's Europe Editor, Tony Connelly, who got hold of the leaked report, said it reflected "private, anxious conversations that are being held in chancelleries and ministries around Europe when Irish officials are present".
"But in a sense we've all known - and this has been articulated in public by people like Jean Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk - that there is essentially disarray within the Tory party, within the cabinet on Brexit and that is reflected in the way people view the British strategy," he told the BBC's Brexitcast podcast.
The leaked document is based on a compilation of political reports from Irish embassies across Europe, dated between 6 and 10 November.
It claims that Brexit was barely mentioned during a meeting on 23 October between Mr Davis and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and French Minister for European Affairs Nathalie Loiseau - something which was viewed as a wasted opportunity.
"Despite having billed this in the media in advance as a meeting to 'unblock' French resistance, Mr Davis hardly mentioned Brexit at all during the meeting, much to French surprise, focusing instead on foreign policy issues," the paper states.
The Czech deputy minister for foreign affairs, Jakub Durr, told officials he felt "sorry for British ambassadors around the EU trying to communicate a coherent message when there is political confusion at home".
Meanwhile, during a meeting in Luxembourg, a British judge at the European Court of Justice is quoted bemoaning "the quality of politicians in Westminster".
The judge, Ian Forrester, also wondered if the British public would view Brexit as "a great mistake" when they realised what leaving the EU entailed, according to the leaked paper.
The report highlights the significant concerns that will make it difficult to progress negotiations to a second phase at next month's summit.
Overall, the various ministries across the EU expressed doubt that the UK would be permitted to move to the second phase of talks unless it brought forward solutions to the issue of the UK's financial liabilities on leaving the EU.
They noted that the EU remained united at 27 countries, and that Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, had appeared far from optimistic that a breakthrough would happen at the December summit.
On Thursday, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said he was hopeful agreement could be reached on Irish-related issues by mid-December to move Brexit talks to the next phase, but that "it is by no means pre-determined".
Earlier this month, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said it was likely" EU leaders would give the green light for Brexit talks to focus on trade, at their meeting in December.
Mr Varadkar said this was his own belief rather than a forecast of any European Council decision.
The leak comes days after Mr Varadkar was branded as "reckless" by the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.
Mr Varadkar "should know better" than to "play around" with Northern Ireland over Brexit, DUP leader Arlene Foster said after the Taoiseach suggested leaving the EU could jeopardise the peace process.
The Irish government says any hard border with Northern Ireland should be off the table.
And an EU paper recently suggested Northern Ireland would have to continue to follow many EU rules after Brexit, if a hard border was to be avoided.
It hinted Northern Ireland may need to stay in the EU customs union if there were to be no checks at the border.
That is something the UK Conservative government - supported in key votes by the DUP at Westminster - has said it can not accept as it would effectively create a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The leaked report was compiled just weeks after the EU summit in Brussels during which EU leaders told Theresa May that Britain needed to do more on the three key issues: citizens' rights, the UK's financial obligation and the Irish border.

The UK government has tried hard to reassure EU citizens living in the UK - and Britons abroad - that they will be protected from deportation after Brexit.
But many people do not fit neatly into either category, throwing up complex and unexpected dilemmas for both the Home Office and the individuals concerned.
Some, such as Ursula Crosby, who contacted the BBC with her story, have been unable to get a clear answer about how to secure residency rights, and citizenship, when Britain leaves the EU, in March 2019.
Ms Crosby retired to Portugal five years ago after 40 years of working as a physiotherapist in NHS hospitals, in London and Shrewsbury. She says she felt like spreading her wings and "doing something a bit different" while she could.
She is a German citizen but under free movement rules she had the security of knowing she could return to the UK, where her daughter lives and where she still owns property, when she wanted to.
Brexit has changed that. The UK has told EU citizens they will be able to apply for "settled status" if they have been living in the UK for five years or have been granted indefinite leave to remain.
It is unclear how this will apply to Ms Crosby, who was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 1979.
Indefinite leave to remain - despite the name - usually expires if you have left the country for two years or more, as is the case with Ms Crosby.
She has received conflicting advice from UK officials about whether she would qualify for settled status and no-one has been able to tell her what will happen if Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
For all the government's assurances about how easy it will be for EU citizens after Brexit, getting a straight answer on all but the most straightforward of cases is very difficult, if the experience of researching this article is anything to go by.
At one point, Ms Crosby was referred to an independent immigration adviser, who told her she would be all right because Britain would probably stay in the European Economic Area after Brexit - which would be news to Prime Minister Theresa May, who has repeatedly ruled that out.
She is now torn between selling up and moving back to the UK before Britain leaves the EU in March, or risking moving back at a later date, during the 21-month transition period that will follow Brexit, in the hope that she can still secure settled status.
"I am sure I could live in Germany but I wouldn't really want to live in Germany," says the 68-year-old.
"I no longer have any connections there, as such. My parents are dead. I have a cousin in Germany.
"I could stay in Portugal but I am not sure I would want to. It was never my intention to and I still have property in England.
"If I ask anybody who meets me, they all think I am British."
She first came to the UK in 1971, on a work permit, long before EU free movement rules came into force, and was married to a British man for many years.
She now regrets not applying for British citizenship when she had the chance but, like many others, she did not think she needed to.
"There are probably quite a lot of people in this situation," says immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, "people that used to live in the UK, perhaps for a very long time, who were assuming they would be able to come back to the UK because it is a member of the EU.
"They will probably be all right if they come back during the transition period."
But, he adds, many will feel "they have got to come back now or they will lose the chance".
Ms Crosby says she can't understand why, as someone in receipt of a full UK state pension, as well as an NHS pension, she may have to wait five years after returning to the UK to qualify for British citizenship, the same as someone from an EU country who has never lived there.
"I am an honest person, I have no convictions, I paid my taxes and if I go back I will be able to support myself. Am I doing any harm?" she says.
The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases, but a spokeswoman said: "After we leave the EU, in March 2019, there will be an implementation period that ends on 31 December 2020, during which EU citizens and their family members will be free to live, work and study in the UK as they do now.
"EU citizens and their family members who become resident in the UK during the implementation period will be able to make an application to the EU Settlement Scheme and be eligible for temporary leave to remain and, after five years' lawful residence, settled status, under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement.
"The rights of those EU citizens arriving during the implementation period will be safeguarded on the same terms as has been agreed for those EU citizens resident in the UK before we leave the EU."
Ms Crosby remains unconvinced by the Home Office's reassurances - and she has written to the department to try to get some clear guidance on what she should do next.
"I am not sure I can rely on the immigration system to relax their very inflexible rules," she says.
"My worst fear is that I sell up here, move back to England and then find out that it would not have been necessary."

So what does the UK political upheaval mean for Brexit negotiations, slated to start in 10 days' time?
And does the hung parliament indicate that a hard Brexit, a softer Brexit or a cliff-edge Brexit (where there's no deal and the UK simply "falls out" of the EU) becomes more likely?
All questions redirected firmly today by Brussels back to the Dover side of the Channel.
The ball is very much in Britain's court.
Brexit - to state the obvious - has been driven by Britain all along.
Almost a year ago, the UK voted to leave the EU. Since then it has been riven by divisions between Leavers and Remainers, and between fans of so-called hard Brexit - where the UK leaves the EU single market and the customs union - and a softer Brexit, where the UK maintains the benefits of those associations.
It was the British government that delayed the possible start of face-to-face Brexit negotiations, by calling a snap election. And it is the new British government that can say, again, it needs more time, s'il vous plait.
The EU position is that it never wanted the UK to leave, but since Brexit is happening, it is ready and waiting.
While the UK has struggled internally with political turmoil ever since its referendum, Brussels has had almost 12 months to quietly get its Brexit ducks in a row and ensure a unified and detailed negotiating position, on behalf of the 27 member states, the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Theresa May called the general election, she said, hoping for a strong mandate, to improve her hand at the Brexit negotiating table.
This plan has backfired horribly.
But Brussels is not rubbing its hands with glee. It wants Brexit done and over with. Yesterday.
The EU has plenty more headaches to deal with: ongoing migration and eurozone problems, security concerns about Russia and an unpredictable US president... to name but a few.
UK election result: How the world reacted
Election 2017: Key points at-a-glance
Brexit: All you need to know
What the election result means for Brexit
Brussels doesn't care what political flavour the new UK government has, it just wants a stable UK government, with a secure prime minister at its helm, who will stay in place for the duration of the negotiations and who won't waver and U-turn after agreements are made.
A wobbly British premier, unable to make tough decisions and sell them at home, increases the possibility of no Brexit deal at all - the so-called cliff-edge scenario - and that would hurt both the EU and UK badly.
Banks, businesses, ports and flights, the politically sensitive and economically significant Irish border, EU citizens living in the UK, UK citizens in the rest of the EU, UK healthcare - the list is endless UK-side.
The EU's pressing concern is to get the UK to honour long-term financial commitments before it leaves, otherwise there'll be a yawning hole in Brussels' multi-annual budget.
EU unity - currently so evident on the Brexit question - would evaporate in a flash if member states suddenly had a cat fight over having to pay extra, or receive less money, should the UK walk out without stumping up a considerable sum.
On a day full of unanswered questions, one thing is certain: that clock is ticking.
The UK formally launched the Brexit process back in March. It now has only until March 2019 to secure a divorce settlement, never mind decide future EU-UK trade and other relations.
The later Brexit talks start, the less time there is to agree a deal.
The UK can always request an extension to the negotiations; it could also ask to cancel the process and return to the EU fold - though no one in Brussels believes that likely to happen. But both those scenarios require unanimous approval by the 27 EU countries and the European Parliament.
Theresa May's dream of providing strong and stable leadership is in tatters.
But the political disarray in the UK has helped the EU in some quarters. It has dampened (though not extinguished) Eurosceptic rhetoric across the continent. And determination to protect the EU in a Brexit deal has united normally fractious EU member states - for now.
Today, after so many of its own crises, the EU is feeling stronger and more stable than it has in a long time, thanks to Brexit.

It is clear that the UK will face a tough divorce from the European Union after European Council President Donald Tusk characterised the forthcoming talks as "difficult, complex" and possibly "confrontational".
From the outset it is clear that the EU side will control the agenda.
That was underlined again on Friday in an early skirmish over procedure. Theresa May wanted divorce talks to run in parallel with negotiations about a future trading relationship. That won't happen.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been quick to rule that out and was given swift backing by the French president Francois Hollande. That was reinforced again on Friday with the leak of the European Council's negotiating guidelines.
Why is this so important?
Europe's leaders want to ensure that Britain agrees to the principles governing the terms of Brexit as a condition for talks continuing. As Mr Tusk said, the UK cannot just walk away without paying debts.
On the EU side there is another calculation: it will be easier to ensure unity among the 27 member states on the terms of the divorce, rather than on trade, when different national interests could come into play.
Preserving unity is a fundamental concern and Mr Tusk insisted that the EU "will act as one".
By insisting that the principles of the divorce bill be settled first, the leaders of the 27 are also stopping Mrs May using payments as a bargaining chip over the future trading relationship.
There were, however, some hints at flexibility, with Mr Tusk saying that the EU would monitor the negotiations and determine when "sufficient progress had been achieved to allow talks to proceed to the next phase of a future relationship".
Of course, it is the EU that will decide what progress has been made but those negotiations on trade could begin as early as the autumn.
For the EU there are four priorities in the talks: settling the divorce bill which some in Brussels have estimated at €60bn (£50bn), establishing the future status of EU citizens living in the UK, keeping open Northern Ireland's borders and agreeing which laws companies will operate under post-Brexit.
But EU leaders have opened the door to holding trade talks before Brexit has been completed and some in the UK will see that as a promising gesture.
The negotiating guidelines allow for a transition period before a future trading agreement is in place. In Brussels there is an expectation that some kind of transition period will be needed after the divorce talks have been completed.
A trade deal can only be formally concluded once the UK has ended its membership.
The EU sees that transitional period as being "limited" and will insist that the UK continues to abide by Union rules during this period. That could prove very controversial because it means there is a very real prospect that, come the next UK general election in 2020, some payments to the EU are still being made with a continuing role for the European Court.
There are differences among Europe's leaders over how constructive they are willing to be in the talks. Some want to demonstrate that leaving the EU is not easy, that divorce must hurt.
The French believe there must be an element of pain to deter others, although the prospect of other countries leaving is currently very remote. Mr Tusk's perspective is that the process of leaving is "punitive" enough without further punishment being necessary.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Friday that in calls he had made over the past two days there had been "lots of goodwill' from European Union ministers.
The wider reaction is that the UK, by triggering Article 50, has stepped into the unknown and taken a huge risk. "A highly indebted Britain has most to lose from uncertainty," was one assessment.
The mood in the European press has been generally gloomy, seeing departure as an act of self-harm, of Britain being tied up in Kafkaesque procedures, of British citizens being worse off by €5,000 (£4,300) a year.
Some papers focused on the UK's future isolation, repeating what passes for accepted wisdom in Brussels that in a global world countries are better off in larger blocs. Among some commentators there was the scarcely veiled hope that at some stage the UK will return to the European fold, tail between legs.
The British strategy is to be constructive towards the EU project and to deliver on the "sincere co-operation" it has promised Angela Merkel.
It has accepted that some payments will have to be made to meet existing obligations, that EU citizens will have to retain rights during the negotiating period and that there may be some limited role for the EU's courts in settling trade disputes.
The UK has some cards: it can offer help with security and intelligence but, by tying that assistance to the future trading relationship, it prompted German MPs to cry "blackmail". Mr Johnson responded by saying that Britain's commitment to EU defence was "unconditional".
But it is clear that every time the UK tries to play its cards there will be voices, particularly from the European Parliament, in full complaint. Mrs May and her team will have to handle the parliament with great skill, as it will have a say on any eventual deal.
Europe will be on alert for any attempt by Britain to divide and rule the remaining 27 EU countries. Mrs Merkel has set out the German interest: despite intensive lobbying from German car manufacturers it is the unity and integrity of the European Union that will be the priority - the EU must not be damaged or weakened by these negotiations.
These guidelines will be fleshed out into a more comprehensive negotiating document that will be presented to Europe's leaders at the end of April.
Mrs May knows compromises will have to be made to avoid the talks breaking down, but her room for manoeuvre is limited by sections of her own party who are determined to ensure a clean break with the EU.

British farmers would produce more food themselves in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a trade deal, a cabinet minister has suggested.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling was responding to industry claims that food prices could rise sharply in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
If this happened, he said the UK would respond by "growing more here and buying more from around the world".
Labour said his comments amounted to telling people to "dig for no deal".
The National Farmers Union has argued Brexit is an opportunity to "reverse the downward trend" in the UK's self-sufficiency in food but insisted this should not be done by "closing off markets".
Mr Grayling's comments comes amid fresh warnings from supermarket bosses that the UK leaving the EU in March 2019 without at least the outline of a future trade partnership would be bad for British consumers.
Sainsbury's chairman David Tyler told the Sunday Times that a no-deal Brexit could result in an average 22% tariff on all EU food bought by British retailers.
The British Retail Consortium has said this could translate into a minimum 9% rise in the cost of tomatoes, 5% for cheddar and 5% for beef, while warning the figures could actually be much higher.
Agricultural products are one of the UK's most important exports while the UK sources roughly 70% of the food it imports from the EU, leading to claims that items could "rot" at the border if there are hard customs checks or supply chains are disrupted after Brexit.
Given the UK's importance to farmers across Europe, Mr Grayling said it was not in their interests to see an outcome which resulted in higher costs and new obstacles to trade.
"You may remember the brouhaha over the Walloon farmers when they objected to the Canadian trade deal. I had a look to see who their biggest customer was - it was us," he told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One.
"We are the biggest customers of the Walloonian farmers - they will be damaged if we don't have a deal."
But if the UK ended up without a deal, which would see it default to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, Mr Grayling suggested domestic producers and retailers would respond by rethinking their sourcing.
"What it would mean would be that supermarkets bought more from home, that British farmers grew more and that they bought more from around the world," he added.
"What we will do is grow more here and buy more from around the world but that will mean bad news for continental farmers and that is why it will not happen - it is in their interests to reach a deal."
The British Retail Consortium said maintaining tariff-free trade with the EU during a post-Brexit transitional period was vital to preventing the UK facing potential tariffs straightaway of up to 40% on some beef and dairy products under WTO rules.
The trade body, which recently published research on the subject, acknowledges forecasting the consequent impact on food costs is complex and a range of other factors would have to be taken into account.
But it said there was a risk that domestic producers could put up their own prices to increase their competitiveness and if this happened, the cost of items like tomatoes could rise by up to 18%, broccoli by up to 10% and cheddar by a maximum of 32%.
A spokeswoman said that while retailers could review their buying policies in the medium to long term to adjust, it was "very unrealistic to expect farmers to make up the surplus of produce straight away".
The NFU has said the UK's ability to feed itself has stagnated and if the country relied entirely on home-grown produce, the cupboard would look bare after about seven months.
Labour said farmers, as much as anyone, wanted to avoid a "cliff-edge" departure from the EU.
"Rather than planning for no deal, ministers appear to be telling us to dig for no deal," said shadow Brexit minister Jenny Chapman. "British farmers already work incredibly hard and to suggest that they could simply grow more food is ridiculous."

The government is paying to promote Theresa May's Brexit deal on Google - but is facing a battle with opponents of the deal using very similar headlines.
The Cabinet Office says it will reveal how much is being spent to push the government's message to the top of the rankings when people search "what is the Brexit deal?".
However, we may not find out until after MPs vote on the deal next month.
And the government ad keeps being knocked off the top spot by a campaign group called "Britain's Future", which says May's deal betrays Brexit.
The government page says "if we reject this deal, we will go back to square one".
The two competing sites appear to have a similar look and feel when they appear in Google search results.
Google said this did not break the terms of conditions of its site - which routinely allocates the top search spot based on an ad auction.
Theresa May is going all out to sell her deal to the public before MPs - a majority of whom are thought to be against it - vote on 11 December.
The Cabinet Office does publish how much it spends on marketing government policies, for example it spent £44,219 on Facebook's services in September.
But we are unlikely to know how much it has spent on promoting Theresa May's deal on Google until after MPs have voted on it.
A government spokesperson said: "Communicating government policy effectively to the public is a core function of the Civil Service.
"We have reached a deal that is good for the UK, good for its citizens, and good for business and we will be communicating that to the country. Any costs associated with this will be published in the usual way."
First, try yourself by clicking this link. Most people see a promoted link at the top of the results, clearly labelled "ad".
This means somebody is paying for this site to be at the top of your results.
However, the advert you see will vary depending on the time of day and where you are in the world.
You might see this advert, for a page called "Brexit Deal Explained", paid for by the government.
It links to a website called "Brexit Deal Explained" which sets out the government's case for the EU withdrawal agreement - and warns about the dangers of a no-deal Brexit.
The website has video explainers about the deal as well as linking to key documents.
It also contains some supportive quotes (although this one falls rather short of a ringing endorsement).
The government is also paying to promote the deal with videos on social media.
Some people get a different result when they Google the same phrase.
This sponsored result appears very similar but if you look closely you can see it says the deal "betrays Brexit".
This article has been published by an organisation called "Britain's Future" which says it is "dedicated to making a positive, optimistic case for Brexit".
On the organisation's homepage is a series of articles criticising May's deal from a pro-Brexit perspective, arguing the deal does not deliver on the referendum result.
Britain's Future has also put up several Facebook videos in recent days criticising May's deal.
The site is run by Tim Dawson, a journalist who has written for right-leaning publications like the Telegraph and Spectator.
Tim Dawson, who described himself to the BBC as a "committed Brexiteer" said he had spent about £2,000 on his campaign.
"I'm raising small donations from friends and fellow Brexiteers", said Mr Dawson, who added that he was not prepared to reveal the identity of those who had given money.
The homepage looks rather similar to the government's one but says "the government has surrendered to the EU".
The page has a video explainer giving the opposite perspective on May's deal, giving reasons why it thinks the agreement is bad for the UK.
When BBC journalists in other countries searched for the phrase they got different results, showing the two adverts above are targeted at Google users based in the UK.
Here is what comes up when you search for the phrase in Brussels.
One sponsored result is for an organisation called KGH Customs, which says it "can provide you with the people, insights and services to streamline and add value to your customs procedures".
Another is for the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a think tank based in Canada.
While the UK results are aimed at the general public, the Brussels adverts seem to be aimed at policy insiders.
Searching the same phrase in France and Germany, on the other hand, brings up an advert for Barclays Investment Bank.
Google says these are not targeted adverts where companies choose to push messages to particular audiences such as an age group or people living in a certain area of the country.
Targeted advertising, particularly on Facebook, has been a major - and controversial - feature of recent election campaigns in the UK and abroad.
Who spent what on Facebook during 2017 election campaign?
Google says the results appear differently for different people because of the "keyword bidding system".
Advertisers can choose to push messages based on searches for particular keywords such as "what is the Brexit deal".
According to Google, when a customer searches for a term matching the keyword, "your ad can enter an auction to determine if it will show... Since the auction process is repeated for every search on Google, each auction can have potentially different results depending on the competition at that moment."
This means two people sitting next to each other may see a different advert while searching the same thing despite the ads not being "targeted" as such - Google does not allow personalised advertising for political groups and other "prohibited categories".
One peculiar outcome of this is that some Google users may see the two similar-looking adverts on top of each other - one supporting May's deal and one opposing it.

The UK government has named 24 devolved areas where it wants to temporarily retain power following Brexit.
Ministers in the Scottish and Welsh governments want subjects such as food labelling and animal welfare to come under their control.
However, UK ministers are bidding to oversee those areas, and others on the list, when the UK leaves the EU.
The Scottish government has accused the UK government of a power grab and has introduced its own Brexit legislation.
Ministers at Westminster insist that "the vast majority of powers returning from Brussels will start off in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast".
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington, who is conducting talks with the devolved governments, said: "There is a much smaller group of powers where the devolved governments will be required to follow current EU laws for a little bit longer while we work out a new UK approach."
The 24 policy areas expected to require a UK legislative approach for a temporary period include:
Mr Lidington told BBC Scotland that if these policy areas were not incorporated into UK-wide frameworks then there would be a loss of jobs and "probably a higher price for consumers".
He explained: "What will not help either customers or producers is to have different sets of food labelling or food hygiene or safety regulations in different parts of the UK.
"All that does is add to costs, loss of jobs amongst producers and it leads to less choice, probably a higher price for consumers.
"The same applies with manufacturers, if you're a paint manufacturer in Wales you've got to stick to some chemical standards in producing your paint, but you want those to be the same as the paint standards in Scotland or Northern Ireland because you are a customer there. It just makes sense that we do so much trade in internal borders in the UK that we have a set of common sense rules agreed.
"I hope between the different governments, laid out in legislation, that means producers and consumers will benefit."
First Ministers Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones are due to hold talks with the prime minister next week.
Both the Scottish and Welsh governments have produced plans for continuity bills as a fallback option to deal with legal uncertainties caused by Brexit if they cannot agree to consent to the UK government's legislation.
Responding to the publication, Scottish Brexit minister Mike Russell said: "This list simply confirms the UK government's plans for a power grab.
"Under the EU Withdrawal Bill the UK will have the right to take control of any of the powers on this list.
"However, the publication of the categories demonstrates the threat is most immediate in key devolved areas such as agriculture, GM crops, fishing, environmental policy, public procurement, food standards and a range of other areas.
"Unless the bill is changed Westminster could soon be in control of these policies amounting to a major power grab and a re-writing of the devolution settlement the people of Scotland voted for so decisively."
The UK government's analysis paper, which was published on Friday, detailed 49 policy areas where no further action was required; 82 policy areas where non-legislative common frameworks might be required and 24 policy areas that are "subject to more detailed discussion to explore whether legislative common framework arrangements might be needed, in whole or in part".
There was confusion at the Scottish Labour conference in Dundee when MP Lesley Laird demanded that the "shroud of secrecy" over the row be lifted, three hours after the full list of powers had been published.
Agricultural support - Policies and regulations relating to income, market support, agriculture, productivity and maintenance grants.
Agriculture, fertiliser regulations - Common standards for compositional ingredients, labelling, packaging, sampling and analysis of fertilisers.
Agriculture, GMO marketing and cultivation - Standards for marketing and cultivation of genetically modified organisms.
Agriculture, organic farming - Regulations setting out standards for organic production certification.
Agriculture, zootech - Rules on breeding and trade in pedigree animals and germinal products in the EU and the treatment of imports from third countries.
Animal health and traceability - EU rules and standards that aim to maintain animal health and allow their movement, including policies covering prevention of disease, control of disease surveillance movement of livestock, pet passports and veterinary medicines.
Animal welfare -  On-farm issues, movement of livestock and slaughter.
Chemicals regulation (including pesticides) - Classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures; the placing on the market and use of biocidal products; the export and import of hazardous chemicals; the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals and plant protection products.
Elements of reciprocal healthcare
Environmental quality, chemicals - Regulation of the manufacture, authorisation and sale and use of chemical products .
Environmental quality, ozone depleting, substances and F-gases - The UK has international obligations under the Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of ODS, phase down hydrofluorocarbons by 85% by 2036, licence imports and exports and report on usage to the UN.
Environmental quality, pesticides - Regulations governing the authorisation and use of pesticide products and the maximum residue levels in food, and a framework for action on sustainable use of pesticides.
Environmental quality, waste packaging and product regulations - Product standards including for packaging (e.g. ROHS in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, Batteries and Vehicles) in order to manage waste.
Fisheries management and support - Rules relating to the sustainability of fisheries (quotas), access to waters, conservation measures, enforcement and financial support.
Food and feed safety and hygiene law -  Food and feed safety and hygiene; food and feed law enforcement (official controls); food safety labelling; risk analysis; and incident handling.
Food compositional standards - Minimum standards for a range of specific food commodities such as sugars, coffee, honey, caseins, condensed milk, chocolate, jams, fruit juices and bottled water.
Food labelling  - Requirements on provision of information to consumers on food labels.
Hazardous substances planning -  Land-use planning, including: planning controls relating to the storage of hazardous substances and handling development proposals for hazardous establishments.
Implementation of EU Emissions Trading System - This directive area establishes the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme for greenhouse gas. The Scheme sets a maximum amount of greenhouse gas that can be emitted by all participating installations and aircrafts; these operators then monitor, verify and report their emissions, and must surrender allowances equivalent to their emissions annually.
Mutual recognition of professional qualifications - Directives that create systems for the recognition for professional qualifications and professional experience throughout the EU. Allowing EU professionals to work in regulated professions in other EU states on either a permanent or temporary basis.
Nutrition health claims, composition and labelling -  Nutrition and health claims made on food; food for special medical purposes and weight control; food intended for infants; the addition of vitamins and other substances to food; and food supplements.
Plant health, seeds and propagating material -  Import and internal EU movement of plants and plant products, risk assessment of new plant pests and outbreak management. Assurance and auditing of policies across the UK to protect plant biosecurity. Requirements for plant variety rights, registration of plant varieties and quality assurance of marketed seed and propagating material.
Public procurement  -  The regime provided by the EU procurement Directives, covering public procurement contracts for supplies, services, works and concessions above certain financial thresholds awarded by the public sector and by utilities operating in the energy, water, transport and postal services sectors.
Services Directive - Directive that seeks to realise the full potential of services markets in Europe by removing legal and administrative barriers to trade by increasing transparency and making it easier for businesses and consumers to provide or use services in the EU Single Market.

David Miliband has urged the UK to seek a "safe harbour" after Brexit by staying in the European Economic Area.
The ex-Labour foreign secretary said Jeremy Corbyn, who has ruled out the so-called Norway model, risked becoming the "midwife of a hard Brexit".
Ministers say EEA membership would require the UK to accept most EU rules as well as freedom of movement.
But Mr Milband told the BBC that the UK must get real, saying that 60% of UK trade was "under European aegis".
Mr Miliband, who has worked for the International Rescue Committee in New York since 2013, joined politicians from other parties who favour retaining the closest links with the EU for a press conference on Monday.
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who backs a clean break with the EU after the end of the transition period in December 2020, said their actions were "the last rearguard action to stop Brexit".
Speaking at rice manufacturer Tilda's factory in Essex, Mr Miliband, former Lib Dem leader Sir Nick Clegg and Tory former education secretary Nicky Morgan urged Parliament to force the government's hand by voting for the UK to remain in some form of customs union as well as retaining full access to the single market.
Mrs Morgan said the "differing and irreconcilable" views of ministers meant Parliament "had to step up to the plate".
Urging MPs to resist "siren voices" arguing the UK could replicate existing economic benefits outside the customs union and single market, she said the UK was being asked to "experiment" with a new trade policy without any idea of its costs.
"That is not a manifestation of democracy, it is a tyranny, a distortion of the referendum result and MPs should call it out," she said.
Asked why after more than five years out of British politics, the public should listen to him, Mr Miliband said many of the complex, vital issues now being discussed simply did not feature in the Brexit referendum.
"I don't take the referendum result as the end of the story," he said. "Democracy cannot be allowed to end on 23 June 2016, debate cannot be allowed to end."
Sir Nick Clegg said while Brexiteers "parroted the language of global Britain", their policies would result in the "greatest introduction" of trade barriers since World War Two.
Earlier, Mr Miliband told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the move was about cross-party working in the national interest, not creating a new political movement or new centrist political party.
Many Labour MPs, and some Tories, favour the so-called "Norway model" of remaining in the EEA - which is an economic grouping of all EU countries as well as Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland.
EEA membership would see the UK retain full access to the EU's internal market of 300 million consumers in return for making financial contributions and accepting most EU laws.
Free movement laws would also apply - so EU citizens could move to all EEA countries to work and live.
The government says this would be counter to the EU referendum, which Mrs May has described as "a vote to take control of our borders, laws and money".
Mr Miliband said EEA membership would allow the UK to have "structured" trade relations with the EU in goods and services, citing support from Norway for the UK to be a member.
While the EU accounted for 40% of the UK's direct trade with the EU, Mr Miliband said that if you took into account third-party EU trade agreements with other countries, the figure was about 60%.
"Membership of the EEA, as what I would call a safe harbour for Britain after Brexit, is on the table for every MP and party leader," he said.
Mr Miliband joined a growing chorus of senior Labour figures - including former Lord Kinnock - calling on Mr Corbyn to rethink his position ruling out the EEA option.
"If Jeremy Corbyn is not careful, he will be the midwife of a hard Brexit that will threaten the living standards of the very people that he says he wants to stand up to represent," he said.
But Mr Rees-Mogg, who chairs the influential European Research Group of Conservative MPs, said it was a "last-gasp effort" by those who want the UK to stay in the EU.
"The Remainers are fighting their last rear-guard action to try and stop Brexit," he told LBC Radio.
"They're doing it in the House of Lords and there's this grouping that's come out today. If that doesn't succeed... then we're on to what the negotiation says what is going to be implemented, and that, I think, will make the prime minister's position much easier."
Theresa May is holding a series of meetings with Tory MPs in Downing Street to set out the two options for future customs arrangements proposed by the government.
The CBI employers group, which backs remaining in a full customs union with the EU, warned that the issue needed to be resolved "within days".
"If we don't break the impasse on this customs decision, everybody will be affected - manufacturers, services companies, retailers," said its director Carolyn Fairbairn. "An awful lot hangs on this now."

The UK has objected to Gibraltar being described as a "colony" in European Union legislation allowing UK nationals to travel to the EU after Brexit.
The EU proposed allowing visa-free travel for Britons in November.
The Spanish government has since insisted a footnote be added describing Gibraltar as a "colony" and referring to "controversy" over its status.
The UK's ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, objected to it at a meeting in Brussels earlier.
A UK government spokesperson said: "The EU's provisions for visa-free travel into and out of the [passport-free] Schengen area cover Gibraltar, and mean that in any scenario, British nationals from Gibraltar will be able to travel for short stays in and out of Spain and other countries in the Schengen area.
"Gibraltar is not a colony and it is completely inappropriate to describe it in this way.
"Gibraltar is a full part of the UK family and has a mature and modern constitutional relationship with the UK.
"This will not change due to our exit from the EU. All parties should respect the people of Gibraltar's democratic wish to be British."
Downing Street also condemned the description of Gibraltar as a "colony" in the draft EU document.
Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo accused Madrid of trying to "bully" the British Overseas Territory by rejecting British demands for the footnote to be removed.
"No one will be surprised to hear the Spanish government making provocative statements in respect of Gibraltar.
"The 32,000 people of Gibraltar are used to the constant attempts by successive Spanish governments to bully us in every possible way.
"This is no different to the sort of abuse we have had from former Spanish administrations."
In November, the European Commission offered visa-free travel for UK nationals coming to the EU for a short stay in the event of a no-deal Brexit on 29 March, as long as the UK offers the same in return.
At a meeting of EU ambassadors earlier, member states agreed their position on the proposed new law.
The European Council document says in a footnote: "Gibraltar is a colony of the British Crown.
"There is a controversy between Spain and the United Kingdom concerning the sovereignty over Gibraltar, a territory for which a solution has to be reached in light of the relevant resolutions and decisions of the General Assembly of the United Nations."
The document will now be discussed by the European Parliament and the European Commission before becoming law.
The EU withdrawal agreement agreed with the UK, proposes a special protocol creating several working groups between Madrid and London to discuss the future of Gibraltar.
The BBC's Brussels reporter Adam Fleming said the Spanish government sees this as giving it a bigger say in the status of Gibraltar, and the issue is likely to be raised again as Brexit approaches, and beyond.
But the UK insists the protocol is just about the technicalities of how Brexit will work in Gibraltar, he added.
Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, but Spain has continued to press its claim for sovereignty - which is rejected by both the UK and the residents of Gibraltar itself.
In December, the United Nations called on Spain and Britain to find a "definitive solution" to their long-running dispute.
The UN General Assembly adopted a recommendation from its Decolonisation Committee for the two countries to reach a solution through "dialogue and co-operation".
Gibraltarians rejected by 99% to 1% the idea of the UK sharing sovereignty with Spain in a vote in 2002 and in a previous referendum in 1967.
But Gibraltar voted by 96% to stay in the EU in the 2016 referendum.

British companies may be frozen out of the European space industry after Brexit, the European Commission says, citing security concerns.
The UK's involvement in the Galileo project, which aims to build a European rival to the American GPS system, will have to be "readjusted", it added.
British firms have already contributed to Galileo and may lose future work.
UK ministers oppose the commission's view and want the country to remain involved in "all aspects" of the work.
According to the Financial Times, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson was furious when he was informed of the move, which could mean the UK armed forces being excluded from the new GPS system.
The newspaper also reports that the Ministry of Defence has looked at the possibility of the UK launching its own system if it is excluded from Galileo.
During a visit to Estonia, Mr Williamson said the commission's approach was "deeply disappointing".
He said the decision "not only will be detrimental to Britain but will also be highly detrimental to European security".
"I very much hope the EU Commission will take the opportunity to see sense, recalibrate its position and not play politics on something that is so vitally important," Mr Williamson said.
The Financial Times describes the issue as "highly charged politically" because French companies are expected to benefit from the UK's proposed exclusion.
The Financial Times reports that in its letter to the UK government, the European Commission said security elements of the GPS project needed to be protected to avoid them being "irretrievably compromised" for several years by being shared with the UK, which will be a "third party" after Brexit.
Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein said it was "the right time to start thinking about adjusting co-operation" on Galileo because the the UK becomes a "third country" - ie no longer a member of the EU - on 29 March, 2019.
British company SSTL, which assembles the timing and navigation payloads on the spacecraft at its Surrey factory, is unlikely to have completed its share of the production effort by that date.
Greg Clark, the business secretary, said British involvement in Galileo should continue as part of the hoped-for "deep and special partnership" being negotiated with the EU.
"The UK has a world-leading space sector that has contributed a significant amount of specialist expertise to the Galileo programme," he said, emphasising its importance to European security.

Transport companies are being asked to bid to provide extra freight capacity to be used in the event of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
The hurried ferry procurement process as the UK prepared to leave the EU on 29 March cost taxpayers more than £85m.
That included £34m in a settlement and legal fees with Eurotunnel - which said it was not considered for the contract.
The government said it would not be committing to buying extra capacity but would have options to do so if needed.
"The Department for Transport is putting in place a freight capacity framework agreement that will provide government departments with the ability to secure freight capacity for our critical supply chains as and when required," a spokesman said.
"This framework does not commit the government to purchasing or reserving any freight capacity, but it does provide a flexible list of operators and options for the provision of the capacity that can be drawn upon if needed."
The government had previously awarded Seaborne Freight, DFDS and Brittany Ferries contracts worth more than £100m - all of which were eventually cancelled.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling faced calls to resign after he was forced to axe a £13.8m contract with Seaborne Freight, a company with no ships or trading history.
All three previous contracts - intended to offer extra capacity and relieve potential congestion at ports like Dover - had been awarded without a full public tender process and prompted legal action from Eurotunnel.
The government also had to pay more than £51m to cancel agreements with DFDS and Brittany Ferries when the UK asked the EU for an extension to the withdrawal process meaning it did not leave as planned on 29 March.
This time, the Department for Transport is pursuing an open process, inviting bids from all "suitably qualified freight operators".
Andrew Dean, a former government lawyer who is now director of public law at Clifford Chance, said: "The department has played a straight bat, having opted to follow a relatively low-risk procurement approach that is open to suppliers from across the EU and beyond."
BBC business correspondent Joe Miller said that Eurotunnel would be able to bid this time around, as the notice invites applications "regardless of transport mode", as long as they offer "roll-on, roll-off capacity" for lorries.
Seaborne Freight confirmed it would not be bidding again, while Britanny Ferries said it would "carefully consider" what capacity it could offer the government.

The government is to end an arrangement that allows other countries to fish in UK waters, it has been announced.
The convention allows Irish, Dutch, French, German and Belgian vessels to fish within six and 12 nautical miles of UK coastline.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the move would help take back control of fishing access to UK waters.
The European Commission said it "took note" but felt the convention had been superseded by EU law.
Ireland's minister for agriculture, food and the marine, Michael Creed, however, said it was "unwelcome and unhelpful".
"Brexit poses very serious challenges to the seafood sector and this announcement will form part of the negotiations," he said.
The Scottish government backed the idea, saying it had been pressing for it "for some time".
The London Fisheries Convention sits alongside the EU Common Fisheries Policy, which allows all European Union countries access between 12 and 200 nautical miles of the UK and sets quotas for how much fish nations can catch.
The relationship between the UK and Ireland is further governed by a separate arrangement.
Withdrawing from the convention, which was signed in 1964 before the UK joined what became the EU, means UK vessels will also lose the right to fish in waters six to 12 nautical miles offshore of the other countries.
What happens to the 12 to 200 mile area will be one of the issues at stake in Brexit negotiations.
Michael Gove told the BBC's Andrew Marr the change was about "taking back control" of UK waters, 6-12 miles from the coast.
When the UK left the EU it would become an "independent coastal state", he said.
He said the EU's common fisheries policy had been an environmental disaster and the government wanted to change that, upon Brexit, to ensure sustainable fish stocks in future.
But the SNP's Richard Lochhead, who held the post of fisheries minister in Scotland until last year, has concerns around fishing being used as a "bargaining chip" by the government, which would "let down UK fishermen".
"Michael Gove is doing his best to get maximum publicity out of the easy bit," he told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend. "But the difficult, complex bit is still to come [with] the Common Fisheries Policy.
UKIP's fisheries spokesman Mike Hookem also said he feared another "wholesale betrayal" without assurances about the 200-mile zone.
"Fishing communities across Britain voted to leave the EU to get back the rights to earn a living, support their communities and to stop the EU plundering our seas of fish that the UK could exploit economically," he said.
He added that the announcement was "no victory for the fishing community" and was instead a "government attempt to use smoke and mirrors to placate British fishermen, while at the same time having the option of handing most our fishing rights to the EU".
Government figures say fishing contributed £604m to UK GDP in 2015 and employed around 12,000 fishers. In 2016, the fish processing industry supported around 18,000 jobs.
The industry's body, the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, welcomed the decision.
Chief executive Barrie Deas said: "This is welcome news and an important part of establishing the UK as an independent coastal state with sovereignty over its own exclusive economic zone."
Its chairman Mike Cohen said a 12-mile exclusive zone for UK boats would be "a good thing" for the UK's inshore fishing fleet.
Will McCallum, Greenpeace UK head of oceans, said leaving the convention would not in itself deliver a better future for the UK fishing industry, and that for years governments had blamed the EU for their "failure" to support the small-scale, sustainable fishers.
He said, for example, that the UK had had the power since 2013 to decide how to allocate its EU fishing quota but that a report by Greenpeace in 2016 had found almost two thirds of that quota was concentrated in the hands of three companies.
He said the UK would also still be bound by the UN convention of the law of the seas - which requires cooperation with neighbours.
But Mr McCallum said he was "excited" that the government was making fishing a priority, after fearing fishing communities would end up "at the bottom of the heap" amidst complex Brexit negotiations.
Environmental law firm ClientEarth consultant Dr Tom West said the move appeared to be an aggressive negotiating tactic.
"As a country outside the EU we need to consider how we can best co-operate with our neighbours, rather than unilaterally withdrawing from all agreements in the hope that standing alone will make us better."

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has set out what he called "practical and proportionate" advice in case the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
The guidance includes instructions for businesses who could face extra paperwork at borders and contingency plans to avoid medicine shortages.
Britons visiting the EU could also face extra credit card charges.
Ministers say a deal is the most likely outcome but that "short-term disruption" is possible without one.
BBC political correspondent Chris Mason described the publication as a "vast swirling porridge of detail - much of it at a technical level, advising individual industries about the manner in which they are regulated in the event of a no-deal Brexit".
Labour said a no-deal outcome would be "catastrophic" and a "complete failure by the government to negotiate for Britain".
Just after the documents were released, Chancellor Philip Hammond reiterated a warning from his department of a 7.7% hit to GDP over the next 15 years under a no-deal Brexit scenario, in a letter to the Treasury Committee.
The timing of that release angered pro-Brexit MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said the Treasury was trying to stop Brexit, and that it consistently painted a bleak picture "because they are frightened of taking responsibility for managing the economy without the crutch of the EU".
In the 24 documents, which cover industries including medicine, finance and farming, it says:
Mr Raab said reaching a deal with the EU was the "overriding priority" and "by far the most likely outcome" but that "we must be ready to consider the alternative".
He also dismissed what he said were "wilder claims" about the impact of not reaching a deal, including that it could spark a "sandwich famine" in the UK.
"Let me assure you that, contrary to one of the wilder claims, you will still be able to enjoy a BLT after Brexit, and there are no plans to deploy the Army to maintain food supplies," he said.
The UK will cease to be a member of the EU on 29 March 2019.
With several sticking points remaining in negotiations, there has increasingly been talk of what happens if there is no agreement in place, including police chiefs warning of a risk to the public if the UK loses access to EU-wide crime databases and Bank of England governor Mark Carney saying no deal would be "highly undesirable".
Pro-Brexit campaigners have described the warnings as "Project Fear" - saying the UK has nothing to fear from leaving without a trade deal and falling back on World Trade Organization rules.
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that such an arrangement "would suffice" and said the risks had been "absurdly overstated".
His fellow Brexiteer John Redwood said stockpiling six weeks worth of medical supplies was "a bit over the top" but that the government was being "ultra cautious".
Analysis by BBC deputy political editor John Pienaar
This didn't seem a comfortable moment for Dominic Raab.
The Brexit secretary campaigned for Leave, and is a true believer in the cause. Yet here he was, setting out plans to cope with a British failure to reach the kind of deal Brexiteers once claimed would be easy to accomplish.
Again and again, the Brexit department's guidance refers to the "unlikely event" of Brexit without an EU deal - but Dominic Raab conceded it could happen.
The risk was real. The International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, has suggested that outcome is more likely than not.
The Brexit secretary may disagree on the level of risk, but could not deny that it would lead to higher costs and a fresh burden of red tape on businesses, scientific and medical research and individuals.
Read John's blog on the no-deal papers
The European Commission said Brexit would lead to disruption "with a deal or without a deal".
"That's why everybody, and in particular economic operators, need to be prepared," it said.
The commission has already published its own assessment of no deal, saying there would be "no specific arrangement" for EU citizens living in the UK or for UK citizens in the EU and warning of "significant delays" at borders.
For Labour, shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said Mr Raab's speech was "thin on detail, thin on substance and provided no answers to how ministers intend to mitigate the serious consequences of leaving the EU without an agreement".
"A no-deal Brexit has never been viable and would represent a complete failure of the government's negotiating strategy," he said.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said a no-deal Brexit would cause "huge disruption and serious, long-lasting economic and social damage", and Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable added: "This isn't project fear by critics of Brexit, this is the government itself and independent bodies pointing to the damage that will be caused."
The National Farmers' Union warned of a "disastrous" cliff edge scenario for the UK food supply chain.
Business group the CBI said: "These papers show that those who claim crashing out of the EU on World Trade Organisation rules is acceptable live in a world of fantasy, where facts are not allowed to challenge ideology."
Pointing to the possibility of new credit card charges, Lord Adonis of the People's Vote campaign, said: "Every time a new Brexit paper is published, more people are made worse off".
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the reports confirmed no-deal Brexit was not a credible option, as it would be "devastating for working people".

The UK has published proposals for how it wants the transition period immediately after Brexit to work.
It says the period should last as long as it takes to "prepare and implement the new processes and new systems".
Number 10 denied this meant it would be longer than the planned two years.
The document suggests the UK will abide by new EU laws and be involved in talks on future fishing quotas, but will not be able to sign trade deals without the EU's permission.
There are "only a small number of areas" where the two sides disagree, it says.
These include the status of EU nationals arriving during transition.
The transition period is due to kick in as the UK leaves in March 2019, and is intended to give time to prepare for the long-term post-Brexit arrangements between the UK and the EU, which have yet to be agreed, and to give businesses time to adapt.
The BBC's Norman Smith said some of the document published by David Davis's Brexit department would make "uncomfortable reading" for Tory Brexiteers.
It contains no "pushback" on EU demands for free movement of people to continue in the same form during the transition phase, no suggestion of a veto to block new EU laws and no power to implement new international trade deals without the EU's permission, he said.
The document's publication comes after more than 60 Eurosceptic Tory MPs set out a list of Brexit demands for the prime minister - and a day before ministers meet at Chequers to try to thrash out a way forward.
The EU has said the transition phase should end on 31 December, 2020, the end of its budget period.
But in the UK's "draft text for discussion", it says the length "should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin the future partnership".
It adds: "The UK agrees this points to a period of around two years, but wishes to discuss with the EU the assessment that supports its proposed end date."
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, of the pro-EU Open Britain campaign, said: "It appears the government wants transition to last indefinitely - a never-ending road to nowhere because the cabinet can't agree on our future trading relationship with the EU".
Speaking on the BBC's Daily Politics, Brexit Minister Steve Baker said: "I'd be quite happy for us to have the minimum period necessary to get out successfully into the new arrangements but that is a matter to negotiate with the European Commission.
"You can see that they want us to exit at the end of the budget period (31 December, 2020) the prime minister is suggesting two years. But what will be the case is, when we've agreed, there will be a fixed date."
One area where the two sides have been expected to clash is citizens' rights, and whether people from the EU arriving in the UK during transition will have an unrestricted right to stay.
The UK government has said such people should be treated differently to those who are already here before Brexit day - something the EU says it cannot accept.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the leak suggested the UK "has softened its position".
She added that the UK side thinks the positions are close:
Giving evidence to a committee of MPs, Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes stuck to the government's line, saying EU citizens would "not be subject to the same rights" once Brexit takes place in March 2019.
"I think there's an important point that EU citizens who come here after we've left the EU will have done so knowing that we're leaving the European Union and will have different expectations to those who have been here for some time and are entitled to settled status," she said.
The letter to Theresa May from 62 Tory MPs says the UK must not be stopped from negotiating trade deals with other countries, once it leaves the EU, and must gain full "regulatory autonomy".
Earlier Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was time for Mrs May to spell out clearly what kind of relationship she wanted with the EU, accusing her of "waffle and empty rhetoric" on Brexit at Prime Minister's Questions.
"Businesses need to know. People want to know. Even Tory backbenchers are demanding to know."
He suggested the PM had downgraded her negotiation goals from a tariff-free trade agreement to "as much tariff-free trade as possible".
Mrs May said this was not the case and her desired outcome remained a "bespoke economic partnership" with the EU which also enabled the UK to "take back control" of its laws, money and borders.
"We want to have a good trade agreement with the EU...but we also want to ensure this country takes the opportunities that will be open to us outside the EU to boost our economy."
She rejected Mr Corbyn's claims that Brexit would result in a "bonfire of regulations", insisting the Conservatives record in government showed it was committed to protecting and extending workers' rights.

The UK's ambassador to the EU urged British colleagues in Brussels to challenge "muddled thinking and... speak truth to power" as he quit ahead of Brexit talks, it has emerged.
Writing to staff, Sir Ivan Rogers said ministers needed to hear "unvarnished" and "uncomfortable" views from Europe.
Earlier it emerged Sir Ivan would be leaving his post several months early.
The government said he had quit so a successor could be in place before Brexit negotiations started.
Sir Ivan's note to staff, obtained by the BBC, confirmed this but also warned the "government will only achieve the best for the country if it harnesses the best experience we have".
Downing Street said it would not comment on the resignation email, although Sir Ivan was "free to express his own opinions".
But former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, who campaigned for Leave during the referendum,  told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that when a civil servant "starts going public", ministers "can no longer trust that individual".
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, tweeted: "Best Wishes to Sir Ivan Rogers, a much-respected UK civil servant in Brussels - who knew what he was talking about."
By James Landale, BBC diplomatic correspondent
Outgoing ambassadors often write valedictory notes but few are as explosive as this. Sir Ivan does not name names but his remarks do not need much decoding.
The clear implication is that the advice the UK's ambassador to the EU has been giving has fallen on deaf ears in Downing Street.
And this is why he is standing down, depriving the government of one of its most experienced Brussels hands just weeks before negotiations over Brexit are due to begin.
His resignation took Downing Street by surprise, coming some eight months before his job was due to end or be extended.
So the hunt is now on for an envoy who can speak truth to power while retaining the confidence of Downing Street, who knows Brussels but is not seen as being part of Brussels.
Sir Ivan is expected to stay on for a few weeks while such a diplomatic paragon is found.
Sir Ivan, who had sparked criticism from some MPs by warning ministers a UK-EU trade agreement might take 10 years to finalise, was due to leave his post in October.
Brexit campaigners welcomed his early departure, while pro-EU politicians said it was a blow to the government's negotiations.
In his note, Sir Ivan said: "I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.
"I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them."
On the UK's Brexit negotiations with the EU, which are due to begin by the end of March, he said "serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall", adding this was not the case in the European Commission or in the European Council.
He said the government would only succeed if it "negotiates resolutely", adding, in a reference to the remaining 27 EU states: "Senior ministers, who will decide on our positions, issue by issue, also need from you detailed, unvarnished - even where this is uncomfortable -  and nuanced understanding of the views, interests and incentives of the other 27."
The nature of the UK's trading relationship with the EU has been much debated ahead of the formal talks.
Sir Ivan said that "contrary to the beliefs of some, free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities", adding that market access would depend on the terms of the deals struck.
The diplomat also made clear that the timing of his resignation was designed to avoid disruption by leaving later this year when his term of office was expected to expire.
"It would obviously make no sense for my role to change hands later this year," he said.
Sir Ivan's resignation comes after his deputy in Brussels, Shan Morgan, announced in November that she would be leaving the post to become the Welsh government's permanent secretary.
A government spokeswoman said: "Sir Ivan Rogers has resigned a few months early as UK permanent representative to the European Union.
"Sir Ivan has taken this decision now to enable a successor to be appointed before the UK invokes Article 50 by the end of March. We are grateful for his work and commitment over the last three years."
Mr Duncan Smith said Sir Ivan "knew very well what he was doing" when he sent the note.
He added: "It gets to a point when a civil servant starts to go public on stuff that you as ministers can no longer trust that individual.
"You must have absolute trust and cooperation. You cannot have this stuff coming out publicly."
Mr Duncan Smith also said: "There are plenty of other civil servants who didn't behave like this."
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said government policy "appears to be to shout down anyone who tells them things they don't want to hear".
The Labour MP told BBC Breakfast: "I regret that. I think often when you shoot the messenger you end up shooting yourself in the foot and think the government needs to be careful now in ensuring that we have the experience that is required in order to conduct successful negotiations."
He said the government needed to know the "reality of the other side of the negotiations" and take it on board and negotiate the best Brexit deal for the UK.
Mr Gardiner said it was "dangerous" for the government to "rubbish" those with concerns and it was important that Sir Ivan's successor was someone with an equally distinguished record.
He said attempts to politicise the impartiality of the civil service was "really scandalous" and there was a need to recognise the experience that civil servants have.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said Prime Minister Theresa May was "marching ahead without a plan or even a clue".

The UK's ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, has resigned.
Sir Ivan, appointed to the job by David Cameron in 2013, had been expected to play a key role in Brexit talks expected to start within months.
The government said Sir Ivan had quit early so a successor could be in place before negotiations start.
Last month the BBC revealed he had privately told ministers a UK-EU trade deal might take 10 years to finalise, sparking criticism from some MPs.
Ministers have said a deal can be done within two years.
Labour said Sir Ivan's departure was "deeply worrying" and Prime Minister Theresa May must be prepared to listen to "difficult truths" about the likely complexity of the Brexit process.
The diplomat was due to leave his post in November.
A government spokeswoman said: "Sir Ivan Rogers has resigned a few months early as UK permanent representative to the European Union.
"Sir Ivan has taken this decision now to enable a successor to be appointed before the UK invokes Article 50 by the end of March. We are grateful for his work and commitment over the last three years."
Analysis - by Kevin Connolly, BBC Europe correspondent
The official UK statement announcing the departure of Sir Ivan Rogers makes it sound like a routine piece of bureaucratic house-keeping - bringing forward the departure of the current incumbent to give his successor time to get his teeth into Brexit.
It seems certain there's more to it than that.
Sir Ivan endured an uncomfortable time at the last EU summit in December after his confidential advice to the government about Brexit potentially taking 10 years was leaked to the BBC. No ambassador relishes "becoming the story" in that way.
There's a sense in Brussels that he may have been seen as a pessimist by cabinet Brexiteers because it fell to him to convey the hostility and scepticism with which other governments view Brexit.
One British insider here, though, called him a key adviser who'd be a huge loss.
Whoever replaces him faces one of the trickiest British diplomatic assignments of modern times.
Prime Minister Theresa May says she will trigger formal talks between the UK and the EU by the end of March, setting in place a two-year negotiation process.
Sir Ivan is a veteran civil servant whose previous roles include private secretary to ex-chancellor Ken Clarke, principal private secretary to ex-PM Tony Blair and Mr Cameron's Europe adviser.
He was criticised in some quarters for "pessimism" over Brexit after his advice to ministers  - which he said reflected what the 27 member states were saying - was reported.
Pro-EU figures raised concern about the impact of Sir Ivan's departure, while Brexit campaigners welcomed his decision. Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, who once worked for Sir Ivan in Brussels, described his resignation as a "body blow to the government's Brexit plans".
He added: "If the reports are true that he has been hounded out by hostile Brexiteers in government, it counts as a spectacular own goal."
Labour MP Hilary Benn, who chairs the Brexit select committee, said it had come at a "crucial" point and urged the government to "get its skates on" in finding a replacement. "It couldn't be a more difficult time to organise a handover," he added.
Mr Benn told BBC Radio 4's The World at One the permanent representative's job was to convey the view of the UK to other member states, as well as "honestly and fearlessly reporting back" what those countries in turn said about the negotiations.
But former Conservative cabinet minister John Redwood said Sir Ivan had made a "very wise decision", saying his leaked advice suggested he did "not really have his heart in" Brexit, believing it to be "very difficult and long-winded".
He said the new ambassador should be someone "who thinks it's straightforward".
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage said he welcomed Sir Ivan's resignation, adding: "The Foreign Office needs a complete clear-out."
But former chancellor George Osborne said Sir Ivan was a "perceptive, pragmatic and patriotic public servant" while the Treasury's former top civil servant, Lord Macpherson - who is now a crossbench peer - said his departure marked a "wilful" and "total destruction" of EU expertise within Whitehall.

EU nationals who arrive in the UK during the transition period after Brexit will be eligible for indefinite leave to remain, the government says.
Sources say it is a compromise offer to the EU which wants citizens to have exactly the same rights as they do now during the transition period.
It means free movement of people is effectively set to continue until the end of the two year or so transition.
But the UK says new arrivals should not expect all the same rights as now.
The EU wants the transition period - which is intended to smooth the way to the future post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU - to last until 31 December 2020. The UK says it should last around two years from March 2019.
Those arriving in the UK after 29 March 2019, the day Britain leaves the EU, will have to register with the authorities if they want to stay longer than three months.
They will then be allowed to stay for five years "working, studying or being self-sufficient" to qualify to apply for indefinite leave to remain, part of the process of becoming a UK citizen.
EU citizens who have been continually living in the EU for five years by 29 March 2019 will be able to apply to stay indefinitely by getting "settled status".
They will be able to bring spouses and other family members to the UK automatically under EU free movement rules.
Those who arrive after Brexit day will also be able to bring family members to the UK under free movement rules, during the transition period.
But - in the main change to the current arrangements - when the transition period has ended they will have to abide by the rules that currently apply to British citizens who want to be joined by family members from outside the EU, such as the minimum income requirement.
Since July 2012, UK citizens and settled residents applying to bring a non-EU partner to the country must be earning at least £18,600 per year before tax. The threshold is higher for those who are also sponsoring children.
Asked how the Home Office proposals differed from free movement - something Theresa May has always insisted will end in March next year - the prime minister's spokesman said: "We'll have a registration system and some of their rights will be different.
"When we leave EU the free movement directive doesn't apply but during the implementation period people will be free to come and live, work and study here. It's for Brussels to respond, this is us setting out our position."
The Home Office is encouraging EU member states to "mirror" these rules for UK citizens moving to EU member states during transition.
But in a major sticking point with the EU, the UK is insisting EU citizens arriving in the UK during transition must have their rights defined and interpreted solely in UK law and through the UK courts.
British judges will not be able to refer questions of interpretation to the European Court of Justice, the Home Office says.
Irish citizens will not be subject to the agreement and therefore will not need to register, the Home Office says in fact sheet explaining the changes.
When the transition period has ended, the UK will put in place a new immigration system which the Home Office says will "strengthen control of our borders and address the public's concerns about the impacts of unrestricted immigration from the EU on jobs, wages and public services".
Labour MP Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "We have been pressing the Home Office for some time to clarify the arrangements for EU citizens arriving during the transition period so it is sensible that they have finally done so.
"But they should be a bit more straight with people. This new paper reiterates the prime minister's line that the expectations of EU citizens arriving in the UK after our exit will not be the same as those who moved here before our withdrawal, yet it then goes on to provide a long list of ways in which arrangements will be exactly the same.
"The clock is ticking and there isn't time to negotiate or implement an entirely new system of immigration or citizens' rights by March 2019 and they shouldn't suggest that things will change next year when they won't."

A new "customs partnership" with the EU - which is fiercely opposed by some Tory Brexiteers - is still on the table, the business secretary says.
Greg Clark warned about the effect of border checks on manufacturing jobs, saying whatever replaces the customs union was of "huge importance".
He added whichever option was chosen would "take some time" to put in place.
Eurosceptic backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg criticised "Project Fear" warnings about job losses after Brexit.
He said if the partnership model was adopted, "we would not in effect be leaving the European Union".
But Mr Clark was supported by former home secretary Amber Rudd, while Remain-supporting Tories criticised pro-Brexit "ideologues", saying they did not represent the party at large.
All EU members are part of the customs union, within which there are no internal tariffs (taxes) on goods transported between them. There is also a common tariff agreed on goods entering from outside.
The UK government has said it is leaving the EU customs union so that it can strike its own trade deals around the world, something it cannot do as a member. But ministers have not yet agreed how to replace it.
The UK is under pressure to make progress on the issue before next month's EU summit.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Clark said the UK would leave the customs union in 2019 with Brexit, and that finding the right replacement was of "huge importance", pointing to the needs of manufacturers like Toyota to avoid friction at the borders.
At last week's Brexit sub-committee meeting of senior ministers, several are believed to have voiced concerns about one of the two options put forward by the government - whereby Britain would collect tariffs on behalf of the EU for goods destined for member states.
Mr Clark said the ministers had had "a much more professional, collegiate discussion" than reports suggested.
And he said the partnership proposal had not been killed off, saying it offered the "very important" feature of avoiding paperwork at UK-EU borders.
But he added that this model was "not perfect" because arrangements would be needed to refund firms if they were only liable for lower UK rates.
He said this, and an alternative proposal of using technology and advanced checks to minimise border disruption, needed "further work", and that whichever was chosen, "it will take some time to have them put in place and available".
The business secretary said it was "possible" this could take two or three years after the UK leaves the EU, suggesting that different elements of the plan could be implemented at different times.
Former home secretary Amber Rudd - who resigned last Sunday over a deportations row - backed Mr Clark's comments.
Ms Rudd, a leading voice in the 2016 campaign to stay in the EU, tweeted that the business secretary was "quite right" to argue for a "Brexit that protects existing jobs and future investment".
Mrs May has been repeatedly urged by Brexiteers to abandon the partnership option, which critics say would keep the UK tied to EU rules.
The Sunday Telegraph quoted a cabinet source saying it would be "unimaginable for the prime minister to press on with the hybrid model after it has been torn apart by members of her own Brexit committee".
Speaking on ITV's Peston on Sunday, influential backbench MP Jacob Rees-Mogg - who has previously labelled the proposal "cretinous" - dismissed warnings about the impact on jobs if it is rejected.
"This Project Fear has been so thoroughly discredited that you would have thought it would have come to an end by now," he said.
"We will have control of goods coming into this country - we will set our own laws, our own policies, our own regulations, and therefore we will determine how efficient the border is coming into us."
The customs debate is central to the question of border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, with supporters of a customs union saying anything else will mean checks and a "hard border".
But Arlene Foster, who leads the Democratic Unionist Party, said a "free flow" of trade did not require a customs union, adding that a border was already in place between the two different jurisdictions.
However, some pro-EU Tories are still pushing for much closer economic ties to the EU.
Asked about Mr Rees-Mogg and other Brexiteers, former education secretary Nicky Morgan told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5 live people who "shout loudest" did not necessarily represent the majority of Conservatives.
She said Tory rebels on her side of the debate would be prepared to defy the party whip in key votes "in the national interest" but that the MPs who were "sabre-rattling about leadership" were those who wanted "the hardest of hard Brexits".
And ex-business minister Anna Soubry told The Sunday Politics Mrs May had to "see off" those who operate a "party within a party" who do not represent "the country at large".
"These are ideologues," she added.
The CBI welcomed Mr Clark's commitment to "frictionless" trade, saying the customs union should remain in place "unless and until an alternative is ready and workable".
Labour, meanwhile, faced criticism of its position on Brexit from pro-EU voices in the party.
The leadership was accused of "complete cowardice" by Labour peer Lord Alli for not supporting a Lords amendment aimed at keeping the UK within the European Economic Area (EEA), like Norway, after Brexit.
EEA members get access to the single market - with free movement of people, goods, service and money - without being EU members.
But shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said such an arrangement would reduce the UK to being a "rule taker" without a seat at the table when decisions on regulations are made.
Labour says it would seek to draw up a new customs union with the EU after Brexit, and would try to persuade Brussels to change the rules and allow it to strike deals around the world.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the Marr show that despite the criticism, the party had not lost votes by not being "anti-Brexit" or "trying to reverse the referendum".
"What people want is a traditional British compromise," he said.
"Respect the referendum result, but get the best deal you can to protect our economy and protect our jobs."

"For me, it's like coming home," said Ursula von der Leyen of her new job as president of the European Commission. Brussels born and bred, she is a former German defence minister, a long-term ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the first woman to head the EU's powerful executive.
Mrs von der Leyen replaced Jean-Claude Juncker in the EU's top job on 1 December 2019 and part of her role is overseeing Brexit.
She has warned that ending 2020 without a trade deal with the UK would be "a cliff-edge situation", which "would clearly harm our interests", but would "impact more the UK than us".
"We are not ready to put into question the integrity of our Single Market - the main safeguard for European prosperity and wealth," she said.
She was not the first choice for the EU's most powerful job. She was not especially popular in her previous role among Germany's armed forces, and only emerged from the shadows as a candidate for Commission chief when initial compromise deals collapsed.
Eventually she was nominated by EU member states and then backed by the European Parliament, after a political stalemate over other contenders.
Her responsibilities include proposing new EU laws, enforcing the bloc's rules and handling trade deals.
Mrs von der Leyen has a reputation as a workaholic. Her decision to sleep in a bedsit adjoining her office at the Commission HQ rather than making a home in Brussels has also raised eyebrows.
She set out her values both before and after assuming office:
Ursula von der Leyen was born in Brussels in 1958, and attended the European School - a multilingual elite school for the children of diplomats and EU bureaucrats.
A few years later, in the 1970s, Boris Johnson attended the European School, as his father was an official in the then European Economic Community (EEC).
Mrs von der Leyen's father Ernst Albrecht was a senior Commission official in Brussels in the 1950s, before entering German domestic politics - he was in the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), today led by Chancellor Merkel. He became premier of the state of Lower Saxony in 1976.
He came from a privileged family of merchants. Her mother had a university doctorate and academic success was much encouraged, journalist Ben Judah has written in a study of Ursula von der Leyen.
With her parents and five siblings she moved to Germany aged 13. Family life was comfortable, on a farm near Hanover - Ursula came to love horse-riding - and the children performed in home plays and concerts, sometimes in front of politicians.
Later she studied economics at London's LSE and medicine in Hanover before going into politics.
In London she went by the name Rose Ladson - at the time German politicians were being targeted by Red Army Faction leftist militants. Her family nickname had been Röschen - "little rose". She enjoyed partying and rock concerts.
She told Germany's Die Zeit daily that "London was for me then the epitome of modernity: freedom, the joy of life, trying everything".
Later in Germany she met Heiko von der Leyen, a doctor, at medical school and they got married in 1986.
Fluent in English and French, she has been a member of the CDU since 2005.
She said her father always told his children that when countries traded, they built friendships and did not shoot each other.
Now 62, Mrs von der Leyen is the mother of seven children, highly unusual in a country where the average birth rate is 1.59 children per woman.
She is seen as a staunch integrationist, backing closer military co-operation in the EU and highlighting the "potential Europe has to unify and to promote peace".
Her appointment as German defence minister in 2013 was unexpected and followed three months of coalition talks between the CDU and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).
As defence minister in the EU's most industrialised and populous country, she argued for Germany to boost its military involvement in Nato.
However, her tenure in the defence post was not without incident.
In recent years, a litany of stories have exposed inadequacies in Germany's armed forces, from inoperable submarines and aircraft to shortages of personnel.
A report published in 2018 highlighted the shortfalls, saying they were "dramatically" hindering Germany's readiness for combat. It said that no submarines or large transport planes were available for deployment at the end of 2017.
While her appointment was initially seen as a fresh start for a German ministry beset by problems, Mrs von der Leyen was questioned as part of an investigation into spending irregularities.
Her defence department was accused of awarding questionable private contracts to consultants that were said to be worth millions of euros.
She later admitted that a number of errors were made in allocating contracts and that new measures were being implemented to prevent it happening again.
That period of her career has not gone away. In December 2019, German MPs accused the defence ministry of deliberately deleting key data from her office mobile phone in an attempt to obstruct their investigation.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Vardakar has ruled out suggestions that those crossing the Irish border after Brexit might need to pre-register.
The taoiseach was reacting to reports that this was one idea being considered by the UK government.
"It is not a solution that we envisage," he told an audience in Austin, Texas.
The future operation of the Irish border has been a sticking point in the negotiations between the UK and the EU.
Both sides have said they want to avoid a so-called hard border - the installation of physical barriers and customs checkpoints - between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The idea of pre-registration has come from a report by a customs expert which was prepared for the European Parliament.
One potential solution put forward in the Smart Border 2.0 report is that people crossing the border after Brexit would have to register in advance to avoid checks and delays.
However Mr Varadkar dismissed it, adding that it might be helpful if British senior cabinet officials such as Boris Johnson and David Davis visited the border to see first hand that it was "invisible".
"They would certainly be very welcome to visit the border," he said.
"Secretary of State Karen Bradley has already done that and a delegation of British politicians from the House of Lords and House of Commons have done that too.
"I can't see anything negative in a British cabinet minister viewing the border, seeing what it looks like.
"You can read as many briefing documents as you like, sometimes you need to see things with your own eyes."
The UK government has said the country will leave the customs union and single market.
That will necessitate some form of new customs controls between the UK and the EU.
Mr Varadkar is currently in the US for St Patrick's Day engagements.
MEPs from across Europe are visiting Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to discuss the impact of Brexit.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has suggested the EU will be the "stronger team" in post-Brexit trade talks with the UK.
Comparing negotiations to a football match, he suggested to the BBC that the EU would be at an advantage due to its larger population and market.
The taoiseach said he did not think the UK had "yet come to terms with the fact it's now a small country".
Boris Johnson said he would be able to "wrap this all up" by the end of 2020.
Mr Varadkar held talks with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Monday.
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Barnier told reporters the two sides faced "the risk of a cliff edge" if trade terms were not agreed by the end of the post-Brexit transition period in December.
He cautioned that a "very short time" remained to "rebuild" the UK-EU relationship.
In an interview earlier with BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Varadkar also said striking a deal in this timeframe was possible but would be "difficult".
He pledged the EU would not be "dragging its feet," but added: "My assessment is that it is more likely that we will need an extension in order to finalise a free trade agreement and future economic partnership than not need it."
Mr Johnson, however, said he had to "respectfully disagree" with his Irish counterpart's doubts, insisting a deal can be reached "in the time we've got".
The UK PM added: "We've got until the end of the year, but we will be doing things very fast, and in a very friendly, respectful way."
Mr Johnson has insisted he is not open to any extension.
Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that from the UK side, trade talks will be led by a 40-person "task force" headed by the PM's Europe adviser David Frost.
Mr Varadkar, the leader of the Fine Gael party, is fighting his first election campaign as taoiseach. Ireland heads to the polls on 8 February.
He told the BBC: "The European Union is a union of 27 member states. The UK is only one country. And we have a population and a market of 450 million people.
"The UK, it's about 60[m]. So if these were two teams up against each other playing football, who do you think has the stronger team?"
He also cautioned the UK against trying to negotiate individual deals covering different sectors of the economy.
"The final deal, the new relationship will have to be comprehensive," he said.
"When I hear people talk about piecemeal, it sounds a bit like cake and eat," he said, adding: "That isn't something that will fly in Europe."
"You may have to make concessions in areas like fishing in order to get concessions from us in areas like financial services."
Mr Varadkar said there was "genuine concern" across Europe that the UK would seek to "undercut" EU standards after Brexit.
"When I meet Prime Minister Johnson he says, no, absolutely not - that's not the kind of United Kingdom that I want to lead as prime minister."
But he added: "We want that written down in law, we want that in a treaty."
Mr Varadkar said both sides would have to agree a "common set of minimum standards" for an agreement to be possible.
But this is likely to be a contentious area of talks, with British ministers having insisted the UK should have the right to move away from EU regulations.
Another potential flashpoint is likely to be access to fishing waters, which both sides have pledged to sort out before the end of June.
Leaked slides from an EU presentation last Friday said the bloc would be aiming for the same level of access to British fishing stocks it has now, and would not sign a wider trade deal until fishing access has been agreed.
But the UK government insists it will "take back control" of its waters.
A leaked slide presentation from a meeting last Friday has revealed more of the EU's objectives in the upcoming trade talks.
Diplomats from national governments agreed that commitments by the UK to maintaining a level playing field - i.e. not undercutting other EU nations for competitive advantage - are a "precondition" for a deal. There should also be a role for the European Court of Justice in any deal to protect EU law.
The EU will pursue what it calls a "comprehensive approach" to the negotiations and there will be "trade-offs between chapters" i.e. give-and-take across different areas of the deal.
The EU will expect to be treated as a single bloc, so the UK will not, for example, be able to offer something to Germany that it doesn't offer to everyone else.  In case of future disputes with the UK, there would be the possibility for "cross-retaliation" where a disagreement in one sector sees the EU retaliating in another.
EU sources say they want to build a relationship with the UK that is balanced and sustainable, where neither side "feels taken for a ride".

For a long time, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has sidestepped talking at length about his role in the fraught political journey of Brexit in the last few years.
But with just a few days until the UK's departure, he opened up a little, in an interview with me, about what happened, and what might unfold next.
The Taoiseach suggested that the EU will have the upper hand in the upcoming trade negotiations, saying: "We have a population and a market of 450 million people, the UK it's about 60, so if these were two teams up against each other playing football, who do you think has the stronger team?"
He also warned against any UK attempt to get a "piecemeal" deal with the EU, saying: "When I hear people talk about piecemeal, it sounds a bit like cake and eat it," and added "That isn't something that will fly in Europe."
But when I asked him if Ireland had been too stubborn in the last couple of years, he suggested that it was the UK had misread the first phase of Brexit, suggesting that many people in Westminster and Britain "don't understand Ireland".
He said there was an imagined scenario that France, Germany and Britain would get together at a big summit and tell the small countries what's what. But he said: "That's not the way the 21st Century works. That's certainly not the way the EU works".
Echoing other leaders, Mr Varadkar also questioned the the timetable set by Boris Johnson to get a trade deal with the rest of the EU by the end of the year.
He disagreed with the Prime Minister's claim that there is "bags of time", saying: "It will be difficult to do this," and suggesting that there might have to be an extension to the next part of the Brexit process, beyond the end of this year, to finalise a trade deal.
He did however pledge to work "night and day" to try and get it done and said: "We won't be dragging our feet".
The Taoiseach said to get a deal there would have to be legal assurances that the UK would not undercut the EU, agreeing a "common set of minimum standards", that would have to be "high standards".
There is no question it's going to be a key area of contention in the coming months, saying that he did trust Boris Johnson, but that it was in "black and white" that were would have to be some checks on goods going from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, despite Boris Johnson's repeated insistence that there will not have to be.
Looking back, Mr Varadkar said he had been genuinely afraid that the UK might have left the EU without a deal, but that a meeting between the two men on the Wirral in the autumn had provided the "crucial moment".
He said the progress at the summit was the "simple story" of "two guys in a room… talking turkey" without their staff present, where they found a way that they could move forward.
"I knew when I was leaving Liverpool Airport that things were looking promising again," he said.
Michel Barnier will visit the Irish leader again today, another statement of intent about how Ireland's position will be taken into consideration by the EU at large, a situation that the government here in Dublin has no wish to leave behind.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator has been told to begin "serious contingency planning" for another EU referendum.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said MPs backing a referendum on the final deal negotiated were becoming "the biggest and most cohesive bloc in Westminster".
Sir Vince, the SNP's Ian Blackford, Plaid Cymru's Liz Saville Roberts and Green MEP Molly Scott Cato met Michel Barnier in Brussels.
The PM has ruled out a referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.
But her "Chequers plan" - which would keep the UK closely aligned with the EU in trade in goods - has been heavily criticised by Tory Brexiteers, including Boris Johnson.
Mr Barnier, who has been negotiating on behalf of the other 27 EU members, has met other politicians from different parties already - including Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage.
In a joint statement after the hour-long meeting, the four parties said the "current Brexit trajectory" enjoys no majority in Parliament and accused Labour - the official opposition party - of having "waved through" the "destructive Brexit being pursued by the Tories".
"With sensible politicians from all parties uniting, we pointed out to Mr Barnier that there is a genuine cross-party consensus that our exit from the European Union must not be assumed," they said.
 Sir Vince said: "My message to Michel Barnier was clear: it's time to start serious contingency planning for a 'people's vote'. We know the UK government has started making such plans as a result of the growing demand for such a vote, demonstrated by last weekend's march.
"The EU should do the same, because MPs who back the people's vote are fast forming the biggest and most cohesive bloc in Westminster."
The People's Vote campaign group wants to give the public the final say over whether the UK leaves the EU, arguing that voters should be given a choice between leaving with or without a deal or staying on current terms.
Hundreds of thousands of people took part in a march urging a referendum on the final Brexit deal at the weekend.
While Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has previously ruled out another EU referendum, Labour members voted to keep the option on the table, if Parliament is deadlocked over the final outcome of the Brexit negotiations. Mr Corbyn has said he will respect the result of the vote.
And a handful of Tory backbenchers, including Heidi Allen and Anna Soubry, have said they would support another referendum.
But Prime Minister Theresa May has said a referendum on any withdrawal agreement that is agreed would be a "gross betrayal of our democracy" and trust.
The British public voted to leave the EU by a margin of 51.89% to 48.11% in a referendum in June 2016.
The UK is scheduled to leave on 29 March 2019, under the terms of the two-year Article 50 process.

"What was the point of all that?" German critics are asking, after the nomination of Ursula von der Leyen, Germany's defence minister, for the top EU job of Commission president.
There were TV debates. There were election rallies. Germany's streets were plastered with posters showing the faces of candidates for the EU's top jobs.
But Mrs von der Leyen's face did not appear on any posters. Instead her nomination was suddenly announced after weeks of difficult, behind-the-scenes wrangling between EU leaders.
Their choice is being seen as a backroom deal - something the new, more personalised elections were supposed to prevent.
There is little patriotic fervour in Germany that, for the first time in 50 years, a German could become EU Commission president.
Ironically Mrs von der Leyen has more support outside her home country than within it.
Abroad she is seen as a multi-lingual, pro-European political heavyweight, who has led three major ministries in the EU's biggest country and has a record pushing difficult pan-European defence projects.
But within Germany her reputation is more tarnished.
Once seen as a successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, she has struggled as head of the defence ministry. It is a position renowned as a career-killer in Germany, so anything short of complete failure is a success of sorts.
But she has been damaged by a string of almost farcical fiascos over useless equipment and an investigation into a procurement scandal and possible illegitimate use of external consultants.
Germany's powerful Green Party is threatening to veto the nomination in the European Parliament.
"It's an unparalleled act of political trickery," says Sigmar Gabriel, a big hitter in Germany's centre-left SPD and former party leader.
He called on his party, which governs Germany with Angela Merkel's centre-right party, to block the nomination.
Otherwise, he warned, the EU elections that were supposed to give the elected parliament more power in allocating top jobs risked becoming a farce.
Martin Schulz, former EU parliamentary president and Merkel rival, condemned what he called backroom haggling over top jobs.
Arguably Mr Schulz is more annoyed that his own backroom deals to get a fellow centre-left candidate into the job have backfired.
He has been outmanoeuvred once again by his nemesis, Angela Merkel.
Her support for the original frontrunner, German conservative Manfred Weber, was only ever lukewarm.
She had been forced into supporting him by her conservative allies in Berlin. Mrs von der Leyen is, on the other hand a pragmatic centrist and a loyal Merkel ally.
There are rumours that moving Mrs von der Leyen to Brussels could help Angela Merkel promote her latest preferred successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, by allowing her to step in as defence minister and boost her profile.
Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer has knocked back the idea.
She might be thinking that Ursula von der Leyen's career shows that being dubbed a Merkel successor and then taking on the difficult defence ministry is the fastest route out of German politics.

Vote Leave broke the law during the EU referendum by exceeding legal spending limits, a Brexit activist has claimed.
Shahmir Sanni told Channel 4 News that the official Brexit campaign used a different group, BeLeave, to overspend.
Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings has already denied the claim and said he checked with the Electoral Commission before donating money to the group.
Mr Sanni has also criticised Vote Leave manager Stephen Parkinson, his ex-boyfriend, for outing him as gay.
"I know that, that Vote Leave cheated… I know that, that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasn't legitimate," Mr Sanni told Channel 4 News.
"Leaving the European Union, I agree with.
"But I don't agree with losing what it means to be British in that process; losing what it means to follow the rules; losing what it means to be quite literally a functioning democracy."
The Electoral Commission is already looking into whether Vote Leave spent more than it was entitled to during the campaign.
Brexit Secretary David Davis told the BBC it was the job of the commission, not ministers, to make a judgement, while foreign secretary and Vote Leave frontman Boris Johnson dismissed the claims as "utterly ludicrous".
Labour's Tom Watson said that "if needs be" the police should investigate too.
Mr Sanni told the Observer that Vote Leave donated £625,000 to the founder of BeLeave, Darren Grimes, before the June 2016 referendum.
Vote Leave would have gone over its campaign spending limit of £7m if it had spent the money.
Mr Sanni claimed Mr Grimes was not in control of how the money from Vote Leave was spent and everything they did they passed through ground campaign manager Mr Parkinson - who is now the prime minister's political secretary.
He told the newspaper that most of the donation went to Canadian data firm Aggregate IQ, which has been linked to Cambridge Analytica - the firm facing claims it amassed the data of millions of people without their consent.
Mr Sanni said he and two other pro-Brexit friends reported the overspending allegation to the Electoral Commission on Thursday.
"In effect they used BeLeave to overspend, and not just by a small amount… Almost two thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference and it wasn't legal," said Mr Sanni, who first worked as a Vote Leave outreach volunteer before working for BeLeave.
"They say that it wasn't coordinated, but it was. And so the idea that… the campaign was legitimate is false."
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend, Mr Sanni said his lawyers would be presenting "recommendations to MPs" at a news conference in London on Monday.
Vote Leave has previously said it made the donation to Mr Grimes because it was coming up to its £7m spending limit and wanted a way of using the £9.2m it had raised from individuals and companies on campaigning activities.
The campaign separately spent £2.7m on the services of AIQ in the run-up to the EU referendum.
BeLeave was set up to give young pro-Brexit campaigners a voice during the referendum.
Separate campaign groups could spend up to £700,000 if they registered as permitted participants.
In a blog on Friday, Mr Cummings denied allegations of links between his campaign and Cambridge Analytica and said the claims were "factually wrong, hopelessly confused, or nonsensical".
Lawyers for AIQ told Channel 4 News that it had "never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica" and it had "never knowingly been involved in any illegal activity".
In a "personal statement" issued to Channel 4 News, Stephen Parkinson denied the allegations and said he was confident he had stayed within the law and spending rules "at all times".
He said he was "saddened" by the "factually incorrect and misleading" statements from Mr Sanni, who now works for the Taxpayer's Alliance.
Earlier, Mr Sanni said - in a statement issued through his lawyers - that Mr Parkinson had outed him as gay in his original response.
Mr Sanni, a British Pakistani, said he was forced to tell his family and that relatives in Pakistan could be in danger as a result.
In his original statement, published on Mr Cummings' blog on Friday, Mr Parkinson said he dated Mr Sanni for 18 months, before splitting up in September 2017.
"That is the capacity in which I gave Shahmir advice and encouragement, and I can understand if the lines became blurred for him, but I am clear that I did not direct the activities of any separate campaign groups," he said.
Mr Grimes told Channel 4 News he denied the allegations.
A solicitor for Vote Leave told the programme the campaign had been cleared twice on this issue by the Electoral Commission.
The Electoral Commission said: "The commission has a number of investigations open in relation to campaigners at the EU referendum; it does not comment on live investigations."
Green Party joint leader Caroline Lucas told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "This is a really complex network - but big, big questions need to be asked and it goes much wider than just the referendum."
But Brexit campaigning Tory MP John Redwood told Sky News Vote Leave had twice been cleared of breaching the rules.
He added: "If it's got to be investigated again, well then, so be it. But I think most people out there feel we had a perfectly fair referendum."

The director of Vote Leave has denied allegations of links between his campaign and Cambridge Analytica.
Dominic Cummings said claims by the Observer newspaper are "factually wrong, hopelessly confused, or nonsensical".
Cambridge Analytica is facing claims it amassed the data of millions of people without their consent.
The Observer is expected to publish further claims about links between the official Brexit campaign and the firm.
Cambridge Analytica is at the centre of a row over whether it used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum.
Mr Cummings claimed stories alleging links with Vote Leave were being promoted because a "powerful set of people will do anything to try to shift public opinion in order that they can overturn the referendum".
He says testimonies he expects to be made public in the coming days were from "whistleblowers" who were "peripheral, making invented claims about things they didn't see".
Mr Cummings has also published emails that appear to suggest Chris Wylie, who has been at the centre of the allegations about Cambridge Analytica, tried to sell Vote Leave a similar service, but was turned down.
Mr Wylie's lawyers have been contacted for a response.
The blog also rejects any suggestions that Vote Leave was in any way linked to Cambridge Analytica.
Vote Leave spent £2.7m on the services of a Canadian digital agency Aggregate AIQ in the run-up to the June 2016 EU referendum.
In his blog, Mr Cummings says AIQ "once built some software" for Cambridge Analytica's parent company SCL, in 2014, but suggestions the company shared data with Cambridge Analytica were "ludicrous".
In a separate development, Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica's former business development director, has told the Guardian the firm carried out data analysis for Leave.EU, the rival Brexit campaign to Vote Leave that was fronted by Nigel Farage.
Cambridge Analytica has said it did "no paid or unpaid work" for Leave.EU.
Ms Kaiser claims in The Guardian some work was undertaken, although no payment was received.
Leave.EU's co-founder Arron Banks said: "Leave.EU did not receive any data or work from Cambridge Analytica.
"UKIP did give Cambridge Analytica some of its data and Cambridge Analytica did some analysis of this.
"But it was not used in the Brexit campaign. Cambridge Analytica tried to make me pay for that work but I refused. It had nothing to do with us."
Cambridge Analytica has suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, who was filmed as part of a Channel 4 investigation giving examples of how the firm could swing elections around the world with underhand tactics such as smear campaigns and honey traps.
The company has offered to hand over all communications between its elections arm, SCL Elections Ltd, and a firm run by academic Dr Aleksandr Kogan by 5pm on Monday to the Information Commissioner, the High Court heard.
Lawyers representing the Information Commissioner's Office, which is investigating allegations against the firm, said its offer was "a poor second best" and are pursuing their application for a warrant.
Both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook deny any wrongdoing. The hearing before Judge Leonard continues.
A group of campaigning lawyers have, meanwhile, won the first stage of their High Court challenge over election spending in the run-up to the EU referendum.
The Good Law Project (GLP) says the Electoral Commission failed in its duty to regulate the referendum process in relation to spending by the Vote Leave campaign ahead of the vote in 2016.

The Brexit activist who has accused the Vote Leave campaign of exceeding legal spending limits said his claims will be backed up by evidence presented to MPs.
Shahmir Sanni alleged that the official Brexit campaign used a different group, BeLeave, to overspend.
Both groups deny any wrongdoing and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a prominent Vote Leave campaigner, said the claims were "utterly ludicrous".
Labour's Tom Watson said that "if needs be" the police should investigate.
Mr Sanni said his lawyers would be presenting "recommendations to MPs" at a news conference in London on Monday.
He told the BBC: "It's quite literally a matter of democracy and it's up to the people of this country to have a look at the evidence themselves and decide for themselves whether the allegations are false or true.
"Lawyers are looking at the evidence and [have] said there is reasonable ground and so they are going to be presenting their recommendations to MPs."
In interviews with Channel 4 News and the Observer, Mr Sanni - a volunteer for Vote Leave - said the official Brexit campaign donated £625,000 to a youth-oriented group, BeLeave, but required it to spend the money on a firm Vote Leave used for its digital advertising.
Vote Leave would have gone over its campaign spending limit of £7m if it had spent the money.
The Electoral Commission is already looking into whether Vote Leave spent more than it was entitled to during the campaign.
Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings denied the claim and Brexit Secretary David Davis told the BBC it was the job of the commission, not ministers, to make a judgement.
Mr Sanni told the Observer £625,000 was given to the founder of BeLeave, Darren Grimes, who - he claims - was not in control of how the money was spent.
He said everything they did they passed through Vote Leave manager Stephen Parkinson, Mr Sanni's ex-boyfriend, who is now the prime minister's political secretary.
Mr Sanni told the newspaper that most of the donation went to Canadian data firm Aggregate IQ, which has been linked to Cambridge Analytica - the firm facing claims it amassed the data of millions of people without their consent.
He said he - along with two other pro-Brexit friends - reported the overspending allegation to the Electoral Commission on Thursday.
"In effect they used BeLeave to overspend, and not just by a small amount… Almost two thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference and it wasn't legal," said Mr Sanni, who first worked as a Vote Leave outreach volunteer before working for BeLeave.
"They say that it wasn't coordinated, but it was. And so the idea that… the campaign was legitimate is false."
Vote Leave has previously said it made the donation to Mr Grimes because it was coming up to its £7m spending limit and wanted a way of using the £9.2m it had raised from individuals and companies on campaigning activities - and that it had received permission to from the Electoral Commission to do this.
The campaign separately spent £2.7m on the services of AIQ in the run-up to the EU referendum.
BeLeave was set up to give young pro-Brexit campaigners a voice during the referendum.
Separate campaign groups could spend up to £700,000 if they registered as permitted participants.
In a blog on Friday, Mr Cummings denied allegations of links between his campaign and Cambridge Analytica and said the claims were "factually wrong, hopelessly confused, or nonsensical".
Lawyers for AIQ told Channel 4 News that it had "never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica" and it had "never knowingly been involved in any illegal activity".
In a "personal statement" issued to Channel 4 News, Stephen Parkinson denied the allegations and said he was confident he had stayed within the law and spending rules "at all times".
He said he was "saddened" by what he called "the factually incorrect and misleading" statements from Mr Sanni, who now works for the Taxpayers' Alliance.
Earlier, Mr Sanni said - in a statement issued through his lawyers - that Mr Parkinson had outed him as gay in his original response.
Mr Sanni, a British Pakistani, said he was forced to tell his family and that relatives in Pakistan could be in danger as a result.
In his original statement, published on Mr Cummings' blog on Friday, Mr Parkinson said he dated Mr Sanni for 18 months, before splitting up in September 2017.
"That is the capacity in which I gave Shahmir advice and encouragement, and I can understand if the lines became blurred for him, but I am clear that I did not direct the activities of any separate campaign groups," he said.
Mr Grimes told Channel 4 News he denied the allegations.
A solicitor for Vote Leave told the programme the campaign had been cleared twice on this issue by the Electoral Commission.
The Electoral Commission said: "The commission has a number of investigations open in relation to campaigners at the EU referendum; it does not comment on live investigations."

The UK and Welsh governments have reached agreement over a long-running Brexit "power-grab" row.
The agreement on changes to the UK Government EU (Withdrawal) Bill follows months of discussions.
Wales' Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford said the deal means powers in areas "currently devolved remain devolved".
Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood accused Labour of selling Wales "down the river" and capitulating to Westminster.
David Lidington, UK Cabinet Office minister, said the deal represented a "significant achievement that will provide legal certainty".
The Scottish Government has rejected the latest offer, saying under the latest proposal the Scottish Parliament's "hands would be tied".
Up until now the Scottish and Welsh governments had been aligned in their stance against the UK Government, and there had been speculation for some time that the two may begin to differ in their approach.
The row centred on what would happen after the UK's withdrawal from the European Union to 64 powers in devolved areas, such as agriculture support and food labelling.
The powers are currently operated by EU officials in Brussels.
As part of its EU (Withdrawal) Bill - which plans to transfer EU laws into UK law in order to avoid a legal "black hole" post-Brexit - the UK government had initially proposed that those powers should transfer to directly to Westminster rather than to the devolved administrations.
It led Welsh and Scottish ministers to label the proposed law a "naked power-grab".
In February, the UK government said it had made a "considerable" offer, which would see the vast majority of those devolved powers returning to Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast while the rest temporarily stayed in London.
Although ministers in Cardiff said at the time the offer did not go far enough, following further discussions the UK and Welsh governments reached agreement on Tuesday on an enhanced proposal.
The agreed amendment is to be tabled by the UK government in Parliament on Wednesday.
It means any changes to powers held in Westminster would need the consent of the devolved legislatures, and that those powers will be held in Westminster for no more than seven years.
Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford said: "Our aim throughout these talks has been to protect devolution and make sure laws and policy in areas which are currently devolved remain devolved and this we have achieved."
He said: "London has changed its position so that all powers and policy areas rest in Cardiff, unless specified to be temporarily held by the UK government.
"These will be areas where we all agree common, UK-wide rules are needed for a functioning UK internal market.
"In a devolved UK the respective governments need to deal with each other as equals and this agreement is a step in the right direction.
"This approach must now continue as we prepare for leaving the EU and the next phase of talks with Brussels," he added.
Mr Lidington said: "This is a significant achievement that will provide legal certainty, increase the powers of the devolved governments and also respect the devolution settlements."
He added: 'It is disappointing that the Scottish Government have not yet felt able to add their agreement to the new amendments that Ministers and officials on all sides have been working on very hard over recent weeks.
"I thank them for that effort and hope that they may still reconsider their position."
As an insurance policy in case agreement was not reached, the Welsh Government fast-tracked a so-called Continuity Bill through the assembly in a bid to safeguard Welsh powers.
Last week, the UK government said it would refer that bill to the Supreme Court to decide whether it could become law.
But following agreement on changes to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, Welsh ministers now say they will withdraw their Continuity Bill as long as the UK government withdraws its Supreme Court action against the law.
Plaid Cymru Leader Leanne Wood said: "By capitulating to Westminster on the EU Withdrawal Bill, the Labour Government is selling Wales down the river.
"This is a bare-faced Westminster power grab which undermines the will of the people of Wales who voted for more powers in two referendums."

As the government prepares to trigger Article 50, what are the key areas that will need to be dealt with in the Brexit negotiations with Europe? Click on the links below for more detail.
Immigration▼ Business▼ Security▼
Defence▼ Health▼ Education▼
Science▼ The environment▼ Farming and fishing▼
For the future of the economy, there are two intertwined issues at the top of the "importance" league table.
First, the type of trade deal Britain secures with the European Union following Brexit.
In economic terms, the more "frictionless" that relationship, the better.
Studies by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research suggest leaving the single market could lead to a long-term reduction in total UK trade with Europe of between 22% and 30%, unless Britain signs exactly the same free trade deal as it has now (which many in the EU have made clear they do not support).
That stark fall in trade - and therefore in the creation of growth and wealth in the economy - reflects the fact the single market is a comprehensive trade agreement aimed at reducing tariff barriers within the EU (the UK's largest export market).
But, as importantly, the single market also seeks to reduce "non-tariff barriers", the rules and regulations governing issues such as safety certification and licensing of goods and services provided across borders.
For an economy such as Britain's, driven by services such as retail and finance, non-tariff barriers are very important as well as very complicated.
The government believes some of that trade impact can be offset with new free trade deals with countries outside the EU, such as Canada and the US, but they may take a while.
Watch the detail closely - the UK's future trade deals will be key to the future performance of the economy.
The other issue is immigration and, more precisely, labour mobility.
Businesses that operate internationally often need to move key staff in and out of the country as seamlessly as possible.
And sectors such as agriculture and food preparation and delivery rely on thousands of EU workers.
Freedom of movement rights across the EU - which help many businesses operate - are one of the red lines for Theresa May.
She has responded to worries that immigration is too high and cheaper workers from Central and Eastern Europe in particular have undermined employment opportunities and pay for British workers (although, with the economy approaching full employment, there is little actual evidence for this).
How "porous" the UK's borders remain to labour mobility will be an important factor in the health of its economy.
More from Kamal Ahmed
The prime minister sees controlling immigration as a red line in the Article 50 negotiations, but whether the end of free movement will see a sharp fall in European migration to the UK once it leaves the EU is much less clear.
Ministers recognise an immigration "cliff-edge" would be problematic for social care, health, construction, hospitality and agriculture, sectors, that currently rely on significant numbers of EU migrant workers.
It is suggested the UK might negotiate transitional arrangements lasting several years after Brexit.
How and for how long such arrangements might operate will be a key question in the Article 50 talks.
The government has said it will work with UK businesses to devise new immigration rules that allow them "to continue to thrive".
This is likely to mean a visa system, similar to the one already used for non-EU migrants.
The independent Migration Advisory Committee could be given the role of recommending how many visas should be issued to EU citizens working in different sectors.
The government will also need to negotiate how UK citizens can access jobs within the European Union, an existential issue for some businesses once free movement rules end.
Immigration rules apply to more than workers, of course.
The prime minister has said she is hopeful the rights of all EU citizens resident in the UK and UK citizens in the EU can be quickly resolved, although exactly the question of who retains residency rights may not be so straightforward.
Mrs May has reiterated her commitment to reducing net migration to the tens of thousands, but her government appears to be managing expectations that this can be achieved as quickly as some imagine.
More from Mark Easton
The number one business concern is failure to agree a trade deal on preferential terms with the UK's largest market for goods and services.
The limit of two years is seen by most companies as either pretty tight or impossible.
Failure to get it done may mean extra costs and red tape that would make UK companies uncompetitive.
Some sectors are more vulnerable than others.
The UK car industry is connected to a Europe-wide supply chain that sees components travel to and from the EU several times and be delivered just in time for assembly.
Tariffs and border hold-ups could seriously hamper that process.
The European financial services industry is concentrated in London.
UK and international firms based there can sell their services across the EU.
That could become more difficult after Brexit.
Both examples illustrate why many have called for a transitional period to either give extra time for negotiation or to get used to any new arrangements.
The government has signalled willingness to consider this, but has also said it is prepared to walk away from negotiations if it doesn't get the deal it wants.
Business groups such as the CBI have warned against favouring some sectors over others in the negotiation, but the government has already shown it is prepared to go to considerable lengths to reassure carmakers such as Nissan.
The other big worry is staff.
Construction and agriculture are heavily dependent on EU labour.
While the government has reassured businesses they will be able to hire the EU staff they need, it may prove hard to reassure every sector while hitting the political target of reducing the number of EU migrants.
Nevertheless, many business leaders remain confident the mutual self-interest of EU and UK companies will prevail in the negotiations.
Others, such as Sir James Dyson, of vacuum cleaner fame, welcome the new focus on fast growing markets beyond the EU that the triggering of Article 50 will prompt.
More from Simon Jack
In theory, it is in everyone's interests for the UK and the EU to maintain co-operation after Brexit on policing, law enforcement and security.
Catching criminals, thwarting terrorism and safeguarding vulnerable people is important to us all.
The terror attack at Westminster has served only to emphasise that.
In practice, though, it will be hard to achieve the efficiency and effectiveness of the current arrangements.
These include:
There is a consensus that the access Britain has to SIS II, Europol and the EAW is vital to the UK's crime-fighting capabilities.
But the access is derived from the UK's membership of the EU, its adoption of an EU-wide data protection framework and compliance with rulings from the European Court of Justice.
If the UK no longer signs up to the rules, why should it be allowed into the club?
Of course, the EU may agree to give the UK some access to SIS II and other crime databases - much of the information generated comes from the UK and so they benefit too.
There will undoubtedly still be a role to play for the UK at Europol - as other non-EU states, such as the USA, have.
It may also be possible to broker country-to-country extradition deals or an overall treaty with the EU akin to the EAW.
But this will all take time.
And, as Britain enters negotiations, there is no guarantee it'll happen.
More from Danny Shaw
Britain is the big spender on defence in Europe.
It is one of a handful of countries meeting Nato's target of spending 2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, and one of only two nuclear powers within the EU.
Some would argue that's a "security surplus" - and the UK should use it as a bargaining chip in the Brexit negotiations.
In reality, the UK will have to pay a price.
The post-Brexit vote exchange rate has already made the Ministry of Defence's shopping list for new military equipment significantly more expensive.
Britain could also lose influence among allies.
Though talk of a "European army" still seems fanciful, EU countries have already agreed to set up a small military command centre that could oversee small-scale operations.
Outside the EU, Britain will not have a voice to block any moves towards further integration.
Britain's defence industries might also suffer - from the loss of EU research grants and markets.
But even out of the EU, Britain will remain a key member of Nato.
The UK will also continue defence cooperation with France, based on bilateral agreements.
The two not only spend the most on defence in Europe, they are also the most willing to use their armed forces.
The most practical problem for UK defence would be if Brexit proved to be the catalyst for Scottish independence.
The Royal Navy would have to find a new home for Britain's nuclear-armed submarines.
Ministers might also have to rethink plans to build new warships on the Clyde.
For the NHS, the issue in the Brexit talks that towers above all others is the status of health workers from around the European Union and the broader European Economic Area (EEA).
The prime minister says rights of residency will form part of the negotiations and she does not want to reveal her hand now.
NHS leaders, though, are anxious the issue is resolved as soon as possible to prevent uncertainty that might result in an outflow of doctors, nurses and care workers.
They fear current recruitment problems could get worse.
A survey of doctors from the EEA by the British Medical Association suggested four in 10 were considering moving out of the UK after Brexit, and another two in 10 were unsure whether to stay.
The General Medical Council says about 11% of doctors registered in the UK - more than 30,000 - were trained in EEA countries.
According to the Nuffield Trust think tank, the proportion of nurses and midwives from the European Union is slightly above 4% of the workforce and rising.
For healthcare staff, however, the numbers from the rest of the world, presumably unconcerned by the Brexit talks, are higher than those from Europe.
Medical research is another area with a lot at stake in the talks.
Universities have warned doubts over residency status could deter academics from coming to the UK.
And international pharmaceutical companies will take a keen interest in talks on the regulation of drug trials.
Currently, there is an EU-wide playing field with a single regulator, the European Medicines Agency.
Ministers say they want to negotiate a standardised approval process post-Brexit.
If that does not happen, the UK would need to set up its own system for regulating drug trials.
More from Hugh Pym
In a way that would have been unimaginable a couple of generations ago, many of the UK's universities are global institutions.
Their staff, their students and their collaboration with other universities are more multinational than ever before.
So you can boil down their anxieties about the triggering of Article 50 into two words, research and people.
After the vote to leave in 2016, some immediate reassurance was put in place by ministers.
That included a promise to honour existing tuition fee and loan obligations to EU students starting in 2017-18 made just a few days before the deadline for applications.
Amidst the uncertainty, the number of students from EU states fell by 9% for some of the most competitive courses.
No such guarantee is in place for 2018-19.
Without it, EU students would face the same fees as international students, who come to the UK already in far greater numbers.
The exception is Scotland, where ministers have recently extended the promise of no tuition fees to students starting courses the following year as well, 2018-19.
The Treasury also promised soon after the vote to underwrite British research funded through the main EU programme, Horizon 2020.
In the Budget, there was a little more money to support home-grown talent to pursue postgraduate research.
None of this provides long-term certainty on what will happen to the research funding universities currently access through various European programmes, or the future of EU nationals currently working in UK universities.
It's not impossible a deal can be done that allows UK academics to continue to bid for funding, and attract or retain research talent.
A failure to do so would damage institutions ministers accept are an important contributor to economic growth and innovation.
The future participation in the Erasmus+  programme, which sees young people from the UK get the chance to study or gain work experience in the EU and some other countries that participate in the programme, will also need to be resolved.
Erasmus is not fundamentally about money, but something else universities value and fear is at risk.
It places a value on the open exchange of culture, knowledge and experience across borders.
More from Branwen Jeffreys
In the build-up to the referendum, Leave campaigners offered British science a bright future: the chance to shake off the EU's restrictions on developments such as genetic modification and to seek more exciting partnerships with the US and China.
They also pointed out some very big organisations such as Cern and the European Space Agency were not part of the EU and the UK's membership of them would continue.
But the scientific community was overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU, and it will be watching the exit negotiations nervously.
One concern is funding.
The EU has a massive pot for research, known as Horizon 2020, and British researchers have done well from it - getting more out than Britain pays in.
Non-EU countries can share this bounty, but they have to contribute to it.
So, Britain would have to keep writing cheques to Brussels and, if the talks turn sour, that may become politically difficult.
The Horizon 2020 money comes with another condition: freedom of movement.
The idea is to pull together the best scientists from across the European Union.
So, for example, a British university might lure a top German professor who in turns hires a brilliant Italian who helps land a big research grant.
The future of this free-flow of scientific talent is uncertain.
UK scientists have seen how financial specialists may be allowed an exemption to keep entering the country, and they want the same kind of deal for science.
More from David Shukman
Brexit could dramatically change the way Britain looks.
The UK's fields, hedges, streams, wild flowers, birds and insects have been influenced by decades of EU farm grants.
When the UK leaves, those grants will be revised - and the current system of handing farmers money for little more than owning land will stop after 2020.
The appearance of the UK's future countryside will depend on whether the government favours wildlife-rich fields or a de-regulated farm sector competing on a global market.
That could see lowlands more intensively farmed to the detriment of birds and insects, and much of the uplands left to scrub.
That would save taxpayers money - but it would trigger fierce resistance.
And it's not just the countryside.
The government promised in its manifesto to leave the environment in a better condition than it inherited.
EU rules have brought cleaner beaches and rivers - and this progress is unlikely to be reversed after Brexit.
But some environmental laws might get weakened as ministers strive to minimise regulatory hassle for business.
The government said it would copy and paste the 800 pieces of EU "green" legislation, but that's not simple.
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary Andrea Leadsom admitted that about a third of environmental laws - including directives on birds and habitats - could not initially be brought into UK legislation.
MPs fear ministers may use the process of adapting those laws to chip away environmental protections.
That's because although the UK has often led Europe on climate change, it's often resisted other safeguards.
On GM crops, chemicals and neonicotinoid pesticides, for instance, it doesn't share the EU principle of caution.
The UK typically favours a more bullish attitude to benefit the economy.
 One big question will be how citizens will appeal if the UK government fails on its environmental targets - as it is now with air pollution.
Currently, the European courts and Commission can beat ministers, but the big stick from Brussels will be no more.
MPs say the way to safeguard the environment is to pass a new UK Environmental Protection Act during Brexit talks.
It's all still a "big question", says George Eustice, the man responsible for UK agriculture and fishing.
We are still none the wiser as to what will happen when the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) no longer exist.
Will farmers still get subsidies?
Will the fishing industry be able to catch more fish?
It's a devolved issue - so will the nations have more control?
A staggering 60% of farm incomes come from subsidies.
This will be matched until 2020, but no-one knows what happens after that.
Farmers loathe the CAP and its labyrinthine regulations.
The hope is fewer rules will let businesses flourish.
But who will pick the strawberries and apples?
Seasonal workers could well stop coming if they have to fill out lots of forms to be allowed in.
Farmers are also nervous about trade deals being struck with food-producing countries where labour is cheap and animal-welfare and environmental standards are lower.
And there is the prospect of having to pay tariffs to sell in to the single market.
The fishing industry is desperate to be rid of the CFP and its fiendishly complex quota system: no-one wants to throw dead fish overboard.
But fish move around.
The aim of the CFP was to manage a common resource, and some fish stocks, such as cod, have been recovering.
It also pressures governments to pay attention to environmental and social factors when handing out rights.
As for fishing rights, post-Brexit, the UK nations will still have to negotiate quotas and somehow police the marine territory.
Farmers and people who work in the fishing industry are waiting for some - any - answers.

From Adele to James Bond, from David Hockney to Harry Potter, the UK's creative talent is admired around the globe.
And the creative industries are one of the UK's fastest growing sectors, growing at twice the rate of the overall economy.
Those in the creative industries are far more anti-Brexit than the rest of the country - a poll by the Creative Industries Federation (CIF) found 96% of its members voted Remain in the 2016 referendum.
Personal politics aside, there are practical reasons why people in the arts are worried that Brexit will be bad news - including their concerns about free movement of talent, funding and Britain's reputation around the world.
But others are seeing silver linings.
Here are some of the ways Brexit could affect the UK's creative industries and talent.
Arctic Monkeys, Idles (pictured), Chvrches and Jorja Smith are just some of the 40 UK acts travelling to play at this weekend's Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona.
As well as worries about the end of free movement having an impact on people wanting to live and work in another country, there are also concerns that it will make it more difficult for musicians and other performers to go on tour.
They may need visas for themselves and their crew, and could need carnets - documents allowing the temporary movement of goods - for their instruments and equipment.
There might also be complex tax procedures and lengthy customs checks. All that could be expensive and time-consuming to organise.
Big-name acts will probably feel the effects less, but there are fears that it will be prohibitive for up-and-coming artists and larger ensembles.
The same applies to European performers wanting to travel to the UK.
Former Labour MP Michael Dugher, chief executive of trade body UK Music, has called on the government to bring in a "touring passport" to get around any extra red tape and cost.
Britain's film and TV industries have been booming of late, thanks largely to Hollywood studios choosing the UK to film blockbusters like Solo: A Star Wars Story, Mission: Impossible - Fallout and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Foreign studios spent £1.7bn in the UK in 2017 - almost double the amount spent four years previously.
Most of that money came from America, encouraged by the fall in the value of the pound after the UK voted to leave the EU, which makes it more attractive for US studios to film in the UK. If, as Brexiteers hope, a wide-ranging free trade deal is struck with the US, the trend could well continue.
Some film-makers are worried about being able to recruit crew members from Europe to work in the UK, though, and have voiced concerns about European co-productions, funding and distribution schemes.
However, Lord Puttnam, who produced Chariots of Fire and is president of the Film Distributors' Association, has said more investment in home-grown films "with a distinctive British voice could help to deliver a form of national re-branding".
If the UK had never been in the EU, children's favourite The Gruffalo - one of every child's favourite books - wouldn't have existed, its German-born illustrator Axel Scheffler recently said.
He brought the character - and many others - to life, working with writer Julia Donaldson in what must be one of the most successful UK-EU creative partnerships.
He moved to the UK 36 years ago and said that without free movement, he wouldn't have been able to make his home in Britain and team up with Donaldson.
Scheffler is one of thousands of Europeans in creative jobs in the UK - the CIF estimated there were at least 130,000 EU nationals working in the sector in 2016.
Some areas rely on European talent more than others. An estimated 30% of people working in visual effects for film and TV were from the EU, with the figure at 20-30% for video games and 25% for architecture.
One of the biggest concerns about Brexit is that some of those people will want to - or be forced to - go home. It's also feared that others will be put off coming to the UK or be unable to do so, meaning artistic collaborations may not happen and some companies may struggle to attract the necessary talent.
In December, a joint document issued by the UK government and the EU said both EU citizens and UK nationals will be able "to live, work or study as they currently do under the same conditions as under Union law" after Brexit.
The late Martin Roth, the German museum director who took London's V&A to new heights, said upon his departure in September 2016 that he might not have taken the post if it had come up after the EU referendum.
"I'd probably still be offered a job, but the question is rather, would that job still be as attractive in such a context?" he said.
UK media watchdog Ofcom currently regulates around 1,200 TV services. But almost a third of those do not broadcast to UK viewers.
They are based in the UK - but the current "country of origin" rule says media outlets can serve the whole of the EU as long as they abide by the rules of their host country.
Some of these companies are considering relocating if they can no longer reach the whole of the EU from the UK, while others have put plans for new investment in the UK on hold, Ofcom said last year.
The Guardian has reported that Discovery is planning to move its European playout hub from London.
English arts organisations received £345m from the EU between 2007 and 2016, according to Arts Council England (ACE).
However, an ACE report said only 14% of its organisations have direct EU funding, with 30% of the organisations saying they have benefitted indirectly from EU funding.
Those getting funding include the Hall for Cornwall in Truro, which has £2.1m European Regional Development Funding to help pay for a new creative industries workspace unit.
In August 2016, the government said it would guarantee to support some EU-funded projects after the UK leaves the EU.
Amid all the speculation about what might happen after Brexit, there is one concrete consequence we do know about.
In November, the European Commission cancelled the UK's turn to host the European Capital of Culture in 2023 - because the UK will have left the EU by then.
Dundee, Nottingham, Leeds, Milton Keynes and Belfast/Derry had their eyes on the boost to their economies and images that the title would have brought.
When Liverpool was the UK's last Capital of Culture in 2008, it saw an extra 9.7 million visits and a £750m injection into the local economy.
When ACE published a survey of its members' views on Brexit in February, one of the key concerns was that the vote would harm the UK's global standing.
"There are significant concerns about the potential negative impact of Brexit on the UK's international reputation for arts and culture," its report said.
One of the organisations quoted, Newcastle-based Isis Arts, works with many European partners.
"People are not looking to us in quite the same way that they might have done before," they said. "Our position over there in these other countries is slipping away from us. It's such a shame because we were held in very high regard."
But the CIF points out that there are opportunities for British firms and talent beyond the EU.
It talks about catering for "the expanding middle class in nations from Chile to China", especially through new digital technologies.
Architects' body RIBA says the UK can fill a skills shortage in the US, while institutions like the V&A and the British Museum have been making inroads in Asia and the Middle East.
The CIF quotes Diane Banks of Diane Banks Associates Literary & Talent Agency as saying: "Investors are much more interested in our access to North American and Asian markets than the EU as these markets offer the highest growth potential, particularly when dealing with an English-language product.
"Leaving the EU will also present exciting opportunities to innovate and be more competitive."
Michael Lightfoot, who started the group Artists For Brexit, says: "We are very keen on trying to promote the notion of global Britain. You're shifting your emphasis to being interested in and having equitable exchange with the world, which has got to be brilliant for the arts."
There are other big issues for people across the British creative sector - who say copyright protection should be maintained, data should still be able to flow freely between the UK and EU, and tariffs shouldn't raise costs for businesses and prices for consumers on exporting things like books, video games and art.
Aside from the economic implications, we're seeing a new breed of artists and writers who have been stirred to give their creative responses to Brexit and the wider political climate.
The Young Vic's incoming artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah (pictured) recently told The Stage: "We can't rest on our laurels, but we're in great shape as a country [for political writing] because Brexit, wherever you sit on it, has awoken a generation [of playwrights]."
At the very least, Brexit has given Benedict Cumberbatch another job.
Thankfully - or not, depending on your view - the Eurovision Song Contest has nothing to do with the European Union.
Israel, Azerbaijan and Australia are among the non-EU countries who take part in the annual song extravaganza. So the UK can continue to compete.
Unfortunately, Eurovision is the one part of the creative sector where the UK is a consistent failure.

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has set out what he called "practical and proportionate" advice in case the UK leaves the EU with "no deal".
Ministers say a deal is the most likely outcome but the government has published 25 documents of guidance for people and businesses across a variety of areas to try to avoid the "short-term disruption" which it admits is possible if the two sides cannot reach a deal.
BBC correspondents have unpicked some of the key details of the newly-published papers.
The details on "no deal" published by the government are sobering. Just take one - trade across the border between the UK and the EU post-Brexit if there is no agreement.
If there is no deal and Britain reverts to "third country" status, the government has provided a long list of preparations that firms which export and import to and from the EU will be required to undertake.
Customs declarations would be needed, tariffs (import and export taxes) "may also become due" and the government also says firms are likely to need to invest in new computer systems to track goods.
"If the UK left the EU on 29 March 2019 without a deal, there would be immediate changes to the procedures that apply to businesses trading with the EU. It would mean that the free circulation of goods between the UK and EU would cease," the government says.
That is the crux of the problem. Leaving the single market and the customs union without a deal means significantly higher barriers to trade with the EU.
And higher costs for firms that are engaged in that trade.
Some of the overall costs to the economy might be mitigated over the medium term by increased trading opportunities with nations outside the EU.
And the government has signalled that in some areas - such as the need for upfront payments of VAT on imports - it is doing its best to smooth the impact on cash flow by allowing for delayed payment systems.
That has been welcomed by business groups. But what is key from the documents published on Thursday is pretty straightforward.
The costs of "no deal" are likely to be substantial. And consumers and businesses would be the ones paying the bill.
Not so long ago, anyone going online to buy a flight, clothes, or even just a new spade could have been hit with a surcharge simply for the luxury of paying by credit card, debit card, or using a digital service such as PayPal.
The government described them as "rip-off fees" and in January they were made illegal as the UK adopted EU rules. In a "no-deal" scenario the government says those surcharges could return for anyone in the UK buying something from a retailer in the EU - something that happens regularly through online shopping.
Equally, any transaction across the border could become slower as UK financial services could no longer plug into the EU's payments system.
Those UK expats living and drawing a pension in Europe may also be affected. As the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has warned, there is a risk that, without an agreement, a UK insurance company paying - say - an annuity to a UK expat in the EU would no longer be authorised to do so.
That pension provider would either have to risk a fine by carrying on making these payments, would have to set up a subsidiary in the EU to do so, or could do a deal with a European counterpart.
The ABI argues that a relatively simple co-operation between UK and EU regulators could solve this issue, and allow people to continue drawing pensions and receiving insurance payouts.
The UK government said it would give temporary permission for financial firms in the European Economic Area to pay people in the UK.
Roaming charges: What will happen after Brexit?
The concern in some parts of the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry is what might happen in a "no-deal" scenario if supply lines for medicines are disrupted.
If lorries get stuck at Calais and Dover because of customs delays, vital drugs like insulin needed in the NHS might be held up.
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock has now written to NHS and social care organisations saying there is no need for hospitals, GPs and pharmacies to stockpile medicines or for doctors to write longer-dated prescriptions.
He says pharmaceutical companies should have six weeks' supplies built up to avoid any possible disruption.
To that end he has written to the companies asking them to clarify their plans for having these supplies.
NHS and industry leaders have welcomed the extra clarity provided by ministers with Thursday's documents.
They are pleased the government will allow drugs and devices tested elsewhere in the EU to be used in the UK. But they say stockpiling six weeks' worth of medicines will not be straightforward with only 200 days to go until Britain leaves the EU.
Brexit: NHS managers warn about impact of no deal
Brexit: What would 'no-deal' mean for food and medicine?
The big Brexit question for farmers is not answered in Thursday's documents: will there be frictionless trade for the £45bn in agricultural produce we exchange with the EU?
The National Farmers Union (NFU) has talked of an "Armageddon" in agriculture if there's no deal. "This is what's keeping us awake at night," one NFU official told me.
But one of the papers does give a taste of potential challenges to come. It covers organic food and highlights the need for a new process of certification.
When Britain leaves the EU, British organic food will have to be certified by UK bodies which will themselves have to be recognised by the EU.
That's a task that can take up to nine months, the document warns, and it may not be possible to start it until Britain actually becomes a "third country".
But without going through these hoops, Britain's organic farmers will not be able to export across the Channel.
The NFU describes this as a "cliff-edge" scenario. The Soil Association says delays could significantly hinder trade.
There's another concern as well: the EU currently runs a system for tracing organic produce and the UK will need to set up its own version. Many wonder if that will be ready by next April.
Post-Brexit farming funding set out by Michael Gove
One line in the technical note on research is ringing alarm bells. It spells out that when Britain is not a member of the EU, it will no longer be eligible for grants from the prestigious European Research Council (ERC).
While non-EU countries can take part in the much larger Horizon 2020 programme - and the government says it hopes that Britain will - the ERC, which is worth 17% of the total, will be closed to them.
This could matter hugely to dozens of researchers up and down the country. A lab at the Francis Crick Institute is exploring new vaccines against cancer and has just started to receive a five-year ERC grant of €2.5m. Would a "no-deal" Brexit mean that that flow of funding would stop at the end of March?
Another set of concerns is uncertainty over nuclear research as Britain leaves the Euratom treaty which covers radioactive materials.
Whether it's nuclear fuel or radioactive isotopes for medical use, arrangements will pass into UK hands.
Operators "may" need to apply for licences for trade with the EU, the government says. And the fate of Europe's fusion research centre at Culham in Oxfordshire is addressed but left unclear.
Brexit barriers 'would harm science', say universities
Does it matter if the UK leaves Euratom?
The EU has been publishing its own preparedness advice for months now, for all Brexit outcomes.
On Thursday, EU officials pointed out, as they have done many times before, that "the withdrawal of the UK is going to lead to disruption, regardless. So with a deal or without a deal. That's why everybody, and in particular economic operators, need to be prepared".
The impacts highlighted by the UK's notices for a "no-deal" scenario are, the EU side says, the "automatic, mechanical" effect of the UK quitting the EU and moving outside the single market and the customs union and all their associated rules and regulations.
In the event of a no deal, the impact will be felt on Brexit day in March next year.
EU sources say their efforts right now are going into negotiating a withdrawal treaty, as that is the way to mitigate a "no-deal" scenario. The EU's own notices say it will be bound, legally, to treat the UK as a "third country" after Brexit, and that will limit any ability to waive EU rules and regulations especially for the country.
Which puts the focus back on the issues still holding up the withdrawal treaty, such as the so-called "Irish backstop", if a "no deal" is to be avoided.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said when it comes to trade with the EU after Brexit: "We want a comprehensive free trade agreement, similar to Canada's".
The EU's agreement with Canada is called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or Ceta for short.
The EU began negotiating with Canada in 2009, and Ceta provisionally came into force in 2017, although it has not yet been signed off by all the EU member states.
We've heard a lot about wanting a "zero-tariff, zero-quota" deal between the UK and the EU. Ceta does not do that.
Ceta gets rid of most, but not all, tariffs (that's taxes on imports) on goods traded between the EU and Canada. Tariffs remain on poultry, meat and eggs.
It also increases quotas (that's the amount of a product that can be exported without extra charges) but does not get rid of them altogether. For example, quotas on EU cheese exports to Canada increase from 18,500 tonnes to 31,972 tonnes a year.
It does little for the trade in services and in particular almost nothing for the trade in financial services, which is very important for the UK economy.
It also does not remove border checks, so there is still a possibility that goods have to be examined at ports to make sure they meet regulatory requirements, and their paperwork is in order.
Ceta protects EU "geographical indications", meaning for example that you can only make Parma ham in Italy and camembert cheese in France, and Canada can't import something that calls itself camembert from any other country.
They have also agreed to open up government contracts to each other, so Canadian companies could bid to build French railways, for example.
There is also co-operation between the two countries on standards, so a piece of equipment made in an EU country can go through all its safety and quality checks there, without needing to have them repeated in Canada - and vice versa.
Ceta also allows professional qualifications to be recognised both in Canada and the EU, making it easier, for example, for architects or accountants to work in both places.
And it aligns Canadian rules in some areas of copyright and patents with those of the EU.
Countries that are closer to each other tend to trade more, especially in goods, and this is the case with the UK and the EU.
The UK exported £291bn of goods and services to other EU countries in 2018, which was 45% of all UK exports.
It imported £357bn of goods and services from the EU, which was 53% of all UK imports.
On the other hand, Canada exported 46.2bn Canadian dollars (£26.7bn) of goods and services to the EU in 2017, which was 7.9% of its exports.
It imported 63.6bn Canadian dollars of goods and services to the EU, which was 10.5% of its imports.
The prime minister also mentioned having an arrangement with the EU similar to Australia's.
The EU does not have a free trade deal with Australia. They are in negotiations for one, but they currently operate mainly on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.
There was an EU-Australia Partnership Framework agreed in 2008, which reduces barriers to trade, but was not a free trade agreement.
So, trading on a similar basis to Australia would be largely the same as trading under WTO rules. In other words, it's another way of saying the UK would leave with no trade deal in place.
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The government's Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), which will take the UK out of the EU on 31 January, has passed all its stages in Parliament and been given Royal Assent.
The WAB turns Boris Johnson's withdrawal agreement, which is a draft international treaty, into UK law and gives the government permission to ratify it.
No new clauses or amendments were passed by MPs, who also rejected changes made in the House of Lords.
What does the WAB actually cover? Among other things:
A number of clauses in the previous version of the bill have been removed. They include:
Between 2016 and 2018, 426 unaccompanied children came to the UK in this way.
After the WAB becomes law, the withdrawal agreement also needs to be ratified by the European Parliament.
Then the stage will be set for Brexit on 31 January, when the post-Brexit transition period will begin.
For 11 months, the UK will still follow all the EU's rules and regulations, it will remain in the single market and the customs union, and the free movement of people will continue.
The challenge for the government will be to get all its new rules and policies in place by the end of this year.
This article was originally published on 21 October and has been updated to reflect changes to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill and its passage towards becoming law.
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The Brexit action plan for EU leaders coming to Salzburg - briefed over and again in advance of the summit in off-the-record conversations with European diplomats - had been to spout words of support for Theresa May to help her secure an EU/UK Brexit divorce deal not just with Brussels, but with political opponents back home.
But this summit has now ended, leaving a decidedly bitter taste in the mouth and a sense that this will be a long and very difficult autumn of negotiations with a real prospect of no deal at the end.
So what just happened?
The EU's "support Theresa" effort was actually launched the day before the summit with chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, suggesting a "new, improved" proposal on the key sticking point of the Irish border.
With the intention of directly addressing UK concerns, Mr Barnier also made explicit assurances that no-one in the EU wanted to break up the constitutional integrity of the UK.
Now, this "new plan" for the border wasn't really new at all, but EU leaders never intended to compromise their position on Ireland or their rejection of Theresa's May's Chequers proposal for the future economic partnership between the EU and UK.
Their Brexit aim for this summit was to go as far as they could with words and gestures to throw Theresa May a lifeline.
But their tokenistic effort was a misreading of Theresa May's political position - especially ahead of what is likely to be a difficult annual conference with her own Conservative Party.
The prime minister swiftly and bluntly rebuffed the Barnier Irish border suggestions - thereby misreading EU leaders right back.
There was huge irritation in EU circles - and that's how this summit began.
EU frustration only grew when the prime minister then arrived in Salzburg insisting unequivocally that her Chequers Brexit proposal was the only way forward.
Theresa May's uncompromising tone was then matched note by note by the EU and here we are now.
The fact that EU leaders had already pointed to problems in the Chequers proposal long before this summit; the fact that they praised other parts of the prime minister's plan, such as her thoughts on security; the fact that numerous European prime ministers said here in Salzburg that there was more hope now that there could be a successful Brexit deal, thanks in part to the prime minister's Chequers plan - all that has now been eclipsed.
But let's face it, critics and political rivals of Theresa May were waiting and watching this summit for storm clouds to gather over Chequers.
That now is the focus of their attention.
And perhaps - if Theresa May can survive this next political storm at home - it rather suits both the EU and the UK in the long term to have the public perception of Brexit negotiations now as fraught. So that if a Brexit deal does finally emerge later this autumn, the perception will be that it was hard fought and hard won.

What just happened?
Meetings in Brussels often run over. Maybe it's the witty repartee, or the chest-beating, or the fact that the institutions here are in the business of trying to get nearly 30 countries to agree on complicated issues. It is political rocket science.
But when Theresa May's lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker went on, and on, and on, and on, a whiff of doubt started to do the rounds.
Through the morning, MEPs and senior politicians - including the president of the EU Council - were suggesting on the record that there had been enough compromises on the British side over the Irish border to enable the talks to move on.
Downing Street did little to dampen down what was much more than the usual kind of summit speculation.
There were well-known politicians in Brussels and in Ireland saying publicly they were confident and that there had been enough progress to move forwards.
But it seemed they hadn't reckoned on the determination of the DUP.
They have been kept in close contact with the government over what was being discussed. But after this morning's reports circulated they snapped.
The leader, Arlene Foster, called a press conference to reiterate her often stated position that in her view, Northern Ireland must not be allowed to be any different to the rest of the Britain as a result of Brexit.
It is, of course, possible that the DUP feels the political need to be publicly cross as much as possible, before an eventual compromise.
Some familiar with their thinking claim this is in fact the case, and that this choreography with the dramatic pronouncements at Stormont are all part of the script.
But today their public ire made it nigh impossible for the PM to proceed. I'm told 20 minutes after Foster's press conference, she received a call from the prime minister, in which it was made plain that the DUP could not support the proposed deal.
They were not prepared to put up with something that looked like it was a victory for Dublin that was, in the DUP's view, ambiguous on Northern Ireland.
Theresa May had broken off her talks with Jean-Claude Juncker to hear that she would not be able to claim victory today. She then went back into the meeting, and shortly after made her grim statement alongside him.
Number 10 sources insist that it was not all about the DUP, saying citizens' rights are still to be completely resolved, as well as the issue of the border.
But having moved mountains to please Dublin, the prime minister now has a big problem with her supporters in Belfast.
Most painful, perhaps, because her reliance on the DUP is a problem of her own making.
Had she not made the biggest mistake of her career in calling the election, they would not be able to call the shots.
It feels like a big blow for the UK government today because it is.
The prime minister would not have invested her own political capital by coming to Brussels today if the government didn't believe that a deal was highly likely.
It is deeply embarrassing, therefore, for her to go home empty handed. But it doesn't mean at all that it's all over.
Sometimes difficult negotiations even need a bust-up before a breakthrough.
Theresa May is likely to be back in Brussels later this week - she'll hope that tradition of near-defeat before eventual victory rings true this time.
And don't forget, this is only the end game of the first phase. Nothing about Brexit was politically going to be easy without a majority.
Day-by-day now, the government is finding out why.

What does Chancellor Philip Hammond's increasingly vocal stance on Brexit say about his intentions, his prime minister and his party?
Is the chancellor intent on using his soft power to take on the hard Brexiteers? He's certainly using it to isolate one very vulnerable prime minister.
Mr Hammond, while seemingly content to let her remain in political limbo, has also vented his frustration about his boss, making it clear that Theresa May's team had made sure he had been shut away during the election, forbidden to talk about the economy.
He has suggested that this was the key, fatal, majority-losing mistake.
His message now: "It's the economy, stupid," and that goes for Brexit too.
Monday's talks in Brussels are one baby step on a long journey to a new future.
The election has changed everything. There are those in the Conservative Party who think the lesson was clear: hard Brexit has been rejected.
"Our power is now limited. To say it is a mess is to state the bleeding obvious," one former minister, an ardent campaigner for Leave, told us.
A former minister on the other side of the debate made it clear she had kept her seat because she was an ardent Remainer and was pinning her hopes on the chancellor softening Brexit.
Whether or not the chancellor is "on manoeuvres", Mr Hammond is certainly marshalling his arguments.
A planned Mansion House speech was postponed because of the Grenfell fire, but was briefed as potentially lobbing a missile into Number 10 and that the chancellor was toying with the idea of arguing to stay in the Customs Union.
He hasn't done that. Instead, he told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that he would prioritise the economy, jobs and skills, while adding: "We're leaving the EU and because we're leaving the EU we will be leaving the single market. And by the way, we'll be leaving the Customs Union." The postponed speech will now be delivered on Tuesday 20 June.
In a wider context, to understand the chancellor's language you have to decode the debate and the movement of the Tories biggest beasts, those who consider themselves the natural rulers, who feel that those they see as rebels, or Leavers, have seized control of their citadel.
It looks as if a counter-strike by these forces is unfolding before our eyes.
Consider: two former prime ministers, John Major and David Cameron, who were humiliated by Eurosceptics, have backed Mr Hammond's view, calling for the economy to be put first and for an agreement on Brexit with other parties.
So has former Conservative leader William Hague. So has the only Tory hero of the hour, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives' leader.
Almost unnoticed, the generally rather underwhelming reshuffle was at the heart of the coup.
Chancellor Phillip Hammond secure in place, Remainer Damien Green elevated to First Secretary of State, Remainer Gavin Barwell, former Croydon MP, the prime minister's new chief of staff, a critical appointment.
Brexit Secretary David Davis's top team has been eviscerated. His main ministerial enthusiast for leaving the EU, David Jones, was sacked without warning. The other resigned. The department didn't know it was coming. More importantly, Mr Davis didn't know it was coming.
One ally and former minister told us: "It's a major blow. David is now isolated, he is concerned that half his senior team have been swept from beneath him."
Another friend ruefully admitted that Mr Davis's hand had been weakened by the loss of close allies but is hoping he is strong enough to stand firm without them.
But the signs are that the core, indefinable, establishment of the Conservative Party, the party of business and occasional populist nationalism, is seizing back control.
If the softies are on the rise, what is it they want?
"Putting the economy first" is code for lots of things from staying in the single market, to staying in the Customs Union, to staying in the European Economic Area.
But two things are at the heart of their demands.
First, a gradual, gliding process of leaving the European Union, gracefully shedding its laws, institutions and benefits only very slowly: a "transitional arrangement" in the jargon. It is never said, but presumably this transition can be frozen into permanence at any point.
Then, there's the rejection of Mrs May's contention that "no deal" - a very hard Brexit - is better than a bad deal.
Some complain that "hard" and "soft" Brexit are meaningless, crude terms. They are correct to the extent that, like "left" and "right", they are big holdalls containing disputed goods.
But, in this case, the key to the argument is immigration. At the heart of soft Brexit is a compromise: getting better access to the single market by ditching tough demands on immigration.
So what did Mr Hammond say? He repeatedly emphasised that Brexit required a "slope not a cliff" and that no deal would be "a very, very bad deal" although one purpose-built to punish would be worse.
He explicitly said he wanted as close to the tariff- and trade-barrier-free single market as we could get. That implies giving up something on immigration.
So far it isn't enough to rile the right on the backbenches, but it leans heavily on one side of the debate.
But peer into next year, and it is the sort of deal that might need the support of Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs.
There is already detailed thinking about such a temporary Macronist alliance - akin to that which has just swept through French politics - in the voting lobbies.
But maybe, just maybe, none of this is really about a final agreement with the EU but an interim one with cabinet colleagues.
Few think Mrs May can survive long. There will probably be a leadership contest within the next few years, very possibly within the next few months.
Few want to, to coin a phrase, jump off a cliff, and rather fancy instead sloping towards the future.
Though still keeping his own Brexit cards close to his chest, Boris Johnson wrote yesterday about an "open Brexit" and not "slamming the drawbridge on talent".
A very public message about the price for support in a leadership contest perhaps?
There's some hard politics behind the soft option.

The art of predicting what happens in important private political meetings is tricky at best, and pointless at worst.
So as Theresa May gathers her close colleagues together at Chequers on Thursday, making guesses - even educated ones - about what will be achieved is imprecise.
But let's take that gamble.
It is safe to say that the differences in the cabinet are real, if not as dramatic and dastardly - or indeed as straightforward - as portrayed.
It is, therefore, also safe to say that getting to a clear, detailed and bold picture after months of tensions, in one day, is unlikely if not impossible.
And if very much is to move forward and be agreed it will either require, as one minister gently lamented, "the PM to actually make a decision", overtly, on her own position and force others along - or for others to budge.
One former minister described the situation as this: "If everyone is happy it's a fudge. If anything's genuinely decided someone has to be unhappy.
"Either Philip Hammond has to agree that he is signed up to divergence, or Boris Johnson has to agree that he can accept alignment, or, someone resigns."
Number 10 would, of course, not agree with that characterisation.
In recent days, despite the foot-stamping from Brexiteers, there has been a detectable sense around government that a form of agreement - or at least the next steps that look like progress - can be reached on Thursday.
No-one around SW1 expects a big bust up, or a big flounce out (which would be awkward in any case given that Chequers has a very, very long drive), or public hysterics from anyone in cabinet after the meeting.
And it is fairly likely there will be a sign-off for a slightly more advanced version of what Theresa May spelt out rather cryptically in her speech in Florence all those months ago.
With the catchy title of "managed divergence", that relates to the "three baskets" approach (don't blame me for making up these names).
As we have discussed here before, the UK government wants to offer the EU an approach to the relationship between the two sides after Brexit that goes something like this...
In basket one (I know), there are some areas in which the UK and the EU might want to achieve the same kind of outcomes as before, and the UK would have no problem using exactly the same rules - and ways of following the rules - for good.
Think of aviation, for example. No-one in the industry, or really anyone in government you can find, thinks there is much wrong with being in the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The upheaval of leaving probably isn't worth it - essentially, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The other way of thinking of this is - same goals, same means. In this particular case, by the way, it is not agreed and the EU is sceptical, but it is likely that the UK will try to find a way to stay in the EASA.
In basket two are areas where the UK might want to have the same goals, but want to get there on its own terms - same goals, different means. An example here might be animal inspection. The UK wants to have the same high standards of animal welfare, potentially they would say, even better conditions and guarantees.
But there is a view in some quarters that the European inspection regime takes too long and costs too much. So the UK might want to set up its own systems to carry out the actual inspections, even though ministers want British pigs and chickens to be just as well looked after (don't mention the chlorine) as their continental cousins. Common standards but different rules.
The third basket is where it gets a lot trickier - where the UK essentially wants to choose what we do and how we do it.
This is probably an over-simplified version of the complexity that's on the table. I am not going to get into the differences between recognition, equivalence, and the rest - there is more jargon out there than anyone could ever wish for, but if it's your thing, my colleague Norman Smith has a great primer here.
And there are other very vexed questions too, not least on customs arrangements, intricately tied to the issue of the Irish border.
One minister told me this week the consequences of leaving the EU after the implementation period without some form of customs arrangement will be graphically spelt out to Brexiteers tomorrow.
This is certainly not exhaustive, and given the levels of secrecy in government about the real details of the plans, it is impossible to be entirely sure what is going on.
But talking to senior government figures, this is the territory where Theresa May hopes to get the cabinet together - with what was described to me as "a little bit of scaring the Brexiteers into compromise".
It is not, repeat not, a final version of the deal the UK will get.
It would be sign-off on a political approach that Theresa May can then put to the EU and, importantly, the public in her next big speech at the end of next week.
There is a whole other question then, about whether Brussels will accept this as an opening offer on our relationship in the future.
What then does Theresa May do if her calibrated compromise (otherwise known as what she could get through) is rejected by the EU?
There have already been reports they are simply not up for it. Over recent months diplomats have suggested to me that they see the three basket approach as messing with the single market.
But without some progress on Thursday, even with a strong flavour of fudge, progress towards a deal on the vital implementation period that business and Number 10 so eagerly wants next month could stall.
PS: Wondering why the document on implementation was so delayed yesterday? Maybe not, but it's interesting, honest.
Cabinet ministers only received the document about the two-year period after Brexit into their red boxes on Tuesday night.
Sources say that some were "deeply unimpressed" by what was in it and the fact that there had been no chance to give it official sign-off or discussion.
Government sources are adamant it was only a write-up of a government policy on the transition that was agreed at a committee meeting on 17 January. Only a skirmish, not a big bust up, but not exactly the sign that all is completely well in the group that is making these big decisions.

The uncertainties of Brexit spread far beyond the borders of the UK and continental Europe.
Decisions made in London and Brussels will have profound consequences for the 250,000 people who live in the UK's 14 overseas territories - yet another thread of complexity in the Brexit process.
Gibraltar has always had the potential to cause a Brexit bust-up, even though Article 50 is perhaps less important here than Article 10... of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht.
That was when Spain ceded sovereignty of the Rock to Britain - a decision it appears to have regretted ever since.
Gibraltar voted 96% in favour of remaining in the EU. There was enormous shock in the territory when the UK voted to leave, taking Gibraltar with it.
"The atmosphere of disaster and grief was absolutely palpable," recalls Marlene Hassan Nahon, an independent member of the Gibraltar parliament.
"One of my good friends met me for breakfast. She was dressed in a black dress, crying her eyes out."
Britain's Overseas Territories
Local businesses are beginning to get more used to the idea of operating outside the single market, especially after the government of Gibraltar revealed that roughly 90% of its financial services trade within the single market is actually with the UK.
"Somehow we had not realised or considered it before," says Joe Garcia, a veteran local journalist who has been covering all things Gibraltar since the 1960s.
"People who bet online in Britain, 60% of those bets actually come through Gibraltar, and it's the same with requests for car insurance. When you are out in Britain, look around. One out of every six cars is insured in Gibraltar."
But many of the people who work in the sector live across the border in Spain. And there are persistent fears about the potential for long delays at the border after Brexit, and about the future of the Rock's low tax regime, which Spain sees as unfair competition.
"They will probably try to use [Brexit] to get Gibraltar to stop being what they call a tax haven," says Spanish historian Mercedes Penalba-Sotorrio. "I think one of the main priorities is to stop that."
But the most sensitive issue is Spain's long-standing claim for sovereignty - shared or otherwise - which is rejected outright by both the UK and Gibraltar itself.
Suspicion was heightened after the remaining EU27 decided formally that no agreement between the EU and the UK may apply to Gibraltar without a bilateral agreement between Spain and the UK.
Now that language is threatening to complicate negotiations on a transition period for the UK after Brexit.
"To the frustration of Brussels and the rest of the EU," says Mujtaba Rahman of the political consultancy Eurasia Group, "Madrid is now arguing that the transition represents one such agreement - and that the transition should not apply to Gibraltar unless Spain explicitly agrees, which it currently does not."
If Gibraltar feels under threat, at least it has some influential supporters in London. Last year The Sun updated its classic early 90s headline "Up Yours Delors" for the front-page benefit of Spain: "Up Yours Senors".
But spare a thought for Britain's overseas territories with rather less clout.
The Caribbean island of Anguilla has a sea border with the EU, and is fearful of the future. Devastated by Hurricane Irma last year, and dependent on neighbouring islands, it is now bracing for Brexit.
Anguilla's closest gateway to the world lies four miles across the sea in the French half of the island of St Martin, which is officially part of France, and therefore an "outermost region" of the EU.
Anguilla relies on access to St Martin for many of its daily necessities - from food supplies to MRI scans to the postal service. The nearest international airport lies on the Dutch side of St Martin.
"We have a symbiotic relationship, and we really don't want Brexit to change it," says Blondel Cluff, the Anguillan government representative in London.
"But I don't think we've come up in the negotiations yet."
In a report published last year entitled "Anguilla & Brexit: Britain's forgotten EU border", the Anguillan government called for a regional customs union with St Martin and a common travel area.
Anguilla is also mostly ineligible for British development aid, and is therefore highly dependent on money coming from the EU for more than a third of its budget.
"I know it's difficult when we have a population the size of a British village," says Blondel Cluff, "but we need to make sure we don't get forgotten in the mix."
It all means that even half way round the world Brexit is raising concerns about the freedom of movement of goods, of services, and of course of people.
"The fact that people in overseas territories are going to lose an important element of their citizenship, without having been asked about it, may well give rise to legal challenges in the future," says Susie Alegre, a lawyer specialising in the rights of citizens in the British Overseas Territories.
Given the bewildering range of Brexit issues that need to be resolved, it is hardly surprising that the overseas territories have not received the attention they feel they deserve.
But Susie Alegre believes that could change.
"It may well be - and particularly with the case of Gibraltar - that in the next year you'll suddenly see quite serious issues popping up out of these dots on the map."

With Theresa May's end of March deadline for triggering the UK's exit from the EU fast approaching, much remains undecided, not least what will happen to British trade.
As an EU member, the UK and UK-based firms can sell their goods to EU customers without having to pay additional taxes. Likewise, British firms and consumers can import from the EU tariff-free.
The prime minister has already ruled out continued membership of the EU's single market post-Brexit, with many assuming this means the UK will also leave the customs union.
Essentially there are two options:
The WTO is an international agency with 164 member countries and its purpose is to promote international commerce. All the leading world economies are members of the WTO, including the UK. European Union countries are also all members, but they act together in the WTO as the EU.
One of the most important principles of the WTO is that you should not discriminate between other WTO members. The UK and the EU would both have to impose on one another's exports the same barriers they apply to goods from the other WTO member countries.  In fact, in the absence of a free trade agreement they would be obliged under WTO rules to do that.
They include import tariffs, which are taxes applied only to imports. WTO members make commitments that they will not raise tariffs above a certain level. Those maximum levels, known as bound levels or bindings, vary from country to country and product to product. The tariffs they actually apply can be, and in many cases are, below those levels. But if you do go below bound levels, you have to do it for imports from all WTO members.
For the EU the average maximum tariff is 4.8% for all goods. But there are some big variations.  It's generally higher for agricultural produce, 10.9% on average. For most industrial goods it's quite low, but for cars, the tariff is 10%.
Assuming the UK were trading with the EU under WTO terms, the figures are an indication of the levels of tariffs British exporters would face on their goods. It would make them less competitive in the EU market than they currently are with no tariffs at all.
The UK's new schedule will have to have the consent of the other WTO members. It is administratively easier and less likely to be contested if we stick with the arrangement that we already have, as the UK's ambassador to the WTO, Julian Braithwaite. wrote in his blog: "So to minimise any grounds for objection, we plan to replicate our existing trade regime as far as possible in our new schedules."
However, the UK would be free to apply lower tariffs. In some cases it is highly likely we would. For example, the EU imposes seasonal tariffs on orange imports when the Mediterranean producers have their harvest. Getting rid of that is an example of what one former trade official described to me as "low hanging fruit".
Some economists, including Patrick Minford of Cardiff University and one of the leading members of Economists for Brexit (now renamed as Economists for Free Trade), favour a more comprehensive exercise in cutting tariffs and other barriers unilaterally. But these cuts would have to apply to goods coming from the EU as well.
Don't be fooled, some aspects will be more complicated. For some farm produce, for example, the EU has quotas that can be imported at lower tariffs (called tariff rate quotas). We don't yet know how these will be divided between the UK and the remainder of the EU.
There is also the question of what happens to that produce when it is traded between the UK and the EU. Currently it is tariff-free. Both will probably want a slice of the other's reduced tariff quota. That will mean either a bigger total quota or a reduced slice for some other country.
In the WTO, the EU has agreed to a cap on some of its farm subsidies. We don't currently know what type of system the UK will adopt and potentially this an area of difficulty. The EU however is well below its subsidy cap, and that could make this area less contentious than it might have been.
No. There are many other types of trade restrictions. These include rules on product specifications, labelling, testing, and requirements for authorisation from a national regulator to provide some types of services. The UK would have to decide whether or not to maintain EU rules in these areas.
Currently a trade dispute would be a matter for the European Court of Justice. Theresa May has already said that its jurisdiction in the UK will end. If there is a trade agreement with the EU it would probably contain some arrangement for a tribunal to make rulings.
If there is no such deal then any dispute would have to go to the WTO's dispute settlement system, which can establish panels to make rulings.
Whatever happens, the UK and the EU will be subject to WTO rules. It is just that the membership of the EU and any new trade agreement that might be negotiated allows for deeper integration than is involved in simply complying with the WTO's rulebook.

As Westminster is settling down to the next phase of its collective mild nervous breakdown, the pushback to Brexiteers' criticism of Theresa May's Chequers plan is that the naysayers don't have their own.
It's not that far off from saying 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'!
Or, in more polite terms, the kind that your parents might have advised, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
Those in government are deeply frustrated that they get knocked about by criticism from Brexiteers (and not just Boris Johnson, honest) who are right now engaged in an overt plan to kill off the prime minister's plan, based on months of work,  but are yet to front up with their own proposal.
In the coming days, the Brexiteers, organised behind the scenes by that powerful grouping, the ERG, which regular readers here will be very familiar with, have a plan to counter that accusation.
I hear from Sunday onwards we should expect several days of carefully planned announcements, almost like a government grid perhaps, where the Brexiteers, with their eyes ruthlessly on their short term prize of "chucking Chequers", will lay out an alternative.
A roll out of written papers will begin over the weekend, with a big event expected in Westminster on Monday which, if it comes off, would just by chance coincide with Boris Johnson's next newspaper column.
Plans, which are in this very febrile environment subject to a whole lot of change, are right now for a push on Sunday to make the argument for a free trade agreement, rather than Chequers.
On Monday, we should see an explanation of the Brexiteers' vision for money and migration, and then on Wednesday for solutions to be presented for the crucial Northern Irish border question and other issues like agriculture and fishing.
The idea is not, sources say crucially, to put pressure directly on Theresa May to trigger some kind of putsch.
But don't be in any doubt, it is a carefully worked-through plan designed to present alternatives to what the government has put on the table, calculated to force the prime minister to ditch the policy.
Of course, by publishing their own plans, the Brexiteers' will submit themselves to the same kind of scrutiny that the government itself has.
It is one thing, they are well aware, to be merely critics, quite another to commit to alternatives that it's likely Number 10 will waste little time in tearing down.
The emerging consensus among Brexiteers seems to be that it is better to present an alternative that will be open to criticism, than face the charge of having no worked out ideas of their own.
The idea, when ministers say to MPs 'well it's Chequers or nothing', is their solution can fill in that blank. And to try, notably, to make Theresa May perform a huge U-turn before the Tory conference and admit, whether privately, tacitly, or publicly, that the July settlement simply can't stand.
Those involved in designing the "chuck Chequers" plan are careful to point out that they would absolutely support the prime minister in shifting position. The condition being, if she does their bidding, they won't seek to damage her further.
The political truth is too that while many Brexiteers would be ruthless in trying to achieve their political goal, their aim right now, and this goes for Boris Johnson too, is that the target is changing the policy, not changing the Tory party's leader.
Yet for those in government right now, there is no question whatsoever of ditching the Chequers deal. Remember it's only the basis for a negotiation, and it took the government two years (yes two years) to come to that position. And insiders say for all the claims of Chequers being dead, in fact it will to a large extent be part of the eventual deal.
In other words, remember, remember, remember Chequers was always a document from which a negotiation would finally start, and inside government there is still a strong belief that elements of it will survive.
There's an acknowledgement inside government too that the next few weeks will be extremely testing. But right now, there is not even a sniff that they would be able, even if willing, to give one inch to the Brexiteers.
But they are organised, determined and willing to try to force her to move, and might have more in their armoury if the prime minister sticks to her ground.

Theresa May faces a daunting task to get her Brexit deal ratified by Parliament after it was rejected by 230 votes. It has not been made easier by the fact that the 118 Tory rebels who voted against her on Tuesday can't agree on an alternative plan.
Does that mean it's dead? Probably in its current form, but Mrs May is clearly not giving up on it just yet. It is on life support until someone can come up with something they can all agree on.
Here is a list of where the Tory rebels who voted against Mrs May's deal on Tuesday stood, based on their public statements - and the number who voted for the deal.
The BBC's researchers have come up with estimates for how many belong to each group.
It is a fluid situation, and some who voted for the deal may now be ready to back other options.
It should also be noted that some MPs cited multiple reasons for voting against Mrs May's deal, while others focused more on the alternative deal they would prefer - and seven Tory MPs have been silent, as far as we can tell, on their reason for opposing the deal.
Tuesday's vote was backed by 196 Tory MPs, including about 100 on the ministerial payroll.
Lest we forget, it would see the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union, with much of the detail of how that would work in practice being worked out after 29 March, when a 21-month transition period would kick in.
It also guarantees citizens' rights and commits the UK to paying a £39bn "divorce bill". There is also the small matter of the Northern Ireland backstop, but more of that later.
The Irish border "insurance policy" is the poison pill preventing the Democratic Unionist Party from backing Mrs May's deal. Plenty of Conservative MPs want to see it scrapped, although some could get by with a time limit on it.
Mrs May would probably drop the backstop in a heartbeat if she thought she could but it is not really in her hands. She would need to convince the EU to agree to it and that seems unlikely right now.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis (pictured) has been banging the drum for a Canada-style free trade deal for some time now - and he is not alone. Other ministers who quit the cabinet in protest at Mrs May's deal, including Boris Johnson, are also in the Canada camp.
They want Theresa May to use her thumping defeat on Tuesday as a bargaining chip to have one last go at getting a better deal out of Brussels. If she can't manage that, then she should step up preparations for a no-deal Brexit, they argue.
Canada has a looser trading arrangement with the EU than the one being proposed by Mrs May but with "zero tariffs and zero quotas" on all imports and exports.
Mr Davis wants what he calls "Canada plus plus plus" - the same deal as Canada but extra provision for financial services.
Mrs May has always ruled out the Canada option, arguing that it would not solve the Irish border issue.
But these MPs think the Irish border issue has been overblown.
A no-deal Brexit is the preferred position of dyed-in-the-wool Eurosceptics such as Sir Bill Cash (pictured), who dismiss fears of economic meltdown as "project fear" and insist Britain could thrive under World Trade Organization rules. Some cabinet members have said there is nothing to fear from a no-deal Brexit, although they say they would prefer a deal.
Mrs May has refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit, even though she does not want it to happen. But as things stand, Britain will leave without a deal on 29 March if MPs can't agree on an alternative.
Leading rebels, such as Dominic Grieve (pictured) and Sarah Wollaston, have come out in favour of this option - although more may be waiting in the wings.
Mrs May could not have been more clear in her rejection of another referendum. But the decision could be taken out of her hands, if the Labour leadership got behind this option, creating a likely parliamentary majority for it. That's a pretty big "if" as things stand, however.
Only one Tory MP, Robert Halfon, voted against the deal because he prefers the Norway option but other supporters of it voted for Mrs May's deal.
MPs who currently support the Norway option, or who have expressed support for it in the past, include Nick Boles, John Stevenson, Kevin Hollinrake, Sir Oliver Letwin and George Eustice.
The Norway model is about as close as you can get to the EU without actually being a member state.
A softer Brexit that would see the UK remaining in the customs union might be something that a majority of MPs would support, although few Tory MPs have publicly backed it.
It would cause anger among Tory Brexiteers but they have lost the ability to get rid of Mrs May in a leadership contest, after last year's failed confidence vote led by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
There might also be cabinet walkouts, among the more ardent Brexiteers, but Mrs May has ridden those out before.
Update 18 January 2019:This article has been amended to provide more detail on the number of MPs who have backed a Norway option and make it clearer that some MPs may now be ready to back other options.

Let me be the first to make the bad joke, to use the predictable metaphor.
There will be a sour mood over the EU summit in the next couple of days, and that's not just because of the problem with the drains that sent toxic fumes into the atmosphere at the summit building forcing the talks back to the old premises next door. (Sorry)
It will also be the sense of frustration in the air, maybe even of exasperation, and likely too a whiff of foreboding about the whole situation.
On both sides there will be spin. On both sides there is already expectation management.
Here are a few things, however, that are currently true and will probably still be true by Friday lunchtime, with the slim but real chance of course that it could all get turned upside down.
First, the UK-EU talks are significantly behind. The UK hoped that by autumn we'd be able to move onto trade talks properly. That's not going to happen, underlining the change since those heady days when Brexiteers promised it could be straightforward.
Second, there is not likely to be any answer to the main bind on Friday. The UK does not want to put any more cash on the table, beyond the 20bn euros implied by Mrs May's Florence speech.
The strongest voices in the EU, although not every country agrees, think the UK ought to have to wait for the next phase of talks unless it is willing to offer hypothetical extra cash.
Whatever else is said or briefed privately, this is the fundamental issue. And until the PM feels she is in a political situation where it's possible and desirable to budge it's hard to see how they will move on as certainly, there is no appetite on the EU side for a shift.
Third, something will have gone very badly wrong, however, if there is not a nudge towards moving on.
Sources say foreign ministers agreed the draft version of the conclusions of the summit yesterday that are not likely to change much.
They don't exactly give a green light to the next phase, but they do at least give a bit of a push in that direction - although not quite as clearly as the UK had hoped.
Fourth, the EU is still concerned that the UK government is yet to present a clear picture of what it really wants the long-term relationship to be. And it's still the case, sources tell me, that the full cabinet is yet to have a proper discussion that tries to find that answer.
Sounds extraordinary but given how divided the party is, arguably the lack of discussion is what keeps things even vaguely calm. With guns drawn in the Tory party there is no temptation for Theresa May to fire a shot.
And there's nothing in the next couple of days, or even the next couple of months, that's likely to change that or to answer that much more fundamental question.

Theresa May will face a fight for her leadership after at least 48 members of her own party put in writing that they have lost confidence in her.
Any time the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives - Sir Graham Brady - receives letters from 15% of the party's MPs, a secret ballot is triggered.
If Mrs May wins, they cannot challenge her premiership for another year.
But, if she loses, there will be a leadership election and she will not be allowed to run. (You can see the process in the graphic below)
Here is a list of MPs who have publicly said they have submitted letters:

Who blinked? Maybe both sides did, a bit.
Lots will be said and written in the next 24 hours about who really backed down after another day of shenanigans in Parliament - whips cornering potential rebels, even today, the grim sight of a Labour MP being forced to come to vote while visibly ill in a wheelchair and on morphine, the Tories so nervous about the vote that they suspended the normal rules that allow for ill MPs to stay out of the Chamber.
As Westminster games go, it is getting pretty extreme.
But ultimately, your view on whether the compromise had a winner, may depend on the side you are on.
Both sides of course will claim they were the victor, the haggling over a deal took so long because both sides wanted to save face.
The cabinet minister Liam Fox has just told us that nothing has really changed, it was just "procedural" and the fundamentals were exactly the same.
In contrast, one of the organisers of the rebel group, Stephen Hammond, tweeted that the government has now conceded that Parliament would have a "real say with no constraints", if the final Brexit deal is rejected.
The two sides will, guess what, continue to argue it for weeks to come, and every insult, every rankle, every cross word on this episode, being remembered in the difficult months to come.
Here are two things however that are hard to dispute.
The government was worried enough about losing today to budge, even if they only gave an inch.
It might be a concession that only really parliamentary lawyers understand, but the PM had to move, again, despite not wanting to.
And despite the fact that she did compromise even in a meaningless way (yes I can't believe that I did just write that sentence, but it is relevant), the vote was still relatively close, certainly not comfortable enough for the government to relax any time soon.
What's also the case is that the Tory rebels, or potential rebels more like, weren't willing to take dramatic action in enough number to humiliate the PM.
The vote result suggests that they have the hypothetical numbers, but their critics, and their internal opponents in the Tory party would question if they really have the guts.
The former boss of the Treasury, Nick McPherson, no fan of Brexit it's important to say, has just acidly written online: "Axiom of the last 30 years. Europhile Tories always compromise to preserve party unity, Their opponents don't. #thatswhywearewhereweare"
But the last 24 hours has also been frustrating for Brexiteers.
Many of them believe that Theresa May didn't have to push it this far, that she could have faced down the potential rebels without having to give any ground.
There are many behind the scenes urging Number 10 to take a firmer line, to dare them to vote against her.
Not the Parliamentary arithmetic, but the Tories' own arithmetic, makes them believe that she'd be easily able to do so, to end it once and for all and make plain that Brexiteers are the dominant force.
But to face down the rebels who want to maintain closer ties to the EU or the Brexiteers would require the prime minister to risk something that she wants to avoid - to make the splits in Tory party more exposed, to make one side of the party the overt winner.
For many months she has survived by tacking first an inch one way, and then the other.
Today's events with a non-compromise-compromise suggest she is simply not ready to abandon that approach.
But with so many more difficult decisions to come in the next few months, on both sides, Tories are more and more frustrated that she refuses to choose.
One observes that Number 10 might believe the "lesson of Maastricht", is to try everything to keep the Tory party together, but the truth they suggest is that the real lesson of Maastricht is that any war is only over when one side is the clear victor.
The trouble is, another source suggested, she never wants to say no to anyone, but when it comes to doing this deal, she simply can't say yes to everyone.

"Only as true friends can, I want to be very honest about what lies ahead of us." The words of the new European Commission president as she headed to Downing Street and her first face-to-face meeting with Boris Johnson on Wednesday.
What lies ahead of the EU and UK might, on the surface, appear relatively straightforward.
By the end of this month, both the European and the UK parliaments will have ratified a negotiated divorce deal. As of 1 February, the UK will no longer be an EU member and by the year's end, says Boris Johnson, an ambitious new trade deal will have been negotiated and signed off by both sides.
Will this be a year of bilateral plain sailing?
With Mr Johnson's considerable parliamentary majority, nothing stands in the way of Brexit taking place. 31 January will be a huge moment. For the UK and the EU. For very different reasons.
Losing a member state, especially such a big, wealthy and important one (one of the only two military powers in Europe and with a seat on the UN Security Council) is a tremendous blow for the bloc, however strong post-Brexit relations with the UK may or may not turn out to be.
By imposing a December deadline for post-Brexit trade talks with the EU, the prime minister has succeeded in focusing European minds. But they have not been persuaded to "do whatever it takes" to agree a trade deal, despite the UK being their most important neighbour.
Commission President von der Leyen was lavish in her praise of the UK in a speech on Wednesday morning.
She spoke in admiring tones of the UK's contribution to the European project in the past, and of her hope and conviction that bilateral ties would remain broad and strong in the future.
But half-buried in the avalanche of studied positivity were clear words of warning. "With every choice comes a consequence," said Mrs von der Leyen.
By leaving the EU the UK will be rid of the "onus", as perceived by many British voters, of the freedom of movement of European workers. But by the same token, the Commission President pointed out, the UK would no longer benefit economically from the free movement of capital, goods and services in the world's largest single market.
There will be no compromise on the integrity of that market, she insisted - as all EU leaders have insisted since the Brexit vote back in 2016.
Mrs von der Leyen went on to warn that Boris Johnson's timetable for trade talks was too short to agree new post-Brexit relations on every subject. So, she said, some areas would have to be prioritised.
The whisper in Brussels is that EU leaders will use Boris Johnson's tight schedule to prioritise bilateral relations of importance to them. Ongoing access for EU fishermen to UK waters, for example. A key concern for eight EU countries, including influential France.
Just this week, French President Emmanuel Macron called on lead EU negotiator Michel Barnier to be tough, even cold-blooded, in talks.
Fishing is a political hot potato for the prime minister. "Sovereignty over our seas" became a totemic Brexit issue, although it contributes little to UK GDP. But Mr Johnson will also be aware if he refuses the EU access to UK waters after Brexit, the EU will threaten to close its market to UK fish.
But surely the EU too is aware that it must think outside the box when it comes to post-Brexit talks with the UK?
The relationship is hugely important in terms of trade potential, security co-operation and relations on the world stage. Take the current Iran crisis as an example.
This, of course, is true. But it's not yet clear how flexible the EU will be. Brussels believes it holds most of the cards in negotiations.
Even the early EU concession that some kind of Free Trade Agreement can probably be reached by December - and that, in the words of President von der Leyen, the bloc "will go as far as it can go" - is a mixed blessing for the UK.
The EU assumption is that, come the year's end, Prime Minister Johnson will want to demonstrate that He Did It.
He took the UK out of the EU. He negotiated an FTA quicker than anyone thought possible.
But will he seek that "victory" at any price? Even if the rushed result is flimsy, restrictive and involves key concessions by the UK?
The price Boris Johnson paid for getting rid of the infamous backstop in the divorce deal was high. In practical terms, when it comes to trade, it separates Northern Ireland from the rest of Great Britain. Something he, the leader of a unionist political party, said he would never do.
The implementation of that Northern Ireland agreement still has to be hammered out this year in parallel to trade talks, by the way. How many checks, how much additional paperwork will there be in trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland? What about checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain?
And even when it comes to the zero-tariffs, zero-quotas, post-Brexit trade deal the prime minister speaks about so often, the EU insists that to get it the UK must sign up to ongoing alignment with EU rules, like environmental and labour regulations.
But Mr Johnson seeks the opposite. He says he wants to leave the EU to be free of its rules, in order to ease trade deals with others, like the United States.
Yet the prime minister will know, if he refuses alignment with the EU, and the EU slaps on punitive tariffs, that could hurt his new supporters in manufacturing communities in the north of England. The UK car industry, chemicals industry, pharmaceutical industry and others are very worried indeed.
It's no surprise really that the EU has declared itself willing to do a "quick and dirty" trade deal in goods. It has a trade surplus with the UK.
What is surprising is that the prime minister has barely mentioned services during the last months even though they make up 80% of the UK economy.
The EU is the UK's biggest customer for the service industry and Brussels does not intend to discuss most services before December.
A scaled-down deal may or may not be finalised in 2020.
A fudge may or may not be agreed between the two sides as to how to keep talking into next year.
Only one thing is certain. Brexit Stage Two: The Trade Deal - much like its prequel, Brexit Stage One: The Divorce - will be very far from plain sailing.

"Phew", a government minister exhaled after this morning's court ruling.
Certainly, the prime minister did not want to find herself in the position of having to ask MPs for permission to start our divorce from the European Union.
Today's verdict from the justices doesn't take away from the reality that having to go to Parliament before triggering Article 50 is a political inconvenience Theresa May very much wanted to avoid.
Nor does it change the sentiment among opposition MPs, some of whom are determined to try to amend whatever legislation the government puts forward to include guarantees of this or that, to try to force a vote on staying in the single market, or to push for final binding votes on the process when negotiations are complete.
However, the sighs of relief are real in Whitehall this morning for two reasons.
The justices held back from insisting that the devolved administrations would have a vote or a say on the process. That was, as described by a member of Team May, the "nightmare scenario".
The Scottish National Party has said it would not try to veto Brexit, but there is no question that having a vote on Article 50 in the Holyrood Parliament could have been politically troublesome for the government. After the judgement it seems like an unexploded bomb.
And second, the Supreme Court also held back from telling the government explicitly what it has to do next. The judgement is clear that it was not for the courts but for politicians to decide how to proceed next.
That means, possibly as early as tomorrow, ministers will put forward what is expected to be an extremely short piece of legislation in the hope of getting MPs to approve it, perhaps within a fortnight.
Nightmare number two for the government would have been explicit instructions from the court about the kind of legislation they had to introduce.
That wouldn't just have made ministers' lives very difficult when they want, above all else, to produce something that gives their opponents minimal room for manoeuvre.
But it would have raised spiky questions about the power of the courts versus our politicians and parliaments - a fight few had the appetite to have.

Even the president of the United States now sees fit to weigh in on the Brexit path Theresa May is taking.
Donald Trump has said, amongst other things, that if the prime minister is successful in her plan - formalised on Thursday in a White Paper - then that would make a future trade deal with the US far less likely.
So how come key player Brussels remains so uncannily quiet about the paper?
Brussels badgered the UK for months and months and months about coming up with a detailed proposal on how it envisions the future EU-UK relationship after Brexit. Now they have it, surely they have an opinion about it?
As far as official responses go, the most we got from Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, was that he and his colleagues now need time to analyse the White Paper in detail.
On the one hand: fair enough. It is a very dense document.
But I feel the EU is hiding behind the paper's 98 pages of Brexit tech-talk.
In private, EU diplomats make no secret at all of their rejection of large chunks of the White Paper.
Brussels has said since the beginning of Brexit negotiations that the UK can't pick and choose the "best parts" of EU membership and walk away from the rest when it leaves. Yet that's exactly how the White Paper is interpreted in EU circles.
There is no way Michel Barnier will accept it as is.
For Theresa May to get that "deep and special" access to the EU in trade terms, Brussels will certainly expect more concessions. But EU leaders are biding their time. Trying to calculate not if, but when, and how to get their criticisms across.
They're very aware of the febrile political atmosphere in the UK and think if they make a quick comment or criticism of the White Paper, they'd be adding fuel to the fire.
So if the EU is so keen for a soft Brexit - (of course we know, deep down, it would prefer no Brexit at all) - what concessions is Brussels prepared to make now to help shore up the prime minister's position in the political maelstrom at home?
Worryingly few, is the answer if you're a fan of Theresa May or her White Paper.
The EU still believes it holds pretty much all the cards in Brexit negotiations. I don't expect real whiffs of EU concessions before the last minute of the 11th hour this autumn.
Can Theresa May hang on till then? And if she can, is she politically strong enough to strike a deal with Brussels and then sell it back home?
Frankly, no one knows - and in the meantime, Brussels is stepping up contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit. Not because the EU or Downing Street wants that - they really do not - but because the time allotted under EU law for a withdrawal agreement to be agreed and signed off by both parties is fast running out.
In the meantime, EU diplomats try to sound upbeat: the White Paper is a great springboard from which to re-start face-to-face Brexit negotiations, they say.
Those talks begin again behind closed doors on Monday.

It's English law, in English - but the courtroom is in Paris.
According to French reports, the new "international chamber" is an attempt to capitalise on Brexit and steal London's crown as a global hub for lucrative commercial legal disputes.
Other English-language courts are popping up in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, with those behind them also talking about seizing opportunities from the UK's departure from the EU.
English courts have long been chosen by companies based all over the world to govern their contracts. So are these new rivals a threat to London's crown?
French justice minister Nicole Belloubet, who tweeted an English "welcome" at the formal signing of the new chamber earlier this month, said in December that the UK's exit from the EU could mean it losing access to a "common judicial space" with the attractiveness of London courts "replaced by other European jurisdictions".
And the head of the Paris Bar, Marie-Aimee Peyron, has said that in light of Brexit, the French capital's new appeals court could help it become the world's commercial law centre.
As the planned Brussels International Business Court was announced in October, Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel described the UK's departure from the EU as an "opportunity" for his country.
This court will offer companies the chance to settle cross-border disputes in English, although only using Belgian law.
"The development of the European Union cannot be slowed down by Brexit," Mr Michel added.
Meanwhile, announcing an English-speaking court in Frankfurt in November, its president, Wilhelm Wolf, spoke of attracting business from English courts to his city, claiming English judgements would become harder to enforce after Brexit.
This would be bad news for the UK's legal sector, which says it is worth £26bn to the economy.
"While it's starting fairly small it could have rapid repercussions," says Conservative MP Bob Neill, who is chairman of the Commons Justice Committee.
"It is an interesting trend and it's something that if you are concerned about the health of UK legal services PLC, one ought to be alert to."
Key to the warnings about London losing its crown is an EU regulation that allows judgements in one member state to be enforced across the bloc - and which Mr Neill's justice committee says needs to be replicated "as closely as possible" after Brexit.
Otherwise, rulings made in London may not be automatically recognised in the EU - there could be extra paperwork, confusion about which jurisdiction should hear a case, and an overall loss of certainty.
Mickaël Laurans, of the Law Society of England and Wales, said that after Brexit businesses may face "additional procedural steps" if the EU regulation no longer applies.
This will depend on the negotiations between the UK and the EU - the UK has said it wants a "close cooperative relationship" with the EU's legal system after it leaves, but details have yet to be agreed.
Nonetheless, supporters of the English system are confident it will retain its crown.
"England and Wales's jurisdiction has a number of strengths which are completely independent of Brexit," said Mr Laurans, citing its "high quality judges who understand highly complex cases".
"Just having English language proceedings would not be enough to attract foreign litigants away from England and Wales," he predicted.
However, the French court - which opens on Thursday - will go further than than those in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany by having the power to make rulings on English law.
This is an "an interesting phenomenon" which could be part of a "charm offensive" aimed at the City of London, Mr Laurans said.
"It's something to look closely at."
A spokeswoman for the French Embassy in London played down the relevance of Brexit in the decision to open the new facility, which will sit inside the existing Paris international tribunal.
It will allow people to address the court and submit documentation in English, with judgements translated from French into English, and judges trained in the English common law system.
"It's not really the context of Brexit, it's the context of what we call attractiveness. We want companies to feel at ease using English when they have commercial litigation," the embassy spokeswoman told the BBC.
"Of course Brexit has an influence and an impact on what's going on, but this was not a decision taken as a result of Brexit."
Last year the justice committee warned that failing to protect the UK's status as a "top-class commercial law centre" would have "clear impacts on the UK economy".
Sir Richard Aikens, a former Lord Justice who is president of the Leave-campaigning Lawyers for Britain group, echoed their sentiments but played down any possible impact of the Anglophone French courtroom.
"I do not expect it to be any kind of threat," he told the BBC, adding that the judges would not have been trained in English law, which he described as "predominantly the commercial law of the planet".
The "real question", he said, is what will replace the aforementioned Brussels regulation allowing judgements to be enforced throughout the EU, with the role of the European Court of Justice likely to be a sticking point.
MP Bob Neill - who comes from the other side of the Brexit debate - agrees.
"It is an issue that we have really got to take seriously," he said.
"I don't think it's getting enough attention."
In a paper in August, the government set out its desire for a "new civil judicial cooperation framework, as an aspect of the deep and special partnership with the EU".
Ministers have also said that "an effective system of cross-border judicial cooperation with common rules is essential to embed certainty and predictability for businesses particularly for those with a commercial aspect".
But like many things, how this will work will be thrashed out over the negotiating table in the months to come.

In the year of political upheavals, there has been another popular uprising - this time in Italy.
Here is how the narrative goes: Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is the establishment figure. He has gambled on holding a referendum to win backing for his reforms. He loses, and resigns.
To some, this is the fall of the third domino: first Brexit, then Trump, now Italy. It marks, so it is argued, the onward march of the populists.
Renzi has had strong support from global leaders. President Obama rolled out White House pageantry for him and even the Germans, with whom Renzi has rowed over austerity, have been singing his praises.
The concern is that now Renzi has said he'll go, Italy's politicians will squabble, the country's fragile economy will suffer, borrowing costs will spike and once again Europe will be facing a crisis in the eurozone.
Waiting in the wings are anti-establishment parties like the Five Star Movement, which is promising that if it eventually wins power, it will offer a referendum on retaining the euro. The very idea of another vote sends shivers down the spines of Europe's leaders.
Five Star's leader, the former comedian Beppe Grillo, has spoken of an "era going up in flames". It is a similar sentiment to that expressed by Nigel Farage, UKIP's former leader, who declared after Mr Trump's victory that the "democratic revolution" was only just beginning.
There is no doubt that Italy needs reforming. The tangle of bureaucracy and judicial delays snares investment projects, reforms get diluted or blocked in the two houses of parliament, and the Senate, with its 315 members, needs shrinking.
But there were legitimate concerns that Renzi's plan would have led to a centralising of power. The winning party would have gained a premium of seats, ensuring an absolute majority. Five Star campaigners successfully argued that the "reforms serve to give more power to those who are already in power".
It would be wrong to see this referendum as a Brexit-style campaign about the EU. Some passionate pro-Europeans are among those who opposed Renzi's reforms.
The Italian prime minister's big miscalculation was to make the vote about himself. Many voters saw the referendum as an opportunity to punish a serving prime minister. Some critics say that he put Italy in danger unnecessarily.
The fear is that Renzi's resignation could tip Italy into an early election. And that might give the Five Star Movement and the anti-establishment Northern League an opportunity of success at the polls.
The prospect of two Eurosceptic parties gaining ground in the eurozone's third-biggest economy might well rattle the markets.
Government ministers will tell you that unemployment is inching down, that the deficit is falling and that labour markets have become more flexible. But the economy is 12% smaller than when the financial crisis began in 2008.
Italy's banks remain weak. The problem of non-performing loans has not been sorted out and the country's debt-to-GDP ratio, at 133%, is second only to Greece's.
It is not clear what follows Mr Renzi's defeat. Fresh elections will not automatically follow.
If uncertainty forces up borrowing costs, then the European Central Bank (ECB) stands ready to purchase government bonds. But any political vacuum will bring renewed focus on weak banks - and not only in Italy.
An early election could come in late spring, just as the British government triggers Article 50 and begins negotiations to leave the EU.
If there is a risk of further upheaval, the instinct of Europe's leaders will be to circle the wagons, to make life as difficult as possible for the UK. The past 10 days have witnessed a succession of warnings that the coming year for Britain will be "a tough ride" and "you cannot pick and choose what you want".
Political instability in Italy could, of course, prompt Europe's leaders to address what voters in Europe are saying but there has been little evidence of that so far.
The Italian vote is not about Europe or the EU but it will be interpreted as an indicator of the strength of the anti-establishment winds blowing through Europe in the aftermath of Mr Trump's unexpected victory.

It is no secret that Theresa May is struggling to get her cabinet on board.
Seven days ago it felt that the ingredients for concluding this vital stage of the Brexit deal were there, waiting perhaps for the political moment to feel right.
But a week on, tortured negotiations continue both between the UK and the EU, and between Downing Street and those who gather at Number 10 for the weekly cabinet meeting. And perhaps you shouldn't be surprised at how reluctant the cabinet is to sign up.
The simple explanation of why they aren't all gladly rushing to back exactly what the prime minister has been planning? Many of them didn't like it much from the start, and some of them don't believe it has a chance of passing Parliament now.
This is not just about the problems of the Irish border, but about the prime minister's overall preferred plan for Brexit, brokered in the heat of the summer at her Chequers country retreat.
There's no secret that the proposals were unpopular with the big Brexiteers. The dramatic departures of David Davis and Boris Johnson saw to that.
But what is only now clear from cabinet sources is just how widespread the discontent was - expressed not just by Eurosceptics but by former Remainers too.
And the frustrations from months ago are unquestionably part of the reason why there is such a stalemate now. Two cabinet ministers last night told the BBC there was little chance that the deal as currently planned would get through parliament. One of them said it was "self-harming" for the prime minister to keep pursuing the same strategy.
Sources have described how multiple cabinet ministers expressed significant doubts from the start.
Elements of the so-called Chequers proposals were described as "worrying", "disappointing", and "concerning" by different members of the prime minister's top team, as the press waited in sweltering heat outside at the end of the grand estate's very, very long drive, across the other side of what actually was, joking apart, a field of wheat.
And what's really notable is how some former Remainers - including Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson - were candid about their fears too. This was not just an exercise in Brexiteers sounding off, but ministers from across the Tory party pointing to deficiencies in the proposed deal.
I've also been told that several ministers, on both sides of the argument, are understood to have called on the prime minister to be honest with the public about the shift in position towards a closer arrangement with the EU.
Months on, I've lost count of the number of times ministers and advisers in government have expressed frustration at how they perceive Theresa May has failed to do that.
Even for some of her backers, her strongest selling point should be being upfront about the fact she is trying hard to find a middle course, not to be the ideologue making crazy promises.
But around Westminster, there is deep frustration on the Tory backbenches that she rarely seems willing to make that case, always sticking to a few tight lines that concede only the bare minimum about what she is trying to do.
Of course, the Chequers meeting did ultimately give the prime minister's plan its backing. Ministers like the chancellor and the business secretary were clear that the risk of no deal was simply not worth taking.
But from what sources have described it is extremely clear that for many of those present, the Chequers proposals were a deeply undesirable compromise, rather than a plan they were agreeing to with any enthusiasm. One senior minister told me most of those present signed up "with a very heavy heart".
A Number 10 spokesman said: "Everyone has to move a little to get a deal that works for everyone on both sides of the argument." But the roots of the current impasse at home surely lie in much of the cabinet's view at that time.
If they didn't like it much then, why would they like it much now, let alone help the prime minister fight for it?
With the EU reluctant to budge, and Parliament deeply unconvinced, what was a deeply unappetising compromise may yet prove an impossible one.

Unless something extremely strange happens in the next couple of days, it is now, really, nearly over.
Several cabinet ministers have told me they expect Theresa May to announce her departure from Downing Street on Friday.
A senior minister said: "She's going to go - if it's to be done, it's best to be done quickly."
Another said it would be "unforgivable" for her to try to stay on now.
One of those who has been most loyal to her said: "It might be tomorrow or Saturday, but it can't be past Sunday."
Multiple sources have said they expect the prime minister to give the timetable for her successor to be chosen on Friday, with 10 June likely to be the start of the official leadership contest.
That would be after the visit from President Trump and the Peterborough by-election the previous week.
Most ministers I've talked to today say they hope the campaign for the next prime minister can be compressed, so it's finished by the end of July but there is not yet much clarity about that.
Why now though? It's not as if Theresa May's been having an easy time of it for months.
You guessed it, it's Brexit, and what's accelerated her departure was trying - again - to put her Brexit plans to Parliament.
It's only two days since she outlined the details of her planned offer. It made things worse in her own party, and had nothing like the impact on the Labour Party that Number 10 had hoped for.
But critically, as one member of her cabinet said, "it crossed a line for them".
So her party won't accept the plan and now her cabinet won't either, there is almost zero chance of it ever making it to Parliament.
And with no hope for the deal she stayed on to try to pass, there is almost no hope for her.
Downing Street was still tight-lipped on Thursday night, although senior figures have made it clear they "get the mood" of the party, and are no longer trying to look for a way out.
Theresa May, meanwhile, was understood to be at home in her constituency with her husband - the only two people in the country who know exactly what will happen next.
One of Theresa May's cabinet colleagues was adamant to me earlier that instead she "will stay and fight on - there's no way she'll be taken out by the men in grey suits".
But she is already scheduled to meet Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers in the morning, who is thought to be planning to give her until Monday to name a date.
It is possible that an early statement outlining her plans to leave office, could come before that.

The ruling by Scotland's highest civil court that it was illegal to shut the UK Parliament is - in the true sense of the word - extraordinary.
Normally courts do not intervene in the decisions of the government, using the principle of a "margin of appreciation," which gives ministers more leeway under the law than that of ordinary people or organisations.
So the fact that all three judges at the Court of Session have - albeit by different routes - arrived at the decision that they can intervene is highly significant.
Stephen Tierney, professor of Constitutional Theory at Edinburgh University, believed the significance of this judgement would be felt not only in the short term but in the longer term also.
He explained: "The normal view of the courts is that it would not be appropriate to rule on the exercise of prerogative power.
"So the long-term significance of this ruling is very important."
"The lower court had said the actions of the executive were 'non-justiciable' - meaning they were not to be examined by judges.
"But this decision indicates the courts are more prepared than many people had expected to intervene in government actions."
The case was brought to the Court of Session by a cross-party group of 75 parliamentarians, who argued the PM had exceeded his powers.
Lord Doherty heard both sides of the argument and ruled last week that the issue was for the judgement of politicians and voters, and not the courts.
But when the case was taken to three appeal judges, they saw it differently.
They concluded that the PM was attempting to prevent Parliament holding the government to account, ahead of Brexit.
Jim Cormack, a constitutional law expert at lawyers Pinsent Mason in Edinburgh said: "The judges have decided this was a clear case in which the government had stepped outside of the normal room for manoeuvre it is allowed by the courts, when it gave its advice to HM the Queen.
He added: "This decision of the Scottish appeal court radically changes the legal landscape ahead of an expected hearing before the United Kingdom Supreme Court next week."
This case was brought in a Scottish court because at the time the High Court in England was on holiday.
But that does not diminish the effect of the ruling, as the case was against the actions of the Westminister government which, within the devolution settlement, affects the whole of the UK.
So the ruling in Edinburgh is binding on the UK government - although this is by no means the end of the legal battle since the case will now be appealed to the UK Supreme Court which will make a definitive decision.
It is also likely to hear arguments arising from decisions in similar cases brought at the High Court in London under English law and the Northern Ireland High Court.
Although proroguing parliament - or suspending it from sitting - is not unheard of, this time it was seen as different.
Parliamentary sessions normally last a year, but the current one has been going on for more than two years - ever since the June 2017 election.
When Parliament is prorogued, no debates and votes are held - and most laws that haven't completed their passage through Parliament die a death.
This is different to "dissolving" Parliament - where all MPs give up their seats to campaign in a general election.
What will happen next, and whether MPs head back to Westminster, will be fought out in both the political and legal arenas.

More than 60 Tory MPs from the Brexit-backing European Research Group have written to the prime minister with a list of demands for Brexit negotiations, ahead of a crunch cabinet meeting. What's going on?
Another letter, another list of signatures.
In these torrid times it is not exactly unusual that documents emerge pushing one version of Brexit doctrine or another, that Tory tensions are spelt out in black and white.
The reason however why the letter from the Conservative Brexiteer backbenches matters is simple. It's about timing.
As we've discussed many times before, Theresa May's base in her party are the Eurosceptics.
With no majority, she knows that she needs to keep the dozens and dozens of Brexit-backing Tory MPs broadly with her for her own government's survival.
They have accepted some shifts from the government that they used to find intolerable - a Brexit departure lounge of a couple of years rather than a sharp exit, and a bill of tens of billions.
But they are not, as this letter makes clear, up for swallowing many more compromises when it comes to getting trade deals done immediately after Brexit.
It's not the detail that matters so much as the fact that this letter has emerged now, just at the moment when Number 10 and cabinet Remainers were becoming increasingly hopeful that a compromise was in reach, with ministers meeting at Chequers on Thursday and the prime minister to set out a way through in a big speech next week.
Just when the PM and her team were readying themselves to sell an accommodation, a powerful faction has made it clear they are not up for budging very much.

Sharpen your pencils. Now Theresa May has her prize from the Commons, getting the Article 50 bill (she never wanted) through with no major changes, it makes its way to the red and gold end of the Palace of Westminster, to the Lords.
The first debate is set for 20 February. More than 140 Peers have already put their names down to speak. But at that stage there probably won't be a vote. A week later the thornier more detailed committee stage begins. Then the last certain stage, the third reading and report is scheduled for 7 March.
If it all goes according to the government's plan, which sources say is "hugely unpredictable", it would allow Theresa May to stick to her timetable and push the button for exit talks to start the next week, once the Bill has been rubber-stamped by the other Palace. (It's daft in this business to make too many predictions, but I'd put a fiver on that happening on Wednesday 15 March.)
The government will have a bumpier ride in the Lords after a grumpy process in the Commons. The Lords is dramatically different because the government most certainly does not have a majority among peers. And, it is the Lords' express purpose to scrutinise and if needed, improve draft laws before sending them back along the corridor to the Commons.
Overnight a government source suggested that the Lords had better jolly well let the Brexit bill go through, or else. Despite the sabre-rattling though, the atmosphere in the Lords is less febrile than that language might suggest.
Downing Street this morning tried to dampen down the aggressive briefing. And one source in the Lords described the threat as "total BS" - I'll leave you to work that out.
The main opposition leader, Baroness Smith, has made it plain on several occasions that although the Lords may try to tweak the Bill, Labour, broadly, has no intention of trying to block it. Her modus operandi is to "hold to account, not hold to ransom".
The Liberal Democrats are more intent on making changes in the Lords, for it is there they can wield power, rather than in the Commons. But unless they have the support of Labour too, there is a limit to how much trouble they can cause.
The chatter suggests the Lords will push for concessions from the government over the rights of EU citizens to stay here, reporting the progress of negotiations regularly to Parliament and maybe on a final "meaningful vote" for both Houses on the deal.
It will be up to the government to decide whether to tweak the bill slightly as they did in the Commons or risk some defeats. Insiders predict it is likely the Lords may end up sending back the bill to the Commons once, as "ping pong" to force the government to make a change or two. But even senior Lib Dem sources don't expect hostile stand-offs for weeks on end.
The Lords will make their voices heard, there is no question about that and the Article 50 bill could run into trouble.
It would be wrong to suggest that ministers don't anticipate a tricky time. But today at least, whatever the sabre-rattling from some parts of government, this historic piece of legislation looks likely to be the subject of a few skirmishes in the Lords, rather than an apocalyptic battle.

The received wisdom is that the election of Emmanuel Macron as president of France is bad for Britain's Brexit negotiations.
Like much received wisdom, it may just be wrong. For the arrival of this young financier-turned politician in the Elysee could actually make a deal between Britain and the European Union easier.
Yes, President Macron is a devoted pro-European. His belief in the idea and the institutions of the EU is part of his core.
In his election manifesto, he described Brexit as a "crime" that will plunge Britain into "servitude".
As such, he will brook no Brexit-induced dilution of the single market and all its works.
After he met the prime minister in February, he told reporters in Downing Street: "Brexit cannot lead to a kind of optimisation of Britain's relationship with the rest of Europe. I am very determined that there will be no undue advantages."
Macron will thus, so the argument goes, stiffen sinews in Brussels and re-invigorate the Franco-German motor that has lain dormant in recent years. He has made utterly clear that he wants Britain to pay top whack when it exits the EU.
He has spoken of reforming the Le Touquet agreement that allows British immigration officers to check passports in Calais. And he has been shameless in his ambition to lure French workers and money back to France.
So Macron on paper could look like no friend of Britain in the Brexit stakes.
And yet his election is actually better news for Theresa May than she might imagine.
Some Conservative ministers had been quite open in their preference for Francois Fillon, the former centre-right candidate with whom they had more natural, partisan commonalities. But they know they can live with Macron.
The new president is not going to be as Brexit obsessed as some imagine. He has other fish to fry.
He has to build support and coalitions in the National Assembly where polls suggest his new party may struggle to form a majority in next month's elections.
He has huge economic problems to deal with at home. And his efforts in Brussels will be focused on gaining support for his own proposals to reform the EU and the eurozone.
Brexit is just one issue on his to-do list. His priority is dealing with France's difficulties and stopping Marine Le Pen winning in 2022.
Now, of course, when President Macron does focus on Brexit, he will naturally be tough on Britain. But that is already the position of the French government. Whitehall has long ruled out any favours from Paris. In many ways, Macron represents continuity.
And just think of the alternative. If Marine Le Pen had won, the EU would be in chaos.
Her election would have been seen by some as an existential threat to the EU. Brexit would have become a second order issue.
EU politicians would have had less bandwidth to spend on Brexit. And as such, a deal would have been less likely, or at the very least much harder. Compare that to the stability that a Macron presidency may provide.
For here is the real point. The election of Macron may just make the EU a little more confident or perhaps a little less defensive. Many in the EU will conclude - maybe over-optimistically - that the global populist surge has now peaked with Trump and Brexit.
The electoral failure of anti-establishment politicians in Austria, the Netherlands and now France will give them hope that the troubled EU project is not quite so threatened as they had imagined.
They may feel a little less fearful that Brexit could presage the breakup of the EU. And a less vulnerable EU may feel less determined to make an example of Britain in the negotiations. And that can only be good for Brexit, however hard or soft you want it.
So the election of President Macron will of course send shivers of relief through the corridors of Brussels. But it won't make the challenge of Brexit any more enormous than it already is.
And just perhaps, it might make the task a little easier.

Enthusiastic Remainers have been quick to jump on the election result as their latest opportunity to mould the UK's departure from the EU.
The various lobby groups, including former ministers still close to some in government, have been whirring with chatter and tactical planning about how to get their voices heard. There are ideas about commissions or "neddies" - groups of advisers from business and all political parties that met in years gone by.
Even senior Tories like the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, one of their few success stories at the moment, told us yesterday: "It can't just be a Tory Brexit." On first hearing, that is a staggering thing to hear from Tory lips.
But before Remainers get swept up in their moment, and their ambitions swell, it's worth pondering what possibly might be on the table - and what might not - given the usual caveats about the unpredictability of what might come next.
First off, even Brexit-supporting ministers involved in the process acknowledge that a minority government has to behave differently. Expect therefore a change in tone, a more overtly consensual approach; the government is, for example, more likely to agree opposition attempts to amend its EU legislation without a fight.
One cabinet minister told me the government will take a less ideological approach. Some members of cabinet will push for a less rigid stance, urging Theresa May to soften or scrub out her red lines, as the negotiations get under way.
But on the fundamental choices? Two well-placed ministers tell me it's hard to see, "hard to go back on" the decision that we are leaving the single market. It is likely the government will make more of trying to maximise our access to it. This could mean it will become an equal concern to immigration rather than being a clear rhetorical second.
But inasmuch as it is at all possible to take direct readings from the electoral message (and I'm not sure it is given how varied the results were), more than 80% of the public voted for the two main parties, who both promised to leave the single market and end free movement. Woe betide any politician in this climate who is suddenly going to tell the electorate they didn't mean it on immigration.
There are hopes in the Remain camp too about the influence of the DUP; their participation in government does not mean suddenly that the government's Brexit plan changes dramatically.
While the DUP have their own particular view on Brexit with concern about customs arrangements, they are not "soft" Brexiteers who will try to water down the whole thing.
They were involved as a party in the Vote Leave campaign and while they will push their strong view on the border and customs arrangement, they are not suddenly going to be arguing for only a tiny loosening of the links.
It is worth remembering too that even with the DUP and this week's promises of support, having been cut down to size, Theresa May is even more vulnerable to her powerful Eurosceptic backbenchers than before the election. The arithmetic means she has to listen to other parties more, but she also has less ballast to fend off her own MPs. One former minister told me "it'd only take me and a couple of my mates to defeat her".
It is easy to argue today for a grand-sounding Brexit Commission to bring all parties in. It could be a political tool for Theresa May to form a mechanism for appearing to be listening to all. The idea is not quite being denied or really encouraged in government. And insiders are well aware of how such ideas can prove pointless.
There is already, for example, the committee that's meant to discuss the Brexit situation for the four nations. Few people who have been close to that process argue it's achieved much at all. And years of arguing for an NHS commission haven't got far at all. The government, although it was considered by David Cameron, did not in the end, trust Labour enough to take up the call.
Theresa May doesn't trust easily. It wouldn't really be in keeping with her style to dramatically reach out to the other parties in a formal way. In truth it is also not that clear the Labour leadership would really want that kind of role.
But the reality of the parliamentary numbers means she is forced to take other opinions into consideration, or her government falls. There will no doubt be arguments about how it's done, whether a new process is introduced or not. It is just as likely the government and opposition whips are about to get to know each other much much better.
But "cross-party working" - otherwise known as clipping your wings - however it's done, will be a feature of life under Mrs May. Remember she is not just more vulnerable to the opposition, but on her own side too.

For four days we've been told the deal between the Tories and the DUP was pretty much complete.
Number 10 even jumped the gun with an administrative cock-up late on Saturday night that announced the pact had been signed.
On Tuesday, Westminster sources confidently predicted there would be a functioning government with a majority in the Commons within 36 hours - the 'T's had been crossed and the 'I's dotted.
There have been suggestions that the DUP has been enjoying its moment of power and attention, so is in no hurry.
Suggestions on the other side that Number 10, still reeling from May's political miscalculation, is not functioning properly, so is slow to conclude the deal.
And yesterday, sources told me Treasury and Cabinet Office involvement is holding things up but there are no big issues.
The government's number-crunchers are nervous about the kinds of promises that are being made.
I could here mention the consequences for the Barnett Formula, but I'll spare you that and simply say that the Treasury is cautious about splashing taxpayers' cash.
With the disaster at Grenfell Tower, the government's attention and desired timing for announcing the deal has shifted.
But as we get towards the end of the week, with suggestions the deal won't be done finally until Monday, it is worth asking what happens if it can't be done?
With the other Northern Irish parties visiting Number 10 today, there is clear disquiet about the principle of doing the deal in the first place.
The DUP has no interest in crashing Theresa May or the Tories. They are certainly never going to lift a finger in any way that could be helpful to Jeremy Corbyn.
They are natural allies of the Tories and as we've reported, they have been informally helping them out for the last few years.
So there is very little chance they would vote against the government's main measures - crucially the first big test, the Queen's Speech.
There are therefore Tories, including Sir John Major, who believe it would be better to avoid the risk of dealing with them and go it alone in minority government.
For Theresa May though, her desire to introduce at least one layer of stability into this rocky situation is strong.
Locking at least 10 MPs into supporting her at times of need provides at least a modicum of political protection.
Moreover if the talks fail and no deal is done she'll have botched the first political challenge of this fragile post-election period.
The DUP will have lost their big shot at more heavy influence.
It is in neither side's interest to allow the deal to dive - and with the Queen's Speech just announced for Wednesday, it's a sign of increasing confidence in government the deal is a matter of when not if.

The EU 27 are concerned that "taking back control" of the UK's waters might mean fewer fishing opportunities for their fleets. A diplomatic note - seen by the BBC - raised concerns about access and environmental commitments.
The prospect might be a surprise to them, focused on 585 pages of draft agreements, but it's been the backbone of the economic argument for the UK's most pro-Brexit industry. Many have said it would be the litmus-test of the whole process.
The waters around all the EU's member states, up to a limit of 200 miles, are effectively "pooled" when it comes to fishing.  It means boats from one country can fish in another's seas.
When the UK leaves the EU, barring any new agreements, those waters will exclusively become the UK's again, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
There's also a further separate international agreement, called the London Fisheries Convention, covering the 12 miles closest to the shore. It's being terminated, meaning no foreign vessel will be allowed to fish in UK waters without the UK's permission.
A long-running fear among skippers has been that their fishing rights would be "traded away" in deals done for the benefit of more economically valuable sectors. The draft withdrawal agreement seems to rule that out but it doesn't mean foreign boats will be immediately chased away by British vessels.
None of the industry bodies has advocated allowing only UK boats to fish in our exclusive economic zone - the sea up to 200 miles from UK shores. What they want is for the UK - or the nations of the UK - to decide who is and isn't allowed in.
When Greenland left the EU, in 1982, it allowed limited access to its waters in exchange for infrastructure funding. Greenland initially held all the quotas for its exclusive seas but effectively sold off some.
A similar negotiation is proposed between the UK and EU but there is no commitment to reaching a deal. The document simply says the two parties will "use their best endeavours" to do so.
There will have to be flexibility as British boats don't just fish in British waters. The recent scallop skirmishes in the Baie de Seine, which resulted in tussles at sea between French and British fishermen in a row over access to fishing grounds, illustrated the need for cross-border cooperation.
The fishing industry in towns such as Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Grimsby will see Brexit as a success only if their harbours are filled with more local boats in the years ahead.
Important too is the link being made between fishing opportunities for EU vessels and the sale of fish and seafood by the UK into the EU.
It's unlikely the prominence of fishing will crumble in the wider noise of securing a trade deal, mainly because most of the industry is in Scotland.
The block of 13 Scottish Conservative MPs, including the Scottish Secretary, David Mundell, have repeatedly taken a tough collective stance with the prime minister over the issue, only last week restating that it would be a "betrayal" if the EU retained any control over fishing rights.
Those 13 Tories have a stronger voting power than the 10 DUP members keeping Theresa May in office.
And looming over all this is the threat of a second referendum on Scottish independence. It would be of great political benefit to the SNP if it was able to claim the fleet had been "let down by Westminster" on fishing.
Of course, a general election could change the dynamic entirely but short of that its difficult to see any radical shift.
As for the environmental concerns, annually the quotas for fishing catches are based on scientific advice. That is, scientists prescribe how much of each stock - cod, haddock et cetera - can be caught sustainably. It then becomes a political negotiation over how to divide up the stock between countries.
It's difficult to argue with the scientists - although many often do.
But if the UK decides to conduct its own scientific research - and that contradicts the European Commission's - the negotiations could become sticky.
Until not so long ago, Iceland had a long running dispute with the EU over its rights to fish for mackerel when its own scientists detected changes in their migration patterns.
But because it was an independent coastal state, it held many of the cards and eventually secured a much larger share of the catch.  It had muscle and used it.
So, should the EU 27 feel concerned about future fishing opportunities being restricted?
We don't know the answer yet. A lot is at stake - from fishing rights to market access  - and so, the negotiations will be complex.

MPs have been promised a vote on any changes to workers' rights after Brexit as Theresa May seeks Labour support to pass her deal on leaving the EU.
No 10 said Parliament would be given a say over whether to adopt any new protections introduced on the continent and to stay aligned with EU standards.
Labour MPs in Leave constituencies have been seeking assurances the UK will not fall behind EU standards after Brexit.
But the TUC said they should not be "taken in by blatant window dressing".
The union movement said what was being offered was "flimsy procedural tweaks".
It comes as Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox emerged from their latest round of talks with EU officials in Brussels, as they seek to get legally-binding changes to the EU withdrawal agreement ahead of crunch Commons vote.
Speaking after a meeting with the EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, Mr Cox said: "Both sides have exchanged robust, strong views. We're now facing the real discussions. Talks will be resuming soon."
He added: "We're into the meat of the matter, we've put forward very reasonable proposals."
Safeguarding workers' rights has been one of Labour's key demands in the Brexit negotiations.
In January, the vast majority of Labour MPs voted against the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Mrs May.
But a handful have suggested they could be persuaded to back the deal when it returns to Parliament next week - if there are guarantees employment rights deriving from the UK's EU membership, covering areas such as paid parental leave, leave for carers and flexible working, will not be watered down.
With MPs due to vote on the PM's deal again by 12 March, ministers have offered the following commitments.
The first EU laws to be subject to the proposed new "Commons lock" would be the Work Life Balance Directive and Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive.
The Work Life Balance Directive, due to come into force after 2020, will guarantee two months of paid leave for parents with children under eight and five days paid leave a year for carers, while all working parents of children aged up to eight will be able to request flexible working.
The Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions Directive will set employment terms for workers from their first day and give more certainty to staff doing shifts.
The UK voted for the measures at EU meetings but ministers say it will now be up to Parliament to decide whether to implement them.
The government has already committed to enshrine the existing body of EU law on workplace standards into domestic legislation after Brexit.
Mrs May said the UK had a long record of exceeding minimum EU standards in its own domestic legislation and, after Brexit, it should be up to MPs to "decide what rules are most appropriate, rather than automatically accepting EU changes".
"When it comes to workers' rights, this Parliament has set world-leading standards and will continue to do so in the future, taking its own decisions working closely with trade unions and businesses," she said.
But the TUC said legally-binding commitments on workers' rights were missing from the withdrawal agreement and the best way for the UK to maintain existing standards was to remain in the EU single market and some form of customs union - which No 10 has rejected.
"There's nothing to stop a future right-wing government tearing up this legislation altogether," said its general secretary Frances O'Grady.
"MPs must not be taken in by this blatant window dressing. Our hard-won rights are still under threat."
The GMB union said Parliament already had the right to legislate on employment rights and suggested the PM would be unable to resist demands by Tory MPs to deregulate after Brexit.
"No one should be under any illusion," said its general secretary Tim Roache. "Support for the prime minister's bad Brexit deal means swapping strong legal protections on workers' rights for legally unenforceable tweaks that are not worth the paper they are written on."
The British Chambers of Commerce said it welcomed the fact business would also be consulted, particularly over proposals to create a single body to enforce laws relating to the minimum and living wages, the rights of agency workers, and exploitation in the workplace.
"Businesses will welcome moves to strengthen enforcement measures against the tiny minority of employers out there who wilfully violate the law of the land to undercut their competitors," said its director general Dr Adam Marshall.

We finally heard at length from the front runner. The politician who, as things stand, is the most likely to enter No 10 in six weeks time and take over not just as Conservative leader, but as prime minister of the whole country.
What did we learn from Boris Johnson's appearance today?
Not much about the kind of policies that he might pursue. Nor much really about the kind of leader he might be. But what about the reason that his formal launch was packed with Conservatives of all stripes?
Well, there is something about him that the other candidates don't have. It might repel you. It might delight you. But he is a rare kind of politician, one who almost never receives an apathetic shrug.
His flair for causing offence is more famous than his reputation for managing policy. His judgement is questioned profoundly by many of those who have worked alongside him.
His supporters acknowledge tonight that allowing the crowd to jeer journalists who were asking legitimate questions was a misstep.
But mistakes that might have ended other political careers by now have not disqualified him from holding the highest office. And he inspires fierce loyalty in others, particularly those who were part of his team when he was in charge in London's City Hall.
Maybe it's the sheer force of personality, ego and his desire for power that are bigger than the scale of the political errors he has made.
Maybe too it's the ability to win - unlikely victories in London and the referendum - that means his Tory colleagues and rivals find it hard to resist a politician who can overturn the usual political obstacles.
But perhaps more than anything else, the tactic that has protected him? Unlike other politicians he has never pretended, or perhaps aspired, to be perfect. That's no excuse of course for offence he has caused, or a cavalier approach to vital details that matter.
In particular, his handling of the case of the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe during his time at the Foreign Office appalled many in Westminster, let alone the country.
But the reason why he is, at the moment, clearly out front in this race is because although you might love to hate him, or hate to love him, Boris Johnson is, for the Tory party, almost impossible to ignore.
And whether that pull is a dangerous alchemy or an irresistible charisma, today at least it has resulted in one big achievement.
The room was full of Conservative politicians from a party that has spent the last three years knocking lumps out of each other and strikingly, they were from both wings.
There were hard-core Eurosceptics and properly convinced Remainers all there supporting Mr Johnson.
It was notable too that he was plain that leaving with no deal was not his desired outcome, even though he has suggested to some of the Brexiteer parts of his party that he would pursue that course of action gladly, leaving at Halloween whatever happens.
Trying to square off former Remainers who are desperate to avoid the turmoil of no deal, and Eurosceptics who are resolute that it must be a genuine option?
Remind you of anyone?
Theresa May and Boris Johnson are night and day as political characters. But if he is successful in following her into Number 10, he too in a sense would be trying to stitch together a coalition in the Tory Party that can last through inevitable compromise and likely political disappointment.
For all his Brexit rhetoric, he is not pursuing a purist stance like some of the candidates - whether that's Esther McVey on the Eurosceptic wing or Rory Stewart on the soft Brexit wing - but trying overtly to juggle both sides of the party.
He may face the same profound truth that Mrs May did that as far as Europe goes, it is impossible to please all the Conservative people all of the time.
Theresa May 2.0, he would not be. But whether he has the political skill to keep his party, and a majority in Parliament together, will be the question demanded of him too.
It should go without saying by now that politics these days is deeply unpredictable.
There is plenty of time for the maths in this contest to change fundamentally, for the frontrunner to fail, and those lurking in the middle of the pack suddenly to emerge.
Tomorrow in the first round of proper voting, we'll have a better idea of where the numbers are going.
On Tuesday 18 June BBC One will be hosting a live election debate between the Conservative MPs who are still in the race.
If you would like to ask the candidates a question live on air, use the form below. It should be open to all of them, not a specific politician.
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Britain's second female prime minister, like the first, has ultimately been brought down by Conservative in-fighting over Europe.
But Theresa May is unlikely to join Margaret Thatcher in the annals of leaders who left an indelible mark on their country. At least not in the way she might have wanted when she entered Downing Street in July 2016.
Whatever ambitions she had - to reach out to the forgotten parts of the nation, or correct the "burning injustices" in British society - were overshadowed by a single word: Brexit.
Her almost three years in office were entirely defined by Britain's decision to leave the European Union, and her increasingly desperate efforts to deliver on the outcome of the referendum called by her predecessor David Cameron.
Even her sternest critics had to marvel at her ability to soak up the punishment that came, in wave after wave, from all sides.
Ministerial resignations and parliamentary rebellions that would have spelled the end for a prime minister in normal times seemed to bounce off her. She ploughed on, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around her, telling MPs "nothing has changed" and promising to deliver on the "will" of British people, even as her power over Parliament and control of her warring party drained away to nothing.
It might have been different had she managed to win the 2017 general election.
But instead of returning to Downing Street with a huge mandate of her own, as she had expected, she lost her Commons majority and had to rely on the support of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party.
She never really recovered from this self-inflicted wound, with a sense that many of her MPs were only keeping her in office until she had delivered Brexit before jettisoning her in favour of a more voter-friendly alternative.
At one point, she had to promise she would quit before the next scheduled election in 2022, as she battled to win a no-confidence vote organised by her own MPs.
And then, as the end neared - and she had alienated many MPs by blaming them for the deadlock over Brexit - she was forced, finally, to accept that the party, which had never elected her as leader, did not want her to serve any more.
She offered her own departure as the final sacrifice to her internal critics, telling them she would stand down if they voted for her EU withdrawal deal.
A venerable Tory colleague once described Theresa May as a "bloody difficult woman".
She wore the label as a badge of honour.
She was said to have a dry wit in private, but her public persona, even when she was trying to lighten up, could be wooden and forced, and even close colleagues were said to have difficulty working out what she was really thinking.
Her single-minded, unshowy and diligent approach to politics enabled her to steadily navigate her way to the very top of a party that had traditionally favoured men from more privileged backgrounds than her own when she had first joined it in the late 1970s.
And despite what it must feel like right now, Brexit will not be her only political epitaph.
The daughter of a Church of England vicar, Hubert, who died from injuries sustained in a car crash when she was 25, Mrs May said her father had taught her to "take people as you find them" and "treat everyone equally".
Born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, but raised largely in Oxfordshire, she attended a state primary, an independent convent school and then a grammar school in the village of Wheatley, which became the Wheatley Park Comprehensive School during her time there.
The young Theresa Brasier, as she was then, threw herself into village life, taking part in a pantomime that was produced by her father and working in the bakery on Saturdays to earn pocket money.
Friends recall a tall, fashion-conscious young woman who, from an early age, spoke of her ambition to be the first woman prime minister.
In 1976, in her third year at Oxford University, she met her husband Philip, who was two years younger than her and president of the Oxford Union, a well-known breeding ground for future political leaders.
They were introduced at a Conservative Association disco by future Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Both claim it was "love at first sight". They married in 1980.
There are no tales of drunken student revelry from Mrs May's time at Oxford, but friends say she was not the austere figure she would later come to be seen as, suggesting she had a sense of fun and a full social life.
After graduating with a degree in geography, May went to work in the City, initially starting work at the Bank of England and later rising to become head of the European Affairs Unit of the Association for Payment Clearing Services.
She first dipped her toe in the political water in 1992, when she stood in the safe Labour seat of North West Durham, coming a distant second. Her fellow candidates in that contest also included a very youthful Tim Farron, who went on to become a Lib Dem leader.
Two years later, she stood in Barking, east London, in a by-election where - with the Conservative government at the height of its unpopularity - she got fewer than 2,000 votes and saw her vote share dip more than 20%. But her luck was about to change.
The Conservatives' electoral fortunes may have hit a nadir in 1997, when Tony Blair came to power in a Labour landslide, but there was a silver lining for the party and for the aspiring politician when she won the seat of Maidenhead in Berkshire, having beaten her future chancellor Philip Hammond to be selected as the candidate. It's a seat she has held ever since.
An early advocate of Conservative "modernisation" in the wilderness years that followed, Mrs May quickly joined the shadow cabinet in 1999, under William Hague, as shadow education secretary and in 2002 she became the party's first female chairman under Iain Duncan Smith.
She launched a drive to get more women selected as Conservative candidates in winnable seats but antagonised the party's grass roots by telling them in a conference speech that they were still seen by some as "the nasty party" and had to change their ways.
Some activists struggled to forgive her for that but it was an early sign of her willingness to deliver unpalatable home truths.
As home secretary, she was booed offstage by angry officers at the Police Federation annual conference, after she had told them they should welcome her reforms and "stop pretending" they were being "picked on" by the government.
After Iain Duncan Smith's brief, chaotic reign as Tory leader, Mrs May held a range of senior posts under his successor Michael Howard.
But she was conspicuously not part of the "Notting Hill set" which grabbed control of the party after its third successive defeat in 2005 and laid David Cameron and George Osborne's path to power.
She was initially appointed shadow leader of the House of Commons, but gradually raised her standing and by 2009 had become shadow work and pensions secretary.
Nevertheless, her promotion to the job of home secretary when the Conservatives joined with the Lib Dems to form the first coalition government in 70 years was still something of a surprise - given that Chris Grayling had been shadowing the brief in opposition.
The Home Office had proved to be the kiss of death for many a promising political career, but Mrs May refused to let this happen to her.
She became the longest-serving occupant of the office in recent history, staying in the post for six years, and developing a reputation as a tough operator who would always fight her corner.
Despite her liberal instincts in some policy areas, such as stop and search powers for the police, she frequently clashed with the then deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, particularly over her plan to increase internet surveillance to combat terrorism, dubbed the "snooper's charter" by the Lib Dems.
After one "difficult" meeting with Mr Clegg, he reportedly told Lib Dem minister David Laws: "You know, I've grown to rather like Theresa May... She's a bit of an ice maiden and has no small talk whatsoever - none. I have quite difficult meetings with her. Cameron once said, 'She's exactly like that with me too!'"
Crime levels fell and she successfully deported radical cleric Abu Qatada - something she listed as one of her proudest achievements, along with preventing the extradition to America of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.
There was a bitter public row with cabinet colleague Michael Gove in June 2014 over the best way to combat Islamist extremism, which ended with Mr Gove having to apologise to the prime minister and Mrs May having to sack a long-serving special adviser.
Mrs May faced constant criticism over the government's failure to meet its promise to get net migration down to below 100,000 a year, She persisted with this target when she entered Downing Street, even though she had never come close to meeting it and had faced repeated calls from Tory colleagues to drop it.
Her decision to make life more difficult for illegal immigrants by restricting access to the NHS and accommodation - and vowing to "deport first and hear appeals later" - would also come back to haunt her when she became prime minister.
The Windrush scandal - which saw Commonwealth citizens who had lived in the UK legally for decades being harassed and even deported because they did not have the correct paperwork - led to the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd, although the minister would later return to the cabinet after an inquiry blamed officials for the Windrush fiasco.
She became Conservative leader and prime minister in July 2016 without a general election, following the resignation of David Cameron.
Like Mr Cameron, she had been against Brexit but she cleverly managed to keep the Eurosceptics in her party on side during the referendum campaign by keeping a low profile.
She reaped her reward by emerging as the unchallenged successor to Mr Cameron, as other potential rivals fell by the wayside - portraying herself as a steady pair of hands who would deliver the will of the people and take Britain out of the EU in as orderly a fashion as possible.
At 59, she was the oldest leader to enter Downing Street since James Callaghan in 1976 and was the first prime minister since Ted Heath not to have children.
Mrs May has rarely opened up about her private life although she revealed in 2013 that she had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and would require insulin injections twice a day for the rest of her life - something she said she had come to terms with and which would not affect her career.
Shortly before becoming prime minister, in July 2016, she spoke to the Mail on Sunday about the impact that being told they could not have children had had on the couple's marriage.
One of her first acts, on entering Downing Street, was to sack Chancellor George Osborne, which seemed to signal a clean break with the past. He would go on to get his revenge in his new, post-politics job as Evening Standard editor with a string of hostile front pages.
To the surprise of many, she also rescued Boris Johnson's career by appointing him foreign secretary, a decision she may have come to regret when he quit the cabinet two years later in protest at her Brexit plans.
She announced that her government would focus on the more neglected parts of Britain and try to help people on modest incomes who were "just about managing" - seen by some as a grab for traditional Labour territory.
She had always insisted it was not in the national interest to seek a mandate of her own in a general election.
Westminster was stunned, then, when on a quiet Tuesday morning in April a lectern was set up in Downing Street for a prime ministerial announcement.
She would be holding a snap election after all, because, she said, the country needed certainty, stability and "strong leadership" following the EU referendum.
Her change of heart had, apparently, come on a walking holiday in Wales, with husband Philip.
With a commanding 20-point lead over Labour in the opinion polls, she saw an opportunity to "strengthen her hand" in the upcoming Brexit negotiations with Brussels.
Despite her evident discomfort with personality politics, she was placed front and centre as the campaign headed out across the country.
There was an early mis-step as she was forced to do a U-turn on one of her key manifesto pledges - social care charges for the elderly in England.
She had to cap the amount of money one individual could be asked to pay, following claims people would have to sell their homes. At a testy press conference she insisted "nothing had changed".
The Conservatives had underestimated Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who came across on television as a more genial figure than the dangerous extremist that he had been painted by Tory MPs and their supporters in the press.
Mrs May refused to take part in televised debates with him, and her attempts to project a more human side in interviews sometimes fell flat. She was mercilessly mocked on social media when she told an ITV interviewer the naughtiest thing she had done as a child was to "run through fields of wheat".
Nevertheless, no-one seriously expected her to lose the election.
The shock at Tory HQ, when the exit poll was announced, pointing towards a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives as the largest party but without an overall majority, rapidly turned to disbelief. But it turned out to be broadly accurate, unlike the opinion polls in the run up to election day.
Mrs May had won the biggest share of the vote for the Conservative Party since Margaret Thatcher's 1983 post-Falklands election victory.
But Labour had seen the biggest percentage increase in their vote since 1945, drawing in millions of anti-Tory voters from smaller parties, in a surprise return to two-party politics.
So instead of returning to Downing Street in triumph, Mrs May was forced to strike a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 MPs agreed to support her in key Commons votes, sweetened by a £1bn public spending boost for Northern Ireland.
The DUP was staunchly Brexit-supporting and it would go on to play a pivotal role in the Brexit dramas she would face as she tried to get her withdrawal deal through Parliament.
Mrs May had backed Remain in the 2016 EU referendum, although she was barely visible during the campaign. Downing Street aides had reportedly nicknamed her "submarine May" for her alleged habit of going missing when Mr Cameron wanted her public backing for the Remain campaign.
Nevertheless, many Leave-voting Tory MPs suspected she did not believe in Brexit, and viewed it as a "damage-limitation" exercise at best.
She did her best to dispel these doubts with her constant mantra "Brexit means Brexit" and her vow to deliver on the "will" of the people as expressed in the referendum.
To the delight of Brexiteer colleagues, and the dismay of pro-Europeans, she set out a harder-than-expected vision for Brexit in a speech at Lancaster House in January 2017.
Three months later she triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, starting the formal two-year process to take Britain out of the 28-nation bloc.
She stressed that Britain would be leaving the EU single market and customs union - and repeatedly declared that Britain would be prepared to walk away from talks with the EU without a deal.
"No deal is better than a bad deal," joined her list of favourite Brexit phrases, repeated ad infinitum.
But negotiations in Brussels, led by Brexit Secretary David Davis, ran into the sand over the issue of how to prevent the return of a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Hopes of striking a trade deal by Brexit day had also evaporated and there was now talk of a 21-month transition period, to allow more time for negotiations.
Things came to a head in July 2018 when the Cabinet met at her country retreat, Chequers, to hammer out a joint position on Brexit that would see the UK establish a "common rulebook" with the EU after Brexit.
Within a few days of Mrs May announcing that she had full cabinet backing, Boris Johnson and David Davis had both quit saying this was not the Brexit they had been promised in her Lancaster House speech.
She also had to endure the humiliation of seeing her Chequers deal publicly rejected - and mocked - by EU leaders at a summit in Salzburg, Austria.
There was a brief respite from the grim Brexit grind in the autumn, when she shimmied on stage at the Conservative Party conference to the strains of Abba's Dancing Queen.
It helped to dispel the memory of the previous year's conference speech, which had been one of the most disastrous on record, with letters falling off the slogan behind her, an interruption from a comedian and a hacking cough that threatened to derail it altogether.
By now, Brexit had largely pushed all her other domestic priorities to one side, although the prime minister did agree a £20bn long-term funding settlement for the NHS.
In November 2018, she unveiled a draft EU withdrawal agreement, announcing, after a marathon cabinet meeting, that she had the backing of her top team, only to be faced with a string of resignations hours later.
The withdrawal agreement, with an accompanying statement on future relations, was the best and only deal available, she said.
And it would take the UK out of the EU in an "orderly fashion", with the minimum of disruption for businesses and citizens of EU countries in the EU as well as British expats in EU countries.
But one clause, known as the Irish "backstop", was proving too much for the increasingly vocal and angry Brexiteer wing of her party, who feared the Remain-voting prime minister was betraying the 17.4 million who had voted to leave the EU.
The backstop was meant to prevent the return of a "hard border" on the island of Ireland if no trade deal had been agreed by the end of the transition period but there was no time-limit on it and no way for the UK to halt it without the EU's say-so.
Opposition to the backstop was led by the DUP and a previously obscure group of Tory backbenchers, the European Research Group, headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Mrs May had to get her deal through Parliament but her plans for a vote on 10 December were pulled at the last minute, when it became clear she would have suffered a heavy defeat.
Two days later, she faced an attempt to remove her as Conservative leader, and prime minister, in a no-confidence vote orchestrated by the ERG.
She survived by 200 votes to 117.
But it was just the beginning of a seemingly never-ending cycle of political torture she would go on to suffer at the hands of her mutinous MPs.
When she did eventually put her deal to a vote in the Commons, it was rejected by 230 votes - the biggest defeat for a government in parliamentary history.
A total of 118 Tory MPs defied orders and voted against the deal but all of them voted to keep her in No 10 24 hours later, when Labour tabled a vote of no confidence in her government.
The Conservatives in Westminster had now splintered into a bewildering array of factions, from those who wanted to stop Brexit, via another EU referendum, to those who wanted a softer Brexit, to those who wanted the UK to leave without a deal at the earliest opportunity.
The one thing that united them was dislike of Theresa May's deal.
When she returned to the Commons with a slightly tweaked version of it, MPs rejected it again, by a reduced but still hefty margin of 149.
Power was now visibly ebbing away from her, as her divided cabinet openly discussed alternatives to her deal and junior ministers resigned with such regularity that they barely made the news.
Parliament was also flexing its muscles - MPs voted to reject a no-deal Brexit, something Mrs May had always insisted must stay on the table in negotiations with Brussels.
She had to hold a Commons vote on delaying Brexit, something she had repeatedly insisted she would never do.
And she had to rely on the votes of Labour MPs to get it through, after most of the Conservative contingent defied the whip.
She then had to go to Brussels to ask for a delay to Brexit - another thing she had said she would never do - as MPs rejected her deal for a third time.
Britain's departure date from the EU was written into UK law as 29 March - and Mrs May had insisted, more than 100 times according to some, that it would not change.
She laid the blame for the delay squarely at the door of MPs, in a late evening speech from Downing Street, in which she tried to position herself as being on the side of the public who, she said, were "tired of infighting and political games" over Brexit.
It proved to be another misjudgement, antagonising many of the MPs she was trying to persuade to back her deal and leading to accusations she was behaving like a demagogue.
She had to climb down the following day, offering something close to an apology, as she announced the new timetable for Brexit that had been imposed on her by Brussels.
In an attempt to negotiate a Brexit compromise that could pass muster in the Commons, she also reached out to Jeremy Corbyn.
But six weeks of talks with Labour ended without an agreement, an outcome many Tory MPs said was depressingly predictable.
A further humiliation followed when she had to agree to the UK participating in European Parliament elections - something she had previously said would be unacceptable.
The Conservatives barely mounted a campaign to speak of, in contrast to Nigel Farage's boisterous new Brexit Party.
With the party's European poll ratings dropping into single figures and would-be successors openly touting their leadership credentials, she made one final attempt to get MPs on side.
She promised them they would get a binding vote on whether to hold another referendum during the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill and would also get to decide on different options for the UK's future customs arrangements with the EU.
Brexit could be lost if her deal was rejected, she added.
But by now many MPs had given up listening, having reached the conclusion that she was an impediment to the kind of Brexit they craved - or any kind of Brexit.
Well and truly cornered, Mrs May finally had to accept she could not continue "in the job she loved" and her time in Downing Street - barring a brief transition period - was now over.
"I have done my best," she said, as she announced the resignation from behind a podium outside Number 10.

So. How open does the EU seem almost a week on from parliament narrowly voting in favour of an amendment to find alternatives to the backstop guarantee to keep the Irish border open after Brexit?
After all, with every passing day as we've heard , again and again and again, the clock is ticking us all towards an increased chance of a no-deal Brexit with all the costs and chaos that could involve.
Well, if I were to speak in weather forecast terms, I might describe current EU attitudes as frosty with a chance of ice.
If Theresa May comes to Brussels later this week, she will be received politely and listened to attentively.
But if her EU ask remains centred around getting a time limit to, or allowing the UK a unilateral get-out mechanism from, the Irish border backstop or if she pushes again for pure technology as a means of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, then the likelihood of her being sent home empty-handed - or as good as - is very high indeed.
This is not because the EU has suddenly become cavalier about the prospect of a no-deal Brexit - far from it. The club may be over the moon about just sealing the world's largest ever bilateral deal with Japan but that's no replacement for trade and cooperation with neighbouring UK.
It's just that the EU sees so many reasons not to budge over the backstop: solidarity with EU club member Ireland over "caving in" to departing member UK; defending the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland peace process; and above all (in the eyes, hearts and pockets of many EU politicians and businesses) defending the integrity of the EU's single market.
So when Sajid Javid, the UK's home secretary, announced at the weekend that sorting out the backstop would just involve "a bit of good will" on behalf of the EU, I could almost hear the groans of European exasperation from my Brussels living room.
This is something that those in the UK who knowingly repeat that "the EU will give in, in the end" perhaps don't fully appreciate.
The EU certainly does budge at times, even when it has repeatedly ruled out such a move but it performs U-turns out of self-interest, to safeguard the bloc in some way.
Take the oft-cited Greek debt crisis - the EU acted in the interest of the eurozone currency. That is ultimately why it changed its line on member country Greece.
The Brussels calculation is that a no-deal Brexit would be damaging for the EU but exposing the entire EU single market to clear vulnerabilities would be the worst of two evils.
The backstop guarantee for the Irish border ensures a means of sealing the long, meandering, porous border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in a way that technology alone (as many Brexiteers are suggesting) cannot.
The EU worries about tariff-dodging and about non-EU standard products being smuggled into the EU's single market "through the back door" - via Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
If technology alone could seal a border in terms of customs and regulatory checks then you would no longer see the existing infrastructure in place between close allies and neighbours non-EU Norway and EU member Sweden or between Switzerland, which has very tight relations with the European Union, and its EU neighbours.
So, instead of dramatically changing or weakening the backstop, the EU is more than happy - as officials indicated today to visiting members of the UK's parliamentary Brexit Select Committee - to repeat or re-package its previous reassurances about the backstop.
For example:
 An important aside on the transition period: there's a new proposal the EU understands is now being championed by Downing Street - The Malthouse Compromise. Brussels would likely reject this, not only because it seeks to rewrite the backstop but because it suggests paying the EU to extend the transition period even in the case of a no-deal Brexit.
The EU argues (and this is included in the text of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement) that if the Brexit deal is not passed by the House of Commons, there will be no transition period. Full stop.
Now, the EU is not at all convinced that re-hashing assurances about the backstop will be enough to satisfy MPs who voted to change it. They believe the bar set by the DUP and hard-line Brexiteers is too high for any tweaks the EU might be willing to make. Which leaves EU leaders sceptical that Theresa May actually has the majority of MPs behind her.
Just this weekend for example, the EU's deputy chief Brexit negotiator, Sabine Weyand, retweeted a UK commentator pointing out signs of splintering in the brief truce inside the Conservative Party.
Which is why the EU will continue to show ice-cold resolve - at least for now. Hoping, by not giving an inch over the backstop, that the Prime Minister will be forced to look across the political divide, to the Labour Party, for another means to find parliamentary support for the Brexit Deal - such as opting for a permanent customs union with the EU.
This is the EU's hope. But European diplomats see in Theresa May a politician who likes sticking to her Plan A's.
From the beginning we've discussed the big possibility that with such a divided country, parliament, party and cabinet, the prime minister will simply keep playing for time, inching forward small step by small step until so close to the cliff-edge of having no Brexit deal at all that most MPs will end up backing her and her deal at the very last moment.
This is high-risk brinkmanship.
Dublin is deeply concerned about the consequences of a no deal Brexit - for peace above all but also about the impact on the Irish economy. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar heads to Brussels this Wednesday for high-level meetings. That same day his deputy flies to Washington to lobby for US support to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement and to ensure the Irish border stays open.
Could US disapproval over UK pressure on the backstop makes things more complicated for a future UK-US trade deal?
It won't make things any simpler.

Theresa May must resign or the Conservatives should force her out, after the party's heavy local election losses, Iain Duncan Smith has said.
The former Tory leader called Mrs May a "caretaker PM" and described her attempts to reach a Brexit deal with Labour as "absurd".
The party suffered its worst local election result in England since 1995.
Other senior Conservatives have urged Tory MPs to compromise with Labour to ensure Brexit is delivered.
Elections were held on Thursday for 248 English councils, six mayors, and all 11 councils in Northern Ireland. No elections took place in Scotland or Wales.
The Conservatives lost 1,334 councillors, while Labour failed to make expected gains, instead losing 82 seats.
The Liberal Democrats benefited from Tory losses, gaining 703 seats, with the Greens and independents also making gains.
Following the results, Mrs May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn both insisted they would push ahead with talks seeking cross-party agreement on leaving the EU.
Mrs May said it was clear the public wanted "to see the issue of Brexit resolved".
But Mr Duncan Smith, a leading Brexiteer, said many Conservatives would refuse to back any deal reached between the two parties.
Mrs May must announce her departure "very soon", he said, and if she did not go, the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs would have to force her to do so.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: "As a result of the devastating election result, the PM has in effect become a caretaker.
"As such, she is not empowered to make any deal with the Labour Party which itself suffered a very similar result. Two discredited administrations making a discredited deal is not the answer to the electorate."
In December, Mrs May survived a vote of no-confidence in her leadership of the Conservative Party, but in March she pledged to stand down if and when Parliament ratified her Brexit withdrawal agreement with the EU.
The UK had been due to leave the EU on 29 March, but the deadline was pushed back to 31 October after Parliament was unable to agree a way forward.
In the wake of the Conservatives' local election losses, senior Tories have called for the party to compromise in order to reach an agreement with Labour to end the Brexit deadlock.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson called for the negotiating teams of both parties - who are currently locked in talks - to "get Brexit sorted, get a deal over the line and let Britain move on".
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the Conservative Party needed to listen to the election results and be "in the mood for compromise".
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said the Conservatives might have to move towards Labour's proposal of a permanent customs union - a move many Brexiteers in the party oppose - in order to solve the impasse in Westminster.
Mrs May's government has previously ruled out remaining in a customs union after the UK leaves the EU, arguing it would prevent the UK from setting its own trade policy.
Labour has said the EU may show flexibility over the issue and allow the UK "a say" in future trade deals.
Mr Hancock suggested "coming up with something in-between", and called for "an open dialogue in which we can make an agreement".
But Mr Duncan Smith said a customs union was "the worst of all worlds because you lose your decision-making capacity".
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there was a "glimmer of hope" that a compromise between the Conservative and Labour "core-voters" could be reached.
He added that while he supported the withdrawal deal reached between the EU and Mrs May, there might be things that could be done to make it "more acceptable" to Labour without compromising on the "things that we think are essential".
But he also warned that a customs union would not be a "long-term solution".
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Hunt's remarks on a customs union provided "yet more evidence" that many in the cabinet believed the "most important thing right now" was the race to be Mrs May's successor.
Labour's MP for Redcar, Anna Turley, also reacted to Mr Hunt's comments that a customs union was not a long-term solution, tweeting: "This is why we can't trust the Tories by doing a deal stitched up in Number 10 which they will seek to unravel under their next leader."

If the Tory party had wanted intentionally to display just how divided they are over Brexit and how generally twitchy they are, they could hardly have done a better job.
Not in off-the-cuff remarks but in scripted comments, one of the most convinced Brexit "softies" in the Cabinet, the chancellor himself, told delegates in Davos that he believed, hopefully, that the changes between the EU and UK economies would be "very modest", as we leave the European bloc.
Meanwhile, the emboldened voice of backbench Brexiteers, Jacob Rees-Mogg, had prepared a speech of his own, accusing ministers of being cowed by the EU and calling for the government to stiffen its sinews in the Brexit talks or risk letting down voters and opting only for a "managed decline".
Before you switch off from this neat, yet predictable demonstration of the division inside the governing party, remember it matters because it will shape the decisions that are made about the country's relationship with the EU in years to come, which will have an impact on all of our lives.
And it constrains Theresa May's ability to keep the show on the road. She has, since moving into Number 10, had to balance the two wings of her party, and particularly pay attention to the Brexiteers.
The sheer force of numbers of them on the backbenches and her lack of majority mean they are essentially her domestic base. It's not always been easy, but until now, they have been quite peaceable in public, relatively speaking.
The conventional logic has been that while they are on board Theresa May is safe, and while not ardent fans, they have been content to support her in office, knowing they are able to wield significant private influence to deliver what they see as "their" Brexit.
In the last ten days or so, with talk of transition, but more to the point the political mishandling of the reshuffle and the perceived tin ear of Number 10 on other issues, some ardent Brexiteers are looking at the Tories'  prospects and wondering if it's time to change their calculation.
One senior Tory told me: "Brexit has been so mishandled, whether we are right or wrong, we know it's bleeding into the party's prospects. In whose interests is it that she continues leading the party? A handful of cabinet ministers who can't summon up the wit to do anything."
Essentially, Brexiteers were content to back the prime minister as long as it looked like she was more or less on track to lead the party and the government through a departure of the EU that was broadly to their liking, with a clean break from the single market and the customs union, a focus on free trade and cutting immigration.
And arguably after the election, their hand was strengthened given they were the biggest group on the Tory backbenches and Theresa May also had to rely on the DUP, who are also Brexiteers, to survive.
But a perceived softening in her position, over the transition period, as we discussed earlier  and a series of political missteps has, for some MPs at least, changed that calculation.
For some, "we are now in a regime change state of mind", with the possibility of seeking opportunities to remove the prime minister on the agenda.
And their putative leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, head of the influential ERG grouping of Brexiteers hinted that there could be trouble in the Commons on our Brexit podcast, saying they hoped to change the government's Customs Bill, by coincidence of course, a bill politically owned by one Philip Hammond.
That would be the first time that Brexiteers have made trouble publicly for the government's programme of legislation and raises the prospect of rebels to the right of the prime minister, and rebels to the [Tory] left of her, with no way out.
One Tory source told me: "I've never known this level of frustration amongst colleagues. It feels like nothing is happening. No one thinks it can carry on like this and something has to give - that's probably Theresa. The question is when? The answer is, hopefully soon."
But - this is important - take a deep breath.
None of this means that it is inevitable that Theresa May is on her way out.
None of this means there will even be a challenge.
And none of this means a spring breeze couldn't sweep away the sour mood in a couple of weeks' time.
Number 10 is convinced that the fundamentals haven't changed. It's likely the majority of MPs, and almost certainly the majority of ministers, think she should stay on.
A leadership contest in the middle of Brexit? The EU would be appalled. And how many members of the public would look kindly on yet another political drama? We can all guess the answer to that.
Moreover, it is absolutely the case that the Tories agree on neither a clear way forward on Brexit, nor a best potential successor, nor even a vision of the kind of party they really want to be and policies they want to pursue in the future.
No-one in the party can agree on a better answer to the status quo. And remember, it is always easy in politics to say, "we can't go on like this".
Yet even MPs who back the prime minister are losing patience. One told me today: "We try to help her but she just won't let us, it's all draining away."
As the Tories' agonies over Brexit resurface, the prime minister has neither the luxury of time nor it seems, unconditional support from her own side.

Philip Hammond has told the BBC he intends to resign as chancellor if Boris Johnson becomes the UK's next PM.
He said a no-deal Brexit, something Mr Johnson has left open as an option, was "not something I could ever sign up to".
Asked if he thought he would be sacked next week, Mr Hammond said he would resign on Wednesday to Theresa May.
He said he intends to quit after Prime Minister's Questions but before Mrs May steps down.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Hammond said it was important the next PM and his chancellor were "closely aligned" on Brexit policy.
Mr Johnson has said the UK must leave the EU by the new Brexit deadline of 31 October "do or die, come what may".
His leadership rival Jeremy Hunt has said a no-deal exit cannot be ruled out, but he is prepared to further delay Brexit if required to get a new withdrawal deal.
Mr Hammond said the situation "might be more complicated" if Mr Hunt wins the Tory leadership contest, but "all the polling" suggested Mr Johnson would succeed.
"That is what is likely to happen, and I'm making my plans accordingly", he said, adding he would wait until the result is announced on Tuesday to "see for sure".
Mr Hammond said he understood committing to leave by this date, even with no deal, would be a condition for serving in Mr Johnson's cabinet.
He said: "That is not something I could ever sign up to. It's very important that a prime minister is able to have a chancellor that is closely aligned with him in terms of policy".
He added that Jeremy Hunt's position regarding a no-deal Brexit was "more nuanced", and he had not demanded a "loyalty pledge" on the exit date from prospective ministers.
Mr Hammond said he would support either man in their pursuit of a new Brexit deal, but it would not be possible to agree this before the end of October.
"A genuine pursuit of a deal will require a little longer", he added.
Mr Hammond has been a prominent critic of the idea of a no-deal Brexit, recently indicating he may vote to bring down the next PM to stop such a scenario.
He had said he could "not exclude anything" when asked whether he would back a motion of no-confidence in the government.
Asked whether he would go against the next PM in a vote of no confidence, he said: "I don't think it will get to that".
"I am confident that Parliament does have a way of preventing a no-deal exit on October 31 without parliamentary consent".
"I intend to work with others to ensure Parliament uses its power to make sure that the new government can't do that", he added.
Earlier, Justice Secretary David Gauke reiterated his intention to resign from government should the next prime minister pursue a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Gauke told the Sunday Times: "If the test of loyalty to stay in the cabinet is a commitment to support no-deal on October 31 - which, to be fair to him, Boris has consistently said - then that's not something I'm prepared to sign up to."
The votes haven't been counted - but already Westminster is preparing for Prime Minister Johnson.
It's not a surprise that Philip Hammond has decided not to serve in a Johnson government.
But the manner of the announcement - live on television, hammering Mr Johnson's key policy on Brexit so publicly - shows just how deep divisions in the Tory Party run.
Justice Secretary David Gauke has confirmed he'll quit too if Mr Johnson wins - and others are likely to follow.
There is an element of jumping before they are pushed.
But it's also a reminder the next PM will face the same huge challenge Theresa May faced - how do you manage discipline in a bitterly divided party, with such a slender working majority in Parliament?
Nobody knows the answer for sure.
Meanwhile, the Irish deputy prime minister said the Irish Republic would have "no choice" but to protect its place in the EU's single market if the UK "forces a no-deal Brexit on everybody else".
Also speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Simon Coveney warned that if the incoming Conservative prime minister chose to "tear up" the Brexit withdrawal deal, then "we're in trouble".
"That's a little bit like saying, 'Give me what I want or I'm going to burn the house down for everybody".
Some 160,000 Conservative Party members are voting in a postal ballot to elect the next leader.
Ballots must be returned by 17:00 BST on Monday, with the winner of the contest due to be announced on Tuesday.

The UK's new information commissioner has called for the country to adopt forthcoming EU data protection laws, despite its plan to leave the Union.
"I don't think Brexit should mean Brexit when it comes to standards of data protection," Elizabeth Denham told BBC Radio 4's PM programme.
She added she would press WhatsApp over plans to share data with Facebook.
The new EU data protection regulations are designed to strengthen the rights individuals have over their data.
The idea is to make companies take the issue of data protection far more seriously.
The rules make it mandatory for large companies to employ a data protection officer and data breaches must be reported within 72 hours.
The legislation will take effect in 2018 and will apply to any company that handles EU citizens' data, even if that company is not based in Europe.
"The UK is going to want to continue to do business with Europe," Ms Denham told the BBC's Chris Vallance.
"In order for British businesses to share information and provide services for EU consumers, the law has to be equivalent.
"The UK was very involved in the drafting of the regulation - it will likely be in effect before the UK leaves the European Union - so I'm concerned about a start and stop regulatory environment."
Analysis by Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology correspondent
She's another Canadian in a high profile job as a UK regulator and - like Mark Carney at the Bank of England - Elizabeth Denham is now showing she's not afraid to step into tricky political territory.
The new information commissioner made it clear that, in her view, leaving the EU did not mean leaving behind European regulation when it came to data protection.
To use such an explicit phrase as "I don't think Brexit should mean Brexit" in the context of data laws could be seen as courageous - or perhaps foolhardy.
But consumers will take more notice of her warning about WhatsApp's sharing of data with its parent Facebook.
She's shown she sympathises with the public's anger on this issue - now let's wait and see if she will back that up with action.
Ms Denham also told the BBC she had questions to ask of web giant Yahoo, which has admitted 500 million user accounts were breached in what it suggested was a state-sponsored attack.
It is thought eight million accounts belonged to UK users.
"This data breach is unprecedented. The numbers are staggering," she said.
"Why did it take so long for Yahoo to notify the public of the breach? It looks like it happened two years ago. What can these account holders do to protect themselves?
"I'm asking those questions on behalf of UK citizens."
Ms Denham also said she would probe WhatsApp's controversial plan to share more of its users' data with its parent company Facebook.
"We are told the data is not yet being shared," she told the BBC.
"We have launched an investigation into the data sharing, remembering that in 2014 when Facebook bought WhatsApp, there was a commitment made that between the two companies they would not share information.
"We are in a dialogue with Facebook and WhatsApp. It's an active and important investigation. You will hear from us very shortly."

There is new evidence today of how the UK technology sector is feeling about its future after the referendum vote to leave the EU. And the message from a survey carried out by Tech City UK is pretty gloomy - though the organisation itself sees some reasons for optimism.
Tech City UK got responses from more than 1,200 members of the tech community. Questioned in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, 74% of them said they thought the economy would get worse, not better.
Their biggest concern was getting access to talent - 51% said they thought it would get more difficult to recruit and retain the best staff. Just under a quarter thought they would scale back their plans for growth, and 31% said they would slow down on recruitment.
But they are now looking forward and have demands of the government as it enters the Brexit negotiations.
Of the employers surveyed, 70% wanted a clear message that EU residents could continue to live and work in the UK, and 79% wanted changes in the visa system to allow the best of global talent to come here. They would also like a cut in business taxes.
But the clearest message is on continued trading relationships with the rest of Europe. Eighty five per cent of respondents wanted to see the government negotiate to remain part of the Single Market.
They may be cheered by the fact that the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, said this month that it was "a priority to allow British companies to trade with the Single Market." But then again she said it was also necessary to "regain more control of the numbers of people who come here from Europe," so they will have to wait to see how she squares that particular circle.
Tech City UK, the organisation set up by the government to promote first London then other cities to technology investors, is determined to be cheerful. The press release it sent out with the results of this rather downbeat survey was headlined "Cause for optimism as tech rises to Brexit challenge".
Its chief executive, Gerard Grech, insists he is beginning to see some of that hope shining through and "there are unexpected upsides and very real opportunities" in the post-Brexit world.
After all the pre-referendum concern about investors pulling back, there have been several announcements in recent days about UK tech firms receiving new funding.
The giant US investor KKR put £50m into the security firm Darktrace, the London-based currency exchange app Revolut raised nearly £8m and a music tickets site Festicket was backed with nearly £5m.
Grech says one upside of the weak pound is that UK assets now look cheaper to overseas investors
What we do not know, of course, amidst these good news stories, is how many firms failed to get funding they had expected before the referendum. At a tech gathering last week, one executive of a start-up told me why he thought its prospects in a very competitive sector were now brighter: "we've got funding, nobody else will get it now," he said.
But Gerard Grech seems happy enough to  wave goodbye to the kind of investor who is put off by Brexit fears: "Those who were fair-weather friends will seek easier ways to make money, and we will be better off without them."
What is clear is that the UK still has plenty of smart young tech entrepreneurs with ambitious plans. Many were certainly disappointed by the referendum result and believe it has made life tougher - but they are still confident in their own abilities and will be pressing the government to put as few barriers as possible in their path to a profitable future.

A "hard Brexit" would be the "biggest disaster" to have hit the UK's universities for many years, a university head told MPs.
Alistair Fitt, vice chancellor of Oxford Brookes, was giving evidence to the Education Select Committee, holding a special away-day session at the University of Oxford.
With the elegant panorama of Pembroke College behind them, the MPs wanted to find out what would be the impact of Brexit on the UK's university sector.
You would be hard-pressed to find any sector in the country more opposed to Brexit than higher education.
So it was probably no surprise that the MPs heard an unrelenting message that leaving the EU was a grim prospect for higher education and research.
University organisations, which usually put much effort and ingenuity into not really being for or against anything in public, took to open campaigning for a Remain vote.
Universities, bastions of liberal thinking, intensely international in their outlook and staffing, seemed culturally allergic to Brexit.
And the referendum result hangs over them like they've fought and lost a civil war.
Professor Catherine Barnard from the University of Cambridge told MPs that her own university had seen a 14% drop in applications this year from EU students.
The university had asked why potential students had turned down a chance to study at Cambridge - and she said among the reasons were fears over an "anti-immigrant sentiment" and uncertainty over the future of the UK's involvement in international research.
Prof Barnard warned that talented mathematicians at Cambridge from countries such as Hungary, Poland and Romania would take their sought-after skills elsewhere.
The committee of MPs heard warnings that in some elite research institutions in the UK, vital to the national infrastructure, as many as two thirds of the staff were EU nationals from outside the UK.
Would they hang around and see if they were still wanted after Brexit? Or would research rivals in Germany or China snap them up to the detriment of the UK economy?
Showing how seriously they take this, Oxford University has appointed its own head of Brexit strategy.
So you could say that at least Brexit has already created one extra job.
But this new postholder, Professor Alistair Buchan, saw leaving the EU as threatening to relegate the UK's universities behind their global competition.
Oxford has been ranked as the world's top university, but Prof Buchan said that in 1970s the UK's universities did not have that top status. This had been built through the EU years and growing networks of international partnerships.
He described Brexit for universities as the "Manchester United problem".
Why would any football team with international ambitions deliberately want to restrict its access both to better talent and to bigger markets?
There were warnings about the financial impact of losing European research funding.
The UK's universities are among the biggest winners from Horizon 2020 research network, bringing more than £2bn into the higher education sector.
This is no small-bière, with some individual universities worrying about the loss of hundreds of millions.
If the UK is to stay ahead in research, Dr Anne Corbett of the LSE said the UK government had to be ready for some "serious funding".
Professor Stephanie Haywood, president of the Engineering Professors' Council, warned that losing access to EU students would make skills shortages in engineering even worse.
But could there be an upside in higher tuition fees?
If EU students are designated as overseas students after Brexit, UK universities could charge them much higher fees.
But such a tuition fee windfall depends on those students not staying at home or going somewhere else.
Prof Barnard raised the example of those talented eastern European mathematicians.
Would they really be able to pay £17,000 or so a year? Or would it mean that universities in the UK would have pay for scholarships rather than see them go elsewhere?
Committee chairman Neil Carmichael pushed his witnesses for more evidence and facts.
But what came back most often was even more questions. What's going to happen to the EU staff in UK universities? What will be the visa system for students?
What will happen to the intricate networks of European research? How much will the UK government be willing to cover for any lost income?
And of course, so far, these are unknowns being piled up on unknowables.
But as another European refugee scientist, Albert Einstein, once said: "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research."

What do we know?
One of the most baffling political quotes of all time was the former American Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld's response to questions about weapons intelligence on Iraq back in 2002.
He was lampooned at the time, but in the months and years that followed, his bizarre syntax became rather a shorthand for a situation so complicated and fluid that it is almost impossible to rule anything in or out.
Just in case you had forgotten - and you can watch it here - here is how he put it at the time.
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
Of course the situation in respect of Brexit is different indeed, very very different.
But I can't help thinking of that quote as right now, we hear government ministers trying, or indeed not trying to give MPs full answers on their plans for Brexit that there are indeed known knowns but also many more known unknowns
And indeed, that there are probably unknown unknowns about how we extricate ourselves from the EU, what our relationship with the rest of the EU looks like, and indeed the rest of the world.
Frankly, we know almost as little about the plan for Brexit that's concrete as we did that momentous morning after the referendum itself.
But there have been plenty of hints, implications and suggestions of priorities that are worth noting, even if just to reveal how much that we can't be sure of. It is not by any stretch an exhaustive list, and without concrete proposals, everything is still open to interpretation.
First off, on immigration, which came to dominate the referendum debate.
Theresa May evidently believes, whatever else we end up with, that the British government needs to have more say over how many people come to live here from the rest of the European Union.
She's ruled out a points system to determine who gets in and who doesn't, even though we use elements of that to control the numbers of people who move here from other parts of the world. There are plenty of suggestions floating around the place over what a new system might be - for example a work permit system as put forward by the former Cabinet Minister Iain Duncan Smith.
Under this option, students, tourists, and people being transferred by their employer for work (known as intra company transfers) can come here without limit, but others must have a job offer before they arrive. But people with particular skills, scientists for example, could be exempt from control altogether.
Other ideas have been put forward, regional visas for example by the London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
In truth, there isn't a clear position from the government yet, but a clear determination that when we get to the end of the Brexit process, there is a political imperative for Theresa May to be able to say she is able to exert more control over the levels of European immigration.
That is what makes the second fiendish issue so politically difficult. Is the government going to try to keep our full membership of the single market - the European Union's giant free trade area where businesses can deal with companies right around the union, with a market of 500 million people, without any obstacles.
During the referendum campaign, Vote Leave said that we would indeed leave the single market. Other EU countries have said that we can't stay in the single market if we are intent on restricting European immigration.
It's not just a real, but a philosophical point - for the EU single market, countries accept four 'freedoms' - goods, services, people and capital - basically cash, trade and people.
So in theory, if we want to control immigration from the EU, we can't stay inside.
But, so far ministers hedge around this. In fact three different cabinet ministers have told me they believe that we might keep our membership of the single market if British negotiators can find a cunning wheeze, a way round it.
Others believe it is helplessly optimistic to believe that's possible, other ministers suggest it's not even desirable and we'd be better off trying to go it alone within the rules of the World Trade Organisation.
Again, the government just hasn't made its position clear. Theresa May is the kind of politician who genuinely wants to look at all the evidence, even if there is swathes of it, before making a decision.
And it's worth remembering this is not as binary as it sounds. Being a member of the single market is not like being a member of the AA or the local gym - you don't just stop paying your direct debit and cut up your membership card.
There are lots of different models like the deal Norway has, or Switzerland, that allow it to trade with varying expectations of how many of the rules they have to obey.
But more to the point, while most EU leaders seem implacably opposed to the UK following Boris Johnson's oft-quoted aspiration of "having its cake and eating it" - keeping all the goodies of the single market and getting more control on immigration - it is always worth remembering that although there are EU regulations and precedents, as one senior Conservative put it, 'there is literally nothing that is unchangeable about the EU if the political leaders want it".
In this instance, that is a huge if, but it'd be wrong to think that anything about the government's attitude to the single market has been set in stone, and importantly in the next twelve months, many European leaders risk losing their perches in their own elections. They could be replaced by others who are more sympathetic to the UK's case, or in reverse, far more willing to be punitive.
But it is also well worth remembering that the UK has over the years managed to exclude itself from some of the biggest EU projects - the single currency and the Schengen border free travel zone.
What about the cash we have to stump up? Ministers have been oh so careful not to rule out having to contribute anything to the EU, even after we leave, despite the promises of the Vote Leave campaign that we'd get billions back.
You might argue that voters, and certainly many Tory MPs will be furious if under the deal we end up shelling out. But it is a very real possibility that ministers may end up pursuing a deal where we would continue to pay a certain amount to Brussels in return for a trading relationship.
It's another known unknown. Equally we know that ministers would rather be able to allow all EU nationals currently living here to stay.
But they are miles from committing to that, insistent, rightly or wrongly, that they will only give that guarantee if British citizens who live in EU countries are given the same, racking up something else we are yet to know.
So far, I'm afraid, so unclear. There are a few issues however that are clear as crystal. It's unambiguous, that the prime minister is intent on taking us out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
This was one of the clues that suggests we'll leave the single market, as the ECJ polices its rules. But then again, Norway is in the market, but is not under the Court, even though its equivalent authority takes much of its guidance from the ECJ.
The European Courts will no longer be the ultimate arbiter of our laws once we have left the EU. Under the Great Repeal Bill, which will be discussed and voted on in Parliament next year, at the moment we leave, all EU laws go into British law. And then, our MPs can, as they see fit, unpick them, replace them, or scrap them one by one.
And as David Davis told MPs today, there'll be no possibility of veto, that Brexit means Brexit and we will be leaving the European Union.
And very few of the MPs who today so passionately pleaded for more say over how our departure unfolds, would now argue to unpick the result.
There are already countless interpretations of all the above, other readings of the nudges and hints we've had from central government.
And there are so many other factors in all of this - what happens about the Customs Union, what happens about EU structural funds, what happens to the Northern Irish border, what happens to benefits paid to expats, the list goes on and and on and you guessed it, most of the items on the list are, yes, known unknowns.
And as Mr Rumsfeld suggested all those years ago, there are indeed, unknown unknowns. We are only at the very beginning of a process that is going to take years, not months, that will change our relationship with the rest of the continent, and ultimately the rest of the world.
There may well be consequences that right now, we can't even imagine, for good or for ill. Right now, there is very little that we can be sure of - the government is yet to come to a concrete position on what it wants to achieve.
And even when ministers can agree on their specific aims, that's when the rest of the EU will start to grapple with the detail of a process. The British government reaching its own conclusions is only perhaps the start.

Senior ministers have agreed they want to reach a Brexit deal with the EU by the end of November, sources say.
"Everyone saw the difficulties of leaving it longer," a senior cabinet source told the BBC.
Meanwhile, the BBC has seen a detailed suggested timetable of how the government could try to sell a deal to MPs and the public.
It includes speeches from Theresa May and support from business figures and foreign leaders.
The notes, which the government has dismissed, suggest the cabinet had hoped to review a Brexit withdrawal deal when it met earlier.
Sources say a final deal was not presented to the cabinet but that ministers agreed they want a deal to be done this month and they could meet again later this week.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March but the two sides have not yet agreed on the terms of its departure, with the Irish border proving the main sticking point.
If a deal can be reached with the EU in time, Mrs May will then need to persuade her party - and the rest of Parliament - to support it in a key Commons vote.
The notes seen by the BBC outline how ministers could present the deal, saying: "The narrative is going to be measured success, that this is good for everyone but won't be all champagne corks popping."
They refer to a speech by Mrs May to the CBI, saying: "We have delivered on the referendum."
And they go on to talk about the government "lining up 25 top business voices...and lots of world leaders eg Japanese PM to tweet support for the deal".
It suggests the government would hope to declare they had made decisive progress and to get the deal through Parliament in less than three weeks.
But a government spokesman said: "The misspelling and childish language in this document should be enough to make clear it doesn't represent the government's thinking.
"You would expect the government to have plans for all situations - to be clear, this isn't one of them."
The spokesman did not deny there were advanced plans for building support for a deal if and when it is concluded.
Labour MP Hilary Benn, who chairs the Commons Brexit select committee, said Mrs May should concentrate on securing a deal rather than on how to sell an agreement that was not yet done.
"When you get a deal, you can think about how you are going to tell people about it," he told the BBC.
Earlier, No 10 said the prime minister assured ministers that the cabinet would meet before the UK agreed to any deal on the terms of the UK's exit.
The withdrawal deal is said to be 95% complete but the tricky bit is proving to be how to honour the commitment by both sides to guarantee no new hard border in Ireland.
There is disagreement on whether this "backstop" should apply to Northern Ireland, or the whole of the UK - and on whether it should be time-limited or revoked by the UK.
At the cabinet meeting it is understood ministers discussed the mechanism for governing the backstop and who should decide when it no longer applied.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is understood to have set out the legal position for an independent review mechanism for the backstop.
He is believed to have told ministers there is a legal "spectrum" of what is possible to prevent the UK from being trapped "in limbo".
The Irish border is an issue because after Brexit it will become the UK's land border with the rest of the EU, which has a single market and customs union so products do not need to be checked when they pass between member states.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier told a Belgian broadcaster that the Irish border remained the main hurdle to be overcome but if enough progress is made he would recommend that a summit is convened to finalise the deal.
Meanwhile, the government has published the criteria for allocating scarce permits for British truckers who need to drive in the EU after Brexit.
The permits will be shared out based on: vehicle emissions, number of international journeys in the previous year, number of international journeys as a percentage of all journeys, type of goods transported and an element of chance.
The Department for Transport document says the permits would be required for a no deal scenario BUT might also be required after the future economic partnership is agreed, depending on the type of deal.

The government has lost its appeal against the High Court's ruling that Article 50 cannot be invoked without Parliament's support.
It was the first time, all 11 of the Supreme Court's permanent justices, including those from Northern Ireland and Scotland, presided over a case, but who are they?
Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger
Lord Neuberger, 68, is the president of the Supreme Court, a position he has held since 2012, and is the UK's most senior judge.
After studying chemistry at Oxford University he worked at the merchant bank N M Rothschild & Sons from 1970-1973 until he was called to the Bar in 1974.
In 2013 he voiced fears about legal aid cuts, telling the BBC they could lead people to "take the law into their own hands".
Lord Neuberger has also led an investigation for the Bar Council, which regulates barristers, into widening access to the profession.
He has two sons and one daughter.
Deputy president Lady Hale
Lady Hale, 71, is deputy president of the Supreme Court and in October 2009 became the first woman justice of the Supreme Court when the court was established, replacing the Law Lords.
Lady Hale, who became deputy president in June 2013 and is the UK's most senior female judge, previously said she was "disappointed" no other woman had reached the level she had.
In January 2004, she became the UK's first woman Law Lord after a varied career as an academic lawyer, law reformer and judge.
In October 2013 she told the BBC: ""I am disappointed that in the 10 years since I was appointed [a Law Lord] not one among the 13 subsequent appointments to this court has been a woman.
"Now things are improving in the lower ranks of the judiciary, but regrettably not yet up here."
She has one daughter and lists her hobbies in Who's Who as "domesticity", drama and duplicate bridge.
Lord Mance
Lord Mance, 73, was one of an original group of nine that were appointed as justices of the Supreme Court when it was established in October 2009.
He had previously been a Lord Justice of Appeal and, before that, a High Court judge.
Lord Mance has one son and two daughters and his hobbies, according to Who's Who, include tennis, languages, music and walking.
Lord Kerr
Lord Kerr, 68, served as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland from 2004 to 2009, and was the last Law Lord appointed before the creation of the Supreme Court.
He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1970, and to the Bar of England and Wales at Gray's Inn in 1974.
Lord Kerr has two sons and lists his hobbies in Who's Who as "trying to be (and hoping to make my family) happy".
Lord Clarke
Lord Clarke, 73, spent 27 years at the bar, specialising in maritime and commercial law, undertaking a wide variety of cases in these areas.
He became a Recorder in 1985, sitting in both criminal and civil courts.
In 2005, he was appointed Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice and in October 2009 he became a justice in the Supreme Court.
He has one son and two daughters.
Lord Wilson
Lord Wilson, 71, became a justice of the Supreme Court in May 2011 after working for most of his career in the field of family law.
He argued in favour of gay marriage, telling Queen's University in Belfast that he wondered how long Northern Ireland would "be able to hold back the tide in favour of same-sex marriages".
Speaking in 2014, he said that that to allow same-sex couples the right to marry strengthened rather than weakened marriage.
Northern Ireland is the only country in the UK where same-sex marriage is not legal.
He has one son and a daughter.
Lord Sumption
Lord Sumption, 67, became a justice of the Supreme Court in January 2012,
He has been described as having a "brain the size of a planet" and the "cleverest man in England".
In a BBC interview in 2010, he denied these nicknames were true, saying "I don't know where these phrases come from. There are lots of clever people around. I'll admit to being one of them, but that's all."
He has two daughters and one son and his hobbies, according to Who's Who, include music and history. He has written several history books, including The Hundred Years' War, volumes one, two three and four.
Lord Reed
Lord Reed, 60, is one of the two Scottish justices of the Supreme Court.
He served as a senior judge in Scotland for 13 years, being appointed to the Outer House of the Court of Session in 1998 and promoted to the Inner House in January 2008 before he was made a justice in the Supreme Court in February 2012.
Lord Reed also sat as an ad-hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights. He has two daughters, and lists his main hobby in Who's Who as music.
Lord Carnwath
Lord Carnwath, 71, served as Attorney General to the Prince of Wales from 1988 to 1994.
He was a judge of the Chancery Division from 1994 to 2002, during which time he was also chairman of the Law Commission.
Lord Carnwath was appointed to the Supreme Court in April 2012.
His hobbies, as listed in Who's Who, include playing the viola, singing (Bach Choir), tennis and golf.
Lord Hughes
Lord Hughes, 68, became a Queen's Counsel in 1990 and was later appointed a High Court judge.
He was appointed as a justice of the Supreme Court in April 2013.
Lord Hughes, who has one son and a daughter, lists his hobbies in Who's Who as garden labouring, mechanics and bellringing.
Lord Hodge
Lord Hodge, 63, joined the Supreme Court in October 2013 and is one of the two Scottish justices.
He has two sons and a daughter and he lists his hobbies in Who's Who as opera and skiing.

Mainstream news organisations have spent the weekend attending English Defence League and far-right rallies in order to try and portray Brexit voters as racists. Channel 4’s “coverage” of the subject almost exclusively uses images from nationalist rallies to represent the pro-Leave camp.
Scenes of anger and hatred on Britain's streets after Brexit.
Police are investigating multiple hate crime reports.https://t.co/aijSlyL8BE
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 26, 2016
And the Mirror – a hard-left news outlet which helped found the aggressive, foreign-funded ‘Hope Not Hate’ group – has a headline that claims Brexit has ‘let [an] evil genie out of bottle’.
But Brexiteers are also on the receiving end of much abuse, and Breitbart London can reveal exclusive reports from Leave voters and campaigners that show they are subject to ageist, racist, and politically motivated abuse. Breitbart London has chosen to anonymise the victims for their protection.
One Twitter user reported receiving messages that say, “The older gen are pricks who hate the young. But you’ll die soon!” as well as “I wish death upon you and your children”. The abuse continued: “I hope you die of an aggressive cancer”.
The report is similar to that of a sign held up at an anti-Brexit rally in East London last week that read: “Old white people, please die”.
https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/747360536652832768
One man, who we’ll call Keith, reported: “As a vote leave person I have had one of my work colleagues call me a racist. I am a train driver on Merseyside and have found at work the majority of people voted to leave. The main media, the cultural elite and social media assume they are the voice of Britain. However, the silent majority have had their democratic say”.
An elderly lady wrote to Breitbart London to say: “Hi I have been abused terribly on the internet – I feel mentally abused via media spat at in the street for having a GO badge and called a everything under the sun. My car has now been scratched and my wing mirror has been broken  – I cannot afford to have it fixed as OAP on pension”.
She added: “I know a lot of decent people like me are terrified of saying they wanted OUT because of the abuse and threats”.
A Facebook user told Breitbart London he had been told ““Every Brexiter is a stupid racist poor person” while another said: “I have been subjected to various sneering from Remainiacs on social media. I’ve been accused of being opposed to peace in Europe by a former professor of European History and of selling my child’s future down the river by various left wingers.”
https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/747383087445778432
Another man, Jeremy, said: “I was abused when campaigning for Vote Leave. Never when canvassing and leafleting, only when helping with a Vote Leave stall in Crystal Palace.
“On numerous occasions I was called a racist, a xenophobe, a Neanderthal and an uneducated idiot. These slurs screamed at me simply for offering a leaflet or for merely standing by the stall. The abusers were on each occasion white middle/upper-class people. It made no difference when we pointed out the fact that we were proposing a non-discrimatory immigration system, irrespective of which country you are from, and to end unfair tariffs on goods which hurt developing countries in Africa etc. It also made no difference when we explained that we were all married to non UK citizens who were born abroad. My Sri Lankan friend fared no better, simply wearing a vote leave t-shirt  was sufficient to have racist screamed at her.  They wouldn’t believe us when we said that many people not originally from the UK would be voting leave.
“There was of course plenty of lower level abuse as well, you are crazy and idiot etc..
‘Since the vote I haven’t had any direct abuse, but plenty of indirect abuse via social media, with family and friends posting articles, implying that all Leave voters are, you guessed it, racist, xenophobe etc.”
And another said: “My brother and I voted Leave – mainly for reasons of sovereignty. We live in Hackney, a Remain stronghold, and went down to a local pub Friday night. As one would expect, the atmosphere was quite gloomy with one women at the bar telling me “I hate this country, the racists have won”.
“As word filtered through the pub that we had voted leave (I had told someone when it came up in conversation) about 10 people surrounded us and hounded us for voting leave which resulted in us having to exit the pub. We’re Irish and another group of Irish people told us we were ‘sellouts’ and ‘anti-immigrant’. One large man even prevented my brother from entering the bathroom!”
Finally, another Leave voter wrote in to say: “My parents been abused ever since the referendum by various pundits and sections of the mainstream media. Both of them are working class, my father is 81 and mother 76. He left school at 15 and started his working life as a builder’s labourer. Keen to succeed he studied bricklaying and carpentry at night-school and gained City and Guilds qualifications. In time he became a civil engineer and retired as a Managing Director.
“My mother spent many years as a working mum and has done voluntary work all her adult life, most recently for a cancer hospice in North Nottinghamshire. Between them they have paid over 70 years worth of taxes and N.I contributions, obeyed the law and voted at every General election. They also voted to STAY IN the EEC in 1975 but another 40 years of life experience has led them to conclude that the EU is: Undemocratic, Corrupt, Inefficient.
“And for all of this they are being told they have betrayed young people’s future. My parents, and millions more like them, rebuilt and maintained this country post-war. They have two teenage grandchildren who they wish to see come to maturity in a free, prosperous, secure democracy. Some betrayal.”
Despite these incidents that are easily identifiable from the public, the BBC, Sky News, Channel 4, and almost all UK news outlets are only focusing on incidents claimed to have happened to Remain campaigners.
On this morning’s Victoria Derbyshire show on the BBC, a woman from the discredited Tell MAMA organisation claimed there had been 14 “Islamophobic” attacks since the Brexit vote.
Breitbart London can reveal our investigations have found far more than 14 “Brexitphobic” attacks since the vote last Thursday, none of which have had attention from the press.
Follow Raheem Kassam on Facebook for more
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Leaked papers have revealed how the foreign-funded group ‘Best for Britain’ hopes to spend a £5.6 million war chest on subverting or overturning the British people’s vote to leave the European Union (EU).
The group, backed by the billionaire open borders advocate George Soros, is to launch a six-month campaign, including a massive advertising and social media propaganda push and a speaking tour by Europhile politicians.
They have already amassed a £2.4 million fortune and are asking a further £3.2 million from wealthy and foreign donors to interfere in UK politics, telling them: “We have less than six months to stop Brexit.”
They aim to convince MPs to vote down Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal, whatever is agreed, claiming it is “not what we voted for”, and mobilise leftist unions into convincing Labour to not back Brexit, the Daily Mail reports.
According to the 26-page leaked document seen by the paper, they will claim Brexit will pose a national security risk, blame Brexit for funding cuts to local councils, and claim that Leave voters are rejecting Westminster politics rather than Brussels.
We have never hidden our agenda, we want to stop Brexit democratically.
— Best For Britain (@BestForBritain) May 23, 2018
Former Cabinet Minister Owen Paterson commented: “The cynical plan to manipulate the British voter and stop Brexit has now been laid bare.
“Leave voters up and down the country will be disgusted that George Soros thinks he can spend his fortune to determine the direction of our great country. Most Remain voters too just want us to get on with it.
“My colleagues in Parliament, whether they were for Leave or Remain, must denounce this brazen attempt to undermine our democracy.
“Those MPs who are seeking to dilute or delay Brexit must now admit that their meaningful vote is really just their plan to stop Brexit – as this document sets out unambiguously.”
‘Guerrilla Warfare’: Gina Miller Slams Soros-Backed Anti-Brexit Group as ‘Undemocratic’ https://t.co/FGrgtPpf9T
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 10, 2018
And Richard Tice, of the pro-Brexit group Leave Means Leave, added: “George Soros, the billionaire who does not live in the UK, will stop at nothing with his elitist friends to stop Brexit, deceitfully masking their plans as a people’s vote.
“Shamefully, they want to deny the poorest in our society from benefiting the most from Brexit.”
Best for Britain was launched earlier this year, in a coordinated push by a broad church of anti-Brexit forces.
They were allegedly coordinating with Tony Blair’s former spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, the New European newspaper, Conservative Lord Ros Altmann, investor Gina Miller, and Labour’s Lord Adonis via an email list.
Co-founder Ms. Miller, who forced a vote on Brexit in the courts, left the group before attacking them as “undemocratic”, condemning their “guerrilla warfare” tactics, attempts to bring down the government, and lack of “transparency” after taking cash from Soros.
London / EuropePoliticsanti-BrexitBest for BritainBrexitGeorge Sorosgina millerSorosSoros LeaksSoros Plan

But the North Somerset MP said it would be a 'betrayal' if MPs stopped the UK leaving the EU
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If MPs reject Theresa May’s exit deal then Britain could crash out of the EU – or Brexit could even be halted, North Somerset’s MP has warned.
Liam Fox MP, the international trade secretary, told reporters at Royal Portbury Dock the exit deal agreed with the EU would allow the country to leave on a “firm and stable base” and urged MPs to vote for it on December 11 – the date of the “meaningful vote” on Brexit in the House of Commons.
The Tory MP has long-held Eurosceptic views and he told journalists at the Port of Bristol the deal “sounds a lot like Brexit to me”.
Taking questions after his speech, Dr Fox said no-deal or even no Brexit at all were both possibilities if Parliament rejects the prime minister’s cabinet-backed plan.
“The possibility is we leave the EU without an agreement and there are a limited number of outcomes to this process,” said the secretary of state.
"Members of Parliament will have to ask themselves over the next week or so exactly what our country wants to see.
“I want to see Britain leaving the European Union, I want to wake up on March 30 next year in a country that is outside the EU and I won’t do anything that jeopardises what would be an incredible betrayal of not delivering Brexit.”
He added: "I don't want to see there being no-deal. I think we are better off having a deal than not."
The PM faces an uphill battle to get her Brexit deal signed off by Parliament, with 100 of her own backbench Tory MPs vowing to vote it down.
Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and DUP, most likely, will join in voting against the terms, which were signed off by the EU on November 25. Rough workings predict Mrs May could lose the vote by a majority of more than 100.
Dr Fox, who campaigned to leave the EU but whose North Somserset constituency voted by 52 per cent to remain, said the deal on the table was the only way to deliver on the referendum result in 2016.
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, used a speech at the G20 on Friday to confirm EU leaders were not prepared to re-open the Brexit negotiations.
North Somerset MP Dr Fox said: “The withdrawal agreement and the political declaration will not please everyone, and we have had some tough choices to make. Choices which many in Parliament, on both sides of the House, are yet to face up to.
“But the deal we’ve reached will give us a firm and stable base on which to leave the EU and build this country’s global future, a future that still encompasses Europe, of course, but also the wide fast-growing markets beyond, with all the opportunity that entails.
“The divisions of the referendum need to be consigned to the past. Now is the time to set aside our differences, and lead our country to a future of freedom, success, and prosperity.”
Dr Fox said the upcoming trade talks, given the amount of collaboration that already exists between the UK and the EU, should be simpler than the divorce negotiations.
Barry Gardiner MP, Labour’s shadow international trade secretary, however, hit out at Dr Fox, claiming he had “admitted failure” on his trading ambitions during his Bristol speech.
“This is the man who promised us the world – the easiest trade deal in history,” said Mr Gardiner.
“Today, he has finally admitted how untrue that was, but he’s admitted failure without any hint of irony. Apparently we must just accept that nobody actually thinks the deal is a good one for the country.
“The deal he has been cowed into accepting fails to set out a clear framework for our relationship with our largest trading partner and risks locking us in a “trade purgatory” – a limbo from which we cannot escape.”
The shadow cabinet member said Labour could renegotiate a deal that would “protect business, the economy and jobs” and “solve the question of the Irish border and give us a stronger voice in negotiating future trade deals with the power of a 500million-strong consumer market”.
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LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO — Liam Fox has warned Theresa May that extending Brexit negotiations would be a "complete betrayal" of Brexit voters, telling Business Insider that the prime minister should commit to instead leaving the European Union with no deal.
The UK's International Trade Secretary told BI that if at the end of Article 50 talks there is no deal in place, the UK government should crash out, rather than request more negotiating time.
Asked whether the UK should seek to extend talks if no deal is secured by the time Britain is due to leave in March 2019, Fox replied that May should instead "leave without a deal."
Fox told BI: "The public have told us, it wasn't a consultation, to leave the European Union, and the public already wonders why it's going to take more than four years after the referendum for us to fully remove ourselves from the EU.
"To attempt to extend our membership even longer, many voters would regard as a complete betrayal by the political class, and I think they would be right."
He accused the EU of pushing Britain towards a no-deal scenario, telling BI that "if [the EU] keep saying no to everything they will end up with no deal."
Fox, who campaigned vigorously for Britain to leave the EU, has remained loyal to the prime minister despite the recent resignations of two of his fellow senior anti-EU ministers, the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit secretary David Davis, from the Cabinet over May's shift towards a softer form of Brexit.
However, any attempt to extend the Article 50 negotiating period would likely lead to an attempt to topple May, with friends of Fox telling Business Insider that any extension would be an uncrossable red line for him.
Leading pro-Brexit MP Jacob Rees-Mogg welcomed Fox's comments, tweeting:
The chances of a no-deal Brexit have risen significantly in recent weeks as UK and EU negotiators have failed to make any significant progress on fundamental issues which remain unsolved in withdrawal talks.
On Thursday, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, dealt a huge blow to Theresa May's Brexit plan, declaring Brussels will not let the UK collect EU tariffs after Brexit, as suggested in her Chequers agreement.
"The EU cannot and the EU will not delegate the application of its customs policy, of its rules, VAT and excise duty collections to a non-member who would not be subject to the EU’s governance structures," Barnier said.
Speaking to BI following Barnier's comments, Fox insisted that the prime minister's Chequers plan was not dead, and accused the EU of putting "political ideology" before both a Brexit deal and the wellbeing on EU citizens.
"They [the EU] simply don't want to make this particular method [May's customs proposal] work.
"So it's clear that it is possible, but it requires political will to do so. The question will be whether the EU 27 leaders are willing to see the Commission's political ideology put ahead of the economic well-being of the people of Europe."
The pro-Brexit minister then took aim at the European Commission. "What the Commission seems to be saying is look, there has to be Brexit on their terms, or no deal at all," Fox said.
"Now, that may be in line with their own theological attachment to ever-closer union and EU treaties but it may have a large cost to EU member states, the member states who require jobs, prosperity, and trade, because they need to get elected, unlike the Commission officials."
He warned the EU that a no deal will be the most likely outcome if it continued to be inflexible.
"The EU then need to tell us how they intend to get the frictionless borders that we want to see. So they can't keep rejecting things without telling us exactly what it is they want," Fox said.
"So negotiations will continue, and we'll want to know from them if they don't want that as a proposal, what do they want, because if they keep saying no to everything they will end up with no deal."
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“What will happen after Gibraltar leaves the EU too? We just don’t know. Will women still be able to get in to Spain to get abortions there, or will they need long border queues or a visa? No one knows.”
BuzzFeed Contributor
Gibraltar is equal parts beautiful and bizarre, created through treaty in the 18th century as a little slice of England dozens of miles from the Costa del Sol. Today more than 32,000 people live in the shadow of the Rock of Gibraltar from which the British overseas territory takes its name.
The Congress at Utrecht, which established the Treaty of Utrecht in March and April 1713, and helped to end the War of the Spanish Succession.
More than 300 years after the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, the Rock remains true to the spirit in which it was first established – an outpost of traditional British culture. Most Gibraltarians are bilingual but speak English with clipped accents, use the pound sterling as currency, and shop in the local Waitrose and Debenhams.
But while this may have a comforting air for many, an altogether darker aspect lurks within Gibraltarian society. Women on the Rock have extremely limited reproductive rights: Abortion is illegal and the morning-after pill is severely restricted.
The 1967 Abortion Act that enabled women in Britain to access terminations in certain circumstances does not apply in Gibraltar, which is self-governing in all affairs, foreign policy and defence aside. Unless a woman’s life is in immediate danger, she cannot have an abortion under any circumstances, including in cases of rape and incest.
Women told BuzzFeed News the small, confined, and at times claustrophobic community on Gibraltar meant their behaviour and bodies can be closely scrutinised. In a tiny area, measuring just 2 miles across, it is difficult to make a doctor or hospital appointment without bumping into staff or fellow patients whom you know, and who may feed back information of your trip to your friends and family.
A pharmacy in Gibraltar.
Although abortion is not legal in Gibraltar, that does not mean it does not happen. No official data is compiled, but local women say many travel to Spain for abortions and the morning-after pill. Many worry that after Brexit, when Gibraltar will leave the EU too, this will get a lot harder, or even outright impossible. Gibraltarians can currently go to Spain by passing through checkpoints with their passports, in a process that takes around 20 minutes.
However, locals fear they may be required to get visas to go to Spain after Brexit, or face long queues due to time-consuming border controls. Older residents remember when the border was closed entirely due under Franco’s regime, and they were cut off totally from Spain. Some fear that women who currently go to Spain for abortions or the morning-after pill will face long queues, delays due to visa processing, privacy invading questions from border police, or outright refusal of entry.
Top of the Rock view over Gibraltar Harbour.
One local, Alicia (whose name was changed to protect her identity), told BuzzFeed News: “When I was pregnant with my son, the doctor here in Gibraltar told me he had a serious disability. It is not really allowed, but the doctor said to me, 'If you want an abortion, we can do it quietly – we will fly you to the UK or you can go to Spain and it will be done for you there.'”
Alicia decided against terminating the pregnancy, but she said she believes the option should be there for women to decide: “I did not have it but I do not have a problem with other women deciding they do. It is up to each woman to decide what is right for her situation.” She expressed fears that after Brexit even this limited option of traveling out of Gibraltar will be shut off or made much harder.
Whereas emergency contraception is available to buy over the counter in pharmacies in the UK, women and girls in Gibraltar must get a prescription from their GP that they then take to a pharmacy or chemist in order to access the pills.
In one pharmacy in Gibraltar, three pharmacists, all of them women, quietly stacked boxes and chatted while fanning off the stifling heat with a brochure. At the mention of abortion, they sprung to life, speaking in hushed but urgent tones: “It is illegal here, but it still happens, of course. It is very hush hush. Women in Gibraltar go across the border to Spain to have abortions there. They go over in the morning, get abortions in private hospitals in Spain in the afternoon, and come back to Gibraltar at night.”
One said: “What will happen after Gibraltar leaves the EU too? We just don’t know. Will women still be able to get in to Spain to get abortions there, or will they need long border queues or a visa? No one knows.”
People cross the border from Spain to Gibraltar.
She added that this is particularly worrying when it comes to the morning-after pill.
Women often go to Spain to get it, where it is purchasable over the counter, but women have a limited time frame in which to take the pill for it to work. Additionally, the sooner it can be taken the more effective it is as preventing an unplanned pregnancy.
The pharmacists feared long border queues may mean women cannot get over to Spain within the required timeframe. “Many GPs are men and are patriarchal. They refuse to give the morning-after pill on moral grounds. So if you cannot get a prescription, you cannot get it and you must go to Spain," one said. "At the moment they can go out and get across the border to take the pills in time. Coming from Spain to Gibraltar this week, we have seen two hour queues each way to cross. Brexit has not happened yet, will this get longer once it does? Will women get to take pills in time, we don’t know.”
One Gibraltarian woman in her twenties also said that many women opt to travel to Spain because they fear GPs refusing it to them on moral grounds, or they want to buy it discretely away from the prying eyes of their close-knit community. She said: “Gibraltar is tiny and people talk so everyone knows everyone’s business. If you go to a clinic or a hospital, people from our community will see you there, they will say to your grandmother the next time they see her, ‘Oh I saw so-and-so at this clinic, why was she there?’ That puts women off.”
While many countries ban reproductive rights for women on religious grounds, attitudes in Gibraltar appear to stem from more traditional values and social conservatism. This includes attitudes towards abortion and contraception which Britain left behind decades ago.
A 29-year-old originally from Herefordshire in England but living in Gibraltar, said: “Society here is very conservative because there are lots of religious groups. Women are used to being sent away for stuff like abortions and the morning-after pill. It’s just what happens. Older women are very used to it but I think younger women are questioning it more. We don’t know what will happen to the border after Brexit – it’s very complicated and I don’t follow all the politics of it so it’s hard to know.”
Some women speculated that if Brexit curtails freedom of movement for them in Europe, they would instead be expected to fly to the UK mainland for abortions or the morning-after pill. However, flights are three hours long each way and cost hundreds of pounds, meaning such an option would likely only be available to wealthy women. The journey would also likely be arduous and uncomfortable after an operation.
Despite women’s concerns, the issue has not yet featured in discussions around Brexit. When asked if they expected the issue to be addressed prior to EU withdrawal, the consensus among women BuzzFeed News spoke to was that social conservatism in Gibraltar meant it would not be brought up by local politicians, and lack of awareness in the UK meant MPs in Westminster were unlikely to realise it was an issue and ensure it was discussed.
Annette Tonbridge, a 63-year-old pharmacist who described herself as “absolutely feminist”, said she did not expect women’s reproductive healthcare will be on the UK government’s mind as it secures a Brexit deal. She said: “Brexit is so complex. We have a list of a thousand different things we need to sort before leaving the EU, healthcare, peace, jobs... the morning-after pill is point 1,000 in the hierarchy of things to address.”
Tonbridge added: “People in England don’t realise what life is like here. They learn nothing about Gibraltar in school, nothing. I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance. They don’t know anything about us, their people or their politicians, so I do not have hope for a Brexit deal which takes Gibraltar into account.”
When approached by BuzzFeed News, a spokesperson for the Gibraltar government declined to comment on whether it would raise the issue of women’s reproductive healthcare in discussions with the UK and the EU surrounding what Brexit means for Gibraltar. A spokesperson said: “The government of Gibraltar does not believe that there will be any material change in the ability of Gibraltar residents to visit Spain as a result of Brexit. Of course, Gibraltarians will always have the ability to visit the UK whenever they wish.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Exiting the European Union told BuzzFeed News that they were unable to comment on the issue in depth as internal legislation is a matter for the Gibraltarian government, and stressed that conditions for the Gibraltar–Spain border have not yet been decided. They said: “We will work to ensure the best possible outcome for the people of Gibraltar, with a well functioning Gibraltar–Spain border one of the top priorities.”
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A Cambridge lawyer has been criticised for a 'shameful' and 'horrendous' tweet in which he called for people to draw swastikas on their Brexit 50p coins - on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The new coins, unveiled this weekend, are set to enter circulation from this Friday (January 31).
The 50p pieces will bear the message "Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations."
But one Cambridge 'economist and lawyer', Neil Marshall, felt the message should be replaced with something some people felt was much more offensive.
Mr Marshall took to Twitter to express his feelings, comparing the Brexit 50p to the rise of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.
To make matters worse, the tweet was published on January 27 - International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The tweet read: "You may not want to touch one, but if we all buy a permanent marker pen and paint a swastika on every #brexitcoin we're given, people might just get the message that Britain is beginning to resemble Germany in 1933 after the Enabling Act was passed..." Mr Marshall's Twitter profile is tagged with the #FBPE (Follow Back Pro-European) hashtag, a signifier that has become a way for strongly Remain-inclined social media users to identify one another online.
But many people - even those on his side of the political divide - felt the tweet had gone too far.
More than 6,000 people have since replied to the message on Twitter.
One user said: "On this day of all days, those with with a more tolerant, sensitive, mature and inclusive temperament would have chosen not to use a symbol associated with the persecution of the Jews and the murder of millions to vent their frustration that democracy didn’t work in their favour."
"Anyone with any brain cell would know that today is Holocaust Memorial Day, a day of reflection, a day to remember those that perished," an incensed tweeter said. "A sick joke to you maybe. Not for anyone else."
Another added simply: "You need help. And I'm a Remainer."
CambridgeshireLive has reached out to the lawyer for comment.
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It is not often that I agree with Boris Johnson.
But when the frontrunner to be the next Prime Minister announced his immigration proposals yesterday, for the first time in this leadership race I found myself on Team Boris.
In a digital hustings, Boris revived an idea that he had trumpeted during the Vote Leave campaign: an Australian-style points-based system, whereby applicants – wherever they are from – are awarded “points” based on a range of criteria, from education levels to language skills to potential job offers, which can add up to a visa.
In defence of this system, Boris argued: “We must be much more open to high-skilled immigration such as scientists, but we must also assure the public that, as we leave the EU, we have control over the number of unskilled immigrants coming into the country.”
He’s absolutely right.
Immigration is hugely beneficial to the UK economy. Despite the misguided narrative repeated in some quarters that migrants leach off the state, most foreigners come to the UK to study or work, often filling jobs that British nationals are either unwilling or unable to do. They are primarily adults of working age, who help offset the demographic challenges of an ageing population.
Their impact obviously varies based on age and other factors, but Oxford Economics estimates that EU nationals in the UK contribute £2,300 more to public finances each year than the average Brit, and pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
And yet for all that, we know that migration was a headline concern in the 2016 referendum. In an Ipsos Mori survey just before the vote, it polled above the economy as the most important issue, and further studies have shown it to be the joint top reason that people voted Leave, along with sovereignty.
Despite the vast benefits that immigrants, particularly from the EU, offer the UK, that message was drowned out by the cacophony of voices lamenting Britain’s loss of control over its borders as a result of free movement.
When Theresa May stepped up as the first post-referendum Prime Minister, she made listening to this immigration-sceptic chorus her priority. But she did so in the bluntest and most blinkered way imaginable: by fixating on the arbitrary target set by David Cameron to bring net migration down to under 100,000 a year.
This blanket cap has led to Home Office policies that range from the counter-productive to the inhumane.
We’ve seen families ripped apart on the basis of unfairly high income thresholds, applications rejected due to trivial or bureaucratic errors, even people wrongfully deported in a bid to get numbers down at all costs.
And on the economic side, people with desperately needed skills, from NHS doctors to star coders, have been barred from bringing their expertise and energy to Britain.
Whoever becomes Prime Minister, May’s draconian and tone-deaf reign of immigration terror will thankfully be over. And rightly so – because the public was never as unhealthily obsessed with the raw numbers as their misguided Prime Minister.
Even people who voted for Brexit have a much more nuanced view of immigration than May ever acknowledged. A September 2017 British Futures survey found that a staggering 82 per cent of Leave voters wanted high-skilled immigration – from the EU and beyond – to remain the same or increase after Brexit. Significant majorities felt the same way about low-skilled migrants filling certain key jobs, like fruit pickers or care workers.
It’s clear, then, that migration anxiety was not due to numbers, but to a sense that Britain had lost control.
A points framework might be practically challenging to set up at first, and business groups have raised valid concerns about the inevitable bureaucracy, but once implemented, it would demonstrate that the government was back in control and that the system was fair, allowing Britain to welcome the people it needs.
That is, after all, how it works in Australia. For all that our antipodean cousins are heralded for their strict rules, Australia takes around three times more migrants per capita than the UK does. Australians have full control of their borders, and that gives them the confidence to let in far more people than we do.
Boris may be sketchy on the details of his Brexit plan, but throughout his career his attitude has always been outward-looking and globalist. He is also a stellar salesman.
If there’s one politician who could open Britain’s doors while alleviating public concerns with a robust points system, it’s him.
And for that, he should be commended.
City A.M.'s opinion pages are a place for thought-provoking views and debate. These views are not necessarily shared by City A.M.
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Jeremy Hunt has accused Boris Johnson of getting important facts wrong in a searing attack on his Conservative leadership rival.
The foreign secretary has sent a letter to Johnson accusing him of not being straight with people over Brexit, and reiterated his challenge of a head-to-head debate before ballot members in the leadership contest go out to Conservative members.
Hunt’s missive is a response to a letter from Johnson last week asking him to rule out extending the UK’s EU membership past 31 October.
In his reply, Hunt said: “I believe with a trusted negotiator and the right team we should get a deal by 31 October.
“If however, there was no prospect of delivering Brexit with a better deal I would leave without one.”
Hunt then challenged his rival on three points Johnson has made since the leadership contest was narrowed to just two candidates last week.
Johnson has claimed the UK could trade without tariffs in a no deal scenario under World Trade Organisation law – something disputed by international trade secretary Liam Fox and attorney general Geoffrey Cox.
He also said a free trade deal can be negotiated during a post-Brexit transition period – despite the EU ruling out such a plan without a withdrawal deal being passed first.
Hunt also pulled Johnson up on his claim the chance of a no deal outcome was “a million-to-one against”, saying “this statement flies in the face of reality.”
The letter in full:
Dear Boris
Thank you for your letter of 25th June.
I had hoped we would be able to debate these issues in person at Sky on Tuesday evening or next Monday, or at one of the proposed debates next week, but as you don’t wish to face me in person before members have started voting, for now we must use your preferred method of debate, exchanging letters.
In response to your questions, I believe with a trusted negotiator and the right team we should get a deal by 31 October. If however, there was no prospect of delivering Brexit with a better deal I would leave without one.
I also believe the biggest risk to Brexit is a general election, and a Jeremy Corbyn government, before it is delivered.
I have a few questions too.
You maintain it will be possible to trade without tariffs in a no deal scenario due to Article 24 (the so-called Gatt-24) arrangements.  Our Leave-voting colleagues – the Secretary of State for International Trade and the Attorney General – who between them boast considerable expertise on this topic, state that this is not the case because it would require a deal with the EU to reach this arrangement.  Geoffrey Cox’s legal advice is universally acknowledged to be full, frank and impartial.  If it were not so, you and many of your ERG colleagues would not have pointed to his opinion that the backstop risks trapping us within the EU’s orbit as a reason to vote down the withdrawal agreement.  Who is correct: you or the Attorney General and the International Trade Secretary?
You also maintain that in a no-deal scenario we can negotiate a free trade agreement during an implementation period.  It is a fact that there can be no implementation period without a withdrawal agreement because it would require a deal with the EU to reach this arrangement.  However much we wish something not to be the case, however strong the pragmatic or economic case for a different approach, the experience of the last three years has shown that the EU are prepared to put the cohesion of their political project above economics. We must be careful to face the facts as we find them.  Will you be straight with people that no deal means no implementation period?
You stated yesterday that the odds of no-deal are ‘a million to one’.  Those odds are wildly different to those given by those in the business of actually judging the odds (some bookmakers put the chance of No Deal at 2:1), so I fear that this statement flies in the face of reality.  I am completely convinced that with the right approach there is a deal to be done. But we must level with people and acknowledge that this will be tough and complex. Our great country can ultimately flourish with or without a deal, but we need credible, detailed plans to make that happen.
Over the past few days you have got some important facts wrong. I believe it is now more vital than ever that we conduct head to head debates this week before ballot papers go out, so party members can make up their minds if you – and indeed I – understand the detail on these crucial issues.
Ps. No need to reply – let’s discuss further at Sky on Monday evening?
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The EU think UK will just swallow what's offered, writes Daniel Hannan
DOES the EU see leaving as an act of aggression? Because that’s the way it’s starting to look.
Most Britons, whether they voted Remain or Leave, hoped that we would replace EU ­membership with a close alliance.
Pulling out of the Brussels institutions did not need to prejudice friendly relations with our neighbours.
But it is becoming clear that Eurocrats do not see it that way. The 27 EU states, or most of them at any rate, might individually want good relations with us.
But, in Brussels, there are plenty of officials who would rather see all sides suffer than watch Brexit succeed.
If their view prevails, the implications go well beyond Brexit. For 70 years, Britain has been a European power.
Although we kept our military ties with the other English-speaking democracies, our focus was the defence of Europe. It still is.
There are, for example, British soldiers patrolling the borders of Poland and Estonia.
The RAF is, to all intents and purposes, acting as Romania’s air force, responding to incursions into that country’s airspace. And so on.
In intelligence and security, rather as with the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain puts a lot more than its share into the common pot.
We have done so cheerfully because we saw European states as our allies, and felt that we had a stake in their security. But what if that feeling is no longer reciprocated?
Visiting Germany on Monday, Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, pointed out in measured and polite language that the EU could not expect to treat Britain aggressively without consequences.
Now Mr Hunt is no Little Englander. He is an entrepreneur who made his money from language courses, is married to a Chinese woman and, after some soul-searching, came down on the side of Remain.
But what he said is impossible to argue with. If the EU chooses to treat Brexit as a hostile act, the basis of European security will be undone — at the very moment that Donald Trump has made it clear that America is no longer interested in defending Europe.
In almost every European speech since the referendum, Theresa May has said that she wants Britain to be the EU’s closest friend and strongest ally.
But when have you ever heard those good wishes returned?
The PM keeps saying she wants the EU 27 to succeed. EU leaders keep saying they want Brexit to fail.
They mean it. Eurocrats are not offering Britain the kind of deal that they have with neighbours such as Norway and Switzerland.
They think UK will just swallow what’s offered.
If we want to remain in the single market, says chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, then, unlike those countries, we’d have to give Brussels 100 per cent control of our trade policy — an impossible condition.
But neither are they offering the kind of simple free trade deal that they have with, say, Canada and Japan.
If we want a straightforward trade deal, Barnier says, we’d have to leave Northern Ireland under EU rules — an equally impossible condition.
In other words, Britain won’t be allowed the friendly relations with the EU that other democracies take for granted.
It is not for a lack of willingness on our side. In February, Theresa May told a Munich audience: “Europe’s security is our security. And that is why I say that the United Kingdom is unconditionally committed to maintaining it.”
The EU’s response? To exclude us from the Galileo satellite programme on grounds that we could no longer be trusted.
Well, fine. I never saw much point in the Galileo system, which was pushed by French leader Jacques Chirac to challenge the “technological imperialism” of America’s GPS system.
Britain should now either go in with the Americans or create its own satellite system, possibly with friendly states such as Australia and Canada.
But the point is, the EU’s logic goes well beyond satellites.
If Brussels no longer sees us as an ally, we can hardly carry on behaving like one unilaterally, so to speak.
While we talk of trade and co-operation, EU negotiators talk of border queues and grounded flights.
Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, even threatens to close his airspace.
To put that remark in context, consider that there are scheduled flights between Russia and Ukraine.
If such thinking wins out, we shall have no choice but to leave Europe to itself and turn our faces, as our ancestors did, to the open seas.
That is not an outcome anyone should want, but we shall be ready if it comes.
The EU’s calculation seems to be that we will end up swallowing whatever is put in front of us.
Understandably enough, you might say, given what feeble negotiators we have been so far. But Britain has a bad habit of switching from vague amiability to sudden resolve when it is almost too late.
Such a moment is upon us.

The EU think UK will just swallow what's offered, writes Daniel Hannan
DOES the EU see leaving as an act of aggression? Because that’s the way it’s starting to look.
Most Britons, whether they voted Remain or Leave, hoped that we would replace EU ­membership with a close alliance.
Pulling out of the Brussels institutions did not need to prejudice friendly relations with our neighbours.
But it is becoming clear that Eurocrats do not see it that way. The 27 EU states, or most of them at any rate, might individually want good relations with us.
But, in Brussels, there are plenty of officials who would rather see all sides suffer than watch Brexit succeed.
If their view prevails, the implications go well beyond Brexit. For 70 years, Britain has been a European power.
Although we kept our military ties with the other English-speaking democracies, our focus was the defence of Europe. It still is.
There are, for example, British soldiers patrolling the borders of Poland and Estonia.
The RAF is, to all intents and purposes, acting as Romania’s air force, responding to incursions into that country’s airspace. And so on.
In intelligence and security, rather as with the Common Fisheries Policy, Britain puts a lot more than its share into the common pot.
We have done so cheerfully because we saw European states as our allies, and felt that we had a stake in their security. But what if that feeling is no longer reciprocated?
Visiting Germany on Monday, Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, pointed out in measured and polite language that the EU could not expect to treat Britain aggressively without consequences.
Now Mr Hunt is no Little Englander. He is an entrepreneur who made his money from language courses, is married to a Chinese woman and, after some soul-searching, came down on the side of Remain.
But what he said is impossible to argue with. If the EU chooses to treat Brexit as a hostile act, the basis of European security will be undone — at the very moment that Donald Trump has made it clear that America is no longer interested in defending Europe.
In almost every European speech since the referendum, Theresa May has said that she wants Britain to be the EU’s closest friend and strongest ally.
But when have you ever heard those good wishes returned?
The PM keeps saying she wants the EU 27 to succeed. EU leaders keep saying they want Brexit to fail.
They mean it. Eurocrats are not offering Britain the kind of deal that they have with neighbours such as Norway and Switzerland.
They think UK will just swallow what’s offered.
If we want to remain in the single market, says chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, then, unlike those countries, we’d have to give Brussels 100 per cent control of our trade policy — an impossible condition.
But neither are they offering the kind of simple free trade deal that they have with, say, Canada and Japan.
If we want a straightforward trade deal, Barnier says, we’d have to leave Northern Ireland under EU rules — an equally impossible condition.
In other words, Britain won’t be allowed the friendly relations with the EU that other democracies take for granted.
It is not for a lack of willingness on our side. In February, Theresa May told a Munich audience: “Europe’s security is our security. And that is why I say that the United Kingdom is unconditionally committed to maintaining it.”
The EU’s response? To exclude us from the Galileo satellite programme on grounds that we could no longer be trusted.
Well, fine. I never saw much point in the Galileo system, which was pushed by French leader Jacques Chirac to challenge the “technological imperialism” of America’s GPS system.
Britain should now either go in with the Americans or create its own satellite system, possibly with friendly states such as Australia and Canada.
But the point is, the EU’s logic goes well beyond satellites.
If Brussels no longer sees us as an ally, we can hardly carry on behaving like one unilaterally, so to speak.
While we talk of trade and co-operation, EU negotiators talk of border queues and grounded flights.
Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, even threatens to close his airspace.
To put that remark in context, consider that there are scheduled flights between Russia and Ukraine.
If such thinking wins out, we shall have no choice but to leave Europe to itself and turn our faces, as our ancestors did, to the open seas.
That is not an outcome anyone should want, but we shall be ready if it comes.
The EU’s calculation seems to be that we will end up swallowing whatever is put in front of us.
Understandably enough, you might say, given what feeble negotiators we have been so far. But Britain has a bad habit of switching from vague amiability to sudden resolve when it is almost too late.
Such a moment is upon us.

JEREMY Corbyn will try and force Theresa May to return her final Brexit deal to Brussels bureaucrats if Parliament votes against it in yet another attempt to disrupt Britain’s plans to leave the EU, reported have claimed.
John McDonnell: Parliament should respect Brexit result
With the Supreme Court expected to rule against the Government and side with anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller, ministers are expected to fast-track legislation through the Commons within hours of the announcement to get Brexit negotiations underway as soon as possible.However, if the ruling is against the Government then the Labour leader wants to put forward an amendment which would mean the Government is forced to enact a second vote on the final terms of any deal, potentially delaying the triggering of Article 50.
Labour are proposing that a vote should be held early enough to be sent back to Brussels if it needs to be “improved or amended”.While Corbyn has maintained his party will not block Article 50 from being triggered, he still plans to table amendments “to make demands on rights, protections and market access”.Shadow chancellor John McDonnell backed the Labour leader, claiming he felt there was enough Commons support for the amendment which would ensure MPs have an influence in Brexit talks over the two-year negotiation period.
“If the ruling is against the Government then a Bill must be introduced to the House this week and a clear timetable set out to ensure that Article 50 will be triggered by the end of March.“If this is the case, it is merely a formality as MPs have already voted on whether the Government should trigger Article 50 and overwhelmingly honoured the democratic decision taken by the British people in the EU referendum.”
THE High Court has blocked the latest legal bid to tie the UK to the European Single Market post-Brexit.
Remoaner claims he is only against leaving Single Market
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage quickly tweeted "Good news" after judges scuppered the application by the two claimants – one of who even voted Leave in the referendum.The pair were trying to tie Britain to a 'soft Brexit' by keeping it in the single market. They were being propped up by a number of migrants who say they are living in a “state of limbo” in the UK following June’s Leave victory.The case was brought by Adrian Walland and Peter Wilding, who run the pro-single market group British Influence. 
A Government spokesperson said after the result this afternoon: “We are glad this attempt to seek a judicial review has been dismissed."As the Prime Minister has said, we will not be a member of the Single Market and we will be seeking a broad new partnership with the EU including a bold and ambitious free trade agreement." 
“The UK is party to the EEA agreement only in its capacity as an EU member state. Once the UK leaves the EU, the EEA agreement will automatically cease to apply to the UK.”But Lord Justice Lloyd Jones, sitting with Mr Justice Lewis at a hearing in London, expressed concerns during the application hearing that the challenge might be premature.And James Eadie QC, appearing for the Government, submitted: "This application is premature and should be dismissed for that reason."The judge added: "There is no final decision by the Government as to the mechanism by which the EEA Agreement would cease to apply within the UK."The court did not know at present "what, if any, justiciable issues will arise for the courts".
Lawyer David Golten, who is based at law firm Wedlake Bell, had earlier warned: "Potential litigation about Article 127 will make the Article 50 case look like a walk in the park."
Mr Wilding was joined by Conservative lobbyist Mr Yalland, who voted Leave, and four anonymous applicants referred to as W, L, T and B.George Peretz QC, appearing for Mr Yalland and Mr Wilding, said the case raised important legal questions regarding the UK's membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), which provides for the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital within the single market.The Department for Exiting the European Union had maintained throughout that the case was unarguable and contended: "Once the UK leaves the EU, the EEA Agreement will automatically cease to apply to the UK."
Following the result, Mr Yalland and Mr Wilding said in a joint statement: "We were right to bring this challenge, and unless the Government gives business and the country the certainty it needs and deserves, it is highly likely we will be here again - only in circumstances where the merits of our case will be heard, as opposed to the outcome of today where the Government was able to use procedure to prevent the substantive issues being considered."They said: "It is intolerable that those who depend upon their EEA rights to trade with the EEA, or those who are married to EEA citizens, or are EEA citizens resident in the UK, are being used as a negotiating pawn by a Government who can choose to act unilaterally to clarify our legal position, but will not.
"Legal certainty is a basic fundamental tenet of our legal system - and we still lack that certainty over whether our EEA rights and freedoms will remain, be taken away by the stroke of a minister's pen, or after Parliamentary consideration. That is an intolerable and disproportionate interference with our fundamental rights."The Government should now accept the valid concerns that hundreds of thousands of individuals have - which business have - and provide some clarity."The Government must stop playing poker with our rights and stop taking liberties with our freedoms."
MPs vote IN FAVOUR of government’s Brexit Bill
Earlier, Mr Yalland and Mr Wilding, who coined the phrase ‘Brexit’, argued Brexit does not need to mean Britain leaves the single market - just the European Union.Mr Yalland, who voted to leave in the historic referendum, said: “I have campaigned for parliamentary sovereignty and accountable government for 20 years and now I want parliament to exercise its sovereignty by deciding if the UK should withdraw from the single market treaty.“Parliament, not government, took us into the treaty and so parliament, not government, must decide if and when we leave. “I voted to leave the EU but parliament did not intend the referendum to cover the issue of membership of the EEA. The government should stop seeking to stretch the mandate to leave the EU to cover things parliament did not intend the referendum to cover.“The referendum was on membership of the EU, not the EEA, nor of [the European Court of Human Rights]. It was not an opinion poll on immigration. I want nothing less than Brexit. But anything more than Brexit is for parliament to permit. The government has a mandate, not a blank cheque. We are a parliamentary democracy, not an elected dictatorship.”Mr Yalland added Brexit could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom.He said: “An independent Scotland may be unlikely to join the EU, but it is a credible candidate for EFTA membership – which would give it full membership of the single market."
TODAY this country faces a crisis as grave as anything since the dark days when Churchill vowed we would fight them on the beaches.
David Davis: We intend to WIN Article 50 appeal
But this time the battle is in the courts and in Parliament – and it is vital that each of us makes our voice heard. How we celebrated when the country voted to leave the EU. How we cheered when the Prime Minister stated categorically: “Brexit means Brexit.” How we smiled when the Remain camp’s Project Fear was exposed as a tissue of lies. Today the mood is sombre and dark as the implications of yesterday’s High Court ruling sink in. 
Truly, November 3, 2016, was the day democracy died. But it is not in the British nature to take injustice lying down – more than ever, your country needs you to fight for its freedom. We must leave the EU. Otherwise what was the point of having the referendum? Ordinary people clearly do not trust MPs of any party to make this momentous decision on their behalf, which is why on June 23 there was a popular revolt against the elitists who deem we are too stupid to know what’s best for us. 
Now, with no hint of irony, some of the highest legal minds in the land decide to hand back to that Westminster cabal the very power the people believe they should not be trusted with. It is a plot too improbable even for a Franz Kafka novel. Equally disturbing is the way the campaign to overturn the popular will, gleefully reported by the BBC and the Left-wing media – you could almost hear their champagne corks popping yesterday – has been led by a woman who makes no secret of her bias towards all things European but who tries to cloak it in the pretence that she is acting for the greater good of the British constitution. 
When Gina Miller heard the Brexit result in June she said she felt physically sick. Now she knows how millions of stomachs reacted yesterday when the Guyana-born former model succeeded in convincing the courts that the votes of 17,410,742 British people in the referendum do not count. The High Court has ruled that because of the British constitution the decision on whether we trigger our departure from the EU can only be taken by MPs – not by a government carrying out the will of the people. 
This actually means that not only the 17 million Brexit votes are worthless but that the 16 million Remain votes count for nothing too. This is more than just a slap in the face for almost 34 million voters. It is a shattering blow for the cherished concept that the ballot box reigns supreme, that the people decide how their country should be run. 
How disgraceful that when our Parliament was being stripped of its sovereignty by a succession of treaties, all of which ceded more and more power to the EU, we heard not one squeak of protest about our constitutional rights from those who now make so much noise. It is only when we try at last to take back the power to govern ourselves, make our own laws and control our own borders that the protests spring up. Nor have the courts ever expressed concern about UK powers being handed to the EU – only when the flow is about to be reversed does the judiciary step in. Where were the self-styled champions of British sovereignty when the Mother of Parliaments was being forcibly sterilised by the European Communities Act and then politically raped by the treaties of Maastricht, Dublin and Lisbon? 
Just imagine for a moment an alternative world in which Remain won the referendum. The sheer outrage – from the very same people celebrating yesterday’s High Court decision – that would have greeted a legal challenge mounted by Brexiteers does not bear thinking about. In all likelihood such a case would have been laughed out of court. Like the Government, the Daily Express believes the High Court is fundamentally wrong in its ruling that executive powers – known historically as the royal prerogative – cannot be used to trigger Article 50 and start the Brexit clock. Our constitution, based on centuries of precedent, is clear that the royal prerogative can be used over matters of foreign policy. What matter of foreign policy could be more crucial than the timing of our departure from the EU? 
A government does not need to get the approval of MPs before declaring war on a foreign aggressor – so why should it need their approval before declaring independence from the dictatorship of a foreign bureaucracy? We fully support the Government’s view that Parliament itself has left powers to withdraw from international treaties in the hands of the Crown, to be exercised by ministers through the royal prerogative, even if that affects the rights British citizens have gained through EU membership. Ms Miller would have you believe that she took court action against Brexit for reasons of process, not politics. Compare that claim on the steps of the High Court yesterday to her ultra-political view of the referendum result a few months back: “I don’t think people know the ramifications of this, of what’s happened, and I felt really sorry that people had been tricked and fooled.” 
James O'Brien SLAMS Farage over Brexit ruling response
Who’s tricking and fooling whom? Further evidence of her antipathy towards the way 17 million people put their country’s interests first can be seen in this statement from her: “We must not underestimate or forget the anger in Europe about our vote... they’re very angry that we’ve had this relationship yet we still threaten the union.” This is the woman who has anointed herself the saviour of all that’s British. A woman who believes we owe it to Europe not to rock the boat. But she would, wouldn’t she? As a fabulously wealthy investment manager in the City, she and her husband have millions at stake. The sharp rise in the pound after her High Court success will certainly not have caused her any discomfort even if it made our exports less competitive. 
It was when the hedge fund fat cats and the bankers plunged headlong into the mire to support George Osborne’s Project Fear that ordinary people decided they could hold their noses no longer and voted in the referendum for a breath of fresh air. Now that nasty smell has returned. The rich and powerful want to dictate to the peasants again. But Ukip leader Nigel Farage is right. As he says, these out-of-touch elites “have no idea the level of public anger they will provoke” if they frustrate the Brexit process. So what can be done? The Government is taking its case to the Supreme Court next month to ask for the High Court ruling to be overturned. If it fails and an Act of Parliament is needed before Brexit can start, the Remainers in the Commons will have a field day tabling crippling amendments that will make a mockery of the referendum result. 
Imagine what poison will be spread by the 54 Scottish Nationalist MPs. Imagine the wholly disproportionate power that can be wielded by the eight Euro-fanatical Lib Dems. And imagine how the four million people who voted Ukip at the general election will feel as they see their beliefs trampled in the dust. The Prime Minister could repeal the law which dictates that the next general election is not until 2020. She could call one in the spring with this issue at stake: who decides if we leave the EU, the people or Parliament? 
Goldsmith: I don't believe MP's will vote against Brexit
The Daily Express has no doubt the Conservatives would win a thumping majority which would guarantee the safe and unimpeded passage of Brexit. But for all Mrs May’s many praiseworthy qualities, is she up for the fight? If not, once again it is up to you, the people, to stand up for your country. Write to your MP today and ask them how they would vote on Brexit in the Commons. Tell them that if they vote to delay or water down Brexit, then you will never vote for them again. Conservative constituency parties should make it clear they will not support any MP whose vote is contrary to the wishes expressed by local people in the referendum. 
Some of them may howl that this is political blackmail, that it is unconstitutional and undemocratic. It cannot be any worse than the way a South American millionairess nicknamed “Mrs Wham Glam” by her friends has ridden roughshod over British voters. There is a battle to be won. A battle that must be won. Six years ago this month the Daily Express launched its historic crusade to get Britain out of the EU. We will not rest until that aim has been achieved and Brexit has been delivered. We know that you, our loyal readers, will be with us every step of the way. Your country needs you more than ever because we must leave the EU. Rise up people of Britain and fight, fight, fight.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN got it right. Famously he said that you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Gina Miller reacts to Article 50 ruling
Few words could be more apposite to the tactics of the Remainers. On Thursday morning, after the High Court ruled that the Government cannot use the Royal Prerogative to trigger Article 50, Gina Miller – the woman behind the case – stood outside the Royal Courts of Justice and tried to prove ­Abraham Lincoln wrong.With a straight face she said that the case had nothing to do with the EU. “This is about process, not politics.” And she’s not alone.Almost to a man and woman the Remainers have told us that all they have been trying to do is right a wrong.
That it’s a simple matter of democracy and parliamentary sovereignty being re-established and the fact they are all Remainers is irrelevant.
They really do think you can fool all of the people all of the time. Because in the real world the case was brought by people who had only one motive: to screw up this first stage of Brexit.It had almost nothing to do with process and everything to do with politics. And it’s not going to stop here. There is almost nothing the Remainers won’t do to try to keep us in.If that means showing contempt towards the result of the referendum – well, they won’t bat an eyelid.The entire history of the EU shows that whenever a referendum goes against them the Eurofanatics ignore it and demand another one.
Investment manager who contested Brexit defends verdict
Which is of course exactly what some – such as Owen Smith, the Labour MP who was beaten out of sight by Jeremy Corbyn this summer – are now saying, arguing that any deal done by the Government should be subject to another referendum.For others there’s no need even to hold a second referendum. They want simply to ignore the referendum and let Parliament put the kybosh on Brexit.Most won’t admit to this because they know that it’s toxic. But some, such as Labour MP David Lammy, are open about their contempt for the electorate.Mr Lammy said that when Parliament decides on Article 50: “I will be voting in what I believe to be the interests of the country – which I think all MPs will take on board – and will absolutely not be voting to trigger Article 50.”This is the crux of the matter because the real issue isn’t whether or not Parliament should have a vote. The real issue is how Parliament will vote.Be clear about what many of the Remainer MPs want: to stop Brexit. And remember that a clear majority of MPs backed Remain in June.They speak about parliamentary sovereignty (which, incidentally, can only be reestablished if we leave the EU). But that’s a fig leaf. What they are really concerned with is finding whatever ways they can to stop Brexit.Let me tell you what is coming next. When MPs have to vote on triggering Article 50 they will come up with some entirely spurious but supposedly democratic reason why they have to vote No.
'Court ruling could make Brexit process take years' - Evans
It’s got nothing to do with not honouring the referendum result, they’ll tell us. How could you even think that?! No, it’s because… blah blah blah. On and on it will go.Every time the issue is discussed they will come up with supposedly plausible reasons to do with democracy and fairness that mean they have no choice, they’ll say, but to vote No.In reality they will have only one motive: stopping Brexit. Their hope and plan is that the longer any decisions are delayed the more chance there is of a change of mood.And they will do their damnedest to create that change of mood. So in parallel they will use their powers to try to ensure we have the worst possible deal so that they can re-argue the referendum debate when the deal is done.We are seeing this already with Hilary Benn, the Remainer chair of the new House of ­Commons select committee on Brexit, demanding that the Government reveals its negotiation stance – and so hand a huge advantage to Brussels.But they are playing with fire. The will of the people has been clearly expressed. The referendum was unambiguous. There is no wriggle room. Brexit must mean Brexit.If it doesn’t – if Remain MPs use their powers to frustrate the will of the people – then they will provoke one of the greatest constitutional crises since the Civil War.
Parliament will be defying the people over the result of a referendum that Parliament itself called. But the constitutional crisis may be the least of it.It is a truism of modern politics that voters are disengaged – that their faith in the political class and political institutions is collapsing.In the US that is reflected in Donald Trump’s ascendancy. In France, Marine Le Pen owes her rise to a similar trend. We have a proud tradition that has always pushed extremists and rabble-rousers to the edges.If, however, our politicians were to show that they do not merely fail to connect with voters but are actively contemptuous of them, it is difficult to see how we could avoid disaster.To say there would be anger would barely come close. Not only would our political system be on the point of collapse there would be riots.And it would be a political crisis entirely of the Remainers’ making. These are worrying times.It is not just Brexit that is imperilled by their behaviour. It is our entire political system.
Jean-Claude Juncker has warned that No Deal Brexit will 'lead to the collapse of the United Kingdom' as the EU heaped pressure on Boris Johnson to cave to its demands.
The commission president dismissed suggestions that the bloc will be to blame for failure to get an agreement, jibing that Britain had committed the 'original sin' of trying to leave.  
The combative comments came amid claims the EU is considering offering the UK an extension lasting just weeks, rather than the three months that had been mooted.
Some member states want to deprive Boris Johnson of the time to hold an election, arguing that if he secures a majority it will put him in a stronger position.
Creating a No Deal 'cliff edge' could maximise the bloc's leverage to force Mr Johnson into an humiliating climbdown.
Negotiations appear to be on life support after Mr Johnson had a brutal clash with Angela Merkel in a telephone call yesterday. 
Downing Street briefed that the German Chancellor had told the PM that Northern Ireland had to stay in the EU's customs union and aligned to its regulations 'forever'.
A No10 source said that made the task of getting a deal 'impossible', as the UK would never accept being divided.  
Both sides are now desperately scrambling to find a way through the impasse, but with little hope of success before a crunch summit next week. 
A supposed 'concession' by the EU on the Irish border backstop appeared to be dead on arrival today. 
There are suggestions that Brussels could offer a 'time limit' to show the UK will not necessarily be stuck in the arrangements forever.
Here is how the coming weeks could pan out:  
Tomorrow or Friday: Boris Johnson holds talks with Leo Varadkar.
October 14: Parliament is due to return for the Queen's Speech. 

October 17-18: A crunch EU summit in Brussels, but Mr Johnson now seems certain to boycott the event in protest at the bloc's intransigence. 
October 19: If there is no Brexit deal by this date Remainer legislation obliges the PM to beg the EU for an extension to avoid No Deal. 
Jeremy Corbyn has said that he will only let Mr Johnson trigger an election after an extension has been secured.
If there is a deal, it will start being rushed through Parliament immediately. 
October 31: The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU. 
'A landing zone on consent could be a double majority within Stormont, to leave, not to continue with arrangements after X years,' an EU source told the Times. 
However, the idea has already been shot down by the DUP, pointing out that it would require the consent of both nationalist and unionist communities to get out of the backstop.
Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill also seemed to kill the proposal stone dead, saying it was 'not plausible' for the Northern Ireland assembly - which has not been sitting for over two years - to be given such a decision. 
Speaking in Brussels today after briefing commissioners, EU negotiator Michel Barnier said: 'I think the deal is possible and very difficult, but possible.' 
Mr Johnson will hold face-to-face talks with Leo Varadkar in the coming days, but the Irish PM has accused him of only pretending to make concessions, saying it would be 'very difficult' to get a deal soon. 
Speaking in the Irish Parliament today, Mr Varadkar said the problem was the UK's position that Northern Ireland must leave the EU customs union. 
He claimed London had adopted this position whether the people of Northern Ireland 'like it or not'. 
He added: 'That creates huge difficulties for us because we want there to be a deal that respects the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland, and indeed the people in this Republic too.'  
European Council president Donald Tusk ranted at Mr Johnson on Twitter yesterday in the wake of the row with Mrs Merkel, saying he was playing a 'stupid blame game' and risking the safety of citizens. 
And in an interview in French newspaper Les Echos, Mr Juncker said it would be the UK's fault if Brexit turned sour.
'If that's the case the explanation is actually in the British camp because the original sin is on the islands and not on the continent,' he said.
'A no-deal Brexit would lead to a collapse of the United Kingdom and a weakening of growth on the continent.' 
A supposed 'concession' by the EU on the Irish border backstop appeared to be dead on arrival today. 
There are suggestions that Brussels could offer a 'time limit' to show the UK will not necessarily be stuck in the arrangements forever.
'A landing zone on consent could be a double majority within Stormont, to leave, not to continue with arrangements after X years,' an EU source told the Times. 
However, the idea has already been shot down by the DUP, pointing out that it would require the consent of both nationalist and unionist communities to get out of the backstop.
Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said nationalist politicians would never agree to leave the arrangements. 
'The double majority arrangement is designed to ensure we can never get out of customs union, given all the other parties are supportive of staying in the EU,' he said,   
Mr Johnson held a 'constructive' 40-minute conversation with Irish premier Leo Varadkar and will meet him for further discussions in the next 48 hours, in what appears to be the last chance for securing a deal. 
But ministers were gloomy, and the PM's official spokesman said negotiations were at a 'critical juncture'. 
Government sources said Mr Johnson could even boycott next week's crunch EU summit rather than suffer a ritual humiliation of the kind dealt out to Theresa May.
The collapse of the talks would put Mr Johnson on a collision course over whether he can keep his 'do or die' pledge to leave the EU by the end of this month.
No10 sources said if Brexit was delayed again by Parliament and the courts, the Tories would have 'no choice' but to fight an election on a No Deal ticket to prevent votes haemorrhaging to Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.
The clash with Mrs Merkel came as a major setback to Mr Johnson, who believed he had an understanding with EU leaders that they would engage positively with his compromise proposals. 
The PM had hoped that Europe's leading powerbroker would assist in breaking the deadlock, urging her to 'help get this boat off the rocks'.
But Mrs Merkel told him he would have to settle his differences with Brussels and Ireland. 
The PM's spokesman said the two leaders had a 'frank exchange' – diplomatic code for a blazing row. 
Mr Johnson is said to be furious that EU leaders have simply 'banked' his compromises – which include keeping Northern Ireland in the single market for goods – without offering any of their own.
The House of Commons will sit on a Saturday after next week's crunch EU summit - for the first time since the Falklands War.
It is understood Boris Johnson plans to summon MPs, whether or not there is an agreement thrashed out in Brussels the previous day.
In the seemingly unlikely event that a deal has been done, the process of pushing through legislation will begin immediately.
Otherwise the PM will set out his response - and whether he intends to obey the Remainer rebel law ordering him to beg for a Brexit extension. 
The Commons has sat on a Saturday just four times since 1939.
MPs convened to consider the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, and in July 1949 - for reasons that are now unclear.
There was a sitting on November 3 1956 during the Suez crisis, and in response to the invasion of the Falklands on April 3, 1982.  
Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said: 'I don't think things have reached an impasse but there are certainly significant gaps to close.'
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson is facing a Cabinet backlash over a threat to cut security ties with EU countries that support a Brexit delay.
In an incendiary briefing, a 'senior government source' said that backing another extension would be seen by the PM as a 'hostile interference in domestic politics.'
The source told the Spectator that countries supporting another delay would 'go to the back of the queue' for future co-operation on everything from trade to security.
Former work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd yesterday named the source as Mr Johnson's chief adviser Dominic Cummings – a claim that was not denied by No10.
The comments sparked a backlash, with Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith and Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan both protesting directly to the PM during yesterday's Cabinet meeting.
Mr Smith later went public, saying that any threat to limit security co-operation with Ireland because of its stance on Brexit would be 'unacceptable'. 
Sources said Mrs Morgan complained to Mr Johnson about the briefing, prompting him to respond: 'You shouldn't believe what you read. You should listen to what I say instead.'
Up to five Cabinet ministers are believed to be on 'resignation watch' amid fears they would walk rather than support a shift to campaign for No Deal.
Other backbench MPs could also choose to quit rather than join a push for the UK to make a clean break.  
 
 
Parliament recently introduced a bill to outlaw the use of wild animals in circuses.
Parading defenceless creatures in front of an audience to be bayed and laughed at is cruel and demeaning. No place for it in today’s civilised society.
But while MPs go all gooey over pandas, horses and bunny rabbits, they have decided the Prime Minister deserves no such clemency.
At 6pm last night, it looked as though the Cabinet was about to tell her it was time to go. False alarm. She would be hunkering down in No 10 for at least one more night.
But considering her experience in the Commons earlier, few would have blamed her for handing over the keys. For more than two hours, the PM was subjected to the sort of humiliation which would have had weaker souls reaching for the smelling salts.
First, during PMQs, then while delivering her statement on her fourth (and valedictory) Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
At times, the Labour benches resembled a toga-clad mob inside Rome’s Colosseum. They snarled, they cackled, they jabbed their fingers. It was wince-inducing stuff. 
Mrs May, dignified and business-like in a funereal black suit and high heels, somehow absorbed it all, like a vicarage tea sponge cake.
Behind her, meanwhile, the Government benches echoed to the sound of stony indifference. Support was scant. Empty spaces everywhere.
Those backbenchers who stayed to hear her out thumbed their phones, plotting their next career move. No sooner had she finished her speech, laying the finer points of the bill, than verbal missiles began raining in from all angles.
‘You’ve come to the end of the road,’ was the verdict of gum-chewing former footballer Liz Kendall (Lab, Leicester West). 
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru, Dwyfor Meirionnydd) suggested the PM’s authority was ‘slipping from her grasp with every passing hour.’ 
Tim Farron (Lib Dem,Westmorland and Lonsdale) claimed he’d witnessed Mrs May getting a friendlier reception in a working men’s club in Durham than from her own benches.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, North East Somerset) asked whether the Prime Minister really believed in what she was doing or whether she was simply ‘going through the motions.’ 
He described her failing strategy as ‘folderol’ – a word dating back to 1820, meaning ‘hogwash’.
In front of him, Lee Rowley (Con, North East Derbyshire) sat slumped, scanning the chamber with a pained face as if to say ‘Why is she doing this to herself?’
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech, incidentally, had been joltingly bad. Jumbled, hesitant, incoherent. I’m not sure how much he actually believes of what he is saying. Recently I’ve been watching Sky’s brilliant drama Chernobyl, which depicts most Soviet apparatchiks as lifeless incompetents. Amazing how similar they are to Corbyn.
Briefly, there were some honey-voiced words of support from Charles Walker (Con, Broxbourne), hoping for a mention in her Resignation Honours List, perhaps. Similarly, Vicky Ford (Con, Chelmsford) observed that MPs needed to ‘stop saying No to everything on the table, just because it is not our favourite dish.’
Perhaps the most measured intervention came from Caroline Flint (Lab, Don Valley) who suggested members ‘take a breath’ and view what the bill says when it is published tomorrow. As doughty Ms Flint sat down, both sides of the Commons fell eerily quiet as though she’d made them feel guilty and given them all something to think about.
PMQs earlier had been equally agonising. Brexit-supporting ministers Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox, Liz Truss and Geoffrey Cox didn’t even bother showing up. 
It became clear later why Ms Leadsom wasn’t there: she was sharpening her knife ahead of her tea-time Cabinet resignation.
Boris Johnson sat in the furthest corner, within whispering distance from 1922 Committee chief Sir Graham Brady. He didn’t stay long. Palms to grease, text messages to send, I don’t doubt.
Most the heat came from Conservative MPs on the subject of Northern Ireland, since the PM is reported to have blocked ministers from proposing a law that would prevent Army veterans from facing murder charges. 
Mark Francois (Con, Rayleigh and Wickford) accused the PM of ‘pandering to Sinn Fein and the IRA while throwing veterans to the wolves.’
Johnny Mercer (Con, Plymouth Moor View) said the Government was showing ‘equivalence between those who got up in the morning to go and murder women, children and civilians, and those who donned a uniform to go and protect the Crown.’
Mrs May offered a limp response. ‘You’re not listening!’ Francois bellowed, face pucer than an ice lolly. ‘She. Doesn’t. Listen.’
I fear that might just be her political epitaph.
Age: 54. Former Foreign Secretary. His support for Brexit was vital to Leave's win.
Background: Known for being identified by just one name, Boris, for his show-off Classics references and for chaotic private life.
EXPERIENCE: Twice voted London mayor.
STRENGTH: Starry, charismatic and clever crowd-pleaser.
WEAKNESS: Bumbling foreign secretary. May struggle to win MPs' support. A 'Stop Boris' campaign is likely.
VERDICT: Party grassroots love him
Age: 46. Former Brexit Secretary. Diehard Brexiteer.
Background: Son of a Czech-born Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1938 and died of cancer when Raab was 12.
EXPERIENCE: Lasted only four months as Brexit Secretary. Voted against May in leadership confidence vote.
STRENGTH: Skilled debater who honed his skills as an adversarial lawyer with blue chip legal firm Linklaters.
WEAKNESS: Seen as too clever by half and lacking people skills.
VERDICT: In second place in ConservativeHome's leadership league table.
Age: 40. Health Secretary. Arch Remainer.
Background: Father bought their council house. Ran his own computer software business before becoming Chancellor George Osborne's chief of staff.
EXPERIENCE: Cabinet minister for only 18 months. Seen as a 'coming man'.
STRENGTH: One of life's Tiggers with ambition and enthusiasm to match his brainpower.
WEAKNESS: Never knowingly modest, he once foolishly likened himself to Churchill, Pitt and Disraeli.
VERDICT: Little known among Conservative Party members.
Age: 55. Work and Pensions Secretary. Remain cheerleader.
Background: Daughter of a Labour-supporting stockbroker and Tory-leaning JP.
EXPERIENCE: Became Home Secretary after just six years as an MP. Resigned over the Windrush scandal after inadvertently misleading MPs.
STRENGTH: Tough operator who was restored to Cabinet within six months.
WEAKNESS: Holds seat with majority of only 346. Headmisstressy manner but an accomplished performer.
VERDICT: Ninth in leadership league table.
Age: 51. Former Welfare Secretary. An ardent Brexiteer.
Background: Spent the first two years of her life in foster care. Was a breakfast TV presenter before becoming a Tory MP on Merseyside.
EXPERIENCE: As welfare minister was viciously targeted by Labour.
STRENGTH: Tough and telegenic. Won plaudits with members for resigning from Cabinet over Brexit deal.
WEAKNESS: Some say she doesn't have the intellectual fire power for top job.
VERDICT: Ranked 14th in league table.
Age: 46. International Development Secretary. Arch Brexiteer.
Background: Her mother died when she was a teenager. Cared for younger brother. EXPERIENCE: Was a magician's assistant. Appeared in the reality TV show Splash!
STRENGTH: Only female MP to be a Royal Naval Reservist. Attended Lady Thatcher's funeral in uniform.
WEAKNESS: Inexperienced, having been in Cabinet for less than two years. Has never run a major Whitehall department.
VERDICT: Edged up to 11th in ConservativeHome league table.
Age: 55. Leader of the Commons. Ardent Brexiteer.
Background: A former City trader. Mother of three.
EXPERIENCE: Struggled in her first Cabinet post, as Environment Secretary.
STRENGTH: Blossomed as Leader of the Commons, winning plaudits for taking on Speaker John Bercow.
WEAKNESS: Stood for leader in 2016 but made ill-considered comment comparing her experience as a mother to the childless Mrs May.
VERDICT: Has soared to the top of the ConservativeHome table of competent ministers.
Age: 51. Environment Secretary. High priest of Brexiteers.
Background: Adopted son of a Scottish fish merchant.
EXPERIENCE: Figurehead for Leave during referendum campaign. Cabinet heavyweight who's served as Education Secretary and Justice Secretary.
STRENGTH: Brilliant debater with razor sharp intellect.
WEAKNESS: Still suspected of having a disloyal gene after knifing Boris Johnson in last leadership contest.
VERDICT: Popular with the Tory members, who, crucially, will vote for the new leader. 
Age: 43 Chief Secretary to Treasury. Brexiteer.
Background: Raised by Left-wing parents and as a child was marched through the streets on anti-Thatcher protest shouting: 'Maggie out!'
EXPERIENCE: Joint-author in 2012 of a controversial booklet, Britannia Unchained, which alleged 'the British are among the worst idlers in the world'.
STRENGTH: A genuine free-marketeer.
WEAKNESS: Poor public speaker with a mixed ministerial record.
VERDICT: Only 15th in ConservativeHome leaders league table.
Age: 49. Home Secretary. Remainer who changed to Brexit after the referendum.
Background: Son of a bus driver who came to Britain from Pakistan with £1 in his pocket. Was head of credit trading at Deutsche Bank.
EXPERIENCE: Previously Culture and Business secretary, cracked down on union rights.
STRENGTH: An extraordinary rags-to-riches back story that we will hear more of during the leadership campaign.
WEAKNESS: Widely seen as a wooden and a poor speaker.
VERDICT: In 4th place in ConservativeHome league table.
Age: 52. Foreign Secretary
Background: Eldest son of Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt. Married to a Chinese wife and he speaks Mandarin.
Before politics, set up an educational publisher which was sold for £30million in 2017.
EXPERIENCE: Longest-serving health secretary in history.
STRENGTH: Among the most experienced ministers in the field who, unusually, has made few political enemies.
WEAKNESS: Some, though, regard him as a 'bit of a drip'.
Verdict: Seen by many as man who could best unite party on Brexit.
Donald Trump sent the Special Relationship into meltdown today after lobbing a series of extraordinary verbal hand grenades at Theresa May on his visit to the UK. 
The US president tore up diplomatic niceties to deliver a series of crushing blows to the PM, warning that her soft Brexit plan would 'kill' a trade deal with the US - and heaping praise on Boris Johnson, who quit in protest earlier this week.
Rampaging unapologetically into domestic politics, Mr Trump said Mrs May had ignored his advice to face down the EU in negotiations and condemned slack controls on immigration.
The bombshell intervention left ministers struggling to come up with a response, just hours before Mrs May is due to host the president at Chequers for talks on the second anniversary of her premiership.
Downing Street is braced for him to double down on his criticism at a joint press conference in what could be a devastating humiliation as she struggles to cling on to power amid a huge revolt by Tory Eurosceptics.
Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan was sent out to try to put a brave face on the embarrassment this morning, stretching credibility by insisting the government did not regard Mr Trump's behaviour as 'rude'.
'Donald Trump is in many ways a controversialist, that's his style, that's the colour he brings to the world stage,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
Chancellor Philip Hammond, in Brussels for meetings, suggested the president had not yet studied the government's Brexit plans properly.
But many MPs made no effort to hide their outrage - with universities minister Sam Gyimah tweeting: 'Where are your manners, Mr President?'
Tory backbencher Sarah Wollaston raged that Mr Trump was 'determined to insult' Mrs May. In a sign of the growing chaos in UK politics, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry also leapt to Mrs May's defence, branding him 'extraordinarily rude'. 
 'She is his host. What did his mother teach him?' Mrs Thornberry said. 
Mr Trump's outburst emerged last night just as Mrs May feted him at a lavish business dinner at Blenheim Palace - the family home of his hero Winston Churchill in Oxfordshire. 
As the leaders posed for the cameras, even holding hands at one point, it was revealed that Mr Trump had launched a full-scale attack on Mrs May's leadership in an interview with The Sun before arriving in Britain.
Giving a withering assessment of her Brexit plan to align with EU rules to ease trade and keep a soft Irish border, he said: 'If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal. I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn't listen to me'.
Sources close to the president earlier warned that a lucrative transatlantic trade deal would be impossible if the UK keeps close ties with Brussels - effectively meaning Britain must choose between the US and EU. 
In an interview with the British newspaper, Mr Trump said he thought Boris Johnson would make a 'great prime minister' and that he was 'saddened' the former foreign secretary was out of the government.
The president also renewed his war of words with Sadiq Khan, saying the London mayor has 'done a very bad job on terrorism'.
He said he thought that allowing 'millions and millions' of people into Europe was 'very sad' and pointed to crime being 'brought in' to London, criticising the Labour mayor for failing to deal with it. 
Europe, he added, is 'losing its culture' because of mass migration and warned it will never be the same again unless leaders act quickly.
'Look around,' he said. 'You go through certain areas that didn't exist ten or 15 years ago.' He added: 'Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame.' 
The White House tried to go on cleanup duty after the explosive interview.
'The President likes and respects Prime Minister May very much,' White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. 
'As he said in his interview with the Sun she 'is a very good person' and he 'never said anything bad about her.' He thought she was great on NATO today and is a really terrific person.'
She continued: 'He is thankful for the wonderful welcome from the Prime Minister here in the U.K.' 
Discussing protests - including the decision by anti-Trump activists to fly a giant blimp of the president wearing a nappy over the capital - he said they made him feel unwelcome in London.
He added that he used to love the city, but now feels little reason to go there because of the animosity directed towards him.
But he did say he respected the Queen, telling The Sun she is a 'tremendous woman' who has never made any embarrassing mistakes.    
And the president also said he loves the UK and believes the British people 'want the same thing I want'.
Mrs May had been trying to use the lavish welcome dinner for Mr Trump at Blenheim Palace to press her case for an ambitious new trade deal with the US after Brexit.
The president arrived in Marine One in a tuxedo alongside First Lady Melania, wearing a floor-length, pleated buttercup yellow gown.
Awkwardly grabbing Theresa May's hand - in a replay of their White House meeting last year - Trump was treated to a fanfare welcome by the Welsh, Irish and Scots Guards' bands.
The president was given a performance of Amazing Grace featuring a bagpipe solo during his red-carpet reception as well as Liberty Fanfare and the National Emblem.  
Critics of the Prime Minister's proposals for future relations with the EU claim that her willingness to align with Brussels rules on agricultural produce will block a US deal.
That is because Washington is certain to insist on the inclusion of GM crops and hormone-enhanced beef, which are banned in Europe.
But addressing the US president in front of an audience of business leaders at Winston Churchill's birthplace, Mrs May insisted that Brexit provides an opportunity for an 'unprecedented' agreement to boost jobs and growth.
Noting that more than one million Americans already work for British-owned firms, she told Mr Trump: 'As we prepare to leave the European Union, we have an unprecedented opportunity to do more.
'It's an opportunity to reach a free trade agreement that creates jobs and growth here in the UK and right across the United States.
'It's also an opportunity to tear down the bureaucratic barriers that frustrate business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.
'And it's an opportunity to shape the future of the world through co-operation in advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence.'
She also highlighted the importance of trans-Atlantic business links to a president who has sometimes seemed more interested in forging new links with former adversaries around the world than nurturing long-standing partnerships.
Britain and the US are the largest investors in each other's economies, with over a trillion dollars of investments between them, said Mrs May.
And she told the president: 'The strength and breadth of Britain's contribution to the US economy cannot be understated.
'The UK is the largest investor in the US, providing nearly a fifth of all foreign investment in your country.
'We invest 30 per cent more than our nearest rival. More than 20 times what China invests. And more than France and Germany combined.
'That all means a great deal more than simply numbers in bank accounts.
'It means jobs, opportunities and wealth for hardworking people right across America.'
British firms represented at the Blenheim banquet alone employ more than 250,000 people in the US, she said.
Mr Trump earlier made clear that he did not approve of the softer stance the PM has been advocating despite fury from many Tory MPs.
'Brexit is Brexit, the people voted to break it up so I would imagine that is what they'll do, but they might take a different route. I'm not sure that's what people voted for,' Mr Trump said.
Mrs May dismissed the criticism as she departed the summit this afternoon, telling journalists: 'We have come to an agreement at the proposal we're putting to the European Union which absolutely delivers on the Brexit people voted for.
'They voted for us to take back control of our money, our law and our borders and that's exactly what we will do'.      
Mr Trump also said the UK was a 'pretty hot spot right now' with 'lots of resignations'.
'Brexit is – I have been reading about Brexit a lot over the last few days and it seems to be turning a little bit differently where they are getting at least partially involved back with the European Union,' he said.
'I have no message it is not for me to say…'
He added: 'I'd like to see them be able to work it out so it can go quickly - whatever they work out.
'I would say Brexit is Brexit. When you use the term hard Brexit I assume that's what you mean.
'A lot of people voted to break it up so I would imagine that's what they would do but maybe they are taking a little bit of a different route. I don't know if that's what they voted for.
'I just want the people to be happy…..I am sure there will be protests because there are always protests.'
Speaking about the prospect of demonstrations in the UK over his visit, Mr Trump told reporters: 'They like me a lot in the UK. I think they agree with me on immigration.'
He added: 'I think that's why Brexit happened.'  
Mrs May was joined at Blenheim by ministers including Chancellor Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, Trade Secretary Liam Fox, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and her effective deputy David Lidington.
Boris Johnson missed out on a seat at the table by resigning as foreign secretary on Monday in protest at Mrs May's Brexit policy, though Mr Trump has said he might try to speak to him during his visit.    
Mrs May, dressed in an ankle length red gown and red high heeled shoes, and her husband Philip, in black tie, welcomed Mr Trump and wife Melania to the gala dinner on the first evening of the President's working visit to the UK.
Mrs Trump was dressed in a floor length yellow ball gown.
In a near replay of their famous hand-holding at the White House, the president briefly took Mrs May's hand as they went up the stairs into the palace. 
The Trumps arrived from London by Marine One helicopter before being driven in the armoured presidential limousine, nicknamed The Beast, to the opulent 18th century palace near Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
Built for the Duke of Marlborough in recognition of his military victories and named a Unesco World Heritage Site, Blenheim is one of a series of historic architectural gems Mr Trump will visit on a four-day trip.
His arrival was marked by a military ceremony, with bandsmen of the Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards playing the Liberty Fanfare, Amazing Grace and the National Emblem.
Leaders of the financial services, travel, creative, food, engineering, technology, infrastructure, pharmaceutical and defence sectors were among around 100 guests who dined on Scottish salmon, English Hereford beef fillet and strawberries with clotted cream ice-cream.
Mrs May told him: 'Mr President, Sir Winston Churchill once said that 'to have the United States at our side was, to me, the greatest joy'.
'The spirit of friendship and co-operation between our countries, our leaders and our people, that most special of relationships, has a long and proud history.
'Now, for the benefit of all our people, let us work together to build a more prosperous future.'
Mrs May said that the history, language, values and culture shared by the UK and US 'inspire mutual respect' and make the two nations 'not just the closest of allies, but the dearest of friends'.
Presented by Queen Anne to the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill in 1704, Blenheim Palace has always been a symbol of British pride.
The astonishing Oxfordshire pile has seen everything from Sir Winston Churchill's birth in 1874 to two World Wars in which it acted both as a military hospital and a college for boys.
Churchill, who also married his wife, Clementine Hozier at the palace once said: 'At Blenheim I took two very important decisions; to be born and to marry. I am content with the decision I took on both occasions...'
The baroque-style site set in 11,500 acres was listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987 and is owned by 13 trustees including Sir Rocco Forte of Rocco Forte Hotels.
Currently the 12th Duke of Marlborough, Jamie Blandford, and his family live in a section of the palace, although he does not appear to be on the board of trustees.
In more recent years, Blenheim has been used as a set in a number of blockbuster films.
The famous 'Harry Potter tree' that appeared in Severus Snape's flashback scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix still stands in the palace grounds, despite fears the ancient Cedar had developed a deadly disease two years ago.
The palace's additional film credits include the James Bond film, Spectre 007, in which it doubled as Rome's Palazzo Cadenza, and Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation, in which the building's Green Writing Room acted as the set for a crucial meeting between the British Prime Minister and a secret agent.
Perhaps Mission Impossible's location team were inspired by the events of September 1940, when MI5 used Blenheim Palace as a real-life base.
Originally called Woodstock Manor, the land was given to the first Duke of Marlborough by the British in recognition of an English victory over the French in the war of the Spanish Succession.
A Column of Victory stands central to the 2,000 acres of parkland and 90 acres of formal garden landscaped by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown.
At 134ft-tall the monument depicts the first Duke of Marlborough as a Roman General.
Meanwhile the magnificent Baroque palace was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh who reportedly aimed to create a 'naturalistic Versailles'.
In an apparent plea to the president to remember his allies when he meets Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in Monday, she noted that Britain and America work closely together in the interests of their shared security, 'whether through targeting Daesh terrorists or standing up to Russian aggression'.
The Countess of Wessex's Orchestra played British and American hits of the 20th century during dinner.
And Mr Trump, whose mother was Scottish, was due to be piped out by the Royal Regiment of Scotland as he and Melania left to spend the night at the US ambassador's residence in London's Regent's Park.
Outside the palace gates, several hundred protesters waved banners and placards reading Dump Trump, Not Welcome Here, Protect children Not Trump and Keep Your Tiny Hands Off My P****!  
Trump touched down in Britain for his first official visit early yesterday after landing at Stansted Airport
He said: 'I think they like me a lot in the UK'
Most people, a number of whom said they worked at the embassy in London, were tight-lipped as they left a secured area in the park near the US ambassador's residence, where Mr Trump and his wife Melania stayed overnight.
Some cited 'job restrictions' while another said he was wary of the press. But one woman said Mr Trump had given a 'short speech' which she described as 'lovely'.
Another man, who did not wish to give his name, said: 'It was very complimentary to England and to the allies that we have, very positive.'
The US President, 72, who will meet the Prime Minister and Queen during a four-day red carpet visit, landed at Stansted Airport on Air Force One at just before 2pm and walked off hand-in-hand with First Lady Melania. 
America's Commander-in-Chief has 1,000 of his own staff in the UK and a giant motorcade led by his bomb-proof Cadillac nicknamed 'The Beast' as well as multiple helicopters including Marine One to fly him around.
The President and his First Lady were met on the tarmac by US Ambassador Woody Johnson and UK Trade Secretary Liam Fox before he was whisked off to Mr Johnson's house near Regent's Park. 
Earlier Mr Trump gave an extraordinary press conference in Brussels after giving NATO leaders a bruising over defence cash, where he wrote off protesters and said Theresa May's Brexit deal probably wasn't what Britons voted for.
When asked about the threat of mass demonstrations he said: 'I think it's fine. A lot of people like me there. I think they agree with me on immigration. I think that's why Brexit happened'. 
Protesters, meanwhile, staged a noisy gathering near Winfield House where Trump and his wife Melania spent the night.
A large group of demonstrators adopted an alternative version of England's World Cup anthem Three Lions as they sang and shouted, 'He's going home, he's going home, he's going, Trump is going home' in Regent's Park.
A wide range of campaigners, including unions, faith and environmental groups came together to unite in opposition to Mr Trump's visit to the UK, organisers said.
Bells and whistles rang out alongside cheers and claps for speakers throughout the protest, staged near the US ambassador's official residence, as the crowd was encouraged to shout loudly in the hope Mr Trump could hear.
Placards including 'Dump Trump' and 'Trump not welcome' were held aloft by the enthusiastic crowd before some began banging on the metal fence which has been erected in the park.
A clip of what organisers said was the sound of children crying at the US border after being separated from their parents was played and described by those listening as 'disgusting'.
Sam Fullerton from Oklahoma said while Mr Trump may not see the protest from Winfield House which is set back inside the fenced-off area in the park, he hoped he would hear it or see it on television.
Mr Fullerton said: 'He watches a lot of TV so he'll see it on TV. Or they may be out in the backyard.'
His wife Jami, a Hillary Clinton supporter, said the protest was 'democracy at its finest'.
'I'm here to witness democracy outside of our own country to see how other democratic societies express themselves,' she said.
'I think it's great. The British are pretty gentle people.'
John Rees, of the Stop The War group, described Mr Trump as a 'wrecking ball' as he addressed those gathered.
He said: 'He's a wrecking ball for race relations, he's a wrecking ball for prosperity, he's a wrecking ball for women's rights, he's a wrecking ball for any peace and justice in this world and we have to stop him.'
Some of those gathered said they planned to stay for Mr Trump's return after the First Couple dine at Blenheim Palace with Theresa May.       
Peers inflicted a second defeat on the Government's Brexit Bill tonight, after they approved amendment 11, which aims to protect people's rights post-withdrawal.
The bill amendment - a cross-party move from peers to maintain existing protections across a range of areas including health and safety, employment, equality and consumer standards was approved by 314 votes to 217 - majority of 97.
It means these protections cannot be changed except by primary legislation.  
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Former prime minister David Cameron has said he does not regret holding the Brexit referendum, but believes Britain chose the wrong course.
He told CNN: 'I don't regret holding a referendum. I think it was the right thing to do.
'I don't think you can belong to these organisations and see their powers grow, and treaty after treaty, and power after power going from Westminster to Brussels and never asking the people whether they are happy governed in that way.
'But, I haven't changed my mind about the result of the referendum. I wish the vote had gone another way.
'I think we have taken the wrong course.'
Mr Cameron added: 'But, to be frank, Britain is the fifth, or sixth, largest economy in the world. It is a legitimate choice to try and be a friend and a neighbour, and a partner of the European Union, rather than a member of the European Union.
'And that's what the country has chosen. I accept the result. I wish my successor well in the work that she is doing.
'I know as being prime minister, it is a hard enough job without your predecessor giving you a running commentary, and that's why I haven't been giving interviews, and the rest of it.' 
The defeat for Theresa May comes a day after remain supporting peers including Chris Patten led the revolt and delivered the first defeat on the flagship laws in the House of Lords.
Ministers have played down the impact of this amendment, insisting its vague wording will not change the Government's plans for Brexit. One Cabinet minister told MailOnline they would be able to 'live with' the amendment.
The Brexit department said it was 'disappointed' but insisted it would not change the 'terms of exit'. 
But the huge 348 to 225 vote against the Government could be a signal more damaging defeats will follow as the crucial laws crawl through Parliament.
Every defeat will have to be passed back to the Commons for approval or veto - a process which could take weeks to complete.  
Following the vote, leading Remainer Lord Adonis hailed it as a 'crushing' defeat for the Government.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer demanded Theresa May listen to the 'chorus of voices' demanding a customs union and changer her plans.   
But ahead of the vote a Cabinet minister told MailOnline the amendment was 'not prescriptive' and they could 'live with it'. 
During today's debate, Lord Patten mocked claims by the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox that a free trade deal with the EU would be 'one of the easiest in human history'.
He suggested the current approach being taken by the Government to securing agreements was 'absurd'.
Lord Patten also claimed the idea that countries such as Australia would open up their market without any demands in return was 'nonsense'.
Crossbench peer Lord Kerr, who tabled the amendment, said: 'Looking further afield is well worth doing but it will be very hard not to see a fall in overall exports if our trade with the European Union is made more complicated - and it will be much more complicated if we don't have a customs union.' 
Conservative former chancellor Lord Lamont of Lerwick opposed the amendment, telling peers the 'pattern of our trade has been changing and a much higher proportion of our trade was with the EU 10 or 15 years ago' because of the growth of Asian markets.
He said the disadvantages of being in a customs union are 'threefold': 'Operating inappropriate tariffs, not having autonomy over domestic rules and goods, and three, not being able to conclude trade agreements.'
Ahead of the vote, a Cabinet minister told MailOnline: 'The Government has moved a long way to accommodate concerns and improve the bill since it was first tabled so there is not a 'war' going on over it as some might have you believe,' they added.
'The language of this amendment is not strictly prescriptive and if, in this instance, it passes, I think we can probably live with it.'
The minister said a decision would be taken later in the process on whether to try to overturn the amendment when the Bill returns to the Commons.
Other battlegrounds in the Lords include measures to limit the Government's ability to use so-called Henry VIII powers, which restrict Parliament's ability to scrutinise future legislative changes required as a result of Brexit.
A cross-party effort to strengthen the 'meaningful vote' promised on the Brexit deal will also feature in debates as the Bill goes through its report stage over six days between April 18 and May 8.
Other potential flashpoints include amendments relating to Northern Ireland and a plan to scrap the Government's decision to fix Brexit for 11pm on March 29, 2019.
Shadow Lords leader Baroness Smith of Basildon said: 'As we begin the Report stage, Theresa May and her ministers still have an opportunity to bring forward sensible changes in response to concerns raised previously in the Lords.
'A failure to do so however, will amount to kicking the can down what could be a very rocky road. And our peers won't be shy about sending amendments to the Commons, giving MPs a further chance to scrutinise the detail of the Bill.'
Shadow Brexit minister Baroness Hayter said the proposed change 'forces the government to prioritise a customs union with the EU - not only to boost industry's ability to trade with the UK, but to ensure there is no hard border in Northern Ireland'.
Downing Street insisted being in a customs union would restrict the UK's ability to strike trade deals after Brexit.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mrs May 'has been very clear that the British people voted to leave the EU and expect us to be able to sign trade deals around the world, operating our own independent trade policy'.
'As the PM has set out, that means we are leaving the customs union,' the spokesman said. 
 
Senior Downing Street advisers believe MPs have left it too late to stop a No Deal Brexit, it emerged last night.
Boris Johnson’s top aides say he can take Britain out of the EU on October 31 – honouring his ‘do or die’ pledge – even if rebel Tories and Labour force a general election.
Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave strategist who has taken a key role in No 10, has argued Mr Johnson could use his powers to set the election date for after Halloween. That would mean Britain leaving on the 31st.
Mr Cummings told officials at one meeting last week that EU leaders such as French president Emmanuel Macron ‘think we’re bluffing’ or believe that ‘MPs will cancel the referendum’, The Sunday Telegraph reported.
He added: ‘They don’t realise that if there is a no-confidence vote in September or October, we’ll call an election for after the 31st and we’ll leave anyway.’
Mr Johnson has left the door open to EU leaders to negotiate a new deal without the ‘undemocratic’ Northern Irish backstop, which he says will keep Britain trapped in parts of the single market and customs union.
He has even coined a term for what he wants from Brussels: a ‘backstopectomy’. No compromise short of removing the backstop will have any hope of getting through Parliament, Downing Street officials believe.
Mr Johnson has ‘turbo-charged’ No Deal preparations with £2 billion, vowing to deliver Brexit ‘by any means necessary’.
A group of Tory MPs led by former attorney general Dominic Grieve are set to join forces with Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition parties to try to stop No Deal when Parliament returns next month.
But they have a window of about five working weeks to move against No 10. MPs will return on September 3, but then break again for party conference season the following week.
Last night Mr Grieve insisted MPs could bring down the Government to stop No Deal, and accused Mr Cummings of being a ‘master of disinformation’.
‘He’s right when he points out that for the House of Commons to prevent a No Deal Brexit ... there are a whole series of obstacles,’ he told the BBC. ‘So he has a point, but I think he may also be missing the point that there are a number of things the House of Commons can do, including bringing down the Government and setting up a new one in its place.’
Labour health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth also said he did not agree MPs could do nothing.
‘There will be opportunities for us when Parliament returns in September to stop No Deal,’ he told Sky News. Legal advice prepared by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has reportedly argued there is no legal basis to prevent the Prime Minister from forcing No Deal even if it happens during an election campaign.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay yesterday said Brussels chief negotiator Michel Barnier should tear up his negotiating plan. He argued in The Mail on Sunday that the European Parliament elections in May meant the original mandate was no longer valid, and should be revised.
Meanwhile, the Brexit Party called on the Tories divide up seats between them in a Brexit deal.
MEP Claire Fox told Sky News that Mr Johnson should ‘make an approach to the Brexit Party’ and ‘stand aside in certain areas’.
As things stand, Britain will leave the EU automatically on October 31. But when Parliament returns in September, some Tories such as Dominic Grieve will join opposition parties to try to stop No Deal. Associate Editor Jack Doyle looks at their options – and chances of success...
Emergency motion
Passing an emergency motion, or resolution of the House, is the potential first step, and has the advantage of being readily available. Petition Speaker John Bercow (who would surely approve) for a debate, and at the end a vote on whether the House is opposed to No Deal, for which there is a majority against. But Boris Johnson has made clear he will simply ignore something that is not legally binding.
Chances of success: zero
Petition the Queen
Among the most bizarre suggestions floated by Remainer MPs is a ‘humble address’ to the Queen, asking Her Majesty to travel to the next EU summit in October and request an extension to Article 50. Unlikely to pass, given MPs would face accusations of dragging the impartial monarch into their Brexit war.
Chances of success: zero
Extend Article 50
MPs could try to force Mr Johnson to ask the EU for an extension to Article 50 before October 31. With the help of the Speaker, the rebels could use an earlier trick of seizing control of the Commons order paper and passing a Bill.
But is there time, with MPs sitting for barely a month between September 3 and exit day and ministers determined to limit their opportunities? And even then, could Mr Johnson ask for an extension but find a way to refuse whatever the EU offers?
Chances of success: slim
Collapse the government
With a majority of just one, Mr Johnson is vulnerable to a confidence vote, and several rebel Remainer Tories have vowed to bring the Government down in order to stop No Deal.
If he loses, there is a 14-day window in which a new government could be formed if someone else can patch together a majority – or the country goes to the polls. But controversially, Mr Johnson could use his powers to set the date of the election after October 31. We would then leave, and go to the polls the following week.
Chances of success: possible.
Geoffrey Cox claimed the Irish border backstop would breach the human rights of people in Northern Ireland in a scramble for new concessions, the EU said tonight.
Sources said the Attorney General made the move in Tuesday night's fractious negotiating session with Michel Barnier, the Guardian reported.
He is said to have warned a permanent backstop would breach the rights of people in Northern Ireland to choose their politicians because it means imposing EU rules.
The EU source said it was one of several 'surprising' things said by Mr Cox amid claims from Brussels Britain has not offered reasonable proposals.
Mr Cox slapped down the EU claims in Parliament today - insisting the British demands were 'clear as day'.  
Downing Street insisted today MPs still needed 'legally binding' guarantees the Irish border backstop would not be permanent to pass the deal on Tuesday night. 
There are just five days until a showdown vote in Parliament on the deal - which Mrs May faces losing by up to 100 even if Mr Cox secures some kind of concession.
Acrimonious talks between Mr Cox and Mr Barnier ended in deadlock on Tuesday night with both sides admitting the 'robust' and 'difficult'. 
Chancellor Philip Hammond today warned Brexiteers to back the deal anyway insisting it is the 'last chance' to leave the EU on time today.
The Chancellor said a second loss for the Prime Minister would leave the fate of Brexit 'highly uncertain' as he predicted MPs would then vote to rule out no deal and delay Brexit. 
If the PM's deal is defeated on Tuesday night, MPs will vote on whether to rule out no deal on Wednesday before deciding whether to delay Brexit on Thursday.
As the stand off continued today, Theresa May's official spokesman said: 'Talks are ongoing. The EU continues to state it wants Britain to leave with a deal.
A top EU bureaucrat has boasted that Brussels' chief negotiator is teaching Britain a lesson over Brexit, boasting that he was 'our very best divorce lawyer'.
Martin Selmayr, the European Commission's German secretary-general, praised the work of Michel Barnier in his hardline approach to negotiations with Theresa May's team.
Mr Selmayr - nicknamed 'The Monter' in Brussels - told an event in Washington DC: 'Barnier, our very best divorce lawyer, has shown that it is not very attractive to get divorced from the European Union.'
Mr Selmayr is an arch federalist who was promoted a year ago from deputy to Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. 
'Parliament requires us to get legally binding changes to the backstop.'
Mr Cox rejected EU claims Britain has not offered clear proposals today, telling MPs: 'We have been engaging in focused, detailed and careful discussions with the Union and we continue to seek legally-binding changes to the backstop which ensure that it cannot be indefinite.
'These discussions will be resumed shortly.'
He added: 'We are discussing text with the European Union. I am surprised to hear the comments that have emerged over the last 48 hours the proposals are not clear. They are as clear as day and we are continuing to discuss them.'
The European Commission's chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas insisted: 'There are technical meetings ongoing, happening, and then of course all remains to be confirmed if and when, when and if, we have something to be presented, as always you will be the first to know.'
He added: 'President Juncker is available 24/7 as all our Article 50 teams and everyone involved - we are in permanent contact.' 
Mr Hammond told broadcasters: 'If we don't pass the meaningful vote on Tuesday we'll go into a parliamentary process that very likely will lead to an extension of time and an uncertain outcome, more uncertainty for the British economy, more uncertainty for people across the country.
'It's very important that my colleagues think about the consequences of not agreeing this deal.
The House of Lords has demanded Britain stays in a Customs union with the EU after Brexit.
Last night, peers defied Government pleas to amend the Trade Bill to make a customs union an 'objective' of the trade talks phase of Brexit negotiations.
The rebel amendment carried 207-141 - setting up a new showdown when the legislation returns to the Commons.
MPs have to agree any changes made by the Lords and the Government would try to strip it from the Bill.
But PM Theresa May has only a feeble grip of the Commons and could be defeated by a handful of soft Brexit Tory rebels.  
'This is now the last chance to be confident that we can get this deal done and we can leave the EU on schedule.' 
Mr Hammond refused to be drawn on how he would vote if Mrs May's deal is defeated and MPs are asked whether they want to delay Britain's exit from the EU.
'I'm not going to speculate about something that hasn't happened and I don't think will happen because I think the Government is very clear where the will of Parliament is on this,' he told Today.
'Parliament will vote not to leave the European Union without a deal next Wednesday, I have a high degree of confidence about that.
'But we do need to have clear confirmation. It's right that Parliament should make that decision and then we'll put the question about extending Article 50 and how we try to break this impasse by finding a consensus.'
Following Tuesday's meeting, Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, gave a gloomy assessment of the talks but said afterwards that he was 'still determined'. 
EU officials are preparing to work round the clock this weekend, saying it is 'unlikely' an agreement will be reached before then and that talks will go down to the wire.
And in a warning there will be no significant concessions from the EU, French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau today said the deal cannot be reopened.
She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the deal was the 'best possible solution', and said: 'We cannot reopen this negotiation on the Withdrawal Agreement because it is balanced...
'We don't like the backstop, we don't want to have to implement it, and if we have to, we don't want to stay in the backstop.
'We all agree that it should be temporary, and that it's a last resort solution.'
The EU sent Attorney General Geoffrey Cox packing as 'difficult' and 'negative' 11th hour talks failed again leaving Theresa May with 'nothing' that could win her make-or-break Brexit vote, it was revealed today.
Mr Cox has openly admitted he had 'robust' conversations with his counterpart Michel Barnier - diplomatic code for a bust-up - as he returned from Brussels empty handed last night with one source claiming: 'There is no light at the end of the tunnel'.
Without a breakthrough the Prime Minister's Brexit deal faces another catastrophic Commons defeat with a senior Tory admitting: 'Everything is going to be s***' if they lose again next week.
Mr Barnier, who has led negotiations, reportedly would not budge and 'did not want to engage' as he knocked back all the British proposals to break the Irish backstop deadlock demanding Britain 're-drafts' its plans again.
EU sources hit back by claiming Mr Cox had produced 'nothing new' and was offering 'a legal solution to a political problem' with his mini-backstop proposals, adding: 'The two sides are still far from each other'.
Sabine Weyand, Mr Barnier's deputy, has spoken to the remaining EU27 member state ambassadors on the negotiations with Mr Cox with a briefing note describing the crunch talks as 'negative'.
One diplomat said: 'There's no light at the end of the tunnel. It was gloomy'.
Another said: 'We're still far from an agreement. There's no text on the table. If there's some progress. The point is always the same: how to phrase the backstop in a way that could be acceptable for the UK.'
'There's no sign of a breakthrough and there will need to be some tough work in the days ahead if there's going to be deal,' one EU official said, adding that it was still possible negotiators could seal a deal by the end of the weekend.
But that would leave Mrs May just 24 hours to travel to Brussels to endorse the deal on Monday before taking it back to be voted on by MPs the next day.
Tory Brexiteers have already warned the Prime Minister they want at least two days to scrutinise any new offer and will not be 'bounced' into an early vote.
Mr Cox, who met Mr Barnier with Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, described Tuesday's late-night talks as 'robust' as he returned to London yesterday.
He said: 'We are into the meat of the matter now. We've put forward some proposals, very reasonable proposals, and we're now really into the detail of the discussions.
'Both sides have exchanged robust, strong views and we are now facing the real discussions. Talks will be resuming soon.'
Last night it emerged that Mr Cox is trying to secure an 'arbitration panel' that would determine if the two sides were acting in good faith in trying to find alternatives to the backstop.
But according to a report on the BuzzFeed website, the idea was rejected by Mr Barnier.
Sources say Mr Cox and Mr Barclay could be back in Brussels as early as tomorrow to help push a deal over the line in time for next week's vote.
Technical discussions, led by Mrs May's chief Brexit adviser Olly Robbins, will continue in Brussels. Neither side is said to have presented any new formal text.
The latest row over the backstop – designed to prevent a hard border emerging in Ireland – centres around disagreements over language which could either form a new document to be added to the Withdrawal Treaty or sit alongside it.
According to EU sources, 'inspiration' for the text has been drawn from a joint letter sent to Mrs May by EU Commission and Council chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk in January.
This included a pledge to reach a future trade agreement 'speedily' and talked of a 'firm determination' to have an alternative to the backstop ready so it would either never have to be used or only triggered 'temporarily'.
Negotiators are struggling with the 'semantic' challenge of agreeing a form of words which will please both sides.
Downing Street acknowledged the talks were deadlocked, but insisted they would continue.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: 'The EU continues to say they want this resolved and they want the UK to leave with a deal. Parliament has been clear we need legally-binding changes to ensure the UK cannot be stuck in the backstop indefinitely.'
An EU Commission spokesman said: 'While the talks were held under a constructive atmosphere, discussions have been difficult and we have not yet been able to identify any solution.'
Meanwhile, EU boats will be banned from fishing in UK waters if Britain leaves without a deal under a new law to be laid before Parliament today.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove will say boats which want to fish off the UK coast will need a licence from the Government.
MPs were warned last night they may lose their Easter holiday to push through Brexit legislation. It was the clearest hint yet that Brexit is set to be delayed.
Mr Gove warned MPs that votes on vital Brexit legislation could be held during Easter.
The prospect of a super-soft Brexit increased last night after Jeremy Corbyn held talks with Tory supporters of a Norway-style deal with the EU.
Norway's arrangement with the EU forces it to accept the free movement of people ruled out by Labour's 2017 manifesto.
But in a surprise move, the Labour leader discussed the idea with a cross-party group of MPs calling for the softest possible Brexit.
In a separate development last night, the House of Lords voted for plans that would force Theresa May to seek a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit.
The moves underline fears at the top of Government that Parliament will seize control of the Brexit process if Mrs May's deal is rejected for a second time on March 12.
Chief Whip Julian Smith warned the Cabinet on Tuesday that Parliament would 'try to force the Government into a customs union' if the deal is defeated next week. Mrs May is considering a public warning on the issue tomorrow in the hope of pressuring MPs into supporting her proposals.
A Whitehall source said the PM could make a major speech 'framing next week as the moment of decision for the country'.
MPs from across parties have been mooting the idea of a plan based on an enhanced version of the relationship Norway has with the EU.
It would effectively keep the UK in the single market, with a customs bolt-on to avoid a hard Irish border, and backers say it would keep Britain close to the EU while cutting contributions to Brussels.
However, critics say it has the drawbacks of keeping free movement, - and tightly limiting the possibilities for doing trade deals elsewhere.
The EU is also thought to have concerns about a country the UK's size joining the EEA, while other states in the group might be resistant.
Yesterday's talks involved Mr Corbyn, Tory ex-ministers Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles and Labour backers of the Norway plan, Stephen Kinnock and Lucy Powell.
Mr Kinnock said the meeting involved talks about a Norway-style deal, adding: 'There is a strong cross-party consensus for a pragmatic, bridge-building Brexit.'
Sir Oliver, working with Labour's Yvette Cooper, is leading a push for Parliament to take control of the Brexit process.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said last night it was 'astonishing' that senior Conservatives were willing to work with Labour's hard-Left leader on plans that would undermine Government policy.
Last night, peers backed an amendment to the Customs Bill by a majority of 66 that would require Mrs May to seek a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit. An alliance of Labour, Lib Dem, cross bench and some Tory peers defeated the Government by 207 votes to 141.
Labour's trade spokesman in the Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, said: 'Ministers must drop their red lines on Brexit and embark on a fresh approach to the negotiations with the EU based around a Customs Union that protects jobs, secures opportunities for our industries, and removes the need for a hard border in Ireland.'
Ministers had been resigned to losing last night's vote, but No10 indicated it would seek to overturn the demand in the Commons, where MPs have already voted twice to reject a permanent customs union.
Mrs May's spokesman said: 'The PM has been clear about the importance of the UK being able to have its own trade policy.'
Norway is not in the customs union but is a member of the EU's single market, and has to accept free movement, pay into the EU budget and accept EU laws. Senior Tories warn that making the UK a rule-taker undermines the idea that the UK is taking back control from the EU. 
A no-deal Brexit could cause a sharp rise in unemployment in Northern Ireland, the head of the civil service said.
Inability to prepare, EU tariffs and significant changes to exports could cause business distress, failure or the relocation of some companies to the Republic, a report from David Sterling said.
The UK will leave the EU without a deal later this month unless MPs support the Prime Minister's deal or Britain secures an extension from the EU.
Mr Sterling said: 'The consequences of material business failure as a result of a 'no-deal' exit, combined with changes to everyday life and potential border frictions could well have a profound and long-lasting impact on society.
'The planning assumptions include the possibility that, in some scenarios, a no-deal exit could result in additional challenges for the police if the approach appeared to be unfair or unreasonable for some of those most affected.'
Just over six months ago, the country was left in chaos after David Cameron resigned as prime minister. Nobody knew what would follow.
There were fears Britain would drift dangerously. We heard talk of economic Armageddon.
This was because the Government (consisting almost wholly of Remainers) did not expect the referendum result, and because Leavers concentrated on winning the vote and didn’t spell out detailed plans in the case of a Brexit victory.
Such was the context for the sudden, swift and largely unexpected emergence of Theresa May as a steadying prime minister, chosen over more obviously brilliant figures, such as Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
Yesterday’s speech showed why the Tories were wise to turn to unflappable Mrs May.
Sane and solid, her speech set out a clear-sighted vision for Brexit. It was the best conceivable answer to critics and gives her the springboard to call a general election on this titanic issue.
Indeed, I hope the arrogant and self-important Sir Ivan Roberts, who resigned earlier this month as UK ambassador to Brussels after rebuking the May government for ‘muddled thinking’, is now hanging his head in shame.
There was nothing muddled about Mrs May yesterday. She was clear as a bell.
Now, bitter Remainers such as Nick Clegg, who gloatingly described Sir Ivan’s departure as a ‘body blow to Brexit plans’, will have to find another line of attack.
Like all good prime ministers, Mrs May listened before she spoke. She has lent an ear to other European leaders, to the City of London, to big business and to the British people. Indeed, there was something in her speech for everyone.
But she was not only conciliatory. She did not shy away from hard decisions. 
Above all, there is now no doubt over what Mrs May famously declared when she became Prime Minister — to implement Brexit.
Britain will leave the single market and search for a free trade agreement with the EU. And if we can’t get that on reasonable terms, it’s not the end of the world.
Most categorically, Mrs May made it plain that she is fully prepared to walk out of talks altogether, insisting: ‘No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.’
If EU leaders won’t agree a fair trade deal with us, she’s ready to sign up to the low-tariff rules of the World Trade Organisation — with the UK paying levies on exports to the EU, but at low, so-called ‘most favoured nation’ rates.
This tough-minded, unsentimental approach shows that Mrs May has learnt the lesson of the naive Mr Cameron’s failed negotiation attempts last year.
Weakly, he was not prepared to gamble — to throw his hand in and walk away. As a result, he gained no worthwhile concessions, and had nothing to offer voters come referendum day.
This was not, however, a faultless speech from Mrs May. I was disappointed that there was no mention of the need to rescue the embattled British fishing industry, which has lost so much to EU rivals ever since being betrayed by Prime Minister Edward Heath’s decision to take Britain into the then Common Market in the early Seventies.
Also, she could have gained the moral high ground if she’d done more to emphasise that European citizens already living in Britain will not be affected when we leave the EU.
It would have put huge pressure on the EU nations to respond in kind as far as British citizens living in their countries are concerned.
A nother criticism is that such an epoch-making speech should have been delivered in the House of Commons, rather than to a desultory gaggle of journalists and foreign diplomats.
As the British people voted for Brexit, the route-map for deliverance should have been spread out in the cockpit of democracy.
Mrs May has also left one vital matter unresolved: what happens if the Commons and Lords — who she conceded should be allowed to vote on the Brexit deal — reject it in two years’ time?
If Parliament blocked her proposals, she would almost certainly call a general election.
But why wait for that possible eventuality? Now is the perfect moment to seize the initiative.
With such a clear and responsible vision, Mrs May ought to use it to go to the country and ask for a mandate to implement that policy.
A victory for Mrs May in an April general election — which she’d undoubtedly achieve with a thumping majority — would not only make her position stronger within Westminster, but also give more fire-power to her negotiations abroad.
Truly, a great fight lies ahead.
Mrs May faces fierce opposition in Europe. Her own civil servants are mutinous and many diplomats are in denial. A cross-party coalition of Clegg, George Osborne and Peter Mandelson is plotting. Teamed up with big business and a recalcitrant House of Lords, it’s clear the British Establishment is out on manoeuvres.
In March, the Prime Minister will trigger Article 50 — firing the starting gun for Brexit negotiations.
Now that Theresa May has set out her vision for Brexit, she should put it to the British people for approval in a general election.
She may come to bitterly regret it if she does not.
Dominic Cummings, who is today installed in Downing Street as arguably the second most powerful man in Britain, first came to public attention when played by Benedict Cumberbatch in Channel 4's Brexit: The Uncivil War.
The drama told the behind-the-scenes story of Vote Leave's successful campaign in the 2016 EU referendum.
Cumberbatch interpreted Cummings, the campaign director, as a sinister anti-hero and eminence grise controlling events.
Boris Johnson, officially the leader of Vote Leave, was given little more than a walk-on role, portrayed as a slightly bumbling idiot figure who travelled the country to address public meetings according to a script written for him by the much more committed Cummings.
Johnson the monkey. Cummings the organ grinder. 
Three years later, and life is copying art. With one crucial difference. Cummings is no longer in the shadows, operating behind the scenes — this Svengali is out in the open.
Indeed, he seems to relish being seen in public, striding ostentatiously into Downing Street every morning.
Now, we are all familiar with his shaven head, scruffy T-shirts, crumpled appearance and contemptuous and appraising eyes, his newspapers and bundles of documents carried in a Vote Leave bag.
According to some papers, and many ministers and civil servants I have spoken to recently, this is the man who is truly running Britain. It's Cummings who oversees the No 10 grid which controls the timing of announcements and public events.
It's in this capacity that he dispatches the PM up and down Britain, photographed in hospitals, sharing selfies with nurses, and on construction sites wearing a hard hat. It is also Cummings, not Johnson, who determines political strategy — hence the huge public spending announcements on health, extra police and other issues.
Indeed, it looks very much as if Johnson has become the public face of Cummings.
And this, I am afraid, is profoundly disturbing. No one ever voted for Cummings, he has little experience of life outside politicking yet he has been given unprecedented power at a moment of immense crisis in the national fortunes.
Within hours of Johnson becoming Tory leader two weeks ago, newly anointed special adviser Cummings called 'his' staff together in the magnificent Downing Street first-floor state room.
He told them that he plans to deliver Brexit 'by any means necessary'.
It is a phrase that could not be more chilling, given that it was coined in the Sixties by extremist black rights activist Malcolm X when he rejected the peaceful approach of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
Cummings's use of this dangerous and inflammatory language was, in my view, not accidental. He used the term no fewer than six times in his speech that day.
Unlike Malcolm X, Cummings was not advocating violence, but there's certainly a touch of gangsterism about his reported threat to advisers who talk to journalists.
At a 7.55am meeting on Monday, he apparently told them they would be sacked without any right of appeal if they leaked information that damages the Government's Brexit policy.
He would, he said, be able to persuade journalists to reveal their sources. 'My worth to journalists is far greater than yours . . . they will rat you out. You have no rights,' he added.
And Cummings is certainly advocating ripping up the metaphorical rule book of the British state as it has existed for centuries. This became crystal clear over the weekend in the wake of a No 10 briefing in which Cummings told colleagues Johnson plans to stay in office even if he is voted out and defeated in a Commons confidence motion.
A Prime Minister would normally quit within minutes of such a humiliation. It goes without saying that such conduct would be a two- fingered salute to our entire system of government.
Experts say it could at once drag the Queen into politics because ultimately it would be her constitutional duty to order Johnson to step down.
But smashing the status quo is what Cummings is all about. He is, in truth, a far more revolutionary figure even than Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
This is a man who is utterly disdainful of the conventions of British public life.
He despises our tried and tested system of representative democracy, so much so that he was found in contempt of Parliament after refusing to appear in front of MPs on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee who were investigating fake news during the Referendum campaign. (He said he offered to appear, but was rebuffed.)
Cummings is known for his loathing of the Civil Service. He has also been accused of telling lies to advance his political project. For example, the now infamous '£350 million for the NHS' slogan on the side of the Vote Leave bus is believed by many to have been his handiwork.
Those who support him say this revolutionary approach is justified because Brexit cannot be delivered in any other way. Conventional means were tried and failed during Theresa May's three-year premiership.
I disagree. Margaret Thatcher, the most radical Tory leader of the past century, was always respectful of Parliament, the Civil Service and the Monarchy.
Certainly, she used advisers. But she never became their creature, or as dependent on them as Johnson, to his shame, appears to be on Cummings.
The same applies to Winston Churchill, upon whom Johnson appears to model himself. Churchill was his own man. He had no need of an adviser to dictate to him what he thought and did.
There is no constitutional outrage in Johnson doing and saying what he is told to do by Cummings. That's a matter for him, even if it is embarrassing and undignified.
But what a bitter irony that Brexit — which was supposed to 'take back control' — has ended up with Government policy so much in thrall to an unelected official.
By the way, don't believe the fawning comments and profiles of Cummings by some journalists who kowtow to him because they need access and rely on his information.
Yes, he's got lots of clever theories and has run successful political campaigns, but has little experience of real life.
He's the supreme example of the type of nerdy political obsessives who have done so much damage to British politics over the past 25 years.
Indeed, one factor worries me more than anything else. There is a precedent for the Cummings/Johnson partnership that governs Britain as Brexit looms.
Tony Blair was also a creature of his powerful adviser, Alastair Campbell. They showed equal arrogance and contempt for Parliament.
They, too, were indifferent to truth. They, too, had little integrity. The Blair/Campbell double act ended in the tragedy of the Iraq war, the unnecessary deaths of countless Iraqis, 179 brave British service personnel and ultimately the rise of Islamic State.
We can only hope that the double act of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings has a happier outcome.
The Tory Brexit civil war escalated dramatically today as former PM John Major threatened to take Boris Johnson to court if he tries to bypass Parliament.
Sir John said he would back a judicial review if Mr Johnson tried to suspend the Commons to stop it blocking No Deal at the end of October.
The grandee said there was 'no conceivable justification' for proroguing Parliament to avoid its objections. 
But allies of Mr Johnson hit back by branding Sir John's threat 'crazy'. 'The role of a former PM is largely to keep quiet,' one told MailOnline. 
Mr Johnson himself dismissed the idea that judges should decide on Brexit as 'very odd'. 
The source swiped that Sir John 'lacked awareness', claiming he is so unpopular with party activists that his interventions actually help Mr Johnson.  
The dramatic intervention came after Conservative leadership favourite Mr Johnson again refused to rule out using the extraordinary tactic to secure Brexit by his deadline.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Sir John said: 'In order to close down parliament the prime minister would have to go to her Majesty the Queen and ask for her permission to prorogue.
'If her first minister asks for that permission it is almost inconceivable that the Queen will do anything other than grant it.
Brexiteers have mooted the prospect of suspending Parliament to stop MPs preventing the UK from leaving the EU by Halloween.
The idea would mean using the PM's executive powers to bring the Commons session to a close in the run-up to Brexit, so there is no opportunity for MPs to take control of the process.
Proroguing Parliament requires royal permission, and asking the Queen would draw her into a massive political debate over Brexit.
There is the potential that MPs could force an indicative vote on proroguing - which would put her under more pressure to act.   
'She is then in the midst of a constitutional controversy that no serious politician should put the Queen in the middle of.
'If that were to happen there would be a queue of people who would seek judicial review. I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review.'
He added: 'The Queen's decision cannot be challenged in law, but the PM's advice to the Queen can be challenged.' 
Sir John was challenged over the timing of his decision to close down Parliament ahead of the 1997 general election, which stopped a report on the cash for questions scandal being considered.
But he branded the comparison 'absurd' saying the government 'carried the election until almost the very last date'. 
But a senior ally of Mr Johnson told MailOnline: 'It is a shame that he keeps intervening... There is a lack of awareness.'
On the idea of a judicial review, the source added: 'It is crazy.' 
On a campaign visit to a pub in London - alongside Brexiteer and JD Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin - Mr Johnson dismissed Sir John Major's comments.
Mr Johnson said: 'What we are going to do is deliver Brexit on October 31, which is what I think the people of this country want us to get on and do.
'I think everybody is fed up with delay and I think the idea of now consecrating this decision to the judiciary is really very, very odd indeed.
'What we want is for Parliament to take their responsibilities, get it done as they promised that they would.
'They asked the British people whether they wanted to leave in 2016, the British people returned a very clear verdict so let's get it done.'
Asked if he would resign if Brexit was not delivered by October 31, Boris Johnson said: 'I will make sure we leave on the 31st.
'I do not wish to provide any incentive to any party not to give us the deal that we want by offering the mouthwatering prospect of my resignation.
'It sounds to me like another bad negotiating technique from the other side.' 
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who supports Mr Johnson, said he did not believe Parliament would be suspended because the leadership front runner had the 'force of personality' to bring people together and reach a deal.
Mr Hancock, who opposed prorogation during his own leadership campaign, told Today: 'I do not think that it's going to happen, I understand why Boris hasn't ruled it out.
Jeremy Hunt has warned that trying to bypass Parliament over Brexit could spark 'civil war'. 
Asked during the ITV Tory leadership debate last night if he would be prepared to suspend the Commons to force No Deal in October, Mr Hunt said: 'When that has happened in the past, when Parliament has been shut down against its will, we actually had a civil war. 
'I think it would be a rather curious thing to do, if this is about taking back control for Parliament, to actually shut it down.' 
Mr Hunt challenged Mr Johnson to rule it out, but the former London mayor said: 'I'm not going to take anything off the table, any more than I'm going to take no deal off the table. 
'I think it's absolutely bizarre at this stage in the negotiations for the UK - yet again - to be weakening its own position.' 
'But ultimately when you have to choose between who is going to be the next prime minister, who you want to be the next prime minister, you have to take everything into account.
'I have chosen to back Boris because he is the best person to deliver Brexit with a deal.' 
In an ITV leadership debate last night, Jeremy Hunt warned that trying to bypass Parliament over Brexit could spark 'civil war'. 
Asked if he would be prepared to suspend the Commons to force No Deal in October, Mr Hunt said: 'When that has happened in the past, when Parliament has been shut down against its will, we actually had a civil war. 
'I think it would be a rather curious thing to do, if this is about taking back control for Parliament, to actually shut it down.' 
Mr Hunt challenged Mr Johnson to rule it out, but the former London mayor said: 'I'm not going to take anything off the table, any more than I'm going to take no deal off the table. 
'I think it's absolutely bizarre at this stage in the negotiations for the UK - yet again - to be weakening its own position.' 
 
Treachery. Betrayal. Sabotage. Nothing less than the destruction of a Prime Minister. There’s been an explosion of feverish speculation over the past 48 hours about the collapse of Theresa May’s much-vaunted Chequers deal, and whether that would spell the end of her premiership.
Add to the mix the frenzied gossip about the fall-out from Boris Johnson’s divorce and the mood in Westminster could not be more inflamed.
Time, therefore, for an attempt at a calm appraisal of the raw facts about Brexit.
Above all, the most fundamental thing to remember is that just over six months — 203 days to be exact — remain until Britain must leave the EU under the provisions of Article 50. This is the European law invoked by Mrs May to trigger the process for us to leave after 46 years as a member.
The Government is adamant that an exit deal is struck with Brussels before the leaving date of March 29 next year.
There is, however, no obligation that we exit with a deal. If ministers fail to strike an accord with the remaining 27 EU countries, Britain would trade with other countries in agriculture, textiles, banking, telecommunications etc on the basis of principles set out by the World Trade Organisation.
This is the outcome recommended by Brexiteer Tories such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson.
Mrs May, by contrast, agrees with leading business organisations and others who want Britain to trade with EU countries after Brexit based on mutually agreed terms.
Understandably, she has freftul nights over the possible consequences for British jobs and the country’s exports if there is no deal.
Hence her Chequers solution — which would allow Brussels a big say over British laws in return for British access to European markets — which was agreed with her Cabinet in July.
Whereas she sees her Chequers deal as common-sense, an increasingly large number see it as a betrayal. Much to Mrs May’s chagrin, her blueprint came under attack this week from Brexiteers and Remainers. This is why there has been such a tumult about whether her days in No 10 are numbered.
I believe that the facts point to one conclusion: that she is secure — at least for the immediate future.
Most significantly, the timetable for Brexit works against a change of prime minister.
Let me explain. First, there will be a Cabinet meeting next Thursday to discuss Brexit strategy. Mrs May will demand ironclad loyalty from her ministers.
I predict she will get it. For ministers realise what is at stake — particularly as the PM is due to meet fellow European leaders in Salzburg on September 20.
This Austrian summit offers her a vital opportunity to appeal over the heads of Brussels’ chief Brexit negotiator, the intransigent Michel Barnier and his recalcitrant colleagues.
I have been told that Mrs May calculates her proposals will meet with a far warmer reception from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other national leaders. I believe she will be proved right.
Next, the Brexit countdown will focus on British domestic politics — and the much-ballyhooed ‘challenge’ to Mrs May’s leadership of the Tory Party by Boris Johnson.
It has been widely reported that his supporters will use the Tory conference in Birmingham next month to try to engineer a revolt against the Chequers deal.
However, Tory grassroots members realise the stakes are so high that I predict they will rebuff the challenge. What’s more, I believe Mrs May will triumph and her Chequers deal with survive, albeit a little scuffed.
The fact is, she is respected by those at the heart of the Tory Party in the shires in a way that no other leader has been since Margaret Thatcher.
Party activists have genuine affection for her and see potential rivals as flash, egotistical opportunists.
After the drama of the party conference season, attention will then concentrate on the summit of European leaders on October 18.
According to the official Brexit timetable, this is when Mrs May must agree a deal which will take this country out of the EU.
However, those familiar with the protracted negotiations say that a deal is unlikely to be struck and that an emergency summit will be scheduled for November.
This would be the last possible date that a deal can be struck — because of the time-consuming ratification process which requires all 27 member states to sign up before Britain formally quits next March.
Of course, the last scene of the last act of the Brexit drama —when Mrs May takes any deal back to Westminster — will be her moment of greatest danger.
Inevitably, it will mean a confrontation not only with those still sore about Brexit, die-hard Remainers, those demanding a second referendum and a Labour Party eager to exploit her weakness, but it also risks a confrontation with Johnson, Rees-Mogg and their cabal of Tory Brexiteers.
The latter Brutuses may think this offers the chance to wield the knife. But a close study of the leadership rules of the Conservative Party shows that they would be harbouring false hopes.
The rules state that at least 48 Tory MPs — representing 15 per cent of the total number — must write letters to activate a confidence motion in Mrs May. If those 48 letters are mustered — and my soundings certainly suggest that such a target could be achieved — party rules stipulate that there would then be a confidence vote in Mrs May via a secret ballot of Tory MPs. Only if Mrs May failed to gain a majority would she have to resign.
Yet my crystal ball tells me that if there was a confidence vote, Mrs May would survive by a large margin.
Again, my reasoning is based on the strictures of the political timetable.
If Mrs May lost a confidence motion, Tory Party rules state that a leadership contest must ensue — beginning with a series of ballots in which Conservative MPs would vote for their preferred candidate.
The two candidates with most votes would then fight it out among the party rank and file on a ‘one member one vote’ basis.
Whereas a confidence vote among MPs would take a few days, this party-wide leadership contest would last up to two months.
For it would require public hustings and ballots to be posted and returned.
That is far too long a period of uncertainty at a time of what would undoubtedly be a national crisis.
During this period, a broken Mrs May would possibly remain as a stop-gap and lame duck Prime Minister — or worse, there would be a stand-in with zero authority.
What’s more, if Tory MPs ditched Mrs May, they would rightly be held in contempt by the public for dereliction of duty at the most pivotal moment in our national fortunes since World War II.
This is why I believe Mrs May will hang on until at least next spring. Indeed, much more likely than her defenestration, she will bring her Chequers deal back to Westminster for approval.
Of course, in this scenario, rebel Brexiteers could join with Labour and the SNP in voting down her deal.
If that happened, Mrs May would be obliged to resign. Then the Queen would have no choice but to ask Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Opposition, to try to form a government.
If he failed to command a Commons majority — the most likely outcome — a general election would have to be held.
No Tory, however much they may loathe the Chequers deal, would want either a Corbyn government or a third general election in three years.
Be in no doubt: we are facing a possible constitutional crisis of the kind that takes place in Britain at most once a century.
To avoid this, I expect good sense to prevail. I expect Theresa May will strike a deal with Brussels — and, if she rides her luck, should remain PM until the next general election, which is scheduled for 2022.
 
Boris Johnson laid down the gauntlet to Jeremy Corbyn and the 'Remain Alliance' today as he opted for the nuclear option of suspending Parliament in a bid to stop MPs blocking the UK leaving the EU on October 31. 
The Prime Minister caught his political opponents off-guard and stunned Westminster this morning as he said he will send MPs home for most of September and the start of October.   
Mr Johnson will then hold a Queen's Speech on October 14 setting out his government's legislative agenda just two weeks before the UK is due to split from Brussels.
The move will dramatically reduce the amount of time available to Europhile MPs who want to pass a new law which would force Mr Johnson to ask the EU to delay Brexit if the UK is on course for a No Deal split on Halloween.
The decision to prorogue Parliament has massively upped the stakes in the battle over Brexit and represents a major gamble for Mr Johnson who is effectively daring his opponents to try to oust him next week and bring about a snap general election. 
Senior Remain-backing MPs yesterday agreed to prioritise the passage of anti-No Deal legislation over a potential vote of no confidence as they try to prevent a bad break from Brussels. 
But Mr Johnson's decision to significantly reduce the amount of time available for such a law to be passed means MPs may now be forced to swing in behind a vote to topple the PM when they return from their summer break next week. 
However, Downing Street is bullish about the chances of defeating a vote of no confidence, with officials deeply sceptical about Mr Corbyn's ability to persuade a majority of MPs to back the move. 
Meanwhile, it is thought Mr Johnson could simply choose to ignore a successful vote of no confidence. 
Convention dictates that a defeated PM should resign but sources said today that Mr Johnson could refuse to quit, dissolve Parliament and then call an election himself.  
His decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks has sparked a political firestorm as opposition MPs and Tory rebels claimed Mr Johnson was behaving like a 'tin pot dictator'. 
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, accused the PM of launching a 'smash and grab against our democracy' and he has written to the Queen to express his concern and to demand a meeting with the monarch. 
However, the Prime Minister defended his decision as he said MPs would still have 'ample time' to debate Brexit in the run up to the existing October 31 deadline.  
Mr Johnson spoke to the Queen this morning to secure her permission to prorogue Parliament at some point during the week beginning September 9, with the order formally approved this afternoon. 
On a dramatic day in Westminster: 
The Prime Minister has repeatedly committed to delivering Brexit by October 31 with or without a deal and 'do or die'. 
This morning he insisted the idea that he was suspending Parliament in order to stop MPs thwarting No Deal was 'completely untrue'. 
He told Sky News: 'As I said on the steps of Downing Street we are not going to wait until October 31 before getting on with our plans to take this country forward and this is a new government with a very exciting agenda to make our streets safer… we need to invest in our fantastic NHS. 
'We need to level up education funding across the country, we need to invest in the infrastructure that is going to take this country forward for decades and we need to deal with the cost of living, moving to a high wage, high productivity economy which is what I think this country needs to be.
'To do that we need new legislation. We have got to be bringing forward new and important bills and that is why we are going to have a Queen's Speech and we are going to do it on October 14. We have got to move ahead now with a new legislative programme.'
Here are the key dates in the countdown to October 31, when the UK is due to leave the European Union with or without a deal.
September 3: MPs return to the House of Commons for first session after summer recess.
September 4: Chancellor Sajid Javid due to make Commons statement on Government spending in 2020/21.
September 9: Parliament likely to begin process for prorogation.
September 10: Parliament likely to be prorogued until October 14.
September 14: Liberal Democrat party conference begins in Bournemouth. Jo Swinson likely to give speech on September 17.
September 21: Labour party conference begins in Brighton. Jeremy Corbyn likely to give speech on September 25.
September 29: Conservative party conference begins in Manchester. Boris Johnson likely to give speech on October 2.
October 14: State Opening of Parliament, including Queen's Speech.
October 21/22: Parliament likely to hold series of votes on Queen's Speech.
October 31: UK due to leave EU.
Mr Johnson said MPs would still have plenty of opportunities to have their say on the UK's departure from the bloc. 
'There will be ample time both sides of that crucial October 17 summit, ample time, in Parliament for MPs top debate the EU, to debate Brexit and all the other issues,' he said. 
The October 17 date refers to a scheduled meeting of the European Council in Brussels - the last one before the Brexit deadline. 
That meeting is shaping up to be a make or break moment for Britain and the bloc because it will likely represent the last chance for a new deal to be agreed. 
Mr Johnson is in the process of trying to persuade the EU to delete the Irish border backstop from the existing agreement in order to make it more palatable to MPs.
The PM outlined his decision to suspend Parliament in a letter sent to MPs this morning. 
In the letter he said: 'This morning I spoke to Her Majesty The Queen to request an end to the current parliamentary session in the second sitting week in September, before commencing the second session of this Parliament with a Queen's speech on Monday 14 October. 
'A central feature of the legislative programme will be the Government's number one legislative priority, if a new deal is forthcoming at EU Council, to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill and move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October.'   
Mr Johnson said the weeks leading up to the European Council would be 'vitally important for the sake of my negotiations with the EU' in a sign that he does not want MPs to do anything to derail his hopes of striking an agreement.
He believes the option of a No Deal split is important negotiating leverage. 
'Member States are watching what Parliament does with great interest and it is only by showing unity and resolve that we stand a chance of securing a new deal that can be passed by Parliament,' he said. 
'In the meantime, the Government will take the responsible approach of continuing its preparations for leaving the EU, with or without a deal.' 
Mr Johnson also stressed in his letter that MPs will have the chance to vote on the government's approach to Brexit after the EU Council meeting. 
'Should I succeed in agreeing a deal with the EU, Parliament will then have the opportunity to pass the Bill required for ratification of the deal ahead of 31 October,; he said.   
House of Commons Speaker John Bercow has criticised Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament. 
Mr Bercow said the move was 'an offence against the democratic process'.
His intervention represents a significant development because he will play a major role in the coming days if and when Remain-backing MPs try to seize control of the Commons to pass an anti-No Deal law. 
Mr Bercow will likely have to agree to bend parliamentary rules to allow such a development. 
He said: 'I have had no contact from the Government, but if the reports that it is seeking to prorogue Parliament are confirmed, this move represents a constitutional outrage.
'However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of prorogation now would be to stop Parliament debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country. 
'At this time, one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history, it is vital that our elected Parliament has its say. After all, we live in a parliamentary democracy.
'Shutting down Parliament would be an offence against the democratic process and the rights of Parliamentarians as the people's elected representatives.'  
Bookmakers responded to the news by slashing the odds of a No Deal Brexit. Betfair put the odds of No Deal split at 5/4 - the shortest odds ever.
Despite Mr Johnson's protestations to the contrary, opposition MPs and Tory rebels responded with fury to the move and accused him of trying to sideline the Commons. 
Mr Corbyn accused the PM of launching a 'smash and grab against our democracy'. 
He said: 'I am appalled at the recklessness of Johnson's government, which talks about sovereignty and yet is seeking to suspend parliament to avoid scrutiny of its plans for a reckless No Deal Brexit. This is an outrage and a threat to our democracy.
'That is why Labour has been working across Parliament to hold this reckless government to account, and prevent a disastrous No Deal which parliament has already ruled out.
'If Johnson has confidence in his plans he should put them to the people in a general election or public vote.'
The Labour leader has written to the Queen to express his concern and to ask for a meeting with the monarch. 
Mr Corbyn today did not commit to calling a vote of no confidence in the government next week as he said he could call one 'at some point'. 
But the prospect of such a vote taking place before MPs are sent home now looks increasingly likely. 
The chances of it succeeding are also growing after a number of Tory Remain-backing MPs expressed their disgust at Mr Johnson. 
Dominic Grieve, the Tory former attorney general who has previously been involved in efforts to stop a bad break from Brussels, said: 'I think [a no confidence vote] is more likely, because if it is impossible to prevent prorogation, then I think it's going to be very difficult for people like myself to keep confidence in the government, and I could well see why the leader of the opposition might wish to table a motion for a vote of no confidence.'
Philip Hammond, the Tory former chancellor, echoed a similar sentiment as he said: 'It would be a constitutional outrage if Parliament were prevented from holding the government to account at a time of national crisis. Profoundly undemocratic.'    
The Prime Minister detailed his decision to suspend Parliament in a television interview this morning. 
Here is what he said in full:  
'As I said on the steps of Downing Street, we are not going to wait until October 31 before getting on with our plans to take this country forward.
'And this is a new Government with a very exciting agenda to make our streets safer - it's very important we bring violent crime down;we need to invest in our fantastic NHS; we need to level up education funding across the country; we need to invest in the infrastructure that's going to take this country forward for decades; and we need to deal with the cost of living, moving to a high-wage, high-productivity economy, which is, I think, what this country needs to be.
'And to do that, we need new legislation, we've got to be bringing forward new and important Bills, and that's why we are going to have a Queen's Speech and we're going to do it on October 14 and we've got to move ahead now with a new legislative programme.'
When it was put to Mr Johnson that his critics will say proroguing Parliament is an insult to democracy and a way to deny MPs' time to stop a chaotic split from the EU on October 31, the Prime Minister said: 'That is completely untrue. If you look at what we're doing, we're bringing forward a new legislative programme on crime, on hospitals, and making sure that we have the education funding that we need.
'And there will be ample time on both sides of that crucial October 17 summit, ample time in Parliament for MPs to debate the EU, to debate Brexit, and all the other issues. Ample time.'
Asked whether he was planning a general election before the end of the year, Mr Johnson said: 'No. What you should take from this is we're doing exactly what I said on the steps of Downing Street, which is that we must get on now with our legislative domestic agenda.
'People will expect... I need to... we need to get on with the stuff that Parliament needs to approve on tackling crime, on building the infrastructure we need, on technology, on levelling up our education, and reducing the cost of living.
'That is why we need a Queen's Speech, and we're going to get on with it.'
Asked what he would say to members of the public who may be concerned, the PM said: 'We need to get on with our domestic agenda and that's why we're announcing a Queen's Speech for October 14.'
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson called it an 'utterly scandalous affront to our democracy' and said: 'We must not let this happen'.  
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: 'So it seems Boris Johnson may actually be about to shut down Parliament to force through a No Deal Brexit. 
'Unless MPs come together to stop him next week, today will go down in history as a dark one indeed for UK democracy.' 
Labour's Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, compared Mr Johnson to King Charles I, whose defiance of Parliament ended in a war and the King's execution in 1649. 
'A constitutional outrage plain and simple, Charles I did this regularly which caused chaos, now an unelected PM seeking to shut parliament down for his own political gain, this isn't taking back democracy this is destroying democracy,' she said. 
Fellow Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Yvette Cooper tweeted: 'Boris Johnson is trying to use the Queen to concentrate power in his own hands - this is a deeply dangerous and irresponsible way to govern.'
Green MP Caroline Lucas said on Twitter: 'Wasn't this meant to be about 'taking back control'?
'The act of a cowardly Prime Minister who knows his reckless No Deal Brexit will never gain the support of MPs. A constitutional outrage which Parliament and the people will oppose.' 
Independent Group for Change MP Chris Leslie said: 'If true, this undemocratic manoeuvre to try and shut down Parliament must be fought every step of the way.
'How totally underhanded of Boris Johnson to make the Queen sign off on this plot it in a secret ceremony up in Balmoral. The House of Commons must assemble and veto this.' 
Lib Dem and former Tory MP Sarah Wollaston said Mr Johnson was 'behaving like a tin pot dictator'. 
'Time for ministers to resign & Conservative MPs to cross the floor rather than be tainted with this outrage,' she said. 
Labour shadow minister Clive Lewis said MPs would refuse to leave the Commons if and when Mr Johnson tries to shut Parliament's doors. 
He said: 'If Boris shuts down Parliament to carry out his No-Deal Brexit, I and other MPs will defend democracy. 
'The police will have to remove us from the chamber. We will call on people to take to the streets. We will call an extraordinary session of Parliament.'
MPs yesterday committed to setting up a 'People's Parliament' in a building a stone's throw away from the Palace of Westminster in the event of prorogation. 
However, a Number 10 source told BBC News that 'this is about the NHS and violent crime, not Brexit, and the courts have no locus to interfere in a bog standard Queen's Speech process'. 
Downing Street dismissed accusations of chicanery by pointing out that under Mr Johnson's plan MPs would sit for just a handful of days fewer than they would have done anyway because of the scheduled break for party conferences to be held at the end of September. 
A Whitehall source told MailOnline a new Queen's Speech was needed because the government had simply run out of domestic laws to pursue.  
The source said: 'We have gone through the bottom of the barrel. We need to put some more stuff in there.' 
Tory Party chairman James Cleverly mocked claims that Mr Johnson was trying to stop MPs blocking a No Deal split. 
He tweeted: 'Or to put it another way: Government to hold a Queen's Speech, just as all new Governments do.' 
Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party, said proroguing Parliament 'makes a confidence motion now certain, a general election more likely and is seen as a positive move by Brexiteers'.  
Opposition leaders' plan to seize control of the House of Commons to pass an anti-No Deal law is likely to be reliant on John Bercow to get off the ground. 
Convention dictates that it is the government of the day which sets the agenda in the Commons. 
So if the Remainers are to kickstart their plan they will need the Commons Speaker to bend or break the rules. 
Their plan is likely to then begin with a simple vote on whether there is a majority of MPs in favour of backbenchers taking control of the order paper. 
Assuming there is, MPs will then agree a date in the diary when they will be able to present, debate and vote on draft legislation designed to stop Boris Johnson from taking the UK out of the EU without an agreement. 
The government will fiercely contest such a move but with Mr Johnson's majority now at just one, it will only take a small rebellion by Tory Europhile MPs to allow the plan to proceed. 
Should the bid to pass a law actually come to fruition the question will then be whether the PM will take any notice of it. 
It has been suggested in the past that he could simply ignore such a move. 
But if he did he would risk triggering an unprecedented constitutional crisis. 
The current Parliamentary session, which started in June 2017, is the longest in British history.
However, the move to bring it to an end has been received by critics as nothing less than an attempt to stop MPs having a meaningful role in the Brexit process. 
Just yesterday, cross-party talks led by Mr Corbyn ended in a commitment from the leaders of six parties to try to stop a No Deal Brexit by seizing control of the Commons and passing new legislation which would force Mr Johnson to seek an extension from the EU.  
The option of a no confidence vote was put on the back burner.  
But MPs cannot pass legislation if Parliament is not sitting and Mr Johnson's decision means they will have less time than anticipated to try to take control. 
Under the previous Parliamentary timetable, Commons business would have broken off for the party conference season in the middle of September before restarting at the start of October. 
Now, time will be much tighter not only because of the additional time MPs will be away from Westminster but also because the Queen's Speech will dominate proceedings when they return on October 14.  
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Commons Leader, flew to Balmoral in Scotland today to present the plan to the Queen in person. 
The Privy Council - effectively a committee with a large membership of senior MPs and peers who take it in turns to attend - then formally approved the prorogation order this afternoon.
The Parliamentary session will now be prorogued just a few days after MPs return from their summer recess next week. 
The shortened timetable means MPs could now move away from the idea of passing legislation and instead swing behind the option of a vote of no confidence which convention dictates would have to be called for by Mr Corbyn. 
A successful vote of no confidence could then lead to an early election, potentially in November. 
Craig Oliver, who was Downing Street Director of Communications under David Cameron, tweeted: 'I suspect Number 10 believes it has created a win win scenario with this explosive announcement. 
The current session of Parliament has been the longest in the history of the United Kingdom.
It formally began on June 21, 2017 with the State Opening, including the Queen's Speech.
A total of 798 days have since passed, making this the longest continuous parliamentary session since the UK was established by the Acts of Union in 1800.
The previous record-holder was the session of 2010-12, which lasted 707 calendar days from the State Opening on May 25, 2010 to prorogation on May 1, 2012.
In joint third place are the sessions that ran from April 1966 to October 1967 and from May 1997 to November 1998 - both of which followed Labour election victories and lasted 554 days. 
Parliament is typically prorogued once a year, followed shortly afterwards by another State Opening and Queen's Speech.
But in 2017, the Government announced the current session was to last two years to pass the key legislation needed to allow the UK's departure from the European Union.
'Yes - and they get Brexit by October 31st; No - and they get to fight a 'people versus parliament' general election.'
In normal circumstances a prime minister who loses a vote of no confidence would resign. 
But a senior official said this morning that Mr Johnson would likely try to disregard the vote and call an election. 
The official told the Financial Times: 'If MPs pass a no confidence vote next week then we won’t resign. 
'We won’t recommend another government, we’ll dissolve parliament, call an election between November 1-5 and there’ll be zero chance of Grieve legislation.'  
Mr Corbyn's plan to stop No Deal was to call a no confidence vote, topple Mr Johnson, become caretaker PM, ask the EU for a Brexit delay and then call a snap election. 
But many opposition MPs are against the idea of putting Mr Corbyn in Number 10 even if it is just for a limited amount of time. 
Other opposition figures had called for a compromise candidate who would be more likely to command a cross-party Commons majority as an interim prime minister. 
But Mr Corbyn has remained adamant that it should be him who tries to form a new administration. 
That led to yesterday's commitment by opposition leaders following a summit convened by Mr Corbyn to pursue a legislative route to stopping No Deal instead. 
The summit was attended by Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Independent Group for Change leader Anna Soubry, Plaid Cymru leader Liz Saville Roberts and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. 
Last night, Mr Corbyn wrote an extraordinary plea to dozens of Tory MPs urging them to defy Mr Johnson. 
His letter – to 116 Tory and independent MPs, including Theresa May and Philip Hammond – asked them to support efforts to block a No Deal Brexit.  
The plan to take control of the House of Commons would likely need help from Mr Bercow in order for it to get off the ground.  
If MPs do stick to their plan to try to pass a law blocking No Deal, they will need to find a way of forcing a vote on giving them control of the Commons agenda and that will probably require Mr Bercow to depart from convention to make it happen. 
Once a way is found to show there is a majority in favour of such a move, MPs will then set aside time in the diary for them to debate and vote on an anti-No Deal law. 
In order to secure such a majority, a number of Tory MPs will have to break ranks and vote with the opposition and Mr Corbyn wrote to them yesterday afternoon to ask for their assistance. 
MPs did previously force through the so-called Cooper-Letwin bill in April which forced then-PM Theresa May to seek an extension. 
That passed by just one vote.  
Allies of Mr Johnson hit out at the opposition leaders, claiming they would 'sabotage' the chances of progress on a Brexit deal.
A Number 10 source said: 'We are now making progress because our European partners realise we are serious about leaving the EU on October 31 - no ifs, no buts.
'It's utterly perverse that Corbyn and his allies are actively seeking to sabotage the UK's position.  
Talk of an early election has intensified after Chancellor Sajid Javid's spending announcement was brought forward to next week.  
The statement on September 4 will deliver extra funding for 'people's priorities' including schools, hospitals and the police, Mr Javid said. 
Mr Javid asked for a 12-month spending round instead of a longer-term exercise as a way of 'clearing the decks to allow us to focus on Brexit'. 
But Labour dismissed the announcement as a 'pre-election stunt' and claimed the Government was in a state of panic. 
Mr Farage yesterday urged Mr Johnson to take Britain out of the EU without an agreement. 
Saying he would work with the Tories if they delivered a No Deal Brexit Mr Farage said: 'A Johnson government committed to doing the right thing and the Brexit Party working in tandem would be unstoppable.' 
But he also unveiled a 635-strong army of Brexit Party MP candidates as he warned Mr Johnson not to 'sell out' Leave voters. 
'If, Mr Johnson, you insist on the Withdrawal Agreement, we will fight you for every single seat' at a general election, Mr Farage warned, setting up a possible showdown on two fronts for the PM. 
Marks & Spencer's could face 'massive gaps' on the shelves after it claimed it was likely to drop and not raise prices in the face of the pound's plunge.
The retailer is facing a backlash from small suppliers after its new boss Steve Rowe promised to protect shoppers from the slump in sterling.
It comes as households are warned by Brexit doom-mongers of massive price hikes in electrical goods, with the cost of energy and fuel also expected to rocket. 
UK electrical giants such as John Lewis are preparing to dramatically increase prices, which it claims is to offset higher import costs.
The industry is among the hardest-hit following the drop in sterling as much of the stock is imported, with tech giants such as Samsung being based in South Korea.
However companies have been accused of 'Brexit profiteering' by attempting to increase prices drastically, with American brand Apple among those to come under fire.
The company's latest range of notebooks were announced last month, with the cheapest option coming in at £1,449 in Britain and $1,499 in the US.
The pricing means customers in the UK will pay £218 more than their American counterparts after converting the two currencies. 

John Lewis had warned following June's Brexit vote that the drop in sterling may 'feed through' to its prices of household items such as televisions and washing machines.
Electrical website AO said prices may go up by between four and six per cent next year, while Dixons Carphone is also thought to be considering hikes.
Petrol prices are also set to rise after campaign group FairFuelUK claimed suppliers are failing to pass on a wholesale price drop estimated at £80million a week.
While the cost of a litre of unleaded fuel has dropped by 5.8p, prices have risen by 3.5p to £1.20.
Electricity bills in the UK will not fare any better, according to analysts, with wholesale prices set to rocket after a combination of freak events abroad.
Twenty of French energy giant EDF's nuclear reactors were shut down over safety concerns, while similar closures in Belgium have aided disruption.
With Norway and Sweden experiencing issues with energy production, prices at which companies are buying their power have gone skyward.
Prices are not expected to go up at high street retailer M&S, however, which claimed it was actually more likely to cut the damage to customer's pockets.
M&S boss Steve Rowe claimed it would offset the damage by 'optimisation of our supply base' and by selling in larger volumes, a strategy described as 'rubbish' by one supplier.
Writing to the Sunday Times, the supplier, who provides 'over a dozen' products to the retailer, said: 'By taking this position he has, he forces us, and probably others, to cease supplying M&S.
'So at a time when he is looking to develop his food offering, he will be left with massive gaps on his shelves.'
The dispute is the latest in a long line of breakdowns between retailers and suppliers after the country voted as a whole to leave the European Union on June 23.
Among the most high profile fall-outs came after Tesco was asked to stomach a 10 per cent hike in the price of Marmite by Unilever, which tried to blame the move on Brexit.
But Marmite is made in the UK and the row, which was resolved within a day, became one of the most controversial since the decision to leave the EU.
Unilever, which is behind a host of household brands, has since warned that the prices of products will rise as a result of the collapse in sterling.
Last month the boss of Typhoo Tea claimed the cost of a cuppa was set to rise as a result of the supposedly ‘disastrous’ consequences of Brexit.
The announcement by the company’s chief executive, Somnath Saha, followed other price hikes introduced by firms such as Apple.
Mr Saha said the cost of importing an 80 kilo bag of tea had soared by 50 per cent – from £100 up to £150 since the beginning of the year.
But the economy has so far confounded the doom-mongers, despite former Chancellor George's Osborne claiming Brexit would spark an 'immediate' recession.
Official figures last month showed economic growth hitting a respectable 0.5 per cent in the third quarter of this year, leaving the UK on track to be the fastest growing economy in the G7.
Other experts, including the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund, have also been forced to upgrade their economic forecasts for next year after being proved wrong.
Meanwhile, a study published last week said there was a 40 per cent chance that Britain will achieve a budget surplus by 2020.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was branded 'pretty weird' tonight and warned to brush up on history after he claimed British war veterans fought for Europe.
Brexiteers said the Taoiseach was 'talking rubbish' at the European Parliament today as he made a bizarre plea for Britain to change its mind on Brexit.
He reeled off a long list of people he insisted will suffer from Britain quitting the Brussels club - including businesses and students.
And he singled out Second World War heroes saying they had 'fought on the beaches of France' not just for Britain but to protect and further 'European values'. 
The remarks were warmly welcomed in Brussels but were mocked in Britain by Tory MP James Gray - who has served in the Territorial Army - who pointed out that D-Day happened in 1944, before the EU 'was a twinkle in anyone's eye'. 
And Tory darling Jacob Rees-Mogg told MailOnline the Irish Prime Minister should spend some time reflecting on Ireland's 'undistinguished' war time record.
Mr Varadkar, a vocal critic of Brexit, told MEPs that 'I really regret the decision on Brexit, because so much will be lost'.
He added: 'Young people will lose their right to live, work and study anywhere in the European Union - losing those rights as European citizens.
'My niece and nephew wont because they are entitled to Irish passports, but other kids in their class will and I think that's a real shame.' 

'British businesses could lose their access to the biggest market in the world, farmers, food producers, even the beer makers that you and I are so fond of, could lose the subsidies they currently benefit from which are not guaranteed beyond this Parliament. 

'And also I'm conscious of British veterans, very brave people, who fought on the beaches of France not just for Britain but also for European democracy and for European values - and people like that are always on my mind.' 
But Mr Gray, MP for North Wiltshire, told Mail Online the comments are 'pretty weird' because the fight against Hitler was nothing to do with the EU project.
He said: 'If he was talking about D Day it's patently obvious that the troops were of course not fighting for the EU because it didn't exist at the time.
'I just think it's wrong, he is talking a lot of rubbish isn't he?
'I have met a great many of veterans of the Second World War in my time and I've never met one who thought they were fighting for the European Union.
'And if that is what the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland thinks then he doesn't know what he is talking about.
'The EU wasn't even a twinkle in anyone's eye at that time.
'Charles de Gaulle of course went to lengths to ensure that Britain didn't form part of any link at all.' 
Mr Rees-Mogg said: 'Mr Varadkar forgets that Ireland was neutral during the war which implies it had no interest in Europe and Eamon de Valera (the former Irish PM) signed a book of condolence at the German Embassy in Dublin on the death of Hitler.
'Perhaps if Mr Varadkar knew his own country's undistinguished wartime history better his views on our history would be more informed.'
During the European Parliament debate in Brussels, Nigel Farage accused Mr Varadkar of being a 'European Unionist whatever the cost to Ireland may be', who is helping with the 'obstructionism and the delay of Brexit' despite Dublin's economic interests in ensuring a good UK-EU trade deal.
'It seems to me that you're prepared to put your devotion to the European project above the interest of Irish farmers and other companies too,' the former Ukip leader told MEPs.
'You are part, of course, of a big attempt here and elsewhere to frustrate and attempt to overturn Brexit.
'You don't want Britain to leave because you know if they do, others will leave too, and I would just say this to you - I don't want a second referendum on Brexit, absolutely not, but I fear that you are all working together with Tony Blair and Nick Clegg to make sure we get the worst possible deal.
'I say that because I've seen it all before, the difference is, if you force the Brits to do it again, there will be a different outcome.'
 
There has been an unedifying beauty contest taking place at the Tory Party Conference as would-be alternative prime ministers parade their charms in the hope of ingratiating themselves with the rank-and-file.
I describe it as ‘unedifying’ because for the time being we have a Prime Minister who is striving to do her best in an almost impossible situation. The last thing she — and the country — need is for her to be undermined at such a crucial juncture.
But that is exactly what a succession of senior Tories have been doing over the past couple of days. They have been shamelessly promoting themselves, while in most cases proclaiming their loyalty to the plainly wounded Mrs May.
There is one exception. I suppose the best thing that can be said about Boris Johnson is that he does not even pretend to be loyal. At least he does not wrap up his treachery in insincere protestations of admiration.
But it is not acceptable for this recent senior colleague of Theresa May to call her Chequers plan — and in effect the Prime Minister — ‘deranged’. As well as contributing to the mounting impression of Tory divisions, Boris damages his own credibility by using such wild saloon bar language.
His gambolling through what looked like a field of wheat in Oxfordshire yesterday — apparently mimicking what Mrs May, the vicar’s daughter, has described as her ‘naughtiest’ moment— was pretty childish.
Then there is the seemingly dependable Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, who before the Referendum was a convinced Remainer without the slightest Eurosceptic leanings. On Sunday he likened the EU to a Soviet jail. Isn’t that going a bit far?
Mocking
Mr Hunt was trying to burnish his newly acquired Brexit credentials. But it was silly to use such inflammatory language. The EU is bossy, overbearing and sometimes bullying. But it is not the Soviet Union.
To advertise that he is a leadership candidate waiting in the wings, Mr Hunt was also photographed hand-in-hand with his attractive Chinese wife, Lucia. The message appeared to be: Here is a nice couple for No 10 should the party faithful tire of the existing occupants.
Philip Hammond has also been on manoeuvres. Although the Chancellor has had a rocky relationship with the Prime Minister, he was commendably supportive in his speech yesterday. But he has been tossing brickbats at Boris Johnson, describing the former Foreign Secretary as incapable of ‘grown-up’ politics in an interview with the Mail.
Let’s think about that for a moment. Until July Mr Hammond, like Boris, occupied one of the four great offices of State. Yet here he was mocking a recent senior colleague for his failure to grasp detail, as well as for his plummy voice.
Putting together Boris’s description of Mrs May as ‘deranged’ with Mr Hammond’s assault on Boris, we are left with a spectacle of Tory in-fighting which is virtually unprecedented.
Outside the feverish confines of Birmingham, the general public will be amazed that the party of government should so rashly expose its divisions. Talk about Cabinet unity!
Other ambitious senior Tories also stirred the pot yesterday in a calculating way. The usually admirable Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab probably went further than he should have done when, having defended the principles of Chequers, he suggested there were ‘alternative’ ways of delivering Brexit.
Another contender, Sajid Javid, also departs from the official line in today’s Mail when he says that a Canada-type deal (vehemently rejected by Mrs May) has ‘a lot to commend it’. The Home Secretary backs Boris Johnson’s right to speak out, which will not please No 10.
Note that Mr Javid, a former Remainer, is an improved second to Boris Johnson in the latest ConservativeHome league table of leadership approval ratings. The politically gymnastic Jeremy Hunt is in third place, his standing having soared in recent weeks.
There is, of course, no reason why any of these senior Tories should not aspire to leading their party. There may well be a vacancy at some stage in the future – and possibly very soon if Theresa May can’t get through the House of Commons whatever deal she is able to obtain from the EU.
That said, all this posturing and machinating is very likely to destabilise her already delicate position when she is only weeks away from critical discussions with the EU. This is really not the moment to challenge her approach.
I say this as someone who is more than a little sceptical of her ability to secure a reasonable deal from the EU on the basis of Chequers. If she confounds my expectations by doing so, it is equally hard to see how she could get any agreement through the Commons.
Discipline
Surely, though, she should be given a chance over the coming weeks without having her hand weakened by jostling rivals in her own party who scarcely disguise their overweening ambition to replace her.
Here, believe it or not, the Tories have something to learn from Jeremy Corbyn’s previously fractious Labour Party. Last week, at its annual conference in Liverpool, it succeeded in maintaining a semblance of remarkable unity.
Needless to say, I am not calling for the intimidation or threats of deselection that have apparently succeeded in quelling potentially rebellious Labour MPs. That is not the Tory way.
But a modicum of party discipline is vital if ministers are going to persuade the country that they are working together to achieve the best possible deal rather than spending their time conspiring against the Prime Minister.
It’s worth repeating one of the basic laws of politics: Voters do not like divided parties. I have no doubt that the Tories will not be easily forgiven if they turn in on themselves in an orgy of domestic strife.
Support
Of course, disagreement on such an enormously important issue as Brexit is inevitable. Yet it is not inevitable that Cabinet ministers should pick public fights with former colleagues, or that they should be ostentatiously laying out their wares at this particular moment, or that they should undermine the Prime Minister.
Theresa May has admittedly proved herself remarkably resilient. One can only imagine the incredible pressures that are bearing down on her. Her ability, so far, to absorb them marks her out as an unusual politician.
Moreover, she is fortunate that none of the noisy pretenders to her throne is an obvious prime minister in-waiting, far less a neglected genius. In their different ways, they are all of them flawed.
But they can still inflict horrendous damage on their party and their country if they insist on politicking. Their time may come. Now is the moment for them to support the Prime Minister.
Perhaps the most tediously familiar insult hurled at those who voted for Britain to leave the European Union is that they — we — are stupid.
This is now being used as a sort of licence for the growing campaign to ignore the result of the 2016 referendum: if those 17.4 million people who voted Leave can be collectively defined as uneducated knuckle-scrapers, it amounts to a justification for disregarding the ballot-box.
This argument — which seeks to redefine democracy in an astonishingly self-serving way — has finally provoked beyond endurance not the ill-educated, but some of the most sophisticated minds in the country. 
A group of 38 leading academics and ex-academics across a range of disciplines has launched a website called Briefings for Brexit.
It is led by two notable members of Cambridge University: the economist Dr Graham Gudgin and the historian Professor Robert Tombs (whose 1,000-page epic The English And Their History was published in 2014 to near-universal acclaim).
Ignorant
Unlike Best for Britain, the group trying to overthrow the referendum result, Briefings for Brexit has no backing from billionaires, foreign or otherwise. It is entirely independent, funded by the academics themselves.
Their anger at what is happening burns through in their letter in today's Times: 'Sir, Those who seek to prevent or nullify our exit from the EU too often try to undermine the Referendum decision by dismissing Leave voters as ignorant, by describing the decision itself as meaningless, and by giving credence to a stream of alarmist and distorted propaganda. 
'This inflames division, undermines democracy, and weakens the country's negotiating position.'
They go on to say that by no means all of their number voted Leave, and they come from all sides of the political spectrum: 'What brings us together today is the conviction that the future welfare of Britain and indeed of Europe requires that the choice made in the Referendum should be fully and positively carried out. 
'Any other outcome would outrage democratic sovereignty . . . We also believe that dispassionate professional analysis does not support a tide of pessimism about the economic consequences of leaving the EU.'
To most people, this might seem completely unobjectionable. In fact, these academics are taking a risk in speaking out in this way. 
As Professor Tombs explained to me when I called him about the venture, there is a culture of what amounts to fear in our great seats of learning. 
Fear, that is, on the part of academics and students who endure ostracism and worse if they express open support for what is, after all, the policy of both Conservative and Labour at last year's General Election (to leave the institutions of the EU).
As Professor Tombs told the Sunday Times yesterday, a number of academics he knew to be sympathetic said: 'I'd love to be part of your group but I haven't got a proper job yet and I probably won't if I'm identified.'
And Dr Gudgin remarked that one of their members 'was told by a younger pro-Brexit colleague that his professor had told him that people who had voted Brexit were the sort of people who sent his relatives to concentration camps'.
To its credit, the BBC three months ago did a vox pop among students who had declared themselves to be 'Leave' voters. It was difficult viewing (though nothing like as difficult as their position). 
A 21- year-old undergraduate in London called Torri, who we see carrying a volume called How Parliament Works, tells how she is regularly called 'Brexit b***h' and that she heard another student leaving a lecture she attended saying to a friend: 'I just want to punch that Brexit b***h.'
Essentially, the fashionable equation on campus is Brexit equals racism. And this is a significant factor in why so many academics are scared to 'come out' as Brexit supporters. 
So for example, when I tried to persuade one leading academic to reveal his true opinion publicly, he said: 'I can't come out as pro-Brexit, it would make my life impossible here.'
He illustrated this by describing how, when one of his colleagues had revealed himself to be a Brexit supporter (on the Left, as it happens) 'he was completely ostracised. He would be sitting alone in hall for dinner. 
Letters were sent to the principal from fellow-academics demanding he be sacked'. No wonder my friend didn't fancy that.
Anger
Something of this seemed to have happened to the Cambridge professor Chris Bickerton, author of The European Union: A Citizen's Guide. 
As he wrote last year: 'In my academic field of European studies, being critical of the EU is rather like being a climate change scientist who admits he has an SUV in the garage.'
Bickerton — another Left-wing Brexiteer — was tolerated during the referendum campaign, but when his side actually won, 'tolerance gave way to anger and disbelief'. 
And he added about colleagues in his university and others who have reacted in this way: 'This intolerance over Brexit is rooted in a lack of empathy or interest in the lives of others, especially those outside one's social circle and lower down the ladder of income and education.
'Rather than engage in an argument or inquire into someone's reasons, one dismisses them as racists.'
I was surprised not to see Professor Bickerton's name among those initial 38 academics who have signed up to the initiative launched today. 
But perhaps I should not have been: who knows what pressure he has been under?
This is not remotely an argument that there is a 'correct' intellectual position on Brexit, or that university administrators and college principals have a duty to take any particular line. 
They absolutely don't. But it is the duty of universities, above all, to be intellectually rigorous and dispassionate when discussing such matters. And that has not been happening.
So for example, that 'shy' Brexit-supporting professor I mentioned earlier, told me: 'After the graduation ceremony in 2016, the master of my college told — told! — all new graduates how they should vote in the referendum.' 
Actually, they would not have needed much telling. As my professor friend pointed out to me, in exasperation: 'They are pathetically uninformed about the EU and how it functions: they just think it's all about being one big happy family.'
This is one of the truths that is rarely admitted. So many of those undergraduates or recent graduates who dismiss as a racist thicko anyone who voted Brexit are themselves shatteringly ill-informed about the institutions and Treaties of the EU.
Selfish
The hostility of the higher educational establishment to Brexit is itself a form of agency capture. 
As Professor Tombs observes, the universities get a lot of money from EU funds, 'so many of our colleagues had wrongly taken a corporatist, selfish and narrow view'.
But their rage about the prospect of that gravy train ending has now been fully exposed as scare-mongering. 
A fortnight ago, the official figures revealed that more EU students applied to study at UK universities last year than ever — so much for the view that intelligent young Europeans regard Brexit Britain as hostile territory. 
And the number of international applicants from outside the EU rose by no less than 11 per cent — they clearly can't think the vote to leave the EU was 'racist'.
It is in such real figures, rather than lazy group-think from those who still can't accept the referendum result, that this new academic body will find the material to analyse and debate Britain's future path.
As they remark in their opening statement: 'It is an intellectual failure for the academic community to have been so overwhelmingly harnessed to a single point of view. 
For this reason it has made a negligible contribution to a national debate of huge importance . . . We intend to put forward reasoned and solidly-based analyses to scrutinise and expose unexamined assumptions, myths and downright falsehoods.'
I wish them the best of luck. But above all they will need courage and thick skins. Dr Henry Kissinger sardonically remarked that academic political disputes are the most vicious of all 'because the stakes are so small'. Not this time.
Senior DUP MPs today endorsed claims from some Brexiteers that the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland had failed.
Jim Shannon and Sammy Wilson said Sinn Fein's refusal to form a power-sharing executive proved the 1998 peace accord no longer worked. 
The claim came amid warnings from Brexiteers the peace accord was being manipulated by Republicans who wanted a unite Ireland after Brexit. 
In an update to MPs in the Commons, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley said she would soon have to take steps to set a new budget for the province from London.
She hinted fresh elections could be ordered in an attempt to end the 13-month stalemate and insisted the Government wanted to preserve the Good Friday Agreement.  
Ireland's Foreign Minister Simon Coveney branded the claims 'irresponsible' today and Brexit Secretary David Davis was forced to say the UK Government still backs the agreement.
The intervention of the DUP MPs - who help prop up the Tory Government in Westminster - will fuel concern the UK could walk away from the deal.
The DUP did not support the Good Friday Agreement when it was signed and opposed it in a referendum. The party later endorsed it and led the power sharing government it created.  
Mr Wilson, the DUP MP for East Antrim, told PoliticsHome that critics of the Good Friday Agreement 'are right'.
He said 'wreckers' in Sinn Fein had used it to bring the assembly down and 'refuse to allow it to be reformed unless others give in to their blackmail demands'.
And he added: 'The Tories are only saying what we have been arguing for - changes which make the assembly sustainable, which means no more wreckers' veto.'
Stramgford MP Mr Shannon said: 'If Sinn Fein can hold back where we are as a protest to move forward then in real terms the Good Friday Agreement as it was has failed.
'Therefore its value has to be considered and looked at for the future.' 

At his Road to Brexit speech in Vienna, Mr Davis said he was not 'conscious' of anyone talking down the Good Friday Agreement, insisting 'certainly nobody in Government is'. 
He said that 'everything we are doing is aiming towards ensuring we meet every aspect' of the agreement. 
Mr Coveney said talking down the 1998 peace deal to further the Brexit agenda was 'irresponsible'.  
Writing on Twitter, he said: 'Talking down (the) Good Friday Agreement because it raises serious and genuine questions of those pursuing Brexit is not only irresponsible but reckless and potentially undermines the foundations of a fragile peace process in Northern Ireland that should never be taken for granted.' 

Mr Paterson, a former Northern Ireland secretary, recently retweeted a commentator's suggestion that the agreement had outlived its use.
He also tweeted that Northern Ireland deserved good government, and health services were falling behind the rest of the UK without a devolved executive. 
The agreement was signed almost 20 years ago by the British and Irish governments and enjoyed support from most of the major parties in Northern Ireland. The DUP - now the leading unionist party and Theresa May's ally in Westminster - opposed it at the time.
It enabled the formation of a ministerial executive and assembly at Stormont.
Ms Hoey said her questions over the future of the Good Friday Agreement were nothing to do with Brexit.
'Hiding head in sand over viability of sustainability of mandatory coalition is reckless and wrong,' she said.
Mr Hannan said he had been arguing long before Brexit that the agreement needed to be changed. 

Almost 28 years ago, younger and more idealistic, I sat in the Commons press gallery and watched Sir Geoffrey Howe impale Margaret Thatcher with a sour, mocking resignation.
Just before 3pm yesterday, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rose to make his own personal statement. 
He was perched on almost the very same green leather from which Howe had launched his attack.
Was Boris about to skewer Theresa May? No. That was not the intention. This speech was less destructive and therefore more admirable. 
It lacked the theatre of Howe's ambush, for the House was not as full as it was that autumnal afternoon in 1990, but Boris's performance projected a sense of 'can-do' and it was joke-free. He spoke with a piercing seriousness.
Blond barnet for once combed, he entered with the truncheon of his rolled script in one palm. 
He was accompanied by Bournemouth West's Conor Burns, his former aide, who stepped in Boris's wake with a petite and worshipful gait – a frigate accompanying the naval flagship.
Beyond the gangway, where more sceptical Tory MPs tend to sit, at least 60 Members demonstrated a solid core of interest. Behind and around Boris: tieless Ben Bradley (Mansfield), who quit a Tory party vice-chairmanship in protest at Chequers; ex-Cabinet ministers David Davis, Michael Fallon, David Jones and Iain Duncan Smith; younger MPs such as Cheltenham's civilised Alex Chalk (no hardline Brexiteer he), David Cameron's Witney successor Robert Courts and Middlesbrough South's cerebral Simon Clarke.
At the bar of the House stood Europhile Philip Lee (Bracknell), hand in tropical-suit pocket as if to indicate disdain. 
On the Government bench was Chief Whip Julian Smith but no other Cabinet minister.
Boris put aside any Prince Hal boisterousness. He came not to bury Theresa. 
He forsook cheap shots and played things responsibly, though there were flashes of anger. 
Why not? It has been enraging the way No 10's pro-Brussels mandarins have blown Mrs May off course. If there was grit in Boris's speech it was no more than that shared by millions of voters.
After opening thanks to Foreign Office staff, he spoke of Mrs May's 'courage and resilience'. 
Early praise can presage a 'but'? This came only after he said her initial position on Brexit in the Lancaster House speech had been spot on. Mrs May herself still invokes that speech.
Boris was being perfectly proper. Now the 'but'. It was the closest he came to insulting her. 
'A fog of self-doubt had descended' since Lancaster House. Yet he did not specify that she was the foggy one. He later said 'we have changed tack once and we can change again'.
Did he mean 'we have changed leader once and can change leader again'? Some may choose to hear that but it is not what he said. He was, again, being punctiliously, perfectly proper.
His brother Jo, a Transport minister, listened from the front bench, staring at the ceiling. 
Next to him was Culture minister Margot James, who recently Tweeted insults about Boris. Silly of her. The Europhiles, time and again, have been the ones breaking the conventions. Conservative activists put store by manners.
For the speech's big line, Boris slowed his delivery. 'Mr Speaker, it is not. Too. Late. To save Brexit.' 
His baritone was level, intent, unhysterical but making plain that Brexiteers will be behind Mrs May, propelling her towards a proper exit rather than 'the miserable permanent limbo of Chequers, the democratic disaster of 'ongoing harmonisation' with no way out and no say for the UK'.
Finally, a small tease. 'We need to take one decision now,' he said. Pause. Some of us braced him for an announcement that Mrs May should be dumped. 
'Instead he said our decision must be 'to believe in this country'. And he finished upbeat, speaking of unity.
Some 28 years after Geoffrey Howe, this was much more uplifting. 
It was almost enough to rekindle the idealism in a jaded sketchwriter. Boris showed yesterday that he may for the moment be out but he is not down.
For 40 years as an MP, I fought to protect the British fishing industry — only to see it ruined in England and damaged in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Although Brexit now offers a great opportunity to rebuild the industry, it is tragic to see that chance being thrown away.
For it is appalling that Chancellor Philip Hammond is touting our fishing rights as disposable, and hinting that the Government may give them away in return for a better Brexit deal.
He has suggested that British fishermen might have to accept foreign trawlers having significant access even after the UK has regained control of its traditional fishing grounds.
Asked if it would be 'acceptable' to trade fishing rights for a better deal for lucrative sectors of the economy such as the City, Mr Hammond said: 'We would be open to discussing the appropriate arrangements for reciprocal access for our fishermen to EU waters and for EU fishermen to our waters.'
Shamefully, he's wobbling and playing into the hands of the EU's Brexit negotiators. For they are desperately cherry-picking parts of a deal (something, of course, our government's negotiators are not allowed to do) by demanding fishing access for their fleets in return for the UK having tariff-free trade access to the remaining 27 EU countries.
Such a craven concession would fit with the way our fishing industry has been sold out to foreigners over the years.
For four decades as MP for Grimsby (where fishing has been vital to the town since mediaeval times), I watched as fishing ministers (both Labour and Conservative) promised to get a better deal for the UK industry in the annual December negotiations.
I then watched as they betrayed those promises — announcing cuts in our quotas, bans on threatened species, as well as denying the British industry the subsidies and support that our European competitors were getting.
It even took a quarter of a century to get niggardly compensation for the thousands of fishermen who lost their jobs when our boats were expelled from Icelandic waters following the so-called Cod Wars in the Seventies.
What's more, we were refused the opportunity to rebuild our industry in our own waters, in the same way every other country was doing. It was Ted Heath who betrayed British fishing when, as prime minister, he took us into the Common Market. He saw our industry as 'expendable', giving away our fishing grounds in his desperate desire to join the European club.
And so we lost control of one of the richest fisheries in the world. For the six founding members of the Common Market ordained that member states should be given 'equal access' to each other's fisheries, re-defined as a 'common resource'.
Since then, it has been one sacrifice after another.
Ministers have not stood up for our fishing industry in the way their counterparts in other countries have done for their own.
For example, Iceland's government protected its waters from being looted, and Norway's membership of the Single Market did not give EU nations any fishing rights off its coast. As independent nations, Iceland and Norway have built up their fishing industries within their own 200-mile limits. So has almost every other fishing nation.
But not Britain, with its weak and unpatriotic ministers.
The fact is that other EU countries, having fished out their own waters, are desperate for ours.
Currently, foreign boats take 80 per cent of the catch in UK waters. EU countries catch nearly two-thirds of their fish in our waters.
Because 'Skipper' Ted Heath was conned into accepting 'equal access to a common resource', our waters are open to any citizen of another EU country with a boat and a net. There's no legal basis to the EU's demands. Fishing is not part of the Single Market, though fish products are.
Brexit means the UK leaving the EU. It means that instead of Brussels rules, the UN law of the sea will prevail — giving us sovereignty over territorial waters out to 200 miles, or the mid-point between nearer countries.
But the words of wobbling Mr Hammond suggest otherwise. No wonder there are grave fears our government might sacrifice our fishing industry by being daft enough to sign up yet again to the notorious Common Fisheries Policy. But it must not.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, whose father had a fishing business that closed down because of EU fishing policy, has said: 'We're taking back control of our fishing policy.'
He added: 'It means that for the first time in more than 50 years we will be able to decide who can access our waters.'
Ministers must not renege on that promise. It is the Government's moral duty to protect our fishing grounds and maintain sustainable stocks to hand this precious resource to future generations. Other countries see our grounds as something to be looted for as long as they can — and preferably for ever.
Disingenuously, Brussels argues that fish don't have passports. They breed in one area and migrate to another.
That's true. But it shouldn't have been an excuse for a policy that covered immature and breeding stocks and punished British-based boats.
For many fish spawn in non-British areas of the North Sea, and are protected from fishing. But as soon as they mature and move into our waters, they can be caught.
Such unfairness is glaringly obvious to everyone in our fishing ports. But it seems Philip Hammond doesn't realise what those Brussels predators want. They want to frighten Britain and please the remaining 27 members.
It is no coincidence that the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, is a former French fishing minister who wants his countrymen to keep over-fishing our sea bass and anything else they can. It is also a natural desire for Germans. Almost all the herring they consume and 60 per cent of mackerel comes from British waters. One of the country's largest fish processing plants, Rugen Fisch, is in an area where Chancellor Angela Merkel has often canvassed during elections.
In my time as MP for Grimsby, I witnessed the over-fishing that the Common Fisheries Policy had led to, and have watched as foreign vessels suspected of over-fishing escaped checks by inspectors because they were too fast, while British boats that had done nothing wrong had nets inspected.
One of the worst scandals was the flagrant abuse of the rules which have allowed foreign vessels to register as British to cynically catch our quota.
Most surreally, I was once introduced to a man who I was told was the 'chair of the Fleetwood (Lancashire) Fishing Vessel Owners'. He was Spanish and spoke little English.
I've witnessed, in foreign ports, fish that has been illegally caught, being landed without a single check.
There's no reason for prolonging this farce. Or Britain's sad and enormous sacrifice.
The British fishing industry can only be rebuilt by safeguarding our waters and having the ability to enforce sustainable fishing. Only that certainty will bring investment.
After four decades of neglect and decline, our coastal fishing areas mustn't be betrayed again. I'm sorry, Mr Hammond, they are not negotiating counters simply to be traded away. They're a way of life and a vital British industry.
It's time for us to stand up and tell Monsieur Barnier: 'Allez vous en!' 
Back in 1947, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton was forced to resign after leaking details of his Budget to a journalist called John Carvel.
Some of his tax changes, including a penny on a pint of beer, appeared in later editions of the long-since defunct London evening newspaper, The Star, while Dalton was still on his hind legs in the Commons.
His fellow MPs were outraged at this shocking breach of Parliamentary protocol, even though there was no evidence that early disclosure had any effect on the price of fish, let alone the stock market.
Nevertheless, Dalton was obliged to fall on his sword. Three decades later, I found myself working on London’s Evening Standard, alongside — some rungs below, actually — Carvel’s son Robert, the Standard’s political editor.
One of the big set-piece events of Bob Carvel’s year, for which he would fortify himself with a can or two of Carlsberg Special Brew, was Budget Day.
By then, although Chancellors were supposed to spend the preceding weeks in so-called ‘purdah’, selected political editors were spoon-fed a few crucial morsels on the understanding that they weren’t published in advance of the Budget speech.
This gave Fleet Street’s cartoonists plenty of time to prepare their front page illustrations, which were dependent on the theme of the measures being announced.
For instance, if the Chancellor of the day decided to bung the NHS an extra few quid, he’d be depicted as a benevolent doctor in a white coat, complete with stethoscope.
If he froze the duty on Scotch whisky, he’d inevitably be caricatured sipping a wee dram, wearing a tartan kilt and a See You Jimmy bonnet.
Novelty front pages were as much a part of the annual Budget Day ritual as the Chancellor posing on the steps of No 11 Downing Street, waving his red box, which is supposed to contain the closely guarded secrets he is about to reveal to the Commons.
These days you’ll find more secrets inside a box of Black Magic. The modern Treasury leaks like a colander, every year mounting a series of clumsy, stage-managed attempts to soften us up for the good news/bad news in store.
Even the Chancellor himself can’t resist getting in on the act. 
Spread Fear Phil was preening himself all over the TV channels at the weekend, teasing anyone who could be bothered to listen about his plans for the coming year. Not for Hammond the strictly-enforced purdah, breach of which cost Hugh Dalton the keys to No 11.
The papers have been full of deliberately placed titbits involving everything from help for the High Street to more money for tree planting. 
Today’s Budgets are as much about burnishing the Chancellor’s own political credentials as addressing the nation’s finances.
Why else would Hammond be announcing that all schools and A&E departments are to get dedicated mental health units, apart from the fact that there’s been a well-orchestrated campaign to elevate mental health to the top of the political agenda — so that it is now acknowledged as an ‘epidemic’ which can only be cured by throwing lashings of taxpayers’ money at it?
Not that he’s the faintest idea how he is going to pay for this largesse. 
The grand gesture is all that counts. He’s even had the audacity to use his round of pre-Budget briefings to threaten that unless we swallow Mother Theresa’s dismal, defeatist, dishwater-weak Chequers version of Brexit, then all bets are off and we can forget about whatever goodies he announced yesterday.
Don’t be fooled by gimmicks like the commemorative Brexit 50p coin. Hammond and May are determined to keep us under the yoke of the EU at all costs.
No deal, no end to austerity, is the ultimatum from the Chancellor. What does that even mean? We’re supposed to send £39 billion to Brussels when the nation is £1.8 trillion in debt and rising?
I want to scream every time I hear politicians and lobbyists bleating about ‘austerity’. 
Why don’t we talk instead about ‘balancing the books’, or ‘living within our means’, or ‘not spending money we haven’t got’, or ‘not borrowing money we can’t afford to pay back’? 
Why even bother with a Budget? Most of the fiddling with tax thresholds can be put on the statute book without a great song and dance.
The only ‘secrets’ in Hammond’s red box are the nasty surprises which he will have somehow forgotten to tell the Commons and will only emerge a couple of days later when the dust settles.
This kind of sleight of hand was a hallmark of Gordon Brown’s time at the Treasury. And, as I have explained previously, Hammond is little more than a third-rate Gordon Brown tribute act.
So I shall continue my habit of reserving judgment on the Budget until it unravels later this week.
Once, a penny on a pint made headlines. Now, who knows how much a pint costs? In parts of London, you’ll get no change from a fiver. Elsewhere a pint will only (only?) cost £3.40. So whatever the Chancellor does to alcohol duty, it won’t make much difference.
As for Hammond himself, he is a political mediocrity who has shamelessly abused his high office to consistently undermine and attempt to overturn the democratic will of 17.4 million people who voted for Britain to leave the EU — no ifs, no buts, no transition period, no backstops, no common rule book, no divorce payment.
If he had a shred of his predecessor Hugh Dalton’s decency, the only statement he should have delivered yesterday was his resignation.
Guy Fawkes Night looms and with it the problem of what to do about pets frightened by the loud bangs from fireworks. 
Classic FM believes it has the answer and has prepared a playlist of soothing music designed to keep anxious dogs calm. Apparently, animals are especially responsive to Mozart and Bach.
This comes in the wake of a report, from Glasgow University, which claims playing reggae by the likes of Bob Marley and UB40 to dogs will have the same effect.
That sounds more likely to me. My daughter volunteers at a dog rescue centre in London and tells me that they often play reggae in the kennels.
(You Gotta Walk And) Don’t Look Back, by Peter Tosh, with Mick Jagger, is a particular favourite.
Our old labrador Ossie was a big fan of The Guns Of Brixton, by the Clash, which features a thumping dub bass line. 
So if you have a dog and want to be on the safe side this week, try tracking down a reggae version of the Brandenburg Concertos. If all else fails, a juicy bone should do the trick.
It always worked with Ossie.
 We need to have Ram Jam banned
Hate preacher Ram Jam Choudary is free to walk the streets again after serving just half of his five year sentence for inciting terrorism.
Naturally, Choudary remains unrepentant in the face of such laughable leniency. Meanwhile, hundreds of jihadi brides and others he encouraged to join Izal are flooding back to Britain.
So what is to prevent Ram Jam picking up where he left off? OK, so he’s being monitored round the clock for the next couple of years, but that kind of surveillance won’t last for ever.
This is, of course, the Islamist rabble rouser linked to the London Bridge terrorists and the men who killed Fusilier Lee Rigby.
How, then, do the authorities propose to stop his murderous mentoring of impressionable young men and women in future? Answer: they’re going to send him on an anti-extremism course.
Brilliant.
That should work. Presumably, this is like one of those speed-awareness courses. Write out 100 times: ‘I must stop inciting terrorism.’
Better still, give him community service.
Stick him in a hi-viz jacket and make him pick up the body parts the next time some of his disciples go on a bloodthirsty rampage, killing innocent civilians in the name of his perverted version of Islam.
The blanket 20mph speed limits beloved of the cycle-worshipping, anti-car bigots who run our town halls have had the entirely predictable side-effect of causing congestion and increasing pollution.
But instead of putting them up again, councils across Britain are proposing to lower them still further, to just 15mph.
How long before they turn the clock back to the 19th century and insist that every car is accompanied by a man with a red flag walking in front of it?
Allies of Theresa May who are plotting a snap election must be drunk or ill, Lord Hague warned today.
The Tory former leader voiced alarm at claims that Downing Street aides are seriously considering the 'nonsensical' idea in the wake of the PM's humiliation at the hands of EU leaders.
He said anyone responding to deadlock with Brussels and Conservative infighting by deciding to call an election has 'probably had too much alcohol' or 'might even need medical help'.
The blunt assessment came after Mrs May urged the Cabinet to 'hold our nerve' over Brexit yesterday, saying she was still confident of a deal despite the vicious assault on her Chequers plan by leaders at a Salzburg summit last week.
But the extent of the panic caused in Downing Street by the bruising summit has been underlined by suggestions that some advisers 'war gamed' holding an election.
Two powerful aides are said to have argued that the only way to 'make the Commons arithmetic work' could be to ditch Chequers, and please the Brexit wing of the Tory Party by swinging behind the 'Canada model' for a looser free trade agreement. 
The plan would then involve Mrs May going to the country in November in a bid to win a majority for the package. 
The thinking has been encouraged by the latest polling which indicates a slump in support for Mr Corbyn among those who voted Labour at the 2017 Election.   
But in his column in the Telegraph today, Lord Hague warned against even discussing such ideas at the Conservative conference next week.
'If you find yourself talking, as some Tory aides were reported at the weekend as doing, of deliberately having another general election soon, you have probably had too much alcohol, or you might even need medical help,' he wrote. 
'If the party were united on Brexit, it would be a brave idea; as things stand it is a nonsensical one. You can't have an election to resolve a problem within your own party and expect anything other than a disaster.
Lord Hague also warned that the public would see an effort to oust Mrs May and force a Tory leadership contest as 'incredibly irresponsible and self-indulgent'. 
Merkel warns EU and UK are still a long way from a deal as she urges May to move on from Chequers plan 
The EU still does not know 'what Britain really wants' from Brexit negotiations, Angela Merel complained today.
The German leader insisted business needed 'clarity' on the shape of the future relationship - but said the discussion in the UK was 'not so clear'.
She also reiterated that Britain will not be allowed to cherry-pick parts of the EU single market - seemingly ruling out a crucial part of Theresa May's Chequers blueprint.
The intervention, in a speech to a German industry conference, will cause frustration in Downing Street amid deadlock in talks.
Mrs May was humiliated by EU leaders in Salzburg last week when they brutally dismissed her Chequers plan. 
Meanwhile, Labour is engaged in a bitter row over whether to back a referendum that could see Brexit cancelled altogether. 
Mrs Merkel appeared to refer to the deep divisions in her speech to industry leaders in Berlin today.
Warning that much hard work was still needed to find a path to a deal over the next six to eight weeks, she said: 'The economy needs clarity... What is important is what Britain really wants - the discussion there is not so clear.'
 
 
Hardline Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg has said Britain is heading for a no deal exit from the EU.
The Tory MP said that leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms was now likely.
Presenting a phone-in on LBC, Mr Rees-Mogg said: 'I think we are heading to WTO and I think WTO is nothing to be frightened of.'
But he said talks should continue with Brussels, stating: 'I think we should carry on negotiating until the end.
'I don't think we necessarily need the theatrics of walking away, but the truth is that WTO is likely to be all that they will offer us.' 
Prime Minister Theresa May is continuing to defend her Chequers agreement despite the resignation of her former Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. 
The two former cabinet members appeared to support Mrs May's proposals on the night of the deal but left the government after returning to London. 
Yesterday, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier responded to the Chequers proposals. 
One of the major stumbling blocks for a deal between the UK and the EU is the future of Northern Ireland border. 
The PM has appeared to moved away from an agreement she reached with the EU over the Irish border in December following pressure from the Democratic Unionist Party. 
Mrs May is reliant on the DUP's ten MPs to push through her Brexit plans. Although, North Antrim MP Ian Paisley Jr is likely to be suspended for 30 sitting days once parliament returns in September over a junketeering scandal. 
Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness said Mrs May would need to erase some of her red lines to avoid crashing out of the EU. 
Commenting on the Chequers deal, she said: 'It's a starting point, it's not an end deal.
'I think the British Prime Minister set out red lines too early on and too deeply.
'We are prepared to show flexibility if the British Prime Minister can show flexibility.'  
Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood insisted the white paper was a workable compromise.
He told the BBC: 'There is no yes/yes solution here which will balance out the extreme views of the Brexiteers and the extreme views of the Remainers.
'It is therefore essential that we have compromise.
'And this is exactly what the white paper does.
'It means that we have for the Remainers, we have access to goods and services, a deal with Europe as well.
'We have financial markets as well.
'And on the Leave campaign side of things, the bill, the EU bill stops. We leave the customs union, we leave the agricultural policy, we leave the common fisheries policy, and, of course, we are able to strike our own deals.'
The comments came after Mr Barnier expressed concern that Mrs May's proposal for a 'facilitated customs arrangement' opened up the risk of major fraud, additional bureaucracy and damage to EU businesses.
Meanwhile, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said she 'hated' the Chequers compromise, according to The Times which said it was quoting minutes of the Cabinet meeting at the PM's country residence earlier in July. 
Cabinet in fresh Brexit battle as Philip Hammond demands EU workers get 'preferential treatment' while Sajid Javid says free movement 'has to end'
Two of Theresa May's surviving government ministers have had a major row over EU migrants during a tense cabinet meeting about Brexit. 
Chancellor Philip Hammond said EU citizens should get preferential treatment in order to facilitate a deal on Brexit. However, newly-installed Home Secretary Sajid Javid disagreed, as he insisted freedom of movement had to end.  
Hammond firmly believes that allowing freedom of movement in post-Brexit Britain will increase chances of a favourable trade deal. 
According to the Telegraph, the pair had a row during the Cabinet away day in Chequers. 
According to minutes of the meeting Hammond 'disagreed with the Home Secretary on labour mobility and ending free movement'.
The Home Secretary insisted that following Brexit, freedom of movement must end. 
However, the Chancellor countered that 'such an agreement would be very important for the people of Germany.' 
Despite the reported row, a cabinet source insisted there was unity in the cabinet following the departure of Boris Johnson and David Davis. 
A government source insisted there was 'difference of opinion between two people'.
A source added: 'The Prime Minister has said many times that we will set out our future immigration plans in the White Paper. It is completely non-negotiable that free movement will end.'  
Prime Minister Theresa May robustly defended her Chequers agreement despite the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis. 
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier noted the proposal but was highly sceptical that it would receive the agreement of the remaining 27 EU member states and the European Parliament. 
Mr Barnier openly questioned the credibility of the UK's proposals in his first response to the Government's white paper on Brexit.
And in comments that will likely alarm arch-Brexiteers in Tory ranks, the vice president of the European Parliament, and MEP for Ireland's governing Fine Gael party, Mairead McGuinness, made it clear to BBC2's Newsnight that Mrs May would need to abandon some of her red lines to clinch a deal.
She said of London's proposals: 'It's a starting point, it's not an end deal.
'I think the British Prime Minister set out red lines too early on and too deeply.
'We are prepared to show flexibility if the British Prime Minister can show flexibility.'
Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood insisted the white paper was a workable compromise.
He told the BBC: 'There is no yes/yes solution here which will balance out the extreme views of the Brexiteers and the extreme views of the Remainers.
'It is therefore essential that we have compromise.
'And this is exactly what the white paper does.
'It means that we have for the Remainers, we have access to goods and services, a deal with Europe as well.
'We have financial markets as well.
"'And on the Leave campaign side of things, the bill, the EU bill stops. We leave the customs union, we leave the agricultural policy, we leave the common fisheries policy, and, of course, we are able to strike our own deals.'
The comments came after Mr Barnier expressed concern that Mrs May's proposal for a 'facilitated customs arrangement' opened up the risk of major fraud, additional bureaucracy and damage to EU businesses.
Tory arch-Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Barnier's 'aggressive' comments 'show why we are right to be leaving the mafia-like European Union'.
MailOnline has approached both the Home Office and the Treasury department for a comment. 
Gloating Europhiles hailed Theresa May's humiliation tonight after judges ruled she cannot trigger Brexit without approval from parliament.
The dramatic decision at the High Court raises the prospect of months of delay while MPs and peers fight a rearguard action against cutting ties with Brussels. 

It sparked furious accusations that 'activist' judges are mounting a 'power grab' by siding with pro-EU campaigners against the will of the public.
But the businesswoman and former model who spearheaded the legal challenge, Gina Miller, goaded Brexiteers by saying they should 'celebrate' the ruling.
Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomed the outcome as 'significant', while former Cabinet minister Ken Clarke said giving parliament the power would help stop ministers 'squabbling'. 


The premier had wanted to invoked Article 50 - which begins the formal two-year Brexit process - alone.
But the judges insisted that would be unconstitutional and she must pass legislation through parliament.
Downing Street insisted Mrs May still believed she should be able to launch the mechanism under so-called 'royal prerogative' powers granted to ministers.
The stage is now set for an extraordinary showdown in the Supreme Court next month - with the fate of the country potentially at stake. 

Another setback there could force Mrs May to put legislation through Parliament, opening the door for Europhile MPs and peers to delay or even wreck Brexit.
Two-thirds of the Commons backed staying in the EU, and the Lords is also believed to have a Remain majority.
Mrs Sturgeon suggested her 54 SNP MPs could oppose invoking Article 50 if there is a Commons vote.
'Scotland voted to remain in the EU and my job is therefore to protect our place in Europe and in the single market as far as I possibly can,' she said.
The High Court battle turned on whether the age-old royal prerogative rules trumped the sovereignty of parliament.
Theresa May's lawyers argued that she is able to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the formal two-year process for leaving the EU - using the powers, which have been at the heart of UK foreign affairs for centuries.

Historically, the list of prerogative powers that can be exercised by ministers include declaring war, pardoning criminals, and regulating the Civil Service.
But the judges backed the legal challenge brought by Remain supporters, who said the prerogative powers were not sufficient and parliamentary approval was needed for an act that would in effect repeal legislation.
'SNP MPs in the House of Commons will certainly not vote for anything that undermines the will or the interest of the Scottish people.'
Amid a wave of condemnation on social media of the controversial decision, Ukip leader Nigel Farage warned there would be public outrage if parliament used its power to block the referendum result.
'I worry that a betrayal may be near at hand,' he said.
'I now fear that every attempt will be made to block or delay the triggering of Article 50. If this is so, they have no idea of the level of public anger they will provoke.'
But Mrs Miller responded:  'I think Mr Farage should be more responsible in his messages because he himself, presumably, believes in the sovereignty of Parliament because he spouted about it throughout the referendum.
'So I would say to him: You should celebrate the win today because the ruling is one that protects the sovereignty of Parliament'.
Tory grandee and arch-Europhile Mr Clarke said the Government will have to give MPs a vote on its Brexit strategy in a return to 'proper parliamentary democracy' rather than decisions being taken in Cabinet committees of 'squabbling colleagues'.
He told BBC Radio 4's PM: 'I think the argument that somehow everything has been decided by this one vote is wrong, it's a childish attempt to avoid debate, the vote was we leave the EU, but it was silent on the terms.
'Even the leading campaigners, the leading Brexiteers do not agree with each other (on the terms).'
Former Remain campaign chief Will Straw said: 'Brexit still means Brexit. But sovereignty means sovereignty too.' 
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock accused Brexiteers of being 'scared' of parliament. 
'There was a pre-referendum majority for Remain in the House of Commons, there is now a post-referendum clear majority for Leave,' he said.
'I don't know what Dominic and the Prime Minister and all these people are scared of.
'Why don't we just have a mature, sober debate in Parliament, as we do on any issue that comes before us, and this happens to be the most important since the Second World War.
'Let's have the debate, let's put it forward.
'In terms of an election, bring it on.'
Former Lib Dem leader Lord Campbell said today's ruling was a 'clear illustration of the well-known legal principle that no matter how high you are, the law is above you'. 
'It is a slap in the face for the Government. It shows the dangers of playing ducks and drakes with the constitution and particularly the sovereignty of Parliament.' 
Nicky Morgan, a former Cabinet minister and Remain campaigner, said the High Court had 'asserted democracy' with its ruling and said the chances of the Government hitting Mrs May's Article 50 deadline of the end of March were 'quite strong'.
Former PM Gordon Brown called for nations and regions to be given powers allowing them to negotiate directly with the European Union.
'We need wholesale reform because today the United Kingdom appears united in name only,' he said.
'Politically, the strains of Brexit are already showing, as different nations, regions, sectors and companies desperately seek their own opt-outs from a hard Brexit and call for their own a la carte version of Brexit.'
Sterling leapt to a three-and-a-half week high against the US dollar after the High Court ruled that Brexit must face a parliamentary vote before Article 50 is triggered.
The pound surged to 1.249 versus the dollar, before paring gains to trade up 1 per cent at 1.243.
Three senior judges ruled that Prime Minister Theresa May does not have the power to use the royal prerogative to push the button on Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty without the prior authority of Parliament.
Sterling also climbed 1 per cent against the euro to 1.120, despite the Government's immediate announcement that it would appeal against the decision at the Supreme Court.

Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker ridiculed Brexiteers' anger with a post on Twitter.
'Absolutely outrageous that parliament might have to make a political decision on the country's future,' he said sarcastically. 

Ukip leadership frontrunner Suzanne Evans said: 'How dare these activist judges attempt to overturn our will?
'It's a power grab & undermines democracy. 
'Time we had the right to sack them.' 
Brexit Secretary David Davis said the option of having a one-off Commons vote on invoking Article 50 was 'not available' to the government due to the fine print of the court ruling.
Instead it will need to table primary legislation and get it through both Houses unless the court ruling is overturned.
The development immediately fueled speculation that Mrs May will call a general election before 2020.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the next election is not due to take place until 2020 unless the Government loses a vote of no confidence or there is a vote by MPs with a two-thirds majority in favour of an early election. 
It is very unlikely that the government could pass primary legislation in time to achieve Mrs May's goal of beginning Brexit by the end of March.
Many MPs believe the PM will not want to hold a general election too close to the moment when the UK actually leaves the bloc, as it could be a turbulent period.
They suggest any delay to Article 50 would make her more likely to opt for a national poll in 2018.
The Prime Minister's spokeswoman appeared to water down her stance on an early election slightly this evening - merely saying there 'should not' be a vote before 2020.
'There shouldn't be a General Election before 2020 – that remains the Prime Minister's view,' the spokeswoman said.
Downing Street insists the decision of the Supreme Court will be final, and believes there will be no recourse to European courts because the matter is a question of UK constitutional law.
Deustche Bank has now installed an election before 2020 as its 'base' prediction. 

Tory former minister Dominic Raab said an election could happen if Remain-backing MPs tried to block the triggering of Article 50 in a Commons vote.

Appearing on BBC Two's Daily Politics, Mr Raab said: 'I think that's the Pandora's Box.
'I think the elephant in the room here is if we get to the stage where effectively Stephen and his colleagues are not willing to allow this negotiation to even begin, I think there must be an increased chance that we will need to go to the country again.
'I think that would be a mistake and I don't think those trying to frustrate the verdict in the referendum will be rewarded.'

Labour MP Mike Gapes, a Remain supporter, said a general election before Article 50 is triggered was now likely.
He tweeted: 'I predicted an early election. I think this court judgment makes it now very likely before Article 50 is triggered.'
The pound soared against the dollar in reaction to today's decision.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney said it underlined the 'uncertainty' around Brexit and warned that would hit the economy. 
'It is an example of the uncertainty that will characterise this process... That uncertainty does bear down on business investment, that effect builds with time, lower business investment has consequences for employment ultimately, it has consequences for productivity.' 



In an humiliation for the Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC, who personally made the case in court, the judges flatly dismissed the government's arguments.
They concluded that the PM does not have the power to withdraw rights from the public by executive decision - something the High Court said would happen by invoking Article 50 and starting the 'irreversible' process of Brexit.
'In the judgement of the Court, the argument is contrary both to the language used by Parliament in the 1972 Act and to the fundamental constitutional principles of the sovereignty of Parliament and the absence of any entitlement on the part of the Crown to change domestic law by the exercise of its prerogative powers,' the ruling said.
'The court expressly accepts the principal argument of the claimants.' 
D-Day for the Supreme Court appeal is December 7 and Theresa May will be desperately hoping her arguments are better received so the issue is ended before Christmas. 
If the appeal fails - something which could even cost Attorney General Jeremy Wright his job - Mrs May will be forced into the parliamentary trenches to make the necessary changes to the law to invoke article 50.


A government spokesman said: 'The Government is disappointed by the Court's judgment.'
'The country voted to leave the European Union in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament. And the Government is determined to respect the result of the referendum.
'We will appeal this judgment.' 

Mrs May had argued the public has delivered its verdict on the June 23 referendum and there should be no second vote by MPs which could frustrate the process.
She will hold talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker tomorrow. 
Tory MP and prominent Brexit campaigner Jacob Rees-Mogg said the judgement 'turns on its head' convention over the Prime Minister's powers - insisting Parliament had already been involved in allowing the referendum. 
He told Sky News: 'I'm very surprised. What's surprised me is every court case brought against the European treaties, when powers were flowing to the EU, and the Government's powers were upheld.
'Now, when it is powers being taken away from the EU, they rule against the Royal Prerogative.' 
The case was brought by British citizens Gina Miller and Deir dos Santos, a hairdresser.
They claimed the Prime Minister has wrongly side-stepping Parliament in refusing MPs a vote on triggering Article 50. 



Welcoming the decision outside the High Court today, Ms Miller said: 'This result today is about all of us: our United Kingdom and our futures.
'It is not about how any of us voted – each of us voted to do what we believed was the right thing for our country.'
She added: 'This case is about process, not politics. My dedicated legal team – Mishcon de Reya and counsel – are, alongside myself and my supporters, pleased to have played our part in helping form a debate on whether the rights conferred on UK citizens through Parliament legislation 44 years ago could be casually snuffed out by the Executive without Parliament or our elected representatives and without proper prior consultation about the Government's intentions for Brexit.'
'However you voted on 23rd June, we all owe it to our country to uphold the highest standards of transparency and democratic accountability that we are admired and respected for around the world.' 

Asked about the ruling this morning, European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said: 'On the UK High Court decision on Article 50, we will not comment on any issues that pertain to the internal legal and constitutional order of our member states.' 


The historic court case came as the author of Article 50 has said the UK could choose to remain in the EU even after exit negotiations begin.
John Kerr said the UK could still legally choose to reject a Brexit after the legislation that begins formal negotiations is invoked.
The Scottish cross-bench peer, who wrote Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, also renewed calls for parliament or the public have another say on the referendum.
Lord Kerr told the BBC: 'It is not irrevocable - you can change your mind while the process is going on.
'During that period, if a country were to decide actually we don't want to leave after all, everybody would be very cross about it being a waste of time, they might try to extract a political price, but legally they couldn't insist that you leave.'
Lord Kerr's remarks came as peers said the UK would have to seek new allies at the United Nations after Brexit.
Former Foreign Office minister Lord Howell of Guildford said the UK would need to 'reinvigorate' old ties and 'build strong new alliances' once it left the EU.
The Lords International Relations Committee said Brexit would require the UK to 'reconsider its methods of operation' at the United Nations, but should seek to continue to work closely with its former EU partners.
The cross-party committee said: 'The UK should negotiate its exit from the EU bearing in mind that one of our strongest allies in international organisations will be the EU. Therefore, as part of its Brexit negotiations, the UK should aim to set up effective ways of continuing to work closely with the EU at the UN.
'Simultaneously, the UK should seek to diversify its alliances, creatively considering new opportunities and methods of leveraging its alliances and influencing other regional blocs at the UN.'
That could include working more closely with Commonwealth allies even though they may not act as a single effective bloc at the UN.
The committee's chairman, Lord Howell, said: 'Given the new status that the UK will have outside of the EU, our committee feels strongly that the UN will be an increasingly important arena in which to promote our foreign policy objectives. We will need to reinvigorate both old ties and build new strong alliances where possible.'

If the Government fails to overturn the High Court ruling or concedes it must press on to keep to its Brexit timetable, it will have to pass Article 50 through Parliament.
D-Day for the Supreme Court appeal is December 7 and Theresa May will be desperately hoping her arguments are better received so the issue is ended before Christmas.
Today's ruling said the Prime Minister does not have the power to withdraw rights from the public by executive decision - something the High Court said would happen by invoking Article 50 and starting the 'irreversible' process of Brexit. 
If the appeal fails - something which could even cost Attorney General Jeremy Wright his job - Mrs May will be forced into the parliamentary trenches to make the necessary changes to the law to invoke article 50.
The nuclear option for Mrs May could be forcing an early general election to answer the question over her powers - but to stay on schedule to invoke Article 50 by the end of March would mean going to the polls as soon as February.

The change to the law could be done a very simple one clause Bill to expedite the process and limit the chance of trouble making amendments.
Normal procedure for legislation would take months as a Bill goes through both the Commons and the Lords.
But the Government has in the past declared court judgements as a reason to invoke 'emergency' procedures, rushing through legislation in a matter of hours.
Alternatively, as the court has not specified the form of Parliamentary vote required, the Government may argue a simple motion is sufficient and not full legislation.
This would strongly limit the chance of amendment and speed up the process - but could conceivably be open to further challenge as it would not have the force of a change in the law. 
A third possibility is to use a statutory instrument, a piece of secondary law, which is impossible to amend and can be put through Parliament quickly - but it can be rejected by MPs or peers on a single vote. 
The three judges whose decision has sparked a constitutional crisis over Brexit include the founder of a European law group and a former Olympic fencer. 
The country's most senior judge Lord Chief Justice, Baron Thomas of Cwmgiedd, aided by Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales, ruled that the Prime Minister does not have power to trigger Article 50 to start the two-year Brexit process.
The unelected trio, three of the most experienced members of the British judiciary, were today accused of 'striking down the will of the people to set in train leaving the EU'. 
But, in explaining the judges' decision today, Lord Thomas insisted they were concerned with 'a pure question of law' and were not expressing any view about the merits of leaving the European Union, which is, he said 'a political issue'.
Lord Thomas was a founding member of the European Law Institute, which says it works towards the 'enhancement of European legal integration'.
He helped found the organisation, which conducts research and make recommendations to provide practical guidance, alongside Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, who is now its president.
But the judge has previously been critical of European judges.In 2014, in a judgement on whole-life tariffs, he said Strasbourg had been wrong in law to rule that such sentences were in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In that ruling, Lord Thomas - whose full name is Roger John Laugharne Thomas - said it was for Parliament to decide which crimes were so serious that the offender should never go free.
The judge was handed the job of leading the judiciary in 2013, beating off a strong field including Sir Brian Leveson, who ran the inquiry into press standards.
Lord Thomas's career as a judge was built in the commercial wing of the High Court before he became a Lord Justice of Appeal, overseeing criminals' claims of miscarriages of justice.
Lord Thomas was also one of the judges who presided over the final hearings last year that sent terror suspect Abu Hamza for trial in the US.
Cambridge-educated Lord Thomas, 69, was part of a team of judges who negotiated Tony Blair's constitution reforms of the mid-2000s.
Mr Blair's decision to scrap the ancient role of Lord Chancellor inside government left the Lord Chief Justice as leader of and spokesman for judges, as well as the senior judge in deciding the interpretation of criminal law.
When he was later appointed to the role, Lord Thomas said the judiciary would 'continue to become more reflective of our diverse society.
'It will also continue to play a constructive role in its relationships with Government, Parliament and the media.' Lord Thomas said.
Lord Thomas was assisted in making today's historic decision by two other senior judges; Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales.
Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton, 65, is the second most senior judge in England and Wales, after Lord Thomas.
He made legal history almost a decade ago when he became the first openly gay judge to be made a Lord Justice of Appeal, and is a former Olympic fencer.
Lord Justice Sales, 54, meanwhile usually sits in the Court of Appeal and is a former First Treasury Counsel, representing the UK government in the civil courts.
He was criticised for charging the taxpayer £3.3million in his first six years in the job from 1997.
Sir Terence Etherton was called to the Bar in 1974 and became a QC in 1990. He was appointed a High Court Judge in 2001 before becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2008. 


Glamourous, feisty and impeccably well-connected, South American-born former model Gina Miller humiliated Theresa May and derailed British democracy because Brexit made her feel 'physically sick'.
Mrs Miller, 51, lives in London with her financier husband Alan, nicknamed 'Mr Hedge Fund' because he made £30 million after starting one of the City's first in 1997.
The couple run an investment firm with a reported £100million in its portfolios.
Nicknamed 'Mrs Wham Glam' by friends, she  has now been branded 'woman of the century' by Remainers who cheered her on the steps of the High Court today.
The mother-of-three, who was born in Guyana but grew up in Britain, became a successful City investment manager and also set up the No.1 Ladies' Investment Club for women in business. 
And friends say she is sharp-witted and acid-tongued, with a reputation for winning every argument. 
Describing herself as a 'natural fighter, she has rattled cages in the City and accused the charity sector of widespread inefficiencies.
But this year Mrs Miller, a Labour supporter, put the Government's Brexit plans in her sights because she was 'absolutely stunned' by the referendum result. 
Mrs Miller, who voted Remain, brought the case with the help of a Portuguese hairdresser called Deir Santos because the Brexit vote on June 23 made her feel 'physically sick'. 
Their high-powered team of lawyers to London's High Court, led by top lawyer Lord Pannick QC and a team up to 11 more barristers, has now embarrassed Theresa May.
Outside the Royal Courts of Justice today Mrs Miller laughed uproariously as she was cheered and clapped by supporters waving EU flags after her win.
Online her fans called her a 'national hero' and 'the woman of the century'. 
She said: 'You can't have a Government casually throwing away people's rights, that why we turned to the courts.  It is about process not politics'.
David Greene, senior partner of law firm Edwin Coe, who acted for Mr Santos, said: 'This is a victory not just for the brave individuals that brought this claim but, more importantly, for Parliamentary democracy and the rule of law.' 
The MPs who defied their constituents to vote against Brexit in the Commons faced a fierce backlash today.
Eight politicians voted No last night to new laws handing Theresa May the power to trigger Article 50 and start the irreversible Brexit process - despite representing seats that backed Brexit.
Labour MPs Catherine McKinnell, Alan Whitehead, Mary Creagh, Graham Allen, Paul Farrelly and Chris Bryant, as well as Liberal Democrat Tom Brake and SNP MP Eilidh Whiteford, all defied voters on their patch.
They were among 114 MPs who voted against starting Brexit last night - but they were overwhelmed by 498 MPs who followed the instructions of the British people.
While the referendum was not counted within constituency boundaries, detailed calculations by University of East Anglia researcher Chris Hanretty based on the votes have produced estimates for each Commons seat.  


Voters in Newcastle were furious with their MP, Ms McKinnell.
Arthur Surtees, 72, is a retired lecturer from Denton, Newcastle.
He said: 'She is not representing the people in the north east or in her area. I think people in this area will feel let down by her.
'I voted to come out and she is going against the interests of her constituents and the interests of the public at the same time.'
He added: 'All of this is just a farce. The vote they have just had is unnecessary. They said you could have a referendum and then change things.'
Christine Hedley, 59, is a hairdresser from Westerhope, Newcastle.
She said: 'I probably wouldn't vote for her again because we did vote to leave.
MPs have backed Brexit in an historic vote that effectively makes the process irreversible.
For the first time, the Commons has supported the principle of legislation that gives the Prime Minister power to trigger Britain's exit from the EU.

A wrecking amendment tabled by the SNP was heavily defeated, before the EU Bill was given its second reading.
The government also comfortably won the third vote - setting the timetable for the rest of the bill's progress.
'I voted to leave not just because of the immigration but because I'm from an era where we weren't in Europe and we were quite alright. 
'I don't think the current Labour government is Labour any more.
'I think people won't appreciate what she's done, that's not what we would have wanted.
'She's voting with her own personal opinion rather than constituents. I feel a little let down. 'I think I would have to have a bigger picture of what she's about before deciding to support her in the future.'
Ann Graham, 75, is a retired architectural librarian from Dinnington, Newcastle.
She said: 'I am a member of the Labour Party. I would have remained. 'However how can you go forward? We are not going to have another referendum so Brexit is what it is whether you agree with it or not.
'I feel we are not going to get this sorted. 'I think it would have been good if everyone had just bitten the bullet and said: ''right that's the way it is. We don't want Theresa May's Brexit we are going to go together and get it done and dusted''.
'She wasn't effecting anything by voting against the article 50. I think she should have just accepted it but fought for it to be the way we want it to be not the way Theresa May wanted it to be.
'I will have to think whether I vote for her in the next election. I won't be voting Tory that's for sure. I think there will be a lot of people who don't care. But the people who voted out will be upset about it.'
In Mr Allen's Nottingham North constituency, voters were furious at their MP.
Lorraine Hall, 54, a support worker from Bulwell, said: 'I think he should have supported it.
'That's the way it's going at the moment, there's so much immigration so we've got to be a bit more careful.'
Peter Staple, 52, unemployed of Bulwell, said: 'We should do all right when we come out.
'I think it is wrong for him to vote against it. I just think it's wrong all together.'  
Chris Housley, 66, retired from Hucknall, said: 'I don't think it's right, it's like he can't trust the decision of the people.
'It's funny because I voted Brexit and my husband didn't but we both think he was wrong to vote against it.'
Former Labour minister Mr Bryant faced a backlash from his Rhondda constituents on Twitter.
In his speech the Commons, Mr Bryant admitted he was speaking only for a minority of his voters and conceded it could cost him his job.
But the former vicar insisted voting against Brexit was in his constituents best interests.
Ben Williams, who said he lived in Ferndale, Rhondda, told him: 'As my vote means so little to my local MP, I will back someone else next time!'
David Kershaw said: 'Get head out of sand and listen to what your constituents want.' 
Others praised the MP, including 'James' who said: 'Proud of my local MP for having a spine and representing the other half of the population.' 


Last night's crucial votes saw Britain reach a landmark moment in its battle to leave the European Union after MPs backed the Brexit Bill.
The Commons endorsed the Article 50 legislation by 498 votes to 114 after the government saw off a desperate bid by more than 100 Remoaners to block it.
In the first of a crucial set of votes in the Commons, a 'wrecking' amendment that would have effectively killed the law was defeated by 336 to 100.
Eight MPs, including Labour's Chris Bryant and Mary Creagh, opposed the legislation to trigger Article 50 last night despite their constituents having decisively backed Brexit in the referendum.
Dozens more voted in favour of holding the EU referendum two years ago - but voted against implementing the result. 

Among those who voted against, 47 were Labour MPs, 50 from SNP, seven Liberal Democrats, three from the SDLP, the one Green Party MP, two from Plaid Cymru, three independent MPs, and just one Conservative, Ken Clarke.
The MPs who voted for were 319 Tories, 167 Labour MPs, eight from the DUP, two UUP, one Ukip and one independent MP. 
Today MPs will pore over the Government's long-awaited White Paper, which will set out its strategy for the upcoming Brexit negotiations with the EU. 
And although last night's vote signalled that last June's historic Brexit vote faces no real prospect of being overturned, rebel MPs will seek to tie Theresa May's hand in those negotiations by tabling amendments on specific aspects of the Government's plans in the next phase of the bill next week.
Downing Street is desperate to avoid any defeats on individual measures in order to prevent the prospect of delaying Mrs May's timetable of triggering our EU divorce by the end of March. 
So any amendments that have the support of Tory MPs will threaten to derail the PM's plans because of the Government's slim Commons majority.  

Below is a list of how the MPs voted so you can find out which side of the bill your representative came down on.
Eight MPs defied the wishes of their own constituents to vote against triggering Brexit last night.
The six Labour, one Lib Dem and one SNP MPs were:
Graham Allen (Labour, Nottingham North)
Chris Bryant (Labour, Rhondda)
Ann Clwyd (Labour, Cynon Valley)
Mary Creagh (Labour, Wakefield)
Paul Farrelly (Labour, Newcastle-Under-Lyme)
Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Dr Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)
Tom Brake (Lib Dem, Carshalton and Wallington)
Eilidh Whiteford (SNP, Banff and Buchan)
Graham Allen represents Nottingham North, a working class area of the city where up to 64 per cent of people demanded the UK cuts its ties with Brussels.
The area he represents is still a major manufacturing centre and contains Boots' headquarters.
Mr Allen insists he is 'not ignoring' the result of the June 23 referendum but said he would not vote for triggering it last night. 
Explaining his decision he said: 'We remain in the dark about many aspects of the government's intended approach. Of course, there is a need for some discretion when approaching negotiations with the remaining EU Member States. But it would be possible to provide far more information than is currently available without compromising the confidentiality ministers need.
'That is why – in line with my responsibility to represent my constituents – I will not vote for a bill authorising the activation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union until they and I know what the government has in mind; how it intends to keep Parliament and public informed about how negotiations are developing; and consult with representatives in Westminster at key stages throughout the process. 
'It is not about ignoring the referendum result, but about ensuring a democratic input into the process of leaving as it unfolds'.
Another rebel was Newcastle upon Tyne North MP Catherine McKinnell, who claimed that despite voting against the wishes of her constituents she 'respected' the June 23 result.
In her constituency an estimated 56.3 per cent voted in favour of Brexit - but she still voted against triggering Article 50 last night.
The area she represents is a mix of urban areas once the life-blood of the British shipbuilding and coal mining industries. It has now been regenerated and contains a number of big businesses like Nestle and Warburtons employing thousands of professionals in the area.
Explaining her decision she said: Many constituents have been in touch about Britain's departure from the European Union, following the outcome of the EU referendum on 23rd June (the result of which I respect). 

'As the Supreme Court ruled last week that when and whether the Prime Minister should be able to trigger Article 50 is for Parliament to vote on, I had to make a decision on what I felt was right at this stage, in my role as the elected representative of Newcastle North. 
'I therefore took the decision that I should vote against the Government's Bill enabling Article 50 to be triggered at this stage, before we have a significantly more detailed plan and strategy in place and before we head down a – potentially irreversible – path that could do irreparable damage to our area and the country. This was not a vote against triggering Article 50 altogether – just a vote against triggering Article 50 at this stage without what I believe to be much needed clarity and safeguards in place'. 
 Alexander, Heidi (Labour) Lewisham East
Ali, Rushanara (Labour) Bethnal Green and Bow
Allen, Graham (Labour) Nottingham North
Allin-Khan, Dr Rosena (Labour) Tooting
Berger, Luciana (Labour) Liverpool, Wavertree
Bradshaw, Mr Ben (Labour) Exeter
Brennan, Kevin (Labour) Cardiff West
Brown, Lyn (Labour) West Ham
Bryant, Chris (Labour) Rhondda
Buck, Ms Karen (Labour) Westminster North
Butler, Dawn (Labour) Brent Central
Cadbury, Ruth (Labour) Brentford and Isleworth
Clwyd, Ann (Labour) Cynon Valley
Coffey, Ann (Labour) Stockport
Coyle, Neil (Labour) Bermondsey and Old Southwark
Creagh, Mary (Labour) Wakefield
Creasy, Stella (Labour) Walthamstow
Debbonaire, Thangam (Labour) Bristol West
Doughty, Stephen (Labour) Cardiff South and Penarth
Dowd, Jim (Labour) Lewisham West and Penge
Eagle, Maria (Labour) Garston and Halewood
Ellman, Mrs Louise (Labour) Liverpool, Riverside
Farrelly, Paul (Labour) Newcastle-under-Lyme
Foxcroft, Vicky (Labour) Lewisham, Deptford
Gapes, Mike (Labour) Ilford South
Greenwood, Lilian (Labour) Nottingham South
Hayes, Helen (Labour) Dulwich and West Norwood
Hillier, Meg (Labour) Hackney South and Shoreditch
Huq, Dr Rupa (Labour) Ealing Central and Acton
Kyle, Peter (Labour) Hove
Lammy, Mr David (Labour) Tottenham
Maskell, Rachael (Labour) York Central
McCarthy, Kerry (Labour) Bristol East
McKinnell, Catherine (Labour) Newcastle upon Tyne North
Moon, Mrs Madeleine (Labour) Bridgend
Murray, Ian (Labour) Edinburgh South
Pound, Stephen (Labour) Ealing North
Sharma, Mr Virendra (Labour) Ealing, Southall
Siddiq, Tulip (Labour) Hampstead and Kilburn
Slaughter, Andy (Labour) Hammersmith
Smith, Jeff (Labour) Manchester, Withington
Smith, Owen (Labour) Pontypridd
Stevens, Jo (Labour) Cardiff Central
Timms, Stephen (Labour) East Ham
West, Catherine (Labour) Hornsey and Wood Green
Whitehead, Dr Alan (Labour) Southampton, Test
Zeichner, Daniel (Labour) Cambridge
Clarke, Mr Kenneth (Conservative) Rushcliffe
Ahmed-Sheikh, Ms Tasmina (Scottish National Party) Ochil and South Perthshire
Arkless, Richard (Scottish National Party) Dumfries and Galloway
Bardell, Hannah (Scottish National Party) Livingston
Black, Mhairi (Scottish National Party) Paisley and Renfrewshire South
Blackford, Ian (Scottish National Party) Ross, Skye and Lochaber
Blackman, Kirsty (Scottish National Party) Aberdeen North
Boswell, Philip (Scottish National Party) Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill
Brock, Deidre (Scottish National Party) Edinburgh North and Leith
Brown, Alan (Scottish National Party) Kilmarnock and Loudoun
Cameron, Dr Lisa (Scottish National Party) East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow
Chapman, Douglas (Scottish National Party) Dunfermline and West Fife 
Cherry, Joanna (Scottish National Party) Edinburgh South West
Cowan, Ronnie (Scottish National Party) Inverclyde 

 Crawley, Angela (Scottish National Party) Lanark and Hamilton East

Day, Martyn (Scottish National Party) Linlithgow and East Falkirk
Docherty-Hughes, Martin (Scottish National Party) West Dunbartonshire
Donaldson, Stuart Blair (Scottish National Party) West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine
Ferrier, Margaret (Scottish National Party) Rutherglen and Hamilton West
Gethins, Stephen (Scottish National Party) North East Fife
Gibson, Patricia (Scottish National Party) North Ayrshire and Arran
Grady, Patrick (Scottish National Party) Glasgow North
Grant, Peter (Scottish National Party) Glenrothes
Gray, Neil (Scottish National Party) Airdrie and Shotts
Hendry, Drew (Scottish National Party) Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey
Hosie, Stewart (Scottish National Party) Dundee East
Kerevan, George (Scottish National Party) East Lothian
Kerr, Calum (Scottish National Party) Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk
Law, Chris (Scottish National Party) Dundee West
Mc Nally, John (Scottish National Party) Falkirk
McDonald, Stewart Malcolm(Scottish National Party) Glasgow South
McDonald, Stuart C. (Scottish National Party) Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East
McLaughlin, Anne (Scottish National Party) Glasgow North East
MacNeil, Angus Brendan (Scottish National Party) Na h-Eileanan an Iar
Monaghan, Carol (Scottish National Party) Glasgow North West
Monaghan, Dr Paul (Scottish National Party) Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
Mullin, Roger (Scottish National Party) Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath
Newlands, Gavin (Scottish National Party) Paisley and Renfrewshire North
Nicolson, John (Scottish National Party) East Dunbartonshire
O'Hara, Brendan (Scottish National Party) Argyll and Bute
Oswald, Kirsten (Scottish National Party) East Renfrewshire
Paterson, Steven (Scottish National Party) Stirling
Robertson, Angus (Scottish National Party) Moray
Salmond, Alex (Scottish National Party) Gordon
Sheppard, Tommy (Scottish National Party) Edinburgh East
Stephens, Chris (Scottish National Party) Glasgow South West
Thewliss, Alison (Scottish National Party) Glasgow Central
Weir, Mike (Scottish National Party) Angus
Whiteford, Dr Eilidh (Scottish National Party) Banff and Buchan
Whitford, Dr Philippa (Scottish National Party) Central Ayrshire
Wishart, Pete (Scottish National Party) Perth and North Perthshire
Brake, Tom (Liberal Democrat) Carshalton and Wallington
Carmichael, Mr Alistair (Liberal Democrat) Orkney and Shetland
Clegg, Mr Nick (Liberal Democrat) Sheffield, Hallam
Farron, Tim (Liberal Democrat) Westmorland and Lonsdale
Olney, Sarah (Liberal Democrat) Richmond Park
Pugh, John (Liberal Democrat) Southport
Williams, Mr Mark (Liberal Democrat) Ceredigion
Durkan, Mark (Social Democratic & Labour Party) Foyle
McDonnell, Dr Alasdair (Social Democratic & Labour Party) Belfast South
Ritchie, Ms Margaret (Social Democratic & Labour Party) South Down
McGarry, Natalie (Independent) Glasgow East
Thomson, Michelle (Independent) Edinburgh West
Hermon, Lady (Independent) North Down
Saville Roberts, Liz (Plaid Cymru) Dwyfor Meirionnydd
Williams, Hywel (Plaid Cymru) Arfon
Lucas, Caroline (Green Party) Brighton, Pavilion




Abrahams, Debbie (Labour) Oldham East and Saddleworth
Adams, Nigel (Conservative) Selby and Ainsty
Afriyie, Adam (Conservative) Windsor
Aldous, Peter (Conservative) Waveney
Allan, Lucy (Conservative) Telford
Allen, Heidi (Conservative) South Cambridgeshire
Amess, Sir David (Conservative) Southend West
Anderson, Mr David (Labour) Blaydon
Andrew, Stuart (Conservative) Pudsey
Ansell, Caroline (Conservative) Eastbourne
Argar, Edward (Conservative) Charnwood
Ashworth, Jonathan (Labour) Leicester South
Atkins, Victoria (Conservative) Louth and Horncastle
Austin, Ian (Labour) Dudley North
Bacon, Mr Richard (Conservative) South Norfolk
Bailey, Mr Adrian (Labour) West Bromwich West
Baker, Mr Steve (Conservative) Wycombe
Baldwin, Harriett (Conservative) West Worcestershire
Barclay, Stephen (Conservative) North East Cambridgeshire
Baron, Mr John (Conservative) Basildon and Billericay
Barron, Sir Kevin (Labour) Rother Valley
Barwell, Gavin (Conservative) Croydon Central
Bebb, Guto (Conservative) Aberconwy
Beckett, Margaret (Labour) Derby South
Bellingham, Sir Henry (Conservative) North West Norfolk
Benn, Hilary (Labour) Leeds Central
Benyon, Richard (Conservative) Newbury
Beresford, Sir Paul (Conservative) Mole Valley
Berry, James (Conservative) Kingston and Surbiton
Betts, Mr Clive (Labour) Sheffield South East
Bingham, Andrew (Conservative) High Peak
Blackman, Bob (Conservative) Harrow East
Blackwood, Nicola (Conservative) Oxford West and Abingdon
Blenkinsop, Tom (Labour) Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
Blomfield, Paul (Labour) Sheffield Central
Blunt, Crispin (Conservative) Reigate
Bone, Mr Peter (Conservative) Wellingborough
Borwick, Victoria (Conservative) Kensington
Bottomley, Sir Peter (Conservative) Worthing West
Brabin, Tracy (Labour) Batley and Spen
Bradley, Karen (Conservative) Staffordshire Moorlands
Brady, Mr Graham (Conservative) Altrincham and Sale West
Brazier, Sir Julian (Conservative) Canterbury
Bridgen, Andrew (Conservative) North West Leicestershire
Brine, Steve (Conservative) Winchester
Brokenshire, James (Conservative) Old Bexley and Sidcup
Brown, Mr Nicholas (Labour) Newcastle upon Tyne East
Bruce, Fiona (Conservative) Congleton
Buckland, Robert (Conservative) South Swindon
Burden, Richard (Labour) Birmingham, Northfield
Burgon, Richard (Labour) Leeds East
Burnham, Andy (Labour) Leigh
Burns, Conor (Conservative) Bournemouth West
Burns, Sir Simon (Conservative) Chelmsford
Burrowes, Mr David (Conservative) Enfield, Southgate
Burt, Alistair (Conservative) North East Bedfordshire
Byrne, Liam (Labour) Birmingham, Hodge Hill
Cairns, Alun (Conservative) Vale of Glamorgan
Campbell, Mr Alan (Labour) Tynemouth
Campbell, Mr Gregory (Democratic Unionist Party) East Londonderry
Campbell, Mr Ronnie (Labour) Blyth Valley
Carmichael, Neil (Conservative) Stroud
Carswell, Mr Douglas (UK Independence Party) Clacton
Cartlidge, James (Conservative) South Suffolk
Cash, Sir William (Conservative) Stone
Caulfield, Maria (Conservative) Lewes
Chalk, Alex (Conservative) Cheltenham
Champion, Sarah (Labour) Rotherham
Chapman, Jenny (Labour) Darlington
Chishti, Rehman (Conservative) Gillingham and Rainham
Chope, Mr Christopher (Conservative) Christchurch
Churchill, Jo (Conservative) Bury St Edmunds
Clark, Greg (Conservative) Tunbridge Wells
Cleverly, James (Conservative) Braintree
Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey (Conservative) The Cotswolds
Coaker, Vernon (Labour) Gedling
Coffey, Dr Thérèse (Conservative) Suffolk Coastal
Collins, Damian (Conservative) Folkestone and Hythe
Colvile, Oliver (Conservative) Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport
Cooper, Julie (Labour) Burnley
Cooper, Rosie (Labour) West Lancashire
Cooper, Yvette (Labour) Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
Corbyn, Jeremy (Labour) Islington North
Costa, Alberto (Conservative) South Leicestershire
Courts, Robert (Conservative) Witney
Cox, Mr Geoffrey (Conservative) Torridge and West Devon
Crabb, Stephen (Conservative) Preseli Pembrokeshire
Crausby, Sir David (Labour) Bolton North East
Crouch, Tracey (Conservative) Chatham and Aylesford
Cruddas, Jon (Labour) Dagenham and Rainham
Cryer, John (Labour) Leyton and Wanstead
Cummins, Judith (Labour) Bradford South
Cunningham, Alex (Labour) Stockton North
Cunningham, Mr Jim (Labour) Coventry South
Dakin, Nic (Labour) Scunthorpe
Danczuk, Simon (Independent) Rochdale
David, Wayne (Labour) Caerphilly
Davies, Byron (Conservative) Gower
Davies, Chris (Conservative) Brecon and Radnorshire
Davies, David T. C. (Conservative) Monmouth
Davies, Glyn (Conservative) Montgomeryshire
Davies, Dr James (Conservative) Vale of Clywd
Davies, Mims (Conservative) Eastleigh
Davies, Philip (Conservative) Shipley
Davis, Mr David (Conservative) Haltemprice and Howden
De Piero, Gloria (Labour) Ashfield
Dinenage, Caroline (Conservative) Gosport
Djanogly, Mr Jonathan(Conservative) Huntingdon
Dodds, Mr Nigel (Democratic Unionist Party) Belfast North
Donaldson, Sir Jeffrey M.(Democratic Unionist Party) Lagan Valley
Donelan, Michelle (Conservative) Chippenham
Dorries, Nadine (Conservative) Mid Bedfordshire
Double, Steve (Conservative) St Austell and Newquay
Dowd, Peter (Labour) Bootle
Dowden, Oliver (Conservative) Hertsmere
Drax, Richard (Conservative) South Dorset
Dromey, Jack (Labour) Birmingham, Erdington
Drummond, Mrs Flick (Conservative) Portsmouth South
Duddridge, James (Conservative) Rochford and Southend East
Dugher, Michael (Labour) Barnsley East
Duncan, Sir Alan (Conservative) Rutland and Melton
Duncan Smith, Mr Iain (Conservative) Chingford and Woodford Green
Dunne, Mr Philip (Conservative) Ludlow
Eagle, Ms Angela (Labour) Wallasey
Efford, Clive (Labour) Eltham
Elliott, Julie (Labour) Sunderland Central
Elliott, Tom (Ulster Unionist Party) Fermanagh and South Tyrone
Ellis, Michael (Conservative) Northampton North
Ellison, Jane (Conservative) Battersea
Ellwood, Mr Tobias (Conservative) Bournemouth East
Elmore, Chris (Labour) Ogmore
Elphicke, Charlie (Conservative) Dover
Esterson, Bill (Labour) Sefton Central
Eustice, George (Conservative) Camborne and Redruth
Evans, Chris (Labour) Islwyn
Evans, Graham (Conservative) Weaver Vale
Evans, Mr Nigel (Conservative) Ribble Valley
Evennett, David (Conservative) Bexleyheath and Crayford
Fabricant, Michael (Conservative) Lichfield
Fallon, Sir Michael (Conservative) Sevenoaks
Fernandes, Suella (Conservative) Fareham
Field, Frank (Labour) Birkenhead
Field, Mark (Conservative) Cities of London and Westminster
Fitzpatrick, Jim (Labour) Poplar and Limehouse
Flello, Robert (Labour) Stoke-on-Trent South
Fletcher, Colleen (Labour) Coventry North East
Flint, Caroline (Labour) Don Valley
Flynn, Paul (Labour) Newport West
Foster, Kevin (Conservative) Torbay
Fovargue, Yvonne (Labour) Makerfield
Fox, Dr Liam (Conservative) North Somerset
Francois, Mr Mark (Conservative) Rayleigh and Wickford
Frazer, Lucy (Conservative) South East Cambridgeshire
Freeman, George (Conservative) Mid Norfolk
Freer, Mike (Conservative) Finchley and Golders Green
Fuller, Richard (Conservative) Bedford
Furniss, Gill (Labour) Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough
Fysh, Marcus (Conservative) Yeovil
Gardiner, Barry (Labour) Brent North
Garnier, Sir Edward (Conservative) Harborough
Garnier, Mark (Conservative) Wyre Forest
Gauke, Mr David (Conservative) South West Hertfordshire
Ghani, Nusrat (Conservative) Wealden
Gibb, Nick (Conservative) Bognor Regis and Littlehampton
Gillan, Mrs Cheryl (Conservative) Chesham and Amersham
Glen, John (Conservative) Salisbury
Glindon, Mary (Labour) North Tyneside
Goodman, Helen (Labour) Bishop Auckland
Goodwill, Mr Robert (Conservative) Scarborough and Whitby
Gove, Michael (Conservative) Surrey Heath
Graham, Richard (Conservative) Gloucester
Grant, Mrs Helen (Conservative) Maidstone and The Weald
Gray, James (Conservative) North Wiltshire
Grayling, Chris (Conservative) Epsom and Ewell
Green, Chris (Conservative) Bolton West
Green, Damian (Conservative) Ashford
Greening, Justine (Conservative) Putney
Greenwood, Margaret (Labour) Wirral West
Grieve, Mr Dominic (Conservative) Beaconsfield
Griffith, Nia (Labour) Llanelli
Griffiths, Andrew (Conservative) Burton
Gummer, Ben (Conservative) Ipswich
Gwynne, Andrew (Labour) Denton and Reddish
Gyimah, Mr Sam (Conservative) East Surrey
Haigh, Louise (Labour) Sheffield, Heeley
Halfon, Robert (Conservative) Harlow
Hall, Luke (Conservative) Thornbury and Yate
Hamilton, Fabian (Labour) Leeds North East
Hammond, Mr Philip (Conservative) Runnymede and Weybridge
Hammond, Stephen (Conservative) Wimbledon
Hancock, Matt (Conservative) West Suffolk
Hands, Greg (Conservative) Chelsea and Fulham
Hanson, Mr David (Labour) Delyn
Harman, Ms Harriet (Labour) Camberwell and Peckham
Harper, Mr Mark (Conservative) Forest of Dean
Harrington, Richard (Conservative) Watford
Harris, Carolyn (Labour) Swansea East
Harris, Rebecca (Conservative) Castle Point
Hart, Simon (Conservative) Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire
Hayes, Mr John (Conservative) South Holland and The Deepings
Hayman, Sue (Labour) Workington
Heald, Sir Oliver (Conservative) North East Hertfordshire
Healey, John (Labour) Wentworth and Dearne
Heappey, James (Conservative) Wells
Heaton-Harris, Chris (Conservative) Daventry
Heaton-Jones, Peter (Conservative) North Devon
Henderson, Gordon (Conservative) Sittingbourne and Sheppey
Hendrick, Mr Mark (Labour) Preston
Hepburn, Mr Stephen (Labour) Jarrow
Herbert, Nick (Conservative) Arundel and South Downs
Hinds, Damian (Conservative) East Hampshire
Hoare, Simon (Conservative) North Dorset
Hodgson, Mrs Sharon (Labour) Washington and Sunderland West
Hoey, Kate (Labour) Vauxhall
Hollern, Kate (Labour) Blackburn
Hollingbery, George (Conservative) Meon Valley
Hollinrake, Kevin (Conservative) Thirsk and Malton
Hollobone, Mr Philip (Conservative) Kettering
Holloway, Adam (Conservative) Gravesham
Hopkins, Kelvin (Labour) Luton North
Hopkins, Kris (Conservative) Keighley
Howarth, Sir Gerald (Conservative) Aldershot
Howell, John (Conservative) Henley
Howlett, Ben (Conservative) Bath
Huddleston, Nigel (Conservative) Mid Worcestershire
Hunt, Mr Jeremy (Conservative) South West Surrey
Hurd, Mr Nick (Conservative) Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner
Hussain, Imran (Labour) Bradford East
Jackson, Mr Stewart (Conservative) Peterborough
James, Margot (Conservative) Stourbridge
Jarvis, Dan (Labour) Barnsley Central
Javid, Sajid (Conservative) Bromsgrove
Jayawardena, Mr Ranil (Conservative) North East Hampshire
Jenkin, Mr Bernard (Conservative) Harwich and North Essex
Jenkyns, Andrea (Conservative) Morley and Outwood
Jenrick, Robert (Conservative) Newark
Johnson, Alan (Labour) Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle
Johnson, Boris (Conservative) Uxbridge and South Ruislip
Johnson, Dr Caroline(Conservative) Sleaford and North Hykeham
Johnson, Diana (Labour) Kingston upon Hull North
Johnson, Gareth (Conservative) Dartford
Johnson, Joseph (Conservative) Orpington
Jones, Andrew (Conservative) Harrogate and Knaresborough
Jones, Mr David (Conservative) Clwyd West
Jones, Gerald (Labour) Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney
Jones, Graham (Labour) Hyndburn
Jones, Helen (Labour) Warrington North
Jones, Mr Kevan (Labour) North Durham
Jones, Mr Marcus (Conservative) Nuneaton

Jones, Susan Elan (Labour) Clwyd South
Kane, Mike (Labour) Wythenshawe and Sale East
Kawczynski, Daniel (Conservative) Shrewsbury and Atcham
Keeley, Barbara (Labour) Worsley and Eccles South
Kendall, Liz (Labour) Leicester West
Kennedy, Seema (Conservative) South Ribble
Kinahan, Danny (Ulster Unionist Party) South Antrim
Kinnock, Stephen (Labour) Aberavon
Kirby, Simon (Conservative) Brighton, Kemptown
Knight, Sir Greg (Conservative) East Yorkshire
Knight, Julian (Conservative) Solihull
Kwarteng, Kwasi (Conservative) Spelthorne
Lancaster, Mark (Conservative) Milton Keynes North
Latham, Pauline (Conservative) Mid Derbyshire
Lavery, Ian (Labour) Wansbeck
Leadsom, Andrea (Conservative) South Northamptonshire
Lee, Dr Phillip (Conservative) Bracknell
Lefroy, Jeremy (Conservative) Stafford
Leigh, Sir Edward (Conservative) Gainsborough
Leslie, Charlotte (Conservative) Bristol North West
Letwin, Sir Oliver (Conservative) West Dorset
Lewell-Buck, Mrs Emma (Labour) South Shields
Lewis, Brandon (Conservative) Great Yarmouth
Lewis, Clive (Labour) Norwich South
Lewis, Mr Ivan (Labour) Bury South
Lewis, Dr Julian (Conservative) New Forest East
Liddell-Grainger, Mr Ian(Conservative) Bridgwater and West Somerset
Lidington, Mr David (Conservative) Aylesbury
Lilley, Mr Peter (Conservative) Hitchin and Harpenden
Long Bailey, Rebecca (Labour) Salford and Eccles
Lopresti, Jack (Conservative) Filton and Bradley Stoke
Lord, Mr Jonathan (Conservative) Woking
Loughton, Tim (Conservative) East Worthing and Shoreham
Lucas, Ian C. (Labour) Wrexham
Lynch, Holly (Labour) Halifax
Steve McCabe (Labour) Birmingham, Selly Oak
McCartney, Jason (Conservative) Colne Valley
McCartney, Karl (Conservative) Lincoln
McDonagh, Siobhain (Labour) Mitcham and Morden
McDonald, Andy (Labour) Middlesbrough
McDonnell, John (Labour) Hayes and Harlington
McFadden, Mr Pat (Labour) Wolverhampton South East
McGinn, Conor (Labour) St Helens North
McGovern, Alison (Labour) Wirral South
McInnes, Liz (Labour) Heywood and Middleton
Mackinlay, Craig (Conservative) South Thanet
Mackintosh, David (Conservative) Northampton South
McLoughlin, Sir Patrick(Conservative) Derbyshire Dales
McMahon, Jim (Labour) Oldham West and Royton
McPartland, Stephen (Conservative) Stevenage
Mactaggart, Fiona (Labour) Slough
Madders, Justin (Labour) Ellesmere Port and Neston
Mahmood, Mr Khalid (Labour) Birmingham, Perry Barr
Mahmood, Shabana (Labour) Birmingham, Ladywood
Main, Mrs Anne (Conservative) St Albans
Mak, Mr Alan (Conservative) Havant
Malhotra, Seema (Labour) Feltham and Heston
Malthouse, Kit (Conservative) North West Hampshire
Mann, John (Labour) Bassetlaw
Mann, Scott (Conservative) North Cornwall
Marris, Rob (Labour) Wolverhampton South West
Marsden, Gordon (Labour) Blackpool South
Matheson, Christian (Labour) City of Chester
Mathias, Dr Tania (Conservative) Twickenham
May, Mrs Theresa (Conservative) Maidenhead
Maynard, Paul (Conservative) Blackpool North and Cleveleys
Meale, Sir Alan (Labour) Mansfield
Menzies, Mark (Conservative) Fylde
Mercer, Johnny (Conservative) Plymouth, Moor View
Merriman, Huw (Conservative) Bexhill and Battle
Metcalfe, Stephen (Conservative) South Basildon and East Thurrock
Miliband, Edward (Labour) Doncaster North
Miller, Mrs Maria (Conservative) Basingstoke
Milling, Amanda (Conservative) Cannock Chase
Mills, Nigel (Conservative) Amber Valley
Milton, Anne (Conservative) Guildford
Mitchell, Mr Andrew (Conservative) Sutton Coldfield
Mordaunt, Penny (Conservative) Portsmouth North
Morden, Jessica (Labour) Newport East
Morgan, Nicky (Conservative) Loughborough
Morris, Anne Marie (Conservative) Newton Abbot
Morris, David (Conservative) Morecambe and Lunesdale
Morris, Grahame (Labour) Easington
Morris, James (Conservative) Halesowen and Rowley Regis
Morton, Wendy (Conservative) Aldridge-Brownhills
Mowat, David (Conservative) Warrington South
Mundell, David (Conservative) Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale
Murray, Mrs Sheryll (Conservative) South East Cornwall
Murrison, Dr Andrew (Conservative) South West Wiltshire
Nandy, Lisa (Labour) Wigan
Neill, Robert (Conservative) Bromley and Chislehurst
Newton, Sarah (Conservative) Truro and Falmouth
Nokes, Caroline (Conservative) Romsey and Southampton North
Norman, Jesse (Conservative) Hereford and South Herefordshire
Nuttall, Mr David (Conservative) Bury North
Offord, Dr Matthew (Conservative) Hendon
Onn, Melanie (Labour) Great Grimsby
Onwurah, Chi (Labour) Newcastle upon Tyne Central
Opperman, Guy (Conservative) Hexham
Osamor, Kate (Labour) Edmonton
Osborne, Mr George (Conservative) Tatton
Owen, Albert (Labour) Ynys Môn
Paisley, Ian (Democratic Unionist Party) North Antrim
Parish, Neil (Conservative) Tiverton and Honiton
Patel, Priti (Conservative) Witham
Paterson, Mr Owen (Conservative) North Shropshire
Pawsey, Mark (Conservative) Rugby
Pearce, Teresa (Labour) Erith and Thamesmead
Penning, Mike (Conservative) Hemel Hempstead
Pennycook, Matthew (Labour) Greenwich and Woolwich
Penrose, John (Conservative) Weston-super-Mare
Percy, Andrew (Conservative) Brigg and Goole
Perkins, Toby (Labour) Chesterfield
Perry, Claire (Conservative) Devizes
Phillips, Jess (Labour) Birmingham, Yardley
Phillipson, Bridget (Labour) Houghton and Sunderland South
Philp, Chris (Conservative) Croydon South
Pickles, Sir Eric (Conservative) Brentwood and Ongar
Pincher, Christopher (Conservative) Tamworth
Poulter, Dr Dan (Conservative) Central Suffolk and North Ipswich
Pow, Rebecca (Conservative) Taunton Deane
Powell, Lucy (Labour) Manchester Central
Prentis, Victoria (Conservative) Banbury
Prisk, Mr Mark (Conservative) Hertford and Stortford
Pritchard, Mark (Conservative) The Wrekin
Pursglove, Tom (Conservative) Corby
Quin, Jeremy (Conservative) Horsham
Quince, Will (Conservative) Colchester
Qureshi, Yasmin (Labour) Bolton South East
Raab, Dominic (Conservative) Esher and Walton
Rayner, Angela (Labour) Ashton-under-Lyne
Redwood, John (Conservative) Wokingham
Reed, Mr Steve (Labour) Croydon North
Rees, Christina (Labour) Neath
Rees-Mogg, Mr Jacob (Conservative) North East Somerset
Reeves, Rachel (Labour) Leeds West
Reynolds, Emma (Labour) Wolverhampton North East
Reynolds, Jonathan (Labour) Stalybridge and Hyde
Rimmer, Marie (Labour) St Helens South and Whiston
Robertson, Mr Laurence (Conservative) Tewkesbury
Robinson, Gavin (Democratic Unionist Party) Belfast East
Robinson, Mr Geoffrey (Labour) Coventry North West
Robinson, Mary (Conservative) Cheadle
Rosindell, Andrew (Conservative) Romford
Rotheram, Steve (Labour) Liverpool, Walton
Rudd, Amber (Conservative) Hastings and Rye
Rutley, David (Conservative) Macclesfield
Ryan, Joan (Labour) Enfield North
Sandbach, Antoinette(Conservative) Eddisbury
Scully, Paul (Conservative) Sutton and Cheam
Selous, Andrew (Conservative) South West Bedfordshire
Shah, Naz (Labour) Bradford West
Shannon, Jim (Democratic Unionist Party) Strangford
Shapps, Grant (Conservative) Welwyn Hatfield
Sharma, Alok (Conservative) Reading West
Sheerman, Mr Barry (Labour) Huddersfield
Shelbrooke, Alec (Conservative) Elmet and Rothwell
Sherriff, Paula (Labour) Dewsbury
Simpson, David (Democratic Unionist Party) Upper Bann
Simpson, Mr Keith (Conservative) Broadland
Skidmore, Chris (Conservative) Kingswood
Skinner, Mr Dennis (Labour) Bolsover
Smeeth, Ruth (Labour) Stoke-on-Trent North
Smith, Mr Andrew (Labour) Oxford East
Smith, Cat (Labour) Lancaster and Fleetwood
Smith, Chloe (Conservative) Norwich North
Smith, Henry (Conservative) Crawley
Smith, Julian (Conservative) Skipton and Ripon
Smith, Nick (Labour) Blaenau Gwent
Smith, Royston (Conservative) Southampton, Itchen
Smyth, Karin (Labour) Bristol South
Soames, Sir Nicholas (Conservative) Mid Sussex
Solloway, Amanda (Conservative) Derby North
Soubry, Anna (Conservative) Broxtowe
Spellar, John (Labour) Warley
Spelman, Dame Caroline (Conservative) Meriden
Spencer, Mark (Conservative) Sherwood
Starmer, Keir (Labour) Holborn and St Pancras
Stephenson, Andrew (Conservative) Pendle
Stevenson, John (Conservative) Carlisle
Stewart, Bob (Conservative) Beckenham
Stewart, Iain (Conservative) Milton Keynes South
Stewart, Rory (Conservative) Penrith and The Border
Streeter, Mr Gary (Conservative) South West Devon
Streeting, Wes (Labour) Ilford North
Stride, Mel (Conservative) Central Devon
Stringer, Graham (Labour) Blackley and Broughton
Stuart, Ms Gisela (Labour) Birmingham, Edgbaston
Stuart, Graham (Conservative) Beverley and Holderness
Sturdy, Julian (Conservative) York Outer
Sunak, Rishi (Conservative) Richmond (Yorks)
Swayne, Sir Desmond(Conservative) New Forest West
Swire, Sir Hugo (Conservative) East Devon
Syms, Mr Robert (Conservative) Poole
Tami, Mark (Labour) Alyn and Deeside
Thomas, Derek (Conservative) St Ives
Thomas, Gareth (Labour) Harrow West
Thomas-Symonds, Nick (Labour) Torfaen
Thornberry, Emily (Labour) Islington South and Finsbury
Throup, Maggie (Conservative) Erewash
Timpson, Edward (Conservative) Crewe and Nantwich
Tolhurst, Kelly (Conservative) Rochester and Strood
Tomlinson, Justin (Conservative) North Swindon
Tomlinson, Michael (Conservative) Mid Dorset and North Poole
Tracey, Craig (Conservative) North Warwickshire
Tredinnick, David (Conservative) Bosworth
Trevelyan, Mrs Anne-Marie(Conservative) Berwick-upon-Tweed
Trickett, Jon (Labour) Hemsworth
Truss, Elizabeth (Conservative) South West Norfolk
Tugendhat, Tom (Conservative) Tonbridge and Malling
Turley, Anna (Labour) Redcar
Turner, Mr Andrew (Conservative) Isle of Wight
Turner, Karl (Labour) Kingston upon Hull East
Twigg, Derek (Labour) Halton
Twigg, Stephen (Labour) Liverpool, West Derby
Tyrie, Mr Andrew (Conservative) Chichester
Umunna, Mr Chuka (Labour) Streatham
Vaizey, Mr Edward (Conservative) Wantage
Vara, Mr Shailesh (Conservative) North West Cambridgeshire
Vaz, Keith (Labour) Leicester East
Vaz, Valerie (Labour) Walsall South
Vickers, Martin (Conservative) Cleethorpes
Villiers, Mrs Theresa (Conservative) Chipping Barnet
Walker, Mr Charles (Conservative) Broxbourne
Walker, Mr Robin (Conservative) Worcester
Wallace, Mr Ben (Conservative) Wyre and Preston North
Warburton, David (Conservative) Somerton and Frome
Warman, Matt (Conservative) Boston and Skegness
Watkinson, Dame Angela(Conservative) Hornchurch and Upminster
Watson, Tom (Labour) West Bromwich East
Wharton, James (Conservative) Stockton South
Whately, Helen (Conservative) Faversham and Mid Kent
Wheeler, Heather (Conservative) South Derbyshire
White, Chris (Conservative) Warwick and Leamington
Whittaker, Craig (Conservative) Calder Valley
Whittingdale, Mr John (Conservative) Maldon
Wiggin, Bill (Conservative) North Herefordshire
Williams, Craig (Conservative) Cardiff North
Wilson, Phil (Labour) Sedgefield
Wilson, Mr Rob (Conservative) Reading East
Wilson, Sammy (Democratic Unionist Party) East Antrim
Winnick, Mr David (Labour) Walsall North
Winterton, Dame Rosie (Labour) Doncaster Central
Wollaston, Dr Sarah (Conservative) Totnes
Woodcock, John (Labour) Barrow and Furness
Wragg, William (Conservative) Hazel Grove
Wright, Mr Iain (Labour) Hartlepool
Wright, Jeremy (Conservative) Kenilworth and Southam
Zahawi, Nadhim (Conservative) Stratford-on-Avon
 

As a general rule, the prime minister of Ireland, who is known as the Taoiseach, rarely captures the British public’s imagination.
Recent incumbents, such as Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny, could have walked down a typical UK high street without anybody giving them a second glance.
But Leo Varadkar seems determined to change all that.
After barely half a year in office, the 39-year-old has made more of an impression on British opinion than his two predecessors put together.
Unfortunately, he has done it for all the wrong reasons. Having already indulged in posturing over the Irish border — threatening to veto a Brexit deal over it — Mr Varadkar has clearly decided to cast himself as Britain’s chief critic and the EU’s best friend.
Nothing else can explain the arrogance of his speech this week at Strasbourg. 
Addressing MEPs, he listed a host of supposed losers from Brexit — Britain’s young, farmers and businesses.
But he was also ‘very conscious’, he said, of ‘British veterans, very brave people who fought on the beaches of France, not just for Britain but also for European democracy and European values. People like that are always in my mind’.
Where on earth do you start with this?
Well, you might start with the effrontery of a young politician lecturing neighbours about how to conduct their affairs.
Then there’s the excruciating mawkishness of the claim that Britain’s veterans are ‘always’ on his mind.
And there’s the obvious point that people who remember World War II are more likely to have voted for Brexit than anybody else.
When I read Mr Varadkar’s words, though, what really incensed me was the sheer historical illiteracy of his version of a war, in which — in case he has forgotten — Ireland refused to join the Allied cause, and in which his predecessor, Eamon de Valera, disgraced himself and his country by personally offering condolences to the Nazi ambassador on the death of Adolf Hitler.
The simple truth is that whatever the Irish PM may think, the men who fought on the beaches of France were fighting for Britain. They were not fighting for ‘European values’, because none of them would have had the faintest idea what that meant.
I say this, by the way, not as a hardened Brexiteer, but as somebody who voted Remain. Even so, I am very weary of listening to Euro-enthusiasts who pretend that World War II was a great crusade for European federalism.
During the referendum campaign, the pro-EU camp released a video in which one veteran claimed: ‘We sacrificed many, many men in both world wars and this was to establish a peaceful and prosperous union.’ The EU, he added, ‘reflects the values my generation fought for in Europe during World War II’.
But this is simply not true.
No British servicemen fought to defend ‘European values’ or to set up a ‘prosperous union’.
When Neville Chamberlain took Britain to war, or when Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and rallied the nation after Dunkirk, there was no talk of European union.
Indeed, when our allies collapsed beneath the Nazi war machine in the spring of 1940, many people were actually relieved, because they thought Britain was better off on its own.
‘Now we know where we are. No bloody allies!’ a Thames boatman shouted to a group of MPs. George VI agreed. He wrote to his mother: ‘I feel happier now we have no allies to be polite to and pamper.’
The only wartime leader who did talk of a European Union was a Herr Hitler of Berlin, with his dreams of a New Order from the Atlantic to the Urals.
It was not the Allies who had plans for a European single currency and a central bank. It was the Germans.
In the words of Nazi minister Arthur Seyss-Inquart, later executed at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, ‘the new Europe of solidarity and co-operation among all its people will find rapidly increasing prosperity once national economic boundaries are removed’.
I don’t mean to imply the EU is a Nazi project. Obviously it isn’t. But it is high time that EU enthusiasts, not just abroad but at home, stopped lying about our history.
To take an especially egregious example, EU fans sometimes pretend Winston Churchill wanted Britain to join a ‘United States of Europe’. Again, this is just not true.
Yes, Churchill did speak of creating a United States of Europe after the war. But he never explicitly said Britain should join. Indeed, as Prime Minister in the early Fifties, he kept Britain out of the emerging Common Market. 
‘We have our own dream and our own task,’ he explained. ‘We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed.’
His wartime deputy, Labour leader Clement Attlee, was even more fervently opposed to European integration.
Like Churchill, Attlee had fought in World War I. But his experiences convinced him that Britain should stay well out of the European project.
So when Britain applied to join the Common Market, Attlee said he was ‘gravely disturbed’ that we would ‘go cap in hand to the people whom we thought we beat in war’.
‘The Common Market. The so-called Common Market of six nations,’ he told Labour MPs just before his death in 1967. ‘Know them all well. Very recently this country spent a great deal of blood and treasure rescuing four of ’em from attacks by the other two.’
As for the young men who fought in the war, they fought to defeat Nazism and to save their native land, not to defend a political project that had not even been invented.
Indeed, among them were some of the most passionate opponents of the EU, such as Enoch Powell, who served in North Africa and India, or Tony Benn, who joined the RAF.
Powell always thought European integration would mean the end of Britain as a ‘free, independent and self-governing nation’. Benn was initially tempted, but came to believe it was ‘not democratic… I think they are building an empire and want us to be part of that empire, and I don’t want that’. 
Perhaps all this will be news to the Irish prime minister. But perhaps he doesn’t care, as his real audience is in Brussels and Berlin, where his words will have gone down very well.
The British Euro-enthusiasts who parrot his fake history, however, should know better. If they knew just a little about real history, they might show more humility and understanding about why they lost the referendum in the first place.
As it happens, the moment the Irish PM referred to — spring 1940 — led to the London Evening Standard publishing a legendary cartoon by the great David Low. It shows a British soldier, looking out over the Channel, shaking his fist at German planes. The caption reads: ‘Very Well, Alone.’
It was that spirit that fired our young men to save their country from Hitler. It was not some anachronistic, high-minded enthusiasm for Jean-Claude Juncker and all his works; it was patriotism, pure and simple.
The European elite and their intellectual admirers have never understood that. They sneer at it; they pretend it doesn’t exist; they rewrite their history books to downplay and deny it. But they have never succeeded in erasing it.
And that, of course, is one of the chief reasons they lost.
From Brexit to Trump, Syria and Putin, the teetering EU and the battle against ISIS, 2016 has been a year of political, economic and military shocks. 
This week, the Mail will run a series of essays analysing these earth-shaking events, and predicting how the aftershocks will play out across the world in 2017...
There is no more precious commodity in politics than trust. If you win the confidence of the public, every battle is already half won. Once you lose it, though, you are almost certainly finished.
It was, I think, above all the issue of trust that defined the politics of the past 12 months, surely one of the most sensational years in our modern history. Democracy depends upon it. When trust in the system evaporates, then people turn to the extremes.
So when future historians try to make sense of the political shocks that punctuated 2016, from Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the fall of David Cameron, to Donald Trump’s stunningly dramatic victory in the U.S. presidential election, I suspect they will look long and hard at the erosion of trust in the gilded elites who had long governed the Western world.
Even now, as the dust begins to settle, the sheer pace of change seems almost dizzying. Exactly a year ago, the most powerful men and women in the Western world were U.S. 
President Barack Obama and his heir apparent, Hillary Clinton; Britain’s David Cameron; France’s Francois Hollande; Germany’s Angela Merkel; and Italy’s Matteo Renzi.
If you had asked a casting agency to supply six supremely articulate, well-educated, liberal-minded politicians, wedded to the principles of globalisation, multiculturalism, free trade and the free movement of labour, it could hardly have done a better job. 
They were the masters of all they surveyed, confident in their role as the architects of history.
Where, though, are they now? Barack Obama faces retirement under a successor likely to dismantle much of his legacy, while Mrs Clinton suffered the most sensational defeat ever in an American presidential election.
Mr Renzi resigned after losing a constitutional referendum, while Mr Hollande, humiliated after months of abysmal polls, abandoned his bid for re-election.
A nd although Mrs Merkel survives, she has never been more bloodied and beleaguered, with thousands of Germans now lurching to the Right in their political views.
Nobody, however, fell more suddenly or more stunningly than David Cameron. He entered 2016 a winner, the man who had prevailed against all the odds in the general election a year earlier. He even assured his EU colleagues that he would easily secure victory in the Brexit referendum, ‘maybe by 70-30’.
But he ended 2016 as one of the most conspicuous losers in British political history, having staked his future — and his country’s fate — on the gamble of a referendum. He thought the public would trust him, and he was wrong.
Trust, you see: it all comes down to trust.
Of course, there have been dramatic years before, such as 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the Communist empire collapsed; or 1956, the year of the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Uprising against Communist rule.
But never has there been a year like 2016. Certainly there has never been a year when the conventional wisdom was turned so completely on its head.
And at the heart of the revolt against the Western establishment was that crucial question of trust. The truth is that for years, even decades, suspicion had built up between the political, cultural and financial elites on the one hand, and millions of largely provincial voters on the other.
This was the year patriotism — or nationalism, if you prefer — reasserted itself as a major political force, with millions reacting against the gospel of globalisation, multiculturalism and open borders that their leaders had preached for so long.
In Europe, it is now clear that the Continent’s governing elite completely failed to measure up to the twin challenges of the eurozone crisis, which has seen the imposition of devastating austerity on the economies of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, and the migration crisis, which has destroyed many European voters’ confidence in their political masters.
Whether the EU can survive in its current form strikes me as very unlikely.
Evidently, Mrs Merkel and her allies in Brussels are hoping to muddle on for as long as possible without serious reform, but I suspect that events in the next 12 months may take matters out of their hands, especially as terrorist attacks drive more voters towards the far Right, which seems terrifyingly plausible.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, almost any forecast would seem utterly foolhardy, since President-elect Mr Trump is so extraordinarily unpredictable.
One prediction I feel confident in making, though, is that 2017 will be — yet again — Vladimir Putin’s year, since he finds such a fervent admirer installed in the Oval Office.
B ut what about Britain? Where do we go from here? The truth is that for all the starry-eyed optimism of the Leavers and the doom-laden hysteria of the Remainers, nobody really knows.
Although Prime Minister Theresa May has promised to trigger Article 50 by the end of March, which would mean Britain leaving the EU two years later, it seems highly unlikely that all the negotiations will be finished by 2019.
My guess is that we will seek a transitional deal to tide us over. So the whole process could well last for years longer. Indeed, I wouldn’t be all that surprised still to be writing about this in a decade’s time.
For the moment, however, we are in an extraordinary muddle. Thanks to the Remain campaigner Gina Miller, the Government has found itself locked in a battle with the courts about the right to trigger Article 50.
In the meantime, some Remain MPs, such as Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, have been threatening to derail the process in the Commons, while there has also been talk of a rebellion by pro-EU peers to block Brexit legislation in the Lords.
By the middle of 2017, therefore, Mrs May’s Government could find itself besieged on three fronts. Since that would inevitably stoke intense public anger among the millions who voted for Brexit, nothing would be more likely to erode still further any remaining trust between the voters and the political classes.
Indeed, I suspect a long stalemate could reignite demands for sweeping political reform, perhaps including the wholesale reform or abolition of the House of Lords. Meanwhile, some Remainers are already arguing for a so-called ‘progressive alliance’, uniting pro-EU Labour MPs, Lib Dems, the SNP and even some Tories to block Brexit. That could propel proportional representation back on to the agenda — and who knows what might happen then?
As if all that were not enough, Mrs May also has to face the problem of Scotland, where the SNP’s leader Nicola Sturgeon seems intent on exploiting Brexit to relight the fires of independence. Make that a war on four fronts, then: the judges, MPs, the Lords and the Scots. By comparison, the civil wars of the 1640s — when the Irish fought the King, the King fought Parliament, Parliament fought the Irish, and the Scots fought everybody — will probably look childishly simple.
What lies behind this unseemly squabbling is probably the single most important political divide of our time — the same political divide that has fuelled so much anger in Europe and America.
On the one hand, you have a highly educated, largely middle-class, cosmopolitan, liberal-minded elite. On the other, you have millions of people, many struggling to get by, who feel ignored, disregarded, despised and abandoned.
Despite all the hysteria in recent months about this kind of mass insurgency, this is not as new as you might think. As far back as 1953, the historian A. J. P. Taylor coined the phrase ‘the Establishment’, which, he said, ‘talks with its own branded accent; eats different meals at different times; has its privileged system of education; its own religion, even, to a large extent, its own form of football’.
Distrust of the Establishment has long been a force in British politics. In part, it lay behind the formation of the Labour Party in 1900, which was formed to speak for the working men who felt that they were being ignored by the Tory and Liberal Parties — although it has to be said that Jeremy Corbyn’ s party, cocooned in its own narcissistic extremism, has long since lost sight of its founding mission.
P erhaps never before, though, has the mutual suspicion between the metropolitan, university-educated elite and the rest of the country been quite so stark.
Indeed, listening to Left-leaning academics — most of whom know literally nobody who has ever voted Conservative, let alone who voted for Brexit — I often wonder if they have even the slightest knowledge of the country the rest of us inhabit.
Perhaps this explains the ludicrously hysterical reaction to the vote on June 23 (and I say that as somebody who voted Remain). But it also means that British politics in 2017 is likely to be more strident, bitter and downright distrustful than at any time in living memory.
The logic of the referendum is that it expresses the will of the people, however narrowly decided. The people speak, and that’s that. So it was in 1975, when Britain voted to stay in the Common Market; so it is, or should be, today.
As it happens, I agree with Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom worried that referendums were incompatible with Britain’s unique form of parliamentary democracy. But once we had our first referendum in 1975, it was always inevitable that more would follow. After all, you can’t give the people the chance to decide once — but never again.
But where do you stop? Some inveterate Remainers are already pushing to re-run the Brexit referendum; others want a referendum on the terms of the deal. Nicola Sturgeon makes no secret of her desire to have a second Scottish independence referendum. What about a referendum on immigration policy? On taxes? On the future of the NHS?
My fear, therefore, is that unless Mrs May steadies the ship and shows a firm hand, we will slide into the politics of permanent plebiscites, with different interest groups clamouring for referendums on their pet projects.
And when you throw the divisive effects of nationalism into the mix, stoked by the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Ukip, it is easy to imagine British politics spiralling further towards the extremes of suspicion and resentment.
What makes this so worrying is the wider context. Across much of Europe, democracy itself seems in greater danger than at any time since the darkest days of the Cold War.
The states of Eastern Europe, in particular, seem worryingly prone to the cult of the nationalist strongman, with leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico openly proclaiming their admiration for Mr Putin.
Indeed, there is every chance that France’s presidential election in May could hand power to Mr Putin’s friend, the Far-Right National Front leader Marine le Pen — and then Europe really would be in a mess.
The most obvious parallel, of course, is with the dark decade of the 1930s, when parliamentary democracy collapsed across much of Europe, as voters turned to paramilitary bullies and nationalist dictators. We all know how that story ended, and I shudder to think that it might happen again.
Yet the parallel works two ways. For there is another lesson from the 1930s. At a time when Europe was sliding towards the abyss, Britain remained remarkably sane and stable, a testament to the calm, clear leadership of the dominant personality of the age, the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
The liberal intellectuals of the day despised Baldwin. To the canting snobs of the metropolitan elite, he seemed provincial, middle-class and middlebrow, a proud son of the West Midlands who spent Sunday mornings at church and talked about unfashionable values such as patriotism and duty.
Y et the British people liked him. What was more, they trusted him. They saw him as someone like them; a man who instinctively understood the hopes and fears of Middle England; conservative but compassionate, a pragmatist and a patriot.
So if Mrs May needs a role model as she steers the ship of state through the tempests of 2017, she could do a lot worse than the man who captained the ship when Europe last found itself in the eye of the storm.
‘I shall always trust the instincts of our democratic people,’ Baldwin once told the Commons. ‘They may come a little late, but my word, they come with a certainty when they do come; they come with a unity not imposed from the top, not imposed by force, but a unity that nothing can break.’
Wise words, which Mrs May would do well to heed. Trust the people. Those words might horrify the liberal literati. But amid all the turbulence of our times, there is surely no better motto. 
EU leaders have set up a titanic showdown with Theresa May after they rushed to dismiss key UK demands within hours of the historic Article 50 letter being delivered.
In a day of high political drama, the Prime Minister was cheered to the rafters by Tory MPs in the Commons as she declared that her envoy Sir Tim Barrow had handed the formal Brexit notification to European Council president Donald Tusk in the Belgian capital.
Giving an upbeat assessment of the country's prospects once it regains control after 44 years tied to the EU, Mrs May stressed she wanted to forge a 'deep and special special' bond with our old partners.
But the letter also included chilling threats about the 'fragile' condition of the bloc, making clear that giving Britain a bad deal would be a 'costly mistake' causing serious damage to the EU's own prosperity and security.
The tensions between the two sides were underlined when German Chancellor Angela Merkel flatly rejected Mrs May's call for the talks on a mooted £50billion divorce bill to happen at the same time as negotiations on a future trade deal.
Outgoing French president Francois Hollande upped the stakes with a warning Brexit would be 'economically painful'.  
The point of no return for Brexit was reached at 12.20pm today UK time, as the handover between Sir Tim and Mr Tusk happened at his HQ in Brussels.
Mrs May's confirmation that the deed had been done, fully nine months after the referendum, was greeted with cheers of approval in the jam-packed Commons chamber. Meanwhile, outside parliament Europhile protesters were still vainly demanding a rethink.
On another day of intense political action:
Mrs May told the House of Commons that she was 'giving effect to the democratic will of the UK people'.
'The Article 50 process is now underway... In accordance with the wishes of the people, the United Kingdom is leaving the EU.
'This is a historic moment from which there can be no turning back.'
She added: 'At moments like this, a great turning point in our nation's story, the choices we make will define the character of our nation.
'We can choose to say the task will be too great, we can choose to turn our face to the past and say it can't be done.
'Or we can look forward and in believe in the enduring power of the British spirit.
'I choose to believe in Britain and that our best days are to come.'   
Theresa May has admitted that immigration to Britain will not come down until after the UK has left the EU in 2019 - but refused to commit to a 'significant' drop.
Asked if net migration would come down considerably, the Prime Minister told the BBC's Andrew Neil that there were 'so many variables' that influenced the situation.
However May did insist that the UK would 'see a difference in the number of people coming in' after Britain finally leaves the bloc in March 2019. 
She said: 'For a lot of people when they voted last year immigration was one of the issues. Now obviously we want to see net migration coming down.
'Now, when we leave [the bloc] we’ll be able to put rules in place decided here about the basis on which people can come from inside the European Union.'
Asked if this meant immigration would be significantly lower after Brexit, May said:  Well, I think what we will see a difference in the number of people coming in.
'But I was Home Secretary for six years and when you look at immigration you constantly have to look at this issue because there are so many variables.
'What we will be able to do, as a result of leaving the EU, is to have control of our borders, is to set those rules for people coming from outside.
'We haven’t been able to do that so we’ll be able to have control on those numbers, set the rules for that, as we’ve been able to set the rules for others in the past.'

The historic six-page letter launching the break-up process was handed over more than nine months after the people delivered their verdict in the EU referendum.
It confirmed that Britain will be leaving the single market, but called for a broad free trade agreement, and urges an early deal to guarantee rights for EU nationals already here and Britons living on the continent. 
The missive also included a chilling warning to Brussels against trying to take revenge on the UK for leaving.
Theresa May has triggered Article 50 today, meaning Britain will leave the EU in two years' time. This is what has happened so far: 
'At a time when the growth of global trade is slowing and there are signs that protectionist instincts are on the rise in many parts of the world, Europe has a responsibility to stand up for free trade in the interest of all our citizens,' the letter said. 
'Likewise, Europe's security is more fragile today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. 
'Weakening our cooperation for the prosperity and protection of our citizens would be a costly mistake.' 
In a clear threat about the consequences of trying to punish the UK for leaving, Mrs May wrote: 'If we leave the EU without an agreement the default position is that we would have to trade on World Trade Organisation terms.
'In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened. 
'In this kind of scenario, both the United Kingdom and the European Union would of course cope with the change, but it is not the outcome that either side should seek. We must therefore work hard to avoid that outcome.' 

Mrs May told MPs the UK was preparing for all outcomes from the talks. She has stressed that she will walk away from the table if the EU does not offer a good deal.
'Government will be working across all departments to ensure that we have preparations in place whatever the outcome will be,' she told the House.
'But as I made clear in my letter to (Donald) Tusk, that while both the European Union and the UK could cope if there was no agreement, that would not be the ideal situation, it is not what we will be working for and we should be actively working to get the right and proper deal for both sides.' 
In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Neil tonight, Mrs May reiterated arguments tested in more than three hours in front of MPs.
She said the UK's involvement in Europol would be 'part of the package' up for negotiation with the EU.
And she refused to be drawn on whether the UK could agree to a huge divorce bill, although she did insist we would not pay huge sums year after year. 
Mrs May also refused to promise that immigration will fall dramatically after Brexit, merely stating that levels are currently too high.
She admitted transitional periods would be needed - including potentially on free movement from Europe - after 2019.
Asked if free movement would end within two years, Mrs May replied: 'We want to have the agreements done in two years. There may then be a period when we are implementing those arrangements.' 
The Premier said: 'What voters wanted to know what was the UK Government was taking control of our borders.' 
Mrs May dismissed the Vote Leave promise - famously painted on Boris Johnson's campaign bus - to plough £350million into the NHS, telling Neil: 'Points were made on both sides of the argument.
'We are now at the point where we are putting things into practice.' 
Mrs May added: 'I did campaign for Remain and I did vote to Remain but I also said I didn't think the sky would fall in if we left the European Union and it hasn't.' 
The European Union was swift in its response to Mrs May's letter after it had arrived. 
Council president Mr Tusk made an immediate jibe on Twitter about the nine months it had taken Mrs May to begin the process.
And in a hastily arranged press statement he urged people not to 'pretend this is a happy day in Brussels or London'.
He insisted the EU will act 'constructively' but 'as one' and was determined to 'preserve our interests'. Outgoing French president Francois Hollande warned that the outcome would be 'painful' for Britain.
Heralding a potentially titanic clash over the timetabling of negotiations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel flatly rejected the PM's call for talks on the divorce and future trade arrangements to be held in parallel.
'The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship... and only when this question is dealt with, can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship,' Mrs Merkel said in Berlin.
French President Francois Hollande struck a tough tone, warning that Brexit would be 'economically painful' for Britain, the first country to leave the bloc. 
The European Parliament's chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt reiterated the order the negotiations must take and said MEPs were ready to veto any deal that was considered too generous to the UK. 

'We will never accept that the UK is starting trade negotiations with other countries before the withdrawal. Until the withdrawal, the UK is a full member of the EU with all the right but also all the obligations,' he said.

'The Parliament need to sign off the final agreement or agreements. Naturally, it will never outside the union be better than inside the union. That is not a question of revenge, that is a question of logic of the European Union, of the European Treaties, of the European project.' 

Mrs May briefed the Cabinet on the task ahead this morning, having put her signature to the letter last night before it was transported to Belgium on the Eurostar by diplomats and guards.
The timeline set out in the Lisbon Treaty now means that the UK will officially leave the EU when Big Ben strikes midnight at the end of March 29, 2019. 
In a bid to spike the guns of nationalists in Scotland, Mrs May told the Commons this afternoon that Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast would be stronger after Brexit.
She told MPs: 'No decisions currently taken by the devolved administrations will be removed from them.
'I expect the devolved administrations will see significant increases in their decision making powers as a result of this process.'  
In a plea for unity, Mrs May said the UK should be 'no longer defined by the vote we cast, but by our determination to make a success of the result'. 
'We are one great union of people and nations with a proud history and a bright future,' she added.
'This great national moment needs a great national effort,' she said. 
Mrs May said Britain would continue to be willing allies and close friends with Europe. She said: 'With European security more fragile today than at any time since the cold war, weakening our cooperation and not standing up for European values would be a costly mistake.
'Our decision to leave the European Union was no rejection of European values.' 
Mrs May's letter to Mr Tusk made clear she was implementing the 'democratic decision' of the referendum and setting out Britain's objectives.
'We believe that these objectives are in the interests not only of the United Kingdom but of the European Union and the wider world too,' it said.
'It is in the best interests of both the United Kingdom and the European Union that we should use the forthcoming process to deliver these objectives in a fair and orderly manner, and with as little disruption as possible on each side.
'We want to make sure that Europe remains strong and prosperous and is capable of projecting its values, leading in the world, and defending itself from security threats. 

'We want the United Kingdom, through a new deep and special partnership with a strong European Union, to play its full part in achieving these goals.'
In the first sign of potential controversy, Mrs May said Britain believed it was 'necessary' to negotiate the future trade deal alongside the divorce - something the EU does not agree with. 
The pound held firm against the dollar and the euro as Theresa May triggered Brexit today and gave a rousing speech about the UK's bright future.
On the day Article 50 was invoked the pound was virtually unchanged against the US dollar at 1.24 and was up against the euro at 1.15.
The response came as the Prime Minister told the Commons: 'This is a historic moment from which there can be no turning back'.
The FTSE 100 index rose 30 points or 0.41 per cent to 7,373.72
.
She said: 'The Government wants to approach our discussions with ambition, giving citizens and businesses in the United Kingdom and the European Union – and indeed from third countries around the world – as much certainty as possible, as early as possible.' 
The letter also urged the EU to avoid putting Britain in a situation where the fluid border between Northern Ireland and the Republic was at risk - pointing out that could imperil the peace process. 
'The Republic of Ireland is the only EU member state with a land border with the United Kingdom,' it said. 
'We want to avoid a return to a hard border between our two countries, to be able to maintain the Common Travel Area between us, and to make sure that the UK's withdrawal from the EU does not harm the Republic of Ireland. We also have an important responsibility to make sure that nothing is done to jeopardise the peace process in Northern Ireland, and to continue to uphold the Belfast Agreement.' 

The Prime Minister's official spokesman denied the Prime Minister was making an agreement on trade dependent on security, or that the inclusion of the two factors was a threat. He said: 'It is a simple statement of fact.'
The spokesman said any future security arrangement, or its collapse in the event of no deal, only related to EU institutions such as the European Arrest Warrant or Europol.
Nato and most intelligence sharing is not changed by EU membership, he said.
Mrs May's spokesman said the Government remained eager to agree a deal on citizens' rights as soon as possible.
But he risked infuriating Tory Eurosceptics by signalling that free movement could continue unfettered until March 2019.
He said: 'We wish to get an early deal in relation to residency rights and all other matters in relation to that.
'The fact is we are going to honour our obligations while we are full members of the European Union.'
Mrs May remains committed to negotiating the divorce deal and the future arrangements in parallel – within the two year time frame.
Her spokesman said this was set out within the terms of Article 50, despite the EU's insistence today the two things must be negotiated in sequence.
Theresa May's letter urged the EU not to put Britain in a position where the fluid border between Northern Ireland and the Republic is at risk.
The missive to Donald Tusk pointed out that changing the arrangements could imperil the peace process.
'The Republic of Ireland is the only EU member state with a land border with the United Kingdom,' it said. 
'We want to avoid a return to a hard border between our two countries, to be able to maintain the Common Travel Area between us, and to make sure that the UK's withdrawal from the EU does not harm the Republic of Ireland. 
'We also have an important responsibility to make sure that nothing is done to jeopardise the peace process in Northern Ireland, and to continue to uphold the Belfast Agreement.'
He said: 'We wish to get a comprehensive agreement. We are negotiating for a full and comprehensive agreement.' 

Sat in the cabinet office of Downing Street, May last night signed her name under the watchful eye of Sir Robert Walpole, the country's first ever Prime Minister.






Afterwards she telephoned Mr Tusk, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to inform them about her approach.
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'In separate calls, they agreed that a strong EU was in everyone's interests and that the UK would remain a close and committed ally.
'They also agreed on the importance of entering into negotiations in a constructive and positive spirit, and of ensuring a smooth and orderly exit process.'
The exact location of the handover of the letter was kept a closely-guarded secret amid fears of disruption by Europhiles.
It has emerged that Britain will obey Brussels free movement rules for up to two more years.
Ministers had considered using the official notification as a 'cut-off point', denying new EU arrivals the automatic right to stay here. But sources last night confirmed that this idea had been dropped and the timing of the cut-off will form part of the Brexit negotiations.
The decision on free movement last night raised fears of a rush by EU migrants to beat the deadline.
A government source insisted the Prime Minister had not avoided an early confrontation with Brussels in order to ease the opening of negotiations.
'We have not ducked anything,' the source said. 'The fact is that we have not got a reciprocal deal on the rights of citizens abroad so we cannot set a date for the start of a new system.'
Another source said the Home Office was concerned about the practical difficulties of enforcing a cut-off date before the introduction of a new post-Brexit immigration regime.  











Sources last night said a date was unlikely to be set until a deal on reciprocal citizen rights has been agreed.
The European Parliament yesterday threatened to block a final Brexit deal if the UK tried to introduce a cut-off before its full departure from the EU.
A resolution setting out MEPs' demands will be voted on next week and will include a provision for 'non-discrimination' against EU citizens in the UK.
Theresa May finally triggered Article 50 today and started the process of Britain's departure. 

The process is irreversible, and our membership will expire on March 29, 2019 even if there is no deal. 
The EU will issue its first formal response on Friday and the 27 remaining members are set to meet in late April.
The first major summit is likely to be later in the spring - but substantive talks could be delayed by elections in Germany in the Autumn.
The final deal is expected to emerge by the end of next year in time for a series of votes on ratification Brussels, London and around Europe.
If the talks collapse at any point in the two years, Britain could face leaving the EU without a deal at all.
While a transitional period is thought likely, Britain will cease to be a full member of the EU at the end of March 29,2019.
That will be 1,009 days after polling day in the EU referendum.
A source who has seen the document said: 'The Parliament will demand that EU free movement law is applied until the day the UK leaves.' 
The Article 50 process has never been used before. Ministers believe that, after today, the UK's departure from the organisation it joined in 1973 will be irrevocable.
Mr Tusk will set out the EU's 'draft negotiation guidelines' by the end of the week before sending them to the 27 remaining states for consultation.
EU leaders will meet on April 29 at an extraordinary European Council summit to agree a mandate for chief negotiator Michel Barnier and clear the way for talks to begin in earnest in May. 
Mr Hammond risked fuelling tensions with Cabinet colleagues today by giving a cautious assessment of what the government will be able to negotiate from Brussels. 
'We've already made it clear that we accept that, because of our requirements, because of the requirements the British people specified in the referendum result, we will not be members of the European single market, we will not be full members of the European customs union and not being members of those entities has some consequences, it carries some significance and the European Union understands that,' he said.
'I think the fact that we set that out very clearly has sent a clear signal to our European partners that we understand that we can't cherry pick, we can't have our cake and eat it, that by deciding to leave the European Union and negotiate a future relationship with the EU as an independent nation, there will be certain consequences of that and we accept those.'
But Mr Hammond voiced confidence that the UK would create a new 'special relationship' with the EU encompassing trade, security and education.

'I am very confident that we will not get an outcome which would be a worst-case outcome for everybody. That would be ridiculous,' he said. 
'We are going to get a deal. The question is about the shape and nature of that deal.'
Jeremy Corbyn ramped up the pressure on the PM by saying it will be a 'failure of historic proportions' if she does not manage to protect jobs and living standards in the negotiation.
'The British people made the decision to leave the European Union and Labour respects that decision,' the Labour leader said.
'Britain is going to change as a result. The question is how. The Conservatives want to use Brexit to turn our country into a low wage tax haven. Labour is determined to ensure we can rebuild and transform Britain, so no one and no community is left behind.
'It will be a national failure of historic proportions if the Prime Minister comes back from Brussels without having secured protection for jobs and living standards.'
Former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the government was making 'preposterous' claims about what it could achieve.
He said today the 'phony war' would end and the public would start to see what Brexit really means.
Mr Clegg lambasted Labour for refusing to vote against legislation authorising Article 50.
The government is set to enshrine more than 50,000 EU laws into the domestic statute books, research has revealed.
They are set to be transposed into UK law as part of the Great Repeal Bill, which is being unveiled tomorrow.
'You can only hold the government to account if you are prepared to vote against the government,' he said.
French presidential favourite Emmanuel Macron said he did not want to 'punish' Britain. 
'The question is not to punish the UK for a vote made by British people,' he said at a meeting with London Mayor Sadiq Khan in Paris.
'My priority will be to protect the European Union, the interests of the European Union, and the interests of European citizens.
'And my deep wish is to have Great Britain with the European Union in another relationship.
'I think especially on defence matters it's important to work together.' 
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, on a visit to Valetta, said today was the start of a 'very long and difficult road'. 
But far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has warned that the EU 'undeniably' intends to punish Britain over Brexit and the bloc wants the split to be 'as painful as possible'.
The National Front leader, who is standing on a fiercely anti-Brussels ticket, said European leaders could 'feel' other members want to break away and want to avoid a 'domino effect'.



However, speaking to BBC's Newsnight, Ms Le Pen said she expected Britain to ultimately secure a good deal during negotiations to leave the EU, which formally begin on Wednesday.
Asked if the UK will be punished for triggering Article 50, she said: 'That's undeniably the intention of the EU. The EU wants the divorce to be as painful as possible. That's simply because they can feel that other nations of Europe want to leave this political structure.
'They don't want a domino effect. Blackmail didn't work, project fear didn't work either. So they have to try to make the separation as painful as possible. Will they succeed? I don't think so.'
Ms Le Pen said Britain's position will be favourable after leaving the EU as it will be able to protect itself from 'uncontrolled globalisation'. 


TEAM UK 
David Davis
The Brexit Secretary is a veteran of EU battles. He was Europe Minister under John Major before a long spell in the wilderness on the back benches.
His EU shadow in the 1990s was Michel Barnier and the pair will now face off again in the talks to come. 
Oliver Robbins
Oliver Robbins is Britain's most senior un-elected diplomat. He is Mr Davis's permanent secretary and will be the Brexit Secretary's right hand man.
A civil service high flyer, he works as Mrs May's 'sherpa' at summits and is tipped for the top. 
Sir Tim Barrow 
Britain's EU ambassador was dropped into the job at short notice earlier this year after his predecessor resigned.
A veteran of diplomacy in Russia, Sir Tim has been a high flyer during a long career. He will be one of Mrs May's closest advisers in the talks. 
TEAM EUROPE
Michel Barnier
The European Commission's chief negotiator will be the public face of the EU's talks. He has struck a tough position from the outset.
Mr Barnier knows David Davis well from their time sparring in the 1990s during Maastricht battles.  
Sabine Weyand
A little known German official, Sabine Weyand is a senior trade deal negotiator for the EU. She has experience Britain lacks.
Ms Weyand will be across detail and the UK delegation will have to take care not to be left behind. 
Guy Verhofstadt 
The chief negotiator for the European Parliament may appear a fringe player at the start but he will be a loud presence in the media.
Later, the European Parliament holds a veto on the final deal - meaning Verhofstadt must be squared. 
Nick Clegg warned the 'phony war' against Brexit was over with the triggering of Article 50 as remoaners stepped up their campaign.
Opponents of quitting the EU are camped out around the Palace of Westminster today to demand Theresa May secure the softest Brexit possible.
Protests were held to mark the historic day ahead of the crucial moment at around 12.30pm.
Former deputy prime minister Mr Clegg told Talk Radio:'The phony war now ends and the reality bites, because we have to negotiate with 27 other governments and parliaments, all with their own needs and priorities.
'From now on in, people like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, and Nigel Farage, making all these promises and expectations of a utopia – they'll have to deliver it.'
He added: 'My job regarding the British people is the expectations which have been raised, £350 million for the NHS, a cornucopia of new trade deals, the same benefits outside the single market than in – my job is to hold them to account.' 
Donald Tusk has insisted this is not a 'happy day' in London or Brussels in a gloomy response to Britain's Article 50 letter.
The EU council president said the Brexit process would be about 'damage control' for both sides.
In his initial response to the letter from Theresa May, Mr Tusk warned of 'difficult negotiations' in the months ahead.
He vowed to protect the interests of the remaining 27 EU members but insisted there was nothing to 'win' for either side.
And he said: 'What can I add to this? We already miss you.' 
In a brief statement in Brussels, Mr Tusk said: 'There is no reason to pretend this is a happy day, neither in Brussels nor in London.
After all, most Europeans including almost half the British voters wished we would stay together not drift apart. As for me, I will not pretend that I am happy today.
'But paradoxically, there is also something positive in Brexit. Brexit has made us, the community of 27, more determined and more united than before.
'I am fully confident of this, especially after the Rome declaration. We will remain determined and united during the difficult negotiations ahead. 
This is Britain's divorce letter to Brussels that today triggered Article 50 and promised to seize back 'self-determination' from the EU so the UK can 'put our citizens first'.
The six-page document reveals that Theresa May will withdraw full cooperation on cross-border crime, security and terrorism unless Europe does a trade deal that suits Britain. 

The historic letter was handed to European Council president Donald Tusk in Brussels by Theresa May's envoy Sir Tim Barrow at 12.30pm today after crossing the Channel by train under armed guard.
In it Mrs May told Mr Tusk he must not to punish the UK for choosing to leave the EU and also confirms that the government will pay Brussels a multi-billion pound bill to leave.
The Prime Minister also sets out six key areas for negotiation over the next two years - and repeatedly warns that the EU needs to do a trade deal - telling Mr Tusk it would be a 'costly mistake' not to.
And in an attempt to save the Union she said more powers should be given to devolved powers in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast and any Brexit deal must not 'harm' the Republic of Ireland. 
Minutes after the letter was handed over Mrs May told the Commons: 'In accordance with the wishes of the people, the United Kingdom is leaving the EU. This is a historic moment from which there can be no turning back.' 

At the same time a sombre Donald Tusk held up the letter during a short press conference and said: 'There is no reason to pretend this is a happy day. We already miss you. Thank you and goodbye'.
Theresa May was boosted today as she triggered Brexit today with a poll showing the Conservative lead over Labour growing.
As the PM invoked Article 50, a YouGov survey showed her party up two points to 43 per cent, against Labour on 25 per cent.
The Prime Minister has enjoyed double-digit leads for almost the entirety of her premiership to date.
Asked who would make the best Prime Minister, just 13 per cent now say Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - against 51 per cent for Mrs May.  





At the age of 77, Huddersfield’s Labour MP Barry Sheerman may not plan to stand again for re-election to the House of Commons.
We must certainly assume so given that the old booby just let slip he thinks his constituents in West Yorkshire are ill-educated. As election-winning strategies go, it is at least novel. Vote for me, thickos!
Mr Sheerman, a blowy Europhile, made his outburst during a television discussion at the weekend. Maybe the heat of the studio got to him, or over-excitement at being asked to take part in a live discussion on BBC TV’s Sunday Politics (backbencher Barry is rarely considered important enough for such invitations these days).
Talk turned to our EU referendum and Mr Sheerman closed his eyes, tilted his head and said: ‘The truth is that when you look at who voted to remain, most of them were the better educated people in our country.’ 
Disdain
If that was not la-di-dah enough for an MP whose own constituency is in an area (Kirklees) that voted by 54 per cent to leave the EU, Mr Sheerman also took a swipe at people who were educated at polytechnics.
He was cross that Conservative MP Chris Heaton-Harris has written to universities trying to find out what is being taught about Brexit.
‘This man who went to Wolverhampton Polytechnic,’ shuddered Mr Sheerman. ‘Who does he think he is? Trying to frighten my university in Huddersfield!’ The thrust of this was clear: poly-educated oiks such as Heaton-Harris have no place offering their opinion to us Varsity types.
That’s the Brexit vote and the Polytechnic vote slagged off in seconds. Good work, Barry. At this rate Theresa May will give you a knighthood for services to the Tory party.
Let us begin by trying to understand Mr Sheerman’s ‘snobbery’ — as one fellow guest in the studio put it. There is certainly data to show university graduates voted two to one in June 2016 to stay in the European Union.
Cambridge and Oxford, our best-known university strongholds, were hot for Remain. The British political, legal, media and academic elites were, and still are, markedly anti-Brexit. They clutch their necks with condescending disdain at those lower orders who voted for British independence.
Mr Sheerman, it could be said, was merely stating facts when he hailed the intellectualism of the Remain camp. But it brings us up against the old truism that the longer someone has studied at university, the less clued up he or she may be. I say that as someone who attended three universities and who has often felt a hamfisted nincompoop alongside non-university friends.
Some of the quickest wits I know never went near a college campus, and many of our biggest idiots are those with fancy letters after their names.
It may seem unfair to pick on so slight a political figure as Barry Sheerman, a spongy middler who in the Blair years won the ‘Golden Pager Award’ for asking the most obsequious questions in Parliament.
In the past he has called for Buckingham Palace to be torn down (because it is one of Britain’s ugliest buildings), demanded that Britain join the Euro, and described a £7,000 pay rise for MPs as ‘pathetic’.
It probably tells you all you need to know about this sorry little man, but he’s again placed his head above the parapet, so here goes with the polemical mallet. His attitude stinks of entitlement, of patronising disdain, of a self-righteous sense of superiority over ‘the little people’. For a Labour MP — a Labour MP! — to express such views is dreadful; yet hardly surprising.
Mr Sheerman is typical of the illiberal Centre-Left which has done so much damage to this country in recent decades.
Labour sloganeering about ‘the many not the few’ is tommy-rot. They are vicious snobs and regard ‘the many’ as a herd of dumb cattle. There sits Mr Sheerman in the House of Commons, supposedly representing his constituents, yet plainly regards the majority of them as educationally inferior.
He studied at the London School of Economics, long a seed-bed of the worst sort of anti-popular, neo-elitist, pocket-filling Leftism. He has both a BSc and MSc in economics to his name. Bow down, ye voters of Huddersfield, to your twice mortar-boarded Member of Parliament.
Hail to your intellectual master, the chin-stroker, the brow-clutcher, that Erasmus de nos jours, Barry ‘the Brainbox’ Sheerman! You won’t be surprised to hear he opposes grammar schools (even though he went to one).
We don’t want the working-classes getting ideas above their stations, do we, Barry? This ninny, this snoot, this velvet-lined codpiece, Sheerman is typical of a Parliament which, with its allies in the Establishment, has gone on dirty protest about Brexit.
They kick, stamp, pout and blow bubbles about last year’s stonking, revolutionary referendum result. The Leave vote was a close but clear rejection not just of the European Union but also of the stooges and suck-ups who for years anti-democratically pushed Brussels down our throats.
Crucial
The Sheermans of this world argue that MPs are chosen by constituents to act and vote on various matters as they personally see fit. That an MP is entitled to take his or her view on, say, capital punishment, even though it may clash with majority opinion in the constituency. This, Burkean view of democracy — as argued by philosopher Edmund Burke — raises parliamentarians to the level of autonomous trustees, sent to the Commons to do as they see fit for the nation. Except, except, except . . . it is more complicated than that.
The EU referendum was not a parliamentary vote. The crucial thing was that it was beyond and above the House of Commons, and it was established as such by Parliament.
It trumped the Burkean ideal. If there was an element of trusteeship, it was that the Parliamentary class would obey the referendum’s verdict.
From Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer and Tory Dominic Grieve, to dimmer bulbs such as Mr Sheerman, Westminster’s Remainers put themselves above the majority — and pooh-pooh them as morons who ‘didn’t vote to become poorer’ or ‘didn’t vote to leave the Single Market’.
In his TV appearance, Mr Sheerman derided Conservatives for agreeing to respect the EU referendum result.
Exquisite
The Tories were now ‘no longer the nasty party’ but ‘the stupid party’, he tweeted later.
Yes, how stupid of politicians to respect the will of the majority of voters in the biggest plebiscite held in our country.
The arrogance of these Remain extremists is sometimes matched only by the over-ripeness of their claims.
I recently heard Mr Sheerman claim, in the Commons, that he had met ‘not one person’ in the manufacturing or business sectors of Huddersfield or Leeds who wanted to leave the EU. He was either lying or picks acquaintances in pro-Brexit Yorkshire with exquisite hygiene.
Let us close by returning to the polling data from pro-EU areas. What exactly do those statistics from university towns tell us? Do they prove the intellectual superiority of the Remain case? Even if they did, the democratic will would surely have to prevail — unless you want riots on the street.
But might the statistics not just tell us our college populations like the world the way it is? University types, who tend to do better financially than non-degree holders, may not have wished their elitist privileges to be imperilled by change. Voting patterns may just be down to all-too human greed and protectionism.
Only a very stupid politician — such as Barry Sheerman — would fail to admit the possibility of that.
EU Council President Donald Tusk today admitted the chances of a no deal Brexit are 'more likely than ever before' as the talks hit the buffers.
But he urged both sides not to 'give up' and said a Brexit deal always 'seems impossible until it's done'.
And he confirmed that Theresa May will make a last-ditch plea to EU leaders to strike a Brexit compromise over dinner on Wednesday night at a Brussels summit.
It comes as the PM launched a desperate bid to win over EU leaders tonight embarking on a ring round to urge them to strike a compromise.
But in a stormy session of the Commons this afternoon, she also warned there will be no deal unless Brussels drops its Irish border demands.
The Prime Minister laid down the marker after she dramatically pulled the plug on a fledgling divorce settlement.
She called for 'cool heads' in talks but said the UK will leave the bloc without a deal if the EU sticks to its call for Northern Ireland to be 'carved off' from the rest of the UK.
But she faced a barrage of interventions from Remainers and Brexiteers who demanded she radically change her strategy in the final weeks of talks.
Boris Johnson - who quit the Cabinet in fury at her Chequers plan -  demanded she stands up to Brussels 'bullies' to get a Canada-style trade deal.
While arch Remainer and Tory Dominic Grieve warned he would vote against the PM's plans unless they were 'put to the British people again' in a second referendum. 
Mr Tusk cloaked his stark warning that a no deal Brexit is now on the cards in conciliatory language. 
He tweeted this evening: 'On a Brexit deal: It always seems impossible until it's done. Let us not give up.'
In a statement posted online, he added: 'The European Council will start on Wednesday evening with a debate on Brexit. 
'I have invited Prime Minister May to address the EU27, giving the UK Government's assessment of the negotiations. Later at 27, we will decide on how to take the negotiations forward, on the basis of a recommendation by our chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. 
'As you remember from Salzburg, we wished for maximum progress and results that would lead to a deal in October. 
'As things stand today, it has proven to be more complicated than some may have expected. We should nevertheless remain hopeful and determined, as there is good will to continue these talks on both sides. 
'But at the same time, responsible as we are, we must prepare the EU for a no-deal scenario, which is more likely than ever before.'
He added: 'Like the UK, the Commission has started such preparations, and will give us an update during the meeting. 
'But let me be absolutely clear. The fact that we are preparing for a no-deal scenario must not, under any circumstances, lead us away from making every effort to reach the best agreement possible, for all sides. 
'This is what our state of mind should be at this stage. As someone rightly said: "It always seems impossible until it's done." Let us not give up.' 
The Irish border is the major sticking point in the Brexit divorce negotiations.
The concept of a 'backstop', to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic whatever the future trade relationship, was agreed by both sides in December last year.
But they have dramatically different idea on how the mechanism would work. 
Brussels insists that Northern Ireland should stay under its customs jurisdiction. 
But Mrs May says that would be unacceptable as it would split up the UK.
The PM was thought to be trying to break the deadlock by proposing a new 'backstop' arrangement for the Irish border.
The blueprint could mean the whole UK staying in the EU customs union 'temporarily' and accepting regulatory checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.
But Mrs May was already facing a huge outcry as there was not expected to be any hard end date - with many Cabinet ministers and Tory MPs fearing that in reality it would keep the UK subject to Brussels rules for good.
It is understood the EU surprised the UK team by demanding a 'backstop on the backstop' - underpinning the UK proposals with its own original Northern Ireland-only backstop.
That would involve customs checks on goods travelling between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK - effectively imposing a 'border in the Irish Sea'.
Government sources said there was a 'real problem' to be overcome.  
Earlier this evening, the PM said she had no choice but to torpedo the draft deal last night after Brussels tried to create a 'backstop to the backstop', she told MPs: 'I could never accept that.
'We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom.'
Mrs May has been ringing round EU leaders including Angela Merkel and Dutch PM Mark Rutte, and will be telephoning the most hawkish - Emmanuel Macron - later.
But she is coming under heavy pressure from Eurosceptics including Mr Johnson and the DUP to toughen up her stance further by putting a hard end date on any backstop.
In the House this afternoon, Mrs May dodged the issue of an end date, but made clear that any UK-wide customs union put in place would need to be 'temporary' to avoid the country being left 'in limbo'.
Yesterday the two sides appeared to be within touching distance of a 'backstop' arrangement to ensure there is no hard Irish border if a broader trade deal does not materialise.
The proposals would have seen the whole UK stay in the customs union and accept more regulatory checks.
But the compromise abruptly collapsed when it became clear Michel Barnier still wanted the pact underpinned with his original backstop plan - for Northern Ireland to stay within the EU's customs jurisdiction while the rest of the UK leaves. 
And his demand was today backed by EU Parliament's Brexit steering group, headed by Guy Verhofstadt.
They said: 'We have followed very closely the developments of the last 24 hours.
'It is our very strong view that the Withdrawal Agreement must include a workable, legally operational and all-weather backstop for the Ireland/Northern Ireland border fully in line with the Joint Report of last December and the Prime Minister May's letter to President Tusk of 19 March 2018.
'Without such a backstop, the European Parliament would not be in a position to give its consent to the Withdrawal Agreement.
'We reiterate our full support for the chief negotiator and his negotiating strategy.' 
Upping the stakes today, a senior DUP figure said they believe a no-deal outcome is now 'probably inevitable' due to the intransigence of the EU. 
Meanwhile, Irish PM Leo Varadkar suggested there would not be any clarity until December.
However, leading Tory Eurosceptic Steve Baker claimed the impasse was 'theatre' designed to help Mrs May sell an agreement domestically. 
Remain supporter and former home secretary Amber Rudd urged Mrs May to work on compromises with the EU 'not just on behalf of the 52 per cent but also on behalf of the 48 per cent', adding: 'It's on behalf of the 100 per cent we need to deliver on leaving the European Union.'
Remain-Tory Mr Grieve told Mrs May he would vote against her plans unless they were 'put to the British people again' in a second referendum.
Mrs May appealed for MPs to hold their nerve as she ran the gauntlet of the Commons in the wake of the debacle.
Arlene Foster today called for 'cool heads' in the Brexit talks amid growing fears that Britain will crash out of the bloc without a deal.
Theresa May's Brexit plans have reached a crisis after she dramatically pulled the plug on a fledgling divorce settlement over the EU's demands for the Irish backstop.
Mrs Foster, leader of the DUP, arrived in Dublin this afternoon where she is holding crunch talks with the Irish PM Leo Varadkar.
She repeated her 'blood red' line - saying that a deal which creates new barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK would be totally unacceptable.
With Brexit negotiations in turmoil, she said: 'There have to be cool heads in what is a very febrile atmosphere.'
And she lashed the EU's 'backstop to a backstop' to the thorny issue of the Irish border, which would leave Northern Ireland tied to the the bloc's customs and some single market rules if no free trade deal is done in time.
Mrs Foster - whose ten DUP MPs wield a massive amount of political power as they prop the Tories up in No10 - said: 'Great Britain is our largest market by far and we cannot have barriers.'
'We are entering the final stages of these negotiations,' she said. 'This is the time for cool, calm heads to prevail.
'And it is the time for a clear-eyed focus on the few remaining but critical issues that are still to be agreed.' 
She said the 'vast majority' of the Withdrawal terms were now settled, and there was also 'broad agreement on the structure and scope of the framework for our future relationship'.
She also argued that the EU had 'responded positively' to the government's proposals for a UK-wide backstop.
But Mrs May added that she would not tolerate the proposals for a 'backstop to the backstop'.
'The EU says there is not time to work out the detail of this UK-wide solution in the next few weeks,' she said.
'So even with the progress we have made, the EU still requires a 'backstop to the backstop' – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy.
'And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed.
'We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom.'  
Mrs May also said she needed to be able to 'look the British people in the eye and say this backstop is a temporary solution'.
In a nod to Eurosceptic anger at her concessions, she said: 'People are rightly concerned that what is only meant to be temporary could become a permanent limbo – with no new relationship between the UK and the EU ever agreed.
'I am clear we are not going to be trapped permanently in a single customs territory unable to do meaningful trade deals.
'So it must be the case, first, that the backstop should not need to come into force.
'Second, that if it does, it must be temporary.
'And third – while I do not believe this will be the case - if the EU were not to co-operate on our future relationship, we must be able to ensure that we cannot be kept in this backstop arrangement indefinitely.
'I would not expect this House to agree to a deal unless we have the reassurance that the UK, as a sovereign nation, has this say over our arrangements with the EU.' 
Hopes were raised that a divorce settlement was close yesterday when Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab made an unscheduled trip to Brussels for talks with Michel Barnier.
Officials including UK negotiator Olly Robbins were reported to have reached an outline deal, with political approval needed.
But after more than an hour of discussions, Mr Barnier emerged to say that 'despite intense efforts' there was still no agreement.
Mrs May was thought to be trying to break the deadlock by proposing a new 'backstop' arrangement for the Irish border.
The PM's backstop proposal is designed to ensure there is no hard Irish border.
It would see the whole of the UK stay in the customs union 'temporarily' until a wider trade deal is struck.
Northern Ireland would effectively remain in the single market to avoid regulatory checks on the border with the Republic.
The government's previous plan said that it wanted the UK to stay in the customs union until 2021 'at the latest'.
But it is not clear whether the UK would be subject to rules that stop countries striking their own trade deals outside the bloc.
It also remains to be seen whether free movement rules would still apply in Northern Ireland. The Common Travel Area already protects movement between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  
The blueprint would reduce friction on the Irish border but lead to greater checks across the Irish Sea.
These would include health and sanitary inspections for animals and animal products.
The backstop is designed to fall away when a wider trade pact is agreed - which Mrs May says should be based on her Chequers plan for a 'combined customs territory' with the EU.
The blueprint could mean the whole UK staying in the EU customs union 'temporarily' and accepting regulatory checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.
Mrs May was already facing a huge outcry as there was not expected to be any hard end date - with many Cabinet ministers and Tory MPs fearing that in reality it would keep the UK subject to Brussels rules for good.
But sources said in the end the breakthrough was prevented by EU's refusal to budge on the carve-out for Northern Ireland. The bloc's version of the backstop would have taken effect if the UK's came to an end or proved to be undeliverable.   
Mr Johnson renewed his attack on the PM today, demanding she stands up to Brussels 'bullies' to get a Canada-style trade deal.
In the Commons, he said: 'Will the Prime Minister confirm, as I think she has just said, that the very latest deadline by which this country will take back control of its tariffs…and vary those tariffs independently of Brussels in order to do free trade deals, will be December 2021?
'And if that isn't the deadline could she say what is.'
Mrs May replied: 'When we published the temporary customs arrangements proposals back in June we set that point that the expectation would be completed by December 2021. One of the issues we are discussing with the European Union is how we can ensure that we do reflect the temporary nature of the backstop.
'I continue to believe that we should be working to ensure that the backstop does not come into place.' 
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said: 'She knows that we cannot support any deal which creates a border of any kind on the Irish sea – not my words, the words of Ruth Davidson the leader of the Scottish Conservatives.
'Will she confirm today that a proposed backstop that would see Northern Ireland carved off in the EU customs union and parts of the single market, separated by a border in the Irish Sea from the UK's own internal market could never be accepted by her.
'She has said that today, will she confirm it is single market and customs union – the UK leaving the EU together with no part hived off either in the single market or customs union.'
The PM replied: When the UK leaves the European Union it will be the UK which leaves the European Union. We will be leaving the European Union together.
'I am very clear there should be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland but as we put forward proposals we can deliver on that and maintain the integrity of our union.'
Earlier, Tory former minister Mr Baker sent a message round to MPs in the Brexiteer European Research Group (ERG) saying the clashes with the EU were 'almost certainly theatre' and the government should be 'called out'.
'The markets will gyrate, colleagues will swoon. Terrible threats will be made by those who wish to reverse the result,' he wrote.
'And then at this Council: breakthrough! We can make progress towards a Cheuqers based deal.'  
The standoff means that meetings between 'sherpas' in Brussels have been cancelled, and UK Government ministers will have no withdrawal plan to approve at Cabinet tomorrow.
Progress at a gathering of EU leaders on Wednesday now looks all-but impossible.  
European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said: 'Despite intensive negotiations several key issues remain unresolved. 
'I can say that no further negotiations are planned ahead of the European Council.'  
Government sources said there was a 'very significant problem' to be overcome. 
A special November meeting had been mooted to sign off the separate political declaration on future trade relations. 
But that might not now happen as Mr Macron has threatened to boycott it if there are not UK concessions on the Irish border.
Another sabre-rattling option would be for the EU to turn it into a summit planning for no deal.
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
The PM's spokesman said she was speaking to a slew of counterparts from the bloc ahead of the summit.
'She has had, as she does ahead of any European Council summit, conversations with some European leaders in recent days and she will be having more in the days to come,' he said. 
Ireland's premier Leo Varadkar said that a Brexit deal could be delayed until December.
He said that negotiations are still ongoing but admitted that 'no one knows for sure' when an agreement can be reached. 
Speaking in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said: 'We are at a sensitive phase and I know some people were optimistic about an agreement on the withdrawal protocol this week, I have to say I always thought that was unlikely, I figure November or December the best opportunity for a deal.' 
Jeremy Hunt admitted the negotiations were going through a 'difficult time' as he attended a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels today.
But he added: 'We should remember that a huge amount of progress has been made.
'I think we can get there. Whether we do this week or not, who knows.'
Chief whip Julian Smith raised eyebrows last night by tweeting a photograph of a phone off the hook. Although there was no accompanying message, it appeared to be a reference to contacts between the sides being suspended. 
DUP leader Arlene Foster is said to have left a meeting with Mr Barnier last week convinced that no deal was the 'most likely outcome'.
And the party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson told the Belfast Newsletter today that he did not believe there was any package on offer that MPs would accept.
'Given the way in which the EU has behaved and the corner they've put Theresa May into, there's no deal which I can see at present which will command a majority in the House of Commons,' he said,
'So it is probably inevitable that we will end up with a no deal scenario.'
Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney today insisted there could be no hard 'end date' to a border backstop.
Arriving in Brussels for meetings, he said that Dublin and the EU simply wanted Mrs May to follow through with agreements already made in March and December.
He said: 'A backstop can't be time-limited. That is new, it hasn't been there before. 
'Nobody was suggesting in March that a backstop would be time-limited in terms of picking a date in the future as an endpoint for the backstop. 
'The backstop will be there unless and until something else is agreed, but unless you have something to replace it well then the backstop needs to be there as an insurance mechanism. 
'That is all we are asking for, that's all the Michel Barnier taskforce is also looking for now in terms of legal text.'  
Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell offered hope to Mrs May's Government, saying he was optimistic a deal could be reached because the alternative would be 'hard' on Britain and the EU. 
Arriving at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels he said that a deal was unlikely at the EU27 meeting on Wednesday as leaders 'are not going to have a miraculous solution on the spot'. 
But he added: 'In Europe, agreements never come before the end of the time. We don't have to dramatise, we still have time. We still have one month.' 
He added: 'We will continue negotiating, it is difficult for me to believe we will not be able to reach an agreement, it is too difficult, too hard, for both parts.' 
Senior civil servants have told ministers that more of the government's contingency plans for no deal must start being put into effect by the end of the month, according to The Times.
Work has already begun on projects such as turning the M26 into a lorry park in case Dover suffers disruption, but other schemes such as stockpiling medicine and getting businesses ready for new customs arrangements must be stepped up. 
CHEQUERS
Trade:
Britain would stick to EU rules on goods by adopting a 'Common rulebook' with Brussels, but not in the services sector.
Theresa May says this would allow the UK to strike free trade deals globally, but the scope would be limited by commitments to the EU.
The blueprint should minimise the need for extra checks at the borders - protecting the 'just in time' systems used by the car industry to import and export parts.
The UK Parliament could choose to diverge from these EU rules over time.
But there is an admission that this would 'have consequences'.
Customs:
Britain would set up something called a 'facilitated customs arrangement'.
This would see the UK effectively act as the EU's taxman - using British officials to collect customs which would then be paid on to the bloc. 
The borders between the UK and EU will be treated as a 'combined customs territory'.
The UK would apply domestic tariffs and trade policies for goods intended for the UK, but charge EU tariffs and their equivalents for goods which will end up heading into the EU.
Northern Ireland: 
Mrs May says her plan will prevent a hard Irish border, and mean no divergence between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.
There would be no need for extra border checks, as tariffs on goods would be the same.
Single market origin rules and regulations would also be sufficiently aligned to avoid infrastructure.
 CANADA-STYLE
Trade: 
Britain would strike a Canada-style trade deal with the EU, meaning goods flow both ways without tariffs.
As it is a simple free trade deal, Britain would not be bound by most of the rules and red tape drawn up in Brussels.
The arrangement would be a relatively clean break from the EU - but would fall far short of full access to the single market.
Eurosceptics have suggested 'Canada plus' in key areas such as services and mutual recognition of standards.
The UK would have broad scope to strike free trade deals around the world.
Customs:
Technology would be used to avoid extra customs checks on the borders.
As a result goods travelling into the UK from the EU and vice versa would be tracked and customs paid without extra checks.
The EU has suggested this is 'magical thinking'. 
Northern Ireland:
The EU says the Canada model would mean border controls are required between Northern Ireland and the Republic to protect the single market and customs union.
It insists Northern Ireland must stay in the bloc's customs jurisdiction in order to prevent that.
Mrs May has signalled she agrees with the analysis - seemingly the reason she is reluctant to go down this route.
But Brexiteers point out that there is already a tax border between the UK and Ireland, and say technology and trusted trader schemes can avoid the need for more infrastructure. 
 
Jeremy Corbyn faces a mass revolt by millions of Labour supporters over his refusal to agree to a snap election.
A survey for the Mail found that 64 per cent of those who voted for his party in 2017 want an early poll.
It also showed that most voters think ‘the Establishment’ is determined to stop Brexit.
The opinion poll was carried out after the Supreme Court ruled that Boris Johnson’s suspension of Parliament was unlawful.
The Prime Minister threw down the gauntlet to Mr Corbyn tonight by giving the Opposition the chance to table a no confidence motion in the Government, triggering an election.
The Labour leader rejected the move, prompting Tory claims he was ‘running scared’.
The Survation survey showed that 55 per cent of voters want an early election, compared with 29 per cent who don’t. Only 28 per cent of Labour voters oppose the move.
Mr Johnson believes an early election could be his best chance of breaking the Brexit deadlock. Mr Corbyn says he wants to delay until a No Deal departure has been ruled out.
The Supreme Court ruling prompted fresh claims by some Brexiteers of a plot by ‘the Establishment’ – a loose term applied to institutions ranging from the Commons and Lords, the civil service, big business and the judiciary to the BBC.
Asked in the poll if they believed ‘the Establishment wants to stop Brexit’, 52 per cent agreed; 28 per cent disagreed and 20 per cent did not know.
However, voters have little sympathy for Tory protests about the Supreme Court’s verdict. A total of 41 per cent rejected the claim by Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg that the court’s ruling was tantamount to a ‘constitutional coup’; 32 per cent backed him. Another 62 per cent said Mr Johnson should apologise to the Queen for misleading her.
And the survey is likely to increase calls for Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and Mr Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings to be fired.
More than half of voters said whoever advised Mr Johnson to prorogue Parliament – widely believed to be Mr Cox and Mr Cummings – should lose their jobs over the fiasco. While condemning the Government’s handling of the matter, there was scepticism over whether the recall of Parliament will do much good. A total of 53 per cent said it would not help solve the Brexit crisis; 32 per cent said it would.
The poll came on a dramatic day in Westminster, which saw Mr Johnson brand Mr Corbyn a coward for turning down the offer of a general election – just days after demanding one. Amid furious scenes in the Commons, the Prime Minister spoke of a ‘zombie parliament’ and accused opposition MPs of paralysing the country and trying to wreck Brexit.
He threw down the gauntlet to opposition parties, saying he would clear parliamentary time for a formal vote of no confidence today if any of them – including the smaller parties – wanted to trigger a general election. Last night it appeared the challenge would be refused.
Mr Johnson was criticised for dismissing as ‘humbug’ complaints that he was using inflammatory language. Labour MP Paula Sheriff had referred to the 2016 murder of Labour MP Jo Cox as she called for Mr Johnson to moderate his language.
Mr Johnson caused further controversy by saying that ‘the best way to honour the memory of Miss Cox was to ‘get Brexit done’.
In other developments:
The poll shows the Tories are on 27 per cent, three points ahead of Labour, with the Lib Dems on 22 and Mr Farage’s Brexit Party on 16.
Despite widespread criticism of Mr Johnson over the suspension of Parliament he retains a massive personal lead over Jeremy Corbyn.
Asked who would make the best Prime Minister, 41 per cent chose Johnson, with 21 per cent favouring Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and just 18 per cent for the Labour leader in third place.
The survey shows how divided the country has become. Asked how they would vote in the event of a second EU referendum, 53 per cent said they would vote to Remain, with 47 per cent for Leave.
However, when asked what Mr Johnson should do if he is unable to win a deal from Brussels, 49 per cent said Britain should leave without one.
A surprisingly high number of Labour voters – 28 per cent – said Britain should opt for No Deal on October 31; 67 per cent said we should extend our EU membership.
A total of 43 per cent believed the motive of those behind the Supreme Court challenge – including campaigner Gina Miller and former Tory prime minister John Major – was the belief that the suspension of Parliament was unlawful; the same number said they believed the main motive was to stop Brexit.
Damian Lyons Lowe of Survation said: ‘The figures show the public think Mr Johnson only has himself to blame for the Supreme Court ruling against the prorogation of Parliament.
‘The Conservative lead over Labour of 3 per cent is not enough to win a Commons majority, but there are grounds for cautious optimism for Mr Johnson’s strategy. The survey suggests his plan to stage a “people versus the Establishment” snap election to end the Brexit impasse, with Johnson on the side of the people, may work.’
Survation interviewed 1,011 adults yesterday. 
At first glance, the Survation poll is yet another blow to Boris Johnson’s standing. The public disapproval of his Government over the controversial suspension of Parliament could not be clearer.
A majority believe whichever of his Downing Street team was responsible for the reckless and totally counter-productive move should pay by losing their job.
Voters believe that, assuming he hasn’t already done so, the Prime Minister should do the decent thing and say sorry to the Queen for misleading her.
And there is little sympathy for Jacob Rees-Mogg’s squeal of protest that the Supreme Court ruling was tantamount to a ‘constitutional coup’.
Equally, the Conservative lead over Labour – of just 3 per cent – is nowhere near enough to give Johnson the Commons majority he craves to resolve Brexit.
The Parliamentary arithmetic and political climate is so volatile it is impossible to convert each party’s poll rating into Commons seats. Suffice to say Johnson would probably be no better off than he is today. And he could lose.
And yet, the poll is far from being all bad news.
There is more than a glimmer of hope that Johnson’s strategy of holding a snap election on Brexit on the basis of ‘The People versus The Establishment’ – with him playing the heroic role of the people’s Brexit tribune – could just succeed.
For a start, there is overwhelming support for an early election from both Conservative and Labour voters.
Second, although the Conservative lead over Labour is a mere 3 per cent, Mr Johnson’s Prime Ministerial rating is at 41 per cent – more than double the Labour leader’s dismal 18. To add insult to injury, voters would rather see inexperienced Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson in No10 than Corbyn. There is more comfort for Mr Johnson among Labour’s die hard Brexit supporters in working class strongholds like the North.
Mr Corbyn is holding out against a snap election in his determination to stop the Prime Minister taking Britain out of the EU on October 31 if he cannot get a deal. But more than one in four Labour supporters say Mr Johnson should do precisely that.
Of course, the main obstacle to Mr Johnson winning a Commons majority is neither Corbyn nor Swinson, but Tory nemesis Nigel Farage – supported by 16 per cent in the Survation poll.
Nearly 70 per cent of Brexit Party supporters voted Tory in the 2017 election.
If Mr Johnson could somehow get a deal and get us out on October 31, the majority of those 70 per cent could be expected to return to the Tory gulf. That would push the Conservatives up to the mid 30s and up to ten points clear of Labour. If that happened Mr Johnson would win outright.
But it is a big if.
Having allowed himself to be tied in Parliamentary knots by Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP – aided and abetted by Remainer former Tory MPs – his hopes of getting a deal look slim.
In that event, the election would take place with Johnson having been forced to eat his words about leaving on October 31, ‘do or die’.
And Farage would claim – with some justification – that disaffected Tory Brexiteers should stick with him.
A bid by Remainers to force Jeremy Corbyn into backing a second Brexit referendum has been blocked.
Supporters of a so-called 'People's Vote' had hoped to tie the leader's hands by pushing through a motion at Labour conference.
But activists will now only get to debate a fudged text urging 'all options' to be kept on the table - which is Mr Corbyn's existing line.
In a further blow to Europhiles, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has also insisted that even if a referendum is held it should not include an option to stay in the EU - although he was later contradicted by shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer.
The motion was thrashed out in a tense five hour meeting of Labour officials overnight, after a day in which tensions on the Brexit issue threatened to run out of control.  
Under intense pressure as Remainers held protests at the gathering in Liverpool yesterday, Mr Corbyn conceded that he was ready to endorse another referendum if members voted for one.
The leader said his preference was to have a general election, but he would 'obviously' comply if party activists demand one.
Some 160 motions on Brexit had been submitted for debate at the conference. However, the texts were watered down in the so-called 'compositing' meeting late last night.
The motion, due to be voted on by delegates tomorrow, will state: 'If we cannot get a general election, Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.'  
MPs joined anti-Brexit protests at the gathering in Liverpool yesterday, and deputy leader Tom Watson urged a debate on the issue on the conference floor. 
Mr McDonnell told ITV's GMB today: 'My understanding is that what's been decided, and I've been arguing for this quite a bit, is a general election.
'A real People's Vote would be at the general election. When Theresa May comes back with a supposed deal from Brussels we will put it against a test, that is mainly whether or not it protects jobs and the economy, and if it fails in those matters then yes, we want a general election but we will keep the option of a people's vote on the table.'
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that even if a referendum were held it should not offer an option to remain in the EU.
'If we are respecting the last referendum it will be a vote on the deal,' he said.  
The comments drew anger from Labour MPs including David Lammy, who said it would be 'farcical' to have a vote without the option of remaining in the EU.
Sir Keir later told reporters that the option of ditching EU withdrawal had not been ruled out.
'The meeting last night was very clear that the question of a public vote should be open,' he told reporters.
'We weren't ruling out options and nobody was ruling out remain. There were 300 people in the room and that was absolutely clear.'
But the views of Mr McDonnell echo those of Unite chief Len McCluskey, another key supporter of Mr Corbyn.
Mr McCluskey said the public had already settled the fundamental question of whether Britain should leave the bloc in 2016.
The manoeuvring lays bare the depth of divisions within Labour over how to handle Brexit - and whether it should happen at all. 
Mr Corbyn has been under massive pressure from his own MPs to shift position on the referendum issue. 
Up to now he has insisted that the idea should be kept 'on the table', but refused to call actively for one to be held. 
Mr Corbyn told the BBC's Andrew Marr show yesterday there would be a 'clear vote' at conference on the referendum issue.
'Let's see what comes out of conference. Obviously I am bound by by the democracy of our party.' 
A poll published over the weekend found 86 per cent of party members think there should be a vote on the outcome of Brexit negotiations.
It also found that 90 per cent of Labour members would vote to remain in the EU.  
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Liverpool yesterday as part of the campaign for a so-called 'People's Vote'.
Mr Watson, who has been engaged in a long-running feud with Mr Corbyn's hard-Left allies, pointed out that more than 100 motions had been submitted that could be considered on the conference floor.
'I want a debate on it,' he told Sky News Sophy Ridge programme.  
Mr McCluskey inflamed the tensions by insisting staying in the EU should not be on the ballot paper if there is a second referendum.
'The people have already decided on that,' he told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5  Live. 'We very rarely have referendums in this country. The people have decided against my wishes and my Union's wishes but they've decided.'  
Mr McCluskey added: 'Here's one of the problems Labour have, there are significant numbers of traditional Labour supporters who are saying we're going to vote Conservative because we don't trust labour to take us out of the European Union despite the fact that Jeremy has said repeatedly, of course we recognise the result of course we respect the result, we're coming out of the European Union. 
'For us to now enter some kind of campaign that opens up that issue again I think would be wrong.' 
Mr McCluskey found an expected ally in former Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
He told GMB today: 'There were five million people who voted for Brexit in 2016 who then voted labour in 2017.
'What I'm struck by is there is a lot of Labour Leave voters who believe in Brexit so I think they are making a huge mistake. Potentially, it's a gift for Mrs May.
'The most important thing is we deliver Brexit, it's about delivering an independent Britain; it's not about the deal, it's about being self-governing.'  
Boris Johnson is reportedly planning to sabotage the Remainer plan to stop a no deal Brexit by sending a letter to the EU requesting an extension, as the new law requires - then in another missive, explaining why they should ignore it.
Today, a Bill passed by opposition parties and Tory rebels will receive Royal Assent. It insists that – if a deal is not reached – Mr Johnson must agree to postpone Brexit for at least three months. 
On Sunday, Mr Johnson bunkered down in Chevening, the Foreign Secretary's country residence, with his closest aides.
It is understood to have included chief strategist Dominic Cummings, where he is thought to have wargamed how the crucial week ahead could pan out.
One plan under consideration to prevent the three month extension is for the Prime Minister to send an additional letter alongside the request to extend Article 50, setting out the government's position that they don't want a delay and want to leave on October 31.
A source told The Telegraph: 'There is a prescribed letter that has to be sent...Does that stop the Prime Minister sending other documents to the EU? I don't think it does.
'A political explainer perhaps, as to where the Government's policy is. It has to make clear that the Government is asking for an extension, but let's not forget what the next step is.
'Once that is done, the Europeans are going to ask: 'Why? What is the reason? [What] if the government said: 'We don't have any reasons for an extension.
'There is a clear path now: the Europeans need to refuse an extension.' 
France has already suggested it could veto lengthening the talks, with French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, telling reporters: 'We are not going to do this (extend the deadline) every three months.' 
And yesterday Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab indicated that No 10 would not go down without a fight, saying Mr Johnson was 'sticking to his guns' to get the country 'out of this rut'.
His comments raise the prospect of a crunch legal challenge in the Supreme Court in the weeks leading up to October 31.
After declaring last week he would rather 'die in a ditch' than delay Brexit any further, he will refuse to ask for an extension at the EU Council on October 17 and 18. That would force MPs to take him to court to try and enforce the law – potentially sparking a major constitutional clash.
Downing Street sources have said they would look to 'sabotage' the extension. But when the law was passed by MPs and Mr Johnson's plans for an early election were blocked by opposition parties there was widespread speculation he could be forced to quit.
Over the weekend, a former director of public prosecutions warned he would be jailed for contempt of court if he refused to comply with the law.
A senior Labour MP has launched a tirade against Jeremy Corbyn's record as leader and blamed him for the party's current anti-Semitism crisis.
John Mann, who is standing down at the next election to become the Government's anti-Semitism tsar, told The Sunday Times he could 'never forgive' Mr Corbyn for allowing the party's 'soul and ethics' to be 'hijacked'. 
The MP for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire also said he could not campaign for Mr Corbyn knowing he could become prime minister. 
The 59-year-old, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group against anti-Semitism, told the newspaper: 'Every time I go into a meeting with a group of Jewish people, I wince when they raise the issue of the Labour Party and Mr Corbyn. It is impossible to overstate the anger that I have about that.'
Mr Mann said he would not 'lie' to voters in an election campaign, and added: 'Neither am I prepared to tell them that Mr Corbyn is appropriate to be prime minister. Because I don't think he is.'
 
In a sign of concerns within Cabinet, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland QC yesterday revealed he had challenged Mr Johnson personally over the issue.
Dismissing speculation he could quit as 'wide of the mark', Mr Buckland said he would continue to serve in his Cabinet.
But he revealed he had spoken to Mr Johnson over the weekend 'regarding the importance of the Rule of Law, which I as Lord Chancellor have taken an oath to uphold'. His comments were seen as a threat to quit if Mr Johnson actively disobeyed the law. Other ministers would be expected to follow him.
Yesterday, Mr Raab insisted ministers would 'adhere to the law' but said government lawyers would look 'very carefully' at what it requires the Prime Minister to do.
He told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'We will adhere to the law but we will also, because this is such a bad piece of legislation – the Surrender Bill that Jeremy Corbyn backed – we will also want to test to the limit what it does actually lawfully require. We will look very carefully, legally, at what it requires and what it doesn't require. I think that's not only the lawful thing to do, it's also the responsible thing to do and again I'll repeat that legislation is lousy.'
He also, for the first time, acknowledged it might not be possible to resist another extension to Article 50 – but said that under those circumstances the blame would rest with 'Jeremy Corbyn, the Liberal Democrats and others who are not prepared to respect the referendum'.
In a separate interview, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said Mr Johnson would not ask for an extension at the EU Council on October 17 and 18. Describing the Bill as an attempt to 'kneecap' Britain's negotiating position, he said ministers would 'look at our options' on October 19.
On that date the law kicks in if no agreement has been reached. It tells the Prime Minister to seek an extension until January 31 and accept any extension the EU agrees.
The Mail understands that No 10 strategists have discussed whether an official could be sent to sign off the extension so Mr Johnson does not have to do it in person.
Labour's shadow attorney-general Shami Chakrabarti said Mr Raab's comments were 'irresponsible and elitist' and called Mr Johnson a 'tin pot dictator'.
She told Sky News: 'The idea that a sitting prime minister in one of the oldest democracies on the planet would say, 'I will ignore the law' and he says, 'Oh no, it's not ignoring the law, it's just testing it a little bit'. Is that what we say to our kids, is that what we say to poor working people, vulnerable people in this country?
'I think [such a] position is irresponsible and elitist, the idea that there is one law for Boris Johnson and his mates and another law for everyone else, it's appalling.'
The Conservative Party leader will fly to Ireland to meet with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Monday morning but his counterpart poured cold water on suggestions of a breakthrough on the stalemate over a solution to the Irish backstop, the safety net agreed by the European Union and the UK to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Sajid Javid fails to rule out pact with Nigel Farage FIVE times
by Daniel Martin
Sajid Javid has failed to rule out a Tory pact with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party at the next election.
The Chancellor said the Conservative Party did not need electoral alliances to win.
But on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show he refused five chances to explicitly rule out a pact.
Mr Javid claimed the Government had a plan to deliver Brexit without Mr Farage's help – but claimed it would be madness to talk about it on television.
'There are actually new ideas,' he insisted. 'Anyone who understands how negotiation works knows you would not discuss those in public and put those in the public domain.
'I am absolutely clear that we are working wholeheartedly, straining every sinew, to get a new deal and the Prime Minister is personally putting in all the significant effort you would expect.
'I do know there is a proposal and it would be madness to start talking about that in public.' Mr Farage has asked the Tories to stand aside in Labour seats in the North in return for an agreement that the Brexit Party will not stand against pro-Leave Tories.
Many Conservatives favour such an alliance, because they fear Labour could sneak through the middle in many seats if both Tory and Brexit Party candidates stand.
Mr Javid said: 'We absolutely now need an election. It is being forced on us because Parliament is trying to kneecap these negotiations.'
He was asked five times to rule out a pact with the Brexit Party, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson is believed to have privately ruled out. Mr Javid said: 'We don't need an electoral alliance with anyone. We can stand on our own two feet, put our message across.
'The picture our opponents are painting of us, of course they would paint a false picture. We are a proud centre-Right, moderate, one-nation party.
'There is nothing extremist about wanting to meet the will of the British people on a simple question which was 'Do you want to leave the EU or not?'. We are not in an election yet. I am clear we do not need an alliance with anyone.'
Mr Farage has publicly offered a non-aggression pact between the two parties, citing the Conservatives' substantial losses in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he said the offer was '100 per cent sincere', adding: 'Johnson should cast his mind back to the European elections in May, in which his party came fifth, and ask himself: does he want the Tories to find themselves in a similarly disastrous position when the results of the next general election come in, or does he want to sign a non-aggression pact with me and return to Downing Street?'
Mr Javid's refusal to preclude a pact was criticised by the opposition. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said: 'The Tories are refusing to rule out a grubby deal with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party because they know he supports all their cuts to public services and the sell-off of our NHS to Donald Trump.'
Expelled Tory MP Sam Gyimah told Radio 5 Live: 'I know there is a serious level of disquiet about what the Government is doing, not just in terms of No Deal but an explicit attempt to purge the Conservative Party of moderate MPs because they see that as the way to steal the Brexit Party votes from underneath Nigel Farage.
'If the Conservative Party can become more like the Brexit Party, then they hope to be able to get his votes without a pact.' 
What is your plan, Boris? Cabinet Minister Nicky Morgan urges Tory colleagues to rally behind under-fire Prime Minister Boris Johnson but warns he MUST be more 'transparent' over his dealings with the EU
by Jack Doyle, Associate Editor for the Daily Mail
A cabinet minister today issues a rallying cry to Tory moderates to stand by Boris Johnson and help him deliver Brexit.
The party was plunged into fresh civil war at the weekend after the resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd.
Amid speculation at least one minister could follow her out, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan insists she would ‘stay in the room’ and give the Prime Minister the ‘necessary support’ to strike a Brexit deal.
Writing for the Daily Mail, she says Mr Johnson is right to keep No Deal on the table and insists the public are ‘fed up’ with the lack of progress over Brexit.
Her comments will be seen as an attempt to calm One Nation Tories disturbed by Miss Rudd’s departure and the eviction of 21 Conservative MPs last week.
But in a challenge to the Prime Minister, Mrs Morgan also says he needs to be more ‘transparent’ about the progress of negotiations with Brussels.
‘With our support, the Prime Minister now needs to show he’s serious about getting a deal,’ she writes. ‘More transparency... on the discussions is needed to ensure everyone is left in no doubt about how a deal is possible and the effort which is being put in to making sure a deal happens.’
Miss Rudd quit the Cabinet and resigned the Tory whip on Saturday over the ‘purge’ of the rebels – who include former chancellors Ken Clarke and Philip Hammond – calling it an ‘assault on decency and democracy’.
She also accused Mr Johnson of a ‘failure’ to pursue a deal with the EU, saying there was ‘no evidence’ he wants a negotiated agreement. In what was seen as a signal others could follow, she said ‘a lot of people are concerned’.
But in her article Mrs Morgan defends Mr Johnson, saying he has been ‘clear from the start that we must leave on October 31 – deal or No Deal’. Her intervention came as:
Yesterday a string of Cabinet ministers who backed Remain in 2016 moved to deny they would follow Miss Rudd out, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland and Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith.
There were even claims Mr Smith had threatened to quit after a row over No Deal legislation for Northern Ireland. Mr Buckland indicated he would quit if Mr Johnson refused to abide by the rule of law.
A junior transport minister, George Freeman, tweeted that Miss Rudd’s exit was ‘another massive blow’ and would undermine confidence that there was a ‘serious ambition to get a Withdrawal deal’. The tweet was later deleted.
Like Miss Rudd, Mrs Morgan backed Remain in 2016. But she is seen as a pragmatist and admired by Tory Brexiteers for her work pushing ‘alternative arrangements’ to deal with the border in Northern Ireland.
Today the Prime Minister travels to Dublin for what are expected to be difficult talks with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in what aides said was further evidence of his determination to pursue a deal.
MPs are also expected to vote on Tory demands for an early general election, which Labour and other opposition parties have pledged to block.
I want a deal – but we must be prepared to leave without one
by Nicky Morgan
Watching talented colleagues walking away from the Cabinet table is never easy. I am sorry to see Amber Rudd and Jo Johnson decide to do so in recent days.
I respect their decision, but the Prime Minister has been clear from the start that we must leave on October 31 – deal or No Deal.
In the words of the musical Hamilton, I intend to stay ‘in the room where it happens’ to ensure that together with my colleagues, the Prime Minister has the necessary support to fulfil his priority of agreeing a deal with the EU as we leave by October 31.
Before I joined the Government, I spent months working as part of the Prosperity UK Commission on Alternative Arrangements to the Irish backstop. Our work demonstrated that there were other ways to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Using these alternative arrangements is now key to getting that deal with the EU which will allow an orderly exit on October 31 and finally enable the 2016 referendum to be fulfilled. 
I know from conversations inside Government that our proposals are being taken on board and this work is happening in earnest.
An overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs and party members backed the Prime Minister’s deal or No Deal plan when he was elected Leader of the Conservative Party in July. 
Three years on from the referendum, we need to find a way for our country to come back together and bring the volatility of British politics to a close now.
It is no surprise that the public are exhausted and fed up. I share this frustration – they voted to leave three years ago and it is our duty to deliver on that result. 
People want certainty and that is why Jeremy Corbyn’s constant political games must stop. Mr Corbyn’s Surrender Bill last week is yet again another opportunistic tactic to undermine the Prime Minister’s negotiations and will just see endless delays. People now want Brexit delivered so we can focus on our domestic agenda.
And I agree that the No Deal option has to be kept on the table. While we are all clear that a deal is preferable, I know from my years as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer that no two sides to a negotiation can be compelled to agree a deal. 
That is why ministers and departments have spent all summer increasing our preparations to ensure the UK is properly ready for a No Deal on October 31 if that eventuality unfolds.
But the whole Government, from the Prime Minister down, is clear that getting a deal with the EU is the priority. 
That is why he visited Berlin and Paris last month and will be seeing the Irish prime minister today. It is why the Prime Minister’s envoy, David Frost, is spending so much time in Brussels setting out the UK’s position. 
It is why the Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, is visiting EU capital cities too.
With our support, the Prime Minister now needs to show he’s serious about getting a deal. 
More transparency, such as that laid out by the Brexit Secretary yesterday, on the discussions is needed to ensure everyone is left in no doubt about how a deal is possible and the effort which is being put in to making sure a deal happens. Government will face the same pressures around disclosure in our future free-trade agreement negotiations.
I want the Prime Minister to succeed in his priority of finding a deal with the EU. A deal will mean that the ambitious Queen’s Speech programme we have planned can be the main focus after three endless years of Brexit – what a relief that would be for everyone.
Hundreds of MPs will return to Westminster next week to press on with the historic legislation that will take Britain out of the EU for good.
Emboldened by a resounding majority, the Conservative Government will forge ahead not only with Brexit but with sweeping reforms to the country — to make our streets safer, control our own borders and protect the NHS.
Ministers will once more be dispatched to television and radio studios to outline this vision but one programme will be excluded from these daily broadcast rounds — BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme Today.
The Government took the dramatic step last year of refusing to put up ministers to be interviewed on Today amid an on-going row about bias along with a concern about its trivial approach to interviews.
The boycott will continue well into 2020 if BBC bosses fail to grasp the scale of the problem they now face.
There is growing mistrust over BBC impartiality — not just among politicians but with whole swathes of the public.
As a senior programme editor at the BBC and as a Director of Communications at Number 10 under Theresa May, I’ve watched the debate over ‘broadcast impartiality’ from both sides of the fence.
And I’ve never been more passionate in my belief that broadcasters must remain politically neutral — especially the BBC, which should be the standard-bearer for impartiality.
Increasingly, commentators and senior political figures complain of bias within the BBC but, to date, its reaction has been far too defensive.
Director general Tony Hall, writing last month about criticism of bias in the BBC’s election coverage, said: ‘The fact that criticism came from all sides shows to me that we were doing our job without fear or favour.’
If doesn’t quite work that way. Just because you’re being criticised from both sides doesn’t mean you’re not being biased.
The fact the BBC received a record 24,435 complaints in just a two-week period during the election campaign should be cause for concern at the BBC. It is unwise for Lord Hall to dismiss these concerns so casually.
Nowhere is impartiality more important than Radio 4’s Today programme, but its election coverage was a masterclass in why the BBC is losing the trust of its audience.
Trapped by its own woke ‘groupthink’, Today — or Radio Misery as my friends increasingly call it — bombarded its listeners with a relentlessly negative and sneering tone and painted a picture of Britain that was monstrously out of touch.
It spectacularly misread the politics of the election with endless outside broadcasts in universities, full of interviews with Left-wing, entitled, virtue- signalling students.
Meanwhile, the real election story was being played out in working-class English towns across the Midlands and the North.
Patience with the Today programme’s haughty attitude is wearing thin even with my former BBC colleagues. One tells me that ‘they behave in the most arrogant way possible’.
A debate now rages within the BBC’s senior management about how best to respond to these growing charges of bias.
They would be wise to take them very seriously.
I understand the BBC has carried out private opinion research that reveals concern about impartiality is at its highest among voters in the Midlands and the North.
These are the one-time heartland Labour seats where voters switched to the Conservatives and delivered the majority needed to get Brexit done.
Support for the BBC is highest in affluent areas with levels of high diversity such as London and Manchester.
If the election showed us anything, it showed us that hard-working and decent families who live outside the metropolitan ‘luvvie’ bubbles that envelop ‘media land’ and Westminster are fed up with being ignored or patronised.
These are the people who delivered a seismic election result and put into power a government that is now more in touch with the people it serves.
But there are depressingly few signs that the Today programme is learning any lessons from this election.
Interviewed on the BBC’s Feedback programme over the Government’s boycott of Today, its editor Sarah Sands declared the Government believes ‘it’s a pretty good time to put the foot on the windpipe of an independent broadcaster’, while accusing No 10 of ‘Trumpian’ tactics in its refusal to appear on the programme. This is extraordinary and unfortunate language coming from the former editor of the Right-wing Sunday Telegraph who championed Boris Johnson as Mayor of London when she was editor of the Evening Standard.
Surely she should now be listening to criticism from inside and outside the BBC and trying to build bridges with the Government, not burn them down.
From the way the BBC conducts its interviews to the way its journalists behave on social media, the corporation needs to reform to make sure it once again becomes a by-word for impartiality.
This should be the one place where viewers and listeners can get news they know they can trust.
We all know what to expect when we pick up a newspaper — a reflection of our own world view. Papers share the morals and values of their readers and help to give them a voice.
But people expect something quite different from broadcasters, particularly the BBC. Impartiality is literally what we all pay for via the licence fee.
Maintaining impartiality is a huge challenge for all broadcasters but it is made much harder by social media, which has given rise to the dangerous concept of ‘journalist as personality’.
You cannot be both an impartial journalist and a political commentator. So it’s high time some news professionals made a choice.
Journalists and producers working on news programmes should rigorously police themselves online. They should avoid ‘liking’ or re-tweeting opinions that could reveal their own political views.
Meanwhile, the temptation to try to humiliate a politician during an interview for the sake of some Twitter praise should also stop.
I understand that MPs are not everyone’s favourite people. But in a democracy they are rightly held to scrutiny in a way few of us are — by the ballot box, Parliament and the Register of Members’ Interests.
By and large, MPs and ministers are decent, hard-working people who want to do what’s best for their constituents, their party and their country.
The truth is Ministers don’t fight shy of television interviews because they are sitting on some hideous lurking secret they fear may spill out under the glare of the studio lights.
They are simply weary of a generation of Andrew Neil-wannabes trying to trip and trap them at every turn. Not every interview has to be the Spanish Inquisition.
There is a world of difference between Andrew’s well-researched and forensic approach and those interviewers who seem more interested in bagging the latest ‘car-crash interview’ to boost their profile online.
What has happened to simply asking the questions the public actually want asked and letting politicians answer so that the audience can judge for itself?
There are signs that broadcasters are belatedly beginning to address some of these concerns, at least in relation to Twitter.
Channel 4’s decision last month to ban non-political journalists from tweeting about politics is a step in the right direction.
I understand the BBC intends to launch a review into how its staff engage on social media soon.
This is to be welcomed.
The age of social media has given rise to the professional political pundit. These days, everyone has an opinion — facts are harder to come by.
That is why the BBC should serve as a beacon to all broadcasters, where facts, accuracy and impartiality are fundamental. 
Today, barring accidents, Boris Johnson will be pronounced the winner of the Tory leadership contest. 
Tomorrow afternoon, he will be driven to Buckingham Palace, where he will kiss hands with the Queen. He will be Prime Minister.
Like his hero, Winston Churchill, he has lived all his adult life yearning for this prize. Like his hero, he has been written off countless times. 
And, like his hero, he assumes power at a critical moment in our history.
The dangers are obviously not as great as they were when Churchill became PM on May 10, 1940, with the humiliating evacuation of Dunkirk and the capitulation of France, Britain’s main ally, only weeks away. But they are bad enough.
Flawed
Britain is divided and isolated. We are being driven mad by Brexit. One might almost say that, although Churchill’s task in 1940 was enormous, at least he knew what he had to do. 
It is hard to see how any politician can lead us out of the mess we’re now in and bring our country together again.
Can Boris save us? Or will he be driven ignominiously out of No 10 in months, even weeks? 
Like many, I ask myself these questions constantly. And I must admit — again, I suspect, like many people — that there is no easy answer. But I hope.
One way to weigh Boris’s weaknesses and strengths is to strip away the layers of gilt that have been lovingly applied to the figure of Churchill and to see the magnificent wartime leader for the flawed human being he was.
I don’t suggest that Boris is remotely equal to his hero. But when considering our new Prime Minister’s failings (which have been catalogued by his many detractors), it is comforting to recall that Churchill also came to the highest office bearing a long charge sheet.
He had been responsible for the Dardanelles fiasco in World War I, in which nearly 50,000 Allied lives were lost. His stint as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Twenties was a near disaster.
Always his judgment was being impugned: over his bigoted opposition to virtual home rule in India in the Thirties, and his rash championing of Edward VIII during the 1936 abdication crisis when public opinion was firmly against the King marrying American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
It’s true that, by 1940, Churchill’s political career stretched back over four decades, whereas Boris’s has been much briefer, and so he has had less scope for political gaffes. 
Still, he managed to pack in quite a few during his two-year spell as Foreign Secretary.
In his biography of Winston Churchill, Boris describes the great man as ‘eccentric’ and ‘over the top’ — words that could as well be used of himself. ‘Rackety’ would be another way of describing what they have in common.
Unlike Boris, Churchill had no appetite for extra-marital sex, but he drank much more prodigiously. He was far more feckless with money, though he earned even greater amounts as a newspaper columnist.
In May 1940, many in the parliamentary Tory Party regarded the country’s new leader as flashy, unreliable and lacking in judgment. 
Rab Butler — then a junior minister and, much later, very nearly Prime Minister — described Churchill as ‘the greatest adventurer of modern political history’ and ‘a half-breed American’.
Sound familiar? My point is that Churchill has been deified, and so his faults and all the rude things said and thought about him by members of his own party, as well as by Labour, have been airbrushed out. 
Might Boris also succeed despite being written off by nearly half the country and bien pensant intellectuals?
There is another similarity. In May 1940, Winston Churchill was opposed by a knot of conspirators in his own party, such as Lord Halifax and Rab Butler, who wanted to put out feelers to Hitler via the Italian leader Benito Mussolini and sue for peace. 
His most deadly adversaries were on his own side. And so it is with Boris. The Tory Party is in disarray. All discipline has broken down. 
Philip Hammond has petulantly said he will resign as Chancellor to avoid being sacked, while Boris-hating Sir Alan Duncan childishly quit his job as a Foreign Office minister in the midst of a worsening international crisis involving Iran. Where is duty?
Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith, who, in a couple of days, could be Deputy Prime Minister in a Johnson administration, publicly accuses the Government — and, by implication, Jeremy Hunt, Boris’s rival and Foreign Secretary — of a ‘major failure’ over its Iran policy.
Respect
Actually, the treachery within the Tory Party is even more rampant than it was in May 1940, when many MPs who were suspicious of Churchill at least showed a measure of respect for their new leader and were prepared to give him a chance.
Sir Alan Duncan has tried to table an emergency Commons motion on whether Johnson should become Prime Minister. Fortunately, he was rebuffed by Speaker John Bercow, who was sensible for once in his life.
Despite this setback, ultra Conservative Remainers (perhaps including erstwhile Eurosceptic Mr Hammond) may try to bring down Boris even before he starts talking to the EU.
An iron rule of politics is that voters abhor divided parties. A decisive early vote of No Confidence in Boris is almost bound to precipitate a general election, in which the Tories would be viewed as a fractious rabble who failed to honour the Leave vote in the referendum.
One difference between then and now: in May 1940, Churchill formed a coalition with Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, whereas Boris will confront Jeremy Corbyn, whose only concern is to achieve power so that he can unleash his Marxist experiment on Britain.
Ambition
Does our new Prime Minister have the political guile, force of personality and greatness of spirit to see off these threats and find his way through a bewildering maze to reach a reasonable accommodation with Brussels?
It is certainly a tall order. So it would be even for Winston Churchill, who, after all, proved himself a disappointing peacetime leader after he was returned to office in 1951.
But Boris, facing as he does the most perilous state of affairs that has bedevilled any prime minister since Churchill in 1940, can reasonably take comfort in the knowledge that his hero was prematurely written off by critics later forced to eat their words.
Maybe he will rise above the pygmies planning to bring him down. 
For all his faults, he has one striking advantage that he definitely shares with the wartime leader. He has craved the highest office in the land since he was a child.
All-encompassing ambition is rare, even in leading politicians. It amounts almost to a mystical sense of personal destiny. Churchill certainly had it. 
He wrote later of that moment in May 1940: ‘I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.’
Such rare men are difficult to stop. Is Boris one of them? I don’t know. But it seems to me his obsessively wanting to lead our country probably constitutes the best hope we have that he will make a decent job of it.
Britain has already secured more than £16billion in foreign investment deals since June's Brexit vote, ministers announced today.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox hailed the splurge in foreign spending as 'a clear vote of confidence' in post-Brexit Britain.
Major international firms such as Google and Apple have pledged to create thousands of new jobs in the UK.
Mr Fox said the foreign investment since Brexit – worth an estimated £16.3billion – will boost Britain's property development, infrastructure and renewable energy sectors.
He said the investment showed foreign firms were confident of 'our strong economy post-Brexit'.
And with billions of further investment expected to be announced in the coming months, the Government is set to reach or exceed its target of £983billion in foreign direct investment already achieved between 2015 and 2016.
The deals are further evidence of the resilient British economy defying doom-laden predictions of financial chaos after June's vote to leave the EU.
Figures show the British economy is growing larger than expected and the London Stock exchange has enjoyed two consecutive days of record highs.
Mr Fox said that in the run-up to Christmas the Australian company Peak Resources announced a £100million investment in a new minerals refinery in the north east of England.
Chinese construction firm CNBM is investing £2.5billion to develop 25,000 modular homes in the UK.
Danish firm DONG Energy has also committed £12billion in renewable energy projects in Britain by 2020.
Dr Fox said: 'Recent major investments show how much the UK is valued as an innovative business-friendly country, and will continue to be as we leave the EU.
'But the benefits of foreign investment have much more impact for local communities across the UK, transforming local industry, creating jobs and tackling issues like housing and clean energy.
'Britain remains truly open for business, that's why my department is supporting businesses in the UK and across the world to attract investment to boost our economy.
'Long-term business investments like these are a clear vote of confidence in the UK and our strong economy post-Brexit.'
The investment was hailed by senior Brexit supporters who said the figures were the final proof that the 'prophets of doom' from the Remain campaign were wrong.
Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said: 'This latest announcement is the turning point. You are now either in the camp that fundamentally believes that Britain can do anything, anytime and anywhere, or you are in the doom and gloom camp that doesn't believe in Britain.
'These are the little England Remainers who cannot believe for one moment that Great Britain is not little England, they actually think that this great island of ours cannot do anything without going on bended knee to Brussels.'
Former Justice Secretary and Vote Leave champion Michael Gove said: 'This is fantastic news that the Government has secured these levels of investment.
'This is a real vote of confidence in Britain after our vote to leave the European Union. The prophets of doom have once again been found wanting.
'All the signs are that Britain can make a great success of life outside the European Union and these investors certainly believe in a great future for Britain.'
News of the £16bn investment came as the London stock market enjoyed two-straight days of record highs.
Big gains for precious metal-related stocks helped the FTSE 100 rise 14.18 points to hit a new high of 7120.26 last night, a day after it attained a record level a fraction above 7,106.
Sterling's post-referendum slump has benefited multinationals listed in London, as many receive earnings in currencies that have strengthened against the pound. 

Were it not for the death of the retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, the BBC would have been leading its news bulletins yesterday morning with the story that came second on its revised agenda.
This was about a letter addressed to the party leaders at Westminster by the Equality and Human Rights Commission urging them to ‘tone down’ campaigning that, it argued, has ‘legitimised hate’.
It is clear who the Commission has in mind: the politicians who campaigned (successfully) for the Leave side in the EU referendum campaign.
And the timing of the letter’s release to the BBC, just days after the conviction of Thomas Mair for the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, is far from coincidental.
It is entirely in line with newspaper columns last week by some of those still unreconciled to the Brexit vote, one of which — on the day after Mair’s sentencing — was headlined ‘Dog-whistle politics can be a deadly game’.
The argument, such as it is, seems to be that the emphasis on the need to control immigration put by many of those campaigning for Brexit triggered Mair’s unspeakably violent attack on one of the country’s most admirable politicians, who was on the Remain side.
But the wider point of such pieces is to insinuate collective responsibility for the crime on the part of those who argued that Britain should exit the EU and become a fully independent nation once again.
Disturbing
Such writers are almost akin to the fictional Dr Heinz Kiosk (an invention of the late satirist Michael Wharton), who, whenever some disturbing crime took place, would declare: ‘We are all guilty.’
The imaginary Dr Kiosk’s motives were not political, however, while those who attribute moral responsibility to Brexit campaigners for Jo Cox’s murder are engaged in pure politics.
Indeed, the notion of collective responsibility is always highly ideological, whether on the part of those who attribute Islamic terrorism to Muslims in general or who blame all Jews for any action by the Israeli Defence Force.
It is true that when carrying out his horrifying attack, Mair was heard to shout: ‘This is for Britain.’ And the murder did take place during the final week of the Referendum campaign.
But when you look into the details of Mair’s (highly disturbed) thought processes, it becomes clear that Britain’s membership of the EU was not his principal, or even secondary, concern. As the trial judge said, he was ‘no patriot’ but an out-and-out white supremacist, who for decades had been obsessed with the notion that the ‘white race’ (a biological nonsense in itself) was facing extinction.
He began his indoctrination 30 years earlier by subscribing to a South African publication devoted to attacking those who opposed the policy of apartheid.
He would sign his letters to the producers of those pamphlets ‘Yours racially’. And his British role model was not Ukip’s Nigel Farage, still less Boris Johnson or Michael Gove, leading lights of the Leave campaign.
No, his inspiration, according to material gathered by the police, was David Copeland: the man who in 1999 planted three nail bombs in London targeting, in turn, black people, Asians and gay people.
The police also uncovered internet searches by Mair which revealed his horror that his mother’s second marriage was to a man of West Indian origins.
What police photographs of his bookshelves also showed was that Mair’s personal library consisted entirely of tomes about the Nazis (he appeared to worship Hitler’s regime) and in his bedroom were Nazi memorabilia. Does this remind you of any Brexiteer you know? Me neither.
It is undeniable that nationalism played a part in the success of the Leave campaign. But to the extent that it did, this emerged from a sense of deep affiliation to traditional British institutions, the most important of which is a sovereign Parliament.
It was, in part, to defend these institutions that Britain fought Nazi Germany — the very dictatorship to which Mair built a shrine in his bedroom.
The Times last week followed up the Mair trial with a detailed investigation into the modern political groups that embrace that murderer’s world view.
Crucial
The main one is called Knights Templar International, which says it seeks to recruit members ‘who share an understanding of the threats we face today from radical Islam . . . and anti-Christian bigotry’.
The point is, just as Islamic terrorists are not interested in the nation state, but in establishing a sort of global caliphate, so people of Mair’s mindset see themselves as promoting an equally trans-national white supremacist movement. The crucial distinction is this: racism is not the same as nationalism, even though many on the Left talk as if the two are synonymous.
Actually, the falsity of this equivalence should be obvious to people in this country. The most spectacular growth in support for any of our political parties in recent years has been that enjoyed by the SNP.
Those three letters stand for Scottish National Party. It is an avowedly nationalistic party, forged in the passionate belief that the Scottish people should have independence from Westminster.
But is it a racist party? Well, there are elements on the fringe of the Scottish independence movement who might be described as Celtic supremacists and who do have a hatred for the English.
But if you asked most Scots if they saw the SNP as inherently racist, they would rightly dismiss the idea as insulting.
So why should those who support the idea of British independence from the institutions of the EU not be similarly affronted by the implication they are motivated by racism?
While the issue of immigration was highly significant in the Brexiteers’ winning campaign slogan ‘Bring Back Control’, this was not remotely a racist phrase — and it is a disgraceful slur on those who agreed with that to stain them all as incipient white supremacists or connected in any way to the weirdo killer of poor Jo Cox.
The Brexit campaign would never have succeeded without winning the votes of very many British Asians. I know a number of such voters and the idea that they were driven by overt or even hidden racism is as offensive as it is preposterous.
No matter what your ethnic origins, if you believe in the idea of the nation state at all, then you are likely also to believe that such a state must have some degree of control over the number of those who have the right to enter from outside and make it their home.
Betrayed
A territory without such control has forfeited one of the principal attributes of statehood and, as a signatory to EU treaties guaranteeing absolute freedom of movement to the citizens of all 28 member states, Britain was unable to exercise that control.
The problem for the leader of the Remain campaign, one David Cameron, was not that he failed to recognise this. It was that he recognised it, but couldn’t deliver it.
He declared on live television in 2014: ‘Britain, I know you want this sorted. I will go to Brussels, I will not take “No” for an answer and when it comes to freedom of movement I will get what Britain needs.’
But he broke this most explicit of promises. This was made brutally clear to him by a British Asian, Harry Boparai, in an ITV referendum debate in which the then PM faced audience questions.
Boparai told Cameron that he had voted Conservative in 2015 because of that promise, but having been betrayed on this, he would vote for Brexit in the referendum.
Is Harry Boparai a racist for casting his ballot in this way and for that reason? The suggestion is an insult, not only to Mr Boparai, but all those who thought similarly.
To be fair to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, its letter to party leaders does concede that: ‘The vast majority of people who voted to leave the European Union did so because they believe it is best for Britain and not because they are intolerant of others.’
But who is guilty of the greatest intolerance? Perhaps those who insinuate that the Brexit campaign was inherently racist should look at themselves in the mirror and examine their own contemptuous attitude to those with whom they disagree.
 
Theresa May last night defended the free Press's right to criticise the judiciary – saying it 'underpins our democracy'.
The Prime Minister intervened amid protests from lawyers and Remain-supporting MPs over the reporting of last week's hugely controversial High Court ruling that Parliament must be given a vote on Brexit.
The Government is appealing against the decision, saying it was made clear when the referendum was called that the people were being given the final say on whether to remain in the EU.
Ex-Armed Forces chiefs warned the ruling could make it harder for Britain to launch urgent military action by undermining the Royal Prerogative.
Yesterday Cabinet ministers said groups such as the Bar Council were in danger of 'exaggerating' the row over Press headlines. They suggested the judges criticised by the Mail and other newspapers were not going to 'lose sleep over a disobliging headline'.
On a trade mission to India, Mrs May – who herself described the court's verdict as disappointing – twice defended the freedom of the Press. She decided to speak out after ferocious criticism on social media and the BBC of both newspapers and Justice Secretary Liz Truss.
Mrs Truss was savaged by Remain-backing MPs and lawyers for not attacking the Press over its comments. The legal profession said she had a duty to protect the independence of the judiciary.
Mrs May said yesterday: 'I believe in the value of the independence of our judiciary. I also value the freedom of our Press. I think those both underpin our democracy and they are important.
'Of course the judges will look at the legal arguments – I believe as a Government we have got strong legal arguments. The Supreme Court will now decide.
'I also reiterate that Parliament gave this decision to the British people in the referendum, and I think for MPs and peers they should remember that the British people gave their view. The majority said we should leave the EU.'
Former European commissioner Chris Patten last night demanded Theresa May chastise newspapers that dared question last week's High Court ruling on Brexit.
The former chairman of the BBC Trust, who is now chancellor of Oxford University, called on the PM to display 'leadership' by publicly attacking the Press.
Tory peer Lord Patten, who opposed Brexit, also called for Sajid Javid to be sacked over comments on the ruling. The Communities Secretary said the judges had been seeking to 'frustrate the will of the British people'. He praised former attorney general Dominic Grieve, who said the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph's coverage was like 'living in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe'.
Speaking on the ITV Peston on Sunday programme, Lord Patten said: 'Here we are with a debate in this country that is starting to make us look mean and a bit nasty. 
'Theresa May should make it clear that she doesn't like the way that tabloid editors have been pushing this debate, that we need to be, to behave more decently to one another with a great deal more respect.' 
The ex-Tory party chairman helped introduce the poll tax. He later served as the last governor of Hong Kong and was appointed by Tony Blair as one of the UK's European commissioners. 
The PM added: 'It is important that we have the independence of the judiciary. It is also important that we have a free Press.'
Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC also defended the right of the Press to criticise, as well as the independence of the judiciary.  
Addressing a meeting on pro bono legal work this morning, Mr Wright said: 'The claimants in this and every other case are entitled to bring their case and to have it heard by the court and are entitled to do so without being harassed or intimidated. The judges in this case are entitled to decide this case in any way they choose in accordance with their judgment.
'I’m sure they would accept they are unlikely to decide so without criticism. But the principles [of the rule of law] remain critical in cases as big and fundamental as this one.
'I can and do defend those principles at the same time that I disagree respectfully with the court. But the good news is that there’s a mechanism to allow those who disagree. It’s called an appeal and we will make use of that mechanism.'
And Jeremy Hunt said he would 'defend to the hilt' the right of newspapers to write what they like as it was an important aspect of democracy.
The Health Secretary referenced the Mail's front page from Friday, which called the judges 'enemies of the people', telling the BBC's Andrew Marr show that the 'democratic right of newspapers to disagree whenever they want with what judges decide' was important because 'we're an open society'. The sentiments were echoed by Commons Leader David Lidington, who told ITV's Peston on Sunday that judges were 'tough old birds' who could survive a disobliging front page.
He accused the Bar Council, which represents barristers, of exaggerating the harm newspaper headlines can do to the principle of judicial independence.
But Gina Miller, the businesswoman who funded the High Court case, said the Press had 'behaved disgracefully'. The former model said: 'The papers – the Mail in particular – have been shameful. It's brought out a side of society – the dark clouds are definitely gathering.'  
Theresa May last night warned she will not sign a £39billion Brexit divorce cheque unless the EU resolves ‘big issues’ on future trade links.
Downing Street played down the prospect of a breakthrough at next week’s Brussels summit, saying there would be no deal without ‘movement on the EU’s side’.
And it dismissed the idea that Mrs May could sign up to a ‘blind Brexit’ – saying the terms of a future trading partnership would have to be spelled out in ‘precise’ detail.
After months of stalling, senior EU figures have made positive noises about the summit, described by EU president Donald Tusk as the ‘moment of truth’.
Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, claimed at the weekend that a deal was 90 per cent there.
But Mrs May has privately warned allies she does not expect to strike a deal until next month at the earliest.
Her official spokesman said she would not sign off on the ‘withdrawal agreement’ – which includes a £39billion ‘divorce’ payment – until the EU agrees the terms of a future trade deal.
This appears designed to allay the concerns of some MPs that EU leaders may agree a ‘blind Brexit’. 
That would mean Parliament being asked to approve the withdrawal agreement – including guaranteed rights for expats and a new arrangement for the Irish border – with no clear idea of future EU-UK relations in areas such as trade and security. 
Asked about the positive noises emerging from the EU, Mrs May’s spokesman said: ‘There is a difference between people talking optimistically about a deal, and a deal – including both a withdrawal agreement and a future framework – actually being agreed.
‘There remain big issues to resolve and, as the Prime Minister has said, this will require movement on the EU’s side. There can be no withdrawal agreement without a precise future framework.’
Today, DUP leader Arlene Foster will travel to Brussels for talks with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier on his demand for customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Mrs Foster, whose ten MPs prop up the Government, warned last week that her opposition to customs and regulatory checks was a ‘blood red line’. The DUP is set to be consulted on British proposals for the Irish border later this week before they are published.
No10 yesterday denied reports the new plan could include the UK staying in a form of customs union with the EU indefinitely.
EU sources also confirmed that plans to publish a formal response to Mrs May’s Chequers proposals – which is expected to reject large parts of them – have been delayed until next week at the earliest.
Theresa May today urged Europe to accept her Brexit plan was a good deal for both sides after French President Emmanuel Macron urged Brussels to cut a deal.
Striking an upbeat tone in Kenya as she wrapped up a continent-wide tour stumping for free trade, Mrs May said she wanted a 'good relationship with the EU while having the freedom to negotiate trade deals'. 
She rejected criticism from her former chief of staff Nick Timothy, insisting her deal would mean Britain ending free movement and leaving EU institutions. 
The Premier denied she was setting Britain on a track to be a 'vassal state' that follows EU rules without helping to set them. 
Mrs May refused again to say whether Britain would be better off in the short term because of Brexit, insisting only quitting the EU offered opportunities.  
Mr Macron's vision for Europe would involve 'concentric circles' with eurozone nations in the inner ring and Britain in a second, The Times reports. 
It came after the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier promised a 'partnership with Britain such as has never been with any other third country', sending the value of the pound on financial markets. 
Mrs May said: 'Chequers delivers on the Brexit vote. It does it in a way that I believe is good for the UK.
'Obviously, we are in negotiations with the European Union, but I believe our proposals are not just good for the UK, but they are good for the EU as well.'
Mrs May added the Chequers plan offers economic flexibility, saying: 'It ensures that we can maintain a good trading relationship with the EU while having the freedom to negotiate trade deals on our own behalf around the rest of the world.'
In other developments today, it was claimed by Politico Britain was threatening not to recognise 'geographic' EU products in future - such as champagne or Parma ham.
Such products are worth billions to the EU economy and Brussels is determined not to undermine the system. 
At a joint press conference with Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, Mrs May said: 'As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, we are committed to a smooth transition that ensures continuity in our trading relationship with Kenya.
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
'We are pursuing, of course, a good deal for trade with the EU once we have left the EU.
'But we will be looking to enhance our trade relationships around the rest of the world as well.
'Trade isn't about one country doing better than another country, actually, trade is mutually beneficial.'
Hosting a business discussion with Mrs May in Nairobi later, Mr Kenyatta joked that she might want to go on holiday in Africa instead of Europe after Brexit.
‘Thank you and hopefully you will be back to visit us soon,’ he said.
‘I've asked Theresa that she doesn't have to necessarily always go to France and Italy for her holidays... there is always friendly weather here, especially after Brexit.’
Diplomatic sources apparently said Mr Macron would use a summit in Austria next month to say that a hard Brexit would endanger European ties and his model for various 'circles' in Europe. 
A source said: 'He sees a no-deal scenario as something that would break links and poison relations at a time when Europe needs to be united beyond the EU.' 
At a meeting on Mr Macron's holiday resort earlier this month the PM said Brussels faced a choice of a 'Chequers deal or no deal', but the president said he stood firmly behind the EU's negotiators. 
Cabinet minister David Lidington earlier made the same argument to a French business conference.
Speaking to France's largest employer federation Mr Lidington said: 'We face the choice between the pragmatic proposals we are discussing now with the European Commission or no deal.
'The alternative models do not meet the level of ambition or the outcome we all want to see delivered.
'So we need the EU to engage with us on our positive vision of the future relationship.' 
 
Brexit minister Dominic Raab said he had quickly established a 'good professional and personal rapport' with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
Addressing peers, Mr Raab said he would be in Brussels tomorrow ahead of meetings on Friday, adding: 'I'm confident that a deal is within our sights. 
'We're bringing ambition, pragmatism, energy and if, and I expect it will be, and if it is matched, we get a deal.' 
Mr Barnier told reporters in Berlin: 'We are prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country.'
However the Brussels negotiator still insisted Britain cannot have an 'a la carte' choice of benefits from the EU single market. 
Brexiteers welcomed his 'more optimistic tone' but warned that actions speak louder and urged the EU to get on with coming up with a new offer. 
A Government spokesman responded to the comments, saying: 'Both the UK and the EU are committed to reaching the best deal possible for both sides.
'We have put forward our proposals for this deal in our White Paper and we stand ready to work at pace with the EU over the coming weeks.' 
The intervention is a significant boost for Theresa May who has spent the summer trying to win support in EU capitals for her Brexit blueprint.
Tory MP and Brexiteer Michael Fabricant said: 'I welcome this more optimistic tone, but words are one thing, deeds are another. 
'We'll all await the offer with interest. But with the UK being the largest export market worldwide for German cars and other products, it was always clear to me that the UK has huge leverage in these negotiations.' 
Theresa May has insisted Brexit means quitting the EU customs union - so the UK can strike free trade deals with other countries.
But  this means that customs checks on goods will probably need to be carried out at the border - creating the spectre of long border queues.
Critics of the PM's approach say the UK should stay in a customs union with the bloc to avoid these hard border controls.
Below are three customs deals the EU  has done with countries outside the bloc:
The Norway Option: 
Norway voted narrowly against joining the EU in 1994, but shares a 1000-mile border with Sweden which is in the bloc.
The Norwegian government decided to negotiate a deal which gave it very close ties with the EU. 
It is part of the EU single market which means it must accept EU rules on the free movement of people.
But it is not in the customs union - meaning it sets its own tariffs on customs coming from outside the EU and so must carry out border checks.
There are some 1,300 customs officials who are involved in policing the border with Sweden, and have invested substantial amounts in technology to make these as quick and smooth as possible.
They have IT systems which pre-declare goods to customs and they are developing a system which will allow lorries carrying pre-declared goods to be waved through. 
Norway also pays large amounts into the EU budget and is governed by the court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The Switzerland Option:
Switzerland is one of the EU's longest-standing trading partners, but the  country voted against joining the bloc in 2001.
It is a member of the EU single market and has signed up to the Schengen area - meaning it must accept free movement rules and does not carry out passport check on other member countries. 
But it is not in the EU customs union - which means that checks on goods crossing over the border from non-EU countries are carried out.
The situation tosses up some anomalies. For instance, a passenger travelling through Geneva Airport can rent a car on the French side of the border for around half of the cost of renting it on the Swiss side.
Border checks are carried out on goods but customs officials say they use intelligence to carry out spot checks, which can be carried out several miles from the border. 
However, there can be long delays as goods are checked at the border.
The Turkey Option: 
Turkey has long eyed up membership of the EU and first tried to start the lengthy application process to join in 1987.
The country signed a customs union with the bloc in 1995 - a move Turkey's rulers hoped would be a stepping stone on the way to full membership.
Turkey's hopes to join the bloc faded over the past few years and have been all but abandoned under President Erdogan after he instigated a major purge of political opponents in the wake of the failed coup against him in 2016.
Under its customs union Turkey must follow EU rules on the production of goods without a say in making them.
It also means that Turkey can only strike free trade deals on goods which are negotiated by Brussels.   
Stephen Crabb? Remember him? No, he wasn’t that famous frogman who went missing, presumed dead, while spying on a Russian warship in Portsmouth harbour in 1956.
That was Buster Crabb. Nor was he the copper-turned-chef played by the late Richard Griffiths in the BBC show Pie In The Sky. That was Henry Crabbe, with an ‘e’.
Anybody? I’m sorry, we’re out of time. Stephen Crabb was, in fact, the Conservative Party’s great white hope as recently as last year.
Following Call Me Dave’s resignation, Crabb put himself forward as leader and, by extension, Prime Minister. For about five minutes, after the Brexit referendum, he was the future.
The Boys In The Bubble got terribly excited. Young-ish, born in Scotland, brought up by a single mum on benefits in a council house in Pembrokeshire, MP for a Welsh constituency, fashionable beard. What’s not to like?
Crabb was the polar opposite of the privileged, metrosexual, public-school Cameroons — just the chap to drag the Tories screaming and kicking into the 21st century. OK, so Crabb was a Remainer and the country had just voted conclusively to Leave the EU. But you can’t have everything. It was even claimed absurdly that because he’d been on the losing side he would be a perfect ‘unity’ candidate.
He actually managed to attract the support of 34 MPs — that’s more than former chairman Grant Shapps could muster for his abortive coup against Theresa May last week.
Sadly, it wasn’t enough to make the cut. After the first round, Crabb withdrew from the race.
Just as well, as it turned out. A few days later it was revealed he had sent a series of sexually explicit texts to a young woman not his wife — which rather flew in the face of his carefully-cultivated image as a devout Christian believer in family values.
Crabb resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary — a job very few people outside Westminster knew he had — and that was the last anyone heard of him.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Everybody back on the battle bus.
I’m only disinterring his body to illustrate the ephemeral nature of politics and the warped priorities of the self-obsessed political class.
In the wake of the biggest popular vote for anything in history, the story quickly ceased to be about Brexit and became all about the politicians themselves.
The people had spoken, but the political class seized possession of the result. Even though most of them had been on the losing side, they decided the will of the 17.4 million who voted Leave was at best a secondary consideration.
Fifteen months on, it’s still all about them. Sack Boris. Sack Spreadsheet Phil. How long can Mother Theresa cling on? Who is going to take over? Is Amber Rudd positioning herself for a challenge? Will it be Ruth Davidson, the kick-boxing lesbian?
Who bloody cares? Enough of the political psychodrama.
Don’t they realise that the 17.4 million weren’t just voting against the EU, they were passing a vote of no confidence in the whole rotten lot of them?
The only thing that matters now is getting Britain the hell out of the EU as quickly as possible. While the Tory Party is playing silly buggers, the Eurocrats and the embittered Remoaner saboteurs are making hay.
Those determined to derail Brexit can smell weakness.
Even before Mother Theresa had formally issued her feeble ‘the ball is in your court’ warning to the EU yesterday, Brussels had lobbed it back over the net. Pick the bones out of that, pet.
Why wouldn’t they? Members of the Cabinet appear more worried about their own futures than the future of the country. Project Fear is still in full swing.
Over the weekend, professional Establishment stooge Howard Davies — formerly of the Europhile CBI and the man who brought you Gordon Brown’s disastrous banking reforms — was wheeled out everywhere, warning that tens of thousands of jobs in the City were about to migrate to Europe.
No, they’re not.
What you have to remember is that Davies is part of the same lying crowd who warned that if we voted Leave, there’d be an emergency Budget the next day, millions of jobs would be lost and World War III would break out.
Then up popped Nick Clegg, all channels, all day, pushing a book on how Brexit can still be stopped. Why does anyone give him houseroom?
After losing the referendum, he fought the last election on an anti-Brexit ticket and lost his seat. How many more goes does he get?
If you take any notice of most of the self-interested merchants of doom, we are at the mercy of the EU and must be grateful for whatever scraps they throw us.
Not that Brussels is in the mood to give us anything. We’ve been walking up a one-way street so far. We offer concessions, which they swallow and then refuse to budge an inch. Pathetic.
Sorry to sound so negative, but just because you’re paranoid and all that. The Great Brexit Betrayal began the moment the result of the referendum was announced. The grave danger now is that it all gets Lost In Transition.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Faced with EU intransigence, the only sensible option, as I’ve maintained all along, is Just Walk Away, Mrs May. They’ve got more to lose than we have. But that’s not going to happen.
It’ll all come down to Angela Merkel, we’re told. Why? She’s just had an even worse general election than Mother Theresa.
Why the hell should a woman who could only poll 33 per cent in Germany dictate Brexit terms to a woman who won 42 per cent of the vote in Britain?
Yet all the parochial Boys In The Bubble are bothered about is who Theresa should sack. For what it’s worth, I’d have shot Spreadsheet Phil back in the spring after his disastrous, hubristic Budget — and said so at the time.
They’d rather she sacked Box Office Boris, the one man who has consistently put forward a positive vision of Britain’s future outside the EU and about the only proven match winner the Tories currently possess. Dumping Boris would be like Portugal dropping Cristiano Ronaldo because he’s not a ‘team player’.
Boris should have got the job when Cameron fell on his sword, but the petty jealousy and resentment of so-called colleagues stopped him in his tracks. He might have screwed up spectacularly eventually, but he had earned the right to give it his best shot.
Ah, but he’s driven by personal ambition, his critics say. And the others aren’t? Grow up. They are all driven by ambition. They’re politicians.
What was the unnecessary and calamitous ‘Vote Theresa May’ vanity project general election all about otherwise?
Why has the appalling, sour-faced Look Back In Amber just hired an expensive pollster, if not out of ‘personal ambition’?
Are you seriously going to tell me that life under Boris would have been any worse than we’ve had to endure over the past 15 months?
It wasn’t Boris who dillied and dallied for months over invoking Article 50, or who called an unwanted election, blew a 23-point opinion poll lead, lost the Tories’ parliamentary majority, and condemned us to the prospect of the Marxist menace Corbyn next time round.
If it had gone pear-shaped, at least — like Arnold Bennett’s Card — he’d have cheered us all up, not tried to scare us to death or filled us with gloom every five minutes.
If not Boris next, then who? Ruth Davidson, young-ish, Scottish, etc, is the bookies’ favourite. The name on everyone’s lips, we’re told.
Well, I was in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago — Old Firm game, Horseshoe Bar, usual haunts — and unless I’ve gone completely mutton, no one, but no one, was talking about her.
At best she’s small-time, the Tories’ version of Wee Burney. She’s not even a Westminster MP — and, anyway, is a fervent Remainer who would keep us locked in to the Single Market, free movement and the European Court of Justice.
I wonder what Stephen Crabb’s up to these days.
 
Rebel Tories last night suggested they would support a Lords amendment that could derail Brexit.
The Remain-backing MPs signalled they would refuse to overturn the amendment when it returns to the Commons. That could force Theresa May to reopen talks with Brussels if MPs reject her Brexit deal.
The controversial amendment – proposed by ex-Tory minister Viscount Hailsham and voted through on Monday night – sparked a furious row yesterday, with International Trade Secretary Liam Fox accusing peers of wanting to delay Britain’s exit from the EU indefinitely. Other Brexiteers warned the move strengthened the case for reforming the House of Lords.
Mrs May said measures to remove the option of walking away from Brexit talks with no deal ‘risked tying the Government’s hands behind its back in negotiations with Brussels’.
The Prime Minister told her Cabinet ‘the Government would be robust’, and it was ‘vital to ensure that the legislation is able to deliver the smooth Brexit which is in the interests of everybody in the UK’.
But the Remain-backing Tory rebels signalled their support for the Lords vote, with Heidi Allen warning that the Commons would reject any ‘no deal’ scenario.
‘The passage of the Great Repeal Bill was always going to be turbulent, but the Lords are merely reflecting what the majority of MPs believe – that Parliament must have a say in whether the deal is good enough, and no deal never will be,’ she said.
In a further sign of the potential difficulties facing the Prime Minister in the Commons, senior Tory backbencher Sarah Wollaston said: ‘Parliament won’t support hard Brexit. Neither the elected Commons nor the Lords are prepared to endorse economic ruin.’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, suggested his MPs would seek to retain the extra powers for Parliament sought by the Lords, telling the BBC: ‘Parliament should have the final say on the terms of leaving the European Union, and if we don’t accept the decisions that the Government has made, then they should be sent back to negotiate again.’
But Dr Fox accused peers of using a ‘backdoor mechanism’ to delay exit from the EU ‘indefinitely’. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We can’t have a situation where the clearly expressed will of the people in a referendum is thwarted by effectively procedural devices that would keep us in the EU indefinitely.
‘I think there is quite a big debate now about whether the unelected House can actually thwart the view of the British electorate in a referendum and what’s been happening in terms of the legislation coming from the House of Commons.’
Tory MPs warned peers they would force the issue of Lords reform back on to the agenda if they continued to seek to derail Brexit. Daniel Kawczynski said the party should consider including a pledge to abolish the Lords and replace it with an elected senate in its next manifesto. He added: ‘The House of Lords is an elitist chamber that is trying to block the will of the people. The time has come for us to start talking about the abolition of the House of Lords.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said he was ‘absolutely in favour’ of reforming the Lords. He told BBC News: ‘Many peers are using this to re-fight the whole Brexit referendum issue and many of them have said some quite arrogant things about the British public. They have a disregard for the nature and the views of people of Britain and I think that is key for the elected chamber the House of Commons to say we are going to vote this down.’
A peer who likened Mrs May’s approach to Brexit to that of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in Monday’s debate yesterday faced calls to withdraw his ‘disgusting’ remarks. Tory former minister Robert Halfon said the comments by Liberal Democrat Lord Roberts of Llandudno were ‘shameful for our Parliament’.
Raising a point of order in the Commons, he said: ‘As someone who is Jewish, and someone who is very proud of our Parliament, I find these remarks absolutely disgusting and shameful.’
Meanwhile, Labour refused to sack a frontbench peer, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who defied the whip on Monday and voted for a Lib Dem amendment that would open the door to a second referendum. The amendment was defeated.
Brexit minister Steve Baker said: ‘Labour are allowing their frontbench to face in multiple directions on Brexit. Their incoherence is an insult to voters, whether they voted Leave or Remain.’
Angela Merkel's 12-year dominance of Europe would appear to be wobbling towards a humiliating end.
With it comes great uncertainty for the Continent — but also, I would argue, an opportunity not to be missed for Britain in its Brexit negotiations.
On Sunday night, the German Chancellor's two-month-long effort to stitch together a coalition following her party's poor showing in September's election collapsed. Immigration policy was the main point dividing the parties.
Now Germany faces another election in the New Year, or its first post-war minority government. Either way, there is a big question mark over Mrs Merkel's future. 
It is possible that her party, the Christian Democratic Union, will want a new leader to fight the next election. 
Many Germans see her now as a vote-losing 'albatross' who attracted the smallest share of the party's vote since 1949.
Alternatively, as leader of a minority government, she would be far weaker than our own somewhat beleaguered Prime Minister. 
At least Theresa May has Ulster's Democratic Unionist Party to carry her to a slim majority. Mrs Merkel is left well short of one.
The unfolding political crisis in Germany is hitting Brussels where it hurts. Berlin has always been the engine-room of the Euro-supertanker.
Without that impetus, it is clear the EU project has not just stalled — it is sinking. The crew are pulling in all directions. 
Some calling for even greater integration, others for letting everyone set their own course.
In essence, Germany's problems can be summed up as the Three Ms: Migration, Money and Merkel.
Since 2005, when she became Chancellor, Angela Merkel has largely ridden roughshod over her political colleagues at home and in the rest of EU. 
Then she made two highly personal decisions that are key to her problems now.
In 2016, she reversed her policy on immigration overnight to welcome in more than a million asylum-seekers from the Muslim world.
It was a widely unpopular move and certainly unsettling for many Germans. (In part, her coalition talks with the Left-wing Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats floundered over limits on the number of refugees accepted into Germany, and family reunions for asylum-seekers.)
Also, there was Mrs Merkel's decision to impose a bailout of the Euro-zone, despite the single currency's rules forbidding it, and the German courts ruling that it was not permissible.
In doing so she added a huge burden to the German public purse — asylum-seekers, like bailouts, have to be paid for — at a time when so many Germans were feeling the pinch of below-inflation pay-rises and high taxes.
Just as Remainers in the UK were often oblivious to the rational economic and social concerns about mass migration that animated the Leave vote, German Euro-enthusiasts failed to register that migration wasn't just an issue for unrepentant, bigoted neo-Nazis.
It was an issue for ordinary people, too — many of them members of ethnic minorities — who had reasonable concerns about pressure on wages, housing and health.
German wages are held down by the inflow of cheap labour, so it is hardly surprising that the most depressed parts of the country, especially the old East Germany, deserted Mrs Merkel's party and voted so strongly for the far-Right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) or the ex-Communist Left Party in September.
Of course, Brussels tried to help Angela Merkel by dictating quotas for migrant re-settlement from Germany to neighbouring EU states. 
But in the last few weeks we have seen what Austrian and Czech voters thought of that, backing anti-Europe, anti-immigration parties.
It is, however, cash that cuts to the quick of German doubts about the EU's future and its place in it.
With Britain leaving the EU, the German taxpayer was obviously going to be asked to pick up much of our tab. 
They saw what was coming and didn't like it, voting for parties such as the AfD that vociferously objected to paying more into the EU or carrying on bailing out the Euro's lame-ducks.
In her search for coalition partners, Mrs Merkel's overtures to the anti-business Greens, who wanted to push up energy costs for Germany's car industry and other exporting firms, proved the final straw for her usual supporters. 
It is no coincidence that this weekend, influential German business leaders launched a campaign called New Deal For Britain to keep Britain in the EU, lobbying for concessions, especially on immigration.
I doubt if Brussels will listen and make the UK an offer it can't refuse. But we should not heed the siren voices saying that Mrs Merkel's difficulties will make Brexit more complicated.
The reality is that Germany's political crisis is a symptom of the disease at the heart of the EU. Across Europe, voters are registering their discontent with the status quo.
Even France's new president, Emmanuel Macron, was elected as an outsider, crushing established parties of Left and Right.
Well before the end of March 2019, the incorrigible complacency of the Brussels establishment could spur a lethal crack across the edifice of EU.
What Britain must do now is make the most of the opportunity presented by the mess that Mrs Merkel finds herself in — to seize the initiative and fulfil what every person who voted for Brexit wanted. That is a country that determines its own fate. 
Waiting for the European elite to offer a good deal is like waiting for Godot with a taxi-meter running. 
There is, I believe, every chance that business sense will predominate — as we are already seeing with the New Deal For Britain.
German carmakers and a host of others know that good trade relations benefit both sides. 
Brussels might want to punish the UK but BMW still wants to make money out of us and with us.
By emphasising a pro-growth agenda, Britain can rally Europeans to accepting a mutually beneficial Brexit. 
But that also means making it clear that this country has a strategy to get on with making our people wealthier come what may — cliff-face or not.
The ups-and-downs of the exchange rate will matter much less than giving incentives to our people and companies to get on with the job of making the future work.
Britain needs to set out its own agenda, fitting in EU rules where they make sense and scrapping them if not. 
Paralysis in Europe should stimulate action here, not a damaging wait-and-see attitude.
Ironically, a Britain that gets moving on Brexit could spark much-needed reform across the EU and so get it working for its citizens and companies, and no longer just for the bureaucrats of Brussels.
Leading his marchers down Rome’s Via Ostiense a few days ago, the rising star of Italian politics took a tumble. ‘F****** pothole! Who did this?’ roared Beppe Grillo, the foul-mouthed anarchic comedian who passes for the leader of the opposition in Italy these days.
On this occasion, the joke was on Grillo. As his opponents were quick to point out, Roman potholes — and I have seen some real shockers this week — are actually his responsibility.
It is now six months since his Eurosceptic, anti-capitalist, semi-bonkers party, the Five Star Movement, swept the board in mayoral elections across Italy. And Rome today is run by Five Star’s own mayor, Virginia Raggi, 37, a leading light in this madcap political movement whose slogan is ‘F*** Off’ — yes, really — and who still can’t fix a pothole.
Yet Italian politics are no laughing matter right now. Indeed, if tomorrow’s referendum on constitutional reform goes the way Mr Grillo wants — and the way most people think it will — this country could be about to fall off a cliff.
The vote is on fiendishly complex plans by Italy’s shiny centre-Left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — a 41-year-old latter-day Tony Blair — to cut the cost of the legislature and strengthen his government by reducing the power and size of Italy’s Senate (the upper house).
This would make it easier for him to pass legislation.
Renzi has staked his political reputation on a Yes vote. If he loses, he says, he’ll quit.
Plenty of experts think that a rejection of Renzi’s reforms will trigger a crisis which could eventually bring down the entire European project — the EU, the euro, the Brussels gravy train, Uncle Tom Juncker and all.
For a No vote could be the prelude to an Italian Brexit vote — Quitaly, Exitalia, Pasta La Vista, call it what you will. And if Italy leaves the EU, the EU is finished.
Certainly, it would bring on a general election at a time when Italy’s two popular anti-Establishment parties, Mr Grillo’s Left-leaning Five Star Movement and the country’s hard Right Northern League, are both committed to a popular vote on Italy leaving the euro and, thus, the European Union.
What’s more, the vote coincides with this week’s news that the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Italy this year has reached a record 171,000.
Just when the Western liberal consensus thought 2016 could not get any worse, post-Brexit and post-Trumpquake, here comes a stonking great Italian meteorite.
This weekend also sees an Austrian presidential election which will return the most far-Right European head of state since Spanish dictator General Franco if Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer beats his Green opponent.
Over the border in Germany, the hard-Right AFD recently overtook Chancellor Angela Merkel’s moderate CDU party in her own state. And France is only a few months away from a presidential election which will boil down to a choice between the extremist National Front and anyone-but-the-National Front.
In Italy, however, it is not just the far Right who are fiercely anti-immigration and avowedly Eurosceptic. Hostility to immigration and the EU can be found across the political spectrum, which makes the prospect of seismic political upheavals south of the Dolomites a distinct possibility.
On top of that, several Italian banks are in a critical condition. One of the country’s biggest institutions — the Banco dei Monti Paschi di Siena, the oldest bank in the world — is teetering on the edge of collapse.
Unless it finds an injection of five billion euros in the next few days, it will go under (seven other banks are believed to be in the same boat). A rescue package from gas-rich Qatar is said to be contingent on a Yes vote.
So before any diehard Brexiteers start cheering, it is worth remembering that an Italian banking collapse followed by economic catastrophe across the Eurozone could be extremely painful for Britain, too.
Some economists say the Italian story will be a much bigger version of the Greek crisis, but with one crucial difference — the country is too large to be rescued. The potential chaos, they argue, could make the 2008 financial crisis, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, look like a quarrel over small change.
But millions of Italians still intend to vote No, arguing that these apocalyptic forecasts are exaggerated and things can’t get any worse.
No matter that the package of political reforms is so complicated that I have not met a single Italian who can recite the referendum question correctly.
(Say after me: ‘Do you approve the text of the Constitutional Law on “Provisions for exceeding the equal bicameralism, reducing the number of MPs, the containment of operating costs of the institutions, the suppression of the CNEL and the revision of Title V of Part II of the Constitution” approved by Parliament and published in the Official Gazette no 88 of 15 April 2016?’.)
The No campaign encompasses everyone from the far Left to the far Right and a great deal in between.
As well as Mr Grillo and his populists, the hard-Right Northern League want a No vote, too. So does former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his remodelled centre-Right Forza Italia party. Some members of Mr Renzi’s own party have come out for No.
The vote has united communists, fascists, Greens, trade unionists and big business. Even the staunchly Europhile Economist newspaper has just urged Italians to vote No, arguing that Renzi’s reforms are undemocratic and fail to address Italy’s deep seated problems.
This week, I have visited chic Italy, rural Italy and inner city ghetto Italy. And I have met everyone from wealthy bankers to Leftie students who will vote No.
When I ask if they fear instability and chaos, they just shrug and say: ‘This is Italy. What’s new?’ Talk of a wholesale collapse of the Italian economy, they say, is just ‘scaremongering’, like ‘Project Fear’ ahead of Britain’s Brexit vote.
Unlike Britain’s June referendum, though, there are few obvious fault lines. There are no clear north/south, Left/Right, old/young, metropolitan/provincial divides. The chief factor seems to be whether you rate PM Renzi and his attempts to reform one of the Western world’s most bloated political systems.
For Mr Renzi’s package of constitutional reforms — to speed up law-making and reduce the annual cost of the biggest legislature outside China by £430 million a year — should be a massive vote-winner.
Ask most people in Britain if they’d like to see fewer politicians and cheaper, more efficient government and you’d struggle to find anyone against.
A big problem for Mr Renzi, though, is that many Italians are deeply suspicious of any tinkering with the constitution, even if it is merely a recipe for inertia. This may be a system which has delivered 63 different governments since World War II.
This may be a system which has not produced an elected Prime Minister in seven years (Mr Renzi was not even an MP when the President plucked him from Florence’s city hall to run the country in 2014).
Italy is crying out for the financial stability and investment which the Yes camp is promising. But many Italians point out that these reforms give enormous parliamentary power to the party which comes out top. In this innately conservative society, many would rather have an impotent coalition than risk a dictator.
Newsagent Marco Gagliardi, 46, is not too worried that his No vote might cause a bank crash. That’s because his bank has lost all his life’s savings already.
He owns a busy tobacconist shop next to a superstore in the grand old Tuscan town of Arezzo. Like so many Italians, he’s saved all his life with the local bank, in his case the Banca Etruria. In 2014, he had 90,000 euros of both personal and company savings in an account that returned a miserly one per cent.
Then his local bank manager persuaded him ‘as a special customer’ to transfer to a much better rate in a supposed foolproof five-year ‘subordinate’ account. In fact, he had been lured in to buying bank bonds.
‘I didn’t know how it worked. I just trusted him and signed the form,’ says Marco.
A year later, he learnt that the government had ordered a ‘bail-in’ of his bank — meaning shares, bonds and larger deposits were being sacrificed to avert complete catastrophe.
More than 130,000 ordinary shareholders were hit. One pensioner in Civitavecchia lost £72,000 overnight and hanged himself.
The day after he learned the truth, Marco went to his local branch in a state of shock. The father-of-two shows me the bank statement of November 25, 2015. It reveals that his investment of 90,000 euros had suddenly been revalued at ‘796’.
One year on, he smokes like an old Alfa Romeo, has developed a twitch, cannot sleep and tries not to seethe all the time.
‘That bank failed because the bosses were handing out our money to their friends. In a normal country, they would now be in prison,’ he says, brandishing the fraudulent application form which the bank manager used to process his bond application.
The bank needed to prove that he was financially literate and had substantial assets. Neither applied in Marco’s case.
‘Look, they wrote on this form that I have “two properties”. I don’t even own my home. They said I had “a degree”. I don’t. They said I invested regularly “more than five times a year”. All untrue. They just showed me where to put my signature. Now they call me a speculator.’
He tries to be positive. ‘I’m young enough to come back and to fight this,’ he says. ‘But I know one poor man of 60 who has gone mad.’
I delicately ask about tomorrow’s referendum.
‘No! No! No! All the bank victims will vote No. We know Renzi and this government too well.’
He points out that the vice-chairman of the bank which ruined him is the father of Maria Elena Boschi, the glamorous young lawyer-turned-minister for constitutional reform who has drawn up the referendum. Little wonder they hate ‘the elites’ in these parts.
Up at the stunning town hall with its medieval frescoes, Arezzo’s mayor is a pro-European, independent moderniser from the political centre ground. A former university lecturer, Allessandro Ghinelli is a reformer who wants to slash the cost of basic services. But he turns out to be a No voter, too.
‘The constitution was created to unify Italy but Renzi is using it to divide the country. There are two types of politician. Those who work for Italy and those who work for themselves. Renzi is the latter.’
As night falls, I head for Florence and a Yes rally featuring two big-hitters, the Italian Home Secretary and the Mayor of Florence (the post previously held by Mr Renzi).
Mayor Dario Nardella is a smooth, multi-lingual chum of the Prime Minister and is under no illusions about the magnitude of this vote.
‘This referendum is as important as Brexit,’ he tells me. ‘It might be a different question but it is at the same level. The reputation of Italy in the world will go down if we vote No. The world will say: “Look, Italy doesn’t want to change.” And Europe and the financial markets will reflect that. The No vote offers no solutions at all, just negativity.’
Try as he might, it’s a pretty downcast gathering of just 100 Renzi supporters in a function room above a bustling food market. Half seem to have turned up for the free Prosecco and sandwiches. I do not sniff victory in the air.
Back in Rome, I meet the local co-ordinator for the hard-Right Northern League. Claudia Bellocchi, 46, a fast-talking Europhobe, believes that a victory for No tomorrow will kick-start the momentum towards an Italian Brexit.
‘My message to Europe? This will be another anti-establishment moment, like Trump’s victory. It will be a strong message for change. I just hope Italians will be as brave as Britain when the time comes to leave.’
In addition to the migration crisis, Claudia suggests that this year’s two big Italian earthquakes could be a factor in the No vote, too. Thousands are still waiting for temporary housing.
‘Renzi says the reforms will save 500 million euros,’ she says. ‘And yet he’s spent 2.5 billion euros on the migrants coming to this country. Most are not fleeing wars. They are 30-year-old men with phones, many of them delinquents. They get housing. But Italians displaced by these earthquakes have nowhere to live.’
So will there be an fresh earthquake right across Italy tomorrow night?
I expect a No vote. But I still think the most likely scenario is for Italy — a nation wearily familiar with shambolic political uncertainty — to muddle through somehow and stagger on to the next crisis.
If it doesn’t, we will all be feeling the aftershocks for years to come.
Theresa May warned that the NHS needs more than a 'sticking plaster' today as she unveiled a huge £25billion funding boost.
The Prime Minister pointed to the care given to terrorism victims and her own experience of coping with diabetes as she vowed to turn on the spending taps over the next five years to improve services.
But Mrs May admitted that a claimed 'Brexit dividend' will not cover the whole sum and taxes will have to rise - with experts warning that working families could face stumping up an extra £10billion a year.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the Treasury could be forced to make households pay up to £2,000 more by 2033.
The respected body said raising National Insurance by 1p for workers and employers could pull in £8billion.
Almost £2billion more could be brought in by freezing the thresholds for the personal income tax allowance at the basic and higher rates - potentially dragging thousands more people deeper into the tax system.
Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have hailed the funding move - announced in a keynote speech at the Royal Free Hospital in London today - as a 'downpayment' on the money currently being sent to Brussels
However, the idea that leaving the EU will free up any resources has been branded 'tosh' by Tory Remainer MPs. 
In her speech today Mrs May heaped praise on the staff who keep 'our NHS' going today, saying the service 'reflects the values' of Britain.
The NHS funding boost could mean thousands more workers must be pulled into the tax system - or face bigger bills.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has dismissed the idea that there will be a 'Brexit dividend' over the coming years - setting out several tax rises that could be used instead.  
There are six main ways the money could be found by Chancellor Philip Hammond at the Budget later this year: 
1. Income tax: Adding a penny to the rate of income tax would raise £5billion a year
2. National Insurance: A 1 per cent hike to National Insurance contributions paid by workers, the self-employed and employers would net the Treasury about £9.9billion 
3. Corporation tax: Labour has promised to unwind deep cuts to corporation tax introduced since 2010, bringing £18billion back to the Treasury
4. Personal Allowance: Freezing the personal allowance in 2020 - when it is due to be £12,500 - would raise £1.8billion. Cutting the basic rate allowance by £1,000 a year would raise £5.8billion.
5. Rich people: Separate research by former Tory minister David Willetts calls for a new inheritance tax system raises billions from the wealthy 
6. Borrowing: If none of the above options are politically palatable or possible, the Chancellor can always borrow more money  
Signalling a drive to slash waste and red tape, she conceded that despite consistent above-inflation budget settlements the UK's 'crowning achievement' was under threat from surging demand for treatment.
'We cannot continue to put a sticking plaster on the NHS budget each year,' she said. 
'So we will do more than simply give the NHS a one-off injection of cash.'  
Mrs May said the funding that would no longer be sent to the EU would help fill the gap.
But she insisted the commitment she was making 'goes beyond' that and resources would be allocated 'in a responsible way' at the Autumn Budget.
Grilled by reporters, she conceded that people would have to pay a 'bit more' tax to support the funding splurge.
'Across the nation, taxpayers will have to contribute a bit more in a fair and balanced way to support the NHS we all use,' she said.
Outlining how the overhaul could be paid for, Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: 'If the Chancellor is taking his deficit target seriously, it would not be a surprise to see a £10 billion tax rise. 
'A tax rise of that magnitude would lead to many working families paying more.'   
Earlier, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt quashed hopes that spending could be raised without punishing workers - saying bluntly that 'there will be an increased burden on taxation' .
He also risked inflaming a bitter row between Tory Remainers and Eurosceptics by admitting the 'dividend' from leaving the EU will not be 'anything like' the sums being pumped into the NHS. 
The PM gathered Cabinet earlier to discuss the plans before making her long-awaited speech - which marks the 70th birthday of the NHS.
Mrs May said the NHS budget will be expanded by £25billion by 2023.
Spending on NHS England will rise £20billion a year, while the Scottish government will be given an extra £2billion and Wales will receive £1.2billion - along with hundreds of millions for the health service in Northern Ireland.
In a surprise additional boost, a further £1.25billion will be allocated each year to  relieve NHS pension deficits.
Mrs May claimed a chunk of the money would be coming from a so-called 'Brexit dividend' - but the possibility has been rubbished some Tory Remainers.
Pressed on the prospect after her speech today, Mrs May said: 'It's very simple: we are not going to be sending the vast amount of money every year to the EU that we spend at the moment on the EU as a member of the European Union.'
'That money will be coming back and we will be spending it on our priorities - and the NHS is our number one priority.'
She acknowledged payments to the EU would continue under the terms of the Brexit divorce settlement 'but there will still be more money coming back from the EU and our priority for that is the NHS'.
In a round of interviews this morning, Mr Hunt said there will not be any detail of where the money is coming from until the Budget in the Autumn.
Theresa May has said the money Britain keeps when the country quits the EU - known as the Brexit dividend - will go towards funding the NHS.
In the referendum, Brexiteers including Boris Johnson said the windfall  would equate to £350million a week.
Vote Leave plastered the number on the side of a red campaign bus and suggested the money be pumped into the NHS. The PM is saying she is making good on that pledge.
But the whole notion of a Brexit dividend is controversial and has been rubbished as 'tosh' by its critics - including Mrs May's own MPs.
Economist Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said any dividend will be wiped out by slower growth and lower tax revenues.
And he also pointed out that when Britain leaves the EU the country will go on paying vast amounts of money to Brussels as part of the Brexit divorce bill.
So while the UK will stop paying the annual £9billion, the country will still have a £39bn for years to come. 
And the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt risked inflaming the row by admitting the 'dividend' will not be 'anything like' the £25billion being pumped into the NHS.  
But he added: 'A lot of thinking has gone on at the Treasury to make absolutely sure this can be afforded. We are clear that there will be an increased burden of taxation.' 
He said one sources for extra money was 'the fact that we won't be paying subscriptions to Brussels by the end of this period'.
'But that alone won't be anything like enough, so there will also be more resourcing through the taxation system, and also through economic growth,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
In her speech, Mrs May pointed to her own reliance on the NHS after she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
'I would not be doing the job I am doing today without that support,' she said.
Mrs May signalled some of the coalition's health service reforms could be unwound, saying staff were spending too much time on bureaucracy instead of patient care.
The PM said the reforms must deliver better integration between services. 
She said: 'It must also make it easier to break down the barriers between different organisations to deliver integrated patient-focused care so people don't feel like a pinball in a machine bounced from one part of the system to the next, explaining to the next healthcare professional what they just said to the previous one.' 
Mrs May said improving mental health services was a 'personal priority' and reforms must be 'even more innovative and more ambitious' to ensure care catches up with the rest of the NHS. 
She added: 'This could include attracting more of the best graduates into the mental health professions; or finding new ways to provide joined-up care in the community, or helping people to manage their conditions so they do not reach a crisis point. 
'It must be supported by sustained investment that reaches the frontline of mental health services and staff. 
'For too long we have had one expectation for minimum waits and eligibility for care when we have a physical condition; and another entirely in mental health.' 
In return for the extra funding, Mrs May asked the NHS to produce a ten-year plan later this year that includes significantly improving access to good mental health services and cutting waste.
She warned there cannot be a repeat of the increases in NHS spending under New Labour, when she said nearly as much as half of the money failed to get to frontline staff to improve patient care.
She said: 'This must be a plan that ensures every penny is well spent. It must be a plan that tackles waste, reduces bureaucracy and eliminates unacceptable variation, with all these efficiency savings reinvested back into patient care.
'It must be a plan that makes better use of capital investment to modernise its buildings and invest in technology to drive productivity improvements. It must be a plan that enjoys the support of NHS staff across the country – not something dreamt up in Whitehall and centrally imposed.'
There have been high-profile examples of NHS waste in recent years. For instance, one hospital was found to be spending £16.47 on a pack of 12 rubber gloves, while another spent 35p. On toilet roll, some hospitals pay 67p per roll, others pay just 34p.
The government is pledging years of rises for the NHS on top of inflation.
Here is the schedule for how budgets will rise.
2019-20 - 3.6%
2020-21 - 3.6%
2021-22 - 3.1%
2022-23 - 3.1%
2023-24 - 3.4% 
An estimated £1billion a year is wasted because patients are not showing up for hospital appointments, £26million a year is spent on prescriptions for gluten-free food even though it can be bought from supermarkets, and £1.5billion a year is spent on agency nurses. 
In an emotional tribute to NHS staff, Mrs May said: 'I will never forget visiting the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena attack. There, in the face of the very worst that humanity can do, I witnessed first-hand, the very best.
'Doctors and nurses working 24-hour shifts to treat the injured. Surgeons who were off-shift, dropping everything to come in and perform life-saving operations.
'Paramedics who had risked their own lives to get others to safety. In every instance, I was struck not only by the medical expertise of the staff, but the compassion with which people were treated. This is our National Health Service.'  
Dr Sarah Wollaston, who chairs the Commons health and social care committee, yesterday criticised her party leader for bucking to 'populist arguments' on Brexit.
She tweeted: 'The Brexit dividend tosh was expected but treats the public as fools. 
'Sad to see government slide to populist arguments rather than evidence on such an important issue. 
'This will make it harder to have a rational debate about the 'who and how' of funding and sharing this fairly'. 
Asked about the plans by journalists as he attended a UN conference in Switzerland today, Mr Johnson said: 'I think it is, as the prime minister has rightly said, a downpayment on future receipts that will come to this country as a result of discontinuing payments to Brussels.'
Theresa May dodged questions about her plans for overhauling social care today.
The Prime Minister accepted that the issue needed to be put on a more 'sustainable footing'. 
But she merely stated that the government would 'come forward with proposals' at a later stage. 
The question of how to fund care for Britain's ageing population has proved politically toxic for years.
A failure to provide enough care for the elderly either in their own homes or in care homes means patients get stuck on hospital wards - a major reason the NHS is creaking.
The average person needs £20,000 worth of care in their lifetime - but 10 per cent of people need much more, with conditions lasting decades costing over £1million. 
The state currently only funds people with assets worth less than £23,350, leaving many people dependent on the NHS. 
Fixing the problem will require billions of pounds but there is no political agreement on what to do.
Mrs May was forced into an embarrassing U-turn on the issue during the general election campaign last year.
The Tory manifesto proposed people should not have to pay bills during their lifetime but then fund them from their estate after death - with a guarantee they could keep at least £100,000 to pass on.
But the plan was derided as a 'dementia tax' because there was no cap on what people would have to pay - meaning those with degenerative conditions could face much higher bills than those who only become ill at the end of their lives.
In 2010, the Coalition Government asked Sir Andrew Dilnot to investigate how to solve social care. He recommended each individual with assets worth more than £100,00 be asked to pay up to £35,000 in care costs before the state took over - intending the cap to create a new market in insurance. 
The proposal was never implemented but generated huge debate over the level at which a cap could be fairly set.  
The deal was decided on Friday afternoon between Mrs May, health secretary Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor Philip Hammond and the chief executive of NHS England Simon Stevens.
Mr Hunt admitted today that the negotiations within government had 'gone to the wire' - and there appears to have been only broad agreement on where the money will come from. 
A source told The Times: 'By the end of the meeting, some sources of funding had been more heavily pencilled in than others.'
Plans to raise money from freezing all personal allowance and national insurance thresholds at the end of the parliament could raise nearly £4billion. 
Borrowing could account for £8billion to £10billion.
But there is significant resistance to plans to defer corporation tax rate cuts, which could free up another £6billion for the government.
That is thought to leave a potential £11billion black hole where the source of the funding is unclear. 
Economist Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, dismissed Mrs May's claim about a Brexit dividend, saying this would be wiped out by slower growth and lower tax revenues.
He said the so-called windfall from EU withdrawal would not materialise when the UK stopped paying more than £9 billion a year to Brussels due to the 'divorce bill' of some £39 billion, and other economic factors.
Labour, which said it would match the Tory funding proposals if in power, called on Mrs May to set out details of how her plan would be paid for.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: 'The money announced today by the prime minister is not enough to save our NHS after eight years of Conservative austerity.
'Although she confirmed the current situation is not sustainable, today’s figures represent little more than a standstill in funding, according to experts.
'People are waiting longer and in pain because of Tory cuts to the NHS. The prime minister couldn’t say today when this will improve and waiting lists will come down.
'She also confirmed that social care, capital spending and public health will not see any increase as a result of today’s announcement.
'If the Conservatives do manage to publish the detail of their insufficient 3.4 per cent increase, then Labour’s fully costed plans to raise taxes for the top 5 per cent and big business will top up NHS spending growth to around the 5 per cent which is needed.' 
Theresa May pointed to her own experience today as she outlined ambitious plans to boost funding for the NHS.
The PM said she could not do her current job without help from the health service - after she was diagnosed with diabetes in November 2012.
The then Home Secretary has told how she put 'classic' symptoms, including weight loss, down to work pressure for a long time before finally visiting the GP.
'That summer was the Olympics, so life was in a different order,' she said in 2014. 'There was a lot more going on, so I didn't really notice.'
Mrs May was initially told she had Type 2 diabetes and ordered to take tablets. However, doctors then decided she actually had Type 1, and requires insulin injections up to five times a day.
Mrs May told Diabetes UK: 'I hadn't appreciated the degree of management it requires and I hadn't appreciated, for example, the paradox that while everyone assumes diabetes is about not eating sugar, if you have a hypo, then you have to take something that's got that high glucose content.'
The PM has been seen wearing a special diabetes patch.
The device, worn on the upper arm, continuously monitors glucose levels. 
Results can be read using a device which scans through clothing, reducing the need for finger-prick blood tests.  
 
 
Marmite, PG Tips, Hellmann's and other family favourites will go on sale again at Tesco after manufacturer Unilever withdrew blanket price rises following threats of a boycott by shoppers.
Anglo-Dutch consumer goods manufacturer Unilever retreated amid widespread outrage after it blamed Brexit for a 10 per cent price rises on dozens of brands.
It is a humiliating climbdown for the firm, whose share price lost £3bn in the furore.
The company was accused by supermarket insiders of using Brexit as a smokescreen to justify the price rises after it claimed a fall in the value of the pound had put up the cost of imported products and ingredients.
But Tesco called its bluff over the 'take it or leave it' ultimatum to pay an extra 10 per cent for its products. It said it reached a 'satisfactory' outcome with Unilever tonight.


Hinting that it had not been forced to adhere to the 10 per cent price rise, the supermarket said: 'We always put our customers first and are pleased it has been resolved to our satisfaction.' A spokesman said products would be re-stocked 'soon'.



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In a statement, Unilever said: 'Unilever is pleased to confirm that the supply situation with Tesco in the UK and Ireland has now been successfully resolved. 
'We have been working together closely to reach this resolution and ensure our much-loved brands are once again fully available.
'For all those that missed us, thanks for the love.'


The company was accused by supermarket insiders of using Brexit as a smokescreen to justify the price rises after it claimed a fall in the value of the pound had put up the cost of imported products and ingredients.
But a source at another supermarket told the Mail that Unilever's claims were a red herring, pointing out that many Unilever products, such as Marmite, are made in Britain and are therefore largely immune to currency fluctuations.
He added: 'The aggressive manner in which they attempted to impose blanket price rises was very different from other manufacturers.'
Asked whether it was blackmail, he said: 'They were certainly using their very heavy bargaining power. Some people might describe it as anti-competitive.
'The catch-all claim that these rises had been driven by Brexit and the fall in the value of the pound did not stand up to scrutiny. This was a smokescreen to cover much wider increases than were justified.'
The pound has fallen by about 14 per cent against the euro and 17 per cent against the dollar. But Unilever's profit on sales is 15 per cent, putting it in a stronger position to absorb higher costs than Tesco, whose margin is 1.7 per cent.
When Tesco challenged Unilver's across-the-board price rise, it was told to 'lump it'. But the supermarket called the manufacturing giant's bluff and refused the ultimatum.
Unilever, which made profits of £2billion during the first half of 2016, stopped supplies of 200 products including Dove, Flora, Pot Noodle, Ben & Jerry's, Knorr and Bertolli, leaving shortages on shelves.
However, its heavy-handed approach prompted a campaign for people to stop buying its products, promoted on Twitter with the hashtag #BoycottUnilever. 





In the face of consumer fury and a growing PR disaster, the Anglo-Dutch company, which is worth more than £100billion, backtracked last night and announced a new supply deal with Britain's biggest supermarket.
It said: 'Unilever is pleased to confirm the supply situation with Tesco has been resolved. We have been working together closely to reach this resolution and ensure our much-loved brands are once again fully available. For all those that missed us, thanks for all the love.'
The details of the deal are secret. But it seems likely that a more limited range of price increases will be applied over the coming months.
Tesco said: 'We always put customers first and we are pleased this has been resolved to our satisfaction.' The news appears to be a victory for Tesco boss Dave Lewis, who spent more than 20 years at Unilever before joining the supermarket.
The row was seized upon by some of the Labour MPs who campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU.
Stephen Kinnock, of the Open Britain campaign, said: 'When the plunging pound stops you from getting PG Tips and Marmite in the supermarket, you're truly starting to feel the first tremors of Brexit.'
But Sainsbury's boss Mike Coupe said the fall in the pound did not have to push grocery prices up because it could be offset by lower commodity prices.
The British Retail Consortium said supermarkets could not absorb big price rises. 
Chief executive Helen Dickinson said: 'Retailers are firmly on the side of consumers.' 















Sir Gerald Howarth said it was 'outrageous' that Unilever would 'exploit' customers while MP Peter Bone added: 'It is Unilever trying to make more money.'
He added: 'It is absurd. Marmite is made in this country from ingredients made in this country.
'To hike like this seems to be price gouging by Unilever. Well done to Tesco for saying, 'on your bike'.
'I think we are going to see a lot of this kind of thing, trying to blame price rises on Brexit.
'If it is made in this country how does the Pound have anything to do with it?
'It is Unilever trying to make more money.
'Tesco have done what is right and if Unilever cannot sell their products then what are they going to do?' 
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg added: 'Unilever has half a point, some of its costs may have gone up, but I think 10 per cent is profiteering.
'They are basically using a story people know about to maximise their profit.
'You would have thought that their customers will be unhappy that they are making the most of the fall in the Pound rather than just maintaining their margins.
'Tesco as so often is doing a fantastic job standing up for its customers. Well done Tesco.'  
And Labour MP John Spellar asked: 'As Marmite is made in Burton in the heart of the Midlands how does currency change justify Unilever price hike?' 

Eamon O'Hearn, the GMB union's national officer for the food industry, said: 'It's very common for suppliers and retailers to renegotiate supply contracts but super-rich companies like Unilever must not be allowed to exploit the Government's chaotic handling of Brexit as an excuse for making workers and shoppers pay the price.
'We will vigorously defend our members in the event that wealthy companies like Unilever seek to recoup increased costs through cuts to terms and conditions.'

Meanwhile, an industry source said: 'Unilever is using Brexit as an excuse to raise prices, even on products that are made in the UK.' 
Other customers turned on Unilever earlier today, threatening to boycott products in a bid to 'take back control' from the 'European giant'. Hundreds used #Marmitegate to join the discussion on social media.
'Do we really think Tesco are stuck? They'll go somewhere else now, soap powder is soap powder, people will just get a non Unilever product, same with yeast extract. I'll be sticking with Tesco for sure. I won't be going elsewhere.' 
Unilever had blamed Brexit and the falling value of the pound for the price increase, saying it is now more expensive to import ingredients. 
The consumer goods manufacturer was among the businesses which warned about the dangers of a Brexit vote before the EU referendum, provoking allegations of scaremongering.
Speaking as Unilever's third quarter results were released today, Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly said: 'In the UK, which accounts for 5 per cent of turnover, prices should start to increase to cover the cost of imported goods due to weaker sterling.'  

Food and beverages: 
Alsa, Amino, Amora, Annapurna, Aromat, Becel, Ben & Jerry's, Best Foods, Bertolli, Blue Band, Bovril, Breyers, Brooke Bond, Bru, Brummel & Brown, Buavita, Bushell's, Calvé, Chicken Tonight, Choysa, Colman's, Conimex, Continental, Country Crock, Darko, Delma, Du Darfst, Elmlea, Fanacoa, Flora, Fruco, Fudgsicle, Grom, Heartbrand, Hellmann's, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Imperial Margarine, Jif, Joko, Kasia, Kecap Bango, Kissan, Klondike, Knorr, Lady's Choice, Lan-Choo, Lao Cai, Lipton, Lipton Ice Tea, Lizano Sauce, Lyons, Maille, Maizena, Marmite, McCollins, Motions, Mrs. Filbert's, Paddle pop, Pfanni, PG Tips, Phase, Planta, Popsicle, Pot Noodle, Promise, Rama, Rani, Red Rose Tea, Robertsons, Royco, Saga, Sana, Sariwangi, Scottish Blend, Sealtest, Slotts, Stork, Streets, Sunce, T2, Telma, Tortex, Tulipan, Turun sinappi, Unilever Food Solutions, Unox, Vaqueiro
Home and personal care: 
All, Ala, Andrelon, Aviance Cosmetics, Axe, Ayush, Baba, Badedas, Biotex, Block & White, Breeze, Brilhante, Brisk, Brylcreem, Caress, Cif, Citra, Clear, Clinic, Close-Up, Coccolino, Comfort, Cream Silk, Degree, DERO, Dimension, Dollar Shave Club, Domestos, Dove, Dove Spa, Dusch Das, Elidor, Eskinol, Fair & Lovely, FDS, Gessy, Glorix, Good Morning, Impulse, Ioma, Lakmé, Lever 2000, Lifebuoy, Linic, Lux, Lynx, Lysoform, Master, Matey, Minerva, Mist, Neutral, Noxzema, Omo, Origins, Organics, Pears Transparent Soap, Pepsodent, Persil, Pond's, Prodent, Quix, Q-Tips, Radox, Rexona, Rinso, Robijn, Sedal, Shield, Signal, Simple, Skip, SR, St Ives, Suave, Sun, Sunlight, Sunsilk, Sure deodorant, Surf, Swan Soap, Thermasilk, Tholl, TIGI, Timotei, Toni & Guy, TRESemmé, Ultrex, Vaseline, Vibrance, Vim, Vinólia, Viso, Wheel, White Beauty, Williams, VO5, Xedex, zendium, Zhonghua, Zwitsal

However analysts say many of the products that were involved in the dispute - including Marmite, which is made in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire - are made in Britain with home produced ingredients.
Downing Street refused to get drawn into the row today. A spokeswoman for Theresa May said: 'It's a decision for companies how they market and sell their products.' 
But shadow business secretary Clive Lewis said: 'Once again the public are paying the price for Tory failure to make any contingency plans for Brexit.
'This is unlikely to stop at a Marmite shortage - more and more retailers are going to be squeezed by higher import prices in the coming months, as hedging contracts end and the cheaper pound starts to squeeze margins.'


It is understood that Unilever had approached a number of the major retailers in an attempt to increase prices.
Several supermarkets are understood to be embroiled in a row with the consumer goods firm although Mr Pitkethly said some retailers had accepted the new prices. 
Unilever products are still available online from other major supermarkets, including Sainsbury's and Morrisons.    
The row sparked an online backlash with hundreds of social media users calling on shoppers not to buy Unilever products.
Twitter user Nigel Carter said: 'Boycott all profiteering Unilever products, as if they get away with it others will follow.'


Dave Lewis: Tesco CEO who spent decades at Unilever
Tesco chief Dave Lewis worked at Unilever for over 27 years in various posts before leaving to become CEO of Tesco in September 2014.
Mr Lewis, 51, made the switch to retail after nearly three decades across the floor in consumer goods, largely with Unilever. 
One of his greatest successes was launching Dove in 1992, now one of Unilever's biggest brands. 
He also spearheaded the 'Real Beauty' advertising campaign for Dove. 
His influence at Tesco has been keenly felt, with bold business decisions perhaps adding further credence to his nickname 'Drastic Dave'.
Last financial year, the Yorkshireman engineered one of the greatest turnarounds in Tesco's history. 
Mr Lewis's recovery programme resulted in the closure of 60 unprofitable stores since the start of its financial year and the controversial shelving of a further 49 shops.
He also ended Tesco's final salary pension scheme and moved its main headquarters from Cheshunt to Welwyn Garden City in a measure expected to save £250 million.
He authorised the slashing of prices across hundreds of lines within the company in an effort to cope with the emergence of discount stores such as Lidl and Aldi. 
Paul Polman: The green-thinking Unilever chief
Paul Polman has been CEO of Unilever since January 2009.
Born and brought up in the Dutch city of Enschede, Mr Polman earned a BA from the University of Groningen in 1977.
Two years later he gained an MA in Economics and an MBA in Finance and International Marketing at the University of Cincinnati.
Mr Polman worked at Proctor and Gamble for 27, starting as a cost analyst in 1979. 
He moved up the ranks, becoming managing director of P&G UK, president of global fabric care, and group president Europe. 
He then joined Nestle in 2006 as CFO and head of the Americas.
In 2009 Mr Polman was named CEO of Unilever. 
The business chief set a target to double its size while reducing its overall environmental footprint, arguing sustainability must be a focus in a world of finite resources. 
Mr Polman earns £9.4million a year but says he is 'embarrassed' of his pay packet, the Sun reported. He is reportedly paid £1.3million as a base salary and benefits from substantial bonuses and expenses.
The business veteran is married to wife Kim, with whom he has three sons.  
 

Robert Urbanex Heard posted: 'Marmite made in Britain sourced in Britain and still @Unilever blames Brexit... Boycott Pot Noodle and try super noodles instead'.
And Charlotte added: 'I am going to support our country and boycott #Marmite #Unilever trying to rip us Brits off! Well done Tesco stand your ground!'


Tesco recently boasted that its prices are down by six per cent compared with two years ago, saving average families more than £300 a year.
But bosses have been forced to lay off thousands of backroom staff, move its HQ and abandon the opening of new stores to cut costs. 
They are determined not to allow suppliers to dictate price rises that will let budget chains poach customers. Aldi and Lidl do not face the same pressure as mainstream supermarkets as they rely on own-label products rather than big brands. 
The row is embarrassing for Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis, who previously held a top job at Unilever for 27 years. 
He recently told The Grocer magazine: 'We would be very challenging with anybody who was thinking of taking an exchange rate move to justify a price increase just on the back of that alone.'

Bryan Roberts, a retail analyst at TCC Global, told The Guardian that Unilever' s attempt to increase prices was not surprising and reflected attempts by a large number of supermarket suppliers to offset cost increases. He suggested there were likely to be more disputes between retailers and suppliers in the coming days.
'A lot of suppliers are seeking to pass on price increases to retailers but in the current environment retailers are increasingly reluctant to take it. They want to keep prices as low as they can to increase their affordability against the competition,' he said.
Both Tesco and Unilever share prices fell today in response to the ongoing dispute.
By midday shares in Tesco were down more than 2 per cent while Unilever fell 3 per cent.   
Concerns also spread to the wider grocery sector, with Sainsbury's and Morrisons slipping 3.3 points to 230 and 1.7p to 217.4p respectively.
Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex, said: 'Love it or hate it, Marmite has made an unlikely stir on the markets this Thursday as a battle between Tesco and Unilever sees the Brexit make its entrance into the supermarket price war.'
He added: 'It's a sign that sterling's current Brexit-drag is only going to put even more pressure on a supermarket sector already engaged in a margin-slashing price war, and is another tangible example of Britain's choice to leave the EU affecting the average person on the street.'

A source at another supermarket group said Unilever had threatened to cut off its entire supply unless it agreed to an across-the-board price increase of 10 per cent. 
He said the retailer would consider banishing Unilever products from its stores rather than comply with the ultimatum.
Unilever was among the businesses which warned Brexit could have a negative effect before the vote in June, provoking allegations of scaremongering. 
Chief executive Paul Polman, along with former chief executives Patrick Cescau and Niall FitzGerald and former chairman Sir Michael Perry, sent a joint letter to employees effectively warning them of the dangers of a vote to leave.
It read: 'It is not for us to suggest how people might vote... but in taking this hugely important and irreversible decision, we feel a responsibility to point out that Unilever in the UK, with its thriving operating company, international research centres, factories and global headquarters would, in our considered opinion, be negatively impacted if the UK were to leave the European Union.' 
Mr Polman also previously told Channel 4 that a vote to Leave would mean hikes in import duties on items such as dairy products, leading to price rises that would affect consumers.
Citing the example of Wall's Magnum ice cream, Mr Polman warned about trade restrictions, saying: 'Undoubtedly if the UK were to Leave, the conditions will not be as good as if they stay in.'
But MPs have now condemned Unilever, saying the company is using Brexit as an excuse to exploit consumers. 
They warn it may damage its brand.
Sir Gerald Howarth told the Daily Telegraph: 'I think it will be very damaging to the reputation of Unilever if they seek to use the fall in the pound to exploit the consumer.
'Clearly products which are not dependent upon imports into the United Kingdom will not be affected by the fall in the value of the pound. 




'Consumers will switch to other products where companies aren't seeking to fleece the consumer.'


Marmite is one of several Unilever products made in Britain with home ingredients that the manufacturing giant claims is affected by the falling pound. 
However UK-made products are not affected by currency fluctuations in the same way imported goods are, as the same currency is used along the supply chain.   
The world's supply of Marmite is made in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire.
One factory produces 6,000 tons of Marmite — around 50 million jars — a year. Only 15 per cent of that goes overseas - the rest is eaten in Britain. 
Many of the ingredients used are believed to be made in Britain.  
First yeast is pumped into large drums, where it is mixed with water and salt, and heated at 90c for ten hours.
The hop residue (from the beer-making process) is then removed, followed by a spin in a series of centrifuges to remove the solid, bitter cell walls of the yeast.
This is where it starts to acquire its dark brown colour. Any remaining water and alcohol are driven off in a large evaporator and then cooled to turn it into a paste.
The next stage of the process is a closely guarded secret. The special blend of ingredients added to the yeast extract — listed simply as 'spice extracts' on the jar — is as surrounded in mystery as the formulae for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken. 





The dispute came on a tumultuous day for the pound on the foreign exchanges, which at one point saw sterling lose almost one per cent of its value against the dollar during the course of exchanges in the House of Commons, before staging a rally. 
Tesco last week revealed its half-year profits dropped by more than a quarter to £71million after being hit by the sector's price war, although it recorded sales growth for a third quarter in a row.
Shoppers trying to buy any of the some 200 items affected from Tesco's website yesterday were met with the message: 'Sorry, this product is currently not available'.
The deadlock divided shoppers outside Tesco stores across the country today. 
Unilever reported a rise in sales in the third quarter today, helped by price increases.
The firm said underlying sales rose 3.2 per cent in the period, with total sales coming in at 13.4 billion euro.
This was down on the 4.7 per cent growth in the first half of the year but higher than the 2.9 per cent predicted on average by analysts, according to a company supplied consensus. 
The company had flagged a worsening of performance, due to tougher comparisons with an unusually strong third quarter last year and deterioration of economic conditions in markets such as Brazil and Argentina. 
Shares in Tesco and Unilever have taken a hit as a result of the spat. 
Tesco shares were down 1.96 per cent and Unilever was down 2.46 per cent in morning trading.


Victor Tawil, 65, said: 'To be honest I think it's quite understandable from Unilever's point of view. They have business decisions to make, at the end of the day, so you can see how the value of the pound isn't great for them right now.' 
David Ball, 72, from Prestwich, Greater Manchester, said of the Marmite crisis: 'I find it difficult to believe that something that's made in the UK won't be available to buy in the biggest UK supermarket. That's daft.'
Car washer Jiri Corvin, 22, said he would go elsewhere to buy Marmite if it was not stocked in the Tesco store in Prestwich. He said: 'They are going to miss out on the sales. I do like Marmite and I will now buy it somewhere else. It's certainly very strange that something made here will not be on sale in somewhere as big as Tesco.'
Sarah Fort, 55, a postal worker, said: 'I was reading about it earlier and my first reaction was that we've been getting ripped off for our shopping for years.  

'I think it's a bit of a nonsense that Unilever is pulling its products. The EU vote sounds like a convenient excuse. I voted to Leave and I'm happy with that.'
Lucy France, 34, receptionist, said: 'I heard about Unilever's decision earlier, and I think customers are the ones who are going to suffer. I'm sure a compromise could have been reached. 
'I will still come to Tesco anyway. Obviously if there's something specific missing, I'll get that somewhere else, but I'd still do my main shopping here. I love Marmite and I think it's stupid that something made in the UK won't be on sale here, but I won't be panic buying it. I overheard staff in one of the smaller Tesco stores talking about empty shelves the other day, wondering how they were going to fill them.'
Vic Joyce, 74, from South Queensferry, Edinburgh, said she would stay loyal to Tesco and buy other brands. She said: 'I think Unilever are putting prices up too soon after the pound price has dropped. For once it's Tesco standing up, and saying no to them, good for them.

Married couple Clare and Andy Greathead, 45 and 56, said: 'Most of the products we don't buy anyway, but I think Marmite was the only one that we actually buy. 
'If anything Unilever are just trying it on - especially with products like Marmite that are actually made in this country.' 
Margaret Russell, 39, a nurse, said: 'It sounds like Unilever are probably being a bit greedy. It depends how much the exchange rate is really affecting them. 
Entrepreneurial customers are trying to flog jars of Marmite on eBay and Twitter as anxious Tesco shoppers rush to snap up the last spreads from store shelves.
One ambitious eBay seller is asking for £100,000 for a 'used' jar - including postage and packaging.
Another tongue-in-cheek post offers a jar at an asking price of £5,000, more than two and a half thousand times its normal price.
Gail Eitch writes: 'One of the last remaining examples of this fabled product in private hands. Unsealed, it is in the same condition it was when it was plucked from the supermarket shelf. 
'Little did I know it would be the last Marmite I ever bought - and now, you, too, can buy your last ever Marmite.'
Another post, which asks for £29.99 for a 125g jar, reads: 'A much loved/hated spread once found in many cupboards across Britain, but following the decision to leave the EU has now become an extremely rare item.
'This rare jar of yeast extract could at least ensure that a family somewhere in the country will receive their recommended daily allowance of the B12 vitamin.'
Another cheeky Marmite fan cleared a central London Tesco out of jars before selling them to hungry office workers. He tweeted a picture of 15 jars and wrote: 'Need #Marmite in Clerkenwell? If you've got the cash, I've got your toast covered.'  



'It's not going to make me change my shopping habits though. I will still go to Tesco but just buy other things. Hopefully things will get better and they can maybe reach an agreement. The country's in a bit of a mess at the moment. I voted Remain and I'm not impressed with how Brexit has been handled so far.'

Tesco previously had a significant rift with Premier Foods, the maker of Ambrosia, Oxo and Mr Kipling cakes, in 2011 when the supermarket refused to stock products after the supplier tried to pass on a cost hike.
Former chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer and B&Q all warned ahead of the EU referendum that a drop in the pound - coupled with supply chain disruption - would cause prices to spike.
The Tesco stand-off with Unilever came hours after former Sainsbury's boss Justin King said shoppers should expect price rises after the fall in the value of the pound since the Brexit vote.
Mr King warned supermarkets would struggle to absorb the rise in the cost of importing goods because of the devalued pound, meaning consumers would face higher prices, The Guardian said.
Speaking at a conference in London on Wednesday, Mr King said: 'Retailers' margins are already squeezed. So there is no room to absorb input price pressures and costs will need to be passed on.'
He added: 'No business wants to be the first to blame Brexit for a rise in prices. But once someone does, there will be a flood of companies because they will all be suffering.'
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron blamed the Government for the latest row, saying: 'The chaos around Brexit is now hitting our supermarket shelves. This shows the Government don't have a plan or even a clue.'
Earlier this month, a survey by the Food and Drink Federation found that three-quarters of members have reported the cost of ingredients increasing, as well as falling profit margins.
Uncertainty following the Brexit vote has been blamed for the tough trading conditions.
UNILEVER: THE ANGLO-DUTCH CONSUMER GIANT 
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam and London.
Its products include food, drinks, cleaning agents and personal care products. 
Although its roots date back to the Victorian era, Unilever was formed in 1929 when philanthropic soap-maker Lever Brothers and Holland's Margarine Unie joined up - they both used rape seed oil as their key raw material.
It is the world's third-largest consumer goods company measured by 2012 revenue, after Procter & Gamble and Nestlé.
Unilever owns over 400 brands, but focuses on 14 brands with sales of over one billion euros: Axe/Lynx, Dove, Omo, Becel/Flora, Heartbrand ice creams, Hellmann's, Knorr, Lipton, Lux, Magnum, Rama, Rexona, Sunsilk and Surf. 
Their products are found in nine out of every ten UK homes.
They have three global research facilities at Port Sunlight, Colworth and Leeds, as well as manufacturing sites and distribution depots around the UK.
The company boasts annual UK sales of around  2billion euros.
One of the oldest multinational companies in the world, its products are available in around 190 countries.
TESCO: BRITAIN'S LARGEST RETAILER
Tesco is Britan's largest retailer and the third largest retailer in the world measured by profits.
It is the fifth-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues. 
It has stores in 12 countries across Asia and Europe and is the market leader in the UK where it has a market share of around 28.4 per cent, Ireland, Hungary, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Originally a UK grocery retailer, Tesco has diversified geographically since the early 1990s and into areas such as the retailing of books, clothing, electronics, furniture, toys, petrol and software. It also offers financial services; telecoms and internet services. 
With 3,500 shops of different sizes in the UK, it employs more than 310,000 people in Britain.
Tesco employs more than 500,000 people worldwide.
The 1990s saw Tesco reposition itself; it moved from being a down-market high-volume low-cost retailer, to one which appeals across many social groups.
It did this by offering products ranging from its 'Tesco Value' items (launched 1993) to its 'Tesco Finest' range.
Tesco is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. 
It had a market capitalization of approximately £18.1 billion as of 22 April 2015, the 28th-largest of any company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Uncertainty following the Brexit vote has been blamed for the tough trading conditions.
Why Marmite could be 'thin end of the wedge': Experts warn shoppers could still face more price rises in the New Year
The Unilever price hike could be just the 'thin end of the edge' for consumers, experts warn. 
Shoppers could face a surge in prices in the New Year as retailers look to pass on higher costs once the festive season is out of the way, according to Steven Dresser, retail analyst at Grocery Insight.   

Retailers are facing rising costs of goods and materials from the plunging value of the pound since the Brexit vote but are under pressure to keep prices low amid an intensely competitive market.
Mr Dresser said the Tesco row over prices with Unilever was a 'pre-cursor' to other moves by suppliers to put up the costs of their products.
He added: 'No one wants to put prices up ahead of Christmas. Others may just wait until January. It's only going to get more painful.' Former Sainsbury's boss Justin King said shoppers should expect a price rise. 
Former chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer and B&Q all warned ahead of the EU referendum that a drop in the pound, coupled with supply chain disruption, would cause prices to spike.
Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the pricing spat was likely to be the 'thin end of the wedge'.  
Supermarkets are already taking a hit amid a fierce price war in the sector sparked off by the rising popularity of discounters Aldi and Lidl.
Consumers have been enjoying four years in a row of falling retail prices, but the pressures of the weak pound is set to bring this to an end.
The British Retail Consortium warned earlier this week that Brexit could leave retailers with no option but to pass on costs to consumers.
It said: 'While UK retailers have been very successful in insulating consumers from the cost of rising business rates and labour, the recent devaluation of the pound in relation to our most important trading currencies is compounding economic headwinds, while years of deflation have left little margin to absorb added cost from import tariffs and administrative burdens.'
The average price of a basket of 35 commonly bought items has increased by 57p between May - the month before the referendum - and September, analysis by price comparison websitemysupermarket.co.uk reveals. 
*Average price without multi-buy 
 Products 
Apples (x8)
Baked Beans (415g)
Bananas (x8)
Cereals (750g)
Broccoli (400g) 
Butter (250g)
Carrots (1kg)
Cheddar (500g)
Cola (2l)
Crisps (6x25g)
Cucumber (x1)
Eggs (x12)
Fresh Chicken (1kg)
Fresh Peppers (x6)
Frozen Chips (1kg)
Frozen Fish Fingers 
Frozen Pizza (350g)
Fruit Juices (2l)
Yogurt (4x125g)
Grapes (500g)
Kitchen Towels (x4)
Leaf Salad (200g)
Minced Beef (750g)
Mushrooms (300g)
Onions (1kg)
Pasta (1kg)
Potatoes (2.5kg)
Red Pasta Sauce 
Sausages (454g)
Squash Drink (1l)
Toilet Paper
Tomatoes (500g)
White Bread (800g)
Total 

Price May 2016*
£3.52
£0.79
£1.29
£3.83
 £0.72
£1.51 
£2.05 
£4.45 
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£0.51
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£2.62 
£7.74 
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£3.05 
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£2.81 
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£0.72
£0.26 
£2.89 
£2.50
£2.41 
£1.47 
£4.25
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£1.26 
 £82.62
Price Sept 2016* 
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£0.78 
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£0.98 
£0.27 
£2.88
£2.68 
£2.40
£1.51 
£4.08
£2.56
£1.27 
 £83.19
 Price change (+/-)
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£0.00 (no change) 
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Minister wades into Marmite row by urging people to buy 'own brand' alternatives during the stand-off over Unilever price hikes 
By James Tapsfield, Political Editor for MailOnline 
A senior minister has waded into the Marmite row by urging consumers to buy 'own brand' alternatives during the stand-off over Unilever price hikes.
The multi-national firm is at loggerheads with Tesco after saying the fall in the Pound since the Brexit vote meant it had to increase prices by 10 per cent.
The supermarket has refused to pay the extra, leaving it running short of stocks of popular products including Marmite and Persil. 
Unilever is now facing a furious backlash, with many people pointing out that the yeast extract spread is actually manufactured in Burton-upon-Trent.
Leader of the House David Lidington was asked about the government's response to the situation in parliament. 
His Labour counterpart Valerie Vaz suggested that party leader Jeremy Corbyn was launching a personal campaign to get Marmite back on the shelves.
Sat next to the veteran left-winger in the chamber, she said: 'This morning I received a text, it's an upgrade from an email, from a 'Jeremy' who says 'we want our Marmite back'. 
Mr Lidington replied: 'I am sure that members on all sides of the House will have sympathy for your call to restore our Marmite.
'I think that the best advice I can give to her about her email correspondent is to advise Jeremy that during the current commercial dispute between the wholesaler and the retailer there are a number of own brand yeast extracts that are available.'
Amid laughter, he referred to Mr Corbyn's Islington North constituency, saying: 'I'm confident that in an area like Islington there is a wealth of alternatives of both traditional and organic varieties that will be available to the discerning customer.'
Pete Wishart, the SNP's Commons leader, also urged Mr Lidington to take action.
He said: 'Who would have thought that the first casualty of this hard Brexit would be the nation's supplies of Marmite?'
Mr Wishart said it was time for the Government to reconsider its plans for a 'full English Brexit' and opt for a 'more palatable continental Brexit instead'.
Mr Liddington replied: 'I simply note that on the information I have been given this morning the ingredients of Marmite are not imported into the United Kingdom but are manufactured and supplied here.
'I think probably it is not for the Government to intervene in what seems to be a dispute between two commercial companies.' 

Love it or hate it, at least it's British! How Marmite has been made in Burton for 114 years - despite being invented by a German scientist and named after a French casserole dish
By Keiligh Baker for MailOnline 
As the country reels from Unilever's announcement that it is pulling 200 products from the shelves of Tesco - including Marmite - MailOnline looks back on the history of that quintessentially British spread.
The world's supply of Marmite is made in a factory in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire and the spread, which celebrates its 114th birthday this year, has never been more popular. 
That one factory produces more than 6,000 tons of Marmite — around 50 million jars — a year. Only 15 per cent of that goes overseas and the rest is eaten in Britain and 27 jars are sold every minute.
Marmite, which was invented by a German scientist called Justus von Liebig in the late 19th century, has been produced in Burton since 1902. 
The town's beer heritage is important: the basic ingredient of the spread is yeast sludge, a waste product left over from brewing beer, and there were once 30 breweries in the surrounding area. Now, the raw materials come from across the UK.
It is named after a French casserole dish, pronounced 'mar-meet', having first been distributed in earthenware pots. To this day, the jar's iconic red-and-yellow label depicts a Marmite dish. 
What started as a wartime staple has recently revamped its reputation — moving from nursery treat to trendy retro brand. Last year, Marmite saw an 11 per cent rise in popularity among the under-30s.
Top chefs swear by it in everything from curries to cupcakes, while coffee shop Starbucks has started putting Marmite in its paninis. 

And it is only since 2006, when the famous 'love it or hate it' advertising slogan was introduced, that our opinions of the spread have become so polarised. 
During World War One, Marmite wasn't seen as an acquired taste at all — it was included in British soldiers' ration packs. And during World War II it was supplied as a dietary supplement in prisoner-of-war camps.
It is also said to have a number of health benefits — from fighting anaemia to healing tissue after heart damage — and until the Sixties was given away free to new mothers by NHS baby clinics because of its high concentration of B vitamins and folic acid. 
Many of the ingredients used are believed to be made in the UK - but the process itself remains something of a mystery.
Firstly, yeast is pumped into large drums where it is mixed with water and salt, and heated at 90c for ten hours.
The hop residue (from the beer-making process) is then removed, followed by a spin in a series of centrifuges to remove the solid, bitter cell walls of the yeast.
This is where it starts to acquire its dark brown colour. Any remaining water and alcohol are driven off in a large evaporator and then cooled to turn it into a paste.
The next stage of the process is a closely guarded secret. The special blend of ingredients added to the yeast extract — listed simply as 'spice extracts' on the jar — is as surrounded in mystery as the formula for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  

Marmite is one of several Unilever products made in Britain with ingredients that the manufacturing giant claims is affected by the falling pound.
However UK-made products are not affected by currency fluctuations in the same way imported goods are, as the same currency is used along the supply chain. 
Over the years, Unilever — the company which owns Marmite, having taken over the brand in 2000 — has released a number of special editions, including Guinness-infused spread, a champagne blend and the patriotic Ma'amite in honour of the Queen's Jubilee in 2012. 
The most recent version, Marmite XO (an extra-strong version that is fermented for 28 days), was produced with the help of a group of country-wide aficionados, nicknamed The Marmarati, who were recruited via social media for the purpose of tasting new blends. 
Although the exact recipe remains secret, the main ingredients are manufactured in the UK including yeast and vegetable extract and spices, and therefore the drop in the pound should have little effect on the cost of production.
The naturally high vitamin concentration means a serving provides between a third-and-a-half of the body's recommended daily requirements of Vitamin B-12, niacin RDA and folic.
Due to its high nutritional value, it was part of ration packs for soldiers during the First World War, and its high vitamin B content is even said to make it an effective mosquito repellent.  
Before Brexit Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Tesco all refused to sign a letter from Britain's biggest companies in support of the UK remaining inside the European Union.
Despite more than half of Britain's biggest companies signing a letter which backed the remain vote, the supermarket giants all refused to get involved. 
But the supermarket chains, which declined to back either side ahead of the Scottish referendum, said the choice over whether to continue belonging to the EU was one for the British people.
However, former chief executives of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Marks & Spencer and B&Q all warned ahead of the EU referendum that a drop in the pound - coupled with supply chain disruption - would cause prices to spike. 


An EU chief today mocked Theresa May for boogying on stage to Abba at her crunch Tory party conference speech.
The Prime Minister displayed her rarely seen jokey side as she shimmied and strutted on stage to Dancing Queen - her favourite song.
After arriving to the Swedish pop anthem, she used her hotly anticipated speech to warn the EU that Britain is 'not afraid' to leave without a deal if the bloc refuses to compromise.
But Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator, was quick to mock the Prime Minister's dancing moves.
He sent a tweet linking to a story about Abba member Bjorn Ulvaeus from over two years ago speaking out against Brexit.
And he wrote: 'While dancing to ABBA today, PM May overlooked the fact that Bjorn from ABBA called Brexit a 'disaster'.'
Ahead of the referendum, Bjorn Ulvaeus talked to 5 live's Sarah Brett in May 2016 stating Britain should remain in the bloc.
'I'm so nervous, I pray that you don't leave the EU - it would be a disaster,' he said. 'It really makes me sad the thought that Britain would leave.'
'It's like someone you love leaving you in a way. It's emotional. I'm not intellectually quite clear what I mean, but emotionally I'm certain I don't want Britain to leave.'
But he did go on to say that he understood ambivalence toward the EU in both his home country of Sweden and the UK, highlighting what he believed was a valuable role Britain played in balancing the bloc's ambitions. 
'The Swedes feel that with Britain in there's more people that think like we do in the EU,' he said. 'Britain is a balance to the continent - it is somewhere in between America and Europe.'
Mr Verhofstadt's trolling of the PM came after she had issued another stern warning to the bloc not to play games with Britain over the Brexit talks.
She told Brussels to treat the UK with respect and work to try to thrash out a deal in time for Britain's exit next year.
And dialling up her rhetoric, she warned that the UK will leave without a deal if the EU does not compromise.
Addressing party activists in Birmingham, she said: 'No one wants a good deal more than me.
'But that has never meant getting a deal at any cost. Britain isn't afraid to leave with no deal if we have to.'
But while Mr Verhofstadt seized on May's conference address to poke fun at her dancing and Brexit plans, other foreign officials were more enthusiastic about her choice of music.
The Swedish ambassador to the UK Torbjorn Sohlstrom tweeted: 'As Swedish Ambassador I can only say Bravo to @theresa_may for starting her conference speech with ABBA's Dancing Queen. #CPC18'
Mrs May is facing a frantic political battle to get a Brexit deal thrashed out in time in the face of opposition to her plans from Brussels and a mutiny from her MPs and activists.
Her Chequers Brexit blueprint was rejected by leaders at the Salzburg summit last month in a major humiliation for the PM.
While this week's Tory Party conference was overshadowed by Boris Johnson's savage attack on her plans.
The ex foreign secretary addressed a packed-out 1,500-seater hall on the fringes of Tory conference yesterday to demand Mrs May to 'chuck' Chequers in a speech which delighted activists.
His intervention has cast a massive shadow over conference and threatened to snatch all of the headlines away from the messages Mrs May and her ministers were trying to pump out.
Mrs May today hit back at Mr Johnson and pleaded for her party to unite behind her and her Brexit plan.
But while she appears to have staved off the immediate threat of a leadership challenge, many activists are still furious at her Brexit plans warning they would leave the UK having to swallow EU rules after the country leaves.
She faces a race against time to broker a deal, with EU leaders demanding substantial progress is made by mid November if the deal is to stand a chance of being done in time.
In the meantime, ministers have stepped up no deal planning amid mounting fears talks will fail and Britain will crash out of the bloc.
  
Sir John Major has branded Brexit an 'historic mistake' and demanded Theresa May halt the 'cheap rhetoric' that is damaging the chance of a good deal.
In an incendiary speech that will infuriate Brexiteers, the ex-PM said his successor must 'charm' her EU allies and prepare the public for hard times ahead.
Sir John hit out at Brexit less than a fortnight after Tony Blair urged Remain supporters to 'rise up' in defiance of Brexit. 
In a gloomy assessment of Britain's prospects, Sir John said a hard Brexit would leave the UK dependant on a dominant and unpredictable United States.
He admitted the economy had been more 'tranquil' than expected but warned the public was being 'led to expect a future that seems to be unreal'.
And Sir John warned the political tensions in the Brexit risked smashing apart the Union, as Scottish nationalists strive for a re-run of the 2014 referendum and Northern Ireland's politicians wrestle with the future of devolution.
Scroll down for video 
He also warned quitting the EU without a deal and turning Britain into a low-tax, low low-regulation economy would end the welfare state and never gain popular support.  
Speaking at Chatham House in London, Sir John said: 'Eight months ago a majority of voters opted to leave the European Union. I believed then – as I do now – that was an historic mistake, but it was one – once asked – that the British nation had every right to make.
'The Government cannot ignore the nation's decision and must now shape a new future for our country.
'Some changes may be beneficial: others may not. A hard Brexit – which is where we seem to be headed – is high risk. Some will gain. Others – will lose.' 
Answering questions after his speech, Sir John said he was not calling for a second referendum 'at this stage' and added: 'We cannot turn the clock back. We cannot overturn the result. We must get the best deal we can.'  
A Brexit backlash was underway tonight as senior Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg told MailOnline Sir John was 'yesterday's man with yesterday's opinions'.
Former Conservative Party vice-chair Michael Fabricant said he was 'disappointed' at this 'almost personal attack'.
Leading Brexit supporter Andrew Bridgen said Sir John's attack was misdirected, insisting Mrs May had never promised there would be no 'bumps' along the way as was working hard for a 'successful' Brexit.  
Sir John said the referendum had been 'one of the most divisive votes in British history' that had 'opened up divisions' across society.
And he warned: 'I have watched with growing concern as the British people have been led to expect a future that seems to be unreal and over-optimistic.
'Obstacles are brushed aside as of no consequence, whilst opportunities are inflated beyond any reasonable expectation of delivery.' 
Sir John said if those expectations failed to be met, those hurt most would be those least able to bear it.
And in remarks that may be aimed at the criticism his speech will generate, Sir John condemned those on the Brexit side 'shouting down legitimate comment'.
The former Tory leader, who won a general election in 1992, said closing Parliament out of the Brexit negotiations altogether would leave ministers deaf to public concern.
And he warned it was crucial the public was aware of challenges ahead as.
Quoting Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson directly, but not naming him, Sir John said: 'The hopes of those who favoured leaving the European Union are sky-high. We are told that countries ''are queuing up to do trade deals with us''. That ''our best days lie ahead''.
'It all sounds very enticing. And – for the sake of our country – I hope the optimists are proved right. But I'm not sure they will be.
'My own experience of international negotiations – and the national self-interest that accompanies them – makes me doubt the rosy confidence being offered to the British people.
'Negotiations are all about 'give' and 'take'. We know what the Brexiteers wish to take: yet we hear nothing about what our country may have to give in return.
'If anyone genuinely believes that Europe will concede all we wish for – and exact no price for doing so – then they are extraordinarily naive.' 
Sir John said Mrs May would need 'goodwill' on both sides to achieve a good deal for Britain.
But he warned that behind public diplomatic niceties, the atmosphere was already difficult - and warned of a 'politically explosive' start to negotiations if the EU stands by its demand for a £60billion divorce bill as a precursor to talks.
He said: 'Behind the diplomatic civilities, the atmosphere is already sour. A little more charm, and a lot less cheap rhetoric, would do much to protect the UK's interests.'
On the divorce bill he said: 'Of course that is true: but when you leave any club, you are obliged to settle your debts, and that is what the European Union is going to expect the UK to do.
'There are liabilities to be met: pension costs, legacy costs, contingent liabilities, a proportional share of work-in-progress. The EU will argue we have a legal obligation to pay these bills.' 
And he warned: 'So there is a choice to be made, a price to be paid; we cannot move to a radical enterprise economy without moving away from a welfare state.
'Such a direction of policy, once understood by the public, would never command support. It would make all previous rows over social policy seem a minor distraction.' 
Sir John said Brexit was undermining Europe and fuelling 'populist' parties on the continent that would cause even more damage.
He said the vote had 'energised' anti-EU, anti-immigrant nationalists' ahead of elections in France, Germany and Holland.
Sir John said: 'None of these populist groups is sympathetic to the broadly tolerant and liberal instincts of the British.
'Nonetheless, their pitch is straightforward. If Britain – sober, stable, moderate, reliable Britain, with its ancient Parliament and anti-revolutionary history – can break free of a repressive bureaucracy in Brussels, why, then ''so can anyone''.
'It is a potent appeal.'
Sir John added: 'I caution everyone to be wary of this kind of populism. It seems to be a mixture of bigotry, prejudice and intolerance. It scapegoats minorities.
'It is a poison in any political system – destroying civility and decency and understanding. Here in the UK we should give it short shrift, for it is not the people we are – nor the country we are.'


Sir John said Britain would be left dependant on the United States after Brexit and warned the UK was most useful as an ally inside the bloc.
He said the UK was 'by far the junior partner' because America 'dwarfs the UK in economic and military power'. 
The ex-PM said: 'Inevitably there will be disagreements: the US wish to contain China and engage Russia; we wish to contain Russia and engage China.
'We seem likely to disagree also on refugees, free trade, the legality of Jewish settlements, and climate change.
'How many disagreements can there be before even the closest of ties begin to fray?' 
In any event, Sir John said, trade between Britain and US was already high and low cost.
He warned: 'The Government must also replicate the 53 deals struck on our behalf by the European Union. So far, only 12 are in play.
'There is a very, very long way to go, and the question arises: are 65 million Britons likely to get the same favourable outcome as 500 million Europeans?
'I set out these difficulties, not because I don't think deals can be done – some certainly can – but to be realistic about the timescale and complexity of the huge undertaking that lies ahead.
'It is crucial to business and the public – that our expectations are consistent with what can be delivered. It matters to the Government, too: Ministers must not over-promise.'
Senior Conservative Mr Fabricant told MailOnline: 'I am disappointed that a former Prime Minister has chosen to embark on this almost personal attack.
'He is resurrecting tired old arguments which were all made during the long referendum campaign, which failed to convince then and have since been proven wrong.
This is not the first time Sir John has launched a Brexit broadside. Last November he claimed that Brexit should not be dictated by the ‘tyranny of the majority’ and said there was a ‘perfectly credible case’ for holding a second referendum to reverse the will of the people who voted on June 23.
Sir John, who campaigned for Remain, said: ‘I hear the argument that the 48 per cent of people who voted to stay should have no say in what happens. I find that very difficult to accept.
‘The tyranny of the majority has never applied in a democracy and it should not apply in this particular democracy.’
He was quickly slapped down by Number Ten.

'This is all based in the past and is blinkered to the bright opportunities for our future.
'The bitterness of those who reject the will of the people is not an edifying sight.' 
Tory Andrew Bridgen said: 'I think it is always dangerous when politicians claim that when they lose an election, it is the people who have got it wrong.
'I don't think Theresa May has ever said there won't be bumps along the road as we leave the European Union.
'Theresa May has made clear we are going to work hard to deliver the most successful Brexit that we can.' 
John Longworth, co-chairman of the Leave Means Leave campaign, said: 'No deal is better than a bad deal with the EU – Britain must walk away from the table and revert back to WTO rules if the EU is unwilling to do a deal.
'Britain is in a strong negotiating position - the EU needs access to to the London capital markets for its own growth.
'Instead of carping from the sidelines and damaging Britain, Sir John Major should heed his own advice. After the 1997 election he said ''when the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage''.' 
Chuka Umunna MP, leading supporter of Open Britain, said: 'Sir John is right to question how likely that is but it is there is no chance at all of it being delivered if our European partners across the negotiating table continue to be demonised.
'It is vital that Parliament is given a meaningful vote on the final agreement, with the power to send the Government back to the negotiating table if the deal they come back with is not good enough for Britain.'
Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron said: 'The Conservatives should listen to the likes of John Major and Heseltine instead of sneering at them.
'These are people with huge experience of negotiating with Europe, while the Brexiteers have no clear strategy.
'There is nothing patriotic about shutting down debate on the risks of a hard Brexit for our country's prosperity and security.'
A No 10 source said: 'The Government is determined to make a success of our departure from the European Union and to move beyond the language of leave and remain to unite our country.
'The Prime Minister set out her 12 negotiating objectives for Brexit in January. We have a clear plan to get the best deal for the United Kingdom and are going to get on with the job of delivering it.'
 

Twenty one Tory MPs will be kicked out of the party in a 'bloodbath of the Remainers' after condemning Boris Johnson to his first Commons defeat last night, Downing Street has confirmed.
In a major rebellion, a string of senior Tories – including eight former Cabinet ministers and Winston Churchill's grandson – voted with opposition parties to wreck the Prime Minister's negotiation plans and stop No Deal.
Late last night, a Downing Street spokesman revealed the Chief Whip was 'speaking with those Tory MPs who did not vote with the Government' and confirmed that they would 'have the whip removed'.
The bloodbath means that if – as expected – an election is called within days, the rebels will lose their right to stand as Tory candidates and their political careers will come to an end.
The rebels included Establishment Tories such as former chancellor Philip Hammond, former justice secretary David Gauke, former development secretary and leadership candidate Rory Stewart, Tory grandee and former Chancellor Ken Clarke, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill's grandson.
Another rebel, Guto Bebb, accused Mr Johnson of hypocrisy and attacked his adviser Dominic Cummings.
He said: 'It is frankly rather hypocritical of a Prime Minister who constantly voted against the previous Conservative prime minister in taking this action against people who voted against him.
'None of this would have happened if it wasn't for the way in which No 10 and the Prime Minister have handled this whole issue. That decision to prorogue parliament on the advice of Dominic Cummings has misfired spectacularly.'
Mr Cummings was earlier seen hectoring some of the rebels at Downing Street, yelling: 'I don't know who any of you are!'
A source close to the Tory rebels said: 'Tonight's decisive result is the first step in a process to avert an undemocratic and damaging No Deal. No 10 have responded by removing the whip from two former chancellors, a former lord chancellor and Winston Churchill's grandson. What has happened to the Conservative Party?'
Rebel leaders have accused No 10 of planning to 'purge' Mr Johnson's opponents.
A senior Downing Street source confirmed they would lose the whip. Another Government source described it as a 'bloodbath of the Remainers'. 'They lose the whip. Done,' one source said.
However, there was confusion after Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said she hoped the rebels would 'reconsider overnight' and could get a 'second chance'.
The rebels voted for a motion backed by Jeremy Corbyn and opposition parties designed to wrest control of the Commons agenda from the Government today. The Government lost by 328 to 301.
Mr Johnson said Parliament was 'on the brink of wrecking any deal we might be able to strike with Brussels'.
The rebels will today attempt to use power over the Order Paper to pass a law to force Mr Johnson to extend Article 50 by three months and stop Britain leaving without a deal on October 31.
Mr Johnson has described the law as 'Jeremy Corbyn's Surrender Bill' and No 10 has warned it will cost taxpayers £1billion a month in EU contributions.
The PM warned it will 'chop the legs out' from under his negotiators when Brussels is on the brink of offering concessions and fears it could result in a second referendum or the repeal of Article 50.
He has insisted he will refuse to request an extension to Brexit and instead call a general election. Yesterday Mr Johnson met with the rebels in No 10 and warned them they would be 'handing power to Corbyn's junta'.
There were fractious exchanges with Mr Hammond in the Cabinet Room. Mr Hammond, who was reselected by his constituency association on Monday night, suggested he could launch a legal challenge against attempts by party bosses to take him off the ballot paper. 
He said he was ready to go to court to defend his right to stand as a Conservative candidate if he has the whip withdrawn.
But Tory sources said it was impossible for a candidate to stand if the leadership had withdrawn the whip. One source pointed to the example of former Tory vice-chairman Howard Flight, who was sacked by the then leader Michael Howard in the run-up to the 2005 election after making unauthorised comments about plans for Tory spending cuts. 
Mr Howard withdrew the whip from him, leaving him unable to stand at the election just six weeks later. Mark Wallace, of the Conservative Home website, said: 'Philip Hammond was readopted perfectly validly, but that's not an unassailable, inalienable status.
'If he loses the whip, effectively ceasing to be a member of the Conservative Party's Approved Candidates List, then he would cease to be eligible to be nominated as the official Conservative candidate come election time.'       
Mr Gauke has accused the PM of planning a 'purge' of his opponents.
The rebels voted for a motion backed by Jeremy Corbyn and opposition parties to wrest control of the Commons agenda. The Government lost by 328 to 301.
The rebels will today attempt to use power over the Order Paper to pass a law to force Mr Johnson to extend Article 50 by three months and stop Britain leaving without a deal on October 31.   
The PM said an extension of Article 50 would amount to an 'extinction level event for the Conservative Party'.
Yesterday morning Mr Hammond launched a broadside against Mr Johnson's senior adviser Dominic Cummings, accusing him of trying to turn the Tory party into a 'narrow faction'.
Mr Hammond said: 'Frankly I feel a sense of outrage that a party I have been a member of, and recently a leading member, for 45 years is thinking of throwing me out.
'And I don't recognise the right of these people who have taken over our party, some of whom are not even members of our party but are controlling the actions of the Government, to turn us from a broad church which the Conservative Party has always been to a narrow faction. Some of my colleagues have chosen to call it a day because they don't like what's going on.
'My approach is to stay and fight and I will fight for the party I joined and the party that I believe the Conservatives must be, a broad inclusive centre-Right party, for as long as I am able to do so.' Last night senior Tory sources said rebel MPs can be barred from standing at the next election – even if they have already been reselected by their local activists. 
Tory sources last night said it was impossible for a candidate to stand as a Conservative if the leadership had withdrawn the whip. 
'If he loses the whip, effectively ceasing to be a member of the Conservative Party's Approved Candidates List, then he would cease to be eligible to be nominated as the official Conservative candidate come election time.'
'They will have the whip removed': The TWENTY-ONE Tory rebels who will be kicked out of the party after voting against the Government in bid to block No Deal Brexit 
A band of 21 Tory rebels defied threats of being booted out of the party and voted against the government to block a No Deal Brexit.
Boris Johnson threatened to remove the whip and deselect Conservative MPs who vote to pass a law in the Commons today stopping the UK from crashing out of the EU on October 31. 
Before the vote an estimated 21 Conservative, including some former cabinet members and two ex-chancellors, were expected to side with the Opposition on the crucial European Union (Withdrawal) (No.6) Bill 2019.
It was thought the enormous pressure from Number 10 and the Tory whips whittled down the  number of defiant Conservatives. 
Although some Tory MPs buckled, 21 did vote with the Opposition as others joined the band of rebels opposing Boris Johnson.
These inlcuded former chancellor Philip Hammond, ex-justice secretary David Gauke, former attorney general Dominic Grieve and Sir Oliver Letwin. 
Mr Gauke, Mr Hammond, Mr Grieve, Mr Letwin and former minister Alistair Burt had all already signed the Bill sealing their fate and almost certain expulsion from the party before tonight's vote took place. 
One of those who voted against the government was for Conservative Phillip Lee who dramatically crossed the floor of the Commons to join the Lib Dems while Boris Johnson was speaking - and effectively wiping out his majority before the vote even took place. 
Downing Street tonight confirmed the rebel MPs would be kicked out of the party after the government was defeated.
A spokesman said: 'The Chief Whip is speaking with those Tory MPs who did not vote with the Government this evening. They will have the whip removed.'
However, Mr Hammond indicated he would fight any deselection through the courts. 
The Tory rebels include: 
Philip Hammond
Rebel leader, former chancellor and detested by Tory Brexiteers. He insists he isn't trying to block Brexit and points out he voted for the Withdrawal Agreement three times, unlike Boris Johnson who he says is 'staggeringly hypocritical'. Mr Hammond argues that No Deal would cost the British economy £90 billion.
Soon after the the government was defeated in the Commons a spokesman for Mr Hammond reportedly confirmed he would have the whip removed.
He said: 'I can confirm Philip Hammond has had the  whip removed, following a phone call  form the chief whip.'
Constituency: Runnymede
Leave vote: 50 per cent
David Gauke
Former justice secretary and leader of the 'Gaukeward Squad' of anti-No Deal Tory rebels. He accused Boris Johnson of a 'purge' for threatening to deselect and withdraw the whip from rebels. Mr Gauke also said the prime minister of trying to turn the Conservatives into the Brexit Party. The ex-cabinet minister claimed Mr Johnson actively wanted to lose the Commons showdown so he can 'purge' Remainers reshape it into a new hardline Eurosceptic electoral force.
Mr Gauke tweeted after the vote: 'For the first time in 14 years as an MP I voted against the Conservative Party whip. That whip has now been withdrawn.
'If tonight's motion had been lost, a no-deal Brexit would have been almost inevitable. Probably not a good career move but the right choice.'
Constituency: South West Hertfordshire
Leave vote: 46 per cent
Dominic Grieve
Arch Remainer and second referendum supporter who says he wants to 'save the Tory party' from Mr Johnson. The QC and former attorney general has been the legal brains behind much of opposition to No Deal and has been a thorn in the side of the hard Brexiteers. Today, referring to threats of deselecting rebel Tory MPs, he said: 'I simply do not see the Conservative Party surviving in its current form if we continue behaving like this towards each other.'
When asked after the vote if the Conservatives can survive this latest crisis, Mr Grieve said it was a very dangerous moment' for the Tory party.
He told ITV News: 'We've always been a broad church party and we've been very tolerant, particularly of rebels. Some colleagues have been rebelling against the government for 30 years and nobody has taken the whip away from them, so this is unprecedented. 
'And it shows a ruthlessness and ideological approach to politics that doesn't sit comfortably with our party's success as an electoral force or force for good in our country. I think it's a very dangerous moment for the Conservative Party and I look at the emails I'm getting from constituents and even party members saying they'll never vote Conservative again.' 
Constituency: Beaconsfield
Leave vote: 49 per cent
Sir Oliver Letwin
Cerebral but gaffe-prone MP who was David Cameron's policy chief and another of the brains behind the anti-No Deal alliance. He has argued that to stop No Deal MPs would have to take over the role of the government. This evening he tabled a motion that began the Commons debate on blocking a No Deal Brexit. He told the House the government has not presented any 'viable' alternatives to the Irish border backstop and the chances of securing a new deal are 'slight'.
Constituency: West Dorset
Leave vote: 51 per cent 
Justine Greening
Former Education Secretary who represents a heavily Remain seat in South West London and announced yesterday she will stand down at the next election to try and extend social mobility. She confirmed that she would not stand for re-election in Putney, telling Today: 'It's very clear to me that my concerns about the Conservative party becoming the Brexit party, in effect, have come to pass.'
Constituency: Putney
Leave vote: 28 per cent 
Alistair Burt
Former Foreign Office minister who quit the government in March after joining anti-No Deal rebels. He refused to rule out standing against Tories in his North-East Bedfordshire seat and today confirmed he will not stand as a Tory candidate again.
Constituency: North East Bedfordshire
Leave vote: 53 per cent
Ken Clarke
The Europhile of Europhiles, a Tory Big Beast, former Chancellor and, at 79, the longest standing MP or 'Father of the House of Commons'. Has said he would vote to bring down a Tory government to stop No Deal and previously suggested he might stand down as MP at the next election. He opposed the 2016 Brexit referendum and was the only Tory MP to vote against triggering the Article 50 process for leaving the EU. 
After the vote Ken Clarke told the BBC the Conservatives were becoming another version of the Brexit Party. 
He said: 'I'm as amused as Michael Heseltine is by being told he's not a Conservative because he voted against the Party in the House of Lords. This is all based on this absurd argument that Boris is trying to get a deal. He's obviously not trying to get a deal. I'm sure he'd prefer one if he thought he could get one past his right-wing supporters. But he's dug himself in, he assumes he's going to get No Deal. Because he can't get the right wing of the Conservative Party, many of them now stuck in his cabinet, to agree to it. He voted for Theresa May's deal.'
'Of course I'm a Conservative. I'm a mainstream Conservative.'
Asked about the state of the party: 'It's been taken over by rather a rather knockabout sort of character, who's got this bizarre crash-it-through philosophy, in charge, a cabinet which is the most right wing cabinet any conservative party has ever produced. They're not in control of events. 
The prime minister comes and talks total rubbish to us, and is planning to hold a quick election and get out, blaming Parliament and Europe for the shambles.'
'I have to decide whether to vote Conservative if Boris Johnson is still the leader. That's my next problem. I am a Conservative, of course I am. But this leader, I don't recognise this. It's the Brexit Party, re-badged.'
Constituency: Rushcliffe
Leave vote: 41 per cent
Sir Nicholas Soames
Heavyweight backbencher and party grandee who is Sir Winston Churchill's grandson. He compared Brexiteers to a 'growling Alsatian that must be kicked really hard in the balls'. Mr Soames was among rebels who met the PM on Tuesday for last-ditch talks and later confirmed he would not support the government.
Appearing alongside fellow rebel Ken Clarke, Sir Nicholas Soames was asked by the BBC's Emily Maitlis if he had been contacted by the chief whip since the vote tonight and said he would not stand in any upcoming election.
He added: 'I've been told by the chief whip who is my friend and who I like very much, and he's told me it will be his sad duty to write to me tomorrow to tell me that I've had the whip removed, after 37 years as a conservative member of parliament. 
'I've voted against the government three times in 37 years and I've had the whip removed. You know, that's fortunes of war what I was doing and I just believe they're not playing straight with us. To say you want a deal is quite different to saying you want a deal that's achievable, and what he [Boris Johnson] wants is not achievable.
'I'm quite sure he wants a deal, but what he wants is unachievable. And it's not possible, it's not on offer, and he won't get the deal he wants.
'I think they planned, personally, all along to have an early general election and to get this out of the way and get a new Parliament.'
She then asked what he will do if a new election is called imminently, he replied: 'I actually won't stand, I'm not going to stand.'
On whether any Tory MPs who rebelled tonight might choose not to vote against the government tomorrow, Mr Soames added: 'No one is going to peel away from tonight's result.'
'It's a pity, in my view a great pity, that this has in my view all been planned. I think it's been planned, this is exactly what they wanted, they've got it, and they're going to announce tomorrow that they're going to organise to have a General Election.'
Constituency: Mid Sussex
Leave vote: 46 per cent
Guto Bebb
Former defence minister who quit to stop No Deal and announced he is standing down at the next election. He has accused his party of 'appealing to the type of nationalism that has seen UKIP grow in the past, and the Brexit Party now'. Previously Mr Bebb said a vote against No Deal is 'truer to Conservative tradition than anyone who traipses through the lobbies out of fear, opportunism or simply unthinking loyalty'.
Following the vote Mr Bebb confirmed he was told he would be losing the Conservative whip as a result of voting with the Opposition. 
He blamed Boris Johnson's defeat on his decision to suspend parliament and accused the prime minister  of not genuinely trying to get a deal with the EU.
He told the BBC: 'Frankly it's rather hypocritical of the prime minster who consistently voted against the previous Conservative prime minster, to take this action against people who voted against him.
'None of this would have happened if it wasn't for the way in which Number 10 and the prime minster have mishandled this whole issue since the decision to announce the prorogation or suspension of parliament.
'That decision persuaded people he [Boris Johnson] was not serious about getting a deal with the EU. People were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, people were willing to allow him to try and get a deal with the European Union. His decision to prorogue parliament on the advice of Dominic Cummings has misfired spectacularly.
'The Conservatives who rebelled simply didn't believe the prime minster, he cancelled the meeting yesterday with those who were thinking of rebelling. All they wanted was some assurances from the prime minster that he was really trying to get a deal.
'This prime minster is not trying to negotiate a deal. He tried to give the impression of negotiating a deal and I'm afraid that the lack of trust that people have in Boris Johnson has resulted in this defeat this evening.'
Constituency: Aberconwy
Leave vote: 52 per cent 
Antoinette Sandbach
The 6'4' MP for Eddisbury and longstanding Remainer rebel branded Mr Johnson 'staggeringly hypocritical' for threatening to deselect rebels. She also said it was 'important to act' to stop any chance of no deal and she would put her constituents' interests ahead of her own.
Antoinette Sandbach tweeted this evening: 'I am elected to act in what I believe is in the best interests of my constituents. I have had the whip taken away from me. However there are critical times when you have to do what is right, no matter what the personal consequences. It is hard I won't pretend it isn't. 
 
Constituency: Eddisbury
Leave vote: 52 per cent 
Rory Stewart
Eccentric former development secretary who ran an enthusiastic, if futile, leadership bid, he has been described as a Tory Remainer pin-up. As well as posting social media clips of his meetings with the public, the ex-cabinet member released a video confirming he would vote against the government and explained his reasons. Mr Stewart said claims No Deal Brexit would be a 'clean and easy break' from the EU were disingenuous as it would lead to years of economic and political uncertainty.
After the vote he tweeted: 'Strange that a decision has been made to remove the whip from so many colleagues who were ministers so recently. Particularly when we voted repeatedly for a Brexit deal. I can't think of a historical precedent. But I am not stepping down as an MP.' 
Constituency: Penrith and the Border
Leave vote: 55 per cent 
Ed Vaizey
From 2010 to 2016 he served as Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, with responsibilities in the Departments for Culture, Media and Sport. After leaving the government he warned against leaving European Atomic Energy Community, Euratom as it protected the nuclear power industry and helped scientific research in Britain.
Constituency: Wantage
Leave vote: 46 per cent 
Margot James
Self-made millionaire who resigned as culture minister after rebelling against Theresa May to stop No Deal. The former digital minister has been highly critical of No Deal on social media and backed Mr Gauke's attempts to block the UK crashing out of the EU on October 31.
Constituency: Stourbridge
Leave vote: 64 per cent 
Stephen Hammond
Former Transport minister and MP for heavily Remain constituency of the Wimbledon seat in south west London who is under threat from Lib Dems. He has accused Tory Brexiteers of 'lecturing others' about loyalty. He told the BBC he would 'reluctantly' vote against the government.
Constituency: Wimbledon
Leave vote: 29 per cent
Richard Harrington
Ex-business minister and perennial would-be resigner. He has rebelled over Brexit before but finally quit earlier this year to stop No Deal and last week announced he would stand down as a Tory MP at the next election. 
Constituency: Watford
Leave vote: 51 per cent

Caroline Nokes
Former immigration minister was sacked by Boris Johnson and said yesterday her constituents 'mean a whole lot more to me than keeping the Conservative whip'. She also added that she believes her constituents would be worse off under a No Deal Brexit and their futures mattered more than her own as a Conservative MP.
Constituency: Romsey
Leave vote: 46 per cent 
Sam Gyimah
Quit as science minister under Theresa May in protest at her 'naive' Brexit deal and backed a second referendum. The former universities minister said there was 'no mandate' for No Deal and claimed it would be 'damaging and disruptive' for his constituents. Mr Gyimah said it is 'extreme' to deselect opponents of No Deal.
Mr Gyimah tweeted after the vote this evening: 'Today I voted against the government in order to a stop no deal Brexit. I along with 20 colleagues have had the Conservative Whip removed. I will continue to fight for the interests of my constituents as their MP.'
Speaking after the crunch Common debate, the former universities minister called for a second referendum.
He added: 'Tonight, MPs who believe in the national interest have stood up to strike a first crucial blow to defend democracy.
'It means Boris Johnson will find it harder to bypass Parliament to impose his undemocratic Brexit on the British people.
'No-one believes the government is serious about negotiating a deal. No-one trusts Boris Johnson over the date of the election or his motives for trying to call one now. The only legitimate way to solve this Brexit crisis is not to trust Boris Johnson but to trust the people in a final say referendum.' 
Constituency: East Surrey
Leave vote: 54 per cent  
Greg Clark 
Previously serving as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2016 to 24 July 2019 he said he would resign if the UK pursued a No Deal Brexit. 
After the vote hr tweeted: 'As a former Business Secretary I know the harm that an abrupt no deal Brexit would do to our country and to my constituents. Parliament must be able to prevent that harm. So I voted for the legislation tonight, fully aware of the personal consequences.'
Constituency: Tunbridge Wells
Leave vote: 45 per cent  
Anne Milton
Spiky-haired Guildford MP who rose through the ranks under David Cameron and Theresa May. She is the rebels' unofficial whip and has kept a low profile since quitting as a minister in July. However she attended a meeting with other potential rebels in Westminster earlier today. 
Constituency: Guildford
Leave vote: 41 per cent 
Steve Brine 
Steve Brine served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health from 2017 to 2019, but resigned from the Government on March 25 to vote against the government's policy on Brexit. He previously worked on BBC local radio and has joined Friends of the Earth. 
Constituency: Winchester and Chandler's Ford 
Leave vote: 40 per cent 
Richard Benyon
A former soldier who graduated from Sandhurst where he served in Northern Ireland and the Far East, Mr Benyon was a Parliamentary Under-Secretary Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In government under David Cameron, he worked as Wildlife Minister at DEFRA from May 2010 to October 2013.
Constituency: Newbury 
Leave vote: 48 per cent  
Michael Gove today warns mutinous Tories they will put Brexit at risk if they vote down Theresa May’s plan in ten days’ time.
In a powerful intervention, the former Vote Leave chief tells Eurosceptic MPs that Brexit is ‘under greater threat than at any time since the referendum’.
The Environment Secretary admits in an article in the Daily Mail that Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement is not ‘perfect’.
But he adds: ‘Does it deliver 100 per cent of what I wanted? No. But then we didn’t win 100 per cent of the vote on 23 June 2016. In politics, as in life, you can’t always get everything that you want.’
He dismisses those accusing the Prime Minister of betrayal, saying that her plan ‘delivers in crucial ways which honour the vote to leave’.
Downing Street will hope the intervention by the Cabinet’s leading Eurosceptic – and architect of the Brexit campaign – will prove pivotal in the campaign to gain a seemingly impossible Commons majority on December 11 and safeguard the PM’s job.
Mr Gove makes it clear he is ‘uncomfortable’ with parts of the withdrawal agreement, but argues it is much better than either a second referendum or a no-deal exit.
He warns his fellow Eurosceptics that those pushing for a second vote ‘might well succeed’ if Mrs May’s plan is voted down – a move he says would cause ‘disillusionment on a scale never seen before’.
And in a direct appeal to the 100 Tory MPs threatening to side with Labour to block the PM’s deal, he urges them to reconsider ahead of the ‘momentous’ vote: ‘Get this wrong and we may put in peril the Brexit the British people voted for and want us to deliver.’
His intervention throws a lifeline to Mrs May, who spent yesterday trying to persuade world leaders at the G20 summit in Argentina to back her proposals.
In other developments:
Last month Mr Gove came close to following Dominic Raab and Esther McVey out of the Cabinet after Mrs May agreed with Brussels a plan that fails to give the UK a unilateral exit route from the Irish backstop, which its critics say could keep the UK in the EU customs union indefinitely.
He spent 36 hours wrestling with his conscience before deciding to stay on.
Today he rallies firmly behind the PM, declaring that he will be supporting the withdrawal agreement ‘for all its flaws’. He says it will end free movement, meaning ‘future governments will now be free to implement immigration policies which they think best for the country’. The package will also mean an end to ‘sending huge sums of money to the EU every week’ – an issue he says was ‘a huge concern to a great many Leave voters’.
And he says it will finally right the ‘great injustice’ done to our fishing industry by entry into the EU 45 years ago. The fallout from the Brexit vote fractured Mr Gove’s close friendships with both David Cameron and Boris Johnson, who he helped persuade to lead the Leave campaign. He acknowledges that the against-the-odds referendum victory in 2016 came at a ‘personal cost’, adding: ‘The impact of my decision on my family and friendships has been impossible to ignore.’
However, he insists the UK is right to leave the EU.
‘For too long, this over-bearing, undemocratic and profligate bureaucracy has told us what to do, protected vested interests, stood in the way of innovation and inflicted economic and social harm on its citizens,’ he writes.
‘The referendum offered us the chance to break free, to become the authors of our own national story, to bring democracy home. I believe in Brexit, I campaigned for it heart and soul. And now I want to see it through. And we should be in no doubt, seeing it through is by no means guaranteed.’
Condemning calls for a second referendum, he warns: ‘It would prove right all the criticisms we made of the EU and the Westminster establishment during the campaign – that they never listen; that they only answer to the people when it suits them; that they will simply never change.’
Mr Gove acknowledges that he is ‘uncomfortable’ with the backstop plan, which is designed to prevent a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland.
But he says the EU is determined to prevent the backstop ever being invoked for fear it would give British firms ‘many of the benefits of EU membership, without most of the obligations’.
‘I would prefer to have had a mechanism to exit the backstop unilaterally,’ he writes.
‘But it’s important to look in detail at what the backstop entails – and to appreciate that however uncomfortable it is for the UK, it actually creates major problems for the EU.’
Mr Gove also takes a swipe at hardline Brexiteers who claim the UK can make a painless exit from the EU without a deal.
‘I know some of my colleagues would prefer a clean break – that we should walk away from the negotiating table and move towards a relationship based on World Trade Organisation rules,’ he writes. ‘I respect their position but I can’t share it. It is undeniable that no deal would cause considerable dislocation and disruption in the short term.’
And he warns those pushing for a soft Brexit, such as his ally Nick Boles, to think again and back the PM’s proposal.
Mr Gove warns that a Norway-style deal, inside the single market, ‘would mean less freedom to decide our laws, less control over our borders and we would still be sending significant sums to Brussels every year.’ He adds: ‘It’s better than EU membership, but worse than this deal.’
In an article for the Guardian last night, Mr Austin, who is Labour MP for Dudley North, said: ‘It is clearly not a perfect deal, but there was never going to be a perfect deal. My constituents voted to leave. They expect us to sort this out and we in the Labour party need to think carefully before rejecting it.’
He added: ‘It is very unlikely that voting the deal down would bring about the general election Labour members desperately want to see.’ 
 
The EU last night warned it was prepared to play hardball over any request for a Brexit delay.
Warning that Britain would need ‘credible justification’ for extra time, EU leaders said the UK was now closer to a No Deal Brexit than ever before – with no guarantees that an extension to avoid a cliff-edge exit would even be granted.
It is likely that any request for a delay could come with significant conditions attached. Following the second crushing defeat of Theresa May’s deal last night, the bloc’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier led the warnings that Britain should not automatically expect an extension if it asks for one.
He tweeted: ‘The EU has done everything it can to help get the withdrawal agreement over the line. The impasse can only be solved in the UK. Our No Deal preparations are now more important than ever before.’
A spokesman for EU Council president Donald Tusk said: ‘On the EU side we have done all that is possible to reach an agreement... If there is a solution to the current impasse it can only be found in London.’
Warning Britain would need to set out a cast-iron plan if it was to persuade the remaining EU27 leaders to grant an extension, the spokesman added: ‘With only 17 days left until March 29 [when Britain leaves], today’s vote has significantly increased the likelihood of a No Deal Brexit.
‘The EU27 will expect a credible justification for a possible extension and its duration. The smooth functioning of the EU institutions will need to be ensured.’
The Commons will tomorrow decide whether to instruct Theresa May to seek an extension of Britain’s EU membership in a bid to resolve the deadlock. If approved, it means a summit of EU leaders in Brussels next week – just eight days before the UK is due to leave – could become one of the most important in Britain’s history for its future relationship with the bloc.
It is expected that this is when the EU27 leaders will decide whether to grant Britain an extension and how long for. All 27 leaders must agree unanimously on granting an extension and on the length, with member states understood to be split over whether to permit a short or long one.
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said: ‘The Dutch government will keep working tirelessly to make sure the damage for the Netherlands and Dutch citizens living and working in the UK is minimised in the now more likely case of a No Deal Brexit.
‘Should the UK hand in a reasoned request for an extension, I expect a credible and convincing justification.’
A statement from the European Commission differed slightly from the EU Council’s, saying the Commons vote had ‘increased the likelihood of a No Deal Brexit or the possibility of a no-Brexit’.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has already warned any extension beyond May 22 would mean Britain being ‘legally required’ to hold costly EU Parliament elections, which begin the following day. It puts Mrs May in a tricky position as EU leaders are unlikely to believe Britain could sort out the Brexit chaos in just six weeks, unless she drastically changes her negotiating position.
Today EU officials, including Mr Juncker, will debate the result and the way forward in Strasbourg, where the EU Parliament is sitting this week. Meanwhile member state ambassadors will discuss the way forward in Brussels in an emergency meeting.
Mr Juncker has already ruled out any further changes to the deal, meaning the focus will be on any potential extension.
Senior EU sources last night said they believe a short extension is the most likely scenario, but that there were no guarantees. They said that up until now, in-depth discussions between EU leaders about what to do in the event of such a request have not yet been extensive enough.
Preparations are said to be under way for a delay of up to a year in the event Britain decides to hold a general election or another referendum. But under any other circumstances there are doubts as to whether the EU27 would unanimously agree on a longer extension, with member states said to be split.
Some fear an extension beyond May 22 could disrupt the bloc’s decision-making process, with Britain continuing to take up key posts and seats in the EU Parliament.
One senior EU source said: ‘It’s unpredictable at the moment... At this point it still could be no extension, or extension until EU elections, but I would think a longer extension is less likely.
‘Whoever tells you he or she knows either way is an untrustworthy source.’
Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker have laid down the gauntlet to Theresa May's successor as they said the Brexit divorce deal cannot be changed but the terms of the future EU/UK relationship could be amended. 
Mr Tusk, the President of the European Council, said it remained the EU's ambition to avoid a 'disorderly Brexit' and that he looked forward to meeting with Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt depending on who emerges victorious in the race for Number 10. 
But he and Mr Juncker put the bloc on a collision course with the two leadership rivals as they both reiterated that the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be changed. 
However, Mr Tusk said that if Britain softened its negotiating red lines, potentially by seeking a closer pact built on a customs union, then the EU would be open to changing the proposed future relationship between the two sides. 
Both Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson have pledged to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and make changes to it in order to secure the backing of a majority of MPs. 
Neither man is likely to pivot towards pursuing a customs union given such a move would provoke widespread fury among Brexiteers on the grounds it would likely rob the UK of having its own trade policy.
The comments from Mr Tusk and Mr Juncker, combined with the respective stances of Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson, mean the two sides remain locked in a state of Brexit stalemate. 
Boris Johnson's team warned ministers that failing to publicly back him would destroy their careers amid a 'dirty tricks' backlash over the Tory leadership vote, it was claimed today.
One was warned that it would be 'a shame if you failed to make progress' by not swapping from a rival candidate quickly enough ahead of yesterday's votes which saw Mr Johnson chosen to face Jeremy Hunt in the final two.
Supporters of Environment Secretary Michael Gove questioned whether Mr Johnson's team arranged for some of the runaway favourite's backers to 'lend' votes to the Foreign Secretary to ensure he got through - something it denies.
Following the elimination of Sajid Javid from the race on Thursday morning with 34 votes, at least five of the Home Secretary's supporters - Chris Philp, Chris Skidmore, Mims Davies, Kevin Foster and Mike Wood - said they would switch to Mr Johnson.
EU leaders convened in Brussels yesterday and today in order to decide who should takeover from Mr Tusk and Mr Juncker as well as a series of other important roles. 
But the EU28 member states were unable to reach an agreement with leaders set to meet again to finalise the plans on June 30. 
Mr Tusk told a press conference in Brussels at lunchtime: 'At the end of our meeting the EU 27 briefly came back to the issue of Brexit. 
'We have agreed on the following united approach of the EU27.
'We look forward to working together with the next UK prime minister. 
'We want to avoid a disorderly Brexit and establish a future relationship which is as close as possible with the UK. 
'We are open for talks when it comes to the declaration on the future UK EU relations if the position of the United Kingdom were to evolve. 
'But the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for renegotiation.'    
 Mr Juncker added: 'There was nothing new, nothing new, because we repeated unanimously that there would be no renegotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement.'
Jeremy Hunt effectively has a fortnight to derail Boris Johnson's march to becoming Tory leader – with the first hustings taking place tomorrow. 
The two candidates face four weeks of campaign events where they will set out their stall to the 160,000 Conservative members who will decide who enters No10.
 But their ballot papers will not be sent out by post until July 6 – meaning Mr Hunt has two weeks to land a knockout blow against the frontrunner. 
The party has organised 16 hustings events across the country – with the first in Birmingham tomorrow afternoon. The final event will be in London on the evening of July 17. 
June 22: West Midlands
June 26: Digital Hustings
June 27:  South (Central)
June 28: South West
June 29: Lakes & Borders
June 29: North West
July 4: Yorkshire & Humber
July 5: North East
July 5: Scotland
July 6: East Midlands
July 6: Wales
July 11: South East
July 12: Gloucestershire
July 13 Cambridgeshire
July 13: Essex
July 17: London
TBC: Northern Ireland
 
 
Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson are now locked in a month-long battle for the keys to Downing Street after they were selected as the final two candidates by Tory MPs.  
Both have advocated similar positions on Brexit in that each of them wants to change the Withdrawal Agreement to make it more palatable to MPs.  
One of the main targeted changes would be to remove the Irish border backstop protocol which Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP believe represents a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK. 
However, the EU has long been adamant that not only can the backstop not be deleted from the Withdrawal Agreement but nothing can be changed within the document. 
Their offer of making changes to the political declaration which sets out the terms of the future relationship between the bloc and Britain will not be enough to win over critics of the deal. 
The offer of improved terms is also based on the assumption that the UK softens its negotiating red lines and asks for a closer relationship built on being in a customs union with the bloc - something Mr Hunt and Mr Johnson are extremely unlikely to countenance. 
 Mr Tusk said the leaders of the 28 member states would meet again on June 30 after discussions on new appointments lasting four hours failed to reach a conclusion.
The leaders talked about the appointments until 1.45am local time (12.45am BST) on Friday at the Brussels summit, before adjourning until the end of the month.
Mr Tusk told a press conference at 2am (1am BST): 'The European Council had a full discussion of nominations, taking into account my consultations and statement made within the European Parliament.
'There was no majority on any candidate. The European Council agreed that there needs to be a package reflecting the diversity of the EU. We will meet again on 30th June.'
 ITV will host a head-to-head debate between Conservative leadership candidates Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt.
The broadcaster has promised to 'get answers to the questions that matter' in its coverage of the two hopefuls to be the next prime minister.
ITV made the announcement following news that Michael Gove had been knocked out of the leadership race leaving Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt competing for votes from the Tory membership.
It comes after the BBC programme featuring the five would-be PMs has been widely condemned after it emerged one of the 'ordinary voters' posting questions was an imam who had previously posted vile tweets about Israel.
Mr Juncker, asked why he expected it would be easier to get a deal on the package of top jobs later in the month, replied: 'I don't expect that, but it has to be done.'
Theresa May left the summit on Friday morning after holding a one-to-one bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The PM also dropped in to the UK Permanent Representation to the EU to talk to staff. 
Mrs May - who had expected the summit to be her last as Prime Minister but she will now have to return again on June 30 - said as she arrived yesterday that she would play a 'constructive role' in the discussions.
Earlier, Mr Tusk said that while he had been 'cautiously optimistic' about making progress, he had become 'more cautious than optimistic'.
The leaders discussed who should take over from Mr Tusk and Mr Juncker, amongst other roles.
It was hoped a new European Council president, European Commission president, European Central Bank president and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy would be decided in the talks.
Discussions on the first day of the summit also focused on climate change, disinformation, the long-term EU budget and external relations. 
The main political groupings in the Parliament have nominated candidates, including German MEP Manfred Weber, for the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), and former Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans, for the Party of European Socialists (PES).
The liberal group has put forward a 'Spitzen Team' made up of figures including European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt and Danish EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
However, Emmanuel Macron is thought to favour appointing the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, to the role of European Commission president, limiting Germany's power in the bloc which would grow if Mr Weber became Commission president. 
Tory Remainers joined Boris Johnson in launching a searing attack on Theresa May's Brexit strategy today.
The Prime Minister is facing a pincer movement from both wings of her party after the former foreign secretary accused her of flying the 'white flag' in negotiations with the EU.
Europhile former minister Justine Greening piled in to jibe that the Chequers plan was 'more unpopular than the poll tax'.
However, Downing Street hit back that critics of the premier's blueprint - which would see the UK follow EU rules on goods and collect some taxes for the bloc in order to avoid friction at the borders - had 'no new ideas'.
Mr Johnson also came under fire from some angry senior figures who branded him a 'great charlatan'. 
In his latest incendiary intervention, Mr Johnson complained that the UK was 'lying flat on the canvas' in negotiations with Brussels, insisting Mrs May had 'not even tried' to play hardball.
Mr Johnson, who resigned over the Chequers compromise along with former Brexit secretary David Davis, wrote in his Telegraph column that the negotiations were a 'fix' which could only lead to victory for Brussels.   
The Tory heavyweight compared withdrawal negotiations between Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and the EU's Michel Barnier to a rigged wrestling match.
He said: 'Out of their corners come Dominic Raab and Michel Barnier, shrugging their shoulders and beating their chests - and I just hope you aren't one of those trusting souls who still thinks it could really go either way.
'The fix is in. The whole thing is about as pre-ordained as a bout between Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy; and in this case, I am afraid, the inevitable outcome is a victory for the EU, with the UK lying flat on the canvas and 12 stars circling symbolically over our semi-conscious head.'
Mr Johnson accused 'some members' of the Government of deliberately using the Irish border situation to 'stop a proper Brexit' and effectively keep Britain in the EU.
He said that the real 'scandal' was 'not that we have failed, but that we have not even tried' on Brexit.
The blistering intervention comes as Mrs May faces growing opposition on Tory benches to the Chequers Cabinet compromise on the Brexit strategy which triggered the resignation from the Government of Mr Johnson. 
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
With Parliament returning from recess tomorrow, the PM is facing huge pressure to change course from Tory hardliners - amid claims that election strategist Sir Lynton Crosby is involved in a 'chuck Chequers' campaign.
But the PM's spokesman shot back: 'Boris Johnson resigned over Chequers. There are no new ideas in this article to respond to.
'What we need is serious leadership with a serious plan - that is exactly what this country has with this prime minister and this Brexit plan.'   
Mr Barnier has stated he 'strongly opposes' the UK plan because 'cherry-picking' would mean the end of the European project.
But Mr Johnson said Britain faced getting 'two thirds of diddly squat' for its divorce bill.
He said: 'They may puff about 'cherry-picking' the single market. There may be some confected groaning and twanging of leotards when it comes to the discussion on free movement. 
'But the reality is that in this negotiation the EU has so far taken every important trick.
'The UK has agreed to hand over £40 billion of taxpayers' money for two thirds of diddly squat.
'We will remain in the EU taxi; but this time locked in the boot, with absolutely no say on the destination. We won't have taken back control - we will have lost control.'
The comments followed claims from former Brexit secretary David Davis that Mrs May had positioned herself for 'open sesame' on further Brexit climbdowns after saying she would not be pushed into compromises 'that are not in our national interest'.
Mr Davis warned that the Chequers blueprint was 'actually almost worse than being in' the EU.
But he insisted today that Mrs May should not be forced to resign for putting forward 'wrong' proposals - and took an apparent swipe at Mr Johnson by criticising 'personality' politics. 
Asked if Mrs May should resign, he said: 'No, we don't need any more turbulence right now. What matters in all of this is not the personality politics, it's the outcome at the end.'
Home Secretary Sajid Javid also joined in the criticism.
He told a press conference in London: 'The thing that is helpful is for us all to support the Prime Minister with her plan and make sure it is getting affair hearing with the EU.
'And those who think there is a different way then they need to properly set out what alternatives there might be.
'But right now this is a plan that has been put forward by the UK Government and it is still being considered by all the bits that make up the EU and let's see what they say.
'But that is the plan and that is the one that everyone should be uniting behind.' 
Senior Tory backbencher Sarah Wollaston laid into Mr Johnson more bluntly on Twitter.
'No surprise to see the great charlatan blaming others for a mess of his own creation. 
Damian Green, a close ally of Mrs May and her former deputy, complained that Mr Johnson was not being 'serious'.
'I don't think using words like surrender and so on is cogniscant of the seriousness of the situation.
'These are hugely important months for the future of the country and its prosperity.' 
He insisted Mrs May's position was 'difficult but not impossible' .
'We're walking a narrow path with people chucking rocks at us from both sides,' he said. 
Mr Green said he believed the Chequers plan would end up winning support. 
'Everyone is going to have to face the fact that the British Government has got a plan... no-one else in the EU has suggested a plan that is in any way workable,' he said. 
One Tory Remainer told The Times they were being privately assured that the Chequers plan would be softened further.
'They are telling me, 'We know this is difficult. We know we may have to move further.' 
Joining the attack on Mrs May, Ms Greening - who has urged a second referendum on Brexit - said 'no one wants' her plan.
'The Chequers deal is now more unpopular with the British people than the poll tax was,' she told BBC Radio 4's World at One. 
'The PM cannot waste the next two months shuttling around Europe pretending nothing has changed, trying to land a deal no-one wants.'
Fellow Europhile Nick Boles said Mrs May's proposals were almost certain to end in 'humiliation'.
'This is the first time I have broken with my Prime Minister but she is wrong on this,' he said.
'She has not succeeded, let's be clear, but we have a prime minister and I want her to deliver a better Brexit - the kind of Brexit I have set out in my plan.'
Mr Boles said: 'We can't get to Nirvana in one step. I'm suggesting we reject the current withdrawal plan in its entirety.'
He added his proposal for parking Britain in the European Economic Area while a future trade arrangement was finalised represented 'a much superior option'.
'What I want is a plan that's workable,' he added, not a 'humiliation' by the EU. 
Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the influential European Research Group of Tory MPs, said the Chequers plan was 'certainly not' the best way forward.
Mr Rees-Mogg, in Brussels for the Brexit Select Committee's meeting with Michel Barnier, told Sky News there were 'hundreds of suggestions' for the basis of a deal with the EU and 'it's a question of choosing which of the many is the best'.
'It is certainly not Chequers,' he said. 
In more evidence of Cabinet tensions yesterday, International Development Secretary Liam Fox took a swipe at the Treasury over gloomy predictions on the consequences of a no-deal scenario.
Dr Fox told the BBC: 'Can you think back in all your time in politics where the Treasury have made predictions that were correct 15 years out, I can't, they didn't predict the financial crisis that happened, no-one could.
'So this idea that we can predict what our borrowing would be 15 years in advance is just a bit hard to swallow.
'To say what a GDP figure would be 15 years ahead is not a predictive power that I've known the Treasury to have in my time in politics ... I don't believe it is possible to have a 15-year time horizon on predictions on GDP.' 
OPPOSED 
Former Cabinet ministers Boris Johnson and David Davis, who both quit over the details of the plan.
Tory Brexiteers, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, who insist it will leave Britain worse off than remaining a member.
Tory Remainers, such as Justine Greening, who complain it means Britain leaves the single market and customs union, threatening jobs and trade.
Labour, who say it fails their six tests to ensure the Brexit deal has the 'exact same benefits' of staying in the single market.
The EU Commission, whose negotiator Michel Barnier has said the plan undermines the single market and would destroy the EU. 
French President Emmanuel Macron, who said while he wants a strong relationship with Brexit Britain, it cannot come at the cost of the EU unravelling.
IN FAVOUR 
Prime Minister Theresa May, who says the Chequers plan delivers on the Brexit vote while offering a good deal for both Britain and the EU.
Former Cabinet ministers Amber Rudd and Damian Green, who are Theresa May loyalists and desperate to prop her up against rampant Brexiteers.
Tories in the Brexit Delivery Group of backbench MPs, which is determined to get to exit day without tearing the Conservative Party apart.
Conservative rebels including Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel have joined a backbench campaign to wreck Theresa May's Brexit plans, it has emerged.
The Stand Up 4 Brexit group has apparently recruited around 20 Tory MPs including the ex-Cabinet ministers in an effort to sink the PM's Chequers compromise.
Mrs May's limited control of the House of Commons means even a small rebellion from her own backbenchers could prompt a government defeat.
Stand Up 4 Brexit's aims include the end of free movement and opposing plans to keep Britain aligned with EU standards on goods, The Times reported.
David Davis, who resigned as Brexit secretary over the Chequers plan, also vowed to vote against Mrs May's proposals.
The PM's plans were 'actually almost worse than being in', he said.
However Mr Davis said he did not believe a change of party leader was needed, following claims that election strategist Lynton Crosby was planning to install Boris Johnson in Downing Street instead.
He said: 'It is absolutely possible to dump Chequers without changing leader and that's the best way to do it.
'Anyone who conflates getting rid of Chequers with changing the leadership is confusing their aims'. 
Theresa May has made a grand overture to urge EU nationals living in Britain not leave after Brexit by telling them directly 'I want you to stay'.
The PM scrambled to try to win over Europeans who have moved to the UK by saying she understands their 'underlying anxiety' at their future when we quit the bloc.
Mrs May said she is 'delighted' to have come back from Brussels with a pledge to guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in Britain.
In an open letter to EU nationals, she said she was 'proud' they had chosen to live in the UK and that she wanted them to stay after Brexit on the terms agreed in Brussels.
The missive is a follow-up to one sent by the Prime Minister in October when she told the 3.3million Europeans living in Britain they would be allowed to stay regardless of the outcome of talks. 
The letter was released as Mrs May was grilled by MPs on the terms of her divorce deal in a marathon session at the Commons Despatch Box.  
In the letter to EU citizens, the  PM wrote: 'I greatly value the depth of the contributions you make - enriching every part of our economy, our society, our culture and our national life.
'I know our country would be poorer if you left and I want you to stay.'
She told EU citizens their rights would be written into UK law through a Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill.
Britain is facing demands to push back the date that new EU migrants can arrive to 2021 in return for a two-year transition deal, it emerged last night.
EU negotiators plan to demand this later 'cut-off date' during the next phase of negotiations, in return for the transition deal wanted by the Prime Minister.
The ultimatum risks infuriating Brexiteers who insist leaving should mean regaining control of the UK's immigration system.
The divorce deal agreed by Theresa May last week proposes a cut-off date of March 2019, after which new EU migrants would lose the automatic right to reside in the UK on a long-term basis.
British officials insist the issue has been largely settled in negotiations but the EU believes that the date can be pushed back further.
A European Commission report said: 'The ''specified date'' should, in the Commission's view, be defined not as the date of the United Kingdom's withdrawal, but as that of the end of the transitional period. 
And she said that - controversially - their rights will be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice for eight years.
She pledged that a new system to apply for settled status would  be up and running next year and cost £72.50 for a standard adult version.
Mrs May went on: 'So right now, you do not have to do anything at all. 
'You can look forward, safe in the knowledge that there is now a detailed agreement on the table in which the UK and the EU have set out how we intend to preserve your rights - as well as the rights of UK nationals living in EU countries.
'For we have ensured that these negotiations put people first. That is what I promised to do and that is what I will continue to do at every stage of this process.
'I wish you and all your families a great Christmas and a very happy New Year.'
Earlier, Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov said he would raise the issue of citizens' rights during talks with Mrs May in Number 10.
'We will have the opportunity to speak about Bulgarian representatives who have been residing in Great Britain for over five years, about preserving and maintaining their lifestyle in spite of Brexit obviously taking place,' he said as he met the Prime Minister in Downing Street.
Mrs May finally managed to get EU leaders to sign up to her Brexit deal and move on to trade talks on Friday - days after her initial plans were torpedoes by the DUP.
But some Brexiteers warned they were deeply unhappy that European judges would still be able to hold sway over Britain for a decade after we quit the EU.
While the deal also allowed EU nationals to bring their spouses, parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren, who do not live in the UK, to join them in the future.
And this will extend to future spouses of EU citizens even if they are not yet together.  

In the Commons yesterday afternoon, Mrs May came under fire from Tory Brexiteers as she defended her EU divorce deal.
The PM faced a grilling in the Commons on why she had agreed to hand over up to £39billion to Brussels when the country was still going through austerity.
What is 'full alignment'?
In last week's Brexit deal, Theresa May agreed to keep the UK in 'full alignment' with the EU on issues relevant to Northern Ireland. 
Remainers seized upon the language to say it meant Britain would be closely tied to Brussels, but ministers insist it does not mean Britain will be tied directly to the single market and customs union. 
David Davis said it meant Britain will meet the same 'outcomes' – but not do it 'by just copying what the EU does'.
What is 'divergence'?
Brexiteers warn it would be a disaster to tie Britain too closely to the EU's rules. 
They want to allow for maximum 'divergence' – distance from the EU – so Britain can negotiate better trade deals with non-EU countries. 
However, managing the border between the North and South of Ireland becomes more difficult the more the UK diverges from EU rules. 
For example, if Britain did a US trade deal to allow chlorine-washed chicken into the UK, how can you prevent the chicken being sold into the European market?
What happens next?
Cabinet ministers will consider next week what the UK wants the 'end state' of relations with the EU to look like – that is, how much divergence they will seek.
In theory, the more distance Britain seeks, the more restrictive its trade deal could be. 
The Cabinet's crunch meeting is next Tuesday – expect Remainers to call for less divergence and Brexiteers for more freedom.
Conservative backbencher Philip Davies told Mrs May: 'She said there had been give and take in this negotiation and she is absolutely right - we are giving the EU tens of billions of pounds and they are taking it.'
The PM insisted the government was taking 'responsibility' and insisted the taxpayer would soon see 'significant savings' that could be pumped into key public services.
She also made clear the payment would be 'off the table' if a trade agreement with the EU was not reached
The clashes came as Mrs May was forced to move to appease anger in Dublin after David Davis played down the effect of the painstakingly-assembled deal and suggested it would not be 'legally enforceable'.
The Brexit Secretary was embarrassingly sent out this morning to correct his comments - promising that Britain would stand by the arrangements and they were 'more than legally enforceable'.
The climbdown appears to have defused the row for the time being, with Irish PM Leo Varadkar - who previously insisted the agreement is 'bullet proof' - saying he was 'very happy with the clarification'.
The government is desperate to paper over the cracks at least until after a crucial EU summit later this week, when the bloc's leaders will decide whether to approve the start of trade talks.
Amid fears that the deal has already tied us into 'soft' Brexit, Mrs May told the House that powers over 'borders, money and laws' would be reclaimed.
She was given the benefit of the doubt by many Tory MPs concerned about derailing the Brexit process altogether, but some still voiced significant misgivings about the divorce deal and trade commitments.
Mrs May also had to deny a suggestion from another Tory, Mike Wood, that the UK could face 'punishment payments' in future.
Mrs May said she had never pretended Brexit would be an 'easy process'.
'It has required give and take for the UK and the EU to move forward together. And that is what we have done,' she said.
She insisted that the settlement on a divorce bill of around £39billion represented the UK acting 'responsibly'.
It will mean that soon the government will be sending less to Brussels and would have 'more money to spend on our priorities at home' - such as housing, schools and the NHS.
The PM also warned that the payment would be 'off the table' if a trade agreement with the EU was not reached.

Labour's position on Brexit was plunged into fresh confusion today after John McDonnell said they would try to stay in the single market - contradicting an earlier pledge to leave.
The shadow chancellor ruled  out staying in the single market in June  as it would mean keeping  free movement rules.
But today he said Labour would try to keep Britain in a reformed single market in a fresh signal of the party is trying to push for a so-called soft Brexit.
He said a Labour in government would seek a 'negotiated relationship' to ensure 'tariff-free access' to 'a single market' and 'a customs union'.
Mr McDonnell said: 'What I said is that remaining within the single market would not respect the referendum result.
'What we've been using as the phraseology, a single market, not the single market, and a customs union not the customs union, so therefore a reformed single market or a new negotiated relationship with the single market - and (Sir) Keir was actually putting our position yesterday.'
His comments come after Labour's Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer said Britain should accept 'easy migration' from Europe, swallow EU laws and carry on paying billions to Brussels after Brexit.
The Labour frontbencher suggested the concessions were the necessary price for a trade deal.
He also refused to rule out offering voters a second referendum on whether Britain should leave at all. 

Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Sir Keir said Britain should 'stay aligned' to the EU after Brexit to preserve the benefits of the single market and customs union.
He indicated that the UK could mimic Norway's arrangement with the EU, which involves accepting single market rules and paying a contribution to EU coffers.
The House of Commons library estimates that Norway pays, per capita, about 80 per cent of the UK's contribution.
That could leave Britain with an annual bill of about £8 billion. Sir Keir said staying close to the single market and customs union was necessary to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
The Labour frontbencher said freedom of movement rules would 'have to be negotiated', but added: 'The end of free movement doesn't mean no movement.
'Of course we would want people to come from the European Union to work here, we would want people who are here to go and work in the EU – the basis of that would have to be negotiated.'
Asked if this would mean 'easy movement', if not free, he said: 'Yes, of course.' 
He was immediately accused of trying to 'betray' voters by failing to honour the referendum result. 
Brexit Secretary David Davis said the Labour MP would 'take us back to square one' and fail to get back control of Britain's laws, borders and money.
Mr Davis said: 'Keir Starmer could not have been clearer about what the consequences of Labour's chaotic approach to Brexit would be.
'A Labour Brexit would mean billions of pounds going to the EU in perpetuity, the UK being forced to obey rules over which we have no say and zero control over our borders.
'A Labour Brexit would betray voters and leave this country in the worst possible position.'

 
 
Nigel Farage says Theresa May has banned him from meeting Donald Trump - and has hit back at the Prime Minister for being 'petty' and 'small minded'.
The Brexit Party leader said Number 10 had told the US president's team not to meet him during his state visit – a move he branded 'absolutely ludicrous'.
Mr Farage, who is today in Peterborough to campaign for the constituency's by-election, said that a friend in Washington had informed him that Theresa May's office had told Mr Trump's entourage: 'Don't meet this guy.'
'It's absolutely ludicrous,' Mr Farage said.
'I know they're worried about their Conservative Party but given that I've got good connections to him and many of the team around him and that they're our biggest military ally, intelligence ally, and very important investor in each other's countries.
'Why would you want to prevent a meeting between someone who knows the president well?
'It's just extraordinary, it's small minded, petty and it's not putting the interests of the country first.'
Farage also said that the outcome of the Peterborough by-election will be 'even bigger' than the European elections in which his Brexit Party won 29 seats.
His party is the bookmakers' favourite to win the constituency, which has traditionally been a closely-fought battle between Labour and the Conservatives.
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'Who the President meets during his visit is of course a matter for him.'      
The June 6 by-election was called after Peterborough's previous MP Fiona Onasanya was forced out after she was jailed for lying about a speeding offence.
Onasanya was elected as a Labour MP and was later suspended from the party after she was sentenced.
Mr Farage, speaking at a packed rally in Peterborough on Saturday, said the by-election is 'the opportunity for the next chapter in this great story' following the European elections.
He said he thought the Brexit Party 'must be doing quite well' as former prime minister Gordon Brown visited Peterborough this week to campaign for Labour.
'It shows you that our political establishment were absolutely mortified by what happened last Sunday (in the European elections),' he said.
'But in some ways what happens here on Thursday (in the by-election) is even bigger.'
He said the Labour Party has a 'very good, well-honed by-election campaign machine' and has been working the ground for 'many months'.
Urging party supporters against complacency, he added: 'Don't underestimate how hard the Labour Party will try.'
Mr Farage also said that if his party's candidate, Mike Greene, a businessman who has appeared on Channel 4's Secret Millionaire, becomes the first Brexit Party MP then 'we will have them on the run'. 
The Brexit Party has not published a manifesto, and Mr Farage was asked about future policies during a Q&A segment.
He said he would be 'on the side of' small businesses, would campaign to get rid of 'ridiculous, expensive vanity projects like HS2' and achieve Brexit.
He added: 'If we don't leave the EU on October 31 in a way that is recognisable to those that voted for Brexit, then I predict the end of a two-party system that now serves nothing but itself and not this country.' 
Asked about Mr Trump's comments that Boris Johnson would be an 'excellent' choice to replace Mrs May as Conservative Party leader, Mr Farage said: 'He obviously likes Boris, and he obviously thinks Boris believes in Brexit.
'Trump is clearly a Brexiteer – he's never made any bones about that, so yeah he likes Boris. He quite likes Jeremy Hunt by the sounds of it too.'
Mr Trump will be in the UK for a three-day visit from June 3-5, and earlier this week said Mr Farage was a 'friend of mine' and a 'good guy'.
The Brexit Party leader said he knew for 'absolute fact' that Mr Trump had been asked to avoid him, telling MailOnline Mrs May was putting 'Conservative Party unity' above the 'national interest'.
It comes after Mr Trump praised Mr Farage and Boris Johnson as 'big powers' and 'friends' in Washington earlier this week, saying he might meet the two of them during his three-day visit.
Claiming the government had urged Mr Trump not to see him, Mr Farage said: 'I have been told that from Washington on very very good source.
'Ask Downing Street to deny it.
'You would have thought given our security relationship, our defence relationship, our trade relationship that if this county has somebody who is a friend of the US president and without doubt the closest connected of anybody in this country that this could be used as a resource.
'And yet the Conservative Party's unity comes first. She is putting the Conservative Party's wellbeing above the national interest in this case - it is a simple as that.
'He has got a difficult balance. The Queen is normally the head of this, he loves the Queen. It is a difficult situation for him.'
Monday, June 3
The Queen, joined by The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall, officially welcome The President and Mrs Trump at Buckingham Palace. Royal Gun Salutes fired in Green Park and at the Tower of London.
Private lunch at Buckingham Palace for the President and First Lady, hosted by Queen with Duke of Sussex
Tour of Westminster Abbey, where President will lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.
Afternoon tea with the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at Clarence House.
Full state banquet at Buckingham Palace
Tuesday, June 4
Business breakfast meeting at St James's Palace with Theresa May and Duke of York.
Talks at No10 Downing Street followed by lunch with Mrs May, and a joint press conference.
President and Mrs Trump host a return dinner at Winfield House, official residence of the US Ambassador.
Wednesday, June 5
National Commemorative Event for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Portsmouth, alongside over 300 D-Day veterans.
On Thursday the US President said he 'may' hold talks with Mr Farage and Mr Johnson, saying: 'Nigel Farage is a friend of mine. Boris is a friend of mine. 
'They are two very good guys, very interesting people.
'Nigel has had a big victory, he has picked up 32 per cent of the vote starting from nothing (in EU elections).
'I think they are big powers over there, I think they have done a good job.'
Mr Johnson is the apparent frontrunner to enter Number 10 this summer after Theresa May resigned, admitting she had failed to deliver Brexit.
But there are deepening divisions between Conservative Party factions over how best to deliver Brexit, with Jeremy Hunt and others warning that trying to force No Deal would be political 'suicide', and Mr Johnson stating that the UK should leave the bloc by the end of October with or without a deal.
When asked if he was supporting Mr Johnson and Mr Farage, Mr Trump said: 'They are friends of mine but I haven't thought about supporting them... I have a lot of respect for both of those men'.
On his previous visit to the UK last July, Mr Trump hailed the qualities of Mr Johnson, who had just resigned as foreign secretary, calling him 'a very talented guy' who would make a 'great prime minister'.
The President said at the time: 'I was very saddened to see he was leaving government and I hope he goes back in at some point. I think he is a great representative for your country.'
Nigel Farage was famously the first senior UK politician to meet Mr Trump after he was elected - and the two were seen posing together by the golden elevator in his New York penthouse.
Boris Johnson urged the EU to get Brexit talks 'off the rocks' today amid claims Theresa May has agreed a deal that could leave Britain paying into Brussels coffers for decades.
The Foreign Secretary demanded movement from the bloc as the Prime Minister faced a backlash over apparently increasing the divorce bill offer to up to £50billion.
The proposal is thought to have been signed of by the Cabinet at a lengthy meeting yesterday, after weeks of tense negotiations with the EU.
It could pave the way for a summit of the bloc's leaders next month to launch trade discussions - although Dublin is still demanding more concessions over the border with Northern Ireland.
Sterling rallied on the news, but there was fury from Brexiteers who accused the PM of 'selling out' to Brussels. Mrs May tried to soothe nerves be repeating her mantra that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed', meaning money will only be paid if there is a trade settlement.
Senior Tories told MailOnline there would have to be a Commons vote on handing such sums to the EU - warning ministers could struggle to secure a majority.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss told MPs today that any 'divorce bill' for Brexit will be contingent on getting a good deal on future trade. 

A recent poll found that as few as 11 per cent of voters would regard paying more than £30billion as acceptable.
Speaking on a visit to Africa this morning, Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson delivered a message to the EU, saying: 'Now is the time to get the ship off the rocks.'
He said: 'We're hoping very much that the offer the prime minister is able to make at that council will be one that guarantees sufficient progress.'

In a round of TV interviews during a visit to Iraq, Mrs May was asked directly whether the UK had agreed how much it would pay the EU.
She replied: "No, we are still in negotiations with the European Union... As the EU themselves have said, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."
Mrs May repeated her call for the UK and EU to "move in step together" to trigger the second phase of Brexit talks, dealing with trade and security, at a crunch summit of member-states' leaders in the European Council on December 14-15.
She is due to meet European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday for crucial talks.
The true scale of the bill may never be known, as payments will be hidden deep in accounts and only paid when they fall due.
Some elements, such as pensions for Eurocrats, will be ongoing for many decades to come. 
Tory grandees suggested they were willing to swallow some ongoing payments to the EU - but insisted they had to be contingent on a trade deal being agreed. 
Former party leader Iain Duncan Smith told the BBC: 'If there is no trade deal, then my view - and I would think the whole of the party's view - would be we don't owe them any money at all. 
EU states have been piling on demands as they realise the scale of the hole about to be left in the bloc's finances by the departure of its second biggest contributor.
The key elements of the divorce demand from Brussels include:
'Because if we don't have that arrangement, than that whole figure that is being bandied around becomes null and void.'
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has previously ruled out any link between the divorce bill and a trade deal, despite Downing Street vowing that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'.
Eurosceptics are reluctant to undermine Mrs May publicly at a key stage in the Brexit process, but they warned that financial commitments would be scrutinised extremely closely. 
'All expenditure of money needs the approval of parilament,' one former minister said. 
Some MPs who backed Remain have said they would also oppose large payments.
In a boost for Mrs May, Brussels sources have hinted that the offer will be enough to persuade the EU to sanction the start of trade talks at a crunch summit next month, provided agreement is also reached on citizens' rights and the Northern Ireland border.
'The deal on the money is there,' said one source.
There was agreement in principle on the divorce bill following a private presentation to a Brexit 'War Cabinet' by the UK's top official Oliver Robbins last week.
A three-point package is then said to have been signed off at full Cabinet yesterday.
Two of the reported points - a pledge to keep the Irish border open and approval for a financial settlement topping £40billion - were little different from what had previously been revealed.
But a proposal to resolve concerns over the future rights of EU citizens living in the UK, by permitting the Supreme Court to refer issues up to the European Court of Justice where it felt unqualified to adjudicate, is likely to prove more contentious. 
One senior Whitehall source dismissed the ITV report it had been agreed by Cabinet as 'nonsense'.
Government sources denied a final deal on the money had been struck and stressed that no figures had been discussed with Brussels. 
Summoned to the Commons, Ms Truss dismissed the reports as 'media speculation', and said that Mrs May had made clear that the remaining 27 EU member states would not be left out of pocket because of UK withdrawal.
But she insisted that any divorce bill would be smaller than the cost of ongoing contributions to EU budgets if Britain remained, telling MPs: 'Whatever happens, we will not be paying anything like what we would have paid as an EU member, and that represents a considerable saving for the taxpayer.' 
Labour veteran Dennis Skinner said Leave supporters in his Bolsover constituency would 'expect me to tell (Ms Truss) that if they've got £60 billion to spare it should go to the National Health Service and social care'.
Mr Bone later said: 'For the first time in my parliamentary career I'm going to agree with (Mr Skinner).
'He is absolutely right: the 60-odd percent of the people in Wellingborough who voted to leave would want to know what we were doing with £60 billion - they would want it spent on the NHS, social care and defence, they would not want it given to the European Union.
Jacob Rees-Mogg told her to 'note the growing concern that Her Majesty's Government seems in these negotiations to be dancing to the tune of the European Commission'.
And he added: 'If she can be certain that after the 29th March 2019 that we will make no payments to the European Union whatsoever in the absence of a full agreement covering trade?'
Ms Truss said: 'Well I can assure (Mr Rees-Mogg) that we are not dancing to anyone's tune, what we care about is the future of Britain's economy, protecting the British taxpayer from excess payments and making sure that we secure a good deal, which is why it's so important that we don't discuss these numbers whilst we're in the middle of a very important negotiation.' 

The UK's improved offer is also contingent on the EU agreeing to a comprehensive trade deal. 

Labour's Emily Thornberry jibed at Damian Green over the ongoing sleaze probe into his behaviour today as the embattled minister stood in at PMQs.
Mr Green filled in for Theresa May, who is visiting the Middle East, and looked nervous as Mrs Thornberry opened her questions by asking if he was 'happy to be held to the same standards in government that he required of others while he was in opposition'.
Mrs Thornberry joked that Mr Green seemed 'perturbed by my line of questioning', adding: 'He needn't worry, I'm not going there.' 
Mr Green, who faces allegations of making inappropriate advances to Tory activist Kate Maltby and that porn was viewed on a computer in his parliamentary office, responded that all ministers should be held to the ministerial code.
As the session continued a new allegation about Mr Green's conduct emerged as it was claimed in the Evening Standard his apparent advance at Ms Maltby came with an offer to help her find a job. 
Mr Green refused to issue a general apology to all people who have been harassed in Westminster. His spokesman was later unable to say whether Mr Green even agreed with Mrs May's earlier apology on similar terms.  
 


A final cash settlement will only be agreed at the end of the process when both sides can see the shape of the future relationship.
The news was denounced by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage as a 'sellout'.
'I have always argued that no deal is better than a bad deal,' he said. 
'Make no mistake about it - 55billion euros to leave the EU is a very, very bad deal.' 
He told ITV's Good Morning Britain: 'They owe us money, we morally owe them money. 
'Let's call it quits. It's time for us to simply walk away.' 
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the two sides were 'still working' on an agreement. 
Speaking at a security conference, in Berlin today, Mr Barnier described the reports as 'rumours'.
'There is a subject on which we are continuing to work - despite the claims or rumours in the press today, that's the issue of financial engagements,' Barnier said.
'We are not going to have 27 (EU members) pay for what was decided by 28, it's as simple as that. So we want to settle the accounts,' he said.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, a prominent Leave supporter during the referendum, refused to be drawn on the figures this morning, but insisted the government was merely meeting the UK's 'obligations'.
Mr Grayling said the government would not 'walk away from' its obligations to the EU.
'We've been very clear that we will meet our obligations as a member of the European Union as we leave,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'We don't want to walk away on bad terms, we don't want to walk away from obligations that we built up during our membership. 
'Our goal is to be good friends and good neighbours with the European Union and to trade freely with the European Union, to carry on as friends.'
He added: 'The price is meeting the obligations that we built up, no more, no less than that. 
'I don't think people in this country would expect us to just walk away from things we've already said we'd pay for.' 
Mrs May is hoping the offer will trigger a breakthrough next month when EU leaders gather in Brussels to decide whether 'sufficient progress' has been made on divorce issues to allow talks to turn to trade.
But ministers remain concerned about progress on what will happen to the border in Ireland, where Dublin is making increasingly belligerent demands.
A breakthrough on trade talks would ease Tory concern about the size of the divorce bill. 
Former international development secretary Priti Patel this week said the PM should have told Brussels to 's** off' rather than pay up.
But former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who was also critical of increasing the offer, last night struck a conciliatory tone, saying: 'I would be very happy if they get to a point where they have agreed and can get on to trade negotiations.'
Speaking in Australia yesterday, the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox also struck an upbeat note, saying: 'We believe that we've gone far enough to be able to get into this second stage.'
The apparent breakthrough follows a lengthy stalemate in negotiations. EU sources last night claimed the UK had agreed to a formula that could see the final bill hit £53 billion. But British sources suggested the settlement could be below £40 billion.
A final offer on the payment will be presented by the PM during a key lunch with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker next week.
After Mr Juncker and the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier consider the offer, EU leaders will then decide whether to give the green light to trade talks at a summit in Brussels on December 14.
Mr Barnier hinted at the breakthrough earlier this week when he said: 'The moment of truth is approaching.' In an attempt to obscure the exact size of the bill, British officials are understood to have presented a complex payment method that will ensure the money is not paid off in one large sum.
Although the agreed methodology does not produce a specific figure, British sources last night said that it could result in a final payment in line with the £40billion (€45billion) offer that has been signed off by the Cabinet.
Responding to the move, one EU diplomat said: 'As long as they agree to pay it, it does not matter whether there is a figure attached.' Another told the Financial Times: 'They have promised to cover it all, we don't care what they say their estimate is.'
But a UK source close to the negotiations insisted that 'nothing has been agreed' even though the UK team had presented their proposals. They said: 'These talks are ongoing and the idea that there is a number or an agreement is not right.'
Intense under-the-radar talks will continue between UK and EU officials over the coming days.
Soon after the breakthrough was announced, the pound recovered on currency markets.
Sterling spiked $1.33 against the dollar as traders piled into the currency. It also closed above €1.12 against the euro.        
Nigel Farage was last night accused of attention-seeking after he suggested there should be a second Brexit referendum.
The former Ukip leader said he was increasingly persuaded that another vote would 'kill off' attempts by die-hard Remainers to keep the country in the EU.
And he argued the Leave side would win by an even bigger margin if the referendum was run again. But fellow Brexit supporters accused Mr Farage of an attention-seeking stunt to boost his own profile – and said it was a 'belated Christmas present' for Europhiles.
Former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'It is ridiculous, he is such a preposterous self-publicist.
'He doesn't get much coverage any more, nobody is really interested in what he has to say, he has slipped off the radar.' During a visit to Brussels on Monday, Mr Farage rejected the idea of a second referendum, saying: 'We wish to govern our own country. End of.'
But yesterday he suggested another vote could ensure Brexit is not thrown off course. Appearing on Channel 5's The Wright Stuff, he said: 'My mind is actually changing on all this.
'What is for certain is that the Cleggs, the Blairs, the Adonises will never ever, ever give up. They will go on whingeing and whining and moaning all the way through this process.
'So maybe, just maybe, I'm reaching the point of thinking that we should have a second referendum on EU membership.'
He added: 'We would kill it off for a generation. The percentage that would vote to leave next time would be very much bigger than it was last time round.
'And we may just finish the whole thing off. And Blair can disappear off into total obscurity.'
Project fear was resurrected yesterday when London's Labour mayor used a taxpayer-funded report written by a Jeremy Corbyn ally to claim Brexit could cost 500,000 jobs.
Sadiq Khan said 'independent analysis' showed Britain 'could be heading for a lost decade of lower growth and lower employment'. But he faced accusations of scaremongering as critics questioned the objectivity of the firm commissioned to produce the report.
The non-executive directors of economic analysts Cambridge Econometrics include Richard Murphy, who is credited with creating the basis for the Labour leader's economic policies. Gareth Bacon, leader of the Tory group in the London Assembly, said: 'The fact is, the economic collapse that Remainers like Sadiq Khan predicted would happen immediately after the referendum, has not occurred.'
Professor Patrick Minford, chairman of the Brexit-supporting Economists for Free Trade, said: 'These ridiculously pessimistic studies are the latest attempts to use taxpayers' money to pump life into Project Fear.'
According to the study, if Britain leaves the EU without a trade deal the country faces nearly £50billion less investment by 2030. Mr Khan said Britons 'have a right to know the likely impact of the various options the Government are considering on their lives and personal finances'.
However, Mr Farage later attempted to backtrack, claiming a second referendum might be 'unavoidable' in an article for the Daily Telegraph. Nevertheless, anti-Brexit campaigners gleefully celebrated his remarks. Sir Nick Clegg tweeted: 'I agree with Nigel.' Lord Adonis added: 'Bring it on.'
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, a leading supporter of pro-EU campaign group Open Britain, said: 'For perhaps the first time in his life, Nigel Farage is making a valid point.' However, Theresa May firmly slapped down the idea. The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'As I have said many times, we will not be having a second referendum.'
Tory MP Crispin Blunt asked: 'Has he gone mad? The people have taken the decision.'
Fellow Tory Paul Masterton asked Mr Farage on Twitter to 'save us all from your pathetic cries for attention'. Henry Bolton, the current Ukip leader, added: 'The party opposes a second referendum. To hold such a referendum would be to call into question the decisive importance of the largest democratic exercise ever held by this country.'
The party's treasurer John Bickley called the call for another vote 'idiotic and a betrayal of 17.4million Leave voters'. 'Also, it's dumb politics and a belated Christmas present for Remain,' he said.
n Tory donor Peter Stringfellow yesterday said he was turning his back on the party in protest over Brexit. The nightclub owner told the London Evening Standard: 'I can't live with the fact that I'm supporting a party that is totally against what I think is good for our country.'
Nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow has ditched the Tories party in protest over Brexit.
Stringfellow, who has previously donated to the party, said he was concerned the government was doing damage by taking the country out of the EU.
But he made clear he did not regard Jeremy Corbyn as an acceptable option, and would be supporting the Liberal Democrats. 
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Mr Stringfellow said: 'I'm quitting the Tories unless they change their direction and lead us towards Remain.
'I can't live with the fact that I'm supporting a party that is totally against what I think is good for our country.'


I never thought I would write these words: I agree with Nigel Farage on Europe. He has come round to accepting the need for a referendum at the end of the Brexit negotiating process, albeit for motives quite different from mine. But there is a common thread: we agree that we need, as a country, to try to draw a line under this endless, rancorous, divisive, energy-sapping debate.
If the public endorses Brexit in such a vote, then the Remoaners (like me) will have to commit to accepting the outcome and strive to make Brexit work.
If the deal is rejected, and the public decide they prefer to stay in, then we must all strive to make EU membership work in a reformed EU, taking into account any concerns which have surfaced from the Brexit side of the debate.
What is, I think, helping the referendum movement to gather momentum is the growing sense that we shall finish up with a messy and unsatisfactory compromise which will create widespread dissatisfaction.
Because Theresa May has ruled out continuing membership of the single market and customs union, and an association agreement all those Remainers who had reconciled themselves to a ‘soft’ Brexit will be seriously disappointed. There will, in all probability, be a Canadian-type tariff agreement which will provide for much less market access than we currently enjoy; will lead to extensive border friction including in Ireland; and offer little to services industries including the City of London. If there is no vote and Government pushes through such an unsatisfactory deal – paying a lot of money to be part of a trade arrangement greatly inferior to the present one – the Remoaners will continue to moan. Meanwhile the authentic Brexiteers, like Nigel Farage, will complain the outcome is not what they fought all these years for. Far from taking back control, it is likely Britain, in a transition and after, will follow EU rules while having no say in setting them.
I am struck by the growing number of people who are emerging from different standpoints to get behind demands for a vote on the final deal. On the Tory side, there was a thoughtful piece recently from (Baroness) Camilla Cavendish, formerly head of the Downing Street Policy Unit, arguing the Conservative Party’s long term interests lie in securing the best deal available and then legitimising it in a referendum.
Michael Heseltine, never previously a supporter of referendums, now advocates one as a Remainer. Although Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t want to discuss Brexit for fear of opening up further divisions in his party, Labour figures such as Sadiq Khan, David Miliband and Tom Watson (and Tony Blair) have been open to the idea of a referendum. And, outside politics, Gary Lineker, J. K. Rowling, Richard Branson and scholars A. C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins have come forward as advocates for a rethink.
While the risk of a chaotic ‘no deal’ Brexit is lower now than last year, the prospect of a steady, slow drain of investment and decline persists. The spectre of a transition under EU rules; attempts at convergence on EU terms; a large divorce payout rather than money for the NHS: all of these will make many Leave voters wonder whether it was all worthwhile. 
The Conservative-leaning press will make a brave attempt to portray whatever is agreed, however unsatisfactory, as a great triumph. But committed Brexiteers will argue that a half-baked Brexit will inhibit the sense of national renewal which could result from ‘proper’ Brexit.
I have never been a referendum enthusiast. It is not a good way to make big, complicated decisions. But this is how the Brexit process was launched and I fear the already tenuous position of elected politicians would be further undermined if Parliament sought to frustrate ‘the will of the people’ without a further popular mandate.
The Lib Dems have led calls for the public to have the final say between accepting the Government’s path, or taking an exit from Brexit. I am happy to sit down with Nigel Farage and the growing numbers favouring a referendum to discuss how this one can work. It must be framed not in the interests of opportunistic party management as in 1975 and 2016, but as a way of bringing a divided country together.
Jacob Rees-Mogg today urges hardline Eurosceptics to back Theresa May or face losing Brexit altogether as up to 20 hardcore Brexiteers could swing behind her deal if she agrees to quit tonight.
Writing in the Daily Mail, he says fellow Leavers have to face the 'awkward reality' that Remainers will thwart the 2016 referendum result unless the EU withdrawal agreement is passed.
Mr Rees-Mogg admits that his change of heart will prompt accusations of treachery from some of his followers but told them: 'Half a loaf is better than no bread'.
But he says the Prime Minister's plan is now the only way to ensure Britain leaves the EU and wrote: 'I apologise for changing my mind. By doing so I will be accused of infirmity of purpose by some and treachery by others. I have come to this view because the numbers in Parliament make it clear that all the other potential outcomes are worse and an awkward reality needs to be faced.'
Theresa May has been told directly that for Brexiteers including Boris Johnson to support her deal she will need to promise Tory MPs she will quit before the second stage of EU talks later this year. Mrs May will address Tory MPs at a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee tonight.
Her chief whip Julian Smith reportedly believes that 20 or more rebels could be ready to switch sides while former minister Iain Duncan Smith is said to be hoping to broker the resignation deal and said last night: 'There is a pretty good chance the deal is going to get through'. 
Senior Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom was lukewarm today when asked if she thinks Theresa May should stay on as Prime Minister and said she is 'not going to express a view' on whether she should resign for votes.
She said: 'I'm fully supporting the prime minister to get us out of the European Union. What happens after that is a matter for the prime minister'.
Mr Rees-Mogg's intervention came as the number of Eurosceptics reluctantly backing Mrs May threatened to turn from a trickle into a flood.
2pm: Debate on how to organise the indicative votes begins. It will be the first time ever MPs have control of the agenda.
3pm: Votes to finalise the rules of indicative votes. This is set to say MPs will use a ballot paper to vote yes or no on a series of Brexit plans all at once. This can be amended to the rules could change.
3.15pm: Debate on the plans will start proper. Ideas are thought likely to include a soft Brexit, hard Brexit and a No Deal on April 12. It is unclear whether the Government will put its own deal into the mix.
7pm: The Commons will be suspended for 30 minutes so MPs can fill in and file their ballot papers.
7.30pm: Voting closes. MPs are due to spend up to 90 minutes debating the change to the law on Brexit Day. It is a technical change as EU law has already postponed it from March 29.
9pm: Speaker John Bercow will announce how MPs have voted on each Brexit plan. Anything which gets more than about 315 votes will have a rough majority in the Commons. It is possible the House could vote strongly in favour of nothing - or multiple contradictory plans.  
Seven Conservative MPs who voted against her plan earlier this month yesterday said they were changing their minds.
And last night Boris Johnson gave the strongest hint yet that he could also fall into line, saying: 'If we vote it down again there is an appreciable and growing sense we will not leave at all. That is the risk.'
Former Tory leader and Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith said last night there was now a good chance of Mrs May winning the 'meaningful' vote.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said the Government hopes to be able to bring Theresa May's Brexit deal back to the Commons this week.
Mrs Leadsom told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think that there is a real possibility that it does. We are completely determined to make sure that we can get enough support to bring it back.'
She added: 'The Prime Minister said she is working hard, as many colleagues are, to persuade colleagues to support it.'
Mrs Leadsom refused to be drawn on whether the Prime Minister should commit to standing down once the Withdrawal Agreement is passed in order to win over wavering MPs.
'I am fully supporting the Prime Minister to get us out of the European Union,' she said.
Asked if Mrs May should stand down after that, she said: 'I think that is a matter for her. I am not expressing a view.'
The shift in momentum came as Remainers – led by Tories Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles and Labour's Yvette Cooper – prepared to seize control of the Brexit process today in a bid to push through a soft departure.
MPs tabled a blizzard of amendments for consideration in today's 'indicative votes' in the Commons.  
Options include revoking Article 50, which would effectively cancel Brexit, holding a second referendum and locking the UK into a single market and customs union.  The latter would require Britain to accept free movement, EU laws and payments to Brussels.
Sir Oliver Letwin, the architect of the plan for the Commons to stage a series of indicative votes on the way forward on Brexit, tioday warned that if Theresa May tried to ignore the outcome, MPs could seek to force her to act.
'If on Monday one or more propositions get a majority backing in the House of Commons, then we will have to work with the Government to implement them,' he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'The way I would hope it would happen under those circumstances is that we would have sensible, workmanlike discussions across the House of Commons and the Government would move forward in an orderly fashion.
'If the Government didn't agree to that, then those who I am working with across the parties will move to legislate to mandate the Government - if we can obtain majorities in the House of Commons and House of Lords for that - to carry that forward.'
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is said to have told the PM that if Parliament does mandate her to pursue a new Brexit route next week if her deal falls then she will break the law if she ignores it.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 27: MPs HOLD INDICATIVE VOTES ROUND ONE:
MPs are set to hold the 'first round' vote choosing their preferred Brexit from options including Norway, a Customs Union, May's Deal and No Deal. They will most likely be able to choose more than one option at this stage, and will write their preferences on pink slips of paper rather than walking through lobbies in the traditional Commons voting method. The top options would then be put forward to another 'round two' vote.
COULD STILL HAPPEN THURSDAY MARCH 28: MAY HOLDS A THIRD MEANINGFUL VOTE ON HER BREXIT DEAL:
May is likely to try and pass her Brexit deal a third time, after the EU offered a Brexit date of 22 May if she does so this week. The Prime Minister will use threats that MPs will take control and force a softer Brexit in an attempt to force Brexiteer rebels and the DUP to finally back her. She may also offer them a date when she will quit in return for their support. Thursday is the most likely day for her vote, but there is a chance she won't hold it if she still does not believe she'll win.
FRIDAY MARCH 29: MPs TAKE CONTROL?
If the PM loses a third vote on her deal, or does not hold one, by Friday the Brexit date is reset until April. MPs and Remainer Cabinet ministers will try and force her towards a softer Brexit. Brexiteer MPs and Cabinet minister will conversely try and push her towards a No Deal exit from the EU. Minister have also claimed that they could call an election if MPs try to force them into a soft Brexit.
MONDAY APRIL 1: INDICATIVE VOTES ROUND TWO:
MPs are expected to rank their preferences for Brexit. When one option is knocked out, MPs second preferences will be counted. For example if a second referendum is knocked out, its supporters can switch to backing a soft Brexit. Parliament would agree to support the final option.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 3: MPs COULD FORCE MAY'S HAND:
If Theresa May refuses to accept MPs preferred Brexit option, they could try to pass new legislation compelling her to do so. 
As No 10 weighed up whether to put the withdrawal agreement to a vote for a third and final time tomorrow:
As chairman of the 80-strong ERG group of Tory MPs, Mr Rees-Mogg has led opposition to the Prime Minister's strategy. He was also a leading figure in the bid to topple her last year, which resulted in a confidence vote that she won.
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner has warned that Labour could have difficulty supporting a plan for a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal.
MPs will consider the motion, tabled in the name of former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, requiring a public vote before ratification of any deal, in a series of indicative votes on Wednesday.
However Mr Gardiner said that if Labour voted for it, it could suggest that they were a 'Remain party' - which was not the case.
He said that under the terms of the motion, any referendum could be a choice between Theresa May's deal or staying in the EU.
'It would be saying we could accept what we have always said is a very bad deal. Therefore it looks as if the attempt to have a public vote on it is simply a way of trying to remain because nobody likes this deal,' he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'To put that up as the only alternative in a public vote and say we will let it go through looks as though you believe that at the end of it Remain would be the result.
'It is not where our policy has been. Our policy is clearly that we would support a public vote to stop no-deal or to stop a bad deal, but not that we would allow a bad deal as long as the public had the opportunity to reject Brexit altogether.
'That implies that you are a Remain party. The Labour Party is not a Remain party now. We have accepted the result of the referendum.'
How tonight's key votes will work...
 ...And the Brexit options that MPs could decide on
Revoke Article 50
Put forward by SNP's Joanna Cherry
Demands that if no deal has been agreed on the day before Brexit that MPs will get the chance to cancel the UK's notice to Brussels it would leave the EU.
Second referendum
Labour ex-foreign secretary Margaret Beckett
States that MPs will not sanction leaving the EU unless it has been put to the electorate for a 'confirmatory vote'.
Customs union
Labour's Gareth Snell
Demands that ministers negotiate a new customs union with Brssels, which would prevent the country being able to strike its own trade deals.
Labour's plan
Jeremy Corbyn
Also includes a comprehensive customs union but with a UK say on future trade deals and close alignment with the single market.
No deal 
Eurosceptic Tory John Baron
Tabled a motion demanding 'the UK will leave the EU on 12 April 2019' without a deal. However, a No Deal Brexit has already been rejected twice by MPs.
Common Market 2.0  
Cross-party group including Tory former minister Nick Boles and Labour's Stephen Kinnock
A soft Brexit that would keep the country in the single market and involve a new customs arrangement, meaning continued freedom of movement and ongoing contributions to the EU budget. Similar to Norway's arrangement with the EU.
Malthouse Compromise 
Nicky Morgan, Jacob Rees-Mogg and DUP's Nigel Dodds
Demands the Brexit deal is changed so the Irish backstop is replaced with 'alternative arrangments'.
Single Market 
Tory former minister George Eustice
Would keep the UK in the European Economic Area (EEA), but unlike the Common Market 2.0 plan would not involve a customs arrangement. Again, similar to Norway's deal. 
Today he cautions colleagues against believing that removing Mrs May would solve the Brexit crisis.
'A number of Tory MPs think a new leader could swiftly renegotiate but that is almost certainly not true now that Parliament has taken control of the House of Commons timetable,' he writes.
'It would be even harder for a Eurosceptic to manage the current Commons than it is for Mrs May.'
Mr Rees-Mogg, whose backing is subject to support from the DUP, says the agreement negotiated by the Prime Minister 'is a bad one' – and he would rather leave under No Deal, but this was effectively ruled out.
Six other Eurosceptic Tories who have voted against Mrs May's plan said yesterday they would now back it.
They were former Tory vice-chairmen Rehman Chishti and Ben Bradley and MPs Michael Fabricant, Gordon Henderson, Eddie Hughes and Henry Smith. They join a trickle of Brexiteers who have changed their minds in recent days, including former Cabinet minister Esther McVey, James Gray and Daniel Kawczynski.
Privately, ERG sources acknowledge the group is likely to split, with a hard core of 'refuseniks' unwilling to back any deal.
This group includes former Cabinet ministers John Redwood and Owen Paterson, Mr Rees-Mogg's deputy Steve Baker, and Tory grandee Sir Bill Cash. A senior government source last night confirmed that the PM wants to try another vote this week – possibly tomorrow or even Friday – but said she would do so only if she was confident of winning.
'Realistically if we don't get the deal through this week then we are looking at a long delay and participation in the European Parliament elections,' the source said. 'Things are moving, but the numbers are not there yet.'
Hardline Brexiteers – including Sir Bill – yesterday accused Theresa May of exceeding her lawful powers by delaying Brexit beyond this Friday.
They said there were 'serious legal objections' to the agreement made at last week's EU summit to extend the UK's membership.  
Theresa May could be prepared to make clear that she will quit No10 within weeks if Tory MPs agree to back her Brexit deal, ministers believe.
Senior Eurosceptic Conservatives are demanding that she names a date for her departure when she appears before the 1922 Committee of backbenchers at 5pm today.
Last night one close ally of the PM told the Mail that they believed she could now agree to leave Downing Street 'if it were in the national interest and she finally got this thing through'.
However, the ally warned it would be her 'last move' and she would only agree to go if it was clear the deal would pass.
Ten Brexiteers, including European Research Group chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg, have now said they could back the deal if it comes back to the Commons regardless of Mrs May's intentions. 
They fear that moves by former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour's Hilary Benn – who have organised a series of indicative votes in the Commons today – will result in a much softer Brexit, a long delay to leaving the EU or no Brexit at all. 
But a larger group are holding out until an announcement from the PM of a firm date when she will go.
Behind the scenes, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith was yesterday said to be 'actively encouraging' Brexiteer MPs to back the deal on the basis of a discreet promise by Mrs May to go if it passes.
He is thought to have proposed the idea at last weekend's Chequers summit and told the PM he could deliver 90 per cent of the ERG's hardline Leavers if she agreed to quit. Mrs May did not rule out the idea but responded sceptically: 'I'm not sure you can get me the numbers.'
Other senior Eurosceptics want the PM to go public with her promise tonight. It comes amid signs Mrs May could call a third Brexit vote as early as tomorrow if she believes she can get enough support for the Withdrawal Agreement.
Tory Nigel Evans, executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, told the BBC last night: 'The Prime Minister will be addressing the 1922 tomorrow at 5pm. I am encouraging her in that speech to give the timetable for her departure.
'A number of Brexiteers are reluctant to support her deal because they think if it gets over the line, she will then say 'Look what I've achieved – I'm staying'. A number of them want to make absolutely certain she's nowhere near the negotiating table when we start talking about the future trade relationship with the EU.
'If the Prime Minister announces a timetable of departure, I think that's going to swing a lot of people behind her deal – we could get it over the line.' 
Dover Tory MP Charlie Elphicke told Kent Online: 'If the deal does get endorsed, it should be on condition Theresa May agrees to stand down. 
What I am clear on is that if we are going to support it, there needs to be a change of negotiating team. I think we need to have a change of leadership and a new face and a new team to take us forward to the future relationship.'
Former education minister Tim Loughton said it was 'inevitable' Mrs May would go but she could leave with her 'head held high' if she got her deal through. 
Cabinet ministers were in talks with the Democratic Unionist Party in Whitehall last night in a last-ditch attempt to win its support – which is seen as necessary before Eurosceptics will fall in line. 
A total of 75 Tories – including half a dozen arch-Remainers – voted against the deal when it was defeated two weeks ago by a majority of 149.
At yesterday's Cabinet meeting ministers, including Commons leader Andrea Leadsom and Treasury chief secretary Liz Truss, pledged their determination and 'resolve to get this done'.
A source said: 'They are pulling out all the stops to try and get colleagues over the line.'
But one Cabinet minister estimated the odds of Mrs May getting the deal through at just 30 per cent. Her allies downplayed expectations, saying 'everything has to fall in place at once' and it wouldn't be clear until lunchtime today what would happen.
Even if she wins over the DUP and most of her backbenchers, Mrs May will still need Labour MPs to back the deal. A group of up to 25 hardline ERG members are seen as 'irreconcilable' – including Sir Bill Cash, Sir John Redwood and former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson.
Some of these argue that they can still secure a No Deal Brexit regardless of a bid by Sir Oliver to try to find a softer deal the Commons can agree to. 
Other Eurosceptic MPs said they were determined to oppose the deal. Dr Julian Lewis, chairman of the Defence Committee, told the Mail: 'The choice revealing itself is one between a clean Brexit or tearing up the result of the referendum.
'It is vital that those of us who believe in Brexit neither 'flag nor fail' in Churchill's immortal phrase, at this decisive stage.'
The Easter recess of parliament may be cancelled as MPs try to get a grip of Brexit, Mrs Leadsom said yesterday.
She stressed Britons would expect MPs to be 'working flat-out'. She told the Commons: 'I have announced the dates for Easter recess. But, as is always the case, recess dates are announced subject to the progress of business.
'We will need time in the House either to find a way forward or to pass the Withdrawal Agreement bill, and I think the country will rightly expect Parliament to be working flat-out in either scenario.' The recess is due to run from April 4 to 23.

I apologise for changing my mind. Theresa May's deal is a bad one, it does not deliver on the promises made in the Tory Party manifesto and its negotiation was a failure of statesmanship.
A £39 billion bill for nothing, a minimum of 21 months of vassalage, the continued involvement of the European Court and, worst of all, a backstop with no end date.
Yet, I am now willing to support it if the Democratic Unionist Party does, and by doing so will be accused of infirmity of purpose by some and treachery by others.
I have come to this view because the numbers in Parliament make it clear that all the other potential outcomes are worse and an awkward reality needs to be faced.
Mrs May ought to have concluded a better agreement but behind the backs of two secretaries of state, David Davis and Dominic Raab, she did not.
The agreement on the table is as it is, and the proposal to replace the backstop with something else, particularly the Malthouse Compromise (a managed No Deal exit — if a deal cannot be agreed) has floundered.
Delay
The EU, in the knowledge that it was dealing with a weak counterparty, has refused to reopen the text and the Government has not been willing to threaten No Deal in any effective way. The late start to No Deal planning and the reluctance to use it in negotiations has been a significant reason for the poor outcome.
Until last week, nonetheless, No Deal remained the default legal option but the Government and the Prime Minister have now ruled this out and with the support of Parliament can now do so.
No Deal is an outcome I would prefer to Mrs May's deal. It would be a fully-leaded Brexit and mere motions in the Commons could not have stopped it.
Indeed, despite a clear majority of MPs opposing such a departure, it would have happened on Friday had Mrs May not used her executive authority as Prime Minister to postpone the day of Brexit.
Once No Deal had been ruled out, it was necessary to examine what would happen in the event of the current agreement not passing. This would lead to a long delay as there is no opportunity of renegotiating anything before the European elections at the end of May. Two years or more is proposed but considering the opposition to Brexit it could be revoked or put to a skewed second referendum.
A long delay would make remaining in the EU the most likely outcome.
If the moral authority of 17.4 million voters and a General Election in 2017 when both main parties committed to respecting the result could not deliver our departure in three years, how strong a mandate would it be after five? Even if the fear of remaining were exaggerated, it would inevitably lead to an even softer Brexit.
It is a sad fact that there is a gulf between Parliament and the people. Fifty-two per cent voted Leave but two-thirds of MPs want to remain. The Lords is even worse with a tiny minority of pro-Leave peers.
After giving people the right to decide, too many politicians felt that the voters gave the wrong answer and must be saved from themselves. Two years further from the referendum would allow for the demands to be watered down again, leaving the UK shackled by a Customs Union or as a Norway-style rule-taker.
If this were all, it could be sensible to take the risk and see if something better turned up. A number of Tory MPs think a new leader could swiftly renegotiate but that is almost certainly not true now that Parliament has taken control of the Brexit timetable.
It would be even harder for a Eurosceptic to manage the current Commons than it is for Mrs May. Even if this could happen, politicians must look at the current constitutional clash and fear for our polity.
The constitution is under attack in three ways. The first is between the Government and the Commons.
This has been encouraged by the Speaker whose noble efforts to allow the Commons to hold the Government to account have gone too far and now seek to take the role of the Government to the legislature.
Recklessness
This is dangerous because the Commons' job is to provide confidence in a Prime Minister who can take decisions for which she or he is accountable.
These decisions ought to be in accordance with manifesto commitments and if there is no confidence in the duly elected Prime Minister, then control ought to return to voters, not to a cabal of MPs who will have random majorities on various issues but no clear leader or mandate.
Separation of powers between Downing Street and the Commons is a crucial part of how we are ruled and a protection against arbitrary government.
Upsetting this balance is unwise to the point of recklessness and the Sir Oliver Letwin takeover proves the point.
Unfortunately, the second breakdown is just as serious. The Government only functions if ministers support a single position or resign, and this has been the reality since the 1830s. There can only be one Government position, otherwise how can it be held to account? How can electors know how power is being exercised if different ministers say the first thing that pops into their heads?
Recently, three Cabinet Ministers failed to back Government policy on the vote to leave the EU without a deal and in a rather jejune fashion ostentatiously abstained.
As they did not resign, this undermines one of the cornerstones of the constitution, making it harder for the Government to function.
Faltering
Any government must be able to get its business done. If it cannot, it is unable to govern. The principle of the separation of powers and of collective responsibility lie at the heart of this.
The great Duke of Wellington was famous for insisting that the Queen's Government must go on and that all responsible politicians have a duty towards such an end, even if it countermands their own piety.
The worst breakdown, though, is between the elected and the electors.
The condescension of politicians who feel that Leave voters were all stupid and ought never to have been allowed to decide something so complicated is tragic.
Ultimately, voters know best and must be trusted. Imperfect as it is, Mrs May's deal gets closer to that than anything else available.
The Withdrawal Agreement has one great virtue. Legally, we would have left and to re-join would mean agreeing to adopt the Euro single currency, Schengen (the abolition of national borders) and no rebate. Such a course would be expensive and hugely unpopular.
The backstop, too, could tie us into rules that we did not like. But outside the EU, it would be a political not a legal matter.
International law is not as clear-cut as EU or domestic law and there is no court to rule between states and international bodies.
Ultimately, Brexit could be delivered upon but it would take longer.
It would need a Commons that wants to use our freedoms and that is willing to insist that the word 'temporary', as applied to the backstop, is genuine.
It needs political leadership and a desire to stop the weak-minded managing of decline and a belief in the UK.
Theresa May's deal is a more faltering step than I want, or feel, could be taken —but at least it is a step forward. 
The Leave campaign's biggest financial backer has blasted the government's Brexit negotiators and claimed the best outcome would be a 'no deal' with Brussels.
Billionaire Peter Hargreaves slammed Theresa May for leaving the talks up to civil servants who 'don't have a clue' and 'haven't made a deal in their lives'.
The 71-year-old, Briton's 12th richest man with a £3.5billion fortune, said those in charge of the UK's departure from the EU were doomed to fail as they 'don't want Brexit'.
'The best option is no deal,' he told  Bloomberg. 'No deal would give us free trade with Europe because the three biggest economies in Europe, outside Britain, are huge exporters to the UK.
'That's Germany, France and Italy. And those three economies would absolutely demand free trade from the EU. I guarantee my entire wealth that we would get free trade.' 
Speaking to Bloomberg, he said: 'The best option is no deal.
'No deal would give us free trade with Europe because the three biggest economies in Europe, outside Britain, are huge exporters to the U.K.
'That’s Germany, France and Italy. And those three economies would absolutely demand free trade from the EU.
'I guarantee my entire wealth that we would get free trade.'
Hargreaves, the founder of financial advice firm Hargreaves Lansdown, was the Leave campaign's biggest individual donor, having given £3.2million to the cause.
The billionaire is now retired and no longer an executive of Hargreaves Lansdown but still owns 30 per cent of its shares.
He said that experienced businesspeople should have been drafted in to negotiate Brexit with the European Union, as opposed to mandarins.
'There isn’t one person on our Brexit team that has a clue,' he added. 'None of them are brave.
'None of them have done a deal. None of them know the art of the deal. 
'They’ve left it to civil servants and not one of them has done anything of any worth in their lives.
'We should have a team that want Brexit and want us out of the EU.'
The trained accountant, who started his firm from his bedroom in 1981, also slammed Jeremy Corbyn.
He said electing the Labour leader as Prime Minister would be 'an absolute, unbelievable, total disaster', causing the pound to crash and entrepreneurs and wealthy families to flee the country.
It comes as a EU diplomat savaged Theresa May's Brexit stance - accusing her of coming up with a plan that is stuck in the Victorian age.
The official said the PM is so indecisive that it is easier to negotiate with Donald Trump.
In a brutal attack on Mrs May's Chequers plan, the ambassador of an EU country said the Prime Minister has come up with a plan which is 'very nostalgic'.
The unnamed diplomat told The Sun said the Brussels bloc has found it incredibly difficult to negotiate with Mrs May because she is 'irrational'.
The blistering put-down comes amid growing fears that Britain will crash out of the bloc without a deal.
UK ministers have said that stubborn Eurocrats are risking a no-deal Brexit because they are refusing to compromise and respond to Britain's plans.
One of the country’s most successful self-made businessmen, Peter Hargreaves created an empire from his spare bedroom.
Now worth more than £3bn, the plain-speaking Lancastrian’s road to riches began at the start of the 1980s after he left his job as an accountant.
He spotted a gap in the market for savers and investors. He believed that by using newsletters he could give investment fund recommendations to customers.
Hargreaves roped in Stephen Lansdown, a friend and fellow accountant who was still working at the company he left behind. After putting in £1,000 each they started to produce their first newsletters.
The company they created, Hargreaves Lansdown, now has 783,000 customers, is worth almost £6bn and runs £59bn worth of savings, pensions and investments. It also employs more than 950 people, most of them in its Bristol HQ.
Hargreaves, who was awarded a CBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours for services to business innovation, financial services and the city of Bristol, claims to be the only person to have founded a FTSE 100 company without borrowing a penny.
Hargreaves stepped down as chief executive in 2010, and left the board last year.
He and his wife Rosemary have been married for 30 years and have a son and a daughter.

One of the country's most influential historians yesterday admitted he had been wrong to endorse the Remain campaign – and should have backed Brexit.
Before the referendum, Professor Niall Ferguson had been one of the most vociferous supporters of Britain staying in the European Union.
He had warned that leaving the EU would be 'the ultimate divorce', dubbing its supporters 'happy morons' and 'Anglo-loonies' who ignored the serious damage that would be done to the economy.
But yesterday, in an astonishing reversal, he said he had been wrong and admitted he – and the rest of the elite – had failed to listen to voters concerned about immigration. Brexit, he said, was the 'revolt' of provincial England.
The 52-year-old, who is a professor at Harvard in the US, also issued a scathing critique of the EU, which he said 'deserved Brexit' after failing on 'monetary union, foreign policy, migration policy, radical Islam policy'.
Speaking at the Milken Institute conference on the future of Europe in London, he said: 'I'm going to do something very unusual on these occasions, I'm going to admit that I was wrong.
'I characterise my 2016 in terms of post-Brexit traumatic stress disorder. I was arguing right up to the referendum for Remain but it's one of the few times in my life I've argued something without wholly believing in it.'
He said he had done so because he 'didn't want the Cameron-Osborne government to fall'. 
With hindsight, he said, David Cameron should have rejected the 'absolutely risible' offer from the EU on migration and backed Brexit as well.
Professor Ferguson then listed the EU's failures over the past decade including the euro, which he said had been a 'disaster for all the reasons we said it would be in the 1990s'.
'It has been a disaster for southern Europe and has only worked for Germany and northern Europe,' he said.
'European security policy, especially with respect to North Africa and the Middle East, has been a disaster. 
'On the migration issue the European leadership got it disastrously wrong. On the question of radical Islam the European leadership has fundamentally got it wrong. One has to recognise that the European elite's performance over the last decade entirely justified the revolt of provincial England that was what we saw in Brexit.
'If those of us who were part of the elite spent more time in pubs in provincial England and provincial Wales we would have heard what I just said.
'This is not about GDP, it is principally about the complete loss of control of the EU's external border and what that implies for our country's future.
'I have had a kind of awakening. Brexit woke me up and reminded me I needed to pay much more attention to what the non-elite majority of voters were thinking.'
On Twitter he wrote: 'Cameron should have rejected [the EU's deal] and backed Brexit. Me too.'
Last night Brexit supporters welcomed his change of heart. 
Matthew Elliott, who was chief executive of Vote Leave, said: 'It's great that people who supported Remain have woken up to the fact Britain is right to leave the EU. That is not just eminent historians like Niall Ferguson – large parts of the population who have found that Project Fear didn't come true now support Brexit.'
Less than a month before the June vote, Professor Ferguson signed a letter suggesting with Brexit we would 'cast ourselves adrift, condemning ourselves to irrelevance and Europe to division and weakness'.
He also wrote an article for the Sunday Times with the headline 'Brexit's happy morons don't give a damn about the costs of leaving'. In it he quoted warnings about the impact on the economy from the International Monetary Fund, as well as banks Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche.
'The risk of Brexit is already acting like a flashing red light to foreign investors,' he wrote. 'Project Fear? No. This is the consensus of the financial world, from the IMF down. Only a happy moron would ignore these dangers.'
Then, just two days before the vote, he described Brexit as 'the ultimate divorce' in an article for the Spectator.
Professor Niall Ferguson relishes his reputation as one of the world's best-known, globe-trotting historians.
He is, it must be said, not a modest man. On his own website he boasts he's 'an accomplished biographer' and that one of his books was 'published to international critical acclaim'.
I suspect he was flattered when newspapers suggested that he earned $5 million a year — because he reacted by saying publicly that the figure was 'ridiculous'. Whether it was too low, he didn't say.
Throughout the Brexit campaign, he posed as the intellectual heavyweight of Project Fear.
With a tone of cosmic certainty and sophisticated historical authority — this is not a man who wears his cleverness lightly on his sleeve — he denounced the idea of EU withdrawal as 'horrendous' and a 'nightmare'.
In the weeks before the June 23 vote, Ferguson, without a scintilla of doubt, predicted that the 'result would be a landslide for Remain'.
A professor at Harvard and the author of 14 major books, the 52-year-old is renowned for his phenomenal literary output, assured media performances and gift for powerful language — using a knowledge of history as a tool to illuminate the present.
In his best-selling books he has addressed history's sweeping themes — war, money and empire.
Last year, he published a 1,000-page authorised biography of former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger — the first of two volumes.
In 2004, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, while he was also an adviser to the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008.
There can be little doubt that this conversion by a man with such impressive credentials is a major blow to the Remain camp.
He is, as I say, not a man to whom modesty comes easily.
Academic life in Britain is 'so shallow', he moaned when explaining his decision to base himself in the USA.
Though thin-skinned over coverage of his own personal life, he has never been shy about dishing it out to those he derides.
For example, he called Brexiteers 'Anglo-loonies' and made personal jibes about the great British economist John Maynard Keynes, saying he had no interest in Britain's long-term future because he was gay and childless.
Ferguson later apologised, admitting his comments were 'as stupid as they were insensitive'.
Considering his Brexit U-turn, how ironic it is that it was Keynes who, in defence of intellectual inconsistency, said: 'When the facts change, I change my mind . . .'
A VERY COSTLY DIVORCE
'I worry about a sterling crisis [caused by Brexit] and I have been through a divorce myself so I know these things are rarely swift and always costly. This would be the Mother of all Divorces, believe me.'
Addressing a conference, May 2016
'You are voting for a divorce, my pro-Brexit friends. And, like most divorces, it's going to take much longer than you think and cost much more.'
The Spectator, two days before the vote
BREXIT'S HAPPY MORONS
'It is the proponents of Brexit who are the utopians. Far from being Eurosceptics, they are Anglo-loonies.'
The Sunday Times, February
In an article headed 'Brexit's happy morons don't give a damn about the costs of leaving', he wrote: 'When I see the risks of Brexit being glossed over in ways that would disgrace an undergraduate essay, I feel anything but happy.'
The Sunday Times, April
'Today there are a great many Brexiteers who would love to pin all the UK's problems on the EU. Trust me: most of those problems will still be there after Brexit, along with a heap of nasty new ones. And you'll have no one left to blame but yourself.'
The Spectator, two days before the vote
TO HELL IN A HANDCART
'History shows that when Britain disengages from the continent, the continent goes to hell in a handcart. That is the clear lesson of the 20th century. The notion that we can sail off into the Atlantic and drop our anchor close to Bermuda is absurd.'
May
'The arguments for Brexit are not historically credible. They are frivolous — and self-seeking in the case of Boris Johnson.'
May
In an article headlined 'Brexiteers isolated from Britain's duty to save Europe', he wrote: 'If only historians got to vote in next month's referendum, I am confident the result would be a landslide for Remain.'
The Sunday Times, May
TALKING BRITAIN DOWN
'The economic consequences of leaving the EU would be horrendous. If you think about it, the UK has a very large current account deficit, about 7 per cent of GDP. I can't believe that capital would be pouring into a country that has just voted to leave the EU. Many major corporations are in the UK precisely because it gives them access to the single market.'
On U.S. TV, May
On Barack Obama's notorious remark that the UK would be at the 'back of the queue' in any trade deal with the U.S. post-Brexit, he said: 'I think Obama was right and I was glad to see him intervening. It is not good for the West as a whole if Britain leaves.'
May
'My attitude is not based on macro-economics, though I welcomed the IMF's doom-mongering as an important part of the Government's strategy.'
May
'The money Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have promised to spend on the NHS and cuts in VAT will be swallowed up by the post-Brexit recession and negotiations nightmare.'
The Spectator, June
LITTLE ENGLANDERS
'One need have no illusions about Brussels to believe that Britain must remain in the EU. I certainly have none. But one does need to have illusions — fantasies about a largely imaginary 'Anglosphere' or some Tory version of Ourselves Alone — to believe that we can somehow exit Europe, pull up an imaginary drawbridge and resuscitate a 19th-century ideal of parliamentary sovereignty.'
February
'The absurdity of Brexit is to walk away from our position [in Europe]. In effect, we have seats on the board; we are major shareholders and we are about to walk away. We won't be compensated. We will actually be penalised for giving up our power just at the moment when we won the argument.'
May
POST-VOTE DOOM-MONGERING
Under the headline 'Brexit: victory for older voters but disaster for the economy', he wrote: 'The UK has just voted itself into recession.'
He continued: 'The fact that neither of the leaders of the Brexit movement . . . is in a hurry to seize the reins of power . . . tells us all we need to know about the fundamental frivolity of the Leave campaign. They assiduously denied that Brexit would have severe economic consequences. Now they would like someone else to reap their whirlwind.'
And: 'This is a victory from beyond the grave for two of the leading populists of the 1970s. Enoch Powell, a one-time Conservative cabinet minister, was against UK membership of the European Economic Community . . . The other was Tony Benn, whose Euroscepticism was rooted in his socialist convictions. Congratulations, then, to the dead — Enoch and Tony — and to the ageing English working-class. You won.'
The Sunday Times, four days after the vote to leave
HEADING FOR A RECESSION
'There is no evidence as yet to dismiss the predictions that the UK would suffer a recession if the electorate voted to leave the EU. I still expect it to, as investment appears to have ground to a halt. The mountains of the Earth are still standing. But that sucking noise you hear is the sound of financial services jobs leaving London.'
The Boston Globe, July
And a week later: 'It is too early to tell just how grave the consequences of Brexit will be, but Fleet Street is still full of swivel-eyed optimists fantasising that either Theresa May or Andrea Leadsom is the next Margaret Thatcher.'
AND YESTERDAY'S U-TURN
ON Twitter he wrote: 'My mistake was uncritically defending Cameron and Osborne instead of listening to people in pubs. Issue was not GDP but future migration.'
AND: 'Mistake was not referendum but acceptance of EU's risible offer on migrant benefits. Cameron should have rejected and backed Brexit. Me too.'
  

 
Sitting on the sun-drenched patio overlooking the Downing Street garden yesterday, Theresa May runs her fingers over the pretty blue necklace she is wearing.
It is one of a number of gifts, along with sacks of letters and cards, she has received from well-wishers since she tearfully announced she was stepping down as Prime Minister.
With typical modesty, Mrs May mentions that many people were saddened that she has been forced to stand down, having been bruised and battered by fellow politicians on both sides of the Commons divide.
Fingering the necklace proudly, she says it was sent in the post from ‘the ladies in the Jaeger shop in Marlborough in Wiltshire’.
Among other welcome parting gifts from voters in Middle England who felt sorry for her being the fall-girl for the country’s rancorous Brexit deadlock was a bouquet of flowers sent by someone who described himself as ‘a male boss and the lads who worked for him’.
Mrs May says the warmth shown to her by the public was ‘truly humbling’.
In less than two weeks, she will leave No 10. She knows the history books could be harsh in their judgement of her failure to deliver Brexit during her three years as PM. There is no escaping the fact that her job was to deliver the wishes of the 52 per cent of people who voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum and of those who voted Remain but realised that the result must be honoured.
Certainly, the brutality of her eviction from No 10 has been very painful to watch.
Forever etched on our memories will be the way she finally crumbled as she stood in the middle of Downing Street on May 24 and told the nation that she was standing down.
She concluded by saying she was leaving the job that it had been ‘the honour of my life to hold – the second female prime minister but certainly not the last’. She continued: ‘I do so with no ill-will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.’
I ask her about that moment. She replies: ‘If a male Prime Minister’s voice had broken up, it would have been said “what great patriotism, they really love their country”. But if a female Prime Minister does it, it is “why is she crying?”.’
Her hackles also rise when I refer to how her German counterpart, Angela Merkel, has looked worryingly wobbly in recent public appearances.
‘I’m interested you picked a female example,’ she retorts sharply. ‘Are you saying it’s only females who feel the strain?’
Has she had sleepless nights in No 10? She replies: ‘There are times you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about things that are going on.’
Without doubt, the way Mrs May, 62, has coped with the sheer physical and psychological strain of being Prime Minister has been compounded by having Type One diabetes, requiring her to have regular injections. But she has taken all that in her stride.
Although it is hard to imagine the vicar’s daughter swearing, surely she must have cursed when things went badly wrong?
‘I have been known to,’ she laughs.
What about using the f-word? With a tantalising laugh, she shoots back: ‘I have often said that I am… frustrated.’
Over the course of a conversation lasting nearly an hour, Mrs May insists that, despite failing on Brexit, she has a legacy to be proud of.
Candidly, she talks about reasons for those times she woke up worried about big decisions in the middle of the night and of mistakes she made. Despite the best intentions, she also failed signally not to take a couple of well-aimed swipes at Boris Johnson and Chancellor Philip Hammond – who has been accused of trying to block Treasury cash for some of her legacy spending pledges, such as a £27billion school funding plan.
Acidly, she points out to me that her full title is ‘Prime Minister and First Lord of Treasury.’ Translation: she outranks Hammond when deciding whose hands control the public purse strings.
She laughed off her cruel ‘Maybot’ tag – given because of her robotic repetition of phrases such as ‘strong and stable’ during the 2017 election campaign.
Keen to dispel her image for being dull and work-obsessed, she says she knocked back Aperol spritzers and larked about on the plane while flying home from the recent G20 world economic summit in Japan.
Theresa May is setting up a new watchdog to promote a fairer society as part of her legacy.
The Office for Tackling Injustices, an independent body to be known as Ofti, will be tasked with combating injustice, with tough measures to hold Cabinet ministers to account on the issue.
Mrs May said: ‘Deep-seated social injustice requires a long-term focus and cannot be eliminated overnight. I am proud of what we have achieved to make the UK a more just society. But there is more to be done if we are truly to say that this is a country which works for everyone – no matter who they are or where they’re from.’
The watchdog will ‘shine a spotlight on injustices, provide better solutions and create lasting change’, she said.
But there was no time for such relaxation when she was fighting her forlorn battle to get her Brexit deal through the Commons. Thrice she tried and thrice she failed.
Undoubtedly she is scarred by highly personal attacks on her from hard-Brexit Tory MPs, disloyal Cabinet ministers, intransigent Brussels officials and unhelpful fellow national leaders who, in turn, opposed and patronised her.
Despite the July sun shining over Downing Street, the clouds of Brexit will never clear from Mrs May’s CV.
One of the main criticisms from hardline anti-EU Tories about her approach to Brexit negotiations was that she would have got far more out of Brussels if she had swung her handbag like Margaret Thatcher.
Mrs May won’t accept that argument for a minute. ‘I did everything I could to get it over the line!’ she exclaims, straining forward. ‘I was willing to sit down with Jeremy Corbyn, willing to sacrifice my premiership – give up my job!
‘People have asked me: “Why didn’t you tip the table over?” But if you do that constantly, it’s like the little girl crying wolf – it ceases to have an effect.’
If not tip over the table in Brussels, how about if she had used a ‘more positive energy’ – Boris Johnson’s apparent solution to the Brexit impasse? ‘I can assure you I put positive energy into it!’ she replies firmly.
What about her likely successor’s claim that he will be able to secure concessions that Brussels denied her? He clipped response are 12 tart words: ‘The EU have said they don’t want to and won’t reopen agreement.’
She makes no attempt to conceal her anger with hard-Brexit Tories – now backing Johnson – who refused to back her deal.
‘I had assumed mistakenly that the tough bit of the negotiation was with the EU, that Parliament would accept the vote of the British people and just want to get it done, that people who’d spent their lives campaigning for Brexit would vote to get us out on March 29 and May 27. But they didn’t.’
She was boxed into a corner and assailed from both sides.
‘People say “you are being far too rigid! You’re insisting on this!” Then, on the other hand, people say: “You’ve given everything away. You’ve compromised and moved too far”. They can’t both be true.’ In hindsight, she concedes she should have done more to prevent what she describes as ‘the polarisation between the language of soft and hard Brexit’ that divided the warring factions in Parliament.
Brexit apart, she feels another low in her premiership was the way she reacted to the fire at the Grenfell tower block in London which killed 72 people.
This month, she hosted a party at No 10 for children survivors.
‘I was dancing with one of the children. I just wanted to give them a bit of enjoyment.’
On the brighter side, Mrs May says she’s proud of her campaigns to combat modern slavery, reduce plastic waste, boost mental health care and set a new target for zero carbon emissions.
She reels off more achievements: ‘Biggest-ever NHS cash boost. Record employment. Record low unemployment. Youth unemployment halved. More women in the workplace. Wages rising faster than inflation. More homes built last year than in all but one of the last 30 years.’
Unlike showman Johnson, Mrs May was brought up in a household where boasting was frowned on. She tried to ‘champion unfashionable causes’.
Significantly, she avoids referring to Boris Johnson by name but there is little doubt who she has in mind when she says: ‘Too many people in politics think being Prime Minister is a position of power.
‘Actually, it is a position of service to the country where you are always asking yourself “What more can I do for the public?”.
‘All too often those who see it as a position of power see it as about themselves and not about the people they are serving. There is a real difference.’ Ouch!
For her part, Mrs May embraces being called an ‘unfashionable politician’.
‘I have never spent endless amounts of time in the Commons tea room or socialised in the Strangers Bar,’ she says.
Maybe if she had, she would have quelled some of the backbench Tory plots against her.
It is universally held that her biggest mistake was the botched election of 2017 which cost her Commons majority. Her campaign chiefs had told her that all she had to do to win was repeat the mantra ‘strong and stable’ and avoid debating with Jeremy Corbyn on TV.
It was a disaster.
‘Looking back, it wasn’t a “me-style” kind of campaign,’ she says. ‘I should have done the TV debates. I didn’t because I had seen them suck the life blood out of David Cameron’s campaign.’
Unfortunately, her reputation for being boring was fixed when, during that election campaign, she said the most daring thing she had done in her life was to ‘run through a wheat field’.
Wouldn’t she have a better Prime Minister if she was more spontaneous, more fun, more reckless, even, like Boris Johnson?
Mrs May won’t budge and denies her Downing St has been a joke-free zone.
Recalling that Aperol sprtizer-fuelled flight back from Japan, she says: ‘There was plenty of laughter. We were playing cards and jokes were going round.’
Much more seriously, her biggest fear is that Jeremy Corbyn might one day occupy Downing St.
‘It would quash all hope and optimism for this country. Look at what he has done to a once proud patriotic party.’
Mrs May’s father, Church of England Reverend Hubert Brasier, whose unfashionable sense of duty she inherited, died in a car crash when she was in her early 20s.
What would he make his daughter being Prime Minister?
‘He would be immensely proud and say: “Don’t forget those you have worked for as Prime Minister.”
She intends to stay on as Maidenhead MP and take up roles with charities connected with diabetes and modern slavery.
Will she miss being Prime Minister? ‘What I won’t miss is the sense that any moment, you are constantly on call; you go on holiday, an office goes with you, at any moment you could have to make a big decision. Now I’ll have more space and time.’
After 36 months of having to endure Brexit bickering, bawling and brawling, that’s the very least Theresa May deserves.
Boris Johnson was triumphant in Brussels tonight as the EU agreed to his new Brexit deal - and Jean-Claude Juncker backed Remainers into a corner by suggesting that the bloc will not agree to any further delay.
The European commission chief turned up the heat by indicating no extension will be offered by the EU next week - a move that could checkmate pro-EU MPs by neutralising their law designed to block No Deal and force the PM to ask for a delay on Saturday - but hours later Donald Tusk refused to rule out EU leaders listening to a request for for a delay.
It means that if Remainer MPs refuse to back Boris Johnson's deal in a showdown vote on Saturday, they run the risk of Britain not being offered a delay and crashing out of the EU without a deal.
That sets up a day of frenetic deal-making tomorrow, with No 10 fighting to win onside former Tory rebels, the DUP and Labour rebels. 
The dramatic intervention came as Mr Johnson insisted 'now is the moment to get Brexit done' after he signed off the blueprint, which deletes the hated Irish backstop.  
Mr Johnson has taken an extraordinary gamble by agreeing to the deal despite fierce opposition from the DUP - who publicly spelled out a laundry list of objections and accused him of risking the break-up of the UK, vowing to vote against the package. 
Mr Johnson told reporters this evening he was 'very confident' that MPs will want to vote for his deal on Saturday.
He then suggested his view that there should be no further Brexit extension was ‘widely shared’ among other leaders.
The PM said: ‘My view has been very clear for some time. I don’t think delay is to the advantage of the UK or the whole of Europe. That is a view that seems to be quite widely shared.’
However, while the summit significantly avoided pointing to any delay, it also fell short of categorically ruling one out if Mr Johnson loses his Commons vote. European Council president Donald Tusk said any request for a delay would be considered if it is made.
With no chance of an extension, anti-No Deal MPs would face huge pressure to give their support to Mr Johnson's agreement.
Mr Juncker earlier told reporters there will be no 'prolongation'. Asked if he believed Parliament would approve the deal, he said: 'I hope it will, I'm convinced it will. It has to. 
Boris Johnson's new deal includes several legal changes from Theresa May's Brexit deal - but the DUP are still refusing to back it.
Many of the changes are more palatable to the DUP than Mrs May's deal, but others are not.
The new deal gives the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont a vote to leave the new customs arrangements after four years - a unilateral exit mechanism rather than the backstop which required the EU to agree to changing the deal.
But the DUP object because the vote requires only a simple majority at Stormont, depriving them of a veto to any changes to customs arrangements.
Arlene Foster's party also object to a number of other aspects of the new deal, but seemed willing to accept them if the consent issues were fixed to give them a veto.
The new deal introduces new customs checks on goods travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland if their final destination is in Ireland. Goods bound for northern Ireland would be charged EU customs duties as they cross the Irish sea.
Although the unionists accept that Northern Ireland would still technically be in the UK customs territory, they point out that trade with mainland Britain will be 'subject to rules of the EU customs union',
Northern Ireland will also be 'bound in' to EU VAT arrangements, that do not apply to the rest of the UK. Under these rules, VAT from the country of origin is charged at the point of sale. So for a TV set from Germany sold in Northern Ireland, the retailer would collect German VAT
The DUP says there is a 'real danger' of increasing divergence from the mainland against the will of the 'democratic representatives of the people of Northern Ireland'.
 
'Anyway there will be no prolongation. We have concluded a deal and so there is not an argument for further delay - it has to be done now.'
The final decision on whether an extension would be offered ultimately rests with the EU heads of state. 
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said this evening that 'if there is a request for an extension I will consult member states to see how to react'. 
But Mr Juncker's comments suggest that the EU does view Saturday's vote as the last chance saloon for an orderly Brexit. 
Should Mr Johnson be defeated in the Commons he will then have to decide what to do next: Try to renegotiate an improved version of the deal or switch to calling for a No Deal Brexit. 
If he does the latter, believing that the EU will not budge any further, then he will likely need to force an early election to deliver it.
Earlier today Mr Johnson hailed the unexpected breakthrough on a deal at a Brussels press conference alongside Mr Juncker with the PM saying there must be 'no more delay' about the UK leaving the bloc. 
'I do think this deal represents a very good deal for the EU and the UK,' Mr Johnson told reporters, saying the UK would leave 'whole and entire'. 
'I think it is a reasonable, fair outcome and reflected the large amount of work undertaken by both sides.'  
Mr Juncker added: 'This is a fair, a balanced agreement. It is testament to our commitment to finding solutions.'  
The new plan includes legal changes to Theresa May's original deal – something Brussels had previously insisted was impossible – with overhauled customs and regulatory arrangements specifically for Northern Ireland rather than the whole UK. 
Downing Street claimed the pact had done away with the Irish border backstop altogether, and would allow the whole UK to exploit the opportunities of leaving the EU, without the mainland being bound to Brussels rules or laws.
The Stormont assembly will theoretically have a vote to end the arrangement, although critics argued that in practice the hurdles for doing so would be difficult to overcome. 
The early signs from Tory 'Spartans' looked positive, with several hardliners who steadfastly opposed Mrs May's package saying they were ready to vote in favour of Mr Johnson's blueprint.  
However, unless the 10 DUP MPs come on board it is far from certain that the deal will be agreed by MPs when Parliament convenes for its first Saturday sitting since the Falklands War. 
In a defiant statement this afternoon, the unionists threatened to join forces with Labour and opposition parties - who have condemned the blueprint as a hard Brexit - to block the plan. 
'These proposals are not, in our view, beneficial to the economic well-being of Northern Ireland and they undermine the integrity of the Union,' the statement said. 
The DUP slammed the 'consent' mechanism, saying it drives a 'coach and horses' through the Good Friday Agreement by only requiring a simple majority of the Stormont Assembly. They wanted the threshold for staying in the arrangements to be a majority of unionist and a majority of republicans.     
If No Deal at Halloween is the only alternative to Mr Johnson's agreement, it would shift the focus onto a group of approximately 30 'realist' Labour backbenchers who have said they want to deliver Brexit.   
WHAT HAPPENS TONIGHT? 
European leaders will be presented with the proposed Brexit deal agreed by the EU and the UK and they will then be asked to rubber-stamp it.
Mr Johnson has been lobbying other leaders hard to create a 'cliff edge' to improve his chances of getting the deal approved by MPs. 
That would mean essentially  
will shift to the House of Commons.
WHAT HAPPENS ON SATURDAY?
Parliament is due to sit on Saturday when Mr Johnson will present his deal to MPs and ask MPs to vote for it.
Without the support of the DUP it remains unclear whether he will be able to secure a majority.
If he does win the vote then the UK will be on course for an orderly departure from the EU on October 31.
WHAT HAPPENS IF MPS DON'T BACK THE DEAL ON SATURDAY? 
If he falls short and sees his deal defeated then Mr Johnson will be legally required to write to the EU to ask for a Brexit delay.
However, Jean-Claude Juncker today said there should be 'no prolongation' if MPs reject the deal, raising the prospect of the EU rejecting any extension request if the latest accord is dismissed.
Ultimately a decision on whether to grant an extension rests with the European Council but Mr Juncker's comments suggest that the EU does view Saturday's vote as the last chance saloon for an orderly Brexit.
COULD BRITAIN STILL LEAVE THE EU ON OCTOBER 31
He will then have to decide what to do next: Try to renegotiate an improved version of the deal or switch to calling for a No Deal Brexit.
If he does the latter, believing that the EU will not budge any further, then he will likely need to force an early election to deliver it.
WHEN WILL THERE BE AN ELECTION
Opposition leaders have said that once a No Deal Brexit on Halloween is ruled out they will support an election.
That means there could be a vote on going to the country early at the start of next week with a polling day at the end of November or the beginning of December.
The one thing that could dramatically alter the above is whether Remain-backing MPs are able to force and win a vote on Saturday on holding a second referendum.
The high-stakes manoeuvring started early this morning, when the DUP seemingly got wind that the government was about to try to 'bounce' them into signing up to the package.
The party - which has been in intensive negotiations with Mr Johnson for days - tried to head off the situation by releasing a statement saying it 'could not support' the current blueprint, highlighting serious problems with the customs arrangements, VAT concessions, and consent mechanism.   
But Mr Johnson then essentially threw his former allies under the bus by pushing ahead despite their complaints. 
He tweeted: 'We've got a great new deal that takes back control — now Parliament should get Brexit done on Saturday so we can move on to other priorities like the cost of living, the NHS, violent crime and our environment.' 
Mr Juncker added on Twitter: 'Where there is a will, there is a deal - we have one!
'It's a fair and balanced agreement for the EU and the UK and it is testament to our commitment to find solutions. I recommend that #EUCO endorses this deal.' 
The PM will need to secure the support of 320 MPs when the deal is put to a vote but his path to reaching that number without the DUP appears fraught with difficulty.
Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP have all roundly condemned the package as a 'hard' Brexit and worse than Mrs May's plan.
Arriving at the summit today, Irish PM Leo Varadkar said: 'The backstop has been replaced with a new solution, unique to Northern Ireland recognising its unique geography, and which protects the all island economy and access to the single market, and takes account of democratic wishes of the people in Northern Ireland.' 
The DUP's opposition to the deal raises questions about whether hardline Tory Brexiteers will be able to back it as well given that they have tended to take their cue from the unionists. 
That means the PM could be reliant on the votes of a handful of Labour MPs if he is to have any hope of getting his agreement through Parliament. 
Customs: Northern Ireland remains in the United Kingdom's customs territory but all EU procedures will apply to goods arriving there in this complex system. There will be no customs checks on the island of Ireland - they will be done in ports.
For goods crossing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland that are deemed to be staying there, no EU tariff will apply.
No EU tariffs would be paid on personal goods carried by travellers across the Irish frontier and for a second category of exempted goods that can only be for immediate consumption rather than subsequent processing.
An EU-UK body called the Joint Committee will define this second group of goods more precisely after Brexit.
The UK will be allowed to reimburse excise duties for companies in Northern Ireland as long as it does not undercut EU state aid rules.
Northern Ireland will be able to benefit from future UK trade deals around the world. As long as the goods do not cross to Ireland and the EU's single market, only UK customs tariffs will apply.
Consent: The Northern Irish assembly will have to give consent after Brexit for the region's continued alignment with the EU's regulatory rule book.
Four years after Brexit, the assembly will have to decide by simple majority of those taking part in the vote whether stick with it. If the vote is positive, the system is extended for another four years.
If another vote then is positive with cross-community support, the system is extended by another eight years until another vote.
If consent is not granted, there is a two-year cooling off period during which sides need to find a new solution to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland.
If the regional assembly does not sit or vote, the system continues as the default position.
Unlike the 'backstop' solution in the original deal this system would not be replaced by a new free-trade deal between Britain and the EU. That marks a big concession from the EU side.
Future trade: The two sides are aiming at an ambitious free-trade agreement after Brexit with no tariffs and unlimited quotas. It comes together with a statement that sides will uphold high standards on environment, climate, workers' rights and other rules.
Everything else stays the same: A previously agreed settlement on citizens' rights after Brexit and Britain's divorce bill stay as they were. That also goes for a transition period of 14 months until the end of 2020, which can be extended by one year or two years.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson is also likely to face an attempt by Remainer rebels on Saturday to try to force a vote on holding a second referendum - something the PM is vehemently against. 
Michael Gove, the minister in charge of No Deal planning, denied that the government had 'thrown the DUP under the bus' in order to get a deal as he said: 'Absolutely not. This is a great deal.' 
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, suggested that all the bloc could now do is wait to see how MPs choose to proceed as he cautioned that the deal is far from being home and dry. 
Despite the uncertainty over the Commons vote, the agreement struck between the EU and UK represents a major win for Mr Johnson. 
It will boost Brexiteer hopes that the PM will be able to deliver on his 'do or die' pledge to take Britain out of the EU by the October 31 deadline.
It also had a major impact on the value of the pound as sterling surged against the the dollar, rising by one per cent this morning above $1.29, marking a five-month high. 
Mr Barnier delivered an impromptu press conference in Brussels after the deal announcement was made. 
He said that the agreement would resolve the uncertainty created by Brexit as he said the UK and EU 'we have delivered, and we have delivered together'. 
He also confirmed that under the deal done, the UK has agreed to pay in full the Brexit divorce bill, worth an estimated £39 billion. 
Mr Barnier did express a note of concern about what could happen when the deal is put before MPs - especially since the Commons rejected the old divorce agreement. 
He told reporters: 'It is true that we have some experience in this matter and that is why we use the metaphor of mountaineering.'
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, immediately moved to dismiss the deal as he described it as 'worse than Theresa May's'. 
He said in a statement: 'From what we know, it seems the Prime Minister has negotiated an even worse deal than Theresa May's, which was overwhelmingly rejected.
'These proposals risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections: putting food safety at risk, cutting environmental standards and workers' rights, and opening up our NHS to a takeover by US private corporations.
'This sell out deal won't bring the country together and should be rejected. The best way to get Brexit sorted is to give the people the final say in a public vote.'
Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, responded to the news of the agreement being in place by insisting that it must be put to a referendum. 
She said: 'The fight to stop Brexit is far from over. Boris Johnson's deal would be bad for our economy, bad for our public services, and bad for our environment. 
'The next few days will set the direction of our country for generations, and I am more determined than ever to stop Brexit. 
 Nigel Farage sensationally claimed today that it would be better to delay Brexit than leave under Boris Johnson's new deal.
The Brexit Party leader lashed out at the compromise hammered out by the Prime Minister with Brussels and claimed it would be thrown out by MPs.
They are set to vote on the 11th hour agreement in historic session in the House of Commons on Saturday.
Mr Farage told Sky News today: 'Look I would much rather we had an extension and a chance of a general election than accept this dreadful new EU treaty.'
'When this deal comes to Parliament we will use every possible opportunity to give the public a People's Vote on the Brexit deal that includes the option to remain in the European Union.'
Despite the negativity of the opposition, Downing Street sources were jubilant at the terms struck by the PM.
One senior source said that under the agreement 'Britain is out of all EU laws' and 'we will be able to strike our own free trade deals'. 
They also said that the PM had delivered on his promise to delete the Irish border backstop. 
The source said: 'Northern Ireland will be in the UK customs territory forever. There is now no doubt that Northern Ireland remains part of the UK's customs territory and will benefit from the free trade deals we strike.
The pound had a tumultuous day against the dollar today after Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed a Brexit deal had been agreed with the European Union.
Sterling rose by 1 per cent this morning towards $1.30 which marked a five-month high for the currency as Mr Johnson headed for a crunch EU summit in Brussels.
But the currency then plunged this afternoon when it soon dawned on investors that there was no guarantee of the UK Parliament backing the agreement.
The volatility comes after the pound gained more than 6 per cent in value against the dollar this week as hopes increased of a Brexit deal by the end of October 31.
Independent economist Julian Jessop told AFP: 'After the initial relief that the UK government and EU have done a deal, markets are worried that it still does not have enough support to get through parliament on Saturday.'
While the pound soared to within a whisker of $1.30 earlier today, by this afternoon it was roughly back to where it started from against the dollar.
 
'The anti-democratic backstop has been abolished. The people of Northern Ireland will be in charge of the laws that they live by, and – unlike the backstop – will have the right to end the special arrangement if they so choose.'
Tory Brexiteers were this afternoon keeping their powder dry before pledging their support. 
Tory former leader Iain Duncan Smith, asked if he would vote for the deal, told the BBC: 'I'm reserving my position on this because I really want to read what is in it.
'Because we were told by the government throughout in discussions that certain concerns were being met within this agreement. And I just want to make sure that is the case.
'For many of my colleagues … there are some issues, for example, if the DUP aren't backing it what are their reasons for not backing it?'
Last night ministers had claimed that a deal was 'fingertip close' after frantic negotiations.
But the DUP had appeared to smash hopes of an accord with their early morning statement. 
DUP leader Arlene Foster, and deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, said in the statement: 'We have been involved in ongoing discussions with the Government.
'As things stand, we could not support what is being suggested on customs and consent issues, and there is a lack of clarity on VAT.       
'We will continue to work with the government to try and get a sensible deal that works for Northern Ireland and protects the economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom.' 
Mr Johnson's decision to effectively disregard the concerns of the DUP in order to strike a deal sets up a monumental vote in the Commons on Saturday. 
The government tabled a motion yesterday to give it the option of Parliament sitting at the weekend. 
Given that the PM has now agreed a deal the government will move forward with the first Saturday sitting since the Falklands War. 
Mr Johnson will put his deal to a vote and challenge MPs to back it but whether or not the PM has the numbers to win is deeply unclear. 
Assuming the DUP oppose the deal, victory for the PM is likely to come down to how three groups of MPs choose to vote. 
The first are the hardline Tory Brexiteers who rejected Theresa May's divorce deal on three separate occasions.
They have previously linked their voting intention to that of the DUP so the question now is whether they will split from the unionists in order to back the PM.  
Last night the chairman of the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteers, Steve Baker, sounded optiomistic about backing a deal but suggested DUP opposition could be an issue. 
He told ITV's Peston: 'If the original (Theresa May) deal was a triple-lock, Boris has dealt with two of the three locks.
'The questions for us were about the remaining items in the Withdrawal Agreement. So on the narrow issue of Northern Ireland, if the DUP are happy, it's not for us to gainsay them.'  
The second are the former Tory rebels who lost the whip after backing a bid to block No Deal. 
Many of those rebels backed Mrs May's deal and Mr Johnson will be hopeful of securing the support of most of them. 
The third are Labour MPs who have previously signalled that they are willing to support a Brexit deal.  
These MPs have concerns about numerous parts of the Brexit deal and will take some persuading in order to support the deal done by Mr Johnson. 
The PM will also be reluctant to place the fate of Brexit in the hands of his political opponents but given his handling of the DUP it now appears that he may not have any other options.   
Should MPs vote for the deal on Saturday it would mean Mr Johnson no longer has to ask the EU for a Brexit delay as he is legally required to do so under the Benn Act if no agreement is in place by October 19. 
That would spare him a major headache and keep his 'do or die' Halloween pledge alive.
Mr Johnson has insisted he will never ask for the date to be pushed back - but Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay made clear yesterday that he will obey the controversial legislation.
 
Jeremy Corbyn blasted Boris Johnson's Brexit deal as 'even worse' than Theresa May's doomed agreement today as he suggested he would fight it to the bitter end.
The Labour leader tore into the proposal hammed out in Brussels this morning to end years of stalemate.
With Mr Johnson looking likely to require pro-deal Labour MPs to rebel to get his deal through the Commons it suggests Saturday's crucial Parliamentary sitting will see a furious confrontation between the two leaders.
This morning Mr Corbyn said: 'From what we know, it seems the Prime Minister has negotiated an even worse deal than Theresa May's, which was overwhelmingly rejected.
'These proposals risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections: putting food safety at risk, cutting environmental standards and workers' rights, and opening up our NHS to a takeover by US private corporations.
'This sell out deal won't bring the country together and should be rejected. The best way to get Brexit sorted is to give the people the final say in a public vote.' 
Despite a deal being done, many in the EU believe a short Brexit delay may be needed in order to get a deal over the line. 
Mr Johnson will resist any demands for even the shortest of Brexit delays. 
Last night Mr Barnier told ambassadors that an agreement had basically been reached - with the possibility of a formal sign-off today. 
Mr Johnson had also sounded confident, suggesting at Cabinet yesterday afternoon that he still hoped the DUP could be won over. 
He also told a gathering of Tory MPs last night that the government was on the 'Hillary Step' about to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 
He insisted: 'If it is not possible to achieve a deal we will still leave the EU on October 31.'
And he later even compared his intense negotiations to that of a prisoner in The Shawshank Redemption - in which the hero escapes a jail by wading through a tunnel of waste.
Amid desperate efforts to win over the DUP yesterday there were hotly denied claims that billions of pounds more funding for Northern Ireland was on the table as a sweetener. 
Ms Foster was in No10 for talks yesterday afternoon, but she dismissed afterwards EU claims reported by Irish broadcaster RTE that she had given in on key issues.
She tweeted: 'Discussions continue. Needs to be a sensible deal which unionists and nationalists can support.' 
One Cabinet minister told MailOnline there was 'guarded optimism' over the chances of getting the DUP on board but they insisted the government is preparing to fight to get Brexit done by October 31 if a resolution cannot be found.
'We will be ready if the DUP can't be won over,' they said. 
Boris Johnson today agreed a Brexit deal with the European Union as he kept his hopes of taking the UK out of the bloc on October 31 alive.
The PM arrived in Brussels this afternoon for a crunch summit when European leaders will be asked to rubber-stamp the agreement which no longer contains the Irish border backstop.  
Mr Johnson has struck an accord with the bloc which will see Northern Ireland leave the EU customs union along with the rest of the UK and give the Stormont assembly a say over future border arrangements. 
The deal will be put to a vote in the House of Commons on Saturday during a special sitting. 
That means MPs have less than 48 hours to get their heads around the new divorce terms before they decide whether to back them or not.
Mr Johnson's deal remains similar to Theresa May's original Withdrawal Agreement but the PM will be hopeful that the changes he has secured will be enough to break the Brexit stalemate. 
Here is a run down of the main proposals and an assessment of whether MPs will be able to vote for them.
The original backstop has been deleted
Downing Street was jubilant this morning after the deal was agreed principally because on the face of it the Prime Minister has succeeded in his main aim of getting rid of the original Irish border insurance policy. 
Mr Johnson had repeatedly labelled the protocol 'undemocratic' and the EU had long maintained that it could not be scrapped. 
It was originally included in Mrs May's deal and it would have ensured, come what may in future trade talks, that the Irish border remained free flowing post-Brexit.
It would have been rolled out in the event that the two sides failed to strike an agreement on future trading relations by December 2020.
Effectively the UK as a whole would have stayed in the EU customs union for an undefined period to avoid the need for customs checks on the 310-mile frontier.
Northern Ireland would have had to adhere to EU single market rules on goods, again to rule out the necessity for border regulatory checks.
Crucially for the deal's detractors, there was no time-limit on the arrangements or a mechanism through which the UK could unilaterally exit them.
The bloc's position on the issue softened in recent weeks as European leaders said they were willing to entertain the prospect of replacing the backstop with alternative arrangements. 
Today's deal shows Mr Johnson was able to put forward a proposal the EU deemed good enough to get rid of the protocol. 
But the solution the two sides have arrived at is fiendishly complex and will be politically difficult for some MPs to accept. 
What has the backstop been replaced with? 
The UK and the EU have come up with a four point plan to get rid of the backstop and also ensure that there is never a return to a hard border on the island of Ireland. 
Those four points relate to: Customs, regulations, VAT and the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly. 
What has been proposed on customs? 
Under the proposals Northern Ireland will leave the EU's customs union at the same time as the rest of the UK - a red line for Mr Johnson. 
Crucially that means that the province can benefit from any future trade deals struck by the government after Brexit. 
However, Northern Ireland will remain an entry point into the EU's customs zone which means that UK authorities will apply UK tariffs to products entering Northern Ireland, but only if they are not earmarked for onward transportation across the border.
For goods at risk of entering the single market, the UK will collect EU tariffs on behalf of the bloc. 
Effectively this means creating a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
The key line from the deal states the two sides are 'underlining their firm commitment to no customs and regulatory checks or controls and related physical infrastructure at the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.' 
It also states unequivocally that 'Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom'.  
How will MPs react to this change? 
Deleting the backstop has been a demand of hardline Tory Brexiteer MPs ever since the protocol first emerged. 
However, many of those MPs have previously taken their voting cue on Brexit from the DUP which has already said it cannot support the proposed way forward from the PM. 
The unionist MPs are against any proposal which would see Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the UK - erecting a customs border in the Irish Sea undoubtedly falls foul of that principle. 
The question now is whether Tory Eurosceptic MPs join the DUP in saying they will not vote for the plan. If they do Mr Johnson will be in big trouble and his hopes of getting the deal through parliament will shrink. 
What about regulations? 
Much the same as the backstop, Northern Ireland will remain aligned with single market regulations on all goods.
But the checks and procedures on such goods will take place at ports and airports in Northern Ireland and not at the land border.
The UK authorities will therefore assume responsibility for applying the EU rules in Northern Ireland.
What about the thorny issue of consent? 
This is one of the major differences in terms of how the new deal differs to the old one agreed by Mrs May. 
Effectively what has been agreed is that the Northern Ireland Assembly will be given a say on what should happen with the Irish border after Brexit.  
The customs arrangements outlined above will come into effect at the start of 2021 and, after an initial four-year period, Stormont Assembly members will be given a vote on whether to continue to apply them.
Significantly, that vote will be conducted on a simple majority head count and will not require the support of a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists. 
This means the DUP will not have the chance to exercise a veto.  If the vote is carried, the arrangements will be extended for another four years.
If it transpires that a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists do ultimately vote in favour of the move, then the extension period will be for eight years.
The document states: 'Where the decision reached in a given period had cross-community support, the subsequent period is the 8-year period following that period.' 
If members vote to come out of the EU arrangements there would be a two-year cooling off period before that happened in order for a new way forward to be hammered out. 
So basically the assembly would vote every four years on whether to stick with the arrangements or try something else.  
How will MPs react to this proposal?
The consent issue emerged as perhaps the biggest sticking points in the talks in recent weeks. 
Under initial proposals put forward by Mr Johnson the DUP would have been given an effective veto on the border arrangements. 
But the compromise in today's deal that the vote in the assembly will only require a simple majority means the DUP would have significantly less influence over the process than it would have wanted. 
Combine disappointment over consent with the anger over the customs plans and the DUP appears incredibly unlikely to change its stance. 
Mr Johnson may be able to win a vote in the Commons without the support of the DUP's 10 MPs. 
But the big question now is how Tory Eurosceptics respond to the DUP's move. 
And what about VAT? 
The VAT issue had only emerged as a potential stumbling block as the talks neared a conclusion.  
What has been agreed would mean that EU rules on value added tax and excise duties will apply in Northern Ireland, with the UK responsible for their collection.
However, revenues derived will be retained by the UK. The UK will also be able to apply VAT exemptions and reduced rates in Northern Ireland that are applied in Ireland. 
Will the UK still have to pay the Brexit divorce bill? 
Yes. The previously agreed settlement on citizens' rights after Brexit and payment of the £39 billion divorce bill stay as they were. 
That also goes for a transition period of 14 months until the end of 2020, which can be extended by one year or two years. 

Boris Johnson faces an uphill struggle to get his Brexit deal through the Commons despite managing to hammer a last-gasp agreement with the EU after years of bitter cross-channel wrangling. 
Today's stunning announcement sets up a potentially showstopping Commons confrontation on Saturday. 
The Prime Minister is certain to use the weekend session - the first since 1982 - for a vote on his deal. 
But the Parliamentary arithmetic is currently against him unless he can convince the DUP to reverse its opposition to what he has agreed or entice enough Labour rebels to defy the party whip.
What happens tonight at the EU summit if a deal is agreed?
The Brussels summit was set to be a humiliation for the Prime Minister. Under the rebel Benn Act passed in September he was legally required to ask for a further Brexit delay past October 31 if he could not agree a deal by this Saturday. 
With a deal in place that Brexit delay of three months is off the table (for now). However EU officials have already suggested that there is already not enough time to get the deal signed and sealed by October 31.
So a short 'technical extension' that provides enough time for this to happen is likely to be on the agenda for the leaders. The question will be how long it is. 
Downing Street remains adamant that there must be no Brexit delay in order to preserve Mr Johnson's 'do or die' pledge. 
However, if the two sides are close to an orderly divorce it is unlikely that the UK would pull the plug. 
Ultimately, Mr Johnson may be able to accept a short delay if that is the price of getting Brexit done in a non-chaotic manner. 
Assuming the leaders of the EU's 27 member states sign off the deal the PM will then have to present it to MPs for them to vote on. 
That vote would likely take place on Saturday with the government having kept open the option of asking MPs to work at the weekend. 
Does this mean the UK leaves the EU on October 31? 
Not necessarily. Jean-Claude Juncker today hinted that the EU would not grant another Brexit delay. 
 After face-to-face talks with the PM he told reporters the deal 'has to' be approved by Parliament.
'Anyway there will be no prolongation,' he added, regarding the October 31 deadline.
'We have concluded a deal and so there is not an argument for further delay - it has to be done now.'
However, whether any requested extension is granted is not down to Mr Juncker - it requires the consent of the 27 remaining members of the European Council.
And his remarks left open what could happen if the deal is voted down on Saturday, with the EU repeatedly saying that it will not be responsible for a No Deal Brexit. 
So what will happen on 'Super Saturday' ?
It's going to be massive. It will potentially pitch the Prime Minister against Labour, the other opposition parties and possibly even the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The latter are in a confident and supply agreement with the Tories but leader Arlene Foster remains opposed to the deal. 
She announced this morning that they could not support it in its current form mainly because of concerns about the ability of the Northern Ireland Assembly to vote on supporting the complex customs plan in it.
But Mr Johnson send ahead and signed up anyway, in attempt to force the unionist party's hand. However this was tried without success by Theresa May last year.
If the DUP refuse to vote for the deal, a hardcore of the Tory European Research Group of Brexiteer ultras will not back it either, losing the PM more votes from his own side. 
Mr Johnson would then require pro-deal Labour rebels to defy what looks certain to be a three-line whip against the deal ordered by Jeremy Corbyn.
This morning he said the deal was 'even worse' than Theresa May's doomed agreement today as he suggested he would fight it to the bitter end.
In addition Labour would-be rebels, mainly from Leave-supporting seats in the North of England,  have this week suggested they would not rush to back Mr Johnson. 
They have been unnerved by reports this week that the government plans to 'diverge' from EU rules on the environment and workers' rights after Brexit. These measures are key to winning them over.
Boris Johnson needs 319 votes to win a majority.  When MPs voted on Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement for the third and final time on March 29 it was defeated by 344 votes to 286, a majority of 58.
That means Mr Johnson will need to persuade approximately 30 MPs to switch from opposing a deal to voting for one.
That also assumes that none of the 286 MPs who voted for the original deal have subsequently changed their minds.
So it comes down to a straight fight between yes or no?
No. There are additional plans afoot designed to tie the PM's hands.      
Remain-backing MPs are expected to try to force a vote on Saturday on holding a second referendum. 
The exact terms are not yet clear but it is thought that if there is a deal then they will agree to back it on the grounds that the public are then given a final say on whether to accept it. 
That referendum would then likely pitch the PM's deal against Remain. 
Mr Johnson will resist any attempt to attach a second referendum to his deal and currently it is unclear whether there is a majority in Parliament in favour of a so-called 'People's Vote'. 
Reports today suggested that Jeremy Corbyn could whip his MPs behind the amendment as a safety net in case the main deal passes, although that has been played down by party sources.
If a majority does emerge for a second referendum it will be difficult for the PM to resist given that Remain-backing MPs have repeatedly shown a willingness to seize control of the Brexit process.
Then what happens between now and Halloween if all goes to plan? 
Parliament would then spend the coming week putting in place the legislation needed to actually make Brexit happen on October 31. 
If Mr Johnson has a majority at the first vote on Saturday there is no reason to think that it would evaporate when it comes to voting on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. 
Once Parliament has agreed the deal it will then be up to the European Parliament to do the same. 
Brexit critics have raised the prospect of trying to block the deal but if the European Commission, European Council and British Parliament have all backed it, MEPs will be under immense pressure not to scupper the process. 
Assuming all of those hurdles are cleared in a timely fashion then the UK will leave the EU with a deal on October 31. 
What happens to plans for a general election? 
 The timing of the general election will be determined by what happens on Saturday. 
If Boris Johnson wins the Commons vote it will not take place until after Brexit happens on Halloween because there is no time.
Labour may try to bring in a vote of no confidence in the Government but it is unlikely it will succeed if he can win a Brexit vote.
However, if Mr Johnson loses the vote, he remains tied by the Benn Act to seek a Brexit delay until January. 
If that happens Mr Johnon is certain to ask for an election and Labour would grant it once No Deal is scuppered.
 So next week could see a fresh vote on holding a snap general election. 
Mr Johnson has already tried twice to go to the country early but was thwarted by anti-No Deal MPs.  
If MPs say yes then polling day would be at the end of November or the start of December.
One alternative would be for the opposition to bring forward a vote of no confidence to oust Mr Johnson and then allow Remain MPs to try to form a government of national unity.
But they have so far been so hopelessly divided that there is a risk they would not be able to do that. If no Government was formed after 14 days it would trigger an election.
 
Addressing the Cabinet yesterday, Boris Johnson reached for a vivid cinematic reference to describe the state of the Brexit negotiations.
'It's a bit like The Shawshank Redemption. We're in the tunnel,' he said – using the EU's term for the final, intense phase of the talks.
In the 1994 film, a prisoner crawls through a rancid mile-long sewage tunnel before finally tasting freedom.
Later, before the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, he compared the talks to climbing Everest, saying: 'We are not quite at the summit, we are at the Hillary Step. The summit is not far but at the moment it is still shrouded in cloud.'
It was typical Boris - both summarising his predicament and raising a laugh, even when the chips are down.
But however easy he found it to make light of the situation, yesterday was a difficult day for the Prime Minister, and the first time he has tasted the intransigence of the DUP.
Infamously, Theresa May had to pull out of December 2017 talks with Jean-Claude Juncker to take an hour-long call from a furious Arlene Foster, the DUP leader.
May could be forgiven for a wry smile at his predicament. One MP joked that she was probably 'doing cartwheels down the corridor' watching him suffer.
Most Britons who have an opinion on Brexit say they are still in favour of leaving the EU – but only with a deal, a survey has found.
Once 'don't knows' are excluded, more than half of the public (54 per cent) want to see the Brexit referendum result honoured.
But the Comres poll of 26,000 adults – the biggest since the referendum – found most of those who want to leave would oppose a No Deal Brexit. The result of the poll, commissioned by Channel 5 and ITN, is a surprise because most recent surveys have found Remain narrowly ahead. It revealed the public is also against holding a second referendum.
A YouGov poll showed Boris Johnson is the most popular choice for PM (43 per cent) – even among young people and the working classes. Conservative MP Michael Fabricant said: 'The desire to leave is hardening.'
For yesterday, it was her successor whose hopes of doing a deal were scuppered by the Northern Irish party saying 'No, No, No'.
Late on Tuesday night, in the Berlaymont, the European Commission's 13-storey Brussels headquarters, there was still optimism a deal could be done. On the fifth floor, the lights were still on as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier's midnight deadline to agree a deal came and went.
After refuelling on sandwiches and pasta salad late in the evening, the negotiating teams, split between multiple rooms to cover more ground, persevered until 1.30am before calling it quits.
At one point a junior UK official was sent out to buy a bag load of white shirts for diplomats on the UK side who were running out of fresh clothes.
Mr Johnson's chief negotiator David Frost, who leads a team of 25 officials, retired to the British ambassador's opulent residence on Rue Ducale, but was back in the building at 9am, in one of the fresh shirts.
The negotiations resumed, Frost shuttling between the Commission and the UK Embassy, but to the dismay of the UK side – and despite the Commission briefing to the contrary – there was no Eureka! moment.
By mid-morning, it was clear why. Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds entered No 10 for talks with the PM by the back door, via the Cabinet office on Whitehall. They weren't saying much, but a few hundred yards away in the House of Commons, the DUP's Sammy Wilson spelled out the party's demands when he erupted at Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay at a committee hearing.
Why does the PM need the DUP?
With a Commons majority of minus 45, Boris Johnson needs all the help he can get to push a deal through. The DUP has just ten MPs. But, crucially, Tory members of the pro-Brexit European Research Group have suggested they will not support any deal unless the DUP is happy.
Why is the DUP holding out?
The unionist party insists that any withdrawal from the EU must not affect the integrity of the United Kingdom. That is why it was against Theresa May's backstop, which it said effectively gave Dublin a veto over Ulster leaving the EU. If a general election is around the corner, as expected, the DUP will be keen to be seen to be sticking to its red lines as closely as possible to avoid losing seats to rival parties.
Has it given any ground?
Few details of the talks have leaked out. However, it is understood that the DUP might be prepared to accept Mr Johnson's controversial proposals for a customs border down the Irish Sea. This would mean that while Northern Ireland remains in the UK customs zone in theory, it would also be in the EU customs zone because checks would take place at ports on the Irish Sea.
What is the stumbling block?
THE DUP will only sign up to the deal if it contains a 'consent mechanism' for Northern Ireland. The party wants an injection of democracy into the process with the Stormont Assembly allowed to sign off the new arrangements. Mr Johnson proposed a vote in advance and one every four years, but this has gone down badly in Brussels and Dublin because they fear that it would give unionists a rolling veto.
Is money an issue?
THE DUP has been adept at prising out extra cash for Northern Ireland in return for helping the Conservatives – it got money out of Mrs May to prop up her government after the disastrous 2017 election in which she lost her majority. It is believed the unionist party may be trying to get more cash in return for signing up to the deal.
Could UK ministers make concessions?
LABOUR MP Stella Creasy claimed last night that in an attempt to get an EU deal through, ministers had offered to allow the Northern Ireland Assembly a vote on whether to legalise abortion in the province. That would overturn a vote in Westminster that took place in the summer.
Are there splits in the DUP?
IT appears so. While some more moderate members would consider concessions to allow a deal to be done, others – including Westminster leader Nigel Dodds – are holding out. Another DUP MP, Sammy Wilson, said yesterday that failing to allow a consent mechanism would breach the Good Friday Agreement.
The deal as it stands would mean Northern Ireland staying in parts of the single market and – in effect – accepting a customs border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. This represents a huge compromise for the unionist party.
What they want, Wilson barked, was 'cross-community consent' for the proposal, something he said was required under the Good Friday Agreement. What this means is a vote, or multiple votes, in Stormont, to approve the deal.
The Cabinet meeting was called in the hope Johnson would be able to brief ministers on a deal, but none was available.
While staying upbeat, and delivering his Shawshank Redemption line, he told them: 'There's a chance of securing a good deal but we are not there yet.'
Back in Brussels, the EU had other ideas. The anonymous 'EU sources' who have enraged No 10 for the past three years, were 'at it again', one senior source told me. They briefed friendly journalists that a deal was done. A 'technical agreement' had been reached, and the DUP were onside. This was seen in No 10 as a blatant attempt to bounce Mr Johnson into accepting the agreement as it stood. And only hardened the DUP's resolve.
The source said: 'The EU haven't helped with endless babbling about a deal having been done. That briefing was phenomenally unhelpful. People read that stuff and it makes it harder to get this thing over the line.' Barnier's deadline slipped and slipped. Due to brief member states at 2pm on the deal, that was pushed back to 5pm and then 7pm. At 4.30pm, Johnson did a five-minute turn at the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, with nothing to announce.
But the Shawshank line went down well. 'He's saying he's up to his eyeballs in s*** but not to give up', said one MP. Tory MP Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Brexiteers, said: 'It was vintage Boris Johnson. It was enthusiastic. It was uplifting. It was positive.'
Some Cabinet ministers are also upbeat about the deal. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told Cabinet: 'Last time we were in the seventh circle of hell; this time I'm in an airy villa with a lovely view.'
Yet last night in No 10, the mood was downcast. Johnson's proposal for a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly to approve the deal, and one every four years thereafter, hasn't survived contact with Brussels. It's far from clear what he can extract from the EU that the DUP will accept. And the grim truth is that without their support, he can't get his deal through, and there's little point even turning up to today's EU Council summit.
In the absence of a deal, the looming deadline set by the Benn Act will force him, on Saturday, to ditch his 'come what may, do or die' pledge and delay Brexit. He's riding high in the polls, but after an extension? Will Leave voters blame the MPs who agreed the 'Surrender Act' or will they blame him?
Privately, Mr Johnson's most senior advisers haven't given up hope. Perhaps they're right to, and he will emerge odorous but victorious.
Or perhaps they should be reading another line from Shawshank, delivered by hard-bitten lag Red, played by Morgan Freeman: 'Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.'
Super Saturday's on the brink: Boris urges MPs to back the first weekend sitting since Falklands
by John Stevens, deputy political editor 
Boris Johnson last night tabled plans for a 'super Saturday' Parliamentary sitting to get a Brexit deal through the Commons – even as rebel MPs threatened to wreck his hopes.
The Government laid a motion for both Houses of Parliament to sit from 9.30am until 2pm on Saturday, which will be voted on by MPs today.
Should the motion pass, the Commons will sit on Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War in 1982. 
The Prime Minister hopes to use the session for MPs to debate – and pass – any Brexit deal he brings back from this week's crunch Brussels summit.
But yesterday, ringleaders of the 21 MPs who recently had the Conservative whip removed said their support for a deal would be conditional on Mr Johnson first seeking an extension beyond October 31 – or backing a second referendum. 
They are said to be concerned that hardline members of the European Research Group could double-cross the Government by backing a Withdrawal Agreement but then withdrawing their support and voting against the actual legislation needed to implement it.
They also don't believe there is enough time left before October 31 to pass the laws required.
It makes it even more difficult for the Prime Minister to get the numbers he needs to get a deal through the Commons, as Theresa May failed to do three times.
Last night, the leader of the Independent Group for Change, former Conservative MP Anna Soubry, hinted at opposition to Saturday's debate. 
She said: 'It is increasingly clear Johnson's 'new' deal is worse than May's. Parliament will get five hours' debate on Saturday without any independent assessments, analysis or select committee scrutiny of the most important set of decisions we will make in generations. That's plain wrong.'
If Britain and the EU cannot finalise the legal text of a deal before Saturday, it is possible MPs could be asked to hold an 'indicative vote' on the outline of the plan – to prove the Prime Minister can command the support of the Commons.
An EU source last night claimed European leaders could even refuse to sign off on a new deal until the Prime Minister shows he can make the arithmetic work among MPs.
Remarkably, it has even been suggested that opposition MPs might vote down the motion for the Saturday sitting. 
The so-called Benn Act passed by MPs trying to prevent No Deal states the Prime Minister must write to Brussels asking for an extension if Parliament does not agree to a deal by Saturday.
One Cabinet minister said MPs could block the Saturday sitting.
The minister said: 'There are a lot of MPs who claim they want a delay because they want to prevent No Deal, but actually they just want to stop Brexit altogether. 
They just do not want to admit that publicly because they fear a backlash from their constituents.
'MPs could stop us having a vote on a deal on Saturday because they fear it will pass, and they know without one the Prime Minister will have to ask for an extension. That is one step towards their goal of blocking Brexit entirely.'
Former Tory Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt said it would be 'pretty blooming amazing' if anyone voted against the motion for the Saturday session.
Yesterday, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay told MPs that Mr Johnson would comply with the Benn Act by writing a letter to Brussels asking for a delay if a deal was not approved by Saturday, following fears the PM could try to scupper an extension with a second contradictory letter or ask a member state to block an extension.
 
Theresa May was offered 'loyal and genuine' support by her MPs it was claimed tonight after making a 'heartfelt' appeal to her backbenchers.
The PM survived a crunch confrontation with her fractious party at the 1922 Committee meeting tonight where she spoke of her personal drive to get a Brexit deal done in the national interest.
And as the meeting broke up, Brexiteer Michael Fabricant claimed it was a 'love in' and told waiting reporters: 'It's not Daniella in the lion's den, it's petting zoo'. 
Mrs May was welcomed by cheers and loud banging of desks as she arrived for a tense meeting of the 1922 Committee in Parliament days after being warned to 'bring her own noose' to a 'show trial'.
Some Brexiteers demanded 'cast iron guarantees' that Britain would leave the EU and pressed their leader on what concessions she had manage to force out of Brussels.
But a string of Tory MPs emerged from the meeting to say that most Tories had rallied behind the PM and that her position as leader is now more secure.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid hailed a 'strong statement' from the PM while Attorney General Geoffrey Cox declared the meeting was 'very good'. 
Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd declared Mrs May had 'won the room', after making an earnest and 'emotional' address.
While Mr Fabricant said she will emerge a 'heroine' who could lead the party into the next election if she gets a good Brexit deal.
Ms Rudd said Mrs May made an 'emotional' and 'heartfelt' plea to her backbenchers – and she believes her position as PM 'is safe'.
She said: ‘She got a warm welcome, she talked quite emotionally about why she was doing this for the good of the country and how it was important that the public and our party members realise that we are behind her and that we all wanted the same thing – which is to lead in the best interests of the country.
The price of  cheese could rocket by over a third if there is a no deal Brexit, MPs were today warned.
Retail bosses from Northern Ireland said the price of beef may also soar if Britain crashes out of the bloc and starts trading on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms.  
And they warned that the smuggling of bootlegged goods over the Irish border may also flourish if there is a no deal Brexit. 
It comes amid warnings that criminal gangs have branched out from cigarettes, alcohol and petrol to sneaking washing powder across the  border to sell at knocked-down prices.
But several MPs angrily accused the bosses of 'scaremongering' and said that businesses should have done far more to prepare for Brexit.
 
Aodhan Connolly, director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, said that ' no deal is not an option' for Northern Ireland because the economic consequences would be dire.
He told the Brexit Select Committee today that if the UK goes to WTO trading rules then the price of beef could go up by 37 per cent and  cheese by up to 43 per cent.
Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope accused the business bosses of 'scaremongering'.
He said: 'Why are the people of Northern Ireland  going to have to pay more for the cost of cheese when they can get it either from the surplus milk there is going to be, or in buying good old English cheddar?'
Declan Billington, vice chairman of the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association, hit back saying that all the cheese processing factories are in the Irish Republic.
He said: 'Two points - the UK is running I think a 30 per cent deficit in cheese.
'A lot of that cheese is made up from countries like Ireland, indeed the milk from Northern Ireland goes to the south to be made into cheese. 
'Years ago,  we argued that we needed the level playing field to be able to build the factories in Northern Ireland to service the UK market.'
He added: 'The all Ireland market evolved and the factories are on the other side of the border, and the milk will not be able to move south to service those factories, and we do not have the factories in the north to make butter or cheese.' 
 
 
Asked if the PM looked emotional Ms Rudd said: ‘Well she looked like she really minded – it wasn’t reading from a script.
‘She was talking frankly and honestly form the heart about why she was doing this.’
Ms Rudd said she had only ‘occasionally’ seen the PM so emotional when speaking.
She added: ‘She was very earnest and it felt, listening to higher, very heartfelt. And a lot of the questions were about different things but a lot referred to the fact that we didn’t want the use of that nasty language we saw before.’
The former Cabinet minster also said that many Tory MPs had condemned the violent descriptions - briefed out anonymously to the press - that she was going to be 'knifed' at the showdown.
She said: 'There was a lot of uncomfortable feeling about the language that was used apparently in last week's papers, and obviously pointing out that we needed to hold together and deliver based on the fact that the real danger to this country is from a Labour party opposite – the real extremists.'  
Ms Rudd said the PM is in a stronger position now and that she is 'safe' in No 10.
She said: 'She was able to win the room and deliver something quite personal and emotional about why she was committed to doing it despite being quite frank about the difficulties that were still there.
'People spoke very freely about their concerns…but they came back to the fact that they backed her in delivering for the country and the government.'  
Mr Fabricant said: 'I think she was very, it was encouraging. Everybody was praising her. 
'One or two questions were very tangible questions about Europe, which she answered.
'As I said, not Daniella in the lion’s den, but a petting zoo. 
'It was really lovely actually and everybody thinks we should hold together. 
'It is particularly crucial at this time. I think we all realise that we need to at this point, in the next month or two we are going to get a deal and we need to hold together.
'Andrew Bridgen asked what concessions were being made, and she gave a whole series of concessions that the EU had made.
'She explained very clearly with several examples, including how the EU were initially saying that EU nationals living in the UK should be allowed to appeal to the ECJ over the UK, and she said that now is not the case. The UK courts will have supremacy.
'She did not have to appeal for unity because everybody else did. Lots of people were saying how the language used over the last weekend was disgusting and misogynistic and the rest of it. I think we all felt that way.
'She lives to fight another day I am quite sure, and possibly the next election. I would not be surprised.
'If she gets a good deal she will be a heroine. It was a love in.'
He said there was no mention of the letters of no confidence  in the PM which have reportedly been sent into the Tory party chairman. 
Repeated rounds of banging were heard outside the packed committee room in the House of Commons. 
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Environment Secretary Michael Gove turned out to support the PM at the private meeting.
Before the meeting began Brexiteers claimed the meeting was being 'rigged' and descending into a 'PR farce' before the showdown even began.
Nadine Dorries claimed the whips were planting questions and organising a noisy show of support while Andrew Bridgen accused colleagues of 'hypocrisy' as he predicted private critics of the PM would turn out to applaud her in public.
Former Brexit Minister Steve Baker said despite the organised shows of support he wanted to hear what Mrs May was doing to stop the 'great ship of state of this country' from 'heading towards the rocks'.   
The stakes were raised ahead of the meeting after leaked documents revealed Cabinet ministers have been advised Britain could be left in Brexit limbo for years.  
Rumours are swirling in Westminster that the chairman of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady holds almost enough letters from Tory MPs to order a vote of no confidence. He must call a vote if 48 letters are sent. 
Ms Dorries tweeted: 'PM attending '22 meeting. Already rigged by the whips.
Britain has drawn up a contingency plan to buy or lease a flotilla of lorry ferries to ensure food and medicine can still get past a no deal blockade of the Channel.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling briefed the Cabinet yesterday on the extraordinary backup plan.
There are fears that if there is a sudden no deal Brexit traffic through the Channel Tunnel would collapse for months. Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said the normal Dover-Calais route could be at 12 per cent capacity for six months.
Mr Grayling told ministers the scheme is called Government Owned or Operated Logistics and would move goods via the Ports of London, Tilbury and Liverpool.
The chilling reports, revealed today by ITV's Robert Peston, come amid claims French President Emmaneul Macron would deliberately block imports in no deal.  
'Loyalist Chequers supporters will be dispersed about the room to desk bang and cheer.
'The whips will communicate via WhatsApp. The first questioner will already have been agreed and the questions planted.
'It's a PR farce.' 
Mr Bridgen lashed 'hypocritical' colleagues who would cheer Mrs May tonight before criticising her in private.
Mr Bridgen even claimed Downing Street was behind viscous anonymous briefing against Mrs May at the weekend. 
He told Sky News: 'I have thought about it and the only people that suited - it was very unhelpful and bad politics and I have a lot of sympathy with the Prime Minister - is No 10.
'I would not be surprised if No 10 put those words out themselves knowing exactly how the press and the public would react.' 
Amid the growing drama in Westminster, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament Brexit was being handled with 'staggering incompetence' that was pushing the country into no deal.  
The current fury against Mrs May is fuelled by both her and the EU accepting the concept of an extension to the Brexit transition period at last week's fractious summit in Brussels.
Current transition agreements oblige the UK to keep following all EU rules, including on free movement, without having a say on how they are written. 
The Prime Minister has insisted it would only last for a 'few months' and in any event would end 'well before' the next election in 2022.
But a paper to ministers warns the plan 'could, in theory, lead to a long-running IP (implementation period)' with annual extensions on a 'rolling basis', The Times reveals today.
Any such threat will alarm and enrage Eurosceptics who fear Mrs May's plans will park Britain in the Brexit departure lounge indefinitely.
Downing Street insisted the leak was a 'partial reflection' of advice given to ministers and did not reflect either decisions taken or the PM's position. 
Cabinet yesterday saw stormy rows between ministers at the state of the negotiation, which now turns on how to resolve the so-called Irish backstop.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox warned Britain risks being left in Dante's 'first circle of hell' - better known as limbo - under the plans.
Ministers, including Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt according to reports, are desperate for Mrs May to negotiate a unilateral way for Britain to escape the backstop, which is supposed to govern what happens to the Irish border between the transition period and the start of a full trade deal.
Ministers also heard blood-curdling threats that Britain might have to buy a fleet on lorry ferries to ensure food and medicine can get past a Brexit blockade of Calais.
There are fears that if there is a sudden no deal Brexit traffic through the Channel Tunnel would collapse for months.
There were claims the normal Dover-Calais route could be at 12 per cent capacity for six months.
Mr Grayling told ministers the scheme is called Government Owned or Operated Logistics and would move goods via the Ports of London, Tilbury and Liverpool.
The chilling reports, revealed today by ITV's Robert Peston, come amid claims French President Emmaneul Macron would deliberately block imports in no deal.  
And Cabinet Office Minster David Lidingtion is said to have warned Cabinet a no deal could trigger a financial crisis as severe as 'Black Wednesday' in 1992, where falling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) saw Bank of England interests rates spike to 15 per cent. 
Theresa May insists the Brexit deal is 95 per cent done - but the final issue of the Irish border backstop may be the hardest part.
The backstop sets out what will happen to the Irish border if the Brexit transition ends before a final UK-EU trade deal is in place.
Transition is currently due to end in December 2020.  
The EU is still insisting that in the absence of a full trade deal, Northern Ireland should stay in the EU customs union while the rest of the UK leaves to ensure the Irish border remains open.
Mrs May has flatly rejected the idea, saying she would not agree to anything that risked splitting the UK. 
Instead, the government has mooted a temporary customs union for the whole UK.
There would also probably need to be more regulatory checks between mainland UK and Northern Ireland to protect the single market. 
Some already take place, but they could be dramatically stepped up - potentially creating a huge flashpoint with the DUP.
Brussels now appears to be prepared to do a UK-wide backstop in the divorce deal - but insists it must be robust and the UK could not exit it unilaterally. 
Following the grim warnings, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab was ordered to bring weekly updates on no deal preparations to the Cabinet.  
Britain's preferred version of the backstop is for a UK-wide temporary customs union with the EU - but this would block new trade deals and is unacceptable to Brexiteers as a long term settlement. 
As well as exit mechanism, the talks are still stalled because the EU wants a Northern Ireland-only backstop, at least in the divorce treaty. 
Following the Cabinet leak, a Downing Street spokesman said: 'This is nothing more than a partial reflection of advice to ministers, and not of decisions taken.
'The prime minister made her position absolutely clear in the House of Commons on Monday.
'As the PM said then, we do not believe any extension to the implementation period will be necessary, and in any event we would have to be out of it well before the end of the parliament.
'We would not accept a position in which the UK, having negotiated in good faith an agreement which prevents a hard border in Northern Ireland, finds itself indefinitely locked into an alternative, inferior arrangement against our will.' 
In other developments today, a former Labour minister claimed up to 45 Labour MPs could defy Jeremy Corbyn and vote for Theresa May's Brexit deal if it is 'reasonable'.
Caroline Flint said the Labour leadership's six tests for a Brexit deal were 'disingenuous' and designed to be failed.
A major rebellion could be a get out of jail card for the Prime Minister who faces a major revolt on her own side.
There are now 50 Tory MPs publicly signed up to the 'Stand Up 4 Brexit' social media campaign vowing to vote down a deal based on Mrs May's Chequers blueprint.  
Ms Flint told the Yorkshire Post: 'There are a number of Labour MPs who feel if there's a reasonable deal on the table, if you're going to say no you need some bloody good reasons why if we're going to end up with no deal.
'We had 15 vote against the EEA, the Norway option, I think you could double or triple the number of MPs who have concerns.' 
Ukip MEP Nigel Farage denounced the UK negotiating team under Olly Robbins as an 'enemy within' attempting to sabotage Brexit and said Britain was heading for humiliation unless the Conservative Party got rid of Theresa May.
Speaking to the European Parliament today, Mr Farage thanked Mr Tusk for 'confirming that it was Theresa May that asked for a one-year extension to the transition period'.
Dismissing the threat of a hard border in Ireland as a 'red herring' which would never come to pass, Mr Farage told MEPs: 'The problem is that there is a rogue element in these negotiations, a group of people who don't wish to see a solution, who put up a brick wall to stop us breaking free.
'It is not your chief negotiator Michel Barnier, it is actually the British civil service, Olly Robbins' team.
'They signed up years ago to the European dream. They have been happy to take their orders from Brussels, they are now out to sabotage Brexit. They are indeed the enemy within.'  
The European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt told MEPs: 'We are now in a battle of the figures. Mrs May says 95% has been agreed, Michel Barnier says 90% has been agreed. I know Britain has always had difficulties with the metric system.
'If it is 90 per cent or 95 per cent or 99 per cent, if there is no solution for the Irish border, for our Parliament it is 0 per cent that is agreed at the moment.
'We need agreement on the Irish border. The Good Friday Agreement must be protected.'
A Tory leadership contest can be called in one of two ways - if the leader resigns or if MPs force and win a vote of no confidence in them.
Calling votes of no confidence is the responsibility of the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which includes all backbench Tory MPs.
Chairman Graham Brady is obliged to call a vote if 15 per cent of Tory MPs write to him calling for one - currently 48 MPs. 
The process is secret and only Mr Brady knows how many letters he has received.
The no-confidence vote is purely on whether the leader should stay in place or not, rather than a contest.
Crucially, if the incumbent receives more votes in support than opposed they cannot be challenged for 12 months.
That procedure was last used in 2003 when Iain Duncan Smith was removed as Tory leader. 
If the leader is ousted, any MP is eligible to stand in the subsequent competition.
Conservative MPs hold a series of ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to two, with the lowest placed candidate dropping out in each round.
The final two candidates are then offered to the Tory membership at large for an election. 
Some activists have called for changes so it is easier for contenders to reach the final stage.
They have suggested that the membership should get to choose between any candidates who get support from at least 20 other MPs.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox admitted tonight the UK cannot unilaterally exit the Irish border backstop - prompting claims the Brexit divorce is a 'trap'.
Mr Cox told MPs if the backstop ever comes into force there will have to be a trade deal or proof the EU is acting in bad faith to escape it.
To heckles of 'it's a trap', Mr Cox told MPs the Brexit divorce deal contained 'no unilateral right for either party to terminate'.
Insisting he would answer questions 'candidly', Mr Cox said the Britain was 'indefinitely committed' to the backstop if it ever came into force - but said that was a political not a legal question.   
Short of agreeing a full UK-EU trade deal, the only way to break the Irish backstop is to convince a tribunal there is 'clear evidence' that the EU is deliberately avoiding finalising a trade agreement. 
Mr Cox said he would have preferred a unilateral exit but said he was 'prepared to lend my support' to take the 'calculated risk' because 'I do not believe we will be trapped in it permanently' - insisting it could be challenged in court if needed.
Many MPs believe the government is holding back even more damaging material in the full written advice from Mr Cox.    
Shadow solicitor-general Nick Thomas-Symonds told the Commons: 'The Government does not want MPs to see the full legal advice for fear of the political consequences.'  
Mr Cox - an eminent QC and strident Brexiteer - was a key figure in forcing Theresa May's deal through the Cabinet - but there are claims his private legal guidance warned the UK could be stuck 'indefinitely' in the Irish border backstop.
Labour and other opposition parties wrote to Commons Speaker John Bercow tonight to demand he start action to hold ministers in contempt of Parliament over Brexit legal advice.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the Mr Cox had failed to follow the orders of Parliament to publish his full legal advice - despite the Attorney's repeated insistence publication would not be in the public interest.
He joined forces with the Liberal Democrats, SNP and even Theresa May's DUP allies to ask Mr Bercow to consider launching contempt proceedings. 

In his statement to MPs, Mr Cox insisted the backstop part of the divorce was 'expressly agreed not to be intended to establish a permanent relationship but to be temporary'.
The Government has caved to demands to publish the full legal advice on the Brexit deal after losing an historic vote.
It means fresh details about the legal advice will be published. But this is what we know about the advice so far:   
He said the Article 50 process did not provide a legal basis for a permanent arrangement.
But 'if the protocol were to come into force, it would continue to apply in international law unless and until it was superseded by the intended subsequent agreement' which met the goals of avoiding a hard border and protecting the Good Friday Agreement.
'There is therefore no unilateral right for either party to terminate this arrangement. This means that if no superseding agreement can be reached within the implementation period, the protocol would be activated and in international law would subsist, even if negotiations had broken down.
'How likely that is to happen is a political question, to which the answer will no doubt depend partly on the extent to which it is in either party's interests to remain indefinitely within its arrangements.'
Brexiteers claim the 47-page legal summary published this afternoon is actually a 'glossary' to the Attorney General's six-page advice handed to the Cabinet last month.
It confirms that the Irish border backstop will be in force after the transition period ends in December 2020, 'unless and until' it is superseded by other arrangements.
'If the Protocol starts to apply after the end of the implementation period, then it will continue to do so unless and until its provisions are superseded by a subsequent agreement between the UK and the EU establishing alternative arrangements,' it says. 
The legal paper gives a more detailed explanation of the 'best endeavours' provision in the Withdrawal Agreement. The deal sets out that if the backstop were to come into force, there will be a review process for the UK to break out.
Under Commons rules, the Speaker decides whether to allow a contempt motion to go before the House.
If he does and the vote is carried, it would then be referred to the Committee of Privileges which would rule on whether a contempt of Parliament had taken place.
If it is decided that a contempt had occurred, the committee can recommend a suitable punishment which is then put back to MPs to agree.
In theory, the most severe penalty is expulsion from the House, although the prospects of that happening would appear remote.
There were only three expulsions in the 20th Century, with the last one in 1954. Two of them involved serious criminal convictions, and the third was for lying to a committee and allegedly taking bribes.  
However any finding against the Government would be potentially highly damaging for Mrs May at a time when she is at her most vulnerable politically.  
The summary argues that the 'obligation to negotiate in good faith with a view to concluding agreements is a well recognised concept in international law'. 
'Relevant precedents indicate that such obligations require the parties to conduct negotiations in a meaningful way, contemplate modifications to their respective positions and pay reasonable regard to each other's interests,' it says. 
But the document adds: 'A tribunal would only find a breach of the duty of good faith if there was a clear basis for doing so.'  
The wrangling comes as the bitter row over Mrs May's Brexit plan reaches the endgame, with just over a week until the crunch Commons vote.
As tensions rise, the DUP has said it ready to sign a joint letter with Labour complaining that ministers are in contempt of parliament - after a Commons motion called for the details to be issued.
The party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said: 'If the Government attempt to ignore the will of the House of Commons and refuse to publish the full legal advice on the Irish backstop, the DUP will work with colleagues from right across the House to ensure they start to listen.' 
In his Telegraph column, Mr Johnson also waded into the row, saying: 'It is a scandal that this is currently being withheld.
'You will recall that, when she was in opposition, the present Prime Minister wrote to the Labour government and complained of their failure to publish the Attorney General's advice on the Iraq war. 
As pressure grows on the PM, there are claims next week's Brexit vote could be shelved.
Some Tory whips think a delay could help Theresa May to go back to the EU to renegotiate her deal to avoid a defeat in the Commons.
Under the plan, if the situation was still looking dire at the end of this week the Government would abandon the vote.
Mrs May could then attempt to reopen talks at a summit in Brussels. 
However, Sajid Javid - who was said to be one of the minister who back the idea - dismissed it today.
And Downing Street insisted the vote will go ahead as planned.  
'She was right then – and how much more wrong and absurd is her position now, when you consider that this legal question is more important even than the Iraq war.'  
It represents another massive hurdle for Mrs May to overcome as stares down the barrel of almost certain defeat on December 11.
A heavy loss could bring Mrs May's time in Downing Street to a chaotic halt - although allies hope going down by a small margin could allow her to try again.
Earlier Mrs May's chief Brexit adviser told MPs that the Northern Ireland border backstop was a 'slightly uncomfortable necessity' for both the UK and the European Union.
The fallback plan agreed with Brussels was 'not the future relationship that either the UK or the EU wants to have with one another', Olly Robbins told the Exiting the European Union Committee.
He said: 'It is an uncomfortable position for both sides and the reality ... is that there is not a withdrawal agreement without a backstop.
'That reflects also, as I've said to this committee before, ministers' commitments to Northern Ireland and to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, rather than being something imposed upon us.
'So, it is a necessity and a slightly uncomfortable necessity for both sides.'
Leading businessman Sir Ian Wood has said Theresa May's Brexit deal is 'workable' and is better than the current situation with Europe.
He said that the UK cannot afford to leave without a deal and that the plan now needs to 'move ahead.'
The businessman said that Brexit could also bring benefits to Scottish fishing.
Sir Ian, who made his name developing the Wood Group into a global oilfield services company, said that dealing with Brexit had been an 'extraordinarily difficult task.'
He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: 'There is not a solution which anyone, or I suspect even more than 50% of people, would really say 'that's a really good solution'.
'There are two extremes and all kinds of ranges in between.
'I frankly think we do need to move ahead. We cannot afford to have no outcome.
'It would be bad for Europe and it would be bad for the UK and it would take a long time to work our way through that and frankly I think the proposal that's on the table, I think it is workable, I think it is better than we have, we're out of Common Market membership but we're retaining some of the advantages so I think it's better than we have, and I think it's a workable proposal.'
Asked if the Government had drafted a clause for the Withdrawal Agreement which would have allowed the UK to opt out of the backstop unilaterally, Mr Robbins said: 'Ministers asked us to look at a whole range of options for how to bring the backstop to an end, and so we did.
'And the Prime Minister and other ministers tested some of those out on European partners.
'But, what we went into the negotiation with in the end was a text that delivered the termination clause very much as it is laid out there.'
The UK faces making additional payments to Brussels if the Brexit implementation period is extended, the Government's Brexit legal advice also said.
Under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, it is due to run until the end of December 2020 but can be extended by up to two years if both sides agree.
The advice says that discussions on any extension would involve 'reaching further agreement on the UK's financial contribution'.
Labour's Chris Bryant, a supporter of the People's Vote campaign for a second referendum, attacked the paper's release when MPs had demanded to see the full legal advice given to ministers by Mr Cox.
He said: 'The House of Commons was very clear that the full legal advice to the Cabinet should be supplied to Members of Parliament.
'The refusal of the Government to comply sends a very clear message about the Brexit deal - that it is bad for Britain, satisfies nobody and will weaken our economy and our voice in the world.' 
Meanwhile, demands for a second referendum are mounting after the dramatic resignation of universities minister Sam Gyimah over the weekend.
Senior Labour figures including shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and deputy leader Tom Watson are thought to be ramping up pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to back a fresh national ballot. 
Environment Secretary Michael Gove admitted yesterday that a referendum was a potential outcome if Mrs May loses, but said it would 'rip the social fabric of the country'. He also insisted Leave would win by a bigger margin than in 2016.
MPs across Parliament have angrily accused ministers of ignoring the will of the House by only releasing a 'full reasoned political statement' on the legal position.
It follows a binding Commons vote last month requiring the Government to lay before Parliament 'any legal advice in full' - including that given by the Attorney General - relating to the Withdrawal Agreement.
Ministers chose not to oppose the motion - tabled by Labour under an arcane procedure known as the humble address - as they feared a damaging Commons defeat.
Mr Cox is said to have warned the UK could be tied to the EU customs union 'indefinitely' through the Northern Ireland 'backstop'.
The Sunday Times said in a letter sent last month to Cabinet ministers, he advised the only way out of the backstop - designed to prevent the return of a hard border with the Republic - once it was invoked was to sign a new trade deal, a process which could take years.
'The protocol would endure indefinitely,' he apparently wrote.
The letter was said to be so sensitive that ministers were given numbered copies to read which they were not allowed to take from the room afterwards. 
Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab - who quit last month over the withdrawal agreement - said the legal position was clear.
'The backstop will last indefinitely until it is superseded by the treaty setting out our future relationship, unless the EU allows us to exit,' he told The Sunday Times.
'The EU has a clear veto, even if the future negotiations stretch on for many years, or even if they break down and there is no realistic likelihood of us reaching agreement.
'That's my view as a former international lawyer, but it is consistent if not identical with all of the formal advice I received.'  
House of Commons lawyers have raised fresh questions about the Irish border backstop in Theresa May's Brexit deal.
An internal assessment by the House's EU legislation team highlights that the customs arrangements would be a 'practical barrier to the UK entering separate trade agreements on goods with third countries'. 
It also suggests the Joint Committee to arbitrate over the Withdrawal Agreement could put Britain at a 'practical disadvantage'.
'If the Joint Committee is unable to reach a decision, in some circumstances, that will block next steps,' the note says.
'The party that wants those next steps to occur, will then be at a practical disadvantage. 
'By way of example, i) the Joint Committee sets the limits of state aid that can be authorised by the UK for agriculture. If limits are not agreed, state aid may not be authorised.' 
Downing Street has acknowledged that the backstop would hamper trade deals on goods, but argues that the EU would also be unhappy to keep the arrangements indefinitely.
The PM's aides insist the country would still be able to do deals on services.
Ministers have argued the legal advice is privileged, in the same way as any advice given by a lawyer to their client, and that government cannot function if it is required to release such confidential material.
However, Sir Keir said it was essential MPs understood the 'full legal implications' before they voted on the agreement.
'If the full legal advice is not forthcoming, we will have no alternative but to start proceedings for contempt of Parliament - and we will work with all parties to take this forward,' he said.
'If ministers stubbornly refuse to obey the order of MPs then they risk triggering a historic constitutional row that puts Parliament in direct conflict with the executive.
'Although I accept the long-standing convention that Cabinet legal advice should be kept confidential, it's well-established that in exceptional circumstances that convention does not apply. And these are exceptional circumstances.' 
Sir Keir is ready to sign a joint letter with the DUP's Westminster leader Nigel Dodds, Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake and SNP Europe spokesman Stephen Gethins, asking Mr Bercow to allow a motion 'that the Government has held Parliament in contempt'.
Under Commons rules, if the Speaker allows the motion to go before the House and the vote is carried, it would then be referred to the Committee of Privileges which would rule on whether a contempt of Parliament had taken place.
If it is decided that a contempt had occurred, the committee can recommend a suitable punishment which is then put back to MPs to agree.
In theory, the most severe penalty is expulsion from the House, although the prospects of that happening would appear remote.
However any finding against the Government would be potentially highly damaging for Mrs May at a time when she is at her most vulnerable politically.
May jokes Corbyn's Brexit TV debate plan would mean she misses STRICTLY   
Theresa May joked Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit TV debate plan would mean she misses Strictly Come Dancing - just days after the Labour called for the showdown to be early enough he could watch the I'm a Celebrity final.
The PM's jibe at Mr Corbyn today after Downing Street accused the Labour leader of 'running scared' of a head to head clash.
Both leaders have backed a debate on Sunday night - two days before the crunch vote on Mrs May's Brexit deal in the Commons - but failed to agree on format.
Mrs May wants the debate on BBC One and has accepted the broadcaster's idea of a head-to-head debate alongside questions from a panel.
Mr Corbyn had backed an ITV plan of a simple one-on-one contest. He has accepted this could be on the BBC but wants the simpler format.
There are growing doubts as to whether the debate would take place at all amid continued wrangling over the format. 
Mrs May told This Morning she was 'keen' to take part in a debate.
She said: 'There are discussions about where exactly it is going to be.
'There are variations on this. I think he said he wanted to be on ITV so he could watch the final of I'm a Celebrity.
'I think his proposed time means I would miss Strictly - I hate to say it on ITV but I'm a bit of a Strictly fan.' 
'Leave won!' Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan grill Tony Blair on Brexit referendum call 
Tony Blair faced a fiery grilling today as he was challenged over why he is calling for another Brexit referendum just two years after the historic vote.
The ex-PM is stepping up his campaign for a so-called People's Vote and lashed Theresa May's deal for 'yielding' too much to Brussels. 
Appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain, he said another referendum should be held which gives Britons a choice between staying in the EU or having a Boris Johnson-style hard Brexit.
But presenters Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan quizzed him over why Remain should even be on the ballot two years after the side lost.
In a heated exchange with the ex Labour leader, Susanna said: 'Why should Remain even be an option on the second referendum? Why isn't it a choice between May's deal and an alternative Brexit?
'Because the whole Remain camp didn't win that campaign. Why should we re-run that part of the referendum? Why would Brexiteers - people who voted to leave , not feel utterly infuriated that is being re-run?' 
Mr Blair hit back, saying: 'I think if you had a referendum and you excluded the possibility of remaining I think your 16-odd million people who voted Remain would feel a great sense of disillusion if they weren't able to make their case again.'
Piers also chimed in asking: 'Isn't that what happens when you lose?' 
The ex Labour leader went on: 'When you lose but the other side are as divided as to what form of Brexit is correct or not the only sensible way is to put it back to people and say, you have had your 30 months of experience, do you want to stay?'
He said there his also a 'good chance' Brussels would give the UK more concessions to the UK.  
 
Theresa May's task of getting her Brexit deal past the House of Commons is looking near-impossible as opposition mounts.
The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs will happen on December 11 and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - as well as being the key to Mrs May' fate as PM.
But despite opinion polls suggesting the public might be coming round to her deal, there is little sign of a shift among politicians.
Remainers have been stepping up calls for a second referendum in the wake of Sam Gyimah's resignation as universities minister over the weekend - while Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have accused Mrs May of betrayal.   
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part.
The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, over 100 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No.
This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185.
This is how the House of Commons might break down:
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The Government (plus various hangers-on)
Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides.
There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'.
How many of them are there? 178.
What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss.
Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote
Who are they: The most hard line of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker.
How many of them are there: 26
What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Other Brexiteers in the ERG
Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson.
Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her.
How many of them are there? Around 50.
What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal.
This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic.
The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Remain including the People's Vote supporters
Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee.
How many of them are there: Maybe around 10.
What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no.
A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister.
Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists
Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy.
There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else.
How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal.
What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it.
It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work.
Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
The DUP
Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government.
They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union.
How many of them are there? 10.
What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea.
Labour Loyalists
Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders.
How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do.
What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum.
Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process.
The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal.
Labour Rebels
Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point.
How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal.
What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
Other Opposition parties
Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents.
How many of them are there? About 60 MPs.
How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. 
 
Theresa May repeatedly broke down in tears today as she admitted her Brexit-wracked premiership is coming to an end - first on live TV and then behind closed doors.
Watched by husband Philip, the Prime Minister was overcome by emotion on the steps of Downing Street as she conceded that her desperate struggle to get the UK out of the EU will end in failure.  
'I've done my best,' she said. 'I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal ... sadly I have not been able to do so.
'It is and will always remain a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.'
Mrs May was almost unable to continue as she voiced her pride at having served the country. She declared she will resign as Conservative leader on June 7, triggering a contest that should be complete by the end of July. 
And there were more tears when she went back inside No10, as she paid tribute to her 'rock' husband during an address thanking her staff and advisers. MailOnline understands Mrs May welled up when she said of her time in office, 'it's been a journey'.  
The dramatic scenes came after Mrs May's last-ditch effort to get her EU deal through the Commons backfired spectacularly. Tories were up in arms and the Cabinet mounted an open revolt after she offered MPs a vote on holding a second referendum and joining a temporary customs union with the EU.
The PM humiliatingly pulled her Withdrawal Agreement Bill - known as WAB - yesterday after accepting the reality of her demise.  
Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the powerful Tory 1922 committee, met her in No10 this morning. He had been instructed by Tory backbenchers to enforce an exit date if Mrs May refused to volunteer one, with MPs threatening to change party rules to allow a fresh no-confidence vote.
Jeremy Corbyn immediately seized on the news to demand a general election, saying the Conservatives were 'divided and disintegrating'.  
Boris Johnson also kicked off the Tory leadership battle by declaring that the UK should leave the EU on October 31 'deal or no deal' - while Jeremy Hunt confirmed today that he will be a candidate.
But despite the brutal assault on her position from her own side, there was an outpouring of sympathy today after Mrs May finally fell on her sword.
Mr Johnson paid tribute to her 'stoical service to our country', urging politicians to 'follow her urgings' by 'coming together to deliver Brexit'. 
Andrea Leadsom, whose resignation as Commons Leader put the final nail in Mrs May's political coffin, tweeted: 'A very dignified speech by @theresa_may. An illustration of her total commitment to country and duty. She did her utmost, and I wish her all the very best.'  
David Cameron also weighed in, describing it as a 'strong and brave speech'. 
Last night the PM chose to stay at her constituency home in Berkshire mulling her exit strategy with her husband Philip - who was yesterday urged by Brexiteers to tell his wife her time is up. However, she is thought to have made up her mind up to quit earlier this week. 
There might be five months left until the next deadline for the UK to leave the EU, but in fact time is short to prepare the ground for it to happen. 
The new Tory leader is unlikely to be in place before the end of July. And then they will have  just two months - including August, when much of the continent downs tools - to overhaul the Brexit deal Theresa May thrashed out with Brussels. 
Success in this process would still mean a frantic race against time to  pass legislation through Parliament in October.
Here are the key dates in the process: 
June 7 - Theresa May formally  steps down
June 10 - Tory leadership contest begins 
The battle to succeed Mrs May as Tory leader should formally kick off early in June.
Nominations to stand will close in the week beginning June 10 before it is put to several rounds of votes. 
The final two candidates are then offered to the Tory membership at large for an election.
It could take two to six weeks for MPs to whittle down the leadership contenders 
From 24 June - Top Two Tory candidates are offered to Tory members
Once Tory MPs have whittled the leadership contenders down to the top two in a series of votes - the lucky two will be be put to a vote by Conservative Party members. 
July 26  - New Tory leader selected and becomes PM  
The Tory party hierarchy has said it wants a new Tory party leader to be selected by the Parliamentary recess - which is likely to be on July 26.
The new leader will become Prime Minister and form a government.  
September 29-October 2 - Conservative Party conference 
The Tory gathering in Manchester this autumn will be the natural time for a new leader to take the stage and try to unite the fractured party.
Assuming no way has been found to force a Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament by this point, they will need to spell out how they intend to approach the Brexit process.
October 31 - Britain leaves the EU?  
The Brexit extension Mrs May thrashed out with the EU expires on October 31.
Unless another postponement can be agreed, the UK is still scheduled to leave the bloc at this point.
Mrs May returned to Downing Street just before 9am, where she met her closest aides, including chief of staff Gavin Barwell director of communications Robbie Gibb, and political secretary Stephen Parkison.
They went through the text of her momentous statement - which was drafted by her young speechwriter Keelan Carr, who wrote the well-received address to Tory conference last year.  
Aides said Mrs May showed few nerves before stepping out to deliver the words. 'She tends not to show nerves,' one told MailOnline. 'She has been doing this for a very long time, she is a pro.'
Mrs May said it had been the 'honour of my life' to be PM, and she hoped she would not be the last woman to lead the country. 
In a parting shot at the bitter Brexit divisions that have blighted her time in office, she urged MPs from all parties to remember that 'compromise is not a dirty word'.
Having delivered her painful message, she then hurried back through the famous black No10 doors and was immediately whisked away via the back exit.  
After she had done the deed, Mrs May was clapped back into No10 by staff who had gathered in the entrance hall. 
She was heard expressing regret that she had been overcome by emotion. But one aide said the show of tears should be 'one in the eye for the Maybot reputation'. 'It has always been a nonsense,' the source told MailOnline.
Mrs May then made a speech to a room of special advisers, thanking them for their hard work over the past few years. And she paid tribute in particular to her 'rock' Philip May.
An aide who was there said: 'She held it together quite well but at the end when she was thanking Philip she was a bit tearful.' 
This morning's bombshell development, which plunges the future of Brexit into further doubt, came as:
Theresa May recalled advice from the late Sir Nicholas Winton, hailed as 'Britain's Schindler' after saving hundreds of children from Nazi tyranny, as she set out the timetable for her departure.
The Prime Minister said the humanitarian had been a constituent of hers in Maidenhead for many years, and once told her that compromise is 'not a dirty word'.
'He was right,' said Mrs May, speaking outside Number 10.
Sir Nicholas organised the rescue of 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War before helping them to begin new lives in Britain.
The London-born stockbroker founded the Kindertransport following a visit to Prague at the end of 1938, during which he felt compelled to help save children there from almost certain death.
His bravery was only made known to the public half a century later, when his family happened upon an old briefcase in the attic containing lists of children and letters from their parents.
Sir Nicholas died in 2015, aged 106, and Mrs May, then the home secretary, was among political dignitaries who celebrated his life at a memorial service the year after. 
Mrs May's decision to announce her plans to step aside came after senior Cabinet ministers warned her they were on the brink of withdrawing their support over her decision to open the door to a second Brexit referendum in a last-ditch bid to get her deal approved by MPs.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told Mrs May to abandon plans to put her Withdrawal Agreement Bill to a vote by MPs next month.
Mr Hunt, one of more than a dozen Tory MPs hoping to succeed her, said it was not fair to ask loyal MPs to vote for a toxic compromise that had no chance of succeeding. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, another potential leadership candidate, warned her he could not back the legislation unless she dropped the option of a second referendum.
Their interventions followed the resignation of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, who quit on Wednesday night in protest at the scale of the concessions to Labour.
Sir Graham arrived for today's meeting armed with the results of a secret ballot of senior Tories which is thought to authorise him to call an immediate vote of no confidence in her leadership if she refuses to go. 
Mrs May told MPs on Wednesday that her 'new deal' Brexit – which was designed to win over Labour MPs – would be published today and voted on in the week beginning June 3.
But the move was dropped after Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, who would have to oversee the legislation, said he could not support it in its current form.
In her speech, Mrs May recalled advice from the late Sir Nicholas Winton, hailed as 'Britain's Schindler' after saving hundreds of children from Nazi tyranny, as she set out the timetable for her departure.
The Prime Minister said the humanitarian had been a constituent of hers in Maidenhead for many years, and once told her that compromise is 'not a dirty word'.
'He was right,' said Mrs May, speaking outside Number 10.
Sir Nicholas organised the rescue of 669 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War before helping them to begin new lives in Britain.
Back in 2016, we gave the British people a choice.
Against all predictions, the British people voted to leave the European Union.
I feel as certain today as I did three years ago that in a democracy, if you give people a choice you have a duty to implement what they decide.
I have done my best to do that. I negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbours that protects jobs, our security and our Union.
I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal. Sadly, I have not been able to do so.
I tried three times. I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high.
But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new Prime Minister to lead that effort.
So I am today announcing that I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on Friday 7 June so that a successor can be chosen... 
It is, and will always remain, a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit.
It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum.
To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not.
Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.
For many years the great humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton – who saved the lives of hundreds of children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through the Kindertransport – was my constituent in Maidenhead.
At another time of political controversy, a few years before his death, he took me to one side at a local event and gave me a piece of advice.
He said, 'Never forget that compromise is not a dirty word. Life depends on compromise.'
He was right. 
As we strive to find the compromises we need in our politics – whether to deliver Brexit, or to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland – we must remember what brought us here.
Because the referendum was not just a call to leave the EU but for profound change in our country.
A call to make the United Kingdom a country that truly works for everyone. I am proud of the progress we have made over the last three years...  
Our politics may be under strain, but there is so much that is good about this country. So much to be proud of. So much to be optimistic about.
I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold – the second female Prime Minister but certainly not the last.
I do so with no ill-will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.
The London-born stockbroker founded the Kindertransport following a visit to Prague at the end of 1938, during which he felt compelled to help save children there from almost certain death.
His bravery was only made known to the public half a century later, when his family happened upon an old briefcase in the attic containing lists of children and letters from their parents.
Sir Nicholas died in 2015, aged 106, and Mrs May, then the home secretary, was among political dignitaries who celebrated his life at a memorial service the year after.
Prominent Tory Brexiteer Steve Baker, who strongly opposed the PM's Brexit deal and is considering a run for the top job, tweeted: 'Very dignified statement from Theresa May, beginning to set out the many things which she has achieved in office. This is a sad but necessary day.' 
Environment Secretary Michael Gove tweeted: 'A moving speech from a Prime Minister who deserves our respect and gratitude. Thank you @theresa_may.'  
Brexit Party Leader Nigel Farage tweeted: 'It is difficult not to feel for Mrs May, but politically she misjudged the mood of the country and her party. Two Tory leaders have now gone whose instincts were pro-EU. Either the party learns that lesson or it dies.' 
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: 'That Boris Johnson as PM is a serious proposition is proof that the Tories have taken leave of their senses. 'Nothing - apart from Brexit obvs - has done more to trash the UK's global reputation in last three years than his risible tenure as Foreign Secretary.'  
Scottish Conservative Leader Ruth Davidson said: 'The Prime Minister has always put country before party and, by announcing her resignation and setting out a plan for an orderly departure, she has shown that commitment again today.' 
Former PM David Cameron alluded to his own resignation as he paid tribute to the spirit of 'duty and service' which had driven her time in office. 
'Theresa is right that compromise is not a dirty word and she should be thanked for her tireless efforts on behalf of the country,' he said in a statement. 
'I know how painful it is to accept that your time is up and a new leader is required. She has made the right decision - and I hope that the spirit of compromise is continued.' 
Three years ago Mr Cameron himself emerged onto the steps of No10 to declare the country needed 'fresh leadership' after dramatically voting to leave the EU. 
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker 'followed Prime Minister May's announcement this morning without personal joy', a spokesman said.
Deputy chief spokeswoman Mina Andreeva added: 'The president very much liked and appreciated working with Prime Minister May, and has said before Theresa May is a woman of courage for whom he has great respect.
'He will equally respect and establish working relations with any new prime minister, whomever they may be, without stopping his conversations with Prime Minister May.
 The Archbishop of Canterbury praised Theresa May’s ‘sense of public duty that never wavered’ yesterday.
Justin Welby also asked for the nation to ‘pause and pray’ for the PM and her husband, both of whom are regular church-goers.
The Archbishop tweeted: ‘During the last three years of leading our nation through times of profound change and uncertainty, Theresa May has shown determination, resilience and a sense of public duty that has never wavered.
‘That is a service to us all that deserves our admiration and gratitude.
‘As Mrs May prepares to stand down from office over the coming months, this is a moment to pause and pray for her and her husband, Philip, whose support has been unwavering, and for all those around them working to ensure a smooth transition into new leadership.
‘Every day in churches across the country, we pray for our political leaders. We pray that they be guided and strengthened in wise leadership that strives for the common good.
‘We pray too for their protection, safety and wellbeing in the roles they take on for the benefit of our communities and our nation.
‘In these critical times, people of faith should commit to pray for all those who lead, all those who are led, and work together with all of goodwill.’
'Our position on the Withdrawal Agreement has been set out by my colleague yesterday. There is no change to that.
'We have set out our position on the Withdrawal Agreement and on the political declaration.
'The European Commission and the Article 50 format has set out its position and we remain available for anyone who will be the new prime minister.'  
Former Brexit secretary David Davis has said the next prime minister should go back to Brussels to persuade them to drop the Northern Ireland backstop.
'I think they will be willing to talk to us,' he told BBC Radio 4's The World at One.
'They are all very concerned about the impact on the European economy of a no-deal.
'If we go back, I think we have got a decent chance of negotiating but we have also got to be ready to undertake no deal if it is absolutely forced on us.'
The Mail revealed yesterday that Mrs May had accepted her time was up and was ready to announce plans for a 'dignified' departure.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said if Mrs May refused to heed the message from her MPs and Cabinet it was up to her husband to tell her that her time was up.
He told Talk Radio: 'The person closest to her is clearly her husband, and I think somebody has to say look, nobody likes this... Politics is a nasty, sometimes brutal, ghastly business. 
Analysis by Jack Doyle for The Daily Mail
Analysis: Mrs May is defending her good intentions and effort, while acknowledging she has failed and that Brexit has destroyed her premiership. She repeatedly defends trying to get the deal she negotiated – and believes in – passed by MPs.
What she said: ‘It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum. To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not. Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.’
Analysis: This is a clear rebuke both to the 30 Tory diehards who refused to back her deal, and to Jeremy Corbyn and Labour for refusing to agree to a compromise. It’s also a warning to whoever succeeds her about the grim situation they inherit.
What she said: ‘The referendum was not just a call to leave the EU but for profound change in our country. A call to make the United Kingdom a country that truly works for everyone. I am proud of the progress we have made over the last three years.’
Analysis: Mrs May is arguing she has achieved a great deal in No 10. Effectively clearing the deficit, ending austerity, an enviable jobs record, a massive cash injection into the NHS and huge progress on protecting the environment – particularly on plastics. The tragedy is that Brexit overshadowed all her successes, which were not inconsiderable.
What she said: ‘This is what a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative government, on the common ground of British politics, can achieve – even as we tackle the biggest peacetime challenge any government has faced. The unique privilege of this office is to use this platform to give a voice to the voiceless, to fight the burning injustices that still scar our society.
Analysis: Entering No 10 three years ago, Mrs May pledges to fight ‘burning injustices’ in society. Here she lists her proudest achievements: mental health funding, domestic abuse, an audit of racial discrimination and gender pay gap reporting. She urges her successor not just to focus on traditional Tory values – such as security, freedom, opportunity – but to continue to battle for the underprivileged.
What she said: ‘Our politics may be under strain, but there is so much that is good about this country. So much to be proud of and optimistic about. I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold – the second female prime minister but certainly not the last. I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.’
Analysis: Her voice cracking, Mrs May displayed – finally – the emotion her critics accused her of lacking. She is proud of being a female PM in a male-dominated Westminster and of serving her country. She did her duty even though it ended painfully. What a contrast with David Cameron’s flippant whistle as he left No 10 in 2016.
'But the reality is that she has no confidence any longer, not just in her party but in the Cabinet as well. So the best thing for her and the best thing for everybody else is to break away and say it's time to find a new leader.'
Allies of Mrs May last night dismissed suggestions that she had been forced out by the line of ministers beating a path to her door.  
Boris Johnson today vowed to take the UK out of the EU at all costs - as the Tory leadership contest exploded into the open.
The former foreign secretary said Brexit must happen by October 31 'deal or no deal' as he made a high-octane pitch for 10 Downing Street.
'We will leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal,' Mr Johnson told an economic conference in Switzerland this afternoon.
'The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal,'
 
One said: 'It is funny – and slightly pathetic – to see Sajid and Jeremy suddenly saying the deal is unacceptable after sitting through the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that approved it. Leadsom stole a march on them – they are scrabbling to catch up.'
It comes as a Survation poll for the Daily Mail shows Mr Farage's Brexit Party well ahead in the European elections on 31 per cent, trailed by Labour on 23, the Conservatives on 14 and the Lib Dems on 12.
Nearly seven out of ten Tory voters said the reason they did not intend to vote for Mrs May yesterday was because of her failure to deliver Brexit. Calls for her to step down were backed by 57 per cent of Conservatives with 25 per cent against.
With the Tory leadership contest about to begin, most of the party's supporters appear to have already decided that former Foreign Secretary Johnson is the best person to revive their dismal ratings and sort out the Brexit chaos.
A total of 36 per cent of Conservatives said he should be next leader, with Home Secretary Sajid Javid a distant second on nine per cent, followed by Environment Secretary Michael Gove on seven and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on five.
The highest placed women candidates are Andrea Leadsom, who resigned from the Cabinet on Wednesday, and fellow Brexiteer, former TV presenter Esther McVey. 
Both are on three per cent. Mr Johnson has almost as big a lead over his Conservative rivals among voters as a whole. With the Tories expected to choose a new leader by the end of July, his fellow leadership contenders will have their work cut out to close the gap.
The pound rose slightly against the dollar this morning after Theresa May announced she will step down as Prime Minister next month.
Sterling went up to $1.2710 shortly after her announcement at Downing Street in London, but soon fell back to $1.2666, which was its level at the previous close.
Traders are concerned the next PM will want a tougher Brexit deal from the European Union after Mrs May spent two years trying to push through her plans.
Meanwhile Britain's main stock index the FTSE 100 advanced this morning, aided by hopes of a resolution to the prolonged trade war between the US and China. 
As the leadership contest kicked into top gear this afternoon, Mr Johnson told an economic conference in Switzerland: 'We will leave the EU on October 31, deal or no deal.'
He added:  'The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal,' 
Asked about his own leadership ambitions, Mr Gove said: 'Today is a day for all of us to reflect on the Prime Minister's achievements, to thank her for everything that she has done for this country and to show her the respect and gratitude that she deserves for having always put this country first.'
Mr Hunt effectively confirmed that he will join the race to replace to Mrs May as Tory party leader.
'I'll make the announcement on my own candidacy at the appropriate time,' he told his local newspaper the Farnham Herald.
'I think this is a day to remember Theresa May and her duty, her sense of public service, the fact that she has done an incredibly difficult job with enormous integrity, and I think that's what people up and down the county will be thinking today.' 
The Tory leadership contest will now kick off on June 7 - although in reality the main candidates have been running full-scale campaigns for weeks. 
While as many as 25 MPs could run for the job they will swiftly be whittled down into a workable number as MPs show their allegiances and plot to get their chosen man or woman into Downing Street. 
As chair of the 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady is responsible for organising leadership contests. But he said today that he was considering taking part. 
So who will replace Theresa? Bookies' favourite Boris is ODDS-ON to take May's crown as a DOZEN former ministers and backbenchers enter the race to be PM 
Boris Johnson is now odds-on to replace Theresa May's after her decision to resign on June 7 fired the official starting gun on the race to succeed her. 
The long-term favourite has roared into a commanding lead to win the vote to take over as Tory leader and become the Prime Minister who will be faced with delivering Brexit. 
But the field in the contest due to take place in June and July is likely to be wide, with more than a dozen ministers, former ministers and backbenchers believed to be ready to run. 
Some like Mr Johnson, Rory Stewart and Esther McVey have already announced they will run and Jeremy Hunt announced to his local paper this morning that he was going for it.
Other frontrunners believed to be ready include Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid and Andrea Leadsom.
But a few outsiders have seen their odds shorten this morning, including hardline Brexiteer Steve Baker and even Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee.
Here we look at the main runners and riders, with their odds with Ladbrokes and how they voted in the 2016 referendum:
Boris Johnson: The long-running thorn in May's side  who has recently had a 'prime ministerial' makeover
The former foreign secretary, 54, who quit last July and has been tacitly campaigning for the leadership ever since. He finally went public last week to confirm he would run.
Never far from the limelight the father-of-four recently split from his wife Marina and is in a relationship with former Conservative staffer Carrie Symonds, 20 years his junior. 
As an increasingly hawkish Brexiteer who says we should not be afraid of leaving without a deal he is hugely popular with the party faithful.
At the start of the year he underwent what might be deemed a ‘prime ministerial’ makeover, losing weight and taming his unruly mop of blonde hair.
Popular with the rank-and-file membership he has less fans in the parliamentary party and may face a concerted campaign to block his succession. Received the surprise backing of Johnny Mercer last night.
Dominic Raab: Brexiteer who quit rather than back Mrs May's deal
Mr Raab, 45, is another Vote Leave member who became Brexit secretary after David Davis quit alongside Mr Johnson last July over the Chequers plan.
But he lasted just a matter of months before he too jumped ship, saying he could not accept the terms of the deal done by the Prime Minister.
Like Mr Johnson and Mr Davis he has become an increasingly hardline Brexiteer, sharing a platform with the DUP's Arlene Foster and suggesting we should not be afraid of a no-deal Brexit.
The Esher and Walton MP's decision to quit in November, boosted his popularity with party members but he lacks the wider popular appeal of Mr Johnson.
And like Mr Johnson he might benefit from having quit the Cabinet at an earlier stage and dissociating himself with the dying days of the May administration.  
His odds have shortened as he is seen as possibly a more palatable alternative Brexiteer to Boris by MPs seeking to block Mr Johnson's run.
He recently posed for a glossy photoshoot with wife Erika at their Surrey home, seen as a sign he will run. 
Andrea Leadsom: May's former rival who finally decided she could take no more
The former Commons’ Leader piled pressure on the Prime Minister by announcing her own resignation from the Cabinet on Wednesday. 
In a parting blast, the Commons Leader said she could not stomach the latest version of Mrs May's Brexit deal, with its offer of a second referendum.
In a brutal resignation letter she said: 'I no longer believe that our approach will deliver on the referendum result.' 
It was the final act by an MP whose departure had seemingly been on the cards for months.  
Mrs Leadsom, a mother of three, stood against Mrs May for the party leadership in 2016 before conceding defeat before it was put to a vote of MPs.
As collective responsibility largely broke down among ministers she became an increasingly vocal and clear Brexiteer voice in the Cabinet along line similar lines to Mr Johnson and Mr Raab.
She was the host of a Brexiteer ‘pizza party’ in Parliament that included Michael Gove and Liz Truss as the vying wings of the Cabinet plotted to shape the Brexit deal they wanted.
In her role as Commons’ Leader she frequently clashes with Speaker John Bercow over issues including bullying in Parliament.
It is something that will do her no harm among the Tory backbenches where he is widely loathed. 
Michael Gove: The boomerang cabinet minister with a Machiavellian reputation
A Brexiteer with a Machiavellian reputation after the 2016 leadership campaign in which he first supported Boris Johnson for the leadership and then stood against him, to their mutual disadvantage.
The former education secretary -  sacked by Mrs May -  was rehabilitated to become a right-on environment secretary - complete with reusable coffee cups and a strong line on food standards after Brexit.
Despite being a former lead figure in the Vote Leave campaign alongside Mr Johnson the former journalist and MP for Surrey Heath has swung behind Mrs May's Brexit deal -  which might count against him.
But while he noisily supports the deal - he views the alternatives as worse - the father-of-two - married to Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine -  is quieter when it comes to supporting the Prime Minister and practically mute when it comes to her future.
Seen as one of the Cabinet's strongest political thinkers and having stood once it is unthinkable that he would not stand again.
But like many others he has yet to publicly declare his candidacy. 
If he did it would again pitch him pitched against Mr Johnson in a battle for Brexiteer votes. 
Jeremy Hunt: Remainer turned Brexiteer unity candidate who wants to heal the party
The Foreign Secretary who has undergone a Damascene conversion to the Brexit cause and is seen as a safe if uninspiring pair of hands.
The 52-year-old South West Surrey MP has reportedly been selling himself to colleagues as a unity candidate who can bring together the fractious Tory factions into something approaching a cohesive party. 
A long-serving health secretary, the father-of three replaced Mr Johnson as the UK's top diplomat and has won some plaudits over issues like the imprisonment of British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran.
But critics point to tub-thumpingly comparing the EU to the USSR at the party conference last year - which was very badly received in Brussels - and a gaffe in which he referred to his Chinese wife  as 'Japanese' as a reception in China.
Last month he went on a tour of Africa in which his Chinese wife Lucia made a major appearance, after he gaffed by forgetting her nationality.
Last week he called for a 'decisive' hike in defence spending to see off the rising threat from Russia and China – in a speech seen as a clear signal of his leadership ambitions. 
Speaking at the Lord Mayor's Banquet Mansion House in the City of London, he said the UK's hard power must be strengthened, with billions more spent on new capabilities to tackle drones and cyber attacks.
Penny Mordaunt: The highly regarded Brexiteer promoted to take on defence
The new Defence Secretary - the first woman ever to hold the post - is highly regarded in Brexiteer circles. 
The Royal Navy reservist, 46, carved out a niche at International Development with some eye-catching suggests about changing how the UK spends disperses aid cash.
She has become an increasingly serious politician after initially being seen as lighthearted when she appeared in a swimsuit in ITV reality TV show Splash!
She was promoted earlier this month to replace Gavin Williamson when he was sacked for leaking details from a confidential meeting about Huawei.   
Over the preceding few months she was at the heart of persistent rumours that she would be the next Brexit-supporting minister out the door over Brexit. 
She has yet to announce she is running but last month she backed a thinktank report saying the party needed to attract new voters.
She said the party needed to 'act swiftly' to win over the younger generations who were turning away from the centre-Right in 'unprecedented' numbers. 
On Wednesday, after other Cabinet Brexiteers including Andrea Leadsom were notable by their absence during Prime Minister's Questions, she remained at her post. It remains to be seen whether this loyalty will count for or against her. 
Sajid Javid: Remainer star who has run into trouble over knife crime and refugees
The Home Secretary, a Remainer who wants to see Brexit delivered, was the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet to replace Mrs May.
After replacing Amber Rudd last year he consciously put clear ground between himself and the Prime Minister on issues like caps on skilled migrants after Brexit.
But his credentials have taken a hit recently. He finds himself facing ongoing criticism of his handling of the knife crime crisis affecting UK cities, which sparked a Cabinet row over funding for police.
He also lost face over his handling of the influx of migrants crossing the English Channel in January, being seen to move slowly in realising the scale of the problem.
But more recently the 49-year-old Bromsgove MP has made a serious of hardline decision designed to go down well with Tory voters. 
Most notably they have included moving to deprive London teenager turned Jihadi bride Shamima Begum, 19, of her British citizenship, after she was discovered among former Islamic State members in a Syrian refugee camp. 
Rory Stewart: Remainer rising star and friend of royals who is not short of confidence 
The former prisons minister who once vowed to quit if they did not improve within a year declared his candidacy almost as soon as he was promoted to the Cabinet.
He stepped up to International Development Secretary earlier this month to replace Ms Mordaunt and days later declared he will run for the Tory leadership.
The Theresa May loyalist praised the PM for her 'courageous effort' to pass her Brexit deal but admitted he would throw his hat in the ring when she steps down.
Urging his party not to 'try to outdo Nigel Farage', the development secretary said the Tories should 'stretch all the way from Ken Clarke to Jacob Rees-Mogg'.
The Old Etonian former tutor to the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex previously worked for the Foreign Office in Iraq and set up a charity for the Prince of Wales in Afghanistan.
He has also written several books about walking. 
The father of two is married to Shoshana, whom he first met when they worked together in Iraq and she was already married.   
Seen as highly intelligent his staunch Remainer and soft Brexit credentials look likely to count against him in a race set to be dominated by the Brexiteer wing of the party. 
Matt Hancock: Waffle-loving health secretary who wants Tories to choose a younger leader 
The Health Secretary is, like his predecessor Jeremy Hunt, seen as something of a unity candidate.
The 40-year-old father of three is seen as a safe pair of hands despite a few teething problems in his latest Cabinet role.
Last year he was accused of breaking ethics rules after he praised a private health firm app in a newspaper article sponsored by its maker.
But he has since make some hard-hitting interventions in ares like the impact of social media on health. 
Last month he joined Ms Mordaunt in backing the Generation Why? report showing that the Tories needed to become more relevant to younger voters. 
He called on the party to change its 'tone' towards modern Britain or face Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, in a speech widely seen as setting out his leadership credentials.
This week he showed his human side by unashamedly chomping calorific stroopwafels before a TV broadcast, saying he people should enjoy things in moderation. 
Steve Baker: Brexiteer 'Spartan' and self-styled 'hardman' who refused to budge over Brexit
The High Wycombe MP, 47, is a Brexit purist who has never backed Theresa May's deal.
In March he even threatened to quit the party over the issue, saying: 'We've been put in this place by people whose addiction to power without responsibility has led them to put the choice of No Brexit or this deal.
'I may yet resign the whip than be part of this.'
The married former RAF engineer officer described himself as a 'hardman' in a TV interview this year, only to be shown shortly afterwards in a dsocumentary crying in his office.
Today he told the BBC: 'There is no point shying away from it, people have been asking me to stand. I have had a degree of support from across the country that I could never have foreseen.
'I have also had some MPs asking me to stand but I need to face up to the challenge of taking a decision on whether I should do it.
Sir Graham Brady: Backbench kingmaker with an eye on the throne?
The chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of backbench MPs has played a key but neutral role in the downfall of Theresa May.
Despite being a Brexiteer he has been an independent arbiter, overseeing the no-confidence vote Mrs May survived in December and reportedly opposing attempts to change the rules to dethrone her early.
The married father of two has held several meetings with the PM in recent weeks as the mutiny against her grew and this morning saw her in Downing Street where he told her that her time was up.
But his name was conspicuously absent from a later Conservative Party statement about how the leadership election would happen. The three signatories - including his two 1922 deputies - ruled themselves out of running, leaving people to wonder whether he would run.
His Brexiteer credentials and honourable display as Mrs May was brought down will count in his favour but he lacks frontbench experience, having a sole three-year stint as a shadow Europe minister 15 years ago on his CV. 
Esther McVey: Former TV presenter and minister who quit Government over Brexit 
The former Work and Pensions Secretary declared her leadership bid last month and has set out a stall as a right-wing blue-collar candidate from a working class  Liverpudlian background.
The former television journalist, is engaged to fellow Tory backbench Brexiteer  Philip Davies, 47, having previously had a romance with ex-minister Ed Vaizey. She has no children.
This week she set out her leadership pitch by calling for the party to use £7billion of foreign aid cash on buckling British police forces and schools.
Launching a 'blue collar conservatism' campaign the Brexiteer MP, 51, said her party had 'lost the trust' of working people by failing to leave the EU already and must pursue 'radical conservative agendas' to win it back'.
She said that keeping cash in the UK that is currently sent abroad would allow an increase of £4billion in spending on schools and £3billion for police, which are both demanding more money.
And she declined to rule out doing a post-election deal with Nigel Farage - but said that if the Tories got the UK out it would mean that his Brexit Party would have no reason to exist. Speaking in Westminster she reiterated her call for the next party leader to be 'someone who believes in Brexit' - a dig at Mrs May, who supported the Remain campaign in 2016. 
 
Sadiq Khan was lashed by both Tory and Labour politicians today after he demanded Brexit is delayed to allow time for a new referendum on quitting Europe.
The London Mayor was condemned as 'undemocratic' by Tory Brexiteers while a senior figure in his own party said a re-run would let Theresa May 'off the hook.
Mr Khan's intervention sets up a bitter clash at next week's Labour conference as Jeremy Corbyn will have to resist a growing clamour to change policy and back a second referendum.
More than 100 motions have been tabled by unions and party activists for next week's gathering in Liverpool in defiance of Mr Corbyn's current policy.   
Mr Khan insisted today that the Leave campaign promises had proven to be 'lies' and said he wanted a 'first ever' referendum on reality of quitting the EU.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr his first preference was for an early general election and installing Mr Corbyn as Prime Minister.
But acknowledging the Tory refusal to do so, he said: 'For the first time the British public should have a say on the outcome of the negotiation.
'It is really important it is not a re-run of the first referendum.' 
Mr Khan said contrary to Leave promises, voters were now being told they had to leave the EU single market while NHS wards go short staffed.
Liam Fox insisted today that there must be no delay to Brexit in March next year.
The International Trade Secretary hit out at claims Britain will not be ready by March 29, 2019. 
It has emerged Chancellor Philip Hammond floated the prospect of a postponement at the no deal Cabinet on Thursday.
But asked if there was any reason for delay, Dr Fox told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: I’d say no.
'As I’ve said before, extending Article 50 until we’ve got an agreement is effectively allowing the European Union to dictate when Britain will leave the European Union itself.
'The public have given us an instruction in the referendum, there has to be a time set for our exit, that’s the 29th March next year and we should honour that.'  
He insisted the Government could 'easily' ask Brussels to 'suspend' the current Brexit process to allow time for a new referendum once an exit deal was finalised. 
And he told Marr: 'I would like to see one of the options being the option to stay in the European Union.'
Brexiteer Tory Theresa Villiers reacted with fury to Mr Khan, insisting voters just wanted the Government to 'get on with it'.
She told the BBC: 'It is so undemocratic to ask people to vote again just because there is an elite establishment that does not like the answer they were given the first time. 
'We have to listen to the result of the referendum and implement it.' 
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis said: 'Labour need to rule out trying to delay Brexit. Across the country, Labour politicians are calling for a referendum rerun that would take us all back to square one.
'Today they have gone further and admitted that they want to keep the UK in the EU beyond March 2019 - almost 3 years after the country voted to leave.'
Mr Corbyn will come under acute pressure to bring Labour's policy into line with a second referendum at next week's conference where more than 100 anti-Brexit motions have been tabled for debate. 
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner said today current policy was right.
He told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday: 'We've said we haven't ruled anything off the table… but actually to have a second referendum would be to throw this Government a lifeline.'
The TUC has now endorsed the idea of a second referendum and is expected to bring a motion to the conference floor in Liverpool. Other major unions, including the GMB have done the same.
Labour policy has so far been based on six tests for the Brext deal, one of which insists the party will only support an outcome with the 'exact same benefits' as current membership.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said on Friday that the state of the negotiations made it inconceivable Theresa May would secure a deal Labour could ever support. 
Writing in the Observer ahead of his Marr interview, Mr Khan blamed the government's handling of the negotiations and said the threat to living standards, the economy and jobs was too great for voters not to have a say.
He suggested if a so-called People's Vote were to be held, an option to remain a member of the EU should be included on the ballot paper.
'This means a public vote on any Brexit deal obtained by the government, or a vote on a 'no-deal' Brexit if one is not secured, alongside the option of staying in the EU,' he wrote in the article.
'People didn't vote to leave the EU to make themselves poorer, to watch their businesses suffer, to have NHS wards understaffed, to see the police preparing for civil unrest or for our national security to be put at risk if our cooperation with the EU in the fight against terrorism is weakened.'
Theresa May has repeatedly ruled out holding a second referendum following the vote two years ago to leave the EU. 
She says members of parliament will get to vote on whether to accept any final deal.
Jeremy Corbyn told supporters he would challenge the Government 'all the way' over Europe - before later telling the Prime Minister to 'jog on'. 
Speaking at a raucous party rally in Liverpool on Saturday night, the Labour leader said his party would reject Prime Minister Boris Johnson's deal with the European Union as he mobilised for a general election.
And later tweeted: 'Jog on Boris Johnson with your daft ideas.'
It came just hours after The Commons voted 322 to 306 in favour of an amendment postponing a decision on the PM's deal, and activating the Benn Act - a Remainer law that compels him to send a letter by midnight asking Brussels for a delay.
Mr Corbyn said: 'And he came with his plan, well we've got answers to his plan for our relationship to Europe because that plan was all about thumping our workers' rights, taking away consumer protections, damaging our environment, damaging the Good Friday Agreement.
'But the real purpose behind it is, what they want for the future, which is, as I said in my speech today, is what he's done today, if he succeeds is fire the starting gun in a race to the bottom.
'We will challenge them all the way, in Parliament next week, we challenge them in crashing out of the EU and we as a movement will come together, those that voted leave or remain have all got a place in the Labour Party and the labour movement.
'What unites us is our determination for socialism.'
Mr Corbyn, who travelled up to Liverpool from the vote on the Government's EU deal in Parliament earlier today, was interrupted regularly during his speech with chants of 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn!' by the crowd, numbering a few hundred strong.
He was cheered and applauded by supporters as he spoke about the Iraq war, arms sales to Saudia Arabia and austerity.
Mr Corbyn said Labour was committed to nationalising, 'mail, rail, water and the National Grid' - and promised decent housing and schools and an end to prescription charges.
He also said the rich had got richer and the poor, poorer - and there would be tax rises for the wealthiest 5 per cent of the population.
Mr Corbyn said: 'Surely to goodness in the fifth richest country in the world, we can offer our young people something better than a future where they are told they will be poorer than their parents' generation and they must make their provision for health, for housing for education for pensions and everything else.
'Well, we've got a different answer to that and the answer is in a short word, it's called socialism.'
Mr Corbyn told supporters to get themselves to marginal constituencies to campaign so the party is 'up and raring to go' when the election is called.
He added: 'This will be an election campaign like no other.
'And I'll tell you what, one thing I'm very, very certain about, is that nobody but nobody, but nobody will be able to say in the general election of 2019, 2020 whenever it's going to be, 'There wasn't a choice'.
'Oh yes, there will be a choice.
'I am utterly determined, utterly determined that we are ready for an election and to win an election.'
Outside, the Liberal Democrats claimed to have 'gatecrashed' the event - with a van circling the venue with a mobile electronic billboard carrying the slogan: 'You can't stop Tory Brexit with Labour Brexit. Only Lib Dems will stop Brexit.'
After the rally, Boris Johnson tried to distance himself from a legally required request for a Brexit extension by stressing to the EU it was sent to Brussels at Parliament's bidding.
After suffering an embarrassing defeat in the Commons over his Brexit plans, the Prime Minister got a senior diplomat to send an unsigned photocopy of the call by MPs to delay withdrawal from the bloc.
In a second note to European Council president Donald Tusk, the PM said a Brexit extension would be 'deeply corrosive'.
The stance is likely to spark a fierce political row.  
After the letter asking for a Brexit delay was sent to the EU, Mr Corbyn tweeted: 'I told the Prime Minister to obey the law and despite his petulant posturing and bluster he finally has - he's asked for an extension.
'His damaging deal was defeated.'
Nigel Farage was cut off as he delivered his final speech in the European Parliament this afternoon because he and his Brexit Party MEPs started to wave Union flags.
Parliament vice-president Mairead McGuinness switched off Mr Farage's microphone as he was finishing his address as she told the party's MEPs to 'put your flags away, you are leaving'. 
The cheering Brexit Party contingent then proceeded to get up and walk out of the chamber.
The stormy clash took place as MEPs rubberstamped the Brexit divorce deal - the final hurdle which needed to be cleared for the UK to leave the EU at 11pm on January 31. 
The hours before the vote saw numerous MEPs break down in tears as Britain was given an emotional send off.
Concluding his remarks, Mr Farage said: 'I know you are going to miss us. I know you want to ban our national flags but we are going to wave you goodbye and we will look forward in the future to working with you...'
At this point Mr Farage and his party colleagues started to wave Union flags but his microphone was immediately cut off. 
MEPs broke down in tears today as British politicians sat in the European Parliament for the last time and were given an emotional send off.
European Commission president Ursula Von Der Leyen said 'we will always love you and we will never be far' as she bid farewell to the UK contingent ahead of Brexit taking place on Friday. 
The British politicians' last act this evening was to ratifying the Brexit Deal ahead of the UK's departure on Friday.  
They passed the Withdrawal Agreement 621 - 49, following the completion last week of the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the UK Parliament.
After tears, and the lighting of candles at commemorative events in Brussels earlier, there was applause as Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage's valedictory speech after two decades at the heart of the EU establishment was cut off.
Ms McGuinness said: 'If you disobey the rules you get cut off. Could we please remove the flags. Mr Farage. Can we remove the flags please. Can I please ask for quiet.'
Brexit Party MEPs then started to clap and cheer as Mr Farage could be heard saying: 'That's it. It is all over.' 
His MEPs then proceeded to give their leader three cheers of appreciation, prompting a further rebuke from the chair. 
Ms McGuinness snapped: 'Please sit down, resume your seats. Put your flags away you are leaving. And take them with you if you are leaving now. Goodbye.' 
Mr Farage had used his speech to tell the European Parliament that this was the 'final chapter, the end of the road' for the UK and the bloc after a 47 year 'political experiment that the British frankly have never been very happy with'. 
The veteran Eurosceptic, who was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999, said: 'What happens at 11pm this Friday, January 31 2020, marks the point of no return, once we've left we are never coming back and the rest, frankly, is detail.
'We are going, we will be gone and that should be the summit of my own political ambitions.
'I walked in here as I have said before, you all thought it was terribly funny, you stopped laughing in 2016.' 
Mr Farage hit out at the bloc as he said it had a history of making people vote on an issue a second time if it did not like the result of the first ballot.
But he said the 'British are too big to bully, thank goodness', adding: 'We love Europe. We just hate the European Union. I am hoping this begins the end of this project.'
Mr Farage suggested that the 'anti-democratic' bloc was not in tune with what modern voters are looking for.
'You may loathe populism but I will tell you a funny thing, it is becoming very popular,' he said.
Following his fiery departure speech he said: 'The book is about to close and we are going to leave in 48 hours and that is for me, in a way, the achievement of my lifetime political goal.
'I've been campaigning for this for 27 years, 20 of them in this parliament, and sometimes as a human being if you want something so badly it's almost difficult to believe it's really happening.
'But it is happening and I think it's the right thing and I also think - I'm seeing the first signs of it today - it's going to lead to a lot of reflection across the union.'
News that British holidaymakers will be charged €7 to visit the EU after Brexit has sparked a furious social media reaction - prompting calls to charge Europeans for coming to the UK.
The backlash comes after an announcement that UK citizens will have to purchase a security check known as the European Travel Information and Authorization System when travelling to the continent. 
Under the system, travellers would have to apply online by providing personal information and passport details, before noting the first country they are travelling to and answering background questions.      
But reaction to the news has been mixed with dozens taking to Twitter to complain about the upcoming charge. 
Lynette Craig said: 'So we are going to need an ETIAS to go to an EU country. What happened to passports? 
'And will they use the dosh for helping migrants or just for better wine at dinner?'
While Ian Jones said: 'Let's charge the Europeans £6 to come here'. 
Not everyone was angered by the news, however. With some suggesting it was only fair we had to pay.
Erecan Essilor said: 'No doubt ETIAS will get all the remainers in a froth but this is an extremely small price to pay for the money Brexit saves.'
While Vincent Franklin said: 'So, we'll have to buy an ETIAS if we want to visit Europe. It seems like they're getting control of their borders back.' 
Brussels confirmed the charges will be levied on UK citizens as Theresa May fought for more concessions on her deal at a summit. 
A spokeswoman for Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed that the new system for visiting the bloc will apply to the UK after Brexit.   
Natasha Bertaud, Mr Juncker's spokeswoman, tweeted: 'Yes Etias will apply to the UK as 3rd country post-Brexit – 7 euros for a 3 year pre-travel authorisation.
'Simple form, like Esta to the US, but way cheaper.' 
ETIAS stands for European Travel Information and Authorization System, it is a form of electronic travel authorization. 
From 2021, visitors travelling to the Schengen Area will need to obtain an ETIAS travel authorization prior to their trip. 
It is designed to improve the security of the region by screening travellers before their arrival in the Schengen Area. 
The process will determine whether a citizen can enter the Schengen Area or not. 
By cross-checking information against various databases, the system will be able to detect if a person is a security threat.
The new electronic system means that travellers from Britain will be treated in the same way as those from the US and Australia.
A three year travel pass would cost €7 - around £6. And will be levied despite no-deal plans released by the EU last month stating UK citizens will be handed a visa exemption.
Responding to the news, shadow arts minister Kevin Brennan said: 'This will have a direct effect on British families, holidaymakers, and those travelling for work.
'The Government should listen to the tourism sector's warnings and urgently reconsider this disastrous Brexit deal.'     
The ETIAS regime will apply to nationals visiting from almost all non-EU countries - an estimated 39million people a year. 
The registration information will then be checked against EU crime-fighting databases.      
While most decisions will take just minutes, problematic cases could lead to further requests before being finally answered within four weeks. 
The EU commission previously announced that anyone staying less than 90 days will be able to visit freely as long as the UK reciprocates.     
While stressing that it would need to be approved by the European Parliament, the commission said: 'In the scenario where the UK leaves the EU without a deal, this would apply as of 30 March 2019. 
'If a deal is reached, however, it would apply as of the end of the transition period.'
The move was 'entirely conditional upon the UK also granting reciprocal and non-discriminatory visa-free travel for all EU member states'. 
The Association of British Travel Agents warned UK citizens not to be too panicked by the news, stressing that it does not come into force until 2021.
An ABTA spokeswoman said: 'Europe is the number one destination people plan to visit next year, so it's really important holidaymakers are aware that the new ETIAS system won't apply until 2021. 
'When it does apply ETIAS will mean that you don't have to get a visa. There have been some helpful reassurances recently that, even in a no-deal scenario, flights will still operate between the UK and EU, and a visa is not required.'

Donald Tusk today warned Britain all 27 EU nations are united in their determination to secure a deal for Ireland before trade talks.
Standing alongside the Irish premier Leo Varadkar, Mr Tusk demanded an 'explicit, specific' solution to the border.
The EU's fall back position is keeping Northern Ireland inside EU rules - something considered impossible by London and Belfast despite a political agreement in December with Theresa May.
Britain has long insisted working out rules on trade after Brexit is essential to clarifying how the open border between the Republic and Northern Ireland will function. 
In his press conference, Mr Tusk also rejected calls from Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday for the Brexit trade deal to be the first ever to include financial services.
The hard-hitting message risks chilling British optimism of a breakthrough at an EU summit later this month.
Mr Tusk said: 'We have to be clear that any backsliding on the commitments made so far would create a risk to further progress in Brexit negotiations. This applies also to the question of avoiding a hard border.
'When I was in London last week, I heard very critical comments by Prime Minister May and others about the way the Irish border issue was presented in the draft withdrawal agreement.
'We know today that the UK Government rejects a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea, the EU single market and the customs union.
Arlene Foster today tore into Tony Blair and Sir John Major over their bid to use the threat of violence returning to Northern Ireland as a 'bargaining chip' in Brexit talks.
The DUP leader said the warnings that quitting the EU could reignite the Troubles was an 'insult' to people who live in Northern Ireland. 
Her comments are a fiery rebuke to the two former Prime Minsters who have both claimed Brexit will endanger the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process.
Mrs Foster said the EU must sign up to a sensible plan which would see no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic or the rest of the UK.
She told the British Chambers of Commerce's conference in London today: 'I want to see an optimistic, sensible and pragmatic approach to Brexit,' she said.
'I object in the strongest possible terms to people who have limited experience of the Troubles in Northern Ireland throwing threats of violence around as some kind of bargaining chip in this negotiating process.
'To do so is an insult to the people of Northern Ireland who worked so hard to bring peace to our country.'
'While we must respect this position, we also expect the UK to propose a specific and realistic solution to avoid a hard border.
'As long as the UK doesn't present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations. If in London someone assumes that the negotiations can deal with other issues first before the Irish issue, my response would be: Ireland first.'
Mr Varadkar said that his preference was 'to avoid a hard border through a wider future relationship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the European Union'.
He said: 'We are committed to playing our part in exploring this option or alternative specific solutions in a way that respects the structure of these negotiations.
'That will of course require further detailed progress to be put forward by the UK Government.
'However, we must have certainty that if a better option proves unachievable, the backstop of maintaining full alignment in Northern Ireland with the rules of the single market will apply, in order to protect the North's co-operation and avoid a hard border.'
Mr Tusk's visit comes before the European Council meeting of EU leaders on March 22-23 on Brexit and economic affairs.
It is his second visit to Ireland in three months and he told reporters in between he had spoken to every other EU leader about the Irish border questions. 
Turning to Mr Hammond's call for a services trade deal yesterday, Mr Tusk said: 'I heard the Chancellor's words about financial services being very much in the mutual interest of the UK and the EU.
'I fully respect his competence in what is defining what is in the UK's interests, however he'll have to let us define what is in the EU's interest.'   
Ireland's foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney has suggested the EU could block Theresa May's plans to maintain a soft Irish border while leaving the customs union.
One fallback option is the UK would have to accept keeping Northern Ireland in an effective customs union with the EU.
This is Mr Tusk's second visit to Ireland in three months.
He has already pledged that the EU will stand with the Republic on the Irish border issue and Dublin's efforts to ensure frictionless passage of people and goods.
Northern Ireland's position post-Brexit is holding up agreement on Britain's exit terms and a transition deal.
Mrs May's supporters in Government, the Democratic Unionists, are adamantly opposed to any settlement distinguishing Northern Ireland's EU trading relationship from the rest of the UK's post-Brexit, what some have termed a border in the Irish Sea.
On Thursday Mr Varadkar will also hold a separate meeting with the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria.
Discussions will cover the OECD's latest economic survey of Ireland and the potential for deeper Ireland-OECD co-operation.
Meanwhile, Department for Exiting the EU minister Robin Walker is due to meet Gibraltar chief minister Fabian Picardo on Thursday, and Cabinet Office minister David Lidington is hosting a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee with representatives of the devolved administrations.
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
 

The Brexit negotiations are entering the end-game. We will leave the European Union in under six months and the prospect of Parliament agreeing to any version of the Prime Minister’s plan that would be acceptable to the EU has never looked fainter.
Nobody can fault Theresa May’s dedication, perseverance and resilience. My admiration for her as a human being has only grown in recent times – and the British people seem to feel the same way. But she made some critical errors in earlier phases of the negotiation and is now sitting on the end of a fragile branch that is about to break.
MPs simply will not countenance the imposition by the EU of a different set of trading rules in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK. I have many differences with the Democratic Unionists, but on this they are absolutely right. The entire United Kingdom must leave the European Union together – and if Brexit is going to have a number of different stages, as seems inevitable, every part of the UK must move between the different stages in lockstep.
Yet the Prime Minister is proposing an agreement which could see Northern Ireland being kept in the Single Market for goods, when the rest of the UK has left it. This would be a constitutional affront.
It is not just Northern Irish unionists who oppose it. So does Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, and David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland: they know that any weakening of the ties that bind Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK would be exploited by separatists peddling Scottish independence. We cannot leave the European Union in a way that threatens the much more ancient and precious Union of these four great nations.
During the course of the summer, it became clear to me that the so-called Irish backstop promised national humiliation and would never get through Parliament.
But you can’t beat a plan with no plan. So I set myself the challenge of devising a workable Plan B, one that would deliver our exit from the European Union next March in accordance with the people’s vote in the 2016 referendum, protect people’s jobs and incomes by securing the benefits of continuing tariff-free access to the Single Market, and – crucially – command the support of a majority of MPs.
Very simply, it involves the UK leaving the EU on March 29, 2019, and, for an interim phase only, moving to a position like Norway’s in what is called the European Economic Area (EEA). That’s the Common Market that integrates the economies of countries in the EU with those of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
We would be inside the Single Market (as most businesses want) but outside the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy, and outside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
We would need to join the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – of which the UK was a member before we joined the EU, and which negotiates free trade agreements for Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein – as either a full member or an associate member. And we would need to agree continuity in our customs arrangements for the interim period.
From this halfway house, we would negotiate a long-term economic relationship based on a Canada-style Free Trade Agreement, as has been proposed by former Brexit Secretary David Davis and others.
Since the beginning of September, I have been meeting with MPs of all persuasions – passionate Brexiteers, committed Remainers and unbending Unionists – and I have been struck by the response. Nobody loves the ‘Norway then Canada’ approach – but, crucially, everyone can find some things they like about it, and most of them can see how they might be able to swallow those bits they like less, if they are offered other assurances and guarantees.
For Remainers, having continuity on the Single Market and on customs for this interim period appeals because it secures the position of vital industries like car manufacturers and aerospace companies, whose businesses are based on the fluid import and export of parts between different European countries.
For Leavers, dumping the permanent subjugation to EU legislation promised by the Prime Minister’s Chequers plan, and instead committing to a Canada-style Free Trade Agreement as the format for our long-term economic relationship, offers the prospect of a real Brexit, in which the UK eventually takes back control of our money, our borders and our laws.
For Unionists, my plan offers an absolute guarantee that all parts of the UK will move through the different stages together, that all will benefit from continuity on the Single Market and customs in the Norway phase, and that all will leave the Single Market and the customs union together when we are ready. I believe this plan – which won the very significant endorsement of former foreign secretary William Hague on Monday – has the potential to unite the Conservative Party, and indeed the country.
But I don’t want to pretend that achieving a consensus will be easy, or that the Brexiteer lion is going to lay down with the Remainer lamb, and start singing Kumbaya in sweet harmony. Committed Leavers are worried that life alongside Norway in EEA/EFTA will prove too cosy and comfortable – that Parliament will lose the will to move out into the bracing winds outside the Single Market and the customs union.
We will only win their support for this plan if the Government is wholly committed to negotiating a looser economic relationship based on a Canada-style free trade agreement, and implementing it before the 2022 election so that Labour doesn’t have a chance to stop it.
We may need to pass legislation enshrining that commitment – and to get the country ready to leave the EEA without a free trade agreement if the EU refuses to play ball.
Having scuppered one Brexit deal by insisting on an eternal lock on Northern Ireland’s future, it would be an extraordinary act of self-harm for the EU to scupper this deal – one that delivers all of their objectives – by insisting on the same.
We should also be straight with the British people. In the halfway house alongside Norway, we would still be subject to a version of freedom of movement – although we would have some wriggle room to restrict it to people with job offers, and even to impose a temporary brake if numbers get out of control.
That is one of the main reasons why it would not be acceptable for the halfway house to become the UK’s permanent home. People voted to end freedom of movement, and we must not let them down.
On her return from this evening’s EU summit, the Prime Minister has an opportunity to make a clean break and a fresh start. She should acknowledge that despite her best endeavours she has not been able to reach an acceptable agreement with the EU on her Chequers plan, and that she will now come to Parliament with a proposal for a staged withdrawal via the EEA and EFTA. Most MPs would be relieved. Business leaders would applaud. European leaders would grumble about the wasted time and effort, but they would welcome our embrace of an off-the-shelf arrangement with which they are already familiar.
I believe it is Theresa May’s destiny to be the Prime Minister who delivers Brexit in a way that preserves the UK’s prosperity, constitutional integrity and position in the world. With a Norway-then-Canada plan, she can do it.
Read Nick Boles’ Brexit plan at www.betterbrexit.org.uk
 
 
Theresa May flatly rejected an EU power grab over Northern Ireland today after Brussels unveiled plans for the province to obey Brussels rules.
The Prime Minister gave an angry response as Eurocrats were accused of tabling demands that would effectively 'annex' Northern Ireland.
Mrs May said the proposals would 'undermine' the integrity and constitution of the UK.
'No UK Prime Minister could ever agree to it,' she told the House of Commons. 
The backlash came after EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier published 'concrete' plans to avoid a hard Irish border amid a huge political row.
The blueprint would create a 'common regulatory area' on the island of Ireland covering areas such as customs, VAT, energy, environment, agriculture.
It brands the idea the 'default' option in the event no deal can be agreed by the UK and EU.
Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster condemned the draft as 'constitutionally unacceptable' and potentially 'catastrophic' for Northern Ireland.
Brexit Secretary David Davis wrote to Tory MPs tonight underlining the Government's commitment to protecting Northern Ireland.
Scroll down for video 
The controversial idea implies that Northern Ireland will effectively stay inside the EU customs union and Single Market.
At a press conference in Brussels today, Mr Barnier insisted the UK should not be 'surprised' by the move and stressed the document was a 'draft'. 
Mr Barnier denied that the plans would impinge on the territorial integrity of the UK, adding that the EU's stance was 'functional and operational'.
'My responsiblity is that we have a proposal for a functioning agreement,' he said. 'We have done this is a practical, pragmatic, legal fashion.' 
He added: 'I know the constitutional order of the UK and we all have to respect that.
'We are trying, in practical and pragmatic term…to respect institutions. I have listened and will continue to listen.'   
Mr Barnier said he was not trying to cause 'shock waves' or throw the process into chaos. 'It was the UK that unilaterally had the referendum…they unilaterally issued the letter to leave in March next year,' he said.
'We are 13 months off that date – I am not trying to provoke anybody. I am not being arrogant in any way.
He said the Brexit negotiations were not about 'fine speeches' but thrashing out a legal treaty. 
However, in a further threat Mr Barnier repeated his warning that a transition deal was 'not a given'. 
But speaking at PMQs minutes later, Mrs May said: 'The draft legal text the Commission have published would, if implemented, undermine the UK common market and threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK by creating a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea.
'No UK prime minster could ever agree to it. 
'I will be making it crystal clear to President Juncker and others that we will never do so.' 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
In a letter to Conservative MPs, Mr Davis said: 'The UK Government remains steadfast in its commitment to avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, but also in its commitment to avoiding any borders within our United Kingdom.
'We continue to stand behind all the commitments we made in December and we will work with the Commission to agree how they should be translated into legal form in the withdrawal agreement.
'But the draft legal text the Commission have published today would, if implemented, undermine the UK common market and constitutional integrity of the UK by creating a customs and regulatory border down the Irish Sea.' 
Mrs Foster said: 'EU draft text is constitutionally unacceptable and would be economically catastrophic for Northern Ireland.
'I welcome the Prime Minister's commitment that HMG will not allow any new border in the Irish Sea.
'Northern Ireland must have unfettered access to GB market.'
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accused Eurocrats of using the Irish border 'politically' to force the whole UK to stay in the customs union. 
David Jones, a former Brexit minister, said Brussels seemed to think it could simply 'annex' Northern Ireland. 'That is what it would amount to,' he said.
Britain accepted continued 'regulatory alignment' if trade talks fail during December's tense talks.
But making it the default choice has enraged Brexiteers. 
The UK had indicated its preferred options are to keep the border 'soft' either by striking an overarching free trade agreement with the EU, or using technology such as cameras and electronic records to avoid physical checks.
However, neither option is included in the draft treaty published by Mr Barnier today as Brussels deems they have not been spelled out in enough detail by UK ministers.
The EU text describes a 'common regulatory area' between Northern Ireland and the Republic, covering areas such as customs, VAT, energy, environment, agriculture, product markets and more.
The text adds: 'The territory of Northern Ireland, excluding the territorial waters of the United Kingdom... shall be considered to be part of the customs territory of the Union.' 
A separate row is brewing over the legal enforcement of the withdrawal deal.
The EU draft states that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) must have the power to 'interpret and enforce' the agreement.
That would leave the UK subject to EU laws for decades - with Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg warning it would turn the UK into not just a 'vassal state' but a 'convict state'.
The document also spells out that sanctions will be imposed if the EU decides Britain has broken the rules during a transition period. 'The Union may suspend certain benefits deriving for the United Kingdom from participation in the internal market,' it says.
The incendiary developments come after a leaked Cabinet letter written by Mr Johnson suggested he had questioned the importance of the Irish border issue.
In the letter the Foreign Secretary raised the prospect of a harder border between Northern Ireland and the Republic if other solutions failed.
Mrs May has repeatedly insisted she will not accept a hard border involving inspection posts and checkpoints, following warnings this could undermine the Northern Ireland peace process.
But in the letter, Mr Johnson wrote that it was wrong to see the task as maintaining 'no border' on the island of Ireland after Brexit, saying the Government's task was to 'stop this border becoming significantly harder'.  
He added: 'Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95 per cent-plus of goods pass the border [without] checks.' 
The missive drew anger from Labour, with shadow Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Smith saying Mr Johnson should be sacked if the letter was genuine.
'Boris Johnson's recklessness with our relationship with the Republic and the future of the Good Friday Agreement must be addressed by the PM,' he said. 
But questioned by journalists as he was out jogging this morning, Mr Johnson said he was a victim of dirty tricks by those who wanted to thwart Brexit.
'The issue of the Northern Ireland border is being used politically to try to keep the UK in the customs union, effectively the single market, so we can't really leave the EU. That's what's going on,' he said. 
Asked about the issue at PMQs today, Theresa May said: 'The Foreign Secretary and I both committed to ensuring we deliver on no hard border in Northern Ireland.
The EU's legal draft of the Withdrawal Agreement, the principles of which were outlined by Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker before Christmas, is set to cause a series of flaming rows.
Northern Ireland 
The document brands the idea of a 'common regulatory area' the 'default' option in the event no deal can be agreed by the UK and EU.
The controversial idea implies that Northern Ireland will effectively stay inside the EU customs union and Single Market. 
It does not include commitments Mrs May made that there would be no regulatory divergence within the UK.
Who enforces the agreement 
The EU draft states that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) must have the power to 'interpret and enforce' the agreement.
That would leave the UK subject to EU laws for decades - with Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg warning it would turn the UK into not just a 'vassal state' but a 'convict state'.
Free movement during transition
The text states that EU citizens who arrive in the UK before the end of the transition period should keep permanent residency rights.
The UK has insisted that ongoing free movement rights should end on the formal Brexit date next March.
Sanctions
The document spells out that sanctions will be imposed if the EU decides Britain has broken the rules during a transition period. 'The Union may suspend certain benefits deriving for the United Kingdom from participation in the internal market,' it says.
'That is the position of the UK government, the parties of Northern Ireland and the position of the Irish Government, and it is what was agreed in December.
'We are all committed to ensuring there is no hard border in Northern Ireland.'
A No10 source said: 'The EU should be absolutely clear the Prime Minister is not going to sign up to anything that threatens the constitutional integrity of the UK or its common market.
'Nor will we accept the ECJ as the final arbiter of the agreement.' 
One insider stressed the plan from Brussels is only a 'draft negotiating position by the EU, not a final binding text'.
Mr Jones told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'What is proposed is that Northern Ireland should remain part of the customs union, it should effectively be part of the single market, and should, I understand, remain subject to the European court of justice. 
'That effectively amounts to an annexure of Northern Ireland by the European Union...
'I think that it would be pretty catastrophic and I think that the European Union in actually proposing this is behaving wholly irresponsibly.'
DUP MP Sammy Wilson said: 'The EU have been trying to manoeuvre the negotiations to ensure that the United Kingdom as a whole stays within the single market and customs union and have been using - or abusing - Northern Ireland to try and bring that situation about.'
Brexiteers are increasingly convinced that Remainers are coordinating their attacks on government policy with Brussels. 
Mrs May is facing a potentially catastrophic Commons rebellion after Easter, with Tory rebels pledging to side with Labour to demand a customs union with the EU after Brexit.   
Former PM Sir John Major is set to use a speech today to urge pro-Remain MPs to 'show leadership' by rejecting government plans for a clean break with the EU.
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the legal text on Britain's withdrawal from the EU states there will not be a hard border with Northern Ireland. 
'Some people were trying to suggest in the last couple of weeks that we over-spun, or oversold what was achieved in December. I think people will see today that that charge from the opposition (parties in Ireland) and others is not correct,' he said. 
Mr Varadkar told Newstalk radio: 'Option C is how we can avoid a hard border. We set that out in legal terms today, it is very clear. 'In the same way that we have a common travel area between Britain and Ireland we could have a common regulatory area involving Northern Ireland. 
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
'A lot of the rules of the customs and single market would apply in the north and that means there doesn't have to be a hard border so it is do-able. We've set it out in a legal text.' 
Mr Varadkar said his Government would prefer to see what is being classed as 'Option A' - a new relationship between the UK and EU that is so close that a border is unnecessary. 
'It's up to the UK to bring proposals to the table to make that possible and I hope that we will see some indication in Theresa May's, the Prime Minister's speech on Friday as to how they intend to do that,' Mr Varadkar said. 
'It's not OK for people - whether it's pro-Brexit politicians in Britain or people from parties in Northern Ireland - to just say no now. It's incumbent on them if they can't accept the backstop then they must detail how Option A or B would work.'
Giving evidence to MPs this morning, Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley tried to play down the spat.
'The British government stands resolutely behind the joint report of December,' she said. '
'That means that, as the joint report says very clearly, there will be no hard border. 
'We have said that, the Irish government have said that, the EU have said that. No new physical infrastructure at the border. 
'And that is north-south, but also east-west. So, to be absolutely clear, the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom is paramount and something that the United Kingdom government will ensure is what we achieve.' 
Theresa May has insisted Brexit means quitting the EU customs union - so the UK can strike free trade deals with other countries.
But  this means that customs checks on goods will probably need to be carried out at the border - creating the spectre of long border queues.
Critics of the PM's approach say the UK should stay in a customs union with the bloc to avoid these hard border controls.
Below are three customs deals the EU  has done with countries outside the bloc:
The Norway Option: 
Norway voted narrowly against joining the EU in 1994, but shares a 1000-mile border with Sweden which is in the bloc.
The Norwegian government decided to negotiate a deal which gave it very close ties with the EU. 
It is part of the EU single market which means it must accept EU rules on the free movement of people.
But it is not in the customs union - meaning it sets its own tariffs on customs coming from outside the EU and so must carry out border checks.
There are some 1,300 customs officials who are involved in policing the border with Sweden, and have invested substantial amounts in technology to make these as quick and smooth as possible.
They have IT systems which pre-declare goods to customs and they are developing a system which will allow lorries carrying pre-declared goods to be waved through. 
Norway also pays large amounts into the EU budget and is governed by the court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The Switzerland Option:
Switzerland is one of the EU's longest-standing trading partners, but the  country voted against joining the bloc in 2001.
It is a member of the EU single market and has signed up to the Schengen area - meaning it must accept free movement rules and does not carry out passport check on other member countries. 
But it is not in the EU customs union - which means that checks on goods crossing over the border from non-EU countries are carried out.
The situation tosses up some anomalies. For instance, a passenger travelling through Geneva Airport can rent a car on the French side of the border for around half of the cost of renting it on the Swiss side.
Border checks are carried out on goods but customs officials say they use intelligence to carry out spot checks, which can be carried out several miles from the border. 
However, there can be long delays as goods are checked at the border.
The Turkey Option: 
Turkey has long eyed up membership of the EU and first tried to start the lengthy application process to join in 1987.
The country signed a customs union with the bloc in 1995 - a move Turkey's rulers hoped would be a stepping stone on the way to full membership.
Turkey's hopes to join the bloc faded over the past few years and have been all but abandoned under President Erdogan after he instigated a major purge of political opponents in the wake of the failed coup against him in 2016.
Under its customs union Turkey must follow EU rules on the production of goods without a say in making them.
It also means that Turkey can only strike free trade deals on goods which are negotiated by Brussels.   
The customs union and single market have emerged as crucial battlegrounds in the struggle over Brexit.
The customs arrangements could decide the fate of the overall deal - as the UK has already said it will ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
Here are the main options for what could happen after Britain leaves the bloc.
Staying in the EU single market
A Norway-style arrangement would be the deepest possible without formally staying in the EU.
The single market rules out tariffs, quotas or taxes on trade, and guarantees free movement of goods, services, capital and - controversially - people.
It also seeks to harmonise rules on packaging, safety and standards. 
Staying in the EU customs union
The customs union allows EU states to exchange goods without tariffs, and impose common tariffs on imports from outside the bloc.
But they also prevent countries from striking deals outside the union.
Theresa May has repeatedly made clear that the UK will be leaving the customs union.
Forging a new customs union
Some MPs and the Labour leadership have raised the idea of creating a new customs union with the EU.
This could be looser than the existing arrangements, but still allow tariff free trade with the bloc. 
However, many Eurosceptics believe it is impossible to be in a union without hampering the UK's ability to strike trade deals elsewhere.
They also complain that it would mean accepting the EU's 'protectionist' tariffs against other parts of the world in areas like agriculture.
The PM has also ruled out this option. 
A customs partnership
Less formal than a union, this proposal would seek to cherry pick the elements that facilitate tariff-free trade - without binding the UK's hands when it comes to deals with other countries.
One possibility could be keeping the UK and EU connected for trade in goods, but allowing divergence for the services sector.
The partnership option was floated by the government in a position paper last year.
'Highly streamlined' customs
This scenario would be a 'bare minimum' customs arrangement between the EU and UK.
New technology would be deployed alongside a simple agreement to minimise friction.
But there are fears that this could hit trade, and it is unclear how the system would work with a 'soft' Irish border. 
Boris Johnson hits back in Irish border row saying Remainers are 'politicising' the peace process in Northern Ireland
Boris Johnson lashed back in the Irish border row today accusing Remainers of 'politicising' the Northern Ireland peace process in a bid to keep Britain in the EU.
The Foreign Secretary claimed he was a victim of dirty tricks after documents emerged suggesting he had questioned the importance of the Irish border issue.
In a leaked letter to Theresa May, Boris Johnson suggested he would be willing to accept a so-called 'hard border' between Northern Ireland and the Republic if other solutions failed.
Mrs May has repeatedly insisted she will not accept a hard border involving inspection posts and checkpoints, following warnings this could undermine the Northern Ireland peace process.
But in the letter, Mr Johnson wrote that it was wrong to see the task as maintaining 'no border' on the island of Ireland after Brexit, saying the Government's task was to 'stop this border becoming significantly harder'.
He added: 'Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95 per cent-plus of goods pass the border [without] checks.'
The letter emerged after Mr Johnson faced criticism yesterday for likening the Irish border to the boundaries between London boroughs.
The former London mayor said 'there's no border between Camden and Westminster' as he suggested that goods crossing between the Republic and Northern Ireland could be subject to electronic checks, in an apparent reference to the congestion charge.
But his suggestion was dismissed as 'wilful recklessness' by Labour MPs.
In his letter to the Prime Minister, which was obtained by Sky News, Mr Johnson pointed out that there was already a border between north and south, saying it was 'of course a fallacy' that Brexit could see a border re-emerge.
Shadow Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Smith said Mr Johnson should be sacked if the letter was genuine.
 
Election results were delayed in parts of England overnight after so many people had deliberately spoilt their ballot papers.
Some voters scribbled 'Brexit means Brexit', 'Get May out and us out of the EU' or 'traitors' on their forms and refused to mark crosses against any candidates' names.
Each of the spoilt papers had to be individually adjudicated and the number to be examined was higher than normal in Ipswich, Suffolk - delaying the result.
Voters shared pictures of their spoilt ballot papers on Twitter with the hashtag #SpoilYourBallot, which has gathered momentum overnight over the past 24 hours.
Some voters wrote the words 'Brexit Party' over their papers in support of Nigel Farage's new political group, despite it not fielding candidates in the local elections.
An official in Ipswich's Corn Exchange said: 'We thought there would be quite a few spoilt papers, but nothing on the level we have seen - it took everyone by surprise. There seems to be a lot of anger and frustration out there.' 
In Basildon alone there were 800 spoilt ballot papers, reported BBC Essex. Brexit Party MEP candidate Michael Heaver said the figure showed 'huge anger out there'. 
It was 200 in Immingham, Lincolnshire, with councillor David Watson saying: 'That is a phenomenal amount. The residents have disengaged with the political process.' 
Meanwhile there were 414 in Castle Point, 600 in Tendring and 539 in Chelmsford, all in Essex, plus 647 in Folkestone & Hythe, Kent, and 693 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. 
Spoiling a ballot paper is not illegal, although there are legal restrictions on photographing in polling stations under the Representation of the People Act.  
A man named only as Jordan voted in the Worcester City Council elections and told how he spoilt his ballot because of issues surrounding Brexit.
He said: 'The major parties have been lying for three years straight about Brexit and, in a two-party system, neither of them deserve to be voted for at any level.
'I'm actually a member of the Conservatives, so under normal circumstances I would have voted for them. If there was a Brexit Party candidate I would have voted for them.'
It follows a campaign by Leave.EU urging people to spoil their ballot papers. 
The group tweeted on March 26: 'The Conservatives depend on our votes. Instead of respecting our decision to leave the EU, they have chosen to stab us in the back.  
'Send a message on May 2 by spoiling your ballot, writing in Brexit Party and show CCHQ what happens when you defy the will of the British people!'
There were also similar protests from Remain supporters, with messages including 'Stop Brexit' written on ballot papers.
The result itself in Ipswich was not so much of a surprise, with Labour increasing its  majority by three and retaining its grip on the town's borough council.
The Tories lost three seats, with Labour gaining two and the Liberal Democrats one. Labour now holds 36 of 48 seats with the Tories on nine and the Lib Dems on three.  
Overnight, voters vented their anger at the two main parties over the Brexit deadlock as both the Tories and Labour suffered losses in the English council elections. 
The Conservatives shed 409 seats and 16 councils in early results, with voters apparently frustrated at the Government's failure to deliver Brexit on March 29.
There were calls from Tory MPs for Theresa May's removal as leader, with Sir Bernard Jenkin warning the party would be 'toast' unless it 'mends its ways pretty quickly'.
But Labour also struggled, losing seats at a point in the electoral cycle when they could expect to be making significant gains at the expense of the Government.
In contrast, the Liberal Democrats were enjoying a good night, with some predictions that they could pick up as many as 500 seats.
With results in from 109 of the 248 councils where elections are being held, the Conservatives had lost 409 seats and Labour 60, while the Lib Dems had gained 283.
Theresa May set out her vision for post-Brexit Britain today, pledging a country run for 'ordinary working families' instead of the 'international elite'.
Delivering her keynote speech to Tory conference in Birmingham,  the Prime Minister insisted the historic result in June was a 'quiet revolution' and offered a 'once in a generation chance to change the direction of our country for good'.
Using the platform to make a bold pitch for the political centre ground nearly three months after taking charge of Downing Street, Mrs May made no bones about her disdain for snobbishness among the ruling class.
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She insisted her government would be about more than just Brexit, and voiced her determination to hammer big businesses that abused power and did not help improve the lives of those struggling to get by.
'In June people voted for change. And a change is going to come,' Mrs May said. 
‘Change has got to come too because of the quiet revolution that took place in our country just three months ago – a revolution in which millions of our fellow citizens stood up and said they were not prepared to be ignored anymore.’
The hour long address came after a week in which the party presented a united front following bitter infighting during the Brexit campaign, and was clearly designed to set the tone for Mrs May's premiership.



Among her key messages were:
In an excoriating volley at a ruling class that has more in common with 'international elite' than their own fellow Britons, Mrs May said: ‘Just listen to the way a lot of politicians and commentators talk about the public.
‘They find their patriotism distasteful, their concerns about immigration parochial, their views about crime illiberal, their attachment to their job security inconvenient.
‘They find the fact that more than seventeen million people voted to leave the European Union simply bewildering.’
Mrs May warned that unless there was fundamental reform the divisions in British society would end in 'disaster'.
'Our society should work for everyone, but if you can’t afford to get onto the property ladder, or your child is stuck in a bad school, it doesn’t feel like it’s working for you.
'Our economy should work for everyone, but if your pay has stagnated for several years in a row and fixed items of spending keep going up, it doesn’t feel like it’s working for you.
'Our democracy should work for everyone, but if you’ve been trying to say things need to change for years and your complaints fall on deaf ears, it doesn’t feel like it’s working for you.
'And the roots of the revolution run deep. Because it wasn’t the wealthy who made the biggest sacrifices after the financial crash, but ordinary, working class families.' 
Mrs May arrive to a huge standing ovation with Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones playing, and said the Tories had faced big questions at the start of the week.
She said: ‘Do we have plan for Brexit? We do.
‘Are we ready for the effort it will take to see it through? We are.
‘Can Boris Johnson stay on message for a full four days?'
To laughter from the audience - including a slightly-awkward looking Mr Johnson himself - she said: ‘Just about!’


Mrs May set out her vision of what Britain was, telling activists it was a country built on family ties and citizenship.
She praised institutions including the NHS and the BBC, said the UK had produced more Nobel Laureates than any country outside the US and said it was all possible because of the Union.
And she said: ‘I will always fight to preserve our proud and historic union and will never let divisive nationalists drive us apart.’ 
Mrs May said the speech would set out her own personal vision of Britain.
The Premier said: ‘Today I want to answer that question very directly. I want to set out my vision for Britain after Brexit. 



‘I want to lay out my approach, the things I believe, I want to explain what a country that works for everyone means.’  




But she issued a warning about ‘division and unfairness all around’, repeating her mantra that a ‘change is going to and this party is going to deliver it’.
The PM slammed the gap between the ‘rich, the successful and the powerful’ and everyone else.
Mrs May said: ‘Don’t get me wrong: We applaud success, we want people to get on, but we also value something else. 
‘The spirit of citizenship – that spirit that means you supports the bonds and obligations that make our society work.’
Reaching out to the millions of blue-collar workers who were the bedrock of Margaret Thatcher’s support, Mrs May will pledge to put ‘the power of Government squarely at the service of ordinary working-class people’.
She yesterday denied that her plans to put workers on company boards and challenge big business amounted to abandoning Conservative free market principles.
And in today’s speech, she said that Government intervention can be a force for good. 
Echoing a famous phrase from Mrs Thatcher - with whom she is often compared - Mrs May said government should be about 'action'.
‘It’s about doing something, not being someone. About identifying injustices, finding solutions, driving change,' she said.
The Tory leader did not name former BHS boss Sir Philip Green by name but signalling an assault on bad business practice, she said: ‘Today too many people in positions of power behave more in common with international elites than people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the street.
‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. 


‘If you are a boss who earns a fortune but doesn’t look after your staff, an international company that treats tax laws as optional extras, a household name that refuses to work with the authorities even to fight terrorism.
‘A director who takes out massive dividends while knowing the company pension is about to go bust.
‘I am putting you on warning: This can’t go on any more.’
Mrs May said the Tories would always be the party of business but said the behaviour of bad companies fueled frustration.
She said: ‘Too often the people who are supposed to hold business accountable are drawn from the same social circles as the executive team and too often the scrutiny they provide is not good enough.’
And she added: ‘We all believe in a low tax economy but we also know tax is the price we pay for living in a civilised society.
‘Nobody, no individual tycoon or business, has succeeded on their own.
‘We all play a part in that success so it doesn’t matter to me who you are: If you are a tax dodger we are coming after you.’ 
Mrs May said her government would be about 'taking, not shirking, the big decisions' - warning that ministers and the party would need to have 'the courage to see things through'.
‘I want to set our party and our country on the path towards the new centre ground of British politics – built on the values of fairness and opportunity – where everyone plays by the same rules and where every single person, regardless of their background or that of their parents, is given the chance to be all they want to be,’ she said.
She added: ‘It’s time to remember the good that Government can do.
‘Time for a new approach that says while Government does not have all the answers, Government can and should be a force for good.
'That the state exists to provide what individual people, communities and markets cannot; and that we should employ the power of Government for the good of the people. 
'Time to reject the ideological templates provided by the socialist Left and the libertarian Right and to embrace a new centre ground in which Government steps up – and not back – to act on behalf of the people. 
'Supporting free markets, but stepping in to repair them when they aren’t working as they should.
‘Encouraging business and supporting free trade, but not accepting one set of rules for some and another for everyone else. 
'And if we do – if we act to correct unfairness and injustice and put Government at the service of ordinary working people – we can build that new united Britain in which everyone plays by the same rules, and in which the powerful and the privileged no longer ignore the interests of the people.’ 
In her second speech to conference this week – following Sunday’s address in which she promised to deliver Brexit by March 2019 – Mrs May delivered a brutal swipe at law firms who have been harassing troops over alleged abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan.  






Recalling the announcement on Monday to protect troops from being pursued by lawyers, she said: ‘Not only will we support (our Armed Forces) with our heart and soul, not only will we remain committed to spending 2 per cent of our national income on defence, but we will never again in any future conflict let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave, the men and women of our Armed Forces.’ 
Mrs May said she would press on with High Speed 2 and said there would ‘shortly’ be a decision on airport expansion.
She told activists: ‘We will take the big decisions when they are the right decisions for Britain because that is what Government can do.
‘And we can take those big decisions because our economy is strong and because of the fiscal discipline we have shown over the last six years.
‘We must continue to aim for a balanced budget but to build an economy that works for everyone we must also invest in the things that matter, the things with a long term return.’
Mrs May said the Government would acknowledge the ‘bad side effects’ of historically low interest rates – repeating again her mantra ‘a change has got to come.’
Mrs May said Britain would be a ‘global’ nation after Brexit takes place and told activists the country would be the ‘strongest and most passionate advocate for free trade.
And she said the UK would continue to play its role as a major aid-giving and defence-spending nation.
The PM, dressed in a striking purple dress and watched by husband Philip in the hall, made a bold bid to woo Labour voters.
She branded Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition the ‘nasty party’ – the phrase she famously used in her call for the Tories to modernise in a speech at the 2002 party conference.
She told Tory delegates: ‘We must govern for the whole nation, where Labour build barriers we will build bridges, towards working class people.’
The PM said: ‘The main lesson I take from their conference last week is that the Labour Party is not just divided, but divisive.
‘Determined to pit one against another. To pursue vendettas and settle scores. 
'And to embrace the politics of pointless protest that doesn’t unite people but pulls them further apart.
‘So let’s have no more of Labour’s absurd belief that they have a monopoly on compassion. Let’s put an end to their sanctimonious pretence of moral superiority.
‘Let’s make clear that they have given up the right to call themselves the party of the NHS, the party of the workers, the party of public servants.’
Theresa May called out Twitter, Google and Sir Philip Green in her first conference speech as Prime Minister as she demanded a 'change' must come to Britain.
While not naming any by name, none in Birmingham's Symphony Hall were left in doubt at the Tory leader's intentions.
Mrs May set out an interventionist vision for her government and warned it was only through reform could treasured institutions be protected.
She said: ' Today too many people in positions of power behave more in common with international elites than people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the street.
‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.
‘If you are a boss who earns a fortune but doesn’t look after your staff, an international company that treats tax laws as optional extras, a household name that refuses to work with the authorities even to fight terrorism.
‘A director who takes out massive dividends while knowing the company pension is about to go bust.
‘I am putting you on warning: This can’t go on any more.'
Mrs May said the Tories had a 'responsibility to step up, represent and govern for the whole nation'. 
'That means tackling unfairness and injustice, and shifting the balance of Britain decisively in favour of ordinary working class people,' she said.
'Giving them access to the opportunities that are too often the preserve of the privileged few.
'Putting fairness at the heart of our agenda and creating a country in which hard work is rewarded and talent is welcome.
'A nation where contribution matters more than entitlement. Merit matters more than wealth.
'A confident global Britain that doesn’t turn its back on globalisation but ensures the benefits are shared by all.
'A country that is prosperous and secure, so every person may share in the wealth of the nation and live their life free from fear.' 
Mrs May said Britain faced an historic moment that ‘calls us to respond and reshape our nation again’.
She said: ‘This is our generation’s moment. To write a new future on the page, to bring power home and make decisions here in Britain.
‘To take back control and reshape our future here in Britain.
‘To build an outward looking, confident trading nation here in Britain. To build a stronger, fairer, brighter future here in Britain.
‘That is the opportunity we have been given and the responsibility to grasp it falls upon us all.
‘So to everyone here this morning, and the millions beyond, whether leavers or remainers, I say come with me and we will write that brighter future.
‘Come with me and we will make that change. Come with me as we rise to meet this moment.
‘Come with me and together let’s seize the day.’
In a TV interview last night, she also vowed to get tough on big business which does not behave responsibly.
Speaking on BBC’s Newsnight, she said: ‘I think people want to feel that everybody plays by the same rules in the economy and feel that there isn’t one rule for the privileged few and another rule for everybody else.
‘Companies must recognise that actually they have a position in society too. 
'This is why I’m talking about issues like consumer representation on boards, worker representation on boards.’
But Mrs May denied that she was abandoning Conservative free market principles.
She said: ‘I’m going to be setting out the sort of economic and social reforms I want to see that will deliver a country that works for everyone.’
The speech comes after a conference in which the Tories attempted to show a united front following the bitter infighting of the EU referendum campaign.
Theresa May today slammed 'activist, left wing, human rights lawyers' for harassing British troops over their battlefield conduct.
The Prime Minister recalled Monday's major announcement to exempt troops from some human rights legislation to protect them from complaints.
Thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been subjected to legal claims - many of which are seen as vexatious - for years after the end of each war. 
In her first keynote conference speech as party leader and Prime Minister, Mrs May said: 'Always acting as the strongest and most passionate advocate for free trade right across the globe.
'And always committed to a strong national defence and supporting the finest Armed Forces known to man.
'And this week, our excellent Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, proved not only that we will support them with our hearts and souls. Not only will we remain committed to spending two per cent of our national income on defence.
'But we will never again – in any future conflict – let those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave – the men and women of Britain’s Armed Forces.'
The announcement by Mrs May and Mr Fallon on Monday followed a successful Mail campaign to end the witchhunt against British troops.  
Theresa May teased Boris Johnson over his tendency to drift off message in her first conference speech as leader.
The Prime Minister said keeping her Foreign Secretary on track for the four day Tory conference had been a key goal at the start of the week.
The quip was the only light-hearted line in the entire 60 minute speech.
Mrs May arrive to a huge standing ovation with Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones playing, and said big questions faced the Tories at the start of the week.
She said: ‘Do we have plan for Brexit? We do.
‘Are we ready for the effort it will take to see it through? We are.
‘Can Boris Johnson stay on message for a full four days?'
To laughter from the audience - including a slightly-awkward looking Mr Johnson himself - she said: ‘Just about!’
Mr Johnson was slapped down by Home Secretary Amber Rudd on Monday for remarks made last month but has otherwise had a quiet conference. 
Theresa May lavishes praise on David Cameron - but says we need to draw a line under his era
Theresa May delivered a fawning thanks to David Cameron during her first leader's speech to Tory conference today despite tearing down a number of his key policies in her first three months in No 10.
She gave a long list of the former Prime Minister’s achievements in office, citing record employment, the new National Living wage, deficit reduction, three million apprenticeships, her own record on reducing crime and taking the lowest paid out of income tax. 

Mrs May said it was a ‘record of which we should all be proud’ as she told Tory delegates: ‘This morning it’s right that we pause to say thank you to the man who made that possible.
‘A man who challenged us to change and told us that if we did then we would win again.
‘And he was right. We did change. We did win. The first majority Conservative Government in almost 25 years.
‘A great leader of our party – a great servant to our country. David Cameron, thank you,’ she said to loud applause.
But acknowledging the ‘quiet revolution’ of June’s Brexit vote, Mrs May then immediately said: ‘Now we need to change again.’ 
Unsurprisingly she didn't mention the string of Cameron and Osborne measures she had scrapped, including their goal of eliminating the deficit, watering down their child obesity strategy, her trashing of relations with China at the same time as she pushed ahead with an expansion of grammar schools - a move opposed by the former PM and Chancellor.
 
 
Theresa May today pays tribute to her 'rock' Philip for supporting her through a tumultuous week of resignations, plotting and vicious personal attacks.
In a moving tribute to her loyal husband, she said he felt the pain of the personal abuse she has received from MPs more deeply than she does.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail conducted in her Downing Street study, the Prime Minister revealed Philip poured her a large whisky when she finally finished a five-hour Cabinet meeting that sparked a revolt against her Brexit plans.
He was so enraged by wall-to-wall coverage of rebels laying into her that he had to turn off the televisions at work.
Mrs May said: 'It's often harder for the other half because they are watching it and feel protective and think 'Why are they saying that to my wife?' He does feel some of the hurt. We've been married for 38 years, that's a long time. He is my rock. It's hugely important to have somebody there who is supportive of you, not involved in the intricacies of politics but there to provide human support.'
Her comments come at the end of a gruelling week when she has been rocked by Cabinet resignations and a plot to oust her by Tory Brexiteers – in her words 'a pretty heavy couple of days'.
Yesterday, Cabinet ministers rallied round, with Mrs May's deputy David Lidington saying she would 'win handsomely' if her Eurosceptic critics forced a leadership contest. 'I've seen no plausible alternative plan from any of those criticising her or wanting to challenge her position,' he said.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox urged the plotters to back down, saying: 'I hope we all take a rational and reasonable view of this. We are not elected to do what we want.
'We are elected to do what's in the national interest.'
On another turbulent day:
Mrs May told the Daily Mail her husband strongly supported her Brexit stance and would urge her 'keep going, this matters, keep doing the right thing.'
When the Conservative revolt erupted on Wednesday, threatening to bring her down, Philip was waiting in the Downing Street flat with more practical sustenance when she returned exhausted at 11pm.
She said: 'The first thing he did was to pour me a whisky. On Thursday, he served up beans on toast for tea. I opened the tin! He made the toast – and did the washing up!'
Asked if he felt like punching his wife's would be Tory assassins, she replied: 'You'll have to ask him – he's as protective as any other-half would be.'
She also delivered a series of thinly veiled jibes at Tory Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg who want her replaced.
She said they had no chance of getting the 'Canada plus' trade deal they have campaigned for even if they ousted her from power and went back to Brussels.
She added: 'People say 'If you could only just do something slightly different, have a Norway model or a Canada model, this backstop issue would go away'. It would not. That issue is still going to be there.
'Some politicians get so embroiled in the intricacies of their argument they forget it is not about this theory or that theory, or does it make me look good.'
She conceded her Brexit deal was not perfect, but said she deserved credit for ending free movement between Britain and the rest of the EU.
Mrs May's allies yesterday admitted she remains in the danger zone with Downing Street on standby for a possible vote of confidence in her leadership as early as Tuesday.
By yesterday evening, 23 Tory MPs had publicly admitted sending letters of no confidence in Mrs May to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs which polices the leadership rules.
The number is well short of the 48 needed to trigger a no confidence vote.
And Cabinet sources suggested Brexiteer ministers could still quit in the coming days if, as seems likely, Mrs May refuses to renegotiate the deal with Brussels. Foreign Office minister Mark Field urged MPs to stop 'squabbling' and get behind the PM.
He is not normally shy. But Boris Johnson seemed annoyed to be seen in a restaurant with Nigel Farage on Thursday.
The pair were at Boisdale of Belgravia when a diner took photos. Mr Johnson wagged a finger disapprovingly.
He was dining with his father Stanley and Mr Farage was at the restaurant by coincidence, a friend said.
By Simon Walters for the Daily Mail  
Sitting in her Downing Street study yesterday morning, Theresa May hardly had the manner or appearance of someone on the verge of being ejected from No 10.
Perhaps the Prime Minister was taking inspiration from the portrait of an impassive Winston Churchill glowering down on us, for her demeanour was one of determination and resolve.
In her elegant tweed jacket and white top with a discreet string of pearls, Mrs May was a picture of calm under the circumstances – although the pointed steel toecaps of her flat shoes may have reflected what she really thought of her political enemies.
Mrs May's exclusive interview with the Mail behind the heavy blue doors of her Downing Street redoubt took place at the height of this week's political turmoil.
Just 48 hours earlier, Jacob Rees-Mogg had launched a campaign to depose her over her proposed Brexit deal; seven ministers and senior Tories had resigned; and she was struggling to find someone ready to accept the Cabinet's poison chalice, the job of Brexit Secretary.
Diabetic Mrs May has admitted she is concerned about supplies of insulin in the event that Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
The Prime Minister has type 1 diabetes, and she revealed in a radio phone-in that her medicine came from Denmark.
Health chiefs have been warning for months of the dangers of supplies running out. 
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, reportedly told Cabinet on Wednesday that he could not rule out the risk that people could die from medical shortages if there is no deal. When asked by LBC Radio about Mr Hancock's reported comments, she said: 'I'm not sure that's exactly what Matt did say.
'This is an issue that I feel personally – as it happens my insulin is produced by a company in the EU, Denmark, so I know this is an issue that's a matter of importance to people.
'The Department of Health is ensuring it is making all the steps if we go to no deal, but I believe we've got a good deal.' 
Meanwhile, Novo Nordisk, the Danish firm that manufactures Mrs May's insulin, told the BBC it was stockpiling supplies in the UK in case of a hard Brexit next March.
When you are in the bunker with heavy shelling all around, any hint that another major casualty has been avoided is cause for fresh hope.
Which is why embattled Mrs May and her No 10 team were so thrilled by the news just before our meeting that Michael Gove was not going to resign from the Cabinet despite rejecting her plea to replace Dominic Raab as Brexit Secretary.
In normal circumstances, a Cabinet minister who publicly spurned a prime minister in their hour of need would be sacked.
These are not normal times.
Mrs May has been hit by so many resignations she is in danger of running out of Conservatives willing or able to fill the gaps round her Cabinet table.
But while her boasts that she and her Government are 'strong and stable' are long gone, she has an air of steely composure as she talks candidly about her marriage, her faith, how she copes with Tory plotters ... and why Boris Johnson – and anyone else who might replace her as prime minister – would be deluding themselves if they think they can wring any more concessions from Brussels than she has.
'It's been a pretty heavy couple of days,' she says with understatement and her familiar awkward smile. 'When I went up to the flat late on Wednesday, around 11pm, the first thing Philip did was to pour me a whisky, Penderyn Welsh whisky – though I do drink Scotch as well!,' she adds diplomatically.
She needed a large one, surely?
'I couldn't possibly comment!' she jokes.
Her husband's whisky serves more than one purpose. Asked if she has lost sleep, she laughs: 'It depends how strong the whisky is, or how much Philip has poured for me!' The next morning, before she had even walked downstairs from the Downing Street flat to her study, she could have done with another glass of Penderyn because she was told that Mr Raab's resignation had been confirmed.
'I wasn't leaden footed, but sad,' she says with a sigh. 'When you are PM you wake up each morning and never quite know how the day is going to pan out.'
She discovered this afresh when, within hours, Mr Rees-Mogg called on her to resign.
For many it would have been a body blow, but not for this prime minister. That evening, she was back on duty chatting to Prince Charles at his 70th birthday party at Clarence House.
Only after returning to the No 10 flat was she finally able to discuss her woes with her husband.
Philip May, a banker, was so irked by the wall-to-wall reporting of his wife's imminent political demise, he has taken to switching off all TV news bulletins at work. 
When she returned from Clarence House, he was waiting in their Downing St kitchen with more modest fare than the champagne and fine canapes at the royal birthday party.
'We went up to the flat for a quick bite – Philip cooked beans on toast – I think I opened the tin! He made the toast – and did the washing up! Then it was downstairs for a quick meeting and home (their property in Sonning, Berkshire) by 9.30pm so I could get the washing on and leave it to dry overnight.'
As ever, the middle-class vicar's daughter was putting day-to-day practicality first.
She skipped her usual Friday morning gym session to be back at Downing St for our interview but says she could not survive the pressure cooker of politics without Philip. 
'I always say he is my rock. It's hugely important to have somebody there who is supportive of you, not involved in the intricacies of politics, but there to provide human support.' 
When they met at Oxford, Philip was as politically ambitious as she was. 'He thinks what I am doing is important for the British people, though he doesn't put it like that. He says 'Keep going, this matters, keep doing the right thing'.'
Mrs May says Philip feels the pain of the vicious personal attacks on her by Tory Party critics even more than she does. 
'It's often harder for the other half because they are watching it and feel protective and think 'Why are they saying that to my wife?' He does feel some of it (the hurt) himself – he's bound to. We've been married for 38 years, that's a long time.'  
Some Whitehall veterans have compared the air of impending doom now enveloping Mrs May's No 10 to the last days of Margaret Thatcher in 1990, when, just as with Mrs May, her Tory ministers were deserting her.
Maggie's husband Denis has often been likened to Philip: discreet and monosyllabic in public; similar in appearance – tall, slim, formal; and above all loving and fiercely loyal.
When the Tory sharks circled around Lady Thatcher, it was Denis who stepped in and said it was time to go, telling her: 'You've done enough, old girl. You've done your share. For God's sake, don't go on any longer.' Has Philip reached that point? 'No, he supports what I'm doing.'
He must feel like punching her Tory assailants on the nose?
'You'll have to ask him – he's as protective as any other half.'
Mrs May says her Christian faith has also helped. 'I am a practising member of the faith and go to church regularly. It is an important part of my life – part of who I am and how I do my job.'
She is careful not to attack Mr Johnson, Mr Rees-Mogg and others directly, perhaps because she is fearful of prodding the hornet's nest. But she leaves little doubt that she regards some hard Brexiteers as vainglorious, fanatical ideologues with no regard or knowledge of ordinary people or real life.
'Some politicians get so embroiled in the intricacies of their argument they forget it is not about this theory or that theory, or does it make me look good? It is what is best for people going about their lives day in and day out. 
They think too much about their privileged position and too little about their responsibility. The job of a prime minister is to make tough decisions which are not always black or white. I have to find a way through, what best suits everybody's needs.' Mrs May does not pretend her Brexit plan is perfect.
'It's not everybody's ideal deal. You were never going to get that.'
She is hardly extolling it to the skies – however hard she tries to get people enthused about it, there's a feeling she must know the truth: that it is the least worst option.
But she is intensely frustrated that so few have given her credit for addressing the main reason millions voted to cut ties with Brussels: controlling immigration by ending freedom of movement.
'As Home Secretary for six years I did my best to reduce immigration with one hand tied behind my back because you couldn't do anything about people coming in from the EU,' she said. 'Now we can. Freedom of movement ends.'
She trotted out her other Brexit achievements: 'no more sending vast sums to the EU; an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice; out of the Common Agricultural Policy; out of the Common Fisheries Policy; out of the customs union; out of the single market; independent trade and an independent coastal state. That is delivered in the future.'
It sounds impressive. But she is back on the defensive when challenged over claims that the EU can now veto us leaving the customs union: 'No, no, no, no. In the future we WILL leave customs union.'
But we are trapped in it?
'No, no, no, no, no.' She's very much in Maggie mode here.
Could Mrs May categorically say the EU would not have a veto?
She pauses, 'You are talking about it, you see …'
Have they or haven't they?
'No, but…'
Won't they just trap us in it?
'No. The EU does not have a veto on us leaving the customs union – we have a future relationship where we are not in it.'
It sounds categorical.
But then she adds the so-called 'backstop mechanism', involving 'UK-wide customs territory arrangements to ensure the Ireland and Northern Ireland border remains free', can only be ended by 'mutual consent – we don't have unilateral withdrawal from that.' No wonder people are confused.
She also struggles to answer Esther McVey's withering comment to her after quitting the Cabinet: 'You have gone from saying no deal is better than a bad deal to any deal is better than no deal.'
'No, I haven't gone to that position,' she says tersely.
But what if her deal is voted down by MPs? She will have nowhere to go. It will be the end game. She refuses to contemplate it: 'I am focusing on making sure I persuade people this is a good deal.' 
Admirers will praise her resolve: cynics will say she is in denial. But in a message aimed at her Tory assassins she says replacing her as prime minister would not lead to a better Brexit offer. 
'People say 'if you could only just do something slightly different, have a Norway model or a Canada model, this backstop issue would go away.' 
She turns up the volume: 'IT. WOULD. NOT. THAT ISSUE IS STILL GOING TO BE THERE.'
Whatever your view of her as a prime minister, there can surely be no doubting her fortitude on a human level. She makes light of the regular injections of insulin she requires ever since she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
She jokes that during last week's five-hour Cabinet Brexit summit 'I was the only one who didn't take a break! You get used to managing it. It becomes part of your way of life. I inject when I eat,' she said matter-of-factly.
As for the idea that she is about to suffer the same fate as Lady Thatcher, who wept as she was driven out of Downing St, it simply isn't on her mind.
'I don't go 'Oh gosh, it must have been like this x years ago'. I wake up each morning and say 'What have I got to do today to get where we need to be?'.
'Being prime minister is about fighting the good fight for the country,' she insists with that air of defiance and resolution. And that is what I am determined to do.'
 How beans on toast, a glass of Welsh whisky and Philip's rock-like support helped Theresa May survive a week of treachery... but the PM has STILL had to do the washing as she vows to keep 'fighting the good fight' on Brexit
Sitting in her Downing Street study yesterday morning, Theresa May hardly had the manner or appearance of someone on the verge of being ejected from No 10.
Perhaps the Prime Minister was taking inspiration from the portrait of an impassive Winston Churchill glowering down on us, for her demeanour was one of determination and resolve.
In her elegant tweed jacket and white top with a discreet string of pearls, Mrs May was a picture of calm under the circumstances – although the pointed steel toecaps of her flat shoes may have reflected what she really thought of her political enemies.
Mrs May's exclusive interview with the Mail behind the heavy blue doors of her Downing Street redoubt took place at the height of this week's political turmoil.
Just 48 hours earlier, Jacob Rees-Mogg had launched a campaign to depose her over her proposed Brexit deal; seven ministers and senior Tories had resigned; and she was struggling to find someone ready to accept the Cabinet's poison chalice, the job of Brexit Secretary.
When you are in the bunker with heavy shelling all around, any hint that another major casualty has been avoided is cause for fresh hope.
Which is why embattled Mrs May and her No 10 team were so thrilled by the news just before our meeting that Michael Gove was not going to resign from the Cabinet despite rejecting her plea to replace Dominic Raab as Brexit Secretary.
In normal circumstances, a Cabinet minister who publicly spurned a prime minister in their hour of need would be sacked. These are not normal times.
Mrs May has been hit by so many resignations she is in danger of running out of Conservatives willing or able to fill the gaps round her Cabinet table.
But while her boasts that she and her Government are 'strong and stable' are long gone, she has an air of steely composure as she talks candidly about her marriage, her faith, how she copes with Tory plotters ... and why Boris Johnson – and anyone else who might replace her as prime minister – would be deluding themselves if they think they can wring any more concessions from Brussels than she has.
'It's been a pretty heavy couple of days,' she says with understatement and her familiar awkward smile. 'When I went up to the flat late on Wednesday, around 11pm, the first thing Philip did was to pour me a whisky, Penderyn Welsh whisky – though I do drink Scotch as well!,' she adds diplomatically.
She needed a large one, surely? 'I couldn't possibly comment!' she jokes.
Her husband's whisky serves more than one purpose. Asked if she has lost sleep, she laughs: 'It depends how strong the whisky is, or how much Philip has poured for me!' The next morning, before she had even walked downstairs from the Downing Street flat to her study, she could have done with another glass of Penderyn because she was told that Mr Raab's resignation had been confirmed.
'I wasn't leaden footed, but sad,' she says with a sigh. 'When you are PM you wake up each morning and never quite know how the day is going to pan out.'
She discovered this afresh when, within hours, Mr Rees-Mogg called on her to resign.
For many it would have been a body blow, but not for this prime minister. That evening, she was back on duty chatting to Prince Charles at his 70th birthday party at Clarence House.
Only after returning to the No 10 flat was she finally able to discuss her woes with her husband.
Philip May, a banker, was so irked by the wall-to-wall reporting of his wife's imminent political demise, he has taken to switching off all TV news bulletins at work. 
When she returned from Clarence House, he was waiting in their Downing St kitchen with more modest fare than the champagne and fine canapes at the royal birthday party.
'We went up to the flat for a quick bite – Philip cooked beans on toast – I think I opened the tin! He made the toast – and did the washing up! Then it was downstairs for a quick meeting and home (their property in Sonning, Berkshire) by 9.30pm so I could get the washing on and leave it to dry overnight.'
As ever, the middle-class vicar's daughter was putting day-to-day practicality first.
She skipped her usual Friday morning gym session to be back at Downing St for our interview but says she could not survive the pressure cooker of politics without Philip. 
'I always say he is my rock. It's hugely important to have somebody there who is supportive of you, not involved in the intricacies of politics, but there to provide human support.' 
When they met at Oxford, Philip was as politically ambitious as she was. 'He thinks what I am doing is important for the British people, though he doesn't put it like that. He says 'Keep going, this matters, keep doing the right thing'.'
Mrs May says Philip feels the pain of the vicious personal attacks on her by Tory Party critics even more than she does. 
'It's often harder for the other half because they are watching it and feel protective and think 'Why are they saying that to my wife?' He does feel some of it (the hurt) himself – he's bound to. We've been married for 38 years, that's a long time.' 
Some Whitehall veterans have compared the air of impending doom now enveloping Mrs May's No 10 to the last days of Margaret Thatcher in 1990, when, just as with Mrs May, her Tory ministers were deserting her.
Maggie's husband Denis has often been likened to Philip: discreet and monosyllabic in public; similar in appearance – tall, slim, formal; and above all loving and fiercely loyal.
When the Tory sharks circled around Lady Thatcher, it was Denis who stepped in and said it was time to go, telling her: 'You've done enough, old girl. You've done your share. For God's sake, don't go on any longer.' Has Philip reached that point? 'No, he supports what I'm doing.'
He must feel like punching her Tory assailants on the nose?
'You'll have to ask him – he's as protective as any other half.'
Mrs May says her Christian faith has also helped. 'I am a practising member of the faith and go to church regularly. It is an important part of my life – part of who I am and how I do my job.'
She is careful not to attack Mr Johnson, Mr Rees-Mogg and others directly, perhaps because she is fearful of prodding the hornet's nest. But she leaves little doubt that she regards some hard Brexiteers as vainglorious, fanatical ideologues with no regard or knowledge of ordinary people or real life.
'Some politicians get so embroiled in the intricacies of their argument they forget it is not about this theory or that theory, or does it make me look good? It is what is best for people going about their lives day in and day out. 
They think too much about their privileged position and too little about their responsibility. The job of a prime minister is to make tough decisions which are not always black or white. I have to find a way through, what best suits everybody's needs.' Mrs May does not pretend her Brexit plan is perfect.
'It's not everybody's ideal deal. You were never going to get that.'
She is hardly extolling it to the skies – however hard she tries to get people enthused about it, there's a feeling she must know the truth: that it is the least worst option.
But she is intensely frustrated that so few have given her credit for addressing the main reason millions voted to cut ties with Brussels: controlling immigration by ending freedom of movement.
'As Home Secretary for six years I did my best to reduce immigration with one hand tied behind my back because you couldn't do anything about people coming in from the EU,' she said. 'Now we can. Freedom of movement ends.'
She trotted out her other Brexit achievements: 'no more sending vast sums to the EU; an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice; out of the Common Agricultural Policy; out of the Common Fisheries Policy; out of the customs union; out of the single market; independent trade and an independent coastal state. That is delivered in the future.'
It sounds impressive. But she is back on the defensive when challenged over claims that the EU can now veto us leaving the customs union: 'No, no, no, no. In the future we WILL leave customs union.'
But we are trapped in it?
'No, no, no, no, no.' She's very much in Maggie mode here.
Could Mrs May categorically say the EU would not have a veto?
She pauses, 'You are talking about it, you see …'
Have they or haven't they?
'No, but…'
Won't they just trap us in it?
'No. The EU does not have a veto on us leaving the customs union – we have a future relationship where we are not in it.'
It sounds categorical.
But then she adds the so-called 'backstop mechanism', involving 'UK-wide customs territory arrangements to ensure the Ireland and Northern Ireland border remains free', can only be ended by 'mutual consent – we don't have unilateral withdrawal from that.' No wonder people are confused.
She also struggles to answer Esther McVey's withering comment to her after quitting the Cabinet: 'You have gone from saying no deal is better than a bad deal to any deal is better than no deal.'
'No, I haven't gone to that position,' she says tersely.
But what if her deal is voted down by MPs? She will have nowhere to go. It will be the end game. She refuses to contemplate it: 'I am focusing on making sure I persuade people this is a good deal.' 
Admirers will praise her resolve: cynics will say she is in denial. But in a message aimed at her Tory assassins she says replacing her as prime minister would not lead to a better Brexit offer. 
'People say 'if you could only just do something slightly different, have a Norway model or a Canada model, this backstop issue would go away.' 
She turns up the volume: 'IT. WOULD. NOT. THAT ISSUE IS STILL GOING TO BE THERE.'
Whatever your view of her as a prime minister, there can surely be no doubting her fortitude on a human level. She makes light of the regular injections of insulin she requires ever since she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
She jokes that during last week's five-hour Cabinet Brexit summit 'I was the only one who didn't take a break! You get used to managing it. It becomes part of your way of life. I inject when I eat,' she said matter-of-factly.
As for the idea that she is about to suffer the same fate as Lady Thatcher, who wept as she was driven out of Downing St, it simply isn't on her mind.
'I don't go 'Oh gosh, it must have been like this x years ago'. I wake up each morning and say 'What have I got to do today to get where we need to be?'.
'Being prime minister is about fighting the good fight for the country,' she insists with that air of defiance and resolution. And that is what I am determined to do.'
Theresa May last night hailed her Brexit deal as being in the 'national interest' after convincing her Cabinet to back it - but only after a stormy five-hour meeting in which minister after minister had spoken against the plans, sparking fears of an imminent coup against her leadership from furious Brexiteers.
Mrs May finally won the day after declaring it was 'this or Jeremy Corbyn', but the fallout from the discussions left at least one minister - Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey - on 'resignation watch'.
In all at least 10 mutinous ministers spoke out against Mrs May's draft deal with Brussels during the meeting that stretched into yesterday evening.
Ms McVey called for a formal ministerial vote during the tempestuous debate before Mrs May rebuffed her. Others who declared themselves against the plans included International Trade Minister Liam Fox, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Home Secretary Sajid Javid. 
After the Cabinet battle, which went on three hours longer than scheduled, the premier took to the steps of Downing Street admitting that the debate had been 'long and impassioned' and there were 'difficult days ahead'.
'The collective decision of Cabinet was that the government should agree the draft Withdrawal Agreement and the outline political declaration,' Mrs May said. 'I firmly believe with my head and heart that this decisive choice is in the best interests of the entire UK.' 
Mrs May's reference to a 'collective' decision rather than a unanimous one immediately raised eyebrows. Around 10 ministers - nearly a third of the total - are understood to have spoken out against parts of the package, amid reports that a no confidence vote against the PM could be triggered as early as today. 
Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who was thought to be among those closest to quitting, demanded assurances from the premier on key points. Defence Secretary Gavin Willliamson also expressed reservations about elements of the deal, as did Sajid Javid, Liam Fox, Jeremy Hunt and Andrea Leadsom.
But one Cabinet source told MailOnline that Ms McVey was an 'outlier' in the strength of her opposition, and appeared 'emotional'. 
There are also rumours swirling about Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab's intentions after he endorsed the plans with a 'heavy heart'. 
Scottish Secretary David Mundell had emerged as a potential risk after he signed a letter warning against giving away fishing rights as part of the agreement, but tonight confirmed that he was staying in the tent.
However, the apparent victory for the PM could be only temporary respite, as she faces an even bigger task to get the measures through Parliament amid a massive mutiny from Tory backbenchers and the DUP, and Labour opposition.
There are growing signs that Mrs May could face an imminent no confidence vote. The Eurosceptic ERG group - which claims to have up to 80 Tory MP members - has shifted its position after previously holding off sending letters to the 1922 committee chairman Graham Brady.
An ex-minister told MailOnline: 'I think a few people are holding off, will read the deal, square off their associations this weekend, then put in a letter.' 
Meanwhile, DUP leader Arlene Foster has turned up the heat by warning Mrs May there will be 'consequences' if she pushes her plan through.  
Mrs May delivered an impassioned defence of the package at PMQs earlier, insisting it was a 'significant' step forward in taking the UK out of the EU. 
But she was warned she is making a 'shambolic mess' of the talks by Jeremy Corbyn - and her own MPs said she was 'not delivering the Brexit people voted for'. 
The trouble was brewing as Boris Johnson vented fury over a leaked note claiming the deal means the UK will have to 'swallow' EU rules for good.
The former foreign secretary urged ministers to 'live up to their responsibilities' by blocking the agreement from going forward.  
Theresa May has struck a Brexit deal with Brussels - but now has to sell it to her Cabinet and then Parliament. 
Here is how events could develop now a draft agreement has been reached.  
Emergency EU Summit, Brussels, late November
What will happen? If the divorce package is agreed by the cabinet, it will need to be signed off by EU leaders.
EU council president Donald Tusk will convene a summit where formal approval will be given by EU leaders. This is expected sometime between November 22 and 25.
Will the whole deal be agreed? The Brexit deal is due to come in two parts - a formal divorce treaty and a political declaration on what the final trade deal might look like.
The second part may not be finished until a regular EU summit due on December 13-14.
Assuming the negotiations have reached an agreement and Mrs May travels to Brussels with her Cabinet's support, this stage should be a formality.
What if there is no agreement? If EU leaders do not sign off on the deal at this stage, no deal becomes highly likely - there is just no time left to negotiate a wholly new deal. 
The so-called 'meaningful vote' in the UK Parliament, December 2019
What will happen: A debate, probably over more than one day, will be held in the House of Commons on terms of the deal.
It will end with a vote on whether or not MPs accept the deal. More than one vote might happen if MPs are allowed to table amendments.
The vote is only happening after MPs forced the Government to accept a 'meaningful vote' in Parliament on the terms of the deal.
What happens if May wins? If the meaningful vote is passed, there will be a series of further votes as the withdrawal treaty is written into British law.
It will be a huge political victory for the Prime Minister and probably secure her version of Brexit.
How can she win? The Prime Minister needs a majority of the House of Commons - excluding the Speakers, Sinn Fein and Tellers this means 318 votes.
She can rely on around 150 members of the Government and maybe another 80 Tory MPs - getting her to about 230 votes - leaving her almost 90 votes short.
Mrs May is likely to get the backing of some Labour MPs - but probably no more than 45 at the most.
This mean she can only win the vote if she can squeeze the Brexiteer rebels down from up to 80 votes and get the 10 DUP MPs in line. 
Depending on the number of Labour rebels, she could have to win the support of 50 hardcore Tory Brexiteer MPs to get her   
What happens if she loses? This is possibly the most dangerous stage of all. 
The Prime Minister will have to stake her political credibility on winning a vote and losing it would be politically devastating. 
Brexiteers do not want to sign off the divorce bill without a satisfactory trade deal and Remainers are reluctant to vote for a blind Brexit.
She could go back to Brussels to ask for new concessions before a second vote but many think she would have to resign quickly. 
Ratification in the EU, February 2019 
What will happen? After the meaningful vote in the UK, the EU will have to ratify the agreement.
The European Parliament must also vote in favour of the deal. It has a representative in the talks, Guy Verhofstadt, who has repeatedly warned the deal must serve the EU's interests.
Will it be agreed? In practice, once the leaders of the 27 member states have agreed a deal, ratification on the EU side should be assured.
If the deal has passed the Commons and she is still in office, this should not be dangerous for the Prime Minister. 
Exit day, March 29, 2019 
At 11pm on March 29, 2019, Britain will cease to be a member of the European Union, two years after triggering Article 50 and almost three years after the referendum. 
Exit happens at 11pm because it must happen on EU time.
If the transition deal is in place, little will change immediately - people will travel in the same way as today and goods will cross the border normally. 
But Britain's MEPs will no longer sit in the European Parliament and British ministers will no longer take part in EU meetings.
Negotiations will continue to turn the political agreement on the future partnership into legal text that will eventually become a second treaty. Both sides will build new customs and immigration controls in line with what this says.
Transition ends, December 2020
The UK's position will undergo a more dramatic change at the end of December 2020, when the 'standstill' transition is due to finish.
If the negotiations on a future trade deal are complete, that could come into force.
But if they are still not complete the Irish border 'backstop' plan could be triggered.
Under current thinking, that means the UK staying in the EU customs union and more regulatory checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.
Eurosceptics fear this arrangement will prevent the country striking trade deals elsewhere, and could effectively last for ever, as Brussels will have no incentive to negotiate a replacement deal. 
Mrs May spent much of the morning engaged in frantic efforts to win over wavering ministers to the blueprint ahead of the Cabinet meeting.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar has revealed that if she is successful an EU summit to sign off the pact will be summoned on November 25.
But Mrs May suffered a major blow when it emerged Michel Barnier's deputy, Sabine Weyand, boasted about the divorce package in a briefing for Brussels officials.
She apparently claimed the UK will have to 'align their rules but the EU will retain all the controls', bragging that Britain is effectively accepting staying in the customs union for good, and will have to 'swallow' demands over fishing waters.
The extraordinary comments will reaffirm the fears of Brexiteers - and could tip ministers over the edge. 
In a stunningly vicious backlash, Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP have warned Mrs May that her 'days are numbered' if she sticks to the plan. 
Mr Johnson jibed today that the mooted package rules out a looser Canada-style relationship with the EU.
'This means super-Canada impossible. Cabinet must live up to its responsibilities & stop this deal,' he tweeted.  
Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey is also considered at high risk of quitting, but the intention of others is unclear. Cabinet sources told MailOnline that things were still 'up in the air'.
Doubts about Mr Mundell were raised when he join 12 other Scottish Tory MPs - in signing a joint letter warning the PM they could not support a deal which failed to restore 'complete control and full sovereignty' over the UK's fishing waters.
Mr Mundell is among the few MPs to have viewed the draft agreement.
In the letter, the MPs warn: 'We could not support an agreement with the EU that would prevent the UK from independently negotiating access and quota shares... We also cannot stay in the Common Fisheries Policy after December 2020.'
Mrs May might be able to survive one or two departures, but fears are running high that the whole process could spectacularly collapse. 
Speaking at PMQs, Mrs May said her package 'brings us significantly closer to delivering on what the British people voted for in the referendum'.
'We will take back control of our laws, borders and our money. We will leave the Commons Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy while protecting jobs, security and the integrity of our United Kingdom,' she said.
'I will come back to the House to update it on the outcome.'
But Tory Brexiteer Peter Bone confronted the premier with his concerns, saying: 'If media reports about the EU agreement are in any way accurate, you are not delivering on the Brexit people voted for and today you will lose the support of many Conservative MPs and millions of voters around the country.'
Mrs May insisted she was delivering on the referendum – pointing to curbs on free movement - and added: 'This is a deal that delivers on that vote but in doing so protect jobs, protects the integrity of the United Kingdom and protects the security of people in this country.'
She acknowledged concerns about the fallback position of the UK being closely tied to the EU's customs union becoming a permanent situation but insisted that if the arrangement was needed it would be temporary. 
'I am aware of the concerns that there are, that we don't want to be in a position where the European Union would find it comfortable to keep the UK in the backstop permanently,' she told MPs. 'That's why any backstop has to be temporary.' 
Jeremy Corbyn attacked Mrs May's draft deal, describing it as a 'failure in its own terms'. 
The Labour leader said: 'After two years of bungled negotiations, from what we know of the Government's deal it's a failure in its own terms.' 
But Mrs May shot back by accusing Labour of seeking to 'frustrate' Brexit. 
'Time and time again he has stood up in this House and complained and said that the Government isn't making progress, that the Government isn't anywhere close to a deal,' she said.
'Now when we're making progress and close to a deal he's complaining about that.
At an emergency Cabinet meeting expected to run for a marathon three hours this afternoon, the PM will warn ministers it is now 'make or break' for avoiding a chaotic exit. 
Downing Street claims it has headed off plans that could have led to Northern Ireland being 'annexed' by the EU after Brexit and insists it has laid the groundwork for a 'good deal'.
But according to a note leaked to The Times, Ms Weyand told European ambassadors on Friday that the UK was getting the worst of the deal. 
 'We should be in the best negotiation position for the future relationship. This requires the customs union as the basis of the future relationship,' she said.
'They must align their rules but the EU will retain all the controls. They apply the same rules. 
'UK wants a lot more from future relationship, so EU retains its leverage.' 
She added that Britain 'would have to swallow a link between access to products and fisheries in future agreements'. 
Other notes of the remarks were apparently less inflammatory - claiming she had in fact suggested the 'backstop' was the 'starting point' for future trade talks.
Mrs May is yet to publish her 400-500 page draft EU withdrawal agreement, but it is understood to include:
DUP leader Arlene Foster - whose 10 MPs are propping Mrs May up in power - has flown to London for crisis talks and to read the Withdrawal Agreement in full.
Speaking to journalists in Parliament's Central Lobby, she warned her party would not 'be led by anyone' and would decide how it votes after seeing the deal.
She said: 'The Prime Minister has been very clear about our position. Just to be clear we wrote to her on November 1.
'If she decides to go against that – to go against herself because on many occasions she has stood up and said she will not break up the United Kingdom… if she decides to go against all of that there will be consequences.'
Theresa May's task of getting her Brexit deal past the House of Commons is looking near-impossible as opposition mounts.
The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs will happen on December 11 and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - as well as being the key to Mrs May' fate as PM.
But despite opinion polls suggesting the public might be coming round to her deal, there is little sign of a shift among politicians.
Remainers have been stepping up calls for a second referendum in the wake of Sam Gyimah's resignation as universities minister over the weekend - while Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have accused Mrs May of betrayal.   
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part.
The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, over 100 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No.
This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185.
This is how the House of Commons might break down:
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The Government (plus various hangers-on)
Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides.
There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'.
How many of them are there? 178.
What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss.
Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote
Who are they: The most hard line of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker.
How many of them are there: 26
What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Other Brexiteers in the ERG
Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson.
Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her.
How many of them are there? Around 50.
What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal.
This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic.
The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Remain including the People's Vote supporters
Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee.
How many of them are there: Maybe around 10.
What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no.
A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister.
Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists
Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy.
There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else.
How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal.
What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it.
It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work.
Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
The DUP
Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government.
They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union.
How many of them are there? 10.
What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea.
Labour Loyalists
Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders.
How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do.
What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum.
Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process.
The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal.
Labour Rebels
Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point.
How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal.
What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
Other Opposition parties
Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents.
How many of them are there? About 60 MPs.
How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. 
Ominously, she stressed that the party's confidence and supply deal was with the Tories rather than Mrs May personally.   
DUP chief whip Jeffrey Donaldson upped the pressure earlier by making clear it was currently determined to reject the proposals.
Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg joined forces with the DUP to launch an ambush on Theresa May's Brexit deal within minutes of it emerging last night.
Tory rebels dramatically marched to Parliament's Central Lobby - flanked by the bloc of DUP MPs who are supposed to be propping up Mrs May in No 10 - to hold court with journalists.
In a furious briefing before a deal was even confirmed by Downing Street, they derided it as 'totally unacceptable' because it would leave the UK a 'vassal state' under the yolk of EU control. 
Mr Johnson and Mr Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Brexiteer European Research Group, renewed their attack on the plans today demanding the Cabinet throw out the plan. 
Last night's ambush began within minutes of details being leaked to the Irish broadcaster RTE at around 4pm. 
Just 90 minutes later the rebel MPs were speaking live to broadcasters just feet from the Commons chamber having arrived from Iain Duncan Smith's office. 
The condemnation of the plans had started before Downing Street had even confirmed it had a deal and Mrs May would meet Cabinet ministers one-on-one before a crucial meeting later today. 
He told BBC Radio 4's Today the Unionist party 'don't fear a general election', when asked whether it would risk Jeremy Corbyn, a long-term supporter of a united Ireland. 
He said: 'It's not about who is prime minister, it's not about who governs the country, it's about the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK, that is fundamental for us. 
'And it is not just us, the DUP does not stand alone on this, we have many friends within the Conservative Party and indeed in some other parties, who believe this deal has the potential to lead to the break-up of the UK. 
'That is not something we can support.' 
If the PM manages to squeeze her plan past Cabinet she will argue it represents the only chance of a deal, or risk crashing out of the EU on March 29 next year.
Mrs May appears to have convinced Brussels to drop its demand that Northern Ireland should remain in the customs union during the transition period that ends on December 31 2020.
But in return she may have agreed to a 'level playing field' measures tying Britain to more EU rules in that period. 
Iain Duncan Smith warned last night that the Prime Minister's 'days were numbered' if she tried to keep the UK tied to Brussels.
Mrs May's ability to get a deal through Parliament was put in doubt when Eurosceptic MPs were joined at an impromptu Westminster briefing by senior figures in the Democratic Unionist Party.
They voiced fury at reports that the proposed agreement could drive a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.  
Intriguingly, Mr Duncan Smith was also seen entering the famous building - although it is thought he was in to talk about a government climbdown over delays to curbs on 'crack cocaine' gambling machines. 
As she left home today, Mrs Leadsom told journalists: 'I've had a good conversation with the PM and I'm looking at the details of the deal today and I'm extremely optimistic that we'll have a good deal, but I'm looking at the details today.'
Moderate Tories accused leading Brexiteers of 'throwing their toys out of the pram' before they have even seen the details of the proposed withdrawal agreement.
And today former foreign secretary Lord Hague cautioned MPs that voting down Mrs May's deal might mean 'Brexit never happens'. 
The Cabinet has just had a long, detailed and impassioned debate on the draft withdrawal agreement and the outline political declaration on our future relationship with the European Union.
These documents were the result of thousands of hours of hard negotiation by UK officials and many many meetings which I and other ministers held with our EU counterparts.
I firmly believe that the draft withdrawal agreement was the best that could be negotiated, and it was for the Cabinet to decide whether to move on in the talks.
The choices before us were difficult, particularly in relation to the Northern Ireland backstop. But the collective decision of cabinet was that the government should agree the draft withdrawal agreement and the outline political declaration.
This is a decisive step which enables us to move on and finalise the deal in the days ahead. These decisions were not taken lightly but I believe it is a decision that is firmly in the national interest.
When you strip away the detail the choice before us is clear: this deal, which delivers on the vote of the referendum, which brings back control of our money, laws and borders, ends free movement, protects jobs, security and our Union, or leave with no deal, or no Brexit at all.
I know that there will be difficult days ahead. This is a decision that will come under intense scrutiny and that is entirely as it should be and entirely understandable.
But the choice was this deal which enables us to take back control and build a brighter future for our country, or go back to square one with more divisions, more uncertainty and a failure to deliver on the referendum.
it is my job as Prime Minister to explain the decision the government have taken, and I stand ready to do that, beginning tomorrow with a statement in parliament.
But if I may end by just saying this: I believe that what I owe to this country is to take decisions that are in the national interest and I firmly believe with my head and my heart that this is a decision which is in the best interests of our entire United Kingdom. 
'For the DUP... they advocated leaving the EU, they also have to face up to the fact that if they vote down a deal because they are not happy with the details, well, the consequences may be that Brexit never happens,' he told the BBC.
However, worryingly for Mrs May, leading Tory Remainer Dominic Grieve said he currently could not support the package.
The Brexit divorce negotiations have boiled down to the issue of the Irish border and Theresa May is claiming victory.
The line between Northern Ireland and the Republic will be the UK's only land border with the EU after we leave the bloc.  
Brussels had initially demanded that Northern Ireland stays within its jurisdiction for customs and most single market rules to avoid a hard border.
But it appears the PM has encouraged them to back down by agreeing a deal being compared to a swimming pool.
It is understood that during the transition period lasting until the end of 2020, Northern Ireland will be in the 'deep end' of the pool.
NI would have a 'special status' to be aligned to more of the EU's rules while mainland Britain will be in the 'shallow end' and have to accept fewer rules than Belfast.
Irish broadcaster RTE reported that the deal now involves one overall 'backstop' in the form of a UK-wide customs arrangement - as sought by Mrs May - but with deeper provisions for Northern Ireland on customs and regulations.
The Guardian reported that an independent arbitration committee will judge when a UK-wide customs backstop could be terminated.
There will also be a review in July 2019 six months before the end of the transition period, at which it will be determined how to proceed - a new trade deal, the backstop or an extension to the transition period.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is said to have told Cabinet that Northern Ireland will be in a 'different regulatory regime' under the customs backstop and subject to EU law and institutions, something that may 'cross a line' for the DUP. 
'I could not look my constituents in the eye and say this would be a better deal than the one we have as a member of the EU,' he said. 
Former minister Philip Lee said he wanted a second referendum. 'Where we're going to end up is not where was promised. This is political fraud, and I'm not putting my name to it,' he said.
Yesterday's breakthrough came after days of gruelling negotiations in Brussels, in which both sides made further concessions.
Downing Street was tight-lipped about the contents of the withdrawal agreement, which runs to more than 400 pages of legal text.
An accompanying document on the 'future framework' is said to be as short as five pages, and is set to be the subject of intense negotiations.
But sources said Brussels had backed down over the controversial 'backstop' plan which is designed to prevent a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland if trade talks falter.
The EU had demanded a scheme that would have kept Northern Ireland in the customs union after the rest of the UK left. Brussels has now accepted a proposal that could keep the whole UK in a temporary backstop until trade terms are finalised.
A Government source said: 'The idea of a Northern Ireland-only customs backstop has been dropped. There is no backstop to the backstop.' 
Last week, seven Cabinet ministers, including Mr Raab warned Mrs May that the UK must have a 'unilateral' exit clause from the arrangement. 
Sajid Javid yesterday became the latest minister to warn the deal would not get through Parliament without this.
But the proposal was rejected by Brussels and is thought to have been replaced by a complex joint mechanism, which will raise Eurosceptic fears that Britain could be 'trapped' in a customs union against its will.
Sources said the deal allows for an independent panel to decide when the UK can leave a backstop arrangement. 
It will review progress on a transition deal in July 2019 and decide if the UK is ready to switch to a free trade deal, transfer to the backstop or extend the transition period until 2021, reported the Guardian.
The EU demanded a 'level playing field' guarantee, which could see the UK made to follow Brussels rules during any backstop period.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the European Court of Justice would have a role in deciding when the backstop arrangement would end, something that would infuriate Eurosceptics.
The newspaper also said that the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, told the Cabinet the backstop arrangement would leave Northern Ireland under a 'different regulatory regime subject to EU law and institutions.' 
 Earlier this week, Miss Mordaunt suggested the Cabinet was ready to act as a check on Mrs May's Brexit compromises.
Irish news organisations claimed the agreement involved deeper customs and regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, breaching a DUP 'red line'.
A Whitehall source last night dismissed this claim as Dublin 'spin'. The source warned there was no realistic prospect of further concessions from Brussels, adding: 'It's make or break time. This is the basis for a good deal, but the negotiators are clear they have taken this as far as they can.'
The DUP said it had been kept in the dark, raising doubts about the future of the confidence and supply deal that props up Mrs May's minority government at Westminster.
Speaking on Ireland's broadcaster RTE the Democratic Unionist Party's Sammy Wilson said it was not a deal that his party could support.
'What we've heard and seen of the deal it is something which we would absolutely oppose,' Mr Wilson said.
Ireland: The Prime Minister has killed off EU demands for a Northern Ireland-only 'backstop' designed to prevent a hard border with the Republic. However, in its place is a 'temporary' plan that could see the whole UK stay in a form of customs union until a trade deal is finalised.
Regulations: The UK is set to have to follow most single market regulations during any backstop period. Theresa May has said she wants the UK to continue following a 'common rule book' for goods and farm products in the final trade deal – a move opposed by Brexiteers.
Money: The Brexit deal will confirm a £39billion 'divorce payment' to the EU and is expected to outline a mechanism for agreeing additional payments in the event of an extended transition.
Trade: The deal is expected to contain only a brief 'political declaration' on future trade arrangements. Ministers hope to beef this up before MPs are asked to vote on the deal next month.
Citizens: The deal will guarantee the existing rights of the three million EU citizens living in the UK and the one million Britons living in Europe. But the EU is still pushing for the UK's new immigration system to grant preferential treatment to EU citizens in return for a better trade deal.
'It goes against everything the Government promised it would deliver. Indeed it's a regurgitation of what the Prime Minister said last March, no British Prime Minister could ever sign up to and it would split the United Kingdom.
'It would keep the UK tied and handcuffed to the European Union with the key for those handcuffs remaining in the hands of the EU.'
He added: 'I don't think it's only us who will be opposing it.'
Members of the European Research Group urged ministers to block the deal. Chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'It is a failure of the Government's negotiating position, it is a failure to deliver on Brexit and it is potentially dividing up the United Kingdom.'
Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson said: 'For the first time in a thousand years, this place, this Parliament, will not have a say over the laws that govern this country. It is a quite incredible state of affairs.'
But moderate MPs suggested the Eurosceptic response had little to do with the details of the deal. 
Simon Hart, founder of the Brexit Delivery Group of MPs, which is backing efforts to strike a deal, said: 'This is now judgement day. Every minister and MP needs to weigh up what's on offer, compare it with alternative outcomes and make their decision and live with the consequences.
'Using this moment to play politics or grandstand will rightly be greeted with dismay by all our voters, irrespective of whether they voted to leave or remain.
'We are looking for calm assessment of the position, not the political hysteria which has been all too frequent when discussing Europe.'
Michel Barnier's team was due to update member states in Brussels on the deal this afternoon.
The meeting had originally been intended only to cover no-deal preparedness but has now had 'state of play' on the talks added to the agenda. 
One diplomat said: 'The ball is on the side of the UK and its internal processes. It's now for Theresa May's Cabinet to decide if it is satisfied.'
Further Brussels sources last night said the deal would include a review before the end of the transition to determine whether to trigger the Irish backstop. 
Both Britain and the EU had teams of negotiators hammering out the final stages of the deal working late into the night.
The two sides were led by a group of powerful individuals at the head of small armies of officials tasked with turning political deals into cold legal text.  
In the final days the teams have worked until the small hours to finalise a deal that could be put to an emergency summit later this month. Talks on Sunday night ran until 2.45am. 
The final deal is thought to be at least 500 pages long and civil servants on both sides have spent months hammering out the detailed legal language.
The treaty includes clauses on the divorce payment, rights of nationals on both sides and crucially how the Irish border will work.
The key players on each side were: 
TEAM UK
Dominic Raab 
Brexit Secretary
Drafted in to replace David Davis in July, Raab was ordered to deliver the Chequers plan as Theresa May's political representative in the talks.
A committed Brexiteer, he was part of the Vote Leave campaign and leading DEXEU was his first Cabinet job.
Unlike his predecessor, Raab was explicitly appointed to deputise for the Prime Minister in the talks rather than personally lead them - but has been the point man in Brussels.
Oliver Robbins 
Prime Minister's Europe adviser  
At around 6ft 3in, the burly civil servant certainly looks like he won't be messed with, but is best known in Whitehall for his intellect.
Only 43, the Oxford PPE graduate has already served in senior roles for David Cameron, Theresa May and Gordon Brown.
Brexiteers have repeatedly criticised him for dragging the talks toward a soft deal.  
TEAM EU 
Michel Barnier 
Chief EU Brexit negotiator
A seasoned French official was once called an 'enemy of Britain' for trying to impose controls on the City. 
Ambitious, he is distrusted in some UK quarters, but is also known as an ultra-charming negotiator.
Brexit role has made him a 'rock star' figure in Brussels.
Promised a hard-line approach throughout the talks and never deviated from the rules handed to him by EU leaders.
Sabine Weyand
Michel Barnier's deputy 
A former student at Cambridge in the 1980s and seen as one 'the best and brightest' of the Brussels technocrats. 
The German has more than 20 years' experience carving out trade deals for the Commission.
Can be brusque but is known as a problem-solver. 
Conservatives who made violent threats against Theresa May over Brexit should be identified and kicked out of the party, a leading Eurosceptic said today.
Steve Baker led condemnation of the abuse against the Prime Minister in the aftermath of last week's summit in Brussels.
Mr Baker - a ringleader of Brexiteer revolt against Mrs May's plans - said the anonymous MPs had 'thoroughly disgraced themselves' by claiming the PM would be 'knifed' and should 'bring her own noose' to a 'show trial'.
The Prime Minister defied the claims and defended her embattled Brexit plans in a major statement to the Commons.
She said a possible extension to the Brexit transition period beyond December 2020 - an idea loathed by Brexiteers - would only be done as a last resort in the national interest.
But she said if a full trade deal was close in late 2020 it would be better than making business change rules twice or falling into the Irish backstop - which Britain wants to be a UK-wide customs arrangement that could limit trade deals.
Mrs May said the divorce deal was 95 per cent finished and hailed a 'substantive' shift from the EU to ensure the so-called Irish backstop is UK-wide and not Northern Ireland only.  
Outlining the remaining issues, Mrs May said Britain needed agreement the Irish backstop would be UK wide.
She said she wanted the option to extend transition to avoid ever using the backstop if a trade deal is close in late 2020.
Mrs May said neither the backstop or extended transition period could be never ending - and vowed in all circumstances Northern Ireland's business would get guarantees on full access to the UK markets.
In her speech, Mrs May told MPs 'the shape of the deal across the vast majority of the Withdrawal Agreement is now clear.'
Mrs May said new agreements have been finalised on issues including the British base on Cyprus and with Spain on Gibraltar.
The Prime Minister warned the final stage may be the 'hardest of all' as she attempts to finalise the deal on the Irish border and the so-called backstop for how it will work in the absence of a full UK-EU trade deal.
But vowing to defend her red lines on Northern Ireland, she said: 'The commitment to avoiding a hard border is one that this House emphatically endorsed and enshrined in law in the Withdrawal Act earlier this year.
'As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.
'I do not believe that any UK Prime Minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.' 
Ahead of Mrs May's statement, Brexit Minister John Glen - hauled to the Commons to answer questions on a possible extension to transition - played down the chance of Britain having to pay extra to the EU but deferred most questions to Mrs May. 
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab insisted the Government was offering MPs a 'meaningful' vote on the terms of the deal - but said the outcome must be clear as he was accused of trying to halt amendments.  
Senior Brexiteers held 'constructive' talks with Michel Barnier in Brussels today - but denied undermining Theresa May.
Former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, together with Lord David Trimble, held talks at the EU Commission in Brussels.
They promoted the virtues of a Canada-style free trade deal for Brexit Britain, the policy of the Tory European Research Group.  
Mr Duncan Smith said: 'We are presenting some ideas which we think are constructive and we had a constructive discussion.
'Now we are going to go back and talk to the Government about it.'
Mr Barnier has held a series of meetings with UK politicians, including groups of Remain supporters and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
He insists he only negotiates with the Government and the meetings are for information on the talks only.  
The PM attempted to reassure Cabinet ministers on a conference call yesterday about proposal to extend the Brexit transition period and how a temporary customs union would work. 
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling admitted to disagreements today, but played down splits insisting 'we are not a set of clones. we don't always agree on absolutely everything'.
There was a growing backlash today at lurid claims Mrs May is in the 'killing zone' and faces being hung with her 'own noose' at a crunch meeting of Tory MPs on Wednesday night.
Writing in the Sun today before her statement to MPs later, Mrs May said:  'None of this is about me. It's all about you.
'That's why, when I'm confronted with tough choices during the Brexit negotiations, I don't think about what the implications are for me.
'Instead, I ask myself what it means for you, for your family and for the whole of the United Kingdom.' 
Admitting the negotiations can seem 'never ending', Mrs May said: 'The Brexit talks are not about me or my personal fortunes.
'They're about the national interest and that means making the right choices, not the easy ones.' 
Mrs May moved to calm another Cabinet revolt last night amid alarm at concessions made during last week's summit in Brussels.
Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey was 'devastated' by Mrs May saying the Brexit transition could be extended beyond December 31, 2020, the Telegraph revealed today.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid demanded reassurance there would be a time limit on any 'backstop' for the Irish border in fear any temporary customs union would be allowed to drag on indefinitely.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox was also among those demanding reassurance.  
Britain has proposed leaving the entire UK inside customs union rules in the absence of a backstop to meet EU demands the Irish border stays open after Brexit. Brussels had suggested this only apply to Northern Ireland but this would threaten the Union. 
The backstop is only supposed to apply between the end of the transition and the start of a trade deal. Extending transition is intended to make it less likely it will ever be used. 
The Telegraph said Mr Javid specifically demanded to know whether Mrs May 'explicitly threatened the EU with no deal'. 
Mrs May will tell MPs later: 'The shape of the deal across the vast majority of the Withdrawal Agreement is now clear.
'The commitment to avoiding a hard border is one that this House emphatically endorsed and enshrined in law in the Withdrawal Act earlier this year.
'As I set out last week, the original backstop proposal from the EU was one we could not accept, as it would mean creating a customs border down the Irish Sea and breaking up the integrity of the UK.
'I do not believe that any UK Prime Minister could ever accept this. And I certainly will not.'
She will also say that the Government has agreed 'underlying memoranda' after discussions with Spain to resolve the issue of Gibraltar after Brexit, 'heralding a new era in our relations'.  
What is the Brexit transition period?
The EU and UK agreed in March that there would be a 21-month transition after Brexit day on March 29, 2019. It is due to expire on December 31, 2020.
In the period Britain will still obey all EU rules without having any say in setting them, pay membership fees, and have the same trade terms.
The current plan has not yet been voted on in Parliament.
How long could it be extended?
There is a new proposal to extend transition for another few months, possibly to the end of 2021.
Why is there talk of extending it?
March's agreement also included a commitment to create a 'backstop' on the Irish border - a back up plan to ensure the border stays open in the absence of a long term trade deal.
There is a deep dispute over how this should work so the new suggestion is a longer transition could allow a full trade deal to be completed in time for the backstop never to be used.
The theory is this takes pressure off the exact form of the backstop, making it easier to agree and solving the last issue in the divorce deal.
Does anyone support extending it?
The EU says it is willing to adopt a longer transition if Britain asks for it.
Theresa May says Britain is not asking for a longer transition - but might accept a mechanism for extending the current transition.
Tory Brexiteers hate the idea, fearing it will just be extended again and again and leave Britain facing billions in extra charges.
Government sources tried to calm the row today by insisting an extension would only be acceptable if the EU accepted the UK's version of the backstop.
Would it solve the Irish problem?
Nobody knows. Both sides are still far apart on how the backstop will work and there is doubt a full trade deal can be finished even by the end of 2021.
What happens if transition is extended?
Britain would continue to follow all EU rules without having a say on how new ones are made - meaning continued free movement, European Court judgements and bills to Brussels.
Trade across the Channel would also continue under today's rules.
David Davis has delivered a stark warning to Remoaner MPs against exploiting the Supreme Court ruling to 'thwart' our departure from the EU.
The Brexit Secretary issued the tough message as he defiantly vowed to push ahead with the timetable for leaving the bloc despite the government being dealt an humiliating legal blow.
The top judges ruled by a margin of 8-3 that Theresa May cannot use executive powers to begin the formal process of cutting ties with Brussels.
Minutes after the painful defeat for the government, a triumphant Gina Miller - the businesswoman who spearheaded the challenge - stood on the steps of the court to declare that she had scored a victory for 'parliamentary sovereignty'.
But former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said the intervention of the court raised 'constitutional' issues - although the judges made clear they were not taking a view on Brexit.
Ministers will take some comfort from the fact that three of the judges sided with them, and the court flatly dismissed demands from Nicola Sturgeon for the Scottish government to get a veto over the deal.
In a statement to the Commons later, Mr Davis said he would bring forward a short Bill on the coming days, designed to provide minimal opportunities for pro-EU MPs and peers to table amendments. He said Britain was 'past the point of no return' on Brexit.

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Mr Davis said: 'The purpose of this Bill is simply to give the Government the power to invoke Article 50 and begin the process of leaving the European Union.
'That's what the British people voted for and it's what they would expect.
'Parliament will rightly scrutinise and debate this legislation.
'But I trust no-one will seek to make it a vehicle for attempts to thwart the will of the people or frustrate or delay the process of exiting the European Union.'
He added: 'There can be no turning back.
'The point of no return was passed on June 23 last year.'
The warning was echoed in the Upper House by Brexit minister Lord Bridges, who pointed out that the chamber was 'unelected' and needed to 'tread with considerable care'.
Labour's former Cabinet minister Lord Blunkett also appealed for peers to stay out of the row, saying the situation was 'extremely delicate' and it was 'unthinkable' to block the triggering of Article 50. 
However, Remain supporting MPs have already indicated they will fight a rearguard action against the government plans.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is demanding a 'meaningful' vote on the final deal that would in effect mean MPs could tear up whatever Mrs May negotiates and order her to start again.
The SNP has also threatened to table 50 amendments in an effort to bog the Bill down. 
Delivering the ruling today, senior judge Lord Neuberger said: 'Today, by a majority of 8-3, the Supreme Court rules that the Government cannot trigger Article 50 without an Act of Parliament.'  

He said when the UK withdraws from the EU treaties 'a source of UK law will be cut off'.
'Further, certain rights enjoyed by UK citizens will be changed,' he added.
'Therefore, the Government cannot trigger Article 50 without Parliament authorising that course.' 
Attorney General Jeremy Wright thanked the Supreme Court for its work.
Speaking outside court, the Government's top lawyer said: 'Of course the Government is disappointed.
'The Government will comply with the law and will do all that is necessary to implement it.'
Ahead of a statement to MPs by Brexit Secretary David Davis later, a No10 spokeswoman said: 'The British people voted to leave the EU, and the Government will deliver on their verdict – triggering Article 50, as planned, by the end of March. Today's ruling does nothing to change that. 







'It's important to remember that Parliament backed the referendum by a margin of six to one and has already indicated its support for getting on with the process of exit to the timetable we have set out.
'We respect the Supreme Court's decision, and will set out our next steps to Parliament shortly.' 
The Supreme Court judgement rapped David Cameron for producing unclear legislation on the effect of the EU referendum. 
The judges said the Government would not have faced legal challenges had the legislation made clear 'what should happen in response to the referendum result'. 
It said previous referendums - such as the 2011 vote on changing the electoral system and the 1998 devolution votes - had stipulated that an Act of Parliament would be passed if they were approved. 
But the failure of the European Union Referendum Act only made provision that the referendum should be held. 
The judgement suggested this was because ministers did not predict Leave would win the referendum.
The lack of clarity led to ministers confusing the public during the referendum campaign as some described the outcome of the referendum as advisory while  others said it was decisive, today's ruling said.

Speaking outside the court, a jubilant Mrs Miller said: 'Today eight of the 11 Supreme judges upheld the judgement handed down by the High Court in November in a case that went to the very heart of our constitution and how we are governed. 
'Only parliament can grant rights to the British people and only Parliament can take them away.
'No Prime Minister, no government can expect to be unanswerable or unchallenged. Parliament alone is sovereign.
'This ruling today means that MPs we have elected will rightfully have the opportunity to bring their invaluable experience and expertise to bear in helping the Government select the best course in the forthcoming Brexit negotiations – negotiations that will frame our place in the world and all our destinies to come.' 
But leading Brexiteer Mr Duncan Smith said the ruling underlined the problem of judges intruding on the role of parliament.
He told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire show: 'You've got to understand that, of course, there's the European issue but there's also the issue about who is Supreme – Parliament or a self-appointed court. 
'This is the issue here right now, so I was intrigued that it was a split judgment. 
'I'm disappointed they've tried to tell Parliament how to run its business... 
'They've stepped into new territory where they've actually told Parliament not just that they should do something but actually what they should do and I think that leads further down the road to real constitutional issues about who is supreme in this role.'
In his ruling, one of the three judges who backed the government, Lord Reed, voiced similar concerns about intruding on the political sphere.
'Courts should not overlook the constitutional importance of ministerial accountability to Parliament,' Lord Reed wrote.
'Ministerial decisions in the exercise of prerogative powers, of greater importance than leaving the EU, have been taken without any possibility of judicial control: examples include the declarations of war in 1914 and 1939.
'It is important for courts to understand that the legalisation of political issues is not always constitutionally appropriate, and may be fraught with risk, not least for the judiciary.'
Ex-Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the 'establishment' was trying to 'frustrate' the Brexit process.
He warned that people are 'getting angry about it'.

The scope of the PM's powers under the royal prerogative were called into question by Mrs Miller's challenge - which caused explosive political rows about the role of judges intervening on the will of the people.
The executive powers are also deployed for things like taking the country to war. 

The Government appealed and a landmark four day case was heard by all 11 of Britain's most senior judges for four days in December.



The overwhelming majority of MPs have indicated they will not try to block the Article 50 legislation outright - after the Commons passed a symbolic vote for Brexit by a landslide last month.
But up to 80 Labour MPs could join the Lib Dems in rebelling against Article 50.
The Supreme Court has ruled against the Government and ordered the Prime Minister to consult MPs before she can start the process of leaving the EU. 
Judges agreed with the High Court decision that because invoking Article 50 was irreversible it meant citizens would lose rights currently provided by virtue of EU membership - even if the Government promised to match them.
This meant ministers need to pass a law in Parliament to carry it out.
The law is expected to very short and very simple - as little as one clause that is just three or four lines long.
The Government could introduce a Bill as soon as tomorrow and push it through the Commons and Lords as quickly as possible.
This is likely to take a couple of days but could be done over a couple of weeks. 
But attempts by opponents to amend the bill risks delaying the bill and if successful, could attach conditions that tie Theresa May's hands during negotiations. 

There will also be attempts to water down Mrs May's negotiating position. 
Labour sources have said they will try to amend legislation in four areas - but said even if they were defeated the party would not try to block an Article 50 bill.
The amendments will demand the Government produce a full plan for Brexit - going beyond Mrs May's speech last week.
The party also wants priorities - including single market access - spelt out in the legislation, as well as regular, binding, checks on progress by MPs through the two-year negotiation.
The final deal should also be presented to MPs in time for it to be rejected and sent back to the European Council for improvement before the expiry of the two years given by Article 50.  

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party will not seek to block Article 50 - which he said meant he would ask MPs to support it.
'Labour respects the result of the referendum and the will of the British people and will not frustrate the process for invoking Article 50,' he said.
'However, Labour will seek to amend the Article 50 Bill to prevent the Conservatives using Brexit to turn Britain into a bargain basement tax haven off the coast of Europe.
'Labour will seek to build in the principles of full, tariff-free access to the single market and maintenance of workers' rights and social and environmental protections.
'Labour is demanding a plan from the Government to ensure it is accountable to Parliament throughout the negotiations and a meaningful vote to ensure the final deal is given Parliamentary approval.'



The case at the Supreme Court came weeks after Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, and two other leading judges at the High Court, ruled on November 3 that Mrs May lacked power to use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50.
The subsequent Supreme Court hearing attracted media attention from around the globe. It was the most televised UK case ever. 

The pound fell after a decision by the Supreme Court on Brexit.
Judges voted eight to three that Parliament must vote on triggering Article 50.
But crucially Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish assemblies will not get to veto the process.
Sterling was trading 0.8 per cent down against the dollar at 1.24 and fell 0.46 per cent versus the euro at 1.16 euro.
David Cheetham, XT market analyst, said: 'The pound has come under some selling pressure in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, largely due to the fact that the Government doesn't have to consult the Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish assemblies before triggering Article 50.
'The appeal itself was rejected, but it still remains likely that Mrs May will meet her self-imposed deadline of beginning the formal Brexit process by the end of March.
'Sterling has been volatile over the announcement.'
Although MPs are expected to vote it through, the ruling adds a further complication to the Brexit process, adding to uncertainty.
Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would not 'frustrate the process for invoking Article 50' but will seek to amend the Government's bill. 
He said: 'When it comes to leaving the European Union, Parliament has had full capacity and multiple opportunities to restrict the executive's ordinary ability to begin the Article 50 process and it has not chosen to do so.'
Government lawyers told the court that there was no 'affront to Parliamentary sovereignty' in giving Article 50 notice.
At the heart of the legal battle were rights given to UK citizens by Parliament under the 1972 European Communities Act following the decision to join what is now the EU.
James Eadie QC, for the Government, argued that the 1972 Act was the 'conduit' which allowed executive powers to be used by successive governments to give effect to EU treaty obligations under domestic law.
But Lord Pannick, who represented Mrs Miller and won the ruling at the High Court, told the justices that her case 'is that the prerogative power to enter into and terminate treaties does not allow ministers to nullify statutory rights and duties'.
He declared: 'Parliament is sovereign. What Parliament created only Parliament can take away.'
When the case concluded Lord Neuberger announced: 'It bears repeating we are not being asked to overturn the result of the EU referendum.
'The ultimate question in this case concerns the process by which that result can lawfully be brought into effect.
'As we have heard, that question raises important constitutional issues and we will now take time to ensure the many arguments presented to us orally and in writing are given full and proper consideration.'
The Government's top law officer, Attorney General Jeremy Wright, had argued that the High Court got it 'wrong'.
He told the justices that the use of the prerogative in the circumstances would be lawful.
It was for the Government to exercise prerogative powers in the conduct of the UK's affairs on the international plane.
Supreme Court judges unanimously rejected claims that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be given a veto on Brexit. 
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon led arguments that the devolved administrations should be consulted before Theresa May triggers Article 50 - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU - which threatened to derail the PM's timetable for Brexit.
The case came alongside the main Supreme Court ruling that MPs must be consulted before the Government starts the process of leaving the EU. 
But unlike the ruling on devolved powers, it was not a unanimous decision, with three judges dissenting against the majority of eight judges who ruled that an Act of Parliament was necessary.  

Scottish nationalists said it will put forward 50 'serious and substantive' amendments to the legislation. 
Former first minister Alex Salmond, the SNP's international affairs spokesman, said: 'We welcome the Supreme Court's decision and hope that their ruling brings this Tory government back to the reality that they cannot simply bypass elected parliamentarians to fulfil their role in carrying out due and proper scrutiny of one of the biggest decisions facing the UK.
'The Prime Minister and her hard Brexit brigade must treat devolved administrations as equal partners - as indeed she promised to do.
'For over six months the concerns surrounding a hard Tory Brexit have been echoing throughout the land and yet the Prime Minister has not listened.
'If Theresa May is intent on being true to her word that Scotland and the other devolved administrations are equal partners in this process, then now is the time to show it.
'Now is the time to sit with the Joint Ministerial Committee and not just casually acknowledge, but constructively engage. Consultation must mean consultation.
'Our amendments will address the very serious concerns facing the UK and the very real issues that the UK government has, thus far, avoided.'
Explaining why they decided the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies do not have to be consulted before triggering Article 50, the Supreme Court judges said: 'The devolution Acts were passed by Parliament on the assumption that the UK would be a member of the EU, but they do not require the UK to remain a member.
'Relations with the EU and other foreign affairs matters are reserved to UK Government and parliament, not to the devolved institutions. Withdrawal from the EU will alter the competence of the devolved institutions, and remove the responsibilities to comply with EU law.
'In view of the decision of the majority of the Justices that primary legislation is required for the UK to withdraw from the EU, it is not necessary for the court to decide if the NIA imposes a discrete requirement for such legislation
'The decision to withdraw from the EU is not a function carried out by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in relation to Northern Ireland within the meaning of section 75 NIA.'
They added: 'Moreover, section 1 NIA, which gave the people of Northern Ireland the right to determine whether to remain part of the UK or to become part of a united Ireland, does not regulate any other change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. 
'As to the application of the Sewel Convention to the decision to withdraw from the EU given the effect on the devolved competences, the Convention operates as a political constraint on the activity of the UK Parliament. It therefore plays an important role in the operation of the UK constitution. 
'But the policing of its scope and operation is not within the constitutional remit of the courts. The devolved legislatures do not have a veto on the UK's decision to withdraw from the EU.'
The Supremes: The 11 Justices who ruled on Article 50 today   
Lord Neuberger - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
As president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger is the leader of the 12 judges who have the final say in Britain on how the laws set by Parliament are interpreted.
He was born in 1948 and educated at Westminster School before reading chemistry at Christ Church, Oxford.
He worked at the Rothschild family's merchant banking firm from 1970 to 1973, before he entered Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in 1974, becoming Queen's Council in 1987 and earning his first judicial appointment as a Recorder in 1990. 
Lord Neuberger became a High Court judge in 1996, a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2004 and in 2007 he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and became a life peer as Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury in the County of Dorset. 

Baroness Hale - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Baroness Hale, 71, is the most senior woman judge in the country.  
A feminist, Baroness Hale is a long-standing critic of marriage although she has been married to her second husband for nearly 25 years.
Lady Hale first came to widespread notice in the 1980s when she was appointed to the Law Commission. She drew up a law making it possible for a woman to get a court order throwing a man out of his own home if she accused him of violence.
Lady Hale was also heavily involved in the preparation of the 1989 Children Act, held by opponents to have deprived parents of much of their say over their children's lives.
She became the first woman Law Lord in 2004.
Lord Mance - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Lord Mance, 73, made headlines when he lashed out at the press while delivering his judgement upholding an injunction preventing the identification of a married star who organised a threesome with another couple.
In upholding the gagging order he also took a swipe at critics, including this website, saying: 'As to MailOnline's portrayal of the law as an ass, if that is the price of applying the law it is one which must be paid.' 

He sat as a Recorder in 1993 and between 2000 and 2011 he represented the United Kingdom on the Council of Europe's Consultative Council of European Judges.
He has also served on the House of Lords European Union Select Committee.  
 Lord Reed - VOTED WITH THE GOVERNMENT 
Lord Robert Reed, 60, is one of the two Scottish justices who sit on The Supreme Court. He attended George Watson's College in Edinburgh and later the University of Edinburgh in the School of Law, where he attained a First Class degree and won the prestigious Vans Dunlop Scholarship.
Lord Reed later went on to Balliol College at Oxford University to study for a PhD, and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1983, where he undertook a wide range of civil work.
He married wife Jane Mylne in 1988, and the couple have two daughters.
Lord Reed served as a senior judge in Scotland for 13 years, being appointed to the Outer House of the Court of Session in 1998 and promoted to the Inner House in January 2008. 
Lord Kerr - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Sir Brian Kerr, 68, was the last Law Lord appointed before the creation of the Supreme Court in October 2009. 
Educated at St Colman's College, Newry, Sir Brian read law at Queen's University, Belfast. 
He was called to the Bar in Northern Ireland in 1970, to the Bar of England and Wales in 1974 and became a QC in 1983. 
In 1993 he was appointed a Judge of the High Court and knighted. 
He became Lord Chief Justice and joined the Privy Council in 2004.
Lord Kerr succeeded Lord Carswell of Killeen as Northern Ireland's Lord of Appeal in Ordinary on 29 June 2009.
 
 Lord Wilson - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Nicholas Wilson, Lord Wilson of Culworth, studied at Bryanston School, Dorset, and later read jurisprudence at Worcester College, Oxford.
In 1967 he was called to the Bar and spent the next 26 years practising almost exclusively in the field of family law.
He became a QC in 1987 and was made a Recorder the same year. 
From 1993 until 2005 Lord Wilson, 71, was a judge of the Family Division of the High Court. From 2005 until May 2011 he was a judge of the Court of Appeal.
In May 2011 he became a Justice of The Supreme Court, gaining the courtesy style Lord Wilson of Culworth.
Lord Carnwath - VOTED WITH THE GOVERNMENT
Old Etonian Lord Carnwath, 71, studied law at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
He was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1968. He practised in parliamentary law, planning and local government, revenue law and administrative law. 
Lord Carnwath held the appointment of Junior Counsel to the Inland Revenue (Common Law) from 1980 to 1985. He took silk in 1985.
He served as Attorney General to the Prince of Wales from 1988 to 1994.
Lord Carnwath was a judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court from 1994 to 2002, when he was appointed to the Court of Appeal. 
Lord Carnwath also has a significant interest in environment law.  

 Lord Hodge - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
One of the two Scottish Justices, Lord Hodge went to school at Glenalmond College, in Perthshire. 
He studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a civil servant at the Scottish Office between 1975 and 1978. 
He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1983 and appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1996. As a QC his work has been mainly in commercial law, judicial review and property law.
Between 1997 and 2003 Lord Hodge was part-time Law Commissioner at the Scottish Law Commision. From 2000 to 2005 he was a Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey. 
Lord Hodge joined the Supreme Court in October 2013. 
 Lord Clarke - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT


Lord Clarke, 73, was the first High Court Judge to be appointed directly to the Supreme Court without having sat as a Law Lord.
He was educated at Oakham School, in Rutland, and read law at King's College, Cambridge, before being called to bar in 1965. 
Lord Clarke spent 27 years at the bar, specialising in maritime and commercial law, undertaking a wide variety of cases in these areas.
Lord Clarke conducted the Marchioness and Bowbelle Inquiry into the 1989 collision between two vessels on the Thames that resulted in the deaths of 51 people. 
On 1 October 2005 he was appointed Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice. 
Lord Sumption - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Once dubbed the 'cleverest man in Britain', Lord Sumption was one of the country's highest paid QCs and counted Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich among his clients.  

After reading history at Magdalen College, Oxford, and serving for four years as a history Fellow of the College, Lord Sumption was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1975 and took Silk in 1986.  His practice covered all aspects of Commercial, EU and Competition, Public and Constitutional Law.
He was appointed as a Deputy High Court Judge in 1992 and served as a Recorder between 1993 and 2001. He was appointed as a Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey in 1995. In January 2012 he became a Justice of The Supreme Court. 
 Lord Hughes - VOTED WITH THE GOVERNMENT
Born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in 1948, Lord Hughes was educated at the Shrewsbury School before obtaining a law degree from Durham University.
He was called to the Bar (Inner Temple in 1970) and served as a Recorder of the Crown Court from 1985 to 1997.
He became a Queen's Counsel in 1990 and was later appointed a judge of the High Court (Family Division from 1997 to 2003; and Queen's Bench Division from 2004 to 2006). 
Lord Hughes, 68, was appointed to the  Court of Appeal in 2006 and served as Vice President of its Criminal Division from 2009 until his appointment as Justice of the Supreme Court in April 2013. 
 


 
 
Britain will have to quit the EU altogether in a ‘hard Brexit’ if we want to control our borders, the president of the European Council warned last night.
Donald Tusk said there would be ‘no compromises’ to allow the UK to curb the free movement of workers, break free of the European Court or stop sending billions to Brussels.
And he claimed this left the UK with a simple choice between making a clean break from the EU, including the single market, or reversing the result of the referendum. The top Eurocrat said: ‘The only real alternative to a hard Brexit is no Brexit.’ 


His comments give the lie to claims by Remain-supporting MPs that the UK can control immigration and still remain a member of the single market. Leave MPs are likely to seize on Mr Tusk’s speech as proof that the UK is best served by quitting the Brussels club, then negotiating its own free trade deals.
It came as a wealthy businesswoman, backed by a group of London lawyers, began a legal action to try to stop the Government from triggering the legal process for leaving the EU.
Gina Miller, an investment fund manager, claimed it would be a breach of her human rights if MPs were not given a vote allowing them to potentially block the result of the June 23 referendum. 


Britain has been repeatedly warned it cannot have an 'a la carte' relationship with the EU, accepting only aspects it finds beneficial.
German chancellor Angela Merkel led the warnings, insisting that the free movement of people is one of four fundamental pillars to the single market that cannot be breached.
But Mr Tusk's comments tonight will still come as a blow.
He told the European Policy Center that once Britain's talks officially begin next year, 'there will be no EU cake on the table, only salt and vinegar'. 
Mrs May, who today is in Spain for talks with her counterpart, has said she will formally start her negotiations - triggered by invoking Article 50 in the EU treaties - no later than March 2017.
That will set in train a two year negotiating process to agree exactly how Britain leaves the EU and on what terms.
Leaked Treasury forecasts this week provoked a major row after they warned leaving without a free trade deal with the single market could cost the exchequer £66billion a year in taxes.
Mrs May told Prime Minister's Question's yesterday she wants the 'maximum possible access' to the single market but not at the cost of unlimited migration from the EU to Britain. 
During his attack on Britain and the referendum result, Mr Tusk singled out Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for harsh criticism, mocking his claim to be ‘pro having cake and pro eating it’.
He said: ‘When it comes to the essence of Brexit, it was largely defined in the UK during the referendum campaign. We all remember the promises, which cumulated in the demand to “take back control”.
‘Namely the “liberation” from European jurisdiction, a “no” to the freedom of movement or further contributions to the EU budget.
Britain is the country most worried about mass immigration, a survey of 25 major nations reveals today.
More than 42 per cent put immigration in the list of issues which most concern them, the Ipsos MORI poll found. By contrast, it did not figure in the global list of top five worries.
The findings are likely to prove helpful to Theresa May in her Brexit negotiations, emphasising the fact that one of the major reasons Britain voted Out was to regain control of our borders.
They also come at a time when big business is putting pressure on the Government not to impose new restrictions on EU immigration. Britain’s concern about immigration is higher than in Germany (41 per cent) and Sweden (33 per cent), the EU nations worst affected by the migration crisis.
Out of the 25 countries, Britain is also the most worried about the rise of extremism (28 per cent). Also in the top five concerns in the UK are healthcare (34 per cent) and poverty and social inequality (29 per cent).
The economy did not figure, despite the aftermath of ‘Project Fear’ and a series of warnings that the economy would suffer post-Brexit. Britons are positive about the direction the country is going, with 44 per cent saying they think things are heading in the right direction – the most optimistic response out of all European countries in the study.
‘This approach has definitive consequences, both for the position of the UK Government and for the whole process of negotiations.
‘Regardless of magic spells, this means a de facto will to radically loosen relations with the EU, something that goes by the name of “hard Brexit”.
‘This scenario will in the first instance be painful for Britons. In fact, the words uttered by one of the leading campaigners for Brexit and proponents of the “cake philosophy” was pure illusion: that one can have the EU cake and eat it too.
‘To all who believe in it, I propose a simple experiment. Buy a cake, eat it, and see if it is still there on the plate. The brutal truth is Brexit will be a loss for all of us. There will be no cakes on the table. For anyone. There will be only salt and vinegar.
‘If you ask me if there is any alternative to this bad scenario, I would like to tell you that yes, there is. And I think it is useless to speculate about “soft Brexit” because of all the reasons I’ve mentioned. These would be purely theoretical speculations. In my opinion, the only real alternative to a “hard Brexit” is “no Brexit”.
‘Even if today hardly anyone believes in such a possibility, we will conduct the negotiations in good faith, defend the interests of the EU 27, minimise the costs and seek the best possible deal for all.
‘But as I have said before, I am afraid that no such outcome exists that will benefit either side.’
The remarks will raise the temperature ahead of next week’s EC summit, the first since Theresa May became Prime Minister. She is expected to come under pressure to explain what she wants in her Brexit talks, ahead of formally triggering article 50 next year.
In yesterday’s court case, Mrs Miller claimed it would be unlawful to trigger Article 50 without a vote in Parliament. She is the lead claimant in a historic legal action with several other applicants opposing the use of Article 50,
Lord Pannick QC, acting for Mrs Miller and her fellow complainants, said: ‘The issue in this case is not whether this country should remain a member of the EU, or leave the EU. The question is a much narrower, but important question.
‘The question is whether the Government may take action unilaterally to notify, or whether it needs parliamentary approval to do so.’ Attorney General Jeremy Wright, acting for the Government, rejected this argument. He said: ‘The country voted to leave the EU in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament. There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum. The result should be respected and the Government intends to do just that.’ The case will continue next week.
Tory former minister Dominic Raab, a Brexit campaigner, accused Mrs Miller of ‘a pretty special kind of arrogance’ and a ‘pretty naked’ attempt to ‘steal the referendum by the back door’.
The court case follows days of bitter complaining by pro-Remain MPs, including four Tory ex-ministers. Yesterday, Boris Johnson hit out at pro-Brussels MPs and organisations over their continued doom-mongering, saying Britain had done ‘the right thing’ in voting to leave the EU. Attacking ‘Project Fear’, he said: ‘I think those who prophesied doom before the referendum have been proved wrong and I think they will continue to be proved wrong.’
But, giving evidence to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, Mr Johnson warned that negotiating Britain’s exit from Brussels could take longer than the two-year timetable specified in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. Article 50 allows talks to be extended for a year if all EU member states agree.
THE European Union was accused of ‘Sesame Street accounting’ yesterday as auditors failed to give a clean bill of health to £4.9billion of Brussels spending.
Billions poured into the bloc by countries such as Britain was squandered on ineligible projects and non-existent schemes, according to the European Court of Auditors’ annual report.
It means the Brussels accounts have not been given the all-clear for 22 years running. Among the examples blasted in the report was £14,900 given to a youth club in Azerbaijan which auditors were unable to trace, suggesting the money had disappeared altogether. 
And £137million in animal welfare payments to farmers in Romania who pledged to treat their livestock better were declared ineligible. Alarmingly, in Slovakia a company charged to the EU the cost of building materials at six times the going rate.
Ukip MEP Jonathan Arnott said: ‘These examples of waste would make you think the EU is being run by Count von Count from Sesame Street.’
Klaus-Heiner Lehne, president of the European Court of Auditors, said: ‘People cannot even begin to trust the EU institutions if they do not believe we are looking after their money properly.’
 
 
 
Nigel Farage raged at 'Theresa the Appeaser' today as MEPs gave the green light to the Brexit divorce deal.
The former Ukip leader said the EU was 'delighted' with the agreement because the PM had 'given in on virtually everything'.
He branded signing up to a £39billion divorce deal 'ludicrous' and warned that concessions over rights of EU citizens would mean 'open door immigration for years to come'.
The scathing assessment came as a close ally of Angela Merkel gloated about the exit package during a fiery debate in the European Parliament.
Manfred Weber faced shouts of 'rubbish' as he claimed that most Britons had now changed their minds about leaving the EU.
The senior MEP said the UK had been forced to bow to the will of Ireland over the border issue, saying: 'The British will lose a lot'.
The incendiary comments came as MEPs gave their approval to the divorce deal package, clearing the way for EU leaders to declare that trade talks can start at a summit on Friday.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier told the session that there was still work to be done in areas like citizens' rights but 'sufficient progress' had been made to move on to the next phase.
He said he hoped the framework he was setting would make those talks 'more serene' than the first stage.
But the debate showed little evidence that would be the case.
Mr Weber, who heads the main centre-right group in the parliament, said a poll had shown 50 per cent of Britons wanted a second referendum.
'The British people realise now that Brexit means losing many things, but not necessarily gaining anything,' he said.
Amid shouts of 'rubbish' from UK MEPs, he added: 'The British people realise that Brexit means losing many things, but not gaining anything.
'I can only mention one example which was an interesting ones the debate in the last days about the decision of the (European) commission that British cities cannot become a European capital of culture. 
'A very easy message that you can understand that the British can lose a lot.'
Mr Weber said the UK had been able to impose terms on the Irish border in years gone by, but Dublin's membership of the EU meant it was much more 'powerful'. 
Michel Barnier gave a clear sign today that the EU will try to drag out Brexit talks to up the pressure on the UK.
The EU's chief negotiator told the European Parliament there were 'very many more steps' that need to be taken before a final Brexit deal is thrashed out.
He said the EU's next priority is to consider a possible transition period, before turning to trade later.
Brussels insists that trade negotiations will not begin until March 2018 at the earliest, with work in the first three months of the year focusing on an 'implementation period' of around two years following the official Brexit date of March 2019.
The timetable appears designed to exert maximum pressure on Britain to make concessions. It will again raise fears that Mrs May will be unable to stick to her mantra of 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'.
Mr Barnier told MEPs in Strasbourg that if EU27 leaders agree on Friday to move Brexit negotiations on to their second phase, he will begin by hammering out the final wording of a Withdrawal Agreement.
He said this could be done 'fairly swiftly' on the basis of the joint report agreed by the Prime Minister and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last week.
Meanwhile, the European Council 'will also be looking at the definition of the transition period', including the question of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, he said. 
The parliament's Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt and the leader of the socialist group Gianni Pittella attacked David Davis for suggesting that the deal on the Irish border was merely a 'statement of intent' and not legally enforceable.
Mr Verhofstadt insisted: 'Ireland cannot become the collateral damage of Brexit. We will not let it happen.'
He demanded that the joint report be turned into a binding agreement 'within weeks'.
'I think the best way to secure this is that, in the coming weeks, we transpose all these commitments into the legal text of a Withdrawal Agreement. That is the best way to do it, and to do it not in the coming months but the coming weeks,' he said,
But Mr Weber was taken to task by Tory politician Syed Kamall over his jibe that the EU represented the modern world.
Mr Kamall said he is Muslim and saw the EU institutions as still having a 'lot of work to do' on diversity.
German MEP Hans-Olaf Henkel criticised the level of 'Schadenfreude' on the chamber and said the EU would not be 'competitive without Great Britain'.
And Mr Farage stormed that Mrs May was 'dancing to the tune' of the EU, suggesting Brexit might have to be 'refought'.
'It is as if, even though we are leaving, effectively the British Government wants to keep us in some form of single market relationship,' said Mr Farage. 
'I'm not surprised you are all very pleased with her.'
He said the proposed transition period was 'the biggest deception yet played on the British people'.
'We are volunteering to go on paying the membership fee, accepting all the existing rules and all the new rules, we will effectively - once transition is granted - have left the EU in name only,' he said.
'If that transition deal lasts up to the next general election, there is a real possibility that a new incoming British government-stroke-coalition could sign us up to the single market and customs union forever.'  
Mr Barnier drew battle lines on the  divorce deal yesterday after Mr Davis was accused of 'undermining trust' and behaving like a 'gangster'.
He warned that the bloc would 'not accept any backtracking' on the package that was painstakingly assembled by Theresa May in Brussels last week.
He also raised the stakes on trade, warning there was 'no possibility' of a full agreement on the future relationship being reached by the time Brexit happens in March 2019. By contrast Mr Davis suggested at the weekend that a trade deal could be struck 'one minute' after we leave the EU.
The combative comments came after Mr Davis scrambled to defuse a bitter row over playing down the UK's commitments on the Irish border.
Furious MEPs seized on the 'unacceptable' remarks to accuse the UK of 'behaving like gangsters', while Mr Weber opened a new front by warning the UK should not 'assume' it will get a transition period if it does not honour commitments.
EU leaders responded by signalling a crucial summit on Friday will push for fast progress on writing the divorce deal - which also includes a £39billion financial payment and guarantees on rights for EU citizens - into a formal Treaty.
At a press conference in Brussels this evening, Mr Barnier echoed the hard line. 
'We will have a final agreement only if the political commitments taken by May in the name of the British Govt last Friday are respected and we will be vigilant. We will not accept any backtracking from the UK,' he said. 
In a letter to EU premiers, council chief Donald Tusk appealed for them to stand together in the second phase of the talks. 'This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key,' he said. 
 
A Tory lord today tore into his fellow peers for trying to 'wreck' Brexit and 'thwart' the will of the people.
Lord Framlingham, a former Tory MP, said the past few days have been the 'darkest' in the Chamber's 700 year history.
And he said that unelected peers have risked causing 'irreparable damage' to the reputation of the unelected Chamber by trying to water down Brexit.
He lashed out at the peers for passing over a dozen amendments to the crucial EU Withdrawal Bill which have been designed to water down Brexit.
The amendments have been tabled to force Theresa May to try to keep the UK in the EU single market and a custom union after Brexit - in defiance on the PM's red lines.
But the Chamber ignored his warnings and inflicted a 15th defeat on the Bill designed to ensure sure EU environmental principles are enshrined in UK law. 
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Speaking in the House of Lords today, Lord Framlingham said: 'What I do know is that irreparable damage has already been done to our reputation  by the antics of these dark days. 
Here are the 15 Brexit Bill defeats inflicted by peers:
'To set ourselves up in such a disreputable way, as guardians of wisdom and the common good when so many of the amendments we have passed have simply been attempts to wreck the Bill and thwart the will of the people is both false and dangerous.
'Without any doubt my lord these days will go down in history as the House at its worst.
'The House has been repeatedly warned of the recklessness of the path taken.'
Lord Framlingham's remarks came as the Lords debated a cross-party amendment aimed at enshrining environmental principles and standards post-Brexit. 
His remarks sparked angry jeers from other peers who accused him of talking 'rubbish'.   
Tory colleague Lord Cormack told him: 'If anybody is doing damage to the reputation of this House it is you.'
But Lord Framlingham hit back, saying: 'I believe I am speaking up for this House and for the country.   
However, peers ignored his pleas and passed another amendment to the Brexit Bill.
They voted 294 to 244 for an amendment designed to ensure EU environmental principles continue in domestic law after the transition period.   
Brexit minister Lord Callanan said the amendment was premature in that it prejudged the consultation and would 'ultimately be detrimental to the future protection of environmental law'.
He said: 'We have debated the important topic of environmental protection on numerous occasions and the Government has taken clear action in response to many of the points raised.
'We have endeavoured to provide as much transparency as possible to our plan for ensuring environmental protections are enhanced and indeed strengthened, not weakened, as we leave the EU.'
Later analysis of the division list showed there were seven Tory rebels who backed the amendment, including former ministers Lord Deben and Lord Patten of Barnes.  
Speaking after today's debate, Baroness Angela Smith, Labour's Leader in the House of Lords said: 'The Prime Minister will have been carefully watching our debates and votes on this Bill. 
'It now returns to the Commons in better shape, with both government and cross party amendments that provide MPs with an opportunity to consider these important issues.
'I hope Mrs May will take a pragmatic view of how best to proceed rather than follow a purely ideological route that rejects sensible amendments.' 
A UK firm lashed out at ministers today after the contract to produce post-Brexit blue passports was handed to a French company.
De La Rue slammed the decision as 'disappointing and surprising' saying that the government should be 'supporting British business'.
Chief executive Martin Sutherland demanded that Theresa May come and look his staff 'in the eye' to inform them of the move. 
Gemalto, which is listed on the French and Dutch stock exchanges and has a French chief executive, is believed to have undercut British and other rivals by £50million.
The contract for the passports was worth £490million – though senior Whitehall sources pointed out that the deal has not been formally signed yet.
Under EU rules, the Government could not favour a British company and had to choose the best-value bid. This was despite calls by MPs for a domestic firm to produce the new documents.
De La Rue, which produces the current UK passport, had put in a tender with the UK Passport Agency but lost. 
The banknote printer had said it would make a significant investment in its Gateshead site if it won.
Mr Sutherland told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I find that a disappointing and surprising decision. 
'I think we have heard over the last few weeks and months ministers more than happy to come on the media and talk about the blue passports and the fact that the blue passport is an icon of British identity. 
'Now this icon of British identity is going to be manufactured in France.' 
Gemalto is one of the major global players in producing passports.
It is listed on the French and Dutch stock exchanges, and has a French chief executive.
The firm operates in 180 countries around the world, with revenues of around €3billion and 15,000 employees.
Alongside identity documents, it specialises in providing secure software applications and SIM cards.
Gemalto supplies e-passports to states such as the US, Singapore, Czech Republic, Denmark, France and India.
Its website says: 'Identity authentication and data protection technologies at the heart of modern life. 
'We are there when banks exchange funds, people cross borders or drivers step into connected cars.'  
Mr Sutherland said his firm had been producing passports for the UK for the last 10 years 'without a single hiccup' but had been 'undercut on price' and would appeal against the decision. 
Referring to the Gateshead staff, he said: 'I'm going to have to go and face those workers, look at them in the whites of the eyes and try and explain to them why the British government thinks it's a sensible decision to buy French passports not British passports.' 
He added: 'I would actually like to invite Theresa May or Amber Rudd to come to my factory and explain to my dedicated workforce why they think this is a sensible decision to offshore the manufacture of a British icon.' Mr Sutherland said that his firm was 'not allowed to compete for the French passport contract'. 
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock suggested EU procurement rules were to blame - and hinted things would be different after we cut ties with Brussels.
'The procurement rules are very clear. As it happens, one of the advantages of leaving the EU is that we will be able to have more control over our own procurement rules. But, as I understand it, this procurement is not fully complete,' ,' he said. 
Unite union chief Len McCluskey said: 'Passport printing contract decision would not happen in France where its government prints French passports in the country on the basis of national security.' 
Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said: 'It's farcical that the Tories wanted blue passports to demonstrate our 'independence' from the EU after Brexit, but now they plan to buy passports from a French company at the expense of the British economy.
'Once again we've seen this Government fail to ensure public contracts bring about the public good.
'The next Labour Government will concentrate on upgrading Britain's economy across our nations and regions, not contracting more of it out.' 
Brexiteers also condemned the move. 
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'I am very sorry to hear it, as De La Rue has a factory in my constituency. 
'It seems odd to have a national symbol produced abroad.'
When the UK leaves the European Union it will need a passport that does not display the EU logo. The final design of the passport is not known but firms across Europe raced to win the right to print it.
De La Rue was in competition with both Gemalto and French company Oberthur Technologies.  
De La Rue is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of bank notes and passports.
It was founded in the early 19th century by Thomas De La Rue who started out as a hat maker before branching out into playing cards, stamps and bank notes
It makes over 15 million passports every year providing passports to countries all over the world.
It had produced produced Britain's passports for many years before missing out on the blue passport contract.
Recently it supplied Qatar with the kingdom's first e passports, and supplies ID cards to Rwanda.
The firm  also produces over 7 billion banknotes.
It has recently won the contract to supply the new plastic notes to the Bank of England and also provides Kuwait with its new bank notes.
It also works with Microsoft to create certificates of authentication for products.   
In December last year the then immigration minister Brandon Lewis announced the UK passport would be changed to a blue and gold design – the colours used in the traditional British passport.
In November last year Martin Sutherland, chief executive of De La Rue, said: 'We have submitted our bid for the renewal, which is in 2019 and will last for ten years.
'It would be a shame if in the year of Brexit the contract was lost and the British passport was not printed by a British company.'  
Navy blue British passports were first produced in 1920. The burgundy passport was introduced to the UK in 1988, some 15 years after Britain joined the trading bloc.
A Home Office spokesman said: 'We are running a fair and open competition to ensure that the new contract delivers a high quality and secure product and offers the best value for money. We do not require passports to be manufactured from the UK.'
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: 'Under EU rules the Government would not have had a choice, but in the future we need to look at the total benefit to the UK.'
Gemalto is registered in Holland and has its headquarters in Amsterdam. It employs 15,000 people in 47 countries around the world.
De La Rue is the world's biggest passport producer. It has six plants in the UK. Theresa May described blue passports as an expression of 'independence and sovereignty'.
 
The architect of Vote Leave tonight branded Brexit Secretary David Davis as 'thick as mince' as a row over delivering the referendum deepened.
Dominic Cummings blasted Mr Davis was also 'lazy as a toad' and 'vain as Narcissus' - the latter a mythological Greek God who fell in love with his own reflection.
The brutal jibes came amid a growing battle inside the Cabinet about exactly how the Government should be delivering Brexit. 
Mr Davis and his team were back in Brussels today for the latest round of talks with chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier.
But the Brexit Secretary faced mockery for being photographed at the meeting with no papers while his EU rivals held thick bundles of documents.
Mr Cummings, an ex-advisor to Michael Gove who spearheaded the Vote Leave campaign, has repeatedly warned Government risks squandering Brexit. 
Mr Cummings, who tweets as @odysseanproject, said today that Civil Service chief Jeremy Heywood was in a 'parallel universe' on Brexit and warned Whitehall had 'mega failed to prepare' for the negotiations.
And he jibed: 'DD (David Davis) is manufactured exactly to specification as the perfect stooge for Heywood: thick as mince, lazy as a toad, and vain as Narcissus.'

The first phase of the Brexit talks will cover the divorce settlement - with the main topics reciprocal rights for UK and EU citizens, the potential bill for Britain, and the Northern Ireland border.
David Davis is facing strong opposition from the EU over Britain's proposals for rights of European nationals living in the UK, as well as pressure to accept paying a huge 'divorce' bill.
Theresa May last month published a 'fair and serious' offer to guarantee the future rights of the 3.2 million EU citizens living in the UK and the 1.2 million British ex-pats in the EU.
The proposal to grant EU nationals 'settled status', effectively indefinite leave to remain, was immediately dismissed by European Council President Donald Tusk as 'below our expectations'.
Under the terms agreed between the EU and UK, negotiations are taking place in four-week 'rounds'.
The second session is beginning in Brussels today.
The EU says that only when 'sufficient progress' has been made on citizen's rights, the divorce bill and Northern Ireland will they move on to discuss future trade talks. 


Both sides have committed to 'transparency', and are expected to released updates about each round accompanied by press conferences. 

Over the weekend, Chancellor Philip Hammond angrily accused Cabinet rivals of trying to undermine his agenda for a 'softer' business-friendly Brexit prioritising jobs and the economy.
One unnamed Cabinet minister was reported have hit back, claiming Mr Hammond was part of an attempt by 'the Establishment' to prevent Britain ever leaving the EU.
The Daily Telegraph quoted the minister as saying: 'What's really going on is that the Establishment, the Treasury, is trying to f*** it up. They want to frustrate Brexit.'   

Earlier, Mr Davis sat down with counterpart Michel Barnier for the second round of negotiations in Brussels this morning, saying he wanted to make progress on a deal for reciprocal rights for citizens.
But pictures showed the UK team without any paperwork as they sat across the table from the Eurocrats - who were armed with huge piles of documents. 
After greeting Mr Barnier this morning, Mr Davis insisted the teams from the UK and EU were now getting to the 'heart of the matter'.
'For us it is incredibly important we now make good progress,' he said.
'That we negotiate through this and identify the differences, so that we can deal with them, and identify the similarities so that we can move forward.
'And now it's time to get down to work and make this a successful negotiation.'
Mr Barnier said: 'I look forward to our negotiations this week. We'll now delve into the heart of the matter.
'We need to examine and compare our respective positions in order to make good progress.'
However, Mr Davis only stayed in Brussels for around three hours - before heading back to London and leaving officials to discuss technical details. 
Mr Davis is facing strong opposition from the EU over Britain's proposals for rights of European nationals living in the UK, as well as pressure to accept paying a huge 'divorce' bill.
Theresa May last month published a 'fair and serious' offer to guarantee the future rights of the 3.2 million EU citizens living in the UK and the 1.2 million British ex-pats in the EU.
The proposal to grant EU nationals 'settled status', effectively indefinite leave to remain, was immediately dismissed by European Council President Donald Tusk as 'below our expectations'.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson then fanned the flames when he said in the Commons that Brussels could 'go whistle' if it expected the UK to pay a hefty 'divorce bill' in respect of its outstanding financial obligations.
Mr Barnier, who has made clear that he is not prepared to start talks on a trade deal until there has been sufficient progress on the financial settlement, retorted icily he could not hear any whistling, 'just the clock ticking'.
That row was quietly defused with a written Government statement acknowledging Britain had obligations to the EU which would continue after the UK had left and which 'need to be resolved'
However ministers also faced criticism at home over their plans to withdraw from the EU nuclear regulator, Euratom, amid warnings the UK find its access to radioactive isotopes used to treat cancer restricted.
All three issues will be on the agenda for this week's discussions, which are expected to continue to Thursday, along with the thorny matter of the future border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mr Davis made clear his first priority would be resolving the issue of citizens' rights, saying he was determined to make 'real progress'.
'We made a good start last month, and this week we'll be getting into the real substance,' he said.
'Protecting the rights of all our citizens is the priority for me going into this round and I'm clear that it's something we must make real progress on.'
 
Furious Geoffrey Cox today dismissed calls to quit over his advice that prorogation was legal - and raged that Parliament is 'immorally' blocking an election.  
The Attorney General ridiculed claims that he should quit after his view was rejected by the UK's most senior judges yesterday.
He told MPs that the Supreme Court had 'made new law' - something he said it was 'perfectly entitled' to do.
Mr Cox also went on the attack against Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition parties who are blocking Boris Johnson's attempts to go to the country for a new mandate. He said a new bid to go to the country will be tabled 'shortly' and urged the 'spineless gang' to support it. 
The Labour leader insisted this morning that a poll must not be triggered until the Brexit deadline has been pushed back beyond Mr Johnson's 'do or die' date of October 31. 
'This Parliament is a dead Parliament, it has no right to sit on these green benches,' he boomed. 
'This Parliament should have the courage to face the electorate. The time is coming when even these turkeys won't be able to prevent Christmas.' 
Mr Cox hinted that the government might bring forward a one-line Bill to hold an election on a fixed date. That would only require a simple majority, rather than the two-thirds threshold needed through the Fixed Term Parliaments Act route. 
He also seemed to suggest that ministers have given up on trying to find loopholes in the Benn Act, which requires the PM to beg the EU for a Brexit extension if an agreement is not in place by October 19. 
Asked if the government would abide by the Remainer law, he replied: 'Yes.'   
Mr Cox was also embroiled in brutal clashes with former Tory minister Philip Lee, who defected to the Lib Dems in protest at Brexit policy. When Dr Lee urged him to show 'humility', Mr Cox shot back that having refused to call a by-election when he switched parties the MP should be 'on his knees' begging forgiveness from constituents.
Reconvening the House earlier, Speaker John Bercow gloated that Mr Johnson's prorogation of Parliament had been 'expunged' by the bombshell Supreme Court ruling.
Telling MPs 'welcome back to our place of work', he spelled out that the suspension triggered by the PM earlier this month had been made void - as legally it never happened. 
The stage is now set for Boris Johnson to run the gauntlet in the chamber later.    
The PM has returned to Downing Street after cutting short his trip to New York, and is set to renew his call for a general election to break the Brexit deadlock when he faces the wrath of MPs in the wake of the bombshell Supreme Court judgement. 
Mocking calls for him to resign today, Mr Cox said: 'I have to say, that if every time I lost the case I was called upon to resign I probably would never had had a practice.
Here is how the coming weeks could pan out:  
Today: Parliament resumes after Supreme Court ruling that it was suspended illegally. PM flying back UN summit in New York. 
Remainers are set to put in train fresh moves to sabotage the government's Brexit strategy and rule out Boris Johnson forcing No Deal at Halloween. 
September 29-October 2: Tory conference takes place in Manchester, but likely to be hampered by the fact Parliament is sitting. 
Mr Johnson is due to give his first keynote speech as leader on the final day - but the scheduling is in turmoil as he should be taking PMQs at the same time. 
The speech will be a crucial waypointer on how Brexit talks are going. 
October 17-18: A crunch EU summit in Brussels, where Mr Johnson has vowed he will try to get a Brexit deal despite Remainers 'wrecking' his negotiating position. 
October 19: If there is no Brexit deal by this date Remainer legislation obliges the PM to beg the EU for an extension to avoid No Deal. 
Jeremy Corbyn has said that he will only let Mr Johnson trigger an election after an extension has been secured. 
October 31: The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU. 
November/December: An election looks inevitable, but Labour is hinting it might push the date back towards Christmas to humiliate the PM further. 
'The government accepts the judgement and accepts that it lost the case and at all times the government acted in good faith and in the belief that its approach was both lawful and constitutional.
'These are complex matters on which senior and distinguished lawyers will disagree.'
He added: 'Of course we respect the judgement of the court. Given the Supreme Court's judgement, in legal terms the matter is settled.'
Mr Cox said normally legal advice would not be made public but he said he would 'consider over the coming days' whether there was a public interest in a 'greater disclosure of the advice given to the government on this subject'.
He said: 'I am not permitted to disclose the advice I may or may not have given to the government but I repeat: The matter is under consideration.'
He suggested the ruling by the Supreme Court had brought a written constitution a step closer. 
The Attorney General has been facing demands to quit over his botched prorogation legal advice, while Mr Cummings is also under fire amid growing calls for him to be booted out of Downing Street.
Mr Cummings has been credited with masterminding Mr Johnson's strategy since the latter won the keys to Downing Street at the end of July.
That strategy has seen Mr Johnson lose six Commons votes out of six, 21 Tory MPs stripped of the whip, the resignation of the PM's brother, numerous clashes between the PM and angry members of the public and then yesterday's devastating Supreme Court ruling. 
Mr Johnson's political opponents have demanded Mr Cummings be sacked while there is reportedly growing disquiet within the government about the path the Vote Leave maverick has put the Tories on. 
However, Downing Street said this morning that Mr Johnson does still have confidence in Mr Cox while 'nobody' - minister or official - had offered to resign over the prorogation ruling. 
'The answer will be ''no'' on all of those questions,' the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said. 
Earlier, Mr Gove was defiant as he made clear he did not agree with the judgement - although the government will abide by it. 
'I don't think the government should apologise for having a strong domestic agenda,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
'I don't think we should apologise for trying to advance our exit from the EU.' 
Remainers will seek to create a new law to erect a legal wall across the path to a No Deal Brexit, possibly within days, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said today.
As MPs arrive back in the newly un-prorogued Commons she said that an emergency law passed weeks ago, forcing Boris Johnson to seek an extension to Article 50, needed strengthening.
In a hastily arranged press conference outside the doors of Parliament she said that the UK could not wait until October 19, when the Benn Act would come into effect, to ensure Mr Johnson complies with it.
There have been suggestions that he could ignore the law, which orders him to ask for a three-month Brexit delay at the European Council meeting on that day.
In a jibe at the Prime Minister following his Supreme Court defeat yesterday Ms Swinson said: 'We simply cannot afford to wait until the 19th of October to see whether or not the Prime Minister will refuse to obey the law again.'
Ms Swinson ruled out agreeing to back a vote of no confidence until no-deal has been taken off the table. 
'Our country is in a moment of great peril and it is hugely important that we not risk accidentally crashing out of the European Union, and that is the risk of an early vote of no confidence,' she said.
'That is why we are saying we should explore all options to bring forward that guarantee that we can take No Deal off the table because then we can get rid of this Prime Minister who is unfit for office.
'We saw in September the House of Commons take control of the order paper to pass a piece of legislation and that's the type of way forward that may well enable us to take the threat of a no-deal Brexit off the table earlier than October 19.'
He added: 'I think it's important to stress that while the Supreme Court was clear, there is a respectable legal opinion that disagrees with that view. 
'It's perfectly possible in a democracy to say you respect a judgment and will comply with the judgment, but you also note that there are a range of views about the appropriateness of a particular course of action.'
Speaking on the same programme later, Mr Corbyn denied that he was running scared of an election because of his dire popularity ratings - which are the lowest ever for an opposition leader at minus 60.
'Until it is very clear that the application will be made, per the legislation, to the EU to extend our membership to at least January, then we will continue pushing for that and that is our priority,' Mr Corbyn said. 
He added: 'When that has been achieved we will then be ready with a motion of no confidence...
'Our priority is to prevent a No Deal exit from the EU on the 31st of October,' he said. 'I am very happy to have an election when we have taken No Deal off the table and the EU has agreed to an extension.' 
The veteran left-winger said Mr Johnson had 'abused the power he has in the royal prerogative and attempted to close down Parliament'. 
'I think he should apologise to (the Queen) for the advice he gave her but, more importantly, apologise to the British people for what he's done in trying to shut down our democracy at a very crucial time when people are very, very worried about what will happen on October 31,' he added. 
In a vindictive step, Mr Corbyn confirmed Labour will not grant the Conservatives a Commons recess so the party can hold its conference - due to get under way in Manchester on Sunday.   
'I won't support anything that shuts down parliament until it is absolutely clear that the government will abide by the law and apply for an extension,' Mr Corbyn said. 
A No10 source took a similarly hard line last night, suggesting the court had 'made a serious mistake in extending its reach to these political matters'.
'Further, the Supreme Court has made it clear that its reasons are connected to the parliamentary disputes over, and timetable for, leaving the European Union. We think this is a further serious mistake,' they told the BBC.
Mr Johnson accused the court of siding with Remain campaigners to 'frustrate Brexit', although he was careful to say that he 'respected' the court's judgment.
But Amber Rudd, who quit the Cabinet over Mr Johnson's hardline approach to Brexit, said it was irresponsible for the Government to claim the ruling was 'all about people trying to frustrate Brexit' when the Government's defence was that 'prorogation had nothing to do with Brexit'.
Sir Nicholas Soames, a rebel Tory thrown out by Mr Johnson, said: 'Boris has learned the hard way: be ye ever so high you are not above the law.'
The backlash led Justice Secretary Robert Buckland to issue a warning to the Cabinet against questioning the impartiality of the judiciary.
Parliament will now be recalled today, with Mr Johnson forced to cut short his visit to the UN general assembly in New York where he was holding talks with world leaders. Ministers were last night weighing up the possibility of using the recall to make another bid to force an election.
Mr Johnson said that, with Parliament gridlocked, an election was now 'the obvious thing to do'. Ministers however fear they do not have the numbers to win a Commons vote on the issue.
Pro-Remain MPs last night indicated they would exploit the judgment by forcing a series of votes designed to embarrass the Government.
Yesterday's court ruling was the final blow to Mr Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks.
In a defiant response, the Prime Minister brushed aside opposition calls to resign and appeared to suggest the court had political motives.
Speaking in New York he said it was 'perfectly normal' for a government to prorogue Parliament in order to hold a Queen's speech, which he had planned to stage on October 14.
He added: 'Let's be in no doubt, there are a lot of people who want to frustrate Brexit. There are a lot of people who want to stop this country coming out of the EU.'
The Prime Minister said that he had the 'highest respect' for the judiciary, but added: 'I strongly disagree with this judgment.'
Supreme Court president Baroness Hale said that with the prorogation eating up five of the eight weeks of possible parliamentary time before Britain left the EU, 'the effect on the fundamentals of democracy was extreme'.
She added: 'No justification for taking action with such an extreme effect has been put before the court.'
Delivering the unanimous verdict of 11 of the UK's most senior judges, she said: 'The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions.'
This is what may happen next in the coming days with anti-Brexit factions plotting how to derail the Prime Minister's plan to leave the EU on October 31.
Will Boris Johnson resign?
The Supreme Court's ruling is highly embarrassing for Mr Johnson and puts the PM in completely uncharted territory.
The fact that he was found to have acted unlawfully represents a hammer blow to his premiership and has unsurprisingly prompted calls for him to quit. 
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, pounced immediately after the ruling was read out as he said the PM must now 'consider his position'.
Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scottish First Minister, said a premier with 'any honour would tender his resignation'. 
She said that if Mr Johnson will not do the 'decent and honourable thing' then MPs should try to force him out. 
But Mr Johnson responded to the ruling by insisting he was right and the judges had got their decision wrong. 
He had previously said that he had no intention of resigning if the court ruled against him and based on his hardline comments today that position has not changed.
Will the PM now face a vote of no confidence?  
The possibility of an imminent confidence vote is receding.  
The responsibility for seeking a vote rests with Mr Corbyn as the leader of the opposition, and he has said it will not happen until after the 'threat of No Deal is taken off the table'.  
Opposition leaders rejected Mr Johnson's demands for an early election earlier this month because they did not want to go to the country before a No Deal Brexit has been ruled out. 
But an anti-No Deal law is now on the statute book while rules relating to the holding of general elections dictate that there must be a 25 day campaign period. 
That means any election caused by toppling Mr Johnson would not take place until after October 31 - and after the PM has been required by law to ask the EU for a Brexit delay should no agreement have been struck.  
It is important to remember that the UK must always have a prime minister: Even if Mr Johnson lost a vote of no confidence and resigned he would be expected to stay in post until a replacement has been chosen or elected.
Could a vote of no confidence succeed? 
Any vote would likely be tight. Mr Johnson would expect to count on the support of the overwhelming majority of Tory MPs although today's Supreme Court ruling could make some think long and hard about backing the PM. 
Mr Johnson would also likely be backed by a number of Labour Brexit-backing MPs and the DUP.  
On the other side, if Mr Corbyn was to launch a push to get rid of Mr Johnson he would likely only do so if he believed all the other opposition parties were on board. 
Lib Dem sources have suggested they could now back a vote of no confidence while the SNP would leap at any opportunity to boot out Mr Johnson. 
The parliamentary arithmetic means that the result could ultimately come down to how a group of 21 Tory rebels who were stripped of the whip by the PM after backing the anti-No Deal law would vote. 
If they decided to vote with the opposition Mr Johnson would be in big trouble. 
What happens if Mr Johnson loses a vote of no confidence?   
Convention dictates that he should resign as PM. But Downing Street has suggested before that even if he did lose a confidence vote he would not walk away and would instead try to dissolve Parliament and force an election. 
That really would be uncharted territory.  If he lost and the government falls as it is supposed to there would then be a 14 day period in which MPs could try to form another administration. 
That could be the point at which the Remain alliance tries to put together a cross-party unity government with one task: To delay Brexit beyond October 31 in order to avoid a No Deal split. 
What does the Supreme Court ruling mean for Brexit?
It does nothing to change the fact that the UK is still due to leave the EU on October 31. 
But crucially it gets Remainer MPs back in the game. When Parliament was suspended MPs and peers were sidelined from the Brexit process. 
With Parliament sitting again they will be able to challenge the government and, should they believe it is necessary, try to seize control of proceedings as they did when they passed anti-No Deal legislation. 
Could Boris Johnson try to prorogue Parliament again?
Yes. The PM hinted that he could do so when he responded to the Supreme Court ruling. 
When the PM first suspended Parliament he did so with the argument that he needed time to prepare a Queen's Speech in which his new government would set out its domestic legislative plans. 
That speech had been scheduled to take place on October 14 but today's ruling puts that date in doubt.
Mr Johnson today said the government will likely try again to bring forward a Queen's Speech but it was not immediately clear whether the PM will try to stick to the current October 14 date.  
Mr Johnson said the Supreme Court ruling did not 'exclude the possibility of having a Queen's Speech' in the near future.
Lady Hale had said during her ruling this morning that a 'normal period necessary to prepare for the Queen's Speech is four to six days'.  That suggests Mr Johnson could try to prorogue Parliament in the first week of October in order to keep to his previous timetable.
Convention dictates that Parliament must be prorogued - and the parliamentary session formally brought to a close - before a Queen's Speech can take place to kick off a new session. 
What about the Conservative Party conference? 
The Tories are due to meet in Manchester next week but Mr Bercow's decision to resume Parliament throws a grenade into their plans. 
The Conservatives have said they will go ahead as planned with the four day event from Sunday until Wednesday. 
It is thought ministers will try to get Parliament's approval tomorrow for a short conference recess to allow the get together to go ahead. But the chances of MPs voting to go back to recess immediately after Parliament's doors have been reopened appear slim. 
If the Commons rejects the proposed recess then the Tories will almost certainly have to amend their plans: The leader's speech is due to take place on Wednesday at the same time as PMQs and Mr Johnson cannot be in two places at once. 
What has the EU made of all of this?
The European Commission declined to comment today on what it described as the 'internal constitutional matters' of the UK.
But Brussels will be closely monitoring developments in London as Westminster tries to work out what happens next.    
The last EU summit before Brexit is due to take place on October 17 and Brussels is still waiting for the UK to make a formal offer on how to break the current impasse. The bloc will be waiting to see whether today's chaos focuses minds or if it leads to further meltdown.   
 
Jean-Claude Juncker today denied briefing against Theresa May after leaks suggested he branded her 'tormented' after a secretive Brussels dinner.
The EU Commission President claimed to be 'surprised' at the leaks which emerged in the German papers yesterday.
He told the BBC today the Prime Minister had been in 'good shape' at last Monday night's dinner, saying Mrs May was 'not tired' but instead 'fighting' for the British interest.
Mr Juncker denied Mrs May had been pleading with him, insisting 'that's not the style of British prime ministers'.  
The leaks to a German paper claimed Mr Juncker found Mrs May to be 'despondent and discouraged' with 'deep rings' beneath her eyes.
The extraordinary claims were condemned today by Nick Timothy, Mrs May's ex-chief of staff, who named Mr Juncker's top aide Martin Selmayr as the leaker.
Mr Selmayr denied being to blame and insisted the account was untrue today as the explosive new diplomatic row unfolded.
Downing Street refused to deny the reports, insisting it had no comment to make. Mrs May's spokesman instead highlighted Mr Selmayr's denial. 
Scroll down for video 
Speaking to the BBC today, Mr Juncker said: 'I am really surprised - if not shocked - about what has been written in the German press. And of course repeated by the British press.
'Nothing is true in all of this. 
'I had an excellent working dinner with Theresa May. She was in good shape, she was not tired, she was fighting as is her duty so everything for me was OK.' 
The leaks echo similar disclosures made to the German press after a dinner between Mrs May and Mr Juncker in Downing Street. 
On that occasion, a furious Prime Minster stormed out of No 10 to denounce the European Commission for interfering in her snap election campaign.
After last week's dinner, a joint statement was released agreeing to accelerate Brexit talks.
And later in the week, at the European Council summit, EU leaders said they would begin scoping work on future trade talks while making clear to Mrs May that she must make more concessions on Britain's divorce payment for negotiations to progress. 
FAZ reporter Thomas Gutschker reveals Mr Juncker found Mrs May 'anxious, despondent and discouraged' by the talks.
His account - written from Mr Juncker's perspective - said: 'She looks like someone who does not sleep for nights on end.
Jean-Claude Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr is known by many names in Brussels.
A feared fixer at the European Commission, the German lawyer has been dubbed Rasputin, the Monster and even Darth Vader. 
As chief of staff to the European Commission President he is a key player negotiating the talks and was one of just four people at last week's dinner with Juncker and Theresa May.
Selmayr was blamed for incendiary leaks in the spring that threatened to blow up the Brexit talks before they really began.
He has denied involvement in today's leak. 
'She rarely laughs, though clearly, she has to for the photographers. But it looks forced.
'Previously, May could literally pour out laughter — her whole body shaking. Now she has to use her utmost strength to avoid losing her composure.' 
The story says the dinner was planned at the 'last minute' by Mrs May - in defiance of No 10's earlier claims it had been scheduled for several weeks. 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office was said to have told Mrs May 'dryly' that 'Brexit was not wanted and could not solve the problems of the British' for the Prime Minister.  
Mr Timothy, who worked for Mrs May at the time of the previous leak, today said the new disclosure showed there are figures in Brussels who want Britain to leave the EU with either no deal or on terms which would punish the country for Brexit.
He tweeted: 'After constructive Council meeting, Selmayr does this. Reminder that some in Brussels want no deal or a punitive one.'
But Mr Selmayr responded with his own tweet: 'This is false. I know it does't fit your cliche, @NickJTimothy. But @JunckerEU & I have no interest in weakening PM.
'But it seems some have interest in undermining constructive relations @JunckerEU & PM May. Who? is the real question.'
He denied being behind the leak or that Mr Juncker ever made the comments about Mrs May's emotional sate.
He also dismissed the suggestion the EU was being 'punitive' and claimed it was an attempt to frame the EU side of the negotiations and 'undermine talks'.
Asked about the report today, Mrs May's official spokesman said: 'I have no comment on it whatsoever.
'One of the people who was present has denied this morning Jean-Claude Juncker ever said it.' 
Following the dinner, Mrs May and Mr Juncker issued a joint statement hailing 'constructive and friendly' talks. 
The European Commission spokesman said he would not enter into a 'game' with reporters when he was asked to make clear that Brussels did not believe the UK Government was attempting to undermine the EU negotiating position.
The spokesman said: 'I will not say a word beyond what I said on the issues we discussed. If we have to say something we do, we don't need to be probed.'
The government is honouring the result of the referendum by bringing in tough measures to curb immigration, a Cabinet minister said today.
Sir Michael Fallon said ending free movement was necessary to reduce inflows after a leaked document outlined a new post-Brexit system.
The proposals included action to slash the number of low-skilled EU workers and force bosses to put British workers first.
A 'direct numerical cap' on immigration could be imposed when the UK leaves the 28-nation EU in March 2019, according to the Home Office report.
Asked about the document, Defence Secretary Sir Michael stressed that the government would spell out its plans later this year. He also insisted there was no intention to 'close the door' on talent from abroad.
But he made clear ministers' determination to meet the Tory target for reducing annual net migration below 100,000 a year.
'This is our target,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today. 'We need to get immigration down and we need to show the public that it is being properly controlled.' 
Under the blueprint, low-skilled workers would be allowed to stay for only one or two years while professionals could apply for five-year visas.
To give preference to British workers, firms would have to pass a rigorous 'economic needs test' before recruiting EU nationals lacking higher qualifications.
The 82-page document says migration policy will be determined by the UK national interest, ensuring social cohesion and reducing the number of arrivals. 

The paper said: 'To be considered valuable to the country as a whole, immigration should benefit not just the migrants themselves but make existing residents better off.'

Sir Michael told BBC Breakfast: 'I can't set out the proposals yet, they have not yet been finalised, they are being worked on at the moment.
'There is obviously a balance to be struck, we don't want to shut the door, of course not.
'We have always welcomed to this country those who can make a contribution to our economy, to our society, people with high skills.
'On the other hand we want British companies to do more to train up British workers, to do more to improve skills of those who leave our colleges.
'So there's always a balance to be struck.
'We're not closing the door on all future immigration but it has to be managed properly and people do expect to see the numbers coming down.' 
The radical proposals include:
Last night Whitehall sources insisted the document had not been signed off by ministers and immigration policy was still a 'work in progress'.
Officials have produced at least six subsequent versions, the source added. The measures are likely to be watered down as part of Brexit talks.
Campaigners for controlled migration and Tory MPs hailed the proposals, saying they reflected the public's demands for an end to mass immigration.
Lord Green of Deddington, chairman of the MigrationWatch think tank, said: 'This is very good news. Completely uncontrolled migration from the EU simply cannot be allowed to continue.
'These proposals rightly focus on the highly skilled and, by doing so, could well reduce net migration from Europe by about 100,000 a year.'
Charlie Elphicke, MP for Dover, said: 'People want a robust approach on tackling the number of low-skilled migrants coming to Britain as they feel deeply this pushes down the wages of working people.'
However, there was an immediate backlash last night with Labour mayor of London Sadiq Khan saying: 'It reads like a blueprint on how to strangle London's economy, which would be devastating not just for our city but for the whole country.'
The leak comes just days after the latest round of Brexit talks ended in acrimony and a row over the so-called divorce bill.
It could anger Brussels if it is seen that the plans downgrade the status of EU citizens too far. Theresa May is reportedly set to deliver a key speech on Britain's future relationship with the EU later this month as negotiations approach a critical stage.
The document, entitled 'Borders, Immigration and Citizenship System After the UK Leaves the EU' – dated August 2017 – was published in full by the Guardian newspaper last night.
It makes clear that in setting future immigration policy ministers will be 'guided' by their policy of hitting the target of cutting net migration to the tens of thousands, and to give 'preference in the job market to resident workers'.
It says that high levels of net migration are 'not inevitable'.
'To be considered valuable to the country as a whole, immigration should benefit not just the migrants themselves but also make existing residents better off,' it says. After Brexit, there would be a transition period lasting at least two years, during which EU nationals would be free to come to the UK for short periods, but would be forced to register with the Home Office after living here for three months.
Anyone who wants to stay will have to show evidence of a employment, study or self-sufficiency. The document defines this as having an income above £18,600 – as per non-EU nationals.
There would then be a gradual ratcheting up of controls over years to a new system. In the longer term, low-skilled migration would be limited either using a straightforward cap, a minimum salary level or skill shortage assessments. Tourism, business and other short-term visits would continue as normal.
In a dramatic shift in policy, firms would be allowed to hire migrants only if they could prove they had tried – and failed – to hire a Briton.
The document states: 'We are clear that, wherever possible, UK employers should look to meet their labour needs from resident labour. It is now more important than ever that we have the right skills domestically to build a strong and competitive economy.
'It is not a question of stopping EU migration. But there will be a fundamental shift in our policy in that the Government will take a view on the economic and social needs of the country as regards migration, rather than leaving this decision entirely to EU citizens and their employers.
'We will want to strike the right balance – making sure we attract the people we need to fill key labour market requirements, and ensuring that we continue to support UK businesses to prosper, while addressing concerns about the impact of uncontrolled migration on public services and community cohesion.'
To help farmers ensure they have enough labour to pick fruit, a seasonal workers scheme would give temporary work permits.
Green MP and co-party leader Caroline Lucas said the plans were economically illiterate and 'a profound mistake'.
'Ministers know that ending free movement will damage the British economy – yet they are ploughing ahead regardless,' she said.
'Now they're also planning draconian rules on family members of EU nationals and harsh income requirements too. Britain has benefited from freedom of movement and from the enormous contribution of EU nationals.'


Angela Merkel today insisted she 'deplored' Brexit and warned the German position had not softened in the months since the referendum.
The German Chancellor said Brexit talks are under 'time pressure' and agreements had to be put in place to keep planes flying and allow cross border healthcare to continue.
And Mrs Merkel said Germany has not changed its position on Britain leaving the EU, saying 'we deplore it'.
Although she also also admitting the EU also wanted a 'close partnership' in future and signalled that Britain would get a bespoke deal.
The German leader grabbed the opportunity of a joint press conference with Mrs May in Berlin today to use tough words to urge quicker progress on Brexit.
Meanwhile, Mrs May repeated her hopes for a 'bold and ambitious' partnership with the EU after Brexit and said coming up with a deal is not a 'one way street'.
The Prime Minister was forced to rebuff claims Britain was not being clear about what it wanted from the negotiations. 
Mrs Merkel insisted she still did not know what Britain wanted to achieve in Brexit talks and quipped: 'I'm not frustrated, I'm just curious how Britain envisages this future partnership and obviously we also have our own vested interests.' 
Mrs Merkel said Germany has not changed its position on Britain leaving the EU, saying: 'We deplore it.'
She said that she now wanted to hear from the British on their proposals for a Brexit deal.
'We very much look forward to Britain again setting out its ideas,' she said.
'We would like to initiate those negotiations because we are under a certain amount of time pressure but we also want be very diligent and very careful in working on this which means we will have frequent exchanges of views.'
In a signal Germany was keen to see a deal struck, the Chancellor added: 'We would like to preserve this close partnership.
'Both sides, in a way, are in a process of learning and trying to figure out where we find common ground.
Angela Merkel:
On the Brexit negotiations:
'I'm not frustrated, I'm just curious how Britain envisages this future partnership and obviously we also have our own vested interests.'
On her view of Brexit: 
'We deplore it.'
On a post Brexit deal:
'We would like to preserve this close partnership.
'Both sides, in a way, are in a process of learning and trying to figure out where we find common ground.'
Theresa May: 
On future trade deal: 
'We have referred in our discussions to the UK's vision for a bold and ambitious economic partnership once the UK leaves the European Union,' she said.
'I want to ensure that UK companies have the maximum freedom to trade and to operate in German markets and for German businesses to do the same in the UK.'
On fleshing out what a Brexit deal would look like:
'We will be saying something in the coming weeks' about the future economic partnership but insisted 'it isn't just a one-way street'.
'I want a future economic partnership that is good for the EU, good for Germany, good for the other remaining members of the EU and is good for the UK.' 

'For this what we need is a permanent exchange, because sometime we don't know how our opposite is seeing things.' 
Mrs Merkel said there were still many issues to resolve. 
She said: 'We have to be very careful we have the right rules and regulations in place for example to be able to enable tourists to meet, that planes can start, that we have proper healthcare systems in place – all of that has to be settled
'And the we have to think if trade relations and service relations…all of that will come out in the course of negations.
'There is not this one crux of the matter this one single bone of contention it is a complex structure of negotiations and we have to come to a fair balance for both sides.'
In response, Mrs May told the press conference: 'It is not just a one way street… our future economic partnership is good for the UK and the EU.
'I believe through negotiations we can achieve that economic relationship.' 


Asked if it was time for Britain to make a clear offer and not wait on Europe, Mrs May said: 'The point of negotiations is two partners sit down and talk about these issues and come to an agreement about these issues.'
She said she had clarified the issues at different points in the negotiation and tomorrow will flesh out what future security arrangement she wants.
She added: 'I think that's important because we are all facing the challenges and threats.'
'This is not the time to reduce cooperation but to develop and extend cooperation.'
Mrs May said the next round of Brexit talks in Brussels would begin on Monday.
'We have referred in our discussions to the UK's vision for a bold and ambitious economic partnership once the UK leaves the European Union,' she said.
'I want to ensure that UK companies have the maximum freedom to trade and to operate in German markets and for German businesses to do the same in the UK.'
Today's meeting follows reports Mrs Merkel mocked the PM's negotiating approach at last month's World Economic Forum at Davos.
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
Mrs Merkel reportedly entertained a private meeting by joking that every time she asked her want she wanted, the Prime Minister replied: 'Make me an offer.'



Ahead of today's talks, former Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for greater urgency in agreeing the post-Brexit security relationship between the UK and EU. 
Mr Rasmussen told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I have urged the negotiators on both sides to start negotiations on security issues already now.
'I am concerned that as far as we can see, security is not on the radar screen right now.
'But it's very, very complicated.' 
The former Danish prime minister said negotiations on a UK/EU security treaty should begin 'right away'. 
He added: 'Even the UK must realise that in today's world, its strength is very much dependent on co-operation with other countries.' 
In order to continue data-sharing with the EU in the realm of security, the UK would have to continue to observe Brussels regulations, he warned. 

The former director of the Government's GCHQ eavesdropping centre, Robert Hannigan, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Mrs May should use her Munich speech to 'give some detail and set out a plan'.
He warned that she will 'disappoint' her European audience if she simply restates her wish for a special security partership.
'People now - as in every area of Brexit - want to hear some detail about what does that mean and on the really difficult issues what is the plan that is going to be put to Brussels,' he said. 

He warned that Britain's defence industry 'is likely to start a steady decline' if it loses the ability to collaborate on research and innovation with the increasingly integrated EU defence sector.
'Increasingly, our defence sector - which is incredibly important to us, hundreds of thousands of jobs right across the UK depend on that sector - has been collaborating with European partners, particularly on research and innovation, which is no longer really affordable for a medium-sized country,' said Mr Hannigan.
'To compete in the modern market and export outside of the EU - where most of our defence exports go - we need to collaborate. Will that be possible in the future?' 
Furious Tories turned on Emmanuel Macron today after he launched an all-out attack on Brexit – saying 'it can't be delivered' and had 'torn society apart'.
Eurosceptics demanded the French president apologise over his extraordinary rant at an event last night - urging him to focus on his own domestic woes.
MPs pointed out that the referendum was a 'democratic decision' and unlike France, the UK was not suffering any 'rioting on the streets'.
The rebuke came after Mr Macron - one of the biggest Brexit hawks among EU leaders - rubbished the result of the national vote in June 2016, saying it showed how the public could be manipulated. 
'Be aware of people who sell you dreams, that tell you all your anger can be solved by a referendum. I'm scared of people who manipulate you with miracle ideas,' he said.
Mr Macron was speaking to an audience in Bourg-de-Peage, south of Lyon, in a 'people's debate'.
Some were so-called Yellow Vest anti-government campaigners who themselves want France to leave the EU.
But Mr Macron told them: 'Take the British. They voted for Brexit. There were people who, in good faith, were sometimes as angry as you are, and they said that the source of all their ills was Europe. It's rubbish!'
Attacking Brexit poster campaigns that in 2016 promised more money for the NHS and other good causes, Mr Macron said: 'There were lots of buses passing by reading that you were going to save something like 36 billion pounds if you get out of Europe.
The Yellow Vest, or 'gilet jaunes', movement in France grew out of a campaign against fuel tax hikes in November. 
But it has since expanded to cover a bewildering range of grievances, from high immigration to university entrance rules. 
Named after the hi-visibility jackets that must be law be carried in vehicles, the protests have threatened to bring parts of the country to a standstill.
Paris saw the most serious clashes on the streets since 1968, as extremist groups jumped on the bandwagon. 
The core group is often regarded as disaffected rural French nationalists, unhappy with the way the country is changing. 
Many of them regard Emmanuel Macron as a symbol of French elitism, dismissive of the struggles faced by ordinary people. 
The French president was forced to abandon the planned fuel tax rise last month, as he struggled to contain the chaos.  
'And it will be done in 15 days, and then people voted. There were people who voted for Brexit, who did it in good faith, they were angry, and they thought their situation was impossible, because the system was unjust.
In a clear reference to former Conservative politicians including Prime Minister David Cameron, who resigned after losing the Brexit referendum, Mr Macron whistled as he mocked their departures.
'The result is, it's in fact been going on for two years now and those who promised a Brexit literally left within two weeks. They didn't even want to govern!
'People are starting to realise that all the figures they were given are entirely false, and what they were told could be done overnight in fact can't be delivered.
'And in the end it's going to cost them. In this context do you think that the referendum was a good thing?
'No, because it didn't allow for an informed, transparent and calm debate. It's torn a society apart, and it's left it open to disinformation coming from abroad, or terrible manipulation.'
Tory MP Nadine Dorries told MailOnline: 'I think Macron should apologise. He should be looking to his own problems.'
Fellow backbencher Peter Bone said he is not sure the French people would back Mr Macron in a referendum.
'The first thing the president ought to consider is this was a democratic decision reached by the British people,' he said.
'There was a massive debate and we had a massive turnout. We don't have rioting on the streets. We don't have people in yellow jackets.'  
Earlier this week Mr Macron said Britain leaving the EU without a deal would be a disaster for everyone, and especially the British.
Instead, he believes the UK will now ask for more time to negotiate a new trade deal.
Speaking more widely about the issue of referendums, Mr Macron said they were a poor form of democracy, that could be manipulated by fake news, and that parliamentary government should be respected at all times.
After praising the head of the European Council Donald Tusk and the EU's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, Mr Macron said he expected Britain to eventually ask for more time to renegotiate a deal.
At present, Britain is due to leave the EU at the end of March, but Mr Macron believes the British government will wait until European Parliament elections be held on May 23 to 26.
A total of 751 MEPs currently represent some 500 million people from 28 member states, but in February 2018 the European Parliament voted to decrease the number of MEPS to 705, in line with the UK leaving.
Mr Macron, who was elected in President of France in May 2017, originally displayed a hard line against Brexit, at one stage before his win calling it 'a crime'.
But until tonight he had toned down his attacks on the British leave vote while in office, saying he was leaving negotiations to senior EU representatives.
 
The image will not go away. The tower, black and smoking, the odd glow of flame, a stream of water directed at it. Below, surrounded by London's bustling summer streets, I saw fire officers slumped in exhausted sleep, grimy in their yellow protective clothing. Air bottles from the breathing equipment lay heaped in piles, witness to dedication and barely imaginable courage.
We watched a drone whirr into the air to inspect the charred hulk for safety. Groups of those with the unspeakable duty of sifting through the ruined homes for bodies stood waiting and talking.
I was there with the Bishop of Kensington, Graham Tomlin. He had been on the scene for hours already and would stay for the next few days, alongside local clergy of all faiths. Plenty of the fire and police officers stopped to talk. Some asked for prayers.
Nearby, a local church was awash with noise and activity – Muslims, Christians and none-of-the-above all lending a hand. Diverse, buzzing, brilliant, this was London in active compassion.
Why am I starting with what I saw that day? Because Grenfell Tower and the terrorist attacks of the past few weeks comprise a storm of events that have tested our deepest values with an almost unrelenting ferocity – and brought out the best of communities in crisis.
The response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy from the emergency services and civic society – including churches and other faith groups – has been remarkable. It is matched by courage from those caught up in Manchester, Westminster, London Bridge.
Communities have staggered, stumbled and pulled themselves up. I am so proud and grateful to be part of a country where people at Westminster rush to treat a man who has just tried to kill them, where an imam ensures the would-be killer whose van is still resting on one of his congregation is protected.
I was moved to tears by those who risked their lives during the attacks; by the police, unarmed, sprinting towards the danger at London Bridge; by the Ariana Grande fundraising concert and the courage of Manchester.
However, the Grenfell Tower tragedy has also served to highlight divisions in our society. Many, including the Prime Minister herself, have recognised that support from the state has been inadequate in North Kensington. We have been severely tested in how we handle diversity, integration, social mobility and inequality. Failure in these areas is ultimately a failure of values.
In the terrorist attacks we have seen diversity integrated in community and decorated with courage. We know what we can be, both for good and ill, and we are at a moment where that difference sets our future. We have seen courage and generosity and all that makes for a good and flourishing society. 
We have also seen failures of government and a sort of tragic unwillingness to face the realities of divisions and people being left behind. We need to choose between the selflessness of the former and the inward looking 'me-first' attitudes of the latter.
Because this is, after all, a significant moment in our history, as the United Kingdom begins Brexit negotiations. For only the third time in two centuries, we find ourselves needing to redefine the place of our country in the world. Our approach to global issues will be defined by the values we practise here.
The subjects dominating the Brexit negotiations – trade, commerce, financial transactions – are important, but they are not enough on their own. Trading agreements are useless unless they serve individuals, communities and society.
Our values must be shaped by a recognition of the dignity of every human being, regardless of wealth, status or influence. They must be values lived at home so that when we play what I believe can and should be a leading role, it is a role for the good of the poorest of the world. People around the world will need to see that we are consistent, self-critical, showing in our own society the flourishing that we desire for every society.
Proverbs 29:18 says: 'Where there is no vision, the people perish.' But while high-flown words or soaring ambitions and vision may be an essential foundation, they must also be turned into policies, based in deep values of respect for all.
And policies must be joined to resources and actions so that they become realities. As we reimagine our future post-Brexit, not only do we need clear vision from politicians, we need delivery.
In numerous ways, we are already doing this – such as through spending a generous amount of national income on aid, our leadership in responding to ebola in West Africa and sending highly trained taskforces to places of vulnerability and conflict like South Sudan.
But recent events have highlighted the urgent need for a process of internal reconciliation, between regions, social groups, faiths and generations.
The future of this country is not a zero-sum, winner take all, calculation but must rest on the reconciled common good arrived at through good debate and disagreement.
Brexit continues to divide us. Exit negotiations will be fierce and the differences on what we should aim for, and how, are very deep. They divide our politicians and our society. With a hung Parliament, there is an understandable temptation for every difference to become a vote of confidence, a seeking of momentary advantage ahead of the next election.
For that to happen would be a disaster if our negotiators, faced with the united determination of the EU, go into the room without confidence in their backing in the UK. It might turn us inwards and forfeit the opportunity to be a country the world admires and blesses for our generosity and vision.
Politics is rightly hard and tough. We must not pretend otherwise. But for Brexit, we need the politicians to find a way of neutralising the temptation to take minor advantage domestically from these great events.
We must develop a forum or commission or some political tool which can hold the ring for the differences to be fought out, so that a commonly agreed negotiating aim is achieved. Obviously it would be under the authority of Parliament, especially the Commons. It would need to be cross-party and chaired by a senior politician, on Privy Council terms. It could not bind Parliament, but well-structured it could draw much of the poison from the debate.
A country united after Brexit is essential if we want a country that is resilient under the threats we face, capable of ensuring that the victims of Grenfell Tower are cared for and its lessons learned, and courageous in making our way in the post-Brexit world. The decisions we make over the next two years will have an impact for generations to come.
Let us do everything we can to ensure the right values are at their heart.
We’re old friends. We agree on a great deal. But recently, we were divided on one of the biggest issues this country faces – our future in Europe.
Greg grew up in industrial Middlesbrough, Michael in the port city of Aberdeen. Both of us are the first in our families to go to university and both of us are Conservatives because we believe in opportunity and we believe in Britain.
But we were on different sides in the EU referendum. Greg argued to Remain, Michael to Leave.
Now we are both Ministers in Theresa May’s Government and are determined to honour that result, to make it work and to secure a brighter future for Britain outside the EU.
And we both recognise that involves compromises. In a country that voted 52:48 to leave, we need both to deliver on the Referendum verdict but also to respect the concerns of all citizens. We need to make sure we take advantage of new opportunities offered by life outside the EU and safeguard important economic relationships with our close neighbours and trading partners.
Delivering on the Referendum means giving Parliament and the British people the final say on our laws, thus securing space for British entrepreneurs to innovate and create new jobs, allowing us to control migration so we can welcome the most talented people to our shores, creating new trading opportunities for British business, getting rid of the wasteful and bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy, and taking back control of our territorial waters so we can revive our fishing industries and our coastal communities. But we also know that in the negotiations we’re undertaking with the EU, there has to be give and take.
Access to any other country’s markets depends on accepting some common rules and standards. And the particular web of relationships that exists between citizens of the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom needs careful handling to preserve the political and economic gains of recent years.
When we met at Chequers on Friday, we were acutely aware of the need to agree on a realistic approach that respected all these priorities. We were also aware that the clock is ticking and we need to make progress in our negotiations with the EU to secure the best-available outcome in advance of our departure in March 2019.
The plan we agreed at Chequers allows us to take advantage of significant new freedoms available to us outside the EU, while safeguarding access for existing industries to European markets. It’s a balanced package that creates space for innovation but also respects realities on the ground.
All trade deals involve trade-offs. At the heart of the new relationship we are proposing with our European neighbours is a UK-EU free trade area, with a common rule book for goods. This would be complemented by a customs model designed to facilitate smooth access to each other’s markets.
Taken together, these measures would ensure frictionless access to each other’s markets for goods including food and drink, our biggest manufacturing sector. Our proposals respect the need to safeguard the integrated and highly efficient supply chains and just- in-time processes that have been developed over the last 40 years. That provides stability for manufacturing sectors like car-making and chemicals, and helps safeguard the jobs in those industries.
We would maintain influence over technical standards through continued membership of the European Standards Organisations. And, most importantly, Parliament would have a lock with the ability to reject any new rule we did not want, with proportionate consequences for our future market access.
By removing the need for customs checks at the border, this plan will also respect the wishes of people across the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom for goods to circulate freely.
But our plan is about more than maximising our trade in goods with the EU. It is also about helping British business to seize new opportunities as we leave the EU.
The Common Agricultural Policy would not be part of the rule book, and neither would food policy. So our plan will allow us to deliver a better deal for our farmers and food producers. We can redirect the support we give them to both make them more competitive and to enhance the countryside they care for. The high animal welfare and environmental standards our farmers uphold give our food a world-leading reputation. Outside the EU an even brighter future beckons.
Second, as we set out in the White Paper earlier this week, leaving the EU creates a sea of opportunity for our fishing industry, so we will leave the Common Fisheries Policy and take back control of our waters. This means that the UK will decide who comes into our seas and who fishes here once we leave the European Union.
Third, the free trade area will cover goods but not services. So the economic partnership we are proposing will give us greater regulatory freedom on services, while allowing people to continue to travel overseas to carry out business. This means our plan will ensure Britain is best placed to capitalise on the industries of the future, in line with our modern Industrial Strategy.
Finally, our plan also includes a far-reaching security partnership that will ensure continued close co-operation with our allies across Europe, while enabling us to seize the opportunities of an independent foreign and defence policy.
As we have shown flexibility to agree this generous proposal, we hope EU nations ask their negotiators to show similar flexibility and generosity.
We are united across Cabinet in believing that the time has now come for the EU to move towards us. We are also united in recognising that now we have developed a plan for a deal, so we must step up our plans if there is no deal.
By making clear that we are ready for every eventuality, we can argue with confidence for the best deal for Britain. And by arguing for that deal as one united Cabinet, Government and Party behind our Prime Minister, we stand the very best chance of securing the best future for our children. 
Britain and Ireland are just 'hours away' from securing a deal to take to Brussels to move Brexit talks on to trade, an Irish official has tonight said.
The official said Westminster and Dublin are 'very close' to an agreement on the Irish border and that talks are 'moving quickly', with discussions expected to continue throughout the night.
Theresa May has held talks via telephone with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and the Irish PM Leo Varadkar tonight.
Mr Juncker's chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said after the calls that an early morning meeting and 'press point' was 'possible', but added: 'We are making progress but not yet fully there. Talks are continuing throughout the night.'
A Number 10 spokesman also confirmed the calls, adding: 'Discussions about taking forward the Brexit process are ongoing.'
A UK Government source said: 'We're not there yet.' 

A spokeswoman for Mr Tusk confirmed he would make a statement at 7.50am Brussels time (6.50am UK time) - before the London Stock Exchange opens - but would not give further details. 

The PM is on the cusp of a breakthrough on Brexit talks after her last plan to move the negotiations on to trade was suddenly torpedoed by the DUP on Monday.
The party - which props Mrs May up in No10 - pulled the plug at the eleventh hour amid fears the proposals for the Irish border would tear the UK apart.
The PM must get all sides signed up to a new plan by a crunch summit in Brussels in just seven days time at the very latest.
It comes after Boris Johnson fired a warning shot to Mrs May not to compromise any more on Brexit as Britain has met Brussels 'more than half way' on key demands.
An Irish official told a British Irish Chamber of Commerce event in Brussels: 'It is moving quite quickly at the moment. Negotiations are continuing.
'I think we are going to work over the next couple of hours with the UK government to close this off. I say hours because I think we are very close.' 
While European Council president Donald Tusk has scheduled a Brexit press briefing early tomorrow morning fuelling rumours Britain is on the cusp of a breakthrough.
An Irish Government spokesman said: 'Matters are being considered as part of ongoing discussions involving the (EU negotiating) Task Force, the Irish Government and the British Government.'
Why is the Irish border a problem?
After Brexit, Northern Ireland will have the only land border between the UK and the EU. 
With Britain leaving the single market and the customs union – but the Republic staying inside both – there are questions about how to move goods over the 300 crossing points along the 310-mile frontier.
What does each side want?
Dublin – backed by the EU – says there must be no 'hard border' involving customs checks for fear of undermining peace accords. 
Irish ministers have suggested Northern Ireland should stay inside the customs union. But Mrs May – and the DUP – could never agree, as it amounts to breaking up the integrity of the UK.
Why was the last deal scuppered? 
Downing Street, Dublin and Brussels all thought they were ready to sign off on adeal to move Brexit talks to trade on Monday.
But they collapsed at the eleventh hour when the DUP - who prop Theresa May up in No10 - pulled the plug on them. 
They collapsed talks amid fears only Northern Ireland would keep 'regulator alignment' with the Republic post Brexit - effectively pushing border controls eastwards to the border with the rest of the UK.
They feared the deal would drive a wedge between the UK which could tear it apart.  
But he did not specifically confirm whether or not a new form of text had been tabled by UK negotiators.
DUP chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: 'Discussions are ongoing.'
Earlier today, Mr Johnson insisted the Brexit deal must stick to the spirit of the Leave campaign and mean the 'whole of the United Kingdom' takes back control from Brussels.
The Foreign Secretary said Britain's pledge to pay the EU a £50billion divorce bill was a 'very good' offer and said it is time to 'get going' with trade talks. 

The remarks by Mr Johnson - a leading Brexiteer - will be seen as a warning to Mrs May not to give much more away .
And he piled pressure on the PM to come up with a plan which ensures there is no regulatory difference between Northern Ireland and the mainland UK post Brexit.
Speaking at the Foreign Office in London today, he said: 'It is very, very important that whatever happens now, whatever we agree, has got to be consistent with taking back control of our laws, of our borders and of our cash.
He said the UK was making a 'very good' financial offer to the EU and defended his comments the EU could 'go whistle' for a large divorce bill insisting he was referring to reports of demands of £100 billion.
Mr Johnson said: 'I was asked my reaction to some of the very extortionate sums that I had heard in the region of £80 or £100 billion, and, I don't want to repeat the offending phrase, but go whistle seems the appropriate reaction to that kind of money.
'When it comes to other sums and other obligations, a more detailed examination of our obligations, our financial obligations, I think you will find the British Government is absolutely punctilious in wanting to meet our friends more than half way and to be useful.
'I think you will find the financial offer that we are making is very good, but it is nowhere near the sums that I was first invited to comment on in a musical way.'
And he took a swipe at any deal which would subject Northern Ireland to different rules and regulations than the rest of the UK.
He said: 'You can take it from me that whatever comes up, whatever the solution that we come to, whatever we devise getting on to the body of the talks, it's got to be consistent, it's got to be consistent with the whole of the United Kingdom taking back control.'
And he threw down the gauntlet to the EU urging them to hurry up and  kick start the next phase of negotiations on trade. 
Britain will guarantee rights for as yet unborn children who join EU parents in the UK after Brexit, a leaked document reveals today.
Britain will also accept EU judges' rulings on such rights, according to a draft European Parliament resolution.
The document also supports Theresa May's call for an agreement from Brussels that British citizens in the EU will be able to live freely in any member state after Brexit. 
But it contains no mention of how long EU citizens living in Britain might have any recourse to the European Court of Justice - a continuing sticking point in the Brexit talks.  
The draft resolution was prepared on the basis of an agreement May was about to sign on Monday before objections. A final version of it could be voted by MEPs as soon as next week.
Breaking briefly into French, he said: 'We need to get going, franchement (frankly), with the second part of the talks.
'That's the exciting bit. That's the bit where we will achieve a new trading relationship with our friends and partners.
'We can get it done, we just need to get on with it, and I hope very much that the December European Council will mark that progress.' 
EU leaders will meet next week to formally decide whether that second phase, on the future UK-EU relationship, can begin.
Before they will do so a deep impasse over how the Irish border will work must first be navigated. 
The EU Commission today said there was still no 'white smoke' but that Jean-Claude Juncker was on stand-by to meet Mrs May 'at any moment'.
Mrs May must finds a solution acceptable to the DUP in Northern Ireland, the Irish Government in Dublin and her own Tory party in Westminster.
The crisis in the talks came against a backdrop of renewed rumours about Mrs May's future today as critics claimed there was the 'smell of death' around her and reports said Mr Juncker feared she could be replaced by a hardline Brexiteer.

The PM is expected to make a last minute dash to Brussels as soon as the DUP sign off on a fresh plan to move the Brexit talks on to the next phase.
The DUP torpedoed attempts to move the talks on amid fears a guarantee to keep regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic would move customs controls to the border with the rest of the UK a d risk breaking up the union.


Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told reporters in Brussels today: 'So far no white smoke.
'We stand ready to receive prime minister May at any moment in time when they are ready,'   
DUP sources this morning told The Sun: 'We're going to slow it all down. This is a battle of who blinks first — and we've cut off our eyelids.'
Downing Street today said talks continued. The PM's spokesman told reporters: 'We think we're close to an agreement but there's more work to be done.'
The pressure for May is on, with one EU official telling The Telegraph: 'Mr Juncker wants to support Mrs May to avoid the collapse of her government.  
Brexit trade talks might not start until the Spring unless a divorce deal is done in the coming days.
The EU summit taking place next Thursday and Friday is the last opportunity this year to get approval for the second phase of negotiations.
Unless leaders agree this time around that 'sufficient progress' has been made, it might have to wait until the next gathering in several months.
The EU has also been insisting that a deal must be thrashed out several days before the summit so it can be put out for 'consultation'.
But in reality it is likely the arrangement over the Irish border - thought to be the biggest outstanding issue - could be settled by leaders on the night if it came to a crunch.
EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has made clear he is prepared to meet Mrs May at any point over the next week to try to clear the first phase. 
'He is prepared to meet her at any time, including on days next week in the run up to the European summit.' 
Another source said there was 'wiggle-room' to change the controversial wording in the agreement concerning the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, that caused talks to fail on Monday.
The source said: 'It's a highly difficult situation for Theresa May and he [Juncker] wants to help her.
'It's important that he supports her in everything she does.'  


Despite Mr Juncker's apparent flexibility, EU negotiator Michel Barnier has insisted the deal must be done by Friday if trade talks are to be started at the leaders summit in seven days. 
May has also been threatened by her own MPs, some of whom have stressed she could be thrown out of Downing Street if she fails to secure a deal. 
One Tory MP said it could be 'a matter of weeks' if the situation does not improve.
Another MP told the Sun the Prime Minister had the 'smell of death' around her amid the crisis in the Brexit talks.  
Possible successors include David Davis, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove - all three of whom are said to be prepared to take charge if others pushed May out. 
MPs linked to Brexit Secretary Mr Davis denied to MailOnline they were involved in an active plot against the Prime Minister today. 





In other developments, twenty MPs have written to May to attack pro-Brexit colleagues for being 'highly irresponsible' in risking a no-deal outcome for Britain.
Tory Anna Soubry and Labour's Chuka Umunna have joined forced to table a new amendment to flagship Brexit laws that would allow Parliament to ask for an extension to Article 50. 
The Irish prime minister yesterday said May wanted to 'come back to us with some text tonight or tomorrow'. 
He added: 'I expressed my willingness to consider that because I want us to move to phase two if that is possible next week.' 

May angrily denied caving into Brussels demands as she scrambles to get the EU divorce plans back on track. 
But the DUP, who humiliatingly torpedoed the proposals just before Mrs May was due to seal them on Monday, have demanded more assurances they will not trigger the break-up of the UK. 
Mr Varadkar previously warned he was ready to delay a decision on launching trade talks to beyond Christmas - even though it could raise the prospect of Britain leaving with 'no deal'.
Brexiteer Bernard Jenkin today accused the European Commission of being 'intransigent' over refusing to discuss trade until divorce issues were dealt with, and said Brussels had been using the Republic of Ireland as a 'proxy' in order to prevent the creation of an open frontier on the EU's border.
Mr Jenkin told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I don't think we should walk away, but I do think we should take a firm line, as the Prime Minister did earlier this week.
'We shouldn't be allowing ourselves to be bullied into promising more and more money or giving up the goal of regulatory autonomy or being dragged into a long period of uncertainty without clarity on what we are getting at the end of it.'
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, one of the most prominent Brexiteers in the Cabinet, said: 'I remain absolutely optimistic that we will reach a successful point, we will move on to the trade talks, because ultimately it is in everybody's interests for that to happen.'
Businesses in the Republic of Ireland would suffer if no agreement was reached on the border, he warned.
'If you are running a business in the Republic of Ireland and shipping foods to the EU, the relationship with the UK is pretty fundamentally important, because your goods need to go through the UK,' he said.
In a combative performance at PMQs, Mrs May defended her position, insisting no terms would be finalised until an overall deal was struck with the EU next year, and said the sides were 'close' to making progress on the first phase of negotiations.                  
Brexit could have as big an impact on the British economy as the 2008 credit crunch, David Davis warned today.
The Brexit Secretary said quitting the Brussels club will amount to a 'paradigm change' comparable with the biggest financial slump since the Depression of the 1930s.
He made the extraordinary comment as he was called before the Brexit select committee where he admitted no Brexit impact assessments have been carried out by Whitehall.
He said an assessment of the potential impact of Brexit on different sectors of the UK economy would not necessarily be 'informative' as economic models 'have all proven wrong' in the past.
Mr Davis told the committee: 'You don't need to do a formal impact assessment to understand that if there is a regulatory hurdle between your producers and a market, there will be an impact.' 
The defence came after Mrs May was rebuked for playing a 'risky game' by keeping her top team and the DUP in the dark over plans for a 'soft Brexit' deal with Brussels.  
Mrs May was repeatedly urged to toughen up her stance by MPs in the Commons.
Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said her Brexit red lines needed a 'new coat of paint', while hardline Eurosceptic Peter Bone offered to accompany her to Brussels to 'sort out' the Eurocrats. 
Mrs May said: 'We're leaving the EU, we're leaving the single market and the customs union but we will do what is right in the interests of the whole United Kingdom and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.' 

There is growing alarm on the Tory benches after David Davis confirmed some sectors of the UK economy could have to align with the EU after Brexit to resolve the Irish border issue.
Former leader Iain Duncan Smith – who has acted as a bridge between No 10 and Eurosceptic MPs until now – described the proposal as 'intolerable' and suggested it was time to walk away from the talks.
'We are beginning to stare at the edge of what is a price that we simply cannot afford to pay,' he said. 

DUP MP Jim Shannon challenged Mrs May over the situation at PMQs this afternoon.
'Can you give a specific commitment that nothing will be done that creates any barrier constitutionally, politically, economically, or regulatory between NI and the rest of the UK?' he asked.
She replied: 'The simple answer is yes. He will know as other members will that there are already areas where there are specific arrangements between NI and Republic of Ireland, for example specific energy markets...
'We want to make sure there is no hard border, that is what we're working for, we are also working to protect the constitutional integrity of the UK and the internal market of the UK and I think we share those aims.'
Mr Bone, a leading Brexiteer, drew gales of laughter in the chamber by offering to act as the PM's enforcer.
'If we have a problem would it help if I came over to Brussels with you to sort them out?' he said.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who yesterday congratulated the DUP on scuppering the proposed divorce deal, said: 'Will she apply a new coat of paint to her red lines... they are looking a bit pink.' 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn labelled the Government's Brexit approach a 'shambles'. But Mrs May shot back that Labour was in chaos over whether it wanted to stay in the European single market or not.
'The only hard border around is right down the middle of the Labour Party,' she said.  

Irish Taoiseach Mr Varadkar risked fuelling the row by arguing that the DUP did not represent everybody in Northern Ireland.
'We need to bear in mind that there are a lot of different voices in Northern Ireland; we need to listen to them all, and all parties in Northern Ireland, not just one,' he told the Dail parliament in Dublin yesterday.
He said his Government wanted to begin phase two of the UK-EU talks to address post-Brexit trade and acknowledged it was in the Republic's own interest. 
'We want to move to phase two but if it is not possible to move to phase two next week then we can pick it up in the new year,' he said. 
He added that he stood by the text of a draft deal 'agreed' on Monday.  In a phone call with Mrs May later, Mr Varadkar 'reiterated the firm Irish position', according to a spokesman.

Government sources insisted that the proposal on the Irish border was only a 'backstop' designed to open the door to trade talks this month.


Analysis by Jack Doyle 
Northern Ireland to Ireland
It might be assumed that trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic formed a very significant part of the province's economy.
But official data shows its economic relationship with the rest of the UK is much more significant. 
Around two thirds of Northern Ireland's turnover involves sales within the province. 
Exports to Great Britain make up 21 per cent, while those to the Republic are just five per cent and to the rest of the EU just three per cent.
According to the Legatum Institute think tank, trade patterns from before the UK joined the EU in 1973 have proved 'remarkably resilient'.
DUP MP Sammy Wilson has said: 'Our main market is not the Irish Republic. It is not even the whole of the EU. Our main market is the UK, and the integrity of the single UK market is far more important to us, to people who work in Northern Ireland, than having some kind of regulatory convergence or continuance with the rest of Europe.'
Ireland to Great Britain
By contrast to the relatively small scale of its trade with Northern Ireland, the Republic has very significant trade links with Great Britain, its second biggest trading partner. More than 12 per cent of Irish exports go to Great Britain, and 18 per cent of services (compared to 1.6 per cent to Northern Ireland).
It also imports a huge amount from Great Britain, which accounts for 25 per cent of its imports. But because of the size of the two economies, the Republic has a lot more to lose in relative terms from the talks collapsing and no agreement being made on trade.
Estimates of the damage to Irish GDP from a collapse in talks suggest it could fall by up to 3 per cent. Henry Newman, of the Open Europe think tank, warns the Irish have the most to lose of any EU state from no trade deal, and are 'playing with fire'.
Boris Johnson declared war on the judiciary last night following a shock Supreme Court ruling that he broke the law.
The UK's highest court annulled his decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks, branding it 'unlawful, void and of no effect'.
The judgment prompted fury in No 10, with one senior ally of the Prime Minister saying: 'The effect of this is to pose the question, who runs this country? Are the courts saying they want to run the country now? It will be very interesting to see what the public makes of that.'
Mr Johnson was forced to telephone the Queen to discuss the unanimous ruling that his advice to her to prorogue Parliament had been illegal.
Sources refused to say whether he had apologised. 
During a stormy Cabinet conference call yesterday, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg accused judges of mounting a 'constitutional coup'. 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the court had overturned decades of precedent.
Another No 10 source said: 'We think the Supreme Court is wrong and has made a serious mistake in extending its reach to these political matters.'
Donald Trump said that Boris Johnson is 'not going anywhere' as the two leaders met in New York today, as the Prime Minister faced growing calls to quit over his Brexit Supreme Court humiliation.
The US president made the comments as they sat down for face-to-face talks likely to focus on post-Brexit trade as well as Iran and other issues.
He branded the defeat in London this morning 'just another day in the office' for the beleaguered Prime Minister, who is being urged to step down after misleading the Queen into proroguing Parliament. 
Mr Trump has earlier used an address at the UN general assembly to say he was looking forward to signing an 'exceptional' trade deal with the UK once it was out of the European Union.
Mr Johnson appeared to rule out resigning as they were grilled by reporters at the UN headquarters. 
After the PM was questioned about resigning, Mr Trump said: 'I'll tell you, I know him well, he's not going anywhere.'
Mr Johnson added: 'No, no, no.'   
Mr Trump rebuked the reporter who asked whether the PM would resign, saying: 'That was a very nasty question from a great American reporter.'
Mr Johnson added: 'I think he was asking a question, to be fair, that a lot of British reporters would've asked.' 
The BBC source added: 'Further, the Supreme Court has made it clear that its reasons are connected to the parliamentary disputes over, and timetable for, leaving the European Union. We think this is a further serious mistake.'
Mr Johnson accused the court of siding with Remain campaigners to 'frustrate Brexit', although he was careful to say that he 'respected' the court's judgment.
But Amber Rudd, who quit the Cabinet over Mr Johnson's hardline approach to Brexit, said it was irresponsible for the Government to claim the ruling was 'all about people trying to frustrate Brexit' when the Government's defence was that 'prorogation had nothing to do with Brexit'.
The backlash led Justice Secretary Robert Buckland to issue a warning to the Cabinet against questioning the impartiality of the judiciary.
Parliament will now be recalled today, with Mr Johnson forced to cut short his visit to the UN general assembly in New York where he was holding talks with world leaders.  
The only mention he made to Brexit during his final speech before leaving New York was a comparison to the myth of Prometheus.
Referring to how the Titan's liver was pecked out by an eagle, Mr Johnson said: 'And this went on forever... A bit like the experience of Brexit in the UK, if some of our Parliamentarians had their way.' 
Ministers were last night weighing up the possibility of using the recall to make another bid to force an election.
Mr Johnson said that, with Parliament gridlocked, an election was now 'the obvious thing to do'. Ministers however fear they do not have the numbers to win a Commons vote on the issue.
Pro-Remain MPs last night indicated they would exploit the judgment by forcing a series of votes designed to embarrass the Government. The row came as:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an astonishing speech to world leaders at the UN this morning, talking up the values of technological advances but warning against misuse of advances to make 'pink-eyed Terminators' and 'terrifying limbless chickens'. 
Many didn't know what to expect after the court ruling came down hours before Johnson's inaugural UN General Assembly speech as prime minister.
But in the notably energetic speech, which ended after 10pm local time as more than 12 hours of UN addresses were inching to their end, Johnson said he was optimistic about technology's future - if humanity finds 'the right balance between freedom and control'.
The first potential future that Johnson mapped out was decidedly dystopian - one where technology permeates every corner of human life, and not in a good way. 
'You may keep secrets from your friends, from your parents, your children, your doctor - even your personal trainer - but it takes real effort to conceal your thoughts from Google,' he said. 'And if that is true today, in future there may be nowhere to hide.' 
But if things are done right, the prime minister said, a different story could unfold for all of us. 
With the right approach - one of 'freedom, openness and pluralism' - and making sure that such voices are heard loudly 'in the standards bodies that write the rules,' humanity can deliver itself to a brighter technological future, he said. 
Yesterday's court ruling was the final blow to Mr Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament for five weeks.
In a defiant response, the Prime Minister brushed aside opposition calls to resign and appeared to suggest the court had political motives.
Speaking in New York he said it was 'perfectly normal' for a government to prorogue Parliament in order to hold a Queen's speech, which he had planned to stage on October 14.
He added: 'Let's be in no doubt, there are a lot of people who want to frustrate Brexit. There are a lot of people who want to stop this country coming out of the EU.' The Prime Minister said he had the 'highest respect' for the judiciary, but added: 'I strongly disagree with this judgment.'
The Daily Telegraph reported this morning that Mr Johnson could try to force a General Election with a Commons vote as early as this week. 
Pro-Remain MPs have accused the PM of trying to thwart their attempts to block a No-Deal Brexit and limit scrutiny of his Brexit plans.
Supreme Court president Baroness Hale said that with the prorogation eating up five of the eight weeks of possible parliamentary time before Britain left the EU, 'the effect on the fundamentals of democracy was extreme'.
She added: 'No justification for taking action with such an extreme effect has been put before the court.'
Delivering the unanimous verdict of 11 of the UK's most senior judges, she said: 'The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions.'
Next month’s Queen’s speech could be cancelled because of the Government’s Supreme Court defeat.
Downing Street sources suggested last night that a second attempt to suspend Parliament was not a certainty after the annulling of the first by judges.
In his initial response to the ruling, Boris Johnson indicated he wanted to press ahead with a Queen’s speech on October 14 in order to set out his legislative agenda.
Speaking at a business reception in New York, the Prime Minister said: ‘I do think there’s a good case for getting on with a Queen’s speech anyway and we will do that.
‘We have a Parliament that is unable to be prorogued, doesn’t want to have an election and I think it is time we took things forward.’
Mr Johnson also insisted that the Supreme Court had not ruled out another prorogation to allow a Queen’s speech, saying: ‘I don’t think the justices remotely excluded the possibility of having a Queen’s speech.’ However, Government sources last night said a ‘final decision’ on whether to attempt to prorogue Parliament a second time had not been taken.
Asked about the PM’s comment, a source said: ‘He was talking about his preference – it was not a statement of intent.’
In a letter to MPs earlier this month Mr Johnson said a new Queen’s speech was needed to bring an end to the longest parliamentary session in more than 400 years.
The PM said parliamentary time had been dominated by pieces of legislation which, ‘while worthy in their own right, have at times seemed more like filling time in both the Commons and the Lords, while key Brexit legislation is held back’.
He said he wanted to bring forward a ‘bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda for the renewal of our country after Brexit’, including measures on health, tackling violent crime and cutting the cost of living.
But, with Labour blocking an election and the Government unable to control business in Parliament, aides now appear to be having second thoughts about pressing ahead with a new Queen’s speech this side of Britain’s scheduled exit from the EU on October 31.
Ministers also fear that, with no majority and a febrile atmosphere in Westminster, any Queen’s speech put forward by Mr Johnson could be voted down. Sources acknowledged that the judges’ ruling made it clear the courts would not accept prorogation lasting more than a few days.
Jacob Rees-Mogg accuses the Supreme Court of a 'constitutional coup' over its stunning ruling
The Cabinet was left stunned last night after Britain’s top court ruled that proroguing Parliament was unlawful.
In an historic ruling, the Supreme Court declared that the Prime Minister was wrong to suspend the current Westminster session.
Last night, in a Cabinet conference call, Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Supreme Court judges of launching a ‘constitutional coup’ and ‘the most extraordinary overthrowing of the constitution’.
He also accused the judges of making errors, saying ‘some elements of the judgment are factually inaccurate’.
There is fury at the highest levels of government over the judgment. On the call, other senior ministers also raised questions about the ruling. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, the government’s chief law officer, suggested that the ruling overturned decades of precedent. He told the phone call that he didn’t believe ‘any prorogation over the past 50-100 years would have survived today’s judgment.’
Mr Rees-Mogg is expected to make a statement to MPs on the ruling today. He was one of three Cabinet ministers who travelled to Balmoral to advise the Queen to prorogue.
During last night’s conference call, Chancellor Sajid Javid suggested to the Prime Minister that he should prorogue again in the coming days to ensure he can secure a Queen’s Speech, one source said.
The ruling, delivered just after 10.30 yesterday, said Mr Johnson’s advice to the Queen to suspend Parliament for five weeks was ‘unlawful’. In their unanimous judgement, 11 justices said it was ‘impossible for us to conclude’ that ‘there was any reason – let alone a good reason’ to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament.’ They found that the Prime Minister’s move was therefore ‘void and of no effect’.
There were gasps in the wood-panelled courtroom as the decision was announced.
Justice Lady Hale, Supreme Court President, said the ‘effect [of the prorogation] upon the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme’. The 74-year-old judge said that ‘no justification for taking action with such an extreme effect has been put before the court’. Lady Hale made clear the importance to the ruling of the Brexit deadline on October 31. She said the ‘quite exceptional circumstances’ of Brexit meant Mr Johnson’s decision had an ‘extreme’ effect on the ‘fundamentals of our democracy’.
Lady Hale concluded: ‘The decision was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions.’
Remain campaigner Gina Miller, who took the case to the Supreme Court after losing a High Court challenge, looked shocked before hugging and kissing her barrister Lord Pannick.
Yesterday’s judgement was a final ruling on two separate cases, brought in England and in Scotland, against the five-week suspension of Parliament. In those cases, judges had made opposing rulings, with Scotland’s highest court saying that the Prime Minister effectively misled the Queen, while the High Court in London ruled the move was ‘purely political’ and not a matter for the courts.
Last night one legal expert said the Supreme Court judges had ‘stepped outside their proper role of applying the law’ and ‘strayed too far into politics’, although others welcomed the judgment.
Sir Stephen Laws QC, an ex-chief legal adviser to the Government, said it was ‘disappointing’ the courts were ‘involving themselves in the relationship between Parliament and Government’.
Sir Stephen said he was surprised and disappointed by the ruling. ‘Like everybody I’m shocked, I didn’t predict this,’ he told Sky News. But Lord Mark Saville, who led the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, said the role of the court was unlikely to change. ‘I do not think we are moving towards a US Supreme Court,’ he told the BBC.
The judgment marks a seismic shift in power from the executive to the judiciary. Judges used rulings dating back to 1611 to prove that the Government ‘hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him’.
The judgement found that the suspension prevented parliament from carrying out its constitutional role. ‘The prorogation was void and of no effect. Parliament has not been prorogued. This is the unanimous judgment of all 11 Justices.’ 
Following the Supreme Court ruling today, Speaker John Bercow delivered a statement in which he said the House of Commons will resume tomorrow morning at 11.30am. 
This is what may happen next in the coming days with anti-Brexit factions plotting how to derail the Prime Minister's plan to leave the EU on October 31.
There are growing rumours that Labour may shy away from calling a no confidence vote with critics calling them 'bottlers'.
Instead Mr Corbyn's may try to force the PM to release the formal advice given to Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to ascertain if he warned Mr Johnson not to do it.
Some Tories including Rory Stewart are said to be pushing Boris to put Theresa May's deal back to Parliament. 
Will Boris Johnson resign?
The Supreme Court's ruling is highly embarrassing for Mr Johnson and puts the PM in completely uncharted territory.
The fact that he was found to have acted unlawfully represents a hammer blow to his premiership and has unsurprisingly prompted calls for him to quit. 
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, pounced immediately after the ruling was read out as he said the PM must now 'consider his position'.
Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scottish First Minister, said a premier with 'any honour would tender his resignation'. 
She said that if Mr Johnson will not do the 'decent and honourable thing' then MPs should try to force him out. 
But Mr Johnson responded to the ruling by insisting he was right and the judges had got their decision wrong. 
He had previously said that he had no intention of resigning if the court ruled against him and based on his hardline comments today that position has not changed.
Will the PM now face a vote of no confidence?  
The possibility of an imminent confidence vote is receding.  
The responsibility for seeking a vote rests with Mr Corbyn as the leader of the opposition, and he has said it will not happen until after the 'threat of No Deal is taken off the table'.  
Opposition leaders rejected Mr Johnson's demands for an early election earlier this month because they did not want to go to the country before a No Deal Brexit has been ruled out. 
But an anti-No Deal law is now on the statute book while rules relating to the holding of general elections dictate that there must be a 25 day campaign period. 
That means any election caused by toppling Mr Johnson would not take place until after October 31 - and after the PM has been required by law to ask the EU for a Brexit delay should no agreement have been struck.  
It is important to remember that the UK must always have a prime minister: Even if Mr Johnson lost a vote of no confidence and resigned he would be expected to stay in post until a replacement has been chosen or elected.
Could a vote of no confidence succeed? 
Any vote would likely be tight. Mr Johnson would expect to count on the support of the overwhelming majority of Tory MPs although today's Supreme Court ruling could make some think long and hard about backing the PM. 
Mr Johnson would also likely be backed by a number of Labour Brexit-backing MPs and the DUP.  
On the other side, if Mr Corbyn was to launch a push to get rid of Mr Johnson he would likely only do so if he believed all the other opposition parties were on board. 
Lib Dem sources have suggested they could now back a vote of no confidence while the SNP would leap at any opportunity to boot out Mr Johnson. 
The parliamentary arithmetic means that the result could ultimately come down to how a group of 21 Tory rebels who were stripped of the whip by the PM after backing the anti-No Deal law would vote. 
If they decided to vote with the opposition Mr Johnson would be in big trouble. 
What happens if Mr Johnson loses a vote of no confidence?   
Convention dictates that he should resign as PM. But Downing Street has suggested before that even if he did lose a confidence vote he would not walk away and would instead try to dissolve Parliament and force an election. 
That really would be uncharted territory.  If he lost and the government falls as it is supposed to there would then be a 14 day period in which MPs could try to form another administration. 
That could be the point at which the Remain alliance tries to put together a cross-party unity government with one task: To delay Brexit beyond October 31 in order to avoid a No Deal split. 
What does the Supreme Court ruling mean for Brexit?
It does nothing to change the fact that the UK is still due to leave the EU on October 31. 
But crucially it gets Remainer MPs back in the game. When Parliament was suspended MPs and peers were sidelined from the Brexit process. 
With Parliament sitting again they will be able to challenge the government and, should they believe it is necessary, try to seize control of proceedings as they did when they passed anti-No Deal legislation. 
Could Boris Johnson try to prorogue Parliament again?
Yes. The PM hinted that he could do so when he responded to the Supreme Court ruling. 
When the PM first suspended Parliament he did so with the argument that he needed time to prepare a Queen's Speech in which his new government would set out its domestic legislative plans. 
That speech had been scheduled to take place on October 14 but today's ruling puts that date in doubt.
Mr Johnson today said the government will likely try again to bring forward a Queen's Speech but it was not immediately clear whether the PM will try to stick to the current October 14 date.  
Mr Johnson said the Supreme Court ruling did not 'exclude the possibility of having a Queen's Speech' in the near future.
Lady Hale had said during her ruling this morning that a 'normal period necessary to prepare for the Queen's Speech is four to six days'.  That suggests Mr Johnson could try to prorogue Parliament in the first week of October in order to keep to his previous timetable.
Convention dictates that Parliament must be prorogued - and the parliamentary session formally brought to a close - before a Queen's Speech can take place to kick off a new session. 
What about the Conservative Party conference? 
The Tories are due to meet in Manchester next week but Mr Bercow's decision to resume Parliament throws a grenade into their plans. 
The Conservatives have said they will go ahead as planned with the four day event from Sunday until Wednesday. 
It is thought ministers will try to get Parliament's approval tomorrow for a short conference recess to allow the get together to go ahead. But the chances of MPs voting to go back to recess immediately after Parliament's doors have been reopened appear slim. 
If the Commons rejects the proposed recess then the Tories will almost certainly have to amend their plans: The leader's speech is due to take place on Wednesday at the same time as PMQs and Mr Johnson cannot be in two places at once. 
What has the EU made of all of this?
The European Commission declined to comment today on what it described as the 'internal constitutional matters' of the UK.
But Brussels will be closely monitoring developments in London as Westminster tries to work out what happens next.    
The last EU summit before Brexit is due to take place on October 17 and Brussels is still waiting for the UK to make a formal offer on how to break the current impasse. The bloc will be waiting to see whether today's chaos focuses minds or if it leads to further meltdown.   

This is the full judgement summary delivered by Lady Hale, president of the Supreme Court, with the backing of 10 other judges; Lord Reed, Lord Kerr, Lord Wilson, Lord Carnwath, Lord Hodge, Lady Black, Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lady Arden, Lord Kitchin, Lord Sales.
Lady Hale said: 'We have before us two appeals, one from the High Court of England and Wales and one from the Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland. It is important, once again, to emphasise that these cases are not about when and on what terms the United Kingdom is to leave the European Union. They are only about whether the advice given by the Prime Minister to Her Majesty the Queen on 27th or 28th August, that Parliament should be prorogued from a date between 9th and 12th September until 14th October, was lawful and the legal consequences if it was not. The question arises in circumstances which have never arisen before and are unlikely to arise again. It is a 'one-off'.
'Briefly, the Scottish case was brought by a cross party group of 75 members of Parliament and a QC on 30th July because of their concern that Parliament might be prorogued to avoid further debate in the lead up to exit day on 31st October. On 15th August, Nikki da Costa, Director of Legislative Affairs at No 10, sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister, copied to seven people, civil servants and special advisers, recommending that his Parliamentary Private Secretary approach the Palace with a request for prorogation to begin within 9th to 12th September and for a Queen's Speech on 14th October. The Prime Minister ticked 'yes' to that recommendation.
'On 27th or 28th August, in a telephone call, he formally advised Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament between those dates. On 28th August, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Privy Council, Mr Mark Harper, chief whip, and Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, Leader of the House of Lords, attended a meeting of the Privy Council held by the Queen at Balmoral Castle. An Order in Council was made that Parliament be prorogued between those dates and that the Lord Chancellor prepare and issue a commission for proroguing Parliament accordingly. A Cabinet meeting was held by conference call shortly after that in order to bring the rest of the Cabinet 'up to speed' on the decisions which had been taken. That same day, the decision was made public and the Prime Minister sent a letter to all Members of Parliament explaining it. As soon as the decision was announced, Mrs Miller began the English proceedings challenging its lawfulness. 
'Parliament returned from the summer recess on 3rd September. The House of Commons voted to decide for themselves what business they would transact. The next day what became the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 2) Act passed all its stages in the Commons. It passed all its stages in the House of Lords on 6th September and received royal assent on 9th September. The object of that Act is to prevent the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a withdrawal agreement on 31st October.
'On 11th September, the High Court of England and Wales delivered judgment dismissing Mrs Miller's claim on the ground that the issue was not justiciable in a court of law. That same day, the Inner House of the Court of Session in Scotland announced its decision that the issue was justiciable, that it was motivated by the improper purpose of stymying Parliamentary scrutiny of the Government, and that it, and any prorogation which followed it, were unlawful and thus void and of no effect.
'Mrs Miller's appeal against the English decision and the Advocate General's appeal against the Scottish decision were heard by this court from 17th to 19th September. Because of the importance of the case, we convened a panel of 11 Justices, the maximum number of serving Justices who are permitted to sit. This judgment is the unanimous judgment of all 11 Justices.
'The first question is whether the lawfulness of the Prime Minister's advice to Her Majesty is justiciable. This Court holds that it is. The courts have exercised a supervisory jurisdiction over the lawfulness of acts of the Government for centuries. As long ago as 1611, the court held that 'the King [who was then the government] hath no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows him'. However, in considering prerogative powers, it is necessary to distinguish between two different questions. The first is whether a prerogative power exists and if so its extent. The second is whether the exercise of that power, within its limits, is open to legal challenge. This second question may depend upon what the power is all about: some powers are not amenable to judicial review while others are. However, there is no doubt that the courts have jurisdiction to decide upon the existence and limits of a prerogative power. All the parties to this case accept that. This Court has concluded that this case is about the limits of the power to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament.
'The second question, therefore, is what are the limits to that power? Two fundamental principles of our Constitution are relevant to deciding that question. The first is Parliamentary sovereignty - that Parliament can make laws which everyone must obey: this would be undermined if the executive could, through the use of the prerogative, prevent Parliament from exercising its power to make laws for as long as it pleased. The second fundamental principle is Parliamentary accountability: in the words of Lord Bingham, senior Law Lord, 'the conduct of government by a Prime Minister and Cabinet collectively responsible and accountable to Parliament lies at the heart of Westminster democracy'. The power to prorogue is limited by the constitutional principles with which it would otherwise conflict.
'For present purposes, the relevant limit on the power to prorogue is this: that a decision to prorogue (or advise the monarch to prorogue) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In judging any justification which might be put forward, the court must of course be sensitive to the responsibilities and experience of the Prime Minister and proceed with appropriate caution.
'If the prorogation does have that effect, without reasonable justification, there is no need for the court to consider whether the Prime Minister's motive or purpose was unlawful. 
'The third question, therefore, is whether this prorogation did have the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification. This was not a normal prorogation in the run-up to a Queen's Speech. It prevented Parliament from carrying out its constitutional role for five out of the possible eight weeks between the end of the summer recess and exit day on 31st October. Proroguing Parliament is quite different from Parliament going into recess. While Parliament is prorogued, neither House can meet, debate or pass legislation. Neither House can debate Government policy. Nor may members ask written or oral questions of Ministers or meet and take evidence in committees. In general, Bills which have not yet completed all their stages are lost and will have to start again from scratch after the Queen's Speech. During a recess, on the other hand, the House does not sit but Parliamentary business can otherwise continue as usual. This prolonged suspension of Parliamentary democracy took place in quite exceptional circumstances: the fundamental change which was due to take place in the Constitution of the United Kingdom on 31st October. Parliament, and in particular the House of Commons as the elected representatives of the people, has a right to a voice in how that change comes about. The effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme.
'No justification for taking action with such an extreme effect has been put before the court. The only evidence of why it was taken is the memorandum from Nikki da Costa of 15th August. This explains why holding the Queen's Speech to open a new session of Parliament on 14th October would be desirable. It does not explain why it was necessary to bring Parliamentary business to a halt for five weeks before that, when the normal period necessary to prepare for the Queen's Speech is four to six days. It does not discuss the difference between prorogation and recess. It does not discuss the impact of prorogation on the special procedures for scrutinising the delegated legislation necessary to achieve an orderly withdrawal from the European Union, with or without a withdrawal agreement, on 31st October. It does not discuss what Parliamentary time would be needed to secure Parliamentary approval for any new withdrawal agreement, as required by section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
'The Court is bound to conclude, therefore, that the decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.
'The next and final question, therefore, is what the legal effect of that finding is and therefore what remedies the Court should grant. The Court can certainly declare that the advice was unlawful. The Inner House went further and declared that any prorogation resulting from it was null and of no effect. The Government argues that the Inner House could not do that because the prorogation was a 'proceeding in Parliament' which, under the Bill of Rights of 1688 cannot be impugned or questioned in any court. But it is quite clear that the prorogation is not a proceeding in Parliament. It takes place in the House of Lords chamber in the presence of members of both Houses, but it is not their decision. It is something which has been imposed upon them from outside. It is not something on which members can speak or vote. It is not the core or essential business of Parliament which the Bill of Rights protects. Quite the reverse: it brings that core or essential business to an end.
'This Court has already concluded that the Prime Minister's advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect. This means that the Order in Council to which it led was also unlawful, void and of no effect and should be quashed. This means that when the Royal Commissioners walked into the House of Lords it was as if they walked in with a blank sheet of paper. The prorogation was also void and of no effect. Parliament has not been prorogued. This is the unanimous judgment of all 11 Justices. 
'It is for Parliament, and in particular the Speaker and the Lord Speaker to decide what to do next. Unless there is some Parliamentary rule of which we are unaware, they can take immediate steps to enable each House to meet as soon as possible. It is not clear to us that any step is needed from the Prime Minister, but if it is, the court is pleased that his counsel have told the court that he will take all necessary steps to comply with the terms of any declaration made by this court.
'It follows that the Advocate General's appeal in the case of Cherry is dismissed and Mrs Miller's appeal is allowed. The same declarations and orders should be made in each case.'
MPs have shared photographs of themselves sitting in the House of Commons eagerly waiting for the return of Parliament after today's Supreme Court ruling.
Tory backbencher Tom Tugenhadt and the Lib Dem's Luciana Berger were among those to post selfies from inside the chamber demanding MPs return to action. 
Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas and Labour's Barry Sheerman shared images of themselves sat in parliament with 'not silenced' banners.
Labour MP Stephen Doughty shared a photograph of himself in the back of a cab along with the caption: 'I'm on my way back to Parliament right now.'
Meanwhile, fellow Labour member Rupa Huq wrote: 'I'm at desk in my office in Parliament now, ready for proroguing the prorogation.
'Chamber not seen any action for a while, time to get back to scrutinising the government.'
It comes after Boris Johnson was humiliated in the Supreme Court today as judges ruled unanimously he illegally prorogued Parliament to 'frustrate' debate on Brexit.
Shortly after, Commons Speaker John Bercow revealed that the House of Commons was preparing to resume tomorrow at 11.30am. 
Mr Bercow said: 'I welcome the Supreme Court's judgement that the prorogation of Parliament was unlawful.
'The judges have rejected the Government's claim that closing down Parliament for five weeks was merely standard practice to allow for a new Queen's Speech.
'In reaching their conclusion, they have vindicated the right and duty of Parliament to meet at this crucial time to scrutinise the executive and hold Ministers to account.
'As the embodiment of our Parliamentary democracy, the House of Commons must convene without delay.
'To this end, I will now consult the party leaders as a matter of urgency.'
Mr Johnson suspended Parliament with the argument that he needed time to prepare a Queen's Speech which had been due to take place on October 14.
Today's ruling effectively destroys that timetable and puts the government back to square one.
Ministers will now have to decide how to proceed, with rumours that Mr Johnson could try to prorogue Parliament again.
Such a move would be incredibly controversial. Mr Johnson had ruled out resigning in the event of the court ruling prorogation was unlawful.
But he will now face intense pressure to consider his position.
The UK remains on course to leave the EU on October 31 but today's decision means the run up to Halloween will be volatile and fraught with difficulty.
What did the Supreme Court judges rule?
In a unanimous judgment, the 11 justices said Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks was unlawful because it had the effect of stopping MPs doing their job. The PM could not use this ancient power if it had the effect of ‘frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions’.
Was Brexit relevant?
Yes. The court made clear the suspension took place in ‘quite exceptional circumstances’ of the ‘fundamental constitutional change’ due to take place on October 31. The court said, the PM’s decision had an ‘extreme’ effect on the ‘fundamentals of our democracy’.
Is it the role of judges to decide?
Before they made their decision, the court first ruled that the court had the power to rule in the case – that the decision to prorogue Parliament was ‘justiciable’. They pointed to a court ruling from 1611 that the King ‘hath no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows him’. The High Court of England and Wales ruled the exact opposite earlier this month.
What did the court say about the Queen?
In an apparent bid to keep the monarch away from the constitutional warfare, they did not say Mr Johnson misled or lied to the Queen, who formally makes the decision to prorogue on the advice of her ministers. But they said the PM’s advice to Her Majesty was ‘unlawful, void and of no effect’.
What does it mean for Parliament?
The court ruled that, because it was unlawful, in effect the prorogation did not happen. Lady Justice Hale said the royal commissioners going through the prorogation ceremony were holding a ‘blank sheet of paper’. Speaker John Bercow was invited to decide the next step. MPs will return to the Commons this morning, and the PM is flying back early from New York.
What does it mean for Boris Johnson?
Predictably, opposition leaders wasted no time in calling for him to quit. But the ruling may not damage Mr Johnson’s support among frustrated Leave voters. The PM said he respected the verdict but ‘strongly disagreed’ with the court’s judgment.
What happens next?
Ministers are expected to propose a short recess from later this week to allow for Tory Party conference next week.
If MPs refuse, Mr Johnson could prorogue again. He may also want to do that anyway to allow for a new Queen’s Speech, to announce new legislation.
Will the PM face a confidence vote?
Mr Corbyn yesterday demanded both an election and that Mr Johnson resign but he is refusing to call a confidence vote. He says he wants to wait until after October 31 and a Brexit extension. Labour will, however, try to force the Government to publish its legal advice on prorogation. In the meantime, Mr Johnson will continue to try to get a deal.
Is that the end of the matter?
In terms of this case, yes. But brace yourself: the Benn Act hurriedly passed by MPs requires Mr Johnson, if he has not got a deal through Parliament by the end of October, to delay Brexit for three months. If he refuses, he will face yet another Supreme Court challenge.
Nicola Sturgeon has lashed out at Theresa May for 'driving Scotland over a hard Brexit cliff' after a stormy meeting in Downing Street.
The First Minister voiced 'frustration' after 'feisty' showdown talks with the Prime Minister, accusing her of having no vision for the UK's future outside the EU.
She told Mrs May to stop 'closing the door' on proposals for trade deals, and reiterated her determination to hold a second independence referendum if there were no concessions on the approach to leaving the EU.
But the premier hit back by demanding that the devolved administrations 'play their part' in forging a Brexit package for the whole UK.
The angry comments came moments after end of discussions between the PM, Mrs Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones and Arlene Foster - the First Ministers of Wales and Northern Ireland respectively - in London.
Scroll down for video  
Mrs May has promised to give the leaders a 'hotline' into Brexit negotiations, with regular meetings with David Davis.
But Downing Street dismissed suggestions from Ms Sturgeon that Scotland could stay in the single market, even if the rest of the UK leaves.
Speaking to reporters outside No10, Mrs Sturgeon denied 'nonsense' claims that seeking a separate deal would undermine the UK's wider strategy.
'I'm not seeking to undermine anyone. I don't know what the UK's negotiating position is, so there's nothing there that I can see to undermine,' she said. 
'I'm the First Minister of Scotland, 62 per cent voted to remain.
'I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't out there talking to people and doing my best to protect Scotland's interests.
'I can't undermine something that doesn't exist, and at the moment it doesn't seem to me like there is a UK negotiating strategy, which is one of the sources of great frustration.' 
Mrs Sturgeon said she was not prepared to 'sit back and see Scotland driven over a hard Brexit cliff edge'. 
According to No10, Mrs May told the meeting: 'We have important work to do for the UK in terms of negotiating a smooth exit from the EU and getting the best possible deal for the whole of the UK.
'The UK has chosen to leave the EU and we're going to make a success of it.'
In a statement issued after the talks, Mrs May said a deal had to work for the 'whole of the UK'.
'The great union between us has been the cornerstone of our prosperity in the past - and it is absolutely vital to our success in the future,' she said.
'The country is facing a negotiation of tremendous importance and it is imperative that the devolved administrations play their part in making it work.'

The tense meeting came as Mrs May told MPs that Britain still wants to strike a free trade deal with the EU after we leave. 
She rejected fears that the collapse of Canada's trade agreement with Brussels showed the scale of of the challenge the UK faced. 
And she revealed that MPs will get a chance to debate the 'broad principles' underpinning the looming negotiations before Christmas. 
The latest tantalising glimpse of Mrs May's approach to future relations with Brussels came as she answered questions in the House of Commons.
She insisted the government was determined to get a 'bespoke' post-Brexit arrangement and would be 'ambitious and bold'.
Making a statement on last week's EU summit, Mrs May said it was not a 'binary choice' whether Britain would remain in the European customs union.
Pressed on whether she was determined to go for a 'hard Brexit', she replied: 'There is no suggestion of that whatsoever. 


Earlier in the day Downing Street dismissed suggestions from Mrs Sturgeon that Scotland could stay in the EU single market even if the UK leaves.
The PM's official spokeswoman poured cold water on the prospect of parts of the UK having different trade deals after Brexit.
'We have been clear that it is important that the UK is united,' the spokeswoman said.

Carwyn Jones said there had been no details about what happens next in the divorce talks, and warned 'time is not on our side'.
The Welsh First Minister said access to the single market was 'the most important issue', but dismissed suggestions by Nicola Sturgeon that Scotland could remain part of the trading agreement even if the rest of the UK did not.
'We need to make sure we continue to sell in one of the world's biggest markets on the same terms as we do now,' he told Sky News.
'The scale of the challenge is truly gigantic. Nobody has any details yet as to what happens next.
'We are waiting for the UK Government to tell us what its general principles will be in advance of the negotiations in March.'
Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister, said there was a 'joint responsibility' to manage the Brexit process.
He told reporters: 'As this process moves along, we need to be at the heart of it.'
The SNP has made a number of bold demands to be given special treatment in Brexit negotiations since Scottish voters bucked the trend and voted 62-38 per cent in favour of staying in the EU.
1. Single market: First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has demanded Scotland remain in Europe's single market even if Theresa May takes the rest of the UK out.
But this has been described as impossible by constitutional experts because it would require a 'hard' economic border between Scotland and the rest of the UK to stop the movement of goods, services and people.
2. Immigration: Ms Sturgeon wants the Scottish government to gain control over migration if the Tories opt for 'hard' Brexit.
The SNP argues that Scotland has skills shortages and other demographic challenges different to the rest of the UK and needs more immigration to help the economy.
3. International trade: At the SNP's conference earlier this month Ms Sturgeon also announced her intention to demand Scotland gains the power to strike new international trade deals. Both this and the immigration proposals have already been dismissed as unworkable by Britain's Brexit Secretary David Davis.
4. Brexit veto: Among the boldest demands from Scottish nationalists has been the suggestion that the Scottish government has a veto over Brexit. Ms Sturgeon said she was in a 'very, very strong position' following a meeting Mrs May to discuss her approach to Brexit shortly after she became Prime Minister in the summer.
This led to suggestions she would seek to block Britain's departure from the EU unless it delivered a favourable agreement for Scotland.
Downing Street earlier said leaders of the devolved administrations must not 'undermine' the negotiations.
'We have been very clear that we should be working together to secure the best possible deal for the whole country,' the Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said.
'We expect representatives of the devolved administrations to act in that way and to in no way undermine the UK's position.'

The Institute for Government has warned of a 'full-blown constitutional crisis' if the PM fails to secure an agreement on the Government's approach with all nations of the UK.
In a report published today, the think tank insists that the four governments must agree the 'core planks' of the UK's negotiating position before Mrs May triggers Article 50, which formally starts the process of Britain's departure from the EU.  
It says that imposing a Brexit settlement on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may be legally possible but it would be a 'reckless strategy' that could lead to the possible break-up of the UK. 
Ms Sturgeon was joined in Downing Street today with Welsh leader Carwyn Jones, Northern Ireland's Arlene Foster and her Sinn Fein deputy Martin McGuinness at the meeting today. 
Mrs May has pledged regular formal talks with the First Ministers and urged them to help make a 'success' of the UK's departure from the EU. 
The Prime Minister has been embroiled in an increasingly bitter stand-off with Ms Sturgeon's after she threatened to call a second independence referendum before 2019 if the Brexit deal looks to be running against Scotland's interests.
Mrs May has insisted that the Holyrood government has no mandate for a second referendum after independence was rejected in 2014 and the issue could cast a shadow over the talks on Monday.
But Ms Sturgeon has upped the ante by promising to present the premier with 'specific proposals' to keep Scotland in the single market, even if the rest of the UK leaves.
The devolved leaders have also joined forces to renew demands for a parliamentary vote on Mrs May's approach to the negotiations before she triggers Article 50 - which formally starts the process of cutting ties with Brussels.
The PM has offered the first ministers a 'direct line' to Brexit Secretary David Davis, who will chair a new forum bringing them together for regular talks on the situation.

Mrs May said: 'I am determined that as we make a success of our exit from the European Union, we in turn further strengthen our own enduring union.
'The great union between us has been the cornerstone of our prosperity in the past - and it is absolutely vital to our success in the future.
'The country is facing a negotiation of tremendous importance and it is imperative that the devolved administrations play their part in making it work.


'The new forum I am offering will be the chance for them all to put forward their proposals on how to seize the opportunities presented by Brexit and deliver the democratic decision expressed by the people of the UK.'
The new sub-committee of the JMC chaired by Mr Davis is expected to hold its first meeting by the end of November and at least one more by Christmas as negotiations progress before Article 50 is triggered by the end of March 2017.
But leaders in Wales and Scotland have called for the UK Parliament and the three devolved legislatures to be given their own votes on the negotiating position the Government intends to take and said that Article 50 should not be triggered until there is an agreed approach.
'We believe that a UK Negotiating Framework should be developed, based on principles and aims (but without revealing a detailed 'negotiating hand') and this, linked to invoking Article 50, should be the subject of a vote in all four of the United Kingdom's parliaments and assemblies,' Mr Jones said in a letter to the Prime Minister.
'Such an approach would properly reflect the stated position of the UK Government that the UK is a family of nations, a partnership of equals.'
He also said the final 'exit deal' should also be subject to votes in all four UK parliaments and assemblies.
Ms Sturgeon backed Mr Jones' position, telling the Prime Minister: 'It will not be acceptable for the devolved administrations to simply be consulted on UK Government plans. We must have meaningful input into the decision making structure and the formation of negotiating positions.' 



Nicola Sturgeon's administration has drawn up draft legislation for a second referendum on independence, with the First Minister suggesting Scots should have the ability to reconsider the issue in light of the vote for Brexit.

Today's IfG report acknowledged the difficulties that will be faced in reaching consensus between Mrs May, Ms Sturgeon, Welsh leader Mr Jones and Northern Ireland's Ms Foster and Mr McGuinness, but warned of a 'serious breakdown in relations' if agreement was not reached.
'There is little common ground between these leaders on the future of the UK or almost anything else,' the report said.
'So, as with the dog walking on its hind legs, perhaps we should be impressed if the four governments work together at all rather than overly critical of how skilfully they perform the task.
'But the stakes are high. If it proves impossible to find consensus and the dog topples over after a few tentative steps, the result may be a serious breakdown in relations between the four governments (and nations) of the UK.'
The three devolved governments would 'almost certainly' seek to vote on whether to give consent to the terms of Brexit, the report said.
Although the UK Parliament is sovereign and it would therefore be legally possible to ignore the views of Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont, this would be a 'reckless strategy for a government committed to the Union, since it would seriously undermine relationships between the four governments, and increase the chances of Scottish independence and rifts in Northern Ireland's fragile power-sharing arrangements'.
The IfG recommended setting up a new committee made up of lead Brexit ministers from each government, which would hold monthly meetings to agree the UK's Brexit strategy. 
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon voiced 'frustration' after 'feisty' showdown talks with the Prime Minister, accusing her of having no vision for the UK's future outside the EU.
She told Mrs May to stop 'closing the door' on proposals for trade deals, and reiterated her determination to hold a second independence referendum if there were no concessions on the approach to leaving the EU. 


Carwyn Jones, the First Minister of Wales, said there had been no details about what happens next in the divorce talks, and warned 'time is not on our side'.
The Welsh First Minister said access to the single market was 'the most important issue', but dismissed suggestions by Nicola Sturgeon that Scotland could remain part of the trading agreement even if the rest of the UK did not.
'We need to make sure we continue to sell in one of the world's biggest markets on the same terms as we do now,' he told Sky News.
'The scale of the challenge is truly gigantic. Nobody has any details yet as to what happens next.
'We are waiting for the UK Government to tell us what its general principles will be in advance of the negotiations in March.' 
A joint statement from Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Foster and her deputy Martin McGuinness said: 'We have today emphasised to the Prime Minister in the clearest possible terms the need for the Northern Ireland Executive to be fully represented in the negotiating process regarding future relationships with EU countries.
'That must mean nothing less than high level and ongoing involvement in the process on a continuing basis.'




 
 
Former justice minister Phillip Lee faced the threat of de-selection last night after his decision to resign over Brexit sparked fury in his constituency.
The GP said he was quitting to vote against the Government as he could no longer back Theresa May’s EU strategy.
He said he wanted to ‘speak up’ for his Berkshire constituents – even though a majority voted Leave – and appeared to compare Brexit to the death penalty. Dr Lee, a personal friend of Mrs May, gave her just 15 minutes’ notice of his decision.
Just 12 hours earlier, he had been seen having dinner in the Commons with Tory rebel leader Dominic Grieve. 
Dr Lee was lauded by Labour, with shadow education secretary Angela Rayner saying she had ‘total respect for him for standing by what he thinks is right’. 
Last night he tweeted: ‘I am incredibly sad to have had to announce my resignation as a minister... so I can better speak up for my constituents and country over how Brexit is currently being delivered.’
But his decision infuriated Tories in his Bracknell constituency. Several constituents warned they would not vote for him again.
Phillip Lee  dramatically quit as justice minister to speak out against the Government's plans for Brexit.
Here is what he has said about Britain's withdrawal form the EU previously:
June 2016:
Dr Phillip Lee, who voted Remain in the referendum, warns of' challenging times ahead' after Leave wins the vote.
October 2017:
He warns that young voters find the looming departure as 'toxic' as Donald trump's proposed wall with Mexico.
He said: 'It's about the virtual signalling of essentially being closed off to the world, because for most young people the world is just 'Amazon', it's just 'there', and it seems retrograde to being seen to be putting up barriers. It's like Trump's wall.
'So, single market access or not, I don't think is what young people are talking about. I think what this is about is closing off, turning away from Europe, and also having controls on migration.'  
31 January 2018:
Breaks ranks with his Government colleagues to warn that their Brexit strategy should be driven by 'evidence not dogma' in a series of Twitter posts.
He was responding to an article which said that leaked  Government analysis shows that Britain will be worse off outside the EU under every scenario modelled. 
He wrote on Twitter:  'But if these figures turn out to be anywhere near right, there would be a serious question over whether a government could legitimately lead a country along a path that the evidence and rational consideration indicate would be damaging.'
He added: 'It’s time for evidence, not dogma, to show the way. We must act for our country’s best interests, not ideology & populism, or history will judge us harshly. Our country deserves no less.'
He was given a ticking off by Tory whip Julian Smith and 'reminded it is better to express such views in private in future'. 
Dr Lee is now set to be hauled in front of an executive meeting this month. Tory association chairman Chris Boutle called the decision ‘regrettable’ and revealed that he had first read the news on Twitter.
He warned that ‘if an election were to be called it will count against him’ if he wanted to be reselected.
‘Philip Lee did speak to me this morning after his resignation,’ said Mr Boutle. 
Here are the 15 Brexit Bill defeats inflicted by peers:
‘I said I thought it was a regrettable decision. He said that as he’s voting against the Government on the matter of a meaningful vote, this makes his ministerial position untenable. 
‘I think it’s regrettable that he couldn’t support the Government at this time. 
‘During the Referendum campaign, he came out in favour of Remain so his personal views do not chime with those of most of his constituents.
‘There will be an executive meeting in two weeks. I think many of our members are not going to be very impressed by his decision.’
Gill Birch, a Bracknell borough councillor, added: ‘The timing could have been better ... and that’s on his conscience. My own view is that the country voted to Leave and we should support Theresa May.’
Yesterday, several constituents vowed not to vote for Mr Lee again. 
Sylvia Blake, 85, said: ‘He is not supporting what the area voted for.’ 
Gary Hambledon, a retired HGV driver, 67, said: ‘He has definitely betrayed us. At the end of the day we voted him in and we voted to leave, so he should serve us.’ 
Margaret Ayscogh, 74, said his resignation would make her ‘think twice’ about voting for him again.
Dr Lee yesterday insisted his decision to quit was based on Brexit. 
He had urged fellow Tory MPs to push for a ‘meaningful’ vote on any final Brexit deal in the Commons. 
The Government defeated the amendment. He also called for a second referendum and compared Brexit to the death penalty.
In his resignation speech, Dr Lee was applauded as he said politicians had a duty to defy public opinion if it harmed society, pointing to the example of Parliament banning capital punishment. 
Despite his comments, he eventually abstained on the key Brexit vote last night.
Downing Street tried to play down the impact, saying: ‘His resignation is a matter for him and we thank him for his service.’
 By Andrew Pierce
When the EU referendum result was declared, Dr Phillip Lee declared it was now the ‘duty of all Parliamentarians to respond in the best interests’ of the country.
Yesterday, without warning and aiming to cause the maximum political damage over Brexit to Theresa May, the Remainer flounced out of Government.
In a carefully stage-managed piece of political theatre, the justice minister dropped the bombshell halfway through a nondescript speech at a Tory think-tank. 
It came the day after he was spotted dining with Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General – a chief architect of the Tory rebellion.
In his resignation statement, Lee said he had a ‘major responsibility to my constituency of Bracknell’. To which the only rational response is: Does Lee know the voters in his Berkshire constituency?
They voted to Leave – 54 per cent of them – on a turnout of 76 per cent. 
There is particular anger in Westminster because Lee, 47, neglected to tell the Government of his plans until hours before a series of crucial votes on the EU withdrawal bill. 
With breathtaking arrogance, he also failed to inform the foot soldiers in his Bracknell Conservative Association, who helped him secure re-election with a majority of 16,000 at the last election. 
Chris Boutle, the local Tory chairman, said someone else told him it was on social media – Lee called him later. He added: ‘Phillip campaigned for Remain, but always indicated to us that he would be supportive of the Government and the Prime Minister.’
Lee’s wife Catherine, who watched his speech yesterday, turned to the person standing next to her as he delivered the bombshell and said: ‘He’s just resigned.’
The couple, who met when she was working for David Cameron in Downing Street, were married in the Commons crypt two years ago, with the former PM and his wife Samantha among the guests. 
As a qualified GP, he is expected to return to the freelance medical work that paid him around £80 an hour. So what emboldened this obscure figure to rock the Tory boat now?
Lee used to whisper loudly in journalists’ ears that he would be Health Secretary because he was a doctor.  
Last year, friends apparently tried to get polling companies to include him in a survey of future leadership contenders. 
Not one was interested. ‘They laughed out loud ... because they know Phillip Lee has never surfaced in any poll they’ve ever conducted on anything,’ a senior Tory MP said last night. ‘Apparently Lee was crushed by their rejection. Poor lad’s got such a big ego, but not much else.’
Brought up in Buckinghamshire the son of a businessman, Lee went to grammar school, studied biology at King’s College, London, and went on to Oxford, where he specialised in the ‘psychodynamics of anti-Semitism and the psychology of the child sex offender’. He took his medical degree at Imperial.
After deciding to become an MP, Lee went on the so-called A-list of Tory candidates, broadly designed to fast-track women and minorities. But he made it on because he was a GP who was committed to the NHS. 
Elected in 2010, he became increasingly frustrated by his failure to secure the ministerial post he believed should be his.
Not noted as an orator, he felt his chances were over until Mrs May – whom he had backed for the Tory leadership – promoted him in 2016. 
‘So much for loyalty,’ one May supporter said tartly after yesterday’s resignation. It was in January that Lee made his first overt criticism of Brexit, expressing concerns about its economic impact. 
He was rebuked by the Tory whips and pledged to make any future comments in private.
Yesterday he tore that pledge to shreds with a calculated and cynical attempt to weaken the Government on the very day it was trying to strengthen its position for the battles ahead with Brussels.
So was it his idea, or was he put up to it? We know he is a member of the ‘Mainstream’ group of Tory MPs, which includes serial rebel Nicky Morgan, the Remoaner who was sacked as Education Secretary by Theresa May, and has been actively taking revenge ever since. 
The consensus among many fellow Tory MPs – even those who voted Remain – is that by quitting in such a public way, Lee is guilty not just of naivete, but rank treachery. 
He may yet pay the price for his disloyalty if Bracknell Conservatives decide to deselect him before the next general election. It’s fortunate for Lee that he’s a doctor, for he appears to have shot himself in the foot.  
MPs have been voting on the EU Withdrawal Bill - commonly known as the Brexit Bill.
The legislation facilitates Britain's withdrawal from the EU and is one of the most important pieces of legislation debated by Parliament.
Over yesterday and today Theresa May faces one of the toughest tests of her premiership so far as she tries to navigate the legislation through a series of knife-edge votes.
What are the Brexit Bill amendments being debated by MPs?
There are 15 Brexit Bill amendments which are being voted on by MPs in a crunch two-day Commons showdown.
The House of Lords drew up the changes when they debated the Bill last month because they want to change the way the Government is negotiating Brexit.
Changes being voted on include proposals to try to keep the UK in the EU single market and customs union in a move which would mean the UK would have to keep free movement.
Brexiteers say the changes are wrecking amendments designed to thwart Brexit and bind the Government's hands in the talks.
Mrs May has scrambled to try to bargain with Tory rebels to ensure they don't revolt against her in the knife-edge votes.  
What are the most important amendments ?
There are two crucial amendments which the Government feared it would face defeat on.
The first, debated yesterday, was to give MPs a 'meaningful vote' on the Brexit deal. This would effectively have allowed MPs to seize of the negotiations if Theresa May failed to reach a deal by December.
The second is an amendment to try to force the UK to seek to stay in a customs union with the EU after Brexit, which is being debated today.
Mrs May has explicitly ruled this out as it would effectively stop Britain from being bale to negotiate its own trade deals with other countries.   
What happened last night?   
The PM narrowly avoided a humiliating rebellion on the amendment demanding a meaningful vote by making a last-ditch concession to Tory rebels.
No10 promised MPs they will get a vote on the Brexit pans in November, or if the Government walks away from negotiations.  It remains unclear at this stage what significance this vote will have
Mrs May also managed to thrash out an eleventh hour agreement with some Tory rebels on the customs union amendment.
Brokered on Monday night, it calls for ministers to seek a customs agreement with the EU - not a union. The change is far more than one of just language as it effectively means the UK can seek to set up different trade deals outside the Brussels bloc.
This amendment is being voted on today, and it remains to be seen if it has succeeded in peeling enough would-be rebels away from the revolt.
But the issue has just been kicked down the road as Remainers have said they will mount a fresh push to try to keep the UK in a customs union with  Brussels when the Trade and Customs Bills come to Parliament next month  
What does that means for Theresa May?  
The picture is mixed.
After weeks of speculation Mrs May could face two humiliating defeats in the Commons on the Bill - dealing her a heavy blow in the middle of Brexit talks - it looks like she has avoided all out defeat.
But it appears she has been forced to make a major concession to Tory rebels by giving MPs a vote on the Brexit deal later this year. 
She has another battle on her hands when the issue of the UK's customs arrangements with the EU returns to parliament for debate next month. 
What happens next? 
If the PM is successful at axing all of the 15 Lords amendments from the Bill and replacing them with her own then the Bill goes back to the House of Lords on Monday.
Peers will then get the chance to agree with them, or reject them and send them back to the Commons for debate. This back and forth, known as 'ping pong' continues until both Chambers agree. 
 Here are the crucial amendments being voted on:
MEANINGFUL VOTE:
Remainers have been fighting to ensure that they are not left with a choice between accepting whatever package the government thrashes out with the EU, or crashing out without any deal.
The government has already committed that there will be a vote on the terms reached with Brussels.
But the amendment passed by the Lords would effectively give parliament power to dictate subsequent talks if it rejects the deal.
That would be a major break from the existing constitutional position - which gives the executive control over negotiating treaties.
Tory MP Dominic Grieve has put forward a compromise amendment that would force ministers to come up with a new plan, and then put that before parliament for approval.
However, government sources have insisted they will not accept the plan.
CUSTOMS UNION: 
The Lords amendment orders ministers to 'outline' to parliament how they will negotiate to 'continue participating in a customs union' after Brexit.
The idea is that it would force Mrs May to change approach and keep the UK lashed to the bloc - although the effect would be largely political is unclear as it would not be binding.
Ministers appear to have delayed a confrontation with Tory rebels by tabling a compromise amendment that would commit the government to seeking a customs 'arrangement'.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA:
The Lords inserted this demand for the UK to stay in the EU single market against the wishes of both the Tory and Labour front benches. 
It spells out that the government should be seeking a Norway-style deal with the EU - potentially meaning free movement would stay in place. 
This amendment has no chance of surviving in the Commons. However, Jeremy Corbyn is facing a major rebellion by his MPs, dozens of whom have called for EEA membership to be retained after Brexit. 
BREXIT DATE:
The government has specified the date of Brexit as March 29, 2019 - as laid down by the Article 50 process.
But Remainers would like to see the date taken out of the Bill to make it easier to extend negotiations if a deal is not reached.
Tory rebels are not focused on this change and it would not be mission critical for the government, but ministers are expecting to avoid defeat. 
Nigel Farage clashed angrily with the BBC's Andrew Marr, accusing him of being 'in denial' of a 'sea change' in British politics, for focusing on his previous statements.
It made for uncomfortable viewing as the two men talked across each other, the interviewer refusing to stop asking questions and the politician angrily denouncing the exchange as 'ludicrous'. 
Arguing that examining its leader was the 'only way to look at the Brexit Party in the round at the moment', Mr Marr asked: 'Do you still want to replace the NHS with a private insurance system?'
Mr Farage replied: 'I never did, I would like to take the burden off the NHS.' 
He added quickly: 'But if you want to go back, this is really very boring isn't it.
'All you want to do is go back to stuff from years ago. Why don't we talk about now in British politics. 
'Why don't we talk about the sea-change that is going on out there', said Mr Farage, precipitating a tense several minutes as broadcaster and politician spoke across each other and both refused to back down.
Mr Marr put a string of Mr Farage's previous statements to him, on bringing in health insurance to the NHS; saying that worrying about global warming was the 'stupidest thing in human history'; on relaxing laws on gun control; being uncomfortable hearing foreign languages on the Tube; stopping people with HIV coming into the country; and admiring Vladimir Putin.
Throughout, the Brexit Party leader said: 'Here we are talking about one of the biggest changes that's ever occurred in politics and you're not even interested.
'What's wrong with the BBC?
'I've been going round the country speaking at packed rallies every night and do you know who's not there? The BBC. and from this line of questioning I can see why. You're just not interested are you?
'Let's talk about democracy, let't talk about trust, let's talk about competence in British politics.
'This is ludicrous. This is absolutely ludicrous.
'I've never in my life seen a more ridiculous interview than this.
'You are not prepared to talk about what is gong on in this country today. you're in denial, the BBC's in denial, the Tory and Labour parties are in denial.
'I think you're all in for a bigger surprise on Thursday week than you can even imagine.'
In a tense exchange full of interruptions, Nigel Farage gave Andrew Marr some of the answers he was asking for, but angrily slammed the BBC for 'trawling back through a series of quotes from years ago'. 
Andrew Marr: The only way that we can really judge the Brexit Party in the round at the moment is by looking at its leader, looking at you. So let's look at you for a moment.
Nigel Farage: Well…
Marr: Do you still want to replace the NHS with a private insurance based system?
Farage: I never did. I would like to take the burden off the NHS. I mean, if you want to go back…
Marr: Yes I do want to go back
Farage: This is really very boring isn't it
Marr: No it's not boring
Farage: All you want to do is go back to stuff from years ago, why don't we talk about now, in British politics. Why don't we talk about the sea-change that is going on out there.
Marr: You are trying to lead an insurgent party to replace the main parties. Therefore you are an important figure, in this. [Quoting] 'I think we're going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare, I would feel more comfortable, my money would return value if I was able to do that through the marketplace of an insurance company than just trusting giving a hundred billion pounds a year to central government.' Do you still hold that view?
Farage: If I was encouraged to opt-out of the system, to relieve the burden off the National Health Service, I would do so gleefully/. Do you want to discuss these european elections or not?
Marr: Yes I certainly do but…
Farage: Go on then. Go on then, lets' try.
Marr: Do you still believe that worrying about global warming is 'the stupidest thing in human history'?
Farage: I believe that if we decided, this country, to tax ourselves to the hilt, to put hundreds of thousands of people out of work in the manufacturing industries, given that we produce less than two per cent of global CO2, that isn't terribly intelligent. But as I say: here we are, with one of the biggest changes in politics that has ever occurred…
Marr: Okay…
Farage: … and you're not even interested?
Marr: Do you still…
Farage: What's wrong with the BBC?
Marr: Do you still want to…
Farage: What is wrong with the BBC?
Marr: Do you still want to roll back gun controls and reintroduce hand guns in this country?
Farage: What is wrong … This sums it up. Do you know, I've been going around the country, speaking at packed rallies every night, and do you know who's not there? The BBC. And from this line of questioning now I can see why.
Marr: Do you still…
Farage: You're just not interested are you?
Marr: Do you still feel uncomfortable with...
Farage: You are just…
Marr: … foreign languages being spoken on the train?
Farage: ...not interested are you. Let's talk about democracy, let's talk about trust, let's talk about competence in politics. This. Is. Ludicrous.
Marr: Do you still feel that people with HIV shouldn't be allowed into this country?
Farage: Do I think the National Health Service is there for British people? Yes I absolutely do.
Marr: So you still do. Do you…
Farage: This is absolutely ludicrous. I've never in my life seen a more ridiculous interview than this. You are not prepared to talk about what is going on in this country today. You're in denial, the BBC's in denial, the Tory and Labour Parties are in denial. I think you're all in for a bigger surprise on Thursday week…
Marr: We have talked about it…
Farage: … than you can imagine.
Marr: We have talked about it. Do you still admire Vladimir Putin?
Farage: No. I've never admired Vladimir Putin.
Marr: You, Well you asked which current...
Farage: I said I wouldn't like to live in his country
Marr: Asked which world leader you most admired you told GQ..
Farage: This is absolute nonsense.
Marr: … magazine 'as an operator but not as a human being, I would say Putin'
Farage: Well there you are
Marr: 'The way he played the whole' …
Farage: Well there you are
Marr: … 'Syria thing'
Farage: Well there you are. Not as a human being. I don't like him as a human being. What is your question? What is the relevance of this?
Marr: I'm trying to work out where you are and where the Brexit Party which wants to destroy the political system is going.
Farage: You haven't asked about a single other member of the Brexit Party, you haven't commented on the fact we have the most diverse list of candidates of any party fighting in this election.
Marr: From the Revolutionary Communist Party right through to the Right
Farage: Well that's worth discussing isn't it. How have we managed to get Left and Right together. These things are really interesting to your viewers. Not trawling back through a series of quotes from years ago.
Marr: Do you still want to slash the size of the state?
Farage: Absolutely. I want people to have more freedom. Absolutely, and particularly, 5.4 million people out there, acting as sole traders, running small businesses, and there's nobody in government on their side. Let's make their lives easier. They'll create more jobs, pay more taxes, and it'll be good for our country.
The ill-tempered interview came as two polls showed the Brexit Party on course for a thumping win at the European elections on May 23 - and one even put Farage's team ahead of the Tories in a theoretical General Election. 
Mr Farage said this morning the country had been 'betrayed' by both Tory and Labour politicians.
 Arguing the only way now to deliver the 'democratic will of the people' was to leave on WTO terms - a no deal Brexit - he claimed the EU leaders would soon be 'banging our door down to have a sensible tariff free deal' afterwards, and dismissed potential economic fallout as 'short term disruption' akin to moving house.
Mr Farage said: 'This is our chance to break free of failing political project, to open ourselves up to the rest of the world, to get some self-confidence back in who we are as a country.
'And the problem is this: the country very clearly wants us to stand up and be who we are.
'Our political class do not believe in Britain. they simply don't think we're good enough to run our own affairs.' 
He also insisted that should the Brexit Party win the European elections as they are widely predicted to do, he would insist on its new MEPs being included in the government's Brexit negotiating team, to 'knock some sense into them'. 
Asked why in 2016 he did not advocate no deal, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said it was 'because it was obvious that we could do a free trade deal'.
He told Andrew Marr: 'The problem is the Prime Minister never asked for it so we finished up in the mess that we're in.'
He added: 'She chose to go for this close and special partnership. Basically right from the start she was happy for us to be kept very close to the customs union. So where we are now, the only way the democratic will of the people can be delivered is to leave on a WTO deal.'
He went on: 'In the referendum itself, I was the one that coined the phrase no deal is better than a bad deal.'
The Prime Minister, he argued, 'has wilfully deceived us', adding: 'What she's put to Parliament three times isn't a deal, it's a new European Treaty. I didn't spend 25 years campaigning to leave the EU to sign up to a new treaty.'
An Opinium poll in the Observer today found the Brexit Party will hoover up 34 per cent of the vote in the European elections, and put Labour on 21 per cent and the Tories in a miserable fourth place with 11 per cent
An even more extraordinary poll in the Sunday Telegraph said for the first time the Brexit Party would beat the Tories in a General Election.
The ComRes survey of voting intentions put Brexit on 21 per cent to the Conservatives' 20, which would see Farage's team win 49 seats, becoming the UK's second biggest party.
The polls follow calamitous council elections, where Mrs May oversaw the loss of nearly 1,300 Tory councillors, and comes ahead of a predicted wipeout in the European elections in the next fortnight.
The poll shows the Conservatives would lose 46 seats to the Brexit Party, dethroning Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and party chairman Brandon Lewis.
And Labour would take the scalps of Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith and Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee, with the Tories retaining support from less than half of those who voted for them in 2017.
Jeremy Corbyn would be able to lead a minority government with 27% support, leaving the Brexit Party with 20% and the Conservatives 19% support, according to the poll commissioned by Brexit Express.
Andrew Hawkins, the chairman of ComRes, described the poll as a 'disaster', adding: 'If the Conservative leadership contenders are not careful, there will be no party for them to lead.'
The shocking figures will further heighten the panic spreading among Tory members staring electoral annihilation in the face.
More than 600 Tory association chairmen, councillors, donors and activists wrote to the Telegraph to warn that if Mrs May cannot deliver a clean exit, MPs must replace her urgently or 'risk disaster'.
They wrote: 'Voters could not be clearer in saying how angry and betrayed they feel – Conservative voters most of all.
'The damage that this is doing to party and country is incalculable.'
This morning in the Sunday Telegraph Nigel Farage suggested the party might even sink without trace, to be replaced by the Brexit Party.
He said: 'What I'm hearing is that they're coming pretty close, the Cabinet, to agreeing some form of second referendum. 
'I'll tell you what, if that's really what they decide to do, then the Brexit Party will replace the Conservative Party. And I mean it.'
He added: 'They've been going 200 years and people could say, 'Nigel you're just talking moonshine here', but I genuinely think if ever there was a moment, like 1921, where the liberals... just disappear, we are at a moment in which that could happen to the Conservative Party as we currently know it.'
The Tory Party currently has around 124,000 members, but people have been signing up to the Brexit Party in their thousands since its launch and membership had reached 85,000 a week ago according to Mr Farage.
Mr Farage told the paper: 'I would think by the end of this campaign we'll be a lot bigger than the Conservative Party.'
Earlier Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay warned the country is in danger of 'sleepwalking' into staying in the EU, and called on fellow politicians to 'roll up their sleeves' and deliver Brexit - or risk the EU not granting another extension in October if a deal is not done.
Mr Barclay told The Sun: 'The message from Brussels is clear – if Britain has not left the EU by 31 October we will be faced with a stark choice: a no deal Brexit or no Brexit at all.
'We are at real risk of sleepwalking into remaining in the EU.
'And the reality is - it won't be in Parliament's gift to extend the time further.
'The EU will decide it for us. If we don't roll up our shirt sleeves and get on and pass the deal we risk the EU understandably losing patience and refusing any further time.' 
The EU's chief negotiator drew battle lines on the Brexit divorce deal today after David Davis was accused of 'undermining trust' and behaving like a 'gangster'.
Michel Barnier warned that the bloc would 'not accept any backtracking' on the package that was painstakingly assembled by Theresa May in Brussels last week.
He also raised the stakes on trade, warning there was 'no possibility' of a full agreement on the future relationship being reached by the time Brexit happens in March 2019. By contrast Mr Davis suggested at the weekend that a trade deal could be struck 'one minute' after we leave the EU.
The combative comments came after Mr Davis scrambled to defuse a bitter row over his claim that the UK's commitments on the Irish border were merely a 'statement of intent' and not 'legally enforceable'.
Furious MEPs seized on the 'unacceptable' remarks to accuse the UK of 'behaving like gangsters', while a key ally of Angela Merkel opened a new front by warning the UK should not 'assume' it will get a transition period if it does not honour commitments. 
EU leaders responded by signalling a crucial summit on Friday will push for fast progress on writing the divorce deal - which also includes a £39billion financial payment and guarantees on rights for EU citizens - into a formal Treaty.
At a press conference in Brussels this evening, Mr Barnier echoed the hard line. 
'We will have a final agreement only if the political commitments taken by May in the name of the British Govt last Friday are respected and we will be vigilant. We will not accept any backtracking from the UK,' he said. 
In a letter to EU premiers, council chief Donald Tusk appealed for them to stand together in the second phase of the talks. 'This will be a furious race against time, where again our unity will be key,' he said. 
After his gaffe on Sunday, Mr Davis was deployed on the airwaves yesterday in a desperate bid to clarify his comments - insisting the commitments to preserve a soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic were 'more than legally enforceable'. 
EU leaders are set to give approval for trade talks to start at a summit on Friday.
Passing Brussels threshold of 'sufficient progress' on the divorce issues is a boost for Theresa May.
But from then the negotiations are likely to become even more complicated - and tense.
The next item on the agenda is to settle the terms of a transition period, which could last for around two years after we formally leave in March 2019.
Only once those arrangements have been negotiated- potentially in around March next year - will trade discussions get properly under way.
But there are mounting questions about the sequencing of the deals, and how it fits with Mrs May's mantra that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'.
Michel Barnier ruling out a full trade deal being complete by 2019 suggests parliament could be asked to approve the divorce terms - including the Brexit bill - with only a broad outline of what trade relations might be. 

His correction appeared to satisfy Dublin, who said they were 'happy' he had acted to straighten the situation out. 
An EU commission spokeswoman accepted that the deal remained a 'gentlemen's agreement' until it was written into a Treaty.


But there was deep irritation in Brussels at the blunder. One EU diplomat joked that the summit conclusions had been 'Davis-proofed'.

A draft of the text confirms that EU leaders will sign off the divorce deal, meaning that trade talks can get under way - a significant boost for Mrs May. 
But it adds: 'Negotiations in the second phase can only progress as long as all commitments undertaken during the first phase are respected in full and translated faithfully in legal terms as quickly as possible.'
Wading in gleefully on Mr Davis today, Mr Verhofstadt said his comments were 'unacceptable' and the European Parliament would 'insist' on a legal text 'ASAP'.
'Remarks by David Davis that Phase one deal last week not binding were unhelpful & undermines trust. EP text will now reflect this & insist agreement translated into legal text ASAP #Brexit,' he said.
Mr Verhofstadt told reporters in Brussels that Mr Davis had scored an 'own goal'.
'I have seen a hardening of the position of the council (of EU leaders) and hardening position of the parliament,' he added. 
Mr Verhofstadt and Manfred Weber, a key ally of German Chancellor Mrs Merkel, have proposed an amendment to the Parliamentary motion stating that trade talks can only continue if the UK 'fully respects the commitments it made in the Joint Report and they are fully translated into the draft Withdrawal Agreement'.
Green MEP Philippe Lamberts accused the UK of acting like 'gangsters'. 'How can Britain be taken seriously globally if it behaves like a gangster in its international relationships?' he said.
Mr Weber widened the spat by calling for a tough line on the mooted two-year transition deal. 

'The British government is assuming it will be granted a transitional period, during which the UK will enjoy continued access to the European single market,' he wrote in an article for Politico.
What is 'full alignment'?
In last week's Brexit deal, Theresa May agreed to keep the UK in 'full alignment' with the EU on issues relevant to Northern Ireland. 
Remainers seized upon the language to say it meant Britain would be closely tied to Brussels, but ministers insist it does not mean Britain will be tied directly to the single market and customs union. 
David Davis said it meant Britain will meet the same 'outcomes' – but not do it 'by just copying what the EU does'.
What is 'divergence'?
Brexiteers warn it would be a disaster to tie the UK too closely to EU rules.
They want to allow for maximum 'divergence' – distance from the EU – so Britain can negotiate better trade deals with non-EU countries. 
However, managing the border between the North and South of Ireland becomes more difficult the more the UK diverges from EU rules. 
For example, if Britain did a US trade deal to allow chlorine-washed chicken into the UK, how can you prevent the chicken being sold into the EU market?
What happens next?
Cabinet ministers will consider next week what the 'end state' of relations with the EU should look like – that is, how much divergence they will seek.
In theory, the more distance Britain seeks, the more restrictive its trade deal could be.  
'There's no guarantee that will happen. The transition period will rely on the approval of the European parliament. 
'Whether it signs off on such an arrangement will be entirely conditional on the progress made in this next phase of talks.' 
Mr Davis posted on Twitter this afternoon: 'Pleasure, as ever, to speak to my friend @guyverhofstadt - we both agreed on the importance of the Joint Report. Let's work together to get it converted into legal text as soon as possible.'
He added: 'I look forward to working closely with the EP (European Parliament) in the next phase, including on a top shared priority: ensuring admin procedures for citizens are as streamlined as possible in both the UK and EU.' 
At his press conference in Brussels, Mr Barnier said the divorce deal joint report would be translated into 'legally binding and precise language', with a draft of the Withdrawal Agreement produced early next year.
After briefing EU ministers he also indicated there was frustration about the UK's lack of a firm position on what sort of future relationship it wants with the remaining 27 nations. 
'Many ministers said that the UK must clarify what it wants,' he told reporters. 

Challenged at the weekend that it would not be possible to finalise a trade deal within eight months, Mr Davis said: 'I don’t agree. I mean it’s more like a year than 8 months in truth, but because bear in mind we can’t sign this until after March, until after we actually leave.
'Maybe one minute after we leave, or one second after we leave, but the formal technicalities we can’t do that. But we’ve got about a year and that was actually why this week was important.' 
The sabre-rattling will increase pressure on the UK to finalise details of a Withdrawal Treaty early in the New Year - before transition and trade terms have become clear.
That could undermine Mrs May's mantra that 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'. 
There are also mounting questions about the sequencing of the deals. Mr Barnier ruling out a full trade deal by 2019 suggests parliament could be asked to approve the Brexit bill and other divorce terms with only a broad outline of what trade relations will be.
Downing Street play down the concerns, and said it believed Mr Davis had dealt with the row.
'The secretary of state set out yesterday, and the commission agreed with him, that the agreement that was reached last week is a political agreement, but that will move forward into a withdrawal agreement, which will be legally binding,' a spokesman said. 
The Prime Minister defended her controversial divorce agreement, dramatically struck in Brussels on Friday, in the Commons yesterday.
Tory Eurosceptics have been generally keeping their powder dry until the shape of the government's proposed trade deal becomes clearer.
But there are fears that Mrs May has already committed the UK to 'soft' Brexit by promising to mirror some key EU rules in order to prevent a hard Irish border.
Some MPs also voiced alarm at the prospect of paying a divorce bill to the EU of around £39billion, although Mrs May has insisted no money will be handed over if there is no deal.
The government is desperate to paper over the cracks at least until after the crucial EU summit, when the bloc's leaders will decide whether to approve the start of trade talks.
But delivering the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture at London's Carlton Club last night, Lord Lawson smashed the fragile truce.
The peer, who has been urging the PM to leave the bloc with 'no deal' and revert to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, said the divorce deal was 'just about acceptable so far as it goes'.
But he added: 'We find ourselves today quite unnecessarily as a supplicant, in a humiliating state of cringe, begging for what is both unnecessary and unattainable – a posture which would have been anathema to Margaret Thatcher.
'The time has come to call an end to this demeaning process. We must get up off our knees. Enough is enough.'


Lord Lawson, who was Chancellor under Thatcher, said the government had 'allowed ourselves to become bogged down in the fruitless quest for a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU, wasting precious time and making concession after concession to try and achieve one'.
Philip Hammond pumped £2billion into social care and signalled a major education shake-up in his first Budget today - but funded it with a huge tax raid on the self-employed and savers.
With potentially just a week to go before Theresa May formally launches the Brexit process, the Chancellor hailed the way the economy had 'confounded' the doom-laden warnings of Project Fear.
Unveiling dramatically upgraded forecasts for UK plc, he promised the country would be 'stronger and fairer' after we cut ties with Brussels.
But he smashed a Tory manifesto pledge by hiking national insurance contributions for more than 2.4million self-employed to raise around £650million a year. On average people will pay £240 more annually due to what was dubbed the 'sole traders tax'.
Some two million shareholders - most of them low or middle-earners - will also be hit by slashing the rate of 'dividend allowance', drumming up an extra £900million annually for the Treasury. Together the tax raids bring in around £4.6billion by 2021-22. 
The immediate row over the Conservative manifesto led some to claim today's Budget would kill off any speculation Mrs May might force an early election to take advantage of Labour's dire ratings under Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Hammond told the Commons the Budget was 'building the foundations of a stronger,fairer, more global Britain'.
But he said debt remains too high, productivity too low and too many families were 'feeling the squeeze'. 'Our job is not done,' he added.
The Chancellor insisted the Tory government would not 'saddle our children' with huge debts and would take tough decisions to balance the books.
The main planks of the package include:
Unveiling his Budget, Mr Hammond said: 'There is no room for complacency and you will not find any on these benches. As we prepare for our future outside the EU, we cannot rest on our past achievements.
'We must focus relentlessly on keeping Britain at the cutting edge of the global economy. The deficit is down but debt is still too high.... 
'Too many families are still feeling the squeeze almost a decade after the crash.
'So our job is not done. Our task today is to take the next steps for preparing Britain for a global future, to equip our young people with the skills they need to support our public services, and to help ordinary working families as we build an economy that works for everyone.' 


Declaring that 'Class 4' NI contributions for the self-employed will rise by 1 per cent to 10 per cent from April next year, and then to 11 per cent in 2019, Mr Hammond said: 'The difference in NICs is no longer justified... it undermines the fairness of the tax system.'
The move is expected to hit 2.4million people who are making net profits over £8,000 - including large numbers of contractors in IT and finance. The average increase for individuals is set to be around £240 a year.
He confirmed he will stick to George Osborne's decision to abolish Class 2 NICs for the self-employed - which will offset the gains for the government to make them a net £145million a year. 
But the whack for sole traders and freelancers caused fury as the government slashes corporation tax for the biggest firms.
The most sugary soft drinks are to be taxed at 24p per litre as part of plans to reduce childhood obesity, the Chancellor confirmed.
Philip Hammond announced a two-tier levy of 18p on drinks with 5g of sugar per 100ml, and the higher 24p rate on those with more than 8g per 100ml.
Ministers confirmed plans late last year to push ahead with the tax on the producers and importers of soft drinks with added sugar, despite opposition from industry, which will be introduced from April 2018.
Responding to the Budget announcement, British Soft Drinks Association director general Gavin Partington said: 'Given current increases in the cost of goods, we're surprised the Treasury wishes to put more pressure on businesses and raise prices for hard-pressed consumers.' 

However the Obesity Health Alliance described the levy as a 'bold, positive and necessary move we believe will help reduce the amount of sugar our children consume'.
The 2015 Conservative manifesto included a catch-all pledge not to increase 'VAT, Income Tax or National Insurance' before the next election. 
A senior Treasury aide tried to explain the situation by arguing the legislation that enshrined the pledge had only covered class one NI contributions, rather than class four.
'This was an anomaly. 85 per cent of employed people were paying more than people who were self employed,' the aide added.

Mr Hammond said: 'The abolition of Class 2 NICs for self-employed people announced by my predecessor in 2016 and due to take effect in 2018 would further increase the gap between employment and self-employment.
'To be able to support our public services in this budget and to improve the fairness of the tax system, I will act to reduce the gap to better reflect the current differences in state benefits.'  
The dividend allowance - the amount people can receive tax-free - is being reduced from £5,000 to £2,000 in April next year. The measure raises £2.7billion for public coffers by 2021-22 - with 40 per cent of the sum coming from 1.4million basic rate taxpayers.
The Treasury admitted that 20 per cent of investors will be affected, although they will be able to shield their investments to some extent using ISAs. Some 7 per cent of pensioners will pay more as a result.
Although the Chancellor said the measure was mainly designed to reduce incentives for workers to incorporate themselves as companies for tax reasons, it will also impact on savers with investments in stocks and shares worth more than £50,000 outside ISAs, with an average loss of £320 a year each. 
Tories voiced deep anxiety about the raid. Anne-Marie Trevelyan, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, tweeted: ‘Worried about raising NI on self-employed. They are the risk-takers, starting next generation of business leaders, no statutory sick leave or holiday pay.’
Fellow Conservative Andrew Murrison told the Commons: ‘It’s very important to ensure that we don’t disadvantage self-employed people.
‘This party on this side always has been, I hope always will be, the party that supports white van man and white van woman.’

Labour branded the raid on NI a 'sole traders tax' and vowed to oppose it. 
'Philip Hammond has used his first Budget to claw £2 billion in tax on those self-employed who are on low and middle incomes,' shadow chancellor John McDonnell said. 
And the row prompted Rupert Harrison, who helped George Osborne prepare the disastrous 2012 'omnishambles Budget' warned 'think we can rule out a snap election'. 
Philip Hammond has justified his tax raid on the self employed by claiming it closes an anomaly in the system.
Currently, staff and companies jointly pay a national insurance bill that is higher than that for the self-employed. 
For example, an employee earning £32,000 will incur between him and his employer £6,170 of National Insurance Contributions.
A self-employed person earning the equivalent amount will pay just £2,300 – significantly less than half as much.
Historically, this was because the self-employed were entitled to less from public services. Mr Hammond said this is now less true - hence the change.
Chris Sanger, head of tax policy, at accountants EY, said: 'Increasing the NIC main self-employed rate (Class 4) by 1 percentage point in April 2018 and another the year after, raising £645million in 2019-20 alone, the Chancellor has more than offset the £430million abolition of Class 2 announced by George Osborne. 
'This amounts to a net rise of almost £50 per month for higher earners.
'In contrast to the concerns of his predecessor, the Chancellor seemed unperturbed by the fact that this was a breach of a 2015 manifesto commitment not to increase National Insurance Contributions.' 
Robert Pullen, a senior manager at London accountant Blick Rothenberg, said the dividend changes were a 'hammer blow'.
'Two years after a crippling 7.5 per cent increase to dividend tax rates, the more than halving of the £5,000 dividend 0 per cent band to £2,000 is a hammer blow to small business owners,' he said.
The accountancy firm calculated that the allowance cut will cost £225 for taxpayers on the basic rate, £975 for those on the higher rate, and £1,143 for those on the additional rate. 
Mr Hammond took to his feet in the House of Commons chamber boosted by a dramatic upgrade to economic forecasts. 

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) watchdog raised its predictions from the 1.4 per cent it suggested to 2 per cent - although growth is expected to fall back after that. 
Other controversial measures included confirmation the sugar tax was going to come into force next year as planned. The most sugary soft drinks are to be taxed at 24p per litre as part of plans to reduce childhood obesity.
And mobile phone roaming charges are set to be increased by 20 per as the Chancellor imposes VAT on calls, texts and data used abroad.  
The respected OECD think-tank yesterday revised its estimates for growth this year up by 0.4 per cent to 1.6 per cent.  
ECONOMY 
The OBR upgraded its growth forecasts from 1.4 per cent to 2 per cent this year, while public sector borrowing estimates were slashed. But Mr Hammond signalled there will be no end to austerity.
BUSINESS RATES 
Small businesses will get relief totalling £435million. Firms losing rate relief will have their monthly increase capped at £50 for a year, some 90 per cent of pubs will be given a £1,000 discount in 2017, and councils will get a £300 million fund to assist losers.

The NHS
Hospitals will get £325million to implement 'transformation plans' and another £100 million will be put into a new triaging projects in England.
SOCIAL CARE 
The crisis-hit social care system will have another £3 billion pumped into it over the next three years, with £1 billion of this available in 2017/18. Mr Hammond ruled out a new 'death tax' to fund social care.
EDUCATION 
Another 110 new free schools will be opened, including a new generation of grammars. Free school transport will be given to children on free school meals who attend a grammar, and £216 million will go into repairing existing schools. New T-levels will be created to improve vocational education.
CIGARETTES AND ALCOHOL 
There was no change to previously planned upratings of duties on alcohol and tobacco, but a new minimum excise duty will apply to cigarettes based on a packet price of £7.35.
TAX FOR SELF-EMPLOYED 
Higher paid self-employed workers are to pay an average of 60p a week more in National Insurance contributions as part of changes to raise an extra £145million by 2021-22.
It will be Mr Hammond's first and final spring Budget - as he announced in November that the main fiscal event of the year is being moved to the Autumn.
Mr Hammond vowed to build the foundations for a 'stronger, fairer, better Britain' outside the EU as he announces the package.
The Chancellor - who was previously criticised for his gloomy pronouncements about Brexit - gave a much more upbeat assessment of the country's prospects today.

Echoing Mrs May's desire for a fairer society, Mr Hammond insisted the government recognises the pain felt by 'ordinary working families' who are still 'feeling the pinch' a decade on from the credit crunch.
He held out the prospect of action to address the concerns of parents who fear their children do not have the same 'opportunities' they enjoyed. 
The Budget responded to the growing crisis in the social care system by committing an extra £2billion of funding over three years. Some £1billion will be frontloaded to next year.
A major announcement was boosting skills training for 16 to 19-year-olds by £500 million a year.
Mr Hammond said the move represents the most significant shake-up in post-16 education since the introduction of A-levels 70 years ago.
The current 13,000 separate qualifications replaced with '15 world-class routes' better suited to business needs from 2019.

Students on higher technical education courses will also be eligible for maintenance loans under the reforms. 
There will be around £320million of funding for 110 free schools - set to include the first selective state secondaries to open in decades.
Free schools can be opened by parents, charities or community groups, effectively giving disgruntled families a right to set up a grammar themselves.
The schools could be fast-tracked for as early as 2020 – if ministers can win what is likely to be a bruising parliamentary battle to overturn a Labour-imposed ban on grammars. 
Ministers are also scrapping rules that stop children from poor homes receiving help for travel to selective schools.
The moves amount to a declaration of intent from Mrs May, who has made a personal priority of reviving grammars – she attended one herself.
Overall the Budget has a neutral effect on the public finances, as measures were funded by changes elsewhere, including higher tax on cigarettes - making the cheapest pack £7.35 - and a 2p rise in national insurance on the self employed to equalise their rate with those in salaried jobs.
With a revolt among Tory MPs gaining pace, Mr Hammond provided relief worth hundreds of millions of pounds to small businesses affected by the first revaluation their properties since 2008.
But Treasury aides confirmed that the help would only last for one year. There were also questions about why the aid for 36,000 pubs is only predicted to cost the Exchequer £25million when each is getting a £1,000 discount. 
Online retailers face fines for tricking customers with complicated small print and automatic subscriptions. 

Mr Hammond also announced that the casualties of the D-Day landings are to be remembered by a special monument which the Government is contributing £20 million towards.
The memorial to those who died in the Normandy campaign will be erected at the site of fierce fighting which took place during and after the Allied landings in France in 1944. 
On following Norman Lamont in delivering the last Spring Budget: 'What they (Treasury staff) failed to remind me was ten weeks later, he was sacked. So wish me luck!' 
On Jeremy Corbyn: 'He is so far down a black hole even Stephen Hawking has disowned him'
On funding for driverless vehicles: 'It is a technology [Labour] knows about'
On Labour's economic record: 'By the way, they don't call it the last Labour government for nothing'
On hitting EU targets: 'I won’t hold my breath for my congratulatory letter from Jean-Claude Juncker'
It will be unveiled on the 75th anniversary of D-Day in 2019, and carry the names of the estimated 21,000 members of the British armed forces and Merchant Navy who lost their lives.
As expected, Mr Hammond delayed changes to tax thresholds until the Autumn Budget, although increases already pencilled taking the personal allowance to £11,500 and the 40p rate to £45,000 will go ahead in April. The Chancellor reiterated his commitment to the levels hitting £12,500 and £50,000 respectively by 2020.
The Chancellor was given a rousing response from the Tory benches as he said his Budget confirmed the 'continued resilience of the British economy'.
He said the package would continue to 'build on the foundation of our economic strength, reaching out to seize the opportunities that lie ahead'.
He went on: 'Backing our public services. Supporting Britain's families. Investing in the skills of our young people.
'And making Britain the best place in the world to do business.' 
Responding to the package, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn complained that it would do 'nothing to create a fairer economy'. He branded the grammar school boost a 'gimmick' and 'vanity project' that would only 'increase segregation'.  


Stephanie Onwunali, 25, left her job as an auditor at accountancy firm Ernst & Young late last year to set up her own business What Next Coach, helping young people.
She said that the national insurance hike sent out the wrong message and will hurt the self-employed, who lack the benefits the employed get from their companies.
'I think the Chancellor ignored the fact that we have to pay ourselves if we want to do training, go on holiday or take parental leave', said Stephanie.  

Philip Hammond flouted the Tory manifesto today to impose a dramatic tax hike on the self-employed. 
The multi-millionaire Chancellor said the National Insurance rate for self employed people would go up by 2 per cent by 2019. 
It means 2.4million people face an average tax rise of £240 - despite the Tory manifesto in 2015 ruling out any increase. 
Treasury sources denied it was a breach of the manifesto on the ground legislation, printed after the election, specified only the main NI rate would be frozen.
And they said it was an important reform that removed an 'anomaly' from the tax system.
Labour branded the hike a 'sole traders tax' and it was condemned by a procession of Conservative MPs in the Commons.  
Under the measures announced in the Budget this afternoon, class four national insurance - the main rate paid by the self-employed - will rise from the current 9 per cent level to 11 per cent by April 2019. 
It is a clear breach of the Conservative Manifesto from the 2015 election, which pledged no rises in VAT, national insurance or income tax until at least 2020.
Treasury sources insisted: 'The legislation makes clear it refers to class one contributions, not class four.'
It was pointed out that legislation had not been published when self-employed people voted in the election, having been potentially swayed by the manifesto promise.
In response they said: 'The legislation is the place for this type of detail. 
'This was an anomaly. 85 per cent of employed people were more than people who were self-employed.' 
Chancellor Philip Hammond unveiled £2billion in extra social care funding over the next three years after Prime Minister Theresa May faced new questions.
In his Budget statement, Mr Hammond said £1billion would be spent in the first year of the new programme.
The announcement came after Mrs May was forced to deny Surrey Council got a special deal on social care.   

In a leaked tape Surrey leader David Hodge claimed he had a 'gentleman's agreement' with ministers about funding that led him to cancel a planned referendum on an eye-watering 15 per cent council tax rise.
The revelation came weeks after the Government was forced to deny a deal was done when Jeremy Corbyn revealed texts sent by Mr Hodge claiming a 'sweetheart deal'.
The Labour leader today demanded Mrs May tell him what the difference was between a 'sweetheart deal' and a 'gentleman's agreement'.
Philip Hammond has set out £1billion in extra funding for schools that will herald 21st Century grammars, new technical qualifications and overhauls for existing buildings.
The Chancellor placed education at the heart of today Budget with the series of spending announcements dwarfed by restraint elsewhere.
The Budget includes £320million to help fund up to 110 new free schools, including grammars, creating more than 70,000 new places. The investment is intended to build on the Government's commitment to open 500 new free schools by 2020. 

The Budget includes £500million for a 'radical' plan to put technical training on an equal footing with academic studies.

The Budget also includes a further £216million to rebuild and refurbish existing schools in England, to ensure that they are fit for purpose.
Mr Hammond said: 'Choice is the key to excellence in education.' 
The controversial announcement of money for new grammar schools has attracted widespread criticism, with opponents arguing that expansion will lead to segregation and a two-tier education system.
It is understood that the Government has not set a target on the number of grammar schools it wants to open with this new funding, but is open to these selective institutions submitting proposals.
The money includes funding for more specialist maths colleges, such as the existing Exeter Mathematics School - which selects 16 to 19-year-olds based on their aptitude for the subject.
Philip Hammond has offered a handout to help pubs facing eye-watering hikes to their business rates.
Mr Hammond is to spend an extra £435million on helping small firms move to the new business rates.
He said no business would see their bills increase by more than £50 a month and most pubs would get a special £1,000 a year discount.
The Chancellor has been under acute pressure from Conservative MPs to ease the burden of a business rates re-valuation in England that is due to send some bills spiralling from April 1.
Ministers have claimed almost three quarters of firms will see the same or a lower bill and said there is support for those facing the highest rises.
But the promises have not stopped demands for extra help.  

Chancellor Philip Hammond's £100 million investment to ease the pressure on A&E won't work, leading doctors warn.
Announced in today's Budget, the funding boost is aimed to try and ease the chronic bed shortage the NHS is currently under.
The extra cash is designed to support and develop onsite GP facilities at A&E departments across England by next winter.
This will allow for more accurate assessments of patient's ailments, helping to reduce waiting times in the health service, preventing unnecessary deaths. 
But critics argue that having extra doctors in A&E won't reduce admissions, if anything it could attract more patients to hospitals.

The cost of using a mobile phone abroad is set to soar by 20 per cent after the Chancellor slapped VAT on roaming charges.
Philip Hammond's Budget announcement means charges for calls, texts and data outside the EU soon will cost 20 per cent more.
And the Budget does not specify whether the hike will apply inside EU countries after 2019 when Britain is due to Brexit.
Inside the EU, roaming charges due to be abolished.
In the Budget speech, Mr Hammond said the change was to bring Britain into line with international standards.
He included the measure - which kicks in later this year and will raise £65million a year for the Treasury from 2018/19 - as part of his tax avoidance strategy.   
Moderate Labour MPs could be persuaded to back the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal after he offered a series of sweeteners on workers’ rights.
Speaking in Brussels last night, Boris Johnson said he would ‘gladly’ make a commitment to maintain the ‘highest possible standards’ on environmental and social protections.
And the Daily Mail understands that Downing Street is now offering to write them into the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to make them legally binding.
Behind-the-scenes talks have already taken place with rebel Labour MPs, led by Stephen Kinnock, who has previously said he would support a deal which honoured the referendum result.
Jeremy Corbyn made clear yesterday that he wanted Labour MPs to vote against the revised withdrawal agreement, saying it would lead to a ‘race to the bottom’ on workers’ rights.
The party has not said whether MPs who defy him would lose the party whip. Even so, as many as ten Labour MPs are reported to be considering voting for the deal if Mr Johnson’s pledges on workers’ rights are enshrined in law.
Ruth Smeeth yesterday said it was her ‘intention to vote for a deal’ unless rights were ‘undermined’ by the deal.
Labour MPs John Mann, Sir Kevin Barron and Jim Fitzpatrick are also understood to support the agreement.
Mr Johnson will be dependent on some Labour support now that the DUP has said it will vote against the deal on ‘Super Saturday’ tomorrow.
Yesterday, the PM reached out to Labour MPs, saying: ‘It is a good text, and it gets to the heart of what we want to achieve with the EU. It does also contain important provisions and commitments that this country gladly makes about our determination to maintain the highest possible standards on environment and social protection.’
The agreement, announced yesterday morning, provides for a ‘level playing field’ on workers’ rights and environmental protection and commits Britain to ‘maintain... standards at the current high levels’.
However, the promise is part of the political agreement that sits alongside the withdrawal agreement – not the withdrawal agreement itself.
It is understood that Downing Street is offering to write these protections into the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the legislation which enacts the Brexit deal, to make them legally binding and get the Labour rebels on side.
Mr Kinnock and 18 other Labour MPs wrote to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker earlier this month, declaring that they ‘wish to see the British EU referendum result honoured without further delay’.
One of the signatories told Huffington Post that around ten Labour MPs are now in the mood to vote for ‘any deal’.
On Wednesday night Mr Kinnock suggested that he could support the Brexit deal.
Speaking to Robert Peston on ITV, the MP was asked if he would back the deal. He said: ‘Yes, if the text meets Labour’s six tests... The level playing field is absolutely crucial.’
Yesterday Mrs Smeeth said: ‘It is my intention to vote for a deal unless Boris has completely undermined workers’ rights, environmental rights and consumer rights.’
Mr Mann said: ‘I will vote for this deal... We voted to leave, and I’m happier to leave with a deal that gives stability for businesses and jobs in this country, that’s what a deal does... I think the deal will get through.’
Another Labour backbencher told the Huffington Post he would consider voting for Mr Johnson’s deal if it enshrined workers’ rights. ‘If Boris can write all these things on to the face of a Bill, and bring that Bill forward pronto, we can vote for it,’ he said.
Labour MP Graham Stringer, who campaigned for Brexit, said he would back the Bill if it is ‘genuinely deal or No Deal’.
Despite the Prime Minister’s pledges Mr Corbyn said he would not support the deal. ‘These proposals risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections: putting food safety at risk, cutting environmental standards and workers’ rights, and opening up our NHS to a takeover,’ he said.
Public figures — and, indeed, Supreme Court judges — are some- times accused of being 'remote from' and 'out of touch with' the electorate. Well, this time it is undeniable.
Business tycoon Sir Richard Branson is pushing his snout back into the Brexit debate and is bankrolling a campaign for a second EU referendum.
The alleged billionaire is doing so from 4,124 miles away: the as-the-crow-flies distance from Westminster to his palm-fringed island home in the Caribbean.
This morning, back home, London's Supreme Court will announce its verdict in a case brought against the Government by wealthy Remain campaigner Gina Miller and others.
That finding will be followed closely by millions of British subjects who voted Leave in June's referendum. 
They will be hoping that our lofty judges permit the Government to proceed unimpeded with plans for Brexit, as voted for by a majority in last summer's unprecedentedly large plebiscite.
In the Caribbean, emotions will be coursing in the other direction.
Sir Richard and his sun-bleached coterie will be hoping that judges Neuberger, Hale, Mance and co — those gold-robed poohbahs of the Europhiliac judiciary — will toss a spanner into Theresa May's plans to obey the referendum vote and extract us swiftly from the claws of Brussels.
Necker, the private island where Sir Richard rests his worrying head of a night, is said to be an idyllic place. For those whose taste runs to such things, you can sit on its Turtle Beach and let the warm waters nibble your naked toes.
'Would sir and his popsy enjoy some scuba diving before today's succulent barbecue lunch of lobster and fresh mahi-mahi?' we may imagine a grass-skirted batman asking.
As the sun sets, Sir Richard can sip rum punch on verandas fringed by bougainvilleas and plumbago while he and his fellow Remainers rage and tut and moan and plot against the Euroscepticism of those voters back home in Britain.
What fools the Little Englanders have been! If only they hadlistened to Sir Richard's pro-EU friends such as Lord Mandelson and Nick Clegg, not to mention celebrities such as Jamie Oliver, Gary Lineker and actress Kate Beckinsale. If Sir Richard and his ilk have their way, Brexit will never happen.
To this end, as the Mail reported last week, the businessman has given office space and a donation of £25,000 (so far) to a campaign co-organised by former Blairite Cabinet minister Alan Milburn.
This outfit, currently called UK-EU Open Policy Limited, hopes to persuade the British people to change their mind over the EU.
They intend to make us see the goodness of the European Commission, to realise we have made a ghastly mistake in our referendum and they hope we will crawl back to Brussels pleading to be forgiven our rush of blood to the head.
The group's backers include a notoriously Europhile journalist, Anatole Kaletsky, and insurance millionaire Sir Clive Cowdery, who founded the Centre-Left think-tank, the Resolution Foundation.
Another backer is Stephen Peel, a former director of the controversial bank Goldman Sachs. Between them and others, they have raised funds reportedly not unadjacent to £1 million to push their agenda.
This set-up has a strongly Blairite flavour. Its cheerleaders include (almost inevitably) Sir Bob Geldof, former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, Labour's MP Chuka Umunna and PR agent Matthew Freud, an egregious little greaser who was once married to one of Rupert Murdoch's daughters and was never far from Downing Street's door in the Blair years.
Former New Labour ministers Lord (John) Hutton, Douglas Alexander, Lady (Sally) Morgan and a sometime No 10 speechwriter, Peter Hyman, have also been mentioned in connection with the Branson-backed front.
This group is not to be confused with a separate enterprise being mounted by former prime minister Tony Blair, or with Open Britain, a group set up after the referendum to fight, it says, for the best deal for this country.
Open Britain's chairman is the big cheese PR man Roland Rudd, who is very keen for the UK to remain part of the single market.
'No one voted to be poorer,' he said. 'It would be an act of calamitous self-harm if any second-best trade arrangement with the EU damaged British growth, jobs and prosperity.' What are we to make of these people? After all, to immerse yourself in political debate is, it could be argued, an honourable pursuit — civic engagement by men and women who may simply be seeking to 'put something back into society'.
Or is there something more selfish and sinister here? Are they genuinely doing their best for the British population?
Are they are as detached from the true concerns of the British electorate as their champion and financial backer Sir Richard is, physically, from our island's fog-bound shores?
If my suspicions incline to the latter, it is for two reasons. The first is the narrow one of the personal career and business interests of those involved.
Sir Richard has already claimed that Brexit has cost his Virgin group dearly.
Less than a week after the referendum, he went on breakfast television to say in a somewhat petulant, told-you-so sort of tone that Virgin was cancelling a deal which might have created 3,000 jobs.
Since then there has been plenty of evidence the British economy is surging ahead, quite undented by looming Brexit, but we must take his word for it and accept that those alleged jobs were, indeed, lost. 
The effect of the Leave vote on the personal fortunes of men like Sir Clive Cowdery and former Goldman Sachs man Stephen Peel is hard to calculate, though given the stock market has risen to new heights and those millionaires are likely to have substantial share holdings, it would be a surprise if they had lost money.
But the political careers of Sally Morgan, Alan Milburn and co have undoubtedly sagged as a result of the vote to quit Brussels.
Their party, Labour, is at sixes and sevens and Mr Milburn's quango job as social mobility czar — he was appointed by David Cameron's coalition government — looks distinctly vulnerable.
In the coming weeks we are going to see new pressures applied to Jeremy Corbyn (an instinctive Eurosceptic whom the Blairites loathe) and his leadership of the Labour party as it fights to retain its parliamentary seats in Stoke-on-Trent and the Cumbrian constituency of Copeland in two by-elections.
When Lord Mandelson is in the shadows, as he is said to be here, we must not rule out the possibility of ulterior political motives — namely, the destabilisation of Mr Corbyn's Labour, which at present does not intend to block Article 50 and the official triggering of Brexit.
But the bigger reason for being dubious about these rich and powerful anti-Brexiteers —indeed, to question their motives as they stamp their feet in opposition to the plain will of the majority in the biggest vote ever held in our history — is that their case is built on Britain failing. 
To quote the Left-leaning Independent and its report on the group: 'Backers hope that public support for a rethink [on the referendum] will grow if the economy deteriorates and the EU negotiations point to a bad deal for Britain.'
In other words, Branson and Co will get their way only if our rivals prosper at our expense, and if our economy goes belly-up.
What sort of British person actively banks on such circumstances? There is a word for this sort of behaviour and it is not patriotism.
The ostensibly hesitant Branson has for decades sold himself to the public as an easy-going, liberal sort of guy — even as a totem of Britishness.
Business journalists have watched with awe — and some of them with a rising, sceptical distaste — as Sir Richard has posed with pretty air stewardesses, wrapped himself in the Union flag, thrown himself into stunt adventures in balloons and so forth.
He has sucked up remorselessly to impressionable politicians as he has promoted the Branson brand.
His business record long suggested something infinitely more ruthless than the mild- mannered Leftist we were shown. He pocketed millions of pounds in subsidies from the taxpayer to run his heinously expensive railways, among other ventures.
As the Supreme Court judges hand down their verdict today, we will be told severely that we must not question their motivations.
But can the same be said of the hard-core Remainers, who are using the law to try to sow confusion and create inertia, thus defying the British people who surely have more right to see their political will enacted than a billionaire who chooses to live half a world away?
 
For the past 25 years, the Tory Party has been convulsed by a bitter civil war over our membership of the European Union.
The feuding has been so vicious that for long stretches, the party has been virtually ungovernable.
So when the British people voted to leave Europe last year, and Theresa May was elected party leader and Prime Minister to near universal acclaim, there was a collective sigh of relief.
Most observers believed the party would unite around Mrs May as she led us confidently out of Europe.
I am now convinced that this analysis was premature. In fact, I predict that the Conservative Party is on course for one last apocalyptic battle over Britain and the European Union.
This will be different from the others in one respect. It will not concern British membership of the EU.
No attempt will be made to reverse the outcome of the referendum last June. However, the looming conflict will concern the terms on which we leave.
I can report that a number of Conservatives are profoundly disappointed by last week’s statements from both Theresa May and her Brexit minister, David Davis.
Many Tory MPs — and I guess the majority of party activists — had been looking for what they call a ‘clean break’ from the EU.
In her comments accompanying the Article 50 notification to Brussels last week, Theresa May made clear that a clean break is the very last thing she has in mind.
She has listened hard to lobbying from business, from the City, the Civil Service, the intelligence services and even the Trades Unions, all of whom are pressing for British departure from the EU to be as friendly as possible.
In other words, relatively little will change.
I believe this approach to our new relationship with Brussels may well be common sense. But as night follows day, it is certain to generate claims that Mrs May has betrayed the British voters.
Many Conservatives are concerned that she means for Britain to stay in the EU in all but name. These fears have been inflamed by reports that her husband, Philip, a City figure whose views carry weight at home, is a passionate Remainer.
The areas of concern over which accords must somehow be struck between London and Brussels are numerous.
However, the three most significant involve the headline issues which dominated the referendum campaign last year. First, red tape. Mrs May and David Davis made it plain as a pikestaff last week that a great many EU regulations are here to stay if Britain wants to carry on doing business with Brussels.
In private, Mr Davis calls the so-called Great Repeal Bill — in which Parliament is supposed to bring thousands of areas currently governed by EU regulation back under British law — The Great Continuity Bill. So will we be free in a single bound from European red tape? Forget it!
The second contentious issue is money. The Vote Leave side repeatedly claimed on posters and in their literature that leaving the EU would bring £350 million a week back to Britain. Forget it! That’s not going to happen.
The main negotiating team is candid that payments to Europe will continue. I understand that, privately, David Davis says he expects to pay between £9 billion and £16 billion in order to guarantee access to key EU markets.
The third and most inflammatory issue is, of course, immigration. British voters were promised control of national borders. Once again, forget it! Both David Davis and Mrs May, under pressure from business, have made it clear that foreign migration into Britain will continue.
There are plenty of Tory MPs who take the view that Mrs May is simply being pragmatic. These loyalists understand that Britain must retain a warm relationship with the EU, and that there will, of course, be a price to pay for that.
But some others believe that readiness to give in on the central issues upon which the referendum was fought is a grievous betrayal. This week, those voices were not heard amid the euphoria following the dispatch of the Article 50 letter to Brussels.
But be assured of one thing: they will not remain silent for long. For I can reveal that Conservative MPs are already starting to rally around an organisation called the European Research Group.
The members include many of the key figures in the Vote Leave campaign.
This group communicates secretly through WhatsApp, the internet messaging system which cannot be hacked (and which, by coincidence, was used by Khalid Masood minutes before the recent Westminster terrorist attack).
The European Research Group has some of the characteristics of a party within a party. Significantly, it organises members on other issues apart from Europe, and more pertinently, is capable of mustering significant numbers of Tory MPs. For example, it was responsible for the powerful letter sent to the BBC ten days ago complaining about biased coverage of Brexit. Some MPs hostile to this group are already comparing it — unfairly in my view — to Labour’s Militant Tendency at the start of the Eighties.
Its officers include highly respected party figures such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and Wycombe MP Steve Baker, while senior figures such as Iain Duncan Smith are supporters.
At present, this group is loyal. But I predict that the triumphalism in the Brexit camp will soon diminish as further details of Mrs May’s negotiations emerge.
And when that happens, the mood of optimism in the Conservative Party, which has held sway in recent months, is likely to become more acrimonious as time goes by.
And finally, when Mrs May presents her Brexit deal to the Commons in early 2019, do not rule out the danger that the Tory Party could split in half, in one final epic convulsion.
In such circumstances, if Mrs May is to survive as Prime Minister, she will need to depend on the support of Labour, the Liberals and the SNP. For that reason, I do not believe we should count on this government surviving until the official election day in 2020.
Though she is determined not to do so, Mrs May would be best advised to go to the country for an endorsement of her Brexit strategy before then.
Trump may be gone within a year
How much longer can Donald Trump survive in the White House?
He’s at war with the Supreme Court. He is fighting a bitter battle with Congress. He is on non-speaking terms with almost the entirety of the Press.
Even elements of his own Republican Party have turned against him — and he’s been in office for less than three months.
Now comes a very dangerous new development for the President. His short-lived National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, who was forced to resign over his links to Russia, has re-entered the fray.
He said yesterday that he is ready to testify to a Congressional Committee investigating allegations that the Trump camp conspired with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
General Flynn has laid down one condition. He wants immunity from prosecution.
Yet it is only six months since Mike Flynn said: ‘When you are given immunity that means you have probably committed a crime.’
Earlier this year, I warned that Donald Trump would most likely not last his full term of office.
I am beginning to wonder whether the U. S. President will still be in the White House this time next year.
Two weeks ago the Conservative MP, Adam Holloway, a former soldier and foreign correspondent, took himself off to the battle for Mosul, where a coalition of forces have converged to wipe out the remains of the murderous Islamic State caliphate. I hope that all ministers and policy-makers will read his brave and powerful dispatch. The message is stark. Yes, Islamic State will be destroyed. But what comes next may be even worse, and the British Foreign Office is clueless about what will unfold. Shia Muslim Iran is using the crisis to pour its militias into Iraq, while dispossessed, rival Sunni Muslims — the remnants of the Saddam Hussein power base — are left to fear reprisals when the Islamic State melts away. If Holloway is to be believed, combustible ingredients are mixing for an even greater catastrophe than the one we have already experienced. 
A wealthy investment fund manager was accused of 'arrogance' today as she launched a landmark legal bid to block Brexit being triggered.
Gina Miller is the leading figure in a High Court challenge demanding that Theresa May stages a vote in parliament before invoking Article 50.
The campaigning former model - who is married to a multi-millionaire fund manager - was a supporter of Remain during the referendum campaign and has previously said she 'felt physically sick' when she heard the result.
But the Prime Minister has dismissed her calls of those of her supporters - and took the unusual step of dispatching the Attorney General to argue the case in person.
Ms Miller - who has complained of death threats over her legal bid - brought her own high-powered team of lawyers to London's High Court, led by top barrister Lord Pannick QC.

He told three judges in a packed courtroom that the case 'raises an issue of fundamental constitutional importance'. 

Lord Pannick said the case was not concerned with the 'political wisdom' of the country withdrawing from the EU and it was wrong to suggest that the legal challenge was 'merely camouflage' for those who wanted to remain.
He told the court: 'Many of the rights that Ms Miller and others currently enjoy will be removed if the notification is given - for example, Ms Miller's right to free movement, her right to free movement of goods, her right to freedom of services across Europe.'
Mrs May announced at the Conservative Party conference that she intends to trigger Article 50 by the end of March.
Campaigners say only Parliament is empowered to authorise service of the Article 50 notice and Mrs May's stance threatens to undermine its sovereignty and the rule of law.
Lord Pannick argued Theresa May could not use royal prerogative powers to remove rights established by the European Communities Act 1972, which made EU law part of UK law, as it was for Parliament to decide whether or not to maintain those statutory rights.
He said the question of the legal limits on Executive power 'arises in the context of one of the most important of our statutes which is the source of so much of the law of the land.' 
The first applicant to lodge a Brexit legal challenge was London hairdresser Deir Dos Santos, and he is among a wide group of 'concerned citizens' supporting Ms Miller's application for judicial review.
Their lawyers contend it is a fundamental constitutional requirement that there should be full scrutiny by both houses of Parliament, followed by new legislation.
Notification of Article 50 by royal prerogative, they argue, would hit rights established by the European Communities Act 1972, which made EU law part of UK law. But only Parliament has the sovereign power to repeal the 1972 Act.
Ms Miller, a mother-of-three who lives in London with her hedge fund manager husband Alan Miller, said when she was given permission to launch her action: 'This case is all about the sovereignty of Parliament.
'It is very important that the (Article 50) issues are dealt with in a serious and grown-up way. We are making sure that happens.'
After several hours of making submissions on her behalf on the first day of the hearing, Lord Pannick QC told the court that Ms Miller had received further 'abuse, threats and insults' due to the legal challenge.

The case is being heard by Lord Thomas, the Lord Chief Justice, sitting with Sir Terence Etherton, Master of the Rolls, and Lord Justice Sales.
Attorney General Jeremy Wright, the Government's leading law officer, is arguing in court that the challenge lacks legal merit.
He said: 'The country voted to leave the EU in a referendum approved by Act of Parliament.
'There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum.
'The result should be respected and the Government intends to do just that.'
Other applicants wishing to intervene include Britons living in France campaigning as 'Fair Deal for Expats' and individuals from other countries living in the UK anxious to secure guarantees for rights gained as EU citizens.
A group referred to as 'the AB Parties' say they are representative of a large class of 'ordinary, poor or otherwise vulnerable' people and their children whose fundamental human rights and stability are at stake.
Because of the urgency and constitutional importance of the case, any appeal is expected to be heard by the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, before the end of the year.
But Tory former minister Dominic Raab, a high profile Brexit campaigner, accused Ms Miller of 'a pretty special kind of arrogance'.
'I think this is a pretty naked attempt to steal the referendum by the back door,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Mr Raab added: 'I don't think it's right that a fund manager with deep pockets and legal friends in high places gets to go to court and try and block or frustrate that process.
'I think it takes a pretty special kind of arrogance to think that one person's view trumps that of 33 million.'
The case is being brought by glamorous, Guyanan-born Gina Miller, an investment manager living in London, who voted Remain.
The 51-year-old mother-of-three worked for BMW in the UK, before moving into financial services for Legal & General and Scottish Widows.
In 2002, the former model moved to investment firm New Star, where she met her multi-millionaire husband Alan, 52, and the pair later left the firm to have children and go travelling.
Around this time, Mr Miller was involved in an acrimonious divorce from his ex-wife, Melissa.
His ex was earning £85,000-a-year at a pharmaceutical company but gave up work after they were married.
The childless marriage broke down after less than three years around the time he met Gina.
Melissa was awarded £5million of his £30million fortune, which he challenged all the way to the House of Lords and lost.
During the battle, Mr Miller's lawyer claimed it would be cheaper for him to run over his ex-wife than pay the settlement.
Mr Miller and his new wife Gina had reached Panama on their travels by 2008, but returned to the UK to 'put their house in order' as the financial crisis hit.
In the wake of the crisis, the couple set up SCM Private, which now manages hundreds of millions in funds. 
Ms Miller has recently spent much of her time working for her True and Fair Foundation, which she founded in 2009.
The foundation advises charities on how to take what she calls 'a more strategic business-like approach' to their work.
Earlier this year, she criticised Judy Murray after it emerged just £20 of a £60-a-head charity event hosted by the tennis star's mother was going to good causes.
The Millers also led the so-called 'True and Fair Campaign', which called for more transparency in the City of London.
Ms Miller, who describes herself as a 'born fighter' and an 'adrenaline junkie', has told how she felt sick when she heard the Brexit result.
She said earlier this year: 'I felt physically sick because I thought: I don't think people know the ramifications of this, of what's happened, and I felt really sorry that people had been tricked and fooled.'
She has also said: 'We must not underestimate or forget the anger in Europe about our vote.... they're very angry that we've had this relationship yet we still threaten the union.'
 
Even by Westminster’s current lowly standards, Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to endorse continued membership of the European Single Market beyond March 2019, when Britain leaves the EU, is an act of grotesque hypocrisy.
It is a betrayal of everything we know the Labour leader believes — dressed up as concern for jobs and the economy — done for calculated political gain and, ultimately, to thwart Brexit.
This is a man who voted against British membership of the EU in 1975. Ten years later, he opposed the introduction of the Single Market.
In fact, Mr Corbyn has never supported any piece of pro-European legislation. He is a Eurosceptic through and through.
So to allow the Shadow Brexit Secretary, Keir Starmer, to write an article in The Observer yesterday making it clear that, under a Labour government, the UK would continue to abide by the EU’s free movement rules, accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice on trade and economic issues and pay into the EU budget for a ‘transitional period’ after Brexit is a repudiation of everything he has ever personally believed. 
Starmer also outlines an option whereby the UK could remain a member of the Customs Union and Single Market for good, should a Labour government negotiate a special deal on immigration and freedom of movement rules.
Hypocrisy aside, this is a spectacular betrayal of millions of Labour voters, mainly in the Midlands and the North, who voted for Brexit in June last year.
Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Cabinet have shown that their Labour Party is just as contemptuous of ordinary voters as Tony Blair’s New Labour was.
It’s only a month since Corbyn confirmed on The Andrew Marr Show that he would take the UK out of the Single Market. Now we have this U-turn — and what a nauseating spectacle it is.
Under normal circumstances, I would dismiss Mr Corbyn’s latest stunt as contemptible and ignore it. Sadly, not on this occasion.
Labour’s timing is perfect. Mr Corbyn is taking advantage of the massive vacuum over Europe created by Theresa May’s dithering.
During the 13 months of her premiership, she has come up with plenty of tough rhetoric, declaring repeatedly that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and insisting that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’.
However, these strong words have not been matched by actions. The Prime Minister has failed consistently to spell out her vision for what Britain should look like after we leave the EU.
She has struggled to decide whether she wants a clean departure from the EU, or a departure that leaves our trading relationships intact.
A clean break would mean the UK regains 100 per cent control of our law and our borders — which is exactly what the majority of British people voted for in the referendum.
But the City and businesses have repeatedly warned that a clean break would damage our trade with Europe, with a potential cost in jobs: the so-called ‘cliff-edge’ argument.
They continue to demand that we stay in the Single Market as part of a ‘soft Brexit’ deal under which we would remain subject to the rules of European courts, during a transition period, so that trade could flow easily.
Mrs May has been unable to make up her mind between the two approaches. To make matters worse, the Tory Party appears desperately split.
Most of the Cabinet wants a ‘soft Brexit’. Chancellor Philip Hammond, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and the man who is effectively Deputy Prime Minister, Damian Green, are all pressing for a version of this.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they: all were Remainers during the referendum campaign. 
The only senior voice holding out against this coalition of Remainers appears to be the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson. Though he may be an isolated figure in Cabinet, his position is strongly supported by Tory activists and MPs, as well a majority of opinion out in the country.
Mrs May, a naturally cautious politician, is stuck between two camps — but time is running out for her.
Brexit negotiations restart today; early next month the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill returns to the Commons for its second reading, and it’s only 18 months before the UK is booked to leave the EU.
There is, understandably, some frustration among European leaders that the Government, for all the position papers and grand-standing by its negotiators in recent weeks, has yet to come clean about what it wants.
Labour’s shift in position — establishing itself as the party of ‘soft Brexit’ — plays into the hands of Brussels’ hardliners who do not want Britain to leave.
I believe that Mrs May must make her choice, and soon.
She can come down on the same side as Philip Hammond, big business, the Remainers — and now Jeremy Corbyn — and opt for a soft Brexit. Or she can support Boris Johnson, Tory activists, and the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit.
Of course, both choices will put the Prime Minister’s political survival at risk.
If Mrs May plumps for clean Brexit, the weight of big business and the political establishment will turn against her.
But if she plumps for a deal with Europe, she faces an explosion of anger and discontent from inside the Conservative Party and the country.
With barely five weeks till the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, it’s shaping up to be one of the most mutinous and explosive periods in modern political history, with pro-EU Tory MPs under intense pressure to rebel against their own party.
Keir Starmer’s article has set off a political earthquake. In his defence, that is what the Opposition is supposed to do.
But there is a fascinating paradox here. Jeremy Corbyn, who has dedicated his life to revolutionary socialism, has, in his old age, turned into the voice of the British Establishment.
The Governor of the Bank of England, the Director-General of the CBI, the Civil Service, the Diplomatic Corps, the BBC and Tony Blair are all suddenly on the same side as the ageing revolutionary.
And why? Because all these Establishment figures rightly believe that Labour’s dramatic shift on Brexit is the best way of sabotaging it. 
Under the Corbyn plan, we stay in the EU in all but name, doing what the Brussels commissars and European judges tell us — and continuing to pay vast sums for the privilege. You might very well ask what was the point of leaving in the first place.
I am certain that the latest Labour proposal is part of a carefully thought-out Establishment plan to delay and — finally — to halt Brexit.
Is it a coincidence that arch-European Tony Blair is to meet EC President Jean-Claude Juncker this week?
The Remainers are still too cautious to come out and demand that the referendum result should be reversed. But they want to do everything they can to undermine it — and Corbyn’s Labour Party is their chosen vehicle.
Soon they will be going further and demanding a second referendum.
These are uncharted political waters in which the future of British democracy is at stake. We are entering extraordinary times. 
As the guardian of the nation's finances, presiding over historically low levels of unemployment and a remarkable improvement in the public finances, Philip Hammond ought to be shouting from the rooftops about this Government's successes.
He also ought to be straining every sinew in his body to ensure that Britain is in the best position possible economically during the battle of wills between London and Brussels over Brexit.
But instead of arming Theresa May with the strongest hand with which to negotiate a successful deal, the Chancellor seems to be acting as a one-man road block against Brexit.
Instead of extolling the entrepreneurial brilliance of British firms and the world-class institutions in the City of London, he has reverted to the Remainer instincts which he struggled to cast off when he delivered an upbeat Spring Statement in March.
To the huge frustration of Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, Hammond has returned to the pessimism of the past and the reservations about the UK leaving the EU which led to him being disparaged as Eeyore.
What's worse is that the Chancellor is being miserly in the extreme with money that fellow ministers are quite justifiably demanding as they prepare for all eventualities in the final Brexit arrangement.
For example, the Home Office needs millions for border controls; the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs will require huge sums to compensate British farmers who will no longer be in receipt of EU Common Agricultural Policy subsidies; Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs expects it will need 11,000 more staff.
There was a point when it seemed that Hammond had swallowed his misgivings about Brexit and was happy to do his bit.
In his Spring financial statement, he pronounced with great fanfare that in the current financial year he would allocate £1.6billion towards Brexit preparations (part of a larger package of £3.7billion that was first announced last year).
But his tune has changed.
Even if all the money promised by him in March were to be released now and passed on to the six Government departments most affected by Brexit, it would be a mere trifle for Britain's £2trillion economy.
Indeed, considering what is at stake for the nation during the negotiations with Brussels, Hammond's failure to come up with sufficient funding starts to look like a wilful dereliction.
As someone who has written about economic matters for more than 40 years, to me Hammond's failure – or, more worryingly, unwillingness – to grasp the nettle of Brexit and back it up with the appropriate resources does not come as a major shock.
My view is that since he arrived at the Treasury in the chaotic days following the 2016 EU referendum, Hammond has been missing in action.
Whatever one may think of his predecessors at No11, Gordon Brown and George Osborne, they were at the heart of Government with vision and imagination on how best to drive the nation's economy more smartly.
Brown was the architect of radical ideas designed to deal with the scourge of youth unemployment, and understood how important it was for Britain to be a leader in global finance. Osborne executed the task of restoring some order to the public finances, never forgetting that the Tories are the party of enterprise. 
He cut company taxes to the bone (without sacrificing overall revenue receipts), supported great innovation and came up with the idea of the Northern Powerhouse (though that now looks to have withered).
The great challenge of Hammond's tenure has been delivering a Brexit that ensures our future economic stability. The Chancellor has been in an extraordinarily strong position to put some muscle behind our negotiators to make sure they have all the tools they need to defy the toxic combination of Remainers in the Cabinet and civil service, and leaden Brussels officials.
It is no secret, for example, that there are highly developed electronic means of easing the frictions at customs posts, including the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Electronic surveillance is already part of the infrastructure at a similar border between Sweden (inside the EU and customs union) and Norway, which is outside, as well as on the Swiss border, through which traffic crosses in and out of the European Union. Only a lack of resources has prevented these electronic systems from being implemented so far.
As this paper has reported recently from Felixstowe, one of the biggest container ports in the whole of Europe, old-fashioned customs officers in peaked caps are largely a thing of the past. Shipments to and from the rest of the world are processed by technicians sitting at screens using barcodes (not dissimilar to those familiar to us all from supermarkets) to process goods of all kinds.
The cost of installing such advanced technology at every port of entry, including at the Irish border, would be enormous – perhaps upwards of £20billion. But it would be a relatively small price to pay to make sure that exports and imports from the EU, some £553billion involving 200,000 businesses, could be maintained without any prospect of interruption or damage to confidence.
Given the resources available, HMRC could start investing now to show that Britain is prepared for any eventuality and will not be bullied over its own sovereign border with Ireland. In many ways, the endless row over customs and physical trade is a red herring. Of course manufacturing exports are critical, and the idea of a 'march of the makers' once backed by Osborne cannot be abandoned.
But as Hammond himself made clear at the recent meetings of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, financial and other services are where Britain has the greatest competitive advantage, running big trade surpluses with the EU and America.
Last year alone, Britain had an export surplus of £69.9billion on services with the rest of the world. Even so, the Treasury is not doing enough to make sure the City keeps its competitive edge. It is outrageous that when the Government started the process of selling back to the public its shares in Royal Bank of Scotland this week, it chose four American banks to do the job. Yet two of Britain's own banks, Barclays and HSBC, are both global players in investment banking and were left at the starting post.
Failure to put them on the list was like excluding England from a World Cup draw in which they were favourites.
Mr Hammond can justly claim that by keeping a tight rein on the public finances, he is delivering economic stability that will protect the UK from a disorderly departure from the EU.
But in doing so, he is depriving the great arms of the state – from HMRC to the Immigration Service – of the resources they need to face down Brussels and ensure we can broker a deal on frictionless trade with the European Union. The Chancellor's penny pinching and obduracy are in grave danger of working against the greater public good.
On the day after the 2016 EU referendum, the pound went into freefall on foreign exchange markets, credit became much scarcer and Britain looked to be without a functioning government as David Cameron threw in the towel.
Into the breach stepped the Bank of England Governor to steady the nation's nerves. Outlining a contingency plan for tackling an economic and political vacuum, he endeavoured to calm investors, saying: 'We are well-prepared for this.'
The interest rate was slashed so that lending would continue and the Bank printed an extra £60 billion to underpin the economy.
This emergency package was hugely successful. Despite widespread fears about the ramifications of the Leave vote, confidence in the nation's economic stability was restored.
Indeed, Britain has performed remarkably well since then, with employment at record levels, output chugging along nicely and public finances dramatically improving, despite months of political uncertainty.
Unpredictability
What we have seen has been a much more positive outcome than most forecasters, including the Bank and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF), predicted.
The intervention by The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street demonstrated the huge value of contingency planning when faced with the possibility of an economic and political journey into the unknown.
So it ought to be reassuring that, as Britain lurches towards another period of unpredictability with the distinct possibility of a No Deal exit, public officials have yet more well-prepared emergency plans: Project Kingfisher and Operation Yellowhammer.
In much the same way as weather forecasters use human names to describe storms, so the Treasury — home over the years to several bird-watching Chancellors — has given avian names to its initiatives.
For my part, I regard the scare stories of sweet shops without Mars bars, supermarkets with no supplies of toilet paper and pharmacies running short of medicines as overdone. Even if supply chains are interrupted, I have faith in Britain's bosses to overcome the bottlenecks within days, if not hours.
But everyone — even the most rose-tinted Brexiteers — recognises that seceding from an economic relationship with the world's largest trading bloc and one that has fuelled prosperity for more than four decades will inevitably be disruptive to supplies and the stability of financial markets.
Operation Yellowhammer, the Civil Service's worst-case Brexit planning unit, would seek to intervene directly to ensure that the flow of fresh foods, drugs and medical equipment is not interrupted.
Project Kingfisher aims to guarantee that economic output does not stall by using the nation's strong balance sheet to pump funds into the most stressed parts of the economy.
This would be in the form of new money beyond that which Chancellor Philip Hammond has already been dishing out to Government departments in preparation for Brexit.
It is known that Bank of England Governor Mark Carney regards a No Deal Brexit as a bigger threat to supply chains and business confidence than to events in the financial markets.
But the Bank still has in place contingency plans, including possible cuts to interest rates. It has also stress-tested the banks in case there is a big fall in property values.
Meanwhile, the Government is ready to launch Yellowhammer — a 'command and control' system employing 5,000 people to prevent a run on food, fuel and, potentially, the banking system.
Underlining the urgency and seriousness of the preparations for No Deal is the decision to activate a team in a nuclear bunker beneath the Ministry of Defence to manage operations.
They are right to be prepared. For civil servants still have nightmares about the fuel tanker drivers' strike of 2012, when factories were almost brought to a standstill overnight and panic-buying of fuel by motorists led to stations running out of supplies.
Yellowhammer would link major Government departments dealing with any civic contingencies. As has been the case during past emergencies, such as the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2001, the Ministry of Defence is ready to offer 3,500 troops for civilian duties.
A subset of Yellowhammer is Operation Fennel — an emergency traffic plan for Kent, should delays at Dover and Folkestone create tailbacks. Concrete barriers have been positioned along Kent's main transport artery amid reports that up to 10,000 lorries could be queuing across the county.
On a wider level, Mr Hammond's Spring Statement last week showed that, as a result of the remarkable improvement in public finances, the Treasury potentially has as much as £26 billion to pump into public services. Indeed, if no deal with Brussels could be achieved, the Government could also start to reallocate the £39 billion exit bill due to be paid to the EU over a number of years.
Resources
The officials working on Kingfisher would try to make sure harder-pressed parts of the UK had sufficient resources and that small businesses, the backbone of our economy, had access to special support schemes, should trade slump.
This is not just a domestic project. Brexit's potential impact on the economy has been modelled by several international organisations. The IMF has found that, under an EU exit deal similar to the one twice voted down by MPs, the long-term loss of output would be limited to 2.5 per cent to 4 per cent over a decade.
It predicts that a No Deal Brexit could cost between 5 and 8 per cent over the same period — alarmingly, double the potential harm.
Nevertheless, the Bank of England has been confident enough to raise its economic forecasts on the basis of recent good statistics and expects a strong pick-up in investment if Brexit uncertainty is removed.
Spirit
Indeed, Mr Carney told the Mail earlier this month that he 'has our back' and is ready to step in if there is disruption.
Of course, there are still doom-mongers. A most unusual joint letter from the general secretaries of business organisation, the CBI, and the trades union federation, the TUC, has warned 'our country is facing an emergency' and that firms and communities are unprepared for No Deal.
However, this chilling warning is not shared across the whole business community.
Lord Wolfson, the Brexiteer boss of Next, says he's seen no evidence Brexit uncertainty is affecting consumer behaviour.
Grocery bosses are less sanguine and warn of dire consequences, not least the soaring cost of food basics from butter to oranges.
However, a chairman of two FTSE 100 companies told me yesterday that what he considers to be a 'confected panic' reminded him of fears that the Millennium Bug would cripple computers as the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000.
What can be said for sure is that no one knows what will happen if there is a No Deal exit. But we can be sure that it would have a convulsive economic shock.
We have in place the planning, fiscal and monetary resources and, above all, an immutable national spirit to deal with whatever is thrown at us.
Yet it could still be disorderly and painful, which is why I believe, even at this 11th hour, Mrs May's deal still offers Britain the best opportunity to preserve jobs and prosperity.
Fans of Rumpole of the Bailey will probably recognise this quote from their ruddy-cheeked hero: 'I often think that knowledge of the law is a bit of a handicap to a barrister.'
The same sentiment could be applied to Attorney General Geoffrey Cox after his legal advice scuppered the Government's deal last night.
Unlike some past Attorneys General, Cox has been lauded for his independence of thinking. He refused to compromise his legal view.
If he had compromised his integrity, he might have earned the undying gratitude of the Prime Minister. For her part, though, commendably, she never tried to bully him into changing his mind.
That said, over the past few months since Cox's elevation to the Cabinet, this basso profundo-voiced lawyer has played to the gallery in the manner of John Mortimer's fictional creation.
Pleading with MPs and stabbing the air with his finger in the Commons yesterday, we could have been watching a scene from Rumpole and the Last Resort.
But Horace Rumpole would not have engaged, as Cox did, in an unedifying spat with a TV presenter, typing 'Bollocks' on Twitter in response to the claim that he'd made up his mind overnight that Mrs May's deal was legally invalid and had been sent away to think again.
What on earth was Cox doing?
Instead of firing off an obscenity on social media, he should have been preparing for the most important speech of his life and keeping his judgment for the floor of Parliament, not for Twitter.
As one MP told me: 'Sadly, Cox has bought into the idea that he has become some sort of media personality.'
Already, he had revelled in the fact that the extra agreement – or codicil – he was attempting to win from Brussels had been given a saucy nickname in his honour.
'It's come to be called Cox's codpiece!' he told the Commons. 'What I am concerned about is to ensure what's inside the codpiece is in full working order.'
The Brexit crisis, the most serious since the war, was reduced to schoolboy humour. Except not many Tory MPs are laughing.
Worse was to come when Cox appeared to risk sabotaging the deal in his written statement, saying: 'The legal risk remains unchanged.'
In the Commons shortly afterwards, though, he said the concessions from Brussels would 'reduce the risk' that Britain could be indefinitely trapped in the backstop. His audience was clearly confused whether this was a contradiction or if he was separating the legal risk from the political risk.
And by adding that the decision for MPs was not a political one, but a legal one, he was mixing the two definitions.
One senior ministerial source said: 'If only he'd written in his statement that 'the legal risk was reduced' and made the call to arms for MPs to vote for Mrs May's deal, we might have got it over the line.
'He could have gone down in history as the Attorney General who delivered Brexit.'
But he didn't.
Cox had already revealed his unhealthy love of the limelight by telling The Mail on Sunday that he was unlikely to change his legal opinion on Brexit unless he was certain there was 'no legal risk of us being indefinitely detained in the backstop'.
Pompously, he said: 'I have been a barrister for 36 years, and a senior politician for seven months. My professional reputation is far more important to me than my reputation as a politician.'
Perhaps if he had taken more care of his reputation as a politician, the country would not be in crisis this morning.
Traditionally, Attorneys General are not in the Cabinet and thus not directly involved in political discussions. This means that whenever legal advice is required, there is no suspicion that the country's most senior law officer might bend his view to please his political colleagues.
 19. However, the legal risk remains unchanged that if through no demonstrable failure of either party, but simply because of intractable differences, that situation [ where Britain is stuck in backstop] does arise, the United Kingdom would have... no internationally lawful means of exiting the Protocol's arrangements, save by agreement
Most notoriously, that was said to have happened in the Labour government when Tony Blair was accused of trying to persuade his Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, to alter his opinion on the legality of the Iraq War.
But Geoffrey Cox, 58, is not the sort of Attorney General who works in the shadows.
An ardent Brexiteer, he likes the sound of his own voice – especially since being the unexpected star turn at last year's Tory Party conference when he was Mrs May's warm-up act.
Last week, before heading to Brussels for talks with EU negotiators, he vaingloriously posted online an image of the Duke of Wellington – the victor of the Battle of Waterloo – with the simple caption: 'The Iron Duke.'
Wellington secured a victory that has gone down in history. Cox secured a lame defeat.
Cox's supporters argue that in his legal judgment he had no choice because he had to preserve his reputation at the Bar – the source over the years of lucrative barrister work for himself.
Indeed, legal work will be his livelihood again after his Cabinet career ends – which could be sooner rather than later.
He named his legal practice Thomas More Chambers after Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor.
Famously, More was beheaded for refusing to agree to the annulment of the King's first marriage.
Thankfully for Mrs May's Attorney General, courtiers who fail their masters these days suffer a less awful fate. But whatever happens, Geoffrey Cox will pay a high price for his failure.
 
When David Miliband returned to the domestic political scene yesterday, it was in the faintly comical surroundings of a rice factory, on a platform surrounded by shiny blue sacks of Tilda’s finest. It looked a bit like a glam-rock stage from a Slade concert 40 years ago.
Miliband and his pals, Nick Clegg and Nicky Morgan, were certainly playing some old tunes about Europe, claiming Britain is being ‘held to ransom’ by Brexiteers, and promising to campaign for MPs to water down the EU Withdrawal Bill when it returns to the Commons.
But if the sight of them looking like a superannuated pop trio with a microphone each was bizarre, there was one conspicuous absentee who stopped them being a not-so-fab four: Miliband’s political mentor, Tony Blair.
Toxic
The truth is, it’s the influence of the former prime minister that lies behind this anti-democratic cross-party roadshow.
From his Central London office, Blair the puppet master has been holding court with Labour MPs dismayed by the party’s continually changing, confused stance on Brexit.
Blair, who also fanned the flames of rebellion in the House of Lords, encouraged Miliband to speak out. He talks regularly to the man he once nurtured for the Labour leadership.
Though the egotist Blair would prefer to be at the front of house, leading the challenge to the Government, a well-informed observer says: ‘He’s self-aware enough to know his presence would be a distraction, which is why he egged on David.’ The revelation that Blair is involved behind the scenes will be a gift for Tory and Labour Brexiteers, who regard him as toxic.
Former Lib Dem leader Clegg, who has been trying to carve out a public role since he lost his Commons seat last year, has been spotted at Blair’s office, too.
Nicky Morgan, meanwhile, is an increasingly isolated figure in the Tory Parliamentary party, and susceptible to flattery by the likes of Miliband — who has been living in New York for five years since leaving in a huff after his younger brother, Ed, beat him to the Labour leadership.
Despite his comfortable self-imposed exile, his political ambition is as strong as ever.
Yesterday, his slightly nasal tones could be heard in a prime slot offered to him by the BBC to promote his views on Brexit.
On Radio 4’s Today programme, he announced like some venerable political seer that if Britain capitulates over the customs union and fails to establish control of our borders and our trade deals, there would be an enormous sigh of relief in Europe. Which presumably he would regard as a happy outcome. We mustn’t upset Brussels, after all.
Many listeners would have concluded that a man who gives up his seat in Parliament and takes a huge salary abroad has no right to pontificate on our political future. Will voters really welcome him back to the country he abandoned?
They will point to the irony in Miliband, 52, taking time off from his £400,000-a-year job running the International Rescue charity in New York to portray himself as the lost voice of the British people.
His former constituency, South Shields, is in the South Tyneside area, which voted 68 per cent Leave in the referendum — not that listening to the people comes naturally to a man more used to hobnobbing with liberal darlings such as George Clooney and Hillary Clinton.
How piquant that Miliband Major has resurfaced just as his former role as foreign secretary is under the microscope. It was only last Thursday that Theresa May apologised over the Blair government’s involvement in the torture of a Libyan dissident by the Gaddafi regime in Tripoli.
Miliband, who became foreign secretary three years later in 2007, has been accused of lying over what he knew about extraordinary rendition (the euphemism for the kidnap and torture of terror suspects overseen by the CIA) in an attempt to keep the New Labour government off the hook. Funny how he didn’t mention that at yesterday’s carefully stage-managed launch.
Undoubtedly, his appearance with Nick Clegg and Nicky Morgan will fuel speculation that he is planning to revive his political career.
One reason why he left Britain was the falling-out with his brother. Relations became so poor that he failed to invite Ed to his 50th birthday party in London in 2015.
But, intriguingly, David has now buried the hatchet with Ed. A friend of the family told me this week: ‘They will never be as close as they were, but they are talking again. They have young children and want the children to get together.’
Attention
While Miliband has made a success of his new life in the U.S., he was bitterly disappointed that his friend Hillary Clinton failed to become the Democratic president. There was even talk of a big job under Clinton in the American government, but the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House has forced Miliband to turn his attention to British politics once more.
A return to these shores would offer tempting career prospects for Miliband’s wife, Louise Shackelton, a concert violinist. Last autumn, the celebrated conductor Sir Simon Rattle returned to Britain after more than a decade at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic. He is now director of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO). Despite living in New York, Ms Shackelton has played with the LSO in London since Rattle’s return, and there would be a permanent post if she wanted it. A complicating factor if the Milibands returned to Britain is that their young sons are happily settled in schools in New York.
However, there is a ‘break clause’ this year in Miliband’s contract with International Rescue. That means the reaction to yesterday’s performance — among the public and from MPs — may have a major bearing on whether he has a future in British politics.
While he is seen by Blairite MPs as his party’s lost leader, Miliband knows the chances of making a successful second bid for the leadership are challenging, to say the least.
Saviour
The majority of Labour’s 500,000 members, who have the final say over the leadership, are followers of Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-Left politics, which means it might even be difficult for David Miliband to be selected for a safe Labour seat. The Corbynista roots already run deep, and they loathe Blairites almost as much as they hate Tories.
But what if Miliband is not interested in leading Labour: what if he has ambitions to set up a new centrist party instead? It might appeal to his Remoaner chum Clegg, who is increasingly out of step with the Lib Dems since the collapse of the coalition, and to Tory malcontents such as Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry, who were both sacked by Mrs May.
The creation of a new party is, in fact, the brainchild of a businessman named Simon Franks, who is reportedly putting up £50 million to make it a reality, having made his fortune renting out DVDs. He has called it ‘Project One Movement for the UK’.
Does Miliband see himself as the saviour of British politics, riding in on his white charger to plant his flag in the centre ground? Watch this space.
Whether British voters will welcome the return of the ‘king across the water’ is rather less certain.
 
 
 
 
 
On Monday, as he left the Commons after Theresa May's humiliating climbdown over the Brexit withdrawal deal, Jeremy Corbyn stopped by the Speaker's chair.
To the astonishment of several onlookers, the Labour leader addressed its beaming occupant, John Bercow. 'Thank you for all your help,' he said.
The gushing praise confirmed the Tories' worst fears: Bercow has abandoned all pretence of impartiality and is manipulating Commons procedures to undermine the Government on Brexit at every possible turn.
Minutes earlier, Bercow had accused Mrs May of being 'deeply discourteous' in pulling the 'meaningful' vote on the Government's deal scheduled for that evening.
In an extraordinary reprimand directed at the PM, the Speaker urged ministers to put the decision to delay it to an MPs' vote.
There was an immediate and icy reaction from Downing Street, with one source saying: 'The Prime Minister has the authority to pull a vote. She leads the Government, not the Speaker.'
But last night, as rumours of a Tory leadership challenge spread through Westminster, there was little disagreement among his critics that the Speaker had played his part to perfection.
Arrogant, high-handed and calculatedly indiscreet, during his tenure Bercow has ridden roughshod over the centuries-old convention that Speakers stay scrupulously above the political fray.
When it comes to the EU, he's never hesitated in making his allegiance known. Earlier this year, his car was spotted bearing a sticker which said 'B******s to Brexit, it's not a done deal'.
While addressing students at Reading University in 2017, he revealed he'd voted to Remain in the 2016 referendum, and hoped some EU rules, including equality laws, would continue after Brexit.
On immigration, a touchstone issue for many, he commented: 'If you asked me if I think freedom of movement has been a positive, the honest answer is that it has been a positive, certainly for the country.'
Flouting
Bercow also attacked the 'untruths' told by Leavers during the campaign.
This is in direct contravention of the rules laid down in Erskine May, the parliamentary bible on procedure: 'The Speaker is the chief officer and highest authority of the House of Commons and must remain politically impartial at all times . . . therefore, on election the new Speaker must resign from their political party and remain separate from political issues, even in retirement.'
Flouting this edict again and again, Bercow has sided with the Labour Party and Tory Remainers. He has lined up with Brussels, the BBC and even France's President Macron as a one-man Brexit wrecking ball.
During Monday's debate on the withdrawal deal, Bercow selected MP after MP who were opposed to it, creating the impression that Mrs May was totally isolated.
He also took a lenient stance when the Labour MP, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, snatched the Parliamentary mace, a symbol of royal authority, from the Commons chamber in protest at the vote being deferred.
Russell-Moyle was suspended for the sitting but readmitted the next day. 
The last Labour MP to grab the mace back in 2009 was a little-known Labour backbencher called John McDonnell, angry at a Heathrow expansion plan. He was suspended for five days.
Last Tuesday, there was more fury in the Government ranks when Bercow controversially selected an amendment proposed by arch-Remainer Dominic Grieve, the former Tory Attorney General.
It was designed to hand Parliament power over what would happen if the withdrawal deal fell through and was, on every level, highly contentious.
The result was catastrophic for Mrs May — in the space of one hour she suffered three Commons defeats — but no doubt it left the sanctimonious Bercow purring with pleasure at the Government chaos.
Pompous
Ministers tend to suffer in silence the relentless grand-standing of the pompous Bercow, a man who is never happier than when he's interrupting ministers.
But yesterday Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, finally snapped. In an interview on Radio 4's Today programme she came close to accusing him of bias.
'He's made his views on Brexit on the record, and the problem with that, of course, is that the Chair's impartiality is absolutely essential,' she said.
Asked whether she believed his position was 'tainted', she added: '. . . it's a matter for him, but nevertheless it's a challenge and all colleagues need to form their own view of that.' 
Chief Whip Julian Smith also expressed his frustration in an ill-judged but revealing ITV programme last week about the operation of the Whips' Office in the run-up to the vote.
Smith said he was not just battling Tory rebel MPs. 'We are up against some other issues, like the Speaker. He's got a strong view on this [Brexit].'
And in a highly unusual move at a Cabinet meeting last week, two ministers openly accused Bercow of trying to poison the Brexit process.
Liam Fox, the International Development Secretary, went furthest. 
'The Speaker is a disgrace to his office,' he told colleagues. Chancellor Philip Hammond was also critical.
Bercow, who was elected as the Tory MP for Buckingham in 1997 and became Speaker in June 2009 — with the support of Labour MPs and only a handful of Tories — is unrepentant about the breakdown in relations with ministers.
When appointed, he pledged to go after nine years, as is the convention, but typically broke that promise. 
He is now expected to leave next year following an investigation by a High Court judge, Dame Laura Cox QC, into bullying and harassment of staff in Westminster.
Her report, published in October, found that a culture of 'deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence' had allowed the mistreatment of Commons staff to thrive.
Three Tory MPs stepped down from the Commons Reference Group On Representation And Inclusion, which is chaired by Mr Bercow, but he ignored calls for him to quit that, too.
While Bercow was not named in the Cox Report, it was clear Dame Laura believed he should consider his position.
One senior Tory source said last night: 'It's Bercow's swan song, which means he couldn't care less what we think about him. All he cares about is keeping in with the Labour MPs who put him in the job in the first place — and whose bidding he appears to fulfill.'
Despite the fact that Bercow has also faced claims — which he denies — that he personally bullied two former officials, Labour cynically refuses to call for him to stand aside to enable the cases to be investigated.
Bullying
Earlier this year, Dame Margaret Beckett, a former acting leader of the Labour Party, said Bercow should not quit despite the bullying allegations. 
Asked if that meant Labour would tolerate bullying, she said: 'Abuse is terrible; it should be stopped. Behaviour should change anyway, whether the Speaker goes or not.
'But yes, if it comes to the constitutional future of this country, the most difficult decision we have made, not since the war but possibly, certainly in all our lifetimes, hundreds of years, yes it trumps bad behaviour.'
One senior Tory figure told me: 'Bercow has worked out he can have two legacies. Being forced out of his job over bullying. Or the Speaker who killed off Brexit.
'We can see what he's chosen. He will do everything he can to duck and dive and bend the rules to ensure a difficult hand for the Government.'
 
What better way to try to dismiss stories alleging that your health is ailing than to be seen out in shorts on your trusty Raleigh bicycle?
Not many 70-year-olds would have taken to the saddle this weekend – but Jeremy Corbyn was desperate to prove his fitness for office and dispel the notion that he has suffered a mini-stroke, has been 'losing his memory' and needs a daily siesta to recharge his batteries.
For their part, his aides have strenuously dismissed as 'scurrilous' such reports, but there is no denying that speculation has been rife ever since he cast off claims he suffered a mini-stroke three months ago.
Certainly, it has been confirmed that he's been receiving treatment at Moorfields Eye Hospital for a 'muscle weakness in his right eye'. All this talk about his health comes at an unfortunate time for Corbyn as, politically, his leadership is under siege from several fronts. Above all, he is accused of dithering over Labour's Brexit policy – and it has been easy to link such indecisiveness with allegations about his health.
Recently, he's been forced to rebut claims that he has been planning to resign because he is 'tired and fed up', that he's often driven home for afternoon naps and that he insists on taking a day off in the week if he has weekend commitments such as appearing on a Sunday TV programme.
Without doubt, being leader of the Opposition is gruelling, and one source says he's 'not great in the mornings – which is why he goes to lots of evening meetings.' A slim, teetotal, vegetarian, Corbyn has laughed off all speculation and insists he's preparing for power with regular jogging sessions of up to seven kilometres, cycling, workouts in the gym and using weights equipment in his local park on Sunday afternoons.
He says he loves 'being outdoors' – nowhere more so than on his beloved allotment. 'I think his allotment is more important to him than his Socialist beliefs,' joked the source. 'It's where he can zone out of politics and think about compost and potatoes.'
Jeremy Corbyn has, with some justification, expressed anger at the 'leaks' from the Civil Service.
However, it is clear that some of the speculation is fuelled by senior Labour party figures who want to exploit his age by pressing their own agenda for him to back a second referendum on Britain's EU membership.
They are also exploiting deep internal divisions over his wretchedly weak reaction to allegations about institutionalised anti-Semitism in the party.
Last week, he recorded the lowest ever rating for a Leader of the Opposition – with a negative rating of minus 57 per cent in an Ipsos Mori poll. At the same time, Corbyn has been assailed by a slew of reports that his relationship with his Shadow Chancellor and long-time political soulmate, John McDonnell, has foundered.
According to some reports, McDonnell would back a coup to install as leader Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer, or Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry – as long as McDonnell himself keeps the Treasury portfolio.
A few months ago it would have been unthinkable for McDonnell to even speculate about replacing Corbyn. But ever the pragmatist, it's said he believes Labour must have a strategy for a new leader.
This would be an insurance against any poll bounce that the next Tory leader benefited from, as well as considering the fact that prime minister Johnson or Hunt would inevitably feel duty-bound to seal their position with a public mandate and therefore call a general election.
The truth is that however fit or unfit Corbyn is personally, he will have to cycle very fast to keep up with a tiny Left-wing clique who are said to dominate him and treat him as a puppet.
Nicknamed the 4Ms, they run his office. They are former Guardian columnist Seumas Milne, his director of strategy; Karie Murphy, his chief of staff; Len McCluskey, general secretary of the influential Unite trade union and Andrew Murray, a former Communist and adviser to Corbyn.
They pull all his strings. Recently, even Corbyn loyalists – such as one-time girlfriend and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott – have privately complained that they are being frozen out by the 4Ms, who exert rigid control over access to the Labour leader.
Determined to keep control, the 4Ms will try to persuade Corbyn not to quit. They are counting on him making it to No10 – thus giving them unrivalled power. 'They're finished without him,' adds the source.
But while Corbyn's inner circle continue to insist their man relishes the prospect of fighting a general election, ultimately it will be his wife, Laura Alvarez, who may call the shots.
Intriguingly, video footage at the weekend showed her reluctant to leave her house when she spotted a TV camera crew outside.
She dislikes being in the public eye and is said to be furious at claims made by civil servants that her husband isn't 'functioning on all cylinders'.
But even if Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour red Raleigh bike completed September's Tour of Britain race, there would continue to be widespread talk of his ability to last a week as prime minister or about serial plots to oust him.
Even by Donald Tusk’s standards, the passage in his speech yesterday about the ‘special place in Hell’ reserved for Brexiteers was deliberately unpleasant and provocative.
Leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, was overheard joking about the outrage it would cause in Britain. Mr Tusk, the former Polish prime minister, nodded, laughed and then, to drive home the point, tweeted the inflammatory remarks.
The episode infuriated the Brexiteer Tory MPs who Theresa May is desperately trying to keep on side as her negotiations with Brussels enter a critical phase. ‘You wonder if that’s why Tusk does it,’ said one senior exasperated Government source.
Mr Tusk certainly seems to relish winding up Britain’s Brexit negotiators.
When Mrs May went to Salzburg to sell her Brexit plan last year, Mr Tusk released an Instagram picture offering her some cake. ‘Sorry, no cherries,’ was his punchline – a childish attempt to suggest that her so-called Chequers plan was not going to be allowed to cherry-pick concessions from Brussels.
If he’d done his homework, he would have known the Prime Minister avoids cake on account of her Type 1 diabetes.
And when Mrs May’s Government suffered a crushing 230-vote Commons defeat last month, Mr Tusk responded by sending a gloating tweet. ‘If a deal is impossible, and no one wants No Deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?’ Charming.
Mr Tusk is president of the European Council, which is responsible for the meetings of all EU leaders – making him one of the five unelected presidents of the EU.
He has a history of launching spiteful attacks on Britain since the EU referendum, which he describes, with typical over-exaggeration, as: ‘One of the saddest moments in 21st century European history.’
At A legal conference in Dublin last year, making clear his scorn for Britain’s democratic will, he added: ‘I don’t like Brexit. In fact, sometimes I am furious about it.’
In fact, Mr Tusk is angry about Brexit all of the time, complaining to anyone who’ll listen that it takes up nearly all of his time. He has been an implacable opponent of the British negotiating team at every turn in the Brexit negotiations.
Yet his native Poland, under the Right-wing Law and Justice government, is one of the most vocal EU countries calling for Brussels to compromise with Theresa May. Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki said only days ago: ‘We still believe a compromise is possible.’
Mr Tusk made his position crystal clear in the first statement from an EU leader when the referendum result came through. Warning of an end to ‘Western civilisation’, he added: ‘I always remember what my father used to tell me: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”.’
He was also hugely critical of David Cameron for calling the poll in the first place. In a BBC documentary last month, he revealed he had been scornful of Mr Cameron’s hopes of securing a renegotiation of Britain’s deal with the EU.
‘I told him bluntly: “Come on, David, get real. I know that all prime ministers are promising to help you, but believe me, the truth is that no one has an appetite for revolution in Europe only because of your stupid referendum”.’ Yet Mr Tusk was backed for his top job at the European Council by Mr Cameron himself back in 2014, the same year he pledged the referendum.
In backing Mr Tusk, he was trying to curry favour with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mr Tusk and Mrs Merkel are strong allies, having both been brought up under Communist rule – Mrs Merkel in East Germany and Mr Tusk in Gdansk, a northern Polish city. He speaks better German than English, and once famously said: ‘I’m incapable of getting angry with Angela Merkel.’
His father was a carpenter, his mother a nurse, and a grandfather spent time in a labour camp, served briefly in the German army, then fought for the Polish Resistance.
Mr Tusk, 61, married with two adult children, is a liberal Roman Catholic who likes popular culture: Quentin Tarantino films, Lord of the Rings and football. But he is deeply serious. His wife, Malgorzata, said: ‘Politics was always my husband’s passion, and it’s impossible to compete with passion.’
After studying history at Gdansk University, he was involved in student associations supporting the pro-democratic Solidarity trade union led by Lech Walesa. He once said: ‘Communism was something so hideous that you had to be an exceptional conformist or a fool not to see the evil around you.’ But he was never a standout figure in the pro-democracy movement.
After communism collapsed in Poland in 1989, Mr Tusk co-founded the Liberal Democratic Congress, a party of staunch economic liberals, before setting up the Civil Platform Party which propelled him to the premiership in 2007, resigning seven years later to move to the well-remunerated offices of the EU.
Initially reluctant to leave national politics, Mr Tusk was persuaded by his wife for the ‘prestige, better money and less problems at work’ that come with a top job in Brussels on the infamous gravy trains of pay and perks. As prime minister, he earned £47,500 a year, making him one of the lowest-paid EU leaders.
But now, as president of the European Council, he earns £263,000, and has a personal motorcade of five limousines. Nice work if you can get it.
As for the future, he is hoping, when his term of office ends this year, to return to Poland in triumph to run for the presidency.
For all his withering remarks, his incendiary and juvenile commentaries of the Brexit negotiations have often acted as a gift to Brexiteers. As Tory MP Justin Tomlinson said last night: ‘Tusk has just sent support for Brexit through the roof.’
Mr Tusk reminds voters that the EU is an undemocratic institution run by overpaid, unelected officials often in the twilight of their careers. He is the very embodiment of EU bureaucracy: accountable to no one – least of all the member states he claims to represent.
Within minutes of the secret meeting of Brexit saboteurs in Smith Square finishing on Wednesday, Roland Rudd, the shadowy multi-millionaire spin doctor behind the campaign to derail Brexit, was in receipt of a full report.
In his open-plan office on the 13th floor of the iconic Adelphi Building, with its panoramic views of Westminster, the man dubbed the ‘godfather of Remain’ was on the phone, demanding that every cough and spit be relayed to him. Increasingly, he believes he scents victory.
Rudd, an oleaginous charmer with just a hint of the spiv, is the boss of a City PR firm and a lifelong EU fanatic who set up the pressure group Open Britain immediately after the EU referendum in June 2016.
It would, he promised, lead the fightback to stay in Europe, to keep Britain in the single market and customs union, and to ensure free movement of people continues. The first page of the Open Britain website makes its intent clear.
‘As the Brexit process continues, facts are starting to come to light which no one could have known at the time of the referendum. The architect of Article 50, Lord Kerr, confirmed that Brexit is reversible if people change their minds,’ it says.
In an attempt to concentrate firepower, Rudd has now moved eight other anti-Brexit organisations into the Open Britain war room based at Millbank Tower, a few hundred yards from Parliament.
They include Best For Britain; European Movement UK; Scientists For EU; Healthier IN the EU; and Britain For Europe.
It is, however, Open Britain that is the unofficial cabal of Labour MPs, Tory rebels, peers of all parties, City folk, aides and fellow spin doctors whom Rudd has recruited to the cause. Several of them were present at the meeting — exposed in yesterday’s Mail — at the European Commission’s Smith Square HQ in Central London.
Rudd’s researchers provide facts and figures for their speeches and articles and organise their media interviews. He has ploughed many hundreds of thousands of pounds of his £45 million fortune into the venture and mobilised his formidable network of contacts.
There is, of course, a revolving door of visitors to Millbank from Westminster, and the usual suspects include Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP, who makes no secret of his wish to overturn Brexit. Rudd is also close to Tory MP Anna Soubry, who famously almost broke down in tears at a Remain rally after the referendum (and later denied being inebriated) and, of course, former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and former Attorney General Dominic Grieve.
‘The main opposition to Brexit must come from within Parliament,’ Rudd has insisted.
Rudd’s £23 million home in Kensington is also put to good use, with recent guests including Sir Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, and former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Earlier this year, the two men shared a platform at anti-Brexit event.
Former EU Commissioner Lord Mandelson — who under Tony Blair was sacked twice from the Cabinet — is a friend and ally. Indeed, Mandelson is godfather to of one of Rudd’s three children with his wife, dress designer Sophie Hale.
Sir John Major, the former Tory Prime Minister who made a passionate (for him) plea against Brexit in February, had been in close contact with Rudd’s team beforehand.
Open Britain raised £50,000 on the back of that speech.
Turn on BBC and you often hear Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s bully-boy mouthpiece (present in Smith Square this week), attacking Brexit. Chances are the interview was fixed by Rudd’s outfit.
Roland Rudd’s influence on the war on Brexit cannot be over-stated, and his team is now focused on organising a mass march from Hyde Park to Westminster later this month to demand a ‘People’s Vote’ on the final terms of the deal negotiated with Brussels. They are putting it about that one million will attend. A People’s Vote is a classic EU tactic — if you can’t get the vote you want in an EU referendum — hold another.
Roland Dacre Rudd, 57, was educated at Millfield School where today he is chairman of the board of governors. His younger sister, Amber, was Home Secretary until she resigned last month over the Windrush scandal.
Their father Tony, a financial journalist turned corporate financier, was criticised by an official inquiry into the 1982 takeover of investment firm Greenbank Trust, a company he owned with his business partners. The report concluded that Rudd and his associate were ‘totally unfit to be directors’.
At the little-known Oxford College, Regent’s Park, Roland Rudd studied Philosophy and Theology, and became president of the Union at the third attempt. He started out in journalism at the Financial Times, where he and his great friend Robert Peston, now the political editor of ITV, were known as The Pest and The Rat.
According to a former colleague at that time, they were ‘both tall, dark and ambitious, though the Pest was considered the better journalist, while the Rat (named after the TV character Roland Rat) was the handsome charmer’.
As the City expanded and deregulation offered unprecedented opportunity, Rudd recognised that a new type of financial PR was needed, one in which he and his team operated as counsel and confidante to CEOs and high-flyers.
In 1994 he founded Finsbury Group and built on an already extensive network — with his penchant for designer suits, he was known as the ‘Serpentine schmoozer’ — which he is now exploiting in the anti-Brexit cause.
In 2001, he sold the business to Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP, banking a reputed £45 million in the process. Today, Rudd is chairman of Finsbury, Britain’s largest communications company and the third biggest in the U.S.
He represents more than a quarter of FTSE 100 companies. Last year he paid himself £4.5 million. In addition to his West London home, the family spends weekends at an eight-bedroom Grade I-listed mansion in Somerset.
Rudd’s friendship with Peston has remained intact and on occasion raised a few eyebrows. In 2007, in the run up to the financial crash, Peston who was then the BBC’s new business editor, broke the story about the Northern Rock bank. Rudd just happened to be handling the bank’s PR.
A year later, Peston picked up the scoop that Lloyds TSB, headed by Sir Victor Blank, was about to step in and rescue its foundering rival, HBOS. There had been fears that a run on the bank could wreck the deal. But Peston’s exclusive saw the HBOS share price rally. Sir Victor’s PR adviser? Roland Rudd.
(Rudd has said previously he’d ‘never leak anything that hadn’t been pre-ordained and discussed [with a client]’ and ‘when people get stories, particularly somebody as good as Robert, he never writes it on the basis of one person’.)
Certainly, Rudd has form for working behind the scenes on the EU. In 2006 he hosted a dinner at his home for Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, and leading businessmen. Blair spoke passionately about the opportunities for Britain with Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU the following year.
On behalf of his business guests, Rudd issued a statement urging the Government to resist Tory calls to limit migrants from the new member-states. It said: ‘If Bulgaria and Romania join the EU next year, the UK should continue with its open-door policy.
‘A pause in migration would be tantamount to a reversal of policy and could work against Britain.’
No mention was made of Blair being at the dinner nor were any minutes kept — a highly unusual occurrence for a serving PM.
Even now Rudd insists that unlimited immigration is a positive. ‘The prospect of further migration that triggers economic growth is a cause for celebration, not cowardice,’ he says.
How ironic that he cannot accept a simple truth: that it was the very issue of unfettered migration that was a significant factor for millions in the referendum that delivered a decisive vote for Leave.
All the pompous complaints about President Trump's interference in our politics can't conceal the fact that he was right.
Our efforts to fulfil the people's will and get out of the European Union have been a model of incompetence; more Whitehall farce than demonstration of the art of the deal.
Britain's performance since the electorate voted to come out of the EU, the lack of foresight or planning, the weakness of the Government, the splits in the parties and the clamour of fear from the vested interests makes one wonder whether our political system is any longer fit for purpose.
It's as if Britain, a once-proud nation, has become so weak it can neither pay its way in the world outside Europe nor succeed in a European Union created to protect the industrial interests of Germany and the agricultural interests of France.
As if our business community has become so desperate from years of failure that it can't envisage reaching back to the global markets it once served. And as if an elective dictatorship, a government once all powerful, can't today negotiate a pig out of an insalubrious poke.
The pickle we are in has given rise to predictable new demands — led by the Tories' former Education Secretary Justine Greening — for a second referendum. She and fellow Remainers hope the lamentable state of the negotiations will convince the 17.4 million who voted to leave Europe of the errors of their ways.
I wouldn't be so sure. The public just want us to get on with Brexit. They are angry over Europe's bullying, and bored rigid by a political class that's not just incompetent, but utterly self-centred.
Demands
Instead of starting tough and making firm demands, we've faffed about and argued among ourselves about whether we want a strong Brexit, a soft Brexit or an invisible Brexit — when it's not our decision to make.
It can only emerge as a result of our negotiations with an obdurate and obstinate EU. We've been too intimidated by Remainers who've undermined our negotiating position, worked in collusion with Brussels to create difficulties, and unleashed an exaggerated campaign of fear and disaster.
Instead of going in strong, making our demands and preparing the fallback position every negotiation needs, we've gone in on our knees, pleading so pathetically the EU has forced us into a cage, demanding concessions on money, citizenship and the Northern Ireland border (to suit them, not us) before they'll even discuss the real issues.
They've consistently accused us of not having any clear proposals while rejecting every proposal that comes up and threatening to exclude us from every project we've already paid through the nose for.
The EU has nothing to learn from Trump on negotiating.
Perhaps Theresa May is a political genius who planned all this to get a deal that is acceptable to the timorous.
Perhaps she's a slow decider who takes time (a year and a half) to make her mind up.
Perhaps she's been terrified by the warnings of doom and disaster and the special pleading by every interest group that might be affected by Brexit, and so many that won't.
I can't guess what lies behind her reasoning. But the end result, clever or accidental, is that she's sidelined the Brexiteers in Cabinet and forced the resignation of their leaders.
She stopped David Davis, her negotiator, from negotiating by transferring power to a Civil Service ever ready to compromise with anyone — particularly Europeans — to gain 'goodwill' rather than defend the national interest.
She forced the Cabinet to either accept a dog's breakfast so pathetic no dog would sniff it — or let their nightmare, Comrade Corbyn, into power.
So after the Chequers debacle we end up starting the real negotiations as supplicants, begging for crumbs, rather than demanding what the electorate wants.
The position set out in the Chequers plan won't be the final settlement. It can't be because it has yet to go through the EU mangle.
The EU is held together by rules. It will fall apart if they're broken. It's already crumbling with the refugee problem and the inability to make an unworkable euro work for other countries besides Germany. The EU is desperate to humiliate us 'pour decourager les autres', as France's President Macron might put it.
The result is the EU can't negotiate rationally or reasonably and is determined to impose its sacred 'four freedoms' on us — free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
They'll try to pare down our pathetic supplication to turn us into an EU colony bound by their rules rather than an independent nation controlling its own destinies. Regulation without representation. The only way to salvage anything from such a humiliation is to tie Mrs May down to her own proposals as the Brexiteers are doing and to insist our two basic needs, control of EU migration and total freedom to make trade deals with other countries, must be conceded in full.
Getting both will rescue something from the wreckage and give us a base for a more gradual separation, but we'll get them only if Theresa is as tough with the EU as she has been with her own party.
So far, she's shown no inclination for that. So far, our national civil war over Brexit has given game and set to the resisting Remainers. It encouraged their yesterday's men to come up with the idea of making it match, too, by demanding a new referendum.
Power
This 'people's vote' is their soft way out of the dilemma of a nation they see as too pathetic to solve its own problems. Their argument is that the politicians, the parties and Parliament can't do what the electorate wants. So give power back to the people in the hope that they'll change their minds and stay in the affectionate embrace of the EU.
Isn't it ironic that these people who opposed the first referendum now want a second?
And that the very individuals who've been claiming the Leave majority were ignorant, racist, xenophobic, or manipulated by lies or by Russia, Cambridge Analytica and perhaps Disraeli from the grave, are now keen to return power to the peasants?
Their hope is clearly that the nation is so fed up with the whole business that national pride will collapse into apathy.
What seems to have escaped them, though, is the possibility that a nation whose people remain proud of their country — even if the elite isn't — is so fed up with being messed about by an arrogant, inflexible EU that it won't vote for humiliation and a return to subjugation.
Bullying
Think what a second referendum would be about.
In the unlikely event that Theresa May wins a deal on the basis of the Chequers proposal, people will be asked to vote on whether they want a watered-down Brexit that is far less than they demanded in the original referendum.
If in negotiations the EU dilutes the Chequers proposal, they'll be voting on whether Britain should be given colonial status by the EU, subjected to its laws but unable to influence them.
There is a very real possibility that a British electorate, infuriated by EU bullying and Remainer intransigence, could reject both options. Then we would be left with the 'no deal Brexit' everyone fears.
Is that really what Justine Greening and her crew want?
The EU has long refused to allow the democratic wishes of electorates to stand in its way. It ignored the referendum result in Greece in 2015, when people voted against the severe austerity package being forced on them by the EU. It has vetoed votes in Ireland, France and Sweden, requiring their electorates to vote again so their electors can stand on their heads and ask pardon for disobeying Brussels.
But Britons are different. We tend to believe the man in Brussels isn't always right.
And the truth is that Remainers could get the shock of their lives if they are successful in their demands for a second referendum.
A student group representing almost a million young people nationwide is joining forces to try 'putting a stop to Brexit'.
For Our Future's Sake is a new collective that represents 60 student unions from different universities across the country.
They want the public to have a say on the Government's final Brexit deal before we leave the European Union in 2019.
FFS leaders claim there are around 1.4million teenagers who were too young to vote when the UK was given a referendum on EU membership in June 2016 but believe they should have a say now they are 18. 
They are organising huge group action and urging members to write to their local MPs about the broken promises of the referendum campaign and how young people will be affected by them. 
Their joint letter reads: 'I am part of For our Future's Sake - a movement of young people and students across the UK who believe that Brexit will damage our future.
'Young people overwhelmingly voted against Brexit. Since the referendum result, numerous promises were made by the Leave campaign which have been shown to be completely false.
'Young people overwhelming want the current benefits of EU membership to be retained. 
'However, based on the current trajectory of the Brexit negotiations this is looking highly unlikely.
'In October, you will have the opportunity to vote on the Brexit deal. 
'As an elected member of Parliament, I ask that you stand up for young people in your constituency, vote against the EU Withdrawal Bill and demand a People's Vote on our future relationship with the EU.'
Among the university unions that have signed up to FFS are Cambridge, Durham, St Andrew's, Lancaster, Birmingham, Liverpool John Moore's and Westminster. 
Amatey Doku, deputy president of the National Union of Students, is a spokesman for FFS and told the Guardian yesterday: 'When over 120 elected student officers, representing nearly a million young people, call for something with one clear voice, they need to be listened to. 
'Students and young people overwhelmingly voted Remain and cannot see how the government can deliver a Brexit deal that works for them. 
'As an elected representative body of 600 student unions, NUS is calling for a people's vote on the Brexit deal.'
Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have both so far refused to entertain another public vote on Brexit.
But the Government faces continued challenges from the House of Lords on its vision for the customs union among other post EU issues.    
One of Jeremy Hunt’s most senior allies warned yesterday that MPs would block No Deal in October – and could even bring down the Government.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said the number of Tories prepared to vote against a No Deal prime minister in a confidence vote was ‘easily there’.
Mr Hunt insisted yesterday that if he became prime minister he would leave without a deal if it was a choice between that and No Brexit.
But Miss Rudd said Tory Remainers would bring down the government to stop No Deal, although she would not join such a rebellion, calling it a ‘step too far’. But she added: ‘There are a number of colleagues who have gone public saying they would consider doing that, and there are a number I know of privately who say that.’
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt signalled that Brexit could be delayed for several months – and refused three times to say it would happen by the end of the year.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, the Tory leadership hopeful rounded on his rival Boris Johnson’s determination to leave by the current deadline of October 31.
He said there was not time to negotiate a new deal with the EU before then, meaning Mr Johnson’s policy would result in ‘either a No Deal Brexit or a general election’.
However, he said it would be ‘completely unacceptable’ if Brexit didn’t happen before the next election.
Warning against guaranteeing a departure on October 31, he said: ‘If we are saying that we’re going to choose headlong for no deal Brexit on 31st of October, or an election, those are very stark choices.
‘We have holidays over the summer, we have a new European Commission, we have very few parliamentary sitting days... and my argument is, are those really the best options, those very stark choices between a no deal Brexit or an election?’
Britain's selection of Supreme Court justices is far more secretive than the process in the US.
When a vacancy arises, the Lord Chancellor chooses a selection committee to look at candidates. It consults senior judges and politicians with the only criteria that they are chosen ‘on merit’.
The appointment is then made by the Queen on the Prime Minister’s recommendation – with no public scrutiny required.
Here we look at four of the law lords set to hear the Brexit case in December. All have links to the European legal establishment.
LORD REED
The 60-year-old is one of two Supreme Court judges who has served on the European Court of Human Rights. Lord Reed was on a panel which decided in 1999 that Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who killed toddler James Bulger, had not received a fair trial. 
And it ruled Michael Howard, the home secretary at the time of the 1993 trial, breached human rights laws by intervening to raise the killers’ sentences.
Lord Reed was also vice-president of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment between 2006 and 2008. A Brussels man to his fingertips, he was an adviser to the EU Initiative with Turkey on Democratisation and Human Rights between 2002 and 2004.
He was an obvious choice to deliver the annual Sir Thomas More lecture (More was beheaded by Henry VIII) on EU law and the Supreme Court in 2014. He said: ‘For anyone invited to express his views on Britain’s relations with Europe, Sir Thomas does not provide an encouraging precedent.
‘While I do not expect this lecture to be followed by my head’s being impaled and displayed on London Bridge, I nevertheless subscribe to the view that it is wise for judges to avoid speaking in public on controversial topics.’
LORD KERR 
A former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Lord Kerr, 68, has also sat in the European Court of Human Rights.
Last year he went against then-home secretary Theresa May over her decision not to admit an Iranian woman with a terrorist conviction to Britain. 
In the case, Lord Kerr held the court had the power not only to review whether the home secretary’s argument was ‘tenable’ according to the rules, but if it was ‘right’.
He is an unashamed champion of the Human Rights Act brought in by the Blair government. 
He said in an interview: ‘The central point about the Act is that it has given judges free access to the rich vein of jurisprudence that is provided by the Strasbourg Court. I am in favour of the view that Strasbourg should not necessarily provide the last word on the content of human rights in our jurisdiction.'
LORD MANCE 
Fluent in several languages, Lord Mance’s career has been saturated in the processes of European law. 
The 73-year-old worked for a Hamburg law firm shortly after leaving Oxford, and has gone on to represent the UK on the Consultative Council of European Judges, set up to advise the Council of Europe on the ‘independence, impartiality and competence’ of judges.
He is also a member of panel set up under an EU treaty to give an opinion on candidates’ suitability for the European Court of Justice. 
In 2012 Oxford University chancellor Lord Patten, who yesterday urged Downing Street to order newspapers to desist from publishing criticism of the judges, made Lord Mance high steward of the university.
His wife Dame Mary Arden is also a judge. This year he upheld an injunction preventing the naming of a married celebrity who asked another couple if they were willing to have a threesome in a children’s paddling pool filled with olive oil. 
The judgment provoked derision as the celebrity’s identity was published around the world – and all over the internet.
When MPs said the ruling made the law look an ass, an unrepentant Lord Mance retorted: ‘If that is the price of the applying the law it is one which must be paid.’
LORD CARNWATH 
A key legal adviser to Prince Charles between 1988 and 1994, Lord Carnwath, 71, is steeped in EU laws and tradition. 
The Old Etonian was a co-founder of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment. The body exists to ‘promote the enforcement of national, European and international environmental law’.
Last year he chaired a Supreme Court climate-change conference and he has been president of the UK Environmental Law Association since 2006. 
Lord Carnwath is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental Law. 
 
Andrea Leadsom has added fuel to her Tory leadership campaign bid by waving a 'Boll***s to Bercow' sign while on the campaign trail today.
Leadsom insisted that Commons Speaker John Bercow would not be able to block Brexit on October 31 .
Bercow had warned Tory hardliners last month that 'the idea that parliament is going to be evacuated from the centre stage of debate on Brexit is unimaginable.' 
The former Cabinet minister today warning that leaving the EU by October must be a 'hard red line', as well as declaring Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement dead.
She insisted the best option now was a 'managed' departure to ease the impact of leaving without a comprehensive deal. 
But she also risked a major backlash by refusing to rule out holding another Scottish independence referendum, saying 'never say never'. Labour seized on the comments to claim that the Tories 'can't be trusted' to protect the Union.  
The intervention comes as candidates struggle to make their mark in the race to succeed Theresa May as PM. 
There are 10 contenders in the leadership race, but several are thought to have only just crept over the threshold of eight nominations needed to stand. 
Boris Johnson increasingly looks 'unstoppable' after he racked up more public endorsements from MPs - and Michael Gove was hit with a storm over his cocaine use.
TODAY 
Three more Tory hopefuls - Andrea Leadsom, Mark Harper and Rory Stewart - formally launched their leadership campaigns today. 
They were among 10 hopefuls who had reached the threshold of eight endorsements from MPs when nominations closed last night.
One contender, Sam Gyimah, dropped out admitting he does not have the support. 
Now the candidates have been finalised, MPs will start whittling them down in a series of votes.
THURSDAY, JUNE 13 
This will be another critical day, as the first ballot takes place.
Anyone with fewer than 16 votes will be automatically eliminated, and at least one will be ejected. 
THURSDAY, JUNE 19 
Further rounds of voting will take place during June until there are just two candidates left by this point.
They will then go to a run-off ballot of the 160,000 Tory members.
WEEK OF JULY 22 
The winner is due to be declared this week.
They will take over from Mrs May as PM shortly afterwards - probably in time to take a session of PMQs before the Commons breaks up for its summer recess. 
The former foreign secretary has been boosted by a fresh round of endorsements after the contest kicked off for real, including from Iain Duncan Smith. 
He also topped a poll at a hustings event with the right-wing 92 group of MPs last night, receiving more than twice as many votes as Brexiteer rival Dominic Raab.
Backbenchers said Mr Gove's bombshell admission that he took cocaine two decades ago had 'f***ed' him and 'handed the whole show to Boris', as he would now probably face a far less potent threat from Jeremy Hunt in the run-off ballot of Tory members.
At her launch, Mrs Leadsom presented herself as the 'optimistic yet realistic Brexiteer' who can heal the divisions in the country.
She joined Mr Johnson, Dominic Raab and Esther McVey in calling for the UK to leave by the next deadline of Halloween - in contrast to Mr Hunt, Mr Gove and others who are refusing to rule out an extension.  
'Leaving the EU on the 31st of October is, for me, a hard red line,' Mrs Leadsom said. 
'The next prime minister must have a clear plan to a managed exit by the end of October.'
She also set out a wider agenda, saying moving to a carbon-neutral economy is not only right for the planet and for future generations, but also offers the chance to develop new clean technologies which could rival the UK financial services sector in size and stature.
She outlined her ambitions for a major expansion in housebuilding, to help young people get a foot on the housing ladder while providing new opportunities for those looking to downsize.
'Our party has thrived in the past when it has governed as a champion of the people, providing freedom of choice and opportunity, a strong economy and global leadership,' she said.
Andrea Leadsom left little room for doubt over her views on Speaker John Bercow today.
The former Commons leader held up a placard with the message 'B*****s to Bercow' during a lunch for journalists in Westminster.
Mrs Leadsom repeatedly clashed with Mr Bercow when she was in government.
Flashpoints included his handling of parliamentary procedure in the Brexit process, and allegations that he bullied staff - something he has always denied.
On one occasion Mr Bercow was accused of branding her a 'stupid woman' in the chamber.
At a lunch with journalists later, Mrs Leadsom said she would not rule out allowing another referendum on Scottish independence.
She said she would 'never say never' to the prospect of another public vote, but stressed that it would not be in the interests of either Scotland or the UK.
She said it would be 'disrespectful' to the Scottish Parliament for her to rule out a referendum completely if she becomes prime minister, but she would fight against it.
The Tory leadership hopeful told a Westminster lunch: 'The reason I say 'never say never' is because I do not think that there should be another independence referendum in Scotland, I do not think it's in their interest, but on the other hand I am a big believer in devolution.
'So, what I just want to say is I am not going to stand here and utterly rule it out because I think that that is disrespectful.
'But I would very strongly fight against a second referendum, which I don't think is in the interest of Scotland and it's definitely not in the interests of the UK.
'What I think we have to be doing is promote the strength of the UK working together far stronger, far more than we have done, and I have a number of policy areas that I would use to try and make that happen.'
Labour MP Ian Murray said: 'This shows that the Tories can't be trusted to protect Scotland's place in the Union.
'The majority of people in Scotland don't want a divisive second independence referendum and have rejected both the nationalism of the SNP and the Tories.'
Many years ago, when I was working as a classroom assistant in a French high school, one of the teachers invited me round for dinner. 
After a typically lavish Gallic feast, we were polishing off the last of the Côtes du Rhône when the conversation turned to the thorny history of Anglo-French relations.
‘We’ll never forgive you, you know,’ he said abruptly, gazing moodily into his glass. ‘For what?’ I asked. ‘For the Second World War,’ he said. ‘Winning it, I mean.’
I often think about that conversation these days. For although France’s political and cultural elite are always the first to boast about how they have buried the grudges of history and banished the hatreds of the world wars, their recent actions tell a different story.
There have been two prize examples in the past few days. One came from France’s Minister for European Affairs, Nathalie Loiseau, who told a French radio station that she would rather see Britain crash out of the EU without a deal than accept a compromise that might undermine her beloved single market.
The other came from the organ grinder himself, Emmanuel Macron, who recently told the United Nations that the EU would gladly welcome Britain back if we corrected our historic mistake in a second referendum.
Indeed, according to yesterday’s Times, Theresa May has warned the Cabinet that Mr Macron believes Brexit can be reversed — and is hoping that, by blocking a deal, he can blackmail her into approving a second referendum.
This is, of course, a familiar Macron theme. Barely a month passes without him delivering another lecture about the shameful insolence of our vote to leave the EU.
The Leave victory, he said recently, was won by ‘liars’ who ‘left the next day so they didn’t have to manage it’. Actually, the only person who left the next day was David Cameron, who had campaigned for Remain. So Mr Macron was not quite as clever as he thought.
Even so, in its haughtiness, condescension, ignorance and arrogance, Mr Macron’s rebuke shows why he has become a shining example of everything ordinary Britons loathe in the European political elite.
Any sensible person would tell him that his threats were bound to put British people’s backs up. Indeed, if there were a second referendum I would be tempted to vote Leave purely to express my fury at being lectured by this Parisian pygmy — even though I voted Remain the first time.
But Mr Macron’s real audience was not here in Britain. Like so many of his predecessors in the Elysée Palace, he was pandering to the jealousy, resentment and fear with which so many French men and women peer anxiously across the Channel.
Perhaps that sounds a bit strong. But as the Cambridge historian Robert Tombs wrote a few years ago in his superb history of Anglo-French relations, That Sweet Enemy, many of our Gallic neighbours have never really forgiven us for Agincourt and Waterloo, let alone for our effrontery in standing up to Hitler in 1940 while they ignominiously crumbled and collaborated.
That most pompous of all French presidents, Charles de Gaulle, never forgave us for saving his country during World War II. 
Painfully conscious of the cowardice and incompetence that had disfigured his own country’s war effort, he tried to get his revenge by vetoing our first applications to join the Common Market in 1963 and 1967.
De Gaulle’s successors have invariably tried to copy his example. When Margaret Thatcher tried to win a rebate on Britain’s scandalously excessive contributions to the EU budget in the early 1980s, for example, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing tried to block her at every turn.
At one summit, Giscard d’Estaing even started reading the newspaper while she was talking. At least Mr Macron has not yet done that to Mrs May, although given the turgid pretentiousness of his country’s newspapers, perhaps that is not surprising.Other recent presidents have continued the same pattern. 
When the financial crisis broke in 2008, the first reaction of Nicolas Sarkozy, a moral and political dwarf now facing charges of bribery and corruption, was to blame it on ‘Anglo-Saxon capitalism’ and demand action against the City of London.
Similarly, no sooner had Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016 than the risibly flaccid Fran- çois Hollande insisted that ‘there must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price’, and that Britain must face serious ‘economic and human consequences’.
As for Mr Macron, when he was elected in May 2017 he pretended to be an entirely new kind of president. But if you got a computer to design a classic over-privileged Gallic politician, the result would look just like him.
From his unusual marital history to his pretensions of grandeur, he conforms absolutely to type.
He went to the elite École Nationale d’Administration, which educated three other French presidents, seven prime ministers and about half of all recent Cabinet ministers.
He became Minister of Finance without standing in a single election. Then he set up his own political party, En Marche, its initials borrowed from his own
name. Can you imagine a British politician doing that?
Like his unlamented predecessors, Mr Macron came to power promising tough reforms but has utterly failed to deliver. He
parades around like a conquering hero and harangued a teenager who failed to call him ‘Mr President’. Yet he looks more and more like a teenager himself, struggling to cope with a grown man’s job.
His administration is in chaos, with his experienced interior minister walking out on Wednesday in protest at his hubris. His approval rating stands at a pathetic 23 per cent, lower than Theresa May’s. And so Mr Macron has fallen back on the oldest French trick of all: bashing the British.
As for his recent attempts to blackmail us into a second referendum, I think we should see them for what they are: a reflection of his underlying weakness.
To Mr Macron, as to so many of his compatriots, Brexit poses a huge existential challenge. It would be humiliating for France, for so long our greatest rival, if we made a success of our independence outside the EU while they ploughed joylessly on towards ever-closer union with the titans of Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta and Romania.
No wonder he never ceases to decry our decision to leave, spent the Salzburg summit trying to intimidate Mrs May into surrender, and even now seems determined to exact such a high penalty that he forces the British people to think again.
But if Mr Macron seriously thinks he can blackmail us into falling into line, he is an even bigger fool than he looks. For if he knew anything about history — and since he is French, I can readily understand why he would prefer to forget it — he would know that nothing infuriates the British people more than a foreigner telling them what to do.
And since Mr Macron clearly models himself on Napoleon, hosting Mrs May this summer at the emperor’s old haunt of Fort de Brégançon, an island retreat off the Mediterranean coast, he should remember what became of his hero.
Napoleon, too, thought he could bully Britain into surrender. He drew up his forces along the coast, struck a medal to commemorate the invasion and even ordered a triumphal arch to be built in readiness.
And what happened to him? We beat him at Trafalgar, then at Waterloo. He ended up a prisoner on the island of St Helena, his empire smashed, his pretentions shattered, his country humiliated in the eyes of the world.
So Mr Macron should be warned. Let him block a deal if he likes, though the consequences would surely be disastrous for his own economy, with its woefully undercapitalised banks and crippling youth unemployment rate.
Let him strut and swagger. Let him enjoy his time in the limelight. It won’t last long.
Britain can take it. After all, we have taken it before — and worse. And if there is one thing guaranteed to unite us, it is that we will never, ever give in to a foreign bully.
 
Ever since Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell took control of Her Majesty’s Opposition, they have tried to portray themselves as men of principle. And when challenged about their hard-Left opinions, their enthusiasm for IRA bloodshed, Palestinian terrorism and Marxist economics, their disciples have always fallen back on the same mantra.
Jeremy and John are men of conviction, the Corbyn cultists say. Whatever you think of their opinions, at least they tell you what they think. Hence the self-congratulatory tagline of the video produced by Mr Corbyn’s cronies after he became Labour leader: ‘Straight talking, honest politics.’
Four years later that tagline has a bitterly ironic ring. For in the last few days, Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell have been exposed as perhaps the most cynical and dishonest double act in our modern political history.
How else, after all, can you make sense of Mr McDonnell’s promise that if elected, Labour would support a tweaked version of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement with the EU – the very same agreement against which he and his Labour comrades voted three times on January 15, March 12 and March 29?
Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. As the Shadow Chancellor told the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday, Labour’s latest Brexit strategy is that, if elected, they would go to Brussels to secure some cosmetic changes to Mrs May’s much-maligned exit deal.
Then a Corbyn government would put the deal to the British people in a second referendum – although, in a twist inviting well-deserved ridicule, both Mr McDonnell and the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, have said they would urge people to vote Remain instead.
The risible spectacle of Ms Thornberry trying to justify this madness on Question Time last week was one of the highlights of the entire Brexit shambles. ‘So you would be campaigning against your own deal?’ asked an incredulous Fiona Bruce, while the ludicrous Ms Thornberry gulped and wobbled like a stranded seal.
For me, though, what is really astounding is the blatant cynicism, the sheer brass neck, of Labour’s plan to revive Theresa May’s deal. After all, Labour MPs have had three chances to vote for the deal already.
Had they taken one of them, we would already be out of the EU. Not, perhaps, on the terms preferred by hardline Brexiteers – but at least we would be out and the wrangling would be over.
Even though I voted Remain, I always thought Mrs May’s deal was the best compromise available, respecting the British people’s decision to leave the EU without blowing up our economy in the process.
But Labour could not find a good word to say about it. Mr Corbyn’s neutered nodding dog, Sir Keir Starmer, claimed that the deal was totally ‘inadequate’, adding: ‘Why on earth would you back a deal as bad as this one?’
Even now, Labour’s website boasts a page presenting ‘Six reasons why Theresa May’s Brexit deal is bad for Britain’, claiming – entirely wrongly, in my view – that it ‘puts jobs at risk’ and ‘could pose a national security threat’. So why the volte-face? The answer is very simple: Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell will say and do anything, no matter how dishonest, to damage the Tories and get into power. Contrary to their pious claims, they don’t care about the national interest. All they care about is the chance to put their student-union politics into practice.
Indeed, this shameless dishonesty has characterised their attitude to Brexit right from the beginning. As all the world knows (but as Mr Corbyn will not admit), he has always been one of life’s Leavers.
Like his political master, the late Tony Benn, he regards the EU as a capitalist conspiracy, blocking the kind of wholesale nationalisations, confiscations and controls that he thinks necessary to kick off a British socialist revolution.
But because so many of his adoring young voters are Remainers, Mr Corbyn lied about this during the election campaign, pretending that he had become a convert to the joys of Brussels. And ever since June 2016 he has equivocated between respecting the result and talking vaguely of a second referendum.
You might wonder how the Leader of the Opposition could justify his failure to take a clear position on the single defining question of the day. Once again, though, the answer is very simple.
Mr Corbyn does not really care about Britain’s place in the EU, any more than he cares about the health of our economy. In his simplistic, pseudo-Marxist view of the world, all that matters is the crusade against the Tories, the top-hatted agents of wickedness.
To get the Tories out, anything is permissible. Lying, cheating, changing his mind: it doesn’t matter, as long as it serves the greater good. For then, once he’s kicked out the Tories, he can get on with the real job of redistributing wealth, renationalising the utilities, closing down private schools, putting up taxes and disarming the military.
The problem with all this, as the Labour leadership have discovered, is that the British people are not fools. Most of us, listening to Mr McDonnell’s sanctimonious homilies and Ms Thornberry’s patronising lectures, have long since realised that these people are lying to us, because they change their position at least once a month.
Even on the issue of an election, Labour’s leaders have been exposed as deeply dishonest. For months Mr Corbyn and co. told the cameras that they didn’t want a second referendum, because they wanted a General Election instead.
When Boris Johnson announced the impending prorogation of Parliament, they went into hysterical overdrive, shrieking ‘Stop the coup!’ and demanding an election straight away. And what happened next? When Mr Johnson proposed an election, Labour said no – the first instance in British history of an Opposition deliberately turning down the chance of a General Election.
The good news is that all this has done immense damage to Mr Corbyn’s reputation. At the beginning of this year, Labour’s poll standing was about 40 per cent. Today they are becalmed in the mid-20s and struggling to fend off the Liberal Democrats.
The bad news, however, is that these mendacious hypocrites still have a decent chance of forming the next Government, since the split on the centre-Right between the Tories and the Brexit Party could still allow Labour to pick up dozens of Leave-voting working-class seats.
And if, by some horrible mischance, Mr Corbyn found himself in Downing Street, I think it highly unlikely that he would become an honest man overnight. Politicians do not change when they become Prime Minister; they simply become exaggerated versions of themselves, as Boris Johnson is currently proving.
Of course Mr Johnson is unlikely to win any prizes for resplendent personal integrity. The difference, though, is that on Brexit, and indeed on politics more generally, everybody knows where the Prime Minister stands.
By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have done everything possible to disguise their true colours. Their aim is to work their way into Downing Street by stealth, subordinating everything else to their crusade to get their hands on the levers of power. And if that means reversing course completely and voting for Theresa May’s deal after all, so be it.
And one last, even more disturbing thought. If Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell can sink to such cynical depths on Brexit, what would this dishonest pair be capable of when it comes to your taxes, your pension and your children
Finally, it’s sorted. Until yesterday, the anti-Brexiteers known as Remoaners had high hopes of Philip Hammond, the Chancellor.
His statement on The Andrew Marr Show last month that failure to reach an amicable deal with the EU ‘would be a very, very bad outcome for Britain’ was seen as an attack on his Brexiteer colleagues in the Cabinet (and, indeed, on the Prime Minister).
But yesterday he appeared as joint author of a newspaper article with the most adamantine Brexiteer in the Cabinet, the International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox. The two supposed foes declared that in March 2019, Britain would not just be leaving the EU but also ‘we will leave the Customs Union and be free to negotiate the best trade deals around the world as an independent, open, trading nation’.
Although the Cabinet Brexiteers were content with Hammond’s proposal that there should be a transition period after March 2019, pending a final settlement of the country’s arrangements with the EU, the Chancellor had given the impression he was bending to the demands of the CBI that Britain remain within the Customs Union during that unspecified period.
Blunder
This they regarded as a fatal blunder — and not just because they suspected the CBI (which had campaigned for Britain to give up sterling for the euro) of seeking to keep the UK in the EU ‘by the back door’.
As Shanker Singham, chairman of the special trade commission of the Legatum Institute (a group consulted regularly by the Government), warned last week: ‘The UK must be able to provide the clarity of being outside the Customs Union on Day 1 of Brexit. If such clarity does not exist, then other countries will not think the UK is serious about executing an independent trade policy and they will quickly lose patience and move on.’
The point is that while remaining a member of the EU Customs Union, you can’t unilaterally negotiate trade deals with other countries — which would wreck one of the fundamental purposes of Brexit.
Last week, the man appointed by Theresa May and Dr Fox to be our chief trade advisor, Crawford Falconer, arrived from New Zealand to take up his post. If the Government had given way to the demands of the CBI, Professor Falconer — renowned for his expertise in trade negotiations across the world — might as well have returned immediately to the Antipodes. That will now not happen, thank goodness (I speak as someone who has met the redoubtable New Zealander).
In the circumstances, it is almost comical that David Miliband appeared yesterday as the author of a column in The Observer demanding a second referendum on Brexit, and declaring ‘Philip Hammond is playing an important, even valiant role’ in defying what the former Labour Foreign Secretary termed the ‘delusion’ of Dr Fox (and other ‘hard Brexiteers’ in the Government).
Not only has Hammond pulled the rug from under Miliband’s feet: his argument for a second referendum — the eternal demand of the Remoaners — is also dead and buried. We are going to leave in March 2019: full stop.
Any referendum thereafter about EU membership would not be on the basis of our previous terms. We would be applying as a new member, obliged to agree a timetable for joining the euro, and without the mega-billions rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher. Good luck selling that to the British people, Mr Miliband.
In any case, the nation has not changed its collective mind since the referendum in June 2016. If anything, views have hardened in the direction set by the result. A survey of 3,293 people published on Friday by the London School of Economics showed that even those who had voted ‘Remain’ would prefer the sort of Brexit deal the LSE’s team described as ‘hard’.
A total of 51.3 per cent of Remain voters backed a Brexit deal which delivered ‘full control’ over immigration and led to lower numbers of migrants from the EU. No fewer than 54.7 per cent of Remainers said that the UK should ‘pay nothing’ to the EU by means of a ‘divorce bill’.
And 52.2 per cent of Remainers told the LSE researchers that we should entirely free British law from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Unsurprisingly, a still higher proportion of self-identifying ‘Leave’ voters supported what the LSE termed ‘hard Brexit’.
Monstrous
This clearly disappointed the most voluble critic of the Brexiteers on the Tory parliamentary benches, Anna Soubry. In her own newspaper article yesterday, she lamented ‘a sense of resignation among most people who voted Remain that we have to “man up” and make the most of what we know will be a rotten Brexit’.
This former business minister under David Cameron described the likes of Dr Fox as the sort of ‘Brexit ideologue’ who had ‘brought down’ previous Tory PMs, among whom she listed John Major, her old boss Cameron — and Mrs Thatcher!
It is a monstrous misrepresentation to say that Thatcher was brought down by ‘Brexit ideologues’.
It was two days after Mrs T declared ‘No! No! No!’ to Brussels’ plans for a federal European state that her deputy, Geoffrey Howe, resigned in protest, precipitating the leadership challenge by his fellow supporter of British membership of the euro, Michael Heseltine.
In other words, it was Soubry’s fellow pro-EU ‘ideologues’ who brought down Thatcher. By intimating yesterday that she would vote in Parliament against the Government over a ‘hard Brexit’, Soubry signalled her readiness to bring down Theresa May over the same issue.
But the waters are closing rapidly over Soubry’s head: the Cabinet is now united over its approach to Brexit. About time, too.
A spooky political diagnosis of dementia
I received a puzzling email from a doctor last week. It was headed ‘Climate Change’ and warned: ‘Your paps needs a dementia screening soon.’ Because of climate change?
Not exactly. Juergen Messner — that was the sender’s name — was referring to an interview my father Nigel Lawson had just given to the BBC, in which he said there had been no increase in ‘extreme weather events’ and that we should stop panicking about climate change.
Dr Messner, a registrar in trauma and orthopaedic surgery at an NHS teaching facility in Yorkshire, seemed to think my 85-year-old father’s opinions indicated that he was losing his mind to dementia.
He isn’t, as it happens — but I emailed Dr Messner to ask if, as a bone rather than a brain specialist, he was qualified to diagnose dementia. He replied with the garbled: ‘Assessing mental capacity is part of most clinical doctors.’
I emailed back that surely any doctor with respect for the proprieties of his profession does not give anyone a diagnosis of a potentially terminal condition in one of their relatives without personally having responsibility for the patient — Dr Messner has never met my father. I added that I would consult the General Medical Council to check if I was right.
Dr Messner responded by asserting his rights to freedom of speech under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, followed by what some would term ‘a religious profanity’.
Actually, he has a good point about freedom of speech — and it covers abuse (which basically is what Dr Messner’s original email was). But it is a little spooky when a doctor in this country regards dissent from establishment views on the effects of climate change as evidence of mental incapacity.
Totalitarian regimes in the past — notably the Soviet Union — often treated dissent as a form of mental illness. Such dissidents would be consigned to psychiatric units, where they were drugged by doctors compliant with the prevailing political orthodoxy.
I would advise elderly patients at Dr Messner’s orthopaedic clinic not to engage him in discussions about climate change. They may get a diagnosis they hadn’t bargained for.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox today denied he has given up hope the EU will give Britain a guaranteed exit from the Irish backstop that could help get Theresa May's Brexit deal over the line next week.
The Tory MP, who will return to Brussels tomorrow hoping for a breakthrough, insists claims he is now pursuing a Plan B are based on 'misunderstood fag ends dressed up as facts'. 
The QC is fighting the EU to secure legally-binding changes to ensure that the UK is not trapped permanently by backstop arrangements designed to keep the Irish border open if trade talks fail.
With the EU refusing to back down on setting an end date, Mr Cox is now seeking an enhanced 'arbitration mechanism' instead, the Daily Telegraph reported, in the hope Brexiteers, the DUP and rebel Labour MPs will help vote through Mrs May's deal on March 12.
The focus is on plans for how alternative arrangements – including technological ones for cross-border trade combined with bilateral agreements on customs – could be reached that would allow the backstop to cease if triggered.
One senior source said: ‘It’s a thing that needs work, but of course in order to retain the insurance element for the Irish this has to be carefully drafted because on one hand, it can’t look like a unilateral escape clause for the UK, but on the other hand it can’t look like it’s permanently locking in the UK. 
'That is semantically quite a challenge. It’s a difficult circle to square.’
The source added: ‘What they are looking at is something that has a legal value and that is credible enough so that the attorney-general can demonstrate to MPs that yes, the backstop is not a prison. 
'The name of the title of the document doesn’t matter, it’s the content. So the UK is now calling it a codicil, but you can call it an additional protocol, an annexe, an interpretative text.
‘It will be used by Geoffrey Cox to demonstrate the point they want to make – that there is life after the backstop.’ 
Responding to the story today Mr Cox crypically tweeted: 'Some of it is accurate, much more of it isn't and what is not is far more significant than what is’. 

In a humorous twist on the crunch talks Mr Cox included 'Get Outlook for iOS' on the bottom of his Twitter rebuke - a hint that he had copied and pasted the tweet from an iPhone. Responding to a suggestion he needs someone to proof-read his social media he said: 'Good idea'.
Mr Cox is due to meet EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels tomorrow and is taking Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay with him just eight days until the crunch Commons vote.
It is claimed that Mr Cox is arguing for an 'independent' arbitration panel outside the EU's institutions - but Brussels has so far rejected the plans. 
A Number 10 spokesman said: 'The Attorney General continues to pursue legally binding changes to the backstop that are necessary to ensure it cannot be indefinite. 
'We will not however comment on the specifics of the negotiations at this critical stage.'
Meanwhile Justice Minister Rory Stewart said hardline Eurosceptics are becoming 'more pragmatic' about Theresa May's deal.
The threat that Brexit could be delayed, softened or even halted was focusing minds among Eurosceptic MPs, he said. 
'I think there's been a huge amount of movement,' he told Sky News. 
'I think people are becoming more pragmatic, they are recognising much more than they did in the past that there are a limited number of alternatives to this and that the alternatives are worse.'
A number of senior Eurosceptics have indicated they could back Mrs May's deal, provided she is able to secure concessions on the controversial Irish backstop.
Nigel Evans, secretary of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, said Eurosceptics and the DUP would not accept 'some wishy washy sticking plaster'.
But, writing in the Daily Mail, he said: 'I will be looking very carefully at what (Attorney General) Geoffrey Cox brings back. 
'On my interpretation that it delivers what Theresa May said she was going to deliver, and on it having the backing of the DUP, I can see me edging towards pushing this deal over the line.'
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, warned that Remainer attempts to remove the possibility of No Deal had undermined Mrs May, but said Eurosceptic MPs could yet help reverse the defeat inflicted on her deal when it returns to the Commons. 
He said: 'When the right compromise is offered, we should pull together behind the Prime Minister and help her to deliver our exit from the EU on March 29.'
 
Government sources are hoping that Mr Cox will achieve a breakthrough in Brussels by the end of this week that will allow him to change his legal advice that the backstop could 'endure indefinitely' ahead of an expected vote on March 12.
A source at the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs warned ministers not to try to 'bounce' them into backing any revised deal at the last minute, saying: 'We want at least 48 hours' notice. That is not an unreasonable amount of time and anything less would be treating Parliament with contempt.'
The ERG has set up a panel of Eurosceptic lawyers, led by Sir Bill Cash, to pass judgment on any concessions secured by Mr Cox.
Yesterday, the group set out three tests the changes must pass. These include a 'clearly worded, legally-binding treaty-level clause which unambiguously overrides' the text of the Withdrawal Agreement.
The language 'must go beyond simply re-emphasising/re-interpreting the temporary nature of the backstop'.
And the changes must demonstrate 'a clear and unambiguous route out of the backstop if trade talks fail'.
Sabine Weyand, deputy to the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, yesterday suggested the demands are 'way beyond' what is on offer.
But Tory MP Michael Tomlinson, who will sit on the new committee, said Eurosceptics had already compromised by accepting that the change did not necessarily have to be written into the text of the Withdrawal Agreement. 
THE BBC covered up a Boris Johnson outburst in which he accused the French of being 'turds' over Brexit.
The crude remark, made when he was foreign secretary, was supposed to feature in a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary.
But the Foreign Office successfully begged for it to be cut, according to insiders. The claim is corroborated by a leaked Whitehall memo seen by the Mail. It said the gaffe would make Anglo-French relations 'awkward'.
Senior diplomats went further and privately said it would enrage French president Emmanuel Macron and make it even harder for the UK to achieve a good Brexit deal.
Mr Johnson's undiplomatic language will be seized upon by his critics in an increasingly heated Tory leadership contest. In other developments in the race for No 10:
Mr Johnson made the 'French turds' jibe during a three-part documentary about the Foreign Office broadcast on BBC2 in November.
By the time it was shown he had resigned as foreign secretary in protest at Theresa May's Brexit policy outlined at Chequers.
Since she was still trying to win concessions from the EU, the Foreign Office panicked when it was told the BBC planned to broadcast Mr Johnson's offensive comment.
In bizarre secret 'negotiations', officials begged the corporation to censor it. Diplomats were also worried about another attack by the former London mayor on the French in the film in which he accused them of 'shafting Britain'.
The BBC initially stood firm, telling the Foreign Office they planned to broadcast both remarks on the grounds that it was an accurate and fair portrayal of Mr Johnson at work.
The Foreign Office countered that Mr Johnson's comment could cause 'significant damage' to Britain. They said it made a mockery of the Government's aim – in agreeing to the documentary – to 'promote Global Britain to a UK audience'.
In the end the BBC agreed to remove Mr Johnson's 'French turds' remark but kept his 'shafted' comment in the programme.
An emergency budget for a No Deal Brexit is being planned by Boris Johnson if he becomes prime minister, it was reported last night.
The leadership hopeful is said to be planning major tax cuts, an overhaul of stamp duty and revamp of regulations to leave the EU without a deal.
Mr Johnson is also considering abolishing stamp duty on homes worth less than £500,000 if he wins, as well as reversing George Osborne’s stamp duty hike on more expensive homes. Currently, only the first £125,000 of a home is exempt from stamp duty – with Mr Osborne raising the tax on properties worth more than £1.5 million from 7 per cent to 12 per cent. The budget, which is normally held in October or November, would be brought forward to September, ahead of the October 31 deadline.
Mr Johnson believes it would help the economy go ‘gangbusters’ to mitigate leaving without a deal, according to The Times. Sources close to him refused to comment on the reports last night.
It was also claimed Mr Johnson has offered Sajid Javid the role of chancellor in a future government. Mr Johnson’s team is expected to outline his plans next week at a meeting chaired by Sir Edward Lister, who is working on a blueprint for his first 100 days in office should he win.
The reports came as Theresa May last night refused to offer unconditional support for her successor’s Brexit strategy.
Mrs May urged the next Tory leader to pursue a negotiated agreement and warned against suspending Parliament to drive through No Deal. 
The leaked memo – dated November 13 – states: 'We negotiated the removal of one potentially awkward moment where the former foreign secretary calls the French 'turds' so as not to distract from the rest of the programme.'
The disclosure of the way Mr Johnson's 'French turds' comment was kept quiet will also raise questions about the independence of the BBC. A BBC spokesman said: 'The programme set out to reflect the realities of life inside the Foreign Office, the production team made judgements about what was in the programme and they are satisfied that the programme achieves its ambitions and has the content they wanted.'
Mr Johnson's critics will see the episode as further evidence of his unsuitability to be prime minister. His supporters may counter that his provocative remarks are part of his appeal.
At his campaign launch a fortnight ago, Mr Johnson vowed to continue speaking his mind after he was challenged about such remarks.
He said: 'I will continue to speak as directly as I can. Occasionally some plaster comes off the ceiling as a result of a phrase I may have used, or the way that phrase has been wrenched out of context by those who wish for reasons of their own to caricature.'
When he quit as foreign secretary he told Mrs May to her face that her EU withdrawal agreement was like 'polishing a turd'.
Mr Verhofstadt, an EU federalist and former Belgian PM, yesterday attacked both Tory leadership candidates and said real trading power came only through being an EU member. 'The debate between the candidates confirms that they have learned nothing whatsoever from the past two years of negotiations with the EU,' he insisted.
'Sadly, this comes as no surprise, given that the lead candidate is Boris Johnson, the Leave campaign's most prominent architect and a man who continues to dissemble, exaggerate, and disinform the public about Brexit.'
In a column for media organisation Project Syndicate he said that Mr Johnson had 'drummed up fears' over EU membership, was 'foreigner-bashing' and will 'most likely soon find himself in a position where he must make good on his promises'.
He added: 'To Johnson's followers, however, he is more prophet than politician. Only he can deliver a mythical 'true Brexit' that will deliver the prosperity promised during the referendum campaign.' Mr Verhofstadt also cited recent trade deals with Japan and Canada and a deal expected to be announced in days with the South American Mercosur bloc.
He added: 'Europe will have offered still more proof that Brexit is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to Britain's economic interests. The 'buccaneering' Brexiteers might then finally have to explain what it is they're still complaining about.'
Some in the EU dread Mr Johnson becoming prime minister because they believe he will carry on demanding the withdrawal agreement be reopened – something Brussels has repeatedly ruled out. Others believe he may be able to sell a tweaked version of Mrs May's plan to MPs.
Neither Mr Johnson nor the Foreign Office responded to requests for comment last night.  
Journalist Nick Robinson has likened the behaviour of Boris Johnson to a 'dictator' for broadcasting directly to the public on social media.
The former BBC political editor, currently a host of Radio 4's Today programme, called the Prime Minister's social media use a 'form of propaganda' and said it was undemocratic to avoid proper scrutiny by journalists.
Mr Robinson made the comments at the Cheltenham Literature Festival – where he also warned against presenters such as himself voicing their opinions.
He said: 'There is no doubt that all politicians know that they can broadcast directly using social media. Johnson regularly does videos on Facebook and regularly does videos on Twitter.
'And he has the great joy on Facebook of calling it the People's PMQs which largely consists of his aides picking questions that they want him to answer. 
'There's no capacity for anybody to say, "What did you mean about that?" or "Hold on a second" and so that's democracy.' 
He added: 'It ain't democracy, it is a form of propaganda used by dictators down the ages.'
Mr Robinson also said it was 'a great danger' to allow a party leader the chance to broadcast their own show – highlighting Nigel Farage's radio programme on LBC. 
Both Mr Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have only recently appeared on Today – after being criticised for shunning it in the past.
A BBC spokesman said last night that Mr Robinson's 'point is that social media on its own could be used to give a misleading impression of accountability'. A Downing Street spokesman declined to comment.
Boris Johnson has thrown down the gauntlet to MPs, telling them to either back any deal he brings back from Brussels – or admit they are trying to stop Brexit.
At the start of a defining week in politics, the Prime Minister told his Cabinet in a conference call there was still a 'long way to go' to hammer out an agreement.
But in a reference to his breakthrough meeting with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Merseyside last week, he added: 'Where there's a Wirral, there is a way.'
Negotiators are working around the clock in Brussels to agree the basis of a deal by tomorrow so it can be signed off by EU leaders at a summit starting Thursday.
Mr Johnson is hoping to put the agreement to a vote of MPs this weekend as the Commons sits on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War. But he faces the threat of a rebel plot to hijack legislation so that any deal is subject to approval in a second referendum.
Brussels: Boris Johnson is in a race against time to reach a deal ahead of the EU summit on Thursday. Even if the Northern Ireland border problem is solved, EU negotiators say there might not be enough time to finalise the details.
Hardline Brexiteers: Several of the Tory MPs who voted against a deal in March are now in Government and are therefore expected to back an agreement. However others such as Steve Baker and Mark Francois will need convincing that the Prime Minister has not given too much ground.
DUP: The Democratic Unionist Party is anxious about suggestions that the PM could agree a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Ex-Tory rebels: Most of the 21 rebels stripped of the Conservative whip over their attempts to block No Deal, such as Philip Hammond and David Gauke, had backed Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. But they may now insist on a confirmatory referendum.
Labour: Nineteen Labour MPs have signalled they are prepared to back a deal agreed by Mr Johnson and the EU. However, they are coming under intense pressure not to help the PM out.
Yesterday as he briefed his Cabinet colleagues, Mr Johnson said if MPs who are against No Deal now oppose his new deal they will be 'exposing their true aim of wanting to stop Brexit altogether'.
During the call, which lasted half an hour, it is understood he gave a very rough outline of the proposed compromises to get a deal.
According to a Cabinet source, ministers were 'very supportive' of Mr Johnson's suggestions.
Jacob Rees-Mogg issued an appeal to Brexiteers to trust the Prime Minister as negotiations enter a critical stage.
The Leader of the Commons, who was a thorn in the side of Theresa May over Brexit, warned compromise was inevitable if there was to be an agreement.
He hinted he may even have to 'eat my words' and support a customs plan close to one put forward by Mrs May, which he once called 'completely cretinous'.
But Mr Rees-Mogg insisted Leave supporters could have confidence Mr Johnson would not give too much ground to Brussels.
'I think he is somebody who even the arch Eurosceptics, even a member of the Brexit Party, can trust and have confidence in,' he told Sky News's Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
Supporters of a second referendum yesterday claimed they were close to having enough support to push through an amendment making any deal subject to a 'confirmatory' public vote.
The idea of a fresh EU referendum was narrowly rejected by MPs in April by 292 votes to 280.
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday appeared resistant to Labour frontbench pressure to back such a move, telling MPs who want a confirmatory vote: 'I would caution them on this.'
But he looked increasingly isolated after Labour's business spokesman Rebecca Long-Bailey, who was a main opponent to a second referendum, said she would now back a public vote on a deal.
She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'I think the only option we've got now is to let the people decide.... I know many colleagues are of a similar opinion to me.'
Nicola Sturgeon will seek another referendum on Scottish independence before the new year.
The Scottish First Minister wants to hold a fresh vote in the second half of 2020 but has not yet asked the Government to grant the ‘Section 30’ order that would allow it to take place.
The SNP leader told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday: ‘I’m putting legislation through the Scottish Parliament right now, to put the rules and regulations in place.
‘As that legislation progresses we will make that request for a Section 30 order.’
Asked whether she would request the order this year, Miss Sturgeon replied: ‘Yes. We will do it at an appropriate moment when the legislation is passing. It is likely to be over the next matter of weeks. It is coming soon.
‘Of course we don’t yet know who is likely to be in Downing Street, the situation is very fluid.’
Miss Sturgeon said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn should not ‘bother picking up the phone’ to ask the SNP to put him in government unless he backs an independence vote.
At the SNP conference in Aberdeen yesterday she repeated her view that holding a legal referendum was the only route to independence.
It will be 'very difficult' to reach a new Brexit deal by the October 31 deadline, the EU’s chief negotiator warned last night.
Michel Barnier told ambassadors that Britain's Irish backstop alternative is still not acceptable – despite concessions from Boris Johnson.
UK and Brussels negotiators locked themselves away in the EU Commission’s headquarters over the weekend to hammer out a compromise in time for a crunch summit on Thursday.
It came after Mr Johnson’s fresh proposals on how to solve the Northern Ireland border issue were given a warm reception by Irish premier Leo Varadkar last week.
But Mr Barnier said there had not been 'as much progress' as hoped during a briefing last night to update member states. 
TODAY – The Government will set out its plan for new laws in the Queen’s Speech.
TOMORROW – EU ministers will meet in Luxembourg, where the outline of a Brexit deal will need to be agreed if it is to be signed off by end of the week.
WEDNESDAY – French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Paris to agree their Brexit stance.
THURSDAY/FRIDAY – Boris Johnson attends a European Council summit in Brussels, where he hopes EU leaders will approve the new deal.
SATURDAY – The Commons meets for the first time on a Saturday since the Falklands War. MPs will vote on a deal if one has been agreed with Brussels. A huge People’s Vote march, protesting against Brexit, is planned in London. 
He said Britain had failed to provide enough detail on the issue of customs, which has dogged talks surrounding the backstop, designed to prevent a hard border in Ireland.
Mr Barnier stopped short of calling off the talks, which will continue today and tomorrow.
But his bleak assessment dampened hopes of an imminent breakthrough, which is needed if Britain is to leave the EU on October 31 as Mr Johnson repeatedly promises.
One senior EU diplomat said: 'It's a kind of Groundhog Day that continues tomorrow on customs.'
Another added: 'It'll be difficult to have a legal text ready for the summit, but still not impossible if there's some movement.'
A third diplomat said: 'There's momentum but probably not enough time. Negotiations are, as expected, not easy. But they are moving forward.'
EU officials had already privately said there was little chance of reaching a deal in time.
Mr Johnson's plan involves creating two customs areas on the island of Ireland, which one senior EU source close to the negotiations described as 'mind-bogglingly' complex. 
They added: 'This requires careful legal work you can't do hastily. That makes it all very tricky.'
The plan would see Northern Ireland being subject to EU customs tariffs as goods cross the Irish Sea from mainland Britain. But Northern Irish businesses would claim back rebates, meaning it would de facto remain within UK customs jurisdiction.
A meeting of EU foreign ministers will take place tomorrow in Luxembourg, where they ideally want sight of final proposals.
Under the terms of the so-called Benn Act, Mr Johnson must accept whatever extension is offered by the EU if there is no agreement before October 31.
Any new legal text will have to be translated into all of the bloc's languages and subjected to scrutiny by its legal services.
The EU parliament must then pass it, where it would have to go through committee hearings before facing a full vote. One EU source said it was 'really unlikely' all these processes could take place by the end of the month.
A UK Government spokesman said there had been 'constructive discussions' but that there is still 'a significant amount of work to be done'.
Boris Johnson delivered brutal attacks on Remainer MPs and 'anti-semitic Marxist' Jeremy Corbyn today as he warned there must be no more Brexit delays.
Addressing party conference for the first time as PM, Mr Johnson tore into Parliament as a 'pebble in the shoe' of the nation, saying: 'If it was a school it would have been shut down by Ofsted.'
He raged at Labour for dithering, saying Mr Corbyn would keep the country in damaging limbo for another three years while the 'Communist cosmonaut' tried to work out what should happen.  
The premier again made clear that he will not beg Brussels for an extension beyond Halloween - suggesting the EU must accept his new 'compromise' proposals or face No Deal.  
'What Leavers want, what Remainers want, what the whole world wants – is to be calmly and sensibly done with the subject, and to move on,' he said.
'And that is why we are coming out of the EU on October 31, come what may.' 
Without giving many details about his new Brexit proposals, he described them as 'constructive and reasonable', and warned: 'Be in no doubt the alternative is No Deal.' 
The defiant speech was effectively a curtain-raiser for a general election, which most of Westminster expects to be called within weeks. 
It was watched from the audience by girlfriend Carrie Symonds - who embraced him afterwards in a rare show of public affection. 
But despite his upbeat tone Mr Johnson is facing a wall of resistance from the EU to his new blueprint, even though it has not been formally tabled yet.
The package has been summarised as 'two borders over four years', and appears to mean Northern Ireland staying tied to EU rules for food and agriculture until the mid 2020s, but being outside the customs union. 
That would require customs checks on the island of Ireland and regulatory checks in the Irish Sea, although technology and other schemes would be used to minimise friction. 
Mr Johnson admitted there would be change but denied there will be checks 'at or near the border', saying the government will respect the Good Friday Agreement. 'I love Europe. But after 45 years of really dramatic constitutional change we must have a new relationship,' he said.  
EU diplomats have accused Mr Johnson of adopting 'kamikaze' tactics, and said the chances of a deal emerging now appeared to be 'zero'. 
Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney suggested any proposal that includes customs checks cannot be the 'basis for an agreement'. 
However, DUP leader Arlene Foster urged Brussels to take the ideas seriously, saying the backstop had always been the 'big stumbling block' and needed to be 'fixed'.  
Sparking cheers from the crowd in Manchester today, the PM said Mr Corbyn and his 'fratricidal anti-semitic Marxists' would bring the 'chaos and cacophony of two more referendums' - on Scottish independence and Brexit.
 Boris Johnson made a tub-thumping speech to the Tory party faithful today as he vowed to complete Brexit on October 31.
In his leader's address to the party conference in Manchester today, the Prime Minister: 
 
'Can you imagine - another 3 years of this? But that is the Corbyn agenda – stay in the EU beyond October 31, and paying a billion pounds a month for the privilege, followed by years of uncertainty for business and everyone else.'
Mr Johnson raged about Parliament's decision to pass the rebel law intended to ban No Deal, saying: 'There is one part of the British system that seems to be on the blink.
'If parliament were a laptop, then the screen would be showing the pizza wheel of doom. If parliament were a school, Ofsted would be shutting it down.
'If parliament were a reality TV show the whole lot of us would have been voted out of the jungle by now
'But at least we could have watched the Speaker being forced to eat a kangaroo testicle
'And the sad truth is that voters have more say over I'm A Celebrity than they do over this House of Commons.
'Which refuses to deliver Brexit, refuses to do anything constructive and refuses to have an election.'
Stepping up his stinging attack on the establishment for blocking the verdict of the public in the 2016 referendum, Mr Johnson said: 'I am afraid that after three and a half years people are beginning to feel that they are being taken for fools.
'They are beginning to suspect that there are forces in this country that simply don't want Brexit delivered at all.
'And if they turn out to be right in that suspicion then I believe there will be grave consequences for trust in democracy.'
He said politicians had to heed the 'cry' of those who voted for Brexit, and Remainers who were 'first and foremost democrats'. 
'It is only by delivering Brexit that we can address that feeling in so many parts of the country that they were being left behind, ignored. That their towns were not only suffering from a lack of love and investment but their views had somehow become unfashionable or unmentionable.' 
The leak of details of Mr Johnson's plan to the Daily Telegraph has already fuelled tensions with Dublin, with UK officials convinced the Irish were responsible for exposing the documents before the conference speech. 
In effect, the proposals would leave Northern Ireland tied to single market rules on food and agriculture for four years from the end of the transition period in January 2021. 
Boris Johnson played his Brexit trump card today as he told Tory activists that his mother voted for the UK to leave the European Union. 
Mr Johnson has been under fire from his sister Rachel and brother Jo in recent months because they are both opposed to his Brexit stance. 
But the Prime Minister used his big speech at the close of Conservative Party conference in Manchester to reveal he is not the only Brexiteer in the Johnson clan. 
His revelation that his mother, Charlotte, voted to Leave at the EU referendum in 2016 delighted the crowd as it burst into applause. 
But is also came as a surprise to many in the main hall - especially his father Stanley Johnson who was sat alongside the PM's partner Carrie Symonds. 
After the premier had made the remark, a laughing Stanley turned to Ms Symonds and said: 'I didn't know that!' 
However, the plans are facing criticism for putting the Good Friday Agreement at risk and requiring the EU to grant sweeping customs exemptions. 
After 2025, the Stormont assembly would be free to choose whether to stick to EU single market rules or follow British ones. 
In his speech, Mr Johnson restated his pledge to build 40 new hospitals over the next 10 years.
He said: 'We are not only recruiting more doctors and nurses, and training them, but in the next 10 years we will build 40 new hospitals in the biggest investment in hospital infrastructure for a generation.'
The PM added: 'It is time for us to say loud and clear, we are the party of the NHS.'
Reiterating his pledge for 20,000 more police officers, Mr Johnson added: 'The first thing we must do in spreading opportunity is to insist on the equal safety of the public wherever you live, to make your streets safer.
'And that is why we are recruiting 20,000 new police officers and that is why we are committing now to rolling up the evil county lines drugs gangs that predate on young kids and send them to die in the streets to feed the cocaine habits of the bourgeoisie.
'And we will succeed, and yes we will be tough on crime.
'We will make sure that the police have the legal powers and the political backing to use stop and search.
'Because it may be controversial, but believe me that when a young man is going equipped with a bladed weapon, there is nothing kinder or more loving or more life-saving you can do than ask him to turn out his pockets and produce that weapon.'
Mr Johnson described himself as a 'bus nut' and said he likes to 'make and to paint very inexact models of buses'.
He said the Government wanted to expand the bus network and put in gigabit broadband to 'increase the productivity of the whole UK economy'. 
Mr Johnson told the conference he would create growth 'by creating the economic platform for dynamic free market'.
'Capitalism, yes, you heard that right,' he said.
'When did you last hear a Tory leader talk about capitalism?
On Parliament and Brexit
He said: 'We are like a world class athlete with a pebble in our shoe. There is one part of the British system that seems to be on the blink. 
'If parliament were a laptop, then the screen would be showing the pizza wheel of doom.'
On John Bercow and attempts to stop Brexit 
He said: 'If parliament were a reality TV show the whole lot of us would have been voted out of the jungle by now. 
'But at least we could have watched the Speaker being forced to eat a kangaroo testicle.' 

On his mother voting to Leave
He said: 'I am going to follow the example of my friend Saj. I am going to quote that supreme authority in my family - my mother.
'And by the way for keen students of the divisions in my family you might know that I have kept the ace up my sleeve - my mother voted Leave.'  
On UK exports and Nigel Farage
He said: 'We already have some astonishing exports. Just in the last few months I have seen an Isle of Wight ship-builder that exports vast leisure catamarans to Mexico. 
'We export Jason Donovan CDs to North Korea. We exported Nigel Farage to America – though he seems to have come back.' 
On sending Mr Corbyn into space 
He said: 'Let’s get on with sensible moderate one nation but tax-cutting Tory government and figuratively if not literally let us send Jeremy Corbyn into orbit where he belongs.'  

'We are the party of the NHS precisely because we are the party of capitalism, not because we shun it, or despise it.
'And we understand the vital symmetry at the heart of the modern British economy between a dynamic enterprise culture and great public services.'  
The PM said he wanted to see a lower-tax Britain after Brexit, saying: 'When we leave the EU we will be able to allow UK businesses, manufacturers, to have bigger tax breaks for investments they make in capital and new technology.
'Out of the EU we can do free ports, we can use the tax regime to do free ports, and new enterprise zones.
'We can ban the cruel shipment of live animals that has offended the British people for so long and, yes, we will have those free trade deals.'
Wrapping up his speech, he praised the government's space programme, before joking: 'Let's get on with a sensible, moderate, one nation but tax-cutting Tory government and figuratively if not literally let us send Jeremy Corbyn into orbit where he belongs.
'Let's get Brexit done and let's bring our country together.' 
A senior government source said Britain would leave the EU on October 31 without agreement if Brussels did not 'engage'. 
This is despite MPs passing a law that obliges the PM to beg Brussels for an extension if an agreement has not been reached by October 19. 
The source added: 'It is take it or leave it. Officials have made clear that if Brussels does not engage with this offer, then this Government will not negotiate further until we have left the EU.' 
Officials also made clear the Prime Minister will 'in no circumstances' negotiate a delay at the crunch EU summit on October 17 and 18.
A No10 source warned that Brussels should not try to bypass the Prime Minister and try to negotiate directly with MPs - a majority of whom are desperate to avoid No Deal.
Boris Johnson embraced Carrie Symonds after he addressed the Tory Party conference for the first time as Prime Minister today.
The 54-year-old party leader made his way to his partner, 31, after a Brexit-heavy address to the faithful in Manchester.  
After a kiss and hug they then walked from the hall together in a rare show of public affection between the couple.
Party leaders frequently invite their wives and husbands onto stage at the end of the set-piece highlight of the annual event, and Philip May and Sam Cameron both did so in past years.
But Ms Symonds, 31, initially kept a discreet distance in Manchester today.
Elegantly dressed in a fuchsia dress she sat in the audience alongside the Prime Minister's father, Stanley. 
However she did then join the PM after he came off stage as he greeted members of the audience as he left the packed room.  
Ms Johnson is currently going through a divorce from second wife Marina Wheeler, the mother of four of his children.   
'The EU is obliged by EU law only to negotiate with member state governments, they cannot negotiate with Parliament,' said the insider.
David Frost, who is Mr Johnson's chief Brexit negotiator, will deliver details of the blueprint to Brussels today.
The Government hopes that the EU will agree to enter the 'tunnel' – code for intensive, secret negotiations aimed at finding a compromise.
But Mr Johnson has faced a backlash after confirming for the first time that his plan will involve customs checks on the island of Ireland. 
Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney said today: 'Certainly, from what we're reading this morning, I would not be too encouraged by it. 
'Essentially if he is proposing customs checks on the island of Ireland, then I don't think that is going to be the basis of an agreement. But let's wait and see the detail of that before we make a full judgment on it.' 
Incoming EU trade commissioner Phil Hogan said another delay was now more likely than a deal.
However, Brussels is rumoured to be considering putting a time limit on the backstop – a concession it had ruled previously out during talks with Mrs May.
The move could provide a way out of the increasingly bitter deadlock.  
One of the main objections from Brexiteers and the DUP to the previous plan was that the UK could be trapped indefinitely with the EU customs union and single market rules, making it impossible to strike trade deals elsewhere. 
'We'll look at anything, of course,' Mr Johnson told The Sun.
In media interviews yesterday, Mr Johnson said the chances of a deal were still very good, provided the EU showed 'common sense'. 
Under the new plan, the two sides would agree an all-Ireland food and agriculture zone to allow livestock and food to continue moving freely across the border.
Mr Johnson will suggest the plan could be extended to cover industrial goods, provided the Northern Ireland Assembly agreed. 
The entire UK would leave the customs union, meaning that customs checks would be needed on goods crossing the border. 
But these would be carried out away from the border in order to reduce the risk of tensions.
Here is how the coming weeks could pan out:  
Today: New Brexit proposals going to the EU.
 October 17-18: A crunch EU summit in Brussels, where Mr Johnson has vowed he will try to get a Brexit deal despite Remainers 'wrecking' his negotiating position. 
October 19: If there is no Brexit deal by this date Remainer legislation obliges the PM to beg the EU for an extension to avoid No Deal. 
Jeremy Corbyn has said that he will only let Mr Johnson trigger an election after an extension has been secured.
If there is a deal, it will start being rushed through Parliament immediately. 
October 31: The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU. 
November/December: An election looks inevitable, but Labour is hinting it might push the date back towards Christmas to humiliate the PM further. 
The rest of the agreement negotiated by Theresa May would stay in place, including the £39billion divorce bill and an 'implementation period' until the start of 2021.
Mr Johnson urged Ireland yesterday to recognise the 'reality' that customs checks will be needed on the island after Brexit, and the 'status quo' could not be maintained completely. 
He also delivered a thinly-veiled threat to disrupt the EU from within if his 'do or die' Brexit deadline of Halloween is delayed.
He said if Britain was 'held against its will' they would face a 'very unhappy and unfortunate' situation. 
But Irish PM Leo Varadkar said: 'People here don't want a customs border between north and south and no British government should seek to impose customs posts against the will of the people on the island of Ireland.' 
The senior EU diplomat said: 'The kamikaze way this is now being dealt with by the UK Government is not something we've chosen.' 
Both sides are now bracing for a frantic 10-day push to find a settlement in time for the EU summit.
Despite the tough rhetoric on refusing to countenance an extension, senior Tories increasingly believe Mr Johnson could ride out a Brexit extension without suffering catastrophic political damage.
Some MPs thought he would have to resign rather than break the rebel law or see his 'do or die' vow broken. 
However, one Cabinet minister told MailOnline that the public would blame Remainer MPs and Speaker John Bercow. 
'It would be surrender, betrayal, treason against 17.4m people who voted for Brexit at the referendum,' they said. 
'But it would be Remainer MPs and John Bercow to blame. It would not necessarily kill us at an election. People will know Boris was dragged kicking and screaming.' 
Downing Street has denied reports that Mr Johnson is planning to prorogue Parliament again next week to pave the way for a Queen's Speech. 
Essentially, the plan is to create two Northern Irish borders at the end of the Brexit transition period, with the arrangements rolled out in January 2021. 
One of them will be a regulatory border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
Effectively this would amount to a border in the Irish Sea with Northern Ireland remaining aligned with the EU on all single market rules for agriculture and industrial goods while the rest of the UK could do what it wanted in those areas. 
That regulatory border would come with a proposed four year time-limit. 
The second border would be between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and it would be purely relating to customs. 
However, the UK is expected to ask the EU to grant wide-ranging exemptions on customs rules to make the border as frictionless as possible. 
In simple terms, Northern Ireland would leave the customs union with the rest of the UK but it would remain in parts of the single market until 2025. The plan has been dubbed 'two borders for four years'.
In 2025, the Northern Irish Assembly would be asked how it wants to proceed, with two options on the table. 
The first would be for Northern Ireland to continue to stay aligned with EU regulations. 
The second would be to split from EU rules and then realign with the rest of the UK which would be assumed to have diverged from the Brussels regulations book in a number of areas by that time.  
If Stormont opted for the second option it could risk the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland. 
But it would be hoped that by 2025 there would be technological solutions which could avoid that eventuality.
The almost untrammelled economic power of American tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook is already a grave threat to free market competition in the UK and worldwide.
But when these unaccountable and rapacious behemoths start to challenge the fundamental underpinnings of our democracy, they are moving into dangerous waters indeed.
It has emerged that, at a meeting organised by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab last Friday, the head of Amazon UK predicted there could be ‘civil unrest’ within two weeks if Britain were to leave the EU without a deal. It’s a claim — even if it was a worst-case scenario — that reeks of humbug and hysteria.
As a large employer in Britain, Amazon plainly thinks it has the right to speak out on our domestic affairs. But it should recognise that for a foreign company to make such claims is at best ill-advised, not least because it could encourage people to take to the streets if there is no deal. Not only that, but as a huge U.S. enterprise which — thanks to a cynical international sleight of hand — pays almost no tax in Britain (or on the Continent for that matter), it ought to be wise enough to steer clear of unhelpful political comment.
Mischief
Amazon’s UK boss, Cambridge-educated Doug Gurr, should remind himself that the very foundation of American independence was the principle of no taxation without representation. He seems to want representation with barely any taxation.
The possibility of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit — which has been outlined in a document issued by the European Union, and is being prepared for in contingency plans drawn up in Whitehall — has sparked scaremongering and mischief from firms and lobby groups seeking to panic the British people.
It is no more nor less than the next phase of Project Fear which tried, and failed, to scare people into voting Remain with its dire warnings of an emergency budget, higher income taxes, recession and mass unemployment.
The reality is that there has been no recession, and the British economy has proved a job creation machine, with the jobless rate at 4.2 per cent — half that of the European Union average.
Despite that, we are now seeing Project Fear: The Sequel cranking into action. For Amazon is not alone in pressing the panic button.
The dairy industry has also gone into attack mode. A report written by the political research body London School of Economics Consulting argues that delays at borders as well as additional trade costs could restrict the availability of butter, yoghurts and cheeses and send the prices of dairy products soaring.
They could, it’s claimed, simply become ‘occasional luxuries’ for the consumer.
If anything, this kind of alarmist rhetoric is likely to provoke panic buying, which could itself lead to shortages.
It is also worth noting that a significant amount of Britain’s dairy produce comes from Ireland, where Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s unhelpful interventions over the issue of the trade border between Northern Ireland and the Republic could end up impoverishing his own people.
His Irish compatriot, loose-lipped Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, cannot resist getting in his euro’s worth, too, arguing that the risks of a hard Brexit cannot be ‘underestimated’, and that flights could be grounded if Britain crashes out of the European Union without a deal.
The interventions of Amazon, the dairy producers, Ryanair and others seem intended to undermine the democratic will of British voters.
Suddenly, the stalemate between UK and European negotiators is being translated into images of British people taking to the streets, melted butter wasting at ports and planes stuck on runways.
Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised by the arrogance of Amazon bosses. This is a ruthless company that leaves victims, in the shape of destroyed rival businesses, in its wake everywhere it goes.
In spite of the increasing destruction of traditional commerce on High Streets across America and Britain, supine governments have been fearful to challenge Amazon’s extraordinary power.
Unscrupulous
At present, the firm is valued at $879 billion on the U.S. stock market, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, was named earlier this year as the richest man in the world with a personal wealth of around $150 billion.
The truth is that Amazon knows almost no boundaries in its power and domination of retail and commerce, and in spite of U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledges to bring the internet giants to heel, absolutely nothing has been done.
Amazon is one of the what have become known on Wall Street as the FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google).
Together these unscrupulous giants, and the way they interact with their users and feed off their data, allows them to become dominant players in the markets in which they operate, locking out almost everyone else.
But now these firms have also become enormously political. In the U.S. they have effectively neutralised criticism through a huge rise in political lobbying in almost every state.
But in America, much of the financing and lobbying of politicians passes under the radar.
What makes Amazon’s intervention in British politics so troubling is that it has done immense damage to so many British companies.
In short, it has played a large part in the crisis engulfing Britain’s High Streets.
Arrogance
The closure of stores by House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer, Poundworld and thousands of smaller firms can be directly placed at Amazon’s door.
Worst of all is the sight of an American giant making these doomsday auguries about Britain’s future when it has gone out of its way to deprive the British Treasury of so many millions in tax.
What moral authority does it have to pontificate about this country’s political situation when it has treated the UK like a giant cash machine?
Amazon’s 2017 annual report shows that the online retailer paid just £15 million of tax across Europe on sales of £19.5 billion.
The tax bill in Britain, where it employs 24,000 people, was just £7.4 million.
So far, efforts by Chancellors George Osborne and Philip Hammond to make Amazon pay more tax have had limited success.
If there is to be civil strife, as Amazon suggests, it is more likely to be triggered by the infamous working conditions in its warehouses (workers went on strike across Europe this month in protest), the company’s failure to pay its fair share of taxes, and the way it uses its huge power to control prices to kill off swathes of the High Street.
Amazon may be a good inward investor to the UK, but it is certainly not a good corporate citizen.
All the intervention from its UK boss has done is underline the arrogance of a digital giant which thinks it floats above governments and the bricks-and-mortar business world, and can do what it damn well pleases.
His predictions are unwarranted and, at worse, could be downright dangerous. 
Billionaire inventor James Dyson has torn into the EU for demanding a sky-high divorce bill and said Britain should walk away from the Brexit talks.
The vacuum cleaner innovator blamed the current stalemate on Brussels and said it is 'outrageous' the EU is demanding 'billions and billions' of pounds from Britain.
And he said the UK should just walk away from talks because the member states of the bloc need Britain to sell its products to.
His intervention comes just days after the sixth round of Brexit talks again ended in deadlock. 
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier setting a two-week deadline for Britain to increase it divorce bill offer in order to move on to trade talks before the New Year. 
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: ' It is a problem with the people we are negotiating with.
 'I think demanding billions and billions to leave is outrageous and I think demanding it before we leave is outrageous.
'I would walk away, that's the only way to deal with them.
'I have been dealing with the EU for years....there is no way to deal with them. we have to walk away.
'If we walk away they will come back to us because they sell all of their products to us. We are in a very strong position.
'We should walk away and they will come to us.'
He said Britain has tried 'very hard' and  been 'very reasonable' in the negotiations but Brussels has failed to engage the same way. 


Theresa May has offered to pay another 20 billion euros (£17.7bn) for a transition deal which will keep Britain in the single market and customs union for two years.
She is reportedly considering dramatically upping the amount of cash we pour into Brussels's coffers to unblock the talks.
While Brexit Secretary David Davis has said hinted at a shift in stance by saying the UK was willing to show 'flexibility'.  
Speaking after the last round of talks in Brussels last week, EU chief negotiator Mr Barnier said the two sides were 'making some progress'.
But he delivered a stark threat to block discussions on trade unless the UK was willing to put more money in the pot within a fortnight.
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary Mr Davis hinted at a shift in stance by saying the UK was willing to show 'flexibility'. 


 
Tony Blair has admitted that immigration rules must be made tougher - but insisted that can be done without leaving the EU.
The former prime minister, who oversaw a surge in arrivals from newer states in the bloc, conceded that 'sentiment' had changed about open borders. 
He has put his name to a report calling for tighter controls, while arguing that 'grievances' about free movement rules can be dealt with inside EU.
The intervention, on the eve of key votes in parliament on the EU Withdrawal Bill, amounts to a bid by Remainers to neutralise the immigration issue in the Brexit debate.
But Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon dismissed the prospect of revisiting the referendum decision, insisting the British public had spoken. 
Theresa May has made control of inflows a red line in talks with Brussels, saying there is no possibility of cutting numbers from the EU unless we leave the single market.
But in an article for the Sunday Times website, Mr Blair said: 'There is no diversion possible from Brexit without addressing the grievances which gave rise to it.
'Paradoxically, we have to respect the referendum vote to change it.'
He went on: 'We can curtail the things that people feel are damaging about European immigration, both by domestic policy change and by agreeing change within Europe.
'This is precisely the territory the Labour Party should camp upon.'
Mr Blair has been widely blamed for the rise in public anxiety over immigration, after he failed to impose transitional controls on migrants from new EU member states in 2004. 
Urging MPs to put forward a 'different or better way' to deal with the issues instead of leaving the EU, Mr Blair told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: 'I'm trying to say this - in the end Brexit is a distraction not a solution to the problems this country faces.
A leading Tory Europhile has urged his colleagues to give up on staying in the EU. 
Former cabinet minister Ken Clarke said it is 'hopeless' to expect the UK to remain in the bloc.
He told Sky News's Sunday with Niall Paterson: 'Tony (Blair) still thinks we can stay in the EU.
'I think the mood in the country is it's hopeless to expect that. What we now need to address is the practical consequences of what is our new relationship.'
But Mr Clarke insisted it was crucial for the country to get the best possible access to the EU market.
He said it was impossible to see a full agreement being struck by 2019, and a transition period of 'two, three, four years' will be needed. 
'If Members of Parliament really believe that then their obligation is to set out solutions that deal with the actual problems communities and people have and not do Brexit which is actually going to distract us from those solutions and going to cause real economic and political damage.'
The ex-PM warned that the only way of making a success of leaving the EU was by aggressively lowering taxes and regulation.
But he said any attempt to do that could lead to a lurch to the Left, and cause enormous damage to the UK.
'The risk is the British people won't vote for that, they are not going to vote for the huge economic and social restructuring - to the changes to the health service and other things that that would require,' he said.
'And the risk is actually that we have a Brexit followed by, I'm afraid, an unreconstructed leftist programme from Labour, and if you combine those two things together in my view we will be in a very serious situation as a country.'
But Sir Michael dismissed Mr Blair's comments, and insisted he needed to 'get over' the result of the referendum.
'It's a bit late now this epiphany, I'm not sure where he's been - well we know where he's been, he's being travelling the world,' he said.
'The country wants proper controls over immigration, we saw that in election after election and we saw that in the referendum last year.
'The country has taken it's decision, we're leaving the European Union now, and that means freedom of movement has to end whether we like it or not.'
He added: 'The country has decided we're leaving the European Union, we've got to get on with that, Tony Blair has got to get over it, and we've got to get a smooth and successful exit from the union.' 
But Mr Blair said 'back then the economy was strong, the workers were needed', adding: 'The times were different; the sentiment was different; and intelligent politics takes account of such change.'
Brexit voters' concerns about 'pressure on services', 'downward pressure on wages' and 'cultural integration' now 'cannot be ignored', he said.
According to the newspaper, a report from the Tony Blair Institute, authored by former Downing Street policy expert Harvey Redgrave, urges the Government to  force EU immigrants to register on arriving in the UK so authorities can check whether they go on to work or study. 
It also proposes that EU nationals are made to show evidence of a job offer that is confirmed by their employer before they enter Britain.
There would be a ban on renting a home, opening a bank account, or accessing benefits without permission.
EU immigrants' access to free NHS care if they are 'economically inactive', and universities would be able to charge EU nationals higher tuition fees than British students.
The report also suggests trying to negotiate a change in free movement rules to introduce an 'emergency brake' on people coming into Britain when public services are overstretched.
However, David Cameron attempted a similar change and failed to secure it when renegotiating the UK's EU membership ahead of the referendum.
Mr Blair added: 'If we go ahead with Brexit, we will have taken the unprecedented decision for a major country to relegate ourselves, like a top-six Premiership side deciding to play exclusively in the Championship.
'Other than President (Donald) Trump, I can't think of a single leader of any of our major allies or partners who thinks this decision is anything other than self-harming.' 
Unite boss Len McCluskey said Mr Blair 'misses the point' because the only way to stop abuse of migrant workers by 'greedy bosses', which brings about undercutting of wages and conditions, is to properly regulate the jobs market after Brexit.
Describing the ex-PM as 'yesterday's man', Mr McCluskey told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio Five Live: 'He's as out of touch now as he was in 2004.
'He doesn't address the idea because what Tony Blair and the New Labour government were a part of, and certainly what the Conservatives have continued, is creating this race to the bottom culture within our society rather than a rate for the job society.'
Tory grandee Lord Heseltine also suggested the EU could be open to reform of free movement after the German election this month, while criticising 'damaging' proposals revealed in a leaked Home Office document this week.
The peer said immigration as an issue was a 'low hanging fruit' for politicians, who blame it for pressure on public services despite its contribution to the economy in an effort to win over voters.
Addressing the Home Office plans in the Mail on Sunday, he wrote: 'Free movement of labour would end immediately and all but the most highly skilled EU workers deterred from coming to this country.
'I fear the very social fabric of our caring society, health services and swathes of the public sector which depend on immigrant support could be destroyed if this happens.
'There have to be controls on immigration across Europe.
'Free movement is under question and we should join a discussion that could follow on from the German elections.'
Theresa May will unveil plans next week to use the ‘Brexit dividend’ to pour billions more into the NHS.
The Prime Minister is finalising the details of a new ‘long-term plan for the NHS’ designed to avoid a repeat of last winter’s crisis.
The deal will include a funding package expected to involve annual funding rises of around three per cent in real terms.
Mrs May will also make it clear the new settlement will be funded in part by the ‘Brexit dividend’ generated by the UK no longer having to pay EU membership fees. In doing so she will overrule Chancellor Philip Hammond, who has been fighting to prevent a direct link between Brexit and extra cash for the NHS. 
The decision will help deliver on one of the most high-profile pledges of the Leave campaign, which was emblazoned across its tour bus. It represents a victory for Brexiteer ministers such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who have been urging the PM to make good on the referendum pledge for months. It is timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the NHS in July and designed to give the health service the funding needed to adapt to the demands of an ageing society.
Ministers are keen to avoid a repeat of last winter’s NHS crisis, which led to thousands of patients having to wait for treatment on trolleys.
The Prime Minister said in March that she wanted to see a new ‘long-term funding plan’ for the health service. Mr Hammond then announced in the Budget that the NHS would be taken out of the normal spending review and treated as a special case.
He has publicly dismissed the idea that a ‘Brexit dividend’ could be used to fund the NHS, and sources claim he has been resisting the idea behind the scenes.
One Cabinet source said: ‘Hammond seems determined to block anything that could be seen as a win for the Brexiteers.
‘It is ridiculous. One of the central messages of the referendum campaign was that people want to take back control of the money we send to Brussels and spend it on domestic priorities like the NHS.
‘We have to spend more money on the NHS anyway, so why not use it as a Brexit positive and show people they are getting what they voted for? It’s an open goal.’
Whitehall sources said Mr Hammond had been overruled by Mrs May. ‘This is a multi-year settlement. In the later years there will be a lot of cash freed up by the fact we are no longer in the EU and the Prime Minister is very clear that should be spent on domestic priorities. The biggest priority is the NHS.’
A three per cent rise in real terms would equate to about £5billion a year extra for the NHS, although Mr Hammond is still pushing for a lower overall figure.
While the Prime Minister is expected to make her pledge next week, final decisions on how it will be paid for will be left until the Budget.
The Chancellor has vetoed plans for a dedicated ‘NHS tax’ involving putting 1p on National Insurance. But he is warning that other tax rises will have to be identified to generate funding on the scale required.
Reports have suggested the Chancellor is considering a freeze on taxation thresholds, which could raise £3.7billion by the end of the parliament in 2022. Scrapping planned cuts to corporation tax would raise a further £5.7billion.
Some in government believe much of the money could be funded temporarily by borrowing or raiding the reserves until the Brexit dividend comes good.
The UK’s net contribution to the EU fluctuates but is around £10billion a year.
Mrs May said it March that she wanted to see some of this money used to fund public services, adding: ‘There will be money available for us to spend on our priorities. Priorities like the NHS and schools.’
 
Boris Johnson is prepared to spark a major constitutional crisis drawing the Queen into the heart of politics in order to get Brexit done by the end of the month.
The Prime Minister is said to be prepared to 'squat' in Downing Street and will dare the monarch to fire him if MPs topple his administration in a confidence vote and seek to delay the UK's exit from the European Union.
It comes as the Queen was today pictured looking glum at Balmoral, as she attended a church service in Crathie Kirk.
The 93-year-old monarch is set to be drawn into the heart of the debate, despite the fact that she has previously worked hard to remain separated from frontline politics. 
Under a backbench law passed last month Mr Johnson has to seek a three-month Brexit delay if there is no deal by October 19, and opposition parties are planning to try to topple his administration. 
But he has continued to insist that Brexit will happen on Halloween, despite court documents last week admitting he would comply with the Benn Act. 
'Unless the police turn up at the doors of 10 Downing Street with a warrant for the prime minister's arrest, he won't be leaving,' a senior source told the Sunday Times. 
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick this morning said that the PM would 'absolutely' comply with the law, but refused to confirm or deny that he would sign the letter asking for an extension. 
Boris Johnson suffered a huge blow in his bid to get a Brexit deal through Parliament today when key a key Labour leaver blew the compromise plan out of the water.
Lisa Nandy, who is seen as a bellweather of a group of opposition backbenchers in Leave seats, said she was still willing to break her party whip to support a deal.
But she tore into the PM's plan and hammered him over reports he will row back on agreements made by his predecessor Theresa May on worker rights and environmental issues. 
Speaking on Sky's Ridge on Sunday the Wigan MP said: 'What we've got is a proposal which stands virtually no chance of being accepted by the EU which creates two borders on the island of Ireland which is completely incompatible with existing international law and which rips up the workers' rights and protections and the environmental protections that we spent several months at the start of this year negotiating with the former prime minister.
'I will vote for a deal, but this is not a deal. This is a pre-election party political broadcast by the Prime Minister.
He told Sky's Ridge on Sunday the UK would be leaving on October 31 and 'we will be doing everything in our power to bring that about'.
'We've said that as any Government would do we will comply with the law... however all of our efforts now are focused on trying to get a deal,' he said.
'And we've just put forward some, I think, very reasonable and thoughtful proposals to the EU - they try to answer the questions that had dogged the previous deal prepared by Theresa May.'
Pressed again, Mr Jenrick said: 'The Prime Minister has been very clear that he is not going to extend Article 50 - I don't think he personally could have been any clearer.
'We have said that we will comply with the law however what we're going to do now is work as hard as we possibly can to secure that deal.'
It came as Speaker John Bercow was suggested as a replacement prime minister in a so-called government of national unity (GNU). 
The opposition parties remain fractured over who should replace Mr Johnson to seek a Brexit delay if he loses a confidence vote.
Labour is demanding Jeremy Corbyn be installed in no 10 but the Lib Dems will not accept his leadership. 
Mr Bercow is the latest of several alternatives to be considered by he is so hated by Brexiteers he is very much an outside bet.
Shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti dismissed the idea that the Speaker could take over.
She said: 'If I may say so, we are now getting into almost fantasy football. I think it's unlikely, I really really do.' 
In another snub to the Queen Mr Johnson is also said to have avoided apologising to her over the advice he gave her in order to prorogue Parliament last month. 
After the advice was deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court he expressed 'regret' to the monarch.
It came as the PM warned of plans to 'sabotage' the European Union by vetoing the bloc's seven-year budget if a deal is not reached by October 31.
Britain will leave the EU in 25 days without a deal unless senior figures agree to compromise. In the case of a delay Mr Johnson will 'paralyse' the EU, senior aides revealed.
If Brexit is pushed back after October 31 the leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, could be drafted in as the British Commissioner in Brussels to 'disrupt' meetings, reports claim.
Two cabinet ministers told the Sunday Telegraph they were among others backing the more 'aggressive' approach to Brussels.
It comes after the EU said Mr Johnson's proposals for an exit agreement, which include an plan for customs check on the Northern Irish border, did not 'provide a basis for concluding an agreement'.
But the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier poured scorn on the chances of the new proposal succeeding, reportedly telling an event in Paris: 'If they do not change, I do not believe, on the basis of the mandate I have been given by the EU27, that we can advance.'
In comments reported by The Observer, he also reiterated the EU's claim that a no-deal outcome would 'never be Europe's choice... it would always be the UK's choice, not ours'.
This is while Shami Chakrabarti today accused the Prime minister of speaking with a 'forked tongue' over whether he legally has to seek a three-month delay to the departure from the EU. 
She insisted that the backbench Benn Act concocted by MPs last month was was drafted carefully, and that Mr Johnson will not be able to lawfully take the UK out of the EU without a deal, or without Parliament's approval.
Ruth Davidson has revealed she is quitting front-line politics, weeks after standing down as Scottish Tory leader.
The Edinburgh MSP, once linked with a run at a Westminster seat and a senior post in Government, said she will not stand for re-election in 2021 elections for Holyrood.
The 40-year-old, who recently had a child with partner Jen Wilson, said she did not rule out changing her mind - if there is a second independence referendum.
Her departure is one of a raft of retirements and defections by Tory moderates following Mr Johnson's take-over of the party.
She was credited with doing much to repair the Tories' terrible reputation in Scotland.
Speaking at the Wigtown Book Festival, she said: 'It's a fairly open secret that I think I'm going to see out my term.
'I'm giving myself the option to change my mind but I don't think that I will stand again.'
Ms Davidson quit in August. She had clashed with Boris Johnson during the Brexit referendum, and her resignation came just a day after the Prime Minister announced he was to temporarily suspend Parliament in the run-up to the UK's EU departure date of October 31.
Her intervention came after Mr Johnson last night demanded that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn 'name the date' of the election after his party repeatedly blocked Tory attempts to call one immediately.
Ms Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general, told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that once Benn Act has been complied with - October 19 is the cut-off - there should be a general election, 'certainly this side of Christmas, hopefully substantially before Christmas'.
It paves the way for a December election, as the campaign usually takes five weeks.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay had earlier told Marr: 'Getting Brexit done is the best way to get national unity in this country.'
Baroness Chakrabarti, however, questioned how Brexit can be achieved in compliance with the law.
She said: 'It was drafted with great care after a great deal of co-operation across the House of Commons and it is very very specific and explicit about the personal duty on the Prime Minister to either get a deal through the House of Commons or persuade the House of Commons that no-deal is plausible, or he has to write a letter.
'The letter has been drafted and attached to the Act to the European Union asking for more time.'
She added: 'He seems to have a very casual relationship with the law. He seems to think he is above the law.
'As the Supreme Court showed us a few weeks ago, he is not. No-one is above the law, even a British Prime Minister.'
She said it is important to see what a Boris Johnson deal might look like, and that Parliament must be able to scrutinise his proposals. She said his current proposals 'cannot get through'.
She said, however, that if a deal was approved by Dublin and Brussels, it would be something that would be 'more likely' to pass Labour's tests.
Despite this, another Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who is seen as a bellweather of a group of opposition backbenchers in Leave seats, said she was still willing to break her party whip to support a deal.
But she tore into the PM's plan and hammered him over reports he will row back on agreements made by his predecessor Theresa May on worker rights and environmental issues.
Speaking on Sky's Ridge on Sunday the Wigan MP said: 'What we've got is a proposal which stands virtually no chance of being accepted by the EU which creates two borders on the island of Ireland which is completely incompatible with existing international law.
By HARRY COLE DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
Supreme Court judge Baroness Hale was last night accused of betraying her anti-Boris bias amid a growing political storm over comments she made mocking the Prime Minister.
The judge stunned the legal and political worlds two weeks ago with her brutal slapdown of Mr Johnson's bid to suspend Parliament for five weeks, rendering the prorogation granted to him by the Queen illegal.
At the time she insisted she was above politics and only focused on the law.
However, an appearance on Friday at the Association of State Girls' Schools annual leadership conference in Central London plunged her to the centre of a political furore.
Standing in front of a backdrop that read 'Spider woman takes down Hulk', Baroness Hale used Mr Johnson's controversial recent comments about David Cameron to greet the audience with a cry of, 'Let's hear it for the girly swots'.
Lady Hale's spider-shaped brooch that she wore to deliver her withering legal demolition of the Government has become a symbol of defiance against Mr Johnson, and the PM's interview with The Mail on Sunday in which he compared himself to the Hulk has become common parlance in Westminster.
Following the appearance, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'It was quite clear what she was doing – she was revelling in her recent judgment and she's opened herself to the question, "Who judges the judges?"'
On Friday night, the Supreme Court media team insisted Baroness Hale was given no prior warning of the stage's backdrop, but doubled down on the barbed comments.
'Lady Hale said a few words before leaders of girls' state schools and was glad to declare support for girly swots in that company,' her spokesman said. 
'Which rips up the workers' rights and protections and the environmental protections that we spent several months at the start of this year negotiating with the former prime minister.
'For all the talk of getting Brexit done we are further from a deal than we were two months ago when he became Prime Minister.'
Her distance from the PM's position will come as a blow as without a majority Mr Johnson will need Labour rebels to break the party whip and support his deal in order to get it through the Commons.
It came after the Sun reported that Mr Johnson would abandon a pledge to maintain a 'level playing field' with EU standards after Brexit in order to get trade deals.
Workplace protection was one of the areas suggested where there could be divergence, with Trade Minister Liz Truss tweeting that such a move was 'vital for giving us the freedom and flexibility to strike new trade deals and become more competitive.'
Ms Nandy added that Mr Johnson was 'not behaving like a PM who is at all serious'.
'What he is ding is wasting time and running down the clock as we approach No deal,' she added.
Last week Jeremy Corbyn ordered his Labour MPs to frustrate Boris Johnson's 'reckless' attempt to secure a Brexit deal and get the UK out of the EU.
The opposition leader laid out the command in the Commons amid claims by some backbenchers in Leave-voting areas that as many as 30 of his MPs would be prepared to support the Government's plan to get Brexit done.
Tory Spartans also rallied behind the Prime Minister as he claimed his Brexit blueprint can 'bridge the chasm' with the EU.
Running the gauntlet of the House of Commons, the PM said he had put forward a 'serious' blueprint that can win over a majority of MPs, again warning that the only alternative was No Deal.
He was bolstered by support from hardliners, who hailed 'progress' in the talks. The DUP and some Labour moderates have also signalled they are on board.
But Mr Corbyn made clear he is determined to order his loyalist MPs to block the proposals if they ever come to Parliament.
'No Labour MP could support such a reckless deal that will be used as a springboard to attack rights and standards in this country,' he said.
Brussels' Brexit point man has warned Boris Johnson that he and the UK Government alone would have to shoulder all the blame for the aftermath of a No Deal Brexit.
Michel Barnier rejected the UK's latest offer of a deal which sets out a complex plan for the Northern Ireland border, saying the EU needed it to 'change'.
The European Commission's top Brexit negotiator, who has proved adept at frustrating efforts to seek a compromise deal, said a deal was still doable.
But speaking at an event organised by the Le Monde newspaper last night he said: 'We are ready for no-deal, even if we don't desire it,' he said. 
'No-deal will never be the choice of the EU. If it happens, it would be Britain's choice.'
Mr Barnier added: 'If they do not change, I do not believe, on the basis of the mandate I have been given by the EU27, that we can advance.' 
It came as the PM warned of plans to 'sabotage' the European Union by vetoing the bloc's seven-year budget if a deal is not reached by October 31.
Britain will leave the EU in 25 days without a deal unless senior figures agree to compromise. In the case of a delay Mr Johnson will 'paralyse' the EU, senior aides revealed.
If Brexit is pushed back after October 31 the leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, could be drafted in as the British Commissioner in Brussels to 'disrupt' meetings, reports claim.
On Saturday Mr Johnson started phoning his EU counterparts to sell his proposals for a managed withdrawal from the bloc, after the latest plans were given short shrift by Brussels.
European diplomats say London needs to offer a revised, viable way forward before the end of next week, so that any haggling and legalistic work is done before a crucial EU summit on October 17-18.
That high-stakes European Council meeting will determine whether Britain is headed for an agreement, extension, or potentially disastrous no-deal.
Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne - whose country currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency - said he had told Johnson it was 'important to find a solution within a week' and the British leader 'agreed with the timetable'.
Dutch Premier Mark Rutte tweeted he had told Johnson 'important questions remain about the British proposals' and 'there is a lot of work to be done ahead' of the summit.
Johnson was expected to also call the leaders of other EU countries after talks broke up without progress Friday between a top UK Brexit official, David Frost, and Mr Barnier. 
The UK had been keen for discussions to continue through the weekend, but they were set to restart on Monday.
Latvian prime minister Krisjanis Karins said today that Mr Johnson's Brexit offer is a 'basis for negotiations'.
'I have full trust in the Commission as our negotiator to try to find a good compromise with the UK,' he told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show.
'If Mr Johnson is willing to negotiate that's a very good sign and certainly from Europe's side we are always looking for a deal that works for everyone.'
Mr Karins said striking a deal was 'fully dependent on the will of Mr Johnson because from the European side we are always open and looking towards a deal'.
'If a deal can be found that keeps the single market intact and is not bad for the Republic of Ireland I think it would work for the rest of the EU as well.'
Mr Karins added that  the EU 'doesn't have a whole lot of wriggle room' in negotiating a new deal, but said some tweaks were possible.
'To open up the entire agreement I think that is very unrealistic, certainly in the short time frame.'
He said the PM 'probably' could get an extension if it was to help 'hammer out a deal which is good for everyone'.
'But just extending for the sake of extension I think there would be quite a bit of debate within the EU.'
The Prime Minister will vow to ‘mobilise the full breadth of our new freedoms’ on Brexit night – as his Bill paving the way for Britain to leave the EU was finally passed by Parliament yesterday.  
A leaked Downing Street memo, setting out how the Government will mark January 31, reveals Boris Johnson will use the occasion to call for national healing and unity.
But he will also make clear that after the UK’s exit it will ‘maximise all the freedoms the British people voted to grasp’, including on trade, immigration and fishing.
The script, obtained by the Daily Mail, has been prepared as a basis for remarks to be given by Mr Johnson and ministers on the historic day. 
The PM will hold a Cabinet meeting in the North, before returning to No 10 to make a televised address to the nation in the evening.
Britain will leave the EU at 11pm after Mr Johnson’s Brexit bill cleared its final Parliamentary hurdle yesterday when it was approved by the House of Lords. 
Now all it awaits is Royal Assent and approval by the European Parliament next week.
According to the leaked ‘narrative’ plan for Brexit day, which has been circulated to ministers, the PM and his Government will herald ‘the start of a new chapter in the history of our country, in which we come together and move forward united, unleashing the enormous potential of the British people’.
It reveals how ministers will tell the country to come together after three years of division, adding: ‘We will mobilise the full breadth of our new freedoms – from encouraging technology and innovation, to signing new free trade deals around the world. 
As we maximise all the freedoms the British people voted to grasp, we must also work to heal divisions ... and reunite our communities.’ 
Boris Johnson was slapped down twice this afternoon after reviving Vote Leave's promise of £350million a week for the NHS in a suspected leadership challenge.
The Foreign Secretary was already under fire for making the claim again in a 4,000 essay laying out his personal vision for Brexit a week before the Prime Minister is due to make a major speech in Florence.
Mr Johnson's repetition of the discredited £350million a week claim was taken to task in a formal rebuke from Sir David Norgrove, head of the UK Statistics Authority. 
Sir David wrote to Mr Johnson to say he was 'surprised and disappointed to see the claim repeated.
The row escalated when a spokesman for Mr Johnson insisted the Foreign Secretary had spoken to Sir David and received clarification the complaint was about headlines on his incendiary intervention.
But Sir David stood his ground and insisted his objection was indeed with Mr Johnson's original words.
In a further letter, Mr Johnson then demanded the statistician withdraw his 'complete misrepresentation' and complained about being rebuked publicly. 
The bizarre exchanges came after Mr Johnson was accused of 'back seat driving' in the Brexit negotiations by Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
The BBC was also accused of making a heavy handed intervention after its 'Reality Check' team declared Mr Johnson's figures 'wrong'.  
In his first letter today, Sir David said: 'I am surprised and disappointed that you have chosen to repeat the figure of £350 million per week, in connection with the amount that might be available for extra public spending when we leave the European Union.' 
'It is a clear misuse of official statistics,' Sir David added
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said: 'Boris has spoken to Sir David and he has made clear that he was complaining about the headlines and not Boris' piece and in fact admitted that Boris' wording in the piece was absolutely fine.' 
But a spokesman for the UK Statistics Authority later added: 'Sir David Norgrove does not believe the issues lie solely with the headlines.
'He has not changed the conclusion set out in his letter to the Foreign Secretary.' 
In an angry further reply, Mr Johnson complained: 'You say that I claim that there would be £350 million that "might be available for extra public spending" when we leave the EU.
This is a complete misrepresentation of what I said and I would like you to withdraw it.'
In separate developments, senior Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen told MailOnline the BBC should not be acting as if it was 'running the Government'. 
Allies of Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Aid Secretary Priti Patel said the Vote Leave veterans were solidly behind Mr Johnson.  

The article said because of Britain's EU rebate, only £276million was sent to the European Union each week.
Reality Check editor Liz Corbin said: 'The UK's gross contribution was actually £361m, but - crucially - the rebate is removed before any money is sent to the EU. So the amount sent to the EU in 2014 was £276m per week, after the rebate.
'The Vote Leave campaign's claim argued that the money could be spent on the NHS.
'Well, it could, but that would mean cutting all the money the EU sends back to the UK, for example on farming subsidies and grants for community projects.
'That was in 2014. The amount the UK sends the EU has been falling. In 2016 it sent £252m per week to the EU after the rebate, the lowest since 2012.'
Mr Bridgen told MailOnline: 'I did not know the BBC were running the government and deciding spending commitments.
'If a majority of MPs in Parliament decide we are going to spend most of the money we get back from the EU on the NHS, that is what will happen.' 
Mr Johnson's 4,000-word feature - which appeared on the front page of yesterday's Daily Telegraph - claimed that after Britain had 'settled its accounts' with the EU, Britain would be around £350million a week better off. 
He said: 'It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS, provided we use that cash injection to modernise and make the most of new technology.'  
The BBC's 'Reality Check' team have been overruling politicians since the 2010 general election.
It takes issues raised by politicians in the news and drills into the detail of their claims before reaching a ruling on whether they are true.
In recent weeks, it has scrutinised anti-terror powers and checked out claims by Theresa May on police pay. 
The content is designed to favour social media. It is published onto Twitter and Facebook and designed to be shared.  
Since the referendum campaign, many on the Leave side - including even ex Ukip leader Nigel Farage - have accepted the policy is not deliverable.
A BBC spokeswoman said: 'The BBC's Reality Check is simply a fact checking service that examines figures used by politicians from all sides, we first published one on this figure during last year's referendum campaign.'

Meanwhile, allies of Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Aid Secretary Priti Patel have told the Sunday Telegraph said the Vote Leave veterans were solidly behind Mr Johnson. 
A Whitehall source told the Sunday Telegaph: 'Boris and Michael have said to Downing Street that the £350million [NHS funding] promise was made to Leave voters and we've got to follow through with that when we leave the EU. Both of them are also of one mind when it comes to the Brexit bill.'
A friend of Ms Patel added: 'The principle has to be that government policy is reclaiming control of our money and that gives us the freedom to spend it however we wish on our domestic priorities, which is what she said during the campaign. 
Mr Johnson has been widely condemned by Remain supporters for resurrecting the pledge, which was famously painted on the side of the Vote Leave bus during last year's referendum battle. 
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'On his central point, the £350m a week, this is a lie.
'He knows it is a lie and endlessly repeating it does not make it the truth.' 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said Mr Johnson's comments 'laid bare the conflicts at the heart of Theresa May's government over Brexit' and undermined the prime minister's authority.
He said: 'The foreign secretary even has the gall to dredge up the fantasy of £350m a week extra for the NHS.
'The prime minister must spell out now how this will be paid for, or stand condemned for once again trying to mislead the British public.'
The £350million a week figure was debunked during the referendum campaign by Sir Andrew Dilnot, the head of the UK statistics watchdog. 
Boris Johnson was accused of 'back seat driving' the Brexit talks today as a Cabinet row exploded into public view.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd blasted 'I don't want him managing the Brexit process' and urged the Foreign Secretary to leave the talks to Theresa May.
Mr Johnson stunned Westminster with a 4,000-world article setting out his personal vision for Brexit yesterday in what many saw as a brazen leadership bid.
No 10 has scrambled to insist the Government is united less than a week before Mrs May makes a major Brexit intervention with a speech in Florence. 
Ms Rudd used a major TV interview today to give a glimpse into the fury at Mr Johnson's intervention.
She famously told a TV debate during the referendum campaign she would not want Mr Johnson 'driving her home at the end of the evening'.
Ms Rudd said she had not read Mr Johnson's piece as she had 'quite a lot to do' responding to the Parsons Green terror attack. 
And today she told the BBC's Andrew Marr that Ruth Davidson 'had a point' in suggesting the timing of Mr Johnson's intervention was unhelpful.
She said: 'I had a very busy weekend dealing with what could have been a terrible attack on our transport system.'
Ms Rudd added: 'I have the great good fortune to work with Boris. I know what an irrepressible enthusiast he is about Brexit and what he has done is set it out there - I think it's fine and I would expect nothing less.
'I don't want him managing the Brexit process. What we have got is Theresa May managing that process, driving the car to continue the allegory. 
'I am going to make sure that as far as I cam concerned and the rest of the Cabinet is concerned, we help her do that. This is difficult moment.'
Prompted to agree Mr Johnson was back street driving, she said: 'You could call it back seat driving.'  
Ms Rudd said 'time will tell' if Mr Johnson's article was a 'helpful intervention'.  
 
Tories warned today that an election showdown with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party would be a 'massive own goal' - after Boris Johnson suffered a shattering defeat at the hands of the 'Remainer alliance'.  
The PM's honeymoon came to a crashing halt after the Lib Dems triumphed in Brecon & Radnorshire, slashing his Commons majority to just one.  
Jane Dodds overcame a Conservative majority of 8,000 to take the Welsh seat by 1,400 votes.
Tory ex-MP Chris Davies, who stood again despite his conviction for expenses fraud having triggered the contest, held on to second. 
But Conservative chairman James Cleverly complained that the Lib Dems only won due to a 'dirty deal' with the Greens and Plaid Cymru, which saw the pro-EU rivals stand aside to give Ms Dodds a clear run.
In contrast, the Brexit Party did field a candidate.  Mr Cleverly pointed out that that although they only received 10 per cent of the vote, combined with the Tories it would have been more than enough to have delivered victory. 
Prominent Eurosceptic MP Steve Baker today pleaded with Mr Farage not to split the Brexit vote by fielding candidates in vulnerable seats.
'It is becoming obvious to all now that the Brexit Party standing against the Conservative Party would produce a massive own goal,' he said. 
There is a huge degree of uncertainty about how a pact would function, and what kind of results it would produce at an election.
But as an indication, an Ipsos MORI poll found this week that the combined vote share of the Tories and Brexit Party was 43 per cent.
With Labour on 24 per cent and the Lib Dems on 20 per cent, the Electoral Calculus website suggests a Brexit alliance would have an enormous 268 majority in the House of Commons.   
Mr Johnson has flatly dismissed the idea of a pact - but one MP told MailOnline today: 'He is going to say that, isn't he?'
The MP warned that a Commons confidence vote could only be weeks away, and said a number of Tories had been 'putting out feelers' to Mr Farage about a pact for 'months'. 
'If we don't the Remainers are having a little pact... and we know what happens when they do,' the MP said. 
Former minister Crispin Blunt, who has previously urged an arrangement with the Brexit Party, told MailOnline Mr Johnson had taken a 'very important judgement' by publicly rejecting a deal, but suggested he would have to think again
'Whether he then gets a chance to review it if we find ourselves on the wrong end of a general election where we don't choose the time, that will be a matter for him.' 
He added: 'Are they really interested in Brexit, or are they interested in damaging the Conservative Party?' 
Allies of Mr Farage have also warned that Mr Johnson must start 'talking' to the MEP. 
Analysis by political strategist James Kanagasooriam for Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday found a Remain Alliance could increase the number of explicitly anti-Brexit MPs in England and Wales from 27 to 66. The figure could rise to 154 if the new group performed particularly well in seats lower on its target list. 
Mr Clevery refused to blame Mr Davies for the loss, describing him as an 'incredible local candidate'. 
'What we saw was a very close result in a by-election in which the Lib Dems were expected to romp home comfortably,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
Speaking on ITV's GMB, he said it was 'disappointing' that an area that voted Leave in 2016 now had a Remainer MP. 
Here are the results of the Breon and Radnorshire by-election:
‘I find it disappointing that a lot of people voting for the Brexit Party who want Brexit to be delivered, now have a Lib Dem MP who is going to do everything she can to stop Brexit being delivered.' 
Mr Cleverly said the pro-EU parties had done a 'dirty deal', but admitted the alliance was allowed within the rules. 
He stressed that the combined votes for Brexit were still more than for Remain parties.
‘They've said it again in combined votes in this election,’ he added. 
Mr Cleverly said the parliamentary maths had been difficult for the Tories since the 2017 election, and urged MPs to get behind the PM. 
'The Prime Minister got a clear mandate from parliamentarians... the wider Conservative Party gave him an even more thumping victory in the leadership election.
'So I do think it's incumbent on all Conservatives to support the Prime Minister in what has been a long-standing Conservative policy.' 
The vote shows the scale of the job Mr Johnson still has to do with 90 days to go until Britain is due to leave the EU. 
A Tory MP has threatened to defect to the Lib Dems in protest at Boris Johnson's hardline Brexit policy, 
Dr Phillip Lee, who supports a second EU referendum, suggested he will 'spend the summer' deciding whether to cross the floor. 
Speaking on a podcast with fellow Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah, Dr Lee said: 'I'm really not comfortable about my party pushing for no-deal Brexit without proper consent of the public.
'Purely on the national interest, I think it's wrong to do this. But party politically I think it's narrowing our base in a way that I don't see how we win elections.
'And if you don't win elections in a democracy you don't have power and you can't do things you want to do. It's just simple reality.
'I'm sort of sitting here, looking on and - yeah - I'm going to spend the summer thinking a lot.'
A defection would leave Mr Johnson leading a minority government. Instead of the current wafer-thin advantage of one in the Commons, Opposition parties would have one more MP in the House.  
Three Tory MPs - Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen - quit earlier this year to join an independent grouping in the House of Commons.
It will inevitably fuel speculation about a pact between the Conservatives and Nigel Farage's party if a general election is forced over the coming months. 
Ms Dodds, 55, who secured a majority of 1,425 after a 'Remain alliance' with Plaid and the Greens cleared the way for her to take on the Tories, said the result was 'sending a message to Westminster that we demand better'. 
She said her first act as an MP would be to find the Prime Minister and tell him to rule out No Deal.
She said: 'People are desperately crying out for a different kind of politics. There is no time for tribalism when our country is faced with a Boris Johnson Government and the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
'So my very first act as your MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Mr Boris Johnson wherever he is hiding and tell him loud and clear: ''Stop playing with the future of our communities and rule out a no-deal Brexit now''.'
There was more bad news for Jeremy Corbyn as Labour's Tom Davies was humiliatingly beaten into fourth place by the Brexit Party's Des Parkinson and narrowly avoided losing his deposit. 
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said: 'We are thankful to Plaid Cymru and the Green Party for putting the national interest first and not contesting this by-election. 
'We now have one more MP who will vote against Brexit in Parliament.' 
In a further blow to Mr Johnson, a sitting Tory MP has threatened to defect to the Lib Dems in protest at his hardline Brexit stance.
Phillip Lee said he 'spend the summer' thinking about his future. If he follows through on the threat, Mr Johnson's wafer-thin majority of one would be eradicated. 
Instead, Opposition parties would have one more MP in the House of Commons than commanded by the government. 
The vote in the Welsh borders constituency yesterday was sparked by the criminal conviction of Tory MP Chris Davies for expenses fraud in March and a subsequent recall petition.
But the Tories' decision to allow the disgraced ex-MP to contest the seat despite local people voting to oust gave the Lib Dems the chance to win the seat.
The other Remainer parties stood aside to give their candidate Jane Dodds a clear run to take a seat the party won as recently as 2010. 
Defeat for the Tories in Brecon and Radnorshire reduces Mr Johnson's majority in the rebellious and fragmented Commons fall to just one - including the DUP - and add a Remainer to the force opposing him. 
Turnout in the election in the UK's largest constituency was 59.7 per cent, the highest in a by-election since 1997. 
A Welsh Liberal Democrat source said they expected the result to be 'a lot closer than we thought' but was still confident of beating the Conservatives before the result came in. 
The source said: 'We are confident we can do this, but it isn't in the bag. It's a big majority we're looking to overturn across a big seat. Our campaign has put us in a good place.'
A Welsh Conservative Party source said they believed Boris Johnson's appointment as Prime Minister had boosted Brexiteer support for the party, saying the number of votes between them and the Lib Dems would be 'closer than people thought'. 
Mr Johnson has dramatically boosted the party's national ratings, with one poll yesterday suggesting it was 10 points ahead of Labour. 
Mr Johnson's solemn 'do or die' vow to take the UK out of the EU by the end of October appears to have reversed some of the haemorrhage of support to Nigel Farage's fledgling outfit.
The combined vote of the Tories and Brexit Party is more than that for the Lib Dems, an outcome that could heap pressure on the PM to consider a pact in a potential election widely expected within the next year.  
Mr Davies, 51, was picked by local members despite his conviction and a subsequent recall petition signed by 20 per cent of voters demanding he be ejected from the seat. 
Mr Johnson made a fleeting visit to Brecon earlier this week, attending the offices of the BVG Group with Mr Davies. 
Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove have both visited the constituency in recent weeks. 
The Liberal Democrats were trying to not look complacent, talking about the size of the rural seat making its doorstep efforts harder.
The Brexit Party had been hoping to steal votes from disaffected Tories with its candidate, former local police superintendent Mr Parkinson, 71.
Jane Dodds is the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats who won Brecon and Radnorshire's by-election last night. 
The 55-year-old speaks Welsh and was born and bred in Wrexham in the north of the country.
She has worked for the Refugee Council, specifically in the section that focuses on children.
Dodds has also worked for the Salvation Army, Child Protective Services and across various councils. 
The social worker kicked off her political career in 2006 as she become one of three councillors for North Richmond ward in London.
But she lost her seat in 2010, when her party went into coalition with the Conservatives.  
She stood for her party in the 2015 and 2017 general elections and contested the Welsh Assembly constituency of Montgomeryshire in 2016.
Her policies include a strong opposition to leaving the European Union without a trade deal in place. 
She said that her first priority in negotiations with the bloc is that a no-deal Brexit is 'taken off the table'.   
But their showing will have disappointed Nigel Farage, coming way off where they will have wanted to have been. 
A swing of at least 9.8 per cent was needed by Ms Dodds to win the seat, which saw a majority of 8,038 for Mr Davies in 2017. 
It is the sort of swing which, were it to happen at a general election, could see the party pick up around a dozen seats from the Tories. 
In the end there was a 12 per cent swing. 
A poll of the area by the Number Crunching Politics website last week suggested that the Remainer party was on course to achieve a 14 per cent swing from the Tories to 43 per cent.
But  it put the Tories in second on 28  per cent, ahead of the Brexit Party on 20 per cent, with Labour and the Monster Raving Loony Party coming in ahead of Ukip.
On Monday a separate poll suggested the 'Boris bounce' had spread to Wales, finding the Tories had leapfrogged Labour.
A survey found the Conservatives had jumped seven points since May on voting intention for a general election.
They now enjoy a slender two-point advantage over Jeremy Corbyn's party - which was down three on 22 per cent, the lowest level ever recorded.
However, the YouGov research for Cardiff University and ITV underlines the fragmentation in party support in Wales.
Despite being down five points since the last poll just before the European elections, the Brexit Party was on 18 per cent, while the Lib Dems were up four on 16 per cent. Plaid Cymru is also riding high on 15 per cent. 
Defeat for the Conservatives in the by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire reduced the Government's working majority in Parliament to just one.
There are currently 320 MPs who - on paper - would back the Government in a crunch vote in the House of Commons - 310 Tories and 10 members of the DUP.
The DUP agreed to support the Conservatives in certain key votes, such as confidence motions and Budgets, as part of a deal reached in the aftermath of the 2017 general election.
After the by-election, there are 319 MPs from all other parties set against the government total of 320. 
These totals do not include Sinn Fein's seven MPs, who do not take their seats in the Commons, and the Speaker and three Deputy Speakers, who do not vote.
The Lib Dems held the seat of Brecon and Radnorshire from 1997 to 2015. 
The Tories won 49 per cent of the vote in 2017, compared with 29 per cent for the Lib Dems, 18 per cent for Labour, 3 per cent for Plaid Cymru and 1 per cent for Ukip. 
Brexit Party: Des Parkinson. The retired Dyfed-Powys Police chief superintendent, 71, wanted to cut local council tax and opposed wind farms being built in the attractive rural area. A former Ukipper he ran unsuccessfully to be the area's Police and Crime Commissioner in 2016. During the campaign he attacked Boris Johnson, writing in Politics Home that 'if he really wanted a clean Brexit he would have asked the tainted Tory to stand down'.
 
Welsh Conservatives: Chris Davies - The 51-year-old former MP for the seat. In April this year the ex-auctioneer, who is married with two young children, was given a community order after admitting two charges of expenses fraud over false invoices for photographs, sparking a recall petition and this by-election. A Brexiteer who was backed by the local party despite his conviction. But No10 had deep reservations, and the PM made only a brief visit to the constituency this week.
 
Welsh Labour: Tom Davies. The Brecon born and raised lawyer, 29, sits on the town's council. He trained as a barrister and works in Cwmbran, while living in Brecon. He's a fluent Welsh-speaker and rugby fan. He supports a second referendum but is not expected to win. But Mr Davies finished fourth behind the Lib Dems, Tories and the Brexit Party.
 
Welsh Lib Dems: Jane Dodds. The 55-year-old married child protection social worker and Welsh Lib Dem leader had been the firm favourite to take the seat, which was held by the party as recently as 2010.  She is also a Welsh-speaker and was born and raised in Wrexham in the north of the country. She won the candidacy after a vote of party members and contested Montgomeryshire in 2015 and 2017.
 
Ukip: Liz Phillips. The former personal assistant to former Ukip leader Gerard Batten lived for a long time in Rhayader in the constituency but currently lives in Kent. She struggled to win votes from the Brexit Party, and ended up in last place. She previously contested the seat at the 2001 and 2005 elections -  on the latter occasion finishing last.
 
Monster Raving Loony: Lady Lily The Pink. Representing the perennial election also-rans, Lily, who lives in Brecon, is targeting people not planning to vote because they don't like the more mainstream candidates, using the slogan 'if you don't know what to think, vote Pink'. She managed to avoid coming last, gaining 334 votes. 
By Policy Editor for the Daily Mail 
Jeremy Corbyn faced fresh calls to quit last night after Labour’s disastrous showing in the by-election.
The party slumped to fourth in the Brecon and Radnorshire seat, behind the Brexit Party, Tories and Lib Dems.
Labour’s candidate Tom Davies picked up just 1,680 votes, down almost 5,000 on its third-place showing at the 2017 general election.
This amounted to just 5.3 per cent of the vote, just above the threshold of 5 per cent to avoid the party losing its £500 deposit to take part in the election.
Labour’s vote share has fallen by 12.5 percentage points since 2017 – the largest slump among any of the parties.
The result strengthens the hand of Mr Corbyn’s critics, who say his fence-sitting on Brexit is costing the party votes.
Yesterday Mr Corbyn said he was ‘disappointed’ by the result, adding: ‘The Liberal Democrats won it after doing a deal with Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
‘I think that a lot of voters were determined to get rid of the Conservatives and they voted accordingly.’
But he still faced fresh calls to go. Pat Glass, the former Labour MP for North West Durham, tweeted: ‘Let’s not forget that Labour... got just 5 per cent of the vote and came in fourth behind the Brexit Party.
‘When are we in the Labour Party going to wise up, smell the coffee and get ourselves a new leader?’
Ian Austin, the independent MP for Dudley North, who quit Labour over anti-Semitism, tweeted: ‘Jeremy Corbyn is certainly consistent, as well as hopeless. If Labour MPs and the shadow cabinet won’t get rid of him because of the racism and extremism that has poisoned Labour, surely they’ll act out of self-interest?’
Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson told The Times she was ruling out a Remain alliance with Labour, saying Mr Corbyn could not be trusted on Brexit.
 
Tory rebels kicked out of the parliamentary party for voting to stop a no-deal Brexit last week have been offered an 'olive branch' by Boris Johnson.
The Prime Minister last night told the Chief Whip to write to all MPs and set out the appeals process to restore the whip - after 21 were kicked out of the party for voting against Mr Johnson in the Commons. 
A group including Philip Hammond, David Gauke and Ken Clarke as well as Winston Churchill's grandson Sir Nicholas Soames were all stripped of the whip for backing a bill designed to prevent a No Deal exit. 
The move prompted a furious backlash within the party, with Tory backbenchers accusing Mr Johnson's chief strategist Dominic Cummings of overseeing a 'Stalinist purge' of the Conservatives. 
This week Number 10 faced growing calls to change tack and allow the rebels back into the parliamentary party. 
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, are all said to have urged the Prime Minister to offer an 'olive branch' to the rebels, according to The Daily Telegraph.  
Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House, and Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, are reported to have spoken out in favour of letting some MPs back.
Now, Mr Johnson has instructed the Chief Whip to write to the rebels on how to appeal the decision - in a move labelled a 'ray of light' by one senior party source. Although at least three different versions of the Chief Whip's letter are thought to have been sent out, some more welcoming than others.
A government source said: 'It's not like they're all one bloc. Some are fully off the reservation, while some want to have some path back – maybe by voting for the Government in the Queen's Speech, or voting for a new deal.'  
Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, is among the rebels to have received the letter, a spokesman for whom said: 'The letter reads like an olive branch of sorts. If that is the tone that No 10 is taking, that is a welcome one.' 
Among the MPs thought most likely to be reinstated are Steve Brine, Stephen Hammond, Anne Milton and Richard Benyon. 
But despite the positive signs, Mr Johnson has been warned that backtracking on his decision to remove the whip from the rebels could spell even more trouble. There are fears Brexiteers could be angered by the move, causing problems with party discipline. 
The MPs have been told to inform Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, of their intention to appeal. 
Although of the 21 Tory MPs who were kicked out for voting against the Prime Minister, only ten are expected intended to stand again at a general election. The remaining 11 were already planning to stand down. 
The news comes as an Edinburgh court decided that the Mr Johnson's prorogation of parliament was unlawful because the Prime Minister's intention had been to 'stymy' scrutiny of his Brexit policy - not to pave the way for a new legislative programme as he claimed.
The shock outcome in Edinburgh sets the stage for a titanic showdown at the Supreme Court in London on Tuesday - with the risk that the Queen will be dragged into the constitutional crisis.
Mr Johnson would need as many MPs on his side as possible - especially after the work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd resigned last week and earlier Tory MP Phillip Lee crossed the Commons to join the Liberal Democrats - should he have to reconvene parliament.
It also comes amid signs Mr Johnson will try and negotiate a Brexit deal over Northern Ireland, for which he will need as many votes from Tory MPs as possible. 
Also last night, the Operation Yellowhammer documents revealing the Government's No Deal Brexit Planning were released by Downing Street.
The newly released government dossier of 'worst case planning assumptions' says a no deal Brexit would lead to delays in medicine, illegal fishing boats, public disorder, delays at the border and rising food prices for those on the lowest incomes. 
The newly released government dossier, features 20 'key planning assumptions' and there is one which is partially redacted.  
It reveals some very real concerns over a no deal exit including electricity price increases, delays to medicine imports and protests across the UK. 
MPs voted by 311 to 302 in favour on Monday of telling Number 10 advisers to hand over WhatsApp, Facebook and text messages and for ministers to release their No Deal contingency plans in full.
The MPs, led by former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, set a deadline for the material to be surrendered by 11pm yesterday.
But Downing Street refused a request to hand over the texts, emails, and WhatsApp messages of key advisers about the decision to suspend Parliament. Instead, it only released the document.  
The roars created an ear-splitting cri de joie – the sort that probably erupted in Roman amphitheatres whenever a gladiator speared his opponent through the spleen with a javelin.
The House of Commons, over which such gloom has hung for the past three years that you could have mistaken it for the wretched Miss Havisham’s attic, finally blasted back to life.
Tory MPs thundered as Boris Johnson entered the chamber, plonking his great gorilla hulk down on the green benches with a thud. They exploded with exuberance when he spoke of his plans to make the United Kingdom ‘the greatest place on earth’.
Most of all, they raucously bellowed after he skewered ‘the sceptics and the doubters’ on Labour’s front bench.
Indeed, he lampooned John McDonnell so mercilessly that the Shadow Chancellor – who can dish it out but can’t take it – almost flounced out.
The new Prime Minister was making his first appearance at the despatch box and, as promised, he brought along the sunshine. Temperatures may have been 38 degrees outside but the feelgood factor among most Tories was even warmer.
Johnson’s message, as it has been all week, was one of optimism. Talk me down, folks, and you talk down the country. Labour, for now, have been totally scorched.
Performance-wise, it was a corker. It’s been a while since a British prime minister devoted so much energy to their appearance at the despatch box.
Those arms! Waving, jabbing, pointing, while his lower half pirouetted as if he were the Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov after several tumblers of vodka.
A most extraordinary thing happened today. Did anybody notice the terrible metamorphosis that took place, like the final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? 
At last, this long-standing Eurosceptic (Corbyn) has been captured. He has been jugulated, reprogrammed, turned into a Remainer!
Of all the flip-flops in his tergiversating career, that is the one for which he will pay the highest price.
Jeremy Corbyn suddenly looked very old. As Tornado Boris swirled around the house, Jezza sat as sullen and stony-faced as an Easter Island statue. He reminded me of a despondent snooker player looking on as his opponent began a maximum break of 147.
Johnson entered behind the Speaker’s chair at 11.30am, giving Michael Gove a hearty thwack on the back.
Leader of the House Jacob Rees-Mogg was proving the perfect warm-up act as he set out his parliamentary timetable. Witty, charming, with a hint of metal. As he waited to be called, the PM scanned the chamber from his new viewpoint, drinking it all in. ‘Here we are at last,’ he seemed to be thinking.
His statement laid out sweeping dreams for the country beyond 2050, when he said the UK would be the biggest economy in Europe and where our grandchildren would live ‘longer, happier and healthier lives’.
He repeated his promise for 20,000 extra police officers, saying he had instructed new Home Secretary Priti Patel to make it her top priority. Sharp-tongued Priti beamed from ear to ear – not her natural repose. Chancellor Sajid Javid grinned apprehensively, wondering how he would pay for them.
He (Corbyn) has been paid by Press TV of Iran... he sides with the mullahs of Tehran rather than our friends in the United States over the Persian gulf.
How incredible that we should even think of entrusting him with the stewardship of this country’s security. 
Enthusiasm was not entirely total. Justine Greening (Tory – Putney) gave a few weary, Remainer sighs. Sir Nicholas Soames (Tory – Mid Sussex) sat, head slumped on fist, as though modelling for Rodin’s Thinker.
Over on the opposition benches, shadow education spokesman Angela Rayner squawked furiously whenever Johnson mentioned schools.
If Brexit was uttered, Sir Keir Starmer waggled his right foot impatiently, itching to befuddle the new PM with boring legal jargon. Shadow trade minister Barry Gardiner and Ed Miliband exchanged dismissive shakes of the head.
For Corbyn, this should have been an opportunity to draw blood on a new Prime Minister ahead of the summer recess. To show Conservatives that their Zeus bleeds.
Predictably, he rose to the occasion with all the panache of a lonely pub bore. Dear me, he was flat. Boris’s pizzazz appeared to have steamrolled him.
‘No one underestimates this country,’ Corbyn said, trying to dismiss Johnson’s depiction of him as a sulky naysayer.
‘You do!’ the Tories cried.
Corbyn never recovered. He plodded on with little enthusiasm. Behind him, Labour members fanned themselves and fiddled with their phones in wild indifference.
Too many people in this country have been told repeatedly and relentlessly what we cannot do.
Since I was a child, I remember respectable authorities asserting our time as a nation has passed... that we should be content with mediocrity and managed decline.
Time and again, by their powers to innovate and adapt, the British people have shown the doubters wrong. I believe that at this pivotal moment in our national story, we are going to prove them wrong again. 
It was when Corbyn sat down that Johnson really went to work on him.
Here is the man paid by Press TV of Iran, he said, who repeatedly sides with the mullahs of Tehran over our American friends. And people are considering putting him in charge of our national security!
The next target was McDonnell. Johnson pointed out he was sacked by Ken Livingstone at the Greater London Council for being too left-wing. He’ll raise tax on inheritances, on pensions, on corporations and then nick your garden.
McDonnell crossly rose to his feet. I don’t have to put up with this, he seemed to be saying.
‘Wooooooo!’ his opponents cried. McDonnell then appeared to have second thoughts about walking off and sat down with a glass of water, slurping it the way that shaken seadogs nurse a large brandy.
Back to Corbyn. Johnson noted how he had said Labour planned to campaign for Remain in a second referendum.
If we bend our sinews to the task now, there is every chance that in 2050, when I fully intend to be around, although not necessarily in this job, we will be able to look back on this extraordinary period as the beginning of a new golden age for our United Kingdom.
He scorned: ‘Did anybody notice the terrible metamorphosis that happened today? Like the final scene of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers? At last, this long-standing Eurosceptic has been captured, jugulated, reprogrammed by his friends! He has been turned now into a Remainer!’
Corbyn was a picture of bewilderment. What was this unfamiliar weapon he was being attacked with? His predecessor certainly never deployed it.
Ah, humour. That deadliest of arrows.
When Boris Johnson eventually departed the chamber, few would have forgiven him for uncorking something over lunch. It had been a very satisfactory opening knock.
As they broke for recess last night, for the first time in a very long while it was Tory MPs heading off with a spring in their step.
Boris Johnson today brutally slapped down Michel Barnier after the EU negotiator demanded Britain signs up to EU rules to get a trade deal.
The PM insisted there is no need to tie the UK to Brussels regulations, or vice versa, as he condemned growing protectionism around the world. 
Arguing that he wants to be a champion of free trade now Brexit has happened, Mr Johnson dismissed claims that Britain will undercut social and environmental standards - saying it was often ahead of the bloc. 
The defiant stance - in a 30-minute speech in which the premier notably declined to use the word 'Brexit' - came minutes after Mr Barnier warned that Britain will only get a 'best in class' trade deal if it bows to demands on a 'level playing field' and access to fishing waters.
He said the bloc was ready to strike an 'ambitious' package with the UK, including zero tariffs and quotas and covering the crucial services sector. 
But he insisted that would be 'conditional' on Britain committing to keep the current social and environmental standards - as well as letting the European fishing fleet in.
The two sides are on a collision course again, with Mr Johnson vowing he will never accept Brussels regulations as the price for a trade deal.
The PM signalled a tough approach in a keynote speech urging European leaders to honour their pledge to give the UK a Canada-style package.
But Mr Johnson warned that the EU must not demand alignment with its rules - making clear if it does he will simply walk away from the table.
CANADA 
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the EU was signed in October 2016.
It meant 98 per cent of goods traded are exempt from tariffs - although there are still regulatory barriers and the system is being phased in.
Companies in based in both jurisdictions can compete for public contracts.
There are protections for products from specific geographical locations, such as Parma ham.
But there is little coverage of services, aside from respecting intellectual property. 
AUSTRALIA
The EU and Australia do not have a formal trade deal - although one is being negotiated.
Instead the two interact based on World Trade Organisation terms.
That means tariffs apply on many goods, with ad hoc agreements in specific areas.  
The clash comes on the first working day after Brexit finally happened on Friday night, sets the stage for months of brutal haggling over the shape of the future relationship.
In another pressure tactic, there are claims that Mr Barnier has also agreed to Spain's call to get a veto over whether Gibraltar should be covered by the arrangements - something that Britain has insisted will not be agreed. 
Irish PM Leo Varadkar has also been turning up the rhetoric, after branding the UK a 'small country' and gloating that the EU has a stronger hand in the talks. 
At a press conference in Brussels, Mr Barnier spelled out the EU's stance as skirmishing gets under way. 
He said a 'best in class' trade deal could include zero tariffs and zero quotas on goods, and cover the services sector. 
'We are ready to offer all this, even though we know there will be strong competition between the UK, our immediate neighbour, and the EU in the future,' he said.
'Competition is normal, competition is normal. But because of our geographical proximity and economic interdependence, our draft mandate also makes clear, that this exceptional offer is conditional on at least two things.
'First, we need to make sure that competition is and remains open and fair. We have already agreed with PMB that our future partnership will prevent, and I quite 'unfair competitive advantages'.
'We must now agree on specific and effective guarantees to ensure a level playing field over the long term.
'That means a mechanism to uphold the high standards we have on social, environmental, climate, tax and state aid matters today and in their future developments.
'Second, out free trade agreement must include an agreement on fisheries. This agreement should provide for continued reciprocal access to markets and waters with stable quota shares.
'If we can agree on this, as well as robust agreements towards a level playing field, and the necessary enforcement mechanism, we will achieve a very ambitious free and fair trade agreement.'
Boris Johnson today slammed 'mumbo-jumbo' fears about US food standards and NHS interference - as he insisted Britain will be the superhero of free trade.
The PM shrugged off 'hysteria' over issues like chlorinated chicken, joking that he thought Americans looked 'pretty well nourished'.
He said Britain's approach would be based on 'science', although he stressed that other countries will have to accept that the UK will not slash standards or compromise animal welfare. 
The comments came as Mr Johnson delivered a keynote speech pledging to make the country a beacon for free trade now it has left the EU.
Hailing Britain's proud history of pushing for more competition, he said it would emerge with 'cape flowing' to fight those who were 'letting the air out of the tyres' of the global economy.
However, Mr Johnson argued no other country which has a trade deal with the EU has been forced to sign up to such obligations.
In a speech to business leaders and ambassadors in Greenwich, he said: 'There is no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment or anything similar, any more than the EU should be obliged to accept UK rules.
'The UK will maintain the highest standards in these areas – better, in many respects, than those of the EU – without the compulsion of a treaty and it is vital to stress this now.'
He said: 'We have often been told that we must choose between full access to the EU market, along with accepting its rules and courts on the Norway model, or an ambitious free trade agreement, which opens up markets and avoids the full panoply of EU regulation, on the example of Canada. We have made our choice: we want a free trade agreement, similar to Canada's.' 
In the 'very unlikely event' that talks do not succeed, Mr Johnson said in his speech he will seek a much looser arrangement. 'The choice is emphatically not 'deal or no deal'. 
The question is whether we agree a trading relationship with the EU comparable to Canada's – or more like Australia's,' he insisted. 'In either case, I have no doubt that Britain will prosper.' 
Mr Johnson added that 'our new relationship with our closest neighbours will range far beyond trade'. 'We will seek a pragmatic agreement on security, protecting our citizens without trespassing on the autonomy of our respective legal systems,' he will announce.
Nissan could abandon the EU and expand its operations in the UK to get a competitive advantage after Brexit, it was claimed today.
The Japanese company has reportedly drawn up plans to 'double down' on its presence in Britain if tariffs are introduced across the Channel next year.
The move is designed to capitalise on higher costs of other car manufacturers - with suggestions Nissan could end up selling four times as many vehicles in the UK as a result.
According to the Financial Times, the scenario - one of a number of options being considered - would see plants in Barcelona and France closed down.
Instead, production in Sunderland would be ramped up.
Mr Varadkar yesterday insisted the extra protections were needed as the UK is geographically closer to the EU than Canada and does a much larger volume of trade. 
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr show yesterday: 'You're geographically part of the European continent, we share seas, we share airspace and our economies are very integrated.
'One thing that we feel very strongly in the European Union is that if we're going to have tariff-free, quota-free trade with the UK... then that needs to come with a level playing field. We would have very strong views on fair competition and state aid.'
But Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said any suggestion the UK will have to follow EU rules and laws after 2021 'just ain't happening'. He told Marr that staying tied to EU regulations 'obviously defeats the point of Brexit'.
Mr Johnson has vowed to negotiate a trade deal with the EU by the end of this year so there is no need to extend the transition period beyond December.
Some EU figures have questioned whether the fast-track timetable is realistic, but former European Council president Donald Tusk yesterday said he believed it would be possible. He told Marr: 'One year is enough to finalise our negotiations.'
By John Stevens, deputy political editor for the Daily Mail 
EU STANDARDS 
What the EU wants: Brussels has said it is ready to offer a 'highly ambitious' trade deal with zero tariffs and zero quotas – but with strings attached. It says the UK must agree to maintain EU standards on workers' rights, environmental protections and state aid so British businesses do not have a competitive advantage over those on the continent.
What the UK wants: Boris Johnson insisted yesterday there was 'no need' for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules and regulations. He made the argument that Brussels has not imposed similar obligations on other countries it has struck trade deals with. At the weekend, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said a commitment to stick to the EU's way of doing things 'obviously defeats the point of Brexit'.
FISHING RIGHTS 
EU: Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, insists that allowing European trawlers into UK waters is 'inextricably linked' to securing a trade deal. France and other maritime nations want a 25-year settlement based on the current quota system to 'avoid economic dislocation' for continental fishermen who currently land 43 per cent of the fish caught here.
UK: The Prime Minister has said he is ready to consider an agreement on fisheries but warned it 'must reflect the fact that the UK will be an independent coastal state from the end of this year, controlling our own waters'. He has proposed annual negotiations to ensure 'British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats'.
GIBRALTAR 
EU: Brussels has backed Spain's territorial claim to Gibraltar by handing Madrid a veto over whether it is included in a Brexit trade deal. The centuries-old dispute over the Rock has been an issue throughout Brexit talks, with Spain provoking a row last year by insisting it be referred to as a 'colony' in EU legislation. 
UK: Mr Johnson said yesterday: 'The UK will be negotiating on behalf of the entire UK family and that certainly includes Gibraltar and the sovereignty of Gibraltar remains, as everybody knows, indivisible.' The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht gave the peninsula to Britain in perpetuity. In 1967 and 2002 its people voted against Spanish sovereignty. 
ROLE FOR EU JUDGES 
EU: Brussels wants the European Court of Justice to be given a legal role in disputes between the EU and UK over the agreement. Mr Barnier also warned yesterday the UK would automatically be kicked out of joint law enforcement programmes if it pulled out of the European Convention on Human Rights. 
UK: Mr Johnson said yesterday an agreement could not include 'any jurisdiction for the European Court of Justice over the UK's laws'. He warned that a deal 'must respect the sovereignty of both parties and the autonomy of our legal orders'.
FINANCIAL SERVICES 
EU: The EU is refusing to negotiate on whether firms based in the City of London will be allowed to continue to serve clients on the continent. It plans to retain the unilateral right to decide whether British firms can keep trading, which could be withdrawn with as little as 30 days' notice.
UK: Ministers accept that banks in the City of London will not get an unqualified right to trade in the EU, but want the notice period lengthened. They insist the deal should 'provide a predictable, transparent and business-friendly environment'. 
Give Brussels fishing rights for 25 years? Codswallop! Britain to reject EU demands for deal that would allow foreign trawlers access to our waters until 2045
Britain is to reject EU demands for a deal on fishing that would give foreign trawlers access to our waters for 25 years.
Instead, France and other European nations will have to request access annually, with quotas negotiated each year.
The UK has some of the richest fishing grounds in the world, but British vessels land less than a third – 32 per cent – of the total catch. EU boats take 43 per cent, while the Norwegians catch 21 per cent.
At the end of the transition period in December, the country will leave the EU's Common Fisheries Policy, which dictates how much British trawlers can catch and where. Fishermen complain they do not get a fair share of what is caught in UK waters.
The Fisheries Bill going through Parliament will end the automatic right of EU vessels to fish in British waters, with access to fisheries set to be a matter for the UK to negotiate.
Ministers see Norway as a model. It holds annual negotiations with the EU on access to waters, management of shared stocks and exchanges of quota rights. The political declaration on future relations agreed by Boris Johnson and EU leaders last year states fishing rights must be ratified by July.
Theresa May is facing fresh pressure to drop her Chequers plan and back a Canada-style 'clean Brexit' today as she gathers Cabinet.
The PM is meeting ministers in the wake of her humiliation at the hands of EU leaders in Salzburg last week.
The session has been called to consider new post-Brexit migration rules - but some ministers are expected to make clear their unhappiness with Mrs May's approach.  
Brexiteer Cabinet ministers have played down claims that they are planning to quit at this stage. 
The meeting comes as Eurosceptics published an alternative blueprint for relations with the EU. 
Scroll down for video 
The analysis, by the free market Institute of Economic Affairs think tank (IEA), urges ministers to break the deadlock in negotiations with Brussels by seeking a 'basic' free trade agreement for goods. 
At the same time, it says the Government should open simultaneous discussions on securing new long-term free trade deals with countries such as the United States, China and India. 
In order to ensure there is no return of a 'hard border' between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the report calls for 'cooperation mechanisms' to enable trade 'formalities' between the two jurisdictions to be completed away from the border. 
Former Brexit secretary David Davis, who quit the Government over the Chequers plan, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, are among the speakers listed for the report's launch in London this morning.
According to the Telegraph, some ministers will use Cabinet today to urge the Prime Minister to back a free trade agreement that would be the 'clean Brexit' that Leave voters wished for.
They will also suggest she should sack Olly Robbins - who is in charge of Brexit negotiations.
A Cabinet source told the newspaper: 'In a nutshell, we now face a choice between a Norway-type deal and a Canada-type deal. 
'More than half the Cabinet now support the idea of a Canada-style option, while maybe half a dozen favour Norway.'
A key figure in the bid to convince Mrs May to back the Canada-style option is Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has publicly indicated he is open to the idea.
However, he is due to be out of the country today, as are other key Brexiteers. 
It comes after Mrs May pleaded with Tories to 'hold your nerve' amid claims No10 aides plotted a snap election following her humiliation by EU leaders.
The Prime Minister warned that failure to stick together in the face of attacks from Brussels and opposition parties could mean Brexit is 'thwarted'. 
The extent of the panic caused in Downing Street by EU leaders' brutal knifing of Mrs May's Chequers plan in Salzburg last week has been underlined by suggestions that some advisers 'war gamed' holding an election.
Two powerful aides are said to have argued that the only way to 'make the Commons arithmetic work' could be to ditch Chequers, and please the Brexit wing of the Tory Party by swinging behind the 'Canada model' for a looser free trade agreement. 
The plan would then involve Mrs May going to the country in November in a bid to win a majority for the package. 
The thinking has been encouraged by the latest polling which indicates a slump in support for Mr Corbyn among those who voted Labour at the 2017 Election.  
As she attempted to cool tensions yesterday, Mrs May issued a statement saying Conservatives needed to come together in a spirit of national unity and 'do what is right for Britain'.
'Now is the time for cool heads. And it is a time to hold our nerve,' she said.
'I have said many times that these negotiations would be tough, and they were always bound to be toughest in the final straight.
Brexit has the potential to bring 'real growth' if Theresa May's Chequers plan is ditched, according to a new report backed by prominent Tory Brexiteers.
The analysis, by the free market Institute of Economic Affairs think tank (IEA), urges ministers to seek a 'basic' free trade agreement for goods and pursue 'regulatory freedom and trade independence'.
The report claims that Brexit creates an 'historic opportunity to form trade agreements with partners around the world' and calls for discussions to secure new long-term free trade deals with countries such as the United States, China and India.
In order to ensure there is no return of a 'hard border' between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the report calls for 'cooperation mechanisms' to enable trade 'formalities' between the two jurisdictions to be completed away from the border.
The report also calls for food and animal health regime in Northern Ireland to be aligned with the EU, with suitable powers devolved to the
Government of Northern Ireland to enable local politicians to fully cooperate and coordinate with the Irish authorities, in accordance with the Belfast Agreement.
Former Brexit secretary David Davis, who quit the Government over the
Chequers plan, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, are among the speakers listed for the report's launch in London.
Shanker Singham, who is the director of the IEA's international trade and competition unit and co-author of the report, said: 'Brexit has been too narrowly thought of as the role of the UK in the EU, whereas the reality is Brexit is a major global event.
'A G7 country is embracing independent trade and regulatory policy for the first time in 40 years - an unprecedented situation. This is where the Brexit prize lies.'
'But what's also clear is that many in Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP are trying to thwart Brexit at every step and seeking to exploit this moment for political gain.
'Some are now openly advocating a second referendum and extending article 50 to delay Brexit, sending us right back to square one. Others are talking directly to the EU to actively undermine the UK's negotiating position.
'But I say, this is the moment to put our country first. This is the moment to set aside our differences and come together in national unity.
'This is the moment to do what is right for Britain.' 
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'It is categorically untrue that No10 is planning a snap election.'  
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab also dismissed claims about a snap general election 'for the birds'. 
'It's not going to happen,' he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show. 
Mr Raab said the Government would keep negotiating with the EU on the basis of the Chequers proposals. 
'This is a bump in the road. We will hold our nerve, we will keep our cool and we will keep negotiating in good faith,' he said. 
'What we are not going to do is be dictated to. The UK is one of the biggest economies in Europe, if not in the world. 
'We have come up with a serious set of proposals. We are not just going to flit from plan to plan like some sort of diplomatic butterfly. We are going to be resolute about this.' 
Pro-EU former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said she believed Chequers might well be 'dead' - but warned that a leadership challenge to Mrs May would not be in the interests of the Conservative Party or the country.
'Having a leadership election now would not be in the country's interest. There are particularly a lot of the hard Brexiteers who want to bring the Prime Minister down,' she told Sky News' Sophy Ridge On Sunday. 
'This is not a move that would help the country in order to get to the best position after Brexit which does least damage to the economy. That is what we as Conservatives should be focused on. 
'Europe has always been a big faultline in our party. But the majority of the parliamentary party and, I think, the membership want us to focus on getting a good deal that supports the economy and then moving on.' 
With time running out, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said the 'moment of truth' will come at next month's EU summit in Brussels, when it should become clear whether the two sides can reach an agreement.  
CHEQUERS
Trade:
Britain would stick to EU rules on goods by adopting a 'Common rulebook' with Brussels, but in the services sector.
Theresa May says this would allow the UK strike free trade deals globally, but the scope would be limited by commitments to the EU.
The blueprint should minimise the need for extra checks at the borders - protecting the 'just in time' systems used by the car industry to import and export parts.
The UK Parliament could choose to diverge from these EU rules over time.
But there is an admission that this would 'have consequences'.
Customs:
Britain would set up something called a Facilitated Customs Arrangement.
This would see the UK effectively act as the EU's taxman - using British officials to collect customs which would then be paid on to the bloc. 
The borders between the UK and EU will be treated as a 'combined customs territory'.
The UK would apply domestic tariffs and trade policies for goods intended for the UK, but charge EU tariffs and their equivalents for goods which will end up heading into the EU.
Northern Ireland: 
Mrs May says her plan will prevent a hard Irish border, and mean no divergence between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.
There would be no need for extra border checks, as tariffs on goods would be the same.
Single market origin rules and regulations would also be sufficiently aligned to avoid infrastructure.
 CANADA-STYLE
Trade: 
Britain would strike a Canada-style free trade deal with the EU, meaning goods can flow both ways without tariffs.
As it is a simple free trade deal, Britain would not be bound by the rules and red tape drawn up in Brussels.
The arrangement would be a relatively clean break from the EU - but would fall far short of full access to the single market.
Eurosceptics have suggested 'Canada plus' in key areas such as services and mutual recognition of standards.
The UK would have broad scope to strike free trade deals around the world.
Customs:
Technology would be used to avoid extra customs checks on the borders.
As a result goods travelling into the UK from the EU and vice versa would be tracked and customs paid without extra checks.
The EU has suggested this is 'magical thinking'. 
Northern Ireland:
The EU says the Canada model would mean border controls are required between Northern Ireland and the Republic to protect the single market and customs union.
It insists Northern Ireland must stay in the bloc's customs jurisdiction in order to prevent that.
Mrs May has signalled she agrees with the analysis - seemingly the reason she is reluctant to go down this route.
But Brexiteers point out that there is already a tax border between the UK and Ireland, and say technology and trusted trader schemes can avoid the need for more infrastructure. 
Boris Johnson today offered Theresa May a sliver of hope by saying he could said he could vote for her deal - if she can get a time limit on the backstop. 
But the former foreign secretary insisted the mechanism would need to expire before the next general election in 2022. 
The intervention came as the PM moved to quell Tory fears that she is about to cave into Jeremy Corbyn's demand for a permanent customs union with the EU. 
EU negotiator Michel Barnier today doubled down on demands Mrs May reach a deal with Mr Corbyn, insisting 'something has to give on the British side' and 'time is short' to conclude the deal. 
Mrs May had caused panic in Tory ranks by appearing to open the door to a grand bargain. 
But Downing Street insisted the PM was 'absolutely clear' that she will not support the call from Labour. 
'We must have our own independent trade policy,' her spokesman said.  
Mrs May sparked the furore by penning a letter to Mr Corbyn saying his call for the UK to stay in a customs union would hamper free trade deals – but stopped short of ruling it out. 
Mrs May also said the Tories were 'prepared to commit' to new laws to protect workers' rights after Brexit – a key demand of Labour and the unions.
But the hints at a cross-party pact, which could frustrate opposition from hardline Tory Eurosceptics, risked causing a Cabinet meltdown - with several senior figures including Liz Truss and Liam Fox thought to be ready to quit. 
Brussels has so far flatly dismissed pleas from Mrs May to reopen the divorce package that they painstakingly thrashed out over two years, despite it being humiliatingly rejected by MPs last month. 
Mrs May is now due to make a statement updating MPs on her progress renegotiating tomorrow, before the latest round of crunch votes are held on Thursday. 
Mr Barnier is due to meet Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay over dinner tonight but warned 'clarity' on the fate of the deal must 'come from London'.
Speaking in Luxembourg this afternoon, he said: 'It's in London where they have to find the ways and means to build a positive majority between the two negative majorities that exist today in the House of Commons. 
'We stand ready to give all necessary explanations and all necessary guarantees on the withdrawal agreement act, as have already done the two Presidents Juncker and Tusk.
'We stand ready to rework with the British the content of the political declaration that sets the frame.
'Maybe there's a way to explain better, to have more ambition, to put into perspective the content of the accord, and the backstop.'
Urging Mrs May to consider the 'interesting in tone and in content' Labour position, he warned 'something has to give on the British side'.  
Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Mr Johnson insisted staying in a customs union permanently would mean the UK being 'essentially a colony'.
'It's clear that Jeremy Corbyn... he's done a complete U-turn,' he said. 
'He now wants to frustrate Brexit very largely by staying in a permanent customs union.' 
Mr Johnson indicated he would be willing to accept a time limit on the backstop as his price for backing Theresa May's EU Withdrawal Agreement. 
'The argument is now about how to get out of the backstop. And how to make sure that the UK isn't locked in that prison of the customs union,' he said.
Up to 60 Labour MPs are 'actively looking for ways' to support the PM's Brexit deal, it was claimed today.
Wigan MP Lisa Nandy said she would not support Theresa May's plans in their current form.
But she said many of her colleagues were keen to get a package agreed. 
The comments came as Mrs May confirmed she is ready to give commitments on the environment and workers' rights as she woos Opposition backing.
There have also been claims the government is looking to pump money into Brexit-voting areas to secure votes.
Ms Nandy told the BBC's Politics Live 40-60 Labour MPs were 'actively looking for ways to support this at the moment'. 
'I think that you would need to have a time limit.'
But asked if changes to the backstop proposals could come in a separate codicil to the Withdrawal Agreement, Mr Johnson said: 'I don't think that would be good enough.'  
In her letter to Mr Corbyn, Mrs May confirmed that ministers are 'examining opportunities' to pour millions into deprived Brexit-voting Labour constituencies. The move is seen as vital in winning the votes of Labour MPs for her deal.
The Prime Minister also proposed further talks with the Labour leader and his team in the coming days to discuss issues around the customs union, the single market and 'alternative arrangements' to the Irish backstop. 
Her letter came hours after she was warned she could face a Cabinet walkout if she changes tack to pursue a customs union. 
Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss yesterday refused three times to say whether she would remain in the Cabinet if a customs union became official policy. 
Asked whether she would resign, she told Sky News: 'I absolutely do not think that should be our policy.' 
Fellow Cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Andrea Leadsom and Penny Mordaunt are also said to be implacably opposed to any shift towards a customs union. 
Dr Fox warned today that Labour proposals for a customs union with the EU are 'not workable'. 
'Of course we always want to work with the opposition but the opposition has put forward some ideas that are not workable,' he told reporters in Bern at the signing of a new trade deal with Switzerland. 
'The idea that you can have a customs union with the EU and at the same time, as an outside country, have an effect on EU trade policy is to not understand the EU treaties. 
'It is very clear from the European Union that non-EU members do not have a say in EU trade policy so to pretend that you could do so is a dangerous delusion.'  
Prisons minister Rory Stewart fueled talk of a Brexit compromise with Labour today.
The Remainer MP said both he and Theresa May believed it was possible to find common ground with the Opposition.
But he stress that it would not involve a customs union with the EU - despite that being Jeremy Corbyn's key demand. 
'I think she feels, as I do, that there isn't actually as much dividing us from the Labour Party as some people suggest,' Mr Stewart told the BBC. 
He denied there was any 'shifting of red lines', pointing out that the PM has repeatedly ruled out a customs union. 
 
Prisons minister Rory Stewart fueled talk of a compromise with Labour today, saying: 'I think she feels, as I do, that there isn't actually as much dividing us from the Labour Party as some people suggest.' 
But he denied there was any 'shifting of red lines', pointing out that the PM has repeatedly ruled out a customs union. 
Many Brexiteers believe Mrs May is merely paying lip service to the idea of a pact with Mr Corbyn to frighten them into backing her deal. 
Pressure is mounting on Mrs May as she faces revolts from both wings of the Conservative Party, with less than seven weeks to go until the UK is due to leave the EU.
Amid the deadlock, the premier is desperately playing for time to get more concessions from Brussels on the Irish backstop.
Labour is trying to use the latest round of crunch Commons votes on Thursday to force a decisive showdown on Mrs May's deal by the end of the month, whether or not she has managed to overhaul it.  
However, Cabinet minister James Brokenshire suggested yesterday that Mrs May will try to delay the so-called 'meaningful vote' until next month.
Instead No10 is promising another round of indicative votes by February 27, hoping that will be enough to persuade wavering Tory Remainers that they can hold off staging an all-out rebellion against no-deal Brexit. 
There is growing suspicion that Mrs May's tactic is to get as close as possible to March 29 before staging the vote, giving MPs a stark choice between the package she has thrashed out or crashing out without a deal.  
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay is preparing to fly to Strasbourg later to reopen talks with the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, for the first time since Mrs May's Commons defeat last month. 
The EU has flatly dismissed calls for the Withdrawal Agreement to be reopened.
But Theresa May has promised MPs that she will somehow get legally-binding changes that satisfy concerns about the Irish border backstop.
Here are some possible options for how the PM might seek to get through the impasse.
A unilateral exit clause
Prominent backbenchers including former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has pushed Mrs May to seek a unilateral get-out from the backstop.
The current mechanism can only be deactivated through a joint review system - although the EU insists it is technically 'temporary'.  
But Brussels has insisted that an 'insurance policy' that can be ended by one side is not acceptable.
Expiry date
A hard end date to the backstop would allay the fears of most Tory MPs - as long as it is not too far in the future. 
Boris Johnson has suggested he could vote for the deal if she manages to get a time limit, although he also said it should conclude before the next election in May 2022.
The former foreign secretary also unhelpfully insisted a legal 'codicil' - an amendment which would run alongside the Withdrawal Agreement - would not be enough to win him over and he wants the whole thing unpicked.
Again, the EU has insisted it will not agree to a backstop that is time limited. 
The 'Malthouse Compromise' 
Tory Remainers and Brexiteers have been working on a proposal to replace the backstop with a looser, Canada-style free trade arrangements. The plan would deploy technology in a bid to avoid a hard border.
But Brussels has already dismissed the technogical solutions as 'magical thinking', saying the systems needed do not yet exist.  
Guarantees that the backstop will only be 'temporary' 
The EU's top official, Martin Selmayr floated the idea of 'unzipping' the Withdrawal Agreement and inserting new guarantees about the 'temporary' nature of the backstop during meetings with MPs.
He suggested the text of recent letters from Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker could be cut and pasted in without reopening other terms.
But that would be highly unlikely to satisfy Brexiteers. 
Mrs May, who left church yesterday after playing fetch with a worshipper's dog, risks angering Eurosceptic MPs by flirting with Labour. 
But it might persuade some to back her deal for fear of being left with an even softer Brexit. 
Downing Street last night insisted the PM remained committed to securing an 'independent trade policy' after Brexit, which would be incompatible with a customs union. 
A source said: 'We are very clear that in order to have trade deals, which are a central part of the Brexit deal, you cannot be a member of a customs union.' 
The PM's letter is a direct response to Mr Corbyn's call last week for the Government to adopt a 'permanent and comprehensive' customs union, 'close alignment' with the single market, and the automatic acceptance of all EU laws on workers' rights in future.
In her reply, Mrs May welcomes Mr Corbyn's willingness to 'find a deal... not to seek an election or second referendum'. 
The PM warns that his customs plan would give few economic benefits over her own deal while leaving the UK with far less freedom to strike trade deals.
Mrs May says the EU has insisted that 'completely frictionless' trade is only possible if the UK signs up to the single market, adding: 'This would mean accepting free movement, which Labour's 2017 manifesto made clear you do not support.' 
But she does not rule out further compromise if her own deal is defeated.
Mr Brokenshire yesterday told the BBC's Andrew Marr show that MPs would be given another chance to vote on how to take Brexit forward on February 27, regardless of whether or not a deal has been struck with Brussels. 
The move is designed to persuade wavering Tory Remainers not to join a cross-party rebellion designed to delay Brexit to prevent a possible No Deal exit.
But Mr Brokenshire refused to say whether a 'meaningful vote' on the revised deal would be held this month. 
One Cabinet source predicted MPs would not get another vote on the final deal until deep into next month – potentially just days before the UK is due to leave on March 29. 'She is taking it to the wire,' the source said.
Mr Barclay will update Mr Barnier today on the UK's proposals for tackling the controversial Irish backstop, including setting a legal time limit, giving the UK a unilateral exit clause or agreeing 'alternative arrangements'.
CBI chief Carolyn Fairbairn yesterday hit out at the prospect of further delay, saying: 'I think we really are in the emergency zone of Brexit now... this is danger time.' 
And Tory Remainer Sarah Wollaston called on like-minded ministers to quit the Government this week 'if they are serious about preventing No Deal'.
In a report for Lawyers for Britain, Martin Howe, QC, said the UK could face a string of demands from EU leaders if it seeks to extend Article 50. 
He wrote: 'It is likely that onerous conditions will be imposed, whether by the EU collectively or by individual member states – each of whom has a veto.'
Valentine's Day 
MPs will hold another round of votes on Brexit.
They are not due to pass judgement on Theresa May's deal - instead debating a 'neutral' motion simply saying that they have considered the issue.
However, a range of amendments are set to be tabled. They could include proposals to delay the Brexit date beyond March 29. 
Labour is pushing a change that would force another 'meaningful vote' on the PM's Brexit deal by February 26, regardless of whether she has finished renegotiating the package with the EU.
February 24-25
Mrs May could have an opportunity to seal a new package with fellow EU leaders at a joint summit with the Arab League in Sharm el-Sheikh.
However, it is not clear how many will attend the gathering - or whether she will have completed the deal by then.
February 27
Downing Street is trying to head off a potential Tory Remainer mutiny by promising MPs will get another set of votes by this date regardless of whether there is a final deal.
March 21-22
The PM will attend a scheduled EU summit in Brussels that would effectively be the last opportunity to get agreement.
Some MPs fear that Mrs May is trying to delay for as long as possible, and might even try to hold a make-or-break vote in the Commons on March 26. That would be just 72 hours before Brexit, giving them a very stark deal-or-no-deal choice.
11pm, March 29
The UK is due to leave the EU with or without a deal, unless the Article 50 process is extended with approval from the bloc's leaders, or revoked to cancel Brexit altogether. 
A No Deal Brexit would cost 100,000 jobs in Germany, experts predict.
The academic study says British imports from the EU could plunge by 25 per cent if the UK leaves without a deal next month.
Concern about the impact of a No Deal Brexit has put mounting pressure on Angela Merkel to help broker concessions that will enable Theresa May to get the agreement through Parliament.
Last week, the German chancellor urged EU leaders to 'be creative', saying 'everybody is willing' to help find a solution.
The study, cited by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, suggests that Germany would be among the foreign countries hit hardest by a No Deal Brexit.
It estimates that more than 100,000 jobs would be put at risk 'either directly or indirectly'. 
This includes 15,000 jobs in the German car industry alone.
'In no other state is the effect on total employment as great as Germany, which affects around 100,000 people,' said study co-author Oliver Holtemöller, of the Halle Institute for Economic Research.
'The employment effects of a hard Brexit would be noticeable above all at the automobile locations.'
France is the next country in line to feel the heaviest effects of a No Deal Brexit, with 50,000 jobs on the line, according to the study. 
Ireland and Malta would also be hit hard.
Overall, the study estimates that more than 600,000 people worldwide could feel the effects of a No Deal exit.
Meanwhile, a think-tank said household incomes in Britain have taken a £1,500 hit since the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Higher than expected inflation also contributed to the fall in the average disposable income of families in the UK, according to a report by the Resolution Foundation. 
It was 'hard not to conclude that Brexit must be the single biggest factor'. 
 
Boris Johnson has warned of plans to 'sabotage' the European Union by vetoing the bloc's seven-year budget if a deal is not reached by October 31.
Britain will leave the EU in 25 days without a deal unless senior figures agree to compromise. In the case of a delay Mr Johnson will 'paralyse' the EU, senior aides revealed.
If Brexit is pushed back after October 31 the leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, could be drafted in as the British Commissioner in Brussels to 'disrupt' meetings, reports claim.
Two cabinet ministers told the Sunday Telegraph they were among others backing the more 'aggressive' approach to Brussels.
It comes after the EU said Mr Johnson's proposals for an exit agreement, which include an plan for customs check on the Northern Irish border, did not 'provide a basis for concluding an agreement'.
Instead Brussels wants Mr Johnson to keep Northern Ireland in the customs unit - effectively segregating it from the rest of the UK.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, said: 'We are not backing down.'
Northern Ireland would not be 'set adrift', he added.
Writing in the Sunday Express Mr Johnson encouraged EU chiefs to 'grasp the opportunity that our new proposal provides. The UK is 'packing its bags', he added.
A Downing Street source added that over the coming days Mr Johnson will 'hit the phones' to get a deal done. 
If his proposals are rejected aides say he will 'squat' in No 10 rather than leave.
He could dare the Queen to sack him rather than resigning in order to drive Brexit through on October 31. 
One senior figure told The Times: 'Unless the police turn up at the doors of 10 Downing Street with a warrant for the Prime Minister's arrest, he won't be leaving.' 
Boris Johnson will push for a general election if the EU follows Donald Tusk's advice to grant another Brexit delay, a No. 10 source revealed last night after MPs rejected the Prime Minister's three-day timetable for his Brexit bill.
MPs handed the fate of Brexit back to the EU after they first supported Mr Johnson's deal but then voted against his plan to crash it through the House of Commons before the weekend. 
With the PM forced to pause his efforts, Mr Tusk announced that he would urge the 27 EU member states to give Britain more time, expected to run to January 31. 
In which case, a No. 10 source confirmed Mr Johnson would press for the ballot option, saying: 'Parliament and Corbyn have repeatedly voted for delay. On Saturday Parliament asked for a delay until January and today Parliament blew its last chance. If Parliament's delay is agreed by Brussels, then the only way the country can move on is with an election. This Parliament is broken.' 
It comes amid a report that Mr Corbyn last week urged a group of his MPs they 'cannot afford to turn down another election request,' an insider told The Sun. 
The ball is now in the EU's court and the scheduled debate on the Brexit Withdrawal Bill will be scrapped for Wednesday afternoon, though time is still allotted for the usual Prime Minister's Questions. 
Mr Tusk tweeted: 'Following PM Boris Johnson's decision to pause the process of ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement, and in order to avoid a no-deal Brexit, I will recommend the EU27 accept the UK request for an extension.  For this I will propose a written procedure.' 
Mr Tusk's tweet suggested that he will recommend accepting the proposed delay set out by the UK in a letter submitted to the bloc at the weekend which asked for Brexit to be pushed back to the end of January. 
The PM was forced to send that letter under the terms of the anti-No Deal Benn Act, passed by rebel MPs, after he failed to secure MPs' backing for his deal on Saturday. Mr Johnson refused to sign that letter and made clear in a separate letter to Mr Tusk that he opposed any extension. 
But the EU has taken Saturday's request seriously and as a result Mr Johnson now faces the prospect of having a delay imposed on him against his wishes with European leaders almost certain to back Mr Tusk's recommendation to avoid a No Deal split.
If the EU does offer a three month delay it will almost certainly put the UK on course for a general election before Christmas because opposition leaders have previously told Mr Johnson that they will back a snap poll once a No Deal split on Halloween has been ruled out. 
The last line of Mr Tusk's tweet suggests he believes there will not need to be an emergency EU summit to agree an extension and that European leaders will be able to agree to terms simply by writing letters. 
Mr Tusk's decision to recommend a Brexit delay comes after Mr Johnson recorded an historic triumph as the Commons approved his divorce deal in principle by 329 votes to 299 following hours of tense debate.  
But Mr Johnson then suffered a huge setback as MPs effectively blocked him from keeping his 'do or die' vow to cut ties with the EU by Halloween as the Commons torpedoed a proposed 72-hour timetable for passing crucial Brexit legislation by 322 to 308.      
After the results were declared, Mr Johnson hailed the historic breakthrough, saying he was 'joyful' that MPs had finally agreed on a Brexit blueprint after rejecting Theresa May's on three separate occasions. 
The PM faced two massive showdowns in the Commons tonight - one over his deal itself and another to get MPs to agree the 72-hour timetable he has set out to push it through.
Second reading: The first big vote on the Brexit legislation, took place at 7pm.
MPs were asked to approve the Bill in principle, so it can go forward for detailed scrutiny.
If the text had been rejected at this point, it was effectively dead.
But Number 10 had the numbers for approval after a mix of Labour moderates, ex-Tory rebels and the vast majority of the so-called Tory Spartans, who voted against Theresa May's deal three times, came on board.
He secured an historic win on a Brexit deal with MPs voting 329 - 299 in favour of Mr Johnson's blueprint.  
Programme motion: The government was trying to set a tight timetable so the law can be rushed through to meet Boris Johnson's 'do or die' Brexit date of October 31.
MPs were asked to approve a 72-hour timetable to push it through by next week.
But many complained that it did not give enough time to scrutinise the Bill.
MPs voted it down, torpedoing his 72-hour timetable for passing crucial legislation by 322 to 308. 
Defeat made the PM's Halloween deadline almost impossible to meet - and he now faces haggling over the timeframe of an extension with EU leaders. 
Victory in the 'second reading' means the package has now cleared its first hurdle towards becoming law. 
The margin of victory on the first vote was far greater than many people expected and Mr Johnson was urged to press ahead with the legislation. 
But the defeat that followed on the so-called 'programme motion' meant that the PM's plan to get the deal through the Commons this week, a timetable which would have kept his 'do or die' vow alive, was left in tatters. 
He then insisted he needed to 'pause' the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill which would enshrine his deal in law and actually make Brexit happen on the grounds he needed to see how Brussels would react to the results. 
Mr Johnson said in the immediate aftermath of the second vote result being announced: 'I must express my disappointment that the House has again voted for delay rather than a timetable that would have guaranteed that the UK would have been in a position to leave the EU on October 31 with a deal.
'And we now face further uncertainty and the EU must now make up their minds over how to answer parliament's request for a delay...
'I will speak to EU member states about their intentions until they have reached a decision.
'Until we have reached a decision I am afraid we will pause this legislation. Let me be clear. Our policy remains that we should not delay, that we should leave the EU on October 31 and that is what I will say to the EU and I will report back to the House.
'One way or another we will leave the EU with this deal to which this House has just given its assent and I thank members across the house for that hard won agreement.' 
Mr Tusk tweeted his response less than two hours after the PM made his remarks as he appeared to dismiss Mr Johnson's renewed calls for the EU not to grant a delay. 
Before the outcome of the divisions were declared, Mr Johnson had tried to heap pressure on wavering MPs by threatening to pull the legislation if the timetable was voted down.
However, he struck a significantly more emollient tone after the results.  
Mr Tusk's tweet suggests he will propose offering an extension to the end of January and under the terms of the Benn Act the PM will be legally obliged to accept the delay. 
However, if the bloc offered a short extension of weeks - or even days - it would give Mr Johnson huge leverage to secure support from Tory rebels and Labour MPs who are terrified of No Deal to support his agreement. 
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar responded to the votes in the Commons by tweeting: 'It's welcome that the House of Commons voted by a clear majority in favour of legislation needed to enact Withdrawal Agreement. 
'We will now await further developments from London and Brussels about next steps including timetable for the legislation and the need for an extension.'
European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva tweeted: '@EU_Commission takes note of tonight's result and expects the U.K. government to inform us about the next steps. @eucopresident is consulting leaders on the UK's request for an extension until 31 January 2020.' 
Mr Tusk had earlier today suggested that the EU would reject Mr Johnson's plea not to offer a Brexit delay.
There are two ways in which the UK could end up having a general election before the end of 2019. 
Both are set out in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, and both need the cooperation of Labour to succeed. 
The first is that a Commons vote is held on a motion that simply states: 'That there shall be an early parliamentary general election.'
In order to pass, that motion must be backed by at least two thirds of MPs which means it would be dependent on the support of Labour in order to succeed. 
Boris Johnson has tried to trigger an election in this way on two previous occasions but he failed on both attempts as opposition MPs refused to back a snap poll. 
The second route to an election is if the government was toppled in a vote of no confidence which convention dictates can only be asked for by the Leader of the Opposition. 
If such a vote was held and it succeeded - potentially with the government opting to abstain in order to lose on purpose - there would then follow a 14 day period in which another government could try to be formed. 
If no new government could command the support of a Commons majority by the close of that period then an early election would be automatically triggered.  
Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition leaders have said that once a No Deal Brexit has been ruled out they would back an election which means the first route is the more likely of the two should the EU agree to a lengthy delay.
However, many Labour figures will be concerned about the prospect of fighting an election where Brexit will be the main issue due to the party's decision to remain neutral on the subject.
That could prompt Mr Corbyn to change his mind and withhold support in the hope that Brexit has been sorted by the time the country next goes to the polls. 
Another idea which has been floated is that minor parties could be invited to table a vote of no confidence at the government's behest and that Tory MPs would then abstain so that the Johnson administration would fall, triggering a snap poll. 
However, it is likely Commons Speaker John Bercow would rule this out of order because it is only Jeremy Corbyn who is supposed to be able to ask for such a vote. 
The European Council president made clear the bloc would always act to avoid the UK crashing out, telling the European Parliament: 'A No Deal Brexit will never be our decision.'
Ministers had been growing increasingly optimistic through the day that the numbers were in place to win the first big vote on the legislation tonight, known as the second reading. 
But there was deepening gloom about the programme motion throughout the day.
Mr Johnson wanted to get all of the Commons stages of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill completed by close of play Thursday. 
But critically for Mr Johnson, former Tory rebels including Rory Stewart and Ken Clarke indicated they intended to go against the government. 
Remainer MPs have been hoping that they drag their heels on Brexit the EU would agree to delay the date for months so they can continue the fight for a second referendum. 
The division list showed 19 Labour MPs voted for the Bill at second reading. They were joined by 285 Conservatives - including all 28 of the hardline 'Spartans' who never backed Mrs May's deal - and 25 Independents. 
But just five Labour MPs rebelled to support the programme motion, along with 18 independents as the PM fell short. 
After the numbers were declared, Father of the House Mr Clarke urged Mr Johnson to press home his advantage rather than pausing the Bill.
'I can't quite see the logic of pausing progress on the Bill when the whole House is expecting the next two days to be spent on it,' he said. 
'It would enable us to see how quickly the House is actually proceeding, what sort of time is being looked for, it may enable then, if people start filibustering, which I hope they won't, for the Government to get a majority for a timetable motion if it came back which was a modest adjustment to the one he had, because I think three or four days more would certainly do it.'
Labour MP Gareth Snell, who backed the Bill, also urged the government to keep going.
'The injury inflicted this evening was a mere flesh wound, and if the Leader of the House was willing to bring forward a motion tomorrow with a more considered timetable for committee stage, it would pass this House,' he said.
'Some of us voted for second reading precisely so we could get on to the next stage for more scrutiny, and didn't support the programme motion because we did not believe there was sufficient time.'
Another supportive Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, said: 'All we're asking for is the opportunity to ensure that the deal which was only presented to us last night works for our constituents and my local economy – we need slightly more time.' 
Jeremy Corbyn, who whipped Labour MPs to oppose the government on both votes tonight, said the House had 'refused to be bounced into debating a hugely significant piece of legislation in just two days with barely any notice and analysis of the economic impact of this Bill'. 
'Work with us, all of us to agree a reasonable timetable, and I suspect this House will vote to debate, scrutinise and, I hope, commend the detail of this Bill. That would be the sensible way forward, and that is the offer I make on behalf of the opposition tonight,' he said. 
In a gambit designed to maximise support for the programme motion earlier, Mr Johnson said: 'I will in no way allow months more of this. 
'If parliament refuses to allow Brexit to happen and instead gets its way and decides to delay everything until January or possibly longer, in no circumstances can the government continue with this. 
'With great regret I must say the Bill will have to be pulled and we will have to go forward to a general election, in no circumstances can the government continue with this. 
'I will argue at that election let's get Brexit done and the leader of the opposition will make his case to spend 2020 having two referendums: one on Brexit and one Scotland. The people will decide.'  
Mr Corbyn completely ignored the issue of an election in his response to the PM. Mr Johnson would need his cooperation to force a snap poll, and Labour has twice blocked such a move, but Mr Corbyn has committed to backing one if Brexit is delayed.  
In another bewildering day as politicians desperately wrestled for control of the country's destiny:
Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg upped the stakes earlier by warning that 'a vote against the programme motion is a vote against Brexit', 
The tough talk looked to backfire with some MPs. Former Tory MP Ed Vaizey responded on Twitter: 'Oh dear. Any more ludicrous tweets like this and I may change my mind and vote against the programme motion.'
Another ex-Conservative MP, Nick Boles dismissed Mr Johnson's 'bluff' on axing the Bill. 'No 10 is bluffing, as usual. There is no way that after winning a famous victory on 2nd reading the PM is going to pull the bill just because MPs reject the programme motion,' he tweeted. 'He will bring forward a revised motion giving us a few more days and blame Parliament for any extension.' 
The simplest way of staging an early election is to pass a motion with two-thirds support in the Commons. Mr Johnson has failed twice to reach the mark.
But Mr Corbyn has previously promised to support an early poll if there is an extension agreed with the EU to remove the immediate threat of No Deal. 
Even if Mr Johnson brings back the legislation, the government is desperately struggling to fend off amendments that would keep the UK in the EU's customs union or force a referendum 
In a fresh threat this morning, Mr Boles has tabled a change that would prolong the transition period by two years unless Parliament gives explicit approval for it to end in 2021. 
That could prove unacceptable to Eurosceptics and splinter the fragile coalition Mr Johnson has created for his deal. 
During the debate, Cabinet minister Robert Buckland tried to win over critics by suggesting there will be a concession on the issue. 
Earlier, Mr Johnson made a rallying cry to get the Brexit deal over the line, telling MPs: 'For three-and-a-half years this Parliament has been caught in a deadlock of its own making, and the truth is that all of us bear a measure of responsibility for that outcome.
'And yet by the same token, we all bear a share of responsibility, we all have the same opportunity now.
'The escape route is visible, the prize is visible before us, a new beginning with our friends and partners, a new beginning for a global, self-confident, outward-looking country that can do free trade deals around the world as one whole entire United Kingdom.
'The deal is here on the table, the legislation to deliver it is here before us.
'A clear majority in the country is now imploring us to get Brexit done in this House of Commons, and I say to this House, let us therefore do it, and let us do it now and tonight.'
Mr Johnson was boosted by the endorsement of his brother Jo, a Remain campaigner who quit the Cabinet last month.
He said he hoped the Bill would secure Royal Assent 'sooner rather than later'.  
And Oliver Letwin, who sparked fury by tabling a referendum at the weekend that deprived Mr Johnson of a clean vote on his plan, said: 'Getting seriously worried that HMG will pull Bill if Programme Motion is defeated. 
'Surely best for all of us who regard this deal as the least of the evils to vote for the Programme Motion, whatever we really think of it.' 
The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act prevents the Prime Minister from choosing when to call an election. 
Instead, he must have the support of two-thirds of MPs or lose a formal vote of no-confidence. Labour has refused to hold a vote of confidence, and it abstained in a vote on an early election. 
Mr Corbyn has said he is keen for an election but many Labour MPs are opposed. So ministers are looking at other ways to force an early poll.
There have been suggestions that a minor parties could be invited to hold a vote of confidence, and Tory MPs would abstain. However, it is though the Speaker will only allow a confidence motion tabled by the official Opposition.
A Bill could be introduced to set aside the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, but there would be a slew of amendments that could render it impossible to pass.
Another option would be for the Government could submit a vote for an election every day until Labour 'gives in'. 
But in his response, Mr Corbyn merely moaned about the deal and did not address the PM's call for an election.
'We warned on Saturday that if the House passes the Government's deal, it'd be a disaster for our country,' he said.
'Now, as we look through the details of the Bill, we see just how right we were.
'Page after page of what amounts to nothing less than a charter for deregulation and a race to the bottom.
'A deal and a Bill that fails to protect our rights and our natural world, fails to protect jobs and the economy, fails to protect every region and every nation in the United Kingdom.
'This Bill confirms Northern Ireland is really in the customs union of the EU and goods will be subjected to tariffs.'
Shadow chancellor and Labour MP John McDonnell tweeted: 'Johnson threatening a general election because Parliament might want a few more days to scrutinise his Withdrawal Bill. Pathetic. What has he got to hide?' 
Labour MPs representing Leave constituencies have indicated they will support the Withdrawal Agreement Bill at second reading.
Wigan MP Lisa Nandy and Ashfield MP Gloria De Piero said they would support the Bill at second reading in order to be able to amend it at committee stage.
Intervening during the Labour leader's speech, Ms Nandy said: 'For many people back home in towns like Wigan this is an article of faith in the Labour Party.'
Ms De Piero added: 'I am also minded to vote in favour of a second reading, not because I support that deal but because I don't. And I want to improve the deal so it reflects the manifesto that I stood on to respect the result of that referendum.'
Responding to Ms De Piero, Mr Corbyn said: 'I hope that she will understand why I believe this Bill should not be given a second reading, but I'm also sure she will agree with me that to get this Bill to debate less than 17 hours after it was published is a totally unreasonable way of treating Parliament and I hope she will also join in the lobby this evening in opposing the programme motion on this particular Bill.'
Overnight Mr Johnson appealed to MPs to back his deal 'so that we can leave without disruption and provide a framework for a new relationship based on free trade and friendly co-operation'.
The PM said: 'I hope Parliament votes to take back control for itself and the British people and the country can start to focus on the cost of living, the NHS, and conserving our environment. 
'The public doesn't want any more delays, neither do other European leaders and neither do I. Let's get Brexit done on October 31 and move on.'
Opening a new front, Mr Boles tweeted that he had tabled an amendment 'to require the government by default to seek an extension of the transition to Dec 2022 unless MPs pass a resolution to the contrary'. 
'We must stop No Deal Brexit in Dec 2020,' he added. 
What happens next? Boris Johnson pauses his Withdrawal Bill after MPs wreck his three-day timetable... so can Britain still leave the EU by October 31? 
The fate of Brexit was plunged into uncertainty this evening after Boris Johnson secured MPs' backing for his deal only for the House of Commons to then scupper his plans to hit the October 31 divorce deadline. 
MPs voted in favour of the PM's agreement by 329 votes to 299, a majority of 30 - the first time any Brexit deal has been supported by a Commons majority. 
But the PM then lost a crunch second vote in which he asked MPs to support a plan to crash the 110-page Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the Commons in the space of just three days. 
MPs voted against fast-tracking the legislation that would put the premier's deal into law and make Brexit happen by 322 votes to 308, a majority of 14, on the grounds they needed more time to scrutinise it. 
Mr Johnson responded to the two votes by welcoming the support for his deal but also by expressing his disappointment that MPs had put the Halloween deadline in peril. 
With no timetable now agreed for the passage of the so-called WAB, Mr Johnson told MPs he would pause his efforts to see if the EU offered the UK an extension. 
He said he would be urging EU leaders not to grant a delay as he vowed to accelerate the government's No Deal preparations. 
Mr Johnson said he would report back to the Commons once the EU had made its position clear. 
The chaos in the Commons means the UK is now set for a chaotic 48 hours as Downing Street and Brussels try to figure out what to do next. 
Below is an analysis of what has happened and what is likely to happen next as the PM tries to keep alive his hopes of taking the UK out of the EU by October 31.  
Boris Johnson wins a first vote on his Brexit deal as MPs give the Withdrawal Agreement Bill its second reading
Tonight the House of Commons voted in favour of a Brexit deal for the first time since the UK backed leaving the EU in June 2016. 
Theresa May suffered three defeats on her proposed divorce agreement but Mr Johnson won the first proper vote on his deal by 329 to 299, a majority of 30.
The decision to give the Withdrawal Agreement Bill a second reading means that the PM's deal has now cleared its first major Commons hurdle. 
Jeremy Corbyn whipped his MPs to vote against it, as did the DUP, the Lib Dems and the Scottish Nationalists. 
But Number 10 was able to make progress after winning over almost all the hardline Brexiteers who killed off Mrs May's deal as well as some former Tory Remain rebels and a handful of Labour pro-deal MPs.  
MPs vote against the programme motion setting out how much time would be spent debating the Withdrawal Agreement Bill 
Immediately after MPs voted to support the PM's deal they then voted on the government's proposed timetable for debating and agreeing the legislation needed to make Brexit an orderly Brexit happen. 
The government had proposed two midnight sittings today and tomorrow to get the bulk of the work done. 
But opposition MPs – and some Tory rebels – demanded more time for debate after the WAB was only published for the first time last night. 
Labour had offered the government a deal for MPs to be given nine days to discuss the Bill but that would have made it impossible to meet the Halloween deadline. 
The government refused to make changes to the timetable and MPs then voted against the way forward by 322 votes to 308, a majority of 14. 
That means that Mr Johnson's Brexit legislation is now in a state of limbo: Still very much alive but its passage through Parliament has been paused. 
Mr Johnson said this afternoon that if MPs voted against the programme motion and the EU offered a delay to January he would pull his deal and try to trigger an election. 
But after the result of the second vote was announced Mr Johnson said he will wait for the EU to make a decision on a Brexit delay before making his next move. 
So what happens now? 
Mr Johnson praised MPs for backing his deal but expressed his 'disappointment' that the Commons had 'again voted for delay rather than a timetable that would have guaranteed that the UK would have been in a position to leave the EU on October 31 with a deal'.
He then said the EU would dictate what happens next as he kept open the option of trying again to get the WAB through the Commons. 
He told MPs: 'The EU must now make up their minds over how to answer parliament's request for a delay.
'The first consequence is that the government must take the only responsible course and accelerate our preparations for a No Deal outcome.
'But secondly, I will speak to EU member states about their intentions until they have reached a decision.
'Until we have reached a decision I am afraid we will pause this legislation. Let me be clear. Our policy remains that we should not delay, that we should leave the EU on October 31 and that is what I will say to the EU and I will report back to the House.
'One way or another we will leave the EU with this deal to which this House has just given its assent and I thank members across the house for that hard won agreement.'  
What will the EU agree?
Mr Johnson was forced at the weekend to submit a legally required request to the EU for a Brexit delay under the terms of the anti-No Deal Benn Act. The Benn Act suggested a delay to the end of January next year.
He made clear at the time that he did not want any such extension to be granted by the bloc and he will do the same when he calls his European counterparts in the coming hours. 
However, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said the EU would consider the request for a delay at the weekend even though Mr Johnson said he did not want one. 
He is likely to adopt a similar tone if Mr Johnson calls him to say the same again. 
Mr Tusk today said that the EU would never be responsible for a No Deal Brexit in comments which signalled the bloc is willing to offer an extension even if Mr Johnson opposed one. 
The question for the EU now is whether to grant the extension proposed in the Benn Act or to offer a shorter delay. 
A delay to January 31 would almost certainly prompt Mr Johnson to shelve his deal and try to force an early election on the grounds that postponing Brexit for three months is totally unacceptable. 
That makes a shorter extension potentially more likely because if the EU offered the UK two more weeks beyond October 31 so that MPs have a bit more time to scrutinise the deal Mr Johnson could accept it because an orderly Brexit would be in sight. 
Either way, with each passing day it will become more and more difficult for Mr Johnson to hit the Halloween deadline and a delay is increasingly a possibility.
So is the PM's deal dead?
No. In fact it is very much alive and if the EU were to offer a short Brexit delay Downing Street could elect to bring forward a new programme motion settingf out a new and slightly longer timetable. 
If a new programme motion were to be agreed by MPs the WAB would then immediately move onto its committee stage - the bit in the legislative process when MPs can table amendments. 
There would be lots of amendments brought forward by MPs in a bid to change the PM's divorce deal. 
But Number 10 would be most wary of two: One which would force the UK to be in a customs union with the EU after Brexit and one on making the PM's agreement subject to a second referendum. 
The customs union amendment is expected to be brought forward by Labour. It would make post-Brexit free trade deals all but impossible. 
A similar proposal in April lost by only three votes. Downing Street aides have made it clear they will not swallow a customs union – the issue on which Mr Johnson quit Mrs May's government – and suggest such an amendment would kill the Bill. 
With Tory rebels backing away from the idea yesterday, any vote would hinge on actions of the DUP, SNP and Labour leavers.
The second referendum amendment would be likely to be tabled by Labour backbenchers. 
It would propose a Brexit delay until the country has voted on Brexit for a second time with Mr Johnson's deal pitched against Remain. 
If it passed, Mr Johnson would then have to abandon the Bill and – in the short term – Brexit. 
But despite the determined efforts of Remain campaigners, the Commons has never voted for a second referendum, and there seems little prospect of a majority emerging at this stage.
The WAB itself: Proposed continuation of EU law 
If it gets to committee stage, there are a number of problematic areas in the WAB which could be difficult for some MPs to vote for. 
One relates to the continued application of EU law in the UK after the Brexit divorce date. 
The last government under Mrs May delighted Tory Eurosceptic MPs by bringing forward and passing the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.
That legislation committed to repealing the European Communities Act 1972 - the law which took the UK into the EU and gave Brussels law supremacy over British law - when Brexit takes place. 
However, clause one of the WAB would pause the repeal of the Act so that the UK would remain under EU law during the proposed transition period which is due to expire at the end of 2020. 
This was always expected to happen so that there is a stable basis on which the UK and EU can thrash out the terms of their future trading relationship. 
But the European Communities Act is loathed by Tory Brexit 'Spartans' who view it as a symbol of the EU's unacceptable influence over the UK.  
Meanwhile, the WAB makes clear that should there be an extension to the transition period then the Act would continue to apply. This will be hard for many in the European Research Group of Tory MPs to swallow. 
The government is aware of how much many MPs will hate the prospect of the UK continuing to have to abide by EU law during the implementation period. 
As a result, Mr Johnson has preemptively tried to assuage their concerns through clause 29 of the WAB. 
This would allow the European Scrutiny Select Committee - chaired by leading Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash - to review any problematic EU legislation with recommendations then put to a vote in the House of Commons. 
For example, if the committee deemed a piece of EU law to be damaging to the UK's national interest it could say so in a report and then MPs would vote on whether to ask the EU to change course.  
Extending the transition period
Anti-No Deal MPs are concerned about what will happen if the EU and UK are unable to agree the terms of their future relationship by the end of the transition period.
The two sides have agreed that if that happens there could then be a further two year transition extension. 
However, as currently drafted the WAB only offers Parliament the right to sign off a proposed extension. 
It does not give MPs the ability to force the government to ask for an extension. 
That means that if the government did not ask the EU for more time to discuss the terms of a free trade agreement the UK would be on course to crash out of the bloc with No Deal. 
MPs will try to amend the legislation to give Parliament more of a say over whether there should be a transition extension. 
Former Tory Nick Boles today tabled an amendment which would require the government by default to seek an extension to the transition to December 2022 unless MPs pass a resolution to the contrary in the event trade talks have not finished.
Tory Brexiteers will oppose any such move. They believe that there should be a hard cut-off point on the transition period so that the UK will finally sever ties with the EU.
The importance of the issue was highlighted today after Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, suggested a trade deal could take at least three years to finalise - long past the current end of 2020 deadline.
The influence of MPs over future trade negotiations
The government is proposing giving Parliament oversight of negotiations for the future relationship between the EU and UK. 
Effectively, the government would set out its negotiating objectives to MPs and then ask them to vote for the proposed way forward. 
MPs could then vote to change those objectives and the government is committing to then pursue the agreed objectives during talks with Brussels. 
However, any changes would still have to comply with what the UK and EU have agreed in the political declaration - the second bit of Mr Johnson's Brexit deal - which sets out the broad goals of future talks. 
Labour pro-deal MPs have previously said that giving parliament a say on future negotiating objectives could be enough to win their support. It remains to be seen whether what has been proposed goes far enough for them to back the PM's accord. 
No more 'meaningful vote'
A law passed by MPs last year dictated that the government would have to win a 'meaningful vote' on a Brexit deal as well as passing legislation to implement the deal in order for the UK to leave the EU in an orderly fashion. 
However, after Mr Johnson tried and failed to hold a 'meaningful vote' on Saturday and was then denied the chance to hold another one yesterday the government is proposing to delete the requirement. 
Clause 32 of the WAB would abolish the need to hold a 'meaningful vote' with the passage of the new legislation enough to deliver Brexit. 
Northern Ireland and the payment of the Brexit bill
The WAB commits to Mr Johnson's replacement for the Irish border backstop which will see Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the UK on the key issue of customs. The DUP will continue to oppose the measures and could try to change them. 
In clause 20, the WAB enshrines the payment of the Brexit bill - worth an estimated £39 billion - into British law.
Many Brexiteers believe the UK should not have to hand over the money at all while others believe payment should be tied to whether a trade deal is successfully agreed. 
However, if Brexiteers vote for the PM's deal at second reading it is unlikely they would then blow up the legislation during committee stage by trying to change the payment plans. 
Suspending normal requirements for scrutinising new treaties
A complex piece of legislation called the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act dictates that MPs should be given 21 days to consider a new international treaty before they are asked to vote on it. 
The government is suspending this requirement in a bid to stick to the October 31 deadline. 
Many MPs are not happy about the amount of time being made available to them to digest the terms of the divorce agreement and 'CRAG' could become a major row. 
After the Commons the WAB must get through the House of Lords      
Assuming the government can get the WAB through the Commons without any major changes having been made to it, the legislation would then go to the House of Lords for further scrutiny. 
If MPs have voted for a law convention dictates that ultimately peers will also have to agree to it because of the supremacy of the Commons over the upper chamber. 
But the Remain-heavy House of Lords is likely to want to take its time as it debates the WAB.
The government will do everything it can to get the legislation through speedily but it will face intense resistance from peers.
The final hurdle: The European Parliament 
The European Parliament will only debate and vote on the Brexit deal if and when it has been agreed by the UK Parliament. 
EU chiefs have urged MEPs to back the deal and it is thought that when it comes to the crunch a majority will support the agreement.
If they do then the deal will be home and dry. But if the European Parliament blocks it then the EU and UK will be forced to go back to the drawing board.   
Below is a full tally of how your MP voted on the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill and the subsequent vote on the timetable. 
Aye Count: 329
CONSERVATIVE
Nigel Adams (Conservative - Selby and Ainsty)
Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Pudsey) 
Iain Stewart (Conservative - Milton Keynes South) 
Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Peter Aldous (Conservative - Waveney)
Lucy Allan (Conservative - Telford)
David Amess (Conservative - Southend West)
Edward Argar (Conservative - Charnwood)
Victoria Atkins (Conservative - Louth and Horncastle)
Richard Bacon (Conservative - South Norfolk)
Kemi Badenoch (Conservative - Saffron Walden) (Proxy vote cast by Leo Docherty)
Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)
Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Stephen Barclay (Conservative - North East Cambridgeshire)
John Baron (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
 Henry Bellingham (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Paul Beresford (Conservative - Mole Valley)
Jake Berry (Conservative - Rossendale and Darwen)
Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
Crispin Blunt (Conservative - Reigate)
Peter Bone (Conservative - Wellingborough)
Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Andrew Bowie (Conservative - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
Graham Brady (Conservative - Altrincham and Sale West)
Suella Braverman (Conservative - Fareham) (Proxy vote cast by Steve Baker)
Jack Brereton (Conservative - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Andrew Bridgen (Conservative - North West Leicestershire)
James Brokenshire (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Robert Buckland (Conservative - South Swindon)
Alex Burghart (Conservative - Brentwood and Ongar)
Conor Burns (Conservative - Bournemouth West)
Alun Cairns (Conservative - Vale of Glamorgan)
James Cartlidge (Conservative - South Suffolk)
William Cash (Conservative - Stone)
Maria Caulfield (Conservative - Lewes)
Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Colin Clark (Conservative - Gordon)
Simon Clarke (Conservative - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
James Cleverly (Conservative - Braintree)
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
Therese Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Alberto Costa (Conservative - South Leicestershire)
Robert Courts (Conservative - Witney)
Geoffrey Cox (Conservative - Torridge and West Devon)
Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
David T. C. Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Glyn Davies (Conservative - Montgomeryshire)
Mims Davies (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Jonathan Djanogly (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Leo Docherty (Conservative - Aldershot)
Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
Oliver Dowden (Conservative - Hertsmere)
Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative - Thurrock)
Richard Drax (Conservative - South Dorset)
James Duddridge (Conservative - Rochford and Southend East)
David Duguid (Conservative - Banff and Buchan)
Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative - Chingford and Woodford Green)
Alan Duncan (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Philip Dunne (Conservative - Ludlow)
Michael Ellis (Conservative - Northampton North)
Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
George Eustice (Conservative - Camborne and Redruth)
Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Michael Fabricant (Conservative - Lichfield)
Michael Fallon (Conservative - Sevenoaks)
Mark Field (Conservative - Cities of London and Westminster) 
Vicky Ford (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Kevin Foster (Conservative - Torbay)
Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)
Mark Francois (Conservative - Rayleigh and Wickford)
Lucy Frazer (Conservative - South East Cambridgeshire)
George Freeman (Conservative - Mid Norfolk)
Mike Freer (Conservative - Finchley and Golders Green)
Marcus Fysh (Conservative - Yeovil)
Roger Gale (Conservative - North Thanet)
Mark Garnier (Conservative - Wyre Forest)
Nusrat Ghani (Conservative - Wealden)
Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
Cheryl Gillan (Conservative - Chesham and Amersham)
John Glen (Conservative - Salisbury)
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative - Richmond Park)
Robert Goodwill (Conservative - Scarborough and Whitby)
Michael Gove (Conservative - Surrey Heath)
Luke Graham (Conservative - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Richard Graham (Conservative - Gloucester)
Bill Grant (Conservative - Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
James Gray (Conservative - North Wiltshire)
Chris Grayling (Conservative - Epsom and Ewell)
Chris Green (Conservative - Bolton West)
Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)
Andrew Griffiths (Conservative - Burton)
Kirstene Hair (Conservative - Angus)
Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)
Luke Hall (Conservative - Thornbury and Yate)
Matt Hancock (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Greg Hands (Conservative - Chelsea and Fulham)
Mark Harper (Conservative - Forest of Dean)
Rebecca Harris (Conservative - Castle Point)
Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Simon Hart (Conservative - Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire)
John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Oliver Heald (Conservative - North East Hertfordshire)
James Heappey (Conservative - Wells)
Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
Peter Heaton-Jones (Conservative - North Devon)
Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Nick Herbert (Conservative - Arundel and South Downs)
Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Simon Hoare (Conservative - North Dorset)
George Hollingbery (Conservative - Meon Valley)
Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
John Howell (Conservative - Henley)
Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Mid Worcestershire)
Eddie Hughes (Conservative - Walsall North)
Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Nick Hurd (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Alister Jack (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Sajid Javid (Conservative - Bromsgrove)
Ranil Jayawardena (Conservative - North East Hampshire)
Bernard Jenkin (Conservative - Harwich and North Essex)
Andrea Jenkyns (Conservative - Morley and Outwood)
Robert Jenrick (Conservative - Newark)
Boris Johnson (Conservative - Uxbridge and South Ruislip)
Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Joseph Johnson (Conservative - Orpington)
Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
David Jones (Conservative - Clwyd West)
Marcus Jones (Conservative - Nuneaton)
Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Gillian Keegan (Conservative - Chichester)
Seema Kennedy (Conservative - South Ribble)
Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
Julian Knight (Conservative - Solihull)
Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative - Spelthorne)
John Lamont (Conservative - Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
Mark Lancaster (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Pauline Latham (Conservative - Mid Derbyshire)
Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Jeremy Lefroy (Conservative - Stafford)
Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Andrew Lewer (Conservative - Northampton South)
Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)
David Lidington (Conservative - Aylesbury)
Julia Lopez (Conservative - Hornchurch and Upminster) (Proxy vote cast by Lee Rowley)
Jack Lopresti (Conservative - Filton and Bradley Stoke)
Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Craig Mackinlay (Conservative - South Thanet)
Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Alan Mak (Conservative - Havant)
Kit Malthouse (Conservative - North West Hampshire)
Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Theresa May (Conservative - Maidenhead)
Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
Patrick McLoughlin (Conservative - Derbyshire Dales)
Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)
Johnny Mercer (Conservative - Plymouth, Moor View)
Huw Merriman (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Stephen Metcalfe (Conservative - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Amanda Milling (Conservative - Cannock Chase)
Nigel Mills (Conservative - Amber Valley)
Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Penny Mordaunt (Conservative - Portsmouth North)
Nicky Morgan (Conservative - Loughborough)
Anne Marie Morris (Conservative - Newton Abbot)
David Morris (Conservative - Morecambe and Lunesdale)
James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
David Mundell (Conservative - Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale)
Sheryll Murray (Conservative - South East Cornwall)
Andrew Murrison (Conservative - South West Wiltshire)
Robert Neill (Conservative - Bromley and Chislehurst)
Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Jesse Norman (Conservative - Hereford and South Herefordshire)
Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)
Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Guy Opperman (Conservative - Hexham)
Neil Parish (Conservative - Tiverton and Honiton)
Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Owen Paterson (Conservative - North Shropshire)
Mark Pawsey (Conservative - Rugby)
Mike Penning (Conservative - Hemel Hempstead)
John Penrose (Conservative - Weston-super-Mare)
Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
Claire Perry (Conservative - Devizes)
Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Christopher Pincher (Conservative - Tamworth)
Dan Poulter (Conservative - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
Rebecca Pow (Conservative - Taunton Deane)
Victoria Prentis (Conservative - Banbury)
Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
Jeremy Quin (Conservative - Horsham)
Will Quince (Conservative - Colchester)
Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Laurence Robertson (Conservative - Tewkesbury)
Mary Robinson (Conservative - Cheadle)
Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Douglas Ross (Conservative - Moray)
Lee Rowley (Conservative - North East Derbyshire)
David Rutley (Conservative - Macclesfield)
Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Bob Seely (Conservative - Isle of Wight)
Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)
Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Alok Sharma (Conservative - Reading West)
Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative - Elmet and Rothwell)
Keith Simpson (Conservative - Broadland)
Chris Skidmore (Conservative - Kingswood)
Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North) (Proxy vote cast by Jo Churchill)
Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Caroline Spelman (Conservative - Meriden)
Mark Spencer (Conservative - Sherwood)
Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
John Stevenson (Conservative - Carlisle)
Bob Stewart (Conservative - Beckenham)
Gary Streeter (Conservative - South West Devon)
Mel Stride (Conservative - Central Devon)
Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Rishi Sunak (Conservative - Richmond (Yorks))
Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)
Hugo Swire (Conservative - East Devon)
Robert Syms (Conservative - Poole)
Derek Thomas (Conservative - St Ives)
Ross Thomson (Conservative - Aberdeen South)
Maggie Throup (Conservative - Erewash)
Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative - Rochester and Strood)
Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Michael Tomlinson (Conservative - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
David Tredinnick (Conservative - Bosworth)
Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Conservative - Berwick-upon-Tweed)
Elizabeth Truss (Conservative - South West Norfolk)
Tom Tugendhat (Conservative - Tonbridge and Malling)
Shailesh Vara (Conservative - North West Cambridgeshire)
Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Ben Wallace (Conservative - Wyre and Preston North)
David Warburton (Conservative - Somerton and Frome)
Matt Warman (Conservative - Boston and Skegness)
Giles Watling (Conservative - Clacton)
Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
Heather Wheeler (Conservative - South Derbyshire)
Craig Whittaker (Conservative - Calder Valley)
John Whittingdale (Conservative - Maldon)
Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Gavin Williamson (Conservative - South Staffordshire)
Mike Wood (Conservative - Dudley South)
William Wragg (Conservative - Hazel Grove)
Jeremy Wright (Conservative - Kenilworth and Southam)
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative - Stratford-on-Avon)
 LABOUR
 Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
 Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham)
Rosie Cooper (Labour - West Lancashire)
Jon Cruddas (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
 Mike Hill (Labour - Hartlepool)
Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central) 
Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields) 
John Mann (Labour - Bassetlaw)
Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)  
Lisa Nandy (Labour - Wigan) 
Melanie Onn (Labour - Great Grimsby) 
Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East) 
Jo Platt (Labour - Leigh)
Ruth Smeeth (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Gareth Snell (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent Central)
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 
NONE 
INDEPENDENT 
Ian Austin (Independent - Dudley North) 
Richard Benyon (Independent - Newbury) 
Nick Boles (Independent - Grantham and Stamford)
Steve Brine (Independent - Winchester)
Alistair Burt (Independent - North East Bedfordshire) 
Greg Clark (Independent - Tunbridge Wells)
Kenneth Clarke (Independent - Rushcliffe) 
Charlie Elphicke (Independent - Dover) 
Frank Field (Independent - Birkenhead)   
David Gauke (Independent - South West Hertfordshire)
Philip Hammond (Independent - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Stephen Hammond (Independent - Wimbledon)
Richard Harrington (Independent - Watford) 
Kelvin Hopkins (Independent - Luton North) 
Margot James (Independent - Stourbridge) 
Oliver Letwin (Independent - West Dorset)  
Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South) 
Stephen Lloyd (Independent - Eastbourne) 
Anne Milton (Independent - Guildford) 
Amber Rudd (Independent - Hastings and Rye) 
Antoinette Sandbach (Independent - Eddisbury) 
Nicholas Soames (Independent - Mid Sussex)
Rory Stewart (Independent - Penrith and The Border)
Edward Vaizey (Independent - Wantage)
John Woodcock (Independent - Barrow and Furness)
 Noe Count: 299
CONSERVATIVE 
NONE
LABOUR
Diane Abbott (Labour - Hackney North and Stoke Newington)
Nic Dakin (Labour - Scunthorpe)
Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent) 
Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour - Gower)
Jonathan Ashworth (Labour - Leicester South)
Adrian Bailey (Labour - West Bromwich West)
Margaret Beckett (Labour - Derby South)
Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
 Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Tracy Brabin (Labour - Batley and Spen)
Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
 Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Nicholas Brown (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East)
Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Richard Burgon (Labour - Leeds East)
Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
 Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Alan Campbell (Labour - Tynemouth)
Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Jenny Chapman (Labour - Darlington)
Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate)
Ann Clwyd (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Vernon Coaker (Labour - Gedling)
Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Jeremy Corbyn (Labour - Islington North)
Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East)
Mary Creagh (Labour - Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Labour - Walthamstow)
John Cryer (Labour - Leyton and Wanstead)
Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)
Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Wayne David (Labour - Caerphilly)
Geraint Davies (Labour - Swansea West)
Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)
Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)
Emma Dent Coad (Labour - Kensington)
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
 Anneliese Dodds (Labour - Oxford East)
Stephen Doughty (Labour - Cardiff South and Penarth)
Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
David Drew (Labour - Stroud)
Jack Dromey (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)
Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Maria Eagle (Labour - Garston and Halewood)
Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)
Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Chris Elmore (Labour - Ogmore)
Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Chris Evans (Labour - Islwyn) (Proxy vote cast by Mark Tami)
Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)
Lisa Forbes (Labour - Peterborough)
Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Hugh Gaffney (Labour - Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill)
Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Ruth George (Labour - High Peak)
 Preet Kaur Gill (Labour - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Mary Glindon (Labour - North Tyneside)
Roger Godsiff (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland)
 Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Margaret Greenwood (Labour - Wirral West)
Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
John Grogan (Labour - Keighley)
Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)
Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Fabian Hamilton (Labour - Leeds North East)
David Hanson (Labour - Delyn)
Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Sue Hayman (Labour - Workington)
John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Mark Hendrick (Labour - Preston)
 Meg Hillier (Labour - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Margaret Hodge (Labour - Barking)
Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn)
George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Gerald Jones (Labour - Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)
Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Liz Kendall (Labour - Leicester West)
Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester, Gorton)
Ged Killen (Labour - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberavon)
Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Lesley Laird (Labour - Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath)
David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Ian Lavery (Labour - Wansbeck)
 Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln)
Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Tony Lloyd (Labour - Rochdale)
Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Ian C. Lucas (Labour - Wrexham)
Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax)
Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Seema Malhotra (Labour - Feltham and Heston)
Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Sandy Martin (Labour - Ipswich)
Rachael Maskell (Labour - York Central)
Christian Matheson (Labour - City of Chester)
Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Andy McDonald (Labour - Middlesbrough)
John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Pat McFadden (Labour - Wolverhampton South East)
Conor McGinn (Labour - St Helens North)
Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Jim McMahon (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Ian Mearns (Labour - Gateshead)
Edward Miliband (Labour - Doncaster North)
 Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
 Alex Norris (Labour - Nottingham North)
Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Kate Osamor (Labour - Edmonton)
Albert Owen (Labour - Ynys Mon)
Teresa Pearce (Labour - Erith and Thamesmead)
Matthew Pennycook (Labour - Greenwich and Woolwich)
Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Laura Pidcock (Labour - North West Durham)
Luke Pollard (Labour - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Lucy Powell (Labour - Manchester Central)
Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Steve Reed (Labour - Croydon North)
Christina Rees (Labour - Neath)
Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Rachel Reeves (Labour - Leeds West)
Emma Reynolds (Labour - Wolverhampton North East) (Proxy vote cast by Pat McFadden)
Jonathan Reynolds (Labour - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Marie Rimmer (Labour - St Helens South and Whiston)
Geoffrey Robinson (Labour - Coventry North West)
Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Danielle Rowley (Labour - Midlothian)
Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour - Brighton, Kemptown)
 Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Barry Sheerman (Labour - Huddersfield)
 Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn) 
Dennis Skinner (Labour - Bolsover)
Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Eleanor Smith (Labour - Wolverhampton South West)
Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)
Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Alex Sobel (Labour - Leeds North West)
John Spellar (Labour - Warley)
Keir Starmer (Labour - Holborn and St Pancras)
 Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Graham Stringer (Labour - Blackley and Broughton)
Paul Sweeney (Labour - Glasgow North East)
 Mark Tami (Labour - Alyn and Deeside)
Gareth Thomas (Labour - Harrow West)
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour - Torfaen)
Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Anna Turley (Labour - Redcar)
Karl Turner (Labour - Kingston upon Hull East)
Stephen Twigg (Labour - Liverpool, West Derby)
Liz Twist (Labour - Blaydon)
Valerie Vaz (Labour - Walsall South)
Keith Vaz (Labour - Leicester East)
Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Tom Watson (Labour - West Bromwich East)
Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Matt Western (Labour - Warwick and Leamington)
Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)
Martin Whitfield (Labour - East Lothian)
 Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)
Phil Wilson (Labour - Sedgefield) 
Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
 LIBERAL DEMOCRAT
Heidi Allen (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)
 Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
 Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland) 
Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton) 
Jane Dodds (Liberal Democrat - Brecon and Radnorshire) 
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale) 
Sam Gyimah (Liberal Democrat - East Surrey)
 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
 Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Norman Lamb (Liberal Democrat - North Norfolk) 
Phillip Lee (Liberal Democrat - Bracknell) 
Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon) 
Angela Smith (Liberal Democrat - Penistone and Stocksbridge) 
Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire)
Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham) 
 Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
INDEPENDENT 
Guto Bebb (Independent - Aberconwy) 
Louise Ellman (Independent - Liverpool, Riverside) 
Justine Greening (Independent - Putney)
Dominic Grieve (Independent - Beaconsfield)
Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Lady Hermon (Independent - North Down)
 Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Gavin Shuker (Independent - Luton South)
DEMOCRATIC UNIONIST PARTY
Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry) 
Nigel Dodds (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast North)
Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Democratic Unionist Party - Lagan Valley)
Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Emma Little Pengelly (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast South)
Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Gavin Robinson (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast East)
Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party - East Antrim)
 SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY
 Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
 Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire South)
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party - Ross, Skye and Lochaber)
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
 Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
 Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
 Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
 Joanna Cherry (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh South West)
 Ronnie Cowan (Scottish National Party - Inverclyde)
 Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
 Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
 Martin Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party - West Dunbartonshire)
 Marion Fellows (Scottish National Party - Motherwell and Wishaw)
 Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party - North East Fife)
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party - North Ayrshire and Arran)
 Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North)
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Neil Gray (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts) (Proxy vote cast by Patrick Grady)
 Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
 Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party - Dundee East)
 Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
David Linden (Scottish National Party - Glasgow East) 
 Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party - Na h-Eileanan an Iar)
 Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South)
Stuart C. McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)
 John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
 Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North West)
 Gavin Newlands (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
 Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party - Argyll and Bute)
Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Chris Stephens (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South West)
Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party - Central Ayrshire)
 Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and North Perthshire)
PLAID CYMRU 
 Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)
Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion) 
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd) 
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru - Arfon)
THE INDEPENDENT GROUP FOR CHANGE
Ann Coffey (The Independent Group for Change - Stockport) 
Mike Gapes (The Independent Group for Change - Ilford South) 
 Chris Leslie (The Independent Group for Change - Nottingham East)
 Joan Ryan (The Independent Group for Change - Enfield North)
Anna Soubry (The Independent Group for Change - Broxtowe)
GREEN PARTY
Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion) 
NO VOTE RECORDED:
John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)
Lindsay Hoyle (Deputy Speaker - Chorley)
Eleanor Laing (Deputy Speaker - Epping Forest)
Rosie Winterton (Deputy Speaker - Doncaster Central) 
Orfhlaith Begley (Sinn Fein - West Tyrone)
Mickey Brady (Sinn Fein - Newry and Armagh)
Michelle Gildernew (Sinn Fein - Fermanagh and South Tyrone)
Chris Hazzard (Sinn Fein - South Down)
Paul Maskey (Sinn Fein - Belfast West)
Elisha McCallion (Sinn Fein - Foyle)
Francie Molloy (Sinn Fein - Mid Ulster)
Kate Hoey (Labour - Vauxhall)
Ronnie Campbell (Labour - Blyth Valley)
Yvonne Fovargue (Labour - Makerfield)
Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston) 
Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton)
Chris Williamson (Independent - Derby North)
Caroline Nokes (Independent - Romsey and Southampton North) 
 Aye Count: 308
CONSERVATIVE 
Nigel Adams (Conservative - Selby and Ainsty)
Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Pudsey) 
Iain Stewart (Conservative - Milton Keynes South) 
Bim Afolami (Conservative - Hitchin and Harpenden)
Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Peter Aldous (Conservative - Waveney)
Lucy Allan (Conservative - Telford)
David Amess (Conservative - Southend West)
Edward Argar (Conservative - Charnwood)
Victoria Atkins (Conservative - Louth and Horncastle)
Richard Bacon (Conservative - South Norfolk)
Kemi Badenoch (Conservative - Saffron Walden) (Proxy vote cast by Leo Docherty)
Steve Baker (Conservative - Wycombe)
Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Stephen Barclay (Conservative - North East Cambridgeshire)
John Baron (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
 Henry Bellingham (Conservative - North West Norfolk)
Paul Beresford (Conservative - Mole Valley)
Jake Berry (Conservative - Rossendale and Darwen)
Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
Crispin Blunt (Conservative - Reigate)
Peter Bone (Conservative - Wellingborough)
Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Andrew Bowie (Conservative - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Karen Bradley (Conservative - Staffordshire Moorlands)
Graham Brady (Conservative - Altrincham and Sale West)
Suella Braverman (Conservative - Fareham) (Proxy vote cast by Steve Baker)
Jack Brereton (Conservative - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Andrew Bridgen (Conservative - North West Leicestershire)
James Brokenshire (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Fiona Bruce (Conservative - Congleton)
Robert Buckland (Conservative - South Swindon)
Alex Burghart (Conservative - Brentwood and Ongar)
Conor Burns (Conservative - Bournemouth West)
Alun Cairns (Conservative - Vale of Glamorgan)
James Cartlidge (Conservative - South Suffolk)
William Cash (Conservative - Stone)
Maria Caulfield (Conservative - Lewes)
Alex Chalk (Conservative - Cheltenham)
Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Colin Clark (Conservative - Gordon)
Simon Clarke (Conservative - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
James Cleverly (Conservative - Braintree)
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
Therese Coffey (Conservative - Suffolk Coastal)
Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)
Alberto Costa (Conservative - South Leicestershire)
Robert Courts (Conservative - Witney)
Geoffrey Cox (Conservative - Torridge and West Devon)
Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
David T. C. Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Glyn Davies (Conservative - Montgomeryshire)
Mims Davies (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Jonathan Djanogly (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Leo Docherty (Conservative - Aldershot)
Michelle Donelan (Conservative - Chippenham)
Nadine Dorries (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Steve Double (Conservative - St Austell and Newquay)
Oliver Dowden (Conservative - Hertsmere)
Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative - Thurrock)
Richard Drax (Conservative - South Dorset)
James Duddridge (Conservative - Rochford and Southend East)
David Duguid (Conservative - Banff and Buchan)
Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative - Chingford and Woodford Green)
Alan Duncan (Conservative - Rutland and Melton)
Philip Dunne (Conservative - Ludlow)
Michael Ellis (Conservative - Northampton North)
Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
George Eustice (Conservative - Camborne and Redruth)
Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Michael Fabricant (Conservative - Lichfield)
Michael Fallon (Conservative - Sevenoaks)
Mark Field (Conservative - Cities of London and Westminster) 
Vicky Ford (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Kevin Foster (Conservative - Torbay)
Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)
Mark Francois (Conservative - Rayleigh and Wickford)
Lucy Frazer (Conservative - South East Cambridgeshire)
George Freeman (Conservative - Mid Norfolk)
Mike Freer (Conservative - Finchley and Golders Green)
Marcus Fysh (Conservative - Yeovil)
Roger Gale (Conservative - North Thanet)
Mark Garnier (Conservative - Wyre Forest)
Nusrat Ghani (Conservative - Wealden)
Nick Gibb (Conservative - Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
Cheryl Gillan (Conservative - Chesham and Amersham)
John Glen (Conservative - Salisbury)
Zac Goldsmith (Conservative - Richmond Park)
Robert Goodwill (Conservative - Scarborough and Whitby)
Michael Gove (Conservative - Surrey Heath)
Luke Graham (Conservative - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Richard Graham (Conservative - Gloucester)
Bill Grant (Conservative - Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
Helen Grant (Conservative - Maidstone and The Weald)
James Gray (Conservative - North Wiltshire)
Chris Grayling (Conservative - Epsom and Ewell)
Chris Green (Conservative - Bolton West)
Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)
Andrew Griffiths (Conservative - Burton)
Kirstene Hair (Conservative - Angus)
Robert Halfon (Conservative - Harlow)
Luke Hall (Conservative - Thornbury and Yate)
Matt Hancock (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Greg Hands (Conservative - Chelsea and Fulham)
Mark Harper (Conservative - Forest of Dean)
Rebecca Harris (Conservative - Castle Point)
Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Simon Hart (Conservative - Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire)
John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Oliver Heald (Conservative - North East Hertfordshire)
James Heappey (Conservative - Wells)
Chris Heaton-Harris (Conservative - Daventry)
Peter Heaton-Jones (Conservative - North Devon)
Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Nick Herbert (Conservative - Arundel and South Downs)
Damian Hinds (Conservative - East Hampshire)
Simon Hoare (Conservative - North Dorset)
George Hollingbery (Conservative - Meon Valley)
Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
Adam Holloway (Conservative - Gravesham)
John Howell (Conservative - Henley)
Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Mid Worcestershire)
Eddie Hughes (Conservative - Walsall North)
Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - South West Surrey)
Nick Hurd (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)
Alister Jack (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)
Sajid Javid (Conservative - Bromsgrove)
Ranil Jayawardena (Conservative - North East Hampshire)
Bernard Jenkin (Conservative - Harwich and North Essex)
Andrea Jenkyns (Conservative - Morley and Outwood)
Robert Jenrick (Conservative - Newark)
Boris Johnson (Conservative - Uxbridge and South Ruislip)
Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Joseph Johnson (Conservative - Orpington)
Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
David Jones (Conservative - Clwyd West)
Marcus Jones (Conservative - Nuneaton)
Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Gillian Keegan (Conservative - Chichester)
Seema Kennedy (Conservative - South Ribble)
Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
Julian Knight (Conservative - Solihull)
Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Kwasi Kwarteng (Conservative - Spelthorne)
John Lamont (Conservative - Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
Mark Lancaster (Conservative - Milton Keynes North)
Pauline Latham (Conservative - Mid Derbyshire)
Andrea Leadsom (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Jeremy Lefroy (Conservative - Stafford)
Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Andrew Lewer (Conservative - Northampton South)
Brandon Lewis (Conservative - Great Yarmouth)
Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)
David Lidington (Conservative - Aylesbury)
Julia Lopez (Conservative - Hornchurch and Upminster) (Proxy vote cast by Lee Rowley)
Jack Lopresti (Conservative - Filton and Bradley Stoke)
Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Craig Mackinlay (Conservative - South Thanet)
Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Alan Mak (Conservative - Havant)
Kit Malthouse (Conservative - North West Hampshire)
Scott Mann (Conservative - North Cornwall)
Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Theresa May (Conservative - Maidenhead)
Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
Patrick McLoughlin (Conservative - Derbyshire Dales)
Stephen McPartland (Conservative - Stevenage)
Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Mark Menzies (Conservative - Fylde)
Johnny Mercer (Conservative - Plymouth, Moor View)
Huw Merriman (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Stephen Metcalfe (Conservative - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Amanda Milling (Conservative - Cannock Chase)
Nigel Mills (Conservative - Amber Valley)
Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Penny Mordaunt (Conservative - Portsmouth North)
Nicky Morgan (Conservative - Loughborough)
Anne Marie Morris (Conservative - Newton Abbot)
David Morris (Conservative - Morecambe and Lunesdale)
James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
David Mundell (Conservative - Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale)
Sheryll Murray (Conservative - South East Cornwall)
Andrew Murrison (Conservative - South West Wiltshire)
Robert Neill (Conservative - Bromley and Chislehurst)
Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)
Jesse Norman (Conservative - Hereford and South Herefordshire)
Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)
Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Guy Opperman (Conservative - Hexham)
Neil Parish (Conservative - Tiverton and Honiton)
Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Owen Paterson (Conservative - North Shropshire)
Mark Pawsey (Conservative - Rugby)
Mike Penning (Conservative - Hemel Hempstead)
John Penrose (Conservative - Weston-super-Mare)
Andrew Percy (Conservative - Brigg and Goole)
Claire Perry (Conservative - Devizes)
Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)
Christopher Pincher (Conservative - Tamworth)
Dan Poulter (Conservative - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
Rebecca Pow (Conservative - Taunton Deane)
Victoria Prentis (Conservative - Banbury)
Mark Prisk (Conservative - Hertford and Stortford)
Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
Jeremy Quin (Conservative - Horsham)
Will Quince (Conservative - Colchester)
Dominic Raab (Conservative - Esher and Walton)
John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)
Laurence Robertson (Conservative - Tewkesbury)
Mary Robinson (Conservative - Cheadle)
Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Douglas Ross (Conservative - Moray)
Lee Rowley (Conservative - North East Derbyshire)
David Rutley (Conservative - Macclesfield)
Paul Scully (Conservative - Sutton and Cheam)
Bob Seely (Conservative - Isle of Wight)
Andrew Selous (Conservative - South West Bedfordshire)
Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)
Alok Sharma (Conservative - Reading West)
Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative - Elmet and Rothwell)
Keith Simpson (Conservative - Broadland)
Chris Skidmore (Conservative - Kingswood)
Chloe Smith (Conservative - Norwich North) (Proxy vote cast by Jo Churchill)
Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Julian Smith (Conservative - Skipton and Ripon)
Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Caroline Spelman (Conservative - Meriden)
Mark Spencer (Conservative - Sherwood)
Andrew Stephenson (Conservative - Pendle)
John Stevenson (Conservative - Carlisle)
Bob Stewart (Conservative - Beckenham)
Gary Streeter (Conservative - South West Devon)
Mel Stride (Conservative - Central Devon)
Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Julian Sturdy (Conservative - York Outer)
Rishi Sunak (Conservative - Richmond (Yorks))
Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)
Hugo Swire (Conservative - East Devon)
Robert Syms (Conservative - Poole)
Derek Thomas (Conservative - St Ives)
Ross Thomson (Conservative - Aberdeen South)
Maggie Throup (Conservative - Erewash)
Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative - Rochester and Strood)
Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Michael Tomlinson (Conservative - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
David Tredinnick (Conservative - Bosworth)
Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Conservative - Berwick-upon-Tweed)
Elizabeth Truss (Conservative - South West Norfolk)
Tom Tugendhat (Conservative - Tonbridge and Malling)
Shailesh Vara (Conservative - North West Cambridgeshire)
Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
Robin Walker (Conservative - Worcester)
Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Ben Wallace (Conservative - Wyre and Preston North)
David Warburton (Conservative - Somerton and Frome)
Matt Warman (Conservative - Boston and Skegness)
Giles Watling (Conservative - Clacton)
Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
Heather Wheeler (Conservative - South Derbyshire)
Craig Whittaker (Conservative - Calder Valley)
John Whittingdale (Conservative - Maldon)
Bill Wiggin (Conservative - North Herefordshire)
Gavin Williamson (Conservative - South Staffordshire)
Mike Wood (Conservative - Dudley South)
William Wragg (Conservative - Hazel Grove)
Jeremy Wright (Conservative - Kenilworth and Southam)
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative - Stratford-on-Avon)
LABOUR 
Kevin Barron (Labour - Rother Valley)
Jim Fitzpatrick (Labour - Poplar and Limehouse)
Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Kate Hoey (Labour - Vauxhall) 
John Mann (Labour - Bassetlaw) 
INDEPENDENT 
Ian Austin (Independent - Dudley North) 
Richard Benyon (Independent - Newbury) 
Nick Boles (Independent - Grantham and Stamford)
 Steve Brine (Independent - Winchester)
Alistair Burt (Independent - North East Bedfordshire) 
Greg Clark (Independent - Tunbridge Wells) 
Charlie Elphicke (Independent - Dover) 
Frank Field (Independent - Birkenhead) 
David Gauke (Independent - South West Hertfordshire) 
Stephen Hammond (Independent - Wimbledon) 
Kelvin Hopkins (Independent - Luton North) 
Margot James (Independent - Stourbridge) 
Oliver Letwin (Independent - West Dorset) 
Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South) 
Amber Rudd (Independent - Hastings and Rye) 
Nicholas Soames (Independent - Mid Sussex) 
Edward Vaizey (Independent - Wantage) 
John Woodcock (Independent - Barrow and Furness) 
 Noe Count: 322
CONSERVATIVE
NONE 
LABOUR
Diane Abbott (Labour - Hackney North and Stoke Newington)
Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Mike Amesbury (Labour - Weaver Vale)
Tonia Antoniazzi (Labour - Gower)
Jonathan Ashworth (Labour - Leicester South)
Adrian Bailey (Labour - West Bromwich West) 
Margaret Beckett (Labour - Derby South)
Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East) 
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)
Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Tracy Brabin (Labour - Batley and Spen)
Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West) 
Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Nicholas Brown (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne East)
Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Richard Burgon (Labour - Leeds East)
Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)  
Alan Campbell (Labour - Tynemouth)
Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Sarah Champion (Labour - Rotherham) 
Jenny Chapman (Labour - Darlington)
Bambos Charalambous (Labour - Enfield, Southgate) 
Ann Clwyd (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Vernon Coaker (Labour - Gedling) 
Julie Cooper (Labour - Burnley)
Yvette Cooper (Labour - Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Jeremy Corbyn (Labour - Islington North) 
Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
David Crausby (Labour - Bolton North East) 
Mary Creagh (Labour - Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Labour - Walthamstow)
Jon Cruddas (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
John Cryer (Labour - Leyton and Wanstead)
Judith Cummins (Labour - Bradford South)
Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Wayne David (Labour - Caerphilly)
Geraint Davies (Labour - Swansea West) 
Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)
Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)
Emma Dent Coad (Labour - Kensington)
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough) 
Anneliese Dodds (Labour - Oxford East)
Stephen Doughty (Labour - Cardiff South and Penarth)
Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
David Drew (Labour - Stroud)
Jack Dromey (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)
Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Maria Eagle (Labour - Garston and Halewood)
Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey) 
Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham)
Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Chris Elmore (Labour - Ogmore)
Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Chris Evans (Labour - Islwyn) (Proxy vote cast by Mark Tami)
Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)
Lisa Forbes (Labour - Peterborough)
Yvonne Fovargue (Labour - Makerfield)
Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)
Hugh Gaffney (Labour - Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) 
Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Ruth George (Labour - High Peak) 
Preet Kaur Gill (Labour - Birmingham, Edgbaston) 
Mary Glindon (Labour - North Tyneside)
Roger Godsiff (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland) 
Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Margaret Greenwood (Labour - Wirral West)
Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
John Grogan (Labour - Keighley)
Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)
Louise Haigh (Labour - Sheffield, Heeley)
Fabian Hamilton (Labour - Leeds North East)
David Hanson (Labour - Delyn)
Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Harriet Harman (Labour - Camberwell and Peckham)
Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Sue Hayman (Labour - Workington)
John Healey (Labour - Wentworth and Dearne)
Mark Hendrick (Labour - Preston) 
Mike Hill (Labour - Hartlepool)
Meg Hillier (Labour - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Margaret Hodge (Labour - Barking)
Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Sunderland West)
Kate Hollern (Labour - Blackburn) 
George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Gerald Jones (Labour - Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)
Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Helen Jones (Labour - Warrington North)
Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West)
Sarah Jones (Labour - Croydon Central)
Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Liz Kendall (Labour - Leicester West)
Afzal Khan (Labour - Manchester, Gorton)
Ged Killen (Labour - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberavon)
Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Lesley Laird (Labour - Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath)
David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Ian Lavery (Labour - Wansbeck) 
Karen Lee (Labour - Lincoln) 
Emma Lewell-Buck (Labour - South Shields)
Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)  
Tony Lloyd (Labour - Rochdale)
Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles) 
Ian C. Lucas (Labour - Wrexham)
Holly Lynch (Labour - Halifax) 
Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Seema Malhotra (Labour - Feltham and Heston)
Gordon Marsden (Labour - Blackpool South)
Sandy Martin (Labour - Ipswich)
Rachael Maskell (Labour - York Central)
Christian Matheson (Labour - City of Chester)
Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Siobhain McDonagh (Labour - Mitcham and Morden)
Andy McDonald (Labour - Middlesbrough) 
John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Pat McFadden (Labour - Wolverhampton South East)
Conor McGinn (Labour - St Helens North)
Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)
Liz McInnes (Labour - Heywood and Middleton)
Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Jim McMahon (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North) 
Ian Mearns (Labour - Gateshead)
Edward Miliband (Labour - Doncaster North)
Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Lisa Nandy (Labour - Wigan) 
Alex Norris (Labour - Nottingham North) 
Melanie Onn (Labour - Great Grimsby)
Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Kate Osamor (Labour - Edmonton)
Albert Owen (Labour - Ynys M?n) 
Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Teresa Pearce (Labour - Erith and Thamesmead)
Matthew Pennycook (Labour - Greenwich and Woolwich)
Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Jess Phillips (Labour - Birmingham, Yardley)
Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Laura Pidcock (Labour - North West Durham)
Jo Platt (Labour - Leigh)
Luke Pollard (Labour - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
Lucy Powell (Labour - Manchester Central)
Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Angela Rayner (Labour - Ashton-under-Lyne)
Steve Reed (Labour - Croydon North)
Christina Rees (Labour - Neath)
Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Rachel Reeves (Labour - Leeds West)
Emma Reynolds (Labour - Wolverhampton North East) (Proxy vote cast by Pat McFadden)
Jonathan Reynolds (Labour - Stalybridge and Hyde)
Marie Rimmer (Labour - St Helens South and Whiston) 
Geoffrey Robinson (Labour - Coventry North West)
Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Danielle Rowley (Labour - Midlothian)
Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour - Brighton, Kemptown)  
Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West) 
Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Barry Sheerman (Labour - Huddersfield) 
Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)
Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn) 
Dennis Skinner (Labour - Bolsover)
Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Ruth Smeeth (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Eleanor Smith (Labour - Wolverhampton South West)
Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)
Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Gareth Snell (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent Central)
Alex Sobel (Labour - Leeds North West) 
John Spellar (Labour - Warley)
Keir Starmer (Labour - Holborn and St Pancras) 
Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Graham Stringer (Labour - Blackley and Broughton)
Paul Sweeney (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Mark Tami (Labour - Alyn and Deeside) 
Gareth Thomas (Labour - Harrow West)
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour - Torfaen)
Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Anna Turley (Labour - Redcar)
Karl Turner (Labour - Kingston upon Hull East)
Stephen Twigg (Labour - Liverpool, West Derby)
Liz Twist (Labour - Blaydon)
Valerie Vaz (Labour - Walsall South)
Keith Vaz (Labour - Leicester East)
Thelma Walker (Labour - Colne Valley)
Tom Watson (Labour - West Bromwich East)
Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Matt Western (Labour - Warwick and Leamington)
Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)
Martin Whitfield (Labour - East Lothian) 
Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South) 
Phil Wilson (Labour - Sedgefield) 
Mohammad Yasin (Labour - Bedford)
Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Nic Dakin (Labour - Scunthorpe)
Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent)
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT
 Heidi Allen (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
 Luciana Berger (Liberal Democrat - Liverpool, Wavertree)
Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington) 
Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham) 
Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland) 
Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton) 
 Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
 Sam Gyimah (Liberal Democrat - East Surrey)
 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat - Bath)
Jane Dodds (Liberal Democrat - Brecon and Radnorshire)
 Norman Lamb (Liberal Democrat - North Norfolk)
Phillip Lee (Liberal Democrat - Bracknell) 
Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat - Oxford West and Abingdon) 
Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) 
Angela Smith (Liberal Democrat - Penistone and Stocksbridge) 
Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire) 
Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham) 
Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
DEMOCRATIC UNIONIST PARTY
Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party - East Londonderry) 
Nigel Dodds (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast North)
Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Democratic Unionist Party - Lagan Valley)
Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party - South Antrim)
Emma Little Pengelly (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast South)
Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Gavin Robinson (Democratic Unionist Party - Belfast East)
Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
David Simpson (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party - East Antrim)
 SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY
Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
 Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire South)
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party - Ross, Skye and Lochaber)
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
 Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
 Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
 Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
 Joanna Cherry (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh South West)
 Ronnie Cowan (Scottish National Party - Inverclyde)
 Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
 Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
 Martin Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party - West Dunbartonshire)
 Marion Fellows (Scottish National Party - Motherwell and Wishaw)
 Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party - North East Fife)
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party - North Ayrshire and Arran)
 Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North)
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Neil Gray (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts) (Proxy vote cast by Patrick Grady)
 Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
 Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party - Dundee East)
 Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
David Linden (Scottish National Party - Glasgow East) 
 Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party - Na h-Eileanan an Iar)
 Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South)
Stuart C. McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)
 John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
 Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North West)
 Gavin Newlands (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
 Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party - Argyll and Bute)
Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Chris Stephens (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South West)
Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party - Central Ayrshire)
 Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and North Perthshire)
PLAID CYMRU 
 Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)
Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion) 
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd) 
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru - Arfon)
THE INDEPENDENT GROUP FOR CHANGE
Ann Coffey (The Independent Group for Change - Stockport) 
Mike Gapes (The Independent Group for Change - Ilford South) 
 Chris Leslie (The Independent Group for Change - Nottingham East)
 Joan Ryan (The Independent Group for Change - Enfield North)
Anna Soubry (The Independent Group for Change - Broxtowe) 
INDEPENDENT 
Rory Stewart (Independent - Penrith and The Border)
Justine Greening (Independent - Putney) 
Dominic Grieve (Independent - Beaconsfield) 
 Philip Hammond (Independent - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Antoinette Sandbach (Independent - Eddisbury) 
Anne Milton (Independent - Guildford)
Richard Harrington (Independent - Watford) 
 Guto Bebb (Independent - Aberconwy)
Kenneth Clarke (Independent - Rushcliffe) 
Stephen Lloyd (Independent - Eastbourne)  
Gavin Shuker (Independent - Luton South) 
Louise Ellman (Independent - Liverpool, Riverside) 
Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Lady Hermon (Independent - North Down)
Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam) 
NO VOTE RECORDED:
John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham) 
Lindsay Hoyle (Deputy Speaker - Chorley)
Eleanor Laing (Deputy Speaker - Epping Forest)
Rosie Winterton (Deputy Speaker - Doncaster Central) 
Orfhlaith Begley (Sinn Fein - West Tyrone)
Mickey Brady (Sinn Fein - Newry and Armagh)
Michelle Gildernew (Sinn Fein - Fermanagh and South Tyrone)
Chris Hazzard (Sinn Fein - South Down)
Paul Maskey (Sinn Fein - Belfast West)
Elisha McCallion (Sinn Fein - Foyle)
Francie Molloy (Sinn Fein - Mid Ulster)
Ronnie Campbell (Labour - Blyth Valley)
Rosie Cooper (Labour - West Lancashire)
Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton) 
Caroline Nokes (Independent - Romsey and Southampton North)
Chris Williamson (Independent - Derby North)
Boris Johnson laid down the law to Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel in the last 24 hours as he warned the trio there will be no new Brexit talks until the EU agrees to ditch the backstop.  
The new PM made clear his position to the French President in a tense late-night phone call and did the same with the president of the European Commission and German Chancellor.
Meanwhile, Dublin voiced alarm over the premier's ramped up rhetoric, saying Mr Johnson had put the UK on a 'collision course' with the EU. 
Brussels has dismissed Mr Johnson's backstop demands as 'unacceptable', while French ministers accused the premier of 'posturing'. 
Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney warned Mr Johnson's hard line was a 'very bad day' for the prospects of a deal, suggesting everything now depended on whether the UK would back down. 
The bruising exchanges set the stage for a series of showdowns as Mr Johnson embarks on what is expected to be a tour of key European capitals this summer. 
There are signs that EU states are starting to contemplate the possibility that the UK will not bow to pressure from the bloc - raising the danger of a bitter economic and security standoff lasting years.
Diplomats are reportedly scrambling to create a 'bridge' between the two sides that could allow trade talks to continue, after the new PM made clear the Irish border backstop must be scrapped altogether.
The Brexit row erupted as Mr Johnson fueled speculation he is plotting a snap election as he went to Birmingham with Home Secretary Priti Patel to promote his pledge to boost the number of police officers by 20,000.  
A Downing Street spokesman said Mr Macron, who has boasted that he will be the 'bad guy' over Brexit, had called to congratulate Mr Johnson, but the conversation moved on to the split from the EU.
Mr Johnson told the French premier that 'he wants to do a deal and he will be energetic in trying to seek that deal'.
But he warned that the 'Withdrawal Agreement has been rejected three times by the House of Commons'.
'It is not going to pass so that means reopening the Withdrawal Agreement and securing the abolition of the backstop,' the spokesman said.
Asked whether there was any date for talks to start, the spokesman added: 'We are ready to begin talking but are clear what the basis for those discussions need to be.'  
The so-called Irish border backstop is one of the most controversial parts of the existing Brexit deal. This is what it means: 
What is the backstop? 
The backstop was invented to meet promises to keep open the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland even if there is no comprehensive UK-EU trade deal.
The divorce deal says it will kick in automatically at the end of the Brexit transition period if that deal is not in place.
It effectively keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU and Northern Ireland in both the customs union and single market.
This means many EU laws will keep being imposed on the UK, restricting its ability to do its own trade deals. It also means regulatory checks on some goods crossing the Irish Sea. 
Why have Ireland and the EU demanded it? 
Because the UK is leaving the customs union and single market, the EU said it needed guarantees that people and goods circulating inside its border - in this case in Ireland - met its rules.
This is covered by the Brexit transition, which effectively maintains the status quo, and can in theory be done in the comprehensive EU-UK trade deal.
But the EU said there had to be a backstop to cover what happens in any gap between the transition and final deal.  
Why do critics hate it? 
Because Britain cannot decide when to leave the backstop. 
Getting out - even if there is a trade deal - can only happen if both sides agree and Brexiteers fear the EU will unreasonably demand the backstop continues so EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland.  
Northern Ireland MPs also hate the regulatory border in the Irish Sea, insisting it unreasonably carves up the United Kingdom.   
The Elysee Palace said Mr Macron had invited Mr Johnson to visit France in the coming weeks. 
On the call with Mrs Merkel, the No10 spokesman said Mr Johnson had promised to be 'energetic in reaching out as much as possible to try to achieve a deal'.
But the spokesman added: 'He reiterated the message he delivered in the House of Commons yesterday: Parliament has rejected the Withdrawal Agreement three times and so the UK must fully prepare for the alternative – which is to leave without a deal on October 31.
'He said the only solution that would allow us to make progress on a deal is to abolish the backstop. The PM and Chancellor agreed to stay in contact.'
Mr Coveney told reporters the stance from Mr Johnson was 'very unhelpful'. 
'The statements of the British prime minister yesterday in the House of Commons were very unhelpful to this process,' he said.
'He seems to have made a deliberate decision to set Britain on a collision course with the European Union and with Ireland in relation to the Brexit negotiations, and I think only he can answer the question as to why he is doing that.' 
The French minister for Europe, Amelie de Montchalin, swiped that the new MP should avoid 'posturing'.
'From our side, we need to be responsible,' she told France 2 television. 'That means being clear, predictable and it means on the other side that we need to create a working relationship, that there aren't games, posturing, provocations.' 
Mr Johnson went on the attack yesterday in his first Commons statement since entering Downing Street.
He was cheered by Tory MPs as he urged the EU to 'rethink' its refusal to make more concessions in talks - threatening to withhold the £39billion divorce bill unless the UK gets a better deal. 
Insisting tweaks to the Irish backstop were 'not enough', Mr Johnson said the UK was 'better prepared' than many thought for No Deal. 
The remarks drew a sharp response from EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker.
A call between the EU commission president and Mr Johnson last night ended with no signs of breaking the deadlock - although they did exchange mobile numbers. 
In a memo circulated to diplomats in Brussels, Mr Barnier said the demand to abolish the backstop was 'unacceptable' and breached the EU's negotiating mandate.
'As suggested by his rather combative speech, we have to be ready for a situation where he gives priority to the planning for no-deal, partly to heap pressure on the unity of the EU27,' he said.
The new PM has been accused of 'forgetting' veterans after he failed to appoint a designated minister for them in his Cabinet as he promised.
Earlier this month, Boris Johnson vowed to back former soldiers facing relentless probes, saying: 'There will be a minister with particular responsibilities for veterans in Cabinet.'
But ex-troops criticised him for not making it a priority after No 10 revealed the full list of Cabinet Ministers on Thursday. 
Friends of Tory MP Johnny Mercer, a former Army officer, said there would be 'trouble' if Mr Johnson's pledge did not materialise.
'In any case, what remains essential on our side is to remain calm, stick to our principles and guidelines and show solidarity and unity of the 27.' 
According to The Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told friends she believes No Deal could create an Iron Curtain-style divide between the EU and UK.
There are concerns that the blame game could escalate quickly if the UK refuses to pay the divorce bill. 
France has previously been adamant that economic chaos from crashing out would force the UK back to the table within weeks, but this is starting to be questioned after Mr Johnson's bullish start to his premiership. 
Diplomats are anxious that Donald Trump would wade in on the UK's side, potentially leading to a protectionist trade war spiralling out of control.  
One ambassador said: 'There is no shortage of acrimony. 
'I don't think there will be any circumstances under which there will be anything other than a Brexit Cold War.'
Another EU diplomat suggested they had to find a way of avoiding the two sides stopping trade talks altogether. 
Boris Johnson fueled speculation he is plotting a snap election today as he promotes his pledge to put 20,000 more police officers on the streets.
The PM will head for the West Midlands with new Home Secretary Priti Patel as he continues his policy blitz after taking over in Downing Street.
The breakneck pace of Mr Johnson's first 48 hours in office, his bullish rhetoric, and a slew of multi-billion pound spending commitments have all boosted rumours that he could go to the country within months.
The drafting in of much of his old Vote Leave team that won the 2016 referendum - including maverick Dominic Cummings - has increased talk that he is in 'campaign mode'.
Some MPs believe an election could even be held as early as October 24 - a week before the Brexit deadline.
Mr Johnson is facing a massive challenge to keep his 'do or die' promise to force through the UK's departure from the EU by Halloween.
The government's effective majority stands at just two - and could fall to one if, as expected, the Conservatives lose a by-election in Brecon next week.
 
'We need a bridge. We need to avoid both sides hunkering down in their bunkers,' they said. 
Meanwhile, speculation is mounting that Mr Johnson is considering a snap election, perhaps even before the Brexit deadline of October 31.
The new PM is heading for the Midlands today to promote his pledge to hire 20,000 extra police officers.
However, Tory tensions have been on show after Brexiteer 'spartan' Steve Baker turned down an offer to become a minister.
Mr Baker, a senior figure in the European Research Group (ERG) of Tories, said he did not want a repeat of the 'powerlessness' he felt in the Brexit department under Theresa May, with all the real work being done by the Cabinet Office.
He insisted he had 'total confidence' in the Prime Minister to deliver on his commitment to meet the October 31 Brexit deadline, but in a sign that hardliners will force him to keep the pledge Mr Baker said: 'Disaster awaits otherwise.'
Some Eurosceptics blame Mr Johnson's maverick new adviser, former Vote Leave chief Dominic Cummings for the friction. Mr Cummings previously branded the ERG a 'tumour' that was preventing progress with getting out of the EU.
ERG vice-chairman MP Mark Francois said last night it would oppose any attempt by Mr Johnson to bring back the deal thrashed out with Brussels, even if he succeeded in removing the Irish backstop - the most contentious element of the divorce deal.  
He told the BBC's Newsnight: 'If there were any attempt to revive the Withdrawal Agreement, even without the backstop, the ERG would vote against it.'
Mr Francois said he believed Brussels would 'blink' and agree to talks on a free trade deal instead.
Challenged that Brussels was currently dismissing demands to give ground, Mr Francois said: 'Herr Juncker in the bunker would say that...
'The EU for three years has been rolling us over because we never really argued back.' 
Entrepreneur Ben Elliot was last night appointed co-chairman of the Conservative Party.
A nephew of the Duchess of Cornwall, he will work alongside MP James Cleverly as the Tories prepare for a possible election within months.
Last year Mr Elliot was appointed by Michael Gove as the Government's first 'food waste champion' to help cut the amount sent to landfill.
Mr Elliot, 43, is co-founder of Quintessentially Group, which provides concierge services to the wealthy. He is also a philanthropist, raising cash for several charitable causes.
July 26: The Commons has broken up summer recess. Mr Johnson will finish appointing his ministers, and is visiting the West Midlands.   
August 1: Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. 
Tory candidate Chris Davies is seeking to regain the seat he was ousted from by a recall petition triggered in the wake of his conviction for submitting false expenses claims. If he fails, the new prime minister's working majority in the Commons will be cut to just three. 
August 24: G7 Summit in Biarritz. The new prime minister's first appearance at a major global summit. 
Donald Trump will be among the world leaders at the gathering, potentially providing the opportunity for a meeting with the controversial US president in an effort to highlight the importance of the special relationship and a future trade deal. 
September: The UN General Assembly meeting in New York will provide another opportunity for the new prime minister to appear on the global stage and set out their vision for the country's place in the world. -
September 29 to October 2: Conservative Party Conference. 
The gathering in Manchester will be a key test of the new Tory leader's ability to unite the party and provides a platform to use their closing speech to address the nation. 
October 17-18: EU summit. This is the last schedule meeting of EU leaders before the UK is due to leave the bloc - although an emergency gathering could be called before or afterwards.
October 31: The deadline for reaching a Brexit deal. 
Unless there is a further extension, this will be the UK's last day as a member of the European Union and it will leave, with or without an agreement. 
Despite Mr Baker's refusal to join his government, Mr Johnson filled a series of ministerial jobs outside the Cabinet, rewarding allies and removing MPs who would not sign up to his commitment to leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal.
And in an effort to show he is acting on his Tory leadership campaign pledges, Mr Johnson announced that a drive to recruit extra police officers would begin in September.
The Prime Minister wants the process completed over the next three years.
'As I said on the steps of Downing Street this week, my job as Prime Minister is to make our streets safer,' Mr Johnson said.
'People want to see more officers in their neighbourhoods, protecting the public and cutting crime.
'I promised 20,000 extra officers and that recruitment will now start in earnest.'
He also set out plans to urgently review pilot schemes which make it easier for forces in England and Wales to carry out stop-and-search operations.
Mr Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel have also set out plans for a new national policing board.
The panel will be chaired by the Home Secretary and bring together key police leaders, holding them to account for meeting the 20,000 officers target and working on a national response to other issues.
Ms Patel said: 'Officers up and down the country put themselves in danger every day to keep us safe, they deserve our support.
'The rise we've seen in serious violence is deeply worrying. An additional 20,000 officers sends a clear message that we are committed to giving police the resources they need to tackle the scourge of crime.
'This is the start of a new relationship between the Government and the police working even more closely together to protect the public.'
But shadow police minister Louise Haigh said: 'When it comes to policing, Boris Johnson simply cannot be trusted. He served in a government which promised to protect the police, then voted for brutal real-terms cuts.'
Sajid Javid: Chancellor of the Exchequer
Sajid Javid's 18-year banking career that saw him rise to be a £3m-a-year board member at Deutsche Bank will stand him in good stead as he takes the reins of the UK economy. 
The Remainer, who backed a hard Brexit during the Tory leadership campaign, is the son of a Pakistani immigrant bus driver who arrived in the UK in 1961 with just £1 in his pocket.
 Javid, 49, was raised on Stapleton Road in Bristol, which was once dubbed 'Britain's worst street' and described as a 'lawless hellhole where murder, rape, shootings, drug-pushing, prostitution, knifings and violent robbery are commonplace'.  
After attending state school and Exeter University he went on to become an investment banker for nearly two decades.
He has spoken about having mixed-race children with wife Laura and the racism he faced as a child, before politics and also when he joined the Conservative Party. 
Mr Javid ran against Mr Johnson in the Tory leadership campaign, eventually finishing fourth. He is the most senior Remain voter in the Government.
After becoming Home Secretary last year, he made a push for No. 10 on the back of Theresa May's resignation. But after being knocked out of the leadership race, he moved swiftly to back Mr Johnson and was widely tipped as the top choice to move to number 11. 
Priti Patel: Home Secretary
The Essex MP - who was once an outspoken proponent of the death penalty - has made a remarkable return to the Cabinet after being sacked by Theresa May.   
The mother-of-one is back two years after being forced to resign over secret meetings with Israeli officials, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The 47-year-old Brexiteer became infamous in 2011 when she called for hanging to be reintroduced during her first appearance on Question Time, calling capital punishment a 'deterrent'.  
Mrs Patel's Ugandan-Indian family arrived penniless in Britain in 1972.
They were forced to abandon a fortune in tea and coffee plantations as they fled the military dictator Idi Amin.
Her father, Sushil - which is also her middle name - ditched plans to go to university and opened a corner shop in Tottenham, North London, with his wife Anjana and his parents.
Mrs Patel, who has been married to marketing consultant Alex Sawyer since 2004, lived above the shop and worked most mornings behind the counter before school. 
She was educated at a comprehensive school in Watford, joined the Tory party at 17 and studied economics at Keele University. 
A former PR and policy adviser for drinks multinational Diageo she went on to work for the Conservative Party before being picked for her very safe seat in 2010. 
After a spell working for the Conservative Party under former leader William Hague, the MP for Witham became a lobbyist for cigarette companies.
Mrs Patel was humiliatingly forced to resign from the PM's top team in November 2017 after the secret meetings with Israeli officials emerged.  
Dominic Raab: Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State
The MP for Esher and Walton worked as an in-house lawyer for the Foreign Office in 2000 has now returned as head of the department.
The former grammar school boy, born to a Czech Jewish father who fled the Nazis in 1938 to Britain as a refugee before the Second World War, helped bring war criminals to justice in The Hague during his first stint in the Foreign Office.
Mr Raab is a karate black belt and former boxing blue at Oxford University in 1995. The 45-year-old is married without any children to Erika, a Brazilian-born marketing executive who was wheeled out for photoshoots in his leadership campaign. 
During the campaign he described how his father Peter fled the Nazis and came to Britain aged six as he accused Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell of not standing up for 'free and tolerant democracy' that welcomed his dad.
His father learned English, worked for M&S as a food manager and met his mother Jean, who was from Bromley, Kent. He died when Dominic was 12 after losing his battle with cancer. 
It's a major promotion for Mr Raab, who has just four months experience in the Cabinet after a stint as Brexit Secretary last year.   
He stood in the Tory leadership race on a hardcore Brexiteer ticket even harder than Mr Johnson. But after being knocked out he quickly backed his former rival and supported him in his campaign.
Mr Raab is in favour of a No Deal Brexit and replaces Jeremy Hunt. He will step into immediate fire with an ongoing diplomatic spat with Iran.
Michael Gove: Cabinet Office Minister
Seasoned minister Michael Gove who blazed a trail as a reformer in departments across Whitehall has been handed a role at the heart of government. 
The adopted son of Aberdeen fishworkers already has four Cabinet jobs under his belt - heading education, justice and environment departments as well as a stint as chief whip.
While in charge of the nation's schools under David Cameron, the Brexiteer pushed through a series of controversial reforms to the curriculum and axed the Building Schools for the Future programme. 
But he was criticised most for introducing Free Schools – state funded schools which are exempt from teaching the National Curriculum.
Critics claim the schools take money and pupils from existing schools, increase segregation and division and lead to the break-up of the state school system. 
As Environment Secretary he championed a war on plastic - introducing charges for plastic bags and doing away with single-use straws and cups.  
He was a firm backer of Theresa May's Brexit deal to the last, which damaged him in the eyes of the more purist Brexiteer elements. 
Mr Gove had a tilt at the Tory leadership but came undone when revelations about his past drug use were revealed.
He admitted using cocaine when he was younger after it came to light in an unauthorised biography.
Mr Gove, 51, is a former Times journalist, 51, who has two children with newspaper columnist Sarah Vine. Mr Gove indicated that his drive to be prime minister is fuelled by a desire to show his parents they were right to take the 'risk' of adopting him.  
Ben Wallace: Defence Secretary
The former military hero who served in the Scots Guard and was mentioned in dispatches in 1992 has been named Defence Secretary. 
The 51-year-old attended Sandhurst military academy after a short stint as a ski instructor and served for eight years in Northern Ireland.
The Remainer rose to the rank of captain and was mentioned in dispatches in 1992 after an incident involving a terrorist cell. 
Mr Wallace - who also served in Cyprus, Germany and Central America - has been married to Liza since 2001 and they have three children. 
He makes the step up to the Cabinet after spending three years as security minister - during which the country has battled a spate of major terror attacks. 
His first call to action in his new role will be bringing about the return of the British ship seized by Iranian forces last week.
Mr Johnson has suggested he wants to boost defence spending and build more naval ships to protect UK-flagged vessels in the Gulf.
Gavin Williamson: Education Secretary 
The state-educated South Staffordshire MP, who studied social sciences at the University of Bradford, has made an astonishing return to the Cabinet.  
The former Defence Secretary was sacked just three months ago for leaking secrets from a National Security Council meeting.
But he was given the job of overseeing the nation's schools as a 'thank you' from Boris for helping to mastermind his leadership campaign. 
Mr Williamson has been dubbed the Cabinet's Private Pike, after the hapless Dad's Army character, for a series of gaffes while in the Cabinet.  
His appointment comes just months after it appeared his political career seemed over when he narrowly escaped prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for the leak. 
While Defence Secretary in 2018, the father-of-two confessed to a fling that at one time threatened to end his marriage with wife Joanne.
Not long after being promoted from Tory chief whip he admitted to a brief office romance with a former colleague. He said it was 'a dreadful mistake' but Joanne had forgiven him.
Mr Williamson, 43, who was made Defence Secretary following the resignation of Sir Michael Fallon over sexual harassment claims, insisted the relationship had not gone beyond kissing 'a couple of times'.
It occurred before he embarked on a career in politics but he is understood to have revealed details to party officials when he first ran for selection as an MP more than a decade ago.
Matt Hancock: Health and Social Care Secretary
Matt Hancock stays in one of the hardest job in government despite aiming volleys of criticism at Mr Johnson while running against him for the leadership.
He told an interviewer 'f*ck f*ck Business' after the new Prime Minister's much criticised reaction to firms' No Deal Brexit fears.
But the married father of three, 40, did a superb reverse ferret to become one of Mr Johnson's chief cheerleaders.
This included reportedly trying to block the release of a paper he commissioned which recommended taxes on milkshakes because it ran contrary to his new boss's opposition to 'sin taxes'.
He also poked fun at himself during the campaign after being caught on camera wolfing down a high-sugar stroopwafel ahead of an early-morning TV interview. 
Last year he was accused of breaking ethics rules after he praised a private health firm app in a newspaper article sponsored by its maker.
But he has since made some hard-hitting interventions in areas like the impact of social media on health. 
In May he joined Ms Mordaunt in backing the Generation Why? report showing that the Tories needed to become more relevant to younger voters. 
He called on the party to change its 'tone' towards modern Britain or face Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, in a speech widely seen as setting out his leadership credentials.
Jo Johnson: Universities Minister   
Mr Johnson's acceptance of a ministerial post appears to mark an abrupt volte-face from November, when he shared a platform at a Remainer rally with television presenter and ex-footballer Gary Lineker.
The Orpington MP, 47, in the younger brother of the Prime Minister and also an Old Etonian. He is married to the Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman.
His  appointment to Universities Minister means he will attend the hardline Brexiteer-dominated administration formed in a bloodbath of the ministries throughout the course of Wednesday.
The role comes under the jurisdiction of two departments, Education and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Both of them are now led by hardline Leavers in Andrea Leadsom and Gavin Williamson.
He quit as a transport minister in November saying that Theresa May's Brexit deal was a massive failure in British statecraft on the scale of the Suez Crisis in 1956.
Talking about the original 2016 EU referendum at the November People's Vote rally in London Mr Johnson said: 'I think it's fair to say that back then we didn't really know what it would entail, the ramifications of leaving the European Union. 
'It's becoming clear that there are very few positives. It's almost unanimous that people think it will have some sort of debilitating effect on our economy, at the very least. I think it's very rare in life that you get to use the benefit of hindsight.'  
But he was quick to fall in behind his brother when he announced his run for the leadership of the Conservative Party.     
He accompanied Boris to a garden centre during a visit to his suburban London constituency and was present along with the rest of the Johnson clan when he was made leader on Tuesday.
Alok Sharma: International Development Secretary
An ardent and long-time supporter of Boris Johnson, Alok Sharma was widely tipped before the reshuffle to finally make it to the Cabinet.
He was frequently sent out to bat for Mr Johnson during the Tory leadership campaign and his hard work was rewarded as he was last night made Rory Stewart's successor at the Department for International Development. 
It will be a big step up for Mr Sharma who only started his ministerial career in July 2016 in the wake of the EU referendum having first become an MP way back in 2010 when he won the seat of Reading West from the Labour Party.
He had a relatively low profile in Theresa May's government but did hit the headlines when he was housing minister in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. 
Residents affected by the fire confronted Mr Sharma in June 2017 as they demanded to know why more had not been done by the government to help rehouse people who had been made homeless by the tragic blaze. 
His promotion to the Cabinet will surprise many given his support for numerous big policies which his new boss is known to be cool on. 
For example, Mr Sharma is a big backer of the High Speed 2 railway line and Heathrow expansion. 
Mr Johnson is believed to be considering scrapping the former while his opposition to the latter is well known. 
Mr Sharma also voted to Remain at the 2016 referendum but his loyalty to Mr Johnson was apparently enough to overcome policy differences and opposite votes on Brexit to get him into the Cabinet.  
The 51-year-old was a chartered accountant and then a banker before he entered parliament, representing the area where he grew up. 
He was born in India but moved to Reading with his parents at the age of five. He is married and has two daughters.    
Grant Shapps: Transport Secretary
A key part of Boris Johnson's Tory leadership campaign team, Grant Shapps was tasked with keeping track of how many MPs the front runner could rely on during the early parliamentary ballots.
He performed his duties with aplomb as each of the results from the ballots corresponded almost exactly with what he said his boss would get.
He has been rewarded with a return to the political frontline after a four year absence.
His appointment as Chris Grayling's replacement at the Department for Transport proved to be one of Mr Johnson's more controversial moves given his chequered history with the Tories.
He posed problems for David Cameron with a series of scandals leading up to his resignation as a minister in November 2015.
After 10 years of soaring through the Tory ranks, his rapid rise stalled at the height of the 2015 general election campaign when he was accused of anonymously editing his own entry and those of other Conservative politicians on internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
The disclosure that Mr Shapps, or someone acting on his behalf, was suspected of engaging in 'sock puppetry' - creating a fake online identity for improper purposes - proved highly embarrassing to the Tories.
At the time, then prime minister Mr Cameron stood by him, insisting he was doing a 'great job', while Mr Shapps strenuously denied the allegations and dismissed them as 'bonkers'.
An investigation by Wikipedia found there was no definitive evidence linking the account used to alter the entries with Mr Shapps, and the encyclopaedia administrator who blocked the account and revealed the allegations to the media was severely criticised in an internal inquiry.
But following the 2015 election, Mr Shapps was removed from the post of party chairman and made a minister at the Department for International Development - a move widely seen as a demotion.
He was forced to resign from the post after just six months when it emerged that he had been warned about bullying among young party activists almost a year before 21-year-old Elliott Johnson took his own life.
Mr Shapps denied being informed about any allegations of bullying, sexual abuse or blackmail, but quit his post saying that 'responsibility should rest somewhere'.
Just months before the Wikipedia scandal, Mr Shapps was accused of having breached the codes of conduct for ministers and MPs when it was revealed he held a second job after entering parliament.
Mr Shapps was exposed as having continued working as a marketer of get-rich-quick schemes under the pseudonym Michael Green. 
Robert Buckland: Justice Secretary
David Gauke's successor at the Ministry of Justice was given a massive promotion by Boris Johnson.
A man with a relatively low profile in Westminster, Robert Buckland had been serving as prisons minister before being bumped up to Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor in the new PM's reshuffle.
His ministerial career has been dominated by crime and punishment roles with his first job being solicitor general but he has a reputation in the Westminster tea rooms as a happy and cordiale politician.
His status as a QC, former prisons minister and former solicitor general means he is uniquely qualified to perform his new job - previous appointments as Lord Chancellor have raised eyebrows because they did not have a legal background.
As a result the criminal justice world is likely to welcome his appointment.
The 50-year-old MP for South Swindon overtakes Wales Secretary Alun Cairns as the most senior Welshman in government.
He has long been tipped for a big job in government but many believed his no-frills approach may have cost him promotions to more outspoken Tory colleagues in the past.
Stephen Barclay: Brexit Secretary
One of only a handful of Theresa May's old team to keep their seat at the top table, Stephen Barclay remains Britain's point man in talks with the European Union.
His status as an ardent Brexiteer will likely have done him massive favours when it came to Mr Johnson deciding who should negotiate with Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, in the run up to October 31.
Mr Barclay was ridiculed when he first became Brexit Secretary in November 2018 after the resignations of David Davis and Dominic Raab from the role, mainly because very few people actually knew he was.
However, he has grown in confidence in the job in recent months and has been a vocal advocate for keeping the option of a No Deal split on the table.
He recently hit the headlines after he laughed in public at claims from Philip Hammond, the now ex-chancellor, that a No Deal Brexit would cost the Treasury almost £90 billion in lost revenues. 
Many in Westminster were unsurprised he kept his Cabinet role after EU sources said he recently used a meeting with Mr Barnier as a 'job interview' to try to impress Mr Johnson.
He reportedly repeatedly told Mr Barnier that the Withdrawal Agreement was dead in a series of angry exchanges which puzzled many in Brussels.
The 47-year-old worked in banking before entering parliament as the MP for North East Cambridgeshire in 2010 - a Conservative safe seat. He is married and has three children.
Rishi Sunak: Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Rishi Sunak, long seen as a rising Tory star, has joined the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury - meaning he will be the driving force behind the looming Spending Review.
Mr Sunak, 39, the grandson of Indian immigrants, and his father was an NHS GP. 
He went to Winchester public school before Oxford University, an MBA at Standford in the US, and then made his fortune by founding a hedge fund.
He is married to the Akshata, the daughter of Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, making him one of the richest MPs in Parliament.
Mr Sunak was once labelled the 'Maharajah of the Yorkshire Dales' when he was selected as candidate for William Hague's old Commons seat of Richmond,
The Brexiteer Tory has held the safe seat, where he lives with his wife and two daughters, since 2015. 
Amber Rudd: Work and Pensions Secretary
Amber Rudd managed to keep hold of her Cabinet job, and gain the Women and Equalities brief, after she softened her opposition to a No Deal Brexit.
As a leading Remainer who had previously been vocally against a disorderly split from Brussels, Ms Rudd performed a screeching U-turn during the Tory leadership campaign.
Her flip flop came after Boris Johnson had made clear that only people who supported No Deal as a Brexit option could serve in his administration. 
Her decision to change her mind about No Deal prompted widespread criticism.
She also managed to keep her job despite having previously been a vocal critic of Mr Johnson. 
During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, she said of the new Tory leader: 'He's the life and soul of the party but he's not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.' 
She was the only prominent backer of Jeremy Hunt to keep a big job in the Cabinet when Mr Johnson shuffled his deck.
She has had an eventful 12 months as she was forced to resign as home secretary in April 2018 in the wake of the Windrush scandal.
But she was swiftly brought back by Theresa May to head up the Department for Work and Pensions just a matter of months later in November 2018.
Previously tipped as a Tory leader, her hopes of winning a contest within the current version of the Conservative Party were made almost impossible by her EU referendum vote and the fact she only has a majority of 346 in her Hastings and Rye constituency.
The 55-year-old has two children and was married to the writer A.A. Gill in the early 1990s while her brother, Roland Rudd, runs the People's Vote campaign.
Andrea Leadsom: Business Secretary

A former leadership contender forced to apologise to Theresa May for suggesting being a parent made her a better leader than the childless ex-prime minister.
But she recovered to be made a minister and run again as a Brexiteer outsider in 2019 before dropping out early on.
The Leave supporter, a mother of three, resigned as leader of the House of Commons in May amid a backlash against Mrs May's Brexit plan.
Mrs Leadsom was hardly a household name when she first entered the fray to succeed David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party.
But her plans to cross the threshold of Number 10 were thwarted when comments which appeared to suggest being a mother gave her an advantage as a potential prime minister over childless Theresa May saw the then-energy minister's ambitions evaporate.
In an interview she said:  'I feel that being a mum means you have a real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.' 
Her departure from the leadership race in 2016 resulted in being appointed environment secretary.
It was during this post that she received further criticism following comments that it would be sensible not to employ a man to look after children in case they were a paedophile.
Mrs Leadsom entered Parliament in 2010 after a 25-year career in banking and finance - realising an ambition she first developed at the age of 13.
Educated at Tonbridge Girls Grammar School and Warwick University, she rose to become financial institutions director at Barclays and worked with then Bank of England governor Eddie George to avert a crisis after the 1995 Barings collapse.
She later spent a decade in fund management - her financial experience gaining her first a seat on the Treasury Select Committee and then a stint as economic secretary to the Treasury with responsibility for financial services.
After a spell as a councillor in South Oxfordshire from 2003-2007 - during which she fought an unsuccessful general election campaign in the safe Labour seat of Knowsley South - she became MP for South Northamptonshire.
Liz Truss: International Trade Secretary
The South West Norfolk MP, who is married with two children, was brought up in Yorkshire and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Merton College, Oxford, where she became president of the University Liberal Democrats.
She previously worked in the energy and telecommunications industry and is a qualified management accountant.
Known for her colourful outfits and love of social media, the 43-year-old entered Parliament in 2010 and backed the campaign for Britain to remain in the EU.
But she saw the way the wind was blowing and was an early supporter of Boris Johnson's leadership campaign. 
The then chief secretary to the Treasury fell in behind him from the start, and was among those doing his batting when allegations about his private life surfaced mid-campaign.
But while she made no secret of the fact that she wanted to be chancellor, she has replaced Liam Fox at International Trade.
Ms Truss boasts an impressive CV - supplemented by her appointment as International Trade Secretary on Wednesday - defying her upbringing by left-leaning parents to hold posts as Education Minister, Secretary of State for the Environment and Justice Secretary in Conservative governments.
Away from politics, Ms Truss's flair for social media has seen her offer an insight into the woman behind the politician by updating her Instagram account with pictures of her relaxing at the beach, or behind the scenes at official events.
Infamously, the worlds of social media and politics combined in 2014, when her improbably enthusiastic speech about opening pork markets in Beijing went viral - pilloried on satirical programmes such as Have I Got News For You?
 She was also pilloried for her 2014 Tory conference speech in which she said, with heavy gravitas: 'We import two thirds of our cheese. That is a disgrace.'
Theresa Villiers: Environment Secretary 
It is a return to the top table of politics for the divorced 51-year-old ex-barrister, who is descended from Edward II.  
Ms Villiers was Northern Ireland Sectary in the coalition Government and later under David Cameron's Tory government before being sacked by Theresa May.
A lawyer, university lecturer and MEP before entering the Commons in 2005 the London-born and Bristol-educated  MP for Chipping Barnet has not always seen eye-to eye with Mr Johnson over the environment.
She disagreed with his call for a new airport in the Thames Estuary and backs HS2 as a way to utilise spare capacity at UK regional airports. 
 She has shown her green credentials before. last year she   sparked a hunt for a mystery litter bug who left their Crunchie chocolate bar wrapper in the House of Commons Chamber.
She attacked litterers who dump their rubbish - damaging the environment and harming people's quality of life.
And she warned that even the Palace of Westminster is not immune to the anti-social activity.
Ms Villiers pulled out a crumpled up Crunchie bar wrapper which she said had been discarded carelessly on the green benches of the House of Commons.
Brandishing the shiny wrapper, she said: 'However, I am afraid that it is not just young people who drop litter.
'To illustrate that, I produce this Crunchie wrapper, which I picked up this week after it had been dropped in the back row of the main Chamber of the House of Commons.'
'It is truly depressing that littering occurs even here, in this mother of Parliaments.'
Robert Jenrick: Housing Secretary
No Tory minister has had a faster rise up the Conservative ranks than Robert Jenrick.
He was only elected for the first time as Conservative MP for Newark in June 2014 after winning a by-election before then being made a junior Treasury minister in January 2018.
He served as Exchequer secretary for just shy of 18 months before getting the big promotion to the Cabinet yesterday.
The 37-year-old is believed to have sealed his bright political future, despite being a Remainer, after he penned an editorial during the Tory leadership campaign, along with fellow fast risers Rishi Sunak and Oliver Dowden, lavishing praise on Mr Johnson.
They declared the former foreign secretary a 'proven winner' and said he could 'inspire the country and revitalise our party'.
He takes over as Housing Secretary from James Brokenshire and he can expect plenty of scrutiny over his performance given the importance placed on building more homes by Mr Johnson.
He was a lawyer before entering parliament and faced accusations, which he rejected, of covering up a property portfolio worth millions of pounds when he first ran for his Newark seat.
At the time he was reported to own three homes - two in London and one country pile.
He is the first Cabinet minister to have been born in the 1980s. He is married with three children. 
Esther McVey, Housing Minister
Esther McVey found fame as a GMTV presenter in the 1990s before turning to politics, and is one of the party's strongest media performers.
The MP for Tatton – George Osborne's old seat – resigned in protest over Theresa May's Brexit deal in May.
McVey made a bid for the leadership – but finished in last place after the first ballot of MPs.
The 51-year-old, who attended Cabinet as employment minister under David Cameron, was the most high-profile Tory casualty of 2015 when she was ousted by Labour in Wirral West.
She lost her seat after the unions mounted a nasty campaign in her constituency, which was surrounded by a sea of red. 
She returned to Parliament in June 2017 after taking George Osborne's seat in Tatton, and was made deputy chief whip in November the same year.
In January 2018, she made a remarkable comeback to the Cabinet table when she was appointed Work and Pensions Secretary.
In an interview with the Daily Mail late last year, Miss McVey revealed how she had been put into foster care as a baby after she was born to young parents.
She said: 'I believe most people in their life will fall upon tough times at some point. I want to give the message that anyone can succeed given the opportunity.
But she sent Mrs May's Cabinet into meltdown in November when she dramatically quit in fury at the PM's Brexit divorce deal.
She joined Dominic Raab in storming out in fury after the PM put her blueprint to her ministers in a stormy five-hour cabinet session.
 In March she boosted talk of a leadership bid after going public with her MP lover Philip Davies.
The four-year relationship between her and the stubborn backbench MP for Shipley, 47, was already an open secret at Westminster.
But the Brexiteer lovers went public to confirm they are 'two individuals, but a couple' in a joint-interview with the Conservative Home website.
She later revealed that they were planning to marry after he proposed in April. 
Nicky Morgan: Culture Secretary
Nicky Morgan was an ardent Remainer who had said she would not serve under Boris Johnson.
But she has seemingly undergone a conversion on both fronts in recent months with the new Culture Secretary now apparently in favour of the option of a No Deal Brexit and of working for the new PM.
It was during her two-year stint as education secretary under David Cameron between 2014 and 2016 that Mrs Morgan really made her mark on the political frontline as she spearheaded the government's programme of education reform.
But she was among those culled in the post-2016 EU referendum shake-up when Theresa May took charge of the country.
Mrs May sacked Mrs Morgan with the pair having a famously fractious relationship as illustrated by a bizarre row over leather trousers in December 2016.
Mrs Morgan had criticised Mrs May for wearing the £995 designer trousers, prompting her to be blocked from attending a meeting of moderate MPs with the new PM.
After making it into the Commons in 2010 at the second attempt, corporate lawyer Mrs Morgan was quickly earmarked by Mr Cameron as a potential star and was made a ministerial aide within months, a whip in 2012 and then a junior Treasury minister.
Married to architect Jonathan Morgan with whom she has a son, the 46-year-old was educated at Surbiton High School and St Hugh's College, Oxford.
While working as a lawyer specialising in mergers and acquisitions, she came within 2,000 votes of causing an upset in Loughborough at the 2005 general election and finished the job in 2010, taking the seat from Labour by a majority of 3,744.
She has served as the powerful chairman of the Treasury Select Committee since July 2017 but will now vacate the role.  
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Commons Leader 
Jacob Rees-Mogg has been rewarded for his loyalty to Boris Johnson and his hardline Brexit views by being appointed Leader of the House of Commons.
In an unusual move, Mr Rees-Mogg will attend Cabinet meetings despite not being a full member of the Cabinet and despite the fact it is his first ever ministerial role.
The fourth of five children, Mr Rees-Mogg was born to a wealthy family steeped in the Conservative Party - his late father William Rees-Mogg was a former editor of The Times and was created a life peer in 1988, while his mother Gillian Shakespeare Morris's father was a Tory local government politician.
His younger sister Annunziata was also involved in the Conservative party from a young age but went on to win a seat at the European Parliament representing the East Midlands for the Brexit Party in May.
Mr Rees-Mogg, a product of Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, started his working life in investment banking, first in London and later in Hong Kong before returning to Britain.
In 2007 he and some colleagues set up their own fund management firm, Somerset Capital Management.
He stepped down as chief executive of the company when he was elected as Member of Parliament for North East Somerset in 2010.
On the green benches of the Commons, Mr Rees-Mogg has given sketch writers and columnists plenty of material, with his mannerisms and style leading to the affectation 'The Honourable Member for the early 20th Century'.
While he also entered into the relatively modern foray of social media in his own style, his first tweet reading 'Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis', Latin for 'the times change and we change with them'.
When it came to the main issue of recent times, Mr Rees-Mogg - chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs - proved a thorn in the side of former PM Theresa May.
He led a failed bid to get rid of Mrs May in December 2018 and was a strong critic of her Brexit policy.
With Mr Johnson's elevation to 10 Downing Street, Mr Rees-Mogg has got his wish of a 'true believer' driving the Brexit process.
The 50-year-old is married and has six children. 
Geoffrey Cox: Attorney General
Relatively unknown in Westminster before becoming Attorney General in 2018, Geoffrey Cox became a key player in the government in the run up to the original March 29, 2019 Brexit deadline.
He announced himself on the national political scene with a barnstorming speech as the warm up act for Theresa May at Conservative Party conference in October 2018.
With his booming voice and soaring rhetoric he left many in the conference hall wondering why he wasn’t the prime minister.
His professional opinion would later have a major impact on Britain’s departure from the EU.
MPs wrestled with the government as they demanded Mr Cox’s Brexit legal advice be published with the Commons eventually victorious in the contest.
The publication of the legal advice in December 2018 torpedoed Mrs May’s hopes of getting her Brexit deal through parliament because in it Mr Cox said the UK could not unilaterally leave the Irish border backstop protocol if it was ever implemented.
He wrote: ‘In the absence of a right of termination, there is a legal risk that the United Kingdom might become subject to protracted and repeating rounds of negotiations.’
The 59-year-old QC has been chosen to stay in the role as the government’s top legal adviser by Boris Johnson.
He first became an MP in 2005 and has represented the seat of Torridge and West Devon ever since. Before his political career he was a barrister, having first been called to the Bar in 1982.
He is married and has three children.  
James Cleverly: Conservative Party Chairman
James Cleverly once said he wanted to 'snog' Theresa May as he played a light-hearted game on BBC Radio 5 Live - a desire the PM later complained he had not followed through on.
The married father of two is known as a good communicator on TV and radio, and is not afraid to be combative on social media.
He makes a virtue of his lack of Cabinet experience, sand has said he would be proud to be the first BAME Prime Minister. His mother was from Sierra Leone and worked as a midwife in London.
But his run in the leadership campaign was short, dropping out before the voting started and swinging behind Boris Johnson. 
Mr Cleverly was previously a Brexit minister who insisted that while a no-deal Brexit is 'not his preferred choice', he was 'ready to lead the country' through whatever happens. 
He has been seen as a rising star since entering the Commons as part of David Cameron's surprise win in 2015, as MP for Braintree.
Prior to that the 49-year-old was leader of the Conservative group in the London Assembly - although he had a life before politics, serving briefly in the British Army  before injury ended his career, and then working in the publishing industry.
Mr Cleverly was moved up the ranks to Tory Deputy Chairman at the beginning of last year, before getting on the ministerial ladder as the No2 at the Brexit department when Chris Heaton-Harris resigned this spring.
However, despite being loyal before her resignation was announced, Mr Cleverly later showed a ruthless streak by swiping that Mrs May was 'not a good fit' for the role of PM.
Mark Spencer: Chief Whip 
The Sherwood MP is something of an unknown quantity at Westminster but respected as a behind the scenes operator which will help him with his job of keeping order.
His brusk nature did break through during a debate in 2015 about benefits that is sure to be repeatedly raised by Labour
When a Labour MP raised the case of a man with learning difficulties who could not tell the time but had been sanctioned for being four minutes late for an interview, he replied: 'It is important that those who are seeking employment learn the discipline of timekeeping, which is an important part of securing and keeping a job.'
The same year he raised eyebrows when he suggested that Christian teachers opposed to gay marriage could be prosecuted for 'hate speech' under terrorism laws.
In a letter leaked to the Telegraph he said: 'Teachers will still be free to express their understanding of the term ''marriage'', and their moral opposition to its use in some situations without breaking the new laws. 
'The EDOs (Extremism Disruption Orders), in this case, would apply to a situation where a teacher was specifically teaching that gay marriage is wrong.' 
The unmarried 49-year-old is from a farming background in Nottinghamshire and went to agricultural college before joining the family business.
He spent five years as a local councillor before becoming MP for Sherwood in 2010.
He voted remain in 2016 but has swung behind the Government's plan to take the UK out of the EU.
Kwasi Kwarteng: Energy Minister
Kwasi Kwarteng was tipped for high ministerial office even before he was first elected as a Conservative MP back in 2010 - but he has had to wait for his big break.
The 44-year-old son of Ghanian parents who moved to the UK in 1960s has followed an archetypal Tory path to the top of politics.
He attended Eton College before going to Cambridge University where he read classics and then onto Harvard University in the US on a prestigious Kennedy Scholarship.
After a number of attempts at getting elected to public office, Mr Kwarteng eventually succeeded in 2010 as he became the MP for Spelthorne.
He got his first taste of life in the government after the 2017 general election when he was made an aide to Philip Hammond - despite the two men having voted opposite ways at the Brexit referendum in 2016 with Mr Kwarteng having backed Leave.
He was made a Brexit minister in November 2018, a job which he has now left to take up his new role as Energy Minister.
He used to date fellow Cabinet minister Amber Rudd.
Before becoming an MP he worked in finance and he is a prolific author having written numerous books.
Brandon Lewis: Security Minister 
 The 48-year-old father of two gets a  ministerial job after overseeing the Tory election as Tory Party chairman.
A former policing, housing and immigration minister he was privately educated and became a barrister before becoming MP for Great Yarmouth in 2010.
As party chairman he introduced each of the 17 hustings that saw Mr Johnson and Jeremy Hunt face a grilling from the membership.
In July last year he was involved in a Commons controversy that saw Theresa May apologise to Jo Swinson, now the Lib Dem leader.  
Ms Swinson, who had given birth to her son Gabriel two weeks ago, was on maternity leave so she missed the crucial parliamentary showdown.
Tory whips had agreed to 'pair' her with party chairman Mr Lewis - meaning he would also skip the vote so Ms Swinson would not be punished for having a baby.
But Mr Lewis flouted the agreement and took part in the knife-edge vote on the customs union. 
And in September he dodged questions on whether he would quit over a major security breach in the party's conference app. 
The glitch on CPC 2018 meant they could log in without a password using just members' email addresses and view contact details including mobile phone numbers of people such as Mr Johnson.
Trolls then changed the now Prime Minister's photo to a pornographic image and edited his title to say 'd**k head', according to reports.
Oliver Dowden: Cabinet Office Minister/Paymaster General  
Mr Dowden was nicknamed 'Olive' when he worked for David Cameron.
The 40-year-old father of two was plucked from political obscurity and thrust into his first Government post last night.
He represents the Hurtsmere seat in Herfordshire, the area where he was born and raised. 
He was state educated before winning a place at Cambridge to study law.
He worked for the Conservative Party and then in public relations before returning to become a special adviser and as Mr Cameron's deputy chief of staff. 
He was elected in 2015 and voted Remain in 2016 before receiving a CBE in Mr Cameron's resignation honours.
 In 2012 he made headlines when he admitted spending most of his time on 'crisis management' after finding out what is happening in politics by listening to the radio.
He revealed he was 'surprised' on a daily basis by the behaviour of people in government and used an interview in America to reveal he listened to Radio 4 each morning to 'hear what’s going on' before deciding what soundbites to feed to Britain’s ‘aggressive' media.
He said at the time: 'I’m surprised on a day-to-day basis. There is no accounting for the conduct of individuals.'
 Julian Smith, Northern Ireland Secretary 
Julian Smith, an MP for Skipton and Ripon since 2010, most recently held the role of parliamentary secretary to the treasury and chief whip.
In his previous role Mr Smith was tasked with trying - and failing - three times to help pass Theresa May's withdrawal agreement. 
The married 47-year-old was educated at the University of Birmingham, and Balfron High School before going on to have  a successful career as an entrepreneur after setting up Arq International, an executive recruiting firm, in 1999.
In Parliament, Smith served on the Scottish Affairs Committee briefly in 2010 and was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Minister of State for International Development Sir Alan Duncan MP between September 2010 and 2012.  
He then became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Justine Greening MP, Secretary of State for International Development, between 2012 and May 2015, before he was  appointed an Assistant Government Whip in David Cameron's Government.
After the 2016 EU referendum, Smith became one of six MPs who led Theresa May's leadership campaign, and after the campaign's success he was appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Household - a senior position within the whips' office.
Smith attended the DUP annual conference in 2017 after the confidence-and-supply agreement between the Conservatives and the Democratic Unionists was brokered in 2017, and was welcomed as a 'friend' of the party.
He backed Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum and served as chief whip under Theresa May between November 2017 and July 2019. 
He became critical of Mrs May's government, claiming that they should have made it clear after the 2017 election that it would have to accept a closer relationship with the European Union following Brexit.
In a BBC documentary he also criticised ministers, accusing them of trying to undermine Mrs May, claiming their behaviour was the 'worst example of ill-discipline in cabinet in British political history'. 
In October 2013 The Guardian had claimed that Smith may have breached national security by posting an image of himself alongside military personnel at a high-security US base on his website. 
Smith says his interests include 'violin and piano' and was a junior international squash player. 
Alister Jack, Scottish Secretary 
Alister Jack was first elected as MP for Dumfries and Galloway in the 2017 election, having been born in Dumfries in 1963. 
The newcomer grew up in Dalbeattie and Kippford, attending Perthshire independent boarding school Glenalmond College, then Heriot-Watt University before launching a business career, founding a series of self-storage companies which he went on to sell, reportedly for tens of millions. 
Jack voted leave in the 2016 referendum, claiming Britain could see a bright future as an 'independent, free trading nation'. 
He quickly ascended Conservative Party ranks, becoming an aide to the Leader of the House of Lords before becoming Lord Commissioner of the Treasury - a position within the whips office. 
Jack, who is married with three adult children, did not reveal who he backed in the leadership contest, but he did vote for Theresa May's deal after raising concerns over the integrity of the United Kingdom. 
In 2018 he was among 62 Conservative MPs who signed a letter that called for the UK to make a clean break from the European Union, calling for 'regulatory autonomy' after Brexit, insisting the country must be able to negotiate its own trade deals.  
In 2017 he was at the centre of controversy when The Herald Scotland reported that he owned more than £70,000 worth of shares in Bermuda-incorporated Jardine Matheson Holdings.
The outlet's report referenced a 2016 Oxfam report that listed Bermida as 'the worst' of 15 corporate tax havens.
There was no suggestion the company had not paid taxes across the world.
A Scottish Conservatives spokesperson had said at the time: 'Quite rightly, there is no law banning politicians – or anyone else – from becoming involved in companies which happen to be registered in Bermuda.'
Alun Cairns, Welsh Secretary 
Alan Cairns, retained as Welsh Secretary in Boris Johnson's new Cabinet, was originally appointed to the position in March 2016, having been elected as MP for the Vale of Glamorgan in 2010.  
Raised in Clydach near Swansea, fluent Welsh speaker and son of a British Steel welder father and shopkeeper mother, Cairns attended a comprehensive school before going on to worked as a Business Development Consultant with Lloyds Banking Group for more than ten years.
He was elected as a representative for South West Wales to the National Assembly in 1999, during which time he was finishing a Master of Business Administration at the University of Wales, Newport. 
Cairns provoked controversy on June 13 2008 when, while on BBC Radio Cymru's radio show Dau o'r Bae, he was asked to apologise for offensive remarks about Italian people. 
Contributors had been asked to say who they would support in the Euro 2008 tournament, with one revealed she had written a note saying 'nice food' next to the Italian flag on a list of participating teams, Cairns said: 'I've written greasy wops'. 
He did apologised immediately, subsequently resigning from his position in David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet the next day. 
But after a party investigation, he was re-appointed as Shadow Minister for Local Government on October 22, 2008.  
Cairns supported Remain in the 2016 referendum, but claimed the European Union needed 'reforming', and that the UK had something of a 'special status' within the EU, praising then-Prime Minister David Cameron's efforts to keep Britain away from 'the Euro, open borders or the prospect of ever-closer union'.
Following the referendum result, he voiced an opposition to a 'soft' Brexit and championed Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement.
Cairns lives with wife Emma and son Henri, and is an avid London Marathon runner. 
Baroness Evans, Leader of the House of Lords
Remain voter Natalie Evans, Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, was made Leader of the House of Lords in July 2016, and has retained the position in Boris Johnson's new regime. 
She was educated at Henrietta Barnett School, a prestigious grammar school for girls, in Hampstead Garden, London, before going on to study social and political sciences at Cambridge University. 
Baroness Evans, born in November 1975, was made a life Peer in September 2014 having previously served as Deputy Director of the Conservative Research Department.
In November 2010, while acting as Deputy Director at the centre-right Policy Exchange, she introduced then-Home Secretary Theresa May at a speech about immigration. 
During her speech Mrs May, part of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, said that immigration was 'one of the most important issues facing our country', adding that 'managed well, immigration is something that can bring great benefits', but claiming she was focused on reducing immigration to 'sustainable levels'.  
Baroness Evans was appointed leader of the House of Lords by Theresa May in 2016. 
Her husband, James Wild, was a special adviser to the Michael Fallon when he was Defence Secretary. 
The Baroness's father was a surgeon and her mother a nurse. She revealed that her first job was at a checkout at Supermarket Tesco.
She was the hockey captain at school and, along with her husband James, is a season ticket holders at Norwich City.
 
 
Michael Gove and Boris Johnson were locked in a race row last night over the way they used the Australian-style points system in the immigration debate during the EU referendum.
According to a new book, Brexit campaign chiefs knew the system would not work in the UK.
But they used it in a ‘cynical and merciless subliminal barrage’ because British voters see Australia as white, not black.
The extraordinary disclosure is made in a new book about the referendum, Breaking Point, by Gary Gibbon, the Political Editor at Channel 4 News.
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Leading Brexit figures constantly praised the Australian points system for curbing immigration, even though most experts said it would not be practical or effective in Britain for geographical and other reasons.
According to Gibbon’s book, Gove and Johnson’s Vote Leave team knew this – but ignored it after polling experts stumbled upon the fact that it had huge appeal to working class voters, who regard Australia as white.
Gibbon writes: ‘The policy, as one senior Vote Leave strategist told me, was all about sending a signal to white voters.
‘Australia, along with Canada, is probably the nation most commonly perceived by Britons to be overwhelmingly “white”.
‘As a policy, my source said, it had “no relevance” to Britain’s specific needs, no particular merit. As a campaign tool it was mercilessly effective.
‘The cynicism is only matched by the acute political grasp.’
He describes similar telling exchanges with other Vote Leave aides. When Gibbon asked why they were pushing the Australian system when it was ‘uniquely irrelevant to the UK’, his ‘very senior source’ replied: ‘It’s just a phrase that works with people.’
Pressed to say if it was because it was meant to send a ‘subliminal message,’ Gibbon was told: ‘Yes, of course.’
Intriguingly, the aide said a similar ‘subliminal’ ploy was used to win support for Michael Gove’s controversial free schools policy during his time as Education Secretary.
The Australian immigration system was a good message for Vote Leave in the referendum ‘in the same way that Swedish schools was good for messaging for Gove’s free schools push, conveying a reasonable liberal country,’ said Gibbon’s source. ‘Focus grouping had hit upon a phrase that tempted some white, working class voters with an image of a predominantly white Australia,’ writes Gibbon.
His book says Vote Leave used ‘data analytics experts’ to mobilise public support on immigration. He writes: ‘The Leave camp had road-tested its potential to unlock the sleeping electorate, the people who don’t often turn out to vote. They trialled the messages that would connect while Remain was fumbling for a strategy.’
Gibbon says Vote Leave chief strategist Dominic Cummings told him in 2015 he was ‘hand-picking cutting-edge brains’.
The book claims mercurial Cummings, who was also one of the driving forces behind Gove’s free schools initiatives – and who loathes David Cameron – decided at the outset to ‘go for Cameron on immigration and trust’ in ‘total warfare’.
Gibbon says a ‘Pro-Brexit Tory who worked closely with Gove and Vote Leave’ told him: ‘We weren’t meant to win. That line – “You were only meant to blow the bloody doors off” – it’s true.
‘The plan was to run Remain close enough to scare EU into greater concessions. None of us thought that we were ever going to win – with the possible exception of Dominic Cummings, who just wanted to drive a car into the Camerons’ living room.
‘It’s all such a mess. I want a second referendum now.’
In another shocking disclosure, Gibbon writes: ‘An extraordinary encounter in Westminster with one of the central backroom figures in Vote Leave. I asked if support was straying into any new cohorts? “Absolutely not,” he said. “Our people are the old, the badly educated and the poor.” ’
Last night Mr Gove said it was ‘ridiculous’ to accuse Vote Leave of playing the race card.
Foreign doctors are allowed to practise in Britain despite having an ‘unacceptably low’ standard of clinical expertise, an expert warned last night.
Psychologist Richard Wakeford, a fellow of Hughes Hall at Cambridge University, said patients were being put at risk because exams for non-EU doctors were still ‘not stringent enough’.
Mr Wakeford, who has decades of experience assessing GPs, said: ‘We are setting up these doctors to fail – and along the way patients will be put at risk.’
Medics from outside the EU must show a level of competence equivalent to that of UK-trained doctors at the end of their first year working in NHS hospitals.
But at the moment foreign-trained doctors do not take the same exam as their British counterparts. Instead, they take tests set by the General Medical Council. Analysis by Mr Wakeford and other academics showed the pass marks for these are being set far too low.
In April, The Mail on Sunday revealed 72 per cent of doctors struck off in the last six years trained abroad, even though they account for only a third of NHS doctors. 
Carswell 'joined Ukip to sabotage Farage' 
Ex-Tory MP Douglas Carswell defected to Ukip in a bizarre plot to sabotage Nigel Farage’s ‘toxic’ leadership, according to a new book.
It says Carswell ‘fooled’ the Ukip leader into letting him join the party to stop his ‘awful’ views on race deterring middle-of-the-road voters from backing Brexit.
And Carswell secretly wrecked Farage’s bid to lead the official Vote Leave campaign in the referendum for the same reason.
The extraordinary claims are made in Brexit Club, by journalist and Ukip expert Owen Bennett, who says Carswell decided it was his ‘national duty’ to ‘neutralise’ Farage.
When Carswell quit the Tories in 2014 and held a by-election in his Clacton seat in Ukip colours, Farage gave him a hero’s welcome.
But Bennett says Carswell had in fact tricked him. A plot was hatched at London’s Tate Britain gallery by Carswell and Tory Euro MP Daniel Hannan to ‘undermine’ the Ukip leader from within.
Carswell says polls proved that ‘the better Farage did, the less support there was for leaving the EU’ – the ‘Farage paradox’ as they called it.
Carswell says: ‘Angry, nativist Ukip risked being so toxic that if it ran the referendum it would do to the Eurosceptic cause what kryptonite did to Superman. That could not be allowed to happen.’
Bennett reveals the plotters decided ‘someone had to infiltrate Ukip and neutralise the party and its leader.’ Hannan says: ‘Douglas felt he could hold his seat under pretty much any colours and prevent Ukip losing us the referendum with a negative campaign.’
Bennett says Carswell was forced to admit defeat in his subversive war on Farage when he became ‘increasingly blunt’ on immigration. However, he consoled himself by claiming credit for later plotting with Vote Leave chiefs to wreck Farage’s hopes of running the official anti-EU campaign.
By contrast, Carswell campaigned in Vote Leave alongside his former Tory colleague Boris Johnson.
Farage and Carswell have clashed ever since his defection, and the new disclosures could deepen the rift. Despite stepping down as leader, Farage remains hugely popular in the party, while there have been persistent reports Carswell could rejoin the Tories.
Claims that George Osborne is planning a Cabinet comeback were fuelled last night as it emerged he has signed a lucrative book deal with a literary agent known as The Jackal.
The former Chancellor’s book on economics is expected to cover his five years at the Treasury and the impact of Brexit, which he opposed.
He has been signed up by US literary agent Andrew Wylie, known as The Jackal for his tough approach. His clients include Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Bob Dylan, and Elton John.
Due to be published next year, the book will allow Osborne to maintain his political profile – especially if Brexit negotiations hit trouble. The news comes after Osborne – who is set to be paid a six-figure sum – denied he planned to follow David Cameron, who is writing his memoirs.  
 
Boris Johnson hit out at the BBC yesterday over its 'shamelessly anti-Brexit' coverage.
The Foreign Secretary told delegates at the Tory conference that the way the Corporation had reported on the EU referendum result was 'infuriating'.
And he pointedly praised Jeremy Clarkson, who was sacked as a Top Gear presenter by the BBC after punching a producer. 
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But he went on to say that despite its flaws, the BBC was an 'effective ambassador' for Britain's culture and values abroad. 
Mr Johnson used his speech to laud the free Press, and the 'right' of the media to 'make fun of the politicians'.
Although the BBC was praised for its even-handed coverage during the campaign, there has been criticism of its negative reporting on Brexit since the vote.
The Corporation has given prominence to a legal bid to block Theresa May invoking Article 50 without a parliamentary vote.
And it has also been accused of often preceding positive economic news with the phrase: 'Despite Brexit…'
Mr Johnson said Britain could thrive on the international stage by wielding 'soft power' – that is persuasion rather than the 'hard power' of military might.
One of the ways the UK can do so is through cultural exports such as the BBC, he said, telling delegates: 'Up the creeks and inlets of every continent on earth there go the gentle kindly gunboats of British soft power captained by Jeremy Clarkson – a prophet more honoured abroad, alas, than in his own country. 
'Or JK Rowling, who is worshipped by young people in some Asian countries as a kind of divinity.
'Or just the BBC – and no matter how infuriating and shamelessly anti-Brexit they can sometimes be, I think the Beeb is the single greatest and most effective ambassador for our culture and our values.' 
Mr Johnson revealed even the Russian foreign minister had lauded the recent BBC adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.
He said: 'It was Sergei Lavrov himself who told me that he had not only watched our version of War and Peace, but thought it was 'very well done' – and that, from the Kremlin, was praise.'

The Foreign Secretary also praised the virtues of the free Press, saying he was disappointed that, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, other countries had not embraced our political freedom.
Liam Fox says he does not want to share a 115-room mansion with Boris Johnson – as he has a country house already.
In July Prime Minister Theresa May allocated Chevening House as the grace-and-favour residence of three Cabinet ministers rather than the Foreign Secretary's sole domain.
Civil servants are pondering how to divide the Grade I-listed Renaissance country house near Sevenoaks, Kent, between Dr Fox, the International Trade Secretary; Mr Johnson, in charge of the Foreign Office; and Brexit Secretary David Davis.
But Dr Fox said at a fringe Tory conference event yesterday: 'When your constituency is in North Somerset and you have one of the best vistas to look out on, you don't really need another country home.
'My wife is quite keen that we have a little nosy in Chevening but I'm much less concerned about it. I did not come back into Government again because of the lure of a country house.' The millionaire MP owns a flat in central London as well as his country home in Somerset.
It is understood the trio will have to place bids with the Cabinet Office for weekends they want to use it. But Chevening's trustees have so far refused to hand keys over without a sharing deal set in stone.
'We genuinely thought that after all that misery and slaughter, we were seeing the final triumph of that conglomerate of Western liberal values and ideals that unite the people in this room,' he said.
'Not just free markets – but all the things that we then believed, in that brief shining moment, were the essential concomitants of free-market capitalism: rule of law, human rights, independent judiciary, habeas corpus, equalities of race and gender and sexual orientation.
'And the eternal and inalienable right of the media to make fun of the politicians.'
Mr Johnson also praised satirical magazine Private Eye as 'free speech of a kind still unknown in much of the planet'.
But he admitted the notion of the West's moral supremacy had been 'tarnished and devalued' by the Iraq war and the financial crisis. He said: 'We have taken those twin blows like punches to the midriff, and we have been winded and sometimes lacking in confidence in these ideals.'
Mr Johnson said this lack of confidence had been bad for the world, making it 'less safe, more dangerous, more worrying'. But he said it was wrong to use Iraq to argue all Western military action was wrong – pointing to successes in Sierra Leone and Somalia.
Despite his rapturous reception from the Tory faithful, Mr Johnson faced renewed hostility from his Remain colleagues – with Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson refusing to say she had confidence in him.
The pair clashed during the referendum campaign, with Miss Davidson accusing Mr Johnson at a live TV debate of 'selling a lie'.
Yesterday she refused to say, 'I have confidence in Boris Johnson,' when asked to three times on the BBC's Sunday Politics Scotland.
She said only that she had more confidence 'now that I've sat down with him'. Recently Tory MP David Davies said there was an anti-Brexit tone to the BBC's news coverage following the vote, and called for it to 'deal with the bias that many people have complained about'.
 
Bashing Boris Johnson has become the favourite pastime of millions of Remainers who won’t accept the outcome of the referendum. They blame him more than anyone. Poor Boris may have become the most hated man in Britain.
For that reason alone, I am inclined to jump to the Foreign Secretary’s aid. He has become unpopular by promoting a great cause. But, alas, from time to time Boris says or does things which even his warmest admirers cannot defend.
The most recent rush of blood to his head concerns illegal immigrants. Boris has reportedly dusted off one of his favourite arguments in a Cabinet immigration committee chaired by Theresa May. He thinks there should be an amnesty for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants.
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His suggestion is that illegal immigrants who have escaped detection for ten years or more should be allowed to stay. He contends such people would start paying taxes once their residence in this country became official.
I’m not at all sure this would be the case because so many illegal immigrants have become wedded to the cash economy that it might be very difficult to persuade them to pass a share of their earnings to the taxman. But even if some of them did, an amnesty remains a bad idea.
The reason is that it would set a dangerous precedent. There are countless would-be migrants who want to live and work illegally in Britain. They are prepared to pay people smugglers large sums of money and undergo considerable risks to come here. Wouldn’t they and others like them redouble their energies if they believed they might one day be granted legal status?
And with net immigration at a record high of more than 330,000 a year — updated figures are due today — this is absolutely the worst time imaginable to contemplate measures that would almost certainly increase numbers significantly.
No one knows how many illegal immigrants there are in Britain. The impeccably accurate think-tank Migration Watch suggests there are likely to be upwards of one million. Of these, a fair proportion will have been here for at least ten years. Granting an amnesty, and thereby encouraging others to come, would inevitably boost immigration.
Last night, it was reported that Boris has privately told at least four unidentified EU ambassadors that he supports freedom of movement — despite the Government’s official line that it must be curbed.
What is he up to? While he was Mayor of London, he floated the idea of an amnesty. Cynics suggested that in a city with a large immigrant population (according to official figures released today, seven in ten babies born in the capital have at least one foreign parent), such a policy would endear him to many voters.
But as Boris is no longer Mayor, his enduring passion for his old cause is perplexing. He may genuinely believe the more immigrants the merrier.
Or does he hope to burnish his faded liberal credentials in the minds of erstwhile admirers who have grown to hate him for his role in the Brexit campaign?
Whatever the reason, Boris is up a gum tree, and should be gently talked down. Fortunately, it seems that the majority of ministers on the same Cabinet committee, as well as Theresa May, strongly disagree with him. No 10 yesterday confirmed that an amnesty for illegal immigrants is not on the cards.
However, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (who was pretty rude to Boris during the referendum campaign) is said to have asked him for further details. Let’s hope she drops them into the wastepaper basket.
The irony of all this is that at the very moment the Foreign Secretary is advocating an amnesty for illegal immigrants, the Government ought to be championing an amnesty for the 3.3 million legal EU immigrants residing in this country, as well as for 1.2 million British expats who live on the Continent.
Many of these are people deeply worried about their future. I’ve met several EU nationals working here who fear they may be carted off when this country leaves the EU. I tell them their anxieties are groundless and that throwing out people who have come here legally to work is not the British way. I’m afraid they are not entirely convinced.
Equally, there must be many British nationals living or working in Europe who, despite the dictates of common sense, fear they may be sent packing as soon as this country withdraws from the European Union.
Such high-handed treatment would, of course, be unthinkable, as Theresa May well knows. At first — in the aftermath of the referendum and during her first weeks in No 10 — she was reluctant to discuss the matter.
The explanation was that she did not want to give up a potential bargaining chip in forthcoming negotiations. What would happen if the UK declared that the rights of all EU nationals living here would be respected, while our European partners did not grant reciprocal rights to Britons living in the EU?
The trouble with this approach was that it left millions of people in a quagmire of uncertainty. So the Prime Minister came up with the idea of fast-tracking a deal that would create an amnesty for British expats, and EU migrants in the UK, after Brexit.
Almost unbelievably, this humane and sensible plan has been scuppered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk, the European Council President, who insist the issue must wait until Article 50 is triggered and talks formally begin.
The inescapable interpretation of their response is that they don’t want to give up a bargaining chip and are prepared to indulge in the pretence that in extreme circumstances British nationals living in the EU might be asked to get on their bikes.
Or is it a pretence? Might our civilised EU friends really be capable of inflicting such a punishment on innocent Britons living on the Continent, not to mention their own nationals in this country? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
At all events, they have unwittingly given Mrs May the moral advantage. If they insist on leaving millions of legal immigrants in a state of uncertainty for months to come, she could seize the high ground by simply agreeing to honour the rights of EU citizens living here.
Should the European Union not immediately reciprocate such an undertaking, it would be left looking mean and small-minded — the very charges that are commonly being levelled against this country by Brussels in a sometimes nasty fusillade of words.
To judge by her remarks yesterday in the Commons, the Prime Minister is not yet ready to make a unilateral declaration that the rights of EU citizens to stay in the UK be guaranteed. She said this would risk leaving those Britons living in Europe ‘high and dry’.
Yet it is surely inconceivable that Britain would in any eventuality require EU nationals already legally living here to repatriate. Mrs May has every-thing to gain and nothing to lose by showing that this country does not play dirty little games.
Contrary to what is often maintained in fashionable circles, most people who voted Brexit are not anti-foreigner or anti-immigrant. They realise that controlled immigration can be beneficial to the economy. All they want is a fair and transparent system that limits immigration to manageable proportions.
That obviously rules out Boris’s crackpot plan for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. It also means that any deal with Brussels will have to restrict EU immigration and give the Government the right to set quotas. It does not mean — and no decent person could propose it — forcibly deporting EU citizens from our shores.
 
Boris Johnson has opened up an astonishing new Government split with a crude outburst against Theresa May’s new Brexit policy.
The Foreign Secretary stunned fellow Ministers with his four-letter dismissal of the Prime Minister’s plan at Friday’s special Chequers summit designed to unite the Cabinet. His comment risks making him the first victim of Mrs May’s fresh crackdown on dissent.
Mr Johnson – who has been accused of betrayal by Tory Brexiteers for not blocking Mrs May’s ‘soft Brexit’ proposals – spoke out against the plan for the UK to remain in line with Brussels rules in a new free trade zone with the EU.
According to a reliable source, he complained that anyone obliged to defend the proposals would be ‘polishing a turd’.
He added sarcastically: ‘Luckily we have some expert turd polishers’ – shooting a glance at one of Mrs May’s spin doctors.
Challenging the Prime Minister’s new policy to her face, he said that her decision to try to ‘align’ UK trading rules with the EU would reduce Britain to the humiliating status of a ‘vassal state’.
He also took issue with her cher-ished new customs plan, the Facilitated Customs Arrangement (FCA), claiming it would be a ‘serious inhibitor’ to striking new trade deals with non-EU countries.
His outburst was revealed just hours after Mrs May tried to draw a red line under weeks of open dissent from her Ministers, vowing that from now on she will enforce collective Cabinet responsibility and sack any Ministers who defy her. Some senior Tories believe she may be forced to fire Mr Johnson.
A Mail on Sunday poll today endorses her handling of the Cabinet showdown, with 33 per cent of voters supporting her Brexit plan and 23 per cent opposing it. The Survation poll, the first survey since the Chequers summit, suggests Mrs May has twice the support of Mr Johnson – although voters do not believe her plan is ‘faithful’ to the EU referendum result.
Last night, Eurosceptic Tories said there was so much anger at the PM’s ‘sell-out’ that some MPs would submit no-confidence letters to force a challenge to her leadership.
And Jacob Rees-Mogg’s pro-Brexit European Research Group said experts believe the Chequers deal left the UK ‘on course for a “black hole” Brexit’ – meaning we would be sucked into the orbit of EU rules with no hope of escape.
Mr Johnson made clear in the run-up to Friday’s session that he was vehemently against any scheme which left us shackled to EU rules, leading to fears in Downing Street that he and other pro-Brexit Ministers could resign.
But Mrs May launched her own plan to kill off his revolt: signalling in advance she had already lined up ‘talented’ junior Ministers to replace any Cabinet quitters; forcing all those at the summit to hand over their phones to stop them briefing against her under the table; and issuing an official No 10 communique declaring victory while her critics were still stuck inside arguing.
This newspaper understands that seven out of the 30 Ministers at the summit spoke out against the plan. Mr Johnson left Chequers after dinner late on Friday evening in the back of a Government car, having chosen not to resign. But his position prompted hardline Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen to liken Mr Johnson’s approach to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, the outspoken Conservative MP says: ‘We needed Boris to emulate his hero Churchill. Instead, he gave us a modern-day version of Neville Chamberlain.’
But an ally of Mr Johnson hit back: ‘Boris has acted with total propriety. He told the Prime Minister his views openly. There is nothing new in him expressing himself in robust and colourful language. There is no offence in that.’
When asked why Mr Johnson had not resigned, a supporter of the Foreign Secretary said: ‘Boris is of more use to the country inside the Cabinet because it will enable him to stop a soft Brexit getting any softer. The only person who would benefit from him leaving Cabinet would be Michel Barnier [the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator].
‘By staying, Boris can carry on making the argument for the Brexiteers. But he supports collective Cabinet responsibility and will abide by it. He will not be speaking out publicly against the proposals.’
No 10 sources claim that Mr Johnson was ‘engaged’ and ‘constructive’ throughout the day. They claimed his comment about ‘polishing a turd’ was light-hearted and denied he said Mrs May risked making the UK a ‘vassal state’ of the EU.
What would Theresa May’s plan mean for post-Brexit trade?
Under a new UK-EU free trade deal, the UK would abide by EU regulations for industrial, agricultural and food goods. The UK’s services sector would lose its current levels of access to EU markets.
How would the Facilitated Customs Arrangement (FCA) work?
All imported goods would be charged the UK tariff at the border, rather than the EU rate. Goods would then be tracked – and if they were sent on to the Continent, then the EU tariff would be charged and the money passed on to Brussels. No10 says the plan allows the UK to sign trade deals with other countries.
What would be the impact on UK sovereignty?
Parliament would have the final say over how EU rules were incorporated into UK law, but would have to pay ‘due regard’ to European Court of Justice rulings relating to the trade in EU goods
Will the deal lead to a drop in immigration?
Freedom of movement as it stands will come to an end, but an as yet undefined ‘mobility framework’ will ensure that UK and EU citizens can continue to travel to each other’s territories to apply for study or work.
But he is not alone in his denunciation of Mrs May’s FCA plan. One of Brexit Secretary David Davis’s aides said: ‘It is called the FCA because it is a “f*** up”.’
The drama could revive the tension between Mr Johnson and fellow Brexit campaigner Michael Gove, who infamously betrayed Mr Johnson in the 2016 Tory leadership contest. In contrast with Mr Johnson, the Environment Secretary helped swing the Cabinet behind Mrs May’s plan, leaving Boris outgunned. A source close to Mr Gove described his interventions on Friday as ‘pragmatic’, saying: ‘It’s going too far to say Michael was cheerleading for May’s plan.
‘His view was that given that the party does not have a Commons majority, and that the EU is playing hardball, her proposal is probably the best on offer.’
After dinner on Friday, the Prime Minister gave a short speech in which she hailed a ‘historic day’ and paid a warm tribute to Mr Davis for leading the negotiations.
Mr Davis briefed Mr Barnier on the Chequers proposal yesterday.
Although Mr Barnier has cautiously welcomed the proposals in public, senior EU figures have privately repeated warnings that the UK cannot ‘cherry pick’ and stay in the single market for goods without allowing sweeping freedoms for EU citizens to enter the UK.
Last night, Mrs May said that her plan was ‘a good deal for Britain and a good deal for our future’.
She added that her plan would spell an end to free movement of people; the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK; and ‘vast sums’ of money going to Brussels – and Britain taking ‘control of our money, laws and our borders’.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn challenged her to hold a General Election if she failed to get agreement on the new Brexit plan and said the Chequers agreement ‘might unravel in a few days’. 
Theresa May is just the latest person to have felt the full force of Classics scholar Boris’s ripe rhetoric – often laced with four-letter words. 
Boris Johnson thinks he's Churchill - but this so-called Brexit deal proves he's really Chamberlain, writes ANDREW BRIDGEN
This so-called Brexit deal is nothing short of a betrayal of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU. What on earth were the staunch Leavers in the Cabinet doing?
Where was Boris Johnson? At Chequers on Friday, we needed him to emulate his hero, Winston Churchill. Instead, he gave us a modern-day version of Neville Chamberlain.
Sadly, the Foreign Secretary was not alone in apparently waving the white flag of appeasement in the direction of Brussels. Other Brexiteer buccaneers and recent Brexit converts also jumped ship.
The door to Mrs May’s country residence was open but they chose not to walk out of it. Perhaps the threat of the withdrawal of the Government limo was just too great.
This is a huge mistake on two grounds. Firstly, all those harbouring leadership hopes have done their ambitions fatal harm. Grassroots party members will have no truck with their perceived treachery. Some will try to keep their leadership hopes alive by claiming it was not the time to quit and they had a duty to stay on to ensure Brexit is not further watered down. But it leaves only one credible contender with the integrity and backbone to follow Mrs May: Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Secondly, Brexiteer Cabinet Ministers are losing their nerve at the wrong time. This is not the end of the battle – it is the start of the real fight for a true Brexit. What Theresa May unveiled last week appears little short of a punishment Brexit, designed by the EU to dissuade any other country from leaving the bloc.
With no incentive to offer non-EU countries free trade deals when we leave, through mutual recognition of standards, the UK will forever remain a captive market for overpriced EU goods. It means going through the pretence of leaving but becoming a non-voting associate member, a vassal state.
We would still be locked into the EU’s suffocating embrace via this ‘common rule book’ while the dead hand of the European Court of Justice will be lurking in the background.
In contrast, we should call Brussels’ bluff and, if necessary, leave without a formal deal. A so-called ‘no deal’ scenario may sound scary but ‘no deal’ does not actually mean no deal. It simply means the UK would trade on WTO terms which we use already to trade with most of the world.
The fight to deliver a proper Brexit starts here and now.
 
Boris Johnson today launched a blistering attack on Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit plans - warning it will leave Britain a 'colony of the EU'.
The Labour leader today announced a dramatic change in Labour's policy to keep the UK in a customs union with the bloc.
The move could mean Britain will have  from being able to strike trade deals around the world after Brexit. 
And it could mean the UK has to swallow decisions on what tariffs to impose without having a formal seat at the table - although Labour say they want a 'say' in the decisions. 
But the Foreign Secretary - a leading Brexiteer - blasted the policy tweeting: 'Corbyn's Brexit plan would leave UK a colony of the EU - unable to take back control of our borders or our trade policy.
'White flag from Labour before talks even begin.'  
Mr Corbyn announced the policy in a major speech today which sets the stage for a titanic Commons showdown with Theresa May on Brexit  in the coming months.  
Laying down the gauntlet to the PM ahead of her own major speech on Friday, Mr Corbyn also warned failure to accept a customs deal could put the Good Friday Agreement at risk in Northern Ireland.
Senior Tories branded the shift by Labour a cynical ploy to derail the Brexit process that would mean the UK being a 'colony' of the EU. 
Meanwhile, Leave supporters in the party's own ranks said he was betraying millions of voters.
Mr Corbyn urged Remainer Tory rebels to join him in the parliamentary voting lobbies when the question of a customs union comes up - amid fears that defeat for Mrs May would bring down the government.
'I appeal to MPs of all parties, prepared to put the people's interests before ideological fantasies, to join us in supporting the option of a new UK customs union with the EU, that would give us a say in future trade deals,' he said. 
Up to a dozen Conservative MPs have indicated they are ready to back an amendment to the Trade Bill tabled by former minister Anna Soubry, which orders the PM to take 'all necessary steps' to forge 'a customs union' with the EU.
The government has delayed the vote until after Easter as it scrambles to shore up Mrs May's wafer-thin majority.
But Downing Street has flatly rejected the idea of climbing down on the issue, with Mrs May's spokesman saying: 'The Government will not be joining a customs union.'
There were also signs this afternoon that rebels might be backing off a confrontation with the PM. Ex-minister Stephen Hammond suggested it would not come to a confidence vote, and insisted he did not favour customs arrangements that would prevent the UK doing trade deals beyond the EU. 
As he rolled the political dice in his speech in Coventry today, Mr Corbyn:
Mr Corbyn paid lip service to the Brexit vote saying he 'respects the result of the referendum'.
But he said: 'We are leaving the European Union but we will still be working with European partners in the economic interests of this country.
'When 44 per cent of our exports are to EU countries and 50 per cent of our imports come from the EU, then it is in both our interests for that trade to remain tariff-free.
'It would damage businesses that export to Europe and the jobs that depend on those exports for there to be the additional costs of tariffs and it would damage consumers here, already failed by stagnant wages and rising housing costs.'
Britain would not be able to strike a free trade deal with Australia if it stays in a customs union with the EU, the country's high commissioner has said. 
Alexander Downer said his country would never 'contract out' its decision making to a body it was not a member of.
His warning come as he was quizzed about Brexit on the BBC's Westminster Hour.
He said: 'If they remain in a customs union and single market but leave the Eu there wont be much point in that advocacy because we will have to focus on France and Germany and so on.
‘And we wont be able to make trade agreements with the UK, we will only be able to make trade agreements with the EU.
‘The EU will decide what those trade agreements are going to be, including cooperation with us.
‘The UK wont be part of the decision making process.
'It's up to you I wont tell you hat to do. But ill tell you this – Australia would never contract out its trade policy or the regulations of the management of our internal economy to a group of other countries.' 
He added: 'Every country that is geographically close to the EU without being an EU member state, whether it's Turkey, Switzerland, or Norway, has some sort of close relationship to the EU, some more advantageous than others.
'Britain will need a bespoke relationship of its own. 
'Labour would negotiate a new and strong relationship with the single market that includes full tariff-free access and a floor under existing rights, standards and protections.'
Mr Corbyn said Labour would 'seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland'. 
But he said there would need to be a mechanism to 'ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals'.
'A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest,' he said. 
Labour would not countenance a deal that left Britain as a passive recipient of rules decided elsewhere by others. That would mean ending up as mere rule takers.' 
Despite the EU insisting it will not accept 'cherry picking' of single market rules, the Labour leader demanded the right for the UK to tear up the EU's state aid rules.
He told the audience in Coventry this would 'ensure we can deliver our ambitious economic programme'.
Mr Corbyn said the government had 'dithered' about the Brexit talks complaining that there was not enough clarity about where 'they are actually heading in these talks'.
He insisted the outcome of the negotiations with the EU could not be allowed to leave the country 'worse off'. 
'We do not believe that deals with the US or China, would be likely to compensate for a significant loss of trade with our trading neighbours in the EU, and the government's own leaked assessments show that,' he said.
'Both the US and China have weaker standards and regulations that would risk dragging Britain into a race to the bottom on vital protections and rights at work.'  
Theresa May faces a major political battle over a bid by Tory rebels to try to force her to change policy on Brexit.
Anna Soubry has tabled an amendment to a Trade Bill to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
Others Tory Remainers have said they will back it and Labour is considering uniting with them in the division lobbies.
Mrs May has a wafer thin working majority of just 13 votes - with the backing of the DUP.
This means that if over a dozen backbenchers rebel she could face a humiliating Commons defeat.
Although a few Labour Brexiteers, like Frank Field and Kate Hoey, would probably vote with the Government. 
Some commentators have warned this could plunge the Tories into such turmoil it could bring down the Government.
Technically Parliament cannot bind the Government's hand in a two-way negotiation, but the vote is very important symbolically.
And a defeat would be a major blow for the PM, whose time in No10 has been dogged by accusations of political weakness and talk of leadership challenges.
Around a dozen Tory MPs could back the the Bill, according to reports.
No10 has delayed the vote until May amid fears of defeat.
But Ms Soubry yesterday hinted she may not push it to a vote if the PM makes a concession in her Brexit speech on Friday.
No10 is also reportedly considering making any vote a confidence vote - meaning it could trigger another General Election if they lost.
The tactic is risky but may convince Tory backbenchers not to rebel.    
The Labour leader also played down the prospect of a crackdown on free movement rules after the UK leaves the EU, saying there would be no 'bogus' targets for reducing numbers.
'Most people in our country, regardless of whether they voted leave of remain want better jobs, more investment, stronger rights and greater equality,' he said.
'So we will not let those who want to sow divisions drive this process. 
'No scapegoating of migrants, no setting one generation against another and no playing off the nations of the UK.' 
Mr Corbyn went on: 'Our immigration system will change and freedom of movement will as a statement of fact end when we leave the European Union.
'But we have also said that in trade negotiations our priorities are growth, jobs and people's living standards. 
'We make no apologies for putting those aims before bogus immigration targets.
'Labour would design our immigration policy around the needs of the economy based on fair rules and the reasonable management of migration.
'We would not do what this government is doing, start from rigid red lines on immigration and then work out what that means for the economy afterwards.' 
Claiming that government plans for loosening trade ties with the EU could undermine peace in Northern Ireland, he said: 'No one should be willing to sacrifice the Good Friday Agreement, the basis for 20 years of relative peace, development and respect for diversity in Northern Ireland.' 
But Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson hit back, tweeting: 'Corbyn's Brexit plan would leave UK a colony of the EU - unable to take back control of our borders or our trade policy. 
'White flag from Labour before talks even begin.' 
Trade Secretary Liam Fox accused Mr Corbyn of a 'cynical attempt to frustrate the Brexit process and play politics with our country's future – all the while, betraying millions of Labour voters'.
'Labour's confused policy would be bad for jobs and wages, it would leave us unable to sign up to comprehensive free trade deals, and it doesn't respect the result of the referendum,' he said.
By Jack Boyle for the Daily Mail
BREXIT CONFUSION
What he said: 'Our message has been consistent since the vote to leave. We respect the result of the referendum.'
What he meant: 'After months of confusion we've made up our minds, sort of.'
Since the referendum in June 2016, Labour's Brexit policy has been all over the place. By one estimate they've changed positions nearly 20 times. 
He's tried to appeal to Remainers in London and Leavers in the Midlands and the North. He points to Tory divisions and claims Labour is united. But it is split between hard-core Remainers like Chuka Umunna and the Eurosceptic hard Left.
CUSTOMS UNION U-TURN
What he said: 'We have long argued that a customs union is... viable for the final deal.'
What he meant: 'We're performing a screeching U-turn, but pretending otherwise.'
Six months ago international trade spokesman Barry Gardiner said it would be a 'disaster' to agree a post-Brexit customs union with the EU.
Mr Corbyn – a lifelong Eurosceptic – has changed his spots for cynical political reasons.
TRADE DEALS
What he said: 'A new customs arrangement would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest.'
What he meant: 'We want to have our cake and eat it.'
Any customs union between the UK and the EU would force the UK to accept EU tariffs on imports from outside the EU. It would be the end of any independent trade policy, with deals negotiated by Brussels.
Boris Johnson says Britain would become an EU 'colony'.
NHS PRIVATISATION
What he said: 'Labour is implacably opposed to our NHS or other public services being part of any trade deal with Trump's America or a revived Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership-style deal with the EU, which would open the door to a flood of further privatisations.
What he meant: 'We love the NHS.' But Mr Corbyn's customs deal would cut ministers' power to set trade policy, making it more likely that the NHS would be part of a trade deal with the US or other nations.
SUBSIDIES
What he said: 'In our transport networks, energy markets and digital infrastructure, too often Britain lags behind. 
We would seek to negotiate protections, clarifications or exemptions... in relation to privatisation and public-service competition directives, state aid and procurement rules and the posted workers directive.'
What he meant: 'We want to hurl vast subsidies at nationalised industries.'
To do so, he needs an exemption from EU rules that prevent 'state aid'. Labour intends to borrow around £500billion to 'invest' – code for huge bungs to favoured industries,
IMMIGRATION
What he said: 'Labour would design our immigration policy around the needs of the economy based on fair rules and the reasonable management of migration. 
We would not do what this Government is doing, start from rigid red lines on immigration and then work out what that means for the economy afterwards.'
What he meant: 'I have no intention of reducing immigration.' He said the Government's immigration target to cut net numbers to the tens of thousands was 'bogus'. 
The new line saying Labour has 'no red lines' on immigration suggests he might trade away immigration controls, even though that's why millions of Labour voters backed Brexit.
UNION POWER
What he said: 'It is not migrants that drive down wages, it is bad employers that cut pay and bad governments that allow workers to be divided and undermined, and want unions to be weak. 
To stop employers being able to import cheap labour to undercut pay and conditions, collective agreements and sectoral bargaining must be the norm.'
What he meant: All power to the unions. He refuses to restrict numbers – but government economists point to evidence that mass migration has suppressed wages, particularly among the low-skilled. Instead, he will hand huge power to unions barons to negotiate pay rates across industries.
FORCING AN ELECTION
What he said: 'I appeal to MPs of all parties prepared to put the people's interests before ideological fantasies, to join us in supporting... a new UK customs union with the EU that would give us a say in future trade deals. 
Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU. But we will not support any Tory deal that would do lasting damage to jobs, rights and living standards.'
What he meant: I will do and say anything to bring down the Government and get into power. This sentence reveals the real reason for his speech: A cynical bid to win support from Tory Remainers and force a General Election. 
By backing a customs union, Labour opens up a potential alliance with rebel Tories. So despite a lifetime of Euroscepticism, Mr Corbyn is softening his position because it could take him a step closer to No10.
'This is another broken promise by Labour. Only the Conservatives are getting on with delivering what British people voted for, taking back control of our laws, borders and money.' 
Brexit Secretary David Davis said Mr Corbyn was breaking the commitments he made to Labour voters at the last election'.
Anna Soubry (tabled amendment)
Nicky Morgan (Treasury select committee chairwoman)
Sarah Wollaston (Health select committee chairwoman)
Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon MP) 
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon MP)
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire)
Bob Neill (Justice select committee chairman)
Antoinette Sandbach (Edisbury MP)
Dominic Grieve (ex attorney general)
Ken Clark (Rushcliffe MP)
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford MP)
Vicky Ford  (Chelmsford MP)
Ex Vaizey  (Wantage MP)
'If it looks like snake oil, and it smells like snake oil, don't expect it to make you feel better,' he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. 
'The customs plan would surrender control over our trade defences.
'Membership of a customs union, with a common commercial policy, gives the EU the exclusive right to put in place remedies to tackle anticompetitive practices. This means that inside a customs union the UK would not be able to take action on the trade challenges we face.' 
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: 'It's the first step of a – quite easy to see – a complete Labour sellout on the issue.
'Labour voters are going to start to ask: Are we really leaving?' 
Pro-Brexit Labour MPs warned their leader he risked betraying millions of party supporters who voted to take Britain out of the EU. 
Former minister Frank Field has said keeping the country shackled to the customs union would mean 'ratting on the people's decision to leave'.
But today he insisted Mr Corbyn's speech was not that significant - because the Labour leader was asking for a deal that the EU would never sign up to.  
Kate Hoey, another former Labour minister, said: 'I hope Jeremy realises that to divert from the recent manifesto would be a hammer blow to those Labour supporters all across the country who came back and voted for us precisely because of our unequivocal position on leaving the EU.'
Labour Eurosceptic Graham Stringer said it was vital to keep the party's pledge to make a clean break with the EU, adding: 'Anything less would be a betrayal.'
But pro-EU Labour MP Chuka Umunna welcomed what he called 'a clear change of position'. 
In today's speech in the West Midlands, Mr Corbyn is expected to confirm that Labour would keep Britain in the customs union after Brexit, closing the door on the dream of taking back control of Britain's trade policy.
He will demand a 'bespoke' deal that would keep Britain in the single market in all but name, while demanding the right for a future Labour government to tear up EU competition rules to subsidise failing nationalised industries. 
Mr Corbyn will signal that Labour is ready to join forces with Tory Remainers over the customs union in the hope of forcing a Commons defeat that could topple Theresa May.
Brussels has drawn up a plan to put the post-Brexit customs border in the Irish Sea in a move which sets it on a collision course with Theresa May. 
The Prime Minister struck a deal with the EU in December which committed to keeping a soft border in Ireland as part of the divorce agreement.
They also drew up a 'DUP clause' which promised there would be 'no new regulatory barriers' - effectively no hard border -  between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
But the European Commission has deleted this wording in the legal document putting the divorce deal down in writing, according to reports.
They have also drawn up  a last resort option which would see Northern Ireland stay under EU rules and regulations if no free trade deal is done.
This would mean Northern Ireland could accept the rules of the customs union, single  market and continue to be bound by EU courts after Brexit - even while the rest of the UK is not. 
One senior EU diplomat who had seen the draft told the Financial Times it amounts to 'a long way of explaining what a border looks like along the Irish Sea'.
He will also leave the door open to a second referendum on the final Brexit deal that could cause fresh chaos, and accept that they should only be minor curbs to free movement rules. 
The move comes barely six months after Mr Corbyn's shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner warned that staying in a customs union after Brexit would be 'a disaster'.   
Mt Gardiner said today: 'We have said that we recognise the benefits of the customs union as it stands and we are now saying that a customs union between the EU and the UK, where we together decide those third-party countries where we will have common tariffs and common quotas, is of benefit.' 
Mr Gardiner insisted Labour's plans avoided some of the drawbacks of that approach by giving the UK a say over third countries' access and the rules governing the arrangement. 
'What we are talking about is a customs union in which we, as the UK, would be negotiating with the EU about those third parties, we would not be in the situation of being a rule taker,' he said. 
Solicitor general Robert Buckland accused Mr Corbyn of changing tack in search of 'short term advantage'.
'I was a massive Remainer. But if you vote to leave, you vote to leave the whole shebang,' he told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour. 
'This is about Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership seeing a short-term advantage by potentially winning a vote in the House of Commons, and therefore jumping on a bandwagon … It's politics, that's what this is about.'
Mr Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell are lifelong Eurosceptics who have railed against the EU and its customs union for years. 
In 2005, Mr Corbyn said EU tariffs were destroying agriculture in the developing world, adding: 'The practice is simply crazy and must be stopped.'
Brussels 'needs to be reminded' it will not get a penny of the £40billion Brexit divorce bill if it blocks a good trade deal with the UK, Jacob Rees-Mogg has said.
The Eurosceptic Tory MP told the Daily Mail it was time for Theresa May to get tough with Brussels, which rejected the Cabinet's trade demands last week before they have even been published.
He called on ministers to ensure Britain feels 'different' on the day after we leave the EU in March next year, suggesting immediate curbs to free movement and the slashing of EU tariffs on things the UK does not produce.
He denied holding the Government to 'ransom', and accused some pro-EU campaigners of 'colonial' attitudes by suggesting other countries' standards could never match those of Brussels.
 
But he has come under intense pressure from Labour members and the unions to soften the party's line on Brexit. Labour strategists also believe the shift could wreck Mrs May's hopes of keeping the fragile Tory coalition on Brexit together.
Mr McDonnell is said to have told Labour's top team that inflicting a Commons defeat on Mrs May over the customs union is the 'best chance' of an early election.
Sir Keir said: 'The crunch time is now coming for the Prime Minister because the majority in Parliament does not back her approach to a customs union.' 
Tory MP Nadine Dorries warned Remainers in her own party not to fall into Mr Corbyn's cynical trap. She said: 'Millions of Labour voters took Corbyn at his word when he promised to respect the referendum result and help deliver Brexit.
'Those same voters will punish him and any Tory Europhile rebels who are considering backing him.'
First Secretary of State David Lidington will today warn devolved governments not to use Brexit as an excuse to break up the UK. He will pledge to ensure most EU powers relating to devolved areas will be transferred to Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, rather than being hoarded by Westminster.
But Mr Lidington will warn the new powers must not be used to sever ties holding the UK together, warning this would make the whole country 'weaker and poorer'. 
The customs union and single market have emerged as crucial battlegrounds in the struggle over Brexit.
The customs arrangements could decide the fate of the overall deal - as the UK has already said it will ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
Here are the main options for what could happen after Britain leaves the bloc.
Staying in the EU single market
A Norway-style arrangement would be the deepest possible without formally staying in the EU.
The single market rules out tariffs, quotas or taxes on trade, and guarantees free movement of goods, services, capital and - controversially - people.
It also seeks to harmonise rules on packaging, safety and standards. 
Staying in the EU customs union
The customs union allows EU states to exchange goods without tariffs, and impose common tariffs on imports from outside the bloc.
But they also prevent countries from striking deals outside the union.
Theresa May has repeatedly made clear that the UK will be leaving the customs union.
Forging a new customs union
Some MPs and the Labour leadership have raised the idea of creating a new customs union with the EU.
This could be looser than the existing arrangements, but still allow tariff free trade with the bloc. 
However, many Eurosceptics believe it is impossible to be in a union without hampering the UK's ability to strike trade deals elsewhere.
They also complain that it would mean accepting the EU's 'protectionist' tariffs against other parts of the world in areas like agriculture.
The PM has also ruled out this option. 
A customs partnership
Less formal than a union, this proposal would seek to cherry pick the elements that facilitate tariff-free trade - without binding the UK's hands when it comes to deals with other countries.
One possibility could be keeping the UK and EU connected for trade in goods, but allowing divergence for the services sector.
The partnership option was floated by the government in a position paper last year.
'Highly streamlined' customs
This scenario would be a 'bare minimum' customs arrangement between the EU and UK.
New technology would be deployed alongside a simple agreement to minimise friction.
But there are fears that this could hit trade, and it is unclear how the system would work with a 'soft' Irish border. 
Jeremy Corbyn's own words show how his attitude to the EU has shifted dramatically. 
January 1993: ‘The European Central Bank will undermine any social objective that any Government would wish to carry out.’
March 1993: ‘What powers do we have to do anything about the fraud in EC institutions on... the Common Agricultural Policy...? 
'People... pay taxes and much of that money seems to find its way into the hands of the Mafia or into grandiose, unwanted and often badly built construction projects...’ 
May 1993: ‘The Maastricht treaty takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment...’ 
May 2005: ‘It is morally wrong that the US ... and the EU Commission pay farmers to overproduce. 
'They then use taxpayers’ money to buy the overproduction ...it is then shipped at enormous public cost across the seas to be dumped as maize on African societies. It’s simply crazy... ’
2008: ‘The project has always been to create a huge freemarket Europe, with everlimiting powers for national parliaments and an increasingly powerful common foreign and security policy.’ 
June 2015: ‘There is a real risk that Greece leaves both the eurozone and the EU. Its future would be uncertain, but at least it could be its own.’ 
June 24, 2016, day of the Brexit result: ‘The British people have made their decision. We must respect that result and Article 50 has to be invoked now so that we negotiate an exit from European Union. 
'Obviously there has to be strategy but the whole point of the referendum was that the public would be asked their opinion. They’ve given their opinion. It is up for Parliament to now act on that opinion.’ 
Boris Johnson last night pledged to introduce an Australian-style immigration system, despite warnings it will do nothing to cut the number of migrants coming to the UK.
In a significant policy announcement designed to get his campaign back on track, Mr Johnson revived his pledge from the EU referendum campaign to introduce a ‘tough’ points-based system modelled on the arrangement used Down Under.
It came as Mr Johnson was criticised by a leading Brexiteer over his claim there would be no trade tariffs on UK exports in the event of a No Deal Brexit. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox – who is backing Jeremy Hunt for leader – accused Mr Johnson of relying on ‘supposition’ instead of ‘facts’.
Mr Johnson’s immigration pledge would see Britain’s system refocused on highly skilled workers – and could result in a ban on over-50s. Prospective migrants would have to have a firm job offer before travelling and demonstrate ‘an ability to speak English’. They would be unable to claim benefits until they had completed a qualifying period in work.
Mr Johnson said: ‘We must be much more open to high-skilled immigration such as scientists, but we must also assure the public that, as we leave the EU, we have control over the number of unskilled immigrants coming into the country. We must be tougher on those who abuse our hospitality. Other countries such as Australia have great systems and we should learn from them.’
Sources in the Johnson campaign team last night said legislation would be introduced immediately through changes to the existing Immigration Bill.
But the new system will not be up and running until 2021, and the announcement made no mention of the Tory pledge to cut net immigration, which stands at 283,000 a year, to the ‘tens of thousands’.
The system will be based on the scheme used in Australia, where prospective migrants are scored on a points system to determine their value to the economy. Key factors include qualifications, skills and age. Applicants have to be aged under 50 to apply. EU migrants would not receive special treatment. But Mr Johnson said EU citizens already here would have their rights protected unilaterally, even if Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
But the Migration Watch think-tank last night warned there was little evidence the Australian-style scheme would address public concern over immigration levels.
It said: ‘This statement just ducks all the key issues. There is no mention whatsoever of reducing net migration, let alone how it might be achieved. The UK has had a points-based system for almost ten years and it hasn’t worked.’
The Australian immigration system has been designed to allow people into the country who the government believes will contribute to the economy and fill skills shortages. 
Skilled worker visas are available to people if they score enough points across a number of categories in a points-based assessment with 60 the magic number.
One of the key categories is age, with all applicants having to be under 50.
Younger applicants are automatically awarded 30 points while those approaching the age of 50 get zero, making it much harder for them to be accepted. 
Another key category is the ability to read and write English to a satisfactory level. Points are awarded to people who are particularly 'proficient' while even more are awarded to those deemed 'superior'. 
Then there are qualifications and skilled employment history. This is where people must get most of their points from.
 For example, five years of skilled work outside Australia is worth 10 points and a PHD qualification receives 20 points.
Meanwhile, Dr Fox warned that a trade rules standstill would require the consent of EU leaders, after Mr Johnson suggested trade with the EU could continue as now even in the event of a No Deal.
Brexiteers have long pointed to the provisions of GATT 24 – the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade – to suggest trade with the EU could continue without tariffs under No Deal. They say this provision allows for a ‘standstill’ in trade relations for up to ten years while a deal is being negotiated. But Dr Fox said bluntly: ‘This is not the case’.
And Mr Hunt said last night: ‘There isn’t a No Deal route that allows us take advantage of GATT.’
The row exploded as a leading Tory said Mr Johnson would be prepared to defy a Parliamentary edict telling him to stop No Deal.
Mr Johnson has pledged that the UK would leave the EU before Halloween, but MPs opposed to No Deal are expected to use every Parliamentary avenue to try to stop it.
Yesterday Dominic Raab, who backed Mr Johnson after abandoning his own leadership ambitions, said a Commons motion opposing No Deal would have ‘zero legal effect’, and could simply be ignored.
Justice Secretary David Gauke said last night he would quit the Cabinet if Mr Johnson became PM.
Mr Gauke, who opposes a No Deal Brexit and backed Rory Stewart for the leadership, told ITV: ‘I wouldn’t serve. I wouldn’t be able to give him full-hearted support.’
Hunt: Why I'm proud to have millions in the bank
Jeremy Hunt declared yesterday that he is proud to be a multi-millionaire.
The Tory leadership hopeful was responding to a suggestion by BBC Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine that he is the richest member of the Cabinet.
It came as Mr Hunt’s campaign gathered momentum, winning the support of fellow Cabinet ministers Rory Stewart and Damian Hinds, and Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson.
The Foreign Secretary will today announce that if he becomes prime minister young people who start businesses and employ staff will have their tuition fee debt waived.
Mr Hunt made £14million after selling his educational course listings business Hotcourses two years ago.
Defending his wealth on Radio 2 yesterday, he said: ‘I don’t think we should be going into the politics of envy.’
Asked by Mr Vine – one of the BBC’s highest-paid presenters – how much he was worth, Mr Hunt said: ‘Hang on. My salary when I was running my business was far lower than your salary, if I may say.’
From selfies to driving a cab, Jeremy Hunt took part in a string of photo stunts as he drummed up support for his leadership bid in Essex yesterday.
The Foreign Secretary was pictured slurping on a strawberry milkshake in Chelmsford, saying it was ‘a big improvement’ on the one thrown over Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage last month. He also stopped for selfies, visited a hairdresser in Canvey Island and gave a passenger a lift in a taxi.
He also bought some orchids for his wife, joking to a market florist: ‘I keep on calling her Japanese when she’s actually Chinese.’ 
Mr Vine earned between £440,000 and £450,000 last year for his work on Radio 2 and the game show Eggheads.
Mr Hunt argued that being a successful entrepreneur should be seen as a positive thing, adding: ‘We have to encourage people who take risks and set up businesses and create jobs.
‘It’s not offensive – I am proud of my business success.’
Mr Hunt, 52, claimed his business background would help him get the best deal from Brussels.
During a phone-in segment, a caller told Mr Hunt he believed the EU was ‘treating us like dirt’ in Brexit talks. The Foreign Secretary replied: ‘That is exactly what I feel. I don’t think they have shown respect for us at all.’
He will today announce a plan for graduates’ tuition fee debts to be cancelled if they create a start-up that employs more than ten people for five years. At present, just 1 per cent of graduates start their own businesses.
Mr Hunt will say: ‘If we are to turbocharge our economy and take advantage of Brexit, we need to back the young entrepreneurs who take risks and create jobs.’
The Foreign Secretary told a Tory internet hustings he wanted online voting introduced for general elections. ‘I think it will encourage more participation in democracy,’ he said.
Mr Hunt also faced a row over his answer in an online Q&A session on Tuesday night.
After a Tory councillor asked how he would unite the country after Brexit, he replied: ‘Deliver a Brexit that works for the 48 per cent not just the 52 per cent – a positive, open and internationalist Brexit, Great Britain, not Little England.’
Some of Boris Johnson’s supporters accused him of describing Brexiteers as Little Englanders, which he denied.
Analysis by Jack Doyle
What did Boris claim?
In last week’s BBC debate, the Tory leadership favourite was pressed on his No Deal Brexit policy.
Dismissing fears about the impact of tariffs (taxes on imports) which would be imposed by the EU on manufacturing and agricultural exports, he insisted: ‘There will be no tariffs, there will be no quotas’. Mr Johnson claimed he could secure a ‘standstill’ in the current arrangements under Article 24 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement. A ‘standstill’ is jargon for suggesting the status quo remains until a new agreement had been hammered out.
What is GATT 24?
It is an obscure section of the GATT international treaty, but is critical in the context of Brexit.
Opponents point out that No Deal would mean the UK trading with the EU on so-called World Trade Organisation rules, meaning sky-high tariffs on many exports from the UK, which would damage trade. But Brexiteers use GATT 24 as a get-out clause, arguing these negative effects could be avoided.
So is Boris right?
No, not really – and he’s admitted as much. In theory, yes, the EU could allow for an interim agreement under GATT 24, which would keep tariffs at zero in the short term. But it would be entirely within their gift. Indeed, Mr Johnson admitted as much on LBC on Tuesday when he said we couldn’t use GATT 24 ‘unilaterally’.
Yesterday former Brexit Secretary (and Johnson backer) Dominic Raab said it would be for the EU alone to decide if tariffs were imposed as Britain would not do so.
What does the EU say?
Various EU leaders have dismissed the idea of zero tariffs in the event of No Deal.
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said that the idea Article 24 could be used to avoid tariffs without an agreement was ‘completely wrong’.
Officials point out there is already a GATT 24 provision within the Withdrawal Agreement, as part of the Northern Ireland backstop, which Mr Johnson has said is ‘dead’.
What about Boris’s critics, including Brexiteer Liam Fox?
Trade Secretary Dr Fox, who is backing Jeremy Hunt for the Tory leadership, dismissed Mr Johnson’s claims and pointed out that for GATT 24 to work in the short term, it would ‘require the consent of the EU’.
He also accused Mr Johnson of favouring ‘supposition’ rather than ‘facts’.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney was equally dismissive, saying GATT 24 applies only ‘if you have an agreement… not if you have decided not to have an agreement, or have been unable to come to an agreement’. 

Philip Hammond last night launched a blistering personal attack on Boris Johnson.
He said the former foreign secretary was incapable of 'grown-up' politics and did not have a clue how his own proposal for a Brexit deal would work.
On the eve of his speech to the Tory Party conference, the Chancellor also said Mr Johnson was doomed to fail in his bid to be the next Conservative prime minister.
'I don't expect it to happen,' he told the Daily Mail in a candid and wide-ranging interview.
Mr Hammond revealed he had repeatedly told Mr Johnson that his 'Canada-style' plan would not work – but Mr Johnson made no serious attempt to defend it.
In a withering put down, he said Mr Johnson's main political achievement was 'Boris Bikes' in his days as London Mayor and he had no grasp of 'detail' when it came to matters of state like Brexit.
Mr Hammond shrugged off his cautious 'Fiscal Phil' image and openly mocked Mr Johnson by doing an impression of his trademark plummy vowels and stuttering bluff manner.
Asked about Mr Johnson's attack on Mrs May's Brexit plan as 'supine' and 'deranged', he said: 'Boris is a wonderful character, but he's never been a detail man. I've had many discussions with him on Brexit.'
When the pair discussed a 'Canada' style trade deal, 'Boris sits there and at the end of it he says 'yeah but, er, there must be a way, I mean, if you just, if you, erm, come on, we can do it Phil, we can do it. I know we can get there.' 'And that's it!' exclaimed the Chancellor, mimicking the Old Etonian.
He continued: 'You know? No rebuttal of the arguments.' 
Then Mr Hammond resumed his Boris impression: 'We just have to want it a bit more, we just have to wish a bit harder, we just have to be a bit more bullish and it will all be fine.' But it won't all be fine because we are dealing with grown ups here and we have to deal with the real world situation we face.'
 It came as: 
Mr Hammond's outspoken remarks reflect a growing fury among Mrs May's Cabinet allies at Mr Johnson's increasingly provocative attacks on her handling of Brexit negotiations. 
Mr Johnson's call for a free trade deal based on a similar agreement between Canada and the EU is backed by many Tory MPs, and reportedly, by a growing number of ministers.
It threatens to turn the Conservative conference into a political bloodbath and risk toppling Mrs May.
 Mr Hammond told the Mail he had had 'countless' discussions on Brexit with Mr Johnson when they served in the Cabinet together.
'He never argued back. He listened to what I was saying and then just said 'we gotta go for it, we gotta go for it, there must be a way.'
Belittling Mr Johnson's track record, the Chancellor said his 'political experience is the triumph of will, of personality, that's his experience as London mayor. What were Boris' policies as mayor? 
'You can think of one or two like Boris bikes. But I'm afraid when you are negotiating with the EU, you have to look at the facts and details.'
Brexiteer Tory MPs love to call Philip Hammond 'Mr Gloomy' over his 'Project Fear' warnings of the dangers of leaving the EU without a deal.
But in his interview with the Daily Mail, he smiled and said: 'I don't recognise in myself the person I read about in the paper.
'Relentlessly negative? Downbeat? Always nitpicking? That's not me at all. I don't think I'm gloomy, but I do think I'm a realist. We have to understand the facts. But I'm an optimist for Britain.'
When his 'Mr Gloomy' image was raised in the interview, his wife Susan, sitting nearby, burst out laughing.
However, she is not so sanguine about personal barbs hurled at him, such as 'tin eared', 'arrogant' and insensitive', saying: 'It is horrible reading about it.'
Mr Hammond vowed to carry on spelling out the economic facts about Brexit – however unpopular it makes him – but is determined to show off his optimistic side. 'We're treading water, noses above the waterline, but what we do next is crucial,' he said.
It was vital to understand the EU's position to have any hope of reaching an agreement with them.
'That's not supine, that's not capitulation. Anyone who's ever done any negotiation will tell you it's just simple common sense that you need to understand the position of your opponent to negotiate effectively with them.'
Mr Hammond denied that Mrs May's Brexit deal was effectively dead in the water. Invited to compare it with the famous Monty Python TV sketch, he joked the Chequers plan was 'not an ex parrot'.
He said Mr Johnson's deal was 'wishful thinking' and would not work because it could lead to a return to terrorism in Northern Ireland; would split Britain from Northern Ireland; cause delays in lorries crossing the Channel which would put food prices up - and the UK would have to cough up the £39 billion EU 'divorce' bill before Brussels agreed to detailed talks on any such deal.
'For all the noise I've heard from colleagues, Canada is just not on offer,' he said. 'Unless we want to carve Northern Ireland from the country, a Canada style agreement is not on offer (from the EU). And if we did do that Nicola Sturgeon would demand the same for Scotland within minutes. 
'I for one am not prepared to sign up to any solution that would break up the UK. The single market of the UK and shared prosperity we have in the UK is far more valuable to us than any (EU) deal we might do.
'A lot of people in Ireland feel strongly about the open border being a symbol of the success of the Good Friday Agreement. A closed border would signal to many that we were going backwards. You can't rule out the risk out that that would give succour to terrorists as well as criminals. For decades terrorism in Northern Ireland was intimately connected with organised crime, particularly across the border.'
And he issued a fresh warning to Brussels that they must reconsider their flat rejection of Mrs May's Chequers plan.
'The EU can't just sit there and say it doesn't work. They have got to come back and tell us which bits don't work and why.'
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell's economic plans have been compared by Philip Hammond to Stalin's policies which led to a grain famine which killed four million in the Soviet Union.
A Corbyn-led government could also lead to a return to the 'squalor' of the 1970s Labour government when streets were piled with rubbish in a wave of strikes, said the Chancellor.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said 'ruinous' policies unveiled last week were a wake-up call to the Tories on 'how dangerous Labour would be in government'. Their plan to force firms to hand over up to 10 per cent of shares to boost workers' rights would have a 'chilling' effect on industry and turn the UK into a 'pariah' for investment.
It amounted to the 'confiscation of wealth', he said, and warned that 'Marxist' Mr McDonnell posed a more sinister threat than Mr Corbyn.
Mr Hammond said: 'As Stalin found out, [if] you take the grain from the peasant that they intended to plant for next year's crop, next year you haven't got a crop because they didn't plant.
'If you undermine people's confidence in the economy … investment will stop. And if that happens we go backwards.'
Boris Johnson has unveiled plans for a light show in Downing Street on Brexit night.
This comes as he has attempted to defuse a row over his failure to get Big Ben to sound that evening.
The Prime Minister will address the nation from inside No 10 as a clock counting down to the moment Britain leaves the EU at 11pm on January 31 is projected on to the outside.
Buildings around Whitehall will be lit up and Union Jacks will be flown in Parliament Square.
Leading Tory Eurosceptics dismissed the plan as an inadequate substitute for the Big Ben bell being heard.
No 10 was also forced to defend its decision to stage the countdown in Downing Street, which is not accessible to members of the public.
However, aides insisted that the public will be able to watch it on television and on social media sites such as Facebook.
As part of the official plans to mark the country's departure from the EU, the commemorative Brexit coin will come into circulation on January 31. 
The Prime Minister is expected to be one of the first to receive a newly minted 50p piece.
Mr Johnson will hold a special meeting of his Cabinet in the North of England on exit day, when ministers will discuss the Government's plans to spread prosperity and opportunity across the UK. He will then make a special televised address to the nation in the evening.
It is understood the Prime Minister will use the speech to call for the country to unite and move forward as one.
Sources said Mr Johnson wants Brexit day to be a 'healing moment' where old divisions are left behind.
Britain will not automatically deport EU citizens who fail to apply for settled status before the 2021 deadline, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has assured Brussels.
It emerged yesterday that he made the pledge to Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit negotiator, during talks in London.
Mr Verhofstadt said he had been told the Home Office would consider those who missed the deadline on a case-by-case basis and potentially still grant settled status.
It came as France told Boris Johnson it will not be bounced into a post-Brexit trade deal by the end of the year.
It accused the Prime Minister of trying to put a 'straitjacket' on the EU and said 'if we need six more months, it's worth taking them'. 
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister claimed the Government was 'working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong'.
But Downing Street yesterday admitted that even if £500,000 is raised – the amount Commons authorities have said it will cost to ring the bell – it is still unlikely to happen.
Prominent Brexiteers last night criticised No 10's newly unveiled proposals for the light show and televised address.
Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: 'Nothing can replace the bell. No light shows, no laser beams, no 'parties'.
'All the British people really want is for the bell – which has been sounded out in all the key moments of the nation's history – to chime at 11pm when we leave the EU.'
He added: 'We don't need parties or extravagances, we just need to hear that magnificent and sonorous bell.' 
Mark Francois, who has led the parliamentary campaign for Big Ben to bong for Brexit, added: 'These preparations are all very well, but they are no substitute for the most iconic clock in the world chiming out freedom.'
Nigel Farage, who is planning a Brexit night rally in Parliament Square, has accused the Government of being 'embarrassed' by Brexit.
This comes as Tory Brexiteers accused the Commons of deliberately inflating the cost of ringing Big Ben on the night of January 31. Figures released yesterday showed it cost just £14,200 to sound the bell on New Year's Eve and Remembrance Sunday.
But the House of Commons commission has claimed it will cost up to £500,000 to bring Big Ben back into use for Brexit.
The estimate includes £120,000 to build a temporary floor in the belfry and reinstall the temporary 'bonging' mechanism. They also said this would delay renovations by up to four weeks at a cost of £100,000 per week.
Fresh doubt was cast on the extraordinary figures yesterday as the cost of bringing the bell back into use on previous occasions were disclosed.
Mr Francois claimed that this proved 'officials have deliberately inflated' the £500,000 estimate, and called on Mr Johnson to force officials to ring the bell on Brexit day. 
Millionaire businessman and Leave.EU founder Arron Banks has given the campaign to make Big Ben bong for Brexit a massive boost after pledging £50,000 to the cause. 
The donation from Mr Banks, a former Ukip donor, and the Leave Means Leave group means fundraising efforts are now almost halfway to the £500,000 needed in theory to get the bell up and running.      
However, even if the target is reached it still seems unlikely that Big Ben - currently mothballed as it undergoes a major overhaul - will be brought back into service at 11pm on January 31. 
The House of Commons Commission has suggested it would be unable to accept public donations to pay for the necessary work which means the fundraising efforts could end up being for naught. 
Boris Johnson initially backed the fundraising campaign but Downing Street has gone cold on the idea, blaming the 'intransigence' of parliamentary decision-makers for blocking the bongs plan. 
Senior Brexiteers led by Sir Iain Duncan Smith are now urging Mr Johnson to 'overrule' Parliament and allow members of the public to pay for Big Ben to bong.  
Sir Ian told The Telegraph: 'I beg the Prime Minister to step up and tell the Commission they've got this wrong, and he and the government will overrule it unless they change their mind.'
The government has said it will shortly announce its own plans for marking Brexit. It was claimed this afternoon that those plans could include a speech by the PM designed to unite the nation.
The Stand Up For Brexit group which has organised the fundraising campaign has said that if it fails to raise the full £500,000 the money will be given to the Help for Heroes military charity. 
Scroll down for video.  
Mark Francois, a Tory MP and one of the architects of the fundraising campaign, announced Mr Banks' donation this afternoon. 
He told the BBC: 'We're at £166,000 and I can now make a formal announcement.
'Following telephone calls this morning, Leave Means Leave and Arron Banks have now donated £50,000 towards the campaign.
'We are now not far short of £220,000, and by the end of the day we probably won't be a million miles away from having raised half the total in two days.'
Mr Francois's comments came amid growing scepticism over the suggestion it would cost £500,000 after it emerged that making Big Ben bong on other special occasions during its renovations had cost just £14,000. 
A former Big Ben engineer has rubbished the £500,000 price tag quoted by the House of Commons authorities for the bell to bong for Brexit, calling it 'unbelievable'. 
Speaking to LBC on Tuesday, a caller called Mike said: 'I was fortunate enough to work in Parliament for a couple of years and one of my jobs there was to project manage the extraction of the clock mechanism itself and to replace it with the electric motor that's up there now,' he said. 
He called the cost that the Commons Speaker cited 'unbelievable' and added,: 'I can only believe that they're trying to claw some of the money back because it's so over budget.'
Sir Paul Beresford, responding on behalf of the Commission to a parliamentary question from Mr Francois, said: 'The costs associated with striking Big Ben on Remembrance Sunday and New Year's Eve in 2019 were £14.2k including VAT on each occasion.'
However, Sir Paul said these events had been made to fit around the planned works 'so as to minimise the impact on the project costs'.
'If the project team are required to strike the bell with less notice, the costs would substantially increase due to the unexpected impact on the project schedule,' he said. 
Number 10 sparked anger among Tory MPs yesterday after appearing to wash its hands of the campaign following Mr Johnson's decision on Tuesday to support the plan as he urged people to 'bung a bob for a Big Ben bong'. 
More than 9,000 people have now donated cash, including Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom who handed over £10. She wrote on Twitter: 'I admit I've donated a tenner. #LoveBigBen. The Big Ben must bong for Brexit campaign.'
Former party leader Sir Iain condemned the House of Commons Commission and urged Mr Johnson to stop 'sitting on the fence'.
'On the eve of the single biggest change that Britain will undergo – arguably since the end of the Second World War – the House of Commons Commission, it appears, is determined to leave Big Ben mute.
'This bell has rung out at all the critical moments in our nation's modern history. But that it should be silenced now verges on the absurd.
'Somehow they managed to find time to clang the bell to welcome in the New Year which is of far less significance. They must rethink this and allow that bell to ring.'
He added: 'I urge Downing Street to make a clear statement that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet want Big Ben to signal the moment when our great country officially leaves the EU.'
Mr Francois had earlier said the PM would be 'mad' to back down after initially backing the campaign.
'As the Prime Minister effectively initiated this campaign live on TV two days ago and as we are clearly going to hit the target, he would be mad to back away from it,' he said.
Downing Street sources had previously said the idea of restoring the bell for January 31 was 'dead', and Mr Johnson's spokesman appeared to confirm the news yesterday as he pointed the finger of blame at the Commons authorities.
'The House of Commons authorities have set out that there may be potential difficulties in accepting money from public donations,' he said. 
'I think the PM's focus is on the events which he and the Government are planning to mark January 31.'
A government source blamed the 'intransigence' of Commons officials, saying: 'We went to the House authorities saying 'how can we make this happen?' and they came back with a whole series of unhelpful comments.
'It's very difficult for us to say to people they should contribute money when the whole thing might still be turned down by Parliament. If they do raise the half a million pounds then the Commons authorities are going to have a very big decision to make.'
Nigel Farage accused the government of being 'embarrassed' by Brexit over its failure to back the bid for Big Ben to bong. 
'It seems to me they are embarrassed by Brexit and it makes me ask the question how much they really believe in it,' he said. 
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, who is chairman of the commission, set himself firmly against the idea saying the cost would be '£50,000 a bong' – and argued only people who live in Westminster would get to hear the bell.
Commission officials warned of the legal and ethical problems of accepting public donations, calling it 'unprecedented'.
The extraordinary cost is made up of £120,000 to reinstall and test the temporary 'bonging' mechanism. That also includes the cost of building a temporary floor in the belfry and then removing it again. They also said the Brexit bongs would delay renovations by up to four weeks at a cost of £100,000 per week.
Last night another Commons source said No10 could have pushed the issue by forcing a vote in Parliament.
'The issue came up before the Commission and it was explained the cost and delay involved to the restoration of Big Ben and the Tower. If the Government really wanted it they could put forward some sort of motion and they could vote on it. That would overrule the commission.'
The appeal was launched on Wednesday morning on the GoFundMe website.
Writing on the site, one donor told the PM to 'get it done': 'I find it unbelievable that this wasn't arranged ahead of time and at reasonable expense just like it has been with every other significant event. Just get it done!'
 

Boris Johnson's hopes of uniting Leavers and Remainers appeared to have failed today as he was branded a 'charlatan' by EU supporters and praised by Brexiteers. 
The Foreign Secretary launched his vision for quitting the EU in the first of a series of major speeches by Government ministers to set out the 'road to Brexit'. 
Mr Johnson hailed Brexit as a cause for 'hope not fear' and rejected claims it was a 'great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover' or a 'plague of boils' on the nation.
But it was immediately dismissed by Remain supporters. Labour peer Andrew Adonis accused Mr Johnson of being a 'charlatan' while Tory rebel Anna Soubry said the speech would drive British business to despair.
Business leaders launched their own assault on the speech, with both the CBI and Institute of Directors warning firms needed clear answers on what Brexit will look like. 
Despite the criticism Tory darling Jacob Rees-Mogg - the leader of Brexiteer backbench Conservatives - said the speech was 'reassuring' and a 'classic of Boris oratory'.
Following his speech, Mr Johnson dodged questions over whether he would resign if the Cabinet fails to fully endorse his vision of a buccaneering, free trade Brexit.
He also admitted to detecting a 'hardening of the mood, a deepening of the anger' over the June 2016 vote. 
Mr Johnson accepted he was divisive but insisted 'people's feelings matter' and that he wanted to engage with critics.
In his rallying call across the Brexit divide, Mr Johnson: 
Mr Johnson said: 'Brexit is about re-engaging this country with its global identity & all the energy that can flow from that.
'And I absolutely refuse to accept the suggestion that it is some unBritish spasm of bad manners.
'It's not some great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover.' 
Boris Johnson gave the first in a series of major Cabinet speeches on Brexit today. He said: 
He added: 'Brexit is the expression of a legitimate and natural desire for self-government of the people, by the people, for the people.
'And that is surely not some reactionary Faragiste concept'.
Mr Johnson argued efforts by Remain-supporting ministers to keep Britain closely aligned with Brussels rules after Brexit would not amount to 'taking back control'.
The British people should not have new laws imposed from abroad, he declared, extolling the benefits of leaving the EU's customs union and the single market.
In a warning to Mrs May ahead of the next phase of negotiations - in which the EU is demanding the right to impose EU laws during the transition - Mr Johnson said: 'If we are going to accept laws, then we need to know who is making them, and with what motives.
'We need to be able to interrogate them in our own language, and we must know how they came to be in authority over us and how we can remove them.' 
He added: 'People voted Leave – not because they were hostile to European culture and civilisation, but because they wanted to take back control.
'That is why it is so vital not to treat Brexit as a plague of boils or a murrain on our cattle, but as an opportunity'. 
In a message to Remainers, he said: 'More people voted Brexit than have ever voted for anything in the history of this country.
'I say in all candour that if there were to be a second vote I believe that we would simply have another year of wrangling and turmoil and feuding in which the whole country would lose.
'So let's not go there.'
In answer to a question after his keynote Brexit speech Mr Johnson said that the Prime Minister 'was the cure' for 'Brexchosis'.
Business leaders launched an assault on Boris Johnson's Brexit speech today warning a 'bonfire' of EU rules would be bad for firms.
Both the CBI and Institute of Directors warning firms needed clear answers on what Brexit will look like. 
John Foster, CBI director of campaigns, told the Standard: 'Businesses aren't looking for a bonfire of regulation – quite the opposite - our aerospace, automotive and chemical sectors, to name a few, all have highly integrated European supply chains that benefit from consistent regulation.
The data economy - worth £240 billion - needed alignment of rules to help firms in the sector grow to their potential, he added. Mr Johnson, however, said high-tech was one area where UK innovators should be free to 'do things differently'.
Edwin Morgan, Director of Policy at the Institute of Directors, complained at the lack of detail from the Government. 'They are still largely in the dark about what relationship will replace their current full level of access to the EU,' he said.
He added: 'The Prime Minister can do a great Brexit deal that can unite the country and that is what the whole cabinet wants to achieve.' 
Mr Rees-Mogg, leader of the Tory European Research Group, told MailOnline: 'It is an excellent and reassuring speech reiterating the need to leave the single market and customs union. 
'It is positive in tone, looking to the opportunities beyond the narrow European sphere and generous to Remainers. 
'A classic of Boris oratory.' 
John Foster, CBI director of campaigns, told the Standard: 'Businesses aren't looking for a bonfire of regulation – quite the opposite - our aerospace, automotive and chemical sectors, to name a few, all have highly integrated European supply chains that benefit from consistent regulation.
The data economy - worth £240 billion - needed alignment of rules to help firms in the sector grow to their potential, he added. Mr Johnson, however, said high-tech was one area where UK innovators should be free to 'do things differently'.
Edwin Morgan, Director of Policy at the Institute of Directors, complained at the lack of detail from the Government. 'They are still largely in the dark about what relationship will replace their current full level of access to the EU,' he said.
Leading Remainers branded the Foreign Secretary's intervention 'deeply cynical and dishonest' and dismissed his Valentine's Day offer of an olive branch.
Leading Remainers have poured scorn on Boris Johnson's Valentine's Day bid to woo them
Lord Adonis, Labour peer and former Cabinet minister   
'Time to unite ... behind him and his bunch of charlatans.
'We are in this mess because his motto was the most infamous line in Milton: ''Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven''.' 
Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames 
'You can't go Global unless you have a properly adequately resourced Diplomatic Service and Armed Forces capable of doing the business.' 
Eloise Todd CEO of Anti-Brexit organisation Best for Britain
'Usually people hope to be swept off their feet on Valentine's day but this speech was a Valentine's day disaster.
'The only thing Boris wants on Valentine's is the love of the Tory party.'
Open Britain campaigner Chuka Umunna 
'This was an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy from Boris Johnson. His vision of Brexit may be many things, but it is not liberal.'

Lord Cooper, pollster and David Cameron's ex director of strategy
'Vote Leave made a Farageist, not *liberal* case for Brexit. Cutting immigration & boosting the NHS is what Johnson, Gove & co. sold to the British people. 
'Deeply cynical & dishonest for Johnson to try to re-frame Brexit as *liberal* now.'
Antoinette Sandbach, Tory MP and leading Remainer rebel
'Reports of Johnson speech seem to indicate we shouldn't be subject to EU laws as we can't influence them. 
'However that is inevitable consequence of Brexit, if we want to continue to export to EU we have to comply with their rules!!'
Tom Brake, Lib Dem MP and Brexit spokesman
'If this speech was supposed to offer an olive branch to Remainers, Boris must have picked up the other version.'    
Lord Adonis, the former Labour Cabinet minister, condemned Mr Johnson as a 'charlatan'. 
He said: 'We are in this mess because his motto was the most infamous line in Milton: ''Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven''.' 
Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames rejected Mr Johnson's claim that Brexit could deliver Britain's global mission.
As the Foreign Secretary spoke, he tweeted: 'You can't go Global unless you have a properly adequately resourced Diplomatic Service and Armed Forces capable of doing the business.'   
Tory rebel Anna Soubry tweeted: '@BorisJohnson fails to understand the very real concerns of British business far from reaching out it will drive many to deeper despair.'
Sarah Wollaston, who swapped from the leave camp to remain during the referendum campaign, posted: 'Boris presenting an optimistic vision of global Britain. I hope he is right. But his speech did not address any of the serious practical difficulties that will affect real peoples lives with a hard Brexit.'
In a press conference in Brussels while Mr Johnson spoke, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said: 'Some in the British political society are against the truth, pretending that I am a stupid, stubborn federalist, that I am in favour of a European superstate.
'I am strictly against a European superstate. We are not the United States of America, we are the European Union, which is a rich body because we have these 27, or 28, nations.
'The European Union cannot be built against the European nations, so this is total nonsense.'  
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament's representative in the negotiations, said Brexit meant throwing up barriers to the movement of people and trade.
As the Foreign Secretary laid out his vision for Brexit, Mr Verhofstadt insisted it was the 'opposite' of liberal and was instead nationalism.
Mr Johnson attempted to argue in his speech that the vote was not inspired by Nigel Farage but a nobel vision of self-government.
Mr Verhofstadt tweeted: 'Putting up barriers to the movement of trade and people & suggesting that the identity of citizens can only be national is not liberal - it's quite the opposite.'
Andrew Cooper, a pollster who was director of strategy for David Cameron before being sent to the House of Lords, wrote on Twitter: 'Vote Leave made a Farageist, not *liberal* case for Brexit. 
'Cutting immigration & boosting the NHS is what Johnson, Gove & co. sold to the British people.  Deeply cynical & dishonest for Johnson to try to re-frame Brexit as *liberal* now.'
Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach - one of the leading Remainer rebels on the Conservative benches - also poured scorn on the speech.
She wrote: 'Reports of Johnson speech seem to indicate we shouldn't be subject to EU laws as we can't influence them.
A top MEP lashed Boris Johnson's vision of a 'liberal Brexit' today. 
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament's representative in the negotiations, said Brexit meant throwing up barriers to the movement of people and trade.
As the Foreign Secretary laid out his vision for Brexit, Mr Verhofstadt insisted it was the 'opposite' of liberal and was instead nationalism.
Mr Johnson attempted to argue in his speech that the vote was not inspired by Nigel Farage but a nobel vision of self-government.
Mr Verhofstadt tweeted: 'Putting up barriers to the movement of trade and people & suggesting that the identity of citizens can only be national is not liberal - it's quite the opposite.'
'However that is inevitable consequence of Brexit, if we want to continue to export to EU we have to comply with their rules!!' 
Mr Johnson's demand that Britain should have a clean break from Brussels rules will ratchet up the pressure on Theresa May, who is seeking to find a compromise to please the warring factions of her Cabinet.
During talks, Mr Johnson has faced resistance from Chancellor Philip Hammond and Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who fear moving too far from EU regulations could damage existing export markets.
Some Tories fear the Foreign Secretary could walk out of the Government if the Prime Minister attempts a fudge that does not see Britain fully go its own way after Brexit.
Meanwhile, in a newspaper article today, Mr Johnson described Britain's departure from the EU as 'the great project of our age'.
Writing in The Sun, he said: 'When the history books come to be written, Brexit will be seen as just the latest way in which the British bucked the trend and took the initiative – and did something that responds to the needs and opportunities of the world today.'
His speech is the first of six by Mrs May and Cabinet members to set out the Government's road map for Brexit. 
Brexit Secretary David Davis, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Mrs May's deputy David Lidington are set to speak in coming weeks.
In Westminster this morning, Mr Johnson warned Europhiles that efforts to stay in the EU would permanently damage the trust of voters.
Jean Claude-Juncker today told member states they must cough up more cash to bankroll the project amid warnings the EU faces a £12.5bn a-year funding black hole after Brexit.
The European Commission President said it cannot be 'business as usual' and countries will have to 'rethink things' and loosen their purse strings.
He took a swipe at countries who he said 'don't want to pay more' but want the Brussels club 'to do more'.
And he warned that projects to beef up security along Europe's borders in the wake of the refugee crisis could be imperiled if they do not properly fund it.
He said: 'Member states are going to have to rethink things.
'Some member states don't want to pay more but they want to do more. Other member states want to receive more.'
'I fear some people are becoming ever more determined to stop Brexit, to reverse the referendum vote of June 23, 2016, and to frustrate the will of the people,' he said. 
'I believe that would be a disastrous mistake that would lead to permanent and ineradicable feelings of betrayal. We cannot and will not let it happen.
'But if we are to carry this project through to national success, as we must, we must also reach out to those who still have anxieties.'
He added: 'I want to try today to anatomise at least some of those fears and to show to the best of my ability that they are unfounded and that the very opposite is usually true – that Brexit is not grounds for fear but hope.'
Reaching out to Remainers, Mr Johnson said the country 'must not repeat the mistakes of the past when pro-EU voices too often ignored the voices of those who opposed EU membership'.
'It is not good enough to say to Remainers – you lost, get over it; because we must accept that many are actuated by entirely noble sentiments, a real sense of solidarity with our European neighbours and a desire for the UK to succeed,' he said.
But Mr Johnson, who yesterday returned to work in London after a tour of south Asia, also took a swipe at the leaked civil servant reports which claimed Britain would be better off if it stays closely tied to Brussels.




Philip Hammond warned Brexit could be a rough ride today but insisted we can become 'bigger and better' outside the EU.
Delivering his first speech to Conservative conference as Chancellor, Mr Hammond outlined an optimistic vision of the country's future after cutting ties with Brussels.
But he confirmed that the goal of eradicating the deficit by the end of the decade will be scrapped to deal with the upheaval of leaving the bloc. 
He hinted at 'fiscal' moves to ease the process later this year - potentially including tax cuts.
Mr Hammond told activists he wanted to 'deliver the vibrant, successful economy that will mean when future generations look back on our decision in 2016 they will see not the end of an era, but the beginning of a new age'.
'Not a country turning inward, but a nation reaching out decisively, confidently to grasp new opportunities,' he said.
'A bigger, better, Greater Britain. Truly, a country that works for everyone.' 
The warm words for Mr Osborne come despite Theresa May brutally sacking him after becoming Prime Minister. Mrs May has also jettisoned other key planks of the policy agenda pursued by the old administration.
Mr Hammond highlighted the notorious 2010 note left by Labour former Treasury minister, telling his coalition successor there 'is no money'. 
Philip Hammond today moved to calm nerves about the post-Brexit economy with his first speech to party activists since becoming chancellor.
Here are the key points: 
'My predecessor didn't leave me a note,' Mr Hammond said.
'But if he had, here's what it would have said: 'Dear Chancellor, Employment is up; Wages are rising; the Deficit is down and income tax has been cut for tens of millions of people.'
'That is the Conservative record. That is the difference Conservative leadership makes.' 
Repeatedly naming Mr Osborne, Mr Hammond - who has announced that the government is abandoning the goal or eradicating the deficit by the end of the decade - credited his predecessor with 'pulling us back from the precipice'. 
'The tough early choices and the doggedness in sticking with them delivered that intangible, but indispensable commodity: credibility,' he said.
Mr Hammond - who campaigned for Remain and is regarded as more cautious that Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and David Davis - insisted that the government would honour the historic referendum result.  
'That result in June gave clear voice to a desire by the British people for an end to political union and a restoration of control,' he said. 'Control over the rules and regulations that govern their lives. 
British manufacturers have clocked up their best month for more than two years after the weak pound boosted exports.
In a further sign that the economy is thriving following the Brexit vote, activity in factories in September grew at the fastest pace since June 2014.
The findings, by research group Markit, showed that British manufacturers are now the strongest in Europe, leaving their rivals in Germany, France, Italy and Spain trailing. Industry experts hailed the 'expectation-busting surge' in factory output.
The upbeat figures came as the FTSE 100 index of leading shares powered to its highest level for more than a year – surging back towards the 7,000 mark.
But the pound – which was trading at $1.50 before the EU referendum – fell to $1.2818, only just above the 31-year low of $1.2801 reached in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. Sterling was also down against the euro – hitting a three-year low of 1.1434 euros.
Chancellor Philip Hammond hailed the 'underlying strength of our economy', but warned of 'turbulence' ahead as Britain negotiates its withdrawal from the EU.
The International Monetary Fund – whose managing director Christine Lagarde vehemently opposed Brexit – is today expected to raise its growth forecasts for the UK for this year. It is thought the latest forecasts will put Britain on course to be the fastest-growing economy in the G7 in 2016 – beating the US, Japan, Canada, Germany, France and Italy.
Lee Hopley, chief economist at the EEF industry lobby group, said: 'The expectation-busting surge in manufacturing activity points to conditions across industry being considerably better than business as usual, with expansion in all industry segments boding well for growth in the second half of this year.'

'Control over who can live and work in their country. And control over how their money is spent.
'And I can reassure the British people of this: that message has been received, loud and clear.
'No ifs, no buts, no second referendums. We are leaving the European Union.' 

However, Mr Hammond warned that the public had not voted to become 'poorer, or less secure'.
'Our task is clear: repatriate our sovereignty; control our borders; and seize the opportunities that the wider world has to offer, but do all of this while protecting our economy, our jobs and our living standards.'
He said the process of Brexit would be 'complex' and required 'patience, experience, meticulous planning and steely resolution'. 
In one key passage, he raised the prospect of radical action to ease the Brexit process later this year.
'The independent Bank of England successfully cut interest rates to restore confidence in the wake of the vote,' he said.
'But as the economy responds over the coming months fiscal policy may also have a role to play.
'So let me be clear. Throughout the negotiating process, we are ready to take whatever steps are necessary to protect this economy from turbulence.'
Asked afterwards if that meant a tax cut was on the table, an aide to Mr Hammond said: 'He is considering all the things he needs to consider.'
Earlier, Mr Hammond used a round of broadcast interview to warn that Brexit will be a 'rollercoaster' ride and the government is hoping to strike a deal with the EU as quickly as possible.
The Chancellor confirmed that the 'turbulence' meant he would not be able to wipe out the deficit by the end of the decade as previously promised by George Osborne.
He also accepted that most forecasts showed economic growth will take a hit from the process of cutting ties with the EU - refusing to reject suggestions that the loss could be as much as 4 per cent over the coming years.
But he insisted the UK economy was in a strong position to handle the upheaval - rating its performance as 'eight out of 10'.
The comments came after Theresa May revealed that Britain should be out of the EU by April 2019 at the latest.
The Prime Minister is set to trigger Article 50 - the formal two-year process of leaving the Brussels club - by the end of March next year.
She has also signalled a tough approach to negotiations with other states, making clear that the UK will demand control over immigration as a 'red line' in any trade deal.  
Mr Hammond dismissed the idea that it meant we were headed for a 'hard' Brexit - without maintaining membership of the Single Market.
He said the government would not rule out keeping the trade arrangement - but warned there would be no running commentary on how the talks were going. 
In a round of broadcast interviews, Mr Hammond confirmed that his Autumn Statement in November will set out a fresh policy framework allowing the Government greater scope to borrow for investment.
However, he insisted this did not mean an end to austerity, with the new plan continuing the 'task of fiscal consolidation' begun under Mr Osborne and maintaining controls on public spending in order to ensure that Britain lives within its means. 
The Chancellor told BBC1's Breakfast: 'We must expect some turbulence as we go through this negotiating process. There will be a period of a couple of years or perhaps even longer when businesses are uncertain about the final state of our relationship with the European Union.
'During that period, we need to support the economy to make sure that consumer confidence remains, to make sure that business confidence is stable, so that we get the investments that keeps the jobs that keep Britain going.
'That's my challenge as we go through this period.'
Mr Hammond said: 'I'm absolutely in favour of trying to get this deal done as quickly as possible, because the sooner it's done, the sooner we restore certainty to our economy and allow businesses to start investing with confidence for the future.
'But I think we must go into this negotiating period with a realistic expectation of the turbulence that there could be during the negotiations. People will be speculating - one day it's going very well, one day it's not going so well.
'We have to expect a period when confidence will go up and down - perhaps on a bit of a rollercoaster - until we get to a final agreement, where businesses and consumers can understand what the future relationship between Britain and the European Union will be.'
Mr Hammond declined to say whether he expected Britain to retain full access to the single market, insisting it would undermine the Government's negotiating position if it provided a 'running commentary' on its negotiating position.
He said the Government was going in to negotiations - due to be complete by the spring of 2019 - in a 'spirit of determination' to get a good deal for Britain.
But he warned: 'We won't control that process, because we have 27 negotiating partners on the other side.'
Data since the June 23 referendum have shown that the UK economy is 'very strong going into this period', said Mr Hammond, adding: 'The stronger we are going into it, the greater the chance of maintaining growth and maintaining stability throughout the period.' 
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It is still the prediction that overall leaving the EU will have an effect on economic growth. 
'But that's not a one off hit that will take the economy into recession - it is spread across 15 years in most forecasters' impression. 
'The Bank of England has made an intervention to respond to the challenge the economy is facing, but our job is to head them [the potential problems] off.' 
Mr Hammond made clear that the Brexit vote has tied ministers' hands in deciding future economic policy and the UK's future relationship with the remaining EU.
'We've said very clearly that this Government will go into these negotiations looking to get the very best possible deal for British businesses and British workers, to maximise the access for British companies into the markets of the EU,' he told BBC Breakfast.
'But we do that within a mandate that we've received from the British people which requires us to bring back our sovereignty, to take control of our borders, and we have to negotiate with the EU within that mandate.
'We are going to go through a period when there will be some turbulence and uncertainty in the economy and it's right that the Government has the flexibility to be able to support the economy, to support jobs, to support economic growth during that period, and that means we have to reset our expectation about when we can reach that point of sustainable public finances.
'George Osborne had set the date of the end of this Parliament - 2019/20. We have said we will not aim for a surplus in 2019/20, but that doesn't mean that we are abandoning fiscal discipline.'
 
Almost 1,000 police officers are being trained up for deployment in Northern Ireland in case of violence stemming from a no-deal Brexit. 
Chiefs from the Police Service of Northern Ireland had asked for the reinforcements to handle any problems that may arise from a hard border.
It is thought large numbers of officers from Britain on the streets could anger Irish republicans.
But additional officers are thought to be necessary to cover the possibility of violence with a no-deal Brexit. 
The training will mean officers are pulled from their regular duties, according to The Guardian.
News of the continued no-deal Brexit preparations came on another difficult day for Theresa May.
The so-called Irish border backstop is one of the most controversial parts of the PM's Brexit deal. This is what it means: 
What is the backstop? 
The backstop was invented to meet promises to keep open the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland even if there is no comprehensive UK-EU trade deal.
The divorce deal says it will kick in automatically at the end of the Brexit transition if that deal is not in place.
If effectively keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU and Northern Ireland in both the customs union and single market.
This means many EU laws will keep being imposed on the UK and there can be no new trade deals. It also means regulatory checks on some goods crossing the Irish Sea. 
Why have Ireland and the EU demanded it? 
Because Britain demanded to leave the EU customs union and single market, the EU said it needed guarantees people and goods circulating inside met EU rules.
This is covered by the Brexit transition, which effectively maintains current rules, and can in theory be done in the comprehensive EU-UK trade deal.
But the EU said there had to be a backstop to cover what happens in any gap between transition and final deal.  
Why do critics hate it? 
Because Britain cannot decide when to leave the backstop. 
Getting out - even if there is a trade deal - can only happen if both sides agree people and goods can freely cross the border.
Brexiteers fear the EU will unreasonably demand the backstop continues so EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland.  
Northern Ireland MPs also hate the regulatory border in the Irish Sea, insisting it unreasonably carves up the United Kingdom. 
What concessions did Britain get in negotiating it? 
During the negotiations, Britain persuaded Brussels the backstop should apply to the whole UK and not just Northern Ireland. Importantly, this prevents a customs border down the Irish Sea - even if some goods still need to be checked.
The Government said this means Britain gets many of the benefits of EU membership after transition without all of the commitments - meaning Brussels will be eager to end the backstop. 
It also got promises the EU will act in 'good faith' during the future trade talks and use its 'best endeavours' to finalise a deal - promises it says can be enforced in court.
What did the legal advice say about it? 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said even with the EU promises, if a trade deal cannot be reached the backstop could last forever.
This would leave Britain stuck in a Brexit limbo, living under EU rules it had no say in writing and no way to unilaterally end it.  
The DUP on whom the Tories rely for a Commons majority, insisted their objections to Irish border backstop arrangements remained, while the EU closed ranks in the face of demands for new concessions.
After a meeting with the Prime Minister, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said: 'The Withdrawal Agreement, as currently proposed, flies in the face of the Government's commitments on Northern Ireland as we leave the EU.'
Mr Dodds again attacked the proposed Irish border backstop, which would see the UK remain under EU customs rules if no wider trade deal was agreed by the end of a withdrawal transition period, as unnecessary.
However, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he would not accept any changes to the deal that would make the backstop inoperable.
Mr Varadkar said he had spoken to German Chancellor Angela Merkel by telephone on Thursday and the two leaders agreed to 'stand by' the Brexit deal.
He said: 'We're happy to offer reassurances and guarantees to the UK, but not reassurances and guarantees that contradict or change what was agreed back in November.'
Mr Varadkar said the conversation, which lasted about 40 minutes, focused on securing the ratification of the deal.
The remarks are a blow to the Prime Minister, who is trying to get concessions on the Irish backstop plans in the hope it will convince MPs to vote her Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament later this month.
Mr Varadkar's comments came as the EU confirmed 'no further meetings are foreseen' with the UK on updating Mrs May's Brexit deal because negotiations have concluded.
A spokeswoman for European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the leaders of the remaining 27 countries 'have been very clear' that what is on the table 'will not be renegotiated'.
At a press conference in Brussels, Mina Andreeva, deputy chief spokeswoman for the European Commission, was asked what talks would be held before the Commons has its say on the deal in the week of January 14.
She said: 'We have said many times the deal that is on the table is the best and only deal possible.
'And the EU27 leaders confirmed on December 13 in their conclusions that it will not be renegotiated.'
Ms Andreeva said the EU side have 'started the ratification process' on the terms in the Withdrawal Agreement, adding: 'For now, no further meetings are foreseen between the Commission's negotiators and the UK negotiators as the negotiations have indeed been concluded.'
She said Mr Juncker is 'always willing to listen to Mrs May's views on the backstop', but when asked what else he can do to help her deal get through Parliament, she rebuffed any chance of altering the backstop as it currently stands.
And Mrs May's deal drew criticism from Tory former minister Ben Gummer, who co-authored the Conservative manifesto at the last election.
Mr Gummer, who lost his Ipswich seat at the 2017 election, said it would leave the country poorer for generations.
He told the BBC: 'I think it is probably unique in modern parliamentary history, because Members of Parliament are being asked to walk through the division lobbies to make the country, and their constituents, permanently poorer and less secure.
'Not just in one generation, but in two or three.'
Mr Gummer said if Parliament failed to find a route through the Brexit situation, a new referendum should be held.
The comments came as Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the consequences of a no-deal Brexit would be 'considerable' in the agricultural sector.
Ireland will demand hundreds of millions of euros in aid from the EU if the UK crashes out of the bloc, the country's agriculture minister warned today. 
Michael Creed said it would take 'mega money' to ease the impact of a no-deal Brexit - with beef, dairy and fishing among the most vulnerable sectors.
The warning came as Brussels again appeared to dismiss Theresa May's plea for fresh concessions to help her get the Brexit package through the Commons later this month.
An EU commission spokeswoman also said there were no plans for any further negotiations with the UK - despite the PM insisting talks are ongoing.
The latest standoff has sent the chances of a no-deal Brexit spiralling, as Mrs May looks down the barrel of near-certain defeat in the Parliamentary showdown due in the week beginning January 14.
Killing off the plan could throw the government into chaos, with the UK set to crash out of the bloc by default at the end of March unless politicians can agree another course.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar is seen as having been one of the main obstacles to sealing a deal, after he insisted on a 'backstop' to guarantee no hard border with Northern Ireland. The DUP has condemned the proposals because they risk splitting the UK, while Brexiteers say it will prevent the country striking trade deals elsewhere. 
However, the intervention by Mr Creed today underlines the threat of disruption Ireland faces if there is no Brexit deal.   
Speaking about the need for support from the EU in the event of no deal, he told the Irish Independent: 'You're looking at hundreds of millions here.
'Between the beef industry and the fishing industry we're talking mega-money.'
Nearly 80 per cent of Irish exporters deliver products to Britain, according to 2016 government figures. The country is also considered a vital 'land bridge' to the European continent
'There is a high level of awareness of Ireland's unique exposure to the UK food market,' Mr Creed said.
'I think nobody wants to talk about it right now because there is still a hope and expectation that a level of sanity will prevail.'
But, he added: 'In racing parlance the odds are slashed on a hard Brexit. 
If Britain crashes out of the European Union on March 29, Creed said he hoped an EU grant would be approved at a Luxembourg summit of EU farming ministers in April.
Dublin outlined its no deal contingency plans before the Christmas break.
They include schemes for port overhauls, a fund for Brexit-specific tax staff and talks to preserve the island's integrated electricity network.
Up to 45 pieces of emergency legislation would be required.
At a press conference in Brussels this morning Mina Andreeva, deputy chief spokeswoman for the European Commission, was asked what talks would be held with the UK before the Commons vote.
She said: 'We have said many times the deal that is on the table is the best and only deal possible. 
'And the EU27 leaders confirmed on December 13 in their conclusions that it will not be renegotiated.'
Ms Andreeva said the EU side have 'started the ratification process' on the terms in the Withdrawal Agreement, and confirmed Brussels is ready to start preparations on a new trade deal 'immediately after the signature' on the deal from the UK Government.
She added: 'For now no further meetings are foreseen between the commission's negotiators and the UK negotiators as the negotiations have indeed been concluded.'
A cabinet minister last night said it would be worth splitting the Tory party to get Brexit passed.
Rory Stewart, who was promoted to International Development Secretary last week, suggested that the Conservatives should accept 'short-term pain' in order to settle the issue.
Theresa May is thought to be on the brink of offering significant concessions to Labour to win backing for her plan – including offering some form of customs union.
But her Tory critics yesterday warned the party would face a tidal wave of anger from voters if she 'diluted' Brexit.
It has been reported that as few as 90 Conservative MPs would support an agreement with Jeremy Corbyn.
 
Mr Stewart said cross-party cooperation was the only way to secure a parliamentary majority because of the resistance of some Tory MPs. 
Asked about the potential for a split, he told the BBC: 'This is the most tortuous, torrid, painful time in British politics since the Second World War.
'I think to get Brexit done, and to move this country on, is worth an enormous amount, and we may have to take some short-term pain to do that.' 
He also suggested that Mrs May should aim for a 30-year cross-party agreement rather than one that could be overturned at the next election.
Mrs May yesterday tried to soothe the nerves of those in her party who fear she is about to sign up to a softer Brexit.
TUESDAY Talks set to resume between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in a bid to reach a Brexit deal. 
On the same day, Sir Graham Brady – chairman of the Tories' 1922 Committee – is expected to meet the Prime Minister and urge her to set a date for her own departure.
FRIDAY This is the last possible date for the Government to bring a Withdrawal Agreement to the Commons in order to avoid a new round of British MEPs taking up their seats in Brussels, according to a Cabinet minister.
THURSDAY, MAY 23 European elections to take place in the UK, barring a (seemingly impossible) swift deal.
SUNDAY, MAY 26 Counting starts for the European elections. The results, like last week's, are set to be devastating for both Labour and the Conservatives.
TUESDAY, JULY 2 Members of European Parliament take their seats. Mrs May hopes the UK will have finally left the EU by then...
In an article for the Mail on Sunday, she wrote: 'If we are able to negotiate a cross-party agreement, this deal will be a stepping stone to a brighter future, outside the EU, where the UK can determine the road ahead. This is because no Parliament can bind its successor.
'Some people would prefer a less close relationship with the EU in the future, while others would prefer a closer relationship.
'The key point is, the ultimate decision-maker in everything we do is parliament. So future parliaments, with a different party balance, will be able to decide whether they want a closer or more distant relationship with the EU.'
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell yesterday signalled that his party was prepared to demand more concessions in return for agreeing to support the EU withdrawal agreement.
He hinted again that the party would demand a second referendum, telling the BBC: 'The Conservatives have to recognise that if a deal is going to go through there might be a large number of MPs who will want a public vote.'
He also voiced concerns that any agreement could be ripped by Mrs May's successor.
'In the wings, if you like, are all the leadership candidates virtually threatening to tear up whatever deal that we do,' he said.
'So we're dealing with a very unstable Government and let me just use this analogy: it's trying to enter into a contract with a company that's going into administration and the people who are going to take over are not willing to fulfil that contract. We can't negotiate like that.'
Mr McDonnell said he had no trust in Mrs May after details of the talks appeared to have been briefed to Sunday newspapers.
He said: 'We have maintained confidentiality as that is what we were asked to do. We haven't briefed the media. So it is disappointing the prime minister has broken that, and I think it is an act of bad faith. I fully understand now why she couldn't negotiate a decent deal with our European partners if she behaves in this way.'
The 'big, bold' offer to Labour, when talks between the two sides resume on Tuesday, will reportedly centre on a comprehensive but temporary customs arrangement with the EU; alignment with many single-market regulations on goods; and an offer to enshrine in law dynamic alignment with EU legislation on workers' rights. 
Yesterday, Tory Eurosceptics lined up to warn the Prime Minister of the consequences of a deal with Labour.
Nigel Evans MP told Sky News: 'I know that Leave voters are sometimes typified as a bit thick, but we are not and we can smell what Brexit-in-name-only is like. People will punish us further.
'We had an earthquake on Thursday throughout the entire country in the local elections and on May 23 [the European elections] that will be followed by a tsunami if both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party together try to push through some sort of Brexit-in-name-only. We all know that a customs union is not Brexit.'
Mr Evans, who is secretary of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, said Mrs May 'should stop listening to the advisers that tell you to dilute Brexit, listen to the 17.4million who voted Leave'.
Lee Rowley, Tory MP for North East Derbyshire, tweeted: 'My message to Theresa May: stop this madness. People didn't vote for you to do a deal with a Marxist. Fix the backstop and stop wasting time.'
Their warnings came after Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922, said the consequences of a cross-party deal would be 'unthinkable'.
In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, he wrote: 'The temptation for the Government now to do whatever is necessary to secure some kind of Brexit agreement is obvious – but it must be resisted. To reach agreement with Labour that locked the UK into the customs union might pull in enough Labour votes to allow an agreement to limp over the line, but the price could be a catastrophic split in the Conservative Party.'
CUSTOMS UNION
THE Prime Minister is apparently willing to offer a 'comprehensive but temporary' customs union to break the deadlock.
The deal would last until the next general election, scheduled for 2022. It would probably be called a 'customs arrangement' to make it more palatable to Tory MPs, following repeated promises that Britain would leave and strike its own trade deals.
SINGLE MARKET ON GOODS
TORY negotiators could agree to align the UK with single market rules on a wide range of goods, forcing manufacturers to follow Brussels' lead.
Many Brexit supporters would not be happy with this as they think it is unfair to make UK businesses adhere to the EU's rules even if they do not export their goods to the EU itself.
WORKERS' RIGHTS
THERESA May could promise to enshrine in law a pledge that British workers' rights would match those in the EU – known as 'dynamic' alignment.
Labour has long feared Brexit will lead to new laws forcing us to work longer, or curtailing rights. However, many Tories claim EU rules make it harder for UK firms to compete with the US and the Far East.
As the heat on Theresa May intensified over the weekend, her would-be successors were quick to show their leadership credentials.
Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab yesterday stepped up his campaign with a glossy magazine interview.
On Saturday, Environment Secretary Michael Gove gave an interview in which he posed with his parents Christine and Ernest, in Aberdeen, before he went to speak at the Scottish Tory conference.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, a keen rider, burnished his credentials by posing with a horse in photographs to accompany a newspaper interview.
'We need to deliver Brexit and then turn the page,' he told The Sunday Times.
Meanwhile, despite only having been appointed to the Cabinet days ago, Rory Stewart declared he would run when a contest takes place.
The maneuvers came as Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt returned from a week-long tour of Africa with his wife Lucia, who he described as his 'secret weapon'. 
At the weekend, Mrs May's Tory Brexit critics warned they would launch another bid to oust her unless she sets a date for her departure within days.
Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, is due to meet the Prime Minister this week to discuss her exit plan.
Mr Raab posed with his wife Erika in their kitchen as he set out his stall with promises including taking a penny off the basic rate of income tax. 
Speaking to The Sunday Times Magazine, he said he would focus on tax cuts for low and middle income families.
He also talked of hopes for all fathers to have the right to two weeks' paternity leave at 90 per cent pay and a change in the law to ensure new or expectant mothers cannot be made redundant during pregnancy or maternity leave.
Mr Raab has already gained the support of fellow former Brexit secretary David Davis, who revealed in Saturday's Daily Mail that he would back the 45-year-old. 
Tory former Cabinet minister Maria Miller, chairman of the women and equalities select committee, yesterday added her support to Mr Raab's bid, saying he has the 'right ideas' for the future of the party.
Meanwhile, Mr Stewart yesterday said he believed it was better to be honest about his leadership ambitions.
Asked if he would throw his hat in the ring, he told Sky News: 'Yes, but I am now so excited to be the International Development Secretary.' He described holding the position as 'the greatest gift on Earth'.
He added: 'You have just got to be straight. If people feel that they would like to get into that competition, they should say so and we should talk about what we believe in. 
'I think talking about what we believe in matters in everyday life but it also matters just in doing good policy.'
After a botched leadership challenge last December, Mrs May was supposed to be immune to removal for 12 months.
But a group of Tory MPs, led by 1922 Committee secretary Nigel Evans, want to change the rules so they can trigger another confidence vote in her immediately. 
Mr Evans told the BBC: 'I'm sure the conversation will continue if we've not been given a clear lead by the PM through Sir Graham as to the timetable for her departure.'
In the wake of the local elections, which saw the party lose more than 1,300 councillors, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, called on the 1922 Committee to force out Mrs May if she is unwilling to quit. 'We have to make a change,' he told LBC.
A survey by political blog Conservative Home yesterday found that 82 per cent of party members want Mrs May to stand down and call a leadership election.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has signed the 'commencement order' formally starting the process that will take Britain out of the EU on October 31.
Senior Tory Brexiteers previously said the signing of the document was 'totemic' and a 'do-or-die' pledge confirming the UK will be leaving the EU.
Theresa May had angered Brexiteers by refusing to sign the order and instead agreeing to delay Brexit until October 31.
But now Mr Barclay has signed the document, as reported by The Sunday Telegraph.
In a tweet posted today, he said: 'I have signed the legislation setting in stone the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972. 
'This is a landmark moment in taking back control of our law. It underlines that we are leaving the EU on October 31.'
The signing of the commencement order will repeal the European Communities Act of 1972, and bring the European Withdrawal Act into force.
The Withdrawal Act was already voted through in the Commons in September last year, but for it to come into effect a 'commencement order' needed to be signed by a minister. 
Signing the 'commencement order' was described as 'not merely symobolic' by hard line Brexiteer Steve Baker.
He told The Times: 'It is absolutely totemic. It shows a transformation in the approach, that Boris Johnson is willing to leave on a fixed date with no question of extension. It's the do-or-die pledge in black and white. It's not merely symbolic. 
'Once it's signed that's it, the UK is leaving. Theresa May did not bring the repeal of the European Communities Act on a fixed date because she was always willing to extend.'
It comes as Boris Johnson is due to meet Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron this week to talk about a new Brexit deal.
Mr Johnson will make clear to the French president and German chancellor that Britain will leave the European Union on October 31 with or without a deal.
The PM, who is heading to Berlin on Wednesday and Paris on Thursday, is expected to say that Parliament will not and cannot cancel the outcome of the EU referendum.
He will insist there must be a new deal to replace Theresa May's thrice-defeated Withdrawal Agreement if Britain is to leave with a settlement on October 31.
However, Number 10 said it expects there will be 'very little discussion' of Brexit during the visits, predicting that each side would state its position and then move on to other topics.
Instead, it is thought the discussions will revolve around next weekend's G7 agenda - with topics including foreign policy, security, trade and the environment likely to dominate.
Mr Johnson will meet world leaders at the summit in Biarritz, France, where he will seek to spread the message of the UK's 'renewed global reach'.
Details of the PM's travel plans emerged as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reiterated his call for MPs to work together to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Corbyn, who set out his plan to be installed as a caretaker prime minister last week to stop the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal, said his proposal is the 'most democratic way' to prevent a no-deal.
He told the Observer: 'My message to MPs across Parliament is simple and urgent: only by working together can we stop no-deal.
'Three years after the EU referendum, the country stands at a precipice. Boris Johnson has become Prime Minister without any popular mandate. He has no right to drive our country off a cliff and into the arms of Donald Trump with his no-deal fixation.
'The plan I set out this week is the simplest and most democratic way to stop no-deal. We have to seize the opportunity before it's too late, so the people, rather than an unelected Prime Minister, can decide our country's future.'
The Liberal Democrats and senior Tories have rejected his proposal, however it won the potential backing of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Tory MP Guto Bebb.
Very few British politicians have emerged with honour in the aftermath of last year’s Brexit referendum.
Nigel Farage, without whose pressure on the Tory Government the public would never have been given a vote on the issue, has turned himself into a media personality and sycophant-in-chief to President Donald Trump.
Labour’s brave and widely respected Leave campaigner Gisela Stuart has stood down as an MP.
Shamefully, Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed working-class Labour voters (and his own one-time anti-Brussels instincts) by calling for Britain’s continued membership of the Single Market and European Court of Justice.
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For their part, leading Tories who campaigned for Remain, led by Chancellor Philip Hammond and Home Secretary Amber Rudd, are trying to sabotage Brexit by striking a shabby compromise deal with Brussels.
Only one major political figure has behaved nobly and should be saluted for the way he has upheld the interests of Britain ever since the start of the referendum debate.
Who is he? The much-maligned Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.
But, tragically, despite such integrity and principle, he has become the object of a vicious and orchestrated Westminster whispering campaign. Its aim is to get him driven from office in the Cabinet reshuffle expected later this year.
Mr Johnson is accused of incompetence, egotism and a failure to master detail.Yet none of these accusations is remotely true.
Indeed, diplomats and Foreign Office staff say his ability to master a brief is far more impressive than any of his most recent predecessors as Foreign Secretary.
The truth is that Mr Johnson’s enemies want him out because he has single-handedly taken on the inherently pro-EU British Establishment, who are determined to stop Brexit happening in defiance of the wishes of the majority of the British people.
Johnson stands as one of very few members of the Cameron government to remain true to his beliefs.
This is in contrast to so many senior Tory colleagues — who have been forced to champion Brexit despite having been diehard Remainers until June last year. Even some high-profile Leavers, such as Michael Gove, seem to have lost the stomach for battle.
Since the referendum result, Mr Johnson has consistently fought a lone battle in Cabinet to ensure that the May Government keeps its promise that ‘Brexit means Brexit’.
It is a hard job — and one that has been made much harder because of the appallingly unpatriotic behaviour of former colleagues such as George Osborne and David Cameron.
I have little doubt that Osborne, eaten up with malice and a desire for revenge, having been sacked by Theresa May, lies behind some of the most vicious attacks on the Foreign Secretary.
Indeed, the pro-EU former Chancellor, a key architect of the contemptible Project Fear during the referendum campaign, appears to have entered into a demeaning alliance of convenience with Blairite pro-Europeans who are hell-bent on wrecking Brexit.
Mr Johnson’s most deadly enemies, however, are some of his Cabinet colleagues. They are appalled by his vehement calls for a ‘clean Brexit’ whereby total separation from the EU is achieved in March 2019. A phalanx of senior ministers such as Mr Hammond wish Britain to retain membership of key European institutions well beyond that date.
Their strategy, though, is flawed. Britain can only retain trading relationships with the EU if we agree to remain subject to the supervision and control of Brussels. This ‘soft Brexit’ solution would be nothing less than a national humiliation.
Indeed, it would be far better to remain a full member of the EU than agree to this unsatisfactory halfway-house deal.
It’s no coincidence that Mr Hammond and his allies played leading roles in the Remain campaign. I have no doubt that their ultimate plan is to retain Britain’s EU membership.
So far, despite her visionary Lancaster House speech in which she said the UK ‘cannot possibly’ remain in the Single Market and that ‘no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal’, Mrs May has not come down on either side in this epic Cabinet battle.
This leaves Boris Johnson as the most senior voice in government staying true to the 17.4 million Britons who voted to leave the EU last year.
For that he should be championed — not be the target of a political assassination hit squad.
In February, John Bercow, the preening Commons Speaker, announced that President Trump would not be welcome to speak to Parliament.
Yet Bercow fawned over Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi when she came to Britain to address both Houses. 
And this weekend, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has been criticised after her troops went on the rampage against her nation’s minority Muslim population, and thousands have been forced to flee into Bangladesh.
What sanctimonious hypocrisy by Bercow!
Mandelson is not such a business mandarin
It has been a hallmark of Lord (Peter) Mandelson’s post-ministerial career that he has hawked his services across the world, picking up big cheques along the way.
His links stretch from Russia to China, across Asia and to wealthy Arab nations. But he seems to take less interest in British businesses.
As part of this portfolio, Mandelson joined the ‘senior advisory board’ of the investment group Sapinda, run by the German Lars Windhorst.
Over recent years this flamboyant financier has suffered two bankruptcies and stood trial on 35 charges of fraud, embezzlement and breach of trust in Berlin. After a plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to drop the fraud charges if Windhorst paid an £850,000 fine, repaid £2.1 million to an alleged victim and admitted a breach of trust offence, for which he got a year’s suspended jail sentence.
Mandelson’s ‘advice’ does not seem to have helped Windhorst.
Sapinda has had a dreadful past 12 months, though in all fairness it should be noted that the worst of the firm’s tribulations have taken place since his departure. Its main investments plunged in value. A high-profile investment in video games was soured by reports that employees, creditors and even prize-winners had not received money due to them.
Windhorst has now resigned from Sapinda. Mandelson had already quit the board.
At the very least, Mandelson’s relationship with Windhorst throws doubt on his own judgment. Throughout his career he has suffered cruel slurs on his reputation. To avoid this happening again, he would be wise to volunteer a full account of his relationship with Windhorst.
Lord Mandelson did not answer my questions to him yesterday.
May's election call to push through Brexit
Theresa May’s wish to stay Prime Minister after the next election has been widely misinterpreted by Westminster observers, who claim her decision means she could still be in No 10 in 2024.
But I am convinced she aims to stay as PM only until 2021. I understand Mrs May has confided to advisers that she may call the next election in 2019.
This fits with her realisation that a Brexit deal will have to be put before Parliament. If all goes to plan, a big Tory majority will push it through the Commons. She would then step down around 2021.
Labour, Nicola Sturgeon and the Welsh government last night threatened to band together to derail the Repeal Bill that ends the EU’s power over Britain.
Ministers yesterday published legislation to repeal the European Communities Act, which enshrines the supremacy of EU law – and the European courts.
It will smooth the path to Brexit by transferring thousands of EU regulations into British law, preventing legal uncertainty.
But Labour’s Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer warned that his party would try to block the legislation when MPs vote in September as it will not bring a controversial human-rights charter into UK law.
The devolved governments in Scotland and Wales also said they would seek to veto the Bill, demanding more assurances on how powers on environment, agriculture and fisheries would be returned from Brussels to Edinburgh and Cardiff.
And the Lib Dems warned the Government faced a ‘nightmare’ that could cost the PM her job.
But Mrs May said the legislation was essential, and without it the country would not have a working legal system on the day of Brexit, expected to be in March 2019.
Under her plan, all 12,000 EU regulations applying to Britain will be copied and pasted on to the UK statute book.
Ministers will be handed so-called ‘Henry VIII powers’ allowing them to tweak any laws that need vital amendments without an MPs’ vote.
Jeremy Corbyn held talks with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator yesterday – even presenting him with a football shirt.
In his bid to present himself as prime minister in waiting, the Labour leader met with Michel Barnier (pictured far right) at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels.
With Diane Abbott and Sir Keir Starmer watching on, Mr Corbyn gave the sports-mad EU official a shirt from his favourite team Arsenal FC with Mr Barnier’s name on the back and a signed copy of Labour’s manifesto.
Mr Corbyn said: ‘Now he’s got two things in red – a shirt and a book.’
He said that the Labour Party respected the result of last year’s referendum but was seeking a Brexit to protect jobs.
And Mr Corbyn also confirmed his offer of citizens’ rights for EU nationals living in the UK after Brexit and said Labour was ready to pay ‘what we are legally required’ to as part of the withdrawal process.
The Labour leader said he had told Mr Barnier that his party would ‘make sure Britain doesn’t become some sort of low-tax regime off the shore of Europe’.
But Scottish First Minister Miss Sturgeon and her Welsh counterpart Carwyn Jones raised the prospect of a constitutional crisis as they threatened to block the Bill, which they branded a ‘naked power grab’.
They claimed that it would not return powers to devolved administrations, adding: ‘It returns them solely to the UK Government and Parliament, and imposes new restrictions on the Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales. On that basis, the Scottish and Welsh governments cannot recommend that legislative consent is given to the Bill as it currently stands.’
Sources confirmed it was likely the Government would need a so-called ‘legislative consent motion’ from Holyrood for the Repeal Bill, though the Scottish Parliament cannot veto Brexit.
Meanwhile, Labour said it would vote against the legislation unless it brought the European Charter of Fundamental Rights into UK law.
It has been blamed in a string of controversial human rights cases. The Government said the charter of 50 human rights, which Tony Blair signed up to in 2000, is merely a ‘catalogue of rights that already existed elsewhere in EU law’.
But Sir Keir said the charter’s inclusion was a ‘red line’, adding: ‘Labour are putting the Prime Minister on notice that unless the Bill is significantly improved, Labour will vote it down in the House of Commons.’
The Bill was given its first reading in the Commons yesterday, but it will not be formally debated until autumn.
The Government has insisted that the Henry VIII powers will be limited to correcting minor legal issues. However, with 800 to 1,000 pieces of secondary legislation, known as statutory instruments, likely to be brought forward under the powers during a two-year window, there are likely to be objections from MPs and peers.
Labour MP Wes Streeting has said the powers are ‘undemocratic, unaccountable and simply wrong’. But Brexit Secretary David Davis told the BBC: ‘It is not just a ministerial signature, it is what they call a statutory instrument which … can be debated, can be voted on.’
Downing Street said the suggestion Scotland and Wales may not give legislative consent was ‘very pessimistic’, adding: ‘We want to work with all parties, MPs, devolved administrations, talk to them.’ 
EU negotiator Michel Barnier finally conceded he would have to offer Britain a unique deal on Brexit today in the first hint of a climb down from Brussels.
In remarks that sent the pound soaring up against the euro and the dollar, Mr Barnier promised a 'partnership with Britain such as has never been with any other third country'.
Mr Barnier has repeatedly insisted Britain must choose from an existing model used by either Norway or Canada - deal the UK say are unacceptable.
The Brussels chief still insists Britain cannot have an 'a la carte' choice of benefits from the EU single market. 
Brexiteers welcomed his 'more optimistic tone' but warned that actions speak louder and urged the EU to get on with coming up with a new offer. 
A Government spokesman responded to the comments, saying: 'Both the UK and the EU are committed to reaching the best deal possible for both sides.
'We have put forward our proposals for this deal in our White Paper and we stand ready to work at pace with the EU over the coming weeks.' 
The intervention is a significant boost for Theresa May who has spent the summer trying to win support in EU capitals for her Brexit blueprint.
Her Chequers plan - which triggered the resignation of Boris Johnson and David Davis in July - had been rejected in previous statements by EU leaders. 
Mr Barnier told reporters in Berlin: 'We are prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country.
As the clock ticks down on the Brexit talks, Michel Barnier has softened his stance towards Britain and what deal can be done.
Here is how his rhetoric has changed since Article 50 was triggered in March 2017:
September 2017
Michel Barnier  welcomed the 'constructive spirit' of Theresa May's Florence speech. 
In a statement this afternoon, he said: 'In her speech in Florence, Prime Minister Theresa May has expressed a constructive spirit which is also the spirit of the European Union during this unique negotiation.
December 2017:  
Mr Barnier said the UK must choose between one of two models of trade deals the EU already has already struck – Norway or Canada.
He said:  'We won't mix up the various scenarios to create a specific one and accommodate their wishes, mixing, for instance, the advantages of the Norwegian model, member of the single market, with the simple requirements of the Canadian one.
'No way. They have to face the consequences of their own decision.'
January 2018:
Mr Barnier said the UK can get its own unique deal.
He said: 'This agreement will of course be tailored to the specificities of the relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom, in the same way that our agreement with Canada is not identical to our agreements with Korea or Japan.' 
August 2 2018
Michel Barnier suggests the EU is ready to compromise on their proposals on the thorny issue of the Irish border, which threatened to derail Brexit talks.
He said: 'What the EU has proposed is that Northern Ireland remains in a common regulatory area for goods and customs with the rest of the EU.
'We are ready to improve the text of our proposal with the UK.' 
August 29, 2018
Mr Barnier talked up the possibility the UK will get its own unique trade deal.
He said: 'We are prepared to offer Britain a partnership such as there never has been with any other third country.
'We respect Britain's red lines scrupulously. In return, they must respect what we are.
'Single market means single market ... There is no single market a la carte.' 
'We respect Britain's red lines scrupulously. In return, they must respect what we are.
'Single market means single market ... There is no single market a la carte.'
The remarks appear to be a significant departure from the EU position, echoed as recently as Monday by French President Emmanuel Macron. 
Government sources said they would look at the comments but played down the shift, suggesting Mr Barnier had made 'similar' remarks before. 
Tory MP and Brexiteer Michael Fabricant said: 'I welcome this more optimistic tone, but words are one thing, deeds are another. 
'We'll all await the offer with interest. But with the UK being the largest export market worldwide for German cars and other products, it was always clear to me that the UK has huge leverage in these negotiations.' 
In other developments today, Dominic Raab admitted that a Brexit deal could be delayed until after the October deadline - amid fears the UK could crash out without an agreement.
The new Brexit Secretary insisted that ministers are 'ambitious' and still optimistic a deal can be done with Brussels.
But he said that finalising the agreement could 'creep beyond' the EU summit on October 18 and 19, which has been the deadline for the talks.
His remarks, made in front of the House of Lords select committee on the EU, is the first time a minister involved in talks has publicly admitted the deadline could slip. 
Mr Raab made the admission as he called for the EU to match the UK's energy in coming up with a deal for the crunch talks.
He said: 'It's important as we enter the final phase of the negotiations to the lead up to the October council and the possibility that it may creep beyond that, we want to see some renewed energy. 
'We are bringing the ambition and substance of our white paper on our future relationship, and also some pragmatism to go the extra mile to get the deal that I think is in both sides interests.
'We need that to be matched. Obviously.'
He said that a deal is 80 per cent done and that 'the contours of an agreement is there'.
He added: I'm confident that a deal is in our sights. 
'We are bringing ambition pragmatism and energy and if it is matched as I expect it will be, if it is matched then we get a deal.
The chairman of the committee, Lord Boswell of Aynho, quizzed the minister on how delayed a deal may be.
He said: 'You have indicated it could go a bit further than that – can we ask you to go a it further.'
Mr Raab said: 'My starting point is March next year when we are leaving the EU and I work back from there.
'We are aiming for the October council but there is some measure of leeway.' 
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
His words are a shift in tone from the Government, which yesterday was still stressing that it is working towards the October deadline.
The PM's spokesman said yesterday: 'The PM has already addressed this. She has confirmed we are working to the October deadline and that remains the case. 
'We are working to the deadline. There is a deadline the Commission set out and we are working to that.' 
Mr Raab also played down reports in The Guardian today suggesting that the EU's lead Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has failed to make himself available for face to face talks with him.
The newspaper reported that despite his assertion that he is available '24/7' for talks, Mr Raab had been left frustrated at his lack of meetings with Mr Barnier.
But the UK ministers poured cold water on the report today - insisting he has met with Mr Barnier several times and the two have a close working relationship.  
Asked about it today, Mr Raab said: 'In relation to whatever tittle tattle will appear in whatever newspaper, I'm in Brussels tomorrow evening for a long substantive meeting with Mr Barnier on Friday.
'On a one to one level, we have established a good professional personal rapport.
'I would say we have a good working relationship and the beginnings of a good personal relationship….and these things matter.'  
Mr Raab is making his first appearance in front of the Lords select committee since being promoted to Brexit Secretary in July after David Davis' shock resignation.
Mr Davis quit the role in protest at Theresa May's Chequers proposal - a compromise deal which would mean the UK sticks to EU rules for goods but leaves the  single market and customs union.
The proposal sparked outcry from Brexiteers and Tory activists who warned it would leave the UK stuck half inside the Brussels bloc  and hamper the country's ability to strike free trade deals globally.
And the EU also greeted the plan with scepticism - and it emerged yesterday that Mr  Barnier threatened to boycott Brexit talks if Mrs May insisted on basing a deal on her Chequers plans.  
Theresa May has insisted Brexit means quitting the EU customs union - so the UK can strike free trade deals with other countries.
But  this means that customs checks on goods will probably need to be carried out at the border - creating the spectre of long border queues.
Critics of the PM's approach say the UK should stay in a customs union with the bloc to avoid these hard border controls.
Below are three customs deals the EU  has done with countries outside the bloc:
The Norway Option: 
Norway voted narrowly against joining the EU in 1994, but shares a 1000-mile border with Sweden which is in the bloc.
The Norwegian government decided to negotiate a deal which gave it very close ties with the EU. 
It is part of the EU single market which means it must accept EU rules on the free movement of people.
But it is not in the customs union - meaning it sets its own tariffs on customs coming from outside the EU and so must carry out border checks.
There are some 1,300 customs officials who are involved in policing the border with Sweden, and have invested substantial amounts in technology to make these as quick and smooth as possible.
They have IT systems which pre-declare goods to customs and they are developing a system which will allow lorries carrying pre-declared goods to be waved through. 
Norway also pays large amounts into the EU budget and is governed by the court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The Switzerland Option:
Switzerland is one of the EU's longest-standing trading partners, but the  country voted against joining the bloc in 2001.
It is a member of the EU single market and has signed up to the Schengen area - meaning it must accept free movement rules and does not carry out passport check on other member countries. 
But it is not in the EU customs union - which means that checks on goods crossing over the border from non-EU countries are carried out.
The situation tosses up some anomalies. For instance, a passenger travelling through Geneva Airport can rent a car on the French side of the border for around half of the cost of renting it on the Swiss side.
Border checks are carried out on goods but customs officials say they use intelligence to carry out spot checks, which can be carried out several miles from the border. 
However, there can be long delays as goods are checked at the border.
The Turkey Option: 
Turkey has long eyed up membership of the EU and first tried to start the lengthy application process to join in 1987.
The country signed a customs union with the bloc in 1995 - a move Turkey's rulers hoped would be a stepping stone on the way to full membership.
Turkey's hopes to join the bloc faded over the past few years and have been all but abandoned under President Erdogan after he instigated a major purge of political opponents in the wake of the failed coup against him in 2016.
Under its customs union Turkey must follow EU rules on the production of goods without a say in making them.
It also means that Turkey can only strike free trade deals on goods which are negotiated by Brussels.   
Brexiteers are trying to break the Cabinet deadlock on trade plans by suggesting Britain could stay tied to the EU customs union for years longer - but make a clean break afterwards.
The proposal, pushed by allies of Michael Gove, would mean dropping the customs partnership blueprint favoured by Theresa May.
But in return Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers would accept that their 'Maximum Facilitation' option will need much more time to put in place.
The idea has emerged as the PM scrambles to find a way to end the damaging standoff among the government's big beasts.  
Mrs May was brutally taunted during PMQs yesterday over Boris Johnson's extraordinary public attack on her 'crazy' partnership proposal. 
As Mr Johnson looked on sheepishly from the frontbench, Mrs May was forced to deny she had wasted months on plans that ministers could not agree on.
The spat erupted after a tense meeting of the Brexit War Cabinet last week, in which it became clear that most members did not support Mrs May's blueprint for the UK to collect duties on behalf of the EU - and give businesses a rebate if Britain wanted to impose lower tariffs. 
The other option on the table is 'Max Fac', which would rely on technology and mutual recognition schemes to minimise friction on trade.
In a sign of the problems in finding a way through the impasse, the PM has delayed another showdown in the key sub-committee until next Tuesday.
There has been speculation that Mrs May could stage a public intervention on Monday in a bid to bring the issue to a head. 
It is not clear whether Downing Street will be receptive to the idea of a delayed 'Max Fac' customs arrangement. 
Alongside fears that the 'Max Fac' option would require a hard Irish border, doubts about how long it would take to develop the necessary technology and IT systems have been the main blocks.
Mrs May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy told the Sun last night that "ministers might accept that Max Fac will take longer to be introduced".
Former minister Nick Boles, an ally of Mr Gove and Boris Johnson, also tweeted his support for the idea. But he added: "This must not be rushed and will not be ready by the end of the transition in Dec 2020."
The Open Europe think-tank run by Mr Gove's former aide Henry Newman has endorsed the concept. 
Downing Street sources have conceded that the customs partnership blueprint - which would see Britain collect duties on behalf of the EU in an effort to minimise friction on trade and prevent a hard Irish border - will 'not go ahead in its current form'.
Officials are looking at ways of overhauling the idea or coming up with a new option that can win over sceptical ministers.
Mr Corbyn kicked off PMQs by asking: 'Does the Prime Minister agree with her Foreign Secretary that the plan for a customs partnership... is in fact crazy?' 
Mrs May dodged the question, insisting the government would 'ensure that we leave the customs union, that we can have an independent free trade policy, that we can maintain no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and we have as frictionless trade with the EU as possible'.
Mr Corbyn then challenged Mrs May over Business Secretary Greg Clark's warning in an interview at the weekend that 'jobs would be at risk if we don't sort out a comprehensive customs deal'. 
But the premier retorted that Labour was 'letting Britain down' by taking the EU's side in the negotiations.
'They want to go into a customs union with the European Union with no say over trade policy, with Brussels negotiating trade deals in their interests, not our own,' she said. 
'The Labour manifesto said it wanted to strike trade deals, now they've gone back on that policy. Typical labour, letting Britain down once again.' 
Mrs May stormed: 'He talks about the state of the negotiations. Before December he was saying the negotiations were not going to get anywhere.
'What did we get? A joint report agreed by the European Council. He said before March that we weren't going to get what we wanted from negations. What did we get? An implementation and an agreement with the European Union Council.
'We are now in a negotiation for the best deal for the UK for when we leave the EU and we will get the best deal for the UK for when we leave the EU.'    
Speaking in the Commons immediately after the clashes, Mr Johnson denied that he had breached Cabinet collective responsibility with his public criticism of the customs partnership option.
'I am completely in conformity with Government policy on the matter, since that policy has yet to be decided,' he said to laughter from the Labour benches.  
 What are the options on the table for a customs deal with the EU? 
With time ticking away on the Brexit negotiations, the Cabinet is still at daggers drawn on the shape for future trade relations with the EU.
The government has set out two potential options for a customs system after the UK leaves the bloc.
But despite a series of tense showdowns at Theresa May's Brexit 'War Cabinet' ministers continue to be deadlocked over what to do.
Meanwhile, Brussels has dismissed both the ideas - and warned that negotiations could stall altogether unless there is progress by a key summit next month.  
OPTION 1 - CUSTOMS PARTNERSHIP 
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Britain would be responsible for tracking the origin and final destination of goods coming into the country from outside the EU. The government would also have to ensure all products meet the bloc's standards.
Firms selling directly into the UK market would pay the tariff levels set by Brussels - but would then get a rebate if Britain's tariffs are lower. 
Supporters of the hybrid plan in Cabinet - including Theresa May, Philip Hammond and Greg Clark - say keeping duties aligned up front would avoid the need for physical customs borders between the UK and EU.
As a result it could solve the thorny issue over creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mrs May has been advised by the chief whip that the hybrid option could be the only way of securing a majority in parliament for a Brexit deal. 
But Brexiteers regard the proposal as unworkable and cumbersome - and they were joined by Sajid Javid and Gavin Williamson in criticising it at a tense 'War Cabinet' meeting last week.
There are fears the experimental system will either collapse and cause chaos, or prevent the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit.
Mrs May has instructed official to go away and revise the ideas. Eurosceptics are braced for her to bring back the plan with only 'cosmetic' changes, and try to 'peel off' Mr Javid and Mr Williamson from the core group of Brexiteers.
They are also ready for Mrs May to attempt to bypass the 'War Cabinet' altogether and put the issue before the whole Cabinet - where she has more allies. 
OPTION 2 - MAXIMUM FACILITATION
The 'Max Fac' option accepts that there will be greater friction at Britain's borders with the EU. 
But it would aim to minimise the issues using technology and mutual recognition.
Goods could be electronically tracked and pre-cleared by tax authorities on each side.
Shipping firms could also be given 'trusted trader' status so they can move goods freely, and only pay tariffs when they are delivered to the destination country.
Companies would also be trusted to ensure they were meeting the relevant UK and EU standards on products.
Senior ministers such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox believe this is the only workable option. 
But Remain minded Tories such as Mr Clark insist it will harm trade and cost jobs in the UK.
They also warn that it will require more physical infrastructure on the Irish border - potentially breaching the Good Friday Agreement. It is far from clear whether the government would be able to force anything through parliament that implied a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  
The EU has dismissed the idea that 'Max Fac' could prevent checks on the Irish border as 'magical thinking'.
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
 

Brexit could be overturned because Leave voters are dying off, the pro-Remain peer Mark Malloch-Brown claimed yesterday.
Lord Malloch-Brown is leading a campaign to try and block Britain leaving the European Union.
There was a huge backlash against his campaign group Best For Britain last week after it emerged it had received £400,000 from the billionaire investor George Soros.
Lord Malloch-Brown, a former Labour minister and chairman of Best For Britain, said it would be a ‘reasonable outcome’ of the campaign if Theresa May resigned as Prime Minister.
He estimated he had a 40 per cent chance of stopping Brexit.
He said yesterday that the campaign could succeed because Brexiteers will ‘die off’ in a matter of years. And he argued younger people felt ‘hijacked and kidnapped’ by Brexit.
They are ‘all really angry with older people,’ he added. ‘They feel utterly betrayed. But the actuarial rules of life are moving in their favour.
‘Within a matter of four, five or ten years they will be in an overwhelming majority in this country as all the Brexiteers die off, because under 55 there was a huge majority in this country tailing off as you got to 65.’
Lord Malloch-Brown said he wanted to give MPs ‘the courage’ to vote against the terms of Mrs May’s deal.
He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘A perfectly reasonable outcome could be a defeat of Mrs May’s Brexit package, an eruption within the Tory Party that leads to a change of leader.’
This would lead to ‘the terms of the deal’ being put to a second referendum, he said, adding: ‘People are feeling themselves hijacked and kidnapped by Brexit. We have got to get beyond that.
‘We are in an uphill fight. It is probably 60/40 against us at the moment. But is it worth fighting as a democrat and a patriot? I believe it profoundly is.’ After revelations emerged about Mr Soros’s donations, the financier said he would match donations from the public to the tune of another £100,000.
The Best For Britain campaign has raised a total of £2million.
Lord Malloch-Brown said he would not rule out Mr Soros giving more money, saying: ‘There will be more from lots of sources and I certainly would not rule out George is one of them. We have other donors who collectively are giving more than George Soros at the moment.’
Mr Soros is known as ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’ after he made more than $1billion betting against the pound in 1992. 
Full details of a plot by rebel MPs to seize control of Brexit can be revealed today.
If Theresa May loses tomorrow’s crunch vote, authority for drawing up a new negotiating blueprint could pass to a panel of senior backbenchers, the Mail understands. 
The liaison committee, which is dominated by Remainers by a margin of 27 to nine, would be charged with coming up with a proposal supported by MPs.
The Prime Minister would then be required to go to Brussels to negotiate for it – in all likelihood creating a much softer Brexit.
The dramatic move would mean tearing up the Commons rule book – giving backbench MPs the power to propose legislation instead of the Government. A senior minister described it as a ‘copper-bottomed, bullet-proof plan to sink Brexit’.
A dozen Brexiteers – including eight who served in Mrs May’s Cabinet – have written to all Tory MPs urging them to vote down her plan. Boris Johnson, David Davis and Dominic Raab signed the letter calling upon the Prime Minister to reopen talks with the EU over the Irish border backstop. 
They said if the EU failed to give ground Britain should leave on March 29 to trade on World Trade Organisation terms.
‘It is right to vote down this bad deal and that in doing so we will unlock a better future for our party, our country and its people,’ they said.
The plan to seize control of Brexit is based on a draft Bill, which the Mail understands has been drawn up by former ministers Nick Boles, Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan and is to be published today. All three backed Remain, but are expected to vote for Mrs May’s plan tomorrow.
A source close to the move said the changes to the standing orders of the House of Commons would be temporary and would be reversed after Brexit.
The source said: ‘We all want Brexit to happen on March 29, that is our first preference.’
A leading figure behind the move added: ‘This is not a wholesale reordering of the British constitution. It would be a one-off surgical strike and afterwards things would go back to normal.’ Under the plan, the Prime Minister would have 21 days to come up with an alternative Brexit deal.
If none is found, responsibility for developing one would pass to the liaison committee which is made up of the chairmen of the 36 Commons select committees. It is chaired by Dr Sarah Wollaston, who is a leading campaigner for a second referendum.
The committee’s proposal would have to be approved by MPs with ministers then ordered to reopen talks with Brussels. If time is short, Article 50 could be extended, meaning the UK would stay in the EU. If Brussels refused this, Article 50 would be revoked, in effect cancelling Brexit.
The liaison committee would be expected to propose a version of Brexit involving membership of – or a much closer relationship with – the single market and customs union. 
Mr Boles has long advocated the ‘Norway’ model which would keep the UK in the single market.
Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom said the move by pro-EU MPs was ‘incredibly dangerous’ and would change the way Parliament worked.
The plotters want backbench motions to take precedence over Government business if Mrs May’s deal is defeated tomorrow. This would strip ministers of control and put Brexit at risk.
Mrs Leadsom said this threatened ‘the relationship between the people and those who govern them’. Her stark warning comes at the start of what could be the most momentous week in British politics since the Second World War.
In other developments:
If Mrs May’s deal were to be voted down tomorrow, she is required – under the Grieve amendment controversially allowed by Speaker John Bercow last week – to return to the Commons on Monday week to make a statement.
By the end of next week, she will put before the Commons a motion setting out her plan. It would be amended by Labour and rebel Tory MPs to change the standing orders of the Commons – the rules of how Parliament works.
If the Speaker approved – and Parliament agreed – backbenchers would seize power over proposals for new legislation and then submit a single Brexit Bill.
The Bill would give Mrs May 21 days to come up with an alternative plan which commanded the support of a majority of MPs.
If she failed, the liaison committee would then be made responsible for coming up with a new proposed deal. This is made up of 36 select committee chairmen and is dominated by Remainers. It is led by Tory Sarah Wollaston, a campaigner for a second referendum.
The liaison committee would draw up a new Brexit plan and vote on it. If agreed by a majority of the committee, it would go before Parliament – and if MPs approved it, the Prime Minister would be tasked with renegotiating along those lines.
The new deal, if negotiated with the EU, would come back before the Commons and Lords for a vote.
Ministers would be put under a legal duty to extend Article 50 to allow time for the negotiation.
If no deal was done by March 27 and the EU refused an extension to Article 50, it would be revoked.
Sir Oliver Letwin refused to comment yesterday on claims that he is helping to lead the plot to rewrite Commons rules.
Mrs Leadsom, who as Leader of the House is in charge of setting the timetable for Parliament, said it was wrong to undermine ‘centuries of convention and the rulebook’.
She added: ‘The reason why our Parliament is looked up to around the world is because we have the right balance between the executive, the Government who proposes legislation and the timetable, and then a very strong tradition of scrutiny.
‘I am incredibly concerned about it. I am a huge supporter of Parliament and the rights of Parliament, but to overturn the way we run our democracy is an incredibly dangerous prospect.’
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said it would be a huge mistake for MPs to take control of the Brexit process from ministers.
‘My message to anyone who is thinking of that is, this is not a one-off over Brexit. You would change the whole nature of the passage of legislation in the future,’ he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
Mr Boles dismissed talk of a plot, saying: ‘Odd sort of coup that requires a majority of democratically elected MPs to vote for it before the tanks start rolling.’
Pro-EU Tory MP Anna Soubry accused No 10 of spreading fake news in order to scare Conservative colleagues from voting against the PM’s plan.
Mrs May will today use a speech to factory workers in Stoke to warn that trust in politicians will suffer ‘catastrophic harm’ if they fail to implement the result of the referendum.
Downing Street’s strategy of highlighting how ministers could lose control if the PM’s deal is voted down appeared to bear fruit last night as four Tory Brexiteers who had previously been wavering came out in support. 
Theresa May is facing a fresh headache as Europhiles on her backbenches gang up to seize control of Brexit.
Pro-Remain Tories were last night accused of plotting to re-write parliamentary rules to put them in the driving seat if the Prime Minister is defeated in the Commons tomorrow.
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve will today team up with Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable to publish draft legislation revealing how they could push for a second referendum. 
Meanwhile, former Tory ministers Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles will host a meeting of like-minded MPs to plan how they will block a 'no-deal' Brexit.
It comes after 20 Tory MPs last week helped inflict a humiliating defeat on the Government over Brexit after Commons Speaker John Bercow tore up parliamentary convention. 
As Britain prepares for a tumultuous week in politics, Andrew Pierce profiles the plotters-in-chief and the MPs conspiring to stop a hard Brexit.
Dominic Grieve, 62: (Beaconsfield, Leave vote 50.7%)
Still brooding over his ministerial career ending more than four years ago when he lost his job as Attorney General. 
Assumed he had been destined for greater things. A Francophile with a French mother and QC father who was a Tory MP. 
Educated at a French school, Westminster (annual fees up to £37,700) and Oxford. 
Happy to risk a general election rather than see a no deal. Spotted last year in Brussels leaving a meeting of campaigners for a second referendum.
Anna Soubry, 62: (Broxtowe, Leave vote 54.6%)
Shockingly abused by Right-wing thugs last week outside Parliament who called her a 'Nazi'. 
Increasingly detached from the Government with pro-Europe views with which she tours TV and radio studios. 
Comprehensive school-educated, studied law and was a TV presenter before going into politics. Quit the Tories in 1983 to join the SDP but then rejoined the party when it was led by Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith. 
Has threatened to side with Labour to bring down the Government to prevent no deal.
Sir Oliver Letwin, 62: (West Dorset, Leave vote 51%)
At Cambridge, he joined the societies of all three main political parties. His PhD was titled ethics, emotion and the unity of the self. 
A member of Mrs Thatcher's policy unit, which came up with the much-hated poll tax. 
Seen as an unworldly egghead out of touch with voters – the proof being his call for big public spending cuts during the 2001 election campaign. 
Other gaffes include saying he'd rather 'beg on the streets' than send his two children to state schools.
Tasked with implementing the Leveson inquiry into Press standards, he cooked up a deal which would have introduced statutory regulation of newspapers for the first time in centuries.
Nick Boles, 53: (Grantham and Stamford, Leave vote 59%)
Oxford and Harvard-educated. Part of the so-called Notting Hill set of posh cronies who powered David Cameron to No.10. 
Brexiteer Michael Gove's campaign manager when he stood for the Tory leadership. Quit as a minister in 2016 before May could sack him after he called for pensioners to lose free prescriptions and winter fuel payments. 
In remission from cancer, he's facing the threat of deselection after vowing to bring down the government to stop no deal.
Sarah Wollaston, 55: (Totnes, Leave vote 54.1%)
Qualified GP who was a high-profile Leave campaigner but switched sides after disputing the claim that the NHS would get an extra £350million a week after Brexit. 
A serial rebel on a range of issues. Chairman of the Commons health select committee.
Nicky Morgan: (Loughborough, Leave vote 50.3%)
The former Education Secretary has been a persistent thorn in the side of Mrs May who sacked her in her first Cabinet reshuffle. 
Controversially criticised the PM for 'the height of political vulgarity' for wearing leather trousers in a photoshoot.
She later apologised but was exposed for hypocrisy when photographed herself with a £950 Mulberry handbag. 
The Oxford-educated solicitor considered standing as party leader in 2016 but humiliatingly got only a handful of MPs to back her. Still rankles over her demotion from Cabinet.
Antoinette Sandbach, 49: (Eddisbury, Leave vote 52.2%)
Barrister who caused outrage for reporting to the police a church-going pensioner constituent who objected to her Remainer views. 
Has said: 'Britain used to have a reputation for being polite and courteous; have we really turned into this shouty society that just screams at each other?' 
Suffered tragedy when she lost her five-day-old son to sudden infant death syndrome. At 6ft 4in tall, thought to be the tallest female MP.
Jonathan Djanogly, 53: (Huntingdon, Leave vote 55.3%)
A trained solicitor who took over John Major's seat and only rose to become junior justice minister for two years. 
Stripped of duties for regulating claims management firms after failing to disclose conflicts of interest regarding family members. 
It was also alleged that he claimed parliamentary expenses to hire an au pair. He said she didn't provide childcare for his family and had only worked as a cleaner. Voluntarily repaid £25,000.
Ken Clarke, 78: (Rushcliffe, Leave vote 42.4%)
Ageing poster boy of Tory pro-Europeans. Has likened visions of a post-Brexit future to a fantasy 'where you follow the rabbit down the hole and emerge in a wonderland where countries around the world are queuing up to give us trading advantages'.
The Father of the House who's standing down at the next election. Famously caught by a TV camera saying 'Mrs May is a bloody difficult woman', successive Tory leaders have discovered that Clarke himself is a difficult man.
John Bercow, 55: (Buckingham, Leave vote 48.7%)
Has become arch-villain for hard-Brexiteers. But his impartiality and favouritism are very serious charges considering his key role.
Faced calls to resign after his family car was seen to have a window sticker saying 'b******s to Brexit, it's not a done deal'. Seen by Remainer MPs as their most important weapon in the battle to stop Britain leaving the EU.
Britain famously has an unwritten constitution. On the whole it has worked pretty well over the years, evolving to address political developments and challenges. It’s not, though, set in stone.
But what a group of MPs is now plotting is nothing less than a constitutional coup which, if successful, could change the way in which we have been governed for well over a century.
If Theresa May’s deal is defeated tomorrow, Dominic Grieve and his band of Remainer conspirators plan to neutralise the Government, and to assume charge of the entire Brexit process – which would almost certainly mean no Brexit at all.
Needless to say, they claim to be asserting parliamentary sovereignty – taking back control, if you like. This is a preposterous falsehood that must be demolished. These MPs are behaving in a fundamentally undemocratic way. They are actually acting against the people, not on their behalf. Let me explain.
Under our political system, parties put forward a set of policies in a manifesto which they are committed to enacting if elected. Before the last election in June 2017, both Conservative and Labour undertook to honour Brexit, for which 17.4 million people had voted a year earlier.
In other words, the overwhelming bulk of the Commons – Tory, Labour, as well as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – made a solemn pledge to carry out the will of the majority as expressed in the referendum. Only about 50 MPs from Liberal Democrat, Scottish Nationalist and other small parties were returned on an anti-Brexit manifesto.
This means that the ponderous Grieve and many of his fellow plotters (Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, can be exempted) were elected on the understanding that they would support Brexit, not thwart it.
They cannot in good conscience renege on the contract they made with electors. Ah, I hear someone say. What about the Tory political philosopher Edmund Burke, who, in 1774, argued persuasively in a speech to the burghers of Bristol that he and other MPs were not mere delegates of the people, but representatives expected to use their judgment?
But the truth is that the modern, if seldom employed, device of a referendum drives a coach and horses through Burke’s dictum of 250 years ago. Voters charged Parliament with carrying out the result of the referendum, and nearly all MPs accepted this obligation.
No, what Grieve, Oliver Letwin, Sarah Wollaston et al are cooking up is a constitutional outrage. They are being assisted in this by the insufferably puffed up Commons Speaker, John Bercow.
Last week, having plotted with Grieve in private, Bercow shockingly overrode long established parliamentary convention to force Mrs May, if she is defeated tomorrow, to come back to the Commons within three days to set out alternative plans.
Assuming the Prime Minister loses the vote heavily, rebel Remainer Tory MPs (who have dozens of existing or potential collaborators in the Labour Party) will try to impose a series of ‘indicative votes’, foremost among which would be a demand for a second referendum.
Grieve, Cable and other MPs from the main parties today publish their draft legislation for a so-called ‘People’s Vote’ (a term which absurdly implies there hasn’t already been one) as though they constitute a government. Such a motion might well be carried. Remember there is an anti-Brexit majority in the Commons which, I regret to say, does not appear to respect the outcome of the referendum, let alone recoil at the prospect of ignoring it altogether.
Last week’s finagling by Bercow may only be the start of the subverting of an enfeebled Government. With his dependable assistance, a succession of Commons votes could be binding on Mrs May – or on her successor if she resigns. Parliament would control Brexit. And that would probably mean staying in the EU. For as I have previously argued, the most likely threat, if the Prime Minister’s hard-negotiated deal is defeated, is not No Deal but a second referendum in which all the forces of Project Fear would be re-deployed with more unscrupulousness than ever before.
Yesterday we got a whiff of what may be in store for us in a newspaper article by John Major. Having accused the Brexit leadership of mendacity on an epic scale (as though Remainers did not twist and exaggerate!), the former prime minister suggested Parliament should rescind our withdrawal from the EU and establish a ‘national consultation process’, which in due course would lead to a second referendum. The nerve of it!
Can’t these people foresee the damage that would be done to the democratic process if the majority decision of the British people were set aside, and we ended up staying in the EU because the likes of Grieve and Major can’t accept the result?
By the way, I noticed that, in common with some Remainers, Major had many harsh words for the allegedly lying Brexiteers, but none at all for EU officials such as Jean-Claude Juncker, or the Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar, who have been so obstructive and unhelpful throughout the negotiating process.
I don’t know about you but – in addition to the frightening loss of trust in our democratic institutions I have mentioned – the sheer mean-spiritedness and pettiness of EU officials and some European leaders is another strong reason for not wanting to crawl back, cap in hand, to Brussels.
So far I have only discussed the short-term baleful effects if MPs hijack the Brexit process, and overturn the outcome of the referendum result. But who can doubt that once they had wrested power from the Government, there would be further incursions into the power of the executive?
That could only spell further political chaos to add to the problems we already have, with the prospect of over-mighty MPs squaring up to, and attempting to second guess, the government of the day.
I repeat: political parties are democratically accountable bodies which offer a series of policies to the people, and are judged by their success or failure.
None of us wants to be governed by shifting coalitions of MPs who are not bound by manifesto promises.
Are there any circumstances in which it would be legitimate for Members of Parliament to take matters into their own hands and challenge the executive?
Maybe in extremis, if the Government had disintegrated, and we were hurtling towards disaster. But we are not by any stretch of the imagination in that position. Theresa May has brokered a deal with the EU, and the Commons will vote on it tomorrow. It is far from perfect, but it honours the result of the Referendum.
Of course, lots of Brexiteers have argued it doesn’t go far enough. As many, including the Prime Minister, have warned, by their intransigence they risk ending up with no Brexit at all.
But now there is a further danger. A vote against May’s deal tomorrow may not only keep us in the EU. It could foster anarchy in Parliament, with Remain MPs making the running. I don’t see Jacob Rees-Mogg and his allies, or the DUP, prospering in such conditions.
Things really are spinning out of control. The only way to restore a modicum of stability is to support the best version – I’d say the only version – of Brexit we will ever have. 
Donald Tusk today warned the apparent breakthrough on a Brexit transition deal may not yet have the support of all EU members.
The EU Council President said he still needed to secure the support of all 27 states ahead of a summit that begins on Thursday.
Reports from Brussels suggest Spain is one of the nations whose support still needs to be secured, amid continued concern over the future state of Gibraltar.  
Mr Tusk's warning comes despite a triumphant press conference held by Brexit Secretary David Davis and EU negotiator Michel Barnier yesterday.
The pair revealed a Brexit transition deal had been struck between London and Brussels, with work progressing on the wider divorce deal.
Thursday's summit had been expected to rubber stamp the progress made so far and trigger full-blown trade talks on the future UK-EU relationship.
But in a letter to EU leaders today, Mr Tusk said: 'Yesterday our negotiators reached a solution on parts of the withdrawal agreement.
'Whether all 27 Member States can welcome this at the European Council remains open.
'I still need a couple more hours to consult with some of the most concerned Member States.
'To me, one thing is clear. We have achieved success when it comes to citizens' rights and the financial settlement.' 
But he added: 'As regards the most contentious issue, namely Ireland, Prime Minister May has reassured me that she accepts all options agreed in December to be on the negotiating table.
'Including the option of full regulatory alignment between Ireland and Northern Ireland if there is no other possibility to avoid a hard border.'
Mr Tusk's warning came as Ireland's deputy premier warned the UK there will be no Brexit withdrawal treaty if there is any U-Turn on the 'backstop' solution to avoid a hard border on the island.
Simon Coveney, the country's Foreign Affairs Minister and Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) insisted the UK government has provided a 'cast-iron guarantee' that will ensure no physical infrastructure, checks, or controls at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic post Brexit.
'Without that backstop agreement in place in the withdrawal treaty there will be no withdrawal treaty and there will be no transitional arrangements which are part of the withdrawal treaty,' Mr Coveney warned.
The draft text of a Brexit treaty includes an agreement between the EU and the UK that there must be a backstop solution to ensure that there is no hard border on the island of Ireland.
Speaking during Leaders' Questions in the Dail (Irish Parliament) on Tuesday Mr Coveney hit back at claims that the Government had failed to make any progress on the Irish border issue.
Fianna Fail TD Stephen Donnelly said he believed that what was agreed on Monday was a 'political fudge'.
He also said it was an attempt to 'kick the (border issue) can down the road.'
However, Mr Coveney said: 'Now what we have is an agreement from the British negotiating team to put that backstop in the withdrawal agreement first so that we know there is a floor below which we cannot fall.'
He added: 'And they have also agreed, as a matter of urgency, they would engage in negotiation to put a legally operational backstop in place in the withdrawal agreement and that negotiation would start as soon as next week.
'I think you should inform yourself in terms of what is progress and what's not,' he told Mr Donnelly. 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
A Brexit deal could be agreed by negotiators in Brussels in secret on Sunday before being presented to the British Government next week, it has been claimed.
Internal documents, believed to be from the team working under chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, have been leaked in Germany.
Reporters from one of Germany's largest newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung, were allegedly given access to documents which carried a timetable.
On the papers, it was claimed an agreement on the Brexit deal with Britain should be reached on Sunday.
The 'provisional timetable' and its content was presented to the EU ambassadors on Friday to make them aware of the EU's position, it was claimed.
Highlighted in red on Sunday, the papers say: 'Deal made, nothing made public (in theory)'.
According to the same timetable, Britain will be given access to the offered deal on Monday.
Within days, if it is agreed, there should be a joint public announcement by British Brexit Minister Dominic Raab and EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels. 
However, the paper reports there was still heated exchanges on the trade agreements after the official leave date and the following, 'transition phase' ends, on Saturday. 
This week, the Irish border appeared to be the major sticking point for negotiations.
 Michel Barnier did not appear to be close to making a deal, or backing down over the EU's demands on the border.
The EU negotiator insisted 'checks' would be needed between the UK and the bloc in future, and they could not happen between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
In a speech in Brussels, Mr Barnier repeated his plan for the province to stay within the EU's customs jurisdiction - suggesting barcode scanning and other technology could be used to ease 'political sensitivities'.
Under the European Commission's 'backstop' plan for the Irish border, customs and VAT checks would be carried out using existing customs transit procedures, to avoid the need for physical inspections at the border, he said.
Mr Barnier vowed he would keep fighting to protect the integrity of the EU single market.
'Brexit brings no added value. It is a negative negotiation. It is a lose, lose game,' he said.
Mr Barnier also said Britain could ease the situation by joining a customs union - something the PM has ruled out as it would make trade deals elsewhere almost impossible.
In a stinging putdown, he took aim at Mrs May's Chequers blueprint for future trade, warning it would undermine the single market and give the UK a 'huge competitive edge'.
Mrs May has insisted the idea is unacceptable as it would risk splitting up the UK.
There have however been faint signs of progress amid reports that the two sides are now working on a single text of a divorce agreement - rather than making counter-proposals. 
The intervention came amid a desperate scramble to put together a package that is acceptable to both sides.
An apparent suggested solution would be that Northern Ireland could remain in the European internal market for a limited period of time to prevent a hard border.
However, Northern Irish politicians have repeatedly rejected offers which sees their people treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom.  
Mrs May is thought to be trying to unlock the negotiations with new plans for a 'backstop' to avoid a hard Irish border.
It could effectively keep the whole UK in the customs union as a 'temporary' measure until a broader trade agreement is finalised based on her Chequers blueprint.
But there are also likely to be increased regulatory checks in the Irish sea to protect the EU single market.
That could destroy relations between Mrs May and the DUP - which has warned it has a 'blood red' line on the issue. 
Any agreement this weekend will be discussed by the General Council and then approved by the 27 Heads of State and Government at their EU summit meeting on Wednesday evening, it was claimed .
For the following day, the notes state: 'Deal with Theresa May confirmed in the European Council'.   
Emmanuel Macron has branded Brexit an 'irresponsible lie', calling it Europe's worst crisis since World War II. 
In his most ferocious attack on Brexit to date, the French President said Britain's withdrawal was peddled by 'anger mongers and fake news' and 'offers nothing'. 
Macron published his open letter in 22 EU languages and shared it on his Twitter feed just weeks before Britain leaves the 28-member union. 
His intervention comes as Theresa May battles to win concessions from EU leaders including Macron in order to persuade Parliament to back a withdrawal deal before March 29. 
The 41-year-old French leader, who has faced months of protests against his government, wrote the letter in a bid to rally support ahead of European Parliament elections later this year. 
He said: 'Never, since the Second World War, has Europe been as essential. Yet never has Europe been in so much danger.
'Brexit stands as the symbol of that. It symbolises the crisis of Europe, which has failed to respond to its peoples' needs for protection from the major shocks of the modern world. 
'It also symbolises the European trap. The trap is not being part of the European Union. The trap is in the lie and the irresponsibility that can destroy it. 
'Who told the British people the truth about their post-Brexit future? Who spoke to them about losing access to the European market? Who mentioned the risks to peace in Ireland of restoring the former border? 
'Nationalist retrenchment offers nothing; it is rejection without an alternative. 
'And this trap threatens the whole of Europe: the anger mongers, backed by fake news, promise anything and everything.'
Calling the impasse over Brexit negotiations a 'lesson for us all', Macron called for 'European renewal' ahead of elections to the EU's Parliament later this year. 
Promising 'freedom, protection and progress', he said: 'We cannot let nationalists without solutions exploit the people's anger.'  
Last week Macron warned the UK will need a good reason to delay its scheduled departure from the European Union on March 29.
Theresa May announced in Parliament that she would allow MPs to vote on an extension to the two-year negotiation period if no deal is agreed. 
But Mr Macron said that any request from Britain would need to be justified by 'a clear perspective on the goal,' adding: 'We don't need time, we need decisions.' 
He went on: 'We would support an extension request only if it was justified by a new choice of the British.'   
Macron was elected French President in 2017 with a huge mandate after launching his own party - En Marche - the previous year. 
He swept to victory after National Front candidate Marine Le Pen outpolled France's traditional parties to reach the final two. 
But his popularity has slumped in recent months as the weekly Yellow Vest protests have undermined his authority. 
Critics have accused Macron of an 'imperial' style of government and being out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. 
The European elections will take place in May and are not expected to involve the UK.  
A total of 751 MEPs currently represent some 500million people from 28 member states, but in February 2018 the Parliament voted to reduce the number to 705 after the UK's departure. 
Citizens of Europe,
If I am taking the liberty of addressing you directly, it is not only in the name of the history and values that unite us. It is because time is of the essence. In a few weeks' time, the European elections will be decisive for the future of our continent.
Never, since the Second World War, has Europe been as essential. Yet never has Europe been in so much danger.
Brexit stands as the symbol of that. It symbolises the crisis of Europe, which has failed to respond to its peoples' needs for protection from the major shocks of the modern world. It also symbolises the European trap. The trap is not being part of the European Union. The trap is in the lie and the irresponsibility that can destroy it. Who told the British people the truth about their post-Brexit future? Who spoke to them about losing access to the European market? Who mentioned the risks to peace in Ireland of restoring the former border? Nationalist retrenchment offers nothing; it is rejection without an alternative. And this trap threatens the whole of Europe: the anger mongers, backed by fake news, promise anything and everything.
We have to stand firm, proud and lucid, in the face of this manipulation and say first of all what Europe is. It is a historic success: the reconciliation of a devastated continent in an unprecedented project of peace, prosperity and freedom. We should never forget that. And this project continues to protect us today. What country can act on its own in the face of aggressive strategies by the major powers? Who can claim to be sovereign, on their own, in the face of the digital giants? How would we resist the crises of financial capitalism without the euro, which is a force for the entire European Union? Europe is also those thousands of projects daily that have changed the face of our regions: the school refurbished, the road built, and the long-awaited arrival of high-speed Internet access. This struggle is a daily commitment, because Europe, like peace, can never be taken for granted. I tirelessly pursue it in the name of France to take Europe forward and defend its model. We have shown that what we were told was unattainable, the creation of a European defence capability and the protection of social rights, was in fact possible.
Yet we need to do more and sooner, because there is the other trap: the trap of the status quo and resignation. Faced with the major crises in the world, citizens so often ask us, 'Where is Europe? What is Europe doing?' It has become a soulless market in their eyes. Yet Europe is not just a market. It is a project. A market is useful, but it should not detract from the need for borders that protect and values that unite. The nationalists are misguided when they claim to defend our identity by withdrawing from Europe, because it is the European civilisation that unites, frees and protects us. But those who would change nothing are also misguided, because they deny the fears felt by our peoples, the doubts that undermine our democracies. We are at a pivotal moment for our continent, a moment when together we need to politically and culturally reinvent the shape of our civilisation in a changing world. It is the moment for European renewal. Hence, resisting the temptation of isolation and divisions, I propose we build this renewal together around three ambitions: freedom, protection and progress.
The European model is based on the freedom of man and the diversity of opinions and creation. Our first freedom is democratic freedom: the freedom to choose our leaders as foreign powers seek to influence our vote at each election. I propose creating a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies, which will provide each Member State with European experts to protect their election process against cyber attacks and manipulation. In this same spirit of independence, we should also ban the funding of European political parties by foreign powers. We should have European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet, since respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.
Founded on internal reconciliation, the European Union has forgotten to look at the realities of the world. Yet no community can create a sense of belonging if it does not have bounds that it protects. The boundary is freedom in security. We therefore need to rethink the Schengen area: all those who want to be part of it should comply with obligations of responsibility (stringent border controls) and solidarity (one asylum policy with the same acceptance and refusal rules). We will need a common border force and a European asylum office, strict control obligations and European solidarity to which each country will contribute under the authority of a European Council for Internal Security. On the issue of migration, I believe in a Europe that protects both its values and its borders.
The same standards should apply to defence. Substantial progress has been made in the last two years, but we need to set a clear course: a treaty on defence and security should define our fundamental obligations in association with NATO and our European allies: increased defence spending, a truly operational mutual defence clause, and the European Security Council with the United Kingdom on board to prepare our collective decisions.
Our borders also need to guarantee fair competition. What power in the world would accept continued trade with those who respect none of their rules? We cannot suffer in silence. We need to reform our competition policy and reshape our trade policy with penalties or a ban in Europe on businesses that compromise our strategic interests and fundamental values such as environmental standards, data protection and fair payment of taxes; and the adoption of European preference in strategic industries and our public procurement, as our American and Chinese competitors do.
Europe is not a second-rank power. Europe in its entirety is a vanguard: it has always defined the standards of progress. In this, it needs to drive forward a project of convergence rather than competition: Europe, where social security was created, needs to introduce a social shield for all workers, east to west and north to south, guaranteeing the same pay in the same workplace, and a minimum European wage appropriate to each country and discussed collectively every year.
Getting back on track with progress also concerns spearheading the ecological cause. Will we be able to look our children in the eye if we do not also clear our climate debt? The European Union needs to set its target – zero carbon by 2050 and pesticides halved by 2025 – and adapt its policies accordingly with such measures as a European Climate Bank to finance the ecological transition, a European food safety force to improve our food controls and, to counter the lobby threat, independent scientific assessment of substances hazardous to the environment and health. This imperative needs to guide all our action: from the Central Bank to the European Commission, from the European budget to the Investment Plan for Europe, all our institutions need to have the climate as their mandate.
Progress and freedom are about being able to live from your work: Europe needs to look ahead to create jobs. This is why it needs not only to regulate the digital giants by putting in place European supervision of the major platforms (prompt penalties for unfair competition, transparent algorithms, etc.), but also to finance innovation by giving the new European Innovation Council a budget on a par with the United States in order to spearhead new technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence.
A world-oriented Europe needs to look towards Africa, with which we should enter into a covenant for the future, taking the same road and ambitiously and non-defensively supporting African development with such measures as investment, academic partnerships and education for girls.
Freedom, protection and progress. We need to build European renewal on these pillars. We cannot let nationalists without solutions exploit the people's anger. We cannot sleepwalk through a diminished Europe. We cannot become ensconced in business as usual and wishful thinking. European humanism demands action. And everywhere, the people are standing up to be part of that change. So by the end of the year, let's set up, with the representatives of the European institutions and the Member States, a Conference for Europe in order to propose all the changes our political project needs, with an open mind, even to amending the treaties. This conference will need to engage with citizens' panels and hear academics, business and labour representatives, and religious and spiritual leaders. It will define a roadmap for the European Union that translates these key priorities into concrete actions. There will be disagreement, but is it better to have a static Europe or a Europe that advances, sometimes at different paces, and that is open to all?
In this Europe, the peoples will really take back control of their future. In this Europe, the United Kingdom, I am sure, will find its true place.
Citizens of Europe, the Brexit impasse is a lesson for us all. We need to escape this trap and make the upcoming elections and our project meaningful. It is for you to decide whether Europe and the values of progress that it embodies are to be more than just a passing episode in history. This is the choice I propose: to chart together the road to European renewal.
Emmanuel Macron 
Boris Johnson today dramatically ditched his Brexit Bill and launched an all-out bid to force a pre-Christmas election - after the EU took a wrecking ball to his 'do or die' pledge to cut ties with Brussels by Halloween.
The PM is set to put forward new legislation to trigger a snap poll, with support from the SNP and Lib Dems allowing him to overcome frantic resistance from Labour. 
Downing Street unveiled the plan hours before a crunch Commons vote in which Mr Johnson will give Jeremy Corbyn one last chance to change his mind about an election. 
The motion tonight needs to be approved by two-thirds of the House, making Labour backing necessary. But the shadow cabinet agreed this afternoon that the party will abstain, amid threats of a massive revolt by half of backbench MPs who fear being put to the sword if they go to the country. 
Boris Johnson, the SNP and the Lib Dems have today formed an unlikely alliance to render Jeremy Corbyn powerless as Labour starts another week hopelessly divided over whether they want a general election or not. 
In the face of a massive backbench revolt, Mr Corbyn has vowed to block the PM's latest bid to force a snap poll tonight. 
That motion is being brought under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, meaning two-thirds of the Commons must vote in favour for it to pass.
But the veteran left-winger has been outflanked after the SNP and Lib Dems broke ranks. 
They have offered to back a one-line Bill that would sidestep the FTPA. In return the PM would give up hope of passing the Brexit Bill before an election. 
If the government loses tonight, it will be put before Parliament tomorrow, and crucially will only require a simple majority in both Houses. That threshold is well within reach with SNP and Lib Dem MPs and peers on board.   
However, the split has already caused fury among Labour Remainers who accuse the smaller parties of 'playing for naked political' advantage. 
There has been some chatter at Westminster that the government could offer Mr Corbyn a way out by trying to table a new timetable for the Brexit Bill tomorrow - although it is far from clear that will work.  
A No10 source warned that its next step will be to join forces with the SNP and Lib Dems to pass legislation for an election. 
That only requires a simple majority, making it easier to pass. But the PM will have implicitly shelved hopes of getting his deal through Parliament before the nation votes. 
'Tonight is Labour's last chance to have an election with Brexit done - they can vote tonight for the 12th and get Brexit done before Parliament is dissolved,' the No10 source said. 
'If not, we will introduce a Bill almost identical to the SNP Bill tomorrow and we will have a pre-Christmas election anyway. 
'This Parliament has repeatedly failed to respect its promise to respect the referendum. 
'Millions of families and businesses can't plan because of constant delays. We need a new Parliament by Christmas so we can Get Brexit Done in January and the country can move on.' 
The manoeuvring came after Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, announced that Brussels had granted Britain a so-called 'flex-tension' until January 31.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson has indicated she will order her MPs to support an election as soon as the departure date has been formalised. Her party's priority has been to ensure that a Brexit deal cannot be passed before either a referendum or an election is held.  
'We will keep fighting for a People's Vote, but unless Labour wholeheartedly back it then a General Election is the only way we can use this extension to #StopBrexit,' she tweeted today.
Furious Labour Remainers accused the Lib Dems of 'playing for naked political advantage' and handing more advantage to Mr Johnson by 'blowing up' the so-called Remainer alliance. 
One Tory MP told MailOnline that the smaller parties endorsing a snap election would leave Labour 'well and truly stuck'. 
Under the terms of the extension granted by the EU, if MPs back Mr Johnson's Brexit deal in the coming weeks then the extension can be terminated early and the UK will split from Brussels.  
Mr Johnson's Plan A was for MPs to back holding an election on December 12. 
If MPs back the snap poll then Parliament would be given until November 6 to agree to the PM's deal - but the election would then go ahead regardless. 
The chances of the PM securing an election on his preferred date will hinge on whether Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party support it. 
Donald Tusk announced this morning that the EU had agreed to delay Brexit by up to three months to January 31, 2020. 
However, the extension will have flexibility built into it. 
That will mean that if Boris Johnson is able to get his Brexit deal agreed by parliament and then ratified by the European Parliament the extension will be terminated early. 
If he is able to get his Withdrawal Agreement finalised in November the UK is likely to leave the EU on December 1. 
If the Brexit deal is finalised in December then the UK will likely leave on January 1 and if it is not sorted until January then the UK will leave the day after the current extension on February 1. 
Should Mr Johnson fail to get his deal through then the extension will provide enough time for a general election to be held. 
The EU is also expected to insist as part of the extension package that the UK appoint a new European Commissioner for the duration of the extension.  
Mr Johnson will need the backing of two thirds of the Commons 434 MPs - to trigger the election but Mr Corbyn is expected to abstain on the motion. 
Mr Corbyn previously said he would vote for an election once a No Deal Brexit had been ruled for the next few months, but the party has suggested in recent days that the government must rule out a disorderly departure at any point.
Mr Corbyn now faces being outflanked by his political opponents after the Liberal Democrats and the SNP put forward their own plan, which has now been endorsed by Downing Street.
That would see an election held on December 9. 
The government is believed to be haggling with the Lib Dems and SNP over pushing the date to December 10 or 11.
But crucially for the Lib Dems, the Brexit Bill will be shelved until after the national ballot. The legislation to implement Mr Johnson's deal received its second reading from MPs, but was then 'paused' after the House refused to sign off a breakneck 72-hour timetable to get it on the statute book.  
A senior government source was jubilant about the shift, saying it 'feels like we'll get there one way or another'. 
Independent Group leader Anna Soubry raged that the Lib Dems had 'turned their backs' on a second referendum.
'They have, in my view, turned their back on the People's Vote, wrongly claiming there is no majority for it in Parliament. I am sorry to say that old style, selfish, tribal party politics is at play,' she said. 
One Remain-backing Labour MP told MailOnline: 'This is about naked political advantage... they are just blowing things up.' 
The MP said they and anti-Brexit colleagues would still vote against the FTPA motion, but added gloomily: 'I've got to go - I've got a small majority and an election to prepare for.'  
The decision by the EU to grant the UK a three month delay represents a humiliating moment for Mr Johnson who said he would rather be 'dead in a ditch' than see Brexit postponed again. 
Announcing the extension, Mr Tusk said in a tweet: 'The EU27 has agreed that it will accept the UK's request for a #Brexit flextension until 31 January 2020. 
'The decision is expected to be formalised through a written procedure.' 
Under the terms of the extension offered by the EU, the UK will be able to quit the bloc before January 31 if Parliament is able to agree to the PM's deal. 
The extension is expected to include a termination clause so that if MPs back the deal in November the UK will leave the EU on December 1 and if they back the deal in December then the UK will leave the EU on January 1. 
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, said today: 'I'm very happy that a decision has been taken.' 
The EU had been split on how long thew Brexit delay should be with French President Emmanuel Macron initially  favouring a short extension.  
However, Mr Macron is believed to have changed his mind after a phone call with Mr Johnson yesterday. 
The EU has long insisted that it would grant a lengthier delay if it was to make time for the UK to either hold an election or a second referendum. 
Mr Johnson appears to have persuaded Mr Macron that a general election will dramatically alter the Brexit arithmetic in the House of Commons, finally providing a way through the current impasse. 
An EU source said the extension would last 'only as long as necessary to allow for the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement and, in any event, no longer than January 31 2020'.
Britain would be able to leave the EU on the first day of the month following the ratification of the WAB by both the European and UK parliaments.
But the source added: 'The United Kingdom will remain a member state until the new withdrawal date, with full rights and obligations, including the obligation to suggest a candidate for appointment as a member of the Commission.
'This extension excludes any re-opening of the Withdrawal Agreement.'
The text will be submitted to the UK for agreement, before a written procedure is launched to adopt the decision - with the process likely to be concluded tomorrow or Wednesday.
One potential sticking point in the EU's extension offer is that the UK will likely be required to nominate and send a UK Commissioner after October 31. 
Mr Johnson previously said Britain would stop sending one after October 31 – the day he said Brexit would happen.
The EU is also adamant that no major changes can be made to the Prime Minister's deal. 
It says: 'The European Council firmly states that it excludes any reopening of the Withdrawal Agreement in the future and recalls that any unilateral commitment, statement or other act by the United Kingdom should be compatible with the letter and the spirit of the Withdrawal Agreement.'
Mr Tusk has been in intensive discussions with EU leaders over the weekend. 
A majority of Labour MPs are believed to be opposed to a pre-Brexit election. 
One set out their opposition in colourful terms to the Politics Home website as they said: 'I won't be voting for a general election come hell or high water. They can go f*** themselves. Brexit must be sorted.
'As for winning, you've got to be pretty dim to ask for the chequered flag when you're stuck at the back of the grid.'
Many recent opinion polls have Labour trailing the Tories by double digits with senior party figures fearing the worse if there is an election in the near future.
But while many in Labour are downbeat on their chances at an election, the pro-Remain Lib Dems and SNP are champing at the bit to go to the country early. 
Both believe a pre-Brexit election is in their favour, hence why they have joined forces on the plan to force a poll on December 9. 
That is the absolute earliest an election could be held because of rules which dictate there must be 25 working days before polling day. 
The December 9 date would be three days before the PM's proposed date and, crucially, when more students are still at university to cast their votes in Remain-supporting target swing seats. 
The draft law, currently earmarked to be tabled tomorrow, would require a simple majority of 320 MPs to support it in order to dissolve Parliament - 114 fewer than under the FTPA 'super majority' rules. 
Ms Swinson said the proposal would tie Mr Johnson's hands over the election date and would not give him the 'wriggle room' that his own plan would have.
Many opposition MPs fear that if they voted for an election Mr Johnson could then change the date to force a No Deal Brexit - something Downing Street has long dismissed as nonsense. 
'And because people can't trust what this man says, I think setting that date in law is a very good idea,' Ms Swinson told the BBC' Radio 4 Today programme.
The Lib Dem leader said there were various reasons why December 9 made more sense than December 12 for an election.
'Clearly, it's three further days away from Christmas and I understand that the public appetite for an election around Christmas is not necessarily high so I think, from the point of view of the economy and retailers, keeping it as far away as possible is helpful,' she said. 
'What waiting would do is risk No Deal, because if we waste this extension and we end up in January with that 31st of January deadline looming, assuming it is granted today, and we haven't done anything with this time, then there's no guarantee the EU will extend again and then no-deal is back on the table.'
The prospect of the Lib Dems and SNP working with the Tories to force an early election sparked anger from Labour frontbenchers. 
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, tweeted: 'Looks like the Lib Dem and Tory pact of 2010 is being re-established. 
'They are back together, selling out the People's Vote campaign and the cross party campaign to prevent a no deal. 
'The Lib Dems will stop at nothing to get their ministerial cars back.'   
Last night Labour frontbencher Lucy Powell told the Westminster Hour that an 'election soon is now both inevitable and necessary'.
She said: 'Parliament is in a deadlock and we need to break that deadlock somehow, even if Brexit is done. 
'The issue is the terms of that election, the when and how of that election. I think what we've seen from the Liberal Democrats and the SNP is trying to shape the terms of that election in a way that would favour them the most, it's pure playing of politics.' 
The Brexit endgame: How the crisis might develop as Boris Johnson struggles to cut ties with EU  
The Prime Minister has missed his 'do or die' Halloween Brexit deadline, which means the UK will stay in the EU until January 31 next year, unless Parliament ratifies his deal before then.
With that 'flextension' now confirmed by the EU, attention now turns to the matter of a general election.
So is it as straightforward as setting a date and getting on with it? Not quite. Here is a look at how things stand.
What does Boris Johnson want to do now and is he likely to succeed?
First, Mr Johnson is making an election bid under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act (FTPA), requiring a two-thirds Commons majority - 434 MPs - to have an election on December 12.
Labour's lack of support for the proposal means it is likely to be defeated when voted upon on Monday evening.
Jeremy Corbyn has insisted that Labour can only support an election once the threat of a no-deal crash-out from the European Union has been completely ruled out.
Why is there opposition to an election on December 12?
Concerns have been raised about a December election for a number of reasons - not all of them political.
There is talk of voters staying away, discouraged by cold wintry evenings, while others could well be booked up with office Christmas parties, nativity plays, shopping and generally busying themselves with festive fun.
There are also potential issues with councils being unable to book polling stations and count venues with such short notice.
Has December 9 also been mentioned as a potential date?
Yes. Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford have put forward a tightly-drafted Bill that would grant an election on December 9 - three days earlier than the PM's suggested polling date - as long as the European Union granted the January 31 extension.
The draft law, currently scheduled to be debated in Tuesday's sitting of the House of Commons, would require a simple majority of 320 MPs to support it in order to dissolve Parliament - 114 fewer than under the FTPA 'super majority' rules.
What difference does three days make?
Ms Swinson said her proposal ties Mr Johnson's hands over the election date and does not give him the 'wriggle room' that his own plan would have.
She said it is three further days away from Christmas, adding that keeping the election day as far away from December 25 is in the best interest of the economy.
The Lib Dem leader also pointed out that December 9 would be a better date for university students who may be leaving university towns to return home for Christmas at the end of term.
Are the Lib Dems and the SNP keen to have an election at the earliest possible opportunity?
It would seem so. Ms Swinson said December 9 is the earliest possible date to have an election if the Bill is passed, meaning that an election happens 'as soon as possible'.
Both the Lib Dems and the SNP would hope to benefit from an election before Brexit takes place because they will be hoping to win the backing of people who want Brexit scrapped.
The Lib Dems have campaigned for a People's Vote, while the SNP has also been vocal in its support of a second Brexit referendum.
So where does Labour stand on all of this?
While some around Jeremy Corbyn back a snap election, many Labour MPs are bitterly opposed to a poll, fearing confusion over the party's position on Brexit will cost them at the ballot box.
The party has said it will only back an election if Mr Johnson makes 'absolutely clear' that no-deal is off the table now that the January extension has been granted.
But it is not entirely clear what steps Mr Johnson would have to take to satisfy Labour that no-deal has completely been ruled out.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott suggested further legislation may be required as promises by Mr Johnson were 'not worth the paper they're written on'.
She said that Labour would 'discuss' the Lib Dems/SNP Bill with opposition colleagues.
Mr Corbyn had previously said he wanted to wait for the EU's decision over the length of the Article 50 extension before deciding whether to whip MPs in support of Mr Johnson's bid for a winter election.
What will the Prime Minister do if he fails in his bid to hold an election on December 12?
A Number 10 source said on Monday afternoon that if Mr Johnson fails, the Government will introduce an 'almost identical' Bill to the December 9 general election proposals put forward by the Lib Dems and SNP.
'We need a new Parliament by Christmas so we can Get Brexit Done in January and the country can move on,' the source said.
Lord Mandelson has launched a brutal assault on Jeremy Corbyn, arguing a Labour government is impossible under his leadership.
The Blairite peer, who was one of the architects of New Labour and a Cabinet minister under Gordon Brown, also fires a broadside at the party's 'statist' economic policies.
In a report, he warns that in government, 'Chancellor' John McDonnell would hand power to 'a new generation of trade union barons' and 'reassert the statist mindset that New Labour disavowed'.
But he adds: 'Were it not for Jeremy Corbyn's extremely poor personal ratings – they make a majority Labour government an impossibility while he remains – Labour's prospects would be far stronger than the party's detractors imagine.'
His comments come in the foreword to a report by the free market think-tank Policy Exchange, which highlights the dangers of 'McDonnellomics' to the City of London.
The report examines Mr McDonnell's plans for the economy and warns they are rooted in the politics of the 1970s hard Left.
It concludes a Labour government would in a short period undermine investor confidence, damage the tax base and hurt growth.
Labour's plans for the City would be a 'gift' to financial centres in New York, Tokyo and elsewhere, it says.
The report's author, head of economics Warwick Lightfoot, said a McDonnell 'experiment' would hit companies and ordinary people.
Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell want to bring rail, water, electricity and other utilities back into public ownership, policies that would cost hundreds of billions of pounds.
Mr Lightfoot said: 'John McDonnell has set out a highly ambitious policy agenda in terms of increases in public spending, taxation, nationalisation, modifications to property rights and employment and industrial relations law.
'This economic experiment would, over time, have a radical and transformational impact on the UK's economy. But there is much more doubt about how it would benefit businesses and employees.'
Theresa May today set up a major Brexit showdown with Remain rebels by confirming all 15 Lords amendments to her flagship laws will be voted on next week.
Chief whip Julian Smith confirmed to Tory MPs a marathon debate would be held next Tuesday and warned votes could go on long into the night. 
MPs are expected to be ordered to strike down all 15 changes made by peers to the EU Withdrawal Bill.
But at least two of the amendments - on whether Mrs May can quit talks without a deal and on keeping Britain inside the European Economic Area - could attract enough Tory rebels to inflict embarrassing defeats on the Government. 
The Prime Minister is gambling that Tory rebels are not prepared to risk collapsing the Government and even triggering an early election.
In a letter to all Tory MPs today, Mr Smith said: 'I know that the Commons consideration of Lords amendments on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is of great interest to many of you and I am able to confirm that this will take place on June 12.
'There will be a number of divisions that day so please make sure you are working from the estate at all times - we will be voting well beyond the moment of interruption.'
Here are the 15 Brexit Bill defeats inflicted by peers:
Mr Smith's final remark is a warning to MPs he plans to call votes well after the normal 7pm end to business on a Tuesday. 
The Government has not made clear its position on all 15 Lords amendments.
But he told Tory MPs: 'I look forward to working with you to deliver back to the House of Lords the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill in a way that reflects both the referendum result and the Conservative Party manifesto we all stood on last year.' 
Labour MP and Best for Britain campaigner David Lammy said: 'This shows total contempt of Parliament to try and railroad 15 amendments through Parliament in just a single session.
'This piece of legislation will have huge consequences for the future of our country for generations to come. 
'There is no shortage of parliamentary time - the government has hardly put any substantive legislation before Parliament since the General Election because their mandate is shot to pieces and the Cabinet is divided over Brexit.' 
Earlier Labour's Sadiq Khan called on his party's MPs to defy Jeremy Corbyn and vote to keep Britain close to the EU.
It could make the vote on the EEA close even if Mr Corbyn chooses to support the Government. 
Invoking the memory of Labour MPs such as Robin Cook Mr Khan told the Guardian: 'The last vote of this significance was the vote on the Iraq war – when there were brave MPs from all parties who did the right thing and voted against the war regardless of the consequences.'
Khan himself was not in the Commons at the time of the Iraq vote, having only become an MP in 2005, and so did not take part in the revolt he is promoting.
Theresa May is set to let MPs decide on how to break the Brexit deadlock as her own furious ministers urged her to end talks with Labour today.
If the plug is pulled the Prime Minister will offer the Commons a series of 'definitive votes' to try to settle the matter after the European elections conclude on May 23.
Talks with Labour resume today after seven weeks without any breakthrough, but Mrs May is under growing pressure to abandon them after Jeremy Corbyn's chief negotiator insisted a second referendum must be the price of any deal.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today a new EU poll would be a 'betrayal' as he downplayed the chances of one being offered to Mr Corbyn and the PM's spokesman later confirmed she is opposed to any form of Brexit referendum.
Communities Secretary James Brokenshire has revealed the Government's Plan B 'would be to go back to Parliament to have a series of definitive votes'. 
The votes on whether to accept Mrs May's deal, a second referendum, a customs union with the EU or revoking Article 50 completely, could be held within weeks - but a similar exercise in March and April failed to find a majority.
Talks between the Tories and Labour were left in turmoil this morning after Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said a deal without a second referendum is 'impossible' because up to 150 Labour MPs would reject it.
He said: 'I've made it clear that at this stage – at this 11th hour – any deal that comes through from this Government ought to be subject to the lock of a confirmatory vote.'
But the Prime Minister has always made clear that a second Brexit poll after 17.4million voted to leave the EU in 2016 is a red line she is not prepared to cross.  
MPs would vote on whether they back Theresa May's Brexit deal - and  alternatives to it - on the proviso the PM would then to act on their wishes.
Definitive votes have never been held before in the UK, but it would be a similar system to the indicative votes held in Parliament in March and April.
MPs would be presented with a ballot paper listing all the selected proposals and would vote 'aye' or 'noe' to whichever ones they choose. 
They can vote for just one, or all of them.
The Government would not be legally obliged to swallow the results but Mrs May could promise to take the top option forward, but only if Jeremy Corbyn also agreed to the process.
Arriving in Brussels for a meeting of the EU's Foreign Affairs Council today, Jeremy Hunt told reporters: 'From the Conservative point of view we have always said that we think that would be a betrayal of what people voted for and we want to implement the first referendum'.  He added that it was a 'crunch week' for the talks with Labour.  
 Communities Secretary James Brokenshire also said a new poll would be wrong because it is 'not giving effect to the original vote'.
He said: 'These talks are about delivering on the result not reopening the debate, creating more uncertainty and division. If we go down this approach of a confirmatory referendum that's taking us in a different direction that's not delivering on the original vote'. 
Away from Brexit a domestic abuse survivor told Prime Minister Theresa May her support 'makes a world of difference' as she visited a charity helping women and children.
The PM visited Advance, a charity which supports women and children who have survived abuse across the capital, at its headquarters in west London on Monday morning.
It coincides with Mrs May's announcement of plans to end the postcode lottery for domestic abuse survivors and ensure councils have a legal obligation to provide them with secure homes.  
Any second referendum on Brexit is expected to be  'confirmatory', which is when the public has the chance to approve or reject a proposition of the Government.
If it happened it would most likely be a binary yes/no choice whether to accept Theresa May's Brexit deal, either changed after a deal with Labour, or unchanged.
If widened out it could be a straight choice between the Government's Deal vs No Deal -  or the Governmnet's Deal vs Remain.
Whichever option won more votes would then be implemented. 
Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson also admitted this morning he believes it would be 'difficult' for his party to assist Mrs May in the UK's exit from the EU without another referendum. 
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'The difficulty is just parliamentary arithmetic and Keir Starmer has alluded to this today as well, and John McDonnell did last week.
'The whipping arrangements for these deals is very difficult because MPs have hardened their positions within their parties so I think it would be very difficult.'
Mr Watson continued: 'If a deal could be found that inspires enough votes in Westminster then fine, but it seemed to me that that's very, very difficult.
'And so my idea of a confirmatory ballot is not a religious point or a point of ideology, it's just how do you get an outcome, how do you sort this out?
'And one way to do it are these two minority positions - the Prime Minister's deal and those that think the people should have a say on the deal - plug them together and you build a majority.'
Labour's policy on the second referendum appears to be shifting.
Just two weeks ago a member of its negotiating team insisted a new poll was not a 'red line'.
Now  Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer warned it was 'impossible' to get a deal through without one.
And the party's deputy leader Tom Watson said Labour's position in relation to the European elections is as a 'remain and reform' party.
May 13: Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said a Tory/Labour Brexit pact could clear the Commons unless it guaranteed the deal would be put back to the public for a 'confirmatory vote'.
And Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said he thought the way out of the impasse was a 'confirmatory ballot' on Theresa May's agreement, saying it would be 'difficult' for his party to assist in the UK's exit from the EU without another referendum.
May 1:  Jeremy Corbyn was accused of 'fudging' the party's manifesto commitment to a second referendum on Brexit. 
Mr Corbyn made a second referendum the last resort after a marathon meeting of the party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), where he saw off a bid by Remainers to commit the party to a 'confirmatory' referendum on any Brexit deal.
Instead, the party's manifesto for this month's European parliament elections will simply keep the referendum idea on the table as 'an option'.
April 30: Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, who is part of Labour's negotiating team, indicated on Sunday that a second referendum was not a 'red line' for Labour, saying: 'If we don't get a deal that satisfies those objectives - if it's a damaging Tory Brexit deal or there is the risk of us moving towards a No Deal, in that circumstance we have said that all options should be on the table and that includes campaigning for a public vote but our priority in these negotiations is to find the consensus and to get a deal that we know will protect the economy.' 
Mr Watson described Labour's position in relation to the European elections as a 'remain and reform' party.
'We are remain and reform party but obviously when it comes to a deal people can form their own view,' he told Today.
'But when it comes to that European election let me just say Remain is not on the ballot paper in that election.'
Chancellor Philip Hammond is said to be among those who have lost faith with the plan to strike a cross-party deal, which the Times reports he believes is a 'false premise'.
'If we can't do a deal with Labour we need to throw our weight behind indicative votes,' a government source said. 
And the PM's husband Philip May is said to be seeking a 'dignified exit' for his wife, having been her 'rock', encouraging her to hold out against calls for her to go for many months.
One minister told The Sun: 'If she can't find a majority for Brexit in the next couple of weeks, does she really risk abject humiliation at the national convention on June 15?
'Or does Philip sit down with a whisky and tell her it's time. I suspect he'll tell her not to put herself through that and, knowing her, she won't want to put the party through that either.' 
The Brexit talks between Labour and the Tories so far 'have been serious' but 'they have also been difficult', Downing Street said today.
With the two teams due to meet again on Monday evening, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mrs May has made clear her views about a second public vote, insisting she was 'focused on delivering the result of the first referendum'.
The spokesman acknowledged that 'we need to get on with it' but declined to put a deadline on the talks process or the publication of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
'If we were able to make progress with Labour then we would look to bring the bill before the House of Commons before the European elections,' he said.
Nigel Farage later said the idea of a confirmatory referendum was the 'most outrageous proposal' he had ever seen and would lead to a party like the Brexit Party winning a majority in Parliament at the next general election. 
The Tories face the ignominy of finishing fifth in the EU elections as Nigel Farage continues to give them a battering, a new poll revealed today.  
The Brexit Party is racing ahead with a predicted 34 per cent of the vote on May 23 - but Theresa May's Conservatives are heading for just 10 per cent, a YouGov survey has found.
This would put the Prime Minister's party in fifth place behind the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, who were on 15 per cent and 11 per cent respectively.
The collapse in support for the Conservative Party is piling pressure on Mrs May to set a date for her departure from No 10 - but Labour is also down five points on 16 per cent, with confusion over their Brexit position continuing.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the Brexiteer European Research Group of Tories, appealed for disillusioned Conservatives to stick with the party for the sake of Theresa May's replacement.
He said: 'I would appeal to their loyalty, to their tradition and to say that the Conservative Party will get a new leader at some point. We have gone from 40 per cent to 10 per cent in the polls and those are Eurosceptics. It is forgetting about them that is destroying the Tory party's vote'.
Speaking during a walkabout in Pontefract, part of Labour MP Yvette Cooper's constituency, Mr Farage said: 'A confirmatory vote, it sounds all nice and fluffy, what does it mean?
'It means we stay in the European Union as we are, or we nominally leave and stay permanently part of a customs union and with single market rules. They wouldn't even give the public the option of actually leaving. It's the most outrageous proposal I've ever seen.
'It wouldn't break the deadlock, it would just mean we're not leaving the European Union. It would just mean, basically, the second referendum would be there, giving two choices to reverse the result of the first one. It's an outrage, it cannot happen.
'I promise you this, if we get forced as a country into that choice of a referendum, there'll be bigger change in British politics than anybody can even imagine.'
DUP leader Arlene Foster had claimed a confirmatory Brexit referendum would place democracy at risk.
Mrs Foster, who was attending the launch of her party's European election manifesto in Belfast, also criticised Prime Minister Theresa May for lacking the vision of a strong United Kingdom post-Brexit.
'What people want to see is democracy being respected. Unfortunately it hasn't been respected and we have a Remain parliament, therefore parliament has not been able to deliver on Brexit in the way it should have been delivered upon,' she said.
'We have a Prime Minister frankly who doesn't have the vision for the United Kingdom post Brexit that we all want to see. We want to see a United Kingdom that is strong post-Brexit and has a close relationship with Europe.'
Cabinet Ministers who want her to move to Plan B are understood to include DWP Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Business Secretary Greg Clarke. 
Sir Keir Starmer, who has taken part in five weeks of the talks, suggested Labour could call time within days if no new offer is forthcoming.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of another meeting on Monday, Sir Keir said he doubted any agreement that was not set to be ratified by a public vote would pass through Parliament.
'A significant number of Labour MPs, probably 120 if not 150, would not back a deal if it hasn't got a confirmatory vote,' he said.
'If the point of the exercise is to get a sustainable majority, over several weeks or months of delivering on the implementation, you can't leave a confirmatory vote out of the package.'  
Nigel Farage has said that the Labour party is 'vulnerable in the most extraordinary way' in Leave areas in the north of England.
The Brexit Party leader was speaking during a visit to Pontefract, West Yorkshire, part of Labour MP Yvette Cooper's constituency, where 70% of voters voted to leave the EU.
Mr Farage said he had seen a lot of anger and passion in Labour Leave areas in northern towns, as he toured the UK ahead of next week's European election.
He said: 'The passion seems even stronger in Labour Leave areas than in Conservative Leave areas.
'Whether that's because people in the north of England wear their hearts on their sleeves more, I don't know.'
Mr Farage spoke to members of the public who told him that they were usually Labour voters, but would be voting for the Brexit Party in the forthcoming election.
He said: 'It's areas like this where I think the Labour party is vulnerable in the most extraordinary way.'
He continued: 'This is a 70% Leave constituency, these five towns voted Leave by a massive margin.
'You've got a member of Parliament who, at the general election a year later, promised to honour the result, and has spent the last two years, effectively, trying to stop Brexit from happening.
'So there is real anger in these places, and we focus on the Conservatives being in real trouble over the EU issue.
'In the north of England, Labour are in very big trouble too.'
Mr Farage said the option of a confirmatory referendum was an 'outrage' and would lead to a change in British politics if implemented.
The issue of a confirmatory referendum has been an internal battleground within Labour ranks, with Sir Keir pushing for one but shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, also part of the negotiating team, less keen.
But Sir Keir highlighted how the party lost 200 lost seats in this month's council elections, which he said were a sign Labour was losing the trust of Remain as well as Leave voters.
With less than two weeks before the European elections, the shadow Brexit secretary urged Labour Remainers tempted to vote for the Lib Dems or Change UK that only Jeremy Corbyn's party could deliver a fresh referendum.
'There is concern in leave areas about whether some of our voters might vote for other parties, but I think there is an increasing concern that some of the Labour Remain voters might not vote Labour,' he said.
'It is very important that we learn those lessons.'
Tom Watson will use a speech today to push for a second referendum. 
Philip Hammond's parliamentary aide Hugh Merriman, who supports another referendum as a way of carrying out Brexit, told BBC Radio 4 Westminster Hour his party will do badly in the European Parliament elections later this month.
He told Carolyn Quinn: 'The public will blame the Conservative Government because we were the party that brought forward the referendum. And so for those that didn't want it and wanted Remain they'll blame us for having tried to take us out.
'And for those that voted to leave they'll blame us for having not got the country out of the EU. We're at the perfect storm so yes I think we'll get an absolute mauling.'
Education Secretary Damian Hinds expressed support for finding a 'stable majority' by allowing MPs to vote on different options.
'If we can't do a deal with Labour we need to throw pour weight behind indicative votes,' a Government source said, adding moves to step up no-deal planning would be resisted.
'How can we campaign against the Brexit Party if their campaign for a no-deal Brexit is our contingency plan?
'Nothing better sums up the ludicrousness of our situation than that.' 
MPs sat for less than four hours today as the House of Commons stumbled on during the Brexit deadlock.
Monday's sitting started at 2.30pm with work and pensions questions, with the Government adding two statements to the schedule.
But the House of Commons rose at 6.04pm - more than four hours earlier than scheduled.
The chamber usually sits until 10.30pm on Mondays but all business was dealt with long before then.
The Commons has finished early on several days in the weeks since the Easter recess as talks between Labour and the Conservatives continue in a bid to break the Brexit impasse.
No votes have taken place in the chamber since April 10 and MPs approved the Whitsun recess, which is due to take place from close of play on May 23 until June 4, unopposed.
The Brexit deadlock has contributed to the longest session of Parliament since the English Civil War.
Tuesday will mark the 300th sitting day of a session which has stretched over three different years, starting on June 13, 2017.
But the current session is unlikely to break the record of the Long Parliament which begin on November 3, 1640 and continued until April 20, 1653 - sitting for a total of 3,322 days.
Analysis by the House of Commons Library said: 'What makes the 2017-19 session unusual is that it has lasted for more than three years.
'This has been to permit the passage of Brexit-related legislation. This parliamentary session has now overtaken the 296 sitting days in the 2010-12 session, which was previously the longest since the Civil War.
'It has therefore also become the longest session since the union of England and Scotland in 1707.'
Other notable sessions include the Convention Parliament of 1688-89, which followed the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and sat for 250 days.
The longest session in the 19th century was in 1893-94 - 226 sitting days - when Gladstone's government unsuccessfully tried to enact home rule for Ireland.
Divisions over Europe contributed to the 240-day session of 1992-93, characterised by bitter debates over the Maastricht Treaty.
The 1997-98 session, with 241 days, saw the passing of legislation creating devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales.
In terms of sitting hours, the 2,657 hours and 56 minutes recorded up to May 10 made it comfortably the longest on record, with figures dating back to 1831-32.
Brexit will allow the UK to halve net migration, a major study indicates today.
The cut will provide a long-term boost to wages and help ease the national housing crisis, say Cambridge University researchers.
Any negative impact on growth will only be tiny and would probably have happened even without a vote to leave, according to their research.
The academics deliver a devastating verdict on the Treasury’s pre-referendum scare-mongering, accusing officials of ‘flawed and partisan’ forecasts about the country’s prospects outside the EU.
The Treasury was accused of a Project Fear cover-up last night after refusing to identify the economists who predicted an immediate recession if Britain voted for Brexit.
Cabinet minister David Gauke has refused repeated Parliamentary requests to identify the officials who were responsible for the doom-mongering predictions.
This is despite concerns from MPs that the same economists are working on the Brexit negotiations and may take excessively gloomy positions that hold Britain back. Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen has asked Parliamentary questions and written in person to Mr Gauke, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, requesting the names of the senior economists responsible, all of whom are paid by the taxpayer.
He wrote: ‘I do feel in the light of the economic performance after the referendum, a full list of the economists who contributed to Treasury review should be made public given the significant impact the report could have had on the referendum.
‘I believe this is necessary if the public is to have confidence in Treasury reports in the future.’
But Mr Gauke would only confirm the documents were produced internally by the Treasury.
 
Instead, they say leaving the Brussels club will allow net migration – the difference between the number of foreign nationals arriving in the UK and those leaving – to be cut to 165,000. The total currently stands at a record 330,000.
The report came as a raft of economic good news emerged yesterday including record car sales, a fresh high for the FTSE and a report showing that business confidence is returning. 
The Cambridge study, from its Centre for Business Research, said slashing net migration would give British workers more wage bargaining power while reducing the pressure on housing supply.
It said: ‘Controls on immigration from the EU are assumed to be imposed in mid-2019, leading to net migration falling to around 165,000 from 2020.’ 
On wages, the report states: ‘Our equations for earnings suggest that earnings will rise by more than 2 per cent as employment rates reach a peak in 2017 and especially as migration reduces from 2019.
‘The UK labour market has become very dependent on foreign-born labour with the increase in foreign-born workers being equivalent to over 80 per cent of additional employment since 2004.
‘Immigration restrictions will provide the biggest shock to wage bargaining for over a decade.’
The Treasury’s doom-laden report predicted a fall in real wages, which factors in rising inflation.
By contrast, the CEBR predicts they will keep rising in line with inflation until around 2025. From then on, there will be steady real-terms rises. 
On housing, it says – without Brexit – homes would have become much harder to afford as prices far outstripped wage growth.
The report states: ‘With lower net migration after 2019 this pressure is expected to recede.’
The report said that only one of the Treasury’s many gloomy predictions – a sharp fall in sterling – had been realised. 
The economists said even this had a positive impact because it would reduce the UK’s balance of payments deficit to a ‘manageable level’.
He's obviously feline the benefits of post-Brexit Britain.
Number 10 cat Larry was spotted with a new collar yesterday featuring a union flag pattern. The Downing Street mouse catcher was treated to the patriotic gift over the festive period – most likely a present from a civil servant.

Crucially, the fall in the pound has also effectively wiped out the impact of any tariffs which may be imposed on UK exports by the EU once Brexit is complete. For 2017, the economists predict growth of GDP will be between one and 1.5 per cent and ‘could even be 2 per cent’.
Graham Gudgin, one of the authors of the report, said the Treasury’s work had been ‘very flawed and very partisan’. 
‘The Treasury said there would be four quarters of recession, we have had six months since the Brexit vote, we should have been in recession by now, but we are not,’ he said.
Overall, the study says of the economy: ‘The economic outlook is grey rather than black, but this would, in our view, have been the case with or without Brexit.’
Former Tory Cabinet minister John Redwood said: ‘The Treasury was far too pessimistic about Brexit - and constantly far too optimistic about the alleged benefits of the EU single market. 
‘Long term, I don’t think Brexit is going to have any negative effect.’ 
Figures released yesterday revealed car sales hit a record high last year as families brushed off doom-laden warnings about the threat posed by Brexit.
Some 2.69million new cars were sold in the UK in 2016 – up from 2.63million the previous year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders.
In a further boost to the economy, the FTSE hit a new record high for the fifth trading day in a row – a first since January 1998.
A report by the British Chambers of Commerce also shows business confidence is returning as the fall in the pound helps exports.
BCC director general Adam Marshall said: ‘Our findings suggest that business communities across the UK remain resilient, and many firms are expecting continued growth in the months ahead.’
Separately, analysts IHS Markit said its index of activity in the construction sector – where scores above 50 show growth – rose from 52.8 in November to 54.2 in December.
 
With the Brexit cliff edge fast approaching, it is no wonder that passions are running high. The BBC, entirely predictably, gave blanket coverage to Saturday’s march in central London demanding a second referendum, which may well have been the biggest convocation of Waitrose regulars in history.
It is, of course, easy to sneer, especially if you agree that a second referendum would be a betrayal of democracy and an insult to the 17.4 million people who voted Leave.
Yet no sensible observer can ignore the sheer numbers who turned out for the march, the five million who signed a petition calling for Brexit to be revoked, or the fact that across much of leafy, middle-class Britain, agitation at the prospect of a chaotic No Deal Brexit is now turning to outright rage.
But it was another protest in the last few days, which attracted rather less attention from our metropolitan public broadcaster, that struck me as much more ominous.
This was the go-slow on Britain’s motorways at rush-hour on Friday evening, which saw chaotic tailbacks on traffic arteries such as the M1, M4 and M6, as well as on major A roads everywhere from Devon and Cornwall to Lancashire and Humberside.
The organisers, who call themselves Brexit Direct Action, make no secret of their ambition to bring Britain to a standstill if the Government continues to delay Brexit, or even cancels it altogether. With strong support among the nation’s lorry drivers, they claim they could shut down our motorways overnight. And it would, I think, be a brave man who would bet against them.
So, on the one hand, you have the streets of the capital paralysed by protesters who want Brexit to be cancelled; and on the other, you have the nation’s motorways paralysed by protesters who insist it must go ahead. Even if Theresa May were the most adroit politician in history, this would present a horrendously daunting challenge.
Of the two, the lorry drivers’ protests seems to me by far the more dangerous. Recent history suggests that when roused, Britain’s hauliers can be formidable adversaries.
The fuel protests of 2000 shut down thousands of petrol stations and did immense damage to Tony Blair’s public image, while it was a lorry drivers’ strike in early 1979 that launched the Winter of Discontent and helped to bring down the Labour government of the day.
Even more ominous, though, is the example of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement across the Channel, which has dominated French politics for the last five months.
Launched by lorry drivers outraged by high fuel prices, it has now escalated into a rolling, amorphous anti-Macron protest movement, with colossal street battles between demonstrators and riot police on the streets of Paris.
So far at least ten people have been killed in the gilets jaunes protests, while almost 100 have been seriously injured, losing eyes, limbs and even jaws. Indeed, despite all the talk of the unprecedented divisions here in Britain, we often forget that the situation across the Channel is far more embittered.
Could it happen here? Of course it could. After more than a thousand days, the running sore of Brexit is rawer than ever. The air is full of talk of betrayal, the Prime Minister herself seems doomed, and the prospect of a dramatic, hugely controversial twist – either a No Deal Brexit or a second referendum – looms ever larger.
There is no doubt Brexit has exposed the deep divisions in our body politic. Indeed, some historians argue that the gulf between Leavers and Remainers reflects a cultural chasm that has existed for centuries, a divide of almost religious proportions between two kinds of Britons – herbivorous, ‘progressive’ citizens of the world on the one hand, and carnivorous, conservative card-carrying patriots on the other.
Most of us lean one way or the other. But like our predecessors during the bloody civil wars of the 1640s, most of us have friends or family members who think differently. And whether we like it or not, the plain fact is that Britain must find room for both tribes, the 17.4 million who voted Leave as well as the 16.1 million who voted Remain.
To me, one of the saddest things about the last thousand days is that so many supposedly intelligent people have lost any sense of humility, generosity or perspective. I simply cannot understand why the hard-line Brexiteers are so blind to the narrowness of their victory or the urgency of protecting our economy, just as I cannot understand why so many ultra-Remainers, suffused with self-righteous, hysterical sanctimony, want to trample all over our democratic traditions.
Surely it is the job of any responsible government to find a pragmatic compromise between the two extremes. That is why Mrs May’s much-maligned deal has always struck me as the obvious way forward, not least because it leaves neither side an out-and-out winner.
But if Mrs May’s deal fails, as seems dangerously likely, the result will only be greater polarisation. More Waitrose marches, more motorway shutdowns and the grim prospect of a home-grown gilets jaunes movement.
That would, I think, be a catastrophe, poisoning our politics for a generation. Is this really what our MPs want for Britain? 
Brexit-backing boss of Wetherspoons threatens to stop selling European beers if 'bullying' EU leaders impose tariffs on Britain after Brexit
Wetherspoons could stop selling European beers in protest at the 'bullying' approach EU leaders have taken to Brexit negotiations. 
Tim Martin, the Brexit-backing chairman of JD Wetherspoon, made the threat to European leaders as he warned that sales at the pub chain have slowed.  


He used a first-quarter trading statement to rip into German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker for their reaction to Britain's decision to leave the EU. 
He accused them of putting European businesses at risk by telling them not to negotiate with UK companies and to adopt an 'intransigent' attitude.
Mr Martin, who donated £200,000 to the Leave campaign, warned that the failure of the EU to offer Britain tariff-free access to Europe's single market would unfairly hit firms across the continent. 
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He warned: 'Wetherspoon normally agrees on trade deals with suppliers for three to 10 years. 
'If we, and companies like ours, are unable to agree on tariff-free transactions, it will inevitably result in a loss of business for European companies which have done nothing to deserve this outcome.
Mr Martin, who regularly uses company results announcements to berate Remainers, added that the 'ultimate sanction' lies in the hands of British consumers.
'The ultimate sanction will be in the hands of UK consumers, should they take offence at the hectoring and bullying approach of Juncker and co. 
'French wine, Champagne and spirits, German beer and Swedish cider, for example, are all at extreme risk.'
Mr Martin, 61, founded the JD Wetherspoon chain in 1979 and now has 920 pubs and restaurants across Britain and Ireland. 
Wetherspoon said like-for-like sales in the 13 weeks to October 23 rose 3.5 per cent, but added that the number slowed to 2.3 per cent in the last five weeks of the period.
The company also expects to be hit by higher costs in wages, business rates and repairs, with the level of capital investment in existing pubs rising from £34 million last year to £60 million.
Mr Martin was a passionate campaigner for Brexit and appeared in television debates before the June 23 vote to represent the Leave campaign. 
He distributed half a million beer mats that challenged statistics used by the Government to back the Remain campaign. 
On the morning after Britain voted for Brexit in June, Mr Martin issued a statement rejoicing the result. 
He said he was 'delighted' by the referendum result and described the EU as 'a sclerotic organisation' with tremendous economic problems'.
He wrote: 'The UK will thrive as an independent country, making its own laws, and we will work with our good friends and neighbours in Europe and elsewhere to ensure a positive outcome for all parties.
'The most important factor now is to work together for our mutual benefit.' 
The 500,000 beer mats he distributed across his pubs during the EU referendum were titled: 'Cronyism is bad for Britain - a few questions for George Osborne'.
They read: 'Dear Mr Osborne, You say that you won the economic argument. Many strongly disagree.
'Democracy leads to prosperity and freedom - and the EU is increasingly undemocratic, with awful results in Greece, Spain and Portugal and 15 years' stagnation in Italy.
'Our European friends are being dragged down by Brussels' bureaucracy.' 

 
Dozens of Brexiteer Tory MPs will back Theresa May's Brexit deal if she sets a timetable for when she will quit as Prime Minister.
A number of Brexiteer MPs are now prepared to vote for the deal, even if Mrs May isn't able to secure any significant changes.
Mrs May faces a new Commons vote to approve her revised Brexit deal on March 12.
One senior MP told The Sun: 'We need her to lay out a timetable for her departure this year.
'A decent amount of us have now told the whips we would change our vote and back the deal if she did - enough of us to get it through.'
A second rebel MP confirmed they would also back the deal if she quits.
A source at Downing Street said Theresa May is unaware of such a proposal. 
Earlier this week Mrs May made a screeching U-turn this week to admit if MPs reject her deal a second time by March 12, they will get to vote first on whether to go for no deal on March 13 and, if not, on delaying Brexit on March 14.
In the wake of Mrs May's concessions George Eustice quit the government yesterday.
He told Mrs May he now wanted to play full part in how Britain leaves the EU and could not do so as a minister having already stayed through 'a series of rather undignified retreats'.
The MP, who was Michael Gove's deputy as Environment Secretary, told Mrs May he would vote for her deal when it comes back to Parliament - but said he would then vote to leave with no deal if she loses a second time. 
The incendiary resignation will fuel Brexiteer fears ministers expect to be whipped to vote against no deal on March 13 - despite Mrs May insisting no deal is still an option. 
In his furious resignation letter, Mr Eustice lashed Remain supporters in Parliament for refusing to respect the referendum result - telling Mrs May she has been 'terribly undermined'.
He demanded the Government should show 'courage' and commit to leaving the EU without a deal if Brussels refuses to make further concessions.
His incendiary resignation comes after a blazing Cabinet row on Tuesday where Brexit backered lashed Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark for publicly threatening to resign over no deal.
Earlier on Thursday, a member of the hardline Tory Brexiteers today said the group would back down and back the Brexit deal if Theresa May wins over the DUP.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is thought to be drawing up legal guarantees the Irish border backstop will not be permanent.
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds repeated his demand yesterday changes must be 'legally binding'.
The ERG led by Jacob Rees-Mogg has so far been resolute in its opposition to the deal unless the Irish border backstop is stripped out.
But with less than a fortnight until the next approval vote is expected the group may be softening its position. Mr Rees-Mogg said yesterday he could accept an appendix after all.
The so-called Irish border backstop is one of the most controversial parts of the PM's Brexit deal. This is what it means: 
What is the backstop? 
The backstop was invented to meet promises to keep open the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland even if there is no comprehensive UK-EU trade deal.
The divorce deal says it will kick in automatically at the end of the Brexit transition if that deal is not in place.
If effectively keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU and Northern Ireland in both the customs union and single market.
This means many EU laws will keep being imposed on the UK and there can be no new trade deals. It also means regulatory checks on some goods crossing the Irish Sea. 
Why have Ireland and the EU demanded it? 
Because Britain demanded to leave the EU customs union and single market, the EU said it needed guarantees people and goods circulating inside met EU rules.
This is covered by the Brexit transition, which effectively maintains current rules, and can in theory be done in the comprehensive EU-UK trade deal.
But the EU said there had to be a backstop to cover what happens in any gap between transition and final deal.  
Why do critics hate it? 
Because Britain cannot decide when to leave the backstop. 
Getting out - even if there is a trade deal - can only happen if both sides agree people and goods can freely cross the border.
Brexiteers fear the EU will unreasonably demand the backstop continues so EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland.  
Northern Ireland MPs also hate the regulatory border in the Irish Sea, insisting it unreasonably carves up the United Kingdom. 
What concessions did Britain get in negotiating it? 
During the negotiations, Britain persuaded Brussels the backstop should apply to the whole UK and not just Northern Ireland. Importantly, this prevents a customs border down the Irish Sea - even if some goods still need to be checked.
The Government said this means Britain gets many of the benefits of EU membership after transition without all of the commitments - meaning Brussels will be eager to end the backstop. 
It also got promises the EU will act in 'good faith' during the future trade talks and use its 'best endeavours' to finalise a deal - promises it says can be enforced in court.
What did the legal advice say about it? 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said even with the EU promises, if a trade deal cannot be reached the backstop could last forever.
This would leave Britain stuck in a Brexit limbo, living under EU rules it had no say in writing and no way to unilaterally end it.
Despite a growing clamour holding a new vote is a complicated and lengthy process, requiring new laws, agreement on a question - and a delay to Brexit day on March 29.
Theresa May has insisted repeatedly that a new referendum would betray Leave voters in 2016 and will not happen on her watch.
But Parliament could force the PM into the decision - prompting Nigel Farage to tell Leave campaigners to prepare for another vote.
Why do people say there needs to be a second referendum?
Theresa May's Brexit deal has no majority in Parliament - and it is not clear any other deal has a majority either, even if one could be negotiated.
Passing the question back to voters is seen by some as a way to end the impasse and give a clear instruction to politicians on what to do.
Some campaigners also say the 2016 referendum was not an informed choice because too many of the implications of Leave were unknown. 
What do critics think?
Many people - led by the Prime Minister herself - say a new vote on Brexit would betray the people who voted Leave in 2016. They insist there was a clear order from the public to Leave the EU and politicians must follow it, working out the details for themselves.
Unionists also complain that accepting a new referendum on Brexit would pave the way for another referendum on Scottish independence, threatening the future of the UK. 
Some politicians also feel it would simply reopen the wounds from the 2016 battle without really deciding anything more clearly.  
What needs to happen for a referendum to happen?
Parliament would need to pass a new law for a referendum to be held. This process alone would take weeks and would likely be very controversial.
Before that can even happen, for political reasons there would probably have to be some kind of moment creating a 'mandate' for a new referendum as it is something neither of the main parties promised at the last election.
This might be a simple vote of MPs after Mrs May's deal has been rejected. The Government could call such a vote at any time. Labour also has some opportunities to call a vote - though winning such a vote would have less power.
It could even be a whole general election where one or more sides puts a new referendum in their manifesto. 
What would the question and be who decides? 
Nobody knows for sure - and this is probably the hardest question of all.
Some say it should be a simple repeat of last time, with Leave or Remain on the ballot paper. Others say it should be Remain versus Mrs May's Brexit deal.
Others advocate a two stage referendum - between Remain and Leave, followed by Mrs May's deal versus No Deal if Leave wins. 
Still others say there could be multiple questions on the ballot paper, possible using a ranking system known as alternative vote.
The Electoral Commission would make a recommendation and MPs would make the final decision on what the question would be. 
Would exit have to be delayed from March 29? 
Yes. On the shortest timescale imaginable, a referendum would take almost six months from the point the decision was taken - something which has not happened yet. Exit day is less than four months away.
How long does it take to call and fight a referendum? 
There is no fixed schedule but former Cabinet minister Justine Greening last month set out a 22 week timetable - just under six months start to finish
This assumes about 11 weeks to pass the necessary laws and another 11 weeks for the campaign - both a preliminary period to set up formal campaigns on each side and then a main short campaign.
This would in theory allow a referendum by mid June 2019 - a full three years after the last one. 
Lots of factors could cause delays and short of sweeping political agreement on the rules of a campaign almost no way to speed up the process. 
Would the result be any more decisive?
Probably not. Unlike last time, the referendum law could make the result legally binding and the question could be more specific than last time.
But polls suggest the country remains just as divided as in 2016 - suggesting the result could be just as close as the 52% to 48% Leave win next time.   
 
 
Brussels is demanding its judges keep control after Britain leaves the European Union, it emerged last night.
The bloc is calling for judges to have the power to rule on any post-Brexit agreement with the UK.
According to an internal diplomatic document, the bloc wants the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be able to enforce the terms of a trade, fishing and security deal.
Under previous talks, negotiators insisted that the UK follows the EU's rules and regulations in areas such as state aid and environmental protection - in a bid to try and prevent unfair competition.
But new unprecedented proposals, seen by the Times, go even further.
The proposals, briefed to European diplomats, insist that the ECJ must have a role in ruling whether the UK has breached any rules that it signs up to.
The ECJ is based in Luxembourg and rules on matter of EU law.
The leaked document states that the 'UK is a partner like no other', citing its 'geographic proximity... economic interdependence and connectedness'.
The document goes beyond existing free trade agreements to 'ensure consistent interpretation of the agreement and secure the role of the (ECJ) in this respect'.
It also states it is 'seeking inspiration' from the government's withdrawal treaty, which gives the ECJ a significant enforcement role.
This suggests the EU will make significant demands linking Europe's markets to judicial supervision by European judges.
The move - days before Brexit - was condemned by Brexiteers who called on Boris Johnson to 'walk away' from such talks.
Former cabinet minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith said:  'We have simply got to say no,' he said. 'Nobody in their right minds would accept this and if they continue to pursue this then we simply have to walk away.'
Downing Street sources also rejected the proposal.
A source told the newspaper that the European court was 'by very definition not a neutral arbiter'.
It comes as the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK's insistence on moving away from Brussels-made laws and the scrutiny of its judges meant trade without some form of customs checks was 'impossible'.
Speaking in Belfast, he said: 'The UK has chosen to become a third country, to leave the single market and the customs union, to leave behind the EU's framework of common rules, common supervision and common Court of Justice.
'It has chosen to create two regulatory spaces. This makes frictionless trade impossible. It makes checks indispensable.'
In further comments that will be set to worry Brexiteers, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar also indicated that Brussels would look for concessions on fishing in exchange for the UK's financial services industry to have better access to the European single market. 
The Vote Leave campaign vowed that Britain would be able to have control of who fishes in UK territorial waters upon leaving the EU and the common fisheries policy (CFP).
At present, the CFP dictates how much British fishermen can catch and where, and fishermen have often complained they do not get a fair share of what is caught in UK waters.
The Taoiseach told the BBC: 'What happens in these things is trade offs.
'You may have to make concessions in areas like fishing in order to get concessions from us in areas like financial services.'
Responding to the comments, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's official spokesman said: 'We are going to be taking control of our fishing waters. We have been clear on that.'
 
Theresa May insisted Britain will have an 'independent trade policy' after 2020 today as she denied caving into the EU over Brexit.
The Prime Minister faced a backlash from Eurosceptics after it emerged her 'war Cabinet' has signed off on an extension as part of a 'backstop' that would avoid a hard Irish border if no other solutions are found.
She confirmed this evening the UK would soon be putting forward its plans for a fallback option to address the irish border question after Brexit.
But she insisted the proposal would not prevent the UK striking trade deals with other countries.
The defiant stance came after Irish PM Leo Varakdar - who held talks with Mrs May at a summit in Sofia today - upped the pressure by warning that negotiations could collapse altogether unless there is movement on the border issue.
Speaking at a press conference in Macedonia, where she travelled after the EU gathering in Bulgaria, Mrs May repeated her pledge that the UK will leave the existing customs union in 2020.
She insisted that meant there would be an 'independent trade policy'. 
'In December, when the joint report was published between the European Union and the United Kingdom we set out clearly options in relation to the commitment that we have given for no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland,' she said. 
'We expect that to be dealt with through the overall relationship we have with the European Union, but there were then two further levels of options including a final fallback option. 
'The commission published a fallback option which was not acceptable to us and we will be bringing forward our own proposal for that fallback option in due course.' 
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
The issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has emerged as the crunch point in talks with the EU.
A divorce deal struck by Mrs May before Christmas included a backstop that if no other solutions were found to avoid a hard border, the UK would stay aligned to EU rules in key areas.
However, a legal text of the document produced by Brussels since then has been condemned as unacceptable by the PM as it would effectively draw a red line down the Irish sea and split the UK.
The Brexit War Cabinet session this week focused on ways to resolve the standoff, amid threats from the EU to halt wider trade negotiations unless the border issue can be guaranteed.
Ministers have signed off on a counter-proposal for a 'backstop' that would UK effectively keep the UK in a customs union beyond the end of a mooted transitional period in December 2020. 
To soothe concerns of Brexiteers, it would include a 'sunset' clause ensuring Britain does leave in the end. There would also need to be a major concession from Brussels that the UK could implement trade deals with other countries during the extension period.
Senior Whitehall sources stressed that the plan was a fallback, and not 'something we ever expect to happen'. 
One source said: 'It's about providing an alternative to the EU's border down the Irish Sea.'  
Mr Varadkar and EU negotiator Michel Barnier have been taking a tough line, and the Dublin premier stepped up his rhetoric again today.
'The deadline for the withdrawal agreement is October, but if we're not making real and substantial progress by June then we need to seriously question whether we're going to have a withdrawal agreement at all,' Varadkar told reporters in Sofia.
He added that it was an 'absolute red line' for Ireland not to have a hard border on the island and all 27 remaining EU states supported the current 'backstop' proposal in the Withdrawal Agreement - which Mrs May has said no British prime minister could accept.
'If the UK wants to put forward alternatives to that - whether it's an alternative text to the backstop or whether it's some some sort of alternative relationship between the UK and the EU - we are willing to examine that.
The EU is playing for time in Brexit talks in the hopes that the parliament will derail the government's plans, it has been claimed. 
An unnamed minister suggested Brussels was refusing to strike a deal on trade and the Irish border because they believed Theresa May was being weakened domestically. 
The government suffered 15 defeats on its flagship Brexit Bill in the Lords.
Mrs May now faces a series of potentially disastrous showdowns in the Commons as she bids to get the Bill back on track. 
Tory rebels are also threatening to side with Labour to demand the UK stays in the customs union. 
'As we warned, the EU are now negotiating with parliament, not us, and they are playing for time while they see what MPs say,' a minister told The Sun.
'But we need to see it written down in black and white, we need to know that it's workable and legally operable and we have yet to see anything that remotely approaches that.' 
Mrs May told Mr Varadkar and European Council president Donald Tusk in talks that Britain would be putting forward its own 'backstop' proposal 'shortly'. 
The government hopes that it can come up with a trade plan that would keep a soft Irish border while allowing Britain to set its own tariffs and trade policy.
However, the Cabinet is deadlocked between two options. The customs partnership favoured by Remain-minded ministers would entail the UK collecting taxes on behalf of Brussels and acting as its regulatory enforcer.
The 'Maximum Facilitation' proposal backed by Brexiteers would rely on technology and trusted trader schemes to make the border as fluid as possible.
Ministers admit that neither option is currently workable, and time is running short to get the necessary systems in place by the end of the potential transition period.
Mr Rees-Mogg told the Daily Telegraph: 'The risk of the Government using all its mental energy on the fallback position is that it creates a position that is more attractive than a permanent deal.
'We have gone from a clear end point, to an extension, to a proposed further extension with no end point. The horizon seems to be unreachable.
'The bottom of the rainbow seems to be unattainable. People voted to leave, they did not vote for purgatory.'
What are the options on the table for a customs deal with the EU? 
With time ticking away on the Brexit negotiations, the Cabinet is still at daggers drawn on the shape for future trade relations with the EU.
The government has set out two potential options for a customs system after the UK leaves the bloc.
But despite a series of tense showdowns at Theresa May's Brexit 'War Cabinet' ministers continue to be deadlocked over what to do.
Meanwhile, Brussels has dismissed both the ideas - and warned that negotiations could stall altogether unless there is progress by a key summit next month. 
They are demanding the UK agrees to a 'backstop' in the Withdrawal Agreement that Mrs May has rejected as unacceptable because it would draw a customs border down the Irish Sea and split the UK.
OPTION 1 - CUSTOMS PARTNERSHIP 
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Britain would be responsible for tracking the origin and final destination of goods coming into the country from outside the EU. The government would also have to ensure all products meet the bloc's standards.
Firms selling directly into the UK market would pay the tariff levels set by Brussels - but would then get a rebate if Britain's tariffs are lower. 
Supporters of the hybrid plan in Cabinet - including Theresa May, Philip Hammond and Greg Clark - say keeping duties aligned up front would avoid the need for physical customs borders between the UK and EU.
As a result it could solve the thorny issue over creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mrs May has been advised by the chief whip that the hybrid option could be the only way of securing a majority in parliament for a Brexit deal. 
But Brexiteers regard the proposal as unworkable and cumbersome - and they were joined by Sajid Javid and Gavin Williamson in criticising it at a tense 'War Cabinet' meeting last week.
There are fears the experimental system will either collapse and cause chaos, or prevent the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit.
Mrs May has instructed official to go away and revise the ideas. Eurosceptics are braced for her to bring back the plan with only 'cosmetic' changes, and try to 'peel off' Mr Javid and Mr Williamson from the core group of Brexiteers.
They are also ready for Mrs May to attempt to bypass the 'War Cabinet' altogether and put the issue before the whole Cabinet - where she has more allies. 
OPTION 2 - MAXIMUM FACILITATION
The 'Max Fac' option accepts that there will be greater friction at Britain's borders with the EU. 
But it would aim to minimise the issues using technology and mutual recognition.
Goods could be electronically tracked and pre-cleared by tax authorities on each side.
Shipping firms could also be given 'trusted trader' status so they can move goods freely, and only pay tariffs when they are delivered to the destination country.
Companies would also be trusted to ensure they were meeting the relevant UK and EU standards on products.
Senior ministers such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox believe this is the only workable option. 
But Remain minded Tories such as Mr Clark insist it will harm trade and cost jobs in the UK.
They also warn that it will require more physical infrastructure on the Irish border - potentially breaching the Good Friday Agreement. It is far from clear whether the government would be able to force anything through parliament that implied a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  
The EU has dismissed the idea that 'Max Fac' could prevent checks on the Irish border as 'magical thinking'.
 
 
Bank Governor Mark Carney was accused of 'crying wolf' today after he claimed households are £900 worse off than they would have been without Brexit.
The Bank of England boss said the Britain's relative slow down compared to other leading economies since 2016 meant people had lost ground.  
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson led the backlash against the Governor, insisting Brexit had not damaged Britain.
While Brexiteer ringleader Jacob Rees-Mogg told MailOnline Mr Carney was 'crying wolf'. 
Britain's economy has grown in every quarter since the June 2016 poll - allowing Brexiteers to claim it has defied grim pre-referendum forecasts of a recession.
But despite the positive figures, Mr Carney told MPs it meant Britain's economy was up to 2 per cent smaller than it might have been if the country had not voted to quit the EU in June 2016. 
Despite his downcast analysis Mr Carney admitted there was likely to be a post-Brexit boom in business investment once the terms of exit were clear.  
Speaking in Argentina today Mr Johnson said: 'I believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given an authoritative opinion on this matter, which is that it is absolutely not the case that Brexit has damaged the interests of this country. 
Mr Rees-Mogg told MailOnline said: 'The Governor of the Bank of England cannot even get his forward guidance on interest rates right which is his main responsibility so his endless crying wolf over Brexit simply discredits him and sadly the Bank.'
The Governor said that the UK's economy is 'up to two per cent lower than it would have been' without the Brexit vote, adding: 'That is a reasonable difference.'
Mr Carney told the MPs: 'If you map that into household incomes... Real household incomes are about £900 lower than we forecast in May 2016, which is a lot of money.' 
He said this was despite global and European economies being 'much, much stronger' than they were when the Bank made its economic predictions ahead of the 2016 referendum. 
And Mr Carney said pre-referendum growth was not maintained despite a 'very large stimulus provided by the Bank of England'.
Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with Mr Carney's assessment that Britons were worse off after the referendum, a Downing Street spokesman said: 'I would point you to the fact that the economy has remained incredibly resilient continuing to grow over the past five years.
'Growth has been stronger than many expected after the referendum and in recent weeks we have seen the lowest net borrowing in over a decade, employment up to a new record high, unemployment at this lowest since 1975, real wages growing, 69,000 first-time buyers benefiting from our stamp duty cut and UK exports rising by nearly 10 per cent in the last year to a new record high.'
In another Brexit intervention, Mr Carney predicted a surge in invesment once Brexit has taken place.
He told the committee: 'Actually, with clarity, that ultimately comes, big long-term decisions that are taken about the relationships with Europe, that business will then use those clean balance sheets, access financing, and start to put capital to work, and then we'd see a sharp pick up in business investment.'
Treasury Select Committee chairwoman Nicky Morgan asked the Bank chief whether he accepted that statements referring to a 'somewhat earlier-than-expected' interest rate rise was 'rather confusing', given that rates were ultimately kept steady at 0.5%.
Mr Carney said a hike was never set in stone.
He said: 'We give guidance. The guidance is conditional on the economic outlook.
'If the outlook changes, the actual policy stance will adjust, and of course the policy stance is determined by the sum of the individual decisions,' he told MPs during a Treasury Select Committee hearing on Tuesday.
'What happened was the economy did not in the first quarter evolve broadly in line with our forecast,' he added.
'Inflation came in lower, economic momentum - a number signs - were lower, and then ultimately the hard data came in lower as well and we as a committee sat back, looked back at that data and took our own assessments.'
While two members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted in favour of an interest rate rise, Mr Carney said the majority 'thought it made sense to take a bit of time to see that the momentum that I expect - that we expect, as a committee, in our forecasts - the momentum in the economy to re-establish itself before raising interest rates'.
The Governor has been dubbed the 'unreliable boyfriend' by critics, who say he has failed to follow through on monetary policy guidance on multiple occasions.
Tory Eurosceptics are playing 'Russian Roulette' by trying to kill of Theresa May's Chequers plan and could trigger the most serious crisis in centuries, Lord Hague warned today.
The former foreign secretary said he feared Britain was on track for disaster unless hardliners on both sides of the debate were willing to compromise.
The grim assessment came as the PM scrambles to save her blueprint for future relations with the EU, which has come under heavy fire from Brexiteers, Remainers and Brussels.  
Boris Johnson stoked tensions over the weekend by accusing Mrs May of wrapping a 'suicide vest' around the UK - amid claims at least 80 MPs are prepared to vote against the Chequers proposals if they come to parliament.
There was a chink of light for the premier last night when EU negotiator Michel Barnier delivered his most optimistic comments on the talks yet.
He suggested a deal on the withdrawal terms - including the vexed question of the Irish border - was possible within the next six to eight weeks.
Amid claims EU leaders are launching 'Operation Save Theresa' by ordering Mr Barnier to be more flexible, the remarks cause the Pound to spike in value against the US dollar.
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
However, Lord Hague spelled out the potential consequences of a standoff between the government and the Commons.
In his regular Telegraph column, the Tory former leader warned that neither side would be able to force through its will.
Instead there was a serious risk that parliament would demand a referendum, but ministers would refuse to extend the Brexit date. 
'Complete with an atmosphere of intense recrimination and abuse, it would be no exaggeration to say that this would be the most serious constitutional crisis in Britain for at least one century, possibly two,' Lord Hague wrote. 
He said the results were 'unknowable', but could involve the 'unremitting domestic chaos' of a disorderly exit from the EU or the UK not leaving the bloc at all.
'Perhaps it is alarmist to describe such a scenario,' Lord Hague said. 
'But it is worth thinking about because everyone in parliament who is enjoying making categoric statements about being against Chequers or against 'no deal' is now loading the revolver for a game of Russian roulette, with a lot more than Brexit at stake. 
'With strong feelings aroused about what is in the national interest, that interest would be served best of all by some reflection on what could soon transpire, and on how to avert it.' 
Another ex-Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, criticised Downing Street for 'accusing and attacking' Brexiteers.
The jibe came after a group of Tory MPs who oppose the Chequers plan were invited to a meeting at No10.
He told the BBC's Newsnight: 'I always think that rather than allowing a unit in Downing Street to take on its own colleagues and backbenchers, and accuse and attack them, I think the best thing is always for them to say, 'I tell you what, let's get together and thrash this out and see what we can come up with'.
'That's a far better approach because it carries the party with you.'
Over the weekend Mr Johnson provoked a torrent of criticism for accusing the premier of having wrapped 'a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to Michel Barnier'.
The extraordinary language drew a torrent of criticism from senior Tories, and sparked claims he is trying to distract from turmoil in his personal life. Mr Johnson has announced he is divorcing his wife amid claims of links to a former Tory aide. 
Justice Secretary David Gauke made clear he would not serve in Cabinet if Mr Johnson became PM.
Former education secretary Nicky Morgan also said she would not be in government under Mr Johnson. 
Boris Johnson caused fury by accusing Theresa May of 'wrapping a suicide vest' around the UK constitution and 'handing the detonator' to Michel Barnier.
The response illustrated the deep divisions in the Conservative Party. 
BLASTING BORIS 
Foreign Affairs committee chair Tom Tugendhat, former army officer:
'A suicide bomber murdered many in the courtyard of my office in Helmand.
'The carnage was disgusting, limbs and flesh hanging from trees and bushes. 
'Brave men who stopped him killing me and others died In horrific pain. 
'Some need to grow up. Comparing the PM to that isn't funny.' 
Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan:
'For Boris to say that the PM's view is like that of a suicide bomber is too much.
'This marks one of the most disgusting moments in modern British politics. 
'I'm sorry, but this is the political end of Boris Johnson. 
'If it isn't now, I will make sure it is later.'  
Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt: 
'I'm stunned at the nature of this attack. 
'There is no justification for such an outrageous, inappropriate and hurtful analogy.

'If we don't stop this extraordinary use of language over Brexit, our country might never heal. Again, I say, enough.'  
Home Secretary Sajid Javid: 
'It's a reminder for all of us in public policy, whichever party we represent, to use measured language because I think that's what the public want to see.'
BACKING BORIS 
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen 
'Boris says it how he sees it, and I think it’s how a lot of people in our country see it, but very few dares to call it. 
'He speaks truth unto power and I’m not surprised that those in power resent that and that there’s a backlash.' 
Tory MP Nadine Dorries
'Don’t underestimate the vitriol that’ll be directed towards Boris.
'He delivered the leave vote, remainers and wannabe future PMs hate him. 
'If he becomes leader (and PM) he’ll deliver a clean and prosperous Brexit
'They are terrified of his popular appeal.'
Stewart Jackson, ex-chief of staff to David Davis, dismissing Sir Alan Duncan
'This is the guy who flew to Chicago at public expense to tell us that Brexit was a 'tantrum' by the 'working classes (sic)'. 
'Pompous doesn't really do it justice.' 
 
Brexiteers today hailed Boris Johnson's furious attack on Theresa May's Chequers plan - as she faces a make or break party conference where she will come under pressure to ditch it.
The ex foreign secretary savaged the plan as a 'moral and intellectual humiliation' and unveiled his own six-point proposal for a 'super-Canada' style free trade deal.
Leading Eurosceptics lined up to heap praise on his 4,500-word Brexit manifesto, published in his weekly newspaper column, and urged the PM to adopt his vision.
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker - who quit along with Mr Johnson in anger at the Chequers plan - said it is a 'brilliant, pivotal' intervention.
He told MailOnline: 'Conservatives have spent too long negotiating amongst ourselves. Now, as we approach conference, we have a clear choice - hopeless failure with Chequers, or a hopeful future of renewal with the plan Boris has set out.
'It's time to commit to practical management of the border with Ireland and go forward with an advanced Free Trade Agreement.' 
Tory MP Marcus Fysh said, 'absolutely right Boris Johnson - this is the way forward', and Conservative MP Nadine Dorries said he was a 'man with a plan'.
But other Tories tore into Mr Johnson over the remarks - saying his article suggests that he 'does not care' about the impact on people's lives.
Mr Johnson's outspoken attack comes as Tory MPs warned their party has 'lost its way' and must adopt more radical policies. 
The timing of the intervention sets the scene for a fraught Tory conference in Birmingham and will be seen in Downing Street as an act of gross disloyalty.
A senior Tory source said last night: 'We always knew Boris was going to be as unhelpful as possible to the PM this week. That is what he does.' 
Leading Tory Remainer Nicky Morgan blasted Mr Johnson's column, writing: 'I said Boris had to decide if he was a politician or a journalist - he’s clearly made his decision but shame he didn’t research the link between agreeing a solution that keeps the Irish border frictionless and the chances of agreeing withdrawal terms. 
'Or does he just not care?' 
Mrs May is facing huge pressure as she faces Conservative activists and MPs at the annual conference amid a major Tory revolt over her Brexit plans.
Amid the bruising Tory civil war on Brexit, the PM is also facing a clamour from her own MPs to unveil more radical policies to stave off the threat from Jeremy Corbyn. 
Universities Minister Sam Gyimah, said the Tories 'veer between talking business down, ignoring voters' concerns', adding: 'So we need to find our way, and quickly.' 
And Treasury Minister Liz Truss told an event with the Reform Scotland think-tank 'we need to be talking about how people's lives are getting better'.
In his column, Mr Johnson calls for the first time for Mrs May to tear up the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, which was finally signed in December last year after months of painful negotiation.
He says the UK 'stumbled and collapsed' into the Northern Ireland backstop agreement, which he says is incompatible with his vision.
Mr Johnson said the Northern Ireland problem could be dealt with by checks carried out away from the border. 
But the idea was explicitly rejected by the Tories governing partners in the DUP yesterday. 
And former Home Secretary Amber Rudd warned that 40 MPs would vote against it – making it impossible to get through parliament.
Last night, Mr Johnson set out his Canada-style Brexit blueprint which he said would 'fulfil the instruction of the people'.
He claimed his alternative six-point 'SuperCanada' plan would make Britain 'rich, strong and free'.
He called on Mrs May to negotiate the deal during a 21-month transition period which will follow Brexit on March 29.
She should rip up her backstop plan for Northern Ireland, he said, arguing that technology should be used to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
He said: 'This is an opportunity for the UK to become more dynamic and more successful, and we should not be shy of saying that – and we should recognise that it is exactly this potential our EU partners seek to constrain.' 
His call follows reports that some members of the Cabinet are moving towards a Canada-style agreement as an alternative to a 'No Deal' scenario.
In his 4,500 word essay, Mr Johnson argues for a change in position following a rejection of Mrs May's Chequers plan by European leaders.
In the 'A Better Plan for Brexit' text, he writes: 'This is the moment to change the course of the negotiations and do justice to the ambitions and potential of Brexit. 
A former Cabinet minister has urged Theresa May to get more radical on the eve of a crunch Tory Party conference this week.  
Priti Patel urged the PM to cut taxes and red tape on business, saying a ‘clear Conservative vision’ was needed to tackle Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-Left agenda.
Her intervention will be seen as part of a move by a disaffected Tory MPs to pile pressure on Mrs May to do more to boost business.
Miss Patel told The House magazine ‘Gone are the days of flagship policies giving millions the chance to own their own home, start their own business, become share owners, and offer choice in public services. 
'Now we are showcasing taxes on coffee cups.’
Ex education minister Robert Halfon also piled in and said the Government needs to come up with a vision which attracts working class voters.
He said: ‘The Corbyn description of what is going on resonates with millions of people.
‘Deep social and economic problems remain. 
'We are stuck in the political rhetoric of the past, rather than providing a proper Tory vision for the future.' 
'We have the chance to get it right, and I am afraid that future generations will not lightly forgive us if we fail.'
Though he does not directly attack Mrs May, the timing of his call to change position will inevitably drive speculation of a leadership challenge before January.
In a veiled criticism, he also describes the decision to call a general election last year as a 'serious strategic mistake'.
Turning on the negotiating team, he adds that there has been a 'collapse of will' by ministers and civil servants to deliver on the Referendum result. 
He denounces the 'pretty invertebrate performance' of the British negotiating team, led by Olly Robbins, who Mrs May appointed.
Their 'supine position' on Brexit has given the EU the upper hand while the UK has 'stumbled and collapsed' into the Northern Irish backstop plan which could effectively lead to the province's annexation by the EU. 
Mr Johnson will attend a fringe event at the conference in Birmingham on Tuesday which is likely to overshadow preparations for Mrs May's own speech on Wednesday.
Other fringe events by prominent Brexiteers will also call on Mrs May to 'chuck Chequers', including Jacob Rees-Mogg, who heads the Eurosceptic backbench European Research Group.
Mrs May will face a further threat from the backbench MP who will accuse her of 'doing nothing to support' traditional families in a major intervention at Conservative conference.
Mr Rees-Mogg will tell party activists that successive governments – including the current one – have undermined marriage with perverse welfare and tax policies.
His comments will be seen as a pitch to the Tory right and the start of positioning for a future leadership contest after he led calls to 'chuck Chequers'.
The Prime Minister's proposed deal sets out a 'common rulebook' for goods, which may make it more difficult to negotiate free trade deals around the world.
Brexiteers including Mr Johnson believe a Canada-style deal would leave Britain free to negotiate its own deals elsewhere. 
They say it is the only model that could win the backing of Parliament. Both Labour and Eurosceptic Tory MPs have said they will vote against any Brexit deal based on Chequers.
Mrs May's Chequers plan was also rejected by the leaders of the other 27 EU members when they met in Salzburg last week.
Mr Johnson criticises the 'backstop' arrangement for Northern Ireland, which would place a border in the Irish Sea if no alternative arrangement for the province can be agreed.
He concludes that as Britain approaches 'the moment of truth' in the Brexit process: 'We must decide who we are – whether we really believe in the importance of our democratic institutions.'
EU leaders have said that if substantial progress towards a deal is made at their October meeting, an extra meeting will be held in November to thrash out the details.
CHEQUERS
Trade:
Britain would stick to EU rules on goods by adopting a 'Common rulebook' with Brussels, but not in the services sector.
Theresa May says this would allow the UK to strike free trade deals globally, but the scope would be limited by commitments to the EU.
The blueprint should minimise the need for extra checks at the borders - protecting the 'just in time' systems used by the car industry to import and export parts.
The UK Parliament could choose to diverge from these EU rules over time.
But there is an admission that this would 'have consequences'.
Customs:
Britain would set up something called a 'facilitated customs arrangement'.
This would see the UK effectively act as the EU's taxman - using British officials to collect customs which would then be paid on to the bloc. 
The borders between the UK and EU will be treated as a 'combined customs territory'.
The UK would apply domestic tariffs and trade policies for goods intended for the UK, but charge EU tariffs and their equivalents for goods which will end up heading into the EU.
Northern Ireland: 
Mrs May says her plan will prevent a hard Irish border, and mean no divergence between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.
There would be no need for extra border checks, as tariffs on goods would be the same.
Single market origin rules and regulations would also be sufficiently aligned to avoid infrastructure.
 CANADA-STYLE
Trade: 
Britain would strike a Canada-style trade deal with the EU, meaning goods flow both ways without tariffs.
As it is a simple free trade deal, Britain would not be bound by most of the rules and red tape drawn up in Brussels.
The arrangement would be a relatively clean break from the EU - but would fall far short of full access to the single market.
Eurosceptics have suggested 'Canada plus' in key areas such as services and mutual recognition of standards.
The UK would have broad scope to strike free trade deals around the world.
Customs:
Technology would be used to avoid extra customs checks on the borders.
As a result goods travelling into the UK from the EU and vice versa would be tracked and customs paid without extra checks.
The EU has suggested this is 'magical thinking'. 
Northern Ireland:
The EU says the Canada model would mean border controls are required between Northern Ireland and the Republic to protect the single market and customs union.
It insists Northern Ireland must stay in the bloc's customs jurisdiction in order to prevent that.
Mrs May has signalled she agrees with the analysis - seemingly the reason she is reluctant to go down this route.
But Brexiteers point out that there is already a tax border between the UK and Ireland, and say technology and trusted trader schemes can avoid the need for more infrastructure. 
 
Brexiteers condemned Mark Carney as 'deeply irresponsible' today after he send the pound down by warning the risk of a no deal Brexit.
The Bank of England Governor's remarks sent the pound below 1.30 against the dollar while sterling was also weaker against the euro.  
He warned Britain 'accidentally' leaving the EU without a deal and no transition in March 2019 would be 'highly undesirable' for the economy.
He revealed banks have been 'put through the wringer' to ensure they would cope with house prices plunging by a third, interest rates spiking to 4 per cent and a recession.
Brexiteers accused Mr Carney of deploying 'project fear style rhetoric' and accused him of damaging the Bank.
In other developments today, BA chief Willie Walsh played down the risks of no deal, insisting planes would still be able to fly in and out of Britain. 
He said: 'The possibility of no deal is uncomfortably high.' 
Mr Carney said work had been ongoing to ensure that the financial system was in a 'robust position' so it 'lessens the impact of a bad deal in this case, a no-deal Brexit'.
He said there were a range of contingency plans in place to ensure the banks were prepared both for a no deal in March and a no deal at the end of transition. 
Asked if no deal would be a disaster, Mr Carney said: 'It is highly undesirable. Parties should do all things to avoid it.'
He revealed a 'stress test' had been carried out to ensure banks would not collapse even if all of a recession, falling house prices, rising interest rates and huge unemployment all happened at once.
Mr Carney said: 'We have put the banks through the wringer well in advance of this to make sure they have the capital.'
Mr Carney, pressed on whether the preparations were to guard against a run on the bank, said it was the 'exact opposite', to ensure the banks can lend to the economy to 'advance not retreat'.
Asked if he believed this situation could emerge, Mr Carney replied: 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no - we won't be in that situation, we will not be in that situation.'
Change Britain supporter Andrea Jenkyns said: 'It is deeply irresponsible of Mark Carney to yet again engage in Project Fear style rhetoric about the prospect of a No Deal.
'The British people were given similar hysterical claims by the Bank of England Governor and the pro-EU campaign during the referendum but they quite rightly ignored them and voted Leave. They know that the UK has a bright future outside the EU once we have taken back control of our laws, borders, money and trade.
'Mr Carney should focus on preparing for Brexit instead of making overtly political interventions and weakening the Government's hand at the negotiating table.'
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of Tory eurosceptics, said: 'Mark Carney has long been the high priest of project fear whose reputation for inaccurate and politically motivated forecasting has damaged the reputation of the Bank of England.' 
Mr Carney's warning comes after Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned on a tour of EU capitals this week the risk of an accidental no deal was rising.
The Government has urged Brussels to engage with Theresa May's Brexit blueprint agreed last month at Chequers or risk the talks running out of time.
BA chief Willie Walsh played down the risks of no deal Brexit today, insisting planes would keep flying.
Mr Walsh said he expected a 'comprehensive transport agreement' to be put in place between the UK and EU.
And he said Britain would continue to follow air safety rules even if the country loses the ability to help set rules, meaning there was no reason to ground planes. 
He told Sky News: 'There will be changes behind the scenes that won't be obvious to our customers.' 
Mr Walsh also warned that strikes in France are posing a challenge to its operations.
The airline group, which owns Aer Lingus, Vueling and Iberia, said strikes were causing disruption for customers and hurting the Spanish economy.
The firm has joined forces with other carriers to complain about the strikes to the EU.
The Prime Minister is meeting French President Emmanuel Macron later to push for a breakthrough.  
Mr Carney's intervention comes a day after the Bank of England raised interest rates to 0.75 per cent - the highest level in almost 10 years.
The hike is only the second since the financial crisis and means interest rates are higher than at any time since March 2009. 
It will mean higher mortgage bills for the 3.7million people on variable and tracker mortgages - but could also help savers who have suffered a decade of miserable rates.
Experts said borrowers can expect to pay about an extra £6 a month for every £50,000 on a 20-year mortgage.
At the end of 2017, 1.3 million mortgages were trackers and 1.8 million were standard variable rates (SVRs).
Calculations by UK Finance suggest a 0.25 percentage point base rate rise passed on in full to borrowers could add around £16 to monthly repayments for those on tracker rates and around £12 on an SVR, based on typical amounts outstanding. 
The Bank kept its forecast for UK growth unchanged at 1.4 per cent in 2018, but upped its prediction for next year to 1.8 per cent.
Mr Carney said the 'modest' rise in interest rates was an 'appropriate' response to inflation which is still rising faster than its 2 per cent target and putting pressure on wages.
Speaking at a press conference after the rates announcement he said: 'UK growth in the second quarter is estimated to have rebounded as expected.'
He confirmed the prospect for further rises as he said if rates stayed at 0.75%, inflation would remain above 2% throughout the forecast horizon.
But he said 'rate rises are expected to be limited and gradual'.
'Rates can be expected to rise gradually. Policy needs to walk - not run - to stand still,' he added.
During the financial crisis rates were slashed to the emergency low of 0.5 per cent in an effort to contain the fall-out from the financial crisis.
 
 
Brexiteers reacted with fury today as the government's economic watchdog predicted that leaving the EU will help drive national debt to an eye-watering £2trillion. 
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) delivered a series of dire forecasts about the public finances alongside the Chancellor's Autumn Statement.
The independent body said it expected growth to be 2.4 per cent lower over the next five years - adding an extra £122billion to government borrowing.
But MPs who supported cutting ties with Brussels queued up to criticise the estimates - pointing out that the Treasury's dire Project Fear warnings about Brexit had already failed to materialise. 
Tory former Cabinet minister John Redwood said the watchdog was 'quite wrong'.
'The OBR are probably still quite wrong about 2017 - their forecast is too low, their borrowing forecast is too high, and we will get good access to the single market once we are out of the EU,' he said.
Fellow Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'It seems to me that there are two problems with those assumptions.
'One is that they assume that we will apply tariffs on the same basis inside the European Union, which the Chancellor will know he will be able to remove.
'And secondly, they're particularly gloomy on the prospects for financial services.
'I wonder, therefore, if we might be able to take a little bit more of an optimistic tone, and indeed with the freedoms we have outside the customs unions and the single market, the ability to solve the productivity problem.'
Ukip's only MP, Douglas Carswell, delivered an even harsher verdict - slamming the figures as 'bogus' and accusing 'Spivs' of trying to blame loose spending on the EU referendum.  
'Bogus empiricism of governing elite on display today. Their models are consistently wrong yet still they claim to divine the future,' he said.
Patrick Minford, co-Chair of Economists for Brexit, said: 'The Government in the UK needs to be able to make decisions relating to Brexit on sound economic evidence and forecasts, not flawed Treasury models or arbitrary OBR assumptions. 
'These official forecasts have been horribly wrong this year, and there is no sign that they are learning their lesson and focussing on the data, rather than vague guesswork about emotions.' 
The OBR's own assessment concedes that it is 'little the wiser' about the government's strategy or demands in the looming negotiations with Brussels. 

Mr Hammond stressed that it was his role to respond to the forecast, rather than criticise it.
He also said the OBR had made clear that there was an 'unusually high degree of uncertainty' because no-one knows how the Brexit negotiation will pan out.
'Obviously, economic forecasting is not a precise science and I absolutely recognise, as with the OBR, that individual members will have their own views on the likely future trajectory of our economy,' Mr Hammond said.
'It is probably worth mentioning that the OBR very specifically says in its report that there is an unusually high degree of uncertainty in the forecasts it is making because of the unusual circumstances.'
The OBR said it expected national debt to reach 90.2 per cent of GDP in 2017-18 - a level that former chancellor George Osborne once described as causing serious damage to the economy. 
But crucially they forecast that Britain will not fall into a recession because of June's vote to leave the EU, contradicting the doom-laden pre-referendum Treasury forecasts of negative growth by Christmas. 

The OBR downgraded its growth prediction for next year from 2.2 per cent to 1.4 per cent, blaming increased uncertainty and lower investment.
In 2018 growth will be 1.7 per cent instead of the 2.1 per cent predicted in March, but growth forecasts for 2019 and 2020 remain unchanged.  
Slower growth, lower investment and falling consumer spending will leave a hole in the public finances - adding up to an extra £122billion of government borrowing by 2020-21.
Mr Hammond said this made it necessary to tear up the rules on tackling the deficit, which Mr Osborne pledged to eliminate by the end of the decade. 
It will now only be eradicated 'as soon as practicable', the Chancellor said today. 
Government borrowing, forecast to reach £68.2billion this year, is set to fall every subsequent year, reaching £17.2billion by 2021-22.

Mr Hammond warned that the coming challenges made it 'more urgent than ever' to tackle long term economic issues. 
He told MPs: 'While the OBR is clear that it cannot predict the deal the UK will strike with the EU, its current view is that the referendum decision means that potential growth over the forecast period is 2.4 percentage points lower than would otherwise have been the case.'
But Mr Hammond said the UK economy had 'confounded commentators' around the world by thriving after the historic EU referendum result and promised to get the British economy 'match fit' for Brexit as the country prepares to 'chart a new future'. 
He warned that the coming challenges made it 'more urgent than ever' to tackle long-term economic issues.   

Increased government borrowing will boost Britain's chronic low level of productivity, he said as he announced a new National Productivity Investment Fund that will deploy £23billion in an all-out drive to boost productivity, which has been lagging behind other major nations.  
But Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the Autumn Statement placed on record the 'abject failure of the last six years' with growth and deficit targets slashed. 

 Osborne plan to balance books by 2020 is binned 
Philip Hammond yesterday abandoned George Osborne’s plans to balance the books by the end of the decade.
The Chancellor tore up his predecessor’s fiscal rules – which included running a surplus in 2019-20 – and merely said he would return Britain to the black ‘as early as possible in the next Parliament’.
The dramatic departure from Mr Osborne’s blueprint means a surplus will not be achieved until at least 2023. 
Britain’s mammoth debt is also set to soar to nearly £2trillion, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. 
The Government will borrow £216billion over the next five years – £122bn more than planned by Mr Osborne – although the OBR was last night accused of being too pessimistic.
According to its forecasts, the national debt as a proportion of national income will peak at 90.2 per cent in 2017-18, a level not seen since the 1960s.
The Chancellor blamed an expected economic slowdown following the Brexit vote for the sharp deterioration in the public finances and insisted he was making the economy ‘match-fit’ for the future.
‘In view of the uncertainty facing the economy, and in the face of slower growth forecasts, we no longer seek to deliver a surplus in 2019-20,’ Mr Hammond said.
‘But the Prime Minister and I remain firmly committed to seeing the public finances return to balance as soon as practicable while leaving enough flexibility to support the economy in the near-term. 
'And our task now is to prepare our economy to be resilient as we exit the EU and match-fit for the transition that will follow.’
Consigning Mr Osborne’s fiscal rules to the dustbin, Mr Hammond announced three of his own. 
First, the public finances should be in balance ‘as early as possible’ in the next parliament. 
Second, debt must be falling as a percentage of GDP by the end of this parliament, and third, a new cap on welfare spending.
The Chancellor said the new fiscal rules gave him ‘headroom’ to bolster the economy if needed as Britain leaves the EU. 
The Office for Budget Responsibility has a history of mistakes. Here are five forecasts it got wrong:
PREDICTION: An over-optimistic OBR predicted economic expansion of 5.7 per cent between 2010 and mid-2012
REALITY: The country managed only 0.9 per cent
PREDICTION: Switching to pessimism in March 2013, the OBR predicted growth that year of 0.6 per cent and 1.8 per cent in 2014
REALITY: The figures were 1.9 per cent in 2013 and 3.1 per cent in 2014
PREDICTION: Scottish nationalists based their rosy vision of an independent future on OBR oil revenue forecasts of £2.4billion in 2016-17
REALITY: Prices crashed and this was revised down to £600m
PREDICTION: In March 2013, the OBR said public borrowing would be £120bn in 2013-14, £108bn in 2014-15, and £95.5bn in 2015-16
REALITY: The figures were £104bn, £96bn and £76bn respectively
PREDICTION: In March 2014, the forecasters predicted inflation of 2 per cent in 2015 and in 2016
REALITY: Inflation was 0 per cent last year and now stands at 0.9 per cent

Leo Varadkar is facing a furious backlash from Brexiteers today after he taunted that Britain is just a 'small country' outside the EU.
The Irish leader said the EU would have the 'upper hand' in post-Brexit trade talks, which formally begin after Britain leaves on Friday.
He warned the bloc would try to force big concessions on fishing rights for EU trawlers by exploiting Britain's 'weak position' on access to Europe's financial markets.
Speaking in Dublin about the trade talks, Mr Varadkar told the BBC: 'I don't think the UK has yet come to terms with the fact it's now a small country... I think the reality of the situation is that the European Union is a union of 27 member states. The UK is only one country.
'And we have a population and a market of 450million people. The UK, it's about 60 [million]. So if these were two teams up against each other playing football, who do you think has the stronger team?'
However, his comments sparked fury from Brexiteers. 
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: 'The UK has the equivalent GDP of 18 of the EU's smallest 27 countries; is the biggest export destination for the EU; the fifth largest export destination in the world; has the third most potent defence forces in the world... 
'Small? Not really. The EU will be much smaller without the UK and our money.'
Mr Varadkar admitted Britain was in a 'very strong position' on fishing waters, which Mr Johnson has vowed to fully reclaim after Brexit.
But the Irish PM warned the bloc could downgrade the City of London's access to financial markets to bounce the UK into allowing EU trawlers in its waters. 
He said: 'If financial services and entertainment... are cut off from the single market, the European market, that will be a very severe blow to the British economy. So, you may have to make concessions in areas like fishing.'
Trawlers from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Germany and Spain rely on access to UK waters and their fishing industries could collapse if it is withdrawn. EU diplomats say the bloc is ready to play hardball over the issue.
Mr Varadkar's comments came as internal negotiating documents seen by the Mail revealed Brussels will demand that existing fishing rights for EU trawlers are continued after Brexit. 
But the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: 'We are going to be taking back control of our own fishing waters. The EU should be in no doubt about our determination on that issue.'
The leaked documents also reveal demands for the European Court of Justice to have jurisdiction over trade disputes to 'ensure consistent interpretation of the agreement'. 
Underlining that Brussels will order Britain to stay aligned to its rules and regulations as part of a trade deal, Mr Varadkar added: 'There's a genuine concern across the European Union, that part of the motivation behind Brexit was for the UK to undercut us in terms of environmental standards, labour standards, product standards, food standards, all of those things.'
A source said it had always been clear that the post was a 'time-limited job'.
Brexiteer fury as EU demands its own Strasbourg judges have final say on any EU trade-deal disputes with Britain
by Larisa Brown Political Correspondent for the Daily Mail and Joe Middleton for MailOnline
Brussels is demanding its judges keep control after Britain leaves the European Union, it emerged last night.
The bloc is calling for judges to have the power to rule on any post-Brexit agreement with the UK.
According to an internal diplomatic document, the bloc wants the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be able to enforce the terms of a trade, fishing and security deal.
Under previous talks, negotiators insisted that the UK follows the EU's rules and regulations in areas such as state aid and environmental protection - in a bid to try and prevent unfair competition.
But new unprecedented proposals, seen by the Times, go even further.
The proposals, briefed to European diplomats, insist that the ECJ must have a role in ruling whether the UK has breached any rules that it signs up to.
The ECJ is based in Luxembourg and rules on matter of EU law.
The leaked document states that the 'UK is a partner like no other', citing its 'geographic proximity... economic interdependence and connectedness'.
The document goes beyond existing free trade agreements to 'ensure consistent interpretation of the agreement and secure the role of the (ECJ) in this respect'.
It also states it is 'seeking inspiration' from the government's withdrawal treaty, which gives the ECJ a significant enforcement role.
This suggests the EU will make significant demands linking Europe's markets to judicial supervision by European judges.
The move - days before Brexit - was condemned by Brexiteers who called on Boris Johnson to 'walk away' from such talks.
Former cabinet minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith said:  'We have simply got to say no,' he said. 'Nobody in their right minds would accept this and if they continue to pursue this then we simply have to walk away.'
Downing Street sources also rejected the proposal.
A source told the newspaper that the European court was 'by very definition not a neutral arbiter'.
It comes as the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the UK's insistence on moving away from Brussels-made laws and the scrutiny of its judges meant trade without some form of customs checks was 'impossible'.
Speaking in Belfast, he said: 'The UK has chosen to become a third country, to leave the single market and the customs union, to leave behind the EU's framework of common rules, common supervision and common Court of Justice.
'It has chosen to create two regulatory spaces. This makes frictionless trade impossible. It makes checks indispensable.'
In further comments that will be set to worry Brexiteers, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar also indicated that Brussels would look for concessions on fishing in exchange for the UK's financial services industry to have better access to the European single market. 
The Vote Leave campaign vowed that Britain would be able to have control of who fishes in UK territorial waters upon leaving the EU and the common fisheries policy (CFP).
At present, the CFP dictates how much British fishermen can catch and where, and fishermen have often complained they do not get a fair share of what is caught in UK waters.
The Taoiseach told the BBC: 'What happens in these things is trade offs.
'You may have to make concessions in areas like fishing in order to get concessions from us in areas like financial services.'
Responding to the comments, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's official spokesman said: 'We are going to be taking control of our fishing waters. We have been clear on that.'
Novelist Philip Pullman moans that new Brexit 50p is missing an Oxford comma… only to be schooled about its correct grammatical use on Twitter
by Lara Keay
Author Philip Pullman complained the new Brexit 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma - only to be lectured about its correct usage on social media. 
The 73-year-old novelist told his followers the commemorative Brexit coin should be 'boycotted by all literate people' because it is missing the 'correct' punctuation.
The coin reads: 'Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations', followed by Friday's date - when Britain will officially leave the European Union.  
He implied the 50 piece should instead read: 'Peace, prosperity, and friendship', with the Oxford comma used before the 'and' to make clear the three components of the list are separate. 
But his intervention sent Twitter into meltdown, with users split on whether the controversial punctuation mark is used in British English and others mocking his complaint.
The His Dark Materials writer tweeted: 'The Brexit 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma, and should be boycotted by all literate people'. 
Brexiteers on social media responded: 'Happy Brexit day!' and 'Still leaving' under a picture of Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving a thumbs up. 
One person wrote: 'I thought it was used after three or more' and a confused face emoji.
Someone else simply commented: 'It does not need an Oxford comma'. 
While someone else wrote: 'An odd hill to choose. The Oxford comma is unnatural, unnecessary and unliked.'  
The Times Literary Supplement's editor Stig Abell was another literary voice to condemn the lack of an Oxford, or serial, comma on the coin.
He wrote that 'not perhaps his only objection' to the coin was 'the lack of a comma after 'prosperity'', which he claimed was 'killing him'. 
The Oxford comma debate stretches back years, with fierce arguments on both sides. 
Those who condone its use claim it is essential before the final component in a list of three or more to separate each one. 
It is also important to separate elements of a list where one of them has the word 'and' included in it. 
The punctuation mark, also described as a 'serial comma', is the final comma that comes before the conjunction in a list of three or more items. 
The first printed references can be traced back to writer F.H. Collins, who published it in his Authors' and Printers' Dictionary in  1905, before it appeared in the Oxford University Press (OUP), and became a controversial staple in the Oxford Style Manual. 
But many others argue it is unnecessary and not used in British English.  
The Brexit 50p piece was unveiled by Chancellor Sajid Javid yesterday. 
He said: 'Leaving the European Union is a turning point in our history and this coin marks the beginning of this new chapter.'
Approximately three million Brexit coins will enter circulation across the UK on Friday with a further seven million to be rolled out later this year. 
Mr Javid, who is Master of the Mint, was given the first batch of coins, and will present one to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, this week.
As part of the launch of the coin, the Royal Mint will open its doors for 24 hours to let people strike their own commemorative Brexit coins.
But it has sparked uproar among remainers, with Lord Adonis, a Labour peer who has consistently fought to reverse Brexit, tweeted: 'I am never using or accepting this coin.' 
Meanwhile, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, echoed a similar sentiment as he said he will ask shops for alternatives to the coin if he is handed one in the future.  
 
John Bercow was accused of trying to sabotage Brexit last night after he blocked another vote on Theresa May’s deal.
In a dramatic intervention, the Commons Speaker ruled that the EU withdrawal agreement could not be put to a vote again without substantial changes.
He gave Downing Street no notice of his announcement, which came just 24 hours before the Prime Minister was expected to ask the Commons to decide on the issue for a third time following two crushing defeats.
As well as sparking a constitutional crisis, Mr Bercow’s move all but killed any prospect of a vote before Mrs May heads to an EU summit on Thursday.
It also means she may have to ask Brussels for a delay of up to 20 months. A senior Government source said the Speaker, who is an outspoken critic of Brexit, wanted to wreck Mrs May’s plan of limiting the delay to three months.
‘It seems clear that the Speaker’s motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week,’ the source added. ‘It leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit.
‘Anyone who thinks that this makes No Deal more likely is mistaken – the Speaker wouldn’t have done it if it did.’
With just ten days to go until Britain is scheduled to leave the EU, the Prime Minister was last night locked in crisis talks with her closest advisers to try to come up with a new strategy.
Ministers proposed a string of radical options – including asking the Queen to open a new session of Parliament – in the hope of getting round Mr Bercow’s ruling.
In a bleak assessment, solicitor general Robert Buckland said: ‘We’re in a major constitutional crisis here, a political crisis we want to try and solve for the country.
‘The Prime Minister’s doing everything she can to try to break that impasse.
‘There are ways around this – a prorogation of Parliament and a new session. We are talking about hours to March 29.
‘We could have done without this. Now we have this ruling to deal with, it is clearly going to require a lot of very fast but very deep thought in the hours ahead.’
In a private message to Tory MPs, Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris suggested the EU would exploit the chaos to demand a five-year delay to the UK’s departure, ‘giving the Commons all the time in the world to steal Brexit’. He added: ‘Game over.’
As Mr Bercow sparked further controversy by suggesting he might allow MPs to vote on soft Brexit options:
Mr Bercow’s decision was welcomed by some Brexiteers, who believe it could bring No Deal closer, and by supporters of a second referendum, who think it could result in Brexit being blocked altogether.
Hardline Brexiteer Owen Paterson said: ‘If the withdrawal agreement cannot be put to the Commons again, we must leave the EU on March 29, as the law demands.’
Labour MP Angela Eagle welcomed the ruling, saying it was wrong to allow MPs to be ‘either strong-armed, bullied or bribed’ by the Government into backing Mrs May’s plan. But Mr Bercow enraged some mainstream Tories.
Neil O’Brien MP accused the Speaker of double standards, pointing out that he had allowed multiple votes on plans hatched by Remainers trying to block Mrs May’s strategy.
And he warned that voters would not understand why MPs were being banned from voting on a deal negotiated with 27 EU countries.
Mr O’Brien said: ‘If the Speaker were to block a solution, which many of my constituents favour, from even being discussed, on the basis of no principle other than his preferences, then my constituents will be furious with him.
‘It is for Parliament to decide what it wants to do in order to respect the will of the British people, not for one man to decide what should or shouldn’t be on the table.’
James Gray MP said: ‘Thanks to this announcement Brexit will not now occur. The people of Britain, the people who voted for Brexit, but also the Remainers who want to see democracy done, will be absolutely furious that their views will not be allowed to be heard in the House of Commons.’
Mr Bercow’s ruling centred on the longstanding principle that MPs should not be asked to vote twice on the same issue in a single session of Parliament.
He said he had allowed a second vote on the deal because it had changed after Mrs May secured fresh concessions from Brussels.
But he added: ‘What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition – or substantially the same proposition – as that of last week, which was rejected by 149 votes.’
Ministers pointed out that Mr Bercow had torn up Commons rules in January to allow Dominic Grieve, a Tory remainer, to throw another spanner in the Government’s Brexit plans.
Mr Bercow last night suggested he might let MPs use an emergency debate – possibly as soon as this week – to stage votes on soft Brexit options, such as staying in the customs union and single market. Votes on emergency debates are normally restricted to ‘neutral’ motions.
Q&A by Ian Drury 
What happened yesterday?
Commons Speaker John Bercow announced, without warning, that MPs could not vote on the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement for a third time unless it was ‘substantially different’ from before.
Downing Street was stunned, insisting it had no notice that the statement was coming.
Mr Bercow might argue he is behaving honourably. But at a time of national crisis, when the Government is trying to pick a way through the impasse, his intervention will be seen by ministers as profoundly unhelpful. The EU has already said it will not re-open the deal to provide the kind of changes that would satisfy the Speaker.
What had been the Prime Minister’s plan?
After two humiliating Commons defeats for her Brexit deal – one by a record 230 votes in January, the second by 149 last week – Theresa May wanted to bring her agreement back for approval by MPs for a third time before March 29.
Ministers had pencilled in today or tomorrow to hold the vote ahead of the next meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. Westminster watchers dubbed this ‘Meaningful Vote Three’ (MV3). Mrs May had hoped enough hardline Tory Brexiteers would hold their noses and support her deal, fearing the alternatives: a long delay to leaving the EU, a soft Brexit or, worst, no Brexit at all.
How can the Speaker justify his move?
Having been asked by Labour MPs Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant whether the Government was allowed to vote on the same motion repeatedly in a short space of time, the Speaker said he had consulted Erskine May, the Parliamentary procedural handbook. He cited a 415-year-old precedent – not used for nearly 100 years – to rule the PM could not bring back broadly the same deal ‘during that same [Parliamentary] session’.
But didn’t he flout parliamentary convention himself?
He did indeed. In January, Mr Bercow tore up centuries of Commons procedure and helped frustrate Mrs May’s attempts to win a better deal from the EU.
He allowed an amendment by the former attorney general and Remain campaigner Dominic Grieve that forced the PM to come back within three sitting days if her withdrawal agreement was voted down.
This ruling by the Speaker was made against the advice of Commons Clerk Sir David Natzler and meant the Government lost an element of control over Parliamentary business.
Is Mr Bercow right to make it harder to hold a third vote?
Legal experts and MPs were divided yesterday over his interpretation of procedure.
But last October Sir David told MPs: ‘If it was exactly the same document and they came back three months later for another bite, I do not think the procedures of the House are designed to obstruct the necessary business of government in that way in such a crucial thing.’
So is Mrs May’s deal dead – or is it still on life support?
If it becomes clear that there is a majority for the deal, the Government can probably put it to a vote.
The PM still has to travel to Brussels on Thursday to ask the EU for an extension and MPs will have to vote on that, plus alternative outcomes.
While leaving the bloc on March 29 is still the default legal position – with or without a deal – there is zero chance that Parliament, which is overwhelmingly Remain-supporting, will allow that.
But the Speaker has certainly inserted yet another unwanted obstacle for the Government to overcome.
What happens next?
There will not be a third vote this week, meaning MPs could be voting on Brexit next week, days before the March 29 ‘exit day’. Mrs May will now have to find something substantially different to allow her to even put a vote before the Commons.
Solicitor general Robert Buckland stated succinctly yesterday: ‘We are going to have to put all our thinking caps on and come up with some quick answers.’
A nuclear option would be ejecting Mr Bercow from the Speaker’s chair using a no-confidence motion. However, Remainers – especially Labour MPs – turn a blind eye to his antics because they see an ally in thwarting Brexit.
A second option is proroguing Parliament – ending the session. Public Bills can be carried over from one session to the next. But this would require a new Queen’s Speech and take time, yet the Brexit clock has only ten days to tick.
By John Stevens Deputy Political Editor
Theresa May will be forced to ask the EU for a long delay to Brexit after John Bercow yesterday wrecked her chances of getting her deal passed this week.
MPs voted overwhelmingly last week to instruct the PM to ask Brussels for an extension to the two-year Article 50 process.
Mrs May had said a short technical delay until June 30, giving enough time to pass necessary legislation, would be possible if her deal is passed before March 29.
But if MPs do not back it, there would have to be a much longer extension – delaying Brexit for up to 20 months – requiring the UK to take part in European Parliament elections in May. After Commons Speaker Mr Bercow yesterday ruled the PM could not bring her deal back to the Commons unchanged, Downing Street sources last night said it was ‘very unlikely’ a vote on it would be held this week.
Instead they said Mrs May will write to EU leaders ahead of a Brussels summit on Thursday requesting a lengthy delay. Some Brexiteers yesterday rejoiced at Mr Bercow’s decision, believing it has actually increased the chances of a No Deal Brexit because MPs will not stomach a prolonged extension.
In a sign of their optimism, one group of Eurosceptics was even heard whistling the Great Escape theme in the Commons tea room.
But if the EU agrees to offer the Prime Minister an extension, it is unlikely to be turned down by a Commons that voted against a No Deal departure.
It means MPs now face a showdown next week – the last before March 29 – when they are likely to be asked to vote on Mrs May’s deal again if she wins the Speaker’s permission, and if that fails, on the offer of a delay. It means that although the referendum was almost 1,000 days ago, Britain’s future will go right down to the wire.
Last night, sources suggested Mrs May could try to seek a ‘break clause’ in any delay she negotiates at the European Council this week. That could potentially allow the UK to leave early – before the European Parliament elections – if MPs have a change of heart and approve her deal.
If that attempt is unsuccessful, Britain faces up to 20 months in the EU while a new plan is negotiated.
However, some Brexiteers are convinced that when presented with this prospect next week, the Commons may yet decline to formally approve a delay – and that Britain will leave on time with no agreement. Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the European Research Group of hard-Brexit MPs, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: ‘The legal position is that unless something changes, under the EU Withdrawal Act that Parliament passed last summer, we leave on March 29 at 11pm. That has not changed.’
Mr Francois suggested No Deal could happen if the EU refuses to give an extension to Article 50.
He added: ‘All 27 nations must agree unanimously. I am not saying for definite that they won’t, but it is not axiomatic that they will. So it is a moot point and we will have to wait and see.’
Former Tory Cabinet minister Owen Paterson said Mr Bercow’s decision was a ‘huge opportunity’ for those who want the country to leave with No Deal.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘If the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be put to the Commons again, we must leave the EU on March 29 as the law demands. That has huge support across the country, that would satisfy the 17.4million people who voted to Leave, it would satisfy all those Conservative voters who were promised that we would leave the single market, the customs, the remit of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and it would put real pressure on the EU to come to discussions on a free trade deal.’
He added: ‘I think there is a lot of Project Fear nonsense about a so-called No Deal. We have already got lots of side agreements on aviation, airplanes, trucks.
‘I think what would happen is that it would trigger a really positive, constructive discussion.’
If an extension is agreed by the EU, Mrs May will have to bring it back before MPs just days before the country is due to leave the EU on Friday. Downing Street sources said they wanted it to include an exit clause the country can leave early if the Brexit deal is somehow passed by Parliament.
Mrs May had planned to hold a third vote on her Brexit deal this week and had been hopeful she could win around the DUP, which are seen as pivotal because of their influence on Tory Brexiteers. Leading Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday said he would wait to see what the DUP decided before finally making up his mind which way to vote if the deal returns to the Commons.
However, last night sources said there was no chance of a breakthrough this week in talks with the DUP. MPs last Thursday backed the Prime Minister’s reluctant call to delay Brexit by 413 votes to 202. It came a day after they backed taking No Deal off the table by 321 votes to 278.
By Sir Stephen Laws QC, former First Parliamentary Counsel who advised the Cabinet Office on constitutional affairs
The Speaker is right to raise the question of whether a third vote on the Government’s Brexit deal should take place. The ‘same-question’ rule – under which a defeated motion cannot be brought back in the same form during the course of a parliamentary session – is well precedented.
But it would be quite wrong to apply it to disallow a third meaningful vote.
Since the deal was last put before the House of Commons, there have been two significant votes: one on preventing a No Deal Brexit and another on extending Article 50. The deal may look broadly the same – but those two votes have produced fundamentally different circumstances, and mean MPs are no longer facing the same question.
In addition, there has been time for a more considered look at the effects and implications of the legally-binding documents concerning the Withdrawal Agreement brought back by the Prime Minister from Strasbourg last week. The vote for a delay of the Article 50 deadline resulted in a resolution that specifically provided for a third vote, and so implicitly gave the House’s permission to have one. The Speaker should respect that.
If there is a majority for the deal, preventing the vote would be to frustrate the will of the House. It would be deeply concerning to see a Speaker act in such a way. Those who are opposed to the deal should want to win with a majority on the substance, not by procedural manoeuvring or on a technicality, and the Speaker should allow that.
The Speaker’s reputation for impartiality has already become questionable. It is difficult to see how it could survive the application of the same-question rule to a third vote on the deal when that same-question rule was not applied to prevent MP Dominic Grieve’s Remain-supporting amendments to motions to reopen questions that had been finally resolved in a more effective way during the passage of the Bill for the Withdrawal Act.
Parliamentary procedure exists to facilitate not thwart the wishes of the majority. The best test of what the majority wants is a vote, not a ruling from the Chair.
Sir Stephen is Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Exchange think-tank and was talking to Andrew Wilson.
When John Bercow rose to his feet shortly after 3.30 yesterday afternoon you could tell by his body language this was a moment he had been itching for all day.
As he surveyed the chamber with that sense of propriety which has become his staple in the Speaker’s chair, his face twitching with bristly anticipation, it was obvious this was to be no mundane procedural announcement.
What spewed forth from his mouth for the next twenty minutes of rhetorical windbaggery was met with incredulity on all sides of the House.
No forewarning had been given to any party what he was going to say.
The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition – they were all hearing it, like us, in real time.
Labour couldn’t believe their luck. The Government simply couldn’t believe what it was hearing. If Mrs May’s deal is to be put before the House for a third time, the Speaker ruled citing a Commons precedent from 1604, then it would have to be substantially different to the one MPs voted on last week. She could not simply ask members to vote on exactly the same deal.
Bang! An Exocet rocket straight to the core of what remained the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy. No wonder Bercow was smirking.
Chief whip Julian Smith was so stunned his lower jaw was hanging open. Someone on the front bench really needed to lean over and pop it back up again.
Once again the Government had been done over by the chair. Frustrating ministers and torpedoeing Brexit. These are what get John Bercow out of bed in the morning. Rules? Procedure? The chap just seems to make ’em up as he goes along.
The Speaker had been on unusually boisterous form for a Monday moments before making his statement during Pensions Questions.
He bantered with backbenchers. He joshed with his clerks. Plonked in the Speaker’s throne, his stumpy legs hammered up and down his footstool excitedly like a naughty toddler in a highchair.
When news emerged he would be making a statement once the session had finished it was swiftly obvious from his giddy behaviour the little goblin planned to drop a howitzer on the Government.
The House quickly filled as MPs rushed to hear what he had to say. How he seemed to enjoy that. He then rose to feet, clutching a stack of paper half an inch thick. Oh heck, we weren’t getting out of here in a hurry.
Here was the Speaker at his despotic worst. Putting himself at the centre of events and turning it into the John Bercow show, painting himself as Parliament’s fearless defender.
‘Part of the responsibility of the Speaker is to speak truth to power and I have always done that... I have never been pushed around and I am not going to start now... I am not a stickler for tradition but…’ I, I, I. Me, me, me. His oration became so florid and absurd at one point, works and pensions secretary Amber Rudd had to stifle her matronly giggles. The arch-Brexiteers were delighted. Sir William Cash (Con, Stone in Staffordshire) congratulated the Speaker on his judgment, saying his decision ‘made an awful lot of sense’.
Bercow returned the compliment, praising Mr Cash for always trying to act in the national interest. Priti Patel gave a beaming Cash a ‘well done’ pat on the back. Pass the sickbag stuff.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, Somerset North) commended the Speaker for following protocol, quoting from the Bible: ‘There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.’ Bercow grinned and nodded his head enthusiastically. I’m not sure he realised this was a dig.
Sir Hugo Swire (Con, East Devon) asked not unreasonably why the Speaker had made this call now, and not last week when it was clear Mrs May was going to try again. Tsk. And give the PM the weekend to adjust her preparations? Where would the fun have been in that?
Leader of the House and Bercow nemesis Andrea Leadsom briefly punctured his balloon when she coolly implied he couldn’t be trusted to treat colleagues with courtesy and respect. Cue collective sucking of wind around the chamber.
‘I treat the House with respect, I treat members with respect!’ The Speaker boomed, jabbing his forefinger at his accuser. Background: Bercow once called feisty Leadsom a ‘stupid woman’. Funnily enough, a caller to Rees-Mogg’s phone-in show on LBC earlier that morning had pre-empted Bercow’s ruling.
Samina from Tooting she was called. She had phoned to enquire why Mrs May was being allowed a third crack at her vote, asking: ‘Isn’t this tactic specifically barred to stop the Government from bullying the legislature. Shouldn’t this be ruled out of order?’
‘A brilliant question,’ purred the Moggster, referring her to page 397 of the Parliamentary rule book, Erksine May.
Samina certainly seemed to know her way around Parliamentary procedure rather better than your average LBC punter, traditionally a forum for London cab drivers and the over-opinionated. Could it have been Jacob’s nanny in disguise?
 
Theresa May faced a new Brexit rift with David Davis last night after claims that he has raised private doubts that the UK is certain to leave the EU.
The Prime Minister used her official New Year message to restate her determination to deliver on the result of the 2016 referendum vote.
She vowed to 'keep up progress in 2018' on the next stage of the EU exit talks, declaring: 'Making a success of Brexit is crucial.'
The vast majority of voters 'just want the Government to get on and deliver a good Brexit – and that's exactly what we are doing', she added.
But her defiant message was undermined by reports that Mr Davis told a private meeting it was still possible the decision to leave the EU could be reversed.
It follows a seminar hosted by Mr Davis at his Whitehall department shortly before Christmas, when he invited members of leading think-tanks to discuss the Government's success in getting an agreement with Brussels on moving to the next phase of Brexit talks. 
Sources say Mr Davis told the policy wonks: 'My view is that it means there is less chance of no deal – and less chance of no Brexit.'
Some of those present expressed surprise at Mr Davis's remarks.
'For the Brexit Secretary to express the thought that the whole thing might never happen was not what I expected – even behind closed doors,' one source said. 
'Nor was I the only person who reacted like that. It didn't square with the Prime Minister's mantra of 'Brexit means Brexit'.'
Mr Davis claimed his remarks had been misinterpreted.
A spokesman said: 'He was simply repeating the PM's point that the deal is good for people who supported Leave and who fear Brexit isn't going to happen, and Remain supporters who fear no deal.'
The row comes after a series of damaging reports in recent weeks about Mr Davis's handling of the Brexit negotiations, including claims that he has been sidelined by No 10.
He was accused of going back on a pledge to publish dozens of detailed reports showing how Brexit would affect the economy; said 'you don't have to be clever' to handle Brexit talks; and suggested leaving the EU could have as much impact on the UK as the 2008 credit crash.
Internet giants were last night threatened with a multi-million-pound tax penalty unless they agreed to help combat the terrorist threat to Britain.
Security Minister Ben Wallace branded internet firms 'ruthless profiteers' that cost the Government millions of pounds by failing to help security services identify terrorists and crack down on extremism online.
'If they continue to be less than co-operative, we should look at things like tax as a way of incentivising them or compensating for their inaction,' he added in an interview.
'Because content is not taken down as quickly as they could do, we're having to de-radicalise people who have been radicalised.
'That's costing millions,' he added.
In her New Year message, Mrs May made no reference to a series of setbacks in 2017 which threatened her hold on power, including the botched Election and losing three Cabinet Ministers in a spate of scandals.
But she dismissed claims that she was losing her grip.
'The real test is not whether challenges come; it's how you face them, whether you allow a task to overcome you, or tackle it head-on with purpose and resolve,' she said.
In his New Year message, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was on the brink of ousting Mrs May from No 10.
'We are a government in waiting,' he said. 'The hope of a new Britain is closer than ever.'
Mr Corbyn added: 'Now the Establishment's secret is out: they're not as strong as they appear. Let's face it, they have no idea how to fix their broken system or upgrade our stagnant economy.
'In 2018, Labour's mission is to give our people support and security and use their talents, unleash their creativity and fulfil their hopes.'
Britain must 'face the consequences' of its Brexit vote, EU negotiator Michel Barnier warned today.
Mr Barnier ruled out striking a unique deal for Britain in the trade talks unlocked by Theresa May at the EU summit this week.
He said Britain must choose between one of two broad models that already exist, based on how Norway and Canada work with the EU.
Norway accepts almost all EU single market rules and in return gets free access to EU markets. Canada has less access much more freedom over how it regulates business. 
Theresa May will hold the first official Cabinet discussions this week on what model Britain will seek in the next phase of talks, with a deep split among top ministers. 
Brexit Secretary David Davis has said he wants a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal - suggesting a looser arrangement but close access for financial services.
Mr Barnier's new intervention, in an interview with Prospect magazine today, suggests Brussels will resist the idea.
He warned the 'most difficult part' of the negotiations will come in the next phase.
The chief negotiator, who works to guidelines handed down by EU leaders, said Brussels was happy to accept Britain's decision to leave the EU, its single market and customs union.  
But he warned: 'They have to realise there won't be any cherry picking.
'We won't mix up the various scenarios to create a specific one and accommodate their wishes, mixing, for instance, the advantages of the Norwegian model, member of the single market, with the simple requirements of the Canadian one.

What happened at the summit this week?
On Friday, EU leaders rubber stamped a draft divorce deal to say 'sufficient progress' had been made on issues about the separation. 
This unlocks the crucial next phase in which a transition deal and future trade will be discussed.  

EU Council President Donald Tusk has announced new negotiating guidelines for the EU's negotiator, Michel Barnier.
These instruct him to strike a transition deal before launching long-term trade talks.
What does the EU want in the transition period? 
The new negotiating guidelines suggest the EU want a complete 'standstill' transition that keeps Britain inside all EU laws for a fixed period, expected to be two years and running until March 2021. 
This means freedom of movement will continue to apply, Britain will not be allowed to sign new trade deals and European Court rulings will still be enforced.
What does Britain want? 
Theresa May has set out her own vision for a two year transition in which most EU rules continue to apply. 
She wanted full-blown trade talks to run in parallel with transition talks from January but looks set to be disappointed. 
Brexiteers will be furious if it is confirmed Britain is not allowed to strike trade deals during the transition period and accept new EU rules.

'No way. They have to face the consequences of their own decision.'
Best for Britain CEO Eloise Todd said: 'Today is the day that Theresa May's Red,White and Blue Brexit died.
'Barnier said no way, May and it should deeply worry everyone that the government has no plan and no clue.
'The government are deluded and hope to pull a rabbit out of the hat at the eleventh hour. Sadly people like Boris are not magicians, just clowns. So far all the government have done is kick the can down the road and avoid all the difficult decisions.
'Right now it is Mayday in Downing Street.' 

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson used an interview in the Sunday Times to fire an opening salvo across the deep divide within the Cabinet over what 'end state' Britain will seek.

Mr Johnson said today that Britain must 'maximise the benefits of Brexit' and this means the nation must go its own way.
He cited the working time directive - which caps working hours at 48 hours a week - as an EU regulation which could be scrapped. 
He said: 'The prime minister has done a fantastic job moving us forward in the negotiations.
'What we need to do is something new and ambitious, which allows zero tariffs and frictionless trade but still gives us that important freedom to decide our own regulatory framework, our own laws and do things in a distinctive way in the future.'
He added: 'We need to raise our eyes to the horizon and ask ourselves in 10, 20, 30 years time.
'Is the world really going to be a series of mutually competitive trade blocs or are we going to be working in a system where there is freedom and free trade between countries, businesses, between individuals ... in accordance with global standards?
'That is a very exciting future.' 
Mr Johnson said he was encouraged by Mr Hammond's Budget speech, in which the Chancellor touched on regulatory divergence with Brussels.  
He said: 'Philip can see that we have a very original economy, very different from other European countries tech sectors, bioscience, bulk data, this is a very innovative place to be.
'We may in future wish to regulate it in a different way from the way that Brussels does.' 
 

Hostile EU leaders have warned Theresa May that Britain must continue to let in hundreds of thousands of migrant workers every year if it wants access to the single market.
As she attended her first EU summit, the Prime Minister faced a barrage of demands from Eurocrats determined to preserve rules on free movement.
Meanwhile, European council chief Donald Tusk said he still hoped the UK would not leave at all - and our former commissioner in Brussel, Lord Hill took a swipe at hardliners urging 'stupid' Brexit.  
Scroll down for video 
Mrs May endured a difficult first day of the gathering, where she delivered a stern message that the UK must not be left out of the bloc's operation before it formally leaves.
Many in Brussels are unhappy that Mrs May has said restoring control of Britain’s borders will be her priority in the Brexit talks. 
Currently, EU migration adds 180,000 people to the UK’s population every year.
German politician Mr Schulz told the summit: ‘From day one, the European Parliament must be fully involved in setting the new relationship between the EU and the UK – not least because it must give its consent to any withdrawal treaty and subsequent treaty setting out the full relationship.
‘Treating the European Parliament as an obstacle rather than a partner in this process would therefore be a serious mistake.’
Mr Schulz repeatedly warned Britain that, if it wants access to the single market, it must continue to leave its borders open.
‘The fundamental freedoms are inseparable, i.e. no freedom of movement for goods, capital and services, without free movement of persons,’ he said.
‘They [the UK] have decided to leave the single market and they want full access to the single market after leaving the European Union. 
'That’s only possible by accepting the fundamental rules of the European Union.’
The comments came despite Eurocrats insisting that no talks on the detail of Brexit are allowed until the UK triggers Article 50 next year.
Last night Number 10 insisted it was relaxed about the remarks, with one senior official saying: ‘This does not change our approach’. 
Mr Tusk, who chairs the summit, made clear he had not given up on the UK changing its mind despite Mrs May flatly ruling out a U-turn or second referendum.
'If it is reversible or not, it is in the British hands. I will be the happiest one if it is reversible,' he said. 
Mr Tusk said that he hoped Mrs May would realise 'the European Union is simply the best company in the world'.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Lord Hill - who stepped down as our EU commissioner after the historic referendum on June 23 - said there was a widespread and mistaken view in Brussels that the result could be overturned.
But the peer, who campaigned for Remain, suggested some ministers were underestimating the difficulties of the looming referendum.
While UK politics tended to focus on economic factors, in Europe it was more 'emotional' and 'romantic' which could make a punishment strategy more likely.
In an apparent dig at hardline figures such as International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, Lord Hill said: 'We have this false choice in the UK often between "hard" and "soft" Brexit.
'I think the choice is between stupid Brexit and more intelligent Brexit.' 

Tory MEP Syed Kamall, who leads the EU parliament’s European Conservatives and Reformists Group, said of Mr Schulz's comments: ‘This is all posturing. EU leaders are blowing hard now but they’ll soon see sense when the detailed negotiations begin.’
On her way into the summit, Mrs May said: ‘I am here with a very clear message: the UK is leaving the EU but we will continue to play a full role until we leave and we’ll be a strong and dependable partner after we’ve left. 
'It is in the interests of both the UK and the EU that we continue to work closely together including at this summit. 
'We must show a robust and united European stance in the face of Russian aggression.'
Mrs May also warned leaders that she would not accept decisions made without her at a summit in Bratislava last month. 
The other 27 EU leaders met to discuss the future of the bloc but she was not invited.
She said: ‘I accept the 27 need to meet but I want UK to play an active part otherwise it will be hard to accept things you agree.’
Earlier in the day, Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat said some EU states still believed Britain may not leave the EU. 
He told the BBC: ‘I do think that some of us are keeping that option at the back of our mind.’
Jeremy Corbyn yesterday invited socialist leaders to a meeting in London next year to discuss an ‘alternative Brexit’.
But Tory MP Maria Caulfield said: ‘If Jeremy Corbyn was serious about making a success of leaving the EU he would get behind the Prime Minister’s negotiation – not try and talk Britain down from the sidelines.’
Britain should stick to the EU single market, keep contributing to Brussels coffers, and have 'easy' migration rules, the shadow Brexit Secretary said today.
Sir Keir Starmer gave the most detailed account yet of Labour's stance as he hinted that the party could back a second referendum on relations with the EU.
But his comments endorsing a Norway-style tie-in are likely to fuel the burgeoning divisions within the party about Brexit, which has seen Jeremy Corbyn, frontbenchers and rank-and-file MPs take starkly different positions. 
Appearing on the BBC's Andrew Marr show this morning, Sir Keir hailed Theresa May's divorce deal that was finally sealed with the EU on Friday. 
He claimed the UK's path was already set after Mrs May committed to UK-wide 'full alignment' with the bloc in key trade areas in order to protect the soft Irish border and assuage DUP concerns about the integrity of the union. 
Asked if the UK now had to stay 'very, very close' to the single market and the customs union.
'Yes, and I think that's the right thing and I think we should hold her to that because that goes to the heart of the question what sort of Britain do we want to be?' he said. 
'Do we see Europe as our major trading partner in the future or do we want to rip ourselves apart from that?'  
Speaking about regulations and standards, Sir Keir added that if the UK wanted the benefits of the single market and the customs union 'you've got to stay on the same level playing field'.
He said: 'We are very comfortable with staying on a level playing field.' 
He said Labour wanted a partnership that 'retains the benefits of the single market and the customs union' and wanted a new treaty.
'We would start with viable options, staying in a customs union and a single market variant which means full participation in the single market,' he said.
Britain should pay the EU's divorce bill even if there is no trade deal, the shadow business secretary said today.
Rebecca Long-Bailey said she thought the UK should 'honour' the financial demands even if negotiations collapse. 
'I think it's important and I think earlier on the point was made that you know, if you had a mortgage you'd still be expected to pay you know the sums that you would need to honour,' she told Pienaar's Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live.
She said the UK should hand over the 'agreed amount... nothing above what we should pay legally and what we're contractually bound to pay'. 
'You can't sweep the customs union and the single market off the table on the one hand and also say you don't want a hard border in Northern Ireland...You can't have no hard border if you don't have alignment.' 
Sir Keir also made clear that Labour was ready to keep paying money into EU coffers in return for market access. 
The government has said that apart from the divorce bill the UK will no longer be paying 'large sums' to the bloc every year. 
Sir Keir said: 'Norway pays money in, they do it actually on a voluntary basis... there may have to be payments, that's to be negotiated.'
Pushed on the party's vow that it will not accept freedom of movement after Brexit, Sir Keir suggested its term would be similar to the current arrangements.
'Well that would have to be negotiated but the end of free movement doesn't mean no movement, of course we would want people to come from the EU to work here, we would want people who are here to go and work in the EU, the basis of that would have to be negotiated,' he said.
Asked if that would mean easy movement if not free, he replied: 'Yes, of course.'   


Asked if Labour would call for a second referendum, he replied: 'We haven't called for a second referendum, things are moving so fast it's hard to know what's going to come next but we are not calling for it.'
Pressed twice more on the issue, he added: 'Things are moving so fast it's hard to know what's going to come next, but we are not calling for a second referendum.'

Theresa May hailed an 'historic' moment tonight as Labour failed to defeat the government in the first vote on the EU Withdrawal Bill.
The crucial legislation was comfortably given its second reading in the Commons by a margin of 326 to 290 - a majority of 36. 
Seven Labour MPs defied Jeremy Corbyn's order to oppose the bill, making clear during a near-nine hour debate that they were determined to implement the result of the referendum. 

Importantly, the government also succeeded in passing its timetable for pushing the laws through parliament. 
But ominously for ministers, senior Tory MPs were among those who vowed to force changes to the proposals at a later stage in the process. 


The landmark measures would scrap the legislation that underpins our ties to Brussels, while at the same time copying all current EU law on to the domestic statute book to minimise disruption.
The Prime Minister said after the result: 'Earlier this morning parliament took a historic decision to back the will of the British people and vote for a bill which gives certainty and clarity ahead of our withdrawal from the European Union.
'Although there is more to do, this decision means we can move on with negotiations with solid foundations and we continue to encourage MPs from all parts of the UK to work together in support of this vital piece of legislation.' 
Labour and some Tory MPs - including former Attorney General Dominic Grieve - voiced concern that ministers will also get so-called 'Henry VIII' powers to amend the rules as they are transposed.
Seven Labour MPs rebelled by voting for the EU Withdrawal Bill's second reading. They were:
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley), 
Frank Field (Birkenhead), 
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall), 
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North), 
John Mann (Bassetlaw), 
Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) 
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton).
Others, such as Caroline Flint (Don Valley), chose to abstain.  
Mr Corbyn ordered his benches to oppose the Bill at second reading, even though it is a vote on the principle of the legislation.
However, he suffered a rebellion by a group of MPs who either supported Leave in the referendum or whose constituencies backed Brexit. 
Former minister Frank Field said he would be voting for the 'referendum result to be implemented', and he was joined by six others including veteran left-winger Dennis Skinner. Caroline Flint abstained saying the legislation was 'necessary' and she wanted it to continue.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer admitted it was a 'deeply disappointing result'.
'This bill is an affront to parliamentary democracy and a naked power grab by government ministers. It leaves rights unprotected, it silences parliament on key decisions and undermines the devolution settlement,' he said.
'It will make the Brexit process more uncertain, and lead to division and chaos when we need unity and clarity.
'Labour will seek to amend and remove the worst aspects from the bill as it passes through parliament. But the flaws are so fundamental it’s hard to see how this bill could ever be made fit for purpose.' 
During the debate - which lasted nearly nine hours today and 13 in total - Mr Field, chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, said: 'Tonight I will be voting for the only option - the referendum result to be implemented.
'That was the wish of my constituents and that was the wish of the country, and I don't wish there to be any different view put forward about whose side I'm on.
'I'm on the side of the majority of people who voted to come out.'
There were three divisions called on the EU Withdrawal Bill tonight. 
A Labour amendment that would have block the draft legislation was defeated by 318 votes to 296, majority 22.
The second reading for the Bill was carried by 326 votes to 290, majority 36.
The government's timetable for pushing through the Bill was passed by 318 votes to 301, majority 17.
Two motions on the financial implications were nodded through without a vote.
In a message aimed at ministers, Mr Field added: 'We have seen many people when we started this process bravely going about their lifetime views to actually implement the views of their constituents.
'But given the frailty of human nature, we've had one or two recidivists who are now thinking... about there may be reasons for not doing this and doing the other.
'I therefore put on the order paper, when we come back to committee, grouping them together, a four-clause bill.
'Because the Government, by having this mega bill, is storing up no end of trouble by those people, those members who are wolves in sheep's clothing who will actually try and undo the measure.'  
Mrs Flint told MPs the only reason for blocking the legislation would be to 'thwart' Brexit. 
'The truth is, whoever was in Government, we would have to pass a Bill of this kind to prepare for leaving the EU in March 2019,' Mrs Flint said.
'And there can be little disagreement on that, unless your ambition is to thwart the result of the EU referendum and prevent or delay the UK leaving the EU.
'Now I believe Labour's job is to improve the Bill by amending it - not killing the Bill at the beginning of its passage through Parliament.'
She added: 'I will work with others to improve this Bill, but tonight I cannot vote to block this Bill and I shall be abstaining to allow the Bill to be further discussed and amended.
'We have a job to do to ensure a smooth, orderly Brexit.'

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said the legislation amounted to a 'coup'. 'Let us make no mistake, this Bill is not about delivering the will of people, rather it's about gagging our democracy and this House by the way of a false discourse. It is a silent coup d'etat, masquerading as technical necessity,' he said.
Potential Tory rebels signalled that they would support the Bill at second reading - keeping their powder dry for later in the parliamentary process.
That meant the government had a comfortable majority in the key votes tonight, defeating a Labour amendment before securing the second reading.
But hundreds of amendments could be table as the legislation goes into committee stage next month, with peers vowing 'trench warfare' to soften Theresa May's approach to Brexit.
Under intense questioning from Mr Grieve, a QC, Justice Secretary David Lidington conceded the time available to propose changes in the committee stage could be extended. 
'Where there is good reason to extend debate further, we are willing to consider that very seriously and carefully indeed,' he told Mr Grieve. 
'I hope he will take that assurance in the spirit in which it has been intended.' 
David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had warned that efforts to derail the legal overhaul would mean a 'disorderly' Brexit and cause severe damage to the economy.   
Mr Johnson told Today that failure to pass the legislation would mean 'the whole thing being disorderly and chaotic'. 
He also held out an olive branch to the EU, saying he wanted to see the bloc have a 'renaissance' at the same time as the UK.
'I'm interest to hear that the commission president, Monsieur Juncker - who has many great qualities, by the way - he has said that he regards Brexit as... a moment for the renaissance of the European Union. 
'Well, fantastic, let's get on with it, let's have a renaissance of the European Union.' 
The Bill overturns the 1972 Act which took Britain into the European Economic Community and incorporates relevant EU laws into the UK statute book to prevent black holes in the law at the point of Brexit. 
There are currently a guaranteed 64 hours over eight days for committee stage, when amendments can be made, but concerns have been expressed by Tory and Labour MPs that this will not be enough time given the constitutional significance of the legislation. 
 
Britain will not get an 'ambitious' trade deal unless it obeys EU rules, Michel Barnier warned today - as he ruled out City firms being able to trade freely in the bloc after Brexit.
In an uncompromising speech, the EU's chief negotiator demanded the UK accept Brussels regulations on tax levels, food quality, and 'social' standards or face being excluded from key markets. 
But he made clear that even if Britain signs up to those rules there is no chance of City firms keeping 'passporting' rights that mean they can operate unhindered across borders.
Mr Barnier also warned that Britain still needed to come forward with proposals to resolve the issues of the divorce bill and the Irish border before trade talks can start.
The tough talk will come as a blow to the City, where firms have been hoping for a deal with Brussels that could allow them to keep operating in the same way.
So-called 'passporting' rights mean businesses can operate freely across borders without having to seek further regulatory approval.
Mr Barnier ruling out the prospect could fuel fears that more of them will choose to relocate at least some of their activities to other European countries.
Delivering a speech to the Centre for European Reform in Brussels, the French former minister said the EU wanted to forge an 'ambitious' trade relationship with the UK.
But he said Britain could not keep the benefits of the EU single market, and the bloc would 'never compromise' on financial regulations. 
Divorce Bill:
Theresa May has said Britain will pay 20 billion euros for a two-year transition deal and honour the commitments we have made.
But the EU are demanding Britain goes further in spelling out exactly what we will pay - squeezing out more cash before we move on to trade talks.
Irish border:
Both sides want to keep a soft Irish border, fearing a return to border guards and  check points could reignite the violence of The Troubles.
But it is unclear how this will be achieved when the UK leaves the customs union.
The EU says Northern Ireland should stay in the EU customs union to avoid a hard border with the Republic.
But the Government and the DUP - who are propping Mrs May up in No10 - say they will not accept a deal which involves a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Citizens Rights
Theresa May has laid out an offer to guarantee the rights of the 3.2million EU citizens in the UK.
They will be given a two-year grace period to apply for settled status, which they will be granted as long as they pass criminal and security checks.
But this was rejected by the EU Parliament who say the status should be automatic and not involve criminal records checks.  

'The legal consequence of Brexit is that the UK financial services providers lose their EU passport,' Mr Barnier said - although he suggested they might be able to keep more limited rights on the basis of 'equivalent' regulations. 
With Theresa May gathering her Brexit 'war Cabinet' to discuss a fresh offer on the UK's Brexit divorce bill, Mr Barnier said that it remained his priority to 'settle the accounts accurately'.
He said it was for the UK to 'come forward with proposals' for how to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
He raised the possibility that Northern Ireland could stay in the customs union while the UK leaves - a possibility that has been flatly dismissed by the government.
'I expect the UK, as co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, to come forward with proposals,' he said. 
'The island of Ireland is now faced with many challenges. Those who wanted Brexit must offer solutions.' 
Mr Barnier said 'Brexit means Brexit' as he repeated that the UK would not be allowed to 'cherry pick' the best bits of EU membership.
He cautioned that the European parliament would not approve a deal that permitted too much 'divergence' from EU regulations - a key demand of Brexiteers. 
The UK faced an 'important decision' that would 'shape the discussion on our future relationship and shape also the conditions for ratification of that partnership in many national parliaments and in the European Parliament'. 
'There will be no ambitious partnership without common ground on fair competition. Stated: Tax-dumping, food safety, social and environmental standards,' he warned.
He also rejected suggestions the UK will continue to be able to benefit from the work of European agencies, arguing that 'freedom implies responsibility for building new UK administrative capacity'.
But despite the hard line, Mr Barnier did make clear he was ready to discuss an 'ambitious' agreement. 
'If we manage to negotiate an orderly withdrawal and establish a level playing field... the EU will be ready to offer its most ambitious FTA (free trade agreement) approach,' he said.

'This is why we have started internal preparations with member states, to be ready to talk about the future as soon as we will have agreed on how to settle the past. 
Mr Barnier said Brussels would be ready for a 'no deal' outcome, but it was 'not our scenario'. 
'I regret that this no-deal option comes up so often in the UK public debate,' he said. 'Only those who ignore, or want to ignore, the current benefits of European Union membership can say that no deal would be a positive result.'  
 
 
Britain is unlikely to leave the European Union this year – even in the event of No Deal, Brussels said last night.
Eurocrats say they are convinced Boris Johnson will be the next prime minister, but that he will U-turn on his promise to leave on October 31 come what may.
Even in the event of a cliff-edge exit, they believe EU leaders would sign off on a short extension for a 'controlled No Deal' which would last into the beginning of 2020. 
However, EU officials are working on the assumption that Mr Johnson will not insist on forcing through No Deal because this would trigger a no confidence vote by MPs and end his premiership. 
Instead, they expect him to use his 'charm and charisma' to sell an amended version of the current deal which Theresa May was not capable of delivering.
A senior EU source said: 'A lot of people are scared about Boris, but I don't think he is the worst of all. 
'I think Boris can sell things back home that Theresa May probably couldn't... 
'If people really brief Boris and talk him through the implications of No Deal, I think he will really think twice.'
Another senior source added: 'Whatever happens, you'll probably end up with a short-term extension of two or three months. 
'It will either be a short extension for a controlled No Deal, or to allow for getting a deal to pass through the [UK] parliament.'
Britain will be at the mercy of Emmanuel Macron if there is No Deal Brexit, Philip Hammond warned today.
The Chancellor dismissed Boris Johnson's claims the UK can control the fallout from failure to reach an agreement with the EU - saying the bloc holds 'many of the levers' needed to minimise damage.
He said France could 'dial up' delays at Calais to cause chaos at ports like Dover.
Mr Hammond is expecting to leave government next week, when Mr Johnson is the hot favourite to take over from Theresa May as PM.
But he has vowed to keep fighting to avoid No Deal, after delivering some of the most blood-curdling warnings from ministers over the consequences.
Earlier this month Mr Hammond angered Brexiteers by highlighting fears the Treasury would take a £90billion hit from leaving without an agreement.
Mr Johnson has insisted that Brexit must happen by October 31 'come what may', saying the impact of No Deal could be 'vanishingly inexpensive' if the UK prepares properly.  
But in an interview for a BBC Panorama programme being broadcast on Thursday, Mr Hammond said the impact should not be played down. 
Asked if the UK can control No Deal, he said: 'We can't because many of the levers are held by others - the EU 27 or private business. We can seek to persuade them but we can't control it.'
He added: 'For example, we can make sure that goods flow inwards through the port of Dover without any friction but we can't control the outward flow into the port of Calais.
'The French can dial that up or dial it down, just the same as the Spanish for years have dialled up or dialled down the length of the queues at the border going into Gibraltar.'
 
Britain's hopes to strike post Brexit trade deals around the world could collapse in a row over the Irish border. 
Brussels 'annihilated' Theresa May's plans to take Britain out of the EU customs union while keeping a soft border with the Republic, it was today claimed.
While the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier warned that negotiations could 'fail' and the UK may crash out of the bloc without a transition deal.
The UK's proposals to use technology to avoid hard customs checks and border guards were rejected after a 'detailed and forensic rebuttal' of the plans, it emerged today.
The move is a major blow to the PM and casts serious doubt over whether Britain will be able to leave the customs union.
It comes after Australia's foreign minister Julie Bishop warned Britain must leave the customs union to strike trade deals with her country. 
Miss Bishop told the BBC World Tonight: 'My understanding is that if Britain remains in a customs union then the opportunity for us to enter into a free trade agreement with Britain would not be achievable.' 
Meanwhile, appearing on French TV today, Mr Barnier also  warned that a Brexit deal was far from done and dusted.
He told France2 TV: 'I say as the Union's negotiator that there are still difficulties, still a risk of failure.
'On 25 per cent of the text, we don't have agreement. 
British Government: No physical infrastructure on the border but Northern Ireland leaves the EU Customs Union with the rest of the UK. Customs rules to be policed with local exemptions and technology. 
Irish Government: No physical infrastructure on the border and the same rules on trade on both sides. Ireland suggests this could mean leaving Northern Ireland inside the customs union with checks at Belfast and other ports.
DUP: Protect Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom at all costs. No physical infrastructure but no concession to making rules different in the UK and Northern Ireland.
Sinn Fein: Leave Northern Ireland in the Customs Union and Single Market so it mirror rules in the Republic
EU: Keep the EU27 together and back Ireland over the UK. 
'If there is no agreement, there is no orderly withdrawal, there is a disorderly withdrawal and there is no transition.'
Restating his position that the integrity of the single market and the freedom of movement are 'non-negotiable', Mr Barnier switched from French to English when asked if the UK could obtain a 'single market a la carte' deal, replying: 'No way.'
The breakdown in talks over the Irish border was revealed today by the Daily Telegraph and throws into doubt hopes of a trade deal by October. 
Mrs May has vowed to take Britain out of the EU customs union as the country will not be able to strike its own trade deals if it stays in.
However, what happens with the Irish border - which will be the UK's only land border with the EU after Brexit - has proven to be one of the thorniest issues in the Brexit talks.
There are fears that a return to a hard border and the border guards of the past could reignited sectarian violence and a fresh round of The Troubles. 
Downing Street today insisted it 'does not recognise' the reports in The Telegraph.
No 10 said it is confident a deal that protect's Northern Ireland's place in the UK and allows new trade deals after Brexit can be struck in the 'coming months'.
Peter Bone, Tory MP for Wellingborough, told Mail Online the EU is trying to 'bully' Britain.
He said: 'The EU negotiators are always trying to bully us and we are going to have to stand up and be counted.
'We have to say we are not going to have a hard border.' 
The row will fuel demands by Remainers for Mrs May to abandon her commitment to scrapping the customs union - an idea hated by Brexiteers because it would limit Britain's ability to strike new trade deals but which could break the deadlock.
Peers heavily defeated the Government on a customs union amendment on Wednesday night and MPs will hold a symbolic vote on the crucial issue next week.
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'The two proposals we have put forward remain the basis for our negotiation position and what the PM set out at Mansion House.' 
Both Britain and the EU have publicly committed to ensure the Irish border remains open after Brexit.
But the two sides are far apart on how to make it work after Britain leaves the single market, leaving different rules on trade across the border for the first time in decades.
The UK has insisted local exemptions and technology-based solutions can be used instead of border checks. 
The EU says the only practical solution is for Northern Ireland to continue to follow EU rules after Brexit - effectively keeping it inside the single market and customs union.
Dublin has a veto over the entire Brexit deal if it is unhappy with the proposals and Britain agreed in December the 'backstop' option is for the UK to mirror EU rules.
Mrs May's DUP allies will never allow any deal that means rules in Northern Ireland are different to the mainland UK, claiming it would mean a border down the Irish Sea. 
The latest breakdown in talks emerged after Britain's former ambassador to the EU Sir Ivan Rogers said that UK hopes of finding a technological solution to the border issue were regarded as 'a fantasy island unicorn model' in European capitals. 
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
A UK Government spokesman insisted that Britain was 'continuing an intensive work programme to engage' on all the scenarios set out in the Joint Report agreed in December by Mrs May and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.
The agreement included three options for the Irish border, with the British backing a close economic relationship which would make customs checks unnecessary or technological solutions to render them near-frictionless.
But a version published by the EU in February contained only the third 'backstop' option, effectively drawing a customs border down the Irish Sea, which a furious Mrs May said 'no British Prime Minister could ever agree'.
The report puts pressure on Mrs May ahead over a vote in the Commons next week on keeping the UK in the European Customs Union, just days after she was defeated on the issue in the Lords.
If the UK position continues to be rejected by Brussels, the Government could be faced with a choice between remaining in the Customs Union or accepting a hard border in Ireland.
Mrs May has been warned a hard border could inflame tensions so much it could even lead to the collapse of the Good Friday Agreement.  
On Wednesday, European Council president Donald Tusk warned that there will be 'no withdrawal agreement and no transition' without a solution on Ireland.
According to the Telegraph, Mr Robbins was also warned that Brussels needs  'full compliance' with EU rules on goods and agricultural products in the whole of the UK – not just Northern Ireland – if customs barriers are to be avoided.
A Government spokesman said: 'We have been clear that we will protect Northern Ireland's place in the UK internal market.
'That commitment was set out in December's Joint Report which also includes our guarantee of avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
'As the PM's letter to Donald Tusk said, we have made our position on aspects of the draft Commission Protocol clear.
'We have agreed that the areas covered in the draft must reflect those that meet our shared commitments.
'And we are continuing an intensive work programme to engage on all the scenarios set out in the Joint Report.'
Responding to the Telegraph report, former Treasury permanent secretary Lord Macpherson tweeted: 'EU's position on Irish border so predictable.
'UK sold pass by conceding 'backstop' in December, inviting EU to hold us to it. #badbusiness'.
Speaking at the Policy Exchange think tank in London, Sir Ivan said that the economic solution was not regarded as 'a runner' on the other side of the Channel, because of Mrs May's insistence on leaving the single market and customs union.
And he added: 'The Brits are therefore focused above all on Option B – the technological solution.
The UK will avoid a mass exodus of bankers after Brexit thanks to successful negotiations with Brussels, Philip Hammond said yesterday.
In an upbeat speech, the Chancellor said the UK had ‘dammed the flow’ of financial services jobs from the City to European rivals.
Mr Hammond was also positive about prospects for the UK economy, saying he hoped to exceed a downbeat forecast made by the Office for Budget Responsibility in March and ‘deliver a positive shock’.
He said: ‘We have dammed the flow and avoided what could have been a haemorrhaging of jobs from the UK into the EU.’ The Chancellor’s comments in Washington came after a visit to Wall Street, where he went to the investment banks and fund managers who have chosen to make their European headquarters in Britain.
The City is enormously valuable to the British economy, generating a surplus on services of £80 billion a year.
Mr Hammond – who has been criticised for his pro-Remain leaning and gloomy forecasts – said: ‘We have got to the point where debt is going down. Inflation has fallen sharply and earnings are continuing to rise so we are back to rising real wages. The most important metric for ordinary families is real wage growth.’
 
'That, candidly, from everything I've heard from various places is still viewed as a bit of a fantasy island unicorn model.
'The Irish and Brussels in particular – but I think backed, as far as I can see, by Berlin and Paris – have said the only solution to this is the so-called backstop Option C, which is what the Commission put in print and got the toxic reaction both from the DUP and the Prime Minister.' 
Meanwhile, The Times reported frustration within the Cabinet over delays in drawing up the Government's plans for immigration after Brexit.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told MPs last month that the immigration bill would not be introduced until early next year.
But the paper quoted one unnamed source as saying Ms Rudd seemed to think she could 'take as long as she likes', and said an unnamed 'ally' of Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey had said: 'We're eager to get on with it'.
Eleven select committee chairmen joined together to force a vote next week calling on the Government to make staying in a customs union with the EU ‘an objective in negotiations’ with Brussels.
Downing Street insisted Mrs May would not back down on her determination to leave the customs union. However, ministers privately fear they could struggle to win a vote on the issue in the Commons.
Mrs May was last night under pressure to strip Tory peer Baroness McGregor-Smith of her role as a government business ambassador for voting to keep Britain in a customs union, in defiance of government trade policy.
But she also faced calls to remove fellow peers Lord Burns and Baroness Noakes from the board of the broadcasting regulator Ofcom after they voted with the Government on the issue.
Downing Street declined to comment yesterday. 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
Emmanuel Macron insisted Britain would 'for sure' be allowed to reverse the Brexit decision today as he resumed his attack on Eurosceptic 'lies' in the referendum.
The French president risked wading back into UK politics by saying leaving the EU was more 'complicated' than voters had thought.
The intervention will heap fresh pressure on Theresa May as she desperately struggles to find a way through the Brexit impasse.
The PM is facing calls from within Cabinet to consider a Canada-style trade deal with the EU if her Chequers plan fails. 
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has issued an ultimatum that Labour will oppose any agreement that does not include a customs union - a red line for Mrs May.
Mr Macron - who led a brutal assault by EU leaders on Mrs May's Chequers plan  at last week's Salzburg summit - launched his latest salvo in an interview with Bloomberg.
Surging nationalist politics is undermining the unity of Europe, Angela Merkel warned tonight.
In remarks that will be seen as a coded attack on both Brexit and Donald Trump, Mrs Merkel told fellow conservatives at an event of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin that the European Union and Germany were facing a watershed moment. 
Her speech comes two days after  President Trump rejected globalism and touted 'America First' in a United Nations speech.
It is also a week after a disastrous EU summit which saw Brexit talks sink to a new low.    
Mrs Merkel said: 'Perhaps the most threatening development for me is that multilateralism has come under such pressure
'Europe is facing attacks from the outside and from the inside.'
Speaking at a climate meeting in New York, he was asked whether the bloc would 'have the UK back' if it decided not to go ahead with Brexit. 
'For sure,' he replied, while stressing that it was not an issue for him to decide whether Britain changed its position and he 'respected the choice' of voters. 
Pressed whether abandoning Brexit would mean giving up the opportunity of luring London bankers to Paris, Mr Macron said: 'This is about history, not about domestic interests...
'I did regret this vote for the rest of Europe and for our very special relationship (with Britain).' 
Mr Macron also resumed his assault on the Leave campaign 'lies' during the referendum two years ago. 
'It costs a lot, it's much more complicated than they initially thought,' he said.
The remarks will heighten tensions amid claims senior Tories including Sajid Javid, Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and Dominic Raab harbour doubts over the PM's insistence that no deal is the only alternative to her blueprint.
They are keen to avoid a situation where the EU rejects the Chequers proposal at a crunch summit next months and negotiations essentially collapse without a 'Plan B'.
However, the group have not presented any new solutions to the issue of the Irish border, according to The Times.
The DUP has delivered a much-needed boost for Theresa May by dismissing a 'vague and contradictory' rival plan for Brexit. 
Sammy Wilson of the Northern Ireland party - which is propping the PM up in power - said a Canada-style blueprint was 'not something we could support'. 
Boris Johnson, David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg were among the Tory Brexiteers who endorsed the plan put forward by the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) last week. 
The paper urged a 'clean break' from Brussels with a 'basic' free trade agreement for goods.
It warned that Britain would squander an 'historic opportunity' to broaden its horizons if Mrs May stuck to her proposals.
But DUP Brexit spokesperson Sammy Wilson told the Belfast News Letter that the proposals were 'inconsistent'.
'I am not sure if this report is deliberately vague or just not very well thought out,' he said.
'It talks about the goods which are regulated differently in EU member states, and uses the phrase 'of which there are many'. 
'Are they saying that the UK government would commit to, or the NI Executive would be required to commit to, copying all of the EU regulations in relation to that myriad number of goods? That is not clear.'  
With just weeks left to break the deadlock in negotiations, Mr Corbyn is also holding talks Michel Barnier in Brussels amid mounting fears anything that emerges will be blocked by Parliament.
Mr Corbyn said he would be urging Mr Barnier and his team to do 'all they can' to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
The EU side apparently requested the meeting after learning that Mr Corbyn was coming to Brussels to attend the naming of a square after murdered Labour MP Jo Cox. 
The encounter will raise anxiety among Brexiteers that Mr Corbyn is plotting with the EU to frustrate the UK's departure.
The veteran left-winger used his party conference speech yesterday to insist Mrs May must call a general election unless she is prepared to drop her red line against joining a customs union with the EU.
Mr Corbyn couched his demand as 'reaching out' to the PM to get a 'sensible deal' through parliament - but it was denounced by Tories as a naked attempt to gain power.
Mrs May says a customs union would deny Britain the opportunity to strike trade deals around the world.   
Accepting the idea would almost certainly spell the end of Mrs May's time in Downing Street and plunge the Tories into turmoil, making an election and Corbyn government much more likely.
Labour has set six tests for a Brexit deal - including securing the 'exact same benefits' - that seem designed to be impossible to pass.
The conference also agreed that if the party cannot force an election, the option of holding a referendum should be kept 'on the table'.
There was a glimmer of light for Mrs May today as it emerged the DUP has dismissed a 'vague and contradictory' rival plan for Brexit.
Sammy Wilson of the Northern Ireland party - which is propping the PM up in power - said a Canada-style blueprint was 'not something we could support'. 
Boris Johnson, David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg were among the Tory Brexiteers who endorsed the plan put forward by the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) last week. 
The paper urged a 'clean break' from Brussels with a 'basic' free trade agreement for goods.
It warned that Britain would squander an 'historic opportunity' to broaden its horizons if Mrs May stuck to her proposals.
But DUP Brexit spokesperson Sammy Wilson told the Belfast News Letter that the proposals were 'inconsistent'.
'I am not sure if this report is deliberately vague or just not very well thought out,' he said.
'It talks about the goods which are regulated differently in EU member states, and uses the phrase 'of which there are many'. 
'Are they saying that the UK government would commit to, or the NI Executive would be required to commit to, copying all of the EU regulations in relation to that myriad number of goods? That is not clear.'  
Mrs May and Mr Macron looked to have buried the hatchet at a UN meeting in New York last night after their explosive fallout over Brexit.
The two leaders were seen exchanging kisses of greeting before laughing and joking alongside Belgian premier Charles Michel.
The EU commission says it will 'keep calm and keep negotiating' despite growing fears over a no-deal Brexit.
Spokesman Margaritis Schinas dismissed 'horror stories' that the bloc is ramping up contingency planning in case negotiations collapse.
He told journalists at a regular briefing that although the commission was getting ready for all outcomes, the focus was still on getting an agreement.
'Keep calm and keep negotiating,' Mr Schinas said. 
Diplomats later said the EU will wait until November before kicking off full-blown preparations for no deal.
EU envoys from the 27 member states held talks yesterday on stepping up contingency planning.
'We will wait for if and when the negotiations with Britain officially fail to kickstart more open work among the 27 on preparing for a no-deal,' a senior diplomat said.
'We've given ourselves until November.'
The warm scenes were a million miles from the Salzburg summit last week - when Mr Macron led a brutal assault on Mrs May's Chequers plan for Brexit.
The PM had hoped to get a signal from her EU counterparts that they were close to a deal on the future relationship.
But instead the Frenchman pushed his colleagues into issuing a blunt statement that Mrs May's blueprint 'will not work' as it would undermine the single market.
He then flouted diplomatic convention by wading into UK politics, delivering an extraordinary rant about how the British public had been tricked by 'liars' during the referendum in 2016.
The backlash left Mrs May visibly shaken in Salzburg, before she regrouped and made her own defiant statement from No10 accusing her colleagues of lacking 'respect' for the UK.
Despite the more cordial tone of their encounter in New York yesterday, there is little sign that Mr Macron is minded to back down in his condemnation of Mrs May's blueprint - which would effectively keep Britain in the single market for goods.
He is said to have threatened to boycott a looming summit in November that could seal a deal unless the the PM bows to demands over the Irish border.
The EU insists Northern Ireland must stay within its customs union to avoid a hard border - but Mrs May says this is totally unacceptable as it would split the UK.
CHEQUERS
Trade:
Britain would stick to EU rules on goods by adopting a 'Common rulebook' with Brussels, but not in the services sector.
Theresa May says this would allow the UK to strike free trade deals globally, but the scope would be limited by commitments to the EU.
The blueprint should minimise the need for extra checks at the borders - protecting the 'just in time' systems used by the car industry to import and export parts.
The UK Parliament could choose to diverge from these EU rules over time.
But there is an admission that this would 'have consequences'.
Customs:
Britain would set up something called a 'facilitated customs arrangement'.
This would see the UK effectively act as the EU's taxman - using British officials to collect customs which would then be paid on to the bloc. 
The borders between the UK and EU will be treated as a 'combined customs territory'.
The UK would apply domestic tariffs and trade policies for goods intended for the UK, but charge EU tariffs and their equivalents for goods which will end up heading into the EU.
Northern Ireland: 
Mrs May says her plan will prevent a hard Irish border, and mean no divergence between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.
There would be no need for extra border checks, as tariffs on goods would be the same.
Single market origin rules and regulations would also be sufficiently aligned to avoid infrastructure.
 CANADA-STYLE
Trade: 
Britain would strike a Canada-style trade deal with the EU, meaning goods flow both ways without tariffs.
As it is a simple free trade deal, Britain would not be bound by most of the rules and red tape drawn up in Brussels.
The arrangement would be a relatively clean break from the EU - but would fall far short of full access to the single market.
Eurosceptics have suggested 'Canada plus' in key areas such as services and mutual recognition of standards.
The UK would have broad scope to strike free trade deals around the world.
Customs:
Technology would be used to avoid extra customs checks on the borders.
As a result goods travelling into the UK from the EU and vice versa would be tracked and customs paid without extra checks.
The EU has suggested this is 'magical thinking'. 
Northern Ireland:
The EU says the Canada model would mean border controls are required between Northern Ireland and the Republic to protect the single market and customs union.
It insists Northern Ireland must stay in the bloc's customs jurisdiction in order to prevent that.
Mrs May has signalled she agrees with the analysis - seemingly the reason she is reluctant to go down this route.
But Brexiteers point out that there is already a tax border between the UK and Ireland, and say technology and trusted trader schemes can avoid the need for more infrastructure. 
 
 
British voters are getting increasingly gloomy about Theresa May's ability to get a good Brexit deal - but most have not changed their mind about leaving the EU, a new study today reveals. 
The report by pollsters NatCen found the proportion of voters who think the UK will get a good deal has fallen from a third back in February to just under a fifth (19 per cent).
While the proportion of voters who think the Government is handling the negotiations badly has also soared from 41 per cent in February to 61 per cent.
But while an increasing number of Britons are losing faith in the negotiations the poll found that most voters have not changed their mind about wanting to quit the EU.
John Curtice, Senior Research Fellow at NatCen, said: 'Our new data point to two important conclusions.
'First, voters, including not least those who voted Leave in the EU referendum, have become more critical of the way the negotiations are being handled and more pessimistic about what the consequences of Brexit will be. 
'However, and second, this development has apparently not changed the balance of public opinion on what the eventual shape of Brexit should be.'
The findings come as Mrs May's Brexit plans have been thrown into turmoil after the DUP pulled the plug on a divorce plan amid fears it would tear the UK apart.
The PM is facing a race against time to get the party - which is propping her up in No10 - to sign off on a deal before a crunch EU summit in eight days time.
The NatCen study released today suggests the Government's bumpy ride in Brexit talks are making Britons more pessimistic about the prospects of quitting the EU.
In February, 46 per cent of those quizzed thought the economy would be worse off when we quit the Brussels club, but this has risen to 52 per cent.
But the survey of 2,200 people found that despite the turbulence surrounding the negotiations, there has been no major swing away from Brexit.
And voters still want the same kind of Brexit - with many voters still calling for an end to free movement.
Mr Curtice said: 'Between them our two key findings point to an important lesson – it should not be presumed that growing disappointment and discontent with the Brexit process (of which there already seems to be plenty) will necessarily persuade voters to change their minds about the kind of Brexit the UK should be seeking, or their view about the wisdom of leaving the EU in the first place. 
'So far, at least, voters seem inclined to blame the actors in the Brexit process for their perceived failure to be delivering what voters want rather than draw the conclusion that the act of leaving is misguided. 
'A difficult Brexit could simply prove politically costly for Mrs May and her beleaguered government rather than a catalyst for a change of heart amongst the public about Brexit.' 
The poll found that 64 per cent of voters still think that ‘people from the EU who want to come to live here’ should have ‘to apply to do so in the same way as people from outside the EU’.
This is just a slight fall form the 68 per cent who backed this provision in February.
And 53 per cent think we should ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ allow freedom of movement for EU citizens in return for securing free trade deal - around the same as the 54 per cent who expressed that view in February.  



Brussels is preparing to climbdown on one of its Brexit red lines and concede to UK demands to keep trade links without free movement, it was today reported.
The EU is set to say that it will allow Britain to stay in the single market for goods while still being able to bring in border controls.
Theresa May has been on a charm offensive to desperately try to drum up support for her Chequers Brexit plan amid fears that the UK could crash out of the bloc without a deal next March.
But Brussels is said to be demanding its own concessions in return from the UK which could bind the UK to EU red tape and hamper the country's ability to do free trade deals.
They want the Prime Minister to pledge that the country will copy all new EU environmental, social and customs rules, The Times reports.
European leaders are expected to bring the proposal to the table when the heads of member states meet in Salzburg in Austria  next month.
Scroll down for video 
The move is a radical departure from the public proclamations of the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.
He has repeatedly asserted the UK cannot stay in any part of the single market without accepting free movement as that would be 'cherry picking'.
Mrs May has been on a charm offensive with EU leaders urging them to back her Chequers proposal.
The EU and Britain have both drawn up a series of Brexit 'red lines' during the negotiations.
But as the clock runs down on negotiations and fears of a no deal grow, Brussels is said to be preparing to soften their stance - for come concessions.
What the EU is prepared to give: 
Brussels is reportedly set to allow the UK to stay in the single market for goods withut having free movement.
This is a departure from its previous position that the four freedoms - goods, services, money and people - cannot be separated, or 'cherry picked'.
What the EU wants in return:
The bloc is insisting that Britain agreed to adopt all future EU environmental and social protections.
It is trying to stop the UK breaking away and changing laws to give it a competitive edge.
But agreeing to the demand would seriously undermine the UK's ability to strike free trade deals globally on things like agricultural products. 
Under the plan the UK will agree to stick to EU rules on goods but fully quit the trading bloc for services - by far the country's biggest sector. 
The PM says this compromise model will protect manufacturers and jobs which rely on goods and components flowing over the EU border seamlessly.
Many Brexiteers are furious at the plan amid fears it wil scupper the UK's chances of signin free trade deals with other countries and will leavce the UK half in and half out of Brussels.
It triggered the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson and sparked fury among Tory activists up and down the country.
The proposal being drawn up in Europe is known as the Jersey model - where a country is outside the bloc for all matters except goods, similar to the Chequers plan.
An EU source told the paper: 'If May came with the Jersey model there would be a serious discussion among leaders for the first time.
But EU leaders are said to be insisting that if the UK goes for this they must fully adopt the jersey model. 
This means the UK would have to agree to adopt all future EU environmental and social protections. 
And it would probably also mean that Mrs May would have to alter her customs proposals.
This could seriously undermine the ability of the UK to strike free trade deals globally as they could not include manufactured goods or agricultural products.
This is likely to trigger a furious backlash from Brexiteers who will warn there is little point in quitting the EU if the UK does not have its own independent trading policy. 
Under Mrs May's Brexit plan, the UK will have a common rule book with the EU which would allow single market access for goods.
But it leaves the UK with the room to split away from Brussels rules on the environment and social legislation.
It promises to ensure the UK sticks to existing levels of environmental and social protections, but gives the country the power to take decisions far more quickly than the Brussels machine.
The EU's member states are worried that Britain will use this power to diverge on environmental laws - giving the country competitive edge.
And they are determined to keep the country tightly bound to its rules and red tape - despite Brexit. 
 
The Irish PM today warned that Brexit trade negotiations will not start until March as he pledged his loyalty to his country's 'new best friends' the EU.
EU leaders are expected to rubber stamp moving on to the next phase of talks at a Brussels summit tomorrow but Leo Varadkar said the details of the transition will need to be thrashed out before we turn to trade. 
His comments came as Theresa May downplayed her humiliating Commons defeat on the Brexit Bill last night as she arrived in Brussels to pitch for an 'ambitious' trade deal.
The PM's authority in Brussels risks being weakened after 11 Tory rebels joined Labour to inflict a defeat on the Government and demand a meaningful vote on the deal.
Mrs May admitted the loss was 'disappointing' but insisted ministers are still 'on course' to deliver Brexit for Britain.
But as the PM arrived to press the case for trade talks, Mr Varadkar said is allegiance lies with the EU, telling reporters: 'Ireland is a member of the European Union so our best friends are the 27 member states...
'As a remaining member our very closest relations have to be with other members of the European Union just as they were our closes friends in the weeks gone by.'
Mr Varadkar said he expects the next three months of talks to be devoted to the transition deal, adding: 'And once we have that done, we can then talk about the new trading relationship.' 
His comments are a blow for Mrs May who has travelled to the Belgian capital to urge leaders of the 27 other member states to kick start trade talks as soon as possible. 
What does the defeat on the Brexit Bill mean?
Tory rebels joined with Labour and the Lib Dems to force the Government to give MPs a meaningful vote on the Brexit deal.
This means Parliament will have to get a say several months before Britain formally quits the bloc in March 2019 so they ca n sent the PM back to the negotiating table if they want.
Politicians expect the Government to give the Commons a vote in around October next year. 
What will happen at the summit?
Theresa May has touched down in Brussels to press the case to move on to trade talks.
She has already got EU leaders to agree 'sufficient progress' has been made on the divorce bill, citizens rights and the Irish border, and member states are expected to rubber stamp the decision.
The PM will address a dinner of the leaders of the 27 member states tonight but the actual decision will be taken tomorrow in her absence.
Mrs May is pressing the case to move on to trade talks but member states have warned details of the transition will need to be thrashed out first. 
The PM struck a bullish tone despite the shock defeat on her flagship Brexit Bill by stressing that she had won the vast majority of votes on the legislation.

She told reporters: 'I am disappointed with the amendment but actually the EU (Withdrawal) Bill is making good progress through the House of Commons and we are on course to deliver on Brexit,' she told reporters.  
'We have have had 36 votes, and we have won 35 of them.' 
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson today insisted that Brexit is 'unstoppable' and vowed the UK will 'get it done in a very successful way'. 
Mrs May had hoped for a victorious meeting in Brussels today after finally sealing a Brexit divorce bill last week.
But she is facing fresh questions about her authority after the defeat in Westminster. 
The result sparked a furious war of words between the rebels and Brexiteers, with one MP even calling for colleagues to be deselected for undermining the PM's negotiating position.
Leading Remainer Anna Souby faced heckles in the Commons chamber this morning that the revolt's ringleaders had been 'drinking champagne' in Westminster's bars after inflicting the defeat. She angrily denied taking any 'pleasure' in rebelling.
The European parliament's chief Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt also waded into the row by mocking the Vote Leave referendum slogan, saying the Commons had 'taken back control'.
But EU leaders and other MEPs suggested the amendment would make no difference as there is no chance of negotiations being reopened after October next year. 

European Council president Donald Tusk told journalists as he arrived at the summit that the first phase of Brexit talks were coming to an end.
But he warned that the next stage, covering a transition period and trade negotiations, would be even tougher. 
'By the way, I have no doubt that the real test of our unity will be the second phase of the Brexit talks,' he said.  
Ministers had proposed that Parliament could have a 'take it or leave it' vote on Theresa May's final Brexit deal with Brussels. 
If they rejected it, Britain would leave with no deal. 
But rebels feared the vote would come too late to give them a 'meaningful' say on the shape of Brexit.
Now, as result of last night's vote, MPs and peers have the opportunity to amend any deal and in theory force Mrs May back to the negotiating table.
And several leaders of member states sought to rally round Mrs May and downplay talk the defeat diminished her authority abroad.
Arriving shortly before Mrs May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was 'a good chance that the second phase can now begin'.
And Dutch PM Mark Rutte said: 'I think she still has formidable stature here.'  

Dutch PM Mark Rutte said the UK now needed to 'make up its mind' what kind of relationship it wanted from the EU in future. 
He said Mrs May had been 'wise' to 'hold her cards close to her heart' until now, but added: 'Having now hopefully passed the mark of phase one, I think we need from her to understand how she sees this relationship with the European Union. 
'It is now for the UK to make up its mind.'  

Answering questions in the Commons this morning, David Davis warned Tory rebels they had 'compressed the timetable' for Brexit.
And he refused to rule out trying to reverse the setback later in the legislative process, telling MPs: 'We will have to decide how we respond to it.'
The government was defeated by a margin of four votes, losing 309 to 305 and Labour MPs joined the rebels in cheering and applauding as the extraordinary result was announced last night.


Mr Grieve's amendment demands ministers pass a full law enshrining the exit deal before the Government is allowed start implementing it.
It puts huge new pressure on the Brexit timetable approaching exit day on March 29, 2019. 
Rebels hope it will allow Parliament to reject anything they consider a bad deal for Britain in time for further negotiation.

Britain will continue to participate in the EU's Erasmus student exchange programme until at least the end of 2020, Theresa May today said.
Whether the UK stays in the programme longer will be discussed in Brexit negotiations.  
Speaking in a discussion on education and culture at the European Council summit in Brussels, the PM said the 30-year-old scheme had provided invaluable experiences for students and staff from the UK and Europe. 
She told fellow leaders; 'I welcome the opportunity to provide clarity to young people and the education sector and reaffirm our commitment to the deep and special relationship we want to build with the EU.'  
But speaking as he arrived at the EU summit today, Luxembourg PM Xavier was asked whether the bloc would renegotiate if MPs voted down a deal.
He replied: 'No.'
Danuta Hübner, a Polish MEP, who chairs the European parliament's constitutional affairs committee, said any Commons vote after the tentative date for a deal of October next year would still be take it or leave it. 
'Once it is finalised and it is signed by both parties, then any change to it means reopening negotiations, meaning we will not make it within the two years (ending March 2019), meaning there is a hard Brexit,' she told the Guardian. 


Mrs May left Westminster and was on the red carpet at the Sun's 'Military Awards' minutes after the humiliating defeat last night.
And today she attended a memorial for the Grenfell tragedy at St Paul's today, before heading for Brussels for the summit.

A furious Mrs May quickly sacked former minister Stephen Hammond from his role as Tory vice-chairman after he joined the revolt last night.
Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire accused the rebels of 'putting a spring in Labour's step, given them a taste of winning'.
'They have guaranteed the party a weekend of bad press, undermined the PM and devalued her impact in Brussels,' she said. 
'They should be deselected and never allowed to stand as a Tory MP, ever again.'
To compound her difficulties, Mrs May faces another knife-edge vote in the Commons next week over fixing the Brexit date in law of March 29, 2019.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has likened the Brexit row to the Great War as he called for a Christmas truce.
Justin Welby called for a 'ceasefire' on the use of insults, 'personalised attacks' and 'pejorative terms' as the process of leaving the European Union continues.

Dr Welby said: 'If we go back 103 years, we find Christmas 1914 there was a ceasefire. It would be very good to have a ceasefire from insult and the use of pejorative terms about people at this time.
'As a country, we have a future ahead of us, we have made a decision about Brexit, that is clear, both sides are saying that.
'How we do that is a question for robust political argument, but there is a difference between disagreeing and personalised attacks - and those have to be avoided.
'If we are going to make a success of Brexit, and it's perfectly possible to do and in fact we should make a success of it - it gives opportunities as well as challenges - then we need a political leadership that is united in their attitude to the future, even if divided on policy.
'Therefore we do need reconciliation and unity.' 

But Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt played down the impact today, insisting the Brexit process would not be derailed.
'I don't think it should be a surprise that in a hung Parliament, Parliament wants to reassert its right to scrutinise the process,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'But we should also be clear this isn't going to slow down Brexit, it's not going to stop Brexit.' 
Asked whether MPs now had the power to force the Government back to the negotiating table, Mr Hunt said: 'Parliament can say whatever it wants but of course renegotiation is something that involves two parties.'


As the rebellion built, Justice Minister Dominic Raab offered last ditch assurances that powers in the legislation that trouble Tory rebels will not be used until the exit agreement is written into UK law.
At 6.45pm he returned to the Despatch Box to promise MPs he would turn his assurance into an amendment if MPs back down.
His concession appeared to peal off at least two Tory rebels as Vicky Ford and Paul Masterton backed down. 
Two Labour MPs - Frank Field and Kate Hoey - voted with the Government.  
But after Mr Grieve declared 'It's too late, I'm sorry, you cannot treat the House in this fashion' other rebels inflicted the punishing defeat. 
Insisting the rebellion would go ahead this afternoon, Mr Grieve quoted Winston Churchill as warned Mrs May: 'A good party man...will put his country before his party.'
After the vote, a Government spokesman said: 'We are disappointed that Parliament has voted for this amendment despite the strong assurances that we have set out. 
'We are as clear as ever that this Bill, and the powers within it, are essential.
'This amendment does not prevent us from preparing our statute book for exit day. We will now determine whether further changes are needed to the Bill to ensure it fulfils its vital purpose.' 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn branded it a 'a humiliating loss of authority for the Government on the eve of the European Council meeting'. 

The debate saw furious blue-on-blue exchanges as Brexiteers Bernard Jenkin and Bill Cash rose to defend the Government.

Mr Grieve warned the Government he had tried to be helpful but that on the issue of a meaningful vote 'we have run out of road - and all rational discourse starts to evaporate'.
He said this has led to 'confrontation' in which it is 'suggested the underlying purpose is sabotage, followed by hurling of public abuse' including by other Tories. 
Signalling support for the amendment, Mr Clarke said the key thing around a meaningful vote was its timing, adding: 'The vote's got to take place before the British Government has committed itself to the terms of the treaty-like agreement that is entered into with the other members.
Eleven Conservative MPs were enough to defeat Theresa May.
The 11 rebels were: 

Dominic Grieve
Heidi Allen
Ken Clarke
Nicky Morgan
Anna Soubry
Sarah Wollaston
Bob Neill
Stephen Hammond 
Oliver Heald
Jonathan Djanogly
Antoinette Sandbach
A 12th Tory in the aye lobby was John Stevenson who voted both ways - an active abstention
'Any other vote is not meaningful.'
Mr Clarke said it was 'quite obvious' that the Government was not going to be 'remotely near' a detailed agreement by March 2019.
He added: 'It's not a question, I may say, to my desperately paranoid eurosceptic friends, that somehow I am trying in some surreptitious Remainer way to put a spoke in the wheels of the vast progress of the United Kingdom towards the destination to which we are going.
'But they don't know what Leave means, because nobody discussed what Leave meant when we were having the referendum.' 
Another rebel, Antoinette Sandbach, expressed fears that a vote on a Brexit deal motion outlined by the Government could be 'meaningless'.
In an attempt to sooth rebel concerns, Mr Raab vowed powers they want to modify - that allow ministers to bring in the exit agreement using secondary legislation - would not be used until Parliament has voted on the deal as a whole. 
Offering a political assurance - rather than a change to the bill - Mr Raab said: 'None of the Statutory Instruments will come into effect until Parliament has voted on the final deal.'
He urged the rebels to drop their amendment, adding: 'If we waited for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill not just to be introduced after the withdrawal agreement has been signed, but fully enacted, waiting for the full passage of that to happen we would not have the time deal with the volume of technical legislation that we need to put through under secondary legislation.
'There is no getting around the timing issue, we have got the long tail of technical regulatory secondary legislation we need to get through if we want to provide legal certainty that will make a smooth Brexit.'
Four Tory MPs are thought to have abstained in last night's vote.
They included Ed Vaizey, a member of David Cameron's 'chumocracy' who was fired by Mrs May and said he was 'hurt, bitter, thoroughly p****d off' about it. 
He also said Mr Cameron had 'sort of stuffed the country by accident' with Brexit.
Another notable abstainer was George Freeman, who resigned his position on Mrs May's backbench policy board and has claimed the party risks being seen as one of 'nostalgia, hard Brexit and lazy privilege'.
Others were Carlisle MP John Stevenson, whose seat voted strongly for Leave, and Paul Masterton, who represents the heavily Remainer seat of East Renfrewshire.
Dover MP Charlie Elphicke, who has been suspended by the party over allegations of sexual misconduct, also abstained. He no longer holds the whip.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May said: 'We will put the final withdrawal agreement between the UK and the EU to a vote in both Houses of Parliament before it comes into force.'
She said Westminster would be given a vote ahead of the European Parliament and 'well before' the date of Brexit in March 2019.
Ministers have been hit by a bullying row after a Tory whip allegedly reduced a female MP to tears as they scrambled to try to head off a Brexit rebellion tonight.
A male whip is said to have used 'bully boy tactics' to try to cajole the MP into not defying the Government on a crunch Brexit vote.
The woman is said to have started crying and trembling after receiving the harsh dressing down - a claim No10 have said is 'categorically not true'.
But another report says the chief whip Julian Smith has threatened to sue rebels if they make defamatory allegations about the tactics used to keep them in line.
The claims have surfaced as tensions soar ahead of an expected Tory rebellion tonight on the flagship Brexit Bill demanding MPs are given a meaningful vote on the deal.
It would be Theresa May's first proper defeat on a piece of legislation and a major blow for the PM ahead of a major EU summit in Brussels tomorrow.
Anna Soubry, a leading Tory rebel, accused a Tory whip of overstepping the mark and resorting to bullying to strong-arm MPs into toeing the line.
'To be clear, the final deal will be agreed before we leave and Honourable and Right Honourable Members will get a vote on it,' Mrs May told the Commons.
Answering later questions, Mrs May said the Grieve amendment could risk a 'smooth and orderly Brexit' by squeezing the timetable too far.  
Former constitution minister John Penrose offered support to Mrs May ahead of the vote.
He said: 'The Government has already promised not only a full-scale vote on the EU deal as soon as it's been struck, but up to two more 'ratification votes' plus an entire Act of Parliament before it becomes law.
'That's as much, or more, than even the most fervent democrat could reasonably ask.
'The Prime Minister negotiated a far better ''stage 1'' deal last week than the doom-mongers were predicting.
'Let's not repay her by sending her off to Brussels with an unnecessary and unfair amendment that will only make her job harder.' 

In an attempt to head off defeat, Brexit Secretary David Davis has written to MPs insisting there will be a vote in the Commons on the term of the exit arrangements but that the amendment goes too far. 
The Brexit Department today repeated a promise there would be a Commons vote on the exit deal before it is implemented. 
The Government has also promised to enshrine a withdrawal treaty in law but said this might not happen before exit day.

But Mr Grieve told Sky News: 'I have no desire to defeat my government at all, I am not a rebel, I think I have only rebelled once over a local issue in the 21 years I have been in parliament.
'I don't want to do that but the Government needs to listen to what has been said to them and at the moment unfortunately my impression of the last few days when I have been talking to the Government is it seems to be a bit of a dialogue of the deaf.
'They have sort of turned this into a battle of wills and this is a completely pointless exercise.
'They need to listen to the point that is being made and they need to respond to it.'
Junior Brexit minister Steve Baker told peers this morning: 'There can only be a vote on the withdrawal agreement.'
He said the vote on whether to follow the instruction of the referendum and leave the EU has already happened when MPs backed invoking Article 50. 
And he tweeted: 'Today's amendment 7 to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill is misplaced, however well-intentioned.' 
Twelve Tories rebelled against the Government tonight to consign it to an historic defeat on Brexit.
But the result - a narrow four vote win - does not stop Brexit or even derail this legislation.
What it does do is make significantly more complicated the path to Brexit day and rebels hope it will allow them to change the exit deal or even delay departure. 
The first step for the Government is to keep pushing the legislation through Parliament - there are more votes to win tonight and more debate this evening.
Another dangerous day of committee stage debate is due next week, including the prospect of another defeat.
Then the Bill returns to the Commons in January for more scrutiny and more changes. It must then go through the House of Lords. 
The amendment passed tonight demands ministers pass a full law enshrining the exit deal before the Government is allowed start implementing it.
It puts huge new pressure on the Brexit timetable approaching exit day on March 29, 2019.
Ministers could try to change the new amendment with re-writes of their own at the later stages.  
In a letter to MPs, Brexit Secretary Davis specifically referred to Mr Grieve's attempt to rewrite the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and said he was responding to concerns 'by making clear that there will be a number of votes for Parliament on the final deal we strike with the EU'.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier wants the withdrawal deal finalised by October 2018 and the Government has committed to hold a vote in Parliament as soon as possible after the negotiations have concluded.
Mr Davis said the deal would have to go through the normal treaty ratification process and there would then be primary legislation on the Brexit deal.
The Brexit Secretary said: 'If Parliament supports the resolution to proceed with the withdrawal agreement and the terms for our future relationship, the Government will bring forward a Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill to give the withdrawal agreement domestic legal effect.
'The Bill will implement the terms of the withdrawal agreement in UK law as well as providing a further opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny.
'This legislation will be introduced before the UK exits the EU and the substantive provisions will only take effect from the moment of exit.'
The Government swerved possible defeat last night with concessions on so-called Henry VIII powers in the legislation.
And another very tight vote is expected next Wednesday as ministers stand behind controversial plans to write the Exit Date into the withdrawal legislation.   

Yesterday, Conservative former leader Iain Duncan Smith accused Mr Grieve and his supporters of 'grandstanding' and trying to tie the Government's hands in the Brexit talks.
'I think this is looking for ways to derail the bill,' he told The World At One.
'There comes a moment when really grandstanding has to stop. Tying the Government's hands in the way that he would wish to tie them so early on is quite wrong.'




Brussels could force Britons to buy £50 visas to travel in Europe after Brexit, draft plans handed to MEPs have revealed today. 
The proposal is contained in a dossier of potential changes to EU laws being drawn up by the European Commission, run by Jean-Claude Juncker, to prepare for Brexit.
The Brussels list makes provision for Britain to be put on either the 'visa required' or the 'visa free' list once it is no longer an EU member. 
If Britain is ruled to be a nation where people need visas, travellers to the continent could have to pay more than £50 for the right paperwork.  
Last month Brussels unveiled separate plans to charge £7 administration fees for travellers into the EU - a fee seen as likely to hit Britain whatever the final deal on visas.   
The list has been drawn up by Martin Selmayr, the powerful aide to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. 
The EU could also decide that UK nationals should be exempt from visa requirement 'for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period.' 
The EU has drawn up a series of plans for how to deal with British travellers to Europe after Brexit. The options include: 
Britain is on a 'visa required' list
If there is no deal at all, or a limited deal that does not cover travel, Britain will be placed on a list of countries from which visitors to Europe need a visa.
The cost of this can vary widely but is typically around £50.
Britain is on a 'visa not required' list
A trade deal is likely to include agreements on travel that would mean British passport holders could freely enter the EU without a visa.
There would be passport checks at the outside border of the EU but no visa charge.  
Time limited access
The EU could also decide that UK nationals should be exempt from visa requirement 'for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period.'
This would mean anyone who wanted to take up residence for a job might need to buy a visa but holiday makers would not. 
The extra fee
Last month Brussels unveiled separate plans to charge £7 administration fees for travellers into the EU - a fee seen as likely to hit Britain whatever the final deal on visas. 
The final version is likely to be bound up in talks on the planned UK-EU trade deal.
Countries like Ukraine have deals with the EU to waive visa fees running to more than £50.
If Brexit talks collapse and there is no deal, Britain is likely to end up as a visa-required nation.
Any visa would be applicable across the EU free movement zone and not for each member state.  
The new proposal is separate to plans to start charging seven euros to travellers from countries who need a visa to enter the EU free movement zone. 
Nothing is expected to change for travelling Britons until at least January 1, 2021, the first day after the Brexit transition - unless the talks collapse and Britain crashes out of the EU in March.
Visa-free travel is a goal for British negotiators seeking a UK-EU post Brexit trade deal.
But the idea of Britons ever needing a visa was condemned today by a former Brexit minister.
David Jones told Politico, which revealed the plans: 'Many third countries enjoy visa-free access to the EU and given the UK's historical links, one would not expect the EU to adopt such an apparently perverse position.'
The Commission's Brexit Preparedness Group, which is made up of 12 civil servants, works directly under Selmayr's authority.
It is is tasked with drafting notices to stakeholders 'on the legal and practical implications of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union pursuant to Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.'
An EU diplomat said some major European companies also consult the group to elaborate their own preparedness strategies. 
In other developments today, Home Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed EU citizens face a £65 charge for obtaining 'settled status' in Britain after Brexit.
As the EU looks set to introduce a £6 tariff for British nationals visiting the continent, how much does it cost for Brits to go elsewhere in the world?
Turkey - £14 (online or on arrival)
Egypt - £18 (online or on arrival)
UAE - Free (visa on arrival)
USA - £9 (ESTA online registration)
India - £115 (consulate visit)
Kenya - £36 (online registration)
Cambodia - £21 (on arrival)
The Home Office has unveiled proposals for the estimated three million nationals from the bloc living in the UK.
Mr Javid's plans provide for around 600,000 more people moving to the UK from Europe as family members join those already here.  
Under an 'easy' system, adults who have been resident in the UK for five years will be charged £65 and children £32.50 to obtain the status. Applications will be made online and decisions should be taken within two weeks.
The details were revealed after Mr Javid tore into the EU for failing to say how it will protect British expats.
He said the glaring lack of information for UK citizens living on the continent was 'not good enough'.
Under the UK scheme, EU citizens who have lived continuously in the country for five years will be granted settled status, giving them the same rights to work, study and access benefits and services as they currently do.
The provisions would also apply to their close family members, such as spouses, children, parents and grandchildren.
Those living in the UK before December 31, 2020, but who had not met the residency criteria, would be granted pre-settled status until they meet the five-year test.
Officials insist the arrangements, which will be phased in later this year and run until June 2021, will impose the least possible burden.
There can be few nations, if any, with as much concern for the welfare of animals as the British.
It goes back a long way: this was the first country to pass legislation protecting farm animals, in 1822. More recently, we were the first country in the EU to ban fur farming.
This trait is also manifested in our charitable giving. One of the most popular charities in the UK is Guide Dogs For The Blind — and I have often thought this reflects our love for dogs as much as our concern for sightless humans.
Yet, according to many of those who seek to thwart the British people's decision to leave the European Union, our departure will unavoidably lead to a deterioration in our standards of animal welfare.
To this end, they put out a story that Conservative MPs, during a vote on the Great Repeal Bill removing us from the legislative grip of the EU, had backed a clause denying that animals are sentient creatures which can feel pain.
Nothing of the sort happened, although this fake news went viral, furiously endorsed on Twitter by sundry so-called 'celebrities'.
Heritage
It is true that the Tories voted that we will no longer be bound by the Lisbon Treaty, and specifically its accord that 'the member states, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals'.
That is in any case little more than declaratory guff; more to the point, what the anti-Brexit animal lovers fail to realise (or admit) is that this EU declaration continues with the caveat: ' . . .while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions of the member states, relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage.'
So, for example, respecting Spain's 'cultural traditions and regional heritage' means that country can remain fully compliant with EU law while continuing with the practice of bull fighting, in which the unfortunate creature is the unwitting participant in a gory theatre of ritualised execution.
Similarly, France's 'cultural traditions and regional heritage' mean it can continue to practise the forced feeding of ducks and geese via a tube stuffed down their throats, to produce the delicacy known as foie gras.
As it happens, I don't believe the European Commission in Brussels should order the Spanish or the French to abandon such customs; they should be made illegal in those countries only if their own people desire it.
But the point is that the view of the EU as a legislative paradise for animals is mistaken. Still more misguided is the anti-Brexit animal-lovers' belief that the EU in general represents a Garden of Eden from which we are about to be expelled, leaving our furry friends defenceless against the depredations of an unconstrained and cruel British Government.
Governments in democracies broadly represent the desires and prejudices of their electorates. So, given the British people's vaunted concern for animal welfare, why would any government want to show its contempt for such public sentiment?
For example, five years ago it was necessary for our Army's surgeons to travel to Denmark to take part in experiments in which anaesthetised pigs suspended in wooden cages were shot at by Danish marksmen with AK-47s.
This was not a weird Nordic sport, of cultural significance to the good people of Denmark. Our medics were sent out to operate on the gruesomely maimed pigs as part of their training to deal with battlefield injuries: this was actually nicknamed Operation Danish Bacon.
But the reason they had to go to Denmark to do it is that this form of experimentation is banned in the UK. And our leaving the legislative purview of Brussels makes it not an iota more likely that a future British Government would license such experiments — which in any case were found at the time not to be in breach of EU law.
In fact, and in direct contrast to the claims of those who see Brexit as a threat to animal welfare in this country, leaving frees our Government to introduce safeguards which we could not do while still a member of the EU.
This was actually made clear in the 2017 Conservative manifesto, which declared that, once fully independent of Brussels law, the Government would 'take early steps to control the export of live farm animals for slaughter'. And in a recent interview, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Michael Gove, declared that he was 'very attracted' to the idea of banning 'the live exports of animals over the sea'.
Standards
The reason no British Government could do this while we were a member state is that it would be viewed by Brussels as an unlawful restriction of trade within the EU.
Thus, when the British Government suspected that the treatment of soon-to-be-slaughtered sheep in Spain was unacceptably cruel, it was nevertheless prevented from restricting firms in this country from continuing to ship the animals to that other member state.
The essence of EU rules on trade is (reasonably enough) that such regulations have to be identical across its territory: and there are maximum standards as well as minimum ones. This applies, for example, to the trade in puppies — creatures much closer to the hearts of the British than sheep (which, after all, we do slaughter to eat: and very delicious they are too).
Mr Gove wants to bring in legislation banning the import of puppies less than six months old. Under our membership of the EU, no British Government could do that, since EU law specifically allows the importation of puppies aged 11 weeks and upwards. And there are puppy farms in some of the eastern states of the EU which, to put it mildly, don't meet the standards of welfare which we would regard as acceptable in this country.
Indeed, one animal charity, Dogs Trust, last week welcomed the opportunity there now is to deal more severely with this matter: 'Brexit provides a crucial opportunity to ensure that puppies entering this country are healthy, not underage, and not being brought in to sell on to the unsuspecting public.'
Progress
Still, we shouldn't be surprised that untruths about the prospects for vulnerable creatures have been manufactured by those most opposed to Brexit, to foment public anxiety about the terrible (but unspecified) things which might happen as a result of regaining full parliamentary sovereignty.
In the final weeks of last year's referendum debate, the Remain campaign's 'Project Fear' warned that disabled people would suffer most if we voted for Brexit.
A group of disabled pro-Remain peers wrote a letter to The Times declaring that Brexit would cause 'an unravelling of decades of progress that would not have been made if it were not for Britain's membership of the EU . . . after many years of progress, disabled people will be banished to the margins of British life once more'.
As with the claim that our animal welfare is reliant on being a member of the EU, this was contemptible, scare-mongering nonsense. In 1970, before we even joined what was then the European Economic Community, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act was introduced, the first in the world to assign particular duties towards those with disabilities.
This was succeeded by other purely domestic pieces of legislation, notably the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 and the Carers and Disabled Children's Act of 2000 (the latter being of particular relevance to my family, as our younger daughter has Down's syndrome).
Those who think the EU has some essential and irreplaceable role in the protection of disabled children should go to Romania or Bulgaria, and see how much EU membership really 'guarantees their rights'.
This doesn't mean that, as a nation independent of the EU law-making machine, we will get everything right. Our Parliament will be quite capable of passing foolish laws, without any assistance from Brussels.
But the idea it will become less sensitive to the concerns of the British people — and therefore more hostile to animal welfare — is for the birds.
 
Theresa May is facing the prospect of a Cabinet walkout after three senior ministers signalled they are ready to help force a delay to Brexit to stop a ‘disastrous’ No Deal.
Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark today make clear they are prepared to defy the Prime Minister unless there is a Parliamentary breakthrough on her deal next week.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the trio publicly serve notice that if hardline Tory Brexiteers in the European Research Group scupper a deal they will back other MPs to try to force Mrs May to extend Article 50 and delay Britain’s exit from the EU.
In their joint article, the Cabinet ministers warn a No Deal departure would wreck the economy, put the defence of the realm in jeopardy and risk the break-up of the UK. They say it remains their hope that Parliament agrees a deal ‘in the next few days’.
But they add: ‘If there is no breakthrough in the coming week, the balance of opinion in Parliament is clear – that it would be better to seek to extend Article 50 and delay our date of departure rather than crash out of the European Union on March 29.
‘It is time that many of our Conservative parliamentary colleagues in the ERG recognised that Parliament will stop a disastrous No Deal Brexit on March 29. If that happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves for delaying Brexit.’
The move comes at the end of an extraordinary week which saw three Tory Remainer MPs quit the party to join eight ex-Labour MPs in a breakaway Independent Group.
Unless Parliament votes through a Brexit deal before Wednesday, MPs are likely to be asked to vote this week on a motion that would effectively take No Deal off the table and force the Prime Minister to seek a Brexit delay.
Mrs May believes this would destroy her leverage in Brussels. However, it is understood the Cabinet rebels have indicated privately that they are prepared to resign if necessary to carry out their threat.
They could be joined by up to 20 junior ministers and 100 Tory MPs who, with Labour support, would be certain to defeat Mrs May. On another dramatic day in Westminster:
In their article for the Mail, Work and Pensions Secretary Miss Rudd, Justice Secretary Mr Gauke and Business Secretary Mr Clark are careful to praise Mrs May’s ‘extraordinary determination and resilience’.
But they make it clear they will not shrink from flouting her authority if her deal is blocked again next week – adding that this will mean there is no time to stop a ‘disastrous No Deal’ exit.
The ministers accuse MPs in Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s hardline ERG of brushing aside the consequences of a No Deal exit.
In addition to hitting jobs, trade and the economy, it would inflame historic border tensions between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, they argue – and ultimately lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom.
The ministers deny they are issuing an ultimatum to Mrs May. ‘The ultimatum is to the ERG,’ said a source close to one. ‘If they don’t see sense and back the PM, Brexit won’t happen next month – on their heads be it. The aim is to make it easier for the PM to face down the ERG.’
Today’s intervention comes ahead of what is expected to be another critical week on Brexit. On Tuesday Mrs May will return from talks with the EU over the weekend to update MPs on progress.
If no agreement has been found over changes to the Northern Ireland back-stop, MPs will have another chance on Wednesday to propose and vote on amendments demanding Mrs May change course.
‘If we don’t get a deal next week we MUST delay Brexit’: MPs Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke appeal for Tory unity as party is engulfed by bitter in-fighting 
By David Gauke, Amber Rudd and Greg Clark for the Daily Mail
Leaving the European Union has been a protracted and complex process. Disentangling 46 years of membership has not been – and was never going to be – a simple task.
But, as members of her Cabinet, we have seen for ourselves the extraordinary determination and resilience the Prime Minister has demonstrated in seeking to implement the result of the 2016 referendum.
In the next few days, it is to be hoped that we can achieve a breakthrough in our negotiations with the EU and a new deal can be presented to Parliament. After months of uncertainty, it is time that MPs recognised the need to get a deal, accepted that this is the only deal on offer, and supported it.
Once the deal is passed, the benefits will be felt nationally. Optimism will surge, relief will be palpable, we will have pulled back from the damaging precipice of No Deal, and we can put the divisions behind us. But too many of our parliamentary colleagues appear complacent about the consequences of leaving the EU without a deal.
Our economy will be damaged severely both in the short and long term. Costs will increase, businesses that rely on just-in-time supply chains will be severely disrupted, and investment will be discouraged. Obviously, trade with the EU will become harder but so will trade with important non-EU economies, such as Japan and South Korea, with whom we currently trade with the benefit of free trade agreements available for EU members.
Our national security will be weakened. For example, co-operation with our EU allies depends upon the free flow of data between our authorities. Such co-operation will not be possible unless we reach agreement as to how this will work when we are outside the EU. No such agreement is in place.
And the integrity of the United Kingdom would be put at risk. A No Deal Brexit will mean that those whose lives straddle the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border will become much more complicated. It is already clear that moderate Nationalists who, up until now, have been reconciled to living in the United Kingdom, will increasingly see the attractions of a united Ireland. The calls for a border poll would grow stronger and, with it, the prospect of the end of the United Kingdom.
In such circumstances, it does not take much of a leap in imagination to see how the Scottish separatists would seek to seize the chance to break up Great Britain, too.
Far from Brexit resulting in a newly independent United Kingdom stepping boldly into the wider world, crashing out on March 29 would see us poorer, less secure and potentially splitting up.
It would be truly remarkable if this was as a consequence of Conservative MPs voting down the deal. We must be the party that promotes business, protects our security and preserves the Union. None of this would be achieved by pursuing a No Deal Brexit.
The Government’s policy is to leave the European Union on March 29 with a deal that protects our economic and security interests. That date is less than five weeks away and time is running out.
If we cannot achieve a parliamentary breakthrough in the next few days, the country will face a choice. We could crash out on March 29 or we could try to leave with a deal at a later date. Beyond the next few days, there simply will not be time to agree a deal and complete all the necessary legislation before March 29.
Our hope is that Parliament recognises that we should leave the EU on March 29 with a deal. However, if there is no breakthrough in the coming week, the balance of opinion in Parliament is clear – that it would be better to seek to extend Article 50 and delay our date of departure rather than crash out of the European Union on March 29.
It is time that many of our Conservative parliamentary colleagues in the ERG recognised that Parliament will stop a disastrous No Deal Brexit on March 29. If that happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves for delaying Brexit.
Stop playing games over No Deal, Boris and Co warned
By Jack Doyle for the Daily Mail 
The Tory Party was last night engulfed by bitter Brexit in-fighting over the threat of a No Deal departure.
The Prime Minister will travel to an EU summit in Egypt tomorrow as she tries to secure last-ditch concessions from Brussels on her deal.
But ahead of a critical week, the party is at war over whether to take control of the negotiations out of her hands to prevent No Deal.
Dozens of backbenchers yesterday warned Mrs May they were now prepared to rebel in a crunch vote, expected on Wednesday, on a motion to extend Article 50 and avoid No Deal.
And in today’s Mail three Cabinet ministers – Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark – suggest they could defy the PM unless there is a breakthrough in Parliament in the next few days.
Hardline Eurosceptics have reacted furiously and are said to be threatening to ‘effectively end the Government’ if any move to delay Brexit succeeds and we don’t leave the EU on March 29.
Last night, it was reported that some Cabinet ministers had privately warned that Mrs May must stand down after the local elections in May to allow a new leader to deliver the next stage of Brexit negotiations.
Britain is privately giving up on securing changes to the Irish backstop that Theresa May has publicly promised are deliverable, EU officials claimed last night.
The Prime Minister is insisting an end date or unilateral exit clause to the backstop are possible solutions for breaking the Brexit deadlock. But Brussels insists a unilateral exit ‘is not workable’ and one senior EU source claimed the ‘reality is sinking in’ with British negotiators that the ‘ambition has to be turned down a bit’.
They even questioned whether Mrs May ever believed she could win such concessions, suggesting she is touting them to keep hardline Brexiteers in line. Changes would only amount to further assurances that the backstop will not be indefinite, they claimed. It came as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier warned there was now a high risk of an ‘accidental’ No Deal and he was ‘more worried than before’ about Britain leaving without a deal.
The latest claims about the limited extent of the concessions that Britain is trying to secure are likely to infuriate Brexiteers, who want the backstop changed or replaced entirely. It is designed to prevent a hard border emerging in Ireland in the event no future trade deal is reached, but Brexiteers fear it could trap Britain in a customs union with the bloc forever.
Efforts to break the deadlock are now focused on drawing up new wording that would allow Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to offer legal advice to MPs that would demonstrate the backstop does not have to last indefinitely.
The focus could be on plans for how alternative arrangements – including technological ones for cross-border trade – could be reached that would allow the backstop to cease if triggered.
Brussels is opposed to any text in the withdrawal treaty being changed, but is said to be more relaxed about re-opening it in the form of adding to it.
The EU source said: ‘I think the reality is sinking in that the ambition has to be turned down a bit to something which is an interpretation.
‘They could present it as a process that could be interpreted as a way out of the backstop... it can’t be a unilateral escape.’
 
The Guardian claimed that senior figures in government had suggested they wanted the PM to leave shortly after the first phase of the Brexit talks – or risk being defeated in a confidence vote at the end of the year.
Tomorrow, Mrs May will travel to Sharm El Sheikh to discuss Brexit on the sidelines of an EU summit with Arab leaders, and will sit down with EU Council President Donald Tusk.
But one Whitehall source said there had been no ‘white smoke moment’ and it was ‘unlikely’ anything would emerge at the weekend.
With no sign of a resolution, Downing Street officials are braced for a brutal row next week when MPs will vote on plans to force Mrs May to delay leaving the EU. An amendment, proposed by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, would attempt to seize control of the parliamentary agenda and pass a law requiring Mrs May to ask the EU for an extension if no deal is done by the middle of next month. Members of the Brexit Delivery Group have written to her to demand a free vote on the amendment.
Tory MP Andrew Percy, who backed Brexit, said dozens of Tories would be prepared to rebel to stop No Deal and demanded hardliners such as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg start ‘living in the real world’.
He accused arch-Brexiteers in the European Research Group of ‘playing games’ and warned they risked Brexit not happening at all.
‘Some of my colleagues have got to recognise that the game they have thus far been playing with regards to this whole process is not going to end well for them and could potentially end with the delaying of – perhaps even no Brexit – which some of us have spent a lot of our parliamentary and political careers campaigning for,’ he told the BBC’s Today programme. ‘Everybody knows there are about 500 MPs in Parliament who don’t want a No Deal Brexit and only about 100 at best who probably do. I know some of my fellow Brexiteers are in total denial about the parliamentary arithmetic but it is time for people to start living in the real world.’
One ERG figure warned there would be ‘carnage’ if Mrs May moved the Brexit date. ‘If she said she’d extend Article 50, there’d be 20-plus MPs who would just take their bat and ball home: No domestic legislation, no Brexit legislation, they just wouldn’t be showing up any more,’ they said. ‘It would effectively end the government… Mrs May has been absolutely firm for months and months we leave on the March 29. If she went back on that, there would be carnage.’
Eurosceptics in the Cabinet urged Mrs May not to give in to the threats and whip Tory MPs against the Cooper amendment.
One said: ‘We have got to try and vote Cooper down. We shouldn’t just roll over and accept it. People don’t seem to realise that by voting for it they would be reducing our chances of getting a deal.
‘If you ask for an extension to Article 50 it will be horrendous. Europe never does a deal until the last minute.’ Allies of Mrs May said the PM was trying to find a way to ‘persuade everyone to get down off the ledge’ and preserve enough unity to get a deal over the line.
‘The minute you try to extend Article 50, the ERG will go fully mental,’ a source said.
There are also fears Cabinet resignations over No Deal could lead to more MPs quitting.
‘We’re moving towards that’: Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell signals that Labour will back a second referendum 
By Daniel Martin for the Daily Mail 
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has signalled that Labour will back a second referendum as part of a desperate bid to stop more MPs defecting.
He said the party had kept the option on the table and ‘we’re moving towards that’. The seven Labour MPs who quit on Monday all blamed the party’s approach to Brexit and lack of support for a People’s Vote.
Another Labour MP, Ian Austin, resigned yesterday – although he supports Brexit and has so far declined to join the Independent Group. Labour’s position, thrashed out at conference last year, keeps open the option of a second referendum if Theresa May can’t get a deal through Parliament and there’s no general election.
Jeremy Corbyn, a Eurosceptic, is believed to be opposed to a second referendum. But yesterday Mr McDonnell told the London Evening Standard: ‘On the People’s Vote, we’ve kept it on the table and we’re moving towards that.’
He said Labour was ‘moving into implementation stages around our conference decision, around the People’s Vote’.
Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson have devised a plan to support the PM’s Brexit deal on the condition it is put to a confirmatory public vote. The Commons could be asked to vote on the Kyle-Wilson amendment next week.
Mr McDonnell said that any referendum would have remaining in the European Union as the alternative to the deal.
‘If we were going on a People’s Vote based on a deal that has gone through Parliament in some form, if that got voted down then you’d have status quo, and that would be Remain,’ he said.
The Shadow Chancellor said that if it was an option ‘I’d campaign for Remain and I’d vote for Remain’. A spokesman for the People’s Vote campaign said: ‘It looks like Labour will test whether its Brexit plan has the support of Parliament next week.
‘If they back compromise proposals to put any final Brexit deal to the people, it will help unite their party, as well as avoid the catastrophe for their constituents of a No Deal departure from the EU.’
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn was setting out his Brexit plans in Madrid at the Party of European Socialists meeting. He said: ‘The damaging deadlock on Brexit must be broken and following my discussions with EU leaders and officials, I am in no doubt that Labour’s alternative plan is credible.’
Over the past few days, TV viewers may have been driven to distraction by a low, fuzzy and annoyingly repetitive drone.
Before you set about your living room with a fly swat and do terrible damage to your china knick-knacks and family photo-frames, let me stress that the sound has not been made by that October hornet bouncing against the window panes.
It has coincided with the reappearance, in TV studio discussions and on the BBC’s Parliament channel, of a tall man with donkey teeth and bulgy eyes, talking balderdash.
Yes folks, just when you thought it was safe to take a fresh interest in our wonderfully liberated post-Brexit politics, that serial meddler Ed Miliband is back.
The political mastermind who led Labour over a cliff in the 2015 general election is now championing backbench Opposition protests against Brexit. He has formed an alliance with that other electoral genius Nick Clegg. Between them, they hope to gum up the Government’s programme of leaving the EU following June’s referendum.
Miliband! He of the preposterous granite ‘Edstone’ of pledges he was going to erect in the garden of No 10 after sweeping to power. He of the ‘hell yeah, ah’m tough enough’ machismo in an election TV debate with Jeremy Paxman. He of the crucial party conference speech in which he omitted to mention — he forgot it! — the national deficit.
Some 17.4 million people may have voted triumphantly for Brexit but this clown and his pal Clegg, along with a gaggle of apoplectic Euro-luvvies including a few Left-wing Tories, think they know better. They are putting up a barrage of legalistic complaints, parliamentary ruses, publicity stunts and bogus outrage in the hope of creating maximum confusion.
You should have heard the clucking and melodramatic shrieks in the Commons yesterday during an Opposition day debate on Brexit. These anti-democrats are behaving as though the EU referendum never happened. Or do they think those 17.4 million ballot papers were incorrectly counted?
By creating such a stink about Brexit, Miliband & Co suspect they can damage Britain’s prospects in the international financial markets — tactics that, for my money, look nakedly unpatriotic.
If they can make the May Government seem sufficiently beleaguered — and with the BBC in full Euro-bias mode, they are receiving every assistance — it will weaken sterling.
If the pound goes into a prolonged tailspin, that might force Theresa May to renege on some of her so-far admirable commitments to heed the democratic will of the British people and take us out of the European federalist project with its uncontrolled immigration and rapacious trading fees.
In some ways Mr Miliband’s emergence as a leading ‘Bremoaner’ (as these pessimistic Brexit-deniers are called) is great news for those of us who voted Leave.
After all, ‘Red Ed’ is widely understood by the British public to be a total noodle. Voters were given more than adequate sight and sound of him during the five years he was Leader of the Opposition, and from the way they voted for the Conservative Party in May 2015, you might conclude that he wasn’t to their liking.
Here, after all, is Westminster’s version of Frank Spencer. Do you remember beret-wearing Frank, from the Seventies TV show Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em? He reduced to ruin anything he touched. The same can be said of Mr Miliband, though there, perhaps, the comedy ends.
With the plight of Syria much in our minds now, it is worth remembering that Miliband was the Labour leader who, three years ago, ordered his MPs to stop the Coalition Government making what could have been an early, decisive intervention in the Syrian conflict.
David Cameron, then Prime Minister, was under the impression that Mr Miliband had given him a private assurance to put aside party political devilment and support intervention, which many say could have changed the course of the war.
But at the final moment Mr Miliband changed tack and inflicted a rare Commons defeat on a Government on a military motion. It won Labour a few days of bragging rights but left Syria’s vulnerable masses undefended. Admittedly, this is a complex situation but innocents have been dying under the Assad regime’s Russian bombs ever since.
Ruin of a more metaphorical nature was inflicted by Mr Miliband on his own sorry party. Quite apart from his fruitless spell as Opposition leader, he changed the party’s rules for electing a new leader, introducing ‘one man one vote’ and allowing new Labour members to cast their ballot for a leader as long as they paid a £3 party membership fee.
New members duly flocked to join, most voting for the maverick Jeremy Corbyn last summer, leading to Labour’s current opinion poll slump to 17 points behind the Tories.
Again, Mr Miliband’s natural opponents may want to give him a medal, for he has done his own side terrible damage. Those with a deeper investment in the health of British politics will see it is far from desirable for a Government to face such a weak Opposition.
We can add to that Miliband roll of ruin such further disasters as his opposition to House of Lords reform (again, because he was playing silly games — he really is as slippery as a shampooed tennis ball) and his almost complete loss of Labour’s Scottish fiefdom to the Scots Nats.
Scottish voters examined this flubbering former special adviser with his patronising Primrose Hill airs and decided, not unreasonably, that he had nothing in common with them.
But then, Miliband’s whole career has been narrow in its cultural scope. After Oxford and that greenhouse for Lefties, the London School of Economics, he became a researcher on a Channel 4 politics show.
Then he became a Harriet Harman speechwriter (to make her sound sensible is, admittedly, a hellish task) and had a spell as a New Labour aide before being found a supposedly safe seat in Doncaster.
His constituents voted for Brexit by 69 per cent, yet Mr Miliband seeks to frustrate their will. Must we really tolerate lessons in ‘democracy’ from such a figure?
This is not a seasoned man of the world who has developed a political vision for himself. He has prospered thanks to privilege, connections, networking — just the sort of world you find in Brussels.
It began in his boyhood when he was introduced to top Labour figures by his Marxist philosopher father Ralph. Young Ed was spoon-fed his doctrines and he has invariably gone with the bien pensant crowd. He is no more original than the sort of music they play in department store lifts.
Even when he became Energy Minister — where he introduced the ruinously expensive Climate Change Act to reduce carbon emissions, which will apparently cost us £18 billion a year until 2050 — there was a belief
at Westminster that he was being promoted thanks to the influence of his older, brighter brother David, then Foreign Secretary.
But that didn’t save David in Labour’s leadership election of 2010.
With the help of his trade union puppet masters, Ed stood against and beat his sibling, thereby not only shattering David’s world but also placing his mother in the unenviable position of seeing her two sons in a vicious fraternal fight. What sort of man does that?
By the way, his margin of victory in that Labour leadership election was rather smaller than the margin by which Leave voters won the day in the referendum.
Yesterday he was up on his hooves again in the Commons, yacking away about the so-called injustices of Brexit and doing his damndest to trash our Government at this time of intense national importance and opportunity. His chief complaint was that Parliament is not being consulted properly by the May Government, the Prime Minister having decided to keep her negotiating cards away from the EU’s prying eyes.
His laments about parliamentary sovereignty might be rather more convincing if they didn’t come from a man who, like the rest of his meretricious metropolitan set, happily supported handing over great wodges of British power to the unelected, unaccountable European Commission.
Did we hear these philippics about Parliament when the Labour Government was signing the Lisbon Treaty, which took away Britain’s veto over European policies in no fewer than 45 areas? We did not.
He is a fool but, like many fools, he is also a danger. Pass that fly swat, someone. 
Jacob Rees-Mogg told Theresa May the 'majority' of hardline Brexiteers would consign her to a crushing second defeat on her divorce deal tonight.
The leader of the European Research Group said he expected Britain to now crash out without a deal in 17 days as Brexiteers moved to kill off the Prime Minister's plans.  
A 'well attended' meeting of the ERG broke up less than 30 minutes before the vote and the decision is set to hand Mrs May a fresh humiliation when the results are announced at 7.15pm. 
Boris Johnson warned Mrs May her plans have 'reached the end of the road' and said no deal was the only way for Britain to leave the EU with 'self-respect'. He insisted the ailing package should be 'put to bed' - despite Westminster being rife with rumours of a third vote.
If the deal is defeated MPs will vote again tomorrow on no deal and then on delaying Brexit on Thursday - votes set to unlock a cascade of unpredictable consequences. 
The Prime Minister is scrambling to persuade Tory rebels to return to the fold in time for the showdown at 7pm - warning 'Brexit could be lost' if the divorce agreement is rejected again.
Mrs May's hopes were dashed before she even stood up in the Commons today as Attorney General Geoffrey Cox sensationally torpedoed last night's new concessions. He admitted they did not change the legal risk the hated Irish border backstop could become permanent. 
In another blow, Brexit hardliners in the European Research Group were told by their 'star chamber' of lawyers the concessions do not go far enough in changing the backstop. 
Mr Rees-Mogg said earlier the advice meant he could only back the deal if Brexit was at risk - a threat he branded a 'phantom' this afternoon despite Mrs May's warning. 
A handful of Conservatives who voted No on January 15 have said they will back the deal tonight. But the 20 switchers identified by MailOnline are far short of the 116 extra votes Mrs May needs to reverse the 230 vote loss.  
Mrs May, who is losing her voice after her late night rescue mission to Strasbourg last night, said: 'A lot of focus has been on the legal changes - but if this vote does not pass Brexit could be lost'. 
In a last-ditch plea for support she told MPs: 'This is the moment and this is the time - time for us to come together, back this motion and get the deal done. We cannot serve our country by overturning a democratic decision of the British people. We cannot serve by prolonging a debate the British people now wish to see settled'. 
As MPs poked fun at her croaky voice and critics offered her throat sweets she hit back: 'You may say that but you should hear Jean-Claude Juncker's voice after our talks'.
Jeremy Corbyn, who has flirted with MPs campaigning for a second referendum and a softer Brexit, then confronted Mrs May and urged MPs to throw out her deal calling her negotiations a 'failure' and said he 'looked forward to Parliament taking control'.
The Northern Irish DUP party, whose 10 MPs are propping up Mrs May's Government, and the influential ERG group of around 100 Tories led by Mr Rees-Mogg are set to vote with Jeremy Corbyn's Labour to oppose her divorce when the Commons votes at 7pm tonight. 

Charles Walker, vice chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, warned that defeat in the second 'meaningful vote' on the Withdrawal Agreement tonight would lead to a general election.
He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: 'If it doesn't go through tonight, as sure as night follows day, there will be a general election within a matter of days or weeks. It is not sustainable, the current situation in Parliament.'
What happened last night? 
Theresa May held the second approval vote on her Brexit deal. MPs 391 to 242 - a majority of 149 - against the deal.  
What will happen next?  
The Prime Minister promised MPs will get a vote on whether or not to accept no deal today and then a further vote on delaying Brexit on Thursday.
Tory MPs are getting a free vote on whether to support no deal tonight and it is widely expected Parliament will block No Deal.  
Could Brexit be stopped? 
May has warned this is a possibility. While she will not revoke Article 50 herself, she has warned political chaos could see the Government replaced by Jeremy Corbyn or another pro-Remain administration.
Could Brexit be delayed? 
Almost certainly, with just 17 days until it is due to happen. The EU has said it will grant a two month extension to get the current deal through but that this should not extend beyond EU Parliament elections at the end of May.
It might also extend a much longer extension to allow for a general election or second referendum - but this would be for many months or even years.  
Will the Prime Minister face a motion of no confidence? 
It is possible. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has insisted he will only call another vote of no confidence if he has a chance of winning - but in January Mrs May precipitated one herself. 
Will May just resign after a second defeat?
Unlikely but not impossible. Defeat would be another monumental blow to the PM's political authority. 
Will there be a general election? 
There are mounting calls for one. Tory MP Charles Walker said yesterday if the House could not pass the deal, the current Parliament probably needs to be replaced so a new Government can be formed to tackle Brexit.
One of the advantages of an election is it would be much quicker to organise and resolve than a second referendum.
Could there be a second referendum on Brexit? 
There are mounting demands for a new public vote - but probably not currently a majority in the Commons for it.
A new referendum would take at least six months to organise and run. This could be optimistic as there is no consensus over what the question might be. 
The likely fatal blow to Mrs May's Brexit deal came after her Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC admitted today that the 11th hour deal struck in Strasbourg last night failed to reverse his legal advice that Britain could be locked into EU rules forever through the Irish backstop.  
In his bombshell letter presented to the cabinet this morning Mr Cox said: 'The legal risk remains unchanged. The UK would have no internationally lawful means of exiting the Protocol's arrangements, save by agreement'.    
And on another extraordinary day in Westminster where Theresa May faces the most important vote of her premiership, it emerged:
Theresa May's hopes of securing House of Commons approval for her Brexit deal suffered a shattering blow as Tory eurosceptics said they would not back it and her DUP allies said they would vote against.
A so-called Star Chamber convened by the Leave-backing European Research Group found that agreements reached by the Prime Minister in 11th-hour talks in Strasbourg do not deliver the legally-binding changes the Commons has demanded.
And the Democratic Unionist Party - which props up Mrs May's minority administration in the Commons - said its 10 MPs would vote against the latest deal as 'sufficient progress has not been achieved at this time'.
Responding to Mrs May, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said 'not a single word' of the Withdrawal Agreement had changed.
He said: 'After three months of running down the clock the Prime Minister has, despite very extensive delays, achieved not a single change to the Withdrawal Agreement - not one single word has changed.
'In terms of the substance, literally nothing has changed ... There is no unilateral exit mechanism, there is not time limit, there are no alternative arrangements'.
Mr Corbyn accused the Government of trying to 'fool' its own backbenchers and the British people over its Brexit deal.
He said: 'The unilateral statement is a weak Government trying to fool its own backbenchers because the EU has not even signed up to it.'
He continued: 'The Government is in real problems because they are trying to fool the people into somehow believing that somehow or other the deal she has offered is the only one that is available.
'It is not and they very well know that.'
The Prime Minister intervened on Mr Corbyn to tell him his alternative deal had been rejected by MPs and he should listen to that.
She said: 'When the deal the Government had negotiated was rejected overwhelmingly by this House, he said we should listen. We have listened.
'The other week his proposals were rejected overwhelmingly by this House - why is he not listening?'
These are the Tory MPs who have said they will vote against the deal tonight: 
These are the Tory MPs who voted No on January 15 but who say they will now back the deal: 
Mr Corbyn replied he spent 'a great deal of time listening to people' on the shop floor and in small businesses, and 'they want some degree of certainty', adding 'her deal does not offer that degree of certainty at all'. 
As she defended her deal Mrs May reeled off a list of 'core elements' she said were delivered by the deal.
She said: 'It sends a message to the whole world about the sort of country the UK will be in the years and decades ahead ... To our friends and allies who have long looked up to us as a beacon of pragmatism and decency and a message to those who do not share our values and whose interests diverge from ours. It says this: the UK is a country that honours the democratic decisions taken by our people in referendums and in elections.'
She added: 'I believe that we should be delivering on the vote of the British people in 2016, but I also believe it is important that we give businesses ... the certainty for their future, and there is only one certainty if we do not pass this vote tonight, and that is that uncertainty will continue for our citizens and for our businesses.'
She added: 'We are a country where passionately-held views do not stop us from making compromises to achieve progress. We're a country that values both our national sovereignty and the unbreakable bonds of a shared history.'
She went on: 'A bad deal would be even worse than no deal, but best of all is a good deal, and this is a good deal.'
Former Brexit secretary David Davis lent support to the deal, despite its imperfections.
He said: 'Can she tell the House whether she has detected any change in mood on the part of the EU and the Republic (of Ireland) with respect to a constructive outcome in dealing with the Northern Ireland border?'
Mrs May replied: 'Yes, I think what has been obvious is a change in willingness from the EU to be actively working on those alternative arrangements.
'It was not possible to complete that work in time for the timetable we currently have re March 29.
'But the firm commitments have been given in the documents ... show that willingness on their side to be actively working with us to find those alternative arrangements and find them in a way that means the backstop can indeed be replaced.'
His overall conclusion immediately sparked a negative reaction from the DUP - seen as the key group the PM needed to win over - with MP Nigel Dodds, who is also barrister, saying Mrs May's deal meant: 'Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom could be trapped' and an official statement added: 'We recognise that the Prime Minister has made limited progress in her discussions with the European Union. However in our view sufficient progress has not been achieved at this time.' 
Minutes later the ERG pulled the plug after a 'star chamber' meeting where their own lawyers and MPs pored over the new deal.
Veteran Brexiteer Bill Cash said: 'In the light of our own legal analysis and others we do not recommend accepting the Government's motion today' while fellow Tory MP John Whittingdale said Mr Cox had inflicted 'terminal' damage on the PM's deal. 
The Prime Minister joked that you 'should hear Jean-Claude Juncker's voice' after she revealed she had lost her voice as she stepped up to the despatch box.
Theresa May's vocal struggles returned after her speech to the Conservative Party conference in 2017 was infamously overshadowed by her inability to speak.
She could only get out the first two words of her speech, saying 'Mr Speaker' before coughing and clearing her throat.
As Labour MPs joked she could not make her speech, the PM then quipped: 'Okay, you may say that, but you should hear Jean-Claude Juncker's voice as a result of our conversation.'
Hours after releasing his bombshell letter Mr Cox attempted to defend Mrs May's deal and told the Commons it is 'highly unlikely' that the UK and EU would not reach an agreement on their future relationship - and insisted MPs had to make a 'political decision' tonight not a legal one.
After hearing the bad news Theresa May left Downing Street this morning to beg her own MPs to vote for her deal in a lunchtime meeting, warning them that Britain may never leave the EU if they refuse to back her tonight. One MP in the meeting said she 'needed to bring back a rabbit but she had only managed a hamster'.
Minutes earlier she told her cabinet that she did have 'legally-binding changes' to the backstop and ended the meeting by saying: 'Today is the day. Let's get this done'.
If Mrs May's deal fails tonight it will kick-start a move by MPs to block no deal and delay Brexit in votes tomorrow and on Thursday. In a clear threat to Tory Brexiteers, leading Tory remainer Nick Boles, who is working with Labour MPs to deliver the softest possible Brexit, tweeted: 'Do yourselves a favour. Take the win. Vote for the deal. But if you won't, please don't say I didn't warn you about what comes next'. 
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group, warned against providing just five hours for the Commons to consider a matter that could 'determine the nation's future for a generation or more'.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who unsuccessfully lobbied for an extra day of debate on the Brexit deal motion, said: 'It also does not help the Government achieve what it wishes to achieve - and that is a majority in the vote at the end of today's proceedings.
'Because if people feel that they have been bounced, that they have been hurried and they have been harried, the natural instinct is not necessarily to cave in, but it is in fact to stiffen their resolve and see how the cards fall.'
Theresa May refused to comment on Geoffrey Cox's legal advice as she entered a meeting with Tory MPs where she begged for their support. 
Heading into a meeting with the Prime Minister, Brexit Minister Robin Walker insisted there had been positive changes that Tory MPs would support.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox published new legal advice on the Brexit deal on Tuesday morning, which proved to be the final nail in the coffin of Thersa May's deal, which was buried under a landslide defeat of 149 votes hours later.
These are the key paragraphs and what they mean: 
Paragraph 19: The final paragraph and ultimately the only one likely to matter today. Cox admits the 'legal risk remains unchanged' that if UK-EU trade talks fail despite real efforts on both sides, Britain cannot escape the backstop unilaterally.
Paragraph 7: The Government hangs great hope on Cox's conclusion a new 'joint instrument' does impose 'new legal obligations and commitments' on finding an alternative to the backstop before it ever kicks in. 
Paragraph 14: Cox says Britain's 'unilateral declaration' the backstop will not be allowed to become permanent does provide a 'substantive and binding reinforcement' of Britain's legal rights to escape the backstop if the EU acts in bad faith. 
Paragraph 17: Cox says the new documents do 'reduce the risk' the UK could be trapped 'indefinitely and involuntarily' trapped in the backstop by the EU acting badly.  
He said: 'I'm positive. We've seen real progress, more progress than many believed would be possible.
'I'm not making crystal ball predictions but what we have seen from the Attorney General is this reduces the risk of the UK being caught in the backstop.'
Sir Desmond Swayne said 'this is an intractable disagreement'.
Former international development minister Grant Shapps said the vote would be close and 'needed the DUP'.
He said: 'One colleague said he was looking for her to bring back a rabbit but she had only managed a hamster - but he said that was good enough for him. I think that was Charlie Elphicke.
'Some colleagues are coming across.'
ERG member Mark Francois said he was 'wholly unconvinced' by Mrs May's improved deal.
He said: 'Question after question after question was directed at her on the legal advice and particularly on paragraph 19 of the Attorney General's statement where he makes the critical observation 'however the legal risk remains unchanged'.
'Colleague after colleague asked about that.
'It's for individual colleagues to judge and obviously they will listen to what the Attorney General says in his statement at 12.30.
'Speaking purely and entirely for myself I regret to say I found the Prime Minister's answers ultimately unconvincing.'
Andrew Bridgen said 'nothing has changed' as he left the meeting after about five minutes.
The Prime Minister last night announced 'legally binding changes' to the controversial Irish border backstop after a dramatic dash to Strasbourg yesterday and last-minute talks with Jean-Claude Juncker.
What are the changes to the deal?  
There are three new documents that are now part of the divorce package - on top of the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on the Future Relationship. 
None of the new documents change either of the two main ones agreed in November and which were defeated by 230 votes on January 15.
The new documents are: 
What do the changes mean? 
May's deputy David Lidington said they 'strengthen and improve' the deal and amount to 'legally binding changes'.
The Attorney General produced new legal advice today.
He admitted that if UK-EU trade talks simply fail to reach agreement despite best efforts on both sides, the UK could still end up stuck in the backstop.
The advice is a torpedo to May's hopes of victory tonight.  
Do the changes actually change the divorce deal? 
They do not change either document agreed by Theresa May in November and voted on by MPs in January. Both the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration stand unamended.
May says the new documents have the same 'legal weight' as the original deal and effectively improve it from the outside.  
Will they persuade Tory rebels?
It is too soon to tell. Tory hardliners will pass the documents to a group of their own lawyers and they will make a decision today. 
The so-called 'Cash Council' includes eight lawyers, seven of whom are current MPs and leading Eurosceptic. The group includes DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds.
The DUP itself issued a measured response tonight, vowing to study the new documents closely. 
What is the vote today? 
May is holding a new vote on whether or not to approve her deal today. Passing it is an essential part of making the deal law.
Technically the vote has to happen at some point because of the law in Section 13 of the EU Withdrawal Action 2018. 
It is a repeat of the vote she held and lost by a record-breaking 230 votes on January 13.  
What will MPs vote on? 
The Government has tabled a motion that broadly says MPs 'approve' the deal. 
The motion refer to five documents that now make up the deal - including the three new documents about the backstop.
Both the motion and the documents had to be tabled in Parliament yesterday, before the Commons finished for the night. 
Can it be amended? 
Yes. MPs can re-write the motion to say they 'approve' the deal subject to conditions, or to say they 'decline to approve' it for whatever reason.
Can May amend it?
Yes, potentially. May could table an amendment to her own motion or endorse an amendment tabled by a friendly backbench MP if the new agreements look set to fail.
Why would she do that? 
An amendment could be used to send a political signal to Brussels on what is needed to pass the motion unamended.
It would probably mean a third vote was needed - but this is legally ambiguous and appears to have been ruled out as an option by Juncker anyway. 
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis tweeted: 'This all now depends on the Attorney General's legal advice. It is critical that he confirms we can escape this backstop.' 
Theresa May made a direct pitch to MPs at 11.30am and hopes the changes to her deal will be enough to win backing for her plan from rebel Tory Brexiteers and the DUP in the meaningful vote tonight and secure Britain's exit from the EU on March 29. 
In a clear threat to them leading Tory remainer Nick Boles, who is working with Labour MPs to deliver the softest possible Brexit, tweeted: 'Do yourselves a favour. Take the win. Vote for the deal. But if you won't, please don't say I didn't warn you about what comes next'. 
Mrs May needs to convince the entire DUP group of 10 MPs, most of the 108 Eurosceptic ERG rebels, and at least 10 Labour Brexiteers to back her deal and turn her 230-vote defeat earlier this year into an extraordinary and unlikely victory. 
If Mrs May loses again Remainer MPs are poised to stop Britain leaving the EU without a deal and delay Brexit in vote over the next two days. Juncker has last night warned that today was MPs 'last chance' to pass a deal, and said there will be no further changes.
ERG Chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg had given Mrs May hope by saying the new agreement was 'unquestionably a step in the right direction'. David Davis said that if Mr Cox changes his guidance today the deal 'is just about acceptable to me'.  
Tory Brexiteer rebels and Northern Ireland 's DUP have worked through the night to study Mrs May's 'legally binding changes'.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of Brexiteer MPs, said that 'many Conservatives will be heavily influenced by the DUP's view'.
Mr Rees-Mogg also said the process had been 'desperately rushed' and called for the vote to be delayed until tomorrow to give more time to examine the documents.
DUP leader Arlene Foster would not be drawn on what her party in Westminster would do and said last night: 'We will be taking appropriate advice, scrutinising the text line by line and forming our own judgement'.
The ERG and DUP have their own lawyers looking at Mrs May's legal tweaks.
But former attorney general Dominic Grieve, who wants a second referendum, said today: 'It doesn't allow the UK the right to terminate the backstop at a time of its own choosing. Ultimately I don't think this document that's been produced makes any significant difference'.
Independent Group MP Anna Soubry tweeted: 'Just in case you weren't sure who's running our country @Jacob-Rees-Mogg confirms the most important decision our country has taken since WW2 hangs on the views of a self appointed committee of ERG hard Brexit 'lawyers' and the DUP. So much for Taking Back Control'.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has described as 'b*****s' a claim that he had been 'told to find a way' to ensure legal validation of Theresa May's newly-negotiated arrangement with the EU.
The one-word response was given to Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow, who had tweeted: 'A Lawyer contact tells me that the legal world is aware that the Attorney General said NO last night to the validity of Mrs May's 'new EU deal'... he been told to go away and find a way to say YES: A cohort of lawyers has been summoned.' 
Environment Secretary Michael Gove said it was 'make your mind up time' for MPs on the 'new, improved deal'.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We have an improvement on the Withdrawal Agreement that was presented to the House of Commons in January. That improvement ensures that we have additional legal weight behind our position.
'It also ensures that, as in any agreement or any contract, if it is the case that one side - in this case the EU - seeks to act in a way that is not in accordance with their commitments then we can go to court and we can win.
'We have also made a declaration as a nation that, should the EU behave in that way, that is exactly what we will do.'
That declaration of intent has 'political and legal standing', he added.
Rejecting the deal could result in Brexit being 'delayed or diluted', he said in a message aimed at Tory Eurosceptics.  
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has described the outcome of last night's Strasbourg meeting as 'positive' but insisted the EU's legal assurances do 'not reopen the Withdrawal Agreement or undermine the backstop'
He said he now 'hopes and trusts' MPs will support Theresa May's Brexit deal.
He said the backstop remains in place until other arrangements are made.
He added: 'Brexit has been a dark cloud for many months, a positive vote can remove that cloud and restore confidence in Britain, Ireland and the EU.'
After a day of confusion and rumour in Westminster, the Prime Minister dashed by plane to Strasbourg for emergency talks with EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
Following a two-hour meeting to thrash out the final details, the pair unveiled a three-point plan for a revised deal in a press conference.
However, it was unclear last night whether the extra changes secured will be enough for Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to alter his legal advice on the Irish backstop.
What is the vote today? 
Theresa May has promised to hold a vote on whether or not to approve her deal today. Passing it is an essential part of making the deal law.
Technically the vote has to happen at some point because of the law in Section 13 of the EU Withdrawal Action 2018. 
What will MPs vote on? 
The Government has tabled a motion that broadly says MPs 'approve' the deal. 
The motion refer to documents that make up the deal - including the two new documents about the backstop.
Both the motion and the documents have to be tabled in Parliament today, before the Commons finishes for the night. 
Can it be amended? 
Yes. MPs can re-write the motion to say they 'approve' the deal subject to conditions, or to say they 'decline to approve' it for whatever reason.
Can May amend it?
Yes, potentially. May could table an amendment to her own motion or endorse an amendment tabled by a friendly backbench MP if the new agreements look set to fail.
Why would she do that? 
An amendment could be used to send a political signal to Brussels on what is needed to pass the motion unamended.
It would probably mean a third vote was needed - but this is legally ambiguous.  
The vote tonight on the withdrawal agreement could decide the fate of Brexit and Mrs May's premiership.
The Prime Minister said: 'MPs were clear that legal changes were needed to the backstop. Today we have secured legal changes. Now is the time to come together, to back this improved deal and to deliver on the instruction of the British people.'
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay tweeted soon after, saying: 'Parliament asked us to secure legal changes to provide reassurance around the backstop.
'Prime Minister has delivered on that. Time to back the deal and deliver an orderly Brexit.'
Mr Juncker warned that if Britain delayed Brexit beyond May 22, it would have to take part in EU elections that begin the day after. He also said the package was the EU's final offer and there will be 'no third chances'.
He added: 'If there is no support for the withdrawal agreement tomorrow, perhaps there is no support for Brexit at all. Let's be crystal clear about the choice: it is this deal or Brexit might not happen at all.
'I trust that today's meaningful legal assurances will be meaningful enough for the meaningful vote tomorrow. Let's now bring this withdrawal to a good end. We owe it to history.' 
The first new document unveiled in the three-point plan was a 'joint interpretative instrument', which guarantees that the EU 'cannot act with the intent of applying the backstop indefinitely'.
If triggered, this would allow the UK to challenge it via a beefed-up arbitration process and suspend it. 
The second was a joint statement in addition to the political declaration on the future relationship, forming a legal commitment to find alternative arrangements to the backstop – including technological ones – before it has to be triggered.
It could be key for trying to win over Eurosceptic MPs who believe technological solutions could prevent the need for a hard border without requiring the UK to be left in a customs union in all but name.
Thirdly, the UK published a 'unilateral declaration' setting out Britain's belief that, if the future trade negotiations break down, it can trigger a process which would see the backstop ended. 
TUESDAY 
The Commons will vote on whether to support the revised deal in the second so-called 'meaningful vote'. In January it was rejected by a majority of 230 in an historic defeat for the Government.
OPTION A: If it is passed, then the UK is set to leave the European Union on March 29 as planned.
OPTION B: If MPs vote against it again, they will be back in the Commons on Wednesday.
WEDNESDAY
If her withdrawal deal is defeated, as seems likely, the Prime Minister has promised to hold a vote on Wednesday on whether the UK should with no deal. It would take place just hours after the Chancellor's Spring Statement.
OPTION A: If MPs vote for it, a No Deal Brexit would take place.
OPTION B: If politicians vote against leaving the EU without a deal, they'll go back again to the voting lobbies.
LATER ON WEDNESDAY OR ON THURSDAY
A vote against No Deal would see MPs given the chance to delay Brexit beyond March 29, Mrs May has pledged. This would take place on either Wednesday or Thursday.
OPTION A: If MPs back a delay, then the PM would have to go back to Brussels to negotiate an extension of the two-year Article 50 process.
OPTION B: Rejection would mean the country leaves the EU on March 29 with or without a deal.
Mrs May last night insisted the changes deliver on promises made to MPs. However, the measures did not amount to a reopening of the withdrawal treaty or an end date or unilateral exit clause to the backstop – key demands from Brexiteer MPs.
When asked if the changes amounted to either an end date or unilateral exit clause last night, Mrs May said: 'What we have secured is legally binding changes which is exactly what Parliament asked us to secure, and what we have secured very clearly is that the backstop cannot be indefinite and cannot become permanent.'
Mr Juncker said: 'In politics, sometimes you get a second chance. It is what we do with this second chance that counts, because there will be no third chance.
'There will be no further declarations, interpretations and no further assurances if the meaningful vote [on Mrs May's deal] fails.' 
When pressed, he said the changes 'complement' the withdrawal treaty without reopening it.
Following the announcement Mrs Foster, whose MPs the Tories rely on to get legislation through Parliament, said: 'We note the Prime Minister's latest statement and update on our EU exit negotiations.
'These publications need careful analysis. We will be taking appropriate advice, scrutinising the text line by line and forming our own judgement.'
Iain Duncan-Smith, a member of the ERG group of Brexiteers, said: 'We are waiting for the lawyers to see if anything has changed. There are concerns about the Attorney General's advice and when we will see it.'
If the vote is lost, Mrs May has agreed to give MPs the chance to rule out a No Deal Brexit tomorrow. Parliament would then be asked on Thursday whether to seek an extension of Article 50 that would delay Brexit.
THE EXIT MECHANISM
What it is: A legally binding text, added to the withdrawal agreement, which sets out the temporary nature of the Northern Ireland backstop.
Known as a ‘joint interpretative instrument’, it states that the EU ‘cannot act with the intention of applying the backstop indefinitely’. If it did so, the UK could challenge it through arbitration and – ultimately – get out.
What it means: Legal advice on the deal from the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox warned that the UK could in theory become trapped indefinitely in the controversial backstop.
This attempts to reassure MPs, especially in the Eurosceptic European Research Group, by showing a clear – and legally binding – escape route. It also gives more weight to moves to replace the backstop with technological solutions.
THE UNILATERAL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
What it is: A UK-only document that sets out in explicit terms the temporary nature of the backstop. It makes clear that the UK Government’s understanding is that there is nothing to stop Britain unilaterally leaving the backstop if it appears to be becoming permanent.
What it means: This document makes clear the UK’s view that we can’t be trapped in the backstop.
Although not legally binding over the EU, it would set out in unambiguous terms that a future government can decide to leave at any point if there was no prospect of escaping via a trade deal.
THE ASSURANCES LETTER
What it is: On January 14, Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker wrote to Theresa May in a bid to address UK concerns about the backstop and give reassurances that it would only be temporary.
It was dismissed at the time because it was not legally binding, but the new deal puts it in binding legal form.
What it means: The letter contains assurances about the temporary nature of the backstop, that the EU would use its ‘best endeavours’ to do a deal, and that it would only be in place as long as ‘strictly necessary’.
It also makes clear the EU will give priority to finding technological alternatives to the backstop, a critical element for hardline Eurosceptics. It makes clear the backstop cannot ‘supercede’ the Good Friday Agreement. Putting these assurances on a legal footing could be crucial.
 
At yesterday's 8.30am meeting of senior Downing Street strategists, the mood could hardly have been bleaker.
Theresa May was, according to one ally, 'staring down the barrel of a gun'.
The Prime Minister had promised to come back to the Commons with a new deal for MPs to vote on today.
But over the weekend, the talks had failed. The PM's plane had sat on the runway at Northolt, fuelled and ready to go, but there was nowhere to fly to and nothing to sign off.
The PM was in a bind. She could hardly present to MPs the exact same withdrawal agreement which was voted down by a historic margin of 230 votes less than a month earlier. That would be a humiliation. But she had promised a meaningful vote, and pulling it would spark uproar.
Mrs May had also promised – after a rebellion by Remainer ministers – two further votes, one on leaving without a deal and another on extending Article 50. However MPs were whipped, these votes were guaranteed to plunge the Tory party into a new and brutal civil war.
There was chatter among MPs that Mrs May could even call a general election to avoid the votes. With nothing to say, No 10 imposed a ministerial media blackout. Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay entered Downing Street just after 10am and was there for nearly two hours, apparently working on a statement due to be made to Parliament in the afternoon.
At the morning briefing of lobby journalists, Downing Street confirmed the meaningful vote would be going ahead, but could not say what the vote would be on. 
It was clear the talks were in trouble last week, when Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, returned from Brussels empty-handed. But over the weekend, negotiations continued.
By Sunday they were 'sick of the sight of each other' one source said, and any hope of a breakthrough appeared to have disappeared.
Yet at one point they were clearly close. EU ambassadors were told yesterday that Mrs May had suggested the additional legal assurances being offered over the Irish border backstop were good enough.
But they did not satisfy Mr Cox. In an interview in a Sunday newspaper – conducted earlier in the week – he had made clear he would not rewrite his legal advice unless he was absolutely convinced the new deal meant the UK could not be trapped in the Northern Ireland backstop.
'I will not change my opinion unless we have a text that shows the risk has been eliminated. I would not put my name to anything less.'
'I have been a barrister for 36 years, and a senior politician for seven months,' he insisted. 'My professional reputation is far more important to me than my reputation as a politician.'
On Sunday afternoon, at a conference call with Mrs May, Mr Barclay, and Mrs May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell, the Attorney General made it clear he was still not satisfied. The PM phoned EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Sunday night to tell him the deal was off.
One diplomat familiar with the briefing said: 'The legal assurances, the further clarifications that were being offered were just not enough for Prime Minister May to get it through her Cabinet.
'It was said that they had reached common ground and she wanted to sell it in Downing Street to her Cabinet, but she realised she did not have the support of her ministers.
'She called Juncker and said 'my ministers don't back it'.'
The two leaders agreed to 'keep the show on the road' and officials began talking again yesterday morning.
There were reports Mrs May was considering pulling the votes, to the fury of MPs.
Former Tory minister Nick Boles, one of the leading opponents of No Deal, wrote on Twitter that he was 'sure' the PM would honour her promises, adding – in a clear threat – 'If she doesn't she will forfeit the confidence of the House of Commons.'
Mr Boles, along with another former Tory minister Oliver Letwin and Labour's Yvette Cooper, were ready to move. An alliance of Labour MPs and Tory rebels would try to seize control of the Parliamentary timetable and force Mrs May to extend Article 50.
Meanwhile, potential candidates for the Tory leadership continued their public peacocking. Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, made a thinly disguised leadership pitch with a speech on social mobility to a think tank. Asked if he wanted to be Tory leader, he replied: 'Never say never.'
A second call from Mr Juncker at lunchtime was a sign of progress, but when, shortly afterwards, Irish ambassador Simon Coveney suggested Mrs May would by flying to Strasbourg last night, this was news to those in No 10. Mid afternoon, Mrs May gave a reading at Westminster Abbey at a service to mark Commonwealth Day. The passage from 1 Corinthians could have been a plea for Tory unity. 'The body does not consist of one member but of many... If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.'
Talks were still going on to finalise the deal as Mrs May left Downing Street shortly after 5pm to board the Royal Flight. One senior source said it was 'not impossible they [the EU] say no' on landing.
Assuming they don't, the deal faces two further hurdles today. First the DUP, the Northern Irish party whose veto would surely be its death knell. One Cabinet source last night said they were keen to 'find a way out'.
Second is the European Research Group of hardline Eurosceptics, which has set up a 'star chamber' of senior lawyers to pass judgment on what has become known as 'Cox's Codpiece'.
Mrs May will hope to peel off enough MPs to get the deal over the line. But if it fails, she will have nowhere to turn.
As one senior adviser put it. 'This is our last roll of the dice.'
 
Philip Hammond last night laid down the gauntlet to Tory leadership hopefuls to prove they can avoid becoming 'Theresa May Mk II' on Brexit.
The Chancellor said the challenge for all the candidates was to show how they would escape the 'holding pattern' Mrs May became stuck in - and urged them to back a negotiated Brexit.
He said MPs should 'stop pontificating, get off their high horses' and accept the compromises that a deal with the EU entailed.
'My challenge to all of the candidates is: Explain to me how you will avoid becoming Theresa May mark II, stuck in a holding pattern,' he said in an interview with BBC Newsnight.
'An extension of time to try to renegotiate, when the EU have already said they have finished the negotiation and, indeed, have disbanded their negotiating team, strikes me as a not very auspicious policy.'
Mr Hammond said neither no deal nor no Brexit was an 'acceptable outcome'.
'No deal would be catastrophic for the country and the economy and no Brexit would be seen as a gross breach of faith with the public, with the electorate, and would undermine our political system.'
'So we as democrats and we as parliamentarians should be absolutely clear that we cannot tolerate either of those outcomes.'
'We have a solemn obligation to find a solution which avoids both of those outcomes. That means that even at this late stage, a deal.'
He urged MPs to 'stop pontificating, get off their high horses and understand that we will all have to give up something to get to a deal that will work.'
'We will all be grumpy about it, we will all be dissatisfied. But in many ways that is the only way forward for the country,' he added.
 
Just over two years ago, I was delighted when the Tories elected their second woman prime minister. 
Fast forward to today and for similar reasons I feel equally regretful to say that I believe Theresa May, if she doesn't choose to resign, must be replaced and quickly.
The writing was on the wall when, entirely unnecessarily, she committed one of the biggest blunders in modern British political history. 
What was quickly called the 'dementia tax' – a controversial plan to shake up the way elderly care is funded – wasn't just a shock to millions of voters, but appalled nearly every Tory minister, too.
Mrs May thought she was just dropping another policy into the party's 2017 election manifesto, but she was actually dropping a political bomb on to her party's parliamentary majority and the careers and lifetime ambitions of many Tory candidates. 
She didn't even ask her own health and local government ministers if they thought it was a good idea. It wasn't, of course. It was a titanically awful idea.
It blew up in Mrs May's face, has prolonged Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party because he wasn't crushed at the election, and ended the Tories' control both of Parliament and the Brexit process.
To her credit, Mrs May took personal responsibility for the fiasco and told a post-election gathering of my fellow Conservative MPs that she'd caused the mess and she would dig the Government out of it. 
I was content to give her the benefit of the doubt at that time, but no longer. I've changed my mind because, while Mrs May overhauled her Downing Street inner circle, she hasn't changed her ways. In fact, she has just gone and repeated the mistake of the dementia tax debacle.
Her Chequers plan for Brexit was put together secretly, without the knowledge or input of her key ministers. And it's déjà vu all over again.
Leavers and Remainers throughout the country oppose what emerged from her Downing Street bunker. Brussels isn't happy either – rejecting the plan last week. She has lost support in the polls. She's lost experienced ministers after they resigned in despair; she has lost MPs, both Leave and Remain supporters, and the nation has lost vital time in the negotiating window.
The PM seems completely blind to the consequences of playing the team game of politics in such a presidential way.
She announced that she'd be taking personal charge of the final stages of the Brexit process. Given the explosive nature of what she generates in her Downing Street bunker, I fear Brussels will bounce her into another big mistake in the final stages of negotiations.
I wish I hadn't reached this conclusion about her, and I don't for a moment pretend that Mrs May doesn't have major qualities. I admire her doggedness, as most of the nation does. It stems from the ethos of public service she learned from her father, a clergyman. And she has done many good things in No.10. 
Her response to the poisoning scandal in Salisbury was a lesson in statesmanship, for example. An Iron Lady moment.
Overall, however, in a country that is as complex as ours, during times that are so challenging and given Brexit negotiations that matter so much, it's vital we have a Government of all the talents and not just one. She really does exhibit a worrying disdain for the ideas of too many others.
While I was not a great fan of George Osborne, his Northern Powerhouse project was truly of one-nation potential, but she's downgraded it. 
She has rejected, or shown no interest in, the many good ideas that Vote Leave campaigners deployed to help win the referendum – such as cutting VAT on fuel. 
And she hardly uses Twitter, which is odd given that David Cameron exploited it so well, and he was the master communicator. 
If we are to prevent a disastrous Jeremy Corbyn premiership, we have no time to lose. Voters won't believe us if we wait until the eve of the next election to make promises of change and trot out the tired line that we have lessons to learn.
We need a PM who will trust their Chancellor to deliver tax reform; a PM who'll back a housing minister to end the crisis in affordable homes.
What we need is a premier who isn't afraid of bold change, because if Tories don't deliver change, the nation will turn to Jeremy Corbyn or some other populist figure to find it.
My own choice for leader is Boris Johnson. Yes, many MPs nurturing their own political ambitions don't want him, because like Churchill, he will run and run. But he was the man who delivered Brexit. (Sorry, Nigel Farage, it really wasn't you).
And it matters to Boris that the promises made in that campaign – especially on NHS spending and immigration control – are met as quickly and fully as possible.
His loud critics who say they'll leave the party if he succeeds Mrs May remind me of celebrities who insist they'll leave the country if a general election result isn't to their liking. Most end up staying.
Boris would need to put big figures from all wings of the party in top jobs, and preferably put Sajid Javid into No.11 – he is a man with vision and unparalleled fiscal ability. Boris won the Labour city of London twice, and delivered. During his time at City Hall, knife crime did not explode. Infrastructure projects such as Crossrail and the Olympics did not veer off course. Millions rallied to his call to back Brexit.
I've walked down many streets with politicians but Boris is the only one who has rock star status, and the only time I've been mobbed was with him.
He's the man to seize the opportunities of Brexit and not drown in its short-term complexities.
I know he wants to give practical help for people who can't afford a home and lack any job security – and put those policies at the heart of Government.
Tory MPs and other seemingly implacable opponents of the former foreign secretary need to dwell on that. We have almost run out of time. We have weeks to save the country – and Brexit.
Theresa May has to go, and MPs have to put personal ambition aside, do the right thing and put Boris to the membership to vote. 
Yesterday, he extended his lead as the preferred next party leader among Tory members, according to a poll for the website ConservativeHome.
If we don't act, the winner will be Corbyn and the extremist groups that, throughout his political lifetime, he has befriended. No Tory should allow themselves to be an accomplice to that for the sake of their own personal ambition.
 
The latest scare story surrounding the prospect of a No-Deal Brexit is the collapse of the pet passport scheme.
According to papers drawn up by the Government, owners may have to plan three months ahead if they intend to take their pets abroad.
Given that Britain is a nation of animal lovers, ministers fear that this will alarm the public and could swing sentiment in favour of staying in the EU.
As the rules now stand, it is relatively easy to obtain a pet passport for travel within Europe. Provided the animal has been vaccinated and either microchipped or tattooed, one can be issued at fairly short notice. But if a deal is not reached, owners could face a mountain of extra bureaucracy.
The particular aspect of this story which caught my eye is that such passports are currently only available for dogs, cats and ferrets.
Eh?
Just run that by me again. Doggies and moggies I can understand.
But ferrets?
Who takes a ferret on holiday with them? And where do they take them — Cap Ferret, on the French Riviera?
I have visions of ferrets in fashionable Vilebrequin swimwear, sinking Pina Coladas down by the swimming pool — like those meerkats in the television adverts.
Whoever heard of anyone microchipping a ferret? Perhaps they get them tattooed instead, so that your average ferret now resembles a typical Premier League footballer.
To be honest, I had absolutely no idea that people kept ferrets as domestic pets, although I am familiar with the ancient sport of ‘ferret legging’, which remains popular in the North of England — especially in those constituencies where support for Brexit is strongest.
For the uninitiated, this popular country pursuit is said to have originated in Yorkshire among coal miners anxious to prove their masculinity.
Contestants traditionally wear loose-fitting trousers, tied at the ankles with string. Underpants are forbidden. On the command of the judges, each player drops two ferrets down the front of his strides, which are then fastened tightly with a belt to prevent escape.
The trousers must be as loose as possible to allow the ferrets maximum freedom of movement. It is a test of endurance, and competitors are often bitten severely before throwing in the towel.
For years, the world record was five hours and 26 minutes, set in 1981 by Reg Mellor from Barnsley.
Five years later, Mellor attempted to break six hours — the ‘four-minute mile’ of ferret legging — but was forced to retire with ‘his dignity and manhood intact’, according to contemporary reports. In 2010, the record was broken by retired headmaster Frank Bartlett, from Staffordshire, who held out for five hours and 30 minutes.
No one has bettered this time, although attempts have been made in Australia and the USA. From what I can gather, ferret legging is confined largely to the Anglosphere.
So why anyone would want to take a ferret across the Channel is something of a mystery — unless Comcast, the new owners of Sky TV, intend to establish a European Ferret Legging Super League to challenge BT Sport’s monopoly over UEFA football.
Coincidentally, it was ferret legging which gave rise to the expression ‘Reverse Ferret’, immortalised by my old friend Kelvin MacKenzie, briefly of this parish. When he was editor of The Sun, Kelvin believed it was the job of his journalists to ‘stick a ferret down the trousers’ of public figures he felt deserved to be made as uncomfortable as possible.
The ‘ferret down the trousers’ treatment could be meted out for a variety of reasons, from advancing an unpopular policy to indulging in a little extra-curricular rumpy-pumpy.
Occasionally, following a shift in public opinion — or, more likely, a phone call from The Sun’s proprietor — it was necessary to perform a 180-degree turn.
In which event, Kelvin would issue the instruction: Reverse Ferret!
No further explanation was necessary. The expression has since entered the language. Thus, any newspaper which has a sudden change in its editorial stance is said to have executed a Reverse Ferret.
The same goes for any organisation which turns a previous policy on its head. In recent years, everyone from Call Me Dave to the Republican Party in America and the Church of England has been accused of resorting out of expediency to the old Reverse Ferret.
It’s the only sensible course of action when there is nowhere else to go. Mother Theresa would do well to take note. There’s a moral in all this.
Even she must finally realise that her stubborn ‘my deal or no deal’ is dead in the water, following her humiliation in Salzburg.
The EU won’t swallow her Chequers car crash, nor will the country, nor will Parliament, nor will her own Cabinet.
Instead of sticking a pair of ferrets down the front of her designer leather trousers and hoping for the best, she should face up to reality and perform a swift handbrake turn, before the animal lovers of Britain rise up and bring Brexit crashing down to earth.
As Albert Einstein said: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
She’s already been badly bitten. It’s time for the full Reverse Ferret.
 Ooh Betty... I'm the Bodyguard
Well, that’s six-and-a-quarter hours of my life I’ll never get back. For once, I thought that I’d better watch the latest BBC blockbuster series to see what all the fuss was about.
Admittedly, the opening half hour of the first episode of Bodyguard was gripping, but after that it was all downhill.
Jed Mercurio’s Line Of Duty is superb, yet his latest effort was an over-hyped parcel of tosh, an ocean-going insult to your intelligence. I’m astonished so much praise has been heaped upon it.
Either he phoned it in, he’s trying too hard to shock, he’s run out of road, or he was taking the proverbial.
The dialogue was hackneyed, the plot preposterous and the twists about as convincing as a Tom and Jerry cartoon, with more red herrings than a Russian trawler.
This ‘deep state’ conspiracy nonsense has been done so much better, so many times before. Think Edge Of Darkness and The Whistle Blower — and they were made in the mid-Eighties.
At least the last episode had me laughing out loud, especially the ludicrous scene where Dave Budd was strapped to a suicide belt in the middle of a London garden square.
Budd should have been played by Michael Crawford, as Frank Spencer, with Michele Dotrice as his wife, Betty.
It reminded me of the wonderful episode of Some Mothers at the holiday camp, where Frank’s ‘Vesuvius’ fireworks backpack went off by accident.
‘Don’t shoot. I’ll pay for any damage.’
 One of the storylines in Bodyguard involved a secret file of kompromat —compromising material detailing crimes and misdemeanours committed by the fictional Prime Minister.
This got me wondering what dirt the Funny People might have on our real-life politicians.
Given that Mother Theresa claims to have done nothing more dangerous than running through a cornfield, I can’t imagine there’s much on her.
As for the rest of them, we already know about their expenses fiddles and tax avoidance. Sex scandals have brought down more than one minister. Boris’s love life is an open book and we’re only too well aware of Corbyn’s dalliances with terrorists and Communists.
What else is there? I hate to think.
 
Our Civil Service is the most neutral and even-handed in the world. 
When it comes to Brexit, there isn’t the tiniest piece of evidence that our mandarins are stacking the cards or displaying any bias.
This is what three highly agitated former heads of the Civil Service assert after the leak last week of a Whitehall report which suggested that, under every imaginable scenario, Britain post-Brexit will be significantly poorer than it would be if it stayed in the EU.
What is striking about the irate response of the three ex-mandarins is that it is anything but balanced and fair-minded.
If you were looking for evidence that our senior civil servants are obsessively wedded to the EU, you could do no better than listen to Lords O’Donnell, Turnbull and Butler.
Extreme
According to Gus O’Donnell, Cabinet Secretary under Tony Blair and David Cameron, accusations that Whitehall is in any way trying to sabotage Brexit are ‘completely crazy’. 
He said of Brexiteers: ‘If you are selling snake oil, you don’t like experts testing your products.’ In other words, Leavers are charlatans.
His predecessor, Andrew Turnbull, was even more extreme, accusing Leave supporters of using tactics similar to those employed by the Nazis in the Thirties. 
He compared their claims about the Civil Service with the myth of the ‘stab-in-the-back’ perpetuated by the German Right years after their country’s defeat in World War I, which heaped the blame for that loss on unpatriotic civilians on the home front. 
Pretty wild stuff.
Lord Butler — Cabinet Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Blair — contented himself with the observation that ‘rabid Brexiteers’ were seeking to ‘intimidate’ the Civil Service.
These hysterical and offensive rejoinders — not at all normal mandarin-speak — were provoked by what seems to me a perfectly reasonable suggestion, which is that last week’s leaked report was partisan. 
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has been berated for accusing officials of ‘fiddling the figures’.
Why is this deemed by some Remainers to be such an outrageous suggestion? 
Methinks these three former mandarins do protest too much! 
Both before the June 2016 Referendum on the EU, and also before the Iraq war, there were many examples of the Civil Service being far from neutral.
Everyone can remember how, in the event of people voting to leave the EU, the Treasury foresaw ‘an immediate and profound economic shock’, which would supposedly drive the UK into an immediate recession, cause unemployment to rise by 500,000 and necessitate an emergency Budget.
A majority of voters ignored the apocalyptic warnings. But none of these dreadful things happened. 
There has been no economic shock, unemployment has continued to fall and there was no emergency Budget.
Any self-respecting fortune-teller who erred so spectacularly might seek another line of business. 
Not so the Treasury, a redoubt of anti-Brexit sentiment and the mainspring of last week’s leaked report. 
Despite having got its predictions so badly wrong, it has dusted off the same old defective crystal ball.
Wouldn’t a degree of humility be in order after so calamitous a mistake? Apparently not. 
Although last time Whitehall was unable to foresee events a few months ahead with any accuracy, it now feels free to predict the state of the economy (not good, in its estimation) in 15 years’ time.
This is obviously a nonsense because there are so many unknowable variables. No one sitting at a desk in Whitehall can have any idea how much the economies of the EU will grow — or contract — over this period, or how the rest of the world will fare, or how successfully Britain will rise to new challenges post-Brexit.
In fact, I would submit that anyone who offers such a long-term forecast with any degree of certainty is guilty of fraudulent behaviour. 
And, of course, the clever mandarins in the Treasury realise perfectly well that it is a bogus exercise.
Have officials fiddled the figures? Let’s just say they have invested them with much more significance than is warranted. 
And I strongly suspect that this worthless report was leaked by anti-Brexit officials in order to spread doubt and foster misgivings.
Why this silly pretence — to use Gus O’Donnell’s recent phrase — that honesty and objectivity run through the core of senior civil servants ‘like a stick of rock’? 
I naturally accept that the vast majority of them are scrupulous and decent people.
But they are also partial human beings who (just look at the three gun-toting mandarins) tend overwhelmingly to be anti-Brexit. 
And yet we are asked to treat this latest dodgy report as though it were a tablet of stone discovered by Moses on Mount Sinai.
There were, in truth, lots of instances of civil servants not being neutral in the run-up to the Iraq War. 
The Blair Government deceived the British people in various ways, but it could not have done so without the co-operation of senior civil servants.
Pressure
The dossier of September 2002, making the case for the invasion of Iraq, may have been strengthened (or ‘sexed up’) at the behest of Tony Blair and his sidekick Alistair Campbell, but this happened with the assistance of senior civil servants, including John Scarlett, then head of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Equally, when Campbell issued the duplicitous ‘dodgy dossier’ in February 2003 — it rehashed long-published material by an Iraqi dissident which it passed off as being new and fresh — he had to rely on the collaboration of civil servants. 
Were they being neutral and impartial? I think not.
Then there was the legal advice of Lord Goldsmith, the Labour Attorney-General, before the war. 
At first he deemed it illegal but then, after apparent pressure from Tony Blair, changed his mind. 
Senior civil servants were undoubtedly involved in what looks like a deception.
To her eternal credit one of them, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, resigned as a senior Foreign Office lawyer on the eve of the invasion, believing it to be illegal. 
On the other hand, her immediate boss, Sir Michael Wood, did not admit until seven years later that he had thought military action was unlawful. 
Why didn’t he say so at the time?
I’m afraid there’s plenty of evidence of senior civil servants being manipulated, or leant on, or willingly and knowingly colluding with ministers and other officials before the Iraq War. 
Such behaviour does not accord with Lord O’Donnell’s strange conception of all officials having honesty and objectivity running through them ‘like a stick of rock’.
Prejudices
By the way, it is worth mentioning the name of the head of the Civil Service before and during the Iraq War, since he should surely assume some responsibility for the shenanigans that went on. 
It was none other than Lord Turnbull, who now disgracefully compares some Brexiteers to Nazis.
I’m happy to accept that our Civil Service remains one of the most incorruptible in the world and, for all its faults, is reasonably competent. 
But it is simply childish to pretend that its undeniable prejudices on Brexit and other issues are somehow beside the point.
If you don’t believe me, listen to Lord Kerslake, another former head of the Civil Service, who veered away from the party line last year in criticising the Treasury’s poor record at forecasting.
He warned of ‘the specific need to re-establish the department’s [i.e. the Treasury’s] credibility in terms of the impartiality of its advice’.
With Bob Kerslake — whose own stick of rock has ‘Whitehall loyalist’ stamped into it — accepting that the Treasury has lost the plot, why should the rest of us take its forecasts with any seriousness?
No, it can’t be trusted. 
The next time Whitehall leaks an anti-Brexit report, my advice to Leavers and sensible Remainers alike is not to take a blind bit of notice, and throw the damned thing unceremoniously into the bin. 
Snow job. With the white stuff blowing in from the North Sea, a faintly downbeat Jeremy Corbyn went to Coventry to signal capitulation to Brussels. His speech was a flurry of contradictions.
He opposed spending cuts, yet wanted the national deficit to drop faster. He moaned about 'jingoistic posturing' and 'xenophobia' by Conservatives, yet won a round of kneejerk applause from a smallish crowd simply by attacking America. 
He fulminated against 'the global corporate elite'. Eh? They're just the sort of people who most adore the EU. 
If there had been any logic to Mr Corbyn's speech yesterday he would have attacked the Labour core voters whose views on immigration he so blithely ditched.
And in making this policy change on Brexit, he deplored what he said was the Tory tendency to 'agree something at breakfast' only to 'abandon it by teatime'. Oldest rule in politics: accuse your opponents of your own worst characteristics.
The moment Mr Corbyn shuffled into the university science-block venue, he glanced left, then straight ahead, briefly unsure how to reach the lectern. That moment of indecision arguably symbolised his uncertainty over which way to face on the EU.
Likewise, he was using an autocue and its two screens meant his head kept moving from side to side. The text nearly torpedoed him. 'Join us,' he said, 'in supporting the option of a new cake... a new UK customs union with the EU.'
There was something melancholy in the air – and not just because this was a cold Monday mid-morning in the Midlands. 
The one rather admirable thing about Mr Corbyn used to be that he stuck to his beliefs and wasn't just another Westminsteer careerist say-anything-for-power politico. He was a bold insurgent. He was different.
Yesterday, I'm afraid, he looked just as Establishment, as scheming and insincere, as the rest of them. So much for his claim that 'change is coming'. Stodgy, boring Mrs May is now the more radical of these two party leaders. Mr Corbyn has squandered his 'USP'.
Having found his way to the small stage, he stood in front of prototypes of Pod Zero driverless, gas-powered cars. 'Ultra high-tech – that's the modern Labour Party,' he quipped. 
The audience of about 100 (many of them men in the 30s and 40s) heard this in silence. 'You're supposed to laugh,' said Mr Corbyn mournfully. He was rewarded with a feathering of obedient chuckles. 
'We respect the result of the referendum,' he claimed, before proceeding at length to disown that principle. The speech lasted about 40 minutes. The longer it continued, the less enthusiastic he sounded. 
The crowd sparked a little when he mentioned the NHS, when he attacked the selfish rich and when he stood up for immigration.
In the front row sat Blairite London lawyer Sir Keir Starmer, the party's Brexit spokesman. He had his legs crossed and his left ankle was rotating hard while he fingered his chin and stared at the ceiling. Alongside squiffy-quiffed Sir Keir sat shadow minister Barry Gardiner, who until recently called a customs union 'deeply unattractive'.
And beside our Barry (he went to the same public school as me) perched robotic Rebecca Long-Bailey, a grim little operative wearing more make-up than the late Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Mr Corbyn claimed Labour's message had been 'consistent' yet a moment later he admitted 'we have developed our understanding'. Translation: 'I've been got at by the Brussels lobby who persuaded me our voters in the North of England are never going to vote for anyone else. We can ignore their peasant views.'
Questioned by a Channel 4 reporter about his political scheming, Mr Corbyn said, 'thank you for coming along'.
A dispiriting day. One's already weak belief in our politics takes another dent. But Conservatives should be emboldened. Labour's contempt for the public is now as naked as a fat Fraulein glistening with Piz Buin on the nudie dunes of Borkum. Brrrrr.
Jeremy Corbyn and his allies today insisted they have not completely ruled out a second Brexit referendum as they scramble to stop Labour imploding.  
The party's civil war has escalated dramatically after the Labour leader tried to outflank Theresa May by offering to support a Norway-style deal with the EU.
Mr Corbyn tried to woo Tory rebels by dropping his notorious ‘six tests’ which demanded that any agreement had ‘the exact same benefits’ as EU membership. 
But the move infuriated Labour Remainers, who accused him of 'enabling' Brexit - with some even threatening to quit the party.
Mr Corbyn’s letter made no mention of the idea of a second referendum. Shadow Brexit minister Matthew Pennycook was then slapped down by the leadership after he suggested the party would back another public vote if Mr Corbyn’s offer was rejected by the PM.
In an effort to quell the mutiny, senior Labour officials circulated a message to MPs last night insisting a referendum had not been ruled out.
And shadow chancellor John McDonnell said in a round of interviews today: 'The possibility, the option of another public vote is still on the table as we agreed.'  
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'In the national interest we have got to come together to secure a compromise, and then if we can’t do that, well yes, we have to go back to the people.' 
An amendment table by Labour in crunch Commons votes last week called for a referendum to be kept on the table - but only after MPs pass a deal.
Mr Corbyn's own Eurosceptic credentials have also been highlighted by a 2009 video showing him condemning the 'European empire' and complaining that referendums should not be re-run. 
Former leadership contender Owen Smith suggested he would quit the party if Mr Corbyn works with Mrs May to deliver Brexit in any form.
Asked if he could remain in the party if Labour backed a Tory Brexit deal, Mr Smith told BBC Radio Five: ‘I think that’s a very good question - and I think it’s something that I and lots of other people are considering right now.’ Mr Smith described Mr Corbyn’s stance as a ‘betrayal’, adding: ‘The truth is, we’ve got a leadership that is essentially pursing a sort of warmed-over, 1970s, Bennite view of the European Union.
‘Jeremy Corbyn has always subscribed to those views. And he is now effectively trying to acquiesce in Brexit, because ultimately he believes that Brexit will be good for our country. I think he’s wrong about that.’ 
Chuka Umunna, another former Labour frontbencher, reacted angrily to Mr Corbyn’s intervention, describing it as ‘totally demoralising’. 
He added: ‘This is not opposition, it is the facilitation of a deal which will make this country poorer. A strong, coherent Labour alternative to this shabby, Tory Brexit is absent - it has been since this Parliament began.’ 
Former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, who is pushing for a second referendum, accused Mr Corbyn of ‘offering to help a Tory government enable Brexit.’ 
Senior EU figures also seized on Mr Corbyn’s intervention as evidence that the UK could be pushed into accepting a soft Brexit. 
EU president Donald Tusk twisted the knife yesterday by telling Mrs May that Jeremy Corbyn’s plan for a soft Brexit could be a ‘promising way out of the current impasse’.
During tense talks in Brussels, Mr Tusk is said to have urged her to consider a cross-party compromise based around permanent membership of the customs union.
An EU source confirmed Mr Tusk had suggested Mr Corbyn’s plan was a ‘promising way out of the impasse.’ Joining a customs union would breach one of Mrs May’s negotiating red lines and end the dream of striking post-Brexit trade deals. Conservative chairman Brandon lewis has also warned Mrs May that siding with Labour on the issue would split the party.
Throughout the Brexit talks, Labour said it would apply six tests to the deal when deciding whether to vote for it - most importantly whether it offered the 'exact same benefits' as the single market and customs union.
The phrase was based on a quote from former Brexit Secretary David Davis. 
The tests were: 
In the new letter, Labour sets out five new demands on the future UK-EU relationship as its price for voting for the Withdrawal Agreement as drafted.
Crucially the 'exact same benefits' test is gone, demanding instead a permanent customs union and close alignment with the single market. 
Both are against Theresa May's plan 
The new demands from the Labour Party are:  
Whitehall sources said Mrs May urged Mr Tusk to look at the infighting Mr Corbyn’s plan had sparked within the Labour Party. One source said: ‘It’s clear from the reaction Corbyn’s letter has provoked that he could not deliver his party on it.’
To the alarm of ministers, Mr Corbyn’s plan attracted some support from Tory MPs backing a soft Brexit.
Mr Boles said: ‘This takes us a big step forward to a cross-party compromise.’ Sir Oliver, another supporter of a Norway-style deal, said on Twitter: ‘Hope No 10 has noticed Labour’s official support for something strikingly like Common Market 2.0/Norway Plus. This is where a cross party consensus can be formed if PM’s deal fails.’ 
Both men were involved in cross-party efforts last week to allow parliament to seize control of the Brexit process and extend Article 50.
The attempt was defeated, but MPs will get another chance to take control on February 14 when Mrs May has pledged to allow a series of votes on options for the way forward.
One ally of Mrs May last night predicted that a cross-party bid to delay Brexit would come back next week ‘but this time with a customs union attached.’  
Shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti suggested Labour could allow free movement to continue, saying: ‘We are not an anti-immigration party. If we have to negotiate on free movement in order to get the objectives set out in that letter that is what we will do.’ The move has worried some allies of the PM, who fear that it could attract the support of enough pro-EU Tories to get majority support in the Commons.  
 
Jeremy Corbyn has been warned he will have to explain to Labour voters why he is betraying the referendum by voting against crucial Brexit laws.
The Labour leader confirmed today he would impose strict orders on MPs to vote against the Government's flagship Repeal Bill, which copies EU rules into British law. 

Although the government is still expected to win as Tory backbenchers are not likely to rebel at second reading, the move sets the stage for a bitter battle later in the process - as Theresa May tries to force the crucial measures through parliament without an overall majority.
Brexit Secretary David Davis used a major statement in the Commons to warn Labour MPs they would have to 'face their constituents' if they voted against the crucial Brexit laws on Monday night. 
Labour MP Kate Hoey said in the Commons: 'Whilst people might have difficulties with parts of it... anyone who votes against the principle of the second reading is really betraying the will of the British people?'
It came as a former minister predicted that Labour will end up backing a second referendum on Brexit terms. 
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The crucial EU Withdrawal Bill - which paves the way for Brexit by transferring Brussels law on to domestic statute books - is due to come before the House of Commons on Thursday, with the second reading vote on Monday.
Just a handful of rebel Tory MPs could inflict humiliating and catastrophic defeat on Theresa May if joined by Labour and the SNP. 
However, Conservative Remainers are set to keep their powder dry for the committee stage of the bill, when hundreds of amendments could be tabled.
A Labour party spokesman said: 'Labour fully respects the democratic decision to leave the European Union, voted to trigger Article 50 and backs a jobs-first Brexit with full tariff-free access to the European single market.
'But as democrats we cannot vote for a Bill that unamended would let government ministers grab powers from parliament to slash people's rights at work and reduce protection for consumers and the environment.
'Parliament has already voted to leave the European Union. But the government's EU Withdrawal Bill would allow Conservative ministers to set vital terms on a whim, including of Britain's exit payment, without democratic scrutiny.
'Nobody voted in last year's referendum to give this Conservative government sweeping powers to change laws by the back door. The slogan of the Leave campaign was about people taking back control and restoring powers to parliament.
'This power-grab Bill would do the opposite. It would allow the government to seize control from the parliament that the British people have just elected.'
In the Commons Mr Davis agreed with Labour's critics that a No vote on Monday would 'betray they wishes of the British people'.
He said: 'They will have to face their own constituents - their own constituents who voted to leave.
'This is a practical Bill designed to protect the interests of British business and British citizens. That is what it is there for and nothing else.'  
Tory MP Luke Hall said: 'This is the Bill that gives effect to the referendum result by ending the supremacy of the EU over British Law.
'This reckless threat to vote against the Bill, without presenting any alternative approach, risks defying the result of the referendum, and risks the most chaotic of Brexit scenarios – where our legal systems and institutions cannot function from day one of our exit.' 
In an interview with the New Statesman, Lord Adonis said he was convinced Labour would come round to supporting a second referendum.
'Once Labour's in favour it's only a matter of time before the government has to concede … I would be very surprised if we're not committed to a referendum on the exit terms within six months,' he said. 
'The thing I only always learned from Tony [Blair] is 'get the policy right and the politics will follow'. The right policy is a referendum on the exit terms, the politics will sort itself out.' 
Labour former Cabinet Lord Mandelson said yesterday that his party was preparing for 'trench warfare', warning that the Upper House was in no mood to allow the legislation through unamended.
'Ministers, lacking a clear majority, will enter the minefield of the 'repeal bill' with the opposition benches more united against them,' Lord Mandelson wrote in the Times.
'This paves the way for serious, gruelling political trench warfare. It also means that only a small rebellion by Conservatives would be needed to defeat the government and force them to change course.
'The House of Lords, which feels emboldened given the government's electoral failure in June, will likewise make sure it has its say.'


Jeremy Corbyn last night said he would press for Britain to remain in a customs union and protect workers' rights as he agreed to talks with Theresa May to break the Brexit deadlock.
The Labour leader said he was 'very happy' to sit down with the Prime Minister in an attempt to agree a plan that allows the country to leave the EU with a deal.
Mr Corbyn stressed that he would take a list of demands including a move towards a softer Brexit and increased worker protections. But he appeared to have dropped his call for a second referendum – not mentioning it in his list.
Mr Corbyn said he would not set any 'limits' ahead of the meeting, but added: 'Labour has put forward our proposals to ensure there is a customs union with the EU, access to vital markets and protections of our standards of consumer, environmental and workers' rights – and we'll ensure that those are on the table.
'We're also very clear that there has to be an absolute guarantee that the Good Friday Agreement is maintained for peace in Northern Ireland.'
He added: 'So far, the Prime Minister hasn't shown much sign of compromise, but I'm pleased that today she's indicated she'll accept the view of Parliament and is prepared to reach out and have that discussion.'
Mr Corbyn said he recognised that Mrs May had 'made a move' and he had a 'responsibility to represent the people who supported Labour in the last election and the people who didn't support Labour but nevertheless want certainty and security for their own future'.
He insisted: 'That's the basis on which we will meet her and have those discussions.'
But he also warned that Labour would 'hold in reserve' the option of tabling a confidence motion in the Government if it 'proves it is incapable of commanding a majority in the House of Commons'.
Mr Corbyn's agreement to meet Mrs May comes less than a fortnight after he was accused of 'extraordinary, juvenile' behaviour by walking out of a crucial Brexit meeting with her because Labour defector Chuka Umunna was also in the room.
As a member of the breakaway Independent Group, Mr Umunna had been invited by the PM along with other opposition representatives. Mr Corbyn's refusal to be in the same room was contrasted with his previous willingness to sit with members of the terror group Hamas – when he went as far as calling them his 'friends'. He explained his reluctance to join the former Labour MP at the meeting by complaining that Mr Umunna 'wasn't a proper party leader'. But critics slammed such behaviour at a time when Britain's future was hanging in the balance.
Mr Corbyn last night faced pressure from some of his MPs to maintain his demand for a second referendum.
Labour MP Alex Sobel, who is part of the Best for Britain campaign, warned that the party should not help deliver the PM's deal.
He said: 'This would be a leap in the dark when we know the crucial negotiations on our future relationship would end up in the hands of a future Tory leader who won't be bound by her promises.
'We cannot be bounced into any sort of botched Brexit in fear of investing a bit more time in really getting this right. A bad Brexit could destroy British industries and our hard-won workers' rights.' 
Here in Babel we had a five-hour gymkhana of babble and blether as anti-Brexit backbenchers considered asserting themselves.
You might as well ask a gaggle of Mediterranean gravy waiters to bring a jumbo jet in to land at Heathrow. Left a bit, right a bit, keep straight – prrrrrrrang.
Prang it they duly did, and the evening ended well for the Government. All but one vote went their way, and the lost one was non-binding.
Tory Remainer Heidi Allen was wearing her sad, pouty face. Justine Greening blinked back tears after some (unsuccessful) pressure from Tory Whips.
She and her fellow Europhiles Antoinette Sandbach and Stephen Crabb just sat on their backsides, glowering as Chief Whip Julian Smith spoke to them. It had been like that much of the day. Voices, voices, raised and infuriated, bellowed as they told each other how to do it.
Peak madness was reached during Jeremy Corbyn’s astoundingly bad speech. I have never known such prolonged tumult or seen an Opposition Leader so lose hold of the House.
Even crazier, Mr Corbyn was blown off-course by his own side. Angela Smith (Lab, Penistone & Stocksbridge) repeatedly tried to intervene on her leader’s speech. He wanted nothing to do with her – she’s a Blairite. Ms Smith held her arms wide like the Angel of the North. Conservative MPs shouted ‘behind you!’ at Mr Corbyn.
Then he said he wanted to stay in a customs union. Theresa May leapt up to inquire what parts of a union he could accept. He hadn’t a clue! He turned to Sir Keir Starmer, his Brexit spokesman, for help but Mrs May spotted that and mocked it.
Not that she herself was much cop when she opened the debate just before 2pm. Stuttery, prosaic, she boasted that the Commons had recently ‘renewed its confidence in Her Majesty’s Government’. A more honest way of saying that might have been: ‘I scraped through a no-confidence vote.’
As she plodded through her speech, up popped the usual suspects, wearisome minnows whose worn routines make any sane onlooker yearn to clang them over the nut with a copper bedpan.
Here, along with later speakers such as legal osh-gosh-gobbler (sorry, ‘senior lawyer’) Joanna Cherry of the SNP, suavely disingenuous Ed Vaizey, and of course the bent goblin Bercow overseeing it all from his discredited Throne, was the so-called cream of our representative politics. And these over-proud jobbernowls want to run our nation’s affairs, turning themselves into an executive.
The Cooper woman wobbled her head and talked to us like a nursery matron giving us potty drill. The Letwin man, all twirly mannerisms as he fnarrred about ‘constitutional process’, fretted about his party’s share of the vote – and then said he would vote with Labour.
Doddery Vince Cable came over all Corporal Jones and spoke of ‘panic’ if Brexit was not diluted. Dominic Grieve was his usual odd mix of oil and vinegar, a French Legion d’Honneur dressing.
Nick Boles (Con, Grantham & Stamford), who had joined with La Cooper to try to delay Brexit, spoke of his ‘conscience’ and insisted he did not wish to prevent Leave. Just as well he wasn’t on oath when he said that.
Amazing that it’s the Eurosceptics – the ones actually trying to honour the referendum vote – who are spoken of as ‘ultras’.
Frank Field (Ind, Birkenhead) thought the day should be shortened to prevent Parliament doing itself damage. Too late, Frank. So many of these voices busied themselves in self-promotion, in scorning their foes and in dissing the democratic vote. Hyperbole by the hundredweight.
Yet part of me rejoiced at it, for with each such set-to in our citadel, voters discern ever more clearly the bankruptcy of so much in the stinking parade.
Come the votes, that Labour lad from Sheffield Hallam sauntered round in black T-shirt and jeans. Boris Johnson and David Davis, beside each other, nodded like mafia dons as they heard the defeat of the Cooper-Boles delay gambit. Chief Whip Smith and his deputy, Pincher, conspired in a corner. Someone should paint those two.
And the Brady amendment was passed, significantly, with a heftier majority than the non-binding Spelman effort.
Brexit feels closer, a little safer. That it has even been in doubt is the disgrace.  
Make no mistake. Jeremy Corbyn may have told the Commons last night that the prospect of No Deal is a ‘catastrophe’ and would lead to ‘chaos’.
But I am convinced that those were merely weasel words designed for public consumption, whereas the truth is that the Labour leader secretly yearns for no deal. He sees the prospect of Britain crashing out of the EU with No Deal as a godsend.
It offers him the opportunity to destroy the democratic political system that has served this country so well for centuries.
He and his comrades believe they could sweep to power and replace it with the kind of full-blooded socialist revolution, along the lines of the one that Vladimir Lenin inspired in the Soviet Union, that has long been their dream.
The reason I say this and believe that Mr Corbyn was speaking last night with forked tongue is because of what I learned during a private conversation with someone with very close links with Mr Corbyn’s inner circle.
Until Tony Blair stepped down as Labour leader in 2007, I was proud to be a member of the party.
I chaired my local branch and worked at the Commons as an adviser to a former Labour Cabinet Minister.
Despite having left the party some time ago, I still have many friends in it, including some with strong contacts with Jeremy Corbyn’s team, and I meet up with them from time to time.
It was at one such meeting, attended by a senior Labour figure with access to Mr Corbyn’s acolytes, that I discovered the thinking behind the Labour leader’s whole approach to Brexit.
Chaos is exactly what he wants. And a No-Deal Brexit would be the swiftest way to achieve that. To Mr Corbyn and his fellow socialists and Marxists who run today’s Labour Party, chaos is the pre-requisite to achieving revolution.
As well as doing everything he can in Parliament to bring about the fall of the May Government, all his energies are directed at trying to bring about his lifelong wish for a social revolution. Mr Corbyn, his director of communications Seumas Milne, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and their allies are now convinced they are on the brink of achieving it.
Crucially, therefore, they are playing a game which they hope will end with Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal – regardless of all the ‘catastrophic’ damage that he last night warned it would cause the country.
Indeed, they are revelling in the idea of post-Brexit havoc, for which they would then put all the blame on the Tories. This explains why Labour’s parliamentary tactics have appeared so confusing.
True, like him, Corbyn’s supporters say in public that they fear a No Deal would be a disaster. But such concern is two-faced because they would be perfectly happy if it happens – if they can’t have a general election instead.
The economic downturn, social unrest, medicine and food shortages and street protests widely predicted after a No-Deal Brexit all fit perfectly into their Leninist prescription for revolution.
For Corbynistas, this offers a once-in-a-lifetime moment. The Soviet leader believed that a revolution only happens when a number of factors come together and when four key conditions are met. First, a country facing a serious crisis sees its ruling class no longer able to govern and it splits into different factions.
Second, Lenin said that the middle class had to start losing faith in the prevailing political system. This is where Labour’s wish for No-Deal chaos fits in. If the Government cannot secure basic foods for people and there are queues outside shops and even riots on the streets, the opportunity opens for revolution.
Third, the working class has to realise that it must challenge and fight existing political structures as the only way of guaranteeing survival. This is the classic blueprint of revolutionary socialism that John McDonnell and his ilk have preached all their adult lives. In 2010, for example, he described rioting students as ‘the best of our movement’. The following year he criticised a jail sentence given to a student who had thrown a fire extinguisher from a roof during those riots, almost hitting a police officer. ‘Actually, he’s not the criminal,’ said Mr McDonnell. ‘We have got to encourage direct action in any form it can possibly take.’
Lenin’s fourth pre-condition was the presence of a Marxist leadership of the workers’ movement. This is precisely what is offered by Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. As Mr McDonnell has put it, street action is real democracy. He has said: ‘You can’t change the world through the parliamentary system.’ This view was stressed in a foreword he wrote to a pamphlet by a Trotskyite group called Permanent Revolution. He supported what were described as ‘timely’ proposals which included demands for a ‘militant movement’ to carry out a ‘revolution’ and overthrow the Government.
The document also advocated for the working class to be ‘armed’ and for the Army and police to be replaced. Indeed, Mr McDonnell and his fellow comrades have never made a secret of the fact that they see membership of the Labour Party as ‘a tactic’ to advance revolutionary socialism.
Ultimately, all this explains why Mr Corbyn is reluctant to offer any plausible alternative to Mrs May’s deal. It also explains his visceral antipathy to the idea of a second referendum.
Although he claims he wants those in the party’s grassroots – the majority of whom are clamouring for a second vote on EU membership – to decide Labour policy, this would not necessarily get rid of the Tory Government or secure a Leninist revolution.
For hundreds of years, the greatest strength of this country’s democracy has been that, even in wartime or during periods of strife such as the 1978-9 Winter of Discontent, Parliament has been a bulwark against chaos.
However, considering MPs’ behaviour over recent months, that bulwark can no longer be relied upon. Its removal offers Mr Corbyn an opportunity he’s been craving ever since becoming an MP in 1983. Not for nothing has he described Lenin’s mentor Karl Marx as a ‘great economist’ or why Mr McDonnell says Das Kapital is his favourite book.
 
Jeremy Corbyn delivered a Brexit ultimatum to Theresa May yesterday in his keynote party conference speech.
The Labour leader said he wanted to ‘reach out’ to Mrs May and offer her Labour’s support – provided she keeps Britain in a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
But Mr Corbyn, whose party is racked by divisions over Brexit, faced accusations of hypocrisy after he warned he would side with hardline Eurosceptics to defeat the Chequers deal unless she accepts his terms.
The gambit came as Mr Corbyn set out the most Left-wing agenda adopted by any major party in decades – and declared he was ready to be prime minister. He claimed Labour had ‘defined the new common sense’ and become ‘the new political mainstream’ with ‘an alternative to the politics of austerity, of social division and of international conflict’. 
In an hour-long speech, he:
Labour’s conference has been marred by divisions over Brexit, with shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer squabbling publicly over whether the party should keep alive the option of staying in the EU in a second referendum.
Mr Corbyn, a lifelong Eurosceptic, made no mention of a second referendum. Instead, he spBut yesterday, Mr Corbyn appeared to abandon the ‘six tests’ set by Sir Keir as the benchmark for any deal.
Instead, he said he was prepared to back Mrs May if she signs up to a customs union and pledges not to use Brexit to lower standards and workers’ rights in the UK.
He mocked Eurosceptic Tories, saying they ‘unite the politics of the 1950s with the economics of the 19th Century’. However, he said Labour would vote with them in the Commons to defeat the Chequers deal unless Mrs May backs down.
‘As it stands, Labour will vote against the Chequers plan or whatever is left of it and oppose leaving the EU with no deal,’ he said, adding that it would be ‘a piece of cake’ for Labour to negotiate a deal with Brussels.
In a direct message to Mrs May, he said: ‘If you deliver a deal that includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, if you protect jobs, people’s rights at work and environmental and consumer standards – then we will support that sensible deal.’
The move is designed to reassure Labour’s Brexit supporters that the party has not betrayed them, despite opening the door this week to a second referendum.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith last night said it was a cynical move that could never be accepted by Mrs May. Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘This is … designed to confuse people into thinking Labour supports Brexit. He knows very well she is not going to sign up to the customs union.’
The customs union allows EU nations to trade with each other without tariffs on goods – and to impose common tariffs on those from countries outside their union.
Mr Corbyn said he would demand a general election if the Brexit talks collapse, calling the idea of a no deal exit ‘inconceivable’.
To terrace-style chants of ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’, he said he would deliver ‘a real alternative … a radical plan to rebuild and transform our country.’
He denounced what he called ‘greed-is-good capitalism’, which led to the financial crash of 2008.
Mr Corbyn described privatisation as a ‘disaster zone’ and said cuts to local government amounted to ‘social vandalism’. But he made no mention of the crippling deficit left behind by the last Labour government.
Today Mr Corbyn will travel to Brussels for talks with the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.
Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn has shown at every turn he is unfit to govern.
‘All he offers are failed ideas that didn’t work in the past and would leave working families paying the price with higher taxes, more debt and more waste – just like last time.’
 
The European Union has put forward a plan to effectively split Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK after Brexit.
A leaked European Commission document, which emerged yesterday, suggested Northern Ireland must effectively remain in the Single Market and the Customs Union if a hard border is to be avoided on the island.
A furious UK Brexit Secretary David Davis immediately said his country could not possibly consider a solution that would jeopardise the 'constitutional and economic integrity of the UK'.
'Let me be clear: this cannot amount to creating a new border within the United Kingdom,' he said.
He was speaking following comments by EC chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who said more progress would need to be made over the next two weeks or Brexit trade negotiations would be postponed until next year.
The Taoiseach yesterday suggested the UK and Northern Ireland do not have to stay within the Single Market or Customs Union. However he then said that the North would have to abide by all their rules – even though this would in practise amount to the same thing.
'When it comes to the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, what we have all agreed is there shouldn't be a hard border, there should be no physical infrastructure along that border and there should be no return to the borders of the past,' he said.
'That doesn't mean they have to be members of it, but it would mean continuing to apply the rules of the Single Market and the Customs Union,' he told a meeting of the British-Irish Council summit in Jersey.
However, Britain's core aims of striking new trade deals with non-EU countries, and stopping free movement of EU citizens into Britain, are entirely incompatible with EU Single Market rules.
Last night, experts from the worlds of business, politics and EU policy warned if Britain can't reconcile their determination to leave the Customs Union and Single Market with their wish to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland, a hard border is inevitable.
Michael Lux, former head of the European Commission's customs unit, said we are headed towards a hard border if Britain does not agree to let Northern Ireland go it alone. But he fears this is a price the UK government simplywill not be able to pay.
'The current UK government I think will not accept this for political reasons, because it creates a border within the UK, but there is no other way to avoid a border as far as goods are involved,' he said.
'While it might be possible to find some way to allow people cross the border seamlessly, such a solution is simply not possible for goods... as there would be different rates of VAT on both sides of the border,' he added.
John Whelan, former Irish Exporters CEO and trade consultant, echoed his fears, saying: 'As we currently stand there is no question, we are headed for a hard border, which will have major implications for the agri-food sector.'
Neil McDonnell, CEO of Isme, said: 'On one hand the British voiced their determination not to have a hard border in Northern Ireland, but by saying they're leaving the customs union there will be a common tariff at the border of the EU, which will be the Northern Ireland border. There is no way to reconcile their desire to have no border with their desire to leave the EU.'
Fianna Fáil Brexit spokesperson Stephen Donnelly said we now face a dilemma where all choices are bad.
'The issue (of the border) hasn't been resolved; we want it resolved before phase two begins. It's in Ireland's interest to say we won't move to phase two until it's resolved.
'The longer it goes unresolved, the more likely it is there would be no deal and the UK just wobbles out. That would be catastrophic for Ireland. There would be mass unemployment, planes couldn't take off, ships couldn't berth, tariffs like 50% on beef could be imposed overnight which would wipe out our industry… the stakes are really high.' 
The Tory party can boast having had two women prime ministers. But shamefully, both were cruelly driven out of office.
Neither was evicted from No 10 by the voters. Instead, they fell victim to treacherous MPs in their own party — most of whom were men.
Sadly, there is undoubtedly a lesson to be learnt here about the nature of today's politics. Even in a country where women make up almost half of the workforce and have some of the biggest jobs, male dominance persists in Westminster.
In theory, Theresa May's decision last night to stand down was made in order to give the best possible chance for her Brexit withdrawal deal following a series of overwhelming Commons defeats. She felt she could do no more. However, the brutal truth is that just like Margaret Thatcher, she was driven from office.
Mrs Thatcher was more fortunate. She had been allowed 11 years in power before the assassination squad of men took aim.
Moreover, by then, Mrs Thatcher had massive achievements to her name. By the time she left Downing Street, she'd established herself as one of the great prime ministers of Britain, someone whose name will endure as long as the United Kingdom exists.
Not so Theresa May.
She lasted less than three years. And she has no achievements to rival Thatcher's Falklands victory, trade union reform, or the rebooting of a stagnant economy.
She was given one job, one job only — to deliver Brexit. It is likely thus that history will record Mrs May as a failure.
Ultimately, she made what is known in chess as 'the Queen sacrifice'. A player surrenders the most powerful and important piece on the board for strategic advantage. In her case, Mrs May sacrificed herself on the alter of Brexit.
Her legacy depends utterly on whether this gambit succeeds.
What if it fails? In theory, her pledge to quit after Brexit, leaves open the possibility that she could hang on if it is delayed.
There's absolutely no chance this will happen.
In so far as she'll be remembered a few decades hence, I'm afraid it will be for her dithering and dismal inability to bring about what was desired after the biggest vote in this country's history — namely the EU referendum of the summer of 2016.
Yet she will be remembered with some affection as a prime minister who did her best. She always battled on and, despite being written off again and again, had near miraculous powers of recovery.
It should also not be forgotten that previous to becoming PM, she flourished for six years in one of Westminster's most demanding portfolios — the Home Office.
(In some ways, there are parallels with Gordon Brown — also a fundamentally decent person — who produced his greatest political achievements before he became PM, as a capable and highly intelligent Chancellor. Incidentally, if she somehow manages to cling on till May 22, she will overtake Brown as Britain's 35th longest-serving Prime Minister — a small consolation.)
It was Mrs May's assured performance as Home Secretary which earned her the respect which propelled her to No 10.
In her first speech as Prime Minister she spoke with sincerity to those families who were, as she later put it, 'just about managing'. And she led by example in calling for Britain to take action against the 'barbaric evil' of modern slavery.
But that was simply not enough.
In the crude counting house of Westminster, keeping power is the only currency that counts.
For too long, Mrs May had been a political bankrupt.
On a personal level, this will be a deeply painful time of soul-searching for a woman whose life has revolved around the Conservative Party since her days as an undergraduate at Oxford in the Seventies.
Even when she became a junior Bank of England official after leaving university, it was only meant to be a stop-gap job on her hoped-for journey to Parliament. She never wanted anything other than to be an MP.
She's most at home in Tory association garden parties and constituency events. For decades, she canvassed every week. She still does when she has time. I'm sure she will continue to do so out of Downing Street.
Nor did she make any secret of her desire to become Prime Minister. But that dream is now shattered.
Of course, as ever, she will have the granite support of husband Philip. In many ways, the couple are a political double-act, with him having cut his teeth in student politics before she made her mark, too, at university where they met. She has daily gained great strength from his advice — in the same way that Thatcher did from Denis, who similarly had his own very successful business career.
At moments of crisis, Philip sat in the Commons visitor's gallery and tenderly supported his wife. He will always be remembered as one of the most decent and loyal prime ministerial consorts.
His wife will need every ounce of his support over coming days. Cast out of office, she will brood on her failures — and on the betrayal of the party she has dedicated her life to.
That said, she knows she made grave errors. First and foremost was the mistake of calling a General Election in the spring of 2017.
Opinion polls suggested the Tories had an advantage of more than 20 points over Labour. However, an incoherent and lacklustre campaign on her part resulted in her being deprived of the Commons majority she'd inherited from David Cameron, and made her utterly reliant on the Democratic Unionist Party. Those Ulster men and women betrayed her.
Mrs May will inevitably wonder whether by triggering Article 50 in March 2017, thus committing Britain to leave the EU within two years, she did the right thing.
In retrospect, this handed a huge negotiating advantage to Brussels because, thereafter, the British government was always fighting a losing battle against the clock as well as against the intransigence of the other 27 national EU leaders.
Mrs May will also wonder whether she was right to have agreed to demands for the so-called Irish 'backstop' (the term for the British guarantee that there would be no hard border in Ireland between north and south).
Many Leave supporters had been aghast at the way Brussels turned this, something that was barely mentioned in the referendum campaign, into the stumbling block that could yet prevent Brexit happening.
It's easy to see why she made the concession on the backstop. Negotiations with the EU were stalled, and she was desperate for a breakthrough.
As a result, though, Mrs May became embroiled in an internecine war with her own party — which has now pushed her from No 10.
As she licks her wounds over the coming months, Mrs May will surely also torment herself over why she didn't order serious preparations for a No Deal.
By failing to do so, Britain's negotiating position with Brussels was fatally weaker. In addition, she blundered by not having an alternative strategy if her deal failed.
Ruthless EU negotiators in Brussels saw this and took advantage.
This meant that when she tried to play hardball, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier knew she was bluffing.
Mrs May will also ponder on her personal failures.
In the past, Conservative leaders have relied on their own charisma and back-slapping bonhomie to generate support through the difficult times. Such qualities, though, are not in Mrs May's character. She lacks these skills. She isn't warm enough.
Other Achilles heels were her secretiveness and the fact that she was too suspicious of others. Members of her Cabinet complained, again and again, that they were kept in the dark about her intentions.
Like David Cameron, she was far too dependent on a clique of advisers.
For the first half of her premiership, she often seemed beholden to her chief of staff, Nick Timothy. An ardent Brexiteer, unlike his boss who had campaigned to Remain, his influence was so strong that it often seemed that he was in control, telling Mrs May what to do.
But Mr Timothy was forced out in the wake of the 2017 General Election fiasco.
To be fair, his sacking was deserved. He'd abused his power and sidelined Cabinet ministers.
But his departure meant Mrs May had suddenly lost her brother-in-arms and she became in thrall to a new set of advisers.
The key member was Olly Robbins, her chief Brexit negotiator.
He called the shots. But unlike Mr Timothy, who wanted a clean break with the EU, the Europhile civil servant was determined to maintain the closest ties.
And with this change of adviser, Mrs May changed, too. She started to press for Britain to remain linked to key European institutions, such as the customs union and single market.
This mini U-turn led her critics to feel justified in their complaints that the prime minister had no deep convictions of her own. They have argued that she is an empty vessel and simply reflects the preoccupations of the most senior people around her.
With Mr Robbins running the show, the Cabinet was once again kept in the dark.
Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned because he felt he was not consulted about policy. His successor, Dominic Raab, soon quit for very much the same reason.
Underlying her protracted failure to deliver Brexit, there was a widespread feeling that Mrs May was in her heart very much a Remainer. That as a woman brought up as a vicar's daughter who attended one of the world's oldest universities, she was an Establishment figure who instinctively believed in the status quo and that Britain belonged inside, and not outside, the EU.
This meant, her critics believed, that she set about negotiations with the air of someone making the best of a bad job. Someone trying to mitigate the damage she had inherited after others had made a bad decision. In sum, someone whose heart was not in Brexit.
In hindsight, perhaps, it might well have been better if a Brexiteer such as Boris Johnson or David Davis had replaced Cameron.
They would have intuitively prepared a much tougher negotiating position to try to secure the best possible deal for Britain. They would have sold it with passion and optimism to the British people.
What cannot be denied, though, as we look back at Mrs May's premiership, is that there was always much affection for Mrs May among the electorate.
Voters saw a woman of integrity doing her utmost in very trying circumstances.
Even a great politician — a Thatcher or a Churchill — would have made errors in trying to navigate Brexit.
But few can deny Theresa May's quiet dignity, patriotism and courage. In a debased age in which too many political leaders are egotists, she was patently trying to act as best she could in the national interest.
She was motivated by duty, not by a sense of self or by an eye on her legacy. She is British to her core. She passionately believes in the union. She has always remained calm.
She fought as hard as she could and made the best of an impossible job.
For myself, I believe that her withdrawal deal was the best available. All other options were worse.
Now, instead of that deal being her legacy, she has left Britain entering an uncertain and dangerous future.
Theresa May would have wished otherwise.
This daughter of a country vicar will today feel that she's been battered by evil spirits that ganged up against her.
But I have no doubt that her late father, Hubert Brasier, would have felt the deepest pride in his daughter's robust and courageous conduct over the past two years.
And that will count a great deal to Theresa May herself.
Her career may well end in failure, but not in disgrace.
When she leaves Downing Street for the last time as Prime Minister, she can hold her head high.
But she still has one last battle to fight. And if the Queen Sacrifice chess ploy comes off, she will leave Downing Street in something like triumph. As a human being, that's the least she deserves.
Exactly 1,000 days ago today, the British electorate went in unprecedented numbers to the ballot box for the EU referendum.
And when 17.4 million voted Leave, on a 24-year-high turnout of 72 per cent, they gave the Government the biggest democratic mandate in UK history.
With a sense of quiet jubilation, courage, determination and ambition, the people said precisely what they wanted: To cast off the sclerotic bloc’s chains and step out into the world.
Defiantly ignoring the unseemly bombardment of ‘Project Fear’ scare stories from biblical prophets of doom, who warned economic catastrophe would befall Britain, the indomitable public sent a clear message to the politicians: Get us out!
Despite being visibly stunned by the extraordinary — and unexpected — result, the party leaders agreed to implement the electorate’s will.
Soon, it was said, the country would finally become a truly sovereign nation for the first time in 45 years.
We could halt unpopular free movement, regain control of borders, ditch the loathed Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, end the European Court’s jurisdiction over British law and set sail on the high seas of global trade with flourishing economies. And, to boot, stop sending billions of pounds annually to the Brussels spendthrifts.
How long ago it now seems! Today the dream, if not dead, is gasping pitifully on life support.
The culprit? An out-of-touch, elitist Parliament which has shamefully failed to enact the explicit desire of the electorate.
A motley mixture of incompetent MPs, masochistically intransigent Eurosceptic zealots, treacherous Remainers and a supercilious, sabotaging Speaker have conspired to thwart Brexit.
As her deal floundered, no wonder Theresa May was forced to make the embarrassing admission that Britain was embroiled in a ‘national crisis’.
Let us be crystal clear: this is a humiliation for the United Kingdom. There are no two ways about: the failure to pass a deal in the 1,000 days since June 23, 2016, has made us an international laughing stock.
Rubbing salt into the wound, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has suggested watering down the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement to a deal so soft it would make an aghast public wonder why they had bothered to leave in the first place.
For millions of moderate, pragmatic people across the nation, the unsavoury events unfolding in Westminster must seem a monumental act of betrayal.
Out in the real world, where men and women have jobs, incomes and mortgages that rely on a stable government, the tawdry antics can have been nothing short of bewildering. All they wanted was a sensible resolution. They must feel foolish for putting so much faith in politicians!
While the incessant squabbling of MPs has brought Government to a standstill, those self-same hardtoiling folk have been getting on with the task of keeping the country going.
And an excellent job they are doing. Figures yesterday show the jobs miracle continuing apace. Employment is at a record high (32.7 million in work) while unemployment has fallen below four per cent for the first time since 1975 — when the UK was on the brink of becoming an economic basket case.
Meanwhile, real wages saw their biggest increase since the 2008 crash. These are numbers the stagnating eurozone can only dream of.
So it is no wonder heads of companies are tearing their hair out — along with the rest of a frustrated, irritated nation — at Parliament’s abject failure to get a deal over the line.
The International Monetary Fund recently said that if agreement was reached, the resulting economic surge would see UK growth quickly outpace even that of Germany. The prize for delivering Brexit is enormous.
And by their towering incompetence, the preening egotists in Westminster — seemingly more interested in political posturing and clucking about arcane Parliamentary procedure than what is good for the nation — have also jeopardised a £26.6 billion ‘Brexit bonus’.
Raked in by Chancellor Philip Hammond to spend after all EU liabilities had been paid, it was cash that could have been spent on police battling the knife-crime epidemic, our creaking railways, under-strain care system, schools and tax cuts. But now that is at risk of being squandered.
Even Donald Trump’s top adviser, John Bolton, yesterday announced that the U.S. was ready to sign a mammoth trade deal with the UK after Brexit. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg!
How on earth has it come to this?
The Mail is the first to admit Mrs May’s Brexit deal is not flawless. There are obvious concerns that Britain could be temporarily stuck in the Irish backstop and governed by EU rules — hampering our chance to sign agreements with economies in the rest of the world.
But there are overwhelming positives. It was a sensible deal that stood the best chance of repairing a nation fractured by Brexit, honoured the referendum result and ensures that our departure will be orderly and amicable
There is no single plan which commands a majority. The British people do not want their desire for independence from the EU stymied by a second referendum, or a Norway-style deal that would leave this country shackled to the bloc without voting rights. But neither do they want a chaotic No Deal.
The Prime Minister’s fate for tirelessly and resolutely thrashing out a conciliatory pact? Carping, mockery and duplicity, from MPs on all sides of the political spectrum in Westminster, and sneering from Brussels.
Few come out of the whole sorry debacle with a smidgen of credit — except for the Prime Minister, the only grown-up in the room.
Predictably, even as she battled to salvage her ailing deal yesterday, there was a beauty parade of ambitious Tory ministers keen to peacock their leadership credentials, instead of rallying behind the Prime Minister — whatever their reservations about the deal.
And on an extraordinary day, Boris Johnson, who quit the Cabinet in a fit of pique over her negotiating strategy, was spotted entering No 10 — presumably demanding his price for his (eventual) support.
Meanwhile, despite a lifelong hatred of the EU, Jeremy Corbyn’s stand on Brexit was one of ambiguous evasion. The Labour leader insinuated he supports a second referendum and that, if he did, he might back Remain . . . or not . . .entirely depending on who he was talking to.
This preposterous Marxist’s only desire is to force a General Election. Yet if he seized the keys to No 10, his hard-Left clique would drive the economy into a ditch. That would be a national calamity.
But the most deplorable of all the subversives are the Jacob Rees-Mogg-led European Research Group — the Hard Brexiteers’ trade union. They have insisted on the purist of pure Brexits.
But the supreme irony is that, by hubristically making the perfect the enemy of the good, they risk losing the prize they have sought for two generations: Brexit itself.
It is difficult to envisage how the hardliners will be able to look each other in the face if Britain is forced to stay in the EU, let alone deal with the anger of millions of voters.
Now Mrs May will write to Brussels requesting an extension, although it is not clear what Mr Barnier, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker et al will offer. Whatever it is, it will undoubtedly come attached with painful conditions.
But if the Prime Minister manages to wangle a third vote on her deal, Brexiteers must decide what they really want: swallowing leaving the EU on her terms, seeing it diluted or consigned to the dustbin of history.
If it is the latter, 1,000 days — and 1,000 potential opportunities — will have been shamefully wasted.
How did victory turn to this?
This was far more than just a bad and humiliating day for Theresa May and her deal. It was the day Brexit itself was pushed to the very brink.
In a febrile, fractious Commons yesterday, the Government suffered three defeats in quick succession, each more crushing than the last.
The first two – relating to publication of the full legal advice surrounding the withdrawal agreement – were largely procedural. More embarrassing than truly disastrous.
But the third, in the form of an amendment by arch Tory rebel Dominic Grieve, could have the effect of giving Parliament, rather than the Government, total supremacy in shaping Brexit.
In principle, this may sound admirably democratic. But in a hung Parliament, where the majority of MPs are in conflict with the will of the people and want Britain to remain in the EU, it is a recipe for chaos and betrayal.
True, this vote makes the chances of crashing out with no deal vanishingly small. But it also means that Brexit may never happen at all.
Just consider how that would shatter the integrity of our democracy and erode what’s left of public trust in our political class.
On June 23, 2016, 17.4 million people voted in the referendum to leave the EU. It was the biggest mandate in the history of the UK, and the turnout of 72 per cent was the largest since the 1992 general election.
Eight months later, the decision to trigger Article 50 – the formal mechanism for leaving – was passed in the Commons by 498 votes to 114.
And at the 2017 general election 85 per cent of the vote went to parties who promised to honour the referendum result.
Yet now, in their vanity and arrogance, many of those very same MPs who pledged to keep the Brexit flame alive now risk extinguishing it. Could there be a worse breach of faith?
So given the anticipation of this Judas kiss, it should now be clearer than ever that the only hope of salvation is Mrs May’s deal. 
While far from perfect, it satisfies the main referendum criteria – control of our borders, coastal waters and laws, an end to vast annual payments to Brussels and, ultimately, the power to forge trade deals with the wider world.
There is simply no alternative which can deliver the genuine and orderly departure that business and the general public so desperately crave.
Of course, the opposition parties have cynical and opportunistic motives for sabotaging the deal.
Labour and the SNP especially are interested only in destabilising the Government in the hope of forcing a general election, which they believe they can win.
One can only imagine the devastation and poverty a joint Labour/SNP government would wreak on this country, not to mention the likelihood that it would split the United Kingdom for good.
So here is the baffling question. Why are so many misguided Tories and Northern Irish unionists colluding in that baleful plot?
Don’t the Eurosceptic ‘ultras’ – Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson and the rest – realise they are in grave danger of letting all hope of Brexit slip through their fingers?
For all their purism, they must surely see that the May compromise is better than limping back to Brussels with our tail between our legs.
And as for the Tory Remainers (many of whom see a ‘People’s Vote’ as the way to legitimise a return to EU membership) – why do they think a second referendum would have any more legitimacy than the first?
The people have already voted – and they voted to leave. Respect and honour that decision.
Then we come to the DUP. For all their understandable fears over the Irish backstop and its lack of time limitation, how do they think they would fare under a Corbyn-led government?
Jeremy Corbyn was the IRA’s friend and defender through years of murder and mayhem and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell says he ‘longs’ for a united Ireland. Is that really what the DUP wants?
So it’s time for a good dose of realism.
As Mrs May said in the House yesterday, these Brexit arguments – and the strutting, posturing and play-acting that have accompanied them – have gone on long enough and are profoundly corrosive to our political system. Life is full of compromises.
Next Tuesday, Tory rebels and the DUP have one last chance both to save Brexit and to begin the process of healing Britain’s gaping social and political wounds.
The May deal offers hope for a bright post-Brexit future – the prosperity, economic stability and security on which jobs and livelihoods depend. Yes it has flaws, but with good faith and ‘best endeavours’ on both sides, they can be ironed out in time.
Before rejecting this deal, every rebel must carefully consider the alternative – no Brexit, a shattered Tory party and the prospect of Mr Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon posing for some appalling tableau in the Downing Street rose garden.
The resignation of Britain’s ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, can be summed up in two words: good riddance!
Every inch the Foreign Office mandarin and Brussels insider, Sir Ivan viewed the Brexit vote as a disaster and Brexiteers with barely disguised contempt.
Is it any wonder David Cameron’s renegotiation finished as a total sham, when Sir Ivan was advising the then prime minister to ask for so little – especially on immigration – from the EU?
Indeed, given Sir Ivan’s prominent role in that debacle, it is something of a surprise he hung around as long as he did after June 23. The final nail in his coffin was the revelation he was telling ministers it could take ten years to negotiate a trade deal with the remaining 27 states.
As the Mail said at the time, there is no good reason an agreement with some of our closest allies should take nearly twice as long as it did to defeat the Nazis.
Nor can a man with such defeatist views be the right person to represent this country in the negotiations ahead.
Predictably, the mandarin class closed ranks to defend one of its own, backed by Remoaners such as George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Nick Clegg. When they are the ones grieving his loss we can be sure it is good news for the country.
Indeed, for Theresa May it represents a great start to a year in which, even though she is facing a critical Supreme Court ruling on Article 50, she will be confident of firing the starting gun on Brexit.
Choosing Sir Ivan’s replacement will give Mrs May the chance to hire an ambassador with ambition, determination and none of his relentless gloom.
While she’s at it, might Mrs May consider a long overdue clearout of the dead wood at the Foreign Office, to be replaced by diplomats who believe – as this newspaper wholeheartedly does – in the exciting opportunities of Brexit.
Leeching off the NHS
Ambulance-chasing lawyers who drive up compensation bills with their stratospheric fees have long been a terrible drain on precious NHS resources.
Just imagine what a difference the £440million they pocket every year could make if it was instead spent on patient care. Hospital managers should be doing everything they can to force these legal vultures out of the health service.
But instead, in a grotesque act of self-harm, we now learn they are welcoming them in, with several law firms renting office space in prime hospital locations or paying for advertising on NHS-branded leaflets in waiting rooms.
Yes, doctors and nurses make mistakes, sometimes serious ones, and anyone whose health has been affected deserves appropriate financial redress. But nearly 30p in every pound spent on compensation goes to lawyers – and in some cases they even end up with more money than the injured patient.
NHS chief executive Simon Stevens deserves praise for his unequivocal condemnation of those hospitals which allow no-win-no-fee firms to target their patients.
Health bosses should now kick the lawyers out of every NHS building – and make sure they never come back.
Help end ‘gender injustice’ in society – but only for women 
How utterly typical of right-on human rights campaigner turned Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti to launch a £500,000 bursary at the University of Essex to help end ‘gender injustice’ in society – but only for women.
It may not suit her agenda, but Baroness Chakrabarti should know girls are 35 per cent more likely to go to university than boys – and that it is white working class boys who are the least likely to study for a degree. Isn’t it them we should be worried about?
 
Enough is enough. The time is over for griping, self-promotion and peacocking across the political stage by Tory MPs determined to undermine their leader.
Don’t these posturing rebels understand they are sabotaging the Prime Minister at the most crucial point in our history since the Second World War?
The fact that her own party members should be trying to stop her striking a deal intended to safeguard Britain’s future prosperity is not only deeply disloyal – it is profoundly dangerous.
And if they continue with their wrecking tactics, they could force an election that no one wants and may well usher an unreconstructed Marxist into No 10, with all the ruinous consequences that would wreak on the nation.
Their language in recent days has been loathsome. Like vulgar bit-part players in some gory Shakespearean tragedy, these back-stabbing plotters speak darkly of Theresa May ‘entering a killing zone’.
They claim ‘assassination is in the air’, that she is heading for ‘the noose’ and – most egregiously – that ‘the moment is coming when the knife gets heated, stuck in her front and twisted’.
Who on earth speaks like that about their worst enemies, let alone their colleagues? Have these people no sense of duty or respect? One can only imagine what constituents think of their ‘honourable’ Members of Parliament.
Sadly, these obscure backbenchers (mainly anonymous of course, like cowards down the ages) are not alone in their bid to wreck the Prime Minister’s Brexit plans.
Iain Duncan Smith scuttled off to Brussels yesterday to tell Michel Barnier that the Chequers deal would never get through Parliament and that he should offer Britain a Canada-style deal instead. As a former leader who was brought down by disloyalty, Mr Duncan Smith really should know better.
But the Mail’s overriding question is this: What do the conspirators actually think they are going to achieve?
Just imagine for a moment they do succeed in toppling the Prime Minister. The result would be a bloodbath – a bitter six-week leadership battle which would convulse the Tory Party, before ripping it apart. The last contest was more in the manner of a coronation, with Mrs May eventually being elected unopposed.
This time, it would be a fight to the death, from which the party may not recover for a generation.
The arch-Brexiteers fondly imagine that one of their poster boys, Boris Johnson or David Davis, might win. But what then? With just a few months to go to Brexit, what’s their plan? They speak of a Canada-style agreement, but that doesn’t solve the Irish border question and would throw a spanner in the engine of our economy. Then there is the no-deal option, which would involve a hard border around the UK. We may cope, of course, but it would lead to massive disruption and uncertainty for business as Britain reverted to World Trade Organisation tariffs.
Meanwhile, any new Prime Minister would have all the same cards as Mrs May has now – and all the same problems. The Parliamentary arithmetic wouldn’t change. They would still be reliant on the Democratic Unionists to get anything done
The overwhelming likelihood would be a period of chaos, followed by another election at which the Tories would inevitably be punished.
Brexit of any form would be needlessly imperilled.
If there’s one thing voters hate, it’s a party wracked by civil war. If it can’t govern itself, why should it be trusted to govern the country?
Let’s consider the alternative.
The Mail is well aware of the shortcomings of the Chequers plan. But the truth is that it’s the only plan on the table – and Mrs May is the only person who can drive it forward. This paper recognises that no one will get everything they want. But we believe that with good faith and unity of purpose, an acceptable outcome is still possible.
The Prime Minister told the Commons yesterday that the withdrawal terms are ‘95 per cent’ agreed.
True, Northern Ireland remains the main sticking point and she reiterated yesterday that she could never agree to any arrangement which involved separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. This is something Brussels must understand if the agreement is to get over the line.
But Dominic Raab – who has grown in stature since becoming Brexit Secretary – expressed confidence that a deal could be agreed by November, giving time for all the nations of the EU to approve it before March 29 – the day we formally leave.
So it’s time to face facts. Outside the Westminster bubble, the public are exasperated and exhausted by Brexit infighting and just want a sensible deal to be done – for the benefit of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave, as well as 16.1 million who voted Remain.
The dismal consequence could be Corbynism and a return to the economic paralysis and union domination of the 1970s. We know from bitter experience where that ends – with continual strike action, 20 per cent inflation, blackouts and rubbish piling up in the streets. Corbyn’s Labour would lead us to ruin.
The Tory rebels seem keen on channelling Julius Caesar, so before risking such a calamity, perhaps they should consider this quote from that great tragedy: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortunes. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat.’
So of the saboteurs who would take us to the edge of the abyss, this paper asks: Are you really prepared to sacrifice the nation’s fortune on the altar of your own egos? 
This dramatic week in politics could have ended on a tremendous high. It began so encouragingly, when Theresa May was at last able to announce that she had struck a deal with the EU, after thousands of hours of negotiations.
Businesses were exultant. Billions of pounds in investment funds, kept on hold while uncertainty prevailed, seemed about to be unleashed. The pound perked up and share prices rose.
All over the UK, people bored to tears by the Brexit debate – and anxious to get on with implementing the referendum result – breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. Finally, substantial progress had been made.
True, Leavers and Remainers alike agreed the deal was very far from perfect. But wise heads accepted that as in all negotiations – never mind those involving the competing interests of 28 nations – compromise was inevitable.
Despite the opportunist posturing of the Labour hierarchy, it seemed a majority of MPs were ready to swallow their reservations, put their constituents’ interests first and back the deal.
But that was before the revolt by hardline Tory Brexiteers, who had spent the years since the referendum plotting among themselves and congratulating each other on their ideological purity.
With a peacock display of self-importance, seven resigned from the Government (though only two of them – Dominic Raab and Esther McVey – had fleetingly crossed the public’s radar), weeping crocodile tears for the pain they were causing Mrs May.
Meanwhile, their backbench guru Jacob Rees-Mogg viciously attacked the Prime Minister in the Commons, before calling a Press conference to drawl that he had lost confidence in her. He, like Labour, would be voting against the deal – and, what’s more, he would be joining colleagues in demanding a leadership election.
What he hopes to achieve is anyone’s guess. It’s easy to see what’s in it for Labour, as a successful plot to oust Mrs May could well precipitate an election.
This would offer Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell their dreamed-of chance to wreak economic destruction, confiscating private property and nationalising everything short of the air we breathe.
But what on Earth makes Mr Rees-Mogg and Co think a new occupant of No 10 could do better than Mrs May in forging a deal acceptable to both Parliament and the EU? The fact is their treachery puts any form of Brexit in jeopardy.
Indeed, you have only to contrast their ideology-driven disloyalty with Mrs May’s tireless, resilient and ever-courteous pursuit of the national interest – qualities that shine from the Mail’s interview today – to see who is more in touch with the real world.
The good news is that the saboteurs’ attempted coup d’etat already seems a damp squib. By late yesterday, there was still no sign they’d mustered the 48 letters needed to trigger a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister – let alone the 166 supporters needed to carry it.
Meanwhile, prominent Brexiteers such as Michael Gove and Chris Grayling are standing by Mrs May, while Miss McVey’s Work and Pensions Department has passed seamlessly to the returning Amber Rudd. If Mr Rees-Mogg thought he had only to say the word and the heavens would fall in, he has cause to think again.
As for any Tory Leavers considering joining the rebellion, they should reflect that for all its faults – correctable over time – Mrs May’s deal charts a smooth exit from the monstrous bureaucracy of the EU.
Realistically, the only alternatives are the economic havoc of an abrupt and juddering exit – or no Brexit at all. Add the danger of installing Marxists in Downing Street, and are they really prepared to inflict such risks on the public?
 
It couldn’t be clearer – Theresa May’s tenure as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party is at an end. Despite her valiant efforts to deliver an honourable Brexit, she has finally run out of road.
Her Withdrawal Agreement Bill is seemingly dead in the water, and as events in Downing Street yesterday so brutally demonstrated, her support and authority have evaporated.
This is a woman who has always been driven by duty, and whose honest search for compromise was thwarted on all sides.
It’s essential now that she be allowed to leave No 10 with the dignity she deserves – probably either during or just after the coming weekend.
But before that moment arrives, the Tories must endure the ignominy of a probable wipe-out in the farcical European elections.
On February 1, 2017, the Commons agreed by a majority of 384 to pull Britain out of the EU by March 29 this year. Yet here we are today, two months after that deadline, being asked to elect a new raft of MEPs.
This represents the most spectacular failure by our political class to honour the biggest democratic mandate in UK history. But still the two main parties are calling on voters to support them in this orphan election.
Across the country, the response to that call is a resounding: ‘You must be joking!’
Thanks to a combination of division and incompetence, the Tories have failed to achieve the Brexit they promised.
Meanwhile Labour has become so confused that it no longer knows whether it wants to leave the EU or not – with or without a second referendum.
On every level, they have failed the people. Is it any wonder voters want to give them all a bloody nose?
They have been grievously let down and they are angry. Very, very angry.
Enter Nigel Farage, who boldly claims he can slay the Brussels dragon and lead us to sunlit uplands.
After two years of stasis it’s a seductive message, which is why he is riding so high in the polls.
A survey yesterday put his Brexit Party at 37 per cent, with Labour on 13 and the Conservatives on a disastrous 7.
But for all his Everyman rhetorical gifts, Mr Farage’s prospectus is an illusion.
Though his party may be good for a protest vote, the idea that it is the long-term answer to Britain’s problems is simply wrong.
They are no more than a loose affiliation of single-issue obsessives. Nobody seriously believes they could govern the country.
So, disaffected Tory supporters must try to look beyond their righteous anger.
Despite their manifold faults and divisions, the Conservatives represent the only realistic chance of keeping a malign Labour/SNP coalition away from the levers of power.
If they are annihilated now, a fate far worse than any Brexit outcome may await the nation.
For their part, Tory MPs must prove they are worthy of trust. And their new leader – whoever that may be – must offer a positive, optimistic vision for Brexit and beyond.
This Government has been paralysed long enough. Action is urgently required on social care, knife crime, schools, and, as the current steel crisis demonstrates, our industrial strategy.
Barring miracles, this election will be a total humiliation for the Tories. But the Mail believes that with unity and strong leadership, they can rise from the ashes – not least because they have such a remarkable economic story to tell.
If natural Conservative supporters can find it in themselves to keep the faith, a great revival could be just over the horizon. The prize – for all of us – could hardly be greater. 
There was a time when loyalty and respect were part of the Conservative Party’s essential DNA. No longer, it seems.
Certainly neither was in evidence yesterday, as hard-line Tory Brexiteers turned on their leader in a deeply unedifying display of petulant defiance.
Having toiled for more than two years against daunting odds to secure a Brexit deal which honoured the referendum result, Theresa May might at least have hoped for the support of her own side for her Stakhanovite efforts — possibly even an ounce or two of gratitude.
Instead, she and her draft agreement were greeted with contempt by the peacocking saboteurs, whose antics risk saddling this country with the worst of all possible Brexit outcomes.
A day of high drama was punctuated by a string of ostentatious resignations — mainly from obscure Government figures vying for attention.
Most prominent among the quitters was Dominic Raab, in whom the Prime Minister had placed huge trust by appointing him Brexit Secretary. For him to walk out now, rather than working to improve the deal he helped negotiate, is profoundly disappointing.
Ironically the most distasteful attempt to unsettle Mrs May came from hard-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who pretends to be the very model of courtesy and chivalry. He goaded and harangued her in the Commons chamber, then later called on his colleagues to support a vote of no confidence in her.
As for the other rebels who resigned from minor Government positions — Suella Braverman, Shailesh Vara, Anne-Marie Trevelyan and the others — who honestly had heard of them before yesterday?
And for that matter, who will remember them tomorrow?
Meanwhile, there was also a memorable Commons statement from Mrs May, during which she retained her dignity while all about her were losing theirs.
Indeed, throughout a long and exhausting day, the Prime Minister’s calmness, good humour and composure under fire was in stark contrast to the shrill baying and vanity of the vandals.
But what if these low-grade assassins were to be successful in defenestrating their leader? What can they possibly hope to achieve by it? Any replacement would be faced with the same problems that Mrs May has battled so resolutely to overcome. Who on earth do they think would do a better job?
The truth is that with the country split almost down the middle and Brussels keen to punish the British people for having the temerity to vote Leave, negotiating Brexit was never going to be smooth.
Compromises, some of them unpalatable, were always inevitable.
Mrs May has strained every sinew to forge a deal which can unite a divided nation by securing our departure with minimum disruption.
And the very fact that hard-Brexiteers think the proposed deal is too soft and soft-Brexiteers think it’s too hard, suggests she has plotted her way through the minefield with considerable skill. Yes, there are serious imperfections, particularly the open-ended nature of our participation in the customs union and the unresolved uncertainty over the future of the Irish border.
But this is a draft agreement. That means it can be altered or adapted to overcome these problems in time.
On the positive side, it brings an end to free movement, control of borders and offers the promise of frictionless free trade.
It takes us out of the Common Agriculture and Fisheries Policies, ends the jurisdiction of the European Court over British law and means we will no longer be sending vast amounts of money to Brussels every year.
These are by no means small achievements and amount to a Brexit that all but the most inflexible should be able to swallow. And what do the plotters offer as an alternative? What is their grand plan?
A tumultuous no-deal scenario, with hard borders from Ulster to the Channel ports, onerous WTO tariffs and the likelihood of many large corporate employers departing these shores.
This isn’t a plan. It’s an economic suicide note.
To emphasise the point, the mere suggestion of no deal sent the pound tumbling yesterday and prompted a slew of warnings that crashing out could have truly dire consequences for trade, jobs, investment and growth.
Indeed, big business was positively queuing up to repudiate the hard-Brexiteers and to back Mrs May’s plan. Bae Systems, Airbus and the Confederation of British Industry all saw it as bringing an end to dangerous uncertainty.
This is not Project Fear. It’s Project Reality.
Conversely, the boss of Aston Martin said the deal could galvanise the whole British car industry. The British Chambers of Commerce believed it would ‘unleash’ a wave of new investment.
How different their well-founded optimism is from Boris Johnson’s intemperate description of the deal as ‘disgusting’.
And who are they, these self-appointed guardians of the Brexit flame — a loose affiliation of backbench zealots, failed ministers and serial show-offs, who claim to represent Britain’s best interests, but risk destroying their party and the nation’s prosperity.
They are, of course, entitled to their opinion. But, for all their pretentions, they speak only for those who place purist ideology above pragmatism and the practicalities of politics.
If they have any shred of responsibility, they must pause now, and consider the possible consequences of their actions — and what demons they may release.
The threat of a Corbyn government — possibly even in a monstrous coalition with the SNP which could lead to the irrevocable break-up of the United Kingdom — looms larger than ever.
No matter that Labour is at least as split over Brexit as the Tories, with the majority of its MPs desperate to remain in the EU and its leadership just as desperate to leave.
If Mrs May is unseated, or fails to get her Brexit deal through Parliament, they could win by default. The people are exasperated by Brexit stasis and appalled by the fractious infighting in the Tory Party.
Despite the havoc a Marxist government would wreak on the nation, voters might just be tempted to think that anything would be better than the fiasco we have now.
Would the kamikaze plotters really risk that?
Unsurprisingly, our opinion poll today reflects a general public disillusionment with the whole Brexit process. But within the Tory Party, Mrs May still commands respect and support.
There is no appetite among Conservative voters for a leadership contest. None of the pretenders are anywhere near as popular as the woman they seek to topple and significant numbers believe Mrs May’s Brexit deal is the best available.
And that is with the Tory Party in a state of self-induced chaos. Imagine how her popularity would soar if the whole Parliamentary party rallied round her and pulled together to make her deal work.
This paper has always fought hard for the referendum result to be honoured and has never doubted Mrs May’s commitment to Brexit.
Now, as she says, the people want her to ‘just get on with it’ and get a deal done. No viable alternative to her plan has been put forward and, with the hour of our departure almost upon us, it’s too late to formulate one.
The simple fact is, it’s either her deal, or no deal, or no Brexit.
Anyone who thinks otherwise has simply lost the plot. 
Danny Dyer, what a ledge. You must have seen it by now – the moment the EastEnders hard-man cuts through all the Westminster waffle and tells it the way it is.
Brexit has become a 'mad riddle'. Or, to quote Dyer accurately: 'I haven't got a clue. No one knows what it is; it's like this mad riddle that no one knows what it is, right?'
Then he takes aim at David Cameron. Our former Prime Minister should be held to account for his Brexit policy. 
Or to again translate into Dyer-speak: 'How comes he can scuttle off? He called all this on. 
Where is he? He's in Europe, in Nice, with his trotters up, yeah. Where is the geezer? I think he should be held account for it.'
At which point Dyer delivers a final succinct analysis of the Cameron legacy. 'So what's happened to that t*** David Cameron who called it on?' he asks rhetorically. 
Although actually it's not that succinct, because for good measure he decides to repeat the expletive. 'T***,' he says to no one in particular. And then settles back.
Within moments this micro-tirade had become British social media's Gettysburg Address. Liberal commentators rushed to their keyboards to anoint Dyer the new people's champion.
Conservative commentators gushed at his brutally brilliant take-down of posh-boy Cameron, at least until they realised he was also attacking their beloved Brexit.
But then they shrugged, and embraced him anyway. Good for Danny. Another one in the eye for the entitled political elite. Except it wasn't. 
The person Dyer had really poked in the eye was the British voter. 
And the laudatory response to his simplistic, patronising, pound-shop Dick Van Dyke routine underlined why British politics is currently heading to hell in a handcart.
Over the past month, a new self-reinforcing narrative has emerged from both sides of the Brexit debate. 
On the Remain side, it's the They Woz Duped premise. The people who backed Brexit basically didn't know what they were doing. 
The issue was so complex, the arguments deployed for and against so superficial, the votes of the 52 per cent were effectively cast in ignorance. The majority were bamboozled by Dyer's 'mad riddle'.
Then there is the Brexiteers' submission. They Woz Robbed is the growing cry. This contends the will of the people is slowly being usurped. 
Those fiendish, duplicitous politicians – just like that t*** Cameron – are up their tricks again. 'We are being boiled like frogs in a pan' is how the Leavers like to frame it. 
Slowly poached by Theresa May and her Remain-heavy Cabinet, who plan to water down Brexit until it is an insignificant gruel, then sell it to the electorate as the best deal they could get. 
At which point, Mrs May will presumably take her own Roger Vivier clad trotters, rest them on a sun-drenched European lounger, and laugh maniacally at the delivery of her cunning soft-Brexit masterplan.
Two contrasting but ultimately complementary visions of our political future. Complementary because they are essentially underpinned by the same conceit. Namely that Brexit is a mess, and a mess that is all the politicians' fault.
It isn't true. But that doesn't stop it being reinforced by useful idiots like Danny Dyer, who recognise a populist bandwagon when they see one and are desperate to drag their laddish posteriors aboard.
It is not the politicians who are to blame for Brexit, it is the voters who are to blame for Brexit. 
Or rather, it is the voters who are responsible for Brexit, because at the moment it's still unclear whether our decision to leave the EU will be viewed as a moment of monumental national folly or signature national wisdom.
What we can say for certain, is the path we followed to Brexit is not the one painted by Danny Dyer, or fundamentalists in either the Remain or Leave camps. David Cameron did not, as populist wisdom would have it, create the Brexit mess, then do a runner. He recognised – correctly – that our politics was underpinned by a false, decaying consensus.
On Europe, on immigration, on the relationship between the elected and their electors, the status quo had become unsustainable. 
So he pledged a referendum in his 2015 manifesto, won on it, respected the result, (despite the predictions of his enemies), held the referendum, respected that result (again, despite the predictions of his enemies), and stepped down.
These were not the actions of a venal chancer, but a politician who honestly tried and failed to wrangle forces so violent they currently threaten to tear Western democracy apart.
But that reality doesn't fit in with the pitch of the Bar-Room Philosopher Laureat, nor the fiction being peddled by the Brexit true-believers and true-haters. 
Speaking to people in the run-up to this week's latest make-or-break Chequers summit, both sides were remarkably open about their strategies. The Remainers want to turn the Leavers' tactics back on themselves.
They wish to make Brexit a product of the entitled Westminster class. 'Boris. Gove. Rees-Mogg. They pulled the wool over your eyes, then stitched the whole thing up among themselves over cigars and brandy.'
Meanwhile the Brexiteers are aiming for a 'half-baked' Brexit. They want to leave Chequers with the job half done. 'We are so nearly there,' they want to be able to say when the deal is finally delivered. 
'But what we need to do is make sure that we have a Government and Prime Minister committed to seeing the job through. Now it needs Michael/Boris/Jacob to finish the task and embed Brexit for a generation.'
Again, both narratives are false. Theresa May and her Ministers are not trying to dupe or betray anyone. 
They are seeking to deliver a complex geopolitical separation in a way that respects the will of a deeply divided nation.
The divide between governors and governed will not be bridged by continued infantilisation of the voters. 
The path we are on was set by us, the British people. The referendum result was close, but it was clear and it was fair. And we cannot, as a nation, shirk accountability for what comes next.
Brexit is not Danny Dyer's 'mad riddle'. It is our riddle, one we placed before the politicians, along with an instruction to solve it.
Danny Dyer can sit with his trotters up, berating the despised political class. But the rest of us have given the Prime Minister and her colleagues their orders. 
We now need to give them the time and space to carry them out.
As this week's Chequers awayday beckons, Downing Street have placed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on what one official described to me as 'suicide watch'. 
According to a No 10 insider: 'Everyone has been told to keep a close eye on Boris, his advisers, and who they're speaking to. 
Boris has humiliated himself with his surrender over Heathrow and there's a feeling he might be preparing to make a dramatic gesture in an attempt to get himself back into leadership contention.' Watch this space. 
Germany's World Cup exit finally bridged the Tory Brexit divide. Tory Leavers in the Strangers' Bar were surprised to see Remainer Ed Vaizey applauding South Korea's victory. 
'I can do Brexity,' he said. 'Any time a European team goes out, we cheer, right?'
Brexit remains on track — just. The United Kingdom, ministers have decided, probably won't stay in a version of the EU's customs union after all.
Some Eurosceptics had been complaining that keeping the customs union would mean 'staying in the EU in all but name', but the reality is far grimmer. 
Allowing the EU to dictate our trade policy while giving up any say over it would make us worse off than now. It would render Brexit not just pointless, but harmful.
Yesterday, members of the key Cabinet Brexit committee wisely refused to endorse any form of customs union. Good for them. 
This was something of a signal moment, proof there is a resolve at the very top of the party to stand up for Britain's interests. 
Although it might seem like a compromise, the customs union is nothing of the kind. Many of the MPs and peers pushing the idea know perfectly well how damaging and unworkable it would be. 
Their objective is not to find a better outcome, but to weaken our negotiating position in the hope of derailing Brexit.
The first part of that aim, at any rate, has so far been working a treat. Brussels has hardened its position in response to what it sees as British feebleness.
Theresa May and her ministers keep saying that they want Britain to be the EU's 'best friend' and 'closest ally'. Far from reciprocating, Eurocrats respond by sneering, scolding and hectoring.
They want a punishment clause in the exit agreement, giving them a right to sanction the UK. They want a customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 
They want to control our standards and regulations after we leave. They don't want us discussing trade with anyone else.
Their harsh tone horrifies some politicians in the 27 remaining states. They can't understand why Britain puts up with it, and fret that we might simply walk away.
In fact, Eurocrats are behaving quite logically. They calculate that, by hanging tough, they can stop Brexit — at least in substance.
After all, they read British newspapers. They know that many of our MPs and peers aim to hobble Brexit. Why offer any concessions as long as our Remainers are doing their work for them?
Those Remainers are doing it in two ways. First, they have passed an amendment in the House of Lords that would formally delay our departure.
Second, they are manoeuvring to keep us in some form of customs union after we leave — even worse than not leaving, since we would effectively remain in with no veto. The Brussels fonctionnaires can't believe their luck.
Few Remainers admit that these tactics are designed to keep us in the EU. Yet that is their only possible motive.
Let's consider the two proposals in turn. The House of Lords amendment says, in effect, that if Parliament doesn't like the final deal, it should have the power to require us to stay in the EU until it gets an outcome it is happy with.
Most of the Lords pushing this idea were on their best behaviour during the debate. 
They didn't admit that they were seeking to capsize Brexit, talking instead of the importance of parliamentary sovereignty — rather a novel concept to many of them, who had spent their careers until now jeering at sovereignty as a Victorian hang-up.
One or two, though, let the cat out of the bag, talking openly of trying to block Britain's departure.
Think, for a moment, of what will happen if their amendment stands. Why would Brussels offer acceptable departure terms? Why would it even hold serious discussions when it could rely on Britain's Europhile politicians to halt Brexit?
We'd be the pitiable country that had tried, and failed, to leave, trapped indefinitely in a grim departure lounge.
The situation could be prolonged until some future pro-EU government withdrew our notice to quit, marking our final and total humiliation.
Even if Tory whips succeed in overturning that amendment, the customs union threat still hangs over us, and it is the deadlier of the two.
It is important to understand quite how serious the danger is. Staying in the customs union is not a middle way. It is not like having a medium burger because 52 per cent of voters wanted it well done and 48 per cent wanted it rare. 
Quitting the EU while keeping the customs union is like binning the burger and eating the napkin.
I'm all for compromises that reflect the narrowness of the vote in the referendum: staying in some EU programmes, replicating chunks of the Single Market through domestic legislation, perhaps rejoining the European Free Trade Association alongside old allies Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
But the customs union is not such a compromise. Staying in would give Brussels 100 per cent control of our trade policy.
In fact, it's even worse than that: a customs union would oblige us to match the EU's concessions vis-à-vis third countries, but those countries would have to reciprocate only with the remaining EU 27, not with Britain. 
As Barry Gardiner, Labour's trade spokesman, put it before his party's cynical U-turn: 'The EU could do a deal with another country — let's say America — which we would be bound by in the UK. 
We would have to accept the liberalisation of our markets. Why would America give us that access when it's got all the liberalisation of our markets it wants?'
Quite. Why would any country accept such terms?
Norway is as close to the EU as a non-member can be, and exports more than twice as much per head to the EU as we do. Y
Yet almost no one in Norway wants to join the customs union. How odd to see British parliamentarians demanding worse terms than Norway.
In theory, the 'customs partnership' would have allowed Britain to negotiate its own trade deals. 
The UK would apply EU tariffs to goods entering its territory, and then offer rebates if they were not destined for EU territory.
In practice, it wouldn't work. It may be illegal under World Trade Organisation rules, and it will be years before it is technologically feasible.
Even if it were possible to track every consignment entering the UK to see whether there was onward shipment to an EU state, why would any country want to sign a trade deal with us? 
Having to pay full EU tariffs at our border and then claim a rebate back is hardly an appealing prospect. 
We'd face all the costs of running this complex system, with little chance of global trade deals.
If our civil servants are able to find a way around these problems — if they genuinely could find a scheme that would give us regulatory and commercial autonomy while avoiding customs checks with the EU — I'd be delighted.
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
But the scheme that the Brexit War Cabinet refused to adopt yesterday was a non-starter and, if it had been accepted, by the end of the transition period in 2020 we'd end up simply staying in the current arrangements.
How extraordinary that Britain, the world's sixth largest economy, should be nervous about running its own trade policy.
You can see why the EU wants to keep us in permanent economic subjugation. 
We'd be unable to outperform or undercut our neighbours, unable to strike the trade deals that suited our services-based economy, and we'd still be handing our customs revenue to Brussels.
You can't blame Eurocrats for sitting back in incredulous delight as they watch our Remain politicians pushing away all the advantages that ought to come with independence.
But we can, and should, blame those British politicians who, if they can't stop Brexit altogether, seem utterly determined to stop it being a success.
Almost exactly a year has passed since British voters told their government to withdraw from the European Union. Today, at last, formal talks get under way.
The idea is being put about that we go into the negotiations with no clear idea of what we want. This is pure hooey.
We have set out our objectives over and over again: in Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech in January, in a White Paper, in the letter that triggered the disengagement process under Article 50.
We want the closest relationship with the EU compatible with being an independent country. We want cross-Channel trade to flow to the benefit of both sides. We want to keep profound links with our European allies in intelligence, policing and the like.
And we want to ensure that, at the end of this process, we have ceased to be bad tenants and instead become good neighbours.
How realistic are these things? Many in Brussels, after all, were hurt and bewildered by the Brexit vote. Can we be sure that they will act out of sober self-interest? Will they recognise, as we recognise, that a prosperous neighbour is a good customer? Or might they instead act like an aggrieved partner in a messy divorce?
The French president Emmanuel Macron has made a point of saying that ‘the door remains open’ if Britain wants to come back. Oh dear! The idea that Britain might crawl back to Brussels, apologising for its mistake, shows an extraordinary misreading of our character, our history – and public opinion.
In fact, Brexit is more popular now than it was a year ago. Most Remainers, being democrats, have accepted the result with good grace.
Only 22 per cent of Britons still want to stay in the EU, and it’s not hard to see why. The hit to our economy – a key plank of the Remainers’ so-called Project Fear – which we were warned would follow a Leave vote has spectacularly failed to materialise.
Unemployment was supposed to rise by 250,000 in the two years after the vote. In fact, more people are working than ever before.
Our pensions were meant to be hit in a stock market collapse. In fact, British stocks are the best performing in Europe.
Britain was going to experience a ‘technical recession’ in 2016. In fact, it grew faster in the six months following the vote than it had in the previous six months, and closed the year as the world’s most successful major economy. Retail activity, consumer confidence, investment, jobs, manufacturing output and growth have all risen. Britain, in short, is not the broken and desperate country that some in Brussels expected to be dealing with.
The inconclusive election result has, it is true, hardened attitudes. Some Eurocrats seem to think that Mrs May’s government has lost so much authority that it has little option but to agree to whatever terms Brussels dictates. The EU, they say, has had a year to agree its negotiating position, while Britain has faffed about.
Heaven knows I have my criticisms of British officials in Brussels. Their Europhilia can lead them to scorn public opinion and disregard elected politicians, but their competence is not in doubt. They have also had a year to prepare for these talks, and have put it to good effect.
Several Labour politicians and Remain-voting pundits persist in their demands that Britain stay in the EU’s single market and customs union. In fact, as the Chancellor Philip Hammond made clear yesterday, we can’t leave the EU while retaining these arrangements.
It is worth taking a moment to understand what the terms mean. The single market doesn’t mean a free trade area; it means a single regulatory regime, administered by the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.
Plainly, leaving the EU means leaving the jurisdiction of those bodies. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t retain many of the contents of the single market through domestic legislation.
Lots of non-EU states, from Guernsey to Switzerland, do this successfully. The basis of the single market is the rule that forbids discrimination against the goods or products of other member states. I see no reason why the UK shouldn’t keep that rule: it helps consumers.
The customs union is an arrangement whereby all EU states surrender their trade policy to Brussels and accept a common external tariff around the whole bloc. It has damaged Britain more than the other members, because we are the only state that sells more outside the EU than to the other 27 states.
Staying in the customs union while leaving the EU would be the worst of all worlds: it would mean allowing Brussels to dictate our trade policy while having no say in what that policy should be.
Leaving the customs union does not mean abandoning free trade with the EU. Norway is outside, but sells more than twice as much per head to the EU as we do. Switzerland sells five times as much per head to the EU. The days of moustachioed frontier officers in peaked caps and epaulettes are over; customs checks these days happen online and in advance.
But what it does mean is that we can sign our own deals with the countries with which the EU has so far not agreed trade accords, including Australia, Brazil, China, India and the United States.
One might ask why should the EU seek to maximise trade with Britain after we leave the customs union? The answer is that trade is not an act of generosity, but of self-interest.
The complicating factor is migration. The EU insists that free movement of goods, services and capital is ‘indivisible’ from free movement of labour. Quite why it should be so stubborn on this point is anyone’s guess. Other free trade areas around the world separate the two things, and quite a few EU electorates would gladly take back more control of immigration policy.
Still, the EU means what it says. Switzerland is as close to the single market as any country can be without accepting EU jurisdiction, but it is required to allow EU nationals to work on its territory.
There is an immense difference between a bilateral treaty allowing for reciprocal rights of work and study, and a common citizenship which brings enforceable rights on everything from expanding benefits claims to immunity from deportation.
Leaving the EU means taking back control of our laws, money and borders. How we then exercise that control is a question where we should be prepared to be reasonable and generous. Hence, for example, the sensible idea of making a comprehensive offer to guarantee the status of EU nationals already here.
As both sides now accept, we should phase in the changes, allowing businesses on both sides to operate with certainty.
In the referendum campaign I argued that Brexit would be ‘a process, not an event’. The day after Brexit should look very like the day before. It will, however, be the day we begin to pursue a different trajectory, towards global markets and domestic deregulation. Let’s get cracking.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and the author of What Next: How To Get The Best From Brexit.
 
Emerging from a coffee morning with friends in Bettys, the famously twee and traditional tearoom in Harrogate, Jill Carrington fastened her quilted and fur-lined coat — bought on a shopping trip down south in Harrods — against the bitter chill.
Along with 49 per cent of the 96,000 voters in this genteel, prosperous, and quintessentially English town on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, she voted Leave in the 2016 referendum — placing her narrowly on the losing side of the debate in this bellwether Brexit community.
Of course, the views of this wealthy electrical contractor’s wife — who wants Britain to regain its sovereignty and see stricter curbs on immigration — prevailed in the wider poll.
And this week, watching our spineless, self-serving politicians attempt to thwart the will of 17.4 million people, her anger reached boiling point.
‘I think they’ve tret us very disrespectfully,’ she fumes, the brusque Yorkshire slang word for ‘treated’ somehow serving to emphasise her fury.
‘I visit London quite a lot, but it’s very different living up here. When the poll result came through, those so-called experts on TV gave the impression that we were a lot of dumb Northerners who didn’t know what we had voted for.
‘But we knew what we were doing, all right, and with what’s going on now I feel I’m even further from the Westminster bubble. It hasn’t changed my opinions one bit. It’s just made me even more bloody-minded.
‘It seems all the MPs are against Theresa May, but who is putting up any solutions? She is doing a good job, but I don’t envy her. Nobody in their right mind would want her job in these circumstances. They should unite behind her and get on with it. The whole thing is a total shambles.’
Shambles. It is a word one hears time and again when discussing the Brexit fiasco with the people of Harrogate. ‘Farce’ and ‘disgrace’ are two others.
Whichever way they voted, whatever their age, allegiances or personal bugbears, people here are sickened by the cynical endgame being played out in Parliament.
It may be only 210 miles away down the M1, but it now feels so remote from them, and their everyday concerns, that it might as well be the Moon.
Indeed, the one sentiment that unites the otherwise polarised residents of this timelessly elegant spa town — in many ways a throwback to the great days of England, with its fine Georgian terraces, traditional independently-owned shops, and polite but plain-speaking folk — is their utter contempt for our politicians.
That, and their widespread admiration for the courage, resilience and dutifulness (qualities that count for a great deal in these parts) of Mrs May.
Most townsfolk share the view of local Tory MP Andrew Jones, who backed Mrs May’s Brexit deal in the Commons despite voting Remain, saying he had ‘pledged to honour the result of the referendum and politicians should keep their promises’.
The prevailing opinion, even among Europhiles, was that Mrs May had obtained the best possible deal, that the time for talking was over and — as one office worker shopping during his lunch hour put it — ‘we should damn well have done and get on with it’.
Whiling away the morning in Caffe Nero, two friends, Fiona and Claire, said they felt ‘betrayed’ by our MPs over Brexit. ‘I think the standard of politicians has gone down 100 per cent,’ said Fiona, 45, who backed Leave partly because she believes the influx of wealthy foreign students deprived her son of a place at his chosen university.
‘You get the feeling that they are just out for themselves. You don’t know who you can trust any more.’
Claire, 39, whose uncertainty over the pros and cons of Brexit caused her to abstain from voting, agreed, saying it was ‘embarrassing’ to have MPs who spent all their time squabbling over the Brexit process while ignoring people’s basic concerns such as the shortage of police officers and the state of the NHS.
A good many people I spoke to when visiting Harrogate this week were so disillusioned that they swore they would never vote again, whether in a general election or a second referendum, which nobody I met can bear to countenance.
Worryingly, that disillusionment seemed deepest among the generation who have most to gain — or lose — from our exodus from Europe, and will shape the nation’s future; teenagers such as Ellie Watson-Hornsby and Lauren Quandt, both 19 and visiting home from university.
Ellie, who was not old enough to vote in the referendum, feels so far removed from the uninspiring men and women who supposedly serve her interests that she admitted: ‘I am oblivious to it all. The situation is a mess. We are the generation most affected by Brexit, but I feel we are not being made aware of what’s really going on.’
Although the referendum was intended to settle differences over Europe once and for all, thanks to the protracted wrangling in Westminster, the divisions in Harrogate are as intense as ever.
For three years running, the town — whose health-giving springs, stylish shops and restaurants, and proximity to the scenic Dales have been a magnet for tourists since Victorian times — was judged the nation’s ‘happiest place to live’.
It may be no coincidence that the last of these accolades was awarded in 2015, the year before the referendum; today the paroxysms of uncertainty over Brexit are spoiling friendships, causing schisms within families and even prising apart business partners.
The mood was described by Gemma Aykroyd, 42, owner of The Cheeseboard, a quaint town-centre shop offering British and European cheeses (this week’s specials include a semi-cured Spanish Manchego and a buffalo milk creation made across the Pennines in Preston).
‘When the referendum happened, we all felt very open to discussing it here,’ she told me. ‘But now it’s become a case of “let’s just not talk about it”, because we don’t know whether we are going to upset people.
‘At the time we were voting it was an interesting dinner party topic. Now you can’t mention it for fear of having an argument. Feelings are getting more heated than ever.’
Smiling sardonically, she added: ‘I go to a book club, and even they are split down the middle.’
Eager to be free from Brussels bureaucracy, Ms Aykroyd, voted Leave in the referendum.
As the pound has since fallen against the Euro, she is now paying more for the cheeses she imports from France, Germany, Italy and Spain — which comprise almost half her stock — and, should we fail to do a trade deal with the EU, tariffs could make them so expensive that she can only sell British varieties.
She is not dismayed at this prospect; on the contrary, she says her French suppliers are more worried about losing her business than she is of losing theirs; and she is excited by the opportunity of supporting our own producers.
But as she enthuses about the emergence of homegrown cheeses to compare with continental offerings (such as a soft delicacy from Suffolk that substitutes for French Brie de Meaux) a customer walks into the shop — and the ‘split’ she described is suddenly illustrated.
A woman of advancing years whose outfit and manner of speech suggest a New Age view of the world, Pat Barnes is from the other side of the divide.
‘Well, I voted Remain,’ she declares defiantly, ordering a chunk of pungent French cheese. ‘I’m very much a globalist. But it’s all the admin this Brexit process is taking that really gets me,’ she added, making clear her own disenchantment with events in Westminster.
My tour of the town had started that morning in a Wetherspoon’s pub, where the £4.99 full English breakfast pulls in a clientele whose bullish, pro-Brexit views chime with the group’s chairman, Tim Martin (this week he declared that a no-deal exit would save Britain £39 billion, enable us to regain control of our fishing waters, and eliminate tariffs from ‘thousands’ of everyday items).
Digesting his breakfast, the thoughts of Mark Woodhead, 62, a semi-retired IT worker who voted Leave — for greater autonomy — were with the Prime Minister.
‘I think Theresa May, bless, her, has had a rough ride,’ he said. ‘She inherited a lot of things that were always going to happen, and now they are blaming her for them. She’s done the best she could.’
Echoing Harrogate’s key refrain, he surmised: ‘It’s a shambles. I think the politicians themselves don’t know what’s going on.’
Sharing his table, Chris, a 71-year-old software writer, nodded, harking back to the Sixties when French premier Charles de Gaulle ‘stitched us up’ in negotiations to join the EEC — and to the ensuing decade when, Chris declared, Ted Heath sealed our demise by taking us fully into Europe.
For Mrs May, there were kind words even from lifelong Labour supporter Johnny Long, 57, a shaggy-haired pub band bassist.
‘I do feel she got the rough end of the stick because it was Cameron who left us in this mess and she is carrying the can. She’s doing the best job she could do,’ he said.
At the Turkish baths, another Harrogate landmark, Vivienne Elgie, 60, and her daughter Marie, 28, paused to express their unease before thawing out in the spa.
‘I voted Leave on the grounds of losing our democracy but I’ve fought with my conscience ever since, and if I voted now I would back Remain,’ said the mother, who ‘loves Europe’ and has many friends on the continent.
But she doesn’t want a second referendum — she just wants our squabbling politicians to carry out the voters’ will.
As for her daughter, despite employing staff from Eastern Europe in her cleaning business, Marie also voted to Leave — yet, she admitted, she was still too embarrassed to reveal this to her Remainer friends.
However, the story that perhaps best encapsulates Harrogate’s enduring divide was to be found in a high-end boutique — on Parliament Street, aptly enough — where a pair of Italian jeans will set you back £270.
Before the referendum it was jointly owned by Paul Lown, 65, and Steve Mulhaire, who is in his 50s. Both voted Remain.
Yet the confusion over Britain’s relationship with Europe, where they bought many of the designer brands they sell, has proved so stressful that the two men parted company not long after the referendum, with one retaining the original shop and the other opening a rival store nearby.
The details of this acrimonious split are complex. Suffice it to say that Mr Lown wished to keep buying from Europe, despite the increased costs and inherent risks, while Mr Mulhaire preferred ‘more stability and less flamboyance’, as he puts it, arguing that they should switch to British suppliers.
In his new boutique, he has done precisely that. But his anger towards the politicians whose posturing and procrastination he blames for causing this upheaval remains undiminished.
‘It really is terrible,’ he told me. ‘This just shows how it (the Brexit impasse) is hitting people in different ways. The thing that sticks in my throat is that the politicians don’t seem to realise how they are affecting small people like us. They are making these crazy decisions that affect the whole country.’
Shamefully, they are indeed. For when the tremors in Westminster become so seismic that they rattle cups and saucers in the civilized tearooms of Harrogate, we know our MPs are truly a shambles.
 
Dear readers, I am reluctant to do this to you, but we must discuss the ‘indicative votes’ on various forms of Brexit (or no Brexit) which will be held in Parliament today. Amazingly, the future of our country rests on this gimcrack constitutional monstrosity.
After last Wednesday’s first round, out of eight proposals selected by Speaker Bercow, the motion which came closest to gaining a majority was one calling for the Government to negotiate ‘a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU’.
It was rejected by 272 votes to 264. So only five MPs need to switch in today’s second eliminating round for it to win a majority.
If that happens, Sir Oliver Letwin — the inventor of this process, and who voted for this particular option — would attempt (with Bercow’s energetic assistance) to turn it into a binding motion, unless the Government agrees to adopt it.
The Government should do no such thing — and not just because the Conservative 2017 election manifesto pledged to leave the customs union. 
Dismissed  
It is not even the fact that those voting in the EU referendum were promised that Brexit meant being able to make our own trade deals: if it made any sense to break that promise, too, at least it could be explained and justified. But it is simply a terrible idea, on its own terms.
The most insistent argument advanced for it by its Labour supporters, such as Emily Thornberry yesterday, is that it represents a ‘soft Brexit’ which would ‘honour the 48 pc who voted Remain as well as the 52 pc who voted Leave’.
Are we to suppose that if Remain had won by 52 to 48 pc, politicians would have said that in order to ‘honour the 48 pc, we should negotiate to leave at least one EU institution’? Even if they had, we couldn’t have done so because there is no a la carte form of EU membership, as Brussels has so often pointed out.
The European Commission also insists that customs union decisions about trade can be made only by members of the EU. That is made clear in the very first article of the EU treaties on the customs union.
Brussels has already dismissed the idea that the UK could have a vote, let alone a veto, on customs union deals if we attached ourselves to its rules and arrangements as an ex-member of the EU. To be precise, its officials have described this as ‘a fantasy’.
Yet that is what Labour now say they would be able to negotiate.
Either they know this to be untrue (in which case they are lying to the public) or they don’t know (in which case they are too shatteringly ignorant to negotiate with the EU as a governing party).
One of their leading figures has told the truth: Labour’s International Trade spokesman, no less. In July 2017, Barry Gardiner wrote in the Guardian that if the UK remained in ‘a’ customs union with the EU-27, ‘several things would follow: the EU’s 27 members would set the common tariffs and Britain would have no say in how they were set.
‘We would be unable to enter into any bilateral free trade agreement. We would be obliged to align our regulatory regime with the EU in all areas covered by the EU, without any say in the rules we had to adopt. And were, say, the EU to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. that was in the union’s best interests, but against our own, our markets would be obliged to accept American produce with no guarantee of reciprocal access for our own goods into the U.S.’.
Since February 2018, Gardiner has been mute on all these points — because that was when Labour switched their policy to backing ‘a’ customs union with the EU.
Gardiner’s present silence is as eloquent as his earlier demolition of the proposal he is now obliged to support.
It was striking how the main proponents of this in the indicative vote debate last week — Ken Clarke, Sir Keir Starmer (the Labour shadow Brexit secretary) and Hilary Benn (Labour chair of the Commons Brexit committee) all refused to take interventions from the only former Minister for Trade Policy present, Greg Hands.
So Hands, who is fluent in three European languages and understands these matters as well as anyone in the House, set out his argument yesterday on the website ConservativeHome. Among other devastating points, he explains how the UK’s diplomatic power rests partly on our ability to set, or help set, trading rules. 
Absurd  
As he says: ‘If, in the future, the UK has neither its own trade policy nor any say over the EU’s, we have virtually zero leverage on anything to do with trade.’
He also notes why it’s no surprise that Brussels is enthusiastic about that. ‘At trade bargaining tables of the future, it would be able to offer up access to the UK’s 65 million consumers without the UK getting anything in return.’ As the saying goes: if you are not at the table in trade talks, you are the lunch.
Most absurd of all, a promise to cede this in permanence to the EU doesn’t, contrary to Labour’s claims, avoid the dreaded Irish backstop as set out in the Withdrawal Agreement.
EU negotiators have made it clear they will not even begin to negotiate future trade arrangements until the Withdrawal Agreement is passed by the Commons.
If MPs vote for permanent alignment with the customs union, with its tariffs weighing most disproportionately on our poorest consumers, they will be signing up to taxation without representation. In short, they would be betraying not just those who voted Leave, but the entire country, now and in the future.
The Stop-Brexit rally in Parliament Square thrilled to the oratory of Lord Heseltine, as he recalled his wartime experiences in aid of the argument that the UK should never be ‘alone’ in Europe, as we were in 1940.
He thundered: ‘I was there. I saw our Army evacuated, our cities bombed, our convoys sunk.
‘Churchill did everything in his power to end this isolation. Alone was never Churchill’s hope or wish: it was his fear.’
This might have led his more youthful listeners to believe Lord Heseltine was a participant in the British war effort in that fateful year of 1940. In fact, he was seven years old at the time.
I was older than that — eight — during the great debates in Parliament over the abolition of the death penalty, in 1965. I would never dream of making an argument about that on the basis that ‘I was there’ — as if I had been personally connected with this historic episode.
But then, I lack Heseltine’s nerve (and, of course, his oratorical gifts).
Heseltine’s aim was to link Churchill to the idea of Britain as part of a federal Europe. As he did in a 2017 radio interview, citing the great war leader’s Zurich speech of 1946 calling for a ‘kind of United States of Europe’.
But as the author of a new and magnificent Churchill biography, Andrew Roberts, wrote: ‘Churchill in that speech made it perfectly clear that he did not want Britain to be a member of the European project.’
Or, as Churchill told Parliament in 1952: ‘We are not members of the European Defence Community, nor do we intend to be merged in a Federal European system ... we are with them, but not of them.’
Heseltine should know that. He was there. Sort of.
Not for the first time, Nick Clegg — sorry, that should be Sir Nicholas Clegg — has let down his admirers. To the consternation of those who, like him, have been campaigning to 'stop Brexit', the former leader of the Liberal Democrats has abandoned them to join Facebook.
Specifically, he starts work today as the social media company's 'head of global affairs'. That means the former deputy prime minister will be paid millions to lobby governments and public opinion to see things Facebook's way.
We are told that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's dominant shareholder and chief executive, spent months 'wooing' Clegg to take up this job offer. Far be it from me to question Zuckerberg's business acumen, but if he thinks the British people would put any faith in what Clegg says (about almost anything), then the California-based billionaire must have been on the wacky baccy.
Misjudgment
Because Clegg — having achieved ephemeral acclaim during the 2010 General Election as the leader of a party that would 'keep its promises, unlike the two old parties' — became a byword for betrayal. The Liberal Democrats' principal campaign pledge — signed personally by every one of its MPs — was to scrap student fees: this was pitched to win the support of younger voters and it was mightily effective in constituencies with high student populations.
Then, within months of joining government, Clegg instructed his MPs to back the Conservatives in . . . tripling those same university tuition fees. Clegg's misjudgment — to put it politely — led to a cataclysmic drop in support for his party by those same young voters. Eventually, he issued a much-satirised apology on YouTube, saying how sad he was about it.
This was demolished by David Cameron's former policy director at No 10, James O'Shaughnessy, who tweeted: 'Clegg [is] talking crap on student fees. He wasn't between 'a rock and a hard place'. I was in the room when he decided to vote for it. He was keen.'
Not only was this a principal reason (not the only one) for the annihilation of the Liberal Democrats in the 2015 General Election, it contributed to Nick Clegg's ignominious loss of his own seat, in the university constituency of Sheffield Hallam, last year. He's been in need of a paid job ever since: he's certainly got a stonker of a salary now.
To be fair, Clegg has not been idle since the electors of Sheffield handed out his electoral P45. He has written a book called How To Stop Brexit, a manifestation of his revulsion at the decision of the British people in a referendum to leave the European Union, which he has been determined to overturn.
As with other campaigners in that cause, Clegg argues that the British people had been fooled. Well, referendum campaigns, like general elections, involve propaganda and phoney figures on both sides. But the democrat accepts the outcome. You might think Clegg, above all, would accept that: after all, he was the first leader of a mainstream political party to advocate a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU.
Ten years ago, Liberal Democrats leaflets were scattered across the length and breadth of the land, declaring: 'It's time for a REAL referendum on Europe.' And on each was a big photo of Nick Clegg, next to the words 'Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg: It's time to give the British people a real referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. Sign our petition today.'
When the then-Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, refused Clegg's demand for a parliamentary vote on his idea of an in-or-out EU referendum, the Lib Dem leader was so furious that he led his MPs on a stagey flounce out of the chamber in protest.
In the end, of course, Clegg got his wish for an in-or-out referendum, when the Conservative-led coalition government in which he served as deputy prime minister years later pushed through the necessary enabling legislation. When it eventually took place, his side — to his evident disbelief — lost.
And suddenly, it transpires this was not the 'real' referendum after all. No, that was all a terrible mistake. The 'real' referendum, designed to overturn the result of the very one Clegg demanded, is promoted as the 'People's Vote' — presumably to distinguish it from the one in 2016, which must have involved only non-sentient beings or zombies. 
Thwart
Clegg was not among the hundreds of thousands of campaigners for the 'People's Vote' who marched in gloriously sunny London on Saturday. Presumably he was too busy preparing for his new Facebook job starting today or, indeed, applying for his 'Green Card' — the far from automatic permit for which immigrants are required to apply if they wish to work in the U.S. (not at all like the EU free movement system of which Clegg is such an advocate).
Instead, he could be found pontificating in the pages of the German newspaper Die Welt, in a joint article with former prime minister Tony Blair and former Conservative deputy PM Michael Heseltine under the headline: 'Blair, Clegg and Heseltine: we need another EU referendum'. I raised this with a friend of mine, who has spent some time on government business in the EU over recent months. I remarked to him that this piece was clearly intended to convince German readers that the British political establishment will do what it can to thwart the result of the 2016 referendum, but that surely the Germans must realise these three authors carry no weight whatsoever in the UK, being regarded here as has-beens, discredited, or both.
No, he replied: in the councils of Brussels, and in Berlin, the three are taken very seriously and such an article is read as evidence that there really is a good chance the British establishment will force a second referendum, to keep the UK in the EU. And, he added, it encourages Brussels and Berlin to be even more implacable in their negotiating stance, to add to the attractions of such a 'reconsideration'.
In fact, it was all along the view in the Chancelleries of Europe that the British people would discover what the peoples of Holland, Denmark and Ireland learned: that if they vote in a referendum against the way that the European Commission and the established parties want (remember that the leadership of all three main British political parties were for Remain), they will be made to vote again until they come up with the right answer.
Weakness
That view in Brussels will be strengthened by a disgraceful speech in Salisbury last week by the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers. This ex-Foreign Office man (he didn't work his way up the intelligence service, unlike previous occupants of that job) declared his support for a second referendum. And he asserted it was only because the UK had been 'weakened' by Brexit that Russia had dared to attempt to assassinate the British double agent Sergei Skripal: 'Russia was willing to treat Britain with contempt.'
So how does Sawers explain the fact that the same Russian government used equally deadly poison to assassinate another defector, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006 — ten years before the Brexit vote?
Perhaps this unprecedented intervention by an ex-MI6 chief is designed to impress on Berlin or Brussels that the UK is contrite at its voters' impertinence in wanting to leave the institutions of the EU: but Brexit supporters should be heartened that such an ill-thought-out argument is the best that a former so-called 'intelligence' chief can muster.
Indeed, it is a glaring weakness of the forces arguing for a 'People's Vote' that there is no one among its leading figures who commands widespread respect. Its main spokesman is Blair's former spin doctor-in-chief, Alastair Campbell; but the propaganda maestro behind the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq endlessly complaining that Brexit was based on a false prospectus is almost beyond satire.
For similar reasons, those calling for a second referendum should actually be grateful that Nick Clegg is abandoning their cause. Everything he touches turns to ashes. If you have shares in Facebook, sell.
Anyone who thinks that Theresa May, faced with a gang of Cabinet ministers calling for her immediate exit from Downing Street, would give up the key to No. 10 without a struggle, has no understanding of the woman.
She is more likely to say, in the spirit of Charlton Heston: ‘You’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.’
It was her cousin, Andy Parrott, who revealed that even as a schoolgirl in the sixth form, the then Theresa Brazier declared her ambition to become the first woman leader of the Conservative Party.
She was allegedly disappointed, as an Oxford undergraduate, when Margaret Thatcher’s accession in 1975 made that impossible, but it did not dim her ambition to lead the Tory Party in her turn.
Ambition is not to be condemned: it is everyone’s right to dream — and to try to make their dreams come true. But I have always been puzzled by Mrs May’s extraordinary aspiration.
There is no standard for the character of a Prime Minister, but at the least one would expect such a person — or anyone who aspires to the role — to have certain talents. Just as you would expect someone aspiring to be a concert pianist to have a good ear for music (and certainly not tone deaf), so you would expect relevant attributes in anyone who wants to be Prime Minister.
Relish
He, or she, should relish the challenge of debate. They should delight in the market place of political ideas, preferably with strong views of their own.
They should have immense powers of persuasion, or at least be highly articulate. They should be able to inspire people to follow them and to work with them. They should have the ability to charm — both privately and publicly.
Most British Prime Ministers have had a number of these attributes. Winston Churchill, perhaps uniquely, had all of them. Yet Theresa May, for all her other personal qualities, has none of these attributes. And never did.
For her biography of the Prime Minister, Rosa Prince spoke to Rosalind Hicks-Greene, who stood for the Liberals in a school mock-election in February 1974. She beat Theresa Brazier, who was (of course) pretending to be the Conservative leader. Hicks-Greene told Prince: ‘It was not hard to beat Theresa as she was not very charismatic.’
But it was equally characteristic of her, after this early rebuff, to be utterly undeterred in her ambition.
And she was right. In July 2016, she did become Prime Minister, in circumstances few could have foreseen.
Barely a year after winning a general election, David Cameron quit following a victory for Leave in the EU referendum he called. With the absurd exception of Stephen Crabb, May was the only Remainer to enter the leadership contest that followed. The stars of the successful Leave campaign, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, fell out spectacularly; the last remaining Brexiteer standing, Andrea Leadsom, pulled out after an unfortunate newspaper interview.
With Mrs May the only candidate left, the party membership didn’t even get a chance to cast their votes.
My sole lengthy one-on-one meeting with Mrs May at No. 10 took place eight months later when she was in her unusually lengthy Prime Ministerial honeymoon. I still cringe a little when I recall how hard I found it to create a fluid conversation. There were the awkward silences which others report from similar encounters.
Afterwards, as I left the room with the No. 10 press chief who had set up the meeting, I remarked: ‘I’m sorry that didn’t go too well.’ She immediately replied: ‘But that was one of the very best!’
It was two months later that the PM (in contradiction to all her previous assurances) called a snap general election three years before she was required to go to the country.
Her former director of strategy, Chris Wilkins, gave a fascinating account of the debate over that decision in her inner circle, when he and three other advisers were pressing her to call the election.
In particular, he revealed the contribution of Philip May: not just the PM’s husband but her closest political confidante.
‘Philip definitely had the largest reservations of anyone in the room,’ said Wilkins. ‘The point he made was that while he could understand all the arguments we were making, we had to understand what a big risk it was for them as a couple, and he said we had to appreciate that it had taken them years to get to the position of being in No 10, and we were asking them to put that all at risk.’
Destroyed
Mrs May undoubtedly has a consuming sense of duty and passion for public service. But this eyewitness account lays bare the real emotions of an intensely ambitious woman (and of a husband who aspired to become an MP himself and sublimated his own political ambitions in his wife’s slow ascent to power).
It just says: we have spared nothing to rise to the top of the greasy pole (as Disraeli described becoming Prime Minister), so don’t for a second forget how unpleasant it is for us to risk sliding all the way down.
That risk was taken, and Theresa May’s lack of any campaigning or persuasive skills — at least as a leader — was horribly exposed. Yet I don’t share the common view that she made a terrible mistake in calling an election, even though its outcome — the loss of the Tory Party’s parliamentary majority — destroyed the Prime Minister’s authority and also her party’s confidence in her judgment.
She had been urged by the Chief Whip to recognise that her working majority of 13 was inadequate for the challenges of getting Brexit through the House of Commons. He was correct. While doing it in a hung parliament is now being shown as impossible, it would have been horrendously difficult even with the slim majority May inherited from Cameron.
She was right to go for the big majority that her huge lead in the opinion polls led everyone — and I mean everyone — to believe she would win a landslide against a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.
And, thanks to the sudden irrelevance of UKIP, the Conservative vote share of 42.3 per cent — which May won — was as high as most Tories could have expected or hoped for at the outset. The shock was that Labour’s share of the vote soared to 40 per cent (compared with the 30 per cent it won under Ed Miliband in the 2015 general election). To use a soccer analogy, she went into the campaign with a 5-0 lead and at the end it was 5-4 (at best).
Fraught
No wonder the traditional photo of the winning Prime Minister entering No. 10 (taken from inside Downing Street) showed a grim-faced Mrs May coming back through the most famous door in Britain. Her husband wore a similar expression. They both knew that purgatory was in store.
Yet the Cabinet, in fraught discussions immediately after the vote, had chosen to back her remaining in No. 10. That was probably a mistake.
But it would be equally a mistake for her to be dumped this week in a putsch, propelling some bloke to take the seals of office from the Queen. It would not be a good look for a male-dominated Tory cabinet, for a second time, to eject a tearful female leader from Downing Street. Or for a furious Conservative Party membership once again to be denied a chance to vote on their leader.
Much better, perhaps, for Mrs May to tell her colleagues that she will agree to stand down once, or if, the Brexit withdrawal agreement is passed by Parliament. That will then allow time for a proper leadership election.
Even that will be immensely painful for her. Mrs Thatcher, at least, had won three tremendous election victories and enjoyed over a decade of transformational leadership at No. 10 before she was discarded.
And what is there for Mrs May to do afterwards? Traditionally, exiting politicians declare themselves happy to ‘spend more time with my family’. But as one of her cabinet colleagues put it to me: ‘For Theresa, an only child who was, sadly, unable to have children of her own, and whose parents died when she was in her 20s, the Conservative Party is the nearest thing she has had to a family.’
This helps explain her extraordinary devotion to the Tory Party. It also explains why removal as its leader would be so unbearable for her.
The longer Brexit is delayed, the less likely it is that this Parliament can continue to sit: or at least, not with any sense of purpose or self-respect.
If it continues to frustrate what both the Conservatives and the official Opposition promised to do — honour the result of the 2016 referendum — then there may be no satisfactory alternative to the election of a new parliament which would be up to the job.
This is also the argument of Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party. And he is having remarkable success: according to a poll in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, if a General Election were held now, his party would pick up 20 per cent of the vote and win 49 seats. 
That would chiefly be at the expense of the Conservatives.
The most significant consequence, however, would be Labour winning well over 300 seats, way ahead of the Tories.
On this basis, Jeremy Corbyn, with the support of the Scottish National Party, would become Prime Minister, and John McDonnell Chancellor of the Exchequer.
That would not bring about the Brexit that Nigel Farage wants.
Labour is fundamentally a Remain party, and even if it were to take the UK out of the EU, it would be only on the basis that we remained permanently part of the Customs Union: it has repeatedly said as much.
Squealing
McDonnell claims such an arrangement should be welcomed by business, and he has been pushing this line as he travels round the country's boardrooms trying to allay their fears of what a Corbyn-led Labour government would mean.
If they believed him, then their brains would need to be constructed of the same material as their boardroom tables — solid wood.
In fact, yesterday's Sunday Times reported on the rising panic of the billionaires on its annual Rich List: a number of them told the paper they were already making plans to move their assets to other countries, ahead of a feared Labour election victory. 
This squealing is entirely counter-productive.
No one has sympathy for billionaires fleeing from new taxes. Not least because they make up only 0.00002 per cent of the population. And they will be just fine, whatever happens, not just because of their accumulated wealth, but also because they are highly mobile, with accountants who know how to make their money equally so.
In any case, as the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, observes of Labour's soak-the-rich policy: 'Sadly, there aren't enough billionaires to generate serious revenue [for Labour's additional public spending plans].'
So what about the top one per cent? You wouldn't know it, to listen to Corbyn and McDonnell, but such citizens — those with assets of £3 million or more — already provide 28 per cent of all the income tax received by the State (while earning around 11 per cent of total household income).  
And the top 10 per cent? They pay 60 per cent of the total.
So as one Bank of England official put it to me (and he's no died-in-the-wool Tory): 'Our income tax base is already dangerously narrow, over-dependent on a small proportion of the population.'
Bear in mind that the Conservative-led governments since 2010 have, by steadily raising the threshold at which income tax begins to be levied, removed millions of families from the obligation to pay.
But if Labour aren't able to raise from personal taxation of the rich all the extra billions they say they will provide for public services, where will it come from? The not-so-rich. And businesses.
But capital is mobile, too. The Marxists around Corbyn realise this. One of them told the Sunday Times that the party should prepare for 'a capital strike' and 'the partial withdrawal of private sector investment' but that in government Labour should nevertheless proceed with 'the thin end of a thick socialist wedge'.
Well, it may be that the wider electorate could be oblivious to that until too late, like so many frogs cooked in water heated to boiling point only gradually. But there is nothing gradual about Labour's stated plan to expropriate ordinary shareholders, by passing 10 per cent of the equity in large quoted companies to the workers in those firms.
Jolly nice for the employees to get free capital, but not so for our pension funds, which would be the main losers in such a scheme.
In fact, even before such a law could be passed, large funds would take their capital out: the result, obviously, would be less investment in British companies.
The same consequence flows from Labour's plans to renationalise various industries at below market value: the flight of capital would not wait for Labour to be elected. If it seems likely that it will form the next government — and that is what the latest polls suggest — then the disinvestment process begins.
Parasites
Indeed, this is already happening. While falls in investment in plant and machinery are blamed on Brexit, a number of business leaders told the Spectator they fear a Marxist-led government much more than they fear the UK leaving the EU. They say that while the 'upsides and downsides' of Brexit are well-known, a Corbyn government is 'a much greater unknown'.
But one thing is known about Corbyn and McDonnell.
They regard those who create wealth as anti-social. They judge all successful entrepreneurs to be parasites on the backs of the workers.
This, by the way, helps explain the rancid anti-Semitism that now pollutes the Labour Party: many who share Corbyn's world-view see Jews as inherently 'capitalist' and their success in trade as nefarious rather than admirable.
That such anti-Semites should be in sight of getting the government they want is profoundly unsettling. It would be a particular irony if the person who helped bring it about was that former commodity-trader and passionate free-market advocate, Nigel Farage.
ALAS, THIS WASN'T HEZZA'S FINEST HOUR
Emily Maitlis is not known for her indulgence as an interviewer: she is perpetually alert to any dodgy claim by politicians in her studio. 
So I was amazed by the way, on BBC2's Newsnight last week, she allowed Lord Heseltine to get away with a characteristically brazen association of himself with Winston Churchill.
The former Deputy PM, in arguing his case that we should remain in the EU regardless of the 2016 referendum, told Maitlis: 'Every Prime Minister I've worked for, and I started working for Winston Churchill after the war, has told me that Britain's self-interest is inextricably linked to the peace and security of Western Europe.'
Leave aside the fact that it was Nato and not the EU that maintained our security during the Cold War, Heseltine never worked for, with, or under Winston Churchill.
To be clear, he first stood for Parliament in 1959, four years after Churchill resigned as Conservative Party leader. 
And Heseltine didn't actually succeed in becoming a Conservative MP until 1966 — when Churchill had already been dead for a year.
I say this is characteristic because when Heseltine addressed the rally outside Parliament to demand a re-run of the referendum, he very personally linked his insistence on remaining in the EU to Winston Churchill's heroic leadership in the dark year of 1940. 
He declared: 'Churchill did everything in his power to end our isolation [from Europe]. I was there. I saw our Army evacuated, our cities bombed, our convoys sunk.'
Hezza was there? Well, he was certainly alive. But at the time of our Army's evacuation from Dunkirk, he was seven years old. 
And not a precocious confidant of Winston Churchill — nor on any occasion later. 
Our top civil servants are among the cleverest people in the country. But intelligence and wisdom are not always to be found together.
And it was unutterably foolish of 'senior civil servants' to tell a newspaper that the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition is 'physically and mentally' not up to being prime minister.
Worse, one of them effectively told a journalist from The Times that Jeremy Corbyn was going gaga: 'He's too frail and is losing his memory.'
The Labour leader has for some time been having face-to-face discussions with senior civil servants, because it is part of the job of the permanent administration to understand what a possible incoming prime minister will demand of them in policy terms.
But the nature of those exchanges should be absolutely confidential. It is scandalous that unelected officials should seek to make public their opinion of Corbyn's mental capacities, gleaned from such meetings.
I also wonder what are their medical qualifications to suggest that the 70-year-old Labour leader is suffering from incipient dementia.
Improper
The fact is that Jeremy Corbyn has never been the brightest pebble on the beach: as a middle-class child at a decent school, he managed just two Es at A-level and then flunked out of North London Polytechnic (now a third-rate university) after only a year.
It is as far away as is imaginable from the stellar academic records of his interlocutors in the highest ranks of the Civil Service.
They might well have been taken aback by his intellectual inadequacies. But there is all the difference in the world between being a bit thick and losing one's marbles.
And if senior politicians were barred from high office for being rather stupid, I can think of a lot of administrations that would have struggled to construct a quorate Cabinet.
As to the civil servants' observation that Corbyn is also too physically frail for high office, that is defied by the evidence of the public's own eyes.
I imagine most of us will, on news bulletins, have seen the Labour leader scooting around the capital on his bike.
And the respected political commentator Steve Richards points out that he often sees Corbyn on brisk 5km runs (which is much more than I could do, but then I'm not a teetotal vegetarian, unlike the alarmingly ascetic Corbyn).
Obviously, the fact that he is in good shape for a 70-year-old does not mean he is suitable prime ministerial material — but it is for voters to decide that, during the ferocious democratic scrutiny of a general election, without him being nobbled first by anonymous briefings from unaccountable bureaucrats.
You don't have to be a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn — and I would regard his arrival at 10 Downing Street with absolute horror — to view this unprecedented intervention as profoundly improper.
Thus the former Ukip MP Douglas Carswell tweeted: 'I'd rather have my country run by a democratically elected Jeremy Corbyn than the smug, self-regarding, incompetent Whitehall officials that briefed this to The Times.'
Not surprisingly, Mr Corbyn himself has angrily demanded an inquiry into this very personal hatchet job from what is meant to be a discreet and rigorously impartial bureaucracy.
As he says, it should be 'very concerning to all of us' that civil servants 'should be briefing a newspaper . . . against a prospective government. There must be an investigation into which senior civil servants are spreading fictitious information to the Press and in the process compromising the integrity of the Civil Service.'
Well, that will get us nowhere: good journalists — and Rachel Sylvester of The Times, who had the lead byline on the story, is a very good one — put source protection above all other considerations. And I don't see any of the civil servants responsible coming out with their hands up.
So allow me to make a few suggestions as to what is behind this plot — and it is a plot, specifically by those in Labour who want the party to campaign against Brexit in a contrived second referendum and who (rightly) see Corbyn and his close circle as the chief obstacle to their objective.
It is quite transparent, because Sylvester is also a (Labour-supporting) columnist and she has made her own views on the matter admirably clear.
Critical
On April 29, The Times published a column by her — under the headline 'Brexit exposes Corbyn's double standards' — vehemently critical of his reluctance to switch the party to an anti-Brexit stance: 'On Brexit, the most important issue of the day, the leader has repeatedly refused to bow to the will of the vast majority of party members . . . to campaign for another referendum on any deal.'
What makes the nature of the plot all the more transparent is that although Saturday's front-page Times story was headlined 'Corbyn too frail to be PM, fears Civil Service', the most damaging allegations of his alleged physical and mental decline came from his (unnamed) opponents in the Shadow Cabinet.
They are those who want the party to campaign full-bloodedly to block any form of Brexit, despite the fact that they were all elected in 2017 on a manifesto to honour the result of the 2016 referendum.
Thus, one of them is quoted as saying Jeremy 'can barely hold his head up'; another that he is 'old . . . exhausted'; and yet another that 'he doesn't seem all there sometimes'. But, actually, it's not the fact that he is — by their account — doolally, that most bothers them. It's the fact that he is (they say) in the grip of a small group who are furiously opposed to the party coming out for a second referendum to overturn the result of the first one.
One of that small group is his chief of staff, Karie Murphy.
According to The Times, Corbyn 'was shocked at Labour's defeat in Islington, his own backyard, at the European Elections' — this was largely because of the success of the anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats — and 'suggested in a small meeting that the party should throw its weight behind a second referendum'.
At that point, the report claims: 'Karie got up and screamed at Jeremy: 'We're not doing that, we're not selling out our class.' He just sat back, terrified.'
This lays bare the split within Labour — between its seats in the North of England, which voted overwhelmingly for Brexit and whose voters are increasingly furious that it hasn't happened, and those in London, which were and are heavily pro-Remain.
Fools
Therefore, a couple of weeks ago, 26 Labour MPs from the North and Midlands wrote an open letter urging Corbyn to reject the idea of a second referendum and to back a deal by the next Conservative leader to take the UK out of the EU before the deadline of October 31.
One of those MPs, Caroline Flint, claimed on BBC1's Question Time last week that, otherwise, 'the polls show we could lose up to 50 seats across the Midlands and North of England to the Brexit Party, because we will lose heartland working-class voters'.
By contrast, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, speaks for those Labour MPs in London who are terrified of losing their seats to the single-mindedly anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats: YouGov last week produced a poll suggesting that if a general election were held now, Ms Thornberry would be swept away in Islington South and Finsbury by a Lib Dem surge.
On Sky News's Sophy Ridge programme yesterday, Labour's shadow Chancellor John McDonnell claimed that Corbyn is trying to 'bring people together' on Brexit policy.
'The type of leader that Jeremy is is a consensus-builder, and that's what he is trying to do . . . have those consultations and discussions to build consensus,' Mr McDonnell said.
But there can be no 'consensus' between those in Labour seeking to honour the result of the 2016 referendum and those seeking to overturn it. It is a battle to the death only one side of the party can win.
Seen in this light, it is even clearer how cataclysmically stupid — as well as unprofessional — those senior civil servants have been.
They have become the useful idiots of those in, or affiliated with, Labour who want to sweep away the leader blocking their desire for a second referendum.
And, most counterproductively, the intervention of those 'senior civil servants' will only strengthen Corbyn's position: it enables him to stand as the principled democrat opposed by bureaucrats who think they, not elected politicians, should decide what's in our best interests.
What fools these clever people are. 
Delusional is the only word for it. I am referring to Labour's magic recipe for an agreement with the Government to enable Brexit — almost three years after the country voted to leave the EU.
Yesterday, on the main TV politics shows (Marr on the BBC and Sophy Ridge on Sky), the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and the Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon both declared that what they wanted was for Theresa May to agree to sign up to a 'permanent customs union' with the EU, in which the UK would 'have a say' in any future trade deals that the union makes.
The Prime Minister might — to the fury of Brexiteers and yet more Cabinet resignations — agree to make such a proposal to the EU. But here's the bigger problem: Brussels won't buy it.
This was made clear in an article — largely ignored — written last month for the British press by the EU's former trade commissioner and ex-director general of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy.
The formidable M Lamy started by observing: 'At the heart of the Labour proposal is to stay in a customs union and continue to have a say over EU trade policy.'
Then he spelt it out: 'It is not so simple. Article 207 of the Lisbon Treaty makes clear that a common commercial policy is exclusive to the EU's direction.
'Turkey, which is in a partial customs union with the EU, has to follow EU trade agreements with third countries but has no say on them.'
Lamy's conclusion was brutal: 'The reality is that in a customs union, all the power would rest with the EU, with the UK as a follower.'
I admire both Andrew Marr and Sophy Ridge as political interviewers. 
So it was all the more astonishing that neither raised this fundamental point with McDonnell and Burgon, let alone asked them if Labour had received any indication from Brussels that it would agree to a non-EU country having any influence within the Customs Union.
Actually, it got even odder. Burgon argued that the main reason Labour opposes the UK having an independent trade policy after Brexit, is that a British government might sign a trade deal with the U.S. which would allow American private companies unrestricted access to the NHS.
Leave aside whether or not a Conservative government might or might not agree to such a deal, or whether it would be a good thing or not. It was only a few years ago that the EU was negotiating a trade deal, known as TTIP, with the U.S.
The trade union Unite complained bitterly that this would give U.S. health companies an absolute right to bid for contracts within the NHS.
The union, which is Labour's biggest financial backer, called on the British government to block such a trade deal. In the end, the EU-U.S. talks failed on other grounds.
But here's the stinger: if a post-Brexit UK were in 'permanent customs union with the EU' — as Burgon and McDonnell say they want — then Brussels could at any point in the future negotiate exactly such a trade deal with the U.S. and we would have no right to obstruct it, let alone a veto.
The amazing thing is that Labour's own Shadow Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, pointed this out in 2017 (before his party changed tack, and began advocating membership of 'a' customs union): 'Turkey has a customs union agreement with the EU. If we were to have a similar agreement . . . and were the EU to negotiate an agreement with the U.S. that was in their best interests but against our own, our markets would be obliged to accept American produce with no guarantee of reciprocal access for our own goods into the U.S.'
So why is Labour pushing for such a deeply unfavourable settlement with the EU? Perhaps it thinks that if Mrs May won't agree to this (which after all would make a mockery of her pledges on Brexit) then the Tories could be blamed for the breakdown in cross-party talks.
Of course, Labour denies this is its motivation, insisting that its customs union membership proposal has the entirely constructive purpose of avoiding a so-called hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But Pascal Lamy has also poured the iciest of cold water on that, saying: 'A customs union would not be enough to settle the Irish border question. 
To take just one commonly-cited example: if the UK remains in the customs union with the same external tariff but imports chlorinated poultry from the U.S., there has to be a border because the EU does not accept the marketing of chlorinated poultry.'
It is true that big multinational businesses would prefer it if the UK remained tied to the Customs Union: it would be more convenient for them, and they couldn't care less about an abject surrender of British sovereignty over trade.
But still, it was grotesque to see the Marxist McDonnell claim to Marr that Labour's policy meant that they, and not the Conservatives, 'are now the business-friendly party'.
What nerve from a man who seeks to expropriate investors across a range of industries, as soon as he realises his dream of becoming Chancellor.
And what cynicism to promote a Brexit deal which he knows is delusional.
Poor Dame Emma Thompson: photographed in seat 2F of the first-class cabin of a British Airways flight from London to New York, while tucking in to her complimentary beef carpaccio canapes — only a fortnight after flying to the UK from Los Angeles to play her revolutionary part in the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations against climate change.
Thompson is charged with extreme hypocrisy, as Extinction Rebellion insists that flights (even economy ones) should only be taken in 'an emergency'. 
But I think we should give the Corbyn-supporting actress a bit of credit. She could, as she has in the past, have taken a private jet — which is even more CO2-generative per traveller.
Instead, she decided to slum it in the first-class cabin of a commercial airliner. That's a true sacrifice.
And it's hard to be a passionate advocate of carbon emission reduction without wanting a little bit of the high life, too.
For example, the leading article of the left-of-centre Observer newspaper yesterday called on the world to do more to prevent 'the life-threatening dangers of global warming in the Arctic'. It added: 'As the world's leaders turn their backs on the environment, we are at a crisis point. Individual consumer choices are important.'
Presumably, choices such as buying cars with much smaller engines, and certainly not monstrous gas-guzzlers of the sort which only those with no care for the planet's future would zoom around in.
But what's this, popping up on the Guardian/Observer website at exactly the same time as that stern lecture? A gushing review of the new £159,000 Bentley Continental GT, capable of reaching 207mph (almost three times the motorway speed limit). 
The reviewer exults about his driving experience in this beast: 'Its vast engine is chortling happily. It weighs more than 2 tonnes, yet it can surge from 0-62mph in under 4 seconds. Sitting up front, the limitless potential of the W12 engine hovering beneath your toe, is a truly wonderful place to be.'
Indeed, it must be wonderful to call on us all to consume less petrol in order to 'save the planet', but get free rides in what the Left's paper of choice salutes as 'one of the most successful luxury performance cars of all time'.
The revolution continues!
There's no doubt about who is the favourite politician of anti- Brexiters in this country.
It's someone who doesn't even stand for election here. It's not Tony Blair, still less John Major. 
No; their hero is Emmanuel Macron, the President of the Republic of France.
Last week the Independent online newspaper (which campaigns for a second Brexit referendum to overturn the result of the first) adoringly headlined an account of Macron's latest attack on Brexit as follows: 'French President delivers brilliant speech after Theresa May's deal is rejected by MPs.'
Actually, it's well worth looking at Macron delivering his onslaught to an audience in Normandy, an area of northern France not far from the Pas-de-Calais region, which is especially vulnerable to any trade disruptions in the event of a 'no-deal' Brexit.
Their President attempted to reassure them that it would be the 'British who would be the first to suffer' if there were such an outcome, and went on, not for the first time, to denounce what he termed 'the lies' of the Brexit campaign.
But then he immediately unleashed two porkies of his own: 'The British people can't afford not to have a plane taking off or landing in their country; and 70 per cent of their supermarket supplies come from continental Europe.'
In other words, if the British Parliament doesn't accede to the terms brokered by the European Commission, its people will be cut off from the rest of the world and starve.
The actual figures, as supplied by the UK's Office for National Statistics, are that 30 per cent of the food we consume is supplied by the EU. Macron's boast of 70 per cent is either extreme grandiosity (not unusual for him) or a deliberate untruth.
Apocalyptic
And if there were a disorderly Brexit accompanied by the imposition of tariffs on food between the UK and the EU, I would imagine the cheese producers of Normandy might be the least delighted of all.
Personally, I would regret it, too, as I adore French cheese, but our domestic producers are increasingly imaginative and entrepreneurial: why, there is even something called Somerset Brie.
And at Christmas, I tried the new British cheese known as Winslade, a remarkable cross between Vacherin and Camembert. It was gorgeous, a more than acceptable substitute for either of those two great French creations.
As for Macron's apocalyptic assertion that no planes would be able to enter or leave the UK if we left the EU without an agreement, this is the most preposterous iteration of Project Fear yet to be deployed in supposedly serious argument.
For Macron knows as well as anyone — as the European Commission would not have agreed this without the full consent of the French government — that Brussels has published contingency plans if the UK leaves the EU without a deal; they set out that UK airlines will continue to be able to operate flights between the EU and this country for at least 12 months.
This is why the Association of British Travel Agents felt able last month to state: 'There is nothing to suggest that you will not be able to continue with your holiday plans after March 29 [the date of Britain's departure from the EU, with or without a deal].'
Decline
So why is the French President lashing out in this way? The campaign for the European Parliament elections is imminent, and he is extremely concerned that the profoundly Eurosceptic National Rally party, formerly known as the Front National and led by Marine Le Pen, will make big gains.
Note, by the way, that Madame Le Pen herself is a representative of the Pas-de-Calais region. Although she is no longer advocating 'Frexit', Macron is driven by the conviction that if Brexit is not visibly terrible for the UK, then Marine Le Pen's Euroscepticism will gain tremendous traction in France.
Indeed, when asked about this a year ago by the BBC's Andrew Marr, Macron admitted that if the French were to hold a referendum on EU membership, they would 'probably' vote to leave.
Then, Macron was still in his pomp, feted as the fresh voice of leadership for a European Union confident in its future, while the UK sank into Brexit-related economic decline.
It's looking a bit different now. Macron — his opinion poll ratings having collapsed at a speed and a rate unprecedented in modern French political history — has been forced into a humiliating reversal of central elements in his programme. It was his only choice after the country's very stability was threatened by popular revolt on the streets.
More ominously for the Eurozone as a whole, it is not just in France where industrial output is now contracting: the same is true in Germany. And Italy appears to be in full recession.
As the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox pointed out yesterday, the most recent official figures show the UK economy performing markedly better than those three largest Eurozone member states.
And, should the worst come to the worst, with another European-wide recession, it is British banks which are now the best capitalised, and regional banks in Italy and Germany the most vulnerable.
The Guardian's chief economic commentator Larry Elliott observed a fortnight ago: 'Britain's debate on Brexit currently seems based on three propositions. That continental Europe is thriving; that Europe's politicians will come under no pressure to cut a deal from their big companies; and that Britain is well adrift at the bottom of Europe's economic league table. All three are false.'
That was prescient. Last week the president of Germany's industrial federation, Dieter Kempf, told journalists in Berlin that the British parliament's rejection of the withdrawal agreement hatched between Mrs May and the European Commission took matters 'dangerously close to a chaotic Brexit' which would leave his members (the biggest German companies) 'staring into the abyss.'
If the British Parliament is to avert this then that is most likely to require a change in the 'Irish backstop': ostensibly in order to protect peace on the island of Ireland, this element in the withdrawal agreement means that until a future trade deal is agreed the UK will never be able to escape from the EU's customs union. We could be stuck in a non-voting limbo.
It is principally this which caused a mass of Conservative MPs to reject Mrs May's deal in the Commons last week: without winning them back, she has no chance of a different outcome in a future vote.
Although the 'indefinite' backstop is the pride and joy of the Irish government — it was designed principally to address their concerns — there is now great anxiety in Dublin about what will happen if it turns out to be the reason for no deal being agreed at all.
Unprepared
Last week the head of the Irish Exporters Association, Simon McKeever, declared the country was 'totally unprepared' for a no-deal Brexit: 'If it happens, to put it bluntly, we are screwed.'
Unfortunately for Mr McKeever's concerns, or indeed for those of German exporters and French farmers, I see vanishingly little chance of the European Commission re-opening the Withdrawal Agreement which Mrs May failed so dismally to sell to the Commons.
With some reason, they don't believe Theresa May will ever go for a 'no-deal' Brexit. And even if she did, they think it's worth risking recession throughout Europe if that's what's necessary to teach the Brexiting Brits a lesson.
As if to demonstrate that mindset in Brussels, the French magazine Le Point last week reported a conversation from 2016 with the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in which the Frenchman declared: 'I shall have succeeded in my task if the final deal is so hard on the British that in the end they'll prefer staying in the EU.'
We can't say we weren't warned.
But I don't see the British people quailing in the face of President Macron's latest threats. The British Parliament, however, is another matter.
From the day we voted to leave the European Union, those most unhappy with the result have been intent on undermining that popular verdict's legitimacy by means of conspiracy theories.
These theories almost invariably involve claims of illicit financial string-pulling. The implication is that the British people, or at least those who voted for Brexit, are the unwitting dupes of nefarious financiers.
The latest — now being pushed by the Labour Party, the former Chancellor Philip Hammond and, believe it or not, Boris Johnson's sister Rachel — is that the Prime Minister's plan to achieve Brexit on October 31, Deal or No Deal, is part of a conspiratorial arrangement with 'hedge fund' financiers who allegedly stand to gain billions if the country 'crashes out' of the EU.
The claim is that there are a number of financiers who both back Boris Johnson and have made enormous bets on the pound crashing and stock markets falling. Further, that the Prime Minister is in league with, or manipulated by, these unpatriotic money-men.
Last Thursday, Rachel Johnson, in an interview on the BBC, criticised 'an executive' — that is, the Government led by her brother — 'that is so keen to deliver Brexit in any shape or form, to get the country out of the EU'.
Hostile
Asked who was behind this aggressive strategy, she replied: 'It could be coming from my brother himself … it could also be from — who knows — people who have invested billions in shorting the pound or shorting the country in the expectation of a No Deal Brexit.'
I'm not sure what Rachel meant by 'shorting the country'. I suppose she meant financiers taking bets that the share price of British companies will fall. She didn't explain how they might be influencing her brother in his policy, but the insinuation was clear.
It was instantly taken up by Philip Hammond, one of the 21 MPs from whom the Conservative whip was withdrawn after they voted for what the PM calls 'the Surrender Bill', compelling the Government to beg the EU for yet another extension of our EU membership on whatever terms Brussels sets.
In an article for Saturday's Times, the former Chancellor, whose loathing for the Prime Minister is painfully obvious, wrote: 'Boris Johnson asserts, ever more boldly, that we will leave the EU on October 31, 'with or without a deal'.
'But as his sister has reminded us, he is backed by speculators who have bet billions on a hard Brexit — and there is only one outcome that works for them: a crash-out No Deal Brexit that sends the currency tumbling and inflation soaring.'
Among the necessary facts missing from Mr Hammond's article, which might have reassured us that he knew what he was talking about, are: the identity of these 'speculators'; the nature of their investments in full; and how, exactly, their portfolios stand to gain from (for example) 'soaring inflation'. Anyway, his claim was seized on by the best-selling novelist Robert Harris, who is profoundly hostile to Brexit.
Mr Harris tweeted: 'Philip Hammond, ex-Chancellor, seriously suggests that one reason the Prime Minister may want a hard Brexit is so that his backers in the City don't lose billions — corruption on a scale I wouldn't dare put in fiction.'
Sadly for those who want to believe in conspiratorial fantasies, this allegation of multi-billion-pound corruption of the PM by pro-Brexit speculators is fiction. But like most such conspiracy theories, it didn't just come out of thin air.
In fact, it comes from a recent article in a somewhat obscure new publication called Byline Times, which asserted it could 'reveal that currently £4,563,350,000 (£4.6 billion) of aggregate short positions on a 'No Deal Brexit' have been taken out by hedge funds that directly or indirectly bankrolled Boris Johnson's leadership campaign.
'Most of these firms also donated to Vote Leave … currently £8,274,350,000 (£8.3 billion) of aggregate short positions has been taken out by hedge funds connected to the Prime Minister.'
Oddly, the identities of these alleged 'Boris-backing, Britain-selling' hedge funds do not appear in the article.
Nevertheless, despite this omission — which no proper newspaper would regard as satisfactory in a so-called 'investigation' — the article went viral.
So viral, in fact, that its allegations were subjected to penetrating analysis in the Financial Times.
The FT absolutely loathes Brexit, and last week called on Boris Johnson to resign. But it roundly ridiculed Byline Times's widely circulated 'revelations'.
Benefit
To quote the FT: 'The inference is that hedge funds have used their financial might to influence the outcome of Brexit via political donations and are now standing to benefit from short positions in UK companies. The problem is, it doesn't make any sense.'
I won't detain readers with the full demolition, but among the points made was that many so-called 'UK stocks' might be quoted on the London index but 'have little exposure to the UK economy'.
For example, the Cineworld cinema chain, which, according to the data cited by Byline Times, experienced the most 'short-selling' in the past month, derives 75 per cent of its revenues from the U.S. If you wanted to maximise returns on bets that the UK would 'crash out of the EU', why on earth would you 'short' the stock of a company whose London-listed shares would rise if sterling collapsed?
In fact, any 'shorting' of Cineworld would effectively be a bet against No Deal.
As the FT concluded, this 'investigation' seized on so avidly by the opponents of Brexit is 'firmly in the realm of conspiracy theories'.
To rub it in, the UK's independent fact-checking organisation, Full Fact, also forensically demolished the central claim, under the headline: 'We think there's a big error in that viral article about hedge funds and Brexit.'
And Full Fact said that when they asked Byline Times to supply 'more information on which firms they consider to have been direct or indirect Vote Leave donors, they would not release this information'.
None of these inconvenient facts has deterred Labour's Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, from writing to the Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, demanding 'an independent inquiry' into the claims made by Mr Hammond.
Sinister
And on yesterday's Andrew Marr Show, McDonnell's colleague Angela Rayner ran with the ball, declaring: 'What worries me is that speculators are going to profit off a No Deal, they are all backing Boris Johnson, and that's a conflict of interest.'
This conspiracy-theorising, masquerading as principled political argument, is just the latest — and I hope last — spasm of the campaign to prove that Brexit is the outcome not of democracy but of sinister subterfuge.
There was the claim that it was all down to Russian influence via Facebook: but while the Kremlin was undoubtedly keen on Brexit for its own reasons, there was never a shred of evidence that it had any influence on the outcome.
Then there was the claim, backed by the Electoral Commission, that a young Leave campaigner, Darren Grimes, had illicitly broken the spending cap in the last week of the campaign to the tune of £680,000. Amid much fanfare, he was fined £20,000.
But in July, a court upheld 25-year-old Grimes's appeal, finding him innocent.
In this context, we should never forget that far from the Leave campaign's victory being one of big money over the little man, the Remain campaign outspent Leave by £28.4 million to £13.4 million, once you include the £9.3 million spent by the then-Government on a pamphlet sent to every home telling us that leaving would be terrible 'for jobs and the economy'.
Then, last week, came the disintegration of the most treasured conspiracy theory of them all: that the largest pro-Brexit donor, Arron Banks, had broken electoral law with his contributions during the referendum.
Last Tuesday, the National Crime Agency announced that, despite lengthy investigation, it had found no evidence of such criminality on Mr Banks's part.
No wonder those campaigning to stop Brexit have moved on to a new conspiracy theory. The latest one is the loopiest of all: a true mark of their desperation.
The burden of responsibility on Theresa May's shoulders as she attempts to negotiate Britain's exit from the EU is as onerous as any British prime minister has endured since World War II.
But until I spoke to one of her closest advisers a couple of days ago, I hadn't realised the full extent of it.
He pointed out that she is conducting negotiations in the awareness that the alternative government to her administration, if it failed in its task and fell, is led by a man without the slightest regard for any of the institutions of the British state. Jeremy Corbyn would be intolerably, perhaps lethally, irresponsible as a negotiator on behalf of our national interests.
As if to put this point in the sharpest perspective, this week Mr Corbyn is due to visit Belfast and the border with the Republic of Ireland — currently the most vexed issue in the Brexit negotiations.
As Leader of the Opposition, Corbyn is absolutely entitled to engage in such political excursions. That doesn't alter the fact he is a bitterly controversial figure in Northern Ireland because of his longstanding sympathy for those who committed atrocious murders in the province.
Divided
Just weeks after the bombing of the Brighton Grand Hotel during the 1984 Conservative conference, which murdered five people (though not, as the IRA had intended, Margaret Thatcher), Corbyn invited two suspected IRA terrorists to the House of Commons. And when the Brighton bomber, Patrick Magee, came to face justice at the Old Bailey, Corbyn picketed the court.
His supporters claim 'Jeremy' had only ever been working for harmony and peace.They are either lying or ignorant: what he sought was total victory for the Republicans, not a settlement respecting both sides of the deeply divided community.
That is why Corbyn was one of the few MPs who, in 1985, voted in the Commons against the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first legislative step towards the creation of such an accord.
In the same sectarian spirit, his closest political friend and now Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell — who at an Irish Republican gathering in 2003 called for the terrorists who used 'bombs and bullets' to be 'honoured' — opposed the original negotiations to set up a power-sharing assembly (the basis for what eventually became known as the Good Friday Agreement).
It's hardly surprising that last week McDonnell had to abandon an address he was to have made to the Prison Officers' Association's annual conference: the Northern Ireland delegation were furious he had been invited, since 29 of their colleagues had been murdered by the terrorists whom McDonnell celebrated.
Corbyn is expected to speak at Queen's University in Belfast this week. It also happens to be where a 29-year-old law lecturer, Edgar Graham, was shot dead by the IRA in 1983.
The Labour leader might have forgotten, but those who daily live with the consequences have not.
The past lies particularly heavy in these parts — and inevitably Brexit is caught up in the historical debate.
The people of the Republic of Ireland had every reason to feel alarmed and even angered by the UK's vote to leave the EU. While this had no implications for the Common Travel Area between the Republic and the UK (this has been in place since 1922, has nothing to do with Brussels, and will continue), there was huge concern, especially among farmers, that Brexit could endanger cross-border trade once the UK was outside the EU's customs union and Single Market.
To reassure the Irish, the British Government guaranteed that, come what may, there would be no new physical infrastructure on the border between North and South: this would be obligatory as part of the final trade deal still to be negotiated between the UK and the EU.
That's all very well, said the EU: but Mrs May's 'red lines' include being outside the customs union and Single Market. So, Brussels asks: without additional physical border checks, how will each side make sure that nothing is coming through which doesn't breach what might become different regulatory systems?
Anyone who read Robert Hardman's report from Felixstowe in Saturday's Mail — which revealed how speedily and effortlessly this vast port processes £80 billion of worldwide imports a year — will understand just how much technology has transformed the customs business.
Sensible
The volume crossing the Irish border is minuscule by comparison: at £3 billion a year, it is equivalent to little more than 0.1 per cent of current total external EU trade. And Irish customs currently makes physical checks on just 1 per cent of that.
But to avoid any need for additional infrastructure at the North-South border post-Brexit, the British have made a number of suggestions, the most sensible being the enhancement of existing technology in the form of electronic customs arrangements, vehicle numberplate-reading cameras and drones.
These are part of the current intelligence-led operations to detect smuggling: there are such cameras in operation today on the main cross-border highway, as smugglers seek to capitalise on differing excise and VAT rates prevailing in the North and the Republic.
Immediately after Brexit, the then Irish taoiseach, Enda Kenny, committed his administration to intensive collaboration with HM Revenue and Customs to develop such a technological way to meet the requirement for an 'invisible' border.
But last year Kenny was succeeded by Leo Varadkar: he instantly abandoned these discussions — and cut similar lines of communication between Dublin and the office of Arlene Foster, the admirably pragmatic leader of Northern Ireland's largest party, the Democratic Unionists.
Instead, Varadkar has thrown in his country's lot entirely with the European Commission. So he faithfully echoes Brussels's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, who has consistently ridiculed the British idea of a technological solution.
One British Cabinet minister suggested a reason for this to me: unlike Kenny, the precocious Veradkar is more interested in gaining one of the glittering prizes available within the European establishment. He would love to become Ireland's first president of the European Council.
Outrageous
Barnier's motivation is more brutally practical. He is telling Mrs May, in effect, that the only way to honour her commitment to avoid a so-called 'hard border' in Ireland is for the UK to remain subject to the EU customs union and totally compliant with Single Market regulations (certainly as far as they affect agricultural produce).
In other words, the UK would be under the EU's regulatory controls but, having left the EU's political institutions, with no say in their composition.
This outrageous proposition is backed up with an even more disgraceful assertion: that any alternative UK suggestion of extra cameras or drones even some way from the border would be in abrogation of the Good Friday Agreement, and 'risk a return to terrorism'.
This has been the line of the former European Commissioner Lord (Chris) Patten, along with other peers who have voted in the Lords to stymie Mrs May's Brexit legislation.
This spurious hawking of the Good Friday Agreement by those trying to force the UK to remain bound by the EU customs union and Single Market has been comprehensively debunked by, of all people, Labour's Shadow Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner.
In a private address in Brussels a couple of months ago, Gardiner said: 'It doesn't mean that putting in a normal border relationship when one side is no longer in the EU will bring back paramilitary activity — that is to confuse cause and effect.
'People have played up the issue of the Irish border . . . because it is hugely in the Republic of Ireland's economic interest to make sure that there is no tariff and no external border there.'
Unfortunately for Gardiner — a close colleague of Corbyn — the BBC got hold of a tape of the meeting and he was skewered on BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show yesterday by that superb interviewer Emma Barnett.
'Do you stand by your remarks that people are playing up the Irish border for political reasons?' she asked. Coherent answer came there none.
It's only a pity that Ms Barnett was not able to ask Corbyn how a man with his record could ever hope to gain the trust of all the people of Northern Ireland, were he the prime minister negotiating Brexit. 
We ALL knew it was coming. For days, even weeks, it had been perfectly obvious that the Prime Minister would lose the Commons vote on her deal with the EU.
What we did not know, however, was how staggeringly bad the result would be. And even in an age of political shocks, the raw figures — 432 against the deal, but only 202 for it, a defeat by 230 votes — are simply extraordinary.
Never in history has any government lost a vote by such a colossal margin. For Theresa May, the Tory Party and the UK, these are dark, uncertain and dangerous waters.
Has there ever been such blatant political narcissism? Have our MPs ever been more indifferent to economic sanity and political reality?
Have they ever been less willing to compromise, or more desperate to flaunt their supposed principles? And have they ever talked more about the national interest in theory while doing so much to damage it in practice?
More on the MPs in a moment. But, first, a word about the woman at the centre of last night’s high drama.
In normal times, such a colossal humiliation would mean curtains for Mrs May.
Debacle
In 1979, James Callaghan was forced to call a General Election after losing a confidence motion by a single vote — the kind of margin Mrs May would today consider a glorious landslide.
In 1940, Neville Chamberlain won a vote of confidence by 81 votes after the debacle of the Nazi invasion of Norway. Yet with 100 fellow Tory MPs refusing to back him, he knew the game was up and agreed to step down.
However, last night’s defeat differs for one reason.
There is no plausible candidate to succeed Mrs May. Having weathered the slings and arrows for so long, she seems to have concluded that it is her duty to battle on, despite the sneers of her critics.
The most obvious analogy, as Peter Oborne wrote in the Mail yesterday, is with Sir Robert Peel’s rift with his own party over the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846. Peel, like Mrs May, had great moral integrity, but was an awkward and uncharismatic speaker. He was a pragmatist, with a strong sense of the national interest, rather than an ideologue.
At a time of great economic hardship, he realised that abolishing the protectionist Corn Laws, which propped up rich Tory farmers but made it impossible to import cheap food for the people, was the only way forward.
But he also knew it would alienate the hardliners in his own party, and would mean his political death warrant.
The obvious difference is that whereas Peel got his way, with support from the Opposition parties, it is hard to see how Mrs May can save her deal. So while Peel sacrificed himself for the national interest, Mrs May is sacrificing herself for — well, for what?
Where does she go from here?
As I scan the Commons benches for options, my heart sinks. On the Left, there is Jeremy Corbyn, whose cynical evasiveness masks the fact that he would quite happily see the economy driven into a ditch if it gives him a chance to turn Britain into an East German theme park.
On the Right, meanwhile, there are far too many extremist Brexiteers who would prefer a no-deal exit, with all the economic chaos and dislocation it would bring, to a sensible compromise.
Jacob Rees-Mogg and his friends would be secure, of course. They are rich men. But what about the rest of us?
As for the likes of Jo Johnson, Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry, Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna, their ideological vanity and preening self-indulgence know no bounds. Even though Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, they seem determined to ride roughshod over the democratically expressed will of the majority.
Still, they are openly plotting a second referendum, which they dishonestly call a People’s Vote. Are they so indifferent to the alienation this would cause in vast swathes of the country?
What neither wing of this unholy alliance seems to understand is that they cannot both get what they want.
It never occurs to them that if fanatical Remainers and ultra-Brexiteers dislike Mrs May’s deal, then her policy probably represents a pragmatic compromise with reality.
Yet both camps, cocooned in bubbles of ideological self-regard, prefer playing to their tiny online fan clubs than reconciling their ambitions with the real world.
The ultra-Brexiteers, for example, continue to peddle the fantasy of some magical ‘other’ deal, which Mrs May has unaccountably failed to obtain, that they could somehow winkle out of the EU.
Contempt
These are the people who told us Germany’s car-makers would force their government, and therefore Brussels, to give us a good deal within days of our vote to leave the EU. Now they have a new unicorn in sight, though again the details seem frustratingly elusive.
The fanatical Remainers, meanwhile, have spent the past few days briefing the media that, in alliance with the shamelessly partisan Commons Speaker, John Bercow, that they aim to ‘take control’ of Brexit by crippling the executive, shutting down the government and, presumably, scrapping the entire business.
For all their posturing about the rights of Parliament (i.e. themselves), you could hardly find a more flagrant example of contempt for democracy.
I appreciate they were disappointed by the vote to leave. But are they blind, so trapped in their gilded cages, that they cannot understand what a backlash they would unleash?
So what next? In an ideal world, Mrs May would merrily head back to Brussels, where other EU leaders would see sense, amend the hated Irish backstop and give her a deal she could sell to the Commons.
Alas, there are two gaping flaws in that scenario. First, the EU elite have shown precious little interest in compromising with the realities of British politics.
Why would they? After all, their friend Tony Blair has promised them that if they refuse to bend, they can get a second referendum and force us to stay in after all.
Second, and more worryingly, I now wonder whether there is any sensible deal that the Commons would accept.
Far from mellowing, attitudes seem to be hardening daily.
Many Brexiteers appear unwilling to accept any compromise with the EU.
As for the Remainers, their hysterical antipathy to any kind of Brexit, even a managed, sensible one, means they would rather sacrifice democracy itself than contemplate life outside Jean-Claude Juncker’s bibulous embrace.
In essence, though, these are symptoms of the same problem. We have a political class who, insulated from the realities of ordinary lives, are more interested in pursing their own strange ideological obsessions than in compromising for the good of the country.
I often read that Britain is deeply divided, that passions run high and we live in an age of unprecedented political and cultural confrontation.
That has never rung true to me. Polls show most people, however they voted, agree that the referendum should be respected. Most want our politicians to get on with Brexit, without crashing the economy or causing unnecessary chaos, and move on to other things.
So in that sense, the silent majority are not divided at all.
Precious
It is our MPs who are divided. It is they, not the people, who insist on elevating their precious consciences to the status of holy writ. And it is the MPs who are obsessed with customs unions, backstops and the rest of the pettifogging babble they have inflicted on us day after day.
Yes, details matter and principles are at stake. But this is the real world, the real economy, not some ideological game. And if, as I fear, the uncertainty continues, as we approach the cliff edge and the economy totters, who will these posturing pygmies blame?
We may live in an age of uncertainty, but you can bet on one thing. The last people they will blame are the real culprits — themselves.
This has not been a great week for Angela Merkel. 
A keen football fan who celebrated in the dressing room after Germany won the last World Cup, she watched in horror on Wednesday as the reigning champions crashed out at the group stage for the first time since 1938.
It might seem trivial. But the humiliation of Mrs Merkel’s boys is an irresistibly compelling symbol of what has happened to her domestic reputation and Utopian dreams.
The day after Germany’s exit, with cruelly ironic timing, Mrs Merkel was also on the move, arriving in Brussels for the EU summit.
For the Chancellor, it was a long day. She was up with her fellow EU leaders until 4.30 on Friday morning, arguing about immigration before agreeing a tissue-thin compromise deal.
When the text was finally published, with airy pledges to strengthen the EU’s border controls, stop migrants travelling within the Schengen area, and ease the pressure on Italy and Greece, the EU leaders themselves hailed it as a tremendous breakthrough.
It led yesterday morning’s BBC bulletins, with Radio 4’s headlines describing it, quite wrongly, as a ‘deal to reduce the flow of migrants into southern Europe’ and an ‘agreement on how to tackle migration’.
In fact, it was nothing of the kind. As one of the BBC’s own reporters, Adam Fleming, pointed out, the so-called deal was ‘full of caveats, commas and sub-clauses’. Even the Corporation’s Europe editor, Katya Adler, said bluntly that it was ‘riddled with holes’.
For all the talk of a deal, the truth is that the EU is nowhere near a lasting agreement on the migration crisis. And the obvious reason is that the immigration issue rouses passions that politicians such as Mrs Merkel are simply incapable of understanding.
The fact that Germany’s leader found herself in this position is very revealing. There was once a time, back in the days when her countrymen were good at football, when Mrs Merkel would have arrived in Brussels as a conqueror, the architect of Europe, the mistress of all she surveyed.
Not ANY more. At home, she is under relentless pressure. Her interior minister, Bavarian conservative leader Horst Seehofer, had explicitly warned that unless she brokers a new deal to ‘stop [illegal] migrants bleeding into Germany’, he will ‘unilaterally slam Germany’s borders shut’.
Abroad, the atmosphere is increasingly bitter. This week Austria staged ‘anti-migrant’ military exercises on its border, while the leaders of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic explicitly restated their opposition to any EU scheme forcing them to accept more immigrants.
Even Spain, which has been more welcoming than most, turned away a charity boat carrying 230 African migrants this week, with the prime minister insisting his country was no longer prepared to be ‘Europe’s sea rescue service’.
Meanwhile, Italy’s hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who recently refused admission to two more rescue boats carrying thousands of migrants, was also in the news.
He is adamant that other EU nations must take more migrants to relieve the pressure on Italy.
But when Mr Salvini heard French President Emmanuel Macron had dismissed his concerns, he exploded.
‘If Macron believes there is no migration problem in Italy, then he can open his house to the 9,000 migrants France committed to take from Italy under the EU deal,’ he snapped. ‘French arrogance is no longer fashionable in Italy.’
So much for European unity, eh? No wonder even the EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, hardly one of life’s Eurosceptics, declared this week that ‘the fragility of the EU is increasing’ and ‘the cracks are growing in size’.
The common factor in all this is, of course, migration. It has ripped away the crumbling façade of Continental unity, exposed the bitter divisions between Northern, Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, and made a mockery of Mrs Merkel’s ambitions to lead a happy, harmonious EU.
Gaze across the Continent and you see the same pattern. From Greece to Germany, from Sicily to Scandinavia, people are unhappy about mass migration, are punishing the politicians they blame for it and are increasingly drifting into the arms of the extremist Right. And as a result, Mrs Merkel and her allies, who have staked their careers on building an ever-closer union and banishing the nation-state to history, are facing a horrible collision with reality.
It is hard to exaggerate the threat that all this poses to the European project.
Even the BBC — which regularly downplays public concerns about immigration — has recognised the scale of the crisis, with Europe editor Katya Adler posting an apocalyptic essay on its website this week under the headline ‘Europe’s migration crisis: Could it finish the EU?’
Yet one group of people have been mysteriously silent about all this.
They are, of course, Britain’s unreconciled ultra-Remainers, who have spent the past two years lauding the EU as a progressive paradise and caricaturing Britain as a land of closed-minded Philistines. Again and again they insist that talk of reducing immigration is tantamount to fascism, and insist that any deal must preserve freedom of movement, whatever the cost.
Even within Theresa May’s Cabinet, some ministers seem not to have noticed that the mood within the EU is shifting back towards the restoration of national borders.
Earlier this week, the Business Secretary, Greg Clark, told our leaders of commerce that he wanted the softest possible Brexit in order to ensure free movement — even though that is patently not what the country voted for in 2016.The irony, though, is that freedom of movement may be doomed anyway — not because of Brexit, but because of what is happening in the heart of the EU itself. You don’t have to look far to find examples of the new mood.
In Austria, the 31-year-old Right-wing Chancellor Sebastian Kurz sent hundreds of troops to the border to prepare for a possible migration surge this summer.
In Hungary, the authoritarian leader Viktor Orban recently announced plans for a special 25 per cent tax on organisations that support migration.
In Germany, where September’s election gave the far-Right AfD 13 per cent of the vote, there remains a strong possibility that Mrs Merkel’s coalition partner, Herr Seehofer, will pull the plug on her government within weeks, unless she reverses her open-door policy.
So how did we get here? Well, the answer is no mystery. Germany’s experiment in throwing open its borders to more than a million people has been well chronicled, but it is merely one example of the way in which the EU’s commitment to free movement is buckling under the strain of mass migration.
The most revealing case, I think, is Italy. There the key figure is the ferociously anti-immigrant Signor Salvini, who has been outspoken in his demands for the EU to ‘defend its borders’ against African migrants. ‘If anyone in the EU thinks Italy should keep being a landing point and refugee camp, they have misunderstood,’ he thundered recently. ‘The air in Europe is changing.’
It is tempting to dismiss Salvini as a throwback to Benito Mussolini, a bombastic demagogue whose political style involved relentless attacks on immigrants, gypsies and foreigners. (Chillingly, Italy has just announced it is going to take a census of its gypsies, while Salvini said he regrets not being able to deport them.)
But he did not come out of nowhere. His party, the Lega, won almost six million votes in March, and his rhetoric clearly resonates with many ordinary Italians.
In the past 15 years, Italy’s foreign-born population has ballooned from 1.3 million to more than five million. And even though last year saw numbers fall, almost 120,000 people made the perilous sea journey, a figure unthinkable only a decade ago.
Given the ferocity of the public backlash, you might have expected the Italian government to close its borders. But like 25 other European countries, Italy is part of the Schengen area, in which border controls were sacrificed in the name of freedom of movement.
Of course, free movement is a noble principle. Who can fail to be moved by the idea of a happy, harmonious Europe, in which our children travel at will, learning languages and making friends? All too often, however, the reality looks more like the Jungle, the notoriously squalid migrant camp at Calais, where tens of thousands of desperate people waited and hoped to find a way to cross the Channel. Yet even now Mrs Merkel insists that free movement simply cannot be questioned.
In November 2016, for example, she ruled out allowing Britain to have access to the single market unless we accepted freedom of movement. You could not have one without the other, she said, ‘because everyone else will then want these exceptions’.
So if ‘everyone else’ — meaning the vast majority of ordinary European voters — now wants to ditch free movement, why on earth are Mrs Merkel and her allies so wedded to it?
The truth, of course, is that they see it as a quasi-religious principle, an unshakeable pillar of their world-view.
The former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt once even threatened to read one of the founding texts of the EU, the 1957 Treaty of Rome, to Mrs May’s ministers. Specifically, he wanted to read out Article 3, which pledges to abolish all ‘obstacles to freedom of movement for persons, services and capital’.
You might see it as the product of its time, to be amended or superseded when history moves on. But to Mr Verhofstadt it is the equivalent of Moses’ stone tablets.
That strikes me as suicidally self-defeating. Times change. If you want to survive, you change with them. And if the leaders of the EU think they are a special case, they are even more deluded than I thought.
The Treaty of Rome was written in a world that has vanished, in which nobody imagined that literally millions of people would brave the waters of the Mediterranean to build new lives in Munich, Malmo and Manchester.
The EU’s chief architect, French mandarin Jean Monnet, was scarred by his native land’s humiliation in World War II. Obsessed with the need to consign the nation-state to history, Monnet believed ‘there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union’.
He was wrong. People’s national identities are too deeply rooted to be thrown away overnight.
From the 18 million Britons who voted for Brexit to the millions of Italians, Hungarians and Greeks who bridle at being lectured from Brussels, most Europeans are profoundly sceptical about the idea of a post-national future.
The fact is that Monnet’s project was not designed for an era in which millions of people are clamouring at the borders of Europe. And when Mrs Merkel claims that the alternative would be the walls and fences of the Cold War, she is showing her age.
The Berlin Wall, which blighted her childhood, fell almost 30 years ago. It is not coming back. Indeed, instead of looking backwards, Mrs Merkel should be looking ahead, not to some rose-tinted federalist Utopia, but to a more realistic future that is bound to involve considerable international unrest and redoubled public anxiety.
It is perfectly possible, for example, that in five years’ time there could be another major crisis on Europe’s borders: a fresh revolution in Egypt, say, or a civil war in Turkey, or even some sort of meltdown in Russia.
How would the EU cope with yet another influx of millions of
refugees? Wouldn’t this be a gift-wrapped present for the far Right? Wouldn’t it play into the hands of demagogues like Italy’s Salvini? And mightn’t it tear an irreparable hole in the EU’s pretence of happy-clappy unity?
All of this might sound obvious. But it clearly isn’t obvious to die-hard Remainers here in Britain — including some of Mrs May’s own ministers — for whom even the slightest talk of restoring national borders is apparently beyond the pale.
Though I voted Remain, I am heartily sick of the stridency and snobbery of those Euro-enthusiasts who refuse to yield with good grace to the wishes of the majority.
Similarly, I cannot understand why the supposedly intelligent people among Remainers here and those who form Europe’s elite are so blinded by sanctimonious piety that they cannot see how the migration crisis is pushing millions of people towards the extreme Right.
A good example is the arch-Remainer Tory MP Anna Soubry, who dismisses popular concerns about immigration as ‘frankly racist’.
She believes we should stay in the single market and customs union, which means retaining freedom of movement. Britons should, in her words, ‘suck it up’.
I can’t believe I’m alone in finding this extraordinarily patronising. Have we not moved on from the days when politicians expected the general public to ‘suck it up’?
Still, all this is immensely revealing. For voters across Europe have been compelled to suck it up, most famously in 2015, when national governments were obliged to accept thousands of migrants under the EU’s quota system, whether they liked it or not.
In this respect, immigration is both an issue in itself and a symbol of something deeper. To voters in places like Hungary, occupied by the Red Army in 1956 and which endured decades beneath the Soviet jackboot, it has come to symbolise loss of national sovereignty and imposition of foreign rule.
The irony is if the EU leaders really wanted to preserve the principle of freedom of movement, they would be advised to reform it now.
Instead, like Britain’s arch-Remainers, they press on, cocooned by their own hubris, oblivious to the fact that their obstinacy is propelling voters into the arms of extremists.
Where will it end? I fear with more fences, walls, camps and cages. With more populist posturing and racist rabble-rousing, a continent splintered into factions and a dream of unity smashed to pieces.
In other words, the destruction of the very values the EU is supposed to represent.
In politics, as in other walks of life, you pay a high price for hubris, complacency and a refusal to change.
And if Mrs Merkel doubts it, she should ask her nation’s humiliated footballers.
 
The story of almost every modern premiership can be told as a two- act tragedy.
Act One. A car sweeps into Downing Street and out climbs the hero of the hour. Wreathed in smiles, a picture of confidence and vigour, the new master (or mistress) of British politics walks to the microphone, delivers a few inspirational soundbites and steps inside the famous black door.
Act Two. The door opens, and our hero re-emerges. But now the face is pale and haggard, the eyes puffy, the voice weary and disappointed. The long struggle for survival is over. The torture chamber has claimed its latest victim.
As Theresa May wept on the steps of No 10 yesterday, her voice cracking in yet another moment of excruciating melodrama, it would have come as little consolation that no Prime Minister for more than 40 years has escaped such a fate.
Jim Callaghan was destroyed by the Winter of Discontent. Margaret Thatcher was assassinated by her own ministers. John Major was crushed beneath an electoral landslide.
Tony Blair was forced out by his backbenchers. Gordon Brown was knifed by his colleagues and rejected by the electorate. And David Cameron saw his political life ended overnight when the British people voted to leave the EU.
For sheer gruelling agony, though, Mrs May’s ordeal was in a league of its own. 
And though she was not the first Prime Minister to shed a tear on leaving office, the fact that none has ever broken down so completely tells its own story.
She became Prime Minister on July 13, 2016. At the time, few people doubted that she was the right woman for the job.
In the wake of Mr Cameron’s resignation, Michael Gove’s betrayal of Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom’s gaffe-induced withdrawal, the former Home Secretary looked like the only grown-up left.
While her rivals bickered and plotted, Mrs May’s palpable seriousness, her sense of duty, set her apart. Here, it seemed, was a new Iron Lady, who would restore order where all was chaos.
But the essence of any good tragedy is that the protagonist is doomed by a fatal flaw: an error or defect that makes failure inevitable, no matter how much the hero struggles against it.
And like so many Prime Ministers, Mrs May was doomed by precisely the qualities that had elevated her to the top job in the first place.
Her earnestness became woodenness, her steadfastness became stubbornness, and even her sense of duty became a prison, trapping her inside No 10 long after it was clear that her party had turned against her.
Perhaps, in some alternative universe, her tenure might have turned out differently. Her credentials were impeccable.
As a rising Tory star in the 2000s, the first woman to serve as party chairman had argued for modernisation, warning activists that they were seen as the ‘nasty party’.
And as the longest-serving Home Secretary for more than 60 years, she had weathered storms that would have sunk most of her rivals, deporting the radical cleric Abu Qatada, fighting to get immigration down and challenging the police to clean up corruption.
In her first speech as Prime Minister, delivered on that sunny July day three years ago, Mrs May promised a crusade against the ‘burning injustices’ in British society.
She promised to work for ‘working-class families’, as well as those who were ‘just managing’. She promised to give people more control over their lives, to make it easier to buy homes and to tear down the barriers of class and race.
None of it materialised. All her reforming ambitions were consumed by the black hole of Brexit.
Yet, at first, after six years of an insouciant Old Etonian in No 10, Mrs May’s sober new approach felt distinctly refreshing.
Indeed, it seemed that Britain had found its own Angela Merkel: another dogged, dutiful clergyman’s daughter, with an instinctive understanding of the ambitions and anxieties of Middle Britain.
Later, as Mrs May’s premiership collapsed in chaos, people forgot that she had once been extraordinarily popular.
As late as April 2017, an opinion poll found that she led Jeremy Corbyn by a staggering 54 to 15 per cent, while the Tories were 21 per cent clear of Labour.
But that marked the beginning of the end.
One sunny April morning, Mrs May unexpectedly called a snap General Election, gambling that she could use her popularity to secure a bigger majority in the House of Commons.
The result was a disaster.
Day by day, as her nerves and awkwardness as a campaigner were exposed before the cameras, her lead ebbed away. And when the votes were counted on the night of June 8, she had lost her majority — and with it, her political capital.
When future historians ask what went wrong, Mrs May’s personal weaknesses will surely loom large.
Like Gordon Brown — another dour, inflexible clergyman’s child — she seemed to shrink from the limelight. When the cameras rolled, she visibly tensed, as if mortally afraid of saying the wrong thing.
It is supremely telling that when an interviewer teasingly asked about the naughtiest thing she had ever done, the only thing that occurred to her was that, as a child, she used to run through fields of wheat.
This from a woman who had been at Oxford in the mid-Seventies, the heyday of sit-ins, soft drugs and student hedonism.
One day, perhaps, Mrs May’s biographers may conclude that her pathological defensiveness was rooted in her experience as a woman in politics.
Depressingly, women in public life still face appalling abuse, from casual sexism to horrifying rape threats.
Indeed, I lost count of the times I heard supposedly high-minded Left-wingers jeer that Mrs May was ‘weak and wobbly’. It never seemed to occur to them that far from being witty and clever, they were merely exposing their own disgusting sexism.
Mrs May rightly took pride in being the second woman Prime Minister. 
Yet, unlike Margaret Thatcher — who loved being the only woman in the room, played up her housewife credentials and boasted of giving the men a handbagging — Mrs May never turned her femininity into an asset.
Although her aides tried to play up the comparison with the Iron Lady, the differences were far starker than the similarities. Mrs Thatcher loved conflict. Mrs May shrank from it. Mrs Thatcher had a clear vision of where she was going. Mrs May seemed content merely to stagger from day to day.
Above all, Mrs Thatcher was a ruthlessly instinctive politician, a calculating opportunist who played Westminster’s game of thrones to perfection. By contrast, Mrs May, inflexible to the last, seemed entirely bereft of political cunning.
Almost every major decision ended up backfiring.
Under pressure from her backbenchers, she invoked Article 50 before she had a clear strategy, lost an entire army of Cabinet ministers and finally produced an EU withdrawal plan that satisfied nobody.
Humiliated in the Commons, she appealed to Jeremy Corbyn for support, horrifying Tory activists. Finally, she made one last attempt to re-launch her deal, only to alienate her remaining allies in the Cabinet.
Even outside Westminster she seemed to have a kind of reverse Midas touch. Nothing ever went right. 
Hearing of the disaster at Grenfell Tower in June 2017, she decided against rushing to meet the survivors, judging that it would be better to spare them an exploitative media circus.
But, instead of being hailed for her sense of responsibility, this supremely decent woman was condemned as both callous and uncaring.
And when, at her party conference that autumn, she lost her voice on stage, croaking desperately while the set collapsed around her, it confirmed the impression that she had been singled out by fate for special punishment, condemned to limp from one disaster to the next.
But, of course, there was another crucial factor in Mrs May’s demise.
And it all comes down to a word that, very tellingly, she did not even use in that speech in Downing Street on her first day as Prime Minister: Brexit.
As a former Remainer, Mrs May was probably doomed from the start. In hindsight, as many have argued, the Tories might have done better with an ardent Brexiteer, who would have found it easier to carry their colleagues with them.
Any fair-minded observer will surely agree that she had a horribly unenviable inheritance, taking over not just a divided party but a divided country.
Probably no politician on earth would have been able to mollify both the 17.4 million people who voted Leave and the 16.1 million who voted Remain.
But Mrs May never came up with a way through the quagmire. As a cold-blooded political strategist, she proved an unalloyed failure.
For six months she dodged the question, insisting merely that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. Then, at the behest of her aide Nick Timothy, she swung to the Right, adopting an aggressive, uncompromising tone that alienated Remainers.
Once she got into negotiations with the EU, however, her tone began to change.
She became ever more secretive, alienating Brexiteer ministers such as David Davis and Dominic Raab.
On the Right, critics accused her of conceding too much ground on the Irish border, wanting to enter a customs union by the back door, and even conspiring to undermine Brexit completely.
Yet, at the same time, she never successfully reached out to potential allies on her party’s Left. As a result, she found herself friendless.
Three times she introduced her deal in the Commons, and three times it failed. This was not parliamentary strategy so much as parliamentary sadomasochism.
It is too simplistic, though, to blame all this on the failings of one woman.
After all, it is no coincidence that Mrs May was the fourth successive Conservative Prime Minister, after Cameron, Major and Thatcher, to fall victim to the party’s interminable and increasingly bitter schism over Europe.
Her critics claimed that the only other female Prime Minister in our history would have stormed into the conference chamber, breathing fire and swinging her handbag.
But the historical record tells a different story.
Margaret Thatcher had 11 years to pull Britain out of the EU. But far from taking us out, she actually took us further in.
It is easy to list Mrs May’s limitations, mistakes and misfortunes. It is much harder, though, to identify precisely what she should have done instead.
Talk to any Tory MP and they give you a different answer. That tells its own story.
It is true, of course, that an alternative leader might have proceeded with greater tactical cunning. Similarly, almost any other leader would surely have done a better job of selling her exit deal to the British people.
But would the 27 EU leaders really have behaved differently if the lone British leader had been a belligerent, blustering man rather than a cautious, awkward woman? Would we really have got a better deal? I doubt it.
And would another leader really have healed the political and cultural wounds of the 2016 referendum? Wouldn’t the same combination of posturing, intransigent ultra-Brexiteers and sanctimonious, sneering Remainers have combined to block any progress in the House of Commons?
So if the Tories think her exit is a panacea, I fear they have a shock coming.
Their standing in the polls is abysmal. Nigel Farage is buoyant. Jeremy Corbyn waits in the wings. And no Brexit solution is in sight.
For the past three years, Mrs May’s critics have assured us that she is the great impediment to success, and that if she goes, Britain will soar, with one wave of a magic wand, towards a glorious post-Brexit future.
We will soon see if they were right.
As for Mrs May herself, the end of her premiership has undoubtedly come as a deep humiliation. Whether she likes it or not, the final, unbearable moments of her speech yesterday, when she broke down before the cameras, will surely define her time in office.
But on a purely human level, she is better off out of No 10, safe at last from the sneers, plots and betrayals.
She tried her best. She failed. There is no dishonour in that.
In the long days ahead, she can console herself that she did her duty. She will always be able to look at herself in the mirror. I wonder how many of her critics will be able to say the same.
Will it ever end? Three days after the parliamentary showdown that was supposed to settle Brexit once and for all, Labour now plans to back an amendment calling for a second referendum on Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU.
And so the soap opera continues, a stalemate that has become the greatest embarrassment in our modern political history.
But if MPs do vote for a second referendum — as seems disturbingly possible — then this inglorious tragicomedy could take a very dark turn indeed.
A second vote would be a catastrophe for British democracy — and I say that as someone who voted Remain the first time around.
Whatever the outcome, I think it would deepen the gulf between Leavers and Remainers, drive a wedge between generations, turn millions of people against the political system and inject a poison into our political culture that would persist for generations.
The practical objections alone are colossal. Referendums are expensive: The last one cost us £130 million.
Even if Parliament approved a second vote, a campaign would take several months to organise. In other words, British businesses would continue in limbo until the middle of 2020, with yet more uncertainty, paralysis and economic stagnation.
And what on earth would a second referendum be about? A simple Leave/ Remain re-run? Boris Johnson’s deal versus Remain? The deal versus No Deal? Or a messy, Byzantine combination of all of them?
Almost certainly, Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party would urge their supporters to boycott a second vote unless No Deal was an option. 
That seems very unlikely, because the Electoral Commission justified the straightforward Leave or Remain option in the 2016 referendum on the grounds that the question had to be ‘written in a way that voters could easily understand and answer’.
That effectively rules out a complicated three-way question in any re-run. So, with No Deal off the table, there is a good chance that millions would stay at home, meaning that even if Remain did prevail, their victory would be disastrously tainted.
The Brexit Party would claim that the result had no legitimacy and might even campaign for a third vote. Can you imagine greater chaos?
And would the EU really welcome us with open arms? Isn’t it likely that Emmanuel Macron and his cronies would force us to prove our sincerity by embracing the principle of greater integration and perhaps even by signing up to the euro and the Schengen open-borders agreement?
But, quite apart from all this, I think the biggest objection is a basic point of principle. A second referendum would be wrong. It would look wrong, sound wrong, even smell wrong. It would simply not be the decent thing to do.
At the heart of democracy is the expectation that if you lose, you take defeat on the chin. You don’t call out the army, take to the streets or begin a guerrilla campaign to topple your adversaries. 
You dust yourself down, wish your opponents the best of luck and recharge your batteries for the next electoral campaign.
Referendums are, of course, slightly different, because they are once-in-a-generation occasions.
But that is the point: They are supposed to happen only once in a generation.
This was the explicit premise for the 2016 campaign. David Cameron made this absolutely clear at the time, telling the cameras that there would be no second chance, no re-run. 
‘The Government,’ promised the official leaflets, ‘will implement what you decide.’
A year later, in the snap election of 2017, both the Tories and Labour explicitly promised they would honour the referendum result. 
There was no talk then of ‘B******s to Brexit’, to quote the Lib Dems’ infantile and patronising slogan. So what has changed?
According to the dishonestly named People’s Vote campaign — for what was the original referendum but a people’s vote? — the circumstances now are completely different. 
Two million Leavers, they claim, have died since the last referendum, so we ought to have another one.
Quite apart from being unforgivably tasteless, this argument is almost risibly transparent. People die all the time. Does that mean that we have to re-run every referendum after a few years?
And, in any case, if so many Leavers have died, how come the polls haven’t radically changed? Why are they still so close?
Next, the Remainers claim we have lots of information now that we didn’t have in 2016. We know now, they say, how difficult Brexit will be, so we ought to have a chance to change our minds.
This argument strikes me as utterly dishonest. There is nothing we know now that we didn’t know three years ago.
At the time, the Remain campaign argued that Brexit would be complicated, costly and extremely risky, which is precisely what Remainers still claim today.
This was hardly a state secret. It was aired in the media every day for weeks by, among others, the then prime minister, chancellor, leader of the opposition and the leader of the Liberal Democrats.
But 17.4 million people chose to ignore that argument, preferring to prioritise the issues of identity and sovereignty.
I didn’t agree with them, but that doesn’t mean I think they were reactionaries, racists or xenophobes, as so many ultra-Remainers claim.
They have been bolstered by the fact that the economic apocalypse so many predicted at the time of the vote has not come to pass.
The Leave argument also has a distinguished historical pedigree. Labour’s greatest leader, 
Clement Attlee, believed we should stay out of what was then the Common Market. So did his successor, Hugh Gaitskell, as well as serious, erudite figures such as Michael Foot, Enoch Powell, Tony Benn and Barbara Castle.
That more than 17 million Britons chose to agree with them does not strike me as outlandish.
I agree that the Leave campaign was economical with the truth and, even more important, lamentably vague about its strategy for leaving the EU and forging a new path afterwards.
But that is the nature of referendums. Binary questions encourage both sides to take simple, strident positions, which is a good reason to think twice before having another one.
Just think how bitter politics has become in the past few years, encapsulated by the horrifying scenes of People’s Vote demonstrators screaming abuse at Jacob Rees-Mogg and his young son as they walked through Westminster on Saturday afternoon. 
A second referendum campaign would stoke passions to fever pitch. The sense of betrayal among Leavers would almost certainly see such scenes repeated across the country — and just imagine their outrage if Remain scraped home!
Some Remainers, it seems to me, are so fanatical about their devotion to Brussels, so cocooned in their self-indulgent bubbles and so maddened by the experience of defeat that they have given no serious thought to the consequences of their actions.
They don’t care that another referendum would alienate millions of voters. And they are blind to the fact that if they prevail, they will destroy trust in Westminster, corrode the bonds of our national community and undermine the basic principle of democracy.
It is a sign of their arrogance that they think the rest of the population cannot see through their dishonest cant about wanting a ‘final say’.
But, as most of us know perfectly well, what they actually want is to reverse Brexit — and they will stop at nothing to achieve it.
The principle of national solidarity demands that when a majority of the British people speak, the rest of us listen, instead of trying to shout and shriek them down.
The biggest myth about Brexit is that it is terribly complicated. Some aspects are, indeed, immensely convoluted, although I can’t help noticing that the most fanatical Remainers claim to be experts on all of them.
But at its heart is a principle a child can understand, even if Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer can’t. The British people were given a choice and they voted to leave.
So we should leave: No ifs, no buts, no second referendum. It really is as simple as that.
This is a huge decision for our country, perhaps the biggest we will make in our lifetimes. And it will be the final decision... When the British people speak, their voice will be respected — not ignored. 
If we vote to leave, then we will leave. There will not be another renegotiation and another referendum.’
The date was November 10, 2015, and those were the words of David Cameron, setting out his plans for the EU referendum he had promised in his election manifesto a few months earlier. You can hardly say he wasn’t clear.
During the campaign that followed, both sides stuck to the same script. This was the moment of decision, a one-off showdown that would never be repeated. 
As the official leaflets sent to every home put it, ‘the Government will implement what you decide’. 
Three years on, however, those promises are beginning to look increasingly fragile. 
In recent months a hysterical campaign for a so-called ‘People’s Vote’ has been gathering strength, with heavy promotion from the BBC, the Guardian and much of the pseudo-intellectual liberal elite.
Until recently it was easy to write them off as a coalition of sore losers, united only by their obsession with the EU and their haughty disregard for the 17.4 million who had the impudence to vote Leave. 
But now, it seems, their campaign is closer to fruition than ever.
Thanks to the deadlock in Parliament, where Theresa May’s hard-won deal with the EU seems hopelessly becalmed, a new referendum is becoming a much stronger possibility.
Even some of Mrs May’s Cabinet have apparently come around to the idea. 
The Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, for example, pointedly said on Sunday that a second referendum should ‘not be off the table’, which flatly contradicts the Prime Minister’s line over the past two years.
Yet in purely logistical terms, a second referendum would be a nightmare. There is perilously little time to get the legislation through before Britain leaves the EU on March 29.
And what would be the question? Mrs May’s deal or no deal? Mrs May’s deal or Remain? Or some combination of all three, with two rounds of voting?
As political scientists have shown, the outcome could depend entirely on the method chosen. 
For example, if Leave votes were split between two different Brexit options, then Remain could waltz through the middle without winning a majority, which would be manifestly wrong.
More importantly, though, a second referendum would be morally wrong — and I say that as somebody who voted Remain. 
Campaigners for a ‘People’s Vote’ (who voted in the last one — aliens?) pretend that it represents the democratic way forward. But this strikes me as nonsense.
If two referendums are more democratic than one, why stop with two? Why not three, four or five? Why not have a referendum every week?
I know plenty of fervent People’s Vote enthusiasts. Every one of them voted Remain. Far from being fans of referendums in general, they were appalled by David Cameron’s decision to let the common people decide their own future.
When they talk piously about wanting the ‘final say on the deal’ or wanting ‘more democracy’, they are being dishonest. 
They do not want more democracy; they want less of it. And if they did get their way and Britain stayed in the EU, you can be sure they would never support another referendum.
Given that I supported Remain, some readers may wonder why I don’t agree with them. The answer is that I am a democrat. The nature of democracy means that you don’t confuse your own personal prejudices with divine wisdom, and you try to accept defeat with good grace.
Unfortunately, the likes of Tony Blair, Nick Clegg, and Alastair Campbell don’t see things that way. United in hysterical outrage, they are the spoiled brats of the political world, who simply cannot cope with losing.
For the past two years, Mr Blair and Mr Clegg, in particular, have rarely been far from Brussels, pouring poison into the ears of the EU elite, urging them not to make concessions to Britain, and promising that they would get a second referendum eventually.
I hesitate to use the word ‘treachery’, but there comes a point when no other word will do. 
A genuine patriot would put his personal convictions to one side and work in the interests of the democratic majority. But when it comes to the crunch, does anyone really believe Mr Blair and Mr Clegg would side with Britain?
The People’s Vote website claims that ‘new facts have come to light about the costs and complexity of Brexit that no one could have known at the time of the referendum’. This is a lie, pure and simple.
There are no new facts. The Remain campaign made precisely the same argument in 2016, and millions chose to dismiss it. Why insult them by forcing them to vote again?
As for the argument a second plebiscite would heal the divisions of the past two years, this is dangerous nonsense. 
A second referendum campaign would almost certainly be even more angry and impassioned than the first. 
As Mrs May has pointed out, the air would be thick with accusations of betrayal, with 17.4 million people feeling that their democratically expressed instruction had been ignored.
Imagine the reaction in towns and cities far from Westminster. Imagine how people would feel in Stoke-on-Trent, where 69 per cent voted Leave; or Wakefield, where 66 per cent voted Leave; or Hull, where 68 per cent voted Leave.
The second referendum advocates, smug in their university-town bubbles, never bother to imagine what these people would think. They don’t live in these towns, and if they think about their inhabitants at all, it is to sneer at them as knuckle-dragging racists.
But here is how it would look from Wakefield. It would look as though a spoiled political and intellectual elite, cut off by its own privilege from the views of ordinary people, had conspired to betray democracy and steal the Brexit vote.
And you can be sure of one thing: the millions of Tory supporters who voted Leave would abandon the party in droves. It could be out of power for many years to come the next time a general election came round.
Who would benefit from a ‘People’s Vote’? Jeremy Corbyn might, depending on his position during the campaign. (So far he seems to have been reluctant to offer any cogent opinion at all, either because he wants to disguise his true position on Brexit for narrow partisan gain, or because he is simply not bright enough to grasp the issues at hand.) 
Ukip certainly would. So would even more poisonous groups and characters on the far-Right, such as the English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson, who was much to the fore in a ‘Brexit Betrayal’ march last week.
Is that really what the ultra-Remainers want? Are they so indifferent to the health of our political commonwealth? Do they really think their own prejudices are worth more than the principle of democracy?
If our politicians want a way through the impasse, there is an obvious answer. The EU should make concessions on the much-discussed Irish backstop, and then our MPs should get behind Mrs May’s hard-won deal — a compromise which, although not perfect, is the best chance of honouring the Brexit vote without destroying our economy.
By contrast, a second referendum would be a victory for hysteria over pragmatism. It would poison our politics for a generation, driving a wedge between ordinary voters and an entitled elite.
And, if you doubt it, just ask yourself one question. If, after all the promises, there really is a second referendum, why would anybody ever trust our politicians again?
DUP leader Arlene Foster launched a furious attack on Dublin today for exploiting Brexit in a bid to force Irish unification.
Mrs Foster slammed the 'very aggressive' stance taken by the Republic's government as she condemned 'myths' that leaving the EU customs union would lead to a hard border with Ireland.
She also took aim at former PMs Tony Blair and Sir John Major for scaremongering over the risks to peace. 
The salvo came after Michael Gove dismissed fears that Brexit could break up the union.
The Environment Secretary insisted the dire warnings about the impact of the EU referendum had not come to pass.
He also denied that Brexit was about 'identity politics' and said the country could be more open to immigration after cutting ties with Brussels.  
The future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has emerged as critical in the Brexit negotiations, with the UK and the EU engaged in bitter wrangling over how to avoid imposing 'hard' customs checks.
Brussels has dismissed the government's options of either a customs partnership or a 'Maximum Facilitation' technological solution. 
Meanwhile, Theresa May has rejected the idea of drawing a border in the Irish sea, warning that breaking up the UK could never be acceptable. 
Research published today found fierce resistance to tougher border restrictions either on the island of Island or between the province and the rest of Britain.
There was a 'strong expectation' that any dispute would 'quickly deteriorate into violence' with people threatening to block traffic and vandalise cameras, according to the UK in a Changing Europe study.
A poll for the report found one in five Catholics regarded the possible use of cameras at the Irish border as 'almost impossible to accept', and would support protests such as traffic being blocked.
Some 9 per cent of Catholics suggested they would support cameras being vandalised.
A separate survey carried out by ICM found six out of 10 voters thought Brexit had increased the chances of the UK splitting up.  
But an event organised by the Policy Exchange think-tank today focusing on the process of leaving the EU, Mrs Foster said the biggest threat was the attitude of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
She said: 'Our worry as unionists has been... the very, very aggressive nature of the Irish government. That has been a change, it has to be said, from the last government, from Enda Kenny's government.
'It has been quite aggressive. And that leads a lot of unionists in Northern Ireland to think "is this just about the European Union, or is it about something else? Is it about trying to claim the fourth green field in terms of Northern Ireland?".
Fears have been raised today that Irish border checks after Brexit could spark violence - with a poll finding a fifth of Catholics would back protests.
A report found fierce resistance to tougher border restrictions either on the island of Island or between the province and the rest of Britain.
There was a 'strong expectation' that any dispute would 'quickly deteriorate into violence' with people threatening to block traffic and vandalise cameras, according to the UK in a Changing Europe study. 
The poll, conducted for the Economic and Social Research Council, found one in five Catholics found the possible use of cameras at the Irish border 'almost impossible to accept' and would support protests such as traffic being blocked.
Some 9 per cent of Catholics suggested they would support cameras being vandalised.
The report said: 'There is substantial and intense opposition to possible north-south border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and to east-west border checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
'There are strong expectations that protests against either north-south or east-west border checks would quickly deteriorate into violence.' 
'As a unionist I see no logic or rationale for a hard border being created between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The only people stirring up the myths of border checkpoints are those who are committed to unpicking the Union.
'They seek to use such imagery to advance and build support for their long term political objective.'
The DUP leader also said it was 'very wrong' for people like Mr Blair and Sir John to emphasise potential dangers of Brexit and not respect the vote to leave.
Mrs Foster again insisted her party would not accept a Brexit deal that put a regulatory border down the Irish Sea.
 Appearing at the conference earlier, Mr Gove said: 'I'm confident that Northern Ireland will be in the UK for as far as the eye can see, as long as the mind can imagine.'
'Brexit has, certainly so far, strengthened unionist currency in our politics, not weakened it. 
'Since the vote to leave the European Union in 2016, support for Scotland leaving the United Kingdom has diminished.' 
The leading Brexiteer said while the EU was 'a union that doesn't work, the UK is one that does'.
'The referendum campaign was fought against backdrop of people predicting damage to the UK, which hasn't come about,' he said. 
'I think it's impossible to imagine the last 200 years of British history without Scots - you couldn't have the BBC. 
'We wouldn't have won the Second World War without men like Montgomery and Alanbrooke from Northern Ireland.'
However, he added: 'We need a new unionism, one that bridges not just the nations of the UK but also brings together different generations, old and young, richer areas with those left behind.' 
Mr Gove accused the SNP of 'playing with identity politics' by demanding a fresh independence referendum after the Brexit vote. 
But he insisted the example of Ukip showed such tactics were failing. 
'The decline, indeed eclipse, of Ukip is another blow for identity politics. Once it could command four million votes - now its Chairman compares it to the Black Death,' Mr Gove said.
Denying that the referendum campaign he helped spearhead had focused on identity politics, Mr Gove said: 'Post Brexit we see growing support for immigration. We can be more welcoming to migrants if allowed to be, rather than required to be.'  
Mr Gove also tried to soothe Brexiteer anxiety about the Cabinet accepting the UK could stay tied to the customs union for longer as a 'backstop' to avoid a hard Irish border.
'The whole point about the backstop is that it's intended not to be implemented, but it's there just in case,' he said. 
The findings of the SNP's growth commission, set up in 2016 to look at economic policy options for an independent Scotland, are to be published this week. 
Ms Sturgeon said the report - expected to make recommendations on whether Scotland should try to keep the Pound if it leaves the UK - will restart the debate on Scotland's future.
The First Minister said today: 'I expect it to be a very positive report, not sugar-coated.
'It will, I hope, be frank about the challenges we face as a country, but also very positive about how independence can equip us to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the future, and I think that will be quite refreshing in Scotland because the last couple of years have been very much focused on how we limit the damage of Brexit.
'Instead of a debate based on despair, this is an opportunity to turn our minds to a debate that's all about hope, optimism and ambition for Scotland.'
However, Downing Street dismissed the independence campaign. The PM's spokesman said: 'Now is not the time for another divisive independence referendum and there is no appetite for one.'
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
The DUP crushed Theresa May's hopes of saving her Brexit deal tonight as they rejected her offer to resign in return for rebel votes.
DUP leader Arlene Foster said her party still could not support the deal because it 'poses a threat to the integrity of the UK'. A party statement said 'we will not be supporting the Government if they table a fresh meaningful vote' - with Westminster leader Nigel Dodds vowing to vote No.
The hammer blow came hours after Mrs May sensationally promised to quit Downing Street in return for Tory Brexiteer rebels passing her deal as she admitted her time as Prime Minister was almost over.
Mrs May rolled the dice in a final desperate effort to try and get the Brexit deal across the line. She needed all of the DUP, most Tory rebels and some Labour MPs to have any chance - and looks doomed to fail on all three counts.
To win on her deal, Mrs May must find 75 more votes. Without the DUP, she needs every one of the 75 Tory rebels from the second vote on March 12 to return or make up the difference with Labour rebels. At least 50 Tory MPs are thought likely to stay away. 
Amid the drama at the top of Government, MPs rejected eight different Brexit plans in the Commons as an indicative vote on plans ranging from No Deal to a Second Referendum to Cancelling Brexit all failed.  
The PM's promised resignation was tied to the successful passage of the deal at the third attempt this week. No 10 sources said the Prime Minister would resign once Britain was outside the EU - due to be May 22 if the deal gets agreed by MPs later this week. She had previously only said she would go before the 2022 election. 
It is deeply unclear what Mrs May will do if her deal fails again and No 10 sources said it would be a 'whole different ball game'. ERG sources earlier told MailOnline the deal would '100 per cent' still fail. 
Mrs May could attempt to cling on and navigate Britain through a No Deal - or could leave much earlier because Brexit appears set to be delayed for months or even years. 
Whenever she finally goes, tonight's announcement publicly fires the starting gun on a Tory leadership race that is already being furiously fought behind the scenes.  
Boris Johnson - a leading contender to replace her - immediately switched to back the deal if there is a third vote.  
Since her deal was crushed a second time on March 12, Brexiteer rebels have insisted she must be gone before UK-EU trade negotiations begin if they will ever consider backing the deal.  
And a packed meeting of the 1922 Committee tonight Mrs May finally gave in: 'I know some people are worried that if you vote for the Withdrawal Agreement, I will take that as a mandate to rush on into phase two without the debate we need to have. I won't – I hear what you are saying.
'But we need to get the deal through and deliver Brexit.' 
She added: 'I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party.
'I ask everyone in this room to back the deal so we can complete our historic duty – to deliver on the decision of the British people and leave the European Union with a smooth and orderly exit.'  
The Prime Minister set no date for her departure and No 10 sources said she would see through legislation to implement her deal, if it passes.
The trade talks phase of Brexit is expected to begin in the autumn - suggesting the she plans to be gone before the Conservative Party conference in late September at the latest. 
Mrs May's voice 'cracked' during her speech, MP Pauline Latham told reporters outside the meeting. 
Brexiteer ringleader Jacob Rees-Mogg - who has said he will back the deal on the third vote if Mrs May wins back the DUP - said: 'There's never any joy or happiness in someone's political career coming to an end.' 
'This has been a testing time for our country and our party. We're nearly there. We're almost ready to start a new chapter and build that brighter future.
'But before we can do that, we have to finish the job in hand. As I say, I don't tour the bars and engage in the gossip – but I do make time to speak to colleagues, and I have a great team in the Whips' Office. I also have two excellent PPSs.
'And I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party. I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations – and I won't stand in the way of that.
'I know some people are worried that if you vote for the Withdrawal Agreement, I will take that as a mandate to rush on into phase two without the debate we need to have. I won't – I hear what you are saying.
'But we need to get the deal through and deliver Brexit.
She addded: 'I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party.
'I ask everyone in this room to back the deal so we can complete our historic duty – to deliver on the decision of the British people and leave the European Union with a smooth and orderly exit.'
Moderate Simon Hart said the PM had made a 'passionate' speech as if she had 'torn up the script'. 
He said: 'She was clear that providing the Withdrawal Agreement is passed she would start a process of an orderly handover (of power).' 
Mr Hart said the mood had been 'somber' as the PM announced she would leave. 
Brexiteer Simon Clarke - who twice voted against the deal - said Mrs May's speech had 'really changed the mood' but declined to say how he would vote in a third meaningful vote.
He added: 'If I was a Remainer tonight I would be pretty worried.
'I think the chances (of a deal passing) are the highest they have ever been.' 
A senior Brexiteer said the chances of Mrs May's deal passing was now 'very close'. 
Mrs May made announcement to a jam-packed gathering of Tory MPs. Late arriving ministers were barred from entering committee room 14 before the PM's arrival because the room was too full. 
Those inside greeted her with 'muted' banging of the desks as she entered. 
In a fresh twist before Mrs May's announcement, John Bercow this afternoon threatened new Brexit chaos by throwing doubts over Mrs May's efforts to get her deal through the Commons by Friday. 
The Speaker warned the government today that her deal must have changed from the last time she brought it forward for a vote – and she cannot use a procedural device known as a 'paving motion' to get around him.
Bercow has already been accused of having Remainer sympathies and trying to thwart Britain leaving the EU by putting procedural barriers in the Government's path.
May's government insists that a new Brexit date agreed with the EU and clarifications to the backstop announced at a summit in Brussels amount to a 'significant change'.
The Speaker alone will decide if the change is sufficient and is expected to announce the night before if he will block a third vote.
It comes after Mrs May faced down MPs in the Commons today and hinted she could hold a third vote on her deal as early as tomorrow.
The Government is preparing to ask Parliament to sit on Friday in case they call the vote then. 
At PMQs she gave a spirited performance and appeared to trail tonight's announcement when she refused to rule out stepping down when challenged.  
If her deal gets the support of a majority of MPs before the end of this week Britain will leave the EU on May 22, if it does not the country faces weeks of chaos as rebel Remainers try to force a soft Brexit in votes starting tonight.
And in a sign the deal could be voted on again tomorrow or Friday, Mrs May told MPs during Prime Minister's Questions today that they could deliver on Brexit 'if this week this House supports the deal'. 
As more rebel Brexiteer Tories indicated this morning that they will climb down and back May, Leave campaign architect Dominic Cummings attacked 'narcissist delusional' ERG members stopping the PM getting the votes she needs.
John Bercow this afternoon threatened new Brexit chaos by throwing doubts over Theresa May's efforts to get her deal through the Commons by Friday.
The Prime Minister has been considering announcing her resignation date this afternoon to win the support of Brexiteer rebel MPs.
But the Speaker warned the government today that her deal must have changed from the last time she brought it forward for a vote – and she cannot use a procedural device known as a 'paving motion' to get around him.
Bercow has already been accused of having Remainer sympathies and trying to thwart Britain leaving the EU.
May's government insists that a new Brexit date agreed with the EU and clarifications to the backstop announced at a summit in Brussels amount to a 'significant change'.
The Speaker alone will decide if the change is sufficient and is expected to announce the night before if he will block a third vote. 
A week ago MPs accused John Bercow of turning Brexit into 'Parliament versus the people' after he ruled she could not bring her deal back to the Commons unchanged.
Mrs May would have been hopeful that the Speaker is willing to make an exception and if the vote gets the green light, it's down to the numbers. 
Now it is clear that he won't budge - and her best hope will be including the new Brexit dates agreed by the EU last week to make it 'substantially different'. 
In an extraordinary blogpost he said during the 2016 referendum campaign 'so many of you guys were too busy shooting or skiing or chasing girls to do any actual work'.
He added: 'You should be treated like a metastasising tumour and excised'.
However the rebel climbdown could all come to nothing because the DUP, who May also needs to support her deal, show no signs of coming onboard.
Jacob Rees-Mogg today urged other hardline Eurosceptics to back Mrs May or face losing Brexit. Boris Johnson was among those who swung behind her after she agreed to quit tonight.
Backbencher Robert Courts, a member of the ERG's Star Chamber, is the latest to cave with sources claiming the trickle of U-turns could become 'a flood'. 
He said: 'I will reluctantly back the PM's deal. The hard reality is that this deal, for all its faults, is now the only available route out of the EU and to deliver on our promises. With renewed focus the ultimate prize is still achievable in future relationship talks'.
Mr Rees-Mogg admits that his change of heart will prompt accusations of treachery from some of his followers but told them: 'Half a loaf is better than no bread'. 
Chief whip Julian Smith reportedly believes that Mrs May announcing her departure will lead to 20 or more rebels could be ready to switch sides while former minister Iain Duncan Smith is said to be hoping to broker the resignation deal and said last night: 'There is a pretty good chance the deal is going to get through'. 
Mrs May failed to dampen speculation in the Commons when SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said: 'It is becoming increasingly clear that the cost the Prime Minister will pay to force her disastrous deal through is the price of her departure'.
Mrs May didn't rule it out and said: 'It is my sense of responsibility and duty that has meant I have kept working to ensure Brexit is delivered.' 
WEDNESDAY MARCH 27: MPs HOLD INDICATIVE VOTES ROUND ONE:
MPs are set to hold the 'first round' vote choosing their preferred Brexit from options including Norway, a Customs Union, May's Deal and No Deal. They will most likely be able to choose more than one option at this stage, and will write their preferences on pink slips of paper rather than walking through lobbies in the traditional Commons voting method. The top options would then be put forward to another 'round two' vote.
COULD STILL HAPPEN THURSDAY MARCH 28: MAY HOLDS A THIRD MEANINGFUL VOTE ON HER BREXIT DEAL:
May is likely to try and pass her Brexit deal a third time, after the EU offered a Brexit date of 22 May if she does so this week. The Prime Minister will use threats that MPs will take control and force a softer Brexit in an attempt to force Brexiteer rebels and the DUP to finally back her. She may also offer them a date when she will quit in return for their support. Thursday is the most likely day for her vote, but there is a chance she won't hold it if she still does not believe she'll win.
FRIDAY MARCH 29: MPs TAKE CONTROL?
If the PM loses a third vote on her deal, or does not hold one, by Friday the Brexit date is reset until April. MPs and Remainer Cabinet ministers will try and force her towards a softer Brexit. Brexiteer MPs and Cabinet minister will conversely try and push her towards a No Deal exit from the EU. Minister have also claimed that they could call an election if MPs try to force them into a soft Brexit.
MONDAY APRIL 1: INDICATIVE VOTES ROUND TWO:
MPs are expected to rank their preferences for Brexit. When one option is knocked out, MPs second preferences will be counted. For example if a second referendum is knocked out, its supporters can switch to backing a soft Brexit. Parliament would agree to support the final option.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 3: MPs COULD FORCE MAY'S HAND:
If Theresa May refuses to accept MPs preferred Brexit option, they could try to pass new legislation compelling her to do so. 
Tonight MPs will try to grab the levers of power and push Britain towards a softer Brexit by voting on alternatives to Theresa May's deal and today the rebellion's architect Sir Oliver Letwin said the Commons will change the law to force the PM to implement their views.
In order to avoid up to 20 resignations in her cabinet Mrs May there will be free votes for Tory MPs with the Cabinet abstaining. 
Labour has revealed that it will whip its MPs to back a second referendum, customs union and 'encourage' them to back a common market 2.0 - but oppose other options including revoking Article 50.
This will upset the many Labour MPs and supporters have backed the stop Brexit petition now signed by 6million people.  
Former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell said today: 'Oliver Letwin has played a blinder. My friends and colleagues in the ERG can see the instruments of torture laid out in front of them. Oliver has shown them what will happen if they don't come on side. Finally Mrs May has most of us on side on her deal, and with a following wind she will get her deal this week or early next week'. 
Mrs May will address a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee tonight and is expected to be asked to announce her departure date by disgruntled MPs. 
But she is yet to convince the DUP to back her deal - and without their 10 MPs her deal has little-or-no chance of passing because of the 25-plus Labour rebels she would need to bail her out. 
Asked how talks are going with the DUP, Mrs Leadom said: 'We are working very hard'. 
Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski tweeted: 'Have urged some friends in DUP to abstain over Withdrawal Agreement if they cannot support it. That way we could still just about get it across finishing line. We must prevent Remainer Parliament from destroying #Brexit.'
Mr Rees-Mogg's intervention came as the number of Eurosceptics reluctantly backing Mrs May threatened to turn from a trickle into a flood.
Writing in the Daily Mail, he says fellow Leavers have to face the 'awkward reality' that Remainers will thwart the 2016 referendum result unless the EU withdrawal agreement is passed.
But he says the Prime Minister's plan is now the only way to ensure Britain leaves the EU and wrote: 'I apologise for changing my mind. By doing so I will be accused of infirmity of purpose by some and treachery by others. I have come to this view because the numbers in Parliament make it clear that all the other potential outcomes are worse and an awkward reality needs to be faced.' 
Here are the top runners and riders to replace the Prime Minister, their odds with Ladbrokes and how they voted in the 2016 referendum:
 A Brexiteer with a machiavellian reputation after the 2016 leadership campaign in which he first supported Boris Johnson for the leadership and then stood against him, to their mutual disadvantage.
The former education secretary -  sacked by Mrs May -  was rehabilitated to become a right-on environment secretary - complete with reusable coffee cups and a strong line on food standards after Brexit.
Despite being a former lead figure in the Vote Leave campaign alongside Mr Johnson the former journalist and MP for Surrey Heath has swung behind Mrs May's Brexit deal.
At the weekend he denied being involved in a coup seeking to make him a caretaker PM. 
Seen as one of the Cabinet's strongest political thinkers and having stood once it is unthinkable that he would not stand again.
The former foreign secretary who quit last July and has been tacitly campaigning for the leadership ever since returning to the backbenches with a regular stream of attacks on Mrs may and her Brexit strategy.
Never far from the limelight it is his private life that has seen him most in the news recently after splitting from his wife Marina and embarking on a relationship with a former Conservative communications staffer 20 years his junior.
A hawkish Brexiteer hugely popular with the party faithful, in recently weeks he has further boosted his frontrunner credentials with what might be deemed a 'prime ministerial' makeover.
He has lost weight and taming his unruly mop of blonde hair into something approaching the haircut of a serious senior statesman.
The Foreign Secretary who has undergone a Damascene conversion to the Brexit cause in with a series of hardline warnings to the EU.
The 52-year-old South West Surrey MP is the most senior Cabinet minister in contention.
He has reportedly been selling himself to colleagues as a unity candidate who can bring together the fractious Tory factions into something approaching a cohesive party. 
A long-serving health secretary, he replaced Mr Johnson as the UK's top diplomat and has won some plaudits over issues like the imprisonment of British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran.
But critics point to tub-thumpingly comparing the EU to the USSR at the party conference last year - which was very badly received in Brussels - and a gaffe in which he referred to his Chinese wife  as 'Japanese' as a reception in China.  
Mr Raab, 45, is another Vote Leave member who became Brexit secretary after David Davis quit alongside Mr Johnson last July over the Chequers plan.
But he lasted just a matter of months before he too jumped ship, saying he could not accept the terms of the deal done by the Prime Minister.
Like Mr Johnson and Mr Davis he has become an increasingly hardline Brexiteer, sharing a platform with the DUP's Arlene Foster and suggesting we should not be afraid of a no-deal Brexit.
The Esher and Walton MP's decision to quit in November, boosted his popularity with party members but he lacks the wider popular appeal of Mr Johnson.
And like Mr Johnson he might benefit from having quit the Cabinet at an earlier stage and dissociating himself with the dying days of the May administration.  
The Home Secretary, a Remainer who wants to see Brexit delivered, was the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet to replace Mrs May.
After replacing Amber Rudd last year he consciously put clear ground between himself and the Prime Minister on issues like caps on skilled migrants after Brexit.
But his credentials have taken a hit in recent weeks. He finds himself facing ongoing criticism of his handling of the knife crime crisis affecting UK cities, which sparked a cabinet row over funding for police.
He also lost face over his handling of the influx of migrants crossing the English Channel in January, being seen to move slowly in realising the scale of the problem.
But more recently the 49-year-old Bromsgove MP has made a serious of hardline decision designed to go down well with Tory voters.
Most notably they have included moving to deprive London teenager turned Jihadi bride Shamima Begum, 19, of her British citizenship.
Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the Tory European Research group, has said he expects the DUP will vote against Theresa May's deal, in which case Jacob Rees-Mogg and most of the ERG would kill her deal.
'My understanding is the DUP have made very clear they are not going to vote for the Prime Minister's deal,' he told BBC Radio 4's the World at One.
'Jacob Rees-Mogg, my boss as chairman of the ERG, has always said consistently he will not vote contrary to the DUP.
'So, if the DUP hold good to their word, and they're honourable people in my experience, they will vote against the deal. Therefore, so will Jacob and, I believe, so will the bulk of the ERG.
'The Government want to bring MV3 (meaningful vote three) back tomorrow. They are desperately trying to peel people away in order to facilitate it. At the moment, it's not working.'
Seven Conservative MPs who voted against her plan earlier this month yesterday said they were changing their minds.
And last night Boris Johnson gave the strongest hint yet that he could also fall into line, saying: 'If we vote it down again there is an appreciable and growing sense we will not leave at all. That is the risk.'
Former Tory leader and Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith said last night there was now a good chance of Mrs May winning the 'meaningful' vote. 
The official Leave campaign director has today threatened to set up a new group as he said some Conservative Brexiteers should be treated like a 'metastasising tumour'.
Dominic Cummings criticised a 'narcissist-delusional subset' of the influential European Research Group (ERG) that he said needed to be 'excised'.
With Brexit delayed, he issued a threat to MPs who promised 'to respect the referendum result then abandoning' the pledge that 'actions have consequences'.
The Vote Leave director called on activists to start 'rebuilding our network' before suggesting a new campaign or party could be formed.
Mr Cummings' blog post on Wednesday was in response to him being found to be in contempt of Parliament after he failed to appear before MPs investigating fake news.
He accused the subset of the ERG of 'scrambling' for top radio spots while 'spouting gibberish'.
During the EU referendum, he claimed, 'so many of you guys were too busy shooting or skiing or chasing girls to do any actual work'.
'You should be treated like a metastasising tumour and excised from the UK body politic,' he added.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said the Government hopes to be able to bring Theresa May's Brexit deal back to the Commons this week.
Mrs Leadsom told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think that there is a real possibility that it does. We are completely determined to make sure that we can get enough support to bring it back.'
She added: 'The Prime Minister said she is working hard, as many colleagues are, to persuade colleagues to support it.'
Mrs Leadsom refused to be drawn on whether the Prime Minister should commit to standing down once the Withdrawal Agreement is passed in order to win over wavering MPs.
'I am fully supporting the Prime Minister to get us out of the European Union,' she said.
Asked if Mrs May should stand down after that, she said: 'I think that is a matter for her. I am not expressing a view.'
The shift in momentum came as Remainers – led by Tories Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles and Labour's Yvette Cooper – prepared to seize control of the Brexit process today in a bid to push through a soft departure.
MPs tabled a blizzard of amendments for consideration in today's 'indicative votes' in the Commons.  
Options include revoking Article 50, which would effectively cancel Brexit, holding a second referendum and locking the UK into a single market and customs union.  The latter would require Britain to accept free movement, EU laws and payments to Brussels.
Sir Oliver Letwin, the architect of the plan for the Commons to stage a series of indicative votes on the way forward on Brexit, tioday warned that if Theresa May tried to ignore the outcome, MPs could seek to force her to act.
'If on Monday one or more propositions get a majority backing in the House of Commons, then we will have to work with the Government to implement them,' he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'The way I would hope it would happen under those circumstances is that we would have sensible, workmanlike discussions across the House of Commons and the Government would move forward in an orderly fashion.
'If the Government didn't agree to that, then those who I am working with across the parties will move to legislate to mandate the Government - if we can obtain majorities in the House of Commons and House of Lords for that - to carry that forward.'  
Former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell said Sir Oliver Letwin had played 'an absolute blinder' by making clear to Brexiteers the consequences of continuing to oppose the PM's deal.
He said: 'Well, I think Sir Oliver Letwin has laid out for all my friends and colleagues in the ERG the instruments of torture, of what awaits them if they do not support Mrs May's deal the next time it comes to a vote.
'Everyone else is onside in the parliamentary party. Reluctantly, I admit, but nevertheless, onside.'
The Conservative Party will split apart if hardline MPs believe they can back Theresa May's Brexit deal now and unpick it later, Tory former attorney general Dominic Grieve has said.
Mr Grieve said the Tories could not survive the pressure of trying to re-order the Prime Minister's Withdrawal Agreement once Britain had left the EU.
The ex-Cabinet minister said the idea that the UK could renegotiate the deal after it quit the bloc extended beyond some members of the European Research Group (ERG) of Eurosceptic Tories.
Mr Grieve said: 'I am mindful that some of my colleagues, not all of them in the ERG, I can think of at least one Cabinet minister who has hinted that the solution to the problem is to see this deal through so that we leave the EU ... and then try to pick it apart.
'Do they really, seriously think that my party, who's already under a lot of strain and stress, is going to survive such a process?
'Of course it isn't.
'If genuinely they think that the solution is to sign-up, leave and then try to take the whole thing to pieces, I think we can guarantee, firstly, we are going to have a very long period of immense and sterile debate.
'And certainly I think when it comes to that I can confidently predict my party would split.'
Mr Grieve also said it was 'odd' that members of the ERG would support Mrs May's deal on condition she gave a departure date for quitting Downing Street.
Speaking at a People's Vote campaign event calling for a new Brexit referendum, he said: 'It seems to me a very odd thing to say that just because she would go, they would be prepared to support it.'
During PMQs today, SNP MP Stewart Hosie asked the Prime Minister when she would resign.
He said: 'Brexit is already costing the UK around £1 billion a week in lost growth.
'We know 80% plus of the UK public is unhappy with the way in which this has been handled - this is not the fault of Guy Verhofstadt, Michel Barnier, Donald Tusk, or any MP in this House voting according to their conscience.
'That fault lies with the Prime Minister who is the architect of the withdrawal deal, so can she finally concede to the House she is liable, responsible, culpable for the chaos which is the Brexit debacle and when she will be resigning?'
Mrs May insisted her deal 'delivers on the result of the referendum'.
Brexiteer Tory MP Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) said his constituents would never trust the Prime Minister again if the UK failed to leave the EU on Friday March 29, with or without a deal.
'At the last minute she begs our EU masters for an extension to Article 50, delaying our departure,' he said.
'They are good people, but they are not stupid and they will never trust the Prime Minister again.'
Mrs May said MPs could still guarantee delivering on Brexit 'if this week he and others in this House support the deal'
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Mrs May: 'This country is on hold while the Government is in complete paralysis.
'The vital issues facing our country from the devastation of public services to homelessness to knife crime have been neglected.
'The Prime Minister is failing to deliver Brexit because she can't build a consensus, is unable to compromise and unable to reunite the country. Instead she is stoking further divisions, she's unable to resolve the central issues facing Britain today and she is frankly unable to govern.
'The Prime Minister faces a very clear choice, the one endorsed by the country and many of her own party - either listen and change course, or go. Which is it to be?'
Mrs May defended the Government's record on public spending before adding: 'The biggest threat to our standing in the world, to our defence and to our economy is sitting on the Labour frontbench.'
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said: 'I really hope that today we will at least get to see the two or three really clear options where there is support in Parliament.
'Then on Monday, we will have a crack of the whip and I think we can get something over the line.
'But if we can't of course, Theresa May will come back and try her deal. It looks like she will try that tomorrow. Who knows whether that would work.
'But we have to, under all circumstances, ensure that we don't leave the EU without a deal.'
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is said to have told the PM that if Parliament does mandate her to pursue a new Brexit route next week if her deal falls then she will break the law if she ignores it. 
 
Cabinet ministers were in talks with the Democratic Unionist Party in Whitehall last night in a last-ditch attempt to win its support – which is seen as necessary before Eurosceptics will fall in line. 
2pm: Debate on how to organise the indicative votes begins. It will be the first time ever MPs have control of the agenda.
3pm: Votes to finalise the rules of indicative votes. This is set to say MPs will use a ballot paper to vote yes or no on a series of Brexit plans all at once. This can be amended to the rules could change.
3.15pm: Debate on the plans will start proper. Ideas are thought likely to include a soft Brexit, hard Brexit and a No Deal on April 12. It is unclear whether the Government will put its own deal into the mix.
7pm: The Commons will be suspended for 30 minutes so MPs can fill in and file their ballot papers.
7.30pm: Voting closes. MPs are due to spend up to 90 minutes debating the change to the law on Brexit Day. It is a technical change as EU law has already postponed it from March 29.
9pm: Speaker John Bercow will announce how MPs have voted on each Brexit plan. Anything which gets more than about 315 votes will have a rough majority in the Commons. It is possible the House could vote strongly in favour of nothing - or multiple contradictory plans.  
A total of 75 Tories – including half a dozen arch-Remainers – voted against the deal when it was defeated two weeks ago by a majority of 149.
At yesterday's Cabinet meeting ministers, including Commons leader Andrea Leadsom and Treasury chief secretary Liz Truss, pledged their determination and 'resolve to get this done'.
A source said: 'They are pulling out all the stops to try and get colleagues over the line.'
But one Cabinet minister estimated the odds of Mrs May getting the deal through at just 30 per cent. Her allies downplayed expectations, saying 'everything has to fall in place at once' and it wouldn't be clear until lunchtime today what would happen.
Even if she wins over the DUP and most of her backbenchers, Mrs May will still need Labour MPs to back the deal. A group of up to 25 hardline ERG members are seen as 'irreconcilable' – including Sir Bill Cash, Sir John Redwood and former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson.
Some of these argue that they can still secure a No Deal Brexit regardless of a bid by Sir Oliver to try to find a softer deal the Commons can agree to. 
Other Eurosceptic MPs said they were determined to oppose the deal. Dr Julian Lewis, chairman of the Defence Committee, told the Mail: 'The choice revealing itself is one between a clean Brexit or tearing up the result of the referendum.
'It is vital that those of us who believe in Brexit neither 'flag nor fail' in Churchill's immortal phrase, at this decisive stage.'
The Easter recess of parliament may be cancelled as MPs try to get a grip of Brexit, Mrs Leadsom said yesterday.
She stressed Britons would expect MPs to be 'working flat-out'. She told the Commons: 'I have announced the dates for Easter recess. But, as is always the case, recess dates are announced subject to the progress of business.
'We will need time in the House either to find a way forward or to pass the Withdrawal Agreement bill, and I think the country will rightly expect Parliament to be working flat-out in either scenario.' The recess is due to run from April 4 to 23.
Labour MPs will be ordered to vote for a second referendum on Brexit tonight - as MPs try to select an alternative to May's deal that they will try and force upon her next week. 
A series of 'indicative votes' will be held in the Commons tonight with up to sixteen options on the table. 
The alternatives will also likely include cancelling Brexit, a No Deal Brexit on April 12 and a softer exit than proposed by Theresa May.
The results are due around 9pm and the most favoured options are expected to go through to a second round vote next week. 
MPs will then try to pass new laws forcing Theresa May to adopt their favoured option, before Britain will leave the EU on April 12 assuming Theresa May's Brexit deal does not pass this week.    
Labour is understood to be whipping its MPs to vote in favour of a second referendum on May's deal. A Labour spokeswoman confirmed MPs would be told to keep options on the table tonight, which MailOnline understands includes a public vote. 
Remainer Labour MP Jess Phillips confirmed that party MPs were facing a three-line whip in support of an amendment laid by Dame Margaret Beckett backing a new public vote and expected almost a dozen shadow frontbenchers to consider quitting because of that.
She told the BBC: 'I think a lot of people think that wouldn't be good … I would say probably it is up to 10 shadow ministers who I think will be facing the question of whether they have to resign today.'
At around 3pm, Speaker John Bercow will select from the 16 draft proposals which ones will actually be voted on. He is expected to choose six to 10 ideas for a debate that will run until 7pm.  
MPs will be asked to vote 'Yes' or 'No' to each option on a piece of paper that they will then put in a ballot box.They can support as many as they like.   
After 7.30pm, Commons clerks will scramble to count the votes all at once - a process expected to take at least an hour and potentially longer.  
Once that process is complete the total number of votes for each option will be read out. There may not be a majority for any one option, and the most popular options will go forward to a second round vote. 
Mrs May has said she will not necessarily be bound by the results - particularly if they are 'undeliverable' by the EU.  
But before the vote, and internal party row broke out in the Labour party when, shadow trade minister Barry Gardiner said that Mr Corbyn will order MPs to vote against the 'extreme option' of stopping Brexit and leaving with No Deal tonight because 'Labour is not a Remain party'.
An online petition demanding Article 50 be revoked has now been signed by almost six million people. 
But in an interview with the BBC Mr Gardiner also revealed that Labour could have difficulty supporting a plan for a second referendum on any Brexit deal, in case it led to stopping Britain leaving the EU.
He said: 'Our policy is clearly that we would support a public vote to stop No Deal or to stop a bad deal, but not that we would allow a bad deal as long as the public had the opportunity to reject Brexit altogether.
'That implies that you are a Remain party. The Labour Party is not a Remain party now. We have accepted the result of the referendum'.
The EU will push for Britain's first day as a non-EU member to be April Fools' Day 2020 if Theresa May's deal is killed off this week, it was revealed today.
Brussels has pencilled in a year-extension to Article 50 with Brexit Day being March 31 next year.
It came as Donald Tusk today urged the European Parliament to keep faith with those British voters still hoping for a longer delay or even the reversal of the Brexit decision. 
He said: 'We should be open to a long extension if the UK wishes to rethink its Brexit strategy'. 
The President of the European Council also mentioned an online petition to revoke Brexit and claimed one million people marched through London on Saturday demanding a second referendum, despite experts claiming only 400,000 were at the march
He said: 'You cannot betray the six million people who signed the petition to revoke Article 50, the one million people who marched for a people's vote or the increasing majority of people who want to remain in the European Union'.
The Prime Minister must pass her deal by the end of the week for Britain to leave the EU on May 22. 
If it doesn't the country will leave on April 12, but rebel MPs are trying to force through a longer delay and softer Brexit in votes that begin tomorrow. 
An EU leader today compared Nigel Farage to Blackadder's lily-livered First World War Field Marshall.
Guy Verhostadt poked fun at the former Ukip leader's 200-mile March to Leave walk 
 Mr Verhofstadt said when he saw Mr Farage (picrured today) in the European Parliament today: 'This is a surprise to me because I thought that he was marching somewhere in Britain.
'But he is here. A 200-mile march. How many miles have you done, two miles?
'You remind me more and more of Field Marshall Haig in Blackadder, who was also sitting in the World War One in his office in London. And you are in Strasbourg while your own people are marching through the rain and in the cold'.
Mr Farage hit back: 'As a former Belgian prime minister I thought you would know that it was Field Marshall Haig in 1914 that saved the Belgian town of Ypres from German domination, who then went on to lead Britain in 1918 in its greatest ever military defeat of Germany on the Western Front.
He added 'Far from mocking Haig in Belgium, he should be a great hero to you'.
The EU is ready for the extension and will force Britain to accept that this will be April 1 next year, according to the Guardian.
Today European Council President Donald Tusk urged British MPs to remain open to a long postponement of Brexit while Britain rethinks its position, urging them not to 'betray' the UK's pro-Europe voters.
He said: 'I said that we should be open to a long extension if the UK wishes to rethink its Brexit strategy, which would of course mean the UK's participation in the European Parliament elections'
'And then there were voices saying that this would be harmful or inconvenient to some of you. Let me be clear, such thinking is unacceptable'.
He added: 'You cannot betray the six million people who signed the petition to revoke Article 50, the one million people who marched for a people's vote or the increasing majority of people who want to remain in the European Union'. 
Top Euro MPs launched a scathing personal attack on Theresa May yesterday - with one saying she had no 'basic human skills'.
Senior figures on the EU Parliament's influential Brexit Steering Group (BSG) lashed out amid meltdown in Westminster.
But they also gloated that Britain could be heading for a softer Brexit after MPs voted in favour of snatching control from the prime minister.
One leading Euro-MP on the steering group, which last night held talks with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier in Strasbourg, said the situation in Westminster was proof Mrs May was 'totally devoid of the basic human skills' needed for public office.
Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts claimed it also meant she was unable to build 'bonds of trust' with MPs, her cabinet and other EU leaders.
Meanwhile Guy Verhofstadt, chair of the (BSG), declared himself 'very pleased' at developments which could lead to a closer UK-EU future relationship.
They were speaking at the EU Parliament, sitting in Strasbourg this week, after MPs in Westminster voted in favour of holding 'indicative votes' today on options - including reversing Brexit - which Mrs May would then be told to deliver.
The move was orchestrated by Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour's Yvette Cooper.
Mr Verhofstadt yesterday hailed the 'real Brexit revolt' which could see MPs vote in favour of a much softer version of Brexit than set out in Mrs May's deal.
He also praised marchers in London at the weekend who demanded a second referendum and those who have signed a petition calling for Brexit to be reversed.
Mr Verhofstadt said: 'We see for the moment a real Brexit revolt by the people in Britain, the march of this weekend with one million people in London, the petition which has reached more or less 5.7 million signatures.' 
Referring to the political declaration part of the Brexit deal, which outlines the future relationship, he added: 'And I'm very pleased that yesterday evening an amendment, the so-called Letwin amendment, has been adopted because that means that it's possible now to work in Britain towards a cross-party proposal, a cross-party alliance that could upgrade fundamentally the Political Declaration.' 
During the so-called 'indicative votes' MPs could vote in favour of the political declaration being changed to create a softer Brexit, either via a permanent customs union or even continued membership of the single market - referred to as 'Norway-plus'.
Mr Lamberts, who also sits on the BSG, launched the most scathing attack on the prime minister.
He claimed Mrs May's 'inability to factor in what other people think' had fuelled the chaos.
He said: 'The strategy of running down the clock and scaring people into voting for the Withdrawal Agreement has failed.
'I hope that indeed in the first stage the parliament will be able to find a majority for an option.
'Is it Norway plus? Is it a second referendum? I don't know...after that I hope the government will do what it can to make that option happen.' He added: 'One lesson we have learned from Theresa May 's attitude is her inability to factor in what others think, her inability to forge bonds of trust in her cabinet...and between her cabinet and the House of Commons obviously, but also within the European Council.' Mr Lamberts also said that Mrs May had infuriated Luxembourg's prime minister, Xavier Bettel, at a summit last week at which she asked for a delay to Brexit.
He claimed Luxembourg's premier is known as 'Mr Nice Guy by definition' and that it proved Mrs May 'must be totally devoid of the basic human skills you need to be a political leader'.

I apologise for changing my mind. Theresa May's deal is a bad one, it does not deliver on the promises made in the Tory Party manifesto and its negotiation was a failure of statesmanship.
A £39 billion bill for nothing, a minimum of 21 months of vassalage, the continued involvement of the European Court and, worst of all, a backstop with no end date.
Yet, I am now willing to support it if the Democratic Unionist Party does, and by doing so will be accused of infirmity of purpose by some and treachery by others.
I have come to this view because the numbers in Parliament make it clear that all the other potential outcomes are worse and an awkward reality needs to be faced.
Mrs May ought to have concluded a better agreement but behind the backs of two secretaries of state, David Davis and Dominic Raab, she did not.
The agreement on the table is as it is, and the proposal to replace the backstop with something else, particularly the Malthouse Compromise (a managed No Deal exit — if a deal cannot be agreed) has floundered.
Delay
The EU, in the knowledge that it was dealing with a weak counterparty, has refused to reopen the text and the Government has not been willing to threaten No Deal in any effective way. The late start to No Deal planning and the reluctance to use it in negotiations has been a significant reason for the poor outcome.
Until last week, nonetheless, No Deal remained the default legal option but the Government and the Prime Minister have now ruled this out and with the support of Parliament can now do so.
No Deal is an outcome I would prefer to Mrs May's deal. It would be a fully-leaded Brexit and mere motions in the Commons could not have stopped it.
Indeed, despite a clear majority of MPs opposing such a departure, it would have happened on Friday had Mrs May not used her executive authority as Prime Minister to postpone the day of Brexit.
Once No Deal had been ruled out, it was necessary to examine what would happen in the event of the current agreement not passing. This would lead to a long delay as there is no opportunity of renegotiating anything before the European elections at the end of May. Two years or more is proposed but considering the opposition to Brexit it could be revoked or put to a skewed second referendum.
A long delay would make remaining in the EU the most likely outcome.
If the moral authority of 17.4 million voters and a General Election in 2017 when both main parties committed to respecting the result could not deliver our departure in three years, how strong a mandate would it be after five? Even if the fear of remaining were exaggerated, it would inevitably lead to an even softer Brexit.
It is a sad fact that there is a gulf between Parliament and the people. Fifty-two per cent voted Leave but two-thirds of MPs want to remain. The Lords is even worse with a tiny minority of pro-Leave peers.
After giving people the right to decide, too many politicians felt that the voters gave the wrong answer and must be saved from themselves. Two years further from the referendum would allow for the demands to be watered down again, leaving the UK shackled by a Customs Union or as a Norway-style rule-taker.
If this were all, it could be sensible to take the risk and see if something better turned up. A number of Tory MPs think a new leader could swiftly renegotiate but that is almost certainly not true now that Parliament has taken control of the Brexit timetable.
It would be even harder for a Eurosceptic to manage the current Commons than it is for Mrs May. Even if this could happen, politicians must look at the current constitutional clash and fear for our polity.
The constitution is under attack in three ways. The first is between the Government and the Commons.
This has been encouraged by the Speaker whose noble efforts to allow the Commons to hold the Government to account have gone too far and now seek to take the role of the Government to the legislature.
Recklessness
This is dangerous because the Commons' job is to provide confidence in a Prime Minister who can take decisions for which she or he is accountable.
These decisions ought to be in accordance with manifesto commitments and if there is no confidence in the duly elected Prime Minister, then control ought to return to voters, not to a cabal of MPs who will have random majorities on various issues but no clear leader or mandate.
Separation of powers between Downing Street and the Commons is a crucial part of how we are ruled and a protection against arbitrary government.
Upsetting this balance is unwise to the point of recklessness and the Sir Oliver Letwin takeover proves the point.
Unfortunately, the second breakdown is just as serious. The Government only functions if ministers support a single position or resign, and this has been the reality since the 1830s. There can only be one Government position, otherwise how can it be held to account? How can electors know how power is being exercised if different ministers say the first thing that pops into their heads?
Recently, three Cabinet Ministers failed to back Government policy on the vote to leave the EU without a deal and in a rather jejune fashion ostentatiously abstained.
As they did not resign, this undermines one of the cornerstones of the constitution, making it harder for the Government to function.
Faltering
Any government must be able to get its business done. If it cannot, it is unable to govern. The principle of the separation of powers and of collective responsibility lie at the heart of this.
The great Duke of Wellington was famous for insisting that the Queen's Government must go on and that all responsible politicians have a duty towards such an end, even if it countermands their own piety.
The worst breakdown, though, is between the elected and the electors.
The condescension of politicians who feel that Leave voters were all stupid and ought never to have been allowed to decide something so complicated is tragic.
Ultimately, voters know best and must be trusted. Imperfect as it is, Mrs May's deal gets closer to that than anything else available.
The Withdrawal Agreement has one great virtue. Legally, we would have left and to re-join would mean agreeing to adopt the Euro single currency, Schengen (the abolition of national borders) and no rebate. Such a course would be expensive and hugely unpopular.
The backstop, too, could tie us into rules that we did not like. But outside the EU, it would be a political not a legal matter.
International law is not as clear-cut as EU or domestic law and there is no court to rule between states and international bodies.
Ultimately, Brexit could be delivered upon but it would take longer.
It would need a Commons that wants to use our freedoms and that is willing to insist that the word 'temporary', as applied to the backstop, is genuine.
It needs political leadership and a desire to stop the weak-minded managing of decline and a belief in the UK.
Theresa May's deal is a more faltering step than I want, or feel, could be taken —but at least it is a step forward. 
The Democratic Unionist Party made its unhappiness with the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal clear last night by abstaining from crunch votes on the Budget.
It refused to vote on the Finance Bill as a warning to Theresa May over her plans for the Irish backstop.
The move put the Government on notice that the DUP is edging closer to ripping up the ‘confidence and supply’ agreement that allows the Conservatives to govern.
The party’s ten MPs prop up Mrs May’s minority administration through a formal deal that obliges them to vote for the Budget, the Queen’s Speech and Brexit legislation.
But amid increasing rancour after Downing Street unveiled the withdrawal agreement setting out the terms of Britain leaving the EU, co-operation between the parties has come under threat.
The DUP has said there is ‘serious trouble’ with the deal, which risks leaving Northern Ireland on a different regulatory footing to the rest of the UK – one of party leader Arlene Foster’s ‘blood red lines’. 
A source told the BBC: ‘Tory MPs need to realise that their jobs, their majorities, their careers depend on a good working relationship with the DUP and May doesn’t appear to be listening.    
DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said Mrs May's deal with Brussels breached a "fundamental" assurance that Northern Ireland would not be separated constitutionally or economically from the rest of the UK.
After the vote, he told Newsnight: '"We had to do something to show our displeasure." 
"She has broken all of those promises - to the people of the United Kingdom, to her own party and to the people of Northern Ireland."
While the Government won the votes on the Finance Bill, the DUP’s failure to support it in the first two votes were a blow to Mrs May’s authority.
The DUP is pessimistic that she will amend the Brexit deal in any significant way and sees it as driving a regulatory wedge between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Mrs Foster voiced her frustration last week that her party had not been allowed to see the draft of the deal before it was debated by Cabinet.
In a string of other developments yesterday:
Downing Street said yesterday the Prime Minister was, for example, looking to improve the provisions for security co-operation.
In an address at the CBI’s annual conference yesterday, Mrs May reminded her critics that people’s jobs were on the line if there is no Brexit deal.
She said: ‘We are not talking about political theory, but the reality of people’s lives and livelihoods. Jobs depend on us getting this right.
‘What we have agreed unashamedly puts our future economic success, and the livelihoods of working families up and down this country, first.’
She added: ‘Don’t just listen to the politicians. Listen to what business is saying, listen to what business that is providing your jobs, and ensuring that you have that income that puts food on the table for your family, is saying. And business is saying we want a good deal with the EU.’
DUP leader Arlene Foster refused to back down in a row over Brexit tonight insisting she was just as 'unequivocal' as Dublin about the terms of the Irish border.
In a clear signal there will not be a quick fix as Theresa May scrambles to reassemble a draft deal that was ready for agreement yesterday lunchtime, Mrs Foster said there was 'no way' she could endorse the current version. 
The DUP leader is due to finally speak to the Prime Minister later tonight, more than 24 hours after her call yesterday that forced Mrs May to quit a crucial round of Brexit talks without a deal.
Mrs Foster blocked a draft that apparently promised Northern Ireland would match EU rules after Brexit, separately from Britain. Irish Premier Leo Varadkar has claimed Mrs May was ready to sign before the DUP intervention and insisted the contested language was drafted by Britain. 
It was confirmed tonight Mrs Foster had not seen the detail of what was about to be agreed until yesterday. The DUP leader told Irish broadcaster RTE that it was a 'big shock' when the document was finally handed over after five weeks of the party demanding to see what was on the table.
She blamed Dublin for stopping the Tories sharing the details before yesterday. 
When they speak later, Mrs May must quickly find a new form of words that is acceptable to Mrs Foster and will also be agreed by Brussels and Dublin. 
Speaking in Belfast tonight, Mrs Foster warned she was in no mood to give in to Mr Varadkar's demands, insisting: 'He can be as unequivocal as he likes. We're equally unequivocal.'
The Government in Westminster has scrambled today to insist any arrangement for Northern Ireland will be matched across the UK, meaning in some areas rules after Brexit will still follow EU terms.   
Brexit Secretary David Davis flatly denied that the government was prepared to sign up to terms that would risk Northern Ireland's future, vowing that the 'integrity of the UK comes first'.
But he risked Eurosceptic fury by giving the clearest sign yet that all of Britain would 'align' with EU rules in crucial areas such as agriculture, energy and transport in order to secure a close relationship with the bloc.
The comments quickly triggered gloating from Eurocrats that Mr Davis had effectively agreed to 'make the UK kind of a regulatory protectorate of Brussels'.
 In a round of interviews tonight, Mrs Foster said: 'We hadn't seen any text, despite asking for text for nearly five weeks now, we haven't been in receipt of any text and the text only came through to us late yesterday morning.
'And obviously once we saw the text we knew it wasn't going to be acceptable.'
Meanwhile, DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds defended his party's decision to torpedo the deal Theresa May had painstakingly assembled in the EU yesterday.
Mr Dodds confirmed the party only saw a draft text of the plan late yesterday morning, at which point they declared the 'ambiguous' wording guaranteeing 'regulatory alignment' between Northern Ireland and the Republic was unacceptable.
Tory Eurosceptics hailed the move for having 'saved Brexit' and urged a tougher line against Irish demands over the border.
But Labour said it showed the 'DUP tail was wagging the government dog' as Mrs May depends on their 10 MPs to cling to power.
The Prime Minister is scrambling to get negotiations with the EU back on track after an humiliating day in Brussels which saw her pause lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker in order to take a call from Ms Foster raising alarm about her plans.
While Mrs May and Mrs Foster have still not spoken today as the Prime Minister has tasked her chief whip Julian Smith to hammer out the details of what is acceptable with Mr Dodds. 
 

Amid the turmoil, Mrs May hosted the Spanish Prime Minister in No 10 today shortly after a two-hour Cabinet meeting with her senior team. She told Mariano Rajoy 'a lot of progress' had been made on the talks so far. 
If she can patch up her divorce deal, Mrs May could return to Brussels as soon as tomorrow afternoon to seal the agreement. EU chiefs warn a deal must be finished by Friday to be signed off at a summit next week.
The wording of the controversial Brexit deal over the Irish border was the UK's choice, Leo Varadkar said today.
The Irish PM said his team had suggested a guarantee of 'no regulatory divergence' between Northern Ireland and the Republic in key areas that affect the border.
But the British side had proposed the term 'regulatory alignment' instead.
'We satisfied ourselves on Sunday night that we could accept either of those two lines and 'regulatory alignment' was what was accepted by British advisers on Monday morning,' he told the Irish parliament this afternoon.
Mr Varadkar said 15-page proposal, had provided for three potential outcomes in a final deal.
The first was a 'UK free trade agreement that would allow free trade to continue not just north and south but between Britain and Ireland'.
The second was 'a bespoke arrangement involving technology and others things'.
And the third was a backstop for if neither of the possibilities came to fruition to ensure 'ongoing regulatory alignment between north and south'.
 
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker tonight said: 'I will have a meeting with the Prime Minister in the course of this week. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow - not on Friday and Saturday because I'm out of town - maybe on Sunday.'  
Mr Davis was clearly angry as his commitment to the UK was questioned in the Commons this afternoon about the 'shambles' over the talks.
'The suggestion we might leave the EU but leave one part of the United Kingdom behind still in the single market and customs market that is emphatically not something the UK government is considering,' he said.
'So when the first minister of Wales or the first minister of Scotland starts banging the tattered drum of independence or the mayor of London says it justifies a hard border around the M25, I say they are making a foolish mistake. No UK Government would do so a foolish thing let alone a Conservative and unionist one.'
Grilled about the suggestion that the deal would have meant Northern Ireland staying aligned to Irish regulations - and thereby the EU - while the rest of the UK left, Mr Davis shot back: 'The presumption of the discussion was that everything we talked about applied to the whole United Kingdom. 
'I re-iterate: alignment isn't harmonisation, it isn't having exactly the same rules. It is sometimes having mutually recognised rules, mutually recognised inspection, all of that sort of thing as well. And that is what we are aiming for.'
The remarks chime with a statement from Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson this morning demanding that any commitments to follow regulations after Brexit apply to the whole UK rather than individual parts of the union.
Senior Brexiteers thanked the DUP leader today for standing up to Dublin, which selectively leaked parts of the agreement prompting suggesting Northern Ireland would effectively be left behind after Brexit following EU rules. 
Mr Dodds used the Commons debate to lash the Irish government for its 'aggressive and anto-unionist' behaviour and warned the leaks from Dublin which triggered the breakdown had caused 'damage' that 'is going to take a long time to repair'.  

Mrs May has been warned that caving in to Irish demands could see her kicked out of Downing Street within weeks - while friends admit she has 'two guns held to her head'. 
Despite the tough line coming from the DUP, whose 10 MPs prop Mrs May up in power, Chancellor Philip Hammond earlier insisted he was still 'very confident' that a settlement would be reached. 
According to No10, she told the gathering that she was 'very close to an agreement' and there were only a 'small number of issues' outstanding.
Scottish Secretary David Mundell warned colleagues there could be no deal that 'prejudices the integrity of the UK'.   


The latest nailbiting phase of the Brexit process comes after a last minute intervention from the DUP yesterday threw Mrs May's carefully laid plans into chaos.
The premier had to break off from lunch with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to field an angry call from the party's leader Arlene Foster, who had gone public with her concerns.
It emerged today that she had not seen the details of the plans before they began leaking out of Dublin.  
Before the lunch, EU diplomats and journalists had been told to expect a 15-page document outlining details of a deal that would clear the way for trade talks to begin this month.
But later in the afternoon Mrs May and Mr Juncker faced the Press in Brussels to announce that discussions on a divorce deal had been abandoned for the day. 
A senior Tory said the DUP had 'gone ballistic' over a proposed compromise which they feared would result in 'regulatory divergence' from the rest of the UK and an effective border in the Irish Sea. 
The party even threatened to pull out of a deal to prop up the Government at Westminster. 'They are seething,' the source said. 
The Brexit divorce deal plans are yet to be spelled out in detail.
But it appears they could see the whole UK could accept abiding by some EU regulations in order to neutralise the Irish border issue.
According to David Davis, the move would not mean having 'exactly the same rules'. 
'It is sometimes having mutually recognised rules,' he said. 
The areas covered would be those considered essential to maintain the soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, such as agriculture, energy and transport.
It would mean livestock and people could continue to move freely, while the common energy market on the island of Ireland would be facilitated.
If a wider EU trade deal was signed, it would almost inevitably go much wider and deeper than the areas covered in this agreement.
But Mr Davis's comments quickly triggered gloating from Eurocrats that Mr Davis had effectively agreed to 'make the UK kind of a regulatory protectorate of Brussels'.

DUP MP Sammy Wilson described the proposals as a 'unionist nightmare' which could lead to the break-up of the UK.
Senior Brexiteers spoke up in favour of the DUP intervention in the Commons today.
Jacob Rees-Mogg revealed his 'gratitude to the DUP for helping the government stick to its own red lines', tweeting that the party had 'saved Brexit'. 
Mr Dodds, the DUP Westminster leader, says the 'damage' caused by the aggressive Irish government to relations with Ulster is 'going to take a long time to repair' and calls Dublin's behaviour outrageous.
He says 'We will not allow any settlement to be agreed which causes divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK'.
Mr Davis replied: 'He's dead right – and neither will the Conservative and Unionist party'. 
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the government should put staying in the single market 'back on the table' - despite Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell previously ruling the idea out.
He also insisted that the fixed date for Brexit of March 29, 2019 should be dropped, an issue that is set to be the subject of a Commons clash later this month. 
The British proposals are understood to be more subtle than the Irish leaks suggested.
Mrs May is thought to be proposing an arrangement which would require the whole UK to retain 'regulatory alignment' with the EU on a narrow range of issues that affect the Irish border. These include energy, agriculture and transport.
The UK would commit to the same regulatory outcomes in these areas as the EU, but would be free to achieve them by different routes. Crucially, the UK would be free to diverge from EU rules in all other areas.
The proposed compromise would allow Northern Ireland to retain the same rules as the Republic in critical areas without splitting from the rest of the UK. 
One senior Tory said they were hoping that Dublin would settle for an 'unenforceable form of words'. 
'If they don't, or Theresa May goes too far, then we and the DUP will withdraw support and there could be a leadership change this side of Christmas,' they added. 
A source close to Mrs May told the Telegraph she realised too late that 'two guns were being held to her head', by the DUP and Scotland.
10.27am: Jean-Claude Juncker meets with his chief negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Parliament representative Guy Verhofstadt. He says they are working for a 'fair deal'.
11.10am: David Davis says today's talks are the culmination of seven months work by both sides and that Britain hopes to get agreement on 'sufficient progress' on divorce issues at the meeting.
11.16am: Irish broadcaster RTE reports on a leak of the draft agreement suggesting the UK will agree there will be no 'regulatory divergence' between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
12.09pm: European Commission confirms the plan for the May-Juncker lunch is to get 'as close as possible' to a deal.
12.40pm: May arrives at the talks and poses for pictures with Juncker ahead of lunch.
12.44pm: EU Council President Donald Tusk tweets 'Tell me why I like Mondays' and says he was encouraged about the prospects for a deal following talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.
12.45pm: DUP MP Sammy Wilson accuses the Irish government of leaking claims about regulatory divergence and claims the UK government will not sign up to them.
1.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon seizes on the leaks to demand Scotland gets access to the same terms as Northern Ireland.
2pm: Arlene Foster appears in front of cameras at Stormont to denounce any deal that 'separates Northern Ireland economically or politically' from the UK.
2.30pm: Varadkar postpones a statement in Dublin on Ireland's position in the talks.
3.12pm: Reports emerge Foster and May have spoken by telephone during a break in the May-Juncker lunch.
3.57pm: Juncker appears alongside May to confirm there would be no deal today but that he remains confident.
3.59pm: May insists she is 'confident we will conclude this positively' but announces talks will reconvene later in the week.
4.15pm: DUP MP Sammy Wilson appears on TV again to brand the deal a 'unionist nightmare'.
5.10pm: Tusk tweets a picture of himself and May, warning time is 'tight' but agreement is 'still possible'.
5.20pm: Varadkar finally makes his appearance in Dublin, confirming Britain was ready to sign up to an agreement. He said Ireland was ready to sign and was 'surprised and disappointed' Britain could no longer sign up.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson insisted any Brexit deal should apply to the whole UK - suggesting any commitment on aligning regulations on the island of Ireland would also cover England, Scotland and Wales.
'The question on the Brexit ballot paper asked voters whether the UK should stay or leave the European Union - it did not ask if the country should be divided by different deals for different home nations,' she said.
'While I recognise the complexity of the current negotiations, no government of the Conservative and Unionist Party should countenance any deal that compromises the political, economic or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom. 
'All sides agree there should be no return to the borders of the past between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. 'Similarly, jeopardising the UK's own internal market is in no-one's interest. 'If regulatory alignment in a number of specific areas is the requirement for a frictionless border, then the Prime Minister should conclude this must be on a UK-wide basis.' 

Arriving for an EU meeting in Brussels today, Mr Hammond sounded an optimistic note.
'We're very confident that we will be able to move this forward,' he told reporters. 
'Discussions are going on right now and will go on throughout the day.'
Former top Foreign Office official Lord Ricketts said the row was 'damaging' for Mrs May and will leave EU leaders with the impression that she lacks the authority to get through Brexit negotiations. 
Former Brexit minister David Jones said 'there will be people in Downing Street who will have regretted not making the position clearer with the DUP'. 
He urged ministers not to 'ignore the parliamentary arithmetic' in which the DUP props up the minority Government, while making clear he also opposed regulatory alignment as it would hinder Britain's ability to strike new free trade deals around the world. 
'I think we need to ensure that the DUP are on board with whatever is proposed and I think it's fairly clear that yesterday they were not on board - the fact that they managed to stall the negotiations yesterday, I think, demonstrates the precise strength of their position so I don't think it should be under-estimated at all,' he said. 

Mrs May will spend today in talks with Cabinet colleagues and political leaders in both the north and south of Ireland as she tries to find a way through the deadlock.
She is then expected to head back to Brussels tomorrow to resume talks with Mr Juncker.
The Prime Minister yesterday insisted progress had been made, but acknowledged that on 'a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation'.
Mr Juncker described Mrs May as a 'tough negotiator' but said he remained 'very confident' a deal would be agreed this week.
EU Council president Donald Tusk had set yesterday as the 'absolute deadline' for agreement. 
Last night he said time was 'very tight'. But No 10 said a summit of EU leaders on December 14/15 was the real deadline – giving Mrs May ten days to save the talks.
Allies of the PM said that, unlike David Cameron, she had not accepted the first deal offered by Brussels.
One said Dublin and Brussels had tried to 'bounce' her into a deal by briefing broadcast media that it was all but done.

The talks foundered after sources in Dublin and Brussels leaked draft versions of a text they hoped to agree with Mrs May on the status of the Irish border.
The leaks suggested the PM was willing to sign a deal that would allow Northern Ireland 'no regulatory divergence' from Dublin, effectively tying it to the EU's customs union.
A later leak said the UK had agreed Northern Ireland would remain in 'regulatory alignment' with the EU in some key areas.
Nicola Sturgeon, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones seized on the claims to demand that Scotland, London and Wales remain tied to the customs union and single market. 
SNP leader Miss Sturgeon said: 'If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market … there is surely no good practical reason why others can't.'
Conservative Eurosceptics have warned Mrs May against further compromise over the Irish border and the role of the European Court of Justice in policing EU citizens' rights after Brexit.
Tory ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'We have to be very careful. Northern Ireland cannot see any regulatory divergence from the UK. And we cannot get into a position where EU citizens have more rights than British citizens.' 


Regulatory convergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit could cover a whole gamut of different rules.
As members of the single market, Ireland accepts the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
Financial services companies have the ability to work freely across the continent without jumping through additional bureaucratic hoops.
They also have standardised EU rules in areas such as safety, quality standards, and working hours.
Ireland's membership of the EU customs union, meanwhile, means there are no tariffs on goods traded within the bloc. 
And the same tariffs are applied to goods from outside the union.
As a result of being in the customs union, Ireland cannot negotiate its own free trade deals with other countries.
Hard Border:
This would include customs and security checks, border controls, posts and guards to monitor who and what is travelling over from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland, and vice versa.
The UK, EU and the Republic of Ireland have all agreed there can be no return to the hard border of the past, fearing this could reignite the sectarian violence of The Troubles.
Soft Border:
A soft border would mean no security or border checks between the two territories - essentially maintaining the status quo.
Under this plan goods and people will be free to cross from one side to the other without any checks or documentation. 
Third Way: 

It has been proposed that an 'invisible border' can be erected via a new high-tech system.
Under this plan, number plate recognition technology and spot vehicle checks could be used to carry out customs checks.
While it has been suggested that Northern Ireland and the Republic both create squads of flying border guards to police potential smuggling routes from the skies.

What prevented a deal?
The thorny issue of what happens to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit. It combines the intractable politics of the peace process, the delicate Conservative/DUP coalition and the complexity of Brexit. The EU has accepted Mrs May's offer on money and a deal is close on the rights of EU nationals in the UK. But all three issues must be agreed by December 14 if the talks are to move on to trade.
Why is the border a problem?
After Brexit, Northern Ireland will have the only land border between the UK and the EU. With Britain leaving the single market and the customs union – but the Republic staying inside both – there are questions about how to move goods over the 300 crossing points along the 310-mile frontier.
What does each side want?
Dublin – backed by the EU – says there must be no 'hard border' involving customs checks for fear of undermining peace accords. Irish ministers have suggested Northern Ireland should stay inside the customs union. But Mrs May – and the DUP – could never agree, as it amounts to breaking up the integrity of the United Kingdom.
How far apart were the sides?
Government sources played down the prospect of a deal after Mrs May arrived for talks with Brussels chiefs yesterday, describing the meeting as a 'staging post'. But EU officials briefed that a deal was imminent, in what was seen as an attempt by to 'bounce' Mrs May into an agreement.
What went wrong?
At just after 11am, details of a draft deal were leaked to Irish media. They were interpreted as suggesting the UK would agree to single market and customs union rules north of the border and that Mrs May had capitulated. They were seized upon by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon and London mayor Sadiq Khan, who demanded separate deals for Scotland and the capital.
What did the DUP say?
DUP leader Arlene Foster denounced any deal that 'separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the UK'. 'The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way', she said.
The Prime Minister was forced to leave a lunch meeting to speak to Mrs Foster who – it soon became clear – had not agreed the wording of the draft deal. Tory MPs insisted the UK's integrity must not be undermined in a sign of deep disquiet that Mrs May appeared ready to agree the proposal.
What does No10 say?
Officials dispute the Irish interpretation of the text. They argue that the suggestion of aligning regulations would only have applied to specific aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, including energy, agriculture and transport. The language appears designed to be palatable to both sides until trade is on the table and a detailed agreement is possible. But the way the story emerged has hardened positions in Belfast and among Tory MPs.
What happens next?
Mrs May is expected to talk to the DUP today and return to Brussels on Wednesday.      
Standing in neo-classical splendour in London’s St James’s, Lancaster House has seen more than its fair share of historic moments — from two G7 summits and the signing of Malaya’s independence treaty in 1956 to the tortured negotiations in the Seventies that saw Rhodesia become independent Zimbabwe.
Even so, I suspect not even this grand venue has seen anything to rival Theresa May’s unveiling of her plan for Brexit, which will surely rank among the few genuinely consequential speeches in our modern political history.
We always think of Prime Ministers as great speech-makers. We picture them on the political platform, their faces straining with passion, the words pouring forth in a torrent of conviction.
Yet how many modern prime ministerial speeches can any of us remember?
David Cameron has been gone for less than a year, but who can recall anything he ever said? Who can quote so much as a line from Gordon Brown?
Tony Blair’s best speeches all came before he was elected Prime Minister, when he was urging his own party to embrace modernisation. John Major, though personally more substantial than the grey stereotype, never said anything even remotely interesting.
In fact, you have to go back to Margaret Thatcher to find a Prime Minister whose speeches have lingered in the memory, whether promising her party conference that she was ‘not for turning’ in 1980 or pledging to resist the growth of a European super-state in Bruges in 1988.
Perhaps that was what made Mrs May’s speech yesterday so refreshing. Indeed, whatever you think of her strategy — and I will come to that later — you surely cannot question her status as the undisputed heavyweight champion of British politics.
In its clarity, daring, pragmatism, optimism and palpable decency — not to mention more than a hint of steel at the end — Mrs May’s speech could hardly have been more impressive.
The inevitable comparisons with the late Lady Thatcher are sometimes overblown, but I was reminded more than once of the Iron Lady in full flight.
Not for three decades, I think, have we heard a Prime Minister on such clear, confident, serious and decisive form.
The obvious caveat, of course, is that even the most impressive speeches can turn out to be mere hot air.
Ultimately, historians will not remember the Brexit negotiations for the speech that set out Britain’s opening bid; they will only remember what happened in the end.
Even so, Mrs May could hardly have delivered a more comprehensive rebuff to her critics — not least The Economist magazine’s damning cover story about ‘Theresa Maybe’, an ‘indecisive premier’ supposedly skulking in her Downing Street bunker and refusing either to speak to the British people or to face the hard decisions that lie ahead.
At Lancaster House yesterday, ‘Theresa Maybe’ was nowhere to be seen. Indeed, Mrs May’s position could hardly have been clearer. No one could possibly accuse her now of shirking the hard choices.
Out of the European single market, probably out of the customs union, recovering control of our borders, the end of European judicial sovereignty, new trade deals with the rest of the world and Parliament to vote on the terms of the deal. Or, as someone once put it: ‘Brexit means Brexit’.
To some extent, of course, Mrs May was simply stating the obvious. Almost as soon as the verdict of the British people became clear last June, it was patently obvious that we could not stay in the European single market.
For despite the anguished protests of some Remainers —and I write as someone who, like Mrs May, voted Remain — the referendum was in large part a verdict on the EU’s open-door immigration policy.
Under the terms of the single market, however, freedom of movement of people is simply non-negotiable. To stay in the single market, in other words, would always have meant ignoring the very clear wishes of the millions who voted to leave.
In that respect, the Brexit terms were effectively decided a long time ago — not by Mrs May, or even by the British people, but by the EU elite themselves.
The fact is that it was the leaders of other EU countries who would not admit any substantial flexibility in their arrangements, refused to give David Cameron a decent deal when he tried to renegotiate Britain’s membership, and therefore handed the referendum to the Leave campaign on a plate.
If these EU leaders had been ready to compromise, not least on immigration, then perhaps we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place. But here we are, and Mrs May’s historic role is to make the best of it.
If she really had been the ‘muddled’ Theresa Maybe of The Economist’s caricature, she would have fudged and ducked the issues. But she didn’t.
Above all, she was right to emphasise our traditions of openness and tolerance, our history of global trade and our security commitments to our European partners.
Most impressive, though, was her sheer audacity in choosing a clear direction and sticking to it. She recognised that the high-handed inflexibility of the EU made a clean break inevitable, and she went for it.
In that respect, the comparison with Mrs Thatcher is, indeed, well deserved.
For Mrs Thatcher, too, inherited a fiendishly difficult situation on taking office (in her case, Britain’s basket-case economy), chose a clear and decisive course, and stuck to her guns, come what may.
At times, I was half-tempted to wonder what Mrs May’s other predecessors would have said.
David Cameron’s speech would have been one of emollient half-measures; Gordon Brown’s would surely have been arid and technical; and Tony Blair would have given us plenty of stardust, but no substance.
By contrast, Mrs May could scarcely have been more straightforward.
In her rhetoric, as well as her political persona, she remains the Middle England vicar’s daughter — patriotic and plain-speaking, but not afraid to be tough when it matters, as proved when she warned some of our European friends not to try to punish Britain in the Article 50 talks.
She named no names, but I can’t help but suspect that the French President Francois Hollande’s ears were burning.
Will her speech linger in the memory, though?
Well, that depends. If it proves the springboard to a smooth and happy negotiation, setting the tone for Britain’s successful exit from the EU and our rebirth as a global trading nation, then Mrs May’s words certainly will be long remembered.
But if things go badly, no one will recall that she ever said them. After all, if Britain had lost World War II, few would remember Winston Churchill’s stirring words today, just as no one would care what Margaret Thatcher had said if she had failed to bring economic recovery.
What matters are the results, not the airy promises before you start work.
Even so, Mrs May has surely done herself and her country the world of good, as evidenced by the reaction of the currency markets, which saw the biggest rise in sterling for a long time.
Indeed, in just 40 minutes, she confirmed her commanding place at the summit of British politics, stamped her authority on the Brexit process and cemented her growing reputation as probably the most widely respected Prime Minister for decades.
True, there are more than two years to go before Britain leaves the EU — two years that are bound to have their fair share of setbacks, crises and compromises — so it is too early to say whether this will be a speech that resounds in history.
Still, if Theresa May’s actions live up to her fine words, if her optimism proves well placed and if Britain does indeed prosper after 2019, then she will surely command a high place in our national story.
 
Friends of Brexit Secretary David Davis fear he is on the brink of resigning over the bombshell Brexit letter sent by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove to Theresa May.
The letter setting out their blueprint for a post-EU Britain was kept secret from the rest of the Cabinet – including Mr Davis – until it was revealed in last week’s Mail on Sunday.
Now we can disclose that the missive effectively calls for Mr Davis to be sidelined by a new, non-elected ‘Brexit Tsar’. Mr Davis’s allies say he is ‘deeply frustrated’ by the way Mr Johnson and Mr Gove went behind his back to hand-deliver the letter to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell. Last night, No 10 added to his humiliation by failing to deny that the Brexit Secretary had still not seen a copy of the letter.
In the full letter, Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson and Environment Secretary Mr Gove lend weight to claims that some Brexiteers want Mrs May to turn the UK into the ‘Singapore of Europe’ by slashing tax and red tape.
And they say she must prepare for crashing out of the EU after a ‘total breakdown’ in Brexit talks.
The rebel pair flex their muscles by saying she should force all Cabinet Ministers to ‘submit to a process’ to prove they are enforcing a ‘hard Brexit’ blueprint – including recruiting thousands of extra customs and immigration officers. The 2,500-word letter portrays Mrs May as an enfeebled PM forced to take orders from the two men who brought down her predecessor David Cameron.
In addition to sidelining Mr Davis, they also take aim at Chancellor Philip Hammond, whose supporters were furious when we revealed how Mr Johnson and Mr Gove accused him of failing to show ‘sufficient energy’ to prepare for a ‘no-deal’ outcome with the EU.
The new disclosures come as Mr Davis enters the final stages of crunch talks with the EU over the size of our divorce bill – and before another week of Commons clashes over the EU Withdrawal Bill, with 20 Tory MPs threatening to rebel over Mrs May’s plans to fix in law the date of Britain’s departure.
Former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke claimed last week that the fixed date move was a ‘sop’ to Mr Johnson and Mr Gove in the wake of their letter, which told the PM to announce a date for the end of the UK’s ‘transition’ out of the EU.
The letter will revive the debate over whether Britain could use Brexit to become a low-tax, low- regulation ‘Singapore-style’ economy. It says: ‘We may choose to remain identical to the EU – or we may embrace a vision more aligned with pro-competitive regulation. Other countries must know this choice is in our hands – and they must know it on day one.’
An overhaul of science and technology rules will ‘give the UK big advantages over EU members,’ they argue. ‘Our tax system is hugely complex after the long years of Labour government. There will be huge savings from reducing the burden of compliance.’
Supporters of the idea say it would create an economic boom – but critics say it would undermine workers’ rights.
The Ministers attempt to address this criticism by saying that it is ‘not about deregulating’ but about ‘regulating better’, with a ‘vision more aligned with pro-competitive regulation’.
The authors tell Mrs May to crack down on Ministers who refuse to support the proposal and ‘identify individual Cabinet Ministers and submit them to a process that produces action’.
They say Mrs May should seek a Free Trade Agreement with the EU: they do not specify which model they prefer, though they reject the so-called Norway model, supported by Mr Hammond, under which the UK would retain access to the single market while still being bound by its regulations.
The letter also spells out the risk of the Brexit talks collapsing before Britain leaves in 2019 – and says there may be no trade deal even by the time the so-called transition period, scheduled to end in 2021, is over.
‘We may not be able to reach agreement on the final deal during the implementation period or even know by March 2019 if an agreement is going to be possible or not,’ write Mr Johnson and Mr Gove.
‘The worst case is a total breakdown in March 2019, but even if we avoid that we may still have a “no-deal” outcome at the end of the transition period.’
They fear chaos at ports and airports. ‘We are most concerned about customs rules where the UK must be in a position to charge import duties and conduct checks on EU goods. This will require upgrading facilities at ports and recruiting thousands of customs officers. Similarly, we must arrange to implement immigration controls in the event of no deal.’
They claim mandarins are incapable of implementing a ‘hard Brexit’ and must be replaced by Ministers backed by ‘strong’ political apparatchiks and the urgent appointment of a new, non-elected ‘Brexit Tsar’ in charge of an Implementation Task Force (ITF).
‘The ITF leader should have direct authority to mobilise Whitehall on Brexit preparation issues and brief the Cabinet.’
This newspaper has been told Tory Brexit leaders want Matthew Elliott, former chief executive of Vote Leave, and now a senior fellow with pro-Brexit think-tank the Legatum Institute, to be the tsar.
The letter states that Mrs May must not allow the European Court of Justice to have jurisdiction over new EU rules in the UK during the transition.
They write: ‘There should be no question of the UK implementing new EU rules during this period – or ECJ jurisdiction on any new rules. Clarifying that in the minds of colleagues who have not yet internalised that logic would help.’
This is at odds with Mr Davis, who said on Friday that Britain will remain within the jurisdiction of the EU’s Court of Justice immediately after Brexit in March 2019, and it would not be phased out until the end of the two-year transition period.
This angered the influential ‘hard Brexit’ Tory pundit Charles Moore, who yesterday accused Mr Davis of letting EU negotiator Michel Barnier run rings round him – and he also took a swipe at recent claims about Mr Davis’s drinking.
Mr Moore wrote: ‘It is time to get annoyed with Mr Davis. For ages now, he has been flying from meeting to meeting, speaking at dinner after dinner, staying late at party after party, encouraging his bonhomous reassurance to be favourably contrasted with Mrs May’s anxious gloom.
‘Michel Barnier has the right idea – a grave expression, a guardedly polite manner and the tenacious pursuit of what he wants. Unfortunately, he’s on the other side.’
A spokesman for Mr Davis said: ‘It is completely wrong that he is considering resigning and anyone pushing this nonsense in order to undermine Brexit is going to be sorely disappointed.’
Downing Street refused to comment.
1) Brexit vision... But keep it to yourself
 2) Our ruling... On EU Court of Justice
 3) Face reality... Get ready for no deal
 4) We need task force... Not David Davis
 5) Slash taxes... Make ministers feel the heat
 6) Meet us... When you think it wise

David Miliband was today branded a 'wrecker who doesn't live in the UK' after he waded into British politics to calls for the UK to stay in the EU single market after Brexit.
The former Labour frontbencher, who lives in New York, returned to the frontline of British politics after five years away to call for Brexit policy to be overhauled.
He said Jeremy Corbyn risks being a 'midwife for a hard Brexit' as he made his outspoken intervention.
Speaking today, he said he is 'baffled' by the Labour leader's refusal to campaign to make the country sign up to become a member of the European Economic Area. 
He joined arch Remainers Tory rebel Nicky Morgan and ex Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to mount a publicity blitz to soften Brexit. 
But Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall in London and a leading Brexiteer, tore into Mr Miliband over the intervention.
She told Mail Online: 'He is out of touch with Labour leave areas and is unlikely to influence a single Leaver. 
'He said nothing new and is just another one of the class of wreckers of the referendum result. Only difference he doesn’t even live in the UK at the moment. 
Mr Miliband held a joint press conference with Sir Nick and Mrs Morgan at a rice factory in Essex which rice producers say is under threat because of Brexit.
It is his first major intervention in British politics since he quit being an MP in 2013 after he lost the Labour leadership contest to his younger brother Ed in 2010 in a bruising campaign.
Meanwhile, at a separate even SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said she remains determined to try to stay in the single market. 
This would keep the UK in the single market, meaning the country may have to accept free movement rules post Brexit.
David Miliband was today mocked for tweeting a picture of a pot of rice pudding and saying that it was a good reason to stay in the EU's customs union and single market. 
The ex Labour frontbencher tweeted an image of a pout of Tilda rice pudding that he had polished off after a speech pushing for a soft Brexit.
He added the message: 'Delicious @tildarice rice pudding, finished to the last morsel. A great argument for the Customs Union and Single Market!'
But critics were quick to point out that Tilda rice is grown in the Commonwealth - not the EU.
While others mocked the ex MP - suggesting that a 'nice risotto' might be a better argument for staying in the EU.' 
While another Twitter user pointed out that Mr Miliband had cc-ed the wrong Tilda Rice into his tweet. 
Mr Miliband said: 'I am absolutely baffled why the Labour leadership is so worried about supporting the EEA I fear the position makes Jeremy Corbyn the midwife of a hard Brexit'
But critics accused the trip of trying to 'cheat' the British people out of Brexit.
Ex Brexit minister David Jones said: 'Being in the single market and the customs union means being under the jurisdiction of the European Court. 
'This would be denying Brexit and attempting to cheat the British people out of what they voted for in June of 2016,'
And he also pointed out the ex Labour frontbencher moved out of the UK to New York several years ago to take up a lucrative roe as the head of a charity. 
Mr Jones said: 'David Miliband is entitled to his personal opinion but he is no longer an elected representative.'    
The Labour former foreign secretary also warned the UK was being 'held to ransom' by demands for a 'hard Brexit', putting security and economic prosperity at risk. 
The trio of Remainers claimed the Government's proposals for Brexit would 'diminish Britain's standing in the world'. Mr Miliband, who now lives in New York, said: 'The truth is that sometimes distance lends perspective.'
He said he could see the risk 'a great tragedy would unfold of a shrunken Britain retreating into itself' at a time of 'particular global peril'.
They urged MPs and peers to seize control of Brexit from ministers and force a softer approach.    
Sir Nick, the ex deputy PM, said: 'It is a subject of complete bafflement that under the guise and the wholly misleading language of free trade and Global Britain, actually Brexiteers now want to lead us to the rocks of protectionism.'
He added: 'One should never underestimate the narcissism of debate amongst Brexiteers. They think that the only negotiation that counts is the one between them.
'They don't seem to realise that the real negotiation should be between the UK and the 27 other member states.'      
David Miliband left British politics - and the UK - after losing the Labour leadership to his younger brother Ed.
David had been Tony Blair's head of policy at No10 and rapidly rose through the ministerial ranks after being elected an MP - rising to Foreign Secretary under Gordon Brown.
As the older and more senior of the Miliband brothers, he was seen as the natural Labour leader in waiting when Mr Brown resigned. 
But Ed sent shock waves through Westminster by deciding to throw his hat in the ring and run against his older brother in 2010.
While the pair publicly tried to put a brave face on the family rift, behind the scenes relations were tense.
The younger of the Milibands was elected Labour leader in 2010.
And three years later, in 2013, David Miliband quit as an MP and moved to New York to become the head of the International Rescue Committee charity.  
Mr Morgan indicated  that she is getting ready to rebel against her leadership again and back a Lords amendment aimed at leaving open the option of remaining in the EEA.
She said: 'It is becoming clearer that Parliament will have to step up to the plate on this one because ministers have such differing and irreconcilable views.' 
She added: 'If we are not going to get this deep and comprehensive free trade agreement the Prime Minister has talked about, and David Davis has talked about, then the EEA has to be a sensible way to move forward.
'The Lords was right to put it back on the agenda, I certainly will be looking at it.'
She added it was 'something I would be likely to support'.
Meanwhile, at a separate even SNP leader Ms Sturgeon said she remains determined to try to stay in the single market.   
She told business leaders at News UK's Scotland Means Business event in London: 'I deeply regret the UK's decision to leave the EU and I believe the absurdity - and I believe that is the appropriate word - of the ongoing UK cabinet discussions and disputes over the post-Brexit customs arrangements strengthens one of the basic arguments that the Scottish Government together with many businesses has been making.
'That argument is that in our view the approach if the UK is determined to leave the EU is to remain within the single market and within a customs union.
'It is ... the obvious democratic compromise in a UK where 48% of voters and indeed two out of the four nations in the UK chose to remain in the EU. It is also the least damaging solution economically.' 
Remainer hopes of keeping the UK in the single market were boosted today with Norway's PM Erna Solberg backing the idea.
Dispelling previous signs that Oslo did not want Britain to join its European Economic Area group, she told the Financial Times: 'We will cope very well if the Brits come in. 
'It will give bargaining power on our side too. And it would ease Norway's access to the UK.' 
Europhile politicians are gearing up for a last-ditch effort to water down Brexit with as the government struggles to hammer out a position on future trade arrangements.
Theresa May appears to be on the verge of defeat in Cabinet over her favoured plan for a 'customs partnership' with the EU.
But there are fears that the alternative 'Maximum Facilitation' concept will not be enough to protect business and prevent a hard Irish border.
The Commons will vote later this year on whether the UK should stay in a customs union with the bloc, with a dozen Tory rebels threatening to overturn Mrs May's wafer-thin majority. 
A clash on single market membership is also on the cards, with Jeremy Corbyn facing pressure for scores of Labour MPs to shift his party's policy. 
Mr Miliband had earlier warned that a hard Brexit which takes Britain out of the EU single market and customs union risks harming living standards in Britain.
He told the BBC's Today programme: 'The single market isn't just about the trade in goods and services, it's also about environmental regulation, it's also about employee rights, it's about a fundamental social and economic bargain and so you're right to say that this is an issue for MPs and leaders of all parties because the stakes could not be higher.'
Mr Miliband quit as an MP after losing the Labour leadership to his brother Ed in 2010. 
He lives in the US where he is the £450,000-a-year head of the International Rescue Committee, an aid charity. 
Theresa May has insisted Brexit means quitting the EU customs union - so the UK can strike free trade deals with other countries.
But  this means that customs checks on goods will probably need to be carried out at the border - creating the spectre of long border queues.
Critics of the PM's approach say the UK should stay in a customs union with the bloc to avoid these hard border controls.
Below are three customs deals the EU  has done with countries outside the bloc:
The Norway Option: 
Norway voted narrowly against joining the EU in 1994, but shares a 1000-mile border with Sweden which is in the bloc.
The Norwegian government decided to negotiate a deal which gave it very close ties with the EU. 
It is part of the EU single market which means it must accept EU rules on the free movement of people.
But it is not in the customs union - meaning it sets its own tariffs on customs coming from outside the EU and so must carry out border checks.
There are some 1,300 customs officials who are involved in policing the border with Sweden, and have invested substantial amounts in technology to make these as quick and smooth as possible.
They have IT systems which pre-declare goods to customs and they are developing a system which will allow lorries carrying pre-declared goods to be waved through. 
Norway also pays large amounts into the EU budget and is governed by the court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The Switzerland Option:
Switzerland is one of the EU's longest-standing trading partners, but the  country voted against joining the bloc in 2001.
It is a member of the EU single market and has signed up to the Schengen area - meaning it must accept free movement rules and does not carry out passport check on other member countries. 
But it is not in the EU customs union - which means that checks on goods crossing over the border from non-EU countries are carried out.
The situation tosses up some anomalies. For instance, a passenger travelling through Geneva Airport can rent a car on the French side of the border for around half of the cost of renting it on the Swiss side.
Border checks are carried out on goods but customs officials say they use intelligence to carry out spot checks, which can be carried out several miles from the border. 
However, there can be long delays as goods are checked at the border.
The Turkey Option: 
Turkey has long eyed up membership of the EU and first tried to start the lengthy application process to join in 1987.
The country signed a customs union with the bloc in 1995 - a move Turkey's rulers hoped would be a stepping stone on the way to full membership.
Turkey's hopes to join the bloc faded over the past few years and have been all but abandoned under President Erdogan after he instigated a major purge of political opponents in the wake of the failed coup against him in 2016.
Under its customs union Turkey must follow EU rules on the production of goods without a say in making them.
It also means that Turkey can only strike free trade deals on goods which are negotiated by Brussels.   
David Davis made a major concession to Brexit rebels today as he declared any final deal will be enshrined in a separate Act of Parliament.
The Brexit Secretary acted to head off an impending clash with Tory Remainers as he updated MPs on progress with negotiations. 
It fulfils one of the key demands made by Conservative politicians calling for a 'softer' departure from the EU.
But ministers are still facing a titanic battle to push the EU Withdrawal Bill through parliament. 
Former ministers Dominic Grieve, Nicky Morgan and Anna Soubry are among those threatening to side with Labour in votes on the legislation, which is coming back to the House of Commons this week.
More than 400 amendments have been tabled, with the first major clashes due to be over whether to include a fixed Brexit date on the front page of the law.
Mr Grieve set the tone for the argument this morning, branding the idea 'incoherent and a thoroughly stupid' - adding that it 'won't have my support'.
Mrs Morgan said Theresa May's support for fixing a date in legislation showed she had a political 'tin ear' and would only deepen divisions in her party. 
Ms Soubry said the proposal was 'foolish', and said she had already made concessions to the EU referendum result by voting in favour of triggering Article 50.
'I am not going to vote against my conscience again,' she told the BBC.
Addressing the Commons this afternoon, Mr Davis sought to clear out one of the potential flashpoints by committing to a separate Bill on any deal. 
'It is clear that that we need to take further steps to provide clarity and certainty - both in the negotiations and at home - regarding the implementation of any agreement into UK law,' Mr Davis said.
'I can now confirm that, once we have reached an agreement, we will bring forward a specific piece of primary legislation to implement that agreement. This will be known as the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill.
Mr Davis said the move would ensure 'major policies set out in the Withdrawal Agreement will be directly implemented into UK law by primary legislation – not by secondary legislation under the Withdrawal Bill'.
He added: 'This also means that Parliament will be given time to debate, scrutinise and vote on the final agreement we strike with the EU. This agreement will only hold if Parliament approves it.'
But Mr Davis also reiterated that the UK would still leave the EU in March 2019, even if MPs and peers blocked the legislation. 
'It's a meaningful vote but it's not meaningful in the sense that you can reverse the whole decision,' he said. 
November 22: Chancellor Philip Hammond unveils the UK Budget. 
It is understood the Government is not expected to budge on the divorce bill until this is done. 
November 24: Michel Barnier's two-week deadline for Britain to cough up more money for the divorce bill to move on to the next stage of talks, is up.
December 14 & 15: The European Council Summit takes place. 
The heads of state from the 28 member states will all be there and it is at this summit that the UK must get their agreement if trade talks are to start by the New Year.
March 27  2018: The next EU summit is held.
If Britain fails to get the agreement of the EU to move on to trade talks, then this will be our next opportunity to secure agreement. 
But this would be a full year after Article 50 was triggered, and many fear this would not leave enough time to get on with the rest of negotiations.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it was a 'significant climbdown from a weak government on the verge of defeat'.
'For months, Labour has been calling on ministers to guarantee Parliament a final say on the withdrawal agreement. With less than 24 hours before they had to defend their flawed Bill to Parliament they have finally backed down. However, like everything with this government the devil will be in the detail,' he said.
'Ministers must now go further. They need to accept Labour's amendments that would ensure transitional arrangements, and protect jobs and the economy from a cliff edge.'

Earlier, Sir Keir insisted that there must not be a 'red line' against keeping the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice during a transition period.
He said there were 'very many Conservatives who are concerned about this'.
However, Sir Keir admitted that the long-term relationship with the ECJ was 'a matter for negotiation' and the relationship 'would have to change'.
Sir Keir told BBC Radio 4's Today programme it was 'blatantly obvious' that the final agreement would not be in place by March 2019 - when the UK is due to leave.

Brexit Secretary David Davis update MPs on the progress of talks with the EU after a bad-tempered press conference with counterpart Michel Barnier in Brussels on Friday.
The apparent deadlock over the size of the divorce bill has raised fears that trade talks might not start until March - increasing the chances of no final deal being reached.  
Sir Keir claimed today that such an outcome from the negotiations would almost certainly lead to the fall of the government.
He said: 'No deal is a very, very bad outcome.
'Taken literally, it means we have not agreed anything, and that means we haven't agreed anything about EU citizens, we haven't agreed anything about the border in Northern Ireland, we haven't agreed anything on security. 
'I think that sort of no deal is unthinkable. 'In those circumstances I think the Government would have to seriously consider whether it could continue. 
'There will be a real crisis of confidence. A constitutional, sort of, disturbance. And probably all sorts of emergency legislation. And that's why we shouldn't casualise no deal.' 
Prominent Tory Remainers signalled they are ready to rebel over key elements of the Bill. 
Former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan told the Daily Politics that Mrs May's commitment to put the Brexit date into the legislation was 'tone deaf'.
'I'm afraid to say the prime minister's tone-deaf, tin-eared article in the Telegraph was guaranteed to continue to deepen divisions in the Conservative party, rather than trying to heal them, which is what she should be doing,' she said. 

Mr Grieve told Sky News: 'I think it is an incoherent and thoroughly stupid amendment and it won't have my support.'
But Tory former leader Iain Duncan Smith said Labour was shifting its position on Brexit.
Divorce Bill:
Theresa May has said Britain will pay 20 billion euros for a two-year transition deal and honour the commitments we have made.
But the EU are demanding Britain goes further in spelling out exactly what we will pay - squeezing out more cash before we move on to trade talks.
Irish border:
Probably the most complicated issue in the negotiations, both sides want to keep a soft Irish border, fearing a return to border guards and  check points could reignite the violence of The Troubles.
But it is unclear how this will be achieved when the UK leaves the customs union.
The EU has suggested Northern Ireland will have to  stay in the EU customs union post Brexit to avoid a hard border with the republic - effectively pushing the hard border to the sea.
But the Government and the DUP - who are propping Mrs May up in No10 - say they will not accept a deal which involves a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Citizens Rights
Theresa May has laid out an offer to guarantee the rights of the 3.2million EU citizens in the UK.
They will be given a two-year grace period to apply for settled status, which they will be granted as long as they pass criminal and security checks.
But this was rejected by the EU Parliament who say the status should be automatic and not involve criminal records checks.  

He told the BBC: 'Staying inside the Court of Justice would actually be tantamount to staying within the European Union.'
Fellow Tory MP Chris Philp added: 'Labour are so confused on Brexit, they've set out 10 different policies on it since the EU referendum.
'Only the Conservatives have a plan that will ensure that a smooth and orderly Brexit sees our legal system functioning on day one - the only thing Labour policy would ensure is legal chaos.'
The Prime Minister is holding talks with senior figures from European industry in Downing Street, as negotiations enter a crucial phase.  
EU leaders are due to decide at a summit next month whether enough progress has been made for trade discussions to begin.
But the two sides are engaged in a bitter stand-off over the size of the divorce bill - with the UK offering around 20billion euros during a transition phase, but the bloc insisting the figure must be triple that figure.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said Britain must make a fresh offer on money within a fortnight.
There are fears that failure to reach an agreement before Christmas could lead to a 'no deal' Brexit and cause severe harm to economies.
Business on both side of the channel has become increasingly anxious about the prospect of political deadlock disrupting trade.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming under pressure to protect her country's car exports - with Britain a key market.    
 
 

Pro-Brussels MPs were appalled – astonished! – that the Government should be heeding the will of the majority of electors (17.4 million) who voted for Brexit. 
What gobbles and quibbles we had from Remainers in the Commons yesterday when Brexit Secretary David Davis gave another update on progress.
‘The people are revolting, sir,’ says Ed Miliband’s valet. ‘Aren’t they just?’ says Popular Ed.
Scroll down for video 
Mr Miliband and chums wanted us to stay in the Single Market (not much different from the EU). 
Much dancing on niceties was required to justify their position. They tweezered out their political positions with dainty detail and lawyerly sophistry – talk of White Papers and parliamentary procedure on treaties and the indigestible principle of prerogatives. Versus, er, the plain, unadorned fact of the referendum result.
Mr Davis: ‘We have a duty to respect the vote.’ Male Labour heckler: ‘No we don’t.’ My dears, you needed to be an elitist to understand these things. 
Perhaps you needed a knighthood, like barrister Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s new Brexit spokesman, who complained that the Government was ‘sidelining Parliament’. 
He claimed it was ‘wholly unacceptable’ not to give MPs the right to block the exiting process. 
Behind him on the Labour benches was a wad of parliamentarians doing their damndest to block the common people and – sigh – their vulgar desire for our country to be independent.
Mostly they were Blairites such as Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland in Durham, where 57 per cent supported Brexit) and Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton SE, 62 per cent for Brexit) but the anti-Blairite Paul Flynn (Newport W, where 56 per cent wanted Leave) joined them. He accused Brexit of being a pack of ‘lies’.
General election loser Miliband, not often seen here since that national bogwashing in 2015, rose to his hind teeth to complain bitterly that the May Government was heeding the result of the referendum. 
I know. Disgusting, innit? You wonder what the voters of Doncaster North (Mr Miliband’s seat) will make of his opposition to quitting the EU. They opted for Brexit by a measure of 69 per cent. How often does he go there?
The Government, honked Mr Miliband, ‘has no mandate’ for its Brexit. ‘Where is the mandate for its negotiation?’ Mr Davis, doing his best to remain polite, replied: ‘I can not believe my ears!’ He pointed out that the Brexit vote was ‘the largest mandate ever given’ to ministers.
Lining up alongside Mr Miliband was that other popular combo artist, Nick Clegg (Lib Dem, Sheffield Hallam). He resorted to a fancy word to try to baffle the democratic will.
By what right did Theresa May ‘arrogate to herself the right to decide what Brexit means’? Sheffield, since you ask, voted 51 per cent for Brexit. ‘Here we go again,’ said Mr Davis, who was batting well against these whingebags. 
There was a difference between ‘accountability and micro-management’. He would follow conventions on parliamentary involvement but he would not tell MPs everything in his negotiating hand because that would not be in the national interest.
Anna Soubry (Con, Broxtowe, which voted by 54.6 per cent to quit the EU) feared that ‘the Government is turning its back on the Single Market’. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, listening to Miss Soubry, frowned and drummed his fingers on the back of the front bench.
Refusing to act on the instruction of the British people, said Mr Davis with understatement, would create ‘a constitutional problem’. Labour heckler: ‘No it wouldn’t.’
The weakness in the Remainers’ approach was that no one really believes they want the best from Brexit. They want it to fail, so that they can return to the EU. They tittered theatrically at Mr Davis’s use of ‘micro-management’. Such elaborate scoffing!
That tribune of the working masses, Emily Thornberry, sat on Labour’s front bench with a pert pout on her trouty lips and said ‘process, process, process!’, a refrain she repeated three times. I don’t have a clue what she meant, but then I’m not from Islington. 
Theresa May was accused last night of trying to blackmail the EU over a Brexit trade deal.
In a show of steel that angered Brussels, the Prime Minister suggested she could withdraw co-operation on security unless a fair agreement was struck.
She used her Article 50 letter, which launches a two-year divorce process, to warn the EU against trying to damage Britain at such a dangerous time. The 28-state bloc leans heavily on UK intelligence and policing expertise.
Mrs May’s warning was described as tantamount to blackmail by Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator.
EU leaders quickly said they would block Mrs May’s demand for a trade deal to be negotiated alongside the terms of Britain’s departure.
‘The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship,’ said German chancellor Angela Merkel.
‘Only when this question is dealt with can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship.’
French president Francois Hollande said Brexit ‘would be painful for the British’. The security row came as:
During a cagey interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil, the Prime Minister refused to rule out making a divorce payment to the EU.
She said the UK would stop making large payments to Brussels but told the BBC: ‘We’re a law-abiding nation, we will meet obligations that we have.’
Some ministers have warned the PM that Tory MPs would not accept a bill of more than £3billion. EU leaders have suggested a figure closer to £50billion.
In a Commons performance lasting more than three hours and 20 minutes, the Prime Minister fielded questions from MPs and set out her vision for Brexit.
Free movement will not end for at least two years – raising fears of a rush to Britain by EU citizens desperate to beat the deadline.
Theresa May risked anger by stepping away from imposing migration curbs from the moment she triggered Article 50.
It means controversial free movement rules are unlikely to be axed before 2019.
The Government will then bring forward a Bill setting out proposed legislation to tackle immigration.
Mrs May has previously suggested a ‘targeted’ visa regime for EU migrants so they will have to secure a skilled job before being allowed to work in the UK.
Asked on the BBC last night about when free movement could end, Mrs May said: ‘We want to have the agreements done in two years.
‘There may then be a period when we are implementing those arrangements.
‘What we will be able to do, as a result of leaving the EU, is to have control of our borders, is to set those rules for people coming from inside the European Union into the UK.’
She pledged to forge a ‘stronger, fairer, more united’ country, take back control of the UK’s borders and strike an early agreement to guarantee the rights of 3.2million EU citizens living in this country and 1.2million British citizens in Europe. ‘I choose to believe in Britain and that our best days are ahead,’ she said.
The Prime Minister acknowledged there would be consequences for the UK in leaving the EU, with exporters forced to abide by rules that Britain no longer had a say in deciding. Downing Street denied that Mrs May’s decision to explicitly raise the security issues was a threat, saying it was a ‘statement of fact’ that EU membership is the basis for substantial co-operation on security.
Mrs May’s tough stance on security could see the UK withdraw co-operation on issues such as the sharing of DNA, vehicle registration and fingerprints, as well as the UK’s involvement in the cross-border Europol agency and the European Arrest Warrant.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron described Mrs May’s warning as a ‘blatant threat’, adding: ‘Security cooperation has been lumped together with trade – it’s utterly scandalous.’
Mr Verhofstadt said: ‘Our security is far too important to start bargaining it against an economic agreement. I tried to be a gentleman towards a lady [Mrs May] so I didn’t even use or think about the use of the word blackmail.’
Mrs May defended her decision to switch from supporting Remain in the referendum to now championing Brexit, saying: ‘Well, I did campaign for Remain and I did vote to remain.
‘But I also said that I didn’t think the sky would fall in if we left the European Union, and it hasn’t.’
Former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine described it as a ‘very sad day’ and predicted pro-Remain forces could yet block Brexit if Mrs May failed to secure a good deal.
He has declared himself as the defender of Europe who will stand in Britain’s way if it refuses to bow to the EU’s demands during Brexit talks.
But gap-toothed Guy Verhofstadt, who yesterday accused Theresa May of blackmail, is a devoted Anglophile who was once known as ‘Baby Thatcher’.
The former Belgian prime minister, 63, has used his role as chief negotiator for the European Parliament to draw up a list of tough demands that must be met by the UK during negotiations.
The arch-federalist has vigorously pursued a dream of a United States of Europe, and could prove to be the biggest thorn in Mrs May’s side.
While Brexit threatens this dream, Anglophile Mr Verhofstadt is also likely to feel a personal loss. He has a Union Jack fridge, races a 1950s Aston Martin and his present reading material includes a book on Winston Churchill that positions the war leader as a firm believer in Europe.
As a young Flemish politician Mr Verhofstadt was nicknamed Baby Thatcher because he tried to reform socialist-leaning Belgium with free market politics.
Ironically, some of his key rivals in British politics are among the UK’s most staunch Remainers.
He had a deep-seated rivalry with Nick Clegg after the Lib Dem refused to back him during an EU leadership contest.
And he has never forgiven Tony Blair for blocking his lifetime ambition of becoming European Commission President in 2004.
Among current proposals by Mr Verhofstadt, who led Belgium between 2008 and 2009, is to create an EU secret service.

Wrath of the Eurocrats: We'll hurt British, snarls Hollande - as Brussels bites back over May's trade deal threat
By Mario Ledwith, Brussels Correspondent for the Daily Mail
The EU’s most powerful figures lined up last night to warn Brexit would be ‘painful’ – as they rejected one of Britain’s key demands out of hand.
The European Parliament refused to countenance the idea of negotiating a trade deal alongside exit talks, which Theresa May had insisted was vital to their success.
German chancellor Angela Merkel also appeared to reject the demand, saying Britain and the EU had to ‘disentangle’ before they could determine their future relationship.
French president Francois Hollande went further, saying Brexit would ‘hurt the British’ and be ‘economically painful’. And European Council president Donald Tusk told the Prime Minister to prepare for ‘damage control’.
The European Parliament published a list of demands, insisting that it would veto any Brexit deal unless its lengthy conditions were met.
Among the audacious requests was a demand for European judges to maintain jurisdiction over Britain for several years to come, and an insistence that there should be no special market access for the City.
Mr Tusk was first to react, speaking just minutes after Mrs May delivered her historic address to Parliament.
Speaking on behalf of the 27 remaining EU members, he acknowledged that Brexit could prove hugely damaging for the bloc. But he appeared to taunt the UK by saying that almost half of Britons wanted to Remain – and insisting that he would not allow the EU to be bullied during talks.
‘There is no reason to pretend that this is a happy day, neither in Brussels, nor in London,’ he said.
‘After all most Europeans, including almost half the British voters, wish that we would stay together, not drift apart.’
Britain will leave the EU ‘when Big Ben bongs midnight’ on March 29, 2019, No 10 announced yesterday.
It means the deadline for reaching a deal expires when the clock strikes twelve in exactly two years’ time.
EU nations will now draw up detailed negotiating instructions to be passed on to the European Commission – which will act as the bloc’s chief negotiator.
At the same time, lawyers in Whitehall will be working on the Great Repeal Bill for the Queen’s Speech in May, which will smooth the legal transition of Brexit. The Bill will remove the European Communities Act 1972 from the statute book and enshrine existing EU law into British legislation.
It can then be amended or repealed at a future date.
By Christmas, there should be an agreement on the broader principles of Brexit, ahead of detailed discussions of the UK’s future relationship with the bloc.
In order for the UK and EU parliaments to ratify a final agreement by March 2019, a deal must be on the table by October 2018.
Addressing the divisions which have ripped through European politics in recent months, the former Polish premier insisted that he could instill unity among the remaining EU members.
But he finished his short address with a downbeat lament for Britain’s departure, saying: ‘What more can I add to this? We already miss you.’
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said the long-awaited delivery of the Article 50 letter to Brussels marked the ‘first day of a very long and difficult road’.
Mrs May yesterday insisted that she wanted to negotiate a trade deal with the EU at the same time as conducting talks on Britain’s departure.
But Mrs Merkel appeared to position herself in opposition to this, calling for the UK to settle EU demands for a huge ‘divorce bill’ first.
She said: ‘The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship ... and only when this question is dealt with, can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship.’
Mr Hollande said Brexit would be ‘sentimentally painful’ for the Europeans but ‘economically painful’ for Britain.
He added: ‘We have for Great Britain an unlimited affection. It is not our intention to punish them. But when a country is no longer in the EU, they will no longer have the advantages of the EU.’
The most damning threats yesterday were issued by the European Parliament, which positioned itself as the EU’s main negotiating troublemaker. In a resolution setting out their demands, MEPs said they would block a favourable deal for the UK.
The clear challenge to Mrs May – who has vowed to end the UK jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice – saw MEPs insist that EU judges retain some power over Britain. Officials in both Britain and Brussels have accepted that a ‘transition period’, potentially lasting three years, will need to be implemented to avoid a ‘cliff edge’ departure. The draft resolution, drawn up by the European Parliament’s chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, insisted judges in Luxembourg should oversee this period rather than any other body.
Mr Verhofstadt also paved the way for the ECJ to rule on other key issues involving the UK, such as the rights of European citizens living here, for years to come. He said: ‘The withdrawal agreement will be an act of Union law ... that is naturally controlled by the European Court of Justice. It is as simple as that.’ He denied the hard-line approach was a ‘question of revenge’ and said the UK could reverse its decision to leave.
The document also warned EU leaders about seeking a special relationship with the City of London.
The demand is at odds with some of the EU’s most influential states, including Germany, who are determined to avoid market turmoil from breaking with the key financial hub.
Theresa May repeatedly refused to rule out paying the EU a vast one-off divorce bill, insisting that Britain will meet its ‘obligations’.
Last night, the Prime Minister dodged the question four times of whether the UK will shell out a huge sum to break from Brussels.
Speaking to Andrew Neil on BBC1, she said the country will not be ‘paying significant sums of money on an annual basis into the EU’.
She added: ‘As we look at the negotiations, of course we have to decide what the obligations are.’
But Mrs May would not be pinned down on whether a one-off payment will be necessary.
The EU has suggested Britain faces a £52billion bill for projects we signed off while a member, and to fund pensions for Brussels officials.
But Chancellor Philip Hammond rejected the figure, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday: ‘We simply do not recognise some of the very large numbers that have been bandied about.’
Pushed on whether £52billion was in the ‘ballpark’ she might contemplate, Mrs May said: ‘ I am very clear about what people here in the UK expect, but I am also clear that we are a law-abiding nation, we will meet obligations we have.’
Think-tank Civitas has called for No 10 to instead demand compensation from the EU for inefficiency and waste of British funds.
What May's letter REALLY means: How the document contains vital clues on how the UK will approach Brexit
Theresa May’s six-page Article 50 letter contained vital clues to how Britain will approach negotiations with the EU.
Executive Political Editor Jack Doyle examines what the Prime Minister said – and what she meant.
WHY WE ARE LEAVING
May: The people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. That decision was no rejection of the values we share as fellow Europeans. On the contrary, the UK wants the EU to succeed and prosper. We are leaving the EU, but we are not leaving Europe.
What she means: The diplomatic equivalent of ‘It’s not you, it’s me’. Mrs May is trying – like a departing lover - to let the EU down gently. In future, she says, we want a ‘deep and special partnership’, a phrase she repeats seven times.
THE HISTORIC ANNOUNCEMENT 
May: The UK Parliament confirmed the result of the referendum by voting with clear and convincing majorities in both of its Houses for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. Today, therefore, I am writing to give effect to the democratic decision of the people of the United Kingdom. I hereby notify the European Council ... of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Union.
What she means: Formal notification of activating Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty that means Britain leaves on or before midnight on March 29, 2019.
TIMETABLING TALKS
May: It will be a challenge to reach such a comprehensive agreement within the two-year period set out in the treaty. But we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal.
What she means: The EU insists the divorce deal, which includes any monies owed, must be agreed before anything else. Mrs May wants future arrangements – especially trade – discussed at the same time. Who will blink first?
WHY YOU NEED US
May: If we leave without an agreement the default position is that we would trade on World Trade Organisation terms. In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened. In this kind of scenario, both the United Kingdom and the European Union would of course cope with the change, but it is not the outcome that either side should seek.
What it means: We’ll walk away and you’re weaker without us. Designed to send a chill down the spines of EU leaders. Eleven times in her letter Mrs May 11 makes a reference to security. Officials insist co-operation on watch lists, air passenger information, DNA data and criminal records is at risk – but not wider intelligence sharing. Crucially, Mrs May is explicitly linking trade to security and spelling out how the EU will damage both prosperity AND imperil the safety of its citizens if Britain walks away.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
May: We will need to discuss a fair settlement of the UK’s rights and obligations as a departing member state.
What she means: A clear acknowledgment that money is on the table. EU negotiators will demand £50billion as compensation for the hole left in its budget by Britain’s departure and the cost of pensions and other liabilities, a figure UK ministers regard as laughable. Then there are future payments. Mrs May has ruled out contributing ‘huge sums’ but could cough up for specific programmes such as Europol, the police agency.
RIGHTS OF CITIZENS
Mrs May: We should always put our citizens first... we should aim to strike an early agreement about their rights.
What she means: Mrs May wanted to settle the thorny issue of the rights of 3.2million EU citizens in the UK and the 1.2million British ex-pats in Europe before formal negotiations began, but was rebuffed by Angela Merkel. Now she is appealing to the remaining 27 members to come to an agreement swiftly.
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
May: We will continue to fulfil our responsibilities as a member state while we remain a member of the EU, and the legislation we propose will not come into effect until we leave.
What she means: Until Britain formally exits the EU, free movement of migrants continues. New immigration rules for future EU migrants will come into force after we leave and will be be part of the negotiations.
AVOIDING A CLIFF EDGE
May: People and businesses... would benefit from implementation periods to adjust in a smooth and orderly way.
What she means: The deal could be phased in over time. Britain will leave in two years but aspects of any deal – such as immigration and customs – could come in gradually.
PACIFYING THE SCOTS
May: We will negotiate as one United Kingdom. We will consult fully on which powers should reside in Westminster and which should be devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
What she means: More devolution for Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Scots are demanding powers over agriculture and fishing and Mrs May is keen to help to try to see off the threat of another referendum.
THE IRISH QUESTION
May: The Republic of Ireland is the only EU member state with a land border with the UK. We want to avoid a return to a hard border. We also have an important responsibility to make sure nothing is done to jeopardise the peace process in Northern Ireland.
What it means: One of the most sensitive aspects of Brexit: border controls between non-EU Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It remains far from clear how trade and migration can be policed.
CHANNELLING CHURCHILL
May: The task before us is momentous but it should not be beyond us. After all... the leaders of the EU have succeeded in bringing together a continent blighted by war into a union of peaceful nations, and supported the transition of dictatorships to democracy. Together, I know we are capable of reaching an agreement about the UK’s rights and obligations as a departing member state, while establishing a deep and special partnership.
What she meant: A unifying appeal to the post-war spirit of European peace and cooperation. While accepting the negotiations will be difficult, she recalls how Europe united after the Second World War and brought democracy to former Communist countries.
Boris Johnson tonight revealed that he will tell EU leaders not to delay Brexit and will refuse to negotiate an extension - after MPs passed up the opportunity for a fourth time to vote for a deal.
The Commons voted 322 to 306 in favour of an amendment postponing a decision on the PM's deal, and activating the Benn Act - a Remainer law that compels him to send a letter by midnight asking Brussels for a delay.
But Mr Johnson was defiant in the Commons, sparking confusion over whether he will comply with the legislation or try to find a loophole to keep his 'do or die' promise to sever ties by October 31. 
And in a letter to MPs he characterised the Benn Act as 'Parliament's request for a delay' as European Union Council president Donald Tusk tweeted tonight that he was still waiting for the letter to arrive. 
Responding to the result, he defiantly insisted he would not change his stance. 'The best thing for the UK and for the whole of Europe is for us to leave with this new deal on October 31,' he said.
'I will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so.'
He added: 'No delays, and I will continue to do all I can to get Brexit done on October 31.'  
In his letter, sent tonight, he said: 'I will not negotiate a delay with the European Union. I will tell the EU what I have told the British public for my 88 days as Prime Minister: further delay is not a solution.' 
In a bid to distance himself from the decision to ask for a Brexit extension, he added: 'It is quite possible that our friends in the European Union will reject Parliament's request for further delay (or not take a decision quickly).' 
The Conservative Party also tweeted: 'Parliament has voted to delay Brexit again. The Prime Minister will not ask for a delay - he will tell EU leaders there should be no more delays and we should get Brexit done on October 31st with our new deal so the country can move on.' 
What happens if Boris Johnson does not send the letter to the EU asking for a Brexit delay?
The Hillary Benn Law says the Prime Minister must send a letter to Brussels asking for a Brexit extension. 
But Boris Johnson vowed not to negotiate a Brexit delay in the Commons this afternoon. 
He said: 'I will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so.' 
If the Prime Minister does not send the letter, he would be breaking the law and Remainers would start legal action to stop him. 
What legal loophole does Boris Johnson think he has found? 
 Number 10 may well have concluded that it can send the letter while also spelling out to the EU, potentially in a second letter or through other means, that the government does not actually want a delay in the hope the EU does not offer one. 
What can Remainers do to stop the PM if he does not comply with the Benn Act?
If the PM failed to send the letter or tried to frustrate the purpose of the Benn Act then Remainers will almost certainly launch legal action and the battle over Brexit would head to the courts.
The turnaround on any legal action would likely be swift with a potential Supreme Court hearing in a matter of days. 
What does the Benn Act actually ask the PM to do?
Contained within the legislation is a pre-written letter which the PM is required to sign and send to the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, by midnight if no Brexit deal has been agreed by MPs.
It asks the EU to postpone the Brexit divorce date until January 31 next year. The letter reads: 
'The UK Parliament has passed the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. Its provisions now require Her Majesty's Government to seek an extension of the period provided under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union, including as applied by Article 106a of the Euratom Treaty, currently due to expire at 11.00pm GMT on 31 October 2019, until 11.00pm GMT on 31 January 2020.
Despite this, it is understood the Prime Minister has confirmed to European Council president Donald Tusk that he will be writing to him tonight to seek a Brexit delay, according to the Press Association. 
Sir Oliver Letwin's amendment that scuppered his deal was backed by Labour MPs and ten former Tory rebels including Philip Hammond and David Gauke. 
Mr Johnson said his deal is not dead and he is expected to bring forward implementation legislation on Tuesday. 
He swiped: 'The meaningful vote has been voided of meaning.' 

But during angry scenes in the chamber, Jeremy Corbyn demanded the PM 'obeys the law' and asked the EU for an extension. 
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson urged Speaker John Bercow to suspend the sitting so the PM could go and write the letter, and return to inform them it can be sent.
Downing Street flatly refused to say whether the PM would be penning the letter to Brussels, merely pointing reporters to the PM's words in the House. But a tweet put out by the Conservative Party went further and stated that Mr Johnson 'will not ask for a delay'.
There is also confusion over whether the government will try to re-run the 'meaningful' vote on the deal on Monday. Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the move in the aftermath of the showdown this afternoon, but Speaker John Bercow complained he had been 'blindsided' and suggested he might rule it out of order. 
A spokeswoman for the European Commission said it 'took note' of the outcome this afternoon and was waiting for the UK to set out the 'next steps'.  
And Irish PM Leo Varadkar delivered another thinly-veiled warning that no-one should assume the EU will allow an extension.
'To date, no request for an extension has been made by the UK government,' he tweeted.
'Should that happen, President Tusk will consult all 27 Heads of State & Govt on whether or not we will grant one. Extension can only be granted by unanimity.' 
The government was condemned to defeat when 10 former Tories teamed up with Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the DUP and a rag-tag bag of independents. But in a boost for Mr Johnson, no current Conservative MPs rebelled. 
The breakdown of the voting also underlined how close Mr Johnson is to putting together a majority for his deal in the House, with many of those who backed Letwin also saying they will support the deal when it comes to the crunch. 
Tory whips had admitted beforehand that they were not hopeful of seeing off the Letwin amendment - which he insisted was only intended to stave off the threat of No Deal. 
Mr Johnson held last-ditch meetings with the DUP, who have accused him of betrayal for striking a deal that undermines the union, as he pleaded with them to come to the rescue. But the overtures did not go down well, as the PM's former allies wreaked revenge for being thrown under the bus. 'They are not in a positive place,' one government source said ruefully. 
Up to one anti-Brexit millions protesters gathered in London as the vote took place. There were grim confrontations around the estate as MPs, including Mr Rees-Mogg, headed for home.
Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom has alleged she received 'frightening' abuse from anti-Brexit protesters shortly after MPs voted to delay a vote on Boris Johnson's deal. 
Kicking off the 'Super Saturday' showdown in the House of Commons earlier, Mr Johnson complained that there might not be a 'meaningful' decision for days longer. 
He said it was 'urgent' for the country to get past the standoff and 'unite', saying his deal can 'heal the rift in British politics'. 'Now is the time for this great House of Commons to come together and bring the country together today,' he insisted. 
Mr Johnson warned the 'scope for fruitful negotiation has run its course'. 'It is now my judgement that we have reached the best possible solution,' he said.  
Former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin tabled an amendment that would prevent the PM's Brexit deal being put to a formal vote this afternoon. 
It withholds approval of the plan until after legislation has been put on the statute book.
Mr Johnson could now be forced by a separate Remainer law - the Benn Act - to beg the EU tonight for a Brexit extension beyond Halloween.
It is unclear whether European leaders will accept the request immediately, and Mr Johnson insists he can still meet his 'do or die' date of October 31. 
The big showdown on the deal is likely to come on Tuesday, in a second reading vote on the implementation legislation. 
Ironically, the Letwin roadblock emerged just as the premier seemed to be on the brink of a breakthrough.
He has been boosted by the support of leading Tory 'Spartan' Mark Francois and ex-Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith, and Steve Baker, head of the Eurosceptic ERG bloc, today urged his colleagues to fall into line.
There was mounting speculation that at least a dozen Labour MPs would support the package dramatically thrashed out with Brussels this week. 
That would offset furious opposition from his former DUP allies and Mr Corbyn, and put the premier on the threshold of an historic triumph that could define the country for a generation.
However, despite polls showing the public is weary of three years of bitter wrangling after the referendum, an extraordinary piece of Parliamentary trickery deprived the PM of the 'clean' vote he craves on his deal.
Sir Oliver - who served in Cabinet under David Cameron - tabled an amendment that would effectively denied approval of the deal until after detailed implementation law has been passed.
Speaker John Bercow confirmed this morning that he had selected the change for debate, and it was passed with support from Labour and Lib Dem Remainers, many of whom still want a referendum to cancel Brexit altogether.
Letwin's amendment did not outright kill the deal, making it easier for a range of MPs to endorse the amendment instead of giving the Prime Minister his moment of truth.
Labour MP Gareth Snell, who is widely expected to support the deal when it comes to a vote, told the Commons he would back the Letwin move. 
However, it was angrily condemned by a series of other MPs including Labour's Caroline Flint, who branded it a 'panic measure'. She said the plot demonstrated that the 'sponsors of the Benn Act had only one intention - to delay Brexit and stop it'. 
A statement from France's presidential Elysee Palace said there is nothing to be gained by prolonging a decision on the Brexit deal. It said any additional delay 'is in the interest of no-one'.
French president Emmanuel Macron's office said given that a deal has been negotiated, 'it's now up to the British Parliament to say if it approves or rejects it. There must be a vote on the fundamentals'.
In another day of high-stakes drama at the Houses of Parliament as the Brexit saga drew towards a culmination:
Having failed to fend off the Letwin challenge, the rebel Benn Act dictates that he must beg the EU for an extension by tonight - breaking his 'do or die' vow to get the UK out of the bloc by October 31.
Mr Johnson seemed to accept during his statement to MPs this morning that he will send a letter asking for a delay. 'Whatever letters they may seek to enforce the Government to write, it cannot change my judgement that further delay is pointless, expensive and deeply corrosive of public trust,' he said. 
But he pointedly avoided confirming that he would do so after the shattering vote this afternoon. 
There were grim confrontations around the estate as MPs headed for home.
Sir Oliver Letwin has been a repeated thorn in the side of the government over Brexit. 
His amendment forces Boris Johnson to ask the EU to delay UK's departure beyond October 31. 
It also robs the Prime Minister of the chance to test the will of the House of Commons to see if a majority of MPs support his Brexit deal. 
Sir Oliver has insisted that the move is just about bolstering protections against a No Deal split from the EU. 
It requires the government to pass all the legislation needed to enact Brexit before MPs finally sign off on the terms of the agreement. 
But his critics believe it is nothing less than a wrecking amendment designed to stop the UK leaving the EU. 
This is hardly the first time that the former high-ranking Cabinet minister has been involved in efforts which have frustrated the government's Brexit proposals. 
He has been one of the leading Brexit rebels among Remain-backing MPs as they have tried and succeeded in their efforts to rule out a No Deal Brexit. 
His name was at the top of a motion passed at the start of September which enabled MPs to take control of the Commons and subsequently pass the Benn Act, the anti-No Deal law that will force the PM to ask the EU for a delay if no agreement has been backed by close of play this evening.
Sir Oliver was loyal to Theresa May's original Brexit deal as he backed it on all three occasions when it was put to a vote.
But the prospect of a No Deal Brexit prompted him to play a central role in bringing forward the indicative votes process earlier this year when MPs tried and failed to agree a Brexit option that a majority in the Commons could back. 
His rebellion over opposition to No Deal came to a head last month when he was one of 21 MPs stripped of the Tory whip after supporting a bid to block a disorderly split from the EU. 
He is in many respects an unlikely rebel. 
Educated at Eton and then Cambridge, the 63-year-old first entered politics as a member of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit in Number 10 in the 1980s. 
He was then first elected as the Tory MP for West Dorset in 1997 before making a rapid rise up the ranks, joining the opposition frontbench and eventually becoming shadow chancellor in 2003.
He became a key figure in David Cameron's administration, acting as the PM's 'fixer', after he helped to draw up the Tories' 2010 election manifesto. 
After being a constant in Mr Cameron's governments, Sir Oliver was then ousted from the frontbench by Theresa May when she became PM in 2016. 
Sir Oliver is regarded as a 'big brain' in Whitehall circles and is viewed as a man who has a gift for creative thinking and problem solving. 
But he has over the years developed a reputation as a hapless politician who has been prone to gaffes and finding himself in embarrassing situations. 
He once unwittingly welcomed two burglars into his London home after they said they wanted to use the bathroom. 
He was also once spotted discarding parliamentary papers into a bin in St James's Park. 
Before the 2001 election he and his local challengers dressed up in togas for a debate. 
In 2015 he apologised after it emerged he had blamed 'bad moral attitudes' in black inner-city communities for riots in the 1980s in a paper he had helped write. 
Outside of politics, Sir Oliver is married and has two children.   
He is expected to stand down as an MP at the next election. 
Mr Rees-Mogg and one of his young sons were subjected to cat calls and booing as they walked through Whitehall flanked by a group of police.
And Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said: 'Thank goodness for our superb police. Just walked home safely from HoC with their protection - why do the so called ''People's Vote'' protesters think it's ok to abuse, intimidate and scream in the face of someone they don't agree with? So frightening, and so grateful to the police.' 
In his statement to MPs as the debate kicked off this morning, Mr Johnson said the Brexit issue must not be allowed to 'consume' Westminster any more. 
'I do hope that in assembling for the purposes of a meaningful vote that we will indeed be allowed to have a meaningful vote this evening,' he said.  
'The House will need no reminding that this is the second deal and the fourth vote, three-and-a-half years after the nation voted for Brexit. 
'And during those years friendships have been strained, families divided and the attention of this House consumed by a single issue that has at times felt incapable of resolution. 
'But I hope that this is the moment when we can finally achieve that resolution and reconcile the instincts that compete within us.' 
Mr Johnson said the agreement 'provides for a real Brexit', adding: 'Taking back control of our borders, laws, money, farming, fisheries and trade - amounting to the greatest single restoration of national sovereignty in parliamentary history. 
'It removes the backstop, which would have held us against our will in the customs union and much of the single market. 
'For the first time in almost five decades the UK will be able to strike free trade deals with our friends across the world.' 
Mr Johnson played down DUP concerns that Northern Ireland had been cut loose by Britain in the deal, telling MPs: 'Above all we and our European friends have preserved the letter and the spirit of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and upheld the longstanding areas of cooperation between the UK and Ireland, including the common travel area.' 
A shout of 'it's a sell out' could be heard from one MP on the opposition benches as Mr Johnson spoke. 
But Mr Corbyn made clear that Labour will back the Letwin amendment and oppose the deal.
'Labour is not prepared to sell out the communities that we represent,' he raged. 
'We are not prepared to sell out their future and we will not back this sell-out deal. This is about our communities now and about our future generations.' 
During the debate, Theresa May launched a vicious tirade at Remainer MPs mounting a 'con trick' to reverse the referendum result today as she backed Boris Johnson's deal. 
The former PM warned that the 'eyes of the world are on us' as she urged colleagues to get behind the new package thrashed out with Brussels.
She demanded MPs who are planning to oppose the deal 'put the national interest first' and honour the will of the public.
'Do we want to deliver Brexit?' she stormed. 'When we voted to trigger Article 50 did we really mean it?'
The PM has been focusing his efforts to drum up support for the deal on Tory Eurosceptics, 21 former Tory rebels, and up to 30 Labour 'realists' who have suggested they could line up behind the proposals. Some 28 Conservative 'Spartans' did not vote for Theresa May's deal on any of the three occasions it was brought, but Mr Johnson looks set to secure backing from almost all over them. 
With around a dozen Labour MPs appearing minded to defy threats of deselection and support the deal, the bulk of 21 former Tory rebels coming round, and a handful of independents, the government is on the threshold of the 320 winning line. 
Mr Francois told his Rayleigh constitution association last night that he would be supporting the deal. Another 'Spartan' Anne-Marie Morris has also said she will be voting in favour.
Another Tory hardliner, Peter Bone, said he was yet to decide for certain but was minded to fall into line. 'I will vote for his deal if it's made clear in the Commons today we will leave the transition period on December 31 2020 and no later,' Mr Bone said.
Ten ex-Tories including former Cabinet Ministers Philip Hammond and Amber Rudd wreaked their revenge on Boris Johnson today by pulling the rug from under his Brexit deal today.
A slew of MPs forced out or who left the party since Mr Johnson became Prime Minister joined his supposed DUP allies in voting for a rebel amendment in a dramatic showdown this afternoon.
They also included ex-chancellor Ken Clarke - who indicated he would support the deal, as well as hardcore Remainer ex-Tories Justine Greening, Nick Boles, David Gauke and Guto Bebb. 
With Mr Johnson losing the vote by 322 to 306, their votes on his behalf would have seen Sir Oliver Letwin's wrecking manoeuvre defeated, allowing a full meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement.
With the Government planning to introduce the full Withdrawal Agreement Bill on Monday it leaves the success of the deal on a knife edge.
Mr Duncan Smith urged his colleagues to back the deal, and swiped that Sir Oliver should 'stow' his concerns. 
'I beg my colleagues... we have got to vote down the Letwin amendment,' he told the BBC. 'This vote has to be clear to our partners in Europe and clear to the country that we are now on a track to leave under this deal. 
'I just wish Oliver Letwin, for once, would stow it now.' He added: 'I beg my colleagues, it's for the country now, we have to get this over the line.' 
Senior backbencher Damian Collins tweeted: 'The Letwin amendment is another of those Brexit ideas which is too clever by half. If it passes it effectively renders today's Saturday sitting of parliament meaningless, at a time when the country and the EU needs to know whether parliament accepts the new withdrawal deal or not.' 
One government source said of the Letwin amendment: 'It's an act of sabotage dressed up as reasonableness. MPs are still trying to put off the moment of decision.'
Sir Oliver insisted that he was a supporter of the Prime Minister's plans and that it was only designed to act as an insurance policy to ensure that the UK did not leave the EU without a deal on October 31.
But a Government source said: 'The amendment is not about conditional approval – it is explicitly withholding approval. The vast majority of the signatories have no intention of ever voting for a deal, and have never done so. They want an extension and a chance for a second referendum.'  
A rebel amendment put forward by Sir Oliver Letwin which will force Boris Johnson to ask the EU for a Brexit delay was agreed by 322 votes to 306, a majority of 16. 
Labour supported the move but six of the party's MPs decided to defy Jeremy Corbyn and vote with the government in a failed attempt to stop Mr Johnson's Brexit plans being scuppered. 
Attention immediately turned to whether the rebels will now face disciplinary action. 
But MailOnline understands the six MPs - Sir Kevin Barron, Ronnie Campbell, Jim Fitzpatrick, Caroline Flint, Kate Hoey and John Mann - will receive a slap on the wrist from party whips and nothing more. 
Mr Corbyn had suggested last week that Labour MPs who backed the government on Brexit would not be expelled from the party. 
He said at the time that he believed 'in the power of persuasion rather than the power of threat'.
ERG chairman Steve Baker tweeted the group's 'advice to MPs' after a meeting this morning: '1. Vote for Boris's deal in the national interest. 
'2. Support the legislation to completion in good faith, provided it is not spoiled by opponents of Brexit. 
'3. Vote with Boris throughout to give him maximum opportunity to deliver for our country.' 
However, former Tory Antoinette Sandbach confirmed that she would not be joining the government in the division lobbies, saying the package is worse than Mrs May's plan. 
Mr Hammond said he would not be 'duped' into backing something that could lead to a 'heavily camouflaged no-deal' departure.
The ex-top minister said the Prime Minister needed to 'reassure' sceptics like him that the withdrawal agreement would not lead to the UK crashing out of the EU next year because the backstop had been removed.
It came after Tory MP John Baron claimed yesterday that he had been assured by No 10 that the deal would allow the UK to sever ties with the EU if it fails to secure a trade deal.
Writing in the Times Mr Hammond said: 'My former colleague, John Baron MP, gave the game away: they are being told that, once we are out, the UK will make a take-it-or-leave-it proposal for a minimum-ambition,''Canada-minus'' trade deal on the UK's terms and when the EU rejects it, the UK will leave without a trade deal at the end of 2020.
'I haven't come this far seeking to avoid no deal in 2019 to be duped into voting for a heavily camouflaged no-deal at the end of 2020. But I am not a lost cause!'
Meanwhile, Remainers stepped up their efforts to thwart a resolution of Brexit standoff and force a referendum.
Former prime minister Tony Blair told the Today programme: 'If this deal had been put before the British parliament a year ago, or two years ago, there is absolutely no way it would pass.  
'The only reason the Government can try and get it passed now is frankly... people are completely fed up with Brexit. They want it over. They want it done with.' 
Voters last night threw their weight behind Mr Johnson's Brexit deal.
On the eve of today's dramatic Commons vote on his withdrawal plan, 50 per cent said MPs should back it.
The Survation poll for the Daily Mail showed 38 per cent were against the deal with 12 per cent undecided.
The survey found a surge in support for the Tories following the Prime Minister's breakthrough at this week's EU summit. They are now on 32 per cent, five points up on their tally three weeks ago. Optimism was mounting in No 10 last night that MPs will back the agreement. A source said: 'It is incredibly close, but it is doable.'
However the situation became even more tense when Sir Oliver tabled a plan to force Mr Johnson to seek another delay to Brexit.  
Former Tory chancellor Philip Hammond tore into Boris Johnson's Brexit deal today saying he would not be 'duped' into backing something that could lead to a 'heavily camouflaged no-deal' departure.
The ex-top minister said the Prime Minister needed to 'reassure' sceptics like him that the withdrawal agreement would not lead to the UK crashing out of the EU next year because the backstop had been removed.
It came after Tory MP John Baron claimed yesterday that he had been assured by No 10 that the deal would allow the UK to sever ties with the EU if it fails to secure a trade deal.
His intervention came as MPs met for a historic Commons sitting today in order to vote on Mr Johnson's deal.
Mr Hammond's fellow Remainer ex-Tory Antoinette Sandbach indicated she would also vote against the deal. 
Writing in the Times Mr Hammond said: 'My former colleague, John Baron MP, gave the game away: they are being told that, once we are out, the UK will make a take-it-or-leave-it proposal for a minimum-ambition,''Canada-minus'' trade deal on the UK's terms and when the EU rejects it, the UK will leave without a trade deal at the end of 2020.
'I haven't come this far seeking to avoid no deal in 2019 to be duped into voting for a heavily camouflaged no-deal at the end of 2020. But I am not a lost cause!'
Today's poll shows that a total of 47 per cent of people say they support the Prime Minister's Brexit deal, while 38 per cent say they are against it.
Voters were also in no doubt as to who blinked first in the EU talks – with 52 per cent saying the UK gave most ground. Only 20 per cent think Brussels backed down. A total of 47 per cent believe Mr Johnson's plan should go to a referendum, compared with 44 against the idea.
When voters are given a straight choice between the Prime Minister's deal and remaining in the EU there is a dead heat, with both sides winning 50 per cent.
Remarkably, 29 per cent of Labour voters say they would back Mr Johnson's deal in such a referendum; 71 per cent say they would not back his deal.
But a different picture emerges if, as argued by Brexiteers, voters are given a third option of leaving with No Deal. 
Remain gets most support, 45 per cent, based on first preferences – though no option gets over the 50 per cent winning line. The poll showed that most of the extra backing for the Tories was at the expense of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, whose support has fallen by 3 per cent.
The results of the survey heap more humiliation on beleaguered Mr Corbyn. 
One in five of his own Labour voters would rather see Mr Johnson in Downing Street. Millions of Labour supporters have written off his chances of ever seizing power.
Asked who they thought will win the next election, just 31 per cent of Labour voters think Mr Corbyn: exactly the same number, 31 per cent, say Mr Johnson will beat him.
If Mr Johnson delivers his pledge to leave the EU by October 31, he can expect a further surge in his ratings. A total of 33 per cent say they will be more likely to vote Conservative; 23 per cent say they will be less likely to do so.
Former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin continued his run of parliamentary scheming with his amendment that put the Prime minister's withdrawal agreement in a legislative straight jacket.  
MPs voted 322-306 to approve his edit to the meaningful vote that forces the PM to write a letter to Brussels demanding a delay to Brexit or risk breaking the law.
He was able to do this after Speaker John Bercow allowed the amendment to be put top a vote, picking it first this morning.
Mr Letwin surprised Westminster watchers by making his decision just before Mr Johnson got to his feet to make a speech imploring MPs to back the deal hammered out with Brussels.
One pro-Brexit Conservative vented his frustration at Sir Oliver, saying: 'Letwin is a pariah.' 
The West Dorset MP was one of 21 Conservatives expelled from the party in September for not supporting Johnson's pledge to leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal, and he has focused his parliamentary acumen on preventing a no-deal Brexit. 
The Remain voter's amendment withholds parliamentary approval of the Brexit deal until after legislation has been put on the statute book. It forces Boris Johnson to ask the EU to delay the UK's departure beyond October 31. 
What happens if Boris Johnson does not send the legally required letter to the EU asking for a Brexit delay? 
MPs backed a rebel amendment this afternoon which has scuppered Boris Johnson's Brexit plan. 
The Prime Minister wanted MPs to formally back his deal today but a proposal put forward by Sir Oliver Letwin to ruin the premier's hopes of making Brexit progress was passed by 322 votes to 306. 
The amendment will now force the PM to ask the EU for a Brexit delay under the terms of the anti-No Deal law known as the Benn Act.  
The amendment does not kill off Mr Johnson's deal and it will still be possible for him to deliver Brexit by October 31. 
But the path to fulfilling his 'do or die' Halloween pledge will now be fraught with difficulty and the chances of a Brexit delay have increased exponentially. 
Here is a breakdown of what is likely to happen now the amendment has been backed by MPs. 
What happens if Boris Johnson does not send a letter to the EU asking for a Brexit delay?
The PM will now seemingly have to comply with the Benn Act and send a letter to Brussels asking for a Brexit extension. 
The government has long maintained that it will comply with the law but Mr Johnson muddied the water immediately after the Letwin result was announced as he said he 'will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so'. 
The Prime Minister's official spokesman then refused to answer questions about whether the PM will send the letter required by the Benn Act. 
'We are not going to add anything to the PM's words in the House,' the spokesman said. 
However, the spokesman did repeat that 'governments comply with the law' in a hint that the PM could send the letter while also potentially making clear to the EU that he does not want the bloc to grant a delay. 
The PM has midnight to comply with the terms of the anti-No Deal legislation.  
Regardless of what happens with the letter, the PM is expected to bring forward the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - the legislation needed to actually make Brexit happen - on Monday this week to try to crash it through Parliament as quickly as possible. 
If he is able to get MPs and peers to agree to the draft legislation in the coming days he would then be able to hold the 'meaningful vote' on his deal, paving the way for the UK to leave the EU on time.
What legal loophole does Boris Johnson think he has found? 
The PM will have sought extensive legal advice on exactly what the Benn Act requires him to do. 
Unless the government has come up with an unexpectedly brilliant and top secret legal argument against having to send the letter to the EU, it is hard to see how the premier can avoid asking the bloc for an extension. 
However, it is possible Number 10 may well have concluded it can send the letter while also spelling out to the EU, potentially in a second letter or through other means, that the government does not actually want a delay in the hope one is not offered.
But such an approach will be closely scrutinised by Remain-backing MPs who will pounce if they believe the PM is trying to frustrate the purpose of the law. 
Effectively, if the PM does anything to try to contradict the stated goal of the legislation - to ask for a delay - he could face accusations of trying to undermine the law. 
What can Remainers do to stop the PM if he does not comply with the Benn Act?
If the PM fails to send the letter or is believed to have tried to frustrate the purpose of the Benn Act then Remainers will almost certainly launch immediate legal action and the battle over Brexit will head to the courts. 
The turnaround on any legal challenge would likely be swift with a potential Supreme Court hearing in a matter of days. 
What does the Benn Act actually ask the PM to do?
Contained within the legislation is a pre-written letter which the PM is required to sign and send to the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, by the end of today if no Brexit deal has been agreed by MPs.
It asks the EU to postpone the Brexit divorce date until January 31 next year. The letter reads: 
'The UK Parliament has passed the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. Its provisions now require Her Majesty's Government to seek an extension of the period provided under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union, including as applied by Article 106a of the Euratom Treaty, currently due to expire at 11.00pm GMT on 31 October 2019, until 11.00pm GMT on 31 January 2020.
'I am writing therefore to inform the European Council that the United Kingdom is seeking a further extension to the period provided under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union, including as applied by Article 106a of the Euratom Treaty. The United Kingdom proposes that this period should end at 11.00pm GMT on 31 January 2020. If the parties are able to ratify before this date, the Government proposes that the period should be terminated early.
'Yours sincerely, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.'
What happens now to Boris Johnson's deal?
The Prime Minister's deal is very much alive and he could still deliver Brexit by October 31 but he will have to put his agreement into law first.
The amendment withholds support for the PM's deal until such a time as the government has brought forward and passed the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. 
By failing to agree to a Brexit deal by close of play today, the provisions outlined in the Benn Act will now be triggered and the PM will have to ask the EU to push back the current departure date.  
The amendment effectively postpones the 'meaningful vote' on the accord until the government has got its Withdrawal Agreement Bill through Parliament. 
The thinking is that by withholding support for the deal until the key Brexit legislation is in place, MPs will further protect against the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a deal on October 31. 
Some Remainers were suspicious that if MPs backed the PM's deal today and there was no extension, Brexiteers who want a No Deal split could have then tried to scupper the passage of the law needed to deliver an orderly exit, causing a bad break on Halloween.
How likely is it that MPs and peers will agree to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill?
The Letwin amendment effectively robbed the PM of the chance to test whether there is a majority for his deal. 
That means that nobody will know for certain whether there is a majority in favour of the so-called WAB. 
Even if there is a majority it is likely to be a slim one which will make the passage of the legislation incredibly difficult as rebel MPs potentially try to amend and change it. 
Draft laws have been rushed through parliament in quick time before but whether something as divisive as the legislation to deliver Brexit could be dealt with equally as swiftly is unclear. 
What happens if the PM is able to get the Brexit law agreed and win a 'meaningful vote' before October 31? 
The UK could still leave the EU on the current timetable but the closer we get to Halloween the tougher that becomes and the chances of a delay increase. 
If the PM can get the deal signed off by MPs by the end of the coming week - a big if - his 'do or die' pledge could still be stuck to. 
But anything beyond that and time will get extremely tight because once MPs have agreed the deal it still has to go through the European Parliament. 
What is the EU likely to do? 
If the PM sends the Brexit delay letter, the bloc will have to decide whether to offer an extension. 
The most likely scenario is that the EU will keep its powder dry and not formally respond until it has seen whether the PM can win a vote in the Commons this coming week on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. 
If he can, then Brussels will probably hold fire on offering an extension on the grounds that the UK could still agree to a deal and leave on time. 
If he cannot win a vote on the WAB this week and his deal looks dead then the bloc will face more pressure to make a final decision on any delay. 
It is thought in such circumstances the bloc would offer a postponement in order to stop a No Deal Brexit. 
That would pave the way for a general election potentially being held before the end of the year. 
Could the EU refuse to grant a delay? 
Yes. Emmanuel Macron and Leo Varadkar have both suggested that they are against any further delay but Angela Merkel reportedly said an extension would be inevitable if the deal is rejected. 
It is possible that the EU could decide to cuts its losses on the grounds that the Brexit stalemate has gone on for too long. 
But such a move appears unlikely because it would result in the bloc taking the blame for a No Deal split. 
Could there be an emergency EU summit? 
If the PM is able to make progress in the coming days and win a vote on the WAB - potentially on Tuesday - but he is then unable to get everything done by the end of the week there could be an emergency summit held in Brussels on October 28. 
If the PM's deal is still alive but more time is needed to get it through Parliament European leaders could agree to a short extension. 
How 'Pariah' Sir Oliver Letwin pulled the rug from under the Prime Minister to thwart his deal with the help of Remainer Speaker John Bercow 
Boris Johnson's careful Brexit compromise was blown out of the water this afternoon after he was outflanked by two former Tories. 
Former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin continued his run of parliamentary scheming with his amendment that put the Prime minister's withdrawal agreement in a legislative straight jacket.  
MPs voted 322-306 to approve his edit to the meaningful vote that forces the PM to write a letter to Brussels demanding a delay to Brexit or risk breaking the law.
He was able to do this after Speaker John Bercow allowed the amendment to be put top a vote, picking it first this morning. 
He surprised Westminster watchers by making his decision just before Mr Johnson got to his feet to make a speech imploring MPs to back the deal hammered out with Brussels.
One pro-Brexit Conservative vented his frustration at Sir Oliver, saying: 'Letwin is a pariah.' 
The West Dorset MP was one of 21 Conservatives expelled from the party in September for not supporting Johnson's pledge to leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal, and he has focused his parliamentary acumen on preventing a no-deal Brexit.
Letwin criticised Johnson's bid to present lawmakers with a 'deal or no deal' choice.
'I, despite my support for the prime minister's deal, do not believe that it is responsible to put the nation at risk by making that threat,' he told parliament during Saturday's three-hour debate. 
The Remain voter's amendment withholds parliamentary approval of the Brexit deal until after legislation has been put on the statute book. It forces Boris Johnson to ask the EU to delay the UK's departure beyond October 31.
It would also robbed the Prime Minister of the chance to test the will of the House of Commons to see if a majority of MPs support his Brexit deal.
Sir Oliver has insisted that the move is just about bolstering protections against a No Deal split from the EU. 
But his critics believe it is nothing less than a wrecking amendment designed to stop the UK leaving the EU. 
Educated at Eton and then Cambridge, the 63-year-old first entered politics as a member of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit in Number 10 in the 1980s. 
He was then first elected as the Tory MP for West Dorset in 1997 before making a rapid rise up the ranks, joining the opposition frontbench and eventually becoming shadow chancellor in 2003.
He became a key figure in David Cameron's administration, acting as the PM's 'fixer', after he helped to draw up the Tories' 2010 election manifesto. 
After being a constant in Mr Cameron's governments, Sir Oliver was then ousted from the frontbench by Theresa May when she became PM in 2016. 
Sir Oliver is regarded as a 'big brain' in Whitehall circles and is viewed as a man who has a gift for creative thinking and problem solving. 
But he has over the years developed a reputation as a hapless politician who has been prone to gaffes and finding himself in embarrassing situations. 
He once unwittingly welcomed two burglars into his London home after they said they wanted to use the bathroom. 
He was also once spotted discarding parliamentary papers into a bin in St James's Park. 
Before the 2001 election he and his local challengers dressed up in togas for a debate. 
In 2015 he apologised after it emerged he had blamed 'bad moral attitudes' in black inner-city communities for riots in the 1980s in a paper he had helped write. 
Outside of politics, Sir Oliver is married and has two children.   
He is expected to stand down as an MP at the next election. 
Speaker John Bercow has emerged as a parliamentary bete noir of Brexiteers. He was elected as Tory MP for Buckingham in 1997 but has been the Speaker - and therefore an independent - since 2009.
He has made a series of decisions that have infuriated Mr Johnson's Government and that of Theresa may before him. 
He is due to stand down at the end of the month. 
Earlier this month he faced allegations of 'plotting' today after it emerged he met the EU parliament chief to discuss their 'shared' desire to avoid No Deal.
David Sassoli revealed he held talks with Mr Bercow in London, telling MEPs they were on the 'same wavelength'.
Mr Sassoli said the pair agreed that the UK and EU Parliaments must have a key role in 'managing' the Brexit process.
'We share an awareness that a chaotic exit of the UK from the EU would work to the detriment of citizens on both sides,' he said.
But the news sparked anger from Eurosceptics including Nigel Farage, who said it was a 'disgrace' that the president and the Speaker had 'agreed to work to prevent a clean break Brexit'.
'What right does the Speaker have to do this?' he demanded.
The Speaker is meant to be an impartial referee of debates, but Mr Bercow has repeatedly been 'creative' with the rules to frustrate the government - saying his duty was to champion MPs against the executive.
Theresa May's Brexit plans were thwarted partly as a result of his intervention, and last month a rebel law was passed ordering the PM to beg the EU for a Brexit extension if he has not secured a deal by October 19.
Mr Bercow was also at the centre of protests against the PM's decision to prorogue Parliament in the run-up to Brexit, saying it was 'not normal'.
At Tory conference last week, the current Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said he admired many of the things the Speaker had done in his 10-year tenure.
But he said Mr Bercow's 'recent mistakes' had brought the public standing of the House to 'the lowest point in modern history'.
Allies of the PM have made clear he will not follow the convention that Commons Speakers are automatically elevated to the upper chamber when they resign.
Mr Bercow dramatically announced last month that he will stand down from the chair and as an MP on October 31 - symbolically choosing Boris Johnson's 'do or die' Brexit date.
Six Labour MPs defy Jeremy Corbyn to vote with the government on crunch No Deal amendment - but they will not be kicked out of the party amid more Party chaos   
Labour was plunged into fresh Brexit chaos this afternoon after half a dozen MPs sided with the government on a crunch No Deal vote in the House of Commons. 
A rebel amendment put forward by Sir Oliver Letwin which will force Boris Johnson to ask the EU for a Brexit delay was agreed by 322 votes to 306, a majority of 16. 
Labour supported the move but six of the party's MPs decided to defy Jeremy Corbyn and vote with the government in a failed attempt to stop Mr Johnson's Brexit plans being scuppered. 
Attention immediately turned to whether the rebels will now face disciplinary action. 
But MailOnline understands the six MPs - Sir Kevin Barron, Ronnie Campbell, Jim Fitzpatrick, Caroline Flint, Kate Hoey and John Mann - will receive a slap on the wrist from party whips and nothing more. 
Mr Corbyn had suggested last week that Labour MPs who backed the government on Brexit would not be expelled from the party. 
He said at the time that he believed 'in the power of persuasion rather than the power of threat'.
Mr Corbyn today labelled Mr Johnson's new Brexit deal a 'sell-out' as he squared off against the PM in the Commons ahead of the vote on the Letwin amendment. 
Sir Oliver's amendment means that the PM was unable to put his deal to a meaningful vote, triggering an anti-No Deal law called the Benn Act which requires Mr Johnson to now ask the EU for a Brexit delay beyond October 31. 
If Labour had not backed the amendment or if the party had abstained it would have been defeated.
Mr Corbyn re-iterated his desire for a second referendum as he addressed the Commons. 
He said the proposed deal put forward by Mr Johnson would 'be a disaster for working people' because it would 'hammer the economy, cost jobs and sell workers' rights down the river'.
He said: 'Voting for a deal today won't end Brexit. It won't deliver certainty and the people should have the final say.
'Labour is not prepared to sell-out the communities we represent. We are not prepared to sell out their future. And we will not back this sell-out deal.'
Mr Johnson said Mr Corbyn was 'wrong' in his criticism of the draft accord as the PM said: 'This government, this country will maintain the very highest standards and we will lead in environmental protection and social protection in Europe and across the world.'
He added: 'He talks about trust - this is a right honourable gentleman... who patently does not trust his own party, he doesn't trust the shadow chancellor (John McDonnell).
'Above all he has not been willing to trust the people of this country by granting them the right to adjudicate on him and his policies in a general election.
'He won't trust the people and he doesn't trust the people by delivering on the result of their referendum in 2016.
'I suggest in all humility and candour to the House that they should ignore the pleadings of (Mr Corbyn) and vote for an excellent deal that will take this country and take the whole of Europe forward.' 
'Christmas at Chequers is cancelled': The Prime Minister's Remain-backing sister Rachel Johnson jokes about her arguments with Boris Johnson on Have I Got News For You 
Rachel Johnson admitted that being the Prime Minister's sister meant 'a world of pain' in her appearance on the BBC's Have I Got News For You.
The avid Remainer, who has been critical of the UK's decision to leave the EU, quickly objected to being introduced as the sibling to Boris Johnson.
Ms Johnson said on the BBC show: 'I like the way you introduce me as Boris Johnson's sister as if that is actually my day job.'
She joked with panelists that being the Prime Minister's sister meant a 'world of pain'.
Host Victoria Coren Mitchell later asked Ms Johnson: 'Does Boris ever phone you up and say 'oh don't say that it's really embarrassing.'
The broadcaster and journalist - who appeared on the popular programme with Paul Merton, Ross Noble, and Ian Hislop - quickly retorted: 'Yup'.
She added that after she made the comment about No Deal Brexit only benefiting currency speculators that 'it meant Christmas Chequers was canceled.'
Ross Noble joked she could retort to her brother that 'everything you do is embarassing, goodbye.'
She then added 'No, I'm under orders to not do any chat shows, not to say anything about the Prime Minister, this is my safe space' to raucous laughter from the audience.
In regular feature of the show, part of the show panelists were given a headline to complete that started 'Queen set to earn £100 million from (blank space).'
Ms Johnson said: 'I know, suing the Prime Minister for illegal prorogation.'
Then she puts her hands to her face and exclaims: 'Cut that bit! Christmas at Chequers is cancelled.'
Mr Merton then retorts: 'Well he may not be at Chequers at Christmas, you don't know.'
Boris Johnson's sister quickly responds: 'I hope he is.' 
In a previous appearance on Sky News last month, Ms Johnson attacked her brother's attempt to force through Brexit.
She said:  'I think that what we are seeing is an executive that is so keen to deliver Brexit in any shape or form, to get the country out of the EU, to deliver up on that promised land, that they will do anything to justify that end'
Asked what could be behind the strategy, she said: 'It could be (senior aide) Dominic Cummings advising the Prime Minister to be extremely aggressive and to face down opposition from all sides of the establishment in order to secure his position as the tribune of the people.
'It could be coming from my brother himself, he obviously thoroughly enjoys being Prime Minister.
'It also could be from - who knows - people who have invested billions in shorting the pound or shorting the country in the expectation of a no-deal Brexit. We don't know.'
Ms Johnson is not the only family member to turn against the PM after his younger brother Jo revealed he was quitting as a minister and would stand down as the MP for Orpington at the next election.
He said there had been an 'unresolvable tension' between 'family loyalty and the national interest'.
What happens if Sir Oliver Letwin's amendment is agreed by MPs? Boris Johnson would be forced to ask the EU for a divorce delay, face a race against time to pass a key Brexit law and have to wait to hold a final vote on his deal
MPs are likely to support a rebel amendment this afternoon which will scupper Boris Johnson's Brexit plan. 
The Prime Minister wants MPs to formally back his deal today but a proposal put forward by Sir Oliver Letwin is expected to ruin the premier's hopes of making Brexit progress. 
The amendment has cross-party backing and will ultimately force the PM to ask the EU for a Brexit delay under the terms of the anti-No Deal law known as the Benn Act. 
If it is agreed, the amendment does not kill off Mr Johnson's deal and it would still be possible for him to deliver Brexit by October 31. 
But the path to fulfilling his 'do or die' Halloween pledge will be fraught with difficulty and the chances of a Brexit delay will increase exponentially. 
Here is a breakdown of what is likely to happen if the amendment is passed by MPs. 
What does the Letwin amendment do? 
It would withhold support for the PM's deal until such a time as the government has brought forward and passed the legislation needed to actually make an orderly Brexit happen. 
By failing to agree to a Brexit deal by close of play today, the provisions outlined in the Benn Act would be triggered and the PM would have to ask the EU to push back the current departure date.  
The amendment would effectively postpone the 'meaningful vote' on the accord until the government has got its Withdrawal Agreement Bill through Parliament. 
The thinking is that by withholding support for the deal until key Brexit legislation is in place, MPs will further protect against the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a deal on October 31. 
Some Remainers are suspicious that if MPs back the PM's deal today and there is no extension, Brexiteers who want a No Deal split could then scupper the passage of the laws needed to deliver an orderly exit, causing a bad break on Halloween.
What will happen if the amendment does pass? 
The PM will have to comply with the Benn Act and send a letter to the EU asking for a Brexit delay. 
He would then likely bring forward the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on Monday this week to try to crash it through Parliament as quickly as possible. 
If he was able to get MPs and peers to agree to the draft legislation in the coming days he would then be able to hold the 'meaningful vote' on his deal, paving the way for the UK to leave the EU on time. 
How likely is it that MPs and peers will agree to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill?
The Letwin amendment will effectively rob the PM of the chance to test whether there is a majority for his deal. 
That means that nobody will know for certain whether there is a majority in favour of the so-called WAB. 
Even if there is a majority it is likely to be a slim one which will make the passage of the legislation incredibly difficult as rebel MPs potentially try to amend and change it. 
Draft laws have been rushed through parliament in quick time before but whether something as divisive as the legislation to deliver Brexit could be dealt with equally as swiftly is unclear. 
What happens if the PM is able to get the Brexit law agreed and win a 'meaningful vote' before October 31? 
The UK could still leave the EU on the current timetable but the closer we get to Halloween the tougher that becomes and the chances of a delay increase. 
If the PM can get the deal signed off by MPs by the end of the coming week - a big if - his 'do or die' pledge could still be stuck to. 
But anything beyond that and time will get extremely tight because once MPs have agreed the deal it still has to go through the European Parliament. 
What is the EU likely to do? 
If the amendment is agreed and the PM sends the Brexit delay letter the EU will have to decide whether to offer an extension. 
The most likely scenario is that the bloc will keep its powder dry and not formally respond until it has seen whether the PM can win a vote in the Commons this coming week on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. 
If he can, then Brussels will probably hold fire on offering an extension on the grounds that the UK could still agree to a deal and leave on time. 
If he cannot win a vote on the WAB this week and his deal looks dead then the bloc will face more pressure to make a final decision on any delay. 
It is thought in such circumstances the bloc would offer a postponement in order to stop a No Deal Brexit. 
That would pave the way for a general election potentially being held before the end of the year. 
Could there be an emergency EU summit? 
If the PM is able to make progress in the coming days and win a vote on the WAB but he is unable to get everything done by the end of the week there could then be an emergency summit held in Brussels on October 28. 
If the PM's deal is still alive but more time is needed to get it through Parliament European leaders could agree to a short extension. 
Theresa May’s government was saved by a handful of Labour Eurosceptics as they joined forces to defeat a vote to keep Britain tied to the EU.
Amid dramatic scenes in the Commons, a dozen Tory Remainers defied warnings they would collapse the Government by siding with Jeremy Corbyn in a bid to preserve the customs union with Brussels.
The rebellion came despite desperate warnings from Tory chief whip Julian Smith that defeat on the issue would prompt him to call a vote of confidence in Mrs May, followed by a possible general election.
Tory insiders said another 10 Eurosceptic MPs would have sent in letters of no confidence in Mrs May if she had lost the vote – potentially pushing the total over the 48 needed to spark a leadership challenge.
Labour MPs who helped Theresa May see off a challenge to her Brexit plans last night were threatened with deselection by party supporters.
The Prime Minister was saved from a humiliating defeat on the customs union with the votes of four Labour Brexiteers.
Frank Field, Kate Hoey, John Mann and Graham Stringer – along with independent Kelvin Hopkins – voted with the Government. Mr Hopkins is currently suspended from the party over harassment claims.
The five faced an immediate backlash from Labour supporters amid claims the Government could have been forced to call a general election if it had been defeated.
‘Had we not won we would have been looking at even more letters,’ one said.
Rebels inflicted an early defeat on the Government when they voted to keep Britain tied into the European Medicines Agency after Brexit by 305 votes to 301.
But, minutes later, the tables were reversed as MPs voted by 307 to 301 to reject an amendment to the Trade Bill that would have forced the Prime Minister to pursue a customs union with the EU – something she has ruled out repeatedly, including in last year’s Tory manifesto.
The move is a major boost for Mrs May in her negotiations with Brussels, which had been repeatedly assured by Remainers that there was a majority in Parliament to keep Britain in the customs union.
Reacting to the narrow win, one No 10 insider said simply: ‘Thank f*** for that.’
Analysis of the voting record later showed that five Labour MPs voted with the Government: former ministers Frank Field and Kate Hoey and backbenchers John Mann, Graham Stringer and Kelvin Hopkins, who is currently sitting as an independent following suspension. 
If they had voted the other way, the Government would have lost by four votes. 
Theresa May today climbed down form her bid to send MPs home early for their summer holidays after facing a storm of criticism.
The Prime Minister wanted to deploy the extraordinary tactic as she battles to stave off a Brexit meltdown and threats to her leadership.
But her Cabinet ministers and Tory backbenchers had lashed the plan - branding it 'idiotic' and warning that it will go down like a lead balloon with voters. 
The controversial motion was quietly withdrawn by the frontbench in the House of Commons tonight after the PM narrowly avoided a defeat on her Brexit plans. 
Conservative former minister Sir Nicholas Soames - the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill - described the motion as 'idiotic', while other senior figures condemned it as 'wrong' and 'preposterous'. 
Tory MP Nadine Dorries said: ‘If Labour rebels hadn’t stepped in tonight, our own 12 Remain rebels would have lost us that vote. Third reading of the Trade Bill would have been pulled, a confidence vote called tomorrow. If that was lost, a general election. That’s how dangerous a game the Conservative Remainers are playing.’
Victory for Mrs May came as Downing Street braced itself for a possible resignation speech by Boris Johnson this afternoon, in which he is expected to criticise the Chequers plan.
And ministers were forced to abandon plans to give MPs an early holiday just 24 hours after they were announced.
Sir John Major warned that Tory infighting over Europe was worse than the 1990s – and claimed ‘fanatical’ Eurosceptics could force an early election.
The EU meanwhile was preparing the release of ‘strongly-worded’ emergency guidelines on preparations for a no deal Brexit.
Downing Street made it clear Mrs May could never accept moves to lock Britain into a customs union after Brexit.
Her official spokesman said: ‘The PM has set out our position on the customs union many times.
‘We will be leaving the customs union – she believes that is what the British people voted for and that is what will leave us free to strike independent trade deals around the world.’
BREXITEERS 
David Davis - Brexit secretary
Boris Johnson - Foreign secretary 
Steve Baker - Brexit minister
Scott Mann - ministerial aide 
Robert Courts - ministerial aide 
Conor Burns - ministerial aide
Chris Green - ministerial aide 
Maria Caulfield - Tory vice-chair
Ben Bradley - Tory vice-chair
REMAINERS
Guto Bebb - Defence Minister 
Philip Lee - Justice Minister 
A senior Government source said: ‘Losing this vote would have killed off a major part of the Brexit negotiations as Brussels could have just sat back and waited for parliament to take us into a customs union. Now we can negotiate seriously.’
There was also anger on the Labour benches at the actions of their own Eurosceptic rebels.
Former cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw tweeted: ‘So four Labour MPs and one suspended ex-Labour MP helped save this clueless and disastrous Tory Government tonight. Thanks a lot guys.’ The 12 Tory MPs who ignored the warnings from whips were former ministers Stephen Hammond, Kenneth Clarke, Guto Bebb, Jonathan Djanogly, Dominic Grieve, Phillip Lee, Nicky Morgan, Anna Soubry and Bob Neill and backbenchers Sarah Wollaston, Antoinette Sandbach and Heidi Allen.
Mrs Morgan, a former education secretary who was sacked by Mrs May, yesterday insisted she was acting in the national interest.
She added: ‘It is very clear that in this House there is a majority for the customs union to safeguard business and jobs.’
MONEY
Leaving without a deal would mean an immediate Brexit on March 29 after tearing up a 21-month transition agreement. This included giving £39billion to the EU, which ministers would no longer have to pay, a House of Lords report claims.
GOODS TRADE
The Chequers agreement effectively proposed keeping Britain in the single market for goods and agriculture to preserve 'frictionless' trade and protect the economy.
Customs checks on cross-Channel freight would cause havoc at ports, hitting food supplies and other goods.
Even Brexiteers admit to a big economic impact in the short term. Britain could waive customs checks on EU produce to free up backlogs, but would Brussels do the same?
TARIFFS
All EU-UK trade in goods is free of tariffs in the single market.
Trade would revert to World Trade Organisation rules. The EU would charge import tariffs averaging 2-3 per cent on goods, but up to 60 per cent for some agricultural produce, damaging UK exporters.
We have a trade deficit with the EU of £71billion – they sell us more than we sell them – so the EU overall would lose out.
German cars and French agriculture would be worst hit, as would UK regions with large export industries. Tariffs could also mean price inflation. But UK trade with the EU is 13 per cent of GDP and falling compared to non-EU trade, which generates a surplus and is likely to grow. The outlook would be boosted by Britain's ability to strike trade deals.
IMMIGRATION
The UK would immediately have control over its borders and freedom to set migration policy on all EU migrants.
UK nationals would likely lose their right to live and work in the EU. There would be legal uncertainty for the 1.3million Britons living in the EU and the 3.7million EU nationals here.
CITY OF LONDON
Many firms have already made contingency plans for no deal, but there would probably be a significant degree of disruption and an economic hit.
Ministers would be likely to take an axe to tax and regulations to preserve the UK's economic advantage.
AEROPLANES
Fears of planes not being able to fly appear far-fetched – unless the EU is determined to destroy both business and tourism. Rules to keep planes in the air are likely to be agreed. The EU has many deals with non-EU countries as part of its Open Skies regime.
EUROPEAN COURTS
Britain would be free from the edicts of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and all EU laws. Parliament would be sovereign.
FARMING & FISHING
THE UK would quit the Common Agricultural Policy, which gives farmers and landowners £3billion in subsidies. Ministers would come under pressure to continue a form of subsidy.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Northern Ireland would be outside the EU, with no arrangements on how to manage 300 crossing points on the 310-mile border.
The EU would want Ireland to impose customs and other checks to protect the bloc's border – something it has said it will not do. No deal could blow a hole in the Good Friday Agreement, with pressure on all sides to find a compromise.
The Cabinet is at war with itself today over claims 14 ministers spoke out against a long delay to Brexit to avoid No Deal next week.
A list of names leaked within minutes of Theresa May's speech setting out the plans last night after ministers were finally given back their phones and allowed to leave No 10 after a nine-hour showdown.
But after the claim of 14 critics appeared in newspapers, No 10 Director of Communications Robbie Gibb and Energy Minister Claire Perry broke the usual rules on Cabinet secrecy to say just four ministers opposed the plan.
Government sources have backed up Ms Perry's account of the meeting to MailOnline. 
But the leaks prompted claims the Prime Minister went with the minority - a group of 10 ministers including Amber Rudd and Michael Gove who backed a further delay - escalating the anger of already furious Brexiteers. 
In an extraordinary intervention Ms Perry blasted a cabinet colleague 'behaving reprehensibly' for leaking the figures.
She tweeted: 'There were only FOUR cabinet members who spoke explicitly in favour of no extension and No Deal'.
Mr Gibb said a front page story on the Daily Telegraph - which pictured the 14 ministers including Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Liam Fox - 'isn't true'.
The angry row emerged after Mrs May used a bombshell speech to the nation to vow to 'break the logjam' in Westminster by offering talks with Mr Corbyn - who favours a customs union - in a last-ditch bid to find a compromise, saying she would ask Brussels for more time to reach a deal. 
She faced a furious backlash from Brexiteers as Jacob Rees-Mogg declared she was working with a 'known Marxist' and said: 'People did not vote for a Corbyn-May coalition government'. Boris Johnson accused her of betraying voters and the DUP said she was 'sub-contracting the future of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn'. 
Mr Corbyn accepted the offer of talks but some Labour MPs voiced suspicions that the PM was trying to 'dip Mr Corbyn's hands in the mess' of Brexit. 
Mrs May's dramatic move reduces the chance of a No Deal exit on April 12, but leaves little time for a deal if Britain is to leave before May 22 and avoid voting in European Parliament elections. 
It was claimed that at the Cabinet summit, 14 ministers - Gavin Williamson, Liam Fox, Liz Truss, Sajid Javid, Chris Grayling, Jeremy Wright, Andrea Leadsom, Jeremy Hunt, James Brokenshire, Baroness Evans, Stephen Barclay, Alun Cairns and Brandon Lewis - spoke out against a long delay.  
I have just come from chairing seven hours of Cabinet meetings focused on finding a route out of the current impasse – one that will deliver the Brexit the British people voted for, and allow us to move on and begin bringing our divided country back together.
I know there are some who are so fed up with delay and endless arguments that they would like to leave with No Deal next week.
I have always been clear that we could make a success of No Deal in the long-term. But leaving with a deal is the best solution.
So we will need a further extension of Article 50 – one that is as short as possible and which ends when we pass a deal.
And we need to be clear what such an extension is for – to ensure we leave in a timely and orderly way.
This debate, this division, cannot drag on much longer.
It is putting Members of Parliament and everyone else under immense pressure – and it is doing damage to our politics.
Despite the best efforts of MPs, the process that the House of Commons has tried to lead has not come up with an answer.
So today I am taking action to break the logjam: I am offering to sit down with the Leader of the Opposition and to try to agree a plan - that we would both stick to - to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal.
Any plan would have to agree the current Withdrawal Agreement – it has already been negotiated with the 27 other members, and the EU has repeatedly said that it cannot and will not be reopened.
What we need to focus on is our Future Relationship with the EU.
The ideal outcome of this process would be to agree an approach on a Future Relationship that delivers on the result of the Referendum, that both the Leader of the Opposition and I could put to the House for approval, and which I could then take to next week's European Council.
However, if we cannot agree on a single unified approach, then we would instead agree a number of options for the Future Relationship that we could put to the House in a series of votes to determine which course to pursue.
Crucially, the Government stands ready to abide by the decision of the House.
But to make this process work, the Opposition would need to agree to this too.
The Government would then bring forward the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. We would want to agree a timetable for this Bill to ensure it is passed before 22nd May so that the United Kingdom need not take part in European Parliamentary Elections.
This is a difficult time for everyone. Passions are running high on all sides of the argument.
But we can and must find the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for.
This is a decisive moment in the story of these islands. And it requires national unity to deliver the national interest. 
Amid tense exchanges in Downing Street, Mr Williamson called it 'completely ridiculous' to seek help from a Labour leader he said was 'unfit to govern'. 
On the other side, nine ministers - David Gauke, Philip Hammond, Greg Clark, David Lidington, Damian Hinds, Claire Perry, Michael Gove, Amber Rudd and Geoffrey Cox - backed a further delay. 
Health Secretary Matt Hancock appears to have argued against No Deal but called for a short extension to the Article 50 process.
Michael Gove made the critical intervention yesterday in the marathon Cabinet meeting that led to the Prime Minister's dramatic offer to Jeremy Corbyn last night.
Despite several Cabinet ministers pushing hard for Theresa May to sanction a No Deal departure, the Environment Secretary was one of the key voices to call for a compromise approach.
'We have to change the way we do this,' he told her. 'We have to deal with the facts as we find them, not as we wish them to be.'  
There were also two significant flash points. Several sources described a clash between energy minister Claire Perry and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox after she 'went on a rant about Right-wing extremists' and 'nutters' in the Conservative Party.
A source said: 'Geoffrey Cox boomed from the other end of the Cabinet table 'enough of the language, that is not the way to speak'. The Prime Minister had to step in and say 'enough'.' 
According to The Times, Mr Cox told Ms Perry to 'tone it down' but was in turn accused of 'mansplaining'.  
Ms Perry - who was among those supporting a long delay - also voiced support for a national unity government involving Labour. 
However Gavin Williamson, who was among the 14 to reject a long extension, said Labour could not be trusted because they were too 'tribal'. 
In a second clash, Treasury chief secretary Liz Truss asked for an economic and societal impact assessment of not leaving the EU. Her boss, Chancellor Philip Hammond, snapped 'we know all the economic facts'.
Just before the meeting began, ministers were handed a nine-page document written by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, which set out the painful steps the UK would have to take to pursue No Deal, including imposing direct rule in Northern Ireland.
No-one was left in any doubt about Mrs May's determination to avoid the No Deal cliff edge.
Then ministers listened to a lengthy presentation from Tory Party chairman Brandon Lewis and Sir Mick Davis, the chief executive of the Conservative Party, on General Election planning.
They listed a series of 'scary' facts about the party's position in the country, including polling, focus groups, details of target seats, and party fundraising.
Ministers, one source said, have 'never appeared more united as they were against the prospect of a General Election'. Having ruled out an election, they turned to discussing the Brexit alternatives.
Despite Mrs May's clear intention to avoid No Deal, Brexiteers combined with the 'born again' Brexiteers – Remainers who have converted to Brexit – to urge the PM to push ahead with the idea in an attempt to make the Commons choose between it and her original agreement.
But Chief Whip Julian Smith argued that the Commons would not allow it, and Parliament would – one way or another – ensure there was always a Remain option, whether to Revoke Article 50 or ensure a second referendum. 
In the afternoon, after a lunch of sandwiches, discussion turned to whether to seek another extension of Article 50, meaning Brexit would be delayed and, most toxically, whether to speak to Jeremy Corbyn to try to attract Labour votes. This met with fierce opposition.
A general election was 'discussed' by the Cabinet yesterday morning but there was little enthusiasm and ministers ruled it out. 
Ministers had their phones taken away to avoid leaks, were only allowed a sandwich and a stroll around the garden in a short break and were then locked inside Downing Street sipping Chilean red wine while Mrs May prepared her speech.  
Against a long extension (14):
Against No Deal, but for short extension (one)
For a long extension (9):
In her statement the PM said it was a 'decisive moment in the story of these islands' and called for 'national unity to deliver the national interest' as she appealed to Mr Corbyn for a compromise. 
Mrs May said the current divorce deal with Brussels could not be changed but promised to renegotiate a new political deal on what Britain's future relations with the EU might look like.  
She said: 'Today I'm taking action to break the logjam. I'm offering to sit down with the leader of the opposition and try to agree a plan that we would both stick to to ensure we leave the EU and we do so with a deal.
'Any plan would have to agree the current Withdrawal Agreement - it has already been negotiated with the 27 other members and the EU has repeatedly said it cannot and will not be re-opened.'
Mrs May said if she and Mr Corbyn could not agree a way forward she would present 'a number of options for the future relationship that we could put to the house in a series of votes to determine which course to pursue'.
'Crucially, the Government stands ready to abide by the decision of the House. But to make this process work the opposition would need to agree to this too,' she added.  
 Mrs May went on: 'This debate, this division, cannot drag on much longer.
'It is putting Members of Parliament and everyone else under immense pressure – and it is doing damage to our politics.
'Despite the best efforts of MPs, the process that the House of Commons has tried to lead has not come up with an answer.'  
However Mrs May has promised to step down before the next phase of negotiations, which could complicate her attempts to reach a deal with Labour. 
The Tories have promised to leave the Single Market and Customs Union so they can end free movement of people and strike new trade deals after Brexit but Labour's policy is to keep a customs union.  
Mrs May made clear she wanted to save the prospect of leaving on May 22 - despite the EU making clear the deal had to be agreed last week to lock in this date.
Failure to persuade the EU to agree that schedule would mean taking part in European Parliament elections next month, which the PM has repeatedly said she does not want.   

WEDNESDAY APRIL 10: EU SUMMIT
Another summit with EU leaders – where May will ask for a new delay beyond April 12. 
May's new plan is to strike a cross-party consensus in London and persuade EU leaders it means the deal can be delivered in time for Brexit on May 22.
She may have to accept a longer extension that means holding EU elections, as Brussels has made clear this is a red line - and will take a decision on delay without Britain and it must be unanimous. 
EU officials including Michel Barnier have warned that the risk of an accidental No Deal is increasing if May arrives with no plan.
THURSDAY APRIL 11: PM'S FACES MPs
Theresa May will return from Brussels with a likely nine to 12 month extension and will outline her plans in the the Commons in the wake of the EU summit.
FRIDAY APRIL 12: BREXIT DAY
Britain is due to leave the EU without a deal on this date if no delay is agreed. 
Donald Tusk hinted that the EU could approve a further Brexit delay after Theresa May once again asked for more time. 
The president of the European Council called for 'patience' as Mrs May seeks to agree a Brexit plan with Labour which can win Parliament's backing.
Tusk said that 'we don't know what the end result will be', with Britain's future still uncertain just 10 days before a possible cliff-edge exit.  
The foreign ministers of Germany and France called for more clarity from London on Tuesday.
'I'm tempted to say let us know if something changes,' said France's Jean-Yves Le Drian at a joint press conference the two held in New York. 
'Three years after their decision, the British must come up with a clear line because otherwise, sadly, it'll be a hard Brexit in coming days.'
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas declined to comment on the request for an extension but urged London to move swiftly: 'That we're long past five after midnight - they must know that in London, too. 
Finishing her statement, Mrs May said:  'This is a difficult time for everyone. Passions are running high on all sides of the argument.
'But we can and must find the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for. This is a decisive moment in the story of these islands. And it requires national unity to deliver the national interest.'
In response, Mr Corbyn said: 'We will meet the Prime Minister.
'We recognise that she has made a move, I recognise my responsibility to represent the people that supported Labour in the last election and the people who didn't support Labour but nevertheless want certainty and security for their own future and that's the basis on which we will meet her and we will have those discussions.' 
In a furious backlash Boris Johnson said the decision to hand control to Mr Corbyn meant the Cabinet had concluded 'any deal is better than no deal' while Mr Rees-Mogg accused the PM of handing power to a 'known Marxist'. 
John Bercow ruled rebel MPs can try to push through laws to block No Deal in a single day despite Brexiteer fury at the 'reprehensible' plot.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper has published draft laws that would oblige the Government to seek a long deal to Brexit next week if there is not a deal by April 10. 
She wants to use Commons time grabbed by Tory rebel Oliver Letwin tomorrow to ram the law through the Commons in a matter of hours.
Veteran Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash complained the idea was 'unconstitutional' and urged the Commons Speaker to block it.
But Mr Bercow told him pushing through laws in a single day was 'not particularly unusual' in itself, pointing out the Government does so in an emergency.
The Speaker has repeatedly been accused of helping Remainers to frustrate Brexit and has threatened to block any further votes on Mrs May's Brexit deal.
The procedure has been used in recent months to pass laws relating to Northern Ireland, which does not currently have functioning devolution.
The rebels will only be able to push through their draft law in a day if they have a majority of MPs on their side. The House of Lords can still block the law even if they pass it in the Commons. 
After Ms Cooper published her two-clause Bill, Sir Bill, chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, said he had 'grave concerns' about the idea of a bill 'effectively being rammed through in one day'.
Sir Bill said: 'This is a reprehensible procedure in the context of this vitally important issue of our leaving the European Union. It is unconstitutional.
'It is inconceivable that we should be presented with a bill which could be rammed through in one day.'
He said: 'You do find that leaders who decide to go with the opposition rather than their own party find their own party doesn't plainly follow.
'I'm not sure this is the way to conciliate people to persuade them if they haven't moved already to move at this stage.
'I think getting the support of a known Marxist is not likely to instil confidence in Conservatives.' 
Mr Johnson said: 'It is very disappointing that the cabinet has decided to entrust the final handling of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.
'It now seems all too likely that British trade policy and key law making powers will be handed over to Brussels - with no say for the UK.    
'As it is, we now face the ridiculous possibility of being forced to contest the European elections more than three years after leaving the EU and having to agree to exit terms that in no way resemble what the people were promised when they voted to leave.
'The PM and cabinet have concluded that any deal is better than no deal, and this is truly a very bad deal indeed - one that leaves us being run by the EU. I can under no circumstances vote for a deal involving a customs union as I believe that does not deliver on the referendum.' 
The PM's DUP allies in Northern Ireland said: 'The Prime Minister's lamentable handling of the negotiations with the EU means she has failed to deliver a sensible Brexit deal that works for all parts of the United Kingdom. That is why she has not been able to get it through Parliament.
'Her announcement therefore comes as little surprise. Though it remains to be seen if sub-contracting out the future of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn, someone whom the Conservatives have demonised for four years, will end happily.
'We want the result of the referendum respected, and just as we joined the Common Market as one country we must leave the EU as one country.
'We will continue to use our position within Parliament and with the Government to argue strongly the case for Northern Ireland and the integrity of the United Kingdom.
'We remain consistent in judging all Brexit outcomes against our clear unionist principles.' 
The Commons had failed to find a majority for any alternative Brexit plan in a series of indicative votes on Monday night.  
MPs rejected staying in the customs union or the single market, as well as holding a second referendum or cancelling Brexit altogether. 
Tory MP Nick Boles, who had put forward plans for a soft Brexit compromise, dramatically quit the Tories in the Commons chamber moments after the votes.  
The possible breakthrough yesterday came as rebel MPs led by Conservative Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour's Yvette Cooper plotted to seize control of Parliament again today. 
The MPs will try to change the law today to force the PM to stick to her plan to ask Brussels for another Brexit delay.  
Britain's highest-ranking civil servant has issued a doomsday analysis of how the country would be affected by a No Deal Brexit.
In a bombshell letter to ministers, extracts of which have been leaked to the Daily Mail, Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill says leaving the EU without a deal would hamper the police and security services and lead to the return of direct rule in Northern Ireland.
Sir Mark's 14-page letter, sent ahead of yesterday's Cabinet showdown, warns:
Sir Mark's letter warns that No Deal would have wider consequences for the UK's economy, security and constitution.
It was sent to every member of the Cabinet last week. It is understood ministers asked for Sir Mark's assessment to ensure they were complying with their duty to govern in the national interest. 
Letwin and Cooper will launch their plot to stop No Deal by passing a law compelling Theresa May to ask for a long delay to Brexit.  
If it passes the Remainers intend to force their bill to delay Brexit through the Commons and the Lords on Thursday.
Sir Oliver said: 'This is a last-ditch attempt to prevent our country being exposed to the risks inherent in a No Deal exit'.
Ms Cooper added: 'We are now in a really dangerous situation with a serious and growing risk of No Deal in 10 days' time.
'The UK needs an extension beyond April 12'.  
Emmanuel Macron had earlier also lashed out at the crisis in Westminster warning that the EU could not 'be held hostage' to the Brexit crisis and suggested that the UK might not get an Article 50 extension - unless they soften Brexit.
Speaking as Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visited Paris, the French president warned that Brussels would be 'open' to a further extension to Article 50 only if it was accompanied by firm plans for its use.
He said credible justifications for an Article 50 extension could include an election, second referendum or alternative proposals for the future relationship, such as a customs union.      
But he warned: 'A long extension involving the participation of the UK in European elections and European institutions is far from evident and certainly not (to be taken) for granted.
'Our priority shall be the good functioning of the EU and the single market. The EU cannot sustainably be the hostage to the solution to a political crisis in the UK.'
He added: 'We cannot spend the coming months sorting out yet again the terms of our divorce and dealing with the past.'
The Mail yesterday saw leaked extracts of a bombshell letter from Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill warning ministers how disastrous No Deal could be. 
It warned the Cabinet that No Deal would make Britain 'less safe', lead to a recession, a hike in food prices and even risk the break-up of the kingdom. 
But former Brexit Secretary David Davis said it was simply a 'nonsense Whitehall scare story'. 
Mr Davis warned the Tories are now in a 'much worse' state than before Tony Blair's 1997 Labour landslide and it risks becoming 'a ruin' if Mrs May demands a snap poll.  
Brexit rebels are set to make a third fresh attempt to wrestle control away from the Government tomorrow despite Monday night's disaster in the Commons.
MPs failed for a second time to make their minds up on a way out of the EU impasse as the bitterly divided political parties could not find a majority for any of four options they had themselves come up with.
The results were a severe blow for de-facto backbench leader Sir Oliver Letwin, who led the charge to circumvent the Prime Minister and hold the so-called indicative votes.
What power there is in a bitterly divided Westminster seems to be moving back towards the Prime Minister and her Government.
But former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver will tomorrow make a third attempt to discover if the seemingly entrenched MPs on all sides of Brexit are prepared to go over the top in search of a compromise.
What actually happens will depend on what is likely to be a fraught day of horse trading by MPs as they attempt to build consensus.
Expectations that a third round of indicative votes will come up with any viable plan, so divided are MPs. 
What is decided - if anything - could determine whether the Prime Minister brings back her meaningful vote for a fourth attempt this week. 
It is thought she could seek a straight vote on her deal if MPs remain deadlocked, or seek to run it off against any rival plan - like a customs union - if the Commons manages to present a united front.
What happens next:  
Wednesday: Sir Oliver Letwin has control of the Commons agenda for a third day. After Monday's inconclusive results, the rebels are trying to pass a Bill to block No Deal instead. If their plans are approved, there will be a second reading vote on the principle of the draft law at 7pm followed by more debate on the detail and a vote to approve it at 10pm.
Thursday: Allies of the PM have the day pencilled in for a possible fourth attempt to get her deal through the Commons. They believe that, with the majority against her coming down from 230 to 149 then to 58 last week, they have momentum on their side. Ministers are considering an unprecedented parliamentary 'run off' pitting Mrs May's deal against the soft Brexit option chosen by MPs in the hope of focusing the minds of Tory eurosceptics.
What happens next? 
What are the rebel MPs doing tomorrow? 
Oliver Letwin secured control of the Commons agenda tomorrow, a third day after he staged indicative votes on Brexit yesterday and last Wednesday.
Tomorrow, the MPs have a different plan - to pass a draft law requiring the Government to seek a delay to Brexit if there is No Deal.
How do they do it?
Before they can use the time in the Commons they have secured, the MPs must win a vote on the rules known as a Business of the House motion.
Tomorrow's motions says the principle of the new law would be debated until 7pm. After this there is until 10pm to debate any proposed amendments to the law before another vote to finalise it at 10pm.
Is it allowed? 
Yes, in principle and if a majority of MPs vote for the Business of the House motion. Laws have been passed by the Government in a single day before though it remains unorthodox for backbench MPs to have control of the Commons at all.
Can it be stopped? 
Yes, if opponents of the idea can win votes on the issue and block the Business of the House motion. This seems unlikely as Sir Oliver has won his previous votes with a majority of around 40.
What will the Lords do?
Unclear. Forcing the Bill through would require the cooperation of the Lords as there are no timetabling rules in the Upper House. Brexiteers would have a better chance of blocking it in the Lords.
In practice, Labour signalled in January the Lords would be unlikely to outright block a draft law passed by MPs in the Commons. 
What will the EU do next?  
An emergency summit will be held on April 10. Britain can use this to ask for a longer delay to Brexit - perhaps to the end of the year or even longer.
Mrs May has told MPs a long delay will mean holding European Parliament elections on May 22.  
What is No 10's plan? 
Mrs May is ploughing on for now. Downing Street is insistent the deal remains the best way of securing an orderly Brexit and appears set on another vote at some point.  
No 10 may now consider whether to call a snap general election if MPs try to pass laws to force May to pursue their option next week. 

Will May go for a long extension or No Deal? 
Nobody knows for certain. The Prime Minister has publicly ruled out personally going for a long extension but also admitted Parliament will rule out No Deal.
Will May resign now her deal has failed again? 
Again, nobody knows for sure. Her announcement on Wednesday night that she would stand down was contingent on the deal passing.
In practice, it drained Mrs May of all remaining political capital. Most in Westminster think her Premiership is over within weeks at the latest. 
As her deal folded for a third time on Friday, she faced immediate calls from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn so stand down with instant effect. 
What is clear is there is already a fight underway for the Tory leadership.  
Does is all mean there will be an election?
Probably, at some point. The Commons is deadlocked and the Government has no functional majority. While the Fixed Term Parliaments Act means the Government can stumble on, it will become increasingly powerless.
Mrs May could try to call one herself or, assuming she stands down, her successor could do so.  
Would May lead the Tories into an early election? 
Unlikely. Having admitted to her party she would go if the deal passes, Mrs May's political career is doomed.
While there is no procedural way to remove her, a withdrawal of political support from the Cabinet or Tory HQ would probably finish her even if she wanted to stay.    
How is an election called? When would it be? 
Because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act passed by the coalition, the Prime Minister can no longer simply ask the Queen to dissolve the Commons and call an election. There are two procedures instead.
First - and this is what happened in 2017 - the Government can table a motion in the Commons calling for an early election. Crucially, this can only pass with a two-thirds majority of MPs - meaning either of the main parties can block it.
Second an election is called if the Government loses a vote of no confidence and no new administration can be built within 14 days.
In practice, this is can only happen if Tory rebels vote with Mr Corbyn - a move that would end the career of any Conservative MP who took the step. 
An election takes a bare minimum of five weeks from start to finish and it would take a week or two to get to the shut down of Parliament, known as dissolution - putting the earliest possible polling day around mid to late May. 
If the Tories hold a leadership election first it probably pushes any election out to late June at the earliest.  
Why do people say there has to be an election? 
The question of whether to call an election finally reached the Cabinet last week.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay warned the rejection of Mrs May's deal would set in train a series of events that will lead to a softer Brexit - meaning an election because so many MPs will have to break manifesto promises. 
MPs voting to seize control of Brexit from ministers has only fuelldd the demands.   
Labour has been calling for a new vote for months, insisting the Government has failed to deliver Brexit.
Mr Corbyn called a vote of no confidence in the Government in January insisting the failure of the first meaningful vote showed Mrs May's administration was doomed. He lost but the calls did not go away. 
Brexiteers have joined the demands in recent days as Parliament wrestles with Brexit and amid fears among hardliners promises made by both main parties at the last election will be broken - specifically on leaving the Customs Union and Single Market. 
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen wants Mrs May replaced with a Brexiteer. He believes it would push Remain Tories out of the party and then allow a snap election with more Eurosceptic candidates wearing blue rosettes.
What might happen? 
Both main parties will have to write a manifesto - including a position on Brexit. Both parties are deeply split - in many cases between individual MPs and their local activists.
Under Mrs May, the Tories presumably try to start with the deal. But it is loathed by dozens of current Tory MPs who want a harder Brexit and hated even more by grassroots Tory members. 
Shifting Tory policy on Brexit to the right would alienate the majority of current MPs who voted to Remain.
Labour has similar splits. Many of Labour's MPs and activists want Mr Corbyn to commit to putting Brexit to a second referendum - most with a view to cancelling it. 
Mr Corbyn is a veteran Eurosceptic and millions of people who voted Leave in 2016 backed Labour in 2017. 
The splits set the stage for a bitter and chaotic election. The outcome is highly unpredictable - the Tories start in front but are probably more divided on the main question facing the country.
Labour is behind but knows it made dramatic gains in the polls in the last election with its promises of vastly higher public spending. 
Neither side can forecast what impact new political forces might wield over the election or how any public anger over the Brexit stalemate could play out.
It could swing the result in favour of one of the main parties or a new force. 
Or an election campaign that takes months, costs millions of pounds could still end up in a hung Parliament and continued stalemate. This is the current forecast by polling expert Sir John Curtice. 
 
Downing Street has reportedly blamed Philip Hammond's camp for leaking a secret Whitehall dossier warning of the chaos of a no-deal Brexit, that has been dismissed by a government minister as 'scaremongering.'
The document filed by the Cabinet Office, called Operation Yellowhammer, shows the areas that could be most vulnerable if the UK leaves the EU without a deal on October 31. 
The explosive revelations marked 'official-sensitive' include the expectation of a return of a hard border in Ireland due to the inability to roll-out the government's proposed limited checks, and shortages of fuel, medicine and food.
No.10 has now hit back and claimed the document was leaked by a former minister, with reports suggesting they are blaming Philip Hammond's team, which includes dozens of advisers and associates.
The ex-Chancellor quit the cabinet before Boris Johnson became Prime Minister and has become a leading opponent of no-deal Brexit.
A Downing Street source said: 'This document is from when ministers were blocking what needed to be done to get ready to leave and the funds were not available. It has been deliberately leaked by a former minister in an attempt to influence discussions with EU leaders.
'Those obstructing preparation are no longer in Government, £2 billion of extra funding already made available and Whitehall has been stood up to actually do the work through the daily ministerial meetings. The entire posture of Government has changed.'
The government has also played down concerns arising from the documents, with business and energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng describing the release of them as 'scaremongering.'
Appearing on Ridge on Sunday today, energy minister Mr Kwarteng said the government will be 'fully prepared to leave without a deal on October 31.'
He said: 'I think there is a lot of scaremongering around, and a lot of people are playing into project fear and all the rest of it. 
'We've got to prepare for no deal, in fact the previous Prime Minister created DExEU (Department for Exiting the European Union) and said the mandate of DExEU last summer was to prepare for no deal, that's what we were focused on. 
'Now we have a new Prime Minister focused on that and the scale and intensity of those preparations are increasing and we will be fully prepared to leave without a deal on October 31.'
The papers, obtained by The Times, outline the possibility of protests, road blockades and 'direct action.'
Former Tory former cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson claimed the leak of documents on 'Operation Yellowhammer' was an example of the 'establishment' plot to 'sow fear in people's minds'.
In a joint statement, they said: 'This Operation Yellowhammer leak is the version of what the contingency executive put together. We remember attending a briefing on privy council terms which they said was not worst case but reasonable worst case. Theresa May had asked for this to be done. It was obviously Project Fear dressed up.
'For example, on the delays at the port we asked if they had discussed their expectation with the port authorities of Calais/Pas du Nord who had already said that there would be no extra delays at Calais and they said, (after a great deal of shuffling of feet) 'no'.
'We asked why not and they said they had not been asked to do so. There were other areas where it was clear they had not been asked to get balance but instead dress up previous versions of other worst-case scenarios.
'The whole thing was an attempt to frighten us and didn't stand up to scrutiny. We have never seen officials look so uneasy under questioning.
'The fact that this document was 'found' in a Westminster pub tells you all you need to know about this continuing establishment plot to sow fear in people's minds. This is an abuse of the proper use of the Civil Service and must be stopped.'
And ardent Brexiteer Nigel Farage described the report as 'so extreme in terms of its scaremongering it's not believable, at all.' 
On his LBC show he said: 'What do I make of all this, I don't think this is really a government document at all, I think it's a civil service document, I call it an Olly Robbins special.
'There is no way the civil service have been neutral through this whole process, they are doing their utmost to stop Brexit
'Of course, the classic way these things are done, is through fear-mongering.
'The clue as to why it is so completely ridiculous is to suggest that a few months after Brexit the amount of goods entering and leaving this country could be down by 50 percent.
'What are they suggesting? Is Mr Juncker, once he gets better, going to have U-boats in the Channel sinking our ships? What are they talking about, we are not at war.'
The leaked document suggests massive tailbacks at ports could limit fuel distribution and disrupt the supply across the southeast of England, including London.
Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller has claimed the Government 'unequivocally' accepts that it cannot close down Parliament to allow a no-deal Brexit.
The businesswoman, who last month wrote to Boris Johnson arguing any move to prorogue Parliament 'would be an abuse of his powers' and would result in legal action, said she had been reassured Parliament would not be suspended.
Ms Miller previously went to court and won the right for Parliament to give its consent ahead of the Government triggering Article 50 to begin the Brexit process.
She told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'What they have said is unequivocally they accept that to close down Parliament to bypass them in terms of Brexit - stopping a no-deal Brexit in particular - is illegal.
'So without having to go to court they've conceded we've basically called their bluff.'
But Ms Miller said that whilst the Government had given a reassurance that Parliament will not be prorogued, she said she would be seeking further reassurance that MPs would be able to pass legislation to stop a no-deal Brexit.
She said: 'At the moment Parliament has to find a way - instruments and ways - of ensuring that they can pass that legislation, scrutinising which is what the Government letter has confirmed, that Parliament will be able to scrutinise and examine all options when it comes to exiting, it's not the same as giving them the ability to pass legislation.
'And because we already have in legislation that October 31 is our exit they need to pass other legislation to prevent no-deal or to change that date after an extension.'
 
As many as 85% of lorries headed to France could be hit with delays of 60 hours and it could take up to three months before the flow of traffic reaches 75% of current levels.
Fresh food supply will plummet, leading to increased prices and less variety, while fishing vessels could clash, as nearly 300 foreign ships are anticipated to cast their nets illegally in British waters on the first day of Brexit.
The document says that the supply of fresh food will 'decrease' and supermarket shelves could well have gaps, with shoppers unable to buy some things.
The Prime Minister joked in the leadership contest there would still be clean drinking water in the event of Britain crashing out on no deal
But the document says the biggest risk to the food industry will be a dearth in chemicals used to treat water.
The chances of this happening are 'low', but if it does occur could impact hundreds of thousands of people. 
Medical supplies will also be 'vulnerable to severe extended delays,' The Times reports, because three-quarters of British supplies come from the EU. 
A senior Whitehall source told the paper: 'This is not Project Fear - this is the mnost realistic assessment of what the public face with no deal. These are likely, basic, reasonable scenarios - not the worst case.' 
Meanwhile, civil servants have warned that massive protests throughout the country will stretch police. 
Financial services could also be 'disrupted', which could have significant consequences for the economy given the industry contributed £132 billion last year.
The city faces two main obstacles, firstly fluctuations in the price of sterling and also the leaving date which is on a Thursday.
This means banks and financial services will have to switch to a new system for reporting transactions mid-week. But the sector is understood to be one of the more prepared for a no deal.
The news comes as Boris Johnson signalled he would plough ahead with Brexit before calling a general election, even if a no confidence vote succeeded when parliament returns in September.
Leaked details of Operation Yellowhammer, which first became known of last September, illustrates mounting discontent in Whitehall over the government's lack of clarity on its Brexit plans.
Mr Johnson will this week tell French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Westminster cannot stop Brexit and a new deal must be agreed if Britain is to avoid leaving the EU without one. 
But Downing Street doesn't believe an eleventh hour compromise is possible, saying that No Deal remains 'highly likely.'
Among the bleakest predictions in the secret papers, are for patients with diabetes and children with cancer.
Medicines including insulin, flu vaccines and new leukaemia drugs require temperature-controlled transportation and delays at the ports could render many unusable.
The dossier seen by the Times warns that a No Deal Brexit would pose problems 'to preventing and controlling disease outbreaks.' 
Britain is heading towards a constitutional crisis at home and a showdown with the EU as Mr Johnson has repeatedly vowed to leave the bloc on October 31 without a deal unless it agrees to renegotiate the Brexit divorce.
After more than three years of Brexit dominating EU affairs, the bloc has repeatedly refused to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement which includes an Irish border insurance policy that Mr Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, agreed in November.
The PM is coming under pressure from politicians across the political spectrum to prevent a disorderly departure, with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn vowing this week to bring down Mr Johnson's government in early September to delay Brexit.
It is, however, unclear if lawmakers have the unity or power to use the British parliament to prevent a No Deal departure - likely to be the United Kingdom's most significant move since World War Two.
Opponents of No Deal say it would be a disaster for one of the EU's most stable democracies.
A disorderly divorce, they say, would hurt global growth, send shock waves through financial markets and weaken London's claim to be the world's preeminent financial centre.
Brexit supporters say there may be short-term disruption from No Deal exit but that the economy will thrive if cut free from what they cast as a doomed experiment in integration that has led to Europe falling behind China and the United States.
Dominic Raab today said the government will 'test to the limit' an anti-No Deal law passed by Remainer MPs as he appeared to pave the way for Brexit to end up in front of Supreme Court judges. 
The Foreign Secretary said ministers will look 'very carefully legally' at what the rebel legislation, due to be given Royal Assent tomorrow, actually requires.
The law states that Boris Johnson must ask the EU for a Brexit delay beyond the October 31 deadline if Britain and the bloc have failed to strike an agreement in the run up to Halloween. 
But Mr Johnson has repeatedly said he will not ask Brussels for an extension because it would mean breaking his 'do or die' pledge to deliver Brexit with or without a deal.  
Mr Johnson's stance combined with Mr Raab's comments this morning suggest that the PM is ready to go ahead with a bombshell plan which emerged overnight which would see him defy the law and 'sabotage' a Brexit delay. 
Under the plan, detailed in The Sunday Times, Mr Johnson will try to agree a new deal with Brussels at a summit on October 17. 
But should he fail he will then reportedly refuse to comply with the anti-No Deal legislation passed by MPs and ignore the requirement to ask for an extension. 
Downing Street believes such a course of action will guarantee an immediate judicial review in the Supreme Court with the fate of Brexit placed in the hands of judges, just days before the October 31 deadline. 
The idea that Mr Johnson could defy the law was bolstered today after Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, said the government 'will not change its policy' on No Deal having to be a Brexit option and insisted the PM will not ask for an extension. 
A number of Tory MPs responded to the suggestion that the PM could ignore the legislation by saying they would resign the Conservative whip if he went ahead with the plan.
It came after Amber Rudd quit the Cabinet and surrendered the Tory whip as she claimed the government was now focusing up to 90 per cent of its efforts on preparing for No Deal. 
Meanwhile, Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said the EU would not agree to a Brexit delay in the current circumstances as he added: 'We are not going to do (extend) this every three months.'
Separately, Nigel Farage formally offered Mr Johnson a 'non-aggression pact' for the next general election if the PM changes tack and pursues a No Deal split. 
The leader of the Brexit Party said an alliance would make them 'unstoppable' and secure Mr Johnson a 100 seat majority. 
Mr Johnson will tomorrow try for a second time to trigger a snap general election as he urges MPs to back going to the country on October 15. 
But opposition leaders have united and agreed they will not support an early poll taking place until a Brexit delay has been formally agreed with the EU to stop Britain crashing out of the bloc in just 53 days. 
However, Downing Street has reportedly worked up a fall back plan should Mr Johnson's bid for an election fail. 
The plan would see him ignore an anti-No Deal law passed by MPs and peers last week. 
He would go to the final EU summit before Brexit and seek an agreement but should one not be forthcoming he would then refuse to ask for the delay the law states he must. 
Such a move would spark a political, constitutional and legal firestorm because the PM would be acting in open defiance of the law. 
Number 10 expects the matter would then be referred to the Supreme Court and legal experts believe Mr Johnson could ultimately risk a jail sentence if he fails to comply with the law. 
A Number 10 source said: 'If there isn't a deal by the 18th we will sabotage the extension.' 
Mr Raab appeared to suggest today that the government was gearing up for the anti-No Deal law to be tested in the courts. 
He told Sky News: 'We will adhere to the law but we will also, because this is such a bad piece of legislation, the surrender bill that Jeremy Corbyn backed – we will also want to test to the limit what it does actually lawfully require.'
Asked to clarify his comments, the Foreign Secretary said: 'I mean across the board we will look very carefully legally at what it requires and what it doesn’t require. 
'I think that’s not only the lawful thing to do, it’s also the responsible thing to do and again I’ll repeat, that legislation is lousy.' 
Mr Raab said 'we are not extending' but then appeared to concede that the government could ultimately be forced to as he said: 'What I’m going to do is redouble our efforts to get a deal but in any event to leave by the end of October, I think that’s the right thing to do. 
'Of course if we can’t do that, it is very clear that the blockage is Jeremy Corbyn, the Liberal Democrat’s and others who are not willing to respect the referendum and in the Liberal Democrat’s case, if there was a second referendum and people voted to leave they wouldn’t respect that either.' 
Meanwhile, Mr Javid told the BBC that when Mr Johnson goes to the EU summit next month he will be seeking a deal, not a delay. 
He said: 'First of all, the Prime Minister will go to the council meeting on the 17th and 18th (of October), he'll be trying to strike a deal. 
'He absolutely will not be asking for an extension in that meeting.' 
Any attempt to ignore the anti-No Deal law passed by Parliament would prompt a furious backlash from MPs and peers. 
Last night Tory MPs warned the PM that they would resign the whip if Mr Johnson went through with such a strategy. 
Kevin Hollinrake, a Conservative backbencher, told The Sunday Telegraph: 'You would see a significant number of Conservative MPs resigning the whip, including me.' 
Number 10 believes that while the move would be unpopular in Westminster, it would resonate well with the Leave voters it wants to win over ahead of an early general election. 
It came as Ms Rudd quit the government and surrendered the Tory whip as the UK's political meltdown continued apace. 
Ms Rudd said she 'no longer believes leaving with a deal is the government's main objective'.
'He's so focused on one element, preparing for No Deal, he's not engaging enough with the need to get a deal,' she said. 
'My mother used to say: "Judge a man by what he does and not by what he says". I am concerned that he's not doing enough to make true what he says is his priority.'
She also labelled his decision to eject 21 MPs from the Conservative party an 'act of political vandalism' and accused him of 'unwisely' putting parliament against the people.
Describing the decision to remove the whip from MPs as an 'assault on decency and democracy', she said: 'Number 10 wants the 21 not to be there as MPs because they need those seats to be occupied by people who support their No Deal plan.'
Last night a furious Number 10 source said: 'As the polls show, the voters are quite happy for the PM to get rid of people who don't want us to sort out Brexit. 
'There are plenty of talented younger MPs to replace any deadwood.'  
Ms Rudd said today that she believed when it came to the crunch Mr Johnson would comply with the law. 
She also told the BBC that she believed up to 90 per cent of the government's Brexit efforts were now focused on No Deal preparation. 
She told the Andrew Marr Show: 'I am saying that 80 to 90 per cent of the work that I can see going on on the EU relationship is about preparation for No Deal. 
'It's about disproportion. The purpose of this resignation is to make the point that the Conservative Party at its best should be a moderate party that embraces people with different views of the EU.'   
Numerous senior Tories bemoaned Ms Rudd's decision to quit, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock who said he hoped 'other One Nation Tories will stay and fight for the values we share'. 
Philip Hammond, the former chancellor and one of the 21 rebels to be expelled, replied: 'Sorry Matt, I’m afraid the Conservative Party has been taken over by unelected advisors, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn it from a broad church into an extreme right-wing faction. Sadly, it is not the party I joined.'
 
Theresa May has been warned that striking a deal with Jeremy Corbyn risks ‘handing the keys to Downing Street’ to an avowed Marxist – and destroying Brexit in the process.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab – one of the frontrunners to succeed Mrs May – describes her ‘desperate’ negotiations with Mr Corbyn as ‘a major mistake... bad for Brexit, bad for the Tory Party and potentially disastrous for the nation’.
His powerful intervention in an article for today’s Mail on Sunday – on the right of these pages – comes amid a growing revolt in the Tory party over the cross-party talks, with local associations threatening to go on strike in next month’s local elections.
Tory MPs fear Mrs May has ‘legitimised’ Mr Corbyn with the talks – and that, if he were to win power, he would be impossible to shift.
They fear he would legislate to reduce the minimum voting age to 16, warping the electoral system in his favour.
And a new poll reveals how seriously out of touch with younger people the Tories are seen to be, with the party now struggling more over age than class.
The Onward think tank, set up by former May aide Will Tanner, will tomorrow publish a report warning that the Conservatives are losing support among younger voters, with the tipping point at which people typically switch to voting Tory rising to 51 from 47 in 2017, due to falling home ownership and austerity.
Mr Raab warns: ‘If the PM bends to Mr Corbyn’s whims now, we can kiss goodbye to the opportunities Brexit offers us.’
The former Minister, who resigned from the Cabinet last year over Mrs May’s deal, says: ‘Labour’s antics are designed not to deliver a Brexit faithful to the referendum but to create chaos – which Mr Corbyn wants to exploit to seize power. 
He has a history of sympathising with the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah, so it is no surprise Mrs May’s overtures have gone down badly with Conservatives. Our supporters are frustrated or simply giving up, with many threatening to take their vote elsewhere, to Ukip or even Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
‘There is now a danger that Brexit could be lost and that the Government could fall – handing the keys to Downing Street to the very man the PM is depending on.’ Mr Raab adds devastatingly: ‘As Brexit Secretary... I urged her to take a firmer line with Brussels.
‘My efforts were undermined by others within Government.’
And his concerns have been echoed by grassroots Tories, with dozens of once-loyal activists sharing pictures of their cut-up membership cards on social media.
Bob Perry, deputy chair of Hornchurch and Upminster Conservative Association in East London, warned that ‘apoplectic’ party members are ready to strike to get Mrs May to step down, adding: ‘The party will be annihilated in local elections because loyal activists, understandably, want nothing more to do with the party. They will only return when she goes. By collaborating with Corbyn over Brexit, she has alienated the grassroots more than any party leader in history.’
And Dinah Glover, chairman of London East Conservatives, said: ‘This last week has been a turning point for many members who were willing to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt.’
She added: ‘The membership is completely demoralised that democracy is being overturned and we are failing to deliver what we promised to the British public.’
Ed Costelloe, chairman of the Grassroots Conservatives group, accused the PM of being ‘on a different planet’, adding: ‘Theresa May has little or no reputation left and her time is nearly up.’
Three years after the nation voted decisively to leave the European Union, Brexit still hangs in the balance. In a final, desperate bid to get her EU deal through Parliament, our Prime Minister has teamed up with the Marxist Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
This is a major mistake – bad for Brexit, bad for the Tory Party and potentially disastrous for the nation. Mrs May must change course, and quickly.
Mr Corbyn, remember, has no serious interest in securing an effective Brexit. Throughout the whole process, he has zig-zagged like a drunk stumbling home from a Communist Party knees-up. Rather he will demand what amounts to a Single Market – something my party has explicitly rejected.
If the PM bends to Mr Corbyn’s whims now, we can kiss goodbye to the opportunities Brexit offers us.
Indeed, there would be no way of taking back control of our laws from Brussels and Strasbourg. We would be stuck with the freedom of movement of people, with no control of our borders.
And we would give up the right to strike global free-trade deals with fast-growing and emerging economies, which would help create more jobs here as well as cutting the cost of living.
Mr Corbyn has even held talks with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier, and the two are actively coordinating their positions to dilute or derail Brexit.
When the PM returns to Brussels this week to seek another delay to Brexit, the EU will probably try to impose punitive conditions already discussed with Mr Corbyn’s team.
At the same time, the Labour leader will want to set conditions on the PM before allowing Labour MPs to support her approach in the Commons.
Labour’s antics are designed not to deliver a Brexit faithful to the referendum, but to create chaos – which Mr Corbyn wants to exploit to seize power.
He has a history of sympathising with the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah, so it is no surprise Mrs May’s overtures have gone down badly with Conservatives. Our supporters are frustrated or simply giving up, with many threatening to take their vote elsewhere, to Ukip or even Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
Indeed, her approach threatens to damage the Conservatives for years. But just as serious is the danger from Mr Corbyn and the hard Left Labour rabble he wants to put into power. The Government has spent years explaining why Mr Corbyn would sink our economy with his Loony Left ideas. Why rehabilitate him now?
Why sub-contract the biggest decision we have faced in a generation to a man whose unsavoury friends and anti-Western obsessions threaten national security?
Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, warned in this newspaper earlier this year that Mr Corbyn’s adviser, Seumas Milne, would have ‘no chance’ of passing Whitehall security checks.
Mr Corbyn has no intention of putting the country first. But by inviting him into the Brexit process, the Government is giving him a veneer of credibility.
There is now a danger that Brexit could be lost and that the Government could fall – handing the keys to Downing Street to Corbyn.
As Brexit Secretary, between July and November last year, I warned the Prime Minister we could end up in this position. I urged her to take a firmer line with Brussels, insisting on an ability to exit the now-notorious ‘backstop’ – a regime of laws to be imposed on the UK without us having any say. My efforts were undermined by others within Government.
The Government also failed to heed the concerns of the DUP and other MPs about the arrangements for Northern Ireland.
Brussels connived with the Irish government on a protocol that threatens the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK. The Government should have seen off this predatory pincer movement.
Two more Ministers have resigned in frustration at these failings. On Wednesday, the Brexit Minister responsible for No Deal planning, Chris Heaton-Harris, stepped down after the PM announced she would delay Brexit again, as did Nigel Adams, a Wales office minister and whip – the latest in a long list of Ministers who have left in despair at the Government’s failure to keep its promises.
If the EU continues to seek to humiliate our country, the Government must not cower. Instead, buoyed by the self-belief and courage of the British people, we should step out of the failing Eurocracy and walk tall in the world. 
By: Dominic Raab 
Strained Corbyn lines up fiery stand-in
A Left-wing rising star is being lined up to replace Jeremy Corbyn amid fears the Labour leader’s health will force him to stand down before he can get to No 10.
Docker’s daughter Rebecca Long Bailey has been privately ‘anointed’ by leading Corbynistas as their best hope of carrying on the ‘Corbyn project’, sources said last night.
The claim emerged after the fiery Labour business spokesman, a protegée of key Corbyn ally John McDonnell, was picked to form part of Labour’s Brexit team last week to thrash out a deal with the Government.
But it also comes amid increasing predictions from Labour colleagues that Mr Corbyn, 70 next month, is already feeling the strain and will have to step aside. Just two weeks ago, his office was forced to confirm that he was undergoing treatment at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London for a muscle weakness in his right eye which required him to wear corrective glasses.
The revelation was quickly followed by Labour insisting that Mr Corbyn goes for regular runs, cycles and goes to the gym. But the keep-fit counter-claims have failed to convince many fellow MPs.
One said: ‘The strains of being Opposition leader would tax a man 20 years younger and it’s clearly taking its toll on Jeremy.
‘Not only does he look much older, but he needs time off after stressful days to recover. Many of us expect him to stand down before too long.’
Last night, party insiders said leading Corbynistas were now throwing their weight behind Salford MP Long Bailey, 39, to pick up the reins.
One of 36 MPs who originally nominated Mr Corbyn for the leadership in 2015, the former solicitor is seen as fiercely loyal to his Left-wing vision.
Labour MPs say the fact she was on the Brexit talks team – alongside chief Corbyn aide Seumas Milne and Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer – demonstrated how much Mr Corbyn’s inner circle now trust Ms Long Bailey.
One said: ‘She’s also fearless in front of the cameras and nearly always sticks to the Corbynista line.’
But critics argue she is too young and inexperienced to take on the top job in the near future. One said: ‘Rebecca may be very good but she’s just not ready yet.’
Ms Long Bailey is also expected to be up against tough competition from party schools spokeswoman Angela Rayner, who has angered Mr Corbyn’s office by reportedly despairing that he will ever lead the party to power.
Deputy leader Tom Watson and Shadow Chancellor Mr McDonnell himself are also understood to have leadership ambitions.
But last night, Labour dismissed talk of Mr Corbyn having to step down. A party spokesperson said: ‘False speculation about people’s health is contemptible.
‘Jeremy is in good health, on the campaign trail every week, travelling the country, and runs and cycles regularly.’
Downing Street last night dismissed the threat from a female Tory peer that the House of Lords could delay Brexit.
Baroness Wheatcroft, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, yesterday suggested the Lords could withhold approval for Article 50, the mechanism which would trigger leaving the EU.
The pro-Remain Conservative peer suggested there were dozens of peers who want to stop, delay or 'revisit' the result, despite 52 per cent of those voting in the June 24 referendum backing the campaign to leave the European Union.
But No 10 quickly tried to dampen down the threat, insisting that the Lords should get behind the decision of British voters.
Lady Wheatcroft ignited the row by telling The Times: 'The Lords might actually delay things.'
She said she did not want the Lords to immediately stand in the way of the UK leaving the bloc but added: 'However, if it comes to a Bill, I think the Lords might actually delay things. I think there's a majority in the Lords for remaining.'
Asked whether she would support peers delaying Brexit legislation she said: 'Yes I would. And I would hope while we delayed things that there would be sufficient movement in the EU to justify putting it to the electorate, either through a general election or a second referendum.'
She added that just small adjustments to the freedom of movement rules could trigger justification for a second referendum. There are differing views over whether Parliament needs to pass an act first before Article 50 is triggered.
Lady Wheatcroft said Tory whips would not be able to push through legislation to enable Article 50 because the opposition currently outnumbers the Government in the chamber.
She added that even Tory peers 'feel sufficiently strongly that they'd defy the whip anyhow. I would.'
Theresa May has insisted she respects the vote and wants to secure the best Brexit deal.
Mrs May's official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister is very clear that Brexit means Brexit.
'Parliament supported the decision to hold the referendum. Everyone should focus on getting behind that and making a success of Brexit.'
Nigel Evans, the former deputy speaker, criticised the peer. He said on Twitter: 'Memo to Lady Wheatcroft – we had a vote which is called democracy – the people voted Brexit, and PM has helpfully interpreted what it means!'
Lady Wheatcroft is not the first member of the Lords to warn that the upper chamber could thwart Brexit.
Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former top civil servant, said in June, before the vote, that 'the referendum is merely advisory and the Parliament and the Government do maintain their sovereignty in law'.
Almost all the 3.6million EU citizens currently living in Britain will have qualified for residency by the time Brexit is complete, according to The Social Market Foundation. Its report was based on the assumption Article 50 is triggered next year and takes two years. 
She was not the only Remainer to throw a party on EU referendum night, but how particularly flat the atmosphere must have fallen for Baroness Wheatcroft at her £1.5million Westminster home.
'She was expecting it to be a celebration, but it really must have been pretty miserable,' said one House of Lords source yesterday.
The Tory peer had nailed her colours firmly to the mast as a cheerleader for the moneyed Metropolitan elite.
Before the vote, Baroness Wheatcroft, 64, wrote in the Evening Standard: 'The statistics … all point in the same direction – being part of the single market brings financial benefits to Britain.'
Despite the majority of Britons voting to leave the EU, the Baroness – a lifelong Tory who embraced the Cameron regime – appears intent on doing all she can to derail Brexit. Yesterday she publicly discussed options to 'revisit' the referendum result.
So who is Baroness Wheatcroft, of Blackheath in the London Borough of Greenwich, to use the full title she acquired in 2010?
Born Patience Jane Wheatcroft in Chesterfield, she was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Tamworth and the College of Technology, Chesterfield.
She graduated from the University of Birmingham with a degree in law, but pursued a highly successful career in journalism instead.
The mother of three lists her recreations in Who's Who as skiing, opera and theatre.
The House of Lords register of interests shows she is a non-executive director of car manufacturer Fiat Chrysler, for which she received an annual fee and 'other compensation' worth a total of £171,655 last year, according to the firm's annual report.
She is a non-executive director of wealth management firm St James's Place, for which she received a salary and fees of £58,200 and benefits of £1,788 last year, according to its annual report.
Beginning as a City reporter on the Daily Mail in the mid-1970s, she moved to the Sunday Times and then the Times, as deputy City Editor. She was later deputy City Editor of the Mail on Sunday, then Business and City Editor of The Times, where former colleagues remember her as a confidante of Rupert Murdoch.
She became Editor of the Sunday Telegraph in 2006 resigning 18 months later, before made Editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe in 2009. She stood down when she was made a peer.
Labour MP David Lammy called on Parliament to 'stop this madness' and to vote against the decision to leave the EU. In a statement on his Twitter feed, the former minister said: 'Wake up. We do not have to do this.' 
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, said his party would not 'roll over and give up' over the issue, pledging to fight the next general election on a manifesto promise to take Britain back into the EU.
Jeremy Corbyn opened the door to Labour backing a second referendum on EU membership last week as he prepared to launch his campaign to cling on as party leader.
Aides said that although Mr Corbyn 'respects' the outcome of the referendum, he believes the final exit deal will require 'some form of democratic accountability'.
The Labour leader is a lifelong Eurosceptic who called for Brexit to be triggered immediately the day after last month's historic vote to leave.
His half-hearted leadership of the Labour campaign to keep Britain in the EU enraged pro-remain MPs and helped trigger the attempted coup against his leadership.
Rival Owen Smith has already called for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal. At the weekend, he said: 'I don't think we should accept that we're on a definite path out.'
With most Labour members backing EU membership, Mr Corbyn, who launches his leadership campaign against Mr Smith today, now appears to be shifting towards backing a second vote. 

 
Labour should not ‘wreck for wrecking’s sake’ over Brexit, a former minister said yesterday.
Caroline Flint said some of her fellow Labour MPs were seeking to ‘delay the inevitable’ by blocking the Government’s Great Repeal Bill which begins its passage through Parliament this week.
Keir Starmer, the party’s Brexit spokesman, yesterday said they would try to vote down the legislation unless ministers made a string of concessions.
But Miss Flint, who campaigned for Remain, said the party had a duty to respect the referendum result and allow the legislation to pass. ‘There are some colleagues who want to think of ways they can delay the inevitable,’ she said.
‘There are legitimate questions to be asked – that’s fair enough – but I am not going to be involved in wrecking for wrecking’s sake.’
Brexit Secretary David Davis last night warned that failure to pass the legislation would lead to massive uncertainty for business when the UK leaves the EU.
Labour also continued to shift its position on Brexit, with Sir Keir directly contradicting the party’s deputy leader Tom Watson, who had said Labour would be happy to see Britain stay within the single market permanently, meaning free movement would be preserved. 
Last month, Sir Keir said Labour wanted to stay in the single market and customs union during a lengthy transition from the EU, despite Jeremy Corbyn having said it was essential to leave both.
Asked about the change yesterday Sir Keir said it was ‘not a U-turn, but a development of our policy’.
The Great Repeal Bill, now known as the EU Withdrawal Bill, will repeal the European Communities Act, which enshrines the supremacy of EU law in this country.
What is the EU Withdrawal Bill?
It is designed to smooth the path to Britain’s exit from the EU by transferring thousands of Brussels regulations into British law so that they will continue to operate on the day we leave in March 2019.
Why is Labour opposed to it?
Labour claims the legislation does not give enough guarantees on issues such as the future of workers’ rights and says there is not enough opportunity for MPs to scrutinise it.
Are the Tories united?
Almost all Tory MPs are expected to back the legislation when they vote on it for the first time next Monday. But Tory whips fear Remainers could back Labour on some issues.
What are Henry VIII powers?
These allow ministers to change primary laws without full scrutiny from Parliament. Some Tories say this is a massive power grab. But ministers insist the use of the powers will be limited.
What happens if the Bill fails?
Ministers warn failure to pass the legislation would bring chaos. Chunks of existing law would cease to have force on the day after Brexit, causing huge uncertainty for firms and individuals. Some fear it would make it impossible to deliver Brexit, and could bring down the Government. 
But, in a mammoth exercise, it also transposes 40 years of EU regulations into British law in order to ease the UK’s exit.
Without it, individuals and businesses will face legal uncertainty the day after Brexit when EU law ceases to operate here. Mr Davis said of Labour: ‘They know this Bill is necessary – they are taking the most cynical approach.’ 
He sought to ease the concerns of some Tory MPs over the use of ‘Henry VIII’ powers to change British law to match EU regulations. He said that the powers were necessary because of the short time available before leaving the EU.
Tory whips are pressuring Remainers in their own ranks to fall into line – warning that the Government could fall if the legislation fails to pass, potentially ushering Jeremy Corbyn into No 10.
The pressure sparked anger from pro-Remain former minister Anna Soubry, who said: ‘Any suggestion that this is any way treacherous or supporting Jeremy Corbyn is outrageous.
‘It amounts to a trouncing of democracy and people will not accept it.’ MPs will vote on the principle of the legislation a week today, when ministers are hopeful it will pass.
But the Government faces a gruelling autumn, as Parliament goes through the huge stretch of legislation line by line.
Ministers fear Tory rebels are looking for areas to side with Labour and defeat the Government. 
But they have also begun quietly courting Eurosceptic Labour MPs who believe the party is wrong to try to stop Brexit.
Sir Keir has demanded a string of concessions over the Repeal Bill, including a commitment that the Government will continue to implement new EU laws on workers’ rights after we leave the 28-state bloc.
He confirmed Labour would oppose the legislation if the concessions are refused. 
Donald Tusk has hinted that the EU could approve a further Brexit delay after Theresa May once again asked for more time. 
The president of the European Council called for 'patience' as Mrs May seeks to agree a Brexit plan with Labour which can win Parliament's backing.
Tusk said that 'we don't know what the end result will be', with Britain's future still uncertain just 10 days before a possible cliff-edge exit. 
The PM said she will ask for a further extension to the Brexit process to allow the UK to leave the European Union 'in a timely and orderly way'. 
However EU leaders including Emmanuel Macron have signalled that Brussels would require a good reason for a further extension.   
Also tonight, the European Parliament's Guy Verhofstadt welcomed Mrs May's move towards a compromise, saying: 'Better late than never'. 
Macron lashed out at the crisis in Westminster warning that the EU could not 'be held hostage' to the Brexit crisis and suggested that the UK might not get a delay to Brexit.
Welcoming Irish premier Leo Varadkar to Paris, the French president warned that Brussels would be 'open' to a further extension to Article 50 only if it was accompanied by firm plans for its use.
Speaking alongside Mr Varadkar at the Elysee Palace he said credible justifications for an Article 50 extension could include an election, second referendum or alternative proposals for the future relationship, such as a customs union.
But he warned: 'A long extension involving the participation of the UK in European elections and European institutions is far from evident and certainly not (to be taken) for granted.
'Our priority shall be the good functioning of the EU and the single market. The EU cannot sustainably be the hostage to the solution to a political crisis in the UK.'
He added: 'We cannot spend the coming months sorting out yet again the terms of our divorce and dealing with the past.' 
Mr Varadkar trod a similar line, telling reporters: 'I'd like to talk about what we can do to assist the Prime Minister to secure the ratification of Withdrawal Agreement, including the backstop.
'Recognising that the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be opened, but if the UK changes red lines we could make changes to the declaration on the future relationship.
'Also we'll need to consider how we may respond to any request for a long extension, that will involve UK participating in EU elections and we want to avoid a rolling extension, so any extension must have a clear purpose and plan.
'We'll need to talk about what we will do in the event of a no-deal, which will be particularly difficult for Ireland, and from our point of view, we'll want to pursue our twin objectives, to protect the Good Friday Agreement on which peace in Northern Ireland is based and protect the integrity of the single market and customs union, which Ireland's economic model has been based for decades.'
MPs led by Yvette Cooper had earlier launched an audacious attempt to force Theresa May to ask the EU for another extension to Article 50 to after April 12 if her deal fails to pass first.
Rebel backbenchers seem to have abandoned hopes of holding a third round of so-called indicative votes on Wednesday, after two previous votes on Brexit alternatives chosen by backbenchers ended in deadlock.
'We are all running out of time. There is only 10 days until the danger is we crash out with no deal at all,' she told Sky News. 
'We have been trying to condense into two days what should really have been done by the Prime Minister two years ago.
'There is too much of a game of brinkmanship going on, everyone just wants to leave this until the final couple of hours and hope that someone else blinks first. 

WEDNESDAY APRIL 10: EU SUMMIT
Another summit with EU leaders – where May will ask for a new delay beyond April 12. 
May's new plan is to strike a cross-party consensus in London and persuade EU leaders it means the deal can be delivered in time for Brexit on May 22.
She may have to accept a longer extension that means holding EU elections, as Brussels has made clear this is a red line - and will take a decision on delay without Britain and it must be unanimous. 
EU officials including Michel Barnier have warned that the risk of an accidental No Deal is increasing if May arrives with no plan.
THURSDAY APRIL 11: PM'S FACES MPs
Theresa May will return from Brussels with a likely nine to 12 month extension and will outline her plans in the the Commons in the wake of the EU summit.
FRIDAY APRIL 12: BREXIT DAY
Britain is due to leave the EU without a deal on this date if no delay is agreed. 
'That is a really dangerous way to make decisions, it's a really high-risk game with the future of the country.'  
Earlier in Brussels EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier had warned that a no-deal withdrawal was becoming more likely by the day.
The Prime Minister is gathering her top team for crisis talks in Downing Street after MPs again failed to find a majority for a series of alternatives to her Brexit deal.
A call for a customs union with the EU was rejected by just three votes, while a demand for a second referendum was defeated by 12 and a Norway-style deal put forward by Nick Boles by 21.
Mr Barnier said the UK now had two options, quit the EU without a deal, or seek an extension to Article 50.
Speaking in Brussels, Mr Barnier said: 'If the UK Parliament does not vote in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement in the coming days only two options would remain.
'Leaving without an agreement or requesting a longer extension of the Article 50 period.' 
Mr Barnier said the UK now had two options, quit the EU without a deal, or seek an extension to Article 50.
Speaking in Brussels, Mr Barnier said: 'If the UK Parliament does not vote in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement in the coming days only two options would remain.
'Leaving without an agreement or requesting a longer extension of the Article 50 period.'
He added: 'No deal was never our desired or intended scenario.
'But the EU is now prepared.'
He said no deal 'becomes day after day more likely'.
Mr Barnier said: 'The UK may ask for another extension. Such an extension would carry significant risks for the EU.
'Therefore a strong justification would be needed.
'We have always said that we can accept a customs union, or relationship along the style of the Norway model.
'In fact, however, the Political Declaration today can accommodate all of these options already.
'It leaves the door open for a variety of outcomes.
'But if the UK so wishes we are ready to rework the Political Declaration.'
The European Parliament's Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt said last night's failure to agree a way forward in the House of Commons meant 'a hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable'.
He suggested that Wednesday, when MPs may have a third attempt at reaching a majority, was the 'last chance to break the deadlock or face the abyss'.
After a debate disrupted by semi-naked climate change protesters in the public gallery, 'indicative votes' were again held in an attempt to establish what outcome might have majority support among MPs following a similar process last week.
MPs have control of proceedings in the Commons for a third time on Wednesday, but Speaker John Bercow said it was not yet clear what debates and votes will be staged.
The mastermind of the plan, Conservative former minister Sir Oliver Letwin, is expected to set out his proposals on Tuesday.
Theresa May will jet to Brussels today for a final crunch meeting on the Brexit talks - as her divorce deal faces a growing backlash abroad.
The Prime Minister will hold talks with EU President Jean-Claude Juncker as she scrambles to close her Brexit divorce deal.
Before she left the embattled PM was told the Government’s chief whip she needs to wring fresh concessions from Brussels this week if she is to get her Brexit deal through Parliament.
A Tory source said Julian Smith has privately told the Prime Minister the deal risks being voted down unless she can extract new concessions in the final days of talks.
The deal is due to be signed off by EU leaders at a crunch Brussels summit on Sunday.
The source said: ‘The chief whip’s view is that fear of no deal will not be enough to win this one. 
'The numbers are terrible and he needs something sufficiently different from what people currently think they are voting for in order to get this through.’
Mrs May has quelled a threatened Cabinet revolt over her plan, as Brexiteers in her senior ministerial team backed off from quitting today.
But she is facing fresh pressure from France, Germany and Spain, who are trying to squeeze yet more concessions out of Britain in the final stages of talks. 
Mrs May is pushing for a draft ‘political statement’ on the UK’s future relationship with Europe to be fleshed out this week to make it clear that Britain will get a good deal in return for the £39billion divorce payment.
Some allies of the Prime Minister believe that the fear of no deal will ultimately persuade MPs to reluctantly back her Brexit proposals when Parliament holds a ‘meaningful vote’ next month.
But Mr Smith is said to be concerned that opposition to the deal is hardening. Some 53 Eurosceptic MPs have now signed up to the ‘Stand up for Brexit’ campaign which commits them to voting down any deal based on Mrs May’s Chequers proposals.
A senior EU diplomat last night said the final deal would be published today, after ‘fine tuning’ talks between Mrs May and Mr Juncker.
The source said the document was expected to run to about 20 pages. ‘Juncker and May will sort it out,’ the insider added.
France demanding access to fish in Britain's waters even after Brexit and want the UK to agree to sign up to the bloc's tough environmental standards - including changes made in the future after Brexit.
While Spain has threatened to bock the Brexit divorce deal in a row about Gibraltar - a British overseas territory which the Spanish try to lay claim to.
The PM tried to calm Brexiteer jitters by reviving plans for a technological solution to the Irish border problem during an extended Cabinet discussion. 
The so-called ‘Max Fac’ plan was dumped at Chequers in July, but Downing Street said the deal with Brussels could allow for future technology to remove the need for border checks. 
The suggestion was said to have been welcomed ‘positively’ by some senior Eurosceptics. 
Bank of England governor Mark Carney threw his weight behind the PM’s Brexit deal and warned of disruption if the agreement collapses.
France demanded further concessions on fishing, saying the EU had to make it clear that Brexit would have ‘consequences’ for the UK. 
Spain threatened to veto the entire deal unless Mrs May agrees concessions on Gibraltar. 
It also predicted Brexit would break up the UK and said Scotland could join the EU as an independent nation. 
Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez told a business conference in Madrid today: 'As a country, we can't conceive that what will happen with the future of Gibraltar will depend on a negotiation between Britain and the European Union.
'As a consequence, today, I regret to say that a pro-European government like Spain's would vote no to Brexit unless there are changes.' 
While German diplomats have also voiced objections to the deal amid warnings it could give Britain a competitive advantage.
It means that while Mrs May appears to have quelled a fresh Cabinet revolt over her Brexit plan, she still aces the political battle of her life to get the EU and Parliament to sign up to it.
It comes after Andrea Leadsom cracked jokes in today's Cabinet meeting during 'good natured' talks that saw Brexiteers back off from quitting.
The Commons leader quipped she did not like pizza during the two and a half hour meeting - a joke about the secret meetings she convened of Brexiteers ahead of earlier Cabinet meetings. 
Mrs May briefed her ministers on the final days of the negotiations taking place this week to hammer out the shape of the future UK-EU partnership.
Ministers did not discuss the details of the divorce deal signed off at an acrimonious five-hour meeting last week.
New Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay updated ministers on the latest preparations for deal or no deal before Mrs May led talks on the remaining issues with Brussels.  
Following the Cabinet meeting, Justice Secretary David Gauke joked that it had been 'tense', but later described the mood as 'good'.
The Justice Secretary apologised for arriving late to an event in central London on the rehabilitation of ex-offenders, explaining that he had come directly from the weekly meeting.
He said it 'certainly gives me an understanding of incarceration in tense conditions'. 
Asked if there was still a feeling among any Cabinet members that Mrs May's withdrawal plan for Brexit could be re-negotiated, he said: 'It's not about re-opening the withdrawal agreement, it's about pursuing some of the options that we have.'
Mrs Leadsom told the Cabinet 'Prime Minister I don't even like pizza', the Telegraph said. 
Allies of the PM have suggested the issue could be brought back to Parliament for a second time in an effort to force the package through. 
In a glimmer of light for Mrs May, the Eurosceptic plot to oust her has descended into chaos as Brexiteers fight among themselves over tactics.
The Prime Minister appears to have staved off an immediate threat to her leadership after the number of confirmed Tory no-confidence letters stalled at 26 - well short of the 48 needed to trigger a full vote.
The failure to reach the key threshold, days after Jacob Rees-Mogg declared an all-out attack on Mrs May's Brexit deal, sparked bitter recriminations. 
One senior MP who has submitted a letter jibed: 'Where are these great titans of Brexit? The answer is, they've bottled it.' 
Eurosceptics including Mr Rees-Mogg and David Davis tried to get on the front foot again today by holding a press conference pushing for a looser Canada-style relationship with the EU.
France is threatening to scupper Theresa May's Brexit deal unless it can have rights to fish in UK waters after the country's exit.
French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly piling pressure on EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier to squeeze more concessions out of the UK.
The Times has seen diplomatic notes that suggest France wants a 'guarantee that there should be a fisheries agreement' allowing French and other European fleets access to British waters.
The PM has vowed to take Britain out of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) , which gives EU countries the rights to fish in Britain's waters.
British fisherman have long hated the deal, which they say have cut into their stocks and trade. 
Mrs May would fuel more Brexiteer fury at her already controversial divorce deal if she gave ground on the issue. 
But Mr Rees-Mogg humiliatingly had to admit the coup appeared to be failing - conceding that it all looked a but 'Dad's Army'. 
One of the problems facing the group is the lack of an obvious successor to Mrs May outside the Cabinet. 
Boris Johnson has made little secret of his ambitions - but Mr Davis, Dominic Raab are unlikely to clear the way for him. 
Plans for five Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers to issue an ultimatum to Mrs May over her Brexit deal this week also fizzled out, amid divisions over tactics.
Trade Secretary Liam Fox penned an article in support of the PM, while Michael Gove also said he backed her, and Chris Grayling is thought to be on board.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom and Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt are still thought to be mulling their positions - but the threat seems to have receded.   
Scottish Secretary David Mundell also issued a thinly veiled threat that he could go if the PM bows to EU demands on fishing rights. 
Downing Street said Cabinet had a two-and-a-half hour discussion on Brexit, but there was no significant dissent.
New Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay updated ministers on preparations for deal and no deal scenarios, and they talked about the future trade package being thrashed out in Brussels.
The Government’s ‘confidence and supply’ deal was on the brink of collapse after the Democratic Unionist Party failed to vote with the Conservatives on the Budget for the second night running in protest at the Brexit deal;
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell accused the Government of ‘falling apart’ after accepting Labour amendments to the Finance Bill rather than risk defeat at the hands of the DUP.
He insisted: ‘The Tories are in office but not in power. We’re watching a Government falling apart in front of us.’  
Theresa May won her Tory confidence vote after promising not to lead the party into the 2022 general election.
These are some of the leading contenders to replace her:
How did they vote on Brexit?
Led the Vote Leave campaign alongside Michael Gove.
What is their view now?
Hard line Brexiteer demanding a clean break from Brussels. The former foreign secretary is violently opposed to Theresa May's Chequers plan and a leading voice demanding a Canada-style trade deal.
What are their chances?
Mr Johnson's biggest challenge could be navigating the Tory leadership rules. 
He may be confident of winning a run-off among Tory members but must first be selected as one of the top two candidates by Conservative MPs. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave, with a second tier role campaigning for Vote Leave.
What is their view now?
Mr Raab was installed as Brexit Secretary to deliver the Chequers plan but sensationally resigned last month saying the deal was not good enough.
What are their chances?
His resignation from the Cabinet put rocket boosters under Mr Raab's chances, fuelling his popularity among the hardline Brexiteers. May struggle to overcome bigger beasts and better known figures. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain but kept a low profile in the referendum.
What is their view now?
Pro delivering Brexit and sceptical of the soft Brexit options.
What are their chances?
Probably the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet after his dramatic promotion to Home Secretary. Mr Javid has set himself apart from Mrs May on a series of policies, notably immigration.
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave 
What is their view now? 
He has said Theresa May's Chequers blueprint for Brexit is the 'right one for now'. But he recently suggested a future prime minister could alter the UK-EU relationship if they desired.
What are their chances? 
He came third in the first round of voting in 2016, trailing behind ultimate winner Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom. Mr Gove has said it is 'extremely unlikely' that he would stand again. But he popular in the party and is seen as an ideas man and a reformer by many, and he could change his mind if Theresa May is shown the door.
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain.
What is their view now?
The Foreign Secretary claims the EU Commission's 'arrogance' has made him a Brexiteer.
What are their chances?
Another top contender inside Cabinet, Mr Hunt's stock rose during his record-breaking stint at the Department of Health and won a major promotion to the Foreign Office after Mr Johnson's resignation. Widely seen as a safe pair of hands which could be an advantage if the contest comes suddenly. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave.
What is their view now?
Leave and a supporter of scrapping Mrs May's plan and pursuing a Canada-style trade deal with the EU.
What are their chances?
The favoured choice of many hard Brexiteers. Seen as a safer pair of hands than Mr Johnson and across the detail of the current negotiation after two years as Brexit Secretary. He could be promoted a caretaker to see through Brexit before standing down.
Unlikely to be the choice of Remain supporters inside the Tory Party - and has been rejected by the Tory membership before, in the 2005 race against David Cameron. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain. Represented Britain Stronger in Europe in the TV debates.
What is their view now?
Strongly remain and supportive of a second referendum - particularly given a choice between that and no deal.
What are their chances?
Popular among Conservative MPs as the voice of Cameron-style Toryism, Ms Rudd is still seen as a contender despite resigning amid the Windrush scandal - and she was boosted further by her return to Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary on Friday night. She is badly hampered by having a tiny majority in her Hastings constituency and would not be able to unite the Tory party in a sudden contest over the Brexit negotiation. 
How did they vote on Brexit? 
Leave.
What is their view now? 
Leave and recently branded Theresa May's Brexit U-turn a 'humiliation' which has left her deal 'defeated'. 
What are their chances? 
As chair of the European Research Group (ERG) bloc of Tory Eurosceptics he has been urging MPs to replace Mrs May for weeks. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave.
What is their view now?
Leave and subject of persistent rumour she could be the next to quit Cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit deal.
What are their chances?
Possible dark horse in the contest, Ms Mordaunt is not well known to the public but is seen as a contender in Westminster. Known to harbour deep concerns about Mrs May's Brexit deal, but has stopped short of resigning from Cabinet. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave.
What is their view now?
Ms Leadsom said in late November that she was backing the withdrawal agreement struck with Brussels because it 'delivered' on the referendum result. 
What are their chances? 
Leader of the Commons since June, Andrea Leadsom found herself at the centre of controversy in the 2016 leadership campaign when comments she made were interpreted as a claim that she would be a better PM than Mrs May because she was a mother. Asked recently whether Mrs May was the right person to be leading the country, she said she is 'at the moment'. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain. 
What is their view now?
Mr Williamson tweeted today: 'The Prime Minister has my full support. She works relentlessly hard for our country and is the best person to make sure we leave the EU on 29 March and continue to deliver our domestic agenda.' 
What are their chances?
He backed Remain in the referendum and pledged his support for Mrs May in the 2016 leadership contest but has since been mentioned as a potential future Tory leader. 
Theresa May's task of getting her Brexit deal past the House of Commons is looking near-impossible as opposition mounts.
The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs will happen on December 11 and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - as well as being the key to Mrs May' fate as PM.
But despite opinion polls suggesting the public might be coming round to her deal, there is little sign of a shift among politicians.
Remainers have been stepping up calls for a second referendum in the wake of Sam Gyimah's resignation as universities minister over the weekend - while Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have accused Mrs May of betrayal.   
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part.
The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, over 100 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No.
This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185.
This is how the House of Commons might break down:
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The Government (plus various hangers-on)
Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides.
There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'.
How many of them are there? 178.
What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss.
Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote
Who are they: The most hard line of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker.
How many of them are there: 26
What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Other Brexiteers in the ERG
Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson.
Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her.
How many of them are there? Around 50.
What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal.
This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic.
The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Remain including the People's Vote supporters
Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee.
How many of them are there: Maybe around 10.
What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no.
A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister.
Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists
Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy.
There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else.
How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal.
What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it.
It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work.
Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
The DUP
Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government.
They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union.
How many of them are there? 10.
What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea.
Labour Loyalists
Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders.
How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do.
What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum.
Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process.
The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal.
Labour Rebels
Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point.
How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal.
What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
Other Opposition parties
Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents.
How many of them are there? About 60 MPs.
How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. 
Theresa May tried to win over mutinous Brexiteers on Monday by hinting that technology could yet solve the Irish border problem.
The PM appeared to revive the so-called 'Max Fac' plan championed by Tory Eurosceptics as she tries to head off a bid to oust her.
Senior figures including Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson met Mrs May in Downing Street last night to push for the option to be re-considered.
Mrs May has seemingly promised to raise their latest ideas with Brussels. Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Paterson are among the Tory opponents of her deal who have not sent in letters of no-confidence in the PM.
However, the EU has previously dismissed the so-called 'Max Fac' solution as 'magical thinking'.
And there is no sign either Mrs May or Brussels are considering abandoning the 'backstop' proposal in the Withdrawal Agreement.
The EU have long insists that the backstop must apply unless and until another way of guaranteeing there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic is found.
The PM's official spokesman said of technological solutions to the border 'there are things that have been looked at'.
He pointed to the withdrawal agreement draft which says 'alternative arrangements' could be used to bring the backstop plan to an end.
The spokesman confirmed they could involve technical measures of the kind previously promoted as the 'maximum facilitation' solution, or Max Fac.
'The aim of all parties is to ensure there is no hard border,' the spokesman added.
The Brexit debate has plunged British politics into an agony of self-doubt.
After a year of political high drama and turbulence, and given the seeming parliamentary impasse over the Prime Minister’s deal, there are massive anxieties about the consequences of leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement in place.
Will it plunge us into an economic depression as some doom-mongers predict? Will prices rocket and essential goods be in short supply? Will there be riots on the streets as the ugly new social divisions opened up by Brexit play out?
I don’t doubt for one moment these concerns are wholly understandable and we are right to focus on them.
But we should also count our blessings. We are not the only country experiencing turmoil — and for many of our neighbours it is far worse.
Around Europe, many leaders are spending Christmas contemplating chaos and confusion politically, and widespread public dissatisfaction, growing unrest and even violence. For some, economic winter is already descending.
Harrowing
Indeed, I believe the continent of Europe confronts a growing crisis which could yet cause the collapse of the EU.
So whatever our recent troubles — and there are more to come — we should remind ourselves that unemployment now stands at 4.1 per cent, the lowest level since 1975, and we have a youth unemployment rate of just 11 per cent. Since 2009, we have enjoyed solid economic growth.
Compare this with Spain. Youth unemployment is just under 35 per cent — and more than a third of young people have never had a job. Moreover, this human tragedy is directly linked to Spain’s membership of the EU because the euro has rendered large tracts of the Spanish economy hopelessly uncompetitive.
Economically, Italy’s story is even more harrowing. Its economy is barely any bigger than it was 20 years ago, employment stands at 10.6 per cent and youth unemployment is 32.5 per cent. The national debt stands at almost €2.5 trillion — more than 130 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. That money will never be paid back and Italy is heading once more for bankruptcy.
No wonder so much of the country feels total fury at distant EU bureaucrats whom they believe — and with some justice — have condemned Italy to economic failure, let alone their incompetency on migration, which Italians feel they bear the brunt of.
In Greece, the birthplace of European democracy, an epic tragedy continues to play out: membership of the eurozone has wiped out business, jobs and entire industries that will take generations to recover.
Next, let’s look at fraud and corruption. We’ve had serious problems on this front here in Britain, not least among scores of MPs who infamously were found to have fiddled their expenses. And, yes, the occasional business executive is disgraced or goes to jail. But Britain is a remarkably honest country compared with the horror show that is the EU.
Take Malta, viewed by most Britons as a holiday paradise. Last year, a dark underside came to light with the murder of a journalist investigating government corruption, including the sale of EU passports to shady figures from the former Soviet bloc. Many believe Malta escapes sanction from Brussels because the country’s deeply compromised ruling elite can be relied on to do what the European Commission tells it to do.
Romania and Bulgaria are two other countries where corruption flourishes. The culture of greed and backhanders in these two former Iron Curtain nations helps explain the poverty and mass emigration to the rest of the EU. The problem is so flagrant that the Romanian government has sacked the EU-backed chief anti-corruption prosecutor.
As for concerns about law and order, well we have no reason to be complacent. London has seen 131 murders this year — an increase of 38 per cent (excluding deaths by terrorism) on 2014.
There is public anxiety about the ability of our police forces to deal with everyday crimes, while the goings-on at Gatwick last week — when the drone scare brought the airport to a standstill — did us few favours in PR terms.
Politicians were slow to react, while the police, military and intelligence services were made to look foolish.
But compare that with France, where for a sixth weekend on the trot, the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) fuel protesters took violent unrest to the streets. On Friday, the riots claimed their 10th victim.
The protests are about more than France; they are of existential importance to the EU because President Macron has become the poster boy for the European project as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s star starts to fade in Germany.
Macron’s response has so far been weak. He has responded with a mixture of police brutality and concessions to rioters which so far have not worked.
As for political stability in Europe, well therein lies the greatest crisis for the EU.
Fears
Here in Britain there have been warnings that the two-party system which has governed us for more than 200 years may collapse — damaged irreparably by the Brexit fall-out. And there are menacing signs that the far-Right racist parties are on the rise, all the more so now UKIP employs the thug Tommy Robinson as an adviser.
Others worry that the UK itself could break up with Brexit sparking the secession of Scotland. I don’t dismiss for one moment the reality of these fears — but consider that only Italy’s government, out of the EU’s Big Four (France, Germany, Spain), has strong support and a clear majority.
And that is for the so-called ‘government of change’ — made up of two populist parties — which has flouted EU edicts on a budget, and rails against immigration policies.
Consider also the bitter dispute between Madrid and the Catalan separatists, whose leaders either await trial at home or are in exile.
In Germany, social democracy is on the wane and the far-Right poses a menacing threat with the electoral successes of the popular nationalists of the neo-fascist Alliance for Germany party.
Even Belgium, the headquarters of the EU, is in a political shambles. Prime Minister Charles Michel resigned just before Christmas, leaving a vacuum, while concerns about chronic unemployment and immigration fester.
Daggers
Farther east, the situation is much more menacing with the rise of far-Right parties exploiting popular fears about immigration. Poland and Hungary, both at daggers drawn with Brussels, increasingly present a chilling authoritarian alternative to the EU model of liberal democratic politics.
Brexit confronts Europe with a fresh problem. As one of the biggest financial contributors to the EU, we have been essential for balancing the books.
At a time of economic stress, Germany, Holland and the other large contributors will refuse to pay more. However, supplicants such as Bulgaria and Romania will be furious at receiving less.
Elections are due next spring for the European Parliament and these may prove a shock to the EU elite as Right-wing parties score more significant gains. We will see new populist politicians emerge who make Nigel Farage look like a hand-wringing local vicar.
There is no question the EU is about to enter the greatest crisis in its 60-year history — and Brexit is a tiny part of it.
This is not a reason to gloat. Trouble among out closest neighbours will hurt us badly at home. We are entering truly troubling times, but we should keep a sense of perspective this Christmas and remind ourselves we have every reason to feel pride in the stability, prosperity and decency of 21st-century Britain.
Downing Street today denied it was preparing to use the Army in a no deal Brexit as ministers were slammed for failing to prepare for failure in the EU talks.
Theresa May's official spokesman insisted there were 'no plans' to deploy troops after reports claimed contingency plans had been drawn up to have soldiers distribute food and medicine if the UK's ports collapse into chaos.
Brexiteers have reacted furiously to escalating claims of what might happen to Britain if negotiations with Brussels fail ahead of exit day on March 29, 2019. 
As well as claims they would use troops, ministers have been forced to insist there will be 'adequate' food supplies while the NHS has made plans to stockpile medicines.
A collapse into no deal would see Britain going straight to World Trade Organisation rules on trade - meaning thousands of shipments in and out of Britain every day would need to be checked by customs controls instead of waved through under EU rules. 
Eurosceptic ringleader Jacob Rees-Mogg last night derided 'fretful, weak and incompetent' ministers for failing to put in place no deal contingency plans without frightening voters.
The Government is due to publish around 70 notices on how different sectors should prepare for a no deal Brexit in August and September.
Mrs May's spokesman today said: 'It is about making sensible preparations so in the event of a no deal scenario, this would be implemented in an orderly way. 
'We have been clear that it is in the interests of not just ourselves to get a good deal. In the event of no-deal there will of course be consequences for the European Union.
'There are no plans to involve the Army in this.'  
The Prime Minister is on holiday in the Italian Lakes, leaving her de facto deputy David Lidington as the senior Government figure in the UK.
Downing Street defended ministers taking holidays despite the tense state of the Brexit talks, saying: 'The Prime Minister and other ministers are always fully engaged with their briefs. 
Mr Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs, said ministers were using scare tactics to bolster support for the Prime Minister's Chequers deal.
'The PM has said for a long time that no deal is better than a bad deal,' he added. 'If the Government cannot now show that it can deliver a workable deal based on WTO terms then it is not competent.
'It is not a good look for the Government to appear fretful, weak and incompetent, but this seems to be the way it is approaching the idea of leaving on WTO terms.'
On the use of the Army, one minister told the Sunday Times that this was common in civil contingency planning, adding: 'That's not frightening the horses, it's just being utterly realistic.'
But a source familiar with no deal planning at the Department for Exiting the EU said there had never been any discussion about calling in troops, suggesting the briefings came from standard civil contingency plans drawn up over many years by the Cabinet Office. 
Ministers had planned to release a series of low-key technical notes over the summer setting out preparations for the possibility the UK could leave the EU without a deal in March next year.
But Government sources last night said the documents were likely to be released together in late August.
Steve Baker, who resigned as a Brexit minister over the Chequers plan, said there appeared to be a deliberate attempt to undermine public confidence in the credibility of a no deal departure.
Mr Baker said last night: 'I am deeply concerned by the Government's communications strategy around no deal. 
Labour MP Frank Field remains defiant after Left-wing activists in his constituency passed a vote of no confidence in him for siding with the Government over Brexit.
The Eurosceptic former minister was censured by Birkenhead constituency Labour Party at the weekend after he helped prevent a Government defeat over the customs union this month.
The far-Left Momentum group has called for the deselection of Mr Field and three other Labour MPs. 
But Mr Field, speaking after the vote of no confidence, insisted he had acted on behalf of 'millions of Labour voters – mainly in parts of the country that have long been neglected by the elites – who gave politicians a clear instruction to take the country out of the EU'.
Mr Field's constituency on the Wirral voted in favour of Leave.
The vote of no confidence carries no formal weight but could pave the way for deselection.
Fellow Labour Brexiteer Kate Hoey has vowed to fight on after a similar vote of no confidence from activists at her local party in Vauxhall. 
Eurosceptics John Mann and Graham Stringer also face potential censure after Momentum's national co-ordinator Laura Parker said there was 'no room for Labour MPs who side with the reactionary Tory establishment'.
Mr Field said during his 39 years as an MP he had 'always voted to free our country from the tightening stranglehold of the EU' – adding that he had done so for most of that period 'alongside Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell'.
'As I said to the PM I wanted to see the credibility and feasibility of our plans reinforced to the public in order to give reassurance.
'Instead we seem to be seeing long-standing civil contingencies plans being trotted out in the run-up to dumping out a string of technical notices on a single day, shortly before MPs return to Westminster.
'This doesn't seem to me a sincere way to make the unwanted scenario of a no deal exit a credible and feasible proposition.'
Mrs May's chief Brexit adviser Oliver Robbins, the architect of the Chequers plan, is also accused of trying to kill off the option of leaving without a deal.
Reports claimed that he has refused to highlight the substantial impact a no deal Brexit would have on EU economies during discussions with Brussels, despite a Government assessment finding the overall cost to the EU would be 'far greater' than that to the UK.
'Robbins simply refused to raise it,' a source said.
One insider told the Daily Mail that the Department for Exiting the EU had drawn up plans for an advertising campaign on the continent highlighting the dangers of a no deal Brexit for key sectors of the European economy such as farming and cars – only to have the idea blocked. 
Government sources last night denied there was a deliberate attempt to scare voters into accepting the Chequers plan.
One source said the delay in publishing the technical notices was because they were not yet ready, rather than an attempt to influence MPs as they return to Westminster after the summer.
'This is not Project Fear,' the source said. 'Project Fear was a series of predictions about things. This is a very pragmatic look at things that need to be done if we arrive at a certain outcome. 
'We remain confident that we will reach a good deal.'
In a boost to the Prime Minister's chances of reaching a deal, it emerged over the weekend that Brexit has been put on the agenda of an informal EU summit in September.
Downing Street said Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz agreed that Britain's departure from the EU would be discussed at the European Council meeting being hosted by his country, which currently holds the EU presidency, on September 20.
That could allow Mrs May to prepare the ground for an October meeting of EU leaders where the details of the future relationship would be thrashed out. 
Downing Street today categorically ruled out extending the Brexit transition period beyond 2020 after a Cabinet minister warned trade talks with the EU would not be 'straightforward'. 
Under the terms of Boris Johnson's divorce deal, the EU and the UK have until the end of next year to hammer out the details of their post-Brexit trading relationship.  
Critics believe there is no chance of the two sides getting everything done in such a short space of time and the divorce deal does include the option of a delay of up to two years. 
But Number 10 insisted this morning that the December 31, 2020 deadline will be stuck to after Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey appeared to suggest it would be tough to meet. 
Mr Johnson said in an interview broadcast yesterday that he could 'see no reason whatever why we should extend the transition period' - but he did not give a guarantee. 
However, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman was unequivocal on the subject this morning. 
‘The government will not be extending the transition period,’ the spokesman said.
Asked why that was the case, he said: ‘Because the Prime Minister believes that we will have a good trade deal agreed with the EU by December 2020.
‘The Brexit process has been going on for long enough.’
He added: ‘Both parties are committed to negotiating at speed to hit that deadline.’
The Withdrawal Agreement Mr Johnson struck with Brussels and which he is campaigning to implement so the UK leaves the EU by January 31 states the transition period will end on December 31, 2020. 
It also contains an extension provision which states the trade talks deadline can be pushed back by 'up to one or two years'. 
International trade agreements often take years to complete - a new pact between the EU and Japan took the best part of six years to negotiate. 
But the government believes the deal between the EU and the UK will be much quicker because the two sides are starting from the same point on tariffs and rules. 
Asked to rule out an extension yesterday, Mr Johnson said: 'We start our negotiations in a state of perfect alignment. We already have zero tariffs and zero quotas. 
'We already have full regulatory and legislative alignment. So the negotiations, in principle, should be extremely simple.' 
Pushed on whether there could be an extension, he said: 'I see no reason whatever why we should extend the transition period.' 
Mr Johnson's claim that talks with the EU should be 'extremely simple' was seemingly contradicted by Ms Coffey. 
She told Sky News: 'Let’s put it this way: We are starting off with the same rules, with the same tariffs, it should be straightforward to try and agree that deal.
‘Nothing ever is straightforward, I think we have learnt that from the last three years, but candidly it would be far more straightforward with Boris Johnson in charge with a majority Conservative government so we can actually get on with Brexit and actually allow us time to focus even more on people’s priorities like the NHS.’
Ms Coffey added that while the Withdrawal Agreement contained the option for an extension 'I don’t see any reason why we need to do that'.
Brexiteers believe the December 31, 2020 deadline must be stuck to so that the UK's departure from the EU is finally done and dusted. 
But there are growing fears among pro-EU MPs that the transition period could end without a trade agreement in place. 
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said Number 10's commitment to stick to the December deadline was a 'clear admission from the Tories that they are preparing to jump through the no deal trapdoor next year'. 
The Irish PM has ramped up the rhetoric by threatening to block planes from flying over his country to the UK if the EU's demands are not met.
Leo Varadkar said Britain could not expect to 'use other people's sky' after leaving the bloc if there is no deal on future relations.
But the sabre-ratting was derided by critics who pointed out that airspace rules are governed by an entirely separate international treaty - and most flights to Europe go over British airspace. 
Hugh Bennett, a Brexit campaigner, posted an image showing the vast majority of Irish flights heading over the UK.
Writing on Twitter, he added: '[The] Taoiseach says he won't let UK planes fly over Ireland in the event of a "hard Brexit".
'Hope he likes going on holiday to Lanzarotte because he's going to have trouble flying anywhere else.'
He also pointed out that a key part of the airspace to the west of Ireland is controlled by the UK - again proving his threat toothless.
The row comes as Theresa May is visiting the Irish border today for talks with local businesses and residents as she seeks to shift the biggest obstacle to a deal with Brussels. 
The jibe from Mr Varadkar underlines the increasingly entrenched position being adopted by Brussels in the negotiations.
The EU has demanded Britain chooses between two options for avoiding a hard Irish border - an outcome both sides say they do not want.
The first option would see a 'Norway plus' arrangement with the UK remaining in the single market and customs union - accepting free movement and obeying Brussels rules without having any say in setting them.
The other option is a limited Canada-style free trade agreement for the British mainland - but Northern Ireland would effectively remain a part of the EU. 
Mrs May has said both blueprints are totally unacceptable, and put forward a compromise plan that would see the UK follow rules on goods and collect some tariffs on behalf of Brussels to avoid border friction. 
Eurocrats regard the ideas as 'cherry picking'.
Mrs May will meet business representatives on the Northern Ireland side of the border this afternoon.
Tomorrow she is due to deliver a speech in Belfast focusing on how her vision of Brexit, outlined in last week's Government white paper, will impact Northern Ireland and the border.
But Mr Varadkar upped the ante last night by telling journalists 'planes will not fly' if Mrs May did not convince the EU there will be no hard border.
'The situation at the moment is that the United Kingdom is part of the single European sky, and if they leave the EU they are not and that does mean that if there was a no deal hard Brexit next March the planes would not fly and Britain would be an island in many ways, and that is something that they need to think about.
'You can not have your cake and eat it. You can't take back your waters and then expect to use other people's sky.'
He added: 'In the unlikely event that we have a hard Brexit next March, with no deal, I think every country will struggle to put in place the necessary infrastructure and customs and veterinary officials in their ports and airports. It won't be just us.'
Ahead of her arrival, Mrs May said: 'I look forward to hearing views from businesses on the border in Northern Ireland on our departure from the European Union.
'I fully recognise how their livelihoods, families and friends rely on the ability to move freely across the border to trade, live and work on a daily basis.
'That's why we have ruled out any kind of hard border. Daily journeys will continue to be seamless and there will be no checks or infrastructure at the border to get in the way of this.
'I've also been clear we will not accept the imposition of any border down the Irish Sea and we will preserve the integrity of the UK's internal market and Northern Ireland's place within it.'
Mrs May will also hold talks with the region's political parties on the two-day trip, with separate bilateral meetings scheduled across both days.
Northern Ireland has been without a properly functioning devolved government for 18 months due to a bitter fallout between the two biggest parties - Sinn Fein and the Conservatives' confidence and supply partners at Westminster, the Democratic Unionists. 
MONEY
Leaving without a deal would mean an immediate Brexit on March 29 after tearing up a 21-month transition agreement. This included giving £39billion to the EU, which ministers would no longer have to pay, a House of Lords report claims.
GOODS TRADE
The Chequers agreement effectively proposed keeping Britain in the single market for goods and agriculture to preserve 'frictionless' trade and protect the economy.
Customs checks on cross-Channel freight would cause havoc at ports, hitting food supplies and other goods.
Even Brexiteers admit to a big economic impact in the short term. Britain could waive customs checks on EU produce to free up backlogs, but would Brussels do the same?
TARIFFS
All EU-UK trade in goods is free of tariffs in the single market.
Trade would revert to World Trade Organisation rules. The EU would charge import tariffs averaging 2-3 per cent on goods, but up to 60 per cent for some agricultural produce, damaging UK exporters.
We have a trade deficit with the EU of £71billion – they sell us more than we sell them – so the EU overall would lose out.
German cars and French agriculture would be worst hit, as would UK regions with large export industries. Tariffs could also mean price inflation. But UK trade with the EU is 13 per cent of GDP and falling compared to non-EU trade, which generates a surplus and is likely to grow. The outlook would be boosted by Britain's ability to strike trade deals.
IMMIGRATION
The UK would immediately have control over its borders and freedom to set migration policy on all EU migrants.
UK nationals would likely lose their right to live and work in the EU. There would be legal uncertainty for the 1.3million Britons living in the EU and the 3.7million EU nationals here.
CITY OF LONDON
Many firms have already made contingency plans for no deal, but there would probably be a significant degree of disruption and an economic hit.
Ministers would be likely to take an axe to tax and regulations to preserve the UK's economic advantage.
AEROPLANES
Fears of planes not being able to fly appear far-fetched – unless the EU is determined to destroy both business and tourism. Rules to keep planes in the air are likely to be agreed. The EU has many deals with non-EU countries as part of its Open Skies regime.
EUROPEAN COURTS
Britain would be free from the edicts of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and all EU laws. Parliament would be sovereign.
FARMING & FISHING
THE UK would quit the Common Agricultural Policy, which gives farmers and landowners £3billion in subsidies. Ministers would come under pressure to continue a form of subsidy.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Northern Ireland would be outside the EU, with no arrangements on how to manage 300 crossing points on the 310-mile border.
The EU would want Ireland to impose customs and other checks to protect the bloc's border – something it has said it will not do. No deal could blow a hole in the Good Friday Agreement, with pressure on all sides to find a compromise.
History has been made today after the Queen gave Royal Assent to the Brexit Bill - clearing the way for Theresa May to trigger the divorce.
Speaker John Bercow told the Commons that the monarch has formally signed off the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill.
But although the PM now has the powers to invoke the two-year Article 50 process for leaving the Brussels club, she has indicated she will wait until the end of the month to do so.
The legislation's addition to the statute books - becoming an Act - comes after weeks of wrangling in parliament as Remoaner MPs and peers fought to water down the Bill.
Mrs May and Brexit Secretary David Davis successfully fended off attempts to amend the text of the two-clause legislation in the Commons.
But when it moved to the unelected Lords, where the government does not have a majority, Labour and Liberal Democrat peers joined with crossbenchers and a few Tory rebels to pass two changes.
The resistance was finally overcome on Monday night, when MPs overturned the amendments - which had sought to force Mrs May to guarantee rights for EU nationals already in the UK and pledge a 'meaningful' vote in parliament on a final Brexit deal.
The House of Lords then finally backed down from a confrontation with the elected chamber, allowing the Bill to pass unchanged.
Mrs May has said that the invoking of Article 50 will be a 'defining moment' for Britain. 
Mr Davis said today that the government now had the power to 'deliver on the will of the British people'.
'By the end of the month we will invoke Article 50, allowing us to start our negotiations to build a positive new partnership with our friends and neighbours in the European Union, as well as taking a step out into the world as a truly Global Britain,' he said.
Change Britain Chair Gisela Stuart said: 'This is a simple yet significant step in implementing the referendum result and respecting the decision of the British people to leave the EU. 
'Brexit will allow us to begin the process of national renewal, enabling us to build a robust economy, more cohesive communities and to make politicians more accountable to the public.'
In a sign of rising tensions, European Council president Donald Tusk yesterday lashed out at the PM for 'intimidation' tactics.  
The PM has declared her readiness to walk away from negotiations without an agreement, insisting that 'no deal is better than a bad deal'.
Addressing the EU parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Tusk said the bloc would not be 'intimated by threats'. 
He said the remaining 27 members want to 'remain friends', but he also insisted the EU would not cave into pressure from the UK. 
He added: 'I want to be clear that a 'no deal scenario' would be bad for everyone, but above all for the UK, because it would leave a number of issues unresolved.'
Some EU leaders have also demanded that the UK be punished for the decision to leave the Brussels club - although this would be devastating to their own economies. 

Without a formal trade deal, the UK would fall back on international trade rules set by the World Trade Organisation, which would increase trade tariffs on British exports.  

But Mr Davis has played down concerns about quitting the EU without a deal, saying it was 'not as frightening as some people think'.
Appearing before a committee of MPs, Mr Davis played down the suggestion by Remain MPs that it would be a catastrophe.
He said the Government had not conducted a formal economic assessment of the consequences of leaving without a deal. That sparked accusations that ministers were 'driving towards a cliff-edge with a blindfold on'.
Mr Davis said it might be a year before he could offer any figures on what 'no deal' would mean. He added: 'It's not as frightening as some people think, but it's not as simple as some people think.'

MPs have lashed out at EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker after he blamed Brexit on 40 years of 'lies' by British politicians.
The European Commission president said the UK's historic vote to leave the EU showed 'something was wrong in Britain'.  
He admitted Europe was partly at fault for the vote but said people 'cannot be surprised' that voters backed Brexit because for decades politicians in the UK had circulated 'half-truths' and had branded the EU 'stupid'. 
Responding to his remarks, Ukip MP Douglas Carswell dismissed the EU bureaucrat as a 'parasitical clown,' telling MailOnline: 'Herr Juncker'sarrogant disdain for the views of the British people beautifully explains why we were right to leave'. 
Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg said: 'It is a classic example of folie de grandeur. It is the EU that has failed not the wise British electorate.' 




His latest provocative comment came during a live interview in which he was savaged by Twitter users who hijacked the Q&A to criticise his policies.  
But only one of the Twitter questions were answered by the EU bureaucrat. 
Asked why he believed British voters decided to back Brexit, Mr Juncker replied: 'I think this is an easy question.
EU ARMY: The Remain camp repeatedly rubbished claims Brussels was set to launch an EU army, but this week Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled such plans.
ECONOMIC CHAOS: George Osborne warned Britain would be plunged into economic chaos with a Leave vote but the number in work has hit a record high.
SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE: Scottish Nationalists vowed to launch a new push for independence if Britain voted to leave, but the overwhelming majority of Scots still want to remain a part of the UK.
TRADE WAR: Brexit voters were told a decision to leave would spark a tariff war with Europe, but German business leaders have insisted this should not happen as it would damage their interests too.
BRUSSELS REFORM: In the final hours of the campaign David Cameron claimed the EU would reform its free movement rules if Britain remained a member, but he was slapped down by Mr Juncker.
'Of course Brexit means that something is wrong in Europe. But Brexit means also that something was wrong in Britain.
'If, over 40 years, you are explaining to your general public that European Union is stupid, that there is nothing worth…you can't be surprised that the day you ask people 'do you want to stay or do you want to leave' that a too high number of British in this case expressed the view that it is better to leave.
'On Europe there are so many lies, so many half-truths that are circulated around, that one cannot be surprised.' 
His comments came a day after he launched an astonishing attack on the UK over the murder of a Polish man on the streets of Essex last month, claiming it was evidence of what happens when Europe does not unite. 
He caused fury by singling out the killing of Arkadiusz Jozwik in Harlow, telling the European Parliament: 'The Europeans can never accept – never – Polish workers being harassed, beaten, beaten up or even murdered in the streets of Essex.' 
Mr Juncker was accused of stirring up fear and outgoing Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he had ignored the 'heinous crims' being perpetrated by EU migrants who were free to travel to Britain under freedom of movement rules.

Mr Juncker faced a further backlash today with his claim that British voters backed Brexit because of decades of lies. Mr Carswell ridiculed the EU chief, comparing his comments to ancient colonial attitudes.
'I'm sure that George III thought much the same about the American colony. I'm sure that late 19th century British prime ministers felt much the same about Ireland,' he told MailOnline. 
'But you know it's this arrogant idea that we should come to heel that has paradoxically driven British people away from the EU.
'Herr Juncker's arrogant disdain for the views of the British people beautifully explains why we were right to leave. It is no longer our problem,' he added.  




One of Mr Juncker's former colleagues - the ex-European Council president Herman Van Rompuy, warned that Brexit negotiations might not start for another year. 
He said concrete talks between the UK Government and EU leaders were unlikely to start in earnest until a new German government was in place after the country's elections in September next year. 
Mr Van Rompuy, who was nearly as unpopular as Mr Juncker during his spell as council president from 2009 to 2014, told the BBC: 'Before the German elections and before there is a new German government, I think no serious negotiations will take place. 
'You can always start with more technical matters, but the hardcore, the difficult topics, will be tackled after the constitution of a new German government and that will be October/November.' 
Mr Juncker had encouraged EU citizens to send in questions for today's interview using the hashtag #AskJuncker on Twitter. 
But the hashtag was flooded with questions and memes mocking the bureaucrat.
Many of the cutting questions focused on Juncker's plans for an EU army, which he set out to MEPs earlier today.
One Twitter user asked: 'Is Poland going to be the first place you'll invade with your new EU army?' 
Another also compared a potential EU army with Hitler's military campaign in Europe, writing 'Do you remember the last military force to unify Europe?'  along with a picture of Nazi soldiers. 



Meanwhile, Twitter user David M posted a picture of Nigel Farage with the question: 'Do you still weep inside when you see Nige or hear his voice?'
Terri Yoki appeared to question whether Juncker was listening to EU citizens, writing simply 'CAN YOU HEAR US?' above a picture of the bureaucrat holding his fingers up to his ears.  
And one user posted a photograph of vehicles set alight during a riot along with the question 'Is this your European dream?'
Earlier today, Juncker called for an EU military headquarters to be set up during his State of the Union address. 
He claimed a lack of a 'permanent structure' means money is being wasted on duplicate missions. 

Mr Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, said: 'Such an army would help us design a common foreign and security policy.
'Europe's image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don't seem to be taken entirely seriously.'
 
European judges will have the final say on a range of key Brexit battlegrounds, it has been revealed.
If there is no agreement between Britain and the EU over withdrawal terms, the European Court of Justice will be the final arbitrator. 
It means the court could decide on crucial aspects of Britain's departure from the union, including the rights of EU citizens in the UK and the £39 billion divorce bill. 
Discussing the former point, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told The Times: 'This would be akin to saying that a UK citizen living in America could have their rights protected by a UK court.'
Another area in which the court could have the power of arbitration is over the so-called 'backstop' guarantee of no hard border between Ireland and the UK.
Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin, a prominent eurosceptic, said: 'This is very profound. It is giving a status to the European Court of Justice in the withdrawal agreement that is not accorded to the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom.' 
He added that it creates a 'deeply unequal relationship'. 
But a government source told The Times the court would not, in fact, have the final say. 
The paper, however, quotes the current EU draft text which explains that an arbitration panel may 'at any point decide to submit the dispute brought before it to the Court of Justice of the EU for a ruling... The Court of Justice of the EU shall have jurisdiction over such cases and its rulings shall be binding on the Union and the UK.'
It comes as Richard Kellaway, the chairman of the Maidenhead Conservative association, where Mrs May has been an MP since 1997, said his members will not accept any more concession to Europe.
He explained: ‘If it [Chequers deal] were to be diluted it would ultimately not be acceptable.’   
And Don Hammond, chairman of Tatton Conservative association, the local party for Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, warned: ‘This is right at the limit of what I would consider to be a Brexit and I am distinctly unenthusiastic.’ 
Patricia Soby, Tory chairman in the Torridge and West Devon constituency of attorney general Geoffrey Cox, told the Sunday Telegraph that local activists were furious about the proposals.
‘This constituency conducted our own survey and practically everybody was against the Chequers deal,’ she said. 
The EU is stepping up its ‘no-deal’ Brexit preparations because of Labour threats to veto any deal reached between Theresa May and Brussels, it emerged last night.
A leaked diplomatic memo revealed growing fears among member states that even if a divorce deal is agreed, the Prime Minister will fail to get it ‘ratified’ by the Commons.
European leaders have always assumed that a no-deal result would come from a breakdown in talks, but now their contingency planning includes MPs voting down any agreement in Westminster.
It comes after Labour repeatedly insisted during its party conference this week that it will vote down a deal which does not meet its ‘six tests’. During Jeremy Corbyn’s keynote speech yesterday, he did finally offer Mrs May his party’s support for a Brexit deal – if she agrees to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU.
An internal memo revealed topics to be discussed between EU ambassadors at a crunch meeting last night. It said: ‘Uncertainty remains about the outcome of the negotiations and the ratification of a possible deal.’
Although the divorce deal also has to be ratified by the European Parliament, diplomats expect this to happen with little trouble.
One diplomat said: ‘This is something we follow closely, what Labour has been saying in Liverpool. If the Labour Party blocks a possible Brexit deal, this means there is practically no deal, so it is something we’re looking at because we have to be prepared.’
The leaked memo goes on to warn that European capitals may be forced to take action in their own interests without first notifying the EU Commission, which is currently leading negotiations on their behalf. This raises the prospect of countries doing a series of mini deals with Britain in order to limit damage and keep airports, ports and medicine supplies running.
The idea member states may decide to strike their own deals will anger the EU Commission, with the bloc’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier definitively ruling this out during a meeting with UK MPs earlier this month.
But referring to the possibility of such ‘contingency measures’ in the event of no deal, yesterday’s leaked document adds: ‘Some political choices, e.g. as regards the extent to which these measures should mitigate the effect of a disorderly withdrawal, will have to be made before the commission can provide possible answers.’
Yesterday’s talks come ahead of a meeting today between Mr Corbyn and Mr Barnier, which could further fuel fears the Labour leader will work with the EU to make Mrs May’s job harder.
÷ Martin Selmayr, Brussels’s top civil servant who has taken a hard line in Brexit talks, is in the frame to become the EU’s first ambassador to Britain.
A new EU embassy will open in London after Britain leaves next year. According to Brussels insiders, Mr Selmayr has been tipped along with Helga Schmid, the top official at the European External Action Service – the EU’s foreign office.
Brussels last night warned that whoever replaces Theresa May would not be able to make changes to her Brexit deal.
And EU leaders, officials and diplomats all agreed that the chances of a No Deal Brexit had now dramatically increased.
The stage is now set for a showdown if Boris Johnson or another hardline Brexiteer, such as Dominic Raab, wins the keys to Number 10.
Guy Verhofstadt, who heads negotiations for the European Parliament, threw down the gauntlet to Mr Johnson and told the Daily Mail: 'He is famous across Europe for making promises during the Brexit referendum that were undeliverable.
'The current withdrawal agreement remains the only deal on the table. Why it remains blocked is a matter for the British people and their elected representatives.'
A spokesman for EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said 'there is no change' to Brussels's position and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said 'the withdrawal agreement is not up for renegotiation' adding that Mrs May's resignation had 'increased rather than decreased' uncertainty.
Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said: 'This is a period of danger for us, but whatever happens we're going to make sure that we hold our nerve.
'In the next few months we could see the election of a hardline Eurosceptic prime minister who wants to repudiate the withdrawal agreement and go for No Deal or we may even see a new British government that wants to see a closer relationship with the EU and possibly even a second referendum.'
His deputy, Simon Coveney, added: 'Regardless of who the British Prime Minister is, the EU position will remain that the withdrawal agreement took two-and-a-half years to negotiate, and it's closed.'
But Spanish government spokesman Isabel Celaa warned that 'a hard Brexit appears to be a reality that is near impossible to stop'.
She added that the UK Government and MPs would be 'solely responsible for a No Deal exit and its consequences'.
EU diplomats said they most feared a hardline Brexiteer taking over, but predicted that if one did they would be broken down by Brussels.
One said: 'I think the new PM, if everyone tells them what No Deal means, will be concerned with the ramifications.
'Everybody is afraid of Johnson because with him you never know what you get. Raab is utterly disliked because he is not honest, people don't regard him as being honest.
'Boris Johnson, he is difficult to estimate, because he's such a populist but you don't know if it's words. Does he mean it? What's behind what he says? Does he have a sense of responsibility or not?'
However, No Deal is not inevitable and depends on who the new prime minister is and when they first go to Brussels.
The drawn-out Tory leadership contest means Mrs May's successor will not be in post until late July and will miss a key EU summit next month.
They may not even be in place until after Parliament's summer recess begins on July 24, with MPs not coming back until September 4.
The next Brexit summit is on October 17, just two weeks before Britain is due to cut ties with the EU .Another option in that case would be for a second extension.
One EU source said: 'I think there will be another extension because there will not have been enough time in office.
'So whatever happens with Brexit, it will happen in 2020 and not in 2019 – that's if the new prime minister isn't completely intent on No Deal.'
Brussels is also preparing for the possibility of Mrs May's successor calling a General Election. An extension would almost certainly be granted in such a scenario.
Mrs May will meet EU leaders in Brussels on Tuesday for an informal summit dinner following the European Parliament elections. They will also discuss who should replace Mr Juncker and EU Council president Donald Tusk when their terms end in November.
Yesterday EU leaders paid tribute to Mrs May's 'tenacity, her courage and her determination'.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said: 'I just want to express my full respect for Theresa May and for her determination in working towards an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU, and on our side we will work exactly in that direction in the next few weeks and months.'
Mr Juncker's spokesman said: 'President Juncker followed Prime Minister May's announcement this morning without personal joy. Theresa May is a woman of courage for whom he has great respect.'
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had 'respect' for Mrs May and that she had 'worked well' with her.
Mr Varadkar said: 'Politicians throughout the EU have admired her tenacity, her courage, and her determination during what has been a difficult and challenging time.'
Mr Rutte phoned Mrs May after her resignation speech. He said: 'I told her that I thought what she did in the past years was brave and that she worked under incredibly difficult circumstances.'
British holidaymakers will be hit with a £6 fee when they travel to the EU after Brexit under plans drawn up by the bloc.
Approved visas will remain valid for three years or until the passport used during the registration process expires. They can be revoked if new alerts about a traveller arise. 
They will be required to provide personal details and information about their recent movements in order to enter the EU.
And they will also be obliged to answer questions about any criminal history.
The plan, which was signed off by EU ambassadors yesterday, will fuel concerns about how the UK and the EU will reach agreement on a highly contentious deal on cross-border travel after Brexit.
The entrance fee has been proposed as part of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System, which the EU insists is primarily a way of cutting down on illegal immigration and tracking criminals.
Scroll down for video 
As the EU looks set to introduce a £6 tariff for British nationals visiting the continent, how much does it cost for Brits to go elsewhere in the world?
But the EU also hopes the scheme will help to fill the £11.5billion budget ‘black hole’ caused by Britain’s departure. It will apply to nationals from all non-EU countries who do not require visas to travel in the bloc’s Schengen zone. Britain is expected to fall into this category, unless it negotiates an exemption.
After Brexit, British travellers will be among the estimated 39million yearly visitors to the EU who could be hit by the fee.
Under the system, travellers would have to apply online by providing personal information and passport details, before noting the first country they are travelling to and answering background questions.
The registration information will then be checked against EU crime-fighting databases.
While most decisions will take just minutes, problematic cases could lead to further requests before being finally answered within four weeks.
British officials will be hopeful that an exemption to the EU scheme for short-term travellers can be won during Brexit negotiations in order to cut down on costs for Britons.
Theresa May has insisted that the UK will take back control of its borders, as well as ending freedom of movement after Brexit. But ministers have not said about how they plan to administer the entry of EU nationals coming to Britain.
Last year a report written by Tory MP Craig Mackinlay, a Brexiteer, proposed charging EU nationals £10 for a visa to enter the UK after Brexit. He said the plans could raise £150million a year and would be similar to America’s ESTA programme, which determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the US under the visa-waiver system.
Meanwhile, the Government has warned that a planned Brexit security pact with the EU could fall apart under Brussels plans to exclude Britain from a multi-billion satellite navigation project. Ministers have been left furious after the bloc said the UK’s role in the £9billion Galileo system was up for negotiation, despite Britain being one of the biggest investors in it.
The Government is weighing up a number of retaliatory measures and may even set up a rival system. Officials are seeking advice on whether the UK may be able to retrieve the £1.2billion in taxpayer funds that have been dedicated to the programme.
The EU scheme will see the creation of a navigation service made up of 24 satellites to rival America’s dominant GPS and a similar system used by Russia.
While the UK could be given access to parts of Galileo, Brussels has raised concerns about whether Britain can be trusted to use elements reserved specifically for security matters.
 
European Union workers face having to secure a skilled job before they are allowed into Britain.
The post-Brexit visa regime agreed by ministers would restore border controls and slash net migration by up to 100,000.
EU tourists and students will continue to have free access in a bid to help smooth the passage of a trade deal with Brussels.
But the door will be slammed shut on the tens of thousands of low-skilled migrants pouring in every year.
Devised by Home Secretary Amber Rudd, the plan was put to a Cabinet sub-committee on Brexit on Wednesday.
‘There was a strong consensus that this was the only way to go,’ said a Whitehall insider. ‘Ministers agreed that work will continue to see if there is an alternative.
‘The reality, though, is that this is the only option that is going to work in the long term and that will deliver what the public voted for – which is proper control of our borders.’
Officials expect the EU to impose a visa scheme in return. That means Britons will need a permit to work in Europe and will be limited to skilled jobs. Those wanting to go on holiday in EU states – or study there – will be unaffected.
Big business is likely to condemn the plans. Firms argue that access to low-skilled labour is vital for the service sector and jobs such as building and fruit picking.
But sources point out that the existing stock of millions of EU workers will remain available – with Mrs May expected to announce they will all be granted residency.
In the event of a shortage in a particular occupation, such as agriculture, a seasonal worker scheme could be introduced. This would allow workers to enter the UK for a fixed period. Workers could also be allowed to move within the EU on intra-company transfers.
Provision will be made for the self-employed to set up in the UK provided they are skilled and self-sufficient. Polish plumbers, for example, would be allowed in if there was demand for their services. The system is likely to destroy the hopes of Remain supporters that Britain will be able to stay inside the single market.
In a speech on Thursday, European Council president Donald Tusk said there could be no compromise on the principle of free movement of people.
He said: ‘The only real alternative to a hard Brexit is no Brexit.’
Earlier this week, Mrs May made it clear that her priority in the talks will be regaining control of borders.
She told MPs: ‘What we are going to do is deliver on the vote of the British people to leave the European Union; what we are going to do is be ambitious in our negotiations, to negotiate the best deal for the British people, and that will include the maximum possible access to the European market, for firms to trade with, and operate within, the European market.
‘But I am also clear that the vote of the British people said that we should control the movement of people from the EU into the UK, and we believe we should deliver on what the British people want.
‘The UK will be leaving the European Union. We are not asking ourselves what bits of membership we want to retain. We are saying: what is the right relationship for the UK to have for the maximum benefit of our economy and of the citizens of this country?’
Earlier this year, the Prime Minister rejected the Australian-style points-based system suggested by Boris Johnson and Vote Leave during the referendum campaign.
Seventy per cent of EU migrants to the UK come here to work or to seek work. Eighty per cent of EU workers who have arrived in the past ten years are in low-skilled employment.
Earlier this year, MigrationWatch called for a system similar to the one now being backed by ministers. The group said the introduction of a work permit scheme that confines EU migration to skilled employment would reduce net EU migration by approximately 100,000 a year.
Brussels rules banning the sale of powerful vacuum cleaners are set to stay in place even after Britain has left the EU.
Brexit campaigners highlighted the ‘absurd’ ban as a reason for leaving the European Union during the referendum campaign.
But the Government’s committee on climate change is urging ministers to ‘preserve’ the rules – claiming that abandoning them would wreck hopes of meeting targets to reduce carbon emissions.
Retailers have been barred from selling high-power vacuum cleaners since September 2014.
The group estimates that around 30,000 work permits a year would need to be given to EU citizens to maintain the current stock of skilled EU workers in Britain and meet the future needs of business.
Writing on the ConHome website last week, the group’s chairman, Lord Green of Deddington, said: ‘Where employers claim to have become reliant on EU migrants to fill low-paid jobs, they will need to wean themselves away from their current dependence on cheap foreign labour by improving pay and conditions so as to attract British workers and, perhaps, by investing in improving productivity.’
 Britain's £12billion foreign aid budget could be used to help negotiate better trade terms for UK exporters. International aid rules prevent linking funding to contracts for domestic firms.
But ministers believe the goodwill harnessed by the UK’s lavish spending on aid could help it build alliances. International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Priti Patel are both said to be interested in pursuing the idea.
The two Cabinet ministers are expected to use a joint visit to Africa next year to pursue the idea.
Tory MPs lashed Theresa May's Brexit blueprint for recreating the 'worst parts of the EU' today as it was published for the first time. 
A 98-page report setting out the Government's demands to Brussels would mean EU workers will still be allowed rights to travel to Britain temporarily.
Tourists, young people and business trips would also be allowed in without visas.
EU judges will get to advise a new joint committee of UK and EU officials tasked with resolving disputes after Brexit.
And it confirms the Prime Minister's plan to have Britain follow EU rules on goods without any say on how they are drafted.
Brexiteer ringleader Jacob Rees-Mogg declared the plan 'does not respect the referendum result' while Tory MPs lined up to condemn the plans in Parliament.
Amid chaotic scenes, the Commons was briefly suspended as Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab tried to present the policy paper before it was given to MPs.   
The plans have threatened to derail Theresa May's Government since they were agreed by the Cabinet a week ago. Boris Johnson and David Davis resigned in protest, claiming that the plans betray the 2016 referendum vote.  
EU negotiator Michel Barnier welcome the publication of the plans and said he looked forward to resuming negotiations next week after he had studied them. 
Mr Raab used his statement to toughen the line on the £39billion divorce bill - warning Brussels if it did not come to an agreement it would not get its money. 
Despite the proposals for travel for workers and tourists, Mr Raab insisted 'we are going to take back control of our immigration policy', telling MPs he was confident 'a deal is within reach'.
The plans published today would mean: 
The plan envisages the creation of a new governing body of ministers from both sides - meeting twice a year, including one summit of the British PM with leaders of the remaining 27 member states and heads of EU institutions - to oversee the agreement and discuss proposals for change.
It paves the way for an association agreement, which is used by countries like Ukraine to oversee close ties with the EU.
Ukraine's commits Kiev to economic, judicial, and financial reforms to converge its policies and legislation to those of the European Union. 
Key features of the Future Framework plan include:
The plan also envisages a joint committee would underpin technical and administrative functions, with a 'robust' independent arbitration panel to decide on disputes, ensuring that rulings on differences between the UK and EU are not made by the courts of either side.
Crucially, the panel would be able to seek guidance from the European Court of Justice, but only on the interpretation of EU law. 
Brexiteers condemned the plan as not delivering on the referendum mandate.
Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'In particular, this paper sets out that the UK will be subject to EU laws while having no say in their creation.
'The Common Rulebook will not be common it will be EU law, interpreted by the EU Court with the UK subjected to EU fines for non-compliance.
'The UK has accepted it cannot diverge from ''ongoing harmonisation'' without activating repercussions for Northern Ireland. In effect, Parliament will have no say over future EU laws implemented in the UK.
'The UK has accepted that it will collect and hand over EU taxes. This is an unwarranted intrusion into the control of our border. The absence of reciprocity is concerning and the cost to the taxpayer unknown.
'Taken as a whole, this recreates many of the worst aspects of the EU the British people voted to leave. This does not respect the referendum result.'
Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash, who chairs the Commons European Scrutiny Committee, raised concern that a 'common rulebook' with the EU on certain produce would see the UK accepting regulations as it had done under the 1972 European Communities Act.
The Government wants to maintain parts of this rulebook to allow 'frictionless trade at the border' after Brexit. 
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said in a tweet: 'We will now analyse the Brexit White Paper with Member States and European Parliament, in light of EU Council guidelines.
'EU offer = ambitious FTA and effective cooperation on wide range of issues, including a strong security partnership. 
'Looking forward to negotiations with the UK next week.'
Business groups welcomed clarity from the Government after the plan was finally published more than two years after the referendum.
Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: 'At last, businesses have a more comprehensive understanding of the Government's aspirations for the UK's future relationship with the European Union.
'This vision should not have taken two years and three weeks to emerge, but it is nevertheless a welcome starting point for businesses.
Stephen Phipson, chief executive of manufacturers' organisation EEF, welcomed the white paper as 'a further step forward following the Chequers meeting last week'. 
Stephen Martin, director general of the Institute of Directors, said the White Paper 'puts some vital meat on the bones of the Chequers plan'.  
CBI director general Carolyn Fairbairn said: 'The Brexit White Paper reflects much of the evidence that business has been highlighting since the referendum. This direction is welcome - protecting jobs and investment now and in future should be the guiding star for both sets of negotiators.
'Many of the intentions are reassuring. Seeking a free trade area for goods and a common rule book shows the Prime Minister has put pragmatism before politics and should be applauded.'
Former chief executive of UK Trade and Investment Sir Andrew Cahn told the BBC the City would be hurt by the lack of a deal on financial services, stating: 'It means the City is going to have to change. It's going to have to change quite radically.
'We will clearly lose business, some business, to Europe. But I think the City will adjust and find a way forward.
The Treaty of Le Goulet was entered into by King John in 1200 in return for Philip II of France's support in succeeding to the English crown.
John's claim to the crown was contested after the death of Richard the Lionheart. 
But the price Philip demanded for his recognition was high. 
He ceded Évreux and the Norman Vexin to Philip, agreed that Issoudun and Graçay should be the dowry of his niece who was marring Philip's son, and renounced any claim over Berry and Auvergne.
Later when John came into conflict with a family in Aquitaine, he was summoned to appear before Philip as a vassal of the French crown. 
John did not present himself, and in 1202 Philip pronounced John's French lands forfeit.
'But, it's going to hurt the City, and there's going to be costs involved, and I think the Government will get less tax revenues for a period.
'I think that it's an illusion to think that somehow or other, other countries are going to be rushing in wanting to do deals, or that if they do do deals with us they'll be beneficial to us.'
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief negotiator, said he also welcomed the UK's proposal for a future association agreement.
He added: 'We will analyse the White Paper in light of our priorities: citizens' rights, an operational backstop for Ireland and a deep economic relationship based on the integrity of the union and internal market.'
Ireland's Deputy PM Simon Coveney said: 'What you will see from the EU now is a 'take them seriously on this new position' and a desire to get the negotiating teams into a room from next Monday afterwards.
'I don't think we should go through the white paper and try to undermine it and find inconsistencies in it.' 
He added: 'We think that now the clear negotiation position is the first time in six months there is clarity coming from the British government.
'That new direction has been a step in the right direction towards a pragmatic, sensible Brexit that allow EU and the UK to trade in a way that works for everyone as opposed to a policy driven by ideology.'  
Britain want to negotiate a 'framework for mobility' after Brexit that ends full EU free movement but protect business and tourist travel.
The Government white paper today insists 'free movement of people will end as the UK leaves the EU' and promises a replacement that 'works for all parts of the UK'. 
It says the UK will continue to be an 'open and tolerant nation' that wants to attract the 'brightest and best' from the EU and elsewhere. 
The proposals infuriated Brexiteers who believe leaving the door open to foreign workers and students will make it impossible to reach the long-standing target of slashing net migration to the tens of thousands.
Big cuts to immigration were demanded by many Leave voters ahead of the referendum in 2016. 
After 2020 it sets out five principles: 
Irish citizens will continue to have full rights to travel and work in the UK under the Common Travel Area established in 1923. 
Brexiteer ring leader Jacob Rees-Mogg warned: 'The wording on migration means nothing. They have climbed down on everything else. People tend to behave in a consistent way.
'They are keeping the option of free movement by another name open.'
Officials from both the UK and EU would take part in a 'joint committee' charged with keeping the deal up and running in future.
According to the plan, there will likely be a series of agreements - particularly on trade and security. All of them will be policed by the joint committee. 
It will manage and monitor the deal and future relationship and resolve disputes if and when they arise.
The Government plan says the European Court of Justice will no longer have the power to make laws in the UK.
But if the joint committee needs advice on EU law, it will have the right to ask the EU judges. It also says the joint committee will keep 'under review' ECJ judgements.
UK courts would pay 'due regard' to EU case law only in areas where Britain has agreed to observe a 'common rulebook' in areas like trade in goods. 
Brexiteers will say this blurs Mrs May's red line on ending the court's jurisdiction.
A matching provision allows UK judges to advise on UK law. 
Mr Rees-Mogg said: 'The UK has accepted it cannot diverge from ''ongoing harmonisation'' without activating repercussions for Northern Ireland. In effect, Parliament will have no say over future EU laws implemented in the UK.
'The UK has accepted that it will collect and hand over EU taxes. This is an unwarranted intrusion into the control of our border. The absence of reciprocity is concerning and the cost to the taxpayer unknown.
'Taken as a whole, this recreates many of the worst aspects of the EU the British people voted to leave.'
Ministers have set out plans for a 'free trade area for goods' that would require Britain to follow EU rules, enraging Brexiteers.
The Government insists it is necessary to ensure goods - such as food or car parts - can flow in and out of Britain without massive queues at the border.
It also says it is essential to maintain an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. 
The deal will exclude Britain's services industry - mostly covering banking and legal work - which makes up more of the economy.
Under the plan, EU rules on goods would be replicated by the UK Parliament - described by the plan as Britain making an 'upfront choice' to commit to EU rules.
While it would not be compulsory to introduce rules in future, the paper admits it would damage existing cooperation.
Brexiteers insist this makes Britain a 'vassal state', effectively forced to take laws it has no role in writing.
Mr Rees-Mogg declared: 'This is the greatest vassalage since King John paid homage to Phillip II at Le Goulet in 1200.
'This White paper has not needed age to turn yellow.' 
But Mrs May says it is the only way of meeting her red lines of leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union without breaking the economy.  
Ahead of today's publication, Mr Raab said the UK would be ending free movement but visas would be a part of future trade deals.
He said concerns raised by Brussels had been listened to and the government was approaching the talks in a 'spirit of friendship'.
Rival Brexit plans that were being proposed by David Davis before his resignation have been leaked.
The 'alternative' White Paper would have called for the UK and EU to have 'mutual recognition' of standards on goods rather than the stricter 'common rulebook' mooted by Theresa May.
Critics claim the more restrictive approach adopted by Mrs May will prevent a deep trade deal with the US. 
The draft of Mr Davis's version, leaked to the ConservativeHome website, claims that mutual recognition and alignment have been agreed in free trade arrangements between the EU and Canada.
It adds that 'standalone mutual recognition agreements' are in place with New Zealand, the US and Australia.
The plan states: 'UK law may not necessarily be identical to EU law, but it should achieve the same outcomes…
'This commitment means that in practice, UK and EU regulatory standards will remain substantially similar in the future.' 
But he refused to say if the white paper was an opening offer to the EU or the UK's red lines.
'I don't really want to get into all of that but we need to crack on,' he said.
He added: 'We are going to take back control of our immigration policy.'
There will be a 'negotiation' about the details when the immigration bill is set out, he said. 
She said a 'small cabal' in Downing Street were showing 'contempt' for the opinions of MPs.
Meanwhile, details of an 'alternative' White Paper that was being drawn up by Mr Davis have been released - which would have called for the UK and EU to have 'mutual recognition' of standards on goods rather than a stricter 'common rulebook'.
Critics claim the more restrictive approach adopted by Mrs May will prevent a deep trade deal with the US. 
Writing in The Sun, Mrs May pleaded with rebels to back down, saying her plan was the only one which 'truly respects the will of the British people'.
The newly installed Brexit Secretary insisted the much-anticipated White Paper would not leave the UK as a 'rule taker' and respects the referendum result while backing business.
Mr Raab is taking the document to EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier later as the government makes an all-out bid to break the deadlock in negotiations.
But it is far from clear that the plans will get a good reception in Brussels, after Mr Barnier warned they must be 'workable' and urged business leaders to prepare for a no deal scenario.
Eurosceptics are plotting to inflict a series of Commons defeats on Theresa May next week as they step up their 'guerilla war'.
They have tabled four amendments to the PM's flagship Trade Bill that could stop her enacting the plan agreed by the Cabinet at Chequers.
The revolt could wipe out Mrs May's majority when the legislation returns to the Commons on Monday, in the first significant test of strength of her Brexit critics. 
The Prime Minister faces a war on two fronts as Remain-supporting Tories led by Dominic Grieve are also planning their own amendments to keep Britain tied closely to the EU. 
A source added that a series of defeats would act as a warning shot to Mrs May by Brexiteers over her Chequers blueprint. 
He said: 'The Government has a very small majority, and there are quite a lot of people who want a proper Brexit. The Government forgot that at Chequers. 
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, rebel Maria Caulfield said: 'Instead of exploring this perfectly acceptable solution a small cabal in Downing Street has dreamt up a fiendishly complex arrangement that seeks to recreate large parts of the EU's single market. This approach comes with serious costs.
'Far from threatening the PM the way a handful of colleagues selfishly have ever since the country voted to leave the EU, I have loyally supported her in difficult times.
'While I did not expect my loyalty to be rewarded, nor did I expect it to be treated with contempt.' 
Jeremy Hunt, who has replaced Mr Johnson as Foreign Secretary, tried to play down the tensions.
'You're going to have very, very lively debates in a situation like this. This is one of the biggest decisions that we have taken as a country in our political lifetimes so there's going to be a pretty fierce discussion but the prime minister has found a way forward,' he told reporters at a NATO summit in Brussels.
He also laid down a warning to the EU, insisting: 'We're not the only ones who can't do the cherry-picking. If they want a deep and special partnership with Britain going forward, then we have to look at our relationship as a whole.'
Mr Raab said the Chequers showdown had produced a 'credible' proposal. 'It's bold, it's ambitious but it's also pragmatic,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'The Prime Minister is in charge of the negotiations. I will be deputising for her and I plan to speak to Michel Barnier later today.' 
Mr Raab said he hoped the White Paper being published by the Government would 'reassure all of those with concerns about this'. 
'For those that are either criticising or carping or whatever else, they need to come back with credible alternatives,' he said. 
Mr Raab said it was 'true' that the UK would no longer be part of setting the directives in the common rulebook it would agree to under the proposals. 
But he said Britain would 'have a chance to influence it' and there would be a parliamentary lock on new measures. 
'It's not right to say we will be a rule-taker in the sense that's normally used,' he added.  
Ahead of the release of the white paper, Mr Barnier told the US chamber of commerce: 'We will look carefully at each and any proposal of UK, but these proposals must be workable.'
However, Mr Barnier said: 'Only the combination of the single market and the customs union makes frictionless trade possible.
'Outside of the customs union there need to be procedures and customs controls.
'And outside of the single market you necessarily have controls to check compliance with European standards.
'As a consequence there will be no business as usual because of the Brexit.
'And we should all get ready for all scenarios, including a no-deal scenario.' 
Fears of Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM are driving the EU to take a hard line in Brexit negotiations, it was claimed today.
Brussels is insisting on a 'level playing field' mechanism to prevent a hard-left UK government nationalising large sections of the economy and subsidising industry.
The level of anxiety was underlined as Tory infighting over future trade links with the EU intensified. 
Environment Secretary Michael Gove has risked fuelling by endorsing a Twitter thread by former aide Henry Newman that condemned Theresa May for trying to 'resurrect the corpse' of her plans for a customs partnership with the bloc.
The intervention came after Business Secretary Greg Clark was sent out by Downing Street to argue for continuing close customs links.
However, despite the raging row within government, EU sources have told The Times their main concerns centre around Mr Corbyn's demands for exemptions from basic free market rules.
In a speech earlier this year, Mr Corbyn said he wanted 'protections, clarifications or exemptions' from restrictions on 'state aid' for industries. 
The Labour leader said he would not be held back 'from taking the steps we need to support cutting-edge industries and local business, stop the tide of privatisation and outsourcing'. 
The EU has now laid down requirements for a 'level playing field' that would hit Britain with trade tariffs, fines and even grounding of flights if the UK subsidises industry.
The source said the real cause for the punishment was not fear of deregulation, but Labour's protectionist plans. 
'If a Corbyn government implements his declared policies the level playing field mechanism will lead to increased costs for Britain to access the single market because of distortions caused by state aid. That is why this is where the real battle is,' the source said.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Brexit Secretary David Davis, Trade Secretary Liam Fox, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson all lined up against the hybrid 'customs partnership' model at a meeting of the Brexit war cabinet last week.
There was speculation they had managed to 'kill off' the proposals after Mrs May ended up in the minority at the showdown.
But Mr Clark made clear the idea had not gone away yesterday - and also opened the door to extending a transition period on customs with the EU.
A customs partnership is less formal than the current EU customs union the UK is a member of.
Under the proposals, Britain would stay in a customs union with the EU for some sectors, while leaving it for others.
This would mean it would impose the same tariffs as the Brussels bloc on some goods, but set its own on others.
Backers of the plan say his would facilitate free trade in areas where Britain does  a lot of its business with the EU, while freeing the country to sign new free trade deals with other countries. 
One possibility could be keeping the UK and EU in a customs union for trade in goods, but allowing divergence for the services sector.
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels and then pay it to the EU.
But Brexiteers are critical of the plan. which they think is unworkable and cumbersome.
They fear it will effectively stop the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit. 
Mr Clark said it could be a case of implementing a new customs arrangement 'as soon as you can do'. 
Mrs May is now believed to be planning to bring a 'rebadged' version of the plan back to the powerful Cabinet sub-committee, after warning ministers that it is the only way of getting parliamentary approval for a Brexit deal.
If there is still resistance she could opt to bypass the sub-committee altogether and take the decision to full Cabinet, where she has more allies.
The idea - one of two Britain placed on the negotiating table last year - would in theory create close enough ties with the EU to avoid a hard border in Ireland and still allow Britain to strike trade deals.
But there are no similar agreements elsewhere in the world and Brexiteers fear it will be used as a 'trojan horse' to effectively keep Britain inside the full customs union, sabotaging any new trade deal.
The other British option is to streamline the UK-EU borders as much as possible but accept some checks as the price for striking new trade deals. 
Brussels has already rejected both proposals.
Mr Gove tweeted that his former aide Mr Newman - now director of the Open Europe think tank - was 'always worth reading' and views on customs arrangements were 'v helpful'.
Mr Newman said if Number 10 sought to pursue a version of the customs partnership, 'they will be putting all their eggs in a broken basket' and it was 'far better to accept some friction on trade' and pursue the 'max fac' model. 
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
MPs last night tore into three 'out of touch' judges for ruling that embittered Remainers in Parliament should be allowed to frustrate the verdict of the British public.
The Lord Chief Justice and two senior colleagues were accused of putting Britain on course for a full-blown 'constitutional crisis' by saying Brexit could not be triggered without a Westminster vote.
The judgment by Lord Thomas – a founding member of the European Law Institute, a club of lawyers and academics aiming to 'improve' EU law – throws into chaos Mrs May's timetable for invoking Article 50 in March next year.  
Senior MPs – led by an ex-justice minister – said it was an outrage that an 'unholy alliance' of judges and embittered Remain backers could thwart the wishes of 17.4million Leave voters. 
They warned that Mrs May could be forced to hold an election early next year if the courts did not back down. Leave campaigners said the judges had 'declared war on democracy'. On an 'declared war on democracy'. 
On an extraordinary day of drama:
The row exploded yesterday morning when a panel led by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, ruled that Mrs May cannot trigger Article 50 – the formal two-year process for leaving the EU – without a vote by Parliament.
This is despite a clear commitment by the Government during the referendum to enact the public's verdict without delay. A furious Number Ten vowed to challenge the 'disappointing' decision in the Supreme Court next month.
The judge who has threw a spanner in the works yesterday is, professionally at least, a committed Europhile.
Lord Chief Justice John Thomas was a founder of the European Law Institute, a club of lawyers and academics aiming to ‘improve’ EU law.
He was also president of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary for two years.
But Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the most senior judge in England and Wales, has also been critical of European judges.
In 2014, he spoke out in favour of Parliament’s right to decide which crimes were so serious an offender should never go free – and criticised Strasbourg judges for saying such sentences breached the European Convention on Human Rights.
As a High Court judge, the 69-year-old refused Wikileaks head Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to Sweden and radical cleric Abu Hamza’s attempt to avoid extradition to the US.
He was also once accused of trying to silence a High Court judge who had championed the institution of marriage. In 2013, he rebuked Sir Paul Coleridge for ‘bringing the judiciary into disrepute’ after speaking out in favour of traditional marriage and describing the devastating impact of family break-up on children.
Lord Thomas has a record of displaying short-tempered impatience over the tricks of immigration lawyers.
When a Bangladeshi student’s lawyers made two last-minute applications to keep him in the country on the eve of his deportation, the judge described it as ‘an intolerable waste of public money’, an abuse of the courts, and ‘totally without merit’, and threatened lawyers who acted in the same way in the future with ‘vigorous action’.
Educated at Cambridge, he also attended the University of Chicago. He married an American, Elizabeth, and they have a grown-up son and daughter.
In 2011 he and his wife banked £1million when they swapped their £2.6million five-bedroom home for a £1.6million townhouse close to the Thames.
He has spoken up in favour of freedom of the Press – and he beat Lord Justice Leveson to become the Lord Chief Justice.

Supreme court judges were left in no doubt what was at stake. Mr Davis said that – if yesterday's verdict was upheld – a full Act of Parliament would be required to trigger Brexit.
This would allow MPs or peers to table amendments that would allow them to dictate the terms of Brexit or even halt the process altogether. Mr Davis said heading down this path would be a huge mistake.
The outpouring of rage against the High Court's shocking 'judicial activism' was so strong at Westminster that there were calls for a review of the way senior judges are appointed.
Whitehall sources also revealed that the judges gave the Government barely an hour's notice of their bombshell verdict. Usually, ministers can expect an overnight warning.
Insiders said Mrs May and the ministers in charge of Brexit had all been enraged. They now hope the Supreme Court will see sense. It will hear Mrs May's appeal from December 7 – with a verdict highly unlikely before Christmas.
Ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve – a leading Remain campaigner – claimed this could delay her pledge to start the two-year process for quitting the EU in March 2017. One minister claimed the delay could take up to a year. The High Court's verdict hinged on an interpretation of British constitutional law. Government lawyers said that, in the wake of the June 23 referendum result, Mrs May had prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 without a vote by MPs.
But the panel of judges yesterday declared: 'The Government does not have power under the Crown's prerogative to give notice pursuant to Article 50 for the UK to withdraw from the European Union.'
MPS last night accused judges of failing to read the £9million taxpayer-funded publicity leaflet that stated the referendum result would be followed directly by ministers.
Sent to every household before the referendum, the pamphlet stated clearly: ‘This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.’ Despite this, the High Court ruled the referendum was merely ‘advisory’ and could not be activated without Parliamentary approval. Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said the leaflet had been ‘clear’, while Tory MP John Redwood said: ‘I cannot believe the judges failed to read the leaflet. Parliament was passing the decision to the people.’
Implying Remainers had changed their tune, Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said: ‘Did any Remainers disassociate themselves at the time from this [leaflet’s] statement?’
They added that triggering Article 50 would fundamentally change UK people's rights – and that the Government cannot change or do away with rights under UK law unless Parliament gives it authority to do so.
Condemnation of the verdict – which few had expected – was swift and devastating. MPs pointed out that it had been brought by embittered Remainers and a wealthy fund manager, who had formed an 'unholy alliance' with the judiciary.
If the Government's appeal is not successful, an Act of Parliament will be required to trigger Article 50. This would allow MPs or the unelected House of Lords to put down amendments delaying Article 50, insisting Britain must stay in the single market, or block its passage altogether.
Ex-justice minister Dominic Raab said: 'On 23 June the British people gave a clear mandate for the UK Government to leave the EU. This case is a plain attempt to block Brexit by people who are out of touch with the country and refuse to accept the result.'
He added: 'An unholy alliance of diehard Remain campaigners, a fund manager, an unelected judiciary and the House of Lords must not be allowed to thwart the wishes of the British public. It would trigger a constitutional crisis if the Supreme Court upheld this vague and undemocratic verdict'.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary said the judges had precipitated 'a constitutional crisis – literally pitting Parliament against the will of the people'.
Ukip's Nigel Farage said: 'I now fear that every attempt will be made to block or delay the triggering of Article 50. If this is so, they have no idea of the public anger they will provoke.'
Leading Leave campaigner Douglas Carswell MP said: 'Shocking judicial activism – these judges are politicians without accountability.' 
Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton is no stranger to the cut and thrust of politics.
He qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympics as part of the British fencing team – but boycotted the games in protest against the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan.
The 65-year-old, who took his role as the second most senior judge last month, made legal history a decade ago as the first openly gay judge to be made a Lord Justice of Appeal.
In 2014, he and his partner, solicitor Andrew Stone, took part in the first Jewish ceremonies at a UK synagogue to convert a civil partnership into marriage.
In legal circles, Sir Terence has been described as the ‘epitome of a modern judge’. He served for two years as chairman of the Law Commission – the Government’s legal reform body – where he was credited with suggesting ‘enlightened’ ways of updating laws.
Last year, he was hailed for striking a blow to ‘tax dodgers’ by ruling against investors including Sir Alex Ferguson who took part in a scheme to shelter money from HMRC.
The panel’s third judge, Lord Justice Sales, came from the same chambers as Tony Blair and once billed taxpayers more than £3million. He defended the Blair government in a 2005 court challenge over the decision not to hold a public inquiry into the Iraq war.
Sir Philip Sales charged taxpayers £3.3million in six years during his tenure as Mr Blair’s First Treasury Counsel – a lawyer who represents the UK government in the civil courts.
His appointment in 1997 had caused consternation in legal circles because he was only 35.
He had been a barrister at 11KBW, the same chambers as Mr Blair and then-lord chancellor Derry Irvine, leading to claims of cronyism.
The 54-year-old studied at both Oxford and Cambridge and was called to the Bar in 1985. In 2009, the same year Sir Philip stopped being First Treasury Counsel, London’s Evening Standard revealed he had charged up to £619,000 a year for fighting the government’s corner. 
He was made a QC in 2006, a High Court judge in 2008 and an Appeal Court judge in 2014.

Every day we are told the British Government is entering Brexit negotiations with little idea of what it wants. The Labour Party grows hysterical about the alleged lack of any plan.
Some claim that even if we had a plan we would be crushed by the combined weight of 27 EU members, which are supposed to be infinitely more powerful than us, and determined to drive a hard and unpleasant bargain.
When the prime minister of minuscule Malta suggested a few days ago that the EU was immovable, his comments were gleefully reported by the BBC and other anti-Brexit media outlets. Joseph Muscat effectively said there wasn't a cat's chance in Hell of our having access to the single market while restricting free movement of labour.
Sometimes it seems intransigent Remainers actually want negotiations to founder so that Brexit can be universally recognised as a total disaster. They fail to grasp that, whether stayers or leavers, we are now all in this together, and it is in our common interest that the Government obtains the best possible deal. 
And, in fact, I believe there are good reasons for thinking that Britain holds many more cards than is generally accepted. We are in several respects much more indispensable than is usually assumed, while the EU is probably in no state to hang this country out to dry.
Oddly enough, these two insights surfaced in yesterday's Financial Times, which has shed more tears over the referendum result, and incubated more gloom, than any other newspaper. It ran a piece reporting that British negotiators believe they have a strong hand to play, and it suggested they had good reason for doing so.
To be sure, the Civil Service was ill-prepared for the outcome of the referendum, having taken for granted, like nearly the entire political class, a Remain victory. Whitehall's most senior official, Sir Jeremy Heywood, is said to have gathered his top team together in the aftermath of the vote and asked pathetically, 'What is our leverage?', only to be met by blank faces.
But five months have passed, and much work has been done. Senior civil servants who neither expected nor wanted Brexit have had its inevitability drummed into their skulls by ministers. As the FT points out, it is dawning on them that Britain has a lot of leverage.
Look at the economic and political mood of Europe. As Philip Hammond mentioned in last week's Autumn Statement, this year the British economy (whose immediate collapse was confidently predicted by his predecessor, George Osborne) will grow more quickly than the EU's three other large economies — Germany, France and Italy.
Even taking into account the doggedly pessimistic cast of mind of the Office for Budget Responsibility, next year the UK is expected to grow more than either Italy or France.
All this means that an economically enfeebled European Union is in no position to attempt to strangle the British economy, since such a misguided act of vandalism would only make its own predicament more precarious. About a fifth of all German car production comes to the UK. Will Berlin really risk damaging this by imposing import tariffs on us?
That much was appreciated during the referendum. What has changed since then is the increasing political uncertainty in several European countries, which is likely to further undermine any appetite the EU might have for a fight to the death with Britain.
Next Sunday, Italy will vote on various constitutional issues. Its prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has said he will resign if he loses, which appears likely. Italy's near-bankrupt banks would then be scrutinised even further by the markets. Meanwhile, polls suggest the next prime minister would come from the Five Star Movement, which is committed to a referendum on Italy's membership of the euro.
If Italy is entering a period of political turbulence, so too is France, which will have presidential elections next spring. Its next president could be the far-Right Marine Le Pen, who might take France out of the EU. Or it may be the centre-Right Francois Fillon, whose Thatcherite economics, reputed Anglophilia and anti-EU sentiments could work to Britain's advantage.
Political turmoil may also ensue in Austria, where presidential elections take place on Sunday. In a contest considered too close to call, the far-Right candidate Norbert Hofer has said he may agitate for a referendum on EU membership.
In these and other European countries, there is a potent combination of shaky economic performance and populist movements. Is it likely that an EU in such a weak and confused condition will come together with the specific intention of punishing Britain? I don't believe so.
Of course, some European politicians — especially in Brussels — like to talk tough. Last week, arch-federalist Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief negotiator for forthcoming talks, tried to put Brexit Secretary David Davis in his place by saying: 'Welcome to Hell.'
Like many generals on the eve of battle, these politicians will strive to demoralise us and insist that Britain should expect a poor deal. These are classic negotiating tactics. We should simply ask how many aces they have up their sleeves. The answer is: many fewer than they like to pretend. 
And it should be stressed that for every Guy Verhofstadt or Maltese prime minister putting on war paint, there are just as many, if not more, EU leaders who like and admire this country and have no wish to make us suffer.
A month ago, Sweden's finance minister, Magdalena Andersson, declared it would be a serious mistake to chastise Britain for voting to leave the EU, and appealed for an amicable settlement to minimise damage to both sides.
Yesterday, Theresa May held talks with the Polish prime minister, Beata Szydlo, who had earlier written in a newspaper that the EU must be prepared to compromise to secure a Brexit deal that works for everyone. Ms Szydlo promised Poland would be a 'constructive' partner.
Such sentiments are based on common sense and a remembered shared solidarity against Nazi Germany — and also, crucially, on an awareness of Britain's vital security and defence contribution to the EU even after it leaves.
Mrs May confirmed we will be sending 150 troops and a number of armoured vehicles to patrol in north-east Poland, close to the border with Kaliningrad, which houses Russia's Baltic fleet. A gesture, perhaps, but a significant one. 
The perception of an increasing Russian threat to Eastern Europe has already led to four RAF Typhoon aircraft being sent to Romania, and some 800 British personnel with armoured support being dispatched to Estonia.
In a way he could not have predicted, the bellicosity of President Vladimir Putin is aiding Brexit, for members of the EU (nearly all of whom spend less on their defence than they should) regard Britain as an indispensable ally.
They know, too — and even the competitive French are forced in private to admit it — that in GCHQ at Cheltenham, Britain has an intelligence facility which helps protect the whole of Europe and is unmatched anywhere on the Continent.
Moreover, with President-elect Donald Trump opining that Nato is 'obsolete', the role of Britain as the leading European military power becomes ever-more important in the minds of our EU friends.
Are they really going to try to grab us by the throat? Political peacocks such as Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, might like to, but sensible political leaders who are grounded in the real world, and answerable to voters, will act like grown-ups.
Enough of all this gloom! Of course negotiations will be prolonged and sometimes fraught. But Europe needs us in more ways than one, and the truth is that the EU is in no condition to punish us for daring to seize our own destiny.
Given the delicate state of the Brexit negotiations, the last thing that the Government needed was to have a political aide, Julia Dockerill, wandering around Downing Street brandishing the notes of a top-secret meeting.
But that, of course, is what happened on Monday, leaving Westminster agog at the revelation the Government’s model for Brexit is to ‘have cake and eat it’.
This was the cue for all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Europhiles, although having a cake and eating it sounds pretty much ideal to me. But the words that really jumped out at me were rather less cheerful: ‘French likely to be most difficult.’
Although ministers spent yesterday hastily insisting the notes bore no relation to reality, I couldn’t help noticing that the difficulty of the French was something of a theme in Julia Dockerill’s notebook. 
Indeed, virtually no other European country was mentioned at all, which surely tells its own story.
‘Very French negotiating team,’ she scribbled ominously at one point. And again, discussing the chances of a deal: ‘Manufacturing relatively straightforward. Services harder because French hoping for business.’
The remarkable thing about this, of course, is that nobody was at all surprised.
We all knew the French were likely to be the most implacable obstacle to a successful Brexit, and that they would try to use it to steal business from the City of London. The only surprise is that anybody saw the need to write it down.
Right from the early hours of June 24, when the referendum result became apparent, the French have cast themselves as our chief adversaries. In some ways, it pains me to write those words, because I studied French at university and lived for a time in the south of that beautiful, troubled, unhappy country. But it is true.
Which foreign leader, for example, insisted that the EU must pose a ‘threat’ to Britain, and that we must pay a ‘price’ for our effrontery? None other than France’s President Hollande, whose leadership has been such a triumph that he currently basks in an approval rating of four percent.
Similarly, who demanded that the Brexit talks be conducted exclusively in French? Why, who else but the former French foreign minister Michel Barnier, a strident critic of Britain’s financial sector, who wangled a job as the EU’s chief negotiator.And which country placed adverts trying to lure major firms from London, and even promised them financial aid in resettling workers and handling their English files? Well, I’ll give you a clue — it wasn’t Germany.
But of course, it never would be Germany. For all the wartime stereotypes, most modern Germans are full of admiration for Britain, as they are always keen to tell you.
The French are a very different matter, which is why I have not been at all surprised by their shamelessly hypocritical, cynical and self-interested conduct.
It is sometimes said that the French elite’s jealousy and resentment of all things Anglo-Saxon dates back to their behaviour in the Forties, when they abased themselves before the Nazi war machine and had to be liberated by the British and Americans.
In fact, I think the roots are a bit deeper. Ever since Napoleon’s bid for world power was ended by the British and the Germans at Waterloo, the French have been the whipping boys of the world powers.
Their culture, once the finest in Europe, has become a sleepy backwater. Their economy has become sclerotic and inflexible. Even their language, once the world’s lingua franca, has become a minority interest.
All this helps to explain why, as the Cambridge historian Robert Tombs wrote a few years ago in his brilliant book That Sweet Enemy, envy and hatred of the English is so deeply embedded at the core of French identity.
Many of our Gallic neighbours, if only unconsciously, have never forgiven us for Trafalgar and Waterloo, let alone for saving them in 1944.
Indeed, when a poll was carried out to mark the centenary of the entente cordiale in 2004, it transpired that the words the French most associate with us are ‘snobbish’, ‘cold’, ‘arrogant’ and, of course, ‘insular’. Nothing very cordiale about that!
It is this festering resentment, I think, that explains why the French were so keen to poison our relations with the newly formed Common Market from the very beginning.
President Hollande can moan all he likes about Britain’s supposed folly in leaving the EU, our arrogance in not considering ourselves European and all the rest of it. What he seems to forget, though, is that it was his predecessor, Charles de Gaulle, who vetoed our application to join in the Sixties — and not once, but twice.
Most commentators at the time agreed that de Gaulle had never forgiven Britain for bailing him out during World War II, and was itching to get one over on his former patron. He was reported to have said he wanted to see Britain enter the Common Market ‘stripped naked’ — and although he denied it, most people thought it rang true.
De Gaulle made no secret of his fundamental distrust of all things British. By ‘nature and structure and economic context’, he said, Britain was different from the rest of Europe. Hence his famous ‘non!’, which delayed our entry for ten years to 1973.
I sometimes wonder how different our history would be if de Gaulle had fallen under a protesting farmer’s tractor and we had, indeed, joined in 1963.
Since Britain was then unquestionably the leading power in Europe, we would surely have dominated the Common Market in its crucial early years, and could have helped it to evolve into a leaner, less wasteful, more effective association, shorn of all its bureaucratic nonsense.
The French, of course, would not have liked that at all. Even now, they cling jealously to their privileges, such as the ridiculous gimmick of having a second European Parliament in Strasbourg and the corrupt charade of the Common Agricultural Policy, which accounts for 40 per cent of the EU budget and functions as a gigantic subsidy for French farmers.
In that respect, de Gaulle played his cards perfectly. By the time we joined, the Common Market was well on its way to becoming a French cartel. And with Britain’s self-confidence then at an all-time low, there was very little we could do about it.
Where de Gaulle led, though, other French leaders have followed. When Margaret Thatcher became our first woman prime minister in 1979, her French counterpart, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, treated her with snobbish condescension, to the point of ostentatiously leafing through a newspaper while she was talking at a European summit.
Jacques Chirac revelled in his reputation as the enemy of all things Anglo-Saxon. Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to move France’s migrant camps to the shores of southern England.
And although the current front-runner for the French presidential election in 2017, Francois Fillon, is a self-confessed Anglophile (and is married to a Welsh woman), I wonder whether, under the pressure of the election, he can resist the temptation to bash the British, in order to appeal to the notoriously chauvinistic voters of la France profonde.
So while Tory aide Miss Dockerill was reckless to wave her notes around for all the world to read, I am pleased to see that the Government is taking the French threat seriously.
For the past 1,000 years, our cross-Channel neighbours have been our greatest rivals — not just on the battlefield, but in everything from business and finance to culture and sport.
It was probably only a matter of time before they threw off the flimsy pretence of politeness and took up their battered old Napoleonic swords.
Once again, this is a battle we cannot afford to lose.
But we should not shrink from the challenge. We should welcome it. For as history shows, when the French and the British lock horns in earnest, there is usually only one outcome.
 
Cabinet ministers expect another heavy defeat for Theresa May's Brexit deal when the Commons votes again next week, after the UK walked away empty-handed from the latest negotiations with Brussels. 
Talks between EU negotiators and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox ended in deadlock yesterday after Brussels refused to grant assurances over the Irish backstop. 
The backstop has proved the biggest obstacle to Mrs May's efforts to persuade her Tory colleagues to back her Brexit deal. 
But Europe refused to make changes to the withdrawal deal which would allow Cox to issue new legal advice saying that the backstop will not last indefinitely. 
The impasse means the PM is running out of time to secure changes before the Commons votes again on Tuesday.  
Ministers have resigned themselves to defeat with one believing she is 'certain' to lose again following her record 230-vote defeat in January, the Daily Telegraph reported. 
Some of her Tory colleagues believe the majority against her deal could be as high as 100 this time, it is claimed.  
Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, gave a gloomy assessment of the talks but said afterwards that he was 'still determined'. 
EU officials are preparing to work round the clock this weekend, saying it is 'unlikely' an agreement will be reached before then and that talks will go down to the wire.
'There's no sign of a breakthrough and there will need to be some tough work in the days ahead if there's going to be deal,' one EU official said, adding that it was still possible negotiators could seal a deal by the end of the weekend.
But that would leave Mrs May just 24 hours to travel to Brussels to endorse the deal on Monday before taking it back to be voted on by MPs the next day.
Tory Brexiteers have already warned the Prime Minister they want at least two days to scrutinise any new offer and will not be 'bounced' into an early vote.
Mr Cox, who met Mr Barnier with Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, described Tuesday's late-night talks as 'robust' as he returned to London yesterday.
He said: 'We are into the meat of the matter now. We've put forward some proposals, very reasonable proposals, and we're now really into the detail of the discussions.
'Both sides have exchanged robust, strong views and we are now facing the real discussions. Talks will be resuming soon.'
Last night it emerged that Mr Cox is trying to secure an 'arbitration panel' that would determine if the two sides were acting in good faith in trying to find alternatives to the backstop.
But according to a report on the BuzzFeed website, the idea was rejected by Mr Barnier.
Sources say Mr Cox and Mr Barclay could be back in Brussels as early as tomorrow to help push a deal over the line in time for next week's vote.
Technical discussions, led by Mrs May's chief Brexit adviser Olly Robbins, will continue in Brussels. Neither side is said to have presented any new formal text. The latest row over the backstop – designed to prevent a hard border emerging in Ireland – centres around disagreements over language which could either form a new document to be added to the Withdrawal Treaty or sit alongside it. According to EU sources, 'inspiration' for the text has been drawn from a joint letter sent to Mrs May by EU Commission and Council chiefs Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk in January.
This included a pledge to reach a future trade agreement 'speedily' and talked of a 'firm determination' to have an alternative to the backstop ready so it would either never have to be used or only triggered 'temporarily'.
Negotiators are struggling with the 'semantic' challenge of agreeing a form of words which will please both sides.
The House of Lords is poised to demand Britain stays in a Customs union with the EU after Brexit today.
Peers are likely to defy Government pleas to amend the Trade Bill to make a customs union an 'objective' of the trade talks phase of Brexit negotiations.
The rebel amendment is widely expected to carry - setting up a new showdown when the legislation returns to the Commons.
MPs have to agree any changes made by the Lords and the Government would try to strip it from the Bill.
But PM Theresa May has only a feeble grip of the Commons and could be defeated by a handful of soft Brexit Tory rebels.  
Downing Street acknowledged the talks were deadlocked, but insisted they would continue.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: 'The EU continues to say they want this resolved and they want the UK to leave with a deal. Parliament has been clear we need legally-binding changes to ensure the UK cannot be stuck in the backstop indefinitely.'
An EU Commission spokesman said: 'While the talks were held under a constructive atmosphere, discussions have been difficult and we have not yet been able to identify any solution.'
Meanwhile, EU boats will be banned from fishing in UK waters if Britain leaves without a deal under a new law to be laid before Parliament today.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove will say boats which want to fish off the UK coast will need a licence from the Government.
MPs were warned last night they may lose their Easter holiday to push through Brexit legislation. It was the clearest hint yet that Brexit is set to be delayed.
Mr Gove warned MPs that votes on vital Brexit legislation could be held during Easter.
The prospect of a super-soft Brexit increased last night after Jeremy Corbyn held talks with Tory supporters of a Norway-style deal with the EU.
Norway's arrangement with the EU forces it to accept the free movement of people ruled out by Labour's 2017 manifesto.
But in a surprise move, the Labour leader discussed the idea with a cross-party group of MPs calling for the softest possible Brexit.
In a separate development last night, the House of Lords voted for plans that would force Theresa May to seek a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit.
The moves underline fears at the top of Government that Parliament will seize control of the Brexit process if Mrs May's deal is rejected for a second time on March 12.
Chief Whip Julian Smith warned the Cabinet on Tuesday that Parliament would 'try to force the Government into a customs union' if the deal is defeated next week. Mrs May is considering a public warning on the issue tomorrow in the hope of pressuring MPs into supporting her proposals.
A Whitehall source said the PM could make a major speech 'framing next week as the moment of decision for the country'.
MPs from across parties have been mooting the idea of a plan based on an enhanced version of the relationship Norway has with the EU.
It would effectively keep the UK in the single market, with a customs bolt-on to avoid a hard Irish border, and backers say it would keep Britain close to the EU while cutting contributions to Brussels.
However, critics say it has the drawbacks of keeping free movement, - and tightly limiting the possibilities for doing trade deals elsewhere.
The EU is also thought to have concerns about a country the UK's size joining the EEA, while other states in the group might be resistant.
Yesterday's talks involved Mr Corbyn, Tory ex-ministers Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles and Labour backers of the Norway plan, Stephen Kinnock and Lucy Powell.
Mr Kinnock said the meeting involved talks about a Norway-style deal, adding: 'There is a strong cross-party consensus for a pragmatic, bridge-building Brexit.'
Sir Oliver, working with Labour's Yvette Cooper, is leading a push for Parliament to take control of the Brexit process.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said last night it was 'astonishing' that senior Conservatives were willing to work with Labour's hard-Left leader on plans that would undermine Government policy.
Last night, peers backed an amendment to the Customs Bill by a majority of 66 that would require Mrs May to seek a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit. An alliance of Labour, Lib Dem, cross bench and some Tory peers defeated the Government by 207 votes to 141.
Labour's trade spokesman in the Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, said: 'Ministers must drop their red lines on Brexit and embark on a fresh approach to the negotiations with the EU based around a Customs Union that protects jobs, secures opportunities for our industries, and removes the need for a hard border in Ireland.'
Ministers had been resigned to losing last night's vote, but No10 indicated it would seek to overturn the demand in the Commons, where MPs have already voted twice to reject a permanent customs union.
Mrs May's spokesman said: 'The PM has been clear about the importance of the UK being able to have its own trade policy.'
Norway is not in the customs union but is a member of the EU's single market, and has to accept free movement, pay into the EU budget and accept EU laws. Senior Tories warn that making the UK a rule-taker undermines the idea that the UK is taking back control from the EU. 
A no-deal Brexit could cause a sharp rise in unemployment in Northern Ireland, the head of the civil service said.
Inability to prepare, EU tariffs and significant changes to exports could cause business distress, failure or the relocation of some companies to the Republic, a report from David Sterling said.
The UK will leave the EU without a deal later this month unless MPs support the Prime Minister's deal or Britain secures an extension from the EU.
Mr Sterling said: 'The consequences of material business failure as a result of a 'no-deal' exit, combined with changes to everyday life and potential border frictions could well have a profound and long-lasting impact on society.
'The planning assumptions include the possibility that, in some scenarios, a no-deal exit could result in additional challenges for the police if the approach appeared to be unfair or unreasonable for some of those most affected.'
European newspapers have responded to Theresa May's Brexit speech with a series of striking front pages.
Mrs May confirmed on Tuesday that Britain will quit the single market and implement a 'full Brexit', warning she will walk away from exit talks rather than accept a 'punitive' deal. 
Germany's broadsheet Die Welt mocked the Prime Minister with an image of her superimposed in front of a Union Jack flag with the headline 'Little Britain'.
The headline font matches the one used in the eccentric BBC comedy of the same name starring comedians David Walliams and Matt Lucas.
The subheading read: 'Prime Minister Theresa May leads Great Britain into the isolation'.
She is pictured wearing a blue checked blazer and white shirt with matching red lipstick and nail varnish - a nod to her previous 'red, white and blue' Brexit reference.
Die Welt’s Twitter account shared the front page with a message that said ‘so lonely’.
Denmark's leading broadsheet Politiken also emphasised Mrs May’s tough words, with the headline: ‘Brits slam the door hard on EU.’
French daily Libération tied their coverage of Mrs May’s speech in with the upcoming inauguration of Donald Trump and Russia's President Putin being ‘aggressive’.
It said ‘London who opts for a hard Brexit... The EU finds itself attacked on all fronts without having seen anything coming.’
French paper Le Figaro's headline said 'Theresa May ready to break completely with Europe' but the publication's main front page article was about terrorism in France.
Italian daily La Repubblica lead with the headline ‘Brexit, London gets its wall, away from the EU and the common market'.
And Italy’s Corriere della Serra used a photo of Mrs May waving as she walked away from photographers with the headline 'Theresa May's clear cut', while La Stampa interpreted the speech as 'out of Europe right away'.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais did not top with Brexit, but there is a mention of Mrs May's speech in the top right of the title page.
It references the Prime Minister's announcement that Britain will leave the single market, adding that Mrs May is hoping for a hard Brexit subject to Parliament's vote.
It calls the announcement her 'most important speech' since coming to Downing Street.
Britain's Brexit minister David Davis said the government had received positive responses from Brussels after Prime Minister Theresa May set out her priorities for upcoming negotiations on leaving the European Union.
'Some of the other responses we got back from Brussels overnight reflected that, that this was a positive response, something that they were, I think they were hoping for, frankly,' Davis told BBC radio on Wednesday.
May said in a speech on Tuesday that Britain would seek the greatest possible access to European markets but aim to establish its own free trade deals with countries beyond Europe, and impose limits on immigration from the continent.
Asked how things would change for Britons the day after the country left the EU, Davis said he did not expect travel restrictions but customs checks were up for negotiation.
'You won't see any difference, let's say, in the right to travel. We have got 35 million people who come here from Europe each year,' he said. 'We will see (about customs checks). That is one of the things we will have to negotiate.'
A close-up of Mrs May's face set against a Union flag dominates the front of Spanish newspaper ABC.
Its headline translates to: "May threatens the EU with a commercial war."
It warns that Britain will create a tax haven if the rest of Europe "punishes" it during negotiations.
And Spain’s El Mundo said: ‘Theresa May renounces European Union to control immigration’.
Norway's Klassekampen used a picture of Mrs May pursing her lips and glancing sideways alongside the headline 'Goodbye EU'.
Bullet points added: 'May promises full break for Britain. Promises tough demands for the EU'.
Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter headlined its front page: 'Rough times when the British go out of the EU.'
Austria's Kronen Zeitung did not include Mrs May on its front page but published a story online that said 'she has announced in her principle speech on Tuesday a "hard brexit", a clear separation from the European Union.
 
The EU is risking street riots across Europe and imperiling public safety if it continues to stubbornly refuse to do a Brexit deal, leaders today warned.
Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said that furious farmers will take to the streets to vent their fury if Brussels lets the UK crash out of the bloc and then slaps hefty tariffs on trade.
He compared the scaremongering over the consequences of Britain's looming departure to the unfounded fears that the millennium bug would send all computers into meltdown.
Meanwhile, in a leaked letter, police leaders have warned that no deal could put the British public at risk if the EU follows through on its threat to evict the UK from its policing databases.
In the letter, sent to Home Secretary Sajid Javid and leaked to The Guardian, police chiefs urge the Government to do more to prepare the country for crashing of the bloc.
The warnings come amid growing fears that Britain will not get a Brexit deal - with International Trade Secretary Liam Fox saying the odds of no deal were now 60 to 40 because of Brussels' stubbornness. 
Theresa May's official spokesman said the UK had taken a 'significant' step in drawing up its Chequers plan and said the EU must now respond.
Sir Bernard told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'What will happen to the quarter of Dutch poultry farmers who sell their goods to the UK or the one fifth of Spanish tomatoes that come to the UK – what will happen to those producers of the EU insists on putting up all these barriers?
'There would be rioting in the streets at this perverse behaviour.'
He added: 'The industry is feeding the Government with this diet of gloom and alarm and despondency.
'Actually, it's unnecessary and we will look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, a bit like the millennium bug.' 
He hit out at reports that the UK will have to stockpile drugs in preparation for no Brexit and said that Britain sells more medicines to the EU than vice versa.
Meanwhile, in a letter market 'official, sensitive', police chiefs have warned Mr Javid that public safety could be put at risk if no deal is done.
The letter, from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) cross-party Brexit working group, says British officers use 32 different security mechanisms which operate through the EU. 
This includes the European Arrest warrant - which allows criminal suspects to be arrested  and extradited around the continent - and several databases.
The letter says: 'Considerable additional resource would be required for policing to operate using non-EU tools and that such tools would be suboptimal – potentially putting operational efficiency and public safety at risk.
'Recruitment, vetting and training of staff to use these tools would take a substantial amount of time.
'We are therefore concerned that a 'no deal' scenario could cause delays and challenges for UK policing and justice agencies.'
The letter adds: 'These shared tools, measures, initiatives and capabilities which have been developed over the last 40 years of cooperation across the EU have saved many lives. 
'We must find ways to protect these mutually important capabilities when the UK leaves the EU in order to ensure the safety and security all our citizens.'
Mrs May has repeatedly said that the UK wants to maintain a close security relationship with the bloc after Brexit.
And she has warned the EU not to let their own stubborn commitment to their ideological red lines undermine the ability of European and British police and security forces cooperating to protect their citizens. 
Article 8 of the Lisbon Treaty states that the EU must seek good relations with its neighbouring countries. 
Here is what it says: 
1. The Union shall develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries, aiming to establish an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness, founded on the values of the Union and characterised by close and peaceful relations based on cooperation.
2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the Union may conclude specific agreements with the countries concerned. These agreements may contain reciprocal rights and obligations as well as the possibility of undertaking activities jointly. Their implementation shall be the subject of periodic consultation.
Some have pointed out that by stubbornly refusing to do a Brexit deal the EU could be seen to be flouting its own rules, enshrined in this treaty.
But EU experts point out that any legal case would be fraught with difficulties.
They note that the Treaty only states that the EU 'may' enter into agreements with countries - and does not say it must.   
Her official spokesman today repeated that warning as he said that Dr Fox 'is right to say there is a risk of the negotiations not succeeding' - although he said No10 still believes a deal is the most likely option. 
He also pointedly said that Mrs May has previously warned that 'rigid institutional restrictions or deep seated ideology' must not be a block to getting a good deal.
The comments come amid reports that ministers have warned the EU it could be breaking its own rules if it refuses to compromise and get a deal on Brexit.
Article 8 of the Lisbon Treaty - one of the key legal texts which governs how the EU operates - says the bloc should 'aim to develop an area of propensity and good neighbourliness with  neighbouring countries'.
Whitehall sources reportedly said that if the EU does not abandon its stubborn negotiating stance and try to broker a deal then it may be flouting this obligation.
The warnings come amid growing fears that the UK could crash out of the EU at the end of next march without a deal.
In an outspoken intervention at the weekend, Dr Fox - a leading Brexiteer - said 'the intransigence of the commission is pushing us towards no deal'.
Asked today what the PM thought of his comments, her official spokesman said: 'We continue to believe that a deal is the most likely outcome because reaching a good deal is not only in the interests of the UK it is in the interests of the EU ad its 27 members.
'But the Trade Secretary is right to say there is a risk of the negotiations not succeeding, and the Government has to prepare for all eventualities.'
And he said that Britain had come up with a working compromise in the Chequers deal - and that the ball is now in the EU's court.'
He said:  'Following the publication of the white paper, we are now in a serious conversation across a broad range of issues with the EU.
'They recognise the white paper represents a significant move by the UK ad now they need to respond.
'The Prime Minister has in the past set out the importance of being pragmatic and practical in the negotiations.
'For example, in her Munich security speech, she said 'this cannot be a time where any of us allow competition between partners, rigid institutional restrictions or  deep seated ideology to inhibit our cooperation and jeopardise the security of our citizens'. 
In an interview with The Sunday Times , Dr Fox said he believed the risk of a no-deal scenario had increased.
He pinning the blame on the European Commission and Brussels' chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
He said: 'I think the intransigence of the commission is pushing us towards no deal.
'We have set out the basis in which a deal can happen but if the EU decides that the theological obsession of the unelected is to take priority over the economic wellbeing of the people of Europe then it's a bureaucrats' Brexit – not a people's Brexit – then there is only going to be one outcome.'
He said Mr Barnier had dismissed the UK's proposals in the Chequers plan thrashed out by Mrs May and the Cabinet simply because 'we have never done it before'. 
Some in the Government believe that the EU could be found to have flouted its own rules unless it tries to come up with a compromise on Brexit.
A Whitehall source told The Daily Telegraph that under Article 8 of the Lisbon Treaty the EU has an obligation to seek a cooperative relationship with its neighbours.
And they pointed out that the bloc's current refusal to compromise on its own red lines and do a deal can be viewed as flouting this requirement.
But legal experts have pointed out that the clause only requires the EU to aim to develop an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness with its border countries.
Academics say that while the treaty suggests deals can be done with countries, it does not require the bloc to do them.
They said this would make any legal case against the EU incredibly difficult to bring.
But a Whitehall source said the UK will make it clear that the finger of blame should be pointed squarely at the EU if no deal is done.
They told The Daily Telegraph: 'We have made an offer that some people think is on the generous side and the EU has to know we are not kidding. 
'If they don't like our offer they need to come back and say what the alternative is, but they can't just keep stalling. 'They also need to accept that we've done nothing wrong. 
'We left under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty, which says they have obligations to help us. 
'The way they are behaving is making things difficult and if we end up with no deal we will make it clear whose fault it was.'
Ex Brexit Secretary David Davis told the newspaper: 'The Lisbon Treaty requires them to come up with a workable arrangement and that's certainly not the description of their behaviour at the moment.'
As fears of a no deal Brexit grow, Mrs May is bypassing the EU to hold talks with member state leaders directly.
She met with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, cutting short her holiday to visit his summer retreat.
And ministers including Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab have also engaged in diplomatic activity in Europe in recent days as the in an effort to keep the Chequers plan alive.   
Nigel Farage has again blasted Andrew Marr over his 'ludicrous' interview and accused the BBC of 'secretly' taking millions in EU cash while trying to keep him off TV.
The Brexit Party leader, 55, clashed with the broadcaster, 59, on his Sunday morning show in a row that has shocked and split viewers. 
Mr Farage, who was asked about comments he had made about Putin, climate change and the NHS, said: 'It was bizarre that the ludicrous line of questioning persisted all the way through. This is a public service broadcaster that we all pay money to. We deserve better'.
In an incendiary column today, Mr Farage says he is a victim of BBC 'bias' and had to 'fight like crazy' to get on to Question Time on Thursday because 'the BBC now have to gender balance everything'.
He also claimed the BBC was 'still receiving a seven-figure sum from the EU, taking millions in this way from the EU during the past decade. It does so secretly, without mentioning this in its accounts. I find this highly suspicious'.  
Mr Farage claims the BBC still receives a seven-figure sum from the EU under the EU Framework programme. The BBC is yet to respond.
Mr Farage's new party is flying in the polls and is predicted to win the popular vote when the European elections take place on May 23.
Nigel Farage has said that the Labour party is 'vulnerable in the most extraordinary way' in Leave areas in the north of England.
The Brexit Party leader was speaking during a visit to Pontefract, West Yorkshire, part of Labour MP Yvette Cooper's constituency, where 70% of voters voted to leave the EU.
Mr Farage said he had seen a lot of anger and passion in Labour Leave areas in northern towns, as he toured the UK ahead of next week's European election.
He said: 'The passion seems even stronger in Labour Leave areas than in Conservative Leave areas.
'Whether that's because people in the north of England wear their hearts on their sleeves more, I don't know.'
Mr Farage spoke to members of the public who told him that they were usually Labour voters, but would be voting for the Brexit Party in the forthcoming election.
He said: 'It's areas like this where I think the Labour party is vulnerable in the most extraordinary way.'
He continued: 'This is a 70% Leave constituency, these five towns voted Leave by a massive margin'.
On Sunday Mr Marr had brought up his past comments about the NHS and admiring Vladimir Putin, and the irate Brexiteer replied: 'I've never in my life seen a more ridiculous interview than this. You are not prepared to talk about what is going on in this country today. You're in denial, the BBC is in denial'.
Campaigning in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, yesterday, 'The idea was to use up all the time talking about irrelevances and inaccuracies, rather than talking about a major election taking place next Thursday. That's why I took the attitude that I did.'
In another blast at the BBC he said: 'The BBC is a public service broadcaster. We are essentially taxed on the BBC. £150 a year goes to the BBC, the licence fee. People like Andrew Marr get £400,000 a year from this money. This was not public service broadcasting.
'You've got a brand new political movement that's come from nothing and is leading the polls. I would have thought on the first big interview on TV, it might be interesting to find out how and why that has happened'. 
Andrew Marr has stayed largely quiet over the row, although the BBC's TV politics chief Rob Burley insists that Mr Marr's line of questioning was fair and impartial.
Mr Marr then retweeted a message from his colleague saying: 'Andrew Marr and the rest of us will just carry on doing OUR job and we won't be intimidated'. 
Viewers have leapt to the defence of Nigel Farage. 
Twitter users attacked the BBC, saying that the interview had been a 'hatchet job' and Mr Farage himself complained today that it had brought up subjects 'entirely unrelated to this election'.
Piers Morgan was among those who took the side of Mr Farage, saying in a row with former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell that 'hysterical' critics were helping propel Farage 'into Downing Street'.
But other twitter users were less sympathetic, with many saying it was right that he be held to account and some suggestion that he appeared on the BBC too often. 
But Jason Keen, a producer on the Andrew Marr programme, defended its handling of the Brexit Party leader.
Writing on Twitter he said: 'It is not true Marr ''didn't ask Nigel Farage anything relevant to EU elections'' Andrew questioned him for 9 mins on: The mandate for no deal (Farage's flagship policy) (and) whether 2nd ref or a Brexit deal that keeps us close to EU would be ''betrayal'' (one of his key arguments).'
It came as Mr Farage hit out at being prevented from meeting US President Donald Trump during this summer's state visit, saying: 'Theresa May doesn't care about the national interest.'
He claimed that he had been banned by the Government from meeting Mr Trump on the President's last visit to the UK last year.
But Downing Street insisted the claims were 'nonsense', adding that the President had not even asked to meet the ex-Ukip boss. 
Yesterday, Mr Farage attacked Labour MPs during a campaign rally in the party's Yorkshire heartland yesterday.
The Brexit Party leader held a reception at a working men's club in the town of Featherstone, West Yorkshire, next to Labour MP Yvette Cooper's constituency.
He spent the morning meeting residents in nearby Pontefract telling supporters: 'I can't think of a better constituency for the Brexit party to visit. Because 70 per cent of you in that referendum voted to leave.'
'And the next year your MP Yvette Cooper made a series of promises to you. She promised she would respect the vote and she boasted that she voted for Article 50.
'Yet despite all of that, I cannot think of an MP who has done more in the last two years than to stop us leaving the EU.'
Earlier in the day, Mr Farage said it was his 'duty' to stand as an MP in the next general election. He told LBC: 'I'm going to have to [stand] of course. It's a duty, it's a duty, it's a duty.
'We cannot ever allow again a great democratic exercise like this to be railroaded aside by career politicians of the Labour and Tory parties'.
In a tense exchange full of interruptions, Nigel Farage gave Andrew Marr some of the answers he was asking for, but angrily slammed the BBC for 'trawling back through a series of quotes from years ago'. 
Andrew Marr: The only way that we can really judge the Brexit Party in the round at the moment is by looking at its leader, looking at you. So let's look at you for a moment.
Nigel Farage: Well…
Marr: Do you still want to replace the NHS with a private insurance based system?
Farage: I never did. I would like to take the burden off the NHS. I mean, if you want to go back…
Marr: Yes I do want to go back
Farage: This is really very boring isn't it
Marr: No it's not boring
Farage: All you want to do is go back to stuff from years ago, why don't we talk about now, in British politics. Why don't we talk about the sea-change that is going on out there.
Marr: You are trying to lead an insurgent party to replace the main parties. Therefore you are an important figure, in this. [Quoting] 'I think we're going to have to move to an insurance-based system of healthcare, I would feel more comfortable, my money would return value if I was able to do that through the marketplace of an insurance company than just trusting giving a hundred billion pounds a year to central government.' Do you still hold that view?
Farage: If I was encouraged to opt-out of the system, to relieve the burden off the National Health Service, I would do so gleefully/. Do you want to discuss these european elections or not?
Marr: Yes I certainly do but…
Farage: Go on then. Go on then, lets' try.
Marr: Do you still believe that worrying about global warming is 'the stupidest thing in human history'?
Farage: I believe that if we decided, this country, to tax ourselves to the hilt, to put hundreds of thousands of people out of work in the manufacturing industries, given that we produce less than two per cent of global CO2, that isn't terribly intelligent. But as I say: here we are, with one of the biggest changes in politics that has ever occurred…
Marr: Okay…
Farage: … and you're not even interested?
Marr: Do you still…
Farage: What's wrong with the BBC?
Marr: Do you still want to…
Farage: What is wrong with the BBC?
Marr: Do you still want to roll back gun controls and reintroduce hand guns in this country?
Farage: What is wrong … This sums it up. Do you know, I've been going around the country, speaking at packed rallies every night, and do you know who's not there? The BBC. And from this line of questioning now I can see why.
Marr: Do you still…
Farage: You're just not interested are you?
Marr: Do you still feel uncomfortable with...
Farage: You are just…
Marr: … foreign languages being spoken on the train?
Farage: ...not interested are you. Let's talk about democracy, let's talk about trust, let's talk about competence in politics. This. Is. Ludicrous.
Marr: Do you still feel that people with HIV shouldn't be allowed into this country?
Farage: Do I think the National Health Service is there for British people? Yes I absolutely do.
Marr: So you still do. Do you…
Farage: This is absolutely ludicrous. I've never in my life seen a more ridiculous interview than this. You are not prepared to talk about what is going on in this country today. You're in denial, the BBC's in denial, the Tory and Labour Parties are in denial. I think you're all in for a bigger surprise on Thursday week…
Marr: We have talked about it…
Farage: … than you can imagine.
Marr: We have talked about it. Do you still admire Vladimir Putin?
Farage: No. I've never admired Vladimir Putin.
Marr: You, Well you asked which current...
Farage: I said I wouldn't like to live in his country
Marr: Asked which world leader you most admired you told GQ..
Farage: This is absolute nonsense.
Marr: … magazine 'as an operator but not as a human being, I would say Putin'
Farage: Well there you are
Marr: 'The way he played the whole' …
Farage: Well there you are
Marr: … 'Syria thing'
Farage: Well there you are. Not as a human being. I don't like him as a human being. What is your question? What is the relevance of this?
Marr: I'm trying to work out where you are and where the Brexit Party which wants to destroy the political system is going.
Farage: You haven't asked about a single other member of the Brexit Party, you haven't commented on the fact we have the most diverse list of candidates of any party fighting in this election.
Marr: From the Revolutionary Communist Party right through to the Right
Farage: Well that's worth discussing isn't it. How have we managed to get Left and Right together. These things are really interesting to your viewers. Not trawling back through a series of quotes from years ago.
Marr: Do you still want to slash the size of the state?
Farage: Absolutely. I want people to have more freedom. Absolutely, and particularly, 5.4 million people out there, acting as sole traders, running small businesses, and there's nobody in government on their side. Let's make their lives easier. They'll create more jobs, pay more taxes, and it'll be good for our country.
 
 
 
 
The Tories may have to accept a permanent customs union to get Brexit through Parliament, the Cabinet was warned yesterday.
In a blunt analysis, the Government's chief whip Julian Smith said there was no chance of passing a version of Mrs May's deal without Labour's support – and warned that the Government could be 'sunk' if it tried.
A source said Mr Smith told yesterday's meeting of the Cabinet: 'It's a customs union or a second referendum, and we are not having a second referendum.'  
It came as Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey - who has attended the Tory-Labour talks - has said the Government may have no option but to move towards a customs union if it wants to get its Brexit deal through Parliament. 
Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright reportedly said after a 90-minute discussion in No 10 yesterday: 'The options are like being in an acid bath because there are no good options'.  
Environment Secretary Michael Gove told the Cabinet it would be better to have the 'unpalatable' outcome of a deal with Labour than the 'disastrous' outcome of Brexit not happening at all.
He reportedly argued that if Mrs May's promised to deliver the 'benefits of a customs union' - the Tories could pursue free trade deals but it would give a Labour government wriggle-room to push through a full customs union.
The Telegraph reported a Cabinet source as saying some Brexiteers in the room were were unhappy about the way Mrs May was handling the issue.
Although no decisions were taken at the meeting, one Cabinet minister described the presentation as 'pitch rolling for a customs union' ahead of last-ditch talks with Labour on a soft-Brexit compromise next week. 
Mrs May told ministers that she wanted to bring the month-long talks with Labour to a 'conclusion' next week, in the hope of getting a Brexit deal through Parliament in the coming weeks.
But Labour has made it clear that a customs union would be the minimum price for its support. 
 Rebecca Long-Bailey said today Labour is waiting to see if the Government is prepared to move on some of its positions in the cross-party talks aimed at finding a compromise deal which can win support in the Commons.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, she said that, on the crucial issue of a customs union - which Labour supports but many Tory MPs strongly oppose - the Government may have to give ground.
'I think, pragmatically, that they potentially may have no option in order to be able to push this deal through,' she said.
'We are fleshing out the details to see how far the Government can move towards us and then we will be able to ascertain how far we are able to move towards them.
'There are certain issues that we think they will be prepared to move on and we might be prepared to support certain positions.
'There are certain areas which we haven't seen any movement at all. We want to take a view on the whole package, the whole deal, to see if there has been any true movement.'
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has led calls for the Government to introduce the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which would ratify Mrs May's Brexit deal, and dare MPs to vote it down.
But Mr Smith yesterday issued ministers with a detailed paper highlighting the risks involved. He said it was clear that Labour would vote against the legislation unless the Government met its demands for a soft Brexit. With 34 Tory rebels and the DUP also still opposed, the legislation would have no chance of passing.
Ministers were warned that in order to bring the deal back later, they would then have to prorogue Parliament [terminate a session until November], with no guarantee that the DUP would back a Queen's Speech – potentially bringing about the collapse of the Government.
'Basically he told us the Government would be sunk if we tried it,' the source said.
Another source said: 'The point, which was reflected by many ministers, is that the choices we are facing as a result of Parliament rejecting the deal, are now very unpleasant.'
International development secretary Penny Mordaunt called on Mr Smith to 'not give up on the 34' Tory rebels. But sources said she was backed only by Mrs Leadsom and the international trade secretary Liam Fox.
Mrs May has yet to make a formal offer to Labour on a customs union, with ministers instead trying to persuade their opposite numbers that her deal delivers most of the benefits they want.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday rejected the idea of a customs union calling it 'bad policy'.
Speaking to the Mail during a trip to Africa, Mr Hunt said: 'Personally I think a customs union is bad policy.
'I haven't seen any experts who think the customs union which is on offer from the EU would be in any way sustainable for an economy the size of Britain.'
Mr Hunt also warned that a soft Brexit agreement with Labour could anger so many Tories that it might be defeated anyway.
He added: 'There is always a danger of doing a deal with Labour that you lose more Conservative MPs than you gain Labour MPs. But I think the essential question is whether Labour are serious about delivering Brexit.'
Fears have been raised today that Irish border checks after Brexit could spark violence - with a poll finding a fifth of Catholics would back protests.
A report found fierce resistance to tougher border restrictions either on the island of Island or between the province and the rest of Britain.
There was a 'strong expectation' that any dispute would 'quickly deteriorate into violence' with people threatening to block traffic and vandalise cameras, according to the UK in a Changing Europe study.
The future of the Irish border has emerged as critical in the Brexit negotiations, with the UK and the EU engaged in bitter wrangling over how to avoid imposing 'hard' customs checks.
Brussels has dismissed the government's options of either a customs partnership or a 'Maximum Facilitation' technological solution.
Meanwhile, Theresa May has rejected the idea of drawing a border in the Irish sea, warning that breaking up the UK could never be acceptable. 
If the UK crashes of the bloc out without any kind of deal there would automatically be a hard border. 
Brexit minister Steve Baker appeared to accuse Brussels of 'running a scam' to keep Britain tied to the bloc last night.
He retweeted a series of messages on Twitter pointing out that there are already border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The poll, conducted for the Economic and Social Research Council, found one in five Catholics found the possible use of cameras at the Irish border 'almost impossible to accept' and would support protests such as traffic being blocked.
Some 9 per cent of Catholics suggested they would support cameras being vandalised.
The report said: 'There is substantial and intense opposition to possible north-south border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and to east-west border checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
'There are strong expectations that protests against either north-south or east-west border checks would quickly deteriorate into violence.' 
The research found 61 per cent of the population favoured the UK as a whole remaining in the customs union and single market.
Some 69 per cent said they would vote Remain if there was another referendum - up from 56 per cent when the national ballot took place two years ago.
Catholics were much more likely to support a united Ireland if there was a 'hard exit' in which the UK left the customs union and single market. 
A united Ireland was supported by 28 per cent of Catholics if the UK was to stay in the EU, while the figure rose to 53 per cent if there was a 'hard' exit with Britain leaving the customs union and single market.
Principal investigator John Garry, Professor of Political Behaviour at Queen's University Belfast, said: 'We find Catholics and Protestants most prefer the option that would avoid the need for any new barriers on borders.
'Either in the Irish Sea or across Ireland. They want the UK as a whole to stay in the customs union and single market.'
He added: 'However, what may surprise people is the extent to which Catholics oppose all borders within these islands.'
Writing on the Times website today, DUP leader Arlene Foster insisted the people of Northern Ireland did not want to see conflict. 
'Unionists want to live in harmony with their nationalist neighbours. They want to grow our economy and share prosperity. They want the next generation to live in better times,' she wrote. 
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley, Brexit Secretary David Davis and Business Secretary Greg Clark have been visiting Northern Ireland as part of their work on future customs arrangements with the EU after Brexit.
The trio met cross-border companies as part of their working group focusing on a proposed 'Max Fac' option for tackling one of the thorniest outstanding issues. 
The Prime Minister has split her ministers into two teams as they work towards a reconciliation on how to manage arrangements with the EU after the exit.
One group - Brexiteers Liam Fox, Michael Gove and Remain-backing Cabinet Office minister David Lidington are considering a 'customs partnership' - which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU.
A statement from the Brexit Department said: 'Both of the customs models currently under consideration are designed to meet the UK's three guiding principles: allowing us to trade goods and services as freely as possible with the EU, enable us to have an independent trade policy, and avoiding any hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland while maintaining the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom.'
What are the options on the table for a customs deal with the EU? 
With time ticking away on the Brexit negotiations, the Cabinet is still at daggers drawn on the shape for future trade relations with the EU.
The government has set out two potential options for a customs system after the UK leaves the bloc.
But despite a series of tense showdowns at Theresa May's Brexit 'War Cabinet' ministers continue to be deadlocked over what to do.
Meanwhile, Brussels has dismissed both the ideas - and warned that negotiations could stall altogether unless there is progress by a key summit next month. 
They are demanding the UK agrees to a 'backstop' in the Withdrawal Agreement that Mrs May has rejected as unacceptable because it would draw a customs border down the Irish Sea and split the UK.
OPTION 1 - CUSTOMS PARTNERSHIP 
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Britain would be responsible for tracking the origin and final destination of goods coming into the country from outside the EU. The government would also have to ensure all products meet the bloc's standards.
Firms selling directly into the UK market would pay the tariff levels set by Brussels - but would then get a rebate if Britain's tariffs are lower. 
Supporters of the hybrid plan in Cabinet - including Theresa May, Philip Hammond and Greg Clark - say keeping duties aligned up front would avoid the need for physical customs borders between the UK and EU.
As a result it could solve the thorny issue over creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mrs May has been advised by the chief whip that the hybrid option could be the only way of securing a majority in parliament for a Brexit deal. 
But Brexiteers regard the proposal as unworkable and cumbersome - and they were joined by Sajid Javid and Gavin Williamson in criticising it at a tense 'War Cabinet' meeting last week.
There are fears the experimental system will either collapse and cause chaos, or prevent the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit.
Mrs May has instructed official to go away and revise the ideas. Eurosceptics are braced for her to bring back the plan with only 'cosmetic' changes, and try to 'peel off' Mr Javid and Mr Williamson from the core group of Brexiteers.
They are also ready for Mrs May to attempt to bypass the 'War Cabinet' altogether and put the issue before the whole Cabinet - where she has more allies. 
OPTION 2 - MAXIMUM FACILITATION
The 'Max Fac' option accepts that there will be greater friction at Britain's borders with the EU. 
But it would aim to minimise the issues using technology and mutual recognition.
Goods could be electronically tracked and pre-cleared by tax authorities on each side.
Shipping firms could also be given 'trusted trader' status so they can move goods freely, and only pay tariffs when they are delivered to the destination country.
Companies would also be trusted to ensure they were meeting the relevant UK and EU standards on products.
Senior ministers such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox believe this is the only workable option. 
But Remain minded Tories such as Mr Clark insist it will harm trade and cost jobs in the UK.
They also warn that it will require more physical infrastructure on the Irish border - potentially breaching the Good Friday Agreement. It is far from clear whether the government would be able to force anything through parliament that implied a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  
The EU has dismissed the idea that 'Max Fac' could prevent checks on the Irish border as 'magical thinking'.
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
 
 
Hardline Brexiteers never tire of reminding us the UK is the world's fifth-largest economy and, freed of the deadening shackles of Brussels, we will take our rightful place as a powerhouse of growth that puts the EU to shame.
It's an inspiring vision, indeed. 
Unfortunately, the blindness to economic reality — wilful or otherwise — currently on display from some Brexiteer politicians who persist in promoting that glorious future, makes it hard to have faith in their claims.
Our latest growth figures are terrible — in fact, 'growth' is barely the right word. In December, normally brisk because of Christmas shopping, the economy shrank by 0.4 per cent.
In the final three months of the year, quarter-on-quarter growth slipped to a rate of 0.2 per cent, slightly below the Bank of England's expectations and down from a rate of 0.6 per cent in the third quarter.
At the same time, the High Street is in a desperate state with retailers big and small going to the wall, and tens of thousands of jobs being lost.
But one of the most perturbing aspects of the figures released yesterday by the Office For National Statistics was the slow down in manufacturing.
Take the aerospace industry: British prowess at making wings and aero-engines at companies such as Airbus and Rolls-Royce is the envy of the world, with average growth of just under 5 per cent annually from 2010-2017.
Blame
Yet, despite an increase in demand internationally, UK aircraft manufacture fell by 4.5 per cent last year. Senior industry figures say uncertainty over Brexit is to blame.
They are not alone, as we've seen in recent weeks. As hopes of an agreed withdrawal deal have floundered, car company Nissan reneged on a plan to build its new X-Trail SUV at its plant in Brexit-supporting Sunderland.
Meanwhile, the technology company Dyson, whose founder Sir James was a prominent Leave supporter, is already shifting investment and work away from the UK.
More manufacturing companies will certainly follow, and this will be particularly damaging to the regions, which will lose high-skilled, high-paid jobs. What price is the Northern Powerhouse in a No Deal Brexit?
We are at a dangerous juncture. The economy is stagnant and the corporate sector is scared.
Out in the real world of business, of balance sheets, profits and jobs, there is despair at the political impasse as the clock counts down to March 29 and the threat of the UK crashing out of the EU looms ever larger.
Some are unconcerned. Jacob Rees-Mogg and his hardcore Brexit cronies in the European Research Group (ERG) relish the prospect of No Deal.
They place their own ideological purity above the economy, or the worries of business. If the economy is trashed in the process, well it's a price worth paying.
(Incidentally, the fund management firm founded by Rees-Mogg has set up an outpost in Dublin so it can still deal with European investors after Brexit.)
Let's not forget the role of Boris Johnson in all of this. 
In recent months, the former Foreign Secretary has undergone a transformation overseen by his new lover, Carrie Symonds. 
With an eye on a future Tory leadership battle, he's lost weight, tamed his blond mop and is less the mercurial buffoon, and more of un homme serieux.
In his newspaper column yesterday, Johnson hinted he might just be able to bring himself to vote for Theresa May's deal if she can obtain a time limit on the Irish backstop.
Later, he burbled fruitily on Radio 4's Today programme about the Malthouse Compromise (redrafting of the backstop and extension of the transition period) which has the backing of the ERG.
But the mask slipped when he was asked a crunchy question about the 36 per cent tariffs on dairy products under World Trade Organisation rules that could come into play in the event of No Deal.
Beating
Johnson wafted it away with an assertion that the UK and the EU are run by 'responsible human beings' who would never let such a thing happen.
The kind of 'responsible human beings' who dismiss the Brexit concerns of employers by muttering 'f**k business', as Boris is said to have done last year?
Or 'responsible human beings' who, like former Brexit Secretary David Davis, suggest a 20 per cent fall in sterling in the event of No Deal Brexit might not be such a bad thing?
For sheer recklessness, that takes some beating. Yes, our goods would be cheaper abroad, but to suggest a huge devaluation would be an economic boon beggars belief — not least because of the higher prices we'd pay for food and goods from overseas. 
Both Davis and Johnson have ignored the entirely reasonable fears raised by Environment Secretary Michael Gove that food prices will rise in the event of a No Deal.
Far from being 'responsible human beings' who care about the welfare of voters, too many politicians have shown themselves to be charlatans and chancers intent only on their own advancement.
They are prepared to take huge gambles with our national prosperity, while showing themselves to have a precarious intellectual grasp of the economy that would shame a dim A-level student.
Dogma
Naturally, I include in that list Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. He is a half-baked Marxist who takes economic illiteracy to dangerous new depths.
As for the 'responsible' counterparts in Brussels Boris mentioned, well I don't have much faith in them either.
Of course, it is absolutely in the interest of Eurocrats to come to a sensible accommodation with Britain. Germany is terrified of the damage thatr No Deal could cause to its ailing car industry, while Italy relies on the City of London to finance its huge debts.
Unfortunately, Brussels dogma has, for the past two years, taken precedence over these valid concerns and the EU has been every bit as intransigent as the Brexiteers over the prospect of a No Deal scenario.
However much Brexiteers gloss over it, there are serious concerns for the economy after a No Deal Brexit. 
The Bank of England warned last week that growth in 2019 will be as low as 1.2 per cent, and that there is a one in four chance of recession by the summer because of the 'fog of Brexit'.
And while Rees-Mogg, Johnson & Co talk blithely about 'WTO rules' as being the saving grace, they seem completely unaware that the World Trade Organisation has been virtually neutered by a policy of obstruction by President Trump as he fights his own trade wars around the world.
Now with the economic alarm bells ringing, Mrs May is still battling for her deal as the hard-liners wave us over the edge.
Business desperately wants MPs to get behind the PM and avoid a No Deal Brexit that could cost tens of thousands of jobs in their constituencies.
Instead of flirting with Armageddon, politicians need to start repairing the damage they've done to our image abroad, and make restoring confidence in this country as an attractive place to invest their first priority.
 
Furious Tory Remainers claimed Jacob Rees-Mogg is running Britain today after failing to soften the government's Brexit stance.
Rebels complained that Eurosceptics had hijacked Theresa May's premiership after a knife edge vote on whether the UK should stay in the EU customs union.
The government fended off the bid to force her hand in negotiations with Brussels by just six votes - with a handful of Labour Brexiteers saving her from disaster.
Tory Remainer rebels mounted the attack on the Trade Bill after being incensed by Mrs May's decision on Monday to swallow amendments that appeared to undermine her own Chequers blueprint for future trade links.
Former minister Anna Soubry said this morning that whips had threatened to trigger a general election if the government had lost the customs union vote. Mrs May has repeatedly insisted that the UK must not be in a customs union, as it would prevent trade deals being struck elsewhere.
'These nonsenses of threatening general elections and votes of confidence in the Prime Minister and as I actually said to the deputy chief whip 'bring it on' because I shall be the first in the queue to give my vote of full confidence in the Prime Minster,' Mrs Soubry told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'Problem is, I don't think that she's in charge anymore. I've no doubt Jacob Rees-Mogg is running our country.' 
Ms Soubry said MPs were 'frightened of the extremes' within their local associations.
She said hardline Brexiteers were 'ruthless' and well organised while the 'pragmatic majority' were loyal to the Prime Minister.
Remainers had been prepared to support the Chequers agreement even though it had 'huge flaws' to give Theresa May a chance to get on with negotiations, she said.
'Then we had the grotesque spectacle on Monday whereby the Government actually whipped its own Members of Parliament to support amendments deliberately designed to wreck that very pragmatic white paper.
'So, now it is in tatters and they know that.'
Mrs Soubry called for a wartime-style government of national unity to deal with Brexit. 
'We simply cannot go on like this. People in this country are fed up to the back teeth with Brexit,' she said.
Ms Soubry said Labour was in an 'even greater mess' than the Conservatives, with the 'old Trotskyists in charge'.
'I personally would abandon the Labour frontbench and I would reach beyond it and I would encompass Plaid Cymru, the SNP and other sensible, pragmatic people who believe in putting this country's interests first and foremost,' she added. 
Sir Nicholas Soames became the first Conservative MP to call publicly for a cross-party government of national unity yesterday. 
He told Channel 4: 'I must say if I had my way we would have a national government to deal with this. I think it is a national problem. It is the most serious problem this country has faced since the war.' 
Mrs May has repeatedly insisted that the UK must not be in a customs union, as it would prevent trade deals being struck elsewhere. 
BREXITEERS 
David Davis - Brexit secretary
Boris Johnson - Foreign secretary 
Steve Baker - Brexit minister
Scott Mann - ministerial aide 
Robert Courts - ministerial aide 
Conor Burns - ministerial aide
Chris Green - ministerial aide 
Maria Caulfield - Tory vice-chair
Ben Bradley - Tory vice-chair
REMAINERS
Guto Bebb - Defence Minister 
Philip Lee - Justice Minister 
But rebels ignored warnings from Tory chief whip Julian Smith that defeat would prompt him to call a vote of confidence in Mrs May today, followed by a possible general election.
Tory insiders said another ten Eurosceptic MPs would have sent in letters of no confidence in Mrs May if she had lost last night's vote - potentially pushing the total over the 48 needed to spark a leadership challenge. 
Rebels inflicted an early defeat on the Government when they voted to keep Britain tied into the European Medicines Agency after Brexit by 305 votes to 301.
But, minutes later, the tables were reversed as MPs voted by 307 to 301 to reject an amendment to the Trade Bill ordering the PM to pursue a continuation of the customs union.
Five Labour MPs voted with the Government: former ministers Frank Field and Kate Hoey and backbenchers John Mann, Graham Stringer and Kelvin Hopkins, who is currently sitting as an independent following suspension. If they had voted the other way, the Government would have lost by four votes. 
The titanic battle sparked rancour with calls for the Tory and Labour rebels to be deselected from their Commons seats.
Mr Smith also had to offer a grovelling apology after failing to honour a deal to 'pair' Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson, who is on maternity leave.
Pairing is when a government supporter does not vote to offset the absence of an Opposition MP who cannot come to the chamber. But Tory chairman Brandon Lewis voted anyway - leading to allegations of cheating. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said the Government would be setting out more details of its preparations for a no-deal scenario in the coming weeks.
He told Today: 'But our energies are going into negotiating a positive way forward with out European counterparts.
'That is what we expect to happen.'  
MONEY
Leaving without a deal would mean an immediate Brexit on March 29 after tearing up a 21-month transition agreement. This included giving £39billion to the EU, which ministers would no longer have to pay, a House of Lords report claims.
GOODS TRADE
The Chequers agreement effectively proposed keeping Britain in the single market for goods and agriculture to preserve 'frictionless' trade and protect the economy.
Customs checks on cross-Channel freight would cause havoc at ports, hitting food supplies and other goods.
Even Brexiteers admit to a big economic impact in the short term. Britain could waive customs checks on EU produce to free up backlogs, but would Brussels do the same?
TARIFFS
All EU-UK trade in goods is free of tariffs in the single market.
Trade would revert to World Trade Organisation rules. The EU would charge import tariffs averaging 2-3 per cent on goods, but up to 60 per cent for some agricultural produce, damaging UK exporters.
We have a trade deficit with the EU of £71billion – they sell us more than we sell them – so the EU overall would lose out.
German cars and French agriculture would be worst hit, as would UK regions with large export industries. Tariffs could also mean price inflation. But UK trade with the EU is 13 per cent of GDP and falling compared to non-EU trade, which generates a surplus and is likely to grow. The outlook would be boosted by Britain's ability to strike trade deals.
IMMIGRATION
The UK would immediately have control over its borders and freedom to set migration policy on all EU migrants.
UK nationals would likely lose their right to live and work in the EU. There would be legal uncertainty for the 1.3million Britons living in the EU and the 3.7million EU nationals here.
CITY OF LONDON
Many firms have already made contingency plans for no deal, but there would probably be a significant degree of disruption and an economic hit.
Ministers would be likely to take an axe to tax and regulations to preserve the UK's economic advantage.
AEROPLANES
Fears of planes not being able to fly appear far-fetched – unless the EU is determined to destroy both business and tourism. Rules to keep planes in the air are likely to be agreed. The EU has many deals with non-EU countries as part of its Open Skies regime.
EUROPEAN COURTS
Britain would be free from the edicts of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and all EU laws. Parliament would be sovereign.
FARMING & FISHING
THE UK would quit the Common Agricultural Policy, which gives farmers and landowners £3billion in subsidies. Ministers would come under pressure to continue a form of subsidy.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Northern Ireland would be outside the EU, with no arrangements on how to manage 300 crossing points on the 310-mile border.
The EU would want Ireland to impose customs and other checks to protect the bloc's border – something it has said it will not do. No deal could blow a hole in the Good Friday Agreement, with pressure on all sides to find a compromise.
EU chief Donald Tusk was under intense pressure to apologise last night after saying leading Eurosceptics deserve a ‘special place in Hell’.
The European Council president hurled a grenade into today’s talks with Theresa May, saying the EU was ‘not making any new offer’ to rescue her Brexit deal.
Mr Tusk, who has previously called for a second referendum, then attacked senior Brexiteers, saying: ‘I’ve been wondering what that special place in Hell looks like for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.’
Incredibly, he was then caught laughing on microphone after Irish premier Leo Varadkar whispered to him that the British would give him ‘terrible trouble’ over the jibe.
Last night, Cabinet ministers rounded on Mr Tusk, with Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom calling on him to apologise. 
The extraordinary row came as:
Downing Street said Mrs May was still deliberating over what concessions to seek from Brussels on the controversial Irish backstop;
Labour MPs in talks with Mrs May predicted she would bring forward a new Employment Bill to protect workers’ rights as part of a bid to win their support on Brexit;
Whitehall sources said Parliament could be asked to sit ‘around the clock’ if a deal is struck, to ensure the UK leaves on time on March 29;
Hardline Brexiteers warned that even a time-limit on the Irish backstop would not be enough to persuade them to back the deal;
Labour called on the Government to delay Brexit to prevent the ‘mayhem and chaos’ of a No Deal departure next month;
Mr Varadkar, who will hold talks with Mrs May in Dublin tomorrow, said the political chaos in London demonstrated why the backstop plan was needed.   
Mrs May has been at Stormont House for bilateral meetings with Northern Ireland's five biggest political parties:
Mrs Leadsom said Mr Tusk’s ‘spiteful’ comment ‘totally demeans him’. She added: ‘What he has said is pretty unacceptable and pretty disgraceful.
‘I’m sure that when he reflects on it, he may well wish he hadn’t done it. This is a negotiation between friends, allies, neighbours. It’s supposed to be collegiate and collaborative.’
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said Mr Tusk’s comments were ‘out of order’, while Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘It’s this sort of arrogance that drives antipathy towards the EU. We are a country that upholds the result of democratic votes. Our EU partners need to respect that.’
Demands for apology also came from Jacob Rees-Mogg.
He wrote in The Sun: 'Mr Tusk’s arrogant and high-handed approach assumes the public did not make an informed decision to Leave.
He is saying that 17.4million people are stupid and got it wrong primarily because they are objecting to the system that he benefits from.'
He continued: 'Considering all the problems going on elsewhere in the bloc - like the violence in France, and the devastation caused by the euro, you would expect them to have some appreciation for the discontent that many people feel with the EU.
'Instead, he makes lurid comments about people who want to look after their voters’ interests, and deliver on what they wanted.
'It just makes the EU look unreasonable and bad tempered.'
Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, went further, branding Mr Tusk a ‘devilish, trident-wielding, euro maniac’.
Mr Tusk’s incendiary outburst caused irritation in Downing Street as Mrs May prepared to travel to Brussels today for talks.
Her official spokesman said: ‘It’s a question for Donald Tusk as to whether he considers the use of that sort of language to be helpful – and I appreciate that was difficult this morning, because he didn’t take any questions.’
Jean-Claude Juncker and Leo Varadkar were pictured today reading a 'Thank You' card the EU chief had received apparently from an Irish family. 
The commission said it was 'private' but images of the text show that it said 'for the first time ever Ireland is stronger than Britain'. 
'For the 1st time ever, Ireland is stronger that Britain,' it said. 
'That strength comes not from guns or bombs. 
'It comes from your words and that of your colleagues. 
'Britain does not care about peace in Northern Ireland. To them it's a nuisance.'
Mrs May will hold talks with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt today, as well as Mr Tusk. Downing Street sources played down the prospect of a breakthrough, saying today’s meetings were ‘part of a process’.
Mr Juncker attempted to laugh off Mr Tusk’s comments, saying: ‘I am lot less Catholic than my good friend Donald... I believe in Heaven’, before joking that working for the European Commission is ‘hell’. But Mr Verhofstadt backed Mr Tusk, saying: ‘I doubt Lucifer would welcome them (Brexiteers), as after what they did to Britain, they would even manage to divide Hell.’
Mr Tusk’s undiplomatic outburst was welcomed by some diehard Remainers. Former Tory minister Anna Soubry said Mr Tusk was simply ‘telling it like it is’ – and suggested his comments applied to a string of prominent Brexiteers, including Boris Johnson, David Davis, Nigel Farage and Dominic Raab.
Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, wife of Nick Clegg, also backed Mr Tusk. In a message on Instagram, she said: ‘Well, that covers the Prime Minister Theresa May and the 494 MPs who voted in favour of giving the Article 50 notice. Hell is going to be really, really crowded.’
But it dismayed moderate Tory Remainers. Former Cabinet minister Stephen Crabb said Mr Tusk’s comments were ‘extraordinary’, adding: ‘Especially given how smug some EU officials have been about how good they are at the diplomacy thing.’
Nick Boles, another former minister, said: ‘Donald Tusk has just encapsulated perfectly why I do not believe the UK can remain a member of the EU.’
Mrs May’s bid to revive her Brexit deal is focused on reforming the Irish backstop, which critics fear could keep the UK in the customs union against its will.
Whitehall sources said she would present a ‘menu of options’ for reform, including plans for putting a time limit on the backstop and giving the UK a unilateral exit clause. She will also discuss backbench plans to use ‘alternative arrangements’ to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Mrs May, who spent yesterday in Northern Ireland holding talks with local politicians, will restate her commitment to avoiding a hard border.
But she will warn EU leaders that without legally-binding changes to the backstop, there is no prospect of the deal being approved by MPs.
Her spokesman said: ‘The fact is that the deal that was on the table has been rejected by 230 votes. So if, as they state, they wish for us to leave with a deal, there are going to have to be changes made.’ 
 
Downing Street has dashed the hopes of Brexiteers by ruling out a state of the art 'drive through' border plan for Northern Ireland designed by the Japanese tech-giant Fujitsu.
The proposal involves GPS tagging vehicles and shipments so they trigger an invisible 'geo fence' when they cross the border to or from the Republic.
The idea is to ensure all the necessary customs checks can be carried out where goods are made to ensure there is no need for physical policing at the border.
But it would require surveillance systems to work so could fall foul of Theresa May's commitment to avoid infrastructure on the border.
There are fears using cameras or drones would awaken memories of The Troubles while having different standards on either side of the border could fuel smuggling.
A No10 spokesman said this afternoon that the government had seen the proposal before and 'it is not under consideration'.
Brexiteers have pinned their hopes on a technology based solution as an alternative to the 'backstop' in the current Brexit divorce deal.
The backstop effectively keeps Britain in the EU customs union and obliges Northern Ireland to follow some single market rules - eliminating the need for border checks.
It is designed to only come into force until a final trade deal is agreed but Brexit supporters fear it could become a permanent solution.
The Fujitsu plan has been under development for around 10 months and is being looked at afresh by a working group of MPs and officials, the Sun revealed today. 
Fujitsu has reportedly said a test version of the system could be deployed on the border in time for exit day on March 29.
A working prototype could be essential to proving to the EU it is a viable 'alternative arrangement' that could replace the existing backstop.  
A Tory minister involved in the talks told the paper: 'Given that we can land a probe the size of a fridge on Mars, it can't be beyond us to devise an imperceptible system for a 310 mile border'.
An 11-page briefing marked 'Restricted – Commercial in Confidence', reveals the plan suggests;
Theresa May is to use top level meetings in Brussels to insist the UK will not be 'trapped' in Brexit backstop arrangements, Downing Street said.
The Prime Minister will stress during a round of talks on Thursday that changes to the Withdrawal Agreement will be needed to ensure legally binding guarantees regarding the backstop.
At present the backstop, which is intended to prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland, would see the UK continue to obey EU customs rules after a transition period if no wider trade deal had been reached.
Mrs May insists she has a clear mandate from Parliament to seek fresh, binding guarantees on the issue from Brussels. 
The PM will hold talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council president Donald Tusk and other senior EU figures during her trip to Brussels.
Downing Street said that Mrs May is 'open to different ways' of achieving her objectives on the backstop.
The PM will use the meetings to state that Parliament has sent 'an unequivocal message that change is required'.
However, it was revealed late last night the deal vote could be delayed. 
Instead of going ahead as scheduled next week, Julian Smith indicated in the cabinet on Tuesday that the vote will not be held next week as May is not expected to have renegotiated her deal in time, the Telegraph revealed. 
One of the PM's key messages for EU leaders will be that the Commons has now made it clear it could support the Withdrawal Agreement as long as concerns about the backstop are addressed.
Mrs May also intends to stress that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also has concerns about the backstop, so it is not just an issue for the Tories and their DUP allies.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has set to cause further problems for May after he wrote to the Prime Minister setting out five Labour Brexit demands which he says can bring the country together.
Ahead of Theresa May's talks with EU leaders on Thursday, Mr Corbyn has insisted that the PM needs to get Labour's priorities enshrined in the Political Declaration setting out future relations with the EU.
Mr Corbyn said that securing the demands in law is the only way of achieving Labour support and uniting the country.
The Labour leader has told the PM that just seeking modifications to the Northern Irish backstop proposals is not enough to win widespread backing and that she must change tack on key red lines.
In the letter to the PM, which follows their Brexit meeting last week, Mr Corbyn calls for a 'permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union'.
He states: 'This would include alignment with the union customs code, a common external tariff and an agreement on commercial policy that includes a UK say on future EU trade deals.
'We believe that a customs union is necessary to deliver the frictionless trade that our businesses, workers and consumers need, and is the only viable way to ensure there is no hard border on the island of Ireland.'
In Brussels however the PM will be focusing on winning over the bloc.
She will state that both sides must 'show determination' to get an exit deal 'over the line'.
Downing Street said the EU meetings are part of a process leading to the Government bringing back a 'meaningful vote' on Brexit to the Commons as soon as possible.
Mrs May travels to Brussels as a war of words between London and Brussels erupted after Mr Tusk said there was a 'special place in hell' for people who promoted Brexit without any plan for delivering it. 
When she returns to the UK, Theresa May will have to deal with Corbyn's letter.
He said Labour wants close alignment with the single market 'underpinned by shared institutions and obligations, with clear arrangements for dispute resolution'.
Mr Corbyn also called for 'dynamic alignment on rights and protections so that UK standards keep pace with evolving standards across Europe as a minimum'.
Labour wants commitments on participation in EU agencies and funding programmes, as well as 'unambiguous agreements on the detail of future security arrangements, including access to the European Arrest Warrant and vital shared databases'.
Mr Corbyn also calls for further talks with the PM 'with the aim of securing a sensible agreement that can win the support of parliament and bring the country together'.
The Labour leader tells the PM that last month's rejection by MPs of her Withdrawal Agreement means a different approach is needed.
He writes: 'Without changes to your negotiating red lines, we do not believe that simply seeking modifications to the existing backstop terms is a credible or sufficient response either to the scale of your defeat last month in Parliament, or the need for a deal with the EU that can bring the country together and protect jobs.'
The Labour leader states: 'There is, as was demonstrated last week, a clear majority in Parliament that no deal must now be taken off the table and that there can be no return to a hard border in Northern Ireland in any circumstance.
'We recognise that any negotiation with the EU will require flexibility and compromise.
'Our first priority must be a deal that is best for jobs, living standards, our communities, in the context of increased and more equitable investment across all regions and nations of the UK.' 
Xavier Bettel's bid to humiliate Boris Johnson appeared to have backfired today - despite a warm embrace from Emmanuel Macron.
The French president hugged and patted the Luxembourg PM as he welcomed him to the Elysee Palace in Paris this morning. 
However, the effusive greeting came amid fury at the treatment doled out to Mr Johnson on his trip to Luxembourg yesterday - and European fears that it might have backfired by stoking anti-EU sentiment. 
One key ally of Angela Merkel, German MP Nortbert Rottgen, accused Mr Bettel of 'public venting' and risking efforts to get a Brexit deal. 
Mr Bettel - whose country has a population of just 600,000 and an economy half the size of the NHS budget - refused to move a joint press conference with Mr Johnson indoors to prevent the British PM being 'drowned out' a small but noisy protest.
Instead he continued with the media call solo, delivering a furious anti-Brexit rant against the backdrop of a Union flag, while gesturing at the empty podium set up for Mr Johnson.
Mr Bettel branded Brexit a 'nightmare' and warned the 'clock is ticking' for Mr Johnson to bring forward new proposals - saying the EU would not be to 'blame' if the UK ended up crashing out without an agreement.
The PM attempted to make light of the row, saying it would not have been 'fair' to Mr Bettel to continue with the joint event as 'there was clearly going to be a lot of noise and our points would have been drowned out'.
Xavier Bettel has been the prime minister of Luxembourg since 2013. 
He has been a vocal critic of Brexit and the amount of time it has taken the UK to set out the terms on which it wants to leave the EU. 
Speaking in the run up to the original March 2019 Brexit deadline, he said: 'We don't force the United Kingdom, you decided to leave, we shouldn't exchange roles.
'You want us to be the bad guy. You decided. You decided. You decided.
'We have to just find a deal and we negotiated the deal, we found the best possible deal and we are not in a souk where we are going to bargain for the next five years.'
The 46-year-old is married and in 2018 he became the first openly gay PM in the world to be re-elected for a second term in office. 
He previously served as the Mayor of Luxembourg City between November 2011 and December 2013. 
He then led the Democratic Party into Luxembourg's national elections in 2013, finishing third. 
However, he was invited to form the next government and became PM, leading a coalition of the Democratic Party, Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party and The Greens. 
The government remained a rainbow coalition after elections last year.   
He gathered Cabinet today to update them on progress in the wrangling with the EU, which also included a crucial lunch meeting with commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in Luxembourg. The two men agreed to step up talks to a daily basis, and Mr Juncker described them as 'negotiations' for the first time. 
The PM told ministers that he 'continues to believe there is a deal to be done with the EU but at the same time no-deal planning must also continue at pace, including through the ongoing Get Ready public information campaign', Downing Street said. 
The incident with Mr Bettel did not come up. 
In a hint that he might regret his actions, Mr Bettel tweeted after the clash with Mr Johnson that Luxembourg would 'remain the UK's partner and friend'. He posted photos of himself greeting Mr Johnson, but not pictures of the empty podium. 
A key ally of Mrs Merkel warned that the 'public venting' by Mr Bettel had backfired.
Senior German MP Mr Rottgen tweeted: 'Xavier #Bettel's speech yesterday did not serve the #European cause. 
'His public venting ignored that a #deal is still in everyone's interest. 
'Even without a deal there will be a post-#Brexit life, which means that right now everyone needs to behave in a way that avoids animosity.' 
Tory MPs from both Remain and Brexit wings voiced anger at the Mr Johnson's treatment.
Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said leaders had a duty to show 'courtesy and civility', and pointed out that Luxembourg was liberated by Allied forces.
'The irony is that Luxembourg was saved by Britain. National leaders should always treat one another with courtesy and civility. Good ones do,' he told the Telegraph. 
Former Brexit minister David Jones said: 'If Remain supporters are revelling in this gratuitous rudeness to a British Prime Minister, they should examine their own motives. 
'Most patriotic people would say it's another good reason to leave on October 31.' 
Sir Nicholas Soames, who was expelled from the Tories for rebelling over the law against No Deal, accused Mr Bettel of 'unhelpful grandstanding'.
Here is how the coming weeks could pan out: 
Today: Supreme Court hears case on whether prorogation of Parliament was illegal. 
September 21-25: Labour conference in Brighton, PM at UN summit in New York. 
September 29-October 2: Tory conference takes place in Manchester, with Mr Johnson giving his first keynote speech as leader on the final day. This will be a crucial waypointer on how Brexit talks are going.
October 14: Unless it has already been recalled following the court battle, Parliament is due to return with the Queen's Speech - the day before Mr Johnson had hoped to hold a snap election.
October 17-18: A crunch EU summit in Brussels, where Mr Johnson has vowed he will try to get a Brexit deal despite Remainers 'wrecking' his negotiating position. 
October 19: If there is no Brexit deal by this date Remainer legislation obliges the PM to beg the EU for an extension to avoid No Deal.
October 21: Decisive votes on the Queen's Speech, which could pave the way for a confidence vote. 
October 31: The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU. 
November/December: An election looks inevitable, but Labour is hinting it might push the date back towards Christmas to humiliate the PM. 
'Very poor behaviour by Luxembourg. Boris Johnson quite right not to be made a fool of.' 
Before his outburst yesterday, UK offficials said Mr Bettel had refused a request to remove Mr Johnson's lectern and Union flag before starting the press conference, leaving it to look like the British PM had simply refused to turn up. One Government source said: 'Friends don't behave like this.'
Another pointed out that Mr Johnson only agreed to see Mr Bettel as a 'courtesy' after European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker asked to move a planned meeting from Brussels to Luxembourg. 
'It was a stitch-up,' the source said. 'But let's see what other EU leaders make of this behaviour.' 
The row threatened to overshadow talks between Mr Johnson and Mr Juncker in a Luxembourg restaurant.
But a senior Government source last night issued a downbeat assessment of the prospects for a deal following those talks, saying: 'It's clear Brussels is not yet ready to find the compromises required for a deal so No Deal remains a real possibility – as the gap we need to bridge remains quite large.' 
Mr Juncker and Mr Johnson held a two-hour working lunch in fine-dining restaurant Le Bouquet Garni, just five-minutes from the Ministry of State, where the Prime Minister met Mr Bettel and where the joint press conference was due to take place.
The 18th-century dining spot is located in the heart of medieval Luxembourg and the menu was changed at the 11th-hour for the pair.
 They were originally supposed to eat snails, salmon and cheese, but instead feasted on pan-cooked chicken oysters, butter-roasted pollock with creamy risotto, then red and black berries, iced marshmallow and basil sorbet.
After the two-hour lunch – the first face-to-face meeting since Mr Johnson became PM – Mr Juncker told reporters it was a 'friendly meeting', adding: 'Negotiations will continue at high speed.'
Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940 even though it was officially designated as neutral country, with Britain playing a key role in its liberation.
Initially after it was invaded it was put under the control of a military administration before it was eventually annexed and made a formal part of Germany.
The Nazis tried to portray Luxembourg as a natural part of the Third Reich and used propaganda and terror to try to 'Germanise' the population. 
The 'Germanisation' of Luxembourg involved trying to get rid of all French influence over the country and the Nazis banned the French language and made German the official language. Wearing a beret was also outlawed.
Luxembourg was liberated by the Allies in September 1944 but while the capital city remained in their control they had to fight off a major counter offensive from the Nazis in the December and beyond.
The Nazis launched what would be their final major attack of the war at the end of 1944 as they tried to push through the heavily-forested Ardennes region, spanning parts of Belgium, France and Luxembourg - in order to stop the Allied advance. 
The ensuing clash became known as the Battle of the Bulge as German units initially made big gains, causing a 'bulge' in the Allied defensive line. 
The battle lasted just over a month as both sides suffered heavy losses before the Allies prevailed at the end of January 1945. 
The man put in charge of Luxembourg by the Nazis, Gustav Simon, was captured after the war had ended and was taken to a British Army prison in central Germany where he is believed to have committed suicide in December 1945. 
Simon was the party leader of a regional branch of the Nazi Party and was made the chief of the civil administration in Luxembourg during the occupation. He was appointed to the role by a decree made by Adolf Hitler himself.    
 
Privately, officials said the UK was unlikely to publish formal proposals ahead of the Conservative Party conference at the end of this month, when Mr Johnson will be anxious to avoid giving the impression he is considering further compromise. 
Sources pointed to the long history of the EU leaking British proposals in order to discredit them.
Mr Johnson yesterday acknowledged the EU was 'still officially sticking on their position that the backstop has got to be there.' In an interview with the BBC, he said a deal was only possible if there is 'movement from them on that crucial issue'.
And he suggested a key part of his plan is ensuring that Northern Ireland has a democratic lock on any move to keep it tied more closely to the EU than the rest of the UK.
Mr Johnson warned that failure to resolve the backstop would mean 'we'll have an exit with No Deal on October 31', adding: 'That's not what I want. 
'It's not what they want. And we're going to work very hard to avoid it. But that's the reality.'
A Luxembourg government official acknowledged that the UK had asked to switch yesterday's press conference indoors because of 'concern about noise levels'. 
But the source said there 'wasn't enough room' indoors to accommodate all the journalists who had attended the event. 
Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany in May 1940 even though it was officially designated as neutral country, with Britain playing a key role in its liberation.
Initially after it was invaded it was put under the control of a military administration before it was eventually annexed and made a formal part of Germany.
The Nazis tried to portray Luxembourg as a natural part of the Third Reich and used propaganda and terror to try to 'Germanise' the population. 
The 'Germanisation' of Luxembourg involved trying to get rid of all French influence over the country and the Nazis banned the French language and made German the official language. Wearing a beret was also outlawed.
Luxembourg was liberated by the Allies in September 1944 but while the capital city remained in their control they had to fight off a major counter offensive from the Nazis in the December and beyond.
The Nazis launched what would be their final major attack of the war at the end of 1944 as they tried to push through the heavily-forested Ardennes region, spanning parts of Belgium, France and Luxembourg - in order to stop the Allied advance. 
The ensuing clash became known as the Battle of the Bulge as German units initially made big gains, causing a 'bulge' in the Allied defensive line. 
The battle lasted just over a month as both sides suffered heavy losses before the Allies prevailed at the end of January 1945. 
The so-called Irish border backstop is one of the most controversial parts of the existing Brexit deal. This is what it means: 
What is the backstop? 
The backstop was invented to meet promises to keep open the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland even if there is no comprehensive UK-EU trade deal.
The divorce deal says it will kick in automatically at the end of the Brexit transition period if that agreement is not in place.
It effectively keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU, and Northern Ireland in both the customs union and single market.
This means many EU laws will keep being imposed on the UK, restricting its ability to do its own trade deals. It also means regulatory checks on some goods crossing the Irish Sea. 
Why have Ireland and the EU demanded it? 
Because the UK is leaving the customs union and single market, the EU said it needed guarantees that people and goods circulating inside its border - in this case in Ireland - met its rules.
This is covered by the Brexit transition, which effectively maintains the status quo, and can in theory be done in the comprehensive EU-UK trade deal.
But the EU said there had to be a backstop to cover what happens in any gap between the transition and final deal.  
Why do critics hate it? 
Because Britain cannot decide when to leave the backstop. 
Getting out - even if there is a trade deal - can only happen if both sides agree and Brexiteers fear the EU will unreasonably demand the backstop continues so EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland.  
Northern Ireland MPs also hate the regulatory border in the Irish Sea, insisting it unreasonably carves up the United Kingdom.   
What are the UK's new proposals?
The latest blueprint being floated would not be the same as a previous Northern Ireland-only backstop floated by Brussels, which was dismissed by Theresa May as something no British PM could accept.
That would have involved the province staying within the EU's tax jurisdiction.
Instead, the idea is thought to be a much looser alignment of agricultural and food regulations with Ireland. 
That could help avoid many checks on the border, but it is far from clear it would be acceptable either to the EU or the DUP.
 
 
The Union that is the United Kingdom is in mortal danger — more imperilled now than it has ever been in its 312 years of existence.
In the past five years, the political discourse in all of our nations has become more extreme, more divisive and more toxic.
But now the Union faces an existential threat: that of competing, antagonistic nationalisms within it.
At stake is not only what kind of Brexit we are to have, but what kind of Britain we are to become. Crucially, too, the fate of the Union cannot be ignored in the contest for our next Prime Minister.
Danger
For what is in jeopardy is both the unity and integrity of the United Kingdom and the shared values — tolerance, respect for diversity, being outward-looking — that underpin what, for all its ups and downs, has been the most successful example of multinational co-operation anywhere in the world.
The danger ahead is the unravelling of a community of mutual interests and common purpose and ideals as each nation turns in on itself.
For just as all political attention has been fixated on Britain moving from a soft Brexit to a hard Brexit, the Scottish nationalists have moved — almost unnoticed — from demanding a soft form of separation to demanding a hard, far more extreme, type.
In the 2014 Scottish referendum, the nationalists wanted Scotland to leave the UK political union — yet keep the UK pound and stay inside the UK single market and customs union.
Now, as the Scottish Parliament celebrates its 20th year, their policy has changed. They demand a wholly separate Scottish currency and want to end the UK single market and customs union which has maintained the free UK-wide movement of goods and services and prevented what would become inevitable: a hard border between Scotland and England and economic life reduced to a battle between them and us.
But just at a time when all mainstream British parties —Conservative, Lib Dem and Labour — should be waking up to this new threat, on red alert and working together to make the strongest possible pro-Union case, those who would seek to defend the Union are less and less in evidence.
Astonishingly, the Conservative and Unionist Party — hitherto a staunch defender of the Union — is in danger of making a colossal and historic error.
In a recent poll, 59 per cent of its members said they were prepared to sacrifice the Union with Northern Ireland to secure the Brexit they want. Even more — 63 per cent — would sacrifice the union with Scotland.
As the Conservative leadership campaign moves from MPs to its party members, the Scottish Nationalists are gleefully claiming that this is indeed the tune to which Boris Johnson marches and that he is the best recruiting sergeant for Scottish independence they could ever wish for.
Even if we strip away his inflammatory rhetoric, we find that for the past 20 years he has vehemently opposed the three constitutional pillars upon which today’s union is built — Scottish parliamentary representation, the devolution settlement and the funding arrangements.
First, Scotland is, Mr Johnson has repeatedly said, grossly over-represented at Westminster. Yet this ignores the fact that in almost every great political union — America, Australia and Canada, for example — special allowance is made to safeguard minorities.
Second, he opposes — and has even said he wants to strip away — devolved powers that the Scottish Parliament already has, specifically those relating to universities and social care.
And, third, he calls ‘reckless’ and ‘unfair to England’ the established principle of funding Scottish services: the 40-year-old settlement which, with all-party agreement, allocates resources by taking account of differing needs and changing demography.
Were Scotland in dire need, Mr Johnson’s answer would be unequivocal: ‘I propose that we tell them to hop it.’ So his knee-jerk response to counter a divisive us-versus-them Scottish nationalism is to embrace an equally divisive us-versus-them English nationalism.
In his version of the Union, Scotland would not have any pride of place: at best, it would have to ‘know its place’.
Already, polls in Scotland suggest he has driven hitherto unionist voters into the arms of the SNP, and, as a result of such inflammatory rhetoric, few Scots believe the Union would be safe in his hands.
Fervour
Few now doubt that, whether through ignorance, carelessness or malice, he would be prepared to play fast and loose with the Union when it suits his personal electoral needs — not least by whipping up English nationalist fervour against the prospect of Scottish nationalists holding the balance of power in the UK.
But Scottish nationalism, plus English nationalism, plus Welsh nationalism, plus Ulster unionism, does not add up to a United Kingdom — even one united only in name. This would be a house divided that could not stand.
In our long history, we have prided ourselves on being patriots who love our country — not bitter nationalists who must hate our neighbours, demonise foreigners, immigrants or other minorities, and blame external forces for everything that goes wrong.
Indeed, it is because we are a multinational state in which four nations have learned to live together that even amid its diversity, Great Britain has been, until now, the most tolerant of countries and the most outward-looking.
Tensions
Of course, there will always be tensions between proud nations. But I, for one, will make the contemporary case for the Union, that all four benefit both culturally and economically — and are best placed to succeed in a harshly competitive global economy — when we find ways to co-operate within one set of islands, rather than engage in economic wars.
I am convinced that Britain will again be the Britain we love and all can live with, when we reaffirm that we are that tolerant and fair-minded people who will always reject an inward-looking and xenophobic approach to the world.
A few weeks ago, as we commemorated the D-Day landings, we had a sharp and moving reminder of what four nations have achieved together and why our Union must endure and matter for centuries to come.
Thousands upon thousands of English, Scots, Welsh and Irish soldiers are buried side by side in the cemeteries in the now-peaceful fields of Europe — together in death as they were in life.
When they fought together, they did not check each other’s nationality before they stood shoulder to shoulder, bound by trust in the trenches, all for a common cause.
It would mock their heroic sacrifices to wish the partition of a United Kingdom that they died to save.
 
Germany has warned its food producers may stop exporting to the UK in the event of a No Deal Brexit to avoid their goods getting caught up in potential border-check delays.
A German government official has reportedly cautioned the Foreign Office during recent meetings with Berlin's agriculture ministry that food suppliers may halt deliveries across the Channel if Britain crashes out of the EU on October 31.
The threat was issued after Germany expressed its frustration at the direction Brexit negotiations had been heading in recent months, according to BuzzFeed News. 
Food businesses in Germany are expecting huge delays at the borders, especially at the Port of Dover where the majority of EU exports arrive into Britain. 
The largest trade deficit between Britain and the EU is with Germany. 
In 2016 the UK imported £75 billion in goods and services from Germany but sold only £49 billion to the country, according to the Office for National Statistics. 
Germany is one of the major food exporters to Britain selling more than £635 million (€700m) of meat plus the same amount of fruit and vegetables every year.
Around 14 per cent of major food and drink imports into Britain come from Germany. 
Boris Johnson flew to Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel who said the backstop could be dropped if the UK can come up with a practical alternative within the next 30 days.
She also insisted Germany is ready for a No Deal Brexit.
Earlier this month the British Chamber of Commerce in Germany, which represents companies in both countries, said Germany could be plunged into recession if Britain leaves without a deal. 
It warned a 'disorderly' exit 'should be avoided under all circumstances' and would lead to thousands of job losses and cost Germany 1 per cent of its GDP.
Despite preparations by Britain and Germany, exporters reportedly feel that delays at the border and potential rises in tariffs could force food producers to abandon the UK to focus on other more accessible markets.
A spokesman for the German agriculture ministry told BuzzFeed: 'One thing is clear for us: Citizens and governments of the EU member states don't want a hard Brexit. But the time is getting shorter. That's why the worries of the agricultural and forestry sector are valid. Therefore, we've been taking the threat of a no-deal Brexit very seriously for a very long time now. '
Last week it was announced that Germany's economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in the second quarter sparking fears a recession is looming in the biggest eurozone economy. 
German exports to other countries that it relies heavily on, such as China and the United States, have also suffered due to global trade disputes, meaning any disruption with the Britain could worsen the country's economy even further. 
At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. There was something about Gina Miller — the glossy investment manager who took the Government to court over Brexit — that was very familiar, even though we’ve never met.
It wasn’t until I read an interview with her that the penny dropped. In it, she recounted how on the night of the EU referendum, she had slept for just 36 minutes.
She knew exactly how long because her husband had given her a new smartwatch that tracks sleep.
Later, she was ‘physically sick’ as she tried to take in what the UK had voted for. But it was OK because, as the interviewer records, ‘by breakfast Mrs Miller’s brain was clunking into gear.
‘When her 11-year-old son heard the news, he said: “But you’re going to do something, Mummy, you always do.” ’
Gina reminds me of Catherine Tate — or, more precisely, her brilliant comic creation: Posh Mum. The Range-Rover-driving mother of Thomas and Chloe whose husband is something super in the City.
‘Thomas, Chloe,’ she says, putting the phone down. ‘You know Daddy left for Paris this morning? I’ve got some bad news . . . Daddy hasn’t been able to find any good brie this trip.’
Catastrophe! How will they cope? Do something, Mummy, do something! Don’t worry, Mummy will fix it. No one will have to suffer substandard cheese on her watch.
Just hand her two Nurofen and a bottle of San Pellegrino mineral water and she’ll have everything back to normal in a jiffy.
As a satire on the pretensions of a certain type of woman, Tate’s creation was spot on.
Posh Mum exemplified not so much the absurdities and arrogance of the very wealthy, as a total inability to empathise with anyone outside their circle of privilege.
It’s not that Posh Mum harbours any hostility to the inferior cheese-munching classes; it’s simply that she cannot fathom them. They are as alien to her as a Primark dress.
Miller has this quality in spades. She is almost Mitford sisters-like in her ability to misunderstand and patronise ordinary citizens. To her, only the hopelessly non-U would vote to leave the EU, as Nancy Mitford might have put it. And any idea that Brexiteers should get their way while she and those like her do not is simply not an option.
This much was clear from her speech outside the Supreme Court. She just doesn’t get it. And, as the wealthy wife of a fund manager (her third husband, Alan) who cultivates the image of a modern, multi-tasking Superwoman, how could she?
She has no concept of what life is like for those who have not thrived under the yoke of Brussels (for a start, she lives in a £7 million house).
Nor, quite frankly, is she telling the truth when she claims her case is about ‘process, not politics’.
In fact, that statement confirms how little regard she has for the intelligence of Leave voters.
It’s hard to imagine a case that’s been more about politics than this one, about the attempt by those who see power and privilege as their entitlement to wrestle it back from those who have dared to exercise the only real power they have: a democratic vote.
Miller is fooling no one when she claims to have been motivated by a passion to uphold the sovereignty of Parliament.
We all know her real desire to reverse the result of the referendum — a result, remember, that made her ‘physically sick’.
The bottom line is this: her side lost, she didn’t like it — and so she used her privilege to secure a top legal team to find a way of helping ‘Mummy do something’.
That neither makes her a hero nor a martyr. It just makes her a very pushy Posh Mum indeed. 
Given that I turn 50 in April, I was really hoping to say something clever about this new study claiming that women’s brains start going downhill in their 50s. But for some reason I couldn’t think of anything . . . 
London, our esteemed Mayor Sadiq Khan informs us, is on high pollution alert. Anything to do with the new, ‘environmentally-friendly’ cycle lanes that have just been installed at huge cost and disruption and which remain largely empty while buses, vans and taxis sit fuming in vast, never-ending traffic jams? 
Celebrity vegans will make their fans sick 
Marks & Spencer announces a new line of vegan sandwiches to cater for what it claims is a growing army of customers who want lunch free from all animal derivatives.
There was a time when vegans were pale, bony individuals who smelled a bit odd and wore very ugly shoes. Nowadays, they are people like Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez, meaning that the whole concept of veganism has acquired a patina of celebrity gloss. For stars, it’s very easy to eat a balanced vegan diet: you just employ a nutritionist and a chef and then wax lyrical in interviews about the wonders of kale.
But for ordinary people, and especially the young who might be tempted to emulate their idol’s culinary choices, it’s another matter entirely. It is very hard to eat a balanced vegan diet on a budget, and even harder still if you don’t have a nutritionist on tap to ensure you make the right choices.
If this absurd craze carries on, we’ll soon be facing a generation that’s anaemic, calcium-deficient and almost certainly lacking in other essential minerals and vitamins. Meanwhile, the celebrity food bandwagon will have moved on to some other absurd fad.
Desert Island Diamond 
Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs is turning 75. Over the years the choice, and choices, of the guests have changed from staunch Establishment figures with classical tastes to a more popular tone.
But the show’s not really about the music: that’s just the framework on which the interview is woven. It takes someone with real skill to tease genuine revelations out of guests.
After a decade presenting the show, Kirsty Young is the real reason it endures: the perfect combination of diligence, directness and disarming charm.
To anyone who has seen how the Civil Service operates up close, the news that it wastes £500 million a year recycling stale policy ideas that have already been rejected by previous ministers will come as no surprise.
The real scandal, though, is that they don’t just rehash failed policies, but people, too. I know of at least two instances where an inefficient or (more often) obstructive civil servant was removed from his or her post, given a conciliatory gong — only to resurface a few months later in another department.
The truth is, it’s almost impossible to fire a civil servant. Just look at Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, aka Sir Cover-Up, on his fourth Prime Minister and counting.
Who cares what colour the Oscar winners are? 
What is the point of the Oscars in 2017? Is it to celebrate excellence in the movies and inject a bit of glitz into the dreary month of February? Or is it to pursue a socio-political agenda?
The answer, it would seem, is increasingly the latter. For the past two years, the ceremony has been beset by accusations of racial bias, trading under the hashtag OscarsSoWhite.
This year, within seconds of the nominees being announced, the issue shot straight to the top of the Twitter agenda: are the Oscars diverse enough?
I am not qualified to answer that question. Ultimately, though, what does it matter whether a nominee is black, white, Indian or Hispanic? When I see Denzel Washington or Naomie Harris (pictured) on screen, I don’t see people of colour, I see great actors.
That, surely, is what the Oscars is all about. Let’s not lose sight of that.
With her Best Actress nomination, Meryl Streep has become the most nominated star in the history of the Oscars. Brace yourself for some more of those razor-sharp political insights . . .
The fact that the Rhodes Trust has awarded a £40,000 scholarship to Joshua Nott, a South African who campaigned to have the statue of Sir Cecil Rhodes outside Oxford University’s Oriel College removed, says more about the pathetic people in charge of the Trust than the hypocrisy of this young man. If they’re that wet, they thoroughly deserve to be taken for a ride. 
The weekend saw millions of women in Britain and America march against Trump. Shame, but I can’t recall them mustering similar outrage for the victims of forced marriage, sexual slavery, FGM — or any of the abuses inflicted on females around the world. Where were the pink hats then, ladies — or were those causes not fashionable enough? 
Happiness in Britain apparently peaked in 1957. I’m not surprised. Back then there were no busybody killjoy quangos (in this case, the Food Standards Agency) seeking to justify their existence by waking us up on a freezing Monday morning with the news that toast and roast potatoes give you cancer. 
Theresa May's hopes of renegotiating her Brexit deal were dealt a fatal blow on Thursday evening as European Council President Donald Tusk declared the agreement was 'not open for renegotiation'. 
EU leaders gave Theresa May assurances this evening that they would try to agree on Brexit by 2021 – so that the contentious backstop is never triggered.
However, on the Prime Minister's Withdrawal Agreement, the 27 national leaders were firm, saying: ‘It is not open for renegotiation.’
Tusk also called for heightened preparedness at all levels for all possible outcomes - including a 'no deal' scenario.
That deal was struck last month but she has since gone back to Brussels for more assurances so that she can get it past her own MPs.
Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said the EU underlines that the backstop is an insurance policy to prevent a hard border in Ireland. 
Tusk said: 'Prime Minister May informed the leaders about the difficulties with ratifying the deal in London and asked for further assurances that would at least in her view unlock the ratification process in the House of Commons.
He added that after a meeting of the EU27, they agreed to reaffirm the conclusions made in the previous gathering at the end of last month in which they 'endorsed the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration'.  
'The Union stands by this agreement and intends to proceed with its ratification. It is not open for renegotiation,' Tusk concluded.
Mrs May had been trying to secure a start date for the future relationship between the EU27 rather than nailing down an end date for the backstop, sources told Sky News. Mrs May said that there should not be a an expiry date on the backstop but a target date for the free trade agreement that she wants to negotiate.
She said: 'We have to change the perception that the backstop could be a trap from which the UK could not escape. Until we do the deal – our deal – is at risk.'
Mrs May said a package of assurances could 'change the dynamic' in Parliament.
Jean-Claude Juncker gave Theresa May a warm welcome in Brussels yesterday – but his outfit revealed his true colours.
The EU Commission president wore a green tie for the Prime Minister’s speech on the Irish backstop. Sources confirmed that he chose it to ‘show solidarity with the people of Ireland’. 
The Irish border has become the most toxic part of the Brexit deal unveiled by Mrs May last month. Opposition to the backstop forced her to pull a Commons vote on the plan earlier this week.
Mrs May has now called on EU leaders to provide extra ‘legal and political assurances’ to make sure Britain cannot be trapped in the customs backstop indefinitely.
'There is a majority in my Parliament who want to leave with a deal so with the right assurances this deal can be passed,' she said. 'Indeed it is the only deal capable of getting through my Parliament.
'I am in no doubt that the best result for all of us is to get the deal done in an orderly way. It is in none of our interests to allow an accidental no-deal and all the disruption that would bring.
'Let's work together intensively to get this deal over the line in the best interests of all our people.'
There was said to have been sympathy for Mrs May inside the leaders dinner after her ordeal yesterday, but sources inside the dinner said it was made clear that not much would be expected from today's talks. 
The 27 leaders are expected to issue a statement tonight amid hopes they will offer 'legal and political assurances' Mrs May says she needed. 
The PM went to Brussels insisting she needed help from the EU to get the negotiated divorce past fractious MPs - more than 100 of whom on her own side say they will not vote for it.  
As the summit began, leaders including Angela Merkel and Holland's Mark Rutte held out an olive branch by speaking of their 'admiration' for the PM as they gathered for a summit in Brussels with Brexit high on the agenda.  
In a glimmer of hope for Mrs May, draft conclusions emphasised that the Irish border backstop is an 'insurance policy' and only intended to be 'temporary' if it comes into force.
And former Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso appealed for EU leaders to help Mrs May - warning a Brexit had to be concluded without 'resentment'. 
But as they arrived at the summit most of the EU27 stuck to a tough line by insisting that the legal text of the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be reopened - despite Mrs May urging concessions that can help her get the package 'over the line'. 
Mrs Merkel said Mrs May's victory in the confidence vote was 'pleasing', but added: 'I do not see that this Withdrawal Agreement can be changed.' 
While acclaiming Mrs May in English as he spoke to reporters in Brussels today, Mr Rutte was less helpful when he addressed Dutch journalists in his own language.
'If anyone in the Netherlands thinks Nexit is a good idea, look at England and see the enormous damage it does,' he said. 
Theresa May abandoned hopes of holding a showdown vote on her Brexit deal before Christmas today.
The Prime Minister played down the chances of an 'immediate breakthrough' in this week's summit.
The Commons vote on the Brexit deal was supposed to happen on Tuesday but was shelved after Mrs May accepted she would be defeated. 
Arriving in Brussels for an EU summit, Mrs May acknowledged she needed fresh assurances from EU leaders regarding the operation of the Northern Ireland backstop if the agreement was to get through the Commons. 
A Downing Street spokeswoman confirmed that it was the Government's aim to hold the vote in the Commons 'as soon as possible in January'. 
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who currently holds the rotating EU presidency, suggested there could be a special Brexit summit in January. 
The idea is to agree 'additional assurances' which could be attached to the Political Declaration on the UK's future relationship with the EU.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz suggested another summit could be convened in January to try and sign off more assurances, but said it was hard to know what the EU should give to May because 'not all the arguments of Brexit supporters are rational'.
And Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite put it more bluntly. 'Brexit Christmas wish: finally decide what you really want and Santa will deliver,' she said on Twitter in posting a picture of a chocolate Christmas tree.
As she arrived at the summit, Mrs May publicly conceded for the first time that the Brexit crisis will cut short her stay in Downing Street, saying although in her 'heart' she wants to fight on, she will need to quit before the next general election.
'I think it is right that the party feels that it would prefer to go into that election with a new leader,' she said.  
Mrs May has acknowledged she must get 'legally binding' concessions from the bloc in the wake of the extraordinary Tory coup attempt yesterday which saw more than a third of her own MPs vote against her. 
But Mrs Merkel today again flatly dismissed the prospect of renegotiating the Withdrawal Agreement, while the Finnish PM warned the best she can hope for is 'political' assurances. 
'We can discuss whether there should be additional assurances, but here the 27 member states will act very much in common and make their interests very clear.
'This is always in the spirit that we will have very, very good relations with the UK after it has departed from the European Union.' 
French president Emmanuel Macron said there could be a 'political discussion' but added ominously: 'One cannot reopen a legal agreement.'  
Mr Rutte was effusive in his praise of Mrs May's 'tenacity'. 'I feel respect. She is an able leader. I admire her tenacity and resilience. She's a great leader. And if you saw the Labour people laughing at her when she said 'I listened', I felt this was not very British,' he said.
'She stood there and kept her composure and won this fight within her party. I have the highest admiration for her.'
Finnish PM Juha Sipila warned: 'Legally binding will be a little bit difficult.
'But we all want to help her first of all, and then our goal is that the new relationship will be before the backstop.
'So I think, at the political level, we can (offer assurances). That's our primary goal. And let's see if we can find something from the legal side also, but it's open still.' 
And the hopes of any imminent progress receded further today as Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom confirmed that the crunch Brexit vote in parliament will not happen before Christmas.
Gary Lineker called out his 'hero' Peter Shilton over Brexit last night after the former England goalkeeper praised Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The Match of the Day host, 58, also told former teammate Chris Waddle to 'stick to football' when he said it would be best if Theresa May left the EU with no deal.
Last month Mr Lineker, an outspoken Remainer, appeared at a 'People's Vote' rally calling for a second referendum and has said stopping 'frightfully boring' Theresa May's Brexit is more important to him than football.
As Mrs May survived her no confidence vote last night the former Spurs and Barcelona striker poured scorn on Peter Shilton's praise for Tory Brexiteer Rees-Mogg.
Mr Shilton, who played for Mr Lineker's beloved Leicester City, tweeted: 'Have been so impressed with @Jacob_Rees_Mogg in the last few days. He really knows what he is talking about and puts it across in a calm and calculated manner!'
Gary Lineker responded to him and said: 'What's that old saying? You should never see a tweet from your heroes?'.  
Mrs May also played down hopes of any shift soon, saying: 'I don't expect an immediate breakthrough, but what I do hope is that we can start to work as quickly as possible on the assurances that are necessary.'  
After scraping through a Conservative no-confidence vote last night, an exhausted-looking Mrs May was given an encouraging farewell by husband Philip as she set off from Downing Street. 
She held talks with Irish PM Leo Varadkar and EU council president Donald Tusk this morning, as frantic efforts continue to find a breakthrough that can satisfy Parliament.
Cabinet ministers have warned they will kill off her fledgling deal unless there are 'legally binding' guarantees that the UK cannot get stuck in the Irish border backstop. 
The PM will lay out her problem to the heads of the 27 member states this evening, hoping that they can help. 
But they have now decided to take her off the invite list for dinner. She will have to leave the room so they can privately discuss their approach to Brexit. 
Yesterday she was forced to concede she will not lead the Tories into the 2022 general election in a bid to buy off a rebellion - but still suffered a bloody nose as 117 MPs joined the bid to get her out. 
Philip cheered his wife on at PMQs yesterday, and the pair are understood to have toasted her political survival with a glass of wine and some crisps last night. 
Former ally Iain Duncan-Smith, who voted against the PM last night, said today that Mrs May should tell EU leaders: 'If you want a deal you'd better damn well step up to the plate' and warn them Britain's £39billion Brexit bill is 'fully at risk' unless they remove the backstop.
The victory last night was far less emphatic than allies had hoped, and a clearly shaken Mrs May acknowledged in a speech outside No10 that 'a significant number of colleagues cast their votes against me'.
She said she would 'listen' and pursue a 'renewed mission – delivering the Brexit that people voted for, bringing the country back together, and building a country that truly works for everyone'.
A Commons vote on the PM's Brexit deal was pulled at the last moment this week to avoid a catastrophic defeat. 
Trade Secretary Liam Fox put down a clear marker yesterday by warning it may never be put to a Parliamentary vote unless changes are made. 
'It is very difficult to support the deal if we don't get changes to the backstop,' he said. 'I am not even sure the Cabinet will agree for it to be put to the House of Commons.'
He told the BBC: 'If there is no movement on the backstop then it is very likely either one of two things happens. Either [we] remain in the EU without a referendum, which I think would be a democratic affront which brings a whole range of consequences, or, perhaps more likely, we have to up our preparations for no deal and leave the EU without an agreed deal.'
In a sign of the simmering divisions, other ministers including Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark are urging an early vote on the package - and then if it is defeated a series of Commons votes on different options for how to move forward. 
Mrs May's fate is now effectively in the hands of EU leaders who have repeatedly said they will not re-open negotiations.  
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz insisted there would only be a 'better interpretation' of the Brexit deal. 
'I think there will be some readiness from our side to maybe find some better explanation about the future relationship,' he said.
'There is also some room to have a better interpretation of what we agreed on. But there will be no new deal about the Withdrawal Agreement.' 
The Prime Minister will restart negotiations with European leaders after winning the intense 15-hour fight to keep her own job, with a vote of no-confidence announced early yesterday and concluded by 9pm. 
Standing on Downing Street last night, Mrs May pleaded to be allowed to 'get on with the job' of delivering Brexit - by rivals both within and outside of her party.
Theresa May has been dogged by rumours of a coup by angry Brexiteers since the snap election surrendered the Tory majority - but the plot exploded when her deal emerged.
November 13: A draft deal is struck in Brussels and begins to leak. Brexiteers react with horror at the state of the Irish border backstop.
November 14: May secures agreement for the deal after a marathon and fractious Cabinet meeting.
November 15: Dominic Raab and Esther McVey resign from Cabinet over the deal, branding it a surrender to Brussels.
Jacob Rees-Mogg goes public with a move against May, calling on Tory MPs to submit letters of No Confidence.
November 22: EU officials sign off the deal after resolving last minute hitches. 
Brexiteer plotters insist they still want to remove the PM but admit they do not have the necessary 48 letters.
November 25: At a special EU summit, the divorce deal is rubber stamped.
December 4: May opens a five day debate on her Brexit deal ahead of a planned vote. Opposition is mounting rapidly, with dozens of Tory MPs pledged against it. 
Tory MPs rebel to help Labour hold the Government in contempt of Parliament amid three humiliating Commons defeats for May in 63 minutes.
December 10: May calls off the vote, admitting there is 'significant' opposition to the deal.
December 11: Rumours spread rapidly that letters of no confidence are finally mounting up as MPs lose patience with May's insistence she can salvage her deal.
December 12: A vote of no confidence is finally called  - and is held within hours as May vows to fight on.
Support for the Brexiteers falls flat, leaving May safe from party procedure for a year and free to keep shoring up her deal despite rage in her party.  
But her hopes of harmony may be short-lived. Jeremy Corbyn insisted her 'dismal' deal be put to Parliament next week, while Labour MPs branded her a 'lame duck' after she vowed she would not lead the Tories into the next general election. 
Rebel chief Jacob Rees-Mogg said because a third of her MPs hadn't backed her: 'She ought to go and see the Queen urgently and resign' - Chancellor Philip Hammond hit back and called Mr Rees-Mogg and his supporters 'extremists'.
Instead, the EU is only likely to offer 'clarifications' that the EU does not want to use the backstop and it should be a last resort. 
However, it may also include a pledge to consider ways of giving further assurances that, while not binding, carry more legal weight.
In an astonishing day of political drama, Conservative MPs voted by 200 to 117 for her to stay on as Tory leader and Prime Minister. 
Despite months of sabre-rattling by her hardline opponents, and deadlock over Brexit, almost two thirds of Tory MPs backed her.
Cabinet ministers immediately demanded that her opponents give her the breathing space and support to secure an 'orderly exit' from the 
EU. But Mrs May's victory, which means she cannot be challenged again for at least 12 months, came at a price. 
She was forced to promise she will quit before the next general election, scheduled for 2022.
Eurosceptics and Labour said the numbers were 'shocking' and a 'disaster', while Cabinet ministers queued up to talk up the positives. 
Jeremy Hunt yesterday said her 'stamina, resilience and decency' had 'again won the day', while Treasury minister Liz Truss said it was 'convincing'. 
And the scale of yesterday's revolt – more than a third of her MPs want her gone – will raise questions about how long she can stay in charge.  
Draft conclusions to be considered by EU leaders say: 'The union stands ready to examine whether any further assurance can be provided.'
However, it adds: 'Such assurance will not change or contradict the Withdrawal Agreement.'
One paragraph in the draft summit conclusions that could help Mrs May says the backstop were to be triggered 'it would apply only temporarily unless and until it is superseded by a subsequent agreement'. 
The text adds: 'In such a case, the union would use its best endeavours to negotiate a subsequent agreement that would replace the backstop, so that it would only be in place for a short period and only as long as strictly necessary.'
Mrs May is seeking assurances that Britain could never become 'trapped' indefinitely in the customs backstop, which will come into effect if no trade deal is struck to avoid a border emerging between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Some MPs fear the agreement could lead to Britain being tied to the bloc's customs regime indefinitely – opposition that led to Mrs May shelving a scheduled Commons vote on the deal.
EU sources appeared to rule out the idea of any further assurances being legally binding. One senior diplomat said yesterday: 'The Withdrawal Agreement and political declaration are set. We don't think a legal instrument is possible here.'
Another senior official added: 'What is not feasible is renegotiations of the Withdrawal Agreement of the deal which was reached. This is not on the table and whatever reassurance will be given they cannot contradict the deal which was agreed on November 25. I don't know what's possible, but what I know is impossible is to renegotiate the deal – that's impossible.'
Another senior EU source suggested a solution could be to beef-up language in the political declaration on the future relationship – the part of the deal that is not legally binding.
EU Council chief Donald Tusk wrote to EU leaders yesterday pledging to listen to Mrs May before making any 'conclusions'.
 Mrs May welcomed the result on Tuesday night while acknowledging that 'a significant number of colleagues did cast their votes against me'.
She said she would now pursue a 'renewed mission – delivering the Brexit that people voted for, bringing the country back together, and building a country that truly works for everyone'. She said the situation called for 'politicians on all sides coming together and acting in the national interest' – an apparent plea for help from Labour.
Speaking in Downing Street afterwards, a clearly shaken Mrs May admitted that she needed to get an improved deal from the EU with 'legally binding' assurances on the Irish border backstop.
'I am pleased to have received the backing of my colleagues in tonight's ballot,' she said yesterday evening.
'Whilst I'm grateful for that support, significant number of colleagues did cast their vote against me and I have listened to what they have said.
'We now need to get on with the job of delivering for the British people and building a better future for this country.' 
Mrs May added: 'That must start here in Westminster with politicians on all sides coming together to act in the national interest.
'I have heard what the House of Commons said about the Northern Ireland backstop. I go to the European Council tomorrow and I will be seeking legal and political guarantees that will assuage those concerns.' 
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling described the result as a 'strong vote of support' for the PM.
Justice Secretary David Gauke said: 'This was a very comfortable victory for Theresa May. Removing her would have been self-indulgent and irresponsible. I'm glad that a large majority agreed.'
But Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the hardline European Research Group which forced the vote, said the PM had suffered a 'terrible result' in which the 'overwhelming majority of her backbenchers have voted against her'.
'Of course I accept this result, but Theresa May must realise that under all constitutional norms she ought to go and see the Queen urgently and resign,' he said.
Mrs May appealed to Tory MPs not to sack her at an emotionally-charged Commons meeting just minutes before the ballot opened last night.
She pledged she would not call a snap election, and said the party's greatest duty was to prevent Jeremy Corbyn entering Downing Street.
One source at the meeting said she told MPs: 'In my heart I would have loved to have led us into the next election, but I realise that we will need a new leader with new objectives for the 2022 election.'
Some ministers were said to be close to tears as the PM acknowledged that some in her own party want her gone rather than risk a repeat of last year's disastrous election campaign.  
The vote came after Tory shop steward Sir Graham Brady announced that at least 48 MPs had written letters of no confidence in Mrs May, sparking a vote under the party's leadership rules.
After the announcement yesterday morning, Mrs May pledged to fight the coup attempt with 'everything I've got'.
She ducked questions about the exact date of her departure.
Teflon Theresa and her ever-present 'rock': PM's husband's unwavering support has seen her through the storm again 
Philip May waved his beloved wife - and Prime Minister - goodbye this morning as she embarked on the latest grueling test - another EU summit where she will plead for key changes to the Brexit deal.
Mr May, 61, has carved himself out a successful career in the City of London as an investment manager.
But it his role as Theresa May's husband, confidante and 'rock' that is perhaps his biggest contribution to the country.
Mr May's devotion to his wife was on display once again yesterday as she was forced to face her Tory rebels and a baying Labour opposition at PMQs.
Mrs May, 62, was fighting for her political life as Tory MPs had called a vote of confidence which could have seen her unceremoniously toppled by the end of the day.
As she entered the Commons Chamber, where plotting Tory rebels were sat slumped on the green benches to her back, while Labour MPs jeered and barracked her straight ahead, she glanced up and saw her husband staring loving down at her.
He allowed himself a brief smile as the couple locked eyes, and Mrs May went on to defiantly defend herself in the onslaught of attacks hurled her way.
The couple have been together for around 40 years - meeting as undergraduates at Oxford University and marrying in 1980s.
They were introduced at a student disco - known as a 'bop' - by mutual friend Benazir Bhutto - later prime minister of Pakistan. 
And while neither Philip nor Theresa particularly enjoy or seek the spotlight, they have sweetly told how it was love at first sight for them in a rare joint TV appearance.
Speaking to the BBC's One Show during the election campaign last year, they gave the country insight into their relationship - and how its strength keeps Mrs May going during her darkest moments.
Asked about how their romance blossomed, Mr May said: 'It was love at first sight, absolutely.'
And asked for his first impressions of the woman who would become his wife, he said: 'What a lovely girl!' And he gallantly added: 'And she still is.'
Theresa May won her Tory confidence vote after promising not to lead the party into the 2022 general election.
These are some of the leading contenders to replace her:
How did they vote on Brexit?
Led the Vote Leave campaign alongside Michael Gove.
What is their view now?
Hard line Brexiteer demanding a clean break from Brussels. The former foreign secretary is violently opposed to Theresa May's Chequers plan and a leading voice demanding a Canada-style trade deal.
What are their chances?
Mr Johnson's biggest challenge could be navigating the Tory leadership rules. 
He may be confident of winning a run-off among Tory members but must first be selected as one of the top two candidates by Conservative MPs. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave, with a second tier role campaigning for Vote Leave.
What is their view now?
Mr Raab was installed as Brexit Secretary to deliver the Chequers plan but sensationally resigned last month saying the deal was not good enough.
What are their chances?
His resignation from the Cabinet put rocket boosters under Mr Raab's chances, fuelling his popularity among the hardline Brexiteers. May struggle to overcome bigger beasts and better known figures. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain but kept a low profile in the referendum.
What is their view now?
Pro delivering Brexit and sceptical of the soft Brexit options.
What are their chances?
Probably the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet after his dramatic promotion to Home Secretary. Mr Javid has set himself apart from Mrs May on a series of policies, notably immigration.
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave 
What is their view now? 
He has said Theresa May's Chequers blueprint for Brexit is the 'right one for now'. But he recently suggested a future prime minister could alter the UK-EU relationship if they desired.
What are their chances? 
He came third in the first round of voting in 2016, trailing behind ultimate winner Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom. Mr Gove has said it is 'extremely unlikely' that he would stand again. But he popular in the party and is seen as an ideas man and a reformer by many, and he could change his mind if Theresa May is shown the door.
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain.
What is their view now?
The Foreign Secretary claims the EU Commission's 'arrogance' has made him a Brexiteer.
What are their chances?
Another top contender inside Cabinet, Mr Hunt's stock rose during his record-breaking stint at the Department of Health and won a major promotion to the Foreign Office after Mr Johnson's resignation. Widely seen as a safe pair of hands which could be an advantage if the contest comes suddenly. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave.
What is their view now?
Leave and a supporter of scrapping Mrs May's plan and pursuing a Canada-style trade deal with the EU.
What are their chances?
The favoured choice of many hard Brexiteers. Seen as a safer pair of hands than Mr Johnson and across the detail of the current negotiation after two years as Brexit Secretary. He could be promoted a caretaker to see through Brexit before standing down.
Unlikely to be the choice of Remain supporters inside the Tory Party - and has been rejected by the Tory membership before, in the 2005 race against David Cameron. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain. Represented Britain Stronger in Europe in the TV debates.
What is their view now?
Strongly remain and supportive of a second referendum - particularly given a choice between that and no deal.
What are their chances?
Popular among Conservative MPs as the voice of Cameron-style Toryism, Ms Rudd is still seen as a contender despite resigning amid the Windrush scandal - and she was boosted further by her return to Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary on Friday night. She is badly hampered by having a tiny majority in her Hastings constituency and would not be able to unite the Tory party in a sudden contest over the Brexit negotiation. 
How did they vote on Brexit? 
Leave.
What is their view now? 
Leave and recently branded Theresa May's Brexit U-turn a 'humiliation' which has left her deal 'defeated'. 
What are their chances? 
As chair of the European Research Group (ERG) bloc of Tory Eurosceptics he has been urging MPs to replace Mrs May for weeks. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave.
What is their view now?
Leave and subject of persistent rumour she could be the next to quit Cabinet over Mrs May's Brexit deal.
What are their chances?
Possible dark horse in the contest, Ms Mordaunt is not well known to the public but is seen as a contender in Westminster. Known to harbour deep concerns about Mrs May's Brexit deal, but has stopped short of resigning from Cabinet. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Leave.
What is their view now?
Ms Leadsom said in late November that she was backing the withdrawal agreement struck with Brussels because it 'delivered' on the referendum result. 
What are their chances? 
Leader of the Commons since June, Andrea Leadsom found herself at the centre of controversy in the 2016 leadership campaign when comments she made were interpreted as a claim that she would be a better PM than Mrs May because she was a mother. Asked recently whether Mrs May was the right person to be leading the country, she said she is 'at the moment'. 
How did they vote on Brexit?
Remain. 
What is their view now?
Mr Williamson tweeted today: 'The Prime Minister has my full support. She works relentlessly hard for our country and is the best person to make sure we leave the EU on 29 March and continue to deliver our domestic agenda.' 
What are their chances?
He backed Remain in the referendum and pledged his support for Mrs May in the 2016 leadership contest but has since been mentioned as a potential future Tory leader. 
But the concession that she will not fight the next election will weaken her authority and spark a race to succeed. Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Amber Rudd will jostle for position against Eurosceptic former Cabinet colleagues Boris Johnson, David Davis and Dominic Raab.
Crispin Blunt, who wrote a letter of no confidence in Mrs May, urged rebels to back her, but said he still considered her Brexit plan a 'bad deal'. He said: 'The leadership question is now behind us for a year and we must get behind Theresa May in delivering Brexit.'
Nadine Dorries, another critic of the PM, said: 'It's not the way I voted, however, I will fully respect the result.'  
Allies had previously insisted that Mrs May would fight on even if she only won by a single vote.

Ministers were eager to move on from the bitter struggle, even though many are known to harbour misgivings about Mrs May's Brexit deal. 
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt posted on Twitter: 'Prime Minister wins confidence motion with 63% of the vote. Now let's crack on with getting the changes we need to the deal on offer and press on with no deal preparations. We are leaving the EU in 15 weeks.' 
Jacob Rees-Mogg told Sky News last night that he still believed 'someone else' should try to secure a good Brexit.
'It's a very bad result for the Prime Minister, 163 Tory MPs are on the payroll…and therefore of the backbenchers the Prime Minster lost very heavily…Clearly the Prime Minister has lost the support of the backbenches of the Conservative Party, and that is not a good position for her to be in,' he said.
'Having failed in her main plank of policy, it would be constitutional normal for her to retire from the fray.'
He added: 'Someone else ought to try to deliver Brexit.' 
Other Brexiteers were keen to make clear they accepted the result even if they did not like it. Steve Double said: 'The PM has won the confidence vote 200-117. We are a democratic party and I accept the result. However the margin should send a clear message to the leadership that over 1/3 of MPs have serious concerns and need to be addressed.'
Crispin Blunt said: 'The leadership question is now behind us for a year and we must get behind Theresa May in delivering Brexit.
'The realities remain. Her proposed withdrawal deal is a bad deal. She was clear today we leave on 29 March 2019. Nothing to fear but fear itself! Get it done!'
The contest was held after hardliners finally secured the 48 letters from MPs needed to trigger the process. 
More than 180 MPs had publicly declared that they would back her, indicating that she was on course to survive.
However, as it was a secret ballot there was no way of telling if they were being truthful. One senior MP privately admitted their colleagues are the 'most duplicitous electorate in the history of humankind'. 
As MPs sweltered in the stifling heat of committee room 14 last nigth, Mrs May was said to have told them in her 'heart' she would like to carry on but she recognised that was not the 'will' of the party. 
Home Office minister Victoria Atkins was one of those nearly overcome by the emotion of the moment. Asked for her reaction as she emerged from the room, she welled up and clutched her chest. 
Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke said that some Tory MPs had tears in their eyes when the PM told the room she would not lead the party into the next election.
He said : 'She basically said it is not her intention to lead the party into the 2022 election.
'I think she's at a stage where she is 100 per cent committed to delivering Brexit. That's where her focus is.
'And her opening remarks were: 'I am not going to call a snap election. There is an impasse and we will get through it but I'm not going to call a snap election.'
Asked what the feeling was like in the room when she said she would not lead the party into the 2022 election, he said: 'Shock. There were a couple of tears in some colleagues' eyes.' 
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who had hinted he was voting against the PM last night, left the committee room before the end of Mrs May's appearance.   
Home Secretary Sajid Javid is favourite with the Tory faithful to succeed Theresa May, with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in second place – and Boris Johnson well down the field.
According to the survey of Conservative councillors, Home Secretary Mr Javid is the Party's first choice to replace Mrs May. 
He is followed by Mr Hunt and former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab. 
Surprisingly, Mr Johnson, Mrs May's most prominent critic, trails in seventh place.
By contrast, Environment Michael Gove, who sabotaged fellow Brexiteer Johnson's 2016 leadership challenge in 2016, but has stayed loyal to Mrs May, is one place ahead of Johnson.
The 753 Conservative councillors who took part in the poll were asked to pick from 11 leadership contenders, listing them in order of preference. 
The more top picks they received, the higher they were ranked and vice versa.
The Survation poll is a key guide to the possible outcome of a Tory leadership contest. 
MPs whittle the candidates down the final two, but the winner is decided by a vote of the Party's 100,000 plus members, which includes its 9,000 councillors. 
Nearly six in ten of those who took part in the survey voted in favour of Brexit in the referendum; four of ten voted Remain. 
In spite of the respondents' pro Brexit views, outspoken Remainer, Work and Pensions Secretary Ms Rudd, restored to the Cabinet after losing her Home Office job over the Windrush immigration fiasco earlier this year, pipped both Johnson and Gove.
The number one ranking for Javid comes after a series of reports that he is gearing up for a challenge if Mrs May falls.
The Home Secretary, who campaigned for Remain but has since said he supports Brexit, is followed by fellow convert Hunt in second place, Raab third, David Davis, Amber Rudd, Gove, Johnson, Penny Mordaunt, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey.
Johnson's low position is at odds with other recent polls of Tory supporters – as opposed to Tory members – which have put him in first place. 
Damian Lyons-Lowe, head of Survation, said: 'It seems Conservative councillors disapprove more strongly of a fellow politician who rocks the party boat to members of the public. 
They are more sympathetic to Cabinet loyalists like Sajid and Hunt. Boris' supporters will be dismayed that he is behind both Gove and Rudd in popularity terms in the Party.'
Nearly seven in ten Tory councillors said Conservative MPs were wrong to try to oust Mrs May; one in three said they were right to do so.
A total of 67 per cent said MPs should vote to keep Mrs May against 31 per cent who said they should sack her.
Tory Party anger with MPs who tried to topple Mrs May is reflected in some of the comments posted by councillors who took part in the poll. 
They included: 'What a mess, no deal should not even be considered, the economy is the priority'; 'We should support the PM, stabbing her in the back has undermined her all the way'; 'Conservative MPs are acting like children'; 'I am ashamed of MPs who did this.'
But some were critical of the Prime Minister. One said: 'We need a leader with real charisma.' Another observed: 'She has made a real hash of the negotiations.' 
Survation interviewed 753 Conservative councillors online today. 
When Theresa May promised to bow out after Brexit she fired the starting gun on the Tory leadership race. With Raab in front and Javid and Johnson behind him, ANDREW PIERCE asks who will replace her as PM? 
By Andrew Pierce for The Daily Mail
Brexit Ultra
Jacob Rees-Mogg
With his double-breasted pinstripe suits and impeccable manners, the 49-year-old has been ridiculed as 'the honourable member for the 18th century'.
Chairman of the European Research Group, a cabal of ultra-Brexiteer Tories who have botched their attempts to unseat Mrs May. And his increasingly personal attacks on her have damaged his standing among fellow Tory MPs and activists.
The son of a former editor of The Times, he divides his time with his wife and their six children between a £4.5 million house in Westminster and a 400-year-old mansion at the foot of the Mendip Hills.
He used to top polls of party activists when they were asked who they wanted as next Tory leader. But his recent disloyalty to Mrs May has seen his ratings plummet.
Always says he doesn't want the top job — which is just as well. After May's comfortable victory, there's now more chance of Tony Blair coming back as Labour leader than Rees-Mogg assuming the Tory crown.
Brexiteers who stalked out
Dominic Raab 
Cerebral lawyer who's the son of a Czech-born Jewish father who came to Britain in 1938 aged six as a refugee from the Nazis.
Appointed Brexit Secretary after fellow Brexiteer David Davis walked out — but quit himself last month. 
'I cannot support an indefinite backstop arrangement, where the EU holds a veto over our ability to exit,' he said. 
Ubiquitous on TV and radio, but not everyone is impressed. 'Dominic is his own biggest fan,' says one Tory MP. 'He's just a bit too clever.'
A black belt at karate, the 44-year-old could form a joint leadership ticket with David Davis.
Boris Johnson
Clearly on manoeuvres — the 54-year-old having just cropped his signature tousled hair and lost 12lb.
The most passionate frontline Tory advocate of Brexit — describing the PM's deal as 'diabolical' and a 'legal lobster pot'. As ever, he is long on bombast, short on content. Long on grandiosity, short on self-awareness.
As one of the most hardline Brexiteers, he is hamstrung by a lack of support among fellow Tory MPs, which means he'll struggle to make it to the final two of any contest. But a restless soul, backbench life will not suit Johnson.
David Davies 
A long-term Leave advocate brought back into government by May (before he quit in a huff) having first served as Europe minister in the Major government. 
The victim of a whispering campaign about his time as Brexit Secretary when the 69-year-old was accused of being lazy, having held only five hours of meetings in Brussels in 2018.
Significantly jockeyed for position yesterday by proposing a new Brexit solution — scrapping the Irish backstop.
A serious contender, but his best hope is as a stop-gap leader before handing over to a younger deputy.
Esther McVey 
A Barnardo's child whose father was variously a scrap metal merchant and an ice cream van driver. Before politics, the Liverpudlian was a breakfast TV presenter.
Resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary in protest at May's EU withdrawal document.
Asked on Sunday if she'd run, Mrs McVey, 51, said she would 'if people asked'.
Though she might have to wait a long time before anyone asks her, as she has yet to prove she has any intellectual depth.
Her political mentor is Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith, and Mrs McVey has been the MP for the Tatton, Cheshire seat — vacated by Europhile George Osborne — since 2017.
The die-hard remainers
Gavin Williamson   
Has enjoyed a rapid rise over recent years — thanks to his naked ambition, matinee idol good looks and a penchant for theatrical power play.
As May's Chief Whip, he was rewarded for running her leadership campaign with the job of Defence Secretary.
Best known for having kept a tarantula in a glass box on his Commons desk, seemingly to intimidate Tory MPs who stepped out of line.
Tried to soften his image by saying: 'I don't very much believe in the stick, but it's amazing what can be achieved with a sharpened carrot.'
His time at the defence ministry has been fraught — being dubbed Private Pike, after the hapless youth in Dad's Army, by some service chiefs who see the 42-year-old as a lightweight.
Early this year he confessed to having had a long-ago office romance with a colleague around the time his first son was born, admitting he 'nearly destroyed two marriages'.
A rank outsider — with critics saying only he thinks he has leadership qualities.
Amber Rudd  
Broke ranks with Mrs May at the weekend when she conceded the possible need for a second referendum. But generally an ally of the country's second woman PM, complaining that men at Westminster 'seem to flounce out quite a lot'.
Brought back into the Cabinet recently after being forced to resign as Home Secretary over the Windrush scandal in April. The 55-year-old's Achilles heel is the fact that she has a majority of only 346 in her Hastings and Rye constituency.
An alumna of Cheltenham Ladies' College, she was 'aristocracy coordinator' for the film Four Weddings And A Funeral and was previously married to the late restaurant critic A. A. Gill.
Her millionaire PR guru brother Roland was a leading figure in the Remain campaign and is now noisily calling for a second referendum.
Now Welfare and Pensions Secretary, Rudd is considered an unlikely successor to Mrs May because of her steadfast support for the EU — something not appreciated by the Eurosceptic Tory grassroots.
Brexit Loyalists
Andrea Leadsom
A leading figure in the Leave campaign and, expecting Boris Johnson to run for leader afterwards, asked him to make her Chancellor if she supported him.
The 55-year-old's own bid for the leadership foundered after allegations she'd exaggerated her City career. 
She then withdrew from the 2016 leadership race after apologising to Theresa May for suggesting being a mother made her a better candidate.
Environment Secretary in May's first Cabinet, but was out of her depth.
Not even worth an outside bet.
Michael Gove
Despite being a die-hard Brexiteer, the Environment Secretary has taken a high-wire stance of staying in Mrs May's Cabinet.
Has toured TV and radio to defend the PM's Brexit plan, which he says is not ideal but is better than a 'calamitous' no deal.
The 51-year-old will run if enough senior party figures urge him to.
Joked this week that he might 'if Boris Johnson nominated me and Philip Hammond seconded'. More likely to back another candidate rather than stand
Penny Mordaunt 
Daughter of a former Para and named after frigate HMS Penelope.
The 45-year-old has been MP for Portsmouth North since 2010 and first came to prominence wearing a swimsuit to appear on ITV's celebrity diving show Splash!
A naval reservist, she was first female Armed Forces minister before being promoted to Cabinet as International Development Secretary.
Was the most outspoken critic at the Chequers summit on the Brexit plan, but decided not to resign.
'Not sure she's clever enough to go to the top,' said one former Cabinet minister last night.
Converts 
Sajid Javid
The Home Secretary was always regarded as a Brexiteer until he came out for Remain in the referendum.
Javid, 49, now describes himself as an enthusiastic Brexit convert, but is viewed with suspicion by hardliners.
He is also a boring speaker and is regarded as dull and unimaginative by many fellow Tory MPs, with little to offer politically.
Jeremy Hunt
A former Remainer whose reputation has been boosted by his strong six-year record as Health Secretary, which ended when he replaced Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.
Affable and quietly authoritative, the 52-year-old has built a loyal following on the backbenches. A convert to Brexit, but vehemently opposed to leaving with no deal.
The Downing Street switchboard logged the call at 10.35pm on Tuesday. It was Sir Graham Brady for the Prime Minister. It was bad news.
The chairman of the 1922 committee confirmed what the Westminster rumour mill had suggested hours earlier – that 48 MPs had lodged letters of no confidence in the PM and that she would therefore face a vote by the Parliamentary party. If a majority voted against her, she was out.
Mrs May told Sir Graham she was 'keen to get on with it and settle the matter'.
It was a brutal end to a gruelling day. The PM had arrived back at RAF Northolt at 9pm after visiting the Hague, where she met Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Berlin for a meeting with Chancellor Merkel and then Brussels to meet EU Council President Donald Tusk and Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker – as she tried to gain assurances over the Northern Ireland backstop that might persuade Tory rebels to back the Government's Withdrawal Agreement.
The whistlestop tour came after she had pulled the vote on the Brexit deal on Monday, knowing that she faced a heavy defeat. Now she was fighting for her political life.
No 10 strikes back
Yesterday the first meeting in No.10 began at 7am – an hour earlier than usual. At 7.40am Sir Graham issued a press release confirming the no confidence vote would be held. 
An hour later Mrs May stood in Downing Street and vowed to fight 'with everything I've got'.
She set out several arguments to convince wavering MPs. Firstly, she warned, no new leader could be in place before January 21, the date by which the 'meaningful vote' on the Withdrawal Agreement is due to take place. 
This would mean handing control of negotiations to opposition MPs – who could force an even softer Brexit, or a second referendum. 
Mrs May also warned it could result in Britain's departure date under Article 50 being either delayed or put off indefinitely.
And she said a leadership contest would see the party spend 'weeks tearing ourselves apart… just as we should be standing together to serve our country.' She added: 'The only people whose interests would be served are Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.'
No time to lose
The realisation that she would face a vote of no confidence was a blow, but it was not wholly unexpected. In mid-November Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group (ERG) of hardline Brexiteers publicly called for Mrs May to go.
That coup attempt failed miserably, but by signalling his intent he handed Downing Street one crucial advantage: time to prepare. 
Aides began planning how to manage a no confidence vote.
By contrast, the rebels appeared disorganised. At least one member of the ERG was reported to be 'furious' at the speed with which the vote was called – they had expected it to be next Monday, giving more time to prepare.
The rules of the 1922 committee say a vote should be held soon as practically possible, so Sir Graham was well within his rights to go quickly. 
The quick vote also suited No 10. Senior aides who discussed timing on Tuesday concluded it would have been impossible to go to the EU Council on Thursday to try and extract concessions from EU leaders with the vote 'hanging over our heads'.
Loyalists rally
The Downing Street machine went into overdrive. Loyalist MPs took to TV and radio stations to hammer home the PM's message, following the lead of Justice Secretary David Gauke, who appeared on the all-important 8.10am interview slot on Radio 4's Today programme. No 10 hammered MPs with polling data. 
It showed two-thirds of Tory councillors wanted Mrs May to stay and three-quarters of Tory voters want her to see through Brexit.
The public don't believe rivals would get a better deal, by three to one. Internal party polling also revealed three-quarters of Tory voters say it is the 'wrong time to change Prime Minister' and that Mrs May is the most popular leader among Tory voters of all potential candidates.
Twitter takes off
On social media, the Cabinet swung in behind Mrs May and other ministers followed. Within minutes of Sir Graham announcing the vote, party chairman Brandon Lewis tweeted his support for Mrs May, saying the party had a 'duty to deliver for our country'.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd – all seen as potential leadership candidates – followed with supportive tweets within the next 20 minutes.
Business Secretary Greg Clark tweeted to say he admired Mrs May's 'grit and determination' and Michael Gove said he was backing her '100 per cent'.
At 10am Julian Smith, the chief whip, also tweeted his support. The only ministers not to tweet, including Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright, do not have personal Twitter accounts.
One of last to declare his support was Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who was in No 10 and did not have his phone. 
Meanwhile, the battle was being fought in the corridors of the House of Commons. 
The whips, charged with enforcing discipline , were arm-twisting and cajoling potential rebels and also went to work on their 'flocks' of MPs, feeding back the voting numbers to Smith
There was a notable absence of new opponents declaring they would not vote for May. 
Former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson announced his intention to do so on Tuesday night, and Sir Bernard Jenkin on Wednesday morning, but neither declaration was a big surprise. More worrying for No 10 were those MPs said to be 'making up their minds'.
Xmas cancelled
Some MPs pointed to one factor in play other than high principle: Christmas. One loyalist said, voice dripping with sarcasm: 'Obviously in many ways I'd rather have a hugely acrimonious leadership contest over Christmas. But also in many ways not.'
Some interventions by ministers were unhelpful. Chancellor Philip Hammond said the vote would 'flush out the extremists' behind an agenda for Brexit which would damage Britain – a comment Mrs May later contradicted. 
Plymouth MP Johnny Mercer – a critic of the Government but not a Brexiteer – called it 'woefully misjudged'.
The same Cabinet ministers who were publicly eviscerating their colleagues for not supporting the PM were, at the same time, phoning MPs to gather support for their own leadership bids, he claimed.
Arch-Remainer Anna Soubry accused Boris Johnson of being a 'great charlatan' and of 'cruising around the tea rooms' to gather support. Meanwhile, Labour MPs could barely keep the smiles off their faces. 
'We're going to have a lunch then come back and put our feet up. Merry Christmas,' one Labour aide said.
'A win is a win'
Just after lunch, the number of MPs who had publicly declared in Mrs May's favour was up to 172. 
This gave officials hope, although they were not counting their chickens. One senior Tory said: 'This is a sophisticated electorate – some may be lying.'
There was also an elaborate game of 'managing expectations'. One senior Tory critic of Mrs May said she would have to go if 80 MPs rebelled because she had lost a majority of backbench MPs.
By contrast, one Cabinet minister said she could lose by 100 and still continue as leader. Others insisted 'a win is a win' – and she would press on regardless even if she won by one vote.
Facing PMQs
Mrs May arrived at the Commons in her ministerial car at 11.10am. Her husband, Philip, there for Prime Minister's Questions, and told the Mail he was 'very confident' of victory. Mrs May sailed through PMQs – Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sounded angry and failed to land a blow.
Then in the post-PMQs briefing of lobby journalists a No 10 aide dropped a bombshell. 
He said Mrs May 'doesn't believe the vote today is about who leads the party to the next election. 
It's about whether it's sensible to change leader at this point in the negotiations'. 
This was a major signal to MPs that the PM would not seek to fight the next election, due in 2022. It was seen by some as a sign that No 10 was not confident about the vote.
Rebuff from DUP
Just after 1pm, Mrs May met with DUP leader Arlene Foster and deputy leader Nigel Dodds in the PM's Commons office in an attempt to try to rebuild relations.
The Northern Irish party has all but abandoned its support for the Government over the Northern Irish backstop. 
After the meeting, Mrs Foster demanded 'fundamental changes' to the legal text of the agreement. 
Several Tory MPs intending to vote against the PM pointed to the collapse of the DUP deal to support the Government – and the loss of its majority in the Commons – being key to their decision.
Shock and tears
Just after 5pm Mrs May made the earlier hint explicit, as she addressed the crunch meeting of Tory MPs in Committee Room 14 – the room where, shortly afterwards, they would vote to decide her fate.
She told them: 'In my heart I would have loved to have led us into the next election, but I realise that we will need a new leader with new objectives for the 2022 election.' Sources said the mood in the room was 'sombre' and there was 'shock and a few tears in the eyes' when she said it.
One Tory MP described it as a 'powerful and moving moment' and the PM had 'listened, heard and respects' the will of the party. 
When pressed, Mrs May refused to set a clear date for her departure –as Tony Blair was forced to following the 'Curry House plot' in 2006. 
She also slapped down Mr Hammond for his earlier 'extremists' jibe, saying 'there are no extremists in this party'.
The result
Shortly before 9pm, Sir Graham entered Committee Room 14 – which was packed withMPs, minister and journalists, to announce Mrs May had won. 
The announcement was greeted with the loud banging of desks by loyalists.
Then Sir Graham announced the result – 200 for and 117 against, meaning more than a third of the party voted against the PM. 
Cabinet minister Chris Grayling immediately insisted Mrs May would now go to Brussels to try and renegotiate the deal. 
Allies also pointed out the PM had won more votes than she did in the first round of the leadership contest in 2016. Rees Mogg said he 'accepted the confidence vote' but said the PM should resign anyway. 
Half an hour later outside No 10, a chastened Mrs May accepted it had been a 'long and challenging day'.
What is the backstop and why is it so toxic?
Under Theresa May’s Brexit agreement, the backstop comes in if no trade deal with the EU has been reached by the end of the transition period – on December 31, 2020. Until then the UK will continue to act largely as if it is an EU member state.
The backstop would, in effect, keep the UK in a customs union with the EU. It would also require Northern Ireland to sign up to EU single market rules while the rest of the UK would be largely free to set their own. The two measures are designed to ensure the Irish border remains completely open to trade. However, it means that goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain will have to be checked to see if they meet EU single market standards.
To the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up Mrs May’s Government, this undermines the Union by creating a regulatory barrier for goods crossing the Irish Sea. At the same time, Tory Brexiteers do not like the backstop because there is no legally-binding end date – and no way for the UK to unilaterally leave it.
Britain could theoretically just walk away, but not without ripping up a major treaty and ending any chance of an EU trade deal. Inside the backstop, the UK’s ability to secure meaningful trade deals will be very limited. Mrs May has been travelling round Europe trying to get changes to the backstop to support her argument it will not last indefinitely.
What are May’s options?
HER DEAL GETS THROUGH
Theresa May has just days to persuade her European partners to agree changes to the deal.
It is thought that her Withdrawal Agreement can only get through the Commons if the EU agrees to a legal addendum committing it to negotiating a free trade deal and agreeing a mechanism to allow the UK to exit the backstop unilaterally. The PM would hope that such a change – however unlikely – would persuade the DUP to drop its opposition and back her.
It could also require a small number of Labour MPs to support the arrangement to counter-act the hardline Brexiteers determined to thwart it any cost. The deal is likely to be voted on before January 21 and the delay may help the Government by convincing MPs they have no alternative.
‘MANAGED NO DEAL’
However, if the Commons is determined not to pass Mrs May’s deal, refuses the option of a Norway-style soft Brexit and Article 50 is not extended, the only option may be No Deal. That would see Britain moving to trade on much less advantageous World Trade Organisation rules, which could lead to higher tariffs – harming British business. There are also concerns about chaos at Channel ports because of the need for customs and regulatory checks, leading to shortages of medicines and a significant short-term impact on the economy.
Some Brexiteers are in favour of this option. Others prefer a ‘managed no deal’, with various short-term agreements including cash payments to soften the impact. The question is whether the many Remainers in Parliament would find a mechanism to block it.
NORWAY-STYLE SOFT BREXIT
If Mrs May cannot secure legally-binding changes to her deal and it falls in the Commons, she has pledged to bring forward a motion by January 21 laying out what she will do next.
This will give Remainers such as Tory MP Dominic Grieve the chance to make their move and propose alternatives.
One option would be a Norway-style soft Brexit, where the UK stays in the EU single market by joining Efta, the free trade club of which Norway is a member.
We would be in the single market without having a say on the rules. The UK would also require a customs union with the EU.
But this option would mean large annual contributions and keeping free movement of people. However, some members of the Cabinet see it as a way of getting out – and it could win support from Labour MPs.
SECOND REFERENDUM
Some believe the defeat of the anti-May plot makes a softer Brexit or a second referendum more likely. If her deal is rejected by the Commons and Labour fails to force a general election by passing a no-confidence motion in the Government, MPs may try to impose a second referendum via a vote in Parliament.
However, there would be huge squabbles about the question. Would it be Remain v No Deal, Remain v May’s Deal, or No Deal v May’s Deal? This would also require the extension of Article 50 because it takes months to organise a referendum.
GENERAL ELECTION
Should Mrs May lose the meaningful vote on her Brexit deal, Labour’s position is that it wants a general election. It would put forward a no confidence motion, and all eyes would be on the DUP.
It would have to decide whether it wanted to risk the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn – a man who has campaigned all his life for a United Ireland – getting into No 10.
Britain has ushered in a new chapter outside the European Union as Brexit was at last delivered, drawing a line under 47 years of membership.
On the stroke of 11pm last night, the UK officially divorced from the bloc after three years of bitter political struggle that split families and paralysed Westminster.
Jubilant Brexiteers heralded the moment with celebrations across the country, including a flagship bash in London's Parliament Square headlined by Nigel Farage.
Britain's last moments inside the EU were ticked off in a light show projected on to the famous black door of Downing Street, where Boris Johnson held a muted party for his staff after releasing a pre-recorded address to the nation. 
The Prime Minister hailed the 'moment of hope, a moment many people thought would never come' and said Brexit would 'unleash' the UK's potential - but warned there will be more 'bumps in the road'. 
Many Remainers are still deeply uneasy about severing ties with the bloc and are cautioning that the Brexit saga is not yet concluded. 
Britain has now entered an 11-month transition period with the EU, during which time the government will race to strike a trade deal before December. 
Any future wrangling with Brussels was far from the minds of revellers last night however. Party-goers waved Union Jacks and cheered triumphantly following victory speeches by key architects of Brexit including Mr Farage, who is no longer an MEP after being a disruptive force in the European Parliament for over 20 years. 
Tonight we are leaving the European Union.
For many people this is an astonishing moment of hope, a moment they thought would never come.
And there are many of course who feel a sense of anxiety and loss.
And then of course there is a third group - perhaps the biggest - who had started to worry that the whole political wrangle would never come to an end.
I understand all those feelings and our job as the Government - my job - is to bring this country together now and take us forward.
And the most important thing to say tonight is that this is not an end but a beginning.
This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.
And yes it is partly about using these new powers - this recaptured sovereignty - to deliver the changes people voted for, whether that is by controlling immigration or creating freeports or liberating our fishing industry or doing free trade deals or simply making our laws and rules for the benefit of the people of this country.
And of course I think that is the right and healthy and democratic thing to do.
Because for all its strengths and for all its admirable qualities, the EU has evolved over 50 years in a direction that no longer suits this country.
And that is a judgment that you, the people, have now confirmed at the polls.
Not once but twice. And yet this moment is far bigger than that. It is not just about some legal extrication.
It is potentially a moment of real national renewal and change.
This is the dawn of a new era in which we no longer accept that your life chances - your family’s life chances - should depend on which part of the country you grow up in.
This is the moment when we really begin to unite and level up, defeating crime, transforming our NHS and with better education, with superb technology.
And with the biggest revival of our infrastructure since the Victorians. We will spread hope and opportunity to every part of the UK.
And if we can get this right I believe that with every month that goes by we will grow in confidence not just at home but abroad.
And in our diplomacy, in our fight against climate change, in our campaigns for human rights or female education or free trade we will rediscover muscles that we have not used for decades. The power of independent thought and action.
Not because we want to detract from anything done by our EU friends - of course not.
We want this to be the beginning of a new era of friendly cooperation between the EU and an energetic Britain, a Britain that is simultaneously a great European power and truly global in our range and ambitions.
And when I look at this country’s incredible assets, our scientists, our engineers, our world-leading universities, our armed forces, when I look at the potential of this country waiting to be unleashed I know that we can turn this opportunity into a stunning success.
And whatever the bumps in the road ahead I know that we will succeed.
We have obeyed the people. We have taken back the tools of self-government.
Now is the time to use those tools to unleash the full potential of this brilliant country and to make better the lives of everyone in every corner of our United Kingdom. 
The Brexit Party leader said on Friday: 'There is one thing above all we must celebrate tonight and it is this. The reason we are here tonight is because Westminster became detached from the people in this country. 
'The people have beaten the establishment. The real winner tonight is democracy. And I am someone who believes we should be pro-Europe, but not the European Union.'
Choruses of God Save The Queen and The Land of Hope And Glory swung round Parliament Square, and were echoed in similar parties up and down the UK.
Brexit was also marked by Remainers - albeit with less fanfare - who mourned the end of the near half-century relationship with the bloc. 
Those at a candlelit vigil held outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh chanted 'we don't want your Brexit'.
And the moment was bitter-sweet for staff at the Department for Exiting the European Union, who have worked towards this day since established by Theresa May in 2016 only to be no longer needed.
On the white cliffs of Dover, the closest point of the UK peninsula to the European mainland, a farewell message was projected.
It followed a series of highly symbolic events earlier on Friday - the UK's flag was removed at the headquarters of the European Council in Brussels.
And the EU flag was taken down at the British government's building in the Belgian capital. 
Former prime ministers Theresa May and David Cameron, who both fell on their swords because of Brexit, also intervened on the historic day. 
Ms May said the occasion meant the government has 'kept the faith of the British people' while Mr Cameron was optimistic about the country's post-Brexit future.
Across the Channel, Emmanuel Macron lamented 'a sad day' as the UK left the EU.
But the French President could not resist firing a parting shot at Leavers who he said disseminated 'lies, exaggerations and simplifications' during the 2016 referendum.
Yet his scathing assessment would have fallen on deaf ears, as most of the core players in the Leave campaign were toasting in Brexit on Friday night.
In Parliament Square, speeches were made by former Brexit Party MEPs Ann Widdecombe and Richard Tice, and Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin. 
The Prime Minister himself, eager to avoid appearing triumphalist, hosted a small gathering for his advisers in Number 10, where English sparkling wine was served.   
However, his top aide Dominic Cummings did not appear in high spirits and was filmed snapping at a reporter who collared him outside a Pizza Express.  
On Friday morning Mr Johnson took his Cabinet to Sunderland, the first city to declare a majority for Leave in the 2016 referendum, in a symbol of his desire to reconnect with the north. 
He told ministers the UK is starting a 'new chapter' and he would be 'going full steam ahead to bring the nation together', according to Downing Street. 
He said the government would 'begin immediately - providing better healthcare and education, tackling violent crime and homelessness and delivering great new infrastructure'. 
He also laid down the gauntlet to the EU over trade negotiations, saying the UK will seek a loose 'Canada-style' deal.
He also made clear the government will look to strike deals with other countries outside the bloc at the same time.
A No10 spokesman said he told the Cabinet that 'from tomorrow, the UK will also be free to begin trade negotiations with countries around the world - with the aim to have 80 per cent of our trade covered by FTAs within three years'. 
In his address last night, the PM stressed his belief that the referendum was a vote not just to leave the EU, but also for lasting change in neglected areas of the country.  
He said: 'It is a moment of real national renewal and change. This is the dawn of a new era in which we no longer accept that your life chances – your family's life chances – should depend on which part of the country you grow up in.'  
He made clear the government would focus on bringing about change for ordinary people, highlighting that ministers could now control immigration, do free trade deals, and 'liberate our fishing industry'.  
'Now is the time to use those tools to unleash the full potential of this brilliant country and to make better the lives of everyone in every corner of our United Kingdom,' he said.   
The EU and UK will use the standstill period over the next 11 months to try to hammer out the terms of their future relationship. 
The UK is adamant a comprehensive deal can be struck by the end of the year but the EU is deeply sceptical and has called for an extension - something Mr Johnson has categorically ruled out.
On Monday, Mr Johnson will deliver a major speech setting out his approach to the Brexit talks as well as detailing his plans for a period of national renewal. 
Sources said he would be 'very frank' about his aims for the negotiations with Brussels and his determination to allow Britain to 'diverge' from EU rules, even if that means the introduction of some trade barriers.  
Mr Johnson will also warn that failure to strike a trade deal by the end of the year would lead to the introduction of tariffs on goods entering from the EU, such as German cars, French cheese and Italian wines.
One government source said: 'Theresa May made two crucial mistakes – she wasn't clear about what she wanted, and she wasn't clear that she was prepared to leave with or without a deal.
'We are not going to make those mistakes. We want a good free trade deal, without alignment, but we are prepared to leave without one if we have to.' 
Mr Johnson will also reject calls for the EU to be given automatic rights to UK fishing grounds – and for the European Court of Justice to be the arbiter of disputes arising from a new trade deal.
Mr Johnson had ordered only low key events to mark Britain's departure last night. 
Union flags have been put up in The Mall and around Parliament Square and there was a countdown clock and light show in Downing Street.  
Leading Eurosceptic Steve Baker called for Brexiteers to avoid triumphalism, saying: 'I will celebrate in a way which is respectful of the genuine sorrow that others are feeling at the same time.' 
However, fellow Brexiteer Peter Bone called for the introduction of a bank holiday named United Kingdom Day. 
And Tory MP Mark Francois said he would be staying up all night to watch the 'sun rise on an independent country'. 
Meanwhile, the EU has been mulling over the departure of one of its largest members.
French president Emmanuel Macron warned the UK's move was an 'historic alarm signal' that the bloc must reform - although he added that the Brexit campaign was based on 'lies'. 
The three most senior figures in the EU institutions delivered a parting shot as they said 'size matters'. 
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Council Charles Michel and president of the European Parliament David Sassoli penned a joint article to mark Brexit. 
They spoke of their 'fondness for the United Kingdom' and praised Britons for their 'creativity, ingenuity, culture, and traditions'. 
But they could not resist putting the boot in as they suggested that on its own Britain will not be able to influence global affairs in the way that it has been able to as a member of the bloc. 
They then used a press conference in Brussels to double down on the jibe as Ms von der Leyen said 'strength does not lie in splendid isolation'. 
Former president of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted his sadness at the UK's departure from the EU as he tweeted: 'My dear British friends. We were, we are, and we will always be a Community. And no Brexit will ever change that.'
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the moment of Brexit would mark a 'sea change' for the EU. 
'We regret [Brexit], and we think the majority of the German population feel the same, but we respect the decision,' Steffen Seibert said at a government press conference.
Berlin hopes Britain will continue to be a 'close partner and friend', Mr Seibert added. 
Meanwhile, Britain's MEPs waved goodbye to the European Parliament on Friday morning as they headed back to the UK. 
The Brexit Party's contingent marked the occasion with a show of strength as they marched out of the building carrying a 'Brexodus Express' banner as Ann Widdecombe said: 'The MEPs leaving here today, our duty is done, our harvest is home and now we're off.' 
Britain has finally left the EU, but what happens next? The UK and Brussels are braced for 11 months of crunch trade talks before a 'cliff-edge' in December (and Boris Johnson wants deals with Japan AND the US in 2020 as well)  
Britain has finally left the European Union but its dealings with the bloc are far from over. 
The last three years have almost entirely been about hammering out the terms of the UK's divorce from Brussels. 
Now the two sides must try to agree all of the details of their future relationship before a standstill transition period ends in December. 
The EU is adamant that 11 months is not enough time to get the job done, but Boris Johnson is refusing to agree to an extension, setting up a fresh Brexit 'cliff-edge' at the end of the year.
Here is a breakdown of all the key dates in the next chapter of the Brexit saga.
January 31, 2020: The UK formally leaves the European Union at 11pm after more than three years of tortuous wrangling. The two sides enter into a standstill transition period during which they will try to agree the terms of their post-Brexit relationship. EU rules will continue to apply to the UK for the duration of the transition. The Department for Exiting the European Union ceases to exist.
February 2020: The UK will be free to pursue trade deals with whoever it wants. Japan and the US are expected to be Britain's top targets with initial talks likely to start immediately after Brexit. The UK will also want to kickstart talks with the EU - but the bloc will make Britain wait.
End of February/early March 2020: Before trade talks can start between the UK and the EU, the bloc must agree a negotiating mandate. This mandate will set out the broad terms of what the EU will be striving for during negotiations and will also spell out Brussels' red lines. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has suggested the mandate may not be finalised until the end of February or early March.
March 2020: Formal trade talks between the UK and the EU are expected to begin. A group of 40 officials called 'Taskforce Europe' and based out of the Cabinet Office will lead negotiations for the UK. The taskforce will be headed up by David Frost, a diplomat and one-time business lobbyist who was appointed Mr Johnson's Europe adviser last year. Mr Frost is expected to negotiate directly with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.   
April/May 2020: Trade talks between the UK and EU - as well as talks with other nations - will intensify. If major progress has not been made with Brussels then there is likely to be increasing pressure on Mr Johnson to agree to extend the transition period. The terms of Britain's divorce from the bloc state that the standstill will finish on December 31 and the PM has been adamant he will not agree to an extension. But the Withdrawal Agreement does include a pressure valve mechanism which states that the transition can be prolonged by one or two years if both sides agree. The EU has already said it does not believe the transition period is long enough to finalise a comprehensive agreement so if talks stall in the first half of the year then Brussels could step up demands for a delay. 
June/July 2020: The Withdrawal Agreement states that a decision to extend the transition period must be agreed by both sides before July 1, 2020 if it is to go ahead. The PM is expected to stick to his guns and refuse to agree to a delay, setting the stage for transition to end in December, with or without a full deal in place. 
July to November 2020: Assuming no transition extension has been agreed, the second half of the year will be fraught with activity as the UK and EU rush to get everything decided. The UK will also be hoping that by this time agreements with Japan and the US will be taking shape, putting pressure on Brussels to work quickly.
September/October 2020: Downing Street is thought to want to have a trade deal with Japan in the books by the autumn to show the EU and the rest of the world it means business. It would be the UK's first post-Brexit trade deal.
November 3, 2020: The date of the US presidential election. The White House has said it wants a trade agreement with the UK in place before the end of the year and will not want talks to clash with Donald Trump's bid for re-election. That means a US-UK trade deal could be done and dusted before November. 
December 2020: The UK and EU will either be on course to end the transition period with a full agreement in place or just a partial agreement. EU bosses have suggested that a lack of time will mean having to prioritise certain issues during talks, potentially leaving others to be resolved at a later date. The UK believes it is possible to get everything done. If no extension has been agreed then the two sides will be going their separate ways regardless.
December 31, 2020: The point at which the Brexit transition period will come to an end and when EU rules and regulations will cease to apply to the UK.
January 1, 2021: EU freedom of movement will be brought to an end and the UK's new post-Brexit immigration system will be rolled out. The Australian-style points-based system is expected to treat migrants from across the world the same, ending preferential treatment for those from Europe. 
Britain entered a new era last night after nearly four years of intense civil war over whether Brexit should happen.
Since the beginning of 2016, politicians have been engaged in a bitter struggle for the soul of the country.
The period has been among the most dramatic in the UK's history - with three Prime Ministers, a referendum and two elections. 
The deadlock was finally broken on December 12, when Boris Johnson won a stunning Tory majority with his simple message of: 'Get Brexit done.' 
Here are some of the key dates as the chaos unfolded. 
February 20, 2016: David Cameron announces the date for the referendum on whether to leave the EU. 
June 23, 2016: The UK votes to leave the EU. 
July 13, 2016: Theresa May becomes PM after seeing off challenges from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
March 29, 2017: Mrs May formally notifies the EU that the UK is triggering the Article 50 process for leaving the bloc. 
June 8, 2017: The Tories lose their majority in the snap election called by Mrs May in a bid to strengthen her hand on Brexit. Mrs May manages to stay in power propped up by the DUP.
July 12, 2018: Mrs May forces her blueprint for the future relationship with the EU through Cabinet during lengthy talks at Chequers. But both David Davis and Boris Johnson resign afterwards.  
November 2018: Mrs May finally strikes a Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, and it is approved by Cabinet - although Esther McVey and Dominic Raab resign. 
December 2018: Mrs May sees off a vote of no confidence in her leadership triggered by Tory MP furious about her Brexit deal. 
January 15-16, 2019: Mrs May loses first Commons vote on her Brexit deal by a massive 230 votes. But she sees off a Labour vote of no confidence in the government.
March 12, 2019: Despite tweaks following talks with the EU, Mrs May's deal is defeated for a second time by 149 votes.
March 29, 2019: Mrs May's deal is defeated for a third time by a margin of 58 votes. 
May 24, 2019: Mrs May announces she will resign on June 7, triggering a Tory leadership contest.
July 23-24, 2019: Mr Johnson wins the Tory leadership battle after solemnly vowing that Brexit will not be extended beyond October 31, and becomes PM the following day.
August 28, 2019: Mr Johnson announces he wants to prorogue Parliament from September 10.
September 3-4, 2019: MPs seize control of Commons business and pass a law requiring a Brexit extension to avoid No Deal. Mr Johnson tries to call a snap general election but does not secure the two-thirds majority of MPs needed. 
September 24, 2019: The Supreme Court declares the prorogation of Parliament illegal.
October 21, 2019: Mr Johnson strikes a new Brexit deal with the EU, incorporating many elements of Mrs May's but deleting the Northern irish backstop and proposing a much looser alignment. 
October 22, 2019: MPs approve Mr Johnson's deal at second reading stage in a major breakthrough - but they vote down his proposed timetable and vow to try to amend the Bill later. The PM responds by pausing the legislation and again demanding an election.  
October 29, 2019: MPs finally vote for an election, after the SNP and Lib Dems broke ranks to vote in favour, forcing the Labour leadership to agree.
December 12, 2019: The Tories win a stunning 80 majority after vowing to 'get Brexit done' during the campaign. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour records its worst performance since 1935 after he sits on the fence over Brexit, saying there should be a second referendum and he wants to remain neutral. 
December 20, 2019: The new-look Commons passes Mr Johnson's Withdrawal Bill by a majority of 124.  
January 9: EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill cleared its Commons stages, and was sent to the House of Lords.
January 22: The EU Withdrawal Bill completed its progress through Parliament after the Commons overturned amendments tabled by peers, and the Lords conceded defeat.
January 24: Mr Johnson signs the ratified Withdrawal Agreement in another highly symbolic step. 
January 29: MEPs approve the Withdrawal Agreement by 621 to 49. Amid emotional scenes in Brussels, some link hands to sing a final chorus of Auld Lang Syne. 
11pm, January 31: The UK formally leaves the EU - although it will stay bound to the bloc's rules for at least another 11 months during the transition period.
Look at what companies do, not what their bosses say. 
That is a good rule of thumb when assessing any corporate action, and one worth applying to Airbus right now.
The chief operating officer of its commercial division, Tom Williams, has just given this warning about the UK’s future relationship with the EU: ‘Put simply, a no-deal scenario directly threatens Airbus’s future in the UK… When we look at the next generation of wings, which is called “Wing of the Future’, we are working on that today in development in the UK and clearly now we are seriously considering whether we should continue that development or find alternative solutions.’ 
Airbus’s frustration has been reflected in similar comments from business organisations such as the CBI and the London Chamber of Commerce – and certainly clarity on the future trading relationship with Europe is very much needed.
But if you look at what Airbus actually does, rather than listening to its rhetoric, another picture emerges.
Three facts. 
First, Airbus buys all of its engines for wide-bodied aircraft from General Electric of America and Rolls-Royce of the UK, while many of its smaller aircraft are powered by CFM engines, a joint venture between GE and a French company called Safran Aircraft Engines. 
So no Airbus aircraft could fly without American and British support.
Second, two years ago Airbus delivered its first aircraft from a new American plant in Alabama, an A321, bought by the American airline JetBlue. 
Major parts are shipped in from Europe, with the engines made in the US.
This shows the multi-national is only too happy to use an American plant to source its engines even though there is no trade deal between the US and the EU.
Third, Airbus has bought just over a half share in the C-Series regional jet programme, developed by Bombardier of Canada. The deal goes through in a week’s time. 
Canada, of course, is outside the EU, but that has not stopped Airbus stepping in.
It looks, by the way, as though Boeing, Airbus’s great and only rival, will be taking a share in the Brazilian company Embraer, which also makes regional jets. 
Aircraft manufacturing is a global business. The twin giants, Airbus and Boeing, assemble their aircraft with components from all over the world. 
Under World Trade Organisation rules there are no tariffs on these components.
Boeing, which has more than 250 suppliers in the UK, is opening a plant in Sheffield to produce wing parts for its next-generation aircraft. 
Its spending in the UK has tripled over the past six years to more than £2billion.
No squealing there about the lack of a trade deal between the UK and US.
Michel Barnier strode on stage at the EU headquarters in Brussels yesterday, a model, as ever, of self-satisfied Gallic charm. He looked calm and well rested. So relaxed, in fact, he could have just returned from a weekend sipping ice-cool highballs on Pampelonne beach.
What a contrast here at Westminster, where our exhausted Prime Minister looks as though she hasn’t slept on her own pillow for weeks, let alone been anywhere near the French Riviera.
Negotiation is a finely balanced art of bluff and deception, and although wily Monsieur Barnier is not a man you would trust to share a bottle of water with crossing a desert, the sad truth is he has run rings around us from the get-go.
One of his most irritating tricks has been to portray himself as someone who regards the whole Brexit hullabaloo as a mere passing irritant, a mind-numbing piece of bureaucracy clogging up his in-tray. Negotiations? Bof! A tedious aside that his diary secretary has squeezed in between a postprandial game of pétanque and his early evening cinq à sept.
Here he was again, goading the British Government, expressing doubts about Theresa May’s chances of getting her deal through. Not, of course, he seemed to imply that he was much bothered.
‘Everyone should now finalise for a No Deal scenario,’ he told his audience. Nor did the Commons voting to stop us leaving without a deal make any difference. ‘Voting against a No Deal does not prevent from it happening,’ he scoffed.
Note how our own guileless leaders stew like autumn Bramleys over the idea of No Deal, whereas the oily Barnier treats the prospect with casual froggy insouciance.
Is he as relaxed about the UK leaving without a deal as he sounds? Of course not. No Deal gives EU leaders the night-sweats just as much as it does our own. This is simply how grown-ups barter. Such a pity. We Brits used to know how to play this game.
As for the Government’s plans to delay withdrawal from the EU, Barnier said he was cool on the idea and suggested Brussels might not necessarily even grant one. ‘What’s the point?’ he asked repeatedly. Nothing in Westminster has changed. Delaying withdrawal until June with no hope of a deal just means prolonged uncertainty.
Barnier stared at the ground. He pawed at his neatly crimped fringe. He affected that wounded manner of a car salesman whose customer has just spurned ‘the deal of a lifetime’.
Another maddeningly bravura performance, in other words.
Meanwhile, back in the Commons, energy minister Claire Perry was cutting up rough during Business questions.
Clive Lewis (Lab, Norwich South), an excitable ex-soldier dedicated to the Corbynite cause, had asked her a question about cuts to renewable energy.
Redoubtable Claire is a hot-breathed ex-lawyer. The Business Department ball-breaker. She’s not a woman who takes kindly to being patronised, nor should she be. Something about the manner of Lewis’s question irritated her and she snapped.
His response was to bounce up and down, sticking out his tongue and waving his arms as if to say, ‘Ooooh, I’m sooo scared’.
Perry lowered her Amazonian frame across the dispatch box and accused Lewis of being a misogynistic bully. ‘Perhaps he’s going to ask me to get on my knees next, Mr Speaker,’ she suggested. Steady! This was a reference to Lewis jokingly telling a male actor to ‘get on your knees, bitch’ at a Labour party conference fringe event.
Lewis and Perry remained at it throughout the session, mouthing insults across the chamber like two featherweights stubbornly refusing to unclench one another after the bell.
All the while, Speaker John Bercow, so incessantly loquacious the day before when he placed a dagger between the Government’s shoulder blades, uttered not a word.
The sheer breathtaking nerve of it is hard to believe.
But it’s true: Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, the biggest double-losers in recent British political history — the former Labour and Liberal Democrat party leaders who were heartily rejected by the voters in last year’s General Election, and again a few months ago when they campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU — have joined forces to insist the Government has no democratic right to implement what they term ‘hard Brexit’.
And this week, they are to be joined at the High Court by the firm of Mishcon de Reya, representing an alleged 1,000 lawyers who want to put a block — if necessary via the House of Lords — on Theresa May invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty: the only way in which a member of the EU can formally begin negotiations to secede.
Yesterday, Ed Miliband said in The Observer: ‘There is no mandate for hard Brexit and I don’t believe there is a majority in parliament for it, either’ and he was backed up by Nick Clegg in the same newspaper.
This term ‘hard Brexit’ needs to be exposed for the Orwellian doublespeak that it is. 
What Messrs Miliband and Clegg and their followers in the defeated Remain camp mean by ‘soft’ Brexit (as in cuddly, cosy, gentle) is that the UK should immediately apply for membership of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Betrayal
This is the organisation consisting of 28 EU states and three others (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). All are full members of the EU single market, in return for which they pay substantial contributions to the EU budget, and undertake to honour the principle of ‘free movement’ — that is, uncontrolled migration within the 31-nation area.
This is monitored and invigilated by the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) Court, a faithful little Miss Echo of the European Court of Justice. The very first sentence of the website of the EFTA Court couldn’t be clearer: ‘The aim of the EEA agreement is to guarantee the free movement of persons . . . in all 31 EEA states.’
This, then, is the so-called ‘soft Brexit’ that Miliband, Clegg and defeated but still campaigning Tory Remainers, such as Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan, say the British public were ‘really voting for’ when more than 17 million ballots were cast for ‘Leave’.
Really? A modicum of investigation would have revealed (if they were interested in the truth about what happened on June 23) that the overwhelming majority of pro-Brexiters had a very different — and very clear — idea of what they were voting for.
I recently attended a presentation on this by the country’s most respected opinion poll analyst, Professor John Curtice.
Citing a series of recent polls on the matter, he said they showed that what almost 90 per cent of Leave voters understood by Brexit was that British taxpayers would no longer be paying billions of pounds a year into the EU budget and that the Government would be able to exert some control over the sort of people who would be able to enter this country from the EU. It is hardly surprising this should be the case. The two principal pledges of the winning Leave campaign were to return to British taxpayers the entirety of the £10 billion a year net British contributions to the EU and to regain control of migration policy. Therefore the claim by Miliband, Clegg, Soubry and co that the British people were not voting for what they call ‘hard Brexit’ is self-serving rubbish, if not straightforwardly dishonest.
Or to put it another way: what MiliClegg call ‘hard Brexit’ is what the British electorate meant by Brexit.
And what MiliClegg call ‘soft Brexit’ is what those 17 million and more voters on the winning side would call ‘betrayal’.
Fortunately, by no means all those parliamentarians who backed the Remain campaign agree with the idea that the losers should be allowed to define what the British public meant by Brexit.
Yesterday, Baroness Manzoor, who led the revolt in the Lords against the Government’s proposed cuts to tax credits, announced she was leaving the Liberal Democrats over the party’s policy, under its new leader Tim Farron, to try to frustrate Britain’s exit from the EU.
She said: ‘I could not support the leadership of a party that calls itself democratic and then refuses to acknowledge the will of the people in a referendum.’
Threats
You might ask why it is that MiliClegg have suddenly launched this challenge.
The reason is that, until last week, they had hoped Theresa May, who had herself been (rather unenthusiastically) on the Remain side during the referendum campaign, would swing the Government behind so-called ‘soft Brexit’. But Mrs May’s remarkable speech to last week’s Conservative Party conference completely shattered their hopes.
She told her adoring party members in Birmingham — and the nation via their television screens — ‘Let me be clear. We are not leaving the EU only to give up control of immigration again. And we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.’
That was, indeed, clear: Britain would not, under Mrs May, apply to join the European Economic Area. By the way, the other reason MiliClegg want the UK to join this group (‘soft Brexit’) is that this organisation was always designed to be the ante-room to full EU membership. In other words, MiliClegg’s cunning plan is that this would make it much easier for Britain to rejoin the EU in the relatively near future.
Mrs May’s speech also explains why the German and French leaders, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, have suddenly begun to make distinctly threatening noises about the ‘price the UK must pay’ for Brexit.
Until last week, they, too, had imagined we might apply to remain full members of the single market — which would, as they rightly added, mean that we continued to commit to free movement.
Yet the British people should not be panicked by these threats, still less by the nearly hysterical Anna Soubry, who, as a business minister under David Cameron, claimed that, if the UK ceased to be a member of the single market, our exports to the rest of the EU would fall to ‘almost absolutely zero’.
Defeat
Leave aside the fact that the countless Chinese products in our stores and homes demonstrate that a country doesn’t have to be a member of the single market to sell billions of pounds’ worth of goods to it: what Britain will aim to negotiate with the EU is some sort of zero-tariff free trade deal.
Canada and the EU have recently done so — and it will not result in that Commonwealth country either paying into the EU budget or accepting free movement of citizens between it and those 28 (soon to be 27) member states. This is what it means — to quote Mrs May’s Birmingham speech — to be a ‘sovereign and independent nation’.
But what of MiliClegg’s fifth column of lawyers who, this week, will try to persuade the High Court to agree to its claim that the Government is not legally entitled to invoke Article 50 by ‘exercise of the Royal Prerogative’ — that is, without first gaining the support of a vote in the House of Commons and the (very anti-Brexit) unelected House of Lords?
It seems the High Court will immediately pass the case up to the Supreme Court, which has indicated that it will make its decision by December at the latest.
If I were a betting man, I’d put a heavy wager on the Supreme Court rejecting the claim that the Government isn’t entitled to invoke Article 50 without first putting it to Parliament.
First, when the Referendum Bill was passed in 2015, the then-Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond declared it meant that ‘the decision about our membership [of the EU] should be taken by the British people . . . not by parliamentarians in this Chamber’.
And second, as that unparalleled expert on the legal aspects of Britain’s EU membership, Martin Howe QC, points out: ‘Article 50 came in as part of the Lisbon Treaty, which took force in British law in 2008. But nowhere in the 2008 Act is there any restriction upon the exercise of the Royal Prerogative to give notice to leave the EU under Article 50.’
In other words, MiliClegg and those attempting to thwart Theresa May through the courts are not just using Orwellian language to trash the verdict of the people in the referendum: they do not even accept the legal order on which our sovereignty rests.
These two-time losers are about to suffer a third defeat. Perhaps then even they will admit it.
If Eurosceptics had wanted to create someone who embodies the darkest impulses of the EU, they could not have come up with a more sinister figure than the German bureaucrat Martin Selmayr.
As the Chief of Staff to the bibulous EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, he is notorious both for his ruthless, bullying methods and his fanatical devotion to the ideology of European unification. Indeed, he’s known as the ‘Rasputin of Brussels’.
Wielding more power than many national leaders, 46-year-old Selmayr offers proof the EU is a vast machine that rides roughshod over democracy in its quest to build the German-led superstate. 
For Selmayr, nothing should stand in the way of this goal.
Anyone who challenges the creed of integration is treated as a heretic. That is why he has long been so hostile to Britain, which has shown far too great a spirit of independence.
Affronted by Brexit, he’s a key architect of the EU’s punishment strategy, compromising a refusal to negotiate constructively on one hand and, on the other, an extortionate demand for a so-called ‘divorce’ settlement.
His attitude makes it believable that he was behind the damaging leak about the May/Juncker dinner.
Selmayr angrily denied he was behind this character assassination.
Yet it seems to fit his anti-British agenda, as well as his record as an intriguer and manipulator.
It’s not the first time he’s been accused of leaking to the press to undermine the British side in Brexit negotiations. Selmayr’s attitude may have been triggered by an incident in his youth, when he was briefly a student in London.
One evening in 1993, he went to hear Margaret Thatcher speak at an event to promote her memoirs. 
Although he bought a signed copy, he was appalled to hear her attack the dream of European integration. He came away with a sense that ‘there is a big misunderstanding between Britain and the EU’. 
Contemptuous of national borders, laws, self-governance and identity, Selmayr is the classic European ideologue bent. Like one of Robespierre’s unyielding revolutionaries during his French Reign of Terror, he is a political zealot, renowned for his dedication and brutality.
Juncker, never one distinguished by his own work-rate, calls him, only half-jokingly, ‘the Monster’.
His commitment is matched by his merciless intimidation which has created its own reign of fear in Brussels.
He thrives on such a reputation, boasting that he keeps the Commission and its 35,000 staff under control. As for his Rasputin nickname, he says: ‘If it means there is an efficient manager, somebody who is not a wimp, I’m OK with that.’ Others are not so happy.
Last year, Kristalina Georgieva, the EU’s Budget Commissioner from Bulgaria, cited the ‘poisonous’ atmosphere that Selmayr created.
A central part of the problem is Selmayr – a lawyer by training – often acts like the Commission President himself. 
One spoof Twitter account joked that Selmayr is now the ‘Chef de drinks cabinet’ for Juncker, but that is a gross misreading of the real situation. 
With typical ambition, Selmayr has exploited his boss’s absences to acquire more political authority than any official in EU history. This, in turn, feeds his epic self-importance. 
‘Do you know the difference between Selmayr and God?’ the long-serving German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble once said. ‘God knows that he’s not Selmayr.’
That spectacular egotism often comes across as political thuggery.
As with so many authoritarians, Selmayr seems to believe that the end justifies the means. In his case, the end is the creation of a united, federal Europe. 
He claims his belief in this vision was fired as a schoolboy, when his maternal grandfather Heinz Gaedecke took him to the First World War battlefields and military cemeteries of the western front, including those at Verdun.
The lesson that young Selmayr absorbed from this trip was that Europe must unify to avoid the blood-soaked lessons of the past.
But Selmayr also had a direct family connection to the darkest episode in Germany’s history. During the Second World War his grandfather was a Lieutenant Colonel on the Wehrmacht’s staff in the Balkans where he won three bravery awards – including the Iron Cross, first and second class.
After the Allies’ victory, Josef Selmayr was tried by a British military tribunal for war crimes, found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served only five years, and on his release helped to create West German military intelligence. 
This painful family experience gives Selmayr another link with Juncker, whose father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht.
But Martin’s own upbringing was far less clouded by conflict. He has been accused of ‘bossy, whip-smart legalism’ – his lawyer father was an adviser to the office of the German President. Selmayr joined the EU’s bureaucracy in 2004 at the age of 34.
Ferociously ambitious, Selmayr spotted the potential of working for Juncker, whose spongy, erratic character was part of his appeal, as it gave far more scope for his chief of staff to have influence. 
Juncker duly became EU President in 2014, despite a strong campaign against his candidacy by David Cameron. His henchman Selmayr has been thwarting Britain ever since. He wants victory for the EU and humiliation for us.
He was one of the diehard opponents of any concessions being granted to Cameron last year during negotiations for a new British relationship. He is just as uncompromising today over Brexit. 
But our Government cannot give in to this Teutonic oppression. Martin Selmayr’s undemocratic antics must not be allowed to deny us our freedom and sovereignty.
Sometimes one reads an article in which everything is illuminated — all one’s suspicions, anxieties and fears. A light is cast on previously shadowy waters.
The novelist Julian Barnes has written such a piece for the London Review Of Books about Britain as it heads for Brexit. Though not a widely read publication, it is influential among the generally Left-leaning literary classes.
Barnes, it should be said, is the celebrated author of many novels. His 2011 work The Sense Of An Ending, which won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction, has been made into a film that opens tomorrow.
This is perhaps why — aware of the value of publicity — he has chosen this moment to grace the London Review Of Books with a diatribe that demonstrates the lack of proportionality, and the hysteria and hatred, evinced by the most extreme Remainers.
And also, most spectacularly, the piece reveals a susceptibility to what has recently become known as ‘fake news’ — but used to be called getting your facts wrong, or even telling a lie.
In the course of a sideswipe against the Mail — seemingly regarded by some Remainers as being single-handedly responsible for the Brexit vote last June — he makes an utterly false accusation.
Referring to the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox a week before the referendum, Barnes claims the Mail ‘gave its readers 30 pages of more important news and comment before deigning to report Jo Cox’s murder’. 
His insinuation is that this paper wished to downplay the murder of the pro-Remain Jo Cox by a deranged fascist. I’ve no doubt that, coming as it does from such an illustrious source, it is being repeated over a thousand fashionable dinner tables, and accepted as gospel truth.
But it’s not true. On June 17, 2016, the whole of the front page of the Mail was devoted to Jo Cox’s tragic murder. So were pages four, five, six and seven. The voluminous coverage was extremely sympathetic, even anguished.
So the eminent Julian Barnes has himself been guilty of disseminating ‘fake news’. The irony is that his incorrect charge should come after he has accused Brexiteers in the same article of purveying multiple lies.
Boris Johnson gets it in the neck over comments he made when explaining why EU countries would be foolish not to make trade deals with a post-Brexit Britain. Barnes criticises Johnson’s claim that Italy exports 300 million litres of prosecco a year to the UK, maintaining that the true figure is only 45 million.
Actually, one apparently authoritative retail website asserts it is 77 million litres, but let’s accept that Boris made a mistake, though it is surely true that the Italian prosecco industry will do whatever it can to ensure tariffs are not applied to its exports to Britain.
My suggestion is simply that Boris’s error pales into insignificance compared to Barnes’s downright falsehood. I don’t accuse him of a deliberate lie. Much more likely, this was laziness born of prejudice.
As a writer who started out in journalism, Barnes certainly ought to know that it is inconceivable that any national newspaper would virtually ignore the murder of an MP.
His article contains other illuminating nonsense. Having listed alleged eruptions of racism unleashed by the Brexiteers (‘the wall-daubings, the increase in racial abuse, the throwing of s**t at “foreign” women’), he makes the extraordinary disclosure that as a ‘largish’ white man he feels ‘abashed when receiving nervous glances on pavements from smaller, less white women’.
May I suggest that, far from thinking that they are about to be assaulted by a hefty pro-Brexit 70-something thug, these women are throwing anxious glances in the direction of a plainly troubled man who provokes their sympathy?
On occasion, the novelist strays from fantasy into a kind of hate-filled negativity that ultra-Remainers who are politicians (e.g. Nick Clegg and Peter Mandelson) usually try to conceal. Barnes doesn’t. 
He says he ‘hopes’ — his word — that ‘leading Brexiteers’ will be ‘well punished’ by EU negotiators, that ‘Europe will make us stump up all we owe, that a hard Brexit will ensue, that the European Union will make us wait as long as Canada had to wait for a trade deal’.
Barnes also hopes that all those ‘who voted to quit the EU will discover that the bright new future without all those Poles and Romanians and Bulgarians means that they will now have to pick strawberries, grade potatoes and care for the demented. . . [and their wages] won’t be any higher.’
Here is a leading novelist who wants his fellow countrymen to suffer for having had the impertinence to vote for Brexit, and hopes that his country will be punished by Europe (which in his mind is indistinguishable from the EU). Do we call that plain nastiness, or does it bear the name of treachery?
Let me say that I have some grieving Remainer friends with whose concerns and worries I sympathise, though I do my best to allay them. But with the kind of unhinged and sometimes fact-free hatred shown by Julian Barnes, my only response is despair and disbelief.
It wouldn’t matter if he were a fool in a pub, but he is a feted writer, one of the most influential in Britain. Behind him are legions of less prominent intellectuals who will go on talking about Brexit as though it is the end of civilisation, while doubtless telling their friends the Mail barely covered the murder of Jo Cox.
Can we ever restore a measure of reason and proportionality to political debate in Britain, and, for that matter, America? Across the Atlantic, the revered and lofty New York Times has just published a mammoth article which suggests (without, of course, producing any hard facts) that London post-Brexit will no longer be a successful international city.
Though much less convulsed with loathing than Julian Barnes’s tirade, a piece by the reporter Sarah Lyall betrays the same sense of determination that everything will turn out badly. A succession of unhappy Remainers are encouraged to air their fears.
Needless to say, neither Barnes nor Lyall mentions that the apocalyptic warnings of Remainers during the referendum campaign — and I’d argue that many of those were plain lies — have not so far come to pass, and they do not address the possibility that their own intimations of doom may be even partly misguided. 
Both writers apparently live in a kind of intellectual bubble or echo chamber, talking to like-minded people, and not bothering to engage rationally with those with whom they disagree. In Julian Barnes’s case — so dissociated is he from the world around him — he actually imagines fears in non-white women passing in the street.
Surely the lesson of the referendum was that of the failure of the Remainers to understand and judge the public mood. I will spare Sarah Lyall, since she is an American, though she tells us that she lived in London for more than 15 years until returning home in 2013.
But Barnes, being British, is different. In common with so many of his kind, he does not like much of his country or many of his countrymen.
He and his ilk often portray those who voted to leave the EU as ‘insular’. Reading his venomous piece — its casual inaccuracies, its narrow prejudices, its rancour — that is the very word I would use to describe Julian Barnes.
For the past couple of weeks there has been a bit of an elephant on this page. I've been doing my best to dance around it — but, given recent events, I just don't think I can ignore it any more. My husband, Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, is running for PM.
It has not been an easy decision to take. Well, not for me, at any rate. I think for Michael it's a bit of a no-brainer. As a leader of the campaign to leave the EU, he is determined to deliver the result of the referendum — not least because it's what he believes in, but also because he has invested so much in it, personally and politically.
Of course, he did his best under Theresa May — a woman for whom I know he has huge respect and admiration, despite everything. While others threw in the towel, he stayed on, not only to try to secure a deal, but also because of his work at Environment.
As the size of the Green vote this weekend proves, the future of the planet is something people are deeply engaged in. 
Or, as our elder child put it: 'Saving Brexit is one thing, Dad; saving the planet is much more important in the long run.' And she's right, of course. No point securing a good deal if we're all drowning in plastic. 
Now that Mrs May has finally been forced to concede, Michael has put his name forward. He has always been passionate about politics, and in particular taking Britain out of the EU. 
As he said to me the other day, watching Parliament drive Brexit into a cul-de-sac over the past few years has been excruciating.
'You just can't help thinking: 'Aargh, if only I could just get my hands on the steering wheel.'
When I pointed out to him that a motoring analogy was perhaps not the best one for a man who took seven — yes, seven — attempts to pass his driving test, he laughed and admitted that perhaps I had a point. But I know what he means.
Seeing the result of a democratic vote turned into little short of a civil war has driven me mad with frustration and, at times, fury. Indeed, there have been times when I have been ready to give up and give in.
I voted Leave not for the reasons cited by those who like to characterise us 17.4 million Leavers as bigots and xenophobes, but because, as a former expat who grew up in Europe and whose immediate family still lives there, I do not view Brussels through rose-tinted spectacles.
Yet I've now even entertained the thought of revoking Article 50 altogether. Anything, frankly, to put an end to the division and anger pulling this country apart.
Michael, I know, has never felt that way for one single second. His Euroscepticism is as deeply ingrained in him as his love of the United Kingdom. And while he is wary of the consequences of a no-deal Brexit, he is equally determined that Britain will, one way or another, leave the EU.
Like all husbands, Michael has his flaws: a fondness for corduroy, an inability to go anywhere (including dinner) without a book, a passion for Wagnerian opera, an obsession with Strictly, an entirely irrational dislike of houseplants and, of course, the usual pathological male inability to operate a dishwasher.
But one thing he cannot be accused of in respect of Brexit is giving up. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that, for him, delivering the result of the 2016 referendum has become more important than almost anything else — and I'll be backing him to the hilt. Every spouse wants to support their partner in life's endeavours.
But there is also family life to think about; not least the small matter of staying sane.
And, as I discovered last time Michael stuck his head above the parapet, during the 2016 referendum, things can get awful mad in politics.
Quite aside from our own issues, I cannot recall a time in my life when Westminster has felt this feverish and toxic; when public anger has been so fierce and so acutely felt, or, for that matter, so justifiable. As we have seen from this recent European election — an election which never should have taken place — people feel deeply let down.
For Michael, this is not just about succeeding where others have failed: it's about honouring the result of the referendum.
And to do that he has to persuade the party and the people that not only is he the right man to unite the Conservatives and deliver Brexit, he is also someone who can, in the long term, restore faith in politics. For me, the challenge is very different but just as personal. I have to find a way of protecting the family, and particularly our two children, from the inevitable repercussions. From a world that may well see them not as human beings but as potential and legitimate targets in the greatest of ideological battles.
That, I think, will be hard, given the strength of feeling in this feral social media age of ours. We are all protective when it comes to our own, and I am no exception.
Like any parent, Michael also feels these concerns acutely. But I also know that part of him believes that in politics there are some things that transcend even the deeply personal; that the overall good of the country requires certain sacrifices.
And he's right, of course. This is not just about one person, one family: it is about the country as a whole. About a Britain that has been torn apart by the question of Brexit. And about the urgent need to resolve the rift in the most civilised way possible.
Treating those with whom you profoundly disagree with respect and consideration is not a mark of weakness, it's basic civility — something that has been in woefully short supply of late.
One of the reasons Mrs May's task was so impossible was because of the sheer tribal vitriol perpetrated by those in Parliament and beyond who wanted to either undermine the result of the referendum altogether or interpret it so aggressively as to only accept a no-deal exit.
Uncoupling Britain from the rules and restrictions of the EU was never going to be straightforward. It requires patience, diligence, conviction and, yes, compromise. All qualities that Michael has in spades. Especially, as you can imagine, patience, being married to yours truly.
If he wins, he faces a Herculean task, not only in delivering Brexit but also in restoring the battered fortunes of the Conservative Party and keeping that creepy communist Corbyn out of No 10.
Can he do it? I hope so. But this much I do know: if the Party and the country puts their trust in him, he will do everything within his power to see this one through.
I, meanwhile, shall be battening down the hatches.             
Good move, Posh - the only Classy Spice 
The much-anticipated Spice Girls reunion tour has been marred by poor sound quality, leading some fans to ask for their money back.
I would have thought that not being able to hear four fortysomethings dressed as schoolgirls warble their way tunelessly through a back-catalogue of tacky hits would have been a positive. 
For once, Posh Spice — who's not taking part — proves she's the one with real class.
 Alexa! Connect me to God
Apparently, thousands of Alexa users are reconnecting with God through a new 'skill' (similar to an app) launched by the Church of England. Time, perhaps, to update the Lord's Prayer?
Our Father,
who art online,
Googled be thy name;
thy Amazon delivery come;
thy shopping be done;
on eBay as it is on Etsy.
Give us this day our free delivery.
And forgive us our Facebook,
as we forgive those who Twitter against us.
And lead us not to Netflix;
but deliver us from the BBC Sounds app.
For thine is the Instagram,
the Snapchat and the WhatsApp,
for ever and ever
#Amen
Trust an American (Rob Lowe) to say what none of us Brits had the courage to say: it's rather sad the future heir has lost his hair. 
As Lowe points out: 'Honestly, one of the great traumatic experiences of my life was watching Prince William lose his hair. He's going to be the f*****g king of England!' 
He's right of course — as he is right that there are now plenty of options for slowing down or even stopping hair loss altogether. 
But part of me rather admires Prince William for being so un-vain as to let nature simply take its course. 
I wonder whether the Duchess of Sussex will be quite so laissez faire with William's little brother. Something tells me maybe not.
As the new Love Island line-up is revealed, I am struck by the story of 26-year-old Amy Hart, an air stewardess from West Sussex.
For her 21st birthday, Amy received a pair of £5,000 surgically enhanced breasts from her grandparents. 
I’m sure they’re very nice and all, but the story does slightly make me long for the days when your 21st birthday present from Granny was a nice carriage clock or a pair of earrings. 
Progress? I’m not so sure.
To a crypt deep inside Somerset House, off the Strand, to hear that well-known election asset and wife-cheater Sir John Major preach against Brexit. 
We were soon served a banquet of the richest, most jellied hypocrisies. Oh yes.
Mrs May should offer Parliament a free vote, said the man who physically steered MPs through the lobbies to save his skin on the Maastricht Treaty (which Ken Clarke never read). 
MPs should listen to their beliefs, not to party Whips, said the man who raged so petulantly against Eurosceptic ‘bastards’ in his Cabinet in the 1990s. 
The noble intellectuals of the House of Lords should ignore the public and be guided by their consciences. 
Talk of ‘consciences’ from the sticky adulterer!
Sir John himself has never been fagged to enter the Upper House. You have to publish details of your income if you are a peer. 
Sir John has over the years coined it in big time from an American investment firm. 
By the way, did you know this sometime afternoon hip-jiggler is a patron of British Gymnastics? Isn’t it perfect?
Former prime minister Sir John, whose speech may or may not be part of an organised PR front by Tony Blair’s Remainers, was speaking at an event promoting the creative industries.
Before his contribution we were spoonfed some stuff about how those creative businesses depended on talent from the European Union. 
Without EU poets and playwrights and pop stars and fashion designers, little Britain would apparently soon revert to the cultural dark ages. 
All this was lapped up by an audience of sleek metropolitan 30-somethings who plainly, at 2pm on a snowy Wednesday, had no work to attend.
In the middle of these youngsters, like a pied piper, sat Peter Mandelson’s friend Roland Rudd, the multi-zillionaire City PR man, arch-Europhile and brother of the Home Secretary.
Sir John claimed he was ‘neither a Europhile nor a Eurosceptic’ but ‘a realist’ who opposed Brexit. 
‘Of course,’ he said magnanimously, ‘the “will of the people” can’t be ignored, but Parliament has a duty also to consider the “wellbeing of the people”.’ 
And with that he was into the patronising cliche about ‘no one voted for higher prices’. 
He continued: ‘I know of no precedent for any Government enacting a policy that will make both our country and our people poorer.’
I do. It was called the exchange rate mechanism and it was pursued, disastrously, by some idiot of a PM in the early 1990s simply out of dogmatic attachment to the EU. 
The name of that dimwit? Major.
Sir John, who was never much liked by George Bush Snr or Bill Clinton, said that Britain used to be close to the US. 
‘Now we are becoming a lesser actor,’ he claimed. ‘I wunt my country to be influential, not isolated.’ 
He wunted us to be richer, not poorer, too, which by unhappy chance has an echo of the Prayer Book’s marriage vows. 
The inconvenient fact for Remainers is that since the Leave vote, our economy has been hopping along rather cheerfully. 
Sir John argued that this was an artificial ‘sweet spot – it won’t last’.
He seemed to be cross both with Brexiteers for being intransigent, and with the May Government for making concessions in its negotiations. 
With the air of a greybeard whose own years had only ever seen the most devoted solidarity, he lamented that the Cabinet disagreed about Brexit. 
‘I don’t say this to be critical,’ he said in that Dalek bleat. ‘I take no pleasure in speaking out as I am today.’
Oh come off it, buster. You were loving the attention. He argued that a second referendum might be needed in 2021. 
Then came a line worthy of the most creepy undertaker in Victorian fiction: ‘Some voters will have left us.’ 
Yes, folks, he was happily saying that some Leave voters will by 2021 be in their coffins, stiffer than … well, let’s not get in to that.
What did Edwina see in him?
 
A series of deeply worrying and unpleasant stories circulated Westminster yesterday concerning the conduct of Boris Johnson’s senior adviser and henchman Dominic Cummings.
According to one account, he ranted against former Tory Cabinet minister and anti-No Deal rebel Greg Clark, saying: ‘We are going to purge you.’
Another report said that Cummings ‘stank of booze’ during a confrontation with Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday night, outrageously accosting the Labour leader over his refusal to agree to a snap general election, taunting him as follows: ‘Come on, Jeremy, let’s do this election. Don’t be scared!’
Though he has only been in the No10 bunker for six weeks, there are a number of other claims about Cummings’ rudeness.
 
I’ve heard accounts of him being dismissive and curt to Tory MPs and even to former Cabinet ministers. For example, he has called Theresa May’s Brexit minister David Davis ‘thick as mince’ and ‘lazy as a toad’.
He swears frequently. Most troubling, Cummings has been criticised for the way he personally fired one of Chancellor Sajid Javid’s female advisers – summoning police to help him – after he accused her of lying about her conversations with members of former chancellor Philip Hammond’s team.
It’s unsurprising that former prime minister David Cameron dubbed Cummings a ‘career psychopath’.
All this would be bad enough. But Cummings, 47, is the architect of the Johnson Government’s flawed and crumbling Brexit policy.
His hand can be detected in the decision to strip the whip from the 21 Tory rebels, including Father of the House Kenneth Clarke, Philip Hammond and Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames.
The Cummings strategy has been to get the public to identify the Tory Government with taking Britain out of the EU and honouring the 2016 referendum – and thus making voters think that every other party is an enemy of democracy.
What he has done, though, is to unite previously disunited opposition parties into a powerful force which has seized control of the Commons.
That’s not all, his tactics have seen Johnson lose control of events and allow Corbyn to dictate whether there is to be a general election.
Cummings’ enemies have been swift to point out that he is not a member of the Tory Party – unlike great men such as Kenneth Clarke, who first stood as a Tory parliamentary candidate 55 years ago.
In other words, he’s a newcomer who has gatecrashed a great party and has become a human wrecking ball.
Indeed, he holds non-compliant Conservative MPs in contempt, having described them as ‘narcissist-delusional’.
I know Cummings quite well. In my experience, he abhors many British institutions which natural Tories are brought up to respect.
It is also worth noting his association with the Vote Leave campaign in 2016 of which he was director. For example, it was fined after breaking the EU referendum spending limit.
And Cummings was widely criticised for refusing to appear in front of a committee of MPs who wanted to ask him questions about the use of Facebook data during the campaign. The new No10 rottweiler has scant respect for the Civil Service, too, denouncing some civil servants as ‘grotesque incompetents’.
It is no wonder that Lord Kerslake, former head of the Civil Service, reacted angrily to the decision to prorogue Parliament, saying civil servants needed to examine their conscience as to whether they could support the Government’s actions. Such is the immense power and influence of a man little known outside Westminster until being hired by Johnson on his first day as PM.
Until then, Cummings’ svengali character was only known to Westminster insiders and to viewers who watched Benedict Cumberbatch play him in the Channel 4 TV film Brexit: The Uncivil War. Now, the name Dominic Cummings is on every MP’s lips.
Many are spitting blood over the behaviour of the man about whom I wrote in the Mail in the first week of August under the headline ‘Why I fear the future of Britain (and Boris) is now in the hands of an unelected svengali’. My opinion has only hardened since.
He’s never struck me as possessing a brilliant mind, despite what a small band of media sycophants claim.
The signs were always there. But the wheels came off his strategy with the Commons defeat on Tuesday night.
As a result, Johnson faces the possibility of becoming the shortest-serving Prime Minister in history.
I wish the Premier well for he is beyond question talented and charismatic. Furthermore, he showed in his first international excursion, when he met Angela Merkel last month, that he has the polished statesmanship to operate comfortably on the international stage.
But thanks to his chum Cummings, Johnson is losing MPs, friends, goodwill and public support very fast. Too fast.
If Johnson is to survive in No10, he must regain his confidence and composure and find a new way of conducting himself in office.
Above all, he must sack his boorish senior adviser without delay.
Otherwise he will be seen to sanction Cummings’ grotesque conduct.
This is because such a man, prone to bullying, is completely unacceptable in any organisation, let alone Downing Street. But his tactical blundering has been calamitous too.
Johnson urgently needs to find new advisers because he has only 56 days left to take Britain out of the EU.
Sacking Cummings, of course, would be a great humiliation for Johnson. But it would not be as fatal for him as the smashing of the Tory Party which he leads.
That looks a stone cold certainty with Cummings granted such power inside Downing Street.
 
Tory rebels who delivered a humiliating blow to Theresa May's Brexit Bill last night were later pictured sitting around bottles of wine in a Commons bar.
Eleven Conservative MPs last night backed an amendment giving them a legal guarantee of a vote on the final Brexit deal, despite government pleas to let ministers retain control.
At least, four of the rebels, Antionette Sandbach, Anna Soubry, Bob Neill and Heidi Allen, were pictured drinking glasses of white wine following the government's setback.
The photo, shared online since the vote, led to Mrs Soubry being accused of celebrating the result with champagne. 
It is not clear exactly when the picture was taken or by whom, although the MPs seem to be wearing the clothes they were in yesterday.
Ms Soubry told the Commons today that the rebels had taken no pleasure in the stinging result and turned on an MP on the Tory benches who heckled her for 'drinking champagne'.
A clearly furious Ms Soubry shot back: 'Nobody drank champagne on these benches.' 
Last night's shock result sparked a furious war of words between the rebels and Brexiteers, with one MP even calling for colleagues to be deselected for undermining the PM's negotiating position. 
As Mrs May prepares to head for a crucial EU summit in Brussels later, the European parliament's chief Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt waded into the row by mocking the Vote Leave referendum slogan, saying the Commons had 'taken back control'.



The government was defeated by a margin of four votes, losing 309 to 305 and Labour MPs joined the rebels in cheering and applauding as the extraordinary result was announced. 

Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, said: 'The Tory rebels have put a spring in Labour's step, given them a taste of winning.
'They have guaranteed the party a weekend of bad press, undermined the PM and devalued her impact in Brussels. 
'They should be deselected and never allowed to stand as a Tory MP, ever again.'
Answering questions in the Commons this morning, Brexit Secretary Mr Davis refused to rule out trying to reverse the setback later in the legislative process.
'We will have to decide how we respond to it,' he said.

Ministers had proposed that Parliament could have a 'take it or leave it' vote on Theresa May's final Brexit deal with Brussels. 
If they rejected it, Britain would leave with no deal. 
But rebels feared the vote would come too late to give them a 'meaningful' say on the shape of Brexit.
Now, as result of last night's vote, MPs and peers have the opportunity to amend any deal and in theory force Mrs May back to the negotiating table.
To compound her difficulties, Mrs May faces another crucial vote in the Commons next week over fixing the Brexit date in law of March 29, 2019. 
She will head to Brussels today for a European Council meeting. 

A furious Mrs May quickly sacked former minister Stephen Hammond from his role as Tory vice-chairman after he joined the revolt.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt played down the impact today, insisting the Brexit process would not be derailed.
'I don't think it should be a surprise that in a hung Parliament, Parliament wants to reassert its right to scrutinise the process,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 'But we should also be clear this isn't going to slow down Brexit, it's not going to stop Brexit.' 
Asked whether MPs now had the power to force the Government back to the negotiating table, Mr Hunt said: 'Parliament can say whatever it wants but of course renegotiation is something that involves two parties.'


Eleven Conservative MPs were enough to defeat Theresa May - despite her concession winning over three others moments before the vote.
The 11 rebels were: 

Dominic Grieve
Heidi Allen
Ken Clarke
Nicky Morgan
Anna Soubry
Sarah Wollaston
Bob Neill
Stephen Hammond 
Oliver Heald
Jonathan Djanogly
Antoinette Sandbach
A 12th Tory in the aye lobby was John Stevenson who voted both ways - an active abstention
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn branded the result 'a humiliating loss of authority for the Government on the eve of the European Council meeting'. 
But ministers have  hinted they could try to overturn the result at a later stage in the legislation. 

Two Labour MPs - Frank Field and Kate Hoey - voted with the Government. 

During the debate yesterday, Ken Clarke signalled his support for the amendment, saying the key thing around a meaningful vote was its timing.
He said: 'The vote's got to take place before the British Government has committed itself to the terms of the treaty-like agreement that is entered into with the other members.
'Any other vote is not meaningful.'
Mr Clarke said it was 'quite obvious' that the Government was not going to be 'remotely near' a detailed agreement by March 2019.
He added: 'It's not a question, I may say, to my desperately paranoid eurosceptic friends, that somehow I am trying in some surreptitious Remainer way to put a spoke in the wheels of the vast progress of the United Kingdom towards the destination to which we are going.
'But they don't know what Leave means, because nobody discussed what Leave meant when we were having the referendum.' 
Another rebel, Antoinette Sandbach, expressed fears that a vote on a Brexit deal motion outlined by the Government could be 'meaningless'.
Justice Minister Dominic Raab urged the rebels to drop their amendment, adding: 'If we waited for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill not just to be introduced after the withdrawal agreement has been signed, but fully enacted, waiting for the full passage of that to happen we would not have the time deal with the volume of technical legislation that we need to put through under secondary legislation.
'There is no getting around the timing issue, we have got the long tail of technical regulatory secondary legislation we need to get through if we want to provide legal certainty that will make a smooth Brexit.' 





How inconvenient it was for the anti-Brexit march on Parliament that a policeman guarding the home of British democracy should have been murdered there only days before their planned mass demonstration.
The Metropolitan Police had indicated to the organisers that it would place further strain on the force’s stretched resources as they dealt with the aftermath of the terrorist attack there last Wednesday.
But Unite for Europe pressed ahead with its march, which finished just yards from where Khalid Masood butchered PC Keith Palmer. Among the posters brandished near the improvised shrine of flowers marking where the policeman fell was one portraying Theresa May stark naked, with the blond-thatched head of Boris Johnson as her genitalia.
Admittedly, very few of the banners carried by the Unite for Europe marchers were as odious. Most carried variations on the same theme: ‘No to Brexit’, ‘Don’t Quit the EU’ and ‘May, May, let us stay’.
But these slogans give the lie to the claim by the politicians who spoke at the rally: the lie being that they ‘accept the verdict of the British people’ in the plebiscite of June 23. It is all about not accepting that verdict.
Tasteless
Some last-ditchers at Westminster are honest about it. The Labour MP and former minister David Lammy, who attended the march, had earlier called on Parliament to ‘stop this madness’ and reject the referendum result.
Lammy is the twit who, on the BBC during the run-up to the referendum, claimed that in World War II, the one million Indians who gave their lives had been fighting for ‘the European Project’.
An ignorant reference to the war against the Nazis is now standard among those most unreconciled to the fact that on Wednesday the Prime Minister is to send a letter to Brussels invoking Article 50, triggering the formal negotiations of our departure from the EU.
Yesterday’s Observer newspaper, in a leading article as hysterical as it was tendentious, described these negotiations as ‘the peacetime equivalent of the ignominious retreat from Dunkirk... Theresa May, figuratively waving the cross of St George atop the white cliffs of Dover like a tone-deaf parody of Vera Lynn’. In fact, the Prime Minister has been anything but warlike in her dealings with the EU, and has studiously eschewed the sort of bellicose rhetoric which the Observer gratuitously invokes.
But even those editorialists, intoxicated by the exuberance of their own verbosity, do not approach Michael Heseltine for sheer tastelessness. In an interview last week, the former deputy prime minister also cited the Nazis in his fury at the PM’s decision to honour the result of the referendum:
‘For someone like myself, it was 1933, the year of my birth, that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war. This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We’ve just handed them the opportunity to win the peace. I find that quite unacceptable.’
Lord Heseltine’s carefully worded reference to the ‘democratic election’ of Hitler is simultaneously offensive and insidious.
It is offensive in linking the democratic vote for Brexit with the German people’s vote for Hitler in the March 1933 federal election. It is insidious in implying that our 2016 vote was tainted: a disgusting attempt to discredit a free choice of the British people.
In fact, that election in March 1933 (in which Hitler’s NSDAP gained 43.91 per cent of the votes cast) took place just days after the Reichstag fire, when Nazi stormtroopers unleashed violent intimidation against all their opponents from other political parties. Voting at polling stations was ‘monitored’ by Nazi organisations including the fearsome SS.
To link last year’s British referendum campaign with this brutal travesty of democracy demeans Lord Heseltine much more than it does those he aims to discredit.
He must be sore after Theresa May sacked him from his government advisory role, following his vote against the Government’s Brexit Bill in the House of Lords, but this outburst only proves she was right to do so.
Banners
David Lammy (whose own grasp of history was immortalised on Celebrity Mastermind in 2009, when he volunteered that the king who succeeded Henry VIII was ‘Henry VII’) also used the anti-Brexit rally to declare: ‘We are living in a dictatorship.’ Actually, Mr Lammy, in real dictatorships people such as you would not be able to march on the seat of government amid banners portraying indecent images of the leader of the ruling party.
And, when it comes to fiddling with the most basic facts, why did Unite for Europe put out a press release at 21.17 on the day of the demonstration, saying its march attracted 100,000 people — then issue a second release a minute later, claiming it was 150,000?
For the record, the police estimate that about 25,000 were on the march. Given that more than 16 million voted for Remain, this suggests the overwhelming majority of those people are not so unreconciled to the outcome as the likes of Heseltine and Lammy.
Perhaps one reason is that those Remain voters — let alone the 17.4 million Leave voters — do not buy the argument, advanced by speakers at the rally, that it was never made clear Brexit would involve leaving the EU’s single market.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, told the marchers, with breathtaking cheek: ‘We are here to show solidarity and respect for those who voted Leave. We do not believe they wanted this. Theresa May does not speak for the 52 per cent, she barely speaks for 5 per cent.’
This ‘5 per cent’ figure demonstrates that Farron’s only source of knowledge is his own imagination. There has been no statistically significant loss of support for Brexit since Mrs May outlined her plans to leave both the EU’s single market and its customs union.
Retort
Yesterday, interviewed by Sky’s Sophy Ridge, Farron’s predecessor Nick Clegg repeated (once again) the canard that ‘no one’ realised Brexit would mean leaving the single market. He brushed aside Ms Ridge’s accurate retort that this was exactly what David Cameron and George Osborne had said would happen if Vote Leave won. ‘They were on the other side,’ he sniffed.
Yet the pre-eminent member of Vote Leave in the Cabinet, Michael Gove, made this clear during the campaign —so clear that last May the Financial Times splashed on its front page with ‘Michael Gove says leaving EU would mean quitting single market’. Almost all other leading members of the Leave campaign followed this line.
The reason for this was obvious. At the heart of the Vote Leave campaign was a pledge to end free movement from the EU into the UK. Yet the rules of the single market are that all members must allow such free movement. It is one of the founding principles, theological in its force. So if we were to remain members of the single market, we would have to continue with unchecked migration from the other 27 members.
There was never a chance that the EU would allow us the one without the other. Such a negotiation would end as soon as it began. That is why May is instead seeking a bilateral free trade agreement with Brussels, akin to that negotiated between the EU and Canada.
Even a majority of those who voted Remain seem to sympathise with this approach. A poll published last week by the National Centre for Social Research found that not only did 86 per cent of Leave voters think that ‘prospective EU migrants should have to go through the same hoops as non-EU migrants’, but 54 per cent of Remain voters agreed with this proposition, too.
No wonder the turnout at last weekend’s anti-Brexit rally was a fraction of what its organisers had hoped or claimed. 
The Government admitted 200,000 firms that trade with the EU are not ready for a no deal Brexit tonight in a damning report with just 31 days to exit day.
The study from the Brexit department also found citizens are ignoring no deal warnings and failing to make sure they are ready for a no deal.
It said no deal would cause delays at the border - potentially meaning shortages and prices rises for some food, particularly fresh produce not in season in Britain.
The report warns panic buying could fuel shortages in foods that are shipped across the Channel.  
Ahead of the publication of tonight's report Theresa May admitted it would be an 'honest assessment' of the 'serious challenges' facing Britain after no deal.
But she told MPs: 'I believe that if we have to, we will ultimately make a success of a No Deal.' 
The Prime Minister made a screeching U-turn today and admitted no deal could only happen if MPs voted for it - and said MPs could demand a delay to Brexit instead. 
Independent Group MP Chuka Umunna said tonight's report showed the 'disastrous' impact no deal would have on Britain. 
The shock Government paper took a swipe at businesses trading with the EU, saying just a sixth of firms trading with EU states had obtained a vital document.
The Government tonight published a report on Britain's no deal preparedness with just 31 days to go. It says: 
After Brexit they will require an Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) number to continue to export as the UK will become an external so-called 'third party' state.
In a damning statement the paper lays the situation bare, saying: 'As an EORI number registration is one of the most basic and straightforward parts of the process most businesses would need to undertake to prepare for no deal, this is assumed to be a generous indicator of overall readiness.
'As of February 2019 there had only been around 40,000 registrations for an EORI number, against an estimate of around 240,000 EU-only trading businesses.
'In practice, the UK's approach is based on, in the short-term, allowing hauliers to pass through the border without stopping, but they would be stopped if taking goods into France without the right paperwork.
'The lack of preparation for EU controls - of which this is an example - greatly increases the probability of disruption.'
However it also said that the Government can process up to 11,000 EORI applications per day, so there is time for firms to act before March 29. 
Consumers could face a bun fight over fresh fruit and vegetables as shortages of some foods kicks off a surge in prices - and are made worse by greedy consumers stockpiling them, the paper revealed.
Some 30 per cent of UK food comes from the EU and it added: 'Although our food supply is diverse, resilient, and sourced from a wide variety of countries, the potential disruption to trade across the Short Channel Crossings would lead to reduced availability and choice of products.'
There will not be an 'overall' food shortage, it revealed, with less than a tenth of 'foods items' 'directly affected by any delays' across the Channel.
But it continued: 'However, at the time of year we will be leaving the EU, the UK is particularly reliant on the Short Channel Crossings for fresh fruit and vegetables.
'In the absence of other action from Government, some food prices are likely to increase, and there is a risk that consumer behaviour could exacerbate, or create, shortages in this scenario.
'As of February 2019, many businesses in the food supply industry are unprepared for a no deal scenario.' 
The paper also took a swipe at UK citizens for failing to complete basic 'administrative tasks' to prepare for a no-deal Brexit - because they are not worried it will happen.
It cited passport renewal, applying for an international driving permit and obtaining a 'car insurance green card' as things which people either visiting or living in EU states needed to complete.
It said: 'As of February 2019, despite a public information campaign encouraging the public to seek out the Government's advice on preparing for a 'no deal', noticeable behaviour change has not been witnessed at any significant scale.
'Based on DExEU survey data from January 2019, 55% of UK adults did not expect to be affected by a no deal exit.
'Government judges that the reason for this lack of action is often because a no deal scenario is not seen as a sufficiently credible outcome to take action or outlay expenditure.'
The Government document stated that the introduction of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade in the case of a no-deal Brexit can be expected to have a 'very severe' impact on some UK industries.
The EU would introduce tariffs of around 70% on beef and 45% on lamb exports and 10% on motor vehicles. The impact on UK businesses 'would be compounded by the challenges of even modest reductions in flow at the border', said the document.
It was 'impossible to accurately predict the ability of businesses to adapt', but the risk of no deal is 'of major concern' for the car industry, both because of tariffs and disruption to just-in-time supply chains.
The document stated that 'the cumulative impact from a 'no deal' scenario is expected to be more severe in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain, and to last for longer'.
It warned: 'In a no-deal scenario there is an expectation of disruption to closely interwoven supply chains and increasing costs that would affect the viability of many businesses across Northern Ireland.
'There is a risk that businesses in Northern Ireland will not have sufficient time to prepare. This could result in business failure, and/or relocation to Ireland with knock-on consequences for the Northern Ireland economy and unemployment.'
Independent Group MP Chuka Umunna said: 'These documents - which The Independent Group of MPs have forced this Government to publish - paint a disastrous picture of the catastrophe which would befall our country if there is a no-deal Brexit.
'In light of what she knows, it is utterly irresponsible for the Prime Minister to keep a no-deal Brexit on the table given the extreme damage it will do.
'These papers set out how food prices will rise, we may see panic buying, there will be severe disruption at the border, and jobs and livelihoods would immediately be put at risk.'
Millions of vulnerable pensioners would be put at risk in the event of a No Deal Brexit, Whitehall officials have warned.
A leaked document from the Department of Health warned firms which provide home helps and manage care homes could collapse because of council cuts and a shortage of staff.
It warned that any Brexit-related disruption to food distribution could have a disproportionate effect on the elderly. And it said significant failings in social care would have a devastating impact on GPs and hospitals – leading to a sharp increase in bed blocking and longer waiting lists.
Worryingly, the document reveals that officials held a special exercise last week to test government responses because ‘Brexit may cause multiple providers to fail simultaneously’. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has already warned of problems in the supply of medicines.
The report said the Department of Health wanted to ‘minimise the negative impacts of No Deal Brexit on vulnerable people’. If it is impossible to ensure uninterrupted provision ‘we want to support local authorities to meet their statutory duties to ensure continued provision of social care to vulnerable people’.
The paper was drawn up by the Department for Health’s EU exit delivery board.
Barbara Keeley, Labour’s social care spokesman, said: ‘This is an extraordinary admission from the Government that the catastrophic No Deal Brexit which this reckless Prime Minister is driving the country toward could endanger the lives of vulnerable people.’ 
A furious Cabinet row saw Remainer ministers lashed for 'kamikaze' tactics today as Theresa May set out a screeching U-turn and admitted Brexit could be delayed. 
Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke were slammed for going public with their demands for no deal Brexit to be ruled out in a newspaper article on Saturday. 
Chief Secretary Liz Truss slammed the 'kamikaze' approach while  Commons leader Andrea Leadsom reportedly shouted in anger, the Spectator reported.
The brazen defiance of Mrs May's insistence that Brexit cannot be delayed and no deal must be on the table came ahead of the PM abandoning both positions today.
After briefing her Cabinet and with negotiations deadlocked in Brussels, the PM told the Commons no deal would only happen with 'explicit consent' and it will get a chance to extend Article 50 within a fortnight.  
Mrs May tried to soothe angry Eurosceptics by insisting that a delay could only be a 'one-off' and was not something she wanted to do. She stressed she will never cancel the Brexit process altogether, arguing that the UK could make a 'success' of no deal if it has to. 
But the concession leaves Tory hardliners with a stark choice of either backing Mrs May's plan in the next showdown, which will happen by March 12, or accepting an almost inevitable delay to the UK's departure. 
Under the new timetable, a vote effectively ruling out no deal would then be staged on March 13, and a vote on an extension the following day - March 14. Mrs May refused to say whether the government would back the delay. 
Without revoking Article 50 no delay to Brexit can last forever - meaning MPs would have to agree a deal eventually. Unless Britain takes part in European Parliament elections in May, a delay cannot extend past the end of June.   
Brexiteer ringleader Mr Rees-Mogg warned a delay could not be cover for cancelling Brexit - insisting it would be a 'grievous error' that would 'undermine democracy'. 
On the Remain side, Tory Nick Boles and Labour's Yvette Cooper questioned whether the PM could be trusted to abide by her word - but this afternoon abandoned their plan to change the law to force a vote on delaying Brexit if there is no deal.  
The PM again drew a blank after a frantic round of Brexit talks with EU counterparts at a summit in Egypt over the past two days.
February 27
Votes are being held on Theresa May's approach to Brexit - although not on her deal, which is still being reworked.
Downing Street is trying to head off a Tory Remainer mutiny by promising MPs will get another set of votes within a fortnight, with the potential for Article 50 to be extended.
March 12
Theresa May has said a so-called 'meaningful vote' on her revised Brexit deal will take place by this date.
March 13  
If Mrs May's deal is defeated or does not get put to the House, there will be a vote on whether to go ahead with no deal. 
March 14
Assuming MPs do not agree to go ahead with no deal, there will be a vote on whether to delay Brexit by a couple of months. 
March 21-22
The PM will attend a scheduled EU summit in Brussels where any agreement approved by the Commons could be signed off - as well as any potential Brexit delay.
11pm, March 29
The UK is due to leave the EU with or without a deal, unless the Article 50 process is extended with approval from the bloc's leaders, or revoked to cancel Brexit altogether. 
EU council chief Donald Tusk heaped pressure on the PM by urging her to take the 'rational solution' of an extension. 
One proposal favoured in Brussels is a 21-month delay, which would essentially replace the transition period.
However, the PM suggested a postponement would only be possible for around two months, up to the European Parliamentary elections. 
Mrs May said: 'Let me be clear, I do not want to see Article 50 extended.
'Our absolute focus should be on working to get a deal and leaving on 29 March.
'An extension beyond the end of June would mean the UK taking part in the European Parliament elections. 
'What kind of message would that send to the more than 17 million people who voted to leave the EU nearly three years ago now? 
'And the House should be clear that a short extension – not beyond the end of June – would almost certainly have to be a one-off. 
'If we had not taken part in the European Parliament elections, it would be extremely difficult to extend again, so it would create a much sharper cliff edge in a few months' time.
'An extension cannot take no deal off the table. The only way to do that is to revoke Article 50, which I shall not do, or agree a deal.' 
Mrs May refused to say how she would order her MPs to vote on March 13 and 14 despite emotional pleas from MPs.
Remain supporter Labour's Jess Phillips said she felt 'so enraged' about the 'complete and utter lack of bravery to do the right thing for our country',  
MPs are voting again on Brexit tomorrow night as the countdown to exit day gets ever louder.
After a raft of ministers have warned the votes are high noon to take no deal off the table Theresa May finally shifted her position today. 
In a mammoth U-turn she promised if she has not got her deal agreed by MPs on March 12, she will allow the Commons to vote first on accepting no deal on March 13 and then delaying Brexit on March 14.
Whether it is enough to stem a rebellion inside Government will only be known for certain tomorrow night.
But with just 32 days to go it sets up yet another crunch vote on March 12.   
What is happening tomorrow? 
MPs are voting again on the state of the Brexit negotiations. May is expected to ask them to endorse her plan to renegotiate the backstop.
It is not a new 'meaningful vote' to approve or reject the Brexit deal. 
Backbench MPs are likely to put forward amendments containing alternative plans - but whatever happens, the stage is set for another showdown on March 12.
This is the third time since the 'meaningful vote' on January 15 MPs have voted on Brexit. May promised the votes would happen as a concession to rebels while she negotiated to stop them taking no deal off the table.  
What amendments might there be? 
Formal amendments have not yet been tabled but they are expected to include:  
Will any of them carry? 
Amendments for delaying Brexit or a second referendum could pass - but all options look likely to depend on what happens at the second meaningful vote by March 12.
May's concessions today on votes on March 12, 13 and 14 make it less likely any of the rival plans will pass tomorrow. 
The Corbyn and Blackford amendments will definitely fail.  
What is the second meaningful vote? 
To get her deal into law, May has to win a specific vote approving her deal. She has tried once before on January 15 and lost by 230 votes.
The PM has promised this will happen no later than March 12. If she wins then, she has said Brexit should happen on time and the Government will scramble to get the necessary laws in place. 
What happens if May loses the second vote? 
May has told MPs they will then have to choose between delaying Brexit for further negotiations or leaving the EU without a deal if the reject the deal by March 12.
On March 13, there will be a vote for MPs to say yes or no to no deal.
If they say no, on March 14 MPs will be asked to say yes or no to delaying Brexit.
If the House also votes no to delay, backbench MPs - backed by Jeremy Corbyn and most Labour MPs - will probably try to push for a second referendum.  
Why do people say there needs to be a second referendum?
Theresa May's Brexit deal has no majority in Parliament - and it is not clear any other deal has a majority either, even if one could be negotiated.
Passing the question back to voters is seen by some as a way to end the impasse and give a clear instruction to politicians on what to do.
Some campaigners also say the 2016 referendum was not an informed choice because too many of the implications of Leave were unknown. 
What do critics think?
Many people - led by the Prime Minister herself - say a new vote on Brexit would betray the people who voted Leave in 2016. They insist there was a clear order from the public to Leave the EU and politicians must follow it, working out the details for themselves.
Unionists also complain that accepting a new referendum on Brexit would pave the way for another referendum on Scottish independence, threatening the future of the UK. 
Some politicians also feel it would simply reopen the wounds from the 2016 battle without really deciding anything more clearly.  
What needs to happen for a referendum to happen?
Parliament would need to pass a new law for a referendum to be held. This process alone would take weeks and would likely be very controversial.
Before that can even happen, for political reasons there would probably have to be some kind of moment creating a 'mandate' for a new referendum as it is something neither of the main parties promised at the last election.
This might be a simple vote of MPs after Mrs May's deal has been rejected. The Government could call such a vote at any time. Labour also has some opportunities to call a vote - though winning such a vote would have less power.
It could even be a whole general election where one or more sides puts a new referendum in their manifesto. 
What would the question and be who decides? 
Nobody knows for sure - and this is probably the hardest question of all.
Some say it should be a simple repeat of last time, with Leave or Remain on the ballot paper. Others say it should be Remain versus Mrs May's Brexit deal.
Others advocate a two stage referendum - between Remain and Leave, followed by Mrs May's deal versus No Deal if Leave wins. 
Still others say there could be multiple questions on the ballot paper, possible using a ranking system known as alternative vote.
The Electoral Commission would make a recommendation and MPs would make the final decision on what the question would be. 
Would exit have to be delayed from March 29? 
Yes. On the shortest timescale imaginable, a referendum would take almost six months from the point the decision was taken - something which has not happened yet. Exit day is just 32 days away.
How long does it take to call and fight a referendum? 
There is no fixed schedule but former Cabinet minister Justine Greening has set out a 22 week timetable - just under six months start to finish
This assumes about 11 weeks to pass the necessary laws and another 11 weeks for the campaign - both a preliminary period to set up formal campaigns on each side and then a main short campaign.
This would in theory allow a referendum by late 2019 - more than three years after the last one. 
Lots of factors could cause delays and short of sweeping political agreement on the rules of a campaign almost no way to speed up the process. 
Would the result be any more decisive?
Probably not. Unlike last time, the referendum law could make the result legally binding and the question could be more specific than last time.
But polls suggest the country remains just as divided as in 2016 - suggesting the result could be just as close as the 52% to 48% Leave win next time. 
Britain passed the point of no return in its historic battle to cut ties with Brussels tonight as MPs backed the Brexit Bill.
The Commons endorsed the legislation by 498 votes to 114 after the government saw off a desperate bid by more than 100 Remoaners to block it.
In the first of a crucial set of votes in the Commons, a 'wrecking' amendment that would have effectively killed the law was defeated by 336 to 100.
The House then gave the Bill its second reading by another huge margin, despite the opposition from Labour MPs, the SNP and most Liberal Democrats.
One Labour MP yelled 'suicide' as the result was read out in the chamber. 
Minutes before the vote, two Labour MPs dramatically quit the frontbench to defy Jeremy Corbyn and vote against the key legislation.
Some 33 of the party's MPs backed the wrecking amendment tabled by the SNP. More are thought to have voted against the Bill's second reading.
A handful, such as Chris Bryant and Mary Creagh, opposed the legislation despite their constituents having decisively backed Brexit in the referendum. 
Dozens more voted in favour of holding the EU referendum two years ago - but voted against implementing the result.
Just one Tory MP, arch-Europhile Ken Clarke, appears to have joined the Brexit opponents in the division lobbies.  
The votes came after two days of bad-tempered and impassioned debate in parliament. 

Mrs May earlier confirmed she will publish a white paper on her Brexit plans tomorrow. 
Ex Chancellor George Osborne - who led the charge for Remain - earlier warned opposing Brexit risked a 'constitutional crisis'. 
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn's EU nightmare gathered pace as two more members of his top team quit to vote against Brexit.
Dawn Butler and Rachael Maskell resigned rather than fall into line with the leadership's stance of supporting legislation that will trigger Article 50.
More could follow them out of the door after the key votes.
Mr Corbyn tried to put a brave face on the chaos, thanking the pair for their work and saying they were still 'assets to the party'. 



Mr Corbyn said: 'MPs have a duty to represent their constituents as well as their party, and I understand the difficulties that MPs for constituencies which voted Remain have in relation to the European Union withdrawal Bill.
'However, it is right that the Labour Party respects the outcome of the referendum on leaving the European Union.' 

In a statement, Ms Butler praised Mr Corbyn for pushing the government to give parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit.  
But she said: 'Unfortunately I still feel strongly that I want to send a message to our Prime Minister that I do not agree with the direction she is [taking the country in] the way for me to do that is to vote against this second reading.' 
MPs have backed Brexit in an historic vote that effectively makes the process irreversible.
For the first time, the Commons has supported the principle of legislation that gives the Prime Minister power to trigger Britain's exit from the EU.

A wrecking amendment tabled by the SNP was heavily defeated, before the EU Bill was given its second reading.
The government also comfortably won the third vote - setting the timetable for the rest of the bill's progress.
Ms Maskell said: 'The UK is no longer being offered a ‘people’s Brexit’ but a ‘Theresa May Brexit’, which goes far beyond just leaving the European Union, as voted on at the referendum last June.'
The resignations came hours after Labour MP Neil Coyle was ordered to apologise for branding Tory MPs 'b*******' in the historic Brexit debate in the Commons. 
In one of the most inflammatory section's of today's marathon debate, Mr Coyle said: 'Former prime minister John Major referred to the like of the former secretary of state for work and pensions as b*******.
'He could not have known that his party would become a whole Government full of b******* who are absolutely causing economic damage for my constituents and for the whole country.
'At the risk of offending my own front bench as well as the Government front bench, I say this - my members campaigned vigorously to remain in the European Union and they deserve a front bench position that is not to sign up to the Government's position, the Government's timetable and the Government curtailing debate.
'It is a disgrace.'
Mr Bercow told the Labour MP: 'You shouldn't have used the word you used.
'You tried to wrap it up in a quote but it was very unseemly and rather undignified and quite unnecessary, and you shouldn't have done it, and you should apologise.'
Mr Coyle said: 'While I share the former prime minister's sentiment, I apologise if it is unparliamentary language.'
Mr Bercow replied: 'It was unparliamentary language and you shouldn't do it again.' 
Mr Coyle vowed to defy the referendum result - despite backing the poll - in the Commons lobbies tonight.

The decision to produce the paper after tonight's landmark Commons vote on Article 50 will cause irritation among Remain campaigners.
But the publication will be another crucial step toward Britain's exit from the European Union.
In the debate, ex-chancellor Mr Osborne admitted he had 'sacrificed' his career in support of the Remain campaign and warned the negotiations to come would be difficult.

He warned it is 'unfashionable in schools these days' to teach what he believes is a 'true tale' of Britain's history, including Magna Carta, the Glorious Revolution, the Founding Fathers of the American constitution, the Great Reform Act and female emancipation.
He went on: 'We have given the modern world a version of democracy that has spread far beyond our shores.
'And therefore to vote against the majority verdict of the largest democratic exercise in British history I think would risk putting Parliament against people, I think it would provoke a deep constitutional crisis in our country, I think it would alienate people who already feel they are alienated, and I am not prepared to do that.'
'So I will be voting for the Bill tonight.'
But in a warning to Mrs May, Mr Osborne he added: 'The Government has chosen – and I respect this decision – not to make the economy the priority. They've prioritised immigration control.
'The European Union isn't prioritising the economy either in these negotiations... while they understand that Britain is a very important market for their businesses, their priority is to maintain the integrity of the remaining 27 members of the EU.
Theresa May has set a target date of launching the formal Brexit process on March 9.
The Government is aiming to push through its EU Bill through Parliament by March 7, which would allow the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50 at a summit of European leaders on March 9 and 10.
Ministers told the House of Lords yesterday that it hopes to have the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill approved by March 7.
The following day - March 8 - is the Budget, before Mrs May travels to Brussels for the long-awaited Brexit showdown with her EU counterparts.
The PM has promised to trigger Article 50, the formal mechanism for quitting the EU, by the end of March.
But she does not want to get off on the wrong foot with EU leaders by clashing with the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which effectively gave birth to the EU.
She could tell her European counterparts of her timetable at a meeting in Malta on Friday.
The timetable could be knocked off course if the Lords initiate what is known as parliamentary 'ping-pong' by sending the bill back to the Commons with a series of amendments.
'They are not interested in a long and complex hybrid agreement with the UK. Therefore both sides are heading for a clean break.' 

Labour's Chris Bryant said he would go against the majority in his Rhondda constituency which backed Leave on June 23 and vote against the Brexit Bill.
He said: 'I am a democrat but I believe in the form of democracy that never silences minorities and I think the 48% in this country have a right to a voice and for that matter the 46% or the 45% or whatever the actual figure was in my constituency.
'Today I'm afraid I am voting and speaking on behalf of a minority of my constituents.'
He warned the Government's Brexit plans would do 'untold damage' to his constituents and make the UK 'poorer' and 'weaker'.
But he acknowledged voting against the majority view of his constituents could cost him his job.
He said: 'In the end there is no point in any single one of us being a member of this House if we don't have things that we believe in and that we are prepared to fight for and, if necessary, lay down our job for.'


Earlier at PMQs, Mrs May told MPs: 'That white paper will be published tomorrow'.
The white paper - conceded by Mrs May last month - will be based on the 12-point plan contained in her historic Brexit speech at Lancaster House. 
Mrs May's spokeswoman refused to comment on the length of the white paper or elaborate on its contents. 
MPs are expected to vote by a landslide at 7pm tonight for legislation on starting Brexit talks - despite as many as 100 rebel MPs vowing to vote against the referendum.
Urging MPs to back the Article 50 bill tonight, Mrs May told the Commons: 'This House has a very simple decision to take.
'We gave the right of judgment on this issue to the British people. They made their choice. They want to leave the EU.
'The question every member must ask themselves as they go through the lobbies tonight is: 'Do they trust the people?''
Corbyn ally Clive Lewis could quit the shadow cabinet next week if the Government refuses to amend the Brexit bill.
The shadow business secretary will back the legislation tonight - unlike scores of his colleagues.
But he has confirmed he will not agree to the bill at its final stage if it is not amended.
Losing Mr Lewis would be a heavy blow to Mr Corbyn, who has already seen two shadow ministers quit so they can vote against Article 50. 
A spokesman for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today refused to spell out the consequences for front benchers who defy his orders to back the legislation.
A string of Labour shadow ministers and whips have said they cannot support the legislation - a position that would normally see them sacked if they refuse to resign. 
But the spokesman refused to confirm this would happen, telling reporters only that a decision would be taken 'later'.
At least 30 Labour MPs are expected to vote against the Bill when it is called after 7pm tonight. 
Asked if he would vote in favour of the EU Bill if he was still a Labour MP, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he 'accepted the verdict of the British people'.
He told MailOnline: 'I am quite clear that as far as the EU exit is concerned the British people did vote to leave the EU, did vote to leave the EU structures.'
'I accept the verdict of the British people.'
Mr Khan insisted his focus was on pressuring the government to maintain 'privileged access to the single market'. 

Following tonight's second reading vote, the legislation will come back to the Commons next week for more scrutiny - and it is expected to be law by the end of the month.
Debate resumed this afternoon and first on his feet was former Labour leader Ed Miliband who urged his party to back the Article 50 Bill.
SNP MP Hannah Bardell channelled the movie Trainspotting today to slam Brexit.
A famous speech, delivered by actor Ewan McGregor in the 1996 film, called on viewers to 'Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family'.
Ms Bardell told MPs: 'Choose Brexit. Choose making up numbers from thin air about the NHS and plastering them on the side of buses. Choose racist and xenophobic sentiments seeping out from some corners of the Leave campaign.
'Choose hate crime rising by over 40 per cent and LGBT hate crime by 150 per cent in England and Wales following the Brexit vote.
'Choose taking the people of our nations to the polls on one of the most important issues of a generation with nothing written down and no plan.'
He said: 'I didn't want this referendum... The reason was that I felt the country had many, many other problems it faced and that the referendum would become as much about the state of the country as about Britain's place in Europe.
'That is water under the bridge... I said I would accept the result and I do and that is why I will be voting for the Second Reading tonight.
'We do not want to give the sense that people who voted for Brexit because they felt they had been ignored are being ignored once again.' 

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: 'Democracy means accepting the will of the people – at the beginning of the process and at the end.
'Democracy means respecting the majority and democracy means not giving up your beliefs when the going gets tough.'
Ex Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said: 'The choice the House will get is a bad deal or no deal.
'Therefore, it is crucial that when the House debates that and comes to a decision there is a meaningful vote, a vote that can made a difference as opposed to a Hobson's choice with a metaphorical gun at the House's head.' 
Brexit supporters queued up to back the Bill.
Conservative MP Chris Green said: 'The British people had 40 years to make up their mind when looking at the European Union.
'It wasn't about the last few weeks of a referendum campaign, it was about the lived experience in the European Union.
'That's why the people rejected it, not because of a few debatable arguments from one side or another.'
Charlie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover, said: 'I for one will be voting to respect the result.
'The leader of the Liberal Democrats seems to think this is like Hotel California - you can check out and you can never leave.
'I don't think that is the right approach to take. The SNP think you should just have multiple referendums until you get the right result.
'My constituents have been very clear. Number one - there must be an end to unchecked EU migration. Number two - no more billions for bloated Brussels bureaucrats.'

Tonight's vote and tomorrow's white paper pave the way for Mrs May to launch her talks with the EU next month, in time for her deadline of the end of March.
Talks will last for up to two years, after which Mrs May hopes to have secured an amicable Brexit and a free trade deal with the EU. 
Speaking at Lancaster House a fortnight ago, Mrs May said her 12-point plan will see Britain regain full control over borders and quit both the single market and European Court of Justice.
She insisted the UK can become a great, outward-looking trading nation.
'We seek a new and equal partnership – between an independent, self-governing, global Britain and our friends and allies in the EU,' she said.
'Not partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union, or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out.
'We do not seek to adopt a model already enjoyed by other countries. We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave.
'The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. My job is to get the right deal for Britain as we do.'
In the face of potential rebellion, the PM agreed last week to put her plans in writing in a formal white paper.  
114 MPs voted against giving the European Union (Notification of Withdrawl) Bill a second reading. The Bill gives Theresa May the power to invoke Article 50 and start the two year, irreversible process of Brexit.
The group included 50 SNP MPs, 47 Labour, seven Liberal Democrats alongside Tory Ken Clarke and nine others.
Lady Hermon (Independent - North Down)
Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party - Dundee East)
Dr Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
George Kerevan (Scottish National Party - East Lothian)
Calum Kerr (Scottish National Party - Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Mr David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party - Na h-Eileanan an Iar)
Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
John Mc Nally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South)
Stuart C. McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)
Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Natalie McGarry (Independent - Glasgow East)
Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North East)
Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North West)
Dr Paul Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party - Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath)
Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Gavin Newlands (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - East Dunbartonshire)
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party - Argyll and Bute)
Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Steven Paterson (Scottish National Party - Stirling)
Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Ms Margaret Ritchie (Social Democratic & Labour Party - South Down)
Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party - Moray)
Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party - Gordon)
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Mr Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)
Chris Stephens (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South West)
Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Michelle Thomson (Independent - Edinburgh West)
Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Mike Weir (Scottish National Party - Angus)
Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party - Banff and Buchan)
Dr Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)
Dr Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party - Central Ayrshire)
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru - Arfon)
Mr Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and North Perthshire)
Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Heidi Alexander (Labour - Lewisham East)
Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Mr Graham Allen (Labour - Nottingham North)
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Richard Arkless (Scottish National Party - Dumfries and Galloway)
Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Luciana Berger (Labour (Co-op) - Liverpool, Wavertree)
Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire South)
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party - Ross, Skye and Lochaber)
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Philip Boswell (Scottish National Party - Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill)
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Ms Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Dr Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland)
Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Joanna Cherry (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh South West)
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Conservative - Rushcliffe)
Mr Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat - Sheffield, Hallam)
Ann Clwyd (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Ann Coffey (Labour - Stockport)
Ronnie Cowan (Scottish National Party - Inverclyde)
Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Mary Creagh (Labour - Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)
Martin Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party - West Dunbartonshire)
Stuart Blair Donaldson (Scottish National Party - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Stephen Doughty (Labour (Co-op) - Cardiff South and Penarth)
Jim Dowd (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)
Maria Eagle (Labour - Garston and Halewood)
Mrs Louise Ellman (Labour (Co-op) - Liverpool, Riverside)
Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Margaret Ferrier (Scottish National Party - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
Mike Gapes (Labour (Co-op) - Ilford South)
Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party - North East Fife)
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party - North Ayrshire and Arran)
Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North)
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Neil Gray (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts)
Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)



They swore if we voted to leave that Brexit would mean Brexit, then vowed to honour the result. 
Here, ANDREW PIERCE exposes how MPs and grandees have U-turned... starting with the politician who outlawed 'No Deal' – and paraded the royal assent on Twitter.
Doesn't it make you proud!
Yvette Cooper, Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford
THEN: 'I voted in Parliament to support triggering Article 50 because I thought it was important to respect the referendum result' – BLOG POST ON HER WEBSITE, SUMMER 2018
NOW: 'My amendment is a vote against the chaos of a No Deal Brexit' – February 2019
Hilary Benn, Labour MP for Leeds Central
THEN: 'You vote to Leave. We are out. We are going' – Before the Brexit referendum in June 2016
NOW: 'It is now clear that... leaving the EU without an agreement would be a disaster. If it turns out that there is no alternative deal that can win a majority in the Commons, then... the only way we will resolve this is to go back to the people' – December 17, 2018
Anna Soubry, Independent Group MP for Broxtowe
THEN: 'We are leaving the EU and must now get a good deal... Many people voted Leave for genuine and respected reasons. We have to respect the result.' – After referendum in June 2016
NOW: 'We have to plan for a People's Vote. The current deal we have with the EU is the best deal' – February 2019
Sir Keir Starmer, Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras
THEN: 'We all have to accept and respect the referendum outcome. I campaigned to stay in the EU. I would have expected the result to be honoured if we had won it' – After the 2016 referendum
NOW: 'A public vote ought to be between the option of a credible Leave deal and Remain' – March 2019
Chuka Umunna, Independent Group MP for Streatham 
THEN: 'We will Leave if Leave wins even by one vote' – on the eve of the 2016 referendum
NOW: 'A People's Vote is our final chance to get it right for generations to come' – October 2018

Sir Vince Cable, Lib Dem leader and MP for Twickenham
THEN: 'The public have voted and it's seriously disrespectful and politically utterly counter-productive to say: 'Sorry guys, you've got it wrong. We are going to try again' – After the 2016 Brexit vote
NOW: 'We are a Remain country now with 60 per cent wanting to stop the Brexit mess' – People's Vote rally, March 2019
Sarah Wollaston, Independent Group MP for Totnes
THEN: 'We must accept the [Brexit] result.' She added: 'A second referendum... is a direct incentive for us to get the worst possible deal. We should not be going back and saying we don't accept the result' – During 2017 election
NOW: 'I don't think we have anything to fear from a second referendum now. It's not about blocking Brexit; it's about saying to people: I think you have the right to give informed consent' – August 20, 2018
Heidi Allen, Independent Group MP for South Cambridgeshire 
THEN: 'We must respect the democratic outcome of the referendum and work positively together to ensure we make Brexit a success' – 2017 election
NOW: 'There is no alternative. We need to go back to the public to decide what they want us to do next. The referendum should include the option of staying in the EU under existing terms' – September,2018
Dominic Grieve, Tory MP for Beaconsfield 
THEN: 'What is clear to me is that the decision of electorate in the referendum must be respected and I should support a reasoned process to give effect to it,' – 2017 election literature
NOW: 'I believe that a further public consultation through a referendum offers the best way forward' – january 2019
Philip Hammond, Chancellor and Tory MP for Runnymede and Weybridge
THEN: 'We are leaving the EU. Because we are leaving the EU, we leave the single market, and by the way, we are leaving the customs union' – June 2017
NOW: 'A second referendum is now a perfectly credible proposition that deserves to be tested in Parliament' – last week on ITV's Peston Show
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader and Islington North MP
THEN: 'This is a one-off vote... between staying in the EU or leaving completely' – June 2017
NOW: 'We are committed to... supporting an amendment in favour of a public vote to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit being forced on the country.' – February 2019
Sam Gyimah, Tory MP for East Surrey
THEN: 'Our country is clearly divided but the majority view must hold' – After the 2016 referendum
NOW: 'I would campaign for Remain in a second referendum versus May's deal' – April 2019
Sir Oliver Letwin, Tory MP for West Dorset
THEN: 'We are leaving the single market. We are leaving the customs union. We are going to have control over our own migration. We are hoping to be able to negotiate our own trade deals with the rest of the world. That's all pretty clear' – December 2016
NOW: 'When I surmised there was a real possibility the Prime Minister... was going to end up taking us out without a deal... I started to work with many colleagues on both sides of the House to try to find a solution.' – March 2019, as co-author of amendment that took power in Commons away from government
AND THE POLITICAL GRANDEES...
Sir John Major, former Prime Minister
THEN: 'There will not be another referendum on Europe. This is it.' – May 2016, before the referendum
NOW: 'The moral case for a second vote has never been more powerful' – Evening Standard, October 2018
Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London 
THEN: 'If we as a country decide to quit then we are out. There is no going back' – Before the 2016 referendum
NOW: 'She [Theresa May] must revoke Article 50, stopping the clock on Brexit to give us time to sort out her mess – and
the British public must get the final say on what happens next' – March 2019
Lord (Peter) Mandelson, former Cabinet minister and EU Commissioner
THEN: 'This is a once-and-for-all decision. We will not be taking a decision like this again in our lifetime. I say that with all the conviction and sincerity that I have' – JuSt before the June 2016 referendum
NOW: 'We have got to make sure everyone feels able to live with the result' – April 2019, calling for second referendum

The alcoves and recesses of the Palace of Westminster are built for plotting.
And early yesterday, as MPs arrived for the final two rounds in the Conservative leadership contest, the air was thick with conspiracy.
Certainly Team Michael Gove feared a plot was afoot, after a newspaper report that Boris Johnson's camp wanted Mr Gove 'humiliated' in revenge for turning on their man in 2016. Back then, one Johnson ally said there was 'a special place in hell' reserved for Mr Gove. They hadn't forgotten.
Yesterday, almost in anticipation, Gove supporters went on the offensive from the off, with one accusing Boris of wanting to 'gerrymander' the result.
The theory was straightforward. Boris would prefer the run-off to be against Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who backed Remain in 2016, rather than Mr Gove, a fierce intellectual who has impeccable Brexiteer credentials. Indeeed in private, Team Gove believe the vote has been rigged all week.
They muttered darkly that Rory Stewart's numbers were inflated to remove Dominic Raab, another Brexiteer threat to Boris, and Sajid Javid's vote was pushed up to keep him in the race and stop his supporters going to Mr Gove.
All fingers pointed at one man: Gavin Williamson, the former chief whip and Defence Secretary who seemed to revel in his reputation for Machiavellian dark arts.
There was another issue raising paranoia levels yesterday: the large number of proxy votes. Around ninety Tory MPs were not physically in the Commons.
Some were enjoying the Ascot races, others were in constituencies and nominated someone else to cast votes on their behalf. Apart from their proxy, no-one, not even the MPs themselves, would know where the vote had gone.
In plotting hands, this could be a powerful weapon. One senior campaign source warned: 'It is always a good idea to trust someone whose interests align with your own.'
With Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt confirmed in the top two places, Tory MPs have now completed their part of the leadership contest.
Nest the candidates will be put to Conservative Party members to choose from. 
The final pair will have to face a series of 16 hustings events over the next month with Theresa May's replacement expected to be announced in the week starting July 22.
After seeing his vote collapse on Wednesday, Mr Stewart accused the Boris camp of sharp practice, saying 'five or ten proxy votes' had been lent to other campaigns.
Team Boris issued fervent denials, and insisted they just wanted to maximise their vote. One Boris supporter claimed Mr Stewart was bitter after his support 'on Twitter' didn't translate into results, saying: 'The truth hurts.'
Asked outside the voting room whether he knew anything about 'dark arts' Mr Johnson insisted: 'No.' When the first result came, at 1pm, it was good news for Mr Gove. Mr Johnson marched on to 157 – more than half the Tory parliamentary party – but Mr Gove had picked up ten votes, and was now two ahead of Mr Hunt.
Meanwhile Mr Javid was eliminated. Had the anti-Gove plot failed? Within minutes the Gove and Hunt camps were at each other's throats.
A Hunt source issued a warning about the final round being dominated by the 'personal psychodrama' of Boris vs Gove.
Gove supporters desperately tried to neutralise the accusation, promising a 'civilised debate'.
They also sought to 'peel off' Mr Johnson's Brexiteers.
Gove campaign manager Mel Stride texted several MPs saying Mr Johnson was 'secure in the final run off' and they should consider backing Mr Gove so 'we can have two Brexiteers in the final'. Where would Javid's 34 votes go? 
One Johnson supporter told the Mail, with a twinkle in his eye: 'We're not telling people to vote for Jeremy but if people feel inclined to go that way, what's to stop them?'
Team Boris had good reason to be confident about their numbers holding up. For in a remarkable feat of organisation, they had successfully predicted exactly how many votes their man would get in two of the initial counts. The person running Mr Johnson's 'book' of supporters was Grant Shapps, the former Tory chairman cast into the wilderness by Theresa May and later accused of over a botched plot to oust her.
His Excel spreadsheet contained thousands of entries. Down one side were the names of all 313 Tory MPs and across pages and pages of data about them – personal biography, policy interests, political affiliations and records of whether they had met Mr Johnson, or spoken on the phone to him.
He also recorded which MPs were apparently backing his man. But how to tell which were telling the truth? Early in the contest, Mr Johnson had a core of trusted supporters who were sent out to gather information. Without always revealing who they were backing, they would ask MPs who they were voting for. By the end this army of 'handlers' grew to 70.
Friends of Mr Shapps said he had spent his time on the backbenches reading up on former US president Lyndon Johnson. LBJ said the first rule of politics was to 'learn how to count'. It was a lesson Mr Johnson, and his team, learned well.
By yesterday, it meant Team Boris had a trove of information on every MP, and a good idea about how the votes would play out.
When the result came in at 6pm, Mr Hunt had beaten Mr Gove into second place by just two votes. Mr Gove issued a gracious concession message and congratulated the two winners. But his supporters screamed 'carve up'.
'If you are that far ahead you get to name your opponent. They knew which candidate they wanted in the final,' said one. Beforehand, Mr Gove's campaign estimated – correctly – that around a third of Javid votes would go their way, and the rest would go to Boris.
Controversial election guru Sir Lynton Crosby is likely to make a reappearance if Boris Johnson becomes prime minister.
Sir Lynton, who masterminded Theresa May’s 2017 snap election failure, speaks to Mr Johnson every day, according to his colleagues. The strategist, known as the Wizard of Oz, has been conducting private polling for Mr Johnson in the expectation that he will run the next general election campaign.
He ran Mr Johnson’s two successful campaigns to be London mayor in 2008 and 2012.
However, he also ran Mrs May’s election disaster, which led to her losing a parliamentary majority and having to rely on the support of the DUP.
Earlier this week, Sir Lynton, pictured, said the next Tory leader must be ‘someone of character’. Speaking about whether the Tories could win a majority at the next election, he suggested a new leader in No 10 could ‘create the opportunity to be heard again’.
‘You need someone who can articulate the case. You need someone who has character. The most successful politicians today are those who have some element of character,’ Politics Home reported.
 
The final piece of evidence, which is hard to explain other than by vote lending, is that Mr Johnson's total increased by four between the two rounds, fewer than the number of MPs who said publicly they would support him. A Johnson source insisted the claims were 'nonsense'. But seasoned observers will suspect otherwise.
Trade Secretary (and Hunt backer) Dr Liam Fox smiled: 'I'm sure it's not organised. Perish the thought!'. 
The Environment Secretary, whose campaign at one stage looked to be fatally damaged by his cocaine admission, had dramatically leapfrogged ahead of Mr Hunt in the fourth ballot earlier today.
But the Foreign Secretary managed to claw his way back to secure a place in the head-to-head by just two votes this evening, amid claims that he might have been 'loaned' backers by Mr Johnson to settle old scores.
Many of Mr Johnson's acolytes have never forgiven Mr Gove for betraying him in the 2016 leadership contest, when he pulled his support at the last second and launched his own abortive bid. 
There were gasps as the incredibly close result of the fifth ballot was announced in committee room 14 in Parliament this evening, with the front runner securing 160 votes, Mr Hunt 77 and Mr Gove 75. 
The figures immediately fuelled rampant speculation about tactical voting, as Mr Johnson only increased his tally by three votes between the final rounds. 
After Sajid Javid was eliminated this afternoon, at least four of his 34 supporters publicly declared they were going to back the favourite. 
Mr Javid himself was also thought to have been ready to line up behind Mr Johnson - potentially in return for getting the plum post of Chancellor. 
In contrast to Mr Johnson's paltry haul in the final ballot, Mr Hunt gained 18 backers, and Mr Gove 14. 
Mr Johnson's allies had been accused of plotting an 'Oxford Union knifing' and the political equivalent of 'revenge porn' as they tried to stop Mr Gove getting into the run off.
At least four Javid supporters - Chris Skidmore, Kevin Foster, Chris Philp and Mike Wood - had publicly announced they were switching to the Johnson camp after their candidate was kicked out this afternoon. 
A Conservative Party MP who backed Rory Stewart in the contest to replace Theresa May has been told to 'leave the party'. 
Antoinette Sandbach, who represents Eddisbury, posted a screen grab from WhatsApp which she claimed was sent by a male Tory MP. 
She said she was travelling on the train when she received the messages. 
According to Ms Sandbach: 'Barely is the ink dry on the results and the dark ops begin. This from a male conservative MP to me as I sit on the train home.'
Referencing the defection of former Tory MPs Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston, she continued: 'It's bad enough when you get it from complete strangers. Is it any wonder three female MPs left.'  
Ms Sandbach posted a grab of two messages. One which arrived at 7.51pm which claimed 'You too are a disgrace'. A second which arrived a minute later said 'time you left the party I think'.
Ms Sandbach did not name the male MP who sent her the messages although she indicated on Twitter she would be reporting the matter.  
Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt said the message sent to Ms Sandbach was 'so wrong' and called for unity in the Conservative Party.
He tweeted: 'This is so wrong! We have to come together as a party...'
Government Chief Whip Julian Smith replied to Ms Sandbach: 'Totally unacceptable-will investigate&meet Monday. Thank you for supporting the Withdrawal Agreement three times & for your support of HMG.' 
MailOnline contacted the Conservative Party who said they have no comment to make on the allegations.  
Mr Gove put a brave face on the crushing disappointment tonight, tweeting: 'Naturally disappointed but so proud of the campaign we ran. Huge thanks to my brilliant campaign team.
'It's been an honour to be able to set out a vision for the future of our great country. Many congratulations to Boris and Jeremy!'
Mr Johnson said he was 'deeply honoured' to have secured endorsements from more than 50 per cent of Tory MPs.
Mr Hunt said Mr Gove was still one of the 'brightest stars in the Conservative team'.
'I'm the underdog - but in politics surprises happen as they did today,' he added. 'I do not doubt the responsibility on my shoulders - to show my party how we deliver Brexit and not an election, but also a turbo-charged economy and a country that walks tall in the world.'
Mr Javid said his party will need Mr Gove 'more than ever to face the challenges ahead' after the Environment Secretary was knocked out of the Tory leadership contest in the fifth round of voting. 
The hopefuls were quickly looking to the next phase of the contest, with ITV announcing the first head-to-head televised debate on July 9. Mr Johnson said he had agreed to take part.
Mr Gove's campaign manager Mel Stride declined to say that the vote had been rigged, but admitted the revelations about Mr Gove's cocaine use two decades ago had damaged his leadership bid.
He said: 'It stalled us and meant momentum was lost at that time.' 
MPs were anxious about the prospect of continuing the long-running struggle between Mr Johnson and Mr Gove - whose rivalry stretches back to when they were at Oxford together. 
Pitting them against each other in a month-long contest for votes from Tory members could see blue-on-blue attacks plunge to new depths.  
Sources close to Mr Hunt tried to play on the fears earlier as he tried to reclaim the advantage, warning: 'Boris and Michael are great candidates but we have seen their personal psychodrama before.
'It's time to offer the country someone the EU will actually talk to.' 
The allegations of skulduggery risk pouring petrol on the simmering civil war that has been threatening to rip the Tories to pieces.  
Rory Stewart, who was knocked out last night, has blamed 'dark arts' for his demise - with claims Johnson's allies propped him up with votes to ensure rival Dominic Raab was evicted, before pulling their backing.
Cabinet minister Amber Rudd, who is campaigning for Mr Hunt, this morning urged Mr Johnson to condemn the 'game playing' by his fans. 
But asked as he went in to vote today whether he knew anything about the 'dark arts', Mr Johnson merely smiled and said: 'No.' He refused to say whether he had voted for himself. 
One Tory MP told MailOnline Mr Johnson's supporters were 'taking the p***' and their 'arrogance' was alienating the wider party.
'This is Oxford Union knifing. This is revenge porn. This is season two of some peculiarly bleak Nordic noir, where you don't know in the final episode whether they are going to f*** each other or throttle each other,' they said.  
Mr Hunt also ramped up his rhetoric against the front runner, urging his colleagues to recognise the party 'can do better than Boris'.  
And underlining the warnings about the 'psychodrama' between the other candidates, he said: 'Critical decision now for all colleagues is what choice do we present to the country? And what future? 
'Choose me for unity over division, and I will put Boris through his paces and then bring our party and country back together.' 
The surge for Mr Gove, who added 10 to his tally in the ballot earlier this afternoon, set alarm bells ringing among the Hunt team. 
The two men are said to have patched up their differences at a personal level, but the hatred between their respective camps is tangible. 
Boris Johnson received a boost from an unexpected quarter today with endorsement from the Evening Standard - edited by George Osborne. 
The former Chancellor has been a trenchant critic of Brexit both in the Treasury and then as editor.
But in its op ed, the paper insisted Mr Johnson was the best choice and could run the country as a One Nation Tory.
The Standard supported Mr Johnson when he was running for London Mayor. 
Liam Fox, who is supporting Mr Hunt, told reporters this evening: 'There's more churn than the average washing machine.' 
Asked if the 'dark arts' were being used to mobilise votes he replied: 'Perish the thought.' 
David Lidington, Mrs May's effective deputy who was backing Mr Stewart, made clear he had not voted for Mr Johnson. He said No Deal Brexit would be a serious problem for the integrity of the UK. 
'The Tory party is facing some existential political challenges, and the union of the United Kingdom is under greater strain than I have never known it in my lifetime,' he said. 
Former Cabinet minister Stephen Crabb, a Javid supporter, said he hoped there had not been tactical voting. 
He said it would 'smack of hypocrisy' for the party if it had taken place. 
Mr Javid hailed Britain as a land of opportunity today in a moving statement after he was knocked out. 
But he also took a swipe at his public-school educated rivals in the contest, saying he had made it in politics despite not having 'private tutors'.   
Tory leadership hopefuls were today threatening to boycott a BBC TV debate after the first showdown descended into a shambles.
The special programme featuring five would-be PMs has been widely condemned after it emerged one of the 'ordinary voters' posting questions was an imam who had previously posted vile tweets about Israel.
Another was a former Labour staffer. There was also fury about the format - which contenders complained made them look like an aging boyband - and how presenter Emily Maitlis weighted into the exchanges.
The debacle has cast serious doubt on a proposed Question Time-style debate between the final two, which would be hosted by Fiona Bruce. 
A source on Johnson's team said the controversy 'hasn't helped the case', while other campaigns also warned that they would be looking more carefully at what was put forward. 'It's got to be better than that,' one said.
Julian Knight, a Conservative member of the culture select committee, said: 'People look up to the BBC but the format and editorial failings were such that they actually produced a much worse debate than Channel 4. 
'The greats of the past like Robin Day and Richard Dimbleby will be doing full 360 degree spins in their graves at this shambolic execution by the BBC.'
Mr Johnson received a boost from an unexpected quarter today with endorsement from the Evening Standard - edited by former chancellor George Osborne. Mr Osborne has been a trenchant critic of Brexit both in the Treasury and then as editor.   
Meanwhile, Mr Stewart said former competitors have been in touch trying to win him over - but insisted he would not be backing anyone publicly. 
'I've been getting texts like you wouldn't believe,' he joked. 
MPs loyal to Mr Johnson have been boasting about plotting the Environment Secretary's downfall, with one gleefully vowing to 'humiliate' him. 
Mr Johnson's team have approached Mr Javid - who came fourth in the ballot yesterday - to become chancellor, according to allies of the home secretary. 
Maverick leadership hopeful Mr Stewart was dramatically booted from the contest yesterday after coming last with just 27 votes - down from 37 on Monday - leaving four hopefuls left to fight it out.
Mr Johnson picked up support from Mr Raab, who was evicted in the previous round, to increase his tally again from 126 to 143 - tightening his grip on the keys to Downing Street.
In that round, Mr Hunt came second with 54 votes, Mr Gove came third with 51, and Mr Javid fourth on 38. 
Mr Johnson's supporters believe that facing Mr Hunt in the final two would be easier than taking on Mr Gove.
Many of Johnson's team have a 'visceral hatred' for the environment secretary and were directly accused by Mr Stewart of dirty tricks yesterday. 
One Tory MP said: 'This is Oxford Union knifing. This is revenge porn. 
'This is season two of some peculiarly bleak Nordic noir, where you don't know in the final episode of season two whether they are going to f*** each other or throttle each other.'
The MP said the 'Machiavellis' on Johnson's team were hard at work. 
'This is revenge day today. Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse? Johnson is purring and Gove is the squeaker,' they said.
'It has (added excitement) if you like Tory melodrama. You have to see Johnson with a top hat, cape and twirly moustache and poor old Gove lashed to the railway line whilst the flying Scotsman comes thundering down.'
The rivalry between Boris Johnson and Michael Gove stretches right back to their university days, and was described in a biography of Mr Gove by Owen Bennett, serialised in the Mail earlier this month. 
From the moment Gove arrived at Oxford University, he had set his sights on becoming President of the Oxford Union. In a 1987 collection of essays entitled 'The Oxford Myth', one former president advised others how to ascend to the post. A candidate needs 'a disciplined and deluded collection of stooges' who will persuade people in their respective colleges to back you, the essayist noted. Collecting and motivating these 'stooges' is a skill in itself.
The presidential candidate must convince the stooge that there is something in it for them; that by so nakedly attaching themselves to his or her particular bandwagon the fruits of success will somehow trickle down.
Yet, as the author of the essay pointedly revealed: 'The tragedy of the stooge is that even if he thinks this through, he wants so much to believe that his relationship with the candidate is special that he shuts out the truth. The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge.' In his first year at Oxford, Gove willingly became a 'stooge'. Indeed, to the student who wrote those very words: Boris Johnson.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York on June 19, 1964 -three years before Gove entered the world in Scotland.
By the time Gove arrived at Oxford, Johnson was one of the big figures on campus. His shock of blond hair, his larger-than-life persona, meant he was someone everybody knew.
Johnson enrolled in 1983 to read Classics at Balliol College and had his sights set on the Union presidency in much the same way as Gove would in future years. He failed in his first attempt to get elected in 1984/85, but had another crack at it a year later. 
Gove was a willing member of the 'Boris cult', he later remembered, providing a vivid description of his first encounter with the man: 'It was in the Union bar. He was a striking figure with sheepdog hair and penny loafers, standing in a distinctive pose with his hands in his trouser pockets and his head bent forward.
However, the MP said the machinations were not going down well in the MPs' tea room at Westminster - or with the wider public.
'I think people in the country find it bizarre, but then politics is in such a bizarre place,' they said. 
'I think colleagues here find it distasteful. They find it arrogant. They think the Johnson campaign is taking the piss. If you want to win you maximise your vote and don't play silly buggers.' 
Speaking ahead of the vote, Mr Stewart told reporters the former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, who is organising Mr Johnson's campaign, was encouraging Johnson-supporting MPs to lend their votes to other candidates to manipulate the contest in a bid to determine who he would face in the final run-off.
He told reporters: 'There's also the dark arts. Gavin Williamson's proxy votes, which we don't know about.
'There are dark arts in politics and they're done with proxy votes, they're not done with someone saying 'would you please vote for this person'.'
Ms Rudd told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I find all this conversation about lending votes rather discrediting of the system.
'I would really call on Boris himself to repudiate the information that is coming out of 'friends of Boris', saying this, saying one thing.'
Ms Rudd, who backs Jeremy Hunt in the race for Downing Street, added: 'This is a serious moment. We don't need that sort of game playing going on in Parliament.' 
As the domestic drama raged, the challenge facing the next PM was underlined by comments from Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte.
Rory Stewart staged a loser's rally to say thank you to his supporters as he refused to formally endorse any of the remaining candidates in the Tory leadershiprace.
The International Development Secretary was eliminated from the battle for Downing Street yesterday after his campaign went backwards and he dropped from 37 votes to 27.
Mr Stewart yesterday directly accused the Johnson camp of dirty tricks. Speaking ahead of the vote, he told reporters the former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, who is organising Mr Johnson's campaign, was encouraging Johnson-supporting MPs to lend their votes to other candidates to manipulate the contest in a bid to determine who he would face in the final run-off.  
Ahead of an EU summit in Brussels today, Mr Rutte said the next prime minister needs to realise Brexit would 'diminish' the UK and No Deal would be even worse.
With a hard Brexit, even with a normal Brexit, the UK will be a different country,' he told the Today programme. 
'It will be a diminished country. It is unavoidable.' 
Mr Stewart would not say who he voted for and insisted he had voted both times today and had not spoiled his ballot.
When pressed on whether he or his supporters would back Michael Gove, currently second in the running, he said waiting journalists were 'charmers, all of you'.
Speaking as he waited to enter the room to vote, Mr Hunt, currently in third place after the morning tally, said he was feeling 'confident but not overconfident... Realistic'.
Mr Javid's statement said: 'I will continue to focus on my responsibilities in the Home Office and reflect on whether to offer my support to another candidate. There are very challenging times ahead for our party, our government and our country. The Conservatives must continue to be a broad church if we are to deliver Brexit, bring change while in government, and beat Corbyn at the next election.
'The three remaining candidates have earned their places in the final round. I wish them well in the weeks ahead and - whoever becomes Prime Minister - I urge my colleagues to get behind them as a team. If I can contribute to these efforts and serve my country in any way I will certainly do so.
'If my ambition and conduct in this contest has set an example for anyone, then it has been more than worth it. This is my message to those children growing up as I did. To kids who look and feel a bit different to their classmates. Those who don't have many toys or private tutors. Those who feel like outsiders and wonder whether 'opportunity' is just for other people...
'Work hard, have faith in your abilities, and don't let anyone try and cut you down to size or say you aren't a big enough figure to aim high. You have as much right as anyone to a seat at the top table, to be ambitious for yourself, and to make your voice heard. So seize every opportunity that this wonderful country presents to you with both hands. Your - and our - best days lie ahead.'
Did Theresa May spoil her ballot paper? Mystery as TWO votes in Tory leadership race are declared null and void  
The hunt is on for two Tory MPs branded 'numpties' who spoiled their ballot papers in the vote to elect the next prime minister today - with suspicion even falling on Theresa May herself.
As in every previous round 313 votes were cast in the fourth round of votes this morning. But for the first time not all of them counted towards one of the four remaining candidates. 
With just two votes separating second placed Michael Gove and challenger Jeremy Hunt, the spoiled papers could have had an impact on which opponent of front-runner Boris Johnson was seen to have the most momentum. 
The ballot taking place in parliament is secret and many MPs have refused to say who they are backing. 
They include Mrs May, who has declined to reveal who she is tipping to follow her in taking on one of the biggest jobs in world politics. 
When journalists asked her this morning who she voted for, Mrs May said: 'I have answered this question the same way every time I have come out, and I think you know the same answer today.
'You can probably chant it with me in unison - ''none of your business''.' 
Mrs May's predecessor David Cameron refused to vote in the leadership ballot which elected her.   
Suspicion has also fallen on  two of the supporters of moderate candidate Rory Stewart who refused to back the others because of their support for a No Deal Brexit.            
Boris Johnson supporter Mark Francois said it was up in the air which Cabinet minister would fight the ex-foreign secretary in the run-off to be decided by party members, stating: 'The other thing that every MP wants to know is who were the two numpties who spoilt their ballot papers? 
'Wrong on every level': Furious Brexiteers turn on Chancellor Philip Hammond as he backs second referendum as option to break deadlock and vows to 'fight and fight' against No Deal 
Tory Eurosceptic MPs have attacked Philip Hammond as the Chancellor prepares to use a speech this evening to urge the next prime minister to consider holding a second Brexit referendum. 
The Chancellor is expected to tell City of London chiefs that Theresa May's deal remains the best way for the UK to leave the EU in an orderly fashion. 
He will suggest that if that deal cannot get through Parliament then Mrs May's successor will have to consider 'other democratic mechanisms' to resolve the impasse. 
He will also vow to 'fight and fight' against No Deal in comments seen as a direct challenge to Boris Johnson, the frontrunner to be the next Tory leader, who has suggested he would take the UK out of the EU on October 31 with or without an agreement.
But the intervention has sparked fury among Tory Brexiteers who are vehemently opposed to holding a second referendum. 
Simon Clarke, a Conservative Eurosceptic MP, said: 'This is wrong on every level. Wrong because it would shatter faith in politics. 
'Wrong because it would usher in a ruinous Government led by Jeremy Corbyn. 
'And wrong because it would not bring resolution to the issue - if a second referendum, why not a third? Terrible.' 
 
Brexiteers are incandescent that Jeremy Corbyn is due to hold talks next week in Brussels with the EU’s trade negotiator Michel Barnier.
They are convinced that despite voting in the Commons to trigger Article 50 to begin Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, the Labour leader secretly wishes to sabotage Brexit.
The argument runs that, by following this course, he hopes to destroy Theresa May’s government and move into No 10 himself.
It’s Monsieur Barnier, of course, a former French government minister, who is a thorn in Mrs May’s side, having preposterously proclaimed that Britain will have to pay a £50billion divorce settlement.
Although many Tory Brexiteers detect a conspiracy between Corbyn and Brussels bigwigs to undermine Mrs May, I believe they have badly misread the intentions of the Labour leader.
But, as some in the Tory party traitorously plot against a gravely weakened PM amid irresponsible talk of possible successors and stalking-horses, the truth is that Corbyn could well make a vital contribution to the Brexit negotiations.
Although I’m not a big supporter of David Cameron, he deserves praise for being loyal to his successor by speaking out in favour of economic austerity.
His dignified conduct compares well with the rank disloyalty of some former prime ministers (Edward Heath springs to mind).
His backing of Theresa May is also a standing reproach to his shameless friend George Osborne, who is still fighting old battles and treacherously lobbing hand grenades daily at Mrs May.
He is on record in recent months as having said the referendum result was ‘a clear vote’ and has stressed his determination to get a ‘good deal with Europe’.
Indeed, currently the most popular politician in Britain — with a YouGov/Times poll yesterday giving Labour an eight-point lead over the Conservatives — he feels he has an increasing amount of authority to ensure Brexit happens.
There is a bigger irony here. In last month’s General Election, thousands of Remainers voted for Labour in the hope that if elected PM, Corbyn might overturn the referendum result or instigate a second vote.
The fact is that, at heart, Corbyn is much more critical of the EU than Theresa May — or many other members of the Cabinet.
The Labour leader has a long record of opposition to the Brussels-driven project for a European superstate.
In the 1975 referendum, like so many Left-wingers, he voted for Britain to leave what was then the Common Market. He then opposed the Maastricht Treaty that, 25 years ago, significantly extended the power of Brussels and laid the foundations for the EU becoming a superstate as it removed sovereign powers from individual member governments. 
Similarly, as a backbencher, Corbyn defied his party leader Tony Blair and opposed the Lisbon Treaty which created the constitutional framework for today’s EU.
 A year has passed since the Chilcot report proved that Tony Blair lied through his teeth to the British people in order to justify his invasion of Iraq.
So why did Sir John Chilcot come to his rescue this week by saying that Blair was ‘emotionally truthful’ ahead of the war? Sir John endorsed the former PM’s repeated claim that he acted ‘in good faith’, even though Chilcot’s report showed this was not true.
Perversely, the British establishment continues to rally round Blair. Another example is how Attorney General Jeremy Wright intervened this week to shield him from private prosecution for war crimes.
Blair is a very wealthy man, and thus more than capable of paying for his own defence.
Before becoming leader, he denounced the ‘EU’s ever-limiting powers for national parliaments and an increasingly powerful common foreign and security policy’.
Despite such a long and proud history of Euroscepticism, when he was elected to lead the party, he felt forced to join the Remain campaign. This was simply because he could not change the minds of the substantial majority of EU-worshipping Labour MPs. (Last year, more than 200 of the party’s 231 MPs were in favour of staying in the EU.)
Even so, Corbyn was conspicuous by his low profile during the EU referendum campaign in 2016.
However, now, with the Tories in turmoil and sensing blood, Corbyn has the opportunity to make mischief, manoeuvre himself closer to No 10 and express his true reservations about the EU.
Evidence of this has been seen in the way he has ruthlessly treated Labour’s high-profile Remainers.
Last week he sacked three pro-European shadow ministers for defying the party whip and backing a Commons amendment by Blairite MP Chuka Umunna calling for Britain to stay in the Single Market, in direct contravention of official Labour policy. 

With the menacing support of the grassroots movement Momentum, which is plotting to deselect moderate Labour MPs, Corbyn has made it clear he’s willing to discipline any parliamentary rebels. In his sights are the 49 who joined the anti-Brexit Commons revolt against his leadership.
Meanwhile, in a fascinating separate development, I understand that, two weeks ago, a group of senior businessmen who met a close union ally of Corbyn in the hope of convincing him of the case for a watered-down Brexit were sent away with a flea in their ear.
Of course, the reasons why Corbyn supports Brexit are not the same as why Tory Leavers loathe the EU.
Theresa May has made a mistake in appointing BBC man Robbie Gibb as head of government communications inside 10 Downing Street.
For he is well-known through Westminster as a mischief-maker. He was one of the clique working in Conservative Campaign Headquarters suspected of trying to destroy the leadership of William Hague and, later, that of Iain Duncan Smith. Gibb’s modernising views are totally antipathetic to Mrs May’s vision of Conservative Britain. I strongly advise her to watch him like a hawk.
While the latter can’t wait to restore powers to Westminster, regain control of our borders, ditch the European Court of Human Rights etc, Corbyn sees the EU as a capitalist, free market organisation that discriminates against working men and women.
Also, the Labour leader fears that Brussels rules — such as those governing free markets, opposing state control and banning the seizing of private assets — could prevent him putting a socialist programme into practice if ever he became prime minister.
And so, regardless of the myriad reasons for his dislike of the EU, I believe that Corbyn’s support is absolutely crucial to the success of Brexit negotiations. This is particularly the case at a time the Tory Party is convulsed by a brutal battle between MPs who want a ‘soft’ Brexit — with continued membership of the Single Market trading arrangements — and hard Brexiteers who believe the UK can flourish without any vestigial EU ties.
As Mrs May struggles to regain authority, it is the duty of the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition to step up and do the right thing by this country.
How ironic it would be if Brexit — with this country re-established as a truly independent, self-governing nation — was achieved thanks to the influence of Jeremy Corbyn, rather than the efforts of Right-wing free-marketeers such as Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Nigel Farage. 
Next week, world diplomats and politicians travel to Bosnia for a ceremony to honour those thousands of Muslim men and teenagers killed in the Srebrenica massacre at the height of the Bosnian war in 1995. But there will be a notable absentee: the local mayor, who shamefully denies the genocide ever took place. Proof, sadly, that peace hasn’t been totally restored in the region. 
Theresa May's attempt to strike a Brexit deal today was de-railed by a phone call with DUP leader Arlene Foster.
Irish Prime Minster Leo Varadkar last night said Britain had been poised to sign an agreement that was acceptable to him and other EU states at lunchtime today. 
But as details of a major concession that critics say would leave Northern Ireland effectively still bound by EU rules leaked, Mrs Foster went on TV to denounce any settlement that split the province from the rest of Britain.
The Prime Minister then spoke to Mrs Foster by telephone during a break in marathon talks in Brussels. After the call, she was no longer able to sign up to language promising 'regulatory alignment' between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
After the breakdown, Mrs May and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker appeared in front of the cameras to admit there would not be a deal today. They said talks would resume later in the week - potentially as soon as Wednesday.
Following his own meeting with Mrs May, EU Council President Donald Tusk then said a deal to allow the start of trade talks was still possible before a crucial summit on December 14 but that time was 'tight'.
Mr Varadkar said he had been ready to sign up to what was on the table but that he was told by Brussels Britain was backing off.
At a press conference in Dublin he said he was 'surprised and disappointed' Britain could not sign up to what 'was agreed earlier'. Mr Varadkar stopped short of directly blaming the DUP but said he could comment on UK party politics.   

The Prime Minister had to break off from lunch with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to field the call from Arlene Foster.
Before the lunch, EU diplomats and journalists had been told to expect a 15-page document outlining details of a deal that would clear the way for trade talks to begin this month.
A senior Tory said the DUP had ‘gone ballistic’ over a proposed compromise which they feared would result in ‘regulatory divergence’ from the rest of the UK and an effective border in the Irish Sea. The party even threatened to pull out of a deal to prop up the Government at Westminster. ‘They are seething,’ the source said.
DUP MP Sammy Wilson described the proposals as a ‘unionist nightmare’ which could lead to the break-up of the UK.
But the British proposals are understood to be more subtle. Mrs May is thought to be proposing an arrangement which would require the whole UK to retain ‘regulatory alignment’ with the EU on a narrow range of issues that affect the Irish border. These include energy, agriculture and transport.
The UK would commit to the same regulatory outcomes in these areas as the EU, but would be free to achieve them by different routes. Crucially, the UK would be free to diverge from EU rules in all other areas.
The proposed compromise would allow Northern Ireland to retain the same rules as the Republic in critical areas without splitting from the rest of the UK.
But it will prove highly controversial with some Tory MPs.       
10.27am: Jean-Claude Juncker meets with his chief negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Parliament representative Guy Verhofstadt. He says they are working for a 'fair deal'.
11.10am: David Davis says today's talks are the culmination of seven months work by both sides and that Britain hopes to get agreement on 'sufficient progress' on divorce issues at the meeting.
11.16am: Irish broadcaster RTE reports on a leak of the draft agreement suggesting the UK will agree there will be no 'regulatory divergence' between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
12.09pm: European Commission confirms the plan for the May-Juncker lunch is to get 'as close as possible' to a deal.
12.40pm: May arrives at the talks and poses for pictures with Juncker ahead of lunch.
12.44pm: EU Council President Donald Tusk tweets 'Tell me why I like Mondays' and says he was encouraged about the prospects for a deal following talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.
12.45pm: DUP MP Sammy Wilson accuses the Irish government of leaking claims about regulatory divergence and claims the UK government will not sign up to them.
1.30pm: Nicola Sturgeon seizes on the leaks to demand Scotland gets access to the same terms as Northern Ireland.
2pm: Arlene Foster appears in front of cameras at Stormont to denounce any deal that 'separates Northern Ireland economically or politically' from the UK.
2.30pm: Varadkar postpones a statement in Dublin on Ireland's position in the talks.
3.12pm: Reports emerge Foster and May have spoken by telephone during a break in the May-Juncker lunch.
3.57pm: Juncker appears alongside May to confirm there would be no deal today but that he remains confident.
3.59pm: May insists she is 'confident we will conclude this positively' but announces talks will reconvene later in the week.
4.15pm: DUP MP Sammy Wilson appears on TV again to brand the deal a 'unionist nightmare'.
5.10pm: Tusk tweets a picture of himself and May, warning time is 'tight' but agreement is 'still possible'.
5.20pm: Varadkar finally makes his appearance in Dublin, confirming Britain was ready to sign up to an agreement. He said Ireland was ready to sign and was 'surprised and disappointed' Britain could no longer sign up.
Earlier, Ms Foster told journalists at Stormont: 'We have been very clear that Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the UK, and we will not accept any form of regulatory divergence that separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the UK.'
East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson went further by warning that his party had 'leverage', adding that the proposals for regulatory alignment were a 'unionist nightmare'. 
'If she gives in on special demands for Northern Ireland then she will be giving in on special demands for Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom,' he said.

Former Ulster Unionist leader Lord Trimble said: 'I think this is a very bad idea.' 
Allies of the PM said that, unlike David Cameron, she had not accepted the first deal offered by Brussels. One said Dublin and Brussels had tried to ‘bounce’ her into a deal by briefing broadcast media that it was all but done.
He added: ‘We need to maintain the integrity of our red lines and … not be like a former prime minister who did take exactly what he was given first time round.’
The talks foundered after sources in Dublin and Brussels leaked draft versions of a text they hoped to agree with Mrs May on the status of the Irish border.
The leaks suggested the PM was willing to sign a deal that would allow Northern Ireland ‘no regulatory divergence’ from Dublin, effectively tying it to the EU’s customs union. A later leak said the UK had agreed Northern Ireland would remain in ‘regulatory alignment’ with the EU in some key areas. 
Last night Conservative Eurosceptics warned Mrs May against further compromise over the Irish border and the role of the European Court of Justice in policing EU citizens’ rights after Brexit.
Tory ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘We have to be very careful. Northern Ireland cannot see any regulatory divergence from the UK. And we cannot get into a position where EU citizens have more rights than British citizens.’
Jacob Rees-Mogg accused Dublin of spreading ‘propaganda’, adding: ‘You cannot align the regulation of one part of the UK with the EU. And if we align the whole of the UK with the regulation of the EU, we haven’t left the EU.’
Pro-Remain Tory Anna Soubry said it was untenable to have one part of the UK diverging from the rest – but said the solution was to keep the whole country in the single market.  
Following a meeting of Tory MPs in Westminster tonight a senior Brexiteer said many Conservatives shared DUP concerns about any solution which left Northern Ireland working to different rules than mainland Britain. 
The MP said it would 'completely intolerable' and accused the Irish government of leaking 'propaganda' to undermine the talks. 
Standing alongside Mr Juncker in Brussels tonight, Mrs May said: 'We have been negotiating hard. And a lot of progress has been made. And on many of the issues there is a common understanding.
'It is clear, crucially, that we want to move forward together.
'But on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation.
'And those will continue, but we will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively.'
In an apparent attempt to bolster her position, Mr Juncker praised her as a 'tough negotiator' and both politicians signalled that there would be more talks later this week.
'I have to say that she's a tough negotiator, and not an easy one, and she's defending the point of view of Britain with all the energy we know she has, and this is the same on the side of the European Union,' he said.
'Despite our best efforts and significant progress we and our teams have made over the past days on the three main withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement today.' 
After their statements the leaders left without taking questions from journalists, as Mrs May headed to another meeting with EU council chief Donald Tusk.
After those talks, Mr Tusk said: 'Met with PM Theresa May. I was ready to present draft EU27 guidelines tomorrow for Brexit talks on transition and future. 
'But UK and Commission asked for more time.
'It is now getting very tight but agreement at December EU Council is still possible.' 
EU leaders will convene in Brussels on December 14 but realistically an agreed deal must be largely in place in advance.  


The dangers of the concession on Northern Ireland had been laid bare by responses from Nicola Sturgeon and London Mayor Sadiq Kha, who seized on the news to argue that Scotland and London respectively should be given similar leeway to 'stay in the single market'.
Downing Street played down the claims and insisted the 'territorial and economic integrity of the UK will be protected'.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn slammed the failure to strike a deal today. 
He said: 'The real reason for today's failure is the grubby deal the Government did with the DUP after the election.
'It is disappointing that there has not been progress in the Brexit negotiations after months of delays and grandstanding.'  

Nicola Sturgeon claimed today that any deal that effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the single European market should also apply to Scotland.
Leaked parts of a deal on the Brexit divorce have suggested arrangements which could effectively allow Northern Ireland to match rules in the single market to prevent the return of a 'hard border' on the island of Ireland. 
Ms Sturgeon said on Twitter: 'If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't.'
Both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the EU in the referendum which was held in June 2016.
The SNP leader stated: 'Right now, Ireland is powerfully demonstrating the importance of being independent when it comes to defending your vital national interests.'
The question of how to maintain a soft Irish border had emerged as the key sticking point to getting agreement from the EU to move on to phase two in the Brexit negotiations.
 The British side was said to have signed up to enough 'continued regulatory alignment' between Northern Ireland and the Republic to 'support North South cooperation and the protection of the Good Friday agreement'.
That left considerably more wriggle room than the initial wording of 'no regulatory divergence'.
Mr Tusk hinted that the move would be enough to secure a deal, tweeting: 'Tell me why I like Mondays! Encouraged after my phone call with Taoiseach @campaignforleo on progress on issue of Ireland.
'Getting closer to sufficient progress at December.' 
In his much delayed appearance in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said that he had confirmed Ireland's agreement to the text to both Mr Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk.
'I am surprised and disappointed that the British Government now appears not to be in a position to conclude what was agreed earlier today,' he said. 
'I accept that the Prime Minister has asked for more time, and I know that she faces many challenges and I acknowledge that she is negotiating in good faith.
'But my position and that of the Irish Government is unequivocal and is supported by all the parties in Dail Eirann and I believe the majority of people on these islands.
'Ireland wants to proceed to phase two - It's very much in our interests to do so. However we cannot agree to do this unless we have firm guarantees that there will not be a hard border in Ireland under any circumstances.'
Since the break-up of talks, Mr Juncker had confirmed that 'Ireland's position remains Europe's position', said Mr Varadkar.
He added: 'I still hope this matter can be concluded in the coming days, as was agreed.'
Regulatory convergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit could cover a whole gamut of different rules.
As members of the single market, Ireland accepts the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
Financial services companies have the ability to work freely across the continent without jumping through additional bureaucratic hoops.
They also have standardised EU rules in areas such as safety, quality standards, and working hours.
Ireland's membership of the EU customs union, meanwhile, means there are no tariffs on goods traded within the bloc. 
And the same tariffs are applied to goods from outside the union.
As a result of being in the customs union, Ireland cannot negotiate its own free trade deals with other countries.
Striking a jubilant tone, Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney told reporters earlier this afternoon: 'We have now a language that gives us the safeguards we need; that there is reassurance for people there is not going to be a re-emergence of a border.
'Irish concerns are going to be addressed fully.'  
Scottish First Minister Ms Sturgeon tweeted: 'If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can't.'
Meanwhile, Mr Khan said: 'Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit.
'Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.'
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones then joined in to insist: 'We cannot allow different parts of the UK to be more favourably treated than others.
'If one part of the UK is granted continued participation in the Single Market and Customs Union, then we fully expect to be made the same offer.' 
Regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the Republic would likely mean both sides following the same rules governing trade, to ensure that goods can continue to move freely across a 'soft' border with no checks. 
But there are fears among some unionists in Northern Ireland that it could lead to the effective drawing of a new border in the Irish Sea between the province and the rest of the UK, if the Westminster Government decides it wants to diverge from EU rules. 
One of the proposed solutions for the Irish border issue is for the Northern Ireland Executive to be handed sweeping new powers.
Fresh devolution would hand authority to keep laws in the province close to the EU single market rules and different from the rest of the UK.
The set up would allow Northern Ireland to leave the customs union with the rest of Britain but still operate different rules on cross-border trade to the mainland UK.
But the details are still hotly disputed and would eventually rely on the restoration of devolution to Belfast - despite the institutions being on ice since January. 
The dramatic political moves today appear to have been carefully choreographed, and Tory and DUP sources stressed they have been in close contact throughout the process.
Although Ms Foster's words seemed designed to reassure supporters in Northern Ireland, she notably stopped short of condemning it outright.
She insisted Mrs May 'understands the position of this party', adding: 'The prime minister has told the House of Commons that there will be no border in the Irish Sea. 
'And the Prime Minister has been clear that the UK is leaving the European Union as a whole, that the territorial and economic integrity of the United Kingdom will be protected.'
Ms Foster said the DUP wanted to see a 'sensible Brexit, a Brexit where the common travel area is continued'.
She added: 'The Republic of Ireland government for their part claim to be guarantors of the Belfast agreement but they are clearly seeking to unilaterally change that Belfast agreement without out input or our consent. 
'And of course we will not stand for that.' 
Sources in the party initially suggested that the text of the border proposal was being selectively leaked and misinterpreted. 
But opinion appeared to slip against Mrs May at the last moment, as the shape became clearer 
Ex-Ukip leader NIgel Farage had condemned the concession, tweeting: 'This UK Government's bitter betrayal of 17.4 million people today is a concession too far, for it will lead to endless problems in Scotland and it damages the integrity of the United Kingdom.'
Hard Border:
This would include customs and security checks, border controls, posts and guards to monitor who and what is travelling over from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland, and vice versa.
The UK, EU and the Republic of Ireland have all agreed there can be no return to the hard border of the past, fearing this could reignite the sectarian violence of The Troubles.
Soft Border:
A soft border would mean no security or border checks between the two territories - essentially maintaining the status quo.
Under this plan goods and people will be free to cross from one side to the other without any checks or documentation. 
Third Way: 

It has been proposed that an 'invisible border' can be erected via a new high-tech system.
Under this plan, number plate recognition technology and spot vehicle checks could be used to carry out customs checks.
While it has been suggested that Northern Ireland and the Republic both create squads of flying border guards to police potential smuggling routes from the skies.
The EU has insisted this week is the last opportunity to reach an agreement that means starting trade talks can be signed off at the bloc's summit in 10 days' time. The next gathering is not until well into next year.
But Downing Street sources have played down the idea that today represents a hard deadline.
Speaking on his way to join the talks today, Mr Davis said: 'We've put seven months of work, both sides, into getting to this point and we are hoping that Mr Juncker today will give us sufficient progress so that we can move on to the trade talks. 
'The decision, of course, won't be taken until 15 December but that's what we are hoping for, because trade talks are of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and to Europe.' 

Mrs May had hoped to secure agreement on moving on to trade talks after persuading her cabinet to back an improved divorce payment worth up to £40billion to the EU.
In return, she is demanding assurances that Brussels will agree a comprehensive trade deal.
But, despite round-the-clock talks this weekend, key differences remained as of this morning between the two sides, particularly over the Irish border.
Asked about the claims that the UK was committing to 'no regulatory divergence' on the Island of Ireland, the PM's spokesman said: 'The PM has been clear that the UK is leaving the EU as a whole, and the territorial and economic integrity of the UK will be protected.' 
Ministers have been alarmed by the lack of a breakthrough. Some, including the Brexit Secretary David Davis, are warning privately that Mrs May will have to walk away if there is no agreement at next week's EU summit.
One source familiar with the talks said: 'If we don't make sufficient progress at this stage then the process is over.'
Ahead of his lunch with Mrs May, Mr Juncker was pictured meeting EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and the European Parliament's Brexit team, led by Guy Verhofstadt.
Mr Juncker's chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas said they were 'working for a fair deal'.  

Senior German MEP Manfred Weber - a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel - said problems remained on citizens' rights and the Irish border.
The leader of the European Parliament's centre-right EPP Group tweeted: 'In Brexit negotiations, money is one of the problems, but it is not the biggest one. 
'We are much more concerned about the fact that negotiations are stalled on the protection of EU citizens' rights & on the Irish case.
'We will not change our red lines. The lives of millions of families are at stake. If no clear commitment is made, the @EPPGroup will not be ready to assess the progress made as sufficient to enter a 2nd phase of negotiations.' 

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday warned Eurosceptic MPs not to limit Mrs May's room for manoeuvre. 'The choice we face is not between this Brexit or that Brexit,' he said.
'If we don't back Theresa May we will have no Brexit, and she is doing an unbelievably challenging job amazingly well.'
Mr Hunt's intervention came as 30 Eurosceptics set down seven 'red lines' over Brexit.
The Leave Means Leave group said Mrs May should not make any payment to Brussels unless she received clear pledges in return, including a free trade deal and agreement that the UK would not have to accept any new EU regulations or European court rulings during a two-year transition period.
Signatories of the letter include former cabinet ministers Lord Lawson, John Redwood and Owen Paterson. They urge Mrs May to abandon the talks completely and go for a no-deal Brexit if Brussels refuses to agree terms next week.
But Mr Paterson dismissed the prospect of Eurosceptics voting against the government. 'The fact is we have incredibly close relations with the Republic of Ireland, this trade is generally small, as I have just said it's regular, and it can be handled with modern communication techniques, electronic invoicing etc.' 
Today's talks are designed to determine whether 'sufficient progress' has been made on three key issues to persuade the EU to move on to trade talks.
The issues at the centre of the row are the size of the divorce bill, the rights of EU citizens living in the UK and the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
The divorce bill is now seen as the most straightforward issue, with EU sources indicating Brussels is ready to accept Mrs May's revised offer.
But differences remain on citizens' rights and Northern Ireland.
The Prime Minister had hoped to offer a 'compromise' on citizens' rights, which would give the European Court of Justice a minor, indirect role. But she has not yet persuaded her cabinet to sign it off.
The deal would allow the UK's Supreme Court to ask the ECJ for guidance in cases brought by EU citizens where there is no existing case law. EU citizens would lose the right to appeal directly to the ECJ – a key Brussels demand.
Nigel Farage was dragged into the divorce bill row yesterday because his £73,000-a-year MEP's pension will be part-funded by Britain's proposed £40billion payment. 
The UKIP leader rejected calls to give up the money, saying: 'Why should my family suffer?' 

The Irish border remains the key stumbling block in the way of Brexit talks proceeding to the next stage. Here are answers to some of the key questions on the thorny impasse that threatens to derail the process.
Why is the border so important to the negotiations?
After Brexit, it will become the UK's only land border with an EU member state. How that frontier is managed is one of the three key issues the EU wants assurances on - along with citizens rights and the 'divorce bill' - before allowing Brexit negotiations to proceed to phase two on future trading relations.
It is proving the most difficult of the trio to resolve, with economic and social factors mixing with potent historical and political considerations.
What does the border look like now?
There are almost 300 crossings between north and south along what was, during the Troubles, a heavily-militarised 310-mile frontier. Those checkpoints are either gone or lying derelict today as traffic passes freely from north to south.
Why are there such major concerns that Brexit would change that?
It could be argued that Brexit itself is not the cause of the sticking point, more the type of Brexit envisaged by the UK government.
If the UK left the EU but remained in the single market and customs union the border problem might not be so complex.
But the UK's decision to leave Europe's trading and free movement frameworks mean the border is set to become a crossing point between two different regulatory and economic zones.
This has prompted fears of a 'hard border', with a return to check points - albeit for very different reasons to those erected during the Troubles.
There have been competing claims on whether such an outcome would undermine the extent of cross-border co-operation enshrined in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Some have even warned that a hardening of the border could reignite violence. Others have dismissed such dire predictions as dangerous scaremongering
What does the EU want?
Brussels insists the retention of a 'soft' border can only be achieved if either the whole of the UK, or just Northern Ireland, remain either within the single market and customs union, or some specially-tailored system that complies with EU regulations. This is the Dublin government's preferred option and the EU has made clear that Ireland's concerns are its concerns.
Why is this such a problem for the UK?
The Government's very existence is dependent on its deal with the Democratic Unionists. While 56% of the population in Northern Ireland voted Remain, the DUP campaigned for Brexit and is set against anything that would see the region treated differently to the rest of the UK.
To do otherwise, it claims, would draw a border up the Irish Sea. The DUP has even accused the Irish government of pushing for regulatory alignment across the island as a backdoor bid to achieve a united Ireland.
Reports that No 10 was prepared to give ground and agree that Northern Ireland would continue to adhere to EU regulations post Brexit were met with an emphatic rejection by DUP leader Arlene Foster, in a statement that quickly snuffed out rumours of a Brexit breakthrough.
So does the DUP hold all the cards?
Not quite. If its 10 MPs pulled put of their deal with the Tories, they would lose their new found influence at Westminster - endangering a linked £1 billion of Treasury funding for Northern Ireland - and face the prospect of what they characterise as the 'pro Irish republican' Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour prime minister after a snap general election.
Are Mrs May's problems confined to Northern Ireland.
No. The suggestion of a different regulatory regime for Northern Ireland prompted demands for the same from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and London mayor Sadiq Khan.

 
Theresa May is ready to butt heads with the EU over the Irish backstop and will now return to Brussels to demand concessions after her dramatic Commons win revived her Brexit deal.
The Prime Minister will start her charm offensive by speaking to Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar first thing this morning before jetting to see European leaders 'once the dust settles' later this week.
She will also meet with Jeremy Corbyn after PMQs today to discuss Brexit after the Labour leader was humiliated after MPs rejected Labour's bid to keep Britain in the EU past March 29.
But Mrs May faces an uphill battle with the EU after European Council President Donald Tusk said her proposal to reopen negotiations was not 'credible' within minutes of her big win while Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also told her yesterday she is wasting her time.
Today Eurocrats held crisis talks led by chief negotiator Michel Barnier and European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt, who said this morning: 'The Irish backstop is an insurance element of Theresa May's Brexit deal which must remain'.
Last night the prime minister secured an extraordinary victory keeping her deal alive and kill off delaying Brexit and relied on fourteen Labour MPs from leave-backing constituencies for her triumph.
Hundreds of MPs who inflicted a historic defeat on her withdrawal plan earlier this month last night voted by 317 to 301 to give her 'Plan B' their backing – provided the Irish backstop is replaced.
The Prime Minister said there could now be a 'substantial and sustainable majority for leaving the EU with a deal' with Tory sources suggested Mrs May might return to Brussels to seek concessions by the end of this week.
But she is now on collision course with European leaders, with European Council President Donald Tusk saying the divorce deal was not up for renegotiation within minutes of her Commons win.
Later this week: Theresa May is expected to return to Brussels to ask for changes to the Irish backstop, after MPs backed an amendment calling for 'alternative arrangements'. Her office has not yet confirmed when she will travel to meet EU leaders, who have already said they will not renegotiate the deal. 
February 13: If no new deal has been reached, Mrs May will address MPs again on this date and her Government will put a further motion before the House of Commons. MPs would then be able to vote on further amendments, potentially on February 14.
March 29: Brexit day. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act of 2018 fixed 11pm on March 29 as the time and date when Britain will leave the EU. If no agreement has been reached by then, the UK - in spite of the Commons vote against a cliff-edge Brexit last night - will leave without a deal. 
Labour defections helped Mrs May to triumph in the Commons and win backing for her plans to seek an alternative to the Irish backstop.
But there are growing calls from members of Jeremy Corbyn's Momentum group to deselect them with critics calling them 'traitors'.
14 Labour MPs rebelled against Jeremy Corbyn last night to sink the party's plan to delay Brexit and send Theresa May back to Brussels with a stronger hand.
Backbench rebels including veteran left-winger Dennis Skinner joined the Conservatives in the division lobbies to vote down Yvette Cooper's amendment but were accused of 'letting the party down'. 
Seven of the Labour rebels also joined the Government in backing the Graham Brady amendment, supported by Theresa May, which gives the PM a mandate to renegotiate her Brexit deal. 
Last night's votes were a crushing rejection for Jeremy Corbyn who switched labour's official position to seeking a Brexit delay in a bid to defeat Mrs May.
The Cooper plan, which was backed by Mr Corbyn, called for an extension of Article 50 to keep the UK in the EU until the end of the year in order to reach a deal. 
It was supported by the Labour frontbench as well as Tories including Nick Boles, but was defeated by 321 votes to 298 last night. 
The Labour MPs who voted against it were Ian Austin, Kevin Barron, Ronnie Campbell, Rosie Cooper, Jim Fitzpatrick, Caroline Flint, Roger Godsiff, Stephen Hepburn, Kate Hoey, John Mann, Dennis Skinner, Laura Smith, Gareth Snell and Graham Stringer.  
Mr Austin and Mr Mann are vocal opponents of Mr Corbyn's leadership while Ms Hoey has been one of the most prominent Labour Brexiteers. 
Of the rebels, Ronnie Campbell, Roger Godsiff, John Mann, Graham Stringer and Dennis Skinner were also Leave supporters in the 2016 referendum. 
Others including Caroline Flint in Don Valley and Kevin Barron in Rother Valley were pro-Remain in 2016 but represent very Leave-supporting constituencies. 
Some Labour members have voiced fears of a backlash from voters if MPs were seen to be delaying or frustrating Brexit.  
It is not yet clear whether there will be any punishment for the Labour rebels who defied the whip.  
But the Prime Minister did not get everything her way.
MPs voted by 318 to 310 for a cross-party amendment rejecting the idea of a no-deal Brexit. Although the vote was only symbolic, it will put political pressure on the PM to avoid no-deal at all costs.
And Mrs May was forced to offer pro-remain Tories the opportunity for another attempt to block no deal on February 14. The move persuaded pro-Remain ministers including Amber Rudd and Richard Harrington to pull back from threats to quit.
It effectively means Mrs May now has two weeks to secure a Brexit deal against the odds before facing a fresh Commons showdown.
Last night's vote came exactly two weeks after MPs rejected Mrs May's Brexit deal by a record 230 votes. It followed efforts by Tory grandee Sir Graham Brady to bring the party together around a single amendment.
Mrs May's leadership rival Boris Johnson, one of dozens of Eurosceptics who switched sides last night, immediately came back onboard, saying: 'The Prime Minister now has a clear and unambiguous mandate from parliament that the backstop, which kept us locked in a customs union, has to be kicked out. I hope our friends in Brussels will listen and make that change.'
On a day of high drama at Westminster:
 
Last night's Commons victory followed a high-stakes gamble in which the PM promised to tear up the Brexit deal negotiated with the EU in order to tackle Tory concerns about the Irish backstop, which critics fear could keep the UK locked in a customs unions against its will.
In a significant climbdown, Mrs May told MPs the scale of her opposition to her deal meant that the 585-page Withdrawal Agreement signed with Brussels would have to be reopened – an idea she rejected just two weeks ago when she said: 'This is the best deal possible – it's the only deal possible.'
In comments designed to reassure Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP that she is serious about delivering on their concerns she said: 'What I'm talking about is not a further exchange of letters, but a significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement. It will involve reopening the Withdrawal Agreement.'
Mrs May appealed directly to MPs to 'give me the mandate I need' to go back to Brussels and try to renegotiate the Brexit deal.
EU leaders last night ruled out the possibility of reopening the deal.
In a prepared statement the European Council President Donald Tusk said: 'The Withdrawal Agreement is and remains best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU. The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for re-negotiation.'
Mrs May acknowledged there was only 'limited appetite' in the EU to reopen the deal. Her chief Brexit negotiator Oliver Robbins is said to have warned her privately that it is not even worth trying to persuade the EU to remove the backstop from the deal.
But last night No 10 said Mrs May would press ahead regardless.
A Downing Street source said: 'We always knew the next 24 hours would be a firefight. Brussels will just say no, no, no. Let's see what happens after that.
'It's a positive day but only the start of what is going to be an incredibly challenging process.'
One Cabinet source told the Mail: 'We've got a chance. We have seen a shift in terms of the EU, and we have seen a shift in terms of the Irish. The question is whether you can take that and turn it into something meaningful on the backstop.'
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said it was 'disappointing' that Labour defectors had voted with the Tories. 
He said: 'Labour whipped the right way. A handful of colleagues let us down.'  
But his colleague Lucy Powell said: 'All this talk of 'recriminations' and being 'cross' with colleagues who voted differently tonight is deeply unhelpful.'
The rebellion against Mr Corbyn's whips helped to cancel out 17 Conservative defections, as Tories including Anna Soubry and Ken Clarke backed the proposed delay.  
Ms Cooper and Mr Boles had sought to postpone Brexit to prevent a no-deal departure on March 29. 
The two members said they were 'deeply concerned that there is no safeguard in place to prevent a cliff edge in March 2019'. 
In a statement the pair said Britain was 'running out of time' to prevent a no-deal Brexit.  
The Brady amendment, which was backed by the Government, called for 'alternative arrangements' to the much-maligned Irish backstop. 
The Commons voted by 317 to 301 in favour of the backstop changes - which Mrs May said showed there was a means of securing a 'substantial and sustainable majority in this House for leaving the EU with a deal'. 
Seven Labour MPs backed the amendment: Ian Austin, Kevin Barron, Jim Fitzpatrick, Roger Godsiff, Kate Hoey, John Mann and Graham Stringer. 
Several other Labour MPs including Ms Cooper and Ms Flint did not vote on the Brady amendment.  
The backstop seeks to prevent a return to border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.  
But it is widely disliked by Tory MPs, who helped inflict a record defeat on Mrs May - 432 votes to 202 - when her deal was first voted on earlier this month. 
The Commons also approved a cross-party amendment, tabled by Midlands MPs Caroline Spelman and Jack Dromey, rejecting a no-deal Brexit by 318 to 310.
The vote is not legally binding on the Government but will impose further pressure on Mrs May as she tries to secure a new deal. 
Mrs May said she would seek 'legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement that deal with concerns on the backstop while guaranteeing no return to a hard border'. 
But she earned an immediate rebuff from Brussels, where European Council president Donald Tusk insisted that the Withdrawal Agreement struck last November was not open for renegotiation.
In a statement, Mr Tusk's spokesman said: 'The Withdrawal Agreement is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.
'The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for re-negotiation.' 
Another cross-party amendment, tabled by Labour's Rachel Reeves, which would have required the Prime Minister to seek an extension of Article 50 if no deal had been reached by February 26, was also defeated. 
However MPs issued an order to Theresa May to prevent a no-deal Brexit as they passed an amendment which rejects the UK leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement.
The cross-party plan, headed by Tory Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour's Jack Dromey, won by 318 votes to 310, majority eight. 
Earlier, MPs rejected a bid by Jeremy Corbyn to force a debate on Labour's Brexit plans. 
Mr Corbyn, who had earlier boycotted cross-party talks, said he was now ready to meet the Prime Minister to discuss a 'sensible Brexit solution that works for the whole country'. 
By Tim Sculthorpe, Deputy Political Editor for MailOnline 
Theresa May claimed there was a 'way forward' on Brexit last night after snatching a surprise victory from a minefield in the Commons.
The latest showdown over Brexit dawned with the Prime Minister facing the prospect of humiliation at the hands of MPs for the second time in a fortnight.
Mrs May pleaded with her party for support and ordered them to rally round a plan by Sir Graham Brady, the influential chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs.
But she had issued her orders just minutes after Jacob Rees-Mogg, the shop steward of Tory Brexiteers, had told MPs to do the opposite.
The Prime Minister made her first move as she gathered her Cabinet in Downing Street on Tuesday morning. 
She told ministers she was ready to demand Brussels reopens the Withdrawal Agreement to seek legally-binding changes to the backstop.
The U-turn - which Mrs May has repeatedly warned against for fears it would risk British success in the negotiations on Gibraltar and fishing - was a key demand of Brexiteers.
Mrs May also set a new deadline of February 13, telling her Cabinet that there would either be a new vote to approve her deal or another round of votes on what to do instead.
It was a crucial concession to Remain ministers such as Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd who had threatened to resign to vote in favour of blocking no deal.
The moves combined with the surprise emergence over night of a new Brexit compromise between Mr Rees-Mogg and Remainer Nicky Morgan built a basis for last night's success.    
It was not all one way traffic: shortly after Cabinet broke up, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn finally clambered off the fence and announced he would back the amendments against no deal.
The move was a huge boost to the plan tabled by Labour MP Yvette Cooper to tear up the Commons rules and try to change the law next week.
Her amendment would have scrapped the decades-old rule that only ministers set the timetable of the Commons and given MPs the chance to pass a law saying if there was no deal by February 26, the PM must delay Brexit.
If the Cooper amendment carried, Mrs May's hopes of getting a renegotiation in Brussels would have been bleak.
With Labour votes, Tory Remain rebels were confident they could use Parliament to seize control of the Brexit process to prevent no deal and significantly soften Brexit.
A crucial moment came when Speaker John Bercow selected all of the main plans at the start of the debate - ending fears he would ignore the Brady plan favoured by No 10.
It meant when Mrs May arrived at the Despatch Box at 1.51pm this afternoon both main amendments - Brady and Cooper - were in with a fighting chance when the votes came at 7pm.
In her speech, Mrs May repeated her promises to Cabinet about demanding the Brexit deal was reopened and told MPs: 'I will never stop battling for Britain, but the odds of success become much longer if this House ties one hand behind my back.'
She tells Parliament the Brady amendment 'will give the mandate I need to negotiate with Brussels'.
The PM used her appearance to support the apparent 'Plan C' from Mr Rees-Mogg and Ms Morgan - saying it was a 'serious proposal'.
Behind the scenes, Tory whips pressed MPs hard to vote down the no deal plans and instead endorse Mrs May's hopes of renegotiating.
The effort appeared to be working - even Boris Johnson said he would vote for the Brady plan if Mrs May was sincere about reopening talks on the divorce deal.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds also spoke up in favour of the PM's new position, while Mr Rees-Mogg thanked Mrs May for her shift.
Again there were blows against Mrs May - with Tory Remain supporters Sarah Wollaston and Ed Vaizey insisting they could not vote for renewed talks on the backstop.
After more than five hours of debate, Mr Bercow finally called the Commons to order at 7pm. 
Amendments from Mr Corbyn and SNP leader Ian Blackford were both dispatched with ease - 327 MPs filed into the Government lobby both times, enough to win any vote.
The third vote was crucial as a plan from Tory MP Dominic Grieve - to hand MPs the power to debate and vote on Brexit every Tuesday until there is a deal - was tested.
Fifteen Conservative MPs rebelled - the usual Remain rebels including Ken Clarke and Anna Soubry - but they were cancelled out by 14 Labour MPs.
The Labour group included Brexit supporters like Kate Hoey and Dennis Skinner, and those from Leave-voting areas like Caroline Flint.
It meant the Government won again - 321 to 301 - and by a bigger margin than many had expected.
It set the stage for the Cooper amendment to fail in the fourth vote of the night. This time 17 Tories rebelled but again they were cancelled out by the same bloc of 14 Labour MPs.
Ms Cooper's plan lost by a slightly larger margin of 321 to 298 - a majority of 23 and a clear signal the Commons would back Mrs May to renegotiate the deal.
A fifth vote on an amendment from Rachel Reeves - to make a political statement saying the same as Ms Cooper's proposed law - was seen off 322-290.
The sixth vote on Dame Caroline Spelman's amendment tarnished the night for Mrs May.
The amendment set out a statement that a no deal Brexit would be unacceptable - but made no effort to change the law or force the Government to do anything.
The same 17 Conservative MPs rebelled to support the motion but this time only three Labour MPs went the other way.
It meant the rebels won 318 to 310 - a symbolic blow to Mrs May that could encourage the EU not to give ground in any new negotiations.
But it did not stop Mrs May securing the most important victory of the night when the Brady amendment was finally called to a vote at 8.26pm. 
The motion carried 317 to 301, with just eight Tory rebels voting against sending Mrs May back for a final push on the border backstop.
Seven Labour MPs voted the other way, joining forces with all 10 DUP MPs and three Independents to get Mrs May over the line.
She told the Commons: 'A fortnight ago, this House clearly rejected the proposed Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration with just 202 members voting in favour.
'Tonight a majority of Honourable Members have said they would support a deal with changes to the backstop.
'Combined with measures to address concerns over Parliament's role in the negotiation of the future relationship and commitments on workers' rights, in law where need be, it is now clear that there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in this House for leaving the EU with a deal.
'We will now take this mandate forward and seek to obtain legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement that deal with concerns on the backstop while guaranteeing no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.'  
After a punishing day in the office, Theresa May likes to relax with a glass of Welsh whisky. 
After yesterday – after her very public and painful decision to postpone her Brexit vote – the Prime Minister could be forgiven for pouring herself a double.
At breakfast yesterday, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said he was '100 per cent' sure the vote was still on.
By 11:30am Mrs May had calmly told a Cabinet conference call she was slamming on the brakes.
The reason? The knotty issue of the Northern Ireland backstop and fears of a defeat on a scale of anything up to 150 votes.
Last night her supporters laid at least part of the blame squarely on embattled French President Emmanuel Macron. 
Two weeks ago, on the Sunday of the EU Summit in Brussels when Mrs May's deal was signed, No10 officials were cautiously optimistic.
'We had a mountain to climb, but we thought we had some momentum and could get away from the backstop to start selling the deal on its merits – control of borders and protecting jobs,' says one aide.
But then came the Macron hand grenade. The French President – desperate to focus attention away from the riots at home – broke ranks.
The UK would still have to give way on the hugely sensitive area of fishing, he warned, or facing being stuck in the Northern Ireland backstop in perpetuity.
'It was backstop blackmail, and we never recovered,' a source admits. The next day, Mrs May faced question after question on the backstop. 
Then Donald Trump – in typical style – declared this was 'a great deal for the EU'.
No10's strategy to pressure MPs by building support among voters and business became irrelevant. 'They were just talking to each other about how much they didn't like the backstop', a source sighs.
On November 30, a little-known Remain-supporting minister, Sam Gyimah, quit, and called for a second referendum. 
Meanwhile, the informal Twitter count of Tory MPs opposed to the deal crept higher and higher.
The other name Downing Street officials spit with fury is that of Speaker Bercow. By selecting MP after MP opposed to the deal every time Mrs May appeared before them, he too created the impression the agreement was friendless.
Controversially, he selected an amendment proposed by arch-Remainer Dominic Grieve designed to hand Parliament power over what happens if the deal fell. It was, Tory sources say, a highly contentious move.
In a single calamitous day, last Tuesday, the Government lost that vote and two others. 
It forced the publication of the Attorney General's legal advice, a letter which made clear the risk of being stuck inside the backstop. Passages pointing to reasons why the EU hated the backstop were largely ignored.
Now several Cabinet ministers and backbenchers were hammering away trying to convince No10 to pull the vote. Chief among them was Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson who, as a former chief whip, knew the grim reality of the numbers.
But the message wasn't getting through. Sir Graham Brady, the 'shop steward' of backbench Tories, begged the PM to delay. He went public last Thursday, saying Mrs May risked losing her job if she went ahead.
Among some May loyalists, considerable ire is also reserved for the Chief Whip, Julian Smith and what one minister called a 'shambolic' whipping operation.
Incredibly, last week he even allowed a TV crew to film him trying to convince the hardest of hardline Tory Eurosceptics, Philip Davis, to back the deal – an attempt which, predictably, failed. One senior Tory told the Mail it was '******* mad'.
At yesterday's Cabinet call International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt raised eyebrows among her fellow ministers by praising Mr Smith's efforts to win the vote – despite his utter failure.
Yesterday Mrs May was told the likely scale of defeat – as many as 150 votes.
The argument that it was better to suffer a defeat and take it to Brussels to show how much help was needed, rapidly fell away.
A defeat of such magnitude would leave Mrs May's very future in No10 in grave peril and the country in chaos.
'For her, it's duty, duty. duty,' said one aide last night – seeking to explain why she doesn't simply throw in the towel.
What happens next? Mrs May has pledged to 'go boldly' back to the European Union.
The question is whether there is anything the EU is prepared to offer which will buy off enough Tory MPs, or if pulling the vote has simply delayed the inevitable. She needs, as one former Cabinet minister told the Mail yesterday, to pull a 'very large rabbit out of the hat'.
Mrs May has been written off before – again and again – and yet survived. But if she is to defy her critics again she will need every bit of luck she can muster.

Brussels claimed Theresa May had opened the door to 'soft Brexit' tonight as her divorce deal was branded a £40billion 'humiliation'.
After a frantic night of negotiations, a bleary-eyed PM and Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed the 'breakthrough' had been achieved at an early morning press conference. 
The two sides papered over the cracks four days after the DUP torpedoed an earlier version - with Mrs May soothing the fears of her Northern Ireland allies by explicitly stating that moves to secure a soft Irish border would not threaten the UK. 
But Tory MPs voiced alarm that Britain's effort to solve the Irish border problem by 'aligning' with EU rules would prevent it striking trade deals with other countries.
Eurocrats increased the pressure on Mrs May by claiming that the text the UK had agreed was 'incompatible' with leaving the European single market and customs union - implying we have accepted a 'soft Brexit'. 
And within hours of the deal being announced European Council chief Donald Tusk was making fresh demands about the next phase of talks. He said during a mooted two-year transition period Britain will have to keep making financial contributions and respect all EU laws, including new ones, even though this country will have no say over how they are decided.
In a scathing assessment, ex-Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: 'A deal in Brussels is good news for Mrs May as we can now move on to the next stage of humiliation.' 
Hailing the progress in the talks, which means trade discussions can formally begin after an EU summit next week, Mrs May insisted it was 'fair to the British taxpayer' and would allow the government to pump more into key services like the NHS.
The pound rallied against the euro on the news, while leading Cabinet Brexiteer Michael Gove signalled he is on board at least for the time being, describing it as a 'signficant personal and political victory' for Mrs May. Boris Johnson also voiced support. 
Citizens' rights
The three million EU citizens in the UK and the one million UK citizens living in the EU can stay for their lifetime.
British courts will be able to refer issues about the rights of EU nationals to the European Court of Justice and have 'due regard' for the court's judgement in its decisions for eight years.
This means EU judges will still have some power over the UK after Brexit, but No10 believes this will only relate to 'two or three' cases a year. 
EU citizens in Britain and Northern Ireland will continue to have access to free healthcare and the benefits system after the UK cuts its ties with Brussels.
EU citizens with family outside the UK will also be able to bring them to the UK after Brexit. No 10 said there are no estimates for how many Europeans are expected to move to Britain under this bit of the deal.
Irish border
This was the main thorny issue which threatened to derail the talks after the DUP pulled the plug on initial plans for a deal amid fears it would break up the UK.
But six 'substantial changes' have been made to the deal which ensure Northern Ireland will keep the same rules as the rest of the UK and the border will not be pushed out to the Irish Sea.
It also rules out calls by Sinn Fein to give Northern Ireland 'special status' which would have seen it have different rules to the rest of the UK. 
And it spelled out in black and white that Northern Ireland will not be separated 'constitutionally, politically, economically or regulatory' from the rest of the UK.
And that the UK is committed to retaining its own internal market. 
The document also pledges to keep soft Irish border and to maintain the good Friday Agreement - ensuring Dublin's support for it.
But in a major concession which could spark opposition from Brexiteers, the UK said if it leaves the EU without a deal and does not come up with a plan to keep the border open then it 'will maintain full alignment' with the EU as a full back position.
Brexit bill
Britain has agreed to pay the EU between £35billion and £39billion as part of the divorce package.
Britain will pay the amount over many years to come - meaning Theresa May will not have to hand over a single fat cheque to foot the bill.
The document says: 'The UK will contribute its share of the financing of the budgetary commitments outstanding at 31 December 2020'.
Britain will get around 12 installments of 300m euros back from the European Investment Bank from 2020. 
Despite Philip Hammond insisting this week that the UK should pay whether or not there is a trade deal, the document makes clear the cash is contingent on a final agreement being reached. 

But the prospect of signing up to a huge divorce bill is threatening to cause serious unrest in the Tory ranks - even though the government now claims it is likely to be closer to £35-40billion than the £50billion figure previously leaked.
There is also anger at accepting the power of European judges to rule on citizens' rights cases for years to come. 
After days of stalemate, British and European officials said late last night they were 'within touching distance' of hammering out a 'divorce agreement' after plans collapsed on Monday when the DUP raised alarm that they risked splitting Northern Ireland from the UK.
Mrs May carried on the delicate discussions as the No10 staff party took place around her in Downing Street, and even managed to pop in to chat for a few minutes, according to aides. A spokesman said the PM grabbed a few hours' sleep between phone calls, and then headed to Brussels. 
'The Prime Minister had a tough day yesterday, I mean there was a lot of work to be done, a lot of conversations to be had. But we are pleased we have got to the place we have this morning,' the spokesman said. 

Intensive discussions found a new wording for the text which DUP leader Arlene Foster said satisfied her there would be no border in the Irish sea. However, she said she regretted that the PM wanted to push ahead while there was still no clarity about the 'nature of any regulatory alignment with the EU that may be required post Brexit'.
Mr Juncker's chief aide Martin Selmayr tweeted a picture of white smoke this morning - a reference to the Vatican's famous signal that agreement has been reached on a new Pope.
The relief for Mr Juncker and Mrs May was clear as the pair greeted each other with a hug as she arrived at the European commission building.
Mr Juncker said he would be recommending to leaders of the bloc that they agree 'sufficient progress' has been made at a key summit next week.
'I would like to thank the prime minister for her determination. The Prime Minister says this has the backing if the UK government,' Mr Juncker said.
'I believe we have now made the breakthrough we need.'
Giving a separate statement later after meeting Mrs May, European Council chief Donald Tusk said he was 'satisfied' with the agreement and branded it a 'personal victory' for Mrs May.
Members of the single market, Ireland accepts the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
Financial services companies have the ability to work freely across the continent without jumping through additional bureaucratic hoops.
They also have standardised EU rules in areas such as safety, quality standards, and working hours.
Membership of the EU customs union, meanwhile, means there are no tariffs on goods traded within the bloc.
And the same tariffs are applied to goods from outside the union.
As a result of being in the customs union, countries cannot negotiate their own free trade deals with other countries.
But he warned of a tougher task to come saying: 'We all know that breaking up is hard. But breaking up and forming a new relation is harder.'
As if to illustrate his point, he immediately set down demands about a mooted two-year transition period after the UK formally leaves the bloc. 
Boris Johnson was thought to have made not accepting new laws from Brussels during the transition as a 'red line' - but that was exactly what Mr Tusk demanded. 
The EU's chief negotiator also took a combative line, again dismissing UK calls for a 'bespoke' trade deal after Brexit.
Mr Barnier said Britain's red lines meant the only option for the future relationship was a Canada-style free trade deal.
A closer Norway-style model is not possible given the PM's insistence on ending the free movement of EU citizens, gaining the ability to strike free trade deals around the world, and ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the UK, he insisted.
The Cabinet is due to discuss before the new year what 'end state' trade relationship to pursue in phase two of Brexit talks, and there are likely to be disagreements among ministers. 
Mr Barnier also suggested it may be difficult to sign a new free trade deal in time for Britain's departure from the EU on March 29 2019. 
At a press conference after Mrs May got agreement from the European Commission to recommend the start of trade talks, he said each model the EU has with 'third countries' such as Norway, Canada, Turkey and South Korea is unique. 
'There's a range of models and if you were to see them on the slide, and then you were to put another slide on top of it with the British red lines as they have been indicated today by the British Government, what do you get? 
'We (Britain) leave the union, we leave the single market because we don't want to respect the four freedoms - in particular the freedom of movement of persons which can't be deserted from the others - we leave the customs union because we want to recover our sovereignty on trade negotiations. 
'Okay, that's the position, and we don't want to recognise the role of the ECJ, okay. 
'So if you take those red lines and put that second slide on top of the first one of various models... what are you left with? What can you still read? Just one thing - free trade agreement on the Canadian model.' 
A communique from the Commission to the Council issued after the deal suggested EU negotiators went further, suggesting that Mrs May's acceptance of aligned rules to protect the Irish border meant Britain could not in reality leave the single market. 
'Whilst the United Kingdom remains committed to protecting and supporting continued North-South cooperation across the full range of contexts and frameworks, including after withdrawal, the common understanding provides that the United Kingdom aims to achieve this protection and the avoidance of a hard border through the overall EU-United Kingdom relationship,' it said according the the Independent.
'This intention seems hard to reconcile with the United Kingdom's communicated decision to leave the internal market and the customs union.' 

An earlier outline of a deal on the key divorce issues was torpedoed by the DUP on Monday. The party objected to plans for 'regulatory alignment' between Northern Ireland and the Republic to maintain a soft border, arguing it would amount to the drawing of a new frontier with the UK mainland.
However, in the early hours of this morning Mrs Foster said she was now satisfied there would be no 'red line down the Irish sea'.
The EU's chief negotiator has dismissed UK calls for a 'bespoke' trade deal after Brexit,
Michel Barnier said Britain's red lines meant the only option for the future relationship was a Canada-style free trade deal.
A closer Norway-style model is not possible given the PM's insistence on ending the free movement of EU citizens, gaining the ability to strike free trade deals around the world, and ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the UK, he insisted.
The Cabinet is due to discuss before the new year what 'end state' trade relationship to pursue in phase two of Brexit talks, and there are likely to be disagreements among ministers. 
Mr Barnier also suggested it may be difficult to sign a new free trade deal in time for Britain's departure from the EU on March 29 2019. 
At a press conference after Mrs May got agreement from the European Commission to recommend the start of trade talks, he said: 'If you take those red lines and put that second slide on top of the first one of various models... what are you left with? What can you still read? Just one thing - free trade agreement on the Canadian model.' 
Mrs Foster told Sky News the PM had a text to present in Brussels in the 'national interest', although she also made clear she was not entirely happy with  the outcome. 
The agreement published today sets out that there will be enough 'regulatory alignment' with the EU to keep a soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic and 'support North-South cooperation'.
But it also specifies that there will be no 'regulatory barriers' between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and the province's businesses will continue to have 'unfettered access' to the UK internal market. 

Speaking at a press conference in Dublin after the announcement, Irish PM Leo Varadkar said: 'We have achieved all that we set out to achieve.' 
But he added: 'There is no question of us trying to exploit Brexit as a means of moving to a United Ireland without consent.' 
Mr Varadkar also paraphrased Churchill, saying: 'This is not the end, but it is the end of the beginning.' 
Mrs May told her press conference that the agreement would guarantee the rights of three million EU citizens in the UK 'enshrined in UK law and enforced by British courts'.
She said that it included a financial settlement which was 'fair to the British taxpayer' and a guarantee that there will be 'no hard border' between Northern Ireland and the Republic, preserving the 'constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom'.  

Mrs May said getting to this point had 'required give and take from both sides'. She insisted EU citizens in the UK would be able to go on living as before, and there would be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
In a nod to the painful way the talks developed, Mrs May said: 'Today's result is of course a compromise.'
She said: 'I believe that the joint report being published is in the best interests of the whole of the UK. 
'I very much welcome the prospect of moving ahead to the next phase, to talk about trade and security and to discuss the positive and ambitious future relationship that is in all of our interests. 
'I have consistently said that we will build a deep and special partnership with the EU as we implement the decision of the British people to leave at the end of March 2019. 
'Doing so will provide clarity and certainty for businesses in the UK and the EU and crucially for all our citizens.'  

Mr Juncker said negotiations had been 'difficult for both the UK and the EU'.
He said he had been assured by Mrs May that the arrangements had the 'backing of the UK government'.
The EU has been increasingly alarmed at the prospect of Mrs May being ejected from Downing Street and replaced by a harder line Brexiteer such as Boris Johnson. 
Monday, December 4:
A draft deal painstakingly assembled by Theresa May falls apart when the DUP raises concerns they would separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
Mrs May and Mr Juncker end their meeting by confirming no deal has been done but insisting sufficient progress would be made in time for the December 14 summit of the European Council.
Mr Varadkar says he is 'surprised and disappointed' no deal has been secured yet. 

Thursday, December 7:
Frantic behind-the-scenes talks continue throughout the day.
5pm - the first signs of a breakthrough as Donald Tusk says will make a statement on Brexit early on Friday morning.
Government sources play down expectations, declaring: 'We're not there yet.'
7pm - Mr Juncker calls Mr Varadkar and then Mrs May as his spokesman says an early morning meeting with the UK PM is 'possible'.
9pm - As Downing Street staff hold their Christmas party in No10, Mrs May keeps working. She speaks to DUP leader Arlene Foster as the shape of a deal crystalises.
11pm - Mrs May has another conversation with Mrs Foster, during which the Northern Ireland politician is believed to have indicated she is content the text does not threaten the union but warned about a rush to strike a deal.
Friday December 8, 5am - Downing Street confirms that the Prime Minister and David Davis are travelling to Brussels to meet Mr Juncker and EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier.
6am - Mrs May arrives in Brussels, receiving a warm hug from Mr Juncker and talks begin immediately.
Mr Juncker's head of cabinet Martin Selmayr tweets a photograph of white smoke gushing from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel - the traditional way of alerting the world that a new Pope has been chosen.
6.40am - A European Commission press release announced that 'sufficient progress' has been made in the first phase of Brexit talks.
6.42am - Mr Juncker and Mrs May appear together at a press conference to herald the deal, with the PM declaring it 'a hard-won agreement in all our interests'.
Mr Juncker added: 'On the basis of the mandate which was given to me by the European Council, the Commission has just formally decided to recommend to the European Council that sufficient progress has now been made on the strict terms of the divorce.' 
In a potentially controversial passage of the text, the government has agreed that British courts will be able to refer issues about the rights of three million EU citizens in the UK to the European Court of Justice for eight years after Brexit.
The Government had warned to limit the role to five years, but Brussels was pushing for at least 15.
A No10 spokesman said: 'In terms of the ECJ we think we are looking at around two to three cases a year in relation to citizens' rights only and most importantly it would be a decision taken by a British court whether or not they wanted to refer a case to the ECJ for a view, that would be an entirely voluntary process. It will be the UK courts who are taking the decisions.' 

The document also sets out in detail how the divorce bill will be calculated - but does not give a figure. 
Billions of pounds will be returned to the UK from investments and other assets over the coming years - but it will be dwarfed by the liabilities Britain will cover. 
The UK will honour the commitments the EU entered into while it was a member on the basis of 'a percentage calculated as ratio between own resources made available by UK from the year 2014—2020 and own resources made available by all Member States, including UK, during same period'. 
The financial settlement 'will be drawn up and paid in euro' - meaning the cost in Pounds could depend on how the the currency markets view any final trade deal. 
Senior government sources said the final bill would be between £35billion and £40billion, although that could rise if the transition period ends up being longer than two years.  
Despite Philip Hammond insisting this week that the UK should pay whether or not there is a trade deal, the document makes clear the cash is contingent on a final agreement being reached. 
A No10 spokesman said: 'We see this as a fair settlement of our obligations. 
'We've always been clear that where we had obligation we would honour them. It's been a forensic process, teams from the Department from Exiting the European Union went through this line by line but we think we've reached a fair agreement.'

Cabinet ministers hailed the deal as a 'significant personal achievement' for Theresa May – and warned critics plotting against the PM to back off.
Environment Secretary and leading Brexiteer Mr Gove went on air on BBC Radio 4's Today programme to back the deal and heap praise on Mrs May for thrashing it out.
He said: 'This is a significant personal political achievement for the Prime Minister.
'Earlier this week, there were all sorts of doomsayers who thought there would be no prospect of an agreement. They've been proven wrong...
December 13 - European Parliament debates and votes on the Brexit 'divorce deal'.
December 14-15 - An EU summit is expected to give the green light to move negotiations on to trade and the transition to a post-Brexit relationship.
December 20 - The EU (Withdrawal) Bill due to complete crucial committee stage in the House of Commons.
January 2018 - Negotiations on the transition to future EU/UK relations, along with 'exploratory talks' on a possible free trade agreement. 
October 2018 - A final agreement on withdrawal and transition should be ready by this point in order to allow time for ratification before the end of the two-year Article 50 deadline.
2019 - Ratification process involving up to 38 national and regional parliaments, with any of them effectively holding a veto.
March 29, 2019 - The UK ceases to be a member of the EU, whether or not an agreement has been reached.
'The final whistle blew this morning and Theresa May won.' 
Mr Gove sought to reassure Tory MPs over the continuing role of the European Court of Justice for eight years after withdrawal.
He said 'it will be a matter for British judges to decide' what cases are referred to the court. 
Mr Gove also played down talk of a £48billion 'divorce bill', claiming it would be less than had been reported in the press, but refused to comment further on the figure. 
He said the PM could now work towards a free trade agreement with the EU covering both goods and services, no tariff barriers, a recognition of professional qualifications. 
The two-year transition period would mean the UK can 'iron out the details', he added. 
Mr Johnson, another senior Brexiteer who has been trying to toughen the government's stance, tweeted: Congratulations to PM for her determination in getting today's deal. 
'We now aim to forge a deep and special partnership with our European friends and allies while remaining true to the referendum result - taking back control of our laws, money and borders for the whole of the UK.' 

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also said the deal was a personal achievement for Mrs May.
He said on Twitter: 'Extraordinary achievement by @theresa_may today. Against all odds a deal delivered that confirms she is probably the only person in Britain able to deliver a good & clean Brexit

The DUP secured six 'substantial' changes to the deal which won their crucial backing. They are:
'Time for @theresa_may critics to recognise her extraordinary strength & resilience which, whatever the hurdles ahead, will deliver stage 2 just as it has delivered stage 1.'
Another prominent Brexiteer and former Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers also publicly-backed the deal this morning.
She told Today: 'There are some compromises in the document, which I would rather weren't there.
'But if we are going to make a success of this process and leave on orderly terms with a good relationship with our European partners, I'm afraid compromise is inevitable.'
In a sign the Tory machine is mobilising around the PM, ministers were out in force on twitter today to express their support for the plan.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: 'I'm delighted that we have got through phase one.
'This is good progress, there's going to be more to do but it shows that under Theresa May's leadership we are able to have successful negotiations and take forward this really important step of negotiating our exit from the European Union.' 

Steve Baker, a Brexit minister and one of the leading figures in the Leave campaign, said on Twitter: 'The Prime Minister has made important decisions in the national interest so we can move ahead to a successful EU exit. I am giving my full support.'
Mr Hammond, seen as the champion of soft Brexit in the Cabinet, said: 'Today's announcement in Brussels is a boost for Britain's economy. Now let's conclude a trade deal that supports Britain's jobs, businesses and prosperity.'


Labour also gave the outcome a cautious welcome, with shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer saying: 'Despite being two months later than originally planned, it is encouraging that the European Commission has recommended sufficient progress in the Brexit negotiations.
'The priority for both sides now must be to agree transitional arrangements on the same basic terms as we have now. That means staying in the single market and a customs union for a time-limited period.
'We will also need to know the political price of the deal struck and the impact any compromise that has been agreed will have on our future relationship with the EU.'
Nicola Sturgeon has welcomed a breakthrough in the first phase of Brexit talks but warned that the 'devil is in the detail' of the deal.
Scotland's First Minister said 'things now get really tough' after the European Commission announced that ''sufficient progress'' had been made to move negotiations on to the next phase.
But Tory MPs were far from happy with the detail of the deal. 
News that Brexit talks are set to move on to issues of trade and transition was welcomed by UK business leaders today. 
Stephen Martin, director general of the Institute of Directors, said: 'It went right down to the wire, but businesses will be breathing a huge sigh of relief.'
He added: 'The most pressing concern for UK companies has been their EU staff, who have urgently needed certainty about their future in this country'. 

In a statement, Dr Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce , said: 'For business, a swift start to trade talks is crucial. Businesses want answers on what leaving the EU will mean for regulation, customs, hiring, standards, tariffs and taxes.
On citizens' rights, he added: 'The biggest priority for many firms since the EU referendum has been to get clarity and security for their European employees, whose contribution to business success across the UK is hugely valued.
'We are delighted that they, as well as UK citizens living and working in the EU, now have more clarity and can plan their future with greater confidence.' 
CBI deputy director-general Josh Hardie said: 'The Government has shown the impact of being determined to focus on securing a good Brexit for jobs. Discussions will continue to be tough, but today's progress shows that careless talk of walking away can be replaced by confidence that the UK can get a good deal. Steely determination in the national interest must always come first.'
The national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, Mike Cherry, said: 'The focus must now shift to the UK's future trading relationship with the EU. This should include, by early next year, a guarantee that there will be no cliff-edge moment on Brexit day, but instead an orderly, time-limited transition period so that small firms only have one set of rule changes. The final deal must have as few barriers to trade as possible.'  
Philip Davies, the pro-Brexit Tory MP for Shipley, told MailOnline: 'The way I would sum it up is that it is unacceptable in places, so in terms of the ongoing subservience of the European Court of Justice, the divorce bill payments, and some of the uncertainty around the customs union and single market in relation to northern Ireland.
'Those things are unacceptable.
'I suppose it was better than some of us feared it was going to be. I suppose a lot of it is about expectation management.' 
Sir Bill Cash, a leading Brexiteer and chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, told MailOnline 'significant improvements' have been made but the detail and meaning of the document will need to be pored over.
He said: 'I think it's quite clear that significant improvements have been made, and there are still matters to clarify, and as chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee we will be looking at the document as soon as possible.
'Politically, some hurdles have been overcome, there is still some clarification needed but generally it's a step in the right direction.' 
Former minister David Jones warned the promise to align rules with the EU to protect the soft Irish border could stop the UK signing trade deals with other countries.
'The worry about that, of course, is that that could well relate to very important areas such as for example agriculture, which we would want to throw into the mix in negotiating a free trade agreement with a third country,' he told the BBC.
'And, if this were to persist, then it could severely handicap our ability to enter into those free trade agreements.'
Arron Banks, the millionaire founder of the Leave.EU campaign, said: 'It's confirmed, Theresa May has betrayed the country and the 17.4 million Leave voters.'
Mr Banks said that 'this traitorous, lily-livered embarrassment of a prime minister' had overseen 'the biggest sell-out of this country' since Edward Heath took the UK into the EU in 1973.'
Mr Farage branded the deal 'pathetic' and said Mrs May had misled the public over her red lines.
'I knew when I watch her saying live that the rights of three million EU citizens would be upheld by British courts, I knew she was lying then because you find out that actually the European Court of Justice and I quote from the document 'will remain the ultimate arbiter of the rights of EU citizens' and that goes on for a further eight years,' he told LBC radio. 
'What have we got from this? We have conceded a vast amount of money which the House of Lords committee themselves we simply have no obligations to pay.'
No10 sought to play down the concession on the ECJ, suggesting it would only relate to 'two or three' cases a year.
As the news unfolded overnight, European Council president Donald Tusk announced he would make a statement on Brexit in Brussels this morning, fuelling speculation a deal was close.
Mr Juncker held calls with Mr Varadkar then Mrs May yesterday evening. But it was not until around 5am that Downing Street confirmed the PM was travelling to Brussels to rubber-stamp the arrangements. 
The late-night talks came as Boris Johnson yesterday warned the PM not to make further compromises on Brexit. 
The Foreign Secretary said he backed Mrs May – but warned that she must not make any concessions that would prevent the UK 'taking back control of our laws, borders and cash' after Brexit. 
He said any deal must stick to the spirit of the Leave campaign he led, and the UK had already met the EU 'more than halfway' by offering a divorce payment of up to £40billion.
Asked if he was comfortable with a widespread 'regulatory alignment' between the UK and EU after Brexit, he added: 'You can take it from me that whatever comes up, whatever the solution that we come to, whatever we devise getting on to the body of the talks, it's got to be consistent, it's got to be consistent with the whole of the United Kingdom taking back control.'
Mrs May has faced a backlash from some Tory Eurosceptics after it emerged she had offered to guarantee some sectors of the economy would remain 'aligned' with EU regulations.
One DUP MP said: 'We've got loads of Tories coming up to us saying, 'Keep going, hang in there.' Theresa's problems aren't with us, they're with her own side.'
Government sources insist the plan would never be needed as the border issue will be solved by a comprehensive trade deal or a technological solution.
Mrs May told MPs this week that she was not compromising on her Brexit principles. But critics fear any concession could make it harder for Britain to strike free trade deals.

'Breaking up is hard to do': Donald Tusk tells PM she has a year to finalise Brexit and warns she must pay billions to the EU but will have NO SAY during two-year transition
A gloomy Donald Tusk today warned Britain: 'Breaking up is hard to do - but breaking up and keeping a good relationship is much harder' as the first Brexit deal was finally done.
The President of the European Council also told Theresa May she has a just year to negotiate Brexit because 'so much time has passed'.
Mr Tusk confirmed Mrs May would like a two year transition period after the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
But in return he said the UK will have pay billions into the EU budget s but have no say on any decisions and will be excluded from summits.
It must also accept all new laws from the European courts.
Mr Tusk, said the bloc is already ready to start negotiating a transition period with Britain after it leaves the EU and said it wanted more clarity from London on how it sees their new relationship after leaving.
Tusk said Britain will have to respect all EU laws during the transition, as well as respect its budgetary commitments and the bloc's judicial oversight.
But it would no longer take part in decision-making that will be done by the 27 remaining states.
'We are ready to start preparing a close UK-EU partnership in trade but also fight against terrorism and international crime, as well as security, defence and foreign policy,' Tusk told reporters after British PM Theresa May arrived in Brussels with a Brexit deal.
Tusk said, however, too much time was spent on negotiating the outlines of Britain's exit, which he said was the relatively easier part.
'We all know that breaking up is hard but breaking up and building a new relation is much harder,' he said. 'So much time has been devoted to the easier task and now ... we have de facto less than a year,' left of talks before Britain is due to leave in March, 2019.
Mr Tusk confirmed that he has sent the leaders of the remaining 27 EU states proposed guidelines for a new mandate for chief negotiator Michel Barnier to begin negotiations on the transition period, as well as 'exploratory talks' on the future trade relationship.
Mr Tusk said he was proposing that, during the transition period of around two years after March 2019, the UK should be required to respect EU law - including any new laws which are passed by the EU27 without British involvement - and to respect its budgetary commitments and the judicial oversight of the ECJ.
On trade, he said 'more clarity' was needed from the UK on how it sees the future relationship after it has left the single market and customs union.
'We are ready to start preparing a close EU/UK partnership in trade, but also in the fight against terrorism and international crime as well as security, defence and foreign policy,' said Mr Tusk, adding that this would require further guidelines to be drawn up next year.
He added: 'While being satisfied with today's agreement, which is obviously a personal success for Prime Minister Theresa May, let us remember that the most difficult challenge is still ahead.
'We all know that breaking up is hard, but breaking up and building a new relation is much harder.
'Since the Brexit referendum, a year and a half has passed. So much time has been devoted to the easier part of the task, and now to negotiate the transition agreement and the framework for our future relationship we have de facto less than a year.'
A relieved David Davis hugged Jean-Claude Juncker as a Brexit deal was done at the last gasp.
The Brexit Secretary and Theresa May dashed to Brussels by private jet this morning after late night talks unlocked talks on trade.
The ministers arrived in the Belgian capital at around 6am and were greeted by resident Jean-Claude Juncker.
But while Mrs May got a kiss Mr Davis and went in for a bear hug after a long week of negotiations. 
During a breakfast meeting with the EU team Mr Davis was full of smiles and he looked relaxed while chatting afterwards with negotiator in chief Michel Barnier.  
Mr Davis said on Twitter: 'Today is a big step forward in delivering Brexit. Been a lot of work but glad the Commission have now recommended that sufficient progress has been reached.
'Citizens can now be confident about the rights they enjoy; we should now move forward to discuss our future relationship with the EU on issues like trade and security.'
Irish PM Varadkar claims victory as DUP say they saved the union - but admit they wanted May to wait longer for deal
A jubilant Irish Prime Minster today claimed victory in the Brexit deal - but the DUP say their intervention has saved the union.
Leo Varadkar and Arlene Foster have both signed up to a deal on the the Irish border in a last-minute major breakthrough for Brexit talks.
The early-morning deal came five days after the DUP torpedoed original plans amid fears the deal on the Irish border could tear the UK apart.
Both sides were claiming victory this morning - with Mrs Foster's DUP party said they have made six 'substantial' changes to the deal.
They said these ensure Northern Ireland will keep the same rules as the rest of the UK and the border will not be pushed out to the Irish Sea.
But Mr Varadkar said he has secured 'all we set out to achieve' to ensure the border remains soft and peace maintained.
And he dismissed the additions forced through by the DUP as 'stylistic changes in language or 'just statements of fact' that his government had 'no difficulty with'.

At a press conference in Dublin this morning, Mr Varadkar said: 'We have achieved all we set out to achieve in phase one of these negotiations. 
'We have the assurances and guarantees which we need from the United Kingdom, and support for them form the European Union.
Why is the Irish border a problem?
After Brexit, Northern Ireland will have the only land border between the UK and the EU. 
With Britain leaving the single market and the customs union – but the Republic staying inside both – there are questions about how to move goods over the 300 crossing points along the 310-mile frontier.
What does each side want?
Dublin – backed by the EU – says there must be no 'hard border' involving customs checks fearing this could reignite violence and undermine peace.
Irish ministers have suggested Northern Ireland should stay inside the customs union. But Mrs May and the DUP ruled this out. The new deal explicitly says Northern Ireland will leave the customs union and single market with the rest of the UK.
Why was the last deal scuppered? 
Downing Street, Dublin and Brussels all thought they were ready to sign off on a deal on Monday.
But they collapsed at the eleventh hour when the DUP - who prop Theresa May up in No10 - pulled the plug amid fears only Northern Ireland would keep 'regulatory alignment' with the Republic post Brexit - effectively pushing border controls eastwards to the border with the rest of the UK.
What has changed?
The DUP say they have made 'substantial'  changes to the deal. This amounts to six all important clauses added in. They are: 
Northern Ireland will leave the EU. 
Northern Ireland will leave the customs union and single market alongside the rest of the UK.
There here will be no customs border in the Irish Sea.
Northern Ireland will  not be separated 'constitutionally, politically, economically or regulatory' from the rest of the UK.
There will be no 'special status' as Sinn Fein had demanded.
The UK is committed to retaining its own internal market. 

'I'm satisfied that sufficient progress has now been made on the Irish issues - parameters have been set and they are good. Now we can move on to work out the detail of what has been agreed - to talk about the transition phase, free trade and the new relationship between the EU and the UK .
'Now we can move on to talk about the detail of what has been achieve
'This is not the end but it it is the end of the beginning and we will remain fully engaged and vigilant.'
He said Dublin has guaranteed the Good Friday Agreement is protected and that the common travel area and soft Irish border is maintained.
And he highlighted a potentially hugely clause in the new deal which promises the UK will keep 'full alignment' with the EU's single market and customs union if it does not secure anew deal to keep a soft border.
He said the UK and EU's commitment to keeping a soft free-flowing border is 'rock solid and cast iron'.
And he hailed today's agreement as 'politically bulletproof'.
But the DUP - the small Northern Ireland party which is propping Mrs May up in No10 - said the deal is a victory for the unionists.
They hailed the 'substantial changes' they made to the text after they pulled the plug on an original deal when it was on the brink of being signed off by Brussels on Monday.
Mrs Foster said her party had been working with the Tories until the early hours of this morning to get six all-important new paragraphs inserted into the document.
She said this would guarantee the border cannot be pushed out to the Irish Sea - as originally proposed by Dublin - and rules out republican demands for 'special status' for the region.
She said: 'There will be no so-called 'special status' for Northern Ireland as demanded by Sinn Fein.
'Northern Ireland will not be separated constitutionally, politically, economically or regulatory from the rest of the United Kingdom.
'And the joint UK-EU report at the conclusion of phase one makes clear that in all circumstances the United Kingdom will continue to ensure the same unfettered access for Northern Ireland's businesses to the whole of the UK internal market.'
And while she warned there is 'still more work to be done' her party hailed their achievement as laying down in stone that the union will not be broken up.
Her chief whip in Westminster, Jeffrey Donaldson, said on Twitter: 'It's clear there will be no border in Irish Sea and no barriers to trade between NI (Northern Ireland) & GB (Great Britain)./
'NI will remain fully within U.K. Market. NI will leave Customs Union and Single Market with rest of U.K. Common Travel Area will be preserved. No hard border between NI and Irish Republic. 


European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker thanked Theresa May 'for her determination' as he announced the Brexit breakthrough.
He also praised the 'extremely hard and skillful work over the last weeks and months' of chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, the UK's Brexit Secretary David Davis and their teams.
Here is what he told reporters about their early morning meeting in Brussels:
'We discussed the joint report agreed by the two negotiators.
'Prime Minister May has assured me that it has backing of the UK Government. On that basis I believe we have now made the breakthrough we needed.
'Today's result is of course a compromise. It is the result of a long and intense discussion between the Commission negotiators and those of the UK.
'As in any negotiation, both sides have to listen to each other, adjust their position and show a willingness to compromise.
'This was a difficult negotiation for the European Union as well as for the United Kingdom.
'On Wednesday, last Wednesday, the College of Commissioners gave me a mandate to conclude the negotiation of the joint report.
'And it had to be concluded today, not next week, today because next week we have the European Council and in order to allow our partners to prepare in the best way possible the meeting of the European Council, we had to make the deal today.
'On the basis of the mandate which was given to me by the European Council, the Commission has just formally decided to recommend to the European Council that sufficient progress has now been made on the strict terms of the divorce.'
 
The extent of anti-Brexit bias at some of Britain’s best known universities was laid bare last night amid a furious row.
A Tory MP was castigated this week and accused of ‘McCarthyism’ for asking universities what they are teaching about the UK’s departure from the EU.
But yesterday the Daily Mail uncovered a string of examples of senior figures at universities explicitly speaking out in favour of Remain.
Before the vote, a raft of senior academics spoke publicly to urge their students to back staying in the EU.
Last night, one student campaigner revealed a professor had stormed up to him at a Vote Leave stall in Durham – and compared Brexit supporters to the Nazis.
Scroll down for video 
Since last year’s referendum, lecturers have been caught doling out pro-EU pamphlets and inviting students to meetings held by the pro-single market group Open Britain.
The Mail also found the master of a Cambridge college used a graduation event this year to rail against Brexit.
One pro-Leave student yesterday said the extent of the bias had left him feeling ‘intimidated’ and afraid to speak his mind. In other developments last night:
In a letter, Conservative whip Mr Heaton-Harris had asked institutions for the names of professors lecturing on Brexit and details of their courses. Universities described the letter as ‘McCarthyite’, while Chris Patten, the former Conservative Party chairman accused the MP of ‘idiotic Leninism’.
But last night Tory MPs said revelations of anti-Brexit bias showed that Mr Heaton-Harris was well within his rights to ask what is happening in higher education.
Andrew Rosindell said universities must ‘present a factual account of Brexit’.
Tom Harwood, from the student wing of the Vote Leave campaign at Durham University, yesterday said: ‘There is a worrying “groupthink” atmosphere hanging over our universities. Too many young people who voted to leave the EU feel intimidated or afraid to speak up because of this heavy atmosphere of institutional bias.
‘A professor got quite aggressive towards us when we were running a street stall in the run-up to the vote. He said we were “doing the same thing the Nazis did”. We complained and subsequently received a letter of apology from him.’ Durham University did not provide a comment last night.
Before the referendum, a number of senior academics encouraged students to vote Remain. Sir Steve Smith, vice chancellor at Exeter University, wrote an email to undergraduates encouraging them to recognise the ‘benefits’ of ‘membership of the EU’.
More than eight in ten academics voted to Remain in the EU, polls showed.
The vast majority thought Brexit would have a negative impact on higher education in the UK, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by the University and College Union.
In the survey of 1,064 professors, published in January, just 8 per cent voted to leave the EU. It mirrored polls ahead of the referendum that suggested nine in ten supported the Remain campaign.
In March the Adam Smith Institute think-tank warned ‘groupthink mentality is rife within academia’, after 75 per cent of lecturers said they were ‘Left-wing’. Its report said: ‘Social settings characterised by too little diversity of viewpoints are liable to become afflicted by groupthink … key assumptions go unquestioned, dissenting opinions are neutralised, and favoured beliefs are held as sacrosanct.’
The authors said ‘ideological homogeneity’ in academia can lead to ‘systematic biases in scholarship, curtailments of free speech on university campuses’.
Some 44 per cent in the January poll said they knew academics who had lost research funding since the vote. More than four in ten said they were more likely to consider moving abroad.
John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde University, said the poll results ‘epitomise the relatively socially liberal climate in most universities’ and that in this case ‘culture and self-interest move in the same direction’.
Now it has emerged that pro-Remain bias has continued even after the vote. A lecturer at a Bristol university was recently called out by Conservative Paul Scully for handing out a poster advertising a pro-EU march to the MP’s daughter. In a separate incident, a Gloucester University lecturer advertised a ‘Unite for Europe national march to Parliament’ to ‘stop Brexit’ on her office door.
Durham students received emails from a lecturer in French, Dr Will McKenzie, highlighting the pro-EU group Open Britain, which wants to keep Britain’s membership of the single market. In December last year, he announced the first Durham Open Britain ‘community meeting’, urging students and staff to get involved.
He added: ‘The organisation might offer wider platforms to help staff members and departments relay the university’s explicit post-Brexit statement, namely, “We flourish because we are an inclusive and outward-looking community”.’ A month later Dr McKenzie invited students to an Open Britain stall in Newcastle as part of a national day of action.
He described Open Britain as ‘a group campaigning for the closest possible UK-EU relationship despite last year’s disappointing referendum result’.
It also emerged the master of a Cambridge college used a graduation dinner in June to warn students Brexit would cause uncertainty. Professor Geoffrey Grimmett was accused of ruining the ‘special moment’.
One of those present said: ‘For students at the end of their degree courses it is supposed to be a special moment … But he basically used the dinner to push his own political views and bash Brexit.’
Last night Professor Grimmett said: ‘In my speech I reflected on the immediate impact of the Brexit vote on Cambridge, namely uncertainty.’
Mr Heaton-Harris did not respond to requests for comments yesterday. But he received support from Tory MPs, including Andrew Bridgen who said: ‘I’m sure Chris Heaton-Harris wouldn’t have got this explosive and very defensive response if he’d enquired about the syllabus on advanced pure mathematics.’
Mr Rosindell said: ‘Universities must show they are unbiased and present a factual account of Brexit, not Remoaning drivel.’ Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘It is not unreasonable to ask questions of public bodies.’ 
In their own very telling words, how academics in our respected seats of learning have tried to influence students’ views both before and after the referendum
BEFORE JUNE 23
University of Exeter
A string of staff used their positions to push students towards Remain before the referendum.
Vice Chancellor Sir Steve Smith wrote an email to all undergraduates encouraging them to see the ‘benefits’ EU membership offers.
Melissa Percival, a languages professor at the same university, added her voice to tell students Brexit would ‘threaten the future of British students abroad’.
Professor Percival later told reporters: ‘People need to know this stuff. The Erasmus programme greatly facilitates modern linguists… and we will lose access if Britain leaves the EU.’ Another languages professor Emma Cayley also forwarded an email to students from the Students4Europe campaign requesting that they join the group, but refused to send a similar email for the University’s Leave Group.
University of Wolverhampton
Vice Chancellor Geoff Layer emailed students warning of the costs of leaving the EU. He said: ‘The university has made a stand in the EU referendum... we believe it is better for all of us to remain. The EU has been very supportive of the university.
‘In this century we have received nearly £70million of project and initiative funding from Europe.’ Conservative MP Bill Cash said: ‘The university is wrong to force propaganda down the throats of its students.’
University of Warwick
Sean Hand, the head of the School of Modern Languages, used the faculty’s mailing list to send a pro-EU letter signed by academics to undergraduates, urging them to vote with the ‘free mobility of students and staff’ in mind.
He said: ‘As languages students, this vote is clearly crucial to key funding issues concerning university research, free mobility of students and staff, and your own employability and career aspirations as internationally-skilled students.
‘The school of modern languages and cultures has a core set of values that includes communicating and working across national and linguistic boundaries.’
University of Plymouth
Students campaigning for Vote Leave were banned from holding events on campus because they were not ‘fair and unbiased’.
The university later allowed an event called ‘Another Europe is Possible’, involving only three pro-EU speakers.
Durham University
A student claimed he had been compared to the Nazis for running a pro-Leave stall in the city centre. Tom Harwood said: ‘A professor got quite aggressive towards us when we were running a street stall in the run-up to the vote. He said we were “doing the same thing the Nazis did”.
British universities are the largest beneficiary of EU research funds to higher education institutions.
Figures released before the referendum showed they received a total of £1.2billion each year.
The elite Russell Group of 24 universities alone receives around £400million – making up 11 per cent of their research income. A report by the Royal Society and others found archaeology is most dependent on Brussels, receiving 38 per cent of its funding from EU government bodies. This is followed by classics with 33 per cent and IT on 30 per cent.
Oxford University receives the most EU funds – £60.3million – followed by Cambridge which receives £59.5million and UCL on £45.7million.
 
We complained and received a letter of apology from him.’ The university had last night not responded to calls for a comment.
AFTER JUNE 23
University of Bristol 
University of Gloucestershire
Dr Abigail Gardner, from the Media School, replied to the furore about Mr Scully’s tweet by replying with a picture of her office door, advertising a ‘Unite for Europe national march to Parliament’ to ‘Stop Brexit’ flyer. Addressing the MP she added the message: ‘My students have to go through my door. Want me to redecorate that too?’ A poster of the EU flag is also visible in the picture.
Dr Gardner and the university were contacted for comment but, last night, had not responded.
University of York
On a page entitled ‘EU advice’, published in the aftermath of the Brexit result, the university said: ‘We are proud that York voted to remain in the EU.
‘We are proud that that vote demonstrates a spirit of generosity and openness that our students experience on a daily basis.
‘York is a city that has benefited from migration for hundreds of years.’ The page also offers counselling for those worried about the EU result saying: ‘We appreciate that the outcome of the referendum has created a period of uncertainty which is concerning.’
Durham University
Students received emails from a lecturer in French, Dr Will McKenzie, highlighting the pro-EU group Open Britain. In December last year, he wrote he was pleased to announce the first Durham Open Britain ‘community meeting’.
‘This meeting will offer a university students and staff members to get involved with activities run by Open Britain,’ he said.
A month later Dr McKenzie invited students to an Open Britain campaign stall in Newcastle as part of a national day of action
University of Cambridge
A college master used a graduation dinner to warn students about Brexit. Professor Geoffrey Grimmett, an expert in statistics, had previously used the university email system to encourage students to sign a petition demanding a second referendum.
One of those present at the graduation dinner in June this year said: ‘Instead of using the speech to congratulate those graduating, he spent a significant amount of the time railing against Brexit.’ Professor Grimmett said: ‘I reflected on the immediate impact of the Brexit vote on Cambridge, namely uncertainty.’
During the referendum campaign, David Cameron was ridiculed when he declared that Britain leaving the EU could put the Continent of Europe at risk of war. No one believed it: probably not even Cameron.
But now those leading the campaign to thwart Theresa May honouring the result of that referendum are using the threat of civil war to terrify us.
Specifically, they claim Brexit will create a 'hard border' between Northern Ireland (outside the EU) and the Republic of Ireland (inside it), and that this could somehow provoke 'the men of violence' to return to terrorism.
The former prime minister John Major — who last week admitted he wanted to stop Brexit happening at all — was at it again yesterday, warning that such a 'hard' border would become a 'target … for Unionist or Nationalist fringes that wish to provoke trouble'. 
The argument, also put by Tony Blair and Michel Barnier, who leads the EU's Brexit negotiating team, is that a customs border between the North and South of Ireland puts at grave risk the entire Good Friday Agreement.
This scare-mongering enrages David Trimble, the former Unionist leader who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his role negotiating that settlement: 'It is not true that Brexit in any way threatens the peace process. There is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement which even touches on the normal conduct of business between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
'Leaving the EU does not affect the agreement because the EU had nothing to do with it — except that Michel Barnier turned up at the last minute for a photo opportunity.'
Why, then, are Barnier and the European Commission making this issue so central to their negotiations, even to the extent of suggesting, to the outrage of the Prime Minister, that a new border be drawn across the Irish Sea, with Northern Ireland becoming a detached subordinate province of the EU?
The reason is Ireland is actually Brussels' weakest link in its attempt to drive a hard bargain with the UK. More than any other EU state, Ireland is dependent on unimpeded free trade with Britain. More than any other EU state, Ireland wants a deal that retains the maximum amount of ease of business.
Cunningly — and ruthlessly — Barnier's team have turned this weakness into a strength by weaponising the Good Friday Agreement. This is designed to terrify the British into agreeing to become an affiliate of the EU Customs Union. This would be a crazy idea from our point of view, as we would be compelled to adhere to all the EU's external tariffs, and lose the power to negotiate our own trade deals with other nations.
Yet Labour has fallen headlong into this elephant trap. Last week, after flying to Brussels for talks with Barnier, Jeremy Corbyn declared his party's support for Britain becoming an appendage of the EU Customs Union. 
As Professor Vernon Bogdanor, a Remainer and leading constitutional expert, pointed out in the Labour-supporting Guardian, this would 'make Britain in effect a client state of the EU'.
But the craziest thing of all is that this notion of a 'hard border' in Ireland post-Brexit is not even believed in Brussels. Last year, the EU parliament itself produced a lengthy paper (Smart Border 2.0. Avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland) authored by Lars Karlsson, the former director of the World Customs Organisation and Deputy Director General of Swedish Customs.
It concluded that modern technology and customs practice meant there was no need for a 'hard border on the island of Ireland: The solution presented here can be implemented regardless of the legal framework for the UK's exit from the EU.'
But you don't need to project into the future. Think of the world we live in today. How often have you been stopped by customs officials when you return from a trip abroad? Actually, it's hard to find one if you do have something to declare.
This goes for business, too. When the Commons Brexit Committee investigated this matter, they were told by the chief executive of HMRC, Jon Thompson, that his staff physically inspected only 0.5 per cent of imports from non-EU countries.
And Thompson went on to tell the Committee: 'We do not believe, and this has been our consistent advice to ministers, [that] we require any infrastructure at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland under any circumstances.' 
Indeed, we can observe this in the way in which business moves between the EU and Switzerland — which is not a member, nor in any customs union with it.
A highly successful businessman friend, who, incidentally, is very much not a Brexit supporter, wrote to me last week to criticise the EU's posturing on this issue: 'I frequently cross the Swiss border into France, sometimes two or three times a day. By the way, 35,000 people cross back and forth from Germany and France every day to work in Basel [a Swiss city]. It is a way of life.
'Virtually none are stopped. I did this myself for nine years and was stopped twice in all that time. And this was without the technology that a Smart Border could bring, and before Schengen [the treaty introducing visa-free travel].'
This most experienced businessman added: 'Surely the Good Friday Agreement has nothing to do with whether there is a border of any sort? It may be perceived as a negative symbol to see border controls, but why does this undermine peace? It only would if you're a troublemaker.'
And who are the troublemakers here? The European Commission's Brexit negotiating team. It is shaming that two former British prime ministers, determined to deny the reality of the referendum result, have enlisted as M Barnier's useful idiots.
Labour double standards? Surely not! 
A week ago, Jeremy Corbyn and Dawn Butler, the Shadow Equalities Minister, posed for pictures with newly appointed members of Labour’s LGBT advisory group — one of them the mixed race transgender model Munroe Bergdorf.
Now a series of Bergdorf’s tweets from 2010 have emerged, in one of which she (or rather he, as was then Bergdorf’s identity) told someone: ‘How’s your barren womb? We all know your little secret … hairy lesbian.’
And another in which he expressed a desire to ‘gay-bash’ a certain individual.
Bergdorf has apologised but insisted: ‘Who I am now, is not who I was almost a decade ago when I wrote those tweets.’
That seems good enough for Dawn Butler. This is the same Dawn Butler who led Labour’s campaign to get Toby Young sacked as a board member of a government higher education regulator earlier this year, after it emerged that Young, the founder of a number of free schools in London, had in 2009 tweeted crude remarks about women’s breasts, among other regrettable observations.
‘The virulence of Mr Young’s misogyny’, said Butler, meant he should lose his position. And when he resigned, she denounced ‘Theresa May’s total lack of judgment in appointing him’.
Now that one of her own advisers has been caught out by offensive tweets of similar vintage, Ms Butler has nothing bad to say about it. At least in Young’s case, the PM and the Education Department didn’t know about the offending nine-year-old tweets when he was appointed.
But Ms Butler must have known that last year Bergdorf was sacked by L’Oreal after she wrote on Facebook that ‘ALL white people’ are guilty of ‘racial violence’ and that the Suffragettes were ‘white supremacists’. (This was based on the model’s totally false assertion that only ‘white women’ got the right to vote in 1918.)
Dawn Butler must have been aware of this when she appointed Bergdorf, and should have known that her appointee wrote only last year that ‘gay male Tories are a special kind of d***head’. I can only conclude that Butler agrees with Bergdorf.
And that’s worse than hypocrisy.
 

Theresa May has been ordered by the Supreme Court to bring legislation before Parliament to trigger Article 50 and start Brexit.
The instructions were handed down by Britain's top judges after an historic case involving all 11 justices sitting together for the first time.
Eight judges upheld November's controversial High Court ruling that said an Act of Parliament must be passed to invoke Article 50. They were: Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Mance, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson, Lord Sumption and Lord Hodge.
Three backed Mrs May - but were outvoted. They were: Lord Carnwath, Lord Hughes and Lord Reed.
Lord Neuberger - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
As president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger is the leader of the 12 judges who have the final say in Britain on how the laws set by Parliament are interpreted.
He was born in 1948 and educated at Westminster School before reading chemistry at Christ Church, Oxford.
He worked at the Rothschild family's merchant banking firm from 1970 to 1973, before he entered Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in 1974, becoming Queen's Council in 1987 and earning his first judicial appointment as a Recorder in 1990. 
Lord Neuberger became a High Court judge in 1996, a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2004 and in 2007 he was made a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and became a life peer as Baron Neuberger of Abbotsbury in the County of Dorset.
Lord Neuberger married television producer Angela Holdsworth in 1976 and they have three children, Jessica, Nicholas and Max, who are all solicitors. His sister-in-law is Baroness Neuberger, DBE Senior Rabbi of the West London Synagogue.
In April 2015, he sparked controversy when he said that judges must respect the right of Muslim women who wish to wear veils while in court. 
And in 2012, during his time as Master of the Rolls, he hit out at legal professionals who court publicity following an appearance by Lord Justice Stanley Burnton as a judge on MasterChef.
Baroness Hale - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Baroness Hale, 71, is the most senior woman judge in the country.  
A feminist, Baroness Hale is a long-standing critic of marriage although she has been married to her second husband for nearly 25 years.
Lady Hale first came to widespread notice in the 1980s when she was appointed to the Law Commission. She drew up a law making it possible for a woman to get a court order throwing a man out of his own home if she accused him of violence. In 2014, a High Court judge condemned the way the law had been used to evict a father of six from his home after 20 years of marriage.
Lady Hale was also heavily involved in the preparation of the 1989 Children Act, held by opponents to have deprived parents of much of their say over their children’s lives.
She became a High Court family judge in 1994 and the first woman Law Lord a decade later. She has been a Supreme Court judge since 2009. 
She has been a prominent critic of the male domination of the judiciary and the wearing of wigs in court. She has joined other Supreme Court judges in suggesting a special court should be set up to decide whether individuals should be given help to commit suicide.
As a legal academic, she once wrote: ‘We should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose.’
In another article, she asked: ‘Do we still think it necessary, desirable or even practicable to grant marriage licences to enter into relationships?’ 
Lord Mance - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Lord Mance, 73, made headlines when he lashed out at the press while delivering his judgement upholding an injunction preventing the identification of a married star who organised a threesome with another couple.
In upholding the gagging order he also took a swipe at critics, including this website, saying: 'As to MailOnline's portrayal of the law as an ass, if that is the price of applying the law it is one which must be paid.' 

He sat as a Recorder in 1993 and between 2000 and 2011 he represented the United Kingdom on the Council of Europe's Consultative Council of European Judges.
He has also served on the House of Lords European Union Select Committee, chairing sub-committee E which scrutinises proposals concerning European law and institutions, and in 2008 led an international delegation reporting on the problems of impunity in relation to violence against women in the Congo.
Lord Mance is married to Dame Mary Arden, who is herself a Lord Justice of Appeal, and the pair - who have two daughters and a son - are the first ever married couple to serve concurrently in the Court of Appeal. 
His hobbies include tennis, languages, and music. 
Lord Sumption - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Once dubbed the 'cleverest man in Britain', Lord Sumption was one of the country's highest paid QCs and counted Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich among his clients.  

After reading history at Magdalen College, Oxford, and serving for four years as a history Fellow of the College, Lord Sumption was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1975 and took Silk in 1986.  His practice covered all aspects of Commercial, EU and Competition, Public and Constitutional Law.
He was appointed as a Deputy High Court Judge in 1992 and served as a Recorder between 1993 and 2001. He was appointed as a Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey in 1995. In January 2012 he became a Justice of The Supreme Court. 




Lord Reed - VOTED WITH THE GOVERNMENT 
Lord Robert Reed, 60, is one of the two Scottish justices who sit on The Supreme Court. He attended George Watson’s College in Edinburgh and later the University of Edinburgh in the School of Law, where he attained a First Class degree and won the prestigious Vans Dunlop Scholarship.
Lord Reed later went on to Balliol College at Oxford University to study for a PhD, and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1983, where he undertook a wide range of civil work.
He married wife Jane Mylne in 1988, and the couple have two daughters.
Lord Reed served as a senior judge in Scotland for 13 years, being appointed to the Outer House of the Court of Session in 1998 and promoted to the Inner House in January 2008.
He is an authority on human rights law in Scotland, and has also sat as an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights. As part of this role, he sat in the Grand Chamber judgements in 1999 on the appeals of Jamie Bulger's killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. 

Lord Kerr - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Sir Brian Kerr, 68, was the last Law Lord appointed before the creation of the Supreme Court in October 2009. 
Educated at St Colman’s College, Newry, Sir Brian read law at Queen’s University, Belfast. 
He was called to the Bar in Northern Ireland in 1970, to the Bar of England and Wales in 1974 and became a QC in 1983. 
In 1993 he was appointed a Judge of the High Court and knighted. He became Lord Chief Justice and joined the Privy Council in 2004.
Lord Kerr succeeded Lord Carswell of Killeen as Northern Ireland’s Lord of Appeal in Ordinary on 29 June 2009.
Lord Clarke - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
Lord Clarke, 73, was the first High Court Judge to be appointed directly to the Supreme Court without having sat as a Law Lord.
He was educated at Oakham School, in Rutland, and read law at King's College, Cambridge, before being called to bar in 1965. 
Lord Clarke spent 27 years at the bar, specialising in maritime and commercial law, undertaking a wide variety of cases in these areas.
Lord Clarke conducted the Marchioness and Bowbelle Inquiry into the 1989 collision between two vessels on the Thames that resulted in the deaths of 51 people. 
He became a Recorder in 1985, sitting in both criminal and civil courts. 
He was appointed to the High Court Bench in 1993 and in April that year succeeded Mr. Justice Sheen as the Admiralty Judge. He also sat in the Commercial Court and the Crown Court trying commercial and criminal cases respectively.  
On 1 October 2005 he was appointed Master of the Rolls and Head of Civil Justice. 
Lord Clarke took his seat as a crossbencher in the House of Lords in 2009. 
He is married to wife Rosemary, Lady Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony, and the couple have three children.
Lord Wilson - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT  
Nicholas Wilson, Lord Wilson of Culworth, studied at Bryanston School, Dorset, and later read jurisprudence at Worcester College, Oxford.
In 1967 he was called to the Bar and spent the next 26 years practising almost exclusively in the field of family law.
He became a QC in 1987 and was made a Recorder the same year. 
From 1993 until 2005 Lord Wilson, 71, was a judge of the Family Division of the High Court. From 2005 until May 2011 he was a judge of the Court of Appeal.
In May 2011 he became a Justice of The Supreme Court, gaining the courtesy style Lord Wilson of Culworth.
Lord Carnwath - VOTED WITH THE GOVERNMENT 
Old Etonian Lord Carnwath, 71, studied law at Trinity College, Cambridge. 
He was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1968. He practised in parliamentary law, planning and local government, revenue law and administrative law. 
Lord Carnwath held the appointment of Junior Counsel to the Inland Revenue (Common Law) from 1980 to 1985. He took silk in 1985.
He served as Attorney General to the Prince of Wales from 1988 to 1994.
Lord Carnwath was a judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court from 1994 to 2002, when he was appointed to the Court of Appeal. 
Lord Carnwath also has a significant interest in environment law. 
Since 2002 he has participated in a judicial task force developing a programme to improve the understanding and practice of environmental issues among judges across the world. 
He is also an accomplished viola player and member of the Bach Choir.
Lord Hughes - VOTED WITH THE GOVERNMENT 
Born in St Albans, Hertfordshire, in 1948, Lord Hughes was educated at the Shrewsbury School before obtaining a law degree from Durham University.
He was called to the Bar (Inner Temple in 1970) and served as a Recorder of the Crown Court from 1985 to 1997.
He became a Queen's Counsel in 1990 and was later appointed a judge of the High Court (Family Division from 1997 to 2003; and Queen's Bench Division from 2004 to 2006). 
Lord Hughes, 68, was appointed to the  Court of Appeal in 2006 and served as Vice President of its Criminal Division from 2009 until his appointment as Justice of the Supreme Court in April 2013. 
Lord Hodge - VOTED AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT 
One of the two Scottish Justices, Lord Hodge went to school at Glenalmond College, in Perthshire. 
He studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a civil servant at the Scottish Office between 1975 and 1978. 
He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1983 and appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1996. As a QC his work has been mainly in commercial law, judicial review and property law.
Between 1997 and 2003 Lord Hodge was part-time Law Commissioner at the Scottish Law Commission. From 2000 to 2005 he was a Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey. 
Lord Hodge joined the Supreme Court in October 2013. 
 

Theresa May has drawn up plans to waive import taxes and create huge inland lorry parks to keep trade flowing as ministers prepare for a 'no deal' Brexit. 
The Prime Minister told MPs they were preparing for ‘every eventuality’ in the Brexit negotiations – including the possibility that Brussels continues to stall on a new free trade deal.
HM Revenue and Customs last night set out the first detailed proposals for policing a new post-Brexit border in the event of no deal.
A white paper published by HMRC states that a new customs regime will be ready ‘from day one’ after Brexit, regardless of whether the EU agrees a trade deal.
Plans include the creation of new inland lorry parks to check imports without causing queues at major ports like Dover and Harwich.
A leaked document from the Department of International Trade also lays out radical contingency plans for leaving without a deal.
Ideas contained within the so-called ‘Project After’ document including dropping all import tariffs and becoming a champion of free trade. A senior government source last night said contingency plans would be stepped up after Christmas if Brussels continued to drag its feet.
Preparing the physical infrastructure for a new border regime is likely to cost several billion pounds and require the recruitment of thousands of staff.
‘It will be expensive, but we can do it and we will,’ the source said. ‘We don’t believe we will leave without a deal. But the EU has to understand that we are serious about going it alone if we have to.’
Mrs May yesterday told MPs that the white papers on customs and trade paved the way for new laws ‘to allow the UK to operate as an independent trading nation and to create an innovative customs system that will help us achieve the greatest possible tariff and barrier-free trade as we leave the EU’.
She added: ‘While I believe it is profoundly in all our interests for the negotiations to succeed, it is also our responsibility as a Government to prepare for every eventuality, so that is exactly what we are doing.
‘These white papers also support that work, including setting out steps to minimise disruption for businesses and travellers.’
The intervention came after Brussels rejected Mrs May’s offer to plug a £20billion black hole in the EU’s budget after the UK leaves in 2019. The PM said the olive branch – contained in her Florence speech last month – meant that the ball was now ‘in their court’.
But the European Commission’s chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas rejected the idea, saying: ‘There has been so far no solution found on step one, which is the divorce proceedings, so the ball is entirely in the UK court for the rest to happen.’
Ministers believe there is no chance of the EU declaring ‘sufficient progress’ has been made on the divorce proceedings to allow trade talks to begin when national leaders gather for a crunch summit in Brussels next week.
Privately they remain optimistic that trade talks will begin by Christmas. But they are determined to show the EU that the option of leaving without a deal is not an idle threat. One source said: ‘Cameron’s biggest mistake was that the EU never believed he was willing to walk away, whatever they offered him, so they offered him next to nothing. We are not going to repeat that mistake.’ Eurosceptic MPs yesterday warned the PM that her Florence speech had gone far enough in offering concessions.
Tory MP Philip Davies told Mrs May the Florence speech ‘seemed like a reward for the EU’s intransigence’. He asked for a guarantee that there would be ‘no more rewards’ for Brussels.
Mrs May told MPs it was now time for the EU to show flexibility.
She said she was optimistic, saying: ‘What we are seeking is not just the best possible deal for us, but I believe that will also be the best possible deal for our friends, too.’
The HMRC document says efforts will be made to ‘mitigate the impact on traders’ who deal with the EU and whose goods would suddenly face new tariffs and customs checks. Importers would be required to give advance notice of goods arriving in the UK.
And new lorry parks would be set up inland to handle customs checks to stop ports becoming clogged up.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the documents showed ‘no real progress has been made’.
The EU’S chief Brexit negotiator believes that speeding up talks on the ‘transition’ deal Theresa May has requested could break the deadlock in negotiations. Michel Barnier has told European diplomats bringing forward discussions on the arrangement will help the Brexit talks to succeed.
Theresa May yesterday repeated her wish to start crafting an ‘implementation period’, which would effectively see the UK remaining part of the EU bloc for two years after Brexit in 2019.
EU leaders are expected to discuss the move in Brussels next week.  
Jeremy Corbyn suffered a double humiliation last night as MPs roundly rejected his plans to delay Brexit – and he finally had to agree to talks with the Prime Minister.
Fourteen of the Labour leader's own MPs voted against a proposal – which he had backed just hours earlier – to keep Britain in the EU beyond March 29 if no deal is agreed by the end of the month.
It was one of a string of defeats, with the only vote Mr Corbyn's side winning being a non-binding expression of will that the UK should not leave without a deal.
And just two weeks after rejecting Theresa May's invitation to discuss the way forward for Brexit, he performed a U-turn and agreed to see her in Downing Street.
Mr Corbyn told MPs: 'Now that the House has voted emphatically to reject the No Deal option the Prime Minister was supporting could I say we are now prepared to meet her to put forward the points of view from the Labour Party of the kind of deal we want from the European Union. To protect jobs, to protect living standards and to protect rights and conditions in this country.'
Amid remarkable scenes, the Labour leader lost a series of amendments thanks to a string of rebellions by backbenchers, many of them in Leave seats.
It meant the Commons voted 321 to 298 against the main proposal, tabled by senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper, which would have seen the UK staying in the EU beyond March 29.
Mr Corbyn had confirmed at lunchtime that his party would be supporting a delay of three months, saying it was important to avoid a No Deal Brexit and ensure there was time for renegotiation. But 14 Labour MPs rebelled, giving the Government a majority of 23 against the extension of Article 50.
They included serial Corbyn opponents such as John Mann and Ian Austin along with hard-Left supporters of the leader, such as Dennis Skinner. And not enough rebel Tory MPs – just 17 – voted with former Conservative minister Nick Boles, who had also advocated the delay.
Miss Cooper's plan would have allowed MPs to call for a delay to Article 50 if no deal had been approved by February 26.
But Mrs May said the amendment was 'deeply misguided' and warned of the constitutional dangers of seeking to 'usurp' the Government.
Labour had been cautious about officially throwing its weight behind the plan, with the party's leadership nervous about alienating Leave-supporting voters in some of its heartlands.
But Mr Corbyn told the Commons: 'The Labour Party will back that amendment tonight because to crash out without a deal would be deeply damaging for industry and economy.'
He added that he was 'backing a short window of three months to allow time for renegotiation'.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the plan 'will allow Parliament to fill the void of leadership left by the Prime Minister'.
If the amendment had gone through, it would have taken away the Government's right to set the business of the Commons to allow Miss Cooper's bill to be debated.
The MP insisted her bill was not an attempt to prevent Brexit, merely to 'give Government and Parliament a chance to avert No Deal in March if time has run out'.
Speaking in the Commons, the Prime Minister said the plan would 'allow Parliament to usurp the proper role of the executive'.
'Such actions would be unprecedented and could have far-reaching and long-term implications for the way the UK is governed and for the balance of powers and responsibilities in our democratic institutions,' she said.
'So, while I do not question their sincerity in trying to avoid a No Deal Brexit, to seek to achieve that through such means is, I believe, deeply misguided, and not a responsible course of action.
'Neither amendment actually delivers on the best way of avoiding No Deal, which is, as I have said, for the House to approve a deal with the European Union.'
The PM said the amendment would also not resolve the difficulties faced in getting any solution through Parliament. 'It does not rule out No Deal, it simply delays the point of decision', she said.
Pro-Brexit former Cabinet minister Dominic Raab also attacked the amendment, saying it would lead to 'understandable fears that actually it is a ruse to reverse or frustrate Brexit'.
Miss Cooper said: 'I am really worried that the delay and the drift and the chasing of unicorns mean we could now end up with No Deal by accident.'
Unless the Prime Minister changes direction and changes approach, she said: 'I fear we will reach the brink.'
Her amendment, she said, would 'make sure there is a safety net to prevent No Deal on March 29'.
In another vote, MPs ordered Theresa May not to lead the country towards a No Deal Brexit.
They backed a cross-party amendment, championed by Tory Dame Caroline Spelman, which rejects the UK leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement by 318 votes to 310. However, the motion was not binding.    
MPs faced a choice of seven Plan Bs for Brexit in the Commons on Tuesday night as the Government scrambles for a way forward on Brexit.
Sir Graham Brady's amendment demanding changes to the backstop in the divorce deal won the support of the House of Commons after it was endorsed by Theresa May.   
The hope is that securing a majority for the demand will demonstrate to Brussels that the deal can pass if the backstop is legally time limited.
Remain supporters backed a plan from Yvette Cooper to block no deal by delaying Brexit if there is not an agreement by February 26, but the amendment was rejected. 
The House also backed an amendment from Caroline Spelman which rejected a no-deal Brexit but without a clear plan for avoiding one.  
Other amendments from Tory Dominic Grieve Labour's Rachel Reeves, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and SNP leader Ian Blackford were rejected.   
SIR GRAHAM BRADY'S PLAN TO FIX THE BACKSTOP BY DEMANDING CHANGES FROM THE EU - BACKED BY MAY
WHAT IT DOES: Proposes replacing the Northern Ireland backstop with 'alternative arrangements' to avoid a hard border. Also supports leaving with a deal.
WHOSE PLAN? Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.
HOW IT WORKS: Allows Mrs May to go to Brussels and say the EU must make concessions on the backstop or get rid of it.
DID IT SUCCEED? Yes - MPs backed the plan by 317 votes to 301. 
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? Mrs May will go to Brussels and say changing the backstop would save her deal.
YVETTE COOPER'S PLAN TO DELAY BREXIT IF THERE IS NOT A DEAL
WHAT IT DOES: Forces ministers to extend Article 50 beyond March 29 to stop No Deal.
WHOSE PLAN? Labour's Yvette Cooper, former Tory ministers Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin.
HOW IT WORKS: Ministers lose the power to decide what is debated on February 5, which passes to backbench MPs. Miss Cooper proposes a law forcing Mrs May to ask for a delay on Brexit if No Deal is agreed by February 26.
DID IT SUCCEED? No - MPs rejected the plan by 321 votes to 298. 
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NEXT? Mrs May would have lost control of Brexit with No Deal off the table. 
DOMINIC GRIEVE'S PLAN TO HAND POWER TO MPS
WHAT IT DOES: Give control over Parliamentary business to MPs.
WHOSE PLAN? Dominic Grieve QC, former attorney general and ardent Remainer, and MPs who want a second referendum.
HOW IT WORKS: Government loses power over the Commons every Tuesday from February 12 to March 26 so backbench MPs could vote on Brexit. Could delay Article 50 or change the deal to include a customs union or second referendum.
DID IT SUCCEED?  No - MPs rejected the plan by 321 votes to 301.  
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NEXT? A second referendum would have been the most likely outcome. 
DAME CAROLINE SPELMAN'S PLAN TO RULE OUT NO DEAL
WHAT IT DOES: Stops the UK leaving without a deal.
WHOSE PLAN: Former Tory Cabinet minister Caroline Spelman and Labour MP Jack Dromey.
HOW IT WORKS: Rejects No Deal.   
DID IT SUCCEED? Yes - MPs backed the plan by 318 votes to 310. 
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? Mrs May's main bargaining chip is weakened but there is no means of enforcing the vote. 
RACHEL REEVES' PLAN TO DELAY BREXIT IF THERE IS NO DEAL
WHAT IT DOES: Just like the Cooper plan, this demands the Government ask for an extension to Article 50 if there is no deal by February 26 - but does so only in political terms without trying to change the law.  
WHOSE PLAN: Labour MP Rachel Reeves  
HOW IT WORKS: Makes a political statement to put pressure on the Government. 
DID IT SUCCEED? No - MPs rejected the plan by 322 votes to 290.  
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NEXT? Mrs May's main bargaining chip would have been limited by a new deadline - hampering her hopes of changing the deal. 
JEREMY CORBYN'S PLAN TO FUDGE THE VOTE BY DEMANDING CHANGE BUT HINTING AT A REFERENDUM
WHAT IT DOES: Demands changes to the deal and hints at a second referendum.
WHOSE PLAN? Corbyn, Labour frontbench.
HOW IT WORKS: Ministers must let Parliament discuss No Deal, and proposes staying in a permanent customs union. If that fails, it suggests a second referendum.
DID IT SUCCEED? No - MPs rejected the plan by 327 votes to 296.  
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NEXT?  A second referendum would become the most likely outcome of Brexit.
IAN BLACKFORD'S PLAN TO MAKE A POINT ABOUT SCOTLAND
WHAT IT DOES: Notes that the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Commons all voted against the deal and Scotland voted Remain 
WHOSE PLAN? SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford 
HOW IT WORKS: Makes a political declaration about Scotland's right to determine its own future.
DID IT SUCCEED? No - MPs rejected the plan by 327 votes to 39.  
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED NEXT? Nothing.   
 
 
Michel Barnier was humiliated today as EU politicians rudely ignored his Brexit speech to a conference in Finland.
Members of the centre-right EPP group chatted among themselves as the Frenchman tried to deliver a stark message about the threats to the bloc's future.
At one point German MEP Manfred Weber stood up and posed for photographs right in front of Mr Barnier - while Angela Merkel walked out half way through.
The behaviour was so bad that Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov later berated delegates from the stage, complaining that Mr Barnier was updating them on a Brexit process that 'could provoke a huge cataclysm' but they were 'not interested to hear him'.
The extraordinary situation developed at the EPP's gathering in Helsinki, attended by a slew of national leaders as well as commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and Mr Barnier.
The EU negotiator was given a prime slot to talk about progress with Brexit and the future of the bloc.
But amid an astonishing show of bad manners, he struggled to be heard as he warned of the need to fight against forces seeking to 'demolish' the European project.
'There is now a Farage in every country,' Mr Barnier said.
'The European project is fragile, it is under threat, it is perishable and at the same time it is vital,' Mr Barnier said.
German MEP Manfred Weber was today anointed as the likely successor to Jean-Claude Juncker as EU commission president.
Mr Weber was endorsed by the powerful centre-right EPP group to be its candidate for the job - winning 492 of 619 votes
The Angela Merkel ally beat off a challenge from Finnish ex-prime minister Alexander Stubb.
The 46-year-old Bavarian conservative will be the favourite to take over from Mr Juncker next year.
EU leaders must sign off on the next commission head, but they typically endorse the candidate from the bloc that dominates European Parliament elections.
He warned that by the middle of the century, Germany would be the only European country with an economy large enough to sit among the G8 group in its own right.
'We must forcefully defend and promote our European model,' said Mr Barnier. 'If we don't write the rules of the game, China will write them for us. We want a Europe that brings opportunities for everyone... a renewed social market economy.'
He added: 'We all have to fight against those who want to demolish Europe with their fear, their populist deceit, their attacks against the European project. There is now a Farage in every country.' 
Mr Barnier appeared uncomfortably aware that he was not holding the attention of the crowd - with large numbers of empty chairs and people talking to each other rather than listening.
Although he is in charge of Brexit negotiations for the EU, Mr Barnier said last month that he would not seek to be anointed as the EPP candidate for to succeed Mr Juncker as Commission president.
Instead that distinction was handed to senior MEP Mr Weber today - who underlined the disregard for Mr Barnier by standing up and spending minutes posing for photographs with other delegates right in front of the stage.
Mrs Merkel then ostentatiously got up and walked out in the middle of the speech, followed by a huge entourage and reporters. 
The German Chancellor has been a strong supporter of Mr Barnier over Brexit, but was apparently heading off to hold private talks with Mr Weber.
Other leaders also struggled to be heard, with Irish PM Leo Varadkar said to have muttered 'impossible' as he fought his way through a speech. 
Mr Barnier told the EPP conference in Helsinki that he remained determined to see the Brexit negotiations through to their conclusion.
'I shall fulfil my Brexit mission to the end,' he said. 'It is my responsibility.
'But I remain with you. We have to build this future of hope.'
Brexit deal could be unveiled on MONDAY: EU expects negotiations to succeed within days and summit to seal package at end of month 
Speculation is mounting that a Brexit deal will be unveiled on Monday - with a summit to seal the agreement at the end of the month.
The EU commission is said to be planning for negotiations to conclude within days, despite bitter wrangling within the Cabinet over Irish border concessions. 
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has also insisted he is confident a package will be finalised over the next three weeks, potentially coinciding with the November 25 summit date circulating in Brussels - although he admitted the situation was 'incredibly complicated'.
The latest signs that a breakthrough is imminent came despite both Downing Street and Ireland trying to play down expectations. Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney said a deal should not be 'taken for granted', while Michel Barnier warned there was 'much more work to be done'.
Some ministers and civil servants had expected the PM to call a meeting of her senior team to sign off a deal today.
But it is understood there is now 'zero' chance of Cabinet gathering before the weekend.
The delay comes amid unrest over the details of a proposed compromise on the Irish border 'backstop' - the final stumbling block in the fraught talks with the EU.
The backstop is intended to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and would only come into effect if no wider trade agreement is sealed by the end of a mooted transition period in December 2020.
 
Let us be clear. The debate which opened yesterday in the House of Lords is bigger simply than the issue of triggering Article 50 and beginning the arduous process of negotiating Britain’s way out of the European Union.
It is about understanding the mood of ordinary people towards political elites — not just in Britain but across Europe and America. It is about unelected peers appreciating that ‘politics as usual’ is no longer acceptable.
Whether you like it or not, the vote to leave the EU last June, against the wishes of the majority of the political Establishment, demonstrated a fundamental change in attitude from those who felt their views on everything from immigration to Brussels red tape and City fat-cats were being ignored by the people running the country.
Elites
The same trend is clear in America, where the election of Donald Trump as President was a resounding expression of dissatisfaction with the political status quo. Opinion polls in the run-up to elections across Europe this year show a similar pattern, with far-Right candidates leading in both Holland and France.
Last Friday Tony Blair made a passionate and well-argued case for those who lost the referendum not to give up. He argued that Brexit was not ‘inevitable’, and called for pro-Europeans to ‘rise up in defence of what we believe’.
His views were repeated in speeches yesterday in the House of Lords by some who felt that the referendum result was the wrong one.
But people have had enough of elites telling them what to do — or telling them how wrong they’ve been.
And that is why, as we in the House of Lords decide whether to try to block the Article 50 Bill, and what amendments if any should be incorporated into it, it is vital to think of the broader political implications of our decisions.
I am firmly of the opinion that the Lords should not hold up this Bill. Any sign that an unelected second chamber is seeking to thwart the withdrawal of Britain from the EU would be seen as acting in defiance of the people.
It may be within the constitutional right of peers to try to prevent Brexit, but we should think twice before doing so.
I say this with a heavy heart, as someone who voted and argued passionately to stay in the EU. I still believe it is a major mistake to detach ourselves from a European bloc of sufficient political weight to counter the rising power of China and India, never mind an increasingly belligerent Russia and a United States under President Trump.
But the argument is over. Both sides presented their case — in my view extremely badly — and the people made up their minds.
To ignore the consensus of the people, to dismiss their views, is to denigrate those on whose behalf politicians speak. It is surely the duty of politicians in any democracy to reflect the views of the people. That is why so many MPs, despite believing that we are making a grave error in leaving the EU, nevertheless voted to trigger Article 50.
Yet despite this principled behaviour by MPs, the Liberal Democrats in the Lords are arguing for wrecking amendments to this simple Bill.
These are the same Lib Dems who argued vehemently for an ‘in-out’ referendum on the EU whatever the outcome of David Cameron’s negotiations to improve Britain’s deal within Europe, yet because that referendum did not produce the right outcome refuse to accept the result.
The same Liberal Democrats, too, who favour an elected House of Lords — which presumably means they should follow the will of the people and not just the views of those who have been elevated to a peerage.
Perception is all in this debate — the significance of which was underlined by the symbolic visit of the Prime Minister to the Lords, where she sat on the steps of the throne in order to listen to the opening speeches.
It is vital that peers involved in this debate appear to be looking after the people’s interests rather than their own. Many of the lords who have been expressing opinions over the past few days have a great deal of experience of the EU, having worked there or having been our representatives as Commissioners.
Yet as this newspaper has pointed out, some of those who served in such capacities have considerable interests in the EU, not least in the form of pensions. And while their contributions to the debate are vital, they must be extremely careful not to put their personal situations before the country’s decision.
Challenge
Given the expertise in the Lords, it is reasonable for the Upper House to consider or suggest amendments to the Bill before them.
It makes sense, for example, to reinforce the commitments in the Bill that have already been made in Parliament. Not least, the right of Parliament to have a vote on the final Brexit package after it has been negotiated with Europe.
It is not in any sense acceptable, however, to use the debate to block Article 50, thereby undermining the straightforward legislation which arose from the Supreme Court decision last month that Parliament should have the final say on Brexit.
It is not acceptable in the present climate and with the vote of the British people clearly in our minds, for the House of Lords to determine that Britain should or should not remain a member of the single market, and therefore place the Government in a situation which is entirely contrary to that laid out by the Prime Minister.
In the words of the former Conservative European Commissioner Jonathan Hill, who stood down after the Brexit vote, the Government has to be given ‘a little slack’ in its difficult task.
That view was eloquently reinforced by the Labour leader of the opposition in the Lords, Baroness (Angela) Smith, who has made it clear that it is not her intention at this stage to challenge the will of the electorate.
Ignored
I am sure common sense will prevail. Most members of the House of Lords recognise their delicate constitutional situation and the even more delicate position democracy faces in light of the alienation from the political process felt by so many.
As I said four weeks ago in the Lords, these wider considerations cannot and must not be ignored.
In other words, the issue of our place in Europe has been decided. There is not going to be a second referendum, much as I wish there could be.
Although those arguing for a vigorous debate are right, the outcome can only be a greater understanding of what we are losing, an appreciation of the difficulty the Government faces in the negotiations in the years ahead — and an agreement that we should come together to try to find the best possible deal we can for Britain in the very different world of tomorrow.
That is the task that faces all who remain in public life. It is not an easy road to travel and for many of us not one we would have chosen.
But, if we believe in democracy, it is the will of the people and not the predilections of those in positions of authority which must prevail.

Donald Trump has delivered a huge boost to Britain by promising a trade deal within weeks of taking office to help make Brexit a 'great thing'. 
The President-elect spoke in glowing terms of his 'love' for the UK and revealed he was inviting Theresa May to visit him 'right after' he gets into the White House.
He said that he wants a trade agreement between the two countries secured 'very quickly' - making a mockery of President Obama's threat that, if the country voted for Brexit, we would be at the 'back of the queue'.
The comments follow weeks of overtures to the Trump camp by Number Ten, including a visit by Mrs May's joint chiefs of staff - and give her a huge boost ahead of her major Brexit speech tomorrow.
Donald Trump has revealed his fury when he first heard the ex-MI6 spy who wrote the 'dirty dossier'.
He says he was so disgusted by lurid sex claims about him he was afraid to shake hands with anyone.
Christopher Steele, 52, pictured, has gone into hiding after he was named as the author of the file.
Among the incendiary and far-fetched claims in it is that Trump was filmed asking prostitutes to urinate on eachother in a Moscow hotel.
He told The Times: 'I was there for the Miss Universe contest, got up, got my stuff and I left. I wasn’t even there — it’s all. So if this guy is a British guy you got a lot of problems.
'That guy is somebody that you should look at, because whatever he made up about me it was false. He was supposedly hired by the Republicans and Democrats working together. 
Even that I don't believe because they don't work together, they work separately and they don't hire the same guy. What, they got together? 'When I just heard it I ripped up the mat. And the other thing, I can't even, I don't even want to shake hands with people now I hear about this stuff.'  
Significantly, he struck a decidedly harsher tone with the EU - predicting more countries will leave and saying it has been hugely damaged by the migration crisis.
Germany and its Chancellor Angela Merkel were lambasted for making a 'catastrophic mistake' when she let more than one million migrants.
He said: 'I think it's very tough. People, countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity.'
In a joint interview with Michael Gove for the Times, and the German newspaper Bild, Mr Trump also revealed that Mrs May had written to him just after Christmas.
She sent a gift of a copy of Winston Churchill's address to the ­American people, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In the letter the PM told Mr Trump that she hoped the sentiment of 'unity and fraternal association' between the two countries was 'just as true today as it has ever been'.
Boris Johnson has welcomed Trump's warm words and pledge to secure a trade deal.
Arriving in Brussels he said: 'I think it's very good news that the USA wants to do a good free trade deal with us and wants to do it very fast, and it's great to hear that from President-Elect Donald Trump. Clearly it will have to be a deal that's very much in the interests of both sides but I have no doubt it will be.'
1. Beautiful Country A Novel by J.R. Thornton. A coming-of-age story set in modern day China centering on the friendship between an American and a Chinese boy who meet while training with Beijing's Junior National Tennis Team.  

2. Two copies of Unprecedented, a CNN book on Trump's 2016 election victory.
3. A Tree of Life humanitarian award given to Trump by the Jewish National Fund in 1983.
4. America's Cup foundation award. Trump has previously funded a US yacht in the prestigious sailing contest, which began in 1851
5. His Sholom humanitarian award, also from the Jewish community, which he called one of his most valuable possessions
6. A photograph of Trump's father, Frederick, who died in 1999. He was a property magnate and an inspiration to his tycoon son.
7. The Nathan Hale patriot award, which was given to Trump in 2015. The musket award honours Hale, an American soldier who was executed by the British in 1776 at the age of 21.
8. A bumper sticker from Trump's presidential campaign, carrying his slogan 'Make America Great Again' 
9. A bundle of copies of the Financial Times 
10. Copy of an issue of GQ magazine with Trump on the cover
11. A boomerang awarded to Trump by The Forum Club in 1995 for pulling off what they described as the ‘Comeback of the Decade’ after he turned his business around following the 1980s real esate market collapse
12. Photograph of Trump with John F. Kennedy Jr, the son of 35th President, JFK. ‘John John’, who was three when his father was assasinated, died in a plane crash in 1999.
13. Playboy front cover from 1990. Trump is one of the few men to ever appear on the cover of the magazine
14. Variety magazine figures declaring The Apprentice to be the number one TV show in the US in 2004  
In comments that are likely to trigger controversy at home and abroad, he also:
Piers Morgan cornered Michael Gove over his decision to sink Boris Johnson's leadership campaign after the Brexit vote.
MailOnline's US Editor-at-Large said: ''To many you were the steely-eyed assassin who stabbed Boris Johnson in the back'. 
He then asked: 'Have you enjoyed being described as the nastiest guy in politics and the biggest treacherous backstabber?'
Mr Gove, who is paid £150,000-a-year by The Times on top of his £74,962 MP's salary, was on Good Morning Britain promoting his interview with Donald Trump.
He said: 'No. But ultimately people throw all sorts of insults at you but your friends know the real you.'

Mr Gove admitted that he still speaks to Boris and David Cameron after the internal rows over Brexit.
He said: 'I'm not going to get into who I talk to at what time', adding he regretted 'all sorts of stuff' but would not be drawn further.
 
During the interview at Trump Tower, the president-elect told Vote Leave champion Mr Gove: 'I love the UK.'
Pointing to a possible meeting with Mrs May at the White House in February, he said: 'We're gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides.
'I will be ­meeting with [Mrs May]. She's requesting a meeting and we'll have a meeting right after I get into the White House and it'll be, I think we're gonna get something done very quickly.'

Mr Trump said he thought that 'Brexit is going to end up being a great thing'.
Michael Gove has laughed off the suggestion that he could be a future ambassador to Washington after his interview with Donald Trump.
He also praised the work done by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in forging links with the incoming Trump administration.
The senior Tory, whose alliance with Mr Johnson during the Brexit campaign spectacularly collapsed in the jostling to replace David Cameron after the referendum, said the Foreign Secretary was doing a 'very good job indeed'.
The former education secretary became the second prominent British politician, after ex-Ukip leader Nigel Farage, to meet the US President-elect at Trump Tower.
Mr Trump later suggested that Mr Farage would do a 'great job' as ambassador to Washington.
But Mr Gove laughed at the suggestion that he too could be a candidate for the post of British ambassador, instead highlighting the 'fantastic' work being done in the role by Sir Kim Darroch.
'I think you can probably tell from my instinctive reaction to that that, wonderful though the Foreign Office is, it is probably better off without me as one of its ambassadors,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
'We have got Kim Darroch doing a fantastic job in Washington, by all accounts. Certainly, from the encounters I have had with him, he is a first-class diplomat.'
Mr Gove's decision to stand for the Tory leadership in the wake of Mr Cameron's resignation effectively torpedoed Mr Johnson's own effort to secure the keys to Number 10.
Mr Johnson was made Foreign Secretary and visited New York and Washington earlier this month to meet key players in the Trump team.
Mr Gove said: 'I think Boris is doing a very good job indeed. One of the things that I was told while I was there is that the relationship that Boris had forged with members of the Trump team had been strong and they appreciated his combination of friendliness and candour.'
He welcomed the fall in the value of the pound for having helped to boost the attractiveness of British products abroad.
Ahead of his inauguration on Friday, he also that said he was also looking ­forward to visiting Britain, saying his Scottish mother was 'proud of the Queen'.
He went on: 'Any time the Queen was on television, an event, my mother would be watching.
Mr Trump also joked that his Scottish ­ancestry meant he liked to 'watch my ­pennies', adding: 'I mean I deal in big ­pennies, that's the problem.'
The remarks will come as both a relief to No10, and be seen as a vindication of the strategy pursued by Mrs May.
She was accused of being ill-prepared for a Trump victory. Further embarrassment followed when Ukip-leader Nigel Farage was invited for an early meeting at Trump Tower.
Since then, Downing Street has worked hard on building a strong relationship with the Trump team - with top aides Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill visiting New York before Christmas. Last week Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also met with key advisers to Mr Trump.
In the interview, Mr Trump also confirmed that he would appoint Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, to broker a Middle East peace deal.
He urged Britain to veto any new UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel and repeated his criticism of President Obama's handling of the Iran nuclear deal. 
Michael Gove has been thrown back into the limelight after he secured the interview.
The leader of the Brexit campaign who sank Boris Johnson's leadership campaign admitted he had not told Theresa May he was doing the interview.
He described Trump as looking 'sodium orange' with 'hair is blonder than any human you will have encountered'.
Describing Mr Trump as 'a warm and energetic, charismatic presence', Mr Gove said it was important for the UK to have a 'good businesslike relationship' with the new president, even though some of his previous comments about women were 'completely unacceptable'. 
Donald Trump is  'emotionally and financially invested' in Britain, Michael Gove said today.
The President-elect told him: 'I love the UK'.
Mr Trump's mother Mary Anne - who was born in 1912 in Tong - emigrated to America and met and married property magnate Frederick Trump.
He also owns two major golf courses in Scotland, including Turnbery.
He said: 'My mother was very ceremonial and my mother sort of had a flair, she loved the Queen. She was so proud of the Queen. She loved the ceremonial and the beauty, cause nobody does that like the English. And she had great respect for the Queen, liked her. Anytime the Queen was on television, an event, my mother would be watching. Crazy, right?'
Hinting about Scots being careful with money he said: 'The Scottish are known for watching their pennies, so I like to watch my pennies — I mean I deal in big pennies, that's the problem'.
She was also a great philanthropist. Mary Anne was the 'mainstay' of the Women's Auxiliary of Jamaica Hospital in New York. She and her husband were also active in the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts of America and the Lighthouse for the Blind. 
The billionaire visited his mother's house and his cousins in 2008 after flying in on his private Tristar with 'Trump' emblazened on its side.
On that trip, the president-elect revealed that he had been to Lewis once before as 'a three or four year old' but, not surprisingly, could remember little about it and promised to return with his youngest son Barron. 
Mr Trump was accompanied by his eldest sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a US Federal judge, who has regularly visited her cousins on Lewis.
In 2015 he donated nearly £160,000 to a care home in Stornoway - in memory of her mother. 
Mr Trump's mother died in August 2000 at the age of 88, but had returned to Lewis regularly before her death.
His grandfather Malcolm MacLeod was said to be a fisherman and crofter at Tong before becoming the area's first postmaster. 
According to another report, Mr MacLeod also served as the 'compulsory officer' to enforce attendance at the local school.
His wife Mary lived until the age of 96 years, dying in 1963 at 5, Tong, while Malcolm died in 1954 aged 87. 

 
Mr Gove said Mr Trump wanted a trade deal in place ready to sign as soon as the UK left the EU.
'I think the president-elect wants to have something signature-ready at the earliest possible opportunity,' he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Brexit campaign leader Mr Gove said Mr Trump should be viewed as a businessman and his offer of a trade deal was a 'sincere wish'.
He told ITV's Good Morning Britain that Mr Trump wants a 'win-win deal' and some of his colourful campaign statements could be attributed to his background as a 'marketeer'.
'Everything that he says is in capital letters and in glowing gold, but then he also, when he gets into the room, looks at the spreadsheet and tries to get the best possible outcome for both sides,' Mr Gove said.
The former education secretary said that before the interview at Trump Tower he had the impression of the US president-elect as a 'big, bombastic personality'.
'When you actually meet him, yes he is an electric figure - charismatic - but also he is warmer ... close up than you would imagine,' he said.
Despite his 'aggressive' persona on Twitter 'in person he has honeyed words for almost everyone'. 

Mr Trump was 'enthusiastic' about Brexit, Mr Gove added.
'He stressed that he believed the European Union would potentially break up in the future and that other countries would leave. So in a sense he is both emotionally and financially invested in it.'
He said the offer of a US trade deal would strengthen Mrs May's hand in the Brexit negotiations with Brussels.
'The EU until now has been assumed to have a better hand to play, but the Prime Minister we now see has actually cards in her hand, including from candidate Trump, which will enable her, I think, to secure a better deal,' Mr Gove said.
The Prime Minister had so far done an 'exemplary job', according to Mr Gove, who said he had a private conversation with Mrs May before Christmas.
He said leaving the single market and customs union would be the 'logical consequence' of the EU referendum result and suggested that Mrs May should confirm that in her major Brexit speech on Tuesday.
Mr Gove described Mr Trump's conversational style as being like a river in spate, adding: 'You throw pebbles into it and sometimes there are eddies and currents and from that you can read what it is that he wants.'
Mr Gove said he believed Mr Trump was an 'admirer' of Mrs May and wanted a swift and comprehensive trade deal with the UK.
The president-elect feels a sense of 'ownership' of Brexit and wants to see it succeed, because he was one of the first international political figures to support it, said the former cabinet minister.
Mr Gove told BBC1's Breakfast: 'It's clear from what he says is that he is an admirer of the Prime Minister, is keen to see her as quickly as possible, and wants to have the strongest possible relationship between Britain and America, and I think - provided that relationship is conducted in a businesslike way - that can only be a good thing.'
Theresa May has invoked the spirit of Britain's greatest leader as she tries to woo Donald Trump.
The Prime Minister wrote to the President Elect just after Christmas to build bridges amid shaky diplomatic relations and the need to secure a good post-Brexit trade deal with his administration.
Mrs May sent Mr Trump a copy of Winston Churchill's speech to the American people at Christmas 1941.
In a letter dated December 29 she told him that 'the sentiment he expressed — of a sense of unity and fraternal association between the United Kingdom and United States — is just as true today as it has ever been'.
In a personal message she said: 'I hope you managed to find some time to pause and spend time with your family over the holiday season'.
Churchill's message to the American people on Christmas Eve 1941 was a rare and historic moment at a time of great peril for the world.
It was a turning point in the Second World War and came days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7.
He said: I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. 
'Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother's side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. 
'I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys'.
He added: 'Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. 
'Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world'. 
In 1963 Churchill, who had an American mother, was the first person to given an honorary US passport. Only eight have ever been given.   
Mrs May's warm words to Mr Trump came amid the row over a former MI6 spy's 'dirty dossier' on Trump and claims that the Government knew about the report and gave permission for him to speak to the FBI.  

In January last year 500,000 people signed a petition demanding the billionaire should be banned from Britain after he called for a ban on Muslim immigrants in the wake of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. 
It drew angry reactions in Britain, where MPs even debated a motion to ban Mr Trump from entering the UK.
Mrs May, then the home secretary, described Mr Trump's plan as 'plain wrong,' while Boris Johnson branded him 'unfit' to be President. 

Her letter to him was sent days before it was revealed that the bust of Winston Churchill is set to be restored to the Oval Office by Donald Trump. 
The sculpture of Britain's war-winning Prime Minister taken out by Barack Obama in favour of a similar statue of Martin Luther King.
His decision to send the Churchill bust to the US Embassy in London caused outrage in Britain, with Boris Johnson labelling it a 'snub to Britain' and suggesting it was because of Obama's 'ancestral dislike of the British Empire.'
But the president-elect was asked by the New York Times if he would bring Churchill back to the White House, he replied 'I am, indeed, I am.'
When it was revealed the Obama had removed Churchill, he explained in a press conference that he has a second one located in his private residence in the White House. 
He said: 'I see it every day, including on weekends, when I'm going into that office to watch a basketball game. 
'The primary image I see is a bust of Winston Churchill. It's there voluntarily, because I can do anything on the second floor. I love Winston Churchill.' 
But the main bust, sculpted by Jacob Epstein, was given to George W Bush as a gift by Tony Blair, and was displayed throughout Bush's two presidential terms.
Trump initially outlined his plans to return it back in November, in a move that was welcomed by his close ally Nigel Farage, but confirmed his intentions again this week.
Donald Trump slams Angela Merkel's catastrophic open-door migration policy after she allowed one million into Germany 
Angela Merkel was lambasted over Germany's open-door migration policy by Donald Trump last night.
The president-elect said that German Chancellor Mrs Merkel had made a 'catastrophic mistake' by allowing 1million migrants into her country – and he predicted that the European Union will fall apart.
In comments that will trigger alarm in Berlin and Brussels, Mr Trump said that he fully understood why Britain had voted for Brexit and he thought others could follow suit.
He said: 'I do believe this, if [EU countries] hadn't been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it entails, I think that you wouldn't have a Brexit. It probably could have worked out but this was the final straw, this was the final straw that broke the camel's back.
'I think people want… their own identity, so if you ask me… I believe others will leave.'
Mr Trump was also far less warm about Mrs Merkel than he has been about Theresa May. He said that he had 'great respect' for the German leader.
But, in a withering attack, he told The Times and German newspaper Bild: 'I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from.
'And nobody even knows where they come from. So I think she made a catastrophic mistake, very bad mistake.'
Mr Trump added that he though the entire EU had become a 'vehicle' for Germany.
Meanwhile, the outgoing director of the CIA yesterday warned Mr Trump to watch his mouth – especially when talking about Vladimir Putin.
Criticising the president-elect's regular posts on Twitter, John Brennan told Mr Trump to stop 'talking and tweeting' and said being so off the cuff was bad for national security.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday – a show that Mr Trump often watches – Mr Brennan said: 'Spontaneity is not something that protects national security interests and so therefore when he speaks or when he reacts, just make sure he understands that the implications and impact on the United States could be profound.'
Mr Trump said last week that he was not opposed to lifting sanctions if Russia was 'really helping us'. 
He also said that, once he has been sworn in, meeting the Russian president was 'absolutely fine with me'.
Mr Brennan called for Mr Trump to be 'very, very careful' about cosying up to Russia and said 'the world is watching' what he says.
He said: 'I think [Mr Trump] has to be mindful that he does not have a full appreciation and understanding of what the implications are of going down that road. 
'Now that he's going to have an opportunity to do something for our national security as opposed to talking and tweeting, he's going to have tremendous responsibility to make sure that US and national security interests are protected.'
At a press conference last week Mr Trump, whose inauguration is on Friday, had likened his treatment by the intelligence agencies to being in Nazi Germany. But Mr Brennan said the comparison was 'outrageous'.
He said: 'The world is watching now what Trump says and listening very carefully. If he doesn't have confidence in the intelligence community, what signal does that send to our partners and allies, as well as our adversaries? It's more than just about Mr Trump.'
It was claimed that Mr Trump was planning a summit with Mr Putin for his first foreign trip as president.
Mr Trump's spokesman Sean Spicer dismissed the claim as '100 per cent false'.
Downing Street has hailed Donald Trump's pledge to do a 'great' free trade deal with Britain - but made clear nothing can be sealed until after we formally leave the EU.
The Prime Minister's spokeswoman said the president-elect's enthusiasm showed the 'opportunities' of cutting ties with Brussels.
But she played down the idea that an agreement could be in place within months, saying the UK would 'respect its obligations' while it remains a member of the bloc.
Theresa May was given a huge boost today when Mr Trump said he was eager to do a trade deal with the UK as quickly as possible.
The incoming commander-in-chief spoke in glowing terms of his 'love' for the UK and revealed Mrs May would be coming to visit him 'right after' he gets into the White House.
He said that he wants a trade agreement between the two countries secured 'very quickly' - making a mockery of President Obama's threat that, if the country voted for Brexit, we would be at the 'back of the queue'.
Asked about the intervention, the PM's spokeswoman said: 'We welcome the commitment from the president elect to engage with the Uk on this to work together to agree a deal quickly.
'That highlights the opportunities of leaving the EU.' 
But she added that only 'scoping' discussions could be held before the end of the Article 50 process, and there were a 'lot of issues to cover' .
'We have also been clear that we will respect our obligations while we remain in the EU,' she said.
'We cannot enter and sign a free trade agreement while we remain in the EU.
'We will have scoping to look at what some of the areas may be ... but we will continue to respect while we remain a member of the EU.
'We will be having scoping discussions to look at the areas where we can benefit most.
'There will be a lot of issues to cover with this.' 
 
 
 
When Britain withdraws fully from the European Union in less than two years, our country will at last regain control over our borders. It’s a step that is essential to any meaningful concept of democratic sovereignty.
From the end of 2020, at the completion of the transition period which has now been settled by the deal signed last month, we will finally be able to set our immigration policy according to our own national interests rather than the demands of Brussels.
The British public’s desire for this change was a crucial factor in the outcome of the 2016 referendum.
The majority of voters were profoundly concerned not only with the pace of demographic upheaval imposed by open borders, but also the inability of our own elected politicians to alter the EU’s rigid attachment to free movement.
But, from 2021, we will be in charge of our own destiny. Yet instead of welcoming the return to democratic accountability on immigration, the embittered Remain lobby continually presents the end of untrammelled free movement as a disaster for Britain.
In their narrative of despair, pro-EU campaigners portray Brexit as nothing more than a triumph of bigotry over tolerance, of isolation over openness.
It is a mentality that was epitomised by Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable when he told his party’s spring conference that the Brexit vote was driven by nostalgia for a world where ‘faces were white’.
This is the kind of slur that has long hindered a rational debate about immigration. As soon as there is any suggestion of a departure from open borders, the pro-EU ideologues start to hurl their accusations of racism and xenophobia.
But, as my Parliamentary colleague Priti Patel and I argue in our new report about a post-Brexit migration policy, such abuse is both absurd and unjust.
Britain has always been a welcoming, liberal country — one prime reason that so many migrants want to settle here. Brexit is not about ‘pulling up the drawbridge’, to use one of the Remainers’ favourite metaphors.
On the contrary, as a fully independent nation, Britain will be able to embrace a global role. If anything, it is our entanglement with the EU that, paradoxically, leads to real discrimination.
Under Brussels’s free movement rules, we’ve had to accept any newcomer from the continent, regardless of skills or intention. Yet we can be much tougher with arrivals from outside Europe.
So at present a white Romanian jobseeker faces far fewer obstacles to come to Britain than an Indian engineer or Brazilian dentist. But Brexit can mean fairness all round, on the basis of meeting our own nation’s requirements.
As the daughter of a migrant, Priti Patel knows how baseless the charge of prejudice is. From her own experience, she recognises that Britain has always provided sanctuary for the vulnerable and opportunities for the enterprising.
Whether it be French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution, European Jews escaping pogroms in Russia and Germany, or Ugandan Asians taking flight from Idi Amin’s tyranny, Britain has a proud record of responding to humanitarian crises.
Moreover, immigration has been a vital engine of economic growth, boosting prosperity in every field from entertainment to retailing.
But what has been entirely missing in recent decades, due partly to our EU membership, is any sense of balance. Since 1998, the influx has been on a scale far beyond anything in our history.
The 50,000 French Huguenots settled here over a 50-year period in the 16th and 17th centuries, as did the 200,000 Jewish refugees in the 19th and 20th centuries.
But now we are living in the middle of an extraordinary social revolution.
In the 13 years between 1997 and 2010, net foreign migration totalled 3.6 million. Even today, according to the latest analysis from the Office for National Statistics, 578,000 migrants arrived here in the year to September 2017.
The real figure could be much higher, for there were 683,000 registrations for National Insurance by foreign citizens last year, 497,000 of them by EU migrants.
The fabric of our society is undergoing a transformation. In 1931, significantly less than 2 per cent of the population in England and Wales was foreign-born, whereas in 2011 the figure had climbed to almost 14 per cent. In London last year, 60 per cent of babies were born to foreign mothers.
It is the scale of this which has caused problems.
One is the mounting pressure on the civic infrastructure, especially the NHS, schools, housing and the transport network. Another is the ruthless exploitation of the cheap labour, which not only drives down living standards and job security for British workers, but also allows employers to evade their responsibilities to invest in training, skills and technology.
That is one explanation for our low rates of productivity and social mobility. Migrants themselves are hit by this culture, forced to accept poverty wages, targeted by criminal gangs and compelled to live in squalid, overcrowded conditions. In one recent appalling case, 35 Eastern European workers were found inhabiting a five-bedroom house in North London.
Mass immigration also imposes a huge burden on the welfare system, both in direct payments such as child and housing benefits, and in low-wage subsidies. My research, based on my experience of running the Department for Work and Pensions, is that £4 billion was paid out in working-age benefits, such as tax credits, to European nationals in 2013/14, a total that is likely to be higher today.
On this subject, the much-cherished assertion of so many in the Remain camp — that European migrants make a far bigger contribution to our economy than British citizens — turns out to be something of a myth.
While it is true that those from Western Europe pay, on average, twice the average income tax of the whole UK population, those from Eastern Europe — who make up the largest number — pay only half the average.
At the bottom end of the income scale, free movement can tragically mean the importing of destitution: one 2016 study found that 60 per cent of rough sleepers in London were foreign nationals. There is nothing compassionate or ‘progressive’ about such a free-for-all.
Brexit gives our country a unique chance to change the agenda. By breaking free from the EU’s restrictive free movement dogma, we can embrace a positive, flexible policy that adds value to our economy and attracts those needed to work, but at a sustainable rate that can be absorbed.
Through the return of control of our borders, we can have an immigration system that genuinely fulfils the needs of our nation.
In practice, we argue that this should mean the introduction of a work permit system, complete with an annual cap on the numbers — to be determined in consultation with businesses — who are granted the right to settle here.
Such a permit scheme would cover the EU and the rest of the world, emphasising both the globalism and the fairness of Brexit.
It would be adjustable enough to allow occupations that may experience temporary shortages, such as those in the agricultural and healthcare sectors, to recruit quickly from overseas.
The scheme would retain a form of free movement for those who contribute to the British economy, such as tourists or fee-paying students.
Similar categories could include people from the EU who are financially self-sufficient and are not competing for jobs, or entrepreneurs who want to set up businesses. But the work permit programme would definitely prevent people coming to Britain with no job, or on such low wages that they require significant levels of welfare to support their living costs.
That could be done either through a simple rule, as we advocate that migrants have no access to benefits for a set period of five years, or by a requirement that eligibility for social security is based on a record of at least four years of National Insurance contributions.
What is certain is that the present expensive immigration mess cannot continue.
We need to build a system that attracts the brightest and best from around the world, not one that undermines our social and economic fabric. Brexit is the moment for just such a fresh start.
At the EU referendum almost two years ago, the British people heroically saw through Project Fear.
In their determination to embrace national independence, they refused to be intimidated by the deceitful scaremongering about our supposedly apocalyptic future after Brexit.
Yet the Establishment has never accepted the democratic verdict of the electorate.
Unable to imagine life without the EU’s rule, devoid of any real faith in Britain’s capabilities, key elements of the political class have embarked on a systematic campaign to obstruct and emasculate Brexit.
That relentless hostility shone through most recently in debates in the House of Lords, where unelected, unaccountable peers lined up to sneer at the public’s wish for national freedom.
Too much of this spirit of fearfulness and surrender has infused our side in the negotiations with the EU over withdrawal, leading to a catalogue of concessions in return for little.
In the same vein, the Civil Service, those past masters at delay, keep pushing for an ever longer transition period in the hope that institutional inertia may ultimately thwart Britain’s departure. 
Now the Establishment is refusing to let go of its new weapon: the customs union.
Over the weekend, Business Secretary Greg Clark told the BBC that Theresa May’s proposed new customs partnership – a fudged version of the customs union that was rejected by her Brexit cabinet only last week – remained on the table.
An arrangement of this kind is necessary, he declared, otherwise the British economy will suffer and trade will shrink. 
Gazing into his crystal ball, Clark specifically warned that 3,500 car jobs at Toyota could be at risk without the customs deal.
Whether intentional or not, these comments echo the same old soundtrack of alarm that always accompanies calls for submission to Brussels. But Project Fear did not work in 2016 and it will not work now.
That is partly because, as has been well-rehearsed in recent days, the new customs partnership would create a bureaucratic nightmare, hurt our economic prospects, hit our global trade and undermine our democracy.
The jewel in the crown of Brexit will be the ability to reach our own trade deals around the world, particularly with the fast developing nations of Asia – something that Brussels simply cannot stomach. 
In their efforts to hype concerns about Brexit and be as obstructive as possible, EU officials, Dublin and the pro-EU brigade here talk endlessly about the difficulty of the Irish border.
In reality, the ‘Irish question’ has been cynically seized upon and ‘weaponised’ by fearmongering Remainers who hope to cajole us into staying put.
No one actually wants a hard border. 
As John Thompson, the head of the HMRC, has made clear, with goodwill and imagination, the problem is easily resolvable, especially since Britain and Ireland have operated a common travel area since 1923.
Indeed, the whole question of a customs arrangement with the EU has been grossly exaggerated by the Remain lobby. 
Only about 12 per cent of Britain’s GDP involves exports to the EU, while just 8 per cent of British companies trade with EU.
Most of our economy is based on the domestic market, which suffers from Brussels’ protectionist policies that push up prices and increase burdens on businesses.
Freed from the dead hand of Brussels, consumer costs – especially of food – will fall and enterprise will flourish. 
It is absurd to cling to the idea, eagerly peddled by the anti-Brexiteers, that the EU is some kind of engine of economic growth.
Just the opposite is true. EU officialdom is the enemy of jobs and innovation, as is reflected in its cripplingly high rates of unemployment, especially among young people, in EU countries like Spain and Greece.
And EU-led stagnation is bound to worsen in the coming years, as Brussels presses ahead with its cherished ideological project of further political integration.
That will mean more taxation in the name of harmonisation, more regulation, more centralised governance, more streams of directives.
Britain will have to be part of that if we end up in a customs union.
Brexit gives us the chance to break free from the continuing destruction of our sovereignty. That is what the British public recognised in 2016.
Tragically, however, the Establishment, reflected in its doom-mongering asides, remains mired in timid defeatism, reluctant either to challenge the EU or contemplate change.
When the pop star Lily Allen writes an ignorant and stupid comment on Twitter, it’s probably not worth getting worked up. She is not regarded as an astute social critic.
Miss Allen took to social media after Theresa May’s speech on Tuesday about a ‘global Britain’ with the following observation: ‘A global Britain could b [sic] good but the world still hates us cause, SLAVERY.’
What can one say in response to such rubbish? That slavery prospered long before the British Empire came along? That after the abolition of this great evil in 1833, Britain led the way in trying to stamp it out? That, in fact, we are not widely hated because of slavery?
No, it wouldn’t be a sensible use of our time to engage with Lily Allen any more than it would be to take on an idiot in a pub who insisted that the Battle of Hastings took place in 966, or that The Last Supper was painted by Canaletto.
Attacked
But when respected intellectuals descend to abuse, and clever, well-read people make wild and hyperbolic comments about Brexit — well, then it’s not possible to smile indulgently and say nothing.
Take, for example, the writer and journalist Robert Harris. He is a civilised man and an excellent novelist, whose meticulously researched books have given pleasure to millions of people.
And yet this usually admirable person has just tweeted the following thought: ‘Everything I liked about my country — tolerance, moderation, courtesy, sensibleness, pragmatism, irony — seems to have disappeared.’
He has repeatedly bemoaned Brexit and these words emerged hours after Mrs May’s speech. They appear to mean that Brexiteers as a breed lack tolerance, moderation, courtesy, sensibleness, pragmatism and irony. Presumably, Remainers such as Mr Harris possess all these qualities in abundance.
The bizarre — or indeed ironic — thing about his tweet is that it manifests the deficiencies he identifies in his opponents. It is not tolerant, moderate or courteous to depict Brexiteers in such absolute and derogatory terms.
Let me say that I appreciate that the outcome of the referendum came as a shock to some people. And I can also understand why some of them should continue to grieve nearly seven months after the result.
But why do they depict those who voted Leave as bone-headed, fascistic types who lack all social and intellectual graces, and are too stupid to grasp the complexities of quitting the EU? Why do some of them resort so easily to vilification and exaggeration?
An even more egregious example than Mr Harris is Nicholas Boyle, a professor of German at Cambridge University, and evidently a man of learning and scholarship. He is one of this country’s leading experts on the German writer Goethe.
In Tuesday’s issue of the anti-Brexit publication the New European, Professor Boyle wrote that ‘the referendum vote does not deserve to be respected because, as an outgrowth of English narcissism, it is itself disrespectful of others, of our allies, partners, neighbours, friends and, in many cases, even relatives.’
He continues in even more preposterous vein: ‘Like resentful ruffians uprooting the new trees in the park and trashing the new play area, 17 million English, the lager louts of Europe, voted for Brexit in an act of geopolitical vandalism.’
So there we have it. If you voted Leave, you are a lager lout and a vandal. And because of that, your vote should be disregarded. With what terrifying contempt does Professor Boyle (who I suspect is a man of the liberal-Left) regard many millions of his fellow countrymen!
The immoderate views of Mr Harris or Professor Boyle aren’t at all unusual among liberal-minded intellectuals. Two days after the referendum, I was invited to a north Oxford drinks party where I innocently told a pleasant and apparently enlightened professor that I had voted Leave. It would have been better if I had admitted membership of the Ku Klux Klan. He looked at me in disbelief, and scarpered. His wife was more vocal: ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’ I think she meant I had helped bring civilisation to an end.
Remoaners are obviously entitled to their views. But they are pushing their luck when they represent those who voted for Britain to leave the EU as a bunch of simple-minded, inebriated, near-lunatic extremists determined to wreck this country.
Why can’t they admit that many of us have principles, that we are not all selfish brutes, and that we may have voted as we did because we care about the future of our country, and genuinely believe it will be better off outside the EU?
It’s the sheer lack of proportionality and good sense that so appals. The normally easy-going, and often quietly amusing, playwright Alan Bennett has a go at Brexiteers during a trip to Venice in his diary published in the current issue of the London Review Of Books.
Reality
Before some overwrought remarks about Donald Trump (‘thankful that I am old and have no children to leave in a world at the mercy of this lying and bellicose vulgarian’), Bennett expresses his ‘gratitude as always for the grace and good temper of the Italians and their friendliness, virtues on which we have so summarily turned our backs’.
Turned our backs? This is nonsense. The Italians are indeed a wonderful people. I’m sure we’ll go on visiting their beautiful country, and they ours, in ever greater numbers. It’s barmy to suggest we have rejected them. The vote was against our membership of an inflexible and increasingly overbearing institution.
No doubt there are some Leftist intellectuals who have accepted the reality of Brexit, and want to make the best of it, but I fear they are few and far between.
This week, the first woman to run the Tate galleries was appointed. Maria Balshaw turns out to be another over-the-top Remoaner who expresses intemperate views about Brexiteers.
Immediately after the referendum, she re-tweeted: ‘And, for the record, Nigel Farage is a fascist c***.’ She also re-tweeted a piece of idiocy from the art critic Waldemar Januszczak that was almost worthy of Lily Allen: ‘The people have spoken. Just as the Germans did in 1933 when they voted in Hitler.’
Such hyperbole is, alas, not restricted to our shores. Parts of the European Press reacted wildly to Mrs May’s speech. The normally sober German newspaper Die Welt ran the headline ‘Little Britain’. Was that a fair description of the Prime Minister’s global ambitions? Might it be that the EU is being rather insular?
Demonise
Amid the widespread (though far from universal) bad-mouthing in Europe of Brexit Britain, the role this country played in saving the Continent from German and Italian fascism seems to have been largely forgotten. What short memories many European politicians have.
As for our home-grown extremists among the so-called intelligentsia, they risk consigning themselves to oblivion if they continue to demonise Brexiteers as Neanderthals whose views must somehow be circumvented.
Some anti-Brexit politicians aren’t much better. Lib Dem leader Tim Farron has the cheek to say Mrs May is planning a ‘theft of democracy’, yet he refuses to accept the outcome of the referendum. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon insists that a ‘hard Brexit’ would be ‘economically catastrophic’. How can she know?
As Remoaners mistakenly forecast an instant recession following a Leave vote, they would be wise to avoid such apocalyptic forecasts. But intellectual humility is not the strongest suit of these extreme Remoaners.
Maybe we should be happy that some opponents of Brexit are prone to exaggeration, name-calling and vituperation since they weaken their case. Yet the great danger is that such unreasoning divisiveness in the face of what is now inevitable may end up by weakening the country they claim to care so much about.
For a priest of such happy-clappy tendencies, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was hand-wringingly pessimistic yesterday — a veritable Jeremiah.
But there was no great surprise in that, for His Grace was discussing Brexit, and no subject is more certain to plunge our stubborn liberal grandees into a spluttering funk.
Archbishop Welby, so upbeat when it comes to ‘spreading the good news’ with his banjo-billy church colleagues (you may recall bongo drummers and partly clothed African dancers in Canterbury Cathedral when he was enthroned), sounded tetchy yesterday.
He wailed to Radio 4’s Today that the chances of Brexit passing through Parliament in the next 18 months were ‘infinitesimally small’. He wanted the matter removed from the Government’s hands and entrusted to a cross-party committee of ‘experts’ led by ‘someone trusted in the political world’.
Did he mean himself?
Treasonous
Brexit — marvellous, liberating, nation-affirming Brexit — continues to bring out the very worst in our Establishment.
Here is the greatest opportunity this country has had for 100 years, a chance to re-ignite our world trade and shake off an over-mighty bureaucracy. Instead, our politicians and civic leaders are doing all they can to make it fail.
Their behaviour, which will inevitably boost the hand of Brussels negotiators, is a disgrace. Given it can only harm our nation’s sovereign interest, you could call it treasonous, were such a word still in use, which sadly it is not.
Since last summer’s Leave vote by a clear majority, our lords and masters have been in a huff. Westminster and Whitehall’s People Who Know Best have tried to delay our departure from their beloved EU. 
At first they simply pretended it had not happened. Then they set the lawyers on the case. 
Then they hoped the Lords would block the process. And yet, Brexit continued serenely. Now they say it ‘won’t make any difference’ and ‘will take longer than expected’.
In the last week, this petulant behaviour has reached new heights — or should that be lows? — as Remainers have capitalised on the Prime Minister’s absence on holiday.
It began on the eve of Theresa May’s departure for a week’s holiday in the Italian Alps when Chancellor Philip Hammond hosted a Treasury drinks party. 
He spent much of the evening boasting that he was winning his battles against Cabinet colleagues on public-spending constraints and his efforts to water down Brexit.
Such end-of-summer-term parties are generally dull affairs, when ministers stick to pre-holiday pleasantries. Not so with Mr Hammond.
I understand that he paraded like a peacock and gave reporters plenty of ammunition for ‘Cabinet at war’ and ‘Hammond sees off rivals’ stories. Chief among them were claims that the Government wanted a long ‘transition’ period as Britain cut free from Brussels.
Remainers are keen on a transition period as they hope its delays will prove permanent.
What made Mr Hammond’s behaviour so odd was the fact that Mrs May’s Government had just had a strong week.
In the last days of the Commons term, Downing Street stabilised a feverish political mood and ministers highlighted Labour’s betrayal of the youth vote by reneging on its promise to clear students’ debts.
That progress was imperilled by the vain Hammond pushing himself centre-stage.
Just as his treachery was fading, we heard from Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Like the Chancellor, Ms Rudd was (perhaps is still) a vehement supporter of Remain. Her City PR-man brother, Roland Rudd, was one of that campaign’s chief organisers. With Mrs May out of the country, Ms Rudd took to the airwaves to discuss immigration plans.
Immigration was one of the main issues in the referendum, an area in which the political elite had shown itself dangerously adrift from public opinion. No 10 hoped its announcement of a registration scheme for EU nationals would reassure voters that post-Brexit Britain would keep a check on EU citizens working here.
Thanks to ‘Remainer Rudd’, that announcement was obscured. Either by incompetence or calculation, she managed to achieve a quite different emphasis. Instead of reporting the encouraging plan, the media concentrated on her blithe insistence that there would be no ‘cliff edge’ and that it would pretty much be immigration as normal after we formally left the EU.
Can she really be so deaf to public opinion to think that is what the voters wanted?
Her remarks may have been part of a choreographed plan by Remainers to sideline pro-Brexit figures Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis.
Idiotic
Meanwhile, the Lib Dems’ maudlin new leader, Sir Vince Cable, was trudging round the broadcasting studios practically ringing his plague bell, warning the world that we were doomed. He claimed that Brexit might never happen.
The same, lo and behold, was soon said by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. And they were cheered on by former Chancellor George Osborne, now a newspaper editor.
It might be tempting to write off all this as mere ‘Silly Seasonitis’, the customary over-inflation of marginal news during the summer weeks.
And within an hour of Ms Rudd making her remarks, one of her own junior ministers, Brandon Lewis, was speaking in more muscular terms. For its part, No 10 has confirmed that free movement will end when we leave the EU.
But such slap-downs should not be necessary. Ministers should be devoted to securing the best deal possible from the EU. Undisciplined chatter harms our national prospects.
The EU’s negotiators must be delighted that London is in such apparent disarray.
Every time a minister spouts forth about Brexit, it makes it harder for David Davis to insist to his EU counterparts that his ‘red lines’ are indeed red. Every time the idiotic Hammond blows forth, it probably adds a billion pounds to our exit bill.
Foreign Secretary Johnson was obliged to deny reports that he was contemplating resigning as a result of Cabinet feuding. 
This rumour was only put about by the malevolent Cable, but in an atmosphere so poisoned by Hammond and Rudd, it was believed.
Vengeful
For what it is worth, Boris has not been stirring the pot against Hammond.
Naturally, No 10 is strongly irritated by the Chancellor’s behaviour. Since the General Election, he may have considered himself to be ‘unsackable’, but that is not to say that he should not watch his step.
It will be interesting to see how activists react to him at Tory conference in the autumn. His latest sally, in French newspaper Le Monde, in which he said he does not want Britain to introduce lower taxes than the EU, is perversely anti-Tory. It is probably not even true to his own core beliefs.
Has Mr Hammond become a little drunk on plotting? Has he been hypnotised by the vengeful Osborne? Or is he simply unaware of how much voters dislike the status quo?
They voted Leave because they are fed up with the ‘experts’ Archbishop Welby so worships, who have long sold out to Europe on the cheap.
Brexit offers a glorious future but it will only be achieved if our politicians pull together.
And if Philip Hammond does not believe in it, and if he really does subscribe to high taxes and Europeanism, he should resign his great office and join the Liberal Democrats.
 
Traditional vaudeville features a variety of interspersed acts none of which bear any relation to the previous one. The performances are often frenetic, chaotic and bordering on the farcical. Shedding of garments occurs frequently.
Similarly barmy scenes played out in the House of Commons yesterday during yet another lengthy day of Brexit madness.
The main event occurred shortly after 5.30pm just as members began debating the evening’s indicative votes aimed at breaking the Brexit deadlock. Peter Kyle (Lab, Hove) was up on his feet, arguing the merits of a second referendum.
Kyle is by no means the worst performer in the House, so there was some puzzlement when the chamber gradually began echoing to the sound of childish titters.
Was it something he’d said? Had Dennis Skinner (Lab, Bolsover) perhaps issued one of his charming soliloquies?
The source of mirth was coming from up in the public gallery. As Kyle spoke, a troupe of ten climate change protesters had casually ambled down to the front, removed their togs and were now showing our political class their bare behinds.
Well, after everything which has happened recently they can hardly complain they didn’t have it coming.
What took place over the next half hour was pure comedy slapstick. The protesters, a youngish bunch, their beneath-the-stairs modesty mercifully protected by garish black thongs, thrusted, gyrated and boogie-woogied their half-naked bodies in front of the chamber.
The Metropolitan Police were duly summoned. Still the swampies did not go quietly. Riotous scenes followed as the coppers made desperate lunges to catch the perpetrators. Hair flew, limbs flailed.
Best of all, since the protective glass in front of the gallery is soundproof, the entire shenanigans took place in silence to the rest of the chamber. It was like watching a saucy Benny Hill sketch without the daft music.
When the final die-hard – a 70s Bjorn Borg lookalike who’d glued himself to the glass – was finally captured, the poor plods did not look chuffed. What they would have given for Boris Johnson’s hastily ditched water cannon.
By now, down below, wonkish Nick Boles (Con, Grantham and Stamford), who’d tabled an amendment on a Norway-plus style Brexit, was making what was supposed to be the speech of his life. Instead, he found himself competing for MPs’ attention against a parade of wiggling bottoms.
The day’s proceedings had already begun in bonkers fashion. There was a point of order from Richard Drax (Con, South Dorset), a Brexiteer who wished to express regret at voting for the Prime Minister’s deal on Friday.
His bizarre outburst was met with predictable disgust down on the Government front bench. Security minister Ben Wallace curled his upper lip so high he could have balanced a coin on it. Immigration minister Caroline Nokes rolled her eyes and mouthed something possibly unsuitable before the watershed.
On to indicative votes. Pete Wishart (SNP, Perth) squirted treacle in the direction of Sir Oliver Letwin, who had been responsible for getting the votes on the agenda.
Letwin, he said, had achieved ‘more in the past five days than the Government has in three years’. Peony-cheeked Sir Oliver puckered his lips as though briefly considering blowing Wishart a smooch.
The ERG bunch, deludedly thinking they can still engineer a No Deal exit, huffed and puffed over the votes happening.
Sir William Cash (Con, Stone), Bernard Jenkin (Con, Harwich and North Essex) and Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, Somerset West) banged on at length about the constitution. Cash quoted Oliver Cromwell. Jenkin reference 18th century French judge Montesquieu. On and on they went, like a particularly trying episode of Last Of The Summer Wine.
The Moggster became involved in a spat with recently departed Conservative Anna Soubry (Ind, Broxtowe), calling her a turncoat. ‘I can’t think why I left,’ barked Soubers sarcastically.
The debate never really recovered once the nudie invaders were captured, which was hardly surprising. They provided far more cheer and amusement than anything happening in the chamber. With any luck the silly rascals will be back for PMQs tomorrow.
 
Brexit is in danger of getting stuck – and that is something that should worry us all.
If MPs dig in against the Prime Minister’s deal and then hunker down in their different corners, none with a majority, the country will face serious trouble.
We will be on a path to something almost everybody agrees mustn’t happen: No deal with the European Union.
It’s tempting to ask: what’s the harm in that? Well, it would mean the current uncertainty we all find distressing would be magnified rather than resolved.
Our car makers – the centre-piece of our manufacturing industry, who depend heavily on exports to the EU – would face short term disruption and long term uncertainty about their ability to compete. 
Our airlines and freight hauliers and retailers would all find it difficult to guess what would become of their businesses.
For the sake of all our futures, this mustn’t be allowed to happen when we have the power to prevent it. 
I acknowledge we should make preparations just in case. But I will do everything in our power to find a constructive solution.
In order to protect the country from the short and long term disruption of a no-deal exit, we need to find a plan that a majority in Parliament can support. It’s something that’s eluded us. The Prime Minister had to put her proposal on hold because it would have been defeated.
I support the PM’s deal, because it can deliver Brexit and allow us to move forward. But many of my colleagues aren’t yet persuaded. It’s possible enough will be – but they might not.
We need to acknowledge the risk that Parliament could spend the next precious few months debating about preferred solutions and end up with no compromise, no agreement and no deal.
So what’s to be done?
We need to try something different. Something that people do in the real world all the time, but which seems so alien in our political culture – to engage with others and be willing to forge a consensus.
That requires politicians to be more prepared to work with anyone who – like me – is willing to accept you can’t always get what you want. It means taking a more practical, sensible and healing approach. 
These may not be words to make the heart beat faster, or fill the soul with excitement – but they are what’s needed in a country that has seen everything from families to political parties split down the middle and that now needs some Brexit certainty.
It also requires everyone to abandon outrage and accusations. It’s not weak to create a safe environment for Parliament to find a solution – it’s strong.
There may be lost votes along the way as we edge towards a solution, but so be it. Each one will help us get to something that is workable and possible.
There will be those outside Parliament that say this approach is naïve. Others may call it treachery. My colleagues across the House of Commons should ignore such siren voices calling us to the rocks of no deal.
This is a great country. I believe it can have a fantastic post-Brexit future – but only if politicians are willing to try a different way and only if a coalition of those who want what’s best for this country argue a little less and compromise a little more.
If we don’t start having these grown up conversations we also risk stumbling into a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Government.
 
Amid all the political manoeuvring over post-Brexit customs arrangements, Theresa May’s Government and Whitehall forgot one essential fact: Yes, goods going between Britain and the Continent are important, but what really counts for the nation’s prosperity are services – from the creative output of brilliant recording artists to the complex financial work done in the City of London.
Indeed, the City is Britain’s biggest earner, generating a surplus (selling more services overseas than we import) of an eye-watering £70billion a year.
No wonder then when the Government’s White Paper on Brexit finally emerged this week the anger from leading financial organisations and companies was barely contained. Instead of the clarity that had been debated and promised there was, to put it kindly, another messy fudge.
The harsh reality is that the Chancellor Philip Hammond will need to act fast if he does not want to see our competitive advantage in financial services gobbled by competitors on the Continent and in New York.
All the major City organisations have been seeking – and had been assured – that a deal based on what has become known as ‘mutual recognition’ was in the bag. Under such an arrangement, the EU would acknowledge that financial regulations on the Continent and in Britain are equally robust so there is no reason to fiddle with the existing rulebook.
If disputes were to arise they could be dealt with through an agreed commercial arbitration procedure. This approach was adopted by no less an authority than the Bank of England and contained in a detailed report provided to Hammond and the Treasury.
But when the White Paper appeared the whole idea of mutual recognition was consigned to the dustbin – leading organisations such as TheCityUK, representing the bankers, and the Association of British Insurers spitting tacks.
Instead of the clean, simple approach to the future, on which serious investment decisions could be based, the City was presented with a package of Whitehall gobbledegook. Writing in the Financial Times the Chancellor sought to assure the City that the arrangements would define how the relationship will be managed.
The new system he proclaimed would be ‘less than mutual recognition’ – as had been discussed and pledged – and ‘more than the EU’s equivalence regime’. What any of this civil service style waffle means is anyone’s guess.
Under the EU’s equivalence protocols the City’s approach to regulation and trading will be fine as long as it doesn’t deviate from those laid down by the Brussels bureaucracy. However, the moment there are rule changes in Brussels or Frankfurt (home of the European Central Bank) the UK would be obliged to adopt the changes in 30 days or fall foul of the equivalence procedure.
In other words the City of London, which in the past has written much of the financial regulation in Europe, would become a ruler taker rather than a rule giver. With France among others determined to undermine Anglo-Saxon dominance of financial markets this could amount to open war on the Square Mile.
When leading financiers questioned the Treasury on why ‘mutual recognition’ had been abandoned it was explained that this was a term unacceptable to Brussels because it had been discredited at past summits on harmonisation of trade standards. Some kind of equivalence would do the job instead.
The failure of the Government to nail down the future of the City, with banking and investment assets amounting to up to 400 per cent of the nation’s total output, is the most shaming backtrack in a treacherous week for Brexit.
The first time I realised we might be in real trouble was one hot Sunday afternoon in July last year. 
I was sitting in Westminster’s famous Red Lion pub with Brexit Secretary David Davis an hour after he’d told the Chief Whip, Julian Smith, that he intended to resign.
I’ve known David for 25 years so I thought I’d have one last go to persuade him to stay in Government. 
It was not to be. News of his resignation was confirmed at midnight and topped the morning broadcast bulletins.
It was just 48 hours after we had published our Chequers Plan. 
In the sweltering heat, the Cabinet had gathered at the Prime Minister’s country retreat where, over eight long and sometimes fractious hours, ministers were talked through Theresa May’s proposals for how a new relationship with the European Union could work.
It was by no means an easy sell and the atmosphere was tense. With discussions over, Cabinet unity was toasted with a glass of Churchill’s favourite champagne, Pol Roger, and by dinner there was a real sense of coming together. 
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson made a brilliant and jocular toast to the Prime Minister — who interrupted to say ‘If only people could see how united we are now’ — and then chatted with the Chancellor Philip Hammond about a joint newspaper article in praise of the plan for that weekend.
But early warning signs of the turbulence to follow emerged just the next day. Boris phoned me to say he was having second thoughts. 
And in the acres of media coverage that followed Chequers, David Davis was notable by his absence.
His resignation on the Sunday was swiftly followed by Boris and a slew of Brexit supporting ministers.
I understood and respected David’s reasoning, but as we’d shared a pint in the Red Lion, I knew that it was a turning point in the Brexit story. His resignation opened up a new flank in the Brexit battle.
Until that point, the Government had been defending itself against Remainers, who accused us of pursuing a so-called ‘hard Brexit’. 
From the Chequers’ resignations onwards, it was Brexiteers complaining that the Government was pursuing a ‘soft Brexit’.
Fighting this second flank was to stretch our forces and would, eventually, overwhelm us. 
I’d always worried that Brexit would be stopped in Parliament by those who claimed to accept the EU referendum result in public even as in private they sought to undermine it. 
What I’d never thought, not even in my wildest nightmares, was that the people who would stop Brexit would be the Brexiteers themselves.
Given the stark realities of the Government’s majority after the 2017 election, our aim was always to find a narrow path to provide safe passage through the competing factions.
We believed the Withdrawal Agreement we eventually struck was a good compromise around which people could coalesce. 
I am not going to rehearse those arguments again, but it remains true that if any Brexiteer had five years ago been offered the chance to stop paying vast sums of money to Brussels, to set our own immigration policies, to make our own laws and take back control of our farming and our fishing and actually leave the EU — they would have jumped at it.
My task was to find a way of selling the deal that could break through the noise barrier surrounding the debate. But it was a near deafening cacophony.
We had a Labour leadership intent on injecting enough chaos into the Brexit debate to plunge the country into another election. 
There was nothing constructive or ambiguous about Labour’s position. The party, with a very few honourable exceptions, voted against Brexit on 37 separate occasions.
They found a handful of willing allies on Conservative backbenches and were aided and abetted in their defiance of the public vote by a Speaker whose role in Brexit has been nothing short of shameful.
This alliance used parliamentary procedure to thwart the public will when it could, and re-wrote the rule book when it could not. Their aim was to slow down progress, hobble our negotiations and weaken our hand.
And yet this endless parliamentary onslaught may yet have been surmountable but for the battles we had to wage on the other end of the spectrum — from those who feared our proposal was not ‘Brexit enough’.
A fault line opened up in the party between the Brexit pragmatists and the so-called Brexit purists — the European Reform Group. 
Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ERG had become a powerful force within the Conservative Party. 
The caucus of 80 backbench MPs held out against a deal they believed to be what Jacob branded Brino — Brexit In Name Only.
The party was, in effect, held to ransom by a group of hardcore hold-outs lifted from the relative obscurity of the backbenches to parade their seemingly endless outrage. Common sense and common ground was driven from the public debate.
This backbench insurgency was legitimised by a chronic lack of discipline from certain ministers who abused the position and privilege of being in Cabinet to leak, brief and undermine at every turn.
It became so bad the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox once refused to discuss his advice in front of Cabinet colleagues whom he simply couldn’t trust not to spew out their gobbets of information to Twitter-hungry journalists five minutes after the meeting broke up.
Well-informed debate increasingly became punctuated by well-crafted soundbites designed for an audience outside the room. We joked rather bitterly that we should cut out the middle men and start broadcasting Cabinet.
This behaviour was far more damaging than simply eroding party discipline — though that would have been bad enough. 
Ministers were putting information out that was being consumed by the other side, so while the EU team maintained its discipline and focus, speaking with one voice, we presented disharmony, conflict and a range of different voices.
It gave the EU succour when it should have been under pressure and it allowed them to brief Britain’s own journalists in Brussels that we were not fighting hard enough.
To counter these cynical and calculated briefings that a cadre of MPs were only too willing to believe, Downing Street embarked on a charm offensive. 
We invited small groups of Conservative MPs to a series of myth-busting dinners — hosted by Chief of Staff Gavin Barwell, Deputy JoJo Penn and myself — to explain the Government’s position. If people were going to object, at least it would be on the basis of facts, not myths.
I thought that, as a well-known Brexiteer myself, we’d be speaking the same language. I considered many of those who came to No 10’s small dining room to be friends or long-standing allies. 
I confessed to them my fear that unless people were willing to compromise we risked delaying or even de-railing Brexit.
One MP openly scoffed at this, telling me: ‘You are just wrong. The leaving date is written in black and white on the face of the EU Withdrawal Bill. We will leave on March 29 and nothing can stop that from happening.’
Similarly, I embarked on speaking tours, taking the deal direct to party members from Yorkshire to Sussex. I was asked at one of these events how I, as a Brexiteer, could back the Government’s deal. It was a frequently asked and depressing question.
I’ve never once regretted the choice I made in 2017 to quit my job as head of political coverage at the BBC to become Theresa May’s director of communications at a critical time for the nation.
I’ve always believed Britain should leave the EU. It was a choice Britain had to make and the public made the right call. 
The EU is heading down a path we cannot and will not follow — one of ever closer union. 
And we have chosen to set our own course, to become once more a powerful global trading nation, confident and capable of determining its own destiny.
You often hear the charge that this generation is imposing its beliefs about Europe on the next. It is precisely for generations to come that this choice was made. 
Our children will grow up knowing the freedom of living and working in a great country that can chart its own path and make its own decisions.
But as the months ground on, it became clear that our destination was moving further away.
While some softened as the parliamentary flashpoints came, a hardcore rump was hardening its position. Even when we achieved changes to the Irish backstop they were never enough.
The PM continued to be let down by elements within her own party and the mood in Westminster grew ever darker.
One senior Brexiteer I had known for many years took to blanking me and tutting loudly whenever I walked past. 
I took another old friend for a drink, but he grew angry and aggressive after a couple of pints and stalked off, still shouting at me over his shoulder.
But private polls and focus groups showed the public, when the details of the deal were explained, were supportive.
That is why we embarked on more ways of talking directly to them — with Theresa May delivering live Downing Street statements, timed to hit the six and ten o’clock bulletins, and her social media fireside chats.
But both in Parliament and with the public at large, the turnaround was too slow. Weakened by fighting on too many fronts for too long, we succumbed to the inevitable.
These last few weeks at No 10, however, have not been ones marked by bitterness or regret. Work on devising new strategies to get Brexit over the line never stopped.
But this week, for many of us, it reached its conclusion and there is, of course, great sadness.
On Wednesday, the team gathered in Downing Street to watch the PM deliver her final speech. 
We applauded her as she drove away to Buckingham Palace to resign and then went back in through the famous black door, some of us for the last time, and hugged friends who were staying.
We had just 15 minutes to leave — by a back door. 
One by one, we handed in our passes and our work phones. It was a sober end to an emotional and exhausting two years.
It is an enormous privilege to work at No 10, to do so at a time of such profound importance to the nation and an honour that may never again be matched. 
I believe that we should always remain proud of the work we did there.
We navigated the EU Withdrawal Bill into law — the crucial foundation for leaving — and we delivered an ambitious domestic agenda despite, as they say, Brexit. 
Theresa May tackled injustices such as domestic violence and modern slavery, boosted funding for mental health care, increased pay for public sector workers and introduced legislation for net zero emissions by 2050.
We leave office with the long-term future for the NHS secured by the largest cash injection in its history, with unemployment at its lowest level since 1975 and with 32 million people better off through tax cuts.
It is a proud record fit for a prime minister who has rightly been feted for her compassion, integrity and her tireless devotion to duty. No country could have asked for a more committed public servant than Theresa May.
As to the future? In her successor, Britain has a leader who is passionate, energetic and determined to deliver Brexit. And it will take all that energy to get this over the line, because the parliamentary maths have not changed and the EU’s position is unlikely to fundamentally alter.
The new PM has amassed a formidable team around the Cabinet table and at No 10, but if Boris Johnson is to succeed, ministers need to demonstrate greater respect and loyalty to him than some showed Theresa May. They must be candid around the Cabinet table, but not drip poison the minute they move away from it.
And the new Prime Minister’s own Brexiteer backbenchers must rally behind their champion — and even accept that any deal he secures with the EU will not be ‘everything’ they wish for.
Over the summer the forces will marshal once more for a ‘do or die’ Brexit battle.
An increasingly isolated Jeremy Corbyn seems powerless to prevent his party’s determination to defy the will of the British people, overturn Labour’s manifesto promise to voters and rally behind a second referendum.
Meanwhile, the Government clings to its paper-thin majority, the forces of Remain are massing and the activist Speaker shows no signs of relenting.
As he stood at the podium in Downing Street this week, Boris Johnson remarked there were just 99 days until October 31 — the deadline he has set for Britain’s departure from the EU, deal or no deal.
But there is a second, more worrying, figure to bear in mind. To negotiate a deal and ratify it, there are just 24 parliamentary sitting days between now and October 31.
As the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier is so fond of saying: ‘The clock is ticking.’
So my message to the Brexit hold-outs is simple — you have been given a second chance to deliver what you say you want. Do not squander it — you may not get a third.
For those who seek to block Brexit once more — including the rump of Conservative MPs who refused to support Theresa May — you risk a breach of faith with the public so profound it may never recover.
And to those on both sides of the House who stood on a manifesto promising to leave the EU — I say do what you promised voters. Deliver Brexit.
Ireland would be better off quitting the European Union and following Britain because it will be badly treated after Brexit, a leading think tank claimed today. 
Outside the trading bloc, Ireland and Britain could use their existing relationship to strike a favourable deal for access to the EU single market, Policy Exchange said.
Ireland has previously firmly rejected a so-called 'Irexit' and recent polls suggest as many as 88 per cent backing continued EU membership. 
The Policy Exchange reporter was drawn up by Ray Bassett, a former Irish diplomat and commentator.
Mr Bassett said allowing the EU to negotiate Brexit on behalf of Ireland was 'untenable', as it would leave Dublin on the sidelines. 
He concluded: 

His report said: 'In the circumstances, Ireland must give serious consideration to other options, including Irexit.' 
'Whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, there will be a price to pay. For Ireland, there is really no upside to Brexit,' it said.
'The question to be raised is what price is Ireland willing to pay to stand in solidarity with the remaining 26 EU countries?
'If the Irish Government is willing to pay that price, will the Dail, and possibly the population in a referendum, be equally willing to do so?'
Mr Bassett warned:'The first duty of the EU negotiators is to act on behalf of the European Union as an institution.
'This is prioritised in their guidelines, approved by the European Council.
'The type of deal that Ireland's interests requires, however, including free trade with the UK, is directly in contradiction with the Union negotiators mandate that anything relating to Ireland and her border which emerges from the Brexit negotiations, must 'maintain the integrity the Union's legal order', i.e., no exceptions to the customs union.'
The consensus in Ireland favours remaining in the EU.
A recent poll suggested that 88 per cent of Irish people think Ireland should stay in, although that was commissioned by an NGO which works to develop links between the Republic and EU. 
Ireland's new Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visited No 10 for talks with Theresa May last month.
Both leaders agreed on the need to ensure the Ireland-Northern Ireland border remained open and with a minimal disruption to trade.
But Mr Varadkar said Brexit was a 'matter of regret' and made clear Ireland would be negotiating as one of the 27 remaining EU states. 


Irish ministers have repeated warnings they are 'resolute' about blocking a Brexit deal if Britain does not back down over the Irish border.
There are just days remaining to find a solution to the deepening stand off before Theresa May meets EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to discuss a draft divorce agreement.
Britain has insisted it is impossible to finalise how the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic will work before UK-EU trade talks.
But Dublin wants guarantees now before it gives permission alongside other EU nations for trade talks even to begin at December's EU council. 
EU negotiator Michel Barnier today said the 'moment of truth' was approaching as he repeated his call for 'real, sufficient progress' on Ireland and other divorce issues.
Asked about the prospect of movement new concessions on Ireland today, the PM's official spokesman said Britain is 'firmly committed' to avoiding a physical frontier. 
Ireland's Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney dismissed a claim from Ukip that Ireland was threatening the UK, but insisted that his country must be protected in the Brexit process.
He said: 'Ireland is not threatening anybody, least of all a friend, but we remain resolute in our insistence on a sensible way through Brexit that protects Ireland.'
Dublin has said that if either the whole of the UK or just Northern Ireland remains in the single market and customs union then there would be no problem with maintaining the current soft border arrangements – a proposal ruled out by the Prime Minister.
British Government: No physical infrastructure on the border but Northern Ireland leaves the EU Customs Union with the rest of the UK. Customs rules to be decided as part of the future trade talks.
Irish Government: No physical infrastructure on the border and the same rules on trade on both sides. Ireland suggests this could mean leaving Northern Ireland inside the customs union with checks at Belfast and other ports.
DUP: Protect Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom at all costs. No physical infrastructure but no concession to making rules different in the UK and Northern Ireland.
EU: Keep the EU27 together and back Ireland over the UK.  
Irish European Affairs Minister Helen McEntee acknowledged that some of the final details would have to be dealt with in the next phase of Brexit talks.
But she warned the UK must come forward with further proposals now to achieve the aim of maintaining a soft border.
Ms McEntee told Channel 4 News: 'If all of the options that we feel can make that possible have been taken off the table then we need them to produce something else that will give us confidence, moving into phase two, that this can actually be achieved.
'To date this has not happened.'
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has suggested the only solution is to introduce technology to manage multinational trade while turning a blind eye to lower-level cross-frontier movement.
That is essentially the proposal forwarded by the UK in its position paper on the border earlier this year.
Mr Ahern told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Theresa May, take her at her word, she's confidently said she doesn't want a physical border, the EU don't want a physical border, the Irish Government don't.
David Davis was tonight accused of keeping Parliament 'in the dark' after handing over edited versions of 58 Brexit analysis papers.
The handover of the documents to the Brexit committee, chaired by Labour MP Hilary Benn, came a day ahead of the deadline agreed by the Brexit Secretary.
The committee will meet tomorrow to decide whether to publish all or part of the documents.
Mr Davis agreed to release the documents after Labour won a Commons vote on November 1 on a 'humble address' to the Queen asking for what it termed the 'impact assessments' to be provided to the committee. 
In a letter to Mr Benn, Mr Davis said the papers had been redacted because there was no guarantee the committee would keep them secret.
He said: 'Given that we have received no assurances from the committee regarding how any information passed will be used, we have sought not to include commercially, market and negotiation sensitive information.
'Delivering a successful outcome to our EU exit negotiations for the whole country requires keeping some information confidential for the purposes of the negotiations.' 

Mr Davis acknowledged that the coverage of each sector 'differs in terms of length and level of detail'.
Labour committee member Seema Malhotra, who has led efforts to examine the sectoral papers, said MPs must be given the full documents 'and nothing less'. 

'We cannot and should not be short-changed, she said.
'This will not be in the national interest.
'The public and Parliament must no longer be kept in the dark.'  
'So you're left down with the one alternative - to make technology work in most cases and to throw a blind eye to those areas that can't come in within technology.'
In a signal of the growing tension around the coming days, EU negotiator Michel Barnier today repeated his call for 'real, sufficient progress' on Ireland and other crucial divorce issues.
He said: 'The moment of truth is approaching... and I really hope that will be the point where we will see real, sufficient progress on the conditions of our separation. 
'And that will allow me to recommend the opening up of the next two phases of negotiations, first of all on the transition period and then on the future relationship.' 
Amid fears there could be a return to a hard border in Ireland given the UK Government's commitment to leaving the European single market and customs union, which allow for frictionless trade, the Frenchman said: 'We don't want to be putting up barriers again and we need furthermore to maintain the integrity of the single market.' 
Asked about the prospect of movement new concessions on Ireland today, the PM's official spokesman said Britain is 'firmly committed' to avoiding a physical frontier.
He added: 'In order to be able to see what the solution is going to finally look like, we need to understand what the future trading relationship is going to be, because the two things are obviously related.
'We want to get on to talking about trade as soon as possible.'
The PM's spokesman gave short shrift to suggestions that the problem could be resolved by allowing Northern Ireland to continue to observe the rules of the customs union.
He said: 'This has been raised numerous times and we've been clear that the United Kingdom as a whole is leaving the single market and is leaving the customs union.'
Yesterday, Trade Secretary Liam Fox said the issue could not be finally resolved until trade talks with Brussels have progressed. 

Mrs May has been given until December 4 to come up with further proposals on the divorce.
EU leaders must declare there has been 'sufficient progress' on the border, the Brexit divorce bill and citizens' rights to give the green light to moving on to the next phase of negotiations.
International Trade Secretary Dr Fox said: 'We don't want there to be a hard border but the UK is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market.'
He told Sky News's Sunday with Niall Paterson: 'We have always had exceptions for Ireland, whether it's in our voting rights, our rights of residence in the UK.
'We have always accepted a certain asymmetry and that will have to be part of whatever agreement we come to with the European Union but we can't come to a final answer to the Irish question until we get an idea of the end state.
'And until we get into discussions with the EU on the end state that will be very difficult, so the quicker that we can do that the better and we are still in a position where the EU doesn't want to do that.'
He blamed the European Commission's 'obsession' with forging a closer union for the delays in the Brexit talks, which the UK hopes will move on to discussing trade after a meeting of EU leaders on December 14-15.

Any arrangement which appeared to give Northern Ireland a separate status would be strongly resisted by the DUP, whose 10 MPs are effectively keeping Mrs May in Downing Street after she lost her majority in the general election.
Rebel MPs voted to seize control of Brexit from the embattled Prime Minister last night, despite warnings from the Government that continued chaos will force it to call another general election. 

Three pro-EU ministers quit the Government to back a Commons amendment enabling MPs to take control of Commons business to stage a series of 'indicative votes' on alternatives to the Prime Minister's deal tomorrow.
They were among 30 Conservative MPs to defy the whips and support the cross-party amendment which was passed by 329 to 302 - a majority of 27 - in another humiliating reverse for Theresa May.
However, Mrs May has warned the government is not bound to honour the result of the indicative votes as they 'could lead to an outcome that is unnegotiable with the EU'. 
As the Government's Brexit strategy went into meltdown, senior ministers 'war-gamed' scenarios that could see a national poll called three years ahead of schedule because a soft Brexit would shred the Tory manifesto.
But the most recent poll on the issue was carried out by Opinium two months ago found that only 12 per cent of Britons would welcome another general election.
The campaign would also likely tear apart the already split Tory and Labour parties because their MPs are already bitterly divided over whether to leave the EU or to reverse the 2016 referendum and remain.
Scroll down for video 
TUESDAY: REBEL MPs WORK OUT HOW THEIR INDICATIVE VOTES WILL WORK AS MAY CONTINUES HER BATTLE FOR SUPPORT FOR HER BREXIT DEAL
Remainer rebels are now trying work out how they will hold the indicative votes on Wednesday while Theresa May scrambles for support for her deal. 
After last night's big win MPs will stage a series of so-called 'indicative votes' on what should happen next with Brexit. The Speaker will select the motions to be debated, which are likely to include a second referendum, Labour's Brexit plan, a Customs Union Brexit, a so-called 'Norway plus' plan. 
Unusually MPs will vote on paper – pink slips which list the options. The votes will not be binding on the Government, but will send a strong signal about what kind of Brexit a majority of MPs are prepared to back and would heap pressure on Mrs May.
Today had been touted as a possible day for the third coming of the meaningful vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal, following heavy defeats in January and just a fortnight ago. But the DUP, whose support is key if she has any chance of getting it through the Commons, kiboshed that idea earlier and she announced it would not happen. 
With no sign that the Prime Minister is prepared to abandon the plan it means she is likely to spend the day trying to hammer out a deal with anyone receptive - if they exist. 
WEDNESDAY: MPs HOLD INDICATIVE VOTES  
The Commons voted to let MPs take control of Brexit. They are likely to hold a series of indicative votes on Brexit alternatives this week, most likely on Wednesday. The alternatives include a softer Brexit, a second referendum or leaving with No Deal. If one commands a majority, MPs will try to pressure Theresa May into adopting that option. But there is no binding way of making her do so.
COULD STILL HAPPEN THURSDAY: MAY HOLDS A THIRD MEANINGFUL VOTE ON HER BREXIT DEAL
May is likely to try and pass her Brexit deal a third time, after the EU offered a Brexit date of 22 May if she does so this week. The Prime Minister will use threats that MPs will take control and force a softer Brexit in an attempt to force Brexiteer rebels to finally back her. She may also offer them a date when she will quit in return for their support. Thursday is the most likely day for her vote, but there is a chance she won't hold it if she still does not believe she'll win.
FRIDAY: MPs TAKE CONTROL?
If the PM loses a third vote on her deal, MPs and Remainer Cabinet ministers will try and force her towards a softer Brexit. Brexiteer MPs and Cabinet minister will conversely try and push her towards a No Deal exit from the EU. Minister have also claimed that they could call an election if MPs try to force them into a soft Brexit.
MONDAY APRIL 1: ROUND TWO:
MPs are expected to rank their preferences. When one option is knocked out, MPs second preferences will be counted. For example if a second referendum is knocked out, its supporters can switch to backing a soft Brexit. Parliament would agree to support the final option.
WEDNESDAY APRIL 3: MPs COULD FORCE MAY'S HAND:
If Theresa May refuses to accept MPs preferred Brexit option, they could try to pass new legislation compelling her to do so
Business minister Richard Harrington, who resigned along with Middle East minister Alistair Burt and health minister Steve Brine, said the Government was 'playing roulette' with peoples' lives and livelihoods in its handling of Brexit. 
Mr Brine told the BBC: 'I will still, as I said in my letter to the Prime Minister. I will still support her deal. I still think it is the best of the options. Maybe what last night will do is focus some minds... those on my side who don't like the deal, maybe they will realise that the House of Commons is prepared to act.
'And, anything from here, as far as they are concerned, gets softer in terms of Brexit.'
Mr Brine said: 'If the House of Commons just simply cannot come up with anything to move us out of this then everything is on the table.
'You have to accept that a second referendum or revoking Article 50 are on the table because they will probably be some options.'
Mr Brine told the BBC: 'You also have to remember that the manifesto of 2017 did not win a majority in the House of Commons.
'And this is the crux of the whole matter, that the House of Commons and executive-led Government works when you have got a majority in the House of Commons.
'We don't have a majority in the House. And, possibly, that would be one of my criticisms of my Government is that we haven't reached across the aisle enough.'
The result means MPs can potentially dictate business of the Commons - normally controlled by the Government - for days to come, potentially paving the way for a 'softer' deal that keeps Britain closer to the EU.
Ministers will consider their response at the weekly meeting of the Cabinet in Downing Street today. 
Health Secretary Matt Hancock called on MPs to back Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'If anything, yesterday in the House of Commons demonstrated that the option of no deal simply won't be allowed by the Commons.
'And the best way through this impasse is the one deal that has been negotiated with the EU that can be delivered quickly now.'
Mr Hancock said: 'Clearly, it's incumbent on the Government to listen to what the Commons says. But we can't pre-commit to following whatever they vote for, because they might vote for something that is completely impractical.'
In other developments:
Twenty nine Tories including three ministers rebelled against the whip to hand Theresa May a devastating defeat. They were: 
They were: 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told a meeting of the Cabinet that failure to pass Mrs May's plan in the coming weeks would almost inevitably lead to an election.
The seven Brexit options MPs may get to choose from:
:: Theresa May's Brexit deal - The Withdrawal Agreement negotiated with Brussels that has already been rejected by MPs twice.
:: Revoke Article 50 - The cancellation of the UK's notice to Brussels that it would leave the EU, which was given almost two years ago.
:: Second referendum - Another national poll of voters to check whether they still want to leave the EU.
:: The PM's deal plus customs union - Labour's Brexit plan, which would prevent Britain being able to strike its own trade deals.
:: The PM's deal plus customs union plus single market - An even 'softer' Brexit plan, also known as 'Common Market 2.0' or 'Norway Plus', that would include keeping freedom of movement of people.
:: Free Trade Agreement - A trade deal between Great Britain and the EU, but excluding Northern Ireland, which would create a customs border in the Irish Sea.
:: No Deal - The country would leave the EU without striking an agreement with Brussels. 
Writing in the Daily Mail, he today makes a last-ditch appeal to hardline Leavers to get behind Mrs May – or face losing Brexit altogether. Two weeks ago his legal advice led many Tory MPs to reject the withdrawal agreement because of fears the UK could remain in the Irish border backstop.
But today he argues the plan's disadvantages have been 'exaggerated and demonised' by opponents of Brexit.
If MPs do not vote for the agreement in the coming days, he says the Commons will 'exert itself' and try to force either a second referendum, or a plan that keeps the UK inside the customs union and single market.
He warns 'powerful and unreconciled forces' who opposed Brexit were still trying to stop it and says his biggest fear is the UK will never regain its 'independence'.
He says: 'We must grasp our freedom now and heed the beckoning call of the future, for if we do not, history will marvel that we spurned this fleeting moment of opportunity.'
At yesterday's Cabinet meeting, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay repeated his weekend warning that an election would be the logical conclusion of the Government losing control over the Brexit process.
Fellow ministers Liam Fox, Andrea Leadsom and Alan Cairns also warned that they believed an election was increasingly likely.
One source said: 'If we lose control of the process then we are heading for an election.
'We'll either lose a confidence vote – in which case you could even get Corbyn without an election – or we will be forced to go for an election ourselves.'
Another source said: 'It's not just scaremongering, it's the only way out of this.'
A Downing Street spokesman said that Mrs May was opposed to a general election.
But a senior Tory source acknowledged it was a growing possibility, adding: 'The reason the Cabinet is so determined to get this deal through is that there is a full understanding that the alternatives are pretty grim.'
The Government is prepared to pull the plug and force a General Election if MPs try to seize control of Brexit and make it softer than Theresa May's deal.
Ministers including Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay are said to have raised the prospect if Parliament votes this evening to wrestle control of the withdrawal process. 
The talk of forcing a General Election come despite an Opinium poll from two months ago finding that only 12 per cent of Britons would welcome another one, just two years after the last resulted in a hung Parliament.
Mr Barclay reportedly repeated at Cabinet today warnings he gave on television yesterday.
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show he said that if the Commons took control of the order paper and votes for a different outcome, it would 'potentially collide with fundamental commitments the Government has given in their manifesto', though he said the vote itself would 'not be binding'.
Explaining the scenario, he said: 'What Parliament has done is vote for a number of contradictory things so we would need to untangle that but ultimately, at its logical conclusion, the risk of a general election increases because you potentially have a situation where Parliament is instructing the executive to do something that is counter to what it was elected to do.'
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox this morning gave a stark warning to MPs, telling BBC Radio 4's Today: 'I was elected, as 80 per cent of members were, to respect the referendum and leave the European Union. 
'I was also elected on a manifesto that specifically said no single market and no customs union. 
 'That, for Conservative MPs who are honouring the manifesto, limits their room for manoeuvre. 
The former hardline Brexiteer turned May loyalist added that the prospect of a longer Brexit delay meaning participation in May's European Elections would 'unleash a torrent of pent-up frustration from voters'.    
'I'm not sure that there are many people in the House of Commons who would fancy that particular meeting with voters,' he said.
'It would unleash a torrent of pent-up frustration from voters and I think that the major parties will do what they can to avoid having to fight those European elections.
'There is nothing in politics like a little bit of self-interest to concentrate the minds, and I think, as we get towards that date, increasingly my colleagues will have to decide which of the limited options they want to follow.'
He urged MPs to back Mrs May's deal, warning: 'For a lot of my colleagues, I think they still believe there is a route to no deal. I have come to the conclusion some time ago that was unlikely given the House of Commons that we have.
'I think we will see today that there is a mood in the House of Commons to stop us leaving without a deal, even if that means no Brexit. I think that is a constitutionally disastrous position.'
Mrs May told yesterday's emergency Cabinet meeting that she hoped to put her agreement to the vote for a third time today.
But the move was vetoed by the DUP, whose support is seen as critical in persuading Eurosceptic Tories to fall in line.
The Prime Minister told MPs: 'With great regret I have had to conclude that as things stand, there is still not sufficient support in the House to bring back a third meaningful vote.'
Mrs May's deputy David Lidington last night said the Government still hoped to hold a vote this week. But the DUP appeared to be digging in. Deputy leader Nigel Dodds rounded angrily on Mrs May in the Commons yesterday after she said more time was needed to prepare Northern Ireland for the possibility of No Deal.
Mr Dodds said the Government was 'entirely responsible' for what he described as a 'fundamental lack of preparation'.
Plans for the Government to put forward its own proposals for indicative votes were dropped ahead of yesterday's meeting. Many ministers, including Dr Fox, Chris Grayling, Gavin Williamson and Mrs Leadsom, are opposed to the process. But Mr Lidington tried to head off a defeat last night by pledging that the Government would provide Commons time for MPs to try to reach an agreement on an alternative Brexit.
Sir Oliver told MPs his plan, which has been rejected by MPs twice since the start of the year, would allow Parliament to vote tomorrow on a string of Brexit options. These might include a customs union, a single market, a second referendum and even revocation of Article 50.
Mrs May said she was sceptical that the process would find a solution, adding: 'No government could give a blank cheque to commit to an outcome without knowing what it is.' Asked whether she would be prepared for a customs union if Parliament backed it, she replied: 'No one would want to support an option which contradicted the manifesto on which they stood.'
Labour backed Sir Oliver's plan. But its Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, also refused to guarantee to back any resulting proposal.
What amendments did MPs vote on?
The Speaker selected three for debate and vote yesterday. One, from Jeremy Corbyn, was a fudge designed to avoid splitting his own MPs and called for votes on a series of options – including a second referendum.
Another, from former Labour foreign secretary Margaret Beckett, would have forced MPs to be given a vote on whether to push ahead with No Deal or to delay Brexit.
But the most significant was proposed by former Tory Cabinet minister Oliver Letwin and backed by some Remainer Tories, Labour and other opposition parties. It was designed to take control of Brexit out of ministers' hands.
What does the Letwin amendment do?
It changes the rules of the House of Commons, the standing orders, to pass control of the agenda from the Government and hand it to backbench MPs. 
Why is he doing it?
Mr Letwin says he wants to stop No Deal because the Government hasn't properly prepared for leaving without an agreement. He argues Parliament should take over the process to find a Brexit which can secure the support of the Commons. He is a supporter of the super-soft 'Norway plus' option, which is likely to mean the UK accepting single market rules without a say in them and paying vast contributions to the EU Budget. It could also mean a permanent customs union, making trade deals impossible.
What do critics say?
They say Mr Letwin's plan amounts to a coup and is 'constitutionally dangerous'. A leaked Whitehall analysis of the plans to let MPs take charge say they pose a 'clear and present danger' to ministers' 'ability to govern'. Yesterday Mr Letwin denied his proposal is a 'massive constitutional revolution'.
Is a general election more likely?
Several senior ministers argued in Cabinet that if Parliament tried to instruct the executive to do something the Government deeply opposed, such as remaining in the customs union or the single market, an election could follow. Mrs May indicated as much in the Commons when she argued 'no-one would want to support an option which contradicted the manifesto on which they stood'.
How could an election happen?
Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, the Prime Minister cannot simply call an election. There are two ways one could result. The first is that two thirds of MPs vote for an election when Mrs May proposes one. The second is that the PM loses a confidence vote and nobody can win one – ie command a majority – within a two-week period.
MPs wrestled control of Brexit from the hands of Theresa May last night, voting to hold a series of votes that could determine how - if at all - the UK leaves the European Union.
The Commons voted by 329 votes to 302 - a majority of 27 - to approve an amendment brought by Tory ex-minister Sir Oliver Letwin allowing it to take control of business on Wednesday from the Government. 
This will allow MPs to select their favorite Brexit option in so-called 'indicative votes', which are likely to include soft Brexit options and the possibility of remaining in the European Union. 
Three ministers were among 29 Tory rebels who defied the Prime Minister and backed the amendment. 
Minutes before the vote Watford's Richard Harrington quit as an energy minister in order to support the Letwin plan, accusing the Government of 'playing roulette' with people's lives.
He was followed by Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt and health minister Steve Brine. 
Other high profile Tories to rebel included former ministers Ken Clarke, Nicky Morgan, Justine Greening, Andrew Mitchell, Sam Gyimah, Damian Green, Alberto Costa and Dominic Grieve, plus Damian Collins, chairman of the Culture Committee.
The Government later lost the main motion by 327 votes to 300, the same margin. 
It came after MPs had narrowly rejected a backbench amendment brought by Dame Margaret Beckett to allow the Commons to have a vote if the UK is seven days away from leaving the EU without a deal, by 314 votes to 311, a majority of three. 
Pro-Europe Tory MP Nick Boles, who backed the indicative votes amendment, told the BBC: 'It is a much better victory than any of us had dared hope.'
Mr Boles added: 'We will be relying on the Government to reflect Parliament's wishes.
'If, ultimately, the Government refuses to listen to what Parliament has voted for then we will look to bring forward a Bill, pass an Act of Parliament that will require the Government to reflect Parliament's wishes in its new negotiating mandate.'
Fellow Tory rebel Guto Bebb said: 'The scale of the Government's defeat and the principled resignations of ministers Richard Harrington, Alistair Burt and Steve Brine are more nails in the coffin of a Brexit deal that very few in the country or Parliament have ever wanted.
'The Prime Minister has now lost control of this process. 
'What is needed now in this national emergency is not more posturing or playing roulette with people's lives but to give Parliament the time and space needed to work out what Brexit means, as well as begin preparing for important democratic elections to the European Parliament.'
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also welcomed the result, hailing the fact the House had now 'taken control'.
He said: 'This Government has been an abject failure and this House must now find a solution...
'This House must also consider whether any deal should be put to the people for a confirmatory vote.
'Where this Government has failed, this House must, and I believe will, succeed.'  
Tory former minister Ed Vaizey voted both for and against Sir Oliver's amendment, which is regarded as a formal abstention. 
Brexiteer Tory backbencher Andrew Bridgen said it was time for Theresa May to quit.
Anti-Brexit campaigners erected six mock customs checkpoints along the Northern Ireland and Irish Republic border on Saturday, in a protest over the possible impact to peace, jobs and the free movement of workers.
Northern Ireland, a British province, will be the only land frontier between the United Kingdom and the European Union once Britain leaves and some fear that will mean a return to checks at the border where about 30,000 people cross each day for work.
The frontier was marked by military checkpoints until a 1998 peace deal ended three decades of violence between Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland and Protestant unionists who wanted to keep Northern Ireland British. Over 3,600 died in that time.
'We want to stop the re-imposition of those border posts,' said Border Communities Against Brexit spokesman Declan Fearon, leading a protest in the town of Carrickcarnon between the Northern Irish county of Armagh and southern county of Louth.
'In many cases they divided peoples' farms, they divided communities and parishes. Young people nowadays have never known of that,' said Fearon, who runs a kitchen manufacturing company three kilometres (1.86 miles) north of the border.
In Carrickcarnon, some locals dressed up as customs officers and caused tailbacks at a temporary road barrier where they called motorists into a mock customs booth and searched vehicles beside fake British customs signs that demanded they stop.
Signs telling motorists they were entering the European Union free travel zone were erected on the other side of the border.
Hundreds protested from Carrickcarnon, which is less than an hour's drive from Dublin airport, to the border between the counties of Donegal and Derry, 160 km north-west.
Overall, 52 percent of voters in the United Kingdom voted in favour of leaving the EU in June's referendum, but a majority - 56 percent - of those voting in Northern Ireland supported remaining in the bloc.
'In (the Northern Irish constituency) Foyle where I am 82 percent of people voted to remain,' said Dermot O'Hara, a charity worker protesting at the Donegal/Derry border.
'The democratic mandate of the remain camp (in Northern Ireland) should be respected.'
 
Were I to be granted a wish for 2018, it would be that fanatical Remainers stop prophesying Armageddon when — they usually say if — Britain leaves the European Union.
So unremitting are their forecasts of doom, so lacking in hope, that one almost feels they want the catastrophe to happen so that they can be proved right about Brexit.
The latest, and hitherto most extreme, intervention comes from Michael Heseltine, the former Tory deputy prime minister, and a lifelong ardent Europhile. He has said in a podcast that Brexit could be more damaging to the country than a Corbyn government (a suggestion which yesterday led to calls from fellow Tories for him to lose the party whip).
The first thing to say about this latest lunatic act of star-gazing is that — as is usual with Tory panjandrum arch-pessimists — no reason is given for the calamity that supposedly awaits our leaving the EU. It is baldly stated as fact, without explanation.
Perhaps Lord Heseltine and fellow Tory doom merchants such as Lord (Chris) Patten (who earlier this year called Brexit ‘the biggest disaster in modern British politics’) think we are too stupid to grasp the complexities of the argument.
We are asked to take on trust that life outside the EU will be a cataclysm, just as for years we were asked to take on trust by Lords Heseltine and Patten and the third member of the Tory triumvirate, Ken Clarke, that life inside the EU was an unalloyed blessing — not that most of us had ever noticed.
Indeed, Michael Heseltine is so wildly pro-EU that he recommended British membership of the single currency while it was causing havoc in the eurozone. Only three months ago, he assured The Independent that the UK ‘will one day join the euro’, while suggesting that we might never leave the EU.
But this time he has really shot his bolt in saying it would be preferable to have Corbyn in charge than to leave the EU. As the Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: ‘It shows how deep-seated his love for the EU is that he would rather bankrupt the nation than leave it.’
For Lord Heseltine well knows the damage Jeremy Corbyn would cause, having lived throughout the dismal, strike-ridden, inflation-stricken Seventies, when a Labour government that was a much paler version of Corbyn succeeded in laying waste to the economy.
Being a highly successful businessman, he understands better than almost anyone the harmful effects much higher corporate taxes would have on UK companies. Foreign investment would dry up, and the pound plunge. As one banker wittily put it, Britain under Corbyn would be ‘Cuba without the sunshine’.
With a fortune of around £300 million, Lord Heseltine would be on the receiving end of confiscatory wealth and property taxes being planned by Corbyn with his hard-line comrade-in-arms, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor.
Possibly it is to his credit that he would rather jeopardise his fine country house with its impressive arboretum than suffer the torments of leaving the EU. But is he being fair to the rest of us? I don’t think so.
The last thing this country needs is a disastrous experiment in Marxist economics. It is not the rich such as Heseltine who would suffer most from Corbyn’s inevitable depredations, but those on middling incomes, and the poor.
How on earth can an intelligent man, who has done much good for his country, believe that ruinous Corbynomics are preferable to leaving the EU, which even he can’t be sure constitutes a one-way ticket to the apocalypse?
It’s curious how Tories such as Heseltine, Clarke and Chris Patten — who take pride in their sophistication and pragmatism while mocking Tory Eurosceptics as ‘head bangers’ and ‘swivel-eyed loons’ — have themselves become blinkered ideologues.
The ideal of Europe as represented by the EU must be defended at all costs and in all circumstances. They don’t explain or justify it, but simply assert its superiority — and continue to do so even after a majority of their fellow countrymen have voted to leave.
So fanatical are these people (we should add the infamous names of Tony Blair and former EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson) that they turn a deaf ear to their own democratic principles in refusing to accept the outcome of the referendum, though to be fair to Ken Clarke he appears to regard a re-run as unfeasible.
Like most ideologues, they have become divorced from reality. It seems not to occur to them that if the result were finagled, and the votes of 17.4 million people disregarded, there would in all likelihood be a split deeper and more damaging than anything we have so far seen.
It is the lack of realism that is so shocking, the unwillingness in normally practical politicians to accept that the majority of the country, having listened to the arguments, does not accept their preconceptions about the European Union.
George Osborne, who as Chancellor led the Remainers’ ‘Project Fear’, is another member of this out-of-touch tribe. On Tuesday he said there was no need to ‘radically clamp down on immigration’ after Brexit.
This was his way of saying that Britain should stay in the single market, or be closely aligned to it, and thereby accept large inflows of EU migrants over which we would have little or no control.
After all that has happened, it is amazing that so worldly a politician as Mr Osborne can believe that the British people can be bamboozled on this point. Why won’t he respect most people’s wish to regain control of our borders?
Actually, there are plenty of Remainers who don’t persist in pretending that the result of the referendum can be reversed, and believe that life post-Brexit won’t turn into the tragedy Lord Heseltine foresees.
One such appears to be Lord Macpherson, who, as permanent secretary at the Treasury, was Mr Osborne’s right-hand man and collaborator in Project Fear, which promised an immediate recession and an emergency tax-raising Budget, neither of which happened.
Now Lord Macpherson declares that the economic impact of Brexit will be ‘limited’ if the Government seizes domestic policy opportunities and ‘looks forward, not back’. His meaning is a bit cloudy, but this former doomsayer is at least attempting to look on the bright side.
Why can’t Michael Heseltine and the rest of them do the same? If only they could take off their blinkers, which they have been wearing for several decades, they might come to see that the future holds exciting possibilities. And how much happier they would be!
Meanwhile, the former deputy prime minister should reflect that if he continues to stir the pot, and to tell us that Corbyn is preferable to Brexit, the more likely it is that the nightmarish hard-Left government he invokes will come to pass.
Is there any hope that he will change his ways? It’s very hard to persuade a bigot to change his mind. It distresses me to use such a word to describe so distinguished man as Lord Heseltine, but that is what he has become so far as the EU is concerned.
He is 84, and seemingly hale and hearty, I’m glad to say. Our best hope is that this entrenched pessimist will live to see his miserable expectations utterly confounded.
 
Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom accused her Cabinet colleagues of failing to deliver Brexit today amid a furious row at the prospect of a 'lengthy' delay.
The Commons Leader jibed 'this used to be a Cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not' as ministers wrestled for 90 minutes over how to respond to John Bercow blocking plans for a third vote on Theresa May's deal this week.
Mrs May warned the Speaker's intervention had left Parliament a 'laughing stock' - and warned the risk to Brexit now meant it was 'Parliament vs the People', a Cabinet source said. 
It leaves her headed to the EU Council on Thursday to plead for a delay amid stalemate in Westminster over whether to adopt the deal, change the kind of Brexit Britain wants or to accept No Deal next Friday. 
The Prime Minister will set out her demands in a letter to EU Council President Donald Tusk either later today or tomorrow. Downing Street was unable to be more specific on when the plans would emerge.  
Mrs May's official spokesman has also refused to comment on what it will say - while No 10 sources have dismissed reports Mrs May wants up to two years with an option to be out by the end of June if her Brexit deal is passed in time to avoid European elections on May 23. 
EU negotiator Michel Barnier warned Britain must choose between either requesting a short delay or a long one - warning it would not be granted a version of both. 
Of Mr Bercow's intervention, Mrs May's official spokesman said: 'If you look back at the speech by the Prime Minister before meaningful vote two (MVII), she said that if MPs did not support MVII, we would be in a moment of crisis.
'I think events yesterday tell you that situation has come to pass.'
Asked how the PM was tackling the crisis, the spokesman said: 'What you can see from the Prime Minister and from her colleagues is absolute determination to find a way in which Parliament can vote for the UK leave the European Union with a deal.
'The Prime Minister's has been very clear she wants that to happen as soon as possible.
'She believes that asking the British people to take part in European elections three years after they voted to leave the European Union would represent a failure of politicians.'
In other developments today Boris Johnson was spotted in Downing Street. Both sides remained tight-lipped about what was discussed. 
Earlier, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay hinted the Government could bring back its deal within days anyway and dare Mr Bercow to rule it out of order if and when the PM has secured a delay to Brexit. The Cabinet will discuss the crisis in No 10 this morning. 
Mrs May is likely to try and secure a delay to Britain's exit date at Thursday's EU summit and use that to overcome Bercow's demands at a vote next week. Britain is currently due to leave the EU on the Friday. 
The Speaker refused to comment on his decision when greeted by reporters outside Parliament this morning. 
But Brexit hardliners have backed the explosive ruling that has left Prime Minister's plans lying in tatters today.
Members of the European Research Group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg seized on the Commons Speaker's intervention as they fight to secure No Deal Brexit on schedule. 
MPs in the group were heard whistling the 'Great Escape' theme tune in the Commons tea room last night in the belief Mr Bercow's bombshell makes their hopes of No Deal more likely. 
They also hope a long delay - instead of a short extension to implement this deal - would allow them to dictate the terms of Brexit. 
Former Cabinet minister David Jones said the ruling was 'absolutely accurate' and insisted it was a 'well known' rule - adding Mr Bercow was doing the 'right thing'. 
The UK could be sucked into taking part in the European Elections at a cost of more than £100million if we have not left by April 11, officials have said.
That date in just 23 days time is the deadline for passing legislation to allow the May 23-26 elections to take place.
That's because on April 12 the Government must, under current laws,'publish notice of the poll' that is to come the following month, the Government has said.
This kick-starts official preparations like hiring staff and setting up polling stations.
Ministers' hands are tied by the European Parliament Elections Act 2002, which sets out the process to follow and which will only be repealed on Brexit day by the EU Withdrawal Act becoming law.
The last set of European elections in 2014 cost £108.6million and Downing Street believes the figure for this time round would be 'comparable'.
Mrs May will fly to Brussels on Thursday for a tense EU summit at which she will admit Brexit must be delayed.
She had hoped to go having secured support for her battered deal at the third attempt and ask only for a short technical extension of around three months.
Instead she will beg for a much longer delay despite little clarity over what Britain might do with months or years more time.
Exasperated EU ministers arrived in Brussels for a pre-summit meeting today complaining about the chaos in London - warning 'patience' in the bloc was being sorely tested.
As Mrs May's prepares her mission, the Foreign Office revealed its No Deal 'war room' today with just 11 days until Britain was supposed to leave the EU.
Mr Jones told the Today programme: 'John Bercow's ruling was absolutely accurate.
'It has been well known that it's impossible for a Speaker to allow a series of identical motions to be put before the House in the same session.
'There is nothing new about this and those who are crying foul are really wrong.
'He did the right thing.' 
Mr Jones - a senior ERG MP and supporter of No Deal - insisted the legal position was unchanged and Britain was still due to leave the EU next Friday. 
He said: 'For us not to leave on Friday next week, the law would have to be changed.'  
In a signal of the Government gearing up for a battle with the Speaker, Mr Barclay struck a defiant tone today. 
Brexit bias: John Bercow has revealed publicly that he voted for Remain in 2016, fuelling claims by Brexiteers that he tried to frustrate Brexit in the Commons.
The claims were fuelled by an anti-Brexit sticker being spotted in a black Land Rover parked outside Mr Bercow's Commons home - he has insisted the car and sticker belongs to his wife.
Brexiteers were also furious when he refused to accept an amendment that sought to rule out a second referendum on Brexit. 
It added to complaints through much of the time since the referendum that he sought to boost pro-EU supporters such as Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke at the expense of Brexiteers.  
Bullying claims: John Bercow was hit by a number of bullying claims. He was said to have subjected staff to angry outbursts for years, mocking junior officials and leaving staff 'terrified'.
A former private secretary, Kate Emms, said she was left with PTSD after working for him.
And earlier this year Lord Lisvane, clerk of the House of Commons from 2011 to 2014, filed an official bullying complaint against him.
Other allegations of bullying emerged shortly after, with Lieutenant General David Leakey, a former Black Rod, revealing he was filing his own complaint of 'intimidation and unacceptable behaviour' by Mr Bercow.  
Mr Bercow denied all the allegations.  
His wife Sally: Sally Bercow has courted controversy since her husband was first elected. She infamously posed in a sheet for a magazine interview soon after Mr Bercow was first elected and she took part in Celebrity Big Brother.
A public Labour supporter, Mrs Bercow's political views led to claims she undermined the Speaker's independence.
In 2015 it emerged Sally had an affair with Mr Bercow's cousin Alan - even leading the couple to move into the family home in Battersea while the Speaker stayed in his grace-and-favour apartment in Parliament.
Expenses: Mr Bercow faced persistent criticism of his official expenses, which included lavish bills for chauffeur-driven cars, trips abroad and entertaining foreign dignitaries.
Mr Bercow and his family lived rent-free in an opulent apartment at Parliament, where the taxpayer footed a £109 a month bill for the Arsenal fan's Sky subscription.
Bias against the Tories: Conservative ministers and MPs long-complained Mr Bercow favours Labour. He repeatedly hauled ministers to the Commons to answer Urgent Questions and Emergency Debates - far more often than has historically been the case.
Before the 2019 General Election, he tore up the Commons rulebook to allow backbenchers to seize control of the agenda and pass a law delaying Brexit.
He also frequently reprimanded ministers, often sarcastically, and his behaviour prompted the Cameron Government to launch a near-unprecedented attempt to remove him in 2015. 
Mr Bercow provoked further fury by speaking out against Donald Trump and Brexit in defiance of protocol demanding he be impartial.  
He told Sky News: 'What we need to do is secure the deal.
'What the Speaker has said in his ruling is there needs to be something that is different.
'You can have the same motion but where the circumstances have changed.
'Obviously that has a difference in terms of how Members of Parliament would vote on a particular motion.
'So we need to look at the details of the ruling, we need to consider that in the terms of earlier rulings that don't particularly align with yesterday's.
'That the fact that a number of Members of Parliament have said that they will change their votes points to the fact that there are things that are different.' 
The Speaker detonated Mrs May's plans in a short notice statement at 3.30pm yesterday - without warning No 10 in advance.  
Mr Bercow told the Commons: 'If the Government wishes to bring forward a new proposition that is neither the same or substantially the same as that disposed of by the House on March 12, that would be entirely in order.
'What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition or substantially the same proposition that was rejected by 149 votes'. 
Asked if he was worried about the ramifications of his decision he added: 'I've never lost a wink of sleep over anything work related'.  
Mr Bercow invoked a precedent from April 1604 - used 12 times in the Commons since then - to warn the PM that she must significantly change her deal if she wants to force another vote on it before the scheduled exit day on March 29. 
The Speaker cited page 397 of the Commons rulebook, Erskine May - and insisted today's ruling 'should not be regarded as my last word on the subject.'
Mr Bercow told MPs: 'One of the reasons the rule has lasted so long it is a necessary rule to ensure the sensible use of the House's time and proper respect for the decisions which it takes.
'Rulings of the House matter. They have weight.
'In many cases, they have direct effect not only here but on the lives of our constituents.'
A senior Government source last night said the Speaker, who is an outspoken critic of Brexit, wanted to wreck Mrs May's plan of limiting the delay to three months.
'It seems clear that the Speaker's motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week,' the source added.
'It leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit.
'Anyone who thinks that this makes No Deal more likely is mistaken – the Speaker wouldn't have done it if it did.'
Senior French and German ministers have torn into UK politicians over the Brexit chaos engulfing Westminster, demanding MPs finally make up their mind or risk a chaotic no-deal Brexit.
As EU foreign ministers met in Brussels there was a clear message that it was up to Britain to come up with a solution that would allow Brussels to delay Brexit.
The meeting of the General Affairs Council came the morning after Speaker John Bercow threw a massive spanner in the works of Mrs May's attempt to get a deal done before she faces EU leaders herself on Thursday.
 
German Europe minister Michael Roth told reporters in Brussels: 'Our patience as the European Union is being sorely tested at the moment. 
The Government is scrambling to find a way to escape the John Bercow bombshell on the Brexit deal. These are possible options: 
Paving Motion
The Government could table a separate motion spelling out explictly MPs should get a third vote on the deal. It will only work if there are votes to pass the deal - which looks unlikely.
Change the law to scrap the meaningful vote
Laws to implement the deal could scrap the requirement to have an approval vote at all. This also looks unlikely as MPs defeated the Government to force the vote in the first place.
Suspending standing orders 
The Commons controls its own rule book so a Government motion could suspend the rules invoked by the Speaker - but the Government would still need to win a vote for this to work.
End the session and hold a Queen's Speech 
The nuclear option would be to dump the current session of Parliament early and hold a quick fire State Opening. Normally this means the Queen coming to Westminster - but it is not compulsory.
It would be hard in the time available and would mean scrapping huge amounts of unfinished laws - and the Government would still need to win votes on a new Queen's Speech after. 
'I can only call once again on our British partners in London to make concrete proposals at last on why they want an extension.'
Germany's core aim was to avoid a disorderly Brexit, but it could only agree to a postponement of the scheduled leave date of March 29 if London gave a clear reason to do so, he said.
A postponement beyond June would mean Britain would have to participate in European Parliament elections, he added.
'Dear friends in London, please deliver. The clock is ticking,' Roth said
His French counterpart Nathalie Loiseau ramped up the pressure on Theresa May by suggesting a no-deal Brexit could well happen unless her Government solves the current 'deadlock'.
In other developments today, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will meet leaders of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and Green Party to discuss Brexit and how to end the current impasse.
In a joint statement ahead of the talks, Ian Blackford, Vince Cable, Liz Saville Roberts and Caroline Lucas said: 'The UK faces an unprecedented crisis with Brexit, and Westminster remains deeply divided.
'The best and most democratic way forward is to put the decision back to the people in a new vote - with the option to Remain on the ballot paper.'
Mr Corbyn will also meet members of the 'Norway Plus' group of MPs in a separate meeting on Tuesday.
The group is determined to force a soft Brexit through to end the current impasse.
Meanwhile in Dublin, European Council president Donald Tusk will hold talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.
Elsewhere Tony Blair denied that he had been pushing EU leaders to hold firm and wait for a new referendum on Brexit.
A hard core of Tory Brexiteers are reportedly threatening to go on ‘strike’ if Theresa May seeks to delay Brexit by a year.
A group of 20 Leave ultras are threatening to withhold their votes from Government business in the Commons, according to the Sun.
The Prime Minister is currently overseeing a hung parliament and relies on a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party to pass laws.
She needs 318 votes for a majority and has 314 Tories, plus 10 DUP votes to see her over the line.
Losing 20 of her own backbenchers would therefore tip the balance away from her.
This could potentially collapsing the Government if key votes like the Budget cannot get through. 
He told GMB: 'The idea that I've been going over to Europe and saying hold firm, don't give in…. I think you'll find that's from a Conservative source.'
He added: 'Of course I speak to a lot of the EU leaders, I still know them. Look, the reason they've got a problem is not because I've given them a problem. I haven't been the Prime Minister for 11 years, they're the government and the European Union leaders deal with the government.'
Blair said a decision on the type of Brexit needs to be made: 'Some want a 'soft' Brexit and some want a 'hard' Brexit, what we should have done over the last 2 and a half/ 3 years is force parliament to choose between those options. Once you choose between those options, the rest of the negotiation is relatively simple to do.'
He continued: 'She [Theresa May] can still now rescue this situation if she puts before parliament the core options. The real reason parliament is rejecting this deal – at the heart of it – is the fact that her deal leaves Northern Ireland in a bit of a mess as you're not quite sure what the situation is there and the future relationship a mystery and that is not a sensible situation to be in.'
He said: 'To be fair to Theresa May I think she genuinely does want to deliver Brexit even though she voted Remain.' 
Q&A by Ian Drury 
What happened yesterday?
Commons Speaker John Bercow announced, without warning, that MPs could not vote on the Prime Minister's withdrawal agreement for a third time unless it was 'substantially different' from before.
Downing Street was stunned, insisting it had no notice that the statement was coming.
Mr Bercow might argue he is behaving honourably. But at a time of national crisis, when the Government is trying to pick a way through the impasse, his intervention will be seen by ministers as profoundly unhelpful. The EU has already said it will not re-open the deal to provide the kind of changes that would satisfy the Speaker.
What had been the Prime Minister's plan?
After two humiliating Commons defeats for her Brexit deal – one by a record 230 votes in January, the second by 149 last week – Theresa May wanted to bring her agreement back for approval by MPs for a third time before March 29.
Ministers had pencilled in today or tomorrow to hold the vote ahead of the next meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. Westminster watchers dubbed this 'Meaningful Vote Three' (MV3). Mrs May had hoped enough hardline Tory Brexiteers would hold their noses and support her deal, fearing the alternatives: a long delay to leaving the EU, a soft Brexit or, worst, no Brexit at all.
How can the Speaker justify his move?
Having been asked by Labour MPs Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant whether the Government was allowed to vote on the same motion repeatedly in a short space of time, the Speaker said he had consulted Erskine May, the Parliamentary procedural handbook. He cited a 415-year-old precedent – not used for nearly 100 years – to rule the PM could not bring back broadly the same deal 'during that same [Parliamentary] session'.
But didn't he flout parliamentary convention himself?
He did indeed. In January, Mr Bercow tore up centuries of Commons procedure and helped frustrate Mrs May's attempts to win a better deal from the EU.
He allowed an amendment by the former attorney general and Remain campaigner Dominic Grieve that forced the PM to come back within three sitting days if her withdrawal agreement was voted down.
This ruling by the Speaker was made against the advice of Commons Clerk Sir David Natzler and meant the Government lost an element of control over Parliamentary business.
Is Mr Bercow right to make it harder to hold a third vote?
Legal experts and MPs were divided yesterday over his interpretation of procedure.
But last October Sir David told MPs: 'If it was exactly the same document and they came back three months later for another bite, I do not think the procedures of the House are designed to obstruct the necessary business of government in that way in such a crucial thing.'
So is Mrs May's deal dead – or is it still on life support?
If it becomes clear that there is a majority for the deal, the Government can probably put it to a vote.
The PM still has to travel to Brussels on Thursday to ask the EU for an extension and MPs will have to vote on that, plus alternative outcomes.
While leaving the bloc on March 29 is still the default legal position – with or without a deal – there is zero chance that Parliament, which is overwhelmingly Remain-supporting, will allow that.
But the Speaker has certainly inserted yet another unwanted obstacle for the Government to overcome.
What happens next?
There will not be a third vote this week, meaning MPs could be voting on Brexit next week, days before the March 29 'exit day'. Mrs May will now have to find something substantially different to allow her to even put a vote before the Commons.
Solicitor general Robert Buckland stated succinctly yesterday: 'We are going to have to put all our thinking caps on and come up with some quick answers.'
A nuclear option would be ejecting Mr Bercow from the Speaker's chair using a no-confidence motion. However, Remainers – especially Labour MPs – turn a blind eye to his antics because they see an ally in thwarting Brexit.
A second option is proroguing Parliament – ending the session. Public Bills can be carried over from one session to the next. But this would require a new Queen's Speech and take time, yet the Brexit clock has only ten days to tick.
Theresa May has a range of Brexit delay options she could ask for when she goes to the European Council on Thursday.
But with Europe apparently divided on what to give her there is no certainty she will get any of them at the moment.
Here are some of her options:
 
 
Donald Trump and Theresa May could hardly be further apart in their character as national leaders.
Whereas Trump is seen to be decisive, Theresa May dithers. Trump is flamboyant and May is dull. While the British Prime Minister tends to seek out compromise, a headstrong U.S. President wants everything on his own terms.
And recently these huge differences in personality and style have been more evident than ever.
While Mrs May has inched forward very carefully with Britain’s negotiations to leave the EU, Mr Trump has ripped up the rulebook by arranging a meeting with North Korean despot Kim Jong-un.
The move is pure Trump — a bombastic, boastful and arrogant man who conducts high-stakes diplomacy by Twitter and is contemptuous of the advice of the Washington establishment, which despises him and is determined to destroy him.
Yes, it’s very early days, but the dramatic news that Trump is to meet Kim brings hope of an end to the threat of nuclear war which has hovered in that part of the globe for years and defied the best efforts of the world’s best diplomats.
If a deal is struck, it will be an extraordinary vindication of The Donald’s way of doing politics. His bravado, aggression and brinkmanship will have paid off.
Remember that when Barack Obama was in the White House, the liberal media applauded his judicious approach to North Korea. But it did absolutely nothing to stop the Pyongyang regime building missiles with the reported capability to reach California.
I’m not suggesting in any way that Mrs May copies Trump, but there are lessons from his leadership style.
Generally, the consensus has been that the Prime Minister’s calm and self-effacing approach has been the right one for a Government with a wafer-thin majority to handle historic negotiations.
Nevertheless, it’s time to ask whether in her dealings over the EU, Mrs May ought to take a leaf or two out of The Trump Book Of International Diplomacy. To date, she’s behaved in the opposite way to Trump.
She’s played by the rules. She’s been careful not to cause offence to Brussels. She’s always ready to offer compromise. She habitually does what Whitehall civil servants tell her.
In the early days of her premiership, Mrs May was tougher, saying about Brexit that no deal is better than a bad deal. She was right.
However, she has backtracked and there has been none of that resolute language recently. Quite the reverse, in fact.
True, her measured speech at London’s Mansion House eight days ago was pragmatic and sensible — setting out her government’s position while also handing out olive branches to Brussels.
So what was the result of being reasonable? The Prime Minister was put down by contemptuous EU leaders. They made clear that they have no intention of striking a deal with Britain except on their own terms.
The European Parliament’s Brexit chief, Guy Verhofstadt, with leaden sarcasm, insultingly spoke of Mrs May’s goals as ‘vague aspirations’ and said he hoped that ‘serious proposals have been put in the post’.
The preening Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, sneeringly said it was not in the EU’s interests to give way to what he called her ‘pick-and-mix’ approach.
And with his own bucket of cold water was the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, whose office lectured the British Government that it should not be allowed to ‘cherry-pick’ a bespoke Brexit deal. It’s easy to guess how Trump would respond to such pipsqueaks. This is the man, remember, who called the North Korean leader ‘Little Rocket Man’ and who tweets scathing ripostes to his critics at 5am.
Mrs May, of course, disdains Twitter — unlike her predecessor in No. 10, David Cameron, who was an oh-so trendy social media obsessive.
(Indeed, on the evening of the EU referendum he was foolishly busy tweeting: ‘Just 1 hour left to #VoteRemain — and keep Britain stronger, safer and better off in Europe.’)
Without resorting to such gimmicks, Mrs May could start tearing up the diplomatic textbook and making her own ultimatums.
For the truth is that Britain has aces to play. If the Brussels bully-boys try to pull up the drawbridge, we must retaliate.
A bankrupt Brussels is desperate for the billions we have offered as a divorce settlement. If they cut up rough, we should threaten to withdraw our offer.
These Eurocrats need to be forcefully reminded that German and French manufacturers would be severely damaged if there was no deal.
Certainly, an area where Mrs May ought to be more Trump-like is on UK fishing rights.
In recent days, two ministers — Philip Hammond and George Eustace — shamelessly signalled to EU negotiators that Britain might be happy to sell out this country’s fishermen and allow boats from the remaining 27 EU nations into our coastal waters if we can secure a better deal for some sectors of our economy such as the City.
What a shabby betrayal of the democratic wishes of the 17 million who voted for Brexit (and, I wager, of many who voted Remain who also care for the protection of British fisheries).
Fishing rights are a deeply emotive issue, like immigration. Mrs May would be justified to do a Trump and threaten to walk away from the negotiating table if Brussels tries to con us on that issue.
She needs to make absolutely clear that any border arrangement between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic cannot be allowed to damage the constitutional integrity of the UK, and if she needs to use brinkmanship to secure this, so be it.
Let’s never forget that it was the unequivocal resolve of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — another leader unconscionably sneered at by the liberal classes — who out-stared the Russian bear, resulting in the collapse of Communism.
Timidly and limply following the advice of diplomats never achieves much in the face of obdurate foes.
It’s time for Theresa May to be bolder, put EU negotiators in their place — and win a really good deal for Britain.
As police continue to investigate the Salisbury poisonings, the Government is planning how to respond if it is proved that the Russian state was responsible.
In such circumstances, I wish I had more faith in our novice Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson. Since his appointment four months ago, he has shown poor judgment.
First, he appalled senior military figures by revealing sensitive information about the Russian threat in what looked like a cack-handed attempt to distract attention from embarrassing revelations that he became close to a female office colleague during the early years of his marriage.
Then he self-aggrandisingly announced that he planned to challenge China by sending a British warship through the South China Sea — which must have had the Chinese quaking in their boots!
Most worryingly, I understand that Mr Williamson’s relations with his military chiefs of staff are poor.
I’m told he has taken to summoning them to his office and berating them in front of junior colleagues. Apparently, senior generals are so alarmed that they may raise their concerns with No. 10.
Mr Williamson makes little secret of his ambition to be prime minister one day. Let me tell him, if he continues alienating so many people, he’ll be lucky to stay in his present job, let alone make it to Downing Street.
As the storm clouds gather, Britain needs a wise head as Defence Secretary. Not an inexperienced lightweight who is consumed by his own vaulting ambitions.
Despite winning four of the five general elections he fought, Harold Wilson’s reputation was abysmally low when he died 23 years ago.
However, there are signs that it is being rehabilitated.
One reason, I believe, is because his skill in keeping Britain out of the Vietnam War contrasts with Tony Blair’s calamitous decision to take this country to war in Iraq.
The latter choice resulted in the wider region becoming a bloodbath that continues to this day.
An insight into Wilson’s mind was offered last week when his chief policy adviser, Bernard Donoughue, 83, delivered a speech in Westminster.
He said the Labour PM ‘never entered a room without first establishing the best exit’.
Donoughue added: ‘That was a metaphor for Wilson’s political tactics.’
Donoughue also said that Wilson warned his speechwriters: ‘Remember that I don’t want too many of these Guardianisms, Environmentalism, Genderism etc.
‘I want my speeches always to include what working people are concerned with: jobs, pay, prices, pensions.’
Sound advice for any prime minister. 
Michael Gove today warns rebel Tory MPs they have less than 48 hours to save Brexit.
In a rallying call on the eve of tomorrow’s momentous vote, the Environment Secretary declares that ‘everyone who believes in democracy’ should get behind the Prime Minister’s deal.
Writing in the Daily Mail, he argues the agreement is the only way to heal the nation’s bitter divisions and make sure Brexit happens. 
Mr Gove, who helped lead Vote Leave, warns that leaving without a deal would not ‘honour’ the commitment made to voters ahead of the referendum.
Andrea Leadsom, another prominent Eurosceptic, also last night issued a stark warning to rebels, saying: ‘It’s now or never.’
The Commons Leader said if Theresa May’s deal is rejected ‘it’s really clear that the next steps Parliament will take make the Brexit we want a fading reality’. 
Mrs May is expected to make a dash to Brussels this morning in a last-ditch attempt to secure changes to her deal. But sources on the Continent were yesterday playing down hopes of any meaningful concessions, saying talks could be as little as a phone call.
British officials spent the weekend locked in negotiations with their EU counterparts over their demands for alterations to the withdrawal agreement so the country cannot be trapped in the Northern Ireland backstop. 
Whitehall sources said the ‘atmosphere was grim’ with concerns that any changes may not be enough to satisfy rebel Tory MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party.
The Prime Minister has promised that if her deal is rejected for a second time tomorrow, MPs will get the chance to vote on leaving the EU without a deal or delaying Brexit beyond March 29.
Senior Tory figures yesterday warned Mrs May’s position could become untenable if she is forced to seek an extension to the two-year Article 50 process.
Sources said Britain would be expected to pay another £13.5billion per year, more than the current £9billion, because the UK would lose its rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher. Even a delay of three months would add billions to the cost of the divorce payment.
The second so-called meaningful vote on the Brexit deal comes after it was rejected by a majority of 230 MPs in January, in a historic defeat for the Government. 
In a further development last night, Downing Street did not rule out amending tomorrow’s vote on the deal so it is conditional on securing extra changes from the EU before the end of this month.
Meanwhile, Philip Hammond is understood to be ready to promise billions of pounds of extra cash for the police, schools and tax cuts in his Spring Statement on Wednesday – if the deal is passed.
The Chancellor will release around £20billion currently ring-fenced as a contingency in case of No Deal. 
Mr Gove is pleading for Tory rebels to take a second look at the withdrawal agreement, arguing they should not ‘make our perfect Brexit the enemy of the common good’.
In his article for the Mail, he says: ‘I hope that everyone who believes in our democracy – in the importance of delivering Brexit, but also in the critical need to unite our country – will come behind the Prime Minister’s deal this week.’
He insisted that while the deal is a ‘compromise’, it ‘provides the best way of delivering an exit that can secure our country’s unity and prosperity’.
Mr Gove warns that many of the arguments made against the deal ‘don’t reflect the reality of what’s been achieved’.
‘It is not the case that this deal makes us a colony or vassal state. How could it when it gives us total control over our borders and ends our current automatic payments to the EU?’ he writes.
While admitting there were ‘aspects’ of the backstop he found ‘uncomfortable’, Mr Gove says the version ‘now agreed is very different from the arrangement the Irish Government and the EU first wanted’. 
‘It places more cards in our hands than theirs. If we play them with skill we can get the final deal we want,’ he adds.
‘While it’s uncomfortable for us it’s a mistake to think it’s a bed of roses for the EU… I can’t imagine EU politicians tolerating for very long an arrangement which allows us to keep them out of our waters but sell all the fish we want to them, allows us access to their markets but restricts their citizens coming here, allows us to make our economy more competitive and ends all payments to their institutions. EU countries would want it to end.’ 
Mr Gove warns Eurosceptic rebels who believe that voting against the plan tomorrow will lead to a No Deal Brexit are likely to be disappointed.
He says: ‘Some may say that ditching this deal will allow us to leave without any compromises, but we didn’t vote in June 2016 to leave without a deal.
‘That wasn’t the message of the campaign I helped lead.’
He adds: ‘It would undoubtedly cause economic turbulence…We would get through it, of course, we’re a great and resilient country. But jobs would be lost in the short term and none of us can be blithe or blasé about the inevitable damage leaving without a deal would cause.’
Mr Gove’s warning comes after Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told Tory MPs they risk losing Brexit altogether if they fail to back Mrs May’s deal. 
He said there was ‘wind in the sails’ of the opponents of Brexit and that it would be ‘devastating’ for the Tories if they failed to deliver on their commitment to take Britain out of the EU. 
MICHAEL GOVE: Only by backing the Prime Minister's deal with the EU will ensure Brexit happens and heal the bitter divides across the country
By Michael Gove  
The great Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once lamented that Britain had become ‘two nations’ between whom ‘there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets’.
Disraeli was writing of the gulf between rich and poor in the 19th century. But his words echo down the decades. 
It seems, at times, that our country is now just as divided — between those insulated by wealth from the effects of globalisation and those who feel shut out; or between those who compete on Twitter to signal how virtuous they are and those who are made to feel that patriotism is prejudice and love of country is now the love that dare not speak its name.
There are other divisions, too — between politicians in Westminster and a population becoming alienated because of those politicians’ failure to listen. Between broadcasters who seek to serve the public and a public that is increasingly switching off.
Between elites who think their professional success means they know all the answers and those who wonder why these elites failed to see the banking crisis coming and failed to spread economic growth more fairly in the boom years.
Those divisions in our society were exposed for all to see by the Brexit referendum. There were different reasons why people voted to leave the EU, but at the heart of the campaign was a wish on the part of the majority to take back control from unaccountable elites, to make politicians more answerable to the people, and to make our country work in the interests of all: one nation once again.
But since the referendum, it has often seemed as though that desire for a fresh start has been continually frustrated by an unwillingness to come together behind that democratic vote.
Listening to some partisans in the ongoing Brexit debate, it is clear that they behave as though they think the other side are indeed ‘dwellers in different zones’ or ‘inhabitants of different planets’. Insults are hurled, cries of treachery traded, any suggestion of finding common ground denounced as a heresy. Sympathy for others seems in short supply.
But for democracy to work, there has to be understanding between people; there has to be compromise and a coming together.
Along with a majority of other people, I voted to reinvigorate our democracy by taking power back from unaccountable institutions and taking back control of our laws.
I recognise, however, that while the majority to leave was decisive, executing that decision, like all democratic decisions, means respecting everyone in our democracy.
Forty-eight per cent of the country voted to remain. Their voices need to be listened to, their hopes incorporated in our plan for the future. That doesn’t mean giving in to the much smaller number who want to overturn the decision and frustrate Brexit.
But it must mean that none of us Leavers should try to make our perfect Brexit the enemy of the common good.
Which is why I hope that everyone who believes in our democracy — in the importance of delivering Brexit and in the critical need to unite our country — will get behind the Prime Minister’s deal this week.
It is, of course, a compromise. But so many of the great British traditions and institutions I and many others value are the result of compromise.
We are governed by a system that reconciles the different interests of Government, Parliament and the Courts; our constitutional monarchy is underpinned by centuries of compromise, as is our national Church.
The devolution settlement is a compromise; our Press balances freedom of speech with a responsibility to be accurate in reporting; our economic system and welfare state balance the individual freedom to pursue success with the collective need to protect the vulnerable.
As the great liberal thinker Isaiah Berlin rightly argued, when one value or a single perspective is valued above all others, the tree of liberty is hacked at its roots. 
So while the Prime Minister’s deal is a compromise, it is not to be rejected for that reason alone. Quite the opposite. In balancing the freedoms that Brexit brings with assurances that smooth our path out of the EU, it provides the best way of delivering an exit that can secure our country’s unity and prosperity.
Of course, there are some who voted Remain for whom no Brexit is acceptable. Whatever deal Mrs May secured, they would find fault with it. But their answer, a second referendum, would only deepen and inflame the divisions it is our duty to overcome.
The demand for another vote is a declaration that those who voted Leave in 2016 were too stupid to know what they were doing or too prejudiced to appreciate the consequences.
Holding another referendum would only confirm the feeling among many that politicians don’t listen and won’t change.
It would undermine confidence in our democracy and any campaign that ensued would further fray the bonds that hold us all together — not least by fuelling demands for new votes in Scotland and Northern Ireland to break up the United Kingdom.
But it’s not only those calling for a second referendum who are, I fear, making a mistake. Some of those who believe most sincerely and passionately in Brexit have allowed arguments to be made about the Prime Minister’s deal which don’t reflect the reality of what’s been achieved.
It is not the case that this deal makes us a colony or vassal state. How could it when it gives us total control over our borders and ends our automatic payments to the EU? Colonies, by definition, don’t have control over their borders and they give up their natural resources to others.
This deal means we have the absolute freedom to decide who comes into this country, and on what terms. It also allows us to decide what pan-European programmes, if any, we want to join in.
As one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, I know that two of the most resonant demands from voters were control of our borders and money. This deal delivers — completely and, as it happens, without compromise — on both.
It also ensures we leave the EU’s legal order and, save for a few very limited areas, we are outside the control of the European Court of Justice. We can, if we wish, choose to continue to meet EU standards, as they change, to make cross-border trade easier. But we can refuse to accept any new EU rule on goods or agriculture we don’t want.
The ratchet of European integration has been stopped. Ever closer union ended.
We can begin to do things differently in all manner of ways when the deal is concluded. We can have new rules for our service sector to help create new jobs in the fastest growing part of our economy. We will continue to maintain the highest environmental standards but we no longer need to follow the EU rulebook and can do things in our own, better, way.
The deal also means we aren’t bound by the EU’s Common Defence and Security Policy and we’re out of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. Our farmers are freed from the bureaucracy that held them back, and we take back control of all our fish stocks and access to our waters.
There are, of course, aspects of the deal which cause concern. It requires us to accept an arrangement called the backstop which places certain restraints on the ability of Northern Ireland to diverge from the EU in the event that we don’t conclude a full trade deal by the end of 2020.
The Irish government have pressed for a backstop throughout these talks because they see it as an insurance policy in order to keep the current open border on the island of Ireland.
But the backstop we’ve now agreed is very different from the arrangement the Irish government and the EU first wanted. It places more cards in our hands than theirs. If we play them with skill, we can get the final deal we want.
As a Unionist and a Brexiteer, there are aspects of the backstop I certainly find uncomfortable. It creates a difference in treatment between Great Britain and Northern Ireland which is troubling. I’d much prefer it if we had a unilateral exit mechanism.
But while it’s uncomfortable for us, it’s a mistake to think it’s a bed of roses for the EU. There are many reasons why they would not want it to last indefinitely — and it’s worth looking at them in detail.
If the backstop ever kicked in, we’d still be able to export our goods to Europe without any tariff barriers, but we would also have full control of our own borders, with free movement of people having ended. More than that, we wouldn’t be paying the EU any money any more. Not a penny.
More, even, than that, we could stop EU vessels entering our fishing waters. If we wished, we could deny French and Danish boats any of our fish. But they couldn’t stop us selling our catch to them.
On top of that, in the backstop our ability to ignore new EU laws, and indeed roll back the vast majority of existing EU laws, would be extensive. We could make our economy more competitive from day one, and still have guaranteed access to their economies.
In the backstop we could still negotiate, sign and implement new trade deals. They wouldn’t cover goods but could cover services, professional qualifications and investor protections.
I cannot imagine EU politicians tolerating for very long an arrangement which allows us to keep them out of our waters but sell all the fish we want to them; allows us access to their markets but restricts their citizens coming here; allows us to make our economy more competitive and ends all payments to their institutions. EU countries would want it to end. And if we do play our cards right, we can ensure that it does — on our terms.
Any objective assessment on this deal shows it delivers on the key Brexit demands and gives us the freedom to go further in the future.I fear, if MPs don’t support the PM’s deal this week, then the chance to come together as a country may be taken from us.
Some may say that ditching this deal will allow us to leave without any compromises. But we didn’t vote to leave without a deal. That wasn’t the message of the campaign I helped lead. During that campaign, we said we should do a deal with the EU and be part of the network of free trade deals that covers all Europe, from Iceland to Turkey.
Leaving without a deal on March 29 would not honour that commitment. It would undoubtedly cause economic turbulence. Almost everyone in this debate accepts that.
EU tariffs on food would hit farmers; new trade frictions would harm manufacturers. We would get through it, of course — we’re a great and resilient country. But jobs would be lost in the short term and none of us can be blasé about the damage leaving without a deal would cause.
We would also be open to criticism from those many Remain voters who are prepared to compromise and leave with a deal, but don’t want to depart without a deal, that we’d preferred our perfect to their good. They could argue we’d preferred ideology to inclusivity. Given the fragility of faith in our politics at the moment, it’s not a course I’d want to take.
And it’s a course we may not be able to take anyway. If the deal is voted down, then the Government is no longer determining events.
Parliament will then vote on whether we leave without a deal on March 29. A majority are likely to say they don’t want to take that risk, and Parliament is likely to ask for an extension of EU membership.
Whatever the merits of that course, it’s undoubtedly the case that it creates another risk — of the Commons diluting Brexit or the EU offering us a poorer deal.
The decisions all MPs face in the next few days will not be easy. And I respect the sincerity and passion with which every one of my colleagues holds to their position.
But if we don’t think coolly about what’s in the best interests of our country, we may find that we have failed to rise to this moment; failed to find the common ground on which our best future rests.
Delaying and diluting what we have or leaving without a deal risks perpetuating the difficulties when we need to overcome divisions to meet new challenges. It’s time we became one nation once again.  

Given the disdain for democracy that is regularly displayed by Europe's political class, the deepening political crisis in Italy is all too predictable.
Yet again, we are seeing the pro-Brussels establishment showing that it will not tolerate any challenge to its project of political integration.
In the mindset of the governing elite, the European orthodoxy must prevail, even when it means riding roughshod over the wishes of voters.
That domineering mentality lies at the heart of the drama in Italy, the Eurozone's third- largest economy, where a coalition with widespread public support has effectively been barred from office because of Eurosceptic views.
Thwarted
In the recent Italian election, the two most successful parties were the hard-Right League and the maverick Left-leaning Five Star movement.
One might not like all their policies — I don't — but they undoubtedly won the election. Both campaigned strongly against Brussels diktats on immigration and budgets.
But their attempt to form a Government was thwarted this week when the country's President, arch-Europhile Sergio Mattarella, vetoed the proposed appointment of the distinguished economist Paolo Savona as finance minister.
The justification was Mr Savona's record of doubts about the euro which, it was claimed, 'could provoke Italy's exit from the EU'.
Denied presidential backing for a crucial position, the Five Star/League alliance had to abandon its plans for office.
An interim administration has been proposed under Carlo Cottarelli, a pro-EU economist and former IMF official, who is, of course, far more acceptable to Brussels.
This turn of events perfectly illustrates the disturbing reality of European politics, where adherence to the ruling dogma counts for far more than any mandate from the people.
In the mindset of the Eurocrats, democracy is acceptable as long as it produces the 'correct' result. The German EU Commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, yesterday suggested that the markets would soon be sending Italy a message about the consequences of voting for 'populists'.
We have seen such statements and attitudes time and again in the history of the EU.
Progressive opinion might be celebrating the outcome of last weekend's abortion referendum in Ireland, but it was a different story in the previous decade.
Then the Irish people twice voted against EU treaties: in 2001 against the Nice Treaty (which allowed the expansion of the EU to the east) and in 2008 against the Lisbon Treaty (which gave stronger powers to the European parliament).
The pro-EU establishment refused to accept these results, forcing the Irish people to vote again so they would come up with the right answers.
That process was at work in Greece during their debt crisis in 2015, when the Athens government was forced to backtrack on economic plans that had the strong support of the electorate, which had rejected the savage austerity proposed by the EU.
Similarly in Britain, the pro-EU brigade has continually agitated against Brexit, urging that the result of the EU referendum should be ignored, or reversed in a second vote.
The conflict between democracy and the EU is inevitable because the European project is based on the erosion of national sovereignty. Lacking popular support, the work of building the desired political union can proceed only by bullying and deception.
Pro-EU ideologues continually taint their opponents with the word 'populism' — a term they use as a form of abuse meaning ignorance.
I have been sceptical about European political integration all my political career. I believe in democratic national independence rather than governance by an unaccountable bureaucracy.
In the early Nineties, as Chancellor, I spent almost a year helping secure Britain's opt-out from the single currency during the Maastricht negotiations, because I recognised that the euro was not an economic initiative but a political vehicle to drive European integration.
My belief in self-rule rather than political union also led me to vote Leave in 2016.
During that referendum, pro-EU campaigners regularly dismissed Brexiteers as alarmists for claiming that Brussels was becoming ever more authoritarian and interventionist.
If there is one good thing to come out of the Italian crisis, it is that Brexiteers' charges have been justified and, once more, the EU has been exposed as being in conflict with democracy.
Anything that threatens the creed of political union must be crushed. Again, that is something that the pro-EU lobby brazenly ignores.
As they persist in peddling Project Fear, they continue to indulge in endless scare stories about job losses and trade problems, while becoming hysterically indignant about the supposed 'lies' of Leavers.
But the Europhiles are guilty of a far bigger lie. They consistently refuse to admit that 'ever closer union', the guiding principle of Brussels, entails the destruction of nationhood and self-determination.
Disastrous
They talk grandly of the 'national interest' but ultimately, under EU rule, there will be no nations, only a new country called Europe.
Italy was a founder member of the Common Market and used to be one of the most pro-Brussels countries in Europe. It is the only place where I ever witnessed a public demonstration in favour of the single currency, long before the euro was created.
But voters have become disillusioned with Brussels, especially over the insistence on open borders — Italy having had to bear the brunt of migrant traffic across the Mediterranean — and the disastrous impact of the euro, which has brought falling living standards, soaring unemployment and mountainous debt.
This has been a tragedy for a country for which I have great affection. It has talented politicians and a host of brilliant civil servants, their expertise epitomised by figures such as Mario Draghi, now head of the European Central Bank.
But I recognise that sometimes in Italy too much faith is put in technocrats. This is partly a reaction against political failure — Italy has had 65 governments since World War II — but it can be excessive.
Mockery
During the Brexit referendum I heard Mario Monti, an economist who served as prime minister of Italy from 2011 to 2013 despite never having been an elected politician, ask: 'Surely people prefer to be ruled by experts?' I could hardly believe my ears.
It was the same devotion to technocrats that led to this week's appointment of Carlo Cottarelli and to the eager embrace of the euro in 1999.
The 81 year old Eurosceptic, Paolo Savona, seems to have been refused office because he once described Italy's decision to join the single currency as 'a historic error'. He was absolutely right and his is a phrase I have used myself.
Brussels refuses to accept that the euro has been a disaster, not just for Italy but for much of Europe, creating division, debt and dole queues, as well as obliterating democracy.
What makes it even worse is that Italy should not have been allowed to join the single currency in the first place. Under EU rules, national debt should be no more than 60 per cent of GDP in any member state, yet in Italy the figure passed 100 per cent, and is now around 130 per cent.
Driven by its obsession with political unification, the EU flouted its own rules in another episode of the long, unedifying tale of 'Brussels creep'.
This alone makes a mockery of the EU's shrill demands during the Brexit negotiations for Britain to abide by every letter of every regulation.
Brussels is happy to tear up the rule book when it suits — just as it is willing to push democracy aside. Ultimately, I do not believe it will win. 
This was not so much Project Fear as Project Oh Dear. Contingency plans for a No Deal lorry log-jam at Dover were being road-tested – quite literally – on the approaches to our busiest Channel port yesterday. 
Half the expected trucks failed to appear while many of the participating hauliers dismissed it as ‘a joke’. 
The exercise achieved a rare outbreak of harmony between prominent Remainers and Brexiteers, with both sides condemning it as ‘a waste of time’.
None the less, the people with the clipboards and the hi-vis bibs were very pleased with their dry run on the roads between a new standby lorry park at the disused Manston airport and the gates of the ferry terminal at Dover 20 miles away. 
A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister was ‘satisfied’ with the result.
The trials had involved a fleet of purely British trucks with British drivers, none of whom was actually carrying any loads. Nor did any of them enter the port of Dover, let alone trouble Passport Control.
The Department for Transport had hoped for a sample of 150 trucks and had offered a going rate of £500 a lorry. 
However, this being a busy working day after a long holiday period, the haulage industry could rustle up only 86. 
Given that Dover handles 10,000 lorry movements a day at busy times of the year, statisticians might argue that yesterday’s exercise was not a wholly realistic sample.
‘A complete waste of time and taxpayer’s money,’ chuckled lorry driver Bob Dowle, 52, as he stopped for a bacon sandwich on the A256 afterwards.
‘It’s been a nice easy day for me. I even got a lie-in. I usually start at 4.30am but today I could sleep until 6am. But this won’t have taught anyone anything.’
That was certainly the prevailing view among the other drivers parked up at the M&N Snackbar near Sandwich (£3.50 for bacon, sausage and eggs).
We WERE a bunch of local drivers, fresh as a daisy after a weekend off,’ said Peter Williams, 48, another HGV veteran taking part in the trial.
‘Just you wait until you’ve got thousands of drivers turning up, most of them foreign, at the end of a long trip. There will be crashes all over the place.’
To be fair to the Department for Transport and Kent County Council, the primary purpose of the exercise was not to create ‘No Deal’ hell on the roads of Kent. 
It was, specifically, to test a new freight overflow scheme at Manston – or ‘Kent International Airport’, as some road signs still call this strip of ex-RAF concrete.
Four years ago – long before the Brexit vote – the department took out a lease on the runway as an emergency precaution against cross-Channel disruption. 
Officials used to impose an emergency plan called Operation Stack which used the M20 as a lorry park and caused huge problems across Kent. Hence the Government’s lease on Manston.
Operation Stack has been torn up and replaced by a new masterplan called Operation Brock (it does seem a bit mean on the poor old badger to be dragged in to this Brexit business, especially after all those culls).
Under Operation Brock, if there is future disruption at the Channel ports, up to 6,000 lorries will be directed to wait at Manston. From there, they will be released in batches to make their way to Dover. 
Yesterday was the first attempt at ‘Brock’. It wasn’t the first time Manston has been used for experimental purposes, though. 
Barnes Wallis tested the first bouncing bombs there ahead of the Dambuster raids of 1943. I doubt anyone will be making a film about yesterday, though. 
After an 8am briefing on the runway, a line of Eddie Stobart trucks led the fleet out through a gate in the perimeter fence and in to a newly created filter lane towards the A256. 
In Dover, there was the faintly bizarre sight of a convoy of trucks descending the hill to the port, reaching the main roundabout, performing a U-turn and driving back up the hill. 
The fleet then repeated the exercise at 11am. By lunchtime, their day was over. Toby Howe, senior highways manager for Kent council, professed himself happy with it all. ‘The feedback showed that there were no serious delays,’ he said.
As for the low turnout, he was not worried. ‘It was about testing flow rates, not about numbers,’ he insisted.
None the less, this was hardly an exercise likely to reassure the public. Coming after the news that a contract for extra ferry services out of Ramsgate has been given to a firm which has no ferries, we are entitled to be concerned. 
Everyone from freight industry leaders to local MP Charlie Elphicke pooh-poohed the trial run. It only seemed to compound the sense of dithering, of Dad’s Army rather than D-Day.
Just above the ferry port, stands Dover Castle. It contains the tunnel network in which Admiral Bertram Ramsay ran Operation Dynamo, the great escape from Dunkirk in 1940. 
Yesterday, I visited the excellent English Heritage exhibition deep inside the White Cliffs of Dover and stood in the starkly lit tunnel where this brilliant man organised the evacuation of a third of a million men under enemy fire, saving Britain and the free world in the process. 
His statue – telescope in hand – peers out from the ramparts high above the ferry port in the direction of Dunkirk.
Was that a tear in his weathered bronze eye? What must he be thinking now? And do we have a latter-day Ramsay for 2019?
If he or she exists, they were certainly not to be found in a hi-vis jacket on the A256 yesterday.
Liam Fox will today issue a stinging rebuke to Tories who oppose the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal amid claims that as many as 100 of the party’s MPs could now vote against it.
The International Trade Secretary will accuse them of not facing up to the ‘tough choices’ that Theresa May has had to make in the negotiations.
And he will warn Conservative MPs that they have an ‘abiding duty’ to act in the best interests of the country.
Dr Fox will become the latest Cabinet Brexiteer to come out in support of Mrs May’s agreement ahead of the meaningful vote on December 11. The Mail revealed yesterday that Andrea Leadsom is also backing the deal.
But the scale of the task was illustrated last night by reports that 100 Tory MPs are now preparing to vote against the agreement, a number which would appear to give it little chance of passing the Commons.
Matthew Offord became the latest to say he planned to vote against the Prime Minister’s plan. The MP for Hendon said he ‘could not support a deal’ which handed over £39billion ‘without certainty of a future trading relationship.’ According to unofficial estimates and a list collated by the website Buzzfeed, that took the number of Tory opponents to 100. However, in a Daily Mail survey of those on the list earlier this week, several indicated that they were still undecided.
Mrs May did receive a boost last night when the Remainer Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach said she would back the deal. She said that, while the deal was not perfect, ‘no one could have done better’ and voting against it would be ‘hugely destructive’. The latest developments came as:
■Mrs May launched a frantic bid to sell her Brexit deal to world leaders at the G20 summit in Argentina;
■Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned that more than half of UK firms were completely unprepared for a no-deal Brexit;
■Security Minister Ben Wallace said quitting the EU without a deal would leave the UK more vulnerable to terrorist attack;
■The PM’s de-facto deputy David Lidington warned that a second Brexit referendum would run the risk of the ‘radicalisation’ of right wing voters in the UK;
■Environment Secretary Michael Gove revealed that French President Emmanuel Macron was ‘speechless with rage’ over post-Brexit fishing rights;
■Justine Greening claimed Britain could hold a new referendum by the end of May. The former education secretary said that if the PM’s deal is voted down, organising a referendum could begin immediately.
Miss Greening suggested the referendum could have three choices – Remain, Brexit with Mrs May’s deal, or leaving with no deal. She said: ‘You could plan and hold a referendum in 22 weeks.’
Mr Fox will today offer his full backing to the Prime Minister when he tells an audience that though her deal won’t please everyone, it provides a ‘firm and stable base’ on which to leave the EU.
He is due to outline Britain’s global trade role, saying it is ‘time to raise our sights, and acknowledge there is a world beyond Europe, and a time beyond Brexit’.
Dr Fox was reported to be among a group of five Cabinet ministers seeking to tweak Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement before MPs vote on December 11. In his speech he will appeal for unity, saying: ‘Now is the time to set aside our differences, and lead our country to a future of freedom, success, and prosperity. In politics we cannot always have the luxury of doing what we want for ourselves, but we have an abiding duty to do what is right for our country.’
News that she has won over Antoinette Sandbach is a significant win for Mrs May because she is one of Parliament’s prominent Remainers and it suggests she may win over others.
Miss Sandbach said: ‘The Prime Minister has done remarkable work putting together a compromise as good as this. The agreement does not give any one group everything they want, but it does have something for everyone.’
Mrs Leadsom’s support suggests backing from the other side of the Brexit spectrum. Yesterday, arch-Brexiteer Mr Gove offered his support, telling the Commons that the Government’s deal on fisheries had caused ‘anger’ in Paris.
He said: ‘As an independent coastal state we will be able to decide who comes into our waters and on what terms.’
Mrs May will become the first British PM ever to visit Buenos Aires. She was stung by criticism from Donald Trump this week, who said her proposals were ‘a good deal for the EU’.
But Downing Street said Mrs May would now use the meeting of leaders from the world’s biggest economies to stress the fact her deal would allow the UK to develop an ‘independent trade policy’.
Mr Lidington warned that with former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson now a ‘standard bearer’ for many on the far-Right, there could be an ‘ugly’ reaction to a second referendum.
Such a move could be seen as an ‘attempt by the political elite to set aside a democratic verdict’, he warned. ‘That would pose a risk of a radicalisation.’
It came as reports emerged that Mrs May’s Brexit adviser Olly Robbins has reportedly drawn up a secret blueprint to let Britain unilaterally abandon guarantees over the Irish border.
A No 10 spokesman said it would not comment on leaks.
The Cabinet Room in No 10 has two clocks. The more prominent one sits on a mantelpiece behind the Prime Minister’s chair.
The other was installed on the table opposite in the Seventies by Harold Wilson because he had become so annoyed that he couldn’t see the time without having to look over his shoulder.
If Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister on July 23 — which is expected to happen barring a hugely unlikely upset — the ticking of those two clocks will prey on his mind as they count down to the Brexit deadline of Hallowe’en.
The moment he walks through the door of No 10, it would be exactly 100 days to October 31. Ahead, he would be facing the biggest challenge confronted by any occupant of that address since the days of his great hero, Winston Churchill.
No longer able to rely on the easy promises he’s dished out during his leadership campaign, he would be encountering the same — or a very similar — set of circumstances which brutally brought down Theresa May.
Incidentally, I’m told that before she accepted the inevitability of her departure, Mrs May resisted stepping down by arguing that even if she did, ‘nothing will change’ for her successor in terms of the challenge of achieving Brexit.
She’s not the only leading Tory to take a similarly pessimistic view. A colleague of hers compared the Party leadership campaign to the plot in the film Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, in which a soldier who drinks from a holy cup turns to dust.
In other words, Johnson’s inheritance at No 10 would be a poisoned chalice.
It would entail a working Commons majority of just four (which could be cut if the Tories lose next month’s by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire); a party left severely bruised by the leadership election; an intransigent Brussels; a sceptical and mutinous civil service; a resurgent Brexit Party; and a looming deadline for Brexit which Johnson has promised to meet — ‘do or die’ — by the end of October.
July 23: UK’s 77th PM
The Tory leadership result will be announced on Tuesday week. Mrs May will have conducted her final PMQs and gone to Buckingham Palace for the traditional kissing of the Queen’s hands to finally relinquish power.
Johnson would have to make a series of choices which would determine not just the stability of his own time in No 10 but which would shape Britain’s political future for decades to come.
For their part, leaders of the 27 other EU member states would be acutely aware that exactly 100 days remain to October 31, the date to which they extended the Brexit negotiating period.
Johnson would be expected to arrive in No 10 on the evening of July 23 and begin selecting his Cabinet and Downing Street team. This, according to one Tory not impressed by Johnson, would be akin to ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’.
I don’t take such a pessimistic view, but the ministerial reshuffle would certainly change the complexion of the Government.
A significant group of May loyalists opposed to a hard Brexit would be sacked. This so-called ‘Gaukeward squad’ which includes David Gauke, Philip Hammond and David Lidington may accept their fate and leave quietly. But they are already threatening to cause ‘merry hell’ from the backbenches if Johnson pressed ahead with a No Deal Brexit.
Inevitably, PM Johnson would disappoint a number of his own supporters, creating more potential discontent.
The fact is that you can’t have five Chancellors — so someone has to be Minister for Paperclips.
Within days, Johnson would have to start negotiations with the DUP over the so-called ‘confidence and supply agreement’ the Tories have been forced to make so as to keep functioning as a government.
The Ulster party’s leaders would demand a high price — either asking for more cash or, worse, by dictating Brexit terms before the new PM had even picked up the phone to EU negotiators.
It is very possible, too, that Jeremy Corbyn might table a no-confidence vote before the Commons rises for the summer holidays.
Would enough disloyal Tories vote to bring Johnson down — and force a General Election within weeks — when he’s barely got his feet under the table?
I doubt it, not least because of the value MPs attach to their summer holidays which they would not want sabotaged by a General Election campaign.
Sept 3: fireworks AT Westminster
If he made it this far, Johnson would have about five weeks to clinch a Brexit deal.
His Plan A would be to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement without what he has called the ‘terrible moral blackmail’ of the Irish backstop, so he would begin a round of frantic diplomacy around EU capitals.
Though Brussels officials notoriously take a long summer holiday, Brexit negotiators have been told to go away early, this month, and leave August free for talks with the Brits to resume.
At the same time, Whitehall preparations for No Deal, which were scaled back when the April Brexit deadline was not met, would begin again.
Johnson’s hope, that the prospect of No Deal would force Brussels to give ground, would work only if leaders of EU countries believed he would — and was able — to carry the threat out, something they never did with Mrs May. In the Commons, Brexit trench warfare would resume with Tory MPs Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve leading the charge to stop No Deal. (Of course, Speaker John Bercow would use every trick in the Commons playbook, and any other he could find dating back to 1844 and beyond, to prevent No Deal.)
Remainer MPs would be busy trying to ensure the Commons sits right up to October 31, so as to stop Johnson using the nuclear option of suspending or ‘proroguing’ Parliament to force a No Deal exit — something he has refused to rule out.
Simultaneously, there would be the legal challenge Sir John Major vowed this week that he would trigger to stop prorogation.
But Johnson’s enemies would only have two weeks before MPs depart Westminster again for party conference season.
Sept 29: johnson’s ‘Do or Die’ moment
The Conservative Party conference begins. It’s hard to imagine a less helpful time for Johnson to address the Tory faithful.
It would be just four weeks until the Brexit deadline. Grassroots members would be baying for it to happen come what may. Johnson’s team would be deep in the middle of delicate negotiations with Brussels, with recalcitrant backbenchers and with the DUP.
Despite all Johnson’s bombastic talk of Brexit ‘do or die’, one senior minister has predicted he might try to secure a small change to the backstop and use his leadership mandate and powers of persuasion to force a deal over the line.
Only a long-standing Brexiteer such as him could sell such a compromise. But if it was interpreted as abandoning his No Deal stance, how would hardline Brexiteers and the Party’s anti-EU members who elected him respond?
By this stage, we would be entering the final stage in Johnson’s game of ‘chicken’. It would be his point of maximum leverage, forcing EU leaders to compromise so as to avert No Deal which they are desperate to avoid.
Recent days have seen suggestions of softening rhetoric from the EU. Have they, as one senior official put it, had enough of Brexit and concluded it’s time to ‘get the drunk out of the bar’.
Perhaps Johnson could pull an unexpected rabbit out of the hat. Or, maybe, some Labour MPs — terrified of losing their seats in the North where voters would punish them for Corbyn turning their party into a vehicle for Remain — could come to his rescue.
Meanwhile, the closer we got to No Deal, there would be economic turbulence. The financial markets would be wavering, the pound falling and businesses threatening to leave the UK.
October 31: The Crunch Point
In Johnson’s most optimistic scenario, he would now have secured a better deal and Britain would be out of the EU. In his own words, the ‘great Incubus’ would have been ‘pitchforked off the back of British politics’.
However, I fear more likely probabilities: Brexit further delayed; a revocation of Article 50 or a major constitutional crisis in which the Queen, and the courts — or both — are dragged into the Brexit mire.
And what about us leaving with No Deal? Would Johnson force it through, knowing that the short-term economic consequences could be brutally painful and that a General Election would be hard to avoid, with the big risk that voters would eviscerate the Tories for their serial Brexit failures?
Little noticed in this week’s leadership debate was when Johnson referred to the ‘forthcoming’ General Election, which by law isn’t due until 2022.
Perhaps this slip revealed his expectation that, to break the deadlock, he will have to go back to the country.
While the Conservatives have been beating themselves up centre stage, Labour’s internecine war is probably more bloody.
Many argue that since the Tories are in government and Labour hasn’t been in power for more than nine years, Jeremy Corbyn’s problems are less important.
But the truth is that whoever becomes the new prime minister, a General Election is likely sooner rather than later. In which case, Corbyn’s policies must be held up to the same level of scrutiny as Boris Johnson’s and Jeremy Hunt’s.
This week, Corbyn found himself more isolated and vulnerable than at almost any time since he became leader.
The central axis of the Labour Party — his close alliance with Marxist firebrand John McDonnell — has become strained to breaking point.
Matters came to a head at a meeting of Labour’s shadow cabinet on Tuesday. McDonnell distanced himself from Corbyn on the most important — indeed, defining — political issue of the day, Brexit.
These two comrades have been fellow travellers on the Hard Left for decades — both wanting to revolutionise British politics along Marxist lines, dismantling free markets and redistributing money they want to seize from the rich.
Theirs is not just a political but a strong personal allegiance, forged while discussing fringe issues at poorly attended socialist rallies. As shadow chancellor, McDonnell has been loyal to Corbyn, defending him against a series of attempted coups by moderate MPs.
But now McDonnell has made clear his frustrations over his boss’s pathetic vacillations on Brexit and refusal to back a second referendum.
He has accused Corbyn of being ‘indecisive’ and described Labour’s Brexit policy as a ‘slow moving car crash’.
Forget Tory attacks on Labour’s ‘Venezuela-style’ plans to renationalise utility firms which would cost billions of pounds and leave millions of pension savers out of pocket. 
Forget the constant barbs about Corbyn ‘sympathising’ with the IRA and Iran, and refusing to accept that Putin’s goons were behind the Salisbury poisonings.
The wheels may well come off Corbyn’s rickety bandwagon because his fellow Labour passengers are warring with each other.
So strong was their relationship that McDonnell disagreeing with Corbyn had been as unlikely as Marks & Spencer going their separate ways. (Or should that be ‘Marx’?) 
Their spat follows deputy leader Tom Watson challenging Corbyn’s authority by saying Labour ought to be an out-and-out ‘Remain party’.
And then this week, long-time Jeremy buddy, Diane Abbott, disloyally said that she ‘worries’ about party strategy and that he doesn’t understand the amount of discontent among Labour members over its muddled and contradictory Brexit policy.
Abbott, in response to someone on Twitter, said: ‘Like you, I have supported Labour’s Brexit strategy so far. But, like you, I am beginning to worry…’
What many had hoped and expected was that Corbyn would draw a line under Labour’s equivocation over Brexit.
Such views are based on the fact that the vast majority of the shadow cabinet want a second referendum and that if Labour is elected to power, it would campaign for the UK to stay in the EU.
While the Tories realise that if they fail to deliver Brexit, they will be electorally dead, Labour is convinced that it must champion Remain voters to survive.
Typically, though, Corbyn has dithered — asking for more time to decide which way to jump. Of course, there are several reasons why he won’t yet. 
At heart, he’s a Eurosceptic who, like his hero Tony Benn, has long regarded the EU as a great capitalist plot to crush the workers.
He saw Brexit as an opportunity to liberate Britain from EU ‘state aid’ rules which would stop a Labour government using billions of taxpayers’ cash to prop up nationalised industries, and other Brussels regulations which would prevent it from imposing strict capital controls on the City of London.
Crucially, too, there is the baleful figure of union baron ‘Red’ Len McCluskey who has bitterly attacked supporters of a second referendum, saying they have ‘no interest in a Labour victory at the next general election’. 
For he is convinced it would alienate traditional voters who voted Leave in 2016. The Unite chief also said Watson was like ‘a poor imitation’ of Machiavelli — a scathing reference to the Italian philosopher whose name is synonymous with unscrupulous plotting.
Indeed, McCluskey is so keen to make Brexit happen that this week he reportedly visited Downing Street for talks with Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay.
But Labour Leavers are in the ascendant. The estimated 30 MPs in pro-Leave seats, who recently warned that backing a second referendum would be ‘toxic to our bedrock Labour voters’, fear the game is up. 
Privately, many regret not voting for Theresa May’s EU exit deal when they had the chance to help her get it over the line.
Instead, they are left losing a battle for the soul of their party and increasingly worried about the threat from Nigel Farage’s rampant Brexit Party.
So, inevitably, it is only a matter of time before Corbyn abandons the last vestiges of his pro-Brexit position and makes the Judas switch to Remain. 
He knows that if he doesn’t, his hand will be humiliatingly forced by grassroots members at October’s party conference, and that his own position would become perilous.
His enemies are circling. Prime vulture, deputy leader Tom Watson, has wrapped himself in the EU flag, declaring: ‘Our members are Remain. Our values are Remain.’
For his part, Corbyn was also spooked by Labour’s appalling European elections — for example, the Lib Dems won more votes than Labour in his own Islington stronghold — that he has little choice but to capitulate.
His supine attempt to stay neutral and let the different wings of his party fight it out, has failed miserably. 
So much for his withering indictment of the Government — ‘Where the Tories have divided and ruled, we will unite and govern’ — in his party conference speech last year. He has been exposed as a weak leader of an increasingly divided party.
As night follows day, Labour will formally abandon the last vestiges of its support for Brexit and become emphatically the party of Remain. 
When that eventually happens, it will become clear to millions of Labour Leave voters that they have been cynically betrayed.
And when it comes to the next election, Corbyn’s party — to all intents and purposes the ‘Remain Party’ — will pay a huge price.
Boris Johnson repeatedly refuses to rule out ‘proroguing’ (suspending) Parliament if he becomes prime minister and MPs try to stop him forcing through a No Deal Brexit.
But he won’t just face opposition from Speaker John Bercow and from all sides of the Commons if he resorts to this ancient prerogative power, long seen as the necessary ‘nuclear option’ by hardline Brexiteers.
I am told that Buckingham Palace takes a very dim view of the idea, as it would be the Queen who would have to carry out the request.
When the issue was first mooted several months ago when Mrs May was looking at No Deal options, Buckingham Palace advisers made their objections clear ‘in no uncertain terms’.
‘They told us very firmly they did not want the Queen dragged into a Brexit constitutional crisis,’ an aide said.
The Queen is said to have painful memories of the controversy that followed her appointment of Alec Douglas-Home as prime minister to succeed an ailing Harold Macmillan in 1963.
There were unfounded allegations that the Queen had colluded with Macmillan’s wish to block his deputy, Rab Butler.
Understandably, she wants to avoid anything similar and to maintain the monarchy’s political impartiality.
As prime minister, Mr Johnson may be prepared to face down Brussels, Tory Remainers and the 16.1 million who voted to stay in the EU to get Brexit through. But even he would not want to embarrass the Queen.
 
I apologise for changing my mind. Theresa May’s deal is a bad one, it does not deliver on the promises made in the Tory Party manifesto and its negotiation was a failure of statesmanship.
A £39 billion bill for nothing, a minimum of 21 months of vassalage, the continued involvement of the European Court and, worst of all, a backstop with no end date.
Yet, I am now willing to support it if the Democratic Unionist Party does, and by doing so will be accused of infirmity of purpose by some and treachery by others.
I have come to this view because the numbers in Parliament make it clear that all the other potential outcomes are worse and an awkward reality needs to be faced.
Mrs May ought to have concluded a better agreement but behind the backs of two secretaries of state, David Davis and Dominic Raab, she did not.
The agreement on the table is as it is, and the proposal to replace the backstop with something else, particularly the Malthouse Compromise (a managed No Deal exit — if a deal cannot be agreed) has floundered.
Delay
The EU, in the knowledge that it was dealing with a weak counterparty, has refused to reopen the text and the Government has not been willing to threaten No Deal in any effective way. The late start to No Deal planning and the reluctance to use it in negotiations has been a significant reason for the poor outcome.
Until last week, nonetheless, No Deal remained the default legal option but the Government and the Prime Minister have now ruled this out and with the support of Parliament can now do so.
No Deal is an outcome I would prefer to Mrs May’s deal. It would be a fully-leaded Brexit and mere motions in the Commons could not have stopped it.
Indeed, despite a clear majority of MPs opposing such a departure, it would have happened on Friday had Mrs May not used her executive authority as Prime Minister to postpone the day of Brexit.
Once No Deal had been ruled out, it was necessary to examine what would happen in the event of the current agreement not passing. This would lead to a long delay as there is no opportunity of renegotiating anything before the European elections at the end of May. Two years or more is proposed but considering the opposition to Brexit it could be revoked or put to a skewed second referendum.
A long delay would make remaining in the EU the most likely outcome.
If the moral authority of 17.4 million voters and a General Election in 2017 when both main parties committed to respecting the result could not deliver our departure in three years, how strong a mandate would it be after five? Even if the fear of remaining were exaggerated, it would inevitably lead to an even softer Brexit.
It is a sad fact that there is a gulf between Parliament and the people. Fifty-two per cent voted Leave but two-thirds of MPs want to remain. The Lords is even worse with a tiny minority of pro-Leave peers.
After giving people the right to decide, too many politicians felt that the voters gave the wrong answer and must be saved from themselves. Two years further from the referendum would allow for the demands to be watered down again, leaving the UK shackled by a Customs Union or as a Norway-style rule-taker.
If this were all, it could be sensible to take the risk and see if something better turned up. A number of Tory MPs think a new leader could swiftly renegotiate but that is almost certainly not true now that Parliament has taken control of the Brexit timetable.
It would be even harder for a Eurosceptic to manage the current Commons than it is for Mrs May. Even if this could happen, politicians must look at the current constitutional clash and fear for our polity.
The constitution is under attack in three ways. The first is between the Government and the Commons.
This has been encouraged by the Speaker whose noble efforts to allow the Commons to hold the Government to account have gone too far and now seek to take the role of the Government to the legislature.
Recklessness
This is dangerous because the Commons’ job is to provide confidence in a Prime Minister who can take decisions for which she or he is accountable.
These decisions ought to be in accordance with manifesto commitments and if there is no confidence in the duly elected Prime Minister, then control ought to return to voters, not to a cabal of MPs who will have random majorities on various issues but no clear leader or mandate.
Separation of powers between Downing Street and the Commons is a crucial part of how we are ruled and a protection against arbitrary government.
Upsetting this balance is unwise to the point of recklessness and the Sir Oliver Letwin takeover proves the point.
Unfortunately, the second breakdown is just as serious. The Government only functions if ministers support a single position or resign, and this has been the reality since the 1830s. There can only be one Government position, otherwise how can it be held to account? How can electors know how power is being exercised if different ministers say the first thing that pops into their heads?
Recently, three Cabinet Ministers failed to back Government policy on the vote to leave the EU without a deal and in a rather jejune fashion ostentatiously abstained.
As they did not resign, this undermines one of the cornerstones of the constitution, making it harder for the Government to function.
Faltering
Any government must be able to get its business done. If it cannot, it is unable to govern. The principle of the separation of powers and of collective responsibility lie at the heart of this.
The great Duke of Wellington was famous for insisting that the Queen’s Government must go on and that all responsible politicians have a duty towards such an end, even if it countermands their own piety.
The worst breakdown, though, is between the elected and the electors.
The condescension of politicians who feel that Leave voters were all stupid and ought never to have been allowed to decide something so complicated is tragic.
Ultimately, voters know best and must be trusted. Imperfect as it is, Mrs May’s deal gets closer to that than anything else available.
The Withdrawal Agreement has one great virtue. Legally, we would have left and to re-join would mean agreeing to adopt the Euro single currency, Schengen (the abolition of national borders) and no rebate. Such a course would be expensive and hugely unpopular.
The backstop, too, could tie us into rules that we did not like. But outside the EU, it would be a political not a legal matter.
International law is not as clear-cut as EU or domestic law and there is no court to rule between states and international bodies.
Ultimately, Brexit could be delivered upon but it would take longer.
It would need a Commons that wants to use our freedoms and that is willing to insist that the word ‘temporary’, as applied to the backstop, is genuine.
It needs political leadership and a desire to stop the weak-minded managing of decline and a belief in the UK.
Theresa May’s deal is a more faltering step than I want, or feel, could be taken —but at least it is a step forward. 
On Tuesday evening at the London Palladium, I was surprised and flattered that so many people turned out to hear me talk about Brexit.
I fear I will never be as popular on its famous revolving stage as the great Sir Bruce Forsyth once was. But if only we can sort out one detail from the EU Withdrawal Agreement and ensure Brexit, then I could retire to sell ice creams at the theatre – just as I did during the interval.
And given that I took more than £480, it may, in fact, be my real vocation.
It was a joy to meet so many people and hear what they had to say about the issue that has dominated political life for the best part of two and a half years.
I got the strong sense from everyone I spoke to that they wanted Brexit delivered as soon as possible.
The Northern Ireland backstop has always been the biggest sticking point in the negotiations – and for a very good reason. 
I am as determined as anyone that the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland should remain as peaceful and problem-free as it is today.
However, in its current form, the backstop – which would allow for an open border between the two countries, leaving Northern Ireland subject to certain rules of the EU's single market – would last indefinitely.
The whole point of leaving the EU is to take back control, not to leave the EU with the potential for lasting effective power over trade and regulations in Northern Ireland, or any other part of the UK.
If this issue can be resolved, then I would be content to support the Prime Minister's Withdrawal Agreement.
Geoffrey Cox, the much-respected Attorney General, is in Brussels trying to persuade the EU to agree to a legally binding date to the backstop.
It would be wrong to jump the gun, but if he can achieve this it would mark a fundamental change to the agreement and allow Brexiteers such as me to accept it. 
Once we can secure a limit to the backstop, all the other imperfections in Mrs May's deal, such as continued meddling by the European Court of Justice and our continuing to pay huge sums into EU coffers, become much less problematic.
The key difference is that these are all time-limited, whereas the backstop, as currently outlined, is potentially everlasting.
Once a final date is put on it, our objections to the deal, like the effects of its provisions, fade away.
I really do not mind what form of words the Attorney General and the EU agree on regarding the backstop – as long as it expires before the next election and has the same legal status as the deal. And I do not agree with those who say the Withdrawal Agreement has to be reopened to solve the backstop problem. It is itself an appendix to the treaty, so I would be happy with a further appendix, as this would have equal legal force.
In my view, that would satisfy most of us who are worried, and it may also help those who say the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be reopened to save face. I take a practical and not a theological attitude towards these matters.
Those who have suggested that I and my Conservative colleagues in the European Research Group have gone out of our way to make things difficult for the Prime Minister could not be more wrong. 
Our aim has consistently been to follow the commitments made in the 2017 Tory election manifesto and implicit in the 2016 referendum result.
That some Cabinet ministers have undermined collective responsibility and tried to thwart Mrs May is hardly our fault.
The Prime Minister says it is still her fervent hope that the UK leaves the EU on March 29. I share her sentiments.
If – and I stress if – she can secure the necessary assurances on the backstop I have outlined, I would be delighted to support her deal and help avoid any delay to Brexit.
It is not my job to tell other Conservative MPs what to do, but I am sure many other passionate advocates of Brexit would take the same pragmatic and patriotic view.
At long last, we would have delivered our promise to the 17.4 million who voted to leave the EU in June 2016.
And, as soon as that happens, we Conservatives can put our differences behind us, reunite and focus on winning the next election – and keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Number 10. 
One of Britain’s biggest exporters is to quit the CBI in protest at its stance against Brexit.
Anthony Bamford of JCB is believed to have decided to pull out over apocalyptic warnings that leaving the EU could cost £100billion and lead to 950,000 job losses.
It is understood the firm will remain in the pro-Brussels group only until its membership expires next year.
‘JCB has taken the right decision – the CBI is one of the most irrelevant organisations ever formed,’ said Peter Hargreaves, founder of financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown, last night.
‘Any employer that joins the CBI has gone soft. Businesses squander their money on it but it has no relevance in today’s world. I’d like to see other companies joining JCB in leaving this organisation, which told lies about Brexit.’
The business lobbying group was one of the loudest voices backing Remain during the referendum campaign.
But at the same time Lord Bamford’s company – the third-largest manufacturer of construction equipment in the world – donated £100,000 to Vote Leave.
And just weeks before the June 23 poll the billionaire boss wrote to his 6,500 staff to say they had ‘very little to fear’ from Britain leaving the EU.
‘The UK is a trading nation and the fifth-largest economy in the world. I am very confident that we can stand on our own two feet,’ he said.
‘I believe that JCB and the UK can prosper just as much outside the EU, so there is very little to fear if we do choose to leave. I voted to stay in the Common Market in 1975. I did not vote for a political union. I did not expect us to hand over sovereignty to the EU.’
Last night a spokesman for JCB would not confirm that the manufacturer’s decision to leave the business group was in response to its pro-EU stance, saying merely: ‘I can confirm that JCB is ending its membership of the CBI.’
A spokesman for the CBI said: ‘It’s always a shame to see any member leave the CBI, but we recognise that businesses have competing priorities and we respect that.’
Jacob Rees-Mogg, Tory MP for North-East Somerset and Brexit campaigner, said: ‘I’d like to congratulate JCB on its perspicacity.
‘It is a model of a successful export business around the world and a representative of entrepreneurialism rather than stodgy protectionism.
‘In contrast, the CBI has an amazing record of getting everything wrong, whether it is opposing Margaret Thatcher’s reforms or promoting the euro. I can see why some industrialists think they no longer want to spend the money on the subscriptions when they are so badly represented.
‘The CBI is now essentially redundant. Perhaps others will be considering saving their subscriptions.’
Yesterday the CBI’s director-general, Carolyn Fairbairn, intensified her lobbying in favour of a so-called ‘soft Brexit’, which preserves the fullest possible access to Europe’s single market.
And she said Mrs May’s insistence on an immigration crackdown on foreign workers could close the door to the UK staying an open trading economy.
MPs reacted with fury to her comments. Like Mr Rees-Mogg, they pointed out that the business group had a track record of being wrong on the economy, having once claimed it was vital for the UK to join the European single currency.
They also pointed out that the CBI’s ‘cry of anguish’ came only days after Mrs May lashed metropolitan elites who sneer at the concerns of ordinary Britons on issues such as mass immigration.
In a firm slapdown to the CBI, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said last night: ‘Britain is an open nation.’
Ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith told the Daily Mail that the business group was seeking to frustrate the process of leaving the EU only out of naked self-interest.
He added: ‘The CBI is still fighting yesterday’s battle. There is a simple answer to them: grow up.
'Join the real debate and stop playing silly games designed to bully the Government. Like it or not, the days of cartel lobbying in Brussels by big business to keep out small businesses will be over.’
Dover Tory MP Charlie Elphicke said: ‘This is a cry of anguish by big business and the jet-set elite who have had their own way for too long.
‘The CBI were wrong on the European exchange rate mechanism, wrong on the euro and the British people are going to prove them wrong again.
‘They need to understand that the UK’s economic interests are not necessarily the same as their own interests.
‘While the CBI and big business bleat about Brexit, small businesses have been busy creating jobs for hard-working Britons.
‘We need a Britain that works for everyone. That includes local towns and regions – not just the metropolitan elite.’
More people are feeling confident in the economy than those who are downbeat for the first time in at least two years, according to a report.
Barclaycard said consumer confidence had jumped to a new record high, with 48 per cent of people feeling upbeat about the economy. Forty-seven per cent were not confident and the remainder were unsure.
Paul Lockstone, managing director at Barclaycard, said: ‘For the first time since Barclaycard began tracking consumer confidence in 2014, more people now tell us they feel confident about the UK economy than those who don’t, and the proportion has jumped since the EU referendum vote in June.
‘This recovery in confidence, combined with the warmer September weather, helped to prolong the summer feeling among consumers last month.
‘Increased spend on experiences, and in particular with friends and family in pubs and restaurants, delivered one of the strongest months for spend growth so far this year.’ 
 
Even at events where the Champagne flows freely, the mood in the German capital is subdued these days.
On Tuesday I attended one of these glamorous Berlin functions, at which our Chancellor Angela Merkel was awarded the American Academy's Henry Kissinger Prize for her contribution to transatlantic relations.
Merkel was lauded for her 'steadfast' leadership, which had provided 'thoughtful, decent and long government'.
But all that praise could not disguise the profound sense of apprehension that hung in the air.
In Germany, fears are growing that the ship of Europe is sailing troubled waters. Soon it could be dashed on the rocks.
Why the anxiety? The looming impact of Brexit, as politicians and policy-makers across the continent begin to recognise that Britain's departure represents a daunting challenge to the European project.
At times it feels like cocktail hour aboard the Titanic, with the iceberg looming on the horizon.
It wasn't meant to be like this. 
For years, EU leaders have insisted that Brexit would be a disaster for Britain, leaving your country hopelessly isolated.
According to the relentless propaganda of the pro-EU cause, Europe would forge ahead on the global stage, ever more united, while the UK would slide into insularity and decline.
But that narrative is starting to look like a delusion.
Headed by a strong government and sustained by a dynamic economy, it is Britain that can look forward to the future with confidence, while the EU and its member states remain trapped in bureaucratic sclerosis, obsessed with regulation and welfare when much of the rest of the world is embracing commercial freedom.
This week, your Government's Brexit Bill finally completed its passage through Westminster, despite some last-ditch and futile skirmishing by Remainers in the House of Lords.
After all the long years of Parliamentary stalemate, Britain's withdrawal from the EU will become a reality next week. 
The alarmists of Project Fear predicted that this moment would be the cue for economic meltdown, yet just the opposite is happening. Britain seems ready to prosper.
Only on Thursday, an authoritative study by the Confederation of British Industry reported the biggest surge in confidence on record among manufacturers, with companies planning to ramp- up investment.
The CBI's report followed news earlier in the week of yet another fall in unemployment as the British jobs miracle continues.
The jobless rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1974, while employment, at 33 million, is at its highest-ever level. 
Particularly striking is the dramatic growth in self-employment to more than five million, a sure indicator of an enterprising economy.
The welcome jobs news comes against a backdrop of a rising pound, widely available affordable credit, a resurgence in the property market and a significant fall in Government borrowing.
Britain looks like it can manage well without the EU. But can the EU manage without Britain?
Your economy is bigger than the 18 smallest EU countries combined. This means in economic terms that the EU will lose not just one member state — but shrink from 28 members to ten. 
On a purely fiscal level, the loss of Britain's contribution will have huge implications for the EU's budget.
And, on much a deeper level, Europe will also badly feel the loss of the Anglo-Saxon, pro-market business model, when so many EU governments are addicted to a quasi-socialist, big-state, heavily interventionist approach.
It is telling that, in this age of online technology, Europe's most significant achievement has not been to create a new web giant to rival Amazon or Google, but to use its clout to introduce tougher controls on email traffic through more regulation.
Similarly, it is remarkable that EU member states account for only seven per cent of the world's population — but 50 per cent of all welfare spending.
The truth is that Brexit — so often sneered at by the federalists — has shone a harsh spotlight on Europe's deep-seated structural problems.
Here in Germany, our economy has long hovered on the brink of recession, with growth at its most anaemic for a decade.
Manufacturing is looking increasingly outdated as exports and capital investments suffer.
Our car industry — the backbone of our economy — now faces perhaps its biggest crisis since Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz invented the automobile in the 1880s.
Yet in the face of this darkening picture, Merkel — now in the last full year of her tenure — seems astonishingly complacent and impotent.
At that Champagne reception in Berlin, she boasted of her achievements, then went on to do something most unusual for a Western politician: she quoted the Russian revolutionary Lenin, who referred to the political principle of 'one step forward, two steps back'.
No one seemed surprised that Merkel uttered the name of this mass-murdering communist in front of an august group of U.S. academics.
Meanwhile, the difficulties of other European countries are even worse.
Next door in France, President Emmanuel Macron is fighting a losing war in his attempt to reform the vast and creaking French state, especially its array of unaffordable pension schemes.
A glimpse into the rotten nature of France's sprawling civic bureaucracy was provided a few years ago by Aurelie Boullet, who wrote a book about her experiences as an employee at Aquitaine Regional Council.
'I was getting destroyed by my job because I had nothing to do,' she said, explaining that her actual work as a mid-ranking administrator amounted to between five and 12 hours a month.
In this culture of institutionalised idleness, she was once told that she had produced a report in the wrong typeface. She was given an entire week to change the font, though the task took her only 25 seconds.
Spain is no better and has no chance of economic renewal now that, after eight months of bickering and paralysis, the country has a socialist government propped up by the radical Left.
It is a similar story in Italy, which is stuck in perma-recession and where the state machine is hopelessly inefficient. There, as in France, attempts at reform have floundered.
Only this week, in an extraordinary judgment about a case that symbolises the mess Italy is in, an Italian court sided with a portly policeman who had been caught on film in 2015, clocking on for work in his underwear.
The case was brought as part of a crackdown on skiving officialdom, but the policeman, who lived in a flat above the station, successfully argued that actually putting on his uniform was part of his working day.
That kind of nonsense is typical of Europe, where too much of the state machinery is a self-serving racket.
A glance across the Channel to Britain is enough to make me sufficiently envious to reach for an aspirin — invented a long time ago in Germany — to quaff with the Champagne.
I see a government with a solid, one-party majority, compared to all the fragile coalitions of Europe. I see a nation with a strong sense of purpose, built on trust in its own capabilities, and a powerful economy. Indeed, according to the International Monetary Fund, Britain will be the fastest-growing G7 economy in Europe over the next two years.
I see a vibrant, open place that can attract huge amounts of foreign investment, has an unrivalled record on business start-ups, is a global pioneer of scientific and genetic research.
I see a country that has an unrivalled financial services sector, enjoys a vast cultural reach through language, music and the arts and contains several of the world's great universities.
At times, when I consider Britain, I am reminded of the bullish atmosphere that prevails in the fast-growing Asian economies.
It is all a graphic contrast to the sluggishness of Europe. When it comes to football, all the best talent is rushing to England, where the Premier League is the most attractive in the world.
While Britain is going through an astonishing cultural renaissance, reflected in the huge popularity of your entertainment industry and the expansion of major art galleries like London's Tate Modern, in Germany a new socialist law on national heritage is so heavy-handed on transactions of valuable art and antiques it is effectively killing the market.
The most interesting person I spoke to at the award ceremony in Berlin was Andrew Gundlach, scion of one of Germany's most famous banking families, the Arnholds, and now President and co-CEO of Bleichroeder LLC. He is a shrewd man with a deep understanding of the geopolitical scene.
Did he think the outlook is grim for post-Brexit Britain? He laughed at the question.
'The whole point of Brexit was to align with the high growth of America and China and not low-growth Europe,' he said.
What sends cold sweat running down the spine of European policy makers, he added, is a vibrant, talent-attracting economy right on Europe's doorstep, with rule-books more liberal than the EU's.
The last time I visited Britain to gauge the spirit of your country for my newspaper BILD, I travelled north, to Teesside.
To my surprise, I found local politicians and businessmen talking of low-tax 'freeports' and new opportunities, and people in pubs ridiculing the doomsayers in the south. Decades of EU membership had seemingly done little for prosperity there.
More than one person told me that things might well get better, 'once we're out'.
They could well be right. Europe fears a truly global Britain.
Diehard Remainers still cling to the belief that Britain will stumble, that the forthcoming negotiations on a trade deal will prove tortuous.
I am not so sure. With only ten months of talks left, Britain is in a far better position than most here on the continent dare to admit.
In Boris Johnson, you have a charismatic, election-winning Prime Minister who has forced through Brexit partly thanks to the sheer force of his personality and his ability to outmanoeuvre his opponents.
In the process, he has repeatedly defied his critics. They said he would never persuade the EU to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement, drop the Irish backstop or reach a new deal.
He achieved all three — and I believe he can do so again with a trade accord.
European politicians used to push around Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.
Now they are confronted with a leader who really is too 'strong and stable' to be bullied.
The eminent historian Niall Ferguson recently said: 'I think Brussels has not really adjusted to the new situation, but they will adjust when they realise that Britain isn't about to be rolled over the way it was because of the way May was negotiating.
'We will see a very different tone to these negotiations.'
The Champagne at these self-congratulatory diplomatic receptions is starting to leave a sour taste.
Your future looks bright. I'm not so sure about mine.
 
Jacob Rees-Mogg has launched an astonishing attack on Theresa May - accusing her of betraying Brexit and breaking the trust voters have put in her.
The Tory MP - the de facto leader of the Brexiteers -  said the Prime Minister had acted in an 'untrusting way' by flouting her previous red lines on leaving the EU.
He accused his party leader of trying to 'gull' Brexiteers into thinking she would deliver a clean break from Brussels but said she was pretending all along.
Mr Rees-Mogg - who has earned a reputation as one of Parliament's most polite MP - also took a swipe at the PM for drawing a distinction between ‘passionate’ Brexiteers and her need to make hard headed political decisions.
He told the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme today: ‘In the view of most Brexiteers, head and heart come together, I’m afraid the Prime minister doesn’t see that.
‘I think she’s a Remainer who has remained a Remainer.'
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson is preparing to make a bombshell resignation speech in the Commons on Wednesday to lift the lid on  his explosive resignation as Foreign Secretary.
He is expected to make it on Wednesday after PMQs in a challenge to Mrs May to stay in the Chamber and listen to his speech.
Mr Rees-Mogg is the leader of her European Research Group - the influential group of backbench Tory Eurosceptic MPs. 
Theresa May has warned there may be ‘no Brexit at all’ because of attempts to wreck her controversial blueprint for Britain’s departure from the European Union.
She claims that rival Commons revolts by warring pro- and anti-Europe Tory MPs threaten to sabotage hopes of winning a post-Brexit deal for Britain. 
And in a hard-hitting message to Brussels, the Prime Minister says she will not budge an inch on the proposed Brexit deal she agreed with Cabinet Ministers at her Chequers summit.
Writing in today’s Mail on Sunday, Mrs May dramatically raises the stakes in her bid to win support for her proposal to make a success of leaving the EU.
Her fighting talk comes after US President Donald Trump enraged Downing Street last week by claiming that Mrs May should be more ‘brutal’ towards Brussels, and also follows reports that Conservative MPs are threatening to force her to quit.
In a bold attempt to kill off plots by both Brexit and Remainer MPs to make her tear up her new Brexit policy, the Prime Minister says: ‘My message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize.
‘If we don’t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.’  
His outspoken attack comes at the end of hugely turbulent week for the PM, who is battling for her political survival.
Mrs May's Brexit plans have been savaged by Donald Trump, sparked the shock resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis, and triggered a mutiny by her backbenchers.
And in a sign that the knives are out for the PM, who could face a leadership challenge over her Chequers plan, Mr Rees-Mogg issued an excoriating attack. 
He told The Sunday Express the White Paper had not met any of the five tests Mrs May set out in her Mansion House speech on Brexit in March.
'The common rule book is misnamed,' he said.
'It is not common, it is the European Union Rule book which we will have to follow or face penalties.'
He accused Mrs May of being so 'oddly secretive' in her 'headlong retreat that even key Secretaries of State didn't know'.
He added: 'She always wanted a soft Brexit.
'The Chequers U-turn, the failure of the Mansion House test and abandonment of 'Brexit means Brexit' has broken trust. 
'It would have been more straightforward to admit that no real Brexit was the intention all along rather than trying to gull Brexiteers. Perhaps we ought to have realised earlier on that a Remainer would stick with Remain.'
Mr Rees-Mogg said the PM had wasted time and taxpayers' money in stringing them along before abandoning her Brexit red lines. 
He added: 'This is at best an untrusting way to behave and a more severe commentator would call it untrustworthy.' 
Mrs My has launched her fightback against her critics though - telling Brexiteers that either they back her plan or there will be no Brexit.
Writing in the Maill on Sunday, she said: ‘My message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize. If we don’t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.’
And she vowed to get tough with Brussels, writing:  ‘The negotiations with the EU are not going to be easy for Brussels – and I don’t intend them to be.
‘As President Trump has said, I’m a tough negotiator. 
'As I made clear to him, I am not going to Brussels to compromise our national interest; I am going to fight for it and fight for our Brexit deal – because it is the right deal for Britain.’
But she suffered a fresh blow today when an opinion poll showed that Tory ratings are at their worst sine the election.  
An Opinium poll for The Observer newspaper found that Tory support has plummeted to 36 per cent - some six points lower than it was in June. 
Meanwhile, Labour have stayed on 40 per cent, while Ukip - the Brexit backing party most commentators had written off - have surged to 8 per cent.
Steve Baker, the ex Brexit minister who followed his boss Mr Davis and quit in fury at the proposals, said the poll shows that backing Chequers would effectively hand the keys to No10 to Mr Corbyn.
He said: 'It looks like Chequers means Corbyn. But it doesn't have to be this way. There's still time to change course. Just.'  
Of all the descriptions often attributed to Jeremy Corbyn, being a mind-reader is not one. And yet before the Prime Minister’s new Brexit deal was published yesterday, the Labour leader definitively declared that he couldn’t support it.
There are two possible explanations for this.
Either Corbyn is a sage who managed to deduce the contents of the unpublished 64-page document.
Or, he jumped in without waiting to read the first page.
Having seen first-hand the shameless speed with which Corbyn can denounce a deal, forgive me if I lean towards the second possibility.
Over the past three years, there has been little about Corbyn’s handling of Brexit to suggest he has any inclination to prioritise the Brexit referendum result over the demands of Labour’s own internal party politics. So much for the man who’s party went into the last general election with a manifesto which clearly stated: ‘Labour accepts the referendum result and a Labour government will put the national interest first.’
Faced with a growing Remainer insurgency along his front bench, Corbyn has also ditched his own Eurosceptic beliefs.
Whether, therefore, Corbyn has tried to scupper every attempt to deliver Brexit out of political cowardice or shameless cynicism scarcely matters.
And while Boris Johnson has staked everything – not least his own reputation and premiership – on making good on that promise, the Labour leader has behaved like a slopey-shouldered spiv trying to welch on a bet. As his actions demonstrated yesterday, Corbyn isn’t one to spend time reading important documents.
But should he ever start, he could do no worse than begin at page 24 of Labour’s own 2017 manifesto.
Time and again, Corbyn has shown how those key five words – ‘Labour accepts the referendum result’ – aren’t worth the paper they were printed on.
Under his leadership, Labour MPs opted to trigger Article 50 and set the two-year clock running on Brexit negotiations, but subsequently voted on 34 separate occasions in the Commons to block Brexit legislation.
Even when we were trying to broker a deal with Labour to break the Parliamentary deadlock, I remember how their delegation failed to take the matter at hand seriously. I will never forget one particularly farcical moment in April when, during crunch talks with Labour to get Theresa’s May’s deal through, the party’s Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, condemned a document we had just given him – even though it had been copied and pasted from his own proposals!
At another point, Corbyn’s deputy, John McDonnell, suddenly raised the issue of a Second Referendum.
I was surprised. At the time, McDonnell had no great love for the Remainer rump of his party.
‘I said I’d raise it,’ he explained matter-of-factly, ‘and I’ve raised it.’ It was a bizarre outburst – though one that now explains why Corbyn’s self-serving game-playing over Brexit is coming home to roost.
Held captive by Labour’s hardcore Remainer membership, he has been backed into a cul-de-sac of support for a second referendum.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has never deviated from the course he set – to take Britain out of Europe on October 31, ‘do or die’.
He has gambled everything on this promise and it seems to have paid off.
Indeed, it means that, tomorrow, there is a clear choice for MPs: back this deal or leave without a deal in less than two weeks’ time.
There are, of course, a handful of honourable former Labour MPs, such as John Mann and Iain Austin, who will do their duty and honour the referendum result.
There are also decent, moderate Labour MPs, such as Caroline Flint, who voted Remain but have since stated resolutely that Brexit must be delivered.
Tomorrow, other Labour MPs would do well to follow their lead.
Now is the time for our politicians to break free from this appalling Parliamentary paralysis, to live up to their promises to voters and get Brexit done.
If Jeremy Corbyn continues to put the brakes on Brexit, it could plunge Britain into an almighty crash.
Sir Robbie Gibb was Theresa May’s director of communications
Jeremy Corbyn has ruled out forming a coalition government after the next general election should Labour fail to win an outright majority.
The Labour leader said he would try to rule in a minority government rather than agree to deals with other political parties. 
He also defended his Brexit position and rejected accusations that he is 'sitting on the fence'. 
Meanwhile, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, today suggested Labour will never support a Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson. 
Mr McDonnell said even if Mr Johnson resolved the controversy over the Irish border backstop there were plenty of other areas in the existing divorce agreement which fell far short of Labour's demands. 
His comments represent a blow to the Prime Minister and make the path to getting a revised deal through the House of Commons much more difficult. 
Mr McDonnell also appeared to rule himself out of replacing Mr Corbyn at the top of the party as he reportedly said the next leader should be a woman. 
Mr Johnson twice failed earlier this month to trigger an early general election as opposition leaders said they would only agree to a snap poll once a No Deal Brexit has been ruled out. 
Mr Corbyn has said that if a Brexit delay is agreed with the EU to avoid a crash out split on October 31 then he will give Mr Johnson the numbers he needs to go to the country early. 
The current volatile nature of British politics means that the outcome of such an election is far from certain. 
But Mr Corbyn, speaking on the eve of Labour's annual conference in Brighton, said he would not enter into negotiations with other parties in order to form a government should he fall short of a majority. 
He said that if there was a hung parliament Labour would seek to govern as a minority administration.
'We would go into government with whatever election result [there] was,' he told UTV. 
'I am not doing deals. I am not doing coalitions.' 
Mr Corbyn rejected the idea that Labour could offer the SNP a second referendum on Scottish independence in order to win its support at Westminster.
However, he refused to rule out such a vote taking place later in the parliament if there was a demand for one in Scotland.
Jeremy Corbyn is the most unpopular Opposition leader ever, according to a new poll, as the Labour leader prepares to face an all-out Remainer rebellion at his party's annual conference.  
The veteran left-winger's net rating of minus 60 is below that of his hero Michael Foot who led Labour to disaster in the early 1980s and whose hard-left 1983 general election manifesto was described as the 'longest suicide note in history'.  
The latest Ipsos MORI survey found that just 16 per cent of voters are satisfied with Mr Corbyn's performance, compared to 76 per cent who are dissatisfied - giving him a net rating of minus 60. 
Mr Corbyn's rating is the lowest ever recorded for an Opposition leader by the polling firm which started asking how satisfied people were with their political leaders in 1977.  
He told Border TV: 'It is not our priority. It is not what I want, it is not what I support. 
'But if after some years in government there is a demand, then in terms of the devolution settlement we will look at it at that time.'
Speaking on STV, he added: 'Obviously in the longer run, if a request is made... I am not going to be the one who stands in the way of that.'
His comments come after Mr McDonnell sparked a furious row over the summer after he suggested a Labour government would not stand in the way of a referendum if there was support for one in the Scottish Parliament. 
Mr Corbyn said that he would press for a general election once it was clear that Mr Johnson could not force through a No Deal Brexit against the wishes of Parliament.
'When the Prime Minister abides by the law which Parliament has passed which requires him if he cannot get a deal to apply for an extension, I think that is the time,' he told ITV Anglia.
'What we won't do is to fall into some trap created by Boris Johnson which would lead us into a No Deal Brexit with all the chaos that would bring.'
Mr Corbyn also hit back at criticism of his latest Brexit position. He said earlier this week that if he becomes PM he would negotiate a new deal with Brussels and then put it to a second referendum against Remain. 
However, he would stay neutral and would not back either option - a position which prompted senior Labour figures to warn the party will get 'steamrollered' if it fights an election with that policy. 
Mr Corbyn told YTV he is 'not sitting on the fence' on Brexit and insisted it was 'not a muddled position'. 
The Labour leader will face intense pressure from party activists in Brighton in the coming days to change tack and formally commit to campaign for Remain. 
Mr McDonnell also set out his stall ahead of Labour's annual conference as he suggested his party would never back a Brexit deal negotiated by Mr Johnson. 
He told The Mirror: 'Everyone is saying let's see what comes back. 
'All the Tory media seem to be interested in is the Irish backstop, but there's a whole range of other stuff we wouldn't touch with a bargepole.'
Mr McDonnell said Labour would consider an agreement presented by Mr Johnson to MPs but added the 'reality is it's not going to be what we sought'.  
'We're not going to allow him to do a deal which will basically allow him to sell the country out to Trump,' he said. 
Meanwhile, in a separate interview with The Times Mr McDonnell reportedly said the next Labour leader should be a woman as he appeared to rule himself out of trying to succeed Mr Corbyn. 
Jeremy Corbyn last night vowed to 'surprise' Boris Johnson with a no-confidence vote which could bring his premiership to an abrupt halt.
The Labour leader said his party would table the motion at a time of its choosing, with sources not ruling out making a dramatic move this week.
If Mr Johnson is toppled within the next four months, he would be the shortest-serving UK prime minister ever. 
Without the support of the DUP, the Conservatives do not have a majority in the Commons.
Mr Corbyn tweeted: 'Boris Johnson has won the support of fewer than 100,000 unrepresentative Conservative Party members by promising tax cuts for the richest, presenting himself as the bankers' friend, and pushing for a damaging No Deal Brexit. But he hasn't won the support of our country. 
'Johnson's No Deal Brexit would mean job cuts, higher prices in the shops, and risk our NHS being sold off to US corporations in a sweetheart deal with Donald Trump.
'The people of our country should decide who becomes the prime minister in a general election.'
Asked whether Labour will table a vote of no-confidence in the new prime minister, Mr Corbyn told the BBC: 'We will table one when appropriate to do so. We'll decide when that will be – it'll be an interesting surprise for all of you.'
New Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson said: 'Whether it is throwing people under the bus or writing a lie on the side of one: Britain deserves better than Boris Johnson.'
Labour's John McDonnell said he and Jeremy Corbyn are both Remainers  'deep' in their hearts today as he revealed he warned the Tories a second referendum might be the price of a Brexit deal.
The hard Left shadow chancellor was speaking after talks between Labour and the Government appeared to have totally stalled after more than six weeks.
And it came as it emerged that EU officials are already talking about a further extension of Article 50 to June 2020 out of frustration at a lack of progress in Westminster.
The shadow chancellor told the Wall Street Journal CEO Council conference in London: 'Deep in my heart I'm still a Remainer.'
Asked if Mr Corbyn was also a Remainer in his heart, the shadow chancellor said: 'Yes.'  
The shadow chancellor went on say that he had warned the Tories that a second referendum or 'confirmatory vote' because of the backing in the Commons  for one.
Yesterday the talks between the Tories and Labour were left in turmoil after Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said a deal without a second referendum is 'impossible' because up to 150 Labour MPs would reject it. 
But the Prime Minister has always made clear that a second Brexit poll after 17.4million voted to leave the EU in 2016 is a red line she is not prepared to cross.
Mr McDonnell today told the conference the issue of a public vote had come up in the talks.
He said: 'Because we are in negotiations, we have been saying to our Conservative colleagues that to get something through Parliament you may well have to concede that there is a public vote of some sort.
'We need to test the numbers on that. And at the moment there has not been much of a shift.
'The point Keir Starmer made at the weekend... is that there are a large number of MPs who will not sign up to anything unless there is a public vote.'
Today there were signs that Brussels is well and truly fed-up with the stagnation in Westminster. 
Charles Grant from the respected Centre for European Reform reported that discussions of another Brexit delay was underway - although such a move is likely to be opposed by France's Emmanuel Macron.
Mr Grant wrote: 'The EU is no longer as united as it was on how to handle the British. 
'But just about everyone working on Brexit in the EU’s institutions and governments is fed up with them, and they do not believe that Britain’s politicians are capable of getting their act together and resolving the problem. 
'Many people in Brussels expect a further extension of Article 50, well into 2020.'
  
Oscar Wilde famously wrote that 'each man kills the thing he loves'. Yesterday, we witnessed Nigel Farage start doing just that.
No British politician has achieved more to advance the cause of British freedom from Brussels' rule. The victorious Leave vote in the 2016 referendum was a testimony to the power of his arguments and his charisma.
But now, by his refusal to co-operate with the Tories, he risks thwarting Brexit, the central purpose of his entire political career. At the very moment when there is a golden opportunity to elect a government fully committed to British independence from the monolithic European super-state, his intransigence may sabotage the cause.
Doesn't Farage realise that with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, this country has the best chance to break free? Doesn't he realise that the idea of Johnson ditching the withdrawal agreement he recently secured from Brussels – which Farage is demanding – is an impossibility?
Indeed, the major motive for the PM calling a General Election is to win public approval for his deal so the Government can 'get Brexit done'. But if Farage obstinately persists, the Tories and the Brexit Party will end up scrapping against each other on December 12, splitting the pro-Leave vote, guaranteeing that Johnson doesn't get a Commons majority and risking a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn which would keep Britain in the EU.
What a disastrous outcome.
Even with a slim victory, Johnson's robust Brexit strategy would be fragile, paralysis would prevail once more in Parliament, cranking up the pressure for a second referendum or even the revocation of Article 50.
On the other hand, a Tory defeat because the Leave vote split would open the way to a radical left-wing government under Corbyn and his Marxist cabal, propped up by Scottish Nationalists who would demand another independence referendum as the price of their support.
A glance at the electoral map shows just how vulnerable the Tories could be if they go head-to-head with the Brexit Party. As an audit by the Mail showed yesterday, there are almost 90 Labour seats – mainly in the North and the Midlands – which could turn Conservative if all pro-Brexit voters throw their weight behind Johnson.
Even if only 70 per cent of Brexit Party supporters back the Tories, at least 38 Labour seats would change hands – enough to avoid another miserable Commons deadlock.
And this is not mere conjecture. The recent Peterborough by-election highlighted the serious consequences of a split Leave vote. Labour's vote there fell by 17 per cent, down to 10,500 votes, but that was still just enough to scrape home in front of the Brexit Party on 9,800, and the Conservatives on 7,200. 
With the support of just over a third of the Brexit Party's votes, the Tories could have won by 6,500.
Translated onto the national stage, that result would undo decades of Farage's noble work. His justification for his inflexible stance is that Johnson's EU withdrawal agreement does not offer real independence and is 'Brexit in name only'. 'Drop the deal because it's not Brexit,' Farage said yesterday.
But this is unconvincing. After hard-fought negotiations, Johnson's deal is a vast improvement on Theresa May's. It would bring back control of our laws, trade and borders, while ending the threat of an Irish backstop that would have shackled us to the Customs Union. Even hardline Brexiteer MPs such as Steve Baker have been vociferous in their support of the agreement.
There are, of course, other factors to account for Farage's stubbornness.
One may be his personal resentment towards the Tories for stealing his party's mantle as the real Brexit movement only a few months after his astonishing victory in the European election, when they consigned the Tories to fifth place. Another is his antipathy towards Dominic Cummings, Johnson's chief aide and architect of the Tories' aggressive Brexit strategy.
A further problem would be that, if the Brexit Party stood many candidates down, Farage would not be entitled to participate in televised debates. 
Also, what if he withdrew candidates from Tory-winnable seats but the Conservatives didn't reciprocate by not fielding candidates in Brexit Party-winnable constituencies?
There could, however, be one possible benefit from Farage's obstinacy. If a Tory/Brexit Party deal was struck, Labour would portray Johnson as the puppet of Farage, just as, in the 2015 General Election campaign, the Tories – with deadly effect – depicted then Labour leader Ed Miliband in the pocket of the Scottish Nationalists.
It should also be noted that ahead of the same election, many Tories felt that their only hope of victory was to reach a deal with the Brexit Party's predecessor, UKIP, which was riding high in the polls.
The Tories' David Cameron refused, but as it turned out, UKIP siphoned off voters from Labour, actually paving the way for Cameron's unexpected victory. Tory optimists might hope that similar will happen in December. 
But in these volatile political times, it seems more likely that the Tories could be badly hurt by the fracture in the Leave vote.
That is why the only sure way to deliver Brexit is to support the Conservatives. As the former UKIP MP Douglas Carswell put it neatly yesterday: 'Don't waste your vote. If you want Brexit, back Boris.'
The great 19th century political writer Walter Bagehot once said that ‘the best cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it’. His words could be applied to the Upper House today, where irresponsible partisanship over Brexit risks the creation of a constitutional crisis.
As the confrontation with the Government deepens, all respect for public opinion has been abandoned by a large number of peers in their undemocratic quest to overturn the result of the EU Referendum.
So far the House of Lords has inflicted nine defeats on Theresa May’s Brexit legislation, and several more are likely to follow in the coming days.
Such a sustained challenge by the peerage to an elected administration trying to implement the centrepiece of its programme is unprecedented in modern times.
It is true that the Commons can still overturn these decisions, but the cumulative impact of this relentless pressure from the Upper House is bound to be destructive.
It is against the national interest as Britain’s negotiating strategy with the EU will be undermined. Just as importantly, a climate of public despair and frustration now begins to hang over Brexit, just as the Remain lobby wants.
As they maintain their parliamentary campaign of obstruction, the anti-Brexit peers dress up their actions in the rhetoric of reasonableness.
Remain-supporting peers claimed yesterday that the latest defeat on the Government was about ‘taking back control’ by giving Parliament and the public more say over the withdrawal negotiations.
But such soothing language cannot disguise the reality that the true aim is to keep Britain in the EU. Indeed, the leading pro-Brussels group Better Britain openly boasted on social media that the vote on Monday was for ‘the Stop Brexit amendment’.
For most of my life I have believed in the merits of an appointed Upper House rather than an elected one, partly because I think the House of Commons must be dominant at Westminster, and partly because the Commons’ constitutional supremacy reduces the chances of legislative deadlock.
The system of appointment through life peerages also allows the presence in the Lords of a wide range of experts, including doctors, engineers, scientists and judges.
The collective expertise in the Upper House undoubtedly exceeds that of the Commons and the presence of cross-benchers and the fact that no single party has a majority has, in the past, enabled it to be more constructive and less confrontational.
But I am afraid the recent antics of my colleagues are forcing me to reconsider.
Perhaps a non-elected house is now an untenable proposition.
It is surely intolerable that the Lords – unaccountable and devoid of any mandate – has decided that it is has the right not only to dictate to the Government and the Commons, but even to thwart the clearly expressed decision of the British public.
If peers continue their present reckless approach, the only solution will be the replacement of the present House by a properly elected one.
There can be little dispute that the House of Lords has become engaged in a power grab, seizing for itself a new influence over the fundamentals of state policy.
The House is not meant to be like this. It is supposed to be a revising chamber that improves and tidies up legislation. But the unending stream of anti-Brexit amendments in the Lords go far further than just ‘tidying up’.
They have the potential to wreck the entire negotiations with the EU.
That is certainly true of Monday’s amendment – voted by 335 to 224 – to give Parliament the right to take charge of the whole direction of negotiations with Brussels if certain strict timetables are not met.
The House of Lords effectively wants to block the ability of the Government to walk away from the negotiating table, no matter what the intransigence from the EU.
In practice what the Upper House has demanded is an extraordinary constitutional innovation, whereby Parliament would tell the Government how to conduct negotiations and even set the timetable.
There has been nothing like this in our history. Treaties have always been negotiated by ministers, never ever by the two chambers of Westminster.
If implemented, this Lords amendment would be a disaster for the country. It would provide a direct incentive to the EU to offer us the worst possible terms, knowing that the Government cannot leave the talks without a deal.
Even more disturbingly, Parliament, having taken charge of the negotiating timetable, could decide at any moment to withdraw the notice given under Article 50 – the formal notice to quit the EU – and keep Britain in the EU.
In fact, some peers this week expressed the hope that exactly this would happen as they paraded their support for the wrecking amendment.
The saga is all the more absurd because the EU Withdrawal Bill – the measure which has been subjected to a barrage of pro-Remain amendments – is actually very limited in its scope. Although very long, it is simply a piece of legislation that allows EU law to be translated into British law, with the aim of maintaining legal continuity after we leave the EU.
Yet, ridiculously, the Bill has been used like a kind of legislative Christmas tree from which the Remainer peers are hanging the decorations of theirpet causes.
This has happened because the House of Lords, in stark contrast to the electorate, has a significant pro-Remain majority. There is probably an anti-Brexit majority in the Commons as well, but at least MPs feel bound by manifesto promises and the need to submit themselves to scrutiny at the ballot box.
No such constraints exist for members of the House of Lords, who can give full vent to their personal feelings in the knowledge that their seats are secure. The decisive pro-Remain majority can lead to grotesque double standards, as could be seen in the Lords debate this week.
When one Liberal Democrat compared Theresa May’s handling of the Brexit negotiations with the leadership of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany in 1933, there was barely a murmur of protest at this ludicrous and offensive analogy.
Yet shrieks of disgust filled the chamber when a pro-Leave peer described the Remain lobby as ‘a fifth column’ for Brussels. The performance of the Liberal Democrats underlines the undue influence that they have in the House of Lords.
With just 12 MPs, the party has little impact on the Brexit debates in the Commons, but it is entirely different in the Upper House, where there are nearly 100 Liberal Democrat peers, almost all of them devoted to the fight against Brexit.
Without this phalanx of die-hard Remainers, fewer of the pro-EU amendments would have been passed.
The Liberal Democrats’ disproportionate role in the Lords is not only unfair but it is also riddled with hypocrisies. The party’s peers now rage against the supposed folly of the referendum. According to them, it was only an ‘interim’ vote.
But it was Nick Clegg who, in the run-up to the 2010 general election, campaigned noisily for a straight In/Out vote on EU membership.
Furthermore the current leader Sir Vince Cable explicitly stated soon after the 2016 referendum that the decision should be accepted. ‘The public have voted and I do think it’s seriously disrespectful and politically utterly counter-productive to say, “Sorry guys, you’ve got it wrong, we’re going to try again.” I don’t think we can do that.’
Yet his party in the Lords put down an amendment for just such a second referendum and has even – with breathtaking dismissiveness – referred to the 2016 outcome as nothing more than ‘an interim vote’.
The Liberal Democrats, along with the other Remainer peers, are playing with fire.
If they succeed in their goal of thwarting Brexit, there will be a massive awakening of bitterness, the like of which we have not witnessed in recent times. The consequences could be unpredictable.
They will comprehensively destroy public faith in British democracy, let alone any support for the unelected House of Lords. 
Labour's Brexit mayhem deepened yesterday after an MP in the Leave-backing North said the party's policy shift towards a second referendum would be a 'final breach of trust' with voters.
Lisa Nandy, who represents Wigan, said if there had been any shift in opinion over Brexit, it was towards the type of No Deal promoted by Nigel Farage. 
But Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott reiterated that she believed another vote would be 'the democratic thing to do' to move Brexit forward.
And Tom Watson, the deputy leader, warned of 'electoral catastrophe' unless party leader Jeremy Corbyn is persuaded to throw his weight behind a new vote on any deal.
The row between Remain and Leave supporters at the top of Labour threatens to tear the party apart as it struggles to come to terms with their drubbing at last week's European elections.
Mr Corbyn is facing mounting pressure to abandon his preference for a general election and go for a second referendum.
On Monday, his closest ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, said: 'We're saying quite clearly if there can be a deal, great, but it needs to go back to the people.'
Labour last night declared it would not block a second Scottish independence referendum – just hours after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon hinted she would help prop up a future Jeremy Corbyn government.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said any decision about holding another vote to potentially break up the Union would be up to the Scottish Parliament.
His comments came shortly after Miss Sturgeon, the Scottish National Party leader, said while she would not enter into a coalition with Labour if it won a general election, she would be interested in some sort of 'progressive alliance' to 'lock the Tories out of government'.
In an interview at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Mr McDonnell said: 'It will be for the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people to decide that. They will take a view about whether they want another referendum.
'Nicola Sturgeon said by late next year or the beginning of 2021. We would not block something like that. We would let the Scottish people decide. That's democracy.' 
Mr McDonnell's position appears to be in opposition to the leader of the Scottish Labour Party.
In March, Richard Leonard told the BBC's Sunday Politics Scotland show that if Labour took power in Westminster the party would refuse to grant another referendum. He added: 'What we said in the manifesto at the 2017 election was that there is no case for, and we would not support, a second independence referendum.'
Earlier this week, the first poll since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister found that support for Scottish independence was ahead – by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Critics of Mr Johnson claimed he is so unpopular in Scotland that he could end up as the last prime minister of the Union.
A second vote on secession – the first was held in 2014 – would likely be a key condition of any Labour-SNP deal to put Mr Corbyn in No 10 if his party did not secure a majority.
Labour has always said it would not be interested in any coalition deals, and would instead try to survive as a minority government.
And Miss Sturgeon said Mr Corbyn would need to take 'a very firm anti-Brexit position' before any deal could be struck – something he has been reluctant to do.
Brexit co-ordinator Michael Gove tore into the EU today for 'refusing to renegotiate' a new Withdrawal Agreement as demanded by Britain.
The senior Cabinet minister warned Brussels that the UK was quitting the bloc on October 31 'deal or no deal' today as Downing Street stepped up its war of words.
The EU has refused so far to budge despite British demands to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement to remove the contentious Northern Irish border backstop provision.
Brussels yesterday refused to make any changes to the deal agreed by Theresa May and last night sources claimed that the EU now believes No Deal is Boris Johnson's main aim and he has 'no intention' of negotiating a new deal.
But speaking on Sky this afternoon Cabinet Office Minister Mr Gove, who has been put in charge of Government Brexit planing, said: 'I'm deeply saddened that the EU now seem to be refusing to negotiate with the UK.
'The Prime Minister has been clear, he wants to negotiate a good deal with the European Union and he will apply all the energy of the Government and ensure that in a spirit of friendliness we can negotiate a new deal.
'But one thing is clear, the old deal that was negotiated has failed to pass the House of Commons three times now, so we do need a new approach.
'And whatever happens, while we remain ready and willing to negotiate, the EU must appreciate we are leaving on October 31, deal or no deal.' 
The Conservatives made great play in the 2015 general election campaign of the dangers of a Labour government led by Ed Miliband propped up by the SNP, then led by Alex Salmond. Last night, Conservative chairman James Cleverly said a Sturgeon-Corbyn alliance would be a 'nightmare prospect for Britain'.
Miss Sturgeon's latest comments are likely to be seized upon by Mr Johnson as he prepares for a possible general election later this year.
Speaking to the Guardian, the Scottish First Minister condemned Mr Corbyn's approach to Brexit since the 2016 EU referendum.
'I have fought two general elections now as SNP leader and, in both of them, I have been pretty candid,' she said. 'We would always want to be part of a progressive alternative to a Tory government. That remains the case.'
Pressed on whether she would rule in a deal with Labour, Miss Sturgeon said: 'In politics you've got to be careful. But it would not be my intention, to go into a formal coalition. I said that in 2015 and 2017 – that's not a new thing. But some kind of progressive alliance that could lock the Tories out of government.'
She added: 'It wouldn't be a blank-cheque type scenario. We would want Jeremy Corbyn to take a very firm anti-Brexit position. We would look to do what was right for Scotland.'
Despite being open to the possibility of an electoral pact, the SNP leader said that she was 'no great fan of Jeremy Corbyn'. She added: 'I think his lack of leadership on Brexit in particular... well, if we do crash out without a deal, he will bear almost as much responsibility as Theresa May or Boris Johnson.'
A Labour spokesman said: 'Labour will not countenance a coalition or pact with other parties. We are campaigning to form a Labour government that will invest in communities and public services in all the regions and nations of the UK.'
Mr Cleverly said: 'This Sturgeon-Corbyn alliance would be a nightmare prospect for Britain. From refusing to respect the referendum result to huge tax hikes and measures that would wreck our economy, Labour and the SNP in cahoots would hammer working people across the country.' 
Nicola Sturgeon accuses Boris Johnson of 'subconscious powerplay' when he 'ushered' her into her official residence before their frosty first meeting
By David Wilcock, Whitehall Correspondent for MailOnline 
Nicola Sturgeon lashed out at Boris Johnson today, accusing him of attempting a 'subconscious powerplay' at their first meeting after he became Prime Minister.
The Scottish First Minister said Mr Johnson made an 'inappropriate' move to usher her into Bute House when they sat down for talks last week.
The two leaders had a frosty face-to-face meeting at her official residence in Edinburgh, as Mr Johnson kicked off a Brexit row by defiantly telling her it was happening on October 31 whether she likes it or not. 
He was booed by protesters on his way into Bute House before appearing to raise his arm behind Ms Sturgeon, who said something to him and waited for him to drop it before walking inside behind her guest.
'I don't think I said: ''Put your arm down'',' she told the Guardian today.
'Those kind of things happen in a flash. But I am aware that he was trying to do something that some people would describe as chivalrous and other people would say was a subconscious powerplay. I was kind of aware of him trying to usher me in. 
Dominic Raab vowed to 'fire up' trade ties outside the EU today as he launched a tour of Canada, the US and Mexico - but was immediately branded 'deluded' by a former White House adviser.
The Foreign Secretary is forging ahead with a diplomatic blitz designed to pave the way for post-Brexit deals around the world.
But Larry Summers, who served as US treasury secretary and economic adviser under Barack Obama, warned that the 'desperate' UK has 'no leverage' and should not expect generous terms.
Mr Raab is on his second major overseas trip since being appointed to the crucial post by Boris Johnson.
He will be in Toronto today before moving on to Washington tomorrow and Mexico City on Thursday.
Ahead of the trip he said: 'I'm determined that we fire up our economic relationships with non-European partners.
'That means working with them now to ensure a smooth transition of our trading arrangements after Brexit and means quickly moving to wide-ranging trade deals that boost business, lower prices for consumers and respect our high standards.'
'And I think, in the instant, I thought: ''That's inappropriate - you go in first.'' But these things happen in a nanosecond. It wasn't at all deliberate on my part.' 
Mr Johnson's hardline Brexit approach last Monday sparked a furious response, with the First Minister accusing him of secretly wanting a No Deal Brexit instead of a deal with Brussels.
The less-than warm reception came after the premier promised to renew 'the ties that bind our United Kingdom' and unveiled plans to release £300million for 'growth deals'.
Downing Street also suggested he dismissed her demand for a second Scottish independence referendum.
After the talks, a Number 10 spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister said he was a passionate believer in the power of the Union and he would work tirelessly to strengthen the United Kingdom and improve the lives of people right across Scotland.
'On Brexit, (he) said that while the government's preference is to negotiate a new deal which abolishes the anti-democratic backstop, the UK will be leaving the EU on October 31st come what may.'
Mrs Sturgeon hit back by accusing Mr Johnson of wanting a No Deal Brexit and said his Government was 'dangerous' .
'He says publicly - and he said it to me again today - that he wants a deal with the EU, but there is no clarity whatsoever about how he thinks he can get from the position now where he's taking a very hard line - the Withdrawal Agreement is dead, the backstop is dead,' she said.
'If I listen to all of that and listen to what's not being said as well as what is being said, I think that this is a Government that is pursuing a no-deal strategy, however much they may deny that in public.'
Ms Sturgeon said she 'abhors' what Mr Johnson is doing, adding: 'So I don't think it will be surprising to anyone to hear me say that I wasn't absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Boris Johnson as Prime Minister.'  
Last night Nicola Sturgeon gloated over a shock poll showing Scots would vote for independence amid Boris Johnson's hardline Brexit stance.
The SNP leader said the case for breaking up the UK was 'stronger every day' after the research found 52 per cent would support the move.
It is the first time in more than two years that a survey has shown a majority in favour of independence.
The result will fuel fears that Mr Johnson's 'do or die' pledge to deliver Brexit by the end of October could put the union at risk.  
The Tory leader north of the border, Ruth Davidson, has also been highly critical of his willingness to force No Deal if necessary.  
In the poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft, Scots were asked whether they wanted a referendum and how they would vote.
The research found 47 per cent believed a new national vote should be held, against 45 per cent who said no.
Some 46 per cent of the 1,019 people quizzed said they would vote to break up the UK in a referendum, while 43 per cent were against.
Excluding those who said they did not know or would not vote gave a lead of 52 per cent to 48 per cent for independence.
It is the first time nationalists have been ahead in a major poll since March 2019.
Remainers today warned the Queen will have to sack Boris Johnson if he refuses to quit after losing a Commons confidence vote over No Deal Brexit.
Allies of the PM have made clear he will simply refuse to resign if rebel Tories join forces with Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems and independents to pass a no confidence motion.
Instead of going quietly, Mr Johnson would wait for an election to be triggered and use his executive powers to set the date of an election for after the Brexit date of October 31, so MPs cannot stop the process. 
Pro-EU MPs admitted that a legal loophole could allow Mr Johnson to postpone the election date by at least a month - potentially pushing it to late November.   
But one senior source told MailOnline the monarch would have to intervene before then if Mr Johnson was playing 'childish games' with the constitution.
'We have an unwritten constitution but there are well established conventions,' the MP said. 'Convention number one is that a PM does not or cannot hold office without the consent of the House of Commons.'
If Mr Johnson tried to 'bury himself' in Downing Street and tried to stop a new government taking over, the monarch would step in despite the risks of getting embroiled in politics, the Remainer source said.
'The Queen would write him a letter saying he is dismissed,' they insisted. 'She would have to sack him. Of course she would.' 
Former Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the PM did have 'discretion' on setting election dates.
'It is not an unlimited discretion, but I cannot see how the courts could say the PM was not entitled to take political risks into consideration,' he said.  
Labour is already plotting to join forces with Tory rebels to try to collapse the Government and replace Mr Johnson as Prime Minister if he pursues a No Deal departure from the European Union on October 31.
When Parliament returns from its summer recess on September 3, Labour is expected to team up with Tory rebels to force a confidence vote. 
With the government's majority on a knife edge and strong opposition to No Deal across parties, there is a serious prospect that Boris Johnson could lose.
However, the PM's adviser Dominic Cummings has made clear he would simply refused to resign.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA), losing a confidence motion triggers a 14 day countdown to an election being called.
During that period, it is possible for a PM to win a confidence vote and prevent the country going to the polls.
However, the legislation is silent on whether the same premier can return to try again.
Remainer MPs insist Mr Johnson would have to quit, suggesting an all-party administration led by a consensus figure - potentially Labour veteran Margaret Beckett - could take over to delay the Brexit process.
They are adamant that if the premier refused to go quietly the Queen would be forced to sack him. 
Whether an anti-No Deal alliance could muster the numbers to install a PM is highly dubious. 
A further loophole in the FTPA gives the premier huge discretion on the timing of an election if one is triggered.
The Queen names the date based on recommendation from the PM, but the act does not give any time frame he must work inside.
Pro-EU MPs admit Mr Johnson could legally extend the schedule by at least a month - taking it well beyond the Halloween Brexit deadline.
However, that would set the stage for a massive constitutional showdown, with the civil service under pressure to maintain the 'status quo'. 
But allies say Mr Johnson would stay in office even if he lost a confidence vote – and trigger a general election to take place after the Brexit date so the UK would leave the EU automatically during the campaign.
Constitutional experts said Mr Johnson is not legally compelled to leave No 10 even if the Commons passes a no confidence motion.
However, if he did refuse to follow 'constitutional precedent' it would spark a crisis that could drag the Queen into Brexit politics.
Details of Downing Street's approach emerged from comments made by his senior aide, Dominic Cummings, who is said to have 'laughed' at the idea that his boss would walk away in response to a confidence vote.
Yesterday the PM's spokesman said the UK will leave the EU on October 31 by 'any means necessary'.
But aides are braced for rebel Tory MPs, led by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, to try 'every trick in the book' to stop No Deal when they return in September. 
The nuclear option is to order a confidence vote under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act.
Last night Mr Corbyn gave his clearest signal yet he would make this move in September, saying the motion would be tabled at an 'appropriate very early time'.
Mr Grieve is said to believe that if he can win the vote, Mr Johnson would be forced to leave office. MPs could then install a prime minister who would extend Article 50, preventing No Deal. However, when this proposition was put to Mr Cummings – the mastermind behind the Vote Leave campaign – he is said to have laughed.
'Someone put Grieve's idea to Cummings that if we lose a vote of no confidence the PM will have to resign. He spat out his drink laughing,' a senior No 10 official told the Financial Times.
Catherine Haddon, a senior fellow at the Institute For Government think-tank, said Mr Grieve's plan relied on Mr Johnson resigning if he lost a no confidence vote. She added: 'But it isn't a legally binding requirement of the Act that he step down.
'If Parliament passed a motion saying we have no confidence in the Prime Minister and we wish a government to be formed under whoever, that would put the Queen under enormous pressure to say, 'I think you should resign because the Commons has confidence in another individual.' But the Queen wants to stay out of politics, so she wouldn't want to do that.'
Asked about the issue, a senior Downing Street source said: 'This Government will use any means necessary to deliver Brexit on October 31.'
Speaking on a visit to Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire, which is set to benefit from the £1.8billion NHS funding boost, Mr Johnson was asked if he was preparing to fight an election.
He said: 'The answer is no. The people of the UK voted in the election in 2015, they had a referendum in 2016 and another election in 2017. They want us to deliver what they asked for – and that is for us to leave the EU. The last thing I want to do is call another election.'       
Labour could back a second referendum following the ‘very significant’ march by protesters calling for a final say on Brexit, Sir Keir Starmer said yesterday.
The shadow Brexit secretary broke ranks with Jeremy Corbyn to praise the so-called ‘People’s Vote’ rally, which attracted up to 700,000 demonstrators to London on Saturday.
Sir Keir said last month that Labour would vote against any deal struck by Theresa May. The party’s official position is to push for a general election if the deal gets voted down.
Scroll down for video 
But Sir Keir yesterday acknowledged that Labour could not force an election – and suggested it may then switch to backing a second referendum.
He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show: ‘If there’s no deal brought back or the deal is voted down, then other options are on the table, one of which is a public vote.
‘And in that public vote no options are ruled out, including the option of remain.’ Mr Corbyn is reported to have banned shadow ministers from attending Saturday’s march. This was denied yesterday, but no shadow ministers attended. The Labour leader has made no public comment on the march and faced criticism for avoiding it, preferring to spend the day in Geneva, speaking to victims of General Pinochet’s brutal military regime in Chile.
Asked if he would have attended the march in other circumstances, Sir Keir smiled and said: ‘Look, 700,000 people, it’s a very significant number. I think the fact of the march, the size of the march is significant and where people came from. But I think it actually reflects a much, much bigger group, I think both Leave and Remain, who are utterly losing confidence in the Prime Minister’s ability to bring back a deal. So it is significant in itself, but also because it reflects this much bigger concern about where all this is going.’
Mrs May is expected to repeat her opposition to a second referendum today when she briefs MPs on the Brexit negotiations. Earlier this month she dismissed the idea, saying: ‘We have had a people’s vote and the people voted to leave.’ A handful of Tory MPs attended the march, including former ministers Anna Soubry and Philip Lee, and Commons health committee chairman Sarah Wollaston.
Former cabinet minister Greg Hands said: ‘I campaigned to remain in June 2016 but... a second referendum isn’t the answer, and will likely be highly detrimental.’
Nick Boles, another pro-remain former minister said: ‘A second referendum would deepen divisions in our country and offer an opening to extremists. So I will not support it under any circumstances.’
The march was backed by a close ally of Angela Merkel, however. In an unusual move, German economy minister Peter Altmaier encouraged the so-called People’s Vote campaigners to step up their efforts, saying: ‘Good luck to all of you.’ He posted on Twitter: ‘The People’s Vote march is the most impressive and deeply moving support for Europe I’ve ever seen. Millions across Europe feel with you! Thx so much!!! Danke! Merci!’ 
Jeremy Corbyn mobilised his army of hard-Left loyalists tonight as he saw off a bid by Remainers to seize control of Labour's Brexit policy - but further fueled the party's civil war.
The veteran left-winger survived a series of crunch votes at conference after a desperate battle to stop members from ordering him to commit to keeping the UK in the EU.
Activists traded brutal blows during a two-hour debate in Brighton, with supporters of the leader demanding his critics behave like 'socialists'.   
His motion was eventually carried on a show of hands, with delegates singing 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn'. 
A rival Remainer motion was then also defeated without a formal vote - although chaotic scenes were sparked as chair Wendy Nichols initially suggested it had been carried before being overruled by general secretary Jennie Formby, a close ally of the leader.  
'Sorry I thought it was one way... and Jennie said something else,' she said. 'Yes, that was lost.'  
Pro-EU members shouted 'disgrace' and 'stitch up' and demanded a full ballot, but their protests were waved away. 
‘If it wasn’t clear I would have asked for a card vote,' Ms Nichols said. 
Union baron Len McCluskey could not resist taunting Remainers after his faction emerged victorious, but shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said he was 'disappointed'. He insisted it was 'obvious' Labour would end up calling for the UK to stay in the EU. 
Mr Corbyn has been desperately struggling to stay on the fence over Brexit, saying he wants to fight an election and try to negotiate a new deal with the EU before deciding whether to back Leave or Remain in a second referendum.   
But pro-EU members were trying to take a wrecking ball to his tortuous stance, and pushed a motion that would have committed Labour to battling to stay in the bloc whatever the circumstances.  
Three major unions - Unison, Usdaw and the TSSA - broke ranks to join the revolt.
But the Momentum pressure group handed Mr Corbyn a lifeline by backing him. 
In a shock split, its founder Jon Lansman made clear he did not agree with the decision, tweeting that 'members should feel free to vote with their conscience'.  
Senior Labour sources on the Remain wing were bullish about their chances this afternoon, with one telling MailOnline there were 'good signs'. 
However, the weight of speeches in the hall suggested the pendulum had swung in Mr Corbyn's favour - and so it proved. 
As chaos erupted in the party, Labour MPs voiced dismay at the situation they faced. 
‘We look like a chaotic, scruffy, angry, deluded and dangerous rabble,' he told Politics Home.
‘We hate success, hard work, intelligence and wealth. We like mediocrity, laziness and irresponsibility.
‘We aren’t sure what we think about the biggest crisis facing the country since the war.
‘We are chanting, cult-like, the name of a leader who has a public approval rating of (-60).
Labour delegates voted on three crunch Brexit motions this evening. 
The first vote was on a motion put forward by Labour's ruling National Executive Committee calling for the party to be neutral on Brexit until after the next general election. 
The motion received the overwhelming backing of delegates as a clear majority raised their hands to show their support for it. 
Then came the second, and most controversial, vote on a motion calling for Labour to commit to campaigning for Remain right now. 
Delegates were again asked to raise their hands and the chair of the meeting decided that there was a clear majority against the move and it was announced that it had been rejected.
However, a number of delegates were left furious at the decision as they believed the show of hands was close enough to warrant a recorded vote. 
But their calls for a formal so-called 'card vote' were rejected and the chair moved onto the third and final vote on Brexit. 
That was on a similar motion to the one put forward by the NEC, calling for the party to be neutral. 
That vote was passed by a clear majority after another show of hands.  
‘Why would anyone vote Labour? We deserve everything coming to us.’ 
Speaking at a Politico event tonight, Sir Keir said: 'We had a vote. It went the way it did... obviously I am disappointed by the result.'
He said it was ‘obvious where the membership is on this’, claiming voters knew that ultimately Labour would back Remain. 
London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted: 'I do not believe this decision reflects the views of the overwhelming majority of Labour members who desperately want to stop Brexit. 
'Labour IS a Remain party. I will continue campaigning with @LondonLabour to give the public the final say and stop Brexit.' 
Lib Dem Jo Swinson - whose party declared last week it will reverse Brexit if it wins power - also jumped on the result.
She said Mr Corbyn had proved he is a 'Brexiteer at heart'.
She said: “Jeremy Corbyn has again shown a total lack of leadership on Brexit and settled on yet another fudge on the biggest issue facing our country. 
'Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly had the opportunity to put the full force of the Labour behind a Remain position, but he has once again shown today that he is a Brexiteer at heart.'
Mr Corbyn showed the strain he was feeling earlier when he launched an extraordinary tirade at reporters. 
Losing his cool completely, Mr Corbyn - who used to refer to himself as 'Monsieur Zen' - raged at a media scrum as they jostled to ask questions, saying: 'This is our conference, these are our stalls... your behaviour is totally unacceptable.'   
Members voted on three separate motions - two that were effectively identical supporting the leader's position, and the rebel call for the party to campaign 'energetically' for Remain at an election.  
Defeat would have been more evidence that Mr Corbyn's grip on power is loosening. 
A poll suggested today that 54 per cent of Labour's voters from the 2017 election now believe he should quit. 
Opening the debate in the hall this afternoon, Simon Hannah of the Tooting constituency party was cheered to the rafters when he insisted: 'We need to say it loud and clear, we are a Remain party!' 
But backing the loyalist leadership motion, Sion Rickard said members should toe the line: 'This is not us versus them, this is not them versus us, we're not leavers and Remainers, we are socialists.
'As Len McCluskey said earlier, there's one door to Number 10 and the only way we can go through it is together.' 
As the battle for Labour's soul gathered pace, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry warned that it risked losing a third of its voters unless it abandoned Mr Corbyn's ambiguous Brexit stance.
She told the Labour leader that the party must decide 'now' whether to back Leave or Remain. 
John McDonnell, once seen as Mr Corbyn's closest ally, also made clear he thought Remain would always be the best option - although he left open the possibility that he could side with the leader.
'I think people should express their own judgement on this,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
'There will be some who think we can get a (better) deal, but there will be others like myself who think you cannot get a better deal than Remain.' 
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer also said he would campaign for Remain in a referendum, but stopped short of explicitly supporting the rebel motion. 
Meanwhile, another shadow cabinet member, shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne said Mr Corbyn had already conceded that his senior team will be free to endorse staying in the EU, whatever the party's official position.  
The Brexit spat has dominated Labour's conference in Brighton, despite a series of high-profile and high-spending promises - including abolishing private schools.  
Mr Corbyn will today urge members to back a plan that would see the party's manifesto promise a second referendum, but without saying which side it would campaign for.
The Labour frontbench has made numerous announcements during the first two days in Brighton for the party's annual conference. 
Many of them would have major ramifications for the exchequer - or the economy - should Jeremy Corbyn win the next general election. 
Here are some of Labour's most radical - and costly - proposals: 
The introduction of a four day working week
Make social care free-at-the-point-of-use for anyone in England who needs it 
End in-work poverty in the first term of a Labour government
Introduce a 'Real Living Wage' of at least £10 an hour
End the roll-out of Universal Credit  
Reverse all cuts to legal aid-funded early legal help
As PM he would then attempt to negotiate a new deal with Brussels before calling a referendum. 
Under his blueprint, the party would stay neutral about whether to back Remain or the Labour-negotiated deal until members make the decision for him at a special conference.
But Ms Thornberry said yesterday that members should 'thrash it out' this week, adding 'We're all here. I don't see why we can't make the decision now.'
She warned that Labour risked haemorrhaging support if it goes into a general election without being 'truthful' about being a Remain party.
'The polling does show that we could lose 30 per cent of the Labour vote to the Greens and the Lib Dems unless we are clear about where we stand on Europe,' she told a fringe meeting at the conference.
'I want Jeremy to be in No 10 and my view personally is that the best chance of doing that is to speak truthfully, which is we as a party are a Remain party.'
She was joined by other senior Labour figures, including London mayor Sadiq Khan, who urged delegates to refuse to support 'any compromise on Brexit'. 
In a Facebook post appealing to members, he wrote: 'Do not accept a fudge, do not delay us setting out what our stance would be in any future referendum.
'Labour has come to a crossroads. Labour is a Remain party and we need to make this official by making it our policy to campaign to stay in the European Union under all circumstances – and to whip our MPs to back that position.
'It's time for Labour to commit to stopping Brexit, not only by promising to give the British public the final say, but by pledging to throw all our energy behind the campaign to stay in the European Union.'
Deputy leader Tom Watson, who survived a bungled effort by Mr Corbyn's allies to oust him over the weekend, delivered a stark message that Labour must support Remain. 
More than half of Labour voters from 2017 want Jeremy Corbyn to quit, a damning poll revealed today.
Some 54 per cent of his supporters at the last election now say he should go - and the view is shared by 58 per cent of the wider population. 
Earlier this week polls found Mr Corbyn's popularity ratings have plumbed new depths at a net minus 60, below the worst level recorded by his left-wing hero Michael Foot in the aftermath of the Falklands War.
Labour has also been trailing the Tories by 15 points on voting intention as the unashamedly pro-Remain Lib Dems siphon off the party's supporters.   
A YouGov poll for the Times today found that 54 per cent of Labour voters from 2017, and 58 per cent of the general public, think that Mr Corbyn should resign.
A third of the much smaller group who currently say they will vote Labour said that he should quit.
One in three of his voters also think Labour Brexit position is confusing, and two-thirds of Remain voters say the same.
YouGov surveyed 1,650 adults on September 18 and 19. 
At a fringe rally he said: 'We are a Remain party. We are a European party. We are an internationalist party. 
'That is who we are. Not perfect, not pure. But overwhelmingly committed to Britain remaining in Europe.'
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said that she would campaign for Remain at a second EU referendum, while Nia Griffiths, Labour's defence spokesman, said that Brexit would leave Britain worse off.
However, union baron Len McCluskey urged members to stick with Mr Corbyn.  
'Let me say here that Jeremy Corbyn is a thousand times right in trying to speak to our whole country at this time of crisis,' he said.
'When we have the Tories dismissing half of our nation. And the Liberals are writing off the other half.
'It is only Jeremy's Labour that puts social justice first, that says whether you are Leave or Remain' matters less than your class.
'We should not let anyone define or divide us as Leavers or Remainers.' 
Yesterday he poured fuel on the flames of the row by demanding a Shadow Cabinet clear out of those who do not support Mr Corbyn's stance.
Appearing on Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, the Unite general secretary said: 'We must go into an election united and when we have a policy on Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn makes it clear that that is the policy then that is what leading members of the Shadow Cabinet should argue for.
'If they find that they can't argue for it because they feel strongly, well of course they have that right but they should step aside.' 
Even if the Remainer motion had gone through, officials said it would not necessarily have ended up in the manifesto - even though Mr Corbyn pledged yesterday to 'obey' the will of conference.
The final decision on that rests with the Clause 5 committee, made up of Mr Corbyn, the shadow cabinet, the ruling NEC, and unions.  
Mr Corbyn yesterday defended his plan. He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'What we have said is that we would want to hold a consultation, a special conference of our party at the point that we have got this offer from the EU, we've got this as a Remain – and hopefully reform – option.
'Because I do think even those that are strongly in favour of Remain would recognise the EU needs to have some reforms.'
In response to MPs and activists calling for the party to come out in support of Remain now, Mr Corbyn said: 'I will go along with whatever decision the party comes to.' 
Mr Corbyn was embroiled in bad-tempered exchanges with the BBC's Andrew Marr yesterday as he denied his time as leader was coming to an end.
Labour would introduce a 32-hour week for workers without them losing money within the next decade, John McDonnell claimed today.
The shadow chancellor said that it was important people 'work to live, not live to work' as he addressed the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.
It was one of a swathe of employment policies unveiled the hardline frontbencher, including scrapping zero-hours contracts.
Labour has already called for a four-day week for workers in an age of increased automation.
Mr McDonnell said the UK had the longest working hours in Europe behind Greece and Austria and there had been little progression cutting average hours since the 1970s.
To applause from hundreds of delegates and activists this afternoon he said: 'I can tell you today that the next Labour government will reduce average full-time hours to 32 a week within the next decade. 
'It will be a shorter working week with no loss of pay.'
The cut in hours goes further than a report commissioned to look into the issue by Jeremy Corbyn's party. 
In an interview, he said rumours of his demise were 'wishful thinking' from critics - suggesting they included Marr himself. He insisted he will serve a full five-year term if elected PM.
However, a senior Labour figure told MailOnline Mr Corbyn was 'terrified' at the possibility of Boris Johnson resigning and the Queen asking him to be PM. 
'If Jeremy had to become PM he would find that terrifying,' the senior MP said.
'He doesn't like taking decisions, he doesn't want to be the person who has 20 text messages to deal with before he goes to bed at midnight, and is woken up at 6am with more demands on his time.'
They said Mr Corbyn had never been prepared for the pressures of running a party, let alone a country.  
'He's happy when he's got something to push back against,' the MP said.
'But when power becomes more real and he's got to reconcile competing interests, he just can't do it.'  
In another blow today, a YouGov poll for the Times found that 54 per cent of Labour voters from 2017, and 58 per cent of the general public, think that Mr Corbyn should resign.
A third of the much smaller group who currently say they will vote Labour said that he should quit.
One in three of his voters also think Labour Brexit position is confusing, and two-thirds of Remain voters say the same.
YouGov surveyed 1,650 adults on September 18 and 19.
Jeremy Corbyn is facing war with his closest ally tonight after John McDonnell insisted a second referendum is now the 'only option' following Labour's EU elections disaster.
The leader is under massive pressure to shift position to full-heartedly back another national vote that could potentially see Brexit cancelled. 
The row escalated dramatically this evening after Mr McDonnell stepped up his backing for a referendum.
Mr Corbyn has been trying to tread a fine between keeping another public vote on the table to appease Remainer activists, and avoiding aggravating the party's Brexit-supporting northern heartlands. 
But Mr McDonnell admitted that a general election - the other option being pursued by Labour - was highly unlikely to happen because 'Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas'. 
'Our only option now is go back to the people in a referendum and that is the position we’re in now,' the shadow chancellor told Sky News. 
The comments came after Diane Abbott demanded a 'clearer' position after Labour slumped to third place in England and Wales and fifth in Scotland.  
Earlier, Mr Corbyn was still trying to dodge being pinned down, saying only that he thought there should be a 'public vote'. 
In a tense interview with the BBC, he said:  'I support that any final deal has to be put to a public vote. What this party does is supports an agreement with the EU to prevent crashing out, supports putting that proposal when agreed to a public vote.'
Earlier in a statement, the Labour leader said: 'With the Conservatives disintegrating and unable to govern, and Parliament deadlocked, this issue will have to go back to the people, whether through a general election or a public vote.'
He added: 'Over the coming days, we will have conversations across our party and movement, and reflect on these results on both sides of the Brexit divide.'

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Labour is well behind Nigel Farage's Brexit Party and the Lib Dems. Even in Mr Corbyn's Islington back yard Labour only managed to come second.
It is being consumed by an acrimonious split between MPs in Remain-supporting areas and those in Leave seats who fear a backlash at the next general election. 
After the result Mr McDonnell said Labour could unite the party and country by 'taking (the) issue back to people in a public vote' and Ms Abbott said that the party had been damaged by not having a 'clearer line' on the issue.
Foreign secretary Emily Thornberry was among those to blast the party's 'unclear' strategy and demand a second referendum after Labour's thrashing.
Ms Thornberry warned were 'getting a good kicking' as the unashamedly pro-Remain Lib Dems ate into the Labour vote.
Deputy leader Tom Watson demanded an 'urgent' change of direction, warning that it will soon be too late to stop the UK from crashing out of the EU without a deal.
And shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said that the public should be offered a choice between 'a credible leave option and remain'. 
But shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon - a key Corbyn lieutenant - insisted Labour had the right approach in seeking to appeal to both Leavers and Remainers despite its failures.
It came after Mr Corbyn himself has said 'this issue will have to go back to the people' as the shadow Cabinet turned on him - although he again dodged stating whether there should be a general election or a single-issue vote.
Mr McDonnell initially said: 'Can't hide from hit we took last night. 
'Bringing people together when there's such a divide was never going to be easy.
'Now we face prospect of Brexiteer extremist as Tory leader & threat of no deal, we must unite our party & country by taking issue back to people in a public vote.'
However after his commentds were picked up on social media he added a caveat: 'So people are absolutely clear what I am saying.
'Of course I want a general election. But I realise how difficult this is to secure.
'I will do anything I can to block no deal Brexit. So yes if, as likely GE (general election) not possible, then I support going back to the people in another referendum.'
This latter comment is in line with the party's policy, which is to only back a second referendum if it cannot achieve a general election.  
Ms Abbott added: 'We have to take the time to analyse the EU vote.
'But, when we come in third after the Brexit party, that is a clue something is wrong with our strategy.
'We need to listen to our members and take a clearer line on a public vote.'
But Mr Burgon said: 'I think the message of trying to bring people together who voted Remain and Leave is the right message.
'It was never going to work in this kind of low-turnout EU election where the people most interested in this important issue of Brexit, whether it is to Remain or Leave, came out to vote. A general election would be very different.' 
And party chairman Ian Lavery, who has spoken against a second referendum, tweeted: 'Those who voted Leave are rightly frustrated that we haven't left & those who voted Remain are rightly furious at the Tories disastrous handling of Brexit. 
'Don't define people by how they voted in 2016 - the real divide is between the have & have nots.'
Savaging the campaign, Mrs Thornberry told BBC News: 'I think we are going to get a kicking. I feel really sorry for all our MEPs who are going to lose their seats, all the candidates who work so hard and all our activists who, frankly, have not done well and it's not their fault.
'I think that the point is that we went into an election where the most important issue was 'what was our view on leaving the European Union' and we were not clear about it.
'We were not clear on the one single thing that people wanted to hear and that wasn't their fault.
'We sent people out to campaign on that and, unfortunately, we just weren't clear enough.' 
She added: 'I fear we will have no deal and we must be clear it will be a disaster for the country so we must have a second referendum.' 
Senior backbencher David Lammy accused Mr Corbyn of trying to 'ride two horses'.
'Labour should get its act together. We tried to ride two horses. We fell flat on our faces, basically, with our face pressed against the pavement,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'That's what happened. It is now clear that the electorate is now polarised, still, along leave and Remain. 
'There is a surge of support for those who want no deal, and there is an absolute surge for those who want a confirmatory vote. 
'And in this election, we have resuscitated the Liberal Democrats, we have handed votes to the Greens, 
'And very, very worryingly, we have facilitated Nigel Farage's Brexit Party because in the system of elections in the European elections, the largest parties always do well unless your policy is not clear.' 
In a fresh hint that he was indeed considering backing a fresh Brexit poll, Mr Corbyn said the EU elections had become 'a proxy second referendum'.
He added: 'With the Conservatives disintegrating and unable to govern, and Parliament deadlocked, this issue will have to go back to the people, whether through a general election or a public vote.
'Labour will bring our divided country together so we can end austerity and tackle inequality. 
'Over the coming days, we will have conversations across our party and movement, and reflect on these results on both sides of the Brexit divide.
'We will not let the continuing chaos in the Conservative Party push our country into a No Deal exit from the EU. Parliament can and will prevent such a damaging outcome for jobs and industry in the UK .
On a disastrous night for the party, Labour's vote share tumbled to third overall behind the Lib Dems. 
Critics said the voters' damning verdict came about because Mr Corbyn had tried and failed to attract the support of both Leave and Remain voters.
In the event, voters on both sides of the Brexit divide deserted his party.
In the Leave-supporting North East region, the Brexit Party polled twice as many votes as Labour. Mr Corbyn's party fell to fourth in strongholds such as Cardiff and Sheffield.
In Remain-supporting London, Labour lost control of the north London borough of Islington, where Mr Corbyn – who turned 70 yesterday – has his Commons seat, to the Lib Dems.
The full London results showed the Lib Dems taking 27 per cent of the vote, above Labour on 24 per cent. Change UK, which broke away from Labour earlier this year, got just 5 per cent.
It means that of the eight seats up for grabs in London, the Lib Dems took three and Labour two.
Labour also had its worst ever result in Wales, slumping to third behind the Brexit Party and the pro-independence Plaid Cymru. 
A Remain-supporting Labour source said there will now be a fresh move by MPs against Mr Corbyn. The source said the focus will be on changing Labour policy to support a second referendum, and then challenging Mr Corbyn's leadership if he refuses.
Anti-Brexit Labour peer Lord Adonis tweeted: 'Very clear that if Labour had been the party of Remain in this election, we would have won.' 
Mary Creagh MP said: 'If we'd said referendum, remain and reform, Labour would've beaten [Brexit Party leader Nigel] Farage. A tragedy for our country and our party.'
Colleague Jess Phillips tweeted: 'If we had been clearer we'd have beaten Farage. The end.'
Labour MEP candidate John Howarth apologised to party members in the south-east for the party's expected poor showing.
'Had Labour's high command set out to lose an election they could not have gone about it in a more convincing way,' he wrote. 
 Alastair Campbell said he had not voted Labour for the first time in his life – in disgust at the party's stance on Europe.
Tony Blair's former spin doctor, pictured, tweeted: 'I voted Lib Dem, as did Fiona Miller [his partner]. For both of us the first time ever we did not vote Labour. 
I'm not a Lib Dem. I'm Labour and I hope that in voting as I did I will help the Labour Party see sense and do right thing for the country: People's Vote.'
He added: 'If Islington has gone Lib Dem then maybe even Jeremy Corbyn might realise the strategy pursued by the posh boy revolutionaries is failing badly and putting his and Labour's future at risk.' 
Mr Campbell was Mr Blair's chief spokesman from 1994 to 2003. He is now a key figure in the People's Vote campaign, demanding a second referendum.
He said before the poll that he believed the country 'made a terrible choice' and had realised 'just how difficult Brexit is'.
Mr Campbell also insisted that Mr Corbyn's approach of 'facing both ways' on Brexit had failed. 
'Labour's NEC [National Executive Committee] had plenty of warning ... of the likely consequences of adopting an equivocal policy on Brexit not based on seeking to remain in the EU.'
In the North-East of England – traditionally Labour's hardiest stronghold in the country – the Brexit Party collected twice as many votes as Labour. 
Labour slumped to just 19 per cent of the vote, meaning Mr Farage's party took two of the three available seats for the region.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, Labour lost control of cities including Leeds and Sheffield. Former Labour MP Jamie Reed tweeted: 'Jeremy Corbyn destroying Labour in Yorkshire tonight. Yorkshire. That's Yorkshire. Well done Jez.'
Labour's civil war erupted into the open yesterday as hard-Left union boss Len McCluskey accused the party's deputy leader Tom Watson of using Brexit as a ruse to topple Mr Corbyn and called him a 'poor imitation of Machiavelli'.
Mr Watson said that Labour must come out strongly in favour of a second referendum, or face electoral oblivion.
Writing in The Observer, he said: 'For our party's sake, but most of all for Britain's sake, Labour needs to find some backbone on Brexit, find our voice – and do it fast.'
Mr Watson described the party's stance on a second referendum as 'a deliberate, self-defeating attempt to triangulate between different groups'.
Mr McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, responded: 'Tom Watson's already out, surprise surprise, trying to take on the role of Prince Machiavelli, but I've got news for Tom,' he said. 'Machiavelli was effective. He's a poor imitation of that. 
If he's trying to turn Labour members against Corbyn and in his favour, then he's going to lose disastrously.'
He added: 'If you look at the Remainers, some of the leading lights, Blair, Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Tom Baldwin… these are individuals who have actually indicated they'd sooner have a Tory government than a Corbyn government, so take no notice of these phoneys, and stick with Corbyn.'
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell insisted it had been right to 'tread a really difficult road' of trying to bring Leave and Remain supporters together. 
Former Labour MP and longtime Eurosceptic George Galloway tweeted a scathing attack on his old party
He said: 'Labour as we knew it is dead. 
'A coalition of Blair Labour and Corbyn Labour, of Leave voters and Remain members, right wing wreckers and liberals masquerading as left. 
'Unless Corbyn sharply turns to Brexit and his heartlands and confronts and routs the Blairites it's over.' 
The complete chaos in Theresa May's five-hour cabinet meeting led to rebels bursting into tears and 'going mental' as they railed against her 'ugly sister' Brexit deal, MailOnline can reveal today.
At least ten cabinet members are believed to have told the Prime Minister they were opposed to her plans during the marathon summit last night.
Esther McVey, who quit as pensions minister this morning, grew more 'emotional' and 'aggressive' before allegedly 'going mental' as she argued with Mrs May and repeatedly called for a show of hands on the deal.
The PM is said to have twice refused a vote before a 'shouting match' broke out in the room until Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill flourished the 'Cabinet manual' that says only the Prime Minister decides if a majority backs her.
But 'sullen' Dominic Raab sat quietly through parts of the meeting, it is claimed, and would later refuse to fly to Brussels to stand alongside Michel Barnier and Donald Tusk to hail the deal.
At the peak of the cross-table rowing Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom is said to have wiped away a tear as she warned Mrs May her proposals had little or no chance of getting through Parliament. 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is said to have declared that the MPs must hold their noses and back the 'ugly sister' deal, arguing that 'this life raft, constructed as it is of oil drums and a plastic sail, needs to make it out onto the open ocean'.
At the end of the brutal Downing Street meeting Mrs May handed out glasses of red and white wine while she went outside to tell Britain her deal was the 'best deal possible'. 
The inside story on the Cabinet meeting came as both Mr Raab and Ms McVey dramatically quit the Cabinet - tearing into the PM's Brexit deal and plunging her premiership into crisis.
Here are what the ministers around the table at the crunch Cabinet meeting said about Theresa May's deal:  
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt: 
Urged May to 'dig in and fight for more concessions from Europe.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss: 
Said they were 'caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.' 
Health Secretary Matt Hancock: 
Told the room that he could not guarantee people would not die as a result of a no-deal Brexit.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox:
Told colleagues to holds their noses and back the 'ugly sister' deal, arguing that 'this life raft, constructed as it was of oil drums and a plastic sail, needed to make it out onto the open ocean.
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom: 
Questioned whether Mrs. May was right to insist that the deal was the best that could possibly be achieved, and urged her to consider another round of negotiation  
Mr Raab became the second Brexit Secretary in just six months to resign - dealing a potentially fatal blow to Mrs May's time in office.
His resignation letter landed in No 10 this morning, but there were plenty of signs that he was not fully signed up to the Brexit plan the day before.
He was said to be 'sullen' during the meeting which signed off the PM's deal - even though he was meant to be the very man who went out and sold it to the country.
And he refused to get on a waiting jet to fly out to Brussels and plug the Brexit deal alongside Michel Barnier last night.
He was expected to stand side by side with the EU's chief negotiator to hail the deal as part of an orchestrated series of press conferences in Brussels, Dublin and London. 
He had harboured serious doubts about the deal, and had pushed strongly for the UK to be able to leave the backstop customs union deal unilaterally - a demand which did not make it into the 500-page Withdrawal Agreement.
And friends told Sky News he felt cut out and 'bypassed' in the negotiating process in the final, crucial moments. 
The BBC claims he told the Chief Whip on his way out he would be quitting. 
But while he quietly dwelt on his doubts about the deal in the meeting, Miss McVey was more explicit in her criticisms.
A leading Brexiteer, she is said to have grown 'emotional' and 'aggressive' as she warned the PM will lose a parliamentary vote on the deal and twice demanded a formal Cabinet vote on it.
7.32am: Shailesh Vara quits as junior Northern Ireland minister, claiming the deal leaves Britain in a 'half way house'
8.53am: Dominic Raab resigns as Brexit Secretary, saying the 'indefinite' backstop threatens to break up the Union 
9.58am: Esther McVey goes as Work and Pensions Secretary, lashing the PM for a deal that 'does not honour the result of the referendum'
10.17am: Suella Braverman quits as junior Brexit minister, warning the 'concessions do do not respect the will of the people' 
10.20am: Anne-Marie Trevelyan quits as an aide to the Education Secretary because the deal is 'unacceptable' to Brexit voters 
10.30am: Theresa May rises in the Commons to present her Brexit deal to MPs insisting it is the best deal that could be negotiated and is in the national interest. She is battered by hostile questions on all sides for almost three hours. 
11.23am: Brexiteer ringleader Jacob Rees-Mogg uses his Commons question to condemn the deal and warn Mrs May she has lost his confidence. 
12.35pm: Ranil Jayawardena resigns as aide to the Justice Secretary saying the deal 'does not deliver a good and fair Brexit'. 
1.44pm: Mr Rees-Mogg appears outside Parliament to announce he and the European Research Group are sending letters demanding a vote of no confidence in Theresa May. He dramatically names a series of possible successors to deliver a better Brexit - but insists it is not a coup and he is not a candidate 
2.58pm: Rehman Chisti goes as the PM's trade envoy to Pakistan, saying the deal is 'contrary to our manifesto commitment' 
5.22pm: Theresa May holds a Downing Street press conference vowing to see her deal through and insisting she is acting in the national interest. She defiantly says she is working to get the best deal available and MPs will have to consider their own position when it comes to a vote.
6.48pm: Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt leaves No 10 in a Government car having not resigned despite rumours she might. 
Her call for a vote flouts Cabinet convention, which says a consensus should emerge through discussion.
But while the PM's won the argument and no vote was held, she failed to win over Miss McVey who had handed in her resignation less than 24 hours later. 
Miss McVey's relationship with No10 was already strained over the row over the Universal Credit welfare reforms.
She reportedly had not been informed by the Treasury that extra money had been found for the benefit payments - leaving her to find out as Philip Hammond read out the Budget in the House of Commons late last month.
While officials at the DWP were said to have stepped in to only let her do pre-recorded clips as they worried about what she would say if she went live on air, according to The Times. 
It was amid these strained relations that she has departed.
The lengthy Cabinet meeting took a very different turn to the usual weekly No10 gatherings.
It ran more than two hours over time and the PM spoke far more than she usually does - responding to criticisms of specific aspects of her deal as she tried to rally her troops to back her deal.
No 10 sources said Mrs May opened the meeting by saying there are ‘difficult things we have to address and confront’.
The PM acknowledged the ‘strongly held views on these issues’ and made two main contributions herself at the beginning and end of the meeting.
As the Cabient wrapped up, the PM offered thanks for the ‘high quality’ contributions made by every minister in the room.  
While Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt, a Brexiteer who has been placed on resignation watch, urged the PM to 'dig in and fight for more concessions from Europe'.     
Theresa May is facing the threat of all-out Tory revolt today after Dominic Raab dramatically quit saying he could not 'in good conscience' support her Brexit deal.
The Brexit Secretary dropped the bombshell news on the morning after the PM forced the terms of her proposed plan through Cabinet in a stormy five-hour meeting.   
Mr Raab was understood to have endorsed the draft deal 'with a heavy heart' at the meeting yesterday, but harboured deep concerns about the UK being locked into the Irish border 'backstop'.
His decision could now spark a series of other departures - potentially posing a fatal threat to Mrs May's leadership. The Pound dropped sharply on the news as markets saw the chances of a Brexit agreement receding.
Mr Raab, who only succeeded David Davis in the post in July, said he had 'enduring respect' for Mrs May but added: 'Today, I have resigned as Brexit Secretary. I cannot in good conscience support the terms proposed for our deal with the EU.'
It is the second resignation in quick succession after Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara announced his departure, claiming Mrs May is trying to 'shackle' Britain to the EU 'indefinitely'. 
Just after 7pm - two hours behind schedule - Mrs May emerged from Downing Street to declare the deal had been signed off.
But her reference to a 'collective' decision rather than a unanimous one immediately raised eyebrows amid reports that numerous ministers had raised objections.  
Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox - both Brexiteers - were described as backing the plan 'with a heavy heart'. 
While Defence Secretary Gavin Willliamson, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt all expressed reservations a bout aspects of the deal.
Ministers had full and frank discussions during which they laid brae their reservations about the deal.
Mrs Leadsom allegedly asked 'whether we are actually leaving' and whether the deal would lead to the break-up of the union. 
She was said to have told Cabinet that if Mrs May continued with the plan, the European Research Group - the powerful group of Tory Brexit backing MPs - 'would end up having a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister'.
But energy minister Claire Perry is said to have leapt to the PM's defence by rebuffing the suggestions. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid - who is tipped as a possible future Tory leader if Mrs May is ousted - also voiced his concerns.
He is understood to have asked whether there was any chance of trying to toughen up the exit clause from the Irish border 'backstop' - one of the most contentious parts of the agreement.
But he did not press the issue, conceding that the negotiating team was best place to know what could be achieved. 
Mr Javid also reportedly called for continuing plans for a no-deal Brexit in case the House of Commons rejects the plan, the Times reported. 
Mr Hunt also voiced concerns that Mrs May simply does not have the support among MPs she needs to get the deal through the Commons. 
He said that as many as 66 Tory MPs could vote against the deal, but said the PM was in a 'difficult situation'. 
Meanwhile Treasury Minister Liz Truss said ministers were 'caught between the devil and the deep blue sea' as they discussed the plan, which includes a transition period that could be extended beyond December 2020.   
Scottish Secretary David Mundell had emerged as a potential risk after he signed a letter warning against giving away fishing rights as part of the agreement.
How does a leadership election work?
The election to find Theresa May's replacement is held in two stages with up to 20 Tory MPs expected to try to stand.  
To join the battle, any candidate requires two other MPs to sign forms agreeing to be their proposer and a seconder. 
The race will start on June 7 and is expected last around six weeks with the new leader in place by the end of July.
Mrs May is expected to remain as Prime Minister until a successor is appointed and ready to be confirmed by the Queen. 
How are candidates eliminated?  
Conservative MPs will hold a series of head-to-head ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to a final two, with the lowest placed candidate dropping out in each round.  
Who votes on the final two?
There will then be a series of hustings involving the two final candidates - probably in all regions of the UK - and a TV debate could also be held.
It is then the Tory members across the country step in.
They will then have around a fortnight to vote via postal ballot - which Mrs May avoided after rival Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the race. The last time a postal vote was held was in 2005, when David Cameron grabbed the leadership.  
He tonight confirmed that he was staying in the tent, without giving a full-hearted endorsement of the blueprint thrashed out with Brussels.
Chris Grayling apparently voiced concerns about losing the support of the DUP, which has kept Mrs May's fragile government alive since the snap election.  
Another Cabinet source said many of the ministers took potshots at 'specific' parts of the deal or offered 'constructive criticism', rather than opposing it wholesale.
'The Brexiteers moaned, but they did not have any alternative,' the source said. 'We are where we are.'
The discussion is said to have focused almost exclusively on the withdrawal package, with no real mention of the future trade relationship. One source said whether Mrs May 'pivots' away from Chequers is still an open issue.   
Brexiteer nerves were calmed by attorney general Geoffrey Cox, who told ministers that any bid to keep Britain in the controversial 'Irish backstop' indefinitely would lead to legal challenges.
Mr Cox reportedly called the plan an 'ugly sister of a deal'. He acknowledged there was a 'balance of risk' in the plans, but said: 'The one risk I am not prepared to take is one that means we don't end up delivering Brexit.'
Backing the proposals, he said it was time for the life raft made of 'oil drums and a plastic sail' to be released on to the open ocean. 'It was a key moment,' said a source.
Michael Gove was the only other Brexiteer minister to speak up for the deal.   
Meanwhile pro-Remain minister James Brokenshire also spoke up in favour of Mrs May, saying she should 'follow her judgment', the Guardian reported.  
Admitting that the debate had been 'long and impassioned', Mrs May said outside Downing Street: 'The collective decision of Cabinet was that the government should agree the draft Withdrawal Agreement and the outline political declaration.
'I know there will be difficult days ahead. This is a decision that will come under intense scrutiny and that is entirely as it should be.
'But the choice was this deal that enables to take back control and build a brighter future or going back to square one with division and uncertainty.'
'I firmly believe with my head and heart that this decisive choice is in the best interests of the entire UK.'   
Theresa May's task of getting her Brexit deal past the House of Commons is looking near-impossible as opposition mounts.
The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs will happen on December 11 and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - as well as being the key to Mrs May' fate as PM.
But despite opinion polls suggesting the public might be coming round to her deal, there is little sign of a shift among politicians.
Remainers have been stepping up calls for a second referendum in the wake of Sam Gyimah's resignation as universities minister over the weekend - while Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have accused Mrs May of betrayal.   
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part.
The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, over 100 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No.
This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185.
This is how the House of Commons might break down:
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The Government (plus various hangers-on)
Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides.
There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'.
How many of them are there? 178.
What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss.
Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote
Who are they: The most hard line of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker.
How many of them are there: 26
What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Other Brexiteers in the ERG
Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson.
Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her.
How many of them are there? Around 50.
What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal.
This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic.
The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Remain including the People's Vote supporters
Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee.
How many of them are there: Maybe around 10.
What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no.
A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister.
Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists
Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy.
There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else.
How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal.
What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it.
It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work.
Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
The DUP
Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government.
They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union.
How many of them are there? 10.
What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea.
Labour Loyalists
Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders.
How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do.
What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum.
Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process.
The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal.
Labour Rebels
Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point.
How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal.
What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
Other Opposition parties
Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents.
How many of them are there? About 60 MPs.
How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. 
Boris Johnson denied being anti-democratic today and blasted Remainer MPs for blocking an election, as he became engulfed in a row over his decision to suspend parliament for five weeks after Scottish judges ruled it was illegal.
The Prime Minister said he must 'respectfully disagree' with the idea that he was acting like a totalitarian as he answered questions from the public in a People's PMQs on Facebook.
The Brexit war exploded today as No10 was accused of questioning the impartiality of Scottish judges who ruled Boris Johnson suspended Parliament illegally. 
An Edinburgh court decided that prorogation was unlawful because the Prime Minister's intention had been to 'stymy' scrutiny of his Brexit policy - not to pave the way for a new legislative programme as he claimed.
But Mr Johnson did not reference the case as he took to social media.
Instead he tore into rebel MPs who have protested his decision to shut down the Commons on Monday, saying they had repeatedly turned down the chance of a general election.    
'Of course, if opposition members of Parliament disagree with our approach, then it is always open to them to take up the offer I made twice now, twice, that we should have an election,' he said.
'There is nothing more democratic in this country than a general election. We will get on and we will come out of the EU on October 31.' 
The shock outcome in Edinburgh sets the stage for a titanic showdown at the Supreme Court in London on Tuesday - with the risk that the Queen will be dragged into the constitutional crisis.
As Westminster descended into chaos, Remainers claimed Mr Johnson had 'deceived' the monarch and the prorogation of Parliament for five weeks - which happened in the early hours of yesterday morning by Royal proclamation - was now null and void.
There was more fury after a No10 source reportedly swiped that the Scottish courts had been 'chosen for a reason', with Nicola Sturgeon slamming the jibe as 'pitiful' and undermining the rule of law. 
Attorney General Robert Buckland tried to calm the row by tweeting that he had 'total confidence' in the independence of judges, while the PM's official spokesman repeated the message.
As MPs demanded the Houses be recalled 'immediately', some staged protests by tweeting selfies of themselves sitting in the Commons chamber. 
Rebel ringleader Dominic Grieve said Mr Johnson must resign if he misled the Queen about his motives, while Labour's David Lammy accused him of 'deceiving' the monarch. 
Meanwhile, union baron Len McCluskey made the extraordinary suggestion that Mr Johnson should be put under 'citizens arrest'.  
Downing Street denied that the PM had misled the Queen. Pressed repeatedly by journalists on the allegation, a spokesman said: 'I think I am fairly clear that the reasons for prorogation have been consistent throughout.' 
No10 sources insisted Parliament will stay prorogued until the Supreme Court rules next week, and suggested another Royal Proclamation will be needed for MPs to start sitting again before the currently slated date of October 14.  
Judge Lord Doherty dismissed a challenge against the planned prorogation at the Court of Session last Wednesday, saying it is for politicians and not the courts to decide.
But a panel of three judges in Edinburgh overturned that decision.
Remainers have been pushing three separate legal challenges to the PM's move to prorogue Parliament.
They have been taking place in the UK's three legal jurisdictions - England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Scottish law has been distinct from English law for centuries, and differs in a number of important respects. For example, juries in criminal trials have 15 members - and as well as 'guilty' and 'not guilty', they can find a case 'not proven'.  
Northern Ireland law has been distinct since partition in 1921, but is more similar to that in England and Wales. 
The challenge in Scotland was rejected in the first instance last week, but today three judges ruled that the suspension of parliament was unlawful due to the PM's 'improper' motivations. 
The High Court in London took a very different view last week. Releasing details of their reasoning today, judges stated that it was not the place of the court to interfere in matters of 'high politics'.
A ruling is due in the Belfast case tomorrow.
However, all three strands are due to end up in the Supreme Court in London next week - the highest authority in UK law. 
Nine senior judges will hear the arguments over three days, before deliberating and delivering a ruling that could decide the fate of the PM, and the country.  
A summary of the judgement said: 'The Inner House of the Court of Session has ruled that the Prime Minister's advice to HM the Queen that the United Kingdom Parliament should be prorogued from a day between 9 and 12 September until 14 October was unlawful because it had the purpose of stymying Parliament.
'All three first division judges have decided that the PM's advice to the HM the Queen is justiciable, that it was motivated by the improper purpose of stymying parliament and that it, and what has followed from it, is unlawful.
'The court will accordingly make an order declaring that the prime minister's advice to HM the Queen and the prorogation which followed thereon was unlawful and is thus null and of no effect.'
At the hearing, Judge Lord Carloway told the court: 'We are of the opinion that the advice given by the Government to her majesty the Queen to prorogue parliament was unlawful and that the prorogation itself was unlawful.' 
A UK Government spokesman said: 'We are disappointed by today's decision, and will appeal to the UK Supreme Court. 
'The UK Government needs to bring forward a strong domestic legislative agenda. Proroguing Parliament is the legal and necessary way of delivering this.'  
The case is now set for the Supreme Court in London where it is expected to be heard alongside a similar case brought by campaigner Gina Miller.
That challenge was rejected by the High Court last week - but judges gave permission for it to be appealed to the Supreme Court. 
In an incendiary jibe, one No10 source told the Sun: 'We note that last week the High Court in London did not rule that prorogation was unlawful. 
'The legal activists choose the Scottish courts for a reason.' 
The remark was quickly disowned by the PM's aides, but SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said: 'This is pitiful, pathetic and desperate from No10.' 
Former Justice Secretary David Gauke said: 'It is neither responsible nor acceptable for 'sources in No 10' to accuse judges of political bias. Criticism of this type from within Government undermines the independence of the judiciary and, therefore, the rule of law.' 
Boris Johnson's decision to prorogue Parliament for five weeks at a key pre-Brexit time for the country followed a well-trodden constitutional path.
The decision to shut down the legislature is ultimately taken by the Queen, but on the advice of the prime minister of the day and the Privy Council.
The monarch spoke with Mr Johnson by telephone before Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg flew to Balmoral at the end of August to present the Government's plan in person.
She gave the Government a short window in which to carry out the prorogation and the decision was taken to enact it on Monday, after Boris Johnson made one last (failed) attempt to convince MPs to back his plea for a general election in October.
The pageantry involved led to chaotic scenes in the Commons in the early hours of Tuesday when opposition MPs tried to stop Speaker John Bercow accompanying Black Rod to the Lords, where the proclamation was read out and officially enacted.
Today's decision in Scotland is unlikely to change anything immediately, despite calls for the doors of Parliament to be reopened today.
But the decision of the Supreme Court in London on Tuesday would carry full political and legal weight.
As the court of last resort, if it upholds the ruling that Mr Johnson's advice to the Queen was unlawful it would effectively declare the shutdown null and void.
It is unclear exactly what would happen next - as Parliament would resume sitting, but the Government has not tabled any business. 
But Tory MP Henry Smith told MailOnline: 'I think the Scottish court decision is is highly political and actually very dangerous, because the courts shouldn't be passing judgement on Parliamentary matters and certainly issues that are the subject of the PM's prerogative.
'The courts should be blind to party politics. The courts are not there to do the SNP's bidding.' 
Another senior Conservative Brexiteer told MailOnline the judgement was 'pretty maverick'.
They said: 'The sort of language that is being used is remarkably political. It does look political.'
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'It is a landmark ruling when a court, this time in Scotland, rules that it is unlawful to prorogue Parliament. The issue will now go to the Supreme Court next week.
'We did everything we could to prevent the prorogation of Parliament. That is actually shutting down Parliament which is what the Prime Minister has done in order to prevent questioning and debate right through to the middle of October.
'Whatever happens next week we will continue to press for Parliament to be recalled so that we can question the PM as to why he seems, still, unable to give an undertaking that he will abide by the European law that we passed last week requiring him to seek an extension if necessary to prevent a No Deal crash out from the European Union at the end of October.
'These are interesting times when courts rule in favour of democracy against a prime minister who wants to shut down our democracy.'
Giving detailed reasons for its rejection of the Miller challenge today, the High Court said the decision to prorogue Parliament was 'purely political' and therefore not capable of challenge in the courts.
Ms Miller's claim was supported by former prime minister Sir John Major, shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti and the Scottish and Welsh governments.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett, Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and President of the Queen's Bench Division Dame Victoria Sharp delivered their ruling at a brief hearing in London on Wednesday.
In their judgment, they stated: 'We concluded that the decision of the Prime Minister was not justiciable (capable of challenge). It is not a matter for the courts.'
They added: 'The Prime Minister's decision that Parliament should be prorogued at the time and for the duration chosen and the advice given to Her Majesty to do so in the present case were political.
'They were inherently political in nature and there are no legal standards against which to judge their legitimacy.'
They said it was 'impossible for the court to make a legal assessment of whether the duration of the prorogation was excessive by reference to any measure'.
The court also said that legislation passed by Parliament, which requires Mr Johnson to seek an extension to the current Brexit deadline of October 31 if no deal is reached with the EU, had 'undermined' Ms Miller's case.
The judgment stated: 'The ability of Parliament to move with speed when it chooses to do so was illustrated with clarity and at the same time undermined the underlying premise of the cases advanced by both the claimant and the interveners, namely that the prorogation would deny Parliament the opportunity to do precisely what it has just done.'
Those who pushed the case have been quick to celebrate the outcome. 
Ms Cherry, one of the Scottish MPs who brought the challenge, tweeted: 'Huge thanks to all our supporters & our fantastic legal team who have achieved the historic ruling that #prorogation is #unlawful'
Jolyon Maugham QC, the anti-Brexit barrister who was second petitioner in the case, said the Supreme Court would hear the case next week.
He tweeted: 'We have won. Appeal begins in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
'We believe that the effect of the decision is that Parliament is no longer prorogued.
'I have never been able to contemplate the possibility that the law could be that our sovereign Parliament might be treated as an inconvenience by the Prime Minister.
Here is how the coming weeks could pan out: 
September 14-17: Lib Dem conference takes place in Bournemouth 
September 17: Supreme Court hears case on whether prorogation of Parliament was illegal. 
September 21-25: Labour conference in Brighton 
September 29-October 2: Tory conference takes place in Manchester, with Mr Johnson giving his first keynote speech as leader on the final day. This will be a crucial waypointer on how Brexit talks are going.
October 14: Unless it has already been recalled following the court battle, Parliament is due to return with the Queen's Speech - the day before Mr Johnson had hoped to hold a snap election.
October 17-18: A crunch EU summit in Brussels, where Mr Johnson has vowed he will try to get a Brexit deal despite Remainers 'wrecking' his negotiating position. 
October 19: If there is no Brexit deal by this date Remainer legislation obliges the PM to beg the EU for an extension to avoid No Deal.
October 21: Decisive votes on the Queen's Speech, which could pave the way for a confidence vote. 
October 31: The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU. 
November/December: An election looks inevitable, but Labour is hinting it might push the date back towards Christmas to humiliate the PM. 
'I am pleased that Scotland's highest court agrees. But ultimately, as has always been the case, it's the final arbiter's decision that matters.
'We will convene again in the Supreme Court next week.'
Sir Keir said: 'I welcome the Court's judgement. No one in their right mind believed Boris Johnson's reason for shutting down Parliament. 
'I urge the Prime Minister to immediately recall Parliament so we can debate this judgement and decide what happens next.' 
He added: 'The Prime Minister was not telling the truth about why he was doing it. The idea of shutting down Parliament offended everyone across the country, and then they felt they were not being told the truth.' 
Speaking at the TUC conference in Brighton, Mr McCluskey told Sky News: 'My advice to the prime minister is don't go up to Scotland - you're liable to face a citizen's arrest.' 
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said Mr Johnson 'broke the law by closing down Parliament', and added: 'Did he also lie to the Queen? Time for Parliament to get back to work.'  
But Brexiteers voiced fury at the ruling.
Tory former MP Stewart Jackson said: 'The reputation of Parliament is as low as it can get now. 
'The Scottish Court decision merely reinforces the narrative that the Establishment couldn't care less about the voters and will do all it can to overturn the democratic will of the people. Carry on. Tick tock.'  
The ruling is a fresh headache for Mr Johnson as he scrambles to find a way through the Brexit crisis.
There are growing signs he is ready to compromise on his Brexit demands after he admitted he faces a revolt from hardline Tory Eurosceptics.
The Prime Minister told Remainer rebels he is expecting 'spears in my back' from so-called 'Spartans' in his own party.
The remarks emerged amid claims Mr Johnson is softening his call for the Irish border backstop to be completely scrapped.
Instead aides are believed to be examining proposals for arrangements that would apply only to Northern Ireland, rather than aligning the whole UK with EU market rules. 
That could raise tensions with the DUP, which has insisted it will not accept anything that risks splitting the union.
Mr Johnson previously stated that he was seeking a 'backstop-ectomy', to remove the controversial provision from the Withdrawal Agreement altogether.
However, the premier's options are looking increasingly limited, after Parliament passed a law effectively banning No Deal at the end of October, and refused his call to trigger an early general election.
Three judges in Scotland's highest civil court have ruled that the PM's decision to prorogue Parliament was unlawful. 
The three judges are: 
Lord Carloway
The Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General, he is the head of the Scottish judiciary. 
The 65-year-old became the most senior judge north of the border in 2015. 
He studied law at the University of Edinburgh and he became a QC in 1990. 
He led a major review of Scotland's justice system after a UK Supreme Court judgement stopped police questioning suspects who had not been offered a lawyer. 
The so-called Carloway Review called for criminal law to be 're-cast' for modern day Scotland. 
He is married, has two sons and reportedly plays bass guitar in a band called The Reclaimers.
 
 
 
 
 
Lord Brodie
He is a Senator of the College of Justice - the name given to the judges who sit in the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary - a role he has held since 2002. 
The 60-year-old also studied law at Edinburgh University before attending the University of Virginia in the US. 
He became a QC in 1987. He is married and has two sons and a daughter. 
He is reportedly a keen fencer.
 
 
 
 
 
Lord Drummond Young
Also a Senator of the College of Justice, a role he took in 2001, the 69-year-old used to be the chairman of the Scottish Law Commission. 
He studied law at Cambridge University and then at Harvard University in the US before becoming a QC in 1988.
He is married and has one daughter. 
He is reportedly a member of The Speculative Society in Edinburgh which is dedicated to public speaking.
The Inner House of the Court of Session has ruled that the Prime Minister's advice to HM the Queen that the United Kingdom Parliament should be prorogued from a day between 9 and 12 September until 14 October was unlawful because it had the purpose of stymying Parliament.
A petition for judicial review was raised by 79 petitioners, 78 of whom are parliamentarians at Westminster, on 31 July 2019, seeking inter alia declarator that it would be unlawful for the UK Government to advise HM the Queen to prorogue the UK Parliament with a view to preventing sufficient time for proper consideration of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union(Brexit).
A substantive hearing was fixed for Friday, 6 September, but on 28 August, on the advice of the Prime Minister, HM the Queen promulgated an Order in Council proroguing Parliament on a day between 9 and 12 September until 14 October. The Lord Ordinary (the judge hearing the case at first instance) refused to grant interim orders preventing the prorogation, but brought the substantive hearing forward to Tuesday, 3 September. On the eve of the hearing, in obedience of its duty of candour, the respondent lodged some partially redacted documents exhibiting some of the Government's deliberations regarding prorogation, going back to 15 August.
The Lord Ordinary dismissed the petition. He found that the PM's advice to HM the Queen on prorogation was, as a matter of high policy and political judgment, non-justiciable; the decision to proffer the advice was not able to be assessed against legal standards by the courts.
The reclaiming motion (appeal) was heard by the First Division of the Court of Session over 5 and 6 September. Parliament was prorogued in the early hours of Tuesday, 10 September.
All three First Division judges have decided that the PM's advice to the HM the Queen is justiciable, that it was motivated by the improper purpose of stymying Parliament and that it, and what has followed from it, is unlawful.
The Lord President, Lord Carloway, decided that although advice to HM the Queen on the exercise of the royal prerogative of prorogating Parliament was not reviewable on the normal grounds of judicial review, it would nevertheless be unlawful if its purpose was to stymie parliamentary scrutiny of the executive, which was a central pillar of the good governance principle enshrined in the constitution; this followed from the principles of democracy and the rule of law. The circumstances in which the advice was proffered and the content of the documents produced by the respondent demonstrated that this was the true reason for the prorogation.
Lord Brodie considered that whereas when the petition was raised the question was unlikely to have been justiciable, the particular prorogation that had occurred, as a tactic to frustrate Parliament, could legitimately be established as unlawful. This was an egregious case of a clear failure to comply with generally accepted standards of behaviour of public authorities. It was to be inferred that the principal reasons for the prorogation were to prevent or impede Parliament holding the executive to account and legislating with regard to Brexit, and to allow the executive to pursue a policy of a no deal Brexit without further Parliamentary interference.
Lord Drummond Young determined that the courts have jurisdiction to decide whether any power, under the prerogative or otherwise, has been legally exercised. It was incumbent on the UK Government to show a valid reason for the prorogation, having regard to the fundamental constitutional importance of parliamentary scrutiny of executive action. The circumstances, particularly the length of the prorogation, showed that the purpose was to prevent such scrutiny. The documents provided showed no other explanation for this. The only inference that could be drawn was that the UK Government and the Prime Minister wished to restrict Parliament.
The Court also decided that it should not require disclosure of the unredacted versions of the documents lodged by the respondent.
The Court will accordingly make an Order declaring that the Prime Minister's advice to HM the Queen and the prorogation which followed thereon was unlawful and is thus null and of no effect.
 
Butchers and grocers are demanding the right to dust off their old weighing scales and sell produce in pounds and ounces again following the Brexit vote.
The British Weights and Measures Association said more and more traders wanted the return of imperial measures, which were axed in 2000 to comply with EU regulations.
Retailers are allowed to display imperial units when selling produce, but this can only be as a 'supplementary indication' because EU law only permits the sale of goods in kilograms and grams.
The imperial measurements cannot be displayed larger than metric ones and are not allowed to be part of the transaction.
The scrapping of traditional pounds and ounces caused huge protests, with some traders – known as the 'Metric Martyrs' – defying the threat of prosecution to continue trading in imperial measures. Now the Government is coming under increasing pressure to allow shops and market stalls to sell meat, fruit and vegetables using traditional measures.
Warwick Cairns, from the British Weights and Measures Association, told the Daily Telegraph: 'In 2000, to comply with European legislation, the Government made it a criminal act for a greengrocer to sell a pound of bananas.
'We thought this was outrageous then, we think it outrageous now. And with our exit from the EU, the legal basis of compulsory metrication will be repealed. It's now time to restore freedom of choice.'
Peter Bone, a Eurosceptic Tory MP, said the Government should allow shops and customers to buy and sell in imperial measurements well ahead of a possible Brexit in 2017.
He added: 'Given that our biggest trading partner by a mile – the United States – is still on imperial measurements, it has always been silly that we have had to just do it in metric.
'It makes sense and is one of the advantages of coming out of the EU.
'That is one of those things that can be implemented now so that when we actually pull out it is a smooth process.
'It is a first-class idea and I hope the Government embraces it.'
Mr Bone is urging International Trade Secretary Liam Fox to back the proposal.
Sir Bill Cash, another Eurosceptic Tory, claimed retailers should be able to sell produce in both metric and imperial. He said: 'Any idea of prosecuting somebody in those circumstances would be insane.'
A Government spokesman said: 'Businesses can already use imperial units alongside metric, or on their own for draught beer and cider, bottled milk and road traffic signs. This is national legislation and there has been no change to the law since the referendum.'
 
As I head to Brussels today for more Brexit talks, I have the words of many Mail readers ringing in my ears: 'Let's get on with it.' 
It has been more than two years since the referendum, and I know many people want us to get on and deliver on the verdict of the British people. Taking back control of our money, our law, our borders – and our country's future.
We are well on the way to delivering exactly that. As the new Brexit Secretary, I am relishing the challenge. 
Our White Paper, published this month, spells out our vision in more detail and I will be in Brussels today for further negotiations with Michel Barnier.
Our plan sets out a principled and pragmatic Brexit. One that sees us outside of the political institutions in Brussels that so many of us campaigned to leave.
Not only do we have a plan, we are delivering it. In Parliament, above all the din, we are getting the legislation in place to deliver Brexit.
The EU (Withdrawal) Act passed last month will mean we take back control over our laws and guarantee a smooth legal transition for businesses and citizens.
Last week our Customs Bill, which gives us the power to make trade deals with the EU and the rest of the world, passed the House of Commons.
In the negotiations with the EU, 80 per cent of the withdrawal agreement has been agreed. Mr Barnier and I will be discussing how we complete the remaining 20 per cent, including guarantees to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
The UK plan would establish a new free trade area for goods with Europe, ensuring our manufacturers, our small businesses, and the people they employ, continue frictionless trade with the remaining EU countries.
I was at one such manufacturer, a family business run by Tom Hainsworth, on Monday. They helped make the uniforms for the Battle of Waterloo. It's a firm with a rich history, and under our proposals, a bright future.
At the same time as securing our trade with the EU, our plan also allows us to go out and strike global trade deals with old friends and new partners around the world – bringing jobs to the UK and providing cheaper goods for our consumers.
On security, we are focused on maintain the operational capabilities that keep our people safe across Europe. 
That means the UK participating in key crimefighting agencies, such as Europol, and sharing vital information that helps keep dangerous people off our streets.
We have a plan with ambition, the energy to deliver and we are working hard to resolve the outstanding issues with our EU friends. I trust that ambition, energy and pragmatism will be reciprocated.
Of course, there is no deal unless we agree the whole deal – it must work for the UK and the EU.
We are striving for the best deal. But in case our ambition and energy are not matched, we are stepping up our preparation for no deal.
We are hiring up to 1,000 more Border Force staff to police our border. Starting this summer, we will publish dozens of notices to industry and consumers on the steps we would need to take if we do not agree a deal, to avoid disruption to transport, trade and supply chains.
Leaving the EU with no deal is not what we want. A good deal would be better for the UK and the EU.
But while there are a few who might wallow in pessimism or have us cower in a corner at this historic crossroads, I am confident Britain's best days lie ahead.
That is because I am stubbornly optimistic about our country, and I am confident in our people. In the coming months, we will rise to this challenge and galvanise our resolve.
With ambition, hard work, and energy – on all sides – we can strike the right deal for the UK. Come what may, we will be ready for Brexit.
 
British fishermen were undoubtedly the greatest victims of our membership of the Common Market in 1973. So desperate was Ted Heath, the then Conservative Prime Minister, to join the bloc that he high-handedly betrayed their interests.
Suddenly our fishermen were forced to share the most plentiful fishing grounds in Europe with their continental counterparts. It wasn’t long before foreign boats were taking more fish from British waters than our own vessels.
Over the past 45 years the annual catch of our fisherman has roughly halved, and once-thriving fishing ports such as Hull and Grimsby have fallen into decline.
So for many people — not just fishermen — one of the boons of Brexit was regaining control of our territorial waters. These will extend, once we recover our sovereignty, 200 miles from the British coastline, or the mid-point between nearer countries such as France or Ireland.
Though I have never set foot in a trawler, the prospect that these waters would again be British, and that our boats could fish in them under British laws, was certainly one of my motivations for voting Leave.
The UK fishing industry employs tens of thousands of people, and has a totemic significance which only foolish politicians ignore.
That is why I trembled for Theresa May when earlier in the week the Government agreed that during the so-called transition period from March 29, 2019, until December 31, 2020, Brussels will continue to control our fish.
In fact, the situation will be worse than at present. At least we currently have a seat at the table. After March next year — when we supposedly leave the EU, though in many ways we won’t — Brussels will continue to set our fishing quotas (what we are allowed to extract from our own seas) while merely consulting us.
Should we be alarmed? Not if the arrangements during the transition period simply last for 21 months before we get back control of our own waters such as we enjoyed before 1973.
Admittedly it will be irksome to remain under the thrall of Brussels while no longer a member of the EU and without representation. But I think most people would accept such a state of affairs if they knew it was short-lived.
The trouble is there are good reasons for suspecting that the European Commission will wish to have a significant say over our territorial waters after the end of 2020. And I’m afraid there is also cause to fear that the Government will give it to them.
We should ask ourselves why Brussels is so keen on maintaining the status quo during the transition phase. It is because it wishes to negotiate shared rights to our fishing grounds. This would be well-nigh impossible if we took back control the moment we left in March 2019.
That the EU regards our waters as an enduring common asset can’t be in doubt. Donald Tusk, president of the EU Council, recently said: ‘In fisheries, reciprocal access to fishing waters and resources should be maintained.’ That implies no change.
Such an agreement would hugely favour the EU. In 2015 the vessels of other member states (principally France, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands) caught 683,000 tonnes of fish (with a revenue of £484 million) in UK waters. Foreign boats take about 80 per cent of the catch in our still abundant fishing grounds.
By contrast, British vessels caught only 111,000 tonnes (£114 million revenue) in member states’ waters. This means that their fishermen are getting a lot more out of us than we are of them.
In other words, keeping things more or less as they are — which is what Brussels wants — would be vastly more to the advantage of the EU than of the United Kingdom.
So dependent have the fleets of some countries such as France, Belgium and Ireland become on fishing in our waters that they might suffer near ruination if they were excluded.
That is why the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier will insist on continued and unconditional use of UK waters after December 2020. The argument is that if we want access to their markets, they must fish in our waters.
Will we agree? Not long ago, Brexit Secretary David Davis ruled out ‘trading away fishing rights for other things’, while earlier this week Environment Secretary Michael Gove reassured anxious backbench Tory MPs that we will take back control of our waters when the transition period ends.
That sounds good. But the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, recently suggested it would be ‘acceptable’ to trade fishing rights in return for a better deal in lucrative areas of the economy such as the City. That sounds bad.
I can smell a sell-out more putrid than a bad kipper. Why should we be surprised if the likes of Mr Hammond and sleek Whitehall mandarins put the interests of City fat-cats before those of fishermen in far-flung parts of the kingdom?
They’ve been betrayed once before and — so the argument will run — can be betrayed again. Why bother about a few thousand fishermen when there are so many bigger issues at stake?
Let me say that such a calculation would be catastrophic for the Brexit cause, and the Government. For I repeat: the much abused fishermen, and the sovereignty of our territorial waters assume an enormous significance in millions of minds.
Woe betide the politician who is seen to sacrifice these hallowed interests in the cause of expediency. There would be political ructions, not least in Scotland.
Recently elected Scottish Tory MPs in at least four fishing constituencies would probably be punished by the electorate, and the resurgent Tory Party north of the border (which has identified with the fishermen’s cause) could be wiped out. That would take care of Theresa May’s slim majority.
An idiotic Tory chief whip called Julian Smith infuriated Scottish Tory MPs on Monday by telling them: ‘It’s not like the fishermen are going to vote Labour.’ No, but they could — and would, in the event of a treacherous deal — vote for the Scottish Nationalists.
Even worse than that, a betrayal of the fishermen by cynical bean-counters in London would undermine the idealism of the Brexit cause, and make some people question the point of leaving the EU if it involves such skulduggery.
Of course we should make bilateral agreements with individual EU countries once we finally escape from the maw of Brussels, just as Norway (a member of the single market with full control of its territorial waters) has done.
But we can’t give the EU continued rights over our waters. That would lead to a reaction which would make yesterday’s demonstration on the Thames, when a few dead fish were tossed into the water, look like a garden party.
I don’t deny it’s going to be difficult for the Government to hold the line against the presumptuous claims of Brussels. Fishing rights could turn out to be as big a bone of contention as the Irish border.
I can also see that in the real world there have to be compromises along the way to arrive at a deal. But not on fishing and our territorial waters. Capitulation on this totemic issue might be fatal. 
Theresa May today told her Cabinet the House of Lords must not be allowed to tie her hands in Brexit talks as she vowed a 'robust' response to a crushing defeat.
MPs will be ordered to delete a wrecking amendment that strips ministers of the right to quit talks without a deal when the legislation returns to the Commons.
Defiant peers passed the plan last night by 335 to 244 in defiance of warnings it would hand 'unprecedented power' to Parliament.
Trade Secretary Liam Fox today accused peers of trying to 'thwart' Brexit by re-writing the flagship Brexit laws.  
Brexiteers fear Tory rebels could join forces with the Opposition to defend the new amendment is an evolution of one the Commons has already passed.
But signalling her intent to strip it from the Bill, Mrs May's official spokesman said today: 'Cabinet expressed its disappointment at defeats inflicted on the EU withdrawal bill in the House of Lords, saying they risk tying the Government's hands behinds its back in the negotiations with Brussels.
'The Prime Minister said that in the House of Commons the Government would be robust. She said it was vital to ensure the legislation was able to deliver a smooth Brexit, which is in the interests of everybody in the United Kingdom.'   
The International Trade Secretary told Sky News: 'Now we have the unelected house actually trying to block the democratic will of the British people.
'This is a question about whether the will of the British people will be respected or not, and it must be.'
Asked by the BBC if Theresa May was now 'horribly weakened' he said: 'We don't have a parliamentary majority, that's for sure.
'That makes life harder.' 
Last night's major amendment to the flagship Brexit laws going through Parliament radically strengthens the so-called 'meaningful vote' on the final deal.
Tabled by Viscount Hailsham - better known as the former MP Douglas Hogg, infamous for expense claims to clean his moat - it will remove the right of ministers to quit Brexit talks without a deal and hand the decision to Parliament instead.
Later the Government suffered another defeat when peers voted 270 to 233 to back plans giving Parliament a say on Britain's mandate for Brexit talks.   
Viscount Hailsham was joined in the lobby by 18 other Tory rebels including ex ministers Michael Heseltine, Ros Altmann and David Willetts.  
Following last night's vote, Brexit Minister Lord Callanan said the Government was 'disappointed' and would now consider the implications of the vote.
He said: 'What this amendment would do is weaken the UK's hand in our negotiations with the EU by giving Parliament unprecedented powers to instruct the Government to do anything with regard to the negotiations – including trying to keep the UK in the EU indefinitely.
'It is absolutely right that Parliament is able to scrutinise the final deal, and that is why we have already committed to giving both Houses a vote on the final deal.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer hailed the vote as a crucial moment in the wrestle for control over Brexit between Parliament and ministers.
He said: 'Labour won the argument at the end of last year for Parliament to be given a meaningful vote on the terms of our withdrawal from the EU. And we are clear that it must be just that: a meaningful vote.
'If Parliament votes down the Article 50 deal, then Parliament must decide what happens next.
'Under no circumstances can the Prime Minister be given a blank cheque to crash the UK out of the EU without a deal.'   
Opening the debate, Lord Hailsham said: 'At the very best it was an interim decision.
'It was an instruction to the Government to negotiate withdrawal on the best terms that could be achieved.
'A final and conclusive decision can only be made when these options have crystallised.' 
Lord Roberts told peers: 'My mind went back to Berlin in March 1933, when the Enabling Bill was passed in the Reichstag.
'That Enabling Bill transferred democratic rights of the parliament into the hands of one man, that was the Chancellor. His name was Adolf Hitler.
'Perhaps I'm seeing threats that do not exist, but they are there, they are possible. Who'd have said before the 1930s that Germany, this cultured country, would involve itself in such a terrible war.' 
Lord Hailsham said Parliament - led by MPs - must be able to decide whether to accept no deal, send ministers back to renegotiate, order a new referendum or even stay in the EU on the current terms.
Former Tory leader Lord Michael Howard told the Lords the rebel amendment demonstrated the 'appalling lengths' Remain backers would go to frustrate the referendum vote.  
Conservative Lord Fairfax branded the Lords a 'cosy cabal of Remain' and attacker Remain supporters as 'fifth columnists' as he lashed the wrecking amendment.  
Ahead of today's vote, Mrs May's spokesman said: 'Fundamentally, the British people voted to leave the EU and the Government is delivering on that.
'It is simply not right that Parliament could overturn this.
'It is absolutely right that Parliament is able to scrutinise the final deal, and that is why we have already committed to giving both houses a vote on the final deal.'
Later the Government suffered another defeat on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill after peers backed plans to give Parliament a say on Britain's mandate for Brexit talks.
An amendment led by Labour's Lord Monks and supported by a cross-party group of peers was supported by 270 votes to 233, majority 37.
Brexit minister Lord Callanan said it was for the Government rather than Parliament to set the mandate for negotiations over the UK's future relationship with the EU.
However, Labour indicated it was supporting the amendment, which would require parliamentary approval for this mandate. 
Responding to the Government's second defeat on Monday, on parliamentary approval for the UK's negotiating mandate, a spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union said: 'We are disappointed that the House of Lords has voted for this amendment in spite of the assurances we have provided.
'Parliament has been updated regularly throughout the negotiations and we have already committed to giving both the House of Commons and the House of Lords a vote on the withdrawal agreement and the terms of our future relationship with the EU.
'But it is for the Government, not Parliament, to set our goals for the negotiations on the UK's exit from the EU and to conduct them.
'We will now consider the implications of this decision.' 
 
Liam Fox today insisted Brexit will slash costs of clothes and food for families - after his former trade chief warned that leaving the EU is like swapping a banquet for a 'packet of crisps'.
The International Trade Secretary dismissed calls for the UK to stay in a customs union with the EU - saying it would stop the UK lowering tariffs on day-to-day products.
He warned that giving up control over trade would leave Britain as 'rule takers' and 'sell out' the public's verdict from the referendum. 
And he launches a scathing attack on Jeremy Corbyn's backing for a customs union with the EU - saying this amounts to a 'betrayal' of voters.
Dr Fox also lashed out at Sir Martin Donnelly, the ex-top mandarin at his own department, who has ridiculed his former boss's plans to quit the EU customs union and single market. 
Sir Martin compared giving up access to the single market to 'rejecting a three course meal now in favor of the promise of a packet of crisps later'.
The former top civil servant in Liam Fox's department has warned quitting the EU is like swapping a three-course meal for a packet of crisps.
Sir Martin Donnelly ridiculed his former boss' plans to quit the EU customs union and single market. 
And he warned dire economic consequences could lie ahead for Britain.
His remarks risks overshadowing the International Trade Secretary's own address later today. 
Sir Martin told the BBC's Today Programme: 'You're giving up a three-course meal, which is the depth and intensity of our trade relationships across the European Union and partners now, for the promise of a packet of crisps in the future if we manage to do trade deals outside the European Union which aren't going to compensate for what we're giving up.
'You just have to look at the arithmetic - it doesn't add up I'm afraid.' 
'It is unsurprising that those who have spent a lifetime working within the European Union would see moving away from the European Union as threatening,' he said.
But Dr Fox hit back: 'The particular choice I heard Sir Michael Donnelly outline was a choice between the EU and trade opportunities elsewhere and the continuation of EU trade agreements.
'I don't believe that is the choice we face. We are already trying to secure a full and liberal partnership with the EU, we are already having discussions about expanding our trade agreements beyond the EU.
'And we are also talking about rolling over those EU agreements into UK law so we get no disruption in terms of market access at the point of exit.
'So it's not a choice of one or the other.
'So I think the UK's Brexit process is a little more complex than a packet of crisps.'
Boris Johnson also lashed out at Sir Martin's comments, which he disagreed 'very strongly' with.
He argued that there is an 'insatiable' market for UK services outside the EU.
He rejected reports that the EU is set to demand the European Court of Justice is the ultimate arbiter in treaty-related disputes as it would not amount to 'taking back control'. 
Critics of Labour accused the party of betraying its Brexit-backing voters in the party heartlands by changing their policy.
And today, Dr Fox joined in the criticism - warning the move would strip Britain of its ability to decide its own police.
He said: 'If you sign up to a customs union you will have to accept the agreements that are reached by others without you having any say in it.
'And if you don't like what they decide, that's tough.
'So, my message to the incoherent, inept and clueless performance of the Labour Party in recent days is, you can't wish the outcomes without wishing the means to deliver those outcomes.
'And, there doesn't seem to have been much thought given to what could be imposed upon the United Kingdom through a customs union if we didn't want it.
'The approach that I set out is UK control over UK trade policy. 
'What the Labour Party is setting out is a dive into the unknown and having to accept rules that are made by others and not by themselves.' 
Theresa May's Munich Speech
The PM made the case for the UK to continued to have a strong security partnership with the EU.
She said the UK will stay in the European Arrest Warrant and owuld 'respect' rulings by the European Court of Justice. 
Boris Johnson's Valentine's Day address
The Foreign Secretary outlined his vision for a 'liberal Brexit' which would see Britain be a leading free trading nation.
He urged for Remainers and Brexiteers to unite and urged the country to be more upbeat about the looming departure.   
David Davis 
The Brexit Secretary made a pitch for an ambitious trade deal which would see the UK and EU have 'mutual recognition' of each others rules and regulations.
And he insisted gloomy predictions of Britain's future outside the EU w ere wrong - saying the country will not descend 'into some  Mad Max-style dystopia'. 
David Lidington 
The Cabinet Office Secretary hit out at SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon for trying to use Brexit to tear the UK apart.
And he reassured devolved governments across the UK that most of the powers repatriated from Brussels will go back to them rather than Westminster. 
Liam Fox 
he hit out at calls for the UK to stay in a customs union  with the EU - warning this would amount to a betrayal of voters.
He said staying in a union would leave Britain having to take EU rules without being able to make them.
And he said Britain should embrace new opportunities  to strike trade deals with growing  economies outside the EU. 
He told an audience at Bloomberg's headquarters in the City of London today that Britain would be foolish to stay in an EU customs union as it would allow Brussels to carry on dictating British policy after Brexit.
He said:  'As rule takers, without any say in how the rules were made, we would be in a worse position than we are today.
'It would be a complete sell out of Britain's national interests.' 
And he warned that staying in a customs union would leave the UK having to take EU rules but without having a say in what they should be.
He said: 'First of all, for goods, we would have to accept EU trade rules without any say in how they were made, handing Brussels considerable control of the UK's external trade policy.'
'Secondly, it would limit our ability to reach new trade agreements with the world's fastest-growing economies.'
'And thirdly, it would limit our ability to develop our trade and development policies that would offer new ways for the world's poorest nations to trade their way out of poverty.'
'As rule takers, without any say in how the rules were made, we would be in a worse position than we are today. It would be a complete sell out of Britain's national interests.'
'A customs union would remove the bulk of incentives for other countries to enter into comprehensive free trade agreements with the UK if we were unable to alter the rules in whole sectors of our economy, as Turkey has now discovered.'
Dr Fox, one of the Cabinet's leading Brexiteers, will warn this would put other countries off from striking trade deals with Britain after Brexit. 
He said: 'The inevitable price of trying to negotiate with one arm tied behind our back is that we would become less attractive to potential trade partners and forfeit many of the opportunities that would otherwise be available to us.'
The Cabinet Minister pointed out that the economies of China and other eastern countries are growing - creating new opportunities for trade.
Meanwhile the amount Britain sells to the rest of the EU has been declining over the past few years. 
Dr Fox said: 'We cannot allow the practices and patterns of the past to constrain the opportunities of the future.'
He added: 'The pattern of our trade is changing - 57 per cent of Britain's exports of goods and services are now to outside the EU compared with only 44 per cent in 2005.
'What is more, while our EU exports are still dominated by goods, our non-EU exports are evenly split between goods and services.'
William Hague today warned the Tory backbenchers not to be used as pawns by Labour by voting against the PM on an  EU customs union.
Tory rebels, led by Anna Soubry, have tabled an amendment to try to keep the UK in a customs union.
And they could unite with Labour to vote for it and inflict a humiliating Commons defeat on the PM.
If they do then commentators have warned they could end up toppling the Government and installing Mr Corbyn in Number 10.
The former Tory leader said: 'Their aim is to use Tory rebels as human torpedoes, gloriously sacrificed in an attack on the battleship May.'
He said some Tory rebels are so ardently pro EU they would 'vote for their motion even if the devil himself was walking through the voting lobby by their side'.
But he urged them not to, saying: 'So if I were an MP minded to rebel on a customs union, I would state my case of course. 
'But then I would draw back, rather than be used as a means of installing a ruinous socialism in the leadership of Britain.'  
'Our approach should not be premised on simply identifying how much of our current relationship we want to keep, but what we need to prosper in a rapidly changing global environment.'
He said Britain needs to radically change its trading policy to take advantage o the new opportunities globally.
Dr Fox said: 'There is a tendency among some nations to cling to the known trading mechanisms more suited to the structures of the past than the digital age of the future.'
'Flexibility and agility, then, are the key to any future trade policy. 
'The ability to react quickly to new developments, to explore new opportunities and to nurture fledgling industries that will be the key to growth and prosperity in the coming years.'
He added: 'To do this, we need the ability to exercise a fully independent trade policy.
'We have to maximise overall trading opportunities for the UK and secure the prosperity of our people.'
Dr Fox's speech is the penultimate address by Cabinet minsters in the 'roadmap to Brexit' series - with Theresa May set to finish it off with her address on Friday.
And as ministers are trying to flesh out their hopes and plans for Britain's looming departure,  the UK's Brexit plans stand at a crossroads.
Tory rebels led by Anna Soubry,  have tabled an amendment to try to keep the UK in a customs union - and could unite with Labour to vote for it and inflict a humiliating Commons defeat on the PM.
If they do then commentators have warned they could end up toppling the Government and installing Mr Corbyn in Number 10.
William Hague today warned the Tory backbenchers not to be used as pawns by the Labour leadership. 
The former Tory leader wrote in The Telegraph: 'Their aim is to use Tory rebels as human torpedoes, gloriously sacrificed in an attack on the battleship May.' 
He said some Tory rebels are so ardently pro EU they would 'vote for their motion even if the devil himself was walking through the voting lobby by their side'.
But he urged them not to, saying: 'So if I were an MP minded to rebel on a customs union, I would state my case of course. 
'But then I would draw back, rather than be used as a means of installing a ruinous socialism in the leadership of Britain.'  
Liam Fox today said no decision can be reached on the Irish border until a Brexit trade deal is struck.
Britain is under growing pressure to come up with a plan to keep a soft border in time for a crunch EU summit in two weeks times.
Brussels has refused to move on to trade talks until 'sufficient progress' on the border along with the Brexit divorce bill and citizens rights is made. 
But the International Trade Secretary and leading Brexiteer laid the blame for the hold up at the door of Brussels.
He pointed out that any deal on a border cannot be thrashed out until trade and customs talks properly start.
Theresa May has insisted all of Britain is leaving the single market and the customs union when we quit the Brussels bloc - meaning what happens to the border is a thorny issue. 
Scroll down for video 
Dublin has suggested Northern Ireland stay in the customs union - effectively pushing the hard border to the sea - and threatened to veto trade talks unless the UK caves to its demands.
Brussels said 'sufficient progress' has to be made on citizens rights, the Irish border and the divorce bill before trade talks can start.
Brexit Divorce Bill:
Britain had offered £20billion for a two-year transition deal, but ministers are believed to have agreed to effectively double this in an effort to start trade talks by the new year.
EU citizens rights:
Theresa May has said we are within touching distance of a deal but Brussels is more gloomy.
The EU wants their citizens rights to be guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, but Mrs May said getting rid of the authority of the ECJ in the UK is one of her Brexit red lines.
Irish border:
Both the EU, UK and the Republic of Ireland are all clear they do not want to see a return to the hard border - fearing this could reignite sectarian violence.
But it remains unclear how Northern Ireland can leave the EU's customs union and single market without having a hard border crossing.
The Irish Republic has suggested border checks could be pushed back to the border with the mainland of the rest of the UK, but this has been ruled out by the Government and the DUP.
But the PM and her DUP allies have ruled out the suggestion pointing out that any plan which effectively erects a border between Britons in Northern Ireland and the mainland would not be tolerated. 
And this morning Mr Fox told Sky News's Sunday with Niall Paterson today: 'We've made very clear what the outline is of our interests, that we don't want there to be a hard border but the UK Is going to be leaving the customs union and the single market. 
'We've always actually had exceptions for Ireland whether it's in our voting rights, our rights of residence in the UK.
'We've always accepted a certain asymmetry and that will have to be part of whatever agreement we come to with the EU.
'But we can't get a final answer to the Irish question until we get an idea of the end state and until we get into discussions with the EU on the end state that will be very difficult.
'So the quicker we can do that the better and we're still in the position where the EU doesn't want to do that and we're getting quite close now to 2018 when we'll be talking about next year when we leave the EU. 
'So for all the reasosns, international as well as European, I think we have to get there faster than we're doing at the present time.'
The EU summit on December 14 and 15 will decide whether we finally moves on to trade talks  in the Brexit negotiations.
Mrs May has doubled  Britain's divorce bill to £40bn in a move to unblock the talks and move on to trade.
But the Irish border now seems the issue which threatens to hold up progress.
Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said his country would block the tart of trade discussions unless a plan was put forward.
The DUP has warned Mrs May the idea of using the Irish Sea as a post-Brexit border between the rest of the UK is 'non-negotiable'.
Nigel Dodds, who leads the DUP in Westminster, said any proposals to make special arrangements for Northern Ireland in Brexit talks should be taken off the table. 
Ruth Davidson today said EU officials are not always honest about the progress being made in Brexit talks when they talk publicly.
She said that deals with Brussels are always a 'five past midnight' affairs as Eurocrats wait until the final minute to sign off. 
But she said that behind the scenes progress is often being made - even if it is not communicated to the public.
Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr show she said: 'The people who walk up to the microphones and speak to the home audience don't always reflect the negotiation and the progress which is going on in the room.
'When it comes to European negotiations it is always a five past midnight job.' 

And their Northern Ireland leader Arlene Foster today revealed that the DUP has written to European leaders to say they will not accept a Brexit that puts customs barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Mrs Foster said she has written to the governments of the remaining 27 EU nations to outline her party's red line.
She told delegates at Saturday's conference in Belfast: 'We want a sensible Brexit. A Brexit that works for Northern Ireland and for the United Kingdom.
'However, we will not support any arrangements that create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom or any suggestion that Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the UK, will have to mirror European regulations.'
One of the loudest cheers of the speech came when Mrs Foster rejected any suggestion Northern Ireland's place within the UK was now at risk. 


Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, a member of the ruling Fine Gael party, told BBC's Sunday Politics she was 'troubled' by Dr Fox's comments.
She said: 'I hope that the UK is not holding the Irish situation to ransom in these negotiations, it is far too serious and far too critical.' 
Meanwhile, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson has said that EU officials are not always honest about the progress being made in Brexit talks when they talk publicly.
She said that deals with Brussels are always a 'five past midnight' affairs as Eurocrats wait until the final minute to sign off. 
But she said that behind the scenes progress is often being made - even if it is not communicated to the public.
Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr show she said: 'The people who walk up to the microphones and speak to the home audience don't always reflect the negotiation and the progress which is going on in the room.
'When it comes to European negotiations it is always a five past midnight job. 
She added: 'I think it is really important that we get the transitional deal nailed down, that is not for the government that is for businesses so we know what they are ding next year and are able to plan.' 


 

The 'Remain Alliance' could target dozens of seats across the UK in an all-out bid to block Boris Johnson and Brexit.  
Talks have been under way between the unashamedly pro-EU Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens maximise their chances in key constituencies in the December 12 election.
The pact would see two of the three parties stand aside to favour the one with the best chance of victory - replicating the success in the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. 
In an interview today, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson disputed claims the Remain Alliance could involve a pact across 60 seats.
'The specifics of announcements will be made in due course but it's well understood that these discussions have been taking place,' she told Sky's Ridge on Sunday.
'I wouldn't necessarily assume that the numbers are accurate.
'I think it's fair to say that in the vast majority of constituencies the party of Remain that is going to be best-placed to win that seat will be the Liberal Democrats.'
The manoeuvring came amid high-stakes wrangling on all sides ahead of the showdown pre-Christmas vote.
Nigel Farage today announced he will not be standing for Parliament at the election, but ramped up the Brexit Party attack on Boris Johnson's 'con trick' deal with the EU.
For his part, the PM again dismissed the prospect of an electoral alliance with Mr Farage. 
Mr Johnson is facing an added threat in his own Uxbridge constituency as the Extinction Rebellion campaign launches a bid to oust him.
The PM could face a struggle to hold on after the environmental protesters vowed to mobilise opposition to the HS2 rail project.  
Mr Johnson has a majority of just over 5,000 in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, and it would take a swing of just over 5 per cent for Labour to snatch victory.
Defeat would make Mr Johnson the first premier in modern times to lose his seat at a general election. 
Momentum has already pledged to send hundreds of volunteers out knocking on doors. 
Tory deputy chairman Paul Scully said voting for the Lib Dems risks handing the keys to No 10 to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. 'No matter what they say, a vote for the Liberal Democrats will create another hung parliament and risks putting Corbyn into Downing Street - meaning years more confusion, delay and indecision,' he said. 
Meanwhile, Ms Swinson resumed her criticism of ITV for excluding her from a live debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.
Suggesting the move was due to sexism, she said Lib Dem polling has improved since the 2010 election when the leaders of the three main parties were included.
'In that election we had Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg - spot the difference,' she said.
'Frankly, you've got a suggestion from a broadcaster that it will be two chaps chatting about how they are going to leave the European Union, leaving out the voice for millions of Remainers who want to stop Brexit and stay in the EU
'And, yeah, (I) happen to be a woman, well isn't that interesting because when it was Nick Clegg there was no problem with him being in the debates.'
 
Philip Hammond and George Osborne were last night accused of plotting to thwart Brexit over a lobster lunch.
The pair were spotted at a Chelsea restaurant before the Chancellor angered Cabinet colleagues by refusing to release cash to prepare for Brexit. 
Mr Hammond agreed to the 'lobster plot' meeting despite his Treasury predecessor's vendetta against Theresa May.
Mr Osborne, who now edits the London Evening Standard, is said to have told friends he would not rest until the Prime Minister was 'chopped up in bags in my freezer'. 
Fellow diners said the pair chatted conspiratorially at a corner table at Caraffini over a 'very long lunch'.
Mr Hammond ordered the £21.90 house special – lobster on a bed of pasta in tomato and garlic sauce.
Tory MP Nadine Dorries questioned his judgment in talking to such a high-profile critic of Brexit and Mrs May. 'It sounds very fishy,' she said.
'You can tell a lot about people by the friends they keep. We know George Osborne wants to wreck Brexit – why would the Chancellor want to meet him unless he sees Brexit as the enemy?
'Perhaps it's time he did the decent thing and stood aside.'
News of the meeting came as:
Restaurant plotting has a long history in politics – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are said to have carved up the Labour leadership at Granita in Islington.
Mr Hammond is believed to be a regular at Caraffini, which offers 'fine Italian food with modern overtones' near Sloane Square.
A witness to the rendezvous said: 'They were huddled together – they seemed slightly conspiratorial. They were talking animatedly but seriously.
'And they were in no rush to leave. Time didn't seem to be an object. It was a very long lunch.'
Neither Mr Osborne nor the Treasury would comment on the content of their discussions last night. 
A Treasury source said: 'Of course the Chancellor meets Conservative politicians past and present. You would be surprised if he didn't.'
A friend of Mr Osborne pointed out that in his time at the Treasury he regularly dined with former chancellors and newspaper editors.
Mr Hammond has endured a turbulent week since clashing with other Cabinet ministers on Tuesday over the need to release cash now to prepare for the possibility that Britain might leave the EU without a trade deal.
The Chancellor infuriated Downing Street by writing an article for The Times on Wednesday in which he suggested it would be irresponsible to start making costly preparations now. 
Mrs May issued a public rebuke within hours, making it clear that the Treasury would be required to fund planning for all eventualities.
And former chancellor Nigel Lawson called for Mr Hammond to be sacked for an approach to Brexit that comes 'very close to sabotage'. 
Mr Hammond's close relations with his predecessor stand in contrast to his strained relationship with Mrs May.
One Government insider yesterday said the pair 'can't bear' to be in the same room.
Mrs May had planned to sack her Chancellor after the election but was too weakened to carry out the purge after losing her Commons majority.
Speculation is mounting that Mr Hammond could be axed in an autumn reshuffle if next month's Budget is a flop. 
But a spokesman for Mrs May yesterday insisted the pair have a 'good working relationship'.
Mr Hammond's decision to maintain cosy relations with Mr Osborne will anger Eurosceptics and raise eyebrows in Cabinet.
The former chancellor, who was sacked by Mrs May last year, is widely suspected of co-ordinating opposition to Brexit from outside government.
He has used the Evening Standard to undermine Mrs May and her ministers.
Several former Cabinet friends and allies, including party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin, have now cut all ties with Mr Osborne in protest.
A friend of Sir Patrick said: 'He has been sent to Coventry. Patrick, who was close to George, isn't taking his phone calls any more, and he is not the only one.
'It is hard to overstate the depth of anger and betrayal within the party over the way George has behaved. His attacks on Theresa are despicable.'
Mr Hammond yesterday rejected claims that he was acting as a brake on Brexit. 
The Chancellor, who this week said leaving the EU 'placed a cloud of uncertainty' over the economy, insisted it was absurd to suggest that he was talking down the economy.
Speaking at a meeting of the IMF in Washington he tried to strengthen his credentials on Brexit by insisting he was now ready to sanction preparations for the possibility that the UK might leave without a deal.
But in a diplomatic blunder, he overdid the tough talk, describing the EU as the enemy.
Within an hour he took to Twitter to apologise for his 'poor choice of words', accompanying his message with the hashtag '#NoEnemiesHere'.
Sources at Caraffini told the Daily Mail that the lunch took place at the end of September. But Treasury sources insisted it was earlier.
Philip Hammond's Basil Fawlty moment: Chancellor tries to act tough by calling Brussels ‘the enemy’ before apologising and saying he won't resign 
Philip Hammond tried to talk tough on Europe yesterday, describing the EU as 'the enemy' while visiting the United States.
But the Chancellor was rapidly denounced by one MP for acting 'like Basil Fawlty on holiday'.
And within an hour of making his comment Mr Hammond was performing an embarrassing U-turn, taking to Twitter to apologise for a 'poor choice of words'.
His about-turn came as he refused to resign and fought back against criticism that he is 'sabotaging' Brexit and undermining Theresa May.
Arriving in Washington to meet global finance chiefs at an International Monetary Fund meeting, Mr Hammond claimed he is fully behind the Prime Minister and backed her speeches on the UK's Brexit stance at Lancaster House in January and in Florence last month.
A number of Conservative backbenchers have called on the Chancellor to quit over his stance on Brexit. 
But Mr Hammond said yesterday: 'My message is this: I understand that passions are high. I understand people have very strong views about this. But we're all going to the same place.
'We all have the same agenda. We're all signed up to the Prime Minister's Lancaster House speech. We've all signed up to the Article 50 letter. We're all behind the speech she made in Florence.'
He added: 'The enemy, the opponents, are out there on the other side of the table. Those are the people that we have to negotiate with. We have to negotiate hard to get the very best deal for Britain.'
In his Twitter apology Mr Hammond said: 'In an interview today I was making the point that we are united at home. 
'I regret I used a poor choice of words.' He added: 'We will work with our friends and partners in the EU on a mutually beneficial Brexit deal #noenemieshere.'
Labour's Peter Dowd, a shadow Treasury minister, said Mr Hammond's remarks about the EU being an enemy were both foolish and a sign that he was 'clearly feeling the pressure from Tory MPs calling for him to be sacked'.
'The tone of this rhetoric will obviously not unblock negotiations or help protect our economic interests,' said Mr Dowd. 
'The Chancellor should be putting the country before the infighting in his own party when he is representing us overseas, and refrain from acting like Basil Fawlty on holiday.'
One MP told MailOnline: 'He has been told he has got to row in behind Brexit and be enthusiastic. 
He has tried to do that and messed it up. He has made a total Horlicks.'
Mr Hammond's U-turn marred what had been a fighting performance from the Chancellor from the moment he arrived in the US. 
He flatly refused to resign and pledged to provide all the funding Britain needs to get through Brexit.
The Chancellor said: 'We have already spent £500million, and we will be making available more resources in the Budget.'
He will deliver his Budget on November 22 and said he was ready to use the Government's contingency reserve, its emergency fund of up to £2billion, if necessary.
His tone was dramatically different from earlier in the week when he appeared before the Treasury Select Committee and said the Government would not spend taxpayers' money preparing for the possibility of a 'no-deal' Brexit until the 'very last moment'.
He said he would not take money from budgets for other areas such as health or education just to 'send a message' to the EU. 
This prompted former Tory Chancellor Lord Lawson to say his behaviour was 'very close to sabotage'.
Yesterday, asked directly if he would resign, the Chancellor said: 'No.' 
Mr Hammond said the Brexit negotiations have created economic uncertainty but the underlying economy 'remains robust' and he was 'committed to delivering a Brexit deal that works for Britain and for jobs, business and prosperity'.
And he said that once the uncertainty over the negotiations has gone away he expects the economy to 'start powering forward and to reach its full potential'.
Thanks for winning the Second World War... but you still have to pay up for Brexit talks to advance, says Juncker 

Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday heaped praise on Britain for its role in the Second World War – before saying we 'would have to pay' for Brexit talks to advance.
In a rambling speech, the Brussels chief claimed he was 'not in a revenge mood' before going on to ridicule parts of the negotiations as 'nonsense'.
He insisted that the so-called 'divorce bill' is the only way to unleash trade talks.
His bizarre intervention came as EU leaders signalled the first major breakthrough in negotiations by preparing to give the green light to discussions on a transition period after Brexit and our future relationship with the EU.
Speaking just hours after documents outlining the plan emerged, European Commission president Mr Juncker said: 'I'm not in a revenge mood – I am not hating the British.
'The Europeans have to be grateful for so many things Britain has brought to Europe, during war, before war, after war. But now they have to pay.
'We cannot find, for the time-being, a real compromise as far as the remaining financial commitments of the UK are concerned.'
He said that the pay-out – estimated at anything between £20billion and £90billion – is not 'impossible' for Theresa May to negotiate and likened it to buying a round of drinks.
Referring to the bloc's 28 countries, he said: 'If you are sitting at a bar and ordering 28 beers and then suddenly some of your colleagues are leaving, it's OK but they have to pay.'
In a further dig, Mr Juncker claimed the Brexit process was revealing 'new problems' for the UK and suggested the two-year divorce 'will take longer than initially thought'.
US banking giant JP Morgan is creating just 60 jobs in Paris to avoid any Brexit fallout – undermining its previous threat to axe 4,000 UK workers.
Before the EU referendum, the Wall Street lender's boss Jamie Dimon said he could sack a quarter of the UK's 16,000-strong workforce unless the vote went his way.
But the arch-Remainer has backtracked since the result, telling shareholders in April that he would not be 'moving many people'. This week it emerged JP Morgan is preparing to create around 60 new jobs in Paris to deal with EU clients. The bank already has around 250 staff based there.
Appearing at the International Monetary Fund summit in Washington, Mr Dimon said: 'JP Morgan is considering adding jobs in Paris after Brexit negotiations are complete.'
Despite bickering in Brussels about how its rigid negotiating mandate is stopping progress on reaching a deal on citizens' rights, Mr Juncker also took aim at the UK for the stalemate. 
After claiming the UK should have offered to adopt EU citizenship rules for years to come, he said: 'Why not say easily and with common sense ... that things will stay as they are?
'The Europeans, or 'foreigners', as they are saying in London, they are there on the island and so many British friends are here. 
So let them here, let them there. Why are we discussing nonsense like that.'
His intervention will be seen as hugely unhelpful by diplomats.
Both sides have been accused of prolonging uncertainty for the 3.5million EU citizens in the UK and the one million Britons in Europe by refusing to cave on a range of issues.
During his address to students in Luxembourg yesterday, Mr Juncker also said he wanted 'closer integration'. 
He denied accusations he is determined to create a 'United States of Europe' before adding: 'I hate this idea but I love this idea.'
His comments follow the first signs of division amongst the bloc over how to take talks forward after the latest round ended in frustration for both sides on Thursday.
The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, who said the stalemate was 'disturbing', has privately pushed to open up talks on a transition period. 
But Germany and France have led objections to this, claiming the UK has not offered enough concessions.
Despite this, EU leaders are expected to unlock internal talks on trade next week. The development is contained in draft conclusions for next week's European Council summit.
Though short of the full trade talks the UK had hoped for, it will be seen as a boon for Mrs May. 
The Mayor of London has said Brexit could be halted if the Labour Party made staying in the European Union a manifesto policy, and won the next election.
Sadiq Khan said it could still be possible to 'trump the referendum' result by effectively putting it back to the public as a manifesto pledge. 
The Mayor has made the intervention at a time his party is in turmoil over its own position, though he has never waivered in his pro-EU stance.  
He told the Guardian: 'For it to have credibility with the British public, there would have to be a Labour manifesto offer, because the public would say, not unreasonably "Hold on a sec, we voted to leave and you're now sticking two fingers up at us".
'What could trump the referendum result is us having a manifesto offer saying we would not leave the EU, or we would have a second referendum.'  
The Labour party has been split on Brexit since the referendum last summer, with the leadership, including Jeremy Corbyn saying the result should be respected but other high-level MPs calling for another referendum. 
Earlier this week, the opposition party was thrown into disarray as the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell contradicted Mr Corbyn over the single market claiming Labour only wanted the 'benefits' of the single market and hinting they could back continued membership. 

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer has also appeared to soften the Labour position, telling senior business figures that it was 'vital' to obtain the benefits of the single market and the customs union and 'how we achieve that is secondary to the outcome'.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott has said Labour is not taking any options for Brexit off the table. 
Mr Khan's remarks to the paper come after Chancellor Philip Hammond said a post-Brexit transitional arrangement could last for three years after the UK's planned withdrawal in March 2019.
Mr Hammond said 'many things will look similar' on the first day after leaving the bloc.
Sources close to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he was working closely with the Chancellor to take the UK out of the EU.
Mr Khan's comments will lead to some speculation that the Mayor is looking to keep his options open for a return to Parliament and a bid to be the Labour leader.
Mr Khan has not shied away from his pro-EU position, leading a city where an overwhelming majority voted to remain in the union, against the 52 per cent of the overall British vote. 
After the referendum vote last year, Mr Khan said: 'I believe that Britain is better off within the European Union, but the British people have clearly spoken today, and their democratic will must now be fulfilled.
'Although we will be outside the EU, it is crucial that we remain part of the single market. Leaving the single market of 500 million people - with its free-trade benefits - would be a mistake. I will be pushing the Government to ensure this is the cornerstone of the negotiations with the EU. It is crucial that London has a voice at the table during those renegotiations, alongside Scotland and Northern Ireland.'
He has also led campaigns under the banner 'London is open' as he seeks to avoid a mass exodus of Europeans living in the capital.  
London will remain the capital of the world's financial industry despite Brexit, a leading City figure has said.
Mark Boleat, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, said there was 'nervousness' about a potential 'cliff-edge' scenario that would leave UK-based firms left stranded in a 'regulatory no-mans' land'.
But he added: 'I have no doubt that whatever happens in 2017, the City of London will remain the world's leading financial centre.'
And he said business uncertainty could be soothed if ministers agree a transitional deal with the EU that sets out the terms of trade in the immediate aftermath of Brexit from 2019.
His comments defy doom-laden warnings by Remain supporters who say anything other than a 'soft' Brexit - which would see Britain stay in the single market and tied to EU free movement rules – would severely damage the economy and push firms abroad.
Mr Boleat's comments also defy concerns that Britain's major banks could relocate to the continent to keep EU passporting rights, which give UK banks, insurers and asset managers the right to sell their services freely across the rest of the EU.
Lobbying group City UK warned 70,000 jobs in the City could be lost after Brexit if UK-based firms were denied the financial passports to trade in European financial markets.
The leading financier urged ministers to secure a transitional deal as soon as possible when Brexit negotiations get under way after March.
Chancellor Philip Hammond backs the idea of an interim arrangement on EU-UK trade as a permanent deal with Brussels is unlikely to be agreed within the two-year time-frame for Brexit negotiations.
And Theresa May signalled she is behind the move too after acknowledging there were concerns about a 'cliff-edge' after Britain cuts ties with the EU.
But Eurosceptics fear that a transitional deal will effectively keep Britain tied to EU institutions and immigration rules for years as pro-Remain firms, civil servants and Brussels officials seek to frustrate the Brexit process.  
Mr Boleat told the Financial Times: 'Firms' nervousness can only be allayed if they know how they can continue running their business.
'Important strategic business decisions are being delayed and much-needed investment postponed or withdrawn altogether.'
His comments bolstered pro-Brexit Tory MPs who have argued that London's reputation as a global financial hub will remain intact after we leave the EU.
Steve Baker, Tory MP for Wycombe, said: 'What I'm hearing is that there is no danger of London losing its status as Europe's premier financial centre.'
And former Cabinet minister John Redwood said: 'I think people are exaggerating the risks here. I don't think the estimates of job losses are well based; I don't think people can back them up — they are unduly pessimistic.'
Businesses fear being left stranded in a 'regulatory no-mans land' after Britain leaves the EU in spring 2019.
With a permanent deal on EU-UK trade unlikely to be agreed within the two-year time-frame, there are growing calls for the Government to seek a temporary transitional deal that sets out the terms of trade for businesses for the interim period and gives UK firms a cushion against the impact of Brexit.
A transitional deal with the EU could take several forms but would almost certainly require Britain to continue contributing into the EU's budget.
The most likely scenario would see Britain remain in the European Economic Area, which allows non-EU countries in Europe to partake in the free movement of people, goods, services and capital across the single market.
But this would require Britain to continue paying budget contributions, accept unlimited EU migration and comply with EU regulations.
And with experts warning that it could take at least five years for Britain to agree a permanent deal with the EU, it would effectively mean Brexit wouldn't be implemented until 2024 at the earliest.
It would give businesses relief from the uncertainty of falling off a 'cliff-edge' but Brexiteers would accuse the Government of betraying June's referendum vote.
If no transitional deal is reached, EU-UK trade will default to World Trade Organisation rules, which are seen as the most basic trading terms and the ones used for Russia's trading relationship with Brussels.
Another scenario would see Britain emulate Norway by remaining a member of the single market.
Norway enjoys the benefits of membership without the same extent of interference from Brussels but must also accept freedom of movement and pay substantial contributions and without having a say on rules and future free trade agreements with other nations.
But if no transitional deal is reached, EU-UK trade will default to World Trade Organisation rules, which are seen as the most basic trading terms and the ones used for Russia's trading relationship with Brussels.It would give businesses relief from the uncertainty of falling off a 'cliff-edge' but Brexiteers would accuse the Government of betraying June's referendum vote.
This could see tariffs as high as 10 per cent slapped on goods and services traded between Britain and Europe and British firms would lose all preferential access to the single market. 
 
 
The tumult and the shouting may at last be dying away. The time for slogans and cheap jibes is over. Dogma is giving way to practicality. We and our leaders are looking hard fact in the face and deciding what is possible and what is not.
There was a moment last week when the foundations of everything trembled. In response to Theresa May’s Brexit deal, some Ministers began to resign.
The markets shuddered and fell. If those resignations had turned into the avalanche that some hoped for, who knows when we would have hit the bottom?
Imagine for a moment that Mrs May had been swept from office, her bargain utterly repudiated. Imagine that the Tory Party was at its own throat, embroiled in a leadership election with no obviously good outcome.
Picture the state of our economy and our democracy if we had by now been slithering unstoppably towards a General Election which the public do not want, and in which they could be expected to punish the party that brought it about.
These were all real possibilities, and we still cannot entirely rule them out.
We are not out of the Brexit crisis yet, and the nation’s interests over the next few weeks lie in the hands of a small number of men and women who will have to continue to put country before career and quite possibly country before party.
Few expected the great Brexit referendum to lead to the unsatisfactory and patchy compromise which the Prime Minister now places before us.
The referendum, a method of decision-making quite alien to our parliamentary system, raised impossible hopes of absolute victory, in a country that has for centuries respected minorities and treated them with consideration.
Dogmatists and cheerleaders on both sides hoped for complete triumph for their cause. Remainers hoped to silence Eurosceptics for good.
Leavers hoped for total liberation from the thousand grasping tentacles of Brussels. The desires of both could not possibly be met. The desires of neither have been fully satisfied.
So the adult response, on both sides, must surely be, as The Mail on Sunday has argued since the vote, to respect the democratic legitimacy of the result while never forgetting the fears and reservations of the very large minority.
This, to her enormous personal credit, has been the Prime Minister’s approach. Laying aside her own undoubted Remainer views, enduring a great deal of mockery and abuse, and recognising that her party will probably never forgive her, she has worked with laudable, calm resolve for her country’s best interests.
It has never been easy. The Civil Service, one of the most powerful lobbies for remaining, has hardly helped, by approaching Brexit as a damage-limitation exercise rather than as an opportunity. David Davis, in his time as Brexit Secretary, failed to live up to his promise.
The EU itself had no interest in helping us, its slippery obduracy reminding us once again why so many have wished for so long to be free of it.
The Labour Party, riven by its own deep divisions, has stood and watched, hoping to profit unjustly from Tory civil strife. And it would be hugely unjust if it did, for Jeremy Corbyn – though he hides it well – loathes the EU as an obstacle to his Marxist plans for renewed state control.
Meanwhile, his EU spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, still dreams of keeping us in the EU. But both collaborate on the same front bench, hoping to gain from Mrs May’s troubles.
Their cynicism is matched, if not outdone, among Tories. Dominic Raab’s nonsensical resignation, in supposed protest at a deal he had himself helped to negotiate, will be remembered as an act of irresponsibility rather than one of principle. It is hard to make any sense at all of Esther McVey’s walk-out.
And there has to be a whiff of careerism about the other minor departures lower down the pecking order of ministers.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has generally been a thoughtful and courteous critic of Downing Street – though his impromptu Westminster press conference last week was a rash mistake, as he probably realises.
But real praise should go to Michael Gove, whose decision to stay in his post on Friday almost certainly prevented a disastrous further mass of resignations.
Mr Gove is now showing that he has learned from the past and that, like Mrs May, he knows when to put the nation first and everything else last.
His refusal to join the rush to quit has kept a number of major figures in the Cabinet and allowed Mrs May a breathing space.
It has also chastened those who had hoped to trigger a no-confidence vote in the Premier. Now they are afraid that such a vote – which can only be held once a year – might backfire on them.
If their putsch failed, it would guard Mrs May from any other attempts to remove her during the crucial months between now and Brexit Day at the end of March.
Even so, Mrs May must be concerned that Mr Gove is among several Brexiteer Ministers who are still talking about going back to Brussels to see if more concessions can be won. This is entirely understandable.
The deal is far from perfect. But it is also a dangerous game, as David Cameron found when he unwisely relied on the EU shifting its ground to help him win over his domestic critics.
If the Cabinet Brexiteers make their continued support for Mrs May dependent on such concessions, and none are forthcoming, we could be back to square one.
If Mr Gove is to complete his task he must explain to his colleagues that nothing should be done that would endanger a final agreement on a negotiated Brexit. What Tory MPs, Tory constituency leaders – and come to that Labour MPs as well – must now understand is this:
If they destroy Mrs May’s deal, there is absolutely no guarantee that any of her various opponents and critics will get what they want. It is not just that nobody will get what they want. It is that almost everybody may get what they do not want. In the chaos that follows such a breakdown, several dangerous things might happen.
We might find ourselves outside the EU without any agreement at all, an outcome which would be deeply dangerous for the economy and which could create an unprecedented political crisis.
There might be a second referendum, a false non-solution which would do grave and lasting damage to our democracy without resolving the issue.
Or we might even end up still stuck inside the EU, having wasted more than two years on futile wrangling. Only a cynic, or a fanatical dogmatist, could desire any of these things.
The people of the United Kingdom have had quite enough wrangling, self-seeking, grandstanding and pettifogging from those they elected to lead them.
They know better than their insulated and pampered leaders that in real life, and in politics, we seldom get everything we want.
All those MPs in all parties who are seriously concerned with the well-being of the country must show responsibility, forbearance and an adult willingness to compromise.
Each of them sought the power and responsibility they now hold and each has been well-rewarded for it.
Now they must show they are worthy of the high positions and the great trust we have given them. They must back the Prime Minister. It is the only responsible course.
If they do not take it, they will never be forgiven for the chaos they unleash.
 
Commentators often describe me as ‘a man in a hurry’. It’s true that in every job I’ve done in government, I’ve driven change and been determined to deliver the benefits of new policies as quickly as possible.
I have used the Whitehall machine to get things done and force through dynamic reforms. I have directed civil servants rather than letting them direct me.
That’s what I did as education secretary – with 1.9million more children now in good and outstanding schools. That’s how I approached reform of the criminal justice system – modernising our courts and making punishments fit the crime.
Also, it’s how I’ve approached my current job as Environment Secretary – with swift action on reducing single-use plastic, on animal welfare, farming and fisheries.
And it’s how I’ll approach Brexit if I’m fortunate enough to become prime minister. A clear plan. No drift, no dithering, no dilution of the referendum mandate for Britain to leave the EU.
I’m ready to deliver Brexit. Once Brexit is secured, we can deliver a vision that will make this country even greater.
We need to improve public services, support the businesses that ensure growing levels of prosperity for all, invest in the infrastructure that the whole of the UK needs so as to flourish, and nurture new technologies so that Britain leads the world in scientific innovation.
Above all, Conservatives should be warriors for the dispossessed – the most disadvantaged in our society.
Crucially, we can use the money we get back from the EU to invest in our most deserving communities. We can demonstrate that Britain, outside the EU, can be a liberal, progressive and democratic beacon.
It’s because I’m an optimist about Brexit and this country’s potential that I’m frustrated that three years on from the referendum, we haven’t delivered on the result. I’ve always been a Eurosceptic. As a teenager, I saw how the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy drove my dad’s small business to the wall and hollowed out coastal communities in my part of Scotland.
Long before I became an MP, I was at the heart of the campaign against a single currency. So when the referendum was called, I knew at heart that I had to stand up for what I had always believed – and for people like my father who had suffered as a result of the EU.
I put everything on the line. I was willing to risk my career and friendships to fight for Brexit. As chair of the Leave campaign, I knew the fight would be tough but we won against all the odds.
It’s not enough, though, just to believe in Brexit – you’ve got to be able to deliver it. Here’s my plan to do so. We need:
This is about more than Brexit – it is about trust and the very democratic values I stood for in the Leave campaign.
Some say that Brussels won’t negotiate with us any more. Certainly, EU negotiators recognise a cross-party agreement is now out of reach. They know Parliament won’t pass the same deal as proposed by Theresa May without legally-binding changes. They also saw the European election results, where the Brexit Party’s success was a reminder Britain has not changed its mind since the referendum.
Yet I believe that European leaders want to find a way through this. I’m convinced they want to conclude these talks as quickly as possible so we’re on course to leave by October 31.
I’d like us out earlier. But if we make the progress I know we can and we are on the cusp of a better deal which works for Britain, would it really be in our best interests to opt for a No Deal exit when just a little more time and effort could make all the difference? I would not give up on the progress made.
Also, saying that we would leave come what may when there is still progress to be made runs the risk of Parliament forcing us into a general election before Brexit is secured.
That would surely hand Downing Street to a Jeremy Corbyn government propped up by Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP. That would mean Brexit was lost, the future of our Union at risk and the levers of power handed to a Marxist. As I argued during the no confidence debate in January, just think how awful that would be for Britain.
Jeremy Corbyn wants to leave Nato, get rid of our nuclear deterrent and have no army. No allies, no deterrent, no army – there’s no way we can ever allow that man to be our prime minister and in charge of our national security.
Every contender in this race for the Conservative leadership should answer what they would do faced with the choice of either delaying Brexit or fighting a general election before Brexit is secured.
My Brexit rule means I will always choose Brexit over the risk of no Brexit. The better deal I would secure, based on a Canada-style free trade agreement, would mean that we can take back control of how our country is run.
So we can then choose our domestic laws under the jurisdiction of our own Supreme Court.
It would mean that we can determine who comes to this country with an Australian-style points-based migration system, and refuse entry for EU nationals convicted of serious offences. My deal would mean no more compulsory financial contributions to Brussels so we could decide how our money is spent. It would mean scrapping the Common Fisheries Policy so we could decide who fishes in our waters, and the Common Agricultural Policy replaced. Live animal exports to the Continent ended.
Brexit is the most complex task any peacetime government has ever had to face. The stakes have seldom been higher; the consequences have rarely been greater.
This is a moment when we need someone who is ready to lead and serious about the job at hand.
I’ve always been optimistic about Brexit. It is not a problem to be managed but an opportunity to be grasped. I’ve shown through my record in government that I am the best placed to master the details of a brief, build a broad team of colleagues, work out how to address the key issues, and get things done.
That’s the approach I would take as prime minister to Brexit negotiations. It would be a huge task but one that I would lead from the front. I’m ready to deliver Brexit.
MPs could be ordered to vote for a 'blind Brexit' as Brussels prepares to back a vague statement on future trade in a bid to finalise Britain's divorce deal and transition deal.
EU officials have said the 'priority is to get the withdrawal agreement done' to ensure Britain does not crash out without a deal.
It will still require a solution for the Irish border amid a months-long stand off on how to avoid infrastructure between the Republic and Northern Ireland.
Theresa May will hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron tomorrow in her latest effort to end the impasse and win support for her Chequers plan.  
Fudging the details of the future relationship is seen as a way of squaring concerns in Brussels.
But any attempt to force the divorce through the UK Parliament without knowing the details of the final trade deal will prompt outrage among MPs in the UK.
Brexiteers will refuse to hand over the £40billion divorce bill without guarantees on trade while Remain supporters want to postpone leaving altogether until it is clear how the future relationship will work.  
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
German sources played down the prospect today, telling the Guardian Berlin wanted a clear plan for the final UK-EU deal at the end of transition in 2020.  
But EU sources told the FT: 'The priority is to get the withdrawal agreement done. That will be the dignified farewell. 
'The rest we can see after Brexit.' 
Another senior official hinted at concessions to get a deal through in time for exit day in March 2019. 
They said : 'The political declaration cannot violate our principles. But with the rest, whatever helps pass a withdrawal bill is fine.'
A third EU government minister handling Brexit told the paper: 'We will do what is necessary to save the withdrawal treaty'.
Officials believe much depends on how much detail Mrs May demands from the EU on the proposed trade agreement.
The senior EU official said: 'Does she go for a more granular and detailed version or think fudge will help me here as well?
'The more that they insist on putting certain issues in the text, probably the more we will have to put in conditions.'
In a signal of unrest at home, Labour MP and People's Vote supporter Chris Leslie said voting on exit without details of the final deal was not good enough.
He said: 'A blind Brexit would take the UK to the same place as a no-deal Brexit, but without the clarity.
'The idea that the fundamental contradictions of the government's Brexit policy can be more easily resolved after the UK has left the EU is simply ludicrous.
'A blind Brexit is being talked about because some see it as a short-term face-saving deal for both the British government and the European Union, both of which are now terrified that concluding with a failure to agree a deal will result in a humiliating no-deal Brexit.
'With the EU27 governments and the EU commission wanting to spare Theresa May's blushes, there is a risk we end up with a fake deal to save face.' 
Fudging the details of the future relationship is seen as a way of squaring concerns in Brussels.
Officials believe it means both sides can get out of the Article 50 process with Britain outside the EU but inside a transition on essentially the current terms.
The details of the future trading relationship can then be sorted out later. 
But any attempt to force the divorce through the UK Parliament without knowing the details of the final trade deal will prompt outrage among MPs in the UK.
Brexiteers will refuse to hand over the £40billion divorce bill without guarantees on trade while Remain supporters want to postpone leaving altogether until it is clear how the future relationship will work.
The People's Vote campaign for a second referendum has already dubbed the idea of voting on the divorce treaty without knowing the long term final settlement a 'blind brexit'. 
Mrs May has been warned not to expect a Brexit breakthrough in talks with Emmanuel Macron on Friday.
The UK's former ambassador to France said Mr Macron was 'the last person' to want to break ranks with the rest of the European Union to push for a softer stance from Brussels.
Lord Ricketts also criticised Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt's repeated warnings about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, saying it was obvious to continental leaders that the UK was not prepared for such a scenario.
The Prime Minister will cut short her Italian holiday to hold talks with the French president at his country retreat.
Lord Ricketts, who was the UK's ambassador in Paris from 2012 to 2016, said the staunchly pro-EU Mr Macron was unlikely to give ground and questioned the Government's plan of trying to deal directly with national leaders instead of the European Commission in Brussels.
He said Mr Macron 'doesn't believe in softening' the position on Brexit as 'he is a passionate pro-European'.
 
Furious Labour MPs have demanded Boris Johnson apologise after he said the 'best way to honour the memory' of Jo Cox is for Parliament to 'get Brexit done' as John Bercow condemned the 'toxic' House of Commons. 
The Prime Minister had also claimed the 'best way' for MPs to stay 'properly safe' is for them to help him deliver the UK's departure from the European Union on October 31. 
Mr Johnson made the comments during a fiery clash in the Commons last night as numerous MPs urged him to tone down his Brexit rhetoric as they suggested it was putting their lives at risk. 
This morning Mr Bercow pleaded with MPs on all sides to calm down as he said the atmosphere in the Commons was 'worse than any I've known in my 22 years in the House'. 
Meanwhile, Brendan Cox, Jo's widower, said he felt 'a bit sick' after hearing Mr Johnson's remarks and today he was asked how he believed his late wife might have responded. 
He said: 'She would have tried to take a generosity of spirit to it and thought about how in this moment you can step back from this growing inferno of rhetoric.'   
MPs today launched a bid to force the PM to apologise as they demanded - and were granted - an urgent question in the Commons on his remarks.
But Mr Johnson snubbed the request for him to face a grilling as he sent junior Cabinet Office minister Kevin Foster to answer questions on his behalf.
Mr Johnson chose instead to attend a private meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs in Parliament.  
Despite his absence, Labour MP Jess Phillips led calls for the PM to say sorry as she accused him of 'putting words in my mouth and in the mouth of my dead friend'. 
Rachel Johnson, the PM's sister, said her brother's remarks were 'tasteless'. 
Last night's debate in the Commons had exploded into acrimony after Mr Johnson appeared to dismiss MPs' safety concerns as 'humbug' as he repeatedly referred to an anti-No Deal law passed by Parliament earlier this month as the 'Surrender Act'. 
Opposition MPs responded to Mr Johnson's comments by claiming he has 'no moral compass of any kind' as they claimed he is 'totally unfit for office'. 
Members of Mr Johnson's Cabinet also hit out at the remarks as Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan said politicians needed to remember their words had an impact and Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said everyone must be 'mild in our language'. 
But James Cleverly, the chairman of the Conservative Party, defended the PM and suggested he had nothing to apologise for.  
Labour MP Ms Cox was murdered by a far-right terrorist two weeks before the EU referendum in 2016. 
MPs tried to drag Mr Johnson to the Commons today to answer questions about what he had said yesterday evening. 
Mr Bercow granted an application for an urgent question from Ms Phillips to ask the PM to 'reflect on his language' but Mr Johnson did not attend. 
Ms Phillips asked the PM's stand-in Mr Foster to tell him to 'apologise and to tell him that the bravest, strongest thing to say is sorry'.
'It will make him look good, it will not upset the people who want Brexit in this country if he acts for once like a statesman,' she said. 
Ms Phillips continued: 'Calling me names, putting words in my mouth and in the mouth of my dead friend makes me cross and angry, it makes me scared even, but I will not react, the Prime Minister wants me to react so I join in the chaos that keeps this hatred and fear on our streets.
John Bercow pleaded with MPs on all sides to calm down this morning as the fallout continued from Boris Johnson's combative performance in the House of Commons last night.
The Commons Speaker said the House 'did itself no credit' in the angry exchanges which followed the Prime Minister's statement on Wednesday night.
As MPs returned to the Commons today, Mr Bercow said: 'There was an atmosphere in the chamber worse than any I've known in my 22 years in the House.
'On both sides passions were inflamed, angry words uttered, the culture was toxic.'
He told them to 'lower the decibel level and to try to treat each other as opponents, not as enemies'.
'I simply ask the minister... who's notable by his bravery today, I ask him to ask the Prime Minister to meet with me in private with his advisers and some of his colleagues, and my friends from Jo's family so we can explain our grief and try to make him understand why it is so abhorrent that he has chosen a strategy to divide rather than to lead.' 
Mr Foster said that 'ultimately it is for everyone to think about what they say and how they have contributed'. 
Some Tories have pushed back at the fury expressed by Labour MPs. 
Steve Baker, the chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘What Boris Johnson has said is entirely defensible and reasonable, but the hypocrisy that is going on here is absolutely rank.
‘I am a person who has sat through now, over nine years of debates in the House of Commons and in particular opposition day debates and the sheer hysteria and provocation, the pejorative language used by Labour MPs, throughout those opposition day debates, has been a cause of, frankly, despair to me.
‘I have been insulted, injured, really driven to the depths of sorrow over what they have said, quite unreasonably.'
But Mr Johnson's sister said the remarks made by the PM were 'tasteless' and that repeated references to the 'Surrender Act' were 'highly reprehensible'.  
'I think it was a very tasteless way of referring to the memory of a murdered MP,' she told Sky News. 
Mr Johnson addressed the Commons last night after Parliament resumed following the Supreme Court's bombshell ruling that his prorogation was unlawful. 
There were angry clashes from the start as Mr Johnson refused to apologise for suspending Parliament as he maintained his position that while he respected the court's ruling he disagreed with it.
Anger levels then spiked after Labour MP Paula Sheriff said the PM 'should be absolutely ashamed of himself' over his Brexit rhetoric as she pointed to Ms Cox's commemorative shield which is on the wall in the Commons chamber. 
Ms Sheriff said: 'We stand here under the shield of our departed friend. Many of us in this place are subject to death threats and abuse every single day. 
'Let me tell the Prime Minister that they often quote his words—Surrender Act, betrayal, traitor—and I, for one, am sick of it.' 
She told the PM politicians 'must moderate our language' but he replied: 'I have to say that I have never heard such humbug in all my life.' 
He also said the 'best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox, and indeed to bring this country together, would be, I think, to get Brexit done' 
And responding to concerns about MPs' safety, he said: 'Believe me: the best way to ensure that every parliamentarian is properly safe and to dial down the current anxiety in this country is to get Brexit done. I hope that he will support us.'
Mr Johnson's comments prompted howls of anger as a number of MPs walked out of the chamber. 
Ms Phillips had tweeted last night: 'I'm not scared of an election, I am scared I might be hurt or killed.'
Meanwhile, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson attacked the PM and said that she had just had to report a 'threat against my child' to the police as she said 'we must be able to find a way to conduct ourselves better'. 
But the PM's combative performance prompted applause and a standing ovation from many Tory MPs. 
Dominic Grieve, the former Tory MP who was stripped of the whip after backing a bid to block a No Deal Brexit, said he found the standing ovation given to Mr Johnson 'terrifying'.
Remainer MPs are at loggerheads over whether they should try to strengthen an anti-No Deal law designed to force Boris Johnson to delay Brexit.  
Under the so-called Benn Act passed at the start of the month Mr Johnson will have to go to Brussels on October 19 and beg for a three-month Article 50 extension if he has not agreed an exit deal with the EU by then.
But with the PM insisting Brexit will still happen on Halloween, with or without a deal, Remainers fear he is preparing to break the law. 
Some are worried that the current legislation to force his hand might may not be strong enough and want to make it 'bulletproof'.
The Lib Dems are leading the charge and want to bring forward new rebel legislation which would force the PM to ask for a delay long before the middle of October - perhaps as early as next week. 
But 21 ex-Tory MPs who were stripped of the party whip after backing the bid to block No Deal are against tampering with the existing law. 
He told ITV: 'I find it terrifying actually. This is somebody who is a pathological liar, one can watch him do it in the chamber of the House of Commons. 
 'I agree with Jess [Phillips]. He has no moral compass of any kind at all and it was quite deliberate, what he was saying was 'you do as I say and you won't be subject to death threats'. 
'That was the impact of that comment. It is total populism.'
Ms Morgan also expressed discontent at Mr Johnson's remarks as she tweeted: 'I know the PM is aware of & sympathetic about the threats far too many of us have received because I shared with him recently the threats I am getting. 
'But at a time of strong feelings we all need to remind ourselves of the effect of everything we say on those watching us.'
Mr Rees-Mogg told the Commons after the PM's statement: 'What has happened to other Members, particularly on social media, has been deeply unpleasant and troubling. 
'We all have a responsibility to be mild in our language when we are speaking in this House or outside.' 
In an unexpected move the Equality and Human Rights Commission weighed into the row this afternoon. 
David Isaac, the chairman of the watchdog, said: 'Words have consequences and after the referendum we wrote to all political parties reminding them of the need for respectful debate at all times - no matter how difficult the issues. 
'Sadly this has not happened. I urge all our politicians to show the best version of themselves so all views are heard.
'Hard line rhetoric and gestures only serve to create a more polarised society and will not heal the divisions that exist in our country.'
Mr Cox told ITV's Good Morning programme today that the 'tone of our politics is descending into the gutter'. 
He said: 'It was one of those moments where you're shocked. I have to say I didn't expect Jo's name to be used in that way. It made me feel sick.'
He urged MPs to 'remember what Jo always said which is we do have more in common than that which divides us'. 
Ms Cox's sister, Kim Leadbeater, told Sky News that she had been left 'dumbstruck' as she watched the Commons clashes. 
'I think the PM needs to think very carefully about the language he uses,' she said.
Mr Cleverly defended Mr Johnson's comments as he denied that the PM labelled Opposition MPs 'traitors'.
'The accusations thrown at him yesterday were deeply unfair,' he said.
'He was accused of calling people traitors - he has never done that.'
Mr Cleverly admitted that Mr Johnson had used the word 'betray' during yesterday's debate. 
Diane Abbott, shadow home secretary, said the performance by the Prime Minister in the Commons had put off MPs from offering cross-party support to a Brexit deal.
'I have spoken to people who might want to consider a Boris Johnson deal but that is over,' she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to force Britain into the Irish border backstop if it does not give up access to UK fishing waters.
Mr Macron said maintaining the customs union would be used as 'leverage' in the next phase of talks on the final UK-EU trade deal. 
Prime Minister Theresa May has insisted Britain will leave the customs union, which is essential to striking trade deals, after Brexit.
But under the divorce deal agreed in Brussels today this can only happen if there is an alternative for keeping open the Irish border. 
If France refuses to agree a trade deal because of a dispute over fishing, entering the backstop - which is hated by Brexiteers, Unionists and the DUP - could be inevitable.
Mr Macron's intervention sparked a ferocious backlash from both sides of the Brexit divide.  
At a press conference in Brussels today, Mr Macron said: 'An agreement assumes that each side promotes its position.
Brexit passed a major milestone in Brussels today as EU leaders agreed the negotiated divorce deal.
This is what the next steps are: 
Tomorrow, November 26: Theresa May will make statement to MPs on the summit and launch her push to win the 'meaningful vote' on the deal. She can expect another furious response from MPs. 
Around December 11: The meaningful vote itself. This is the absolutely crucial moment and could make or break the Prime Minister and her deal. MPs will vote after a debate that could last as long as five days. 
If the vote carries, Mrs May survives and Brexit is on track as she plans. If she loses, she could resign.  
December 13-14: The next EU summit. If the deal has been rejected by MPs, Mrs May could use this to try and secure new concessions. 
January 2019: The European Parliament is due to vote on the deal - but will only do so if it has been agreed in the House of Commons.
March 29, 2019: Exit day. This is written in law so unless there is a dramatic shift Britain will leave the EU, deal or no deal.  
'We as 27 have a clear position on fair competition, on fish, on the subject of the EU's regulatory autonomy, and that forms part of our lines for the future relationship talks, which is a lever, because it is in our mutual interest to have this future relationship.
'I can't imagine that the desire of Theresa May or her supporters is to remain for the long term in a customs union, but to define a proper future relationship which resolves this problem.'
He added: 'It is leverage because it is important as to our future relationship and I do not understand that Mrs May and those who support her very much wanted to stay in the Customs Union, they would rather favour new rules.' '
A joint EU statement set out how fisheries was a 'priority' in the next phase of talks.
It said: 'A fisheries agreement is a priority issue, and should be based on principles of reciprocal access and existing quotas.'
A future fisheries agreement 'must be concluded well before the end of the transition period' after Brexit, which should last until the end of 2020 but may be extended for up to two years, the statement said.
'For us access to British waters is a priority,' said a source close to French President Emmanuel Macron.
Brexiteer Ross Thomson said: 'There can be no ifs and no buts on returning full sovereignty over our waters.
'We must decide who fishes in our waters, when they fish and what they fish. Fishing is still a clear red line for me which is why I cannot support the PM’s deal.'
Remain supporter Sarah Wollaston said: 'So many false promises were made to the fishing community by Brexiteers.
'Future Framework spells out the Brexit reality that access & quotas will be “in the context of the overall economic partnership”.
'This is not what fisherman were led to expect.'
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the EU position could not be 'squared' with promises made by Scottish Tories to fishing communities.  
The divorce agreement approved by EU leaders on Sunday assures that European fishermen will retain access to British territorial waters during the transition period.
During the transition, Britain will continue to apply EU rules and contribute to its budget, but without participating in its decision-making.
Theresa May told MPs to do their 'duty' and vote for the Brexit deal as she promised she will fight 'with all my heart' to get it through the Commons. 
After an historic Brussels summit to seal the deal, the Prime Minister said the deal took back control of 'our laws, borders and money' while protecting jobs and security - meaning it was in the 'national interest'.
At a press conference to mark the landmark day on the road to Brexit, Mrs May began a two week battle to persuade fractious MPs the deal was the best available - but the PM's hopes look bleak.
Mrs May told her MPs: 'I think we have a duty as a Parliament ... to deliver Brexit.'
The Prime Minister repeated her vow to never allow a second referendum on Brexit while she is No 10 - but again swerved questions about whether she will quit if her deal is voted down in Parliament.
The Brexit deal comes in two parts, both of which were signed off in Brussels today:
The Withdrawal Agreement is a 585-page legal text that sets out the terms of the UK's departure.
Among its contents are arrangements for the contentious Northern Ireland backstop and the £39 billion 'divorce bill'. 
It is a full blown treaty which must be written into both UK and EU law to a apply.
There is also a political declaration agreed between Britain and the EU.  
The 26-page document sets out a framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU.
It outlines a spectrum of possible trade deals and what each option might mean. The final deal will be subject to years more negotiation in Brussels.    
Echoing the leadership of the EU, Mrs May insisted that what she was bringing home was the 'best deal possible' and warned her rebels that voting no would 'open the door to even more division and uncertainty'.
She said: 'Crucially it is a deal that delivers on the vote. I think this is so important to me: the people voted for Brexit ... it's, in a sense, a duty for their politicians, who asked them to make that choice, to then deliver on that choice.'
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned MPs the Brexit divorce is the 'only deal possible' today as Brussels signed off on the plans. Effectively telling MPs to take it or leave it, Mr Juncker used his press conference to underline Mrs May's fight in the Commons.
Mr Juncker said anyone hoping to vote down the deal and get a better deal 'will be disappointed', while EU leaders put on a united front to insist there was nothing else on the table.
EU Council President Donald Tusk insisted Britain and the EU would 'remain friends until the end of days and one day longer' as the bloc agreed the terms of its first ever exit.
The 27 national leaders met for just 40 minutes today to rubber stamp both the divorce deal and the political declaration outlining a future trade deal. They claimed Brexit is a 'tragedy' and 'not a moment for celebration'.
The divorce documents have triggered a furious row in the UK and an attempt to oust Mrs May but the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier insisted MPs must 'take responsibility' and vote the deal today.
He said that after 20-months of painstaking talks, the controversial divorce deal had to be agreed as the basis for rebuilding trust between Britain and Europe.
Mrs May's troubles have been escalated by a row over Gibraltar as she was forced to hand Spain the chance to claim a victory over the Rock. Spain's PM Pedro Sanchez claimed today 'we all lose with Brexit but Spain wins on Gibraltar'.
As she begins her new battle, Mrs May's hopes of winning the Commons vote in around two weeks look bleak. The package is opposed by more than 90 of her own MPs, her DUP allies and the Opposition Labour Party.
The Prime Minister has vowed to take her deal out to the country in a bid to persuade MPs but since it was published opposition has mounted rather than diminished.
The DUP hinted today at backing for an alternative deal while former PM Tony Blair insisted the widespread loathing of the package fuelled demands for a new public vote.
Following today's summit, speaking on his LBC show, Nigel Farage condemned the deal.
He said: 'I've decided on balance, no. I'm going to vote against it.'
'This deal is an absolute disaster,' he said.
'It's a betrayal of everything we voted for in Brexit and if the risk was that the other side could force us to vote again, right now I think that risk is worth it.'
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'This is a bad deal for the country.
'It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds. It gives us less say over our future, and puts jobs and living standards at risk.
'That is why Labour will oppose this deal in Parliament. We will work with others to block a no-deal outcome, and ensure that Labour's alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted Mrs May could be doomed if she was defeated.
Pressed by the BBC's Andrew Marr on whether the Government could collapse, he said: 'It's not possible to rule out anything.' 
Theresa May's task of getting her Brexit deal past the House of Commons is looking near-impossible as opposition mounts.
The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs will happen on December 11 and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - as well as being the key to Mrs May' fate as PM.
But despite opinion polls suggesting the public might be coming round to her deal, there is little sign of a shift among politicians.
Remainers have been stepping up calls for a second referendum in the wake of Sam Gyimah's resignation as universities minister over the weekend - while Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have accused Mrs May of betrayal.   
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part.
The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, over 100 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No.
This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185.
This is how the House of Commons might break down:
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The Government (plus various hangers-on)
Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides.
There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'.
How many of them are there? 178.
What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss.
Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote
Who are they: The most hard line of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker.
How many of them are there: 26
What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Other Brexiteers in the ERG
Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson.
Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her.
How many of them are there? Around 50.
What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal.
This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic.
The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Remain including the People's Vote supporters
Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee.
How many of them are there: Maybe around 10.
What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no.
A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister.
Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists
Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy.
There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else.
How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal.
What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it.
It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work.
Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
The DUP
Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government.
They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union.
How many of them are there? 10.
What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea.
Labour Loyalists
Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders.
How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do.
What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum.
Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process.
The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal.
Labour Rebels
Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point.
How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal.
What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
Other Opposition parties
Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents.
How many of them are there? About 60 MPs.
How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. 
Emmanuel Macron was beaten down and left 'isolated' by fellow EU leaders after they knocked back his bid to punish Britain and keep a No Deal Brexit - but he still tried to claim credit for the Halloween delay, it was revealed today.
The French President's climbdown came after six hours of dramatic talks in which he fought against giving the UK the long extension favoured by a majority of member states.
Macron was smiling and appeared to wink as he arrived in Brussels as sources claimed he was ready to 'humiliate' the Prime Minister.
But by 2am, after a bruising meeting lasting at least six hours, the much more serious-looking Frenchman was forced to climbdown after a series of rows with other leaders including Angela Merkel.
At one point EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker rounded on Mr Macron, accusing him of playing hardball just to play to his voters at home and fumed: 'We are just sorting out your domestic problems at this stage,' according to one diplomat.
Afterwards he tried to save face by trying to take responsibility for the new Halloween deadline for Brexit saying he pushed against a long extension 'for the collective good'.
The six-month extension will be accompanied by a technical review in June - described as a 'sop' for the French President Emmanuel Macron after calling for punishing conditions with 'behaviour reviews'. 
Macron had initially insisted on an extension end date of May, with the possibility of No Deal if Britain had not resolved the Brexit impasse by then.
He then dug his heels in for June 30 - the date requested by prime minister Theresa May.
However, after being rounded on by EU leaders, a compromise end date of October 31 was agreed.
He was eventually pressured to back down only after fellow leaders agreed to insert a 'review clause' triggered on June 30 to consider whether Britain is keeping to its pledge not to wreck EU decision-making from within.
The agreement strikes a compromise between member states who wanted a longer extension until the end of the year or early 2020, and those who favoured a shorter delay.
One diplomat said: 'He was the only one holding out for a short extension. Everybody else was flexible. He was on his own and left isolated.
'He was holding out for June 30 for a long time. The June review clause was a face-saver for Macron.'
A handful of around four other countries also wanted a short extension, but were more open to compromise. The majority wanted a longer extension.
Other EU leaders were said to be furious with Mr Macron's hard line stance as he refused to cave and talks ran into the early hours. 
Earlier in the night another diplomat said: 'He's in a bit of a schizophrenic situation - his domestic audience demands he's tough on Britain for historic reasons but France is among the most-hit in any no-deal Brexit.
'It will take hours before we pull him down from his tree.'
EU officials as well as leaders were also divided.
During last night's Brussels summit dinner Michel Barnier, the EU's lead Brexit negotiator, broke ranks with EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, who favoured a long extension along with around 17 other member states.
Mr Barnier sided instead with Mr Macron. According to a senior official, he said: 'Britain can always avoid No Deal. It is Britain's choice. Britain can ratify the withdrawal agreement or revoke Article 50.'
Sources said around 17 countries were in favour of a long extension with the remainder more keen on a short delay.
However, the latter group were said to be open to a longer extension, with Mr Macron the most hard line and against a lengthier delay without stronger guarantees Britain cannot disrupt EU decision-making.
Last night Malta's prime minister Joseph Muscat tweeted: 'A Brexit extension until 31 October is sensible since it gives time to UK to finally choose its way. The review in June will allow [the EU Council] to take stock of the situation.'
Earlier in the night Mr Macron had threatened to veto no extra guarantees were given that the UK could not wreck EU decision-making.
The decision had to be unanimously by all member states.
Earlier in the night a French presidential source said a No Deal was preferable to allowing a long extension.
They said: 'A long extension without serious guarantees would not allow France to agree to it. That is not the case with the text that is on the table. The default position is that a dysfunctional EU is worse than no deal.'
France did, however, help secure changes to the conditions on Britain not to sabotage EU decisions.
Draft summit conclusions drawn up beforehand stated that during the extension 'the United Kingdom shall facilitate the achievement of the Union's tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union's objectives'.
But last night extra words were bolted on, saying: 'In particular when participating in the decision-making processes of the Union.'
They were also beefed-up to say member states and the EU Commission will be able to 'meet separately at all levels' without Britain in the room for matters other than Brexit.
As EU leaders discussed the extension over dinner Mrs May retreated to the British residence a few miles away to dine with her team.
They gorged on warm scallop salad, cod with brown shrimps and iced macadamia nut parfait while Mrs May waited for them at the British residence two miles away, where Mrs May tucked into asparagus with a crispy egg, roast fillet of lamb with mint sauce and treacle tart with yoghurt ice cream.
Austria and Belgium were said to be siding with Mr Macron at the outset.
However, The Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Hungary were among those open to a longer extension.
Admitting he would be 'impatient' with Mrs May as he arrived at the summit, Mr Macron said: 'We have a European renaissance to run and I don't want Brexit to come and block us on this. It is with great impatience that I will listen to Theresa May but nothing should be taken for granted.'
Mrs May gave her speech and took questions from the EU27 for just over an hour before leaving.
Sources said she did a 'decent job' and set out a 'clear narrative' but in the end could not convince them she would get a Brexit deal agreed with MPs by her June 30 deadline.
In particular, she was unable to say whether cross-party talks with Labour for a potentially softer Brexit would be successful or not.
 
Theresa May is facing the threat of Cabinet meltdown today as ministers clashed openly over a 'Plan B' for Brexit.
In the wake of the catastrophic defeat on her deal, the Prime Minister faces a desperate battle to avoid a civil war between Remainers and Eurosceptics in her senior team. 
But in a rare piece of good news for No10, she defeated a no confidence vote called by Jeremy Corbyn by 325 votes to 306.
Speaking in the Commons  moments after the result was announced, said said she will hold meetings with party leaders on Brexit tonight.
Her effective deputy David Lidington has been put in charge of the charm offensive to try to forge a way forward on Brexit.
But the premier came out fighting this afternoon as she insisted the UK will still leave the EU at the end of March, and again ruled out staying in a customs union with the bloc. 
Justice Secretary David Gauke appeared to contradict Mrs May by warning it was no longer possible for the government to 'box ourselves in' with red lines such as on the customs union.
And Chancellor Philip Hammond is said to have suggested to business leaders in a phone call last night that Article 50 would be extended and the government was entering a 'new era' in its approach.   
The Tory splits deepened after a Cabinet meeting yesterday where Remain-leaning ministers including Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and Mr Gauke again urged Mrs May to call 'indicative votes' in the Commons on how to go forward with Brexit. 
A Cabinet source told MailOnline a more hawkish group led by Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Gavin Williamson and Andrea Leadsom gave the idea a 'good kicking'. Another said the proposal was 'heavily sat on'. 
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis also waded in by warning that party activists would not tolerate Mrs May making overtures to Labour MPs for a soft Brexit.
In another sign that Mrs May's rule over the party is weakening, defence minister Tobias Ellwood tweeted that no-deal Brexit was now off the table and Parliament was 'in control'.   

The Cabinet has - just about - been able to unite around delivering Theresa May's Brexit deal.
But now that it has been trounced in the Commons, simmering tensions are coming to the boil.
Two distinct factions have been developing, with a Remain-leaning group pushing for a softer approach that reaches out to MPs across parties - and Brexiteers taking a more hawkish line.  
REMAINERS 
Philip Hammond 
Focused on avoiding economic fallout from Brexit and preventing a left-wing Corbyn administration, he is believed to regard both no-deal and failure to take the UK out of the EU as unacceptable.  
Stayed out of the row over 'indicative votes' but likely to side with the Remain faction on the need to protect business interests. 
Amber Rudd 
Before she was brought back into the Cabinet in November, Ms Rudd had aligned to the campaign for a second Brexit referendum.
Since then she has led calls for 'indicative votes' to be staged in Cabinet, and urged the government to rule out no-deal Brexit.    
Greg Clark
Has broken ranks to warn publicly that no deal would be a disaster, and suggested he will quit if it becomes government policy. 
David Gauke  
Another prepared to quit if the government goes for no-deal, and has hinted that he wants joining a permanent customs union to become government policy. 
Karen Bradley
A long-standing ally of Mrs May, she usually follows the PM's lead but is generally on the side of the Remainers. 
 BREXITEERS 
Jeremy Hunt
A staunch Remainer in the referendum, the Foreign Secretary has since been reborn as an ardent Brexiteer - with many speculating about his leadership ambitions. 
Led the 'kicking' for the 'indicative votes' proposal, and was against ruling out no deal.
Sajid Javid 
Another favourite for the Tory leadership, has taken a practical approach but might support a 'managed' no-deal Brexit above delaying or cancelling Article 50. 
Michael Gove 
Having spearheaded the Leave campaign with Boris Johnson, has been remarkably loyal to May's deal since wavering over quitting in November.
Does not want a no-deal, but is adamant Brexit must happen and deeply opposed to a second referendum. 
Gavin Williamson
Vehemently opposed to the 'indicative votes' idea, and close to the DUP, Mr Williamson has tended to side with the Brexiteers. He also harbours leadership ambitions which would be helped by a tough stance. 
Andrea Leadsom  
One of the original Brexiteers in Cabinet, adamant that there must be no delays and would back no deal over cancelling or holding a referendum. 
The PM has been left scrambling to find a way forward after suffering the biggest Commons loss ever for a government, with an extraordinary 118 Tories rebelling against the plan. 
More than a third of the parliamentary party, joined forces with Labour to sink Mrs May's withdrawal agreement by 432 votes to 202 - a majority of 230 - on a dramatic day at Westminster. 
Moments after the result was announced Mr Corbyn announced he would table a no-confidence motion, hoping to force another general election.
But their bid to seize power failed as the PM survived the vote with a majority of 19 after hardline Tory Brexiteers and her DUP allies backed her in the crunch showdown.  
In the House this afternoon, Mr Corbyn challenged Mrs May to agree to a permanent customs union with the EU, and rule out no-deal Brexit.
But Mrs May shot back: 'There are actually two ways of avoiding no-deal. The first is to agree a deal. And the second would be to revoke Article 50. 
'Now that would mean staying in the European Union, failing to respect the result of the referendum - and that is something that this government will not do.'   
The defiant stance came as the EU and MPs heaped pressure on Mrs May to change tack, with calls for another national vote and Michel Barnier urging her to drop 'red lines'. 
Mrs May's escape routes appear to be closing, with the EU signalling a tough line. The bloc's chief negotiator Mr Barnier goaded the premier by demanding she respond by abandoning her long-standing negotiation positions, such as ending free movement, ruling out a permanent customs union, and ending the jurisdiction of EU law. 
While saying he was 'sad' the deal had been rejected, Mr Barnier suggested the defeat was an 'opportunity' to stay more closely aligned with the EU.    
Interviewed on the BBC's Politics Live, Mr Gauke dropped a heavy hint that he wanted the government to back a permanent customs union.
'I think the position today is given what happened in the House of Commons yesterday when we were defeated very heavily, the Prime Minister rightly said we need to engage across parliament, we need to do that constructively,' he said.
'When it comes to a customs union, our principle is that we are in favour of leaving the customs union so we can enter into trade agreements and no longer trade on WTO terms with third countries.
'But at this stage what we are doing is engaging with parliamentary opinion.' 
Pressed on whether leaving the customs union was still a 'red line', Mr Gauke said: 'I don't think we can today be boxing ourselves in, what we ned to be doing is engaging across Parliament, seeing what ideas emerge where the support is for those particular ideas.
'And at that point we need to make an assessment – is there something that is both negotiable with the European Union and something which could have a majority support in the House of Commons.
'Today is about making an assessment of where the numbers are.'
The PM's spokesman played down the Cabinet split on the customs union in the wake of Mr Gauke's comments and insisted Mrs May's policy had not changed. 
He said: 'His starting point is that there are advantages to being outside the customs and that is the Government's policy.'
He also denied that the PM had softened her policy on extending Article 50 and delaying Brexit.
He said: 'It is the government's policy to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019 – that is of course the Government's longstanding position.
'What she was doing was responding to the suggestion of others that if Parliament were unable to make up its mind or some other situation to arise some people have a perception it is the unilateral ability of the Government to be able to extend Article 50 – that is not the case. It would require the ratification and agreement of the other 27 member states.'  
Mrs Leadsom said this morning that the PM would 'not necessarily be looking for new ideas that no-one has thought of before', but instead 'seeking a consensus, a fresh initiative to find a solution that is negotiable with the EU and that would command a majority in the House of Commons'.
166 - Labour goverment in 1924 
The largest government defeat in modern times occurred on October 8 1924, when the minority Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald lost a vote by 364 votes to 198.
The vote was on an amendment put forward by the Liberal Party to set up a select committee to investigate the Government's decision to drop criminal proceedings against JR Campbell, editor of the Communist newspaper Workers Weekly, which had recently published an article encouraging the armed forces to mutiny.
89 - Labour government in 1979 
On March 22 1979, in the last few weeks of the Labour government led by Jim Callaghan, MPs voted on a motion to annul the fees for a firearms certificate.
Although the numbers taking part were low, the Government lost by 115 to 26.
86 - Labour government in 1978
The largest post-war defeat where at least half of MPs took part. It happened on January 25 1978, when MPs voted by 204 to 118 on an opposition amendment to the Callaghan government's Scotland Devolution Bill.
The legislation had excluded Orkney and Shetland from the provisions of the Bill if they voted 'no' in a referendum.
But the Cabinet minister suggested Mrs May would not be reaching out to Mr Corbyn - branding him 'insincere' and not prepared to engage 'constructively'. 
'He has not put forward any specific constructive proposal and that is a problem, which is why the Prime Minister will be engaging right across the House with those who do have very sincerely held views but want to constructively deliver on what the vast majority of parliamentarians voted for,' Mrs Leadsom told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
Mr Hammond and Business Secretary Mr Clark used a private telephone call to tell business chiefs not to expect changes to the legal Brexit withdrawal text, but rather to the political declaration on future relations with the EU, according to Government sources.
Mr Hammond told those on the call the Government would not put any 'obstacles' in the way of a plan by Tory MP Nick Boles to give senior backbenchers a role in finding a solution to the deadlock, according to the Financial Times. The plan could see the Article 50 process delayed beyond March.
'We have to reach out to MPs in the Commons first,' the Chancellor is reported to have said. 'There is a large majority in the Commons that is opposed to no-deal.'
Other business leaders said Mr Hammond had said the government was entering a 'new era' in its Brexit policy. 
In another extraordinary breach of government discipline, defence minister Tobias Ellwood tweeted: 'REALITY CHECK: Following defeat - Parliament is now in control. 
'It has no appetite for 'no deal' and consensus is likely to lead to a lighter Brexit than offered via PM's deal. Or no Brexit.
'Defaulting to WTO terms was not in our Party's manifesto and not in Britain's interests.'
Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg this morning, Mr Barnier said the deal on the table was still the best available unless Mrs May dropped her red lines.
'If the United Kingdom chooses to let its red lines change in future, and that it takes this choice for its advantage of the ambition of going beyond a simple but not negligible free trade accord, then the European Union would be ready immediately to ... respond favorably,' he said. 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel also heaped pressure on Mrs May, saying it was down to her to propose solutions.
'We still have time to negotiate but we're now waiting on what the prime minister proposes,' Mrs May told reporters.
The margin of 230 in the vote on Mrs May's deal was by far the largest government defeat on record, higher than the 166 votes by which the minority Labour government lost a division in 1924. 
Cheering could be heard by crowds of protesters gathered outside Parliament as the news filtered through - while the EU expressed shock.
Rising to her feet moments after the drubbing, a clearly shaken Mrs May said the government will 'listen' and announced she would fight a no-confidence vote today - effectively daring Mr Corbyn to call one. 
He immediately accepted the challenge, saying she had reached the 'end of the line' and a general election was now essential.   
Mrs May jibed that while it was 'clear' the House did not support her deal, there was no clarity about what MPs did back. 
'It is clear that the House does not support this deal. But tonight's vote tells us nothing about what it does support. Nothing about how - or even if - it intends to honour the decision the British people took in a referendum Parliament decided to hold,' she said.
'People, particularly EU citizens who have made their home here and UK citizens living in the EU, deserve clarity on these questions as soon as possible. Those whose jobs rely on our trade with the EU need that clarity.' 
Downing Street sources said in the wake of the devastating result, which threatens to plunge the Brexit process further into chaos, it would be reaching out to 'senior Parliamentarians' in a bid to find a way forward. 
The pound rose sharply against the US dollar and euro, as markets seemingly concluded that the UK's departure from the EU had become less likely to happen. 
Remainers and Brexiteers were jubilant about the rout, with Mr Johnson saying it was even larger than he had expected and demanding the Irish border backstop is dropped. 
Pro-EU factions seized on the outcome to push for a second referendum, with Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon hailing the setback for the government, and the Lib Dems saying it was the 'beginning of the end of Brexit'. 
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has called on Tory MPs who 'believe in Brexit' to be brave and resist the Article 50 leaving date of March 29 being extended - and urged them to dump Mrs May as PM and replace her with a Brexiteer calling it a Neville Chamberlain moment. 
Assuming she survives the no-confidence vote, Mrs May has until January 21 to set out a Plan B, with the clock ticking on the scheduled date of Brexit in just 73 days' time on March 29.
Sir Oliver Letwin - one of the architects of a plan by senior Tories to give MPs a greater say in the process - warned she would have to be more flexible.
'She put down right at the beginning of this process what she called red lines,' he told the BBC.
'This is not a terrain in which you can have things you will definitely never do. You have to sit down and talk and come up with a consensus. That means being much more flexible than we have been so far.'
Steve Baker, one of the leaders of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, said Mrs May must now abandon the controversial Northern Ireland 'backstop' intended to prevent the return of a hard border with the republic.
'We are not going to be able to agree to the backstop. It is obvious when you look at the vote last night. There is no getting away from it. That was an absolutely devastating blow,' he said. 
Mr Speaker, the House has spoken and the Government will listen. It is clear that the House does not support this deal. Tonight's vote tells us nothing about what it does support. Nothing about how or even if it intends to honour the decision the British people took in a referendum Parliament decided to hold.
People, particularly European Union citizens who made their home here and people from the UK living in the EU, deserve clarity on these questions as soon as possible.
Those whose jobs rely on trade with the EU need that clarity.
First, we need to confirm whether this Government still enjoys the confidence of the House. I believe it does but, given the scale and importance of tonight's vote, it's right others have the chance to test that question if they wish to do so.
I can therefore confirm that, if the Official Opposition table a confidence motion this evening in the form required for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the Government will give time to debate that motion tomorrow. [Jeremy Corbyn later did so, with a vote to be held today.]
Second, if the House confirms confidence in this Government I will then hold meetings with my colleagues, our confidence-and-supply partner the DUP and senior Parliamentarians from across the House to identify what would be required to secure the backing of the House. The Government will approach these meetings in a constructive spirit, but given the urgent need to make progress, we must focus on ideas that are genuinely negotiable and have sufficient support in this House.
If these meetings yield such ideas, the Government will then explore them with the European Union.
I want to end by offering two reassurances. First, to those who fear Government strategy is to run down the clock to 29 March: This is not our strategy. I have always believed the best way forward is to leave in an orderly way with a good deal and have devoted most of the last two years negotiating such a deal.
We respect the will of the House [on the Grieve amendment for a 'Plan B'] and we will table an amendable motion on Monday.
My second reassurance is to British people who voted to leave the European Union in the referendum two-and-a-half years ago. I became PM immediately after the referendum and I believe it's my duty to deliver on their instruction and I intend to do so.
Every day that passes without this issue being resolved means more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancour.
The Government has heard what this House has said tonight but I ask members on all sides of the house to listen to the British people who want this issue settled. And to work with the Government to do just that.
MPs last night voted on Theresa May's Brexit plan in what was set to be the most  important decision taken by Parliament since the Second World War.
The PM suffered a catastrophic defeat in the crunch vote, with MPs seizing on her weakness to push their own plans for Britain's future with the EU.
Politicians are deeply divided over whether Brexit should be soft or hard, and if the UK should go for a Norway-style deal or a Canada plus plan.
But the terms and arguments deployed by MPs are often steeped in jargon and bamboozling to the ordinary Brit.
Here are some of the things that will help you to finally understand the Brexit debate rocking Britain and its Parliament.
1. Plan B – what is it and why do we need one? 
Theresa May has struck a deal with the EU - but MPs voted it down by a massive majority last night, meaning she will have to come up with a Plan B.
And last week MPs passed an amendment put forward by Tory Remainer Dominic Grieve which gives the PM just three working days to come up with her new plan.
It means she will be hauled back to the Commons on Monday to spell out what she will do next.
The PM has so far refused to say what her Plan B will be, but she will be under huge pressure to rule out a no deal Brexit and say what direction  she plans to take the talks in next.
Remainers will want her to go for a Norway-style deal, which will keep the UK in the single market and therefore free movement, or a second referendum.
While Brexiteers will push for the PM to go for a Canada-style free deal which will take Britain fully out of the EU's customs union and single market.
2. The Remainer plot - who is behind it and how would it work?


A  group of Tory Remainers have launched a plot to try to take over Brexit talks if the PM cannot come up with a plan in three days.
Tory MP Nick Boles said that if this happens the Liaison Committee - a committee of 32 senior MPs which is dominated by Remainers - should take over the talks.
It is believed that Tory former ministers Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve are also involved in the plot.
This plan to sideline the Government would flout the rules of Parliament, but Commons Speaker John Bercow - who would have the final say on if this is possible or not - has made it clear he is happy to re-write the rules when it comes to Brexit.
No10 believe that if the plan succeeds then the MPs on the committee will push for a softer Brexit, for example to get a Norway-style deal which would keep the UK in the single market and therefore keeping free movement of people.
3. No deal - what would it mean for Britain and who opposes it?
Britain has been locked in talks with the EU to thrash out a Brexit deal, but if a new plan cannot be quickly agreed then the UK will crash out with no deal.
But many MPs have warned they will do whatever it takes to block a no deal - fearing this will send the UK's economy into meltdown. 
And a string of Cabinet ministers, including Greg Clark, Amber Rudd and David Gauke are expected to quit the Cabinet in fury if the PM then backs a no deal Brexit.
Economic experts have issued dire warnings about the fall-out of a no deal with the CBI saying it could slash 8 per cent off the size of the UK's economy and plunging the country into a massive recession.
But there is a group of die-hard Brexiteers in the Tory Party, including Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group, who say there is nothing to fear about a no deal Brexit.
This group sees going for a no deal Brexit as a step towards their goal of achieving a Canada plus style trade deal with the EU.
4. No Confidence Vote - what is it and who would back it? 
Jeremy Corbyn took up Theresa May's challenge to table a motion of no confidence in the government in the aftermath of the vote on the withdrawal deal.
The DUP - the Northern Irish party propping the Tories up in power - and hardline Tory Brexiteers all voted for her.
The PM survived the vote by with a majority of 19 - but if she had failed then it would have paved the way for another general election. 
5. General Election - how could one be called and who wants it?
Labour have been demanding an election, while many commentators believe that the Tories may end up having to call another election to break the political deadlock in Parliament.    
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, Mrs May would need the Commons to agree to hold another election - and many MPs will be dead-set against the plan which they fear would cost them their seats and could hand Mr Corbyn the keys to No10. 
But if the PM's deal is voted down and MPs cannot agree an alternative before the UK leaves on March 29 then an election may end up being called to bring in new MPs who may be able back a deal.
6. Second referendum – why might we need one and what would the question be? 
Many MPs are pushing for a second referendum to be held, less than three years after voters backed Brexit.
Remainers argue that with MPs unable to agree a deal among themselves then the only way forward is to send the question back to the public.
Many Labour MPs, the Lib Dems and a powerful group of Tory MPs all back a second referendum.
But Mrs May has repeatedly ruled out holding one while she is PM, and even backers of the plan are at loggerheads over what should be on the ballot paper.
Some Remainers believe voters should be offered a choice between the PM's plan and remaining in the EU on current terms, but some others believe a no deal Brexit on world trade organisation terms should be offered.
7. Who is Gareth Johnson, the latest Tory to quit the government?
Tory MP Gareth Johnson quit as a whip whose job it is to convince his fellow Conservative MPs to back the PM's plan - so he could oppose the deal.
He is the latest in a long line of Tory MPs who have resigned as aides and ministers to voice their objections to her blueprint.
The MP for Dartford has a strongly Leave-supporting seat, and he was appointed an assistant whip, one of the most junior ranks, in November last year.
Sources said he had been 'desperate' to get into government, but pointed out that his voters were overwhelmingly Brexit-backing.  
Resigning today, he said he was  putting his 'loyalty to the country above loyalty to the government'.   
Theresa May caved into David Davis today by adding a 2022 'end date' to her Irish border compromise plan - but the UK could still be tied to EU customs rules for an extra year.
The Prime Minister agreed to rewrite her controversial 'backstop' proposal after the Brexit Secretary dramatically threatened to quit.
The text finally published by the government this afternoon says the UK 'expects' the fallback arrangements to expire by the end of 2021 'at the latest'.
However, that represents another year lashed to EU rules after the end of the mooted transition period in December 2020. Eurosceptics pointed out that the new wording stops short of setting an absolute deadline.
Downing Street was also unable to say categorically that the UK would not pay into Brussels coffers during the customs extension. 
The PM's climbdown came after hours of chaotic crisis talks following a furious protest at the blueprint. She also met Boris Johnson and Liam Fox face-to-face in her Commons office.
The situation threatened to spiral out of control after Mr Davis took a stand over the text of a document circulated yesterday setting out the backstop proposals - which will govern future customs arrangements if the UK and Brussels fail to find a wider solution to the Northern Ireland border issue.
The original document proposed extending customs rule alignment, but did not include a specific end date.
Brexiteers said the omission implied a 'Hotel California' Brexit - as it would mean Britain 'checks out but never leaves'.
Scroll down for video 
Allies of Mr Davis had warned this morning that the standoff was 'extremely serious'.  Other Cabinet ministers, including Boris Johnson, were also angry but Mr Davis spearheaded opposition.
Mrs May was thought to have reassured Mr Davis after he was pictured grinning returning from the initial discussions this morning, and No10 said they were 'confident' he would stay in post.
But within minutes allies were warning that he might not yet have been won over and another meeting was called.
Soon afterwards, a source close to the Brexit Secretary said: 'Obviously there's been a back and forth on this paper, as there always is whenever the Government publishes anything. 
The divorce deal struck by Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker before Christmas called for a fallback option to guarantee a soft Irish border.
Both sides agreed that the 'backstop' would mean even if there was no wider trade deal, the UK would stay closely aligned enough to prevent the need for new infrastructure between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  
The inclusion of the clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
The EU then translated the 'backstop' into a legal text - but hardened it to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union and single market.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
The latest row is over the UK's counter-proposal, which has finally been published.
By that time other arrangements should be in place to prevent the need for the backstop, the document says.
However, it does not lay down an absolute end date, saying only that those are the timescales the government 'expects' to hit. 
The EU has already been dismissing the UK blueprint, saying that a backstop cannot be time-limited.
'The backstop paper has been amended and now expresses, in much more detail, the time limited nature of our proposal - something the PM and David Davis have always been committed to.' 
The paper issued by the government this afternoon stated that the backstop customs extension should only last for a maximum of a year after the mooted transition period ends in December 2020.
'The UK is clear that the temporary customs arrangement, should it be needed, should be time limited, and that it will be only in place until the future customs arrangement can be introduced,' it said.
'The UK is clear that the future customs arrangement needs to deliver on the commitments made in relation to Northern Ireland. 
'The UK expects the future arrangement to be in place by the end of December 2021 at the latest. There are a range of options for how a time limit could be delivered, which the UK will propose and discuss with the EU.' 
The PM’s spokeswoman insisted the UK would have the final say on when the backstop ended.
‘We are not going to sign up to anything that means that the EU can hold us in a temporary backstop when our customs arrangements are ready,' she said.
‘When our customs arrangements are ready the backstop must end.’
But asked directly if Britain could pay more money into the EU’s budget under the backstop plans, the spokeswoman refused to rule out the possibility.
She said: ‘We need to discuss the proposals with the EU.’ 
Tory MP Peter Bone insisted the UK should not be agreeing to any form of backstop. He said the EU had proven itself an 'impossible negotiating partner' and urged Mrs May to walk away from the talks.
'The time has come to say we will go on World Trade Organisation terms,' he said.
Even before the paper was released, the EU had insisted it was unacceptable.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar dismissed the idea of a time-limited backstop.
'The principle that is in the existing backstop that is supported by the 27 EU member states is that it applies at least until there is an alternative in place. It is not something that can be just time limited,' he told reporters in Dublin.
'It has to be as they say "all weather", it has to be applicable until such a time if and when there is a new relationship between the EU and UK that prevents a hard border.' 
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier welcomed the publication - but immediately made clear he did not believe it would work. 
'We will examine it with 3 questions: is it a workable solution to avoid a hard border?' he wrote on Twitter. 
Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan today risked plunging the Government into fresh Brexit turmoil when he said that Britain could hold a referendum on the exit deal. 
Remainers have called for another vote on the terms of the deal in the hope this would effectively force the PM to keep the UK in the EU single market and customs union.
Theresa May has insisted that another vote cannot be called it would bind her hands in negotiations with Brussels and leave Britain with a worse deal.
But speaking in Berlin today, Sir Alan  - Boris Johnson's deputy - suggested another vote could be held in comments that are likely to spark fury among Brexiteers, according to Bloomberg.
He said: 'It would, I suppose, just be possible to ask the people in a referendum if they liked the exit deal or not.
'It would not in reality offer people the option of reversing the original decision to leave the EU.'  
'Does it respect the integrity of the SM/CU? Is it an all-weather backstop?' 
The solution took the heat out of the Brexit War Cabinet meeting happening this afternoon. The agenda for the session does not include customs plans, and key players including Gavin Williamson and Sajid Javid are out of the country, but there were fears it could provide the setting for a major row. 
Last night Mr Davis refused to quell rumours that he was ready to resign over the issue, saying whether he remained in his post was a 'question for the Prime Minister'.
One friend said they thought it was '50-50' whether he would stay in his post. Another ally said the situation would have to be resolved one way or the other within hours. 'It is extremely serious. David is the negotiator and he has to be able to do it his way,' they told MailOnline.
Mrs May's discussions with her senior minister last night were described as 'very difficult'.
Eurosceptic Tory MP Nadine Dorries said: 'David Davis is ex SAS He’s trained to survive. He’s also trained to take people out.'   
If the Brexit Secretary had resigned it could have sparked an immediate vote of no confidence in Mrs May.
Mr Davis has form for staging dramatic walkouts - having unexpectedly resigned from David Cameron's shadow cabinet in 2008 over a civil liberties row.
Mrs May has pledged there will be no return to a 'hard border' but the EU and Dublin reject the UK's current proposals as unworkable and are demanding a 'backstop' that would operate after the end of the transition deal in 2020. 
The new proposal would effectively keep the UK in a customs union with the EU while a technological solution is found.
Brexiteers had demanded – and won – a pledge that the new backstop would be 'time limited'. 
But Brussels opposes the idea and yesterday's document from No10 said the backstop would not only be time limited but would also have to last 'unless and until' another solution is found.  
Downing Street was believed to fear that inserting a fixed end date would result in the EU immediately rejecting the plan, which would be highly embarrassing just weeks before a key Brussels summit. As a result Mrs May wanted to maintain 'constructive ambiguity' that could allow talks to move on.
However, the contradictory wording sparked fears of a fudge that could make it impossible for Britain to throw off the shackles of Brussels without the EU's approval.
One Cabinet source said: 'If the EU have to decide when we are ready to leave then we could trapped in purgatory forever. It is very bad news.'
Former Brexit minister David Jones - an ally of Mr Davis - said this morning that the proposal as it stood would not be acceptable to the 'mass' of the Conservative Party.
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
'It would tie us effectively into the EU's customs arrangement for an indefinite period,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
'It would be the Hotel California scenario - we'd have checked out but we wouldn't have left.'
Mr Jones added: 'We need to make sure that David Davis stays at the negotiating table.
'Anything that caused him to leave would be deeply regrettable and deeply damaging to the country.' 
No 10 insists it does not expect the backstop to ever be used, as new trade arrangements will make it unnecessary. 
But many Eurosceptics fear it will become the default position – giving the EU little incentive to reach a deal on trade.
The row added to tensions between Mrs May and her Brexit Secretary over delays in the publication of a 150-page White Paper setting out a vision for future relations with the EU. 
The stance led to bruising clashes in the Commons with Jeremy Corbyn, who mocked the Government's difficulties in establishing a clear position on Brexit.
Backbench Tory MPs also called for clarity on Brexit. Andrea Jenkyns, who quit the Government last month to speak out on Brexit, asked the PM: 'Has the time not come to reiterate to our EU friends, echoing the words of the Prime Minister herself, that no deal is better than a bad deal?'
Mr Davis also finds himself locked in a dispute with Brussels over post-Brexit security co-operation. 
In a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in Westminster last night, he accused the EU of putting the lives of its citizens at risk by rejecting UK plans.
Ministers want to continue British involvement in crime, security and counter-terror agencies after we leave and have promised to pay up. 
But negotiators are insisting the UK must be excluded from the European Arrest Warrant, criminal records sharing, the Galileo satellite project and other programmes. 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
Theresa May suffered a last-minute blow before her big Tory conference speech today as an MP broke cover to demand she quits. 
After a gathering in Birmingham marred by civil war over Brexit, the PM will insist she has a positive vision matching that of bitter rival Boris Johnson.
But shortly before she was due to take to her feet, long-term critic James Duddridge announced that he had sent a letter to the powerful Tory 1922 committee asking for a vote of no confidence.
Mr Duddridge said he was normally a 'loyalist' but said failing to remove Mrs May would consign the Tories to defeat at the hands of Jeremy Corbyn. He said the tipping point for him was Boris Johnson yesterday outlining an alternative Brexit plan in a noisy appearance at the Tory conference. 
If 48 of the letters are received by the 1922 committee's chairman Graham Brady he is obliged to call a formal vote of confidence in Mrs May.
In the speech she will point to a new 'global' immigration system, crackdown on property investors from abroad, and fuel duty freeze as evidence that she can make the country work for ordinary people.
The crucial conference speech could be a make or break moment for Mrs May as she battles to push through a Brexit deal.
In his letter Mr Duddridge blasted he was 'normally' a loyalist but said: 'However, there comes a point that blind loyalty is not the right way forward.
Some Tories lie publicly about having written letters demanding Theresa May be ousted as leader, a senior figure has revealed.
As chair of the 1922 committee, Graham Brady is obliged to call a vote of no confidence when he is notified in writing by 15 per cent of the party's MPs.
But at a fringe event in Birmingham yesterday, Mr Brady revealed he had seen politicians talking about sending him letters that he never received.
'There are instances where I will see a Conservative colleague on the television saying they have written a letter to me when they haven't,' he said. 
'I will see them on the television saying they had withdrawn the letter to me, when they haven't sent it in the first place. 
'You have to be careful what you believe.' 
'We need a strong leader, someone who believes in Brexit and someone to deliver what the electorate voted for.
'The Prime Minister seems incapable of doing this.'
Mr Duddridge said he knew of no MP who thought Mrs May would lead the next election campaign.
And he said: 'We will fail to cut through on issues other than Brexit until we are beyond Brexit, yet the can is kicked further and further down the road.
'I write this with heavy heart, however we now need a proper leadership election and to move on.'
Mrs May must put the blow aside as she makes today's speech. Like last year's event - when a prankster presented her with a fake P45 on stage and then she lost her voice - Mrs May has a heavy cold, but aides insist she is up to putting on a show.
Her address will inevitably be compared to the barn-storming appearance by Mr Johnson yesterday.
The former foreign secretary was cheered to the rafters by around 1,500 Tory rank-and-file as he condemned the PM's Chequers plan for Brexit as an 'outrage'. 
The speech was hailed by Eurosceptic MPs - but allies of Mrs May lashed back by accusing Mr Johnson of 'grotesque self-indulgence' and said he was putting 'ambition' over the national interest.
In her speech, Mrs May will call for 'decent, moderate, patriotic' Britons and her warring party to unite behind her to keep 'appalling'Jeremy Corbyn out of power.  
She will alter Labour's 'For the many, not the few' slogan as she declares that the Conservatives are 'a party not for the few, not even for the many, but for everyone who is willing to work hard and do their best'.
The Prime Minister will say: 'Millions of people who have never supported our party in the past are appalled by what Jeremy Corbyn has done to Labour.
How does a leadership election work?
The election to find Theresa May's replacement is held in two stages with up to 20 Tory MPs expected to try to stand.  
To join the battle, any candidate requires two other MPs to sign forms agreeing to be their proposer and a seconder. 
The race will start on June 7 and is expected last around six weeks with the new leader in place by the end of July.
Mrs May is expected to remain as Prime Minister until a successor is appointed and ready to be confirmed by the Queen. 
How are candidates eliminated?  
Conservative MPs will hold a series of head-to-head ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to a final two, with the lowest placed candidate dropping out in each round.  
Who votes on the final two?
There will then be a series of hustings involving the two final candidates - probably in all regions of the UK - and a TV debate could also be held.
It is then the Tory members across the country step in.
They will then have around a fortnight to vote via postal ballot - which Mrs May avoided after rival Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the race. The last time a postal vote was held was in 2005, when David Cameron grabbed the leadership.  
'They want to support a party that is decent, moderate and patriotic. One that puts the national interest first. Delivers on the issues they care about. And is comfortable with modern Britain in all its diversity.
'We must show everyone in this country that we are that party.
'A party that conserves the best of our inheritance but is not afraid of change. A party of patriotism but not nationalism. A party that believes in business but is not afraid to hold businesses to account.
'A party that believes in the good that government can do but knows that government will never have all the answers. A party that believes your success in life should not be defined by who you love, your faith, the colour of your skin, who your parents were, or where you were raised - but by your talent and hard work.
'Above all a party of Unionism, not just of four proud nations, but of all our people.
'A party not for the few, not even for the many, but for everyone who is willing to work hard and do their best.'   
Mrs May takes to the stage at the Conservative Conference in Birmingham less than 24 hours after 1,500 delegates gave a thunderous standing ovation to Boris Johnson as he branded her Brexit plans a 'constitutional outrage' that would humiliate Britain.
Mr Johnson's demand for the PM to 'chuck Chequers' has echoed around the corridors and fringe meetings at a gathering riven by profound differences over the best approach to Britain's EU withdrawal.
But he stopped short of a direct challenge to her leadership, urging Tories to encourage her to ditch the plan agreed at her country residence and return to a harder Brexit blueprint.
Mrs May said she was 'cross' with her former foreign secretary, accusing him of being ready to 'tear up' her guarantee to the people of Northern Ireland that there would be no customs border down the Irish Sea.
Conservative MP James Duddridge renewed hostilities between the warring factions today, saying he had 'no confidence in her leadership over delivering Brexit'.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We need a strong leader and we haven't got that at the moment.
'Boris yesterday was inspirational, motivational and rallied the troops, rallied politicians, something you could get behind and that's what we need, we need a leader not a chief executive, an administrator, we need a vision to go forward and that's what Boris presented yesterday.'
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said it was 'no shame for someone to have the ambition to be PM'.
 Theresa May won a skirmish in her running battle with Boris Johnson today - as activists queued round the block for her speech to conference.
Hours before the PM was due to take to the stage, hundreds of Tories were waiting in line to get into the conference hall.
The queues were bigger than those for Mr Johnson, who was very much the hottest ticket at the Birmingham gathering yesterday.
The two politicians are vying for the affections of the party faithful amid increasingly bitter clashes over Brexit.
'But everybody should be thinking about the national interest first,' he told BBC Breakfast.
He added: 'He's always got some well-crafted lines and it's the end-of-the-pier show sort of event. 
'What he's not done is, I think, provide any new answers to some of the questions that have been raised - that if you're going to advocate a trade arrangement with the EU that looks like the Canadian one, well, then you have to deal with the reality that Canadian goods coming into the EU are subject to all sorts of checks and inspections, paperwork and bureaucracy which would significantly increase costs for British business if they had to go from the current seamless arrangements to those.' 
Scottish Tories are said to be so worried at the prospect of Mr Johnson becoming PM that they have launched a campaign codenamed to stave off the prospect, codenamed 'Operation Arse'. 
Scottish Secretary Davd Mundell told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland that he was sick of Mr Johnson's 'stunts'.
'I think colleagues in Scotland are very frustrated by Mr Johnson's behaviour, constantly seeking to detract from the prime minister, putting forward stunts and press releases and being a huge distraction at a time of such significance of our country,' he said,
In her keynote speech in Birmingham, Mrs May will try to focus on her hopes for a brighter future after Brexit.
'I passionately believe that our best days lie ahead of us and that our future is full of promise,' she will say.
'Don't let anyone tell you we don't have what it takes: we have everything we need to succeed.' 
The crucial address comes one year, almost to the day, since her catastrophic conference speech in Manchester, where she suffered stage invasion by a comedian, a persistent cough and a collapsing backdrop.
That calamitous performance led to speculation over how long she could last as Conservative leader.
She has already said she has taken steps to ensure she speaks 'strongly' this time round.
In a speech entitled Our Future Is In Our Hands, Mrs May will tell delegates that countries across the world stand ready to trade with the UK.
And she will promise that at this 'moment of opportunity' the Conservatives will always act in the 'national interest' and put the needs of hard-working people first.
Theresa May today called on Jeremy Corbyn to condemn the 'bullying and harassment' MPs and candidates have received in recent months.
The Labour leader has been criticised for failing to do enough to try and stop the abuse after politicians received death threats, were assaulted and hounded on social media. 
The Prime Minister said the rising tide of abuse directed against MPs is unacceptable and urged the Labour leader to join her in speaking out against it.
At a press conference in No 10 with the Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, she said: ‘On the issue of the bullying and harassment that has taken place of candidates and MPs, I call on all party leaders to condemn that.
‘There is no place for that activity in our democracy, and I’m surprised at any party leader who is not willing to condemn that.
‘I think, frankly, we should stand together on this and say there is no place for this in our democracy, people should be able to stand for election, we should be able to conduct elections, without people fearing as to what is going to happen to them as a result of that.’
A slew of MPs and candidates have spoken out against the campaign of harassment and intimidation they were subject to during the recent election campaign.
And some Corbynistas are among those who have joined in the hounding of MPs online.

The PM's intervention comes just hours after one Corbyn-supporting Twitter account branded Yvette Cooper a 'busted flush' and menacingly gloated that 'we're in charge forever' in a foul-mouthed attack on the Labour moderate.
The Reel Politik account launched into the abuse after it posted a blurry photo of the former shadow home secretary as she sat in business class on a train, apparently unaware that she was being spied upon. 

Fellow Labour MP Jess Phillips tore into the abuse, which she warned is part of a wider campaign to bully and intimidate female MPs.
While others said the 'creepy' photo is worthy of the Stasi - the dreaded East German secret police who spied on citizens under Communist rule.

The Reel Politik Twitter account is run by a group of men who praise Jeremy Corbyn, denigrate political moderates and relish in causing offence. 
It is run by Tom Foster, Jack Frayne-Reid, Kieran Morris and Yair Rice, who also have a podcast by the same name. 
The gang of Corbynistas have posted hundreds of expletive laden tweets which tear into Labour moderates and journalists. 
One of their favourite targets for mockery is Labour MP and prominent Corbyn critic Chris Leslie.
In one Twitter message the group called for a statue to Margaret Thatcher to be built so the ‘comrades (can) vandalise it’. 
While the account has also railed against ‘alt Blairites’ and in another they wrote: ‘Over the coming weeks we'll be continuing to threaten various bluetick dipsh**s with imprisonment under a socialist government.’ 
Ms Phillips wrote on Twitter: 'This can no longer be seen as individual incidents, this is targeted to control isolate and manipulate.
'It has to stop.'
The MP for Birmingham Yardley added: 'PS if I caught someone taking stalker pics of me I'd throw their phone on the train tracks.' 
Theresa May has ordered her new No 10 policy unit to draw up plans to better protect MPs after many were subjected to intimidation, death threats and attacks.  
Jeremy Corbyn has been urged to do more to live up to his promise to usher in an era of 'kinder gentler politics' by reining in some of his nastier supporters who are hounding female MPs.
Twitter users rushed to defend Ms Cooper, and compared taking and posting the creepy photo to the East German Stasi police.
Sarah Ditum wrote on Twitter: 'This amateur Stasi s*** is so creepy and only intended to intimidate.'
And Dave Jones wrote: 'Gentler, kinder politics...'
Jonathan Krause wrote: 'Slight  Corbyn? Female? then his disciples will distribute creep shots of you.'
Nigel Sarbutts wrote on Twitter: 'Creeping about sneaking photos of people minding their own business? Grow up.'
The account later deleted the offensive tweet.
The abuse comes amid growing fears that Labour moderates could face deselection as part of a purge launched by the far-left.
Momentum activists have drawn up a 'hit list' of nearly 50 Labour MPs who have criticised Mr Corbyn.
The Momentum group in South Tyneside said the MPs, which included many leading party moderates including Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and Ms Phillips, should 'join the Liberals'. 

And Luciana Berger, who is the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, was told by one newly-elected member of her new local executive that she should 'get on board quickly' or face being axed.
Roy Bentham also told Ms Berger, who has recently had a baby and is on maternity leave, to publicly apologise for daring to criticise Mr Corbyn.  
A number of key Corbyn allies have backed calls for mandatory re-selection of MPs, including Chris Williamson who has just been promoted to shadow fire minister, and party chairman Ian Lavery.
Mr Lavery has warned that Labour is 'too broad a church' and told current MPs they have no 'divine right' to stay in their seat.
While Mr Williamson echoed the threat by saying that some MPs 'think it’s their god-given right to rule' and warning that 'no MP should be guaranteed a job for life'. 
His comments have fuelled fears that the party will be thrust into a fresh civil war as the far-left and moderates battle over its future.
But while Corbynistas are clamouring for reforms to make deselection of moderates far easier, Labour MPs have pleaded for unity.
Tracy Brabin, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, said fears among the left of the party that there is an 'enemy within' which needs to  be purged are misplaced.
She told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour that deselections are 'unnecessary' and a 'distraction'.
She said: ‘I think this General Election we have proved we are more unified than ever and that’s where our strength is – we have come together as never before.
‘Luciana is an extraordinarily hard-working , talented and clever MP who has got the backing of her constituency, it is also her maternity leave – let’s not forget that.
‘So of course it’s not acceptable, it’s not right.’
She added: ‘This is unnecessary and actually…if you want to take the fight anywhere I would say to everybody who is involved in this who wants to create this chaos , take the fight to the Tories – they are the enemy, not within.’ 
A Tory Remainer last night quit his job as a defence minister in protest after Theresa May’s climbdown to Eurosceptic demands over Brexit.
Guto Bebb joined with pro-European Tory rebels to vote against the Government after the Prime Minister backed an amendment by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Mr Bebb, who campaigned for Remain ahead of the referendum, dramatically quit before walking through the division lobbies to vote against the proposed change. The Government managed to pass the amendment by only three votes as Mr Bebb was joined by 13 other Tory rebels including Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Nicky Morgan, Antoinette Sandbach and Dr Sarah Wollaston.
It comes as Parliament is set to break up early for the summer in a desperate attempt to stop Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint being engulfed by Tory infighting. 
The amendment demands that the UK should scrap an offer to collect taxes and duties on behalf of the EU unless the remaining 27 member states pledge to do the same for Britain. Mr Bebb’s resignation comes after nine Brexit-supporting Tories quit their roles over Mrs May’s Chequers plan.
Tory MP Scott Mann yesterday became the ninth as he resigned as a junior ministerial aide in the Treasury, warning he could not accept a ‘watered down’ Brexit and was ‘not prepared to compromise’ on the wishes of many of his constituents.
Ten Tory Remainers are likely to go public with demands for a second vote on Britain’s membership of the EU. Justine Greening yesterday became the first senior Conservative to break ranks by calling for another referendum to end the ‘deadlock’ in Parliament.
The former education secretary, who backed Theresa May’s Chequers deal last week, said she now believed it to be ‘unworkable’ and that voters should be given another say. Sources at Best for Britain, which is campaigning for a second referendum, suggested ten Tory MPs could follow her example.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘The British public have voted to leave the EU. There is not going to be a second referendum under any circumstances.’ 
The PM was forced into a major climbdown on her customs bill ahead of the votes, despite warnings the measure from Jacob Rees-Mogg's European Research Group undermined the draft Brexit deal agreed at Chequers earlier this month.
The change insists that the UK can only collect taxes on behalf of a foreign state if they agree to collect duties for Britain - something the EU is unlikely to agree. 
The climbdown will increase the sense that the walls are closing on Mrs May and the chances of a 'no deal' Brexit are rising - as she now has even less room to manoeuvre in negotiations with the EU.
Her former Brexit Secretary David Davis made his first intervention since his sensational resignation last night, speaking up for the rebel amendments Mrs May has been forced to adopt.
Both Eurosceptics and Remainers have been dismissing her Chequers plan as 'dead' as she faces massive pressure from each Tory faction to change tack. 
Asked in the Commons why she was 'dancing to the tune' of Brexiteers, Mrs May replied: 'I would not have gone through all the work I did to ensure that we reached that agreement only to see it changed in some way through these Bills.
'They do not change that Chequers agreement.'
In his return to the backbenches, Mr Davis said there was a presumption that there is a 'magical frictionless' trade system in place at the moment, but told MPs that Operation Stack had been used 74 times in 20 years, and in 2015 it 'took up 31 days of friction'.
Telling MPs not to fear change at the ports because of Brexit, he said: 'Our businesses, the just-in-time businesses, the perishable goods businesses all coped with it - so let's not frighten ourselves when doing this negotiation.
'Nobody wants it, nobody likes that, but they cope with it,' he said.
Earlier, the premier was hit with another government resignation over Brexit, with Scott Mann quitting as a ministerial aide.
The North Cornwall MP said he was 'not prepared to compromise' the wishes of his constituents and 'deliver a watered down Brexit'. 
Downing Street last night said the Government would accept four rebel amendments from Brexiteers:
1. Make it illegal for Northern Ireland to operate under a separate customs regime to mainland Britain. This effectively outlaws leaving Northern Ireland in the single market.
2. Any customs union between Brexit Britain and the EU must have its own law. Requiring primary legislation makes it much harder for ministers to force through a soft Brexit as part of a wider package. 
3. Banning the UK from re-joining the EU's VAT regime after Brexit.
4. Making it illegal for Britain to collect tariffs and duties on behalf of the EU without Brussels doing the same. This appear to many to be in defiance of the White Paper, which conceded Britain should collect tariffs in return for a close economic tie to Europe. 
In a speech at the Farnborough Airshow yesterday morning, Mrs May again urged MPs not to risk either torpedoing Brexit altogether or seriously damaging business with a hard exit.
But Tory Eurosceptics had upped their threats to embarrass the premier in a series of crucial Commons votes.
There were rumours they could be joined in the division lobbies by Boris Johnson - who has made his first intervention since dramatically quitting last week by jibing at the government's lack of 'dynamism' about Brexit.
A No10 spokesman tried to put a brave face on the capitulation yesterday afternoon, claiming that all four amendments were 'consistent with the approach we have set out'.
Asked if the climbdown meant the Chequers plan was dead, he added: 'We do not agree with that,' he said.
'We looked at amendments that have been put forward. We believe them to be consistent with the White Paper and we are accepting them as a result.' 
Three of the amendments were regarded as broadly in line with existing government policy. 
One would make it unlawful for Northern Ireland to diverge from the rest of the UK for customs; another would require primary legislation for any future customs union with the EU; and the third would stop the UK joining the EU's VAT regime.
But significantly, one change would target a core part of Mrs May's Chequers plan by insisting that the UK can only collect taxes on behalf of a foreign state if there is 'reciprocation' - and it agrees to collect taxes on behalf of Britain.
Although not immediately fatal to the PM's proposals, the condition places yet another a major roadblock in the path of the talks with the EU.
Customs duties are fees and taxes paid when goods cross an international border.
Often this will be VAT or excise duty on goods such as alcohol or tobacco.
Goods from outside the EU are already subject to charges when they enter Britain unless specific exemptions are in place.
This can mean customs duty is charges at 2.5% gifts brought into Britain worth £135-£600. Variable rates are charged on goods worth more than £600.
The dispute is over whether the regime is extended to goods entering Britain from the EU.
The single market and customs union mean charges only apply on the edges of the EU - meaning goods can move unhindered. 
Imposing duties would mean goods having to be physically stopped and checked unless an alternative regime was agreed.  
Mrs May was mocked in the Commons for 'rolling over' when pressured by Eurosceptics. 
But she replied: 'I'm happy to sit down and hear concerns from my colleagues. We did that on the EU Withdrawal Bill and we continue to do that on other Bills.' 
Meanwhile, Conservative former education secretary Justine Greening has dismissed the 'third way' plan and demanded a fresh referendum on EU membership.
Labour has also given the blueprint short shrift - leaving Mrs May's position looking increasingly perilous as she potentially lacks enough support from either Remainer or Eurosceptic camps to push her policy past parliament.
Speaking at Farnborough today, Mrs May delivered another impassioned defence of her plan.
'We are leaving the European Union and forging a new future for our country,' she said. 
'Our proposal sets out the right deal for the UK – honouring the democratic decision of the British people, protecting the integrity of our precious union, supporting growth, maintaining security and safeguarding British jobs.
'We will take back control of our borders, our laws and our money.
'But we will do so in a way that is good for business and good for our future prosperity.'
BREXITEERS 
David Davis - Brexit secretary
Boris Johnson - Foreign secretary 
Steve Baker - Brexit minister
Scott Mann - ministerial aide 
Robert Courts - ministerial aide 
Conor Burns - ministerial aide
Chris Green - ministerial aide 
Maria Caulfield - Tory vice-chair
Ben Bradley - Tory vice-chair
REMAINERS
Guto Bebb - Defence Minister 
Philip Lee - Justice Minister 
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the pro-Brexit ERG group of Tory MPs, insisted over the weekend that Mrs May must change course - but played down suggestions they were seeking to topple her. 
However, the growing danger to the PM was underlined by the disclosure that Eurosceptics have set up a Whatsapp group to co-ordinate voting tactics, organised by former Brexit minister Steve Baker.
There are claims that over 100 MPs have joined the group - more than double the 48 needed to force a formal no confidence vote in the PM. 
Senior Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said yesterday morning that Mrs May's Chequers plan is 'in fact dead'.
'I'm afraid it is neither beloved by Remainers or Leavers. 'It's also quite likely to be either rejected by the EU or more demands will be made upon it so it will be even less acceptable,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
He acknowledged that Parliament appeared to be deadlocked on the Brexit issue - but insisted 'if there is no decision we still have to leave' to honour the referendum result.  
Mr Mann's departure was the ninth over Brexit in barely a week, and came a day after Robert Courts, the MP for David Cameron's old Witney seat, quit as a PPS.
Business Secretary Greg Clark tried to play down the revolt on the Customs Bill yesterday morning.
'The Bill is an important part of preparing for the world after Brexit and I would have thought that all colleagues would respect the fact that we need to get those preparations in place whilst having this important negotiation to make sure that our trading arrangement can continue to support prosperity in the future,' he said. 
Research today suggests that the public is also far from convinced by Mrs May's path. 
A ComRes for the Daily Mirror found just 20 per cent think she should press ahead with the Chequers plan - while 39 per cent believed she 'should accept a no deal and the UK simply leave the EU'.   
A former Cabinet minister condemned Theresa May's Chequers plan and demanded a second Brexit referendum.
Justine Greening, who quit as education secretary in January, said the 'gridlock' at Westminster meant the public should be given another vote that includes the option to remain in the EU.
The Putney MP told Today she would campaign for Remain in any new vote. Asked if any other senior Tories backed a second referendum, she said: 'Yes I believe so.'
On the Chequers package, she said: 'I don't think it can work. I think it was a genuine clever attempt at a compromise that could work.
'But in practice having looked through the detail now it just won't and I cannot see how, going forward, the common rulebook will be workable in practice.
'What we need is a clear route forward that settles this European question once and for all.' 
Ms Greening, who quit Mrs May's Cabinet in January, said the 'gridlock' at Westminster meant the public should be given another vote that includes the option to remain in the EU.
The Putney MP told Today she would campaign for Remain in any new vote. Asked if any other senior Tories backed a second referendum, she said: 'Yes I believe so.'
On the Chequers package, she said: 'I don't think it can work. I think it was a genuine clever attempt at a compromise that could work.
'But in practice having looked through the detail now it just won't and I cannot see how, going forward, the common rulebook will be workable in practice.
'What we need is a clear route forward that settles this European question once and for all.' 
Former international development secretary Priti Patel told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour the white paper had 'many flaws around our independence and our ability to make free trade agreements'.
'Things have moved on from that very clear message that Brexit means Brexit, and that is why we are rightfully questioning the legislation, putting forward new clauses and amendments, and saying not just to the Prime Minister but the whole of government reconsider, look again and work with us,' she said.
The threat from the Brexiteers is not the only danger facing Mrs May, with pro-EU Tories tabling amendments of their own to the Customs Bill and the Trade Bill - which returns to the Commons tomorrow - which would keep Britain in a customs union with the EU.
But they could stop short of pressing them to a vote after some pro-EU MPs backed Mrs May's Chequers plan and EU white paper.
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve accused Brexiteers of trying to cause 'chaos' for the Government. 
The pro-EU Tory told BBC Radio 4's World at One: 'My primary political duty at the moment is to try and help get this country through a Brexit process that is endangering its stability and its wellbeing. 
Theresa May faces a mortal threat to her leadership of the Conservative Party and Government. 
A Tory leadership contest can be called in one of two ways - if Mrs May resigns or if MPs force and win a vote of no confidence in her.
Calling votes of no confidence is the responsibility of the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which includes all backbench Tory MPs.
Chairman Graham Brady is obliged to call a vote if 15 per cent of Tory MPs write to him calling for one - currently 48 MPs. 
The process is secret and only Mr Brady knows how many letters he has received.
The procedure was last used in 2003 when Iain Duncan Smith was ousted as Tory leader.
If Mrs May is ousted, any MP is eligible to stand.
Conservative MPs will then hold a series of ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to two, with the last place candidate dropping out in each round. 
The final two candidates are then offered to the Tory membership at large for an election. 
'As matters stand at the moment, trying to get rid of the Prime Minister or fatally undermine her - I fail to see how that's going to take matters forward.' 
In an article for the Evening Standard, Mr Grieve also suggested that Brexit should be abandoned altogether if Mrs May's plan cannot be made to work.
'Every option is unfortunately worse than staying in the EU. But the current government policy is a lot better than the alternative being promoted,' Mr Grieve said.
'In a deeply divided country we must either work together to get the best deal we can — and this needs compromise — or accept that Brexit cannot be implemented and think again about what we are doing.' 
Meanwhile Mr Johnson, in his first public intervention since his resignation last week, appealed for people to take a more positive view of Britain's prospects outside the EU.
In sign that he is keeping his powder dry, he said in an article for The Daily Telegraph that he would resist 'for now' the temptation 'to bang on about Brexit'.
But he swiped at Mrs May be demanding more 'confidence' and 'dynamism' about how Brexit is delivered.
'It is time for all of us - at this critical moment in our constitutional development - to believe in ourselves, to believe in the British people and what they can do, and in our democracy,' he wrote. 
'People around the world believe passionately in Britain. It's time we shared their confidence.' 
Chief Whip Julian Smith has proposed ending the the parliamentary session on Thursday – five days earlier than planned – in an apparent bid to disrupt plotting against the Prime Minister.
The move would dramatically curtail the time available for disgruntled Tories to submit letters of no-confidence in Mrs May before the summer break, which is now set to last almost seven weeks.
It would also limit the time for any more Parliamentary battles over the the Prime Minister’s Chequers deal. 
Labour MPs described it as a ‘disgrace’ and a sign that the Tories ‘can’t govern’. A motion on the proposal will be voted on by MPs today. 
The PM toured two Airbus planes at the opening of the Farnborough International Airshow in Hampshire. 
Mrs May met Airbus chief executive Tom Enders, who took her on board an A220-300 jet which has its wings manufactured in Belfast. 
The single-aisle aircraft was rebranded from the Bombardier C Series last week after Airbus took a majority stake in the business. 
Airbus, which also has a major wing-building plant in North Wales, has warned it may need to leave the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Mrs May also inspected an A400M military transport aircraft. 
The Royal Air Force will soon take delivery of the 20th out of 22 of the four-engine turboprop planes it has ordered. 
Mrs May watched a flypast of Spitfires and the Red Arrows to officially open the show, before entering an exhibition hall where she spoke to British astronaut Tim Peake. 
They visited a stand run by the UK Space Agency, where they viewed a prototype of a Mars rover named Bruno. It is being developed by Airbus in Stevenage for use on a joint mission to Mars between the European Space Agency and Russia's space agency in 2020. 
Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump said Mrs May needed a 'carve out' in any Brexit agreement to ensure the UK can make a deal with the US. 
He told Good Morning Britain: 'I think we're going to have a great trade deal.
'Now, if they do whatever they do, they have to... I said, make sure that you have a carve out.
'You know, I've called it a carve out for this. You have to have a carve out where no matter what happens they have the right to make a deal with the United States.' 
Theresa May set out a new Brexit red line last night as she vowed to fight Brussels over plans that could grant up to another million EU citizens the right to settle in Britain.
EU leaders accepted in December that migrants arriving after Britain leaves the bloc at the end of March next year should lose the automatic right to reside here.
But Brussels backtracked on the deal this week, saying the ‘cut-off date’ should be delayed until the end of the transition period – putting it back by about two years.
The MigrationWatch think-tank warned the ‘absurd’ move could result in up to a million more EU migrants winning the automatic right to live in the UK.
Speaking to reporters on a trip to China, the Prime Minister vowed to fight the proposal during negotiations with the EU on the details of the transition period.
Mrs May also took a thinly veiled swipe at Philip Hammond’s vision of a status-quo Brexit. The Chancellor enraged Eurosceptic MPs when he suggested leaving the EU would result in only ‘very modest’ changes.
Mrs May flatly contradicted him yesterday, saying people ‘did not vote for nothing to change when we come out of the EU’. In an upbeat assessment, she said Britain’s economy would have a ‘better future’ outside the EU, but she could not accept the idea that EU migrants arriving after we have left should be granted the automatic right to stay here permanently.
Mrs May said it was right to offer guarantees to the 3.2 million EU citizens who had made their home here, because they had ‘made a life choice’ based on the UK’s EU membership. But she added: ‘For those who come after March 2019, that will be different because they will be coming to a UK they know will be outside the EU.’
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, has warned it would be an unacceptable curb to free movement if EU citizens arriving in Britain during the transition period were not granted automatic residency.
But ministers insist free movement will technically end in March 2019 anyway when Britain leaves the EU.
In its place, Mrs May is proposing a temporary arrangement where EU citizens will be free to come and live and work in the UK during the transition. The only restrictions would be that they would have to register with the Home Office and – if she gets her way – they will not automatically qualify to live in the UK permanently.
Ministers are keen to secure agreement on a two-year transition by the end of next month in order to smooth Britain’s exit from the EU. But Mrs May insisted this did not mean they would simply give in to the EU’s demands.
‘This is a matter for negotiation for the implementation period,’ she said. ‘But I’m clear there’s a difference between those people who came prior to us leaving and those who will come when they know the UK is no longer a member of the EU.’
 But Mr Verhofstadt said last night: ‘Citizens’ rights during the transition is not negotiable. We will not accept that there are two sets of rights for EU citizens.’
Mrs May also rubbished reports she is seeking to extend the transition period beyond ‘about two years’. ‘I’m very clear we are not talking about something that is going to go on and on,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving the European Union. There is an adjustment period for businesses – and indeed government – for changes that need to be made.’
EU officials last night said moving the cut-off date back was ‘non-negotiable’. Diplomats said the UK had no option but to accept free movement rules during the transition period and it was ‘inconceivable’ it could get around this. One added: ‘Expect the EU to remain very firm on this.’
Last night Mrs May faced fresh criticism from a member of her Brexit war Cabinet, who anonymously briefed The Spectator that the Government’s Brexit policy-making ‘looks worse from the inside than the outside’. The group includes Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
 
Theresa May scrambled to defuse a bitter row with Brexiteers today after her EU envoy was overheard saying she will put off a vote on her deal until the last moment - and then threaten to delay the UK's departure unless they approve it.
Olly Robbins loudly told companions in a hotel bar that the 'week beginning end of March' would be critical, just days before the UK is due to leave the bloc.
He suggested MPs will be confronted with a 'long extension' to the Article 50 process if they do not give the plan the green light at that point.
The private conversation, which happened within earshot of an ITV journalist on Monday night, sent Brexiteers into meltdown.
Mrs May has repeatedly insisted that the UK will leave on schedule on March 29 - despite growing doubts among ministers over whether that is realistic even if her package was passed immediately.
She was grilled about the issue at PMQs this afternoon, with Tory Henry Smith asking her to reject the 'chatter'. Mrs May said the claims were based on what 'someone said to someone else, as overheard by someone else, in a bar'.
However, she risked inflaming the situation by stopping short of ruling out a delay to the Brexit date,
'This House voted to trigger Article 50,' she told MPs. 'That had a two-year timeline. That ends on the 29th March.
'We want to leave with a deal and that is what we are working for.'  
After the comments by Mr Robbins emerged, Tory hardliners accused the PM of 'ignoring the wishes of the British people'. 
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage branded the senior civil servant part of a 'fifth colum' and said he should be sacked. 
The bitter row erupted as Mrs May braces for the latest round of crunch Brexit votes in the Commons tomorrow.
There is anger that the government has tabled a motion endorsing the 'approach to leaving the EU expressed by this House' in a previous showdown on January 29. Those votes saw MPs pass a non-binding motion stating their opposition to leaving the bloc without a deal. 
Remainers have made clear they will hold off an all-out rebellion to rule out no deal at this stage - but ministers are threatening to join a revolt in two weeks' time if she has not made a breakthrough in talks with the EU by then. 
Known as the mandarin's mandarin, Olly Robbins has been the PM's indispensable Europe adviser since she took personal charge of the negotiations over Britain's departure from the EU.
Reputed to be the only person in Whitehall to grasp fully the complexities of the British negotiating position, Mr Robbins heads the Cabinet Office Europe Unit.
However, the civil servant is widely distrusted by Brexiteers, who have accused him of trying to engineer the softest possible break with the EU.
And while his mastery of the detail may be unrivalled, some have also questioned whether he has the required experience negotiating in the corridors and backrooms of Brussels.
Mr Robbins originally worked under former Brexit Secretary David Davis in the Department for Exiting the EU, but moved to Downing Street in September 2017.
Some in the Leave camp believe he was the true architect of the doomed Chequers plan, drawn up in the Cabinet Office while Mr Davis and other Brexit ministers were kept in the dark.
Prior to his Brexit role Mr Robbins had a long Civil Service career, working under every prime minister since Tony Blair, when he served as the Labour leader's principal private secretary.
Aged 43, the Oxford graduate has held senior roles in the Treasury and Home Office and was also deputy national security adviser under David Cameron.
Mr Robbins was overheard by ITV's Angus Walker following the meeting at the UK Ambassador's Residence between Michel Barnier and Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay. 
'The issue is whether Brussels is clear on the terms of extension,' he was overheard saying by Mr Walker.
'In the end they will probably just give us an extension.'
Asked whether the comments reflected Government policy, Mr Barclay said this morning: 'No.' 
Mr Barclay told BBC Radio 4's Today: 'The Prime Minister has been very clear that we are committed to leaving on March 29.' 
The Cabinet minister also tried to defuse Eurosceptic anger that the PM's motion effectively rules out no deal by endorsing the results of the votes held last month.
Mr Barclay said that contingency planning for no deal was 'the agreed position of the Cabinet'. 
'The agreed policy of Cabinet is to secure a deal. That's our priority and that's what we are working on.'  
Mr Robbins, the UK's chief Brexit negotiator, had been at the 'constructive' talks between Mr Barclay and Mr Barnier on Monday night before heading for the hotel bar.
Angus Walker wrote for ITV: 'Robbins said that, in his view, he expects the choice for MPs to be either backing May's deal or extending talks with the EU.
'He expects MPs in March to be presented with backing a reworked Brexit deal or a potentially significant delay to Brexit... 
'Robbins added that he thought the fear of a long extension to Article 50 might focus MPs' minds.'
Theresa May has always denied she wants to remain in a permanent customs union with the EU - which is a key demand of Labour.
But comments made by Mr Robbins suggest that may have been the original plan.
The envoy apparently confirmed that the Irish backstop was designed not as a 'safety net' to avoid a hard border but as a 'bridge' to the long-term trading relationship.
Mr Robbins was quoted saying: 'The big clash all along is the 'safety net. We agreed a bridge but it came out as a 'safety net'.'
It was also suggested Mr Robbins and the Prime Minister will seek to have the Withdrawal Agreement amended so that the Good Friday Agreement would be less of an obstacle' on the backstop
To do that they will attempt to have the European Commission 'agree that the word 'necessary' in the Northern Ireland protocol is defined as 'necessary subject to the future trade deal'.'
Tory Brexiteer Andrea Jenkyns tweeted: 'If true, the PM should stop ignoring the wishes of the British people and disregarding her own red lines.' 
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said Mr Robbins was part of the 'Civil Service fifth column' and called for him to be sacked for his combination of 'treachery and incompetence'. 
Theresa May is on a collision course with Brexiteers today after they accused her of a 'sneaky' bid to rule out leaving the EU without a deal.
A furious row has erupted after the PM tabled a motion for crunch Commons votes tomorrow seemingly accepting that the UK must not crash out of the bloc.
The spat centres on a Remainer-backed amendment that was passed by MPs two weeks ago rejecting the idea of no deal.
Although that vote was not binding on ministers, the government motion due to be considered tomorrow endorses 'the approach to leaving the EU expressed by this House on 29 January'.  
That has been interpreted by Brexiteers as Mrs May admitting that no deal is off the agenda - despite her repeatedly insisting it is a possibility. 
The bitter row risks condemning the PM to a humiliating defeat in Parliament, as the Tory Eurosceptic ERG group refuses to join her in the division lobbies. 
Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, urged the PM to ignore Mr Robbins. 
'Officials advise. Ministers decide. If the PM decides we are leaving on March 29, deal or no deal, that will happen,' he said. 
Mrs May is running short on time. 
More than a dozen ministers could join the revolt at the showdown on February 27 as pro-EU MPs told MailOnline the votes will finally be the crunch moment for no deal.
Earlier, the PM urged MPs to 'hold their nerve' as she appealed for 'a little more time' to get concessions on the Irish border backstop in bitter Commons clashes.
However, EU chief negotiator Mr Barnier emerged from the dinner with Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay in Brussels last night to insist the Withdrawal Agreement will not be renegotiated. 
The Tory leader tried to quell a mounting rebellion by Remainers by promising them another chance to influence the Brexit process by the end of the month if her renegotiation is not complete.
But Mrs May fuelled anger that she is playing for time to reach March 29 by refusing to give a firm date by which a final vote on her deal will be held.
She reportedly told the cabinet it is 'clear' more time is needed. 
Mrs May said: 'The talks are at a crucial stage. We now all need to hold our nerve to get the changes this House has required and deliver Brexit on time.
'By getting the changes we need to the backstop; by protecting and enhancing workers' rights and environmental protections; and by enhancing the role of Parliament in the next phase of negotiations I believe we can reach a deal that this House can support.'
In a rebuke to Jeremy Corbyn, Mrs May dismissed his call for a permanent customs union with the EU, saying the idea was 'less desirable' than her existing deal and the House had already voted against it in principle.
Earlier this week she stopped short of ruling out a customs union in a letter to Mr Corbyn which caused angry ripples among the more hardlines Conservatives. 
With 45 days to go, former attorney general Dominic Grieve warned that time was running perilously short for ratification of any deal under the terms of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act.
The Act, passed by the coalition government in 2010, requires 21 sitting days before the ratification of any international treaty.
But Mrs May made clear the government would get rid of the requirement if necessary.
'In most circumstances, that period may be important in order for this House to have an opportunity to study that agreement,' she said.
'But of course, in this instance MPs will already have debated and approved the agreement as part of the meaningful vote.
'So while we will follow normal procedure if we can, where there is insufficient time remaining following a successful meaningful vote, we will make provision in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - with Parliament's consent - to ensure that we are able to ratify on time to guarantee our exit in an orderly way.'
A spokesman later explained that the process would be accelerated by a clause in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill itself, which would disapply the terms of the 2010 Act in this case.
Mrs May sidestepped demands from several MPs to spell out whether she would ask the EU for an extension to the two-year Brexit negotiation process or allow the UK to crash out without a deal if she hit the March 29 deadline with no agreement.
Earlier, Mrs May gave the Cabinet details of what had happened on her visit to Brussels last week, spelling out that she had suggested replacing the backstop with 'alternative arrangements', or inserting a time-limit or a 'unilateral exit mechanism'.
Valentine's Day 
MPs will hold another round of votes on Brexit.
They are not due to pass judgement on Theresa May's deal - instead debating a 'neutral' motion simply saying that they have considered the issue.
However, a range of amendments are set to be tabled. They could include proposals to delay the Brexit date beyond March 29. 
Labour is pushing a change that would force another 'meaningful vote' on the PM's Brexit deal by February 26, regardless of whether she has finished renegotiating the package with the EU.
February 24-25
Mrs May could have an opportunity to seal a new package with fellow EU leaders at a joint summit with the Arab League in Sharm el-Sheikh.
However, it is not clear how many will attend the gathering - or whether she will have completed the deal by then.
February 27
Downing Street is trying to head off a potential Tory Remainer mutiny by promising MPs will get another set of votes by this date regardless of whether there is a final deal.
March 21-22
The PM will attend a scheduled EU summit in Brussels that would effectively be the last opportunity to get agreement.
Some MPs fear that Mrs May is trying to delay for as long as possible, and might even try to hold a make-or-break vote in the Commons on March 26. That would be just 72 hours before Brexit, giving them a very stark deal-or-no-deal choice.
11pm, March 29
The UK is due to leave the EU with or without a deal, unless the Article 50 process is extended with approval from the bloc's leaders, or revoked to cancel Brexit altogether. 
The EU has flatly dismissed calls for the Withdrawal Agreement to be reopened.
But Theresa May has promised MPs that she will somehow get legally-binding changes that satisfy concerns about the Irish border backstop.
Here are some possible options for how the PM might seek to get through the impasse.
A unilateral exit clause
Prominent backbenchers including former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has pushed Mrs May to seek a unilateral get-out from the backstop.
The current mechanism can only be deactivated through a joint review system - although the EU insists it is technically 'temporary'.  
But Brussels has insisted that an 'insurance policy' that can be ended by one side is not acceptable.
Expiry date
A hard end date to the backstop would allay the fears of most Tory MPs - as long as it is not too far in the future. 
Boris Johnson has suggested he could vote for the deal if she manages to get a time limit, although he also said it should conclude before the next election in May 2022.
The former foreign secretary also unhelpfully insisted a legal 'codicil' - an amendment which would run alongside the Withdrawal Agreement - would not be enough to win him over and he wants the whole thing unpicked.
Again, the EU has insisted it will not agree to a backstop that is time limited. 
The 'Malthouse Compromise' 
Tory Remainers and Brexiteers have been working on a proposal to replace the backstop with a looser, Canada-style free trade arrangements. The plan would deploy technology in a bid to avoid a hard border.
But Brussels has already dismissed the technogical solutions as 'magical thinking', saying the systems needed do not yet exist.  
Guarantees that the backstop will only be 'temporary' 
The EU's top official, Martin Selmayr floated the idea of 'unzipping' the Withdrawal Agreement and inserting new guarantees about the 'temporary' nature of the backstop during meetings with MPs.
He suggested the text of recent letters from Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker could be cut and pasted in without reopening other terms.
But that would be highly unlikely to satisfy Brexiteers. 
 
 
Proposals for a customs partnership with the EU have been rejected at a meeting of Theresa May's 'war Cabinet' today, it has been reported.
New Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson are said to have expressed 'significant' and 'grave concerns' about the plans. 
The rebuke came after Brexit-backing MPs mounted a huge effort to kill off proposals for a customs deal amid fear it would leave Britain too attached to the EU. 
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg wrote that she has been told Mrs May requested 'revised proposals' and 'further work' on both proposals discussed at the meeting, contradicting other sources who claim the customs deal was rejected.
She added: 'So already different versions out there of what happened at the meeting - but certainly the proposals as they currently exist are not viable with Number 10 agreeing they need more work.'       
Mrs May's allies, meanwhile, warned Brexiteers to wake up to 'reality' today as she battles to save a key plank of her plans for future trade with the EU.
Amid a massive revolt by Tory Eurosceptics, Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said they had to recognise the 'challenges' of forging a 'deep and special relationship' with the bloc. 
Senior Cabinet members including Boris Johnson, David Davis, Liam Fox and Michael Gove urged the premier to abandon the idea at a meeting of her 'War Cabinet' this afternoon - although a final decision has been delayed. 
Housing minister Dominic Raab appeared to pre-judge the outcome of the crucial clashes - saying Brexiteers were 'winning the argument' against a customs partnership.
The standoff deepened today after sixty Conservative backbenchers sent a 30-page report to Downing Street savaging the proposal.
The damning report - compiled by the powerful European Research Group headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg - claimed the idea would 'festoon the entire economy with burdensome controls, while crippling the ability of the UK' to negotiate trade deals.
Mr Rees-Mogg insisted this morning that he was not 'threatening' Mrs May. But he warned that the proposal would 'not deliver on the Conservative Party manifesto or the Prime Minister's other commitments'.
'It would leave us de facto in the customs union and the single market,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.  
Mr Lidington said the PM was 'listening' to her MPs. But in a stark message, he added: 'Part of the future deal we are looking for with the European Union will be a customs agreement/partnership of some kind, some new arrangement to replace the customs union which we are leaving.'
He told ITV's Good Morning Britain he was 'not interested in slogans' but wanted to protect jobs and living standards. 
'The challenge that we have got is to have a deep and special partnership with the EU,' he added. 
Supporters of the customs partnership concept believe it is the only way of protecting the economy and avoiding a hard Irish border. 
But Downing Street has been warned that trying to force the plan through would bring about the 'collapse' of the Government.
If 60 MPs turned against Mrs May it would destroy her wafer thin Commons majority of 13 - and could bring her premiership to an end.
One European Research Group source told The Telegraph: 'We have swallowed everything so far – but this is it. 
'If they don't have confidence in Brexit we don't have confidence in them. The Prime Minister will not have a majority if she does not kill off the NCP [New Customs Partnership].'
Brexiteers fear Mrs May will side with Mr Hammond, Business Secretary Greg Clark and her chief Brexit adviser Olly Robbins, who are championing the idea. 
Mr Lidington played down the prospect of any final decision on the Brexit 'war cabinet'.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today the discussions would 'start this afternoon and will probably continue in other meetings'.
The two proposals had been the subject of 'intensive analytical work by civil servants' who had been 'looking at the practicalities, the operational challenges that would have to be surmounted, all these problems - the legal risks and so on'.
'This will be the first time today for Cabinet colleagues to sit down and have a constructive discussion about the way forward,' he said.
Mr Lidington added: 'I expect we will come to a decision on this, as well as on other important elements of our negotiating position, over the next few weeks.'
He indicated that the full Cabinet may be invited to consider the position by Mrs May after the Brexit sub-committee has discussed the options.
She was also 'talking all the time and listening all the time to voices of Conservative MPs, Conservative Party supporters, from all strands of the debate about Europe'. He added that before June's summit of EU leaders 'we need to be making every effort to ensure there is significant progress in the negotiations'.
The leading Brexiteers fear it would effectively keep the UK inside the EU's customs union and wreck hopes of an independent trade policy. 
'The four are unambiguous in thinking this is a terrible idea,' the source said.
Mr Gove has described the plan as 'bonkers' and Dr Fox yesterday hinted he could even resign if it went ahead.
Mr Davis, who has dismissed the proposal as 'blue sky thinking', is also reported to have told friends he could quit. Aides played down the prospect of a walk-out however.
The four hope to 'peel off' Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and new Home Secretary Sajid Javid, both former Remainers.
New Customs Partnership —backed by Remainers
It would involve UK officials electronically tracking final destinations of goods coming to Britain. Those heading for Europe would pay the relevant EU tariff and the money handed over to Brussels. Firms selling to the UK would be eligible for a refund, if our tariff levels were lower.
In theory, the EU would have to make similar arrangements at its borders to track goods destined for the UK.
If it works – and many believe it won't – it would theoretically allow the UK to leave the customs union and negotiate trade deals with non-EU countries. Crucially, by removing all physical EU-UK customs borders it would also provide the answer to the Ulster border.
Maximum Facilitation — supported by Brexiteers
This would attempt to dramatically reduce customs controls and barriers between the UK and the EU.
Goods would be electronically tracked and pre-cleared with the tax authorities.
Firms allowed to operate as 'trusted traders' – so they can move goods freely without having to pay duty every time goods moved across the border.
Officials admit this will be more bureaucratic than inside customs union but hope to create a 'bespoke' model.
It would allow Britain to do deals with non-EU nations, because we would not have to comply with EU tariffs.
But the EU has dismissed this proposal as 'magical thinking'. 
Jacob Rees-Mogg urged the Prime Minister to abandon the partnership plan and challenge Remainers in Parliament who want to keep Britain inside the customs union. 
The Eurosceptic MP said the partnership proposal, which has the backing of Chancellor Philip Hammond, would 'result in the worst of all worlds and make us a vassal state'. 
One Whitehall source said the PM was more concerned about the prospect of a defeat in Parliament by diehard Remainers led by former attorney general Dominic Grieve than by the risk of a mutiny by Tory Eurosceptics. 
'The bottom line is, she is more afraid of Grieve than she is of Iain Duncan Smith,' the source said.
Cabinet sources played down the prospect of immediate resignations, suggesting Eurosceptic ministers would rely on Brussels killing off the proposal later in the year.
Opinion in Mrs May's 11-strong Brexit war cabinet is finely balanced. Friends of Mr Javid acknowledge he has held 'bracingly Eurosceptic' views for years, but point out that he is a pragmatist who ended up backing Remain in 2016.
Mr Williamson is opposed to the UK remaining in any customs union. But allies suggested he could be swayed by his loyalty to the PM. Today's meeting has been called to discuss the Government's two options for future customs dealings with the EU.
The 'new customs partnership' would require officials to track the final destination of all goods entering the UK and hand over relevant tariffs to Brussels on goods ending up in the EU. It would also require alignment with EU regulations in some sectors.
The second option – known as 'maximum facilitation' – is a looser arrangement, which would use technology to streamline customs controls, particularly at the Irish border.
The EU has raised doubts about whether controls could ever be seamless enough to prevent the need for a hard border on the island of Ireland. 
Eurosceptic MPs have warned that Mrs May could face a leadership challenge unless she opts for a clean break with Brussels. One former minister said: 'This would be the final straw.'  
Unconfirmed reports earlier this month suggested that EU officials had dismissed both UK proposals. Mr Davis yesterday told the House of Lords EU committee: 'The Commission did push back on both.'
A customs partnership is less formal than the current EU customs union the UK is a member of.
Under the proposals, Britain would stay in a customs union with the EU for some sectors, while leaving it for others.
This would mean it would impose the same tariffs as the Brussels bloc on some goods, but set its own on others.
Backers of the plan say his would facilitate free trade in areas where Britain does  a lot of its business with the EU, while freeing the country to sign new free trade deals with other countries. 
One possibility could be keeping the UK and EU in a customs union for trade in goods, but allowing divergence for the services sector.
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels and then pay it to the EU.
But Brexiteers are critical of the plan. which they think is unworkable and cumbersome.
They fear it will effectively stop the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit. 
Downing Street fears the Government's hands could be tied if Remainers in Parliament rally round an amendment to the Trade Bill tabled by former Tory Minister Anna Soubry to keep Britain in a customs union.
Insiders believe the partnership idea could buy off enough rebels to avoid defeat.
Downing Street last night insisted the scheme could be delivered on time.
A No 10 spokesman said: 'We are leaving the customs union and won't be joining a customs union. We have put forward two proposals for addressing the customs issue in general and they will be discussed by the Government further.'                                                  
Yesterday, Dr Fox ramped up the pressure on May over Brexit - making clear he is ready to quit if she drops her red line on leaving the customs union.
The Trade Secretary said any form of customs union with the EU would be 'unacceptable' and worse than the UK's current membership terms with the bloc.  
The PM has repeatedly pledged that there will be no customs union after Brexit, but is struggling to find a way of reconciling the demands of Brexiteers and Remainers.
Tory rebels are threatening to side with Labour and other parties in a Commons vote on staying in the customs union expected next month.
They say keeping the ties are the only way to protect the economy and prevent a hard Irish border. 
The Lords has already passed an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill designed to maintain a customs union - although ministers believe it is so loosely worded as to have little real impact.
But Eurosceptic Tories say they could move against Mrs May unless she holds the line on the crucial issue and ensures the UK can strike trade deals around the rest of the world.   
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
Theresa May was taunted over Boris Johnson's extraordinary attack on her Brexit trade plans during a bruising PMQs today.
The Prime Minister faced catcalls from Labour MPs as Jeremy Corbyn accused her of overseeing a shambolic negotiation with the EU.
As Mr Johnson looked on sheepishly from the frontbench, Mrs May was forced to deny she had wasted weeks on plans that ministers could not agree on. 
But Mrs May hit back by pointing out that Labour is also deeply split on Brexit, and vowed: 'We will get the best deal for the UK.' 
Speaking in the Commons immediately after the session, Mr Johnson also denied that he had breached Cabinet collective responsibility.
'I am completely in conformity with Government policy on the matter, since that policy has yet to be decided,' he said to laughter from the Labour benches. 
The bad-tempered exchanges came with Mrs May scrambling to find a 'third way' proposal for post-Brexit trade after Mr Johnson's outburst.
The Foreign Secretary effectively dared the PM to sack him yesterday by bringing the bitter Cabinet row crashing into the open - branding the proposal 'crazy'. 
Downing Street sources have conceded that the blueprint - which would see Britain collect duties on behalf of the EU in an effort to minimise friction on trade and prevent a hard Irish border - will 'not go ahead in its current form'.
Officials are looking at ways of overhauling the idea or coming up with a new option that can win over sceptical ministers.
Mr Corbyn kicked off PMQs by asking: 'Does the Prime Minister agree with her Foreign Secretary that the plan for a customs partnership... is in fact crazy?' 
Mrs May dodged the question, insisting the government would 'ensure that we leave the customs union, that we can have an independent free trade policy, that we can maintain no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and we have as frictionless trade with the EU as possible'.
Mr Corbyn then challenged Mrs May over Business Secretary Greg Clark's warning in an interview at the weekend that 'jobs would be at risk if we don't sort out a comprehensive customs deal'. 
But the premier retorted that Labour was 'letting Britain down' by taking the EU's side in the negotiations.
A former Northern Ireland First Minister today dismissed 'scaremongering' about the threat to peace from Brexit.
Lord Trimble backed a new report suggesting that the Irish border issue could be solved with technology.
The Policy Exchange study argues that GPS technology could be used to track lorry movements without the need for cameras or other infrastructure at the border.
Lord Trimble, who led the Ulster Unionist Party, said a hard border could be avoided if all sides demonstrated the political will needed. 
He added: 'I hope that true friends of Northern Ireland – including the partners in peace all those years ago – will cease the scaremongering and work for a practical, prosperous future.' 
'They want to go into a customs union with the European Union with no say over trade policy, with Brussels negotiating trade deals in their interests, not our own,' she said. 
'The Labour manifesto said it wanted to strike trade deals, now they've gone back on that policy. Typical labour, letting Britain down once again.' 
Mrs May stormed: 'He talks about the state of the negotiations. Before December he was saying the negotiations were not going to get anywhere.
'What did we get? A joint report agreed by the European Council. He said before March that we weren't going to get what we wanted from negations. What did we get? An implementation and an agreement with the European Union Council.
'We are now in a negotiation for the best deal for the UK for when we leave the EU and we will get the best deal for the UK for when we leave the EU.' 
Despite his incendiary intervention against the customs partnership plan in an interview with the Daily Mail, allies of Mr Johnson have insisted he will not quit but is determined to 'fight this from the inside'.
Amid mounting pressure on Mrs May to break the impasse, leading Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Johnson had 'hit the nail on the head' - and also suggested Britain would be much more 'aggressive' in negotiations with Brussels if he was PM.
But there was a backlash from Tory Remainers, who raged that Mr Johnson's breach of collective Cabinet responsibility was 'disgraceful' and he must 'wake up to reality'.
In a sign of the delicacy of her position, Mrs May avoided reprimanding Mr Johnson at an awkward Cabinet meeting yesterday. 
Sources confirmed that the issue of Brexit had not been mentioned at all during the session.
Asked whether Mrs May had urged ministers to carry out their discussions in private, the PM's spokesman said: 'Not in Cabinet, no.'
Mrs May has pushed back another showdown at the Brexit 'War Cabinet' from tomorrow to next week as she struggles to find a compromise.
Under the partnership concept, officials would track shipments into the UK and collect tariffs for Brussels on goods ending up in the EU.
A Whitehall source said: 'The customs partnership won't go ahead in its current form.
'There's a recognition that we can't simply re-badge one of the proposals and hope to get it through.' 
Allies of Mr Johnson told the Times his intention was to 'fight this from the inside'.
 What are the options on the table for a customs deal with the EU? 
With time ticking away on the Brexit negotiations, the Cabinet is still at daggers drawn on the shape for future trade relations with the EU.
The government has set out two potential options for a customs system after the UK leaves the bloc.
But despite a series of tense showdowns at Theresa May's Brexit 'War Cabinet' ministers continue to be deadlocked over what to do.
Meanwhile, Brussels has dismissed both the ideas - and warned that negotiations could stall altogether unless there is progress by a key summit next month.  
OPTION 1 - CUSTOMS PARTNERSHIP 
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Britain would be responsible for tracking the origin and final destination of goods coming into the country from outside the EU. The government would also have to ensure all products meet the bloc's standards.
Firms selling directly into the UK market would pay the tariff levels set by Brussels - but would then get a rebate if Britain's tariffs are lower. 
Supporters of the hybrid plan in Cabinet - including Theresa May, Philip Hammond and Greg Clark - say keeping duties aligned up front would avoid the need for physical customs borders between the UK and EU.
As a result it could solve the thorny issue over creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mrs May has been advised by the chief whip that the hybrid option could be the only way of securing a majority in parliament for a Brexit deal. 
But Brexiteers regard the proposal as unworkable and cumbersome - and they were joined by Sajid Javid and Gavin Williamson in criticising it at a tense 'War Cabinet' meeting last week.
There are fears the experimental system will either collapse and cause chaos, or prevent the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit.
Mrs May has instructed official to go away and revise the ideas. Eurosceptics are braced for her to bring back the plan with only 'cosmetic' changes, and try to 'peel off' Mr Javid and Mr Williamson from the core group of Brexiteers.
They are also ready for Mrs May to attempt to bypass the 'War Cabinet' altogether and put the issue before the whole Cabinet - where she has more allies. 
OPTION 2 - MAXIMUM FACILITATION
The 'Max Fac' option accepts that there will be greater friction at Britain's borders with the EU. 
But it would aim to minimise the issues using technology and mutual recognition.
Goods could be electronically tracked and pre-cleared by tax authorities on each side.
Shipping firms could also be given 'trusted trader' status so they can move goods freely, and only pay tariffs when they are delivered to the destination country.
Companies would also be trusted to ensure they were meeting the relevant UK and EU standards on products.
Senior ministers such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox believe this is the only workable option. 
But Remain minded Tories such as Mr Clark insist it will harm trade and cost jobs in the UK.
They also warn that it will require more physical infrastructure on the Irish border - potentially breaching the Good Friday Agreement. It is far from clear whether the government would be able to force anything through parliament that implied a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  
The EU has dismissed the idea that 'Max Fac' could prevent checks on the Irish border as 'magical thinking'.
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
 
Theresa May today pleaded with EU leaders for reassurances the controversial Irish backstop will only be temporary as she desperately tries to salvage her Brexit deal. 
The PM embarked on a whirlwind tour of Europe today as she begged her fellow leaders to make major changes to the deal so she can buy off her Tory rebels.
She met Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte for breakfast in the Hague, and held crucial talks with Angela Merkel in Berlin and later held talks with Donald Tusk.
And she will later meet with Jean-Claude Juncker later today as they desperately try to find a way through the mounting crisis.
But she received a distinctly cool response from EU leaders who warned there is 'no way' the Withdrawal agreement can be changed. 
Speaking in Brussels today, Mrs May insisted that any Brexit deal would have a backstop, but said she is determined to win changes to make it time limited.  
She said: 'What I am discussing with European leaders and what I'll continue discussing with them is how we can provide assurances that the backstop in Northern Ireland, were it to be used, that it will only be temporary.'
She added: 'We are just at the start of the negotiations.' 
Mrs May said that after embarking on her first round of diplomacy she is convinced there is a 'shared determination to deal with this issue and to address this problem'.
She said: 'The deal we have negotiated is a deal that honours the result of the referendum and it is the best deal available - indeed, it's the only deal available.
'And the backstop, which is the issue Parliament has raised, the backstop is a necessary guarantee to the people of Northern Ireland and whatever outcome we want, whatever deal we want with the EU in the future, there is no deal without a backstop in it.
Here is how the first day of Theresa May's EU-wide Brexit tour unfolded
8.20am:
Theresa May arrives for a breakfast meeting with Dutch PM Mark Rutte - one of her closest European allies. 
But at around the same time, European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker tells the European Parliament there is 'no room whatsoever for renegotiation'.  
12.06pm
Theresa May arrives for talks with Angela Merkel in Berlin - but accidentally gets locked in her car for a few moments in an awkward moment caught on camera. 
The two leaders have talks over lunch.
5pm: 
The PM meets with Donald Tusk, President of the European Council. 
5.45pm:
Theresa May appears on TV to insist that her deal remains the best and only deal on the table - but says she is trying to win concessions to make the Irish backstop temporary.
'But we don't want the backstop to be used, and if it is we want to be certain that it is only temporary, and it's those assurances that I will be seeking from fellow European leaders over the coming days.'
Mrs May is under huge pressure to get biug changes on the controversial Irish backstop, which keeps Britain  ties to EU customs rules and imposes extra single market checks on Northern ireland if no trade deal can be done tin time.
But the 'plan B' has been blasted by critics as the UK cannot leave it without the EU's permission - sparking concerns Britain could remain trapped in a union forever. 
One option being pushed by the UK is Parliament having an annual vote on whether the Irish border backstop should stay in place. 
But she was given short shrift by Mrs Merkel, who insisted there is 'no way to change' the Withdrawal Agreement. 
And in another blow to the PM, in a speech to MEPs today, EU commission president Mr Juncker delivered the same message, saying the only possibility was 'clarifying' what had been agreed. 
The warmest words were from Mr Tusk, who tweeted: 'Long and frank discussion with PM @theresa_may ahead of #Brexit summit. Clear that EU27 wants to help. The question is how.' 
Senior Tories fear the frantic diplomatic activity is 'pointless' because EU leaders do not believe she would follow through with no deal. 
'Brussels thinks we will cave in,' one former minister told MailOnline. 'They can see that she is weak.'  
The scramble comes after Mrs May was humiliatingly forced to scrap a Commons vote on the Brexit deal to avoid catastrophic defeat. 
Mrs May has left the country at a time when the threats to her position are at the highest level yet - with more Conservative MPs sending no-confidence letters, and Remainers plotting to force a second referendum. 
Former minister Steve Baker urged his colleagues this morning to recognise that they face the 'certainty of failure' under Mrs May, urging them: 'You must be brave.'
He added: 'I really think it is her duty now to go.' 
The number of MPs who confirmed to have written letters of no confidence has now risen to 28, after Crispin Blunt added himself to the list.
Meanwhile, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon demanded Labour gets behind calls for another referendum, saying it is the 'only way' to resolve the impasse in Parliament. 
The SNP is threatening to try to force a Commons no-confidence vote if Jeremy Corbyn does not trigger one - but the Labour leadership thinks now is not the time to try its hand.    

In shambolic scenes yesterday, news of the U-turn on the Brexit vote came just 24 minutes after a Downing Street spokeswoman told journalists it was definitely going ahead. No new date has been given. 
Cabinet ministers including Michael Gove, who had been giving interviews hours earlier insisting the showdown was '100 per cent' happening, were infuriated at having been left hanging. 
Theresa May is facing the growing threat of a Tory no-confidence vote today as a former minister warned Brexit is 'certain to fail' while she remains party leader.
Steve Baker urged colleagues to be 'brave' and send letters to the powerful Conservative 1922 committee that would start the process of evicting the PM.
He also insisted Mrs May should consider her own position after being forced to postpone a crunch Commons Brexit vote to avoid humiliating defeat.
The brutal attack from the former Brexit minister came as the tally of MPs confirmed as having sent no-confidence letters to 1922  chair Sir Graham Brady hit 28, with Crispin Blunt adding himself to the list. 
More are believed to have sent letters privately, but Sir Graham never talks about how many he has received. 
When the figure reaches 48 a formal no-confidence vote of Tory MPs is triggered, in which Mrs May would need to gain majority support to survive.
The Conservative process is separate from a no-confidence vote in Parliament, where MPs of all political stripes take part. 
There are claims that EU officials were told the vote was being shelved on Sunday, before the Cabinet. But Downing Street sources dismissed that as 'b******s', insisting while there were discussions about the difficult Parliamentary arithmetic, final decisions were not taken until Monday. 
Whips also furiously denied claims that the government is planning to try to start the Commons Christmas recess early in order to avoid Mrs May being overwhelmed by the turmoil.
Downing Street said the PM set out to Mrs Merkel her view that the backstop must only be temporary, and they agreed to stay in close touch.
Mrs May will be travelling to Ireland tomorrow after a Cabinet meeting to see Leo Varadkar. She will then head straight on to the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
The premier is speaking to Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz by telephone today.
In a three-hour session with MPs, the Prime Minister denied she had 'bottled it' but accepted she had been facing a big defeat.
Hardline Eurosceptics warned they would not support the deal unless the Irish backstop was abandoned altogether – a move specifically ruled out by Brussels and Dublin.
Mrs May told MPs she believed EU leaders were open to discussion about the idea of providing reassurances that the backstop, which critics fear could leave the UK locked in a customs union against its will, would only be temporary.
Leader of the house Andrea Leadsom suggested today that Mrs May was seeking changes that would give Parliament an additional 'democratic ability to decide'.
'That might include an addendum to the Withdrawal Agreement that sets out that Parliament will vote prior to going into a backstop, should that prove necessary, and potentially that the EU parliament and UK parliament must vote every year thereafter to provide that legitimacy for the UK to stay in the backstop, should that prove necessary,' she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'So there are plenty of options for the PM to talk to the EU about that don't involve reopening the Withdrawal Agreement, but that would provide the legal text as a part of the Withdrawal Agreement, through perhaps an addendum.'
But in a speech to the European parliament this morning, Mr Juncker said: 'There is no room whatsoever for renegotiation, but of course there is room if used intelligently, there is room enough to give further clarifications and further interpretations without opening the Withdrawal Agreement. 
'This will not happen: everyone has to note that the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened.' 
He said that Brexit was a 'surprise guest' at the European Council, adding: 'I'm surprised because we had reached an agreement on the 25th November together with the Government of the United Kingdom. 
'Notwithstanding that, it would appear that there are problems right at the end of the road.' 
The DUP's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson warned Mrs May's mindset will 'guarantee she comes back with nothing which is going to alleviate fears'. 
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme she could only get reassurances over the Irish border backstop which 'don't mean anything when they are put against a legally-binding international agreement'. 
A Tory former minister predicted Brussels would just try to wait the UK out.
'They will think we won't do no deal,' they said. 'I think they are wrong about that, but that's what they think.
'The whole negotiation has been handled badly. I don't know where it ends. It is a really really bad situation.'
Another loyalist Tory MP said they had 'no idea' how things would play out. 'It is absolutely clear that anything could happen.'  
Ms Sturgeon said the only thing blocking a parliamentary majority for a fresh vote was the fact that 'Labour is not yet behind that'. 
'If Labour get behind that, I do think there is a prospect of a majority for that. There is perhaps a greater prospect now for a majority for that than for anything else,' she said. 
'But, in order to put that to the test to get to that point, we need to get Labour off of the fence that it is determinedly sitting on right now and backing a clear way forward. 
'A clear way forward is another vote because Theresa May's plan is not going to get a majority, she simply is running down the clock.' 
Tory sources said Mrs May had reluctantly agreed to delay the planned Brexit vote after being warned that up to 100 Conservative MPs planned to vote against it, condemning her to a potentially career-ending defeat.
A string of ministers, led by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, had spent days warning her not to proceed.
The delay was confirmed during an emergency conference call of Cabinet ministers at 11.30am and quickly leaked – minutes after a No10 spokeswoman insisted to journalists that the vote was going ahead. 
A Cabinet source said there was an 'air of resignation' among ministers about the Brexit deadlock.
'She had to delay the vote, but it leaves us in a dreadful position,' said one source. 'No one really knows what she wants or has much confidence she can salvage this thing. But it's the worst possible time for a leadership contest.'
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, last night suggested the delay would head off the immediate risk of a leadership challenge.
He said Mrs May had done the right thing: 'Lots of people have predicted the Prime Minister's downfall, they have been wrong when they have done so.'
Mr Rees-Mogg, who led last month's aborted attempt to unseat the Prime Minister, yesterday accused her of presiding over a national humiliation. But it is far from clear that hardline Eurosceptics have the numbers to force a confidence vote or leadership contest.
Whitehall sources acknowledged there was little chance of a negotiating breakthrough this week, meaning any vote is likely to be delayed until at least January 7.
Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: 'Firms are looking on with utter dismay at the ongoing saga in Westminster.
'Politicians are seemingly acting in their own interest, with little regard for the millions of people whose livelihoods depend on the success of UK business and trade.' 
Former No 10 director of legislative affairs Nikki da Costa – who quit over the deal – blamed chief whip Julian Smith for the chaos.
She said: 'I can't disagree with much of this, but in defence of the Whips Office, when it's command and control, and those that challenge are ostracised, and experienced Whips officials and SpAds are ignored, there's not much hope that the operation can compensate for the Chief.
'Junior whips can learn art of whipping, and how to build relationships with their flocks, but as with any team you need to invest. If you have no licence to take responsibility, and everything is by the Chief's say so, how much can you do? Don't write off the Office by the Chief.
'Saying this because no one on the inside can say it, I can now and I should - there are good people there.'
Jeremy Corbyn
The Labour leader is also under pressure from elements of his own party who want him to move a confidence vote against the Government.
Some 50 Labour MPs and peers have urged him to force the issue, as have the Liberal Democrats and SNP.
However, the Labour leadership has made it clear it wants to strike when it considers Mrs May to be at her weakest, and is, for now, keeping its powder dry until it sees what, if anything, the PM brings back from the EU.
Donald Tusk
The European Council president said that Brexit had now been added to the two-day EU summit taking place this week after the events at Westminster.
However, Mr Tusk signalled the EU intends to stand firm, stating that the EU would not renegotiate the deal, or backstop measures on the Irish border issue, but would only discuss 'how to facilitate UK ratification'.
Mr Tusk has repeatedly expressed sadness at the prospect of Brexit and its impact on both sides.
Jean-Claude Juncker
The European Commission president has also made clear that negotiations will not be re-opened.
Mr Juncker has made a point of saying the EU will stand firm with the Irish government over backstop arrangements for the Irish border which would see the UK remain subject to the bloc's customs rules if no wider trade deal is agreed before the end of a transition period.
Leo Varadkar
The Taoiseach has taken a much tougher stance on Brexit issues since taking over as Irish leader from Enda Kenny in 2017.
Heading a minority government and facing possible elections within the next few months, Mr Varadkar cannot afford to be seen to give ground to the UK at home.
Citing the need to maintain peace in Northern Ireland, Mr Varadkar has insisted that backstop measures must stay in place after the transition period 'unless and until' a trade agreement is in place.
 Arlene Foster
The DUP leader has been flexing her party's political muscles over Brexit as Mrs May relies on it for a slender Commons majority.
Mrs Foster has insisted that the backstop measures are unacceptable and the DUP cannot support them.
However, the DUP has said it will back Mrs May if she faces a confidence vote in the Commons, but only if the EU Withdrawal Agreement is voted down or significantly changed.
Angela Merkel
The German Chancellor will be a major player in any moves on Brexit.
However, she is now a weakened figure after standing down as the leader of her CDU party, but remaining as Chancellor.
Mrs Merkel will be a key voice in any softening of the EU line, especially as French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to maintain a tough position. 
Sir Graham Brady
The chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers is the only person who knows how many MPs have put in letters calling for a vote of confidence in Mrs May.
If the figure reaches 48 Tory MPs then a vote would be automatically triggered.
Sir Graham said he backed the PM's decision to defer the Brexit vote, but added: 'I think it's best to recognise we are in uncertain times. A very difficult point in British politics.'
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The arch-Breexiter believes the chances of a no deal exit from the EU have increased due the Prime Minister's Commons move.
The MP wants a 'managed no deal' and has turned up the heat on Mrs May repeatedly insisting a new PM would be needed for such a course of action.
Mr Rees-Mogg was widely considered to have overplayed his hand recently when leading figures from the European Research Group of Tory MPs he heads called for backbenchers to put in letters into the 1922 Committee calling for a vote of confidence in Mrs May.
Brexiteers fear Theresa May could try to ignore the objections of her 'War Cabinet' to plans for a customs 'partnership' with the EU.
The Prime Minister's favoured blueprint for future trade with Brussels was humiliatingly rejected by senior ministers at a tense three-hour meeting yesterday.
New Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson joined Boris Johnson, David Davis, Michael Gove and Liam Fox in opposing the proposal for the UK to collect duties on behalf of the EU.
The knockback has left Mrs May scrambling for another option - amid warnings that any blueprint acceptable to Tory Eurosceptics will be voted down by the Remain majority in Parliament.
However, Brexiteers believe the PM could make cosmetic changes to the proposal in a bid to 'peel off' Mr Javid and Mr Williamson, before bringing it to the sub-committee again.
They are also braced for the possibility that she ignores the sub-committee's verdict altogether and put the plan to full Cabinet.
One senior government source said: 'The plan got a kicking, but they don't seem to have any other ideas. We think she could try to peel off Sajid or Gavin.
'Alternatively she could bypass the sub-committee altogether, and take it to full Cabinet where she has more allies and would likely win.'
Cabinet Brexiteers regard the choice between the customs partnership and the so-called 'Maximum Facilitation' solution as 'binary' - making it even harder for Mrs May to come up with a compromise.
The government is effectively going back to the drawing board with time running out ahead of a crucial EU summit in June.
Mrs May is also under massive pressure from Remainers who are demanding that she U-turns altogether and agrees to stay in the customs union. Chief whip Julian Smith is said to have warned Cabinet yesterday that the government would currently lose a vote on the key issue - which could potentially come to a crunch in the Commons next month.
Mrs May had hoped the EU summit next month would be an opportunity to present firm proposals for future trade to the bloc's leaders.
Brussels has been warning that failure to make progress at the summit - particularly on a way to avoid a hard Irish border - could stall negotiations altogether. 
Answering questions in the Commons today, Brexit Secretary David Davis played down fears that ministers are at loggerheads. 
'It is no surprise that it takes some time to nail down this policy,' he said. We're taking time to get this right.' 
At yesterday's meeting, Mr Davis, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox launched a drive against the customs partnership, in which Britain would collect tariffs to hand over to the EU.
They warned the plan would damage Britain's ability to strike trade deals and leave the UK subject to EU rules.
But critically, they were backed in their opposition by Mr Williamson and Mr Javid.
Both had supported Remain and were seen as swing voters ahead of the meeting, but by joining forces with Brexiteers they effectively killed off the plan.
No vote was held, but sources said the 11-strong committee was divided by six to five against the partnership. 
Supporters of the partnership idea claimed the group was actually evenly split as Mr Smith backed Mrs May. But that was mocked by Brexiteers who pointed out that the chief whip is not a formal member.
One source said: 'The customs partnership has been killed off. It doesn't have the support of the Brexit war cabinet and it is very hard to see how it could be resurrected.'
The Prime Minister had hoped to present a preferred option to the full Cabinet on Tuesday, but instead had to order ministers and officials to conduct urgent work on both options.
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
Downing Street sources stressed the urgency of finding a compromise to kick start trade talks with the EU.
Asked how long officials had to craft a solution, a senior government figure told the Times: 'Days, not weeks.' 
According to the Spectator, Mr Smith warned the Cabinet that the government would lose a vote in the Commons on the policy of shunning any form of customs union with the EU - one of the fundamental red lines Mrs May has set as it would mean Britain could not do trade deals elsewhere.
Such a defeat could throw the whole Brexit process into more turmoil and even force Mrs May out of office.
The Lords has already passed an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill urging the continuation of a customs union which will come before MPs at some stage - although ministers say the wording is loose enough that it could be accepted without significant harm.
But Tory rebels are vowing to join Labour in backing an amendment to the Trade Bill that could force a showdown. The crunch point could come as early as next month, dependent on government business timings and whether the amendment is accepted.
Around a dozen Conservatives have indicated they could vote in favour, enough to overturn Mrs May's slender majority. 
The Cabinet meeting last night followed the departure of passionate Remainer Amber Rudd, who had been expected to back the customs partnership, and her replacement with Mr Javid on Monday.
Mr Javid switching sides effectively changed the balance of the committee. The decision was a blow to Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark, who argued in favour of the customs partnership.
One source said Mr Clark had been 'close to tears' as he warned ditching the plan would threaten jobs. 
Friends of Mr Hammond said he was 'frustrated' and did not see how the alternative plan could resolve the need for a hard Irish border.
The move follows a concerted push by Eurosceptics to strangle the customs partnership plan, which they had warned would wreck Brexit.
The 60-strong European Research Group submitted a 30-page paper to Downing Street demolishing the plan.
They warned the 'undeliverable' plan would end up being 'substantially the same as a full customs union with the EU'.
Jacob Rees-Mogg said there was 'no question of an ultimatum' from Tory MPs over the issue. But he said there was a widespread view that the plan was 'deeply unsatisfactory'.
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
Some MPs warned whips they could withdraw support for the PM if the plan went ahead.
And senior ministers, including Mr Davis, Mr Johnson and Dr Fox made it clear to No 10 that they could not accept the proposal, which Mr Gove described as 'bonkers'.
The backlash led to crisis talks in Downing Street on Tuesday night to discuss the way ahead.
The customs partnership had been No 10's preferred option, with one insider describing it as 'intellectually perfect'.
Supporters claimed it would resolve the Irish border issue and stood a chance of gaining approval in Parliament, where ministers fear pro-Remain MPs could vote to stay in a full customs union.
But aides were forced to prepare the ground for a tactical retreat. 
At Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, Mrs May referred to there being 'a number of ways' to resolve the issue, rather than just the two formally on the table.
Ahead of yesterday's meeting, No 10 acknowledged the position was 'evolving'.
Officials also warned ministers at yesterday's meeting that neither plan was ready to be implemented by January 2021 when the Brexit transition finishes – raising the prospect of extending Britain's customs union membership temporarily. 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
Theresa May was today accused of betraying the referendum by effectively keeping us in the EU for another two years - as she made concessions on citizens' rights, money and law in a bid to kickstart Brexit talks.
The Prime Minister used a crucial speech in Florence to declare that Britain will cover the huge hole left in Brussels' finances for another two years after we formally leave in 2019 - contributing potentially another 20 billion euros.
She also said the European court could help enforce the rights of EU nationals - easing back a previous red line - and admitted that bringing in tougher immigration measures would take time, raising the possibility that free movement rules could essentially stay in place for longer.
But Mrs May said in return for the 'generous' financial offer the UK must have full access to the single market during a two-year 'transition' period.
Setting out her vision for a post-Brexit future, she also ruled out existing models for trade arrangements such as Norway's, saying: 'We can do better than that.' She suggested the final deal should be 'bespoke', but could be a much looser affiliation similar to that sealed with Canada.
However, the tightrope walk Mrs May must carry off was underlined as Brexiteers accused her of effectively keeping us in the EU for an extra two years and wasting more money. 
Speaking in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron said that while he welcomed Mrs May's 'willingness' to move forward, more progress was needed on the rights of EU citizens in Britain and the border with Ireland as well as the so-called 'divorce settlement'.
'Before we move forward, we wish to clarify the issue of the regulation of European citizens, the financial terms of the exit and the question of Ireland,' he said.
'If those three points are not clarified, then we cannot move forward on the rest.'
Nigel Farage said the speech was 'two fingers' to the referendum result, while some Tory MPs voiced disquiet about backsliding.
Mr Farage said the speech was a 'victory for the political class'.
He added: 'We stay part of all the current structures and what we do is we simply rebadge the status quo.
'The most telling line in the whole speech was when she said we do not seek a competitive advantage. Well, that's what I voted for. I voted for us to be able to be competitive, to be global.
'She shows no desire, no vision to be the kind of leader we need to take us on to be a global trading nation.'
Former Tory minister Owen Paterson led Eurosceptics in voicing concern about her request for a transition period – where Britain follows EU rules – for two years after the UK's official exit in March 2019.
He said: 'Although she [Mrs May] made it very clear that it should be of course as short as possible, as long as we have that transition period we are still bound in by European rules and we cannot get cracking and open up markets around the world.'
Fellow Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg demanded that European judges do not have power over British courts during the period.
He said: 'As long as it is not subject to the European Court of Justice and the EU migrants don't get permanent rights it is on the margin of acceptability.' John Longworth and Richard Tice, chairmen of Leave Means Leave, said: 'We are deeply concerned that her proposals could lead to nothing changing either during or after the implementation period – which will go on for an undefined amount of time.
'There is no reference to being able to deregulate, sign our own trade deals or control our borders. This is a rebadging of the status quo and is Brexit in name only. In reality, this means we are still members.'
Gisela Stuart, the ex-Labour MP and former chairman of the Leave campaign, said the transition period should last no longer than two years. 'The British people need to know that by the time of the next general election, the British people and the sovereign government they elect will once again be fully in control of our laws, borders, money and trade,' she said.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove tweeted: 'An excellent speech from the PM in Florence – delivering on the wishes of the British people.'
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson praised the speech as 'positive, optimistic and dynamic'. He added: 'A strong Britain working hand in hand with a strong Europe – but once again free to take our own decisions.'
Mrs May had been walking a tightrope to keep all quarters of her Cabinet happy. The PM has also been under pressure not to upset backbenchers ahead of the Conservative Party conference.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said Mrs May had given absolute confirmation that Britain would regain full sovereignty.
But Labour peer Lord Mandelson accused the PM of failing to give enough detail. 'The only sound that can be heard is of a can being kicked down the road,' he said.
There was a warmer response from the EU, with chief negotiator Michel Barnier welcoming her words as 'constructive' and a 'step forward'. Boris Johnson, who caused chaos this week with an apparent resignation threat in order to harden the text, described the speech as 'positive, optimistic and dynamic'.
Flanked by Cabinet ministers including Mr Johnson and Philip Hammond at a Renaissance church in Italy, Mrs May said the UK's desire to be 'strong' partners with the EU remained undimmed - but it wanted to be a 'sovereign' nation taking its own decisions.
'The British electorate made a choice,' she told the audience. 'We share a responsibility to make this work.' 

Downing Street hopes the blueprint can end the bitter standoff of the past few months.
In her landmark speech, delivered at the Santa Maria Novella church, Mrs May:
Mrs May said Norway-style membership of the EEA - effectively the single market - would mean the UK would 'have to adopt the EU rules, rules over which we have little influence and no vote'.
That would inevitably lead to 'friction and a damaging reopening of a conversation about our relationship with the EU'. 
'We can do so much better than this. Let us be creative as well as practical,' she added. 
Spelling out her vision for a transition period, Mrs May said it should mirror the existing arrangements. 
'Clearly people, businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU,' she said. 
'So during the implementation period access to one another's markets should continue on current terms and Britain also should continue to take part in existing security measures. And I know businesses, in particular, would welcome the certainty this would provide.

Transition phase:
Britain wants to have a transition period of 'around two years' to provide reassurance to businesses.
During this phase, the UK will have 'full access' to the EU single market. 
EU citizens 
In a major concession, the PM said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will help guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in Britain after Brexit.  
Immigration:
During the two-year transition period, EU nationals will still be able to come and live and work in the UK.
But they will have to sign up to a new 'registration system', which the PM said was 'essential preparation' for new post-Brexit system.
Security:
The PM spelled out plans for a 'new strategic agreement' on security.
But she faced accusations that she has thrown away Britain's trump card in the negotiations by saying the UK is 'unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe's security'. 

Irish border:
Stressed Britain's commitment to protecting the Belfast Agreement and the Common Travel Area which would keep a soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
Payments into EU budget:
The PM said the UK will 'honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership'.
Future relationship: 
The PM dismissed going for a model based on the free trade deal struck with Canada or one amounting to European Economic Area membership. Instead she wants a bespoke deal. 
'The framework for this strictly time-limited period, which can be agreed under Article 50, would be the existing structure of EU rules and regulations.
'How long the period is should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin that future partnership.
'For example, it will take time to put in place the new immigration system required to re-take control of the UK's borders. 
'So during the implementation period, people will continue to be able to come and live and work in the UK; but there will be a registration system – an essential preparation for the new regime.
'As of today, these considerations point to an implementation period of around two years.' 



Mrs May told Europe's leaders they have a duty to future generations to strike a good deal, saying: 'The eyes of the world are on us.'
'The strength of feeling that the British people have for control and for the direct accountability of their politicians is one reason why throughout its membership, the UK has never totally felt at home being part of the EU and perhaps because of our geography and history the EU never felt like an integral part of our national story. 
'The profound pooling of sovereignty which is a crucial feature of the EU permits unprecedentedly deep cooperation which permits benefits but it also means that when countries are in the minority, they must sometimes accept decisions they don't want, even affecting domestic matters with no market implication beyond their borders. 
'When such decisions are taken, they can be hard to change. That is our choice, it does not mean that we are no longer a proud member of the European nations…. 
'It does not mean we are turning our back in Europe or worse that we don't wish the EU to succeed. The success of the EU is profoundly in our national interest.' 
Mrs May said that 'Britain's future is bright' regardless of whether they agree to a trade deal, because of the UK's 'considerable' economic strengths and 'indomitable spirit'.
Mrs May urged her EU counterparts to seize the opportunity to 'write a new chapter in European history' together so both sides thrive. 
The Prime Minister's financial offer will complete the EU's seven-year budget, which runs to the end of 2020.
There had been near-panic in Brussels at the prospect of reopening the budget.
But the proposal will ensure that Eastern European member states will receive no less money from Brussels and others such as Germany will not be forced to pay more into the budget.
A precise figure was not put on the money but it is expected that the payments would be for about £20billion over two years.
The UK is likely to have to hand over more - as the mooted two-year transition period would theoretically end later, in March 2021. 
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator today welcomed the 'constructive spirit' of Theresa May's Florence speech .
Michel Barnier said the PM's landmark address are a 'step forward' in the crucial talks.
But he repeated his warning time is running out and 'sufficient progress' must be made on the withdrawal deal before proper trade talks can start.
He said: 'In her speech in Florence, Prime Minister Theresa May has expressed a constructive spirit which is also the spirit of the European Union during this unique negotiation.
'The speech shows a willingness to move forward, as time is of the essence.' 
Mr Barnier added: 'Prime Minister May's statements are a step forward but they must now be translated into a precise negotiating position of the UK government.'  

He singled out Mrs May's promise no other EU state would have to pay more into the Brussels budget because of Brexit, and said: 'We stand ready to discuss the concrete implications of this pledge.' 

In a statement, Mr Barnier said: 'The speech shows a willingness to move forward, as time is of the essence. 
'We need to reach an agreement by autumn 2018 on the conditions of the United Kingdom's orderly withdrawal from the European Union. The UK will become a third country on March 30, 2019.
'Our priority is to protect the rights of citizens. EU27 citizens in the United Kingdom must have the same rights as British citizens today in the European Union. 
'These rights must be implemented effectively and safeguarded in the same way in the United Kingdom as in the European Union, as recalled by the European Council and European Parliament. 
'Prime Minister May's statements are a step forward but they must now be translated into a precise negotiating position of the UK government.'
However, former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the plan amounted to keeping the UK in the bloc for another two years.
'Very little substance at all other than what she has made clear is that her vision is leave the European Union but we do so in name only.
'We stay part of all the current structures and what we do is we simply rebadge the status quo.
'I thought the most telling line in the whole speech was when she said we do not seek a competitive advantage.
'Well that's what I voted for.
'I vote for us to be able to a competitive, to be global.
'She shows no desire, no vision to be the kind of leader we need to take us on to be a global trading nation.'
He said Mrs May has retreated from her tough-talking position of being prepared to walk away from the EU with no deal rather than a bad one.
And he warned that the two-year transition phase could end up being 'many, many more times that'. 



Tory former cabinet minister Owen Paterson expressed concern about the proposed two-year transition period.
'As long as we still have that transition period we are still bound in by European rules and we cannot get cracking on opening up markets around the world,' he told BBC News.
He said that ministers should now start making preparations for the prospect that the UK will leave the EU without a trade deal.
'We just want simple, reciprocal free trade on a zero-tariff basis respecting each other's standards and regulations,' he said.
Nigel Farage today slammed Theresa May's Brexit offer - saying it sticks 'two fingers up' to the millions who voted to leave the EU.
The former Ukip leader said her proposal to pump billions into the EU in a two-year transition deal  will effectively keep Britain inside the bloc long after the referendum.
The offer is a 'victory for the political class' over the people, he warned.
'Very little substance at all other than what she has made clear is that her vision is leave the European Union but we do so in name only.
'We stay part of all the current structures and what we do is we simply rebadge the status quo.
'I thought the most telling line in the whole speech was when she said we do not seek a competitive advantage.
'Well that's what I voted for.
'I vote for us to be able to a competitive, to be global.
'She shows no desire, no vision to be the kind of leader we need to take us on to be a global trading nation.'
He said Mrs May has retreated from her tough-talking position of being prepared to walk away from the EU with no deal rather than a bad one.
And he warned that the two-year transition phase could end up being 'many, many more times that'.

'If they are not going to be serious about that, then I think we have to make them wake up to the fact we are not frightened of walking away.'
There was also a lukewarm response from German MEP Manfred Weber, a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
'In substance PM May is bringing no more clarity to London's positions. I am even more concerned now,' he wrote on Twitter.
But Mr Johnson, speaking to reporters in Florence directly after the speech, denied that Mr May's vision will mean 'everything will be the same' in Britain's relationship with the EU.
He said: 'No, no no. As the Prime Minister rightly said we are going to have a transition period and after that of course we are going to be taking back control of our borders our laws and our destiny.
And I think what was so uplifting about this speech was that it was positive it was confident about what Britain can do, but also about our relations with the rest of the EU.
'What it sets out is a very attractive vision of a string Europe supported and buttressed by a strong UK.
'And we are not going to be in relationship like Norway, receiving laws but not being able to change them or to vote on them.
'We are going to be able to do our own thing. But also work positively together on defence, on security and to build and deepen that economic partnership.
'As the Prime Minister said at the end of her speech, this is not the end of a relationship, it is the beginning of a fantastic new partnership.' 
Fellow Cabinet Brexiteer Michael Gove posted on Twitter: 'An excellent speech from the PM in Florence - delivering on the wishes of the British people.'
Mr Hammond, the cheerleader for a softer Brexit in Mrs May's top team, told reporters in Florence: 'I think this was an excellent speech by the Prime Minister.
'It's a decisive intervention that has given I think great clarity to business and to our EU partners about our ambitions for an interim period and our plans for the long-term relationship with the European Union and I'm confident that we're now going to be able to move the negotiations forward on the basis of this intervention.' 





Earlier, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling insisted that freedom of movement rules would end in 2019 when we formally leave.
But the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier suggested yesterday that any transition deal would mean the UK accepting existing arrangements.
Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng, a ministerial aide to the Chancellor, also claimed last night that Britain should not give a 'penny more' than the 20billion euros.
'There is a logic behind a two year transition, because if you think when the EU budget was set. The EU budget was set in 2013 and it was for seven years and we were locked into that. Now in 2013, you will remember, no one was talking about Brexit. We assumed that we would pay for seven years,' he told the BBC's Question Time.
'Really I think as a matter of goodwill there is a sense in saying we will pay until the end of that budget process and then not a penny more.' 

A leading political reporter was left red-faced today after he accidentally introducing himself as the Prime Minister to Theresa May. 
George Parker, political editor at the Financial Times, was questioning the PM on her Brexit plans at the end of her landmark speech in Florence today.
But as he introduced himself in front of the world's media, he said: 'George Parker at the Prime Minister….sorry not the Prime Minister, at the Financial Times.'
His colleagues in the large press pack dissolved in to giggles while the PM smiled at his error.
Quickly spotting his mistake, Mr Parker said 'wishful thinking, obviously' before moving on to quiz the PM on her plans for Britain's future relationship with the single market. 
Cabinet staged a show of unity yesterday after ministers finally signed off the text of Mrs May's speech - despite apparent threats by the Foreign Secretary to resign.
Mr Johnson penned a bombshell newspaper article last week, widely interpreted as an effort to toughen up Mrs May's stance on Brexit.
But yesterday he walked out of Downing Street chatting happily to Mr Hammond, seen as the champion of 'soft' Brexit within Mrs May's top team/ 

Talks in Brussels have ground to a halt over the summer as EU officials have claimed not enough progress has been made on the issues of the divorce bill, citizens' rights and Northern Ireland for negotiations to move forward to a second phase, including trade talks.
By making substantial new offers on the key issues and striking a more conciliatory tone, Mrs May is hoping EU leaders will agree that negotiations should move forward to the next stage at a crunch summit in a few weeks.
UK officials are said to have told negotiators they are willing to consider European Court of Justice case law being 'taken into account' by British judges when they rule on disputes over the rights of EU citizens. 
The Prime Minister's speech set out her vision for a 'bold' economic and security partnership with a 'time-limited' implementation period to avoid a cliff-edge change for businesses adjusting to the new arrangements.
The European Council has to decide next month whether sufficient progress has been made during talks so far to start negotiations on a trade deal. 
Mr Corbyn accused Mrs May and her Conservative Cabinet colleagues of spending more time 'negotiating with each other' than with the EU.
He said: 'Fifteen months after the EU referendum the Government is still no clearer about what our long-term relationship with the EU will look like.
'The only advance seems to be that the Prime Minister has listened to Labour and faced up to the reality that Britain needs a transition on the same basic terms to provide stability for businesses and workers.' 

The pound fell to a daily low against both the US dollar and euro as investors as Theresa May's Florence speech failed to win over investors.
Sterling fell by 0.6 per cent against the US dollar, so that at 1.350 at the end of the speech – a slump of 0.4 per cent during the course of the address.
And it also slumped against the euro, trading at nearly one per cent lower. One pound is now only marginally more valuable than a euro.
Analysts said investors had been left 'disappointed' not to hear any hint that the UK will try to keep access to the single market long-term.
Hamish Muress, a currency analyst at OFX, said: 'The pound was sold off as traders looked for hints around future access to the single market, and were disappointed not to find them in the Prime Minister's speech.
'Not even the pledge for a two-year transition period could stem the pound's losses, particularly against the euro.'
He added: 'The markets want a firm commitment to a soft Brexit and future access to the single market, but it doesn't look like Theresa May will be pushing for this - at least for the time being,' he said.
Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the PM's tone was 'constructive' but many usinesses want a transition which lasts longer than two years.
Lobby group TheCityUK said: 'The ball is now firmly in the EU's court and the clock is ticking'
Theresa May delivered her landmark Brexit speech in an Italian church where four centuries ago a Galileo was condemned for daring to think differently.
The Prime Minister has chosen Santa Maria Novella - a grand Gothic basilica in Florence  - to make the intervention.
The ornate building dates from the 13th century and is one of the most important Gothic churches in all of Tuscany.
And it was from this pulpit where the preacher Tommaso Caccini condemned Galileo for heresy for daring to say the earth travels around the sun.
Paid for by leading Florentine families, the church has a grand marble face and contains a treasure trove of Renaissance paintings and frescoes.
It is the first large basilica in Florence and is closely related to the Renaissance - which is likely to be a key theme of Mrs May's address.
The church was designed by two Dominicon friars and took over 100 years to build, eventually being completed in 1360.
As Florence flourished as a centre for banking and finance, wealthy patrons paid for additional chapels to be added to the church.   
Among them were the famous Medici family, who used their vast wealth to patronise the arts and fuel the artistic Renaissance the city remains famous around the world for.
The eurozone crisis has disproportionately hit young people and poses a threat to 'social cohesion' and democracy, its top banker warned yesterday.
The president of the European Central Bank said the sky-high levels of youth unemployment crippling parts of the single currency bloc carry 'high costs for our societies'.
Fuelling fears that the eurozone faces a lost generation who may never find meaningful work, Mario Draghi warned of the 'scarring effects' of unemployment among the young.
Despite signs the economy is recovering, unemployment in the single currency bloc is stubbornly high at 9.1 per cent, more than double the 4.3 per cent rate in Britain. Unemployment among under-25s is 19.1 per cent, although it is as high as 44.4 per cent in Greece and 38.6 per cent in Spain.
In a speech in Dublin, Mr Draghi, 70, said: 'In several countries the weight of the crisis has fallen disproportionately on the young, leaving a legacy of failed hopes, anger and ultimately mistrust in the values of our society and in the identity of our democracy.'
He added that protracted periods of unemployment was 'scarring' and 'has negative effects not only on life satisfaction, but also on health, and may persist well into later life'.


Donald Tusk tonight warned the EU will not renegotiate the Brexit deal just hours after a humiliated Theresa May said she was pulling the crunch vote on her plan so she could hold a fresh round of talks.
The EU council president said 'time is running out' and made it clear the bloc is not willing to change the legal text of the agreement, including the controversial Irish border backstop.  
And he delivered a thinly veiled threat by declaring that the EU will be stepping up its preparations for the UK crashing out of the bloc in March.
The intervention came after the PM humiliatingly delayed the Commons vote on her Brexit deal to avoid a catastrophic defeat.
She has pledged to return to Brussels to push for concessions after swathes of Tories signalled they will not support the current package.
And she will kick off her European tour tomorrow morning by holding a meeting with the Dutch PM Mark Rutte in The Hague.
Mrs May faced an historic defeat by up to 200 votes in tomorrow's vote and must now come up with something to change the tide. 
Taking to her feet in the packed Commons Chamber tonight to confirm the U-turn, she hinted that her Brexit deal could be delayed for six weeks.
She faced taunts and barracking from MPs, and Tory MP and Brexiteer in chief Jacob Rees-Mogg branded her decision to scrap the vote a 'humiliation' and admission of 'defeat'. 
And Mr Tusk confirmed on Twitter that he has decided to call a meeting on Brexit at this Thursday's EU summit in Brussels.
But in a snub to the PM, he warned: 'We will not renegotiate the deal, including the backstop, but we are ready to discuss how to facilitate UK ratification. As time is running out, we will also discuss our preparedness for a no-deal scenario.' 
She insisted her blueprint was still the 'best deal negotiable', and said she still planned to put it to a vote once 'reassurances' had been secured on the Irish border backstop - but implied that might not happen before January 21. 
In words that raise doubts about whether the tweaks will be enough, Mrs May dodged questions about whether she was going to ask for the Withdrawal Agreement to be reopened, and made clear she is not demanding the EU drops the backstop. 
The statement was immediately condemned by Brexiteers, with Jacob Rees-Mogg demanding that she 'governs or quits'. The DUP complained that the PM does not 'get it' and her deal will 'never' be acceptable to Parliament. 
Jeremy Corbyn insisted the government is in 'disarray' and must 'make way' for Labour to take power, while Remainers accused Mrs May of 'running down the clock' and called for a second referendum. 
The premier was also given an extraordinary dressing down by Speaker John Bercow who accused her of 'discourtesy' for abandoning the vote after four days of debate - urging her to show 'maturity' by giving MPs their say. 
The Pound plunged further against the US dollar as markets took fright at the political carnage. 
Amid a cacophony of catcalls from MPs in the chamber, Mrs May said: 'While there is broad support for many of the key aspects of the deal on one issue – the Northern Ireland backstop – there remains widespread and deep concern.
'As a result, if we went ahead and held that vote that deal would be rejected by a significant margin.
'We will therefore defer the vote scheduled for tomorrow, and not proceed to divide the House at this time.' 
Mrs May said she would hold talks with EU counterparts over the coming days before heading for Brussels summit on Thursday. 
'I will discuss with them the clear concerns that this House has expressed,' she said.
'We are also looking closely at new ways of empowering the House of Commons to ensure that any provision for a backstop has democratic legitimacy and to enable the House to place its own obligations on the government to ensure that the backstop cannot be in place indefinitely.
'Having spent the best part of two years poring over the details of Brexit….I am in absolutely no doubt that this deal is the right one.'  
The EU has already flatly dismissed the idea that there could be substantive concessions on the divorce package, with Irish PM Leo Varadkar insisting it is 'not possible' to change the deal. 
An EU commission spokeswoman said: 'This deal is the best and only deal possible. We will not renegotiate - our position has therefore not changed and as far as we are concerned the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union on the 29th March 2019.'
In another day of high drama in Westminster: 
Earlier, Mrs May decided to postpone the vote in an emergency conference call with her most senior ministers after days of intense wrangling over how to navigate the dire situation.
Some 110 Tory MPs have vowed to oppose Mrs May's plan, making victory all-but impossible as they line up with Labour, the SNP, and the Lib Dems.
A series of Cabinet ministers and a spokeswoman for the PM all publicly insisted this morning that the vote was 'going ahead as planned'.
But within an hour three senior sources told MailOnline they were certain that the Commons showdown will be put off. The Pound plunged on the news.  
The decision drew derision from critics, including Tories. 
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused the PM of 'pathetic cowardice' and demanded Labour join a no confidence vote to collapse the government, while Conservative MP Nick Boles jibed: 'Nothing has changed, right?' 
Asked when she would bring the deal back to the Commons, Mrs May said under the EU Withdrawal Act the government must lay out its plans to Parliament by January 21 at the latest.  
However, Commons experts have raised doubts about whether the deadline applies any more now that an agreement in principle has been reached with Brussels. 
Mrs May also signalled defiance over the Irish border backstop - despite it threatening to torpedo her government.
'I set out I my speech opening the debate last week the reasons why the backstop is a necessary guarantee to the people of Northern Ireland, and why, whatever future relationship you want, there can be no deal available that does not include the backstop,' she told MPs.
'Behind all those arguments are some inescapable facts – the fact that Northern Ireland shares a land border with another sovereign state.
'The fact that the hard won peace that has been built in Northern Ireland over the last twoa decades has bene built around a seamless border.
'And the fact that Brexit will create a wholly new situation. OJ the 30 March the Northern Ireland - Ireland border will for the first time become the external frontier of the European Union's single market and customs union.' 
The climbdown allows Mrs May to avoid catastrophic defeat, and go back to Brussels to try to get more concessions. 
But also demonstrates how low her authority has sunk. 
The so-called Irish border backstop is one of the most controversial parts of the PM's Brexit deal. This is what it means: 
What is the backstop? 
The backstop was invented to meet promises to keep open the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland even if there is no comprehensive UK-EU trade deal.
The divorce deal says it will kick in automatically at the end of the Brexit transition if that deal is not in place.
If effectively keeps the UK in a customs union with the EU and Northern Ireland in both the customs union and single market.
This means many EU laws will keep being imposed on the UK and there can be no new trade deals. It also means regulatory checks on some goods crossing the Irish Sea. 
Why have Ireland and the EU demanded it? 
Because Britain demanded to leave the EU customs union and single market, the EU said it needed guarantees people and goods circulating inside met EU rules.
This is covered by the Brexit transition, which effectively maintains current rules, and can in theory be done in the comprehensive EU-UK trade deal.
But the EU said there had to be a backstop to cover what happens in any gap between transition and final deal.  
Why do critics hate it? 
Because Britain cannot decide when to leave the backstop. 
Getting out - even if there is a trade deal - can only happen if both sides agree people and goods can freely cross the border.
Brexiteers fear the EU will unreasonably demand the backstop continues so EU law continues to apply in Northern Ireland.  
Northern Ireland MPs also hate the regulatory border in the Irish Sea, insisting it unreasonably carves up the United Kingdom. 
What concessions did Britain get in negotiating it? 
During the negotiations, Britain persuaded Brussels the backstop should apply to the whole UK and not just Northern Ireland. Importantly, this prevents a customs border down the Irish Sea - even if some goods still need to be checked.
The Government said this means Britain gets many of the benefits of EU membership after transition without all of the commitments - meaning Brussels will be eager to end the backstop. 
It also got promises the EU will act in 'good faith' during the future trade talks and use its 'best endeavours' to finalise a deal - promises it says can be enforced in court.
What did the legal advice say about it? 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said even with the EU promises, if a trade deal cannot be reached the backstop could last forever.
This would leave Britain stuck in a Brexit limbo, living under EU rules it had no say in writing and no way to unilaterally end it.  
The dramatic developments came as Tory infighting escalated dramatically, with leadership rivals including Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid getting ready to pounce. 
Foreign minister Alan Duncan warned that those who kill off Mrs May deal 'will forever be known as the wreckers'. 
He also said if Mr Johnson took over at No10 he will be met with 'loud raspberries in many many different languages'. 'He is the last person on earth who would make any progress on these talks,' he said. 
A growing number of ministers had been urging Mrs May to shelve the clash tomorrow to avoid disaster.
But others insisted that it would look like cowardice, and she needs a demonstration of Parliament's view to strengthen her hand with Brussels.  
Mr Rees-Mogg ramped up his bid to oust Mrs May as leader - branding her Brexit U-turn a 'humiliation' which has left her deal 'defeated'.
The Tory MP and leading Brexiteer said Conservatives are fed up at the feeling of 'drift' and total lack of direction coming from No10.
He branded the Government a 'mess' and said the PM's decision to pull the crunch vote on her Brexit deal has increased the likelihood the UK will crash out of Brussels with no deal.
And he laid the blame squarely at Mrs May's feet - saying the Brexit deal was her policy and she must take responsibility for it.
Emerging from a meeting of the powerful Brexit-backing European Research Group in Parliament tonight, he said: 'This deal has been defeated hasn’t it? The Prime Minister said she was pulling it saying the vote couldn’t be won.’ 
Mr Rees-Mogg added: 'I think the likelihood of leaving without a Withdrawal Agreement has gone up. 
'But I think we should aim for a managed no deal, and I have made clear and will happily reiterate – we need a new Prime Minister to do that.
If you look at today, this is the failure of the Prime Minister’s policy. The Withdrawal Agreement was her policy, two Dexeu secretaries resigned because they could not support her policy.
‘It is personally identified with her.
'She is the one who has led the government to this defeat, she is the one who ought to take responsibility for it.' 
He added: ‘I thought it was as humiliating for the government to pull the vote as to lose by 100 – if you were to weight it up. They must have thought they were going to lose it by more, to make it worth pulling.’  
Senior figures had spent the weekend trying to quell mounting speculation about a retreat by the PM.
Hours before the volte face emerged at lunchtime, Environment Secretary Michael Gove said the showdown was '100 per cent' on. 
He gave a clear indication that the government is seeking concessions from the EU, saying there was 'no-one better placed' than Mrs May to get more concessions.
But he warned there were significant 'risks' in reopening the Withdrawal Agreement thrashed out with Brussels, including France seeking more access to fishing waters and Spain troublemaking over Gibraltar.
Mr Gove dismissed suggestions that Mrs May could be helped in her efforts by a heavy defeat in Parliament. 
In a reference to the famous resignation speech by Geoffrey Howe that sunk Margaret Thatcher, he warned that would be the 'equivalent of breaking the cricket bat in half before the leader went to the crease'. 
'If colleagues really want to help the PM I'm sure the PM would urge them gently but firmly to support her tomorrow,' Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom is due to make a statement to MPs after Mrs May addresses them this afternoon.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will also make a separate statement later tonight, on the Article 50 ruling by the ECJ. 
DUP leader Arlene Foster said this afternoon: 'Just finished a call with the Prime Minister. My message was clear. 
'The backstop must go. Too much time has been wasted. Need a better deal. Disappointed it has taken so long for Prime Minister to listen.' 
Some of her MPs had threatened to vote against a delay to the vote – raising the prospect of her being humiliatingly forced into holding it.
But No10 confirmed that it will use a procedural tactic to dodge having to get the change past the Commons.
When the Commons clerk reads out the orders of the day on Monday evening, the Government whip will call out 'tomorrow'. 
This puts off the two remaining days of debate and any votes until a date yet to be fixed. There is no requirement for vote on this procedure, said the PM's spokesman. 
But Mr Bercow raged at the tactic in an extraordinary intervention from the chair.
'In any courteous, respectful and mature environment, allowing the House to have its say on the matter would be the right and obvious course to take,' he said. 
Shouts of 'resign' were heard from Opposition MPs as Mrs May concluded her initial statement to the Commons, with a febrile atmosphere sweeping the chamber for the exchanges.
Veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner labelled Mrs May 'frit' and accused her of 'handing over power to the EU' by delaying the vote, which prompted a defence of the PM by Tory former Cabinet minister Dame Cheryl Gillan.
Tory former minister Anna Soubry also warned Mrs May 'nothing will change' in the EU's approach to negotiation as she suggested there was a need for a second referendum.
Speaking in the Commons, Tory Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen said: 'Successful renegotiations require trust and credibility.
'Given the Prime Minister's breathtaking U-turn today, I put it to her that she's lost the trust and credibility of the House, lost the trust and credibility of the country and most importantly she's lost the trust and credibility of the European Union as well.'
Mrs May rejected Mr Bridgen's remarks and said further discussions with the EU would take place.
In a rare intervention in support of the PM, Dame Cheryl Gillan said: 'Far from being frit, I think this Prime Minister has shown great courage in coming back to face this House, delay this vote in efforts to get the best possible deal for this country.' 
Mrs May spoke with EU council president Mr Tusk last night as she considers a bid to squeeze more concessions out of the EU.
An EU summit is scheduled for the end of the week, which could provide a stage for Mrs May to emulate Margaret Thatcher and have a 'handbag moment' to demand more concessions on the Irish border 'backstop'. 
After the vote on the Brexit deal was postponed, children's minister Nadhim Zahawi tweeted: '@theresa_may has listened to colleagues and will head to Brussels to push back on the backstop.' 
But Ireland's deputy PM Simon Coveney today delivered a savage blow by dismissing her chances of getting fresh concessions on Brexit. 
He insisted the deal is 'not going to change'. 
In a clear leadership pitch yesterday, Mr Johnson predicted that Mrs May would lose her crunch vote on the deal by a huge margin.
EU judges delivered a boost for Remainer rebels today by ruling that Britain can unilaterally cancel Brexit. 
The European Court of Justice decided that Article 50 can be withdrawn by the UK without permission from other member states.
Britain would keep its current terms of membership if it quit the process - meaning keeping the rebate, the opt out from the Euro and exemptions from the Schengen passport-free zone.
Today's ruling will encourage hopes from pro-EU MPs that a second referendum can be held to stop the UK from leaving the bloc altogether. 
But Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the ruling was 'irrelevant' as it was 'certainly not the intention of the government' to delay Brexit. 
The case was brought by a cross-party group of Scottish politicians together with lawyer Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project.  
Looking visibly emotional as he appeared on the BBC's Andrew Marr show, he said the UK can do 'much much better' than the PM's deal.
There have been claims that Home Secretary Sajid Javid is also brazenly canvassing Cabinet colleagues for a tilt at the top job if Mrs May is ousted. Aides insisted he is focused on helping the PM get her deal through.
In a sign of what could be a torrent of resignations if and when she goes ahead with the vote, Tory MP Will Quince yesterday quit as a parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
At least two government whips were understood to be considering falling on their swords in order to vote against the Brexit package. 
Mrs May's position was further undermined today when the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK can unilaterally halt the Brexit process by withdrawing Article 50.
The judgement that permission is not needed was hailed by Remainers as opening the door to holding a second referendum. 
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, in Brussels for regular talks with counterparts this morning, said the government has no intention of reversing Article 50 and voters would be 'shocked' if it did. 
Senior ministers including David Lidington and David Gauke are said to be in talks with Labour over whether a second referendum or a Norway-style deal would break the deadlock. 
Sir Alan was on air on BBC's Politics Live programme as the news of the Brexit delay emerged - risking controversy by laughing as he was told the government was in chaos. 
Appearing on Radio 4 earlier, he claimed his Tory colleagues lining up to oppose Mrs May's Brexit deal had not 'thought strategically enough about what the consequences of that would be'.
'The first is that even if they overturn it they are not necessarily going to get an alternative which they are campaigning for, and instead what they will probably do is set in train a course of events which could lead to chaos in many, many areas,' he told the Today programme.
He warned there could be a leadership contest, or a general election, and said the UK could be 'top dog in Europe at the moment when France is burning and Germany is in transition' but instead 'we're just beating ourselves up'.
Sir Alan also said Tory former foreign secretary Boris Johnson would be 'met with a very, very loud raspberry in many, many different languages' if he walked into a negotiating room in Brussels.
And he warned: 'What I really resent is the glee some people have in wanting to oppose this, and then in jostling for their own personal gain. This is contemptible. 
'Let's be absolutely clear that if this goes pear-shaped in the way that it really could, on the back of people opposing the deal that is on offer tomorrow night, the wreckers in history will forever be known as the wreckers.'
Mr Dodds said: 'This vote has been pulled because it would have been overwhelmingly defeated. Deferring the vote is only of any use if the Government is prepared to go to Brussels and insist on necessary changes to the Withdrawal Agreement. 
'Few people accepted this was the best deal available and the Prime Minister's actions today prove that.' 
Mutinous Tories are furious at her deal's Irish backstop plan, which would see the UK tied to the customs union and more single market checks have to be carried out in Northern Ireland.
They warn the UK cannot pull out of the backstop without the EU's permission - potentially keeping the UK 'locked' to Brussels against its will.
Amid mounting opposition to the deal, civil servants have war-gamed two versions of the UK holding another referendum.
The first is a straight choice between the PM's deal and remaining in the EU, and the second would be a leave, remain contest with a  second question asking them if they prefer the existing deal or a no-deal departure on World Trade Organisation terms, The Sunday Times reported.  
If Mrs May loses an immediate no-confidence vote tomorrow, Parliament could have to sit on Christmas Day because the Fixed Term Parliament Act sets a deadline of 14 calendar days for a new Government to be formed, meaning December 25 would be the last chance for any coalition to try to win a Commons majority. 
It's believed that the last time the Commons sat on Christmas Day was in 1656.
Tory rivals are preparing to pounce as Theresa May faces catastrophic defeat over her Brexit deal.
With the PM's position looking increasingly precarious, Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid are among the senior figures on manoeuvres for a looming contest.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is also thought to be staking his claim for the top job should Mrs May be ousted. 
Both ex-Brexit Secretaries Dominic Raab and David Davis, Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Mrs May's deputy David Lidington are also thought to be in the mix.  
Some 110 Tory MPs are pledged to oppose the plan, making defeat all-but certain as they line up with Labour, the SNP, and the Lib Dems.
A growing number of ministers are believed to be urging Mrs May to shelve the clash tomorrow to avoid disaster.
There is the prospect of large scale resignations if Mrs May does press ahead - with at least two government whips understood to be among those contemplating quitting.
In a flavour of what could come, Tory MP Will Quince yesterday quit as a parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.  
Senior Conservatives also warn that a no-confidence vote in Mrs May's leadership is inevitable if she does not back down before the vote. 
Mr Javid has reportedly begun to build a team of ministers to support his bid to become the first non-white Prime Minister, ahead of Tuesday's crunch Brexit deal vote in Parliament.  
Aides played down the claims, insisting he is focused on helping the PM get her deal through. 
Mr Javid's supporters are believed to include Liz Truss - who last week was overhead telling a friend that Mr Javid had to be ready to take over. 
Mr Johnson, meanwhile, also hinted at a possible leadership bid after outlining his plans for another negotiation with the EU. 
Theresa May kicked off a charm offensive with EU leaders today as she draws up secret plans designed to break the Brexit deadlock.
The Prime Minister urged Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte to back an 'ambitious' trade deal as they held talks in The Hague this afternoon. 
She is expected to head for Germany on a crucial mission to win over Angela Merkel to her latest proposals later this week.
But Cabinet ministers are still in the dark about what exactly Mrs May is suggesting - with Brexiteers increasingly fearing she will attempt to 'bounce' them into major concessions when they gather at Chequers in a bid to thrash out a united position on Friday. Downing Street has been promising a 'third way' on customs arrangements that can bring together Remainer and Eurosceptic factions. 
But while Mrs May has been busy struggling to win over EU leaders, senior Tories have been continuing to trade blows over how close Britain's future relationship should be with the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond risked inflaming the row by telling MPs he is determined to respect the views of business - which has been urging the softest possible departure from the EU.
He also vowed to set out the potential costs to the economy when the Cabinet holds its make-or-break session at Mrs May's country residence. 
The Brexit issue was the elephant in the room at the regular Cabinet this morning, with Mrs May avoiding bringing it up and Eurosceptic ministers seemingly stopping short of demanding answers. 
Failure to break the standoff at Chequers could trigger resignations by big beasts including Boris Johnson - potentially causing fatal damage to Mrs May's premiership.
A 'third way' plan for customs arrangements being put together by Downing Street has yet to be run past the Cabinet. 
It is rumoured to include proposals to stay tied to the EU single market for goods - something that is likely to be unacceptable to many Eurosceptics. One source told MailOnline they feared whatever compromise was presented would be 'half baked'. Another said they expected to be given an utlimatum to get in line or quit.
In a speech at a Conservative fundraiser last night, Mrs May gave a message to her party that failure to unite will lead to disaster.
'The stakes are high — perhaps higher than we have ever known in our political lifetimes,' she said. 
'We each have a choice to make. Will we come together and stand together as a party, as a government and as a country?
'Or will we be divided, and allow the scale of the challenge, the complexity of the questions to overwhelm us?' 
Speaking at Treasury questions in the Commons today, Mr Hammond insisted he would be pushing for a Brexit that 'protects British jobs' at the Chequers meeting. 
'On Friday, as I have done consistently for the last two years, I will argue for a future relationship with the European Union that protects our important supply chains, protects British jobs and protects British business going forward,' he said. 
European Council president Donald Tusk said he hoped the White Paper - due to be published next week if Mrs May can bring the Cabinet together - would bring 'the necessary clarity, realism and impetus to these negotiations'. 
He told MEPs in Strasbourg: 'There is much work ahead with less and less time. 'I was very honest in my assessment, including when I spoke to Prime Minister May last week. 
'The sooner we get a precise UK proposal on the Irish border, the better the chance to finalise the Brexit negotiations this year. 
'Put simply: we cannot make progress unless a solid backstop is presented by the UK and accepted by our Irish friends.' 
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker told MEPs there would be no progress unless the UK found a way to guarantee a soft Irish border.
'We have been waiting for months now for the White Paper from No 10 Downing Street and we will analyse it once we receive it. 'We will not accept that the Irish issue is isolated in such a way that it is the only issue not resolved at the end of these discussions,' he said. 
Tory former leader Lord Hague has stepped in to shore up the PM's position, warning Brexiteers that refusing to compromise will only result in Parliament forcing Britain to stay in the EU customs union.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, he said that any minister who chose that moment to quit would show they were not fit to hold high office in the first place.
Lord Hague warned that the Brexiteers did not have the numbers in Parliament to force through their vision on a 'hard Brexit' and urged them to think through the consequences of creating a leadership crisis.
'Everyone threatening Theresa May with chaos, revolt, resignations, and a leadership election if she doesn't do as they wish needs to think carefully about what might be the consequences of their actions,' he said
'A vote of no confidence in the leadership called on this issue would in all probability rally the sensible middle to the Prime Minister.
'If ardent Brexiteers push too hard, they will end up without their main objective. If there is no agreement this week on a plan for customs arrangements, the Commons will be much more likely to vote in the near future to stay in the customs union in its entirety.
'The choice is either to back a compromise plan now or to end up with a more watered-down version of Brexit that would be forced on ministers anyway.'
Amid reports of ministers preparing possible leadership challenges, he warned that the 'vast sensible middle' of the Conservative Party 'deeply dislike naked manoeuvring to become the next leader'.
He said: 'Flouncing out, just when the going gets tough but when the EU Withdrawal Act has been successfully enacted, will look like evading responsibility for choices that were inevitable just when important progress has been made.' 
Mr Johnson risked further inflaming tensions yesterday by publicly defending backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg after he warned the PM she faced the collapse of her government if she failed to deliver on her Brexit promises.
The intervention by Mr Rees-Mogg, the leader of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs, sparked a furious backlash, with Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan accusing him of 'insolence' in threatening Mrs May.
However Mr Johnson insisted that Mr Rees-Mogg was 'a principled and dedicated MP who wants the best for our country'.
Mr Rees-Mogg struck a defiant note today, telling the ConservativeHome website he had done nothing wrong.
'I am trying to support the Prime Minister's position and to remind people that any implementation deal has to get through Parliament, and if it is a bad deal, or it doesn't meet the manifesto commitments, people won't vote for it,' he said. 
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely. Said to have bluntly dismissed concerns from pro-EU companies by saying 'f*** business'.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the soft Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union. Came out strongly to defend business from Eurosceptic criticism, and has suggested the UK needs to stay closely tied to the single market.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
Formerly a close ally of the Prime Minister and once viewed by some as her anointed successor. 
They appear to have fallen out over defence funding, and he has sided with Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain and has joined the push for soft Brexit. Key backer of the customs partnership plan who has insisted avoiding a hard Irish is the top priority.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt 
A Remainer in the referendum campaign, Mr Hunt has since embraced the Brexiteer arguments - with speculation that he is positioning for a tilt at the top job should Mrs May be abruptly ousted. He has been heavily 
Justice Secretary David Gauke
A former Chief Secretary to the Treasury when George Osborne was Chancellor, Mr Gauke has a keen understanding of the finances and how they might be affected by Brexit. He will take a pragmatic approach but is thought more likely to side with the Remainer faction.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds
A largely unknown quantity on Brexit, having backed Remain in 2016 but kept a low profile since.
Many believe he will take his lead from Mrs May, who fast-tracked his career into Cabinet in January this year.
Communities Secretary James Brokenshire
Another long-term May ally and previously seen as on the Cameroon wing of the party. He was brought back into the Cabinet immediately after returning from sick leave, and is expected to support the PM's decisions on Brexit.
Work and Pensions Esther McVey 
Staunch Brexiteer in the referendum battle - even though she was out of parliament at the time. She took George Osborne's old Commons seat of Tatton when he stood down to edit the Evening Standard, but shows no sign of sharing his Remainer views.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling
The campaign manager for Mrs May's Tory leadership, he is one of the hardest line Brexiteers in Cabinet but prefers to keep arguments behind closed doors.
He is loyal to the PM but will not compromise his commitment to making a clean break from the EU. 
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt
Earned her Brexiteer spurs during the referendum by publicly taking on David Cameron over whether Turkey was going to join the EU.
She is independent minded and highly ambitious, and likely to side with the harder Eurosceptic line in the Cabinet debate.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock
Mr Hancock was for years seen as an Osborne acolyte, having served as his chief of staff before becoming an MP.
However, he is now starting to move out of his former mentor's shadow. Thought to be Remain minded, but could swing if it looks like opinion is ranged against the PM.
Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis
A triathlon fan, Mr Lewis knows all about battling over the finish line. As a former immigration minister he is also well aware of the emphasis voters put on tightening up UK borders.
Expected to back a pragmatic solution, while sticking to the line that the UK must have the freedom to strike its own trade deals and control regulations.   
Scottish Secretary David Mundell 
Mr Mundell has been under intense pressure from the SNP to push for a softer Brexit within government. But in public he and the dozen other Scottish Tory MPs have succeeded in treading the tricky line between supporting Brexit and calling for close links to be maintained.
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns
Campaigned for Remain in the referendum, but Wales voted narrowly to Leave. His detailed views on Brexit are not clear. 
Leader of the Lords Baroness Ruth Evans
Well aware of the practical difficulties the government will face in getting a Brexit deal through parliament, having played a key role in stewarding the EU Withdrawal Bill through the Upper House. 
 
 
Theresa May is preparing to abandon her plan to ask the EU for a nine-month Brexit delay after furious cabinet ministers told her the Tory party would only accept a three-month wait.
The Prime Minister is now thought to be considering writing to the EU asking for a shorter extension, as Downing street admitted last night that Britain's departure from the European Union is at a crisis point.
Mrs May was forced into a humiliating retreat after being put under severe pressure by senior ministers at a cabinet meeting last night and is now expected to write to Donald Tusk for a three month extension, rather than ask for a lengthier departure date.
The sudden change of direction left some ministers reeling, one told The Sun: 'Nobody knows what the f*** is going on, or even who in No10 is actually gripping it. Maybe nobody is.
'The whole thing is a national humiliation on a scale we have not seen in many, many decades - if ever before.'
At the 90-minute cabinet meeting ministers were at loggerheads on just how long a potential extension would be.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and International Trade chief Liam Fox were thought to be against a lengthy delay, as was Commons leader Andrea Leadsom.
She said: 'This used to be the cabinet that would deliver Brexit and now from what I'm hearing it's not.'
It comes a thousand days on from the 2016 referendum – and just ten days before the UK is due to leave the Brussels club.
She told ministers that parliamentary opposition to No Deal, the rejection of her plan by MPs and John Bercow's decision to block a third vote this week meant she had been forced to try to put off the March 29 departure date.
Tomorrow she will travel to Brussels to establish the terms of an extension to Article 50 before putting it to the Commons next week.
During a stormy session of the Cabinet, the Prime Minister rounded on Mr Bercow for dredging up a 17th century convention in order to block a third vote on her plan. She said the Speaker was making a laughing stock of Parliament.
In the wake of his ruling, which came as a surprise to No 10, Mrs May told ministers: 'The Speaker has framed this debate as Parliament versus the Government. But what it actually is now is Parliament versus the people.'
A Cabinet source said: 'The only thing agreed this morning was that everyone hates Bercow.' The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mrs May had predicted a crisis if MPs rejected her deal for a second time, adding: 'That situation has come to pass.'
In other developments:
Mrs May told the Cabinet she would ask for an extension with a break clause that could allow the UK to leave the EU by June 30 if her withdrawal agreement is passed.
But she acknowledged that, with no deal agreed, and the UK due to leave next week, she would also have to seek a longer extension.
Ministers were not given the proposed end date of the longer extension, with allies of the PM apparently fearing a leak to the media.
Downing Street denied reports that Mrs May was ready to ask for a delay lasting up to two years.
Her deputy David Lidington is said to have told his EU counterparts that she would seek a delay of nine to 12 months unless she can get her deal through in the coming weeks. No 10 dismissed the report yesterday.
But a Cabinet source said it was already clear that nine months would not be long enough because the new European Commission will not be in place until the autumn. 'A nine-month extension is a joke,' the source said. 'There will be no one to talk to in Brussels until October – the idea we can get a new deal agreed in three months is ridiculous.
'All it means is we'll have to go through this humiliating exercise again at Christmas. What is the point?'
Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney said the UK would need to provide a 'very persuasive plan' to support any request for a long extension to the Article 50 negotiation process.
Former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said both Parliament and the Government had to get a grip to prevent a slide into political chaos.
Mrs Morgan said: 'It is jaw-dropping. The country is watching horror-struck at the lack of decisions from Westminster.
'At a time when the country needs stable government, people are still indulging in what they would like rather than what can be achieved.'
Jeremy Corbyn's heart isn't in a second referendum, Sir Vince Cable said yesterday.
The Lib Dem leader and other opposition parties met the Labour leader to discuss another vote for the first time.
Sir Vince told the Mail: 'Anyone who thought Labour has signed up to the People's Vote has been misled. Their heart isn't in it. They're just trying to keep the party together.' He said Mr Corbyn's team made it clear they would not support Mrs May's deal being on the ballot paper in another vote.
Sir Vince said an amendment by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson had been discussed, but the leadership was 'quite hostile' to it. If the Kyle-Wilson amendment to the deal passes, MPs would vote for Mrs May's deal, but it would be subject to a confirmatory referendum.
Labour sources said they were discussing the final version of the Kyle-Wilson text.
 
Some ministers argued that the prospect of a long delay would pile pressure on the pro-Brexit Tory MPs of the European Research Group to back the PM. But Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson suggested the move would backfire, telling her: 'Trust your instincts that a long extension would create division in the party.'
Mrs May's plan was defeated by 230 votes in January and again by 149 votes last week.
She had planned to put it to a vote again yesterday, but was blocked by Mr Bercow's ruling that MPs should not be asked to vote again on the same proposition.
Allies of the Prime Minister still believe it is possible that MPs could finally knuckle under next week.
Her official spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister is absolutely determined to find a way in which Parliament can vote to leave the EU with a deal.
'The PM wants that to happen as soon as possible.
'She does not want a long delay and believes that asking the British public to take part in European parliament elections three years after they have voted to leave would represent a failure by British politicians.'
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay said there was a growing risk of no Brexit unless MPs agreed to back Mrs May's deal in the coming days.
Jeremy Corbyn indicated that he sees Monday as the point for Labour to mount a challenge to the Government's approach.
Speaking after talks with other opposition parties and Labour backbenchers on the way forward, Mr Corbyn said: 'If the Government can't get a majority for its way on Monday, then I think that's the time to challenge this Government.
'The reality is that this Government has lost its authority, doesn't enjoy the confidence of the House, can't get anything through.
'Surely that is the time to step aside and let the people decide in a people's vote that's called a general election.'
He added: 'I hope that on Monday the House will come together and support some sensible alternatives that can be negotiated during an extension period with the EU.'
Theresa May today insisted Britain will not be bound by EU rules on fishing and farming during a Brexit transition period.
The Prime Minister set the stage for a major clash with Brussels by making clear the UK will not obey the key policies from March 2019.
She also insisted that Britain wants a 'bespoke' trade deal from the EU, and said she wanted the same level of access as the current arrangements.
The bullish comments came as she defended her handling of the Brexit talks in a statement to the Commons - after an EU summit last week formally signed off on moving on to the next phase of negotiations. 

However, the scale of the challenge still in prospect has been laid bare after senior Eurocrats warned that there will be no special Brexit deal for the City of London.
Mrs May flatly rejected a statement from the EU's Michel Barnier that the UK cannot have a 'bespoke' deal, saying he had been contradicted by one of his own aides today.
The jibe was a reference to remarks by Stefaan De Rynck, who told an event at the Chatham House think-tank earlier that all trade deals were technically 'bespoke' but dismissed the idea that models for agreements - such as those with Canada and Norway - could be mixed as Mrs May is urging.
The premier also raised eyebrows by stating that the UK will be 'outside' the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) from the day of Brexit in 2019. Mr Barnier has said the UK must follow all EU rules throughout a transition period that could run until 2021.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) are mainstays of the EU economic model. 
The rules include: 
Tory backbenchers including Jacob Rees-Mogg demanded Mrs May take a stand against the EU's hard line, saying that meekly signing up to it would make Britain 'no more than a vassal state, a colony, a serf of the European Union'.
Earlier, the PM gathered her 'war Cabinet' to plot the strategy for the looming battle with the EU over trade and a transition deal.

Ministers appear to be lining up behind a 'slow Brexit' option - where the UK starts by keeping the same regulations as Brussels and gradually moves away. 

The approach would ease the impact on the economy of cutting ties with the EU, and could satisfy both 'hard' Brexiteers like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove as well as supporters of keeping closer links such as Philip Hammond and Amber Rudd.
Meanwhile, some ministers are said to be urging Mrs May to stay on in Downing Street until 2021 to ensure any Brexit deal does not fall apart at the last moment.   
New EU regulations could be rejected by the government as they arise after the end of a mooted two-year transition period, leaving Britain free to streamline rules and become more competitive globally. 
However, the government could find it tough to get the EU to agree to such an arrangement. 
The bloc's chief negotiator Michel Barnier again insisted yesterday that there can be no 'cherry picking' of the UK's current membership terms. 
The meeting of the Brexit 'war Cabinet' - formally the European Union Exit and Trade sub-committee - did not reach a final conclusion on the UK's strategy.
Norway
Norway is a member of the European Economic Area with near-full access to the single market.
But it is obliged to contribute to Brussels coffers, and accepts most EU rules, including free movement, without getting a say in setting them.  
Canada
The Ceta free trade deal with the EU has yet to come into force, gets rid of most tariffs on goods.
However, it excludes most services and some food items, and there is an obligation to prove where goods are made. 
Canada plus plus plus
David Davis suggested this model in an interview earlier this month.
It would mean taking the Ceta agreement and bolting on elements like services. 
However, the EU has ruled this out saying it could mean the 'end' of the single market. 
WTO
Leaving on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms is the favoured option of many hardline Brexiteers.
The UK would rely on basic tariff rules applicable around the globe, potentially meaning charges on exports and imports.
In reality, a WTO model would require a series of smaller deals to cover areas like aviation - otherwise planes might not be able to fly to EU countries after the Brexit date.
The PM is believed to have stressed that growing importance of international standards - suggesting that the EU's rules might carry less weight in the future. 
The issues are expected to be discussed again by the full Cabinet tomorrow.
In a dramatic reversal of fortunes, Cabinet ministers seem to be increasingly anxious at the prospect of Mrs May stepping aside in 2019 or 2020, as had been widely envisaged.
There are fears that an ensuing leadership contest would see candidates rip up a deal as they woo the Eurosceptic faction in the parliamentary party.
One senior minister told The Times: '(Mrs May) will have to stay on indefinitely, not least because the government will fall if she goes.'
Senior backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'She has to stay until Brexit is completed because obviously it would become the most heated part of any leadership contest.' 
Mrs May told the Commons that the UK will seek to sign trade deals with third countries during the transition period - although they would not come into force until 2021.
She said that even though the UK is leaving the single market and customs union in March 2019 she wants 'access to one another's markets' to continue 'as now' during an implementation period.
The EU's guidelines say that during any transition period the UK would have to comply with the bloc's trade policy - preventing it from striking its own deals with other countries.
But Mrs May said the UK wants to sign agreements which would come into force after the 'strictly time-limited' period has ended.
'We will prepare for our future independent trade policy by negotiating - and where possible signing - trade deals with third countries, which could come into force after the conclusion of the implementation period,' she said. 
The Prime Minister said there is a 'shared desire' between the UK and EU for 'rapid progress on an implementation period' before any UK-EU deal comes fully into effect.
The EU's negotiating position makes clear that the bloc expects the UK to observe all of its rules - including on freedom of movement - and accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) during this time.

Mrs May said 'we would not be in the single market or the customs union, as we will have left the European Union' but 'we would propose that our access to one another's markets would continue as now'.
In the House, Mr Corbyn accused the Government of having 'cobbled together at the 11th hour' an agreement for phase one of the Brexit talks, adding ministers 'cannot afford to mishandle' the second stage.
He demanded Mrs May explain whether Britain would stay in the Commons Fisheries Policy and Commons Agricultural Policy after Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May
First Secretary of State Damian Green
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Home Secretary Amber Rudd
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
Brexit Secretary David Davis
Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Business Secretary Greg Clark
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
Mrs May told him: 'We will be leaving the European Union on March 29 2019, we will therefore be leaving the Commons Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy at that date.
'The relationship we have on both those issues continuing through the implementation period with the European Union will be part of the negotiation of that period which will start very soon.'
Tory Martin Vickers was told by the Prime Minister that EU citizens would be allowed to continue travelling to the UK after Brexit but that they would be subject to registration.
She told another Brexiteer, Philip Hollobone, that it was not yet agreed whether reciprocal rights agreements would continue to apply if Britons already in Europe move between EU countries after Brexit.
Mrs May was challenged to confirm the Brexit date after the Government climbed down on plans to write it onto the face of flagship laws.
She replied: 'We will be leaving on 29 March 2019.'
And answering DUP chief Nigel Dodds, Mrs May said she believed a second referendum would encourage the EU to offer Britain the 'worst' deal.
Mrs May repeatedly rejected claims that she was ready to drop protections for workers during the Brexit process. 
'Under the EU withdrawal bill we are bringing these rights into UK law,' she said. I have said that we will maintain workers’ rights, and indeed enhance workers’ rights.'
 
 
 
Tory opposition to Theresa May’s Brexit deal softened last night as fears of a lengthy delay to the UK’s departure grew.
Eurosceptic MPs, who joined forces with Labour last month to inflict a record defeat on the Prime Minister’s deal, rolled back on their demands for concessions.
Writing in the Mail, Jacob Rees-Mogg says that if Mrs May can secure ‘necessary assurances’ on the controversial backstop to prevent a hard border in Ireland in the event of No Deal, ‘I would be delighted to support her deal and help avoid any delay to Brexit.’
Mr Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of Leave MPs, insists he will take a ‘practical and not a theological attitude’ towards next month’s crunch vote on the deal, adding: ‘It is not my job to tell other Conservative MPs what to do, but I am sure many other passionate advocates of Brexit would take the same pragmatic and patriotic view.’
Mrs May reluctantly let MPs seek a ‘limited’ extension of Article 50 of just a few months if her deal was rejected again next month.
But privately, ministers admit that MPs would be able to amend the relevant legislation to allow for a much longer delay. David Lidington, Mrs May’s deputy, also told MPs they would be able to seek a long delay if EU leaders rejected calls for a short one.
The threat of a delay, which Mr Rees-Mogg warned was part of a plot to stop Brexit, appeared to focus Eurosceptic MPs on the need to strike a deal.
Other MPs who voted against the deal last month also indicated they could now back Mrs May in the vote on March 12, particularly if Attorney General Geoffrey Cox secures legally binding changes to the backstop.
Asked whether Mrs May’s deal could get through, Chancellor Philip Hammond said: ‘That’s what we’re focusing on – I think there’s every chance.’
However, Eurosceptic MPs ‘put down a marker’ last night against the idea of a delay. Some 88 Tory MPs abstained in a Commons vote formalising Mrs May’s offer of a Brexit delay, including Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Mr Rees-Mogg.
Twenty Conservative MPs voted against Theresa May's new timetable for the Brexit endgame last night.
They are hardline Brexiteers and are likely to vote against whatever deal Mrs May brings back on March 12.
They were:  
Lucy Allan (Conservative - Telford)
John Baron (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
William Cash (Conservative - Stone)
Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
David T. C. Davies (Conservative - Monmouth)
Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Richard Drax (Conservative - South Dorset)
Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Esther McVey (Conservative - Tatton)
Nigel Mills (Conservative - Amber Valley)
Anne Marie Morris (Conservative - Newton Abbot)
Tom Pursglove (Conservative - Corby)
Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Bob Stewart (Conservative - Beckenham)
Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)
Robert Syms (Conservative - Poole)
Michael Tomlinson (Conservative - Mid Dorset and North Poole)
Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
Another 20 hardliners, led by former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey, went further by voting against the plan, defying a three-line whip.
The moves came as:
The prospect of a delay sparked angry recriminations against Remain ministers who forced Mrs May’s hand by threatening to resign to back a move by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory Sir Oliver Letwin that would allow Parliament to control Brexit.
Miss Cooper did not force her plan to a vote last night in the wake of assurances from Mrs May that MPs would get the chance to block a No Deal Brexit on March 29. But Sir Oliver warned that Parliament would force the Government to pursue a softer Brexit if there was a delay.
Former Tory Cabinet minister Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour’s Jack Dromey, who have spearheaded attempts to rule out No Deal, also hinted they would seek a softer deal.
The prospect of delay prompted growing alarm among Tory MPs who rejected Mrs May’s deal last month.
Nadine Dorries said: ‘The consequences of not passing the deal on March 12 are too great. We could end up extending Article 50 and Brexit not happening.’ Sir Edward Leigh said: ‘If you want to avoid a damaging No Deal or no Brexit, vote for the deal.’
Ex-minister Sir Mike Penning said dozens of Tory MPs would back Mrs May if she secured enough movement on the backstop to satisfy the DUP.
Robert Halfon, another former minister, said: ‘I didn’t vote for the deal because I was worried about being tied into a spaghetti of EU bureaucracy without a say. However, I will vote for the deal on March 12.’
MPs staged a new round of non-binding votes on Brexit last night - the third set since the deal was defeated on January 15.
Theresa May tabled a motion seeking confirmation of her continued effort to renegotiate the backstop. It carried with two amendments.
There were 12 amendments by MPs on a raft of proposals. Speaker John Bercow selected five for votes from 7pm.
The main amendments were:
Amendment A, Jeremy Corbyn: Sets out Labour's five demands for a Brexit based on a permanent customs union with the EU. Defeated 323 to 240. 
Amendment K, Ian Blackford: Says no deal Brexit is unacceptable. Defeated 324 to 288.
Amendment C, Caroline Spelman: Says if there is no deal by March 18, MPs should be allowed to change the law to force the PM to delay Brexit. The amendment was withdrawn.
Amendment B, Alberto Costa: Sets out new guarantees the Government should meet on EU citizens living in the UK. The Amendment was accepted without a vote.
Amendment F, Yvette Cooper: Sets out in a Commons motion the timetable of votes on the deal, no deal and Brexit delay promised by Mrs May later. It passed 502 to 20
Theresa May was given a reprieve tonight with news she will not face an immediate vote of no confidence - as she  warned furious Tory Brexiteers that sacking her would mean Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM.
The rare bright spot for the PM came as she issued a defiant message at a stormy session of the Tory 1922 committee in Parliament, with her premiership hanging by a thread.
Struggling to quell a wave of anger from Eurosceptics about her 'third way' plan for trade with the EU that is threatening to sweep her out of Downing Street, Mrs May told the gathering that 'to lead is to decide' and raised the prospect of the Labour leader imposing a left-wing revolution on the country. 
The confrontation came after Boris Johnson turned the screw earlier by dramatically quitting in protest at the Brexit proposals, just hours after Brexit Secretary David Davis fell on his sword. 
In a searing resignation letter, the former Foreign Secretary warned that Brexit is 'dying' and accused Mrs May of risking turning the UK into a 'colony' of the EU.
However, in a boost for the embattled PM, the chairman of the powerful 1922, Sir Graham Brady, is said to have confirmed at the session tonight that currently he has not received the 48 letters from MPs that would trigger a no-confidence vote.
After the meeting, solicitor general Robert Buckland told journalists that Mrs May had received strong support from the party rank-and-file.
He said: ‘She talked about Jeremy Corbyn, she talked about the alternative being to deliver the country to the sort of Government people didn’t vote for and any Conservative voter would be repelled by.’
Mr Buckland insisted Mrs May could emerge strengthened from the furore, comparing the turbulent events to the crises which faced German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her early years in office.
He said: ‘I think she is strengthened by all of this, I think it helps her. The most striking remark she said was “to lead is to decide”.' 
Tory MP Geoffrey Cox - a Brexiteer - said many Eurosceptics inside the meeting urged the PM to stay on and lead them through Brexit.
He said: 'I regret Boris and David have gone, but I think they were wrong - they should have stuck in and make this deal successful.'
He said the third way deal Mrs May has put forward represents a 'giant step' on the road to Brexit.' 
But Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Tory MP and leader of the European Research Group - the powerful group of backbench Tory MPs - said the PM must ditch her Chequers plan.
He said: ‘You see that those supporting Remain two years ago are supporting quasi Remain now…the key question for today is does the rather bad Chequers deal go ahead.’
Asked if the party if fissuring, he said: ‘There is one issue of grave concern, and that is that the Government has been briefing Labour members of Parliament. If the Government plans to get the Chequers deal through on the back of Labour Party votes then that would be the most divisive thing it could do.
‘And it would be a split coming from the top, not from the members of Conservative party across the country.’
Challenged over the fact that Mrs May has made it clear that the Chequers deal will not change, he said: ‘Well the Prime Minister has said on previous occasions that she won’t change things, and change then happens.’
Asked if he is casting doubt over whether the PM can be trusted, he added: ‘You should believe the Prime Minister in the broad context of what she says but not always on the specifics.’
He added: 'The statement today (in the Commons) gave me no reassurance. No. What has really clarified my thinking is the resignation of two of the most important members of the Cabinet.’
Mrs May arrived smiling accompanied by her chief of staff Gavin Barwell. She joked with reporters outside the event: 'I wonder what you are doing here'.
She was greeted with table banging and some cheers of 'hear hear' and applause as she arrived.
The meeting of the parliamentary party was absolutely packed - with many MPs struggling to get in.
Theresa May faces a mortal threat to her leadership of the Conservative Party and Government. 
A Tory leadership contest can be called in one of two ways - if Mrs May resigns or if MPs force and win a vote of no confidence in her.
Calling votes of no confidence is the responsibility of the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which includes all backbench Tory MPs.
Chairman Graham Brady is obliged to call a vote if 15 per cent of Tory MPs write to him calling for one - currently 48 MPs. 
The process is secret and only Mr Brady knows how many letters he has received.
The procedure was last used in 2003 when Iain Duncan Smith was ousted as Tory leader.
If Mrs May is ousted, any MP is eligible to stand.
Conservative MPs will then hold a series of ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to two, with the last place candidate dropping out in each round. 
The final two candidates are then offered to the Tory membership at large for an election. 
Applause and feet stamping could be heard several times during the meeting, with Mrs May seemingly escaping relatively unscathed.
Mr Buckland admitted a 'handful' of dissenters had voiced opposition to the Brexit plans, but claimed the atmosphere had been generally friendly. 
No one mentioned David Davis or Boris Johnson by name in the meeting, he said.  
Earlier, Mrs May shrugged off jeers as she made a statement to the Commons just minutes after Mr Johnson resigned.
The Prime Minister made a passionate case for her plan for future trade with the EU, saying it represented 'Brexit in our national interest'.
No10 has also insisted Mrs May is ready to fight for her job if furious Eurosceptics force a no-confidence vote in her leadership.  
Earlier, Mr Johnson resigned just minutes before the PM began updating the Commons on the compromise package she pushed through the Cabinet on Friday night.
Mrs May tried to put a brave face on the shattering blow this afternoon, paying tribute to Mr Johnson's commitment to 'Global Britain'. But some Labour MPs jeered 'bye' and 'resign' as she stood up to address the chamber.   
The premier's grip on Downing Street is hanging by a thread after Mr Johnson delivered his bombshell news after hours of speculation about his intentions.
A No10 spokesman said: 'This afternoon, the Prime Minister accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. His replacement will be announced shortly. The Prime Minister thanks Boris for his work.'
Senior Tory Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg said the departure was more 'proof that Chequers is not Brexit'. Former Cabinet minister John Whittingdale hailed the 'enormous act of bravery'.
Dominic Raab has been appointed the new Brexit Secretary  after the dramatic resignation of David Davis.
Who is Dominic Raab?
Dominic Raab, 44, is a married father of two and MP for Esher and Walton. 
His father was a Jewish refugee who  fled to Britain in 1938 following the rise of the Nazis.
He lives in Surrey with his wife Erika and two sons Peter and Joshua
Asked in 2010 who his political heroes are, he said he likes 'stubborn optimists' like the late US President Ronald Reagan and Gandhi.
Where did he study?
He went to went a grammar school in Buckinghamshire before studying law at Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University before moving to Cambridge where he studies for a Masters. 
It was at university where he developed his passion for karate - captaining the university team and also boxing.
What did he do before becoming an MP?
He worked as a lawyer for Linklaters before joining the Foreign Office (FO) where he advised on prosecuting war criminals and the Israeli-Palestine conflict. 
He defended Tony Blair from  be summoned to court by Slobodan Milosevic, when he was on trial in The Hague.
It was at the FO that he impressed David Davis who went on to employ him as his chief of staff while shadow home secretary.
What has he done in Parliament?
He was selected as Tory candidate for Esher and Walton after winning one of the Tory's open primaries. 
He was elected to Parliament in 2010 and quickly hailed as a rising star - winning The Spectator's coveted newcomer of the year in 2011.
He was made a Justice Minister in 2015 before being moved to the housing brief. 
A leading face in the campaign to leave the EU, he was made Brexit Secretary today. 
But in a sign of the tensions threatening to rip the party to pieces, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said the PM was 'correct to accept the Foreign Secretary's resignation'. David Davis, who kicked off the crisis by quitting as Brexit Secretary late last night, said he did not believe Mr Johnson had needed to resign. 
There is speculation that either Trade Secretary Liam Fox or Environment Secretary Michael Gove could be shifted to take Mr Johnson's role.   
The PM's position has been looking increasingly perilous as MPs vent their rage about the blueprint signed off by ministers at Chequers.
After a weekend apparently seething about the outcome, Mr Davis resigned late last night and delivered an excoriating verdict on the plans.
He complained that Mrs May had undermined him by ignoring his views on a 'significant number of occasions' and put the UK on track to be humbled by Brussels.
Mrs May tried to shore up her Cabinet this morning by drafting in Dominic Raab to replace Mr Davis.
But the Tory wrath has been inflamed further after it emerged that Mrs May's chief of staff Gavin Barwell is briefing Opposition MPs in a bid to win them over to her 'third way' proposals for future trade with the EU. 
Brexiteers warned that the premier will not survive if she has to rely on 'socialist' votes to get the measures through the Commons.
Mr Johnson had gone underground today, despite reportedly having branded the blueprint a 't***' during the marathon Cabinet session. 
He surfaced to resign after contradictory claims over whether he was attending the Cobra emergency meeting on the Amesbury nerve agent poisonings. 
No10 appears to have tried to spike Mr Johnson's guns by revealing his departure before receiving a formal resignation letter.
The Prime Minister told the Commons she wanted to 'recognise the passion' that the outgoing Foreign Secretary had shown in promoting a 'global Britain to the world'.
But she mounted a staunch defence of her controversial plan, saying it struck a balance between Brexit and staying close to EU partners, and was needed to ensure there was no hard Irish border. 
'This is the Brexit that is in our national interest,' she said. 
To laughter, Mrs May said there had been a 'spirited' debate in Cabinet as there was at breakfast tables across the country. 
Tory MP Peter Bone said for the first time Eurosceptic activists in his Wellingborough constituency 'refused to go out and campaign' at the weekend. 
Mr Bone said: 'The activists were so disappointed about what had happened at Chequers - they said they were betrayed and they asked 'Why do we go out each and every Saturday to support the Conservative Party and get MPs elected?'. 
'For the first time in over 10 years, that group refused to go out and campaign.' 
Tory MPs could be heard shouting 'shame' and 'nonsense' as Mr Bone spoke. Mrs May, in her reply, said: 'This is not a betrayal.' 
Asked by journalists afterwards if the PM would fight a no confidence vote, her spokesman said: 'Yes.'
The spokesman denied that the government was in 'meltdown'. 'I wouldn't agree with it – the Prime Minister summed up what we are doing and what we are about and we are setting about that task. It is an important one to deliver for the British people,' he said. 
Told of the resignation news, Mr Davis said his reaction was 'regret' and flatly denied coordinating the action with Mr Johnson. 'I had resigned because this was central. This was central to my job and if we continue with this policy and I was still there, I'd have to present it in the House of Commons. I'd have to present it in Europe. I'd have to be the champion of the policy which I didn't believe in, so that doesn't work. 
'Somebody else can do a better job than me under those circumstances. I don't think it's central to the Foreign Secretary. It's a pity, but there we are.' 
Some senior ministers rallied around, with Chancellor Philip Hammond tweeting: 'The PM making important statement in the House, and @theresa_may's plan has my full support. It's a proposal that puts jobs first and protects our nation's prosperity. #gettingthebestdealforBritain'. 
European Council President Donald Tusk hinted that he thought Brexit could now be reversed altogether.
'Politicians come and go but the problems they have created for people remain. I can only regret that the idea of #Brexit has not left with Davis and Johnson. But... who knows?' he tweeted. 
In a resignation announced just before midnight, Mr Davis told the PM that her policies would leave the UK in a 'weak and inescapable' negotiating position with just eight months until Britain cuts ties with Brussels.
'As you know there have been a significant number of occasions in the last year or so on which I have disagreed with the Number 10 policy line, ranging from accepting the Commission's sequencing of negotiations through to the language on Northern Ireland in the December Joint Report,' he said. 
'At each stage I have accepted collective responsibility because it is part of my task to find workable compromises, and because I considered it was still possible to deliver on the mandate of the referendum, and on our manifesto commitment to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market.
'I am afraid that I think the current trend of policy and tactics is making that look less and less likely.'  
Mrs May responded by saying: 'I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed at Cabinet on Friday.'
Theresa May's premiership is hanging in the balance after David Davis and Boris Johnson quit in a shock double cabinet resignation.
Here are the odds, via bookmakers Ladbrokes, on who will be the next PM:
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
The labour leader will be hoping to capitalise on Brexit disarray in the Cabinet to seize power himself in an election 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
A leading Tory backbencher, he is chairman of the European Research Group - the powerful group of backbench Brexit backing Tory MPs. 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet until today, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely. Said to have bluntly dismissed concerns from pro-EU companies by saying 'f*** business'.
A leading Brexiteer who ran for the leadership last year before pulling out allowing Theresa May to be crowned.
A Remainer in the referendum campaign, Mr Hunt has since embraced the Brexiteer arguments - with speculation that he is positioning for a tilt at the top job should Mrs May be abruptly ousted. He has been heavily 
The new Brexit Secretary, Mr Raab is a leading Brexiteer who has been brought into the Cabinet after David Davis' shock resignation.
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has plunged her Government into chaos after sensationally quitting last night. 
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU.   
Having spoken to his wife and spent a day at the Silverstone grand prix over the weekend, Mr Davis is said to have become convinced he was 'selling out his own country' by staying in post. He is thought to have been offered another job in Cabinet in a desperate bid to stop him resigning, but turned it down.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Davis said his 'conscience' would not allow him to continue as he did not 'believe' in the plan. He insisted he had been 'clear' at the Chequers showdown that he did not back the blueprint and the EU would just take advantage.
'They'll take what we offer already and then demand some more. That's what I fear,' he said. 
'We're giving too much away, too easily, and that to me is a very dangerous strategy.'
The appointment of Mr Raab, seen as a 'true believer' in Brexit, was designed to calm nerves on the Tory benches somewhat. A Leave campaigner in the referendum, he has been promoted from housing minister. 
Mr Davis was praised by Tory MPs including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andrew Bridgen, who have pledged to sink the PM's proposals when they face a Commons vote. Angry MPs accused Mrs May of peddling a 'stinker' of a deal, with some publicly jibing that her leadership is 'over'.
Eurosceptic MPs had warned Mr Johnson he will blow his chance of ever becoming Tory leader if he does not come out against Mrs May's Brexit plan.
Backbencher Andrea Jenkyns said she hoped more ministerial resignations would follow. 'The time has come that we need a Brexiteer prime minister, someone who believes in Brexit,' she said. 
'Theresa May's premiership is over.' 
But Mr Davis stopped short today of urging Mr Johnson to follow him out of the door, and said he hoped Mrs May would not be forced from power.
'It's not for me to make other people's decisions. These decisions are very very hard to make,' he said.
Asked if Mrs May could survive, he replied: 'Oh yes, of course.' 
Senior Conservative Bernard Jenkin said Mr Davis had been left in a 'completely impossible' position. 
Asked if Brexiteers needed to put the PM's future to a vote of the Conservative party, he replied 'it may well come that'. 
He told Today: 'If the Prime Minister thinks she has consent and support from every member of her Cabinet she is deluding herself, as we have just seen.' 
Mr Davis's deputy Steve Baker also quit the Brexit department last night while fellow junior minister Suella Braverman is expected to follow him out of the door. 
In his resignation letter released today, Mr Baker significantly admitted that 'Parliamentary opinion and arithmetic constrain the government's freedom of action'.
'But I cannot support this policy with the sincerity and resolve which will be necessary,' he added.
He urged Eurosceptics not to submit letters calling for a Conservative leadership contest.
'What we need is a change of policy, not a change of PM,' he said. 
Mr Baker said he had almost been prompted to quit by 'childish' aggressive briefing from No10 on Friday that ministers who quit would be forced to get taxis home from Chequers.   
Another Brexit minister, Suella Braverman, appears to have been pulled back from the brink of resignation by Downing Street.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was dispatched to TV studios to shore up the PM today, saying he does not 'believe' a leadership challenge will happen.
He said: 'Personally, I hope that doesn't happen because right now we are in an extremely delicate and difficult situation for our country and I think the only sensible thing is to recognise that in these kinds of situations, difficult choices have to be made.
'The one thing that will damage our country the most is if we don't get behind our Prime Minister.'
Mr Hunt warned it was the 'now or never moment for Brexit and we have to get behind the PM'.
He also took a swipe at Mr Johnson over his ambiguous stance towards the Brexit plan.
'It is possible sometimes for politicians to say two things that appear mildly contradictory and of all people Boris does sometimes do that,' he said.
In a sign that the government fears there will not be enough Conservative and DUP MPs ready to vote for Mrs May's plan, Mr Barwell invited Opposition backbenchers to a briefing on what was being suggested.
But one senior Labour MP told MailOnline: 'She will have to offer us a lot more than the Chequers to get many Labour MPs on board.'
The 1922 Committee is the powerful body that represents Tory backbenchers.
It meets weekly when the Commons is sitting, and the Tory leader typically addresses the group two times in each a parliamentary term. 
The current chair is Graham Brady, and he and the senior committee members are elected by the rank and file.
The 1922 takes its name from a meeting of Conservative MPs in October 1922 which led to the end of the party's coalition government with the Liberals.
Although still widely referred to as a 1922, tonight's meeting is technically a meeting of the Conservative Party chaired by Sir Graham.
As a result the 'payroll vote' of ministers and government aides are entitled to attend and contribute - which could ease the passage for Theresa May. 
Mr Rees-Mogg, who heads the ERG group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs, said he would vote against the Chequers plan if it came to Parliament. 
'The Conservative Party is very strongly in favour of Brexit. The leaders, I'm afraid, have been bitten by the establishment bug and are nervous of leaving,' he said. 
'That's a problem for the party. The antidote is that the leadership should carry out the result of the referendum and that would keep the party together. 
'Friday's announcement was turning red lines into a white flag and David Davis has made that so clear in his resignation letter.' 
Mr Rees-Mogg said he has not submitted a letter of no confidence to 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady, and did not know whether other MPs have done so. 
Asked whether Mrs May could survive as leader until the date of Brexit in May 2019, the North East Somerset MP told LBC: 'Who knows when she will decide she has had enough of this? 
'I think the odds are that she will be Prime Minister in March next year.' 
He added: 'I think if the Government wants to get Chequers through, it will do so on the back of Labour votes, which would be a great mistake.' 
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage urged Mr Johnson to be a 'hero'. 'Boris Johnson now has the chance to save Brexit, he will be a hero if he walks away from the betrayal of voters' trust,' he tweeted. 
The Davis-led Brexit rebellion risks throwing negotiations into chaos and leaves Mrs May in a perilous position as she faces the House of Commons and then a potentially stormy meeting of Tory MPs tonight.
EU commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said the resignation of Mr Davis would not hit the talks. Asked if it was a problem, he replied: 'Not for us. We are here to work.'
Sources claimed the change would make 'no difference' as Mrs May's Brexit envoy Olly Robbins had been in de facto charge of the talks for months.  
The PM insists she has chosen the 'right Brexit for Britain' and is 'no sell-out' as she tries to quell a backbench revolt despite being accused by some Tory MPs of trying to deliver a 'soft Brexit' which would keep Britain tied to EU rules.
The Prime Minister secured Cabinet backing for her strategy in a marathon meeting at Chequers on Friday and was set to urge the Conservative Party to 'stand united' behind her in a showdown meeting with backbenchers tonight.
But Eurosceptics plotting against the Prime Minister earlier claimed MPs have begun sending no-confidence letters, which will trigger a leadership contest if 48 are received. 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that the PM 'has no authority left and is incapable of delivering Brexit.' 
If Mrs May resigns the opposition will have a fighting chance of winning a subsequent general election and taking charge of Brexit negotiations.
He said: 'With her Government in chaos, if she clings on, it's clear she's more interested in hanging on for her own sake than serving the people of our country.'
In his resignation letter Mr Davis, describing himself as a 'reluctant conscript' to the PM's proposals, told Mrs May 'the current trend of policy and tactics' is making it 'look less and less likely' that the UK will leave the customs union and single market.
He said: 'At each stage I have accepted collective responsibility because it is part of my task to find workable compromises, and because I considered it was still possible to deliver on the mandate of the referendum, and on our manifesto commitment to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market. 
'I am afraid that I think the current trend of policy and tactic is making that look like and less likely. 
'The Cabinet decision on Friday crystallised this problem. In my view the inevitable consequence of the proposed policies will be to make the supposed control by Parliament illusory rather than real.
'I am also unpersuaded that our negotiating approach will not just lead to further demands for concessions.'   
 'Dear Prime Minister
'As you know there have been a significant number of occasions in the last year or so on which I have disagreed with the Number 10 policy line, ranging from accepting the Commission's sequencing of negotiations through to the language on Northern Ireland in the December Joint Report. At each stage I have accepted collective responsibility because it is part of my task to find workable compromises, and because I considered it was still possible to deliver on the mandate of the referendum, and on our manifesto commitment to leave the Customs Union and the Single Market.
'I am afraid that I think the current trend of policy and tactics is making that look less and less likely. Whether it is the progressive dilution of what I thought was a firm Chequers agreement in February on right to diverge, or the unnecessary delays of the start of the White Paper, or the presentation of a backstop proposal that omitted the strict conditions that I requested and believed that we had agreed, the general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one.
'The Cabinet decision on Friday crystallised this problem. In my view the inevitable consequence of the proposed policies will be to make the supposed control by Parliament illusory rather than real. As I said at Cabinet, the 'common rule book' policy hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws in any real sense.
'I am also unpersuaded that our negotiating approach will not just lead to further demands for concessions. Of course this is a complex area of judgement and it is possible that you are right and I am wrong. However, even in that event it seems to me that the national interest requires a Secretary of State in my Department that is an enthusiastic believer in your approach, and not merely a reluctant conscript. While I have been grateful to you for the opportunity to serve, it is with great regret that I tender my resignation from the Cabinet with immediate effect.
'Yours ever
'David' 
In her reply to David Davis, Theresa May told him: 'I am sorry that you have chosen to leave the Government when we have already made so much progress towards delivering a smooth and successful Brexit and when we are only eight months from the date set in law when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.'
Listing 12 ways in which the plans would honour manifesto commitments she said the Cabinet had agreed a 'precise, responsible and credible basis' for delivering Brexit, but her government is now in chaos just eight months before the UK's scheduled exit from the EU. 
'Dear David
'Thank you for your letter explaining your decision to resign as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.
'I am sorry that you have chosen to leave the Government when we have already made so much progress towards delivering a smooth and successful Brexit, and when we are only eight months from the date set in law when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union.
'At Chequers on Friday, we as the Cabinet agreed a comprehensive and detailed proposal which provides a precise, responsible, and credible basis for progressing our negotiations towards a new relationship between the UK and the EU after we leave in March. We set out how we will deliver on the result of the referendum and the commitments we made in our manifesto for the 2017 general election:
'1. Leaving the EU on 29 March 2019.
'2. Ending free movement and taking back control of our borders.
'3. No more sending vast sums of money each year to the EU.
'4. A new business-friendly customs model with freedom to strike new trade deals around the world.
'5. A UK-EU free trade area with a common rulebook for industrial goods and agricultural products which will be good for jobs.
'6. A commitment to maintain high standards on consumer and employment rights and the environment.
'7. A Parliamentary lock on all new rules and regulations.
'8. Leaving the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy.
'9. Restoring the supremacy of British courts by ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK.
'10. No hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, or between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
'11. Continued, close co-operation on security to keep our people safe.
'12. An independent foreign and defence policy, working closely with the EU and other allies.
'This is consistent with the mandate of the referendum and with the commitments we laid out in our general election manifesto: leaving the single market and the customs union but seeking a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement; ending the vast annual contributions to the EU; and pursuing fair, orderly negotiations, minimising disruption and giving as much certainty as possible so both sides benefit.
'As we said in our manifesto, we believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside our withdrawal, reaching agreement on both within the two years allowed by Article 50.
'I have always agreed with you that these two must go alongside one another, but if we are to get sufficient detail about our future partnership, we need to act now. We have made a significant move: it is for the EU now to respond in the same spirit.
'I do not agree with your characterisation of the policy we agreed at Cabinet on Friday.
'Parliament will decide whether or not to back the deal the Government negotiates, but that deal will undoubtedly mean the returning of powers from Brussels to the United Kingdom.
'The direct effect of EU law will end when we leave the EU. Where the UK chooses to apply a common rulebook, each rule will have to be agreed by Parliament.
'Choosing not to sign up to certain rules would lead to consequences for market access, security co-operation or the frictionless border, but that decision will rest with our sovereign Parliament, which will have a lock on whether to incorporate those rules into the UK legal order.
'I am sorry that the Government will not have the benefit of your continued expertise and counsel as we secure this deal and complete the process of leaving the EU, but I would like to thank you warmly for everything you have done over the past two years as Secretary of State to shape our departure from the EU, and the new role the UK will forge on the world stage as an independent, self-governing nation once again.
'You returned to Government after nineteen years to lead an entirely new Department responsible for a vital, complex, and unprecedented task.
'You have helped to steer through Parliament some of the most important legislation for generations, including the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017 and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which received Royal Assent last week.
'These landmark Acts, and what they will do, stand as testament to your work and our commitment to honouring the result of the referendum.
'Yours sincerely, Theresa May' 
Mr Davis, a former SAS reservist elected an MP in 1987, ran for the party leadership in 2005 but lost the election to David Cameron. 
In 2008 he quit his role as shadow Home Secretary and stood down as an MP to force a by-election, which he intended to fight on the Labour government's record on civil liberties, although other major parties did not contest it.   
After returning to the front bench in 2016 he had been at the centre of Brexit negotiations, but in recent months had become increasingly frustrated that he was losing influence.  
He had written to the PM on the eve of the Chequers summit to say that the new plan was doomed to be rejected by Brussels and was a waste of the government's time. 
Mr Davis was understood to have expressed fears that rubber stamping the plan at Chequers would delay progress because the EU will inevitably reject it – sending the UK back to the drawing board. 
It is also claimed he objected to the way in which the Cabinet was treated at Chequers, where ministers were told to hand in their phones to avoid leaks.   
An online poll of Tory members by the Conservative Home website revealed widespread unhappiness with the Chequers plan amongst the party faithful.
Some 61 per cent of the 1,225 respondents said that that proposal would be a bad deal for Britain, compared to 31 per cent who thought it would be good. A further eight per cent were unsure.    
Brexiteer Tory MP Peter Bone also supported his decision to quit, saying: 'David Davis has done the right thing, a principled and brave decision. The PM's proposals for a Brexit in name only are not acceptable.' 
Andrea Jenkyns MP tweeted: 'Fantastic news. Well done David Davis for having the principle and guts to resign. I take my hat off to you. We need to make sure this is now a game changer for Brexit.' 
She also hailed Mr Baker as 'another courageous and principled MP'. 
Ms Jenkyns, who quit a junior government role earlier this year to 'fight for Brexit', called on Boris Johnson to follow Mr Davis out of the government. 
Fellow MP William Wragg, who campaigned for Brexit in the referendum, tweeted: 'I've reserved judgement on the Chequers' Brexit plan, but I have grave misgivings about it and understand entirely why @DavidDavisMP has found it necessary to resign. It was the right thing to do.' 
And Laurence Robertson MP said: 'David Davis has taken the only genuine option available to him. Rather than just appoint someone else to replace him, the PM needs to recognise that his resignation represents the views of many Conservative MPs, activists and voters.' 
Commons leader Andrea Leadsom, a Brexiteer, said there had been a 'very frank exchange of views' at Chequers on Friday.
Asked about Mr Davis's decision to quit, she told BBC Radio 4's The World at One programme: 'I'm sympathetic but I think he's wrong.
'I think it's a great shame and also a huge shame that Steve Baker has resigned.
'I just do not see it they way they do. In this new proposal we are upholding all of our red lines.'
Mrs Leadsom denied any knowledge of claims by ITV News that Mr Davis was offered her job - and even that of Mr Johnson - not to quit. 
There are reports that the tactic was one of the things that most infuriated Mr Johnson into confirming his resignation. 
Mrs Leadsom also risked provoking a fresh row by insisting EU citizens must not get preferential immigration treatment after Brexit.
Mrs May has carefully left open the possibility of a deal that will keep relatively fluid borders after the UK leaves the bloc. 
But Mrs Leadsom said: 'Freedom of movement will end and there will be no special favours for EU citizens over anybody else with whom you might have visa reciprocity.'
Labour Party chairman Ian Lavery said: 'This is absolute chaos and Theresa May has no authority left.
'The Prime Minister is in office but not in power. She cannot deliver Brexit and our country is at a complete standstill, while the Tories indulge in their leadership tussling.
'We can't go on like this. Britain needs a functioning government.'  
Key Corbyn ally John McDonnell said: 'With a Prime Minister incapable of holding her ministerial team together & with such instability in government it's impossible to see how EU leaders could take Theresa May seriously in the next round of negotiations. 
'It's time for her & her party to put country before party & go.' 
The country now faces the prospect of another early general election if Mrs May does not survive the Brexit rebellion.  
Labour MP Seema Malhotra, who sits on the Commons Brexit Select Committee, tweeted: 'Will there be a domino effect?
'It's now not inconceivable that May is gone within days or weeks, the Tories are plunged into disarray and a general election called.'  
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry listed the resignations of Government ministers since November last year - Sir Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, Damian Green, Amber Rudd, Justine Greening and now David Davis.
'There have been six resignations in 249 days. That's one every six weeks,' she said. 
Under Mrs May's plans Britain would have a 'common rulebook' for food, farm and manufactured goods, shadowing EU regulations and intended to avoid friction at the border. 
The PM pledged that Britain would be able to deliver an independent trade policy, with its own seat at the World Trade Organisation, the ability to set its own tariffs and secure deals with other countries.
Theresa May's fate as Prime Minister depends in large part on whether she can keep the support of her other Brexit backing Cabinet ministers in the wake of David Davis' devastating resignation.  
Since the key Chequers summit, some have toured the television studios backing the plans, while others have remained silent. 
Here are the Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers and what they have said about the PM's controversial 'third way'. 
Michael Gove, Environment Secretary 
The face of Vote Leave appeared on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday to urge Brexiteers to back the plan.
He said the proposal was not ideal, but would mean Britain was outside of the European Court and the political structures of the EU. 
He added:  'I'm a realist and one of the things about politics is you mustn't, you shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good.' 
Chris Grayling, Transport Secretary
The Brexiteer co-wrote an Op-Ed for The Telegraph with Remainer Philip Hammond backing the PM's plan.
They wrote: 'On Friday night the Cabinet united behind our Brexit deal or Britain – a vision that respects the referendum result, strengthens the union, maintains security and ensures our future prosperity. We now want to bring the country together around this vision and build a brighter future for Britain.'
Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary:
The leading face of Vote Leave has remained silent since David Davis' resignation.
Some Tory MPs have urged him to follow the Brexit Secretary and quit.  
Penny Mordaunt, International Development Secretary:
Another leading Brexiteers, she has remained silent since the crunch Chequers meeting.
Andrea Leadsom, leader of the Commons
Wrote an op-ed for the Sunday Express urging her colleagues to back the deal.
She said the deal 'unshackles our businesses, it makes us a sovereign parliament, it gives us control over the numbers of people coming here, and it means no more vast payments to the EU'. 
Esther McVey, Work & Pensions Secretary
The leading Brexiteer has not spoken publicly about the Chequers deal.
Liam Fox, International Trade Secretary
He penned an op-ed in The Sun on Sunday with Sajid Javid backing the deal.
They wrote: 'At Chequers on Friday, the Cabinet agreed a collective plan to deliver on the next stage of Brexit.
'A plan that will allow us to take back control of our laws, money and borders, and protect British jobs in everything from fishing to manufacturing to financial services.'
David Davis, Brexit Secretary
His resignation has dealt a devastating blow to the the Government - and Theresa May's authority. 
His fiery resignation letter tore into the PM's approach warning it has made it 'less and less likely' Britain will truly leave the EU's single market and customs union, and warns 'the general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one.'  
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had backed the proposals at Chequers despite claiming that defending the plans was like 'polishing a t***' during the meeting.  
But arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg hit out at the 'defeatism' in the Government's plans, warning that he would vote against them - and suggested other Eurosceptics may do the same. 
Brexiteer Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said: 'I can't support the offer which emerged at Chequers - I think it's a breach of the red lines, in fact the offer is so poor that I couldn't support it even if the EU were paying us for it.
'Obviously if the Government and the Prime Minister continue to support that very poor offer then I won't have any confidence in the Government or the Prime Minister.'  
He said he would 'listen to what the Prime Minister has got to say on Monday evening at the 1922 Committee' before deciding what action to take.
Mr Bridgen said he was 'deeply disappointed' with Brexiteer ministers that they 'didn't pick up the cudgels and prevent the Cabinet supporting this offer which I think is a huge mistake for our country, for the party, for the Government and for the Prime Minister'.  
Dear Theresa
It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of their democracy.
They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.
Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.
That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.
We have postponed crucial decisions – including the preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November – with the result that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system.
It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London, in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though there had been a horrific spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
So at the previous Chequers session, we thrashed out an elaborate procedure for divergence from EU rules. But even that seems to have been taken of the table and there is in fact no easy UK right of initiative. Yet if Brexit is to mean anything, it must surely give ministers and Parliament the chance to do things differently to protect the public. If a country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists – when that proposal is supported at every level of UK Government – then I don't see how that country can truly be called independent.
It is also also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods (and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence
Conversely, the British Government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law, without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health – and when we no longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony – and many will struggle to see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.
It is also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods (and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.
What is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see the end state for the UK – before the other side has made its counter-offer. It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them. Indeed, I was concerned, looking at Friday's document, that there might be further concessions on immigration, or that we might end up effectively paying for access to the single market.
On Friday I acknowledged that my side of the argument were too few to prevail, and congratulated you on at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward. As I said then, the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is that I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat. We must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.
I am proud to have served as Foreign Secretary in your Government. As I step down I would like first to thank the patient officers of the Metropolitan Police who have looked after me and my family, at times in demanding circumstances.
I am proud too of the extraordinary men and women of our diplomatic service. Over the last few months they have shown how many friends this country has around the world, as 28 governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination of the Skripals. They have organised a highly successful Commonwealth summit and secured record international support for this Government's campaign for 12 ears of quality education for every girl, and much more besides. As I leave office, the FCO now has the largest and by far the most effective diplomatic network of any country in Europe – a continent which we will never leave.
THE RT HON BORIS JOHNSON MP 
The Prime Minister was set to insist that the plan, which would see the UK share a 'common rulebook' for goods as part of a proposal to create a UK-EU free trade area, still meets her Brexit red lines. 
She will say: 'This is the Brexit that is in our national interest. It is the Brexit that will deliver on the democratic decision of the British people.
Mrs May will also hit back at claims that the plan could hinder Britain's ability to strike trade deals after Brexit, saying: 'They are wrong.' 
She will add: 'When we have left the EU the UK will have our own independent trade policy – with our own seat at the World Trade Organisation and the ability to set tariffs for our trade with the rest of the world.'
Mrs May will say her plan will mean 'a complete end to freedom of movement, taking back control of our borders' as well as 'no more sending vast sums of money each year to the EU' and 'the freedom to strike new trade deals around the world'.  
Michael Gove was previously lashed as the 'snake in the grass' responsible for betraying the referendum yesterday but he insisted May's Brexit blueprint would honour the 2016 vote.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has revealed he will oppose Theresa May's 'misfounded' Cabinet agreement.
The influential backbencher, who leads a 60-strong group of Tory Brexiteers, also warned that other Eurosceptic MPs will follow suit.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said: 'If the proposals are as they currently appear, I will vote against them and others may well do the same.'
He went on to describe the Chequers deal as 'the ultimate statement of managing decline'.
He said: 'It focuses on avoiding risk, not on the world of opportunity outside the EU. Pragmatism has come to mean defeatism.
'We seek a new and equal partnership. not partial membership of the European Union, or anything that leaves us half in, half out. We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. 
'Tying the UK to transcribing the EU rule book to the letter rather than agreeing shared results will leave large barriers to trade with the rest of the world.  
'There is unhelpful ambiguity in the text which could lead to results that are the opposite of those implied by the briefings that have been given. 
'For example, the conclusion boasts that free movement will end, whereas in fact the agreement could be used to open it up again. 
'It proposes 'a mobility framework so that UK and EU citizens can continue to travel to each other's territories and apply for study and work'. 
'The same unclear construction applies to the ending of 'vast annual payments to the EU budget'. 
'As Norway and Switzerland pay for preferential access, does this mean simply 'large' payments but not vast ones?  
'If the Brexit Secretary cannot support them they cannot be very good proposals. It was an attempt to bounce the cabinet. It was a serious mistake.'  
Asked if the plan was everything he hoped for, Mr Gove told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'No, but then I'm a realist and one of the things about politics is you mustn't, you shouldn't make the perfect the enemy of the good.'
In a sign of the anger and division amongst the Eurosceptics, backbench MPs yesterday said they had sent messages to the Brexiteers in the Cabinet, asking: 'Where is your backbone?'  
Some Remain-supporting politicians said the resignation of Mr Davis was evidence of the need for a second referendum.
Baron Adonis, a prominent backer of the move, tweeted: 'People's Vote to put Brexit out of its misery a big step closer after DD's resignation. Now the Brexiters holding Mrs May hostage are falling out, there isn't a majority for ANY withdrawal treaty in Parliament.'
The Liberal Democrats called on people to sign a petition for a vote on the Brexit deal, adding: 'The resignation of David Davis is yet more evidence of the chaos of this Tory Brexit. You deserve the final say on this shambolic Brexit with the chance to stay in the EU.' 
Meanwhile EU diplomats last night criticised Theresa May's new Brexit plan for taking a 'have cake and eat it' approach to the single market.
The Prime Minister will have to water down her proposals even further to please Brussels and strike a deal, European leaders and officials believe.
EU negotiators want to study the full 120-page White Paper – to be published by Downing Street on Thursday – but yesterday expressed scepticism about whether the new British plan will be acceptable to Brussels.  
The main sticking point is Mrs May's proposal to keep the UK tied to the EU on goods and agricultural products only.
The bloc has long warned it will not accept any 'cherry-picking' in relation to the single market's four freedoms on goods, services, people and capital.  
Simon Coveney, Ireland's minister for foreign affairs and trade, said the EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will find it 'difficult' to accept the proposal.
He added: 'The EU has never been keen to facilitate a breaking up of an approach toward the single market in terms of keeping all of the elements of the single market intact and consistent, so I think Britain will find it difficult to persuade the EU to support the approach they're now proposing.
'Michel Barnier will be a very, very strong defender of the EU interests here, in terms of protecting the integrity of the single market and the integrity of the EU customs union.'    
Prime Minister Theresa May has faced a series of Cabinet members leaving their positions since the snap election last June.
The first to leave was defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, who resigned his post after being caught up in Westminster sleaze allegations.
He said his behaviour had 'fallen below the high standards required' after he admitted putting his hand on the knee of radio presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer some years ago when he resigned on November 1.
One week later, Priti Patel quit as international development secretary over undisclosed and unauthorised meetings in Israel, including with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In her resignation letter, she echoed the words of Sir Michael, saying her actions 'fell below the high standards' expected.
The following month, Ms May's deputy Damian Green left the Cabinet after a probe found he made 'inaccurate and misleading' statements about pornography on his computer.
Justine Greening was sacked in the PM's reshuffle in January after refusing to move from her education post to the Department for Work and Pensions.
Home secretary Amber Rudd resigned in April after admitting she had 'inadvertently' misled MPs over the existence of targets for removing illegal immigrants over the Windrush scandal.  
Mr Davis was elected for Haltemprice and Howden in 1997, having originally sat for Boothferry since 1987.
He read molecular science at Warwick University and studied management at Harvard after shining at grammar school.
The married father-of-three first honed his negotiating skills in the cut-throat world of big business.
He enjoyed corporate success in his thirties as a director of Tate and Lyle and President of Zymaize, a loss-making Canadian sweetener manufacturer which he turned into a gold mine.
Mr Davis became politically active as a student, cutting an imposing figure even then as chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students.
A man with brawn as well as brains, he served as an SAS reservist to help fund himself through college, before entering Parliament in 1987.
He had a tough upbringing by a single mother in a Labour working-class household in south London, and still bears the scar on his upper lip from a crowbar attack in Brixton.
The two-time unsuccessful Conservative leadership contender gained a fearsome reputation after taking a series of ministerial scalps in a previous role of shadow home secretary.
Among those he claims as his victims are former home secretaries David Blunkett and Charles Clarke and ex-home office minister Beverley Hughes.
In June 2008, as shadow home secretary, he shocked Westminster by announcing that he was resigning as an MP to 'take a stand' against the terror detention plan, sparking a by-election that saw him hold his Haltemprice and Howden seat.
He was regarded by many as the likely next Tory leader after Michael Howard announced he was to resign, but after a weak campaign - in his second tilt at the leadership - he was soundly beaten in 2005.
His rival, David Cameron, had caught the mood with his careful presentation and youthful optimism.
In the 2001 leadership contest, Mr Davis cut his losses and quit after twice finishing way down the pack in early ballots of Tory MPs, throwing his support behind Iain Duncan Smith.
The contest successfully raised his profile and Mr Duncan Smith appointed him party chairman.
A libertarian who was never afraid to speak his mind, even if his opinions fell outside the party line, he worked closely with former Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti.
His friendship with former Downing Street spin chief Alastair Campbell raised Conservative eyebrows.
Mr Davis once revealed that he offered to buy Mr Campbell's old newspaper the Daily Mirror so the former journalist could edit it.
He put their unlikely friendship down to his liking for 'strong mavericks' and there is something of that description in him. Despite Eurosceptic views, he acted as a whip for John Major during the bruising battle to ratify the Maastricht Treaty.
Mr Davis has previously listed mountaineering, parachuting and flying light aircraft among his more athletic pursuits. 
Who is David Davis?
The long-serving Conservative MP was among the new intake when Tony Blair's new Labour swept to power in 1997. In the two decades since, the former SAS reservist has become an established figure within the party, challenging David Cameron to a 2005 leadership contest which the younger man went on to win. He would become a key ally in Theresa May's embattled Cabinet.
Why was he important to Theresa May?
The no-nonsense politician revelled in the description of being Britain's 'Brexit bulldog', charged with leading negotiations with his EU counterpart over the country's withdrawal from the bloc. He has been noted by former colleagues for his 'tough, resilient' approach. His role as Brexit Secretary was crucial to ensuring Britain leaves the EU next year with what Mrs May described as the 'best possible deal'.
So what does this mean for the PM?
It's hard to imagine a more potentially crippling blow to her premiership. Following a long weekend which started with extended talks over the country's future relationship with the EU at Mrs May's Chequers country pad, an agreed strategy met the backing of her Cabinet. It seemed like the most damaging line to emerge from the summit was Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson's description of the plans as a 't***'. But as the weekend grew older, dissenting voices from the Tory backbenches grew louder. In short, the PM is facing the prospect of steering the country towards the biggest political junction in a generation without her captain at the helm.
Was Davis's departure telegraphed?
The Brexit Secretary was understood to have serious reservations about both the plan and whether it could be acceptable to Brussels following the Chequers summit, but was absent from the television studios in the aftermath of the talks. He has been close to the exit door on a number of occasions in recent months. Last year reports emerged that Davis said he intended to 'retire' in 2019 and leave the transitional period of Britain's exit from the European Union to Boris Johnson, something later dismissed as a 'lighthearted remark'.
Is Davis the first of many?
There was a feeling that any departure - be it immediately after the summit or once the EU made it clear Britain's terms were unacceptable - could trigger a series of resignations from the front benches, particularly from hardliners. Mrs May must be expecting others to go with Davis, and will be particularly keen to know what the likes of Mr Johnson and fellow Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom intend to do now.
Could it get any worse for the PM?
Yes. An avalanche of departures would surely trigger a leadership contest in the Tory party. Simply, if the Prime Minister cannot unite her Cabinet and convince them over the Brexit negotiations, she has no chance of getting the EU to agree to the terms. 
Brexiteers today pledged to stop Theresa May's EU deal 'come what may' as it was revealed she could hold a third vote on her plans after MPs rejected No Deal and will no push hard for a Brexit delay.
The PM's deal could be put to another vote as soon as next week - despite being defeated twice already - following Wednesday's fresh humiliation in the Commons, where Remain MPs hijacked her plan to end the immediate risk of No Deal on March 29.   
Today Chancellor Philip Hammond hinted that Attorney General Geoffrey Cox could revisit his legal advice on whether Britain would be trapped in the Irish backstop 'indefinitely' - unlocking votes for Mrs May's deal.
But members of the Tory Brexit group ERG have already refused to budge with MP Steve Baker saying 'come what may we will continue to vote down the deal' while Mark Francois insisting Mrs May's deal is 'not a win - it’s a lose', adding: 'I was in the Army I wasn’t trained to lose'. 
The DUP is said to have held talks with ministers last night and Tory Simon Clarke - sho has so far voted against the PM's deal admitting he and other Eurosceptics could vote for the deal 'with a gun to my head' - a nod to the fact that a harder Brexit is slipping away.  
Last nigh, amid chaotic scenes, MPs voted twice against No Deal as a raft of pro-EU ministers abandoned the PM in a crucial vote and abstained. In the main division, MPs voted 321 to 278 to rule out No Deal. 
The new defeats prompted Mrs May to tell MPs they have a week to agree her Brexit deal or face delaying the country's exit from the EU - potentially for years.
Tonight the Commons will vote on whether to ask EU leaders for an extension to Article 50, but Brussels has indicated it will not automatically agree to the request.  
With a new 'meaningful vote' looming - just 24 hours after the ailing PM lost the second one by 149 votes - deep splits began to emerge among Brexit hardliners.
The leaders of the European Research Group Jacob Rees-Mogg, Steve Baker and Mark Francois vowed to fight on for a No Deal and defeat Mrs May's deal for a third time.
The 12 Conservative cabinet members and ministers who failed to vote or abstained: 
Solicitor General Robert Buckland, Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Defence minister Tobias Ellwood, Justice Secretary David Gauke, Business minister Richard Harrington, Health minister Stephen Hammond, Culture minister Margot James, Education minister Anne Milton, Scottish Secretary David Mundell, Business minister Claire Perry and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd. 
The 17 Conservatives who voted against the PM: 
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy), Richard Benyon (Newbury), Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford), Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe), Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon), George Freeman (Mid Norfolk), Justine Greening (Putney), Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield), Sam Gyimah (East Surrey), Phillip Lee (Bracknell), Oliver Letwin (West Dorset), Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire), Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth), Mark Pawsey (Rugby), Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury), Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex), Edward Vaizey (Wantage). 
After the votes, Mrs May warned the Commons it must 'face up to the consequences' of its votes over the past two days. MPs crushed her Brexit deal in a second so-called meaningful vote last night.  
She said if her deal is not successful at a third meaningful vote, the EU would demand a long extension and Britain would have to take part in the European Parliament elections on May 23. 
Mrs May said 'the options before us are the same as they always have been' despite MPs voting to reject a no-deal Brexit.
Amid open rebellion against Mrs May, Truro and Falmouth MP Sarah Newton resigned as a minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, after defying the whips to vote for the cross-party proposal.   
The Government's defeat and apparent lack of control over events paves the way for a dramatic series of votes tomorrow that could play a pivotal role in determining when the UK leaves the European Union.
How it unfolds will greatly affect what, if any, bargaining power the Prime Minister has when she goes to the European Council in Brussels to ask for a delay to Brexit on March 21.
Mrs May will set out two scenarios.
Firstly, if they pass a Brexit deal before the meeting of EU leaders in the Belgian capital, she will ask for a three-month extension to June 30 to allow it to be ratified by member states.
But if they do not manage to pass a deal before March 21 it sets out clearly that she will be forced to ask for a longer extension to look at alternatives, potentially for years.
Implicit in this is a threat to Brexiteers to get behind her deal at the third time of asking, or deal with the alternative. 
Amid chaotic scenes, MPs first voted 312 to 308 in defiance of the Tory whips' attempt to quash the plan to scrap No Deal for good. Mrs May had wanted to only rule it out on March 29 but keep it on the table as a bargaining tool in further talks. 
Then, on a procedural second vote MPs voted 321 to 278 to confirm their original plan - defying a Government three line whip to block the rebel proposal at the second attempt.
The second defeat for the Government was worse because a raft of ministers - including Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Justice Secretary David Gauke - abstained rather than vote against ruling out No Deal.
At least eight ministers refused to vote with the Prime Minister on her plans for No Deal - but Downing Street signalled they would not be fired unless they actively voted against.
The Commons also rejected a Brexiteer plan to try and secure radical 11th hour concessions from Brussels ahead of a delayed No Deal on May 22. MPs voted by a landslide 374 to 164 against the plan. 
The immediate consequence is MPs will tomorrow vote on a motion about delaying Brexit. Mrs May will outline two choices in a debate tomorrow.
First she will say a short delay to June 30 could be agreed at next week's EU Council - but only if they have passed the deal in a third 'meaningful vote' - which would have to be agreed by the end of next week.
If MPs refuse to do this, they must endorse an alternative Brexit plan and accept a much longer delay. The EU has hinted at a two year delay. 
Speaking after the result was read out, the Prime Minister said: 'The House has today provided a clear majority against leaving without a deal, however I will repeat what I said before.
'These are about the choices this House faces. The legal default in EU and UK law is that the UK will leave without a deal unless something else is agreed. The onus is now on every one of us in this House to find out what that is.
'The options before us are the same as they always have been.'
MPs voted in favour of an amended Government motion to reject a no-deal Brexit at any time and under any circumstances by 321 votes to 278, majority 43. 
Labour Aye Votes (235)  
Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington)
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow)
Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting)
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale)
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower)
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South)
Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West)
Margaret Beckett (Derby South)
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central)
Clive Betts (Sheffield South East)
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham)
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central)
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen)
Ben Bradshaw (Exeter)
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West), Lyn Brown (West Ham) 
Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East)
Chris Bryant (Rhondda)
Karen Buck (Westminster North)
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield)
Richard Burgon (Leeds East)
Dawn Butler (Brent Central)
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth)
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley)
Alan Campbell (Tynemouth)
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton)
Sarah Champion (Rotherham)
Jenny Chapman (Darlington)
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley)
Vernon Coaker (Gedling)
Julie Cooper (Burnley)
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire)
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford)
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North)
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
David Crausby (Bolton North East)
Mary Creagh (Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow)
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham)
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead)
Judith Cummins (Bradford South)
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North)
Jim Cunningham (Coventry South)
Janet Daby (Lewisham East)
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe)
Wayne David (Caerphilly)
Geraint Davies (Swansea West)
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea)
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield)
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West)
Emma Dent Coad (Kensington)
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough)
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East)
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth)
Peter Dowd (Bootle)
David Drew (Stroud)
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington)
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury)
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood)
Angela Eagle (Wallasey)
Clive Efford (Eltham)
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central)
Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside)
Chris Elmore (Ogmore)
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central), Chris Evans (Islwyn)
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse)
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East)
Caroline Flint (Don Valley)
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford)
James Frith (Bury North)
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill)
Barry Gardiner (Brent North)
Ruth George (High Peak)
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside)
Roger Godsiff (Birmingham, Hall Green)
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland)
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston)
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South)
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West)
Nia Griffith (Llanelli)
John Grogan (Keighley)
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley)
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East)
David Hanson (Delyn)
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham)
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East)
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood)
Sue Hayman (Workington)
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne)
Mark Hendrick (Preston)
Mike Hill (Hartlepool)
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Margaret Hodge (Barking)
Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West)
Kate Hollern (Blackburn)
George Howarth (Knowsley)
Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton)
Imran Hussain (Bradford East)
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central)
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North)
Darren Jones (Bristol North West)
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)
Graham P Jones (Hyndburn)
Helen Jones (Warrington North)
Kevan Jones (North Durham)
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central)
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South)
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South)
Liz Kendall (Leicester West)
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton)
Ged Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon), Peter Kyle (Hove)
Lesley Laird (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath)
David Lammy (Tottenham)
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck)
Karen Lee (Lincoln)
Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields)
Clive Lewis (Norwich South)
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale)
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles)
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham)
Holly Lynch (Halifax)
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood)
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston)
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South)
Sandy Martin (Ipswich)
Rachael Maskell (York Central)
Christian Matheson (City of Chester)
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East)
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden)
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough)
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington)
Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East)
Conor McGinn (St Helens North)
Alison McGovern (Wirral South)
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton)
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton)
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North)
Ian Mearns (Gateshead
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North)
Madeleine Moon (Bridgend)
Jessica Morden (Newport East)
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South)
Grahame Morris (Easington)
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South)
Lisa Nandy (Wigan)
Alex Norris (Nottingham North)
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby)
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Kate Osamor (Edmonton)
Albert Owen (Ynys M?n)
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East)
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead)
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich)
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield)
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley)
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South)
Laura Pidcock (North West Durham)
Jo Platt (Leigh
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Stephen Pound (Ealing North)
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central)
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East)
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South)
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne)
Steve Reed (Croydon North)
Christina Rees (Neath)
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge)
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West)
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East 
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde)
Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston)
Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West)
Matt Rodda (Reading East)
Danielle Rowley (Midlothian)
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown),
 Naz Shah (Bradford West),
 Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall), 
Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield),
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury), 
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn), 
Dennis Skinner (Bolsover), 
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith), 
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North), 
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood), 
Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West), 
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington),
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich), 
Owen Smith (Pontypridd), 
Karin Smyth (Bristol South), 
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central), 
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West), 
John Spellar (Warley), 
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras), 
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central), 
Wes Streeting (Ilford North), 
Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East), 
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside), 
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West), 
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen), 
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury), 
Stephen Timms (East Ham), 
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth), 
Anna Turley (Redcar),
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East), 
Derek Twigg (Halton), 
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby), 
Liz Twist (Blaydon), 
Keith Vaz (Leicester East), 
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South), 
Thelma Walker (Colne Valley), 
Tom Watson (West Bromwich East), 
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green), 
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington), 
Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test), 
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian), 
Paul Williams (Stockton South), 
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield), 
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford), 
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge)
Tory No Votes (265) 
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty), 
Adam Afriyie (Windsor), 
Peter Aldous (Waveney), 
Lucy Allan (Telford),
David Amess (Southend West), 
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey), 
Edward Argar (Charnwood), 
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle), 
Richard Bacon (South Norfolk), 
Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden), 
Steve Baker (Wycombe), 
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire), 
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire), 
John Baron (Basildon and Billericay), 
Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk), 
Paul Beresford (Mole Valley), 
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen), 
Bob Blackman (Harrow East), 
Crispin Blunt (Reigate), 
Peter Bone (Wellingborough), 
Peter Bottomley (Worthing West), 
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine), 
Ben Bradley (Mansfield), 
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands),
Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West), 
Suella Braverman (Fareham), Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South), 
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire), 
Steve Brine (Winchester), 
James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup), 
Fiona Bruce (Congleton), 
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar), 
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West), 
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan), 
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk), 
William Cash (Stone), 
Maria Caulfield (Lewes), 
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham), 
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham), 
Christopher Chope (Christchurch), 
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds), 
Colin Clark (Gordon), 
Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland), 
James Cleverly (Braintree), 
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds), 
Therese Coffey (Suffolk Coastal), 
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe), 
Robert Courts (Witney), 
Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon), 
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford), 
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire),
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth),
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire),
Mims Davies (Eastleigh), 
Philip Davies (Shipley), 
David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden), 
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport), 
Leo Docherty (Aldershot), Michelle Donelan (Chippenham), 
Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire), 
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay), 
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere), 
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock), 
Richard Drax (South Dorset), 
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East), 
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan), 
Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green), 
Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton), 
Philip Dunne (Ludlow), 
Michael Ellis (Northampton North), 
Charlie Elphicke (Dover), 
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth), 
Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley), 
David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford), 
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield), 
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks), 
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster), 
Kevin Foster (Torbay), 
Liam Fox (North Somerset), 
Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford), 
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire), 
Marcus Fysh (Yeovil), 
Roger Gale (North Thanet), 
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest), 
Nusrat Ghani (Wealden), 
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton), 
Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham), 
John Glen (Salisbury), 
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park),
Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby), 
Michael Gove (Surrey Heath), 
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire), 
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock), 
Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald),
James Gray (North Wiltshire), 
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell), 
Chris Green (Bolton West), 
Andrew Griffiths (Burton), 
Kirstene Hair (Angus), 
Robert Halfon (Harlow), 
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate), 
Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge), 
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk), 
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham), 
Mark Harper (Forest of Dean), 
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point), 
Trudy Harrison (Copeland), 
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire), 
John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings), 
James Heappey (Wells),
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry), 
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey), 
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs), 
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire), 
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley), 
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton), 
Philip Hollobone (Kettering), Adam Holloway (Gravesham), 
John Howell (Henley), 
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North),
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey), 
Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner), 
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove), 
Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire),
Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex), 
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood), 
Robert Jenrick (Newark), 
Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip), 
Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham), 
Gareth Johnson (Dartford), 
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough), 
David Jones (Clwyd West), 
Marcus Jones (Nuneaton), 
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham), 
Gillian Keegan (Chichester), Seema Kennedy (South Ribble), 
Stephen Kerr (Stirling), Julian Knight (Solihull), 
Greg Knight (East Yorkshire), 
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne), 
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk),
Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North), 
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire), 
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire), 
Edward Leigh (Gainsborough), 
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South), 
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth), 
Julian Lewis (New Forest East),
Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset), 
David Lidington (Aylesbury), 
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster), 
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke), 
Jonathan Lord (Woking), 
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham), 
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet), 
Rachel Maclean (Redditch), 
Anne Main (St Albans), 
Alan Mak (Havant), 
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire), 
Scott Mann (North Cornwall), 
Theresa May (Maidenhead), 
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys),
Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales), 
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage), 
Esther McVey (Tatton), 
Mark Menzies (Fylde), 
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View), 
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle), 
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock), 
Maria Miller (Basingstoke), 
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase), 
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley), 
Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield), 
Damien Moore (Southport), 
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North), 
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough), 
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot), 
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale), 
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis),
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills), 
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall), 
Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire), 
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst), 
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North),
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire), 
Neil O'Brien (Harborough), 
Matthew Offord (Hendon), 
Guy Opperman (Hexham), 
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton),
Priti Patel (Witham), 
Owen Paterson (North Shropshire), 
Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead), 
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare), 
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole), 
Chris Philp (Croydon South), 
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth), 
Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich), 
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane), 
Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford), 
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin), 
Tom Pursglove (Corby), 
Will Quince (Colchester), 
Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton), 
John Redwood (Wokingham), 
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset), 
Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury), 
Mary Robinson (Cheadle), 
Andrew Rosindell (Romford), 
Douglas Ross (Moray), 
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire), 
David Rutley (Macclesfield), 
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam), 
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight), 
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire), 
Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield),
Alok Sharma (Reading West), 
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell), 
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood), 
Chloe Smith (Norwich North),
Henry Smith (Crawley), 
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon), 
Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen), 
Mark Spencer (Sherwood), 
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle), 
John Stevenson (Carlisle), 
Bob Stewart (Beckenham), 
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South),
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border), 
Mel Stride (Central Devon), 
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness), 
Julian Sturdy (York Outer), 
Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)), 
Desmond Swayne (New Forest West), 
Hugo Swire (East Devon), 
Robert Syms (Poole), 
Derek Thomas (St Ives), 
Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South), 
Maggie Throup (Erewash), 
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood), 
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon),
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole), 
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire), 
David Tredinnick (Bosworth), 
Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed), 
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk), 
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling), 
Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire), 
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes), 
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet), 
Charles Walker (Broxbourne), 
Robin Walker (Worcester), 
Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North), 
David Warburton (Somerton and Frome), 
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness), 
Giles Watling (Clacton), 
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent), 
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire), 
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley), 
John Whittingdale (Maldon), 
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire), 
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire), 
Mike Wood (Dudley South), 
William Wragg (Hazel Grove), 
Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam), 
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon). 
Labour No Votes (2) 
Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow)
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall 
DUP No Votes (10)  
Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry), 
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North), 
Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley), 
Paul Girvan (South Antrim), 
Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South), 
Ian Paisley (North Antrim), 
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East), 
Jim Shannon (Strangford), 
David Simpson (Upper Bann), 
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim).
Independent No Vote (1)  
Sylvia Hermon (North Down) 
 
 Tory Aye Votes (17) 
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy)
 Richard Benyon (Newbury)
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford)
 Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe)
 Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon)
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk)
Justine Greening (Putney)  
Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield)
 Sam Gyimah (East Surrey)
Phillip Lee (Bracknell)
Oliver Letwin (West Dorset)
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire)
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth)
Mark Pawsey (Rugby)
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury)
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex)
Edward Vaizey (Wantage) 
SNP Aye Votes (35)
Hannah Bardell (Livingston), 
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South), 
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber), 
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North), 
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith), 
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun), 
Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow), 
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife), 
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West), 
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde), 
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East), 
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk), 
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire), 
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw),
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife), 
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran), 
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North), 
Peter Grant (Glenrothes), 
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts), 
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey),
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East), 
Chris Law (Dundee West), 
David Linden (Glasgow East), 
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar), 
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South),
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East), 
John McNally (Falkirk), 
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West), 
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North), 
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute), 
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East), 
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West), 
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central), 
Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire), 
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire).    
INDEPENDENT GROUP NO VOTES (11)  
Heidi Allen (Independent - South Cambridgeshire) 
Luciana Berger (Independent - Liverpool, Wavertree)
Ann Coffey (Independent - Stockport) 
Mike Gapes (Independent - Ilford South) 
Chris Leslie (Independent - Nottingham East) 
Joan Ryan (Independent - Enfield North)
Angela Smith (Independent - Penistone and Stocksbridge) 
 Anna Soubry (Independent - Broxtowe)
Gavin Shuker (Independent - Luton South) 
Chuka Umunna (Independent - Streatham)
Sarah Wollaston (Independent - Totnes) 
OTHER NO VOTES (22) 
Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington) 
 Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland) 
Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton) 
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale) 
Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West) 
Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Norman Lamb (Liberal Democrat - North Norfolk)
Kelvin Hopkins (Independent - Luton North)
Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South) 
Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion) 
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd) 
Jared O'Mara (Independent - Sheffield, Hallam)
Fiona Onasanya (Independent - Peterborough)
Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrat - East Dunbartonshire) 
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru - Arfon)
Chris Williamson (Independent - Derby North)
John Woodcock (Independent - Barrow and Furness)     
Last night's votes do not change the law and Brexiteers insist it is not binding - but it will be seen in Brussels as a clear signal Britain is blinking over Brexit.  
Last night's vote on the Spelman amendment sends out a strong symbolic and political message even if it does not actually change the law.
The amendment passed by 312 votes to 308 is non-binding on the Government, so they can choose to ignore it if they wish.
Ms Spelman and Mr Dromey saw a similar amendment pass in January but it has fallen by the wayside.
Avoiding No Deal entirely can only be done in two ways: revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit or by adopting the Brexit deal.
A delay to Brexit of several months or longer would postpone that choice - and would require a change in the law which spells out exit day as March 29 - but it cannot be avoided forever.
But it does indicate the strength of feeling among MPs that a no-deal Brexit must be avoided and will be seen in Brussels as a clear signal Britain is blinking with the deadline just days away.
This is likely to have a huge impact when and if Theresa May heads to Brussels to ask for an extension to Article 50 to achieve a workable Brexit deal.
Avoiding No Deal entirely can only be done in two ways: revoking Article 50 and cancelling Brexit or by adopting the Brexit deal.
A delay to Brexit of several months or longer would postpone that choice - and would require a change in the law which spells out exit day as March 29 - but it cannot be avoided forever.
In the aftermath of the vote, European Research Group chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg said the amendment had no legal force.
He told Sky News: 'We live under a system of law and a motion passed in Parliament does not override the law.'
Earlier, The PM could do no more than nod in support as the Environment Secretary set out the Government's plan to block a No Deal Brexit on Britain's scheduled exit date - but desperately try to keep it on the table. 
Brexiteers  pushed an alternative plan based on the so-called Malthouse Compromise. It says the Government should delay Brexit until May 22, and offer to 'buy' an almost three-year transition period until 2021.
The idea was there is either a full-blown UK-EU trade deal in place by then or both sides are ready for a No Deal on basic World Trade Organisation terms. 
The Eurosceptics say if the EU rejects the offer, Britain must crash out without a deal on May 22 - following a short two month delay to prepare.
The Brexiteer plan was defeated by a landslide after Remain MPs secured enough support to win on the Spelman plan. 
With Mrs May's voice failing Mr Gove began the debate by praising her saying: 'She may temporarily have lost her voice, but what she has not lost, and will never lose, is her focus in the national interest, and a full-hearted desire to do what is right for our country.'     
In a desperate last attempt to win round support, Mrs May met with members of her Cabinet inside Parliament ahead of the votes at 7pm. 
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn whipped his Labour MPs to vote against Mrs May's plan and back the Spelman amendment. 
Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said that if the United Kingdom wants to change its mind over Brexit, it would be welcomed back like the 'Prodigal Son'. 
Ahead of the debate, Chancellor Philip Hammond used his Spring Statement to issue a stark warning about No Deal and called for the Commons to 'compromise'.  
Michael Gove said that since Mrs May lost the first meaningful vote on her Withdrawal Agreement in January she has spent 'more than 19 hours at the despatch box', and: 'Has shown fortitude, tenacity, thoughtfulness, diligence - and above all an unselfish and unstinting patriotism.'
Mr Gove said it was only appropriate that 'on all sides of the House' MPs recognise the way in which the Prime Minister 'always, always, always puts country first' - but told them that after rejecting her deal they now have 'difficult choices to make' about Brexit.
Earlier the croaky Tory leader insisted she understood Britain's demand to get Brexit done as she croaked through PMQs with a blast at Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to help pass her deal.
Hours after she was humiliated by a second drubbing at the hands of MPs, Mrs May returned to the Despatch Box to insist: 'I want to leave the EU with a good deal - I believe we have a good deal.' 
The Prime Minister is already fighting for her political life after being humiliated by a crushing Commons defeat last night which saw her on the 'last chance' Brexit deal voted down by 391 to 242. 
At Prime Minister's Questions Mrs May confronted MPs for the first time since the fresh humiliation. She made light of her own inability to speak blasted at Mr Corbyn: 'I may not have my own voice but I understand the voice of the country.'
Mrs May repeatedly told MPs that the only way to take no deal off the table for good was to either cancel Brexit altogether or ultimately back her deal.
But an hour later Chancellor Philip Hammond used his Spring Statement to undermine his leader by calling for No Deal to be taken off the table by MPs.  Minutes later Liz Truss undermined him by saying: 'No deal would be better than not Brexit-ing'.   
How did the plan come about?
The cross party amendment tabled by Tory Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour's Jack Dromey is their latest attempt to block a No Deal Brexit. 
They laid a similar one in January which was passed by the Commons.
But it is none-binding and the goalposts have been moved by Mrs May's two failed attempts to get a Brexit deal through parliament. 
So they are doing it again.
What does it propose?
Quite simply it rejects a No Deal Brexit at any time and under any circumstances. 
Who is backing it?
A cross-party group of mainly Remain-supporting MPs, including Sir Oliver Letwin, Hilary Benn, Nick Boles and Yvette Cooper, as well as all 11 members of the new Independent Group. 
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour is expected to whip his MPs in favour of the plan.  
Who opposes it?
The Government. 
Theresa May is to whip her MPs to oppose it - including Dame Caroline - under pressure from Brexiteer ministers who have threatened to quit if no-deal is removed as an option. 
They regard it as an important tool in persuading the EU to offer the UK a better deal, even at this late stage with just 16 days until Britain is supposed to leave the European Union.
How much would the UK have to pay?
Passing this amendment would more firmly pave the way to tomorrow's vote on asking the EU for an extension of Article 50. 
If a delay to Brexit was agreed with the European Union Britain would have to continue to pay contributions. 
How much this is would depend on how long an extension is achieved. 
It has been reported that Brussels will demand another £13.5billion in Brexit divorce payments if Theresa May seeks an extension to Article 50.
The deal obliges Britain to pay about £39billion in divorce settlement.  
How did the plan come about?
Housing minister Kit Malthouse brought Remain and Leave-supporting Tories together in a bid to break the Brexit impasse – concocting the plan which now bears his name. 
What does the 'Malthouse Compromise' propose? 
In simple terms, it calls for the UK to negotiate a new transition period until 2021 or leave the EU in May if Brussels fails to offer an agreement.
The plan contains two choices to be offered to the EU: one for how the UK will leave with a deal, and one for how it will leave without.
Plan A is similar to the current Withdrawal Agreement, but with changes to replace the Irish backstop and the implementation period with 'alternative arrangements'.
Plan B assumes that agreement on the Withdrawal Agreement is not possible and creates a 'transitional standstill period'.
How is plan B different to May's deal? 
The current Withdrawal Agreement is stripped down to little more than the deal on citizens' rights and the transition period. This would be extended by a year until no later than December 2021.
The aim of this is to provide a longer period to agree the future relationship, but it could also involve paying more money to the EU.
The second major difference is to the controversial backstop, which would be deleted. Instead, if there is no trade deal at the end of transition the UK and EU would use a 'basic free trade agreement' - essentially trading with the EU on WTO rules. It relies on existing administrative processes.
Is plan B different to a no-deal Brexit?
Yes – the plans says Britain would remain in a transition period on existing rules for three years outside the EU. 
The UK would become a third country, in practice, but would offer to pay the EU in exchange for retaining the implementation period until no later than December 2021. Plan A would remain on offer as long as the EU was willing to consider it.
If there is still no trade deal in place by the end of the three year transition, then Britain would finally leave with no deal. 
How much would the UK have to pay?
Under plan B, Britain would offer around £10 billion per year in exchange for the tranition period to continue.

Britain will face 'significant disruption' in the short and medium term if it crashes out of the European Union without a deal, Philip Hammond has warned, as he called for no-deal to be taken off the table.
The Chancellor, delivering his Spring Statement to MPs, said there would be a 'smaller, less prosperous' economy in the long term, with higher unemployment, lower wages and higher prices in shops.
In comments seen as a veiled call for a softer Brexit, he called for a compromise on what the Commons can agree to in the national interest.
Mr Hammond said the economy was 'fundamentally robust' but pleaded with MPs to lift the 'uncertainty' that 'hangs over' the UK because of the no-deal threat, after Theresa May's deal was rejected for the second time on Tuesday night.
He said: 'Our economy is fundamentally robust but the uncertainty that I hoped we would lift last night still hangs over it.
'We cannot allow that to continue: it is damaging our economy and it is damaging our standing and reputation in the world.
'Tonight, we have a choice: we can remove the threat of an imminent no-deal exit hanging over our economy.
'Tomorrow, we will have the opportunity to start to map out a way forward - towards building a consensus across this House for a deal we can collectively support, to exit the EU in an orderly way to a future relationship that will allow Britain to flourish.'
A Treasury source insisted Mr Hammond supported the Prime Minister's deal, saying: 'He has been very clear that he supports the PM's deal but he has also been saying for months that compromise is how we get through this and he is calling for compromise.'   
Earlier, Senior Brexiteer Steve Baker, a key figure in the hardline European Research Group, said the new version of the Malthouse Compromise would 'throw three safety nets' around leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement on March 29.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that plan A remained putting 'alternative arrangements' in place to replace the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement that was defeated last night.
Food 
Proposed tariff rates on a range of food products were announced as a proportion of the so-called 'most favoured nation' (MFN) currently imposed by the EU on imports from countries which do not have a free trade agreement. 
Beef 53% of MFN 
Poultry 60% of MFN
Pork 13% of MFN
Butter 32% of MFN
Cheddar-like cheese 13% of MFN
Protected fish and seafood products 100% of MFN  
Milled and semi-milled products (83%). 
INDUSTRIAL 
Finished buses: 12.6%
Finished cars and trucks: 10.6%
Transport equipment: 2.9%
Fertilisers: 2.1%
Ceramics: 1.2%
Textiles and textile products: 0.9%
Stone and cement: 0.3%
Leather and hides: 0.2%
Mineral products: 0.2%
Glass: 0.2%
Chemical products: 0.1%
Plastics and rubber: 0.1%
The second element was to 'buy' an implementation period 'so they get about £10 billion a year and we all get a transition arrangement'.
The third was offering 'standstill' arrangements with the EU to provide a third way to have a smooth exit.
The EU's Michel Barnier has repeatedly stressed that a transition arrangement could only be offered if there was a formal Withdrawal Agreement, but Mr Baker said 'negotiability is a dynamic concept'.
He repeated there will be no further offer from Brussels apart from the deal already on the table, and it is now 'the responsibility of the UK' to suggest a way forward.
He told the European Parliament: 'What will their choice be, what will be the line they will take? That is the question we need a clear answer to now.
'That is the question that has to be answered before a decision on a possible further extension 
'Why would we extend these discussions? The discussion on Article 50 is done and dusted. We have the Withdrawal Agreement. It is there.
'That is the question asked and we are waiting for an answer to that.
Mr Barnier added: 'The risk of no-deal has never been higher. That is the risk of an exit - even by accident - by the UK from the EU in a disorderly fashion.' 
In other developments, Brexiteers insisted that a No Deal Brexit would be 'good news' for Britain despite ministers revealing alarming new tariffs that would be charged on products imported from the EU.
The new import taxes will be imposed on items from the continent including cars, meat and cheese if the UK crashes out of the bloc on March 29 - but will not apply in Northern Ireland.
But excited members of the Tory ERG group led by Jacob Rees-Mogg were quick to point out that the arrangements would ensure nine out of ten global imports would land in Britain completely tax-free without an EU deal. 
Tory Brexiteer and ERG chairman Steve Baker said: 'No Deal is nothing to be scared of – it's just Brexit with many mini-deals' while ERG spokesman Sir Bill Cash, who is also Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, said these tariffs will help the British public 'enormously' making 'imports much cheaper' from non-EU countries. 
At the moment products from EU countries such as Germany and France can be imported into Britain without any charges under the single market, but if Britain leaves without a deal the Government will have to introduce new import taxes. 
However in a seemingly confusing loophole in No Deal plan, Northern Ireland's border would remain open at least 'temporarily' and goods entering from the Republic would not face tariffs to preserve the Good Friday agreement. 
The situation will raise fears that the Northern Irish border could become a smuggling route for EU products.  
Under the No Deal plan revealed yesterday morning, 87 per cent of products would be subject to zero tariffs in an effort to stop price spikes and kick-start trade with Britain from across the world. The current figure is 80 per cent.
Critics have said that a No Deal would be a 'disaster' for Britain who would be 'blocked' from trading with its closest trading partner - the EU.
CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said: 'This tells us everything that is wrong with a no-deal.
'What we are hearing is the biggest change in terms of trade this country has faced since the mid-19th century being imposed on this country with no consultation with business, no time to prepare.
'This is a sledgehammer for our economy.' 
The new tariff regime would be applied temporarily in an attempt to minimise disruption to the economy and stop price hikes. 
But ministers said products from the EU including beef, pork, chicken, butter, cheese and fish would also be subject to import taxes expected to push up prices in the supermarkets from March 29 if there is no agreement.  
Cars from the EU would be subject to a a 10.6 per tax on the cost of all 'fully finished' vehicles - making the prices of an average vehicle surge by £1,500.  
Among the 13 per cent of imports - most from the EU - which will be subject to tariffs, will be:

On the new tariff regime, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Today it was a 'modest liberalisation' of trade, adding: 'This is for a short term while we engage with business and see what the real-term consequences are'. 
But British Retail Consortium chief executive Helen Dickinson hit back: 'Even as the Brexit clock approaches midnight, MPs continue to squabble.
'Yet it is the public who will feel the impact of a No Deal Brexit – tariffs, non-tariff barriers and currency depreciation will all push up costs and reduce the choice on the shelves we currently enjoy.
'Businesses are exasperated by the lack of clarity over their future trading arrangements'. 
Philip Hammond dangled a £26billion 'deal dividend' in front of MPs yesterday as he issued stark warnings about the risks of crashing out.  
The Chancellor used his Spring Statement to insist that a no-deal Brexit would mean 'higher unemployment, lower wages and higher prices in the shops'.
Mr Hammond appealed for 'consensus' over how Britain should leave the EU, as he painted a rosy picture of the economy if Brexit hardliners back down and endorse the deal. 
The Chancellor said the economy would continue to grow in every year to 2023 - at a faster rate than Germany - if the deal is agreed, even with a slowdown this year. 
He said the strong economy meant Britain was taking 'another step of... the road out of austerity' if it avoided a no deal shock. 
Mr Hammond said if MPs pass the deal he will decide in the Spending Review later this year how to share the proceeds from any 'Deal Dividend' that Treasury aides said was worth £26billion - £11billion more than thought at the Budget in November.
The money is available deal or no deal - but would be soaked up dealing with the consequences of no deal if Britain crashes out of the bloc.  
If there is a deal, the money would go on increased spending on public services, capital investment and keeping taxes low.
Mr Hammond also announced a £100million funding boost to combat knife crime. The money will pay for a 'surge' in street policing in an effort to tackle rising levels of violence on the country's streets. 
There were also spending announcements on free sanitary products for schools and a package to tackle climate change. 
 
In his 35-minute statement, Mr Hammond said that Tuesday's vote to reject the EU Withdrawal Agreement 'leaves a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the economy' and his most urgent task is to lift it.
He announced the latest economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility suggest the economy will be sharply slower this year than expected - with a downgrade from 1.6per cent to 1.2 per cent - in November.
But growth will rise again to 1.6 per cent a year in 2021, 2022 and 2023, the forecasts say. 
He said: 'Last night's events mean we are not where I hoped we would be today.
'Our economy is fundamentally robust. But the uncertainty that I hoped we would lift last night, still hangs over us.
'We cannot allow that to continue. It is damaging our economy and it is damaging our standing and reputation in the world.
'Tonight, we have a choice. We can remove the threat of an imminent no-deal exit hanging over our economy.
'Tomorrow, we will have the opportunity to start to map out a way forward towards building a consensus across this House for a deal we can, collectively support, to exit the EU in an orderly way to a future relationship that will allow Britain to flourish, protecting jobs and businesses
'A brighter future is within our grasp. Tonight, let's take a decisive step towards seizing it and building a Britain fit for the future; a Britain the next generation will be proud to call their home.'
The Chancellor warned that the country's economic progress will be at risk in a no-deal Brexit, and said he was 'confident' that the Commons will agree a smooth and orderly EU withdrawal 'over the coming weeks'. 
Mr Hammond told MPs: 'A no-deal Brexit would deliver a significant short- to medium-term reduction in the productive capacity of the British economy. 
'And because our economy is operating at near full capacity, any fiscal and monetary response would have to be carefully calibrated not to simply cause inflation.' 
Mr Hammond said he will decide in the Spending Review later this year how to share the proceeds from any 'Deal Dividend', if the UK leaves the EU with a deal, between increased spending on public services, capital investment and keeping taxes low. 
Responding to Mr Hammond's statement, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: 'We have just witnessed a display by the Chancellor of this Government's toxic mix of callous complacency over austerity and ... mishandling of Brexit.' 
Mr McDonnell said downgrading forecasts were a 'pattern' under Mr Hammond before he criticised Government borrowing.
The Government will fund free sanitary products in schools to tackle period poverty, Philip Hammond announced.
Mr Hammond said 'some girls are missing school' because they can't afford to buy them.  
The Chancellor said the Department for Education would develop the new scheme in time for the next school year.
The surprise announcement came amid a small spending spree in Mr Hammond's Spring Statement.  
He added: 'On the deficit, he's boasting about the deficit - he's not eliminated the deficit as we were promised by 2015.
'He's simply shifted it on to the shoulders of headteachers, NHS managers, local councillors and police commissioners and, worst of all, onto the backs of many of the poorest in our society.
'The consequences are stark - infant mortality has increased, life-expectancy has reduced, and our communities are less safe.
'Police budgets have faced a cut of £2.7 billion since 2010 and nothing the Chancellor has said today will make up for the human and economic consequences of those cuts.'
Mr McDonnell added there is 'nothing balanced' about a Government giving more than £110 billion of tax cuts to the rich and corporations while '87 people a day die before they receive the care they need'.
Last week Mr Hammond urged forces to divert existing resources from lower priority crime instead of demanding more.
He said backed a 'surging of resources from other areas of policing activity into dealing with this spike in knife crime' and said forces should 'move' money from other areas.
But Mr Javid publicly backed senior police officers who said they needed more money to pay for overtime to put more officers on the streets.
Philip Hammond yesterday announced a major funding boost to combat knife crime.
In the Spring Statement, the Chancellor pledged an immediate £100million boost for police forces.
The money will pay for a 'surge' in street policing in an effort to tackle rising levels of violence on the country's streets.
It follows a major Whitehall row between the Home Office and Treasury, and represents a major victory for Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
Last week Mr Hammond urged forces to divert existing resources from lower priority crime instead of demanding more.
Sources said around two thirds of the cash would go to paying for a surge in street policing, and the remainder to fund specialist Violence Reduction Units.
On Monday 46 London MPs called for Mr Hammond to use the Spring Statement to help the Metropolitan Police fight knife crime.
Last week a string of former senior officers said there was an urgent need for more police to be recruited.
Lord Hogan-Howe, the former Met commissioner, has called for an extra 20,000 officers across the country and told ministers to 'get a grip on the crisis'.
Police numbers have fallen by 20,000 in England and Wales since 2010. The number of knife-related deaths rose from 186 in 2015-16 to 285 in 2017-18.
Violent crime rose by nearly a fifth in the year to September 2018, according to police figures, and the increase in knife killings has been particularly pronounced.
In the last year alone, 27 under-19s have been stabbed to death, and there have been 285 knife killings in all - the highest level since the Second World War.
Downing Street is also understood to have been backing calls for extra cash. Forces are already set to receive nearly £970 million extra in the next financial year.
Fossil-fuel powered boilers will be banned in new build homes from 2025, the Chancellor revealed yesterday.
Philip Hammond's move spells the beginning of the end for gas boilers in Britain.
The move is part of a package of reforms aimed at tackling climate change in the Spring Statement. 
But shadow housing secretary John Healey tweeted: 'Seriously underwhelming housing announcements from the Chancellor - debt guarantees a recycled pledge from 2017, and what sounds like a partial backtrack on the Tories' 2015 decision to scrap Labour's zero carbon homes plan... by 2025!'
Theresa May last week ordered an urgent set of ministerial meetings to discuss action against knives, but she came under fire after claiming there was 'no direct correlation between certain crimes and police numbers'.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick rejected that claim saying it was obvious 'there is some link between violent crime on the streets and police numbers'
Mrs May is also considering plans for would-be knife thugs to be treated in the same way as potential jihadis.
A new regime would see councils, schools and other agencies required to report youngsters considered to be at risk of being dragged into knife and gang crime.
Ahead of the statement, shadow chancellor John McDonnell urged him to end Government cuts.
Mr McDonnell said: 'Living standards have been squeezed by relentless cutbacks to public services, as part of a toxic Tory cocktail of callousness and incompetence.
'Philip Hammond must abandon this disastrous austerity agenda of the past nine years.
'Labour will tax the rich and giant corporations to end austerity, fund our public services properly, and rebuild our economy so it works for the many, not the few.'  
Theresa May today refused to rule out a no deal Brexit and blasted calls for a second referendum - as she unveiled her Brexit Plan B.  
She vowed to go back to Brussels to try to win new concessions on the hated Irish backstop as she scrambles to win back the support of the DUP and Tory benches. 
And although this is the same strategy she tried to win support for her deal first time round, she hopes the added time pressure before Britain leaves the EU on March 29 will bring fresh concessions.
She hit out at calls for Brexit to be delayed, and said MPs must be 'honest' and admit the only way to avoid crashing out is by passing her deal or revoking Article 50.  
And she lashed Jeremy Corbyn for refusing to join cross-party Brexit talks - urging him to reconsider, while she scrapped the £65 fee charged to EU citizens who want to stay in the UK after Brexit following an outcry at the charge.
Tory Brexiteers rallied round her plan to return to the EU, with Boris Johnson praising her 'determination' and Penny Mordaunt hailing her for keeping no deal on the table.
But Tory Remainers slammed her for not giving any new information or plan, with Heidi Allen warning her leader she cannot go on delaying and delaying. 
Mr Corbyn mocked the PM's Plan B and compared it to 'Groundhog Day', as he pointed out it looks a lot like her 'Plan A' deal - which was defeated by a staggering 230 votes just a week ago.   
The PM has been scrambling to find a way through after her deal was humiliatingly crushed in the Commons last week.
But in a statement to MPs this afternoon, Mrs May suggested she will focus on bringing the DUP and Tories back onside rather than cross-party talks.
The plan received warm words from Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, who said he thinks a deal can be done if the backstop is 'sorted'.
While Tory Brexiteer rebel in chief Jacob Rees-Mogg hinted at a softening of his stance when he said the PM's deal is better than no Brexit at all.
Mrs May conceded there was 'widespread concern about the possibility of the UK leaving without a deal'.
'There are those on both sides of the House who want the Government to rule this out,' she said.
'But we need to be honest with the British people about what that means.
'The right way to rule out No Deal is for this House to approve a deal with the European Union. That is what this Government is seeking to achieve.
'The only other guaranteed way to avoid a No Deal Brexit is to revoke Article 50 – which would mean staying in the EU.'
The premier said other politicians were calling for Article 50 to be extended beyond March so that there was 'longer for Parliament to debate how we should leave and what a deal should look like'.
'This is not ruling out no deal, but simply deferring the point of decision,' she warned.
NO DEAL
Mrs May admitted there was 'widespread concern' about the prospect of no deal. But she warned that politicians had to be 'honest' with the public.
She said the 'right way' to rule out no deal was to approve her deal.
Mrs May insisted the only other guaranteed way to avoid crashing out was to revoke Article 50 – which would mean staying in the EU.
DELAYING ARTICLE 50
Mrs May said other politicians wanted to push back the Brexit date so give longer for 'debate and decision'.
'This is not ruling out no deal, but simply deferring the point of decision,' she said.
And the EU are very unlikely simply to agree to extend Article 50 without a plan for how we are going approve a deal.
SECOND REFERENDUM
Mrs May said another national poll could 'damage social cohesion'.
But she hinted she might accept one if the House voted for it. 
'I do not believe there is a majority for a Second Referendum,' she said.
'And if I am right, then just as the Government is having to think again about its approach going forwards, then so too do those Members who believe this is the answer.'
IRISH BORDER BACKSTOP 
Mrs May admitted there were fears the UK could be 'trapped permanently' in the Irish border backstop, and concerns about Northern Ireland being 'treated differently from the rest of the UK'.
'So I will be talking further this week to colleagues - including in the DUP – to consider how we might meet our obligations to the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland in a way that can command the greatest possible support in the House,' she said.
FUTURE TRADE 
Mrs May said she will bring a 'wider range of voices' to the next phase of talks if her divorce deal is passed.
'That must include ensuring Parliament has a proper say, and fuller involvement, in these decisions,' she said.
TRANSPARENCY 
Mrs May acknowledged that Parliament was unhappy with the level of transparency the government had shown so far.
'So as the negotiations progress, we will also look to deliver confidential committee sessions that can ensure Parliament has the most up-to-date information, while not undermining the negotiations,' she said. 
'And the EU are very unlikely simply to agree to extend Article 50 without a plan for how we are going approve a deal.
'So when people say 'rule out No Deal' the consequences of what they are actually saying are that if we in Parliament can't approve a deal we should revoke Article 50.
Mrs May added: 'I believe this would go against the referendum result and I do not believe that is a course of action that we should take, or which this House should support.' 
Mrs May condemned the idea of a second referendum saying she did not believe the majority of MPs supported it - although she appeared to hint that if Parliament did vote in favour she might accept the verdict.   
'If I am right, then just as the Government is having to think again about its approach going forwards, then so too do those Members who believe this is the answer,' she said. 
Pointing out that Mr Corbyn was the only Westminster party leader to refuse her invitation to talks, Mrs May jibed: 'I regret that (he) has not chosen to take part so far. I hope he will reflect on that decision.
'Given the importance of this issue we should all be prepared to work together to find a way forward.'
Mrs May said she had identified three key changes to her deal to get it past the Commons. 
'First, we will be more flexible, open and inclusive in the future in how we engage parliament in our approach to negotiating our future partnership with the European Union,' she said.
'Second, we will embed the strongest possible protections on workers' rights and the environment.
'And third, we will work to identify how we can ensure that our commitment to no hard border in Northern Ireland and Ireland can be delivered in a way that commands the support of this House, and the European Union.'
The 'Plan B' approach has been branded 'one more heave' by ministers, but it is far from clear that the EU is willing to give enough ground on the crucial Irish border backstop issue. 
However, it received an early boost from leading Tory Brexiteers today who hailed the PM for returning to Brussels.
Mr Johnson said praised Mrs May for her 'determination' to negotiate further with Brussels on the Irish backstop, to boos and hisses from opposition benches.
And he urged her to get a 'legally binding change to the text of that backstop and to the text of the Withdrawal Agreement itself'. 
Ms Mordaunt, the Brexit-backing Aid Secretary, tweeted her suport for the PM's stance.
She wrote:  'Prime Minister rightly confirms no deal is the default if we can't agree a deal, article 50 won't be extended and rules out a second referendum. 
'We will deliver on referendum result. So if we want to leave with a deal we need to come together and agree one.'
But Tory Reminaers poured scotrn on the PM's Plan B.
Ms Allen, Tory MP for South Cambridgeshire, said Mrs May has given 'no further information'.
She said: 'Surely we cannot go on for yet another week, wasting another two weeks in total without some direction, so many members of this House today have suggested a customs union, people's vote, indicative votes, the Prime Minister must commit to one of those next week.' 
Tory former Cabinet minister Justine Greening said: 'Isn't it time for all of us to be honest, that Parliament's run out of road, we've been debating for two-and-a-half years, we could debate for another two-and-a-half years and we still wouldn't reach a resolution on Brexit - the only people who can do that now surely are the British people?' 
Mrs May is tabling a 'neutral' motion in the House that will be debated and voted on - along with any amendments tabled by MPs - on January 29.
But Mr Corbyn has refused to hold discussions with the PM, and there has been little success for the government in trying to peel off Opposition MPs. The deal was hammered by a record margin of 230 votes in the Commons last week. 
There have also been fears that forcing through a package with Labour support will split the Tories and cause an election. 
Mrs May is now pushing changes to the Northern Ireland backstop in the hope she can win round Tory Brexiteers and her allies in the DUP.
The Daily Telegraph reported she was even considering trying to amend the Good Friday Agreement - although No10 sources dismissed the idea as 'mad' and a 'non-starter'.
Mrs May told the Commons this afternoon that she had not considered the move. 
She admitted there were fears the UK could be 'trapped permanently' in the Irish border backstop, and concerns about Northern Ireland being 'treated differently from the rest of the UK'.
'So I will be talking further this week to colleagues - including in the DUP – to consider how we might meet our obligations to the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland in a way that can command the greatest possible support in the House,' she said.
Ministers could urge the Queen to block a bid by MPs to delay or cancel Brexit, a constitutional expert warned today.
Remainers from across parties are launching a bid to seize control of Parliamentary business from the government so they can rule out a no-deal departure from the EU. 
But Sir Stephen Laws, who used to be the government's legislation chief and now works at the Policy Exchange think-tank, said there was a risk of the monarch being asked to 'veto' the plan.  
'It could raise a question whether the government would be entitled or might feel required to reassert its constitutional veto by advising the Queen not to grant royal assent to the bill,' he said.
'How should the monarch react to such advice? The answer is not straightforward and the prospect of it needing to be considered in a real life political crisis is unthinkably awful.
'It is a sacred duty of all UK politicians not to involve the monarch in politics. They have a constitutional responsibility to resolve difficulties between themselves in accordance with the rules, and so as not to call on the ultimate referee.'
However, she dodged when asked by Boris Johnson whether she would confirm that mean amending the Withdrawal Agreement. 
Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney was adamant over the weekend the backstop - intended to ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic - was an essential part of the Withdrawal Agreement.
Arriving at an EU summit in Brussels this morning, German foreign minister Heiko Maas insisted the 'ball is in London'. 
'So far, unfortunately, the British Parliament has only said what it does not want. What we need now are concrete proposals from the British,' he said. 
'The ball is (in London's court), there is not a lot of time left.' 
In evidence of deepening Tory splits, business minister Richard Harrington today publicly urged the PM to rule out a no-deal Brexit. 
'It's an absolute disaster for the country and it's supported by a minority of a minority of people,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. 
Mr Harrington urged Mrs May to take a fresh approach: 'She should in my view say 'we are responsible people, we're going to do our duty to business, and we're going to rule out a no deal because we want a great deal'.' 
He also said he was 'afraid' of Jaguar and Mini closing if there was a no-deal Brexit. 
However, in a glimmer of hope for Mrs May there are signs some Brexiteers could reluctantly back her deal amid concerns a cross-party grouping of MPs are plotting to impose a 'softer' Brexit - or stop it altogether.
Graham Brady, who chairs the powerful Tory 1922 committee, said he thought Mrs May could get her Brexit deal past Conservative rebels if the Irish backstop 'can be sorted out'.
'So much of the vote against was from people who simply cannot support a potentially permanent backstop, if that can be sorted out then I think we might get that withdrawal agreement through,' he told BBC radio.
He said it was in Ireland's interests to help Britain leave the EU with a deal, saying they would be far more hurt by a no-deal Brexit that Britain as most of their trade comes through the UK. 
Writing in The Mail on Sunday, leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'Even Mrs May's deal would be better than not leaving at all.'
There was anger among pro-Leave MPs at moves to enable backbenchers to take control of the Commons business from the Government - in breach of normal conventions - through a series of amendments to the neutral motion.
One group including senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper and Tory former minister Nick Boles is seeking to give time for a bill to suspend the Article 50 withdrawal process if there is no new deal with Brussels by the end of February.
Another more radical amendment drawn up by former attorney general Dominic Grieve would allow a motion by a minority of 300 MPs - from at least five parties and including 10 Tories - to be debated as the first item of Commons business the next day.
Downing Street has flatly dismissed claims Theresa May is considering rewriting the  Good Friday agreement to get her Brexit deal through Parliament. 

The Daily Telegraph reported that ministers were considering amending the peace deal for Northern Ireland would avoid having to commit the UK to the Irish border backstop.
But No10 sources said the idea was 'mad' and not under consideration. 
Any move in that direction would be hugely controversial and would require consensus among all of the parties involved in Northern Ireland.
Mr Grieve said it would enable the Commons to stage a series of 'indicative votes' on the various alternatives, such as a 'soft' Norway-style deal or a second referendum to establish which could command a majority.
He denied claims he was seeking to prevent Britain leaving the EU after International Trade Secretary Liam Fox accused pro-Remain MPs of trying to 'hijack' the 2016 referendum vote.
Mrs May is expected to use her statement to explain how she intends to proceed in the run up to the vote on January 29, rather than setting out a detailed 'plan B'.
Amid a bitter blame game over who was responsible for the deadlock, Mr Corbyn has been refusing to talk unless Mrs May rules out a no-deal Brexit.
He said: 'May's no-deal threat is empty and hugely expensive, wasting billions of pounds we should be spending on vital public services.
'It's a pointless and damaging attempt to appease a faction in her own party when she now needs to reach out to overcome this crisis.
The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford MP said: 'Rather than listening to other options the Prime Minister is instead closing them down, intent on cutting off any alternatives and leaving a false choice between her defeated dead deal and a disastrous no-deal.'
'It would be the height of irresponsibility and economic self-harm if Theresa May does not categorically rule out a no-deal Brexit today. Her attempt to run down the clock must be stopped.'
 
Chancellor Philip Hammond last night warned up to 10 per cent could be wiped off the UK's national income under a no-deal Brexit - in an astonishing intervention that incurred the wrath of Downing Street just hours after Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab played down fears of 'doomsday'.
Triggering a major Cabinet split, the Chancellor wrote that a no-deal scenario would have 'large fiscal consequences' for Britain and could mean an extra £80billion of borrowing.
Mr Hammond said the food industry and manufacturers could be hit especially hard with Northern Ireland and north-east England the regions worst affected.
Last night Downing Street sources said the Chancellor's letter was not cleared with them before being published, with the Daily Telegraph reporting Number 10 was 'infuriated' by the intervention.
Members of the Treasury select committee dismissed Mr Hammond's predictions, pointing out how wrong his department had been about the immediate effects of the referendum, while Charlie Elphicke accused the Treasury of 'reheating dodgy figures'.
Mr Hammond's dire warning came just hours after his colleague Dominic Raab, the Brexit Secretary, delivered an up-beat message and dismissed 'wild' scare stories about the effect of leaving the EU without a deal.
He published a series of technical papers detailing how the Government is preparing for the prospect of failing to reach an agreement with Brussels.
Mr Raab suggested most consumers would not notice the impact of a 'no deal', and rejected suggestions people would not be able to enjoy sandwiches after Brexit.
He also warned Brussels to put 'lives and livelihoods' ahead of politics and make compromises to reach a deal with the UK.
But his words were undermined just hours later by Mr Hammond, a prominent Remain supporter, who said a no-deal scenario would hit the food and drink industry as well as manufacturing and carmakers.
The Chancellor warned that the biggest negative impacts would be felt in the North East of England and Northern Ireland.
Last night Mr Rees Mogg, said: 'The Treasury once more regurgitates its failed attempt at Project Fear.
'As a dog returneth to its vomit, so a fool returneth to its folly. The Treasury is desperate to stop Brexit. Everything the Treasury does has to be read in this light.'
The Cabinet rift opened up as:
One of the technical papers warned that millions of people could face higher credit charges if Britain leaves the EU without a deal;
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told drugs firms to stockpile six weeks' worth of medicines;
Cabinet minister David Lidington said it could take until December to reach a deal - two months beyond the official deadline of October;
Former environment secretary Owen Paterson slammed Theresa May's Chequers plan for Brexit as a 'disaster' for the fishing industry because EU rules would have to be obeyed for years.
Mr Hammond's intervention came in a letter to Nicky Morgan, the Remain-backing Tory MP and chairman of the Treasury select committee.
The Chancellor pointed to disputed provisional analysis, released earlier this year, which claimed Britain's gross domestic product could be between 5 and 10 per cent lower in 15 years if there is no deal.
This also calculated that borrowing could be around £80billion a year higher by 2033/34 under a scenario in which Britain resorted to World Trade Organisation terms for trade after failing to reach agreement with the EU.
Mr Hammond noted that scenarios involving higher barriers to trade with the EU are expected to have a 'more damaging effect' on the economy and public finances.
He also mounted a defence of the Government's preferred approach, which was outlined in a white paper following a Cabinet summit at Chequers, by saying the economic and fiscal impacts of this would be 'substantially better' than no deal.
Mr Hammond wrote in his letter: 'This January provisional analysis estimated that in a no-deal/WTO scenario, GDP would be 7.7 per cent lower (range 5.0 per cent to 10.3 per cent) relative to a status quo baseline.
'This represents the potential expected static state around 15 years out from the exit point.
'The analysis did not estimate the path the economy and different sectors might take under no deal and the potential for short-term disruption.'
Mr Hammond added: 'Under a no-deal/WTO scenario, chemicals, food and drink, clothing, manufacturing, cars, and retail were estimated to be the sectors most affected negatively in the long-run, with the largest negative impacts felt in the North East and Northern Ireland.
'GDP impacts of this magnitude, were they to arise, would have large fiscal consequences.
'The January analysis estimated that borrowing would be around £80billion a year higher under a no-deal/WTO scenario by 2033/34, in the absence of mitigating adjustments to spending and/or taxation, relative to a status quo baseline.
'This is because any direct financial savings are outweighed by the indirect fiscal consequences of a smaller economy.'
Mr Hammond published his letter just hours after Mr Raab insisted the 'vast majority' of consumers will not even notice the impact of a no-deal Brexit.
The Brexit Secretary said: 'I am absolutely clear that the UK will be better off outside of the EU in any scenario in the long-term but I recognise the risks in the short-term.
'I think there is good reason to think that even in a no deal scenario there would be good faith. If you look at the example of pensioners, it is hardly in the interests of Southern Spain to do harm to the UK pensioners out there.
'You would expect cooler heads prevailing. For the vast majority of consumers in this country there is not going to be much change at all, if it's noticeable.'
Mr Raab criticised scaremongering over a no-deal scenario, such as the suggestion that it could spark a 'sandwich famine' in the UK due to shortages of ingredients, or that the Army will have to deliver food supplies.
'Let me reassure you all that, contrary to one of the wilder claims, you will still be able to enjoy a BLT after Brexit,' he said.
He also warned Brussels not to be 'vindictive' in its negotiations, calling on the EU to be more 'responsible'.
'We are raising this issue with the EU, to impress upon them our joint responsibility to work together to minimise any harm to UK and European citizens and businesses,' he said.
'Those lives, those livelihoods, on both sides, should be put ahead of any narrow political interests.'
EU Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein hit back, saying: 'We don't operate according to concepts of vindictiveness or forgiveness.
'We are working very hard continuously, from day one, for the orderly withdrawal of the UK from the European Union.'
Mr Hammond's intervention came days after it was claimed that some of the 'no deal' papers had had to be rewritten because the Treasury had made the original versions too gloomy.
Last night critics asked why the Chancellor had chosen to issue his letter on the day Mr Raab was publishing his papers.
Last night Tory MP Charlie Elphicke, a member of the Treasury select committee, hit out at Mr Hammond.
'Here we go again with dodgy figures being reheated by the Treasury on the very day the government publishes its plan for trading on global deal terms,' he said.
'In the referendum the Treasury said everyone would lose their jobs and the country would plunge into a deep recession if we voted out. Instead Britain is growing faster than the EU and we have record employment.
'It's time the Treasury started to believe in Britain and focus on the opportunities for global trade. That's why we need to Chuck Chequers and seek an advanced trade deal - first with the EU and then the world over.'
Fellow Conservative MP Simon Clarke, also a member of the Treasury committee, added: 'Before the referendum the Treasury said the economy would nosedive with GDP 3.6 to 6 per cent down. They said 500,000 to 800,000 jobs would be lost.
'They were completely wrong. Instead we have record jobs with 32.4million in work while unemployment is at a 42 year-low.
'It's unbelievable that the Treasury continue to talk down our country and our economy by conning the public with their discredited Project Fear yet again.' 
Government reveals Brexit No Deal Doomsday plans: Ministers admit online shoppers and tourists visiting EU could face millions of pounds in credit card charges... and we could even run out of SPERM
James Tapfield, Political editor for MailOnline
Ministers unveiled a raft of plans today to prevent 'no deal' Brexit causing carnage - admitting that credit card charges could rise and expats could be locked out of pensions.
There are even concerns of shortage in donated sperm as imports from Denmark might be hampered, and dramatic health warning photographs on cigarette packets will have to be replaced as the EU holds the copyright. 
Danish semen made up almost half of all non-British male reproductive material imported to the UK in 2017, a paper from the Department of Health and Social Care revealed. 
The potential pitfalls of failure to strike a deal with the EU were spelled out in documents that warned losing access to shared IT systems could mean millions of pounds in extra charges for online shoppers and tourists visiting the bloc.
Ex-pats could also struggle to access pensions and accounts administered by UK-based banks, while medicines could be delayed by regulatory upheaval. 
Launching the first tranche of 25 'technical notes' on the consequences of no deal, Dominic Raab tried to play down the picture they painted, insisting the government was just making sure Britain was 'ready'.
The Brexit Secretary also stressed he was still 'confident' an agreement would be reached. 
Among the main points in the dump of documents issued by ministers today are:
In his speech, Mr Raab said the Government would not risk triggering a tit-for-tat battle with Brussels by imposing new border checks or travel restrictions.
He said: 'I remain confident a good deal is within our sights, and that remains our top, and overriding, priority. If the EU responds with the level of ambition and pragmatism, we will strike a strong deal that benefits both sides.
'But, we must be ready to consider the alternative. We have a duty, as a responsible government, to plan for every eventuality.
'These technical notices - and the ones that will follow - are a sensible, measured,and proportionate approach to minimising the impact of no deal on British firms, citizens,charities and public bodies.'
He added: 'They will provide information and guidance. Our overarching aim is to facilitate the smooth, continued, functioning of business, transport, infrastructure, research, aid programmes and funding streams.
'In some cases, it means taking unilateral action to maintain as much continuity as possible in the short term, in the event of no deal - irrespective of whether the EU reciprocates.'
Mr Raab said the UK, in the event of a no-deal, would 'diverge when we are ready, on our terms' from the European Union.
The Brexit Secretary stressed there was already planning talks between the Bank of England and the European Central Bank for a no-deal scenario and called for talks to begin on data protection and between port authorities.
Credit card charges and online shopping  
One document released today considers the risks facing UK banking and payments customers if the Government fails to clinch a trade agreement that covers financial services.
In the case of a no-deal Brexit, UK-based payment service providers would lose direct access to the EU's payment infrastructure. 
Customers, including businesses using providers to process payments in euros, could also 'face increased costs and slower processing times for euro transactions', the Government paper warned. 
'The cost of card payments between the UK and EU will likely increase, and these cross-border payments will no longer be covered by the surcharging ban,' it added. 
The ban prevents businesses from charging customers for paying by the likes of PayPal or debit or credit cards, which Treasury earlier this year characterised as 'rip-off fees'. 
Consumers shopping in the EU or buying online from an EU company with a UK card, could be hit with surprise charges on their purchases, with some retailers charging more than the cost of processing payments. 
The Treasury estimated that surcharging cost Britons around £166million in 2015. 
The EU surcharge ban came into force in January. The Government said it is looking to align domestic law around payments with rules already set up in the EU in hopes of remaining a member of the Single Euro Payments Area. 
However, that would only ensure that 'lower value euro transactions are processed in the same amount of time as they are today', meaning larger payments may still face delays. 
Consumers would face another potential cost increase when online shopping, with parcels arriving in the UK no longer liable for Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR) on VAT. 
Medical supplies face checks and delays  
The pharmaceutical industry should ensure they have an additional six-week supply of drugs in the event of disruption caused by a no-deal Brexit, the Health Secretary has said.
Matt Hancock has told drug companies that supply chains for products could be affected by changes to border processes and stockpiles would be needed to cope with potential delays.
Hospitals, GPs and community pharmacies in the UK do not need to stockpile additional medicines and doctors should not write longer prescriptions, he said.
Patients should also be advised that they do not need to store additional medicines at home.
Steve Bates, chief executive of the UK Bioindustry Association (BIA), said the request would be 'a massive challenge' for the industry.
In a letter to pharmaceutical companies, Mr Hancock said: 'In the unlikely event we leave the EU without a deal in March 2019, based on the current cross-Government planning scenario we will ensure the UK has an additional six weeks' supply of medicines in case imports from the EU through certain routes are affected.
'This is the current planning assumption but will of course be subject to revision in light of future developments.'
He asked companies 'to ensure they have a minimum of six weeks' additional supply in the UK, over and above their business as usual operational buffer stocks' by March 29.
Mr Hancock said the 'same risk exists in the EU' and countries such as France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands will also need to prepare for disruption.
In an open letter to NHS staff, Mr Hancock said hospitals, GPs and community pharmacies in the UK 'do not need to take any steps to stockpile additional medicines, beyond their business as usual stock levels'.
He added: 'Local stockpiling is not necessary and any incidences involving the over-ordering of medicines will be investigated and followed up with the relevant chief or responsible pharmacist directly.
'Clinicians should advise patients that the Government has plans in place to ensure a continued supply of medicines to patients from the moment we leave the EU.
'Patients will not need to and should not seek to store additional medicines at home.'
Mr Bates said: 'We have stressed and recognise that endeavouring to deliver on this in less than 200 days will be a massive challenge for industry and the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) alike.
'Given that over 150 BIA members are actively involved in clinical development in the UK we will pay particular attention to the implications of this work with regard to ongoing clinical trials.
'A 'no-deal' Brexit would mean the biggest dis-integration of the complex regulated medicines market in Europe in terms of regulation, cross-border movement of goods, comparative pricing and intellectual property.
'On behalf of patients we encourage all participants to be as prepared as possible for a scenario industry really does not want, but we should be under no illusions that this will be easy or smooth.'
The papers also raised the alarm about a potential sperm donor shortage and restrictions on transferring other biomaterials.
One points out that the UK imported 3,000 sperm samples from Denmark last year, along with smaller quantities from other countries in the bloc. 
'UK licensed establishments working in this area, such as hospitals, stem cell laboratories, tissue banks and fertility clinics would continue to work to the same quality and safety standards as they did before exit but some would need new written agreements with relevant EU establishments,' the paper said. 
Expats could lose access to pensions 
UK citizens living in Europe face the possibility of losing access to their pension income and other financial services, according to technical papers on no-deal Brexit preparations. 
Lending and deposit services, insurance and annuities - which people rely on for a regular pension income - are among the financial products which expats could struggle to access, according to the documents.
One said that 'in the absence of action from the EU, EEA-based customers of UK firms currently passporting into the EEA, including UK citizens living in the EEA, may lose the ability to access existing lending and deposit services, insurance contracts (such as life insurance contracts and annuities) due to UK firms losing their rights to passport into the EEA'.
Insurers said millions of customers, including pensioners overseas, could be affected. 
The papers said the Government has committed to putting unilateralaction in place if necessary to resolve issues as far as possible on the UK side.
For UK-based customers who access banking, insurance, investment funds and other financial services with EEA firms currently passporting into the UK, temporary permissions will enable these firms to continue to provide these services to UK customers for up to three years after exit - allowing firms time to apply for authorisation to continue operating in the UK, the documents said.
Banking red tape could mean EU clients lose UK-based services  
The technical papers also echoed warnings from the Bank of England which earlier this summer said the EU needed to do more to prevent Brexit causing havoc in financial markets.
The Government said clients across the European Economic Area would no longer be able to use the services of UK-based investment banks, while cross-border contracts may no longer be valid.
It puts a key industry at risk, with financial services having contributed more than a quarter of the UK's services exports to the EU, accounting for £27 billion out of £90 billion in 2016.
A number of banks have made efforts to secure licences and offices in EU financial hubs to continue serving clients on the continent.
Lending and deposit services, insurance and annuities - which people rely on for a regular pension income - are among the financial products which expats could struggle to access, according to the documents.
One said that 'in the absence of action from the EU, EEA-based customers of UK firms currently passporting into the EEA, including UK citizens living in the EEA, may lose the ability to access existing lending and deposit services, insurance contracts (such as life insurance contracts and annuities) due to UK firms losing their rights to passport into the EEA'.
Insurers said millions of customers, including pensioners overseas, could be affected. 
The papers said the Government has committed to putting unilateral action in place if necessary to resolve issues as far as possible on the UK side.
For UK-based customers who access banking, insurance, investment funds and other financial services with EEA firms currently passporting into the UK, temporary permissions will enable these firms to continue to provide these services to UK customers for up to three years after exit - allowing firms time to apply for authorisation to continue operating in the UK, the documents said.
This means these firms will be able to continue as before if they receive authorisation covering the full scope of services they currently provide.
The UK's savings safety net, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), protects money held by customers of UK-authorised firms when firms go bust, including some products with EEA firms.
Regulators will consult this autumn on arrangements for coverage to continue, the documents said. 
Farming subsidies guaranteed but 'cliff edge' for organic produce 
Government moved to reassure landowners they would continue to get farming subsidies, currently controlled by the EU, in the case of no-deal, until new agriculture legislation is brought in.
The funding will remain at existing levels until the end of this parliament, expected in 2022, for the whole of the UK, a technical notice on payments reiterates.
People receiving subsidies will have to conform to the same standards and rules, including on-site farm inspections, in order to receive the payments.
But organic food producers will face a 'cliff edge' over exporting to the European Union in the event of a no-deal Brexit, farming leaders warned.
According to technical guidance published by the Government, UK businesses would only be allowed to export to the EU if they were certified by an organic certification body approved by the European Commission.
But UK organic bodies will not be able to apply for recognition until after Brexit - and approval could take up to nine months to secure.
The National Farmers' Union (NFU) said the situation for organic produce served as a warning on future trade in all food and agricultural products between the UK and the EU.
On organic produce, the Government said it was exploring 'alternative approaches' to speed up the process.
The Government expects to negotiate an arrangement which would allow free movement of organic produce between the UK and EU, because European regulations will remain in UK law.
Logos on packaging would also need to change, with the EU organic label in the shape of a green leaf of stars stripped off, though UK labels would remain.
Graphic cigarette warnings could disappear  
Stark images of blackened lungs and dead bodies on cigarette packets would disappear under a no-deal Brexit.
Copyright for the current images is owned by the European Commission so the UK could no longer legally use them and new images would need to be created.
A no-deal Brexit would also mean new systems to register tobacco and e-cigarette products, according to a technical paper on labelling tobacco products.
The paper states: 'If there's no deal we would introduce new picture warnings for tobacco products as the copyright for the existing picture library is owned by the European Commission.
'Manufacturers will need to ensure that tobacco products which include picture warnings produced from Exit Day onwards will be labelled with new picture warnings.'
New regulations would be needed to give the Government power to update domestic legislation in response to emerging threats, changing safety and quality standards and technological advances.
A consultation will be held in September on labelling and notification.
The paper adds: 'Inevitably under a no-deal scenario, the close working relationships that exist with our European partners would not be the same.
'The UK will, of course, continue to play an active role in the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.'
There is unlikely to be a Brexit deal until the end of the year, a Cabinet minister suggested today.
Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said he was not surprised by Michel Barnier playing down the prospects of agreement before November. 
He said: 'I was Europe minister for six years, I have seen enough of these negotiations to know that these deadlines slip.
'I think there definitely will need to be an agreement by the end of 2018.'
However, speaking during a briefing with reporters in Edinburgh, Mr Lidington added that he did not believe the March date for Britain's exit from Europe would be pushed back.
'Article 50 is a matter of EU law, it is not a matter of political judgment,' he said.
'I think there is a real pressure from the end of the year because, with the European Parliament going into election mode it will just become more difficult to get enough MEPs in a plenary from January onwards to have the numbers to pass the super majority that is needed.
'And you've got to get legislation through Westminster as well to implement a withdrawal agreement.'
He added: 'I just don't think that seeking to extend Article 50 is going to help... the Treaty is absolutely clear that it is two years or when a withdrawal agreement is reached or ratified if that is earlier.'
Earlier, Mr Raab told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he wanted to move on from the 'latest incarnation of Project Fear'.
'Some of those promoting the worst scare stories around no deal... are assuming that the EU will act in a vindictive way,' he said. 
'I'm still confident a good deal is within our sights,' Mr Raab said. 
'We have got agreement on about 80 per cent of the issues. 
'We have made clear that if negotiations don't achieve the optimum outcome we will continue to be a responsible European neighbour and partner.'
Playing down the threat of shortages in hospitals, Mr Raab said a stockpile of 200 medicines already exists, thanks to longstanding arrangements with pharmaceutical companies to cope with disruptions at the border, such as strikes by French lorry drivers.
'There are potential issues around the border in the worst case scenario,' he said. 
'So it's right, too, we will be working with industry around stockpiling of medicines for a working assumption of six weeks.'
Mr Raab admitted that talks remain deadlocked over the Northern Irish border, with the UK continuing to press for a bespoke customs agreement on goods and services.
'They're still asking questions and probing the proposals, but that's good,' he said.
'They are not knocking them away in principle - they are asking questions on the practical detail.
'They understand very clearly that we will not allow a customs border or any other form of border to be drawn down the Irish Sea.' 
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer dismissed the documents as a distraction, saying a no deal would be 'catastrophic'.
He said: 'A no deal Brexit would be a complete failure by the Government to negotiate for Britain. These documents should not distract us from that.
'No deal would be catastrophic for people's jobs, the economy and for the border in Northern Ireland. It is irresponsible for anyone to casualise no deal.'
Simon Lewis, chief executive of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME), said: 'The consequences of a no-deal Brexit scenario could mean prolonged disruption to the smooth functioning of Europe's capital markets, which would affect investors, borrowers and savers across Europe and beyond.
'The financial services industry is keen to see both negotiating parties agree on a deal which locks in an agreement on a transition period and the future trading relationship in order to minimise the risks to financial stability.'  
 
 
 
 
Desperate Theresa May could be just hours away from the end of her time in power as she battles to hold on amid a full-scale Brexit mutiny in the Conservative Party. 
The Prime Minister fled London this afternoon to cast a vote in the European election in her Berkshire constituency knowing it could be one of her last actions as Tory leader.
With a resignation announcement seen as almost inevitable after she meets Tory 1922 committee chief Graham Brady tomorrow she could have quit or been forced out before the results - widely tipped to be disastrous for her party - are revealed on Sunday and Monday.
The Prime Minister is trying to maintain dignity as the sun sets on her time in power - She has already bowed to pressure to pull the vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which she previously said would happen early next month. 
The prospect of giving MPs a choice on whether to hold another referendum had sparked a furious response from Tories - with Commons leader Andrea Leadsom dramatically quitting last night and putting the last nail in Mrs May's coffin. 
The PM promoted Treasury Mel Stride to fill the gap this afternoon, and met Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid to discuss how the Bill might be rewritten.
However, there appears little chance that she will be able to avoid agreeing to the start of a Tory leadership contest, potentially as early as next week. 
One of the PM's last acts as Tory leader is set to be overseeing a catastrophic performance in European elections, which are taking place across the UK today.
Amid the Brexit chaos and infighting, support for the Conservatives has slumped to just 7 per cent in some polls - with fear that all the party's MEPs could be wiped out.   
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party has surged and is now on track to top the poll - while the Lib Dems have also overtaken Labour. 
The elections today have put a temporary hold on the frenzied leadership jostling to succeed Mrs May. However, the campaigns by contenders including Boris Johnson, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and others are already in full swing behind the scenes. Ms Leadsom is also considering a run.
Mr Johnson was boosted today by support from backbencher Johnny Mercer.
'It's very clear to me that there is one individual that we can go forward and sort of try and govern from the centre/centre-right as a one nation Tory,' he told ITV's Peston programme.
'And that is Boris Johnson... I've had many conversations with him. We're going to try and do it together.' 
There are expected to be as many as 10 candidates nominated to start with - who will be whittled down to a final two in a series of votes by MPs. The Tory membership will then choose between the last two.
However not everyone believes she will quit this week. 
A 1922 Committee source said they expected Mrs May would stay until June 10, but warned there would be 'much greater pressure' for her to go immediately if she introduces the WAB.
'Hopefully what will happen is she will stand down as Tory leader I think on or before June 10, and she will hopefully remain as caretaker Prime Minister until such time as a new Tory leader is elected,' they said.
'My feeling is that she will stay until June 10.'
The source said a new leader would ideally be in place by the end of the summer to get a Brexit deal through Parliament before October 31.
The drama was brought to a head on Tuesday when Mrs May delivered a speech spelling out a series of concessions designed to get her Withdrawal Agreement Bill - known as WAB - past its first Commons hurdle.
The offer of votes on holding a second referendum and joining a temporary customs union with the EU caused uproar among Conservative MPs. And Cabinet anger erupted amid claims that Mrs May had gone further in her speech than had been agreed in a fraught two-hour meeting. 
At one stage yesterday, some aides believed Mrs May was on the verge of quitting on the spot - and even started preparations for a resignation statement.
But chief whip Julian Smith later told the 1922 committee of backbench MPs that Mrs May intended to campaign in today's elections and would instead meet the group's chairman Sir Graham Brady tomorrow.
At that point they are expected to set the timetable for a Tory leadership election - although she will remain as PM until a replacement is chosen. 
The MPs on the executive of the 1922 have already staged a secret ballot on whether to change Tory rules so a fresh no-confidence vote can be held. However, they will only count the votes if Mrs May does not set out a resignation timetable tomorrow.     
Mrs May refused to see rebel ministers yesterday afternoon, leading to accusations that she was bunkered down in No 10.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'The sofa is up against the door, she's not leaving.' 
However sources said meetings with senior ministers were postponed because Mrs May was having her regular audience with the Queen, who she was expected to brief on her intentions. 
Whitehall insiders said the legislation that the Prime Minister announced on Tuesday might never now see the light of day.
She agreed to meet Sir Graham tomorrow to discuss arrangements for the election of a new Conservative Party leader.
An ally said: 'The chances of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill coming forward now are very slender - there is too much opposition in Cabinet. 
'That was her last move - she's made her last move. I think she accepts that.' 
Another said: 'We completely understand what has happened over the course of the last 24 hours. 
'She wants to be able to say that in her own words in short order. You will see that clearly when the elections are done.'
Ms Leadsom's husband Ben stopped to speak to reporters as he left their London home on his bicycle this morning. 'It was a tough day yesterday, but she's happy she made the right decision,' he said. 
A huge field of candidates is expected to run to replace Theresa May. 
While as many as 25 could run they will swiftly be whittled down into a workable number as MPs show their allegiances and plot to get their chosen man or woman into Downing Street.
Here we look at the main runners and riders, with their odds with Ladbrokes and how they voted in the 2016 referendum:
Boris Johnson: The long-running thorn in May's side  who has recently had a 'prime ministerial' makeover
The former foreign secretary, 54, who quit last July and has been tacitly campaigning for the leadership ever since. He finally went public last week to confirm he would run.
Never far from the limelight the father-of-four recently split from his wife Marina and is in a relationship with former Conservative staffer Carrie Symonds, 20 years his junior. 
As an increasingly hawkish Brexiteer who says we should not be afraid of leaving without a deal he is hugely popular with the party faithful.
At the start of the year he underwent what might be deemed a 'prime ministerial' makeover, losing weight and taming his unruly mop of blonde hair.
Popular with the rank-and-file membership he has less fans in the parliamentary party and may face a concerted campaign to block his succession. Received the surprise backing of Johnny Mercer last night.
Dominic Raab: Brexiteer who quit rather than back Mrs May's deal
Mr Raab, 45, is another Vote Leave member who became Brexit secretary after David Davis quit alongside Mr Johnson last July over the Chequers plan.
But he lasted just a matter of months before he too jumped ship, saying he could not accept the terms of the deal done by the Prime Minister.
Like Mr Johnson and Mr Davis he has become an increasingly hardline Brexiteer, sharing a platform with the DUP's Arlene Foster and suggesting we should not be afraid of a no-deal Brexit.
The Esher and Walton MP's decision to quit in November, boosted his popularity with party members but he lacks the wider popular appeal of Mr Johnson.
And like Mr Johnson he might benefit from having quit the Cabinet at an earlier stage and dissociating himself with the dying days of the May administration.  
His odds have shortened as he is seen as possibly a more palatable alternative Brexiteer to Boris by MPs seeking to block Mr Johnson's run.
He recently posed for a glossy photoshoot with wife Erika at their Surrey home, seen as a sign he will run. 
Andrea Leadsom: May's former rival who finally decided she could take no more
The former Commons' Leader piled pressure on the Prime Minister by announcing her own resignation from the Cabinet last night. 
In a parting blast, the Commons Leader said she could not stomach the latest version of Mrs May's Brexit deal, with its offer of a second referendum.
It was the final act by an MP whose departure had seemingly been on the cards for months.  
Mrs Leadsom, a mother of three, stood against Mrs May for the party leadership in 2016 before conceding defeat before it was put to a vote of MPs.
As collective responsibility largely broke down among ministers she became an increasingly vocal and clear Brexiteer voice in the Cabinet along line similar lines to Mr Johnson and Mr Raab.
She was the host of a Brexiteer 'pizza party' in Parliament that included Michael Gove and Liz Truss as the vying wings of the Cabinet plotted to shape the Brexit deal they wanted.
In her role as Commons' Leader she frequently clashes with Speaker John Bercow over issues including bullying in Parliament.
It is something that will do her no harm among the Tory backbenches where he is widely loathed. 
Jeremy Hunt: Remainer turned Brexiteer unity candidate who wants to heal the party
The Foreign Secretary who has undergone a Damascene conversion to the Brexit cause and is seen as a safe if uninspiring pair of hands.
The 52-year-old South West Surrey MP has reportedly been selling himself to colleagues as a unity candidate who can bring together the fractious Tory factions into something approaching a cohesive party. 
A long-serving health secretary, the father-of three replaced Mr Johnson as the UK's top diplomat and has won some plaudits over issues like the imprisonment of British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran.
But critics point to tub-thumpingly comparing the EU to the USSR at the party conference last year - which was very badly received in Brussels - and a gaffe in which he referred to his Chinese wife  as 'Japanese' as a reception in China.
Last month he went on a tour of Africa in which his Chinese wife Lucia made a major appearance, after he gaffed by forgetting her nationality.
Last week he called for a 'decisive' hike in defence spending to see off the rising threat from Russia and China – in a speech seen as a clear signal of his leadership ambitions. 
Speaking at the Lord Mayor's Banquet Mansion House in the City of London, he said the UK's hard power must be strengthened, with billions more spent on new capabilities to tackle drones and cyber attacks.
Michael Gove: The boomerang cabinet minister with a Machiavellian reputation
A Brexiteer with a Machiavellian reputation after the 2016 leadership campaign in which he first supported Boris Johnson for the leadership and then stood against him, to their mutual disadvantage.
The former education secretary -  sacked by Mrs May -  was rehabilitated to become a right-on environment secretary - complete with reusable coffee cups and a strong line on food standards after Brexit.
Despite being a former lead figure in the Vote Leave campaign alongside Mr Johnson the former journalist and MP for Surrey Heath has swung behind Mrs May's Brexit deal -  which might count against him.
But while he noisily supports the deal - he views the alternatives as worse - the father-of-two - married to Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine -  is quieter when it comes to supporting the Prime Minister and practically mute when it comes to her future.
Seen as one of the Cabinet's strongest political thinkers and having stood once it is unthinkable that he would not stand again.
But like many others he has yet to publicly declare his candidacy. 
If he did it would again pitch him pitched against Mr Johnson in a battle for Brexiteer votes. 
Penny Mordaunt: The highly regarded Brexiteer promoted to take on defence
The new Defence Secretary - the first woman ever to hold the post - is highly regarded in Brexiteer circles. 
The Royal Navy reservist, 46, carved out a niche at International Development with some eye-catching suggests about changing how the UK spends disperses aid cash.
She has become an increasingly serious politician after initially being seen as lighthearted when she appeared in a swimsuit in ITV reality TV show Splash!
She was promoted earlier this month to replace Gavin Williamson when he was sacked for leaking details from a confidential meeting about Huawei.   
Over the preceding few months she was at the heart of persistent rumours that she would be the next Brexit-supporting minister out the door over Brexit. 
She has yet to announce she is running but last month she backed a thinktank report saying the party needed to attract new voters.
She said the party needed to 'act swiftly' to win over the younger generations who were turning away from the centre-Right in 'unprecedented' numbers. 
Yesterday, after other Cabinet Brexiteers including Andrea Leadsom were notable by their absence during Prime Minister's Questions, she remained at her post. It remains to be seen whether this loyalty will count for or against her. 
Sajid Javid: Remainer star who has run into trouble over knife crime and refugees
The Home Secretary, a Remainer who wants to see Brexit delivered, was the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet to replace Mrs May.
After replacing Amber Rudd last year he consciously put clear ground between himself and the Prime Minister on issues like caps on skilled migrants after Brexit.
But his credentials have taken a hit recently. He finds himself facing ongoing criticism of his handling of the knife crime crisis affecting UK cities, which sparked a Cabinet row over funding for police.
He also lost face over his handling of the influx of migrants crossing the English Channel in January, being seen to move slowly in realising the scale of the problem.
But more recently the 49-year-old Bromsgove MP has made a serious of hardline decision designed to go down well with Tory voters. 
Most notably they have included moving to deprive London teenager turned Jihadi bride Shamima Begum, 19, of her British citizenship, after she was discovered among former Islamic State members in a Syrian refugee camp.
Matt Hancock: Waffle-loving health secretary who wants Tories to choose a younger leader 
The Health Secretary is, like his predecessor Jeremy Hunt, seen as something of a unity candidate.
The 40-year-old father of three is seen as a safe pair of hands despite a few teething problems in his latest Cabinet role.
Last year he was accused of breaking ethics rules after he praised a private health firm app in a newspaper article sponsored by its maker.
But he has since make some hard-hitting interventions in ares like the impact of social media on health. 
Last month he joined Ms Mordaunt in backing the Generation Why? report showing that the Tories needed to become more relevant to younger voters. 
He called on the party to change its 'tone' towards modern Britain or face Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, in a speech widely seen as setting out his leadership credentials.
This week he showed his human side by unashamedly chomping calorific stroopwafels before a TV broadcast, saying he people should enjoy things in moderation. 
Rory Stewart: Remainer rising star and friend of royals who is not short of confidence 
The former prisons minister who once vowed to quit if they did not improve within a year declared his candidacy almost as soon as he was promoted to the Cabinet.
He stepped up to International Development Secretary earlier this month to replace Ms Mordaunt and days later declared he will run for the Tory leadership.
The Theresa May loyalist praised the PM for her 'courageous effort' to pass her Brexit deal but admitted he would throw his hat in the ring when she steps down.
Urging his party not to 'try to outdo Nigel Farage', the development secretary said the Tories should 'stretch all the way from Ken Clarke to Jacob Rees-Mogg'.
The Old Etonian former tutor to the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex previously worked for the Foreign Office in Iraq and set up a charity for the Prince of Wales in Afghanistan.
He has also written several books about walking. 
The father of two is married to Shoshana, whom he first met when they worked together in Iraq and she was already married.   
Seen as highly intelligent his staunch Remainer and soft Brexit credentials look likely to count against him in a race set to be dominated by the Brexiteer wing of the party.  
Esther McVey: Former TV presenter and minister who quit Government over Brexit 
The former Work and Pensions Secretary declared her leadership bid last month and has set out a stall as a right-wing blue-collar candidate from a working class  Liverpudlian background.
The former television journalist, is engaged to fellow Tory backbench Brexiteer  Philip Davies, 47, having previously had a romance with ex-minister Ed Vaizey. She has no children.
This week she set out her leadership pitch by calling for the party to use £7billion of foreign aid cash on buckling British police forces and schools.
Launching a 'blue collar conservatism' campaign the Brexiteer MP, 51, said her party had 'lost the trust' of working people by failing to leave the EU already and must pursue 'radical conservative agendas' to win it back'.
She said that keeping cash in the UK that is currently sent abroad would allow an increase of £4billion in spending on schools and £3billion for police, which are both demanding more money.
And she declined to rule out doing a post-election deal with Nigel Farage - but said that if the Tories got the UK out it would mean that his Brexit Party would have no reason to exist. 
Speaking in Westminster she reiterated her call for the next party leader to be 'someone who believes in Brexit' - a dig at Mrs May, who supported the Remain campaign in 2016. 
Theresa May is laying down the gauntlet to Tory Eurosceptics and Remainers as she fights to find a way through the Brexit standoff.
The Prime Minister is set to face down rebel MPs who want to stay in the EU customs union permanently.
But in return she will demand that Brexiteers swallow an extension in ties until 2023.
The high-stakes move emerged as the Times reported that the government will bring the crucial EU Withdrawal Bill back to the Commons within weeks - paving the way for a potentially decisive showdown.
Downing Street insisted today there would only be a single transition period that ends in December 2020. 
In other developments, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn claimed today there was a majority in the Commons to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU. 
Mrs May has been scrambling to hold her party together amid increasingly bitter infighting over Brexit.
The Cabinet has been split on whether to back a 'Maximum Facilitation' customs scheme, favoured by Boris Johnson among others, which would rely on technology and trusted trader schemes to keep borders fluid.
Other ministers, including Mrs May, have been urging a 'customs partnership' that would see Britain collect duties on behalf of the EU and then offer businesses a rebate.
Jeremy Corbyn claimed today there is a majority in the Commons for his plan of keeping a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
Recreating similar arrangements on cross border trade would likely allow existing business ties to continue unchanged - but would also probably block Britain's ability to strike new trade deals.
The Labour leader insisted the Brexiteer vision was a 'pipe dream'.
Speaking in Belfast he said: 'Labour will not support any Brexit deal that includes the return of a hard border to this island. But we are also clear there must be no border created in the Irish Sea either.
'That is why Labour has put forward a plan that would go a long way to solving this issue, a plan for which I believe there is a majority in Westminster.'
However, at least a dozen Tory backbenchers are thought to be ready to join Labour in demanding the UK stays in a full customs union - enough to overturn Mrs May's wafer-thin Commons majority. 
They say keeping close ties is the only way to prevent harm to the economy and avoid a hard Irish border. 
Brussels has dismissed both the government's options as 'magical thinking' - although Irish PM Leo Varadkar has hinted that a partnership could be made to work. 
The difficulties facing Mrs May were underlined yesterday when the chief executive of HM Revenue & Customs warned that the 'Max Fac' blueprint could take three years to implement.
Jon Thompson also told MPs the model could cost business up to £20billion.
The Cabinet Remainers' option of a customs partnership would take even longer fully to implement at five years, he said - but the costs would be significantly lower at around £3.4billion.
The transition period currently agreed in principle with the EU will last from March next year to the end of 2020.
Downing Street said today the Government's 'intention' was for the future partnership to be agreed and ready to come into effect when transition ends.  
According to the Times, Mrs May is now expected to ask Brussels for an extended customs and regulatory alignment period that would stay in place from 2021 to at least 2023.
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
By that time technological solutions should be ready to ensure there do not need to be physical checks at the Irish border and elsewhere. 
Mr Corbyn used a speech in Belfast today to claim there was a majority in the Commons for his plan to maintain a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
He said: 'Labour will not support any Brexit deal that includes the return of a hard border to this island. But we are also clear there must be no border created in the Irish Sea either.
'That is why Labour has put forward a plan that would go a long way to solving this issue, a plan for which I believe there is a majority in Westminster.
'Let’s not give up years of hard fought cooperation and stability for the pipe dream prize of race-to-the-bottom free trade deals with the likes of Donald Trump.
'Opposition to the idea of bringing back a hard border to this land isn’t just about avoiding paperwork or tariffs, important though that is, it’s about deep rooted cultural and community ties.
'An open border is a symbol of peace, two communities living and working together after years of conflict, communities who no longer feel that their traditions are under threat.'
Amid continued uncertainty about the Government's position in Parliament on Brexit issues, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom today announced new business for MPs that makes no mention of leaving the EU.
Reports had suggested the EU Withdrawal Bill could return to MPs after the Whitsun recess as ministers try to strip 15 defeats inflicted by peers off the laws.
But there was no sign of the crucial legislation when she made her weekly business statement.  
 
 
Whether you are for or against Brexit, the EU has hardly enhanced its reputation through the behaviour of its top brass.
President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and EU Council President Donald Tusk have shown themselves to be stubborn, unimaginative and keener on political point scoring than securing a Withdrawal deal which is best for everyone.
Now, finally, it is all change at the top of the EU. But if you were hoping for better qualified, more competent EU leaders then dream on.
Two of the EU’s new guard, Christine Lagarde, who has no experience of banking but has been appointed head of the European Central Bank, and Ursula von der Leyen, Juncker’s replacement as President of the Commission although she’s proved a lamentable Defence Minister in her native Germany, hardly inspire confidence. There are questions, too, over their integrity.
So just who are they and how did they come to be appointed?
Fighter jets and helicopters that don’t fly, warships and submarines that cannot put out to sea, guns that miss the target when they get too hot, and a lack of everything from ammunition to underwear.
That, it is claimed, is the parlous state of the German Army under the tenure of the country’s Defence Minister and now President of the European Commission.
Her elevation to the top job in Europe is said to be her reward for political loyalty to Angela Merkel rather than any display of competence as a member of the Chancellor’s government since 2005.
Others say it is a classic case of someone whose services are no longer required being ‘booted upstairs’.
Indeed, Von der Leyen, who in 2013 was appointed as the first female Defence Minister, has only united German politicians across the political divide in questioning her suitability for her new role.
One described her as ‘the weakest member’ of the German government and others call her ‘the soloist’ owing to her tendency to act on her own without consulting others.
‘No matter where you look, there’s dysfunction,’ a senior German officer at Bundeswehr HQ told the Politico website.
Last December, Von der Leyen was called before a parliamentary committee to answer charges over alleged poor handling of defence contracts, which in some cases involved suspected nepotism.
In one scandal, the costs of repairing a naval training vessel spiralled from 10 million to 135 million euros.
The Bundestag is currently holding hearings into accusations that Von der Leyen’s office circumvented public procurement rules in granting contracts worth millions of euros to private firms.
However, none of this seems to have harmed the progress of a woman born into the ‘EU aristocracy’. The daughter of Ernst Albrecht, one of the original Eurocrats when the European Economic Community was formed in 1957, she was brought up in Brussels where she attended the famous European School.
It was an upbringing, rubbing shoulders with the middle-class children of other well-to-do Eurocrats, which led to her becoming a fervent enthusiast for European integration.
In 2011, von der Leyen called for a ‘United States of Europe’ — something which the ultra-federalist may well use her new role to bring to fruition.
She is, of course, fiercely anti-Brexit, describing events since the referendum as a ‘burst bubble of hollow promises... inflated by populists’ and last year saying that Brexit is a ‘loss for everyone’.
Von der Leyen, now 60, is proud of her roots; of her wealthy cotton merchant ancestors in Bremen, while her husband of 33 years, Heiko von der Leyen, a medical professor and CEO of a medical engineering firm, is a descendant of an even posher family of silk-weavers.
When Von der Leyen came to study at the London School of Economics in 1978, her family wealth was feared to put her at the risk of kidnap by the Red Army Faction — a German far-left terrorist group. She studied economics under the pseudonym ‘Rose Ladson’. Later, she switched to medicine, was awarded a doctorate in 1990, and practised as a gynaecologist — giving birth to seven children herself between 1987-1999. The family are Lutheran Evangelical Christians.
Her academic career, however, threatened to unwind in 2016 when she was accused of plagiarism in her doctoral thesis. After an investigation, Hanover Medical School decided that Von der Leyen was guilty only of a mistake, not intentional copying.
Just before Christmas in 2016, in the very room in the Palais de Justice in Paris where Marie- Antoinette was sentenced to be guillotined, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty of ‘negligence with public money’ over a multi-million Euro payout to a business tycoon.
Yet, unlike the French queen, Lagarde escaped with barely a slap on the wrist. The court waived a one-year prison sentence and a 15,000 euro fine, on the grounds of her ‘international reputation’ which, cynics might observe, is a rather rum approach to justice.
Lagarde was finance minister in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government in 2007 when she approved a 404million euro payout (£363m) of taxpayers’ money to a controversial French businessman and friend of Sarkozy, Bernard Tapie.
It was a long-running case that revolved around the sale by Tapie of his majority share in sportswear company Adidas to a bank, Credit Lyonnais, part owned by the state.
When the bank sold the shares at a higher price, Tapie accused it of defrauding him and the payment was in effect compensation awarded by a private arbitration panel.
Lagarde was convicted for failing to contest the panel’s ruling when there were solid grounds for doing so. She insisted that she had only ever done her duty and may have been misled by civil servants.
The verdict on the high profile case did nothing to dent Lagarde’s career. Within 24 hours, the IMF — Sarkozy had lobbied hard for her to get the job in 2011 — in Washington DC gave her their full backing.
And so she has continued on her trail-blazing way ever since — to her likely new appointment as President of the European Central Bank.
With her penchant for Chanel suits and Hermes scarves, Lagarde is known as the ‘rock star of finance’. But unusually for the putative head of a central bank she has no banking experience.
She herself has acknowledged her limitations in the field, saying in 2012: ‘I’ve studied a bit of economics, but I’m not a super-duper economist.’
Lagarde is famously outspoken on Brexit — claiming she can’t see ‘any positive side to it’ — and an ally of former Chancellor George Osborne and the Project Fear cadre. At a press conference in 2016 with Osborne, she warned Brexit would be ‘pretty bad, to very, very bad’.
Lagarde also chooses to ignore that the IMF’s predictions for the UK have been consistently wrong.
At 63, she exerts discipline over every aspect of her life — a teetotal vegetarian who works out every day, swims, and cycles up to 20 miles a week.
She has enjoyed an intriguing love life, married and divorced twice, with two sons in their 30s with her first husband. Her current partner is old love, Xavier Giocanti, a Corsican businessman she met at law school. 
STEPHEN GLOVER: With grubby backdoor stitch-ups like this, thank God we're going! 
The process of extricating ourselves from the EU has turned out to be so prolonged and painful that it’s sometimes easy to forget our original reasons for wanting to leave.
I can’t be the only person who, having voted for Brexit, occasionally asks himself if it’s worth all the bitterness and division: the name-calling, ruined dinner parties and former friends scuttling by on the other side of the street.
It’s remarkable how the arguments about sovereignty and controlling our own borders and the undesirability of a European superstate have virtually disappeared amid squabbles over No Deal and a second referendum.
So I have given thanks to the EU over recent days as European leaders have spent hours horse-trading behind closed doors. They have been selecting the successors of Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, who have loomed so large in our lives.
We have been reminded how fundamentally undemocratic and secretive the organisation is. People who will wield enormous power have been chosen without the voters of Europe getting a look-in.
Thank God we’re leaving! Thank God (unless intransigent Remainers finagle another referendum) we will soon no longer be part of a body that furtively picks our future rulers — for these people are far more than functionaries — without consulting the people.
This club is not for me. Nor do I believe that many Remainers watched the wrangling with any sense of pride. In a democratic age, it’s impossible to defend such practices. Let’s get out while we can, without ill will or venom.
Which is why the boorish behaviour of the 29 Brexit Party MEPs at the opening ceremony of the European Parliament in Strasbourg was so appalling. They turned their backs as the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode To Joy, was performed.
How rude and petty and spiteful they were. How shaming to this nation. They have been elected to the European Parliament and are cheerfully drawing salaries and expenses. Yet they behaved like uncouth members of a student debating society.
What must cultivated Europeans (and there are some in the European Parliament) think of the British political class, which used to have a reputation on the continent of being polite, well-mannered and tolerant?
The smaller Liberal Democrat contingent didn’t behave much better, sporting, on yellow T-shirts, the undemocratic slogan ‘B******s to Brexit’. This was a coarse and puerile gesture — and a little threatening.
Do MEPs of both parties speak for modern Britain? If so, the EU will be relieved to be rid of us. I feel ashamed, as I did when British football hooligans went on the rampage abroad. These oafs in Strasbourg are supposed to be our representatives.
My question to the Brexit Party, whose loutish behaviour was particularly mortifying, is this: why don’t you draw attention to the autocratic nature of the EU by employing reasoned argument, rather than cheap and demeaning tricks?
For the evidence is there, writ large. Cutting grubby deals in private, as European leaders have been doing, is not merely undemocratic. It leads to outcomes that are likely to be injurious to the citizens of the EU.
The whole process is a Franco-German stitch-up. Neither country necessarily gets the person it wants in every post, but each has to be happy with the final compromise. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, originally pushed the centre-Right German politician Manfred Weber for the crucial role of President of the European Commission in succession to Mr Juncker.
But President Emmanuel Macron of France didn’t like the look of Weber because of his political background. He preferred centre-Left Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister.
However, various Right-wing governments, such as those in Poland, Hungary and Italy rejected Timmermans, whereupon Macron championed Ursula von der Leyen, a member of Mrs Merkel’s centre-Right party and Germany’s defence minister.
After much haggling, she was chosen, despite having been embroiled in a controversy over the awarding of contracts (she was eventually exonerated). From November 1, she will occupy the most important position in the EU.
Is she the best person for the job? No one can say — though she wasn’t the favourite to follow Mrs Merkel when the Chancellor stands down in 2021. Not fit to lead Germany, apparently, but suitable to lead the EU.
What is clear is that no single European voter had a direct say in choosing Ms von der Leyen, though it is true the European Parliament will have to endorse her and some on the Left may vote against.
Oh, I should have said: Ms von der Leyen, like Jean-Claude Juncker, is a passionate advocate of a United States of Europe and a European army. Like her predecessor, she hates the idea of Brexit. Yesterday, she told a private audience EU negotiators had done a ‘noble job’.
What would have happened if Britain wasn’t leaving the EU? She would still become President of the Commission because she is the incarnation of the EU’s values — just like Juncker, whose coronation David Cameron humiliatingly opposed in vain in 2014.
Ursula von der Leyen is more of the same: an unelected (at least in Brussels) member of a European political elite that wants to extend the powers of the EU in relation to individual countries. That’s why I’m glad we’re leaving.
By the way, I don’t draw much comfort from the news that senior Eurocrat Martin Selmayr, who appears to dislike Britain, faces the axe later this year under a reshuffle. There are plenty more where he came from.
A second president was also chosen by EU leaders. Charles Michel will give up the job of Belgium’s interim Prime Minister to fill the shoes of Donald Tusk as President of the European Council, a role co-ordinating member states.
Michel is a close friend of Macron, which is cosy. He’s another arch-euro federalist who wants ‘ever closer union’, and will be no friend to Britain as it leaves his precious EU.
A third president was also crowned by European leaders: Christine Lagarde, who has run the International Monetary Fund since 2011, pocketing more than £3.6 million tax-free in the process, will become President of the European Central Bank.
This is a bizarre appointment. For one thing, she has been convicted of criminal negligence over a French corruption scandal, though I doubt this was of much concern to the panjandrums who selected her.
For another, she is a politician, rather than an economist, and not obviously suited to the role of central banker. She was a lynchpin in Project Fear before the June 2016 referendum and prophesied a hitherto-unrealised economic catastrophe for the UK.
As Britain has not adopted the euro, maybe Ms Lagarde’s future role is not our business. On the other hand, it isn’t in anybody’s interests for the eurozone to flounder.
These three freshly minted presidents will wield enormous sway over the peoples of Europe. They will try to strengthen the powers of Brussels, though they are certain to be resisted by populist governments in Hungary, Italy and Poland.
No one can say how the experiment of further European integration will end. Looking at its latest manifestation, I can only say that I am more glad than ever that Britain will not be part of it. 
For the most compelling summary of the political war in Westminster, turn to a real live soldier. I refer to Lieutenant General David Leakey, who, for many years, was 'Black Rod' — technically the Queen's representative in Parliament.
On the BBC's Andrew Marr Show yesterday, he was blunt: 'Boris Johnson will meet his match in Speaker Bercow.'
Lieutenant General Leakey knows what he is talking about. Last year, he revealed how, in his interactions with parliamentary officials, the Speaker was 'vindictive', 'intimidating' and 'bullying' — concluding that Bercow didn't 'match up to the standards expected' of a public servant.
He was not then talking about the legislative fight over Brexit, in which the Government has sought to carry out the verdict of 17.4 million voters in the 2016 referendum, while Parliament collectively — with the indispensable assistance of Bercow — has obstructed it. But his words give the most authoritative possible account of the Speaker's confrontational style in pursuit of his objectives.
Outrage
We got a glimpse of that last week after the Government declared it would be proroguing Parliament ahead of a Queen's Speech in October.
Although Labour had earlier been calling for precisely this, pointing out that the current session of Parliament was the longest since 1945, Johnson timed it in such a way as to reduce the legislative time available for MPs to block his plans to take the UK out of the EU on October 31, 'deal or no deal'.
Remarkably, Bercow immediately issued a statement from the Mediterranean resort where he was on holiday, declaring that Johnson's action 'represents a constitutional outrage'.
Yet, as the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, retorted the following morning: 'The convention is that the Commons Speaker has no tongue with which to speak or eyes with which to see other than is directed by the House.
'What he said yesterday was not directed by the House and therefore must be said in a personal capacity and not as Mr Speaker. It was the most constitutionally improper thing that happened yesterday.'
While Boris Johnson is certainly the sort of person prepared to break with conventional conduct in getting what he wants, Bercow has already shown himself willing to defy parliamentary convention when it suits his objectives.
In January, he sent the Tory benches into near apoplexy when, rejecting the advice of the House of Commons' clerks, he allowed amendments on a so-called 'business motion' that allowed opponents of the Government's Brexit plans to seize control of parliamentary procedure in a way that had never happened before.
Justifying his decision, Bercow remarked: 'If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change.'
Up against a Speaker so willing to tear up convention, it is not surprising that Johnson has been prepared himself to push the parliamentary envelope.
It is clear to the PM that Bercow, and not the ineffectual leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, is the man presenting the biggest challenge in Westminster to his determination to take the UK out of the EU on October 31.
Bercow insists he is merely seeking to give voice to Parliament and not acting in a partial or political fashion. I would like to believe that: if it were any other Speaker within my lifetime, I would do so.
All of them, once in that seat, appeared studiously neutral — like the umpire's chair in Bercow's sporting passion, tennis — on the vexed political matters of the day. But Brexit is now that most vexed matter — and Bercow has abjectly failed to keep his own views on it secret.
In a recent interview with the veteran political reporter Phil Webster, Bercow defended himself against the charge that he had expressed opinions improperly: 'The Speaker is, and should be, independent . . . I once revealed [when speaking] at Reading University I had voted in the referendum. I am a private citizen. I have a right to vote.'
Danger
But Bercow did not merely tell Reading's students that he had cast a vote in the 2016 referendum, he told them how he had voted: Remain.
He told them he supported 'freedom of movement' (the EU regulation that will fall from our statute book when — if — Brexit happens). And he attacked 'untruths' told by the Leave campaign.
It is absolutely OK for Bercow to hold those opinions. It is absolutely not OK for him to express them publicly while he is Speaker. The rules laid down by Erskine May, the parliamentary procedural 'bible', declare that 'The Speaker must remain separate from political issues . . . even in retirement'.
That, one would have thought, should also have deterred Bercow from driving around in a car (his wife's) with a sticker declaring 'B******s to Brexit' — but he did so. As the former Labour MP and deputy speaker Natascha Engel said yesterday: 'When it comes to Brexit, he has never made a secret of his views or willingness to enter the political fray.'
The point here is not whether Bercow is capable of detaching his personal hostility to Brexit from his actions as Speaker — it is that, by failing to disguise his opinions, he has created the impression that he is a biased umpire on Westminster's Centre Court. That drains the moral authority essential to such a role.
It is bad enough that the Brexit-voting public increasingly sees the Commons as wilfully refusing to honour the biggest popular ballot in our nation's history. It adds to that danger of bringing our democratic system into disrepute if they think the Westminster 'game' has a dodgy umpire, to boot.
By rights, Bercow should no longer be in that chair anyway. When he stood for office in 2009, he pledged to MPs: 'If you do me the honour of electing me, I will serve for no more than nine years.'
He welched on that by not standing down in the summer of 2018 — even though he had been condemned in an independent report by Dame Laura Cox for presiding over a culture of bullying.
Yet, although Labour MPs would normally stick up for staff who have been so treated, and have no truck with a male boss who ran his office in such a way, they made an exception for Bercow. It seemed to rest on his Brexit credentials.
Discourtesy
Thus, when Dame Margaret Beckett was asked by the BBC whether, in terms of supporting Bercow, 'Brexit trumps allegations of abuse', the former Labour foreign secretary replied: 'Abuse is terrible, it should be stopped . . . but yes, if it comes to it, the constitutional future of this country, yes, it trumps bad behaviour.'
Labour MPs such as Beckett are right to see Bercow as their man, and he amply justified their faith when — without even consulting his equivalent in the Upper House, Lord Fowler — he declared he would block President Trump from addressing both Houses of Parliament.
He also refused to attend the state banquet for the U.S. President.
I imagine Her Majesty faced this discourtesy with equanimity. But, make no mistake, if Bercow seeks to defy Johnson's prorogation, he will be challenging the Queen and not just the PM (she was constitutionally obliged to assent to the advice from her First Minister).
Bercow is now, so we are told, searching for ways to make sure that an emergency motion in Parliament next week could, in defiance of all precedent and the advice of Commons clerks, be turned into a law mandating the Government to delay or block Brexit.
The Times reported what it called a 'source close to the Speaker' saying: 'He could go on a suicide mission. But he is on a collision course, not only with the Government, but with the Queen and the clerks of the House.'
If anyone is prepared to create a constitutional crisis over Brexit, it is not Boris Johnson, but John Bercow. I only hope Lieutenant General Leakey is wrong about the likely winner of this battle.
 
After a speech from a man who seems to have absolutely no self-knowledge, and which was dripping with messianic madness, the Mail has just one question to ask Tony Blair: Have you totally and utterly lost the plot?
Indeed, what other explanation is there for his frankly incendiary demand for Britons to ‘rise up’ after just eight months and reverse the greatest democratic exercise in this country’s history?
What else but a descent into la-la-land explains our former prime minister’s contemptible suggestion that voters had ‘imperfect knowledge’ about the true dangers of Brexit when they chose Leave? Was he so busy hoovering up money from despots that he missed Project Fear?
Or does he simply believe voters are complete idiots? Where was Mr Blair when, day after day, we were bombarded with doomsday predictions about economic collapse. 
Soaring interest rates... slumping house prices... an ‘immediate shock’ to the economy so dire it would require an emergency Budget. 
All of it, we now know, was fiction from George Osborne and his willing acolyte Mark Carney at the Bank of England.
What else but delusion explains Mr Blair’s demand that ministers now consider staying in a ‘reformed’ EU? Has he forgotten how, after a whistle-stop tour of Europe, David Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate our relationship ended in miserable failure? 
Or that, in every crisis from Greek debt to refugees, the EU — corrupt, unaccountable and undemocratic — has proved itself impervious to reform?
Isn’t it also delusional to claim, as he does, that the BBC has underplayed the dangers of Brexit? 
The Corporation was admirably impartial during the referendum campaign, but, traumatised by the result, has been making up for it since by championing the Remain cause.
Blair’s speech reeked of contempt for ordinary voters. 
What he really means when he says Brexit ‘isn’t smart’ is that anyone who voted that way — including intellectual giants such as the former Bank of England governor Mervyn King — is utterly stupid.
He accuses Leave supporters of being ‘ideologues’, when he is an unrepentant Eurofanatic who has never recanted his support for Britain joining the euro.
But perhaps Mr Blair’s greatest delusion is that he seems utterly unaware he is personally responsible for the disillusionment which drove great swathes of the public to vote for Brexit.
With the help of his venal sidekick Alastair Campbell, he turned political lying into an art form and used it to take Britain into a bloody and disastrous war that has cost thousands of lives.
Without a shred of democratic legitimacy, he threw open the doors to mass migration, placing huge strain on our hospitals, schools and social structure.
This arch hypocrite twice promised a referendum on the EU and reneged both times. Now he has the gall to demand the wishes of 17.4million voters be reversed.
To the great credit of those on both sides of the debate, his arguments are falling entirely on deaf ears. Polls show the vast majority of the public accepts the referendum result and now wants ministers to get on with implementing it.
They also show just how spectacularly unpopular Mr Blair is, with fewer than one in five Remain voters viewing him in a positive light. 
And yet he persists with the notion that he could lead a new popular political movement against Brexit. Thus messianic delusion morphs into megalomania.
The Mail confidently believes he won’t succeed and that Britain has an exciting future outside the EU. 
As for Mr Blair, as much as this newspaper criticised him for it, perhaps he should go back to filling his boots by serving some of the world’s nastiest autocrats?
Michael Gove is set to become the first minister to employ a military planner as fears continue to grow surrounding the possibility of food shortages in the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The military planner is set to be in place by January and has been offered to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) by the Ministry of Defence, to help ensure that rural communities have enough resources in the event of a 'worst case scenario'.
Contingency plans will be drawn up, based on a blueprint known in Whitehall as Operation Yellowhammer, which assumes that trade between Calais and Dover will become severely disrupted.
Part of the planner's job would also be to assess alternative routes into Britain for food supplies and to carry out preparatory work to ensure that rural communities are supplied.
Speaking to The Telegraph, a government source said that the planner will also assess where food supplies can be stockpiled on Ministry of Defence land to ensure that there are no shortages in rural areas.
The worst-case scenario in Operation Yellowhammer assumes that Britons may be forced to eat a 'restricted diet' and that there would have to be a 'dramatic reduction in livestock production', so that crops are eaten by people rather than being used for animal feed.
It states: 'Should an extreme event (such as no access to trade) impact the UK's access to food, UK agriculture has enough nutritious food for the vulnerable, however it would be a restricted diet with less choice for consumers.
'Maximising calorie production would lead to a dramatic reduction in livestock production with all crop production used for human food where possible instead of animal feed.'
 'UK agriculture is also reliant on imported energy, fertiliser, seeds and machinery. If the scope for trade was ever completely removed, domestic agriculture itself would be deprived of essential inputs.
'We have not made an assessment of the potential of UK food production to feed the population if we did not have access to critical dependencies.'
However, a government source said that it was 'totally incorrect' to suggest that ministers would advise people to change their diet', adding that the UK has a 'high degree of food security'.
Mr Gove is said to be considering the offer of support from the Ministry of Defence but is expected to accept.
A Whitehall source said: 'This is just sensible contingency planning for a worst-case scenario. It's unlikely to happen but it is responsible to prepare just in case.'
The news comes after Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that 3,500 soldiers have been placed on standby to provide assistance in the event of a no deal Brexit.
Soldiers could be drafted in to carry out logistics and drive trucks to ensure the security of food and medicine.
The Government has started booking space on ferries to ensure that essential supplies of food and medicine can reach the UK in the event of a 'disorderly' Brexit.
David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, said he would be 'very surprised' if the Mrs May was prepared to back a no-deal Brexit. He has previously indicated he would quit the Government under a no-deal Brexit. 
This latest update comes as families up and down the UK have started to stock pile food, through fears of a 'no-deal' scenario'. Parents such as Nevinne Mann having been stuffing their cupboards with goods.
The family have prepared for March 29, 2019, Brexit day, when Britain will quit the European Union. 'If, by then, we have a deal with the EU, then hopefully everyday life will carry on more or less as normal,' says Nevine, a former midwife, who cares for the couple's three children Oliver, 18, Ethan, 13, and Paige, five. 
'But if we've failed to reach a deal the consequences could be scary: we just want to be ready for that.'
While Ministers dismiss such talk, alarm began in June after news was leaked that the Government had outlined different scenarios for a no-deal Brexit. The worst was dubbed 'Armageddon', with the port of Dover (where a third of all our food supplies arrive from Europe) grinding to a halt. Lorries might then be stuck for days on motorways waiting for import checks as their loads of fresh produce rot. 
Michael Gove faced calls to quit the Government today after the Vote Leave campaign he helped lead was referred to police for breaking electoral law.
The Environment Secretary was lashed in the Commons for either being oblivious to breaches of election laws or participating in it.
Labour MP Chuka Umunna led attacks after securing an emergency debate on the Electoral Commission's decision to fine Vote Leave £61,000 and refer it to the police.
The watchdog condemned the Brexit campaign group for its behaviour during the national vote two years ago - saying there was 'clear and substantial' evidence of wrongdoing.
Mr Umunna said 'foul play' was used in the referendum and said it 'calls into question' the result.
Lashing Mr Gove he said: 'Either the Environment Secretary knew what was going on, which is a very serious matter, or if he did not how can we have any confidence he is capable of overseeing his department?'   
Vote Leave hit back at the Electoral Commission today, accusing the watchdog of being motivated by a 'political agenda'.
Downing Street insisted the referendum was the 'largest democratic exercise in our history' and said the Government was 'getting on with delivering' Brexit. 
The main Brexit campaign body was found to have worked with a smaller group, BeLeave, to channel more than £675,000 to an obscure marketing firm.
Campaigns are allowed to work together but crucially cannot coordinate to sidestep spending limits.
The commission today announced that Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 and Darren Grimes, the founder of BeLeave, £20,000.
Mr Grimes and Vote Leave official David Halsall have also been been reported to the police over 'false declarations of campaign spending'. 
Launching his urgent question in the Commons, Mr Umunna asked what International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab knew about what was going on.
The row over spending during the Brexit referendum has been dragging on for nearly two years now.
The claims centre around Vote Leave, the official pro-Brexit campaign, which is accused of bending the rules on election expenses.
It donated £625,000 to a smaller youth-focused group called BeLeave in the final days of the campaign. 
While this was legal, it would have been against the rules to tell BeLeave how to spend the money.
Shahmir Sanni claimed Vote Leave did exactly that – ordering the group to spend it on digital advertising with the Canadian firm AggregateIQ.
Vote Leave has denied the allegation, saying its donation was within the rules.
The Electoral Commission carried out an initial assessment of the arrangements early last year, but found no evidence of wrongdoing.
However, in November it opened a formal investigation saying new evidence had come to light. 
He said: 'Members of the Cabinet sat in an organisation which has been found to have flouted our democracy.' 
Senior Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston called for a 're-run' of the EU referendum.
The Health and Social Care Select Committee chairwoman told the Commons: 'Consequences must follow, we cannot have confidence that this referendum was secure and it should be re-run.'
Conservative former home secretary Amber Rudd earlier said: 'This matters. Could I respectfully say to the minister that she should not let the Government's commitment to delivering on the referendum result to obfuscate from the real questions that are being raised here.
'This has not come out of the blue - there have been a series of accusations and suggestions, not just in this campaign but in others.
'But protecting the valid confidence that the public needs to have in our elections at every time is absolutely vital.'
Conservative former minister Sir Nicholas Soames called for the electoral system to be 'blown up and started all over again'.
He said: 'One of the great glories of this sadly now diminished country was our electoral and democratic system, and this example today is gross.
'And I say to her (Ms Smith) that if we are to retain the integrity and the trust of the voting public, the whole damn thing needs to be blown up and started all over again.'
His comments sparked cheers from Labour MPs, and Ms Smith said a 'wholesale reform' would be a 'very large undertaking', adding: 'It is something that goes wider than the report we have in front of us here today.'
In a brutal statement this morning, Bob Posner, the Electoral Commission's director of political finance, said: 'Vote Leave has resisted our investigation from the start, including contesting our right as the statutory regulator to open the investigation.
'It has refused to cooperate, refused our requests to put forward a representative for interview, and forced us to use our legal powers to compel it to provide evidence.
'Nevertheless, the evidence we have found is clear and substantial, and can now be seen in our report.' 
Mr Posner added: 'The Electoral Commission has followed the evidence and conducted a thorough investigation into spending and campaigning carried out by Vote Leave and BeLeave.
'We found substantial evidence that the two groups worked to a common plan, did not declare their joint working and did not adhere to the legal spending limits.
'These are serious breaches of the laws put in place by Parliament to ensure fairness and transparency at elections and referendums.
'Our findings relate primarily to the organisation which put itself forward as fit to be the designated campaigner for the 'leave' outcome.'
BeLeave was found to have spent more than £675,000 with Aggregate IQ under a common plan with Vote Leave, which should have been declared by Vote Leave.
It meant Vote Leave exceeded its legal spending limit of £7million by almost £500,000, the statement added. 
But Labour former MP Gisela Stuart, a leading figure on the campaign, said she was 'troubled' by the findings. 
'One of the things that troubled me was the Electoral Commission, despite the offer from Vote Leave to give evidence took no evidence from any of the people of whom they made accusations so if they feel people need to have their date and have their say then I think that is a proper process,' she told ITV's Good morning Britain.
 A Vote Leave spokesman said the group had 'provided evidence to the Electoral Commission proving there was no wrongdoing'. 
'Yet despite clear evidence of wrongdoing by the Remain campaign, the Commission has chosen to ignore this and refused to launch an investigation,' they said.
'All this suggests that the supposedly impartial Commission is motivated by a political agenda rather than uncovering the facts.
'The Commission has failed to follow due process, and in doing so has based its conclusions on unfounded claims and conspiracy theories.
'We will consider the options available to us, but are confident that these findings will be overturned.'
Mr Grimes said: 'It is clear that the EC have caved to political pressure from those who despise Brexit enough to pour hundreds of thousands of pounds into thwarting it through our courts and backroom channels.' 
Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer said the allegations were 'very serious' and should be thoroughly examined. 
Labour MP David Lammy, who works with the anti-Brexit Best for Britain group, said: 'This news makes the narrow referendum result looks dodgier than ever. It's validity is now in question. 
'Politicians from all parties have a duty to ask: do we want to continue with a policy that will wreck our economy and consume government for the next decade, based on this flimsy result?' 
Fellow Labour MP Barry Sheerman said: 'The criminal misbehaviour of the Leave campaign is now clear for all to see they cheated in the Referendum & we must now rerun a new untainted Referendum!' 
Michel Barnier today insisted it is 'realistic' to hope a Brexit divorce deal can be sealed within 'six to eight weeks'.
The EU negotiator voiced optimism that the terms of the UK's withdrawal, including the vexed issue of the Irish border, can be sealed by the beginning of November.
The comments - which caused sterling to rise sharply against the US dollar - came amid claims EU leaders are paving the way for a 'fudge' on Brexit.
The 27 states are expected to give Mr Barnier more scope and order him to do a deal with Theresa May rather than allow Britain to crash out of the bloc.
The conciliatory move has been dubbed a 'save Theresa operation', as fears mount that the PM could be ousted and replaced by a hardline Brexiteer like Boris Johnson. 
The prospect of an agreement could bolster Mrs May as she tries to sell her Chequers plan to a mutinous Tory party. 
Speaking at a forum in Slovenia this afternoon, Mr Barnier said: 'I think if we are realistic we are able to reach an agreement on the first stage of the work - which is the Brexit treaty - within six to eight weeks.
'We must reach an agreement by the beginning of November.'  
The Pound rose more than one per cent to top $1.30, its highest level in five weeks.
It also hit a four-week high against the euro at 88.96.
The EU's remaining leaders are expected to discuss whether to issue additional guidance to Mr Barnier at an informal summit in Salzburg, Austria, later this month.
Ambassadors in Brussels have been briefed on the possibility that the EU could take a more conciliatory approach to the negotiations, according to the Financial Times.
If approved, the update to Mr Barnier’s instructions would ‘serve as a sort of mandate to do the deal’, according to a senior EU diplomat. 
Mrs May's official spokesman today said: 'We have evolved our pwn position and we have set out that we want the EU to evolve theirs, how they do that is obviously a matter for them.
'But we have said throughout that we want these talks to be approached with imagination and with creativity.' 
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has blamed a ‘dogmatic’ approach to negotiations for the limited progress made so far on a deal.
One EU diplomat described the possibility of new guidelines as a ‘save Theresa’ operation, according to the newspaper.
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
‘We aren’t expecting the EU to change Mr Barnier’s guidelines, but we hope the leaders will tell them to interpret them in such a way as to make a deal possible,’ a senior British official told the Financial Times.
 It came as a former Brexit minister warned Mrs May risks a ‘catastrophic’ split at next month’s Tory conference if she persists with her Chequers plan.
Steve Baker, who resigned over the plan in July, said the Prime Minister would face a ‘massive problem’ unless she abandoned her flagship policy before the gathering of the party faithful in Birmingham.
He added there was still time for Mrs May to pursue a more conventional free trade deal that the party would support.
‘We are reaching the point now where it is extremely difficult to see how we can rescue the Conservative Party from a catastrophic split if the Chequers proposals are carried forward,’ he said.
‘I am gravely concerned for the future of our party… because I recognise that the Labour opposition represents a severe danger to our security and prosperity.’
Mrs May has ordered her chief of staff Gavin Barwell and communications director Robbie Gibb to sell the Chequers plan to backbench MPs at a series of dinners this week.
She will also convene a special meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday to co-ordinate contingency plans for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, former Cabinet ministers David Davis and Owen Paterson will outline proposals designed to overcome the Irish border issue that has dogged the Brexit talks.
Eurosceptics will push ahead tomorrow with a major new study on the impact of a no-deal Brexit. The report by the Economists for Free Trade group dismisses ‘hysteria’ over predicted food shortages and says the UK economy would benefit from trading on World Trade Organisation terms.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs, said: ‘We have nothing to fear from trading on WTO terms… Let Brexit mean Brexit and let us flourish under the auspices of the WTO.’
The document says UK exports to WTO countries have risen three times faster than those to the EU over the past 25 years.
New immigration controls will have to be phased in after Brexit takes place raising fears it could take years for the number of new arrivals to fall.
The Government's plans for post-Brexit migrant controls were set out in today's landmark white paper on Theresa May's negotiating strategy.
Immigration is one of a number of policy areas which will see gradual change after the act of Brexit to avoid a 'cliff-edge' change in two years.
Unveiling the document today, Brexit Secretary David Davis said it proved Britain's 'best days were still ahead of us'.
But Ukip warned phased implementation could mean the Government 'isn't serious about taking back control of our borders any time soon'.
Ukip's immigration spokesman John Bickley MEP told The Independent: 'Most people who voted Leave wanted to see immigration controlled and reduced, however today's White Paper is vague at best in setting out when this will happen.
'Based on the Conservative government's utter failure to bring down immigration to their promised ''tens of thousands'' the public would be right to conclude from today's white paper that the government isn't serious about taking back control of our borders and immigration any time soon.
'Will the government make an immediate commitment to take back total control of our borders and immigration by the end of the Article 50 negotiation and no later than 2019?
'Voters have had enough of being duped by the political class and UKIP stands ready to expose any shenanigans from a Prime Minister that talks the talk, but more often than not doesn't walk the walk.'
The position was defended by No 10, who said the moment Brexit takes place would see control over migrant numbers returned to the UK.
Mrs May's spokeswoman said: 'People want us to be in control.'  
The white paper makes clear that any new arrangements to control immigration following Brexit could be phased in over time, to give businesses and individuals 'enough time to plan and prepare'.
'The UK will always welcome genuine students and those with the skills and expertise to make our nation better still,' said the document, promising 'an immigration system that allows us to control numbers and encourage the brightest and the best to come to this country'. 

Today's white paper document was published after Theresa May bowed to demands from MPs to give more details about her plan for negotiations with Brussels, sets the stage for the next round of battles over Britain's EU divorce.
Mr Davis urged the bloc's leaders to behave like 'good neighbours'. 
'The UK wants the EU to succeed. Indeed it is in our interests for it to prosper politically and economically and a strong new partnership with the UK will help to that end,' he said. 
'We hope that in the upcoming talks, the EU will be guided by the principles set out in the EU Treaties concerning a high degree of international cooperation and good neighbourliness.' 
The Government's 77-page Brexit plan puts control of immigration at its heart. 
Theresa May has vowed to trigger her Brexit talks within weeks. The crucial next steps are: 
Monday February 6: The Article 50 Bill returns to the Commons for more detailed scrutiny of its contents.
Wednesday February 8: The Bill will finish its passage through the Commons and be sent to the Lords.
Wednesday March 7: The Government expects Royal Assent for its Article 50 bill.
Thursday March 9: Mrs May meets the other 27 EU leaders for a regular summit. This is thought to be the soonest she files the Article 50 notification. 
By March 2019: Assuming a deal has been struck, talks are due to conclude. Crucial votes will be held in Parliament and around Europe to ratify a deal.
It will also make clear that Britain will leave the single market, leave at least some of the customs union and end the jurisdiction of European judges over British law.
Responding to the landmark document for Labour, Shadow Brexit Secretarty Sir Keir Starmer bemoaned Mr Davis's statement for saying 'nothing' and said the Opposition received the white paper just minutes before the Commons announcement.
Sir Keir said: 'Flicking through the white paper I see... all that's said about the final vote is that the final deal that is agreed will be put to a vote in both Houses of Parliament.
'We have amendments down next week (to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill) seeking a meaningful vote - a vote in this House before a vote is taken in the European Parliament.'
Mr Davis, in his reply, said: 'I've been here long enough to have voted thousands of times in this House.
'I've never yet voted on something I've considered not meaningful.
'Every vote in this House is meaningful and there will be a meaningful vote at the end.'
Other top priorities in the Government's White Paper include ending the jurisdiction of European judges over British law. 
Theresa May has set a target date of launching the formal Brexit process on March 9.
The Government is finish its EU Bill through Parliament by March 7, which would allow the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50 at a summit of European leaders on March 9 and 10.
Ministers told the House of Lords yesterday that it hopes to have the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill approved by March 7.
The following day - March 8 - is the Budget, before Mrs May travels to Brussels for the long-awaited Brexit showdown with her EU counterparts.
The PM has promised to trigger Article 50, the formal mechanism for quitting the EU, by the end of March.
But she does not want to get off on the wrong foot with EU leaders by clashing with the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which effectively gave birth to the EU.
She could tell her European counterparts of her timetable at a meeting in Malta on Friday.
The timetable could be knocked off course if the Lords initiate what is known as parliamentary 'ping-pong' by sending the bill back to the Commons with a series of amendments.
Mrs May's foreword to the white paper was made up of extracts from her Lancaster House speech, in which she said that forging a new partnership with Europe and a 'stronger, fairer, more global' Britain would be 'the legacy of our time, the prize towards which we work, the destination at which we arrive once the negotiation is done'.
In a preface to the document, Mr Davis said that Britain entered the negotiations which the Government intends to trigger by the end of March in 'a position of strength'.
Stressing that the UK 'wants the EU to succeed', he urged the remaining 27 member states and European institutions to be guided in the upcoming negotiations by 'the principles set out in the EU Treaties concerning a high degree of international co-operation and good neighbourliness'.
In debate on the document, Sir Bill Cash, chairman of the European Scrutiny Select Committee, welcomed the white paper and urged ministers to exert pressure on other EU leaders to prevent them from seeking closer union.
His comments came in response to a recent letter by European Council leader Donald Tusk to the 27 other member states calling for political solidarity in the face of challenges from the US, Russia and Islamic extremism.
Conservative veteran Sir Bill said: 'Will you encourage the 27 to recognise that by promoting ever-closer and more centralised unreformed political union, they are creating the very circumstance they claim they want to avoid?
'They are depriving themselves of the trust of the other citizens whom they claim to represent. They are effectively going in the wrong direction.'

But the lack of further details in today's document will anger opposition MPs. 
The absence of a 100 per cent guarantee on protecting the rights of EU nationals currently in the UK has already sparked trouble with Tory MPs.  
Mrs May has only promised to reach a deal with her EU counterparts about their status 'as soon as we can' and in a private meeting with Tory MPs yesterday Mr Davis sought to reassure them by saying 'only a couple' of countries were blocking a deal on EU citizens.
The Prime Minister is reluctant to give guarantees before the status of 900,00 Britons currently living on the continent are assured. 
Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who campaigned for Remain, has been charged with trying to kill the rebellion by phoning around Tory MPs who signalled they could rebel. 
 


1. 'Certainty and clarity' and a vote for Parliament on final deal 
Mrs May has warned there will be 'give and take' in the upcoming negotiations, that compromises will be inevitable and 'not everybody will be able to know everything at every stage'. 
But today's white paper repeated her promise she will give MPs and peers a vote on the final deal that is agreed between the UK and the EU - expected to be in early 2019.
2. 'Control of our own laws'
The UK will take control of our own affairs once again by ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
Laws will only be made in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, adding: 'Those laws will be interpreted by judges not in Luxembourg but in courts across this country.'
3. Strengthen the United Kingdom
The third pledge is to strengthen the 'precious union' between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Prime Minister has said it is 'more important than ever that we face the future together' because we are 'united by what makes us strong: the bonds that unite us as a people, and our shared interest in the UK being an open, successful trading nation in the future.'
She assured this would not mean any devolved powers being removed from the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland institutions.
4. No hard border in Ireland
The white paper details a promise to reach a 'practical solution' to maintain the Common Travel Area with the Republic of Ireland.
It points out that the freedom to move between Northern Ireland and the Republic had been in place since before both nations joined the EU.
'Nobody wants to return to the borders of the past, so we will make it a priority to deliver a practical solution as soon as we can,' Mrs May said at Lancaster House.
5. Regain control of immigration
Britain will 'control immigration to Britain from Europe' by scrapping freedom of movement rules, Mrs May has vowed.
She insisted the UK will 'continue to attract the brightest and the best' to work and study here but said the process will be 'managed properly so that our immigration system serves the national interest'. 
It means the years of open borders between Britain and the 27 other EU member states will be slammed shut when we cut ties with Brussels. 
6. Rights of EU nationals in Britain and British expats in Europe 

Mrs May promised to reach a deal with her European rivals 'as soon as we can' to guarantee the rights of EU nationals already living in the UK to stay here after Brexit. 
She said this would involve a reciprocal deal for British expats living on the continent to remain there. 
Today's white paper said the Government had wanted to sort out the issue already but were stopped from doing so by other EU countries.
7. Protect workers' rights 
In a bid to reassure and win the backing of trade unions and the Labour party the PM said her EU deal will not only translate EU law on workers' rights into UK law but said she will 'build on them'. 
The white paper makes clear this will happen via the 'Great Repeal Bill'.  
8. Free trade deal with European markets
Appealing to her European rivals not to punish Britain, Mrs May said her approach to free trade will prioritise Europe. 
She wants a 'bold and ambitious free trade agreement with the European Union' that allows the 'freest possible trade in goods and services' between Britain and the other 27 EU member states. 
9. New trade deals with the rest of the world
When Britain frees itself from EU rules banning us from striking individual deals with other nations it will 'increase significantly its trade with the fastest growing export markets in the world'.
Branding her trade policy 'global Britain,' she said: 'Since joining the EU, trade as a percentage of GDP has broadly stagnated in the UK.
'That is why it is time for Britain to get out into the world and rediscover its role as a great, global, trading nation.'
She promised that the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will lead the charge to strike new trade deals with the likes of China, Brazil, the US and the Commonwealth. 


10. To make Britain the best place for science and innovation 
Mrs May said her vision of 'global Britain' must also be a country that looks to the future'. 
'That means being one of the best places in the world for science and innovation,' she said as she promised not to cut back but to deepen our collaboration with our European partners on major science, research and technology initiatives. 
11. Cooperation to fight terrorism
She also pledged that leaving the EU will not mean any weakening of our partnership with Europe on fighting crime and terrorism. 
Terrorism is a threat that cannot be dealt with bilaterally and Europe must 'face the challenge of cross-border crime, a deadly terrorist threat, and the dangers presented by hostile states' together, Mrs May said. 
This would mean our authorities continuing to share intelligence material with our EU allies, as well as a keeping the united resistance to Russian aggression whether through sanctions of through the Nato military alliance.   

12. A 'smooth, orderly Brexit' 
Finally, the Prime Minister promised that she will pursue all of her objectives in a 'smooth and orderly' approach in the negotiations. 
She promised to protect business from a 'cliff-edge' scenario where they are left stranded in a regulatory no man's land. 
Instead, she promised a 'phased process of implementation,' where institutions in Britain, Brussels and EU member states prepare for the new arrangements and give businesses enough time to plan and prepare for the new partnerships. 
'This might be about our immigration controls, customs systems or the way in which we cooperate on criminal justice matters. 
'Or it might be about the future legal and regulatory framework for financial services. For each issue, the time we need to phase-in the new arrangements may differ. Some might be introduced very quickly, some might take longer. And the interim arrangements we rely upon are likely to be a matter of negotiation.
'But the purpose is clear: we will seek to avoid a disruptive cliff-edge, and we will do everything we can to phase in the new arrangements we require as Britain and the EU move towards our new partnership.'
114 MPs voted against giving the European Union (Notification of Withdrawl) Bill a second reading. The Bill gives Theresa May the power to invoke Article 50 and start the two year, irreversible process of Brexit.
The group included 50 SNP MPs, 47 Labour, seven Liberal Democrats alongside Tory Ken Clarke and nine others.
Lady Hermon (Independent - North Down)
Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Stewart Hosie (Scottish National Party - Dundee East)
Dr Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
George Kerevan (Scottish National Party - East Lothian)
Calum Kerr (Scottish National Party - Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk)
Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Mr David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Scottish National Party - Na h-Eileanan an Iar)
Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
John Mc Nally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South)
Stuart C. McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)
Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Belfast South)
Natalie McGarry (Independent - Glasgow East)
Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North East)
Carol Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North West)
Dr Paul Monaghan (Scottish National Party - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Roger Mullin (Scottish National Party - Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath)
Ian Murray (Labour - Edinburgh South)
Gavin Newlands (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - East Dunbartonshire)
Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party - Argyll and Bute)
Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Steven Paterson (Scottish National Party - Stirling)
Stephen Pound (Labour - Ealing North)
John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Ms Margaret Ritchie (Social Democratic & Labour Party - South Down)
Angus Robertson (Scottish National Party - Moray)
Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party - Gordon)
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)
Mr Virendra Sharma (Labour - Ealing, Southall)
Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Andy Slaughter (Labour - Hammersmith)
Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)
Chris Stephens (Scottish National Party - Glasgow South West)
Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Michelle Thomson (Independent - Edinburgh West)
Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Mike Weir (Scottish National Party - Angus)
Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Scottish National Party - Banff and Buchan)
Dr Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)
Dr Philippa Whitford (Scottish National Party - Central Ayrshire)
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru - Arfon)
Mr Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and North Perthshire)
Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Heidi Alexander (Labour - Lewisham East)
Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Mr Graham Allen (Labour - Nottingham North)
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Richard Arkless (Scottish National Party - Dumfries and Galloway)
Hannah Bardell (Scottish National Party - Livingston)
Luciana Berger (Labour (Co-op) - Liverpool, Wavertree)
Mhairi Black (Scottish National Party - Paisley and Renfrewshire South)
Ian Blackford (Scottish National Party - Ross, Skye and Lochaber)
Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Philip Boswell (Scottish National Party - Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill)
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Deidre Brock (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Alan Brown (Scottish National Party - Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
Lyn Brown (Labour - West Ham)
Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)
Ms Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)
Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
Ruth Cadbury (Labour - Brentford and Isleworth)
Dr Lisa Cameron (Scottish National Party - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland)
Douglas Chapman (Scottish National Party - Dunfermline and West Fife)
Joanna Cherry (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh South West)
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Conservative - Rushcliffe)
Mr Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat - Sheffield, Hallam)
Ann Clwyd (Labour - Cynon Valley)
Ann Coffey (Labour - Stockport)
Ronnie Cowan (Scottish National Party - Inverclyde)
Neil Coyle (Labour - Bermondsey and Old Southwark)
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party - Lanark and Hamilton East)
Mary Creagh (Labour - Wakefield)
Stella Creasy (Labour (Co-op) - Walthamstow)
Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)
Martin Docherty-Hughes (Scottish National Party - West Dunbartonshire)
Stuart Blair Donaldson (Scottish National Party - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)
Stephen Doughty (Labour (Co-op) - Cardiff South and Penarth)
Jim Dowd (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)
Maria Eagle (Labour - Garston and Halewood)
Mrs Louise Ellman (Labour (Co-op) - Liverpool, Riverside)
Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Margaret Ferrier (Scottish National Party - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)
Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
Mike Gapes (Labour (Co-op) - Ilford South)
Stephen Gethins (Scottish National Party - North East Fife)
Patricia Gibson (Scottish National Party - North Ayrshire and Arran)
Patrick Grady (Scottish National Party - Glasgow North)
Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)
Neil Gray (Scottish National Party - Airdrie and Shotts)
Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)
Helen Hayes (Labour - Dulwich and West Norwood)
Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)



Boris Johnson’s Tory opponents began cranking up a campaign to stop him becoming Prime Minister within 24 hours of his announcement he would stand for the party leadership, it can be revealed today.
The ‘Stop Boris’ campaign swung into action in Westminster last night – amid warnings that some Tories could force a general election rather than give him the keys to Number 10.
Mr Johnson is the runaway favourite to succeed Theresa May as Tory leader following a coup by backbench MPs this week that will see her step aside this summer. 
His hopes were boosted last night by a poll showing he is the Tory most likely to beat Labour. 
The exclusive Survation poll for the Daily Mail put the former foreign secretary more than 20 points ahead of Sajid Javid, his nearest rival for Theresa May’s job.    
But two ministers said opposition to the former foreign secretary is so strong that some would be prepared to vote against him if he tried to introduce a Queen's speech - sparking an election this summer. 
One said: ‘Boris cannot form a government, certainly not on a No Deal platform and probably not on any other. There are at least a dozen people on our side, me included, who would be prepared to vote against him on the Queen’s Speech.
‘Even with the DUP on board, that is the majority gone. Then we are straight into an election.’ Another minister said: ‘Boris is extremely popular with the members, but the situation is the opposite among his colleagues at Westminster.
‘He could obviously win a leadership election in the country but there is a real question mark about whether he can command a majority in Parliament.’
Conservative MP Phillip Lee issued a public warning that no Tory leader campaigning on a No Deal platform could hope to govern without an election.
Dr Lee, who is facing a deselection attempt in his Bracknell constituency after backing a second referendum, said: ‘Boris is not fit for purpose as prime minister, but this is not just about Boris the person.
‘If any leader tries to make No Deal official Conservative policy then the Government does not last – it is going to lose a confidence vote.’ Supporters of Mr Johnson insisted that he could reinvigorate a deflated Tory party, deliver Brexit and defeat Jeremy Corbyn. Leading Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘Boris would win back voters because he would deliver Brexit.’
Nadine Dorries said: ‘Boris would shore up the Tory vote – he is the best placed candidate to beat Corbyn.’
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has warned a general election could allow Jeremy Corbyn into No. 10 and lead to Brexit being 'killed altogether'.
Mr Hancock urged MPs to 'deliver Brexit and move forward' to also prevent Nigel Farage's Brexit Party getting any traction if the country went to the polls.
Theresa May will present another version of her exit plan to MPs next month and there are fears an election could be called if it is rejected again to give her successor more of a mandate.
He told the Daily Telegraph: 'A general election before we've delivered Brexit would be a disaster. People don't want it. I'm with Brenda from Bristol. We need to take responsibility for delivering on the referendum result.'
He added: 'A general election before that [Brexit] not only risks Jeremy Corbyn but it risks killing Brexit altogether. We've got to deliver Brexit in this Parliament, then we can move forward.'
The Survation poll showed he was also the candidate with the highest ratings on the question of who would make a good prime minister and on who would be a vote winner. 
A YouGov poll for The Times yesterday found he was the first preference of 39 per cent of Tory members – far ahead of his nearest rival Dominic Raab on 13 per cent.
But, under the terms of the Tory leadership rules, he must first persuade his fellow MPs to rank him in the top two candidates whose names will go forward for election by the party’s 125,000 members.
The poll also said only 10 per cent of Remain-voting Tory members supported him, while 31 per cent believe he would be a 'poor leader'. 
Meanwhile Health Secretary Matt Hancock has warned a general election could allow Jeremy Corbyn into No. 10 and lead to Brexit being 'killed altogether'.
Mr Hancock urged MPs to 'deliver Brexit and move forward' to also prevent Nigel Farage's Brexit Party getting any traction if the country went to the polls.
Theresa May will present another version of her exit plan to MPs next month and there are fears an election could be called if it is rejected again to give her successor more of a mandate.
He told the Daily Telegraph: 'A general election before we've delivered Brexit would be a disaster. People don't want it. I'm with Brenda from Bristol. We need to take responsibility for delivering on the referendum result.'
He added: 'A general election before that [Brexit] not only risks Jeremy Corbyn but it risks killing Brexit altogether. We've got to deliver Brexit in this Parliament, then we can move forward.'
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who torpedoed Mr Johnson’s 2016 campaign and is widely expected to stand again, yesterday said he would make his own leadership intentions known 'in due course'.
As Mrs May’s hopes of passing a Brexit deal were seriously damaged by the acrimonious collapse of cross-party talks with Labour:
The detailed poll of more than 1,000 people, conducted yesterday, asked who was most likely to beat Labour under Mr Corbyn.
Mr Johnson was streets ahead of the others on 32 per cent. His closest rival was Home Secretary Mr Javid on 11 per cent. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd were next, both with 7 per cent.
In head-to-head contests, Mr Johnson also triumphed against every other candidate. He was 17 points ahead of Michael Gove and Dominic Raab, ten ahead of Mr Hunt and 19 ahead of Matt Hancock. Significantly, 20 per cent of Labour voters said Mr Johnson’s leadership would make them more likely to vote Tory.
However he also had the highest negative ratings: he was seen as likely to be a good prime minister by 32 per cent of the public, but bad by 45 per cent.
Asked if Mr Johnson’s leadership would make them more likely to vote Conservative, 28 per cent of those questioned said yes – the highest figure for any candidate. But 38 per cent said they would be less likely to vote Tory.
If there was a general election tomorrow, the poll showed the Tories on 27 per cent, five points behind Labour, with the Brexit Party on 13 per cent. But with Mr Johnson as leader, the parties were neck and neck on 24 per cent, with the Brexit Party on only 7 per cent.
On Brexit, the poll found that opinion has barely changed from the referendum result nearly three years ago, with 49 per cent wanting to leave the EU and 51 per cent to remain. But the survey suggested Mr Johnson is seen as much more likely than Mrs May to ‘make a success of Brexit’.
It confirmed the Conservatives were likely to sustain heavy losses at the hands of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in Thursday’s European Parliament elections. The Tories were in third place on 14 per cent behind the Brexit Party on 30 per cent and Labour on 24 per cent. The Lib Dems were on 12 per cent and Change UK in the doldrums on just 3 per cent.
Mrs May yesterday enjoyed her best night by far since she became Prime Minister two and a half years ago.
She saved the Tory party from splitting. She headed off the concerted attempt by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory MP Nick Boles to seize back control for Parliament.
And she gained a majority in the House for her desperate last-ditch strategy of tearing up the Withdrawal Agreement she negotiated with Europe last November.
In a series of dramatic late-night votes she was only defeated on one relatively minor issue when MPs supported an amendment by Tory Caroline Spelman to rule out the possibility of a No Deal Brexit.
But Mrs May will surely be able to live with that defeat. The Spelman amendment, after all, is not legally binding.
There has been a great deal of talk in recent weeks that Parliament itself would take control of the Brexit process from Theresa May and Downing Street.
Last night the exact opposite happened. Theresa May took back control of Brexit from Parliament. As a result, she looks more secure in her job than she has done for a very long time.
Nor was that vital strategic win the only matter for Downing Street celebration. As Tory MPs united behind Mrs May’s deal, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party split wide open as a dozen Labour rebels defied a three-line Labour whip over the Cooper amendment and thereby saved Mrs May’s skin – just. 
But I would warn against too much exultation in Downing Street. The Prime Minister has paid a price for her victory in terms of personal reputation and credibility.
Let’s not forget her new strategy involves going back to the deal she defended for so long – one she agreed with the 27 other nations of the EU less than two months ago.
Before Christmas, Theresa May signed up for the so-called ‘Irish backstop’. This gave a guarantee that there would never be border controls between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
But the plan was hated by Brexiteering Conservative MPs because they feared the European Union would use the backstop as a device to keep Britain in the European customs union for ever.
After days of frantic backstairs plotting, Mrs May has won their support by promising to ditch the backstop. She will now ask to open negotiations with Europe for so-called ‘alternative arrangements’.
By doing so, she’s kept Britain on course to leave the European Union on March 29, just 58 days from now. However – and I say this with a heavy heart as a supporter of the PM – last night’s victory has come at the cost of a pretty dramatic U-turn from the PM.
She has only secured her survival by scrapping a deal which she personally agreed to barely eight weeks ago. Back then, remember, she insisted that the backstop was unchangeable.
Now she appears to believe that it can be rewritten after all. What is more, Mrs May seems to think that she can do this in the next two weeks, having promised to come back to the Commons by February 13 for a second ‘meaningful vote’.
To many this looks like dreamland, for many in Brussels will take a dim view of Britain’s decision to renege on a deal that was struck last year – and go back demanding changes.
It needs to be said that Mrs May is not the only one who has shifted their position. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is equally guilty.
He hypocritically opposed Mrs May’s proposal last night, even though he was actually against the backstop in the first place!
Last night, Mrs May criticised Mr Corbyn for facing both ways over Brexit. So what next? What follows in the coming days is essentially an almighty act of brinkmanship.
The Prime Minister must now set herself directly at odds with the European Union.
Essentially, she is making the brutal calculation that the EU leaders will dump the backstop by renegotiating the agreement.
Last night, all the indications were that they would refuse to do so. 
Earlier in the evening, President Macron warned that there would be no renegotiation on the backstop. His words were endorsed shortly after the vote by the EU president Donald Tusk, who announced that ‘the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for re-negotiation’.
This means we have entered terrifyingly unpredictable territory. 
The possibility of a No Deal Brexit has suddenly become far more likely, with all the potentially catastrophic consequences of economic meltdown it involves. No wonder sterling was falling in value last night.
Mrs May has opened herself to the charge of putting the Tory party before the country. Perhaps she will not mind that too much.
Don’t underestimate the depth of the fears that the party could split in two between hardline Brexiteers and the rest as a consequence of Brexit. That outcome has now been postponed, though not put off altogether.
So Mrs May’s triumph is far from complete. With less than ten weeks to go till Brexit Day, there is still a great deal to be achieved. What if the EU keeps to its word and refuses to budge?
There may yet be a mighty arm-wrestle to come. There will be celebration in Downing Street today, but I predict it won’t last long as minds turn to the battle ahead.
As the Prime Minister returns to Number 10 from her holiday, the key to the future of our country and the Conservative Party lies in what she does in the next few months.
With the Brexit negotiations beginning in earnest, Theresa May will need all the wise counsel she can get. Fortunately, there are sensible, moderate wise owls in the Cabinet and on the Conservative back benches.
Mrs May must waste no time in taking on the ‘Hard Brexiteers’ and making it clear that she sides with responsible Cabinet Ministers – such as Chancellor Philip Hammond – who appreciate that we need a sensible Brexit transition period to avoid plunging this country headlong into an economic nightmare.
In other words – the wise owls should be ruling the roost.
But if the Prime Minister or her successor (in the event of Theresa standing down) is not prepared to confront the ideologues, I gravely fear that the party could split – and that would change Britain’s political landscape completely.
Many Remainers like me have been true to our promise to respect the result of last year’s referendum. 
However, we must face up to the Brexit reality: It is fantasy to think we are going to get a good deal from the EU based on our current negotiating strategy. People will soon see how they have been conned by the Brexiteers. All options must go back on the table.
There is a sense of resignation among most people who voted Remain that we have to ‘man up’ – even the women among us – and make the most of what we know will be a rotten Brexit.
But it does not have to be like that. Brexit is a self-inflicted wound; the people of this country hold the knife and they don’t have to use it if they don’t want to. The people, not the hardline Brexiteers, are in charge.
We will soon have a better idea of what type of Brexit we are heading for. Mrs May must be careful not to steer the country or the party in the wrong direction. She must take both with her. 
That means Tory party managers must not issue wild threats against any Conservative who expresses an opinion contrary to the views of those who would seek a ruinous ‘Hard Brexit’. 
Treating people like me as the ‘enemy within’, as opposed to patriots with a legitimate and well-considered view shared by millions of voters, will achieve nothing.
Mrs May is making a great mistake if she allows her policy to be dictated by the Brexit ideologues. They effectively brought down John Major, David Cameron and, arguably, Margaret Thatcher – and will not hesitate to do the same to her.
I am proud of my loyalty to my party and my country.
People have asked me two questions, if the worst happened and we staggered recklessly towards a ‘Hard Brexit’ that would destroy the lives and livelihoods of my constituents: Could I ever see myself joining with like-minded people who want to save our country from such an appalling fate? And has that moment arrived yet?
The answer to the first question is ‘it is not impossible’; the answer to the second is ‘no’.
But I would be betraying my principles if I did not make it clear that country must always come before party.  
Three days after the EU referendum, I set out in this newspaper my reaction. I made three points. First, put Brexiteers in charge. Secondly, I urged the Government to get on with it. And finally, I said the fight back starts here.
Today, five days after the House of Lords approved the Second Reading of the Brexit Bill, which allows the Government to trigger Article 50, I stand where I stood eight months ago.
The Prime Minister shrewdly placed Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox in the three leading trenches in the battle to leave Europe. It was in itself controversial and certainly surprising but it was right.
Any more balanced approach would have opened the door for the charge by the Brexiteers that they were robbed. ‘If only we had been in charge’ would have echoed through the debate as the inevitable compromises emerge from the forthcoming dialogue.
They are in charge. We can all see that they are in charge and they will have to explain why black is sometimes white.
My second preoccupation was to limit – to any possible extent – the damage to our economy that uncertainty over our future relationship with our largest market would cause. Uncertainty is inevitable and will remain so until a clear roadmap is set out in detail and secured by the agreement of both sides. The Lords recognised the mandate delivered by the referendum result and, certainly, its subordinate role as an unelected authority. There was no appetite to assert a more ambitious claim.
I have no time for those who argue the Government should set out its negotiating position in any form in advance of the forthcoming dialogue.
Time and again in private sector negotiations I have set out my demands at the outset. Frequently I never expected to receive them in whole or even in part. It is how negotiation works. You go on until both sides either compromise or give in. Hands are shaken. Optimistic public relation statements issued. But that is not how it works in the public sector. The slightest hint of a defined position becomes a psychological red line.
A more formal position becomes a ‘Maginot Line’ behind which there is no retreat. Immediately one group of supporters will denounce such a position as inadequate by their standards, while the media will define the opening bid as the start line from which any retreat is national humiliation.
The Government knows this full well and has rightly avoided the trap. But the Government doesn’t know what 27 other EU countries will do in the end in their national self interest and to satisfy their parliaments and electorates.
It is more confusing than that. Europe has elections coming up. They don’t even know some of the governments with which they will be negotiating.
The Government needs to proceed as fast as circumstance permits. The scale and complexity of the negotiation make an effective end date impossible to predict. The forthcoming elections in France, Germany and Holland shroud the effective start date in uncertainty. In the end the outcome of Brexit will have to be confirmed by Parliament. It will also have to pass in 27 national European parliaments, several sub-national parliaments and the European Parliament. It was perhaps unwise for our Government to suppose that our Parliament should be excluded where all others were included. Very sensibly, after the Supreme Court interpreted the law, that position was reversed and Parliament was restored to its rightful constitutional role as the ultimate authority.
I will vote in the House of Lords to ensure that position is legally intact. This is not a confrontation with the Government which has already made such a commitment. It is – put simply – a decision to ensure that the Commons has the chance to define its role in the exercise of its authority over what most people regard as the defining issue of our time.
That brings me to my third point. The fightback starts here.
My opponents will argue that the people have spoken, the mandate secured and the future cast. My experience stands against this argument.
I have had my share of opposition politics. I first became an MP in the 1960s when Harold Wilson was Labour Prime Minister. Our duty, we argued, was to oppose. Oppose who? The Government of the day with its popular mandate. From day one we used our parliamentary votes to challenge Bill after Bill despite its clear presence in the Government manifesto.
Of course, we usually lost as the popular elected majority prevailed. But not always. I led the opposition to a Labour Government Bill to nationalise our ports in the 1960s. We so delayed the legislation that it fell when an election intervened.
I led the opposition to another nationalisation measure, the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industry Bill, which Labour secured only by cheating over the pairing system and celebrated by standing on their parliamentary benches and singing The Red Flag. The rest remains history, as the recent West End play, This House, has revealed.
Only Parliament can legislate. Today it is about to authorise the mandate of last year’s EU referendum. Should that authority have any time limit or be in any way influenced by the outcome of the unpredictable negotiations?
Both questions demand an affirmative answer for me.
At the moment there is no evidence that public opinion has changed since the referendum. The PM rides high in the polls and Jeremy Corbyn’s official Labour Opposition has opted to leave the stage. This reinforces the ‘get on with it’ argument. But what if this present background changes?
I have no intention to list the sort of events that could precipitate such a situation. I have never known a future populated by such uncertainty, but my preoccupation is to ensure that if public opinion changes then Parliament has the means to reflect that, whether by election, referendum or rethink.
It should not be forgotten that a month before the EU referendum, Nigel Farage said if the Brexit campaign lost by around 52 to 48 (in the event it won by precisely this margin) it would be considered ‘unfinished business’, with pressure for a second referendum to reverse the result.
And Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has made it clear she is determined to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence if the Brexit talks result in Britain leaving the Single Market.
However, I will make one projection. My belief is that there were two underlying factors at work that led to the referendum result.
The first was the frustration caused by years of stagnant living standards. Something had to be blamed and Europe was readily to hand.
Throw immigration into the mix and the mood for change sought something to latch on to. Nigel Farage articulated that and later Donald Trump’s campaign gave it a transatlantic articulation. Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in Holland, and Frauke Petry in Germany now contribute a European voice.
The free movement of people enshrined in EU rules is under scrutiny. I think our request for change could find a very different reception on the Continent by the end of the coming cycle of elections.
Parliament must have the chance to react to that.
In the meantime, the Government’s immigration policy could gain increased credibility if it took control of the majority of immigrants, who come from outside the EU and over which the EU has no power to influence us at all. I have to recognise the argument that this could require me to defy a three-line whip by my party. I was first elected to Parliament in 1966 and only on three occasions have I consciously and publicly done that.
The first was when my party whipped against the Labour Party’s anti-discrimination race relations legislation in the late 1960s. I was then involved commercially in hotels and employment agencies. I knew what the disease of ‘no coloureds’ meant. These were the days of Enoch Powell and ‘Rivers of Blood’. I defied the whip and three weeks later my party changed its mind. Around the same time I voted against the Labour Government’s policy to renege on the undertaking to Kenyan Asians at risk of persecution that there would be a home for them here.
I revolted against the Poll Tax. I make no apology – it contributed massively to the destruction of our party in Scotland and would have done so elsewhere in the UK if we had not got rid of it in 1990. My third revolt was a more personal gesture to my old friend, Conservative MP Jill Knight – who entered Parliament with me in 1966 – in her defence of opticians and her family business.
It is an ironic reflection on events that the Tory whip sent to dissuade me from this action crossed the floor and is now a Labour peer!
In the end, politics is a lonely place. There comes a moment when only you can know what you must do. In a sense the public is right. We are only in it for what we can get out of it.
Where they are wrong is in defining the ‘it’ in crude material or financial terms.
The ‘it’ is the knowledge that in some small way we contributed to a wider sense of national purpose and interest.
You can express that in the crudest terms that Donald Trump repeatedly does, or you can draw the inspiration I have derived from every Prime Minister for whom I have worked, who perceived British self interests were enhanced within the shared sovereignty of Europe.
 
Hopefully I won’t be expelled for saying this, but after 60 years of being a member of the Labour Party I’m beginning to wonder whether I should ask for my money back.
My party is so busy trying to shed its working-class supporters and become a metropolitan team of amateur Liberal Democrats that it’s no longer recognisable.
I joined a party dedicated to the betterment of the people, a party which my predecessor as MP for Grimsby, Tony Crosland, told me was about equality.
Today, it has become a mob of cosmopolitan meritocrats who love the European Union more than those at the bottom of society’s top-heavy heap. Jean-Claude Juncker’s federalism now means more to Labour than socialism.
Nothing demonstrates this better than its clamour for a second referendum. As made clear in Jeremy Corbyn’s announcement yesterday that he will support a referendum on a Conservative deal and back Remain, Labour seems intent on prioritising the champagne-drinking population of chi-chi Islington above those it should be helping.
That our once-great trade unions cheered him on makes Labour’s betrayal of working-class Leave voters all the more depressing.
At the last general election, every Labour MP stood on a manifesto which promised to ‘accept the referendum result’.
It seemed a logical step. Studies have shown that Brexit voters tended to be those in social housing, those with no formal education and those earning below £1,200 a month. They were traditional Labour voters in traditional Labour areas.
Yet the metropolitan clique leading my party think they know better. From the moment the referendum result was announced, it became clear that they had no intention of keeping their promise, and set out deliberately to undermine it.
From deputy leader Tom Watson to shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, almost everyone in Corbyn’s top team has suggested that the referendum should be rerun.
As for Corbyn, his attempts to sit on the fence have finally come undone. And his previous line of defence, that we should have a general election first, now looks suicidal as the party plummets in the polls.
The long and tortured history of Labour’s gradual slide into its love affair with the European Union demonstrates the truth of the old political nostrum – when you’re in a hole stop digging.
Back in 1961, the then leader Hugh Gaitskell firmly committed the party against joining the Common Market. His successor, Harold Wilson, flirted with the idea, only to have consummation nullified by General De Gaulle.
When Ted Heath managed to get us in on humiliating terms, he got the necessary legislation through Parliament only on the votes of Labour’s Right-wing rebels.
His trickery was soon mimicked by Wilson, whose 1975 referendum backed the existing status quo of membership, as referenda usually do. By the early Eighties, these deceits had cost our membership dearly.
My own town of Grimsby’s fishing industry was ruined when the Europeans cunningly declared the seas around Britain were common waters and gave other members, even landlocked Luxembourg, equal access. As a result, we got only a small proportion of our own fish.
What had been a surplus in our trade with Europe before we went in became a steadily growing deficit. Britain’s membership contributions – in effect, our payments to the EU for being damaged by them – went up year by year, siphoning off money to Europe, particularly to the powerful German economy, which generated ever-bigger surpluses by keeping its exchange rate down.
To cap all this, Europe’s fast growth, which was supposed to boost our own, slowed substantially. Choosing to ignore this, our political class fell in love with Brussels. Trade unions looked to the bureaucrats to protect them from the lasting effects of Thatcher, while Blairites hoped it would stop what they saw as the far-Left extremism exemplified by Corbyn. Major Labour figures from Roy Jenkins to Peter Mandelson went off to Brussels and found a bigger and better stage to strut on. Tony Blair also fell hook, line and sinker for it.
Meanwhile, Labour’s working-class roots were withering and my party became more middle-class and metropolitan, allowing its Northern heartlands to fall behind.
Labour eventually tried to rebuild itself by becoming a coalition of causes; feminism, LGBTism, environmentalism, localism, ethnic politics. You name a boutique issue, we were for it – with the exception of regenerating growth and advancing equality.
Soon a gulf emerged and those separated from the political stratosphere expressed themselves in a howl of protest.
Being British, this emerged not in hurling paving stones and chopping down speed cameras like the yellow jackets in France. The protest was less violent – opting for Brexit when the opportunity arose. The Brexit vote horrified our party’s middle-class leaders, who condemned it as the product of ignorant, uneducated and racist plebs. In short, everything Labour’s ‘enlightened’ folk abhorred.
These ‘plebs’ are now seen by Labour’s elite as an untrendy embarrassment, a nuisance, hostile to all the cosmopolitan causes that the party is now about.
Labour’s responsibility is to see that the will of these people is implemented.
Yet Labour leaders like Yvette Cooper, Tony Blair and Hilary Benn think they know better, using every tactic in the book to weaken our negotiating position, create fear and bind us to the EU.
They have attempted to avoid the issue of the referendum vote by denouncing a Tory Brexit (an easy job since Theresa May was making such a mess of it) and pretending Labour would get a better deal.
Sadly the European elections, where the newly formed Brexit Party stormed to victory, showed that this fooled no one.
Labour lost massive support on both sides of the Brexit divide. Blairites outed themselves as born-again Liberal Democrats. Larger numbers of Brexiteers went for Farage.
Caught in limbo, Corbyn has now been driven into practically declaring us a Remain party in support of a second referendum.
Not that one is particularly likely. A second vote is impossible unless Parliament agrees some settlement for the people to vote on, a process which Labour has done everything to scupper.
But even if a second referendum doesn’t happen, Labour’s new position could severely damage Britain’s future.
Blindly declaring its support for a second ‘People’s Vote’ would also push Britain into a trap and encourage the EU to refuse to improve on the derisory deal they’ve offered Theresa, thus prolonging the agony that Labour deplores.
And if we commit to another referendum and Parliament rules out No Deal, all the EU has to do is sit, wait and watch us flounder.
Meanwhile, supporting Remain will do nothing to bring back Labour’s lost regions, rebuild its working-class base, or focus its attention on the growing problems of real people.
It will only further enthrone the middle-class, metropolitan clique who now dominate the party.
Labour’s head has become as soft as its heart. If its love of Brussels and all its works becomes more important than its residual feelings for Grimethorpe or Grimsby, we’ve had it. 
The third vote on Mrs May’s EU deal will be a truly agonising, painful dilemma for many Conservative MPs who have already voted twice against it.
For them the disadvantages have been all too clear: the long period of European Court of Justice jurisdiction, the large Brexit bill, and above all the Irish backstop dividing our country and from which it may be difficult to exit.
On the other hand, if the PM’s deal is rejected by the House of Commons, we may not leave the EU for many months and possibly not at all.
The PM seems to have decided that since Parliament has rejected whatever she has been able to negotiate, she may have no choice but to follow wherever a majority can be found in the House of Commons. 
The logic of this means at best a soft Brexit, one in name only, and at worst no Brexit at all.
In last week’s debate much attention was focused on the Attorney General’s advice on the risks of being permanently locked in the Irish backstop, and his conclusion that there was no legal guarantee that the UK could unilaterally leave. 
However Geoffrey Cox did also indicate that as a result of the various additions to the backstop the risks of Britain being permanently imprisoned in the backstop had definitely been ‘reduced’.
Since the EU has publicly declared it recognises the backstop is intended to be temporary – if it is ever used at all – and given the spotlight turned on this issue, the EU would surely look pretty disreputable if it ever tried to keep Britain in the backstop against its wish.
More compellingly it is not at all clear why the EU would want Britain permanently in the backstop since it gives Britain full access to goods in the single market without having to accept either freedom of movement or make payments to the EU Budget. 
Britain would also be free to deregulate its services which accounts for 80 per cent of our economy.
Any perceived risks in the backstop have to be balanced against the risks that will follow if the PM’s deal is thrown out again. That would lead to the PM asking the EU for a postponement of Britain’s exit date. 
The danger is that once we postpone our exit for the first time it may be the start of a process whereby it is postponed again and indefinitely.
Some MPs believe that the Government can postpone our exit date but cannot ultimately stop it. This is surely wishful thinking. The numbers are against it. 
Parliament has voted against ‘no deal’ and the PM is likely to go along with that, even if it means altering the legislation, which it could easily do.
Once Brexit is kicked into the long grass with a delay of a year or even longer, then it will be truly dead. The legitimacy of the ‘mandate’ from 17.4million voters will diminish the further we get from the referendum. The momentum for Brexit will be lost – but the momentum for a second referendum will intensify. 
To assert as some Eurosceptics do that it is preferable to remain in the EU than to accept Mrs May’s deal is absurd. The PM’s deal is far from ideal. But it has one overwhelming advantage. 
Under her deal we will definitely leave. We will be removed for ever from the threat of political union, and we will not be subsumed as a province of a new country called Europe.
We will not have our taxes harmonised with those of Europe inside a European Treasury. We will not be part of any European army, and we will leave the Common Fisheries and Agricultural policies. 
True, Mrs May’s deal will not give us, for the moment, the ideal trade policy. But there will be all to play for in the next stage of the negotiations when there will be different leadership because Mrs May has said she will stand down before the next election.
Above all, we will be removed from the main threat Eurosceptics have fought for so long – that of needless unnecessary political integration. That is the main prize. 
What is certain is that this opportunity will never happen again and history will not understand if it is Conservative MPs who prevent us reclaiming our self government. 
 
This column doesn't do honeymoon periods, though it would be churlish not to admit to a sense of satisfaction and vindication now that Boris has finally made it into No 10.
As I wrote at the time and have maintained ever since, he should have got the job the day after the referendum result was announced. My heart sank when he was knifed by Michael Gove, ushering in three wasted years of dismal, defeatist Theresa May.
Boris deserved the chance to follow through on the convincing majority to leave the EU, which he had done so much to secure. My guess is we'd have been out by now, a free-trade deal signed and sealed.
Of course, you can never legislate for the obdurate obstructionism of die-hard Remainers, who have never accepted the democratically expressed will of the British people.
But they might not have been so emboldened in their efforts to scupper Brexit had they been faced down by a confident, determined Boris Johnson, rather than indulged by a timid, technocratic Theresa May, whose heart was never in it.
Still, spilt milk and all that. What matters now is what comes next.
In his barnstorming speech in Downing Street this week, Boris channelled the Sex Pistols: 'Never mind the backstop, the buck stops here.'
It was a cute line, the kind of throwaway quip we've come to expect from this supreme political showman, who deploys language like the master of ceremonies in a Victorian music hall. His bravura performances both in Downing Street on Wednesday and in the Commons yesterday were vintage Johnson.
He's rightly being praised for raising the nation's mood after an eternity of gloom and doom dished out by May and ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond, a man with all the charisma and bonhomie of a pox doctor's clerk.
Our new Prime Minister is clearly revelling in all the attention after achieving his lifelong ambition.
Good for him, but he should make the most of it while it lasts and then concentrate on the job in hand.
If I may inject a note of caution: 'Never mind the Boris, it's about Brexit.'
Yes, it's a relief to have a larger than life character in No 10, especially one with a fine intellect and an irrepressible sense of mischief.
But what we need now is a statesman, not a showman — someone the EU negotiators must fear as a real menace.
Not Dennis The Menace.
To Boris's credit, he has made all the right noises. He's ruthlessly purged the Cabinet of ministers determined to prevent No Deal. He has put Brussels on notice. We are coming out with or without a deal. And unless EU leaders accept the new reality, they can forget about any £39 billion divorce settlement.
I'm also led to believe that Steve Barclay, who is staying on as Brexit Secretary, has been to Dublin and read the riot act to pipsqueak Irish Prime Minister Lenny Verruca, reminding him on which side of his bread he'll find the Kerrygold.
As a consequence, Verruca is coming under serious pressure at home to stop playing silly beggars on the so-called backstop. If he continues to be Michel Barnier's stooge, the southern portion of the Emerald Isle is facing certain economic ruin.
So Boris does have some strong cards to play, though he's a long way short of a royal flush.
His main problem is the petulance and self-importance of so many Conservative MPs.
They refuse to accept the referendum result, they refuse to carry out the clear commitments to Leave which they made in their last Election manifesto, and now a significant number of them pour scorn on their new leader, who was elected by two-thirds of their own party members.
Which bit of democracy don't they understand?
Even before Boris was confirmed, no-mark ministers you'd never heard of were resigning from jobs you didn't know they had because they couldn't serve under Boris or commit to a No Deal Brexit.
Most of them jumped before they were pushed, but that's not the point. It used to be said that unity was the Conservative Party's secret weapon, even though it's always been a nest of vipers.
But, as they have demonstrated time and again since 2016, far too many preening Tory MPs no longer respect the concept of loyalty, collective responsibility or honouring the will of the people who pay their wages.
So Boris will have a titanic battle to get any Brexit departure deal, or no deal at all, through the Commons. He won't be able to busk and bluff it.
He's helped by Corbyn's admission that Labour is now a Remain and second referendum party, which has horrified MPs in Leave-voting Northern constituencies.
These MPs won't want a snap General Election and may be persuaded to vote with the Government. But don't bank on it.
If Boris does call an election, he should do as I wrote a few weeks ago and forge a pact with the Brexit Party, giving Nigel Farage's impressive list of candidates a free run at Labour's Leave heartlands, where no Tory would ever win.
Boris needn't think, either, that he can pull a fast one by slipping a heavily-disguised version of Theresa May's withdrawal agreement under the radar, as many Leavers fear.
If he fails to drive through a clean, convincing Brexit, Britain is finished as a proper democracy, the Tories are finished and so is Boris.
Honeymoon's over.
If Project Fear is right and there really are food shortages after Brexit, we may have to improvise. Jamie Oliver's friend, celebrity farmer Jimmy Doherty, thinks we should start eating squirrels.
He suggests the best way of cooking them would be barbecued with a little rosemary.
Squirrel isn't exactly my idea of dinner, but in a post-Apocalypse Brexit landscape it might be preferable to cannibalism.
We could even see a chain of Beatrix Potter-themed restaurants springing up across the country.
I suppose I could force down a Squirrel Nutkin kebab if I had to. But I'm not sure about squirrel tartare.
Two people have just been fined £600 for eating raw squirrel in front of a vegan food stall in London's Soho.
They said they were raising awareness about the dangers of not eating meat, but were convicted of causing distress and alarm to passers-by.
It may be an unconventional form of protest, but if militant vegans can firebomb hamburger restaurants why shouldn't carnivores stage their own counter demonstrations?
Let them eat squirrel!
Here's another one of those stories I thought I'd never read, let alone write. It comes courtesy of the Sunday Times, which reports:
'A 27-year-old Nottingham secretary has become the first white woman to develop Koro syndrome — usually suffered by African men — whereby people believe their genitals are disappearing.'
Someone at the Sunday Times has a sense of humour. The first edition story about the secretary was headlined: 'Female falls victim to Koro syndrome.'
By the third edition it had been changed to: 'Woman fears loss of personal items.'
Mellor's bad hair day
Did you see that photo of the Mellorphant Man in the Mail, wearing a collarless Nehru shirt and sporting a floppy, frosted hairdo? 
Someone remarked that he looked like the leader of one of those weird Waco-style cults.
On second glance, David Mellor is the spitting image of Isa, the nosy neighbour from BBC Scotland's brilliant sitcom Still Game.
A parrot with a Welsh accent has been rescued by police from a group of women who snatched him from a boat on the Thames.
The parrot, name of Rodney, sings Old MacDonald Had A Farm with what is described as a Welsh lilt.
Sounds like one for Simon Cowell. I wonder if Rodney knows The Green Green Grass Of Home?
Britain could face paying billions of pounds in damages to investors for leaving the EU single market, it has been claimed.
In a fresh challenge to Brexit, lawyers have warned that compensation could be due if company profits fall as we cut ties with the Brussels club.
The claims would be based on bilateral treaties between the UK and other countries that guarantee investors 'fair and equitable treatment'.
The government insists there would be any grounds for damages.

But Holger Hestermeyer, an international dispute resolution academic at King's College London and former staff member at the European Court of Justice, said the scale potentially far exceeded the £50billion 'divorce' bill being mooted by Brussels.
'The EU's so-called divorce bill has sparked much excitement,' he told The Times.
'It is insignificant, however, compared to the damages the UK might have to pay to investors if they successfully take the UK to court for damages they suffered because of Brexit.'
Britain has more than 90 bilateral investment treaties with countries such as Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.
The treaties reportedly protect investors by guaranteeing them 'fair and equitable treatment'. 
If the UK lost access to the EU single market as a result of Brexit, some lawyers argue, that would amount to a breach of the agreements.
More than 40 per cent of experts in investment law at a seminar entitled 'Can foreign investors sue the UK for Brexit?' agreed that they could.
Suzanne Spears, a partner at the specialist law firm Volterra Fietta which was involved in organising the event, told the newspaper: 'Any investor who invested in the UK probably assumed we'd stay in the EU. 
'If you came to the UK for access to the EU single market and beyond it via the EU's free-trade agreements with other countries, that market was huge.'
Luis González García, who has represented the Mexican government in past cases, said: 'I expect investors to have a go even if they know their chances of a successful claim are slim. I expect many claims.'

But a spokesman for the Department for International Trade said: 'The government does not believe that the UK's decision to leave the EU will provide grounds for valid legal claims under our bilateral investment treaties.'
 
Boris Johnson kicked off a Brexit row with Remainer Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today by defiantly telling her it was happening on October 31 whether she likes it or not.
On his first visit to Scotland, Mr Johnson told the SNP leader the UK would leave the EU on Halloween 'come what may'.
But his comments during a head-to-head in Edinburgh sparked a furious response, with the First Minister accusing him of secretly wanting a No Deal Brexit instead of a deal with Brussels.   
The Tory leader was booed by protesters as he arrived for the frosty talks in Edinburgh and jeered as he shook hands with the First Minister at her Bute House HQ. 
The less-than warm reception came after the premier promised to renew 'the ties that bind our United Kingdom' and unveiled plans to release £300million for 'growth deals'.
Downing Street also suggested he dismissed her demand for a second Scottish independence referendum. 
After the talks, a Number 10 spokesman said:  'The Prime Minister said he was a passionate believer in the power of the Union and he would work tirelessly to strengthen the United Kingdom and improve the lives of people right across Scotland.
'On Brexit, (he) said that while the government's preference is to negotiate a new deal which abolishes the anti-democratic backstop, the UK will be leaving the EU on October 31st come what may.' 
Mrs Sturgeon hit back by accusing Mr Johnson of wanting a No Deal Brexit and said his Government was 'dangerous' . 
'He says publicly - and he said it to me again today - that he wants a deal with the EU, but there is no clarity whatsoever about how he thinks he can get from the position now where he's taking a very hard line - the Withdrawal Agreement is dead, the backstop is dead,' she said.
'If I listen to all of that and listen to what's not being said as well as what is being said, I think that this is a Government that is pursuing a no-deal strategy, however much they may deny that in public.'  
Meanwhile Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who also met Mr Johnson, said she had urged him to take part in 'shuttle diplomacy' with the EU - after he ruled out meeting EU leaders until they agreed to remove the Irish border backstop fro the Withdrawal Agreement.  
Protests were held in Glasgow ahead of Mr Johnson's arrival to meet Ms Davidson, with opponents wielding posters of his face with the words: 'No thanks.'  
The visit came as Mr Johnson ramps up preparations for crashing out of the EU, after he solemnly vowed to take the UK out of the bloc by the end of October with or without an agreement. 
Ms Davidson said the talks with Mr Johnson had been 'incredibly constructive'. 
'We covered a number of areas, talking about Brexit, the need to make sure we can get a deal across the line, and I support the Prime Minister wholeheartedly in getting that deal,' she said.
'We've seen a dynamic first week - this is my third conversation with him and he's already up here, so he's clearly engaged and wanting to be engaged.
'He has a very clear idea of what he wants to do and how he wants to get it done.
'I think that judging by some of the issues we talked about today there's a real will there to support me in my aim to be able to have the UK Government deliver for Scots.' 
Speaking to reporters at Faslane, Mr Johnson said he was 'with' Ms Davidson in wanting to get a settlement with the EU - but insisted No Deal must happen if the bloc defies his call to rework the Irish border backstop. 
'It has been the policy of the Government for a long time now to prepare for no deal, and that is what we are going to do with high hearts and growing confidence, we will prepare for a no-deal Brexit,' he said.
'If our friends and partners in Brussels will not change the Withdrawal Agreement, if they will not accommodate the will of Parliament which has said three times now that they cannot accept the backstop, then obviously you would expect us to get ready and that is what we will do.'
But he appeared to contradict a claim from Brexit minister Michael Gove that No Deal is now the government's 'working assumption' and a 'very real possibility'.
He said he stood by his estimate during the Tory leadership campaign that the chances of leaving without an agreement are a 'million to one', and said his 'assumption is that we can get a new deal'.   
Mr Johnson is using today's visit to attempt to reassure Tory supporters that the defence of the Union is a priority. 
Last week, Mr Johnson followed through on a symbolic pledge to add the responsibility 'Minister for the Union' to the Prime Minister's official job title. 
Boris Johnson today insisted he still believes the chances of No Deal are a million to one.
The PM appeared to contradict Brexit minister Michael Gove, who has suggested it is now the government's 'working assumption'.
He said he was willing to go the extra 'thousands miles' to secure an agreement.
But he stressed that the UK will leave the EU in October if the bloc does not agree to ditch the backstop. 
And he said today: 'Our Union is the most successful political and economic union in history. We are a global brand and together we are safer, stronger and more prosperous.
'So as we prepare for our bright future after Brexit, it's vital we renew the ties that bind our United Kingdom.
'I'm proud to be in Scotland today to make clear that I am a passionate believer in our great Union, and I look forward to visiting Wales and Northern Ireland to ensure that every decision I make as Prime Minister promotes and strengthens our Union.'
The Scottish First Minister has warned she would demand a second independence referendum if Mr Johnson pressed ahead with a No Deal Brexit. 
Ms Sturgeon said today: 'The people of Scotland did not vote for this Tory Government, they didn't vote for this new Prime Minister, they didn't vote for Brexit and they certainly didn't vote for a catastrophic no-deal Brexit which Boris Johnson is now planning for.' 
She added: 'Boris Johnson has formed a hard-line Tory Government with one aim - to take Scotland and the UK out of the EU without a deal. 
'Scotland has been ignored throughout the Brexit process and it is now time for everyone who cares about the future of Scotland to come together to chart our own course and say to the Tories - stop driving our country towards disaster.' 
Mr Johnson hit out at the 'campaign to destroy the union' from the SNP - and while he refused to unequivocally rule out granting Holyrood permission for a second independence referendum, he said comments that the 2014 ballot was a 'once in a generation' event must be respected. 
Asked if he was ruling out a second referendum during his premiership, Mr Johnson said: 'It was a once in a generation consultation of the people, we did it in 2014 and the people were assured then that it was a once in a generation consultation. 
'I see no reason now for the politicians to go back on that promise.' 
Today: Boris Johnson has been in Scotland, where he pledged to protect the Union.
He has held talks with Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson. 
Meanwhile in London the new Brexit 'war Cabinet' is meeting - albeit without the PM. 
August 1: Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. 
Tory candidate Chris Davies is seeking to regain the seat he was ousted from by a recall petition triggered in the wake of his conviction for submitting false expenses claims. If he fails, the new prime minister's working majority in the Commons will be cut to just three. 
August 24: G7 Summit in Biarritz. The new prime minister's first appearance at a major global summit. 
Donald Trump will be among the world leaders at the gathering, potentially providing the opportunity for a meeting with the controversial US president in an effort to highlight the importance of the special relationship and a future trade deal. 
September: The UN General Assembly meeting in New York will provide another opportunity for the new prime minister to appear on the global stage and set out their vision for the country's place in the world. -
September 29 to October 2: Conservative Party Conference. 
The gathering in Manchester will be a key test of the new Tory leader's ability to unite the party and provides a platform to use their closing speech to address the nation. 
October 17-18: EU summit. This is the last schedule meeting of EU leaders before the UK is due to leave the bloc - although an emergency gathering could be called before or afterwards.
October 31: The deadline for reaching a Brexit deal. 
Unless there is a further extension, this will be the UK's last day as a member of the European Union and it will leave, with or without an agreement. 
Mr Johnson heaped praise on Ms Davidson, saying: 'I am lost in admiration at what she has achieved, I am a massive fan of the way she has taken the argument to those who would destroy our union.' 
The PM had separate meetings with the First Minister and Ms Davidson this afternoon after visiting HM Naval Base Clyde in Argyll. 
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Ms Davidson said she could not support a No Deal Brexit in any circumstances, pointing out that she is under no obligation to sign up to his timetable of taking the UK out of the EU by October 31.
She said the PM had her 'full support' in pursuing a revised deal which could ensure an orderly exit from the EU. But she added: 'Where I differ with the UK Government is on the question of a No Deal Brexit.
'When I was debating against the pro-Brexit side in 2016, I don't remember anybody saying we should crash out of the EU with no arrangements in place to help maintain the vital trade that flows uninterrupted between Britain and the European Union.
'I don't think the UK Government should pursue a No Deal Brexit, and if it comes to it, I won't support it.'
Ms Davidson, who played a key role in persuading Theresa May that a No Deal Brexit posed a risk to the Union, is expected to repeat the message to Mr Johnson.
Mr Johnson missed the first meeting of the Exit Strategy committee - known as XS - as he made his debut visit to Scotland.
No-deal planning supremo Michael Gove chaired the XS committee in his absence.
He will also lead meetings of the Daily Operations Committee, covering all aspects of the Government's preparations for leaving. 
Earlier, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab stepped up the rhetoric again by warning that Brussels was 'not the only game in town' for trade pacts, saying he would be focusing on strengthening ties with the US, Asia and Latin America. 
He said the 'stubborn' EU would be to blame if the UK ends up crashing out.  
Mr Raab said while there are no 'firm plans' yet, the Government will be using Parliament's summer recess to approach 'growth markets' in Asia, Latin America, and the US to push for future trade deals.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: 'I haven't set the firm plans yet, but that will include the US, Latin America, and Asia because the negotiation with the EU is crucially important and we would love to get a deal that is acceptable to the UK, but Brussels is not the only game in town.
'The opportunities of Brexit involve many of those growth markets of the future from Latin America to Asia, and we have got a US President who is speaking very warmly about this country.'
Fresh fears of a no-deal Brexit have sent the pound down to below $1.23 to hit its lowest level in more than two years. 
Sterling fell 1 per cent to $1.226, a level not seen since March 2017, when the UK triggered Article 50. It also fell against the euro, sliding 1 per cent to €1.1015. 
The recent slump in the pound is causing extra financial pain for Britons heading abroad at the start of the school summer holidays.
The pound has now fallen by 1.6 per cent since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister last week, when he boasted he would lead the UK out of the EU on October 31 with 'no ifs or buts'. It is more than 3 per cent lower than a month ago. 
He added: 'We'll keep straining every sinew if there is a deal to be done, but the EU will need to move and, if they don't, it is incredibly important that we are ready for eventualities.'
Brussels is 'not the only game in town' for future trade deals, the Government has said, while insisting that the UK should prepare for a no-deal Brexit despite opposition.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that, while there are no 'firm plans' yet, the Government will be using Parliament's summer recess to approach 'growth markets' in Asia, Latin America, and the US to push for future trade deals.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: 'I haven't set the firm plans yet, but that will include the US, Latin America, and Asia because the negotiation with the EU is crucially important and we would love to get a deal that is acceptable to the UK, but Brussels is not the only game in town.
'The opportunities of Brexit involve many of those growth markets of the future from Latin America to Asia, and we have got a US President who is speaking very warmly about this country.'
He added: 'We'll keep straining every sinew if there is a deal to be done, but the EU will need to move and, if they don't, it is incredibly important that we are ready for eventualities.'
He said the Government wants a good deal with the EU but that a 'series of fairly stubborn positions staked out by the EU' have made this difficult.
He said the Government has to be able to offer 'finality' for people by preparing for no-deal.
He said the Government wants a good deal with the EU but that a 'series of fairly stubborn positions staked out by the EU' have made this difficult.
He said the Government has to be able to offer 'finality' for people by preparing for no-deal.
Asked how he would deal with opposition to no-deal in Scotland, Mr Raab said: 'As unionists we are committed to respecting the democratic mandate of the referendum, which applied do the whole of the United Kingdom, and that was very clear.
'We, of course though, need to make sure that we assure all sectors of the economy and all regions of the United Kingdom, which is why the Prime Minister is up in Scotland today in the first of a series of visits around the Union.'
He added: 'The mandate certainly wasn't to leave the EU if the EU let us, it was an in out referendum, and we made clear, those on the campaign, that we should strive for a good deal but, if that wasn't available, that we should go on and make a success of Brexit.' 
A study by the Institute for Government today warns that Mr Johnson would have to impose direct rule in Northern Ireland after a No Deal Brexit because of the scale of the decisions required to be taken in the province, where the power-sharing assembly is suspended.
Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill warned ministers this year that such a move could lead to demands for a referendum on Irish unification and another poll on Scottish independence.
Mr Johnson has insisted that Brexit will reduce support for Scottish nationalism as the SNP would have to accept the euro to join the EU.
Today's £300million announcement provides funding for 'growth deals' in a areas including Falkirk, Argyll and Bute, south-west Northern Ireland, the Causeway coast and mid-Wales. 
Britain's largest business group has warned Britain and the EU are both unprepared for a No Deal Brexit.
The CBI, a staunch opponent of No Deal, has claimed that neither side is ready for October 31 and urged both London and Brussels to step up efforts to strike a deal. 
The organisation predicted that 24 of 27 areas of the UK economy would experience disruption.
Josh Hardie, the CBI's deputy director general, today compared No Deal to an approaching storm that would wreak destruction.  
The money is for such things as housing, transport, training and green growth.
Meanwhile, Britain's largest business group has warned Britain and the EU are both unprepared for a No Deal Brexit.
The CBI, a staunch opponent of No Deal, has claimed that neither side is ready for October 31 and urged both London and Brussels to step up efforts to strike a deal. 
The organisation predicted that 24 of 27 areas of the UK economy would experience disruption.
Josh Hardie, the CBI's deputy director general, today compared No Deal to an approaching storm that would wreak destruction.  
He told the Today programme: 'If you see a storm coming, you put down the sandbags. It doesn't mean you're going to stop all the flood water, you'll probably still lose the kitchen but you might save the bedroom and that's where we are right now.
He added: 'A deal is absolutely essential if we're to manage the economy in the best way that we can'.
 
Nicola Sturgeon took a step closer to triggering a major constitutional crisis today warning it was 'very likely' the Scottish Government would refuse to agree flagship Brexit laws.
The First Minister said Westminster's current offer on devolution after Brexit was still not good enough.
The Scottish Parliament must normally pass a 'legislative consent motion' for the EU Withdrawal Bill to become law and Ms Sturgeon has repeatedly warned she will not move a motion without new safeguards.
Ministers in Westminster can technically press ahead with the laws - which copy EU rules into British law ahead of exit day - without Scottish permission.
But doing so would be unprecedented since devolution and would trigger a major row between London and Edinburgh. 
Ms Sturgeon has separately launched her own set of laws in Scotland that would mirror the Westminster legislation with extra safeguards for devolution.
The First Minister has done so despite the Scottish Parliament's presiding officer - the equivalent of Commons Speaker John Bercow - saying it is outside Holyrood's powers. Ms Sturgeon has the support of Scotland's top law officer. 
Cabinet minister David Lidington on Monday said the UK Government had committed to the devolved administrations the 'vast majority' of powers returning from Brussels will start off in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast rather than Whitehall.
Downing Street today it had made a 'considerable offer' to the Scottish Government and would continue to work on finding an agreement. 
But Ms Sturgeon said Holyrood is simply trying to protect the powers that the Scottish Parliament already has over areas such as agriculture, fishing, environmental policy, food standards, justice and health.
She told BBC Radio 4: 'After Brexit, in terms of the devolution settlement, those powers should return to the Scottish Parliament and it should be up to us how we exercise them.
'What the Withdrawal Bill seeks to do is restrict and constrain the ability of the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly to legislate in these devolved areas .
'Westminster effectively wants to be able to impose uniformity in these areas and that's not acceptable in terms of the broad sweep and fundamentals of the devolution settlement.'
Speaking later at the Association of British Insurers's Conference, Ms Sturgeon insisted: 'We've been trying to avoid getting into the position where we can't recommend consent to the Withdrawal Bill, which the devolved administrations have got to do.
'We've put down amendments, we've been talking for months to the UK Government to try to get a compromise, we even drafted what that compromise looks like and they've failed to really do what needs to be done to get an agreement.'
Ms Sturgeon welcomed Jeremy Corbyn's announcement on Monday that Labour would seek to form a 'new and comprehensive' UK-EU customs union to ensure tariff-free trade after Brexit as 'movement' and said she hopes Labour is on a journey towards embracing a single market/customs union outcome.
She said there is a chance of seeing a majority in the House of Commons that could keep the UK in the single market and the customs union.
However, she said there is equally a 'very real risk' that the UK could 'crash out' of the EU without a deal.
 
Nigel Farage's election campaign backfired last night as he was abandoned by three candidates and one of his financial backers.
The Brexit Party leader accused the Tories of arrogance after Jacob Rees-Mogg urged him not to split the Leave vote.
But as Mr Farage unveiled more than 600 candidates he is fielding across the country, he faced a backlash from his own supporters.
Two candidates withdrew over fears that the Brexit Party could prevent Boris Johnson getting a majority, while a third dropped out for personal reasons.
Meanwhile, one of the Brexit Party's donors revealed he would support the Tories at the election, warning that Mr Farage risked hindering the Brexit cause.
Property developer Jeffrey Hobby, who donated £10,000 to Mr Farage's party ahead of the European Parliament elections in May, said he believed Mr Johnson was doing a 'fantastic job'. 
He added: 'It is a shame if Nigel Farage wants to take him on across the country, I don't think that is helpful for the Brexit Party, the Tory Party or the cause.
'For the Brexit Party to field candidates across all seats seems a waste of resources and not the wisest move.'
Mr Farage wants Mr Johnson to abandon his Brexit deal, but Mr Hobby said that while it was not 'ideal', backing it was 'probably the most pragmatic position', adding: 'There is a real need to move forward, get behind the deal and accept that you can pick holes in any deal but it probably does the job it needs to.'
Adding to Mr Farage's woes, Paul Brothwood, his candidate for Dudley South in the West Midlands, quit yesterday and endorsed local Tory MP Mike Wood. 
Mr Brothwood said he was 'confident that Boris Johnson is the best person to stand up for Britain'.
Stephen Peddie, who was due to stand in Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, also announced he was withdrawing, accusing Mr Farage of pursuing a 'fantastical and dangerous strategy' and warning that the Brexit Party was 'evolving from a national asset to a national threat'.
He added: 'We have a Brexit only because of Farage – that doesn't make it his to destroy along with our country.
'I've quit in exasperation. I suspect I'm far from alone.'
Dan Day-Robinson, who was standing in Devizes, Wiltshire, said he was quitting because his partner was pregnant.
Mr Farage accused Tory Brexiteers of being 'good little boys' yesterday by falling into line behind Mr Johnson.
He said he had abandoned any idea of an electoral pact with Mr Johnson, adding: 'What is the point? Jacob said we should stand aside and just allow him to betray us nice and slowly. It is ludicrous. Their attitude to the Brexit Party is arrogant and conceited.'
Mr Rees-Mogg was among senior Tories who criticised Mr Farage's plan to run more than 600 candidates. The Commons Leader insisted Mr Johnson's deal represented a 'complete Brexit', and called on Mr Farage to recognise the campaign to leave the EU had been a success.
Speaking of Mr Farage, he told LBC: 'It would be a great shame if he carries on fighting after he has already won to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.'
Nigel Farage today said he will be mothballing the Brexit Party so that he can bring it back if Boris Johnson makes a 'mess' of the UK's departure from the European Union. 
Mr Farage claimed his latest political vehicle could go down in history as the 'shortest lived but most successful party ever' after it helped guide Britain towards it split from Brussels. 
Meanwhile, the veteran Eurosceptic left the door open to appearing on reality television programmes like I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here now that his time as an MEP is coming to an end. 
However, he conceded the British public's love hate relationship with him would likely result in him being on 'every bloomin' [bush tucker] trial there is'.
Mr Farage said it was 'unbelievable' to see the UK about to leave the EU after he spent his entire political life fighting for it. 
Britain will cease to have any MEPs on January 31 when Britain's divorce from Brussels finally goes through. 
Asked what the point of the Brexit Party was now that the split is actually happening, Mr Farage told ITV's This Morning programme: 'What I'll do now is put it [The Brexit Party} on care and maintenance, just in case they make a mess of it.
'In 2016, I actually believed that Mrs May was going to do the thing properly… I was wrong, so I'm not going to close it [the Brexit Party] down. 
'But I think the truth of it is that Boris Johnson knows that he has got a big Parliamentary majority. If he goes soft on this he'd lose in five years time. I'm actually quite optimistic.'
Mr Farage added: 'History may say it [the Brexit Party] was the shortest lived but most successful party ever.'
The Brexit Party leader was asked what he plans to do next now that the goal of his life's work is coming to fruition. 
He suggested he was open to appearing on I'm A Celebrity as he said: 'Well, you never know!
'I don't know. The jungle have been after me a couple of times, they have.'
He said he had not been tempted to appear on the show in the past because of his political ambitions but suggested post-Brexit that could change.  
'No, because the Brexit thing wasn't done and I thought I've got to stick around,' he said. 
'It is done now. I'd be on every bloomin' trial there is! Because the problem with having an opinion is, whilst some people love you, a lot don't.'
Mr Farage also hinted he is open to taking part on Strictly Come Dancing - 'let's see what comes' - but categorically ruled out an appearance on Dancing On Ice.
Asked if he can ice skate, he said: 'No, I'm not doing that! Absolutely not doing that.
'We'll see what life brings. I was once quite normal, I had a business, young family. I got involved in politics, this was my cause. 
'I'm just going to spend a bit of time after 1st February just reflecting that a big chapter of my life is over. I'll take the time.'
Nigel Farage has shared a letter on Twitter he says is from a 10-year-old boy claiming his school is 'brain-washing' him in to being 'pro-EU'.
The letter, from Matthew, who says he is 'a ten-year-old boy', starts 'I am writing to express my gratitude to you and your party'.
The Brexit Party leader shared a photograph to Twitter saying: 'An amazing letter received from fellow leaver Matthew, who is 10 years old.'
It reads: 'Without you the Leave Voters would have nobody to represent their opinions as the majority of MPs in parliament want to ignore democracy and overturn the referendum result. 
'At my school they try and brain wash us to be pro-EU but me and my friend Jim (fellow leaver) know their tricks. 
'Many thanks and good luck. From Matthew.'
The young schoolboy seems to have taken the time to write a letter in his neatest handwriting — but Twitter users are not convinced. 
Robert Webb, a comedy writer and performer according to his Twitter bio, wrote: 'Amazing indeed. I just wonder which decade Matthew was taught to write his 'f's. 
'Anyway, good old Matthew and Jim. And presumably if he's impressed with this, Farage is now in favour of votes at 16. Great. Bring it on.'
Another tweet, from Kate Wilton, read: 'That letter is not from a ten-year-old Brexit supporter.
'For starters he uses the correct use of their and can spell Parliament and democracy, something most Brexit Party supporting adults clearly struggle with.'
Another Twitter user was ready to believe the letter was real — but only if it had been signed off with a girl's name.
Arzy Del wrote: 'If he'd made it to be from a girl, it might just be believable, but no ten-year-old boy writes that neatly!' 
Others agreed the handwriting was 'far too near'. Zazkia said: 'Even their writing is far too neat. 
'At that age my writing looked like a spider fell in to a pot of ink and ran across the paper.' 
The letter, dated May 22, 2019, claimed Nigel Farage was the voice of the 17.4million British people who voted Leave.
It comes just days after the Brexit Party leader said he would make an election pact with the Tories — but only if Boris Johnson pushes through No Deal by Halloween.
The Brexit Party leader softened his stance against an arrangement that could stave off the threat from Jeremy Corbyn in dozens of seats across the country.
Tory donors are believed to be pushing for an agreement that Mr Farage's fledgling party will not split the vote by running against Eurosceptics. 
In return, the Tories could stand aside in northern metropolitan areas where the Brexit Party has a better chance of defeating Labour.
Mr Farage said earlier this week that he did not 'trust' PM in-waiting Mr Johnson enough, but now says he could support him if he takes a tough line on Brexit.  
Nigel Farage warned of violence on the streets if Brexit is denied as he engaged in angry clashes with Gina Miller on live TV today.
The businesswoman and former model insisted the Ukip leader should be her 'biggest fan' because her High Court case had restored power to parliament.
But Mr Farage hit back by warning of riots if the outcome of the historic EU referendum result was not implements, asking her: 'What part of the word "leave" don't you understand?'
The explosive exchanges came as the pair appeared together on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme this morning.
The shock High Court judgement last week is threatening to tear apart Theresa May's timetable for cutting ties with Brussels.
The judges endorsed the case brought by Ms Miller and Remain supporters allies that the PM cannot invoke Article 50 - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU - without votes in parliament.
The government has argued that it is able to launch the process using ancient Royal Prerogative powers, which are used for actions such as taking the country to war. 
The case is now slated for a dramatic showdown in the Supreme Court next month, which could potentially shape the future of the country. If ministers are forced to pass legislation MPs and peers are expected to fight a rearguard action to limit the scope of Brexit and keep us in the single market. 
Mrs May insisted today that she disagreed with the verdict, and saying that she was determined to implement the will of the people 'in full'.
Speaking today, Ms Miller told Mr Farage he should be her 'biggest fan'. 
But the Ukip leader retorted: 'I just want to ask her what part of the word leave don't you understand?' 
Ms Miller shot back: 'Have you read the case?'
Mr Farage pressed Ms Miller over whether she wants the UK to remain part of the single market, prompting her to reply: 'I'm not the politician here. I'm the person who saw the elephant in the room, which is there's no legal certainty.
'You should actually be my biggest fan because I've just created the legal certainty so that Theresa May can now, rather than appealing, go ahead, have the debate and leave - not interrupt her timetable.'
Mr Farage accused Ms Miller of giving those in Parliament who argue the referendum does not mean Britain should leave the single market 'the chance, effectively, to overturn' Mrs May's wish and mandate her.
He added: 'If that happens, you will have stirred up, I think, the biggest political upset we've ever seen... 
'This is not about whether Parliament is sovereign, it's about whether the British people are sovereign.
'That's the real argument here and for you as a pro-EU supporter to talk about parliamentary sovereignty in Britain is a bit rich, isn't it?' 

Mr Farage said: 'We may have seen Bob Geldof and 40,000 people in Parliament Square moaning about Brexit,' he said.
'But believe you me if people in this country think that they're going to be cheated, they're going to be betrayed, then we will see political anger the likes of which none of us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed in this country.
Asked whether that could mean 'disturbances in the street', he replied: 'Yeah, I think that's right.'
Ms Miller said it was 'misdirection' to claim that the decision was unpicking parliamentary sovereignty.
'The case is that she cannot use something called the Royal Prerogative to do it because we do not live in a tin-pot dictatorship.'
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was 'highly unlikely' the Commons would seek to block Brexit by voting against the triggering of Article 50.
But he warned that MPs and peers could undermine Mrs May's negotiating position by trying to get her to spell out her priorities.
'Our concern is a more fundamental one, which is if you are a Remainer and you are worried about the decision taken by the British people - I was a Remainer until June 23 - and you are worried about the impact on the economy, the impact on the economy will be far worse if through some parliamentary mechanisms Theresa May is forced to lay out her entire negotiating strategy,' he told the Marr show.
'And there's a confusion here – parliament passes laws, it always has, but governments negotiate treaties. And the reason parliament can't negotiate treaties is because you can't decide an international treaty by a simply vote of MPs.
'There is another party involved there is negotiation, there is to and fro and in that situation you have to give the Government latitude to make a deal.'
Mr Hunt signalled similar concerns to Mr Farage about the threat of unrest if the referendum result was not honoured.  
'For people who are worried about the impact of Brexit on the economy or whatever else it is, the damage to the fabric of our democracy will be far, far worse if people felt the establishment was trying to unpick a decision that was made,' he said. 

And he attempted to cool mounting speculation that Mrs May could opt to call a snap general election if parliament frustrates the Brexit process.
'I think a general election is, frankly, the last thing that the Government wants. Theresa May wants to get on with the job, and frankly it's the last thing that the British people want, with all these very, very important national decisions. I think because of that, I think it is highly unlikely that parliament would not, in the end, back a decision to trigger Article 50,' he said. 

It was the night when the behaviour of our MPs provoked levels of chaos never before seen in the mother of Parliaments.
After a week of late-night votes, furious Brexit rows and insults hurled across the Chamber, the Commons was formally ‘prorogued’ – or closed – until October 14.
But Opposition MPs then staged a ‘ludicrous playground stunt’ in the House of Commons in protest.
About a dozen MPs, including members of Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench, held up signs saying ‘Silenced’ in the early hours of yesterday morning and shouted ‘shame on you’.
Amid farcical scenes that reminded observers of punch-ups in foreign legislatures, they also made a show of trying to hold Speaker John Bercow by his legs in his chair to prevent the prorogation ceremony from taking place.
Footage of the incident shows one Commons official hauling Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle away from the Speaker. 
Also involved were Labour frontbenchers Dawn Butler and Clive Lewis and Green MP Caroline Lucas. Officials then stood beside the Speaker’s chair to block access.
Yesterday Tory MPs condemned the student-style protest – which happened just minutes after Labour, Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists once again refused to back a snap election.
Defence minister Johnny Mercer said the MPs were being ‘spiteful, rowdy, dishonest and unwilling to submit themselves to a public who pay their wages’. 
Culture minister Nigel Adams branded the protest a ‘ludicrous playground stunt’.
Conservative backbencher Bob Seely said the situation was an ‘utter farce’. Labour’s John Mann agreed, describing the behaviour as a ‘pantomime’.
How the night of shame unfolded:
Shortly after 12.30 on Tuesday morning, MPs vote on a motion for an early election. 
Before the vote, Boris Johnson accuses Labour and other Opposition parties of ‘preposterous cowardice’ for opposing the move and accused Mr Corbyn of ‘dither and delay’. 
In the vote, 293 MPs back the motion and 46 vote against with vast numbers of abstentions. 
The motion passes but fails to reach the two-thirds threshold required by the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. The prorogation ceremonials then begin.
Sarah Clarke, who holds the ancient office of Black Rod, enters the Commons chamber shortly before 1.20am, having walked from the Lords. 
She is heckled as she delivers the message that Parliament will be prorogued and when she calls for MPs to come to the Lords, as is tradition, Opposition politicians bellow ‘No!’
At the same time, a dozen MPs, including Labour frontbenchers, gather by the Speaker’s chair, holding up slightly pathetic pieces of paper with ‘Silenced’ written on them and chanting ‘shame on you’. 
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle holds down the Speaker’s legs to try to keep him in his chair. 
With the House in uproar, a scuffle ensues. Eventually the doorkeepers – Commons staff – are forced to intervene to haul the MPs out of the way.
After delaying his speech, thereby allowing the pantomime to play out, Mr Bercow takes on a mournful tone. 
He declares his ‘respect’ for Black Rod and says he recognises ‘our presence is desired’. 
‘They are doing what they believe to be right and I recognise my role in this matter.’ 
One Tory MP shouts: ‘Oh, I can’t deal with this!’ sparking a sharp slapdown from Mr Bercow. 
The Speaker then launches into a lengthy condemnation of the suspension, calling it ‘one of the longest for decades’ and an ‘act of executive fiat’. 
One Tory bellows: ‘Do your job, for which you’re handsomely paid.’
After milking every second of the spotlight, Bercow finally succumbs to the inevitable and gets down from his chair. 
But not before he says he ‘completely understands’ why ‘large numbers of members are much more comfortable staying where they are’. 
It’s clear he is aware of MPs’ plans to stay in their seats in protest instead of walking to the Lords with him. 
He leaves the chamber to applause from Labour and other Opposition MPs. SNP leader Ian Blackford cravenly leaps off his seat to shake the Speaker’s hand when he passes.
While the Government benches empty and MPs walk to the Lords, Opposition MPs stay in their seats and start singing. 
Labour MPs opt for the socialist anthem The Red Flag, while Scottish Nationalists sing Scots Wha Hae and Welsh MPs sing Bread of Heaven. 
Remain MPs also hum the EU anthem, Ode to Joy. When Mr Bercow comes back from the Lords, he is greeted with a standing ovation. Their hero had returned!
Standing at the clerk’s desk in front of the Speaker’s chair, Mr Bercow puts on his best sad face and announces that Parliament has been prorogued until Monday, October 14. 
MPs shout ‘shame’. The vast majority of Tories show their contempt for the Speaker by not returning to the chamber. 
Usually MPs of all parties shake hands with each other and the Speaker at prorogation. 
Instead, Mr Corbyn leads Labour MPs to shake hands with Mr Bercow, and the two men enjoy a friendly chat.
My party is a disgrace... by veteran ex Labour MP! 
By Ian Austin MP for the Daily Mail 
I did not leave the Labour party to join another party – I left the Labour party to shine a spotlight on the disgrace it has become under the Leader of the Opposition’s leadership and because I regard myself as proper, decent, traditional Labour, not like the extremists who have taken over this party and are dragging it into the mud. That is the point I am going to make in this debate.
These are people – the Leader of the Opposition, the Shadow Chancellor – who have spent their entire time in politics working with and defending all sorts of extremists, and in some cases terrorists and anti-Semites. We should remember what these people said about the IRA.
It might be ancient history to the Labour party’s new young recruits, but many people will never forget how they supported terrorists responsible for horrific carnage in a brutal civil war that saw people blown up in pubs and hotels and shopping centres.
A few weeks after the IRA blew up a hotel in Brighton and murdered five people at the Tory party conference, the Leader of the Opposition invited two suspected IRA terrorists to Parliament. When the man responsible for planting that bomb was put on trial, he protested outside the court.
The Shadow Chancellor said that “those people involved in the armed struggle” – people he said had used “bombs and bullets”– should be honoured. And they have the brass neck to lecture anybody about the rule of law! What a disgrace.
This is a debate about whether politicians can be trusted to obey the rule of law, and there is not a single Labour figure in the past – not a single one – who would have backed violent street protest, as the Shadow Chancellor did when he called for “insurrection” to “bring down” the Government, or praised rioters who he said had “kicked the s***” out of the Conservative Party’s offices.
After a Labour MP said he should join the Tories Mr Austin added:
She might not want to hear it, but I will tell her this: I am here because voters in Dudley North sent me here to represent them, and none of my views have changed on any of the things I stand up for: decency in politics, the rule of law. And everybody in Dudley knew exactly what I thought of these people at the last election. And I will tell the honourable lady this: I will make absolutely certain she is going to have to answer to her voters for these points at the next election.
No other senior figure in the Labour Party’s history would have joked about lynching a female member of parliament. These people do not believe in the rule of law abroad, either. They always back the wrong side, whether it is the IRA, Hamas or Hezbollah, who they describe as friends. No previous Labour leader would have supported brutal totalitarian dictatorships like the ones in Cuba or Venezuela that have no regard whatsoever for the rule of law.
No previous Labour leadership would have allowed a party with a proud history of fighting racial prejudice to have been poisoned by racism – which is what has happened under these people – against Jewish people, to the extent that members have been arrested on suspicion of racial hatred, and the party itself has become the first in history to be investigated under equalities laws by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
These people, and the people around them, are a million miles away from the traditional mainstream, decent politics of the Labour party. They have poisoned what was once a great party with extremism, and they cannot be trusted with the institutions that underpin our democracy. They are completely unfit to lead the Labour party, let alone our country.
Boris Johnson will make his comeback at Tory party conference next month - just as Brexit negotiations reach their climax.
The former Foreign Secretary has agreed to give a keynote speech at a fringe event during the four-day gathering in Birmingham, the Daily Mail has learnt.
His decision to speak comes after party chiefs last week launched disciplinary proceedings against him over his comments on the burka.
The intervention will prove a nightmare for Theresa May as she attempts to unite the party faithful around her Chequers plan.
The conference will take place as Brexit talks will be at a crucial stage.
Just ten days before the annual event kicks off on 30 September, Mrs May will fly to Salzburg for a meeting of EU leaders where they hope to make a breakthrough.
Both the UK and Brussels have said they are aiming to get a deal agreed in October.
Mr Johnson's comeback will snatch attention from Mrs May at the critical moment. Downing Street had hoped the Prime Minister and her Cabinet would be able to use the conference to sell her Brexit plan directly to party members. So far many rank-and-file Tories have shown reluctance to get behind the proposals.
Mr Johnson has largely avoided speaking on Brexit since he resigned as Foreign Secretary last month, days after the Cabinet agreed to the Chequers plan.
In his bombshell resignation letter, he warned Mrs May that the Brexit 'dream is dying' and claimed her plan would mean Britain taking on 'the status of a colony'.
But since then his remarks on the subject have been limited and allies say he has decided to take a vow of silence on the issue over the summer.
However, it is expected that Mr Johnson will find it impossible to resist setting out his views about Brexit during his speech to party members. Mr Johnson has so far agreed to take part in one fringe event, with discussions ongoing about possible further appearances.
 Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg became one of the main stars of last year's conference as he attracted huge crowds to a series of speeches he made on the fringe.
Allies of the Prime Minister will be concerned the platform will give Mr Johnson an opportunity to rally support amongst the membership ahead of a potential leadership bid.
A friend of Mr Johnson last night said: 'Boris has always been the biggest draw. He will make the fringe meeting look like the conference hall - and the conference hall look like a fringe meeting.'
Party chiefs are currently facing pressure from both Tory grandees and the grassroots to halt disciplinary proceedings against Mr Johnson over comments he made about the burka.
The party launched an investigation into Mr Johnson last Thursday after it received a number of complaints about a newspaper article in which he compared Muslim women who wear the face-veils to 'letter boxes' and 'bank robbers'.
Party chairman Brandon Lewis and the Prime Minister both demanded that Mr Johnson apologise for the remarks, but he has refused.
Several opinion polls and surveys have shown the public largely support Mr Johnson over the row.
Nissan threatened to close its operations in the UK unless it received guarantees that it would not lose out from Brexit, it was claimed last night.
The Japanese car giant warned ministers that production would be switched to plants in France and Spain unless they gave assurances that its competitive position would not be damaged by Britain leaving the EU, it was reported.
The move could have led to the closure of the firm’s flagship plant in Sunderland, costing 7,000 jobs and creating a political crisis for the Government.
It was averted after Theresa May agreed ‘support and assurances’ with Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn this month, which were formalised by Business Secretary Greg Clark in a letter following further talks in Japan, sources told the Financial Times.
Nissan and No 10 both denied that the potential closure of Sunderland was discussed directly by Mrs May and Mr Ghosn.
But the revelations about Nissan’s hardball tactics will fuel speculation about the nature of the guarantees offered by Britain.
Mr Clark is now set to be hauled before MPs over Labour claims he offered ‘bribes’ to Nissan to stay in the UK. Mr Clark did not deny he had offered written assurances to the firm in a letter. But he told BBC Question Time that no financial favours were offered, insisting: ‘There’s no cheque book. I don’t have a cheque book.’
The car manufacturer announced on Thursday it will increase production at its flagship Sunderland plant. The investment, which will see the new Qashqai and X-Trail models built in the North East, was hailed by Mrs May as a major boost for the economy.
It will also secure the future of the plant and see production expand.
But ministers were last night under mounting pressure to ‘come clean’ about the exact nature of the promises made to the company.
Labour business spokesman Clive Lewis said: ‘Public chaos and secret backroom deals are not going to sustain business confidence.
‘Does the Government have an industrial strategy or is the plan just to hand out bribes?’
Iain Wright, Labour chairman of the Commons business committee, welcomed the Nissan deal, but said Mr Clark would be summoned to explain what inducements were offered to the firm.
He said: ‘In terms of transparency, in respect of how Government will intervene and provide that reassurance and support, I do think that’s important.’
But Downing Street said there was ‘no compensation package’ offered to Nissan, adding that there was ‘nothing about tariffs’ in the assurances offered to the firm. Nissan also denied it had received any sort of ‘special deal’ from the Government.
But former business minister Anna Soubry, who had extensive dealings with Nissan until she was sacked this summer, said she would be ‘very surprised’ if the firm had acted without guarantees that the Government would offset any tariffs.
Miss Soubry, an outspoken supporter of EU membership, said she met Nissan on June 30, a week after the Brexit vote, and that the company expressed ‘profound concerns’, about tariffs, and had suggested production could be relocated to a Renault plant in France.
‘They made it very clear that without a guarantee that they would not be subject to tariffs or if they were subject to tariffs the Government would do something to mitigate the damage of tariffs,’ she added.
‘Without that, they told me, my understanding actually was that they would go to Renault because they clearly had the capacity there.’
No 10 refused to confirm that assurances to Nissan were written down in a letter.
A spokesman said only that ministers used ‘all forms of communication’ to discuss Nissan’s concerns.
But it is understood Mr Clark did offer written assurances to the firm ahead of this week’s announcement.
It is thought they included guarantees that the Government’s new industrial strategy would include focus on investment in research into new technologies, including electric cars.
No 10 today insisted Theresa May has met Michael Heseltine hours after he claimed otherwise in an extraordinary public row.
In bizarre scenes, Lord Heseltine announced his own firing last night and today claimed he had never met the Prime Minister despite the pair sharing decades at the top of the Conservative Party.
Mrs May's official spokesman thanked the former Cabinet member for his service in a series of unpaid advisory roles but said his rebellion over the Brexit Bill was not compatible with Government policy.
The sacking was carried out by the Lords chief whip and Mrs May will not send a personal letter, as is convention when ministers are fired.  
Lord Heseltine today insisted he had no regrets over rebelling against the party line by backing calls for a 'meaningful' vote on the final Brexit deal last night.






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The Prime Minister suffered a second defeat over the legislation to authorise the triggering of our EU divorce last night.  
Peers backed Lord Heseltine's controversial cross party amendment by a majority of 98, voting 366 to 268 in favour, prompting fury from Brexit Secretary David Davis.
He accused peers of trying to 'frustrate' Britain's exit from the European Union and insisted the Government intends to overturn the result.

Lord Heseltine was asked to help the Government with plans to restore deprived estates under David Cameron and he also worked with George Osborne on plans for east London.
He advised on plans for a Swansea city deal and has been working with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The peer was also a national infrastructure commissioner.



Lord Heseltine said he was forced to abandon dinner with his wife to receive his marching orders from chief whip Lord Taylor of Holbeach after the vote and debate on the Brexit Bill, in which he warned that quitting the European Union was the 'most momentous peacetime decision of our time'.
The former deputy prime minister said he knew there could be consequences if he rebelled but he was not warned that he could lose his roles advising the Government on a number of areas, including its industrial strategy.
He said: 'I heard nothing from Number 10, I've had no relationship with Number 10 since the new Prime Minister (Mrs May).
'But I'm not complaining, I was getting on with the job that I was doing.'
He refused to comment on suggestions that his sacking was designed to intimidate Tory MPs who are considering rebelling when the 'meaningful vote' amendment comes back to the Commons on Monday.
'I've never met Theresa May and so I can't make a judgment. She's doing very well in the post, public opinion approves of what she is doing, and so I'm not going to get involved in a sort of tit-tat of personalities,' he said.
'My preoccupation has been from the very beginning that I believe that the referendum result is the most disastrous peacetime result that we've seen in this country.'
Mrs May's official spokesman today insisted: 'My understanding is that the Prime Minister has met Lord Heseltine. The idea that they've not met - I don't think that's right.'
The spokesman added: 'The Government has a clearly-stated, consistent position that the EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill should be passed without amendment. This bill has a simple purpose, to trigger Article 50.
'Lord Heseltine, who held a number of government advisory positions, voted against the official position of the Government. The Chief Whip in the House of Lords therefore asked him to stand down from those roles.
'The Government would like to warmly thank Lord Heseltine for his service.'

The peer led the fight for the amendment last night as he warned the final Brexit deal was 'totally unpredictable' and the referendum mandate was not unlimited.
He was later told Prime Minister Theresa May was firing him from his roles advising the Government on a number of areas, including its industrial strategy. 


The peer said he was sorry his expertise would no longer be used by the Government but insisted it was Parliament's duty to protect the country's legacy for future generations.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Lord Heseltine said he had 'never met' Mrs May - although he praised her for 'doing well in the polls'.
He said he had been working 'three to four days a week' for the government for the past six years. But the peer insisted he had little choice but to follow his Europhile principles.
'The point comes in life when you have to do what you think is right,' Lord Heseltine said.


But Brexit supporters warned the amendment, which demands Parliament has the right to send Mrs May back to Brussels for a better deal, would damage the Government's ability to negotiate. 
Lord Forsyth, another ex-Cabinet minister, warned him not to challenge the authority of the Commons, which voted in favour of Article 50, telling him: 'It' s not the moment to grab the Mace'.
This was a reference to the famous moment in 1976 when Heseltine, then a shadow minister, seized the Commons regalia and waved it at the Labour benches after they celebrated a single-vote victory in controversial circumstances.
Michael Heseltine was the most prominent, controversial, outspoken and effective senior politician of the 1980s and 1990s who never became prime minister.
He was the darling of the Tory faithful - particularly the Conservative ladies - with his streaming golden locks and his passionate, over-the-top speeches at party conferences.
But he is best known for his role in toppling Margaret Thatcher from power, only cruelly to be denied the fulfilment of his searing ambition - to replace her in 10 Downing Street. He was the very-nearly-but-not-quite man of British politics.
The Thatcherites who live on in the Conservative Party never forgave him for engineering Mrs Thatcher's downfall.
The ambition to be prime minister never deserted him, although the heart attack he suffered in Venice in June 1993 effectively ended any lingering hope that he would get there.
In 2016 he again hit the headlines in a rather bizarre fashion - having to deny killing his mother's dog.
And in January he was fined £5,000 after knocking a cyclist off his bike.  
Mrs May will demand MPs overturn any changes to the Bill when it returns to the Commons on Monday.
The Prime Minister will hope her decisive action will discourage potential Tory rebel MPs. 
The legislation, which hands the Prime Minister power to start official Brexit talks, is expected to be law by the middle of next week regardless of defeat tonight.
After the vote, Mr Davis said: 'It is disappointing that the House of Lords has chosen to make further changes to a Bill that the Commons passed without amendment.
'It has a straightforward purpose - to enact the referendum result and allow the Government to get on with negotiating a new partnership with the EU.
'It is clear that some in the Lords would seek to frustrate that process, and it is the Government's intention to ensure that does not happen. We will now aim to overturn these amendments in the House of Commons.' 

In his speech, Lord Heseltine said he backed triggering Article 50 in response to the Brexit referendum.
And he praised the Prime Minister's handling of the post referendum period and the formation of her Government.
But of the referendum result, Lord Heseltine said: 'I do not accept that the mandate runs for all time and in all circumstances.
'The 48 per cent have the same right to be heard.' 
He went on: 'We now face a protracted period of negotiation. No-one has the first idea of what will emerge.
'No-one can even tell us what governments in Europe will be there to conclude whatever deal emerges.
'No-one can say with certainty how British public opinion will react to totally unpredictable events.'
The peer understood it would take 1,600 regulations to 'unravel over 40 years of closer union'.
He said: 'Everyone in this House knows that we now face the most momentous peacetime decision of our time.
'And this amendment secures in law the Government's commitment ... to ensure that Parliament is the ultimate custodian of our national sovereignty.
'It ensures that Parliament has the critical role in determining the future that we will bequeath to generations of young people.'

Leading Brexiteer Lord Lawson admitted the prospects of getting a deal within the two year Article 50 process were slim.
The former Chancellor said: 'No agreement is by far and away the most likely outcome.
'A bad agreement is all that is likely to be on offer.'
Moving the cross party amendment Lord Pannick - who represented Gina Miller in the Supreme Court case that forced the Bill to be brought - said: 'The purpose of this amendment is very simple.
The Lords finished its scrutiny on the Brexit Bill with its report and third reading stages last night.
The debate saw detailed discussion on a new set of amendments before a final vote on the principle of the legislation, which is about triggering Article 50.
The Government was defeated on EU nationals as well as on the call for a 'meaningful vote', so the BIll is returning to the Commons for further debate.
This is due to happen on Monday and MPs will spend about an hour discussing the Lords amendments.
If they reject them as planned, the Bill will 'ping pong' back to the Lords.
Peers are expected to then back down, meaning the legislation can be sent to the Queen for Royal Assent, making it law.  
'It is to ensure that at the end of the negotiating process the approval of Parliament is required for the terms of our withdrawal from the EU.'
He said the Prime Minister's commitment to such a vote should be written into the Bill 'no ifs and no buts'.
The Labour-led amendment, tabled with Lib Dem and crossbench support, also required the approval of both Houses if the Prime Minister decided that the UK should leave the EU without agreement on the terms.
Holding a second referendum on the final Brexit deal would add to the nation's divisions and 'deepen the bitterness', the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.
The Most Rev Justin Welby said last June's vote on leaving the EU has exposed deep splits within society and stressed the need to find 'a level of national reconciliation'.
He also cautioned the Government against any temptation to 'oversimplify' the process, arguing it would be 'dangerous and unwise and wrong' to reduce the terms of divorce from Brussels 'to the result of a binary yes-no choice taken last summer'.
His intervention came on a Liberal Democrat amendment for a second poll tabled for the Brexit Bill. It was heavily defeated by peers.  
Alluding to differences of opinion within his own ranks over Brexit, the Archbishop said: 'On these benches we are not a party, nor do we follow a whip.
'We may dress the same but we have independent minds as anyone observing church politics recently will be well aware.'
He said: 'The referendum campaign and its aftermath revealed deep divisions in our societies.  

'(A second referendum) will add to our divisions, it will deepen the bitterness. It is not democratic. It is unwise.
'Even if circumstances change ... even if they change drastically, a dangerous and over-complicated process is the result of a referendum.' 

'It must be for Parliament to decide whether to prefer no deal or the deal offered by the EU,' Lord Pannick said.
Former Conservative leader Lord Howard said MPs would get a say on the deal no matter what course of action the Government took.
'The Commons will not only have its say, the Commons will have its way,' said Lord Howard. 

Mrs May's spokesman made clear there had been no change on the Prime Minister's position on the Brexit bill.
He said: 'She's been clear that she wants an unamended bill to pass. This is a simple bill with one purpose, to give the Government the power to trigger Article 50, that's where we are.'
Asked if the Government intended to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of this month he replied: 'Absolutely.'
Launching the demand for a second referendum, Lord Newby, Liberal Democrat leader in the Lords said: 'It would require any Brexit deal to be put to the people to approve or reject.
'It's based on the principle that having asked the people whether they wished to initiate the Brexit process, only the people should take the final decision.'
Lord Newby denied this amounted to 'sidelining' Parliament and warned of 'corrosive anger' if MPs and peers were to take the final decision going against the majority view at that time.
He said a second referendum would 'hardly impinge' on the Government's timetable for quitting the EU and suggested the question put to voters should be: 'Do you prefer the deal done by the Government or to remain within the EU.'
Challenged by Tory peers that this would provide no incentive for the EU to give the UK a good deal, Lord Newby said our European partners would negotiate in 'good faith' and branded such an 'unfriendly' view as 'deeply depressing'.
Lord Newby's amendment was heavily defeated by peers, ending prospects of a second referendum being added to the Bill. 
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby urged peers to reject the demand, telling the Lords: 'Another referendum will add to our divisions - it will deepen the bitterness, it is not democratic, it is unwise.' 
The Archbishop said instead politicians must 'find a level of national reconciliation'. 
Labour former cabinet minister Lord Hain said Leave voters he spoke to during the referendum campaign 'were voting against something, they were voting against the European Union, but they were not voting in favour of anything'.
He added: 'The Leave campaign left the alternative deliberately ambiguous.'
Lord Hain went on: 'I am not disputing the outcome of June 23. This is not about re-running that referendum. This is about making sure that the democratic process remains democratic. That voters have a final say on the eventual negotiated outcome.'
Ex-Liberal Democrat Lord Carlile of Berriew, who now sits as a non-affiliated peer, said at the time of the EU referendum there had been no suggestion from his former party that there would be a further public vote.
He said: 'It was envisaged by Liberal Democrats that there would be one referendum.'
But his comments led to a dig from the party's former leader Lord Ashdown, who said his 'recall of what positions the Liberal Democrats took in the past has not always been entirely accurate'.
But Lord Carlile hit back, saying: 'He's at his best when he makes points with simplicity. That point was not made with simplicity.'
On Lord Ashdown's recollection, Lord Carlile suggested he had been 'too busy eating his hat', in a gibe at Lord Ashdown wrongly rejecting the shock election night exit poll in 2015, which predicted a Lib Dem bloodbath and disaster for the Labour Party.
Supporting a second vote, Tory peer Baroness Wheatcroft said: 'Although I am not an advocate of government by referendum, in this situation, having started the process with a referendum, it seems to me the only sensible way to bring the process to an end is to put the terms to the public.' 
Failure to deliver Brexit could irreparably 'tear the fabric' of society, Sajid Javid claimed on Friday night.
The Chancellor said even the disruption of No Deal would not be as bad as not leaving at all.
He also insisted that, despite the efforts of Remain MPs, No Deal was still 'very much on the table'.
In an interview with the Daily Mail on the eve of the Conservative Party conference, Mr Javid said: 'The best way to bring the country back together again and heal things is to deliver on that referendum.
'We can't have this debate going on. We've had the referendum, it was the biggest democratic exercise in the history of our country. And we have to honour it.
'It's a real test of the very fabric of our democracy. Our country, our democracy is a fabric that's been woven together over centuries, and made us what I think is one of the strongest democracies in the world.
'If we don't deal with this and exit on October 31, I just fear we tear that fabric in a way that we might not be able to stitch it up again.'
Mr Javid also:  
Mr Javid has been responsible for ramping up No Deal preparations, releasing an extra £4billion for departments since taking office in July. He said Britain would be 'ready' to leave the EU without a deal on October 31.
He said: 'I don't pretend for a second that there won't be challenges. There will be some disruptions here because we can't control what the EU do in No Deal ideal situation. Of course not.
'But we are putting in place many mechanisms and processes to handle No Deal and eventually, I also believe that we will come out and be stronger as a country once we've accepted the new.'
The Chancellor rounded on Opposition MPs for forcing through legislation designed to block No Deal, saying it 'does make it harder' to strike a withdrawal agreement with the Brussels bloc.
'This is not helpful,' he said. 'And I think the impression from the opposition is that they really don't want us to leave the EU at all, which is completely unacceptable.'
Mr Javid insisted the Prime Minister would still press ahead with the planned departure on October 31, regardless of whether a deal had been struck.
He said: 'With the legislation they are obviously trying to make No Deal less likely, but it is still very much on the table – and it is something that we are absolutely prepared to go down that road, if that's what it comes to.
'But, and I can't emphasise this enough, as a Government, we want a deal. There are active negotiations going on as we speak, and there is every reason to think we can still get a deal to put before Parliament. If we don't, we will leave without a deal.'
The Chancellor insisted his relationship with Mr Johnson was very strong, despite talk of tensions following the sacking of his aide.
He set up team-bonding sessions for advisers from No 10 and No 11 over a lasagne supper. And he said his dog Bailey had befriended the PM's new pet Dilyn, joking: 'Even our dogs are friends!'
His claim of a close relationship was strengthened last night when it emerged the Prime Minister has asked him to chair a committee on 'domestic priorities and delivery'.
Sources said the group would act as a 'star chamber' with ministers asked to present their plans for approval. But Mr Javid still said he was deeply uncomfortable with the decision to expel 21 Tory MPs for voting with Labour to frustrate No Deal.
He said the PM had 'a right' to discipline the group, which includes senior figures such as Philip Hammond, David Gauke and Rory Stewart.
But he added: 'These are people that I still consider my friends, they are good Conservatives. And I'd like to think there is a way back.'
He was also scathing about the sacking of his aide Sonia Khan, which was carried out without his consent. Miss Khan was frogmarched out of No 10 after Mr Cummings accused her of contacting allies of her former boss Mr Hammond.
Mr Javid, who took up the issue with the PM personally, said: 'Everyone agreed that it wasn't handled well.
'It was agreed that there be significant changes after that. And nothing like that can ever happen again.'
The Chancellor will today unveil a £16.6billion 'No Deal guarantee' to make up the shortfall in EU grants to businesses, universities and charities in the next few years.
The money includes £4.3billion for the coming year if Britain leaves the EU without a deal next month.
Mr Javid also insisted Islamic State bride Shamima Begum should remain banned from Britain, despite her claim that she now 'hates' the terror group. Miss Begum is challenging Mr Javid's decision as home secretary to strip her of her British citizenship.
In an interview with the Daily Mail this week, she said she was suffering mental health problems and wanted to come back to the UK from Syria, where she joined the murderous terror group as a 15-year-old runaway in 2015.
 
The boss of Aston Martin Lagonda has attacked ministers' Brexit strategy – and said a No Deal departure is better than more uncertainty.
Andy Palmer blasted the Government's attempt at negotiations, and broke with other car bosses by calling for the country to leave the European Union in October even if no agreement has been reached.
Palmer is bored of Brexit and told a crowd of car industry insiders in London: 'We think we know how we would cope with No Deal. We've planned for that. It's not great, we'd prefer it wasn't a No Deal.'
This stance is in stark contrast to other car firms with British operations, from Jaguar Land Rover to Nissan, insisting that No Deal would be disastrous.
The industry would be disproportionately disrupted by delays at borders or problems with customs, as it gets its parts delivered at the last minute in what is called a 'just-in-time' system.
Palmer slammed the Government for debating its negotiation strategy in public, which he said 'is not very bright', and said he was full of admiration for the way the EU has handled the negotiations.
He also poured scorn on hopes that driverless cars will be widely available in his lifetime, saying the expectation was 'absurd'. 
When asked if we will ever have autonomous cars that do not need humans on stand-by to operate, the 56-year-old said: 'Not in the way that is described - at least, not in my lifetime.'
He explained this is because it would require huge amounts of internet infrastructure to enable cars to receive instructions from the world around them, especially outside big cities.
The likes of Ford, General Motors, Tesla, Google and even Uber have been testing self-driving vehicle technology, the holy grail for the transport market.
Palmer also said a version of driverless technology that is currently in trial stages at a number of companies is 'reckless'.
This technology sees a car take over most driving but needs a passenger to intervene if the car requests it.
Palmer said: 'When it can't cope any more it hands back control to the driver. The problem is that the driver may well be distracted or asleep.'
At the same meeting, Aston Martin's chief planning officer Nikki Rimmington said it and Lagonda are prepared for the possibility that shared, driverless vehicles could be popular in future in cities.
The luxury car maker is working on an opulent electric vehicle – the Lagonda Vision Concept – which it hopes will incorporate lots of new driverless technologies.
A former Nissan executive, Palmer became chief executive of the James Bond car maker in October 2014.
He took the company on to the London Stock Exchange last year in a disastrous public float.
Its shares have tanked since they listed at 1900p – and now stand at almost half that level, at around 967p.
Separately, Palmer launched a damning attack on the way the Government picks and chooses new technologies to back.
He said it 'p****s him off' when ministers pick a new technology to champion.
Palmer said: 'I don't know how a politician that probably went to journalism school would have the faintest idea what the technology is going to be in 20 or 30 years - because I'm an engineer and I don't know.'
He also slammed the Government's regularly touted goal of becoming a leader in battery technology, which is crucial to electric cars and renewable energy. 
Palmer described this vision as 'nonsensical' when the Government has pledged to put much less money to fund research and development than other countries have.
 
With the Government releasing the first batch of its ‘no-deal’ impact assessments today, Brexit critics are gleefully anticipating dire headlines.
They have jumped on outlandish predictions for life after Brexit, from rioting and planes being grounded, to empty supermarket shelves and warnings that a no-deal Brexit would push food prices up by 12 per cent.
But what’s the truth? Here, ROSS CLARK analyses claims from proponents of the new Project Fear.
‘A NO-DEAL Brexit would raise food prices by 12 per cent,’ executives from Britain’s leading supermarkets warned the Treasury. 
REALITY: The claim is based on the assumption that the Government would adopt the same tariffs on food imports that the EU currently obliges Britain to levy on imports from outside the EU – which are as much as 44 per cent for cheese and 40 per cent for beef.
Yet after a no-deal Brexit, the UK will be able to set tariffs at whatever level it wants – including zero. 
Under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules we wouldn’t be able to discriminate between countries we don’t have a free-trade agreement with – we would have to levy the same tariff on food from France as we do from, say, Brazil.
But there would be nothing to stop a post-Brexit Government reducing tariffs all round – actually cutting shop prices
‘UK would run out of food a year from now with no-deal Brexit, NFU warns’. 
REALITY: This headline appeared in the Remain-supporting Guardian this month, and the claim seems to be based on a figure released by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that suggests Britain ‘only’ grows 60 per cent of what we eat.
Given that August 7 – when the report appeared – is 60 per cent of the way through the year, the National Farmers’ Union has decided that this is the date we would run out of food if all imports were suddenly cut off.
The 60 per cent figure for Britain’s self-sufficiency is real, but it is ridiculous to assert that all food supplies from abroad would be cut off in the event of no deal.
Why wouldn’t EU farmers and food producers want to export to Britain? And even if the EU were to ban all food exports to Britain – the odds of which are negligible – we could just import more food from non-EU countries.
Some 5 per cent of our food comes from Africa, 4 per cent each from North America, South America and Asia, 2 per cent from non-EU European countries and 1 per cent from Australasia, according to Defra.
Diabetics will have to go without insulin. 
REALITY: On July 30 Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, claimed 3.5million UK diabetics – including the Prime Minister – would be at risk because ‘we make no insulin in the UK’ and what we import from the EU has to be temperature-controlled, meaning it could go off if there were delays at ports.
He had to clarify his remarks after it emerged that a factory in Wrexham produces insulin, and drugs firms that manufacture it in France and Denmark reassured diabetics contingency plans will ensure Britain will not run low. 
‘No-deal Brexit poses serious risk to public safety, say police leaders’. 
REALITY: In another scaremongering Guardian headline, the paper reported on a letter to the Home Secretary from the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners’ cross-party Brexit working group.
Police and crime commissioners are not to be confused with the police – they are in most cases locally elected politicians.
Their claim seems to be based on a speech made by the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier in June in which he said British police would no longer have direct access to EU police databases or the European Arrest Warrant. Yet Mr Barnier also went to pains to say that it wouldn’t mean the end of co-operation nor extradition. In any case, the European Arrest Warrant is widely criticised, not least by shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti. As director of Liberty in 2014, she raised the case of Andrew Symou, who was extradited to Greece on manslaughter charges despite ‘serious doubts about the reliability of evidence’. He was acquitted after spending ten months in jail. 
A disorderly Brexit will bring ‘civil unrest’. 
REALITY: This claim was apparently made by Doug Gurr, Amazon’s chief in the UK, at a private meeting with Brexit secretary Dominic Raab a month ago – although it is not clear exactly what he meant by civil unrest and what would trigger it.
Suffice to say that a decade ago Britain withstood the collapse of a bank followed by the deepest recession since the Thirties without civil unrest – so why Brexit should lead to it isn’t clear. 
‘Aeroplanes will be grounded’
REALITY: Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested this extreme scenario while answering questions from the Commons Select Committee on Business last November. For it to occur, however, it would mean the EU ejecting the UK from its ‘open-skies agreement’ – a single market for airlines allowing any majority European-owned airline to fly between EU airports – and refusing to set anything else up.
That is highly unlikely as, besides being unable to fly to Britain, European airlines would be unable to use British airspace which covers a vital area criss-crossed by many transatlantic flightpaths.
Another reason why planes would be grounded was given by Paul Everitt, chairman of ADS, a trade body for the UK aerospace industry. He claims that after a no-deal Brexit, planes with British-made parts might no longer be allowed to use EU airspace.
This is preposterous. It isn’t just UK airlines that use planes with British-made components – Rolls Royce makes a large proportion of the world’s commercial jet engines and Airbus, registered in Holland, makes wings in Wales. It would mean the EU having to ban planes taking off across Europe. 
‘M20 could be a giant lorry park for years’
REALITY: This is based on an impact assessment by Dover Council. Port officials said that if lorries were given customs checks lasting an average of two minutes it would cause 17-mile tailbacks.
We don’t know what customs arrangements will be in place after Brexit or if there will be any increase in checks. But the hysterical reporting ignores the fact that the traffic system already has to cope with substantial delays at the port.
In 2015, a stretch of the M20 was closed for 24 days as part of Operation Stack – which involved parking lorries on the motorway after a dock strike in Calais caused delays. The police now use Operation Brock, which keeps the road open by parking lorries on just one carriageway.
Even before the referendum, authorities were considering creating a permanent lorry park to cope with such delays.
‘Brexit has given us the slowest growing economy in the developed world’. 
REALITY: There was a blip in 2017 when the UK was the slowest-growing economy in the G7. But over the year as a whole, our economy grew by 1.8 per cent – faster than Japan (1.7 per cent) or Italy (1.6 per cent).
Last Friday, the latest GDP figures showed Britain was once more growing faster than the Eurozone – with growth of 0.4 per cent in the last quarter, compared with 0.3 per cent for the Eurozone.
Just this week, Britain recorded the lowest net borrowing for the period April to July in 16 years. 
Brexit ‘will break the NHS’ 
REALITY: False claims have been made that there is already a ‘Brexodus’ of NHS staff. While some EU nationals have left NHS jobs since the referendum, they have been more than outnumbered by EU nationals who have joined the NHS – in the first year following the Brexit vote there was a net increase of 3,000 EU nationals working in the NHS. 
What has worried some Remainers is a decrease in the number of nurses from other European Union countries during that 12-month period. However, that was more likely to have been the fault of over-stringent new language tests, which in some cases even caught out native English speakers from Australia.
Britain has nothing to fear from leaving the EU without a deal, leading Brexiteers declared last night.
After a weekend when Theresa May’s Chequers plan came under fire from Remainers and Leavers alike, a poll yesterday showed growing public support for walking away from the negotiations.
It found twice as many voters now back leaving the EU without a deal.
Senior Eurosceptic MPs said it was proof that the PM should accelerate contingency planning for a no-deal scenario.
Scroll down for video 
Remainers have long argued that the consequences of no deal would be catastrophic for the economy. But leading Brexiteers admitted yesterday that although it could be bumpy in the short term, Britain could thrive in the long run. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘If we don’t have a trade deal with the EU then we simply trade on World Trade Organisation terms, which is how most countries trade with each other.
‘It wouldn’t be bedlam. All this talk about crashing out with no deal – we’re not crashing, we’re moving to WTO rules, which is how all EU-US trade is governed at the moment.’
Former Cabinet minister Priti Patel said: ‘We should be free to forge new trade deals around the world and leave the protectionism of the EU. This is a positive thing we should be celebrating.’
The ComRes poll for the Daily Mirror found 39 per cent think the Prime Minister ‘should accept a no-deal and the UK simply leave the EU’. Just 20 per cent want her to press on with the White Paper, which critics say is a ‘half in, half out’ Brexit.
More than half of Tory voters (51 per cent) back no deal, compared to one in four (26 per cent) of Labour supporters.
A quarter of voters want the PM to ask for an extension to the March deadline for a deal.
John Longworth, of Leave Means Leave, and a former head of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: ‘There would be a little border disruption if we leave without a deal, but nothing like as bad as Remainers say it would be – and the upsides would be considerable.
‘We could free our economy from EU regulations and do huge free-trade deals with the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.’
MONEY
Leaving without a deal would mean an immediate Brexit on March 29 after tearing up a 21-month transition agreement. This included giving £39billion to the EU, which ministers would no longer have to pay, a House of Lords report claims.
GOODS TRADE
The Chequers agreement effectively proposed keeping Britain in the single market for goods and agriculture to preserve ‘frictionless’ trade and protect the economy.
Customs checks on cross-Channel freight would cause havoc at ports, hitting food supplies and other goods.
Even Brexiteers admit to a big economic impact in the short term. Britain could waive customs checks on EU produce to free up backlogs, but would Brussels do the same?
TARIFFS
All EU-UK trade in goods is free of tariffs in the single market.
Trade would revert to World Trade Organisation rules. The EU would charge import tariffs averaging 2-3 per cent on goods, but up to 60 per cent for some agricultural produce, damaging UK exporters.
We have a trade deficit with the EU of £71billion – they sell us more than we sell them – so the EU overall would lose out.
German cars and French agriculture would be worst hit, as would UK regions with large export industries. Tariffs could also mean price inflation. But UK trade with the EU is 13 per cent of GDP and falling compared to non-EU trade, which generates a surplus and is likely to grow. The outlook would be boosted by Britain’s ability to strike trade deals.
IMMIGRATION
The UK would immediately have control over its borders and freedom to set migration policy on all EU migrants.
UK nationals would likely lose their right to live and work in the EU. There would be legal uncertainty for the 1.3million Britons living in the EU and the 3.7million EU nationals here.
CITY OF LONDON
Many firms have already made contingency plans for no deal, but there would probably be a significant degree of disruption and an economic hit.
Ministers would be likely to take an axe to tax and regulations to preserve the UK’s economic advantage.
AEROPLANES
Fears of planes not being able to fly appear far-fetched – unless the EU is determined to destroy both business and tourism. Rules to keep planes in the air are likely to be agreed. The EU has many deals with non-EU countries as part of its Open Skies regime.
EUROPEAN COURTS
Britain would be free from the edicts of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and all EU laws. Parliament would be sovereign.
FARMING & FISHING
THE UK would quit the Common Agricultural Policy, which gives farmers and landowners £3billion in subsidies. Ministers would come under pressure to continue a form of subsidy.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Northern Ireland would be outside the EU, with no arrangements on how to manage 300 crossing points on the 310-mile border.
The EU would want Ireland to impose customs and other checks to protect the bloc’s border – something it has said it will not do. No deal could blow a hole in the Good Friday Agreement, with pressure on all sides to find a compromise.
 
Theresa May is set to snub Donald Trump at the G20 summit after he savaged her Brexit deal as 'great for the EU' - and warned it would hit trade with the US.
The PM's spokesman said there were 'no plans' to hold talks with the President at the gathering in Argentina following his dramatic intervention - which echoed the complaints of Brexiteers and threatened to kill off the package altogether.
As the government reeled from the blow, one minister highlighted a tweet claiming Mr Trump wanted to 'finish off' Mrs May, while Cabinet Office minister David Lidington said bluntly that he was 'wrong'.
Asked if Mrs May would try to explain the situation to Mr Trump at the summit on Friday and Saturday, the PM's spokesman said she would hold bilateral talks with other leaders, but had 'none planned' with the US commander-in-chief.  
'It is not something that we have requested,' the spokesman said. The Prime Minister's diary is agreed in advance and she is meeting with a number of world leaders to discuss issues like trade and security. 
'We have met with the president on a number of occasions in recent months and the bilaterals that are agreed for the G20 are done so in advance, and they don't include the US president.' 
But the PM received some warmer words after Japanese PM Shinzo Abe welcomed the progress she had made on the Brexit deal in a phone call with Mrs May today.
But No10, who had originally hoped Mr Abe would visit the UK before the crunch Brexit vote next month to boost the PM's PR blitz, confirmed he will now make the trip early next year.
Senior Tories and Eurosceptics have seized on the extraordinary barbs from the White House with glee - saying it could not be 'brushed off' and Mrs May must reopen negotiations with Brussels. Jacob Rees-Mogg said Mr Trump was stating an 'obvious' fact.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, Mr Trump jibed that the agreement was 'great' for the EU - an institution he has accused of being a protectionist cartel.
In a barb that struck at the heart of Mrs May's vision for the UK's future outside of the bloc, he added: 'I think we have to take a look seriously whether or not the UK is allowed to trade. 
'Because right now if you look at the deal, they may not be able to trade with us. And that wouldn't be a good thing. I don't think they meant that.'
The President said he hoped Mrs May would be able to address the problem. 'I don't think that the Prime Minister meant that,' he said. 'And, hopefully, she'll be able to do something about that.
'But, right now, as the deal stands she may not, they may not, be able to trade with the US. And, I don't think they want that at all.'
On a visit to a winter fair in mid-Wales today, Mrs May flatly dismissed Mr Trump's attack, saying the package thrashed out with Brussels was 'very clear we will have an independent trade policy'.
'If you look at the political declaration that sets out the future framework for our relationship with the European Union, it clearly identifies we will have an independent trade policy and we will be able to negotiate trade deals with countries around the rest of the world,' she said.
'As regards the United States, we have already been talking to them about the sort of agreement that we could have in the future. 
Theresa May passed a milestone in the Brexit process by agreeing a package with the EU. But there is still a long way to go.
This is what the next steps are: 
December 11: The meaningful vote itself. This is the absolutely crucial moment and could make or break the Prime Minister and her deal. MPs will vote after a debate that could last as long as five days. 
If the vote carries, Mrs May survives and Brexit is on track as she plans. If she loses, she could resign.  
December 13-14: The next EU summit. If the deal has been rejected by MPs, Mrs May could use this to try and secure new concessions. 
January 2019: The European Parliament is due to vote on the deal - but will only do so if it has been agreed in the House of Commons.
March 29, 2019: Exit day. This is written in law so unless there is a dramatic shift Britain will leave the EU, deal or no deal.  
'We have a working group set up and that is working very well, has met several times and is continuing to work with the US on this.' 
Number Ten said Mr Abe welcomed the divorce deal thrashed out with Brussels.
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'The leaders discussed the importance of free trade and close co-operation between the UK and Japan. 
'Prime Minister Abe welcomed the progress the Prime Minister has made to secure an agreement with the European Union.
'The leaders looked forward to seeing each other at the G20 in Argentina this weekend, and the Prime Minister welcomed Prime Minister Abe's commitment to visit the UK early next year.' 
The row came after Mrs May suffered another agonising day in Westminster, with MPs queuing up to expressing their anger at the mooted settlement with the EU.
She has challenged Jeremy Corbyn to a high-stakes TV debate on Brexit in a bid to turn the tide, and will try to get back on to the front foot today by visiting Wales and Northern Ireland to win public support.
However, defeat is looking near-inevitable in the looming Commons vote on the withdrawal agreement - now confirmed as happening on December 11.
There are suspicions that Mr Trump was influenced by his friend Nigel Farage, who is vehemently opposed to Mrs May's withdrawal agreement - although others point out the former Ukip leader is now mainly a TV and radio pundit.
A welter of Tory rebels pounced on Mr Trump's remarks to bolster their case. 
Mr Rees-Mogg told TalkRadio the president was right. 
'He has pointed something out that is obvious from reading the withdrawal agreement, that is we won't be able to make trade deals with other countries because we'll be bound into the EU customs union,' he said.
'This agreement, or proposal at this stage, limits the government's ability to trade with the rest of the world freely because we'll be tied into the inefficient, protectionist European system.' 
A particularly stinging assault came from former Cabinet minister Sir Michael Fallon, a long-term loyalist.
He said Mrs May's deal was 'the worst of all worlds' and warned it seems 'doomed'.
'It's no use us just brushing that off, saying 'no, no we can do a deal with America', he's the President of the United States, and if he says it's going to be difficult, then it certainly looks like it's going to be difficult.
'This is not a good deal and we need a better deal. If it's possible to get a better deal, to send the negotiators back to Brussels for two or three months, to postpone the actual leaving date for two or three months, I still think that in the long term that would be in the best interest of the country.
'We have to get this right.'
However, Sir Michael did give Downing Street a glimmer of hope by insisting he did not think Mrs May should stand down if she loses the vote next month.  
Tory backbencher Michael Fabricant, another MP who has refused to join the Eurosceptic coup attempt against Mrs May, tweeted: 'Trump is spot on. It's a great deal for the EU.'
Former sports minister Tracey Crouch has also come out against the pact, in a sign that moderate opinion in the party is swinging against the PM. 
But a No 10 spokesman said: 'The political declaration we have agreed with the EU is very clear we will have an independent trade policy so that the UK can sign trade deals with countries around the world — including the US.' 
Mr Lidington said Mr Trump's intervention was 'not unexpected', insisting the UK would be free to do trade deals around the world after Brexit. 
But he also seemed to pour cold water on the idea of a deep Transatlantic agreement, saying: 'I think it was always going to be challenging to do a deal with the United States.
'The United States is a tough negotiator, President Trump's always said very plainly 'I put America first'.
'Well, I'd expect the British Prime Minister to put British interests first, but it's going to be a very tough negotiation.' 
Digital minister Margot James retweeted a message from an FT journalist saying that Mr Trump is 'openly gunning for a no-deal Brexit' and wanted a 'populist like Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg to finish off Theresa May'.    
Mrs May received a hostile reception last night as she told the House of Commons her Brexit deal 'delivers for the British people', and warned that rejecting it would put the UK on the path to division and uncertainty.
She was loudly barracked by MPs as she insisted that no better deal was available than the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration on future relations endorsed by EU leaders in Brussels on Sunday.
Labour MPs were invited to attend a special briefing in the Commons with her chief of staff Gavin Barwell and Mr Lidington - but only around 20 bothered to turn up.
Tory MP and leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg criticised the meeting, saying its 'smacks of desperation'.
But Mrs May has stayed resolute in the face of the verbal barrage, earlier telling MPs they had a 'duty' to listen to constituents and do 'what is in the national interest'.
She faced a barrage of attacks from all sides of the House- including from Tory big-hitters Boris Johnson, David Davis and Iain Duncan Smith. 
Tory MPs told their leader her deal is 'as dead as a dodo' and does not stand a chance of getting passed.
The DUP - whose ten MPs prop the Tories up in No10 - again condemned the backstop, while Jeremy Corbyn said the package pleased 'nobody'.
Even previous loyalists such as ex-Cabinet minister Sir Michael Fallon joined in the criticism. 
Extraordinarily, it took over an hour of brutal attacks from across the chamber before the first MP - Nicky Morgan - spoke in defence of Mrs May. 
At one point during the battering, Mrs May ruefully remarked to Conservative Remainer Anna Soubry that she barely seemed to have achieved one task that people claimed was 'impossible' before they were demanding she completed another one. 
Gibraltar will 'always be under the Union flag', Gavin Williamson has said, amid concerns over the impact of Brexit.
The Defence Secretary was asked by his Labour counterpart Nia Griffith whether Gibraltar's future was British, even after Brexit, following push back from Spain linked to trade.
Speaking during a debate on the RAF centenary, Ms Griffith said: 'I've been trying extremely hard not to mention the B-word but given the events of the weekend he will be only too aware of the unique importance of Gibraltar, so can he give us absolute assurances its status is not under threat?'
Mr Williamson replied: 'I can give her absolutely categorical reassurance Gibraltar is never under threat.
'Ever since the Royal Marines seized it all those centuries ago, it will always be under the Union flag long into the future so do rest assured we will always look after Gibraltar.'
Mr Williamson also told the debate that Parliament's decision to create the RAF in 1918 as 'one of its finest moments'.
He said: 'The Royal Air Force continuously stands vigilant in terms of protecting our skies here in the United Kingdom, but also they're taking our fight to our enemies abroad.
'Whether that is Daesh in Iraq and Syria, the RAF has been bringing its skills to be able to strike and eliminate that threat combining precision guarded weaponry with unparalleled surveillance intelligence gathering and surveillance capabilities, flying at the highest operational tempo for over a quarter of a century and striking more than 1,750 times.'
He added: 'Sometimes people in this country think that the campaigns that the RAF are fighting are campaigns that are very far away from here and maybe don't have the relevance to the United Kingdom, but actually by dealing with that threat in Iraq and Syria what they're doing is keeping the streets of Great Britain safer by dealing with that threat there.'
Mr Williamson later revealed that he was 'desperate' to see Second World War drama Hurricane, which tells the true of an RAF unit manned mostly by Polish pilots.
He said: 'I'm slightly desperate to see the film Hurricane and I'm not sure if any members of this House have had the opportunity to do so but I was trying to persuade my wife to come with me to the cinema but she wasn't convinced of it but I'm looking forward to it coming on release to DVD.' 
The mauling underlines the massive task facing the PM, as she stares down the barrel of almost certain disaster in the House next month.
Just a handful of Tory MPs stood up to defend the deal, but in the marathon Commons session their voices were lost in a sea of criticism.
It came after Mrs May told the Cabinet that the breakthrough in Brussels meant the doubters had been 'proved wrong'. 
Here are some of the damning interjections from MPs which show the sheer level of fury at Theresa May's Brexit deal:  
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader:  
'This botched deal is still a bad deal for the Country and all yesterday did was mark the end of this governments failed and miserable negotiations.' 
Sir Michael Fallon, ex Defence Secretary:
'Nobody can doubt that the Prime Minister has tried her very best, are we not nonetheless being asked to take a huge gamble here?'
Iain Duncan-Smith, ex Tory leader
'Does she recognise the genuine and real concern held on all sides of the House about what would happen if the UK was to be forced into the backstop?'
Boris Johnson, ex Foreign Secretary 
'It's very hard to see how this deal can provide certainty to business or anyone else when you have half the Cabinet going around reassuring business that the UK is effectively going to remain in the customs union and in the single market, and the Prime Minister herself continuing to say that we are going to take back control of our laws, vary our tariffs and do as she said just now, real free trade deals. 
'They can't both be right. Which is it?'
Sammy Wilson , DUP MP: 
'Does the Prime Minister not recognise that by signing this legally binding agreement she is handing the EU a cudgel, which it will use to mug us for a second time when it comes to negotiations on the future trade arrangements?'
David Davis, ex Brexit Secretary 
 'If the EU really intends in good faith to rapidly negotiate a future trade agreement why can we not make the second half of the £39 billion conditional on delivering it?'
Mark Francois, Tory MP
'The Prime Minister and the whole House knows the mathematics - this will never get through, and even if it did, which it won't, the DUP - on whom we rely for a majority - have said they would then review the confidence and supply agreement, so it's as dead as a dodo. 
 Ian Blackford, SNP Westminster leader 
'Scottish fishing communities have been duped once again by the Conservatives.
'We cannot accept this sellout from the Conservatives.
Ross Thomson, Tory MP
'The Northern Ireland backstop would leave Northern Ireland a separate regulatory regime...It could threaten the break up of our precious United Kingdom.' 
Anna Soubry, Remain-backing Tory MP   
'As it currently stands, the majority of people in this House will not vote in favour of the Prime Minister's deal, despite her very best efforts, so she needs Plan B.' 
 
But Brexiteer Cabinet ministers are still deeply unhappy with package - with Andrea Leadsom and Penny Mordaunt among those on 'resignation watch'. 
They have remained stubbornly silent while other colleagues voiced support for the deal.
Other ministers are said to have formed an alliance to push for a Norway-style relationship with the EU if Mrs May's deal falls in the face of massive opposition from scores of Tories, Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems.
Even supportive ministers are in despair at the situation, with one senior source telling MailOnline they feared the Tories were about to experience a 'nuclear meltdown' that could rip the party to shreds. 
Despite the deepening woes, No10 said the Cabinet 'congratulated' the PM and 'thanked her for all her hard work on securing a deal'.
In her Commons statement, the PM said: 'Our duty as a Parliament over these coming weeks is to examine this deal in detail, to debate it respectfully, to listen to our constituents and decide what is in our national interest.
'There is a choice which MPs will have to make. We can back this deal, deliver on the vote of the referendum and move on to building a brighter future of opportunity and prosperity for all our people.
'Or this House can choose to reject this deal and go back to square one ... It would open the door to more division and more uncertainty, with all the risks that will entail.'
She insisted that 'the national interest is clear' and 'the British people want us to get on with a deal that honours the referendum'.
Mrs May admitted some MPs were deeply concerned about the Irish border backstop. 
But she insisted it was an insurance policy that 'no-one wants to use'. 
Sir Michael Fallon, previously among the most loyal of Tory MPs, said: 'Nobody can doubt that the Prime Minister has tried her very best, are we not nonetheless being asked to take a huge gamble here?
'Paying, leaving, surrendering our vote and our veto without any firm commitment to frictionless trade or the absolute right to dismantle external tariffs.
'Is it really wise to trust the future of our economy to a pledge simply to use best endeavours?'
Mrs May responded saying that it was not possible to sign a legally binding free trade agreement with the European Union until the UK had left the EU. 
Tory former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said: 'It's very hard to see how this deal can provide certainty to business or anyone else when you have half the Cabinet going around reassuring business that the UK is effectively going to remain in the customs union and in the single market, and the Prime Minister herself continuing to say that we are going to take back control of our laws, vary our tariffs and do as she said just now, real free trade deals. 
'They can't both be right. Which is it?' 
Conservative former leader Mr Duncan Smith raised questions over the backstop arrangement, asking the Prime Minister: 'Does she recognise the genuine and real concern held on all sides of the House about what would happen if the UK was to be forced into the backstop?'
Mr Duncan Smith said the PM had recognised the UK and EU do not want the backstop arrangement before citing Ireland's desire to avoid a hard border.
He added: 'It makes you wonder why is it in the Withdrawal Agreement at all?'
Tory MP Mark Francois, blasted the deal - and the PM's hopes of getting it through Parliament.
He said: 'The Prime Minister and the whole House knows the mathematics - this will never get through, and even if it did, which it won't, the DUP - on whom we rely for a majority - have said they would then review the confidence and supply agreement, so it's as dead as a dodo. 
Remainer Conservative Anna Soubry asked the Prime Minister to give the Commons a plan B as her Brexit deal would be voted down.
She said: 'As it currently stands, the majority of people in this House will not vote in favour of the Prime Minister's deal, despite her very best efforts, so she needs Plan B.
'What is the Prime Minister's Plan B - is it Norway, plus the single market, the customs union, which some of us have been arguing for over two years?'
As she faces the Commons battering, Mrs May joked: 'I'm tempted to say to her that throughout the last 18 months of these negotiations at virtually every stage people have said to me it wasn't possible for me to negotiate a deal with the EU - No sooner do I then people are saying 'well what's the next thing you're going to negotiate'.'
Struggling to defend her deal, Mrs May insisted that 'both the UK and the EU are fully committed to having our future relationship in place by 1st January 2021'.
'And the Withdrawal Agreement has a legal duty on both sides to use best endeavours to avoid the backstop ever coming into force. 
'If, despite this, the future relationship is not ready by the end of 2020, we would not be forced to use the backstop. We would have a clear choice between the backstop or a short extension to the Implementation Period.
'If we did choose the backstop, the legal text is clear that it should be temporary and that the Article 50 legal base cannot provide for a permanent relationship.'
Mrs May added: 'Furthermore, as a result of the changes we have negotiated, the legal text is now also clear that once the backstop has been superseded, it shall 'cease to apply'.
'So if a future Parliament decided to then move from an initially deep trade relationship to a looser one, the backstop could not return. I do not pretend that either we or the EU are entirely happy with these arrangements. And that's how it must be - were either party entirely happy, that party would have no incentive to move on to the future relationship.
'But there is no alternative deal that honours our commitments to Northern Ireland which does not involve this insurance policy. And the EU would not have agreed any future partnership without it. Put simply, there is no deal that comes without a backstop, and without a backstop there is no deal.' 
But senior Brexiteers ridiculed her chances of getting the package through parliament - saying it was already 'dead'.
More than 90 Tories have publicly committed to opposing the deal, and one jibed that the whips 'don't have enough thumbscrews' to turn the tide.
Another MP pointed out that at least two whips were likely to vote against.  

Theresa May's task of getting her Brexit deal past the House of Commons is looking near-impossible as opposition mounts.
The 'meaningful vote' promised to MPs will happen on December 11 and is the single biggest hurdle to the Brexit deal happening - as well as being the key to Mrs May' fate as PM.
But despite opinion polls suggesting the public might be coming round to her deal, there is little sign of a shift among politicians.
Remainers have been stepping up calls for a second referendum in the wake of Sam Gyimah's resignation as universities minister over the weekend - while Brexiteers including Boris Johnson have accused Mrs May of betrayal.   
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The number is less than half because the four Speakers, 7 Sinn Fein MPs and four tellers will not take part.
The situation looks grim for Mrs May and her whips: now the deal has been published, over 100 of her own MPs and the 10 DUP MPs have publicly stated they will join the Opposition parties in voting No.
This means the PM could have as few as 225 votes in her corner - leaving 410 votes on the other side, a landslide majority 185.
This is how the House of Commons might break down:
Mrs May needs at least 318 votes in the Commons if all 650 MPs turns up - but can probably only be confident of around 230 votes.
The Government (plus various hangers-on)
Who are they: All members of the Government are the so-called 'payroll' vote and are obliged to follow the whips orders or resign. It includes the Cabinet, all junior ministers, the whips and unpaid parliamentary aides.
There are also a dozen Tory party 'vice-chairs and 17 MPs appointed by the PM to be 'trade envoys'.
How many of them are there? 178.
What do they want? For the Prime Minister to survive, get her deal and reach exit day with the minimum of fuss.
Many junior ministers want promotion while many of the Cabinet want to be in a position to take the top job when Mrs May goes.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
European Research Group Brexiteers demanding a No Confidence Vote
Who are they: The most hard line of the Brexiteers, they launched a coup against Mrs May after seeing the divorce. Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker.
How many of them are there: 26
What do they want: The removal of Mrs May and a 'proper Brexit'. Probably no deal now, with hopes for a Canada-style deal later.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Other Brexiteers in the ERG
Who are they: There is a large block of Brexiteer Tory MPs who hate the deal but have so far stopped short of moving to remove Mrs May - believing that can destroy the deal instead. They include ex Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and ex minister Owen Paterson.
Ex ministers like Boris Johnson and David Davis are also in this group - they probably want to replace Mrs May but have not publicly moved against her.
How many of them are there? Around 50.
What do they want? The ERG has said Mrs May should abandon her plans for a unique trade deal and instead negotiate a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal.
This is based on a trade deal signed between the EU and Canada in August 2014 that eliminated 98 per cent of tariffs and taxes charged on goods shipped across the Atlantic.
The EU has long said it would be happy to do a deal based on Canada - but warn it would only work for Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.
How will they vote: Against the Prime Minister.
Remain including the People's Vote supporters
Who are they: Tory MPs who believe the deal is just not good enough for Britain. They include the group of unrepentant Remainers who want a new referendum like Anna Soubry and ex-ministers who quit over the deal including Jo Johnson and Phillip Lee.
How many of them are there: Maybe around 10.
What do they want? To stop Brexit. Some want a new referendum, some think Parliament should step up and say no.
A new referendum would take about six months from start to finish and they group wants Remain as an option on the ballot paper, probably with Mrs May's deal as the alternative.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister.
Moderates in the Brexit Delivery Group (BDG) and other Loyalists
Who are they? A newer group, the BDG counts members from across the Brexit divide inside the Tory Party. It includes former minister Nick Boles and MPs including Remainer Simon Hart and Brexiteer Andrew Percy.
There are also lots of unaligned Tory MPs who are desperate to talk about anything else.
How many of them are there? Based on public declarations, about 48 MPs have either said nothing or backed the deal.
What do they want? The BDG prioritises delivering on Brexit and getting to exit day on March 29, 2019, without destroying the Tory Party or the Government. If the PM gets a deal the group will probably vote for it.
It is less interested in the exact form of the deal but many in it have said Mrs May's Chequers plan will not work.
Mr Boles has set out a proposal for Britain to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) until a free trade deal be negotiated - effectively to leave the EU but stay in close orbit as a member of the single market.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
The DUP
Who are they? The Northern Ireland Party signed up to a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the Conservative Party to prop up the Government.
They are Unionist and say Brexit is good but must not carve Northern Ireland out of the Union.
How many of them are there? 10.
What do they want? A Brexit deal that protects Northern Ireland inside the UK.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister on the grounds they believe the deal breaches the red line of a border in the Irish Sea.
Labour Loyalists
Who are they? Labour MPs who are loyal to Jeremy Corbyn and willing to follow his whipping orders.
How many of them are there? Up to 250 MPs depending on exactly what Mr Corbyn orders them to do.
What do they want? Labour policy is to demand a general election and if the Government refuses, 'all options are on the table', including a second referendum.
Labour insists it wants a 'jobs first Brexit' that includes a permanent customs union with the EU. It says it is ready to restart negotiations with the EU with a short extension to the Article 50 process.
The party says Mrs May's deal fails its six tests for being acceptable.
How will they vote? Against the Prime Minister's current deal.
Labour Rebels
Who are they? A mix of MPs totally opposed to Mr Corbyn's leadership, some Labour Leave supporters who want a deal and some MPs who think any deal will do at this point.
How many of them are there? Maybe 10 to 20 MPs but this group is diminishing fast - at least for the first vote on the deal.
What do they want? An orderly Brexit and to spite Mr Corbyn.
How will they vote? With the Prime Minister.
Other Opposition parties
Who are they? The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Caroline Lucas and assorted independents.
How many of them are there? About 60 MPs.
How will they vote? Mostly against the Prime Minister - though two of the independents are suspended Tories and two are Brexiteer former Labour MPs. 
At least there was one point on which Remainer and Brexiteer could agree last night. This was a very British farewell.
Here in a jam-packed Parliament Square, there were no hysterics, no tears – and no pyrotechnics, either.
Yet there was no downplaying the enormity of the moment – fireworks or no fireworks – as the original helmsman of Brexit, Nigel Farage, steered his life's project across the finish line before leading thousands of his true believers in the National Anthem.
After all the polarised nastiness of the past three years, Britain's departure from the European Union was for the most part good-natured and magnanimous, if tinged with a sense of weariness.
Moments earlier, as the 11pm quitting hour drew near, the beaming Brexit Party leader had quoted the words of former Labour prime minister Tony Blair earlier in the day. 'Tony Blair has said today there's no point looking back!' said Mr Farage, to big applause. 'How about that? A crowd of Brexiteers cheering Tony Blair!'
He then delivered a ringing endorsement of the Prime Minister: 'I believe we have, in Boris Johnson, a Conservative prime minister who is saying all of the right things. Our hopes and our trust are now bound up with what Boris Johnson does.'
And with that, he began the countdown to 'the greatest moment in the modern history of our great nation'. All across the UK, there were scattered celebrations and wakes taking place last night, including a series of 'Leave A Light On For Scotland' candlelit vigils north of the border and two Brexit rallies in central London.
Yet no one was exactly swinging from the chandeliers. Even among the ultras of the Leave brigade, gathered in Parliament Square last night, the mood was more one of boisterous pride than delirium. For some of the older members of the crowd, this was the culmination of almost half a century's political activism.
Yet most seemed content just to sing Rule Britannia and wave a flag rather than bang on about WTO rules and free trade agreements. As for all those diehard Remainers, who once besieged this place daily draped in EU flags, I saw just one yesterday. He did not stay long.
Shortly before the big moment, Mr Johnson delivered a folksy fireside television message to the nation from Downing Street. 'This is not an end but a beginning,' he said, channelling the post-Alamein words of his hero Winston Churchill. 'This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.'
There was, it must be said, a certain crack-of-dawn look to the PM's hair. Though this was surely an occasion for the Downing Street comb, it had clearly been mislaid.
Not that many people will have noticed. Neither the BBC nor ITV chose to broadcast his message live and no one was watching it in Parliament Square.
Mr Farage and his Brexit battalions had been left to bring their own portable stage on the back of a truck and they were having a sing-song while the PM was trying to address the nation. Cometh the moment, there was not a squeak from Big Ben, still shrouded in scaffolding. Instead, a recording of the Westminster chimes was played through Mr Farage's public address system on the stroke of 11.
For real bongs, we had to turn to Tony Appleton, 80, the town crier of Chelmsford, who had come with a big brass bell. There was plenty of cheering from the Brexiteers in the square, of course, but the mood was more restrained beyond. The Government had settled for understated patriotism, commissioning a red, white and blue light show for Downing Street and the buildings along Whitehall plus Union flags on every flagpole, including those along The Mall.
There were certainly none of the elaborate stunts we saw when a previous Conservative government took Britain into Europe.
Contrast last night's event to the great hullabaloo when we joined the European Economic Community at one minute past midnight on January 1, 1973.
Back then, a special Whitehall unit had spent more than a year planning a series of national celebrations under the banner of 'Fanfare For Europe'.
The festivities ran for days on end either side of the magic moment. There was a Fanfare For Europe football match at Wembley between the existing EEC nations and the newcomers (the UK, Ireland and Denmark – who won 2-0).
The Queen and other members of the Royal Family turned out at the Royal Opera House for a Fanfare For Europe gala evening, including readings by Laurence Olivier and Judi Dench.
Last night, while the Prime Minister held a modest drinks party inside Downing Street, a number of private Brexit parties were underway across the capital.
Among the most sought-after invitations was the 'Britain Leaving The European Union' dinner at 5 Hertford Street, the private members' club in Mayfair.
Here more than 100 leading lights of the Leave movement, including Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Bill Cash and Sir Bernard Jenkin, heard Churchill's biographer Andrew Roberts put the moment in context: 'I've heard many things described as 'historic' – football matches, TV programmes, even a speech by Theresa May. But, as an historian, I can guarantee and certify for you that Brexit night truly is historic.'
So much for the plague of locusts we had once been promised come this day. Remember all those predictions of food and drug shortages? Back in December 2018, Kent County Council was even warning that 'dead bodies may remain uncollected' unless Britain opted for a soft Brexit.
Next came dark talk of gridlock across the South East. Best of all was last October's warning by an unnamed minister of an epidemic of 'dogging' along the M20 by bored lorry drivers trapped in lay-bys for days on end.
When I checked in with Kent Police last night, their chief concern was a spate of thefts in the Tonbridge area. And the only thing threatening the smooth flow of traffic through Dover docks? England rugby fans heading for tomorrow's big game in Paris.
 
 
Emmanuel Macron last night warned Theresa May that he stood firmly behind EU negotiators as he refused to break ranks over Brexit.
The Prime Minister cut her holiday short to set out her Chequers plan to the French president at his Riviera retreat yesterday.
She warned him that Brussels faces a choice of a ‘Chequers deal or no deal’ as they held talks at Fort Bregancon. Downing Street wanted to use the meeting to win over Mr Macron, who is seen as one of the biggest obstacles to getting an agreement.
British officials are seeking to persuade France and Germany to order the European Commission’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier to soften his hardline stance. But the Elysee Palace refused to give a public account of the meeting as they sought to demonstrate that negotiations can only take place in Brussels.
A source signalled the French president was closely aligned with Mr Barnier, adding: ‘There is absolutely no intention to speak in place of Monsieur Barnier.’
Mrs May is the first foreign leader to visit Mr Macron at Fort Bregancon, the Mediterranean island-fortress that has served as the summer retreat for French presidents since 1968.
She was accompanied by her chief-of-staff Gavin Barwell, her Europe adviser Olly Robbins and British ambassador to France Ed Llewellyn, who worked as David Cameron’s chief-of-staff in Downing Street. 
After the formal talks, Mrs May and her husband Philip joined the president and his wife Brigitte for a private five-course dinner overlooking the sea. The foursome enjoyed a menu that included tomatoes and saffron-flavoured langoustines, thyme-flavoured sea bass, chicken and dark chocolate creme brûlée.
Once a base from which to repel pirates from North Africa who plagued the Mediterranean, Fort Bregancon was later used as a stronghold by Napoleon during the French Revolution. It remained a military fortress until shortly after the First World War, when it had a small garrison. Before heading to the South of France, Mrs May spoke by telephone with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. Mrs May’s visit comes as part of a major diplomatic push that has seen both Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab travel to France in the past few days to make the case for a softening of attitude.
In an interview before travelling to Paris, Mr Hunt said: ‘France and Germany have to send a strong signal to the Commission that we need to negotiate a pragmatic and sensible outcome that protects jobs on both sides of the Channel.’ France is seen as taking a particularly hard line in the Brexit negotiations, especially on financial services, with Paris expecting to snatch around 3,500 banking jobs from the City.
A source in Mr Macron’s office yesterday said the EU’s chief negotiator Mr Barnier has maintained that any Brexit deal ‘must conform with the economic interests of the 27 remaining EU members, and the president has always supported this as well.’
Mrs May ended her break in the Italian Lakes a day early to travel to France, although she will jet off to Switzerland for a second break later this month. The UK’s former ambassador to France yesterday warned the Prime Minister not to expect a Brexit breakthrough in the talks. Lord Ricketts said Mr Macron was ‘the last person’ to want to break ranks with the rest of the European Union to push for a softer stance from Brussels.
Mr Macron ‘doesn’t believe in softening’ the position on Brexit as ‘he is a passionate pro-European’, the peer said.     
Perched 35 metres above sea level on a small island off the French Mediterranean coast, Fort de Bregancon has been the official retreat of the president of France since 1968.
But the history of Fort de Bregancon stretches back centuries - with the site even attracting the attention of Napoleon Bonaparte.
According to the president's official website, Napoleon became interested in the fort shortly after taking nearby Toulon during the French Revolution in 1793.
Making it his mission to repair and improve it, he endowed it with an imposing artillery.
It remained a military fortress throughout the First World War, and was occupied by a small garrison, before being decommissioned in 1919.
By the 1960s, the fort had fallen into disrepair - but was resurrected and restored to its former glory by a former French senator.
It passed to the state's possession in 1963, and was visited by Charles de Gaulle the following year when he presided over the 20th anniversary of the Allied landings in Provence.
According to reports, de Gaulle was not a fan of the fort and left after a single night.
Since then, the spectacular hideaway has been visited by every French president as a private escape from the demands of the day job.
It is not immune to the prying eyes of the paparazzi however, with former presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande all snapped at the fort.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that current president Macron had ordered a swimming pool to be built in the grounds.
The fort is said to be accessible by just one road, and comes with its own beach.
 
Emmanuel Macron is leading European efforts to stop Britain from getting any new delay to Brexit without a 'clear and credible' plan for leaving, saying we should otherwise be left to quit 'in a disorderly manner'.
Paris today attacked both Theresa May's plea to postpone leaving until June 30 and a separate plan from European Council president Donald Tusk to keep us in the trade bloc for a year.
A French diplomatic source said Mr Tusk's idea for a 'flextension' until March 29 2020 was 'a clumsy trial balloon' ahead of an emergency summit next Wednesday.
And European affairs minister Amélie de Montchalin warned that Theresa May's desire for a short extension of Article 50 with a break mechanism to leave sooner if a Withdrawal Agreement passed through Parliament was not likely to succeed.
'The European council took a clear decision on 21 March … Another extension requires the UK to put forward a plan with clear and credible political backing,' she told the Guardian.
'The council would then define the necessary conditions attached to that extension, she said.
'In the absence of such a plan, we would have to acknowledge that the UK chose to leave the EU in a disorderly manner.'
The French intransigence came as senior Dutch and German politicians also questioned Mrs may's request for a delay to June - after a similar request was rejected out at the last summit in March and two shorter ones imposed.
Dutch premier Mark Rutte said May's letter seeking the extension 'raises many questions' and there will have to be 'intense discussions' ahead of a crucial summit of European leaders next Wednesday that will decide on the issue.
'The plan was that the British would explain what they wanted from the EU,' Rutte told a weekly press conference.
'A letter was sent today which, as far as I am concerned, doesn't answer this request (from the EU for more information). I hope it will be possible to give the answers to these questions.'
Rutte - who has been one of the most outspoken EU leaders on Brexit as his country faces the risk of an economic shock if Britain leaves without a deal - said the letter had 'no full plan, there was only part of a plan.'
'We hope London will provide more clarity before Wednesday,'
German foreign minister Heiki Mass added that 'many questions' remained about Mrs May's plan.
The hardline continental approach to next week's summit came as meetings between the Tories and Labour to try to find a Brexit compromise appeared to have stalled tonight.
After a third day of talks Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: 'So far, the Government isn't proposing any changes to the deal.'
One of Jeremy Corbyn's senior aides today joked that three days of Brexit talks with the Tories had only produced a single piece of paper - as Jeremy Hunt warned Britain would have 'no choice' but to accept a long Brexit delay if Labour won't do a deal.
Brexiteers have pledged to 'go nuclear' and accused Theresa May of 'abandoning' her party - and leave voters - after she wrote to the EU begging them to extend Article 50 until June 30. 
There is also fury that she promised Brussels that British taxpayers would stump up £108million to hold European elections in late May if she fails to make a deal with Jeremy Corbyn by then.
Senior Labour and Conservative MPs are meeting for the third day in a row to thrash out a Brexit deal with a customs union and a second referendum being discussed as a compromise.
But ominously Labour's chief whip Nick Brown described the outcome of the crunch talks had produced 'a piece of paper' - but refused to say what the A4 sheet contained.
Mr Corbyn also admitted that talks with the Prime Minister could drag on after admitting he had 'no issue' with Britain taking part in the European elections.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today there 'no choice' but to accept a long extension if a way through cannot be found.
He told the BBC: 'It's obviously not optimal to have any extension at all and we have a plan to leave the EU and deliver on the referendum result which we put before Parliament a number of times.
'We still hope to leave the EU in the next couple of months, that's our ambition, we don't have a majority in Parliament and that means that we have to have these discussions with Jeremy Corbyn to see if there is enough common ground to do that.'
Asked if he could accept a long extension, Mr Hunt said: 'If we can't find a way through with Parliament then we have no choice'. 
This morning the Prime Minister sent a letter to EU chief Donald Tusk to formally request an extension to Article 50 that will delay the UK's departure beyond April 12 to June 30. 
Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years. 
The last election in 2014 cost £108million to hold and it is expected it will cost a similar amount to the taxpayer this time around if we take part. 
The £108million cost includes funding for things like hiring polling stations and the staff to run them, getting the ballot papers printed and producing promotional material highlighting that the elections are taking place.
It does not include the cost of MEPs' salaries. 
The UK currently returns 73 MEPs from 12 electoral regions to a parliament with 751 members that sits alternately in Brussels and Strasbourg.
The system used to pick MEPs is different from that used for Westminster elections, where you vote for one candidate who represents a specific constituency'.
Instead several forms of proportional representation are used, so between three and 10 MEPs are picked in each of the 12 UK regions and represent every one of the people in them. 
At the moment the UK's 73 MEPs consist of 19 Labour, 18 Tory, ten independents, seven Ukip, seven Brexit Party, three Greens, two SNP and one each for the Lib Dems, Ulster Unionists, Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru and the Social Democratic Party. 
There is also one vacant seat.
Donald Tusk said today that a 12-month 'flextension' to March 31 2020 is 'the only reasonable way out' of the crisis and will urge leaders of the EU's 27 member states to back him later today. 
Mrs May wants a 'termination clause' allowing the UK to leave on May 22 - the day before European elections - if a deal can be pushed through the UK Parliament. 
But Mrs May's letter admits that if she fails Britain would go to the polls between May 23 and May 26, costing the taxpayer up to £108million to put on the elections. British MEPs would then be paid a £85,000-a-year salary to sit in Brussels from July as the UK tries to leave. 
Brexiteer Owen Paterson tweeted that Tories should 'go nuclear' and push again for No Deal while Tory ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg said today: 'If a long extension leaves us stuck in the EU we should be as difficult as possible. We could veto any increase in the budget, obstruct the putative EU army and block Mr Macron's integrationist schemes'. 
He added that if the PM agrees to a customs union: 'The Conservative Party is being abandoned'.
After Jacob Rees-Mogg warned that the UK 'should be as difficult as possible' if it remained in the EU for a long period, the European Parliament's Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt responded: 'For those in the EU who may be tempted to further extend the #Brexit saga, I can only say, be careful what you wish for.'
Tory Brexiteer Mark Francois said Theresa May's letter to Donald Tusk was a 'mistake' and said: 'We should just leave the European Union because that's what 17.4 million people voted for'. Mr Francois also accused the Prime Minister of having 'completely ignored' her Cabinet - which he said was 'unconstitutional' - as he claimed 14 Cabinet ministers said the UK should leave next week with no deal. 
Eurosceptic Conservative MP John Redwood tweeted: 'No more delays. The government should just get on with leaving the EU on 12 April. Offer a free trade agreement and go. The talks with Mr Corbyn cannot result in an outcome that honours Brexit and pleases Leave voters.'
EU sources have said they will reject Mrs May's June 30 Brexit date and tell her that a year-long deal is the only option. With No Deal now off the table she would be forced to accept it. 
But it also emerged Emmanuel Macron could break ranks with the EU and is still considering whether to dump Britain out of the EU unless it finds a 'credible plan'. French diplomatic source slammed as 'clumsy plans of a 'flexible extension' for Britain to leave the EU in the next year.  
Theresa May's cabinet is considering giving MPs a vote on holding a second referendum as the price of a deal with Jeremy Corbyn, it emerged today, but Mr Corbyn appears to be in no rush to find an agreement.

WEDNESDAY APRIL 10: EU SUMMIT
Another summit with EU leaders – where May will ask for a new delay beyond April 12. 
May's new plan is to strike a cross-party consensus in London and persuade EU leaders it means the deal can be delivered in time for Brexit on May 22.
She may have to accept a longer extension that means holding EU elections, as Brussels has made clear this is a red line - and will take a decision on delay without Britain and it must be unanimous. 
EU officials including Michel Barnier have warned that the risk of an accidental No Deal is increasing if May arrives with no plan.
THURSDAY APRIL 11: PM'S FACES MPs
Theresa May will return from Brussels with a likely nine to 12 month extension and will outline her plans in the the Commons in the wake of the EU summit.
FRIDAY APRIL 12: BREXIT DAY
Britain is due to leave the EU without a deal on this date if no delay is agreed. 
He said today: 'We don't think the European elections are an issue one way or another. The more important thing is to get an agreement on our future relationship with Europe. If there are elections we will contest them'.
Brexiteer Tory Marcus Fysh told MailOnline 'we don't need more time, we need the right approach' and suggested Tory grassroots members might refuse to help elect Conservative candidates if the UK took part in the European elections.
He said: 'They [the EU] don't want an unhelpful and unhappy group in the European Parliament and local Conservative parties will not be working to get Conservatives elected under the circumstances. 
And ERG deputy chairman Steve Baker added: 'The PM could get us out with a deal if only she would secure changes to the backstop in line with the Brady amendment which she whipped for. If only the Government would abandon pursuit of a customs union in all but name, this crisis would end.' 
Theresa May's cabinet is considering giving MPs a vote on holding a second referendum as the price of a deal with Jeremy Corbyn, it emerged today.
Talks between Mrs May and Mr Corbyn continue today with a customs union proposal looking the most likely compromise. 
But Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said today it's 'highly unlikely' that the party would support a cross-party deal with the Prime Minister if a second referendum was not included.    
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox last night warned that Britain would be stuck in the EU for at least another year unless the Government cuts a soft Brexit deal with the Labour leader. He said it was now the only way in which Britain was likely to leave the EU next month.
Several Brexiteer ministers are pushing Mrs May to rule out a long delay, with a handful even urging her to take Britain out of the EU without a deal next Friday if Parliament continues to refuse to pass her plan.
Mr Cox told the BBC that unless a deal can be cut with Labour the delay would be a 'long one... longer than just a few weeks or months'.  
DUP leader Arlene Foster said the Prime Minister's request for an extension was 'unsurprising but unsatisfactory'.
Theresa May has written to European Council president Donald Tusk requesting an extension to Article 50 until June 30.
The Prime Minister said she will seek to ratify her Withdrawal Agreement before the European Parliament elections on May 23, but will make 'responsible preparations' to take part if that does not prove possible.
Britain is due to leave the European Union at the end of next week, but Mrs May is now seeking to delay Brexit for a second time after her deal was rejected for a third time last week.
In her letter, she wrote: 'I am writing therefore to inform the European Council that the United Kingdom is seeking a further extension to the period provided under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union, including as applied by Article 106a of the Euratom Treaty.
'The United Kingdom proposes that this period should end on 30 June 2019. If the parties are able to ratify before this date, the Government proposes that the period should be terminated early.
'The Government will want to agree a timetable for ratification that allows the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union before 23 May 2019 and therefore cancel the European Parliament elections, but will continue to make responsible preparations to hold the elections should this not prove possible.'
Mrs May said if ongoing talks with Labour do not lead to a 'single unified approach soon' then the Government would instead look to establish a 'consensus' on options on a future relationship that could be put to the Commons.
She wrote: 'The Government stands ready to abide by the decision of the House, if the Opposition will commit to doing the same.' 
'It should not have been like this,' she said. 'Exiting the EU has become chaotic because of intransigence in Brussels and ineffectiveness in London.
'The United Kingdom fighting European elections almost three years after a clear majority voted to leave the EU sums up the disorganised and slapdash approach taken to negotiations by the Prime Minister.'
Mrs Foster said Mrs May should not be 'subcontracting the UK's future to Jeremy Corbyn' by going into talks with the Labour leader.
She said: 'We want a sensible deal which protects the Union and respects the referendum result but it was foolish strategically in the negotiations to limit the UK's leverage by removing 'no deal' from the table.
'The Prime Minister should not waste any extension by subcontracting the UK's future to Jeremy Corbyn. This time should be used to get a better deal which works for every part of the United Kingdom so the entire nation can leave the European Union together.'
Last night the delay had not been signed off by the Cabinet, which is deeply split over how long to ask for. The move came amid signs that ministers are closing in on a deal with Labour that is likely to involve some form of customs union and guarantees on workers' rights and environmental standards.
After two days of intensive talks, officials were last night working on a formal letter to Labour setting out the broad scope of a possible deal.
Sources played down reports that the package would include a second referendum although they pointed out there would be nothing to stop Parliament attempting to attach one to the deal. But both sides described talks, which will continue today, as constructive.
One Tory source said: 'There has been a bit of capitulation on both sides. Everyone is looking to have something imposed on them – get a deal done and blame the other side for the bits they don't like. It could all come crashing down, but at the moment it's in play.' 
Mrs May launched formal talks with Labour on Wednesday after MPs rejected her deal three times. 
The decision has prompted a furious Tory backlash, with Eurosceptic MPs threatening to go 'on strike' and up to 15 ministers saying they will quit if the deal includes a customs union.
But in an interview with the BBC's Political Thinking podcast, Mr Cox said the Government had no choice but to agree a compromise if Britain was still to leave the EU. 
He warned that with Parliament now legislating to force the Government to seek a delay to avoid a No Deal Brexit next week, Mrs May 'would have little choice but to accept the extension that she's offered'. 
Asked if Mr Corbyn could become the midwife of Brexit, he replied: 'So be it. What matters is this is born.' 
The Cabinet is split over how long an extension to ask the EU for. At a seven-hour Cabinet showdown on Tuesday, up to 14 ministers voiced doubts about a long extension that would delay Brexit beyond the European Parliament elections on May 23.
Tory MPs could go on 'vote strike' to protest against Theresa May's courting of Jeremy Corbyn as she seeks a soft Brexit compromise.
The Prime Minister has ended her efforts to win over hardline Brexiteers and the DUP to support her deal - and called for a compromise with Labour instead.
A second day of talks between senior ministers and Labour officials concluded at the Cabinet Office today amid hopes of a new cross-party deal in time for next week's EU summit.
But even if she does pull off the political miracle of bringing Labour on board with a Brexit plan, scores of her MPs are ready to effectively end her ability to get other business through the Commons.
One senior MP told MailOnline: 'There is talk of a vote strike. People are telling the whips that unless she goes, MPs won't vote. 
'They won't get any Government business through - though they would vote, of course, in a confidence vote.'  
The Prime Minister fought and won a vote of no confidence in her party leadership in December - meaning she cannot be forced out by party rules.
But demands are mounting for the party's backbench 1922 Committee to call another vote anyway.
The theory is a new secret ballot would allow ministers to join a revolt and produce a landslide vote against Mrs May's leadership. 
Success would be yet another political humiliation piled onto the ailing Prime Minister and could force her out. 
Just ten Cabinet ministers backed a long delay to give time to negotiate a new deal. Downing Street yesterday confirmed that preparations for the elections are likely to go ahead, but insisted the £100million exercise could be called off as late as the day before if the Government is able to get a Brexit deal through Parliament.
Members of the 'Pizza Club' of pro-Brexit Tory MPs met on Wednesday night in the office of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom. 
In attendance were several Cabinet ministers including Penny Mordaunt, Jeremy Hunt and Chris Grayling. 
One minister told the Daily Mail: 'Ministers were saying, 'It is miserable, but we need an alternative. We fear Brexit isn't going to happen in the next 18 months'.'
Senior ministers clashed yesterday over whether the Government should contemplate agreeing a second referendum, which Mr Corbyn is under pressure from Labour activists to demand.
Chancellor Philip Hammond described the idea as a 'perfectly credible option'. But Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: 'That's certainly not how I would describe it.' Mr Corbyn is under intense pressure from MPs and activists to demand a referendum as the price of any deal. 
But the Labour leader has indicated he believes a second vote is only needed to 'stop a damaging Tory Brexit or a No Deal'.
Spartan chief Steve Baker told MailOnline: 'The Chancellor has come up with about the stupidest suggestion I could imagine. Look at the rage and despair created by asking Parliament to choose between Brexit in name only or no Brexit, and then imagine the public reaction. Is he trying to destroy all faith in democracy?'. 
There were reportedly talks on creating a 'devolution lock' that would give Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast a veto on any future changes to the UK-EU relationship, according to BuzzFeed News.
Downing Street denied this as 'categorically untrue'. 
Tom Watson today heaped more pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to demand a second referendum from Theresa May as Labour's price for agreeing a Brexit deal.
The party's deputy leader said that it's 'highly unlikely' members would support a cross-party agreement the Prime Minister if another public vote on leaving the EU was not included in some way. 
Labour is split over Brexit after Emily Thornberry contradicted her leader by also demanding a second referendum on any deal. 
But yesterday a group of 25 of his backbenchers wrote to Mr Corbyn warning against the inclusion of a second referendum in any compromise Brexit deal negotiated with the Government. 
The letter warned that a second referendum would be 'exploited by the far-Right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our chances of winning a General Election'. 
Labour is meeting the government for a third day of talks on a possible solution to the impasse over Brexit, with May seeking a further delay while she seeks to find a deal that can get parliamentary support.
Mr Watson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that negotiations are 'making progress', he said, and both sides are hoping for 'a creative solution' - which could include another referendum.
He added: 'One of the solutions to break a parliamentary impasse is to ask the people to run their slide rule over Theresa May's deal.
'They can work out for themselves whether this deal works for them and their families.'
Mr Watson revealed that Labour opened nominations on Thursday for candidates to stand in the European elections. 
Theresa May and Donald Tusk's very different visions for the next Brexit delay set up an incredibly tense period for the Prime Minister both at home and abroad.
Mrs May has said she will seek an extension to June 30 - a date already rejected once by EU leaders - at an emergency summit in Brussels.
Her letter to the European Council president Mr Tusk came after he said that he wanted an extension to March 31 next year as 'the only reasonable way out' of the crisis.
But the decision will ultimately be made unanimously by the heads of state of the other 27 EU states, who overruled Mr Tusk last time round to offer the UK just two weeks until April 12 if no Brexit deal had been agreed. 
It means there is still a great deal of uncertainty over what extension - if any, the Brussels summit will come up with next week.
Against this backdrop talks continue between Mrs May's top team and senior Labour figures over plans for a compromise Brexit deal that would allow the UK to leave as soon as possible.
They will sit down again today in a bid to hammer out a deal acceptable to both parties.
But the move had threatened to shatter both parties, with Tories aghast that Mrs May is negotiating with a hard Left leader and Labour MPs worried that Mr Corbyn, a long-term Brexiteer, might not seek a second referendum on any deal agreed.
If they do agree a deal there is still time for a vote to be held in the Commons before the Brussels summit. 
If the talks come to nothing, Mrs May has indicated she would present MPs with her own version of 'indicative votes - options for Brexit that they get to vote on - which could also be held before the summit.
But previous backbench-led votes like this have so far to win a majority,  hence the current situation is a total mess.
Last night peers were spared an all-night sitting over a controversial move to pass in one day a Bill extending the Brexit process in a bid to avoid a No Deal scenario.
After seven hours of procedural wrangling on whether the European Union (Withdrawal) (No.5) Bill should be pushed through in just one sitting, a deal was reached to complete the second reading stage last night.
But its detailed committee and report stages, and third reading, will be taken on Monday, sparing weary peers the prospect of votes through the night.
Under the rebel law the Commons will set out demands for the length of the new Brexit. The Government says if the EU Council offers a different delay - whether in length or with conditions - the PM will not be able to agree it without a further vote in Parliament.
If Parliament makes further demands instead of rubber stamping whatever comes from Brussels, there would need to be further talks among EU leader - effectively impossible when the second vote would be on April 11 and exit due the following day.    
What has Mrs May asked for? 
In her letter to Donald Tusk she formally requested an extension to Article 50 that will delay the UK's departure beyond April 12 to June 30 - but she also wants a 'termination clause'.
This would allow the UK to leave on May 22 - the day before European elections - if a deal can be pushed through the UK Parliament.
However, this delay is a carbon copy of that sought by Mrs May before the last emergency summit in March - which was rejected.
What has the EU said?
Mr Tusk said that a 12-month 'flextension' to March 29 2020 is 'the only reasonable way out' of the crisis and will urge leaders of the EU's 27 member states to back him later today. 
Such an extension is likely to spark fury among Tory Brexiteer MPs, with Jacob Rees-Mogg suggesting if we were kept in we should be troublesome to the rest of the EU, politically.
And Mrs May has previously said she would not be able to accept such a delay - suggesting it could prompt her to resign. This could lead to a summer leadership battle in Tory ranks before a new, most likely Brexiteer leader, takes over.
What is happening in the cross party talks? 
The Prime Minister has said the divorce deal could not be changed but announced on Tuesday she would seek a new consensus with Jeremy Corbyn on the political declaration about the final UK-EU agreement. 
Talks are taking place for a third day on Friday between ministers and officials from both parties, with previous efforts being hailed as 'constructive. 
If the talks fail, Mrs May has promised to put options to Parliament and agreed to be bound by the result. In a second round of indicative votes on Monday night a customs union, Norway-style soft Brexit and second referendum were the leading options - but none got a majority of MPs.   
What does Mrs May's shift mean?  
It suggests Mrs May has abandoned all hope of winning over remaining Tory Brexiteers and the DUP on the terms of her current deal.
Striking a cross-party deal on the future relationship will require Mrs May to abandon many of her red lines - including potentially on free movement and striking trade deals.
To get an agreement with Labour, Mrs May will need to agree the political declaration should spell out a much softer Brexit than her current plans do. This might mean a permanent UK-EU customs union or even staying in the EU Single Market.
What if Mr Corbyn says No? 
Mrs May said if she cannot cut a deal with Corbyn, she would ask Parliament to come up with options - and promised to follow orders from MPs.
In a second round of indicative votes on Monday night a customs union, Norway-style soft Brexit and second referendum were the leading options - but none got a majority of MPs.
They would probably pass if the Tories whipped for them - but it would almost certainly mean ministers quitting the Government. 
Can either option be completed before the PM goes to Brussels? 
Yes there is still technically time. The Government would have to table a motion the night before any such vote was due to be held.
MPs would then have time the following day to debate what was on offer - and possibly suggest their own changes - before it is put to a vote, probably in the evening.  
In practice, talks with Mr Corbyn and his team must have concluded by Monday at the very latest to give time for MPs to have their say if she is to make demand to the EU ahead of next week's summit. 
When will Brexit be? 
It is hard to say - but it is unlikely to be next week on April 12. 
Mrs May has asked for an extension to June 30. Donald Tusk has suggested a year. 
There are EU leaders like France's Emmanuel Macron who have played Bad Cop and said they want us gone quickly. But others, including Germany's Angela Merkel, has been more conciliatory, suggesting yesterday she would show more flexibility to get a deal. 
The PM clearly still wants to get out of the EU before European Parliament elections have to be held on May 22 but this is ultimately up to Brussels.
Will the EU agree to this? 
It is hard to say. The EU has said it is open to further extension if there is a clear purpose and plan. Open ended talks on the future framework are unlikely to qualify.
A clear, negotiable goal for the future framework probably would do. The EU has always said it is open to Britain staying in the Single Market and Customs Union. 

Will May resign? 
Nodbody knows for sure. Last week, Mrs May announced she would go if and when her divorce deal passed so a new Tory leader could take charge of the trade talks phase.
In practice, it drained Mrs May of all remaining political capital. Most in Westminster think her Premiership is over within weeks at the latest. 
As her deal folded for a third time last Friday, she faced immediate calls from Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn so stand down with instant effect. 
What is clear is there is already a fight underway for the Tory leadership.  
Does is all mean there will be an election?
Probably, at some point though the immediate chances have fallen because of the latest events. The Commons is deadlocked and the Government has no functional majority. While the Fixed Term Parliaments Act means the Government can stumble on, it will become increasingly powerless.
Mrs May could try to call one herself or, assuming she stands down, her successor could do so.  
Would May lead the Tories into an early election? 
Unlikely. Having admitted to her party she would go if the deal passes, Mrs May's political career is doomed.
While there is no procedural way to remove her, a withdrawal of political support from the Cabinet or Tory HQ would probably finish her even if she wanted to stay.    
How is an election called? When would it be? 
Because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act passed by the coalition, the Prime Minister can no longer simply ask the Queen to dissolve the Commons and call an election. There are two procedures instead.
First - and this is what happened in 2017 - the Government can table a motion in the Commons calling for an early election. Crucially, this can only pass with a two-thirds majority of MPs - meaning either of the main parties can block it.
Second an election is called if the Government loses a vote of no confidence and no new administration can be built within 14 days.
In practice, this is can only happen if Tory rebels vote with Mr Corbyn - a move that would end the career of any Conservative MP who took the step. 
An election takes a bare minimum of five weeks from start to finish and it would take a week or two to get to the shut down of Parliament, known as dissolution - putting the earliest possible polling day around mid to late May. 
If the Tories hold a leadership election first it probably pushes any election out to late June at the earliest.  
Why do people say there has to be an election? 
The question of whether to call an election finally reached the Cabinet last week.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay warned the rejection of Mrs May's deal would set in train a series of events that will lead to a softer Brexit - meaning an election because so many MPs will have to break manifesto promises. 
MPs voting to seize control of Brexit from ministers has only fuelled the demands.   
Labour has been calling for a new vote for months, insisting the Government has failed to deliver Brexit.
Mr Corbyn called a vote of no confidence in the Government in January insisting the failure of the first meaningful vote showed Mrs May's administration was doomed. He lost but the calls did not go away. 
Brexiteers have joined the demands in recent days as Parliament wrestles with Brexit and amid fears among hardliners promises made by both main parties at the last election will be broken - specifically on leaving the Customs Union and Single Market. 
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen wants Mrs May replaced with a Brexiteer. He believes it would push Remain Tories out of the party and then allow a snap election with more Eurosceptic candidates wearing blue rosettes.
What might happen? 
Both main parties will have to write a manifesto - including a position on Brexit. Both parties are deeply split - in many cases between individual MPs and their local activists.
Under Mrs May, the Tories presumably try to start with the deal. But it is loathed by dozens of current Tory MPs who want a harder Brexit and hated even more by grassroots Tory members. 
Shifting Tory policy on Brexit to the right would alienate the majority of current MPs who voted to Remain.
Labour has similar splits. Many of Labour's MPs and activists want Mr Corbyn to commit to putting Brexit to a second referendum - most with a view to cancelling it. 
Mr Corbyn is a veteran Eurosceptic and millions of people who voted Leave in 2016 backed Labour in 2017. 
The splits set the stage for a bitter and chaotic election. The outcome is highly unpredictable - the Tories start in front but are probably more divided on the main question facing the country.
Labour is behind but knows it made dramatic gains in the polls in the last election with its promises of vastly higher public spending. 
Neither side can forecast what impact new political forces might wield over the election or how any public anger over the Brexit stalemate could play out.
It could swing the result in favour of one of the main parties or a new force. 
Or an election campaign that takes months, costs millions of pounds could still end up in a hung Parliament and continued stalemate. This is the current forecast by polling expert Sir John Curtice. 
Labour has held the Newport West by-election but Brexit anger pushed up UKIP's vote share up a third. 
But support for Jeremy Corbyn's party and the Tories plunged amid the ongoing chaos in Westminster over Britain's stuttering exit from the EU.
Labour's Ruth Jones took the Commons seat with 39.6 per cent of the vote, but that was down 12.7 per cent on the result of the veteran MP Paul Flynn who died in February.   
But there was an increase in support for UKIP, whose candidate Neil Hamilton trebled its share of the vote when compared to the 2017 election - up from from 2.5 per cent to 8.6 per cent. 
The Tories came second with 31.3 per cent of the vote - down eight per cent in two years - but overall there was a 2.4 per cent swing from Labour to the Conservatives.
Mrs Jones had been the clear favourite to succeed Mr Flynn, who held the Newport West seat for 32 years, winning with a majority of 5,658 and more than half the vote in 2017. 
Jones took 9,308 votes, giving her a majority of 1,951 over the Tory candidate Matthew Evans.
UKIP's Neil Hamilton took third place with 2,023 votes as the party saw support increase. 
The city has long been a Labour stronghold and voted Leave by a margin of 56 per cent to 44 per cent in the 2016 in-out referendum. 
Voter turnout was 37.1 per cent, down from 67.5 per cent in the 2017 general election, with parties blaming poor weather including rain and hail on Thursday. 
 
Attorney General defends inviting Jeremy Corbyn into Brexit talks – saying 'we must use any lawful means' to ensure UK leaves the EU 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has defended inviting Jeremy Corbyn to Brexit talks, saying 'we must use any lawful means' to ensure the UK leaves the EU. 
Mr Cox said that if Government discussions with Labour fail to deliver an agreement the UK faced a long extension to Article 50.
The Attorney General suggested that in such circumstances Prime Minister Theresa May would have little choice but to accept what the EU offered her.
Welcoming the cross-party talks, Mr Cox told BBC Radio 4's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast: 'I say we must use any means to secure the ends, any lawful means.
'We are assisting at the birth of something new. Births are not always easy and we must take the necessary steps to achieve our departure.'
Asked if that meant Mr Corbyn would be the midwife, the Attorney General replied: 'So be it. What matters is this is born.'
The Attorney General said failure to reach agreement with Labour would have repercussions.
Mr Cox said: 'The problem, then, would be that we would be in an extension. It's likely to be a long one, by which I mean longer than just a few weeks or months.'
He added: 'We will no doubt be offered an extension with a date on it and the Prime Minister will be required to accept or reject it.'
Mr Cox said the backbench Bill brought forward by Labour's Yvette Cooper and others, which forces the Government to seek an extension if no deal has been agreed by April 12, would leave the PM with little room to manoeuvre.
Referring to the Bill's impact on a no deal option, the Attorney General said: 'It rules it out... the Prime Minister would have little choice but to accept the extension that she's offered.'
Mr Cox was cool on the prospect of another Brexit referendum.
He said: 'I think a good deal of persuasion might be needed to satisfy the Government that a second referendum would be appropriate. But of course we will consider any suggestion that's made.'
The Attorney General said Mr Corbyn was not fit to be PM.
He said: 'The opposition is simply not fit to govern. The leader of the opposition is simply not fit to be Prime Minister of this country.
'It is vital that the Conservative Party sustains itself in office and sustains its unity.' 
Customs Union
Until now, Theresa May has said the UK will leave the European Union's customs union.
The customs union eliminates duties – or tariffs – between member states, while EU countries impose a common external tariff on imports from non-members.
But the customs union also allows the EU to strike trade deals on behalf of all its members.
The Prime Minister made leaving the customs union a 'red line' in her negotiations due to her desire to strike independent trade deals with other countries – such as the USA.
Remaining in the union would stop this because the UK would be barred from reducing its tariffs on imported goods from other countries.
They could only strike deals in the services sector – however this does make up a vast part of the modern UK economy.
Jeremy Corbyn wants a permanent customs union. He says it will help protect existing trade between the UK and EU, in particular that of manufactured goods which relies on complex supply chains – links which can break down if goods are delayed at the border.
Labour also says that remaining in the customs union will help keep trade flowing freely between Northern Ireland and the Republic without the need for the so-called 'backstop'.
Mr Corbyn claims his proposal does include the UK having a say on future trade deals negotiated by the EU and affecting the UK. But this is something Brussels has apparently ruled out.
Despite all this, senior Tory ministers were out in force yesterday preparing the ground for a customs union compromise. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox argued that the customs union might be needed to get out – claiming the UK could leave at a later point and a customs union would not be a 'permanent straitjacket'.
Employment rights
Under Mrs May's deal, the UK agrees not to row back on existing EU rules on workers' rights – such as the Working Time Directive which limits working hours – after we leave.
But Mr Corbyn wants to go further and is demanding 'dynamic alignment' – meaning any future government would agree to accept any employment laws and trade union rules passed by the EU in future, regardless of Parliament's wishes. So what if the EU agreed to a four-day working week, or passed other regulations which would erode competitiveness?
Mrs May claims to be a champion of workers' rights, so this is an area she could argue is consistent with her approach, even if it limits the UK's ability to set its own course in future because we are tied to Brussels diktats.
Free movement
In theory, the parties are not far apart on free movement – one of the central issues of the referendum campaign.
Vast numbers of Labour voters backed Leave because they oppose uncontrolled immigration. This was reflected in Labour's manifesto which said free movement will end after we leave.
For Mrs May, ending free movement is her reddest of red lines. But Labour policy on what migration policy should replace free movement is significantly more liberal than Tory policy. In particular, the Opposition is against the proposed £30,000 minimum earnings requirement for post-Brexit working visas.
Could Mr Corbyn demand this is scrapped and a lower earnings threshold imposed?
Second referendum
Publicly, Downing Street officials have not ruled out agreeing to a second referendum.
Yet if anything is a deal breaker, it is a demand for another Brexit vote. The whole point of the talks with Mr Corbyn – and the reward for Mrs May enduring civil war in the Tory Party – is that Brexit goes through in short order with Labour backing.
But a second referendum, with Remain on the ballot paper, would require a Brexit delay of at least a year and the UK taking part in MEP elections next month – both currently unacceptable to Mrs May.
On Mr Corbyn's side, the second referendum is the issue which divides his Shadow Cabinet, MPs, activists and voters like no other. Agree to a deal without one and the Remainers in his party will be livid.
If he wants to deliberately crash the talks, this is what Mr Corbyn demand
All you need to know about the Brexit pantomime currently being played out in the 'Supreme Court' is that the judges involved are reported to have spent part of the weekend practising their ceremonial entrance.
They held a dummy run ahead of the hearing to make sure they could walk to their thrones and sit down without falling over in front of the TV cameras.
There's only room for seven of them, but all 11 wanted to be in the movie, so special seating arrangements had to be made. It's the first time the full complement of judges has assembled for a single case.
Scroll down for video 
Proceedings are being streamed on the internet, as well as the rolling news channels. Ostensibly, this is hailed as a triumph for 'transparency', but my guess is that there's an alternative motive.
The judges wanted to ensure that their performances were preserved for posterity, so they could watch the video with friends and family over and over again at Christmas — a judicial version of It's A Wonderful Life.
If football referees play back their games on a Monday morning, why not judges?
'Look darling, that's me — third from the right, next to old Nobby Neuberger. Maybe I should have gone with the MCC tie, instead of the National Liberal Club.
'It's true what they say, though. TV does put 10 lb on you. Do you think I should go on the 5:2 diet before we hand down our decision? Probably a good time to lay off the jam roly-poly for a few weeks. I'm turning into Rumpole of the Bailey.
'By the way, have we got any more of that Chateau Thames Embankment from Aldi in the pantry? We have? Fabulous!
'Hang on, wind it back. That was a terrific point of law I just made, about article 49, clause 12, subsection 14.
'Back of the net!'
Some might accuse me of lacking respect for the judiciary, but what the hell. I've always belonged to the Dick the Butcher school, from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II. 'First thing we do,' says Dick, 'let's kill all the lawyers.'
Works for me, starting with all those two-bob spivs who advertise for 'trip and fall' comp-en-say-shun claims on daytime TV, right up to M'lords and Laydee who sit in the ludicrously titled 'Supreme Court'.
Any faith I had in the judiciary went out of the window during the Leveson Inquisition into the Press, conducted by Sir Brian — or My Noble Lord, or His Royal Majesty, or El Presidente, or whatever he calls himself this week — Leveson, who displayed a level of understanding of my trade which bordered on the cretinous.
His reward was to be appointed Chief High Executioner, or something, on the thick end of a couple of hundred thousand sovs a year. Cue Gilbert & Sullivan, and bring on the dancing girls.
There was a dopey bird on the wireless yesterday, claiming to represent Britain's 15,500 barristers, accusing the Daily Mail of behaving like Hitler for daring to question the impartiality of judges. Oh, for heaven's sake, grow up, pet. Your puerile hyperbole only serves to prove our point.
And who knew that we had 15,500 barristers in Britain, on top of the assorted solicitors, paralegals and PPI parasites? What do they all do, apart from make a bloody nuisance of themselves?
Look, for the record, I acknowledge that we need the rule of law. But I have the utmost contempt for most of its practitioners, who think they are the law, rather than its mere custodians. In the immortal words of Tony Hancock: 'Magna Carta — did she die in vain?'
Maybe it was always thus. Peter Cook was making a good living poking fun at judges in the Sixties. But the rot really set in after the Labour landslide in 1997. Don't forget that Blair claimed the incorporation of the corrupt European 'yuman rites' act into British law was his proudest achievement in politics.
Of course it was. His missus and her mates made a killing, hoovering up millions in legal aid for representing terrorists, rapists, murderers, illegal immigrants, child molesters and assorted chancers.
And these days the Wicked Witch is a judge, too, when she's not buying another house or lecturing us loftily on 'parenting'.
Here's a top tip, Cherie baby. We're not interested in what you think about anything, sweetheart.
But the whole point of the Blair Project was to install judicial activism above popular democracy.
The intention was always to lock us in so tightly to the EU that the judges would be able to scupper any vote to leave. This week's 'Supreme Court' spectacular was in the script. And that's precisely where we've arrived.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about whatever decision the so-called 'Supreme Court' hands down eventually, even if it goes the way I'd prefer. The simple fact is: they shouldn't be involved in the process at all.
This whole attempt to sabotage the democratic will of the British people should never have been allowed to get this far.
But, as always, everybody has to be in the movie — and this time it's the judges' turn to take centre stage. They're like those gormless prats who stand behind TV reporters on location, waving and pulling faces at the camera.
Hello, Mum!
Only in the case of judges, it's not just about being on telly, it's about showing us plebs who's boss.
What they don't begin to understand is that, to employ a cliche, they're part of the problem, not the solution.
When Britain voted Leave, we were rejecting the whole rotten edifice — up to and including the self-regarding, self-important, self-perpetuating judicial class, who despite their aloof blather about their 'independence' are ultimately subordinate to Europe.
And still we've ended up with the future of our nation pivoting on a perverse show trial, conducted by 11 'learned friends' who don't even trust themselves to put one foot in front of the other without falling flat on their backsides in front of the TV cameras.
Makes you proud to be British.
Vets are concerned about the number of pets turning up drunk at their surgeries, especially at Christmas.
During the festive season, they claim, owners are more likely to collapso on the sofa, leaving the dregs of their booze as a temptation to curious animals.
Dogs are particularly vulnerable. That, I can believe. I've had a couple of labradors in my life and both of them would drink anything.
Sherry, my mum and dad's dog, was so named after she knocked over a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream and downed the lot.
Ossie, our lab named in honour of the legendary Osvaldo Ardiles, Spurs and Argentina midfielder, once scoffed a whole box of chocolate liqueurs — managing to guzzle them all while leaving the wrappers untouched.
Obviously, his knees went all trembly. But apart from sleeping for 24 hours, while breaking wind in Hurricane Katrina fashion, he showed no other ill-effects.
Unlike my mate's red setter, who slurped a pint of IPA and five minutes later was stumbling about the house crashing into furniture.
We've all been there.
How long before the Old Bill gets, er, wind of this worrying new trend and starts setting up road blocks to breathalyse boozed-up boxers and paralytic poodles?
I think I've got a lead, guv.
Today's edition of Mind How You Go comes courtesy of Thames Valley Police and the Met, who have both made videos based on the 'mannequin' craze doing the rounds on the internet.
For the uninitiated, this involves assuming a 'time stood still' pose for a few seconds. Or, as children of my vintage knew it, 'doing a Dr Kildare' — after the freeze frame opening titles of the popular Sixties American hospital drama, starring Richard Chamberlain as Dr Kildare and Raymond Massey as Dr Gillespie.
Still, it gives a whole new meaning to: 'Armed police — freeze!'
The funniest, cleverest gig I've seen this year was Rory Bremner at a charity lunch in London last week. 
His Trump, Obama, Boris and Clinton were sensational and the script was as sharp as a Stanley knife. Politics has never been so volatile, or as much fun. Why will none of the networks give him another series? 
The rural economy has gone so far down the gurgler after Brexit that you can now buy three horses for a tenner, according to the RSPCA. Which may be bad news for equestrianism, but is great news for French restaurants.
Quangocrat Dame Somebody Or Other has delivered an official report announcing that mass immigration has produced Muslim ghettoes in Britain. Tell us something we don't know, love.
Next week, Dame Twanky reports exclusively on what bears do in the woods.
After the great global warming scam was exposed as complete fiction, the alarmists are now warning that Britain can expect to be hit by 65ft-high tsunamis.
No, we won't.
 
Theresa May today urges Parliament to ‘do its duty’ and vote through her Brexit deal.
Writing in the Daily Mail, she says she is close to winning concessions from the EU that could persuade Eurosceptic MPs to back her.
Mrs May yesterday faced a mass walkout by Remainer ministers and was forced to offer MPs a vote to delay Brexit beyond March 29 if she cannot get her plans through the Commons.
But in an upbeat assessment of her talks with Brussels and European leaders, she said: ‘I have found a real determination to find a way through which allows the UK to leave with a deal. That engagement has already begun to bear fruit.
‘Parliament should do its duty so our country can move forward.’
The Prime Minister’s decision to sanction a possible Brexit delay prompted a furious row in Cabinet yesterday, with Amber Rudd, David Gauke, Greg Clark and Claire Perry facing a backlash for forcing the PM’s hand on a postponement by publicly threatening to resign.
Analysis by Jack Doyle, Associate Editor for the Daily Mail
MARCH 12: The vote on the PM’s deal
By this date Mrs May must return to the Commons with her deal and put it before MPs. After multiple delays, this really will be D-Day. She lost the first vote by 230 votes in January.
She now has two clear weeks to secure whatever concessions she can eke out of Brussels on the Northern Ireland backstop and put an amended deal back before the Commons.
To secure victory, she will need to win over the Northern Irish DUP, and at least some of the hardline Eurosceptics on the Tory Right.
If – and it’s a big if – she succeeds, Britain could leave the EU with only a short delay after March 29 to pass essential Brexit legislation.
MARCH 13: The ‘No Deal’ Vote
If the Prime Minister cannot get her deal through on or before March 12 then the following day she will table a motion asking MPs if they support leaving without a deal. The Commons is likely to reject No Deal overwhelmingly as it has already indicated its opposition to this form of Brexit.
Mrs May refused several times yesterday to say if she would vote against a No Deal Brexit – or if the Government would ‘whip’ the vote, thereby instructing its MPs how to vote.
She insisted: ‘The absolute focus should be on working to get a deal and leaving on 29 March.’
MARCH 14: The ‘Delay Brexit’ Vote
If the Commons rejects leaving without a deal, the Government will table a motion the following day asking if MPs want to ask the EU for an extension to Article 50 beyond March 29.
This is likely to pass. Again, No 10 would not say yesterday if the vote would be subject to a ‘whip’. What happens afterwards remains unclear.
MPs will, in all likelihood, force her to ask the EU for a delay. This would fray Tory unity, embolden the supporters of a second referendum and put a huge question mark over Brexit happening in any form.
Any Article 50 extension would need to approved by other EU leaders. A three-month extension, dragging out the process until the end of June, has been suggested. There remains the awkward issue of European elections in May but the new European Parliament is not scheduled to sit until July.
Thus the outgoing parliament, including its British members, may still need to ratify a Brexit deal.
In a counterblast today, former Brexit secretary David Davis accuses Mrs May of ‘capitulating to blackmail’ and warns that opening the door to a delay sends the wrong message to Brussels.
Also writing in the Mail, Mr Davis is scathing about ‘mutineer ministers encircling the Prime Minister’.
He writes: ‘The Prime Minister should ignore those ministers currently having a panic attack about the prospects of No Deal. Their fears are exaggerated. While No Deal might – might – be economically difficult, no Brexit would be a democratic disaster.’
As a cross-party group led by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory Sir Oliver Letwin dropped plans to force a vote on letting Parliament seize control of Brexit:
Mrs May’s decision to open the door to a Brexit delay appeared to have averted the threat of an immediate rebellion last night.
At least 15 ministers had threatened to resign to vote for the proposal put forward by Miss Cooper, which would have allowed Parliament to force Mrs May to seek an extension of Article 50 if the PM had not achieved a deal by the middle of next month.
Instead, Mrs May set out a new timetable which would achieve a similar effect. She confirmed that MPs would get a second ‘meaningful vote’ on her Brexit deal by March 12. The first last month led to a record government defeat. If the deal fails to pass again MPs would vote the next day on whether to back No Deal.
If No Deal is formally rejected MPs would have the chance to vote on extending Article 50 the following day.
Mrs May said any delay should be as short as possible.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Tory Brexiteer, said a short delay would mean ‘the cliff edge is simply moved back’. He added: ‘This effort to play call-my-bluff is not going to change people’s minds to back her deal.’
Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, said: ‘Moves to avert No Deal in March are essential. To avoid a hammer blow to firms and livelihoods, delay cannot simply be an extension of stalemate. Compromise is the only way.’ 
Theresa May raised eyebrows yesterday after saying the options for Brexit were ‘simples’, in reference to the meerkat stars of a TV advert.
The Prime Minister quoted the Compare The Market slogan to her bemused colleagues.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford had claimed she was ‘running down the clock’ by offering only her deal or no deal.
Mrs May retorted: ‘If he wants to end the uncertainty... then he should vote for a deal. Simples.’
Labour MP Liz McInnes tweeted: ‘Theresa Meerkat is now in charge.'
Yes, we will leave EU with a deal - if MPs hold their nerve 
By Theresa May 
Despite the political controversy of the past few weeks at Westminster, I believe the United Kingdom remains firmly on course to leave the European Union with a deal – if MPs hold their nerve.
On January 29, the House of Commons expressed its support for that outcome, provided there were legal changes to the Northern Ireland backstop to prevent it operating indefinitely.
When the Government set out to secure those changes, I did not know what the response in Europe would be.
But in the discussions I have had with the leadership of the European Union and the leaders of every EU member state, I have found a real determination to find a way through which allows the UK to leave with a deal.
That engagement has already begun to bear fruit.
The UK and EU are working towards a joint work-stream to develop alternative arrangements to ensure the absence of a hard border in Northern Ireland, in parallel with our negotiations on the future relationship.
We are doing our own ministerial-led work – supported by civil service resources and with £20 million of government funding – to help develop, test and pilot proposals which can form part of these alternative arrangements.
We are also continuing to hold detailed discussions on the legal changes that are required to guarantee that the Northern Ireland backstop cannot endure indefinitely.
But securing the necessary changes to the backstop is not the only thing the Government is doing to build support for the deal across the House of Commons.
We are developing detailed plans to give Parliament a clearer and stronger role in the next phase of the negotiations, in which the UK and the EU will agree the detail of our future relationship. We are discussing with the EU what additions or changes can now be made to the political declaration outlining that future relationship that will increase people’s confidence in the ambition of both sides to agree to it as soon as possible.
And to protect workers’ rights, a concern for many MPs as we leave the EU, we will give Parliament a vote on whether it wishes to follow suit whenever the EU changes its standards. The UK leads the way on workers’ rights, environmental protections and health and safety – as we leave the EU, we will continue to enhance them.
I firmly believe that a deal is within our grasp.
Yesterday I committed in Parliament to give MPs a second meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement by March 12 at the latest. I am confident that we can win that vote. But because many MPs are worried that if we lose that vote Parliament would not have time to make its voice heard on the next steps, I gave two other assurances.
If the Government has not won a meaningful vote by March 12, we will ask MPs if they support leaving the EU on March 29 without a Withdrawal Agreement.
If the House rejects leaving on March 29 without a deal, the Government will bring forward a motion on whether Parliament wants to seek a short limited extension to Article 50.
And if the House votes for an extension, we will seek to agree one with the EU and bring forward the necessary legislation.
But I do not want to see Article 50 extended.
Our absolute focus should be on working to get a deal and leaving on March 29. Doing so would give businesses and citizens the certainty they deserve.
By committing Labour to holding a second referendum, despite promising to implement Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn has shown once again that he cannot be trusted to keep his promises. His cynical political games would take us back to square one.
Instead, Parliament should do its duty so that our country can move forward.
We want to leave the EU with a deal that gives us the best of both worlds: a close relationship with our nearest neighbours and the chance to make the most of our talents and resources by building new relationships with growing economies around the world.
More than half a century ago, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones burst upon a still rather drab and regimented post-war world. They were the epitome of the Swinging Sixties and, like many other rock groups of the time, high priests of sexual permissiveness and drug use.
Much of the nation was shocked. A significant minority — perhaps over represented by men — was elated. What could be better than a sexual free-for-all and the widespread availability of marijuana and LSD?
Mick Jagger’s behaviour was emulated by thousands and tens of thousands and then millions. He went on to have numerous partners, got married and divorced, and then had lots more affairs. In the process, he has fathered eight children by five women. He has five grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Affair
As time passed, fewer people were shocked. The revolutionary sexual mores that Jagger and others had exemplified became the norm for millions of people, while those who tried to cleave to the old paths of marriage and family felt it wasn’t for them to cast aspersions.
And so, when at the start of this week the story broke that the 74-year-old Mick Jagger was on a date with a young woman called Noor Alfallah, who is 52 years younger than him, few eyebrows were raised — at least in the media. If anything, reports in news-papers were approving.
Please note that, according to Jagger’s spokesperson, he is still with his girlfriend, Melanie Hamrick, who is the mother of his ten-month-old son Deveraux. So this is only a brief excursion, then. I wonder what Melanie thinks.
Maybe a few lips were pursed down at the Dog and Duck, though I suspect the general feeling was ‘Good on yer, Mick’ if when you are old and wrinkly and possibly losing your marbles you can persuade a beautiful young woman to share your bed.
No one has dared to wonder publicly whether it was seemly or decent (very old-fashioned words, I know) for a man who has already exceeded his biblical span of three score years and ten to be having a fling with a woman young enough to be his grandchild.
It is, to be sure, a wholly consensual relationship, even if Noor Alfallah may well have been awed by Jagger’s fame, power and enormous riches. (She certainly can’t have been moved by his looks, and he is unlikely to be a repository of wisdom.)
Of one thing we may be fairly sure — that Noor will soon be succeeded by another young woman and then another until the old goat is eventually wheeled off the stage in a bath-chair.
But there is an irony in all this: whereas the antics of the septuagenarian rocker are widely indulged, many of the same people are in a state of apoplexy at the latest scandals seeping out of Westminster.
Needless to say, I am not referring to shocking allegations of rape and sexual assault which must be investigated by the police and, if proven, dealt with by the full force of the law.
No, I am thinking of suggestions that hands of older men may have been put on knees of younger women, who would have much preferred they had not been.
Yesterday, the normally sensible Times newspaper carried a piece by 31-year-old Kate Maltby, a critic and academic, who alleges that Damian Green, the First Secretary of State and effective deputy Prime Minister, put a ‘fleeting’ hand on her knee when they had a drink together in 2015.
Mr Green, who was not a minister at the time, and is a family friend of Miss Maltby’s, vehemently denies the charge. That hasn’t prevented the Tory MP Anna Soubry from demanding that he should stand down while the allegation is looked into.
There is no dispute that Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, repeatedly put his hand on the knee of the journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer during a dinner party 15 years ago, as we learnt earlier this week. Julia, who knows how to look after herself, threatened to punch Fallon, who wisely desisted. Sir Michael’s resignation last night may well have been triggered by other, more serious, causes.
Obviously, men shouldn’t go around placing unwanted hands, fleeting or otherwise, on the knees of young women. The ‘victims’ may be cowed or impressionable, and lack the nous to threaten these pests in the robust manner of Julia Hartley-Brewer.
But is it a hanging offence? Should Mr Green be forced to resign if this one allegation against him is substantiated? Do such relatively minor incidents — and I categorically am not talking about serious allegations of assault — really warrant all the media hysteria and sepulchral faces observed over the past few days?
Libidinous
My answer to all these questions is: I don’t believe so. And I can’t help contrasting the fondness which is applied to the antics of the libidinous Mick Jagger with the grave indictments of Sir Michael Fallon, Mr Green and similar miscreants.
Is it possible that we are a little confused about sex? A tireless and promiscuous fornicator is honoured and celebrated, while a man (I am speaking of Mr Green now) who may, or may not, have placed a fleeting hand on a woman’s knee, is threatened with political ruin.
This apparent contradiction is part of a wider incongruity — which is that we live in a world of sexual permissiveness (of which Mick Jagger and his mates were, and remain, enthusiastic ambassadors) while at the same time we witness growing sexual puritanism.
So it is that the people who ventilate wildly about allegedly straying hands are usually completely unconcerned about the harmful effects of hardcore pornography, or family breakdown brought about by sexual licence.
Nor does it ever occur to such people that the sexual revolution, by removing long-standing inhibitions and boundaries, may have contributed to an increase in the number of serious sexual assaults.
Bizarre
In short, the hysterical critics of politicians allegedly guilty of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ are missing the point — which is that the sexual revolution has legitimised conduct which can be immeasurably more damaging than the occasional wandering hand.
But all this does not explain why such lunacy should have erupted during the past few days, as journalists, politicians and feminists have whipped up a bizarre witch-hunt that sometimes makes one fear for Britain’s collective sanity.
Surely, some sort of gigantic displacement is taking place. The Government faces the biggest peacetime challenge in living memory — namely how to leave the EU on the most advantageous terms possible without the country being torn apart.
Instead of confronting this monumental task, our political and media classes are channelling their energies into obsessing about the essentially trivial and unimportant issue of whether Damian Green’s hand briefly touched a young woman’s knee.
I don’t know what future historians will make of all this. But I do know that these past few days have constituted a kind of national mental breakdown as we have finally taken leave of our senses.
As for Mick Jagger — Sir Mick Jagger, I should say, knighted by (who else?) Tony Blair — I grant that he sang a few good songs, long ago. But isn’t it time this lascivious old rascal was taken down from his pedestal?
Britain's ambassador to Brussels took a swipe at ministers' 'muddled thinking' as he quit his post without warning today.
Sir Ivan Rogers shocked staff this afternoon by announcing his decision to step down from his post early - only three months before Britain's talks on leaving the EU are due to begin. 
In his 1,400-word resignation letter, Sir Ivan said ministers needed to hear 'unvarnished' and 'uncomfortable' views from Europe. 
He wrote: 'I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.
'I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.'
The note, posted on The Times website, was seen as a barely coded attack on Theresa May and her top team, who have been accused of failing to spell out their plan for Brexit.

The Brussels veteran opted to walk after being cut adrift by Mrs May and her top team. His contract was up in November – and he did not expect it to be renewed.  


The timing of his resignation triggered claims of chaos and 'amateurism' in No 10.  
But diplomatic sources said Sir Ivan, who presided over David Cameron’s botched negotiations with Brussels, had decided to go only after it was made plain to him that his ‘days were numbered’.
Senior figures in No 10 and David Davis’s Brexit department were said to have been ‘baffled’ that Sir Ivan did not resign at the same time as Mr Cameron. Allies of the former prime minister heaped blame on Sir Ivan for being too ‘happy to take no for an answer, happy to believe things weren’t possible when they could be possible’. Aides of Mr Cameron claimed the ambassador had repeatedly threatened to resign during the EU negotiations before June’s referendum if his advice was ignored. 

Senior ministers and officials privately insisted Sir Ivan’s departure was ‘no loss’. They said his resignation provided Mrs May with an opportunity to appoint a replacement who ‘believes in Brexit’.

Meanwhile Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg told MailOnline: 'It is crucial that whoever represents us in Brussels is wholly committed to Brexit. 
'Sadly the impartiality of the civil service came into question during the referendum campaign which made the position of the highly intelligent Sir Ivan difficult.'

George Osborne last night waded into the ambassador row by praising Sir Ivan Rogers as a ‘patriot’.
The former chancellor, in what was seen as a dig at the Prime Minister, described the outgoing diplomat as ‘a perceptive, pragmatic and patriotic public servant’.
At the same time, Mr Osborne’s ex-permanent secretary in the Treasury attacked the ‘amateurism’ of the May Government. Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court condemned Number 10 for letting Sir Ivan leave. The ex-mandarin – given a peerage by David Cameron last year – wrote on Twitter: ‘Ivan Rogers huge loss. Can’t understand wilful & total destruction of EU expertise.’ He finished with the hashtag ‘#amateurism’.
Mr Osborne also used Twitter to launch his defence of Sir Ivan and suggest Number 10 had let a top operator slip through its fingers.
He said: ‘Ivan Rogers helped me on many ECOFIN [Economic and Financial Affairs Council] deals over the years. He is a perceptive, pragmatic & patriotic public servant. Thank you.’
Allies of Mr Cameron, however, privately expressed satisfaction at Sir Ivan’s downfall. Some members of the PM’s inner circle have not forgiven his botched role in the Brexit negotiations, in which he was attacked for being ‘too quick to take no for an answer’.
Tensions between Mr Osborne and Mrs May have been strained since she fired him in July, only hours after becoming PM. Mr Osborne has used Twitter on a number of occasions to take aim at Mrs May.
When Lord Jim O’Neill quit the May Government, he wrote that his ex-colleague ‘was one of those rare things in British politics – an outside expert who made a big difference on the inside. He will be missed.’
Last night Ukip leapt on the resignation of Sir Ivan to make mischief. MEP Gerard Batten said: ‘Perhaps Nigel Farage would consider taking up the post? After all, he ably demonstrated in the referendum campaign that he knows more about the EU than any other British politician.’
Nigel Farage also welcomed Sir Ivan's resignation, adding: 'The Foreign Office needs a complete clear out.'
But EU enthusiasts warned that losing Sir Ivan's experience and knowledge of Brussels dealt a 'body blow' to Britain's hopes of getting a good Brexit deal.   

Sir Ivan did not give a reason for stepping down early and had a good relationship with Mrs May, although his strained relations with pro-Brexit figures in the Cabinet could have been a factor in his decision to quit.  
Sources told the Financial Times that Sir Ivan did not give any reason for his departure but played down his decision, insisting he had decided to leave just a few months before his planned departure date of November.
Downing Street confirmed Sir Ivan has resigned as the UK's ambassador to the EU but refused to give any further details on his reasons for quitting. 
Lord Mandelson, Britain's former EU trade commissioner, suggested he had quit because of undue interference from ministers. 
He said: 'I would not expect him to comment further but everyone knows that civil servants are being increasingly inhibited in offering objective opinion and advice to Ministers. 
'Our negotiation as a whole will go nowhere if Ministers are going to delude themselves about the immense difficulty and challenges Britain faces in implementing the referendum decision.' 
Arch-Remainer Nick Clegg said Sir Ivan's resignation was a 'body blow' to the Government's Brexit plans and attacked Brexit supporters for forcing him out. 
'If the reports are true that he has been hounded out by hostile Brexiteers in Government, it counts as a spectacular own goal,' he said. 
'The Government needs all the help it can get from good civil servants to deliver a workable Brexit.' 
Mr Cameron appointed him to the Brussels post in 2013 after promising a referendum on the EU and he has been a leading advisor to No 10 over the last four years. 
His shock resignation deals a major blow to the Prime Minister's preparations for triggering Article 50 - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU - because of his significant experience and knowledge of Brussels. 
MPs have already started speculating over Sir Ivan's replacement. Mr Rees-Mogg suggested his pro-Brexit colleague Sir Bill Cash should replace Sir Ivan in Brussels, pointing out that Britain appointed a political ambassador - the late Lord Rippon - when we joined the European Community in 1973.
'As a politician was the prime mover on the way in, Geoffrey later Lord Rippon, perhaps someone like Bill Cash should do so on the way out,' he said. 
EU diktats forcing farmers to erect huge pro-Brussels billboards on their land are to be scrapped.
Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom will pledge to sweep away a raft of EU red tape in the wake of Brexit.
She will tell the Oxford Farming Conference that this red tape is ‘weighing down farmers in mountains of paperwork’ that costs £5million a year and 300,000 man hours.
Mrs Leadsom will also vow to ditch the ‘three crop rule’ which sets out how many different crops farms must plant each year – freeing 40,000 farmers to grow what they like.
Mrs Leadsom, one of the leaders of the Brexit campaign, will tell the conference: ‘For too long, a bureaucratic system which tries to meet the needs of 28 countries has held farmers back. But now, leaving the EU means we can focus on what works best for the UK.
‘Our farmers will finally be free to get on with the job of growing fantastic food in a way that meets our aims of a world leading food industry and a better protected environment. My priority will be common sense rules that work for the United Kingdom.’
Applicants to the Countryside Stewardship scheme, which rewards landowners for work done to protect wildlife and natural landscapes, are required by EU law to meet publicity guidance, which normally involves putting up large pro-Brussels signs.
Measuring as much as 6ft by 4ft for the biggest grants, they must be displayed permanently to avoid a penalty.
The rules also require farmers to set aside 5 per cent of their land for ‘ecological focus areas’ around hedges, ditches and ponds.
Whitehall officials say that, outside of the EU, more ‘common sense definitions’ can be introduced.

Brexit supporters rejoiced his resignation, with Arron Banks, the Leave.EU chairman and Ukip's biggest donor, calling for a diplomat who is more energetically pro-Brexit to replace him. 
He said: 'This is a man who claimed it could take up to 10 years to agree a Brexit deal. 
'He is far too much of a pessimist and yet another of the establishment's pro-EU old guard. He has at least done the honourable thing in resigning.
'It's time now for someone who is optimistic about the future that lies ahead for Brexit Britain. Enough talk, we need to get on with getting out.' 
Ukip's Michael Heaver said Sir Ivan's departure was 'good' and urged Theresa May to appoint a replacement who 'believes in Brexit,' adding that a 'further clear-out' was needed. 
But Europhiles told Brexiteers rejoicing Sir Ivan's departure to 'put champagne on ice'. Jonathan Lis, deputy director of the Europhile British Influence thinktank, warned Britain was losing a knowledgeable, effective representative who was prepared to speak truth to Govt [sic]'. 

Other EU enthusiasts warned that losing Sir Ivan - one of Britain's most experienced negotiators who knows EU institutions and key figures inside out - puts Britain on the back foot ahead of crunch Brexit talks.

Pro-European Sir Nicholas Soames said it was 'really very bad news indeed' and warned that 'we cannot afford to lose people of this calibre and experience'. 
Hilary Benn, Labour MP and chair of the influential Commons Brexit committee, said his resignation was 'not a good thing' and said it was vital the Government ensures a smooth hand-over as soon as possible. 
He told the BBC: 'I think that it means that the Government will have to get its skates on to make sure there is a replacement in place so he or she can work with Sir Ivan in the transition, the handover,' he said.
'But the hard work is going to start very soon, because if Article 50 is triggered, as the Government says it wishes to, by the end of March, then negotiations will probably begin shortly thereafter.




'And having a handover in the middle of that, depending on when exactly he goes, is not ideal.'  
Sir Ivan had come under pressure to resign last month after Eurosceptics claimed Sir Ivan, a former private secretary to ex-Tory chancellor Ken Clarke, was 'scarred' by his time spent negotiating Mr Cameron's failed referendum deal and, as a veteran of Brussels, was 'out of his comfort zone'.
There was also speculation that his warnings of a 10-year trade negotiation with the EU were deliberately leaked to undermine his position.
A ten-year timetable is at odds with the stated position of both Downing Street and Brexit Secretary David Davis.
Mr Davis predicted a deal could be done in 18 months last month, while Number Ten reiterated its commitment to completing the Brexit process in two years. 
'I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power': Sir Ivan's resignation letter in full
Dear All,
Happy New Year! I hope that you have all had/are still having, a great break, and that you will come back refreshed and ready for an exciting year ahead.
I am writing to you all on the first day back to tell you that I am today resigning as Permanent Representative.
As most of you will know, I started here in November 2013. My four-year tour is therefore due to end in October – although in practice if we had been doing the Presidency my time here would have been extended by a few months.
As we look ahead to the likely timetable for the next few years, and with the invocation of Article 50 coming up shortly, it is obvious that it will be best if the top team in situ at the time that Article 50 is invoked remains there till the end of the process and can also see through the negotiations for any new deal between the UK and the EU27.
It would obviously make no sense for my role to change hands later this year.
I have therefore decided to step down now, having done everything that I could in the last 6 months to contribute my experience, expertise and address book to get the new team at political and official level under way. This will permit a new appointee to be in place by the time Article 50 is invoked.
Importantly, it will also enable that person to play a role in the appointment of Shan’s replacement as DPR. I know from experience – both my own hugely positive experience of working in partnership with Shan, and from seeing past, less happy, examples – how imperative it is that the PR and DPR operate as a team, if UKREP is to function as well as I believe it has done over the last few years.
I want to put on record how grateful I am to Shan for the great working relationship we have had. She will be hugely missed in UKREP, and by many others here in Brussels, but she will be a tremendous asset to the Welsh Government.
From my soundings before Christmas, I am optimistic that there will be a very good field of candidates for the DPR role. But it is right these two roles now get considered and filled alongside each other, and for my successor to play the leading role in making the DPR appointment. I shall therefore stand aside from the process at this point.
I know that this news will add, temporarily, to the uncertainty that I know, from our many discussions in the autumn, you are all feeling about the role of UKREP in the coming months and years of negotiations over “Brexit.” I am sorry about that, but I hope that it will help produce earlier and greater clarity on the role that UKREP should play.
My own view remains as it has always been. We do not yet know what the Government will set as negotiating objectives for the UK’s relationship with the EU after exit. There is much we will not know until later this year about the political shape of the EU itself, and who the political protagonists in any negotiation with the UK will be.
But in any negotiation which addresses the new relationship, the technical expertise, the detailed knowledge of positions on the other side of the table – and the reasons for them, and the divisions amongst them – and the negotiating experience and savvy that the people in this building bring, make it essential for all parts of UKREP to be centrally involved in the negotiations if the UK is to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the Commission or in the Council. The Government will only achieve the best for the country if it harnesses the best experience we have – a large proportion of which is concentrated in UKREP – and negotiates resolutely. Senior Ministers, who will decide on our positions, issue by issue, also need from you detailed, unvarnished – even where this is uncomfortable - and nuanced understanding of the views, interests and incentives of the other 27.
The structure of the UK’s negotiating team and the allocation of roles and responsibilities to support that team, needs rapid resolution. The working methods which enable the team in London and Brussels to function seamlessly need also to be strengthened.
The great strength of the UK system – at least as it has been perceived by all others in the EU – has always been its unique combination of policy depth, expertise and coherence, message co-ordination and discipline, and the ability to negotiate with skill and determination. UKREP has always been key to all of that. We shall need it more than ever in the years ahead.
As I have argued consistently at every level since June, many opportunities for the UK in the future will derive from the mere fact of having left and being free to take a different path. But others will depend entirely on the precise shape of deals we can negotiate in the years ahead. Contrary to the beliefs of some, free trade does not just happen when it is not thwarted by authorities: increasing market access to other markets and consumer choice in our own, depends on the deals, multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral that we strike, and the terms that we agree. I shall advise my successor to continue to make these points.
Meanwhile, I would urge you all to stick with it, to keep on working at intensifying your links with opposite numbers in DEXEU and line Ministries and to keep on contributing your expertise to the policy-making process as negotiating objectives get drawn up. The famed UKREP combination of immense creativity with realism ground in negotiating experience, is needed more than ever right now.
On a personal level, leaving UKREP will be a tremendous wrench. I have had the great good fortune, and the immense privilege, in my civil service career, to have held some really interesting and challenging roles: to have served 4 successive UK Prime Ministers very closely; to have been EU, G20 and G8 Sherpa; to have chaired a G8 Presidency and to have taken part in some of the most fraught, and fascinating, EU negotiations of the last 25 years – in areas from tax, to the MFF to the renegotiation.
Of all of these posts, I have enjoyed being the Permanent Representative more than any other I have ever held. That is, overwhelmingly, because of all of you and what you all make UKREP: a supremely professional place, with a fantastic co-operative culture, which brings together talented people whether locally employed or UK-based and uniquely brings together people from the home civil service with those from the Foreign Office. UKREP sets itself demanding standards, but people also take the time to support each other which also helps make it an amazingly fun and stimulating place to work. I am grateful for everything you have all done over the last few years to make this such a fantastic operation.
For my part, I hope that in my day-to-day dealings with you I have demonstrated the values which I have always espoused as a public servant. I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power. I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them. I hope that you will continue to be interested in the views of others, even where you disagree with them, and in understanding why others act and think in the way that they do. I hope that you will always provide the best advice and counsel you can to the politicians that our people have elected, and be proud of the essential role we play in the service of a great democracy. 





By Andrew Pierce 
As a former private secretary to Tory chancellor Ken Clarke, the choice of Sir Ivan Rogers as 'Our Man' at the EU could not have been more provocative for Eurosceptics.
The appointment of Rogers in 2013 by David Cameron also spoke volumes about the former Prime Minister's views on Europe. Rogers also served as chief of staff to the former vice president of the European Commission, the late Lord Brittan.
Clarke and Brittan were both champions of Britain joining the Euro and of ever closer and deeper political integration with Brussels.
Only last week Clarke was the only Tory MP to vote against giving Theresa May the authority to trigger Article 50.
A career civil servant, Rogers also served as principal private secretary to Tony Blair who is talking of making a political comeback to lead the fight to overturn Brexit. At no point has he worked for any opponents of the EU, which is not surprising. He is privately scornful of Euro-sceptics on the Tory benches who he regards as Little Englanders.
While as a civil servant he is supposed to be scrupulously impartial, he makes little secret of the fact he is a fully committed disciple of the school of thought that the UK is better off in the EU whatever its shortcomings.
Mark Ivan Rogers, who looks older than his 56 years, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He is married to Stephanie and they have a son and daughter.
He has spent all but five years of his professional life has been spent in the Civil Service. He worked in the City for Citigate heading up their Brussels arm and with Barclays Capital.
He was brought back to Whitehall by Cameron as his EU adviser in 2011 and became UK Representative to the EU in November 2013.
It fell to Rogers to mastermind Cameron's renegotiation with the other 27 EU leaders before the referendum. Even the former prime minister's most ardent supporters concede that their joint efforts were a miserable failure.
Publicity shy, he is conspicuous by his absence from Who's Who, the bible of the great and the good. 
He is rarely seen in photos, never gives interviews, and at summits like yesterday he is usually one step behind ministers or locked away from public view in long technical meetings. Now he's turning his attention to Theresa May's Brexit and, as usual, is spouting doom and gloom. Paid around £170,000 he is earning considerably more than the Prime Minister's £143,000.
But the Brexiteers are warning the PM to treat his advice with caution. An Establishment figure to his finger tips, he is anti-change and does not want to upset the EU leadership who he is instinctively at home with.
For Sir Ivan Rogers, Brexit is not a golden opportunity but a negative to be carefully managed and, if possible, shunted into the sidelines.

 
Rebel MPs warned Theresa May last night that they will change the law to force her to accept whatever Brexit plan they pick tonight.
A series of paper ballots will be held this evening on alternatives to her deal after backbenchers seized control of the Commons timetable in an unprecedented turn of events.
Mrs May has said she will not be bound by the results of these indicative votes, which could demand a soft Brexit.
MPs will be given the chance to say Yes or No to a list of options, which are expected to include staying in a customs union, having a second referendum and even cancelling Brexit altogether.
But the rebels revealed plans last night to take control again on Monday, giving them the opportunity to bring forward legislation forcing Mrs May to act on their preferred plan. 
Tory former minister Nick Boles told BBC Newsnight: ‘If the Government refuses to listen to what Parliament has voted for, we will bring forward a Bill that will require it to reflect Parliament’s wishes.’
Mrs May faced a Cabinet row yesterday over whether to give Tory MPs free votes letting them choose which options they support.
Ministers who want to back a softer Brexit said they might resign if they are whipped against picking choices such as staying in the customs union or single market.
Despite the Government warning that it would set a ‘dangerous, unpredictable precedent’, MPs voted on Monday by a majority of 27 to let backbenchers led by former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin seize control of the Commons agenda today.
Under his plan they will hold votes this evening to work out what kind of Brexit has a chance of securing majority support among MPs. 
Commons Speaker John Bercow will pick the options to be on the ballot paper this afternoon, drawn from motions submitted by MPs last night. Eight had been submitted last night.
In one of them, a cross-party group led by Mr Boles, fellow Tory Robert Halfon and Labour MPs Stephen Kinnock, Lucy Powell and Diana Johnson have put forward a Common Market 2.0 plan. 
It would keep the UK in the single market and involve a new customs arrangement, meaning continued freedom of movement and contributions to the EU budget.
Labour MP Gareth Snell has tabled a proposal to negotiate a new customs union with the EU.
Meanwhile, Labour former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett has put forward a motion stating MPs will not sanction Brexit unless it is put to the electorate for a ‘confirmatory vote’.
At 7pm, instead of voting in the division lobbies, MPs will be given slips listing the Brexit options selected by Mr Bercow. 
They will get half an hour to mark Aye or No next to each, with the result expected at around 9pm.
Sir Oliver is planning to seize control of the parliamentary timetable again next Monday so they can repeat the process to narrow down the options or attempt to pass legislation to enforce them.
Labour’s Hilary Benn told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘There will be discussions between MPs. Which are the most popular options? We may then change the system for next week as we are trying to narrow it down.’
Richard Harrington, the former business minister who quit on Monday, said yesterday he expected Mrs May to follow the will of Parliament if a majority was formed for one pathway for Brexit, unless the choice was ‘so off the wall she couldn’t do it’.
‘A responsible Prime Minister... will say, “I would rather have my deal, Parliament’s wish is clearly Norway or customs union or whatever. I will go to Brussels with that, but I’m prepared to put my deal to Parliament against that”,’ he said.
David Davis urged the EU to 'get down to business' today as he kicked off the second round of Brexit talks - but appeared to have turned up without his notes.
The Brexit Secretary sat down with counterpart Michel Barnier for the second round of negotiations in Brussels this morning, saying he wanted to make progress on a deal for reciprocal rights for citizens.
But pictures showed the UK team without any paperwork as they sat across the table from the Eurocrats - who were armed with huge piles of documents. 
After greeting Mr Barnier this morning, Mr Davis insisted the teams from the UK and EU were now getting to the 'heart of the matter'.
'For us it is incredibly important we now make good progress,' he said.
Scroll down for video 
'That we negotiate through this and identify the differences, so that we can deal with them, and identify the similarities so that we can move forward.
'And now it's time to get down to work and make this a successful negotiation.'
Mr Barnier said: 'I look forward to our negotiations this week. We'll now delve into the heart of the matter.
'We need to examine and compare our respective positions in order to make good progress.'
However, Mr Davis only stayed in Brussels for around three hours - before heading back to London and leaving officials to discuss technical details. 
Mr Davis is facing strong opposition from the EU over Britain's proposals for rights of European nationals living in the UK, as well as pressure to accept paying a huge 'divorce' bill.
The first phase of the Brexit talks will cover the divorce settlement - with the main topics reciprocal rights for UK and EU citizens, the potential bill for Britain, and the Northern Ireland border.
David Davis is facing strong opposition from the EU over Britain's proposals for rights of European nationals living in the UK, as well as pressure to accept paying a huge 'divorce' bill.
Theresa May last month published a 'fair and serious' offer to guarantee the future rights of the 3.2 million EU citizens living in the UK and the 1.2 million British ex-pats in the EU.
The proposal to grant EU nationals 'settled status', effectively indefinite leave to remain, was immediately dismissed by European Council President Donald Tusk as 'below our expectations'.
Under the terms agreed between the EU and UK, negotiations are taking place in four-week 'rounds'.
The second session is beginning in Brussels today.
The EU says that only when 'sufficient progress' has been made on citizen's rights, the divorce bill and Northern Ireland will they move on to discuss future trade talks. 


Both sides have committed to 'transparency', and are expected to released updates about each round accompanied by press conferences. 

Theresa May last month published a 'fair and serious' offer to guarantee the future rights of the 3.2 million EU citizens living in the UK and the 1.2 million British ex-pats in the EU.
The proposal to grant EU nationals 'settled status', effectively indefinite leave to remain, was immediately dismissed by European Council President Donald Tusk as 'below our expectations'.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson then fanned the flames when he said in the Commons that Brussels could 'go whistle' if it expected the UK to pay a hefty 'divorce bill' in respect of its outstanding financial obligations.
Mr Barnier, who has made clear that he is not prepared to start talks on a trade deal until there has been sufficient progress on the financial settlement, retorted icily he could not hear any whistling, 'just the clock ticking'.
That row was quietly defused with a written Government statement acknowledging Britain had obligations to the EU which would continue after the UK had left and which 'need to be resolved'
However ministers also faced criticism at home over their plans to withdraw from the EU nuclear regulator, Euratom, amid warnings the UK find its access to radioactive isotopes used to treat cancer restricted.
All three issues will be on the agenda for this week's discussions, which are expected to continue to Thursday, along with the thorny matter of the future border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mr Davis made clear his first priority would be resolving the issue of citizens' rights, saying he was determined to make 'real progress'.
'We made a good start last month, and this week we'll be getting into the real substance,' he said.
'Protecting the rights of all our citizens is the priority for me going into this round and I'm clear that it's something we must make real progress on.'
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who is in Brussels on separate business, said: 'A very fair, serious offer has been put on the table by the UK Government about citizenship, the value we place on the 3.2 million EU citizens in our country.
'The, I think, very good offer that we are making to them and the security they can have about their future.
'I hope very much that people will look at the offer in the spirit it deserves.'
The government's approach received a boost today as the Czech secretary of state for European affairs said Britain could get a 'much broader, much deeper' free trade deal with the EU than Canada. 
The government's Brexit approach received a boost today as the Czech secretary of state for European affairs said Britain could get a 'much broader, much deeper' free trade deal with the EU than Canada. 
Ales Chmelar said he hoped there would be a 'mutually agreeable' trade deal and that it could see the UK and EU enjoy closer economic ties than the bloc's Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada.

But Mr Chmelar warned that a 'deeper' relationship could also see Britain facing 'certain commitments', suggesting the Government would have to continue paying into the Brussels budget.
 
Ales Chmelar said he hoped there would be a 'mutually agreeable' trade deal and that it could see the UK and EU enjoy closer economic ties than the bloc's Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada.

But Mr Chmelar warned that a 'deeper' relationship could also see Britain facing 'certain commitments', suggesting the Government would have to continue paying into the Brussels budget.
Mr Chmelar told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'We still hope that there will be a mutually agreeable settlement also on trade issues and we also hope that the UK will have a specific access to the European market, that's something that we have negotiated for example now with Canada, it can be much broader, it can be much deeper.
'And if it is deeper than other settlements, than other trade deals, then it is understandable that there will be also certain commitments.' 
The talks takes place against a backdrop of bitter feuding among UK ministers over the Brexit strategy.
Over the weekend, Chancellor Philip Hammond angrily accused Cabinet rivals of trying to undermine his agenda for a 'softer' business-friendly Brexit prioritising jobs and the economy.
One unnamed Cabinet minister was reported have hit back, claiming Mr Hammond was part of an attempt by 'the Establishment' to prevent Britain ever leaving the EU.
The Daily Telegraph quoted the minister as saying: 'What's really going on is that the Establishment, the Treasury, is trying to f*** it up. They want to frustrate Brexit.'  
A former aide to Mr Gove, Dominic Cummings, risked inflaming tensions today by describing Mr Davis as 'thick as mince'.
Mr Cummings - who helped run the Vote Leave campaign but says he has not spoken to Mr Gove since June last year - also branded Mr Davis 'lazy as a toad' and 'vain as Narcissus'. 
 

 
 

 

 
A couple of weeks ago very few journalists at the BBC or anywhere else had heard about the American procedure of washing chicken in chlorine in order to kill off nasty bugs.
Now it has been firmly established in the view of Remainers that this habit is bad for chickens (although they are, at this juncture, safely dead) and consumers.
The spectre of chlorinated fowl finding their way on to British supermarket shelves has created panic in the anti-Brexit media. Alarm reached a high-water mark on Tuesday evening when Emily Maitlis of BBC2’s Newsnight interviewed the Trade Secretary Liam Fox in Washington. Solemnity was etched into her features, and her questions were delivered with a portentous air.
In her mind — and the minds of other folk at the BBC — chlorinated chicken represents a major threat to post-Brexit Britain. There is even a suggestion that in order to keep this scourge away from our unsullied shores it might be better not to sign a deal with Trump’s America.
It is all fantastic nonsense, of course. Of all the groundless and far-fetched scare stories pumped out by the Remainer brigade over the past 18 months or so, this one should surely take the biscuit.
Dr Fox was not hopeless under assault from Emily. But he wasn’t great. He should have said that the U.S. is by a wide margin Britain’s biggest single trading partner, and that at the latest count Britain enjoys an annual trade surplus of almost £40 billion with our closest ally.
Moreover, although he had already rightly dismissed the chlorinated chicken issue as ‘a detail’, he might have rammed the point home by saying that the import of these supposedly noxious birds will probably account for a fraction of one per cent of UK-US trade.
He might also have invited the disconsolate Emily to celebrate the enthusiasm of President Donald Trump and leading members of his administration for a rapid deal with Britain. That must be a good thing.
Incidentally, would these metropolitan types be so distressed by the thought of washing chickens if Barack Obama were still president? I can’t help thinking that their horror of American poultry has somehow become associated with their conception of Trump as a great Satanic figure.
There are lots of other arguments which collectively drive a coach and horses through the contentions of the hysterical doom-mongers who are attempting to persuade us that an influx of chlorinated chickens is a national nightmare.
Let me first of all point out that America is a rich, well-regulated country. Her consumers are almost certainly even more pernickety and health-conscious than our own. They have been chomping into this stuff without any apparent ill effects.
Nor is it obvious that our EU-approved arrangements are perfect. Various surveys have found that some of our supermarket chickens are riddled with salmonella (the potentially deadly organism which chlorinating is designed to kill) and so anyone taking one of these birds home is running a risk.
I should add that the idea that our standards are higher than those of the allegedly sloppy Americans is pretty hard to swallow. Wasn’t Britain the cradle of BSE (mad cow disease) in the early Nineties?
This arose because cattle (which are herbivores) had been fed the remains of other cattle in meat and bone meal — a disgusting and unnatural practice. Let’s hope we have improved, but we’re hardly in any position to lecture the Americans about food safety.
The same point could be made of the EU, whose officials have been treating Dr Fox as though he has been consorting with the enemy. But while Brussels regards U.S. chickens with such disfavour, it permits the import of sizeable quantities of the birds from Thailand.
Thailand — a semi-developed country with lower standards of hygiene than an advanced economy such as America — is a major exporter of chickens. A large proportion of these find their way to Europe, and a significant number to the UK.
If you have ever bought a chicken microwave meal, or ventured into an Indian, Chinese or Thai restaurant, it is highly likely that you have eaten a chicken that once upon a time clucked away in Thailand. The same holds true if you have bought a chicken sandwich in a High Street shop.
I do not want to cast aspersions on the chicken business in Thailand or drive any hard-working Thais out of business. But given the choice of being a chicken in the United States of America or in Thailand, I know which I would choose.
And I think it highly likely, if not practically certain, that standards of cleanliness are higher in America (even under President Trump) than they are in Thailand.
Yet while the BBC is convulsed with anxiety over washing chickens with chlorine in the U.S., it maintains a lofty lack of interest in the chicken business in Thailand, even though we consume its products.
Emily Maitlis, who will scoot over to Washington at the drop of a hat, is never to be found in Bangkok, picking her way among chicken coops, peering into battery farms, or indeed expressing any interest at all in the welfare of these possibly unfortunate birds.
The explanation, of course, is that the outcry over chlorine is not really about chickens or the well-being of consumers. It is mainly another opportunity to spread panic over Brexit, of which there have been several other recent instances, as the Mail reported yesterday.
One bogus yarn was that leaving Euratom — the European Atomic Energy Community — could affect the transport of radioactive materials used in cancer treatment.
London’s Evening Standard, edited by anti-Brexit propagandist and former chancellor George Osborne, carried a front page headline which read: ‘CANCER PATIENTS IN BREXIT SCARE.’ The BBC made a great deal of fuss, too.
The truth is that Euratom regulates the distribution of fissile material used in nuclear energy, not radioactive isotopes used in cancer treatment. Moreover, lots of non-EU countries have a close working relationship with Euratom.
Once one grasps the machinations behind these scare stories, it is easy to be amused. But many people will have been alarmed by the nonsense over cancer, as they will be by the suggestion that a lot of lethal chlorinated chickens are about to land on us.
By the way, Dr Fox might have pointed out that the water we drink contains minuscule quantities of chlorine. Unless one gets into the habit of eating a couple of American chickens a day, one is likely to consume more chlorine from what comes out of the tap.
No one is saying that we are obliged to accept every American food import without demur. I’m a bit unsettled by the thought of GM crops. That said, Environment Secretary Michael Gove was unwise yesterday to say we wouldn’t accept chlorinated chicken. I’m afraid he’s playing to the gallery. Wouldn’t making it a requirement to label American chicken give consumers the protection they might seek?
The point, as Liam Fox says, is that these are details. Tiny details. We appear to be on the way to signing a crucial deal with our biggest trade partner and the world’s largest economy. It’s puerile and misleading to be banging on about chickens. 
Two boxes of haddock, four days dead and distinctly whiffy from 20ft, stared dolefully from the decks of a Ramsgate fishing boat called Holladays R8.
Like thousands of fish which have to be discarded owing to European Union rules, those haddock were about to be chucked overboard. 
Unlike their fishy friends, they were going to be ditched in the Thames, a few yards from the Houses of Parliament.
One on top of the pile was a ringer, I swear, for Jean-Claude Juncker. Same rheumy eyes. But maybe not quite so thirsty.
You can hurl fish into the sea as much as you like, wasting perfectly good food, and the authorities will not complain. 
Indeed, they will be pleased because you are following EU rules, and if there is one thing the clerical class approves of, it is obedience to rules, no matter how daft. 
But if you drop a few glum haddock corpses into the river outside the Commons terrace, you soon come up against the powers-that-be.
Yesterday's event, held at lowish tide on a bonny March day, was a protest against the Government's transition deal with the EU. 
Our fishing boats are going to remain bound by Brussels rules for a further 21 months after our official departure from the EU.
Some in the fishing industry think there will be a further betrayal in the final departure agreements. 
Whitehall has almost nothing in common with fishing types. They are the sort of people who write facetious remarks on bureaucratic questionnaires. They are – dread word – individuals.
The good tub Holladays (skipper Christopher Attenborough, from Whitstable) chugged under Tower Bridge at breakfast time and was soon preparing to moor at Embankment pier, not far from the Ministry of Defence. 'You can't moor here!' yelled the piermaster. 'Health and safety!'
Nothing to do with him having been told by political bosses to try to stop this protest, then.
Various Conservative MPs had been expected to give a press conference about the haddock-dumping stunt. 
That was before the Tory Whips started fretting. In the event we had to make do, on the bobbing pier, with Jacob Rees-Mogg (NE Somerset), Craig Mackinlay (S Thanet) and Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon- Tweed). 
Good on Mrs Trevelyan. She is a ministerial aide and will have done her immediate career no good by supporting the fishermen.
The trio no doubt said fantastically quotable things. Alas, my hearing is not what it was and the wind and traffic noise and the fact that I was at the rear of the media scrum made them inaudible.
Mr Rees-Mogg had a neatly folded copy of the Financial Times in his hand. He looked more like a man off to his City office than a politician partaking in a spot of populist trouble-making. The pinstriped Poujadiste.
Another Tory MP, Ross Thomson (Aberdeen S), had earlier boarded the Holladays to say that the transition deal was 'unacceptable' on fishing. 
'We want out and we want out now,' said young, sparky Mr Thomson. But he later left the boat and none of his Tory colleagues stepped aboard. The Whips must have been insistent.
Cue the 'Jaws' music. Enter former Ukip leader Nigel Farage. By now we had moved 200 yards up the Embankment to a pier just beside Parliament. 
Capt Farage, in his usual bookie's coat and impish grin, came sauntering down the gangway, coughed up a few ruderies about the EU, and hopped aboard Holladays like a doge leaping into his personal gondola.
The fishing boat, which was by now being shadowed by a police launch, made its way upstream until level with the Commons terrace. Mr Farage and Scots trawlerman Aaron Brown duly threw the haddock overboard, posing for TV cameras as they did so.
At PMQs an hour or so later, Mrs Trevelyan boldly confronted Theresa May on the transition deal, conveying 'the real concern' of her fishing constituents. 
What did Philip Hammond do? He laughed.
Amazon has faced outrage after they sold a Remainer notepad entitled 'My Little Book of All The Brexiteers I Want To Stab' in the same week MPs urged Boris Johnson to temper his language amid fears for their safety over Brexit.
The £4.05 notebook, described as a 'book and journal for Remainers and EU voters', comes amid uproar over the prime minister's use of the term 'Surrender Bill' in Parliament, which prompted MPs to call for calm on all sides of the Brexit debate.   
Amazon customers reacted with disgust over the listing, with one user writing in the review section: 'I hope this has been reported to the police for inciting hate,' before adding that they wanted the publisher to be 'shut down and arrested.' 
Advertising the toxic product, the seller wrote: 'Get this journal/notebook and put a smile on the face of anyone who is against Brexit, who voted Britain to stay, who don't want Britain to leave the European Union!
'This is a great notebook/journal for all anti-Brexit Remainers and Pro-Europeans, Anti Leave British supporters who want Britain to remain in the European Union.'
But angry customers called for the notepad to be removed from the website and the seller banned from Amazon.
Vincent Gallagher wrote: 'Take this is hate speech and encourages violence as an Amazon customer I am disgusted that this is on sale and I will report it to authorities.'
Adrien Priestly added: 'I hope the author gets the same fate as he wants for Brexiteers. Disgusting vile human being. Reported to the police.' 
Marie C said: 'Vile item, inciting hatred and violence, with today's level of knife crime this is disgusting. Reported to the police!' 
Another said: 'Not what this country needs,' while another said 'this is disgusting and I have reported it to The Met Police.'
Another said: 'I've also reported this to the police as incitement of hatred and violence.' 
Tensions heightened this week during a fiery Commons clash as numerous MPs urged Johnson to tone down his Brexit rhetoric as they suggested it was putting their lives at risk. 
Speaker Mr Bercow pleaded with MPs on all sides to calm down as he said the atmosphere in the Commons was 'worse than any I've known in my 22 years in the House'.
Meanwhile, Brendan Cox, murdered MP Jo Cox's widower, said he felt 'a bit sick' after hearing Mr Johnson's remarks and today he was asked how he believed his late wife might have responded.
He said: 'She would have tried to take a generosity of spirit to it and thought about how in this moment you can step back from this growing inferno of rhetoric.'
MailOnline has contacted the Metropolitan Police for comment. 
Amazon confirmed they have removed the book from sale after being alerted to its content by MailOnline. 
Peter Mandelson today provoked outrage by labelling extreme Brexiteers 'nationalists' who 'hate foreigners' and are not 'patriots' like him.
The former EU trade commissioner said the people leading the charge for quitting the EU were 'Brextremists' not motivated by the best interests of the country.
Leave supporters immediately condemned the incendiary remarks as the row over what kind of Brexit Britain will have next year continued unabated into the summer.
Theresa May's efforts to break the Brexit deadlock before MPs broke up for the holidays appeared to fail last week as Brussels rejected her Chequers plan.
Her ministers will spend the summer trying to convince EU capitals of the merits of her proposals, seen by many as a soft Brexit.
But Lord Mandelson said the controversy over the plan, particularly from Brexit supporters, proved the need to have a second referendum on the deal.
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
He told LBC Radio today: 'Patriotism is love of your country. Wanting to stand up for your country, wanting to serve the best interests of your country.
'Nationalism, on the other hand, is a hatred of foreigners - and that's what they are.
'They are nationalists and they should not be confused with patriots.
'I feel I am patriotic. I want the best for Britain - it's why I voted Remain in the referendum though I entirely respect the contrary view of many others.
'These Brextremists are not like that. They are nationalists in the sense that they hate other countries, and they hate foreigners.
'And that is, in my view, what motivates them and drives their behaviour.'
Asked to name who he was describing, Lord Mandelson declined to do so -  but let host James O'Brien name International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg without contest. 
Mr Rees-Mogg told MailOnline: 'Perhaps Lord Mandelson should not confuse truth with fiction.
'It is regrettably something he has had difficulty with throughout his career.'
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker told MailOnline he was 'deeply insulted' by the 'ludicrous' comments.
He said: 'There is nothing illiberal about wanting democracy to have meaning. Quite the reverse.' 
Tory MP Nigel Evans added: 'His incendiary description is an appalling attack.
'He should take his hefty EU pension which hard pressed British taxpayers are guaranteeing and paying post Brexit and go and live in Brussels where he will clearly feel more at home.
'He and his distasteful views will not be missed.' 
In other developments today Downing Street has insisted the Government is engaged in 'good planning' and taking 'sensible precautions' in case there is a no-deal Brexit.
Asked if Theresa May would continue to lead the country if her negotiations fail and the UK is plunged into a no-deal scenario, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said she is 'fully committed to delivering on the will of the British people'.
Ministers have confirmed efforts to stockpile medicines and ensure an 'adequate' food supply if there is a no-deal Brexit.
But Brexiteers have criticised the approach, insisting that, while preparations must be made to show Brussels that the UK could cope without a deal, the plans should not mark a return to the referendum campaign's 'Project Fear'.
Dozens of technical notices setting out what businesses and concerned citizens need to do are expected to be published in August and September.
The Prime Minister's spokesman said: 'We have been absolutely clear that it's in the interests not just of ourselves but the EU to get a deal.
'In the event of no-deal there will of course be consequences for the European Union.'
The spokesman added that the plans are aimed at ensuring an 'orderly' Brexit even if there is no agreement with Brussels.
'We are working towards getting a deal but the Prime Minister is clear that we will put in place all the necessary steps to ensure the UK has a bright future.' 
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
WHAT THERESA MAY WANTS 
The PM initially backed a 'customs partnership' model, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
At the Chequers Cabinet summit earlier this month, Mrs May pushed through a compromise plan with elements of both.
It would see the UK follow a 'common rule book' with the EU on goods and collect some tariffs on behalf of Brussels to avoid border friction.
UK courts would also take account of decisions by EU judges. 
It has also been dismissed as 'cherry picking' by Eurocrats.
WHAT BORIS JOHNSON AND THE BREXITEERS WANT 
Brexiteers have been incensed by the Chequers proposal, which they say makes too many concessions and will prevent Britain doing trade deals elsewhere.
They back a 'Maximum Facilitation' scheme would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped. 
WHAT THE EU WANTS 
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But when the EU translated this option into a legal text they hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union and most single market rules.
Mrs May says no PM could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the integrity of the UK.
WHAT IRELAND WANTSIreland and the EU have presented a united front on the need for a solution to the border issue before any progress can be made on a future trade deal. Leo Varadkar has repeatedly thanked Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier for their solidarity and vowed that they will not be split by pressure from the UK.  However, economic forecasts have made clear that the Republic could bear the brunt of a massive hit if Britain does not get a trade deal.The UK crashing out on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms would also mean Ireland facing exactly what it says it is fighting to avoid - the prospect of a hard border.  WHAT NORTHERN IRELAND WANTS 
Polls have suggested support for staying in the EU has if anything increased since then.
But the province is deeply divided across sectarian lines. The dominant DUP backed Brexit, while Sinn Fein is Europhile.
Polls suggest that a majority would vote to keep the UK together rather than for a united Ireland if there was a referendum.
Philip May is a busy man with a career to attend to. He makes very few visits to the Commons. But he made one yesterday and sat in the guests’ gallery alongside a family friend.
The look of loving concern on his face was painful to behold as he watched his wife. Scarcely 30ft away from her, he was ashen.
No wonder. Mrs May looked and sounded awful. Her voice had gone, rather as it did when she made her notorious speech at the Tory party conference 18 months ago.
Don’t misunderstand me. Mrs May was in her way magnificent. With formidable dedication to duty, she took intervention after intervention from MPs from all sides of the house. Gutsy. Heroic. Indomitable.
But by the end she could hardly speak. She relied on her script far more than usual. At times it was as if she was clinging on to it for dear life.
It was telling that she had scant support from many of her treacherous MPs.
Sir William Cash, a life-long Brexiteer, claimed he sympathised with her ailment but then politely trashed her speech.
Over previous days and weeks, Cabinet ministers – most notably the increasingly ambitious Liz Truss – pressed their own personal agendas rather than pulling their weight behind their boss.
There are many in No 10 who feel a deep sense of personal betrayal against Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, who sank her deal when he judged that it included no legal guarantees that Britain could leave the Northern Irish backstop.
Shabbily abandoned by those who had a duty to help her, no wonder at times Mrs May looked finished.
Philip May must have worried about her future, too. He is not just the personal rock and a tower of strength for the Prime Minister. He is a highly intelligent man with a deep understanding of politics and public affairs.
His face hinted at anger over how this proud woman, who has done her best for the people of Britain, has been let down.
She has fought for nearly three years to deliver her vision of Brexit. She has endured insult and abuse, and displayed remarkable physical stamina.
She brought back what was undoubtedly a workable withdrawal agreement from Brussels three months ago, only to see it rejected by the biggest Commons majority in history.
Nobody else could have shown greater commitment or self-sacrifice. On Monday, she made a desperate last-minute dash to Strasbourg to try to win a concession to placate the seemingly implacable hardline Brexiteers in her own party.
And still they unforgivably ganged up with 238 Labour MPs to try to wreck her deal and jeopardise her premiership.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks on.
There’s scarcely two weeks until March 29. What happens now?
Some may say there comes a point where obstinacy turns to cussedness. Where raw courage turns into stupidity. Where staying in office does more harm than good.
It will be a point where Mrs May damages the cause she believes in, the party she leads and the country she governs by blindly clinging on.
Philip May knows better than anyone his wife’s amazing resilience and steadfastness, sustained by her deep and enduring Christian faith.
But he wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t asking himself, what on earth is the point?
Certainly, plenty of others were asking this question at Westminster last night.
After all, it’s long been an article of faith at Parliament that a prime minister who can’t force her or his policies through must quit and make way for someone else who can. Mrs May has only had one Brexit policy. Yet it’s been rejected time and again.
So why hasn’t she resigned? That is becoming an uncomfortably apt question. All the more so since time has run out.
I detect a sense of shock and despair among MPs. Also, a foreboding sense of fear. Events have tumbled out of control.
For my part, I felt that something changed about Brexit yesterday. No longer an abstract concept, it’s becoming very real. The constitutional crisis that has long been predicted is now with us.
And, frighteningly, after last night’s vote there is no plan. Panic is setting in. Nobody can see a way out. MPs and ministers feel trapped without an exit.
Article 50 could be delayed. But why? For what purpose? The EU Commission’s President, Jean-Claude Juncker, has made his final offer. Nothing is going to change. Alternatively, some MPs want another referendum. I am sympathetic. But that creates fresh problems. No one can agree what the question would be.
There’s talk, too, that Mrs May could call a general election. But it would probably not solve anything either.
She could step down. Indeed, many Tory MPs would love it if she did. But the ensuing Conservative leadership election would precipitate fresh chaos. It would create a vacuum at the heart of government lasting weeks – and then what?
Meanwhile, Britain has turned into an international laughing stock. Business is pulling out investment, sterling is falling, the future looks bleak.
In the Commons yesterday, MPs stood around in groups, bemused, baffled and in collective despair.
Can there have been any British prime minister whose policies have been so comprehensively repudiated by Parliament?
To her credit, a defeated, exhausted and visibly upset Prime Minister was on her feet within seconds of the bitter news. Reading from a prepared script, she croaked out two key concessions.
A prime Minister who had refused consistently to rule out a No Deal Brexit told MPs she would allow a vote to rule out a No Deal Brexit. Also, a Prime Minister who has insisted again and again that Britain would leave the EU on March 29 was forced to allow a vote on extending the British departure date.
Two deeply injurious humiliations. But then she came out fighting. She said she personally would vote to block a No Deal – and then ensure that it becomes Government policy.
Of course, this infuriated hardline Brexiteers even more.
In Margaret Thatcher’s last days in No 10, her husband, Denis, told her it was time to go.
He said: ‘You’ve done enough, old girl. You’ve done your share. For God’s sake, don’t go on any longer.’
Philip May has been every bit as loyal to his wife as Denis was to Mrs T.
From his box seat on yesterday’s proceedings in the Commons, he will have realised that Brexit looks certain to be delayed.
But for how long? And, will Europe let us?
After our reckless politicians last night took this country a giant step into the unknown, I wonder whether a similar conversation might soon take place between the Mays as did between the Thatchers. 
During more than 25 years of reporting politics at Westminster, I have seen a great many remarkable and astonishing events.
But never anything remotely like the extraordinary and destructive political typhoon that swirled through the House of Commons last night — leaving chaos behind it.
Such unprecedented and profoundly disturbing events normally signal the death of a government — and the destruction of a prime minister.
Five Cabinet ministers defying a three-line government whip — the most powerful instrument of power any prime minister possesses?
That’s never happened before in living memory.
It is very rare for a Cabinet minister to defy the direct orders of a prime minister — as Labour’s Robin Cook bravely did over the Iraq War before quitting the Blair government.
Humiliating
It’s completely unheard of for a minister to defy a three-line whip and survive.
Yet Welfare Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Energy Minister Claire Perry and Scottish Secretary David Mundell are still in their jobs this morning — despite their open defiance of the Prime Minister and the Government they say they support.
As a result, the minority Tory government was defeated twice on key Brexit votes.
And, despite failing in the most public and humiliating way possible to push her flagship policy through the Commons, Mrs May, too, is still in office this morning.
More precisely, she woke up in her bed in Downing Street. But last night’s events showed that she is in No 10 but not in power — to use the phrase expressed with devastating effect by Norman Lamont about John Major after being sacked as Chancellor in the wake of Britain’s Black Wednesday debacle, when sterling crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, with interest rates soaring to a terrifying 15 per cent.
Mrs May’s authority is gone. Ministers are contemptuous of her authority. They can rebel against her orders with impunity.
And as a grisly metaphor for her loss of command, the Prime Minister has lost her voice, with a gallant Michael Gove obliged to step in for Mrs May yesterday afternoon.
Some of her MPs were saying that it’s not just her voice she’s lost. She’s lost her hearing as well. And soon she’ll lose her job.
Amid all this debacle, a brutal and deeply unedifying row has broken out within the senior ranks of the Conservative Party as government whips are blaming Downing Street for the shambles.
They are already naming names — Gavin Barwell, the prime minister’s most trusted aide and her Downing Street chief of staff. It was reported last night that the whips are ‘incandescent’ that Downing Street officials gave Cabinet ministers the nod that they could defy instructions and vote with a rebel amendment blocking a No Deal Brexit.
In other words, blood is on the carpet. There’s been a disgraceful breakdown of trust. An outbreak of civil war at the very top of the Conservative Party.
For the past few months, Theresa May has been desperately battling to prevent the pro-European wing on one side and the ultra-Brexiteers on the other side of the Tory Party from breaking apart. Last night, it was even worse: she faced mutiny. And she lacked the strength and authority to face it down. She gave in to the rebels and there is now a huge price to pay.
Weak though she is, there’s no sign Mrs May will quit despite enduring countless humiliations and defeats.
Cats have nine lives. Mrs May has enjoyed more. Many more.
Incredible though it sounds — don’t rule her out from emerging from this latest crisis.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow ministers keep on saying that Mrs May’s Brexit deal is finished.
I am not so sure. Despite last night’s shambles, Mrs May still holds some cards.
And although her deal is unquestionably on life support in the emergency ward, the switch has not yet been turned off.
There is a chance of revival.
I believe that for all the chaos and confusion of the past 48 hours, a way forward could develop.
Consider the facts. Yesterday morning, Theresa May woke up in the knowledge that her EU withdrawal deal had been voted down in the Commons by a massive 149 votes.
Feuding
Pausing only to take medication for her racking cough, she went straight into an early morning emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss the possible consequences if the Government was defeated again, in last night’s vote.
Those who witnessed ministers emerge from that session tell me that they looked tired, almost broken and deeply depressed.
There then followed what must have seemed to the Prime Minister a blissful respite: the Chancellor’s spring statement on the state of the economy.
Normally this is one of the major events of the year. This time it was all but completely overshadowed by the Brexit chaos.
And by early afternoon it was back to Brexit, with Michael Gove — one of the most ardent Brexiteers — standing in for Mrs May.
By 7pm, the rebellion was under way, government was in chaos, and feuding had broken out at the very top.
To many voters, this must all seem totally mad and out of touch with the realities of their daily lives.
Even someone such as me, well versed in the craziness of Westminster, finds it hard to comprehend what is going on.
Blackmail
But curiously enough, this is what I predict could happen.
It now looks likely that the Prime Minister will use last night’s events to terrify her Brexiteer opponents into submission.
She will effectively blackmail them by saying that if they continue to cause trouble Brexit will not happen after all.
It’s far too soon to be certain but it seems highly likely that the Prime Minister will rise from her sick bed to put her deal before MPs in a so-called ‘meaningful vote’ for the third time next week.
And that she will threaten them that if they vote her down again, Brexit itself will be kicked into the long grass.
Not just a delay of a few weeks to Article 50 of the kind that has been discussed up to now. But a delay of two years or more.
Reassuringly, at last, there are signs that Mrs May’s diehard opponents are about to give in.
They are learning the hard way that you underestimate this very formidable lady at your peril.
The last British Foreign Secretary to resign was Lord Carrington — 36 years ago — in the aftermath of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982.
Peter Carrington’s departure is widely regarded as the most honourable resignation of modern times — he took full responsibility for failing to foresee Argentina’s intentions.
It has to be admitted that Boris Johnson’s rushed decision to quit office yesterday lunchtime lacked the grace and gravitas of Lord Carrington’s departure.
Johnson hung on too long. He should have stepped down late on Friday, when Mrs May unveiled her negotiating position over Europe during that fateful all-day Cabinet meeting at Chequers.
But his departure is in its way as principled as Lord Carrington’s — and as his devastating resignation letter demonstrates, infinitely more dangerous for the Prime Minister.
It could prove lethal for her. This is a letter written not just to save his own integrity — it is also a relentless attack on Mrs May.
Most ministerial resignation letters carry a word of praise and expressions of personal warmth for the Prime Minister. None of that from Johnson.
Most resignation letters contain a bland promise to be a loyal servant from the backbenches. Johnson’s letter is devoid of any such assurance.
It looks very much to me as if he is preparing his way to mount a challenge to the Tory leadership.
Sooner rather than later.
Crucially, the letter carries strong echoes of Sir Geoffrey Howe’s notorious resignation speech in the Commons which propelled Margaret Thatcher from office in 1990. He accuses Mrs May of ‘sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them’.
That phrase is almost identical to Geoffrey Howe’s accusation that — also in negotiations with Europe — Thatcher had sent the Chancellor and Governor of the Bank of England into bat with broken cricket bats.
Indeed, if Sir Geoffrey were still alive he could sue Boris Johnson for plagiarism. 
With its lethal accusation that the Prime Minister is set on converting Britain into a ‘colony’, the letter also conveys Johnson’s sense of deep despair at May’s handling of negotiations with the European Union.
It is plain why Johnson could not remain inside the May Government while supporting a clean Brexit.
If Johnson is indeed planning to challenge May, though, he would be foolhardy to be impetuous and strike too soon. That would result in accusations of treachery.
Yet there is no doubt in my mind that if Theresa May suffers from a vote of no confidence by her MPs, the only logical course of action from the former Foreign Secretary is that he should mount a challenge.
Johnson and May are clearly divided by a massive conflict in their vision of Britain’s relationship with Europe. Their views on this are completely incompatible.
The letter shows clearly that trust between the two has broken down irreparably.
This became all the more apparent when it emerged that Downing Street — which Boris yesterday had warned in advance he would resign that evening — brutally and dishonourably leaked the news before he had even had time to write his resignation letter.
Over the next few days, Mr Johnson will face a barrage of contempt, hostility and criticism from supporters of the Prime Minister’s strategy on Europe. He will be accused of betrayal, opportunism, selfishness and also incompetence.
Plenty will revel in trashing the colourful former Foreign Secretary’s reputation. But I will not be among them.
I worked on The Spectator political magazine when he was its editor 15 years ago and can testify that far from being an opportunist, Mr Johnson was principled then and remains so now. Not least when it came to Europe.
His political opponents claim that his opposition to the European Union during the Brexit referendum campaign two years ago was a clever ruse to gain him popularity and help him become leader of the Conservative Party.
Rubbish. Mr Johnson has a record of criticising the EU dating back to the Nineties.
He will now become the de facto leader of opposition to Theresa May within the Tory Party. And I believe he could be formidable in that new role.
He has an acute political mind matched by remarkable eloquence as a speaker and writer.
Indeed, it may be that Mr Johnson will find his rhetorical flights better suited to the backbenches than to the sober responsibilities of Government.
Whatever his critics say, though, there were many achievements in Mr Johnson’s short time at the Foreign Office. Contrary to widespread reports, he was admired by officials who respected his ability to grasp a brief.
At all times he conveyed a buoyant optimism and he was certainly a massive improvement on his humdrum predecessor Philip Hammond.
He sought to preserve and enlarge Britain’s influence for good in the world, rather than accept and manage its decline.
I would also rate him higher as Foreign Secretary than the former Tory leader, dithering and gutless William Hague.
Mr Johnson made serious efforts to bring an end to the Syrian conflict and to keep afloat the special relationship with the United States at an exceptionally difficult time.
He deserves credit for the way Britain mustered European solidarity and support for Britain in the wake of the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury earlier this year. 
While maintaining a level head, Mr Johnson played an energetic and effective role in bringing the European Union round to Britain’s position that Russia was the most likely culprit of the attack.
He was also the first Foreign Secretary in recent memory to re-engage with the Commonwealth, an institution which has been systematically neglected by the Foreign Office.
The Commonwealth conference in London in April was a conspicuous success.
Equally striking was Boris Johnson’s courageous refusal to allow Theresa May and Philip Hammond to have it all their own way on Brexit. When other Brexiteers kept their head down, Johnson persistently spoke out for his vision of a clean Brexit — and of course it was this persistence and his refusal to budge that eventually led to his resignation.
It was he, for instance, who drafted many of the key sections of the Lancaster House speech last year which committed Mrs May to leaving the key institutions of the European Union.
And the sadness is that he was beginning to find his feet at the Foreign Office.
I believe he could have gone on to become one of Britain’s most respected Foreign Secretaries.
True, Mr Johnson failed to do anything to prevent two great crises on his watch.
The first is in Yemen, where millions of people are threatened with starvation in the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century.
Nor did he take any meaningful action to halt the genocide inflicted on the Rohingya Muslims by the Myanmar government, which came to a brutal head in two weeks of cold-blooded killing and rape last autumn.
From today he has a new role as he turns into Mrs May’s most dangerous critic and opponent.
From now on he will no longer wish to be seen simply as a former Foreign Secretary.
Rather he will position himself as a leader of the Brexiteers and a potential future Prime Minister.
And to convince people he is serious, he will have to rise above the inevitable slurs against him and present his vision for our country’s independent future with boldness, clarity — and his customary eloquence. 
No modern British prime minister got off to a worse start than the one Boris Johnson is suffering.
For a man who said at the age of four that he wanted to be ‘world king’, the reality of the challenges of being in power must be quite a shock.
To be fair, he looked good for the first few weeks. His fluent and optimistic oratory was a welcome change from Theresa May’s debilitating leadership.
And Johnson’s debut overseas trip as PM was a notable success. He appeared to strike up a strong relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and looked comfortable as he engaged with French President Emmanuel Macron.
This week, however, Bulldozer Boris hit a wall. One catastrophe struck after another.
He was condemned for suspending Parliament. His Commons majority sunk from one to minus 43 amid the bloodbath when 21 Tory MPs were ruthlessly sacked.
He lost four consecutive Commons votes. Humiliatingly, he failed to secure a general election, having lost control of a parliament that defied his will and also legislated to make it impossible to achieve a No Deal Brexit.
Devastatingly, his well-regarded brother, Jo, walked out of his Government and from politics altogether — blaming an unresolvable divide ‘between family loyalty and the national interest’.
This was a deadly retort, for it implied he believes his elder brother is not governing in the national interest. No more wounding charge can be levelled at a prime minister.
On a personal level, Johnson has started to appear dishevelled — using a four- letter word at Prime Minister’s Questions and giving an uncharacteristically stumbling performance in front of police recruits in Yorkshire.
There is no avoiding the question: how does Boris Johnson save himself?
I once worked for Johnson when he was editor of The Spectator magazine and I its political columnist. He was charming, intelligent, generous and loyal. Back then, he would take full responsibility if ever things went wrong.
Now that things are going wrong with his leadership of the country, he must shoulder the blame.
But others, too, ought to take some responsibility for what is going wrong. Jeremy Corbyn is hugely complicit in causing the crisis because of his hypocrisy in refusing to honour his repeated calls for a general election and, therefore, support the Government’s Commons motion that would have led to one.
But, admittedly, it is in the Labour leader’s interests to watch Johnson fail.
That said, it is the Tories who are in government, and they are most at fault. Principal culprit is Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser. Through his boorishness, bullying and strategic blundering, his boss has lost control of events. He has also managed to unite what was previously a disunited band of Remainers into a well-organised anti-Johnson coalition that is being marshalled successfully by Corbyn.
So much for Cummings’s supposed tactical genius! The architect of the 2016 Leave campaign should leave Johnson’s Government forthwith.
Also to blame is Johnson’s much-vaunted constitutional expert, Nikki da Costa.
She quit Theresa May’s Government as director of legislative affairs at No 10, but is now back in the same job.
She was intimately involved in the disastrous decision to prorogue Parliament.
It was her note to Johnson on August 15 asking if he wanted a shutdown that led him to order one, with him casually replying that the session in September was a ‘rigmarole’ that only existed ‘to show the public that MPs are earning their crust’.
Another of whom better was expected is Johnson’s long-term chief of staff, Sir Edward Lister.
‘Steady Eddie’ — a 69-year-old former London council chief — should have helped avoid the pitfalls.
Questions are being asked, too, about Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, whose duty is to be the guardian of government integrity.
If Johnson is to regain his poise, he needs a new set of advisers. But he must do much more.
The decision to strip the Tory whip from 21 MPs who voted with Labour this week has been a disaster and must be reversed, however humiliating that would be to the Prime Minister.
Otherwise, I fear more will follow Jo Johnson, the Tory party will fall apart and it will lose the next general election. Significantly, the approximately 100-strong One Nation group of Conservative MPs is becoming restless.
On Wednesday, it authorised its chairman, former Cabinet minister Damian Green, to send a letter to Boris Johnson protesting against the purge of moderate colleagues — when the 21 MPs were sacked from the party.
Green, a long-time friend of Theresa May, added tellingly that if the PM’s aim was to unite the Tory party and the country, removing the whip from the MPs has ‘hindered that mission’.
There is no doubt that a number of Cabinet ministers have been shocked by Boris Johnson’s brutal methods.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan were both part of the One Nation group meeting that led to the letter to Johnson.
Maybe this political forest fire will die away over the next few days.
Or maybe the flames will grow in intensity and spread.
But my advice to Boris Johnson is now to heed the One Nation Tories’ counsel.
Dominic Cummings must go. Great parliamentarians such as Ken Clarke and Sir Nicholas Soames must be welcomed back into the Tory fold.
Better and less divisive advisers must urgently be hired.
I’ve always believed that Boris Johnson has the qualities to be a fine prime minister.
To be fair to him, he is facing an extreme set of circumstances that are on a scale none of his predecessors ever had to deal with.
But he needs to act very fast, or his childhood dream of being ‘world king’ — or even just of running Britain — will be shattered.
Boris shows the diplomatic touch  
Despite the Brexit shambles, Boris Johnson deserves praise for his wise statesmanship over the Iran crisis.
Rather than escalate tensions following the seizure of an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar, which triggered Iran to seize a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, Johnson ordered the release of the Iranian ship. As a result, the Tehran regime freed seven crew members from the vessel it impounded.
Johnson also wisely rejected calls by Israel to keep the pressure on Iran.
He has learnt from his time as Foreign Secretary, when he foolishly compromised the safety of British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is in an Iranian prison.
I believe that a settlement with Iran can be reached which would see her released, in return for Britain finally paying a £450 million debt owed to Iran from an arms deal in the Seventies.
All thanks to Boris Johnson’s enlightened diplomacy.
Ultimately, the man who bears responsibility for the Brexit crisis is David Cameron. The former prime minister called the referendum — to stop losing hardline anti-EU Tory voters to Ukip — and failed to negotiate with Brussels a better deal for Britain.
It was he who put on the statute book the ill-conceived Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which has now caused political paralysis and sorely tested our system of democracy. And it was Cameron who resigned as PM straight after the Brexit vote, despite promising that he would stay on to deal with its fallout. Now, as he surveys the debris he created, he has the audacity to publish and promote his memoirs. To his credit, though, after reports that the former PM got an £800,000 advance, The Bookseller magazine says all author profits will go to charity. But shouldn’t Cameron have delayed publication until after Brexit was solved?
 
The bloodiest day in British politics since World War II. At Westminster they were calling it the Midsummer Massacre.
With a casual brutality of which I had not thought him capable, Boris Johnson has systematically cut short the political careers of more than a dozen Cabinet ministers.
No contrition. No remorse. He simply scythed them down.
Al Capone, the gangster notorious for his drive-by shootings, would have given Johnson a nod of professional approbation and lifelong membership of his Chicago Street Boys Gang.
How telling that Johnson recently told the Mail that his favourite film scene was — to quote his words — ‘the multiple retribution killings at the end of The Godfather.’
Sacking
But he refrained from adding that he planned to treat Francis Ford Coppola’s movie classic as a political textbook rather than as an evening’s entertainment.
The stark truth is that Boris Johnson is sending out a blunt political message. He wants ultra-loyalists around him. And only ultra-loyalists.
It’s not good enough just to be a Brexiteer. He only wants Brexiteers who are loyal to him.
All must be signed up to the Mafia code of ‘Omerta’ under which it is shameful to betray colleagues and principles.
Hence, for example, the totally unexpected sacking of Penny Mordaunt from her job as Defence Secretary.
Ms Mordaunt, who many predicted might be promoted to the Foreign Office, is a passionate Leaver. But she made the fatal mistake of backing Jeremy Hunt to be PM.
The same is true of the former Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox. I cannot stress too strongly how much Boris Johnson’s actions yesterday represents a breach from all known parliamentary and political convention.
Traditionally, any new Conservative (or Labour) leader comes into office seeking to heal rifts in their party by offering jobs to opponents.
Margaret Thatcher was careful to include many so-called political ‘wets’ who disdained her hard-line policies.
At a stroke, Johnson has rewritten the rules of politics.
He’s done nothing to heal divisions that have rent the Tory party for so long. What’s more, he’s gone out of his way to create new enemies.
The biggest breach in convention concerns Jeremy Hunt, who fought a valiant battle in the Conservative leadership contest.
Observers were expecting him to be rewarded with a promotion to the Chancellorship or, at the very least, that he would keep his job as Foreign Secretary — one of the three great offices of state under the Prime Minister.
Johnson had no time for that kind of traditional generosity and decorum.
First, he attempted to humiliate Hunt by forcing him to take a demotion to Secretary of State for Defence. When Hunt refused to budge, Johnson simply sacked him.
Until now, Harold Macmillan held the record for Cabinet sackings. He got rid of seven ministers on the so-called ‘Night of the Long Knives’ in 1962.
Butcher Boris has made Macmillan look like a toddler with a plastic picnic knife.
The political strategy behind this slaughter is obvious, though audacious in the extreme.
Johnson is making plain there can be no room for backsliders as he wrenches Britain out of the European Union by October 31.
He only wants new true Brexit-Boris believers. And the punishment for disloyalty is political extinction.
He has sent out the signal that he means to lead not through persuasion, as has become the norm in our age of consensual politics, but through fear.
The great risk is that he has created an army of enemies on the Tory backbenches.
Of course, all prime ministers gradually create enemies through a long process of attrition while in office. Johnson, though, has gone out of his way to create a new platoon all at once.
Forget the blithe words of tribute to Theresa May — mentioning her ‘fortitude and patience’ and her ‘deep sense of public service’ — this marks a total repudiation of her and her system of government.
After that modicum of praise, he sacked her ministers, trashed her government and witheringly condemned its inability to achieve Brexit.
He seems to have concluded from her failure that the Parliamentary Conservative Party won’t allow Brexit.
Command
So he’s decided that his own MPs, and the conventions which govern the party, are a lost cause.
His motto: follow me or face the sack.
Above all, Johnson knows that he cannot command a natural majority in the Commons. His solution?
It is to threaten Parliament with the will of the people.
Yesterday, he repeatedly referred to the ‘will of the people’ — ironically in view of his plan to break away from a political and economic union with France, this is a concept dating back to the French political philosopher Jean- Jacques Rousseau and which has been repudiated by British constitutional doctrine.
Typically, Johnson is positioning himself as a revolutionary Prime Minister.
Donald Trump repeatedly summons popular support in his battle against congress. Johnson will follow suit in an attempt to undermine an oppositional Parliament.
Vital in this attritional war will be a cohort of Godfather-style consigliere.
Among these appointments is Dominic Cummings — seen by many as a sinister schemer.
Despised
This backroom tactician — now Johnson’s special adviser — is probably best known for being played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Channel 4 film Brexit: The Uncivil War.
The strategic genius behind the Vote Leave campaign was recently found in contempt of Parliament for failing to appear before the Culture, Media and Sport select committee and is despised by many MPs.
Ultimately, I believe Johnson’s decision to declare war on the Parliamentary Conservative Party means that he will have little choice but to call a General Election soon.
I am sure it would be fought on the theme of The People versus Parliament.
Johnson’s calculation is that disloyal Tory MPs would be terrified into submission.
Having witnessed the chaos of the past three years, Boris Johnson will stop at nothing to force through Brexit.
Many will agree that such defiance of convention is necessary considering that our politics have become paralysed.
Others, though, will be horrified.
It’s a brave strategy — and it may be Brexit’s best hope. But it may also break the Conservative Party.
Despite his numerous weaknesses and failings, Jeremy Corbyn has, for decades, offered one admirable quality to voters. That of being a politician of undoubted authenticity.
This has meant that, by the admittedly dismal standards of modern politicians, he has stood out as a man of principle. Indeed, that is one of his main attractions to young voters.
However, all that was blown to smithereens yesterday.
His speech about Labour’s Brexit policy was, I believe, one of the most cynical, calculating and amoral pieces of so-called oratory I have ever heard from a politician.
Several times as I listened, I had to pinch myself as he made the case for Britain to stay a member of an EU customs union.
Here was the neo-Marxist, who has made it his life’s work to fight capitalism, placing himself in the same camp as the bosses’ organisation (the CBI), the Financial Times and the Bank of England.
Corbyn’s sudden alliance with big business goes against every bone in his body.
For, as recently as December, he railed against City ‘speculators and gamblers’ who are part of a ‘damaging and failed system that’s rigged for the few’.
Not only does his new policy of cosying up to big business betray his own personal principles, it is a slap in the face of those millions of Labour voters who want Britain to break from the Brussels straitjacket and who voted Brexit in the EU referendum.
Undoubtedly, they will see Corbyn as a traitor.
That is surely the view of Labour MP Frank Field — regarded by many as the most honourable MP in Parliament.
Field warned at the weekend that if Corbyn said a Labour government would keep Britain in an EU customs union after 2020, he would ‘rat on the people’s decision to leave’.
How ironic that Corbynistas hate Tony Blair for what they say is his hypocrisy and two-facedness. And yet, those are the same characteristics their hero showed yesterday.
The brutal truth is that on the great issue of our time, Jeremy Corbyn has played Judas to democracy.
This, remember, is the same man who voted for Britain to leave the European Economic Community (which preceded the EU) in 1975; who opposed the creation of the EU under the Maastricht Treaty (turning the EU into more of a superstate); who voted for a referendum on our membership of the EU, and the day after the vote itself called for the immediate invocation of Article 50 — the two-year notice to leave the EU.
Of course, Corbyn’s screeching U-turn is down to dirty politics rather than principles. He is positioning himself, as leader of the Opposition, to try to bring down the Government.
In sum, he has sacrificed his reputation for integrity in the hope he can destroy Theresa May’s premiership.
Central to his calculation is that if he succeeds in getting rid of Mrs May and becomes prime minister himself, Labour supporters who voted for Brexit would forgive him.
They would do so, he thinks, because they would prefer a Labour government (albeit still shackled in part to Brussels) than a Tory government that has broken free from Brussels.
This, I reckon, is how Corbyn hopes his plan will work out.
Later this year, MPs will have to vote on the Government’s deal on leaving the EU.
Corbyn believes he might be able to muster the support of sufficient rebel Remainer Tories to defeat Mrs May.
Already, one, Anna Soubry, has tabled a potentially deadly amendment calling for Britain to remain in a customs union — precisely the policy adumbrated yesterday by Corbyn.
For her part, Soubry makes no secret of the fact that her desire to see Britain still shackled to the Brussels-based trading bloc is stronger than her loyalty to Mrs May.
Thus, Corbyn is cynically calculating that he can form an anti-democratic alliance with Europhile Tories and the Scottish Nationalists (who have 35 MPs) to topple the Tory Government. This is a life-and-death gamble.
Of course, there are precedents. In some ways, it is similar to the way the then Labour leader John Smith behaved over the Maastricht Treaty in 1993.
Although a passionate Europhile, Smith joined Prime Minister John Major’s Tory anti-European ‘bastard’ rebels in an attempt to bring down his government.
Although Smith narrowly failed, Major was so badly damaged that he never truly recovered.
Corbyn hopes to go one stage further, take down Mrs May and be in 10 Downing Street by Christmas.
I believe, however, that his audacious gamble will backfire.
Principally because the British people won’t let him unseat a government which is nobly carrying out the democratic wishes of the majority of the electorate.
Also, because people will see through Jeremy Corbyn’s amoral sell-out.
On the specifics of the argument, too, the Labour leader is intellectually flawed. He misunderstands the details.
For example, if Britain retains some trading rights with the EU, we would have to accept the terms put forward by Brussels — and that almost certainly would mean allowing practically unrestricted immigration from other European countries.
In any case, each of the remaining 27 EU countries would have to vote to accept the terms of a deal that a Corbyn-led British government would ask for with regard to a customs union.
Undoubtedly, countries such as Poland and Hungary, which want their peoples to travel freely across continental Europe, would try to force Britain to allow their citizens to come here freely.
This would mean that the UK would not regain control of its borders and immigration levels would remain high.
Yet countless studies have shown that it was worries about high levels of immigration from EU countries which were a key factor in so many Labour supporters backing Brexit in June 2016.
For them, Corbyn’s speech yesterday was a betrayal — and one which they will find hard to forgive.
There is another issue. This is that a trigger for the Brexit vote was that people wanted Britain to be free from Brussels’s crippling tariffs on non-EU goods.
These mean that foods imported from outside the EU are artificially priced much higher than they ought to be.
Similarly, Brussels keeps prices high by paying billions of euros in subsidies to French and German farmers, leading to higher costs for European consumers — including, of course, hard-pressed Labour voters — and making it much more difficult for farmers in the Third World to get access to the European market.
Ultimately, Jeremy Corbyn’s speech may prove to be a momentous one in the history of the Labour Party — but not for the reason he would have wanted.
I believe that he risks losing from the party a hardcore of its traditional supporters, particularly in the Midlands and North — around 30 per cent of its total support — who voted Brexit but feel they could never vote for a party that wants to keep Britain locked into parts of an EU superstate. 
Every day, the road to Brexit seems to get bumpier. The mixed messages coming from Downing Street certainly don’t help.
The latest confusion was caused when, on the one hand, the Government’s Chief Whip, Julian Smith, said he plans to bring the EU (Withdrawal) Bill back to the Commons for a vote earlier than expected, in a move that pleased Brexiteers who want to face down Remain MPs as soon as possible.
However, on the other hand, Downing Street was briefing that the Government may give hope to Remainers by asking the EU for a second Brexit transition period to run until 2023.
No wonder so many of the 17.4 million who voted Leave are getting deeply frustrated.
But while Brussels negotiators continue to stymie Brexit, European politicians are facing a much bigger threat to the European Union.
I refer to events of the past few days in Italy, which will be Europe’s third largest economy after Britain leaves the European Union.
This week, a new government was formed — Italy’s 66th since the end of World War II.
The new prime minister, Guiseppe Conte, heads a rag-bag coalition of the anti-Establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League.
They agree on very little but there is one policy on which they are in harmony: a hatred of Brussels.
It is no exaggeration to say that Mr Conte, a former law professor at Florence University, has the power to bring about the collapse of the EU.
He came to power on a wave of burning national resentment over Italy’s membership of the EU, which millions of Italians believe has been an unmitigated disaster for their country.
Above all, there is the problem of immigration, which was a key issue in March’s elections.
Brussels’s freedom of movement rules are blamed for record numbers of migrants in the country.
At least one million, for example, have settled in Italy from Romania, a fellow EU member. But huge numbers have made their homes in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.
From Libya alone in the past four years, an estimated 600,000 migrants and refugees have reached Italy.
These people know that once on Italian soil, they have a very good chance of being able to begin a new life there or exploit freedom of movement to live in any other of the 28 countries in the EU.
Italy’s new government has pledged to deport up to half a million migrants, to clear illegal gipsy settlements in towns and cities, and to recruit more police and build new prisons to deal with the problems.
This hardline reaction to Brussels’s soft approach to illegal immigration amounts to a huge challenge to its authority and imperils the cohesion of the EU.
But immigration is not the only issue over which Italy’s new government is at war with Brussels.
The country, once an economic success story almost as remarkable as Germany’s, has been brought to its knees by Brussels.
This tragedy dates back to Italy’s decision to join the euro at its launch in 1999. It proved to be a calamitous error.
With its own currency, the lira, the Italian government was able to manage its own affairs and devalue its currency if necessary to make itself competitive.
However, the euro has imposed a financial strait-jacket which has led to the closure of thousands of businesses, with millions of people put out of work.
Shockingly, Italy has not seen any cumulative economic growth since it signed up to the European single currency.
The Italian people know that their membership of the EU is to blame for mass unemployment, social collapse and uncontrolled migration. The new Italian PM, Mr Conte, is the first political leader to genuinely represent the national mood of outrage — and sorrow — at their post-lira impoverishment.
Italy’s national debt is a staggering 132 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product — the second highest in the EU, after Greece.
To try to prevent a crisis of ever bigger proportions, the European Central Bank lent Italy €600 billion (about half a trillion pounds sterling) in order to stop it going bankrupt.
Meanwhile, Mr Conte is promising tax cuts and public spending increases to try to undo the damage to his country’s economy.
As night follows day, though, the Brussels bully-boys — the same ones who have been trying to block Brexit — will threaten him with dire consequences unless he backs down.
We witnessed a similar stand-off when Greece’s economy hit the rocks and had to be bailed out with billions of euros in loans from Brussels.
The Greek people reacted to this national humiliation by voting for a vehemently anti-EU government three years ago.
But they were then shabbily let down when their new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, abjectly caved in to the strong-arm tactics of European leaders.
Mr Conte is unlikely to yield in the same way.
Italy is ten times bigger than Greece. Unlike Greece, Italy is too big to fail.
It is quite possible that Mr Conte will threaten that Italy will pull out of the euro — a move that would instil terror in Brussels and Frankfurt.
Returning to the lira would be a desperate measure, but it would be the economically sane thing to do.
It would give the Italian economy a chance to be competitive again and end the stagnation and mass unemployment which have wrecked countless hundreds of thousands of lives over two decades.
Leaving the euro would mean that Italy would renege on its €600 billion in loans from the European Central Bank.
Without doubt, the bank would collapse. The EU would go into financial and political meltdown.
The ineluctable truth is that Italy is now a ticking time bomb, and I fear it is only a question of time before it explodes, with consequences for the continent which are impossible to predict.
How ironic that the founders of the EU’s predecessor, the EEC, were driven in part by a desire to prevent a repeat of the terrible bloodshed of the two great wars of the 20th century, but their hubristic attempts at political and economic union have instead created division and hatred.
Europe is not just creaking — it is falling apart.
Is it any surprise the British people had the good sense to vote to leave the EU?
The worrying message: Britain approves torture 
Two weeks have passed since Theresa May apologised for the Blair government’s role in the kidnap and torture of Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj.
Mrs May was not to blame for this repugnant case. The two men most responsible were then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and MI6 official Sir Mark Allen.
Yet Straw remains a Privy Councillor and Allen keeps his knighthood. Both men have brought shame on Britain, and if they aren’t stripped of their honours it will suggest that the British State approves of torture.
One of the fiercest critics of the Prime Minister’s handling of Brexit has been the Institute of Directors, the organisation representing Britain’s most senior business people.
What a pity that it cannot handle its own affairs. Membership has almost halved from 55,000 in 2005 to just over 30,000 today.
Theresa May’s formidable speech to the Tory Party conference barely two weeks ago ought to have put paid to all leadership speculation for the foreseeable future.
But, sadly, the knives are being sharpened again.
This time, it’s not Boris Johnson’s blade at the whetstone. The man putting an edge to his weapon is former Brexit secretary David Davis. 
Treacherously, he accuses the PM of ‘incipient panic’ under pressure from Brussels and has called for a full-scale Cabinet revolt against her over what he portentously calls ‘one of the most fundamental decisions that government has taken in modern times’.
For good measure, he adds: ‘This week the authority of our constitution is on the line.’
This is high-blown claptrap.
In truth, what we are witnessing is not the British constitution under threat but one of the oldest and most familiar stories in politics: An old man in a hurry.
I know Mr Davis (who’ll be 70 in December) very well. He is a thoroughly decent man and an ornament to the House of Commons.
Unlike most MPs, he’s had experience of real life outside politics, both as a director of sugar giant Tate & Lyle where he worked for 17 years and as an infantryman in the territorial SAS. And unlike many Tory MPs, he’s had to make his own way in life, being brought up by a single mother and spending his early years mainly on a council estate.
He’s been touted as a possible future Tory leader ever since he was first elected MP when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in 1987. Indeed, he stood as a leadership candidate 13 years ago.
But for all his many qualities, he lacks the record of substantial achievement in politics that is essential for someone with his experience who seeks the top job.
Indeed, Mr Davis is chiefly notable for his record of resignations.
To misquote Oscar Wilde: ‘One ministerial resignation may be regarded as a misfortune; two looks like carelessness.’
True, Mr Davis’s two resignations have always been on points of principle – but there have, nevertheless, been too many.
The most baffling occurred ten years ago when he was shadow home secretary – causing embarrassment to his boss David Cameron when he was leader of the opposition. He stepped down to fight a by-election over his anger over the then Labour government’s plans for 42-day pre-charge detention as part of its anti-terror policy.
Mr Davis’s most recent resignation was in the summer, in protest against Mrs May’s so-called Chequers plan for Brexit. His strop made headlines for a few days.
But as Brexit secretary he should never have allowed Mrs May to have got boxed into such a tight corner by Brussels’ Brexit negotiators.
He had originally been given the job by her in recognition of his role as one of the few Tory big-hitters who had campaigned for Brexit during the 2016 referendum campaign.
Suddenly, he was offered his chance to earn a place in history and put his own imprimatur on Britain’s departure from the EU.
I’m afraid to say he failed. Most shamefully, not only was he repulsed by Michel Barnier & Co but he was weakly shoved aside by his own pro-Remain civil servants.
Equally heinous, Mr Davis gave the impression of failing to master his brief. He was considered lazy – away from his desk too often, attending, for example, the Hay Festival to listen to feminist author Margaret Atwood.
Very soon, Brussels negotiators realised that Whitehall mandarin Olly Robbins, not Mr Davis, was the man in charge.
Instead of playing a central role in this country’s biggest and most important negotiation in 40 years, David Davis had allowed himself to be sidelined.
So why should Mrs May listen to such a man? Why should Cabinet ministers be expected to heed his call to rise against her and agree with his claim that failure to get agreement on a final trade deal would leave Britain paying £39billion to Brussels for ‘a pig in a poke’?
For all his bravado, Mr Davis doesn’t seem to have noticed that his far less experienced replacement, Dominic Raab – ironically a man who was his protege and his one-time chief of staff – looks much more at ease in the job.
If Mr Davis had true self-knowledge, he would not – as he did yesterday – criticise Mrs May for ‘accepting the EU’s language’ on the Irish border issue. The fact is that the minister in charge of negotiations at the time was none other than Mr Davis himself.
But such is the dishonest and disingenuous world of politics.
Over recent months, Theresa May has been forced to put up with treachery and betrayal from some Tory colleagues.
As we reach the Brexit negotiations endgame, she – and, more importantly, the British people – deserve better than to be subjected to the flouncing egotism of a man who palpably failed in his job to secure us an orderly and proper break from the European Union.
 
As Theresa May’s doomed premiership enters its final weeks, a remarkable number of wannabe replacements have made it clear they want her job.
There is former children’s TV presenter and ex-Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, doughty leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom, relatively inexperienced Health Secretary Matthew Hancock and Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss, who posed in a flamboyant series of outfits for photographs in a Sunday magazine last weekend.
In a field that has been compared with the starting lineup for the Grand National, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Home Secretary Sajid Javid are both expected to grab the reins and announce their candidacies.
But until yesterday, it was Hamlet without the prince.
Enter Boris Johnson, centre stage.
Typical of the man, there was no equivocation. ‘Of course I’m going to go for it,’ he said. At once, he’s the bookmakers’ favourite.
Indeed, Mr Johnson’s timing could hardly be more propitious with Tory party ratings in freefall, according to opinion polls.
He IS the only leadership contender with mass backing among the Tory party members who will ultimately choose the next occupant of No 10.
In the Tory shires, utterly fed up with the May Government’s handling of Brexit, he is viewed as something of a national saviour. The only Conservative with the charisma, will and verve to take on and defeat Nigel Farage’s rampant Brexit Party – and see off the red menace of Comrade Corbyn.
Unlike Mrs May, who campaigned for Remain, Mr Johnson believes in Brexit. That counts a lot.
He draws the crowds. He cheers people up. For all of his faults, and despite his chaotic private life, he is a major figure in our political landscape.
I predict that if Mr Johnson is chosen by Tory MPs to make the shortlist of two who will fight it out among the 125,000 Tory party members, he will win comfortably. But will he reach the final two? Will Tory MPs sabotage his bid?
First of all, the rules of the leadership contest may be stacked against him.
Mr Johnson is not popular among Tory MPs. He is seen as aloof. He spends very little time glad-handing colleagues in Westminster tea rooms. Many don’t like him. Others envy his charm and popularity. Few trust him.
This is why plans have already been hatched to stop the blond bombshell’s bandwagon. Inevitably, dark arts are involved.
Don’t forget that the last time Mr Johnson was about to stand for the leadership – after David Cameron’s resignation – his chances were wrecked thanks to an unprecedented act of treachery.
Just minutes before a press conference where Mr Johnson was due to launch his leadership bid, his running partner, Michael Gove, withdrew his backing and said he was standing himself.
Brutally, Mr Gove questioned whether Mr Johnson’s ‘heart and soul’ were really behind Britain leaving the EU. He said he felt that Mr Johnson wasn’t ‘capable of building that team and providing that unity’ needed to see Brexit over the line.
Will Mr Gove strike again? Don’t rule it out. And is that withering assessment shared by other Tory MPs? Most likely, yes. I, too, have reservations about crowd-pleaser Boris. But this time I think it would be regrettable if he didn’t get a proper run for the leadership.
It would be a bit like the England cricket team of the 1980s taking to the field without Ian Botham. Would Argentina pick a World Cup final team without Lionel Messi?
Despite the Whips’ Office notorious ‘black book’ in which MPs’ private foibles are recorded – and Mr Johnson has many pages’ worth – one further factor should weigh heavily with Tory MPs as they decide who should replace Mrs May.
Many believe that our current problems with Brexit derive from the fact that despite the British people’s Leave vote in 2016, someone who had campaigned for Remain became prime minister.
Over 34 months, Mrs May has failed to push through Brexit. Many Tory activists are convinced that history would have been different if Mr Johnson, a true Brexiteer, had been given the task. There’s power in this argument.
By issuing Brussels’ EU negotiators with a plausible threat that Britain would leave with No Deal if they offered unreasonable terms, Prime Minister Johnson might have wrung a better Withdrawal Deal for the UK.
But that is pure conjecture.
As for the future, if he succeeds Mrs May in No 10, Mr Johnson may not be able to push through Brexit either.
Although his supporters would be optimistic that he would get a different result from Brussels, Mr Johnson is derided by most European leaders and they would most likely send him home empty-handed.
Thus, the ultra-Brexiteer would urge the Commons to go for No Deal. But that would be an uphill challenge, too, because despite a new prime minister, there would still be a robust majority of MPs against leaving the EU.
Prime Minister Johnson’s immediate target would be to push through Brexit before the next deadline, October 31. If he failed to achieve that, he would risk being one of the shortest-lived prime ministers in British history. That said, he deserves the chance to try.
Above all, if he is to be taken seriously as a Tory leadership candidate – and he’s already lost weight and tamed his hair – Mr Johnson needs to give a convincing argument over how he might be able to succeed where Theresa May has failed.
Here’s the killer question. How would he fare in a general election pitted against Jeremy Corbyn? Both men appeal to core party voters – and repel as many as they attract. But it can stated with certainty that Boris would give the Tories a raw campaigning oomph that’s been absent under Theresa May.
In the meantime, I advise Tory voters to bolt the doors and bring down the shutters. Hurricane Boris is about to make landfall.
 
Experts predicted Theresa May and her Conservative party would experience an electoral massacre.
Certainly, the results were a stinging rebuff as they lost well over 1,000 council seats.
It was even more dreadful than predicted. But the Tories were always going to do badly because the last time these seats were fought had been a high water mark for them electorally – David Cameron’s general election victory of spring 2015.
However, Labour is also a big loser in these local elections.
They should have scooped up barrowloads of votes considering we have the weakest Prime Minister in memory – and that news on polling day had been dominated by Tories being convulsed by recriminations over the sacking of Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
The fact is that according to the iron rule of British politics, when a government is in trouble, the Opposition is bound to benefit. Yet Labour was hit by a series of hammer blows.
The party lost control of Bolsover District Council for the first time in more than 40 years. This is the Derbyshire former mining town that’s been represented in Parliament by the veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner since 1970.
Other key losses were the Wirral and Hartlepool councils – traditional Labour areas.
Overall, they lost more than 75 councillors and control of several local authorities. Gaining control of Trafford Council, a long-term target, was only a small compensation.
Almost as calamitous for Jeremy Corbyn was the fact that the biggest winners of the night were the Liberal Democrats, who had been written off as a political force with just 11 MPs.
Of course the Tories are still in deep trouble. But Thursday’s local election results are a brutal reminder that Labour is in no fit state to form a government.
Most pertinently, they expose the huge risk Mr Corbyn took at a meeting of the party’s governing National Executive Committee on Tuesday by not committing Labour to a second EU referendum.
Instead of doing so decisively, and thus pleasing the majority of party members who want a second vote, he sat on the fence, doubtless cynically hoping to appeal to Leave voters and Remainers at the same time. As so often has been the case with Mr Corbyn’s leadership, his cynicism and procrastination have done him no good.
His attempt to appeal to all sides has left him offending parts of both.
In the Brexit-supporting North East, voters abandoned Labour in droves. And in pro-Remain areas elsewhere, people who traditionally vote Labour defected to the Lib Dems, the Greens and other fringe candidates.
More worrying for Mr Corbyn, his flawed tactics are set to make matters more difficult for him.
There is no reason to expect Labour will do better in the European elections at the end of this month. Indeed, anecdotal evidence from canvassers suggests that Mr Corbyn himself is no longer popular.
This may be partly down to Labour’s crisis over anti-Semitism, which could intensify over the next month if the Equality and Human Rights Commission launches a full investigation.
And last week it emerged that Mr Corbyn wrote a favourable introduction to a shockingly anti-Semitic book, written by Left-wing author JA Hobson before the First World War but republished a few years ago.
In addition, while the Tories seem irrevocably split between ultra and soft Brexiteers, Labour is seriously split, too.
But the Tories have a disadvantage. They cannot agree on who should be Mrs May’s replacement.
By contrast, there is one plausible name on Labour MPs’ lips as a possible replacement for Mr Corbyn: His deputy Tom Watson.
This week, Mr Watson stormed out of a Shadow Cabinet meeting held shortly ahead of the NEC’s decision not to commit the party to back a second referendum.
Mr Watson is a supporter of what he calls a ‘People’s Vote’ and is frustrated with his boss’s refusal to commit to one. He has also warned that Labour will be beaten by the Brexit Party if it continues to ‘sit on the fence’ and offers only ‘mealy-mouthed’ support for a second referendum.
The 52-year-old Yorkshireman has transformed himself over the last few months.
Two years ago he was a 22-stone political thug with undoubted talents but a shambolic life and was often to be found in a pub. But he has now lost seven stone in little over a year.
It doesn’t take a super-brain to work out that any politician who loses weight and spruces up their appearance (Boris Johnson is another example, having lost 12lb and with an uncharacteristically neat haircut) is part of their preparation to pitch for the top job.
Meanwhile, a summer of political destruction lies ahead.
Mrs May has promised to be gone within months. And the local election results mean Mr Corbyn is in deep trouble, too.
In the short term, fresh electoral catastrophe beckons for both main parties. It’s only three weeks until the European elections – the ones that Mrs May vowed would never happen.
A new menace will appear in the form of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which threatens to take away millions more Tory votes.
This takes us to the heart of the nightmare conundrum facing Mrs May and Mr Corbyn.
The Labour leader could agree a Brexit deal with the Prime Minister that would see both their parties fulfil the demands of the 2016 referendum result and take Britain out of the EU within weeks.
But if he does that, he would have thrown the Tories a lifeline and saved them from electoral wipe-out on May 23.
Most disturbingly for our country’s future, this week’s electoral results show that the leaders of the two main parties are stuck in a potential death-trap and neither has any clue how to get out.
When historians look back at this momentous week, they will struggle to choose which was the most important event.
There was Donald Trump’s first visit to Britain as president and his characteristically belligerent intervention in the Brexit debate.
Also, we saw the dramatic resignations from Cabinet of Boris Johnson and David Davis.
These two cheerleaders for Leave walked out in protest against Theresa May’s White Paper which sets out how she hopes Britain will quit the EU but which both men believe betrays the wishes of the 17 million people who voted for Brexit.
However, I believe that future historians will conclude that the most significant event this week was a little-reported meeting that took place in a Westminster committee room on Monday afternoon.
In the sweltering heat, Mrs May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington, briefed opposition MPs and peers about the White Paper in the hope of gaining their support for her Brexit negotiating strategy.
This meeting — described as ‘surreal’ by one Labour MP present — was unprecedented.
For the corralling of cross-party support for a government policy at a time when the country is not at war is very rare.
But Lidington’s overture signalled a need by ministers desperate for a Brexit solution to have a temporary ceasefire that would be impossible to achieve in the confrontational form of politics that has been the norm in Britain for more than two centuries.
I would go further and suggest that rather than a temporary phenomenon, we could witness the collapse of age-old party divisions in British politics.
For the indisputable fact is that Brexit is destroying the traditional two-party system which has seen either a Labour or a Tory government (or a coalition) ever since the collapse of the Liberals as a major force more than a century ago.
Convulsed by disagreements over Britain’s future relationship with the EU, the Conservative Party is deeply divided between those who want a hard Brexit and those instinctive Remainers who are adamant that the break from Brussels is as soft as possible.
Labour, too, is irrevocably split, with MPs representing constituencies which voted Leave battling against a phalanx of passionately pro-EU MPs who will do anything to frustrate Brexit.
I estimate that there are about 90 Brexiteer Tory MPs who may defy Mrs May. On the other side, Jeremy Corbyn faces a similar number of Labour rebels — MPs who, on Brexit, are ideologically closer to the 90 Tory malcontents. For the fact is that seven in ten Labour-held seats voted Leave and the MPs who represent them feel duty-bound to back their constituents’ wishes.
As a result, I predict that we could see the emergence of a new political landscape.
The two-party mould that has served British politics well for so long will first be broken by the creation of a specifically pro-European party, which could attract leading Remainers such as the Tories’ Nicky Morgan and Labour’s Chuka Umunna.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the debate, rather than a separate pro-Brexit party, I can see the rise of a number of anti-EU nationalist groups. They will be a motley bunch — straddling a wide political spectrum and include those on the Left who want to destroy the capitalist system and those from the Right who are free marketeers.
Ironically, this could mean Labour’s Marxist shadow chancellor John McDonnell and Jacob Rees-Mogg, an Old Etonian Tory who made a fortune in City fund management, becoming unlikely bedfellows. Of course, this would purely be a marriage of convenience.
You may think this scenario that I’m suggesting is crazy. But do not rule out the prospect that Rees-Mogg and McDonnell could join together to fight for a united vision of Britain outside the EU — albeit for very different core motives.
Of course, there is a precedent for such a cross-party alliance.
In the early 1970s, Harold Wilson’s Labour and Edward Heath’s Tories were both split over whether Britain should join the European Economic Community — a trade agreement that was the early version of the European Union.
This led to an unlikely alliance between Socialist Michael Foot (who abhorred the removal of power from the British people to Brussels) and right-winger Enoch Powell (who warned about Britain becoming a province of a European superstate).
During debates over Britain’s membership of the EEC, there were a series of votes in the Commons during which MPs on both sides rebelled against their party leadership.
Eventually, Wilson’s government decided to join the EEC and the two-party system re-established itself.
But this time, I doubt, after Brexit, that the normal order will be restored. Feelings are running so high and emotions so passionate that the two-party system — that is currently much more fragile than it was half a century ago — could be fractured for ever.
 Before a gala dinner at the Nato summit in Brussels this week, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was seen swaying and had to be given a wheelchair.
His critics were quick to suggest that the 63-year-old former Luxembourg prime minister with a reputation as a heavy drinker may have over-refreshed himself. The truth may have been that he was incapacitated by acute leg pains from which he’s said to suffer. 
By comparison, Donald Trump never drinks alcohol. The appearance of the two men together in Brussels made me think of that great newspaper editor William Rees-Mogg (father of Brexiteer Jacob) who once famously wrote that he preferred Foreign Secretary George Brown drunk to Prime Minister Harold Wilson sober.
In the spirit of the late Lord Rees-Mogg, I have to say that there are times when I prefer Juncker drunk to Trump sober.
 
Back in Wilson’s day, both Labour and Tories had well over a million members. Class loyalty and political allegiance were far stronger than they are now.
But today, Brexit is such a toxic issue that divisions are very deep.
For their part, Leavers believe that Mrs May has betrayed voters and has reneged on her so-called ‘red line’ promises in trying to push through a fudged, much-diluted Brussels deal.
Indeed, they know that the PM can only succeed if she is supported by Labour and Lib Dem MPs who regret the referendum result and want to keep Britain tied to the EU as closely as possible.
Such febrile conditions could trigger the emergence of a new, pro-Europe political party.
If this happens, I expect that Boris Johnson would try to take advantage of the chaos and mount a leadership challenge against Mrs May. As the figurehead for Leave, he would claim that he has the moral authority to lead the country out of the Customs Union, out of the Single Market and out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
Buoyed by yesterday’s personal endorsement by Trump, I expect Johnson to launch a leadership bid by this autumn at the latest.
If that happens, we will see a battle for the soul of the Conservative Party on a scale which will make the internecine war in the Nineties over the Maastricht Treaty, which strengthened the powers of a European superstate, seem a very small skirmish in comparison.
However, if Johnson becomes Tory leader, and hence prime minister, I doubt that even a man with his unique talents will be able to keep the Conservative Party together.
Certainly, if he became leader, there would be countless defections by Tory MPs and members to a new pro-European political party.
I’m well aware that not all crystal ball-gazing proves accurate. But events are moving blisteringly fast. And I’m convinced that the shape and structure of British politics is changing dramatically.
We’ve already seen the rise of nationalist parties across Europe, expressing a mood of despair among voters who feel neglected by the political elites which have governed since the end of World War II.
France is now ruled by a party that didn’t exist three years ago. Italy’s government is formed by hardline parties that have never been in power before.
The same political earthquake threatens to strike Britain — with profound and possibly devastating consequences.
Who would have predicted that, at the end of a year in which the Government has become split and paralysed, it is Jeremy Corbyn, and not Theresa May, whose leadership is in biggest trouble?
Confounding the expectations of many, the Prime Minister has survived the most brutal and traumatic month of her embattled premiership.
What’s more, there are even signs of reconciliation between hard Brexit Tory rebels led by Jacob Rees-Mogg and Downing Street.
However, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is badly bruised after being pummelled by a series of blows.
How fitting that his year should end with him mired in an utterly undignified row over allegations of misogyny following claims that he mouthed ‘stupid woman’ about Mrs May during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
For the truth is that the past 12 months have seen a litany of troubles for the Opposition leader — ranging from endless controversies over anti-Semitism to Corbyn himself being investigated for failing to declare a trip to Tunisia in 2014.
To cap it all, this week, Labour MP Fiona Onasanya faces a period in prison after being found guilty of lying ‘persistently and deliberately’ to the police over a speeding charge.
And Ivan Lewis, an MP since 1997, resigned from the party citing Corbyn’s ‘anti-Western world view’ — adding that he ‘could no longer reconcile my Jewish identity and current Labour politics’.
For bad measure, Corbyn’s personal ratings lag badly behind May’s in the polls. According to a recent Opinion Research survey, only 25 per cent of voters think he is decisive, many fewer than the 41 per cent who believe the PM possesses that quality.
But potentially most damaging of all are claims from all sides of the political divide — including from Labour MPs — that Corbyn showed weakness and indecision by dilly-dallying for too long and then eventually refusing to call a no confidence vote in the Government.
It is true that Corbyn has had a bad 2018. But I wish to take the unfashionable position of defending his decision to refrain from calling a vote of no confidence.
I believe that rather than being a ditherer, Corbyn is trying to play a deft political game.
As an experienced parliamentarian — having been an MP for 35 years — he knows very well that calling for a vote of no confidence would simply have helped unite the fractious Tory Party behind Mrs May to prevent a General Election and the possibility of a Corbyn government. Also, he realises that failing to win a vote of confidence would be a personal calamity for himself.
Political tactics aside, there is another key reason why Corbyn backed off from challenging Mrs May.
In his heart, he wants the Brexit referendum Leave vote to be honoured. For he has held a longtime antipathy towards Brussels — having voted in the 1975 referendum for Britain to pull out of the Common Market.
One of the compelling reasons for Britain leaving the EU is the dreaded European Arrest Warrant. In theory, it helps to speed up the extradition process for EU citizens who have fled one member state and are wanted for criminal proceedings in another.
In practice, though, the system is open to widespread abuse.
A dismaying current case concerns one Alexander Adamescu, the son of a Romanian newspaper owner who died in a Bucharest jail early last year after what seems to have been a miscarriage of justice.
Adamescu Junior is accused by the Romanian government of multiple counts of bribery and money-laundering. Authorities there want him to face trial in Bucharest and are pursuing him using the European Arrest Warrant. Outrageously, a man who I guess is almost certainly blameless has been held in British jail for nearly six months as he fights the Romanian government.
This is not merely an abuse of justice but it is also costing British taxpayers thousands of pounds.
I urge Home Secretary Sajid Javid to intervene to end this gross injustice.
In fact, Corbyn is convinced that he cannot achieve his dream of creating a socialist Britain while we belong to the EU.
Above all, he is keen to avoid a second referendum — despite the Labour Party conference in September passing a motion that backed another referendum if all other options become exhausted.
Indeed, this would be exactly the trap that his critics — including many Labour MPs, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — had hoped he would fall into. The fact is that Corbyn’s prime strategy has been to avoid this fate — and he goes into the New Year having succeeded.
As I have argued before in this column, Mr Corbyn is the quiet hero of Brexit.
But this status poses a big problem for him. He knows that his principled position on Brexit is deeply unpopular with much of his Parliamentary Labour Party.
It’s not simply that many Labour MPs would like Britain to remain in the EU. So do Corbyn’s allies in the Momentum group of Labour Party activists.
Normally, Corbyn can rely on Momentum for unquestioning support. However, this is not forthcoming over Brexit.
Indeed, apart from a few hardcore anti-Brussels MPs, Corbyn has on his side only Len McCluskey’s Unite trade union.
Having to juggle all these contradictory interests is the reason why the Labour leader has had to play such a careful political game.
Above all, he can’t show his true Brexit colours because that would be immensely unpopular among so many Labour supporters — particularly in areas such as London and the South.
Inevitably, Corbyn has been accused of pursuing devious tactics. But this is not fair. Every party leader in history has had to duck and dive in order to try to reach their long-term objective.
Mrs May has been forced to compromise — reneging on her promise to guard certain red lines in her negotiations with Brussels.
Others, too, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg MP (who likes to portray himself as highly-principled) seem to have changed their mind a few times.
These examples show that the essential truth of politics is that even though people duck and dive, they must always maintain a clear, strategic objective.
For Corbyn, this objective is to ensure Brexit happens.
As I said, so far he has played his hand well. However, his most difficult test is yet to come.
Early next month, Mrs May will bring her EU withdrawal deal back to the Commons for a vote.
If she is defeated, as looks likely, Corbyn will face huge pressure from his own side to honour his party’s conference decision to back a second referendum.
It will take immense willpower for him to resist.
Jeremy Corbyn has been written off countless times by snooty commentators who disdain his rough and ready style of politics and obvious authenticity.
But he has proved them wrong — repelling two attacks on his leadership of his party and defying all predictions (including my own) that he would be roundly defeated in last year’s General Election.
How ironic it would be that, if Britain leaves the EU on schedule on March 29, it would be partly thanks to the political machinations of the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
Bring them home 
Donald Trump’s moral compass has been broken for many a year. Occasionally, he does something right, however. 
The President should be applauded for ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. 
Not only is he honouring an election promise, he is also taking an important step towards bringing to an end America’s appalling recent record of bloody intervention overseas. 
Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds were enjoying tea with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at Birkhall, the royal couple’s mansion on the Balmoral estate, when the rumours started to circulate on Saturday.
Amber Rudd, Work and Pensions Secretary and one of the most senior Cabinet ministers, was about to quit.
There was, however, no interrupting the genteel encounter over homegrown Scottish produce in the exquisite tartan-themed drawing room. Furthermore, the Duchess had flown up to Scotland specially to meet the Prime Minister.
Boris Johnson tried to call Miss Rudd in an attempt to dissuade her or, at the very least, dampen the impact of her announcement. To his intense frustration he could not get through. Miss Rudd was not taking his calls.
Confirmation of her resignation – someone Boris had come to regard as a friend –came through several hours later.
At the end of what had been a disastrous week – four consecutive Commons defeats, a revolt by 21 Tory MPs who have lost the Party whip, and his own brother, Jo Johnson, quitting the Cabinet – it was yet one more calamity to strike the Johnson premiership which is barely six weeks old.
A Commons majority of plus one at the start of the week is now a minority.
And there’s every reason to suppose it won’t stop there. Several Tory ministers share Miss Rudd’s sentiment that it is impossible to ‘stand by as good, moderate, Conservatives are expelled’.
So who will be next?
Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith is said to be on ‘resignation watch’ – no surprise since just like Miss Rudd he was not consulted about the plan to prorogue Parliament.
Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland was obliged yesterday to issue a statement that he ‘fully supports’ Mr Johnson. But, in an extraordinary addendum, he stated that he had spoken to the Prime Minister of the need to obey the rule of law.
This is a pointed reference to reports that Mr Johnson is considering crashing Britain out of the EU with No Deal in blatant defiance of Parliament’s instructions – and the Bill to that effect that was enshrined in law last week.
Health Secretary Matthew Hancock has said he is ‘gutted’ that Rudd has quit. He has been accused of blatant careerism for staying in the Government, given his stated belief that a No Deal Brexit is not a viable option.
As I highlighted in my column on Saturday, Miss Rudd was present at last Wednesday’s gathering of the 100-strong One Nation group of Tory MPs. This is the meeting which authorised an open letter in protest at the Downing Street purge of rebel Tory MPs and warned of damage to the Tory Party from Mr Johnson’s divisive policies.
I believe it demonstrates the scale of disaffection with Mr Johnson across the Tory Party.
Indeed, in normal times what has befallen Mr Johnson already would be more than enough to bring down a Conservative prime minister. And Miss Rudd’s resignation would surely have come as the final blow.
But these are anything but normal times. The rules of politics have changed. Events which would have been seismic a few months ago today pass without consequence. Hence the cool, calculated and brutal briefing from Downing Street sources yesterday. Mr Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings is said to be relaxed. Happy even.
As far as Mr Cummings is concerned, we are told, everything is going according to plan. The Commons defeats, The sacking of 21 MPs. Miss Rudd’s resignation. Even the shock decision by the Prime Minister’s brother to step down from politics. Couldn’t be better.
There is no reason to disbelieve such claims.
Cummings has never belonged to the Tory Party and regards it with contempt. He views civil servants with disgust. He despises parliamentary democracy – the system which has governed Britain for 300 years.
He’s more than happy to break the law so long as Brexit is delivered whatever the economic consequences.
To quote an ally of Cummings at the weekend, he doesn’t mind seeing Tory MPs go ‘as the polls show, the voters are quite happy for the Prime Minister to get rid of people who don’t want us to sort out Brexit. There are plenty of talented younger MPs to replace any deadwood.’ To an old-fashioned Tory like me this is horrible stuff. Mr Johnson appears more and more like Mr Cummings’ poodle. According to one report yesterday, he’s repeatedly over-ruled the Prime Minister’s attempts to strike a compromise with Tory opponents.
Mr Cummings cheerfully calculates that the greater the chaos and outrage the better. It will prepare the way for a general election framed as a battle between Parliament and the people, and Mr Johnson will emerge victorious.
That’s the calculation. It doesn’t matter how many MPs resign. The more the merrier as far as Mr Cummings is concerned. The Tory Party is his vehicle for pile-driving through Brexit, even though that risks economic carnage and risks fragmenting the Union. And all the outrage at Westminster is part of a plan that plays directly into Mr Cummings’ hands.
For me there is one outstanding question: how does Mr Johnson really feel about this?
I know the Prime Minister well, and the man I know is one who values friendship and the respect of his peers.
Over the last week he’s taken a series of brutal body blows. His private life is in turmoil and when his highly regarded brother Jo left the Government, he did so saying that he had to choose between family loyalty and the national interest – and that the national interest came first. That was deeply wounding and we know from reports that Mr Johnson was emotional about his brother’s departure.
Does Mr Johnson truly want to break the law in order to achieve Brexit? To further damage family ties and alienate friends and colleagues? Does he really want a Tory blood bath?
In truth this is a Prime Minister who is increasingly isolated.
Relations with his Chancellor Sajid Javid remain strained since Mr Cummings humiliatingly sacked one of Mr Javid’s close aides without consultation, and Mr Javid was described as a ‘patsy’ by unnamed sources. His Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab – appointed I believe for no other reason than to keep tight control on him – is all but invisible.
As for Michael Gove, the Cabinet minister charged with No Deal planning, Mr Johnson still does not trust the man who sabotaged his bid for the Tory leadership three years ago an inch. Indeed, there are now rumours of a Tory plot to install Mr Gove in Mr Johnson’s place.
Mr Johnson is most often seen in the company of Home Secretary Priti Patel. She is a useful political ally, of course, but the two have little in common.
Deprived of the company and consensus he relishes, the Prime Minister is increasingly thrown back on the advice of Mr Cummings, of whom he appears to be apprehensive to say the least.
Sadly, I fear that he has gone too far now to call a halt. 
Traditionally, Cabinet meetings are dignified and sedate affairs. Conversations between ministers are meant to be confidential and under the so-called ‘30-year rule’ are not made public for three decades.
Inevitably, though, the atmosphere can become so fraught or the ambitions of individuals so uncontrollable that details of discussions in the Cabinet room in No 10 are leaked.
Yesterday’s Cabinet meeting was one of those occasions – with key parts of ministers’ discussions revealed within minutes of it ending.
Westminster reporters were told that Michael Gove, who has loyally backed the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, described hardline anti-EU Tory rebels as ‘aged swingers’ waiting fruitlessly for the arrival of a Scarlett Johansson lookalike.
The cutting reply by his colleague Amber Rudd was also leaked. She retorted that there was an alternative scenario that might strike a chord more with women – namely that actor Pierce Brosnan was unlikely to turn up either.
Sadly, such briefings reflect the increasing amount of frenzy at the top of government with 79 days to go before March 29 and Brexit D-Day.
Theresa May and her No 10 team had hoped that mutinous Tory MPs would come back from their Christmas and New Year holidays better disposed to her much-battered withdrawal deal.
Not a chance! Increasingly, those rebels seem intent on plunging the Conservative Party into a civil war.
Rather than returning to Westminster – after a period spent more in the real world rather than the out-of-touch one they inhabit around Parliament – and chastened as to the consequences of a No Deal Brexit or the prospect of a Corbyn government, many have hardened their hearts.
This became clear on Monday night when the Prime Minister invited Tory backbenchers to Downing Street to try to sweet-talk them into supporting her in next Tuesday’s Commons vote.
Petulantly, many boasted that they were not for turning – and would not fall in line – as Mrs May’s officials argue – ‘by putting the interests of Britain first’.
James Gray, a Tory MP from the shires, declared in advance that he wasn’t going to be persuaded by the Prime Minister. After sneering at the low quality of Downing Street’s ‘nasty red and warm white wine’ – an insult, too, to us taxpayers who most likely paid for the bottles –he stated baldly that ‘nothing is going to make me change my mind’.
Hard-Brexit cheerleaders Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson issued similar messages.
To sum up, 2019 is off to the worst possible start for the Government.
The Prime Minister is staring down the barrel with a humiliating Commons defeat seemingly unavoidable next week and, with barely ten weeks to go until Brexit D-Day, the Government’s main policy seemingly having hit a brick wall.
That said, I do not believe all is lost. As the classic Latin motto goes: Nil desperandum (do not despair).
In fact, I feel that this week offers a glimmer of hope that Mrs May’s Brexit deal can be rescued.
Even though MPs think the world revolves around them, there is another world. And it is there that I sense the landscape is slowly changing.
I am convinced that we have seen the first sign that the EU’s other 27 national leaders have very belatedly woken up to the consequences to their own people of a No Deal Brexit.
Of course they don’t care a jot about the consequences for Britain – the EU’s Brexit negotiators sympathise as much with the British people as a teacher does for a wilful pupil who defies school rules.
This awakening emerged first from an unlikely quarter – Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar. For months, he has been one of the EU’s most tenacious hawks – taunting the London government and waiting to prey off its corpse if it collapses. He’s set himself against any kind of compromise over the UK’s border with Ireland – and in doing so he has become a hero with the British Remainer press and overly quoted by the BBC.
But yesterday, Mr Varadkar appeared to cave in. He said: ‘We don’t want to trap the UK into anything.’
What’s behind this apparent dramatic change of heart? The answer, of course, is naked self-interest.
If the UK is forced out of the EU without a deal with Brussels, Ireland’s economy would be hit much harder than Britain’s. The brutal fact for Ireland’s 4 million population is that Britain is their largest export market. Irish farmers, manufacturers and horse-breeders would lose out massively.
If foreign-owned firms operating in Ireland are excluded, 40 per cent of the country’s exports go to Britain. In other words, by doing all he can to stymie Brexit, Mr Varadkar would be sabotaging his country’s rural economy.
The sound of Mr Varadkar’s screeching U-turn could be heard this side of the Irish Sea. A similar wake-up call is being sounded across mainland Europe – nowhere more than in Germany where it’s dawning that a hard Brexit would badly affect the country’s economy. Britain’s imports from Germany could halve or even more, according to a study by the IW Institute in Cologne. Particularly hard hit would be car manufacturing – the powerhouse which more than anything drives Germany’s economy.
This would count for a great deal of concern at the best of times. But the latest figures suggest that the German economy is plunging into recession.
With a domestic market in collapse, the last thing Angela Merkel wants is to hamper the ability of Mercedes, Volkswagen and BMW to sell to cars to Britain, their biggest European market.
You can say many things about Germans. But they are not stupid.
I truly believe Mrs Merkel will have to relax her resistance to the idea of offering Mrs May concessions. Like her British counterpart, she is, above all, a pragmatist and wants to cut Brexit disruption to a minimum.
Elsewhere among the EU 27, there is a growing realisation that a No Deal Brexit would mean the movement of European goods to the UK being blocked.
While the hard-Brexit ideologues in Westminster refuse to budge, is it too much to hope the pragmatists in Brussels, Berlin, Dublin and other European capitals might be waking up to reality and starting to slowly change tack?
For more than two years, EU trade negotiator Michel Barnier has not yielded an inch.
It’s too soon to say for sure, but the signs are that he and his confreres are starting to move forward an inch – or should that be a centimetre?

Theresa May’s Brexit proposals, unveiled late on Friday night, have been greeted by howls of protest from those Leave campaigners who believe they are victims of the biggest betrayal by any prime minister since Munich 1938.
And one can understand that fury all too well. The Brexiteers promised a clean break from Europe. They guaranteed an independent Britain, free to strike trade deals unshackled from the bureaucratic morass of Brussels.
And not just the Brexiteers. So did the Prime Minister herself, in her Lancaster House speech in January last year. Back then, she set out a vision of a global Britain, liberated from the paralysing constraints of the customs union. A Britain where our manufacturers could trade freely outside the single market and away from the jurisdiction of the hated European Court of Justice.
For the first time since Britain acceded to the European Economic Community in 1973, Mrs May held out the tantalising prospect that we would be an independent sovereign state. A Britain, furthermore, where the uncontrolled immigration which has put such pressure on public services would be brought to a halt. Brexit, insisted the PM in a famous phrase, meant Brexit.
So I can understand why people who voted to leave the EU two years ago now think the Prime Minister was deceiving them. Brexit, it turns out, actually means Remain — certainly in some very material aspects.
No wonder Nigel Farage is promising a return to frontline politics. Nor am I surprised that there is now strong talk of a mutiny in the Tory shires. Indeed, many Tories now seem to want to see our PM driven from office.
I disagree with them. In my view, Mrs May deserves to be hailed as a politician of exceptional acuity.
This apparently innocuous and lacklustre politician has pulled off one of the undoubted masterstrokes of modern British political history. She has performed the impossible by uniting her fractious and divided Cabinet behind her personal vision of Brexit.
This is an extraordinary feat for a politician written off time and again by commentators and by her rivals. Now it is Theresa May who is exerting political authority. Downing Street has made clear that she demands total loyalty from Cabinet ministers from now on. Anyone who diverges from her strategy will be fired.
The astonishing truth is that she has stared down the Brexiteers and defeated them at their own game. This most underrated of politicians managed to persuade them to sign up to a future for Britain far more closely entwined with Europe than they wanted.
She confronted them with a choice between her vision of Brexit and no Brexit at all. It was the Brexiteers who flinched first.
Let’s start at the top with her Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson. It was Mr Johnson who led the Tory campaign for Brexit in the run-up to the 2016 Referendum, and ever since he has been the most outspoken advocate for a so-called clean Brexit which would liberate Britain altogether from the control of Brussels.
Indeed, it was Mr Johnson who sculpted the crucial sections of that resounding Lancaster House speech.
Mr Johnson is conspicuously unhappy with the proposals unveiled by Mrs May and has used lavatorial language to express the scale of his disgust.
Why does Mr Johnson therefore remain a member of the Cabinet? It has set out in a direction on the greatest issue of our time to which he is profoundly opposed. Why hasn’t he resigned as a matter of principle? It is a question which only Mr Johnson can answer. I am an admirer of the Foreign Secretary, and I must admit that I am baffled.
I now turn to David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. Mr Davis is equally, if not even more, at fault. He campaigned on the Brexit ticket in the Referendum and was given a crucial role by Mrs May as a reward when the result went his way. As Brexit Secretary, Mr Davis had a massive opportunity to put his own personal imprimatur on our manner of departure from the EU. He has totally failed.
He has not paid enough attention to detail. His civil servants have run rings round him. Thanks to Mr Davis’s negligence, his senior civil servant, Olly Robbins, has been allowed to take control of the Brexit negotiations. Had Mr Davis been doing his job properly, this would never have happened.
Recently it emerged that the hapless Davis has had only four hours of meeting with his counterpart, Europe’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, during all of this year. How utterly pathetic. If anybody has betrayed Brexit, then it is David Davis. He has frequently spoken of his deep dismay at the direction of travel — but he was the man at the tiller, theoretically at least.
As for Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox, he is politically impotent. He talks a big game but delivers nothing.
Of the fourth Brexiteer, Andrea Leadsom, the less said the better. It is extraordinary to reflect that this nonentity almost became Tory leader in the contest that followed the Referendum.
To sum up, it is easy to see why the Cabinet Brexiteers have been accused of being gutless careerists, more interested in their ministerial cars than the principles they pretend to believe in.
Mrs May has set out a strategy for the softest possible Brexit and the Brexiteers have failed to protest. I believe that we now need to reassess the political acumen of this Prime Minister, who has so often been dismissed as a temporary stopgap of no lasting significance.
She has been playing a long game. She kept her Cabinet together for two years by being prepared to look weak — and too many political observers made the mistake of believing that she really was weak. In reality, she was playing a patient and calculated game.
Last weekend she struck – ruthlessly, remorselessly. As a result, she is stronger than at any time since calling that disastrous election.
Of course she, too, faces charges of betrayal. But name me any Prime Minister, including Margaret Thatcher or Winston Churchill, who has not been the victim of similar accusation.
The fact is that Mrs May does intend to take Britain out of the EU, as she promised. She is determined, however, to do it her way.
As PM, Mrs May sees her primary concerns as preserving British prosperity and jobs. When Land Rover talks of relocating and Airbus of disinvesting, she worried. It is one thing for Mr Farage to insist on a clean Brexit regardless of the consequences for ordinary people, but for Mrs May this is a matter of the utmost importance.
This Monday morning, there is a new shape to British politics. Mrs May, dismissed so often as a political dullard, has made mincemeat of those figures like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who appear so much cleverer than she does.
She has pulverised Johnson, vapourised Leadsom and played Davis with the contemptuous ease of an expert fisherwoman in a salmon pool. This is masterly politics.
In many ways, Mrs May reminds me of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, who appeared at first sight to be timid and innocuous to the predatory men who crossed her path. But they underestimated her at their peril, and last weekend it was the Brexiteers and not Mrs May who found themselves helplessly out of their depth.
There will be trouble ahead. Who knows how Europe will react to the new negotiating guidelines thrashed out at Chequers?
Many pitfalls will loom over the coming months, to be followed by a knife-edge vote in Parliament later this year. But for the time being, it is game, set and match to the Prime Minister. 
Several years ago, I was surprised to receive an invitation from an aide of Sir John Major to meet the former prime minister.
When I arrived at his South London office, not far from Brixton where he was brought up, he poured out his heart.
He said he believed the Conservative Party that he loved and of which he’d been a member for almost 60 years was being hijacked by ‘bigots’.
Decent people, he added, should come together to save the Tories.
I listened politely but dismissed his interpretation, as it was coming from a man who had been very badly scarred by the revolt of anti-EU Tories — whom he’d memorably described as ‘b*****ds’ — which did so much to wreck his premiership.
Since then I have changed my mind.
I now recognise that Major had wisely identified something which has gone on to fester in the Tory Party ever since he lost power in 1997. The boil burst this week, with Theresa May forced to fall on her sword because today’s equivalents of Major’s ‘bigots’ have refused to approve her EU exit deal as a result of their bovine hatred of the Brussels-based superstate.
All this means we are facing the sixth Tory leadership election since Major stepped down. Will the ebullient Boris Johnson win? Or the cautiously pragmatic Jeremy Hunt? Perhaps the young thruster Tom Tugendhat? Or the unashamedly ambitious Sajid Javid?
But whoever succeeds Mrs May, they will not be the solution to the Party’s woes. Much more important is for Tory MPs and Party workers to ask themselves a rather bigger question.What kind of political organisation do they want to be?
Do they want to uphold the broad-based Conservatism which can be traced back to Disraeli and was championed by Stanley Baldwin and Harold Macmillan? (John Major is part of that One Nation tradition.)
Do they want to follow the rightwards path pursued to no avail by William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith?
Or do they want to be an ideologically rigid pressure group with a fanatical supporter base, but which doesn’t have roots in wider society?
The latter course is the one blithely taken by Jeremy Corbyn. His Labour Party may have record numbers of passionate members — especially among the young — yet it finds it very hard to achieve poll ratings higher than 40 per cent from the wider public.
The Tories must learn the lesson from watching Corbyn’s far-Left Momentum outriders hijack a party which was once led by visionaries and moderates such as Clement Attlee, Labour’s greatest prime minister.
Hats off to Lord Ravensdale for winning the hereditary peers’ by-election.
The 36-year-old engineer and great-grandson of fascist leader Oswald Mosley will now sit in the Upper House as a crossbench peer. Six rival candidates got no votes at all.
During Lord Ravensdale’s previous three attempts, one of those who beat him was the 19th Earl of Devon (a barrister who’s married to an American actress and owns 600-year-old Powderham Castle in Devon).
Since his election last July, the Earl of Devon has not spoken in the House, hasn’t asked a single question and has only voted once.
Last week, the Lords shamefully stymied a bill to abolish these antiquated by-elections which are a hangover from Tony Blair’s botched reform of the Second Chamber.
Until such processes are brought up to date, at least Lord Ravensdale has the opportunity to prove his value, unlike so many drab drudges appointed though the patronage of party leaders. 
For the alternative is very dangerous. Recent events suggest that we could be witnessing a process which reminds me of the nightmare scenario set out to me by John Major.
The Conservative Party is increasingly being dominated, certainly at a grassroots level, by a highly organised and motivated group of doctrinaire hardliners.
Like Militant Tendency 30 years ago, personified by Derek Hatton and which tried to launch a coup against Neil Kinnock’s Labour, these Right-wing ideologues are intent on driving out Tory members whose views they don’t like.
One example of this is the attempt to deselect Nick Boles, MP for Margaret Thatcher’s home town of Grantham. His sin? The former Remainer is considered too soft on Brexit as he has been seeking a ‘Norway-style’ exit from the EU.
Another parallel between the Tories and Labour is the way both parties are riddled in some sections with bigotry towards religious minorities. For Corbyn, it is the virus of anti-Semitism. For the Tories, it pains me to report, it is the virus of Islamophobia.
It goes without saying that there should be no room for this kind of hatred in any modern political party. So in which direction should the Tories go now? I hope the Party will take the path of decency and moderation.
That said, who is best suited to be the next leader?
In no particular order, I’ll start with Amber Rudd. She’s a capable politician who has been a decent Cabinet minister. But her pro-EU views would make her too much of a divisive figure and scare off pro-Brexit voters. The opposite is the case with hardline Leavers Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg. But I think their hopes of the top job are fatally tainted because they are too fanatical.
Unforgiveably, Johnson compared Mrs May’s deal to a ‘suicide vest around the British constitution’.
Raab stupidly claimed that the Withdrawal Agreement was ‘even worse’ than staying in the EU.
Rees-Mogg said the deal meant that Britain would become an impotent vassal state of the EU.
The trio finally backed Mrs May yesterday, but their disloyalty up to that point has made them politicians who do not deserve to be taken seriously.
Just as important, any one of them as Tory leader could not command the support of the population at large and would, I’m sure, deliver the keys to No. 10 to Corbyn in an election landslide.
In my view, the next Tory leader must come from the Centre of the party.
It is a shame that Chancellor Philip Hammond is so bland. Otherwise he would be a steady-the-ship candidate.
The TWO ministers with the best chance are Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Some time ago, I put money at long odds on Mr Hunt becoming leader. He is now a favourite, but by no means a certainty.
Such is the current chaos that the field is open for someone talented from the younger generation of politicians to come through the ranks and show that they can end the rancid sectarianism which has done such damage to the Party.
Mrs May’s resignation offers the chance for the Tory Party to reinvent itself as the wholesome organisation it once was and which is capable of being trusted by families across all four countries of the United Kingdom.
The Party is fast running out of time to do this. Otherwise the Tories will see Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister within weeks. 
Theresa May has been brought down by treachery and intrigue but prime minister Harold Wilson suffered worse.
In his newly published autobiography, Kick ’Em Back, his press secretary Joe Haines tells how the No. 10 doctor offered to ‘dispose’ of the PM’s troublesome aide, Marcia Falkender. He said he could do it ‘in such a way that her death would seem like natural causes’. The physician would then sign the death certificate and ‘that would not be a problem’.
Haines, 91, says he turned down the offer, of course. 
When David Cameron announced the Brexit referendum almost six years ago, his main objective was to end, once and for all, Conservative Party divisions over Europe.
I’m afraid we never needed hindsight to tell us that it was a catastrophic misjudgement. For Tory divisions over Europe seem insoluble. It has now fallen to the embattled Theresa May to stop the Tories falling apart.
Even if — and against all odds — the Commons votes in favour of her EU withdrawal deal on Tuesday, Tory wounds will continue to fester.
But, much worse, if the PM is defeated, the Conservative Party faces imminent civil war.
An organisation which has been the most successful political party in the world since its foundation in 1834, may formally split — into a hardline anti-EU group and a more pro-EU side.
Of course, history tells us that there have been occasional schisms in the past, most notoriously when Prime Minister Robert Peel attempted to abolish the Corn Laws, which protected British farmers from overseas competition.
That debacle meant the Tories were out of power for a generation — with the great Victorian Liberal, William Gladstone, the beneficiary.
It is no exaggeration to say the current crisis is so grave we could soon be witnessing the death of the Conservative Party.
Let me explain the sequence of events that could lead to this.
Although I wrote in Wednesday’s Mail that Mrs May and her deal mustn’t be written off, it is important to consider the dire consequences of a defeat on Tuesday.
Inevitably, the first challenge to her authority would come from Jeremy Corbyn, who as leader of the Opposition would be entitled to put down an instant vote of no confidence in Mrs May’s Government.
If she lost that vote, she would be out of Downing Street within hours, and Britain would face a third General Election in as many years.
After the shambolic way the Tory Government failed to deliver Brexit, as demanded by the British people, the most likely result would be a Labour victory, as voters punished the Tories.
However, my guess is that Mrs May would win a vote of confidence in the Commons. Her backbenchers would finally come to their senses and support her — mostly out of fear of losing their jobs in a general election rout.
Having seen off Corbyn, the next move for Houdini May would be to go to Brussels to explain to the leaders of the other 27 countries that they must offer concessions in order to get her deal approved in Westminster.
But Brussels feels it has done its bit. Many European leaders believe they have made too many concessions to the UK already.
And they have their own problems — such as the riots in Paris — to deal with.
However, any concessions would most likely concern the so-called Northern Ireland backstop, which guarantees friction-less trade between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Of course, Mrs May would hope she could winkle out enough agreements to allow her to win the Commons vote on her exit deal a second time around.
In which case, her leadership would survive and Britain would break relatively smoothly from the EU in March.
But let’s suppose her deal gets struck down for a second time by MPs. Mrs May’s authority would be shattered. Her flagship policy would be sunk and Britain would be rudderless.
It would be at this point that a Conservative Party split would be most likely.
With her deal rejected by politicians (never forget, over the heads of the British public), Mrs May could try to appeal directly to voters in defiance of MPs and call a General Election.
In effect, this would be a single-issue vote of confidence in her own personal leadership and her EU withdrawal deal.
I have no doubt that millions of Britons who admire Mrs May for her fighting qualities would back her.
But such a course would cause utter havoc in the Conservative Party. The fact is that more than 100 Tory MPs have already indicated they regard Mrs May’s deal as a sell-out to Brussels.
Some of those might quit the party and fight the election as independents.
Probably some Tory Remainers would resign, too, feeling that the PM’s deal betrays their Europhile values. Others, showing shameless personal vanity, would abandon a weakened Mrs May and exploit the opportunity to promote their own leadership ambitions.
In sum, the Tory Party would be split asunder.
The only beneficiary, of course, would be Jeremy Corbyn.
Fully aware herself of this scenario, I am convinced that Mrs May would eschew calling a General Election.
Another option, facing this mess, would be a second referendum. Pressure is mounting, and I can understand why. But if Mrs May agreed to hold one, there would definitely be a Tory mutiny.
Whatever happens in the coming days and weeks, Britain is about to plunge into the most scary week in its post-war history.
Unless Mrs May wins on Tuesday, we are faced with stark choices: a lame duck prime minister; months of political paralysis; a challenger to Mrs May as Tory leader; or a Corbyn government.
Let’s consider that there is a move to oust Mrs May before Christmas.
Certainly, Tory infighting would escalate into civil war.
When Mrs May became PM in the summer of 2016, she was appointed unopposed.
All mooted rival candidates — such as Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove — dropped out.
This time, I predict there would be plenty of challengers — representing all shades of opinion — and the Tory Party would quickly self-destruct.
Crucially, hardline Brexiteers know the party’s leadership election rules work in their favour.
A series of hustings between rival candidates would see Tory MPs reducing the number to two, and then a winner would be chosen based on a vote of all members.
The fact is that any hardline Brexiteer would be the favourite, simply because the Tory grassroots are overwhelmingly Eurosceptic.
Even if a Brussels-baiter such as Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg were reluctantly made second choice by Tory MPs, either man would be the darling among Conservative Party members.
But a hardline Brexiteer Tory Party led by Johnson or Rees-Mogg would see dozens of MPs quitting.
There would be mass defections, too, if, on the other hand, a Remainer won the contest.
The brutal truth is that there is no common ground any more between Europhile and Eurosceptic Tory MPs.
And so the moment looms when the two factions will find themselves incapable of living alongside each other in the same political party.
Thus the choice faced by Conservative MPs on Tuesday is not simply whether to accept Mrs May’s deal.
It is about the survival or destruction of the Conservative Party. 
A symbol of how far some areas of modern politics have degraded can be seen in the behaviour of the government whips.
Instead of working overtime to help Mrs May win Tuesday’s Commons vote, they have been revelling in their starring role in this week’s fly-on-the wall ITV programme about their work. Whips ought to maintain a discreet dignity rather than parade themselves in front of TV cameras.
Hardline Brexiteer Priti Patel MP wants the Cabinet to blackmail the Irish Government into backing down over its intransigence towards Mrs May, using the threat of food shortages.
For Ireland is heavily dependent on trade with the UK, with Britain accounting for 29 per cent of its imports. Ms Patel’s suggestion is not just stupid politics but most inappropriate. Using food shortages as a bargaining chip is morally obscene considering that one million Irish died in the Great Famine between 1845 and 1849.
Three cheers for Lib Dem MP Stephen Lloyd for showing admirable integrity by quitting his party’s parliamentary group in order to support Mrs May’s Brexit proposals.
Unlike his Lib Dem colleagues, he’s honouring the promise they made during the 2017 election campaign.
After months of rancour and retributions, there is a new confidence and sense of unity among the Tories. However, this has been achieved at a heavy price.
Theresa May’s personal reputation has suffered badly after she was forced to tear up the Brexit deal she had agreed with other EU leaders.
The toxic political mood across the country over Brexit and the chaotic scenes at Westminster have done great harm to Britain’s reputation.
No wonder other EU countries feel bolstered in their reluctance to grant Britain any concession.
Indeed, Brussels is much more likely now to ignore Mrs May’s begging bowl as she pleads for a substantive concession on the seeming intractable issue of the Northern Ireland backstop.
Perhaps things will change over the next few days — but the chances look slim.
So it seems possible that Mrs May will be forced to return to the Commons in two weeks’ time and admit that she has failed once again to obtain any favours from Juncker, Barnier, Merkel, Macron et al.
Not only would this mean that our prime minister would be back where she began, but the divisions within the Tory Party would surface again.
For the fact is that although the hardline Brexiteers in the European Research Group finally fell behind their party leader and helped Mrs May triumph on Tuesday, they are still adamant that they will fight to the last to try to win the kind of ‘tungsten-tipped’ Brexit they want.
So, what will happen then?
Inevitably, numerous theories abound — some wise but others wild.
There has been talk of Downing Street wooing Labour MPs who represent areas that voted Leave.
Embattled Commons Speaker John Bercow deserves credit for the fair-minded way in which he handled the many amendments and fraught atmosphere during Tuesday’s Brexit debate. But he was wrong to have invited BBC cameras to film behind-the-scenes footage.
His job is to be the highest authority of the Commons and to remain politically impartial at all times — not to use this constitutional crisis to massage his own public image.
Mrs May has met some of their number and there have been reports that taxpayers’ money will be made available to help reinvigorate their communities.
Such horse-trading, though, is shoddy politics.
It smacks of the £1 billion ‘cash for votes’ deal that the Government did with the Democratic Unionist Party to prop it up in the Commons. Another option being discussed is that the prickly Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar could be picked off and persuaded to waive his objections to the backstop.
Of course, all these alternative solutions face huge hurdles.
My view is that too many politicians are simply playing fantasy politics. As the clock ticks down to March 29, only hardline Brexiteers are relaxed — relishing the prospect of a No Deal Brexit, which is the default position if no compromise is found.
I fear that these Brexiteers are blind to the possible economic collapse and social unrest that could occur if Britain jumps off the cliff edge of Brexit without a deal. Thankfully, the majority of MPs strongly oppose a No Deal Brexit.
This is why I believe that the proposal put forward by Tory MP Nick Boles and Labour’s Yvette Cooper to push back Brexit by several months may be resurrected — despite its defeat in the Commons on Tuesday. If that happens, Mrs May’s hopes of survival would be reduced. A key reason why she has remained PM despite failing to deliver Brexit is that Tory MPs can’t see any better alternative prime minister.
But patience is wearing very thin — and could easily crack in a fortnight if Mrs May still hasn’t conjured up a winning Brexit deal.
Regardless of her personal fate, Westminster’s wisest heads — Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt among them — are increasingly convinced that Brexit will have to be delayed.
It goes without saying that Brexiteers are aghast at the prospect because they are concerned that if Britain doesn’t leave the EU on March 29, it won’t leave at all. But their bravado is utterly irresponsible.
Let’s hope that the gravity and magnitude of this political crisis will be understood by Westminster hot-heads and that all 650 MPs see sense over the next ten days.
In my heart, though, I fear that they won’t.
I have never felt more depressed about the future of Britain than I do this weekend.
How absurd to call this a 'show trial' 
It’s welcome news that Craig Mackinlay MP has been cleared of breaking electoral spending laws when he fought off the challenge of Ukip’s Nigel Farage in South Thanet, Kent, in the 2015 General Election.
However, the Tory’s claim that this had been ‘a political show trial’ costing taxpayers millions of pounds is outrageous.
It was quite right that the way the Conservative Party behaved at the time had to be properly scrutinised. The facts are clear. In South Thanet, the Tories spent twice the legal limit on campaigning, with an alleged £60,000 going undeclared.
Mr Mackinlay signed off on fraudulent documents presented to him by party activist Marion Little.
In his trial at Southwark Crown Court, Mackinlay, a qualified accountant, successfully argued that he had no idea that the law had been broken.
Fair enough, but it must not be forgotten that Little, who ran the campaign, was found guilty of two counts of encouraging or assisting an offence for falsifying the expenses.
And that Mr Justice Edis said the Conservative Party headquarters had ‘a culture of convenient self-deception’.
Far from being a ‘show trial’, the court case was a refreshing reminder that our democratic system is always subject to scrupulous policing.
As we hopefully reach the Brexit endgame, it is worth reminding ourselves of Margaret Thatcher’s battles with politicians on the European continent.
Britain’s former ambassador to the U.S., Lord Renwick, recalls in his memoir how she saw Italy’s Foreign Minister (and later prime minister) Giulio Andreotti as slippery and unreliable.
In one exchange about a scientific subject, she reminded him that she was a trained chemist. In reply, a crotchety Andreotti muttered: ‘I’d never buy a prescription from her as I’d be afraid she might poison me.’
If only Theresa May could intimidate her EU counterparts in the same way.
 
Two years have passed since the British people voted to leave the European Union. Since then, little progress has been made towards agreeing terms for Brexit, and now talks have all but reached stalemate.
This is partly because two separate sets of negotiations have been under way.
On the one hand, there have been the formal talks between Britain and the European Union, led by its chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
Our own negotiator has been Cabinet minister David Davis. However, he has struggled to master his brief.
In a measure of the contempt in which he is held by some, one Irish minister recently ridiculed him as the ‘tea-boy’ for Oliver Robbins, the civil servant heading Davis’s Brexit team.
But Mr Davis is not fundamentally to blame. Divisions within the Tory Party mean that Theresa May’s deeply divided Cabinet has been negotiating with itself over the correct strategy.
On one side there are the Brexiteers, led by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who wants a clean break from Europe.
On the other side we have the Remainers, led by Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark, who are determined to maintain a version of the customs union with the EU.
As a result, Michel Barnier has been able to run rings around Britain’s dysfunctional and divided team.
The result: deadlock — and time is running out terrifyingly fast.
There are just nine months to go before — under the terms of Article 50 — Britain leaves the EU. And there are only six weeks of negotiating time left for us to strike a deal with Brussels before the final shape is decided.
This is the very troubling background to next week’s crucial Chequers summit, for which Mrs May has summoned her Cabinet in the hope of agreeing a common strategy on Britain’s future trading relationship with Europe.
The purpose of this meeting is to attempt to bind the Remainers and Brexiteers together in a single negotiating strategy we can take to Brussels to press our case. So far, the Prime Minister has Sellotaped her Cabinet together with a succession of fudges and compromises with both sides that have kept her in office. But such a shambolic approach is no longer in the national interest.
From next week onwards, Britain needs a clear, coherent strategy which will be set out in the long-delayed White Paper, due to be published on July 9. And in a chilling article yesterday Lord Bridges, the former Brexit minister, warned of the consequences if the May Cabinet fails to reach an agreement.
He wrote that ‘there’s a danger the UK will have to agree to a withdrawal treaty full of meaningless waffle on our future relationship with the EU. With so little leverage in the next phase, the negotiations would become a rout’.
That’s why compromise will be necessary on all sides next week. But this means Mrs May will have to change her political strategy.
Until now, she’s done everything she can to avert the threat of resignation by senior ministers in order to keep her Cabinet together.
Now she must ask those ministers to dip their hands in the blood and give her their full support. If they refuse, they must be sacked.
A well-placed source inside Downing Street told me yesterday that the chances of Britain failing to strike a deal at all with Europe are now high.
Some look fondly on the idea of a no-deal Brexit. They believe it will liberate Britain from Europe. I wish matters were that simple.
Some British businesses have warned that the consequences of leaving without a deal, and instead reverting to World Trade Organisation rules, would risk chaos — especially at a moment when U.S. President Donald Trump seems set on tearing up the WTO altogether.
It’s a gamble that should only be taken as a last resort.
I also agree with those who say that Britain must nevertheless hold out the possibility of no deal in order to strengthen our negotiating hand. But Mrs May has palpably failed up to now to plan for the consequences of such an outcome (though the reluctance of Chancellor Hammond to pledge financial support for such planning has not helped).
For all these concerns, this is not a moment for despair, and there’s no doubt we can thrive outside the EU.
This week we were given a brilliant example of a post-Brexit future with the announcement that BAE Systems has won a multi-billion-pound deal to build nine new warships for the Australian navy (beating European competition).
However, the dangers are also very high. In many ways, for the past two years we’ve had a phoney war over Brexit. Now it’s over and the whiff of grapeshot is in the air.
That’s why next week’s Chequers pow-wow is so crucial. The time for dithering and fudge is over.
Boris is no Afghan hound — this was a crucial mission, not a cowardly ruse 
It is time to come to the defence of the much-maligned Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who has been accused of engineering a last-minute trip to Afghanistan in a cowardly ruse to avoid Monday’s vote on a third runway for Heathrow Airport.
These accusations are deeply unfair and wrong. Bear in mind that during his trip, Johnson met President Ghani, as well as the American General John Nicholson, the senior Nato officer in charge of training the Afghan military. Such meetings cannot be arranged at a moment’s notice. They require weeks, if not months, of careful planning.
There are complex diplomatic protocols as well as life-and-death security issues which must be dealt with before any senior politician can fly into a country as dangerous as Afghanistan.
Furthermore, there was a great deal at stake in Mr Johnson’s visit. The British government is deciding whether to grant the request from Nato and President Trump for it to deploy a further 400 or so troops to Afghanistan to help with training.
Mr Johnson has a duty to meet those in charge of this mission before committing our precious soldiers to it — especially since our armed forces are so few in number.
In a sane world, Boris would have come under criticism had he not flown to Afghanistan.
Few British public figures have been more abused and vilified than Craig Murray, who as ambassador to Uzbekistan, was the first to blow the whistle on the Blair government’s disgusting complicity in the kidnap and torture of terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks.
I applaud Mr Murray’s extraordinary moral courage in speaking out against the immoral practices of New Labour.
I was, therefore, delighted to see the following tribute to the role of Mr Murray tucked away in the report by MPs on the subject of British official complicity with torture in Uzbekistan.
‘We support Mr Murray’s own conclusion that were it not for his actions these matters may never have come to light.’
This is an accolade which Craig Murray fully deserves.
 
 This week’s parliamentary chaos over Brexit was graphic evidence that we are living through some of the most dangerous and unpredictable political times of the past few decades.
Yes, Theresa May seems certain to survive through to Parliament’s summer recess on Tuesday, when MPs break up for their six-week summer holiday, but she is badly bruised.
The fact is, she will need more than her characteristic stubbornness and sang froid in the future, as events have started to move out of her control in a truly menacing direction.
Of course, central to her difficulties is her failure to have a Commons majority. That weakness is being exploited by Labour, by Tory MPs on both sides of the hard/soft Brexit argument and by EU negotiators in Brussels.
It is an axiom of politics that prime ministers can stay in power only if they can control a majority in Parliament. Without one, Mrs May has been forced to watch as Parliament, rather than her Government, starts to seize control of the Brexit process.
She can no longer impose her will.
True, Mrs May secured victory in all but one of the knife-edge Commons votes last week, but she has paid a massive price in lost personal authority.
A civil war raging in the Tory party is ugly to behold. Indeed, what we have witnessed over the past week has been not only undignified but an insult to the British people.
Outrageously, Tory MPs have turned on each other. Remainer MP Heidi Allen has questioned the ‘integrity and honesty’ of colleagues over the way MPs were corralled into voting for Mrs May’s Brexit deal. Fellow Remainer Anna Soubry questioned the activities of the party’s whips and suggested there should be resignations if the Conservatives ‘cannot behave with honour’.
For her part, Brexiteer Tory Nadine Dorries turned on Soubry, saying she had ‘lost the plot’. Meanwhile, Tory MPs Ed Vaizey and Andrew Bridgen clashed during a BBC interview as they disagreed about the Chequers agreement.
Not to be outdone, Remainer Simon Hart used an obscenity on Twitter, telling fellow Tory MP Chris Green, who is a Brexiteer, that ‘nobody gives a f***’ that he had resigned as a parliamentary private secretary in a huff because he felt the Brexit that voters wanted had been abandoned by the Government.
I have reported on Parliament for more than a quarter of a century but I have never seen anything remotely as venomous as this —- not even the Tory party blood feud over Europe in the early 1990s. Sadly, I don’t believe that Theresa May has the authority to pull her party behind her. In fact, MPs are starting to order her around.
Even her attempts at bridge-building have failed. Last week, the Prime Minister invited leaders of Conservative associations to No 10. It was an attempt to mend fences and bring unity.
Instead, these representatives of the Tory grassroots used the opportunity to vent more anger. Mrs May, to quote the contemptuous words aimed by Norman Lamont at his boss John Major when he resigned as Chancellor in 1993, ‘gives the impression of being in office but not in power’.
In her lonely fight for survival and to deliver Brexit, Mrs May is relying on one last, desperate strategy.
She hopes her Chequers blueprint can prevail by creating a split in the ranks of those Tory MPs who have fought for a Brexit.
She has already succeeded in dividing the two men who were like blood brothers on the Leave side during the EU referendum campaign: Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
Gove is fully signed up to her strategy, albeit because he is convinced that Britain will be able to strike a tougher deal with Brussels in the future.
For his part, Johnson couldn’t stomach Mrs May’s compromise deal and resigned from the Cabinet. The cluster of admiring Conservative MPs around him as he made his resignation speech on Wednesday showed that a faction is building up behind Johnson as a leader-in-waiting.
The PM, who is under such intense strain that I’m told she appeared close to tears at one point last week, has another tactic.
She hopes that she will be backed by Labour MPs who support her Brexit blueprint and are fed up with Jeremy Corbyn.
This embryonic and ramshackle coalition was enough to save Mrs May last week — but the big question is, will it last when Parliament reconvenes in September?
For if Brussels accepts her Brexit deal — which is certainly not a foregone conclusion — she must bring it before Westminster to be approved.
Theresa May is a brave woman and I wish her well. But the chances are that it will be voted down in Parliament and she will lose the ensuing vote of confidence. What then?
Tory Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg want Britain to crash out of the EU without a deal. But I am convinced that Parliament will prevent that happening.
Whatever the case, we are witnessing a political crisis of a scale not seen since wartime.
As power continues to drain from Mrs May, we face the prospect of a third general election in four years and even a second EU referendum.
I still believe there is a fair chance Theresa May can agree a deal with Brussels and then force it through Parliament. But the odds of that happening have shortened dramatically in the past fortnight.
Britain has entered uncharted and very treacherous waters.
 Three months ago, Britain joined America in a bombing campaign against Syria following claims that President Assad had used the nerve agent sarin in an attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma, a base of anti-government rebels.
This week, however, the UN chemical weapons investigatory body reported there was no evidence that chemical weapons were used. Instead, its inspectors found chlorinated substances. Such chemicals are commonly used in household and industrial products.
In April, Jeremy Corbyn told the Government that it should intervene only if there was definitive proof of the use of chemical weapons.
His misgivings have now been proved justified and the Foreign Office must explain why it approved what seems to have been an illegal assault on Syria.
 Imran bats for Britain
For most Britons, Imran Khan is one of the most glamorous sportsmen of the modern age.
Today, 26 years since he led Pakistan to a cricket World Cup final victory against England, he stands on the verge of an astonishing political triumph.
Imran Khan is expected to be elected Pakistan’s prime minister next week.
I believe he has the charisma and calibre to lead his country to great things. But his election would also be excellent news for Britain.
Mr Khan is an unashamed Anglophile, having studied at Oxford University, where he was a contemporary of cricket-lover Theresa May.
Good relations between our two countries are vital, considering that more than a million British people are of Pakistani heritage.
 
After David Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary, his special adviser, Stewart Jackson MP, said he wished to stay on and work for his successor.
However, Downing Street officials refused to let him. In a fit of pique, Stewart then launched a blistering attack on the Government’s EU withdrawal strategy, accusing No 10 of wanting a ‘Hotel California Brexit’ where Britain checks out but never leaves (a reference to the lyrics of the Eagles’ most famous hit).
Stewart’s sudden U-turn suggests hypocrisy, a failure to control his temper and bad manners.
 
Theresa May has come under heavy fire for her handling of the Brexit negotiations this week. However, almost alone among political commentators, I salute her.
Courteously, carefully and cautiously, the Prime Minister is, I believe, pushing her way forward to a pragmatic Brexit which, while by no means perfect, will be in the best interests of Britain.
Even Mrs May’s enemies, surely, cannot deny that she is taking her responsibilities very seriously.
She is determined not to take unnecessary risks because she fears that if mishandled, Brexit has the potential to do profound damage to Britain’s economic interests for generations to come.
It goes without saying that whatever happens, we will retain close trading links with the remaining 27 EU countries.
Inevitably, though, this will mean some form of compromise, particularly considering how far apart the wishes of hardline Brexiteers and those of Brussels negotiators currently are.
Against this tense and tricky background, Mrs May ought to expect the full support of her Cabinet colleagues. But, sadly, this is not the case.
Instead, she has been obliged to put up with treachery and betrayal — two strong words, I admit, but I am not exaggerating — at this critical moment in British history.
Three ministers — arguably the most important in the Cabinet with respect to Brexit — are most culpable.
They are Chancellor Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis.
Let me start with Hammond.
Most disappointing of all, this one-time Remainer is behaving as though the British people voted in the referendum to stay in the EU. In other words, he’s in denial over Brexit and has failed to give Mrs May the support she deserves.
Many accuse him, too, of siding with those in the business lobby who want this country to stay in the Single Market and the Customs Union.
To be fair to Hammond, it is his job to make sure Brexit does not do unnecessary damage to the economy. Where he undoubtedly has erred in his Eeyore-ish way is that he has ducked responsibility for setting out a clear vision for Britain’s future.
Ministerial colleagues also accuse him of being a road block, not allowing the Treasury to give them sufficient money as they prepare for all possible eventualities of the UK leaving the EU.
This is all unforgivable. It is no surprise that many say this grumpy Remoaner is set on sabotaging Brexit and that Mrs May should show him the door.
Then there is Mr Davis. He was rescued from the political scrapheap by Mrs May who gave him the job of steering our negotiations with Brussels.
In hindsight, this was a mistake.
He has conspicuously struggled to get to grips with his admittedly very complex portfolio. I am convinced that he has not put in the necessary hours of careful work. Nor is attention to detail his strong point.
He seems too keen on TV studio sofas, forever being interviewed. He allows his team to constantly anonymously brief the media against Cabinet colleagues. He spends too much time away from his desk — for example, attending the Hay Festival to listen to Canadian feminist author Margaret Atwood.
The result is that Mr Davis’s civil servants — by nature, supporters of the idea of a European super-state — have run rings around him. More to the point, so has EU chief trade negotiator, Michel Barnier.
All this culminated this week when friends of a rattled Davis suggested he was prepared to flounce out of the Government (something, of course, he has threatened before) over an obscure point of detail concerning the Brexit negotiations.
Dealing with the 69-year-old’s childish tantrum distracted No. 10 staff when they had far more important matters to deal with.Next, of course, is the behaviour of Boris Johnson.
In private comments to a group of Tories, subsequently leaked, he said the Government is in danger of delivering a Brexit betrayal and took a swipe at his boss, saying that Donald Trump would make a better job than Mrs May of negotiating with Brussels.
Mr Johnson was naive in the extreme if he thought his remarks would not be leaked.
The Foreign Secretary is also naive to depend so heavily on his unimpressive Parliamentary Private Secretary, Conor Burns, who is blind to Johnson’s flaws and thinks it is merely enough for his boss to engage in ‘the great task of cheering us all up’.
One of Johnson’s biggest flaws is that he fails to hide his irrepressible ambition to become prime minister.
Indeed, after David Cameron resigned, I hoped that Johnson, having taken huge personal risks to lead the anti-EU campaign, would become PM. But he was thwarted by fellow leaver Michael Gove putting himself forward first. Now he seems to be on manoeuvres again. But he could not have chosen a worse time. It reeks of disloyalty and selfishness.
Any differences with Mrs May should be hammered out behind closed doors, rather than shared with all and sundry.
Sadly, as well as these three men, other ministers are not pulling their weight. Among these, I include International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
Being Prime Minister is a very lonely job. Theresa May deserves better support from her ministers. If she’s toppled over Brexit, these disloyal men should never show their faces in public again.
Former Tory leader and trained lawyer Michael Howard applied his gimlet interrogation skills this week to hold Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu to account over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, which has left more than 100 Palestinians dead and more than 3,000 wounded. Challenging him at a think-tank meeting in London, he said: ‘Why couldn’t you use rubber bullets? Why couldn’t you — if, in extremis, you had to use live ammunition — shoot them in the legs?’
What a contrast with the refusal of our current political leaders in the West to question Israel’s action in Gaza.
Straw should explain his role in Thorpe saga
Tom Mangold’s brilliant BBC Panorama film exposed an Establishment plot to stop Jeremy Thorpe being jailed for hiring a hitman.
This compelling story is not just a piece of human drama — it is a political scandal that merits a proper response from the authorities.
One person involved in this wretched business is Jack Straw. At the time, the future Labour Foreign Secretary was a young special adviser in Harold Wilson’s government.
It is alleged that Wilson wanted evidence of Thorpe’s homosexuality which could be used to undermine the Liberal leader, and that Straw examined private social security files that related to Thorpe’s gay lover, Norman Scott.
If true, this was a disgraceful and disreputable operation by an ambitious young Straw.
Obtaining the private records of a British citizen for political purposes has all the hallmarks of a police state.
It is essential that Straw explains his full role in the Thorpe affair.
Harold Wilson’s widow, Mary, who died this week aged 102, was once offered £30 for the publication of one of her poems. She refused because she felt it was wrong to benefit from her connection to Downing Street. 
What a noble stance compared with the venal behaviour of some of her successor spouses in No. 10. Mary Wilson had an admirable independent streak, too — not always voting Labour, supporting CND and defying her husband by voting against Britain’s membership of the Common Market in 1975.
Another week of Brexit horror, and my admiration for Prime Minister Theresa May grows stronger by the hour. Yes, she is under fire from all sides. Yes, she has made mistakes. Yes, she is in a political pickle. Yes, the Government might yet fall.
But the massive problems she faces make cracking the Enigma code look easy.
Her difficulty is easy enough to identify: she is conducting two sets of negotiations at once. 
On the one hand, her Brexit chief Dominic Raab — a considerable improvement on his overhyped predecessor David Davis — has to strike a deal in the national interest with Brussels.
On the other hand, she has to negotiate with mutinous Conservative MPs — some of whom think she is being too hostile to Brussels, and some too friendly.
In this game of multi-dimensional chess, she faces four conflicting negotiating objectives.
First, Mrs May, who is at heart a patriot, is determined to avoid the chaos and economic distress which would inevitably flow from a no-deal Brexit.
Second, she is utterly determined to avoid the break-up of the United Kingdom, an outcome that is very much on the cards, if the wrong Brexit deal is struck.
Third, she needs to retain the support of the ragged group of Democratic Unionist MPs who are vital if the Conservatives are to maintain a majority in Westminster.
And fourth, she must avert the danger of a General Election followed by the very likely election of Prime Minister Corbyn.
In these desperate circumstances, I believe Mrs May has done a solid job. Any fair-minded observer must surely acknowledge that she deserves enormous credit for steadfastness and courage under savage attack.
This is why it is so important to ignore the headlines and look at the underlying realities. These are rather more encouraging than many realise.
Behind the political histrionics, hundreds of civil servants are quietly working towards a deal. Even ice-cold EU negotiator Michel Barnier said yesterday that we are 90 per cent of the way there. 
Crucially, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the most important voice in Europe, is making encouraging noises.
And let’s further remember there’s precious little new about any of this. Every deal ever struck with Europe has gone down to the 11th hour and often beyond. There is no reason Brexit will be an exception.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister is approaching a moment of terrible danger. She faces a nightmare three months, starting with the Budget in nine days’ time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Brexiteers threaten to cause trouble with Chancellor Philip Hammond’s financial statement.
They are arguing that the Prime Minister’s offer to Europe this week to extend the transition period (with the extra cost to Britain of billions of pounds in payments to Brussels) amounts to a betrayal of Mrs May and Mr Hammond’s promise of extra money to ‘plot the path out of austerity’.
This means they aim to link Mrs May’s Brexit plan to the Budget itself. Mr Hammond will be forced into extra revenue-raising measures to pay for the Prime Minister’s concession of an extended negotiating period.
Brexiteers say they would be justified in voting against the Budget because it would not be necessary to find these additional funds if Mrs May sticks to her original plan of the transition period ending on December 31, 2020.
Frankly, the PM may not be able to survive if she can’t carry her Budget in the Commons.
For an old hand like me, the situation today is hauntingly similar to the problems faced by the John Major government in the mid-Nineties, when Maastricht Treaty rebels voted against Chancellor Ken Clarke’s plans to raise VAT on fuel. 
Then, too, the Tory government was humiliatingly dependent on the votes of Ulster Unionists. John Major just scraped through, and my belief is that Mrs May will be able to as well.
Even if the Prime Minister survives the Brexiteer Budget rebellion, she still faces a torrid time forcing her Europe deal through the Commons.
There had been hopes that it would be struck at the European summit in Brussels this week. It now looks likely that no deal will be decided until December, or even as late as January next year.
Mrs May must then take her deal back to the House of Commons. This will be the most potentially dangerous moment of all.
Will the DUP really vote against the Government, as it is threatening to do? They must know that could spark a General Election which might lead to John McDonnell — who said this week he longs for a united Ireland — marching into Number 11 Downing Street.
Are the hard Brexiteers really able to muster the support they need to sabotage Mrs May? And how many Labour rebels can be induced to vote with the Conservative Government?
Mrs May has to confront fresh talk of Cabinet resignations, and warnings that Tory rebels have mustered the necessary 48 letters to spark a Tory leadership contest. Yet I cannot see the point of bringing down the Prime Minister.
Whoever took over from Mrs May would face exactly the same problems.
Boris Johnson might change direction and force through a hard Brexit, but could not command a majority in the Commons when it came to a vote.
I accept the Prime Minister has made mistakes. She was too quick to exercise Article 50, committing Britain to leave the European Union on March 29 next year. 
Negotiations have proved much more difficult and complex than she predicted.
The Prime Minister was also unwise to cave in to European pressure to agree the so-called Northern Irish backstop. Neither has she consulted enough with senior Cabinet colleagues.
Yet, for all that, she deserves respect. The most likely outcome remains that Mrs May will still be Prime Minister next April, having led Britain out of the European Union. And that will have been a remarkable achievement.
Nick Clegg was deputy prime minister for five years. Now, he’s accepted a job as Facebook’s head of global policy and communications — in other words, Mark Zuckerberg’s press officer. What a humiliation not just for Nick Clegg, but for Britain, too.
Army officers are meant to be loyal, dutiful and discreet. So why do so many wrong ’uns become Tory MPs?
Bob Stewart, a hero of the Bosnian conflict, is amiable and decent, but useless. Patrick Mercer, former commanding officer of the Sherwood Foresters, was forced to resign after breaking House of Common anti-sleaze rules.
The latest former Army officer to make a fool of himself is Johnny Mercer. This veteran of the Afghan war has been tipped as a future Tory leader.
This week, he launched a vicious attack on the Prime Minister, in which he labelled her Government a ‘s**t show’. These remarks were not the comments of an officer and a gentleman.
Just as disgracefully, Boris Johnson backed his comments almost as soon as they were made.
Pressure is mounting for an image of Maggie Thatcher to be displayed on the new £50 note.
This plan must not go ahead. Mrs Thatcher was one of the greatest prime ministers of the 20th century, but many disliked her, and national currencies are there to be used by everyone.
More time needs to elapse before she gains such a signal recognition — besides, I believe there are better candidates.
One is brave Noor Inayat Khan (left), an SOE operative who spied for Britain in World War II, before being captured, tortured and murdered by the Nazis in Dachau concentration camp aged just 30.
I also like the claims of Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Health Service. Yes, he was a Labour politician who once called Tories ‘lower than vermin’, but he was the founder of one of our great national institutions.
It would be a generous gesture to recognise his achievement in an age where politics has become too partisan.
This week has been a nightmare for supporters of Brexit. On Tuesday, Sony, the Japanese electronics giant, announced that it was moving its European headquarters from London to Amsterdam.
This followed a similar decision by Panasonic last year.
The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency then claimed that up to 250 other companies with bases in the UK had expressed interest in relocating.
The Japanese financial firms Nomura, Sumitomo Mitsui and Daiwa had already announced their intention to move their headquarters’ from Britain to other European cities.
Meanwhile, the clock ticks on. Just nine weeks are left before Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29.
The brutal truth is that this country is in crisis. Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement has stalled. The Prime Minister had hoped that it would supply stability. However, the deal — which I strongly supported — was voted down by a huge Commons majority.
Unless something dramatic happens, Britain is now set on a path to leave the EU without a deal with Brussels being agreed.
There are those who view this prospect with equanimity; even with pleasure. They include Brexit hardliners in the European Research Group such as self-styled economics expert Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson.
Such people insist that Britain will prosper outside the EU, and the sooner we quit the better.
There are others, too, on the far-Left — allies of Jeremy Corbyn — who want Britain to crash out of the EU. They have very different motives. They welcome what they expect would be economic chaos. This, they hope, would open the way to a Labour government and a socialist Britain.
Against these forces stand civil servants and business. They believe that a No Deal Brexit would be a catastrophe, and predict huge queues and shortages in the shops — even economic collapse.
I’m a political not an economics reporter, but these warnings make me nervous. And I note that one of Mr Rees-Mogg’s investment firms has set up two funds outside Britain — in Dublin.
Another high-profile advocate of Brexit, the industrialist Sir James Dyson, this week announced that he is to shift his HQ to Singapore.
If Brexit goes wrong, Rees-Mogg and Dyson have cleverly taken steps that might shield themselves from the consequences.How very enterprising and patriotic of them!
But how should the millions of us who intend to remain in Britain conduct ourselves?
In such times of national crisis, people would normally look to the Prime Minister for leadership.
But Mrs May has been gravely weakened by a series of epic parliamentary defeats. Her Cabinet is split wide open.
In so far as the Prime Minister has a plan of action, it seems to be to press forward with a version of her Brexit deal defeated by 230 votes in the Commons. Plan B is not in the Downing Street vocabulary. 
The PM’s officials remain convinced that her deal is Britain’s best and only hope. They are praying for last-minute concessions from the other 27 EU national leaders.
Some people believe this is a brave and pragmatic strategy. But others hold that it is unrealistic, obstinate and amounts to a form of denial of political reality.
Even those close to the Prime Minister concede that she lives in a cocoon.
I set this out as the background to next Tuesday’s House of Commons vote on the way forward for Brexit. 
Two senior backbench MPs, Labour’s Yvette Cooper and the Tories’ Nick Boles, have threatened an ultimatum. They have given Mrs May until the end of February to get her deal agreed.
If the Prime Minister fails, they will demand that the Government delays Brexit for several months so that an alternative withdrawal deal can be negotiated and ratified.
The argument boils down to a straightforward proposition.
It is best for everyone to take a breather and sort things out in good order rather than risk a crash-landing.
Not surprisingly, Boles and Cooper have come under harsh criticism. Tory opponents say they are undemocratically pulling the rug from under Mrs May’s Brexit negotiations.
But Mrs May’s critics point out that she has had two and a half years to deliver Brexit, yet has failed. So why should we trust her to succeed in the few weeks that remain until March 29? Surely it is safer and wiser to let Parliament take control if she can’t get the job done.
Others, though, distrust the motives of Cooper and Boles. They believe that their intention is not to clear up the Brexit mess but to stop Brexit altogether.
Last night, Boles said this interpretation was unfair.
The MP for Grantham — the Lincolnshire constituency in which Margaret Thatcher was born and which was one of the most pro-Leave areas in Britain in the 2016 referendum — set out his position.
He explained that he had campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU but had subsequently been a strong supporter of Mrs May’s withdrawal deal. He added that he was strongly opposed to a second referendum — and that if one was ever held, he would campaign for Brexit.
However, Boles asserted that his main concern were the risks involved in leaving without a deal. 
And so, if Mrs May fails to get a majority for her deal in the next few weeks, it would be best to ‘extend for a few months’ Article 50, which is the clause in the EU’s Treaty of Lisbon that sets out how a country can leave the union.
This all makes reasonable sense to me, but I accept that the arguments advanced against Boles’s amendment are also cogent.
His opponents say that a delay would only make matters worse for British businesses, with yet more months of uncertainty.
We all need to know as soon as possible, they say, exactly where Britain stands in relation to the EU, and that giving an extra nine months or so to keep negotiating would only add to the confusion.
And, of course, there are European Parliament elections this summer. Would the British people vote in them?
So we are facing a host of seemingly intractable problems.
But as one of the most important votes in the modern history of Parliament draws closer, Theresa May needs to convince the British people that she knows what she is doing. Otherwise, MPs will step in and wrest control of Brexit — and rightly so.
 Rees-Mogg’s antics fail to amuse
The Queen never intervenes in politics. That doesn’t mean that politicians don’t shamefully sometimes try to drag her into the Westminster fray.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is the latest, suggesting that Her Majesty should cancel Parliament until Britain leaves the EU.
Ahead of the EU referendum in 2016, Michael Gove was accused of betraying a private conversation he’d had with the Queen on Privy Council terms and telling a red-top tabloid newspaper that he thought the Queen was critical of European integration.
The biggest culprit of her reign so far has been Tony Blair, who repeatedly tried to shove the Queen into party politics.
I’m sure this is the reason why Blair has never been offered the Order of the Garter, Britain’s most ancient award of chivalry. The honour is a personal gift of the Queen and normally given to all former Prime Ministers.
Zimbabwe: Britain’s guilt 
Harriett Baldwin, the Government’s minister for Africa, has condemned the latest outbreak of murderous violence by Zimbabwe’s security forces against their own people.
This is the same woman who disgracefully authorised her officials to give backing to the brutish president Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe’s elections in July last year.
It grieves me to say that the misguided policies of the British Government are in part responsible for the horrors that we are now witnessing on the streets of Zimbabwe.
Theresa May is famous for taking time to reach decisions, which is often no bad thing in a Prime Minister. But my word, she’s been taking an inordinate amount of time to reveal her thinking on Brexit.
To be frank, she’s appeared to dither, which is why so much depended on her speech yesterday in Florence — a city chosen as the backdrop for its rich history as a centre of European commerce and culture rather than for its other claim to fame as the home of the Italian diplomat and arch cynic Machiavelli.
In my view, we’re still not entirely clear where we stand.
Over the past few weeks, Mrs May’s Cabinet has been convulsed by a furious and at times brutal struggle between the hard and the soft Brexiteers.
Crucially, most heavyweight cabinet ministers campaigned for Remain. The most powerful of these are Chancellor Philip Hammond, Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Deputy Prime Minister Damian Green.
Only a few weeks ago, it seemed that the three soft Brexiteers had secured victory and Britain was on course for soft Brexit.
Then Boris Johnson struck with publication of his ‘Brexit manifesto’ in The Telegraph one week ago, followed by reports that he would resign if Hammond et al got their way.
Though Mr Johnson was scathingly criticised by many, the Foreign Secretary made an honourable stand on what is beyond doubt the most momentous issue of our time. He set an example which other lesser politicans would do well to follow.
But amid the chaos, the predicament of the Prime Minister has, at times, resembled that of a soldier stranded in a crater in No Man’s Land, with howitzer shells flying over her head.
In recent days, Mrs May has reasserted her authority with strong performances in Canada and New York, and has forced her Cabinet to put their disagreements to one side in a display of unity.
Florence was her opportunity to state absolutely Britain’s position and put her stamp on Brexit negotiations that lie ahead.
There were welcome elements in the speech and some of her arguments were admirable.
She made it clear that Britain is offering a real deal to the European Union and that this was a genuine effort to break the recent deadlock in negotiations with workable arrangements — a fact acknowledged by the chief negotiatior, Michel Barnier, who described Mrs May’s speech as ‘constructive’.
In practical terms, linking the cessation of Britain’s financial contributions to the EU to the end of 2019 — which marks the end of the seven-year EU accounting period — is eminently sensible.
It instantly soothes nerves in Brussels where the prospect of a black hole in the budget was triggering panic. Poor Eastern European member states will receive no less money, while Germany and France will not have to dig deeper in their pockets between now and Britain’s departure.
There were essential assurances that Britain and Europe would maintain and strengthen security cooperation, putting paid to earlier threats that we would use our world-renowned intelligence expertise as a bargaining tool in negotiations.
And the Prime Minister repeated assurances to European nationals here that they would be able to remain during the transitional period and beyond.
She rightly called Europe ‘our strongest partner and friend’.
Above all, there was moral strength to her words and a key theme was fairness.
Mrs May emphasised that we would honour our existing commitments to the EU. She suggested that Britain’s relationship with Europe could, paradoxically, be even stronger outside the EU. No sane person would disagree with any of this. Britain is not declaring war on Europe: we are simply leaving the EU.
Yet for all the upbeat rhetoric about Britain’s role in the world and the detail about transitional arrangements and budgets, this was a speech that was pragmatic rather than visionary.
It was carefully crafted to appeal to the warring members of her Cabinet, and most of all to keep her Foreign Secretary on board.
No surprise, then, that Boris Johnson hailed the speech as ‘positive, optimistic and dynamic’.
But in essentials, it is something of a fudge.
I fear Mrs May is still finding it almost impossible to choose between the clashing personalities in her Cabinet and their diametrically opposed proposals for handling Brexit.
What the Prime Minister has done with this speech is buy time.
She has kept her Cabinet together — and in that sense she has been politically skilful. So much so that in ordinary political times we might applaud Theresa May’s canniness.
Normally such procrastination would not matter. But in this case it matters very much. Less than 18 months remain until Britain automatically leaves the European Union.
The stark reality is that there are two negotiations ongoing over Brexit.
The first is the angry argument inside the Conservative Party about what Britain should look like after Brexit. The second is that with Michel Barnier.
The problem is that Theresa May cannot properly negotiate with Mr Barnier until she has worked out what kind of Brexit she really wants.
Yesterday’s speech was essentially a compromise between two contradictory positions of hard and soft Brexit.
Eighteen months before Britain exits the European Union, that is nowhere near enough.
 
Very occasionally — indeed, rarely more than once in a generation — a nation’s whole mood changes. 
The unthinkable becomes thinkable. The impossible becomes possible. The tectonic plates beneath the Earth’s crust begin to creak.
Britain experienced such a moment in May 1940. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had lost control of his Conservative Party, opening the way for a deeply distrusted outsider. 
That man was Winston Churchill and, of course, history eventually proved him to be a national hero.
A lesser example occurred in November 1990. Margaret Thatcher had been omnipotent for more than a decade. Yet suddenly, amid deep social divisions caused by the introduction of her poll tax, the Iron Lady became broken, humiliated and left No 10 in tears.
This weekend, again Britain faces a week ahead of monumental importance. It is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of events over Brexit will affect the lives of each and every one of us. Indeed, that is not often said of political decisions.
Forget all the talk of the past 31 months about the 17.4 million who voted to leave the EU and the 16.1 million who said they wanted the UK to remain. What happens over the coming days and weeks will have huge repercussions for every one of Britain’s 66 million people.
At the moment, eyes are on Prime Minister Theresa May. There is a possibility that she will no longer be in No 10 at the end of next week if she loses Tuesday’s Commons vote.
Over the past months, she has clung to office in the face of disloyalty from fellow Tories, abominable treatment by Brussels, irresponsible posturing by rival parties and a series of personal humiliations.
Her stoicism has, in many ways, been admirable. But can she survive if her Brexit deal is rejected by MPs — as seems most likely — on Tuesday? Of course, she could win. I fervently hope she does. If she prevails, the result should be that Britain will leave the EU in relatively good order on March 29.
Mrs May’s political legacy would be secured as the heroine who forced through a version of Brexit in the face of the unforgivable treachery of senior colleagues and against all the odds. Indeed, the BBC has a published forecast — surely very wide of the mark — that the PM could lose by a margin of more than 200 votes.
The biggest defeat suffered by any post-war British government was the 86-vote loss suffered by Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in 1978 over a Scottish Bill.
By the normal rules of politics, Britain would be looking for a new Prime Minister if Mrs May suffers a three-figure defeat. For any government leader unable to get a key policy through Parliament ought by rights to be finished.
But these are not times of normal politics. I believe there is hope for Mrs May if she loses.
Yes, defeat would be devastating. Yes, Mrs May would be humiliated and a husk of a prime minister. She would be in office but not in power — to use the contemptuous phrase levelled against Prime Minister John Major by his sacked Chancellor Norman Lamont 25 years ago.
That said, she could still survive in such extraordinary circumstances. Having seen off a challenge to her leadership from rebel, hard-Brexiteer Tory backbenchers in December, under party rules she cannot face another challenge for 12 months.
Of course, as head of a minority government, she is very vulnerable to a Commons vote of no confidence. Over recent weeks, Labour has huffed and puffed about whether to force such a vote.
My guess is that if there is such a vote, Mrs May would survive. Her mutinous backbenchers, terrified of a General Election, would rally round and she would narrowly win the day.
Even so, she would still be seen as a dead duck PM and be unable to command either her own destiny or that of the nation.
The brutal truth is that whatever happens next week, power is steadily seeping away from Theresa May.
This is because, over the past few weeks, we have witnessed the start of a quiet but profoundly important constitutional revolution which is changing the way that Britain is governed.
The stalled Brexit negotiations have led to power steadily shifting from the executive — the Prime Minister, her No 10 machine and the Government as a whole — to Parliament.
The architect of this revolution is Commons Speaker John Bercow. Personally, I am torn over his antics. On the one hand, I abhor his abuse of power, blatant favouritism and noxious brand of show-off politics. 
All this demeans the high office he holds. Yet as a believer in our traditional system of representative democracy, I welcome a rebalancing of power from an over-mighty Downing Street to the mother of Parliaments.
As part of that recalibration, last week Bercow gave MPs the right to force the Prime Minister to make a statement about her Brexit intentions if she is defeated on Tuesday.
Also, Parliament has secured for itself the power to amend Mrs May’s plans, thus enabling MPs to dictate to the Prime Minister the shape of Brexit.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this development.
In the face of these changes to the levers of power, a debilitated Theresa May would have to accept being ordered about by MPs as the price for staying in office.
I fear she would become the hapless victim of events. Equally humiliating, she could be at the beck and call of Labour and Lib Dem MPs. For talks are under way to form a cross-party coalition capable of taking control and managing British policy towards Brexit. 
Indeed, there’s already a drive towards a Labour/Remainer Tory coalition which would try to force Britain to remain a full member of the EU’s Customs Union.
Also, there is the growing clamour for a second referendum. Underlying all of this is the breakdown of the British party political system.
Rebel Labour MPs are conspiring with like-minded Conservatives (in defiance of Mrs May) behind the back of their own leader, Jeremy Corbyn. It is impossible to say where this may lead.
That is why I believe it is in the national interest for all Tory MPs to rally behind the Prime Minister next week. Her deal is not perfect by any means, nor will it herald the end of bitter Tory rivalries over Brexit. 
But as shown by an opinion poll published in today’s Mail, public support for it has grown in the past month from both Tory and Labour voters.
Theresa May has a closer feel for the national mood than her mutinous MPs and opposition parties are prepared to admit.
The name Alex Dawson is probably unfamiliar to most Mail readers. Until recently, he’s been a member of Downing Street’s backroom staff as Theresa May’s political director. 
But he has just announced his departure —having been poached by Lord (Peter) Mandelson’s shadowy consultancy group, Global Counsel. I am appalled by the move. 
It epitomises the disgraceful way that public duty is increasingly less valued. 
After years working for Mrs May (at taxpayers’ expense), he will be taking his inside knowledge and expertise to a commercial outfit whose New Labour boss is stretching every sinew to stop Brexit happening. 
Worse, much of what he has learnt in No 10 will become available to Global Counsel’s clients, who in the past have included Russian oligarchs and the Chinese. 
Indeed, Mandelson is president of the Great Britain China Centre, which promotes ties between the two countries. Global Counsel has a reputation for furtiveness, with very little known about its work. 
But we do know that it has worked on behalf of BP, the giant mining company Glencore and the firm Asia Pulp and Paper, which has been accused of covering up massive environmental destruction. 
Dawson’s appointment is routinely subject to vetting by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, who would be well advised to demand a list of all Global Counsel’s clients, past and present. 
Even if they have unblemished reputations and Mandelson’s firm’s dealings with them are innocuous, Sir Mark should consider blocking Dawson’s appointment. 
That would be unfortunate for Dawson personally, but it must be a cast-iron principle that people who have worked in the highest echelons of government should not move to any commercial organisation where their inside knowledge potentially becomes available to anyone ready to pay for it.
The past fortnight has been defined by Tory infighting as Theresa May battled to head off damaging and even fatal Commons defeats over Brexit.
Her Cabinet ministers are at war with one another: Brexit secretary David Davis threatened to resign over whether Britain should be tied to EU customs rules indefinitely, while justice minister Phillip Lee (who?!) quit in a failed bid to whip up a protest against the Government.
Political commentators have naturally focused on all this frenzied activity on the Tory benches. However, by doing so I believe they have missed a far bigger development: the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn as the politician to save Brexit.
Many will dismiss my argument because this week Mr Corbyn suffered one of the largest Parliamentary rebellions any opposition leader, Tory or Labour, has ever endured.
No fewer than 90 Labour MPs defied his instruction to abstain from a vote over a Lords amendment designed to keep the UK in the European Economic Area like Norway, which has good access to the single market but in return has to accept the free movement of people.
Yet Corbyn's decision to neuter his own pro-Brussels MPs by ordering abstention helped ensure the Prime Minister avoided what would have been a calamitous defeat.
The Labour leader was criticised by some in his party for failing to press home an opportunity to damage the government.
But Corbyn knew such a move would also have thrown Brexit into jeopardy. And he is, I believe, too principled — critics would say entrenched — in his ideals to do that.
That is why I disagree with those who have interpreted the rebellion against him as a sign of his political weakness.
In my view, Corbyn's willingness to risk parliamentary dissent was a sign of his fortitude. The fact is that Corbyn and his closest circle are, almost without exception, committed to Brexit. His hostility to the European project has been long held. Indeed, it dates back nearly half a century.
Corbyn has been consistent on Europe throughout his career. He voted against EEC membership in the 1975 referendum. In 1993, he voted against the Maastricht Treaty, which paved the way for ever-closer European integration.
He said at the time: 'It takes us in the . . . direction of an unelected legislative body — the Commission — and, in the case of foreign policy, a policy Commission that will be, in effect, imposing foreign policy on nation states that have fought for their own democratic accountability.'
Ten years later, in sharp contrast to Labour leader Tony Blair, he was hostile to the Euro.
He rightly warned it would lead to 'the imposition of a bankers' Europe', as the Irish, the Greeks and the Italians have found to their terrible cost.
Of course, Corbyn's reasons for supporting Brexit are different indeed to those that drive Tories like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, who seek to liberate us from the shackles of an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels.
Corbyn opposes the European Union because he believes it is a capitalist club which will prevent him nationalising Britain's key companies and industries, and turning the country into a socialist state.
That's why in 1993 he said the foundation of a European Central Bank under the Maastricht Treaty would 'undermine any social objective that any Labour Government in the United Kingdom — or any other Government — would wish to carry out'.
For all that, without Corbyn's intervention, the wrecking Remainers in the House of Lords could have scored a major victory in their bid to overturn Brexit.
I would argue that we must now see Jeremy Corbyn as part of a long tradition of Labour leaders who have fought against the European project. These include Hugh Gaitskell who, in a famous speech in 1962, warned against throwing away 'a thousand years of history' by joining the EEC.
Corbyn is also in the tradition of Labour's greatest ever prime minister, Clement Attlee, who said joining the Common Market would be a 'step backward', as well as Tony Benn — his personal hero — who campaigned alongside Enoch Powell against entry to the EEC in 1975.
When the history books come to be written, and the path to Brexit analysed, Jeremy Corbyn's role will be seen as crucial. Historians will record how he took on and defeated his powerful internal opposition, including his shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer and Tony Benn's son Hilary.
Not all Brexiteers may like Jeremy Corbyn. But this weekend, they have good reason to raise a toast of thanks to the grizzled Labour leader.
There is excitement among football fans this weekend after Russia opened the World Cup with a 5-0 win over Saudi Arabia. But we should remember how recently scandal engulfed the organisers, FIFA, when president Sepp Blatter resigned over allegations of corruption.
In that context, I can't help looking with suspicion at the decision to launch the tournament with a game between the host nation, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, by far the weakest team.
Observers can justifiably ask whether it really was a random draw that resulted in such a favourable tie? Certainly it was very convenient for the organisers to start with a Russian victory and get the tournament off to a flying start.
It sits uneasily with recent remarks by disgraced former UEFA president Michel Platini, who admitted that he fixed the World Cup draw in 1998 so France would not meet Brazil until the final.
Platini said: 'We did not spend six years organising the World Cup not to do some shenanigans.'
I would love to feel confident that nothing untoward has happened in Russia. And I look forward to watching the host nation play against Brazil or Germany. But somehow, I don't think that will ever happen.
Britain's shame over Burma genocide
The International Development committee recently published a horrifying report on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims by the army of Myanmar (formerly Burma), noting that UN officials have described the killing as having the hallmarks of genocide.
There was one glaring omission from this report; the shameful failure on the part of the British government to act to prevent these war crimes and mass murder.
Troops started to sweep through Rohingya areas in August last year, murdering, raping and burning as they went. At Tula Toli, on which I reported for the Daily Mail, men and older women were shot dead while younger women were raped and then burned alive.
Yet just a week after this horrible set of events took place, the minister responsible for Burma, Mark Field, incredibly appeared to blame the Rohingya themselves.
He told MPs that he condemned attacks by Rohingya militants on Myanmar security forces, but made scant reference to the genocidal atrocities that were still being committed by the Burmese military.
Did Field know what was happening and ignore it? Or was he ignorant? If the latter, troubling questions now surround the role of Andrew Patrick, then British ambassador to Myanmar. At least Mr Field later had the decency to speak out against the violence.
At the time, our then British ambassador to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft, had direct responsibility for UN Security Council policy towards Myanmar. To this day, no UN sanctions have been applied, and the Burmese army are allowed to carry on raping, looting and slaughtering without any serious rebuke from the international community, including Britain.
In an irony that no novelist would dare invent, Matthew Rycroft is now permanent secretary to the Department for International Development, meaning he is in charge of providing aid to clean up the mess that was at least partly a result of his negligence.
Our treatment of the Rohingya people, whose grandparents fought alongside British troops in the campaign against the Japanese at the end of World War II, will be seen as a dark period in our national history.
Theresa May has blundered badly by appointing Edward Argar as Justice Minister following last week's resignation of Phillip Lee as a protest against Brexit.
Mr Argar will be in charge of Britain's prisons. Yet this is the man who used to be head of public affairs in the UK and Europe for City outsourcing giant Serco, which runs five British prisons and was forced to repay the Government tens of millions of pounds in 2013 for overcharging on a criminal tagging contract.
Though there was no suggestion Mr Argar was involved in the wrongdoing, in these circumstances I believe it's wrong for him to do this job. He should be moved. 
Picture the scene: it’s late evening on Tuesday, March 12, and BBC News at 10 is reporting live from Parliament where MPs are voting on Theresa May’s make-or-break EU withdrawal deal.
Bong! Newsreader Huw Edwards reports that arch-Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson have just been spotted marching arm-in-arm into the Aye Lobby to vote with Mrs May.
Bong! Political editor Laura Kuenssberg reveals from Central Lobby that up to 20 Labour rebels have defied Labour whips to vote with the Tories.
Bong! A setback for the Prime Minister! Now Kuenssberg is reporting that a phalanx of Conservative hardliners, led by mutinous Tory ex-cabinet minister Esther McVey, is holding out against Theresa May’s deal.
Kuenssberg believes the mutineers have the numbers to sink the Government.
Bong! But now comes news that the Democratic Unionist Party has just won a promise of a huge new development grant for Northern Ireland — and in a last-minute change of mind will now be voting with the Tories, too.
There follows several minutes of desperate tension as Parliamentary tellers for both sides line up to announce the final result. Britain’s future inside the European Union and Theresa May’s survival as Prime Minister is hanging in the balance . . .
The minutes tick by and then, finally, Speaker Bercow announces that the Government has won — by a single vote.
Uproar follows in the Commons. Chaos and confusion. Chancellor Philip Hammond and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt lean across to shake Mrs May by the hand as she slumps back exhausted on her seat on the green benches and briefly closes her eyes.
A famous Commons victory for a woman who has been written off again and again. A woman who, just six weeks ago, suffered the humiliation of a record defeat of her deal by 230 votes.
Then, live on camera, a note is passed to the PM. Sterling has soared by five cents in the minute that has passed since the result was made known.
Suddenly Mrs May, a dead woman walking for so long, looks like the great survivor.
An impossible fantasy? Maybe — but I don’t think so.
Over the past two weeks, largely unnoticed, events have been moving quietly in the PM’s favour.
Yes, at first sight, last Monday’s Cabinet revolt looked like another disaster for her when Work And Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Business Secretary Greg Clark, among others, laid down an ultimatum to Downing Street.
They threatened to walk out of the Cabinet unless Theresa May ruled out a No Deal Brexit.
It looked like an act of treachery, and perhaps technically it was. But the short-term effect was to terrify the hard-line Tory Brexiteers.
They suddenly woke up to the fact that, if they press on with their own campaign for No Deal, they might get no Brexit at all.
Within days, Jacob Rees-Mogg was watering down his demands over what was once the deal breaker, the Northern Irish backstop.
Meanwhile, a similar dynamic was driving forward events in the Labour Party. The defection of eight MPs to form an embryonic new political party forced Jeremy Corbyn to change policy and support a second referendum on our EU membership to stop further losses from his riven Party.
But there’s an irony here. The likelier that another EU referendum becomes, the more likely that the Brexiteers will back Mrs May’s deal.
Right now, there is one man holding the key to our exit from the EU. He is Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, who first came to wider public attention with a barnstorming speech at the Tory Party conference last year.
Cox has been given the task of ensuring that the make-or-break legal judgment — whether any undertaking given by Europe that the Irish backstop will be enforced only for a limited period — is legally binding.
Tory Brexiteers demand nothing less. It is the minimum concession they need in order to vote for Mrs May.
There is an uncanny parallel here with the last great crisis in modern British history: Parliament’s decision to commit forces to war in Iraq. Then, again, it was the Attorney General who held the key to the decision to go to war.
Had Lord Goldsmith — who occupied that position in 2003 — declared that the war was illegal, Tony Blair would have been forced to back down.
As we know all too well, Lord Goldsmith issued a judgment that British troops could be sent to Iraq. Only later did we learn that he had succumbed to massive pressure from Blair, and the war was in reality illegal.
I believe that MPs have much greater faith in the integrity of Geoffrey Cox than they ever did in Peter Goldsmith.
Cox has said privately that if there is, in his view, no legally binding pledge on the backstop, he will make it plain.
So there are still obstacles to be navigated. But with ten days to go, Theresa May has, I believe, at the very least a fighting chance of making it into the winner’s enclosure.
And if she does, we can forget the gossip now circulating in Westminster that the PM will immediately resign.
History will judge whether Brexit has — or has not — been a good thing for Britain. But Mrs May will have delivered on her promise. She will be the heroine of the hour. 
As the leadership race intensifies, we can be sure of one thing – a new prime minister will be in place by July 24.
What we cannot be so sure of is the path from there that will deliver Brexit.
While much has been said on the issue, little information has been conveyed.
In the hustings and debates over the next couple of weeks, both candidates need to be challenged – not to set out their ‘preferred’ outcomes – I think we know them – but to spell out what they will do when their preferred trajectories collide with reality and they are forced to move to plan B. Because if plan A is undeliverable, plan B is the real plan. And not to have a plan B is not to have a plan at all.
For all the noise of the leadership election, the fundamentals have not changed – and the new prime minister will face the same facts as the current one does:
First, Parliament has rejected the withdrawal agreement three times and remains bitterly opposed to a No Deal exit. Changing prime minister does not change the Parliamentary arithmetic and I’m confident that, if pushed, Parliament will find a mechanism to prevent a premature No Deal exit happening on October 31.
So the new prime minister must build a Parliamentary coalition in support of a deliverable plan. In a Parliamentary democracy, there is no other way forward. Threatening to prorogue Parliament to force a No Deal Brexit against its will is tantamount to a declaration of war on that Parliamentary democracy. And a No Deal Brexit would be as big a betrayal of the referendum decision as no Brexit at all: the Leave campaign leaders promised we would leave the EU with a great deal that would protect British jobs, businesses and prosperity. They won the referendum and that is what they must now deliver.
The second reality is that it is not possible to negotiate a new deal (or even to renegotiate the existing one) by the end of October. There just isn’t time to negotiate, let alone legislate. And there is no one to negotiate with – the EU’s attention is elsewhere, locked in a battle over who will get the top jobs in the EU institutions. So anyone who claims to want to renegotiate the deal but insists on a hard deadline of October 31 is perpetuating a delusion because a renegotiated deal will require an extension. A hard deadline of October 31 is code for No Deal by choice.
And the third reality is that the European Union is not going to change its position: it will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, which deals with the Financial Settlement, citizens’ rights and the guarantees of the Irish border. And only once the withdrawal agreement is in place can we finalise our future trade deal with the EU. What they clearly are willing to do is renegotiate the Political Declaration to set out a different and more ambitious blueprint for a future trade relationship.
Our new prime minister should seize that opportunity. But he should also acknowledge that any renegotiated deal must include the withdrawal agreement – and without the withdrawal agreement there is no transition and no way of avoiding tariffs on our exports to the EU.
So the challenge for the next prime minister is the same challenge that confronted the current Prime Minister. New face. New style, perhaps. But same facts. Bluster will not solve this problem. Nor threats – whether directed at Parliament or at the EU. Only more painstaking hard work can do that: building a coalition in Parliament around a compromise; convincing the EU of our plan; reuniting our country behind a solution that will give us back control – but won’t wreck our economy in the process.
Britain has a hugely bright future ahead of it. Our high-tech industry is at the cutting edge of the new industrial revolution; our sophisticated services industries are set to boom as services go global. Our reputation around the world – tarnished but not yet irrevocably damaged by Brexit – can be recovered and will allow us to keep punching well above our weight.
The task of our next prime minister is to deliver a practical, consensus Brexit – one that will not put that bright future at risk.
Compromise and pragmatism are not dirty words; in fact, they are the core strengths on which Britain’s modern success is built. If our new prime minister embraces them, he can deliver Brexit, and a brighter future. I wish him success. 
Theresa May last night appealed for MPs to set aside tribal loyalties to find a way forward on Brexit after dramatically surviving an attempt to oust her.
The Prime Minister said the British people wanted politicians to 'get on with' delivering on the verdict of the referendum - rebuking Jeremy Corbyn for turning down her offer of talks.
The address to the nation from Downing Street came after she defeated Mr Corbyn's no-confidence motion by 325 votes to 306, thwarting the Labour leader's bid to force a general election. 
The victory was possible because the DUP and Tory Brexiteers came back into the fold despite dealing her a vicious humiliation on her EU deal the night before. 
Speaking outside Number 10 late last night, Mrs May said: 'I understand that to people getting on with their lives, away from Westminster, the events of the past 24 hours will have been unsettling.
'Overwhelmingly, the British people want us to get on with delivering Brexit, and also address the other important issues they care about.
'But the deal which I have worked to agree with the European Union was rejected by MPs, and by a large margin. I believe it is my duty to deliver on the British people's instruction to leave the EU. And I intend to do so.' 
Immediately after her victory in the confidence vote was declared last night, Mrs May invited the other party leaders to join talks. 
But in an extraordinary snub Mr Corbyn immediately refused, saying he would only join discussions if Mrs May ruled out no deal. 
Tory and Labour MPs voiced anger that the veteran left-winger was willing to 'sit down with terrorists' without conditions, but would not meet the leader of the UK to resolve the biggest crisis facing the country.
Mrs May said she had held 'constructive' meetings with the leaders of the Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru. 
'I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour Party has not so far chosen to take part, but our door remains open,' she added. 
The Labour leader had dodged staging the vote for weeks but finally called it after the government suffered a 118-strong rebellion by Conservative MPs in the vote on the Brexit deal.   
A plan to hand power over Brexit to a committee of backbench MPs was dealt a major blow last night.
Former Tory ministers Nick Boles, Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan proposed handing power to the Commons liaison committee.
But last night the panel, which comprises all 36 select committee chairmen, rejected the idea. A senior source said it would not take on the role.
Mr Boles responded immediately to say he would change his proposed bill so that it only provided for a delay to Article 50 to avoid No Deal.
Supporters of the move, who are understood to include several Cabinet ministers, say it will allow Parliament to prevent the economic damage caused by leaving without an agreement.
Mr Boles tweeted: 'Apparently the liaison committee is not keen to take the role that is proposed for it in the EU Withdrawal No 2 Bill. This was always an optional extra and we will of course take it out. The bit that matters is the requirement that the PM requests an extension to Article 50 if she cannot get a compromise deal through the Commons within a few weeks. It is this that will stop No Deal Brexit and we remain totally committed to it.'
Mr Boles has urged Mrs May to stop appealing solely to the DUP and her own party. He is pushing for an option that would keep the UK tied to the EU customs union and single market.
He told Sky News: 'We need to rule out No Deal. There is absolutely no parliamentary majority for it and it would be catastrophic harmful to the country. There is a majority for a reasonable, soft Brexit deal – you could probably get about 400 MPs to vote for something.
'You are not going to get it if you rely only Conservative and DUP votes.'
However, Mrs May was boosted when a former Labour MP, John Woodcock, declared that Mr Corbyn was 'not fit for high office'. 
An independent unionist, Sylvia Hermon, also voted in her favour.
In the end the margin was significantly bigger than the government's effective majority of 13.
It was the first time a confidence vote has been held in the Commons since 1993, when John Major was PM.  
Mrs May struck a bullish tone as she returned to Parliament in the wake of the Brexit deal drubbing, warning that allowing Mr Corbyn to seize power would send the economy into a tailspin and ridiculing his chaotic EU policy.
But she is still scrambling to find a way forward on Brexit as ministers clashed openly over the shape of the government's 'Plan B'. 
Mrs May had already said she will 'open discussions' with senior MPs from other parties as she tries to forge a Parliamentary consensus on the way forward. Her effective deputy David Lidington has been put in charge of the charm offensive. 
However, last night was the first time she had explicitly offered to open talks with other party leaders. 
The PM held talks with DUP leader Arlene Foster in Westminster this evening, with Mrs Foster describing the meeting as 'useful'. 'The issue of the backstop needs to be dealt and we will continue to work to that end,' she said. 
After the result was announced in the Commons, Mrs May said: 'The House has put its confidence in this Government.
'I stand ready to work with any member of this House to deliver on Brexit and ensure that this House retains the confidence of the British people.'
But Mr Corbyn responded: 'Before there can be any positive discussions about the way forward, the Government must remove clearly once and for all the prospect of the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit from the EU and all the chaos that would come as a result of that.' 
Mrs May did not respond directly - but Downing Street made clear that she will not be taking no deal off the table.
The PM met Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, and Plaid Cymru's Liz Saville Roberts in her Commons office.
The last time a government was defeated on a confidence motion was in 1979.
The Labour government led by Jim Callaghan lost the opposition motion on March 28 1979 by just one vote, 311-310.
Mr Callaghan immediately announced a dissolution of parliament and a general election, which was subsequently won by the Conservatives.
Since 1900 there have been only three occasions when a government has lost a vote of confidence: twice in 1924 and once in 1979.
There have not been any confidence motions formally tabled in the House of Commons since 1993.
The most recent example was on July 23 1993, when the Conservative government of John Major tabled a motion of confidence in itself, to shore up support following its defeat the previous day on the Maastricht Treaty Social Chapter. The government won the motion 339-299.
In November 1994, Mr Major, who became Sir John in 2005, made the passage of the European Communities (Finance Bill) 'in all its essentials' an issue of confidence, but no confidence motion was formally moved by the government or opposition.
Votes of confidence were once regular occurrences in the House of Commons, with both governments and opposition parties using them to test support on the backbenches.
There were eight such votes during the 1960s and nine during the 1970s.
One of the most high-profile in recent decades took place on November 22 1990, when Labour moved a motion of no confidence in the Conservative government.
It was prompted by Margaret Thatcher failing to secure re-election as Tory leader on the first ballot of a leadership contest. The government won the vote 367-247.
 
In a letter to Mrs May after the discussions, Mr Blackford laid down conditions for entering formal talks.
'It is my view that if you are able to confirm that the extension of Article 50, a ruling out of a No Deal Brexit and the option of a second EU referendum would form the basis of those discussions, then we could participate in them,' he wrote.
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister has been very clear that the British public voted to leave the European Union. 
'We want to leave with a deal but she is determined to deliver on the verdict of the British public and that is to leave the EU on March 29 this year.' 
 Mr Corbyn's aides insisted there will be no 'substantive' talks between the leaders on Brexit until she bows to his demands. 
'There can't be meaningful talks about how to find a deal that reflects the majority in Parliament and that can command a majority in Parliament while the threat of no deal, which would be disastrous for the country... is still on the table.
'That must come off the table. It's effectively a blackmail and makes meaningful talks on a real solution that can command a majority in Parliament impossible.' 
Tory MP James Heappey retorted: 'Jeremy Corbyn has sat down with terrorists around the world apparently in pursuit of and always without preconditions. 
'But will he sit down with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to tackle biggest constitutional challenge of our time without preconditions? Errr, no.' 
Labour MP Chris Leslie also said Mr Corbyn was wrong to snub the Prime Minister's offer.
He told MailOnline: 'Every opportunity to influence Brexit policy ought to be taken - surely we should be taking the chance to see the Prime Minister, even if all we get is time to persuade her of the merits of a People's Vote?'
Despite her warm words on compromise, the premier looked to close down the options this afternoon as she insisted the UK will still leave the EU at the end of March, and again ruled out staying in a customs union with the bloc. 
To win and keep power a Prime Minister must be able to win votes in the Commons. This is known as confidence. Winning Budget votes is known as supply.  
Historically, losing a confidence vote would have prompted the PM's immediate resignation or a general election. It last happened in 1979 when Labour's James Callaghan lost 311 to 310.
But under laws passed by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government, defeat last night would have instead started a 14-day countdown to a general election.
If during that period Mrs May could return to the Commons and win a further vote the election would be stopped.
If Mr Corbyn could demonstrate he had the confidence of the House by assembling a new coalition, he could in theory replace Mrs May without an election. 
The Tories have an effective majority of 13 in the House, as long as all MPs turn out. Any MP who goes against their respective party line in such a crunch vote can expected to have the whip removed and be deselected. 
But Mrs May won by more, after a former Labour MP used the debate to launch an excoriating attack on Mr Corbyn as 'unfit to lead the country'.
John Woodcock said he would with a 'heavy heart' not vote to remove the Prime Minister in the vote despite being a life-long opponent of the Tories.
Mr Woodcock quit Labour last year after accusing the party of mishandling a harassment complaint against him. He was a long-standing critic of Mr Corbyn who repeatedly vowed never to vote to make him Prime Minister. 
Dame Sylvia Hermon, an independent unionist, has also said she will support the government. 
The commitments put the final nail in the coffin of Mr Corbyn's slim hopes of pulling off a surprise win in the vote - leaving him embarrassed.
Theresa May won a motion of no confidence 325 to 306 last night, a majority of just 19.
Unlike Tuesday night's showdown over Brexit, this vote split tightly along party lines.
The Tories pulled an all-hands effort - getting all 314 of its available MPs through the division lobbies. It was also backed by all 10 DUP MPs, plus Independent Lady Sylvia Hermon.
Labour almost managed the same, securing the support of 251 of its available MPs. The only one missing was Paul Flynn, who is away from Westminster on health grounds.
Independent former Labour MPs Frank Field and Jared O'Mara backed the motion. 
Several independent MPs missed the vote - former Labour MP John Woodcock declared in advance he would never vote for Mr Corbyn.
Also missing was Fiona Onasanya, who has been kicked out of Labour after being convicted of perverting the course of justice, and Ivan Lewis, who is suspended over harassment claims.  
In six hours of debate, DUP Nigel Dodds joked that Mr Corbyn was so unpopular with Labour MPs that they had been texting him asking him to support the government.
Closing the debate for the government, Environment Secretary Michael Gove delivered a tub-thumping speech roasting Mr Corbyn for his limp response to the Russian nerve agent atrocity in Salisbury.
Mr Gove listed the ways in which the Conservative government was protecting our nation's security, and contrasted that with the Labour leader.
He said: 'While we are standing up for national security, what about Mr Corbyn? He wants to leave Nato, he wants to get rid of our nuclear deterrent.
'And recently he said in a speech, why do countries boast about the size of their armies? That is quite wrong, why don't we emulate Costa Rica, that has no army at all?
'No allies, no deterrent, no army, no way can this country ever allow that man to be our Prime Minister.'
Mr Gove pointed out that Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson, who spoke immediately before him, had failed to mention Mr Corbyn once.
'We have several things in common - we've both lost weight, him much more so. We're both friends of Israel - him much more so,' he said.
To loud cheers from the Tory benches, he added: 'And we both recognise that Mr Corbyn is about he worst possible person to lead the Labour Party.'
As the government's Brexit woes deepened following the vote, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd appeared to contradict the PM by suggesting the UK could join a permanent customs union with the EU.
'It seems to me that everything has to be on the table because the priority is to find a negotiated settlement so we can leave the European Union,' Ms Rudd told the BBC's Politics  Live.
The comments echoed remarks from Justice Secretary David Gauke earlier, who warned it was no longer possible for the government to 'box ourselves in' with red lines.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is said to have suggested to business leaders in a phone call that Article 50 would be extended and the government was entering a 'new era' in its approach.   
The Tory splits deepened after a Cabinet meeting where Remain-leaning ministers including Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and Mr Gauke again urged Mrs May to call 'indicative votes' in the Commons on how to go forward with Brexit. 
A Cabinet source told MailOnline a more hawkish group led by Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Gavin Williamson and Andrea Leadsom gave the idea a 'good kicking'. Another said the proposal was 'heavily sat on'. 
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis also waded in by warning that party activists would not tolerate Mrs May making overtures to Labour MPs for a soft Brexit.

The PM has been left scrambling to find a way forward after suffering the biggest Commons loss ever for a government, with an extraordinary 118 Tories rebelling against the plan. 
More than a third of the parliamentary party, joined forces with Labour to sink Mrs May's withdrawal agreement by 432 votes to 202 - a majority of 230 - on a dramatic day at Westminster. 
Before the vote, Mr Corbyn challenged Mrs May at PMQs to agree to a permanent customs union with the EU, and rule out no-deal Brexit.
But Mrs May shot back: 'There are actually two ways of avoiding no-deal. The first is to agree a deal. And the second would be to revoke Article 50. 
'Now that would mean staying in the European Union, failing to respect the result of the referendum - and that is something that this government will not do.'   
The defiant stance came as the EU and MPs heaped pressure on Mrs May to change tack, with calls for another national vote and Michel Barnier urging her to drop 'red lines'. 
Mrs May's escape routes appear to be closing, with the EU signalling a tough line. The bloc's chief negotiator Mr Barnier goaded the premier by demanding she respond by abandoning her long-standing negotiation positions, such as ending free movement, ruling out a permanent customs union, and ending the jurisdiction of EU law. 
While saying he was 'sad' the deal had been rejected, Mr Barnier suggested the defeat was an 'opportunity' to stay more closely aligned with the EU.    
The Cabinet has - just about - been able to unite around delivering Theresa May's Brexit deal.
But now that it has been trounced in the Commons, simmering tensions are coming to the boil.
Two distinct factions have been developing, with a Remain-leaning group pushing for a softer approach that reaches out to MPs across parties - and Brexiteers taking a more hawkish line.  
REMAINERS 
Philip Hammond 
Focused on avoiding economic fallout from Brexit and preventing a left-wing Corbyn administration, he is believed to regard both no-deal and failure to take the UK out of the EU as unacceptable.  
Stayed out of the row over 'indicative votes' but likely to side with the Remain faction on the need to protect business interests. 
Amber Rudd 
Before she was brought back into the Cabinet in November, Ms Rudd had aligned to the campaign for a second Brexit referendum.
Since then she has led calls for 'indicative votes' to be staged in Cabinet, and urged the government to rule out no-deal Brexit.    
Greg Clark
Has broken ranks to warn publicly that no deal would be a disaster, and suggested he will quit if it becomes government policy. 
David Gauke  
Another prepared to quit if the government goes for no-deal, and has hinted that he wants joining a permanent customs union to become government policy. 
Karen Bradley
A long-standing ally of Mrs May, she usually follows the PM's lead but is generally on the side of the Remainers. 
 BREXITEERS 
Jeremy Hunt
A staunch Remainer in the referendum, the Foreign Secretary has since been reborn as an ardent Brexiteer - with many speculating about his leadership ambitions. 
Led the 'kicking' for the 'indicative votes' proposal, and was against ruling out no deal.
Sajid Javid 
Another favourite for the Tory leadership, has taken a practical approach but might support a 'managed' no-deal Brexit above delaying or cancelling Article 50. 
Michael Gove 
Having spearheaded the Leave campaign with Boris Johnson, has been remarkably loyal to May's deal since wavering over quitting in November.
Does not want a no-deal, but is adamant Brexit must happen and deeply opposed to a second referendum. 
Gavin Williamson
Vehemently opposed to the 'indicative votes' idea, and close to the DUP, Mr Williamson has tended to side with the Brexiteers. He also harbours leadership ambitions which would be helped by a tough stance. 
Andrea Leadsom  
One of the original Brexiteers in Cabinet, adamant that there must be no delays and would back no deal over cancelling or holding a referendum. 
Interviewed on the BBC's Politics Live, Mr Gauke dropped a heavy hint that he wanted the government to back a permanent customs union.
'I think the position today is given what happened in the House of Commons yesterday when we were defeated very heavily, the Prime Minister rightly said we need to engage across parliament, we need to do that constructively,' he said.
'When it comes to a customs union, our principle is that we are in favour of leaving the customs union so we can enter into trade agreements and no longer trade on WTO terms with third countries.
'But at this stage what we are doing is engaging with parliamentary opinion.' 
Pressed on whether leaving the customs union was still a 'red line', Mr Gauke said: 'I don't think we can today be boxing ourselves in, what we ned to be doing is engaging across Parliament, seeing what ideas emerge where the support is for those particular ideas.
'And at that point we need to make an assessment – is there something that is both negotiable with the European Union and something which could have a majority support in the House of Commons.
'Today is about making an assessment of where the numbers are.'
The PM's spokesman played down the Cabinet split on the customs union in the wake of Mr Gauke's comments and insisted Mrs May's policy had not changed. 
He said: 'His starting point is that there are advantages to being outside the customs and that is the Government's policy.'
He also denied that the PM had softened her policy on extending Article 50 and delaying Brexit.
He said: 'It is the government's policy to leave the European Union on 29 March 2019 – that is of course the Government's longstanding position.
Mr Hammond and Business Secretary Mr Clark used a private telephone call to tell business chiefs not to expect changes to the legal Brexit withdrawal text, but rather to the political declaration on future relations with the EU, according to Government sources.
Mr Hammond told those on the call the Government would not put any 'obstacles' in the way of a plan by Tory MP Nick Boles to give senior backbenchers a role in finding a solution to the deadlock, according to the Financial Times. The plan could see the Article 50 process delayed beyond March.
'We have to reach out to MPs in the Commons first,' the Chancellor is reported to have said. 'There is a large majority in the Commons that is opposed to no-deal.'
Other business leaders said Mr Hammond had said the government was entering a 'new era' in its Brexit policy. 
In another extraordinary breach of government discipline, defence minister Tobias Ellwood tweeted: 'REALITY CHECK: Following defeat - Parliament is now in control. 
'It has no appetite for 'no deal' and consensus is likely to lead to a lighter Brexit than offered via PM's deal. Or no Brexit.
'Defaulting to WTO terms was not in our Party's manifesto and not in Britain's interests.' 
MPs voted on Theresa May's Brexit plan this week in what was set to be the most  important decision taken by Parliament since the Second World War.
The PM suffered a catastrophic defeat in the crunch vote, with MPs seizing on her weakness to push their own plans for Britain's future with the EU.
Politicians are deeply divided over whether Brexit should be soft or hard, and if the UK should go for a Norway-style deal or a Canada plus plan.
But the terms and arguments deployed by MPs are often steeped in jargon and bamboozling to the ordinary Brit.
Here are some of the things that will help you to finally understand the Brexit debate rocking Britain and its Parliament.
1. Plan B – what is it and why do we need one? 
Theresa May has struck a deal with the EU - but MPs voted it down by a massive majority on Tuesday night, meaning she will have to come up with a Plan B.
And last week week MPs passed an amendment put forward by Tory Remainer Dominic Grieve which gives the PM just three working days to come up with her new plan.
It means she will be hauled back to the Commons on Monday to spell out what she will do next.
The PM has so far refused to say what her Plan B will be, but she will be under huge pressure to rule out a no deal Brexit and say what direction  she plans to take the talks in next.
Remainers will want her to go for a Norway-style deal, which will keep the UK in the single market and therefore free movement, or a second referendum.
While Brexiteers will push for the PM to go for a Canada-style free deal which will take Britain fully out of the EU's customs union and single market.
2. The Remainer plot - who is behind it and how would it work?


A  group of Tory Remainers have launched a plot to try to take over Brexit talks if the PM cannot come up with a plan in three days.
Tory MP Nick Boles said that if this happens the Liaison Committee - a committee of 32 senior MPs which is dominated by Remainers - should take over the talks.
It is believed that Tory former ministers Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve are also involved in the plot.
This plan to sideline the Government would flout the rules of Parliament, but Commons Speaker John Bercow - who would have the final say on if this is possible or not - has made it clear he is happy to re-write the rules when it comes to Brexit.
No10 believe that if the plan succeeds then the MPs on the committee will push for a softer Brexit, for example to get a Norway-style deal which would keep the UK in the single market and therefore keeping free movement of people.
3. No deal - what would it mean for Britain and who opposes it?
Britain has been locked in talks with the EU to thrash out a Brexit deal, but if a new plan cannot be quickly agreed then the UK will crash out with no deal.
But many MPs have warned they will do whatever it takes to block a no deal - fearing this will send the UK's economy into meltdown. 
And a string of Cabinet ministers, including Greg Clark, Amber Rudd and David Gauke are expected to quit the Cabinet in fury if the PM then backs a no deal Brexit.
Economic experts have issued dire warnings about the fall-out of a no deal with the CBI saying it could slash 8 per cent off the size of the UK's economy and plunging the country into a massive recession.
But there is a group of die-hard Brexiteers in the Tory Party, including Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group, who say there is nothing to fear about a no deal Brexit.
This group sees going for a no deal Brexit as a step towards their goal of achieving a Canada plus style trade deal with the EU.
4. No Confidence Vote - what is it and who would back it? 
Jeremy Corbyn took up Theresa May's challenge to table a motion of no confidence in the government in the aftermath of the vote on the withdrawal deal.
If the PM lost the vote, then another candidate has 14 working days to hold and win a vote of confidence of MPs - if they manage this then they become PM. 
If no party leader can do this within the two weeks then another general election is called. 
But it is unlikely that the Labour leader will be able to win the backing of a single MP from the ranks of the Tories or the DUP - meaning his bid to topple Mrs May is likely to fail. 
5. General Election - how could one be called and who wants it?
Labour have been demanding an election, while many commentators believe that the Tories may end up having to call another election to break the political deadlock in Parliament.    
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, Mrs May would need the Commons to agree to hold another election - and many MPs will be dead-set against the plan which they fear would cost them their seats and could hand Mr Corbyn the keys to No10. 
But if the PM's deal is voted down and MPs cannot agree an alternative before the UK leaves on March 29 then an election may end up being called to bring in new MPs who may be able back a deal.
6. Second referendum – why might we need one and what would the question be? 
Many MPs are pushing for a second referendum to be held, less than three years after voters backed Brexit.
Remainers argue that with MPs unable to agree a deal among themselves then the only way forward is to send the question back to the public.
Many Labour MPs, the Lib Dems and a powerful group of Tory MPs all back a second referendum.
But Mrs May has repeatedly ruled out holding one while she is PM, and even backers of the plan are at loggerheads over what should be on the ballot paper.
Some Remainers believe voters should be offered a choice between the PM's plan and remaining in the EU on current terms, but some others believe a no deal Brexit on world trade organisation terms should be offered.
7. Who is Gareth Johnson, the latest Tory to quit the government?
Tory MP Gareth Johnson quit as a whip whose job it is to convince his fellow Conservative MPs to back the PM's plan - so he could oppose the deal.
He is the latest in a long line of Tory MPs who have resigned as aides and ministers to voice their objections to her blueprint.
The MP for Dartford has a strongly Leave-supporting seat, and he was appointed an assistant whip, one of the most junior ranks, in November last year.
Sources said he had been 'desperate' to get into government, but pointed out that his voters were overwhelmingly Brexit-backing.  
Resigning this week, he said he was  putting his 'loyalty to the country above loyalty to the government'.   
There is a new buzz-word at the BBC. It's been bandied about on countless programmes and dominates the pages of the Left-wing papers. The 17 million-plus Britons who voted to leave the EU are described as part of a 'populist' revolution.
When the American public voted for Donald Trump to be their next President, the BBC and other media likewise described it as a triumph of populism.
This week, after the Italian people voted a resounding 'No' in a referendum that led to the resignation of their pro‑EU Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — a result that has shaken Brussels to its foundations — liberal commentators called it a victory for populist parties.
The dictionary definition of populist is a politician or other person who claims to support the interests of ordinary people.
But, make no mistake, it is now being used as a sneering, pejorative term to describe the extraordinary social phenomenon sweeping both Europe and the U.S. as millions and millions of people express their anger at the ballot box over the indolence, corruption and complacency of their nation's political elite.
People who European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi arrogantly warned last week were a danger to Europe's future, as he talked darkly in an interview about counter-terrorism and border protection, and how populism was wrecking Europe's ability to respond to immigration.
People about whom Tony Blair is now so concerned that he has decided to set up a new institute specifically to counter the 'explosion' in populist movements across Europe.
And let's not forget Jeremy Corbyn who on Saturday issued a call to arms to fight the 'populist Right', whose parties were 'political parasites' which were 'feeding on people's concerns'.
In all of these cases — and many, many more besides — the way the words populist and populism are used implies menace, accompanied by a hint of demagoguery and an insidious suggestion that the voters defying the West's governing classes have racist sympathies.
Dismissive
To liberals, the word populist indicates these voters are vulgar, ill-informed and under-educated. It suggests a lumpen mass of people — quite different, of course, from the well-informed and well-heeled commentators and political leaders who feel something has to be done about unsavoury views of the general public.
And while Left-wing movements such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece are occasionally described as populist, the term is almost invariably used to defame the Right.
Imagine if, in June this year, a majority of the British people had voted to remain in the EU rather than leave it. Would the BBC in its wisdom have been described this as a 'populist' reassertion of European power?
If Hillary Clinton had been voted into the White House as President by the American public last month, would her victory have been dismissed as a 'populist' uprising?
Would it have been a victory for populism if the Italian public had 'behaved' and voted as their Prime Minister had asked them to last Sunday? No — all of these things would have been reported as sensible and appropriate responses of a sensible and well-informed voting population.
Though rarely overtly expressed, that is the view of those who throw around the 'p' word. They believe that there is a respectable way of thinking — and then a populist, unacceptable way of thinking.
Historically one of the most defining aspects of populism has been a politics which sees the people in one corner, and the elites — especially the political elites — in another.
Populist movements have almost invariably concerned themselves with the difference between the gilded lives of those in power and the struggle of the people they were meant to represent.
The reason the word populist has especially dark connotations today, however, is that it is so often associated with the rise of fascism in Europe — when megalomaniac dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini climbed to power using crowd-pleasing soapbox oratory during the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s.
This is why it is so insidious when politicians and media outlets such as the BBC use the word populist with such abandon to smear views with which they disagree.
It is a play on language that repeatedly suggests it is the people, rather than the political Establishment, who are wrong.
Forget that it was the same Establishment which tried to terrify the voters, with its Project Fear, into staying in the EU.
By dismissing the Brexit vote as 'populist', the Remain camp insinuates that a majority of the British people were in some way gulled into voting the way we did. It suggests that we are malleable, easily-manipulated fools who fell for the sinister charms of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
This is not just nonsense, but sinister nonsense.
Not merely because it insults the general public, but because it stops those who level the claims from ever trying to understand the public at whom they are sneering.
If a majority of voters in a country feel a certain way about something, then it is wise — especially if you are a politician — to at least consider the possibility that the public are right.
Instead of pretending the electorate has been lobotomised by brilliant but dangerous demagogues, it is far wiser to address its genuine concerns.
If you dismiss Donald Trump's success in the U.S. elections as a triumph of populism, you ignore a whole range of reasons behind his victory last month.
Insidious
You ignore the American public's loathing for Hillary Clinton and the corrupt and complacent political elite she represents. An elite, moreover, whose liberal assumptions sometimes openly deplored many of the basic principles — patriotism, belonging, community and job security — on which Western democracies were built.
To dismiss the popular revolution in both America and Europe as populism is to ignore the fact that millions of ordinary people are furious at having seen their incomes fall in real terms while the pay gap between the haves and have-nots has widened to record levels.
It is to ignore the valid and very genuine concerns that the line between legal and illegal immigration is everywhere being blurred, and national identity is being compromised — as was made so abundantly clear, in Britain's case, by the social cohesion tsar Louise Casey this week in her report on the terrifying level of segregation in many of Britain's immigrant communities.
These are not small issues, and it is utterly wrong — and deeply misguided — to dismiss those who are concerned about them as though they suffer from some sort of delusion or mania.
The truth is that it is our political elites and their acolytes in the Left-wing media who are suffering from a delusion.
Desperation
How can they fail to see the disconnect between ordinary people and the governing class in Western democracies?
Why do they not understand the deep anger over the way the people's views are held in contempt by politicians who ignore them?
Yet people such as European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker simply carry on as before, ignoring the earthquake beneath their feet, blaming Brexit on '40 years of British lies' and saying that it showed 'something is wrong in Britain'.
This unelected buffoon glides through his well-paid career as he lectures and berates the general public for daring to make democratically-based decisions. And when millions of us express our disdain for this Eurocrat, we are dismissed as 'populist' rabble-rousers.
To disregard the concerns of the public is a serious mistake for any politician. They may be able to ignore it for a time, but at some point the people will be heard. Using words like 'populist' to insult the public is just a desperate final attempt to put off the inevitable.
To her great credit, Theresa May seems to understand the threat posed by the growing disconnect between the political class and the public. She, at least, knows that it is better to listen to our concerns rather than to insult us.
 
Just when you thought Parliament couldn’t sink any lower, along comes jailbird MP Fiona Onasanya to cast the deciding vote in favour of the latest Stop Brexit manoeuvre.
Onasanya walked through the voting lobby wearing the electronic ankle tag with which she was fitted after being released early from HMP Bronzefield in Surrey.
Her participation ensured that the Bill to change the law so that Britain can’t leave the EU without a ‘deal’ passed by the narrowest of margins, 313 to 312.
Onasanya, MP for Peterborough, served just 28 days of a three-month sentence for perverting the course of justice, after repeatedly lying to police to avoid a speeding fine.
If she had been forced to complete her full term she would still have been in prison and, therefore, unable to vote.
Such is the desperation of those determined to defy the democratic will of the British people that they are prepared to rely on the help of a convicted criminal to get their way.
We now live in a country where the vote of a single, disgraced MP outweighs the votes of 17.4 million people in a referendum.
If the division had been held any earlier in the day, Onasanya may not have been able to take part. She rushed to Westminster from an industrial tribunal, where she is accused of discriminating against a disabled employee who was told to use the men’s toilet because she couldn’t climb the stairs. You couldn’t make it up, especially as Onasanya isn’t shy when it comes to using the discrimination card to air her own grievances.
Over the years, we’ve seen sick MPs stretchered in to the House to take part in crucial votes. As recently as last summer, the Labour MP Naz Shah was pushed through the lobby in a wheelchair, dosed up on morphine, and with a bucket on her lap, just in case she threw up while casting her vote.
But Onasanya is the first MP who has turned up to vote wearing an ankle tag, while technically still serving a custodial sentence.
She had previously voted against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. This is regardless of the fact that more than 60 per cent of her constituents in Peterborough voted Leave.
She’s currently fighting a recall petition aimed at forcing her to stand down and face a by-election. She can’t be kicked out automatically because her sentence was less than 12 months. Despite her conviction, and her appeal being turned down by three judges, Onasanya continues to protest her innocence both in public and on social media.
She recently appeared in a bizarre YouTube video with the New York skyline in the background. It looked as if she was auditioning for the old David Letterman show. The current king of late-night TV in America, Britain’s James Corden, might have to look to his laurels.
Heeeere’s Fiona!
It can only be a matter of time before she features on Car Pool Karaoke, singing I Fought The Law (And The Law Won)!
The Labour Party withdrew the whip after she was convicted, but we’re told nothing could be done to stop her voting in the Commons. Really? I’m sure Speaker Bercow could have come up with some arcane rule which would have prevented her casting a vote.
After all, he’s already reached back to the 1600s in his apparent determination to Stop Brexit. And he continues to tear up the rule book and override precedent.
The Bill to extend Article 50 was rammed through in just four hours. Bercow’s behaviour has been described as a ‘constitutional outrage’ by Brexiteers.
Outside the Westminster Bubble, most people would think that allowing a convicted criminal wearing an ankle tag to cast the deciding vote on a crucial Bill affecting Britain’s future was also a constitutional outrage.
Yet the Speaker and the other 312 MPs who voted in favour of the motion, put forward by Oliver Leftwing and Pixie Balls-Cooper, could see nothing wrong with Onasanya helping their cause. They would have been screaming blue murder if she’d voted the other way. You can bet your life that Bercow would have come up with something, anything, to stop that happening.
You might also have hoped that one, just one, ‘honourable’ member planning to vote in favour would have been seized by a pang of conscience and abstained, to cancel out Onasanya’s vote.
But no. As far as the Remain headbangers are concerned, Brexit must be derailed at any cost, even if that means the last vestiges of decency being thrown out of the window.
To make matters worse, Onasanya wasn’t the only crooked MP allowed to vote this week.
Tory Chris Davies, member for Brecon and Radnorshire, trooped through the lobby while awaiting sentencing for fraud.
He pleaded guilty in March to two counts of forgery and one count of providing false and misleading claims, relating to his election expenses. He, too, faces a recall petition.
Davies actually voted against the motion, so his vote did cancel out Onasanya’s. But that’s not the point. Neither of them should have been taking part.
One is still serving her sentence, even if she’s not behind bars where she belongs. The other has admitted his crimes and is awaiting his fate. Both have forfeited their right to sit as MPs.
I don’t know much about Davies, but Onasanya is beyond shame. She even claimed her MP’s salary while doing her porridge.
It’s a pity technology has advanced to allow prisoners to be monitored electronically while effectively on parole.
Not so long ago, the only way Onasanya could have voted would have been if she was escorted from jail to Westminster. It would have been marvellous if she’d been forced to walk through the division lobbies handcuffed to a couple of prison warders, like the Kray Twins at their mother Violet’s funeral.
The demeaning sight of an MP voting while manacled to a screw would have served as a perfect illustration of the murky depths to which the Mother of Parliaments has now sunk.
Speaking of Pixie Balls-Cooper (see above), I wonder if she’s taken in her Syrian refugee family yet? Just curious, that’s all.
Here’s one of life’s mysteries. Why is Project Fear still bothering? They’ve won. The game’s over. Brexit, in any meaningful sense, is dead as a door nail.
Yet they keep on pumping out scare stories. The Chief Constable of Hertfordshire was at it yesterday, warning that his men were on standby to deal with any riots which might arise because of No Deal, or No Brexit, or whatever. 
As someone who lives on North London’s border with Hertfordshire, I somehow don’t see mass rioting breaking out on the streets of Potters Bar. Not until after the pubs shut, anyway. 
Welwyn Garden City is hardly a walk on the wild side. I can’t imagine anyone lobbing Molotov cocktails through the windows of John Lewis in protest at the extension of Article 50. 
Still, as far as Project Fear is concerned, the facts should never get in the way of a good scare story. 
One TV channel went even further, warning that the Army had been put on alert. This ‘news’ was accompanied by library footage of soldiers marching in Downing Street. All you can do to stay sane is laugh out loud. 
The daftest scare yet was the idea Eurostar passengers will have their ham sandwiches, pork pies and cheddar cheese rolls confiscated by customs officers before they travel through the Channel Tunnel. 
At gunpoint, presumably. This ‘story’ was delivered in all seriousness by TV reporters standing on the concourse at St Pancras. 
Do you honestly think French TV reporters are lining up at the Gare du Nord to warn that all baguettes jambon and rillettes will have to be surrendered unless President Macron softens his approach to Brexit?
I can only assume that so many scare stories have been launched that Project Fear has lost radio contact with some of its agents. 
Like Japanese kamikaze pilots, they’re running out of fuel and they’re coming down to earth regardless, Brexit or No Brexit. Hide the ham sarnies!
For some reason, watching the shenanigans at Westminster, I keep hearing the theme tune from Stingray, the Sixties adventure series from puppeteer Gerry Anderson. 
Stingray was the underwater companion show to the better-known Thunderbirds and began with the irresistible promise: ‘Anything can happen in the next half hour!’ That’s where British politics is now. You don’t know what madness is coming next.
Yesterday, there was divine intervention in the form of a water leak which led to the Commons being evacuated. 
I’m looking forward to the plague of frogs, if it hasn’t occurred already by the time you read this. That’ll be a job for Stingray. Anything can happen in the next half hour!
 Britons last night toasted in a new era for the UK outside the European Union with parties, pub crawls and rallies across the country.
The celebrations got into full swing well before 11pm, when Britain finally divorced from the bloc after three and half years of wrangling.
From the flagship Leavers party in London's Parliament Square, to the social clubs of Warrington in the North West, merry revellers waved Union Jacks and wished each other a 'happy Brexit day'.
Champagne corks were also popped in the other home nations, with gatherings in Glasgow and Belfast continuing long into the night. 
People decorated their homes for Brexit-themed dinner parties and planted British flags along their streets amid a wave of patriotism as the country forges a new path.
Town halls and sports clubs were transformed into a sea of red white and blue where Brexiteers glugged down English ales and wine while belting out the national anthem. 
Britain has now entered an 11-month transition period with the EU, during which time the government will race to strike a trade deal before December.
But any future wrangling with Brussels was far from the minds of revellers this evening, who waved Union Jacks and cheered triumphantly following victory speeches by key architects of Brexit including Mr Farage, who is no longer an MEP after being a disruptive force in the European Parliament for over 20 years. 
Choruses of God Save The Queen and The Land of Hope And Glory swung round Parliament Square, and were echoed in similar parties up and down the UK.  
Ahead of the historic moment, excited Britons posted images of themselves on social media with many using the #BrexitDay hashtag to share snapshots of their celebrations.
While others have donned their most British attire to gather in villages, towns and cities across the country to herald in the 'dawn of a new era' for Great Britain after nearly four years of turmoil. 
This evening, the Union Jack flag will fly on every flag pole in Parliament Square ahead of a 'once-in-a-lifetime' party as Britain officially leaves the bloc at 11pm.
And across the country clocks will ring out to mark the country's departure, as thousands across the United Kingdom prepare celebrate the 'bright new future' that independence from the European Union will bring.
Not everyone is celebrating however, with vigils planned by pro-EU supporters and flares let off in London as disgruntled Remainers vent their frustration at Britain's eventual departure from the bloc. 
Remainers are scrawling 'I love EU' on 50p coins with permanent marker and releasing them back into circulation, in a last-ditch attempt to anger Brexit voters.
Karen Hoyles, from Devon, posted pictures of her defaced coins online, calling for others to follow suit.
In an appeal to her Twitter followers, she hoped for people to 'get their creative juices flowing' and release '10million' 50ps with the phrase.
 Another apparent Remain supporter, Nigel Callaghan, claimed to have found two defaced 50ps, a pound and a two pound coin in his 'change'.
Mr Callaghan appeared to sarcastically say it might have been 'treason' if the Queen's face had been drawn on while also outlining how people could write on coins with a Sharpie. 
The protest comes as Royal Mint announced its release of a special edition gold Brexit 50p coin, which can be purchased for £945 by those wishing to commemorate the occasion. 
But for many, today is a turning point after political stagnation and delay. On what will be a special moment, one thrilled Briton claims he'll finally crack open a bottle of Scotch he's had saved for 25 years after waiting for just the 'right time', while pubs are offering up free British grub to celebrate local produce. 
Party organisers claim the country is finally 'moving forward' and this evening's celebrations will be about 'bringing people together' as they celebrate a 'piece of British History' with raffles, tribute acts and discos. 
Those organising events up and down the country and keen to make everyone feel included in this evening's entertainment - designed to mark Britain's departure from the European Union at exactly 11pm.
Ray Singleton, 72, is organising a Brexit celebration event at his men's club in Stapleford, Nottingham. He told MailOnline that he had decided to organise the event around two weeks ago and it is about 'bringing people together'.    
'The reason we are celebrating is because it's a piece of British History. It is not a celebration to say we won, you lost, its about bringing people together and to go forward together. 
'The overwhelming sentiment of our Members, whichever side of the divide they are on, are just pleased its done, the political infighting has finished and we are moving forward. We hope our little event will go some way to achieve those aims.'
Explaining what entertainment will be on offer, he said: 'We will be having a Disco/Karaoke, plus a special guest who's act specialises in Vera Lynn tributes, and she will be serenading us with Land of Hope & Glory plus a few other old classics at around 11pm. 
'We are serving free food and we have reduced our bar prices to £2 a pint and spirits to £1 a shot to help with the celebrations.'
The celebrations have caused quite a 'media frenzy', Mr Singleton explains. Yesterday we did interviews for BBC Radio 4, which will be broadcast today. Radio Nottingham will be doing a Live link from the Club at 10.30pm. 
'East Midlands News are sending a camera crew to the Club today to do interviews and to film the celebrations. Additionally, Broxtowe's newly elected MP, Darren Henry has accepted our invitation to join in the fun, so a very busy day for all concerned.'  
Bill Bailey, the landlord of the Cricketers in Westbourne, West Sussex, - who is also organising a Brexit Party - said celebrations had been a long time coming however.    
'This has been so long waiting for this to come to a close. I think which ever way you voted it's been a lot of money spent on the whole thing which could have been used elsewhere. So what ever the outcome you wanted let's just embrace it and move forward for Britain.
He added: 'We are have our party with live music free Yorkshire puddings with beef in just for a beer soaker as one does we here are all looking forward to a new Britain.'
A controversial anti-Brexit group hijacked the White Cliffs of Dover before dawn today and beamed a pro-EU film in English, French and German on to its famous chalk face to display a 32,000 sq ft 'message to Europe' that Britain will rejoin the bloc 'before long'. 
Protest group Led by Donkeys filmed two Second World War veterans called Sid Daw, aged 95, and 97-year-old Brigadier Stephen Goodall, who both describe their grief as the UK leaves the EU at 11pm tonight.    
The guerrilla video, apparently projected from a boat below the cliffs, ends with the stars on the EU flag slowly disappearing - with just one star remaining, the line reads: 'This is our star. Look after it for us.' 
95-year-old Sid Daw, who was a sniper for the Allies, introduces the video and says: 'This is a message from the White Cliffs of Dover, from Britain'. Mr Daw, from Cardiff, fought in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany during the conflict.
He says: 'First of all, I'm Welsh, and I'm British, and I'm European and I'm a human being. I feel very, very sad about it all because we don't know which way things are going.'
Appealing to fellow Europeans on the Continent, he said: 'Look from your side to this side, see these white cliffs, and we're looking across at you feeling we want to be together and we will be together before long, I'm sure.' 
The UK's most Eurosceptic town is set to celebrate 'long into the night' as the country leaves the European Union.
People in Boston, Lincolnshire, were in high spirits on Friday - saying they expected 'plenty of parties' when the bonds are officially broken at 11pm.
In the 2016 referendum, 75.6% of people in Boston voted to leave the EU - the highest in the UK.
Despite the party atmosphere, some residents said they would not be satisfied unless the Government 'continue to keep to their word'.
One resident, Brian Shaw, 76, said it was a landmark day for the country and he 'cannot wait to stop being ruled by the EU'.
He said: 'I'm very pleased. I've voted Labour all my life until this time when I voted Conservative because I knew they would get it through.
'I don't like the Conservatives, but they did what I wanted them to do.
'A friend of mine has got a Union Jack ready to put on his house at 11pm tonight.
'I'm usually in bed at 10pm but I shall stay up tonight - I'll be celebrating long into the night, I've got the beer ready.
'There will certainly be plenty of parties around here - I think people are just fed up with immigration.
'I cannot wait to stop being ruled by the EU.'
In the town's Wetherspoons pub, salesmen Jason Chambers, 37, Paul Burrell, 44, and Lee Blackbourn, also 44, had bought a bottle of champagne to toast the occasion.
Mr Chambers said: 'The champagne is a toast to Brexit and to the country getting back on its feet.'
Asked if they would be celebrating into the night, Mr Burrell said: 'We'll see what happens, we've got work tomorrow.'
Mr Chambers added: 'We can't do too much, we struggle to earn a crust in this town.'
Another resident, Dean Smith, 59, said he was pleased the UK was officially leaving, but said he would only be happy if the Government 'keep their word'.
'But I'll only be satisfied if the Government continues to keep their word and follows through with what they said they were going to do.'   
Elsewhere, a proud Brexiteer has erected his own 'Brexit Bell' which he will ring this evening at 11pm in celebration of the UK leaving the European Union.
Dave Tyrrell, 69, has been campaigning to leave the European Union ever since the UK joined the European Union in November 1993.
He was inspired to build his own 'Brexit Bell' after Prime Minister Boris Johnson's campaign to have Big Ben ring when Britain left the EU failed.
A 15ft tower erected out of scaffolding poles and Union Jack flags, is proudly installed in his hometown of Lympstone, Devon.
There is a clock defaced with the words 'BREXIT TIME' in front of the bell which Dave will ring at 11pm, surrounded by members of his village. 
A Croatian tech entrepreneur is expanding his business to Britain as he predicts a post-Brexit boom.
Ivan Mrvos, 24, who was named in Forbes' 30 under 30, is also encouraging companies across the continent to set up shop in the UK.
Mrvos is a pioneer of smart cities and made his money designing 'smart benches' - wifi hubs and charging points - while still at school.
His company, Include, opened their office on Brexit Day as the UK prepares to divorce the EU at 11pm Friday night.
Mrvos said: 'Britain has been one of the world's strongest supporters of Croatia over the past 30 years. We want to repay the faith that Britain had in my country by showing our faith and belief in Britain.
'While we know Brexit brings worries for some we don't see any potential problem for us with Brexit, mainly because we strongly believe that the British market is strong and very developed.
'Britain is one of the leading adopters of new technology, not just in Europe, but across the world.' 
Retired landscaper Dave said: 'The cost to ring Big Ben for Brexit was just ridiculous so I thought I'd make my own smaller bell instead - I call it Lympstone's Little Bell.
'The bell was really heavy so it was a struggle to get it on the top but it was worth it! I have been a staunch Brexiteer ever since we joined the EU - I never wanted to join.
'I actually voted against joining and then campaigned ever since to leave. There's been a lot of talk about leaving Europe.
'We're not leaving Europe - Europe is a continent. We're leaving the EU which is a political union - there's a big difference.
'I was against it when we joined the European Economic Area in 1973. I voted against staying in in 1975 and I campaigned against joining the European Union in 1993.
'I've been campaigning to get out of all this for a good 40 years now to anyone who would listen, and if it actually goes through at the end of the year, then I'll be elated.
'Loads of people in the village have said they'll come along to see when I ring the bell at 11pm tonight but I've got no idea how many people will turn up.
'I'll be leaving the bell up all weekend for people to come and give it a bong. I'm collecting for Royal British Legion so if people pop a few quid in when they visit, that'll be nice.' 
And in Redcar, North Yorkshire, some have even decided to organise a Brexit themed barbecue celebrating all things British. 
The event description reads: 'Bring a BBQ and help cook off away from the EU by grilling home grown produce. Support our British farmers and merchants by brining British beef, pork or lamb and a choice of British beers.'
And in Plymouth, organisers have titled their celebrations 'an escape from the EU' sharing an image of Spitfires, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Union Jacks to sell their event to the local populus.
The event description reads: 'Its time to celebrate this historic moment in life and wave goodbye to the Europe after all these years of waiting. We can finally celebrate our national Independence Day. 
'Everyone is to meet and bring as many flags as you want and celebrate with a bang. Wrap up warm it will be a cold one but feel free to bring any old EU flags that are no longer required.
'Of course if your bringing alcohol then please be sensible and enjoy your selfs in respectful manner.'  
Clocks will ring out across the country to mark Britain's departure from the European Union. This will include at Temple Meads Railways Station in Bristol, St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle and Manchester City's Victorian Town Hall. 
Downing Street will be illuminated with a 'countdown clock' intended to symbolise the strength and unity of England, Scotland, Wales Northern Ireland, and a light show in Downing Street at 11pm will mark the actual moment when Britain will split from the EU.  
Earlier this month, the House of Commons Commission killed off the idea of Big Ben bonging for Brexit, claiming it would cost more than £500,000 to interrupt huge repair works now under way on the clock and the historic Elizabeth Tower that houses it.
Buildings around Whitehall will also be illuminated and the Union Jack flag will fly on every flag pole in Parliament Square.
Just a matter of yards away at Parliament Square outside the Palace of Westminster, Brexiteers led by Nigel Farage will hold their own party.
The Leave Means Leave event promised to feature numerous speakers - but it seems live music, alcohol and fireworks have been banned. 
Scheduled to speak are JD Wetherspoon boss Tim Martin, broadcasters Julia Hartley-Brewer and Michelle Dewberry, MEP Ann Widdecombe, Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice and of course, Mr Brexit himself, Nigel Farage.
The festivities start at 9pm and end at 11pm with a recommended minimum donation of £10 to join. There will also be events in Brussels to mark the occasion.
City authorities organised a so-called 'Brussels Calling' event this evening to underline the Belgian capital's long friendship with the UK.
Not everyone has expressed enthusiasm for Britain's departure however, with others sharing images of the Flag of Europe and some posting pictures of themselves sporting European branded clothing.  
Sharing an image of the European Flag, Louise Rowntree, from London, thanked those who had hung it from the window of their house. While another clasped a 'keep calm and carry on' mug as thousands prepare to mark Brexit. 
And as well as the hundreds of Brexit events organised up and down the country, there are also several events designed for people to 'drown their sorrows' following the tight 2016 referendum. 
In London, Nigel Farage has organised a Brexit party in Parliament Square, and despite a ban on booze, live music and fireworks he insists it will be a stellar event.
Many will tune into Boris Johnson's address during celebrations this evening. In an address to be broadcast shortly before Britain's departure at 11pm, the Prime Minister will insist that Brexit marks 'not an end but a beginning'.
And in a sign of the new Government's changed approach, he will convene a symbolic Cabinet meeting this afternoon in Sunderland, the first city to declare for Brexit when the 2016 referendum results came out.
Tonight he will stress his belief that the referendum was a vote not just to leave the EU, but also for lasting change in neglected areas of the country. Mr Johnson will describe Brexit as 'the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act'. 
He will go on: 'It is a moment of real national renewal and change. This is the dawn of a new era in which we no longer accept that your life chances – your family's life chances – should depend on which part of the country you grow up in.'
At 11pm – midnight on the Continent – Britain will legally leave the EU and enter a 'transition period' which runs until December 31. During this time the UK will remain subject to EU laws and free movement of people will continue.
On Monday Mr Johnson will deliver a major speech setting out his approach to the Brexit talks as well as detailing his plans for a period of national renewal.
Sources said he would be 'very frank' about his aims for the negotiations with Brussels and his determination to allow Britain to 'diverge' from EU rules, even if that means the introduction of some trade barriers.
Mr Johnson will also warn that failure to strike a trade deal by the end of the year would lead to the introduction of tariffs on goods entering from the EU, such as German cars, French cheese and Italian wines.
One government source said: 'Theresa May made two crucial mistakes – she wasn't clear about what she wanted, and she wasn't clear that she was prepared to leave with or without a deal.
'We are not going to make those mistakes. We want a good free trade deal, without alignment, but we are prepared to leave without one if we have to.'
Mr Johnson will also reject calls for the EU to be given automatic rights to UK fishing grounds – and for the European Court of Justice to be the arbiter of disputes arising from a new trade deal.
Mr Johnson has ordered only low key events to mark Britain's departure tonight. Union flags have been put up in The Mall and around Parliament Square and there will be a countdown clock and light show in Downing Street.
A Number 10 spokesman said the Prime Minister would 'celebrate Brexit' with a small party for staff.
Are you having a Brexit Day party this evening? Send your pictures to freelance.pictures@mailonline.co.uk 
Traditionally when a new Commons Speaker is elected, they are physically dragged to their vast green leather chair by fellow MPs.
It's a ritual dating back to days of yore and relates to the occupant's duty to communicate the Commons' opinions to the monarch.
If ever a king or queen disliked the message, Speakers risked premature death at the hands of an executioner. As a result, people often required gentle persuasion to accept the post.
How times change. The position is now a plum posting.
John Bercow was dragged to the chair in 2009 but would've stomped barefoot over broken light-bulbs to have got there. He couldn't wait to park his rump on that plump cushion and start making his diminutive presence felt.
A replacement for Mr Bercow will be elected in due course - with favourites including his deputy Sir Lindsay Hoyle and former deputy prime minister Harriet Harman.
He will also resign as MP for Buckingham - a seat he has held for 22 years - which will be hotly contested in the general election this December. 
Judging by the obsequious send-off he was afforded at his final session of Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, a heavy-duty winch may now be required to remove him when he relinquishes his throne today.
Tributes slurped round the chamber like dollops of Lyle's Golden Syrup. In turn, His Speakership smiled bashfully, a flattened palm resting against a heavily blood-vesselled cheek.
Mainly though, he nodded his head like a pampered prince being slobbered over by a particularly gushing courtier. 'Quite so! Quite so!' How he will miss this weekly opportunity to self-preen.
For what is supposed to be a grilling of the Prime Minister increasingly became The John Bercow Show. Although the son of a down-to-earth London taxi-driver, somewhere along the way he has affected the manner and linguistic stylisms of a powder-wigged Regency fop.
Those who tune into PMQs will have noticed that for him no word is too opaque, no phrase in his peculiarly orotund repertoire is too ornate.
'I'm not remotely interested in your pettifogging objection chuntered inelegantly from a sedentary position,' has been a popular retort. Similarly, referring to male MPs as 'young man' – even those several years his senior.
Often such remarks are meant as put-downs, designed to humiliate. Regular targets are those on the government benches. During the general election debate, for example, he adopted a tone with Vicky Ford (Con, Chelmsford) which was so unnecessarily dismissive it made me wince. It may be no coincidence that Ford had previously objected to Bercow's behaviour.
Another complaint is that he allowed the half-hour PMQs slot to drag on. Yesterday, it lasted 75 minutes, surely a record.
Boris Johnson's tribute to the at-last-departing Speaker was a vial of cyanide wrapped inside a chocolate bon-bon. Sweet and lovely on the outside, pure poison in the middle.
He said the tennis-fan Speaker had presided not just as an umpire with a 'Tony Montana scowl' but as 'a player in his own right' – a reference to the Scarface mobster and an allusion to Bercow having overstepped the mark with his needless interferences.
Johnson noted how Bercow had spread his opinions like 'an uncontrollable tennis-ball machine delivering a series of literally unplayable and formally unreturnable volleys and smashes.' Translation: He's also a bully.
Also, his habit of letting sessions over-run and which had 'stretched time more than Stephen Hawking'. Johnson ribbed him, too, for failing to honour his pledge to stand down last year, saying Bercow's farewell had taken longer than Frank Sinatra's.
Bercow roared with laughter but then why not, as he was yet again the centre of attention.
Jeremy Corbyn predictably laid the grease on thick. He praised Bercow for his promotion of LBGT rights. There was a snippy mention of how he'd made the Commons less of a palatial club and he made an overly chummy reference to their mutual support of Arsenal Football Club.
Corbyn incidentally, was in pretty good voice, as he has been ever since deciding to back an election. Whether this was his eagerness for power or because he might be moved to quieter pastures by Christmas isn't yet clear.
To Michael Gove, September 2019:
I say to the Chancellor of the Duchy, that when he turns up at our school as a parent, he's a very well-behaved fellow. He wouldn't dare behave like that in front of [the school] and neither would I. Don't gesticulate, don't rant, spare us the theatrics, behave yourself. Be a good boy young man – be a good boy.
Blaming his wife for an anti-Brexit sticker on his car, January 2019:
I'm sure the honourable gentleman wouldn't suggest for one moment that a wife is somehow the property or chattel of her husband. She is entitled to her views, that sticker is not mine and that's the end of it.
Insulting Greg Hands, March 2019:
I don't require any help from the right honourable gentleman. I wouldn't have the foggiest idea where to start. He was once a whip, he wasn't a very good whip. It'd be better if he kept quiet.
Berating Esther McVey, March 2015: I am reminded of the feeling when one thinks the washing machine will stop – but it does not!
To two noisy MPs , June 2014: Can I say to Mr Robertson – you do have something of a lion's roar and it rather lets you down, because I can hear very clearly it's you. And as for you Mr Lucas, I've told you you need to go on some sort of therapeutic training course if you're to attain the level of statesmanship to which you aspire.
Scottish Nationalists' leader Ian Blackford said the tartan welcome mat would always be laid out for Bercow. Good old Blackers.
What a ludicrous braggard he is. He spoke as if he sits on Hadrian's Wall with a crown and sceptre deciding who comes in and out of Scotland.
A love-in followed with Sir Kenneth Clarke (Con, Rushcliffe). Appearing in his own last PMQs, he hoped Bercow's successor would live up to his 'considerable achievements'. Sir Ken didn't say he wished they would continue to thwart Brexit but that's what he meant. Bercow returned the compliment. 'I, for one, want to salute him. He is a great man.'
His Speakership spoke as if his own imprimatur was the highest accolade anyone could receive.
The Labour benches, who've delighted in Clarke's rudeness towards Boris since he became Prime Minister, burst into applause.
Gush followed gush.
John Bercow was Speaker of the House of Commons for more than 10 years. Here are some of his more controversial moments.
- He racked up a £172 bill being chauffeur-driven to a conference just 0.7 miles from Parliament.
- He also spent £367 taking a car to Luton to deliver a speech on how MPs were restoring their reputation after the expenses scandal.
- Mr Bercow spent thousands of pounds wining and dining fellow MPs - including more than £2,000 on a 'standing down' dinner for his former deputy.
- A taxpayer-funded £37,000 portrait of the Speaker led to accusations of 'vanity'.
- The official painting, by British artist Brendan Kelly, joined those of his predecessors going back to Sir Thomas More and featured a new coat of arms developed for Mr Bercow.
Plaid Cymru's Liz Saville-Roberts, with a voice like a sozzled duchess, murmured in Welsh: 'I do not think we will see your like again, and we will miss you in this House'. Many of us wondered what the Welsh was for 'pass the sickbag'. Ronnie Campbell (Lab, Blythe Valley) called Bercow a 'canny laddy'. Sir John Hayes (Con, South Holland and the Deeping) praised his 'encyclopaedic grasp of detail.'
Observing all this in the visitors' gallery were the Speaker's wife Sally and their three young children. When Bercow turned to address them, his voice quivered. 'I will never forget it,' he gurgled. 'And I will always be grateful for it.'
Cue more Labour applause. Add glissando violin strings. Gently fade out. Roll end credits.
All that was left was for the Speaker to announce he had appointed a new house chaplain to replace Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who is to be ordained as the Bishop of Dover. This was just days after he told MPs how he'd originally appointed Hudson-Wilkin despite opposition from 'various bigots and racists'.
With one final primp, he enunciated: 'I was right and they were wrong.'
How John Bercow would love that phrase to be carved in stone on a statue of himself. 
Bercow profile: Speaker known for his verbosity and patronising put downs who denied accusations of bias and bullying
John Bercow has been no stranger to the limelight in more than 10 years in the Speaker's chair.
The one-time Conservative MP for Buckingham, with a high-profile Labour-supporting wife, has made a catalogue of controversial comments since he took over the impartial role from Michael Martin.
He has survived attempts to remove him from the chair, including from former colleagues in the Tory party, revelations about his expenses and allegations of bullying, which he denied.
But it will be for his controversial interventions on the Brexit crisis, and the relish with which he seemed to make them, for which he will be best remembered.
Regular Parliament watchers may or may not miss his style, such as his bellowing shouts of 'order' and 'division, clear the lobby', but those quirks are what brought him international attention when the eyes of the world became fixed on the Commons throughout 2019.
As the Brexit debate raged and senior opposition figures played every trick in the parliamentary book to prevent the governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson from pursuing their preferred policies, Mr Bercow drew the ire of Eurosceptics for perceived bias.
He voted Remain, discussing it candidly with a group of students, but in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica denied this meant he had lost his impartiality.
'If I'm biased, I'm biased in favour of Parliament. Parliament being heard. Parliament having a right to speak. Parliament having time. Parliament being respected by the government of the day and indeed by the opposition,' he said.
Since being elected as the 157th Speaker of the House of Commons in June 2009, he has delivered many caustic put-downs. 
He had a fractious relationship with former Commons Leader, and now Business Secretary, Andrea Leadsom, after he was accused of calling her a 'stupid woman'.
His remarks from the chair include telling Labour's Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) she would have received an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) if her rowdy behaviour had taken place outside the Commons.
He made the joke in January 2017 as he sought to quieten the chamber to allow then prime minister Mrs May to respond to a question.
Later that month he was caught on microphone warning cabinet minister Sir Michael Fallon it would be 'stupid' to pick a fight with a senior MP.
He made the unguarded comment after the then defence secretary had been grilled about reports that a Trident ballistic missile veered off course during a test firing.
Mr Bercow has suggested yoga to several MPs, including Labour's Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) and Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley), while calling for calm during heated debates.
He admonished MPs for repeatedly asking for a tea break or whether they could use the toilet during a long-running Brexit debate.
His decision to strip parliamentary officials of their traditional wigs in 2017 was met with disapproval from a number of MPs.
In the last few years he has faced scrutiny of his expenses. In November 2015 it was revealed he had spent almost £20,000 of taxpayers' money to fly to a conference in Japan with an aide.
In February 2016 a freedom of information request revealed that he spent thousands of pounds wining and dining fellow MPs, plus almost £2,000 on a dinner with his Australian counterpart and hundreds of pounds to tune the grand piano in his apartments.
His office argued that the overall expenditure of the Speaker's Office had fallen during his tenure, from £626,029 in 2009/10 to £504,737 in 2015/16.
Born on January 19 1963, the son of a Jewish taxi driver, Mr Bercow went to school in Margaret Thatcher's Finchley constituency and first got involved as politics as a teenager.
He attended Essex University, where he gained a reputation as something of a firebrand, and became a member of the hardline Tory Monday Club, notorious for its 'hang Nelson Mandela' slogans, joining its Immigration and Repatriation Committee.
At the age of 20 he left the pressure group, saying some of its members' views about immigration were 'unpalatable'.
After a short spell at Hambros Bank, Mr Bercow embarked on a career as a lobbyist, serving as a councillor in Lambeth, south London, at the same time.
At the 1992 general election he stood unsuccessfully against Labour's Dawn Primarolo in Bristol South.
Three years later he went into politics full-time, becoming special adviser to chief secretary to the treasury Jonathan Aitken until his resignation, and then to heritage secretary Virginia Bottomley.
Mr Bercow finally secured a berth in the safe seat of Buckingham, and, despite Labour's landslide victory, entered Parliament at the 1997 general election.
He was made shadow chief secretary when Iain Duncan Smith became Tory leader in 2001 before quitting the Conservative front bench in November 2002.
He became Speaker following Labour MP Mr Martin's resignation and was re-elected twice, despite angering former Tory colleagues with his behaviour in the chair.
Nadine Dorries, his constituency near neighbour, was one of a handful of MPs who tried to have him removed in 2010. He was re-elected in 2015.
Mr Bercow married Sally Illman in 2002 and they have three children together.
The marriage has been a source of attention throughout his tenure, with his wife becoming a household name after posing for a photoshoot in Speaker's House draped in a sheet, and appearing on Celebrity Big Brother.
In 2015 she admitted she had been a 'terrible wife' amid reports of an affair with her husband's cousin.
Attention will now turn to what Mr Bercow will do next, with speculation focused on him becoming a reality TV star.
Bookmaker Coral have him at 4/5 to be a contestant on I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! and 10/1 to go on and win it.
There is also speculation that he will become an after-dinner speaker, with Ladbrokes offering odds of 1/10 on that career move taking place in the next 12 months.
William Hill is offering odds of 1/1 that Mr Bercow will have a number one selling book before the end of 2020, 20/1 that he will be the next Prime Minister, and 100/1 that he will be the next mayor of London.  
For those in despair over the lack of progress on Brexit, as our political class trade blows and the entire process becomes bogged down in a quagmire of their making, there is a small corner of a government department that they can turn to for cheer.
It is the office of Crawford Falconer, Chief Trade Negotiation Adviser at the Department of International Trade, a man of immense experience in such matters. And, in contrast to the doomsayers, his message about Brexit is one of almost unbounded optimism.
Rather than get het up about every scintilla of the negotiating process, he insists on looking at the bigger picture, saying: ‘Keep your eye on the end game.’
Thrive
He is convinced that after a period of psychological and economic adjustment to being outside the EU, Britain’s fortunes will thrive. He cannot understand why people are ‘so negative about our future’, and says the world is ‘begging’ to do trade deals with us.
Some will scoff, of course, saying his upbeat comments are simply the pipedream of a pro-Brexit ideologue.
But that could not be further from the truth. For Falconer is a man with 25 years of experience in international trade negotiations. He was New Zealand’s ambassador in Britain (although born in Scotland, he was brought up a Kiwi), as well as his adopted country’s permanent representative to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
His knowledge of the working of the Geneva-based organisation is crucial, considering its role trying to tear down trade barriers, lower tariffs and resolve commercial disputes between nations. Indeed, the fact is that if Britain leaves the EU without a deal, all our world trade relationships will be in the hands of the WTO.
Yet his verdict on a post-Brexit Britain could not be more upbeat.
‘The opportunities are enormous,’ he told the Sunday Times. ‘There are so many, where do I start? In ten years, maybe even quicker, people will look back and say: “Oh, why were we so negative about our future?” ’
Nor is his optimism dimmed by Mrs May’s Chequers deal. He believes that once outside the EU, whether after a soft or a hard Brexit, the Government will be much better placed than the doom-mongers behind Project Fear claim.
He says we’ll benefit from a ‘change of direction’ — not least because Brexit has forced businesses to focus on the potential of selling services and goods outside the EU.
Indeed, his enthusiasm is so infectious it makes you think that if he was in charge of Brexit, the whole thing would be wrapped up by now.
And far from being pie-in-the-sky, his reasoning is based on solid evidence.
The Washington-based International Monetary Fund forecasts that over the next ten to 15 years almost all significant global growth will originate outside Europe.
By 2020, China’s middle class — who are powerful engines of economic growth — will have expanded to 600 million people. India’s already numbers up to 300 million. It is estimated there will be 1.1 billion African middle classes by 2060.
Envied
Those populations, Falconer explains, will be desperate for British services and goods.
‘The world is the UK’s oyster,’ he says. ‘We produce the best professional services in the world. Our banks are the best in the world. Our insurance companies the most reliable. Our architects, our designers, our lawyers, our accountants: they are world-class.
‘We have intellectual property rights to die for. It is these services that the fastest-growing economies in Asia and Africa crave. The world is begging for the UK to be able to trade with it. We’ll be pushing on an open door.’
He sees huge export opportunities in goods from cars to aircraft wings and foodstuffs. ‘The world is crying out for protein and safe food generally. In East Asia, that’s what they want. They don’t trust their domestic production, with good reason. The UK makes world-class produce. We can now negotiate with countries in a way that’s specifically tailored to getting our salmon and our venison on tables.’
He’s right. Even amid the present political stalemate, Britain’s exports of professional and financial services to the rest of the world (including the EU) climbed from £36.9 bn in the first quarter of 2017 to £37.8 bn in the same three months of this year.
As well as a being a powerhouse for financial services, Britain is home to Europe’s top four research universities and dominates in sectors such as popular music, computer gaming, video and publishing.
We’re world-beaters in pharmaceutical and aerospace research. Our technology know-how is envied across the globe, with Chinese, Japanese and American digital firms constantly on the prowl to buy our leading innovative firms.
In the past six months, Chinese firms have invested £1.7 bn in UK technology.
Every businessman or woman worth their salt is fully aware of the opportunities available by exploiting this huge competitive advantage.
And Dr Liam Fox and his Department of International Trade colleagues are determined to do so. Post-Brexit, they argue, Britain can take advantage of all this.
Of course, following two world wars, Britain has benefited hugely in economic terms by sharing trade interests with other members of the EU.
But the fact is that, despite Brussels bravado about the efficacy of a Single Market, EU member states have suffered over recent years because their Brussels rule-setters have been too inward-looking. They are obsessed by trade within the EU — to the detriment of the potential of wider possibilities across the whole world.
In contrast, the Department of International Trade looks outwards. In pursuit of the deals Britain must strike post-Brexit, Fox has travelled more than 300,000 miles. He may be mocked for trying to woo trade partners by giving them Union Jack cufflinks, but this ignores the hard work that his senior officials such as Crawford Falconer have been doing.
Bluster
Their outward-looking drive is vital at a time when Donald Trump has launched an international trade war by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods and taxes on imports such as steel and aluminium from EU countries. Indeed, the fear is that we are heading for trade wars on a scale not seen since the Thirties.
I am not so pessimistic. Too few people realise that behind all his bluster, Trump’s goal is not to sabotage the world’s trading system but to spark a new round of negotiations which will lead to tariffs being reduced in the long run.
Indeed, his policy is already having success. China and India have lowered tariff barriers in response to his threats.
Meanwhile, German car manufacturers have made it clear they want to negotiate tariff-free trade between the U.S. and Europe for motor vehicles.
The shape of global trade is changing before our eyes — and it is trade outside Europe that we must encourage.
Anyone who listens to those who want the UK to stay in the EU would think that Brexit was a crazy act of self-harm.
The truth is otherwise. Ever since the Brexit vote, our economy has prospered. Unemployment is at its lowest level since the Seventies.
Freed at last from the shackles of Brussels, what Dr Liam Fox and Crawford Falconer want is for Britain to seize the ‘enormous opportunities’ ahead. And for our political leaders to stop all their squabbling.
 
Unelected peers will today launch their ‘most dangerous’ attempt yet to derail Brexit as they seek to snatch negotiating powers from ministers.
Eurosceptics last night warned that proposed amendments to the Government’s flagship Brexit legislation would give MPs and peers the chance to call a second referendum before the country leaves the EU.
A Government source said the votes in the Lords risked making it ‘the most dangerous day yet for Brexit’, with a raft of ‘very concerning’ motions. 
Ministers fear they will suffer defeat on a Liberal Democrat amendment requiring votes in the Lords and Commons on whether to hold a second referendum before Brexit is finalised after Labour last night said it would abstain.
Tory sources said Labour was giving ‘tacit support’ for another Brexit vote by failing to oppose the amendment.
Meanwhile, Labour peers will back an amendment tabled by Tory former Cabinet minister Douglas Hogg – now Viscount Hailsham – that would block the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without a deal.
Ministers have promised MPs will get a ‘take it or leave it’ vote on the final deal, which would mean if they rejected it the country would still leave – just without an agreement with Brussels.
However, the amendment would allow the Commons to decide what course of action the Government should take in the event of Parliament rejecting the draft withdrawal agreement. 
This opens the possibility that they could send ministers back to the negotiating table or even cancel Brexit.
Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer yesterday boasted that this would stop the chances of a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
‘This is one of the most important amendments of the entire Brexit process – and indeed of the parliament,’ he told the Observer. 
‘We have always been clear that the vote must be truly meaningful. It cannot simply be a take it or leave it choice as the Prime Minister has suggested.
‘This amendment, which has cross-party support, would provide a safety net in the Brexit process. 
'It would remove the possibility of a “No” vote leading to a no-deal. It would bring back control to Parliament.’
Lord Callanan, the Brexit Minister in the Lords, said: ‘This flawed amendment seeks to tie our hands by inserting false deadlines and shifting the power to negotiate from Government to Parliament. 
'It asks for meaningless votes on the deal before the deal is done.
‘Those who want to overturn the referendum call this the “no Brexit” amendment. 
'The Conservatives are taking the scrutinising role of Parliament seriously, to improve an essential piece of legislation. Labour are using it to frustrate Brexit.’
Remain-backing peers have so far inflicted six defeats on the EU Withdrawal Bill, which proposes powers for ministers to change regulations with limited parliamentary scrutiny.
Ministers argue the powers are needed to ensure that thousands of EU regulations are transferred on to the UK’s statute book before Brexit. 
But peers are using amendments to the Bill in a bid to soften the Government’s negotiating stance, including inflicting a defeat earlier this month on the issue of leaving the customs union.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the Tory backbench European Research Group, warned last week that peers risked voting themselves into extinction by attempting to thwart Brexit.
He said the defeats on the legislation preparing for Brexit were a case of the ‘peers against the people’ and that they ‘have to decide whether they love ermine or the EU more’.
‘They are trying to stop the largest ever public vote in our history,’ he said. ‘We are in a position of peers against the people.
‘It is deeply unattractive and I think it is the weakest position for the House of Lords to be in.
‘There is a problem with the House of Lords in that it is very condescending towards the democratic vote. 
'They seem to think that they know better than 17.4million people.’
The petition to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit has hit five million signatures, a day after a reported million people marched through London to demand a new referendum. 
The online movement is now the most popular petition on record as the revolt against Brexit gains momentum amid the chaos of Theresa May's EU negotiations.   
By Sunday afternoon it had more than 5,010,000 signatures, surpassing a 2016 petition calling for a second vote, and the website has already crashed repeatedly.  
Mrs May has already rejected the petition, which warns that a second referendum or People's Vote may never happen and calls on Remainers to 'prove the strength of public support' for cancelling Brexit.  
Demands for a referendum have grown as supporters of a People's Vote claim it is the only way out of the current deadlock in Parliament. 
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn has long been cautious of backing a second vote, demanding a general election instead, and last week ordered his MPs to abstain on a Commons motion calling for a referendum.
Yesterday organisers of the Put it to the People march claimed one million people joined the peaceful procession through the capital. 
The reported crowd size, which has not been confirmed by police, would be the largest demonstration since protests against the Iraq War in 2003. 
Marchers waving EU flags and carrying their placards emblazoned with political messages weaved their way from Hyde Park Corner to Parliament Square on Saturday as AC/DC's Highway to Hell blared out.
Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson accused the Prime Minister of having 'lost control' of the Brexit process and said he could only back her deal if 'you let the people vote on it too'. 
Former Conservative, now Independent, MP Anna Soubry urged her parliamentary colleagues to 'put your country first, get into the lobbies and vote for a People's vote'.
Also addressing the crowds, Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, called for Article 50 to be withdrawn.  
Large screens positioned along Whitehall told people how to text and tweet support for a People's Vote and a series of supportive video messages were played from celebrities including Stephen Fry and Gary Lineker.
In Parliament Square, a giant banner was unfurled above the crowd carrying a quote by leading Brexiteer David Davis: 'If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.'  
Campaigners arrived in the capital from across the country, with one taking on a 715-mile journey on ferries, trains and buses from Orkney in Scotland.  
Meanwhile by Sunday afternoon the Remainer petition had beaten the record for the most-signed petition since the online system began in 2006. 
It surpassed a 2016 effort to call a new referendum if there was not a sufficiently large majority for Remain or Leave in the first one. That petition received 4.2million signatures. 
Another 2016 petition, urging ministers not to invite Donald Trump for a state visit to the UK, is the third-most signed on record with 1.9million. 
A similar petition in 2015 mockingly called for Trump to be barred from the UK after he suggested Muslims would be banned from the United States.  
Parliament's petitions committee said nearly 2,000 signatures on the Revoke Article 50 page were being completed every minute over Thursday lunchtime. 
Data from the petition website shows some users have signed it from abroad but the committee said UK citizens living abroad were entitled to join it.  
Saturday's demonstrations follow EU leaders agreeing to delay Brexit to give Prime Minister Theresa May a final chance to get her deal through Parliament.
Leaders agreed to extend Brexit to May 22 if Mrs May can get MPs to back her deal in the Commons at the third time of asking.
If the vote is not passed, the UK will have to set out an alternative way forward by April 12, which could mean a much longer delay - with the UK required to hold elections to the European Parliament - or leaving with no deal.   
Here we go again. The rhetoric of Scottish nationalism is one of the most dreary, repetitive and grindingly predictable sounds in British politics.
It is like the broken record of a dull Caledonian folk song, permanently stuck in its groove as it plays the same old dirge, laden with victimhood and hostility to England.
The Nationalists’ Chief Balladeer, Nicola Sturgeon, is indulging in her favourite routine of demanding another independence referendum.
Oozing her usual mix of petulant grievance and separatist menace, she claimed that — despite the Nationalist case having been rejected just three years ago — a new vote is justified because Brexit has transformed the constitutional landscape of the UK.
The central theme was that London believes Scotland’s voice ‘can be ignored at any time and on any issue’.
If only. Successive British Governments have bent over backwards to appease the Scots, to no avail. Despite devolution, massive subsidies and an independence referendum, the Nationalists refuse to be satisfied.
Disruption
There was also a deep cynicism about Sturgeon’s timing yesterday. For she made her speech on the very day the Commons was set to pass the legislation to trigger Article 50, paving the way for the start of Britain’s EU withdrawal.
Her obvious short-term aim is to cause the maximum possible disruption in the Brexit process, using the threat of separation to blackmail the Government into granting exceptional concessions to Scotland, including the possibility of continued membership of the Single Market.
Her theory is that Theresa May — battling the EU and Remainer elements in her own party — will not want to fight on a third front. But the idea of a separate Single Market deal is clearly unworkable. A unified nation cannot operate with different sets of trading and customs arrangements.
And it is ridiculous of Sturgeon to suggest the referendum could be held as early as autumn 2018, before the end of Brexit negotiations. How can Scots make an informed choice when the details have not even been decided?
Just as cynical is Sturgeon’s abandonment of her own past pledges not to hold another referendum. The vote in 2014, her party stressed, was a ‘once in a generation event’.
Sturgeon herself said: ‘The politicians have to respect the democratic wishes of the people.’ But that is exactly what she is now failing to do.
In her desperation to break with England, she mirrors the stance of the EU oligarchy she worships. As the EU did with regard to constitutional referendums in France and Ireland, she wants to keep asking the same question until she gets the right answer.
There is no sign another referendum will produce a different response. According to one poll yesterday, independence would again be defeated, this time by 52 to 48 per cent.
Nor, contrary to Sturgeon’s shrill propaganda, is there any evidence that the Scots actually want another vote.
A study for the Scottish Herald newspaper showed that 49 per cent reject the idea of a second referendum, while only 39 per cent want one.
But then Sturgeon’s entire stance is riddled with hypocrisies and contradictions.
She portrays the desire of the majority of the British electorate for freedom from the EU as a dark, socially divisive force, calling Brexit ‘a licence for xenophobia’. Yet she paints her own wish to abandon the British Union as progressive and inclusive.
So, in SNP Orwellian double-think, English national pride equals bigotry, whereas Scottish pride equals liberation.
Equally absurd is her demand to stay in the European Single Market — while seeking to leave the British Single Market, which is far more lucrative to Scotland. Such a move would hammer the Scottish economy purely for the sake of her pro-EU ideology.
The latest statistics show that Scotland’s trade with the UK is worth four times more than its exports to the EU. Altogether, Scotland sold £49.8 billion of goods and services to the rest of the UK in 2015, compared with £12.3 billion to the other EU nations.
As Brexit is implemented, Britain will trade ever more intensively on the global stage. Yet the SNP, cocooned by federalist dogma, wants to cut Scotland off from these new commercial opportunities.
Not that the EU is likely to embrace an independent Scotland. It would have to apply for membership from scratch. And the process for an SNP-led Scotland would be far from straightforward.
Other EU states, particularly Spain, France and Belgium, will not be keen to encourage separatist movements within their own territories.
Moreover, the dire state of Scotland’s economy would preclude it from becoming an independent EU member. Brussels rules state that no member is meant to have a deficit higher than 3 per cent of gross domestic product. Scotland’s deficit last August was £15 billion — or 9.5 per cent of GDP. This is more than double the rest of the UK.
The stark reality is that Scotland is hopelessly ill-equipped for independence.
Dependency
Ironically, the land that once produced the great economist Adam Smith — apostle of the free market — is gripped by debt, decay and dependency. Enterprise is too weak and state expenditure too high, running at a fifth higher per head than in England.
Almost 21 per cent of the Scottish workforce is in the public sector, compared with 14.9 per cent in the south-east of England. Revenues from North Sea oil, which the SNP once eagerly cited as a prop for their cause, is drying up fast.
Four years ago, Scotland’s tax share of the profits from the North Sea stood at £11 billion. Even in 2014/15 the total was £1.8 billion. But last year, the amount in tax receipts was just £60 million, smashing one of the key economic arguments for independence.
Without England, Scotland would be bankrupt.
Even the SNP government in Edinburgh admits that it spends £127 for every £100 it raises in taxation.
It is this largesse from English taxpayers that enables Scotland to continue its reckless quasi-socialist experiment in profligacy. Only cash from the English allows Scotland to have free university tuition and personal care for the elderly, as well as no road tolls or NHS prescription charges.
In fact, thanks to the funds from south of the border, NHS spending in Scotland has been 15 per cent higher than in England over the past seven years.
No longer bankrolled by England, Scotland would face economic meltdown, unable to raise money on the international markets because of its lack of fiscal credibility.
Freeloader
Some Nationalists claim independence would be little different to Brexit, since both involve departures from political unions. But in economic terms, the crucial difference is the UK is a major net contributor to the EU. By contrast, failing Scotland is an ever more expensive freeloader.
Perhaps the greatest mistake Sturgeon makes is to overestimate how much the English care what she thinks. She is delusional if she believes her threat of another referendum will give the London Government pause over Brexit.
And increasing numbers of English people are fed up with paying for subsidies to Edinburgh while being lectured by the SNP about their supposed oppression and neglect.
For Scots, meanwhile, the case for remaining in the Union is stronger than ever. Even if their country could stand on its own two feet economically, there is little doubt it would be better off as part of our Union — one of the greatest success stories of history, that has seen us together build a vast empire, and allowed Scottish genius — from the Enlightenment to the Empire to modern times — to shine brighter on a global stage than ever before.
The case for our United Kingdom is, and always will be, far more powerful than Nicola Sturgeon’s divisive rhetoric.
 
London Mayor Sadiq Khan is facing a backlash after being accused of ‘politicising’ the capital’s new year fireworks display with a pro-EU message.
The £2.3million taxpayer-funded extravaganza saw the London Eye transformed into an EU flag in an apparent tribute to Brussels.
And Remainer Mr Khan announced ‘London is open’ two minutes into the new year – with the phrase repeated in Spanish, Polish, French, Romanian, German and Italian.
An 11-minute soundtrack to the pyrotechnics also included songs by European artists with titles such as We Are Your Friends, Stay and Don’t Leave Me Alone.
Mr Khan said politicians in Westminster had given ‘the impression we’re insular, inward looking, not welcoming to Europeans’ and the display would show the world ‘while they’re watching us, that we’re going to carry on being open-minded, outward looking, pluralistic’ after Brexit.
Some people were supportive, with one tweeting: ‘If he wants to tell the world that London is open for business good for him.’
However, Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said : ‘It’s low, it’s very low to politicise what is an international public event. It’s a betrayal of democracy and it’s what we have come to expect from a very poor mayor of London.’ 
Former MEP Roger Helmer tweeted: ‘While the UK is locked in critical negotiations with Brussels, Sadiq Khan chooses to display the other side’s flag on the London Eye. Would he have shown an Argentinian flag during the Falklands War?’
London Assembly member David Kurten added: ‘He knows he will lose a lot of votes in the next London Mayoral elections as EU nationals will no longer have the vote after Brexit Day.’
Mr Khan has previously expressed his backing for a second referendum and has voiced his concerns over the effects of a no-deal Brexit on the capital.
LONDON rang in the New Year with a soundtrack that appeared to highlight links between Europe and the UK. The playlist included:
÷ Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin – the French superstar singer and actor performs alongside the English actress
÷ We Are Your Friends by Justice vs Simian – a French duo covers a song by Simian, a Manchester rock band
÷ Don’t Leave Me Alone by David Guetta featuring Anne-Marie – chart-topping French DJ with singer from Essex
÷ Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall by Coldplay vs Swedish House Mafia – British rock band joins forces with a house music trio
 
Tickets to the sold-out display cost £10 each, raising about £950,000. It is also estimated that it will bring a £6.5million economic boost to London.    
Mr Khan defended his decision to light up the London Eye to resemble the EU flag last night despite coming under heavy criticism. 
He tweeted: 'Our spectacular #LondonNYE fireworks showed that whatever the outcome of Brexit - #LondonIsOpen - to business, talent, ideas & creativity - and why London really is the greatest city in the world.' 
He later told Sky News: 'As we bring 2019 it’s an opportunity for us to celebrate the contribution made to our city by Europeans.
'Here in London we have more than a million Londoners who are EU citizens and we should reflect on that.'  
 Mr Khan was accused of 'absolute disrespect' and of 'shoving his political views in the faces' of the 17.4million voters who chose to leave in the 2016 Referendum as people vented their fury on social media. 
Twitter user Kevin William Hayes branded the Labour politician a 'd***' and said the mayor was being 'crass' as Gary Fitzsimmons said it was 'highly inappropriate for Sadiq Khan to use tax payers' money to turn the Lonodn Eye into a giant EU flag'. 
But some backed the move, with some pointing that the capital itself voted overwhelmingly to remain in the bloc. Victoria Browne congratulated Mr Khan for 'celebrating the UK but also acknowledging our close ties with the EU' ahead of Britain's exit.
  The words 'London is open' rang in the new year as the capital welcomed 2019 with a dazzling riverside fireworks display.
The phrase was spoken in seven languages around two minutes past midnight as the city skyline filled with lights in the largest annual display in Europe.
A soundtrack featuring Europe's finest musical artists celebrated the diversity of the capital, after Big Ben, silent for much of 2018 due to renovations, chimed once more.  
Khan said the sold-out display would show Europe that the capital will remain 'open-minded' and 'outward looking' post-Brexit.
He said Westminster politicians had given the world the impression that Britain is 'insular, inward looking', as Britain begins the new year countdown to Brexit.
Mr Khan said he hoped this year's event would 'send a message of support' to the more than one million European citizens for whom London is home.  
He has previously expressed his backing for a People's Vote and has voiced his concerns over the effects of a no-deal Brexit on the capital.
'One of the things which upset many, many Londoners and many people across our country and in Europe is the tone and language used by politicians in Westminster, giving the impression we're insular, inward looking, not welcoming to Europeans,' he said. 'I think the Government's made a mess of negotiations with the European Union.
'Bearing in mind Parliament can't resolve the issue of how we will leave the European Union, we should allow the public to take back control with the option of staying in European Union, or accepting the deal made by the government.'
He vowed that London would remain the same after March 29 2019, and said the fireworks display was about 'showing the world, while they're watching us, that we're going to carry on being open-minded, outward looking, pluralistic'.
Some 100,000 ticket-holders lined the banks of the Thames to watch 70,000 projectiles made up of eight tonnes of fireworks fire into the sky from three barges and the London Eye. 
Mr Khan continued: 'We, in my opinion, are one of the greatest cities in the world, one of the reason we are one of the greatest cities in the world is because of the contribution made by Europeans. I think diversity is a strength and I think what tonight is about is celebrating that diversity.
'I hope that members of Parliament, members of the Government will see the fireworks tonight, will listen to the soundtrack and will reflect on what sort of country they want to live in post-March.' 
Around 75,000 party-goers gathered in the centre of Edinburgh, in the shadow of the city's castle, where the devolved government also to celebrate its ties with Europe.
Bands, DJs, street performers, dancers and acrobats from Scotland and mainland Europe all performed at the open air event.
Revellers enjoyed music across three stages, with Scottish favourite Gerry Cinnamon appearing on the Waverley stage, Judge Jules and the Mac Twins leading the DJ stage in Castle Street, while Elephant Sessions took to the stage in South St David Street.
Meanwhile, Franz Ferdinand, supported by Metronomy and Free Love, headlined the Concert in the Gardens at the foot of Castle Rock, while some of the country's top ceilidh bands played at Ceilidh under the Castle. 
First in the queue to see Franz Ferdinand were Jessica Cassino, 37, from Brooklyn, New York, and 28-year-old Alina Entelis, from Israel.
Ms Cassino said: 'I love Franz Ferdinand. Edinburgh's beautiful, I love it. I'll be back next year.'
Ms Entelis, who is currently studying in London, said: 'When I started looking at the Franz Ferdinand concert, I saw a bunch of other events going on. I was participating in the Torchlight Procession on Sunday and I loved it.
'I feel like Edinburgh is the best place to be on New Year's Eve right now. Everybody is jealous of me back home. I've been here once before and I loved it and I was really looking forward to coming back.
'I think it's magical and I've recommended it to a bunch of my friends.' The crowd featured first time vistors, return visitors and those with family links to Scotland.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
It was the first time in Edinburgh for couple Myriam Malquin, 25, and David Maheo, 26, from Brittany in France.
Mr Maheo told Press Association Scotland: 'We wanted to go to a European capital for New Year. We saw that there was a big party in Edinburgh, so we came. It's great. It's very interesting to see the castle, all the buildings.'
Georgina McGuire, 26, from Woking in Surrey, praised the friendliness of the local residents. 'I love Edinburgh - there are good vibes and lots of sparkle. Everyone is so friendly,' she said.
Michelle Rossiter, 30, a speech therapist from Sydney, currently working in London, said: 'My heritage is from Scotland, my grandmother, that's why I'm here.
'We've already met some Scottish people, some Edinburgh locals, and they're all really friendly.
'Sydney has some pretty good fireworks, and I am looking forward to fireworks over the castle, but the concert, definitely, is the main thing I'm excited about.'
The weather was windy but stayed dry as for the festivities. Elsewhere in Scotland, Inverness hosted Scotland's biggest free Hogmanay event, while celebrations also took place in centres such as Aberdeen and Stirling.
The Scottish capital's three-day festival of events to mark the start of 2019 opened on Sunday with the traditional torchlight procession, culminating in Holyrood Park where the outline of Scotland was lit up.
The festivities are set to continue on New Year's Day when hardy people plunge into the chilly waters of the Firth of Forth in the Loony Dook at South Queensferry.
Also on January 1, buildings across the Scottish capital will be illuminated by 'love letters to Europe' from six writers, Billy Letford, Chitra Ramaswamy, Kapka Kassabova, Louise Welsh, Stef Smith and William Dalrymple.
Co-commissioned with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, it runs until January 25.
A report out earlier this year found that the economic impact of Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations on the city was more than £39 million.
A study for organisers Underbelly noted that 165,994 people from 80 countries attended last year's programme of events to welcome in the new year.
Scotland's Europe Minister, Ben Macpherson, said: 'Edinburgh is one of the world's best known cities for bringing in the New Year. Few places celebrate quite like Scotland - the home of the world-renowned Hogmanay celebrations.
'Scotland's ties with our European and international friends and neighbours stretch back many centuries, and this year's celebrations reflect those ties of friendship, business, culture and commerce - strong ties that the Scottish Government and so many others are determined to see endure, whatever the New Year holds in terms of the Brexit process.' 
With each passing day, it becomes abundantly clear the bull-headed intransigence of the EU negotiators is a deliberate policy to try to sabotage Brexit.
There is a determination by politicians in Brussels, Paris and even Berlin to make the process of Britain’s departure from the EU so difficult, disruptive and expensive that the British people might think again and demand the opportunity to reverse last year’s referendum decision.
Of course, it is no surprise Brussels panjandrums such as Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier arrogantly think they can browbeat 17 million Britons to decide that Brexit might not be such a good idea after all.
For they and their unelected predecessors based in the European Commission’s Brussels HQ, where they are served by 33,000 taxpayer-funded bureaucrats, have a successful record in reversing the will of European citizens.
On several occasions, they have persuaded member states to overturn referendums because the results interfered with grand plans to create a European superstate.
For example, the Danish people voted in 1992 against ratifying the Maastricht Treaty, which set out terms for greater European integration. This was the ‘wrong’ decision in Brussels’ eyes, and so a second vote had to be held after a shabby compromise deal in order to get the ‘right’ result.
Ruthless
The Irish were the next fall guys. In 2008, they rejected the Lisbon Treaty (which created the framework for today’s EU), but were successfully persuaded to think again.
Even the French were bludgeoned into line after they initially rejected the case for a European-wide constitution in a referendum in 2005.
Days later, the Dutch also rebuffed the plan in their own referendum. In panic, Brussels forced France to renegotiate and then adopt the proposal without another vote.
Many furious French voters believed their wishes, which they had made clear in the 2005 vote, had been ignored.
In sum, Brussels won the day by using bullying tactics based on the belief that the people of Europe have no right to obstruct politicians’ dream for a European superstate.
Such ruthless tactics are the Commission’s main weapon.
Indeed, the way it treats dissension was recently evident in Brussels’ response to Spanish police ripping out ballot boxes and beating up pensioners as they tried to stop Catalans exercising their right to vote in an independence referendum.
The European Commission said ‘proportionate use of force’ was necessary to uphold the rule of law.
So far, the pressure being applied on Britain to make Brexit as difficult as possible has been less extreme, but I fear now that Brussels is cranking up the intimidation.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say we are witnessing a new Project Fear. Instead of the shameless propaganda exercise designed by then Chancellor George Osborne during the EU referendum campaign, in which Remainers prophesied Armageddon if we withdrew, this is now being orchestrated in Brussels.
Yesterday, the head of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) used grotesquely inflammatory language to describe Brexit.
Angel Gurria, the Mexican Secretary-General of the notionally independent think-tank, likened the impact to the Blitz — the savage bombing by the German Luftwaffe between September 1940 and May 1941, which destroyed one-third of London and killed 32,000 British citizens.
Realising the offensiveness of his remarks, Gurria added: ‘. . . except fortunately not the Blitz.’ What an outrageous view from the head of an organisation whose mission is ‘to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world’.
Clearly, such scaremongering is spread by EU cheerleaders who think they can grind down the British people and force a second referendum.
Indeed, Juncker and his cronies are cynically trying to exploit what they see as Theresa May’s weak and divided government.
However, even though they must know it in their heart — and Juncker conceded as much last week when he heaped praise on Britain for its role in World War II — these hectoring Eurocrats appear to have forgotten the sheer fortitude of the British people.
Spirit
Faced with annihilation by the Nazis and inspired by Winston Churchill, the British people refused to be intimidated and fought back to win a war of attrition.
That spirit remains.
Indeed, Juncker, who said on Friday the UK would ‘have to pay’ for talks to advance, has a fight on his hands.
That fight has become even tougher in view of the fact that Mrs May’s hopes of Angela Merkel showing more sympathy to Britain have been dashed. The German leader insists: ‘In is in and out is out.’ Meanwhile, leaders of the 27 remaining EU countries ignore the fact that they will suffer as a result of Britain leaving and that it is in their own interests to ease our departure.
The truth is, the EU needs our money. That is why Juncker & Co are demanding a Brexit divorce bill of 50 billion euros. The EU needs our soldiers and our spies, too.
Above all, it needs to learn from our economy, which is the greatest job creation machine across the EU. Our unemployment rate is just 4.3 per cent — half the 9.5 per cent in France. Although economic expansion has slowed in 2017, over the past few years the UK has been the fastest-growing advanced economy.
No wonder those Brussels pygmies are convinced their strongest weapon in their battle to stop Britain leaving their cosy club is by asking for a scandalously punitive sum as the price.
Most reasonably, Mrs May — fully aware of hostility here towards the New Project Fear and the fact the extra money is designed to cover future pension liabilities of Brussels bureaucrats — does not want to go much beyond paying a £20 billion Brexit divorce bill.
For their part, the EU’s Brexit negotiators are convinced they have their British counterparts in a stranglehold because Mrs May is committed to fiscal responsibility and wants to eliminate the budget deficit by 2025. An inflated divorce bill would break those intentions to smithereens.
Defiance
Thus Brussels is counting on the Government failing to achieve an acceptable Brexit deal and then having to present this bad deal to Parliament. Brussels would hope that, faced with an unsatisfactory deal, MPs would reject it — therefore sabotaging Brexit.
The next move in this cynical gameplan would be for a humbled UK Government to go back to the British people with a second referendum — which would vote Remain.
And so, just as happened with the Danes, French, Irish and Dutch, the unelected Brussels machine would have destroyed the democratic wishes of millions of people.
This is why, rather than be blackmailed into submission — in the words of Brussels’ OECD lickspittles — Britain’s negotiating team needs to show the kind of defiance as exemplified in the Blitz.
If ever there was a time for the country to reignite that spirit and come together behind the Government and this country’s precious democratic institutions, it is now. 
French President Emmanuel Macron today warned the EU's unity was more important than ties with Brexit Britain.
Mr Macron insisted France wanted a 'strong, special relationship' with the UK after it quits the EU in March but said this could not be at the 'cost' of the bloc unravelling. 
The intervention, in a major foreign policy speech at the Elysee Palace, are a blow for Theresa May who has fought for Mr Macron's support in the Brexit negotiations.
Mrs May cut short the first leg of her summer holidays for talks with Mr Macron at his holiday home in the south of France.
But in a 90 minute address to French diplomats today, the President said: 'France wants to maintain a strong, special relationship with London but not if the cost is the European Union's unravelling.'
Brexit, Mr Macron said, 'is a sovereign choice, which we must respect, but it can't come at the expense of the European Union's integrity'.
Outlining his diplomatic priorities for the year ahead, Mr Macron made no major policy shifts, but spoke forcefully on what he labelled the 'crisis of multilateralism' and the need to make Europe more 'sovereign'.
He called on Europe to be 'a trade and economic power', which defends its strategic interests and financial independence with tools that can fend off U.S. extraterritorial sanctions.
'Multilateralism is going through a major crisis which collides with all our diplomatic activity, above all because of U.S. policy,' he said.
'The partner with whom Europe built the new post-World War order appears to be turning its back on this shared history,' he said. 
The Prime Minister has ordered her Cabinet to meet on September 13 to work out a plan for critical areas not yet covered by no deal plans. 
Mrs May has called her no deal crisis summit amid fears the row between Brexiteers and Remainers is undermining negotiations with Brussels.
The meeting comes as Dominic Raab risked a Cabinet row with Philip Hammond after questioning the worth of economic forecasts about Brexit, days after the Chancellor warned that no deal could cause major damage.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, the Brexit Secretary said that some projections needed to be treated with 'a measure of caution', adding that GDP estimates for 2019 'have been revised up.
Mr Hammond was accused of launching a 'dodgy Project Fear' on Thursday when he suggested that GDP could fall and borrowing could be around £80 billion a year under a scenario in which Britain resorted to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms after a no-deal Brexit.
Without naming Mr Hammond, Mr Raab told the Sunday Times: 'I'm always chary of any forecast because most of them have been proved to be wrong.'
These are some of the key features of the Chequers plan being pushed by the UK government:
 
John Redwood flung wide his arms, nearly biffing his neighbour Alberto Costa. 
Speaking of ‘this once and future sovereign parliament!’ he yelled ‘it will be a great day’ when we leave the EU. 
Honorary Members were astonished by Mr Redwood’s uncharacteristically peppery peroration. Frank Spencer had turned into Superman.
Gesturing at the glum Remainers, Mr Redwood cried: ‘What is it about freedom they don’t like?’ It was the Second Reading of the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. Make that the European Union (Yup, We’re Really Off) Bill. 
Old Sir Bill Cash (Con, Stone), a tremendous prophet of Euroscepticism, became emotional, his voice thickening as he quoted William Pitt’s ‘England has saved herself by her exertions’.
Eurosceptics pinched themselves that the parliamentary Brexit process was at last under way. Remainers wore frowns. Pouts. Crossed arms. 
Chris Matheson (Lab, Chester) sat in a slump. Wes Streeting (Lab, Ilford N), such a brave little boy, was doing a lot of blinking. 
Nicky Morgan (Con, Loughborough) could have been modelling for a Pieta, her dark-rimmed eyes thrown to a distant ceiling cornice.
The speech of Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer needed the soundtrack of a single, muffled church-bell, its toll summoning mourners to a winter afternoon’s country burial. Sir Keir had the mien of a basset hound as he finally swallowed the inevitable. 
The lawyerly argument about the EU referendum being merely ‘advisory’ was a political non-starter, he conceded. ‘It holds no water.’ A Trollopian spinster might at this point have succumbed to a melodramatic faint.
A diminishing handful of pro-Brussels partisans still held out the fragile hope we might yet stay in the Union. Ken Clarke and Nick Clegg hinted at that. Mr Clegg attacked the Eurosceptic ‘elite’. Ha! That earned long laughter. 
‘I have a great sense of foreboding,’ he said, coming over all portentous. Tories said ‘doom, doom’ like Frazer in Dad’s Army.
After Mr Clegg claimed to be speaking up for ‘young people’, opponents noted that he had been quick to impose college fees on those same youngsters. Cleggy didn’t like that.
Mr Clarke, purple and quavery, was indulged. On a day when most backbenchers were limited to less than six minutes, he was allowed to burble away for 17. 
Though he was clapped by Labour, we will remember his long career for finer moments than this pitiful harrumph. 
He was self-referential, loftily petulant (attacking the ‘pathetic’ arguments heard in the referendum campaign) and patronising (a matter as important as EU membership had been ‘particularly unsuitable for a plebiscite’). 
He said Enoch Powell would have been surprised by how anti-immigrant today’s Tory Party was.
That, for many in the House, was the moment his speech spiralled away into Space’s outer galaxies. Just below him James Cleverly (Con, Braintree), a more persuasive face of the modern Tory Party, shook his head with irritation at daft old Ken. 
Theresa May and Boris Johnson had been side by side as a croaky David Davis, Brexit Secretary, introduced the Bill (Mrs May left after half an hour, as PMs do). 
Mr Davis was hard to hear owing to a cold that has been afflicting him this week. He became bogged down in stuff about Britain’s future membership of Euratom, a European atomic science agency. 
‘Will they split over the atom?’ wondered a press gallery friend. But eventually Mr Davis found a bigger picture and said the Bill boiled down to a single question: ‘Do we trust the people or not?’
And that, for all the puffing from a lively Sammy Wilson (a pro-Brexit Ulsterman), a crossly pessimistic Dame Margaret Beckett (it was all ‘potentially catastrophic’) and a ‘we’ll cause trouble yet, just you see’ tone from Hilary Benn, was the nub of it. 
As Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest E) put it: ‘In my opinion the people have decided. I’m going to vote accordingly.’ And that was his speech in its entirety. Twelve words was all it took.
How did you vote in the General Election in June? Oh, that’s right, we didn’t have one. We had a referendum on membership of the European Union.
So why are the political class behaving as if we actually held an election? We’ve got a new Prime Minister, new Cabinet, new policies on everything from grammar schools to corporate crime.
The Boys in the Bubble have treated us to extensive profiles of some bloke with a beard from Birmingham, who is said to be running the country these days. He’s called Nick Timothy and he’s a special adviser to Mother Theresa. I don’t recall voting for him, do you?
What we haven’t got is any tangible progress on what 17.4 million British people really voted for almost three months ago — our prompt departure from the corrupt, sclerotic, imploding EU. When you put your cross in the box marked ‘Leave’, did you think that you were electing a brand new Government dominated by ministers who all backed Remain?
Thought not.
But that’s what we’ve ended up with: a Cabinet in which the majority of members — including the Prime Minister — never wanted to leave in the first place. May I remind you that at a meeting of her own constituency party shortly before the referendum, Mother Theresa was the only person in a room full of 200 people who wanted to stay in the EU.
So did Philip Hammond, now Chancellor of the Exchequer. So did new Home Secretary Amber Rudd. How many people who saw Look Back In Amber spewing schoolgirl bile at Boris Johnson during the televised referendum debate could have imagined that one consequence of voting Leave would be to make her Home Secretary? Precisely.
Be honest, do you trust any of the triumvirate at the top of government to deliver the clean break the majority of the British people voted for? Me, neither. Mother Theresa seems to think she can get away with mouthing ‘Brexit means Brexit’ while doing absolutely nothing to make it happen.
The Three Brexiteers — David Davis, Boris and Liam Fox — were thrown in the sack together precisely so that they would fight like rats. Then they can be blamed if and when the negotiations with the Eurocrats go pear-shaped.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister carries on as if she’s got a mandate to do whatever she wants, especially with Labour a complete basket case. And top of her list seems to be dragging out Brexit for as long as is humanly possible.
Regular readers will be well aware that I’m no fan of May. She spent the referendum campaign hiding behind the sofa and was on the wrong side of history when the result was announced. She was also the Home Secretary who presided over record levels of immigration, both from within the EU and from outside.
Boris was accused of siding with Leave for reasons of pure personal ambition. But you could say exactly the same about May’s decision to go with Remain.
With Call Me Dave and Boy George dead in the water following the Leave vote, she was in pole position to inherit the keys to No 10. Tory MPs, the majority of whom backed Remain, were never going to support a Boris leadership bid.
OK, so when the music stopped maybe there was no alternative. Reluctantly, I would agree that a couple of months of madness while the Tories chose a new leader wasn’t an enticing prospect.
And admittedly, some of her new policies are attractive. But all this is displacement activity. The only mandate she has is getting us out of the EU as soon as possible.
In case you have forgotten, the question on the ballot paper said this: Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Not much ambiguity there. It didn’t contain any caveats, such as: ‘Should we leave, but only if we can negotiate a deal like Norway, which involves paying money to the EU and accepting most of its laws?’
It didn’t say: ‘Should we leave but stay in the single market and swallow all the rules which go with it, including freedom of movement for everyone in Europe?’
Nope, we decided convincingly that we did not wish to remain a member of the EU, with everything that entails. As I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, as soon as the political class started to muddy the waters: ‘Which part of LEAVE don’t they understand?’
It’s bad enough that the anti-democratic Remoaners refuse to accept the result and are demanding a second referendum.
What’s worse is that those charged with getting us out seem to have no sense of urgency and keep magnifying the so-called ‘obstacles’ — of which the latest ‘Project Fear’ scare about having to pay a fiver for a visa to visit Europe is the most pathetic. Why are we even discussing it?
Take the obsession of the political class with staying in the ‘single market’. Of course we want tariff-free trade with Europe. But that’s not what the ‘single market’ means. It also involves accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court, unlimited immigration from the EU, and a whole raft of unnecessary rules and regulations.
Then we’re told we haven’t got enough trained negotiators. How many do we need? Why not let Philip Green rehabilitate his reputation by sending him to negotiate with Brussels? If he wants to keep his knighthood, let him earn it.
Give him a week and he’d do them up like a hareng fumé (that’s French for kipper). They’d end up paying us to leave.
 Here’s the deal: we’re off. No ifs, no buts. If EU politicians and industrialists want to do a post-Brexit deal with us, they know where we are. We don’t have to grovel. We’ve got a winning hand.
Where is it written that we can only leave if we agree to the EU’s terms? Nowhere. The Europeans have got more to lose than we have when it comes to trade. We import more from them than they do from us.
Are they really going to turn their backs on one of their biggest export markets just to score a few pathetic political points?
In June, the British people demonstrated their faith in our future as a flourishing independent nation, in control of our own borders and our own destiny.
So what are we waiting for? Churchill used to slap stickers saying ‘Action This Day’ on memos to his ministers and civil servants.
Mother Theresa should show the same sense of urgency. Invoke Article 50 now and get us out within two years, tops. Stop prevaricating, just do it. The Brexit vote was the most seismic decision this country has taken in half a century.
If the referendum had been a General Election based on existing constituencies and Leave had been a political party, it would have won by a landslide — taking 423 out of the 650 parliamentary seats.
Britain voted for Brexit, we didn’t vote for Theresa May. If she wants to remain Prime Minister after the next General Election, she would do well to remember that.
Another bumper edition of Mind How You Go today, as police in England and Wales announce they are going to treat ‘misogyny’ as a ‘hate crime’.
It follows a pilot scheme in Nottingham aimed at arresting men who wolf-whistle at women. After all, it’s not as if they’ve got anything better to do, is it?
Does my bum look big in this?
Actually, yes.
Right, you’re nicked.
Meanwhile, the Met has been accused of ignoring extremist views expressed by Muslim officers for fear of being accused of ‘Islamophobia’.
Sounds about right.
Former counter-terrorism officer Javaria Saeed, herself a Muslim, said some of the worst sexism and racism came from male Muslim colleagues, but they were allowed to get away with it by their cowardly superiors. Perhaps this could be a job for the new Misogyny Squad.
Elsewhere, the head of West Midlands Plod says that female officers should be allowed to wear burkas on the beat. Leave aside the obvious practical objections. What if every recruit starts insisting on their own special uniform? Will those who define as Jedi Knights be allowed to patrol the streets dressed as Darth Vader?
What about ‘gender fluid’ and ‘transitioning’ cops? Will we see them twerking on the beat in hot pants and high heels, like that bloke in the moneysupermarket advert?
Where will it all end? Lady bobbies in burkas, eh? Once again, I don’t know whether to file it under Mind How You Go or You Couldn’t Make It Up.
They’ve already got ‘safe spaces’ to protect them from unpopular opinions. Now we learn that university students are being given soft toys and pets to help them cope with the stress of higher education. 
Some colleges are even installing special ‘puppy rooms’ and bouncy castles to relieve ‘revision anxiety’.
Call me old-fashioned, but whatever happened to Party Sevens and Class-A drugs?
 Heathrow or Gatwick? Why not stop squabbling and build new runways at both of them, otherwise we’ll be back to square one in another five years.
For years, I’ve been describing Westminster lobby hacks as the Boys in the Bubble. Now ‘Westminster Bubble’ has made it into the Oxford dictionary — along with, I’m delighted to say, our old friends the Oompa Loompas. 
I can’t claim credit for inventing them — unlike Call Me Dave and Two Jags — but they have been regular features of this column.
Bring on the Oompa Loompas!
 
 
 
The 16th floor of Millbank Tower, and Vladimir Putin is pumping out truth — of the Russian kind.
Here, a team of journalists enjoying commanding views of the Palace of Westminster, the London Eye and Thames House, home of MI5, are busy at computer terminals and video mixing desks, preparing bulletins and programmes and telling the news Kremlin-style.
State-of-the-art equipment allows for slick, sophisticated graphics that mimic the output of respectable international news broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN and France 24.
But there is nothing respectable about Russia Today, known by the more friendly acronym RT, whose UK offices these are.
From the tower block in which New Labour moulded the news agenda 20 years ago, another agenda is being peddled, one serving a foreign master with no love for Britain.
RT is a direct mouthpiece for the Russian government, its global operations funded by the Kremlin to the tune of some £200 million yearly, part of a media campaign waged relentlessly to undermine confidence in democracy and sow discord in countries regarded by Moscow as adversaries.
In her speech at the Lord Mayor's banquet in the City of London on Monday, Theresa May mounted an outspoken attack on President Putin's 'fake news', accusing the Kremlin of 'weaponising information'.
In one of the strongest verbal attacks on Russia in recent years, the Prime Minister warned: 'We know what you are doing.' 
It comes as almost 45,000 messages about Brexit were tweeted from Russian Twitter accounts in just 48 hours during last year’s referendum, the Times reported.
More than 150,000 Russian-based accounts switched their attention from subjects such as the Ukrainian conflict to Brexit in the lead-up to the vote, according to research by Swansea University and the University of California, Berkeley. 

RT is a formidable operation, broadcasting to some 100 countries via satellite television and the internet, and now featuring tailor-made programming for U.S. and UK viewers, as well as services in French, Spanish and Arabic. But this is not about information — it's about disinformation.
RT is just one component in what Russian intelligence refers to as an 'active measures' campaign so effective that it may have influenced to a substantial degree the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, propelling Donald Trump into the White House at the expense of Hillary Clinton.
Be it RT broadcasting on multi-channel television or its sister news agency Sputnik, which has an office in Edinburgh, on the internet, be it social media campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, or the hacking of emails belonging to Mrs Clinton, there is but one end. And that is the furtherance of Putin's foreign and domestic aims.
Russia Today's diet is a curious mix. Outlandish conspiracy theories promoted by cranks masquerading as serious commentators vie with more subtle coverage pushing the Russian line on Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, American philosopher and social commentator Noam Chomsky and former Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson have all graced RT's programmes at some time or another. Hosts include the veteran political maverick George Galloway and, curiously, former CNN flagship interviewer Larry King.
Now there is a new star in Putin's media firmament. It was announced last week that Scotland's former First Minister, the SNP's Alex Salmond, is to host a new discussion programme on RT covering politics, entertainment and business.
Mr Salmond justifies his acceptance of 'Moscow gold' by pointing out that no fewer than 50 Labour MPs, 37 Conservatives and 17 SNP members have appeared on RT in the past two years. And he promises 'total editorial control'.
But political opponents — and several fellow SNP politicians — have attacked his decision to consort with Putin as an 'astonishing lack of judgment'. Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond's protege who succeeded him as First Minister, said she would have advised against the deal, had she been consulted.
In the looking-glass world of RT, accuracy is a flexible commodity. At one time or another, we have been told that 9/11 was an inside job perpetrated by the American government, and that the BBC stage-managed a bogus chemical attack in Syria to discredit the regime of Russian ally President Bashar al-Assad.
We've also been informed that the Malaysian airliner downed by a missile over eastern Ukraine in 2014 with great loss of life was the responsibility of the Ukrainian government and not, as is generally accepted, the work of Russian-backed separatists.
The U.S. congress has been hearing this month about the extent of 'active measures' instructed by Putin in early 2016 to influence the race for the White House, fuelled by his fear and distrust of Mrs Clinton.
The U.S. intelligence community has judged with 'high confidence' that Putin did indeed order a campaign of mainstream media, social media and hacking to influence the U.S. vote. The Trump administration has subsequently been dogged by allegations of collusion with Moscow, fuelled by disclosures of links between the Russians and the presidential campaign team.
Last week, Trump appeared to accept an assurance by Putin that he had ordered no such campaign, saying his Russian opposite number was 'insulted' by such a suggestion. But the U.S. President has since rowed back on his remark, reaffirming his confidence in his own intelligence services.
The sharp end of the Kremlin's global disinformation campaign is to be found in the Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg, colourfully known as the Troll Factory, where young operatives labour to hack sites, create bogus news sites and pump out fake news and social media messages.
A tweet in March from this Troll Factory (or another very similar set-up) — so it is believed — sought to stoke racial tensions in the UK by featuring a woman in a hijab speaking on her mobile phone and apparently ignoring a victim of the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack.
In fact, the woman had been traumatised by the incident and was phoning her family to tell them she was safe.
The bogus tweet, which went viral, purported to come from a resident of Texas under the Twitter handle South Lone Star, but had been generated by Russian internet trolls. Such trolls also posted anti-immigration and pro-Brexit messages around the time of the EU referendum.
Items on RT and Sputnik, which usually command only small audiences, are turbo-boosted on social media in concerted campaigns which attract hundreds of thousands of views.
RT's TV audience in the UK is tiny — less than one per cent — but its real power lies on YouTube, where its output is enjoyed by some two million subscribers. Viewers are initially lured to watch it by video footage of tsunamis and other dramatic visual events, which may then lead them on to more politically sensitive items.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, is quite unapologetic about the TV station's ultimate loyalties. 'The word 'propaganda' has a very negative connotation, but indeed, there is not a single international foreign TV channel that is doing something other than promotion of the values of the country that it is broadcasting from,' she says. 'When Russia is at war, we are, of course, on Russia's side.'
Simonyan is one of numerous RT executives with close links to the Moscow establishment. In recent years, her in-tray has filled with complaints from the British media regulator Ofcom, accusing RT's operation of repeatedly violating rules on impartiality and producing broadcasts on Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that are 'materially misleading'.
Yet little is done to curb its activities. 'The most egregious violations by RT tend to occur when it is covering conflicts, such as Ukraine and Syria, in which the Russian government is directly involved,' according to Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council think-tank.
Founded in 2005, RT was tasked specifically by Putin, a former KGB officer, with ending 'Anglo-Saxon' hegemony in international broadcasting. Part of active measures is 'decomposition', which involves the destruction of personal reputations and the cohesion and influence of target nations.
This can be seen in Scotland, where RT's sister organisation Sputnik, which broadcasts on the internet from its bureau in Edinburgh, produces stories aimed at undermining the Union and the British nuclear deterrent, based on the Clyde.
RT itself has been anxious to draw parallels between the nationalist movements in Scotland and Catalonia, stories aimed at keeping the independence debate alive north of the border. A diminished UK with no nuclear force is, of course, a prime aim of Putin and his inner circle, 70 per cent of whom are drawn from the ranks of the intelligence services.
To add a veneer of respectability, RT has recruited British journalists, including Rory Suchet, son of former ITN newsreader John Suchet.
But it is understood that RT is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit experienced journalists in the West because of its reputation as a Kremlin mouthpiece.
There is a similar problem with guests, most mainstream politicians in Britain now preferring to keep their distance.
Jeremy Corbyn, a regular face on RT before his election as Labour leader, now largely avoids the station, despite the allegedly pro-Russian sympathies of his spin doctor, Seumas Milne.
But Shadow Lord Chancellor and Left-wing MP Richard Burgon is a regular guest, as are Ukip's Nigel Farage and Julian Assange, who broadcasts via video link from his refuge in the Ecuadorean London embassy. Some MPs have even received fees to appear, including Labour's Chris Williamson and Rosie Duffield and Tory David T.C. Davies, the backbench MP for Monmouth (not to be confused with the Brexit Secretary), who between them received £3,000 in total according to the Register of Members' Interests.
Why elected members feel it is appropriate to profit from appearing on a foreign propaganda station is unclear.
There is certainly disquiet among some of those who have worked for RT about its editorial standards.
Sara Firth, a British journalist, resigned from RT after being pressured into twisting the story of the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH17 to blame Ukraine rather than a Russian surface-to-air system operated by pro-Russian rebels. 'Our coverage of the MH17 plane disaster was the final nudge,' she explained following her resignation. 'I'd been really unhappy for a long time at RT. I just couldn't do it any more.
We were running an eye-witness account that made an accusation against Ukraine and we had a correspondent in the studio who was asked to produce something about a plane that had been shot down at some point in the past, and had been the fault of Ukraine.
'In other words, to suggest that the Ukrainian government had form for doing such a thing.
'I've been in that position myself before, where you're asked to bring up some piece of obscure information that implies something that fits with the RT agenda. And you think, well, it's not outright lying but it has no relation to what's happening and shouldn't be run at a time when a story of that size is breaking — a news story that is so sensitive. It's abhorrent and indefensible.'
Nikolay Bogachikhin, RT news chief in London, was unapologetic during a BBC interview when speaking about the channel's Middle East coverage.
'We are bringing stories that matter from the Russian perspective,' he explained. 'Russia is a big player. The Russian view of the situation [in Syria and Ukraine] is so much different from the Western vision.'
Mr Bogachikhin denied that RT receives calls from the Kremlin demanding that it adopts a particular editorial line. Regarding Mr Corbyn, he explained: 'Jeremy was quite a frequent guest and we valued and treasured his commentary always. But we now try not to call him because appearing on RT is seen as very detrimental. We see now that everything to do with Russia is toxic. This is sad because we would like to have some anti-Russian voices, some debate.'
Mr Nimmo of the think-tank Atlantic Council argues that Russia's propaganda campaign is aimed as much at a Russian audience as a Western one, portraying Western democracy as weak and rotten, and, in particular, playing on immigration fears.
Hillary Clinton became a prime target for Putin, he says, only when she backed anti-government protests in Russia while U.S. Secretary of State, deeply offending the Russian president. Last year's election tampering can be seen as Putin's revenge.
The OFFICE of the U.S. director of national intelligence, in its assessment of Russian attempts to manipulate the U.S. election, said of the station:
'The rapid expansion of RT's operations and budget and recent candid statements by RT's leadership point to the channel's importance to the Kremlin as a messaging tool and indicate a Kremlin-directed campaign to undermine faith in the U.S. Government and fuel political protest.
'The Kremlin has committed significant resources to expanding the channel's reach, particularly its social media footprint.'
RT is now an established part of the media landscape and it is not going away.
On the 16th floor of Millbank Tower the RT functionaries are beavering away behind their screens. And it can mean no good for the country that offers them a home.
Have you heard about Penka the cow? 
Until a few days ago, Penka was known to almost nobody except her owner, a Bulgarian farmer called Ivan Haralampiev.
Then she went missing. 
Cows do this sort of thing and are usually soon found grazing on a neighbour’s flower-beds.
Alas, Penka made the mortal error of stepping outside the European Union (of which Bulgaria has been a member since 2007). She then tried to re-enter the EU.
As a result of which she was sentenced to death because she lacked the correct paperwork. 
In one of the more quirky — yet highly telling — political news events of the early summer, Penka is now the talk not just of her village of Kopilovtsi — which, to be honest, is not much of a size — and the province of Kyustendil.
Her name is also on the lips of the most important people in her country’s capital, Sofia. 
She is even being discussed in Brussels, headquarters of the European Empire, and Berlin, where she has made the front page of Germany’s most popular newspaper.
Here in Britain, a Conservative MEP from Norfolk has taken up Penka’s case, while a petition has been started to demand that she be spared her impending execution on the orders of EU-citing jobsworths.
But at the time of writing, they were declining to grant her her freedom, saying only that tests are being done on her in quarantine, and that her fate won’t be decided for several days — which doesn’t exactly sound like a pardon.
In order to understand this very European farce, we had better start where most farm stories start, which is out in the meadow, down among the cowslips and the dungflies, where ruminants swish their tails and brooks gurgle.
Penka herself is not able to give testimony, her repertoire being limited to bovine backfirings and grunts, but it seems she was minding her own business one mid-May evening, chewing on her well-trimmed acre, when she noticed some rather more lush terrain just over the way.
You know how it is: the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, particularly in western Bulgaria when the temperatures are rising.
Had farmer Ivan accidentally left the gate ajar? Had the latch become loose with age? It happens to us all in time. 
One push from Penka’s blunted horns and the gate gave way. She went for a wander.
That night, it seems, she may have been chased by wolves. Cows can move pretty quickly. 
They can cover a lot of ground, particularly when baying wolves are snapping at their hind hooves.
Before long, Penka had crossed the border into the neighbouring state of Serbia. Which is not (yet) in the EU. 
Farmer Ivan, on finding that Penka had vanished, was distressed.
Officials who work for government departments in dusty cities may not always understand this, but a cow is more than just an animal.
For dairy farmers, a cow can be a friend, a status symbol and an investment, particularly if they are pregnant, as Penka is (she is due to give birth in three weeks).
And so Ivan Haralampiev and his sons went searching for Penka.They cush-cushed, they rang bells, they checked the usual haunts. Nothing. 
Being good citizens, they notified the border authorities, the police and mayors in nearby villages. Please, had anyone seen our brown, rather sweet-faced cow?
After two weeks, word came from Bosilegrad, a village a few miles away, just inside Serbia. 
Penka had been found! Great was the jubilation. The farmer climbed into his dusty vehicle and went to collect the adventuress.
Great was the back-slapping when he collected Penka and got her into her trailer after a Serbian vet had given her a formal health check and confirmed that she was in a fit condition to return home. 
Then the problems started.
When farmer Ivan tried to cross over the border back into Bulgaria, he encountered one of those creatures which are even deadlier than a pack of central European wolves.
He came face to face with .. . an EU border guard with a clipboard and an over-developed, almost priestly regard for The Rules.
‘Papers!’ barked this Bulgarian border bossyboots.
‘Papers?’ asked Ivan.
I like to imagine that he and Penka at this moment turned and gave one another a mutual look of bewilderment. ‘Certificate!’ snapped the border guard.
It was explained that under EU Commission guidelines, ‘a certification must accompany animals en route to the EU, when they are presented for entry into the EU at an approved EU Border Inspection Post’.
No doubt it is written in the EU’s 24 official languages, available in Braille and other formats, and can be found on the website of the relevant EU authorities, if your taste runs to that sort of thing.
Oh come off it, tried Ivan, pushing to the back of his tired head the rather natty hat he favours. It has a multi-coloured ribbon and says ‘BULGARIA’ on it.
This chap is not one of life’s troublemakers. He is just a patriotic small-town farmer trying to make an honest lev (Bulgaria’s currency, which by unhappy chance is fixed to the euro). He tried to explain that his cow had gone for a gallop and he was simply retrieving her.
This cut no mercy from the border clipboards. As one of them told the Agence France-Presse: ‘It is not for us to decide — we are only implementing rules that come from Brussels.’
As a result of Penka’s failure to fill in the right forms, she was herewith sentenced to death.
Go online and you can see Bulgarian TV’s coverage. I haven’t a clue what it says, but Penka looks adorable, farmer Ivan looks a bit hot and bothered (although possibly enjoying his moment in the sun).
And officialdom? It just looks cruel and nasty.
Who is the silly moo here?
A pregnant cow, her rural owner or a supra-national system which is so stiff and unyielding that it cannot see the damage it causes to itself by refusing to bend to basic common sense?
Was it really beyond the border guard’s nous to use some initiative and allow Ivan Haralampiev and his farm truck to pass through just this once?
Are customs bosses in the province of Kyustendil really so powerless to permit exceptions? Or is it that they, like so many bureaucrats, actually enjoy making life difficult for the citizens they are supposed to serve?
For the European Union, which is currently kicking up a frightful to-do over the future border between Ireland (which is in the EU) and Northern Ireland (which is soon to leave the EU), what does this case show?
There are an awful lot of cows on either side of that border. Local vets may need to ready themselves for a slaughter, if Brussels is going to take this line.
Does the tale of Penka present the EU as a reservoir of practical and amiable administration, or a realm of hectoring, more-than-my-job’s-worth martinets determined above all else to follow the small-print of rules written by remote Brussels legislators?
And is it not just a little rum that a European Union which has been so utterly hopeless at patrolling its borders to prevent illegal migration by humans — indeed, it gaily waved them through in their hundreds of thousands — is now laying down the law and demanding that Penka, with her long eyelashes and maternal bump, have a bolt shot into her brain because she trotted a few hundred yards onto the wrong side of a border into territory they do not yet control?
Thank goodness we are leaving.  
When Greg Clark was standing for Parliament in 2005, knocking on doors in a run-down part of Tunbridge Wells, Kent, he found himself being followed coincidentally house-to-house by a soberly-dressed man. It was the local debt collector.
Tunbridge Wells should be safe Tory territory but Clark became pessimistic about his electoral prospects because it was far from evident ‘whose visit was the more unwelcome’ to residents – his or that of the debt-collector.
Although the 50-year-old Clark now jokes about it, that story says something about the personality of this methodical, oddly zestless Europhile, who has risen to become Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
You could never mistake him for one of life’s thigh-slappers. He is not a feel-good, can-do, cheer-’em-up salesman like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage. 
He approaches life with the fretfulness of Piglet facing a breezy day with much mumbling of ‘oh d-d-d-dear me’ and a conviction everything will go wrong.
Not one of life’s leaders or visionaries, Mr Clark. 
Here is a faint-hearted camp-follower who for decades has held on to Nurse for fear of finding something worse. ‘Nurse’ was once the BBC, for whom he worked as a policy adviser. He was also employed as a ministerial special adviser.
Now his security blanket is the multi-national corporate elite: the bigshots of the Confederation of British Industry such as Siemens, Rolls-Royce and Airbus, all of whom were (and arguably still are) committed members of ‘Project Fear’.
Mr Clark is very much Secretary of State for Big Business rather than for small entrepreneurs. 
He views capitalism not through the small-business lens of risk and agility but as the operation of siege-engine corporations, mighty combines crushing all obstacles in their path.
Though notorious at Westminster for the flatness of his oratory, he has an ostensibly interesting background. This is what is so frustrating: he should be so much more fascinating! 
He grew up on Teesside, in Middlesbrough, where both his grandfather and father were milkmen and his mother would later work on a Tesco’s checkout. 
He was educated at a comprehensive school and a sixth-form college, where he was a model pupil. A hard worker, yes, but a conformist, a rule-taker.
You had to be brave to declare yourself a Tory in 1980s Middlesbrough. He did no such thing. 
Instead, as an undergraduate reading economics at Cambridge, he became a member of the SDP and fell under the spell of David Owen and Shirley Williams, who was the Liberal-SDP Alliance’s unsuccessful candidate in the city at the 1987 general election.
After Cambridge he did a PhD at the London School of Economics, an institution almost synonymous with Centre-Left internationalism.
The title of his 254-page thesis in 1992? ‘The effectiveness of incentive payment systems: an empirical test of individualism as a boundary condition.’ 
If you think that sounds dull, you should listen to some of his parliamentary speeches. Rib-ticklers, they ain’t.
The centre-Left SDP may be long defunct but you could argue that Mr Clark has not really changed his views from the days when he worshipped Shirley Williams and Co. 
He may have joined the Conservative Party in the early 1990s, once that inspirational figure John Major had become leader, but he still adheres to SDP-ish positions on big government (a fan), taxes (ooh yes) and the EU (don’t mind if I do).
Now that his friend Amber Rudd has gone, Mr Clark is probably the biggest Remainer in Theresa May’s Cabinet. But at least Amber had some sparkle. Greg is a grind.
As a member of the inner ‘war cabinet’ on Brexit, Mr Clark has argued long – and sometimes, it is said, almost tearfully – in favour of the softest of all possible Brexits. 
He was the main voice calling for the now discredited ‘customs partnership’ idea which would have seen British officials collecting duties for Brussels even after we left the EU.
In person he is perfectly affable. He is married with three children and he loves to go cycling in the countryside. 
A cruel pen would call him bland but a kinder one would hail him for being inoffensive and tolerant of critics (though that is not to say he heeds their criticisms).
Labour MPs find it hard to puncture his balmy consensuality. But that is another way of saying he is not really a party figure. 
His roots in the Tory family are shallow. His loyalties lie with the nabobs of globalism in their shimmering German limousines. 
What can we do for you, mein Herr, Monsieur, Signor?
When the great British engineering firm GKN was facing a takeover by short-term City dudes, many a Business Secretary would have muscled into the fight and told the profiteers to get their hands off a strategic national interest. 
Mr Clark did no such thing and merely wafted the deal through.
What fuels his love of the EU? Is it idealism about federalism – a sort of peace-without-borders Utopia? 
Hardly. There is no evidence for that romanticism in his bones. I suspect his views flow, instead, from an inate caution. 
He is a placid, procedural figure with a honeyed, bass voice that exudes inertia.
Schedulers at Tory party conferences hesitate to give him speaking slots after lunch because they fear that his soporific voice will plunge people into post-prandial stupors. So will his lack of ideas. 
He is remarkably passive. Politically, a dreadful dullard.
He is one of those Remainers who continues to regard the Leave vote as a dratted inconvenience to the Continental bosscat class. 
It would be no surprise if he has been colluding with the likes of Airbus, whipping up opposition to our departure from the EU’s customs maw.
For big business is more truthfully his constituency than the Tunbridge Wells seat he won comfortably in 2005, despite that debt-collector. 
Have you ever had trouble persuading a dog to release its bone? Not easy, is it? At first, you play nice, asking Rover to surrender his prize, but this is met with snarls.
When the softly-softly approach fails, you try alternatives — mild reprimands, distraction tactics, simmering exasperation — but these only result in worse truculence from the dog. Eventually, your patience snaps.
You wrench the juicy marrow bone from those clenched teeth and throw the treat into distant bushes.
A happy day has ended in messy aggro and you vow never again to indulge the growling, ill-tempered mutt.
Much the same is happening at present with our ruling class.
In recent days, we have seen, in Westminster and Whitehall, some appalling behaviour from the pampered pets of our political Establishment.
For years, they have gnawed on the bone that was the post-war liberal, Brussels-centred consensus. How delicious it was for the people at the top. Chomp chomp chomp.
Two years ago, they were told in the EU referendum — by their masters, the British people — to surrender that bone. They have no intention of complying with such an order.
And so they are growling and snapping and holding tight with increasingly bared fangs.
This unedifying tantrum was most glaringly on display in the House of Lords on Monday, when peers voted to let Parliament force Theresa May to accept a bad deal from Brussels as we quit the EU.
This could prevent her from walking away from the talks, should she wish to resort to that maybe necessary extreme.
By denying Mrs May the option of saying to the European Commission: ‘Right, that’s it, we’re off without a deal and we’ll resort to World Trade Organisation rules, thank you,’ the Lords hopes to rob our Prime Minister of the vital backstop in any negotiation: the walkout.
It is hard to think of a surer way of weakening our country — or, for that matter, of fomenting a public desire to scrap the Upper House.
There was little subtlety about what the 335 peers who voted against the Government were doing. Actually, let’s be more blunt: they were voting against Britain.
One of their number, a crossbencher called Lord Bilimoria, actually blurted it out. The Indian-born beer tycoon gloated that Parliament would have ‘the ability to stop the train crash that is Brexit’.
That is exactly the goal set by Tony Blair and Remain campaigners funded by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
Meanwhile, lifelong Euro-obsessive Lord Heseltine is rubbing his hands and claims Brexit is daily becoming less likely to happen.
Ah, Brexit. That mighty 2016 plebiscite — the biggest vote ever held in Britain — has driven our political elite round the twist.
If you think that allegation of madness is unkind, consider the wild hyperbole of Lib Dem peer Lord Roberts, who compared Mrs May to Adolf Hitler.
Lord Roberts is a Methodist preacher. If he made that sort of unjustified claim from his pulpit, one trusts he would be struck by a divine thunderbolt.
Madness or wickedness. It can only be one of those two that drives a Christian minister to make such lurid comparisons.
Most members of the Lords, composed as it is of Establishment careerists, wanted to remain in the EU. Many of them — in the diplomatic corps, home Civil Service or the Law — devoted their professional lives to the European project. Several even receive hefty pensions from Brussels (though they never declare that financial interest when they speak in parliamentary debates).
When the British electorate voted clearly, in its millions, to leave the EU, these privileged poohbahs were aghast. Like Hillary Clinton, who contrived to lose the U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump, they considered the common people to be ‘a basket of deplorables’.
Parliament may have created the referendum and may have promised to abide by its result — but not that result, for goodness’ sake!
Ordinary Remain voters, being decent and reasonable, accepted the verdict of the majority. That, after all, is how a democracy works. But Europhile hardliners from the political machine reacted differently.
At first came angry disbelief, illustrated in snippy social-media comments about the vulgarity of Leave voters. This was followed by breezy predictions that support for Remain would grow as the months passed.
Obnoxious Remainers such as novelist Ian McEwan relished the prospect of older Brexit voters dying. That would swing the balance in favour of Remain, just you see.
In fact, almost two years since the referendum, there is little evidence of a change in the public’s opinion on Brexit. The electorate is not budging. They voted out and they still want out.
What, therefore, must those voters make of current attempts by Downing Street officials and some Tory ministers to weaken Brexit by another avenue: making us, in effect, stay in the EU’s customs union?
The customs union is an arrangement whereby countries surrender their independence. Instead of making their own trade deals, they let unelected Brussels technocrats set import taxes on goods.
This is the very opposite of ‘taking back control’, the slogan of the winning Leave side in June 2016’s referendum.
Supporters of a customs union, or at least customs cooperation, include Mrs May’s Downing Street adviser on Europe, Oliver Robbins. This influential, unelected figure has cobbled together an impractical-sounding arrangement which would involve British officials monitoring the destination of any goods entering the UK, and paying relevant taxes to Brussels on goods which were bound for the Continent.
Mr Robbins, who is defended by the likes of Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood and Conservative Chief Whip Julian Smith, is often described as a clever man. Well, clever people often have daft ideas — and this is one.
Worse, it looks like a ruse for delaying or even wrecking Brexit.
No doubt, this earns Mr Robbins lots of murmured compliments in the elevated circles in which he moves — ‘Well done, Olly, let’s spin it out a few more years, old boy’.
But let us be in no doubt: it is a stinking obstruction to the sort of liberating, electrifying Brexit the British people want and deserve — the Brexit they voted for comprehensively two summers ago.
If Mrs May, Chancellor Philip Hammond and a clutch of other pro-Remain Cabinet ministers go along with this ‘cretinous’ plan, as Jacob Rees-Mogg was so right to call it, they will lead their party to a deserved defeat at the next General Election. In the Commons, you will hear lawyerly talk from Euro-philes such as Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer and the Tories’ Dominic Grieve that customs union membership is not the same as being in the EU. Ignore it.
The distinctions are as minor as the differences between identical twins.
The Starmers and Grieves know that the customs union would prevent us striking trade deals with countries such as India, the U.S., Canada and China. They know that it would wreck Brexit.
Their cynicism is sickening, as is that of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.
Mr Corbyn is widely thought to be a Eurosceptic, but for the purposes of short-term political advantage he goes along with the plots to stop our departure from the EU.
For this supposed man of principle, nothing beats opportunism.
All those Labour voters who supported Brexit can get stuffed. Jeremy is a member of the game-playing political elite now.
One of Mr Grieve’s little helpers, oddball Tory backbencher Anna Soubry, argues that the people’s referendum vote was superseded by the General Election of June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament.
Let us deal swiftly with that lie.
The General Election — in which Mrs May admittedly campaigned like a sickly goat — saw the national vote go overwhelmingly to two parties (Labour and Conservatives) who promised in their manifestos to honour Brexit. The electorate was told that the Brexit argument had been settled. Game over.
Alas, we were too trusting.
We underestimated the sly, deceitful determination of the British ruling class to hold on to its bone.
The Establishment is fighting hard and its enemy is the British public.
Just look at some of the serial boot-fillers (on £300 a day, just for turning up) who voted against Mrs May in the Lords on Monday: former Whitehall mandarins such as Lord Kerslake and Lord Kerr; ex-children’s television presenter Lady Benjamin; Tony Blair’s former flatmate Lord Falconer; both the Kinnocks, Neil and Glenys; expenses cheat Lady Uddin; Dalek-like former BBC director-general Lord Birt, and many more.
These are not people who surge with democratic fervour. They are patronising, self-enriching snoots who think they, and they alone, know what is best.
June 2016 was exceptional not only in that it was an extra-parliamentary election (i.e. set up to give Parliament an express order), but also in that it saw many people vote for the first time.
These were citizens, many of them working-class, who had never previously bothered to vote because they thought their voices would never be heard.
For the referendum they came out and they seized the democratic moment. They felt strongly about immigration and our national independence.
Now they are seeing their scintillating, revolutionary vote being dragged into legalistic alleyways and mugged by the very people it was meant to instruct.
That could so demoralise them that they will give up on democracy altogether.
When the masses give up on democracy, bad things happen.
Such an awful possibility must be resisted, so I plead with our truculent and selfish elite to surrender their bone and do as they have been commanded.
There really can be no alternative.
Our elite’s deranged hatred of Brexit – its treasonous reluctance to see us become an independent kingdom – took its smelliest turn yesterday when Commons Speaker Bercow resorted to that old trick of despots and cheats: if you don’t like the rules, break ’em.
And who should assist him in this splintering of precedent, this brazen bogwashing of ancient procedures? Why, Mr Hoity-Toity himself, Dominic Grieve, who for decades has given us dusty lectures about the majesty of rules-based systems.
Shortly before the day’s sitting began, Bercow jettisoned parliamentary protocol by allowing Mr Grieve (Con, Beaconsfield) to propose a damaging amendment to the already running EU Withdrawal debate.
The Commons Clerk, who is appointed by the Queen, had told Bercow he should not do such a thing.
Bercow ignored him and let Remainer Grieve have his way. As a result, the Government’s negotiating position on Brexit is further weakened. Perhaps Bercow will soon join Mr Grieve in being made a member of the Legion d’Honneur.
His rape of centuries-old proprieties ignited an hour of remarkable rancour as MPs tore into his malign stewardship of a once-great office of the land.
Points of Order were not just made. They were bellowed. The Squeaker himself stood there, swaying only occasionally. Generally he was smarmily unmoved by the roaring protests. Couldn’t give a damn. All he wants is to screw Brexit and create a blaze of notoriety.
We had just had a low-wattage PMQs. Points of Order began at 12.49pm and within moments the House was in surging, swelling, quivering turmoil, with Theresa May still in her place, watching aghast and amazed.
Pah, you may be tempted to say. Who cares about parliamentary procedure? But parliamentary procedure is the currency of political heft and it is becoming the weapon of Europhile oppression. Parliamentary procedure is today’s equivalent of arrows at the battlefield of Hastings. Bercow, supposedly impartial chairman of our Legislature, seems to be fighting for the nose-helmet Normans.
Brexiteer Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) said he had tried to submit an amendment to the debate but had been assured by the clerks that no such thing could be done. Yet Mr Grieve had been allowed to do it! Bercow claimed ignorance.
Mr Bone slumped in his seat but in some ways he has only himself to blame. He has been one of Bercow’s past defenders. Wake up, Peter. This Speaker is viciously unbalanced, an enemy of your cause and of the referendum majority. Another Leaver, Eddie Hughes (Con, Walsall N), asked how an ‘unamendable motion could be amended’.
Bercow said it was ‘long standing practice’ that the Speaker’s judgements were never questioned by MPs. Ha! They are now, mate. ‘I am clear in my mind,’ he said, rolling his forked tongue over his teeth, ‘that I have taken the right course of action.’
With this he went into a technical passage that played such semantics, it’s a wonder the Heavens did not fling down a thunderbolt to reduce the wordy worm to a roundel of smouldering ashes. Mark Francois (Con, Rayleigh & Wickford) read the long-established rules which Bercow had broken.
He reminded Bercow that he claimed to be ‘a servant of this House and we have taken you at your word’.
Oh, Comrade Foolish, you would better accept the word of Faustus. On hearing further wriggling wordplay from Bercow, Mr Francois erupted: ‘That’s ridiculous! Utter sophistry!’
Bercow did what he often does and sought sanctuary in a contribution from his old boss Kenneth Clarke (Con, Brussels). What a sorry ruin Clarke is these days. Several other Bercow toadies were called. Bercow was speared by his nemesis: Andrea Leadsom, Leader of the House.
She coolly asked that he publish the advice he was given by the Clerk. This earned an explosion of laughter, for the House remembered that Bercow helped force the Government to break custom and publish its legal advice on Brexit. Bercow loftily said that the Clerk’s advice to him was ‘private’.
Leadsom had drawn blood, for she had made the House jeer its Speaker. Contempt for the Chair was open, ministers heckling him and even Remainer MPs relishing the spectacle of a nasty little bully receiving some payback. Feet drummed on floorboards with each fresh attack. Senior Members slapped their knees with pleasure as Bercow guppy-fished for an answer to Mrs Leadsom’s blow.
Independent-minded Andrew Percy (Con, Brigg & Goole) – who is meant to be a friend of Bercow – said the public would realise there was ‘a conspiracy and procedural stitch-up taking place by a Commons grossly out of touch with the referendum result’. Prolonged hear-hears. Bercow tried bragging that he always acted ‘diligently, conscientiously and without favour’ but no one was buying that likely tale.
As long-serving Tory moderate Crispin Blunt (Reigate) said, ‘for many of us, the referee of our affairs is no longer neutral’. He was speaking for MPs but the same will be true of the public.
When Parliament’s arbiter breaks the rules, Parliament itself becomes bent. But I think we all knew that. Westminster no longer has legislators. It has been captured by anti-democratic squatters.
Hard-pressed orderlies in white coats spent the day rushing to and fro with iced flannels, to be placed on the fevered brows of pro-Brussels MPs.
My dears, le tout snootocracy was in a state of the most tremendous agitation about Brexit. Cross fists were shaken, fingers pointed. Voices became husky – hollow! – with grieving disbelief. Britain was really going to leave the European federal project? You mean it wasn’t just some bad dream? Nooooo!
It is as if the great news of June 24, that dawn of our liberation from the bossy EU, has only just reached this metropolitan elite.
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In recent days they have taken off into the ether like one of those Olympic pole vaulters who has just pronged his stick into terra firma. Twang! Up he rises, goggle-eyed with the sheer effort of it all. There will come the inevitable, flailing-limbed descent once these Bremoaners have reconnected with reality. But for the moment the likes of Ed Miliband (Lab, Doncaster N) and Nick Clegg (Lib Dem, Sheffield Hallam) are bawlingly bereft.
Labour had called an Opposition Day debate on our exit from the EU. I will not bore you for the entire column about it, for it was truly no more significant than the barking of mongrels at a passing Royal Mail van, but no doubt the BBC will be giving it bells and whistles, so a few observations may be in order.
Nicky Morgan (Con, Loughborough),gave a speech of pinkening anger. Having said she would insist on scrutinising the Government every inch of its path to Brexit, she complained that some had dared to scrutinise her own (most peculiar) behaviour of late. I suppose one or two of us may have tweaked her hooter a bit, but why not?
‘I resent it!’ snapped Mistress Morgan, in earlier life a corporate solicitor in mergers and acquisitions (no wonder she likes the EU). She thundered that the more she was herself scrutinised, the more difficult she intended to become. Point of information: Her constituents voted to Leave by 54 per cent.
Mrs Morgan said that the negotiations with the EU would likely continue for ‘months, years and decades’. Is she right? Surely two years at most would suffice.
When we cancel a contract with a mobile telephone supplier we do not continue to negotiate with that company for ‘decades’. It may even be open to question whether or not the EU will still be around in even one decade’s time. But it may outlast Mrs Morgan’s political career.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Con, Spel-thorne), a firm Brexiteer, boomed that the debate was more like ‘a group therapy session’. He could not understand all this pant-wetting (not quite his phrase, I admit) about us leaving the Single Market. ‘Most countries have plentiful access to the Single Market but are not members,’ said Mr Kwarteng.
Nick Boles (Con, Grantham & Stamford) gave an interesting speech. Though a devoted Remainer at the referendum, he now saw that Europhiles needed to understand the vastness of what had just happened. They should change their views accordingly.
Earlier we had PMQs where Theresa May was unflappable, despite taking verbal gyp from Emily Thornberry (more properly called Lady Nugee), who has become the Labour front bench’s new Ed Balls.
Mrs May claimed that acid Emily was rabbiting on about a second vote on the EU. ‘I would have thought,’ said the PM, ‘that Labour MPs would have learned this lesson: You can ask the same question again, you still get the answer you don’t want.’
Labour MPs, reminded of their unsuccessful attempt to topple Jeremy Corbyn, fell glumly silent while the Tory benches roared.
In vain did one look for Stephen Phillips (Con, Sleaford & N Hykeham), who has gone off the deep end in attacking the May Government over Brexit. Where was this mega-rich defender of the Commons? Tarting himself around on Sky telly, naturally, and wearing more make-up than the late Dame Barbara Cartland.
 
Just when you thought Project Fear couldn't get any dafter, along come some of the most bizarre scare stories yet.
The first was a warning that toilet paper will be in short supply if Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
According to one manufacturer: 'Stocks are not unlimited and will not withstand long-term border delays or panic buying.'
Are they seriously suggesting we could soon be seeing people panic buying bog rolls, fighting in the aisles over the last multi-pack of Charmin quilted?
Even if there is a shortage, we'll manage. Soft toilet paper is a relatively recent luxury. In living memory many homes made do with cut-up newspapers and could again in an emergency.
The Guardian would be eminently suitable for such a purpose.
I'm sure it won't come to that, though.  Frankly, I don't believe any of these hysterical doomsday scenarios with which we have been bombarbed ever since we voted Leave. 
Toilet tissue is simply the latest commodity we are told will disappear from the shelves if we 'crash out' of the EU, along with everything from vital medicines to fancy sparkling water.
The society magazine Tatler has published a cut-out-and-keep guide to those essentials its readers should stockpile.
I'd like to think it was tongue in cheek, but these days, with no end in sight to Brexit Derangement Syndrome, you never can tell. 
Anyway, top priority should be given to buying up all available supplies of Evian mineral water, which can also be used for washing and flushing toilets when the mains water and sewage system collapses due to Brexit.
Tatler readers are also advised to stock up on Le Creuset saucepans, L'Occitane en Provence almond shower gel, Veuve Clicquot champagne, Leoube Premium olive oil and Ladurée Macarons — a favourite, apparently, of the Duchess of Sussex.
Heaven forfend that Meghan might run out of pistachio-flavoured pastries.
My favourite horror story came from an unnamed Cabinet minister, who is predicting a rise in dogging in the event of a No Deal Brexit. 
There's another one of those sentences I never expected to read, let alone write.
To be honest, I didn't even realise that dogging was a thing any more. It was fashionable a few years ago, but I assumed its day had passed, along with iPods and Rubik's Cubes.
For a while, the hilarious antics of dedicated doggers provided plenty of fun for this column and gave Gary a wonderful range of material for his cartoons.
Many of those gathering in car parks and local beauty spots to have casual sex, while others watched, decided to spice things up by wearing fancy dress.
I can remember reporting on a number of dogging-related incidents featuring people dressed as everything from Tinkerbell to Elvis Presley. 
Inevitably, Oompa Loompas were also involved. 
Could we soon see a return to these golden days of roadside debauchery?
The Government is said to be worried about a mass outbreak of dogging among lorry drivers caught up in tailbacks at the Channel ports.
According to the anonymous minister: 'One of the things we talk about in our No Deal meetings concerns hauliers and their activities. There are dogging hotspots all over the place.' 
Planners are concerned that drivers facing delays of up to two-and-a-half days because they haven't got the right paperwork after October 31 will resort to having sex with strangers to pass the time.
Where did that idea come from? While one arm of the Government is fretting about serious shortages of drugs like insulin, another is drawing up contingency plans to cope with an increase in dogging.
You couldn't make it up.
Why do the planners assume that bored lorry drivers will choose to whittle away the long hours going at it like rabbits in lay-bys?
Perhaps they will use the time productively to play Sudoku or learn a foreign language.
Funnily enough, it's only British lorry drivers that ministers are exercised about. They appear to believe that foreign hauliers have no appetite for dogging.
Even so, what is the Government proposing to do about it? There aren't enough coppers to go round, as it is. 
And those we do have all seem to have been drafted into London to deal with the climate change maniacs. 
Will the fire brigade be called in to turn the hoses on them? 
Or, more likely, will teams of sexual health workers be employed to hand out free condoms, on the basis that if lorry drivers must indulge in dogging at least we can encourage them to practise safe dogging.
I'm afraid if you were expecting a learned treatise on Brexit from me today, you'll be disappointed. 
No one has got the faintest idea what's going to happen. 
And anyone who says they have is a liar.
Maybe Boris and Lenny Verruca will cobble together some shoddy compromise on the Irish bus-stop.
Perhaps the Eurocrats will drop their overt hostility to Brexit and cease insulting our intelligence.
If even half the Project Fear scare stories were true, you might have thought that people would by now be deserting Britain. 
Yet only yesterday, it was revealed that record numbers of EU nationals have successfully applied to stay permanently in this country.
More than 1.5 million have already been granted settled status and the same number again are expected to apply before Christmas.
Dismal defeatists like Spread Fear Phil — making himself busy all across the airwaves yesterday — continue to paint a picture of a No Deal Britain turning into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Clearly, it's not a vision shared by EU immigrants who have made their homes here. Otherwise they'd be heading back home in droves on the first available Eurostar.
No, like the 17.4 million of us who voted Leave, our new fellow countrymen and women believe a post-Brexit, properly independent Britain has a shining future.
And, if all else fails, at least there's the great dogging revival to look forward to.
Somehow, despite the doomsters, I think we'll be fine — toilet roll shortage or not. 
By inclination, I’m not in favour of banning anything. Provided, of course, it doesn’t make other people’s lives a misery.
I’ve never understood, for instance, why you can’t have smoking pubs and non-smoking pubs. It’s called freedom of choice.
Yet I find myself, against my better instincts, drawn towards the suggestion that people should be banned from eating on public transport.
Not that I’m in favour of the nanny state. And people shouldn’t be stopped from munching a Mars bar on a bus.
There’s a time and place for everything, however. 
One of the joys of our civilisation was always sitting in a proper restaurant carriage, eating a British Rail Full English Breakfast, complete with silver cutlery and a large Bloody Mary.
By comparison, nothing is worse than being crammed on a crowded train or bus next to someone tucking into a greasy three-course Happy Meal out of a cardboard box.
So I’d definitely ban the consumption of all hot food, especially on the London Underground.
Until, that is, they get round to putting buffet cars on the Piccadilly Line.
Swamped by Swampy
Swampy’s back! The eco-protester who made a name for himself 20-odd years ago is in the news again as a result of the latest climate change demonstrations.
Daniel Hooper, now 46, is still at it. 
He was recently in court after handcuffing himself to a concrete block on the road to an oil refinery in Wales.
I only ever came across him the once.
I was waiting for the lift at London Weekend Television, when the doors opened and out walked Swampy, who was recording Have I Got News For You in another studio. 
As he emerged, I stepped in with my producer. Big mistake. Trust me, you’ve never smelt anything like it.
Here was a man who lived up to his nickname.
We had to evacuate immediately and take the stairs. LWT was forced to cordon off the lift and fumigate it.
How Merton and Hislop managed to sit alongside him for however long it took to record the show, I’ll never know.
Is it too much to hope that in the intervening two decades he’s had a bath?
Given that he lives in a teepee, I doubt it. Allegedly.  
Just imagine the reaction if a bunch of pro-Brexit English MPs had got onto their hind legs in the Commons and started singing Land Of Hope And Glory.
Or launched into a rousing rendition of There'll Always Be An England, with Jacob Rees-Mogg on megaphone and Bill Cash on ukulele.
They'd be labelled 'Little Englanders' and accused of racism.
So what made the SNP think it was acceptable to sing Scots Wha Hae and Flower Of Scotland in the Chamber this week?
Other excitable Remainers burst into an impromptu performance of the EU anthem, Ode To Joy. 
Whatever next? Can we expect that irritating Green woman from Brighton to bring along her guitar and treat us to Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi during the next climate change debate?
They paved paradise...
I'm assuming the only reason Plaid Cymru didn't deliver the full Land Of My Fathers is that, having only four MPs, they couldn't rustle up a convincing male voice choir.
Here's an idea. Forget the Parliamentary shenanigans and costly court battles.  
Why don't we just decide the outcome of Brexit based upon a Britain's Got Talent-style contest? Simon Cowell could occupy the Speaker's chair. 
After all, he couldn't be any worse than that weasel Bercow.
Coming up next, Andrea Leadsom will give you her We'll Meet Again. And stand by for Anna Soubry's Here We Go Looby Loo.
Never mind a second referendum, you can vote by pressing the red button on your remote or text Leave or Remain to the number at the bottom of your screen now.
Calls cost £39billion.
OK, so as Captain Mainwaring might have said: 'I think you're entering the realms of fantasy there, Rich.'
Perhaps I am. But it would be difficult to invent anything more absurd than the behaviour of MPs over the past couple of weeks at Westminster.
There is a serious point, here, though.
When it comes to Brexit, somehow the impression has been allowed to form that the moral high ground belongs to those who have been shouting the loudest.
Step forward Wee Burney's bombastic representative on earth, that porky pub bore in the petrol blue suit who always reminds me of Robbie Coltrane in Tutti Frutti.
My goodness, he likes the sound of his own voice, shouting down anyone who dares to disagree with him. 
Ian Blackford has been prominent among the procession of pro-EU politicians parading across our TV screens.
If you watch the rolling news channels — which most people don't — you'd be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that Boris was trying to force through Britain's departure from the EU without any democratic mandate whatsoever.
That's because for every Leave spokesman interviewed, equal time is granted to each and every incarnation of the Rag, Tag and Bobtail Remainer army.
So the single Tory Leaver is heavily outnumbered by Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP, the Greens, Welsh nationalists, the Independent Group or whatever Change UK calls itself this week.
Talk about one-sided. You'd never think that a clear majority of the British people voted Leave.
We even have to put up with the Irish Republic's Lenny Verruca and his gobby trade commissioner laying down the law. And they're not even part of the Union. 
This week, we've also had anti-Brexit court cases in Edinburgh and Belfast, attempting to overturn a ruling of the High Court in London. We're talking tails and dogs here.
What's missing is any reference to what Chesterton's 'secret people of England' actually want.
The English make up the bulk of the population and pay the lion's share of the bills. Of the 17.4million who voted Leave in the referendum, 15.2million were in England.
Yet, outside of Remain strongholds such as London, it's as if the English are irrelevant in all this.
In London, mayor Sadiq Khan pretends he speaks exclusively for the vast majority of enlightened, civilised, metropolitan folk, in contrast to the barbarians who live beyond the M25. 
He conveniently overlooks one of my favourite statistics. Even within London, more people voted Leave than voted for Khan.
It's the same story in Scotland, where the SNP presumes to represent everyone. But more people north of the border voted Leave than voted for Wee Burney's gang at the last election.
Ditto the Welsh nationalists, in spades. One of their four MPs has been everywhere lately, declaring that she was going to bring down Boris Johnson.
You'd never think that the number who voted Leave in Wales was seven times as many as those who voted Plaid in 2017.
As for the Lib Dems, they managed just 7.4 per cent of the vote at the last General Election.
So where the hell do they think they get the right to obstruct the will of the clear majority of the British people?
Not to mention the treachery of the turncoat Tories who voted against the Government and their own manifesto commitment.
Ultimately, none of this would matter without the disgraceful connivance of Bercow and the duplicity of Labour, which is running scared of the General Election it has been demanding daily for the past two years.
When we do eventually get an election, the secret people of England will have the chance to speak at last. By then, it'll probably be too late.
Frankly, if you're all as worn out as I am, it might not make any difference. The Brexit we voted for, the Brexit we were promised, is dead in the water.
The anti-democratic forces of Remain have prevailed. As Ken Livingstone once said, and politicians have spent the last three years proving beyond peradventure:
If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it.
But until then, maybe we can make our voice heard. We can go down singing, like the dance band on the Titanic - starting with the Last Night Of The Proms tomorrow. All together now:
Land of Hopeless Tories...
Seems like I’m not the only one who doesn’t do honeymoon periods. Project Fear hasn’t missed a beat since Boris got the job.
Yesterday’s World At One on Radio 4 was a collector’s item, a veritable cornucopia of Scare Stories ‘R’ Us.
Not since miserablist Leonard Cohen’s first album has there been a more depressing 40-odd minutes of music to slash your wrists by.
No turn was unstoned in the producers’ efforts to put the fear of God into us. They even managed to track down a professor in Australia, of all places, to warn that No Deal Boris was passing a death sentence on what remains of the British car industry. 
This was predicated upon Vauxhall saying it might have to reconsider plans to build a new model at Ellesmere Port.
Now there’s a surprise. Multinational motor manufacturers never miss a trick when it comes to putting the squeeze on governments for tax-breaks, regional development grants and so forth.
Given that Boris is already planning to bribe the North with a tsunami of public money, it wasn’t necessary.
Merseyside can expect a large bung from the Treasury, especially with lone Scouse Tory Esther McVey in the Cabinet, and Vauxhall will almost certainly be one of the beneficiaries.
The truth of the matter is that, Brexit or not, the car industry is in far better shape than any time in history, including when I covered it in the Seventies and British Leyland was a byword for clapped-out nationalisation and industrial anarchy.
Still, why let the facts get in the way of a good horror story?
This latest doomsday bulletin from Project Fear was as predictable as the Confederation of British Industry going into full Grim Reaper mode at the prospect of Boris taking us out of the EU without a ‘deal’.
Even so, the CBI was forced to admit that other European countries were less well prepared than Britain for that increasingly likely eventuality. 
Given that this corporatist, fanatically pro-EU organisation has been spectacularly wrong on just about everything I can remember, this was a rare confession that our so-called European ‘partners’ have just as much, if not more, to lose than we do.
The World At Sixes And Sevens then wheeled on the pro-Remain Labour MP for Ellesmere Port, where 58 per cent of his constituents voted Leave.
Prime Minister Johnson wasn’t just the nemesis of Vauxhall, he wailed, he was going to close down British manufacturing industry entirely. Don’t these people ever take a day off?
As Boris embarks on his summer of sorcery, his natural enemies are cranking up their opposition to a No Deal departure. 
Hilariously, the Guardian warned yesterday of an impending ‘No Deal Brexit Emergency’, which would leave public spending plans ‘in tatters’.
Hang on a minute. As part of Boris’s ‘love bomb’ to Britain, he intends to turn on the spending taps, splashing out on everything from high-speed rail to social care and schools.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought the Guardian was in favour of more public spending. Apparently not, if it’s promoted by a pro-Brexit Tory PM. (Mind you, ‘emergency’ is the Left’s favourite new word. See also ‘climate emergency’, what we used to call summer.)
The Grauniad furthermore quoted some quango I’ve never heard of accusing Boris of planning to destroy the Union.
They obviously hadn’t noticed that Johnson was in Scotland yesterday, sucking up to Wee Burney and Ruth Davidson, and is making whistle-stop visits to Wales and Northern Ireland.
He’s also going to bombard every home in Britain with a leaflet spelling out the benefits of Brexit — in stark contrast to the defeatist drivel churned out by the Vichy government presided over for three dismal years by Mother Theresa and Spread Fear Phil.
Maybe he could revive the spirit of World War II and send a refurbished fleet of Lancaster bombers to drop the leaflets from 25,000ft — rather as the RAF did over Germany before hostilities turned seriously grumpy. That would probably appeal to Boris’s Churchillian sense of destiny.
Actually, yesterday’s World At One managed to draw not a World War II but a Cold War analogy between a Boris Brexit and a nuclear winter.
An author who writes about the advertising industry explained that the leaflets the new Government would be sending out may be reminiscent of the Cold War ‘protect and survive’ propaganda, giving advice on what to do in the event of a nuclear holocaust. Everybody hide!
I’m assuming this was tongue in cheek, but with Project Fear you never know. Elsewhere yesterday, it threw up a prediction that every farmer in Britain would go bankrupt if a No Deal Brexit goes ahead — despite assurances to the contrary from Michael Gove.
At this rate, it’s a small step from agricultural Armageddon and manufacturing devastation to nuclear annihilation.
And on that bombshell, as Clarkson likes to say, enough Brexit already. Maybe a honeymoon period isn’t such a bad thing after all.
One of the consistent themes of this column is that no good ever comes of fancy dress. 
How many times over the years have I brought you news of fights between everyone from superheroes and Elvis impersonators to Where’s Wally wannabes?
Memorable incidents have featured drunken Star Wars warriors brawling with Smurfs and Disney characters. 
More often than not, Oompa Loompas are involved. Mostly these mass brawls happen at railway stations, at comic book conventions and at chucking out time on provincial High Streets. 
But never before at sea. Still, it was no surprise to learn violence had broken out on an all-you-can-drink cruise ship off the coast of Norway. 
Fighting erupted when passengers wearing black tie and waving Union flags squared up to a man dressed as a clown. (Incidentally, who packs a clown suit for a booze cruise round the fjords?)
A huge fight ensued. Furniture and plates were used as weapons and there was ‘blood everywhere’, according to eye-witnesses.
It was reported that ‘large amounts of alcohol had been taken’. Surely not.
Bring on the Oompa Loompas!
Like many of you, I basked in the nostalgic glow of the pictures of eggs frying on the pavement during the heatwave. 
These were a Fleet Street stock in trade when I was a paperboy, more than 50 years ago. Of course, that was before global warming had been invented. 
Labour’s disgusting, patronising condemnation of the Conservatives’ ‘Uncle Tom’ tendency in the new Cabinet is nothing new. 
The Left have always thought that they should own the votes and loyalty of black and minority ethnic citizens (BAME) — not just here, but the United States, too.
Welfare programmes and social housing are designed deliberately to keep people in their place, beholden to their benevolent betters.
Randy Newman nailed it as long ago as 1974 in his biting satirical song Rednecks, which you’ll never hear on the radio because of its repeated use of the unsavoury n-word. 
It centred on Northern ‘liberals’ sneering at racist Southerners and boasting about how they had freed African Americans from their slavery chains. 
Yes, Newman wrote, they’re ‘free to be put in a cage in Harlem in New York City’ and ‘free to be put in a cage on the South Side of Chicago, and the West Side . . .’ going on to list notorious U.S. welfare ghettoes.
That’s how the Labour Left think of black and ethnic minority citizens in Britain. 
They despise as traitors anyone of immigrant heritage who would ever vote Tory, let alone serve in a Conservative government. They’re as racist in their own way as any Redneck.
Plans to recruit 20,000 extra coppers may be scuppered by the fact there aren’t enough police stations to go round these days. 
Modern Plod need large lockers to store all their fancy equipment. Space is in short supply. 
Your average bobby has stab vests, body cameras, telescopic truncheons, two-way radios, laptops, protein bars, you name it.
We’ve come a long way from the days when all a detective needed was a shooter, half a bottle of scotch and a bacon banjo from the canteen.
Or as Jack Regan, in The Sweeney, instructed his new driver: ‘I want the glove compartment filled with Mars bars, Wine Gums and Jelly Babies, and ham sandwiches, the sort that come in cellophane packets, and sausage rolls — but no potato crisps, they interfere with transmission.’
According to a new ‘survey’ made up for Channel 4 to promote a television programme, the word ‘Brexit’ is uttered more than 500 million times a day in Britain.
Not in our house it isn’t.
To paraphrase Basil Fawlty, I may have mentioned the B-word once, but I think I got away with it.
Like most of you, if I never heard the word again, it would be too soon. For a couple of glorious weeks over the Christmas and New Year holiday, it was almost possible to avoid Brexit altogether if you tried hard enough.
The hope was that the season of peace and goodwill would rub off on the political class. Once back in the real world, with their families, their friends and their constituents, surely they would come to their senses.
Fat chance of that. So forgive me for having to return to the subject.
When Parliament reassembled this week, it quickly became apparent that the brief cessation of hostilities would be resuming more fiercely than ever.
Not that there was a proper ceasefire, just that most sensible people were taking no notice whatsoever. There was never any chance that MPs would all start singing Silent Night in perfect harmony and emerge from their trenches for a friendly game of football.
The sole footballing analogy came from a senior Conservative who compared Mother Theresa to a player trying to run down the clock in the dying minutes of a game.
Unfortunately, Theresa follows cricket, not football. Otherwise she would realise that you only dribble the ball to the corner flag in the 89th minute to protect a one-goal lead, not when you’re losing 7-0.
Yet she persists stubbornly with her dismal, defeatist Brexit-in-name-only ‘deal’, even though it pleases nobody.
The bookies, who are rarely wrong, give it a 16/1 chance of getting through the Commons.
Leavers won’t vote for it, Remainers won’t vote for it, the DUP won’t vote for it, Labour won’t vote for it.
Most members of the Cabinet wouldn’t vote for it, either, if they didn’t — like former Brexiteer Michael Gove — fancy their own chances of becoming Prime Minister when the music stops and Mrs May finally swallows the cyanide pill.
With a few honourable exceptions, no one in Parliament comes out of this well, least of all that preening puff adder John Bercow, who has demeaned his office and betrayed centuries of neutrality in the Speaker’s chair by ripping up the rule-book to help those headbangers who want to stop any form of Brexit altogether.
If Bercow had attempted this treacherous coup in an earlier period of history, he’d have been dragged off to the Tower for execution and his head displayed on a spike at the entrance to the Palace of Westminster, pour encourager les autres — as they don’t say in Sunderland.
All this garbage about protecting Parliament is an intelligence-insulting smokescreen. When we voted to take back control of our own lawmaking, we meant after we left the EU. We didn’t vote to give MPs the power to overturn the result of the referendum.
That’s how deceitful and self-serving most of our politicians really are. Once they get into office, they hold the electorate, the people who pay their wages, in complete contempt.
We’ve had the spectacle of Dominic Grievance, until fairly recently of one of the country’s most senior law officers, scouring the small print for any obscure clause which can be deployed to scupper Brexit. His latest wheeze, in concert with Labour’s ghastly Pixie Balls-Cooper (who still hasn’t fulfilled her promise to take Syrian refugees into one of her own homes), is an attempt to deny the Government tax-raising powers and disrupt the Budget.
And where did he get that idea from? In the U.S, Donald Trump is currently refusing to sign government spending bills unless Congress agrees to provide the money to build a wall along the Mexican border.
The fundamental difference is that Trump is trying to implement a firm promise he made to the American people during his election campaign.
What Grieve, Cooper and the rest of the hardline Remaniacs are attempting is to thwart the democratically expressed will of the British people, in defiance of both their parties’ manifesto pledges.
At the 2017 General Election, the Conservatives and Labour stood on a platform guaranteeing to respect the result of the referendum, in which 17.4 million people voted Leave.
Neither party now has any intention of doing what they promised. Once upon a time (it really does seems like a lifetime ago), Mrs May assured us that ‘No Deal was better than a bad deal’.
Now she tells us it’s her ‘deal’ or no Brexit.
Would you buy a second-hand car from this woman? Her Brexit deal is a bit like buying a T-reg Skoda from Arthur Daley.
Lift the bonnet and there’s a Bri-Nylon shirt stuffed in the noisy gearbox and grass growing from the mud used to fill the holes in the bodywork.
If Mother Theresa was Fiona Bruce’s agent, not only would Nick Robinson now be hosting Question Time but Fiona would find herself paying the BBC to carry on presenting Antiques Roadshow.
So where do we go from here? Your guess is as good as mine. Anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen is lying.
There’s agitation for a second referendum, a so-called ‘People’s Vote’. Jeremy Corbyn yesterday again demanded a General Election.
In the immortal words of Brenda from Bristol: ‘Not another one!’
But why should we believe they would accept the verdict of a second referendum, when they have trampled over the outcome of the first?
And there’s no guarantee that a second General Election would change anything when it comes to Brexit.
After all, both Labour and the Conservatives have reneged on their last manifesto commitments.
My own well-known preference has always been a ‘No Deal’ Brexit on WTO terms. But that’s not going to happen, either.
I’ve reluctantly accepted that there will have to be some kind of compromise. But with everyone so bitterly entrenched and the PM clinging to the wreckage of her doomed ‘deal’, I honestly can’t see where it’s going to come from.
Back in the autumn, I assumed that a shabby carve-up had already been agreed and it would soon be all over bar the shouting, much to everyone’s relief, after a bit of patronising political theatre designed to pull the wool over our eyes. I got that wrong.
What we have learned from this tawdry, demeaning episode in our nation’s history is that we no longer live in a proper functioning democracy.
The arrogant political class despise the wider electorate and believe they are our masters but not our servants.
I’m reminded yet again of the odious federast Peter Mandelson’s smug declaration 20-odd years ago that the ‘era of true representative democracy’ was coming to an end. He wasn’t kidding.
And of Ken Livingstone’s best line: ‘If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it.’
Look, I’m sorry to have added to the alleged 500 million mentions of Brexit today. But someone’s got to do it.
Sadly, only one B-word comes to mind right now. And it’s not Brexit.
It’s Betrayal.
According to a made-up survey for a supermarket chain, a fifth of British people are using cooking oil instead of sunscreen.
If they’d wanted an even bigger headline, they could have claimed that half the population was frying food in Ambre Solaire. That wouldn’t have been true, either, but it would have had a more powerful ‘Oi, Doris!’ factor.
Does anyone seriously believe more than 13 million of us are rubbing cooking oil into our skin to promote a better tan?
Of course not. Mind you, it won’t be long before the Left seizes on this bogus survey to claim it is yet further evidence of ‘austerity’ Britain. Soon, food banks will be giving away sun cream to those living in ‘poverty’.
There may have been a time when some women misguidedly believed claims that judiciously applied sunflower oil would help them achieve a deep, film star’s tan. But that was before skin cancer was invented.
There was another story a few years ago which alleged that in Scotland people were using chip fat as a home-made tanning aid.
That, I can believe. This is a country, after all, which deep fries everything, including Mars bars. So why not people?
There’s so little sunshine in Scotland that folk are determined to make the most of it, even if that involves tipping the contents of a chip pan over their heads.
I can remember being in the Western Highlands one summer on a rare day the clouds parted. My fair-haired Aberdonian friend immediately pegged himself out like Gulliver for the duration. When he came down for dinner that evening, he was glowing like Chernobyl. I remarked that he’d probably overdone the sunbathing.
‘That’s the thing about us Scots,’ he said. ‘We’re either red or we’re blue!’
Just when you think the squalid Stop Brexit circus can’t sink any lower, a young woman is driven from her home for the crime of living with Boris Johnson.
Step back from the feeding frenzy and consider the kind of country we now live in.
Three years after the British people took part in the greatest democratic exercise in our history, the man who led the Leave campaign, the front-runner to become our next Prime Minister, a former Foreign Secretary and two-term Mayor of London, is forced into hiding.
Demonstrators picket the flat he has been sharing with Carrie Symonds. The street is plastered with anti-Boris, anti-Brexit posters. Johnson is abused in the street and reported to the police by agitprop neighbours who record a domestic spat through the walls and leak it to an extreme Left-wing newspaper.
You might expect the Establishment to rally round their beleaguered parliamentary colleague — at the very least demanding that Scotland Yard provides round-the-clock protection for the couple.
Far from it. Their silence is deafening. Most of them are revelling in Johnson’s discomfort and subjecting him to synchronised character assassination.
Having failed, thus far, to destroy Brexit and overturn the democratically expressed wishes of the British people, they are now determined to destroy the People’s Choice to become PM.
If this was happening in a third-world banana republic, the bien pensant political class would be outraged. There would be calls for UN action, everything from sanctions to military intervention.
But in Britain 2019, this is just business as usual. Ever since the failure of Project Fear to prevent us voting to leave the EU, the Establishment have moved heaven and earth to stop it happening.
Time and again, they have demonstrated that they don’t believe in democracy, when it doesn’t deliver the right result.
First we were told they would respect the result of the referendum. Then both main parties stood in a General Election on a promise to implement Brexit, garnering 80 per cent of the vote.
Neither the Tories nor Labour had any intention of keeping their promise. With the connivance of the courts and the despicable pipsqueak Speaker Jean-Claude Bercow, the vast majority of MPs have contrived to delay and derail Brexit indefinitely.
As I have written before, there may not be tanks on the streets but be in no doubt: what we have been witnessing over the past three years is a concerted coup against the British people. We were initially told we were too stupid to know what we were voting for.
Then we were bombarded with sophistry about ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Brexit, ‘crashing out without a deal’, the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’, blah, blah, blah.
When Theresa May failed multiple times even to get hardline Remainers to back her dismal, defeatist ‘Withdrawal Agreement’, the guaranteed departure date of March 31 was arbitrarily torn up.
Having failed to prevent Boris Johnson becoming one of the final two names put to the Tory membership as May’s successor, the opponents of Brexit are straining every sinew to stop him winning.
They’re now throwing their weight behind bland Jeremy Hunt, the Manchurian Candidate, a brainwashed Remainer currently posing as a born-again Brexiteer.
With Boris at bay, Hunt turned up in Aberdeen, on the bridge of a fishing boat, clutching a can of Irn-Bru and a packet of fish and chips. Presumably, this stunt had been set up for Aberdeen boy Michael Gove. But when former Brexiteer Gove failed to make the cut, rather than waste a photo-op they gave it to Hunt instead.
Later, he joined in the character assassination, accusing Boris of cowardice. It’s a charge repeated everywhere in a plethora of ‘The Boris Who Knows Me’ pieces in all newspapers. The accusation is only because Boris refuses to play the game by the Remainers’ rules and won’t answer questions about his private life.
Why should he? Would smug Hunt like every cross word between him and Mrs Hunt smeared all over the front pages?
Would the hypocritical, holier-than-thou Guardian have published a transcript of an alleged shouting match between Jeremy Corbyn and his missus? And would the BBC have amplified it all weekend? What do you think?
This is the same Guardian which condemned tabloid reporters for listening in on celebrities’ voicemails and delighted when some were prosecuted. What’s the difference between bugging a phone and bugging a home?
We know Boris can be his own worst enemy. His shambolic private life is pretty much an open book, but still it hasn’t stopped people from voting for him.
As for accusations of cowardice, he has to suffer more abuse than any politician bar Nigel Farage. Yet until now he has insisted on cycling and walking in London without a bodyguard.
No, Boris is in the crosshairs because he is the last best hope of Brexit ever happening. If they can’t prevent him winning, they are even prepared to collapse Parliament the day he moves into No 10.
Politics is a bloodsport, but this is one step beyond.
Remoaners such as Bercow, Grieve, Soubry, Rudd and most of the British Establishment might just as well be standing on Carrie Symonds’s doorstep alongside the Class War rabble.
They have created the poisonous climate in which such intimidation is now commonplace. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Project Fear is one thing. Forcing a blameless young woman to live in genuine fear is quite another.
How many thousands of people have been flooded out of their homes in recent years because, to protect wildlife, the Environment Agency refuses to dredge rivers?
In the Thames Valley, the justification for not dredging was to conserve the habitat of the Depressed River Mussel.
Last week, it was the turn of those living in Wainfleet All Saints, in Lincolnshire. More than 580 properties had to be evacuated when the River Steeping burst its banks.
The agency claimed dredging wouldn’t have helped and blamed unforeseen ‘extreme rainfall’.
In which case, why did it spend £300,000 recently to move badgers from Wainfleet to higher ground further down river?
To hell with people whose lives have been ruined, just so long as the badgers are safe.
Depressing, or what?
Hospital cleaners are to start serving meals to patients as part of a cost-cutting drive.
After they’ve mopped the floors and scrubbed the toilets they will be given hairnets and plastic aprons to wear over their work clothes before they handle food.
The new system will come into effect at St George’s Hospital, in Tooting, South London, under a new deal between the NHS and private contractors. Serving food was, of course, something which used to be done by nurses, before they went on degree courses and graduated from traditional duties, such as changing beds, to standing around all day eating biscuits. Given the ‘savage Tory cuts’ to the NHS, how long before cleaners are handed surgeons’ scrubs and told to perform operations?
Scalpel, scrubbing brush, soup spoon . . .
 
How symbolic that within hours of announcing that he is to vacate the job of Commons Speaker which he has performed with a shocking lack of impartiality, John Bercow presided over, arguably. the most puerile scenes in the modern history of Westminster.
Long into the night, Opposition MPs sang, chanted, tried to occupy the Speaker’s Chair and waved placards – while recording it all on their mobile phones.
It was like watching a gang of school-leavers, having raided the parental drinks cabinet, embarking on a farewell bender.
And trendy Bercow, following his own tawdry example of valedictory showmanship, was more than happy to go along with it, egging them on with a pompous little speech saying that he ‘completely understood’ their behaviour.
Except, of course, this was so much worse. This was an orgy of contempt for Parliament which should be played on a loop as a reminder to voters whenever we finally get round to the next election.
In the middle, Black Rod – the Sovereign’s emissary – was booed and mocked like a pantomime villain.
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle had to be restrained by Commons staff as he made a theatrical attempt to block the Speaker’s departure for the Lords, as custom dictates come prorogation.
On his return, Bercow rounded off this night of shame by galloping through the Sovereign’s formal message of prorogation to the House in sarcastic ‘yeah, whatever’ teenage tones. He then reverted to being his most unctuous and ingratiating as he invited MPs to shake his hand.
From the Opposition benches, led by a back-slapping Jeremy Corbyn, they queued to simper and salute the self-styled ‘backbencher’s backstop’.
From the Government benches, there came not a soul. They had long ago left the Chamber to chants of ‘Shame on You!’ from Labour and the Scottish Nationalists.
And to think that these are the same MPs who not only failed to deliver the Government’s Brexit plan three years after the referendum but also failed to come up with an alternative. 
Having spent several years as a parliamentary sketchwriter, I remember, during the final stages of the furious debate over the Maastricht Treaty to strengthen Brussels’ power, some bizarre scenes involving a top hat flying around the chamber.
Under some ancient rules, any MP wishing to make a point of order during a division had to wear one of two collapsible opera hats kept in the Chamber for the purpose.
All utterly bizarre. But none of this came anywhere near the behaviour in the early hours of yesterday.
This descent to borderline yobbery has not happened overnight. The decline started with Tony Blair’s New Labour MPs in 1997.
Many arrived with a deep-seated belief Parliament was an extension of an Establishment men-only club with rules created by toffs for toffs.
Therefore anything archaic was ‘elitist’ while every modernising gesture was ‘good’.
Few would quarrel with changes such as those to make the parliamentary timetable more family-friendly. However, there was also a gradual relaxation of other rules.
For centuries, Parliament limited applause to the cry of ‘hear, hear’. That rule slowly began to fall apart.
It began in 2007 with a luvvie-style send-off for a departing Tony Blair. There were further occasional outbursts which were usually slapped down by the Chair.
After the 2015 general election, Bercow came down firmly against the new crop of Scottish Nationalist MPs when they arrived at Westminster behaving like a game show audience.
‘The convention that we do not clap in this Chamber is very, very long established and widely respected,’ he barked. Now, however, that convention has been wholly abandoned.
Last week, the Opposition benches rose to clap a Sikh Labour backbencher during Prime Minister’s Questions when he accused Boris Johnson of ‘racism’ for that newspaper column likening the burka to a ‘letter box’. The Chair let it pass.
Now, how can Bercow or his successor complain when Tory MPs orchestrate a standing ovation for the next person to call Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite?
Worst of all is MPs’ undignified new habit of filming the Commons – with impunity. If any member of the public was caught doing this they would be thrown out.
In recent months, however, Speaker Bercow has decided that it is perfectly acceptable for MPs to flout their own law.
Look at the brazen tweet by Labour MP Danielle Rowley who was busy snapping away during yesterday’s Leftie slumber party. She said disingenuously: ‘I know you’re not meant to film in the chamber, but everyone on the Opposition benches is singing and this moment was beautiful.’
Do these people have the faintest idea how self-indulgent and childish all this looks to the outside world? In their bubble of ‘yay, look at me’ self-righteousness, narcissistically lapping up the cheers of their own fanbase, they may feel that all this is perfectly principled rebellion.
Boris Johnson has committed ‘democratic outrage’, by proroguing Parliament, they argue, so why can’t we? To call an extra six days of autumn conference season a 'coup' is absurd. Previous governments have prorogued Parliament for their own ends and a court of law has ruled that they may do so.
It may not be nice or pretty but it is politics. Similarly, there is nothing unparliamentary about rowdiness and rhetorical combat. It is part of Westminster’s robust tradition.
What we saw this week, however, is a new low; a debasement of British politics. The next time this wretched bunch all reconvene at Westminster will be for the Queen’s Speech.
It is the ultimate tradition, an historic pageant which goes to the heart of our democratic system.
If they want to play games with that, then they really are in the wrong place – as the electorate will no doubt remind them in due course.
Does the name Tendayi Achiume ring any bells? She was the United Nations’ ‘Special Rapporteur on Racism’, who came to the UK on an official ‘mission’ earlier this year to see if Britain had become more racist since voting to leave the EU.
To the surprise of no one — and the delight of the Left and more zealous Remainers — she concluded that it most certainly had. In particular, her muddle-headed report claimed that Brexit had caused a surge in anti-Semitism and that Britain was now in the grip of ‘national panic’ about Islamic terrorism.
What a pity that Ms Achiume chose to come here instead of, say, Germany. Because if it’s a surge in ugly, extremist anti-immigrant activity you’re looking for — with angry mobs chasing terrified refugees down the street; with shaven-headed thugs hurling abuse at strangers on the basis of their skin colour — then don’t waste your time in Britain.
Gangs
Go and wander through the friendly, open-hearted European Union and, in particular, the most important nation of the lot. Because when it comes to xenophobia, Germany leaves Brexit Britain for dust — as we are seeing this week.
Here in the UK, the far-Right has all but vanished and even Ukip is a busted flush. The most alarming signs of racism entering the political mainstream are to be found on the Left of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party with its growing vilification of ‘Zionists’.
Disturbing though the language of the Corbynistas may be, it is nothing compared with what we are witnessing on the Continent. Just look at the latest scenes in Saxony, where riot police have been breaking up rampaging gangs of far-Right (and a few far-Left) protesters in recent days.
The federal government has now had to offer support to the authorities in the city of Chemnitz — in what used to be East Germany — following violence in which 18 people were injured. The rioting follows the killing on Sunday of a 35-year-old German man during an altercation with migrants. Police have confirmed that they have arrested a 22-year-old Syrian and a 21-year-old Iraqi on suspicion of manslaughter. Prosecutors said the catalyst for the killing was a verbal confrontation that grew out of control.
The authorities were unprepared for what followed. Within hours, street fighting had erupted, inflamed by wildfire rumours on social media. Since then, there has been film footage of demonstrators performing Nazi salutes and chanting ‘the national resistance is marching here’, and disturbing reports of gangs attacking anyone looking non-German.
The Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has now appealed for calm. ‘What we have seen is something which has no place in a constitutional democracy,’ she said yesterday. ‘We have video recordings of [people] hunting down others and hate in the streets.’
Yet, all over Germany and across the political spectrum, millions are pointing the finger of blame right back at Mrs Merkel. They cite her decision in 2015 to open her nation’s doors to all-comers, regardless of need or motive.
As a result, 1.6 million migrants made their way into the EU courtesy of the people-smuggling gangs on Europe’s eastern borders. Some were genuine refugees; many were from peaceful but poor nations simply seeking a better life.
However, the Chancellor neither asked her nation nor the rest of the EU before making a decision that has caused profound divisions across German society.
For a while, Mrs Merkel was the toast of enlightened opinion-formers everywhere. Come December 2015, Time magazine named her its ‘Person of the Year’ for ‘asking more of her country than most politicians would dare’.
Within days, that award had backfired. Millions of Germans were shocked by alarming stories of young women being molested during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne.
Pounding
Initially, the authorities had tried to bury the story, talking of a few isolated incidents. Finally, the German media exposed the truth: up to 1,200 women had reported being sexually assaulted by around 2,000 men right across Germany. Half of the suspects turned out to be new arrivals.
As a result, Mrs Merkel’s reputation and that of her party has been taking a pounding ever since, while a new and increasingly respectable extreme Right-wing party — the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) — continues to make ground. Once the revered politician of the continent’s pre-eminent economic powerhouse, Mrs Merkel was left clinging on after last autumn’s general election. At the same time, the AfD grabbed 94 seats in parliament and are now the leading opposition party.
Not only did it take Mrs Merkel and her Christian Democrats (CDU) six months to form a coalition government, but it all nearly fell apart just two months ago after deep divisions over immigration.
Violence
Her next big test comes in a matter of weeks when the people of Germany’s largest state, Bavaria, hold elections for the regional parliament.
Until now, this has been an impregnable heartland for Mrs Merkel’s Bavarian partners, the CSU — but not any more. Repeated polls show that the CSU is likely to lose its fat majority as the AfD continues to make inroads. They did the same thing in Mrs Merkel’s own state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, two years ago, pushing her Christian Democrats into third place.
This week’s violence highlights the spread of the far-Right. The leader of the AfD in Saxony, Jorg Urban, has criticised the latest violence as the work of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), saying: ‘The AfD expressly distances itself from any form of violence and expressly warns against participation in the demonstrations’.
Other AfD politicians, however, have been less critical. As one AfD MP, Markus Frohnmaier, put it: ‘If the state is no longer to protect citizens, then people take to the streets and protect themselves. It’s as simple as that!’
There is certainly not much of a gap between the AfD and the anti-Islamic Pegida street protest movement that has been organising some of the street protests in Chemnitz.
In other words, mainstream politics draws closer to mainstream disorder.
During last year’s German general election, I interviewed a senior member of the AfD’s hierarchy in Hamburg — an international lawyer who had been an Oxford contemporary of David Cameron. He pointed out that most of his supporters were not headbanging extremists, but disillusioned ex-supporters of Mrs Merkel. It might be tempting to paint them as neo-Nazis but, in German terms, they are more akin to a very Right-wing Ukip. After all, the AfD even wants to remove Germany from the euro.
The party may have a stance which would be off the radar in the UK — forcibly deporting asylum-seekers who have lodged asylum claims elsewhere, banning the burka etc — but these are no longer regarded as taboo aspirations in Germany, or indeed in other parts of the EU. Nice, caring progressive Denmark, for example, has already banned the burka and is also formally registering immigrant hotspots as ‘ghettos’.
Seeing the way in which the popular mood is moving ahead of October’s elections, Bavaria’s state government has just issued an extraordinary edict that all public buildings must display a crucifix at the entrance. This is to emphasise the ‘cultural’ importance of Christianity in public life. Not even Ukip at its fruitiest would have presented a policy like that. And if they did, most of the commentariat would have dismissed it as offensive quasi-racist nonsense. Yet that is now the official policy of Mrs Merkel’s coalition partners.
Remember all this the next time you hear arch-Remainers accuse Britain of being a narrow, nationalistic little country. Right now, it’s in Germany — and EU member states like Hungary and Poland — that we find torch-bearing, nationalist mobs on the march. And you don’t have to be a historian to hear an echo from the past.
 
No luvvies, no rock stars and precious few household names. There wasn’t much in the way of puns or witty banners, either. 
And no one would claim that we were looking at a six-figure crowd, let alone seven.
What was beyond all doubt, however, was the depth of the anger directed towards the parliamentarians sitting just over the road – and a visceral sense of betrayal.
Brexiteers had turned out to honour the Liberation Day that wasn’t. For two years, they had been preparing for March 29, circling it in red in the diary, planning a party, sorting out the hog roast and the bunting. 
And now it had come to nought. Even so, they weren’t going to let it go unobserved.
So, just like a pop festival, we found not one but two large stages erected on Parliament Square, each hosting a rival attraction while thousands of people wandered between the two deciding which one to listen to. 
Here was Glastonbury for hardcore Eurosceptics.
Should they listen to the Leave Means Leave rally on one side of the square, starring Nigel Farage and Co? Or should they join the ranks of the UKIP rally across the way?
It was noteworthy that even on this day of all days, Brexit’s diehard ultras were still unable to put on a united front.
The crowd were all of one opinion, however. These were No Dealers to a man and woman. 
I could find no one with a single good word to say about Theresa May’s deal. 
Any call for a clean, two-fingered break with the EU on the rearranged date of April 12 was cheered to the top of Big Ben (still under scaffolding).
While Saturday’s march in favour of a second referendum had been a slick production, backed by big business and professional marketing experts, yesterday’s show of strength was, frankly, a shambles.
The proceedings were supposed to kick off with a 32ft trawler on a lorry trundling through London, except that it never turned up.
Various protest groups – including the band of true believers who had slogged all the way from Sunderland – marched into Parliament Square unannounced. One was accompanied by a Northern Irish pipe band.
The mood was tense, bordering on ugly in some places. The police had covered Whitehall in crowd barriers and said they had made two arrests, one for assaulting a police officer. A small counter-protest was penned in uneventfully near Downing Street.
Westminster’s pubs overflowed with men of a certain age draped in union flags. If Saturday’s Remain march had the genteel ambiance of a cheese-and-wine do somewhere in the Home Counties, yesterday’s gathering felt more like the countdown to an England World Cup qualifier.
Cross-looking geezers outnumbered women and children by at least ten to one. One throaty UKIP contingent decided to lay siege to the media television platforms and hurl abuse at Channel 4’s Jon Snow and anyone from the BBC.
The equally shouty anti-Brexit brigade who usually camp out here with their EU flags had vacated the area for the day. As news of Theresa May’s latest defeat spread through the crowd, there was no great jubilation.
‘Let’s just see May and her deal gone and let’s get out now,’ said Dave Bradford, 61, a retired print salesman attending the first protest of his entire life. 
Like many, he had even put on a yellow hi-vis vest, like the French gilet jaune movement, though he admitted that he was not really sure why.
‘Europe just want to grind us down and our MPs have behaved appallingly to let it happen,’ said Russell Dawson, 58, an off-duty Argos worker from Bournemouth.
Karl Norris, 57, from Cwmbran, dismissed the fact that the crowd was no match for Saturday’s Remain event. ‘That lot were mostly from London and it was a weekend anyway,’ he said. 
‘We are working people from all over the country who have had to take a day off work to be here.’ 
I met several Londoners including Paul Johnny, a council worker from the solidly Remain borough of Haringey. 
Most of his colleagues at the council, he said, had fallen for the ‘propaganda’ about the risks of leaving. 
Originally from Sierra Leone, he believed that a No Deal exit would soon see Britain hatching new deals with its neglected Commonwealth allies.
The mood was funereal but not defeatist. At one point, a mobile belfry came round the square on a trolley, tolling its bell for Brexit. 
Cornish UKIP activist Duncan Odgers, 52, had turned up with a coffin and a speaker playing ‘Bring Out Your Dead’ on a loop.
‘I have been wanting to leave the EU ever since I got my British citizenship 20 years ago,’ said Jessica, a former US citizen and mother-of-four, from Richmond, south-west London, one of the most anti-Brexit districts in the land. 
She did not want to give her full name, she explained, because of the grief she gets for being a Leaver in ardent Remainer country.
‘People are shocked to meet a woman with two first class degrees in economics and her own business who thinks the EU is bad for this country,’ she said.
As the numbers grew, so did the volume of the two rallies. 
While UKIP wheeled out convicted far-Right rabble rouser Tommy Robinson on one stage, Leave Means Leave produced Labour MP Kate Hoey on the other. 
It should be noted that she attracted a larger crowd and louder cheers by some margin.
There was a surreal moment as Tory Brexiteer Peter Bone appeared on one stage only to find himself drowned out by a chorus of Land of Hope and Glory from the competing UKIP sound system across the way. 
That can’t happen very often to an MP who probably wears Union Jack pyjamas.
Finally, it was Father Brexit himself, Nigel Farage, who brought this downcast lot to a semblance of euphoria.
‘Nigel! Nigel!’ came the messianic chants as the former UKIP leader appeared – not on the UKIP stage but on the rival platform.
‘Here in Westminster, we are in enemy territory,’ he told them. ‘I am more determined to fight back against this political class than I have ever been in my life. We are the real people of this country and we will get our country back.’ 
Off he went followed by a closing chorus of I Vow To Thee My Country.
Amateur theatricals, certainly, in comparison to last weekend’s grand Remainer parade.
Even so, it would be a very foolish politician who shrugged off these scenes as the mere rumblings of a fanatical minority fringe.
This was easily as large as the first anti-Brexit rally on this very spot on the weekend after that epochal referendum. Regard it as a foretaste rather than a footnote.
When Chancellor Philip Hammond stood up at the Commons despatch box yesterday afternoon the nation was in need of cheering up. And — to put it frankly — Mrs May’s Government needed rescuing.
In the short term, Mr Hammond achieved both aims — and in doing so displayed a low political cunning of which I had not until now thought him capable.
He relaxed the iron grip of austerity and many of us will soon be feeling a little richer as a result. And about time too, after ten long years when incomes have stayed put or fallen in real terms.
So today we can have a drink on Chancellor Philip Hammond without an extra penny of duty on it!
He has made some well thought out and necessary adjustments to British economic strategy.
He should be congratulated especially for putting his hand in his pocket and finding some extra money for the Universal Credit welfare reforms.
Labour is determined to dismantle Universal Credit, and that’s madness. But as with all ambitious reforms, there have been teething problems and the Chancellor is sensibly coming to the rescue.
Hammond also deserved praise for listening to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson’s protestations that Britain’s defence budget needs extra funds if we are to compete in a world full of dangerous new military threats.
I admire, too, the way he’s resisted pressure for a reduction in VAT thresholds. Through this display of quiet courage in the face of pressure from his own Treasury officials, he’s protected the self-employed and small businessmen and women — the backbone of this country — from a pointless and costly bureaucratic burden.
In addition, Hammond earns his place in history as the first finance minister of an advanced Western country to turn his firepower on the high-tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon who fail to pay their fair share of taxes.
When the insufferable Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook, next runs into bumptious Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, I suspect they will be exchanging words about Spreadsheet Phil — and they won’t be friendly ones.
Succeeded
Zuckerberg, I feel confident, will be ordering his new spin doctor, little Nick Clegg (how humiliating to reflect he was once our Deputy Prime Minister) to do his worst.
Some commentators yesterday accused the Chancellor of cowardice for not going far enough. I disagree.
While the new taxes raise £400 million, a sum that it has to be said is puny in comparison with the billions these behemoths make in profits, no other country has had the courage to take them on at all. Hammond has set a trend which I predict will be followed by many others.
Normally the most cautious of solid citizens, he’s leading the way. Yes, Philip Hammond has put the wind up the money-grubbing plutocrats of Silicon Valley, and we should all thank him for it.
The Chancellor has also succeeded brilliantly in solving his Government’s greatest short-term problem. Yesterday’s Budget, more than anything else, was about attempting to prevent a Government defeat on the Brexit vote — if Mrs May succeeds in getting a deal — in December. He gave Tory MPs the good economic news they wanted to hear but there was an implied threat: toe the line or you may have to endure another Budget in April. A Budget that could be delivered by a new chancellor, Labour’s John McDonnell.
Some of Hammond’s best lines compared Labour’s insanely reckless and deranged economic policies with his prudence and good sense.
The downsides? There was no vision. No grandeur. Instead we had an accumulation of relatively small and finickety announcements, such as the £400 million allocated to repair potholes. Important and doubtless badly needed. But adding up to what exactly?
The blunt truth is that Hammond lacks the intellectual confidence and shameless verve of Margaret Thatcher’s great chancellor Nigel Lawson in the Eighties.
Equally, he lacks the heavyweight physical and moral presence of Tony Blair’s chancellor Gordon Brown, with his vows of fiscal prudence and schemes of virtuous investment. He even lacks an idea as big and meaningful as his predecessor George Osborne’s programme of cuts to corporation tax designed to make Britain the most competitive economy in Europe.
Indeed, I would go as far as to say that Philip Hammond would have done well to award a nod of thanks to Mr Osborne, whose hard work in bringing down the deficit during his time in office has given the present Chancellor the leeway to go on his spending spree.
But for Osborne, Hammond would never have been able to bring forward the rise in tax thresholds for the punitive 40 per cent rate to next year.
It was this unexpected move more than any other that injected a note of cheerfulness into what is a Budget expertly tailored for Middle Britain.
Philip Hammond should also be grateful for his luck. He long ago earned the sobriquet Spreadsheet Phil. From now on perhaps he should be known as Windfall Phil or even Phil-Your-Boots Hammond because he has been able to lift the spirits of the nation thanks to two spectacular pieces of good fortune.
Magic
The first concerns much higher than expected tax revenues which enable him to spend more than he predicted as recently as last Spring.
The second concerns the decision by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to raise next year’s predicted growth rate from 1.3 to 1.6 per cent, generating even more money for his coffers.
Hammond had faced a choice about how to make use of the extra money. Reduce taxes or raise spending?
He decided to do both. To have his cake and eat it. So where did Phil find his magic money tree? The answer is simple. By adding to government borrowing.
He could have brought down the deficit so government finances were in balance. That would have been the responsible course of action expected of a Tory chancellor.
In his defence, this decision was made for him by the Prime Minister, with her 70th birthday gift of an extra £20 billion for the NHS in June, followed by her announcement at Conservative Conference that the age of austerity was over.
Advantage
The political advantage of this course of action is obvious. Mrs May is fighting the battle of her political life and like many Prime Ministers before her has elected to buy her way out of trouble.
I guess Hammond has gone along with this reckless though understandable course of action with deepest reluctance. In the end though, I wish he had stuck to his fiscally conservative instincts.
At this stage of the economic cycle any Tory government worth its salt would be boasting sound finances. I hope I am wrong, but if the Tories have embarked on a spending arms race with Labour there will be only one winner. And it won’t be the Tories.
History is an unreliable guide. But yesterday was the first Monday Budget since 1962. The Tory chancellor who delivered that financial statement, Selwyn Lloyd, was out of office within a few months.
Yesterday, Philip Hammond secured a short-term political advantage for his PM. But over the medium term there could be a heavy price to pay.
Labour's Emily Thornberry said she would negotiate a deal with Brussels if her party won an election but would still campaign for it to be rejected in a second referendum. 
The shadow foreign secretary said last night that despite her desire to stay in the EU, Labour would negotiate a new Brexit deal if it came to power.
But Ms Thornberry added her party would hold a second poll on Britain's membership, with Remain as an option, and she would campaign to ignore her new deal in favour of revoking Article 50. 
Her suggestion was met with derision and ridicule by other BBC Question Time panellists and audience members, who did not understand the point of negotiating under those circumstances.
Host Fiona Bruce began by asking Ms Thornberry to clarify her position if a general election was held and Labour seized control of Number 10. 
She said: 'If you were to win a general election, you would go to Europe, try and get a better deal, have a referendum where Remain is an option. 
'Would you then be campaigning against your own deal, to Remain against your own deal you negotiated? Or would you be actually saying, no support our deal?' 
Emily Thornberry replied by suggesting she would campaign to Remain.
She said: 'Personally, I will campaign to Remain.'
Ms Bruce added: 'Even if you have negotiated a deal?' 
Ms Thornberry: 'I would negotiate a deal to the best of my ability, a deal that will look after jobs and the economy, but the best way to look after jobs and the economy is for us to Remain.' 
Fellow guest and Conservative MP, Kwasi Kwarteng interjected: 'And then you'll campaign against it?'
LBC radio host Iain Dale mocked Ms Thornberry's response as 'ridiculous'. 
He said: 'Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds to everybody here? You think people are going to vote for you on that basis. Have you no shame?'
At this point the audience in Norwich began clapping and laughing at the complicated Labour policy. 
Brexit Party MEP Richard Tice, who was also on the panel, added: 'Have you any idea how the European Union will treat us if we negotiate in that way? ''Give us a nice deal please, then I'm going to vote not to have it in the first place?'' Utterly, Utterly ridiculous.' 
Last night's live debate came as Boris Johnson suffered the humiliation of his own brother quitting as an MP and minister over the prime minister's purging of Tory rebels.
Mr Johnson suffered two Commons defeats in two days as the Opposition succeeded in seizing control of House business in a bid to block a No Deal on Tuesday.
When the prime minister then tried to call a general election on Wednesday night, he failed to get the two thirds majority needed to hold the snap poll. 
In July Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sought to clarify the party's position by saying he would campaign for Remain in a second referendum held on a Conservative Brexit deal.
Cornered Boris Johnson pays tribute to his 'fantastic' brother and admits Brexit issue 'divides families' after his sibling QUIT the Cabinet (then PM's day gets worse when female police cadet collapses behind him after being kept waiting an HOUR)
ByJack Maidment, Deputy Political Editor For Mailonlineand James Tapsfield, Mailonline Political Editor 
Boris Johnson yesterday tried to put a brave face on his brother's bombshell decision to quit the government over Brexit as the Prime Minister praised Jo as a 'fantastic guy' and a 'brilliant minister'.
Earlier it was claimed that the PM had desperately begged his minister brother not to quit the Cabinet in a tense phone call on Wednesday night.
But Jo pulled the trigger on his departure this morning anyway and dealt his sibling a major body blow as he said he could not square 'family loyalty and the national interest'.
The premier tried to downplay the significance of his brother's decision as he told reporters following a speech in Yorkshire that the pair disagreed on Brexit - just like many other families across the UK.
In a moment of drama Mr Johnson's address was momentarily interrupted as one of the female police cadets providing the backdrop for the speech collapsed, after being kept waiting more than an hour for the late-running PM.
Meanwhile, the premier dramatically upped the Brexit stakes as he said he would rather be 'dead in a ditch' than delay Britain's departure from the EU.
His comments came as it emerged the PM will see the Queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland tomorrow as the political crisis deepens. It is expected that his girlfriend Carrie Symonds will join him.
A spokesman stressed it was normal for prime ministers to spend a weekend with the monarch at this time of year and that the trip had been in the diary for a long time.
The news of Jo's resignation totally blindsided No10 officials, who had apparently not been told by their boss about his brother's intentions.
A Downing Street spokesman said Jo had been a 'brilliant talented minister' and the premier understood it will not have been an 'easy' decision.
Mr Johnson is on the Remainer wing of the Tories, having previously resigned from Theresa May's government accusing her of bungling negotiations with the EU and called for a second referendum.
However, he signed up to the 'do or die' pledge to leave the EU by Halloween - with or without a deal - when he joined his brother's Cabinet in July.
His decision to quit represents another shattering setback for the PM after Remainer MPs boxed him in by passing a law to prevent No Deal.
He has also been blocked by Jeremy Corbyn from calling a snap election to 'let the people decide' - leaving him powerless to control Parliament but unable to seek a new democratic mandate.
The government announced yesterday afternoon that another vote on an election will be held on Monday.
Jo Johnson has not expanded on his reasons for resigning, but he is thought to have been infuriated by the PM's 'Stalinist purge' of 21 Remainer rebels this week.
The group of moderate Tory MPs - which included eight former Cabinet ministers - was brutally expelled from the Conservative Parliamentary party after voting in favour of legislation designed to stop the UK crashing out of the EU at Halloween.
The resignation opens the prospect of a damaging sibling split, which is likely to bring back memories of the clashes between the Miliband brothers.
It came as Mr Corbyn suffered his own set back as he was warned that if he tries to back an early general election before the October 31 Brexit deadline the vast majority of Labour MPs would not vote with him.
Remainers said there was almost 'unanimity' in the Parliamentary Labour Party that there should not be a poll before the deadline is extended to rule out No Deal.
The Prime Minister had hoped to use a speech in Yorkshire yesterday afternoon to promote his government's domestic spending plans which include increasing police officer numbers by 20,000.
But the aftermath of the address was dominated by questions about his brother's decision to quit.
Asked why anyone should back the PM's Brexit strategy when even his own brother now feels unable to do so, Mr Johnson replied: ‘I want to pay great tribute… [he] is a fantastic guy and was a brilliant minister for science, for universities, did a fantastic amount of good work for us, for this country, in that area.
‘Jo doesn’t agree with me about the European Union because it is an issue that obviously divides families and divides everybody.
‘But I think what Jo would agree is that we need to get on and sort this thing out.
‘What Jo certainly would agree, and I think he has said as much this afternoon, is that this government has exactly the right priorities when it comes to dealing with the issues that really matter to the British people.’
The PM was then asked if he expected to be the next member of the Johnson family to resign given the Brexit chaos he is facing in Parliament.
Mr Johnson dodged the question and said he remained committed to delivering Brexit.
‘My intention as I said just now, I am absolutely determined to do this, to deliver on the mandate of the people,' he said.
‘We have a democracy in this country and the way we work is when the people of Britain take a decision, parliamentarians are sworn to uphold that decision.
Jeremy Corbyn has been consistently demanding a general election for years.
But now the opportunity has arisen, he suddenly does not seem so keen.  
September 2018, Twitter: 'We need a General Election and I'm ready for it. Bring it on.' 
November 2018, CBI speech: 'If the Government cannot get its central policy through Parliament, then we will demand a general election.' 
December 2018, Daily Mirror: 'The Government is going to struggle. It may well resign. There may well be a general election. And I can't wait.'
May 2019, Twitter: 'Let the people decide our country's future: we need a General Election now.' 
September 2, 2019, speech in Salford: 'When a government finds itself without a majority the solution is not to undermine democracy. The solution is to let the people decide, and call a general election.' 
September 3, 2019, House of Commons: 'Get the Bill through first in order to take No Deal off the table.' 
‘That is what we all said we would do several times in the House of Commons to respect the result of the 2016 referendum on the EU when people voted by a very substantial majority to Leave.’
Jo Johnson had backed his brother's campaign for Tory leader, and attended Cabinet as universities minister. However, he was rumoured to have turned down a more senior role in the government.
He made his decision to walk away from the government and to quit politics in general by tweeting: 'It's been an honour to represent Orpington for 9 years & to serve as a minister under three PMs.
'In recent weeks I've been torn between family loyalty and the national interest - it's an unresolvable tension & time for others to take on my roles as MP & Minister. #overandout.'
He told the The Sun later: 'What is so clearly in the national interest is everything the government is doing in its strong, One Nation domestic policy agenda: more police on the streets, more doctors and nurses in our hospitals, a welcoming face to scientists and international students.
'That's exactly what a Conservative prime minister should be doing and what Boris does so well.'
One of the 21 Remainer rebels expelled from the Conservative Party, Ed Vaizey, praised Mr Johnson over his decision today.
'Great respect for @JoJohnsonUK for what must have been a very difficult decision,' he said.
Fellow rebel Sam Gyimah said: 'Honest Jo Johnson is a top talent & will be a big loss to politics...
'Huge admiration for him in resolving an impossible and painful ''conflict of loyalty'' in the national interest.'
A No10 spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister would like to thank Jo Johnson for his service.
'He has been a brilliant, talented minister and a fantastic MP. The PM, as both a politician and brother, understands this will not have been an easy matter for Jo.
'The constituents of Orpington could not have asked for a better representative.'
It is understood that he will now stand down as an MP at the next election.
Their sister Rachel Johnson dismissed claims her family's arguments over Brexit were becoming increasingly intense.
'I'm afraid to say this is rubbish,' she tweeted. 'I said last night at a charity do that the family avoids the topic of Brexit especially at meals as we don't want to gang up on the PM!'
In a 2013 interview, Boris Johnson was asked whether he and his brother could ever fall out in the same way as the Miliband brothers.
He said: 'Absolutely not. We don't do things that way, that's a very left-wing thing ... only a socialist could regard familial ties as being so trivial as to shaft his own brother.'
The PM also used his speech this afternoon to launch another searing attack on 'chicken' Mr Corbyn as he accused the Labour leader of a 'cowardly attack' on democracy.
Boris Johnson appears to be quickly running out of options to deliver Brexit after Labour last night voted to block an election on October 15.
The bill to block No Deallooks certain to become law this week, tying the PM's hands in his pledge to take Britain out of the EU 'do or die' on October 31.
Parliament is also due to be suspended early next week, ending fresh opportunities for Mr Johnson to try again to call an election.
Here are his potential courses of action:
ACCEPT A BREXIT DELAY
Mr Johnson could merely recognise that he has been outflanked by Parliament, and rule out No Deal.
But he has made a 'do or die' vow to get the UK out of the bloc by Halloween. And he insists his negotiating strategy would be destroyed without the threat of No Deal.
His political career would be effectively over if he did this, and the Tories could be eaten alive by Nigel Farage's Brexit Party. 
TRY AGAIN TO CALL AN ELECTION 
Mr Corbyn did give Mr Johnson a glimmer of light last night by suggesting Labour could vote for an election after the rebel legislation gets Royal Assent - potentially on Monday. That would just about leave time for an October 15 date. 
However, there is no guarantee as Mr Corbyn's front bench looks to be plunging into civil war over the issue. 
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer told MP earlier that a poll should not be triggered until after a Brexit extension has been granted by the EU. That would require Mr Johnson to beg Brussels, and potentially push the date back well into November.
Similarly, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said the election should not be called for a 'few weeks'.
CHANGE ELECTION LAW
Passing a new piece of legislation that triggers an election might be easier than using the existing Fixed Term Parliaments Act. 
It would only need a simple majority, rather than two-thirds of the Commons. 
But Mr Johnson is now in charge of a minority administration, and without Labour support he looks unlikely to have the numbers.
One potential avenue would be splitting the Remainer opposition, perhaps by convincing the SNP to line up behind the government, although the vote would sill be very tight.   
GO TO SEE THE QUEEN 
If Labour's Remain-minded faction wins the internal struggle, and it will not support an election before November, Mr Johnson will really be in a corner. 
There does not appear to be any plausible legal option open to him to force an election. Some have suggested the government could call a no confidence vote in itself, but it is thought the Speaker would only permit one tabled by the official Opposition. 
Some believe his only course could be to see the Queen and tender his resignation. Once it was clear neither Mr Corbyn nor anyone else can command a majority in the House, an election would have to be called. 
But this would be a hugely high-stakes gamble, with the outcome highly uncertain. There is no sign he is ready to take it yet. 
Mr Johnson has been left at the mercy of a raging battle for supremacy within Labour over whether to approve an election once rebel legislation ruling out No Deal has been passed on Friday night.
Mr Corbyn said in the House yesterday that he backed the idea, which could potentially allow Mr Johnson's proposed October 15 date for a snap poll still to go ahead.
However, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry have suggested the party should not sign off on a poll before the Halloween Brexit deadline has been extended - which the law dictates must happen by October 19. That could mean a polling date well into November.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell made the extraordinary admission this morning that Labour had yet to decide on its position. 'We've got to get the right date,' he told Sky News.
He added: 'We are now consulting about whether it's better to go long... rather than to go short.'
In a sign of internal tensions, Sajid Javid today suggested Tory Remainer rebels including Ken Clarke and Philip Hammond should be brought back into the party.
The Chancellor said Mr Johnson had no choice but to strip the whip from the 21 Conservative MPs who joined the extraordinary Commons revolt to rule out No Deal this week.
But he said he was 'sad' about the situation, and he hoped they would return to the fold 'at some point'.
The intervention appears to contradict a commitment Mr Johnson gave to Eurosceptic Tories during a meeting last night. The premier told a meeting of the 1922 committee that he would not reverse the decision.
However, Mr Johnson is facing growing disquiet among his own ranks, with one backbencher branding the move expel the rebels as 'Stalinist'.
Tory MP Simon Hoare said today that there was 'deep disquiet' at the handling of the rebellion.
'We can't win unless our base is broad and representative of all strands of opinion. No10 needs to rethink and fast,' he tweeted.
'I think we are better being like Churchill and NOT Stalin #toriesdontpurge'
Damian Green, a cabinet minister under Theresa May, wrote to Mr Johnson last night accusing him of a 'purge' of 'moderate members'.
Writing on behalf of the 100-strong One Nation caucus, he complained the whip had been removed from 'principled, valued and dedicated colleagues...all of whom have given years of service to the Party, their constituents and the country.'
'We are deeply concerned about this, and we are asking you to reinstate the Party whip to these colleagues. If your ambition is to unite the Party and the country, last night's actions have hindered that mission.'
Mr Green said the caucus could only 'continue to support' Mr Johnson 'wholeheartedly' if 'moderate modernising Conservatives are still welcome in the Parliamentary Party.'
The PM is preparing a final throw of the dice to get a national poll by bringing forward another vote on Monday on holding an early election.
After losing the vote on his first election motion last night, a visibly frustrated PM ridiculed the stance taken by Mr Corbyn - who did not even bother to be present for the declaration of the result.
He taunted that he was the first Opposition leader 'in history' to turn down the opportunity of a poll.
But crucially, Mr Johnson did not give a clear indication of how he could try to extricate himself from the impasse - merely hinting that he might try staging another vote in the coming days.
That move appeared more likely in the early hours of today after the House of Lords reached an unexpected agreement to allow the rebel No Deal bill to pass by Friday evening.
A No10 spokesman said that the PM would 'speak directly to the nation' about the political deadlock in yesterday's speech.
'Jeremy Corbyn has led a drive by Parliament to back a Surrender Bill that stops us delivering Brexit, and is also cowardly running away from an election that will give the public the opportunity to decide on the path we follow,' the spokesman said.
'Parliament has voted to block Brexit and voted not to give the people the power to decide on their future. Boris will argue that it is now time for the people to decide after Parliament has failed them so we can resolve this once and for all.
'For Jeremy Corbyn to continue to avoid an election would be a cowardly insult to democracy.'
Labour descended into a bitter civil war over a snap election today as Jeremy Corbyn faces pressure to block a vote until the Brexit date has been delayed.
Mr Corbyn dramatically thwarted Boris Johnson's call for an October 15 poll last night despite the PM saying he needed a new mandate because Remainer MPs had 'wrecked' his Brexit strategy.
Mr Corbyn said in the House yesterday that he backed the idea, which could potentially allow Mr Johnson's October 15 date to go ahead.
However, shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry have suggested the party should not sign off on a poll before the Halloween Brexit deadline has been extended - which the law dictates must happen by October 19. That could mean a polling date well into November. 
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell made the extraordinary admission this morning that Labour had yet to decide on its position. 'We've got to get the right date,' he told Sky News.
He added: 'We are now consulting about whether it's better to go long... rather than to go short.'
Yesterday's vote leaves the Prime Minister in potential purgatory with just a few days to find a solution before Parliament is due to be suspended next week.
Last night aides were frantically casting round for an alternative way to either force an election or kill off the rebel legislation.
One insider said: 'We underestimated the rebels. We thought there would be some loopholes in the legislation we could wriggle through, but it is much better drafted than we had expected.'
Another acknowledged that even securing an election would be a 'massive gamble', saying: 'Nobody knows how it will pan out.'
The PM needed to get the agreement of two thirds of the House for an early election, but fell far short of the mark with Mr Corbyn ordering his troops to abstain.
Just 298 MPs backed a poll, compared to the 434 required.
The result and the legislation looks to have left Mr Johnson facing disaster, as it now looks like it will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for him to keep to his 'do or die' Brexit pledge.
His only hope appears to be the astonishing spat on Labour's front bench about whether it should support a poll next week, after the law against No Deal has been finalised and put on the statute book.
A weary-looking Mr Johnson tried to put a brave face on the dire situation after the vote was declared in the House. 'I note that the leader of the Opposition is once again not in his place in what I think is a slightly symbolic way,' he said.
'Forty eight hours ago he was leading the chants of ''stop the coup, let the people vote'', now he is saying ''stop the election and stop the people from voting''.
'I think he has become the first Leader of the Opposition in the democratic history of our country to refuse the invitation to an election.
'I can only speculate as to the reasons behind his hesitation, the obvious conclusion is, I'm afraid, that he does not think he will win.
'I urge his colleagues to reflect on the unsustainability of this position overnight and in the course of the next few days.' 
Theresa May was likened to Adolf Hitler last night as peers handed the Government another defeat over Brexit.
The House of Lords voted to give Parliament the power to force ministers to reopen talks if MPs reject Mrs May’s deal with Brussels.
Nineteen rebel Tories backed the amendment, which was passed by 335 votes to 244. If it is not overturned by the Commons, Mrs May will lose the option of walking away with no deal –potentially meaning Britain may never leave the EU at all.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno, a Lib Dem peer, claimed during the debate that the UK could follow the path of Nazi Germany unless the Prime Minister’s powers were curtailed.
But a Conservative peer said the House of Lords had become a ‘cosy cabal of Remain’ – tying the Government’s hands in a bid to block Brexit.
Fellow Tory Viscount Hailsham had argued the Brexit referendum was ‘an interim decision’. And crossbench peer Lord Bilimoria, who founded Cobra beer, boasted: ‘Thanks to this amendment, Parliament would have the ability to stop the train crash that is Brexit.’
The debate came ahead of tomorrow’s crucial Brexit ‘war cabinet’ meeting over the EU customs union. Eurosceptics fear that staying in any partnership with Brussels will hamper Britain’s ability to strike future trade deals.
Yesterday’s amendment to the Government’s flagship Brexit legislation gives MPs the power to decide what ministers should do – including ordering them to hold fresh negotiations with the EU – if the Commons votes against the final Brexit deal.
Former Cabinet ministers Lord Heseltine, Lord Patten, Lord Deben (formerly John Gummer) and Lord Willetts were among 19 Tory peers to vote against the Government. Whitehall sources said it was the ‘most dangerous’ attempt yet to derail Brexit.
Amid fierce exchanges in the Upper House, Lord Roberts provoked fury by comparing Mrs May’s control over Brexit negotiations to the rule of Adolf Hitler.
The Methodist minister and former president of the Welsh Liberal Democrats told peers: ‘We remember the reluctance of Mrs May to allow Parliament to be involved. She wanted the Government to be in charge.
‘My mind went back to Berlin in March 1933 when the enabling Bill was passed in the Reichstag, which transferred the democratic right from the Parliament into the hands of one man – that was the Chancellor, and his name was Adolf Hitler. Perhaps I am seeing threats that do not exist, but they are possible. Who would have thought before the 1930s that Germany, such a cultured country, would involve itself in such a terrible war?
‘Let us take the warning. What we are doing here must involve Parliament. I would like to see it involving the people as well, but it must certainly be in other hands.
‘We cannot let an enabling act of the United Kingdom possibly lead to the catastrophe that took place in Berlin in 1933.’
Brexit minister Steve Baker denounced the ‘irresponsible’ remarks. ‘This disgraceful rhetoric does Lord Roberts no favours,’ he said. ‘This legislation is an essential mechanism for delivering a smooth and orderly Brexit and ensuring our legal order functions.
‘The over-the-top nonsense spouted by its opponents demonstrates how moribund their arguments are.’
During the Lords debate yesterday, Viscount Hailsham, formerly Douglas Hogg, proposed the amendment, argued that the Brexit referendum, in which 17.4million people voted for Brexit, was at ‘very best an interim decision’.
The Tory ex-Cabinet minister said: ‘This country’s future should be determined by Parliament, ultimately by the House of Commons, and not by ministers.’
Viscount Hailsham said under the amendment MPs could ‘accept that the country should leave the EU, determine that the country should stay in the EU on the existing terms, or request further negotiations’.
Lord Newby, the Lib Dem leader in the Lords, said the Government’s defeat on the issue ‘puts Parliament in the driving seat’.
Ahead of the debate, Lord Heseltine, the Conservative former deputy prime minister, told Radio 4’s The World At One: ‘My present position is that the chances are that Brexit will happen, but it is not a certainty and it is becoming less certain by the week.’
But fellow Conservative peer Lord Fairfax of Cameron described the Lords as ‘a cosy cabal of Remain’. He added: ‘This is a wrecking amendment. It is designed to delay, frustrate and ultimately block Brexit.’
Those who supported it were ‘playing the role of a fifth column’ for the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, he argued, adding: ‘They are doing his job for him’.
Former Conservative leader Lord Howard said he was astonished that an amendment had been put forward ‘which could and very probably would lead to not one but several constitutional crises’.
He added: ‘This new clause is thoroughly and fundamentally misconceived. I am afraid it illustrates the appalling lengths to which the diehard Remainers are prepared to go to achieve their aim.’
The Brexit-backing Green Party peer Jenny Jones said she had come to the House of Lords prepared to vote for the amendment on the basis of parliamentary sovereignty, but said she had been put off by the speeches of pro-Remain peers.
‘Quite honestly, the speeches in favour have turned me against them,’ she said.
Following the defeat, Lord Callanan, who is the Brexit minister in the Lords, said: ‘What this amendment would do is weaken the UK’s hand in our negotiations with the EU by giving Parliament unprecedented powers to instruct the Government to do anything with regard to the negotiations – including trying to keep the UK in the EU indefinitely.’
The Government suffered a second legislative defeat yesterday after peers backed plans to give Parliament a say on the mandate for Brexit talks.
In a third defeat, they voted to keep existing measures for child refugees in Europe. It is the ninth defeat for the Government at the bill’s report stage in the Lords overall. The bill will return to the Commons, where MPs could vote to overturn the changes.
Another amendment to give MPs and Lords the right to call a second referendum was defeated. 
Tory Remainer MPs Anna Soubry and Nick Boles today vowed to quit their party and try to topple Theresa May's government if she presses ahead with a no deal Brexit.
The two former ministers threatened to push the nuclear button and back Labour in a no confidence vote if this was the only way to stop the UK crashing out. 
Their threat comes as the Cabinet ramped up no deal planning amid mounting fears that political deadlock in Parliament could send the UK hurtling towards a no deal.
Ministers have put thousands of troops on standby and reserved ferry space for emergency supplies as they pumped £2billion extra into no deal preparations.
But as the flood of doomsday warnings emerged out of the Number Ten meeting, Mr Boles and Ms Soubry said they would do whatever it takes to stop a no deal.
Mr Boles, a former business minister, said on Twitter: 'The Cabinet spent this morning discussing preparations for ‘no deal’ Brexit. 
'I accept that it is prudent for the government to get ready for all eventualities. But I owe my constituents and my colleagues total clarity about my position. 
'If at any point between now and 29 March the government were to announce that ‘no deal’ Brexit had become its policy, I would immediately resign the Conservative whip and vote in any way necessary to stop it from happening.'
Chancellor Philip Hammond has allocated a total of £4.2billion to no deal plans since 2016 - all of which is due to have been spent by exit day.
Some of the areas where the money has gone include: 
And he was immediately backed by Ms Soubry, another former business minister and a leading campaigner for a second referendum.
Replying to the tweet, she said: 'You and many other sensible responsible One Nation Tories. Well said.'
There are just 101 days to go until Brexit day on March 29, but MPs remain at war over what deal to pursue.
Mrs May is delayed a crunch vote on her plan and is desperately pleading with the EU to make fundamental changes to the irish backstop to try to get her deal through Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet today signed off on plans to massively ramp up no deal preparations.
The scale of the effort was underlined today as it emerged there are 320 projects - including the booking of space on ferries to ensure critical medical supplies can still get into the country.
There are also 3,500 troops on stand-by to intervene anywhere they are needed.
The public will also be urged to prepare themselves and their families, with detailed information on contingency plans set to be published over the coming weeks - including through the Christmas holidays.
Yet as ministers signed off on the preparations, ministers traded bitter blows over what happens if the PM's deal fails to get past the Commons. 
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said that even though the government should prepare for no deal Brexit, 'just because you put a seatbelt on doesn't mean you have to crash the car'. 
In bruising exchanges, the PM is said to have joined forces with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Commons leader Andrea Leadsom to 'squash' calls from Ms Rudd for MPs to vote on a range of Brexit options.
And Brexiteer ministers including Mrs Leadsom urged a 'managed' no-deal if Mrs May's package cannot be pushed through Parliament.
Justice Secretary David Gauke - who has threatened to quit if the government tries to leave the EU without an agreement - is understood to have told colleagues: 'The responsibility of Cabinet ministers is not to propagate unicorns but to slay them.'
Earlier today, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg warned the PM that she faces a greater threat of being ousted by Remainer MPs in the Conservative Party than Brexiteers.
The leading Eurosceptic led the failed coup  to oust Mrs May as leader.
But speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, pledged his loyalty to the PM and warned the greatest threat to her in the Tory Party was now the Remainer wing.
He said: ‘In a motion of no confidence under a Fixed Term Parliament Act I will always back a Conservative Government.
‘I’m a Conservative member of Government, people in North East Somerset voted for me on the basis that I would back a Conservative government. I don’t think I could reasonably go against that mandate.
‘What the DUP will do, you will have to ask them.
‘And I would have thought actually the Prime Minster is at a greater risk in a vote of no confidence from people who see themselves as pro EU in the party, than from people who are Eurosceptic.’ 
Boris Johnson's hopes of getting his Brexit deal past MPs are teetering on the brink today as Remainers led by rebel ringleader Oliver Letwin launched a plot to force him to beg for a delay to the UK's divorce from the EU. 
The PM is edging towards the numbers he will need to get his deal through the Commons tomorrow but pro-EU MPs have brought forward a plan which could scupper his efforts. 
In a piece of Parliamentary trickery, an amendment tabled by rebel ringleaders would effectively block the PM from seeking approval for his deal until next week.
That would ensure he is caught by the Remainer law known as the Benn Act, which orders him to send a letter to Brussels requesting an extension if no agreement has been passed by tomorrow. 
However, there is no guarantee that the EU would grant such a delay with leaders seemingly at odds on the issue. 
French president Emmanuel Macron said today that if the new deal was rejected 'I do not think we shall grant any further delay' while German chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly said the opposite behind closed doors at yesterday's EU summit. 
The extraordinary Remainer tactics - brought forward by former Tory Sir Oliver - emerged as Mr Johnson launched an all-out drive to get his package over the line in a special 'Super Saturday' sitting of the Commons.
There are signs that his push is having some success, with dozens of Tory hardliners, ousted Conservative rebels and Labour MPs coming forward to say they will back the deal.
However, the efforts could be completely derailed by the latest Remainer revolt. 
Mr Johnson has tabled a motion asking MPs to vote for his deal tomorrow after he dramatically finalised the accord with the EU yesterday. 
But Sir Oliver has put down a proposed amendment which has widespread cross-party support including from Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson which would gut the plan. 
The proposal would see the PM's motion changed to say that 'this House has considered' his deal but 'withholds approval unless and until implementing legislation is passed.' 
The manoeuvring came after John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, distanced the Labour Party from an attempt to force a second referendum.
Remainer MPs had hoped to amend the Prime Minister's deal to add a 'confirmatory' public vote – ensuring it had to be approved by the public before Brexit could take place.
But last night campaigners decided not to force a Commons showdown on the issue tomorrow as they are not confident that enough former Tory MPs will support them, sources said.
Boris Johnson has tabled a motion asking MPs to sign off his Brexit deal after it was dramatically finalised with EU leaders yesterday,
The government text due to be voted on tomorrow states that the House 'approves the negotiated withdrawal agreement'.
If it passes, the provision of the Benn Act - which says the PM must beg the EU for an extension unless a deal has been approved by tomorrow - will have been met. 
The government would then start pushing through legislation to implement the detail of the agreement.
However, the amendment put forward by former Cabinet minister Oliver Letwin would change the motion to make clear that the House has not given approval.
Instead, MPs would specify that they are witholding support until after the legislation is fully finalised - effectively reversing the process. 
The tweak is intended to close a loophole in the Benn Act, as in theory MPs could approve the deal in principle and then the government could refuse to bring forward legislation to achieve No Deal on October 31.
But the names signed up to the amendment have raised suspicions about the motivations. 
Alongside Sir Oliver, fellow former Tories Philip Hammond, David Gauke Dominic Grieve and Nick Boles, Labour's Hilary Benn, and Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson have signed up. 
Instead, they will attempt to defeat the PM's deal first – then, if it fails, table a motion for a second referendum when more MPs are likely to vote for it. 
Mr McDonnell told the BBC's Today programme: 'We will talk to the opposition parties. We will look at the timing of that (amendment) because the deal will be debated on Saturday and then you'll have to have the legislation brought forward.
'There are discussions taking place about when is the right time to put an amendment down and, to be frank, I think on Saturday we should just vote the deal down, because it is such a bad deal.
'And then maybe the Government will wake up and start working with other political parties about a sensible deal the British people can have before them.'
Last night Labour's Peter Kyle, the mover behind legislation to force a second referendum, indicated he might still attempt to force an amendment through on Saturday.
He tweeted: 'Our proposal was always about consensus and still is. We have the amendment drafted, we have bags of support for it, and tomorrow (Friday) lunchtime will take the decision about when we'll table it.'
The plan to amend the deal on Saturday is thought to have been quietly pulled in order to give it the best chance to succeed in future.
A source familiar with the campaign said: 'The focus on Saturday has to be stopping the deal. The best chance of getting a 'People's Vote' may well be after this deal is defeated.'
Had MPs managed to successfully amend the deal to add a second referendum it is likely Downing Street would have pulled it entirely before it actually came to a final vote. Mr Johnson's government has repeatedly made clear its implacable opposition to a second public vote.
The decision by Remainer MPs to back away yesterday followed confusion over whether Labour would actually back a second referendum in a vote on 'Super Saturday'. 
Speaking soon after it was announced a deal had been done, party leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'The best way to get Brexit sorted is to give the people the final say in a public vote.'
The Commons will kick off tomorrow at 9.30am with a statement from the PM on the European Council.
That could last between an hour and two hours.
After that, the debate on the crucial motion to approve the Brexit deal will begin.
There is no finish time set on the Commons business papers, and this could well run until late in the afternoon. 
At the end of that debate there will be votes on any amendments.
An SNP bid to revoke Article 50 is expected to be defeated.
But the Oliver Letwin amendment could be the crucial moment. 
That effectively deletes the key parts of the government's motion seeking approval for the deal.
If passed, the provisions in the Remainer law known as the Benn Act will not be met - and the PM will be legally obliged to beg the EU for an extension.  
However, he added he did not 'suspect' that the option of holding a second referendum vote would arise on Saturday, when Parliament is due to give its verdict on Mr Johnson's agreement.
He then described reports that Labour could back such a vote as 'high-level speculation on a hypothetical question'.
In a sign of the deep split within the party, members of Mr Corbyn's shadow cabinet have since said they plan to make the 'argument' for a second referendum to the Prime Minister themselves.
The Liberal Democrats said they would vote for the deal at its third reading if a referendum was attached to it.
Former Tory backbencher Sir Oliver had led the attempt to change the timetable for tomorrow's sitting – allowing for amendments to be tabled and voted on.
It passed by 287 votes to 275, and means an amendment to Mr Johnson's Brexit plans to include a proposed second referendum is now possible. Sir Oliver suggested that it could close a loophole in the so-called Benn Act – which requires the PM to seek a Brexit delay if he does not have a deal by October 19. The law only compels the PM to seek an extension if MPs fail to pass a motion.
He told MPs: 'That will enable those of us, like me, who wish to support and carry through and eventually see the ratification of this deal, not to put us in the position of allowing the Government off the Benn Act hook on Saturday.'
The original plan advanced by proponents of a 'confirmatory vote' was that MPs would pass an amendment making the Brexit deal conditional on a referendum. Once it was amended, they would then vote with the Government for the deal.
But a number of Labour MPs have concerns about anything that would appear to be offering support to Mr Johnson, and a potentially larger group have concerns about supporting a referendum at all.
Earlier this month, 19 Labour MPs in favour of leaving the EU with a deal wrote to Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, asking the pair to 'work night and day' to secure a Withdrawal Agreement they could back.
It remains to be seen whether those backbenchers will support Mr Johnson tomorrow.
Yesterday, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove told BBC Politics Live there would not be a second referendum.
'Ain't gonna happen,' he said. 'Ain't gonna be no second referendum. It just won't happen.'
Boris Johnson is locked in a frantic race against time as he tries to persuade a majority of MPs to back his Brexit deal at a crunch vote in the House of Commons tomorrow. 
The Prime Minister has less than 24 hours to drum up support for the deal he unexpectedly struck with the EU yesterday. 
If MPs vote for the deal the UK will be on course for an orderly departure from the bloc on October 31.
But if they vote against it or back a Remainer amendment which would scupper the PM's plan the UK's Brexit fate will be plunged into uncertainty. 
Here is a run down of how 'Super Saturday' could play out and the events that could follow in the run up to the Halloween Brexit deadline.
What is happening on Saturday? 
Mr Johnson will formally present his divorce accord to the Commons and ask MPs to vote for it. 
The day will start with the PM setting out the terms of the agreement in a statement to the House which is due to begin shortly after 9.30am. 
Following a lengthy debate MPs will then vote on the deal - and any amendments which are selected by Commons Speaker John Bercow - at approximately 2.30pm. 
What amendments have been tabled and what would they do? 
At the moment there are three amendments which have been officially put forward by MPs and which could be put to a vote. 
One from an SNP MP would force the government to revoke Article 50 while another from the SNP would reject the PM's deal and demand a Brexit delay until January 31 in order to make time for an election. 
If either of those are selected they are very unlikely to secure the backing of a majority of MPs. 
But the third amendment has a much better chance of passing and would represent a major headache for the government. 
What is the third amendment? 
A cross-party group of MPs led by former Tory Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour MP Hilary Benn have put forward a proposal which, if agreed, would withhold approval for the PM's deal until the government has passed all the legislation needed to deliver an orderly Brexit. 
In simple terms the PM's deal would still be alive but it would not have been formally backed by MPs. 
That would mean Mr Johnson would still have to comply with the Benn Act and ask the EU for an extension.
The anti-No Deal law states that an extension must be asked for unless a deal has been agreed by MPs by close of play tomorrow.
The amendment is therefore designed to act as a further protection against a No Deal divorce from the EU.
The PM would still be able to move forward with his deal but the UK would almost certainly not leave the EU on October 31.  
The cross-party nature of the amendment - and the expected backing of Labour - means that if it is selected by Mr Bercow and put to a vote it has a good chance of being agreed.  
What will the government do if the Letwin amendment is passed by MPs? 
Mr Johnson will have two options. He could choose to play ball with the amendment and bring forward all the laws needed to make Brexit happen. 
But this would be risky because the PM would not know if there was a majority of MPs in favour of his deal which means it could all fall apart further down the line. 
It would also force him to ask the EU to delay Brexit - something he does not want to do.
The second option would be for the premier to disregard the amendment, accuse MPs of hijacking the Brexit process and then demand a general election.
Will there be a second referendum amendment?  
Currently it is unclear whether pro-EU MPs will pull the trigger on trying to force a second referendum amid concerns they may not have the numbers to win. 
It is thought that such an amendment would grant approval to the PM's deal but only if it was then put back to the people. 
If the amendment is tabled and selected it will have the potential to dramatically alter the Brexit process. 
What happens if MPs vote in favour of a second referendum? 
If a second referendum amendment is agreed by the Commons tomorrow it would trigger a volatile chain of events that are hard to predict. 
The first question for the PM in the event such an amendment is agreed is whether he would proceed to push a vote on his deal. 
Votes on amendments always take place before the vote on the substantive motion which means the PM will have the ability to pull the division on his deal if he has just been defeated on holding a second referendum. 
The PM is adamant that he does not want a second referendum and if he was to pull the vote on his deal and then refuse to present it to the Commons for a second time he would likely pivot to try to force a general election. 
The Benn Act states that the PM must ask the EU for a Brexit delay if no agreement has been backed by MPs by close of play tomorrow. 
Assuming he then complied with the Act and the EU granted a delay the PM would then seemingly have cleared a path to an election because opposition leaders have said they would agree a snap poll if a No Deal split has been ruled out. 
What happens if MPs vote in favour of a second referendum and the PM pushes ahead with a vote on his deal?
Given the PM's opposition to a second referendum it is unlikely he would proceed with a vote on the deal itself if MPs pass an amendment in favour of a 'People's Vote'. 
But if he did it is likely the deal would be agreed by MPs - the referendum provision would allow many critics to vote for the deal in the belief that it would be rejected by the country when pitched against Remain at a national ballot.  
If Mr Johnson was willing to go along with the second referendum plan - again, this is extremely unlikely - he would then have to ask the EU for a delay to make time for the vote to be held, potentially in the first half of next year. 
If Mr Johnson allowed the vote to go ahead and the deal plus a referendum was agreed to but he then refused to put in place the necessary measures to hold that ballot it would be up to rebel MPs to take control of the Commons to push through the necessary legislation to make a 'People's Vote' happen. 
If they failed there would then almost certainly be a general election because it would literally be the only option left. 
What happens if MPs vote in favour of a second referendum but then reject the PM's deal? 
This feels incredibly unlikely because if an amendment is put forward to hold a public vote on the PM's deal and it was passed by MPs there is no reason to think that majority would disappear on the subsequent vote on the amended deal. 
But if for some weird reason it happened it would trigger the same outcomes as if there is no second referendum amendment and MPs simply reject the PM's deal.
What happens if MPs reject the PM's Brexit deal?
In the event that MPs vote down the PM's new accord there are a variety of different ways forward which Mr Johnson could choose from. 
Option one: If the deal was narrowly defeated and Mr Johnson believed there was a path to victory he could ask the EU for a delay - he will be legally required to do so under the Benn Act - and then either hold a second vote next week or ask Brussels to tweak the deal before a second vote. 
Should the EU agree to make changes the PM could ask MPs to vote again and if it then passed the UK would be on course to leave the EU with an agreement but probably after the October 31 deadline. 
If the EU refused to budge or if MPs stuck to their guns then the UK would be on course to quit the bloc without an agreement.  
Option two: The PM could refuse to ask for a Brexit delay and opt to resign instead. A government official would then likely ask the EU for an extension in order to comply with the Benn Act.
Assuming the EU granted an extension a general election would then follow. 
Option three: The PM could ask the EU to delay the UK's departure from the bloc in order to trigger an election in a final attempt to break the Brexit stalemate. 
Brussels has suggested it would grant an extension for an election and if everything went to plan there would then be a snap poll held before the end of 2019. 
Option four: The PM could ask for the EU to grant a delay and the bloc could refuse on the grounds that is has had enough of the ongoing Brexit uncertainty. 
That would prompt the PM to either put his deal to a second vote in the Commons or to pivot to a No Deal divorce. 
If the PM won the second vote on his deal an orderly divorce would beckon. If he lost the UK would be on course to leave the EU without an agreement. 
What happens if MPs vote in favour of the PM's deal? 
This would be the most straight forward option from a 'what happens next' perspective. 
The final vote on the deal is expected to be very tight and nobody knows for certain which way it will go. 
But if the deal were to be agreed by the Commons the government could then bring forward the laws needed to enact the UK's departure from the EU. 
The accord would then be put to the European Parliament to be ratified. Assuming MEPs did not block the deal the UK would then leave the EU with an accord on October 31. 
 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today dragged the Queen into the row over the suspension of Parliament by demanding a meeting with the monarch.
The Labour leader was wrong-footed this morning when Boris Johnson unveiled his controversial plan to suspend Parliament for more than four weeks in the lead up to Brexit.
The Queen signed off the plan today, with her role in the so-called 'prorogation of Parliament' merely procedural and dictated by convention.
But as he attempted to react to the sudden announcement this morning, Mr Corbyn called for the Queen to meet him, as if implying she had some choice in whether or not she would give the move her approval.
Mr Corbyn wrote to the Queen saying: 'There is a danger that the royal prerogative is being set directly against the wishes of a majority of the House of Commons.
'In the circumstances, as the leader of the offical opposition, on behalf of all my party members and many other members of parliament, I request you to grant me a meeting, along with other privy councillors, as a matter of urgency and before any final decision is taken.'
Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson also wrote to the monarch 'to express my concern at Boris Johnson's anti-democratic plan to shut down Parliament'.
The Queen, who has no real power to deny Mr Johnson's request, had already agreed to sign off the plan and was visited by minister Jacob Rees-Mogg today to formalise the move. It is unclear whether she will meet Mr Corbyn at any point to discuss the situation.
Mr Johnson caught his political opponents off-guard and stunned Westminster this morning as he said he will send MPs home for most of September and the start of October to try to stop them thwarting a No Deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson will then hold a Queen's Speech on October 14 setting out his government's legislative agenda just two weeks before the UK is due to split from Brussels.
The strategy has caused outrage among opponents, with Mr Corbyn accusing the PM of launching a 'smash and grab against our democracy'.
The Labour leader said: 'When Parliament does meet - on his timetable very briefly next week - the first thing we will do is to try and legislate and to prevent what he is doing.
'And secondly to challenge him in a motion of confidence at some point.' 
Mr Johnson has said it is 'completely untrue' to suggest that Brexit was the reason for his decision, insisting that he needed a Queen's Speech to set out a 'very exciting agenda' of domestic policy.
Mr Johnson also denied the move was to pave the way for an early general election.
But he said it would allow him to bring forward legislation for a new Withdrawal Agreement if a deal can be done with Brussels around the time of the European Council summit on October 17.
'There will be ample time on both sides of that crucial October 17 summit, ample time in Parliament for MPs to debate the EU, to debate Brexit, and all the other issues,' Mr Johnson said.
The Commons is expected to sit in the first two weeks of September and then break for the conference recess - although MPs had been planning to vote against leaving Westminster for the autumn party gatherings in late September and early October to allow more time to consider Brexit.
 
Remainers today warned the Queen will have to sack Boris Johnson if he refuses to quit after losing a Commons confidence vote over No Deal Brexit.
Allies of the PM have made clear he will simply refuse to resign if rebel Tories join forces with Labour, the SNP, the Lib Dems and independents to pass a no confidence motion.
Instead of going quietly, Mr Johnson would wait for an election to be triggered and use his executive powers to set the date of an election for after the Brexit date of October 31, so MPs cannot stop the process. 
Pro-EU MPs admitted that a legal loophole could allow Mr Johnson to postpone the election date by at least a month - potentially pushing it to late November.   
But one senior source told MailOnline the monarch would have to intervene before then if Mr Johnson was playing 'childish games' with the constitution.
'We have an unwritten constitution but there are well established conventions,' the MP said. 'Convention number one is that a PM does not or cannot hold office without the consent of the House of Commons.'
If Mr Johnson tried to 'bury himself' in Downing Street and tried to stop a new government taking over, the monarch would step in despite the risks of getting embroiled in politics, the Remainer source said.
'The Queen would write him a letter saying he is dismissed,' they insisted. 'She would have to sack him. Of course she would.' 
The MP said the behaviour of Mr Johnson's maverick Brexit adviser Dominic Cummings in making threats about defying the constitution was 'infantile'.  
Meanwhile, former Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the PM did have 'discretion' on setting election dates.
'It is not an unlimited discretion, but I cannot see how the courts could say the PM was not entitled to take political risks into consideration,' he said.  
Labour is already plotting to join forces with Tory rebels to try to collapse the Government and replace Mr Johnson as Prime Minister if he pursues a No Deal departure from the European Union on October 31.
When Parliament returns from its summer recess on September 3, Labour is expected to team up with Tory rebels to force a confidence vote. 
With the government's majority on a knife edge and strong opposition to No Deal across parties, there is a serious prospect that Boris Johnson could lose.
However, the PM's adviser Dominic Cummings has made clear he would simply refused to resign.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA), losing a confidence motion triggers a 14 day countdown to an election being called.
During that period, it is possible for a PM to win a confidence vote and prevent the country going to the polls.
However, the legislation is silent on whether the same premier can return to try again.
Remainer MPs insist Mr Johnson would have to quit, suggesting an all-party administration led by a consensus figure - potentially Labour veteran Margaret Beckett - could take over to delay the Brexit process.
They are adamant that if the premier refused to go quietly the Queen would be forced to sack him. 
Whether an anti-No Deal alliance could muster the numbers to install a PM is highly dubious. 
A further loophole in the FTPA gives the premier huge discretion on the timing of an election if one is triggered.
The Queen names the date based on recommendation from the PM, but the act does not give any time frame he must work inside.
Pro-EU MPs admit Mr Johnson could legally extend the schedule by at least a month - taking it well beyond the Halloween Brexit deadline.
However, that would set the stage for a massive constitutional showdown, with the civil service under pressure to maintain the 'status quo'. 
But allies say Mr Johnson would stay in office even if he lost a confidence vote – and trigger a general election to take place after the Brexit date so the UK would leave the EU automatically during the campaign.
Constitutional experts said Mr Johnson is not legally compelled to leave No 10 even if the Commons passes a no confidence motion.
However, if he did refuse to follow 'constitutional precedent' it would spark a crisis that could drag the Queen into Brexit politics.
Details of Downing Street's approach emerged from comments made by his senior aide, Dominic Cummings, who is said to have 'laughed' at the idea that his boss would walk away in response to a confidence vote.
Yesterday the PM's spokesman said the UK will leave the EU on October 31 by 'any means necessary'.
But aides are braced for rebel Tory MPs, led by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, to try 'every trick in the book' to stop No Deal when they return in September. 
The nuclear option is to order a confidence vote under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act.
Last night Mr Corbyn gave his clearest signal yet he would make this move in September, saying the motion would be tabled at an 'appropriate very early time'.
Mr Grieve believes that if he can win the vote, Mr Johnson would be forced to leave office. 
MPs could then install a prime minister who would extend Article 50, preventing No Deal. 
However, when this proposition was put to Mr Cummings – the mastermind behind the Vote Leave campaign – he is said to have laughed.
'Someone put Grieve's idea to Cummings that if we lose a vote of no confidence the PM will have to resign. He spat out his drink laughing,' a senior No 10 official told the Financial Times.
Speaking to Sky News last night, Mr Grieve attacked Mr Cummings for having a 'characteristic arrogance and ignorance'.
He said the claim that MPs were unable to block No Deal was 'simply wrong'.
'I'm afraid that's a mixture of his characteristic arrogance and ignorance,' he said. 
Catherine Haddon, a senior fellow at the Institute For Government think-tank, said Mr Grieve's plan relied on Mr Johnson resigning if he lost a no confidence vote. She added: 'But it isn't a legally binding requirement of the Act that he step down.
A Tory rebel has attacked the PM's top adviser Dominic Cummings for 'characteristic arrogance and ignorance' on Brexit.  
Speaking to Sky News last night, Dominic Grieve said Mr Cummings' claim that MPs were unable to block No Deal was 'simply wrong'.
'I'm afraid that's a mixture of his characteristic arrogance and ignorance,' he said. 
'If Parliament passed a motion saying we have no confidence in the Prime Minister and we wish a government to be formed under whoever, that would put the Queen under enormous pressure to say, 'I think you should resign because the Commons has confidence in another individual.' 
'But the Queen wants to stay out of politics, so she wouldn't want to do that.'
Asked about the issue, a senior Downing Street source said: 'This Government will use any means necessary to deliver Brexit on October 31.'
Speaking on a visit to Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire, which is set to benefit from the £1.8billion NHS funding boost, Mr Johnson was asked if he was preparing to fight an election.
He said: 'The answer is no. The people of the UK voted in the election in 2015, they had a referendum in 2016 and another election in 2017. They want us to deliver what they asked for – and that is for us to leave the EU. The last thing I want to do is call another election.'       
Tory Remainers last night vowed to push ahead with attempts to frustrate Brexit in Parliament, despite being offered a veto on the final deal with Brussels.
In a significant concession, David Davis said the final Brexit deal would be enshrined in a dedicated Act of Parliament – meaning it could be voted down by MPs just weeks before the UK leaves in March 2019.
The move came ahead of tonight’s first of eight marathon parliamentary sittings in which the Government is braced for possible defeat on Brexit legislation by a coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP and Tory Remainers.
Pro-Remain MPs were initially wrong-footed by the intervention from Mr Davis, with shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer welcoming the ‘last-minute climbdown’.
But senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper has now tabled a new amendment demanding a guaranteed vote on the deal before Brexit day. 
But last night Tory plotters indicated they would push ahead with a string of amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill after Mr Davis said the UK would leave the EU without a deal if MPs voted down the deal agreed with Brussels.
Former attorney-general Dominic Grieve, who is leading a group of about a dozen Tory rebels, gave a cautious welcome to Mr Davis’s announcement, but said he would continue with his amendments unless the Government went further. 
Mr Grieve, who has tabled 19 amendments, also made it clear he would oppose the Government’s decision to enshrine the Brexit date in law, describing it as an ‘incoherent and thoroughly stupid amendment [that] won’t have my support’. 
Fellow Tory Antoinette Sandbach said Mr Davis’s announcement was ‘meaningless’ without further guarantees. Heidi Allen, another rebel, described the concession as ‘pointless’.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith yesterday warned that rebel MPs would put the future of the Government at risk if they inflicted defeats over the EU Withdrawal Bill, which paves the way for Brexit.
‘If people keep voting against the Government on this they make the Government’s position more untenable,’ he said.
Mr Duncan Smith also rounded on the Labour leadership after Sir Keir suggested Labour would accept a deal that kept Britain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) indefinitely. 
Mr Duncan Smith accused Labour of betraying its voters, who backed Brexit in droves last year. ‘Staying inside the ECJ would be tantamount to staying in the EU,’ he said. 
There chief executive of Germany’s biggest bank has rubbished European attempts to steal an essential part of London’s prized currency trading business, saying as few as 74 UK jobs would be lost.
Deutsche Bank boss John Cryan poured scorn on anti-Brexit campaigners’ claims that up to 100,000 roles could disappear from the City if so-called euro ‘clearing’ has to move. The business underpins the trade of trillions of euros every year and helps London maintain its supremacy over EU rivals.
Countries on the Continent have cast jealous eyes on the operation, hoping it will help them attract huge investment banks.
But Mr Cryan dismissed this as wishful thinking.
‘I don’t understand why the Europeans want clearing. There’s confusion about what it is. The idea of 74,000 jobs being at risk is ridiculous, it’s more like 74.’

Government lawyers have told ministers that the exit deal needs to be enshrined in law to minimise the risk of future legal challenges.
But they first have to pass the EU Withdrawal Bill, which begins its detailed scrutiny by MPs this afternoon. Parliament is expected to sit until midnight to debate the first of 188 pages of amendments tabled by pro-Remain MPs.
The legislation is designed to ensure a smooth Brexit by transferring all existing EU regulations into British law. But pro-Remain MPs view it as an opportunity to frustrate the Brexit process – and possibly even halt it.
Tory whips hope the concession from Mr Davis could win over enough wavering MPs to avoid a string of damaging defeats. 
They also believe the rebels could be partly balanced by pro-Brexit rebels in Labour’s ranks, making it possible that the legislation will pass.
Party whips are expecting a string of tight votes over the coming weeks, and all leave has been cancelled.
The new offer from Mr Davis means the final Brexit deal will be enshrined in a dedicated Act of Parliament. Government sources played down the prospect of it being used to stop Brexit, saying any amendments to it would simply mean the UK leaving the EU without a deal. 
Last night the Lord Mayor of the City of London called on Theresa May to agree a Brexit transition deal when she meets EU leaders in Brussels next month.
Charles Bowman suggested a ‘no deal’ exit from the EU would hit the City’s competitiveness, and insist that bankers and other financial workers would rather stay in London than move to Frankfurt.
Speaking at the annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet, attended by the Prime Minister, Mr Bowman said it was vital a transition deal was ‘agreed early’ to give firms ‘time to prepare and adjust’.

While Theresa May was hard at work on affairs of state in the front section of the RAF Voyager plane taking her to South Africa yesterday morning, a senior aide briefly left her side.
Slipping behind the curtain that separated the Prime Minister from the dozen or so journalists accompanying her on the three-day trip, he told them she would join them shortly for an on-the-record chat.
‘Of course, I know you will want to ask her all about the Chancellor,’ he observed pointedly.
Thus the stage was set for Mrs May to deliver her most brutal put-down to date of Philip Hammond after his latest dire warnings on a no-deal Brexit.
According to those on the plane, she offered him no support as she practically spat out words that had clearly been rehearsed in advance, accusing her Chancellor of getting his figures wrong.
The Prime Minister seized the opportunity to give vent to the rage that has been quietly simmering since Thursday. 
That was the day Mr Hammond managed to wreck the carefully stage-managed release of the first tranche of technical government papers offering ‘proportionate’ advice to prepare Britain for exiting with ‘no deal’.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab had made a well-regarded, balanced speech. 
He said that while the ‘over-riding priority’ was to secure a good deal, the nation had to be alert to every eventuality.
Yet within hours, the Chancellor had intervened to cause maximum embarrassment. 
The Treasury released a letter from Mr Hammond – a letter that had not been cleared with No 10 or Mr Raab – that took Project Fear-style scaremongering to new heights.
Written to Nicky Morgan, the Remain chairman of the Treasury select committee, it warned that no deal could wipe almost 10 per cent off GDP over 15 years and burden Britain with £80 billion of extra borrowing.
This crude act of political sabotage was a gift for the Labour Party and the Remoaners in the Conservative ranks. But, much more damagingly, it has been seized on by EU negotiators. 
At A stroke Mr Hammond undermined the Government’s stance that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ by warning in apocalyptic language that it would be much worse for Britain than the rest of Europe.
There was an immediate meltdown in Downing Street. 
Relations between Mrs May and Mr Hammond, lukewarm at best in the past few months, were plunged into the deep freeze.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who is close to Mr Raab, summed up the furious mood in No 10 writing: ‘The timing of the letter was either spectacularly incompetent or deliberate. I know what I think.’
The majority of Mrs May’s team share his view, believing the release of the letter was a deliberate act by a ‘Remainer’ Chancellor who, when it comes to Brexit, relishes living up to his nickname of ‘Eeyore’.
And that’s why Mrs May chose to signal so clearly in advance her intentions, before joining the press pack ‘huddle’ 35,000 ft above the ground yesterday.
 She was seizing this opportunity to put Mr Hammond in his place. She told journalists that the Chancellor had been using, as the basis for his letter to the Treasury committee, data which were merely ‘work in progress’ back in January.
In other words, the Chancellor had got his figures wrong. And not for the first time.
Before the last election it was widely assumed that Mrs May would sack Mr Hammond if she won with a big majority.
 The Chancellor had signed his death warrant in his Budget before the election with plans to increase national insurance contributions for the self-employed that breached his party’s manifesto. An embarrassed and enraged Mrs May was forced to drop the changes.
The inconclusive election meant she had to stick with Mr Hammond, and he’s been flexing his muscles ever since. But her supporters say the darkness of her mood in the past few days matches her rage over the botched Budget.
Any student of politics knows a bad relationship between a Prime Minister and Chancellor can have fatal political consequences.
Mrs Thatcher’s Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, resigned in 1989 and the following year she was gone. Tony Blair’s premiership was scarred by rows with Gordon Brown.
It seems Theresa May’s relationship with Philip Hammond is fast going the same way.
 
Almost one in four voters who supported the EU at the referendum believe the result must be honoured and are set to re-elect Theresa May to get on with Brexit.
The new group, found by pollsters YouGov, breaks the myth that almost half the country are desperate to see the referendum result blocked.
In fact around two third of Britain want to see Brexit delivered and the constituency of hard Remoaners wanting it blocked is just 22 per cent of voters.
The group of 'Re-leavers' is set to bolster Mrs May's hopes of a big majority on June 8 on a manifesto set to prioritise striking the best possible deal with Brussels.
YouGove's results came as two new polls showed the Tory lead at 18 and 20 points with just three and a half weeks to election day.  
YouGov's director of international projects Marcus Roberts said: 'In the eleven months since the EU referendum, it has become a common theme that we are now a nation divided – 52/48.
'However, while it is true that most people still think they voted the right way last June, when it comes to the composition of the Brexit tribes in the general election, it is not a simple as ''Leave'' and ''Remain''.
'There is a third group who change the dynamics of EU-related arguments – the ''Re-Leavers''.
'These are people who voted to Remain in the EU and many still think that leaving was the wrong decision, but crucially now believe the government has a duty to carry out the will of the British people.'
Among the crucial new group, Mrs May is backed by 45 per cent of them - compared to just 10 per cent who plan to vote for Labour.
The results suggest the Tories are set to sweep up votes across the country in an election dominated by continued debate over the Brexit vote.
Mr Roberts said it showed why Mrs May was 'entering landslide territory'.  
He said: 'Among the 68 per cent of the electorate that are Leavers or Re-Leavers, Theresa May’s party is picking up the backing of over six in ten.
'Because of its strength here, it matters a lot less that they are losing voters amongst Hard Remainers, which only accounts for 22 per cent of the electorate.'
The new analysis comes after months of extraordinary polling leads for Mrs May.
She has spent the entire election campaign around 20 points ahead of Labour - figures which suggest a Conservative majority of around 150 on June 8. 
New surveys outs today revealed an 18 point lead, on Survation research, and a 20 point lead, using an ICM sample. 
ICM director Martin Boon said: 'In a week when the eagerly awaited but already much discussed manifestos drop, Theresa May can head into it confident that her poll lead is largely impregnable.' 
Labour is behind the Tories in its 50 most marginal seats with less than a month until the election, a new poll has found.
YouGov questioned the views in Labour's most vulnerable constituencies and found the Tories with an extraordinary lead of 47 per cent to 38 per cent.
Labour's vote rises by four points when people were asked about specifically about their own constituency - but this not enough to put Labour ahead.
The poll suggests Jeremy Corbyn will lose dozens of seats on June 8, from Chester in the north west, Bristol in the south west and Bermondsey in London.
Losing 50 seats would mean the Conservative majority was well over 100.
Astonishingly, the poll actually shows a better picture than national surveys predict even though it still forecasts a landslide defeat. 
YouGov's Chris Curtis said: 'If voters enter the polling station thinking about local issues some Labour MPs might stand a fighting chance of holding their seats despite the strong headwinds.
'But before Labour candidates breathe a sigh of relief, many of these arguments were being made in 2015 about the Liberal Democrats. Then, the Tory tide was too strong for many of them and few managed to hold on.
'If people enter the voting booth thinking about the national government and Theresa May, Labour MPs in these marginal constituencies could face the same fate.'
Coups d’etat used to be conducted by Latin-American generalissimos with dark glasses and scrambled egg – huevos revueltos – on their army tunics.
In Britain the Establishment has little taste for gold braid. 
Are our anti-democratic outrages carried out by murmuring mandarins working to the Cabinet-bypassing diktats of a dishonest prime minister?
First the Iraq War. Now the Chequers ‘betrayal’ of Brexit?
Whitehall’s most controversial fixer, Oliver Robbins, came to Westminster for a taste of parliamentary scrutiny. Mr Robbins runs Theresa May’s Europe unit at 10 Downing Street.
He has been given powers that arguably usurp those of HM Secretary of State for Brexit. 
Mr Robbins is the man whose soft-Brexit papers were sprung on the Cabinet at Chequers.
Eurosceptic MPs have long been itching to interrogate him but were told he was unavailable. 
Finally it was agreed he could go before Hilary Benn’s pro-Remain select committee on Brexit. Yesterday he did so. Last afternoon of term. Convenient.
Physically, Mr Robbins is a commanding presence: tall, bull-necked, strong hair, wide shoulders. 
He wore a smart suit, his black shoes dazzlingly polished. He sat alongside Dominic Raab, new Brexit Secretary (predecessor David Davis having quit at Mr Robbins’s interferences).
Anyone judging Raab and Robbins simply on looks might have presumed that the latter was the politician, for he bore himself with the greater pomp. Mr Raab? A foot shorter, with the darting, stressy look of a clerk. 
A vein throbs on the right of his brow and he is prone to flushing in the face.
When they spoke, the balance changed. Raab was husky, lawyerly enough to see off nitpickers (eg. matinee favourite Joanna Cherry of the SNP), at other moments quite impressively brusque with low-grade pointscorers (eg. Labour’s Stephen Kinnock). 
By contrast Mr Robbins’s voice was as soft as margarine. He was deferential. He bit on the lower lip, did lots of nodding and flashed a pair of dimples, working rising inflections into his tone. Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood and his stand-in Sir Mark Sedwill, along with civil service chief executive John Manzoni, speak in almost an identical way.
John Whittingdale (Con, Maldon) claimed that ‘most ministers knew nothing’ of the soft-Brexit plan pulled out of the Chequers hat.
Mr Robbins, meekly: ‘I don’t think so.’ He claimed Mrs May’s ‘engagement with colleagues was constant’. Constant but deceptive, perhaps.
Mr Whittingdale said it looked as if Mrs May had tried to ‘circumvent’ her Cabinet. 
Mr Robbins, who began most of his answers with ‘so’, said ‘it’s certainly not a picture I or the Prime Minister would recognise’.
Mr Robbins’s enhanced powers were confirmed in a parliamentary written answer published a few minutes before yesterday’s committee hearing.
It confirmed a ‘change of government machinery’ which all but emasculates the Brexit department.
Craig Mackinlay (Con, S Thanet) said: ‘I feel a coup d’etat has been going on.’ Mr Robbins: ‘So, Mr Mackinlay, I honestly don’t recognise the picture.’
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, NE Somerset) wondered when Mr Robbins had started writing his Chequers papers. 
‘These papers had their origins in other papers,’ said Mr Robbins. See how sneaky they are at this sort of thing? He finally conceded that the first versions of the Chequers papers were written ‘about a fortnight’ earlier.
Mr Rees-Mogg, with deadly politeness, said he did not hold Mr Robbins responsible for a ‘worrying’ breakdown in Cabinet government. 
Mr Robbins thanked him. Mr Rees-Mogg now said that he blamed Mrs May. Mr Robbins gave a pale gulp, wishing he had not been so quick to thank the Mogg.
It is often said Tony Blair lied to ministers and to Parliament when he took us into the Iraq War, and that his dishonesty wrecked public trust in our political system.
If Mrs May has just misled her own ministers, on a national strategic relationship with the EU which may impede our economy for decades, her reputation will sink as low as that of the sharply hated Blair. And she will deserve the odium.
Ryanair's chief executive has threatened to ground planes after Brexit in a bid to force Britain to 'rethink' its decision to leave the EU.
Michael O'Leary - a  vocal Remainer - said he is considering carrying out the stunt to show voters they were 'lied to' during the 2016 campaign.
He said the tactic would hammer home to Britons that cheap holidays will become more expensive after Britain quits the Brussels club.
But Tory MP and Brexiteer Peter Bone slammed the 'politically motivated' threat and told Mail Online it would not succeed in blackmailing Britons and just harm the air carrier's profits.
Speaking in Brussels today, Mr O'Leary said he wants to 'create an opportunity' by making people realise they are 'no longer going to have cheap holidays'.
He told an audience of airline leaders: 'I think it's in our interests - not for a long period of time - that the aircraft are grounded.
'It's only when you get to that stage where you're going to persuade the average British voter that you were lied to in the entire Brexit debate.
Donald Trump is reportedly pushing a policy on airlines which  could send prices soaring.
Britain needs to sign a new deal with the US to replace the existing Us-EU Open Skies agreement.
But US officials are reportedly taking a tough stance we would mean airlines had to be majority owned in the UK or US.
But this would prove problematic for British Airways and Virgin as they will not meet this criteria.
British officials played down talk of a problem and said they were hopeful this criteria will be dropped.
But Lord Mark Malloch Brown, chairman of the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain, said: 'This news is a rude but overdue wake up call. 
'The US think we now have less clout than larger regional blocs in trade negotiations. It's all about market size and Britain has opted for reduction surgery.
'Trump will always put America First and our position is at the back of the queue. We are flying blind here with Theresa May's shambolic Brexit plans.
'We have just left the grip of the Beast from the East and now have to deal with the Pest from the West.' 
'You were promised you could leave the EU and everything would stay the same. The reality is you can leave the EU, yes that's your choice, but everything will fundamentally change.'
Mr O'Leary warned there would be a 'real crisis' as flights between the UK and the EU are disrupted after Brexit.
He said: 'When you begin to realise that you're no longer going to have cheap holidays in Portugal or Spain or Italy, you've got to drive to Scotland or get a ferry to Ireland as your only holiday options, maybe we'll begin to rethink the whole Brexit debate.
'They were misled and I think we have to create an opportunity.'
Carsten Spohr, the boss of German carrier Lufthansa, backed the threat, saying: 'In theory, if we could use this industry to prove to the British how wrong the decision was, that might be a good thing.' 
EasyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren, who was on stage alongside Mr O'Leary, interrupted him to say: 'If you start grounding your planes, I'm flying.' 
Mr Bone, MP for Wellingborough, said: 'Mr O'Leary is in love with the EU.
'The idea that grinding Ryanair flights would change the attitudes of the British people about leaving the EU is pure fantasy.
'All it would do is damage the airline. I don't know any chief executives who set out to damage their companies to make some political point.
'His shareholders won't be happy about it. The only person who would look silly is him.' 
The single market for aviation, created in the 1990s, means there are no commercial restrictions for airlines flying within the EU.
Mr O'Leary has repeatedly warned that airlines will be forced to cancel post-Brexit services from March 2019 if no agreement is reached in the Brexit negotiations by September, because schedules are planned about six months in advance.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said in January that he is confident flights will not be grounded because 'it's in the interests of everyone' to maintain the open market for aviation.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is reportedly pushing a policy on airlines which  could send prices soaring.
Britain needs to sign a new deal with the US to replace the existing Us-EU Open Skies agreement.
But US officials are reportedly taking a tough stance we would mean airlines had to be majority owned in the UK or US.
But this would prove problematic for British Airways and Virgin as they will not meet this criteria.
British officials played down talk of a problem and said they were hopeful this criteria will be dropped.
But Lord Mark Malloch Brown, chairman of the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain, said: 'This news is a rude but overdue wake up call. 
'The US think we now have less clout than larger regional blocs in trade negotiations. It's all about market size and Britain has opted for reduction surgery.
'Trump will always put America First and our position is at the back of the queue. We are flying blind here with Theresa May's shambolic Brexit plans.
'We have just left the grip of the Beast from the East and now have to deal with the Pest from the West.' 
 
 
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott is not someone I usually see eye-to-eye with on political matters, but in the case of former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas, I’m afraid I can’t fault the old Trot.
Responding to Ms Lucas’s frankly extraordinary idea that the way to avoid a No-Deal Brexit is for Parliament to pass a vote of no-confidence in the Government, and then for an all-female emergency Cabinet to take over, Abbott tweeted: ‘Backdoor route to a National Government. Didn’t work for Ramsey McDonald [sic] and won’t work now, whatever the gender of the participants.’
She wasn’t the only one. Even Emily Thornberry — one of the women to whom Lucas extended her invitation to join this cross-party cabal of all the ladies — politely declined.
Of course Lucas — MP for Brighton Pavilion — has never been part of mainstream politics. 
Elected on an uncompromising eco-ticket, she’s also an arch-Remainer — one of the majority of MPs whose refusal to accept the result of the 2016 referendum and work with the Government on striking a deal with Brussels is arguably — and ironically — the principal reason we now find ourselves on the brink of leaving without one.
Still, even by her standards, this proposal is extreme. Not that she would see it that way.
In her eyes, she is mounting a heroic last stand against ‘a coup led by a small group of Right-wing libertarians’ hell-bent on implementing ‘the most extreme No-Deal version of Brexit’ and ‘creating more divisions, scapegoating our friends and neighbours, and ignoring the inequality and democratic deficit that fuelled the Brexit vote’. Quite the heroine, our Caroline.
Elected politicians should be ‘setting aside our political differences in the national interest’ in a bid to work towards ‘reconciliation’, she says. 
Not in itself such a bad idea, although arguably she’s dreamt it up three years and two prime ministers too late. 
In any case, if she’s so keen on reconciliation, why didn’t she set aside her own personal views when Mrs May put forward a deal the EU had accepted — and vote with, rather than against, the Withdrawal Agreement?
And this is before we have even got onto Lucas’s utterly bonkers’ assertion that the reason we need a Cabinet of women is that the Gordian knot of Brexit can only ever be untied if we exclude men from the process. 
What’s more, she has subsequently had to apologise for suggesting an ‘all-white list of women’ for her proposed emergency Cabinet.
One might suggest her argument is somewhat undermined by the fact that we’ve just had a female PM who, despite her best and most persistent efforts, failed to get Parliament to agree on anything.
Yet Lucas insists women ‘have shown they can bring a different perspective to crises, are able to reach out to those they disagree with and cooperate to find solutions’. She says they are less ‘tribal’ than men, more prepared to compromise.
To back up this sweeping generalisation, she explains fatuously that ‘it was two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, who began the Peace People movement during the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland; it was two women, Christiana Figueres and Ségolène Royal, who were key to the signing of the Paris Climate agreement’.
This makes about as much sense as those who have suggested — and there are a few — that Boris Johnson will triumph where May fell for the simple reason that he is a man. Again, nonsense.
The truth is, whether a person succeeds or fails has nothing to do with gender, as it has nothing to do with race or religion. Margaret Thatcher’s formidable success proved that, as have countless other women at the top of their fields.
There are just as many capable women as there are capable men, and vice versa, both within and without politics. It’s ability that matters, and some people are just more blessed with it than others.
What is so striking about Lucas’s proposal is not just the blatant sexism of her decision to discount the abilities of 50 per cent of the population — which is, of course, breathtakingly hypocritical, since she can’t stop impressing on us how committed she is to the causes of equality.
It’s also this kind of dogma that undermines the very cause for which feminists have been fighting for decades. It implies we need positive discrimination because we’re not good enough to make it on equal terms with men.
What’s more, her claim that women are less tribal, and therefore prepared to compromise to find solutions, undermines the female sex further. 
It paints women as not prepared to stick to their guns, who’ll forgo their principles for the sake of an easy solution. Above all, it’s a complete fantasy. 
I don’t know where Ms Lucas has been sitting for the past few years, but, in case she hasn’t noticed, getting any sort of cross-party consensus in the House of Commons on anything more testing than the provision of paperclips for the civil service is highly unlikely.
The idea that a self-appointed multi-party coalition of (often very tribal) women would succeed where an actual female PM could not is for the birds.
But if naivety tinged with stupidity were all Lucas were guilty of, it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, if elected politicians can’t indulge in the belief that they can re-shape the world, who can? 
No, it’s the fact that, as well as being completely pie-in-the-sky, her plan is also arrogant, non-democratic and undeniably elitist.
What she is effectively proposing is an all-female dictatorship where the only requirement to sign up is that you have a womb and agree with her.
This is an example of so-called liberal fascism at its finest: the notion that your own world view is so inherently superior to anyone else’s that those who do not conform to it forfeit all rights to participate in the democratic process.
It’s a kind of dangerous self-righteousness that is cropping up ever more. In groups such as Extinction Rebellion, for example, who believe the moral superiority of their argument about climate change means they have the right to impose their agenda on everyone else, disrupting lives to the point where — as happened a few weeks ago in a motorway blockade — they stopped a son seeing his dying father in Bristol. 
When played the recording of the man’s anguish by a local radio station, one protester, Zoe Jones, simply said: ‘I still believe we are doing the right thing,’ adding that, distressing as it was, it wouldn’t stop her protesting because ‘we are all humans’. Only some, of course, are more human than others.
It’s the kind of mindset that carries chilling echoes of the past: the expression of an arrogant, self-entitled elite whose refusal to acknowledge anything other than its own view — in this case, the notion that Brexit is a massive right-wing conspiracy and not a genuine demand for change from the majority of British voters —makes them blind to the risks they take in dismissing anyone who offends them.
Inevitably, if the electorate can’t get their wishes respected by mainstream politicians, they will turn to more populist figures to get the job done. And, as we have seen, the path of populism is not a pretty one.
The truth is, that until MPs accept the referendum result, in which the British people voted to leave the EU, there is not a man, woman or child who can clean up this mess.
If Caroline Lucas really wants to ‘find a way forward’, she should stop playing Fantasy Feminist Cabinet, and concentrate on respecting the wishes of the people who pay her salary: the British electorate.
Three and a half years have passed since I wrote the column whose headline is reprinted further down this page. Just a few days after the referendum result, it described my astonishment at waking to find that, against all odds, the Leave side had won the most momentous vote for decades.
It felt bizarre, unreal. Straight away I felt a certain trepidation, a sense that whatever else this was, it was only the beginning of the process of disengagement from the EU. The ball was rolling; but the job was far from done. Indeed, as I observed then: ‘Triumphalism was the last thing on my mind.’
Even so, there was certainly a sense of satisfaction that the people had been given a voice. A growing expectation, too — to borrow a phrase — that we would get Brexit done. That within a few months, agreements could be struck with our European partners, and the parties at Westminster would come together to honour the result, as they’d promised they would.
This was democracy in action. Wasn’t it?
Well, Britain is finally leaving the EU on Friday. But by my calculation, it will be fully 1,317 days after the vote. And what a very long 1,317 days it’s been. I should, by rights, have the champagne on ice. After all, not only is it what my husband campaigned so hard for and what he’s always believed in, it’s also what the majority in this country voted for.
To see the result of that democratic vote finally honoured, in spite of such determined efforts to undermine it, is, in many ways, a victory in itself. For so long it seemed that the will of the people would be thwarted by a Remain establishment, both here and in Brussels, that was simply too powerful to resist. That democracy has at last prevailed feels both miraculous and just.
And yet, as I sit here contemplating the beginning of the end to this seemingly endless journey, I feel remarkably sober. No feelings of victory, pride, elation. I don’t much care if Big Ben bongs, or if there are fireworks over the White Cliffs. And no, there is still no triumphalism in my heart.
If I feel anything at all, it’s just a huge sense of relief that at last, finally, the country can move on from the political quagmire of the past years and months. The rest, if I’m honest, is a bit numb.
Quite why this should be I cannot precisely say. Perhaps it’s just that, having journeyed so long towards a destination through such treacherous terrain, the prospect of imminent arrival inevitably feels anticlimactic. But it’s more than that. I think, like many Leave voters the length and breadth of the country, I have found the hatred and vitriol of the past few years ultimately very brutalising.
There is something soul-destroying about being characterised as something you are not, and there is no question that in their efforts to overturn the result of the vote, the Remain side has shown no hesitation in defaming the character and motivation of anyone who dared, in their eyes, to defy their righteous superiority.
We Leavers have been accused of innumerable crimes, cast as racist, short-sighted, xenophobic and, above all, thick and uneducated. We’ve been compared to the Nazis, been blamed for the actions of every lunatic extremist, accused of lying — not to mention held responsible for every stock market fluctuation (downwards, naturally) or passing economic squall.
Politicians, celebrities, the media and, of course, all-powerful, divisive Twitter, have demonised every one of the 17.4 million British voters who dared to express their opinion, who refused to do as they were told and opt, like good little boys and girls, for a status quo that was slowly but surely sucking the life out of so many communities.
Of course, this is what happens when you dare to challenge, when you take on the vested interests of banks and institutions, of politicians and powerbrokers. When you try to break a monopoly, the monopoly will try to break you. But there is a difference between knowing that in the abstract, and experiencing it head-on.
That is why I have such extraordinary respect for the courage of the British people.
For their clear-sighted ability to stick, unwaveringly, to their decision to leave — and to reiterate that choice so decisively in December’s general election.
For their sheer, admirable, belligerent defiance of authority, for their capacity to resist intimidation and litigation, ridicule and opprobrium and to stand up to an institution, the EU, that has ultimately proven, in the words and actions of people such as Michel Barnier and vitriolic Donald Tusk, to be all the things we feared: arrogant, entitled, bent on self-preservation at all costs.
But I’m glad they did. Not just because it makes so many of the personal and public sacrifices made by my husband for the cause he has always believed in finally worthwhile. But also because, for my part, I am exhausted. I just want the shouting to stop.
When it comes to the issue that has in many ways defined me and my family’s existence for the past three years and more, I can honestly say I have no fight left. Brexit has, in the end, defeated me.
It’s not just the death threats, the insults, the shouts in the street, the eggs thrown at our windows, the dirt left on the doorstep; it’s not just seeing my husband go through a thousand agonies, or having my kids dragged into it all through no choice or fault of their own.
It’s the attacks in print from colleagues, the slurs from former friends, having my reputation shredded and being characterised as a scheming, manipulative Lady Macbeth figure. And, of course, losing so many old and dear friends along the way.
The fact is that being on the ‘winning’ side in the referendum hasn’t felt like a victory at all — even the celebrations in the week of the vote itself were merely a blip in the stream of abuse directed towards Brexiteers of all stripes.
And yes, it’s taken its toll. Perhaps if I were a better, stronger, more intelligent person, none of these things would haunt me. But they do, and there is no point in pretending: I am changed.
Where once I was the life and soul of any party, now I struggle to be in a room of more than two or three people. Most nights you will find me in bed by 10.30pm, sleeping for long periods being one of the very few ways I can find of silencing my anxiety.
Where once my kitchen was a permanent hub of activity, a place where I would whip up a meal for unexpected visitors at the drop of a hat, something or other always on the boil, now I cook only for close family.
I crave solitude and simplicity in a way that no one who has ever known me can really understand. I’m not entirely sure I do either.
In order to cope, I have had to shrink my world to more manageable proportions.
I can almost count on the fingers of one hand those I trust, the people who have succeeded in seeing beyond the gossip and the headlines to the person I always was and still am.
To these people I will always be unfailingly true. If I am in any way sane, it is largely thanks to them.
No doubt there will be many who say this is no more than I deserve. No doubt the very words on these pages will be fashioned into knives to be thrown back at me. But they needn’t waste their time.
The truth is that, after so many years of being told what an unutterable piece of effluent I am, part of me believes them.
That, I’m afraid, is the nature of the beast.
But while in many ways very painful, this change has not all been bad. If Brexit was all about taking back control of our laws and borders, it has also prompted a kind of taking back control of myself. It’s almost as though, unable to influence the way other people see me I have turned my efforts inwards, altering what is possible.
This internal focus has finally enabled me to lose the weight that I’ve been struggling to ditch for years. I drink less, eat less, move more. And I spend all the spare time I have with my family, whose wellbeing and happiness is more than ever my focus. In particular I am so proud of the way our children have navigated through this storm, and of the feisty, free-thinking individuals they are becoming, in spite of what they’ve had to endure.
At its essence, the choice of whether to leave or remain in the EU was a political one that became, catastrophically for both millions of people and the country itself, intensely personal.
All of us have, to a greater or lesser extent, felt its effects. All of us, I suspect, have felt tensions within our extended families over this benighted issue.
Some people will, like me, have fallen out for ever with old friends. Others will simply have stopped calling those they know will disdain their views.
None of those things seemed possible when I wrote that column three and a half years ago. I couldn’t conceive of the rancour that would envelop Westminster and the country at large.
So was it all worth it? Well, my hope for the future outside the EU is that Britain can at last begin to heal the rift caused by the referendum.
As my own experience has taught me, while certain things may have changed for good, there is always a fresh — and positive — way forward to be found.
So, at last, here’s to Brexit. Thank goodness it’s all over . . . for now.
Jeremy Corbyn's proposal to be installed as caretaker prime minister to prevent a no-deal Brexit has received a further blow after another senior Tory ruled out backing the plan.
Sir Oliver Letwin said he would not be able to support a bid to put the Labour leader in Number 10, saying he did not think it was likely that a majority could be formed for the idea.
The Conservative former minister, who was among recipients of a letter from Mr Corbyn outlining his plan, said it was 'well worth' having discussions across the Commons to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal.
But, when asked if he would make the Leader of the Opposition prime minister, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'That appears to be his agenda, I have to say it is not one I personally share.
'I don't think it's at all likely that a majority would be formed for that and I personally wouldn't want to vote for it. I wouldn't be able to support that, no.'
However, Sir Oliver did not rule out supporting a no confidence motion to bring down the Tory government to prevent a no-deal, but said he would not back it if it led to Mr Corbyn becoming PM.
He said: 'I'm not very inclined to do that if it could possibly be avoided - it's not something I would do under any circumstances in normal life and I'd much prefer to find some other means of getting to a substantive result.'
It comes after Conservative grandee Ken Clarke said he would be willing to lead a government of national unity to avoid a no-deal Brexit - after Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson suggested an emergency government be led by him or Labour's Harriet Harman.
Mr Clarke said it was 'not inconceivable' that a government of national unity may be needed to resolve the impasse, suggesting politics was in a similar situation to 1931 and the two world wars.
He told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: 'If it was the only way in which the plain majority in the House of Commons that is opposed to a no-deal exit could find a way forward... I wouldn't object to it, if that was the judgment of people, the only way forward.'
Ms Swinson's proposal came after she rejected Mr Corbyn's suggestion that he could lead an emergency government to thwart a no-deal Brexit, despite agreeing to meet with him to discuss a no-deal prevention plan.
Anna Soubry, leader of the Independent Group, confirmed that she would also 'not support nor facilitate any government led by Jeremy Corbyn'.
But Mr Corbyn's plan has won the potential backing of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Tory MP Guto Bebb.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was among those applying pressure to Ms Swinson to re-think her position. 
Letwin is the second rebel to go into full retreat mode after suffering a furious backlash from party colleagues over their willingness to discuss blocking a No Deal Brexit with Corbyn. 
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve insisted he 'will not facilitate' making the hard Left Labour leader prime minister after he and three other pro-EU Conservatives were branded Mr Corbyn's 'useful idiots'.
Mr Grieve, Sir Oliver Letwin and Dame Caroline Spelman sparked Brexiteer outrage and calls for them to face no confidence votes from their local parties over what they see as traitorous behaviour.
They agreed to meet with the Labour leader to try to figure out a way of stopping the UK crashing out of the EU at the Halloween deadline without an agreement. 
 'I am not about to facilitate Jeremy Corbyn's arrival in Downing Street,' Mr Grieve said yesterday in an email leaked to the New Statesman. Dame Caroline has also insisted she will not help Mr Corbyn into Downing Street.
The trio of Tory former ministers were joined by a fourth, Guto Bebb, who suggested he would prefer a temporary government led by Mr Corbyn over a No Deal split from Brussels. All except Mr Grieve represent constituencies which voted Leave in 2016. 
It came as Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson performed a U-turn and said she was now willing to meet with Mr Corbyn to discuss his plan.  
She had initially said his idea of toppling Mr Johnson using a Commons no confidence vote and then forming a temporary government with the Labour leader as PM to delay Brexit was 'nonsense'. 
Jeremy Corbyn's hopes of ever winning the keys to Downing Street suffered a blow after a new poll found voters believe Boris Johnson is better suited to being PM. 
A Deltapoll survey for the Evening Standard found just 27 per cent of voters believe Mr Corbyn has what it takes to get the job done. 
Mr Johnson was backed by 46 per cent of voters. 
Meanwhile, 48 per cent of voters said they believed Mr Johnson had the strength of character to  handle a crisis compared to 28 per cent for Mr Corbyn.
Despite Ms Swinson softening her opposition to the plan, the chances of her coming to an agreement with Mr Corbyn appear slim, especially after he hit out at her failure to back his candidacy to be the next PM. 
Mr Corbyn said: 'It's not up to Jo Swinson to choose candidates, it's not up to Jo Swinson to decide who the next prime minister is going to be.'
Leave supporters believe that Mr Corbyn's plan is just a cover for him to seize and then keep power. 
A senior Tory Brexiteer told MailOnline: 'They are idiots. They are Corbyn's useful idiots. If they think he would be there temporarily that is complete nonsense.'
Asked if the quartet should face constituency votes of no confidence, they added: 'I think they should. I think the constituency associations for these people will be absolutely appalled. 
'They would be entirely justified in having special general meetings to consider if they want to carry on supporting them as Conservative candidates.'  
On Thursday night, Mr Johnson warned the Tory Remainer rebels that the 2016 EU referendum result 'must be respected' as he recommitted to his 'do or die' pledge.  
He told them: 'We will leave the EU on 31st October.' 
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan, a former Remainer, also laid into Mr Corbyn's plan. 
In a tweet endorsed by Damian Green, a Remainer former cabinet minister, she said: 'This would be ''short-term'' in the same way Labour MPs thought Corbyn was a ''short term'' Labour leader they could indulge for a bit - and now can't get rid of him.'
 Mr Corbyn has set out a plan which would see MPs vote to oust Mr Johnson and then install the Labour leader in Number 10 on a time limited basis to stop No Deal by persuading the EU to extend the Brexit deadline beyond October 31.
The decision of four Tory MPs to consider supporting plans put forward by Jeremy Corbyn to block No Deal has prompted calls for them to face votes of no confidence in their respective constituencies.
Such votes are not binding which means even if an MP loses one they are not required to step down. 
That means it is very difficult for disgruntled Tory activists to actually get rid of their MP. 
However, losing a vote of no confidence would be tremendously embarrassing and would in normal circumstances lead to an MP standing down at the next election on the grounds that they do not carry the support of their constituency.  
Campaigning as a Tory candidate without the support of Tory members would be incredibly difficult. 
In such a situation it is likely Conservative Party HQ would step in to tell the relevant MP they cannot stand again. 
Tory party rules state that a special general meeting can be held to discuss a vote of no confidence if at least 50 activists, or 10 per cent of the association, sign a petition demanding one.  
The plan appeared to be dead on arrival yesterday after Ms Swinson's initially cold reaction. 
Ms Swinson, who as Lib Dem leader is now in charge of a grouping of 14 MPs, suggested a temporary unity government should be led by a less divisive figure like Labour veteran Harriet Harman or Tory grandee Ken Clarke.
But amid growing pressure from other Remain-backing MPs, Ms Swinson subsequently tweeted: 'I've offered to meet Jeremy Corbyn to discuss how we can work together on a deliverable plan to stop no-deal, including the option of uniting behind an MP who can command a majority in the House.'
Critics are sceptical about whether Ms Swinson and Mr Corbyn will be able to agree a shared way forward given their different stances on Brexit. 
Mr Corbyn's response to the Lib Dem leader will have only enhanced that scepticism. 
'It's not up to Jo Swinson to choose candidates, it's not up to Jo Swinson to decide who the next prime minister is going to be,' he said. 
'Surely she must recognise she is a leader of one of the opposition parties who are apparently opposed to this Government, and apparently prepared to support a motion of no confidence.
'I look forward to joining her in the lobbies to vote this Government down.' 
Ms Harman has reportedly told friends she would be willing to step up and lead the nation if MPs asked her to.
Tory grandee Ken Clarke and senior Labour MP Harriet Harman are both prepared lead an emergency government to prevent a no-deal Brexit, it has emerged.
The Father and Mother of the House - the longest serving MPs - were suggested as a more palatable alternative to Jeremy Corbyn, who has proposed becoming caretaker PM to prevent no deal under Boris Johnson.
 Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, who put their names forward, said she has spoken to the pair - who are Father and Mother of the House - and won their assurances they are ready to 'put public duty first' to 'stop us driving off that cliff'.
Ms Swinson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I have been in touch with them because obviously you don't just mention people's names without checking that they're OK with that.
'They put public duty first, and they don't want to see a no-deal Brexit, and if the House of Commons asks them to lead an emergency government to get our country out of this Brexit mess and to stop us driving off that cliff to a no deal, then yes, they are prepared to do that and I think that is to their credit.'
The change of heart and the potential support of a handful of Tory Remainers means Mr Corbyn's plan may yet have a chance of success. 
The decision by the Conservative rebels to oppose a No Deal divorce prompted fury among Tory activists in their constituencies as some claimed the MPs were 'completely at odds' with voters.
It is also likely to prompt questions about whether they could now face votes of no confidence in their respective constituencies. Mr Grieve lost such a vote earlier this year and has limped on while Mr Bebb has said he will step down at the next election. 
It came as it emerged that Mr Johnson is laying the groundwork to make sure the EU's legal supremacy over UK law ends immediately when Britain leaves the bloc.
The House of Commons voted to repeal the European Communities Act (ECA) of 1972 last year but an order to actually implement that vote was never made when Theresa May was in office as Brexit was delayed. 
The Times reported this morning that Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, will sign the so-called 'commencement order' in the coming days which means the ECA will be scrapped in the immediate aftermath of October 31. 
The move has delighted Tory Brexiteers who said implementing the decision to repeal the legislation was 'well overdue'. 
The fallout from Mr Corbyn's letter to opposition leaders and senior Europhile MPs asking them to help him topple Mr Johnson and take power as a caretaker prime minister continued yesterday. 
Former chancellor Philip Hammond faces the prospect of a vote of no confidence in his Surrey constituency because of his ardent anti-No Deal Brexit stance. 
Mr Hammond coordinated a show of strength from Tory Remainers earlier this week as he attacked Boris Johnson's Brexit strategy and vowed to fight the UK leaving the EU without an agreement. 
But his outspoken opposition to No Deal has reportedly gone down badly with some of the members of the Conservative Association in his Runnymede and Weybridge seat. 
Party insiders told The Telegraph that many activists were 'not best pleased' at Mr Hammond working against Mr Johnson and there was 'no doubt' tensions would boil over in the near future. 
It came as senior allies of Mr Johnson savaged Mr Hammond and accused him of being 'patronising and misleading'. 
Iain Duncan Smith, who served as Mr Johnson's campaign chairman during the Tory leadership race, said Mr Hammond was talking 'utter nonsense' over his attempts to interpret what people were voting for at the EU referendum in 2016. 
Mr Corbyn said he would take power for a time limited period in order to secure a further Brexit delay and then call a general election to break the Brexit deadlock. 
But his plan initially fell flat after many opposition MPs said they could not support a government led by Mr Corbyn.  
Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that Sajid Javid will travel to Berlin for talks with his German opposite number when he is expected to deliver Mr Johnson's tough Brexit stance in person. 
Aides told The Sun that Mr Javid would stress 'how serious we are about walking away' from the bloc unless it agrees to Mr Johnson's demand to renegotiate the existing divorce deal and delete the Irish border backstop. 
Mr Corbyn's letter sparked a political firestorm yesterday as opposition leaders and Tory rebels weighed up whether they could agree to putting him in Downing Street. 
Some said they could in order to stop No Deal but others, most notably Ms Swinson, were reluctant. 
The decision by the three Tories to meet with Mr Corbyn to discuss his plans provoked a swift backlash as Conservative Eurosceptics suggested they should be kicked out of the party.
And in a sign of the seriousness of the moment Mr Johnson himself appeared to address the rebels directly as he tweeted last night: 'The referendum result must be respected.  
Jeremy Corbyn's plan hinges on a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson's Government being successful.
He is planning to potentially call such a vote within days of Parliament returning in September. 
After a series of defections and election defeats, the Prime Minister's majority in the Commons is just one, meaning a tiny rebellion by Remainer Tories could sweep him from No 10 just weeks after getting his key in the door.
Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act (FTPA), losing a confidence motion triggers a 14 day countdown to an election being called.
During that period it is possible for a prime minister to win a confidence vote and prevent the country going to the polls.
But the same is true of the Opposition leader or indeed any unity candidate that can command enough backing.
Some 650 MPs sit in the Commons. Excluding Sinn Fein's seven who do not take their seats and the Speaker and three deputies who do not vote, a majority is 320.
Mr Johnson has 311 Tory MPs plus the support of the 10 Democratic Unionist Party parliamentarians, taking him to 321.
This majority of one is set against perhaps half a dozen Labour MPs who back Leave and who do not want it to be delayed and may vote against Jeremy Corbyn or any leader aiming to postpone Brexit.
The question is how many Tories are ready to back a no confidence vote by Mr Corbyn or allow him to become prime minister. 
It is a drastic option that would end the careers of any Conservative MPs who join, but only a PM can request an extension to the Article 50 process, and the legal default currently is that the UK leaves at Halloween with or without an agreement.
'We will leave the EU on 31st October.' 
Elsewhere, a top UK constitutional expert claimed that of all the options which could come to fruition in October, the one with the highest probability was No Deal. 
Vernon Bogdanor, a research professor at the Centre for British Politics and Government, told Politico: 'The default position is that we leave the EU without a deal and so I suppose that is the most likely outcome.'
Mr Johnson inherited a wafer thin Commons majority from Mrs May which means he will need the support of every single one of his MPs to have any chance of winning crunch divisions in the weeks and months ahead.
The rebel Tories were warned they would never be forgiven if they helped topple Mr Johnson and install Mr Corbyn in Number 10. 
In their reply to Mr Corbyn's letter, the trio and ex-Tory MP Nick Boles, who now sits as an independent, wrote that they believed stopping the country leaving the EU without an agreement should be their 'common priority' as they agreed to meet in the coming weeks 'to discuss the different ways that this might be achieved'. 
The situation is likely to come to a head next month as MPs opposed to No Deal try to stop Mr Johnson from taking Britain out of the EU on October 31 without an agreement. 
Dame Caroline last night said that while she was happy to work with Mr Corbyn on options such as changing the law to block No Deal but she would not vote to bring down the government in a confidence vote.
Mr Grieve said he believed it was 'unlikely' Mr Corbyn would succeed in becoming a caretaker prime minister.
He added: 'But he has written a letter in which he sets out his desire to prevent a No Deal Brexit and on that I am in agreement with him because it is something that is going to have such a catastrophic impact.'
The New Statesman magazine said that it had seen an email in which Mr Grieve had said he would not do anything to 'facilitate Jeremy Corbyn's arrival in Downing Street'.  
The rebels immediately came under fire from their constituencies. 
Jackson Ng, the chairman of the Tory association in Mr Grieve's Beaconsfield seat, told The Telegraph: 'The continuous and thoroughly un-Conservative behaviour being exhibited by Dominic Grieve has become more worrying. 
The European Communities Act was passed by the UK parliament in 1972 and in simple terms it brought the UK into the EU. 
Crucially it gives EU law supremacy over British domestic legislation. 
This is the main reason Brexiteers hate the Act - they believe it represents the exact moment when Britain lost much of its sovereignty. 
Much of the EU law which is currently in effect in the UK is reliant on the ECA to function. 
And while MPs have agreed to repeal the Act the process will see existing decisions and judgments adopted into British law to make sure the domestic legal system does not fall off a cliff when the UK does finally leave the EU. 
However, once the Act has been repealed it will be UK law which is supreme, rather than EU law.  
'Should he entertain the idea of siding with Jeremy Corbyn or any other government other than the existing Conservative Government being led by Boris Johnson, he will leave us with no choice at all as an association.'
Activists in Mr Grieve have already won a vote of no confidence against him in his Beaconsfield constituency over his Brexit position.
But such votes are not binding and Mr Grieve has said he intends to remain the Tory candidate in the seat. 
A party insider in Sir Oliver's West Dorset seat echoed a similar sentiment and said: 'We are completely at odds with our MP over this.'  
Tory figures last night urged caution about working with Mr Corbyn. 
Backbencher Michael Fabricant said: 'It is remarkable that given that the Lib Dems think this offer from Jeremy Corbyn is a big joke, some of my colleagues are taking it seriously. As a former government whip, I hope that their action will not be forgotten.'
Former minister Greg Hands added: 'Corbyn only became Labour leader because his MPs didn't think it could actually happen. Now he could become Prime Minister because a Conservative MP makes the same mistake.' 
Jon Conway, a member of Mr Grieve's local Tory association in Beaconsfield who has been leading efforts to remove him, said that it was wrong for him to be fighting Mr Johnson's Brexit pledge just weeks after the Prime Minister won the overwhelming support of the party membership.
He said: 'People in the constituency are appalled that he still claims to represent us.'
Separately, Mr Bebb yesterday declared he would rather back the Labour leader as a caretaker prime minister than allow Boris Johnson to take the country out of the EU without an agreement.
'A short-term Jeremy Corbyn government is less damaging than the generational damage that would be caused by a No Deal Brexit,' the Tory MP told the BBC. 
Cabinet minister Grant Shapps last night urged his Tory colleagues to 'think very, very carefully' about the dangers of helping Mr Corbyn into power.
The Transport Secretary said: 'It's absolutely extraordinary that any Conservative MP considered even for one minute installing Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.
'Jeremy Corbyn would wreck our economy, he would destroy jobs and the livelihoods, savings, I think he also can't be trusted with security or crime.'
In an appeal to Tory MPs thinking about working with Mr Corbyn, Mr Shapps added: 'I just say to them you know you really need to think very very carefully about installing Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. It absolutely cannot happen for the sake of this country.' 
Sir Oliver Letwin
Once part of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit, Sir Oliver Letwin backed the poll tax fiasco which helped end her tenure.
A memo from the time revealed he blamed the 1985 Broadwater Farm riots in North London, on the 'bad moral attitudes'.
The Eton and Cambridge-educated MP for West Dorset, 63, joined the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under David Cameron.
His constituency voted 51-49 in favour of Leave in the 2016 referendum. 
A journalist once confronted him while he was wearing a toga at a party after it emerged he had put forward £20million of unplanned spending cuts.
 
Dame Caroline Spelman 
Former Tory party chairman Dame Caroline Spelman was environment secretary under David Cameron.
The Tory MP for Meriden in the West Midlands, 61, was criticised in 2008 for using her parliamentary allowance to pay her children's former nanny. 
The mother of three was environment secretary for two years under David Cameron.
She was made a dame in 2017 for political and public service, but has now joined forces with Labour MP Jack Dromey to ensure Britain leaves with a deal.
She also masterminded a letter to Theresa May calling on her to rule out the prospect of leaving the EU without a deal.
Her constituency voted 58-42 in favour of Leave in the 2016 referendum. 
 
 
 
 Dominic Grieve
The former attorney general Dominic Grieve is one of the most vocal opponents of Brexit to be found in the Commons.
He is the President of the Franco-British Society and a fluent French speaker whose maternal family is French.
The Tory MP for Beaconsfield - which backed Remain 51-49 in the 2016 referendum) is also a QC and has sought a legislative route to oppose Brexit, claiming it will bring chaos to the UK. 
The 63-year-old has previously tabled a number of Commons amendments to try to prevent the UK leaving the EU. He is facing the threat of deselection by his local party.
Mr Grieve was sacked from the Cabinet by David Cameron in 2014, claiming this was because of his support for the European Court of Human Rights.
He has been outspoken in his opposition to Boris Johnson and his adviser Dominic Cummings, whom he branded 'arrogant'.
He lost a no confidence vote motion at the Beaconsfield association's annual general meeting in March.
 
Guto Bebb 
Aberconwy MP Guto Bebb has already announced he plans to quit the Tories at the next election because he is so opposed to Boris Johnson and a no Deal Brexit.
Yesterday he was the most outspoken rebel when he said that a short-term Jeremy Corbyn Government would be less damaging than leaving without a deal on Halloween. 
He urged his colleagues to listen to the Labour leader's offer to be a caretaker PM in comments that infuriated Brexiteers.
The Tory MP for Aberconwy in North Wales since 2010 he  was formerly a member of Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru. 
A former defence minister under Theresa May he quit in July last year to join other pro-European Tory rebels to vote against the Government. Mr Bebb, who campaigned for Remain ahead of the referendum, dramatically quit before walking through the division lobbies with 13 other Tory rebels including Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Nicky Morgan, Antoinette Sandbach and then-Tory  Dr Sarah Wollaston.
His constituency voted 52-48 in favour of Leave in the 2016 referendum. 
Jeremy Corbyn risked blowing up a potential Brexit alliance between Labour and the Liberal Democrats before formal talks have even got underway as he lashed out at Jo Swinson. 
Mr Corbyn has asked opposition leaders and rebel Tory MPs to back his plan to oust Boris Johnson and make him caretaker PM to stop a No Deal Brexit. 
Ms Swinson initially dismissed the suggestion as 'nonsense' before softening her stance amid growing pressure from Remain campaigners and she has now agreed to meet with the Labour leader. 
But the chances of the pair agreeing to a shared way forward to stop a chaotic split from Brussels on October 31 took a major hit as Mr Corbyn berated Ms Swinson for failing to back his bid for Number 10.
Lib Dem sources are increasingly convinced that Mr Corbyn is not actually interested in striking an accord to stop No Deal.
They believe his appeal for an alliance is more about him wanting to be able to tell Remain voters that he tried to stop a chaotic split from the EU but was thwarted by the Lib Dems.
One source told MailOnline: 'It's just optics. They want to get into a situation where they can say 'we tried our hardest and it is all the Lib Dems' fault'.'
Insisting the Lib Dems are open to any move which would stop No Deal, the source added: 'Corbyn is the blockage.'  
Mr Corbyn said: 'It's not up to Jo Swinson to choose candidates, it's not up to Jo Swinson to decide who the next prime minister is going to be.
'Surely she must recognise she is a leader of one of the opposition parties who are apparently opposed to this Government, and apparently prepared to support a motion of no confidence.
'I look forward to joining her in the lobbies to vote this Government down.' 
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn's hopes of ever winning power in an election against Mr Johnson were dashed after a new poll revealed just 27 per cent of voters believe he has what it takes to get the job done compared to 46 per cent for the current PM. 
Sir Vince Cable, the former Lib Dem leader, defended Ms Swinson and said it was clear Mr Corbyn would never be able to command a majority in the Commons to form a temporary government.
He also demanded a guarantee from Mr Corbyn that if the Labour leader is unable to win a vote that he would switch to backing another candidate who could. 
Sir Vince said: 'It would be up to the House of Commons to decide who a caretaker prime minister put in place to stop a no-deal Brexit would be.
'This is not about party leaders, but getting a group together to stop no-deal.
'It is clear Jeremy Corbyn cannot command that majority in the House. I urge him to do the right thing and confirm that if he cannot, he will support someone who can.' 
While both Mr Corbyn and Ms Swinson are ardently against the UK leaving the EU without an agreement they are not in the same overall position on Brexit. 
Mr Corbyn and the Labour Party are still committed to delivering on the result of the 2016 referendum but want any Tory deal on leaving to be put to a second referendum. 
Ms Swinson and the Lib Dems are vehemently opposed to Brexit and are campaigning to keep Britain in the bloc. 
Without the support of Ms Swinson and the Lib Dems' 14 MPs it is unlikely Mr Corbyn could get anywhere close to commanding the Commons majority he would need to form a new government should an initial attempt to oust Mr Johnson succeed. 
Labour currently has 247 MPs, far short of the magic number of 320 which represents a parliamentary majority.  
To win power Mr Corbyn would need virtually every opposition MP to back him and then hope a handful of Tories are so opposed to No Deal that they are willing to cross the chamber and line up behind him. 
His plan would see him take power and ask Brussels for a Brexit extension before then calling a snap general election. 
While offering to meet Mr Corbyn for talks, Ms Swinson believes a less divisive figure should be put forward to lead an emergency government tasked with asking the EU to push back the Brexit date.  
She suggested Tory grandee Ken Clarke and senior Labour MP Harriet Harman would be better placed than Mr Corbyn to secure a majority.
Ms Swinson said she had spoken to the pair and won their assurances they are ready to 'put public duty first' to 'stop us driving off that cliff'.
Having initially poured cold water on Mr Corbyn's plan, Ms Swinson subsequently said: 'I've offered to meet Jeremy Corbyn to discuss how we can work together on a deliverable plan to stop no-deal, including the option of uniting behind an MP who can command a majority in the House.'  
Mr Corbyn's plan has won the potential backing of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Tory MP Guto Bebb.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was among those applying pressure to Ms Swinson to re-think her position.
Senior Remain-supporting Tories Dominic Grieve, Dame Caroline Spelman and Sir Oliver Letwin, as well as independent MP Nick Boles, have also agreed to meet Mr Corbyn. 
But Dame Caroline, as well as the Independent Group for Change, ruled out supporting a government led by Mr Corbyn.
 
In 1992, Hoover launched a free flights promotion that spectacularly backfired.
It decided to get rid of a backlog of vacuum cleaners and washing machines, by offering two free return flights to Europe if you bought a Hoover product costing more than £100.
It proved a hit and - despite the dubious financials of a giveway worth more than a product cost - Hoover got away with it thanks to backroom deals with travel agents.
Then inexplicably, Hoover decided to up the ante. It launched a new promotion offering two considerably more expensive return flights to the US free to those who bought a product.
The advertising slogan was: ‘Two return seats: Unbelievable.’
Hoover and its travel agent and airline partners were overwhelmed by people taking advantage of a stupendously good deal.
And in a story where mistakes compounded, as tales began to emerge of people struggling to claim flights, more were either alerted to the deal and signed up, or raced to book free tickets from the Hoover they had bought.
Customers took Hoover to court, one took a washing machine repairman’s van hostage and became a national hero, and only an estimated 220,000 of the 500,000 free flights managed to be claimed.
Hoover is believed to have lost £48million, its reputation was trashed, its market share fell from 50 per cent to 20 per cent in 1995, and the brand was eventually sold by owner Maytag to Italy’s Candy for a knockdown price.
Discussing this story with friends over a pint the other day, somebody said: ‘Still, it probably seemed a good idea at the time.’
‘Just like the Brexit vote,’ came a reply in chorus from a bunch of us who aren't even particularly anti-Brexit.
At the risk of shoehorning the Hoover story into this column, David Cameron’s own promotional offer of ‘vote for me and get an EU referendum free’ similarly backfired.
When against expectations he saw off the UKIP threat and was elected with no need for coalition partners, he decided to up the ante and give the nation the choice to Leave or Remain.
And what an unholy mess that has left the country in.
With just under three months to go to our exit date, we cannot agree on a plan for leaving, risk a lorry-park-on-the-M20-style no-deal Brexit and have a government teetering on collapse.
We also have an opposition party seemingly more interested in its success than the UK successfully navigating Brexit.
The situation is characterised as a row between Leave and Remain, however, the real problem is not that rift but the vote we had in the first place.
With hindsight it should never have been structured to deliver a simple result, but no clear indication of what the country wanted from it, or in our future relationship with the EU.
To be clear I am not anti-Brexit. I can see the benefits of leaving the political mess that is the EU, although I am not convinced that the price we must pay in terms of losing free trade, the frictionless movement of goods and the freedom to work in our neighbours' countries is worth it. 
I am dismayed at the shambolic way Britain is exiting the EU, however. I see the ill-considered 'in or out' question, with no attempt to get a mandate for what the nation wanted from life outside the EU, as the root cause.
As the chaos rumbled on this week, I looked back at a column I wrote in the run-up to the Brexit vote, linking to a selection of articles from different viewpoints for those wanting a reasoned appraisal.
From rereading each article three things were clear:
Firstly, it was obvious even then that both sides were being misleading; secondly, the situation wasn’t as vicious then as now; and finally, almost nobody spotted the Northern Ireland problem that is sinking the whole ship.
In ten well-informed articles that I linked to, Ireland and Northern Ireland were mentioned in that context just once.
The Queen is famously said to have asked why no one saw the credit crunch coming. She could have the same question about Northern Ireland and the backstop
So, what do we do now? 
Keep trying to square the circle, pick a new leader to deal with the same old problems, get a Labour government whose loosely defined plan will most likely face the same issues, or have another referendum.
The thought of that last option fills me with dread - as does the idea of overturning a referendum result before we even enacted it.
I'm not sure the same referendum run again would even settle things. I suspect it would solve little as it would probably just deliver a similar result (or an even bigger vote for Brexit from the contrarian British public). 
What's clear to me is that if we do ultimately go down that path it cannot be a rerun of the Leave and Remain question. 
Like the Hoover flights, that was not a good idea. 
 
 
Brexiteer Tory MP Henry Smith was putting it a bit strongly when he said yesterday that Theresa May could be ‘toast’ by tomorrow if the Brussels summit went badly.
But even her most fervent supporters are beginning to find it hard to argue that she can survive long after her latest rebuff by the EU.
The Prime Minister somehow managed to retain her dignity as she made her latest plea to EU leaders for extra time. She even found time to share a joke with another leader on the way out, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, apparently over their matching royal-blue outfits.
But when the serious talks started, she heard little to cheer her, with France’s Emmanuel Macron trying to make things as awkward as possible for Mrs May.
Nightmare
Until now, her political survival has relied largely on the basis she might — just — get her withdrawal deal over the line: replacing her in panic would make that almost impossible. But after being forced, in all likelihood, to accept a Brexit delay, this argument is beginning to crumble.
Mrs May’s allies insist that she can still get a deal through the Commons — with or without Jeremy Corbyn’s help — in the next few weeks. This would avoid the charade of having to take part in next month’s European Parliament elections.
And they say a ‘hard Brexit’ Tory PM such as Boris Johnson would have zero chance of getting more concessions out of the EU — which loathes him. He would also have less chance than Mrs May of winning over anti-Brexit Tories and pro-Brexit Labour MPs to get a deal through Parliament.
Indeed, he’d be forced to gamble on a general election, potentially paving the way for the Tories’ worst nightmare: a Corbyn-led Government.
That is the view of Mrs May’s Conservative supporters.
Her Tory critics, however, say she is now merely going through the motions of being Prime Minister. Talk of a Brexit pact with Marxist Corbyn, they add, is a reckless fantasy. The only way out is to reboot the Tory leadership.
It looks increasingly likely the Brexit debate will stall and the vacuum will be filled by even more rancorous debate in the Tory Party: the question of who should succeed her in No 10.
In theory, party rules mean she cannot be challenged until December, a full year after the bungled attempt to oust her five months ago, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, in which she survived a vote of no-confidence.
In practice, there will be no stopping renewed calls for her to go. Her failed attempt to persuade Tory MPs to support her deal by promising to step down if they did has simply weakened her position. Trying to wriggle out of it by insisting that she did not say she would step down if they refused to back her will cut little ice.
Pro-Brexit ministers Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom have already hinted that they could resign if, as seems likely, Mrs May agrees to some sort of customs union. A Cabinet collapse could follow.
Pent-up frustration and fury among Brexiteer Tory MPs and at grassroots level is, meanwhile, at boiling point.
Some of her would-be successors have taken the law into their own hands and fired the leadership race starting gun already. ‘Young’ Tory thrusters, Health Secretary Matt Hancock, 40, and International Development’s Penny Mordaunt, 46, showed off their talents at an event on Tuesday hosted by a Right-wing think-tank.
Their denials that it had anything to do with leadership manoeuvrings was exposed when, in a slip of the tongue, Ms Mordaunt made a jokey reference to her ‘campaign team’.
Hancock, who has softened his former reputation as the clever clogs young Commons sidekick of former Chancellor George Osborne by talking of his battle to overcome dyslexia, continued his pitch to be the ‘next generation’ Tory candidate, saying the Conservatives had become the party people voted for when they got their first elderly person’s winter fuel allowance and not their first pay cheque.
The message was clear: ‘I am more than a decade younger than fiftysomething rivals Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove.’
Meanwhile, bookies’ favourite Boris is wooing the Cabinet’s Remainer-in-chief Amber Rudd to form a so-called ‘dream team’ alliance.
In a mischievous jibe at Boris during the referendum campaign, Rudd said he was ‘not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening’. That does not mean she would refuse to serve in a Government led by Boris. Despite their differences on the EU, they are both socially liberal Conservatives.
Plotting
In another sign that Johnson is gearing up for a challenge, his aides are said to be trying to change the Tory leadership rules to stop his Conservative enemies plotting to prevent him making the final shortlist of two candidates chosen by MPs.
They want the party’s national members to have a shortlist of four to choose from instead — a move that would effectively kill off the ‘stop Boris’ ploy by MPs.
Then there’s Jeremy Hunt. The Foreign Secretary has been busy boosting his profile and honing his PC credentials and celebrity contacts in recent days by recruiting George Clooney’s wife Amal, the international human rights lawyer, as a special envoy on media freedom. Hunt is as clean-cut as you would expect the son of an admiral and Charterhouse head boy to be. Yet he can occasionally look like a rabbit in headlights when he makes a gaffe, such as the infamous incident when he described his wife as Japanese (she’s Chinese).
Do not be surprised if ambitious Home Secretary Sajid Javid finds an opportunity to highlight his impressive and moving back story of having grown up as the son of a Pakistani bus driver.
Valiant
The mere thought among Tories that they could shame politically correct Labour by having the first ethnic minority prime minister, as well as the first two women premiers, might tempt some Tories to vote for Javid.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove has done his best to erase the ‘backstabber’ reputation he gained after he spurned fellow Brexit cheerleader Boris Johnson in the 2016 leadership race, instead remaining loyal to Mrs May.
And barely a day goes by without a new soundbite or Instagram photo posted by Thatcherite Treasury Minister Liz Truss, while darling of the hardcore Brexiteers, black-belt karate expert Dominic Raab, is said to have received coaching in how to make him sound more ‘cuddly’.
The stoic Mrs May can repeat her ‘nothing has changed’ mantra through gritted teeth as often as she likes. The Brussels summit has changed everything: the race to succeed her has begun.
Tomorrow was supposed to be the day she went down in history as the prime minister who delivered Brexit by meeting the deadline for her deal to be approved. Instead, she must come to terms with the increasing likelihood that, for all her valiant efforts, she will be remembered as the prime minister who tried, but failed.
Iain Duncan Smith knows what it is like to be drummed out as Tory leader.
His brutal assessment last night was: ‘The whole thing is an utter car crash . . . I think the Cabinet has to have a moment with the Prime Minister and say: “This can’t go on, I’m afraid, it really can’t go on.” ’
Judging from Boris Johnson’s change in Brexit tactics, you could be forgiven for thinking he had been reading Donald Trump’s book The Art Of The Deal.
In it, Trump – as a businessman before entering politics – explained his approach to winning multi-billion-dollar deals. One observer summed it up as ‘threaten the outrageous, ratchet up the tension, amplify it with tweets and taunts and then compromise on fairly conventional middle ground.’
Johnson is more likely to quote Cicero or Churchill but considering that he’s been pinned into a corner and forced to review his strategy, he may have to follow Trump’s negotiating method.
Boris’s version of ‘threatening the outrageous’ was his vow to ‘die in a ditch’ if Britain doesn’t leave the EU on October 31. He has since ‘ratcheted up the tension’ with repeated threats about leaving without a deal and had dumped 21 anti-No Deal Tory MPs while has gone about ‘amplifying’ his intransigence. And with just 49 days to go until his deadline, there are signs he is moving Trump-like towards the ‘fairly conventional middle ground.’
Principally, that means viciously rebutting Nigel Farage’s offer of a general election pact, with No 10 branding the Brexit Party leader unfit to govern.
This was part of a charm offensive to the Tory 21, who loathe Farage and are keen to get back into the fold rather than risk losing their jobs as independents. Of course, the torpedo launched at Farage could backfire if Johnson ever needs his help in an election in northern, Leave-voting seats.
Another step into the middle ground is Johnson’s apparent willingness to compromise on the Northern Irish backstop.
A similar proposal was put forward by Brussels two years ago but rejected by Theresa May, mainly because Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said it was tantamount to letting Brussels ‘annexe’ Ulster.
So why has Johnson revived the idea? Ever the optimist, he saw his Monday meeting with the Irish PM as a chance to show he could back out of the corner he has found himself after losing control of the Brexit process to MPs, having had no Commons majority and having failed to get the election he wanted.
He stated that a No Deal Brexit would be ‘a failure of statecraft’ and said there had to be ‘a way out’ while giving Ireland the assurances it needs.
More details of Johnson’s new ‘backstop 2.0’ – as one diplomat called it – have since emerged. The key difference is that it would only cover Northern Ireland, leaving the rest of the UK free to arrange trade deals with countries around the world.
In place of Mrs May’s backstop would be an ‘all-Ireland zone’ for livestock and agricultural goods – which form the bulk of cross-border trade – avoiding the need for most checks. Northern Ireland – but not the British mainland – would stay aligned to EU regulations so as to smooth its working. The EU’s newly appointed Trade Commissioner, Irishman Phil Hogan said the penny was ‘finally dropping’ in London that the only hope of a Brexit breakthrough was a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
Despite this glint of light at the end of the tunnel, Johnson realised he had to convince the DUP and Tory hardliners that he was not ratting on his pledge to ‘bin the backstop’.
Johnson has been helped in his task by changes in parliamentary arithmetic since Mrs May failed three times to get her EU exit deal approved.
First, the DUP has lost much of its bargaining power. Having expelled 21 anti-No Deal Tory MPs, it would now take far more than the DUP’s ten MPs to restore the Conservatives’ Commons majority.
So far, the DUP has not rejected Johnson’s new backstop plan out of hand. In fact, Northern Ireland’s politicians have been offered the carrot of having a say in EU regulations covering the proposed ‘all-Ireland zone’.
And Johnson has thrown into the mix the prospect – however far-fetched – of a road bridge joining Scotland and Northern Ireland as a concrete symbol of all four parts of the United Kingdom being linked.
As well as Farage-bashing, he is building other bridges with the 21 Tory MPs he expelled from the party. He’s counting on them to back him, because, he says, ‘the spears in my back won’t be from you, they’ll come from the Spartans’. This is a reference to hardline anti-EU Tory MPs who brought down Mrs May and who liken themselves to the Ancient Greek warriors from Sparta.
Some of these die-hards won’t surrender even if the backstop is ditched in its entirety but there are others in this caucus of about 50 MPs who could be won over.
Meanwhile, he’s busy wooing Tory Remainers, mischievously calling himself a ‘Brexity Hezza’ – after Europhile Tory peer Lord Heseltine – and signalling his social conservative credentials by saying foreign students will be allowed to work in the UK for longer after they graduate.
But even if the dumped Tory MPs, the Brussels-baiting and the DUP come round to supporting a new backstop plan and EU negotiators approve it, too – a lot of ‘ifs’, admittedly – Johnson will still need some Labour support to get it through the Commons.
The truth is that Jeremy Corbyn prefers to block Johnson rather than accept any sensible compromise deal.
That said, it is estimated that up to 50 Labour MPs in Leave-voting constituencies could back such an agreement. If so, Boris Johnson might need just one more tactic to stagger over the October 31 line. How about another piece of advice – from Trump’s Art Of The Deal: ‘Be flexible and consider multiple solutions to every impasse.’
After the fiasco of the BBC's leadership debate on Tuesday evening, it was still just about possible to think that what happened was more cock-up than conspiracy.
One could believe, admittedly with a certain amount of effort, that the shambles was due to poor planning, and that there had been no intention to make the five Conservative candidates look stupid, shifty and disagreeable.
But in the aftermath of the programme it has become irrefutable that it was rigged against the Tories. The question is to what degree this was deliberate.
It has emerged that, among the eight pre-selected people who asked questions via video link, there was a former Labour Party worker and council candidate, while another was a pro-Corbyn misogynist with apparent anti-Semite beliefs.
A third participant was a 15-year-old climate change activist of dogmatic views whose social media record implies sympathies for the Scottish National Party.
None of them appeared to be current Tory voters, which is strange if you think about it. For the electorate in the forthcoming leadership contest, once the numbers have been winnowed down to two today, will entirely consist of Conservative Party members.
In a sane world the BBC would have included some people who are part of this 160,000-strong group, and have not yet made up their minds whom to support.
But that would have introduced a spirit of fairness into the proceedings, and might have encouraged an illuminating debate among the candidates. This is not something the BBC wanted to happen.
My suspicions were aroused as soon as I saw the set. The five Tories had been placed on high stools with their legs dangling beneath them. If you want to make someone look like a prat, there is no surer way than to make him or her perch several feet above the ground.
Then there was the format, which lacked any sense of structure, and seemed intended to cause maximum confusion. In the best televised debates, politicians are given equal time to speak, and set out their views. Not here.
The upshot is that two or three of them would sometimes speak over one another, or interrupt. They came over as an argumentative rabble rather than as statesmen capable of running the country. Was such an impression deliberate?
When it came to interrupting, and not allowing people to have their say, there was no more expert practitioner than the so-called moderator, Emily Maitlis.
As the lead presenter on BBC2's Newsnight, she has developed the habit of not allowing interviewees to finish a sentence. It's an annoying trait. In this case it opened the gate to mayhem. Ms Maitlis had evidently decided to make life difficult for the front runner Boris Johnson, who does not always think quickly on his feet, and is not very fluent when flustered. She interfered with several of his answers.
One incident sticks in my mind. He was striving to explain how it might be possible to oversee the Northern Irish border through the use of technology when Emily Maitlis accused him of comparing it to London's Congestion Charge. 'That's how seriously you took it,' she volunteered dismissively.
In truth, all Boris had tried to do previously was to point out that if it is possible unobtrusively to keep track of vehicles coming into the capital, it might be feasible to do the same on the Irish border.
Is Ms Maitlis a secret Corbynista? I very much doubt it. Indeed, in 2007 she was appointed contributing editor of the centre-Right Spectator magazine, only two years after Boris Johnson had vacated its editorial chair.
She simply comes from the school of broadcast journalism (founded by Jeremy Paxman) which believes in handling leading politicians as though they are recidivist members of the criminal classes.
Whether she would have treated five would-be Labour leaders with such contempt is another question. I suspect not — because she might think such anti-Left partisanship would displease her BBC bosses.
Those bosses must be blamed for the anarchic format of the programme, which seems to have been orchestrated to present these leading Tories in the most unfavourable light.
And they must certainly also be blamed for including two questioners whose only interest in the Tory Party would appear to be a wish to wipe it from the face of the earth.
Aman Thakar is a Labour activist of very recent vintage. His question ('When will you do the right thing and call a general election?') came straight out of the Jeremy Corbyn playbook.
Even more egregious was an Iman called Abdullah Patel, who, in an attempt to skewer Boris for his remarks that Muslim women wearing burkas resemble 'letterboxes', piously intoned that 'words have consequences'.
So they do. It turns out that a man who looked as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth is a virulent Corbynista who has written tweets which suggest women rape victims may be partly to blame, and that the state of Israel should be relocated to the United States.
How on earth did this happen? Doesn't Auntie do any due diligence before she dredges up such people? Apparently not. And the reason, I submit, is that Tory bigwigs are considered easy game.
I return to a point I have often made, and which seems so self-evident that I am astonished BBC mandarins continue to deny it. The Corporation has an in-built, almost unthinking bias to the Left.
To be fair, a few BBC luminaries have come clean. Mark Thompson, a former director-general, spoke in 2010 of the Beeb's 'massive Left-wing bias', though he was referring to a previous era. And the presenter Andrew Marr admitted in 2006 that it has a 'cultural liberal bias'.
But in general the absurd pretence is maintained, largely to justify a licence fee paid by people of both Left and Right, that the BBC is impeccably even-handed in political matters.
Anyone who listens to Radio 4's so-called comedy programmes, in which Conservatives and Conservatism are routinely lampooned, will know this is a demonstrably false assertion.
Look at what happened when the Left-wing comedian Jo Brand recently suggested — by way of a joke, mind — that it would be better to throw battery acid rather than milkshakes at Right-wing politicians.
After a half-apology, she remains on our state broadcaster's airwaves. Would a Right-wing comedian (not that many of those are encouraged by the BBC) be so easily forgiven? I doubt it.
Or consider the BBC One series Years And Years, just ended. Emma Thompson played a Right-wing populist politician (echoes of Boris Johnson?) fuelling divisions in a dystopian Britain.
Some of us think Jeremy Corbyn is more likely to play such a role, but I don't suppose a script with a divisive Marxist populist leader would find much favour at the Corporation.
To return to the BBC debacle, I don't fret too much for the five Tories made to look so stupid and inadequate. They'll brush themselves down and get over it, though sensible politicians should think twice before taking part in such a debate in future.
What most concerns me is that, because of the deliberately contrived aggressiveness of the programme, hardly any light was thrown on the candidates. The chief victim of the BBC's calculated ineptitude was democracy.
The process of extricating ourselves from the EU has turned out to be so prolonged and painful that it’s sometimes easy to forget our original reasons for wanting to leave.
I can’t be the only person who, having voted for Brexit, occasionally asks himself if it’s worth all the bitterness and division: the name-calling, ruined dinner parties and former friends scuttling by on the other side of the street.
It’s remarkable how the arguments about sovereignty and controlling our own borders and the undesirability of a European superstate have virtually disappeared amid squabbles over No Deal and a second referendum.
So I have given thanks to the EU over recent days as European leaders have spent hours horse-trading behind closed doors. They have been selecting the successors of Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, who have loomed so large in our lives.
We have been reminded how fundamentally undemocratic and secretive the organisation is. People who will wield enormous power have been chosen without the voters of Europe getting a look-in.
Thank God we’re leaving! Thank God (unless intransigent Remainers finagle another referendum) we will soon no longer be part of a body that furtively picks our future rulers — for these people are far more than functionaries — without consulting the people.
This club is not for me. Nor do I believe that many Remainers watched the wrangling with any sense of pride. In a democratic age, it’s impossible to defend such practices. Let’s get out while we can, without ill will or venom.
Which is why the boorish behaviour of the 29 Brexit Party MEPs at the opening ceremony of the European Parliament in Strasbourg was so appalling. They turned their backs as the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode To Joy, was performed.
How rude and petty and spiteful they were. How shaming to this nation. They have been elected to the European Parliament and are cheerfully drawing salaries and expenses. Yet they behaved like uncouth members of a student debating society.
What must cultivated Europeans (and there are some in the European Parliament) think of the British political class, which used to have a reputation on the continent of being polite, well-mannered and tolerant?
The smaller Liberal Democrat contingent didn’t behave much better, sporting, on yellow T-shirts, the undemocratic slogan ‘B******s to Brexit’. This was a coarse and puerile gesture — and a little threatening.
Do MEPs of both parties speak for modern Britain? If so, the EU will be relieved to be rid of us. I feel ashamed, as I did when British football hooligans went on the rampage abroad. These oafs in Strasbourg are supposed to be our representatives.
My question to the Brexit Party, whose loutish behaviour was particularly mortifying, is this: why don’t you draw attention to the autocratic nature of the EU by employing reasoned argument, rather than cheap and demeaning tricks?
For the evidence is there, writ large. Cutting grubby deals in private, as European leaders have been doing, is not merely undemocratic. It leads to outcomes that are likely to be injurious to the citizens of the EU.
The whole process is a Franco-German stitch-up. Neither country necessarily gets the person it wants in every post, but each has to be happy with the final compromise. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, originally pushed the centre-Right German politician Manfred Weber for the crucial role of President of the European Commission in succession to Mr Juncker.
But President Emmanuel Macron of France didn’t like the look of Weber because of his political background. He preferred centre-Left Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch foreign minister.
However, various Right-wing governments, such as those in Poland, Hungary and Italy rejected Timmermans, whereupon Macron championed Ursula von der Leyen, a member of Mrs Merkel’s centre-Right party and Germany’s defence minister.
After much haggling, she was chosen, despite having been embroiled in a controversy over the awarding of contracts (she was eventually exonerated). From November 1, she will occupy the most important position in the EU.
Is she the best person for the job? No one can say — though she wasn’t the favourite to follow Mrs Merkel when the Chancellor stands down in 2021. Not fit to lead Germany, apparently, but suitable to lead the EU.
What is clear is that no single European voter had a direct say in choosing Ms von der Leyen, though it is true the European Parliament will have to endorse her and some on the Left may vote against.
Oh, I should have said: Ms von der Leyen, like Jean-Claude Juncker, is a passionate advocate of a United States of Europe and a European army. Like her predecessor, she hates the idea of Brexit. Yesterday, she told a private audience EU negotiators had done a ‘noble job’.
What would have happened if Britain wasn’t leaving the EU? She would still become President of the Commission because she is the incarnation of the EU’s values — just like Juncker, whose coronation David Cameron humiliatingly opposed in vain in 2014.
Ursula von der Leyen is more of the same: an unelected (at least in Brussels) member of a European political elite that wants to extend the powers of the EU in relation to individual countries. That’s why I’m glad we’re leaving.
By the way, I don’t draw much comfort from the news that senior Eurocrat Martin Selmayr, who appears to dislike Britain, faces the axe later this year under a reshuffle. There are plenty more where he came from.
A second president was also chosen by EU leaders. Charles Michel will give up the job of Belgium’s interim Prime Minister to fill the shoes of Donald Tusk as President of the European Council, a role co-ordinating member states.
Michel is a close friend of Macron, which is cosy. He’s another arch-euro federalist who wants ‘ever closer union’, and will be no friend to Britain as it leaves his precious EU.
A third president was also crowned by European leaders: Christine Lagarde, who has run the International Monetary Fund since 2011, pocketing more than £3.6 million tax-free in the process, will become President of the European Central Bank.
This is a bizarre appointment. For one thing, she has been convicted of criminal negligence over a French corruption scandal, though I doubt this was of much concern to the panjandrums who selected her.
For another, she is a politician, rather than an economist, and not obviously suited to the role of central banker. She was a lynchpin in Project Fear before the June 2016 referendum and prophesied a hitherto-unrealised economic catastrophe for the UK.
As Britain has not adopted the euro, maybe Ms Lagarde’s future role is not our business. On the other hand, it isn’t in anybody’s interests for the eurozone to flounder.
These three freshly minted presidents will wield enormous sway over the peoples of Europe. They will try to strengthen the powers of Brussels, though they are certain to be resisted by populist governments in Hungary, Italy and Poland.
No one can say how the experiment of further European integration will end. Looking at its latest manifestation, I can only say that I am more glad than ever that Britain will not be part of it. 
 
To judge by the reaction to Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament, you would think he had mounted a coup d'état, and held a pistol to the head of Her Majesty the Queen.
Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon called him a 'tin-pot dictator'. Commons Speaker John Bercow interrupted his holidays to declare a 'constitutional outrage' had taken place, while Tory backbench rebel Dominic Grieve used the same phrase. Jeremy Corbyn accused Boris of being 'reckless'.
All over the country, Remainer politicians are shuddering and cursing, and dabbing their fevered brows. They are joined by a bevy of 25 querulous Anglican bishops, who have penned a letter that suggests they regard No Deal as an unchristian outcome.
The figure of Charles I is regularly dusted off, with the Prime Minister's agitated critics recalling that the unhappy King's head was cut off in 1649. And he prorogued Parliament in 1629 for 11 years. Boris — be warned.
Amid all this free-wheeling hysteria I hate to point out that Parliament is being deprived of only five or six days of sittings before reconvening on October 14. The reason is that it was anyway not due to sit in the second half of September and the first part of October because of party political conferences.
Five or six days. It doesn't seem a lot. If the PM had prorogued Parliament for a lengthy period until after October 31 — the day when we are supposed under existing law to leave the EU — that would have been a bad thing, as I suggested in these pages not long ago.
But it is ridiculous to represent yesterday's announcement as an assault on the British constitution and the rule of law. In more ways than one, this Brexit business is driving the whole country bonkers.
I do admit to registering a qualm or two that Boris Johnson is leaving the Commons less scope to exercise its democratic rights and come up with alternative proposals. But only a qualm or two. No more. Let me explain why.
In the first place, MPs have had three years to agree a plan and have not yet done so. They've debated and voted and argued for thousands of hours without being able to settle on a resolution which commands majority support.
The second reason I'm not going to join a march in favour of MPs' rights is that under the new arrangements they will still have plenty of opportunity to upset Mr Johnson's applecart — if they are able to come up with a common strategy, which remains somewhat doubtful.
When the Commons reassembles next Tuesday, the outraged Mr Bercow and the distraught Mr Grieve and the disgruntled Philip Hammond (until recently Chancellor of the Exchequer) will re-double their efforts to force the Prime Minister to postpone, or reverse, Brexit.
Whether they will succeed is another matter because they may not have the numbers, and there are as many shades of Remainer opinion as there used to be varieties of Heinz. But they'll have their chance next week and the beginning of the following week, and after October 14.
And Jeremy Corbyn (who disgracefully attempted to drag the poor Queen into this mess by demanding a meeting with her) can also have a shot and call a motion of No Confidence in the Government next week, or when the Commons returns.
I wonder whether he will, though, because Labour is floundering in the polls, and would be unlikely to flourish in the election that would inevitably follow such a motion being passed.
By the way, let me point out in a spirit of even-handedness that Remainers howling about the Prime Minister's unconstitutional behaviour are often the same people who have been preparing to bend, twist and otherwise ignore constitutional precedent by seizing power from the Government so that they can pack Boris Johnson off to Brussels to beg an extension.
It was the spectacle of scheming Remainers on Tuesday, brewing up their latest plans to trip him up, that must have finally made up his mind to undertake some modest proroguing.
So for all these reasons, I am keeping my qualms about this alleged democratic 'outrage' — a word as overused by Remainers as is 'catastrophic' in relation to No Deal — very firmly under control.
But there is another powerful reason for gently applauding what the Prime Minister has done. Although the financial markets cannot see it (the pound sagged a little yesterday), suspending Parliament should make a deal more likely. For unless Remainer MPs succeed in their power-grab when the Commons briefly returns next week, the Government will have a clear run of just over four weeks during which it cannot be undermined by parliamentary shenanigans.
EU leaders and bureaucrats will no longer be able to vest their hopes in the idea that MPs are going to rescue them from the need to negotiate with No 10 over the Irish backstop.
Over the past week there have been indications, particularly from Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, that the once-sacrosanct Withdrawal Agreement can at least be partly revisited.
And yet while Brussels believed there was a good chance that MPs would pull the rug from under Mr Johnson, there was no very strong reason for restarting serious negotiations.
As I've argued, the Commons has not been irrevocably side-lined. But inasmuch as Remainer MPs and their incessant and often destructive plotting are absent from the battlefield during the next few weeks, so Boris Johnson will be able to enter unfettered talks with Brussels.
Who knows, when the Queen's Speech is read out on October 14 to signal the beginning of a new session and the unveiling of the Government's legislative programme, there could be the outline of an agreement between the Government and the EU.
At least there is a chance this will be so. And if the price that has to be paid is the loss of five or six days of Commons' sittings, I don't think very many people will shed copious tears, or buy the hysterical claptrap about our constitution being turned upside-down.
Nor, while we are on the subject, should they be taken in by Remainer caterwauling about a supposed onslaught on democracy. Whatever small sliver of democratic accountability is being momentarily sacrificed pales into insignificance compared with the efforts of some Remainer MPs to undo the result of the referendum.
Listen, for example, to the leader of the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson, who recently said she will never accept Brexit, even if the public were to vote for it again in a People's Vote. That is the voice of bigotry and extremism, not democracy.
The truth is that Boris Johnson's proposal is modest and well-judged. I believe it edges us a little closer to a satisfactory agreement with Brussels, and therefore makes No Deal less probable.
Will he succeed, or will he be consumed in the fires of Remainer vengeance? I obviously hope not, but I can't be sure. He is taking on almost the entire British Establishment, bishops included, in a courageous way.
What I am convinced of is that he's as democratic as the next person and more democratic than most, and that all this talk of constitutional outrage is no more than self-serving Remainer tosh.
One year from today, the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. It is now possible to say this with something approaching certainty.
I confess to being somewhat surprised that this momentous upheaval seems very likely to take place despite the awesome efforts of the Establishment.
Immediately after the British people voted to leave in the June 2016 referendum, I was afraid the political class would find a way to frustrate the democratic will of the majority.
But despite countless scare stories propagated by anti-Brexit politicians and the BBC, which followed bloodcurdling predictions pumped out by Project Fear before the vote, this country is on track to exit the EU. In the circumstances, this is little short of a miracle.
It is, above all, a testament to the resilience and sense of the British people — or at any rate the majority who voted for Brexit and have stuck to their guns despite repeated attempts to unnerve them.
Consider how many apocalyptic prophesies have been aimed at them by doomsayers in Westminster and Whitehall, and will doubtless continue to be aired until we leave — and probably beyond.
Before the referendum, Project Fear, orchestrated by the then Chancellor, George Osborne, informed us that a vote to leave would bring about ‘an immediate and profound economic shock’.
Arrogance
An instant recession was predicted if people had the temerity to vote Brexit. Interest rates would rise sharply and unemployment would soar. There would be an emergency Budget.
Of course, none of these things came to pass. The economy continues to grow at a reasonably smart pace, and every quarter it exceeds most official forecasts.
What is so amazing — and, to me, moving — is that 17.5 million people ignored these dire predictions from a ruling class expert in the dark arts of hoodwinking, which had all the resources of the State at its disposal.
At a cost of £9 million, the Government even sent a leaflet to every home, warning voters of the certain shocks to the economy if people were foolish enough to vote Leave.
It turns out the Man in Whitehall does not only not know best, which most of us had gathered long ago. He is also mendacious, manipulative and often mistaken.
This realisation is bound further to undermine the trust of ordinary folk in their rulers. On the whole, this is regrettable. Democracy works best if people have faith in the integrity and competence of those in authority. The loss of trust will take a long time to repair.
Having grossly (and, I believe, deliberately) exaggerated the perils of voting for Brexit, many with powerful positions in politics and the media have continued to try to make the hairs stand up on the back of our necks.
Among the more fatuous myths is that the availability of material used in cancer treatment may be under threat after Brexit. Planes will be grounded. Traffic queues will stretch from the port of Dover to the M25.
Most of these threats are obsessively recirculated by the BBC. There was a time when almost every morning brought a new, usually bogus, tale of woe, which was promptly forgotten and replaced by another one the following day.
Certainty
It was stated with absolute certainty that thousands of high-paid financial jobs would move from London to Frankfurt or Paris. When a report was published last August forecasting the loss of 40,000 City jobs, it was warmly cited by the Bank of England (which separately suggested that 75,000 jobs could go) and taken up by the BBC.
Nor, on Tuesday, did Auntie make anything of a prestigious think-tank again naming London as the world’s leading financial centre — ahead of New York (second), Frankfurt (20th) and Paris (24th). I scoured the pages of the fanatically anti-Brexit Financial Times in vain for a mention of this accolade.
Meanwhile, intransigent Remainers have persisted in their insinuations that anyone who voted for Brexit must be thick or deluded — or both. Don’t such supercilious remarks convey an appalling sense of arrogance and contempt?
Actually, plenty of very brainy people supported Leave — not that they get much of a showing on the BBC. Mervyn King, the former Governor of the Bank of England; the eminent Cambridge historian Robert Tombs and the distinguished philosopher John Gray are just three of them, among thousands of examples.
It is enormously to the credit of the millions of people who voted Leave that they have absorbed, without any weakening of their resolve, this unceasing onslaught of propaganda calculated to undermine their cause.
Zealots
In fact, the very opposite has happened. In a recent poll, 57 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposition that the Government should ‘get on with implementing the result of the referendum to take Britain out of the EU and in doing so take back control of our borders, laws, money and trade’. Only 22 per cent disagreed.
So pronounced is the shift in public opinion in favour of Brexit that, even in reputedly Remainer Scotland, more backed the proposition (44 per cent) than opposed it (32 per cent).
Some obdurate Europhile politicians such as Nick Clegg, Tony Blair, Chris Patten and Chuka Umunna, who still hold out for a second referendum, had better be careful. They have a diminishing band of supporters and are in danger of appearing isolated zealots.
I don’t doubt, of course, that there will be difficulties ahead, just as there have been difficulties in the past. There will be compromises, too, as there have already been.
No one can be pleased that Britain will have to pay the EU a leaving fee of £37 billion, albeit spread over several decades. As I wrote last week, there are suggestions of a sell-out over fish, though I am assured by aides of Chancellor Philip Hammond that he opposes trading our fishing rights for a better economic deal.
On the other hand, the Northern Irish border presents much less of a problem than the European Union pretends. Vehicles daily cross the border between Switzerland (not in the EU) and France (EU) without hindrance, as they do between Norway (outside the EU customs union) and Sweden (inside).
The truth is that EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and his Remainer supporters in Parliament are using the issue of the Northern Irish border as a device to keep Britain in the customs union.
I suspect the Government will work its way through this problem, just as it has grappled doggedly with other difficulties despite continuous brickbats from Remainers.
In the face of such insults, and Michel Barnier’s infuriating condescension, Brexit Secretary David Davis has shown commendable patience.
But the real heroes of this saga are the British people, who have seen through the lies and scare stories churned out by politicians. What a contrast to the deviousness and defeatism of our ruling class.
And this, surely, is cause for hope. When we leave the EU in a year’s time, there will be untold millions who believe in a great future for this country. And it is they, not the politicians, who will deliver it.
 
What was billed as the most momentous parliamentary vote in post-war Britain ended up as a catastrophic night for our country. Where do we go from here?
Writing as a Brexiteer, I am more convinced than ever that the votes of 17.4 million people in favour of leaving the EU are now likely be disregarded.
The probable options facing us after Theresa May’s devastating Commons defeat are either a very soft Norway-style Brexit — which is not obviously preferable to being in the EU — or a so-called People’s Vote, which I expect would reverse the outcome of the June 2016 referendum.
Throughout the world our friends and erstwhile admirers are rubbing their eyes in disbelief as our parliamentary democracy, once admired for its moderation, good sense and pragmatism, collapses ignominiously.
And most people up and down the country will be aghast that their politicians should have failed at the 11th hour to grasp a deal which, though far from perfect, offered stability and every hope of a prosperous and successful future.
How can this have happened? Why, when there should be much to unite the warring factions in the Commons, did MPs repudiate a perfectly sensible deal proposed by the Prime Minister only 16 days before we are due to leave the EU?
I’m afraid there has been a very unBritish reluctance to compromise and an equally unBritish addiction to ideology — combined with a lamentable tendency to put narrow, factional party politics before the national interest.
Obsession
In the dock of shame stand the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), many Tories in the European Research Group (ERG) and the Labour front bench. Add some intransigent Remainers determined to undo the result of the referendum.
Oh, and we mustn’t forget the equally doctrinaire and unbending EU mandarins in Brussels, who are so in love with their dream of a fledgling European superstate, so devoted to the sanctity of their precious rules, that they did only the bare minimum to help out Theresa May.
Let’s consider those discreditable politicians who put party before country. Head of the queue is Jeremy Corbyn, whose obsession in recent months has been to force a general election which — I pray misguidedly — he is convinced Labour would win.
Whereas Mrs May has had to grapple with reality, Labour has advocated policies that would never be acceptable to EU panjandrums — namely clear alignment with the single market and a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union including a say in future trade deals.
Corbyn has had the gall to accuse the Prime Minister of ‘fantasy’ but the idea that Britain could ever achieve Labour’s goals — amounting to all the privileges of EU membership without any of the obligations — is for the birds.
The dishonesty is breathtaking. Instead of offering constructive criticism of Mrs May’s hard-won proposals, Labour has pretended that it has a viable alternative.
Corbyn’s latest sleight of hand has been to accept a second referendum under pressure from Labour Remainers while continuing to scheme for the general election he craves.
Why wouldn’t he, in the national interest, make common cause with Mrs May? Because his overriding preoccupation has been to secure an election so that he can unleash his barmy Marxist experiment on unsuspecting Britons.
In some ways the DUP — all of whose ten MPs voted against Mrs May’s deal last night — aren’t much better. A recent poll suggests that voters in Northern Ireland are overwhelmingly opposed to a hard Brexit such as has been championed by the DUP.
Some 67 per cent of voters (including many unionists) say the party is doing a bad job of representing the province at Westminster. In other words, the hard-line DUP doesn’t speak for the majority in Northern Ireland.
Nor does the party generally consider the wider interests of the UK, of which it says it is so happy to be a part. On the contrary, it is an extremist sect with a dark past which pursues its interests without regard either to the rest of the UK or most people in the province.
To be fair, more reasonable elements in the DUP might have been won over, not least because they realise how out of step they are with public opinion in Northern Ireland, if the Attorney General had not made such a pig’s ear of his legal advice yesterday.
Having established that the concessions wrung from the EU by Mrs May on Monday night ‘enhance’ her deal, Geoffrey Cox nonetheless insisted that the risk of the UK being tied to EU rules over the so-called Backstop ‘remains unchanged’.
How can this be? If the terms are better, the risks must be less. Though he looks every inch the grandiloquent lawyer, my friends at the Bar say his judgment is not universally venerated by his peers. He let down his country yesterday.
And that brings me to the Tories of the ERG since I’ll skip over Remainers in the Cabinet such as Amber Rudd and David Gauke, who recently weakened Mrs May’s hand in her negotiations with Brussels by insisting she take No Deal off the table.
I had hopes of the ERG. Excepting a hard-core of ignorant and irrevocably stubborn characters, many of them are principled and well-informed MPs who have tirelessly championed the cause of Brexit.
And yet last night most of them — with a few notable exceptions such as former Brexit Secretary David Davis — voted against Mrs May’s deal even though by so doing they plunged this country into a period of uncertainty which could result in our staying in.
Idiocies
Why in God’s name could they not compromise? Here was perhaps the only opportunity we will ever have to escape the EU. Three years ago they would have almost died for such an outcome. Now they are likely to get very much less — or nothing at all.
Beware ideologues. And those, such as Corbyn and the bigots of the DUP, who put their parties in front of their country. It grieves me to say this, but it seems we are cursed with a Parliament dominated by knaves and fools who really have abandoned the people they represent.
And now? I normally recoil from loose talk of a ‘national crisis’. But we have one now. Coming into work yesterday morning, I looked around my railway carriage and saw only hard-working and dutiful people whose thoughts seemed a thousand miles from the idiocies of Brexit.
The crisis is not of their making. Leavers or Remainers, they want only to get on with their lives, and not to have their jobs threatened or their wealth and happiness undermined — and Great Britain weakened and made the laughing stock of the world.
I don’t know whether Mrs May will be defenestrated or whether she will struggle on. Conceivably she will limp back one more time. Parliament will try to wrest control.
Today, No Deal is certain to be rejected by MPs. Tomorrow, they will probably vote for an extension to Article 50, which will enable the EU to dictate onerous terms.
Who will save our stricken nation? Ahead I can only see more chaos and turmoil unless politicians miraculously stop gouging out one another’s eyes — and put our country first.
Over the years, Tony Blair has done many things that have made me doubt his integrity, and sometimes even his sanity. But he really has surpassed himself with his latest plea that Germany should do all it can to stop Brexit.
Of course, ever since the 2016 referendum, he has been doing his damnedest to reverse the democratic decision of the British people. He recently falsely claimed on the BBC that Brexit is driving EU nationals out of the NHS, whereas, in fact, their numbers have increased by 3,000 since June 2016.
Blair has also called for a second referendum, and in the course of a BBC interview in January even refused to rule out a third vote if the second one failed to produce the required result.
But his preposterous entreaty to Germany to do everything possible to ‘reverse a mistake of historic proportions’ is astonishing even coming from his mouth.
It may have escaped Blair’s notice that Germany is a foreign country, albeit a friendly one, with interests not identical to our own. To ask another power to do all it can to undo a British democratic vote – well, that comes uncomfortably close to treachery.
The truth is that there is surely nothing so likely to strengthen the resolve of the pro-Brexit majority in this country as this unpatriotic appeal.
Germany may be an ally, but the British people can see perfectly well how ruthlessly it has pursued its own interests within the EU. For example, Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that Greece enact the harshest economic measures in return for German-led financial bail-outs. Much social misery has ensued in Greece.
Many in Italy rightly blame Germany for fixing the euro at a high rate that was bound to be injurious to the weaker Italian economy, and for then pursuing a policy of economic restraint after the Great Recession which has held back Italy and other southern European economies.
Germany first and foremost looks after itself. It is committed to further European integration – so long as it remains firmly in the driving seat – in a way that could never be squared with the wishes of the majority in this country. Indeed, many were appalled by Merkel’s calamitous decision to let a million migrants into her country unchecked.
Moreover, Blair is being deliberately misleading when he holds out the prospect that ‘the new German and French governments will take a leading role in spearheading ambitious reforms in the EU’.
Whatever these reforms might be – and there is no sign they are in the offing – they would be incapable of satisfying the UK’s desire for a looser union of nations in which we could take back control of our borders.
One might add, with all appropriate delicacy, that Blair’s invoking the help of the government of a country, which twice in the past century came quite close to destroying this one, displays a remarkable tin ear for historical resonances.
The peculiar political essence of the man is to delude himself and deceive the British people at the same time. He did it repeatedly as he finagled us into the 2003 Iraq War, and now he is desperately trying to keep Britain inside the EU with all the shameless chicanery of a practitioner of the three-card trick who was exposed long ago.
How can he conceivably imagine we will buy a bogus prospectus once again? There was a time, back in 2002, when some of us wanted to trust his word, unaware that he had already secretly assured the bellicose President George W Bush: ‘I’ll be with you whatever.’ Torrents of lies have flowed under the bridge since then.
We now know he committed this country to a war against Iraq with a series of half-truths and calculated omissions. And we have learnt from official reports that he did this without ensuring that our troops were properly equipped, or making any proper plans for the future of the country he was about to help lay waste.
Even the ultra-cautious civil servant Sir John Chilcot has said he didn’t believe Tony Blair was ‘straight with the nation’ about his decisions in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Let us imagine that by some miracle all Blair’s evasions over Iraq could be blotted out from our collective memory. His record since leaving office would by itself still disqualify him from consideration as a credible and trustworthy politician.
Our avaricious former prime minister has mounted a stunningly successful attempt to aggrandise himself – at the last count the Blair family owned 38 homes worth an estimated £33million – by sometimes dubious methods.
On the basis of knowledge and contacts acquired serving his country, he has got millions from delivering massively lucrative speeches to easily-pleased foreign businessmen.
Even less creditably, he has made larger sums from consultancy work for some of the world’s most unsavoury leaders. These include the president of Kazakhstan, whose regime has been guilty of appalling human rights abuses.
Last year, it was revealed that Blair’s work as an official Middle East peace envoy from 2007 was partly funded in secrecy by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE), which helped finance his London office.
At the same time, he received millions of pounds in consultancy fees from the UAE – an absolute monarchy, with a poor human rights record – while supposedly trying to sort out the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio in a transparent and even-handed way.
The truth is that his often discreditable conduct since leaving office will only confirm in many minds that he is not to be trusted in his self-appointed role as a champion against Brexit.
I can’t imagine Angela Merkel will take his proposal seriously. With less than a year to go until we leave the EU, it must be clear to her and the German government that the chances of thwarting our exit are practically zero.
Germany’s best interests do not lie in trying to bully the UK into staying in the EU, which would certainly not work, but in securing a trade deal that allows its goods maximum access to our markets – and vice-versa.
No, almost no one is going to listen to Tony Blair’s crazy ideas. He long ago used up his political capital. In fact, every time he opens his mouth he is liable to bolster Brexit because of his presumptuousness and notorious unreliability with the truth.
I suppose Leavers should therefore pray for the re-doubling of his efforts. I’ve no doubt that all but the most extreme Remainers will be appalled by his latest plea that Germany should use her might to attempt to make the British people change their minds.
But I wish this man devoid of self-knowledge would shut up all the same. There is something unseemly about a former prime minister of this country making a spectacle of himself with near treasonable arguments in such a hopeless cause.
That it should have come to this! In a desperate last throw of the dice, yesterday Theresa May announced several measures which appear to run counter to the Brexit strategy she has developed over the past couple of years.
The opportunity to vote for a second referendum, last-minute concessions over workers' rights and environmental protection, and a possible temporary embrace of a customs union — all these are proposals that amount to nothing less than a political bombshell.
There is little doubt that many Leave voters will be shocked by the scale of the volte-face. My bet is that the happiest person in the kingdom will be Nigel Farage, to whose Brexit Party Mrs May has just delivered another lorry load of votes before tomorrow's European Elections.
Flawed
But let us, just for a moment, try to see it from Mrs May's point of view. Three times she has been defeated in the Commons by a combination of hard-core Tory Brexiteers and Remainers, Labour, the Scots Nats and the ever-intransigent Democratic Unionist Party.
For my money, the Withdrawal Agreement as it was previously presented, though undoubtedly flawed, honoured the outcome of the 2016 referendum — and I am sorry that it did not command a majority in the Commons. It was far preferable to this latest compromise.
One can understand why a Prime Minister with an eye on history, and a heart committed to delivering Brexit, should have struggled to find another solution to the political impasse in which we find ourselves. She deserves our commendation for that.
And many would also agree with Mrs May when she said the deadlock over Brexit was having a 'corrosive' impact on British politics, and stopping progress in other areas. Half the country is mad with frustration, the other half with boredom.
So Mrs May's 'one last chance' is in principle to be supported. Even now, though I am aghast at some of these concessions, particularly the possibility of a second referendum, I am tempted to doff my cap at this stubborn, spirited woman who never gives up.
And yet this latest version of her deal will challenge the loyalty even of sane, pragmatic Leavers without winning the backing of enough Labour Remainers in the Commons. Understandable though this latest gamble may be, I fear it is above all an act of political ineptitude.
What she has done is to appeal over the heads of hard-line Brexiteers to Labour, much as Ted Heath did, with ultimate success, when as prime minister in 1972 he piloted the European Communities Bill through Parliament which led to our joining what was then called the Common Market the following year.
But whereas 47 years ago there was a sizeable minority of Labour MPs ready to defy their party whip and vote with the Conservative government, it seems unlikely that more than a handful of their modern-day counterparts will do the same.
Even Labour MP Lisa Nandy, in whom No. 10 has invested hopes as someone who might switch to its cause, indicated after Mrs May's speech yesterday that she won't support the Government. It's possible she and others will change their minds if Labour receives a drubbing in tomorrow's elections, but Mrs May would be unwise to count on it.
Jeremy Corbyn has made abundantly clear that the Labour leadership remains unimpressed by her deal, and we may pretty confidently suppose that his MPs will be whipped into the 'No' lobby in early June.
It many ways, of course, this is an example of utter hypocrisy and opportunism on the part of Corbyn since, as Cabinet Minister Rory Stewart recently pointed out, there is only the tiniest degree of difference between what Labour has long demanded and Mrs May's revamped deal.
But Corbyn sees the Prime Minister's crumbled — if not vanished — authority, and will do nothing to help her. His hopes are fixed on a general election. How ironic it will be for Labour if a new Tory prime minister ends up leading this country towards No Deal, which its Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer has termed a catastrophe.
As for backbench Tories, it's possible that a sprinkling of hitherto rebarbative Remainer MPs will be drawn to the latest iteration of Mrs May's agreement, but almost certain that opposition will harden among the extreme faction. Cheerleaders Nigel Evans and Steve Baker said as much last night.
Opposition
They are plainly unimpressed by the Prime Minister's repetition of a legal obligation on the Government's part to find alternative arrangements to maintain an open border in Northern Ireland by the end of 2020 to ensure the controversial backstop plan never comes into force. What happens if Brussels doesn't accept such proposals?
Even Andrew Percy, chairman of the moderate Brexit Delivery Group of Tory MPs, and someone who has supported the Prime Minister on three previous occasions, made clear yesterday that he will no longer back her.
Meanwhile, the Scots Nats' leader Nicola Sturgeon said her party will continue to oppose Mrs May. So will the Democratic Unionists, evidently unmoved by her restated assurance that Northern Ireland will remain aligned with the rest of the UK in terms of regulation following Brexit.
All in all, it is hard, if not impossible, to see how the Prime Minister will garner enough votes to fulfil her dream of going down in history as the woman who took this country out of the EU.
The fascinating question is whether she realises how impossibly big the odds against her have become as would-be successors openly compete for her crown. Have she and her advisers insulated themselves against reality, or is she simply determined to be seen heading towards political oblivion doing what she believes is the right thing?
Betrayal
Maybe both factors are in play. Her facilitation of a second referendum if her Bill should pass — though she emphasised yesterday that she remains opposed to one — does suggest that in her desperation to deliver Brexit she is throwing political good sense to the wind.
Just as she pledged a hundred times that Britain would leave the EU on March 29, so she has declared herself on countless occasions against a rerun of the June 2016 referendum, which she knew would be a betrayal of the largest democratic vote in British history.
She may not want another referendum — and it is far from certain there is a majority for one in the Commons — but she is taking the risk of enabling such an outcome. Much as I admire her resilience and fortitude, this latest concession sticks in the craw.
I can understand why the Prime Minister is determined to roll the dice one more time, but what is the point if the odds against her are so great? Her calculations are surely awry. She may emerge with honour but not, I think, with her reputation for political competence enhanced.
Let her have one more throw. She has earned that right. But more than ever, it seems that it's time this brave but, now somewhat misguided, woman stepped aside to allow someone with fresh ideas and new energy to have a go.
 
To listen to some of the reaction to Jeremy Corbyn's speech on Tuesday, you would think the greatest orator and political thinker of the age had stepped forward to show us the way.
The wildly pro-Remain Confederation of British Industry (CBI) didn't hide its support for the Labour leader, and the BBC was characteristically reverential.
Meanwhile, a former senior civil servant emptied a bucketload of ordure over his erstwhile boss, Cabinet minister Liam Fox, while sparing Corbyn.
But in truth, the much-lauded speech was short on specifics, as well as contradictory. For example, Corbyn insisted Britain should stay in the Customs Union, where, according to him, it would be possible to negotiate new trade deals in our national interest. That isn't remotely feasible.
Not that this was reflected in the BBC's voluminous coverage, which concentrated gleefully on the possibility that Theresa May might be voted down in the Commons in the coming weeks.
Doesn't it say something about our debased political culture — and in particular the desperation of extreme anti-Brexiteers — that a half-baked and dishonest contribution such as Jeremy Corbyn's doesn't merely escape close examination, but is also welcomed in near-ecstatic terms?
It seems far-out Remainers are prepared to grab hold of almost any weapon, and form the most unlikely alliances, as they try to derail the Government's efforts to get the best possible deal for this country.
Of all Corbyn's new-found allies, the CBI must be the most asinine. Its director-general, Carolyn Fairbairn, opined that his 'commitment to a customs union will put jobs and living standards first by remaining in close relationship with the EU'.
Set aside the fact that his confused proposals make no practical sense. If Ms Fairbairn believes the Labour leader would ever safeguard jobs and living standards, she has taken leave of her senses.
Corbyn's recipe for economic regeneration is higher public spending, which would increase the deficit — still about 45 billion a year — and add to our gargantuan £1.8 trillion national debt. That would probably be disastrous for business.
Reckless
Moreover, Corbyn and his sidekick John McDonnell have promised to reverse the Government's cuts in corporation tax at a time when our competitors are slashing their business taxes. That would constitute a further setback for British companies.
Yet Carolyn Fairbairn ignores the dangers posed by Labour's reckless economic policies even as she pats Corbyn on the back for a speech that made little sense, and carried a not-very-well camouflaged promise of vast subsidies for nationalised industries.
But then the CBI has a long and undistinguished record of being obsessively in favour of all aspects of the EU even when Brussels proposes policies likely to harm the businesses the CBI is meant to represent.
In the early Nineties, it backed membership of the exchange rate mechanism (the precursor to the Euro) which led to interest rates soaring into double figures until the UK crashed out of the monetary system in September 1992.
Never prone to learn from its mistakes, the fanatically pro-EU CBI also wanted Britain to join the euro before its launch in 1999, arguing wrong-headedly that the single currency would 'deliver significant benefits to the UK economy'.
Being so often mistaken on European matters in the past has not engendered humility among CBI bosses, who trouser a £150,000 annual grant from the EU Commission. They were eager participants in the stories pumped out by Project Fear before the 2016 referendum.
Even so, to see the CBI embrace Corbyn's maunderings about the Customs Union, while turning a blind eye to the threats he poses to British industry –— well, that marks a new low for this misguided and myopic organisation.
Is it not possible — even likely — that our pro-business Government has a plausible strategy for achieving tariff-free trade with the EU after we have left, if only it could be allowed to get on with it?
Not the least regrettable consequence of Corbyn's intervention, and the ovation from the usual suspects, is that it may well embolden the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his masters to offer us less than they had been intending.
Theresa May wants a 'bespoke' deal — a unique tariff-free trading arrangement with the EU that is justified by Britain's economic importance. Brussels would of course far prefer us to stay in the Customs Union and Single Market rather than negotiate a special agreement.
Which brings me to Sir Martin Donnelly, a rabid Remainer and the former top civil servant at the Department for International Trade.
With stunning ill-grace yesterday, he tried to pre-empt his ex-boss Liam Fox, who was about to deliver a speech arguing that the UK should leave the customs union to seize new trading opportunities.
Sir Martin popped up on Radio 4's Today programme to claim that the UK government was involved 'not in a negotiation' but 'something for a fairy godmother'. Even if this were true (which I don't believe), this was a disloyal and subversive thing for a former top civil servant to say on the airwaves not long before talks re-start.
How the BBC's Nick Robinson welcomed Sir Martin! He couldn't contain himself. 'Treat us,' he begged. 'I don't want to taunt our listeners any longer.'
If the satirist Jonathan Swift had dropped by, he wouldn't have received such breathless encouragement.
Weakening
Sir Martin's scintillating bon mot amounted to saying that life outside the EU single market would be like swapping a 'three-course meal' for a 'packet of crisps'. Brilliant!
It fell to Boris Johnson, interviewed later on the programme, to point out — as Nick Robinson omitted to — that the outspoken Sir Martin Donnelly had worked for some years as a civil servant at the European Commission in Brussels.
Former mandarins are entitled to their anti-Brexit views, but every time they criticise their own country's negotiating team in public, and endorse the Commission's position, they risk weakening their government.
A few weeks ago, the former head of the civil service, Lord (Gus) O'Donnell (acting in concert with two other former colleagues) said it was 'completely crazy' to accuse Whitehall of trying to sabotage Brexit.
Divisions
Well, former Whitehall big cheeses such as Sir Martin Donnelly are plainly working overtime to do exactly that, as are Lord O'Donnell and his mates. When will they learn that when divisions are publicly exposed in this country, the negotiators in Brussels are so much happier?
But perhaps that's what they want. On Saturday, the pro-EU Financial Times (regarded, not unreasonably, by Eurocrats as the voice of the British Establishment) asserted that 'Brexit is a damage limitation exercise and the EU holds all the high cards'.
Am I naive to hope that a Japanese-owned newspaper edited by irrepressible Europhiles might have a patriotic thought for a Government trying to secure the best possible outcome for this country?
Is it a fuddy-duddy idea that newspapers shouldn't bolster foreign adversaries when they are engaged in a deadly serious negotiation with the Government of one's own country?
Many of the members of our ruling class are instinctively defeatist. To judge by the unholy alliance that sprang up following Jeremy Corbyn's lamentable speech, some of them are — I don't use the word lightly — pretty treacherous, too.
Over the years, Michael O’Leary has won a reputation for running a low-cost airline — Ryanair — which seems to delight in treating its passengers and staff as badly as possible.
Last year, for example, it cancelled more than 20,000 flights over a roster mix-up, ruining the holiday plans of hundreds of thousands of people.
Only when the Civil Aviation Authority stepped in did O’Leary, a billionaire, agree to compensate passengers forced to make alternative travel arrangements on more expensive airlines.
At the same time, Ryanair fought a battle with its underpaid cabin crew, many of whom have had to endure appalling terms and conditions, including being required to pay training fees of at least £2,000 and taking up to three months’ unpaid leave a year.
But O’Leary has now surpassed his company’s high-handed past behaviour with his latest threat. In Brussels on Tuesday, he pledged to ruin family holidays by grounding flights in an attempt to thwart Brexit.
O’Leary said: ‘It’s in our interests, not for a long period of time, that the aircraft are grounded...when you begin to realise that you’re no longer going to have cheap holidays in Portugal or Spain or Italy, you’ve got to drive to Scotland or get a ferry to Ireland as your only holiday options, maybe we’ll begin to rethink the whole Brexit debate.’
Sinister
In other words, O’Leary is contemplating punishing passengers — who as usual he apparently holds in contempt — because a majority of voters had the temerity to back Brexit. Even worse, he envisages blackmailing them into changing their minds.
You’d think such a naked piece of intimidation would have been met with cries of ‘Shame!’ Apparently not.
Carsten Spohr, head of the German carrier Lufthansa, chipped in: ‘If we could use this industry to prove to the British how wrong the decision was, that might be a good thing.’
Sinister, no? Long ago I vowed never again to put myself at the mercy of Ryanair after a disagreeable experience at its hands when I was 30 seconds late checking in.
Many of you will have your own horror stories about Ryanair. As a fairly frequent visitor to Venice, I would rather never set eyes again on that incomparably magnificent city than be forced to fly to it on O’Leary’s airline.
Now, following the bullying remarks of Carsten Spohr, I shall write another memo to myself. I am hereby extending my boycott to Lufthansa.
What is really cynical is that O’Leary and Spohr know they are issuing baseless threats, and I’ll wager a case of whiskey that no aircraft of either company will be grounded for a single second.
Nonetheless, the episode offers a fascinating insight into the mindset of those who wish to reverse Brexit.
O’Leary was, of course, a vocal Remainer before the referendum, and since the result has been merrily prophesying fire and brimstone. Last year he opined that ‘Brexit will be one of the great economic suicide notes in history’.
He also urged Ireland and the EU to make Brexit as difficult as possible for Britain in the hope that the country ‘pulls back’ and decides not to leave after all.
Such voluble contributions are particularly misplaced given his nationality. For the self-publicising (though obviously talented) O’Leary is a citizen of a foreign country — the Republic of Ireland — and the boss of a company registered there.
Imagine if a British-born chief executive had involved himself noisily in the internal affairs of Ireland before that country’s 2015 referendum on same-sex marriage. I think many Irish people would have been cheesed off by such interference, and rightly so.
O’Leary is entitled to hold strong views on Brexit, but as an Irish citizen it was presumptuous of him to play such a high-profile role in the referendum campaign.
It is even more out of order for him to have complained so vociferously since the outcome of a democratic vote.
Sovereign
Then to threaten the citizens of a foreign country, and promise to punish them for exercising their sovereign right in a way that ran contrary to his wishes — well, that is utterly preposterous even by the standards of Michael O’Leary’s controversial career.
It’s true, of course, that Britain needs to come to an agreement with the EU so that, post-Brexit, UK and European airlines can continue to operate in one another’s countries.
Most observers think such a deal is highly likely because it is in the interests of all parties to make one.
After all, tens of millions of Britons go on holiday every year to Europe, bringing huge benefits to local economies. For example, 17.8 million people from this country visited Spain in 2016, and most of them travelled by air.
Tourism is extremely important to the Spanish economy — accounting for 10 or 11 per cent of gross domestic product — and Britons make up about a quarter of all the country’s tourists.
In a sane world, the Madrid government is going to move heaven and earth to keep the planes flying.
The same is true of France, Spain and Italy, which receive enormous numbers of British tourists every year, and make billions of euros out of them.
Equally, millions of Poles, Italians, French and other Europeans come to this country by air, either to work or to enjoy holidays here.
Unless the governments of their countries are bonkers, they are going to ensure their citizens can continue to fly to Britain without let or hindrance after Brexit.
The great majority of airlines assume an agreement will be made. But O’Leary continues to deliver apocalyptic warnings, and Ryanair alone intends to issue a ‘Brexit clause’ warning travellers their tickets won’t be valid if there is no new aviation agreement.
Instead of issuing implausible threats, why doesn’t O’Leary work like other airline chief executives towards making a sensible deal? And why produce the outrageous spectacle of grounding passengers in order to teach them a lesson?
As I say, the Armageddon he invokes won’t happen, and O’Leary is simply grandstanding. But let’s pretend for a moment that he went ahead, and grounded his planes in order to penalise his passengers.
The main victims would be the not-very-well-off people who voted for Brexit in such large numbers.
For almost no one flies Ryanair out of choice. They do so because, despite many disadvantages and some inconvenience, it is usually so cheap. That’s why the airline has been such a commercial success.
Futile
But hard-pressed Brexiteers obliged to fly Ryanair wouldn’t forgive O’Leary if he left his aircraft on the Tarmac, and rendered their tickets unusable. Many would defect to other airlines.
He would also lose a lot of money (he is the company’s third largest shareholder) in making such a futile gesture.
No, it is an idle threat from a garrulous man who once said he would rather cut off his own hands than recognise cabin-crew trade unions at Ryanair — and then proceeded last year to do exactly that.
It’s hard to believe that someone who believes in little other than making money can be acting out of principle.
Presumably he has persuaded himself — mistakenly, I would argue — that there is some financial advantage to him in having Brexit reversed.
It won’t be. When it has happened, the aircraft belonging to Ryanair will continue to criss-cross the skies above Britain and the EU, leaving this bumptious Irishman with a greater-than-usual amount of egg on his face.
Channel 4 News has long enjoyed a reputation as a niche current affairs programme with a markedly Leftist take on the world. I often watch it, usually in a state of contentment.
Because it is so niche, and there is no expectation of political impartiality, I find myself expostulating far less frequently than when the BBC is guilty of less egregious bias.
Auntie is so powerful, and so eager to insist on her neutrality, that when she betrays even slight evidence of partiality in her news coverage, some of us are apt to howl our objections.
But it is no longer possible to be so indulgent towards Channel 4 News after its veteran anchorman, Jon Snow, last week provided some revelatory proof of anti-Brexit bias. He seemed to be speaking on behalf of a whole tribe of metropolitan liberals who regard Leave voters with a mixture of contempt and disbelief.
Flags
Last Friday there was a Leave march in Whitehall and Westminster, and the 71-year-old journalist took up a vantage point to observe it. The episode can easily be viewed on YouTube. I thoroughly recommend it.
Against a background of apparently well-behaved people, some of whom were carrying flags, Snow had a somewhat overwrought air. I was reminded of correspondents in war-torn foreign climes who, forgivably, look rather anxious as bullets whizz around their heads.
‘As we speak there are crowds rallying outside Downing Street,’ Snow informed viewers in excited tones. ‘We’ve just got these pictures in... police are now wearing riot gear. Police dogs are patrolling. The mood has changed.’
In actual fact, the police seemed remarkably relaxed and, in the coverage I saw, they didn’t appear to be wearing riot gear, if by that is meant helmets, shields and other defensive paraphernalia. Nor was there any evidence of patrolling dogs, or even of dogs hoping to be stroked.
Snow raced on, approaching his fevered crescendo. ‘It’s been the most extraordinary day,’ he announced. ‘A day which has seen... I have never seen so many white people in one place, it’s an extraordinary story.’
Riot gear. Police dogs. An extraordinary day and an extraordinary story. Above all, an unprecedented preponderance of white people. If one had started watching Snow’s report after it began, one might have thought he was describing an ugly demonstration by violent supporters of the Ku Klux Klan rather than a march of generally peaceable Brexiteers.
His remarks have up to this moment attracted more than 2,000 complaints to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom. Channel 4 has said that it ‘regrets any offence caused by [Jon Snow’s] comments’, while the perpetrator himself has so far kept schtum.
It’s his contention that he had never seen so many white people in one place that is most astonishing. I perfectly understand that he lives in a multi-racial city where there are sometimes almost as many non-whites as whites in sizeable gatherings of people.
But it’s surely not yet a crime to be a white person in a largely white crowd. If those on the march were overwhelmingly white (and Snow’s observation is disputed by some witnesses), it was probably because they mostly came from outside London, where, believe it or not, there are still many white people.
What would Jon Snow have said if he were reporting on a march dominated by black people? Would he have mentioned it? I doubt it. Either it wouldn’t have occurred to him, or he would have refrained from doing so for fear of being accused of racial stereotyping.
Why shouldn’t white Brexiteers be allowed to make their point without racial aspersions being made against them? Despite Snow’s insinuations, they weren’t scary and threatening. But I suspect that their crime, in his eyes, was to emanate from outside the M25, which circles his hallowed metropolis.
Am I being unfair? I don’t think so. Admittedly, I may be more inclined to find fault because he has form. In 2017, it was reported that Snow had chanted ‘f*** the Tories’ at Glastonbury. He said he had no recollection of this, but did not deny it had happened.
The BBC presenter Andrew Marr wrote at the time that he would have been sacked if he had yelled the same thing in public. Channel 4 merely warned Snow to watch his step in future — advice he seems not to have heeded.
What is most objectionable about his sneering and disdainful mischaracterisation of Brexiteers last Friday is that it was divisive at a time when we already have far too many divisions.
The fact is, Leavers are not made up exclusively of the white provincial (and, Jon Snow probably thinks, half-witted) people at whom his comments were seemingly directed.
Hostile
Indeed, research carried out by the polling company Ipsos Mori suggests that almost a third of Britain’s black, Asian and other ethnic communities voted Leave in the 2016 referendum.
Even in Jon Snow’s precious capital city, many more Asians may have backed Leave than is generally supposed. Dr Rakib Ehsan has noted in a paper for the London School of Economics that in Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow (in each of which boroughs the Asian population is above 25 per cent) there was a strong Leave vote.
Are they also to be dismissed in supercilious terms by Jon Snow? I don’t suppose he would dare do that. Much easier to write off those who supported Leave as white bruisers from the sticks.
There is, of course, a long and lamentable record of metropolitan, liberal-minded Remainers referring to Leave voters in a condescending and sometimes hostile way.
A year ago, the Lib Dem leader Vince Cable declared that ‘too many [Leave voters] were driven by nostalgia for a world where passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink’. What evidence does he have for that?
Prejudice
In 2017, the novelist Ian McEwan suggested the deaths of ‘1.5 million oldster’ Brexit voters over the next two years would help swing a second referendum in favour of Britain staying in Europe. With highly questionable accuracy, he added: ‘A gang of angry old men, irritable even in victory, are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth.’
As a writer, McEwan is free to say whatever he wants, however inflammatory. But presenters on Channel 4 (which has the status of a public service broadcaster) are not supposed to abominate Leavers publicly — or, indeed, Tories — as Jon Snow has done.
Leavers come from all classes and backgrounds and from every part of the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason to suppose they are any more or less stupid than Remainers. And, just like Remainers, they hold deeply felt and usually well-considered views.
We rightly blame the Government and the Commons for their failure to find a way out of our national crisis. But what hope is there if broadcasters enjoined to be impartial demonstrate such prejudice?
Watching Jon Snow marvel at the alleged whiteness of Leave marchers, and hearing the contempt he and so many in the metropolitan chattering classes express for millions of their fellow countrymen, it’s hard not to feel gloomy about the future cohesion of our nation. 
Will Scotland be an independent country in five years? It would take a very naive person to stake everything against such an outcome.
For months we have been told a No Deal Brexit will increase the appetite for going it alone north of the border, where Remain attracted 62 per cent of the votes in the 2016 referendum.
Even a softer, negotiated Brexit would, according to some pundits, make independence more likely, because a majority of Scots don’t want to be yanked out of the EU against their will.
But so far all this has been speculation. Now there is a near- certain route to a self-governing Scotland, cynically provided by Labour’s John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, in defiance of his party’s previous policy, and to the great annoyance of some colleagues.
Hours after Scottish First Minister and fierce nationalist Nicola Sturgeon opened the door to a ‘progressive alliance’ with Labour, Mr McDonnell told an audience in Edinburgh on Tuesday that a Corbyn government ‘would not block’ a second Scottish independence referendum. He repeated himself yesterday.
What this means is that the hard-Left clique that runs the Labour Party is no longer confident of achieving an overall majority in a General Election, which could take place in months. So in return for parliamentary support from the Scottish Nationalists, a Labour administration would grant a second independence referendum.
We already knew Mr McDonnell was a ruthless creature with more than a touch of the night about him. But his willingness to break up the 312-year-old union with Scotland in return for a short-lived political advantage really takes one’s breath away.
For there is a high probability in the existing febrile circumstances — with Prime Minister Boris Johnson going down with many Scots as happily as a bowl of cold porridge — that the Scottish Nationalists would finally fulfil their dream.
Indeed, a recent opinion poll suggests 52 per cent of people in Scotland would plump for independence. In the 2014 referendum, 55.3 per cent voted against.
Vote Labour — and get an independent Scotland. Messrs Corbyn and McDonnell might as well paint this slogan on the side of their battle bus during any forthcoming election.
In reality, the Labour hier-archy is abandoning Scotland to the SNP. As recently as 2010, Labour won 41 seats there. This dramatically fell to one in the 2015 election, before rising to seven in 2017.
Once upon a time, Labour depended on its Scottish seats to govern in Westminster. Mr McDonnell evidently believes there is no chance of winning them back, so an electoral pact with the SNP is being cooked up as a substitute. Scottish independence is the price.
So: this is the terrible situation — terrible for Unionists like myself, that is — in which we find ourselves. Labour is preparing to shuffle off Scotland (and very possibly Northern Ireland, too, since last year Mr McDonnell disclosed his ‘longing’ for a united Ireland).
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson appears hell-bent on No Deal, which would surely have the effect, if there is an economic shock throughout the whole of Britain, of hardening the hearts at least temporarily of Scots in favour of independence.
Here it is tempting to hoist the white flag, and accept what may look inevitable. That is what many in England are doing, including, in my experience, Tories who a decade ago were solid Unionists.
If the Scots want to go their own way, let them. That is an argument one now hears from lots of people. They say, with some truth, that the momentum towards self-government has been gathering force for half a century.
They also point out, again reasonably enough, that devolution (which, according to one of its architects, Labour Cabinet Minister George Robertson, would ‘kill nationalism stone dead’) has given the SNP an extra fillip.
Tory MPs won’t express their increasing lack of enthusiasm for the Union in public, but such views are common. This explains why so many are eager to ram through No Deal even though it could end up shattering the United Kingdom. They think Brexit is a greater prize than holding Great Britain together.
A very depressing finding in a recent YouGov poll was that 63 per cent of Tory Party members believe that Scotland leaving the UK would be an acceptable price to pay for achieving Brexit.
Speaking for myself, I would cheerfully consign Brexit to the dustbin if that guaranteed a permanent union between England and Scotland, which has been a huge force for good in the world. But I accept such a deal is not on offer.
Brexit is almost certain to happen, probably a pretty hard one. And so Unionists will have to persuade the Scots that the relationship forged in 1707, and all our shared history and common sacrifices since then, have more enduring value than our fleeting 46-year-old membership of the EU.
If the sky does not fall in post-Brexit — and I am sure it won’t — then it should be possible to convince Scots that the UK has a bright and prosperous economic future.
They should be reminded that, per head of the population, they receive about 20 per cent more on public services compared with England. Is such an advantageous state of affairs really likely to persist if Scotland leaves the Union?
Should it opt for independence and re-apply for EU membership, Scotland would probably be required to join the euro, and would certainly have a hard border with England. Do Scots really want that?
All these and other arguments must be deployed by such people as Ruth Davidson, the very able Tory leader north of the border, and Boris Johnson, who should make saving the Union his priority once Brexit is out of the way.
The two of them will have to find a way of getting on better. Despite his plummy southern vowels, I don’t see why Boris can’t employ his charms successfully in Scotland, and demonstrate he is not the Right-wing fiend and buffoon of SNP and Labour demonisation.
Above all, he must make clear there is no question of another independence referendum — the last one was described by the then SNP leader, Alex Salmond, as a ‘once in a generation opportunity’ — at least until the after-shocks of Brexit have died down.
The hope is the Scots will be able to take a more settled view of the Union after it has become clear that life for Britain outside the EU is not the calamity so many predict.
Of course, if I am wrong, and in five years the UK economy is doing less well than its EU counterparts, the argument for independence will strengthen. But I am optimistic.
To return to my question: is Scottish independence inevitable? Almost certainly, if there is a Labour-led government. A second referendum would be granted, and take place immediately after the divisiveness of Brexit, and before any benefits of leaving the EU are evident.
But all is not lost if Boris Johnson emerges in one piece from the storm about to engulf him. If he resists endemic Tory pessimism about the Union, and fights passionately for its survival, Great Britain may yet continue to exist.
What should we make of Rory Stewart, whose much improved showing in yesterday’s second round of the Tory leadership contest has led to feverish speculation that he might challenge Boris Johnson for the prime ministership of the United Kingdom?
It is impossible not to be attracted by his charms. Successful writer, explorer, man of action, possible former spy – he is a romantic creature who could have strayed out of the pages of a John Buchan novel. 
Without doubt Mr Stewart has brought a freshness of approach to campaigning by exploiting social media and taking his arguments on to the street where he engages with ordinary voters.
There is a star quality about him which none of the other candidates, apart from Boris, possesses. 
His virtues are appreciated by those fed up with the in-fighting and factionalism that blight modern politics.
To judge by last night’s generally unilluminating BBC debate, he is a bit of an oddball too – removing his tie to demonstrate that he was different to the other candidates, and stretching as though he was doing exercises. 
This is my question: if tomorrow he should emerge as one of the final two – a prospect that would have been inconceivable only a few days ago – might his charm and novelty so commend themselves to the seemingly less swayable Tory rank-and-file that they plump for him over Boris?
It’s very unlikely, but not absolutely impossible. After all, David Cameron beat the bookies’ favourite David Davis in the 2005 Tory leadership contest. 
And Jeremy Corbyn pulled off a comparable feat even more dramatically to emerge victorious in the 2015 Labour Party ballot.
Mr Johnson and the other remaining candidates should take the threat posed by the exotic Rory Stewart very seriously. 
Whatever happens, having almost overnight established himself as a formidable politician, he will be a leading figure in any Tory Cabinet – though he chops and changes as to whether he would serve under Boris.
So two cheers, at least, for Mr Stewart. He is ambitious, clever, interesting and – unusually for a modern member of his increasingly unpopular party – able to connect with people outside the Tory tribe, including the young.
But there is a problem. If Mr Stewart were not only to reach the last two, but emerge as leader of his party and prime minister of this country, it would be nothing short of a disaster for the Tories. 
His policy on Brexit threatens to bog us down in a stalemate similar to the one from which we have just escaped. I admit I have some reservations about the man. 
For all his allurements, we know very little about this privileged scion of an Anglo-Scottish family whose father was a leading light in MI6.
Whereas almost everyone in the country is an expert on Boris Johnson’s widely publicised sexual shenanigans and other misdemeanours, Mr Stewart remains, for all his surface candour, a dark horse. 
His closet may well be skeleton-free, but no one has so far has been given the opportunity to peer into it. (We do know he was a Labour Party member aged 18, hardly a point in his favour so far as Tory members are concerned.) 
Doubtless, if he were one of the final two, Mr Stewart would be scrutinised more exactingly by the media than hitherto. 
But Tory MPs would be taking a big risk if they promoted him to the shortlist tomorrow.
I’m sure he is brave and imaginative, but does he have the stiffness of resolve that is indispensable in any new leader thrown into the cauldron of Tory politics?
But much more serious than questions of character are the flaws in his Brexit policy. Everything he has said suggests he intends to re-hash Theresa May’s ill-fated deal. He has not produced a single good new idea to stir into the pot. 
Unless one counts his proposal to create a representative Citizen’s Assembly which would be charged with coming up with solutions to the Brexit impasse that have eluded Parliament. It sounds like a recipe for mayhem.
Mr Stewart’s position on Brexit can be summarised as follows. As he repeated during a debate in which he scarcely distinguished himself, he believes the EU is not going to re-negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement in the tiniest degree.
It may be true the EU won’t budge. But Mr Stewart can’t be sure that, confronted with the frightening prospect of No Deal, it won’t offer last-minute concessions. You can only find out by trying. 
Mr Stewart’s response is to argue that the EU won’t credit the threat of No Deal because it knows Parliament won’t permit such an outcome.
But actually Europe can’t be sure. Arch Tory Remainer and rebel Sir Oliver Letwin suggested last week that Parliament is running out of options to thwart No Deal. 
Setting these considerations aside, it is surely clear that Mrs May’s deal is dead. I say that as someone who thought that, apart from the threat to lock Britain into the Customs Union ad infinitum, it had much to commend it.
But it was defeated three times in the Commons – by a record number of MPs on the first occasion. 
By what inexplicable alchemy does Mr Stewart believe intransigent Democratic Unionist Party MPs and Tory headbangers can be persuaded to fall into line?
Yesterday on Radio Four’s Today Programme he claimed the result of the European Elections, disastrous for the Tories, had created a ‘shock’ which would enhance the likelihood of Mrs May’s deal being revived. 
He seems to be virtually the only person in the country who believes this.
No, I’m afraid that, for all the freshness of his approach, his policy is a stale one, and would almost certainly lead to a familiar deadlock in the Commons. 
Moreover, it would do nothing to reverse the haemorrhaging of support of Tory voters to the Brexit Party. 
According to a new YouGov survey, almost half of card-carrying Tory members would be happy for Nigel Farage to become their leader.
Although it is possible that a Tory Party led by Mr Stewart would win over some Lib Dem voters, it wouldn’t attract those who have defected to the Brexit Party, whether from Conservative or Labour ranks.
In any general election in which Mr Stewart defended his soft version of Brexit – softer than Mrs May’s, I think – Mr Farage would take millions of votes from the Tories. The inevitable upshot would be a Corbyn government.
As for the Parliamentary Tory Party, Mr Stewart would exacerbate its already deep divisions. 
Among his declared backers there isn’t a single Brexiteer. All are Remainers. The other candidates, including Boris, offer a mix.
Such unity as Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt or Michael Gove may bring to their party could very easily buckle under the pressure of events. Mr Stewart would start with a divided party.
And it would hardly be ideal for the modern Tory Party to present a shortlist of two men, Messrs Johnson and Stewart, both of whom went to Eton and Balliol College, Oxford.
Rory Stewart may be a breath of fresh air. He is certainly clever and engaging. 
But I’m afraid he is also a divisive figure who has practically no chance of clearing up the logjam of Brexit. 
A party which calls itself Liberal Democrat might reasonably be thought to be both liberal and democratic. Unfortunately, this is far from being the case.
On the issue of the EU, the Lib Dems have long been doctrinaire and dogmatic. 
Back in 2013, their then leader, Nick Clegg, said people who wanted Britain to leave the EU were 'unpatriotic'. Evidently a very tolerant and broad-minded sort of fellow.
So it was no surprise when, within weeks of the June 2016 referendum, the party called for a re-run because it did not at all like the outcome of the first ballot.
But in their determination to reverse that democratic vote – the biggest in this country's history – the Lib Dems are now going a step further under their new leader, Jo Swinson. 
At their party conference, delegates voted overwhelmingly to scrap Brexit without another referendum if they win power.
This is what one might expect in a party whose zealous activists have paraded T-shirts bearing the slogan 'B******s to Brexit' (my asterisks). Not exactly respectful towards those who voted Leave.
Of course, it may be confidently asserted that the chances of the Lib Dems forming the next government are close to zero, though an ever hopeful Miss Swinson talks about the party winning more than 300 seats in a general election.
Just now they have a spring in their step, having performed well in May's European elections, and attracted a handful of disgruntled Labour and Tory MPs to their parliamentary ranks. But they are stuck at around 16 per cent in the opinion polls, and very far from power.
So we shouldn't get too worked up by the prospect of Prime Minister Swinson unilaterally revoking Article 50, so that Britain remained in the EU, on arriving at No 10. It is most unlikely to happen.
That said, despite Miss Swinson's pledge yesterday that the Lib Dems would not 'prop up a Johnson or Corbyn government' after an election, the Lib Dems might enter a coalition with Labour, and insist on scuppering Brexit without another referendum.
At all events, the conference decision sends a strong signal to the British public. The dark, undemocratic heart of the Lib Dems has been exposed. A great political party is prepared to ignore the votes of 17.4 million people.
How on earth can they contemplate such an eventuality? It would leave this country irrevocably divided, with Brexit voters rightly thinking that their democratic choice had been unceremoniously binned. You might as well set aside the result of a general election.
Boris Johnson has recently been described as a dictator by various liberal-minded folk, but anything he might be accused of doing is dwarfed by the enormity of ignoring the outcome of the biggest democratic exercise in British history.
Jo Swinson's defence, as I understand it – I'm afraid she gave a poor account of herself in media interviews yesterday – is that people would know what they were voting for. If the Lib Dems emerged triumphant, they would have a mandate to undo Brexit.
This argument is open to several objections. One is that a party could theoretically end up governing the country with only a third of the vote. How would that give it the right to set aside the preferences of more than half of the electorate in a record turnout?
As I say, we shouldn't ventilate too much about something unlikely to transpire. The point is that the Lib Dems would like it to happen. Miss Swinson is prepared to ride roughshod over our democratic arrangements in a way that makes Boris Johnson look like a novice.
Having observed the party over the years, I'm not surprised. Most Lib Dems are doubtless thoroughly nice people. But their party is not very nice. It is surprisingly ruthless, and adept at twisting the rules. They might be more accurately described as the Illiberal non-Democrats.
Footage has emerged showing how Jo Swinson previously argued for a referendum on EU membership.
In 2008, the Lib Dem leader was vocal in favour of an In/Out poll and criticised the EU for being inefficient, old-fashioned and cumbersome.
The images taken in Parliament reveal how she spoke out as the Lisbon Treaty, which was signed in 2007, created a more powerful European Parliament and a long-term President of the European Council. Miss Swinson was challenged on the treaty and if she would advocate a referendum on EU membership.
She then told MPs: ‘The Lib Dems would like to have a referendum In and Out of Europe.’
The footage was tweeted yesterday by Tobias Ellwood, Tory MP for Bournemouth, who said she has gone from calling for a vote to ‘completely ignoring’ the 2016 result.
We shouldn't forget how, during the 2010 election campaign, the party solemnly promised to abolish tuition fees. Then, having been tempted into coalition by the Tories, it promptly agreed to treble them.
Even by the standards of modern politics, this cynical somersault took the breath away. It was the action of a sanctimonious party even more shamelessly inconsistent than its larger rivals. Jo Swinson is part of that ignoble tradition. With her soft Scottish accent and youthful open face, she seems as straightforward a woman as you could hope to encounter.
Yet it turns out she is an unusually slippery operator. Not only is she happy to kill off the 2016 referendum result. There was a time, although she has chosen to forget it, when she was herself in favour of an EU referendum.
On Sunday, she declared sententiously that she couldn't 'forgive David Cameron for calling the referendum'. Yet in 2008 she proposed an In/Out poll from the Lib Dem benches, and criticised Brussels over its undemocratic procedures.
Granted, politicians are allowed to change their minds, but morally superior Lib Dems seldom admit that they have. Deputy leader Ed Davy yesterday had difficulty in recalling that his party was once in favour of an EU referendum.
I should add that Miss Swinson still has half a foot in the second referendum camp. Until she achieves power, she remains in favour of another People's Vote. Once in charge, she would drop the idea. Principled and consistent?
Many extreme Remainers will be drawn to her new policy, and cheerfully cast their vote for the Lib Dems when the Prime Minister is eventually allowed to call an election by his opponents.
But I suspect more thoughtful Remainers will think twice before supporting a party which is ready to ignore the votes of the majority in such a divisive and high-handed way.
And I hope Tory voters who are dismayed by the rather brutal treatment meted out by Mr Johnson to Tory MPs who voted with Labour may reflect that the superficially enlightened and broad-minded Lib Dems are far more ruthless.
They might also note that when EU panjandrum Guy Verhofstadt addressed the Lib Dems' Bournemouth conference, and spoke messianically of the need for a united European 'empire', the audience responded ecstatically.
Scratch a Liberal Democrat delegate, and you will certainly find an enthusiastic Europhile. Scratch a bit deeper, and you may well find someone who is both shockingly illiberal and undemocratic.
 
Should Boris Johnson — assuming he becomes Prime Minister — prorogue Parliament? That would mean suspending it so that it couldn’t prevent the United Kingdom leaving the EU on October 31.
At the moment, that is the law of the land. All Mr Johnson has to do is to tell MPs and peers to extend their summer holidays for a couple of months, and our membership of the EU will automatically cease on Halloween.
Or so runs the theory. But he might have John Major to contend with. The former PM took to the airwaves yesterday morning to warn that he will seek a judicial review in the courts if Boris tries to prorogue Parliament.
Can you imagine it? Months of torturous discussion by learned judges while the country is on a knife’s edge. A constitutional crisis as the judiciary is pitted against the executive. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
If Sir John is intent on this ruinous course of action, he would do well to get his facts straight. He declared on Radio 4’s Today programme that Parliament hadn’t been prorogued ‘since Charles II in the 1640s, and it didn’t end well for him’.
I think he meant Charles I, who prorogued Parliament in 1629 for 11 years. As almost every schoolchild knows, King Charles’s head was removed from his body by parliamentarians in 1649.
Sir John is not even correct in saying that Parliament hasn’t been prorogued since then. King Charles II prorogued it in the 1670s, and his younger brother James II did the same in 1685.
In fact Prorogation is the term for the formal end of a parliamentary session, and so is an habitual occurrence. Sir John is talking about suspending Parliament as a means of circumventing opposition.
The device has been employed much more recently than the 17th century. In 1948, Parliament was prorogued by the Labour government after the Tory-dominated House of Lords had opposed the Parliament Bill.
If John Major is going to lecture us about constitutional practice, it would be better if he didn’t fill our ears with dud history while we are trying to enjoy breakfast.
In fact, if we choose a looser definition of prorogation — namely, suspending Parliament for political reasons — it seems that Sir John himself is a culprit.
When, in 1997, he prorogued Parliament to call an election, he was accused of doing so earlier than was necessary in order to delay the publication of an embarrassing report into the ‘cash for questions’ Tory scandal.
After Major’s bizarre radio interview, someone in Boris’s camp suggested to the BBC that the former prime minister ‘has gone completely bonkers’ and had ‘clearly been driven completely mad by Brexit’.
This was crudely and rudely phrased. But in truth Sir John is somewhat unhinged on the subject of Brexit, and such good sense as he once possessed would appear to have deserted him.
He has described the referendum vote to leave the EU as a ‘colossal misjudgment’ and the ‘worst foreign policy decision since the Second World War’. He is certain post-Brexit Britain will be a poorer and unhappy country.
As for Boris Johnson, Sir John has called his Brexit campaign ‘squalid’. He has also expressed the view that the NHS will be ‘about as safe’ in his hands and those of fellow Brexiteers as ‘a pet hamster would be with a hungry python’.
Quite witty, but wrong. Boris is a soft-hearted creature who will cheerfully throw at the NHS the enormous extra funds already earmarked by Theresa May, and probably chuck in a few more billions for good measure.
Isn’t it striking how some ultra Remainers — the same can be said of the nuttiest hard-line Brexiteers — undermine their cause by wild hyperbole and spine-chilling prophecies?
There are, in fact, powerful arguments against proroguing Parliament. If only Sir John could make them calmly and reasonably without promising to mire us in the mother-of-all legal battles.
I can understand why Boris should want to keep the prospect of prorogation ‘on the table’. It may serve to convince Brussels that he is serious about being prepared to deliver No Deal, and so wring some last-minute concessions from the EU.
But he must know in his heart — and I suspect Brussels realises this — that proroguing Parliament to force through No Deal would strike at the core values of the Leave campaign.
When I think back to the now distant referendum, I have no doubt that my main reason for voting Leave was to restore Parliamentary sovereignty. There were other reasons, but none of them was more important than being governed by our own directly elected representatives.
I wish Parliament had been able to honour the Brexit vote. I deplore the cynicism of the Labour front bench, as well as the dishonesty of a small band of Tory Remainers who have done everything possible to scupper Brexit despite having stood on an election manifesto to deliver it.
And it is also true that Remainers who swoon at the unconstitutionality of prorogation have been perfectly happy to seize the parliamentary agenda from the Government in defiance of long-established procedure.
For example, in March an amendment tabled by Tory Remainer Sir Oliver Letwin enabled backbenchers to hold a series of votes on alternatives to Mrs May’s Brexit deal.
But the dubious tactics of some Remainers do not begin to justify the momentous leap of suspending parliamentary proceedings in order to drive through Brexit without the approval of a majority of MPs.
Imagine that Boris took this fateful path. Such bitter divisions as already exist in our country would be deepened to a chasm as anti-Brexiteers complained, not without justice, of an anti-democratic outrage.
In such a scenario, Brexit would finally have been delivered, but at a terrible price. Some, perhaps many, Remainers would regard such an outcome as unconstitutional. The shared values that normally hold together people of very different political outlooks would be torn asunder.
I also believe it would be the end of Boris. For it would not only be disgruntled Remainers who believed that their country and its democratic traditions had been turned upside down.
Many voters — including, I suggest, plenty of Brexiteers — would say that a man who had campaigned to leave the EU under the banner of parliamentary sovereignty had shown he had about as much respect for democracy as a South American dictator.
And that is why I can’t believe Boris will prorogue Parliament. He would lose the support of millions of moderate and reasonable people who may be exasperated by the shenanigans of MPs but don’t want Parliament to be excluded from a decision of such magnitude.
In life it is usually unwise to make a threat you are unwilling to fulfil. Boris is in the position of a cowboy in an American western who portentously places his gun on a table. Everyone in the bar knows it isn’t loaded.
If MPs reject whatever deal he presents to them, there is one solution — to go to the country and seek the people’s endorsement. That is the democratic, and British, way. I think he’d win.
From the moment she became Prime Minister in July 2016, Theresa May has fought with astounding commitment to honour the result of the EU referendum which took place the previous month.
We’ll never know what would have happened if the Brexiteer duo of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove hadn’t come to blows, and found themselves in the driving seat that has been occupied by Mrs May. 
Conceivably they would have secured a better deal.
But it’s certain they would have had to grapple with the same ineluctable difficulties, foremost among which have been the single-minded determination of the EU to drive a hard bargain, and its remarkable success – in defiance of the predictions of some Brexiteers – in staying united during negotiations with the Government.
Johnson and Gove would have had to deal with the same disputatious Parliament, overwhelmingly pro-Remain but fractured into numerous factions, each with its own inflexible notion of the best way of delivering – or not delivering – Brexit. 
Of course the Prime Minister has made mistakes. We can all recite them with the benefit of hindsight. 
The fact remains she was dealt a much more difficult hand than she or anyone else realised. 
Leaving the EU on satisfactory terms was bound to be a monumental challenge.
What can scarcely be denied is that she has shown awe-inspiring resilience. Despite being a diabetic who injects herself with insulin five times a day, she has discharged her duty tirelessly. 
She has recovered from set-backs that would have floored most human beings.
It is therefore hard, because she has these heroic qualities, to say that the best chance she has of rescuing her deal, and delivering what she has battled for so magnificently, is for her to sacrifice her prime ministership.
If she accepts this bitter truth, she will go down in history as the woman who, despite enormous problems, delivered Brexit. 
But if she can’t bring herself to offer up her own political life, she will probably be led from the stage ignominiously, without Brexit having been accomplished.
Let’s examine the options cool-headedly. Other than Mrs May’s deal – to which she made clear yesterday in the Commons she remains committed while accepting there’s ‘still not sufficient support for it’ – there are two options on the table.
One is accepting membership of the customs union, as Labour and Remainer Tories have long argued we should. The other is again extending Article 50, so that we don’t leave the EU for many months, if at all.
Note I don’t suggest No Deal is properly on the table, despite the EU’s contention yesterday that it is becoming increasingly likely. 
Naturally one can’t entirely rule it out. But with a majority in the Commons and the Cabinet against such an outcome, and Mrs May herself opposed, it’s difficult to see how it could transpire.
So we should consider the two plausible options I’ve mentioned. If the Commons with Labour support now endorses membership of the customs union, the Prime Minister couldn’t embrace such a policy without losing all credibility.
She has fought against it at every turn, and insisted that the 2017 Tory Party manifesto reject it.
Alternatively, the Commons may not vote in sufficient numbers in favour of continued membership of the customs union, or the Government might ignore it if it did, as Mrs May suggested yesterday it could choose to do.
In that event, the only sane alternative would be to seek a further extension from the EU, in which case the UK would be required to hold elections for the European Parliament in late May.
The Prime Minister could not survive such a humiliating debacle, any more than she could embrace membership of the customs union while retaining any vestige of political authority. One way or another she would be finished.
Of course she might take the nuclear option of calling a general election, in which case her political career would be over since she could hardly with honour remain as Conservative leader.
Moreover, in such circumstances, with the Tories bitterly divided, I certainly wouldn’t bet against a Labour victory and a Marxist Corbyn government. Mrs May surely does not want to bequeath such a legacy to the British people.
So we return to her deal – a ‘compromise’, as she herself conceded yesterday – but the best, and probably the only, practicable way of extricating this country from the EU.
The idea has been growing over recent days that intransigent Brexiteers in the Tory European Research Group and the Democratic Unionist Party would reluctantly support the Prime Minister’s deal if they could be sure she would stand down once it had passed the Commons.
Former Cabinet minister and veteran Eurosceptic John Whittingdale indicated he might back Mrs May in such circumstances, and even rebel-in-chief Boris Johnson hinted he might be persuaded to fall into line if Mrs May made clear she was ready to resign. Other Tory MPs have said similar things.
The reasoning of such people is that she has forfeited the confidence of many in her party. 
They have little faith that, in the crucial trade negotiations with the EU which lie ahead – remember, the Withdrawal Agreement is only a beginning – she will be sufficiently robust and forensic.
And – let’s be honest – there are some in her party who have had enough of her sometimes abrasive and unbending style.
There is a hunger for change, for a new pair of hands, for a more imaginative approach.
Needless to say, it makes no sense to think of getting rid of her at the moment, and any plan for an immediate coup, such as was reported over the weekend, is idiotic. 
Her instant removal would only plunge us into a state of even greater chaos than the one we are in.
But if Theresa May were to suggest that, in the event of her deal being passed by the Commons, she would step aside though stay on as Prime Minister while preparations for a Tory leadership contest were put in place – well, that would be a kind of deliverance for the country, her party and perhaps for her.
She couldn’t know, and we can’t know, whether such an undertaking would be sufficient to let her deal pass, and it might be argued there would be no point in her sacrificing herself unless she had such an assurance.
On the other hand, if every other outcome seems certain to lead to her undignified exit, wouldn’t it be better if she arranged her departure on her own terms and in a way that commanded widespread respect?
I can see how difficult it would be for her to resign after achieving all that she has fought for. 
But if that is the only way of securing her deal, her sense of duty should argue in her heart for this final act of self-sacrifice.
How else can we escape from the impasse we’re in? How else can the outcome of the 2016 referendum be honoured? 
This is the best – one can truthfully say, almost certainly the only – way of achieving that.
I believe history will be kind to her if she displays such courage. The Prime Minister who delivered the Brexit she promised. 
Out of this appalling crisis she alone can fashion something positive for herself, something good for our unhappy country.
Only Boris Johnson’s enemies could deny that his first month in office has been something of a tour de force. Even his admirers have been taken aback by his energy, enthusiasm and oomph.
Last week he charmed Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, and got on much better with President Emmanuel Macron of France than expected. He apparently secured their agreement that the Withdrawal Agreement is not, after all, set in stone.
Over the weekend he joshed and larked his way through the G7 meeting in Biarritz, making a predictable hit with Donald Trump, who love-bombed him in his press conference yesterday afternoon.
Even that lugubrious EU bureaucrat Donald Tusk, who has been inexcusably rude to Theresa May in the past in what seemed a misogynistic way, pawed Boris affectionately.
So the Nation feels chirpier than it did this time last week. A solution to the impasse suddenly seems feasible, though my blood chilled a little when the Prime Minister declared that Britain could ‘easily cope’ with No Deal. Only in the sense that our ancestors coped easily with the Great Fire of London.
Yet the fact is that, while our spirits are higher than they were, we have not in terms of policy advanced any further. Mrs Merkel has given Boris what he described as a ‘blistering timetable’ of 30 days to come up with a substitute for the dreaded backstop.
This is a moment of truth. On the one hand, the Government has to show quickly that it has credible proposals for avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, and for respecting single market rules in Ireland once the UK has left the EU.
And, on the other hand, Brussels has to demonstrate that it is open-minded enough to accept an alternative to the backstop if one can be found which promises to keep open the border while recognising the integrity of the single market.
This is the $64,000 question: Is the backstop deep-down a ploy by Brussels for keeping the UK in the Customs Union post-Brexit, and subject to EU rules and regulations while no longer having a seat at the table – a kind of vassal state? It is what some Brexiteers suspect, not without cause.
In weeks, we should have a definitive answer to this question. But only if No 10 is able to come up with a detailed set of sensible proposals calculated to appeal to reasonable people.
In yesterday’s press conference, Boris merely conceded that developing new plans was a ‘big job’. He swatted aside a question from the Mail’s Deputy Political Editor, John Stevens, on the subject, and stone-walled or evaded every other question. At the very least he should have shared with us when he will unveil his ideas.
The truth is that he has so far been characteristically broad-brush in describing his alternative plans to a backstop. He has spoken breezily of ‘MaxFac’ or ‘Maximum Facilitation’ (a phrase almost bound to turn off ordinary mortals).
This would involve companies in Northern Ireland and the Republic signing up to ‘trusted trader’ schemes which would remove any need for physical customs checks. Declaration of goods would take place away from the border.
Fortunately for Boris, other minds have spent a good deal of time and effort in fleshing out this thought. One of them is former Tory minister Greg Hands and his Alternative Arrangements Commission.
Mr Hands has spent months working with international technical experts to come up with ideas that would do away with the need for the backstop. He has produced a series of administrative and technological measures, all of which he says are already in place somewhere in the world.
A ‘trusted trader’ scheme similar to that between the US and Canada has been copied, which would avoid routine border checks. There would be animal and food checks away from the border.
His carefully worked out proposals were presented to a gathering of German Cabinet members and German entrepreneurs by Mr Hands in June. He claims his audience was interested and sympathetic.
Meanwhile, a different set of ideas has been presented by Sir Jonathan Faull, a former Eurocrat, and a group of academics. Outlined on yesterday’s Radio Four Today programme, they enlist the criminal law in both the Republic and Northern Ireland. It would become an offence under UK and EU law for companies or individuals to export goods in commercial quantities across the border on which duties had not been paid, and which did not meet each side’s specifications.
Sir Jonathan is no loony, misty-eyed Brexiteer but a hard-headed former civil servant who has spent his working life in Brussels, and understands the pedantic mindset of the Commission, and its obsessive adherence to single market rules, as well as any man alive.
The point is that both Greg Hands and Sir Jonathan Faull – and no doubt there are other eminent people – have studied this problem carefully, and believe there are workable alternative arrangements to the backstop. Of course, it would take months to finalise any new plan.
But this could be done during a transition period after Britain leaves the EU on October 31 – provided there is a deal.
In short, much of the spadework has been done. Boris and his team at No 10 need to focus on various viable proposals, and produce a plausible scheme to present to Angela Merkel & Co in very short order.
I am presuming the Prime Minister wants to meet Mrs Merkel’s challenge.
I trust there isn’t a powerful faction in No 10 which would prefer No Deal in any circumstances, and will try to thwart every attempt to avoid it.
What will happen when the Government brings forward its new ideas? The answer to that question must partly depend on whether, when that point is reached, Brussels thinks Boris has overcome Remainer resistance, and must therefore be dealt with.
For we may be certain that as long as EU leaders believe a cross-party coalition is likely to see off Boris, they won’t offer him any concessions on the backstop, or anything else.
And if Boris vanquishes his political opponents? In those circumstances, should EU leaders – not least Ireland’s intransigent Leo Varadkar – persist in clinging to the backstop, the conclusion will be that they don’t want to reach a sensible agreement with the British Government.
They have insisted time and again that the backstop is only temporary. Even curmudgeonly chief negotiator Michel Barnier has reiterated it.
This will be shown to have been a lie if they refuse to replace it even after Boris comes up with a practical substitute.
If the EU is genuine in saying the backstop is not permanent, why in God’s name can’t it accept that its removal must be agreed now rather than at some unspecified date in the future? As the Prime Minister wrote in his letter to Donald Tusk last week, no sovereign country can accept being locked into an international agreement from which it can’t escape without the say-so of other states.
The backstop has been rejected three times by Parliament. The British Government wants rid of it. It will soon present an alternative – and only then we will discover whether or not the European Union wants a reasonable deal. 
Watching Boris Johnson over recent days, I have felt like a supporter disenchanted with a heavyweight boxer who has just made a long-awaited comeback.
We always knew he was an unconventional and unpredictable fighter, and that he likes to bend the rules. There have even been plausible claims of cheating in the past.
Nonetheless, like many others, I was prepared this time last week to cheer on Battling Boris in the belief that he offered the best chance of Britain leaving the EU. I certainly felt he could be counted on to hit the target.
What a disappointment he has been! His campaign was chaotic — so much so that Iain Duncan Smith has been brought in to introduce some order — and marked by accusations of lying.
In almost every way, Boris has proved astonishingly poorly prepared for the fight of his life. The only thing in his favour is that Jeremy Hunt has failed to capitalise on his shortcomings.
Whether the 160,000 Tory Party members who will choose the next prime minister share my sense of let-down with Mr Johnson I can’t say. But I’m pretty sure millions of voters will be equally bewildered, if not aghast.
Can this blustering, evasive, imprecise, surprisingly depressed-looking figure really be the acme of our nation’s hopes? Is a man who declines 23 times to answer questions about a stage-managed photo of himself and his partner, Carrie Symonds, fit to run the country?
The picture itself was of zero importance. All that matters is whether it was taken, as it was purported to be, after their recent spat. Or whether it was of older vintage, and conjured up by spin doctors to convey a false impression of mutual adoration. Boris refuses to enlighten us.
Maybe begging him to be truthful and honest is no more profitable than howling at the moon. Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand to expect him to provide a credible account of how Britain can extricate itself as painlessly as possible from the EU.
And maybe, too, the majority of the mostly white, rather elderly Tory Party members will go on rooting for their man whatever weaknesses in his character are exposed, and no matter how many slippery arguments are revealed.
But shouldn’t the rest of us still try to hold him to account? Are those of us who aren’t, and have never been, members of the Conservative Party, obliged to believe that Boris can walk on water?
Look at his contention that Britain has little to fear from a No Deal Brexit because Article 24 of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) treaty provides a legal basis for a standstill agreement with the EU, during which zero tariffs and quotas can be maintained until a new trade deal is agreed.
When this assertion was debunked by the director-general of the World Trade Organisation, the governor of the Bank of England and the deputy prime minister, my immediate thought was: they would say that, wouldn’t they? Aren’t they all anti-Brexit?
But then the purist and practically life-long Eurosceptic Liam Fox stepped forward to point out that such an arrangement would require the agreement of the EU, which Brussels has ruled out.
Having been International Trade Secretary for nearly three years, Dr Fox knows a thing or two about GATT. Boris knows somewhat less. The last time he mentioned the word in a newspaper article was 22 years ago.
It is, of course, possible that the EU will raise the white flag and come to an accommodation which it has categorically repudiated. Unlikely, though. Mr Johnson’s plan is a long shot, yet he talks confidently in blithe generalities.
Dr Fox (who backs Jeremy Hunt) has chided him by saying it is essential that the public debate is conducted ‘on the basis of fact, rather than supposition’. Shouldn’t that be obvious?
Somehow it feels as though we have been here before. Think of the Leave Campaign’s battle bus during the 2016 referendum with its misleading slogan: ‘We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead.’
It was a silly and unnecessary lie, because our net contribution is still a huge figure — around £250 million a week. Yet Boris defended the falsehood at the time, and has continued to do so since, allowing his critics to accuse him of peddling untruths.
At this moment of national crisis, it behoves him to be painstakingly exact and punctilious in his statements, and not to lead the public to believe that a No Deal Brexit could be simple and straightforward.
In other words, it’s high time the old broad-brush Boris was replaced by a candid and realistic one. I know he is preoccupied with attracting the votes of Tory Party members, but he is inevitably addressing the whole country. It is a terrible mistake to engender hopes that can’t be met.
There is another aspect to his stuttering campaign that in its way is almost as alarming. The light appears to have gone out of Boris. His much-vaunted ability to instil optimism seems almost to have vanished, no doubt because his own optimism has disappeared.
Very likely this reflects his state of mind. Boris is in the throes of a divorce from a woman to whom he has been married for much of his adult life, and who was a rock to him during many difficulties.
Divorce is never easy, and in this instance it is obviously extremely painful to him.
Some of his children are said to be critical of his setting up home with a woman 24 years younger, who in age could be his daughter. I don’t know whether this relationship is as tumultuous as last week’s quarrel suggests, but it doesn’t seem to be bringing him as much happiness as one might expect.
There’s absolutely nothing any of us can do about this, of course. It is nonetheless disquieting when the usually upbeat prospective captain of the ship, whose chief political attribute is an ability to spread good cheer, is so down in the dumps.
All in all, it’s impossible not to be made despondent by the vacuity of this leadership campaign. Given Boris’s frailties, one might have expected Jeremy Hunt to have stepped into the breach, but he hasn’t yet done so.
Indeed, setting aside his generally lacklustre performance, he has been dangling spending promises (defence expenditure up by 25 per cent in five years) and pledges of cuts in corporation tax without even reaching for his pocket calculator. Boris has admittedly been doing much the same.
Such contests don’t bring out the best in any politician, and one can only hope that whichever of them is chosen — and, in view of the electorate, Boris remains the favourite, despite the upsets of recent days — will govern with his feet on the ground.
But I can’t be the only onlooker profoundly depressed by the whole shallow, misleading business. So much is at stake — our prosperity, our ability to govern ourselves, the future of the union.
One yearns for a politician with the wisdom, the courage and the vision to plot the right path — and keep a Marxist out of No 10. If only Boris were the man. Watching him over the past few days, it’s getting harder to believe he is. 
When the official history of the interminable Brexit saga comes to be written — not a book I personally look forward very much to reading — last night’s votes in the Commons may be judged seismic.
Nearly three-and-a-half years after the referendum, MPs finally voted in favour of Britain leaving the EU in accordance with the outcome of that historic decision.
Theresa May tried three times. Boris Johnson was thwarted last Saturday and again on Monday, first by the sinuous Tory Remainer Sir Oliver Letwin, and then by the shamelessly pro-Remain Speaker, John Bercow.
There have been hundreds of hours of Commons deliberation, repeated EU summits, millions of words in newspapers and on TV, countless journeys to and from Brussels by officials and politicians. Brexit has driven the country and much of Europe half mad.
Yet at last the Prime Minister has won a longed-for victory, and by a surprisingly comfortable margin — only to have the prize immediately snatched from his hands by a familiar combination of a self-serving Labour front bench and irreconcilable Remainer MPs.
Just when it seemed we might be on the road to some sort of resolution, hopes have been dashed by members demanding more time to scrutinise the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
The consequence might well be more chaos in the short-term. Although Mr Johnson threatened yesterday in the Commons to pull the bill rather than ‘allow more months of this’, last night he spoke only of ‘pausing’ it.
Millions of people will be bemused, depressed, exasperated or infuriated. In normal times, MPs would have been justified in asking for more time to look at a bill of such complexity, though there is much in it that is familiar from Mrs May’s deal. But these are far from normal times.
Before we sink into despair, though, let’s recognise that the PM has won a great symbolic victory, if not yet one nailed down in law. One way and another, I believe he will be able to build on yesterday’s considerable achievement.
Many reasonable voters, including Remainers, will acknowledge that he finally got a Brexit vote through the Commons, and did so less than three months after becoming Prime Minister.
And this was accomplished despite many in Parliament and the media accusing him of engaging in a sham negotiation whose only purpose was to provide bogus cover for what was allegedly his real intention of finagling a No Deal.
Such scepticism was not confined to opposition parties. Many supposedly on his side doubted his ability to close a deal with Brussels. One of them was Rory Stewart, a candidate in the recent Tory leadership contest won by Boris.
This is what Mr Stewart said almost exactly a month ago: ‘If he does get a deal through, I would not stand again. I would be the first to apologise. I would get down on bended knees in front of Boris and admit I’d been wrong.’
It’s true he acknowledged a few days ago that his pessimism had been misplaced, but he has certainly not yet gone down ‘on bended knee’. Nor has he given us any clue that he will give up his political career by not standing to be the next Mayor of London.
I’m not particularly gunning at Mr Stewart. The point is that, despite been surrounded by naysayers, Mr Johnson has triumphantly delivered a deal which many people had declared impossible — before being tripped up by an obdurate House of Commons.
Only last week, after being deserted by the Democratic Unionist Party — and I fear the PM did betray them over his new customs proposals for Northern Ireland — many sages forecast that he could never win a pro-Brexit vote. Last night he did, by a whopping 30 votes.
However maddening the subsequent vote to drag out the progress of the bill, it is surely highly likely that Boris’s single-mindedness and determination will have put him on the high ground of British politics in many voters’ minds.
Whatever happens, as a result of events last night, it now seems inconceivable that Britain can leave the EU on October 31, as the PM has endlessly promised that we would.
But it’s not implausible, though perhaps unlikely, that he could come to an agreement with opposition parties to limit the process of scrutinising the bill to two or three weeks, after which time we might be able to leave the EU if the bill were approved in anything like its existing form.
Nor is it beyond the realms of possibility that Brussels will only offer a short extension of a few weeks. In that case, there would be pressure on Remainer MPs (who are terrified of No Deal) to limit whatever delaying or wrecking tactics they may be self-indulgently dreaming up.
If Mr Johnson were able to deliver Brexit in, say, late November, I don’t believe the electorate would accuse him of having inexcusably prolonged the agony. Fair-minded people can see he had done his utmost to fulfil his promise, only to be frustrated by scheming MPs.
So notwithstanding his warning yesterday that he would not countenance ‘months’ of delay, I can imagine him putting up with a few more weeks if there seemed a reasonable chance of ‘getting Brexit done’.
But I’m not at all sure that he needs to achieve such an outcome this side of an election. In the past few days, Remainer MPs have been defining themselves in exactly the way Mr Johnson wants to present them — as incorrigible opponents of almost any version of Brexit.
The stage is now set — from the Prime Minister’s point of view more favourably than ever before — for a Parliament versus the People election in which he can portray himself as the democratic defender of the 2016 referendum result, as well as a decisive and indomitable leader.
It’s perfectly true, of course, that due to the ill-conceived and idiotic Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, Boris can’t call an election at a time of his choosing.
That said, there are various ways by which he could precipitate one. The Scots Nats might be encouraged to call a vote of No Confidence in the Government in which the Tories abstained.
Or the PM could present a short bill, which might be supported by opposition parties other than Labour, negating the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act and enabling an immediate election.
Even if these or other ruses failed, is it really conceivable that Labour could continue to resist an election day after day, week after week, having so frequently and so vehemently demanded one?
Quite possibly Labour might attempt to worm its way out of its existing commitment to embrace an election once No Deal is off the table. But if it did so, it would risk damaging its electoral prospects.
Political parties exist to fight elections and win power. If Jeremy Corbyn cowers in the shadows, producing increasingly implausible reasons for refusing to engage, he and his party will inevitably suffer.
After last night’s debacle, some will say that things have gone from bad to worse. I don’t believe they have. Even if it’s not possible to predict every step by which Boris Johnson will deliver Brexit and vanquish Labour, I’m increasingly confident that he will.
 
Has it come to this? In a modern democracy, can one vainglorious politician really be allowed to override the votes of 17.4million people?
Even before Speaker John Bercow made his controversial ruling yesterday — preventing the Government from bringing back its deal to the Commons in its present form — this country was in a state of abject chaos.
Now, for no reason other than the overweening vanity of a deluded man, this alarming state of affairs has suddenly got much worse. Where in God’s name do we go from here?
What happens if Theresa May can’t put her proposal to the Commons this week, as she had hoped to do, had there been a reasonable chance of it passing at the third time of asking? 
Will we, as everything falls apart, find ourselves leaving the EU on March 29 with No Deal — which few people want?
Begging
It’s certainly possible. That is the law of the land as things stand, and March 29 is a mere ten days away. It’s certainly not Mrs May’s intention, but I am afraid power is being wrested from her grasp by other hands — not least John Bercow’s.
Of course, No Deal is not what he wants either. He hopes to kill off her deal, and force her to go to the summit of EU leaders later this week begging for a longer extension of many months.
If that were granted, it is likely Brexit would be undone, either by a referendum or by so watering down the terms of disengagement as to make leaving the EU virtually meaningless. That is what Bercow longs for.
How can I say this? How can I accuse a man, whose almost sacred duty it is to be impartial, of twisting the rules to favour the cause of staying in the EU, which he espouses?
I don’t attach enormous importance to the fact that a sticker proclaiming ‘Bo***cks to Brexit’ was displayed in a car Bercow says belongs to his wife but on which he has a claim, though it is surely not insignificant.
No, I rest my charge of bias on his conduct as Speaker of the Commons. As recently as last week, he refused to accept an amendment which sought to block a second referendum even though it had cross-party support and had been signed by 127 MPs. 
Instead, he chose an amendment in favour of a second People’s Vote with many fewer signatures, which was defeated ignominiously.
Until yesterday, the worst instance of his partiality was in mid-January, when, against the advice of Commons clerks, and in defiance of centuries of procedure, he allowed anti-Brexit Tory rebel Dominic Grieve (with whom he had shared a cosy chat in his private apartment the previous evening) to table an amendment to a Government motion.
This was the first major undermining of the Prime Minister’s authority, and it forced her to reveal alternative plans three days after being defeated on her so-called ‘meaningful vote’, rather than the 21 days she had intended.
But what happened yesterday was worse. Of course, there will be some, especially on the Labour side, who will defend Bercow’s elaborate appeal to precedent — going back as far as 1604 and ending 99 years ago in 1920 — in which he sought to establish that a government couldn’t bring back a Bill in substantially the same form once it had been defeated. 
There are those who are saying that he is simply passing independent judgment based on parliamentary procedure that has developed through custom and practice over the centuries.
Yet what was so risible about this historical trawl is that the Speaker who venerated precedent yesterday, and based his judgment on it, swept it aside dismissively when allowing Grieve’s amendment in January. 
On that occasion he said: ‘If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change.’
Only two months ago, Bercow also said, in direct contradiction to his pious ransacking of history yesterday: ‘I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so.’
The truth is that Bercow has seldom showed any love for precedent. 
When he became Speaker in 2009, he eschewed the traditional horsehair wig and breeches and buckled shoes, earning the disapprobation of a previous Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, who sadly mourned ‘700 years of history’ which Bercow was cheerfully junking.
In other words, Bercow is perfectly capable of ignoring the past, and waving the flag of modernity, whenever it suits him.
Yesterday it didn’t. He wants to find a reason to strangle the Prime Minister’s deal, and was happy to appeal to Erskine May (a constitutional theorist who died in 1886) to bolster his opportunistic case.
Obstruct
The truth is that even on this narrow reading of the past, he is probably wrong. A much greater constitutional expert on these matters than Bercow took an entirely different view in front of the Commons Brexit Committee last October.
When asked whether the Government could bring back its deal to the House if it had been defeated, Sir David Natzler, then Clerk of the Commons, a very important position, replied: ‘I do not think the procedures of the House are designed to obstruct the necessary business of Government in that way in such a crucial thing.’
And last night, Sir Stephen Laws QC, a former First Parliamentary Counsel, said: ‘If there is a majority for the deal, preventing the vote would be to frustrate the will of the House. It would be deeply concerning to see a Speaker act in such a way.’
Both learned opinions strongly suggest that at a time of crisis, when the future of the country is at stake, ancient parliamentary rules first laid down in 1604 cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the national interest in 2019.
Let me give one more example of the breathtaking inconsistency of Bercow. 
Yesterday, not for the first time, he chided the Government for postponing its ‘meaningful vote’ in December, which he described as ‘discourteous’. 
Yet he issued his earth-shattering guidance yesterday without giving the Government any prior warning. Wasn’t that discourteous?
Calamity
What can the Government do now that it is required by a partisan Speaker to make significant changes to its Bill before it can be introduced again to the Commons?
It’s difficult to know. The irony is that Mrs May would alter her deal if she could, but Brussels has told her she can’t. Speaker Bercow is asking for something that is not in her power to give. 
She could of course weaken it — say by agreeing to the UK staying in the Customs Union — but that is not what she has spent two years negotiating.
By the way, I was sorry to see Sir Bill Cash, a hard-line though honourable Brexiteer, welcome Bercow’s ruling. He evidently thinks it takes us closer to No Deal. But that is not what the country wants. 
And, as I have said, it’s more likely that the result of what happened yesterday will be a long extension that takes us ever further from Brexit.
Events are moving with dizzying speed, with one crisis following hard on the heels of another. By the end of this week, some new calamity may have erupted that makes us forget Bercow’s destructive manoeuvring. 
Conceivably he will climb down. Or maybe the Government will find a way of outfoxing him.
All I can say now is how utterly depressing it is to live in a country in which a political minnow such as Bercow can grab hold of the levers of power, and try to nullify the votes of 17.4 million people.
A few months ago, the Brexit Party was the talk of Westminster. It had won the most seats in May's European elections. Many pundits forecast that without its support, the Tory Government could never deliver Brexit.
But its fortunes have declined since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister and began to act decisively on the EU.
Having enjoyed ratings of 20 per cent and more in polls during the early summer, it has gradually lost ground to the Conservatives, and now stands at around 10 per cent.
In recent weeks, it has been remarkable how little talk there has been about Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party. Some Tories think it won't play a critical role in the election. However, they could be tragically mistaken.
The fact is that the party still retains the ability to inflict terrible damage on Mr Johnson by splitting the pro-Leave vote in many seats. 
The consequences could be dramatic even if the Brexit Party won very few constituencies.
Let's consider the electoral arithmetic. The Tories seem likely to lose seats to the Lib Dems, and even Labour, in Remain areas of London and the South East, and to the Scottish Nationalists north of the border. How many? The number could be 30 or 40.
So it follows that Mr Johnson will have to win as many seats, and more, in Leave-voting parts of the country if he is going to obtain an overall Commons majority: Wales, parts of Essex and Lincolnshire, and large swathes of northern England.
How can he do this if the Brexit Party takes a large slice of Leave votes in many of these constituencies? For, although the PM can reasonably say he has negotiated a pretty tough deal with Brussels, Mr Farage's argument that it amounts to a sell-out could resonate with some Leave voters.
So far as one can judge, No 10 has no intention of coming to any kind of pact with these fellow Brexiteers. Dominic Cummings and the cluster of former Vote Leave strategists working with him loathe Mr Farage for reasons which seem more personal than ideological.
Their reasoning appears to be that they have squeezed the Brexit Party in recent months, and will continue to do so as Leave voters reflect that Mr Johnson's deal gets Britain out of the EU, and moreover that Mr Farage has no chance of getting his hands near the levers of power.
No 10 has gone out of its way to disparage Mr Farage. Last month, someone claiming to be speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister said he was not a 'fit and proper person' to enter government, and so no formal alliance was imaginable. 
Mr Farage would have to be a very broad-minded politician to ignore such cheap brickbats. But if there was ever a time for rising above playground insults, this is it.
Whatever one may think of the Brexit Party leader, it can scarcely be denied he has been one of the most influential British politicians of the past 30 or 40 years. Long after Dominic Cummings has been forgotten, Nigel Farage will be remembered.
Without him and Ukip – which he built up from being a voice crying in the wilderness – there would have been no EU referendum. 
He is responsible for that momentous event more than anyone, just as he can't escape responsibility for the bitter divisions it has created.
Obviously one believes his sincerity in saying the PM's deal is 'appalling'. It undeniably falls short of the 'clean break' he has advocated.
But what happens if Tory and Brexit candidates gouge out one another's eyes in many constituencies – though it seems unlikely Mr Farage will get close to fielding candidates in all 650 of them?
The answer is Boris Johnson might lose the election, and a combination of Labour, Scots Nats and Lib Dems would somehow reverse the result of the 2016 referendum.
After all he has achieved, can this really be what Mr Farage wants? One might add that, if the Tories are defeated, he would also very likely get a Marxist Prime Minister into the bargain, who might connive with SNP allies in the break-up of the UK.
Nigel Farage is above all a patriot. What would be the point of all he has worked to achieve if, at the end of it all, Britain stays in the EU, possibly shorn of a third of its land and five million people?
This is the time for compromise – on both sides. Given the antipathy between the leaderships of the parties, an official electoral pact may not be feasible. But there could be a form of local understanding on the ground.
Would it be wise, for example, for the Brexit Party to field a candidate against arch Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford, where he has a majority of just 2,438? The likely upshot of doing so would be to let in Labour.
Furthermore, there are some Leave-voting, working-class seats in the North in which a Brexit candidate would have a better chance of defeating Labour than a Conservative. So why not cooperate?
Some senior people in the Brexit Party are evidently eager to do so. Its chairman Richard Tice yesterday urged the Tories to form a Brexiteer alliance with his party, which would deliver a 'thumping election victory'.
Nigel Farage is less keen on the idea. Nevertheless, he knows he'll never be Prime Minister, and nor does he want to be. He is a champion of a cause, not a party man.
Thus why not – with a little give from Boris Johnson and the prickly Dominic Cummings – come to an agreement which should ensure Jeremy Corbyn is kept out of No 10, and the last opportunity of honouring Brexit is finally delivered?
Theresa May’s statement in the Commons yesterday has been described as a surrender or a U-turn or a humiliation.
The woman who has repeatedly declared that Britain will leave the EU on March 29 was forced to concede that we may, after all, extricate ourselves three months later. Some will question whether we will ever get out. I certainly do.
So it is very tempting to mark this down as one more mistake by the Prime Minister to add to the many errors of which she has undoubtedly been guilty during the whole lamentable Brexit process.
Rampant
But then we must ask: what else could she have done if she wants, as she obviously does, to keep the Government in one piece? She was put in an impossible situation by insurgent Remainer ministers who threatened to resign unless she took No Deal off the table and postponed the departure date.
In this I believe the impatient rebel ministers were much mistaken. Of course they are right to be frightened of No Deal, even though one may wonder whether rampant scare stories are not being grossly overdone.
But neither Mrs May nor Parliament was ever going to allow No Deal. It was a necessary fiction — its sole purpose to nudge the EU into making last-minute concessions over the so-called Backstop.
A good comparison is Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent. Our enemies can be almost certain that no British PM would ever dare use it; but not entirely so. All that is needed for it to be effective is one per cent of doubt.
The rebellious ministers — Amber Rudd, Greg Clark, David Gauke — and those further down the food chain have destroyed the tiny sliver of doubt that might have been sufficient to persuade Brussels that Britain might, just might, leave without a deal, which is an outcome the EU certainly doesn’t want.
Now a vote is scheduled for March 13 which will establish what we all knew but should not be declared in absolute terms — namely that there is a strong majority in the Commons against No Deal.
And once that position has been needlessly clarified to the satisfaction of Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk and the rest, another vote would follow which would, if passed, as seems probable, keep us in the EU for three more months.
And what exactly will be achieved by that? What miraculous solutions to intractable problems are likely to emerge? None, of course. It’s true that Mrs May yesterday did not rule out No Deal at the end of an extension period, but Brussels now knows the Government does not have the heart for it.
It seems very likely that during these three months the will to leave the EU would wither still further, while the arguments in favour of a ‘People’s Vote’ would strengthen, supported with ever increasing enthusiasm by the Labour Front Bench, now that it has cynically embraced the cause.
How they must be smirking in Brussels! Such leverage as we had has been destroyed by Remainer ministers who insisted on making clear what should have been left in doubt. Meanwhile, we may find ourselves in a kind of limbo, which I suspect would act as a bridge to our staying in the EU.
These rebellious Remainer ministers have proved themselves far more deadly in ambushing and suborning the Prime Minister than their noisy Brexiteer counterparts.
Boris Johnson, David Davis and Dominic Raab flounced out of the Cabinet and withdrew grandiloquently from the field of battle. Beady-eyed Remainers stayed and fought — and have succeeded in bending Mrs May to their will.
Except that there is still one last chance for us to leave the EU and honour the democratic vote of 17.4 million people which took place on — how long ago it seems! — June 23, 2016.
Knowledgeable pundits are already prophesying that when Mrs May’s dog-eared deal returns to the Commons on March 12, it will again be resoundingly defeated.
Possibly a few bells and whistles will be added to it as a result of the exertions of Geoffrey Cox, the orotund attorney-general, and Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, during their continuing talks with EU panjandrums in Brussels.
But whether a cast-iron, legally impregnable codicil will be agreed that demonstrates to all concerned that we can’t be kept in a Backstop arrangement and the Customs Union against our will — well, that may be doubted.
As I have said, now that the threat of No Deal is about to be formally removed from the table, such willingness as Brussels may have had to be accommodating could vanish.
Purist
So when the vote takes place in less than two weeks’ time, it may be that what is on offer doesn’t appear much more enticing to purist Brexiteers than it did when the Government experienced the greatest defeat ever in parliamentary history in the middle of January.
The initial reaction of the Brexiteers to Mrs May’s volte-face has hardly been encouraging. Jacob Rees-Mogg (who perhaps fittingly was performing in front of a rapturous audience last night at the London Palladium) has muttered of a plot ‘to stop Brexit’. Meanwhile, in today’s Mail, former Brexit secretary David Davis uses uncharacteristically strong language to accuse the PM of ‘capitulating to blackmail’ by Tory Remainers.
And yet despite these inauspicious signs, I hope and I pray that the Brexiteers, some of whom I admire, will swallow their reservations in the name of pragmatism. The March 12 vote will almost certainly be their last opportunity to achieve Brexit in any shape or form.
Of course Mrs May’s deal is badly flawed. Without any doubt it offers less than the clean break for which many of us yearned following the referendum result.
Betrayed
On the other hand, it would unequivocally take us out of the EU, and give us control over our fishing, our farming, our borders and our trade policy. Ultimately, we would escape the long hand of the European Court.
If you had told any of these disgruntled Brexiteers five or ten years ago that such an outcome might be achievable, they would have grabbed it incredulously with both hands.
The day after Britons voted to get out of the EU, I suggested to a friend who is a prominent Brexiteer that the political class would never let us leave.
He agreed — and added that democracy would be betrayed if the vote wasn’t honoured, though at least the whole episode would deliver a shock to those who rule over us.
I’m not sure how shocked they would be to get their way. They’re used to it, after all. But it’s now clear that those intimations of a stitch-up were well-founded.
And now it really is five minutes to midnight. Battered, brave — and, let’s be honest, flawed like her deal — Mrs May is still trying to honour the wishes of those who voted for Brexit because she believes in the democratic ideal.
The Brexiteers can call it a sell-out, if they like. They can complain as much as they want. This is the only chance we will have to leave the EU. There won’t be another.
What will European leaders have made of Boris Johnson’s barnstorming speech on the steps of No 10 yesterday afternoon? He threw down the gauntlet to them as has never happened in the past three years.
They can’t have been in much doubt about his determination to deliver Brexit by October 31. He was splendidly clear that, in the event of No Deal, the EU would not receive its £39 billion divorce settlement negotiated with Theresa May.
Remember that EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier recently told the BBC that Mrs May had never specifically threatened No Deal — despite her oft-repeated mantra that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’.
Indeed, Eurocrats such as him did their best to freeze out Mrs May, leaving her to cut a lonely figure during the Brexit negotiations.
If we believe Mr Barnier — and it is hard to understand why he should be lying — he and other Eurocrats must be dumbfounded to hear Mr Johnson proclaiming that, if need be, Britain will leave without a deal and renege on its payment to Brussels.
And last night Boris asked Michael Gove, seen as one of the most capable talents in Westminster, to accelerate cross-Government planning for No Deal.
One could scarcely imagine a more emphatic statement of the new Prime Minister’s willingness to take us out of Europe without a deal than this appointment.
Of course, the EU may comfort itself with the thought that, when push comes to shove, Boris may be in no position to bring about No Deal even if he wants to. The parliamentary arithmetic is seemingly against him.
On the other hand, EU panjandrums can’t be sure that he couldn’t use Labour rebels to get No Deal through Parliament, or that he won’t call an election on the issue and win a bigger majority.
So there will be a lot of stunned and worried people in Brussels and around the capitals of Europe today. The question is whether a plausible threat of No Deal is likely to have any effect on the EU’s negotiating position.
We should obviously be cautious. When Mrs May was trying to force the Withdrawal Agreement through the Commons earlier in the year, some forecast that Brussels would give ground on the so-called backstop, which potentially binds Britain into the Customs Union for ever against its will.
It seemed to many — and still seems — a relatively trivial matter in the great scheme of things. Surely the EU wouldn’t jeopardise the Withdrawal Agreement over a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, which (it is rightly argued by Boris and other Brexiteers) could be policed by non-intrusive means.
In the event, Brussels (with the Irish government breathing down its neck) wouldn’t budge. Mrs May’s bill duly foundered, and so she lost her job.
EU officials and the Irish government have in recent weeks endlessly repeated the formula that, while the legally non-binding political declaration might be re-opened to address British concerns over the backstop, there is absolutely no question of renegotiating the Withdrawal Agreement.
This remains the official position. But there are nonetheless hints here, and small clues there, that the EU’s intransigence may be beginning to crumble, or at any rate that some people are having second thoughts.
In Ireland, in particular, there are signs of increasing alarm at the prospect of No Deal, which was never considered a plausible outcome while Mrs May was in No 10. The country might suffer from No Deal more than Britain.
Half the country’s beef, timber and construction material exports are sold in the UK. More than two-thirds of goods exporters use Britain as a ‘land bridge’. Ireland would be badly hit by the inevitable chaos of No Deal, and by tariffs on its exports to the UK.
Almost for the first time, Leo Varadkar, the hitherto unbending prime minister of Ireland, is being criticised in the Irish Press. For example, the political editor of the Irish Times has suggested he get off his high horse.
There has, so far, been no change of policy on the part of the Irish. But Mr Varadkar has said that he will at least listen to alternatives to the existing arrangements concerning the Backstop.
Meanwhile, Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney, having observed that a No-Deal Brexit would be a disaster for us all, has recently declared that the EU would be willing to change parts of the political declaration relating to the backstop.
Both Mr Varadkar and Mr Coveney have also repeatedly said that Ireland won’t accept a hard border with Northern Ireland in any eventuality — which happens to be Boris’s (and previously Mrs May’s) position.
If both sides agree there won’t be a hard border — in other words, that the border between the EU and the UK could be policed by non-intrusive means — one can’t help wondering what all the fuss is about. Is the gulf between the two parties really all that large?
Now that the Irish government is, for the first time, seriously contemplating the damage No Deal would inflict on Ireland’s economy, an agreement with Britain seems more likely.
Brussels also has powerful reasons for wanting to reach an accommodation, though it has legitimate concerns about preserving the sanctity of the Single Market, which would be threatened by a free-for-all across the Irish border.
There are reports of a multi-billion euro aid package for Ireland to shield it from the dire effects of a No-Deal Brexit. This is money other EU countries can ill-afford as the bloc’s major economy, Germany, teeters on the edge of recession.
The U.S.-China trade war, the cooling of the Chinese car market and fears of a No-Deal Brexit are casting a pall over German business confidence. According to one leading think-tank, the country’s manufacturing industry has effectively been in recession since mid-2018.
The German government is not only worried about the cost of bailing out Ireland — and it would undoubtedly be the major contributor to such a rescue plan.
It is also keenly aware of the impact on its already weakened economy of a No-Deal Brexit, and has every incentive to avoid such an outcome now that Boris Johnson has seriously put it on the cards.
Moreover, the EU Commission in Brussels should take seriously the new Prime Minister’s statement that Britain won’t pay the £39 billion divorce settlement if we leave without a deal.
Boris’s threat is arguably in breach of international law, and of our legal commitment to pay future EU pension liabilities. But Brussels can hardly afford not to take him at his word.
Am I clutching at straws? There is certainly a danger in exaggerating the EU’s readiness to compromise. If we have learnt anything over the past three years, it is that Eurocrats are obstinate and doctrinaire, and very good at losing sight of the big picture — which is European prosperity.
But Boris has changed the game. For the first time, European leaders — and none more than those in Ireland — are genuinely terrified of No Deal and the consequences it might have on their economies.
Ursula von der Leyen, who becomes the new President of the European Commission on November 1 in succession to Jean-Claude Juncker, recently said that a no-deal Brexit would have ‘massively negative consequences’ for both Britain and the EU. She’s right.
In the end, both sides will have to compromise. But no such agreement will be possible without Boris keeping No Deal firmly and convincingly on the table. Those on the Tory side who threaten to take it off are playing with fire.
 
Even Boris Johnson's enemies couldn't reasonably claim his seven weeks in office have been dull. 
No sooner does one thunderbolt shoot out of the blue than it is followed by another from an unsuspected direction.
The ruling of three senior Scottish judges that the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament illegally, and hoodwinked Her Majesty the Queen in the process, sounds on the surface about as serious as it can get.
If the judges are correct, the Queen has been unwittingly complicit in an unlawful act.
It's a good thing she can't be summoned to her own court, and asked to relate how she was led down the garden path by a Mr B. Johnson. 
Not for the first time, he has been accused of duplicitous behaviour towards a member of the female sex.
Paranoid
Did he pull the wool over her eyes? Is this, as some foaming Remainers assert, another constitutional outrage which should result in his resignation, and even imprisonment?
I submit the answer to both questions is 'No', and I would guess - though obviously I can't be sure - that in a week or so we will have moved on from this crisis and be hysterically gripped by another.
I believe the Scottish judges are completely wrong. I don't impugn their motives, and won't make much of the revelation that one of them, Lord Brodie, heads an organisation which aims for 'the development of Franco-Scottish relations in a globalised world'.
It would be paranoid of me to suggest that Lord Brodie harbours dreams of reviving the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, or indeed that any of their lordships has a private political agenda that might have affected their judgment in any way.
Nonetheless, it's a pity they did not heed the wise words of their judicial colleague, Lord Doherty, who last week dismissed the identical petition in a lower court in Edinburgh, brought by the same cross-party group of 79 politicians, the vast majority, if not all of whom, are avid Remainers.
This is what Lord Doherty said: 'The advice given [by the PM to the Queen] in relation to the prorogation decision is a matter involving high policy and political judgment. 
'This is political territory and decision-making which cannot be measured against legal standards, but only by political judgments.'
In other words, unless a law has been broken - and in Lord Doherty's view it has not been — judges should not attempt to apply a legal yardstick to political decisions, whether they like them or not.
A very similar conclusion was drawn by three of the most senior judges of England and Wales last week in the High Court in respect of a case brought by anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller, and supported by former Prime Minister Sir John Major.
In their ruling they stated: 'We concluded that the decision of the Prime Minister was not justiciable [capable of being settled by law]. It is not a matter for the courts.' 
They added that the advice given by Mr Johnson to the Queen was 'inherently political in nature and there are no legal standards against which to judge [its] legitimacy'.
The three Scottish judges yesterday arrived at a different view. Although I would be the last man on earth to suggest they were influenced to the slightest degree by their political opinions, it is striking how political in tone their ruling often sounds.
They infer, without adducing any evidence, that the Prime Minister's purpose in requesting a prorogation was 'to stymie parliamentary scrutiny' and 'impede Parliament'.   
Very possibly it was, but where is their proof?
Conceivably we will learn more when their lordships publish their complete judgment tomorrow. 
But many observers expect the Supreme Court to find against the Scottish court, and to endorse last week's High Court ruling, when it considers the matter next Tuesday.
Oh, I should have mentioned. A Northern Irish court is due to produce its own opinion today, and that will be thrown into the pot for consideration by the Supreme Court.
Isn't this all a maddening distraction and waste of time? 
What is the benefit of so many learned judges, plus battalions of highly paid, disputatious lawyers, arguing whether or not Boris Johnson overstepped the mark?
Even if the Supreme Court finds against him, all that is likely to happen is that MPs would be recalled for the seven days of sittings which the Prime Minister's prorogation will otherwise deny them over the next five weeks.
Trivial
Some would claim a great victory for freedom, and joyously celebrate that the 'dictator' Johnson has been brought to heel. 
Quite a dictator who can't even call a General Election when he wants to, and is forced by Parliament to write a letter to the EU he doesn't want to send!
I'm afraid overwrought Remainers who claim he is taking unprecedented liberties don't know what they are talking about. Sir John Major - hypocritical scourge of the PM - prorogued Parliament for 19 days in 1997 over a relatively trivial matter.
There was an even more sensational case in 1948, cited by the three senior judges in a full judgment published yesterday of their High Court decision last week against Gina Miller and Sir John.
Having noted that in the past 'prorogation has been used by the Government to gain a legislative and so political advantage', they recall how the post-war Labour administration employed the device to 'facilitate the speedy passage of what became the Parliament Act 1949'. 
This measure had been bitterly opposed by Tory peers.
So it seems that when nice Clement Attlee, the then Prime Minister, prorogued Parliament for political gain, history exculpates him. 
But when wicked, pro-Brexit Boris Johnson does the same thing, he is accused of constitutional vandalism, and reproached by Scottish judges.
Vitriol
For God's sake, can't we all calm down! I realise that some Remainers want to reverse Brexit, but they make themselves ridiculous, and simply increase divisions, when they talk about locking up the PM or call him a dictator.
What Boris Johnson might reasonably ask himself is whether it was worth provoking such a hullaballoo simply to deprive Parliament of seven sitting days. 
The political vitriol he is experiencing far outweighs any gain.
In fact, the gain is probably zero, since the main point of proroguing Parliament was to stop MPs making him write a letter to Brussels to request an extension - which he has now got to do.
It hardly matters to him now whether the Commons is recalled or not.
Boris is very far from being a dictator - he is as much of a democrat as the next man - but his sense of strategy and forward-planning could certainly benefit from a little attention.
I pray the Supreme Court has the good sense next week to accept that what happened over prorogation is a matter of politics, not law, and that it will refuse to follow the three Scottish judges down the perilous path of political interference.
And then, perhaps, we could give Boris Johnson and the Government a chance of coming up with a deal that will honour the outcome of the referendum, and avoid the risk of plunging the country into a needless recession. 
Miracles do happen but the Prime Minister will need a spectacular one to avoid a crushing defeat next Tuesday on the deal she has negotiated with the EU.
It’s clear the intransigent Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), on whose support she relies, is not impressed by such titbits as she has been able to toss in its direction.
Nor is there any evidence that hard-line Brexiteers are weakening in their opposition. They will surely vote in large numbers against her next week, as will a few Tory Remainers.
Meanwhile, her freedom of manoeuvre has been limited by yesterday’s ill-conceived Commons vote requiring her to come back within three days of her expected defeat with an alternative plan.
Of course, it’s still possible that, over the coming days, Brussels will produce an ‘undertaking’ — the word used by Mrs May yesterday — which will assuage the misgivings of her Tory and DUP opponents. But it seems unlikely anything will be offered that might tempt the naysayers.
Resign
So let’s assume she loses next week, and by a wide margin. Many people, and not just her enemies and habitual critics, will declare she has been humiliated and should resign.
Even some who have backed her will join the growing chorus for her to go. They will say no prime minister can survive a defeat of such magnitude on so crucial a piece of legislation. They will demand she stand aside.
In normal times, such an argument would carry a lot of conviction. But these are not normal times. We are at a moment of national crisis. Not as severe as wartime, obviously, but as perilous as it can get in peace time. We don’t have the luxury of getting rid of Mrs May.
I wouldn’t say this if there were any prospect of an alternative leader stepping forward capable of uniting the country, or of practicable policies other than the Prime Minister’s admittedly flawed deal.
Let’s examine possible replacements. Boris Johnson can’t be one because he is so divisive. Maybe he could have cut the mustard immediately after the June 2016 referendum, but it wasn’t to be. As things stand, he, or indeed any other unbending Brexiteer, would rip the Conservative Party apart.
Then there are the middle-grounders such as Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Amber Rudd and even Michael Gove. One of them may be a future prime minister, but not now. They are associated with May’s deal, and are not going to come up with a better one commanding widespread support.
The third possibility is Jeremy Corbyn, who could find himself in No 10 following a snap general election. Does anyone sane seriously think he would negotiate a better deal? To be blunt, he doesn’t have the intellectual acumen to lead our country at such a time.
Besides which, he is unloved and distrusted even in his own party, and would leave a trail of wreckage and misery in many aspects of our national life were he ever to become prime minister.
No, there is no available alternative leader who would be likely to do a better job than Theresa May. This might not be the case in six months or a year. But it is now.
So this, it seems to me, is a good reason for hanging on to her after, as seems probable, she is routed next week. She’s far from perfect, and she’s undoubtedly wounded. It’s just that there’s no one else. Nor —just as importantly — are there preferable alternative policies.
If May’s compromise irrevocably bites the dust, there are four possible outcomes, all of them undesirable. One is a general election, which might give us a Corbyn government — or another Tory administration grappling with the same problems and divisions. The second bad alternative is a second referendum which, apart from being fiendishly complicated to frame in satisfactory terms, would inevitably be an acrimonious and embittering process.
The third unattractive possibility is the so-called Norway option, which would keep us yoked to the EU in many ways without having any say in setting its rules. Although Norway is not in the customs union, people generally mean we should be members of it when they talk about the option. However, there is no consensus for this approach in Parliament or the country.
The fourth unwanted outcome would be No Deal, with all its untold dangers, for which the Government has made scant preparations. How shaming that at the 11th hour it should have hired a small start-up company without any ships to provide extra capacity at the Channel port of Ramsgate.
Mercifully, No Deal is probably the least likely eventuality, since there is a large parliamentary majority against it. Moreover, in her heart, Mrs May abhors the idea. So does most of the Cabinet.
Alternative
If she is offering Parliament a stark choice between No Deal and her deal, it is because she hopes to bludgeon MPs into joining her cause and, even more importantly, because she wants to frighten the EU’s negotiators into offering last-minute concessions.
That is why the Commons vote earlier this week aimed at blocking No Deal was unhelpful as it may persuade Brussels that this scary prospect is less likely. Yesterday’s vote forcing Mrs May to come up with fresh alternative plans within three days of a defeat will have a similar effect.
Only if No Deal remains on the table as a plausible alternative will European leaders contemplate better terms. They should take seriously this week’s warning from the World Bank that a No Deal Brexit would have a damaging global impact.
And if they have any sense, they will reflect that Germany, the Eurozone’s largest economy, is teetering on the edge of a recession into which it might plunge in the event of No Deal.
It’s a game of poker. I wish it wasn’t. I wish Brussels hadn’t insisted on imposing unpalatable conditions on Britain because of an abstruse argument about the sanctity of the Northern Irish border.
Crisis
But there is a decent chance that, if Mrs May’s deal is defeated next week, European leaders will ask themselves whether they really want to precipitate an economic crisis over so meagre an issue.
That is why, on top of everything else I have said, the Prime Minister’s approach offers the hope that EU governments will, in the end, act rationally and adapt this deal in their own best interests so that it is acceptable to the DUP and hard-line Brexiteers.
It’s a risk, of course. The EU might not behave rationally. But there’s less risk involved in sticking with Mrs May’s deal than in any of the other options I have discussed.
Let me add one more thing. Yesterday, we saw the mortifying spectacle of the popinjay Commons Speaker twisting established parliamentary convention so as to give the Prime Minister just three days to produce Plan B if she is defeated.
In practice, this may turn out to be more of an inconvenience than anything else, but watching the vainglorious John Bercow, supported by his Labour sycophants, I gave thanks that we have a courageous, resolute and morally upright Prime Minister who towers above them all.
I doubt she will give up if she loses next week, though, God knows, she must be under unbearable pressure. Her party must not give up on her. There isn’t anyone else who can get us out of the terrible mess we’re in.
 
Sadiq Khan warned the EU to brace for Brexit to be delayed today - as Theresa May put off a Cabinet showdown over her Irish border plan.
The London Mayor told Michel Barnier to be ready to postpone the March deadline as he held talks with the negotiator in Brussels.
He said an extension to the Article 50 process could well be needed while a second referendum or election is held.
The intervention came as Remainers ramped up their campaign to block Brexit as negotiations reach crunch point.
The PM has been scrambling to break the deadlock in talks over the Irish border and future trade plans.
The Cabinet had been expected to sign off on a new proposal to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic this week.
Strictly Come Dancing yesterday emerged as Sir Vince Cable's latest weapon in the fight against Brexit.
The Liberal Democrat leader criticised the state of the negotiations and warned that some of the show's cast could 'disappear' after Britain leaves the EU because they are from Europe.
Sir Vince, an enthusiastic Remainer, insisted this was even more reason for a second referendum – or People's Vote – on the final deal brought back from Brussels by Theresa May.
But his comments infuriated Brexiteers, who accused him of encouraging Brussels to offer Britain a bad deal. 
Sir Vince, who appeared on the Strictly Christmas special in 2010, said: 'The rate things are going with the negotiations, you can see half the Strictly cast disappearing after we leave, which would be a disaster.
'My dance partner was from New Zealand, but you've got the Europeans there. People weren't told about these things.'
The current series of Strictly features dancers Graziano Di Prima and Giovanni Pernice, both from Italy, Gorka Marquez from Spain and Aljaz Skorjanec, who was born in Slovenia. Nadiya Bychkova is from Ukraine, which enjoys visa-free travel with the bloc. 
Sir Vince, danced the foxtrot with partner Erin Boag on the show. He performed well, scoring 36/40 from the judges. 
But the decision has apparently been put off until after Chancellor Philip Hammond's financial package on Monday, with the details still needing to be finalised. 
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is said to have warned that getting the backstop wrong could leave the UK in the 'first circle of Hell' after Brexit, lashed to EU rules without any of the benefits of leaving.
In Brussels today, Mr Khan urged Michel Barnier that an extension to Article 50 would be in the interests of both sides to avert a 'political and economic crisis'.
The visit comes after the EU negotiator hosted Lib Dem leader Vince Cable and SNP Westminster chief Ian Blackford yesterday. 
Mr Khan said after the talks: 'Productive meeting with @MichelBarnier
this morning. Important he hears Londoners' concerns - including the one million EU citizens in our city - who are worried we are heading towards a bad Brexit deal, or no deal, which would be hugely damaging for London.' 
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr Khan said 'what happens over the coming weeks and months will have an enormous impact on London, the UK and all of Europe for many decades to come'.
He said: 'It's now extremely likely that Parliament will vote down any bad deal negotiated by Theresa May, which means it will be in the best interests of both the UK and the EU to extend Article 50 in order to leave time for either a public vote or for a new government to reset the negotiations.
'London and Europe are inextricably linked. Europe's biggest businesses are huge investors in the UK economy, they depend heavily on the UK market and rely enormously on the strength of the City for financing.
'London's success has been good for the UK and good for Europe.
'With so much at stake for both the UK and the EU - and with the British Government heading towards a defeat in Parliament - I hope Michel Barnier and the EU will agree to start preparing now to extend Article 50 so that we can avert a political and economic crisis that could have enormous repercussions for all of Europe.'
He is also due to visit Paris, Berlin and Dublin before the end of the year to promote London ahead of Brexit. 
Tory MEPs fear that allowing EU citizens living in Britain to keep their rights to votes in local elections would push the 'self destruct button' on the party.
They fear the Tories will face electoral wipeout in town hall elections as EU voters punish them for Brexit. 
Currently the 3.2million EU nationals living in Britain - apart from Irish and Maltese nationals - cannot vote in General Elections,  but can elect local councilors. 
Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, a leading Brexiteer, claims he has seen a draft of the EU Withdrawal Bill which shows that the UK will pledge to protect these voting rights post Brexit.
But a cache of WhatsApp messages leaked to The Daily Telegraph reveal that some Tory MEPs fear their party will be exiled from local government by European voters who will punish the party for Brexit.  
David Campbell-Bannerman, a former Ukip MEP who defected to the Tories, wrote:  'It's madness Dan. Are we intent on damaging our own party's vote?' 
Amjad Bashir, the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber wrote: 'I think the party is pressing the self-destruct button.
'We've already lost the Commonwealth vote and won't win any votes from the new arrivals from the EU.'
Mr Hannan told the newspaper: 'There is evidence that the enfranchisement of EU nationals has boosted the SNP in Scottish Parliament elections and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland Assembly elections.
'It seems extraordinary that a Tory government is pushing for that right to be retained - not conceding it in return for something else, but actively pushing for it. From the start, these talks seem to have been led by Europhile officials rather than ministers.'  
While in Brussels he is also due to meet EU vice presidents Valdis Dombrovskis and Maros Sefcovic and EU commissioner Sir Julian King 'to discuss London's needs from the Brexit negotiations'.
London voted heavily in favour of Remain in the 2016 referendum. 
On Saturday, Mr Khan was among the politicians who attended a march by hundreds of thousands of people through the capital, thought to have been the biggest anti-Brexit demonstration since the referendum in 2016.
But his overt backing for the second vote on whether to quit the EU has put him at odds with the Labour leadership.
Various frontbenchers have insisted a second referendum should only happen if the Government fails to get a Brexit deal through Parliament and refuses to call a general election, and none of the shadow cabinet attended Saturday's demonstration.
Meanwhile, it emerged today that Tory MEPs fear that allowing EU citizens living in Britain to keep their rights to votes in local elections would push the 'self destruct button' on the party.
Currently the 3.2million EU nationals living in Britain - apart from Irish and Maltese nationals - cannot vote in General Elections,  but can elect local councilors. 
Tory MEP Daniel Hannan , a leading Brexiteer, claims he has seen a draft of the EU Withdrawal Bill which shows that the UK will pledge to protect these voting rights post Brexit.
But a cache of WhatsApp messages leaked to The Daily Telegraph reveal that some Tory MEPs fear their party will be exiled from local government by European voters who will punish the party for Brexit.  
David Campbell-Bannerman, a former Ukip MEP who defected to the Tories, wrote:  'It's madness Dan. Are we intent on damaging our own party's vote?' 
Amjad Bashir, the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber wrote 'I think the party is pressing the self-destruct button.
'We've already lost the Commonwealth vote and won't win any votes from the new arrivals from the EU.'
Mr Hannan told the newspaper: 'There is evidence that the enfranchisement of EU nationals has boosted the SNP in Scottish Parliament elections and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland Assembly elections.
'It seems extraordinary that a Tory government is pushing for that right to be retained - not conceding it in return for something else, but actively pushing for it. From the start, these talks seem to have been led by Europhile officials rather than ministers.' 
New Chancellor Sajid Javid plans to announce spending of around £1billion to ensure Britain is properly prepared for a possible No Deal Brexit in October.
Mr Javid said he would overhaul the Treasury's approach to Brexit, starting with 'significant extra funding' announcements in the coming days to get Britain fully ready to leave the European Union on October 31, with or without a deal.
The extra spending would include financing a major public information campaign for individuals and businesses.
Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, he added that he had plans for 500 new Border Force officers and possible new infrastructure around the country's ports.
Mr Javid's predecessor Philip Hammond, who opposed leaving the EU without a transition deal, was accused by Brexit supporters of failing to spend enough money to get Britain ready for a No Deal Brexit, undermining its negotiating position with Brussels.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he wants to rework the Brexit deal that former leader Theresa May struck with the EU but he also says he is prepared to take Britain out of the bloc without one on October 31, if necessary. 
Meanwhile the Tories have been boosted by a 'Boris bounce' after the election of their new leader, according to a poll for the Mail on Sunday.
Since Mr Johnson became Prime Minister after being declared party chief by Tory members, the Conservatives have gained 10 points to stand at 30 per cent, a survey by Deltapoll showed.
That puts them five points ahead of Labour at 25 per cent, with the Liberal Democrats on 18 per cent and the Brexit Party on 14 per cent.
But if Labour was to drop Jeremy Corbyn as leader, the poll says the party would shoot into the lead at 34 per cent, with the Tories on 28 per cent, the Brexit Party on 14 per cent and the Lib Dems on 13 per cent.
The poll comes as Mr Johnson set out an eye-catching domestic stall promising a £3.6billion boost for left-behind towns as he sought to shift the political spotlight from Brexit.
The PM also pledged funding for a major new rail link between Manchester and Leeds, and promised action on housing and crime, despite insisting he was not preparing for a snap autumn election. 
Scottish voters could back independence after Brexit, new polling reveals today in a new blow for the future of the Union.
The study also suggests quitting the EU will drive up support for a united Ireland.
The findings - by the pro EU Best for Britain campaign - will fuel claims that pursuing a hard Brexit risks breaking up the United Kingdom.  
Campaigners said the findings show Brexit 'ominously threaten the union as we know it' - but Brexiteers will dismiss it as a renewed Project Fear campaign.
When asked how they would vote if a referendum on Scotland's future was held after the UK leaves the EU, 47 per cent said they would support independence, with 43 per cent saying they would opt to stay part of the Union.
But if the UK stayed part of the EU, those figures would be reversed, with 43 per cent saying they would vote for independence while 47 per cent said they would back remaining part of Britain.
In both scenarios, 10 per cent of the 1,022 people who were questioned did not know how they would vote.
Meanwhile, 52 per cent of voters in Northern Ireland said they would vote for a united Ireland outside of the UK after Britain leaves the EU, with 39 per cent favouring the province staying part of the UK while 7 per cent did not know and the remainder said they would not vote.
Support for a united Ireland would increase if there ended up being a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, according to the poll.
Of the 1,199 people questioned in Northern Ireland, 56 per cent said the return to these arrangements would lead them to vote for a united Ireland which was outside of the UK.
However, if Brexit does not go ahead, only 35 per cent said they would support a united Ireland outside of the UK while 52 per cent would vote for Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK, with 11 per cent unsure how they would vote and the rest would not take part in the ballot.
Best for Britain chief executive Eloise Todd said the research was 'compelling evidence as to why we need to stop and think again' on Brexit.
She said: 'This is compelling evidence as to why we need to stop and think again. The public deserve a say on the final deal, with the knowledge that if Brexit happens we could shatter the union altogether.'
Phillip Lee, Conservative MP for Bracknell, called for a second European referendum, saying: 'Brexiteers have to be given a chance to recant now it's becoming so obvious what's at risk.
'No government, especially a Conservative one, can legitimately pursue this course which will likely lead - perhaps not tomorrow or next year or over the next decade but nonetheless inexorably - to breaking our Home Union.'
But Brexiteer Colin Clark, the Scottish Conservative MP who ousted Alex Salmond in Gordon in 2017, said there was little sign of a change in view since the 2014 independence referendum.
He said: 'The people of Scotland voted by a significant margin to remain part of the United Kingdom in 2014. 
'It is time to focus on securing the best deal as we leave the EU - one that works for all parts of the UK.' 
Stephen Gethins MP, SNP Europe spokesman at Westminster, said: 'As the deeply damaging consequences of a 'no deal' Brexit become clearer, as Scotland's economy continues to outperform the UK and as people grow increasingly concerned about the future under Westminster rule, support for Scotland's ability to take its own decisions in an independent country will only grow further.'
Voters in both Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain part of the EU in the 2016 referendum despite the UK as a whole voting to leave. 
The DUP branded the Brexit deal 'economically mad' today after secret legal advice revealed the extent of the border down the Irish Sea created by the Irish backstop.
Nigel Dodds, the party's leader in Westminster, said the document was 'devastating' after the Government finally published it today after being humiliated in the Commons last night.
The six-page memo drawn up by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox for the Prime Minister says the backstop leaves Northern Ireland treating Britain as a 'third country' in some cases.
And goods passing from Britain to Northern Ireland would have to undergo 'regulatory checks' during the backstop. 
Mr Cox's advice also said the backstop is 'intended to subsist even when negotiations have broken down' - meaning it has been designed to last forever if talks fail.  
After the paper was published, the Prime Minister was accused of 'misleading' the Commons as she returned to the Despatch Box for PMQs.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said the politically spun version of the advice on Monday has 'concealed the facts' - prompting a furious row with the Speaker as MPs are not allowed to accuse each other of lying. 
Mrs May insisted there was nothing new in the secret letter because both she and Mr Cox had openly said the backstop was 'indefinite' without a final trade deal.  
Earlier, MPs were warned by Commons leader Andrea Leadsom they would live to 'regret' forcing the Government to publish the letter.   
The latest blow to Mrs May comes after yesterday's historic triple defeat in the Commons lobbies. 
In the worst defeat, 26 Tory rebels sided with Labour to push through an amendment that would let MPs step in if her deal is defeated next Tuesday. 
The five-day Brexit deal debate will continue this afternoon after it adjourned at just after 1am this morning.
In his letter, Mr Cox said 'despite statements in the Protocol it is not intended to be permanent and the clear intention of the parties that it should be replaced by alternative, permanent arrangements, in international law the protocol would endure indefinitely until a superseding agreement took its place'. 
Theresa May suffered the worst day of any Prime Minister in 40 years in the Commons yesterday as MPs inflicted three defeats on her in barely more than an hour.
This is how it unfolded:  
4.41pm: The first vote is announced on the Government's amendment to the contempt motion, attempting to kick it into the long grass. Government loses 311 to 307. 
4.58pm: The main Labour motion declaring the Government to be in contempt of Parliament is announced. Government loses 311 to 293.
It is the first time in history Parliament has done this.
5.44pm: Dominic Grieve's amendment on what happens after the deal is rejected is announced. Government loses 321 to 299. 
It means when the PM sets out the next steps after losing the vote on the deal, Parliament can re-write the plan with its own priorities for the first time. 
5.48pm: Theresa May stands up to make the case for her deal at the Despatch Box.
This suggests the backstop has been drafted to last even if talks break down naturally, rather than if one side deliberately stalls them.
The Attorney said the deal 'does not provide for a mechanism that is likely to enable the UK lawfully to exit the UK wide customs union without a subsequent agreement'.
This section makes clear it is impossible for Britain to escape the backstop unilaterally and a political deal with Brussels was the only way out
Mr Cox said 'this remains the case even if parties are still negotiating many years later and even if the parties have believe that talks have clearly broken down and there is no prospect of a future relationship agreement'. 
The letter says goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland must be subject to a 'declaration process'. It said Britain would be 'essentially treated as a third country' by Northern Ireland.
In his conclusion, Mr Cox advises the Prime Minister there is a 'legal risk the United Kingdom might become subject to protracted and repeated rounds of negotiations' because it was giving up the ability to walk away without escaping the backstop.
He said: 'This risk must be weighed against the political and economic imperative on both sides to reach an agreement that constitutes a politically stable and permanent basis for their future relationship.
'This is a political decision for the Government.'   
Following the letter's publications, Mr Dodds said the advice was 'devastating' to the Prime Minister's claims about the deal.
Here are the 26 Tory rebels who voted for Dominic Grieve's amendment which allows MPs to tell the Government what to do in Brexit talks if the PM's deal is voted down   
He said: 'This advice concisely sets out the stark reality of the operation of the backstop.
'Its publication demonstrates how the Prime Minister has failed to abide by the commitments she gave in that the United Kingdom as a whole would leave the European Union and that she would ensure there would be no customs or regulatory divergence within the United Kingdom.
'This backstop is totally unacceptable to Unionists throughout the United Kingdom and it must be defeated and arrangements renegotiated that uphold the commitments which the Prime Minister and her government has in the House of Commons.' 
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: 'All this advice reveals is the central weaknesses in the Government's deal.
'It is unthinkable that the Government tried to keep this information from Parliament and indeed the public before next week's vote.' 
Earlier today, Mrs Leadsom told the Today programme the Government was furious at being forced to publish.
She said: 'It was incredibly disappointing that the House of Commons decided to vote in effect to overturn what has been decades, if not centuries, of conventions whereby the law officer's advice to Cabinet and to ministers are not even acknowledged, let alone published.
'The Attorney General had come to the House for two-and-a-half hours, which is also unprecedented in these many years, to answer questions to give his very best legal advice.
'He published a 48-page document that outlined all of the legal impact of the Withdrawal Agreement, so the vote yesterday of the House to require the specific legal advice to Cabinet we will comply with, but not without some regret.'
Mrs Leadsom continued: 'Going forward, not only will Government ministers be very careful about what they ask law officers to give advice on, but law officers themselves will be very reluctant to give any advice to Government that they might then see published on the front pages of the newspapers.
The Government lost two votes on whether it was in contempt of Parliament last night - first on its own amendment trying to kick the issue into the long grass and then on the main Labour motion.
Two Conservative MPs rebelled each time: 
In the second vote on the main Labour motion, 11 Tory MPs went missing - meaning a heavier defeat for the Government.
'So it's the principle of the thing.
'And frankly I think any parliamentarian who wants at some point in the future to be in Government is going to live to regret their vote last night.' 
'And frankly I think any parliamentarian who wants at some point in the future to be in Government is going to live to regret their vote last night.' 
Mrs Leadsom said the impact of Mr Grieve's amendment could make a no deal Brexit both more and less likely, depending on how MPs react.
She said MPs should vote for Mrs May's deal because while it was not perfect was the 'best combination we are going to get'.
Admitting she was unhappy with the Irish border backstop, she insisted it was also 'not in the EU's interest' for Britain to be locked into it indefinitely.' 
Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said it would be 'inconceivable' to stop the UK leaving the EU, saying it would be wrong to 'pull a handbrake up on Brexit'.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme  the deal is 'lousy', and said: 'If the deal is voted down on Tuesday I think what will matter most of all will not be what Parliament says in a motion - it will need legislation to stop Brexit - what will matter is the will and resolve in Number 10 Downing Street.'
The backstop is designed to be permanent  
Mr Cox said: 'Despite statements in the Protocol it is not intended to be permanent and the clear intention of the parties that it should be replaced by alternative, permanent arrangements, in international law the protocol would endure indefinitely until a superseding agreement took its place.'
This suggests the backstop has been drafted to last even if talks break down naturally, rather than if one side deliberately stalls them.
Britain cannot exit the backstop without a trade deal 
The deal 'does not provide for a mechanism that is likely to enable the UK lawfully to exit the UK wide customs union without a subsequent agreement'.
This section makes clear it is impossible for Britain to escape the backstop unilaterally and a political deal with Brussels was the only way out
There is no escape even if trade talks break down 
On leaving the backstop, Mr Cox said: 'This remains the case even if parties are still negotiating many years later and even if the parties have believe that talks have clearly broken down and there is no prospect of a future relationship agreement.'
This means the backstop will continue even if talks fail without either side breaking promises to pursue them in 'good faith' and with 'best endeavours. 
Goods passing between Britain and Northern Ireland must be checked 
Mr Cox said: 'Goods passing from GB to NI will be subject to a declaration process... The implications of NI remaining in the EU single market for goods while GB is not is that for regulatory purposes GB is essentially treated as a third country by NI for goods passing from GB to NI.' 
This is a regulatory border down the Irish Sea, something the DUP and other Unionists insist Mrs May promised she would never allow. 
Talks might never end 
Mr Cox concludes: 'There is a legal risk the United Kingdom might become subject to protracted and repeated rounds of negotiations' because it was giving up the ability to walk away without escaping the backstop. This risk must be weighed against the political and economic imperative on both sides to reach an agreement that constitutes a politically stable and permanent basis for their future relationship.
'This is a political decision for the Government.'   
This is Mr Cox repeating his warning that Brexit is not really a legal question but a political judgement about the risks and benefits of a particular course of action.  
Mrs May's ailing hopes of winning the vote on Tuesday took another blow today as former chief whip Mark Harper joined the ranks of Tory MPs pledged to vote No.
Mr Harper demanded the PM 'listen to Conservative colleagues' and tell Brussels to strip the Irish border backstop out of the deal. 
Last night, Mrs May tried to keep her plan alive with a rousing speech to the Commons, in which she warned 'Brexit could be stopped' entirely if it is voted down on Tuesday.
She acknowledged criticism of her 'compromise' deal, but said: 'We should not let the search for the perfect Brexit prevent a good Brexit that delivers for the British people.
'And we should not contemplate a course that fails to respect the result of the referendum, because it would decimate the trust of millions of people in our politics for a generation.'
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, led the rebellion which could effectively takes a no-deal exit off the table.
He claimed it could lead to a second referendum, adding: 'MPs are tonight starting the process of taking back control.' 
Downing Street must now hope that the threat of Parliament blocking a no-deal Brexit convinces some Eurosceptic opponents of her deal to change their minds before the meaningful vote.
However, a number of high profile, and previously loyal, Tory MPs rebelled during the series of defeats last night – including Michael Fallon and Damian Green.
And in a clear indication that the Prime Minister's 'confidence and supply' deal with the DUP is fractured beyond repair, the Northern Irish party warned her it did not fear another election.
Downing Street had hoped the threat of a general election would bring the DUP to heel, because it could bring the pro-Nationalist Jeremy Corbyn to power.
But the party voted against the Government last night, with Nigel Dodds, the party's Westminster leader, telling Mrs May his party was ready to spark another poll. He added: 'I'm certain we will be returned in greater numbers.' 
In her speech last night the PM admitted that both Remainers and Brexiteers have been left dissatisfied by parts of her deal. 
But she said the 'hard truth' is that the compromise she has thrashed out with Brussels is the only deal which delivers on the historic vote and protects jobs.
She said: 'I know there are some in this House and in the country who would prefer a closer relationship with the European Union than the one I'm proposing, indeed who would prefer the relationship that we currently have and want another referendum.
'Although I profoundly disagree, they are arguing for what they believe is right for our country and I respect that.
'But the hard truth is that we will not settle this issue and bring our country together that way and I ask them to think what it would say to the 52 per cent who came out to vote Leave, in many cases for the first time in decades, if their decision were ignored.'
By Jack Doyle 
What happened yesterday?
The Government lost three votes in a day, the first time that has happened since 1996 – an ominous date for the Tory Party which went on to face catastrophic electoral defeat the following year. The first two were on the Brexit legal advice given to Cabinet by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox.
They were damaging, but not disastrous. The third, which is potentially much more significant, was on an amendment, proposed by leading Remainer Tory rebel Dominic Grieve, setting out what could happen if Theresa May's deal is voted down next week. It could, in theory, give MPs vast leverage over the next steps on Brexit.
Why is the legal advice vote significant?
Last month the Commons demanded the full legal advice be published. Ministers refused. Yesterday MPs voted to declare this decision a contempt of Parliament – a serious form of legal admonishment.
To avoid the prospect of ministers being suspended by the House, the Government rolled over and agreed to release the document today. No 10 fought tooth and nail to resist publishing, warning to do so would be 'against the national interest' and breach historic conventions. To placate MPs, Mr Cox made a statement to Parliament describing what it said and published a summary.
Much of the document will be familiar, but it will make plain the gravity of Mr Cox's warnings about the UK being trapped in the Northern Ireland backstop, potentially hardening opposition to the deal among rebel Tory MPs.
What does the Grieve amendment mean?
Following an earlier row this summer, Mr Grieve won a concession that if the deal falls, the Government will have to come back to the Commons within three weeks to set out what course it will then take.
As a result of yesterday's vote, MPs will now be able to propose what alternative course of action the Government should take by making amendments to the motion and voting on them.
Almost inevitably, the likely proposals will include the UK staying in a permanent customs union, or membership of the single market, or both – or a second referendum.
For its supporters, this makes 'no deal' impossible as the Commons – which is overwhelmingly opposed to crashing out – would immediately make clear its disapproval. Some hardline Brexiteers deny this, arguing that any amendment would not be legally binding on the Prime Minister. In theory this is true, but any such vote would heap huge political pressure on the Government to comply.
Where does this all leave us?
With nearly 100 MPs publicly expressing their doubts about the deal, its chances of passing on Tuesday already appeared slim. Losing a string of votes exposes just how weak Mrs May's grip on a fractious and volatile Parliament has become. With this in mind, the Grieve amendment could be hugely significant.
If it is seen to reduce the chances of a no-deal Brexit, could it yet convince hardline Eurosceptic rebels they should back Mrs May's deal?
Or will they press on, with the danger that the future of Brexit falls into the hands of a Remain-dominated Parliament which is flexing its muscles more every day and could yet find a way to sink Brexit altogether?
The PM added: 'There are others in this House who would prefer a more distant relationship than the one I'm proposing and although I don't agree, I know they're also arguing for what they think is best for our future and I respect that too.
'But the hard truth is also that we will not settle this issue and bring our country together if in delivering Brexit we do not protect the trade and security cooperation on which so many jobs and lives depend, completely ignoring the views of the 48 per cent. 
Mrs May said the 'only solution that will endure' is one that addresses the concerns of both sides of the debate. 
But she faced a fiery Commons session as leading Brexiteers lashed her plan, while the DUP - who are propping the Tories up in No10 - said they would be happy to have another general election.
Boris Johnson, who has become the PM's fiercest critic since quitting as Foreign Secretary over her Brexit plan, said the deal is a failure.
He told the Commons: 'I can't believe there is a single member of this House who sincerely believes that this is a good deal for the UK.
'You can tell that the government's hearts are not in it
'You can tell that they know it is a disaster because after two and a half years this deal has done an amazing thing it has brought us together – remainers and leavers in the belief that it is a national humiliation that makes a mockery of Brexit.
'There will be no proper free trade deals. We will not take back control of our laws and for the government to continue to suggest otherwise is to do violence to the normal meaning of words.
'We will give up £39bn for nothing. We will not really be taking back control of our borders.' 
While Nigel Dodds, the DUP's Westminster leader has said he would be 'happy' to have another general election to prove the party has support in Northern Ireland for blocking the PM's Brexit deal.
He said: 'We will happily go to the electorate and put our views to the people if needs be, and I'm quite certain we would be returned in greater numbers than today.'  
A slew of MPs had condemned ministers for refusing to release the full Brexit deal legal advice in a fiery Commons showdown today.
It had pitted Mrs May's authority and support against the accumulated strength of her opposition - which spanned both Brexiteers and Remainers.
But admitting defeat and announcing the legal advice will be published tomorrow, Mrs Leadsom said: 'We have tested the opinion of the House twice on this very serious subject...
'We will publish the final and full advice provided by the Attorney General to Cabinet.'  
Tory rebels took a major step toward giving Parliament control over Brexit by inflicting a huge defeat on the Prime Minister last night.
Remainer Dominic Grieve was joined by 25 Tory rebels to re-write the rules on what happens if and when Theresa May's deal is defeated in the Commons next week.
It means the Commons now has the chance to vote for alternatives - including possible a second referendum, a new election or extending the Article 50 process.  
What happened last night? 
Tory Remain rebel Dominic Grieve defeated the Government to change what happens next if Theresa May's Brexit deal is defeated in the Commons next week.
His amendment was carried by 321 to 299 after 26 Conservative MPs defied orders to vote in favour of it.
What does Dominic Grieve's amendment do? 
The amendment changes the rules on what happens next if Mrs May's Brexit deal is defeated next Tuesday night.
By law, following a defeat the Government must make a statement on what it will do and then holding a Commons vote on it. Before last night, this would have been a simple motion noting the statement that could not be amended.
Now MPs will be able to try and re-write it with amendments.  
What can the new amendments be about? 
Amendments to the motion could try to give instructions to the Government on what to do next instead of simply accepting or rejecting the plan shown to them.
This could be taking measures to avoid no deal, backing a second referendum, calling a general election or setting out new negotiating red lines for further talks in Brussels.
Brexit supporters could also use it to try and tell the Government to pursue no deal.
To have any impact at all, the amendments will have to win a vote of MPs.  
When will the new amendments be debated and voted on? 
The law says the Government must produce its next steps motion within 21 days of a defeat on its deal. This is over the Christmas recess so it is likely to be debated sooner than that, sometime between December 12 and the last day of term on December 20.
Speaker John Bercow will choose which amendments are voted on at the end of the debate.  
What will it mean if any amendments pass? 
The amendments will not have any legal force but a majority vote by MPs on what to do will have a lot of political power.
Even if the vote is not in favour of current Government policy, Ministers could use it to change course - scrapping the current red lines in the negotiation to adopt a Norway-style Brexit or passing new laws for a second referendum. 
What do Brexit supporters think about it? 
Brexiteer MPs insist because the amendments are not legally binding, they officially change nothing. They say if Mrs May's deal is defeated, Britain is on course to leave without a deal under current laws.
This is true, legally speaking, but ignores the political power of Parliament taking control with a vote in favour of a new course of action. 
This spring Saturday was meant to be Day One of a glorious new era. After 46 years in the EU, Britain was supposed to be a sovereign state again, no longer partly ruled by bureaucrats in Brussels who don’t go to the bother of getting elected.
Instead of that joyous state of affairs, we are sinking further into the mire. After Theresa May’s third, and pretty resounding, defeat in the Commons yesterday afternoon, we find ourselves at the mercy of the European Union, which we thought we had escaped.
EU leaders may now offer us a lengthy extension beyond April 12, but at the cost of our taking part in Euro elections at the end of May. Some — me included — doubt whether we will ever leave. A general election and a Marxist Corbyn government may lie ahead.
How did this great betrayal happen? Why have 17.4 million votes cast in the referendum nearly three years ago been set aside amid chaos and in-fighting? The people of this country find themselves more frustrated and divided than at any time in living memory, and politicians can only lead them deeper into the mess.
And so it has become fashionable, particularly in Left-wing circles, to say our political system is broken. Our unwritten constitution, based on the 1689 Bill of Rights, is declared redundant. It may have served us well during Britain’s greatest days. It may have guided us through World War II. But it has been unequal to the challenges of Brexit.
Some assert we need a written constitution. I heard one supposedly knowledgeable expert on the BBC enthusiastically propose that we copy the example of South Africa — a novel idea since that country is one of the most corrupt and least well-governed on earth.
Others aver that the two-party system is moribund and we need proportional representation to deliver us from its dead hand. It’s said we must have more devolution to counter the excessive power of central government — not that this allegedly unruly beast has exactly been on the rampage in recent months.
A few even suggest that a vigorous new broom should sweep away the knee breeches and wigs and coronets and State carriages and all the paraphernalia acquired over the centuries, including perhaps even the monarchy itself, and replace them with the unfussy appurtenances of the modern age.
It would be foolish, after the political convulsions of the past few months, to argue that there is nothing in our political arrangements that should be changed. I’m sure improvements could be made.
But I’m convinced that the problem is not so much a defective system as a failed political class. It’s not the rat-infested, antiquated House of Commons letting us down — as Green MP Caroline Lucas claimed on Radio Four’s Today programme yesterday — but the MPs sitting on its benches.
Let’s conduct a brief thought experiment. Imagine that instead of emerging from the 2017 General Election as the wounded leader of a minority government, Theresa May had romped home with a majority of more than 150, as early polls suggested she would.
Do we seriously suppose that in those happy circumstances she would have been unable to deliver a version of Brexit that would have satisfied the reasonable majority in Parliament and the country (i e. not the head bangers on the extremes of Remain and Leave) to get it through the Commons?
Surely it’s highly likely that, if she had had such a stonking majority, our now stricken Prime Minister would have been able to shape an acceptable Brexit, and would have done so without repeatedly having to rattle her begging bowl in an excruciatingly humiliating way under the condescending noses of EU panjandrums.
Oh, what joy there would have been! Today we would be celebrating a triumph of democracy, not grieving over our national embarrassment as the laughing stock of Europe. No one would suggest our political system is broken.
What has happened is that the peculiar — and, in modern British history, relatively unusual — conditions of minority government have exposed the shocking limitations of our political leaders on both sides of the House.
Without a comfortable majority, Mrs May was never going to be equal to the task of delivering Brexit. She might have coped with lesser problems (as the 1974-79 Labour administration struggled through with Liberal support) but not a divisive and once-in-a-lifetime issue.
Needless to say, she has been admirably resilient, and worked as tirelessly as was possible. But she lacks the empathetic skills to attract doubters in her own party and among opposition MPs to her cause, and her stubbornness and rigidity of mind made her a poor negotiator.
Moreover, she has been cursed with a Cabinet which, despite one or two exceptions such as Michael Gove, is one of the most mediocre in living memory. It has several members who would be fortunate to hold down jobs in middle management.
Errors of judgment by the hapless Chris Grayling, Transport Secretary, are legion, not least in relation to his No Deal planning. Gavin Williamson must be one of the intellectually feeblest Secretaries of Defence ever to occupy that great office of State.
His most ludicrous faux pas was his recent indication that he might despatch Britain’s sole aircraft carrier to the South China Sea even though it lacks planes, and could be sunk by the Chinese in minutes. The government in Beijing cancelled a trip which the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, had been planning to make to China. Few in the Cabinet have much knowledge or experience of foreign affairs, far less the inscrutable workings of the EU. Which among them could with any accuracy be described as statesmanlike?
The ineptitude of our rulers is by no means restricted to Brexit, though it is undeniably most painfully felt there. There is good reason to think that under Tories or Labour we are less well governed than we used to be.
The last Labour government managed to fight an illegal war in Iraq which cost the lives of 179 British soldiers, and a futile war in Afghanistan which accounted for the lives of 454 military personnel.
For years the Home Office, described by one former Labour Home Secretary as ‘not fit for purpose’, has been a by-word for incompetence. Its latest dereliction of duty was to deport at least 83 black British subjects in the so-called Windrush scandal.
Whether we are considering inefficiencies in the NHS or a falling clear-up rate by the police or a dysfunctional welfare system, there is a mountain of evidence that the political class is not up to running the country.
To return to the catastrophe of Brexit: if the current Tory front bench is weak and ill-suited to meet its challenges, Labour is uniquely ineffectual. Whereas the 1964 Labour Cabinet was crammed with Oxford firsts and men with practical experience, today’s Shadow Cabinet has perhaps a couple of people of intellectual distinction, and many who have never had a proper job.
Foremost among them, of course, is polytechnic drop-out and life-long Marxist ideologue, Jeremy Corbyn. It’s not just his mental equipment which needs a good overhaul. The man who offered himself as a breath of fresh air has turned out to be politically poisonous.
What prevented Labour from supporting the Withdrawal Agreement yesterday? Corbyn had previously expressed no significant quarrel with its terms for our extricating ourselves from the EU. But he nonetheless refused to back what he called a ‘blindfold Brexit’.
And yet the Withdrawal Agreement is very specific. It is the non-legally binding and aspirational Political Declaration, which was not voted on yesterday, that might reasonably be described as blindfolded.
The truth is that Corbyn will cynically seize any pretext he can find to oppose the Government because he hopes to precipitate a general election, which he believes he would win — and then unleash his madcap Marxist experiment on an unsuspecting public.
The pity of it is that he may now succeed, and Britain could face economic impoverishment at his hands and his sinister comrade-in-arms John McDonnell, by the side of which No Deal — not that I think it will happen — would resemble a stroll in the park.
Has any political leader ever so egregiously put party before country at a time of national crisis as Corbyn? In May 1940, the Labour leader, Clement Attlee, joined a coalition government led by Winston Churchill. He wasn’t even thinking about Labour’s electoral prospects.
Alas, it’s not just the leadership of both main parties that have failed so lamentably to rise to the occasion. There are plenty more minor players who are equally authentic representatives of a failed political class.
Look at the Tory European Research Group (ERG). I don’t doubt their members have principles. But some of them are also cussed characters who are constitutionally incapable of compromise, which is an essential part of successful government, and was once considered a quint- essentially British political virtue.
For example, the ERG’s Mark Francois, a combative little bruiser who makes a great deal of his short time in the army, insisted on Thursday that ‘I would rather put a gun in my mouth than vote for Mrs May’s deal’.
Around the same time, Steve Baker, deputy leader of the ERG and a man of scary certainty, announced he would oppose the deal and would rather ‘bulldoze’ Parliament than fall into line. Why do these people favour such apocalyptic language?
Even more intransigent are the ten Democratic Unionist Party MPs, an insular sect which claims to uphold the union but in reality thinks only of its own interests in Northern Ireland. Mrs May’s grisly supposed allies, although they voted against her yesterday, are an extremist party with links to the province’s terrorist past.
Meanwhile on the Remain side there are plenty of tin-pot Napoleons. What unites them is their self-importance and their hunger for the limelight, the Soubrys, Grieves, Wollastons et al. How they relish their moment in the sun!
Above them all looms Speaker John Bercow, the most preposterous figure in a crowded field. Almost unbelievably, this creature is venerated by some television news addicts abroad as an engagingly eccentric Englishman.
To many more weary British eyes, he is a Remain activist vaingloriously trying to scupper the whole Brexit process by a one-sided appeal to precedent in defiance of the votes of 17.4 million people. He made no attempt to conceal his delight as he announced the cataclysmic vote.
With a cast of characters like these, it’s not surprising that public esteem for our politicians is rock bottom. Naturally, I don’t deny that on all sides of the Commons there are sensible and committed MPs. Unfortunately their voices have been drowned out.
No, what we see is a political class whose upper echelons are less competent than perhaps at any time in the past 200 years while, lower down the food chain, there are foot soldiers who are bigoted, parochial, and too partisan to accept the need to compromise.
And they’re sometimes venal, too. According to recent figures published by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, MPs are claiming 22 per cent more in taxpayer-funded expenses than they did a decade ago before the expenses scandal was exposed.
Much of the increase reflects higher staffing costs, which some may consider reasonable. But some MPs are charging for first-class train travel and business class flights — contrary to the spirit, if not the letter, of a supposedly more frugal expenses regime.
In all manner of ways, our politicians assume they occupy a different moral universe to the rest of us. While Theresa May’s political corpse is still warm, Tory Cabinet ministers are already publicly jostling for her job. Have they no shame? Can’t they grasp what we think of them?
I’ve been amazed over recent months by how well-informed most people I meet are about Brexit, whether Remainers or Leavers. It’s a curious paradox that while the public grows more knowledgeable, the political class deteriorates.
The sad truth is that the best and brightest are no longer going into politics, though of course there are exceptions. It’s not first-past-the-post or the two-party system or our ancient institutions that are the blight. It’s our pygmy politicians.
No one knows where our country is heading. There’ll be months of tiresome negotiations. We may well never leave the EU. We’ll certainly never get the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for. We could have an election, and a Corbyn government, and the ruination of Britain.
Tens of millions of people, including thoughtful Remainers, will blame a fractious, blind and selfish political class. The legacy of this Brexit debacle will be a lack of respect for our political masters bordering on contempt — and a perilous gulf between the rulers and the ruled that grows ever wider.
Seven Tory Cabinet ministers will today launch a bid to prevent Boris Johnson from leading Britain out of the EU without a deal if he becomes the next leader of the party.
In a significant intervention, the 60-strong 'One Nation Caucus' of Conservative MPs will publish a 'declaration of values' rejecting 'narrow nationalism'.
The group last night said it aimed to 'shift the Conservative Party towards the centre'. 
Sources confirmed it would hold hustings during the impending leadership contest and would 'work to stop any leadership candidate who endorses a 'Nigel Farage No-Deal Brexit'.
The stance is a direct warning to Mr Johnson and other Tory leadership candidates flirting with a No Deal Brexit.
The new group was founded by Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and former education secretary Nicky Morgan with the backing of former prime minister Sir John Major. 
Including Miss Rudd, it counts at least seven Cabinet ministers as members: David Gauke, Greg Clark, Rory Stewart, David Mundell, Claire Perry and Caroline Nokes.
An eighth senior minister, Chancellor Philip Hammond, will go public tomorrow with his concerns about a Tory lurch towards populism, describing it as 'the politics of easy answers'.
Mr Stewart, the new International Development Secretary, yesterday said he would find it 'very difficult' to stay in a Conservative Party led by someone pursuing a No Deal strategy. 
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that No Deal would be 'damaging and unnecessary' and said the UK would eventually have to do a trade deal with the EU anyway.
He added: 'If you go down the path of No Deal Brexit you're going to lose 4 million Remain voters who voted for the Conservatives last time, so you won't win an election, and No Deal Brexit is a vote for Jeremy Corbyn.'
Mr Stewart, who has announced he will stand in the Tory leadership contest, said he would legislate to prevent No Deal if he became prime minister.
Mr Johnson, the runaway favourite to be the next Tory leader, has made it clear he is willing to pursue a No Deal Brexit if the EU refuses to make concessions.
Sources close to Mr Johnson yesterday said he would not form an electoral pact with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party which some Eurosceptics are demanding.
One ally said: 'Of course he won't do a deal with Farage – he's the man to beat Farage.'
Several other leadership candidates, including Dominic Raab and Andrea Leadsom, are also expected to endorse a No Deal strategy, which is overwhelmingly backed by Conservative Party members, who have the final say in the contest to choose Britain's next prime minister.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay warned that the UK would have to ramp up No Deal preparations if MPs vote down Theresa May's deal for a fourth time.
Mr Barclay, who is considering his own bid to succeed Mrs May, told Sky News it was time for MPs to 'face the facts' that they had only three options – backing Mrs May's deal, leaving without a deal at the end of October or cancelling Brexit, which would be 'disastrous' for democracy. 
He added: 'If Parliament won't back a deal then it needs to confront that reality and I do think in that instance we need to bring forward our preparations to mitigate No Deal.
'There is no guarantee that the EU 27 will grant an extension. That is a non-UK decision on the October 31 so that would be a matter for the EU, so we do need to prepare for No Deal and ensure that we use the time we have to mitigate any disruption as best we can.'
Mr Hammond will use a speech to the CBI tomorrow night to issue a warning on the dangers of populism. And he will warn that a No Deal Brexit would leave any new leader unable to pay for expensive campaign pledges on other issues.
Urging the next leader not to abandon fiscal discipline, he will warn against them going on a 'spending spree', saying that 'borrowing today has cost tomorrow'.
The One Nation Caucus will formally launch its 'declaration of values' tonight, describing its members as 'patriotic Conservatives who reject narrow nationalism'.
Key aims include ensuring the UK remains 'a leader on the world stage through our aid, trade and security commitments to tackle global challenges as a global citizen'.
A picture tells a thousand words in politics – so Tory leadership hopefuls were out in force at the weekend, cameras at the ready, to document their 'normal' lives.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom went for a family walk in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, on Saturday with her husband Ben, daughter Charlotte and son Freddie, posting a selfie of the ramble on Instagram.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds were spotted bird-watching at Bempton Cliffs nature reserve near Bridlington, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, before tucking into a £7 fish supper from a local chippy. 
The photos follow recent snaps of Jeremy Hunt with his wife and Dominic Raab in his kitchen.
In contrast with her rivals' outdoorsy approach, Esther McVey upped the ante by spelling out some of her policies, including a call to take billions of pounds from the aid budget to spend on domestic priorities in a 'blue collar' pitch for votes.
The former cabinet minister, who will formally launch her bid for the leadership this week, wants annual aid spending of more than £14.5billion to be cut to the 2010 levels of less than £9billion.
Her pitch also involves more funding for police and schools and axing HS2.
She will set out her stall today at the launch of a new Blue Collar Conservatism group that will concentrate on a domestic policy agenda to appeal to 'ordinary working people'.
Miss McVey, who revealed her engagement to MP Philip Davies last month in the Mail, then starts a pub tour to meet voters.     
Grey Man gone tonto: Sir John Major, about whom there is so often something of the vengeful doormat, last night wailed and caterwauled about how dreadfully difficult Brexit was going to be.
In a speech that will have had Theresa May grinding her molars to a fine dental dust, former PM Major called the Leave vote ‘an historic mistake’ and described the European Union as ‘a colossus’.
Colossus! A majority of our population seems more inclined to regard it as a bloody disaster.
The man who once complained about Margaret Thatcher’s ‘back-seat driving’ was introduced by a Chatham House worthy as being ‘neither a Eurosceptic nor a Europhile’ and as therefore being the right person to offer a contrast to ‘the backdrop of highly politicised debate’. 
This, I fear, was far from the whole truth. Sir John campaigned hard for Remain in the referendum campaign. He was once hot for the ruinous Exchange Rate Mechanism. His premiership saw undeniable kow-towing to Brussels.
He began yesterday’s early-evening speech to an appreciative audience by noting that he had ‘kept silent since last June’. 
He added: ‘I am no longer in politics. I have absolutely no wish to re-enter it in any capacity. I don’t seek publicity – more often than not, I shy away from it.’
Yet this speech, its timing so neatly matching recent pro-EU eruptions by his fellow has-beens Tony Blair and Michael Heseltine, was luridly political. Much publicised, too!
Sir John waved those familiar square, hairy hands at the lectern. Sorry, but I can never see them without thinking of Edwina and ‘getting sticky’ in the afternoons at that London love-nest. 
He was dressed in a blue tie which matched the Chatham House corporate design. The voice had its customary metallic, nerdy edge. The text was littered with correct but now possibly rather old-fashioned references to countries in the feminine.
He quoted some Rudyard Kipling. When he considered the complexities of the coming Brexit negotiations with the EU, he was reminded of Kipling’s lines ‘I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When, and How and Where and Who.’
If we are to take, say, the ‘When’ and ‘Who’ in that quotation, I could find nowhere in the speech any acknowledgement that in the next year several of the main members of the EU may undergo a change in their political leadership.
This was a pungent, firmly-asserted speech, full of Majorish guile and self-congratulation. He has always been an intensely vain man. You could sense him loving the attention. ‘I don’t seek publicity’ indeed!
When, with husky sarcasm, he noted that ‘we are told our best days are ahead’, he won a little ripple of laughter from some voice near the front of the stage. He liked that.
Countless Remain voters had apparently written to him in despair, seeking his help. The pleading masses look up beseechingly to the Grandfather of the Nation! More than once he reminded us of his great experience as a statesman. Maybe not so helpful to his own country, though. Brussels will have loved his line about how we may owe billions of pounds in ‘debts’ to the EU.
He artfully just avoided conflating modern Britain with the sort of European ‘populist’ movements which, he said, were spreading ‘bigotry, prejudice and intolerance’ against minorities, ‘a poison destroying decency and understanding’. 
The juxtaposition of such views with Theresa May’s pro-Brexit, liberal-democratic Tories was not the work of an honest John. It was acidic and sly.
Let us close by observing that Sir John, though critical of Leavers’ trenchant opinions, posed as a defender of the Remainers’ right to speak freely. ‘Freedom of speech is absolute.’
So said the man who once sued, and nearly bankrupted, the New Statesman magazine after it wrote a story about him having a lover. They got the wrong popsy.
The strength of the British economy has confounded Remain doom-mongers, Philip Hammond declared yesterday.
Promising help for hardworking families, a surprisingly upbeat Chancellor said UK output would grow faster than in most EU countries – creating half a million jobs.
In his first Autumn Statement Mr Hammond vowed to spend billions to boost productivity, build homes and improve transport and broadband networks.
But national debt by the end of parliament in 2020 will have soared to nearly £2trillion, with the middle classes hit with tax hikes on work benefits and insurance policies.
And the Office for Budget Responsibility said that – five months to the day after the Brexit vote – the decision to leave the EU would force almost £60billion of extra borrowing by 2020.
One senior minister said the OBR’s figures, which the quango admits are highly uncertain, were both ‘ridiculous and wrong’. 
Mr Hammond, who has been criticised by this newspaper for his gloomy tone, struck a markedly different note yesterday. 
He said the economy had ‘confounded commentators at home and abroad with its strength and its resilience since the British people decided to leave the European Union and chart a new future for our country’.
He told MPs: ‘It is a privilege to report today on an economy which the IMF predicts will be the fastest growing major advanced economy in the world this year.’
The OBR said state finances would be £122billion worse off than previously expected by 2020. It claimed exports to countries outside the EU will be hit for a decade – despite the UK finally being free to negotiate its own trade deals.
The debt to GDP ratio will rise to 90.2 per cent in 2017-18, the highest level in half a century. National debt by the end of parliament will be £1.945trillion.
The Chancellor said: ‘It is worth noting that the OBR very specifically says there is an unusually high level of uncertainty in the forecasts it is making because of the unusual circumstances.’
There was good news for hard working families and so called JAMs – people who are ‘just about managing’. Theresa May had ordered the Chancellor to find extra help for this group.
But Mr Hammond unveiled a raft of stealth taxes in a 51-minute statement that included:
Mr Hammond loosened the Government purse strings – borrowing an extra £23billion to fund infrastructure projects and boost productivity.
In a decisive break with the George Osborne era, he also ditched the pledge to get Britain in the black by 2020 and effectively scrapped the cap on welfare spending. He declined to put a new date on when the deficit will be eliminated – though it will not be before 2023.
Mr Hammond was under pressure from No 10 and Tory MPs to emphasise the opportunities provided by Brexit.
And he delivered a far more positive analysis. The central OBR forecast is for growth to be 2.1 per cent in 2016 – higher than predicted when Mr Osborne was in charge in March.
In 2017 the OBR forecasts growth to slow to 1.4 per cent, which it attributes to lower investment and weaker consumer demand, driven in part by the referendum
Mr Hammond said: ‘That’s slower, of course, than we would wish, but still equivalent to the IMF’s forecast for Germany, and higher than the forecast for growth in many of our European neighbours, including France and Italy.’
The Chancellor added that, as the effects of uncertainty diminish, the OBR forecasts growth recovering to 1.7 per cent in 2018, 2.1 per cent in 2019 and 2020, and 2 per cent in 2021.
This is in dramatic contrast to the doom-mongering forecasts made by the Treasury at the height of Project Fear. Mr Osborne had warned that unemployment would rise by 500,000 following a Brexit vote and there would be an immediate recession. At no point does the Treasury or OBR now predict the country will slide into recession.
The OBR’s forecasts show Britain will stop sending any money to EU institutions by 2019/20 – taking back full control of its money. It also predicts that, if Britain had voted to remain inside the EU, there would have been 80,000 more migrants a year.
Mr Hammond said the Brexit vote would ‘change the course of Britain’s history’ and had ‘thrown into sharp relief the fundamental strengths of the British economy that will ensure our future success’.
He said the task now was to ‘prepare our country to seize the opportunities ahead’ and make it ‘match-fit for the transition that will follow.
Former Tory chancellor Norman Lamont said the OBR was wrong to be so gloomy. ‘No one can forecast precisely what the impact will be until we have had the negotiations – you cannot tell,’ he said. ‘But I believe we will benefit from Brexit.’
Patrick Minford, chairman of the Economists for Brexit group, said the OBR was in danger of becoming ‘the Jehovah’s Witnesses of economic forecasting’.
He said the OBR report was packed with assumptions that ‘simply follow the path of countless other establishment bodies’ that have proved to be wrong.
He added: ‘Because they have not worked out yet why they got it so wrong before and after the referendum, they will continue to have to make humiliating U-turns’.
Mr Hammond said that, in future years, the Autumn Statement will be scrapped. Instead, the Budget will be moved from march to November.
The biggest arguments in divorce cases are almost always about the money. The needs of the children tend to be cast aside: sometimes, they are even used as hostages.
Something similar is happening in the negotiations between the UK and the European Commission over our so-called divorce from the EU.
At the insistence of the Commission — which in effect is acting as the divorce lawyer for the 27 remaining states — the UK must agree to cough up a vast sum before we can even begin to discuss the post-Brexit trading terms between us.
In other words, the long-term future of families in the EU — the people who will benefit most from an amicable trade deal — is less important than getting lots of dosh up front.
This is understandable from the Commission’s point of view. While the UK’s contribution to the EU’s finances may not be significant in terms of those countries’ overall economies, it is of enormous consequence to the Commission itself, amounting to 14 per cent of its total income — notably the salaries and the pensions of the 35,000 or so officials who work for it.
Fanatical
The most influential of those officials is not the President of the Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. No, the man of power there is that bibulous and erratic Luxembourger’s chief of staff, Martin Selmayr.
This 46-year-old German lawyer is known in the corridors of the Berlaymont as ‘the monster’. Both brilliant and a fearsome bully, Selmayr is a fanatical believer in ‘the project’ and is determined not only that Britain is punished for its decision to leave, but so obviously punished that no other nation will ever again even dream of taking the same action.
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According to a German friend of mine who knows Selmayr, ‘he actually wants the negotiations to fail. He thinks this would be the biggest deterrent of all’.
On that interpretation, the German will be delighted at the conduct of last weekend’s round of talks in Brussels between Davis and Michel Barnier, the Frenchman appointed by Juncker/Selmayr as chief Brexit negotiator for the European Commission.
Once more, the money has been the cause of increased ill-will, with Barnier accusing the UK of being ‘unwilling to honour its obligations’ and Davis blaming Brussels for ‘putting process before people’ — that is, the money before the children in the divorce.
Bizarrely, the Commission has been increasing its financial demands as the months have dragged on.
In all normal negotiations, the two sides gradually come closer together and meet in the middle. When we embarked on this process, the talk from the Brussels side was of a demand of €60 billion to settle what it insisted were the UK’s inescapable budgetary and legal obligations. Yet now they are talking of €100 billion, a figure for which the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reasonably said they could ‘go whistle’.
There is an impasse, as Brussels says it won’t talk about future trading arrangements until the outlines of the ‘divorce bill’ are agreed, while Davis understandably regards this matter as his principal point of leverage in getting a good deal for Britain in terms of a tariff-free arrangement with the members of the European Single Market.
While Brussels has the greater economic muscle, in that it represents 27 nations, the British have the advantage of being right — in the sense that Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty (which governs this whole business) does not contain any provision for continuing obligations, let alone ones involving payments by the departing member.
Article 50 just says that two years after it has been invoked, the relevant member state exits automatically — and in the absence of any succeeding agreement between the leaver and the rest of the bloc, the existing treaties just fall away.
This is what May meant when she told an apparently astonished Juncker and Selmayr at a Downing Street dinner four months ago, that in the absence of a deal based on a reasonable financial settlement in exchange for frictionless access to the single market, Britain ‘does not owe the European Union a single penny’.
Provocation
Legally, she is on solid ground — and this, to Barnier’s evident consternation, was what British Government lawyers would have been emphasising last weekend.
They might have especially annoyed him by pointing out that, regarding the pensions of the EU’s bureaucrats, the UK has been properly funding them on a continual basis during our membership and therefore there is nothing more we will owe.
The UK’s scrupulous legalism has been an unbearable provocation to a Frenchman who embodies the phrase amour-propre (self-love). It explains his insufferably pompous remark yesterday that it was his job to ‘teach the British people what Brexit means’.
We know what Brexit means. It is the European Commission which can’t face up to the truth.

Showbiz two-faced over 'whitewashing'
Showbusiness is suddenly becoming highly sensitive to the fashionable accusation of ‘whitewashing’.
This is the term for what happens when a white actor is given the role of a character who in the original text was of a different race.
Last week, the actor Ed Skrein announced he was pulling out of his part in the movie Hellboy, in which he was to have played a character portrayed as Asian in the book from which the film derives.
Mr Skrein has been lauded for his decision, and the movie’s producers nervously told the Hollywood Reporter: ‘It was not our intent to be insensitive to issues of authenticity and we will look to recast the part with an actor more consistent with the character in the source material.’
This issue has caused embarrassment in the UK as well. Last year, Sky Arts pulled from its schedules a satirical drama in which Joseph Fiennes had played the part of Michael Jackson — after protests from the late pop star’s daughter over this ‘whitewashing’.
But does this sensitivity work the other way around? Earlier this year, I went to the opening night of a revival of Tom Stoppard’s breathtakingly brilliant 1974 play Travesties. It is set in Zurich in 1917, when Lenin and James Joyce were in that same city.
The actors playing the Russian revolutionary and the Irish writer both looked uncannily like the real thing. But the woman playing the part of Mrs Lenin, Sarah Quist, was mixed race — and in every other respect looked nothing like the future Soviet leader’s redoubtable wife.
Moreover, her (short) part requires her to speak only in Russian — which she did, not entirely convincingly.
Funnily enough, there were two real Russian women in the seats in front of me. They looked perplexed by what they were seeing — and left during the interval.
More recently, I asked Tom Stoppard himself about this when I went to his 80th birthday party — and he seemed puzzled, too. Who knows what point was being made by the director, Patrick Marber?
I was tempted to create a little mischief by contacting the Russian Embassy and asking them how they felt about this cultural misappropriation (as it would be called if it were the other way around).
I didn’t do so, however, because the production was in every other way superb. But it’s interesting that there was no complaint from any of the critics that Lenin’s wife had been blackwashed. 
Whenever it seems that those who refuse to accept the EU referendum result have scraped the bottom of the barrel of ruses and excuses, they somehow manage to go lower. Over the weekend the 'Remoaners' have done it again.
This time their argument is that a nefarious combination of mind-bending social media marketing and illicit expenditure 'bought' the result, and that therefore the British people's decision in June 2016 to leave the EU should be dismissed as illegitimate.
This concerted attempt to void the result of the biggest exercise in mass democracy ever undertaken by the British people began almost as soon as the votes had been counted and declared.
Days afterwards, Tony Blair's former spin-doctor supreme, Alastair Campbell, called (via Twitter) for the outcome to be rejected on the grounds that 'EU law allows customers to withdraw from contract if contract based on lies. Leave agenda riddled with them'.
Coming from the propaganda maestro who manufactured the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq, this almost defied satire.
Binding
Then this gang argued that the referendum was not binding on Parliament and that it would be illegal for the Government to invoke the EU's Article 50 (which is required for a nation to secede) unless it was approved in a vote by all MPs.
The Supreme Court agreed with this legal claim, brought by that indefatigable anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller.
So then Parliament did vote. And by 498 votes to 114, it agreed that the referendum decision should be honoured. Thus, a year ago this week, Article 50 was invoked by Theresa May's Government.
End of story? Not a bit of it. Defeated both by the public and Parliament, those who don't want the result to stand are now calling for a second referendum.
According to Chuka Umunna, the London MP who chairs a political group that meets every Wednesday to discuss how to stop Brexit, this would be to 'let the people decide' whether to accept the terms of departure negotiated between the UK and the EU.
Last week Umunna came to the support of Owen Smith, after his fellow Labour MP was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet by Jeremy Corbyn for demanding a second referendum on our relationship with the EU.
Umunna complained that Smith had been 'sacked for saying what Labour voters overwhelmingly support'. This, however, is not true.
Last Friday, the pollsters BMG revealed the result of asking the public to respond to the statement 'the Government should get on with implementing the result of the referendum to take Britain out of the EU and in so doing take back control of our borders, laws, money and trade'.
No less than 57 per cent agreed, and only 22 per cent disagreed (with the rest saying they did not have a view).
Even among Labour voters there were 10 per cent more agreeing than disagreeing with what amounts, in layman's language, to Theresa May's policy of leaving both the single market and the customs union.
Oh, that was the other ruse of the Remoaners: because Theresa May had, through an admittedly inept election campaign, lost her Commons majority, there was no mandate for what they invariably describe as 'hard Brexit'.
This argument, too, fails on the most cursory examination. Not just the Conservatives but Labour and also Northern Ireland's biggest party, the Democratic Unionists, all pledged in the 2017 General Election not only that they would honour the result of the 2016 referendum but that the UK would no longer be a member of the single market.
Free movement is a fundamental rule of the single market, and all these parties accepted that the British people — including the majority of Labour voters as well as Conservative ones — were opposed to uncontrolled migration from the rest of the EU.
All along, however, the Brexit refuseniks have been motivated by the view that what differentiates them from the majority is that they know better: that ignorance and stupidity are what define their opponents.
In public, they try to hide this conceit, but it has always been there.
It was most clearly expressed in the days after the referendum in a reader's online comment at the foot of an article in The Independent (which itself called for the result to be rejected): 'Why should the pond life that dragged itself from the estates to the ballot box be allowed to ruin everything for the rest of us?'
Moronic
This idea — that the moronic masses have somehow been dragged or duped into voting for an outcome that defies both reason and their own interests — lies behind the latest attempt to thwart the Brexit vote.
It rests on two claims. First, that a company called Cambridge Analytica, controlled by a U.S. billionaire called Robert Mercer and using a sinister-sounding technique called 'psychographics', had played a decisive role in convincing the British to vote for Brexit.
And, second, that the official Leave campaign had broken Electoral Commission rules by funnelling £625,000 to a secretly linked group called BeLeave.
This second claim was exposed as meretricious only last week in the High Court. It determined that the Electoral Commission had approved, in writing, Vote Leave's decision to donate to other organisations campaigning for Brexit.
A youthful volunteer in that campaign, by the name of Shahmir Sanni, has now told Channel 4 that he still feels the way this was done was a form of 'cheating', and that 'almost two thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference'.
Really? Does anyone other than Mr Sanni and the self-deluding anti-Brexit last-ditchers believe this £625,000 of spending swung the result behind Leave, and that otherwise this outcome — a winning margin of over 4 per cent, let's remember — would not have occurred?
Let's also remember that not only did every mainstream political party organisation back Remain, but so did almost every institution in the land, including the Church of England.
Above all, we should recall that just before the official start of the campaign (thus sneakily evading the spending limits decreed by the Electoral Commission), the Government posted a leaflet to every household in the land — at a £9 million cost to taxpayers — warning of economic disaster if we did not vote to remain in the EU.
Those still campaigning to stop Brexit never mention that. Nor do they like to recall the final words of that leaflet addressed to voters: 'This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.'
Rejected
As for Cambridge Analytica and its allegedly spooky mind-bending techniques based on using information hoovered up from Facebook profiles: even if they were effective, this is completely irrelevant, and for one very good reason.
The company wanted to work for Vote Leave but was rejected by the campaign's mastermind, Dominic Cummings, who regarded them as nothing more than plausible charlatans. That's right: Cambridge Analytica played as big a role in the referendum as Scooby-Doo.
So the claim in the Observer newspaper that 'if the referendum result stands' it would mean we had consented to 'a result paid for by a U.S. billionaire using military-style technology' is a conspiracy theory lacking not just a conspiracy but even a credible theory.
Because no one has yet demonstrated that these techniques swing elections and I have seen no coherent explanation of how they have done so. Cambridge Analytica and Robert Mercer put CA's so-called 'micro-targeting' to work for Ted Cruz in his campaign to become the Republican candidate for the 2016 u.s. Presidential election. It was a disaster.
Perhaps those fighting to thwart Brexit need to believe that some sort of wicked brainwashing lay behind the referendum result. The people's verdict was, to them, so incredible and unbearable that they can never accept it happened fair and square: it must be a conspiracy.
So now their latest line to discredit the referendum result — gullible Britons were brainwashed by spooky Americans into voting Leave — has proved so obviously demented and doomed to fail, what will the stop Brexit crowd try next?
I don't know. But you can be sure it will be an insult to our intelligence. 
What happened yesterday?
Theresa May made the biggest gamble of her political career – in a desperate bid to get her Brexit deal through. First she asked the EU for a short extension of Article 50 from March 29 – next Friday – to June 30. In a letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, she said her deal – with some slight changes – would come back to the House of Commons next week for another vote. If it passes, she said, Parliament would need more time to pass necessary Brexit laws and ratify the deal.
What else did The Prime Minister say?
Her second intervention came at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons. Three times, she repeated: ‘As Prime Minister, I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than 30 June’. This was seen as a clear signal that if the deal does not pass at the third time of asking, she would either allow a No Deal Brexit – which will happen automatically – or quit rather than go cap in hand to the EU to ask for a longer delay. In a tirade at MPs, she said the House had ‘indulged itself for far too long’ and a longer delay would mean ‘endless hours and days of this House carrying on contemplating its navel on Europe’.
What did the EU say?
Upping the stakes significantly, Mr Tusk said the EU would agree to a short extension, but only on the condition that the deal is passed by the Commons next week. He said Europe was suffering from Brexit ‘fatigue’ but prepared to help. Crucially, he left open the possibility that EU countries could refuse a longer delay if the deal does not pass. President Macron is also, reportedly, taking a hard line against a longer extension.
What do hardline Brexiteers say?
Many were initially furious with Mrs May for trying to delay Brexit at all, arguing she should have walked away long ago and be pushing ahead with No Deal. One said the request for an extension was a ‘betrayal’ and several others called for the PM to resign. If anything they appear less likely to vote for the deal, in the hope they can force through No Deal either next week or at a later point.
What about the Tory Remainers?
With No Deal now appearing to be more likely, they are up in arms. Dominic Grieve who is campaigning for a second referendum, was incandescent and said he was ‘ashamed’ to be a member of the Conservative Party. He and other Tory Remainers believed they had forced Mrs May to take a No Deal Brexit off the table, and claim she agreed to ask for a long delay. But yesterday, with just eight days to go until we leave, she turned the tables on them. In the coming days, they will doubtless try once again to ‘seize control’ of Parliament and force her to change course.
What will Corbyn and Labour MPS do?
No10’s calculation appears to be that the deal will not get through solely with the backing of Tory MPs, even if the DUP can be won over with various legal promises about Northern Ireland and the backstop. So instead they are putting the squeeze on Labour MPs and forcing them to choose between Mrs May’s deal and the prospect of either No Deal or a long extension to Article 50. Will Jeremy Corbyn fear being blamed for Brexit not happening and allow his MPs to abstain? Or will Mrs May win over the 30 or so Labour MPs in Leave seats she needs to win the day?
What happens over the next few days?
Mrs May travels to Brussels today with the howls of anger from Westminster ringing in her ears. And the stage is set for an almighty showdown next week, with rumours the vote could come before MPs as early as Monday. Will the Speaker let the vote take place or will he plunge the country into a constitutional crisis by refusing to allow it? If it passes, will she be able to cling on in No10 and for how long?
What If her deal is rejected again?
Chaos. The kind of chaos that makes the mayhem of recent days and weeks look like a walk in the park. Will the EU offer an emergency summit and a longer delay to Brexit? Unwilling to countenance a long delay or a No Deal exit, will Mrs May quit and let someone else pick up the pieces? If that happens, would Mrs May’s successor really agree to a long delay that a majority of the Tory Party are opposed to? If Britain faces No Deal, will the Commons attempt to force what many see as the nuclear option and vote to revoke Article 50 and stop the process of Brexit altogether? Could the Commons, with the help of Speaker John Bercow, find another way to take control in such a short time? With the clock running down, this really is High Noon for Brexit.
Oh look, it’s David Miliband coming to our rescue. Today, at the Tilda rice mill in Essex, the former Labour foreign secretary is to launch a campaign to stop what he calls ‘hard Brexit’.
This marks Miliband’s return to the British political scene, after he stomped off when his younger brother Ed beat him to the Labour leadership in 2010. Since then he has been in New York as the President of the aid charity the International Rescue Committee: he clearly thinks we in the UK now need his help.
He will be joined in this venture by the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Nick Clegg and the Conservative MP (sacked as education secretary by Theresa May) Nicky Morgan.
These three declare that ‘when it comes to putting our country before our political parties, in the debate about Brexit we are unequivocally united’. How nauseatingly self-admiring is this claim of ‘putting our country before our parties’ — as if those who support Brexit do not.
Disloyal
Indeed, when it came to the referendum of 2016, it was the leaders of the Leave campaign who put their careers within their parties at greatest risk. David Cameron made it clear to Michael Gove — when his then colleague said he would campaign for Brexit — that this was unforgivably disloyal, both to him personally and to the interests of the Conservatives.
Less morally robust Eurosceptic Conservative ministers sided with the Remain campaign purely on grounds of loyalty to their party boss (and in the belief that they would be on the winning side and rewarded by David Cameron).
On the Labour side, too, Gisela Stuart — who co-headed the Leave campaign — was subjected to vile abuse in the corridors of the House of Commons by fellow Labour MPs who regarded her as a traitor to the party (which, at least in parliamentary terms, was overwhelmingly pro-Remain).
It then came as a huge shock to them just how many of their constituents disagreed with them: the most adamantly pro-Brexit constituencies were in the Labour heartlands. Few more so than South Shields, David Miliband’s old seat. That corner of the nation split by 62 per cent to 38 per cent in favour of Brexit.
So when Miliband grandly instructs MPs to ‘set aside party loyalties and place their constituents at the forefront of their minds’, I wonder if he has ever considered what his former constituents might think about that.
Tactless
In fact — since Clegg and Morgan also signed their names to this — it’s worth reminding them, too, that, on a constituency basis, twice as many seats voted Leave as did Remain. What these three think — but try not to say too tactlessly — is that their Leave-voting constituents didn’t know what they were doing.
This is why Miliband, Clegg and Morgan go on about what they always call ‘hard Brexit’; as if this is not the same as the Brexit for which the people voted.
In fact the word ‘hard’ is just being used as a synonym for ‘bad’: and ‘bad’ — as linguistic philosophers have long pointed out — is the word we use to mean something we don’t like. And these three sure don’t like Brexit.
They say that they will urge MPs ‘to reject completely the siren calls to sever the UK’s deep economic ties with the EU’. What on earth are they talking about? Theresa May has called for a ‘deep and special partnership with the EU’ and it is almost certain that we will end up in a comprehensive free trade deal with not a single tariff between us and them.
Confused
Judging by the previews, the Miliband/Clegg/Morgan manifesto in no way makes clear what they actually want (as an alternative to so-called ‘hard Brexit’). Remain in a customs union with the EU? Or still members of the Single Market? Or both? We are not given a clue.
Still, the official opposition is scarcely less confused or confusing. Last week, Jeremy Corbyn rejected the idea of remaining in the European Economic Area (which is what Miliband/Clegg/Morgan want but don’t say) on the grounds that to remain in the Single Market while not an EU member means the UK would be left as ‘rule-takers not rule-makers’.
Yet Corbyn’s position is that the UK should remain part of a customs union with the EU. That means we would be obliged to mimic all the EU’s tariff arrangements with the wider world, but with zero say in them and no ability to negotiate our own trade deals. If that isn’t being left as ‘rule-takers not rule makers’, I don’t know what is.
Corbyn will be deeply irritated by Miliband’s return to these shores, since the former foreign secretary is seen by bereft Blairites as the great hope for a new ‘centre party’, now that Labour is in the grip of the hard Left.
But I am sure he could not be as irritated as voters who have not the slightest desire for the head of International Rescue to save them from Brexit.
It is long past time for the Government to have announced the result of its review into the addictive and pernicious high-street electronic roulette known as fixed-odds betting terminals.
The Culture, Media And Sport Secretary Matt Hancock had finally overridden the Treasury’s objections (it had been worried about the loss of tax revenues from a decline in such gambling) and was planning to declare that the maximum stake should be reduced from £100 to £2.
But a last-ditch objection from the Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey has intervened, holding things up. It is a mystery why Ms McVey should wish to continue the vast losses endured above all by those on the benefits her department pays out.
She happens to be a close friend of fellow Conservative MP Philip Davies, who was a bookmaker before entering parliament, and who still has cosy links with the gaming industry: such a connection ought to alarm rather than impress the PM, when she finally decides this matter.
Doubtless McVey has continued to advance the claim of the High Street bookmakers — whose lobbying influence was described to me as ‘fearsome’ by a Conservative MP battling them at Cabinet level — that such a reduction would ‘automatically put 40,000 jobs and 8,000 shops at risk’.
Yes, it would almost certainly reduce jobs in that industry — and (which is the reason for the lobbying) would definitely reduce the profitability of firms such as William Hill and Ladbrokes Coral.
But if less money were spent on their immiserating machines of impoverishment, it would not just disappear into the ether: it would be spent on other goods and services. Perhaps — who knows? — even on food and clothing for the children whose lives have been blighted by their parents’ gambling habits.
And that’s the cost which the Treasury has perhaps factored into its calculations: it may lose immediate tax revenues if the gambling industry is hit, but this form of addiction is increasingly the cause of health problems and family break-up — both of which add considerably to the Exchequer’s burden.
If the vicar’s daughter, Theresa May, doesn’t appreciate this, she is not the woman her admirers portray.
Baffled Brexiteers slammed the German ambassador today after he claimed Britain voted to quit the EU because it was obsessed with World War Two.
Tory MP Henry Smith told MailOnline he had never heard anyone who campaigned for Brexit mention the war. 
Germany's outgoing ambassador Peter Ammon, who leaves his post in London this week, made the bizarre claim in a newspaper interview.   
Mr Ammon claimed Brexit was fuelled by the image of the British standing alone against the Nazis during the Second World War.
Mr Ammon said the decision to leave the EU was 'a tragedy' – and warned that Britain had 'illusions' about what could be achieved in negotiations with Brussels.
He said that conversations with Brexiteers had led him to believe that the UK had a fascination with the Second World War.
He said: 'History is always full of ambiguities and ups and downs, but if you focus only on how Britain stood alone in the war, how it stood against dominating Germany, well, it is a nice story, but does not solve any problem of today.
'I spoke to many of the Brexiteers, and many of them said they wanted to preserve a British identity and this was being lost in a thick soup of other identities.
'Obviously every state is defined by its history, and some define themselves by what their father did in the war, and it gives them great personal pride.'
He said: 'You end up in a divorce in which you say, 'It was always your fault,' and you find some example, and start a blame game.'
Mr Smith said: '‘I’ve never once heard a Brexit supporting colleague mention World War Two in such a context, so the German Ambassador’s suggestion they are seems obsessive on his part.
'Rather than play out some kind of Fawlty Towers ‘don’t mention the war’ episode from the 1970s, when the European project might have been relevant during Cold War years, I prefer looking ahead to an outward, global Britain.’
Dr Ammon, 65, also blamed Brexit on the populism that has brought Donald Trump to power, telling The Guardian: 'Populism provides easy and understandable answers to very complex problem.
'If you say the words 'single market' or 'customs union', probably 99 per cent of the population would not understand.
'But if you say, ''Let us build a wall to stop these immigrants,'' people say, ''OK, that will probably help''.
'I know it is not a good answer to problems – Germany has not had a good experience with building walls.'
He also hit out at the idea that the European Union was dominated by Germany as the Brussels bloc's largest economy. 
He said: 'When I tell people in Germany I am confronted by this narrative occasionally in public debates they say, 'This cannot be true. You are joking. This cannot be true. That is absurd.'
Dr Ammon, who has also held roles in Paris and Washington, said he was concerned about three areas in which there could be a breakdown of Brexit talks – the Irish border and trade deals both with the EU and with other nations.
The ambassador, who has been in London since May 2014, claimed it was doubtful that Britain would manage to negotiate better free trade deals with other countries than those that the European Union has already secured. 
No one could disagree with Croydon MP Gavin Barwell when he describes the gang of savages who attacked a teenage asylum seeker in South London as ‘cowardly and despicable scum’.
The 17-year old Kurdish Iranian suffered horrific injuries, including a fractured skull and a blood clot on the brain. He’s lucky to be alive. Police have charged seven suspects, five of whom appeared in court yesterday. The charges include violent disorder and racially aggravated GBH. They also released CCTV images of others they wished to interview.
The unfortunate victim, said to be an unaccompanied child refugee living with foster parents, was approached by the mob as he waited at a bus stop just before midnight. After being chased for 100 yards, he was subjected to a sustained, frenzied beating.
Detectives are investigating whether some of those involved tipped out of a nearby pub, The Goat. According to a police statement, they attacked him after establishing that he was an asylum seeker.
We will have to wait until the evidence is presented in court before we know the full picture. But the police are already treating it as a ‘hate crime’.
Inevitably, too, Left-wing politicians have seized on this awful, unprovoked attack as more ‘proof’ that Britain has become a vicious, racist country since we voted to leave the EU.
First out of the blocks was Diane Abbott, who managed to blame both the Tories and Brexit, without any concrete evidence. Oh, do get back in your box, Diane.
The Remain camp would have us believe there has been an upsurge of racist violence against migrants by white working-class voters.
But check out the CCTV pictures of two of the suspects police in Croydon published yesterday. They don’t exactly fit the profile of knuckle-scraping white supremacists.
One is black, the other appears to be mixed race. Yet the Left always maintain racism is something committed exclusively by whites against ethnic minorities.
Given that some of those in the frame seem to be from immigrant backgrounds themselves, would Abbott care to revise her conclusions about the motivation behind this attack?
There are undoubted tensions between different races who have made their homes in Britain — not just whites versus the rest.
The open borders policies of the past 15 years have fostered bitter resentment between settled immigrants and more recent arrivals — something the political elite simply refuse to accept.
They would rather concentrate on the alleged ‘backlash’ by ignorant whites against foreigners to reinforce the myth that the Leave vote was driven purely by racism and bigotry.
Which is why the likes of Abbott were so eager to pounce on this incident and rush to judgment. How much more convenient it would have been for Diane if the suspects had all been white skinheads.
Look, I’m not trying to diminish this vile assault. It was certainly a hateful crime. As the Mail said yesterday, when those responsible are brought to justice let’s hope they receive the maximum sentences possible.
But take away the fact the victim was a young asylum seeker, could this not have been just another of those affrays which occur in town centres across the country every weekend at chucking out time?
Even the detective leading the investigation thinks the attack wasn’t planned and said that alcohol was a major factor.
According to locals, this particular area of South London is culturally diverse and many asylum seekers have lived there for years without trouble. The chairman of the residents’ association said: ‘I have been here for decades and never experienced a racist incident.’
So while this is a deeply disturbing example of wanton thuggery, people should be careful before exploiting it for the sake of political expediency. London Mayor Sadiq Khan immediately joined Abbott in labelling it a ‘hate crime’.
But if Britain is brimming with racial hatred, why did Londoners elect Khan, a Muslim, as their mayor? How did a black woman like Diane Abbott manage to rise so high in politics? Of course, the police are always eager to keep up their hate crime quota.
The ludicrous definition of a hate crime as any incident which anyone perceives as a hate crime has contributed to the hysteria being stoked by the Remainers.
Funny how those such as Abbott, who delight in linking ‘hate crime’ to Brexit and the Tories, are always reluctant to link terrorist attacks to Islam in any shape or form, even when the evidence is staring them in the face.
Then there is also a multi-million-pound, taxpayer-funded hate crime industry, which needs to create the myth of a ‘hate crime epidemic’ to justify its existence.
In the wake of the referendum, they produced a report claiming a ‘57 per cent increase’ in hate crime. Yet when the Mail investigated this figure, it was demonstrably untrue and was quickly withdrawn.
That doesn’t stop it being trotted out regularly on radio, TV and in the Left-wing press. European politicians also allege that Brexit is behind a spate of racist attacks on Britain’s streets.
How, then, do they explain the widespread hostility towards migrants in cities across France and Germany — which, the last time anyone looked, were still in the EU and had no intention of leaving?
The plain fact is Britain is one of the most tolerant and generous countries in the world when it comes to immigrants and asylum seekers — which is why millions want to come and live here.
That’s not to be complacent. There are still pockets of intolerance and, I emphasise, the kind of savagery we saw on the streets of Croydon last week has no place in a civilised society.
But even if this attack does prove to have been motivated by racial hatred, it’s high time cynical, opportunist politicians like Diane Abbott put aside their own bigotry and ceased exploiting the despicable actions of a handful of ‘cowardly scum’ to smear 17.4 million decent people who voted Leave.
This column loves daft animal stories, if only to give Gary material for his brilliant cartoons. Neither of these were April Fools, although they could well have been. 
Plans to have a donkey called Clover lead an Easter Parade pulling a cart in East London have been abandoned because she refuses to cross the road.
Clover, who lives on an urban farm in Hackney, is also averse to potholes and manhole covers.
Apparently, she’s worried about falling down and breaking her leg. Elsewhere, it is claimed Britain is being invaded by bodybuilding parakeets.
About 50,000 have made their way from Africa via Europe. They have bulked up to cope with the colder winters and can chew their way through trees.
If they’re that strong, perhaps they could get one to pull a cart in the Easter Parade. We’ve all got our cross to bear. 
For several years, I’ve felt that April Fool’s jokes have run their course. It’s almost impossible any more to separate fact from fiction.
Among the stories on Saturday was a report that one police force is introducing a unisex uniform for male and female coppers to attract more transsexual/transgender recruits.
Then there was the London lawyer who has apparently changed sex three times since 1997. Sam Kane has gone from Sam to Samantha and back again.
He must be a fan of the old Cliff Richard song: Goodbye Sam, Hello Samantha. Oh, and one report said Doctor Who is getting a lesbian sidekick called Bill. Of course he is.
Any of these stories could be true or made up. Your guess is as good as mine.
Meanwhile, Virgin Trains got in on the act with a spoof press release announcing that in future passengers’ season tickets would be tattooed on their arms so they wouldn’t get lost.
Unfortunately, they were a week late. Last Tuesday I told you how German scientists have designed a range of tattoos which look like barcodes and can unlock an assortment of electronic devices.
You couldn’t make it up.
Overheard by reader Mark Lyndon in the snug bar of the Canny Man’s pub, in Morningside, Edinburgh.
A drinker was studying that picture of Wee Burney sitting on a sofa with her legs tucked coyly beneath her — like another famous photo of Mrs Thatcher.
‘Och,’ he said, sipping his pint. ‘She’s mair like Twee Burney.’
The NHS is to ban ambulance-chasing lawyers touting for business in accident and emergency.
Just one question: why the hell were they ever allowed into hospitals in the first place?
Theresa May is gearing up for a bitter battle to stop Nicola Sturgeon holding a fresh Scottish independence vote before Brexit.
The PM lashed out at Miss Sturgeon for 'playing games' with the future of the UK after the First Minister demanded a new poll as early as Autumn 2018 - potentially disrupting negotiations with the EU at a crucial stage.
In a speech at her official residence in Edinburgh, Miss Sturgeon said the UK stood at a 'hugely important crossroads' and Scotland must have a 'genuine choice' about its fate.

But critics pointed out that Scots would not know what they were voting on as the deal with the EU will not have been finalised. And Downing Street made clear Mrs May is ready to fight to ensure the timetable does not undermine the country's interests.
Miss Sturgeon's bombshell announcement came with parliament on the verge of passing legislation allowing Mrs May to trigger Article 50, after rebel Tory MPs and peers indicated they will back down over two key amendments.

In the biggest political gamble of her career, Ms Sturgeon set her sights on an early referendum that could capitalise on fears about the impact of the UK leaving the EU.
She said the Westminster government had agreed in 2014 that a second independence referendum could be triggered by a material change in circumstances.
She said: 'These conditions have of course now been met.
'I can confirm that next week I will seek the authority of the Scottish Parliament to agree with the UK Government the details of a section 30 order – the procedure that will enable the Scottish Parliament to legislate for an independence referendum.
'The UK government was clear in 2014 that an independence referendum should, in their words, be made in Scotland, by the people of Scotland.
'That is a principle that should be respected today.' 
Mrs May now faces a finely-balanced decision over how hard to resist Miss Sturgeon's demands.
In Glasgow, pro-independence campaigners waved saltire flags adorned with the word 'Yes' during a rally held at the city's George Square.
They also held an enormous banner reading 'End London Rule' just hours after the announcement of Ms Sturgeon's plans to hold a second referendum on separation. 
UK ministers have been increasingly resigned to the idea that the SNP will call a second vote.
Nicola Sturgeon's dramatic announcement today will trigger a high-stakes political poker game.
The First Minister and Theresa May are set for a major clash over whether the referendum should be held before or after Brexit takes place.
Mrs Sturgeon insisted today that Scots should have a vote before we leave so there is time to keep the country within the EU - with Autumn 2018 her favoured date.
But Mrs May will fight to avoid a tumultuous referendum campaign at a time when negotiations with Brussels are likely to be at their most fraught.
Instead she would prefer to have the ballot at least a year later after Brexit has been finalised.
Ministers privately concede they are unlikely to be able to block a fresh referendum altogether if the Scottish parliament votes to have one.
But Downing Street drew a strong line today by making clear Autumn 2018 would be the 'worst possible time'.
Although the Westminster government could technically prevent a binding poll being held, political realities make it extremely difficult as Miss Sturgeon could simply stage a vote and claim the result carries moral weight.
Speaking from Downing Street today, Mrs May said she wanted to negotiate a Brexit deal that 'works for the whole of the United Kingdom and that includes the Scottish people'. 
'The tunnel vision that the SNP has shown today is deeply regrettable. It sets Scotland on a course for more uncertainty and division, creating huge uncertainty. And this is at a time when the evidence is that the Scottish people, the majority of the Scottish people, do not want a second independence referendum,' she said.
'So instead of playing politics with the future of our country, the Scottish Government should focus on delivering good government and public services for the people of Scotland. 
'Politics is not a game.'
A No10 spokesman condemned Miss Sturgeon for proposing to hold a vote at the 'worst possible time'.
Mrs May will wait until the Scottish parliament formally approves the call for a referendum - which should happen next Tuesday - before delivering her full response.
The bold gambit by Miss Sturgeon appeared to contribute to a rethink in Downing Street over the timing for triggering Article 50.
Despite speculation she could act tomorrow as soon as the Brexit Bill becomes law, Mrs May is not now expected to launch the process until the final few days of this month. No10 denied that the Scottish referendum announcement had changed their plans.


Miss Sturgeon suffered an early blow this afternoon as the EU insisted an independent Scotland could not automatically remain a member of the club. 
Polls have shown the nationalists are far from certain to emerge victorious.
Recent surveys have suggested the result is on a knife edge, with some showing a 50-50 split.   

The bombshell announcement comes with parliament on the verge of passing legislation allowing Mrs May to trigger Article 50.
The law could receive Royal Assent as early as tomorrow, freeing the PM to get the ball rolling.
The SNP leader has been furiously positioning for another bid at breaking up the union since the historic Brexit vote in June.
Previously the nationalists had signalled they would wait to see consistent lead for independence in the polls before calling a referendum.
The 2014 ballot, which delivered a 55-45 result in favour of staying in the UK, was meant to have settled the issue for a 'generation'.
BMG research for the Herald newspaper today - which was retweeted by Miss Sturgeon herself - showed 48 per cent for independence, with 52 per cent supporting the union. 
But Miss Sturgeon said today: 'In my view it is important that Scotland is able to exercise the right to choose our own future at a time when the options are clearer than they are now but before it is too late to decide our own path.
'Let me be clear: the timing of the Brexit negotiations are not of course within the control of the Scottish Government.
'However we must plan on the basis of what we do know now. 
'What we know is on the timetable set out by the Prime Minister for the Brexit deal will become clear in the autumn of next year, ahead of ratification votes by other EU countries.
'That is therefore the earliest point at which a referendum would be appropriate.
'However, it is just as important we do not leave it too late to choose a different path in a timely way. 
'If the UK leaves the EU without Scotland indicating beforehand, or at least in a short time afterward, that we want a different relationship with Europe we could face a lengthy period outside not just the EU but the single market.






'These considerations lead me to the conclusion that if Scotland is to have a real choice, when the terms of Brexit are known but before it is too late to change course, that choice must be offered between Autumn 2018 and Spring 2019.' 
Miss Sturgeon has faced calls for restraint from critics in her own party.  
There are a set sequence of steps Miss Sturgeon must go through in order to trigger a binding independence referendum.
Former Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has criticised her record in the day job of running education, health and other key areas.
He also launched a scathing attack on Miss Sturgeon's dominance of the SNP, pointing out the party 'has to be bigger than any individual member'.
Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars also said it is 'irresponsible' to push a second referendum and said it should not happen until at least 2020. 
And former Scottish Health Secretary Alex Neil called on Miss Sturgeon to 'spell out a strategy' before she triggers another independence campaign.
Jeremy Corbyn was accused of a 'gift' to the SNP over the weekend after he said that he was 'absolutely fine' with a fresh Scottish referendum being held.
The Labour leader's own MPs accused him of a 'special kind of idiocy' after the comments, which appeared to contradict official party policy.
He has since clarified that he does not support a referendum being held, but does not believe the Westminster government could block one. 
Responding to Miss Sturgeon's announcement, Mr Corbyn said: 'The 2014 Scottish Independence referendum was billed as a once in a generation event. 
'The result was decisive and there is no appetite for another referendum. Labour believes it would be wrong to hold another so soon and Scottish Labour will oppose it in the Scottish parliament. 
'If, however, the Scottish parliament votes for one, Labour will not block that democratic decision at Westminster.' 
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said the SNP leader had 'given up acting as First Minister for all of Scotland'.
Ms Davidson said: 'She has ignored the majority in Scotland who do not want a referendum and has decided instead to double down on division and uncertainty.
'The First Minister's proposal offers Scotland the worst of all worlds. Her timetable would force people to vote blind on the biggest political decision a country could face.
'This is utterly irresponsible and has been taken by the First Minister purely for partisan political reasons.' 


Polls show Scotland remains deeply divided on the question of independence as most surveys show support for the Union only narrowly ahead. 
The most recent survey out today showed support for the Union on 52 per cent against 48 per cent for independence, once don't knows are removed.
This is closer than the 2014 result and the SNP insist the increase in their vote during the last campaigns means a new one is winnable. 
The turbulent political landscape since the No vote in the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 has had pollsters recording surges and dips in support for an independent Scotland.
A poll the month after the referendum found a majority would support independence, given the chance to vote again.
The YouGov poll for The Times found increased support for independence, with 49 per cent of the 1,078 adults surveyed between October 27 and 30 indicating they would vote Yes against 45 per cent voting No.
However, the bounce did not last and the following month a Survation poll for the Daily Record recorded Yes voters dropping to 44 per cent with No at 48 per cent.
A YouGov survey for the Times at the end of August last year putting Yes at 47 per cent and No at 53 per cent once the 'don't knows' were removed.
One of the most recent polls, conducted by BMG for the Herald at the end of January, showed support for independence rising following the Prime Minister's 'hard Brexit' speech.
The survey of 1,067 Scots found 49 per cent back independence while 51 per cent want to stay in the UK, when the 'don't knows' are excluded.
Professor John Curtice said the polls had been 'bouncing around a pretty constant average' between the independence and EU referendums, but neither side could be sure of securing their desired result if another Scottish vote was held.
He said: 'Basically, if we take the polls after September 18, 2014 through to June 22, 2016, they averaged about Yes 47% and No 53% with no discernible change. It's just been bouncing around a pretty constant average.
'Three polls had Yes ahead in the immediate aftermath of Brexit but since then were back to Yes 47%, No 53%.'
He added: 'There's more people in favour of Scottish independence than in 2014, that's absolutely clear but it's still not quite half.
'We're still in the situation where the SNP can't be sure of winning but equally Theresa May can't be sure of them losing another independence referendum.'
Independent Scotland would have to hike taxes or cut spending and join the euro 
An independent Scotland would have to hike taxes or cut spending and faces being forced to join the euro, a leading economist has warned.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said public spending was more than £1,000 higher per person north of the border compared to the rest of the UK.
He added that the fall in the price of oil had made Scotland's financial position more difficult since the independence referendum in 2014.
Brexit had made the situation more complicated because if Scotland was inside the European Union single market and the rest of the UK was outside, trade with its largest partner could suffer.
Setting out why spending cuts or tax hikes may be required, Mr Johnson said: 'Scotland looks very much like the rest of the UK in terms of its income per head, so we get just about as much tax per person from everyone in Scotland as we do in the rest of the UK.
'But spending in Scotland is more than £1,000 per person higher than spending in the rest of the UK.
'So what that means is that there is a big transfer of money from the rest of the UK to Scotland and, obviously, if Scotland were to become independent it would have to either reduce its spending by more than £1,000 per head or increase its taxes by more than £1,000 per head.'
The question of whether Scotland would be able to continue to use sterling was one of the major economic arguments during the 2014 referendum - and the UK's departure from the EU could make that more unlikely.
He said: 'It would clearly be more difficult to maintain the pound if the UK was outside the EU and Scotland was inside and the pressure on Scotland politically from the rest of the EU to join the euro would be significant.
'But in the end that would be a political, as much as an economic, choice.'
 
As Cabinet ministers gathered in the Great Hall at Chequers on Friday morning, sipping coffee or fresh orange juice, there were one or two nervous jokes about political assassinations.
Gazing down on the nation’s leaders from high above the ornate fireplace was a portrait of the children of Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649.
That the Prime Minister meant business was clear from the moment they’d arrived and handed over their mobile phones as a precaution against leaks.
And any minister who might have been contemplating a resignation if the marathon Brexit summit did not go their way was given a less than subtle hint as to the consequences of life outside the privileged world of Cabinet.
One wag in the PM’s team announced loudly that there was a stash of business cards available for Aston’s, the local mini cab firm for ‘ministers who couldn’t make the right decisions for the country’ and would need to make their own way back to London.
A jest or not, they were left in no doubt that the moment they resigned they would no longer have access to the chauffeur driven cars that had swept them down the long cobbled Victory drive, flanked by beech trees that were a gift from Sir Winston Churchill, to the 16th century Buckinghamshire mansion.
Some 40 minutes later, the Cabinet were ushered into the wood-panelled Hawtrey Room, where Churchill recorded some of his stirring wartime broadcasts. Then the Prime Minister swept in wearing a purple dress trimmed in green. ‘The colour of the suffragettes,’ observed one minister who thought it ‘very significant’ in the 100th anniversary of the first women securing the vote. The topic for discussion was a 120-page document on the Facilitated Customs Arrangement (FCA) which most had received only the afternoon before. Questions went back and forth rapidly.
Someone asked for clarification of some of the figures and Chancellor Philip Hammond answered. Ten minutes later he was still talking, at which point he was cut off by the PM who chided that it wasn’t the time for speeches.
As the temperature steadily rose – there is no air conditioning at Chequers, the weekend retreat of every prime minister since the end of the First World War – most people took off their jackets.
Even Britain’s bearded ambassador to the EU Sir Tim Barrow, in his trademark three piece suit, stripped down to his waistcoat.
Then Mrs May asked Julian Smith, the Chief Whip, to speak.
‘Oh God,’ said Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary. Quick as a flash, the PM retorted: ‘He’ll like that as an introduction.’ Smith’s assessment was crucial to May’s subsequent victory, because he bluntly warned that without the FCA compromise the Government would certainly lose a Commons vote on July 16 and be forced to stay in the Customs Union. His remarks had a sobering effect. They broke for a buffet lunch, on the sun-drenched patio, of barbecue chicken thighs with a selection of salads made using produce from the Chequers estate. For dessert there were scones and cream and sticky tea loaf.
Boris Johnson, a Cabinet heavyweight in more ways than one, was seen prodding the loaf with a fork but resisted taking a bite.
At 2pm, they reassembled in the Grand Parlour as the thermometer on the wall hit 27.3C. Windows were thrown open and the Chequers team ferried in chilled Diet Coke and elderflower cordial.
For those who needed more of a sugar rush, a bag of Haribo sweets also went round, with Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt photographed diving in, although nothing passed his lips apparently. ‘He’s thinking about his public image all the time,’ observed one source drily.
The Prime Minister then spoke for six minutes looking down only occasionally at her notes.
‘There was a touch of Elizabeth I about her. Haughty, almost regal, she was confident and assured,’ one minister said admiringly.
David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister and de facto deputy PM, went next. A former Europe minister, arch Remainer, and fully paid-up cheerleader for May, he banged the drum for the FCA. No surprise there.
All eyes, however, were on David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, whom May then called to speak. It was a pivotal moment. Davis had little to do with the FCA, which was drawn up by civil servants who now appear to be leading the negotiations. He made clear he disagreed with the plan and warned the EU would come back for ‘even more concessions’. But it was clear that he would accept the majority view.
One senior source said: ‘He is a realist who knows we are leaving the EU albeit not exactly on the terms he wanted, and he also relishes his Cabinet role.’ Boris Johnson appeared surprised to be called next. In a six-minute ‘rant’ or ‘whinge’, depending who you spoke to, he despaired that the customs plan had ‘emerged zombie-like from the coffin’.
The most telling intervention came just after 3pm from Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary. Stressing that the FCA was not his preferred option and arguing they must make more plans for ‘no deal’, he said: ‘I feel we should all back the PM and support her in her efforts to make this work.’
The words had the desired effect. ‘It changed everything,’ said another source. There was a rumble of supportive noises and suddenly the little bubble of rebellion had burst – although critics were determined to have their say. Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom was ‘vehemently’ against the policy but ended by saying: ‘I will support you, Prime Minister.’
Another notable contribution came from Penny Mordaunt, the International Aid Secretary, who made clear her own misgivings, while Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary and close ally of backbench Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith, also trashed the plan.
After all 29 ministers had spoken, with seven making clear their opposition, the PM addressed them again saying there was a majority for the policy and demanding a return to Cabinet collective responsibility.
‘We have seen what happens when a team is united and gets behind their leader,’ she said – a clear reference to the England footballers’ World Cup success.
With the discussions over, they toasted a rare outbreak of Cabinet unity with Pol Roger champagne, the favourite of Churchill. In a jocular speech Boris Johnson proposed a toast to the Prime Minister, who interrupted to say: ‘If only people could see how united we are now.’ But can it last? 
When I interviewed David Cameron a few days before the 2015 election, I was taken aback. Sleeves rolled up, he thumped the table, calling the then Labour leader Ed Miliband a ‘goon’ and Nicola Sturgeon ‘bonkers’, and comparing himself to Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying: ‘I’m pumped up like Arnie.’
This was a very different man from the gracefully calm one I first met in the early 1990s. Unlike his No 10 predecessor Gordon Brown, who was famous for his thunderous rages, Cameron very rarely gets angry. Typically, he once told a Tory conference: ‘Let sunshine win the day.’
But during the run-in to the 2015 election, his advisers had feared that his cool demeanour was playing badly with voters. His no-nonsense Aussie adviser Lynton Crosby had told him: ‘For God’s sake, show some guts and passion!’
The result was this fist-thumping Schwarzenegger impression.
As we now know, Cameron defeated Miliband, winning the Tories’ first Commons majority since 1992.
Perhaps it’s no wonder that we are witnessing an angry Cameron again.
He’s trying to explain how he made a complete mess by gambling on an EU referendum, then resigning.
Of course he is pointing the finger of blame at others.
There is nothing new in ex-Tory leaders sniping at successors.
After hearing Sir Edward Heath rail against Margaret Thatcher over dinner, I challenged him to find some merit in her. He scoffed: ‘She’s a good chemist!’ (Thatcher had a degree in the subject.)
But Cameron is now unleashing years of pent-up anger and frustration. Yes, there has been a dignified silence for a long period but we are witnessing Terminator Dave lashing out. Storm clouds have blocked out the sunshine.
Predictably, his principal targets are Michael Gove and Boris Johnson.
Savagely, Cameron says Johnson never backed Brexit out of principle but out of naked ambition – in other words to knife Cameron and become PM himself.
He says Johnson behaved ‘appallingly’ and ‘left the truth at home’ (i.e. lied) over immigration during the referendum campaign. As for his one-time close friend Gove, he describes him as ‘mendacious’ and says he once sent him a text message saying: ‘You’re a team player or a w*****.’
Like most ex-politicians, David Cameron finds it harder to analyse his own shortcomings. True, he admits to sleepless nights over losing the referendum and acknowledges the ‘pain and uncertainty’ his actions caused. He vents his frustration at those who say he ‘swanned off’ – his words – by resigning straight after his defeat rather than clear up the mess. He expresses pique that some blame him for ‘austerity’ – when he was merely clearing up the economic mess left by the previous Labour government.
However, the cruel truth is that there are no honeyed words that can rewrite Cameron’s political legacy. He will not be remembered primarily for getting the Tories into power.
His Brexit downfall – and the ensuing chaos – means he will forever be talked about in the same breath as Tory prime minister Anthony Eden, who was ruined by the Suez crisis.
It is difficult to challenge this harsh assessment. But Cameron fails to confront the truth that this was all of his own making.
His 2013 decision to promise a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU was intended as a gambit to stop Nigel Farage’s then Ukip party capitalising on mounting discontent with Brussels resulting in the Tories losing the 2015 election.
If Cameron was honest, he would concede that he believed a referendum would never happen. For at the time he was convinced the Tories would not win the election. Instead, they would be locked again in coalition with the Europhile Lib Dems who, as the price for power-sharing, would veto a referendum.
Conveniently – or the happy result of a cynical strategy – this would save Remainer Cameron from having to honour his referendum offer. But the Tories won the election outright. Without the Lib Dems as a Brexit human shield, Cameron could not get out of his rash referendum pledge.
This week, Cameron was back beside his former deputy PM, Sir Nick Clegg, as they attended a memorial service for Paddy Ashdown. Cameron sat between Sir John Major and Tony Blair.
I’m sure he pondered the fates of these two fellow former prime ministers. Blair is derided and haunted by the Iraq War. Major, responsible for the Tories’ exile from government for 13 years, has regained the respect of many people.
The reputation of the two ex-PMs was reflected in the decision to choose Major, not Blair, who was much closer to Ashdown personally and politically, to deliver the main address.
Cameron can only hope to benefit from a similar revision in public opinion. But it will take much longer than three years.
Theresa May hailed a 'way forward' on Brexit tonight after emerging victorious from a dramatic Commons showdown where she pushed her plan past MPs and saw off Remainer bids to delay the UK's departure.
The PM triumphed in four critical votes, including defeating by 321 to 298 a cross-party amendment that would have paved the way for the UK's departure date to be pushed back from March. There was crumb of comfort for Remainers as they won a symbolic vote urging no deal is ruled out - although it is not binding on the government.
After the bombshell results, which give her a mandate to return to Brussels and get concessions on the Irish border backstop, the premier vowed to 'redouble her efforts' - while admitting it 'will not be easy'. 
Mrs May repeated her invitation for Jeremy Corbyn - whose own amendment was put to the sword by MPs - to join talks on how to proceed with Brexit, and he grudgingly accepted. 
However, EU council chief Donald Tusk underlined the challenge the premier now faces by immediately rejecting the idea. 'The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for renegotiation,' he said.
Pro-EU MPs and businesses voiced misery at the setbacks, while the Pound dipped as markets assessed that the chances of no deal have risen. But Boris Johnson was elated, boasting that Parliament had made Mrs May accept that the backstop 'has got to come out' and saying Brussels must 'listen'. 
'The government set its face against that for some time,' he told Sky News. 'Parliament has clearly said that has got to happen.' 
The results came after Mrs May urged wavering Tories to hold off rebelling, promising it would not be their 'last chance' to avoid no deal.
'I will never stop battling for Britain, but the odds of success become much longer if this House ties one hand behind my back,' she said.  
As the night unfolded, Mr Corbyn's amendment pushing Labour policy was defeated by 327 to 296. An SNP call for Scotland to stay in the EU was also soundly thrashed by 327 to 39. 
An effort from Conservative MP Dominic Grieve to force 'indicative votes' on Brexit policy went down by 321 to 301 - significantly more than the government's effective majority of 13. 
Yvette Cooper's plan to pave the way for Brexit to be delayed was then lost by 23, with 14 Labour MPs defying Mr Corbyn to kill it off - while just six Tories rebelled.
Mrs May's proposed way forward, of going back to Brussels to renegotiate her deal, was passed by 317 to 301. Just eight Conservatives went against the plan, and they were cancelled out by seven Labour who jumped the fence. 
Later this week: Theresa May is expected to return to Brussels to ask for changes to the Irish backstop, after MPs backed an amendment calling for 'alternative arrangements'. Her office has not yet confirmed when she will travel to meet EU leaders, who have already said they will not renegotiate the deal. 
February 13: If no new deal has been reached, Mrs May will address MPs again on this date and her Government will put a further motion before the House of Commons. MPs would then be able to vote on further amendments, potentially on February 14.
March 29: Brexit day. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act of 2018 fixed 11pm on March 29 as the time and date when Britain will leave the EU. If no agreement has been reached by then, the UK - in spite of the Commons vote against a cliff-edge Brexit last night - will leave without a deal. 
After the votes came in a clearly jubilant Mrs May said there was a 'route' to a deal that can get a 'sustainable' majority in the House.
'Tonight a majority of members have said they would support a deal with changes to the backstop combined with measures to address concerns over Parliament's role in the negotiation of the future relationship and commitments on workers' rights in law where need be,' she said.
'It's now clear there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in this House for leaving the EU with a deal. 
'We will now take this mandate forward and seek to obtain legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement that deal with concerns on the backstop while guaranteeing no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.' 
Mrs May also played down the vote against no deal, saying: 'I agree that we should not leave without a deal. However, simply rejecting no deal is not enough to stop it.' 
On another emotionally-charged day of high drama at Westminster:
Speaker John Bercow set the stage for a titanic showdown by accepting the PM-backed amendment tabled by senior Tory Sir Graham Brady, as well as Ms Cooper's plan backed by Mr Corbyn. 
But to secure the support of Tory Eurosceptics including Mr Johnson and the DUP Mrs May had to admit publicly that she must renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement and replace the backstop.
The premier had previously dodged explicitly saying the package she had thrashed out with Brussels would be fundamentally changed - instead suggesting there could be 'legally binding' add-ons.
Mrs May also vowed to look 'seriously' at a Plan C hammered out by pro-EU and Eurosceptic Tories - which would involve demanding a much looser backstop, and if that could not be agreed asking for a longer transition period to seal other trade arrangements. Brexiteers believe approving the Brady plan could be a first step towards securing their vision.  
Mr Corbyn tried to put a brave face on the embarrassing losses, insisting Mrs May must still 'face the reality that no deal is not an option'.
'I will meet the Prime Minister and others from across Parliament to find a sensible Brexit solution that works for the whole country,' he told the Commons after Mrs May repeated her invite to talks - which he previously snubbed.
'That solution should be based around Labour's alternative plan of a customs union with a UK say, a strong single market relationship and a cast-iron guarantee on workers' rights, consumer standards and environmental protections.'
But a spokesman for Mr Tusk said: 'We welcome and share the UK Parliament's ambition to avoid a no-deal scenario.
'We continue to urge the UK government to clarify its intentions with respect to its next steps as soon as possible.
The French President shot down Theresa May's hopes of renegotiating Brexit tonight insisting the deal on the table is already the 'best available'. 
Emmanuel Macron's intervention comes as the EU appears set to rapidly kill off the Prime Minister's hopes of salvaging her two year negotiation.
Speaking in Cyprus tonight, Mr Macron said: 'As the European Council in December clearly indicated, the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated between the UK and EU is the best agreement possible.
'It is not renegotiable.'
Mr Macron called on Mrs May to present the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier with her next steps for avoiding a no-deal Brexit on March 29, which he said 'no-one wants, but ... we must all, despite everything, prepare for'.
Mrs May spoke to EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker this morning before vowing to her Brexiteer rebels she would push for a renegotiation.
He is thought to have repeated the EU position there would be no renegotiation. 
Earlier Manfred Weber, a senior MEP tipped to succeed Mr Juncker as European commission president, suggested Spain could make a new grab for Gibraltar and the £39billion divorce bill could be pushed up.
'The Withdrawal Agreement is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. 
'The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for re-negotiation.'  
The PM spoke on the phone to EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker this morning, and could head for Brussels as early as this week. 
Emmanuel Macron insisted the current deal was the 'best' available and 'non-renegotiable'. 
Mrs May's leverage in negotiations with Brussels could have been seriously undermined if the Cooper plan had been accepted by MPs. 
Ms Cooper and Tory MP Nick Boles issued a joint statement expressing disappointment, and suggesting they will try again next month.
'The Prime Minister promised a new meaningful vote on 13 Feb and a new amendable motion in the event that this motion is defeated or the government does not secure a new deal,' they said. 
'But we are running out of time. 'She will need to reflect the Commons opposition to No Deal. We will consider what amendments will be needed if at that point no progress has been made. 
'We remain committed to ensuring that we don't reach the cliff edge on 29 March without a deal.' 
Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who has regularly campaigned for a second referendum, called the defeat of the Cooper and Grieve amendments 'a bad day for Parliament'. 
Writing on Twitter, he said: 'There is no point claiming you are opposed to a 'no deal' Brexit if you are not prepared to will the legal means to stop it happening. 
'Non-binding motions are not the same as legally binding laws. The Cooper and Grieve amendments addressed this. A bad day for Parliament.' 
However, Mr Johnson said the EU now had to change its stance.
'I hope that our friends in Brussels will listen and that they will make that change,' he said.
'It is no skin off their nose to do it, there is no reason at all why at this advanced stage in the negotiations they shouldn't give the UK the changes that we need.' 
Mrs May had been due to close the Brexit debate tonight with a final plea not to derail her strategy.
But instead she opened the session with a statement explaining why she was backing Sir Graham's amendment as a means to achieving her goals of overhauling the backstop. 
She warned MPs that they could not simply keep saying things were unacceptable. 'We need to send a message about what we do want,' she said. 
Allies hope that a strong vote by MPs will give her 'firepower' to go back to Brussels and secure concessions that can satisfy the DUP and Brexiteers. 
However, first Mrs May had to fend off a potentially catastrophic challenge from the Remainer wing of her party - which has been pushing her to rule out a no-deal Brexit. 
The premier defused the situation by reassuring MPs that they will have another chance to stop the UK crashing out, and did not need to support the Cooper amendment, which would have dramatically reduced her leverage in talks with the EU.  
Mrs May said she will return to the Commons 'as soon as possible' with a revised deal which will be subject to a 'meaningful vote' by MPs. 
If this is rejected by MPs, she will table a further amendable motion for debate the next day. 
If no new deal has been reached with the EU by February 13, Mrs May will make a statement to the House that day and table an amendable motion for 
Despite what she acknowledged was a 'limited appetite' in Europe for reopening talks, she insisted: 'I believe with a mandate from this House... I can secure such a change in advance of our departure from the EU.'
The amendment from Sir Graham - the chair of the influential Tory backbench 1922 Committee - was one of seven selected by Mr Bercow for consideration and possible votes on Tuesday evening.
The cross-party proposal from Ms Cooper and Tory Nick Boles - backed by the Labour frontbench - would have handed control over the Brexit process to Parliament, potentially delaying departure day from March 29 to the end of the year.
During the debate, Mrs May acknowledged that the Commons defeat of the Withdrawal Agreement she agreed with EU leaders last November had been 'decisive'. And she told MPs: 'I listened.'
It was in the interests of the whole House to back the Brady amendment, which would resolve the main obstacle to Britain securing a smooth and orderly exit from the EU, she said.
Mrs May said it was time for Parliament to 'speak as one'. 
'I call on this House to give me the mandate I need to deliver a deal this House can support.
'Do that and I can work to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement. Do that and I can fight for a backstop that honours our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland in a way this House can support. Do that and we can leave the EU with a deal that honours the result of the referendum.
'So the time has come for words to be matched by deeds. If you want to tell Brussels what this House will accept, you have to vote for it. If you want to leave with a deal, you have to vote for it. If you want Brexit, you have to vote for Brexit.'
She warned those considering voting for the 'cacophony' of rival amendments to rule out no-deal: 'Unless we are to end up with no Brexit at all, the only way to avoid no-deal is to agree a deal.
'That is why I want to go back to Brussels with the clearest possible mandate to secure a deal that this House can support. That means sending the clearest possible message not about what this House does not want but what we do want.' 
Sir Graham said after the Withdrawal Agreement was defeated there was a 'fashionable idea that there was simply nothing that the House could agree on'.
He told MPs: 'I don't believe that is true, and what I hope to demonstrate with my amendment today is that there is an agreement which can win majority support in the House of Commons.
'And by voting for amendment, we can send the Prime Minister back to Brussels to negotiate having strengthened her hand.'
But ex-attorney general Dominic Grieve attacked the Brady proposal as 'displacement activity'.
The Tory MP for Beaconsfield said: 'It's very tempting to be told you should just vote for (the Brady) amendment N and send some message that we could just be very close to resolving our disagreements with the EU and doing it collectively.
'I do fear that what we're being asked to do this evening in supporting amendment N is a piece of displacement activity, something which I'm afraid this House has specialised in over the last two-and-a-half years.
'Firstly it's quite clear the EU will not negotiate on it, although I do accept that if you don't ask you don't get.
'Secondly even if we were to get the backstop removed... there is a lack of trust about future intention which makes the 29th March completely irrelevant, because the truth is disputes will arise immediately afterwards about the nature of our state and how we relate to those around us.' 
Father of the House Ken Clarke described Brexit as an almost 'unique political crisis' with MPs facing a constitutional crisis about the credibility of Government and Parliament in its ability to resolve such matters.
He said: 'I think we ought to be aware that the public at the moment are looking upon our political system with something rather near to contempt.' 
Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith said he had voted against the Prime Minister's deal, but would now support the Brady amendment.
He said: 'I do believe it is necessary for us now to send the Prime Minister back with a fair wind and a sense that this House has agreed that they want her to go and renegotiate and to take that change and that desire to deliver Brexit on time on (the) 29th, with her over there to Brussels, and achieve what I hope and believe with strength and with determination she will be able to achieve in those negotiations.
'I wish her well and I therefore am voting tonight to support that amendment because I think it will be for me the greatest expression of my goodwill for a Prime Minister, that, not withstanding sometimes our disagreements, I have the greatest respect for.'
Mr Johnson said earlier that he would 'gladly support the Brady amendment' if Mrs May made a commitment to rewrite the Withdrawal Agreement.
Mr Rees-Mogg and the DUP have also lined up behind the plan in the light of the PM's words.
However, it is thought that after backing the amendment the hard Brexiteers will then try to force their own 'Plan C' through.
The scheme has been engineered by Brexiteers including Mr Rees-Mogg and Remainers such as Nicky Morgan.
It has been branded the 'Malthouse Compromise' because it was brokered by minister Kit Malthouse - would see the UK honour its £39billion divorce payment in return for an extended Brexit transition lasting until the end of 2021.
This would allow time to thrash out a free trade deal and work out an 'acceptable' solution to the Irish border issue that would avoid 'hard' checks. 
In a message on a Tory WhatsApp group, Boris Johnson described the proposed peace deal as 'a breakthrough', adding: 'I really hope the government adopt this as soon as possible.' 
In the Commons, Mrs May said the group had put forward 'a serious proposal that we are engaging with sincerely and positively'. 
She added: 'We will sit down and work through the proposal that has come forward.' Some Remainers, however, warned it was most likely to result in a no-deal Brexit. 
Questions were immediately raised over the idea's chances of success, after some Remainers gave it short shrift. 
Tory backbencher Anna Soubry said: 'The prospect of the EU ripping up the Withdrawal Agreement or allowing a transition period without the backstop is very remote - and for good reason given the risks to the Irish peace process. 
'Instead, this scheme backed by Jacob Rees-Mogg is a recipe for the no-deal Brexit that the hard Brexiters have always craved.' 
Former minster Guto Bebb said: 'It is nonsense on stilts to think that that can actually be a way forward at this point in time.' 
Mrs May is also battling Remainers in her cabinet including Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and Justice Secretary David Gauke, who say she has a fortnight to get her deal done or they will quit to prevent the no deal Brexit.
Mrs May had an extraordinary row with Mr Johnson last night after he tried to derail attempts to save her Brexit deal.
In a dramatic clash, the PM rounded on her leadership rival when he openly questioned her strategy during a tense meeting of Tory MPs in the Commons.
With Labour threatening to back bids to delay or even block Brexit, Mrs May appealed to her MPs for unity after months of damaging infighting – prompting Mr Johnson to openly challenge her authority.
As astonished MPs looked on, the former foreign secretary questioned her decision to back a Commons amendment by Tory grandee Sir Graham Brady, which would demand that Brussels find 'alternative arrangements' to the hated Irish backstop.
According to witnesses, Mr Johnson directly challenged the PM, asking her: 'What DO you want, Prime Minister? What will this amendment achieve?'
In a withering response, Mrs May hit back, saying: 'We won't know unless you support us Boris.' 
As loyalist MPs cheered her on, she added: 'I am happy to battle away Boris – get behind me and we'll do it together.'  

Despite the political controversy of the past few weeks at Westminster, I believe the United Kingdom remains firmly on course to leave the European Union with a deal – if MPs hold their nerve.
On January 29, the House of Commons expressed its support for that outcome, provided there were legal changes to the Northern Ireland backstop to prevent it operating indefinitely.
When the Government set out to secure those changes, I did not know what the response in Europe would be.
But in the discussions I have had with the leadership of the European Union and the leaders of every EU member state, I have found a real determination to find a way through which allows the UK to leave with a deal.
That engagement has already begun to bear fruit.
The UK and EU are working towards a joint work-stream to develop alternative arrangements to ensure the absence of a hard border in Northern Ireland, in parallel with our negotiations on the future relationship.
We are doing our own ministerial-led work – supported by civil service resources and with £20 million of government funding – to help develop, test and pilot proposals which can form part of these alternative arrangements.
We are also continuing to hold detailed discussions on the legal changes that are required to guarantee that the Northern Ireland backstop cannot endure indefinitely.
But securing the necessary changes to the backstop is not the only thing the Government is doing to build support for the deal across the House of Commons.
We are developing detailed plans to give Parliament a clearer and stronger role in the next phase of the negotiations, in which the UK and the EU will agree the detail of our future relationship. We are discussing with the EU what additions or changes can now be made to the political declaration outlining that future relationship that will increase people’s confidence in the ambition of both sides to agree to it as soon as possible.
And to protect workers’ rights, a concern for many MPs as we leave the EU, we will give Parliament a vote on whether it wishes to follow suit whenever the EU changes its standards. The UK leads the way on workers’ rights, environmental protections and health and safety – as we leave the EU, we will continue to enhance them.
I firmly believe that a deal is within our grasp.
Yesterday I committed in Parliament to give MPs a second meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement by March 12 at the latest. I am confident that we can win that vote. But because many MPs are worried that if we lose that vote Parliament would not have time to make its voice heard on the next steps, I gave two other assurances.
If the Government has not won a meaningful vote by March 12, we will ask MPs if they support leaving the EU on March 29 without a Withdrawal Agreement.
If the House rejects leaving on March 29 without a deal, the Government will bring forward a motion on whether Parliament wants to seek a short limited extension to Article 50.
And if the House votes for an extension, we will seek to agree one with the EU and bring forward the necessary legislation.
But I do not want to see Article 50 extended.
Our absolute focus should be on working to get a deal and leaving on March 29. Doing so would give businesses and citizens the certainty they deserve.
By committing Labour to holding a second referendum, despite promising to implement Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn has shown once again that he cannot be trusted to keep his promises. His cynical political games would take us back to square one.
Instead, Parliament should do its duty so that our country can move forward.
We want to leave the EU with a deal that gives us the best of both worlds: a close relationship with our nearest neighbours and the chance to make the most of our talents and resources by building new relationships with growing economies around the world.
At a vegan-friendly arts centre in Hastings today, Jeremy Corbyn said ‘Labour is open to discussions’ on Brexit.
But he wasn’t going to talk to Theresa May about it. Nope. Not until she agreed to agree with him.
You could call it the Michel Barnier approach to negotiations. Brussels refused to discuss Brexit with Mrs May until she accepted its timetable. He’s a quick learner, our Jeremy.
Mr Corbyn was on ripely wriggly form at this brief speech, peering over his spectacles, squinting, screwing up his face and playing hard to get.
For months he had pushed Mrs May to include the Opposition in talks. Now that she had agreed to do that, he had consulted his diary and found he was having his hair done that night. 
Odysseus’s Penelope undid her knitting every night in order to preserve her virtue. Mr Corbyn just wants to avoid having to make a decision on Brexit. Hence his scornful ‘the offer of talks is simply a stunt’.
Hastings is the unsafe seat of Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd. Mr Corbyn took a few swipes at her, accusing her of cruelty to old age pensioners. Mr Corbyn himself is 69.
Around him sat a throng of party activists, some of them very much two-pudding types. 
They clapped enthusiastically when he kept saying he had been ‘clear…very clear…we are clear’ on his Brexit position. 
When politicians say they have been clear, they have usually been as obscure as the windows of a municipal urinal.
He insisted he would not talk to Mrs May until she agreed to ‘rule out’ a no-deal Brexit. Silly sausage. Plenty of voters think No Deal could be terrific yet the elite refuses to contemplate it.
He criticised the spending of public money on No Deal preparations, arguing that it could be better used on social care, housing, etc. No one asked what he thought of handing the EU 39 billion of our jimmies.
Should Brexit be delayed? ‘That may well be the case,’ he murmured, eyes narrowed. What about a second referendum? 
‘It’s an option,’ he said, stroking his chin. A Remainer in the audience had a wonderful idea: the ballot paper on a second referendum should contain only ‘a choice between Remaining options’.
This was presumably a joke but no one laughed at her suggestion. They just nodded and turned, mutely, to the bearded old sage in their midst.
A similar, dazed quality was evident at a London event an hour or so earlier when a little knot of richly-attired Tory Remainers gathered in a modernist hotel basement to promote the idea of a second referendum. 
You’ve enjoyed the Brexit experience so much that you’re gagging for more? Let’s do it all over again!
After some pretty filthy continental-strength coffee, the meeting was opened by Phillip Lee, MP for Bracknell, lugubrious to the point of funereal.
He kept saying ‘let’s be straight’ but then went and spoilt it slightly by claiming ‘this is not a campaign to overturn Brexit’. Oh come off it!
Heidi Allen, that shouty MP from Cambridgeshire, sau-ntered up to say ‘okay, so this is not easy, cos no one actually wants a second referendum’.
A cross between Cleopatra and David Brent, Ms Allen said she knew nothing about politics but she did know about business and she regarded voters as ‘customers’ who had to be offered a ‘product’. 
She was against ‘the tribal nature of politics’ – an odd thing to say at a specifically Tory event – and felt her fellow Conservative MPs should say ‘to hell with their associations’ (i.e. their local party activists). 
She said she wanted to be a minister. Then she said she disliked Ukip and concluded: ‘We want our party back.’ Confused? I certainly was.
Dominic Grieve (Con, Beaconsfield), in a glorious 1950s suit once owned by his father Percy (who was also a Tory MP), slipped out early. 
A weekend European jolly for him. But maybe dim Heidi had just given him a headache.
Supreme Court judges were today warned not to make the 'bizarre' decision to let MPs vote on whether to trigger Brexit when the public has already demanded it.
James Eadie QC - known as the 'Treasury Devil' because he argues the Government's most crucial cases - said that Parliament voted to hold an EU referendum  knowing it would be for Britain to decide on June 23, not them.
He said: 'Was Parliament really in 2015 doing no more than simply reserving to itself the right to decide whether to leave or not as it saw fit? Not merely is that highly improbable - it would be little short of bizarre if that were to be the position'.
The Government has appealed to the Supreme Court after the High Court ruled last month that the Prime Minister can only trigger Brexit following a vote in Parliament - rather than use her prerogative to act on the referendum result. 
Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC said the High Court made the 'wrong' decision because the EU vote was written off as 'legally irrelevant' even though it was set up with the 'universal expectation that the Government would implement its result'. 
And in a stinging rebuke for the Remain supporters opposed to Theresa May triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty he told the court: 'If this is all about standing up for Parliament, I say Parliament can stand up for itself'.
The Supreme Court justices acknowledged the case has stirred up 'strong feelings' throughout the nation and vowed to stay impartial as they consider whether the Government has the power to trigger Britain's departure from the EU. 
It came as the Supreme Court's top judge issued a stark warning about online abuse as remain figurehead Gina Miller was flanked by a team of bodyguards today.
Mrs Miller, 51, says she has had death and rape threats as she also jumped to the defence of the 'disgracefully vilified' 11 judges who will decide on her Brexit battle this week.  
Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the case was of 'great constitutional significance in which there is understandable and legitimate interest both inside and outside this courtroom'. 
He added: 'But if this is all about standing up for Parliament, I say Parliament can stand up for itself.'
For the Government, James Eadie QC said the Royal Perogative was 'a long-standing, well-recognised set of powers firmly established in our constitutional arrangements' which were 'fundamental to our constitution and essential to effective government'.
He submitted: 'The Government has legal power to give notice pursuant to Article 50.' 
Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger said: 'Threatening and abusing people because they are exercising their fundamental right to go to court undermines the rule of law.'
He told the Court: 'This appeal is concerned with legal issues and, as judges, our duty is to consider those issues impartially, and to decide the case according to the law. That is what we shall do.' 


Supreme Court President Lord Neuberger started the four-day appeal hearing - dubbed one of the most important cases in British legal history - with a warning to those who have targeted Ms Miller and others with abusive emails and social media messages.
He said: 'Threatening and abusing people because they are exercising their fundamental right to go to court undermines the rule of law. 
'Anyone who communicates such threats or abuse should be aware that there are legal powers designed to ensure that access to the courts is available to everyone'.
The judge said that no addresses of people involved should be published to protect them.
Critics highlighted how four of the 11 judges have formal links to the EU or linked institutions -  and five have publicly expressed views which appear sympathetic to the EU and its aims.
Lord Neuberger said: 'This appeal is concerned with legal issues and, as judges, our duty is to consider those issues impartially, and to decide the case according to the law. That is what we shall do'. 
All the parties involved in the Supreme Court battle over Brexit have formally given their backing to the 11 justices hearing the historic case, it was announced at the start of the hearing. 
Lord Neuberger, the court's president, said all parties had been asked whether they wished any of the judges to stand down and he said that they have no objection to any of the justices sitting on the appeal.
The Government is again being represented by Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC, who warned judges not to defy the 'will of the electorate' or 'stray into areas of political judgment'. 
Mr Wright said today that the prerogative was not 'an ancient relic', but a 'constitutional necessity' that had been used regularly by prime ministers. 
Wright said the government wasn't using prerogative powers 'on a whim or out of a clear blue sky' but as the result of a process in which Parliament had been 'fully and consciously involved.' 
One of the Supreme Court judges today criticised the lack of detail on Theresa May's Great Repeal Bill.
Lord Carnwath (pictured) says he has been looking for detail on the piece of legislation the Prime Minister plans to use to remove the act that took the UK into the EU. 
When he asked Government QC James Eadie if he had any more detail he said he would have to come back to him.
It was announced at the Tory party conference on October 7.
Lord Carnwath said: Do we have any evidence about that? About what it is, what it's going to do?
'It seems to be of some relevance to ask ourselves, what is Parliament's role going to be between now and the end of the two years?
'I think there's been a statement at the Conservative Party conference. Has there been anything else?'. 





Today he told the justices that the case was of 'great constitutional significance in which there is understandable and legitimate interest both inside and outside this courtroom'.
He said lawmakers had passed the European Referendum Act of 2015, laying out the rules for a referendum on EU membership, in 'universal expectation ... that the government would implement its result.' 
'Secondly, in the light of what followed the Divisional Court (High Court) judgment, it should be said with clarity this is a case which the claimants brought perfectly properly and which it is now perfectly proper for this court to decide.' 
It was for the Government to exercise prerogative powers in the conduct of the UK's affairs on the international plane.
He told the judges that triggering Article 50 'will not be an exercise of the prerogative right on a whim or out of the blue' but was part of a process in which 'Parliament has been fully and consciously involved'.
Mr Wright said the use of the prerogative in the circumstances would be lawful. 
James Eadie QC, also representing the Government, described the prerogative as 'a long-standing, well-recognised set of powers firmly established in our constitutional arrangements' which were 'fundamental to our constitution and essential to effective government'. 
He added: 'It's no small thing to alter the constitutional balance by limiting long-standing powers'. 
He also argued that although when Britain joined in 1972 it was agreed in a referendum and in Parliament - but the then European Communities Act does not demand a vote for MPs if Britain decided to leave. 
He said: 'Article 50 was not even a gleam in someone's eye at that point'. 
He said: 'Parliament has carefully selected the areas it wishes to control and it's selected the ones about which it wishes to have a say. The rest, we submit, is prerogative as normal'. 
He added that ministers are allowed to tweak Britain's relationship with Brussels without a vote and should be able to do the same after a referendum.
Lord Mance, Lord Sumption and Mr Eadie then had a debate about whether leaving the EU was just like members of a London club voting on whether they 'should wear a tie in the dining room'. Mr Eadie said it was the right analogy but Lord Mance said there was a 'huge difference'.  






Once exercised by the monarch alone, the royal prerogative has for centuries been at the heart of UK foreign affairs and the making of treaties with foreign states.
It is also the source of other executive powers dating from medieval times which have now, with the development of constitutional monarchy, passed from kings and queens into the hands of Government ministers. 
In the days of the British Empire, it proved useful in governing the colonies - but it has been used in recent times too. 
In 2000 High Court judges ruled that the people of the Chagos Islands expelled from their homes to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia could return to live on 65 of the islands, though not Diego Garcia itself. 
In 2004, the Government used the royal prerogative, in the Queen's name, to effectively overturn the court's decision, leading to further legal battles. 

Another of the age-old prerogatives is that of mercy, which can still be used through ministers of the Crown to grant pardons to persons convicted of criminal offences.
One of the most well-known cases involved Alan Turing, who helped shorten the Second World War by cracking the German Enigma code.
He was convicted in March 1952 of the then criminal offence of gross indecency with another man and died shortly afterwards. A verdict of suicide was recorded.
He was granted a pardon under the royal prerogative, reflecting his exceptional war-time achievements.
Prerogative powers currently allow ministers to deny United Kingdom passports to those suspected of being involved in terrorism.  

Lord Neuberger is leading a panel including Lady Hale, Lord Mance, Lord Kerr, Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson, Lord Sumption, Lord Reed, Lord Carnwath, Lord Hughes and Lord Hodge.
In his opening remarks Lord Neuberger stressed the court was aware of the 'strong feelings associated with the many wider political questions surrounding the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union' - but those questions were not the subject of the appeal. 
Gina Miller's supporters have gathered outside the Supreme Court today wearing judge costumes and carrying pro-Brussels banners including some saying: 'Brexit is racist'. Fights also broke out between rival supporters as legal arguments went on inside the court. 
Mrs Miller claims she has been been threatened with murder, rape and being set on fire, added: 'I don't go anywhere – it has been a complete poisoned chalice'.
She told the Guardian last night: 'I think it is such a dangerous road to be going down to be attacking the judges and their integrity and their independence. They are being vilified and it is totally disgraceful.' 
If the Government's appeal is unsuccessful, and any potential further appeal to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg also fails, the Government's plans for Brexit could be thrown into disarray.
But Mrs May has made it clear she still intends to give an Article 50 notification by the end of next March to start the leave negotiations with 27 other EU countries.  

Downing Street has hit out at Labour and Lib Dems for threatening to delay Brexit by seeking to amend any legislation on triggering Article 50.
The Prime Minister's spokesman said: 'While others are seeming to make clear that they want to frustrate the will of the British people by slowing down the process of leaving and trying to tie the Government's hand in the negotiation, the Government is getting on with respecting what the British people decided and making a success of Brexit.
'What is important is that the Government's hand is not tied in the negotiation. If you are backing the UK team you want them to be able to go into the negotiation and get the best deal possible.'
She said the Government was confident of winning its appeal at the Supreme Court
'We believe we have a clear case that we have the power to trigger Article 50,' she said this morning.
'We are confidence of our case and that is one which the Attorney General and a team of others will be making in the Supreme Court today.' 
The highest court in the land is being asked to overturn a High Court ruling that the Prime Minister must seek MPs' approval to trigger the process of taking Britain out of the European Union.
In a decision that infuriated Brexiteers, three senior judges said Theresa May lacked power to use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and start the two-year process of negotiating Brexit without the prior authority of Parliament.
Now 11 Supreme Court justices - a record number to sit on an appeal - will have their say regarding one of the most important constitutional cases in generations.
If the appeal is unsuccessful, and any potential further appeal to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg also fails, the Government's plans for Brexit could be thrown into disarray.
But Mrs May has made it clear she still intends to give an Article 50 notification by the end of next March to start the leave negotiations with 27 other EU countries.

Brexit Secretary David Davis is leading the Government's historic legal action. His team of lawyers, headed by Attorney General Jeremy Wright, will argue in the four-day Supreme Court hearing that the three High Court judges erred over Article 50 and its use was legally justified by the June 23 referendum vote in favour of quitting the EU.
Lord Thomas, the Lord Chief Justice, gave the ruling blocking the use of Article 50. Two other top judges - Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales - agreed.
Even though it was emphasised to a packed court in London that they were deciding 'a pure question of law' and not expressing any view about the merits of leaving the European Union, they faced fierce criticism from Leave campaigners and an accusation that they were 'enemies of the people'.
Against that background, the Supreme Court has already stressed that its judges will only be concerned with questions of law and not making political decisions.
The Scottish and Welsh governments and the Attorney General for Northern Ireland are all intervening in the case.
Scotland's Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC is to argue that it would be unlawful for the Article 50 process to start without a legislative consent motion (LCM) from Holyrood.
The High Court ruling was won by Gina Miller, 51, an investment fund manager and philanthropist who was selected to bring the lead case.
She reported that her high-profile role had led to death threats and she had spent £60,000 on security, but she is returning to the battle represented once more by Lord Pannick QC.
Her case is being supported by 'concerned citizens' drawn from all walks of life, including London hairdresser Deir Dos Santos, 37, who helped start the legal battle over Brexit but, say his lawyers, has been forced underground after receiving 'vile' hate mail.
The Attorney General said: 'The country voted to leave the European Union in a referendum provided for by an Act of Parliament.
'The Government is determined to respect the result of the referendum. The Government's case is that it does have legal power to trigger Article 50 on the timetable set out by the Prime Minister. We do not believe another Act of Parliament is necessary.'
Counsel General for Wales Mick Antoniw said: 'The people of the UK voted to leave the European Union. I respect that decision and we will not work against the referendum result.'
He said: 'Leaving the EU will lead to significant changes to the devolution settlement in Wales - only the UK Parliament can make those changes, which should be with the agreement of the National Assembly for Wales.'
The Welsh Government's legal team 'will argue that the judgment of the High Court should be upheld, and that an Act of Parliament is required for the UK Government to give notice under Article 50'. 
Who is hearing the case?
Eleven Supreme Court justices - a record number to hear an appeal.
What is the issue?
The panel is being asked by the Government to overturn a High Court ruling that the Prime Minister must seek MPs' approval to trigger the process of taking Britain out of the European Union.
Who made the ruling at the High Court and when?
A panel of three judges in London - headed by Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas - made the ruling on November 3.
Who is presenting the case for the Government?
The Government's top law officer, Attorney General Jeremy Wright, will be arguing the case for quashing the High Court decision.
What will he argue?
The justices will be asked to find that the High Court 'erred' in its ruling, and that it is for the Government to exercise prerogative powers in the conduct of the UK's affairs on the international plane.
Who else will be presenting arguments?
The justices will hear from a wide range of parties, including the Scottish and Welsh Governments and from Northern Ireland.
How long will the case take?
The legal submissions will be heard over four days.
When will there be a ruling?
Not until the new year.
The Brexit judges selected by quangocrats: How the Supreme Court justices who will decide the Article 50 case today are chosen in secret - and how the US puts us to shame 
By Guy Adams for the Daily Mail 
Since it aspires to be the world's greatest democracy, the United States regards the selection of a new member of its Supreme Court as an occasion for an epic and somewhat mind-boggling exercise in public scrutiny.
A candidate, who has already been heavily vetted by White House staff and the security services, and interviewed by the President, before his or her nomination, is then required to take part in an exhaustive 'confirmation' process which spans several months.
It sees them grilled, in front of the media and on live television, during a series of lengthy and often very unfriendly formal hearings, which are conducted by a committee of elected members of the Senate.
Nothing is off limits during these sessions, from their personal finances, to tax arrangements, previous rulings, public speeches, marriages, political affiliations, encounters with soft drugs while at university, and, occasionally, their sex lives.
Often, hostile witnesses are called to the stand to give bruising evidence regarding their perceived shortcomings.
In 1991, for example, a woman called Anita Hill accused candidate Clarence Thomas (who had been her boss) of multiple counts of sexual harassment. The explicit hearings, which included discussions about his pubic hair, were described by Newsweek as 'an X-rated spectacle that was repulsive and irresistible at the same time'.
Most would-be Supreme Court justices are grilled for between 20 and 25 hours before the Senate is invited to vote on whether their nomination should be accepted.
Though long and exhausting, this at times ugly spectacle is staged for a very good reason: that with great power comes great responsibility.
The Supreme Court's judges have practised their ceremonial entrance to avoid any mishaps under the watchful eyes of TV viewers.
They held a dummy run ahead of today's momentous hearing to ensure everything runs 'smoothly' during the televised court hearing.
The Supreme Court bench comfortably sits up to seven judges, but this hearing is so important all 11 will sit together for the first time.
As a result the justices have practised walking in and taking their seats to make sure there are no trips or slips when the cameras are rolling today.
If all goes to plan, the procession will see the judges take their seats in order of seniority. An estimated 300,000 viewers – the court's biggest ever audience – are expected to watch a live video stream of the hearing on the court's website.
After all, the men and women who sit on the highest court in America will reach judgments which have a profound effect on the lives of ordinary citizens; at times they will over-rule the elected government.
It is therefore considered absolutely crucial, and fundamental to the national interest, that the people they govern are made familiar with every possible detail about who they are, and what motivates them.
Compare and contrast, if you will, this great exercise in democratic accountability with the secretive and opaque process via which we in Britain select new members of our Supreme Court. These 11 Justices, who earn £212,000 a year, are, like their American counterparts, granted extraordinary powers to shape our everyday lives.
This week, the Justices will hear a case on the triggering of Article 50 – which starts the Brexit process – that could end up delaying our departure from the EU and frustrating the wishes of not just the Government, but also a clear majority of voters who participated in a referendum. Yet the public has been told precious little about what shapes the Justices' views.
As the Mail revealed on Saturday, four of the 11 have formal links to the EU, or to European Courts and institutions. Five have publicly expressed views which appear sympathetic to the EU and its aims, and six have personal links to individuals who have been highly critical of the Leave campaign. Only one is thought to have Eurosceptic sympathies.
The President of the Court, Lord Neuberger, is married to a former Labour aide who has used her Twitter feed to launch 50 attacks on Theresa May, her Government, and Brexit, declaring referendums 'bad and mad', and accusing the Leave campaign of 'so many lies, so much ignorance'.
In a country where 52 per cent of voters would like to quit the EU, this hardly makes the judges representative of the population at large. So it's ironic, if not somewhat scandalous, that they were elevated to their current status without undergoing any public scrutiny whatsoever.
Under rules laid down by Tony Blair's government – which created the Supreme Court – new Justices are instead selected entirely behind closed doors, by a five-man committee called a Selection Commission.
The commission is itself headed by the President of the Supreme Court. He or she is joined by a senior judge, and a representative from each of the Judicial Appointments Commissions (JACs) of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, which are made up of judges, barristers, lawyers and quangocrats.
Since these JACs are self-selecting, and dominated by members of the legal profession, it follows that the Supreme Court is, too.
The identities of the members of the Selection Commissions that choose Supreme Court judges have never been widely published. However, the Mail can reveal that just 14 different people sat on the six appointment committees which have been convened since the Court was formed in 2008. Of those, seven are very senior judges, lawyers or barristers (three of whom were existing Presidents or Deputy Presidents of the Supreme Court): the Lords Phillips, Hoffmann, Hope, Neuberger, Lord Justice Coghlin, the Hon Lady Smith, and the Hon Mr Justice Weatherup. Three more were human resources experts: Christopher Stephens, Ruth Laird, and Elspeth MacArthur.
The others were Baroness Prashar, a crossbench peer who achieved prominence running the Runnymede Trust race-relations think-tank; Sir Muir Russell, the former head of the Scottish civil service; Nichola Rooney, an NHS manager; and Dame Hazel Genn, a professor of socio-legal studies at University College, London.
Impressive though their CVs may be, it seems unlikely that this collection of high-powered quangocrats count many Ukip voters among their circle of close acquaintances. As to the whys and wherefores of their decision-making process in choosing Supreme Court judges, it's anyone's guess.
The Court won't publish details of the Selection Commission's deliberations, or of who else was considered for vacant positions, or what the candidates were asked during the interview process.
A spokesman said: 'Just like any other selection panel for a job, no interview notes are published. These are essentially job interviews, and deliberations involving a small number of candidates.
'Of course feedback is offered to unsuccessful candidates, but this is not published more widely – not least to avoid putting off potential candidates.'
As a result of this secretive process, we now have a Supreme Court which is 91 per cent male, 100 per cent white and 81 per cent public school and Oxbridge-educated.
More importantly, given the sway it will hold this week over the future of the nation, it is a court run by people whose motivations, legal outlook, and political allegiances remain largely a mystery to everyone apart from themselves.
The judges and the people: Next week, 11 unaccountable individuals will consider a case that could thwart the will of the majority on Brexit. The Mail makes no apology for revealing their views - and many have links to Europe 
By Guy Adams for the Daily Mail 
A decision by the Supreme Court against the Government's right to trigger Article 50 would raise profound questions about the power of an unelected judiciary to over-ride the will of the British people.
In this context, it is vital that the judges are seen to be independent. Yet four of the 11 members of the Supreme Court have formal links to either the EU, its courts or European institutions; five have publicly expressed views which appear to be sympathetic to the EU; while six have personal links with individuals who have been critical of the Leave campaign.
Only four have no obvious associations with the Remain ethos. Just one, Lord Sumption, has given indications of Euroscepticism.
Crucially, the British justice system revolves around the principle that judges — and particularly Supreme Court judges — are fair-minded individuals capable of treating all cases entirely on their legal merits, regardless of their private loyalties.
So who are these men and one woman? How do they each view the EU and its influence on British law? And what personal beliefs (if any) must they put aside to give dispassionate hearing to one of the most important court cases in our country's history?
1. Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
Age: 68
Education: Westminster & Oxford
Europhile rating:
President of the Supreme Court, who, with his wife, Angela, divides his time between a £3 million mews house in London's Notting Hill and a country home in Dorset.
Lady Neuberger — a TV producer and one-time Labour aide, who has made films for the EU — has in recent months used Twitter to launch roughly 50 attacks on Theresa May, her Government or Brexit.
'So many lies, so much ignorance. It's the poorest will suffer most from Brexit,' reads one. The referendum is 'dangerous' because it 'reduces complex issues to yes or no' says another.
A week before the vote, she declared 'referenda mad and bad' and dismissed Ukip and Brexit as 'just a protest vote'. Six days afterwards, she posted a Remain-friendly message: 'It seems unlikely a PM could trigger Article 50 without Parliament's approval.'
Of course, one expects Lord Neuberger to ignore such views when sitting as Supreme Court president. Another person close to him with strong anti-Brexit views is his sister-in-law Julia, a Leftish peer who used to take the Lib Dem whip (but became a crossbencher in 2011 when she took a job as a full-time rabbi).
She recently announced she has decided to apply for a German passport due to shame over the referendum result, criticising the 'anti-immigrant' nature of the Leave campaign.
Neuberger was until recently a governor of the University of the Arts, London — whose vice-chancellor, Jeremy Till, emailed students on the day after the EU referendum to say that the Leave vote 'breaks my heart', adding: 'I make no apologies in sharing my shock and dismay.'
As for Neuberger, he has expressed views that betray an empathy with EU legal institutions. In 2013, he told The Times he would oppose withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, favouring a 'dialogue' with Strasbourg.
In August, he praised the influence of the EU on common law in the UK, saying: 'Studying and sometimes applying the reasoning of the Strasbourg court has led UK courts to take a more principled and structured approach.'
Last week's Spectator magazine reported that he recently told an acquaintance 'the High Court would be right to find against the Government and that he would support it'.
All of which has prompted Eurosceptic MPs to call for Neuberger to stand down from next week's hearing. Tory Andrew Rosindell says: 'Clearly, his position is compromised.' It must be noted that the Supreme Court's code of conduct warns justices to be aware 'that political activity' of a close relative can raise concerns over impartiality.
However, officially, the court is 'absolutely confident' there has been no breach in Neuberger's case.
2. Lady Hale of Richmond
Age: 71
Education: Richmond High (a grammar) & Cambridge
Europhile rating: 
They don't come more progressive than Hale, the most senior female judge in British history, whose coat of arms carries the motto Omnia Feminae Aequissimae, meaning 'women are equal to everything'.
A prominent critic of the tradition of wigs being worn in court, she achieved prominence as a Law Commissioner during the Eighties and Nineties making countless pronouncements said to have undermined the institution of marriage. 'We should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose,' reads one such remark, from an academic essay.
In another typical article, she asked: 'Do we still think it necessary, desirable or even practicable to grant marriage licences to enter into relationships?' Her own marital history seemed to dovetail with this theme. In 1984, shortly after being appointed to the Commission, she left first husband John Hogget for a fellow commissioner, Julian Farrand.
They married just 12 days after the divorce came through. Today, she and Farrand have homes in Westminster and Richmond, North Yorkshire, where his Remain activist son, Benjamin, is occasionally resident.
She recently backed a European Court of Human Rights ruling over votes for prisoners, and in a 2015 speech in Oxford spoke favourably about the process via which European courts can overrule British ones.
Most troubling, though, was a recent speech in which she suggested the Government might have to create a 'comprehensive replacement' for the European Communities Act before triggering Article 50, which could delay Brexit for years.
Critics said these comments risked breaking the fundamental rule of litigation: that judges should respond to arguments made in court, not introduce them into a debate beforehand.
They also wondered how her speech conformed with the Supreme Court's Guide to Judicial Conduct, which tells judges to 'show appropriate caution and restraint when explaining or commenting publicly upon their decisions in individual cases'.
The Supreme Court responded by saying Hale 'was simply presenting the arguments from both sides of the Article 50 appeal in an impartial way for an audience of law students.'
3. Lord Mance
Age: 73
Education: Charterhouse & Oxford
Europhile rating: 
Began his career at a Hamburg law firm in the early Sixties, and has retained intimate links with the European legal establishment ever since.
He represented the UK on the Council of Europe's Consultative Council of European Judges (an advisory body of the Council of Europe) for over a decade, and served on the Lords EU Select Committee.
His enthusiasm for the European project was made clear in 2013, soon after David Cameron announced an in-out referendum, when he said: 'I remain an optimist that future developments will meet the concerns of all but the most extreme Eurosceptics and that the UK's relationship with the Court of Justice will continue.'
Last year, he made a fawning speech in Luxembourg upon the retirement of Vassilios Skouris as President of the European Court of Justice, declaring that his presidency has 'seen a powerful reaffirmation of the autonomous and binding nature of EU law'.
His wife Dame Mary Arden is a Lady Justice of Appeal, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
She sits on the Advisory Board of the King's College London Centre of European Law — whose president, Sir Francis Jacobs, spent 18 years as Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Communities and worked as an official at the European Commission of Human Rights.
Director of King's College Centre of European Law's is Andrea Biondi, a pro-Remain activist who on Twitter said of the referendum vote: 'No plans no competence, just mediocrity. The whole next UK generation that voted Remain do not deserve this political class.'
Lord Mance's son, Henry, works as political correspondent for the Financial Times, the anti-Brexit newspaper whose editor Lionel Barber has been offered a Legion d'Honneur for the title's 'positive role' in the European debate.
On Twitter, Mance Jr this week mocked Ukip and recently criticised the Telegraph for attacking judges who reached the original High Court Article 50 decision.
Mance's daughter, Abigail, is married to management consultant David Bosomworth — whose Twitter feed alleges that Brexiteers have decided to 'tank the pound, make prices soar, destroy the economy and stoke xenophobia'.
4. Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore
Age: 68
Education: St Colman's Newry (a top boys' boarding school in Ulster) & Queen's Belfast
Europhile rating: 
Dubbed a 'human rights hero' by delegates at a conference organised by Justice, the campaigning human rights organisation, he is a former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
In 2001, he sat as an ad hoc judge in the European Court of Human Rights — an episode curiously missing from his official CV on the Supreme Court's website — and has since made it known that he approves of the incorporation of EU law into British justice.
In a 2014 speech, he championed the Human Rights Act, saying: 'Citizens of the UK are as much Europeans as anybody else and are entitled to cast a jealous eye on the rights of their brethren in the rest of Europe.'
Despite such opinions, Kerr is adamant that they will not influence his Supreme Court role in the Article 50 case, telling Radio 4 that it is his job to 'apply the law' uninfluenced by 'personal views'.
5. Lord Clarke of Stone-Cum-Ebony
Age: 73
Education: Oakham & Cambridge
Europhile rating:
A barrister for 27 years and a judge for 23 more.
He is the oldest and perhaps most experienced member of the Supreme Court, having been the first justice to be appointed directly to it in 2009. 
He's best known for conducting the safety inquiries such as the one into the Marchioness riverboat tragedy on the Thames.
He has no known ties to the EU or to European institutions, and has opposed previous attempts by the court to subvert Parliament.
6. Lord Sumption
Age: 67
Education: Eton & Oxford
Europhile rating: 
Regarded as the most brilliant advocate of his generation. Has acted as a barrister for a wide range of clients — such as the Government in the Hutton Inquiry into the Iraq war and Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.
In 2001, he was named as one of the 'million-a-year' club of top barristers by the Guardian, but responded by claiming his 'puny £1.6 million a year' was dwarfed by earnings in the worlds of business, sports and entertainment.
The only Supreme Court member who hasn't previously served as a full-time judge, he's also thought to be the most Eurosceptic member, thanks (in part) to a 2013 speech in which he said the European Court of Human Rights exceeded legitimate powers and 'undermines the democratic process'.
His daughter, Madeleine, is director of Oxford University's migration observatory, an impartial research organisation whose studies have been quoted by both the Leave and Remain campaigns. He is director of the English National Opera, whose chief executive Cressida Pollock gave a pre-referendum interview saying: 'My biggest concern — and that of all arts organisations — is Brexit.'
He also sits on the board of the Royal Academy of Music, whose leading guest conductor Yan Tortelier wrote to the Guardian in June describing the Brexit lobby as 'upsetting,' and 'rather offensive, if not Trumpesque'.
7. Lord Reed
Age: 60
Education: George Watson's College (a smart Edinburgh private school) & Oxford
Europhile rating:
One of the court's two Scots, he's spent a big portion of his adult life working for European institutions.
In the late Nineties, he was a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, where he was on a panel that decided the killers of Liverpool toddler James Bulger had not received a fair trial.
He acted as expert adviser to the EU Initiative with Turkey on Democratisation and Human Rights, and as chairman of the Franco-British Judicial Co-operation Committee. Between 2006 and 2008, he was President of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and has made occasional headlines as a High Court judge.
For example, he spared an armed robber from jail, saying he should instead buy victims a bouquet of flowers to say sorry.
And he sparked controversy after deciding that a paedophile who had photographed himself raping a 13-month-old baby, should be jailed for just five years because he had 'expressed remorse and shame'.
Before joining the Supreme Court, he was a director of Children in Scotland, a charity which responded to the referendum by writing to the Guardian, moaning: 'We are dismayed that 16-and 17-year-olds . . . were denied the right to have their say in the most important decision of recent times.'
8. Lord Wilson of Culworth
Age: 71
Education: Bryanston & Oxford
Europhile rating:
Owner of a string of race horses. 
A veteran family court judge, he has been accused of straying into areas that elected politicians ought to decide on. 
For example, he backed extending human rights law to change rules regarding assisted suicide. 
However, in other cases, he has come down against the Supreme Court bossing Parliament around.
He dissented from colleagues who last year voted to overrule the Government by ordering the release under Freedom of Information rules of Prince Charles' so-called 'black spider' letters to Ministers.
9. Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill
Age: 71
Education: Eton & Cambridge
Europhile rating: 
A committed environmentalist, he has frequently used EU laws to support this agenda. Came to prominence as legal adviser to the Prince of Wales from 1988 to 1994, when Charles's marriage to Diana was disintegrating.
After being runner-up for the job of British judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he founded the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and served as its Secretary General from 2004-05. The forum exists to 'promote the enforcement of national, European and international environmental law'.
Recently hosted a conference on 'Climate Change and the Law' at which a speaker asked whether courts might be able to play a role in 'scotching' global warming denial.
Around the same time, he ruled in the Supreme Court in favour of pressure group which took the Government to court over its failure to produce an air quality plan in keeping with European law.
An acclaimed viola player and lover of European culture, he and his wife Bambina divide their time between a £5 million penthouse in Kensington and a palatial villa on Lake Iseo in Italy.
Sits on the Advisory Board of the King's College London Centre of European Law, whose director is a pro-Remain activist
10. Lord Hughes of Ombersley
Age: 68
Education: Tettenhall College (a boarding school in the Midlands) & Durham University
Europhile rating: 
A traditionalist who was made a QC in 1990. 
He has opposed previous efforts by the Supreme Court to usurp Parliamentary sovereignty.
He served as a Crown Court recorder before becoming a High Court judge. 
Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2013.
He commutes from a village near Droitwich, Worcestershire.
11. Lord Hodge
Age: 63
Education: Trinity Glenalmond (one of Perthshire's smartest boarding schools) & Cambridge
Europhile rating:
A pillar of the Edinburgh establishment. No obvious professional links to the EU or European institutions.
However, his son George is an ardent Remainer who works for the UN. Hodge Jr's Twitter feed in June called the Leave campaign 'one of the most disgraceful spectacles in modern British political history.'
Before joining the Supreme Court in 2013, Lord Hodge was a trustee of a centrist think-tank called The David Hume Institute.
Last month, the institute hosted a speech on Brexit by former Cabinet Secretary Lord (Gus) O'Donnell, who said of next week's case: 'I have yet to meet any constitutional lawyer who thinks the Government will win.' 
Backing a terror suspect and criminal migrants - how judges have been over-ruling Ministers 
The Supreme Court was created by Tony Blair and is the most powerful legal institution in British history.
Yet despite the extraordinary and unprecedented sway they hold over public affairs, not to mention the daily lives of ordinary citizens, these 11 senior justices are selected for the job — which pays £213,000-a-year — via an entirely private and at times highly opaque process.
In stark contrast to other nations, Britain elevates new members to its Supreme Court — where they sit for nine months each year — without their personal and political views ever being scrutinised by Parliament. The public is given no insight into the outlook or approach they intend to adopt in office.
This is very different to the U.S., where the selection of the nine justices who sit on their Supreme Court, the ultimate interpreter of their revered written Constitution, is accorded a level of attention that wouldn't shame the choosing of a new Pope.
Consequently, whether the court's justices are ruling on power station gas emissions or gay marriage, Americans are rarely surprised by how each votes. In a tortuous appointment process, the justices and their views have already been put through the wringer.
The U.S. Constitution dictates that presidents nominate and appoint justices, who serve for life unless they retire, with the 'Advice and Consent of the Senate'.
In Britain, justices are appointed via a five-person 'special commission' headed by the Supreme Court's existing president. It contains one senior judge along with one member of each of the Judicial Appointments Commissions (JACs) of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
JACs in turn contain a mixture of senior judges, lawyers and 'lay-members'.
In England and Wales, for example, the commission consists of six judges, a solicitor, a barrister and eight quango-crats, largely drawn from the civil service and academia.
Since they are essentially self-selecting, it follows that the Supreme Court is too. The 'special commission' meets behind closed doors to select its new candidate, and the recommendation is then referred to the Lord Chancellor, the Government's chief legal officer, who can reject it only in extremely rare and 'closely defined circumstances'.
Thanks to this process, the Supreme Court is 91 per cent male and 100 per cent white. The average age of members is 68. Nine went to public school and eight attended Oxbridge.
GUY ADAMS

There have been many cases in recent years of British judges over-ruling decisions made by elected politicians. Here are some of the most egregious examples . . .
Case 1:
An Al Qaeda terror suspect — considered one of the country's most dangerous extremists and a potential suicide-bomber — asked judges to ease restrictions imposed on his Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) order.
He said he wanted them relaxed so he could enjoy a 'normal social life'. This was despite then Home Secretary Theresa May warning that he would contact other Islamic extremists to plot attacks against Britain.
Ruling: Sitting at the High Court, Mr Justice Wilkie said the constraints on the 24-year-old Somali were 'chilling' and 'disproportionate' and that he should be able to mingle more freely with students at his university to avoid his 'embarrassment and isolation'.
Reaction: Then Tory MP Patrick Mercer said: 'If this fellow was concerned about his social life then maybe he shouldn't have been spending his time in Afghanistan. His lack of social life doesn't keep me awake at night. The prospect of him having an opportunity to blow himself up does.'
Case 2:
Families of four British soldiers killed in Iraq sought a landmark legal ruling giving them the right to sue the Ministry of Defence for negligence and breach of human rights. Three died when their poorly protected Snatch Land Rovers were blown up by roadside bombs. The fourth died in a 'friendly fire' incident when his Challenger tank was hit. The MoD, supported by defence Ministers, said the Human Rights Act did not apply because the soldiers died on the battlefield.
Ruling: In 2013, the Supreme Court backed the families' legal fight and said the Government owed a duty of care to properly equip and train troops sent to war.
Reaction: Then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said: 'It can't be right that troops on operations have to put the European Convention on Human Rights ahead of what is operationally vital to protect our national security.'
Case 3:
Violent thug John Gilbert, convicted of grievous bodily harm, fought to overturn then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling's ban on sending high-risk violent prisoners to open jails. The Minister had stopped inmates with a history of absconding from being transferred to lenient Category D prisons after a string of criminals fled minimum-security jails.
However, in 2015, Gilbert, who had once failed to return from day release, claimed it breached prison rules.
Ruling: High Court judges threw out the Government's ban — branding it 'unfair and unlawful . . . except in exceptional circumstances'. They said a prisoner's rehabilitation depended on a period in an open prison.
Reaction: Chris Grayling said: 'This is why it is so important a Conservative government has the chance to reform our human rights laws and restore common sense.'
Case 4:
Arsonist Barbara Gordon-Jones challenged the then Justice Secretary's ban on sending books to criminals in jail. The policy had been introduced amid concerns parcels sent into prison containing books were being used as a cover for smuggling in drugs, mobile phone SIM cards or other contraband. Books were already available in the prison library, the Minister said.
Ruling: The High Court overturned the ban in 2014, ruling it was 'strange' for the Government to treat books as a privilege when they could be considered essential for an inmate's rehabilitation.
Reaction: A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'This is a surprising judgment. Restrictions on parcels have been in existence across most of the prison estate for many years and for very good reason. We are clear that we will not do anything that would create a new conduit for smuggling drugs and extremist materials into our prisons.'
Case 5:
Two Romany women who wanted to set up caravan sites on Green Belt land went to court after then Communities Secretary Eric Pickles blocked them.
They claimed last year that the Minister racially discriminated against travelling families by personally examining appeals against councils that had refused planning permission, rather than passing the job to a Whitehall-appointed inspector. (The rule had been brought in following the ten-year saga of travellers camped at Dale Farm in Essex.)
Ruling: Mr Justice Gilbart said that Mr Pickles had broken the 2010 Equality Act and that the Minister had 'discriminated unlawfully against a racial group'.
Reaction: Tory vice-chairman Bob Neill said: 'This has given the impression that travellers can ignore planning rules.'
Case 6:
A foreign-born rapist who faced deportation claimed he should be given taxpayers' money so he could travel across the country to see his baby son — despite squandering cash smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. The failed asylum seeker said he was unable to afford the £13.55 return fare for the 130-mile round trip from Hampshire to Kent — and banning him from having extra money breached his human rights to family life.
Ruling: High Court judge Michael Kent overruled then Home Secretary Theresa May last year, saying the violent criminal was entitled to claim travel expenses.
Reaction: Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: 'Many people will be absolutely appalled by what is yet another abuse of the justice system.'
Case 7:
A Libyan convicted of 78 offences challenged his deportation from Britain on the grounds that he was an alcoholic.
The man, identified only by the initials 'HU', argued that he would be tortured and imprisoned in his homeland where drinking alcohol is illegal. Sending him back to Libya would breach his human rights, he claimed. His case was estimated to have cost British taxpayers a six-figure sum.
Ruling: Upper Immigration Tribunal judges last year overturned Home Secretary Theresa May's decision, claiming it would violate the European Convention on Human Rights because of the risk of 'unacceptably savage' abuse the career criminal faced in Libya.
Reaction: Tory MP Peter Bone said: 'This kind of things drives people mad. On the doorstep they find cases like this outrageous. Few people will think this man should remain in the country. He has completely abused our hospitality.'
Compiled by IAN DRURY
 
 
MEPs today warned Britain if it wants a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU it will have to grant European fishermen the same level of access to British waters as they have now. 
Pierre Karleskind, the newly-elected chairman of the European Parliament's Fisheries Committee, said the bloc would accept 'nothing more, nothing less' than the current arrangements. 
He insisted British agreement on the matter would be 'one condition for concluding the economic partnership' between the two sides. 
But Boris Johnson has been adamant that Britain will decide who gets to fish in its waters when it becomes an independent coastal state at the end of this year. 
The Prime Minister also said priority will be given to British fishing boats with the UK and the EU now firmly on a collision course on the issue.
Each country has an Exclusive Economic Zone which can extend up to 200 nautical miles from the coast. 
That country has special fishing rights over that area. 
However, in the EU each country's Exclusive Economic Zone is effectively merged into one joint EU zone. 
All fishing activity within that zone is then regulated by the bloc's controversial Common Fisheries Policy which dictates how many of each type of fish can be caught.
The joint EU zone is open to fishermen from every member state. 
But after the Brexit transition period the UK will regain sole control of its Exclusive Economic Zone and the bolstered Royal Navy Fishery Protection Squadron will be tasked with patrolling it to make sure every vessel operating there has the right to do so.
Mr Karleskind said in a statement issued today following his election as the new chairman of the powerful committee: 'This mandate will be particularly heavy when it comes to fisheries. 
'First of all, we have to negotiate a new fisheries agreement with the United Kingdom before 1 July this year. 
'We request reciprocal access to waters, meaning the same situation as we have now - nothing more, nothing less. 
'With this being one condition for concluding the economic partnership.'
Britain and Brussels are due to sit down and begin formal discussions on the terms of their future relationship at the start of March. 
Fishing and access to waters will be a crunch issue with the EU's demand for 'reciprocal access' having already been rebuffed by the UK. 
Britain has bolstered its fishing police force amid growing tensions, sparking fears of a repeat of the so-called scallop wars in 2018 which saw French and British boats angrily clash over access to shellfish off the coast of Normandy.   
The UK is taking steps to prepare for all post-Brexit eventualities, with the government having hired two extra ships to provide additional help to the Royal Navy Fishery Protection Squadron's current four ship fleet with further vessels placed on standby. 
Boris Johnson has been warned that the European Union (EU) views negotiations with the UK as a 'different ball game' to the trade talks which secured an agreement with Canada.
The Prime Minister wants a Canada-style trade deal which would leave the UK free to diverge from EU rules.
But a key aide to Brussels' chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU would not budge from its insistence on a 'level playing field' on state subsidies, environmental protections and workers' rights as the price of any deal.
He also said the UK's close proximity to the EU meant it could not have the same kind of deal as Canada.  
Stefaan De Rynck said: 'It's clear that for us it's a different ball game that we are playing with the UK to the one that we agreed with Canada in terms of the level playing field.' 
Mr De Rynck said the UK's closeness to the EU in terms of both distance and trading relationships meant the level playing field conditions were more important than in other trade deals struck by Brussels.
'Some in the UK now seem to want to become Canadians. But Dover is much closer to Calais than Ottawa is,' he said in a speech at the London School of Economics.  
The bolstered Royal Navy squadron will be tasked with patrolling the entirety of the UK's Exclusive Economic Zone to make sure all vessels operating within it have the right to do so, kicking out those that do not. 
Every coastal state has an EEZ) which can extend up to 200 nautical miles from land and over which that country has special fishing rights. 
But in the EU each country's EEZ is merged into one joint zone in which fishermen from all member states enjoy equal access, with activity regulated by the bloc's controversial Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
The UK is leaving the EU's CFP as part of Brexit which means it will be able to take back control of its considerable fishing grounds. 
Senior figures in Brussels have suggested that UK concessions on fishing could unlock EU concessions in other areas. 
But Britain has resisted the idea of using fishing as a bargaining chip because taking back control of UK waters was one of the key pledges of the 2016 Leave campaign. 
Mr Johnson said in a big Brexit speech at the start of this month that Britain is 'ready to consider an agreement on fisheries, but it must reflect the fact that the UK will be an independent coastal state at the end of this year 2020, controlling our own waters'. 
He added: 'And under such an agreement, there would be annual negotiations with the EU, using the latest scientific data, ensuring that British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats.' 
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said there needed to be 'reciprocal access to our territorial waters and our markets'.  
He also insisted that 'agreement on fisheries will be inextricably linked to the trade agreement'.
Fishermen from any registered EU member state can enjoy equal access to the fish in the entirety of the joint EU zone but the CFP imposes quotas on what can be caught.
The CFP does allow member states to retain control of the regulation of fishing activities in inshore waters - those up to 12 miles off the coast.
Up to six miles off the coast is protected for domestic fishing activity but some member states have historical rights to fish in the areas six to 12 miles off the coast of other countries.    
Theresa May insisted last night it was the 'moment of decision' for MPs as she accepted EU terms for delaying Brexit by at least two weeks to avoid No Deal next Friday. 
After a marathon summit meeting, EU Council President Donald Tusk confirmed plans for a two-stage delay plan. 
If Mrs May passes her deal at a third attempt next week, Britain will be allowed to stay in the EU until May 22. 
If she fails, Britain must say whether it will take part in the EU elections by April 12. If elections take place, a longer delay could be agreed - but if the polls are not held then No Deal looms because Britain staying in becomes impossible.
In a midnight press conference in Brussels, the Prime Minister said the 'flextension' plan offered MPs a clear choice.
 'We can leave with a deal in an orderly manner, have that extension until May 22, or if we don't get that deal, that vote, through then we have to come forward with another plan, and if that plan means another extension, it means standing in those European elections,' she said.
'Tomorrow morning I will be returning to the UK and working hard to build support for getting the deal through.'
And she left no doubt that she does not believe the UK should have to elect MEPs in the polls scheduled for May 23-26 across Europe.
'It would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU,' she said.
Thursday's agreement means that no-deal Brexit was no longer a possibility on March 29, but it remains on the table if MPs have not approved the Withdrawal Agreement by April 12.
The agreement avoids the need for an emergency EU summit as soon as next week. EU sources told Sky News the plan 'reduces the likelihood of a chaotic crash out in the next 7 days, or a 24 hour scramble to find an alternative.' 
In the press conference Mrs May said she would return to Britain in the morning to resume work on building support for the deal. Most in Westminster believe she is doomed to fail a third time.
She insisted Britain should still leave in an 'orderly fashion' with a deal despite MPs rejecting it twice by a landslide.
Amid fury at her tirade against MPs last night, Mrs May also admitted to expressing her 'frustration' at the situation - insisting politicians on all sides had 'passionately held views' - but stopped short of apologising.
Mrs May's intervention came after EU leaders agreed the terms of delay after the summit ran late into the night. The Prime Minister - excluded from the talks - failed to win her demand for more three months.  
As EU leaders talked last night, Mrs May was forced to sit and wait tonight as EU leaders wrestled with Britain's Brexit fate at an overrunning EU summit. Britain is banned from talks on how the EU handles Brexit but the PM made a 104-minute pitch for a three month extension to Article 50 earlier this evening.
At the late night press conference, Mr Tusk said: 'The cliff edge date will be delayed. (Before April 12) The UK will still have a choice between a deal, a no deal, a long delay or revoking Article 50.'
Mr Tusk insisted he expected the UK to have new options ready by April 12 if it sought a long delay - a clear nod towards a new general election or a referendum.  He warned staying beyond April 12 was 'impossible' without Britain electing new MEPs. 
In ominous news for Remainers hoping they can cancel Britain's departure at the 11th hour, French President Emmanuel Macron warned there would be a No Deal if MPs turn the deal down for a third time.   
The third 'meaningful vote' already appears doomed next week after she angered MPs by blaming them for the mounting crisis. Some Brexiteer MPs who backed the deal on the second vote could return to rebelling on the third.
In her press conference, the Prime Minister said: 'What the decision today underlines is the importance of the House of Commons passing a Brexit deal next week so that we can bring an end to the uncertainty and leave in a smooth and orderly manner.
'Tomorrow morning I will be returning to the UK and working hard to build support for getting the deal through.'
Mr Tusk said that April 12 was a 'key date' for the UK because if it decided not to participate in the European Parliament elections then a long extension would become impossible.
Mrs May said 'it would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU'.
He said: 'April 12 is a key date in terms of the UK wondering whether to hold European Parliament elections.
'If it is not decided do so by then the option of a long extension will immediately become impossible.'
Mr Tusk added: 'In regards to the extension our decision envisaged two scenarios.
'In the first scenario, that is if the agreement is passed next week, the European Council agrees an extension to May 22.
'In the second scenario, if the agreement is not approved, the European Council agrees an extension until April 12 while expecting the UK to indicate a way forward.
'What this means in practice is that until that date all options remain open.'
Earlier, reports from Brussels suggest Mrs May was 'evasive' and 'tightlipped' during the marathon session on what she would do if the vote fails, BuzzFeed said.  
Piling pressure on to MPs ahead of next week's proposed third Commons vote Mr Macron said: 'In the case of a negative British vote then we'd be heading to a No Deal. We all know it,' adding a longer extension would require 'a deep political change' in Britain - a nod to a second referendum or general election.
Other EU leaders queued up to deliver the same No Deal warning including Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel who said: 'You decided to leave - you want us [the EU] to be the bad guy. But if there is no deal [at Westminster] in days there will be No Deal. We can't extend - for me it is then over'.
While European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was asked if he was tiring of Mrs May's political drama at home and said: 'I didn't even know I had this much patience'. 
The No Deal threats will excite Brexiteers but will be bad news for Remainers who are hoping that the EU will offer a long delay so they can push for the softest possible Brexit or stop it completely. 
Walking into the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - Mrs May said she was disappointed to be calling for a delay. 'This is a matter of personal regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum,' she said.  

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he does not know if Theresa May's Brexit deal will be brought back to Parliament next week, as he warned of 'extreme unpredictability' if the issue is not resolved.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'If we are in the same situation this time next week then only a very limited list of things could happen: Parliament could vote to revoke Article 50, which is cancelling the Brexit process - I think that's highly unlikely...
'There could be an EU emergency summit to offer us an extension and we don't know what the length will be and it could have some very onerous conditions - they could say, for example, 'We'll give you an extension if you have a second referendum'.
'Again, I think it's very unlikely Parliament would vote for that. And then we have no-deal as the legal default on Friday.
'So the choice that we have now is one of resolving this issue or extreme unpredictability.'
Mr Hunt said 'no prime minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May has.
'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure that she is personally under, and I think she does feel a sense of frustration,' he told Today.
'She is absolutely determined to deliver what people voted for and I think ... the Brexit process has sapped our national confidence and we need to remember now what we're capable of as a country.
'And we need to remember that the economy has actually not suffered in the way many people thought it would and we have a chance now to resolve this and move on, to close this chapter, move on to the next chapter.
'And we will be able to say, as one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world, that we were faced with a very difficult decision - a decision that most of the political establishment didn't want to go ahead - and we've delivered it because we are a country where we do what the people say.'
Yesterday's drama in Brussels came after a day in which the PM faces attacks from all sides on the Commons over her controversial speech on Tuesday night that criticised MPs for failing to deliver Brexit. 
Yesterday Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said 'no Prime Minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May.
Defending the Prime Minister, who is facing calls to quit, he told the BBC: 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure she is under. She was expressing her frustration and the public's frustration' - but added: 'I don't think we should all make this about Theresa May'.
Tellingly the Foreign Secretary twice admitted it is not yet certain Mrs May can bring back her deal for a third vote - but said if it's defeated there are three options: No Deal, revoke Article 50 or a 'long delay' to Brexit.  
Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow. Democracy loses when a Prime Minister who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. It's Toxic. She knows MPs are receiving hate mail. We're repeatedly being urged to hold their noses to the stench of this deal and vote for it. That cannot be the blueprint for our great country and I cannot support it'.
Potential 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance and said: 'There's absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. It was an attack on liberal democracy itself. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach'.
But Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said today he believes more MPs will back the Prime Minister's deal after her intervention and insisted she has a 'good shot at landing the deal and winning a vote next week'.
He added: 'I don't think there is a blame game at all- she set out very clearly where we are in the process. There is a deal. If we get the deal through, we can get a short extension to the Article 50 process and we can leave the EU.
'I think saying: 'I'm with you' makes perfect sense. The cab driver who drove me here this morning said: 'I just want to leave…get the deal done and I want to be out of the EU'. The Prime Minister very much reflected that opinion, which is widely held. People are fed up…they want to leave the EU'.
Conservative former minister Sir Oliver Letwin said he believed MPs would support a Norway-style Brexit deal and could seize control of Brexit, possibly on Monday.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that MPs needed to establish if there is a majority in favour of an alternative plan if the Prime Minister's deal is defeated again next week.
Sir Oliver said: 'I believe, for example, that we will probably on that day be able to get a cross-party majority in favour of what is sometimes called Norway plus and sometimes called Common Market 2.0, which is an arrangement where we remain in the single market and we have a customs arrangement with the EU and that has not yet been tested.'   
Theresa May's hopes of getting a Brexit deal through Parliament have been handed a devastating blow today after the DUP signalled that it does not intend to back it.
The Northern Irish party's Brexit spokesman said there was 'no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal' as the Prime Minister headed to Brussels.
EU leaders are expected to make a three-month Brexit delay sought by Mrs May today conditional on her being able to squeeze a withdrawal agreement through the Commons next week.
But hardline unionist and Brexiteer Mr Wilson tore into Brussels, including European Council president Donald Tusk, accusing them of 'arrogance' over their offer in an interview with TalkRadio.
He said: If anything the arrogance of the EU negotiators … this arrogance is born of the fact that the EU see us as a bit of a rollover when it comes to negotiations.
But for anyone to say we'll give you a three month extension if you accept this toxic deal - I neither want this toxic deal nor the extension so there is no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal, and certainly not on the basis of demands from Donald Tusk.'
The DUP has a 'confidence and supply' deal with Mrs May's Conservatives for its 10 MPs to support her in the Commons.
But they have so far voted against her Brexit deal twice because of their intense opposition to the provisions for the Northern Irish border backstop.
Even with their support Mrs may faces an uphill task to convince MPs to back her. 
 
The Prime Minister addressed the nation from Downing Street on Wednesday night. Here is what she said:
'Nearly three years have passed since the public voted to leave the European Union.
'It was the biggest democratic exercise in our country's history.
'I came to office on a promise to deliver on that verdict.
'In March 2017 I triggered the Article 50 process for the UK to exit the EU and Parliament supported it overwhelmingly.
'Two years on, MPs have been unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal.
'As a result, we will now not leave on time with a deal on the 29th of March.
'This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me.
'And of this I am absolutely sure: You, the public, have had enough.
'You're tired of the infighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime.
'You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side.
'It is now time for MPs to decide.
'So, today, I have written to Donald Tusk the President of the European Council to request a short extension of Article 50 up to the 30th of June to give MPs the time to make a final choice.
'Do they want to leave the EU with a deal which delivers on the result of the referendum, that takes control of our money borders and laws while protecting jobs and our national security?
'Do they want to leave without a deal, or do they not want to leave at all causing potentially irreparable damage to public trust not just in this generation of politicians but to our entire democratic process?
'It is high time we made a decision.
'So far, Parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice.
'Motion after motion and amendment after amendment has been tabled without Parliament ever deciding what it wants.
'All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want.
'I passionately hope MPs will find a way to back the deal I've negotiated with the EU, a deal that delivers on the result of the referendum and is the very best deal negotiable.
'And I will continue to work night and day to secure the support of my colleagues, the DUP and others for this deal.
'But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June.
'Some argue that I'm making the wrong choice and I should ask for a longer extension to the end of the year or beyond to give more time for politicians to argue over the way forward.
'That would mean asking you to vote in European elections nearly three years after our country decided to leave.
'What kind of message would that send? And just how bitter and divisive would that election campaign be at a time when the country desperately needs bringing back together.
'Some have suggested holding a second referendum.
'I don't believe that's what you want and it is not what I want.
'We asked you the question already and you've given us your answer.
'Now you want us to get on with it.
'And that is what I am determined to do.'
Celebrity Remainers including Hugh Grant and Annie Lennox are among more than two million people who have signed a petition today to cancel Brexit to avoid No Deal.
Grant claimed every 'sane' person in the country was signing the plea, which was also backed by Professor Brian Cox and Jennifer Saunders.  
Rising rapidly every minute it passed the seven-figure milestone shortly before 3pm after Theresa May made a speech blaming Parliament for a delay to Brexit last night. 
The petition passed 10,000 names on Monday soon after it was created. Parliament's petition site crashed repeatedly today as the number of signatures rose.
Despite verification checks including a signatory's post code and email addresses, the data from the petition appeared to suggest some names may have been added from overseas. The rule of Parliament's petition site say only UK citizens can sign. 
As people flocked to the campaign today, Mrs May was back in front of the cameras on arrival at the EU summit in Brussel - refusing to rule out No Deal and insisting Brexit had to be delivered.  
The petition states: 'The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ''the will of the people''.
'We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen - so vote now.' 
The Government is obliged to offer a written response and it will be considered for a debate in Parliament - but it will not be staged before exit day on March 29.
A map showing where people have signed shows concentrations of support in cities such as London, Oxford and Edinburgh.  
A raft of public figures have promoted the petition since Mrs May's controversial speech in Downing Street last night. 
Hugh Grant said: 'I've signed. And it looks like every sane person in the country is signing too.
'National emergency. Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU.'
Anne Lennox said the petition was 'currently gaining 100,000 signatures an hour'. 
Actor Eddie Marsan urged his followers to sign, tweeting: 'In years to come, when future generations look back on Brexit and how this country was taken over by fanatical ideologues, to the left andto the right, they'll ask ''where were you? What did you do?''.'
TV physicist Brian Cox said: 'I've signed this petition to revoke A50 and deal with the consequences afterwards - referendum, election, whatever.
'I have no idea whether these things do any good but after May's astonishingly irresponsible speech this evening I'll give anything a go.' 
Margaret Anne Georgiadou, who started the petition, told the BBC: 'I became like every other Remainer - very frustrated that we've been silenced and ignored for so long.
'So I think now it's almost like a dam bursting, because we've been held back in a sense - it's almost like last chance saloon now.'
She said the petition 'didn't do very well for a week'.
The Petitions Committee said: 'As many of you have guessed, the number of people using the site has caused problems this morning.
'It's a mix of people reloading the front page to watch the signature count go up and people trying to sign petitions.'
Theresa May's deputy official spokesman said the Government had said '12,000 times' it would not revoke Article 50, adding: 'It is not something that she is prepared to do.'  
The Government's emergency Cobra committee has taken over No Deal preparations today amid plans to activate 'Operation Yellowhammer' on Monday.
Yellowhammer is the civil contingencies wing of No Deal and involves putting 3,500 troops on standby, booking space on emergency ferries for NHS drugs and preparing for miles of lorry queues out of Dover.
The plans - dubbed a No Deal 'doomsday' scenario - also include Foreign Office teams preparing to help Britons who get stranded in Europe from a dedicated 'nerve centre'.
Officials have been planning for No Deal for months and activated 320 other contingency plans before Christmas with 101 days to March 29. It included a public information campaign telling citizens to prepare their own families.
The new escalation comes with just eight days until exit is due to happen and with no deal agreed amid deadlock in Parliament.
Cabinet Ministers were told on Tuesday Operation Yellowhammer would be stood up, the Daily Telegraph revealed.
Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, told them in a letter: 'Operation Yellowhammer command and control structures will be enacted fully on 25 March unless a new exit date has been agreed between the UK and the EU.' 
He told departments to be ready to make 'necessary changes' to their contingency planning to account for an extension, and be ready to 're-programme' certain measures so that they could instead be activated before the new exit date. 
Yellowhammer is the code name for the work for planning a no deal Brexit carried out by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS).
It takes its name from a small yellow bird which lives across the UK.
They forage for seeds to eat, breed in May and enjoy singing.
Male yellowhammers learn their songs from their fathers, and over the course of time regional dialects have developed.
In ancient legend the birds were linked to the devil - the intricate patterns on their eggs were said to conceal an evil message. 
The Yellowhammer operation works across all Whitehall departments to ensure the UK is able to weather the shock of crashing out of the Brussels bloc.
The word itself is randomly generated by a computer.  
The CCS was established in 2011 and works on projects to ensure the UK can handle potentially disruptive change.
Projects similar to Yellowhammer have been carried out to prepare for the 2012 Olympics and the Champions League final. 
A Department for Transport source told The Times: 'Clearly if we are facing a no-deal Brexit on Friday there are going to be issues that require a substantial response and we need to ensure that the department is working in a way that allows us to do that ahead of time.
'The unknowns are going to be the reaction of other European countries to issues like customs and driving licences. We need to be in a position to respond to issues quickly.' 
A government spokesman said: 'As a responsible government we have been planning and continue to prepare for all eventualities and that includes managing the impacts of a no deal Brexit as they arise.'  
European Research Group deputy chairman Mark Francois said in the Commons yesterday Operation Yellowhammer shoudl be stood up immediately.
He said: 'If that is so and there is no extension, why do we not just vote down the rancid withdrawal agreement and sprint for the line?'
Chris Heaton-Harris, a Brexit minister, told MPs: 'We do have Operation Yellowhammer, which is working to deliver the biggest peacetime project in the history of the civil service.
'Leaving the European Union with a deal remains the government's top priority, but a responsible government must plan for every eventuality including a no-deal scenario, and these preparations are taking place alongside work to deliver on the government's policy priorities.'
An official report published last month admitted 200,000 firms that trade with the EU are not ready for a no deal Brexit.
The study from the Brexit department also found citizens are ignoring no deal warnings and failing to make sure they are ready for a no deal.
It said no deal would cause delays at the border - potentially meaning shortages and prices rises for some food, particularly fresh produce not in season in Britain.
The report warns panic buying could fuel shortages in foods that are shipped across the Channel.  
Labour MP and Best for Britain supporter Rosie Duffield said: 'The only reason this money is being spent on disaster planning rather than our crumbling public services is because the Prime Minister is obsessed with keeping no deal on the table to force through her bad Brexit deal.
'Stopping the coming crisis should be the government's sole agenda, not facilitating it. 
'Messes like this explain why the mood in the country has shifted over the last three years. 
'No deal is not an acceptable outcome. People want a final say on Brexit, but also expect MPs to think about revoking A50 to stop this government walking us over a cliff-edge if we reach a point of national crisis next week.' 
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson told MPs last year that 3,500 troops will be 'held at readiness' to help with a no-deal Brexit. 
The troops are a mix of regulars and reserves and will be held on bases to be deployed as needed as Britain leaves the EU.   
Extra personnel could be needed at British ports, at the border or even to help police civil disobedience if a no deal Brexit leads to food shortages or other problems. 
Downing Street insisted the use of soldiers is common - pointing to how troops helped out successfully in the running of the Olympics.  
Speaking in the Commons when he made the announcement, Mr Williamson said: 'We've as yet not had any formal request from any Government department but what we are doing is putting contingency plans in place, and what we will do is have 3,500 service personnel held at readiness - including regulars and reserves - in order to support any Government department on any contingencies they may need.' 
More than 10,000 lorries could be parked in Kent to cater for queues of trucks heading for France in event of a no-deal Brexit. 
First lorries would be parked at Dover, then on Manston Airport and finally the M20.
Dover has room for 1,720 while Manston Airport near Margate, could fit 6,500 following a series of tests. If they run out of room, more lorries could be parked on the M20 - as happened when 'Operation Stack' was triggered in 2015.
Further contingency plans that emerged in November suggested the 10-mile long M26 could also be pressed into service for overflowing lorries.  
Reserving space on ferries for critical supplies is among the contingency plans triggered by the Cabinet today.
Specialist drugs used by the NHS are first in line for space on the No Deal ferries, which were mired in controversy when Transport Secretary Chris Grayling handed one of the contracts to an untested firm with no ships. The deal was later cancelled.   
The Department of Health is understood to have contacted pharmaceutical companies urging them to route their supplies using the new ferry services. 
Jeremy Corbyn today blamed 'confusion' for leaving a Brexit meeting in No 10 because Chuka Umunna was invited. 
The Labour leader is in Brussels and met EU leaders today as the row over his decision to snub Mr Umunna last night continues. 
He was accused of 'extraordinary' and 'juvenile' behaviour after he walked out and critics pointed out that he had been happy to meet members of the IRA and Hamas in the past.
Today he insisted he can deliver Brexit and accused Theresa May of trying to 'threaten' MPs into voting her deal through next week - but twice refused to rule out revoking Article 50 if a longer delay was needed.
But when asked if he could be trusted to lead when he can't accept being in the same room as Mr Umunna, who left Labour this year, he said: 'There was confusion over that meeting' and said later on he had 'a separate and very extensive' discussion with Mrs May.  
Speaking after what he described as 'very constructive discussions' with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission secretary general Martin Selmayr in Brussels, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'Our determination is to prevent a no-deal exit from the European Union next Friday.
'We are therefore looking for alternatives and building a majority in Parliament that can agree on a future constructive economic relationship with the European Union.
'We've been discussing how this could come about and trying to reach out here as both Keir (Starmer) and myself have been reaching out to colleagues in all parties in the UK Parliament.'
Accompanied by shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn said: 'This morning's meetings have been positive and we have done what I believe the Government ought to be doing - instead of bringing back a twice-rejected deal to the British Parliament, looking for constructive solutions.'
Mr Corbyn refused to sit down with Chuka Umunna, who, as a member of the breakaway Independent Group, had been invited along with other opposition representatives by the Prime Minister.
Unite general secretary Len McCluskey tweeted today: 'No anti-Corbyn distractions on this. He's right not to meet with the people who betrayed their party. He wants to take the country forward with people who can be trusted. Keep the focus. We need a Labour deal, not a deal to put the interests of Tories beyond those of the people'.
And ruling out a second referendum he added: 'This is not difficult. We need a customs arrangement'. 
Today Labour MP Barry Gardiner insisted his party leader was right to refuse to take part in talks if Mr Umunna was present because The Independent Group he has joined are not a 'political party' and said Mr Corbyn has concerns about how they are funded.
Labour MP Ian Murray tweeted an ironic attack on Mr Corbyn's walk-out from Brexit crisis talks, highlighting how Mr Corbyn is failing to champion a people's vote like Chuka Umunna is, despite it being Labour Party policy.
He said: 'As for Jeremy Corbyn. He was right to walk out of talks with the PM tonight because @ChukaUmunna was attending.
'Chuka would have championed what is Labour Party policy in a public vote.
'How dare Chuka champion the policy of Labour members. That's the leadership's job. Disgraceful.' 
He added minutes later: 'Thanks for all the messages and emails. This was irony. I should know better than to think Twitter does irony.'
His refusal came despite the fact he has been happy to sit alongside members of terror group Hamas in the past - going so far as to call them his 'friends'. 
Mr Corbyn also invited members of the IRA to the House of Commons just days after the Brighton Bomb.
But yesterday he refused to sit alongside Mr Umunna - complaining he 'wasn't a proper party leader'.
Critics last night lambasted his 'juvenile' behaviour at a time when Britain's future hangs in the balance.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'Jeremy Corbyn's kinder, gentler politics was found wanting as he stomped out of the meeting before it began rather than breathe the same air as Chuka Umunna.
'This is a rather strange way to behave at a moment of national crisis.'
Mr Umunna said the country was in 'a crisis situation' and the people of the UK expect conflicting political groups to 'come together' to find a way forward.
'That's why the Prime Minister convened the meeting and I welcome the fact she did so,' he said.
'I think it's really extraordinary behaviour for the Leader of the Opposition to behave in really this kind of very juvenile way when the moment demands that we all step up and engage in some serious dialogue to find our way through this chaos and this mess.'
And others pointed out his shady history in meeting extremists such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits as an independent, said: 'This man makes a grotesque virtue of fraternising with the violent extremists that many people conclude he sympathises with.
'But at the moment that our country desperately needs MPs to reach an agreement on Brexit, he draws a line at Chuka Umunna.'
Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron tweeted: 'Jezza has been quite happy to meet with some rather 'edgy' folk in the past... but draws the line at that menace to civilisation, Chuka Umunna.'
In 1984, just two weeks after the Brighton bombing which killed five people and injured 31, Mr Corbyn caused an uproar by inviting representatives of the IRA to the House of Commons.
In 2009, Mr Corbyn was filmed at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event saying: 'It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking.
'I've also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well.'
And in 2014, Mr Corbyn visited the graves of terror leaders linked to the Munich massacre.
The Mail published a photograph of him holding a wreath just feet away from the graves of terror leaders linked to the 1972 killings.
Last night Countdown host Rachel Riley - who has been a victim of anti-Semitic abuse from hard-left activists - criticised the Labour leader.
She wrote: 'Corbyn on Hamas (the terrorists): 'I wanted Hamas to be part of the debate'. Corbyn on Chuka Umunna (the anti-racism ex-Labour MP): 'Tell him I'm not talking to him'.'
Euan Philipps, spokesman for Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said: 'What's apparent from tonight's display is that, despite his claims, Jeremy Corbyn only ever speaks with people he agrees with.
'While he seems prepared to talk with Hamas and Hezbollah, he won't sit round a table with a BAME south London MP even when to do so is in the national interest and at a time of crisis.
'This is a man who appears too blinded by his own prejudices to do what is right for the country.'
Mrs May invited leaders of the other parties to a meeting in the Commons yesterday to discuss the way ahead on Brexit.
Tory MP Simon Hoare said: 'Jeremy Corbyn has always said in defence of his meetings with the IRA that you've got to sit down and talk to make progress.
'He was given the opportunity today and he's flunked it. It's another indication that at times when statesmanship is required, he falls well wide of the mark.'
Chris Leslie, an Independent Group MP, said: 'Astonishing. Yet again Jeremy Corbyn puts petty party politics before the national interest.'
SNP MP Stewart McDonald told Mr Corbyn to 'get a grip' after his refusal to engage in talks with the Independent Group present.
He tweeted: 'I mean honestly, nine days until the country he wants to be Prime Minister of leaves the EU and Jeremy Corbyn has gone full 'you can't sit with us'.
'This isn't Mean Girls. Get a grip of your life, man!'
Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson tweeted: 'Jeremy Corbyn this evening channelling a teenager who doesn't get his way. A sad, depressing way to conduct politics.'
A spokeswoman for the Labour Party said: 'It was not the meeting that had been agreed and the terms were broken.
'Downing Street is in such chaos that they were unable to manage their own proposed meeting.
'We are in discussions with Number 10 about holding the bilateral meeting with the PM that Jeremy proposed at Prime Minister's Question Time.'
 
Before making TV appearances during the Brexit talks in Brussels, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is occasionally tempted to seek out one of his most important props: his own reflection.
Gazing at a mirror or pane of glass, he fiddles with his tie- knot, brushes down his jacket and glides his hands through his carefully manicured mane.
Known for his sharp dressing and shiny shoes, the 66-year-old is more than a little vain.
Lord Myners, a City minister in Gordon Brown’s government, recalls meeting Barnier at the Treasury: ‘I saw him in the distance at the end of a corridor. He stopped at every painting and looked at it. 
'He wasn’t looking at the paintings but at his own reflection in the glass, and readjusting his hair at every painting he passed.’
Unfortunately, Barnier also has an ego the size of an EU butter mountain — and that lends him an arrogance entirely unsuited to negotiations in which give-and-take, and even a little humility, is the only way to reach agreement.
His tetchy performance at Monday’s press conference with his opposite number, Brexit Secretary David Davis, showed Barnier living up to his pantomine villain role as frontman for an undemocratic body (with five unelected presidents) which seems determined to punish Britain for leaving the bloc, even if it means punishing the economies of Europe which so desperately want still to trade with the UK. 
This week, Barnier arrogantly declared he would not even countenance talk of a post-Brexit trade deal unless the UK coughs up a ‘divorce bill’ that, it has been suggested, could be as high as £74 billion. He warned Davis: ‘We must start negotiating seriously.’
Presumably, Davis was even less enamoured of this patronising nonsense when he learned that Barnier — a ‘director general’ in the EU civil service — is being paid a reputed salary of £214,000, which is £72,000 more than Davis.
The problem with this Gallic popinjay, who believes in a ‘United States of Europe’, is that he cannot conceal a visceral disdain for British values. Indeed, like many French politicians, he has used the phrase ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a term of abuse.
Anglo-Saxon capitalism’ is spoken of derogatively, as though it is regrettable that the City of London is Europe’s leading financial powerhouse. 
It is typical of obstreperous European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to have chosen Barnier, a scourge of the City, to represent Brussels in the Brexit talks.
But Barnier hardly had to be convinced to take the job — he arrived in Brussels to lobby Juncker for the role within 48 hours of the Brexit vote.
Juncker himself seems as determined as Barnier to antagonise Britain and punish us for daring to abandon his beloved federalist project. He has derided Brexit preparations as ‘not satisfactory’. But, as always, there are other factors at play.
Instead of acknowledging that Britain has a mighty trading economy which can bring huge benefits to EU nations, Juncker is still sore that David Cameron tried to block his appointment as President of the Commission.
Cameron had sought a candidate of genuine stature rather than Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg (population 580,000).
So perhaps his deployment of Barnier as chief negotiator is a form of revenge: it has certainly infuriated British Eurosceptics, not least because Barnier was seen as a tormentor of the City of London in his previous post as EU financial services commissioner.
When he was appointed in 2009, the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, promised Barnier would rein in the ‘freewheeling Anglo-Saxon model of banking’ — in other words, the dynamism that has, on the whole, allowed our financial sector to flourish.
Sure enough, Barnier tried to relocate City business and jobs to the eurozone. In 2011, then Bank of England governor Mervyn King smashed his fist on his desk in rage over Barnier’s attempt to restrict King’s power to fix the rules concerning the capital reserves of British-based banks.
Yet despite his ability to rile his British counterparts, Barnier clearly thinks he has the right temperament for the Brexit talks. He once said, referring to his roots in Savoie: ‘I’m a calm mountain man. Maybe that’s a bit similar to British composure.’
At 6ft 2in, he is a keen climber, runner and swimmer. His climbing hobby has led French critics to nickname him le cretin des Alpes — a jibe at his origins in south-east France, where 18th-century locals suffered brain damage caused by dietary deficiencies.
Such sneers are echoed by some EU officials, who — rightly or wrongly — say Barnier is an intellectual lightweight who rarely reads more than the first-page summary of any official documents.
Of course he has his supporters, such as achingly Europhile Nick Clegg, with whom he worked in Brussels 20 years ago.
When Barnier became the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, the former Lib Dem leader said: ‘He is no friend of the City of London. I think he is going to drive a very hard bargain.’
Tories suspect Barnier has held a grudge against Britain since 2005, when the EU was proposing a new constitution meant to clarify Brussels’s powers — and its limits.
Then British prime minister Tony Blair pledged a referendum to approve or reject the constitution, thus forcing the French to do the same. To the huge embarrassment of the government in which Barnier was foreign minister, the French rejected the constitution and Barnier quit.
One British minister says: ‘He’s been livid with Britain ever since. Brexit has only confirmed his anti-British view.’
His political philosophy was forged watching his cabinet maker father at work. Barnier Sr would say: ‘If you hit a nail, you have to make sure it goes all the way.’ That seems to have been his son’s attitude since the Brexit talks began.
At the end of the first day’s discussions in June, he said: ‘I am not in a frame of mind to make concessions or ask for concessions.’
He recently added tartly: ‘I would very much appreciate that, on the UK side, you could find the same spirit to reach a deal with the EU, not against the EU.’ But his confrontational attitude in recent weeks has not helped matters. 
Barnier’s increasing impatience, as displayed on Monday with David Davis, is a clear sign that he knows his own reputation depends on the outcome of the negotiations.
While Davis only has to convince the British people and get a deal past Parliament, Barnier must convince the EU’s 27 member governments. So it’s no surprise he is showing signs of tension that everything is not going his way.
Happily for him, he can relax at weekends at his family’s secnic hunting estate in the Centre-Val de Loire region.
There, he likes to perform a bizarre ritual of paying homage to a tree. Kneeling down before a giant oak that dates back to the end of the 16th century, he reaches out to touch the bark.
‘Without being superstitious, I tell myself this oak has seen a lot of people and events passing by,’ he has said.
Trees are, he believes, a powerful reminder of life’s values and the concept of time. Above all, they give humans ‘lessons in humility’.
Barnier certainly could learn a great deal from them.  
The EU has hinted that Brexit should be cancelled after Theresa May's deal was voted down in the biggest defeat suffered by a Prime Minister in over 100 years.
EU Council President Donald Tusk suggested if MPs cannot agree a deal and don't want to crash out without one, they should consider reversing the historic vote.
While EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned that 'time is almost up' as he announced no deal planning will be ramped up in the wake of the defeat.
He made a dash back to Brussels for emergency Brexit meetings as the deal was voted down by 432 votes to 202 - meaning a staggering 230 MPs voted against her. 
Mr Tusk said: 'If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?'  
Mr Juncker said last night: 'The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening's vote. 
'While we do not want this to happen, the European Commission will continue its contingency work to help ensure the EU is fully prepared.
'I urge the United Kingdom to clarify its intentions as soon as possible. Time is almost up.'  
While Guy Verhoftstadt, the European Parliament's Brexit chief, accused British of MPs of not nowing what they want.
He tweeted: 'The UK Parliament has said what it doesn't want. Now is the time to find out what UK parliamentarians want. 
'In the meantime, the rights of citizens must be safeguarded.' 
The PM's official spokesman said there are 'no plans' for her to meet with Mr Juncker today.
But she is under huge pressure from all sides to head back to the negotiating table in Brussels to tear up the hated Irish backstop. 
MEPs in the European Parliament will debate the state of the Brexit deal this morning.
It comes as Germany promised to launch a fresh round of Brexit talks. 
Germany's foreign minister Heiko Maas yesterday said talks will start back up.
But in a blow to No10 he downplayed hopes of a major overhaul to the deal - saying he does not think 'substantial' changes will be to the deal. 
In a dramatic day in Parliament which will go down in the history books, over 118 Tory MPs defied their leader to join Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP and the DUP in voting her deal down.
6.45pm: Theresa May will sum up the debate and make a final appeal to MPs to back the deal.
7pm: Voting will begin. First, MPs will vote on the amendments to the motion. 
Four have been selected by the Speaker. 
If any pass, the final vote on the deal is with the amendment attached. 
Each vote will take around 15-20 minutes, meaning the result should be in by around 8.30pm.
8.30pm: After the votes, Mrs May will make a statement setting out her response and the next steps the government will take.
And Jeremy Corbyn seized on the defeat to announce  he is pushing a vote of no confidence in the PM tonight.
If Mrs May loses then she could be ousted from No10 and another general election could be called.
But despite the humiliation, Mrs May vowed to fight on to try to stay as leader and get a Brexit deal through the deeply divided Parliament.  
Rising to her feet moments after the drubbing, a clearly shaken Mrs May said the government will 'listen' and announced she would fight a no-confidence vote tonight.
But she threw down the gauntlet to her MP critics to come up with an alternate plan to deliver Brexit. 
She said yesterday: 'It is clear that the House does not support this deal. But tonight's vote tells us nothing about what it does support. 
'Nothing about how - or even if - it intends to honour the decision the British people took in a referendum Parliament decided to hold,' she said.
'People, particularly EU citizens who have made their home here and UK citizens living in the EU, deserve clarity on these questions as soon as possible. Those whose jobs rely on our trade with the EU need that clarity.' 
Remainers and Brexiteers were jubilant about the rout, with Boris Johnson saying the size was even larger than he had expected. 
Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon hailed the setback for the government, while the Lib Dems said it was the 'beginning of the end of Brexit'.  
Downing Street sources said in the wake of the devastating result, which threatens to plunge the Brexit process further into chaos, it would be reaching out to 'senior Parliamentarians' in a bid to find a way forward. 
The pound rose sharply against the US dollar and euro, as markets seemingly concluded that the UK's departure from the EU had become less likely to happen.
The shattering blow for the PM came despite her making a final plea for critics to think again, insisting her deal was the only realistic option on the table. 
After hours of desperate arm-twisting, she begged MPs to recognise it was the 'most important' vote they would cast in their careers, and every member would have to 'justify and live with' their actions.
But hordes of Tories - including the chair of the powerful 1922 committee Graham Brady - still trooped through the No division lobbies with Opposition MPs. 
At least two ministerial aides, Tom Pursglove and Eddie Hughes, resigned to go against Mrs May.
Fears had been growing during the day that the government was on track for catastrophe, but senior sources had still seemed hopeful they could keep the margin below than 200 votes.   
This week, Theresa May cold-bloodedly sacked her deputy, Damian Green, who is her closest political confidant.
Following the embarrassing recent departures of two other Cabinet ministers — Priti Patel and Michael Fallon — it was widely said that Mr Green’s demise would terminally damage Mrs May’s Government.
Indeed, some were openly gleeful at the prospect. For example, George Osborne, the embittered former chancellor who crudely boasts that he will destroy the Prime Minister, circulated on social media a vindictive cartoon depicting Mrs May as an almost-dead duck collapsing as her political crutch (Green) was removed.
But survive she has. Indeed, I believe she looks stronger than at any time in the past 12 months. How do we explain this?
Some point out that Mr Green was not well known to the public. Yet in political terms he was a key part of Mrs May’s administration. It is fair to compare his close relationship with Mrs May to that held by Peter Mandelson in relation to Tony Blair in the early days of the New Labour government.
Back then, 19 years ago, he, too, was forced to quit the government after revelations that he had not disclosed a pivotal fact to a building society by failing to declare on a mortgage application form that he had received a huge loan from a millionaire Labour colleague.
Blair was badly damaged by the Mandelson affair. Not only did he lose a powerful political fixer but a close friend.
However, the fact that I’m convinced Mrs May will not suffer in the same way is down to the very particular type of modern politician she is.
She is her own woman. She’s not someone whose fortunes are dependent on others.
If you look at photographs of her taken over the past few weeks, you can see that, despite these ministerial departures and the fiendishly tricky Brexit negotiations, she seems relaxed.
What a contrast with 12 months ago. Then, she looked nervous, buttoned-up, robotic and repressed.
Remember, this was a Prime Minister who repeatedly told voters there would not be a General Election in 2017 — but then called one.
This was a Prime Minister accused of being too scared to go on TV to engage in debate to defend her Government’s record.
This was a Prime Minister ridiculed for promising ‘strong and stable’ government while delivering nothing of the sort.
Above all, this was a Prime Minister who was pounded by the electorate in June after unveiling a controversial social care programme and then dropping it a few days later after howls of protest.
Today, though, Mrs May is not merely considerably more at ease with herself; I believe she is also on her way to solving one of the central problems facing all politicians in Western democracies.
The challenge? How to narrow the ever-widening gulf between government and governed.
Very rarely in history has the political establishment been so remote from the electorate as it is today. Of course, this is deeply worrying.
We were told that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 would be a landmark moment in the development of modern democracies. Millions of people held under the iron fist of communist regimes were finally offered the opportunity to build new political structures based on freedom.
But that did not happen in Russia, where the gap between the plutocratic elite and the rest is wider than ever. Meanwhile, democracies elsewhere began to fail.
European politics became increasingly dominated by an elite which was contemptuous of the needs and demands of voters.
Central to this was the python-style grip in which Brussels held EU member states. Their national sovereignties were eroded in a scandalously undemocratic way. The power to decide on key aspects of everyday life — from their economies to immigration — was held by unelected bureaucrats in the European Commission, instead of by national politicians elected and held accountable by voters.
This brought politics into disrepute and resulted in a fracturing of the system that had prevailed for decades when a small number of parties tended to dominate national politics.
In Britain, the stranglehold of Labour and the Tories weakened as Ukip and the Greens took a bigger share of the vote. In France, the two main parties that had controlled politics since World War II collapsed to such an extent that one had no candidate in the run-off for president this year. The Socialists were obliterated by the far-Right National Front. Significantly, the eventual winner, Emmanuel Macron, heads a party that didn’t exist two years ago.
Germany is paralysed politically, with a badly damaged Angela Merkel unable to cobble together a coalition.
Talks have been put on hold until the New Year, after discussion about a three-party coalition between her Christian Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Greens collapsed.
More worryingly, Spain is in the middle of a huge political crisis. This week’s vote, in which separatist parties won a majority in Catalonia in a major revolt against the traditional political system, heralds the country’s possible break-up.
Similarly in Greece, the two main parties have been swept away and following the country’s debt crisis, the government is little more than a puppet of the European Central Bank.
In Austria, voters this month rejected the consensus that has prevailed for years and elected a far-Right party into government in an election dominated by a bitter debate on immigration.
In the east, Hungary and the Czech Republic have vowed to defend Poland against an ‘unjust’ clampdown by Brussels chiefs who have threatened to strip the Warsaw government of voting rights after it moved to gain more control itself.
Fears abound, too, of a growing split between liberal western Europe and its socially conservative eastern members who reject Brussels quotas for the number of migrants they must take.
The truth is that the European Commission — with its contempt for nationhood and the democratic rights of voters — has not only done immeasurable damage to the political system that has worked well since the end of World War II, but now threatens the EU itself.
It is no wonder people are in revolt. Only one major European country has had the guts to stand up to the Brussels behemoth, and that is Britain.
How telling that since the vote to leave the EU last year, traditional parties are back in the ascendance.
This is no coincidence.
Party membership, certainly in the case of the Labour Party, has soared — admittedly on the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity among the young. Support for Ukip and the Lib Dems has fallen massively.
In June’s General Election, the Tories and Labour took 82 per cent of the vote.
Compare this with Germany, where the two main parties (the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats) managed just 47 per cent. In Greece, the traditional parties took just 34 per cent.
The reason for this is that, more than in any other major country in Europe, there remains a strong element of political independence in Britain. We have not caved in to Brussels.
Elsewhere in the EU, voters who feel betrayed by their politicians having sold out to Brussels are angry and, in despair, are turning to far-Right political groupings.
I predict that the situation will get worse. I fear 2018 could witness some very ugly political developments.
When they look at what is happening on the Continent, even the most rabid opponents of Brexit must surely acknowledge that the vote to leave the EU will help protect this country from dangerous extremism.
 There have been precious few honourable resignations recently in British politics, but Damian Green’s was one.
He quit office after being caught telling a lie. As far as I can discover, he is the first minister to do so since John Profumo in 1963 — and that is admirable!
In recent history — think, for example, of Tony Blair’s scurrilous behaviour over Iraq — ministers have tended to brazen it out after being caught telling fibs.
Damian Green’s departure on an issue of integrity is another sign that decency is beginning to return to British politics under Theresa May.
Boris Johnson memorably said three weeks ago, though it seems like an age, that he would rather be 'dead in a ditch' than delay Brexit beyond October 31.
The truth is that he's already in a ditch. Politically speaking, he is not exactly dead but he's certainly incapacitated.
Is it conceivable that he can haul himself out of the predicament he's in, dust himself off, deliver Brexit and preserve the country from the insanities and idiocies of Corbynism?
 
Can he, like Jonathan Swift's fictional hero Gulliver — or, to use Boris's own recent image, the Incredible Hulk — break free from the bonds wrapped around him by lesser men?
There is surely little doubt that by proroguing Parliament, when to do so offered absolutely no prospective political gain and a great deal of potential damage, Mr Johnson is partly responsible for putting himself in the mess he's in.
Boisterous
He is a bit like a drunk who takes an unnecessary short-cut and stumbles into a ditch when there was a perfectly satisfactory orthodox route — letting MPs sit for a few more days before being packed off to their party conferences for three weeks.
But it's far from being all his fault. He has been trussed and bound by Opposition parties in Parliament. Now they have got him where they want him, they will try to lace him up even more tightly.
He is not allowed to call an election and, despite his taunting of Labour in a feisty statement in the Commons last night, and his challenge to call a vote of No Confidence, there won't be an imminent change of heart.
Unless he is prepared to break the law Parliament has passed (and Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox indicated yesterday in a boisterous Commons performance that he isn't), Boris will have to go to Europe to beg for an extension. He can't even have a party conference on his own terms.
Labour's plan is to so weaken and humiliate Mr Johnson, by forcing him to miss his October 31 deadline and do their bidding, that by the time he is finally permitted to call an election he will appear to voters as a bedraggled and compromised figure.
It's a good thing he's a bullish fellow because many politicians finding themselves in his apparently desperate position would probably roll over in their ditch and give up the ghost.
(Incidentally, amid all the gloom I couldn't help laughing yesterday over the response of Jennifer Arcuri, the American businesswoman and pole-dancing ex-model, who received thousands in public money after befriending Boris. She insists he only visited her flat for technology lessons!)
To return to more serious matters. I don't believe Mr Johnson's situation is hopeless. Despite his many wounds, there is still cause for optimism — though he will have to be much more disciplined and sinuous than he has so far been.
I can see two ways out of the morass. The first is that he comes up with a deal which will somehow squeeze through the Commons with the assistance of a platoon of principled Labour MPs.
The conventional wisdom is that the so-called Benn bill requiring the Prime Minister to seek an extension, combined with his loss of credibility after the Supreme Court's unanimous judgment against him, will convince Brussels there is no point in offering a compromise.
This may be true. But I cling to the belief that EU leaders are not all cynical sado-masochists who yearn to punish Britain and its Prime Minister at the expense of their own countries' wellbeing.
On Monday, the leading vehicle manufacturers across Europe issued a joint statement warning that a No Deal Brexit would have a 'seismic' impact on the car industry throughout the Continent.
Remember the perilous state of the EU. Germany faces a recession, Italy could tumble into another one. The European Central Bank is embarking on a new round of printing money, along with a cut in its key interest rate to minus 0.4 per cent, in a frantic attempt to kick-start the eurozone economy.
Is this really the ideal moment for EU leaders to insist on a punishment beating for Britain? Not in a rational world. Moreover, European leaders are fed up to the back teeth with this awful saga (aren't we all!) and long to bring it to a close.
I know. I know. All this has been said before. But that doesn't mean that at five minutes to midnight there can't be a sensible compromise, with the EU perhaps offering a take-it-or-leave-it final deal that will inevitably fall short of what some Brexiteers want.
Last night in the Commons, the Prime Minister gave an upbeat account of negotiations and suggested that the EU was prepared to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, which he had been told was irrevocably closed.
Victim
Would a modified deal get through Parliament? Only with the help of Stephen Kinnock and his group of decent Labour MPs who respect the result of the 2016 referendum. Only if most Tory members of the hardline ERG soften. It might happen.
And if it doesn't? Well, then there is one last possibility for Mr Johnson. He could fight an election on the platform of the People (plus Boris) versus the Establishment.
Since the Opposition parties won't agree to an election now, this could only happen after he had missed his October 31 deadline. The received wisdom is that in such an event he would be political dead meat.
I'm not so sure. He could represent himself as a victim of conniving Remainers frustrating his every move, even to the extent of making him write a letter to the EU seeking an extension he doesn't want.
Asked in a YouGov poll earlier this month to what extent it would be the Prime Minister's fault if Brexit didn't take place by October 31, 68 per cent of Conservative-leaning voters said it wouldn't be his fault 'at all'.
And in a Survation poll published in today's Mail, a surprisingly large 52 per cent of respondents agree that 'the Establishment want to stop Brexit', while only 28 per cent disagree.
Champion
In other words, his failure to meet his deadline could be profitably pinned on his political adversaries, and Boris might successfully represent himself as a champion of democracy.
Such an approach would be a gamble and would become destructive and divisive if Boris, egged on by 'psychopath' (David Cameron's description) Dominic Cummings, targeted Supreme Court judges as Establishment stooges.
By the way, we should stop picking on his adviser Mr Cummings. The buck stops with the PM. What does a responsible owner do if his vicious Alsatian attacks every dog in the park? He puts it on a tight leash. He buys a muzzle. If these measures fail, there is always a last resort for irredeemably dangerous dogs.
For myself, I'd prefer an honourable last-minute deal to a high-stakes People v the Establishment election in which Boris charged around like a bull in a china shop. Better for the heart.
Can he pull off a near miracle and, Gulliver-like, escape his ties? I'm not overflowing with optimism. But for all his errors, he remains the only person who can save us from the madness of a Corbyn government and a shameful betrayal of Brexit.
 
Echoing Margaret Thatcher, Sajid Javid vows today that he is ready to take Britain out of the EU without a deal if he cannot win concessions from Brussels.
Setting out his Brexit plan in an article for the Daily Mail, the Tory leadership contender rules out holding another referendum, an early general election or revoking Article 50.
'In the words of a great British prime minister who knew how to get what she wanted from the European Commission: No, no, no,' he writes.
'The voters have been asked their opinion more than enough times. Never in this country's history have we asked people to go to the polls a second time without implementing their verdict from the first.'
1. 'No, no, no' to a second referendum, early general election or revoking Article 50.
2. Prepare fully for No Deal, including an emergency Budget, to show EU we are not afraid of walking away.
3. Accept deal will only get through Parliament if Irish backstop is amended to include time limit or exit clause.
4. Build trust with Dublin and agree to cover cost of implementing new border technology.
5. Get revised deal through Parliament by October 31 – or leave without one, having done everything to minimise disruption. 
In his first major intervention since launching his campaign, Mr Javid reveals a five-point plan on Brexit which he describes as an 'honest, credible set of proposals that recognises the significant challenges we face'.
He says he would immediately ramp up preparations for No Deal if he becomes prime minister to show he is serious about walking away.
This would include holding an emergency Budget to lay out for the first time details of the tax cuts the Government would introduce if the EU continues to play hardball.
He makes clear that his preference is to strike a deal – but the only way to get this through the Commons is to amend the backstop, which sank Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement.
He says he believes the technology exists to avoid a hard border in Ireland without needing the backstop – and adds he will even offer to pay tens of millions to Ireland to help pay for the equipment needed, in a bid to break the deadlock.
Mr Javid, 49, says this would be 'a small price to pay' for resolving the border problem and rebuilding trust damaged by two years of fractious relations.
However, he insists that he would also accelerate work to get the country ready for No Deal. 
'This would show the EU we are ready ... so when we turn up to negotiate they know we are not afraid of walking out,' he writes.
Mrs May's would-be successors are split on Brexit. Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey have all pledged to leave on October 31 come what may, while Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock have warned of the dangers of doing so. 
Michael Gove is the only one of the leading contenders yet to spell out his plans.
In Mr Javid's pitch to Tory MPs and party members, he vows to 'take every step possible' to get an agreement in place in place by the next deadline. 'We should leave on October 31,' he writes. 
'If we cannot get a deal we should, with great regret, leave without one, having done everything we can to minimise disruption.'
But he warns that the parliamentary arithmetic was 'inescapable', adding: 'It's simply not credible to promise you can deliver a No Deal Brexit if Parliament is set again it.'
Amber Rudd prompted speculation she will back Michael Gove for prime minister yesterday after posting this picture of them together on a beach.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said she was 'thrilled' that Environment Secretary Mr Gove had designated Beachy Head East a conservation zone.
It is one of seven new 'Blue Belt' marine conservation zones created across the East of England.
More than 420 square miles of sea will be protected as part of the drive to give rare species a better chance of survival. Among the species and habitats that will benefit are long-snouted seahorses, tentacled lagoon worms and blue mussel beds.
Hastings MP Miss Rudd tweeted: 'Great Hastings news. Thrilled Defra and Michael Gove backed my campaign.'
It came as Tory MP Bob Seely said he would back Mr Gove, adding: 'Gove is best able to deliver [Brexit] – he may be the only leader who can.'
Mr Javid, who backed Remain in the referendum but has since positioned himself as a firm Leaver, says he can 'unite the party and the country'.
His bid to win over Brexiteers has been boosted by the arrival of former Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott, who is running his campaign. 
Mr Javid became the first home secretary from an ethnic minority background when he was appointed last April.
The son of a Pakistani bus driver from Rochdale, he was a managing director at Deutsche Bank before being elected to Parliament as the MP for Bromsgrove in Worcestershire. 
He has long been a devotee of Mrs Thatcher, and has a picture of the former prime minister above his desk at the Home Office.
Yesterday he won the endorsement of justice minister Edward Argar. Writing on the Conservative Home website, Mr Argar said: 'Sajid has an inspiring story of how he got ahead in life and what our country means for him – he is the embodiment of the Conservative values of aspiration and hard work, and of modern British identity.
'The reason many voters never consider voting for us is because they don't believe we understand their needs or share their values.
'That's why Sajid's working-class background, with a family who relied heavily on public services, will be such an asset in the next election. 
'The drive that took him to university, and into a highly successful business career, is also exactly the kind of spirit and skill we need as a country to fully seize our post-Brexit opportunities. 
'Sajid is someone with extensive experience in both the private sector and in Government, having held four different Cabinet roles. 
'This is the sort of man who could do the job of being our prime minister from day one.'
The London Chamber of Commerce yesterday said no prime minister can guarantee avoiding No Deal, and must be ready for it. 
Chief executive David Frost said: 'Business needs to be confident that Government is still preparing for a No Deal Brexit.
SAJID JAVID: 'NO, I won't back second referendum, NO, I won't call a general election, NO, I won't revoke Article 50,' says leadership hopeful as he launches PM bid with Thatcher war cry
By Sajid Javid for the Daily Mail
As much of the country basks in early summer sunshine, we are just weeks away from the third anniversary of that momentous June day when the British people stood up and told that the world that it was time for the UK to leave the European Union.
As politicians we are supposed to serve our electors. We asked them for their decision. They gave it in good faith.
And as I said at the time, MPs and government had a duty to get on and deliver on the result. 
To seize all the opportunities offered by leaving the EU, and go out into the world as a fully independent nation, in control of our destiny once more.
Three years later – and after local, national and European elections in which too many good, honest Conservatives have been voted out of office – the British people's frustration and the need to make good on the referendum result have never been greater.
The responsibility of doing so will fall to the next leader of the Conservative Party – and if he or she fails in that task, we risk irreparable damage to the very fabric of our democracy.
Whoever they are, they will have a duty to be straight with the British people. And they will need a plan for getting the job done. 
Not empty slogans and fiery rhetoric, but an honest, credible set of proposals that recognises the significant challenges we face – and which will deliver results not in the Parliament and EU we would like to see, but the Parliament and EU that are before us today.
There's no point dwelling on how we got into the stormy seas that now surround us. 
What matters is how we steady the ship and plot a course to the bright horizon we all want to reach – and I'm the right person to do it.
I spent a career in business doing international deals. I know how to make them happen and how to get the best out of negotiations, and I've used those same skills in government to get things done at home and build bridges with other countries.
Now, I'm ready apply those skills to the biggest challenge this country has faced since 1945 – and I have a detailed plan for doing so.
First, we must unite as a party to get a deal through in this Parliament. Some argue we should have a second referendum. 
Others, a general election. Some even suggest revoking Article 50. Well, in the words of a great British Prime Minister who knew how to get what she wanted from the European Commission: No, no, no.
The voters have been asked their opinion more than enough times. Never in this country's history have we asked people to go to the polls a second time without implementing their verdict from the first. 
Another vote before we leave would be disastrous for trust in politics, and cause the kind of chaos that risks handing Jeremy Corbyn and his hard-left supporters the keys to No 10.
Second – we need to prepare fully for No Deal. This isn't because I want it. But we have to accept the reality of our situation.
The EU's insistence that negotiations happen under a ticking clock mean, come October 31, that is what we face if we don't have a deal.
As Prime Minister I would immediately step up No Deal preparations. We would aim to keep the impacts to a minimum. 
But, while too much apocalyptic language has been used, we have to be honest. It wouldn't be painless. So, as part of preparations we would have a broad, bold No Deal Budget ready. 
This would also show the EU we are ready – so when we turn up to negotiate, they know we are not afraid of walking out.
Third – we must focus on what we need to get a deal which can be agreed. That means accepting the realities of the parliamentary arithmetic, and what is practically possible.
We know the only thing that has got through our Parliament successfully is the Withdrawal Agreement with backstop provisions amended to include a time limit or exit clause. 
So, fourth – I would work directly with Ireland so we can amend the backstop. The backstop is important to the EU because it is important to Ireland. So that's where our efforts need to focus.
And there's something big in our favour. We both want the same thing – as now, an invisible and frictionless border.
What's currently missing is trust in our ability and determination to deliver that. That requires two things. 
Someone who could work with them constructively building a strong relationship of personal trust. And a credible solution.
I've looked at this in the Home Office, tasking a team from Border Force to look at what we'd need in place. 
They were clear the technologies already exist to avoid a hard border, and important work in being undertaken by the Alternative Arrangement Commission on this front. What we need is the trust and will on both sides to make this work a reality.
Of course, some will say this isn't possible. I understand that caution. But in practice this is a feasible plan. 
And I think we will see more engagement as a new Commission takes place and we get closer to October.
Others will ask why Ireland should pay for the consequences of the UK's decision to leave. 
That's a fair point, so as Prime Minister I would agree to cover the cost to Ireland of delivering this. 
It's a small price to avoid No Deal – and the risks that would bring to the hard-won peace.
Fifth – we'll need to take this revised deal though Parliament. There is no getting around the fact that the timing for negotiations and then getting legislation through will be challenging. 
But I would take every step possible to ensure we leave with a deal by October 31.
This is an honest, realistic plan to get a deal through. I have to be straight – delivering it won't be easy. 
But if we succeed – and I believe we will – then this is the path that will lead our great country to a still greater future.
As Prime Minister I would have a clear position. We should leave on October 31. And if we cannot get a deal we should, with great regret, leave without one, having done everything we can to minimise disruption.
Of course, the arithmetic of a minority government is inescapable. As the recent comments of the Speaker demonstrated, it's simply not credible to promise you can deliver a No Deal if Parliament is set against it. 
And anyone who promised this would risk driving us to a pre-Brexit general election this year. 
A disaster first and foremost for our country and public trust in democracy, but also for our party.
That's why we need a leader who can unite the party, and country, behind a credible plan – and then go and actually deliver it.
I believe this is that plan.
And I know I am that leader.  
A decision by the Supreme Court against the Government’s right to trigger Article 50 would raise profound questions about the power of an unelected judiciary to over-ride the will of the British people.
In this context, it is vital that the judges are seen to be independent. Yet four of the 11 members of the Supreme Court have formal links to either the EU, its courts or European institutions; five have publicly expressed views which appear to be sympathetic to the EU; while six have personal links with individuals who have been critical of the Leave campaign.
Only four have no obvious associations with the Remain ethos. Just one, Lord Sumption, has given indications of Euroscepticism.
Crucially, the British justice system revolves around the principle that judges — and particularly Supreme Court judges — are fair-minded individuals capable of treating all cases entirely on their legal merits, regardless of their private loyalties.
So who are these men and one woman? How do they each view the EU and its influence on British law? And what personal beliefs (if any) must they put aside to give dispassionate hearing to one of the most important court cases in our country’s history?
1. Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
Age: 68
Education: Westminster & Oxford
Europhile rating:
President of the Supreme Court, who, with his wife, Angela, divides his time between a £3 million mews house in London’s Notting Hill and a country home in Dorset.
Lady Neuberger — a TV producer and one-time Labour aide, who has made films for the EU — has in recent months used Twitter to launch roughly 50 attacks on Theresa May, her Government or Brexit.
‘So many lies, so much ignorance. It’s the poorest will suffer most from Brexit,’ reads one. The referendum is ‘dangerous’ because it ‘reduces complex issues to yes or no’ says another.
A week before the vote, she declared ‘referenda mad and bad’ and dismissed Ukip and Brexit as ‘just a protest vote’. Six days afterwards, she posted a Remain-friendly message: ‘It seems unlikely a PM could trigger Article 50 without Parliament’s approval.’
Of course, one expects Lord Neuberger to ignore such views when sitting as Supreme Court president. Another person close to him with strong anti-Brexit views is his sister-in-law Julia, a Leftish peer who used to take the Lib Dem whip (but became a crossbencher in 2011 when she took a job as a full-time rabbi).
She recently announced she has decided to apply for a German passport due to shame over the referendum result, criticising the ‘anti-immigrant’ nature of the Leave campaign.
Neuberger was until recently a governor of the University of the Arts, London — whose vice-chancellor, Jeremy Till, emailed students on the day after the EU referendum to say that the Leave vote ‘breaks my heart’, adding: ‘I make no apologies in sharing my shock and dismay.’
As for Neuberger, he has expressed views that betray an empathy with EU legal institutions. In 2013, he told The Times he would oppose withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, favouring a ‘dialogue’ with Strasbourg.
In August, he praised the influence of the EU on common law in the UK, saying: ‘Studying and sometimes applying the reasoning of the Strasbourg court has led UK courts to take a more principled and structured approach.’
Last week’s Spectator magazine reported that he recently told an acquaintance ‘the High Court would be right to find against the Government and that he would support it’.
All of which has prompted Eurosceptic MPs to call for Neuberger to stand down from next week’s hearing. Tory Andrew Rosindell says: ‘Clearly, his position is compromised.’ It must be noted that the Supreme Court’s code of conduct warns justices to be aware ‘that political activity’ of a close relative can raise concerns over impartiality.
However, officially, the court is ‘absolutely confident’ there has been no breach in Neuberger’s case.
2. Lady Hale of Richmond
Age: 71
Education: Richmond High (a grammar) & Cambridge
Europhile rating: 
They don’t come more progressive than Hale, the most senior female judge in British history, whose coat of arms carries the motto Omnia Feminae Aequissimae, meaning ‘women are equal to everything’.
A prominent critic of the tradition of wigs being worn in court, she achieved prominence as a Law Commissioner during the Eighties and Nineties making countless pronouncements said to have undermined the institution of marriage. ‘We should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose,’ reads one such remark, from an academic essay.
In another typical article, she asked: ‘Do we still think it necessary, desirable or even practicable to grant marriage licences to enter into relationships?’ Her own marital history seemed to dovetail with this theme. In 1984, shortly after being appointed to the Commission, she left first husband John Hogget for a fellow commissioner, Julian Farrand.
They married just 12 days after the divorce came through. Today, she and Farrand have homes in Westminster and Richmond, North Yorkshire, where his Remain activist son, Benjamin, is occasionally resident.
She recently backed a European Court of Human Rights ruling over votes for prisoners, and in a 2015 speech in Oxford spoke favourably about the process via which European courts can overrule British ones.
Most troubling, though, was a recent speech in which she suggested the Government might have to create a ‘comprehensive replacement’ for the European Communities Act before triggering Article 50, which could delay Brexit for years.
Critics said these comments risked breaking the fundamental rule of litigation: that judges should respond to arguments made in court, not introduce them into a debate beforehand.
They also wondered how her speech conformed with the Supreme Court’s Guide to Judicial Conduct, which tells judges to ‘show appropriate caution and restraint when explaining or commenting publicly upon their decisions in individual cases’.
The Supreme Court responded by saying Hale ‘was simply presenting the arguments from both sides of the Article 50 appeal in an impartial way for an audience of law students.’
3. Lord Mance
Age: 73
Education: Charterhouse & Oxford
Europhile rating: 
Began his career at a Hamburg law firm in the early Sixties, and has retained intimate links with the European legal establishment ever since.
He represented the UK on the Council of Europe’s Consultative Council of European Judges (an advisory body of the Council of Europe) for over a decade, and served on the Lords EU Select Committee.
His enthusiasm for the European project was made clear in 2013, soon after David Cameron announced an in-out referendum, when he said: ‘I remain an optimist that future developments will meet the concerns of all but the most extreme Eurosceptics and that the UK’s relationship with the Court of Justice will continue.’
Last year, he made a fawning speech in Luxembourg upon the retirement of Vassilios Skouris as President of the European Court of Justice, declaring that his presidency has ‘seen a powerful reaffirmation of the autonomous and binding nature of EU law’.
His wife Dame Mary Arden is a Lady Justice of Appeal, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and an ad hoc judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
She sits on the Advisory Board of the King’s College London Centre of European Law — whose president, Sir Francis Jacobs, spent 18 years as Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Communities and worked as an official at the European Commission of Human Rights.
Director of King’s College Centre of European Law’s is Andrea Biondi, a pro-Remain activist who on Twitter said of the referendum vote: ‘No plans no competence, just mediocrity. The whole next UK generation that voted Remain do not deserve this political class.’
Lord Mance’s son, Henry, works as political correspondent for the Financial Times, the anti-Brexit newspaper whose editor Lionel Barber has been offered a Legion d’Honneur for the title’s ‘positive role’ in the European debate.
On Twitter, Mance Jr this week mocked Ukip and recently criticised the Telegraph for attacking judges who reached the original High Court Article 50 decision.
Mance’s daughter, Abigail, is married to management consultant David Bosomworth — whose Twitter feed alleges that Brexiteers have decided to ‘tank the pound, make prices soar, destroy the economy and stoke xenophobia’.
4. Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore
Age: 68
Education: St Colman’s Newry (a top boys’ boarding school in Ulster) & Queen’s Belfast
Europhile rating: 
Dubbed a ‘human rights hero’ by delegates at a conference organised by Justice, the campaigning human rights organisation, he is a former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland.
In 2001, he sat as an ad hoc judge in the European Court of Human Rights — an episode curiously missing from his official CV on the Supreme Court’s website — and has since made it known that he approves of the incorporation of EU law into British justice.
In a 2014 speech, he championed the Human Rights Act, saying: ‘Citizens of the UK are as much Europeans as anybody else and are entitled to cast a jealous eye on the rights of their brethren in the rest of Europe.’
Despite such opinions, Kerr is adamant that they will not influence his Supreme Court role in the Article 50 case, telling Radio 4 that it is his job to ‘apply the law’ uninfluenced by ‘personal views’.
5. Lord Clarke of Stone-Cum-Ebony
Age: 73
Education: Oakham & Cambridge
Europhile rating:
A barrister for 27 years and a judge for 23 more, he is the oldest and perhaps most experienced member of the Supreme Court, having been the first justice to be appointed directly to it in 2009. He’s best known for conducting the safety inquiries such as the one into the Marchioness riverboat tragedy on the Thames.
He has no known ties to the EU or to European institutions, and has opposed previous attempts by the court to subvert Parliament.
6. Lord Sumption
Age: 67
Education: Eton & Oxford
Europhile rating: 
Regarded as the most brilliant advocate of his generation. Has acted as a barrister for a wide range of clients — such as the Government in the Hutton Inquiry into the Iraq war and Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.
In 2001, he was named as one of the ‘million-a-year’ club of top barristers by the Guardian, but responded by claiming his ‘puny £1.6 million a year’ was dwarfed by earnings in the worlds of business, sports and entertainment.
The only Supreme Court member who hasn’t previously served as a full-time judge, he’s also thought to be the most Eurosceptic member, thanks (in part) to a 2013 speech in which he said the European Court of Human Rights exceeded legitimate powers and ‘undermines the democratic process’.
His daughter, Madeleine, is director of Oxford University’s migration observatory, an impartial research organisation whose studies have been quoted by both the Leave and Remain campaigns. He is director of the English National Opera, whose chief executive Cressida Pollock gave a pre-referendum interview saying: ‘My biggest concern — and that of all arts organisations — is Brexit.’
He also sits on the board of the Royal Academy of Music, whose leading guest conductor Yan Tortelier wrote to the Guardian in June describing the Brexit lobby as ‘upsetting,’ and ‘rather offensive, if not Trumpesque’.
7. Lord Reed
Age: 60
Education: George Watson’s College (a smart Edinburgh private school) & Oxford
Europhile rating:
One of the court’s two Scots, he’s spent a big portion of his adult life working for European institutions.
In the late Nineties, he was a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, where he was on a panel that decided the killers of Liverpool toddler James Bulger had not received a fair trial.
He acted as expert adviser to the EU Initiative with Turkey on Democratisation and Human Rights, and as chairman of the Franco-British Judicial Co-operation Committee. Between 2006 and 2008, he was President of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and has made occasional headlines as a High Court judge.
For example, he spared an armed robber from jail, saying he should instead buy victims a bouquet of flowers to say sorry.
And he sparked controversy after deciding that a paedophile who had photographed himself raping a 13-month-old baby, should be jailed for just five years because he had ‘expressed remorse and shame’.
Before joining the Supreme Court, he was a director of Children in Scotland, a charity which responded to the referendum by writing to the Guardian, moaning: ‘We are dismayed that 16-and 17-year-olds . . . were denied the right to have their say in the most important decision of recent times.’
8. Lord Wilson of Culworth
Age: 71
Education: Bryanston & Oxford
Europhile rating:
Owner of a string of race horses. A veteran family court judge, he has been accused of straying into areas that elected politicians ought to decide on. 
For example, he backed extending human rights law to change rules regarding assisted suicide. 
However, in other cases, he has come down against the Supreme Court bossing Parliament around, dissenting from colleagues who last year voted to overrule the Government by ordering the release under Freedom of Information rules of Prince Charles’ so-called ‘black spider’ letters to Ministers.
9. Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill
Age: 71
Education: Eton & Cambridge
Europhile rating: 
A committed environmentalist, he has frequently used EU laws to support this agenda. Came to prominence as legal adviser to the Prince of Wales from 1988 to 1994, when Charles’s marriage to Diana was disintegrating.
After being runner-up for the job of British judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, he founded the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and served as its Secretary General from 2004-05. The forum exists to ‘promote the enforcement of national, European and international environmental law’.
Recently hosted a conference on ‘Climate Change and the Law’ at which a speaker asked whether courts might be able to play a role in ‘scotching’ global warming denial.
Around the same time, he ruled in the Supreme Court in favour of pressure group which took the Government to court over its failure to produce an air quality plan in keeping with European law.
An acclaimed viola player and lover of European culture, he and his wife Bambina divide their time between a £5 million penthouse in Kensington and a palatial villa on Lake Iseo in Italy.
Sits on the Advisory Board of the King’s College London Centre of European Law, whose director is a pro-Remain activist
10. Lord Hughes of Ombersley
Age: 68
Education: Tettenhall College (a boarding school in the Midlands) & Durham University
Europhile rating: 
A traditionalist who was made a QC in 1990. He has opposed previous efforts by the Supreme Court to usurp Parliamentary sovereignty.
He served as a Crown Court recorder before becoming a High Court judge. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2013, he commutes from a village near Droitwich, Worcestershire.
11. Lord Hodge
Age: 63
Education: Trinity Glenalmond (one of Perthshire’s smartest boarding schools) & Cambridge
Europhile rating:
A pillar of the Edinburgh establishment. No obvious professional links to the EU or European institutions.
However, his son George is an ardent Remainer who works for the UN. Hodge Jr’s Twitter feed in June called the Leave campaign ‘one of the most disgraceful spectacles in modern British political history.’
Before joining the Supreme Court in 2013, Lord Hodge was a trustee of a centrist think-tank called The David Hume Institute.
Last month, the institute hosted a speech on Brexit by former Cabinet Secretary Lord (Gus) O’Donnell, who said of next week’s case: ‘I have yet to meet any constitutional lawyer who thinks the Government will win.’ 
Backing a terror suspect and criminal migrants - how judges have been over-ruling Ministers 
There have been many cases in recent years of British judges over-ruling decisions made by elected politicians. Here are some of the most egregious examples . . .
Case 1:
An Al Qaeda terror suspect — considered one of the country’s most dangerous extremists and a potential suicide-bomber — asked judges to ease restrictions imposed on his Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) order.
The Supreme Court was created by Tony Blair and is the most powerful legal institution in British history.
Yet despite the extraordinary and unprecedented sway they hold over public affairs, not to mention the daily lives of ordinary citizens, these 11 senior justices are selected for the job — which pays £213,000-a-year — via an entirely private and at times highly opaque process.
In stark contrast to other nations, Britain elevates new members to its Supreme Court — where they sit for nine months each year — without their personal and political views ever being scrutinised by Parliament. The public is given no insight into the outlook or approach they intend to adopt in office.
This is very different to the U.S., where the selection of the nine justices who sit on their Supreme Court, the ultimate interpreter of their revered written Constitution, is accorded a level of attention that wouldn’t shame the choosing of a new Pope.
Consequently, whether the court’s justices are ruling on power station gas emissions or gay marriage, Americans are rarely surprised by how each votes. In a tortuous appointment process, the justices and their views have already been put through the wringer.
The U.S. Constitution dictates that presidents nominate and appoint justices, who serve for life unless they retire, with the ‘Advice and Consent of the Senate’.
In Britain, justices are appointed via a five-person ‘special commission’ headed by the Supreme Court’s existing president. It contains one senior judge along with one member of each of the Judicial Appointments Commissions (JACs) of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
JACs in turn contain a mixture of senior judges, lawyers and ‘lay-members’.
In England and Wales, for example, the commission consists of six judges, a solicitor, a barrister and eight quango-crats, largely drawn from the civil service and academia.
Since they are essentially self-selecting, it follows that the Supreme Court is too. The ‘special commission’ meets behind closed doors to select its new candidate, and the recommendation is then referred to the Lord Chancellor, the Government’s chief legal officer, who can reject it only in extremely rare and ‘closely defined circumstances’.
Thanks to this process, the Supreme Court is 91 per cent male and 100 per cent white. The average age of members is 68. Nine went to public school and eight attended Oxbridge.
GUY ADAMS

He said he wanted them relaxed so he could enjoy a ‘normal social life’. This was despite then Home Secretary Theresa May warning that he would contact other Islamic extremists to plot attacks against Britain.
Ruling: Sitting at the High Court, Mr Justice Wilkie said the constraints on the 24-year-old Somali were ‘chilling’ and ‘disproportionate’ and that he should be able to mingle more freely with students at his university to avoid his ‘embarrassment and isolation’.
Reaction: Then Tory MP Patrick Mercer said: ‘If this fellow was concerned about his social life then maybe he shouldn’t have been spending his time in Afghanistan. His lack of social life doesn’t keep me awake at night. The prospect of him having an opportunity to blow himself up does.’
Case 2:
Families of four British soldiers killed in Iraq sought a landmark legal ruling giving them the right to sue the Ministry of Defence for negligence and breach of human rights. Three died when their poorly protected Snatch Land Rovers were blown up by roadside bombs. The fourth died in a ‘friendly fire’ incident when his Challenger tank was hit. The MoD, supported by defence Ministers, said the Human Rights Act did not apply because the soldiers died on the battlefield.
Ruling: In 2013, the Supreme Court backed the families’ legal fight and said the Government owed a duty of care to properly equip and train troops sent to war.
Reaction: Then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said: ‘It can’t be right that troops on operations have to put the European Convention on Human Rights ahead of what is operationally vital to protect our national security.’
Case 3:
Violent thug John Gilbert, convicted of grievous bodily harm, fought to overturn then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s ban on sending high-risk violent prisoners to open jails. The Minister had stopped inmates with a history of absconding from being transferred to lenient Category D prisons after a string of criminals fled minimum-security jails.
However, in 2015, Gilbert, who had once failed to return from day release, claimed it breached prison rules.
Ruling: High Court judges threw out the Government’s ban — branding it ‘unfair and unlawful . . . except in exceptional circumstances’. They said a prisoner’s rehabilitation depended on a period in an open prison.
Reaction: Chris Grayling said: ‘This is why it is so important a Conservative government has the chance to reform our human rights laws and restore common sense.’
Case 4:
Arsonist Barbara Gordon-Jones challenged the then Justice Secretary’s ban on sending books to criminals in jail. The policy had been introduced amid concerns parcels sent into prison containing books were being used as a cover for smuggling in drugs, mobile phone SIM cards or other contraband. Books were already available in the prison library, the Minister said.
Ruling: The High Court overturned the ban in 2014, ruling it was ‘strange’ for the Government to treat books as a privilege when they could be considered essential for an inmate’s rehabilitation.
Reaction: A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘This is a surprising judgment. Restrictions on parcels have been in existence across most of the prison estate for many years and for very good reason. We are clear that we will not do anything that would create a new conduit for smuggling drugs and extremist materials into our prisons.’
Case 5:
Two Romany women who wanted to set up caravan sites on Green Belt land went to court after then Communities Secretary Eric Pickles blocked them.
They claimed last year that the Minister racially discriminated against travelling families by personally examining appeals against councils that had refused planning permission, rather than passing the job to a Whitehall-appointed inspector. (The rule had been brought in following the ten-year saga of travellers camped at Dale Farm in Essex.)
Ruling: Mr Justice Gilbart said that Mr Pickles had broken the 2010 Equality Act and that the Minister had ‘discriminated unlawfully against a racial group’.
Reaction: Tory vice-chairman Bob Neill said: ‘This has given the impression that travellers can ignore planning rules.’
Case 6:
A foreign-born rapist who faced deportation claimed he should be given taxpayers’ money so he could travel across the country to see his baby son — despite squandering cash smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. The failed asylum seeker said he was unable to afford the £13.55 return fare for the 130-mile round trip from Hampshire to Kent — and banning him from having extra money breached his human rights to family life.
Ruling: High Court judge Michael Kent overruled then Home Secretary Theresa May last year, saying the violent criminal was entitled to claim travel expenses.
Reaction: Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: ‘Many people will be absolutely appalled by what is yet another abuse of the justice system.’
Case 7:
A Libyan convicted of 78 offences challenged his deportation from Britain on the grounds that he was an alcoholic.
The man, identified only by the initials ‘HU’, argued that he would be tortured and imprisoned in his homeland where drinking alcohol is illegal. Sending him back to Libya would breach his human rights, he claimed. His case was estimated to have cost British taxpayers a six-figure sum.
Ruling: Upper Immigration Tribunal judges last year overturned Home Secretary Theresa May’s decision, claiming it would violate the European Convention on Human Rights because of the risk of ‘unacceptably savage’ abuse the career criminal faced in Libya.
Reaction: Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘This kind of things drives people mad. On the doorstep they find cases like this outrageous. Few people will think this man should remain in the country. He has completely abused our hospitality.’
Compiled by IAN DRURY
 
To nobody's great surprise, up popped that gurning gargoyle Bercow yesterday to stymie, yet again, the latest attempt to get Brexit through the Commons.
In the name of 'democratic accountability', Mr Speaker prevented Boris Johnson's departure deal being put to a vote.
You couldn't make it up.
Frankly, it doesn't matter what excuse he fell back on this time. Bercow has bent every rule in the book to help Remainers scupper the result of the 2016 referendum.
He's like The Man From Del Monte in reverse. Readers who recall this famous TV advertising campaign from the Eighties and Nineties will know exactly what I'm getting at.
It featured a colonial fruit and vegetable buyer for a canned goods company. Kitted out in a fedora and Our Man In Havana white suit, he would be wafted to remote tropical farming districts in pursuit of the purest produce. 
Nervous locals who'd spent months toiling in the fields would await the arrival of his seaplane, or chauffeur-driven limo.
After ceremoniously squeezing oranges, dissecting pineapples and sampling freshly picked tomatoes, The Man From Del Monte would pass judgment.
A thumbs down meant financial ruin, a thumbs up prosperity. Eventually, a farmer with a Viva Zapata moustache and a dodgy, Mind Your Language accent would declare, to rapturous relief:
'The Man From Del Monte, he say YES!'
If they ever revive the campaign, Bercow would be perfect for the part.
The problem would be getting him to stick to the script. Because when it comes to Brexit, The Man From Del Monte, he always say NO! It doesn't matter what ministers lay before the House, the Speaker takes a perverse delight in obstructing all attempts to take Britain out of the EU.
He was never going to permit Boris's deal to be put to a vote of MPs — especially once it became apparent that the Government might just have cobbled together enough support to get it passed.
Scaling new heights of pomposity and self-justification, Bercow blew the Government's Brexit timetable out of the water.
It's largely irrelevant which reason he plucked out of thin air. If it hadn't have been this one, it would have been another.
But bear with me for a moment. Bercow said that he wouldn't allow a vote because Parliament had already voted on a similar motion and some arcane rule prevents the same question being put twice.
In which case, can we also expect him to stop MPs putting forward amendments calling for a second referendum and continued membership of the customs union — both of which have already been rejected?
Don't hold your breath.
What really sticks in the craw is the repeated bleating of Bercow and his fellow diehard Remainers that democratic accountability demands Brexit is subject to Parliamentary scrutiny.
Don't make me laugh.
This rotten, cynical Parliament has shown nothing but contempt for democracy. Having promised to respect the referendum result, the majority of MPs have strained every sinew to overturn it.
The only reason they are insisting on Parliamentary scrutiny is because that's the best way of preventing Brexit ever happening.
I don't want to depress you, but we could be in for another three years of this. Because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, there needn't be another General Election until the summer of 2022.
Labour isn't going to back an election it would inevitably lose. The only way an election could be triggered is if the Government is defeated in a vote of confidence.
But the Opposition refuses to move one.
I suppose Boris could always hold a vote of confidence in himself in the hope that he'd lose, thus freeing him to go to the country. But he doesn't even have the numbers to get that through the House.
Despite agitating for a 'People's Vote', a 'confirmatory vote', the Opposition is scared stiff of letting the people decide.
Among those demanding a People's Vote are a couple of dozen MPs who have resigned from the Tory and Labour parties recently and either joined the Lib Dems, set up Change UK, or are sitting as independents.
Chucky Umunna is on his third party in the past few months.
Not a single one of them has had the decency to offer themselves back to their constituents in a 'confirmatory' by-election, even though they now represent a different political party.
So I think we can take whatever they say about a People's Vote with a shovel of Himalayan rock salt.
To be honest, I had hoped that after I'd taken a week's holiday, I would come back to find MPs had seen sense and embraced Boris's deal on Saturday.
Not that I think it is worth the paper it's written on. It's Theresa May's dismal, defeatist 'deal' on Botox — a pig in lipstick. The triumphalism we are seeing is some quarters is misplaced wishful thinking.
But it's probably the best we can expect in the circumstances. If it gets through, we might, just might, be able to pick the bones out of it later.
Having said they didn't want to leave without a deal, however, MPs then threw it out. Go figure.
What happens next? As I've written before, anyone who claims to know is a liar.
The public mood has moved beyond exasperation. I've never known such despair at the antics of the political class, the courts, the pro-Remain media.
Instead of action, honesty and plain speaking, all we get is self-indulgent waffle about the 'Benn Act', the 'Letwin Law', blah, blah . . .
They might as well call it the Bill And Ben Act, as the political class are all talking Flowerpot Man.
Flob-a-Dob, Flob-a-Dob, Flob-a-Dob.
And coming up after the break, it's Soubry Loo.
Weeeee-eeeeed!
Whether there will be a backlash if and when we are eventually allowed a General Election remains to be seen. The politicians will drag this out as long as they can, in the hope that we'll all get so bored we'll forget about it.
And at the centre of it all struts Mr Speaker himself, a preening popinjay in love with the magnificence of his own verbosity.
He's been described as the most powerful man in Britain, since staging a coup which empowered Parliament to neuter the Prime Minister and remove the Government's ability to govern.
Yet Parliament has seized power without accepting responsibility. It's what Kipling called the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.
Welcome to our very own Parliament of Whores.
But who, precisely, voted for that? To whom is Bercow accountable? Certainly not the electorate. Convention dictated that he was returned to Westminster unopposed.
In turn, he is supposed to remain unimpeachably impartial.
Yet Bercow ripped up his end of that bargain. Even his own deputy now says he is blatantly biased in favour of Remain.
And despite the fact that he was foisted on the Tories by Labour as a kind of practical joke at the end of the Brown years, the incoming Cameron government decided not to remove him.
Another triumph for Call Me Dave.
Bercow is due to retire at the end of this month. But I wouldn't put money on it. He's already broken his word on standing down once before.
My guess is that he won't give up the chair until Brexit is dead and buried, even if that takes another couple of years.
All we can do is watch impotently, while Bercow and his Remainer allies trash democracy before our very eyes.
The only thing we can be sure of is that when it comes to Brexit, The Man From Del Monte, he say B@££&%#$!
There is a tendency among the political classes to pretend that big business has a monopoly on economic wisdom about our country’s future.
As a result, the public is urged to accept, without challenge, the views of corporations and their representative bodies such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
According to this fashionable narrative, the insights of corporate chief executives should count for much more than the decisions of voters exercised through the democratic ballot box.
The belief in the primacy of corporate opinion has been on full display in recent days. The pro-EU establishment, along with large sections of the media, has given prominent coverage to warnings by those two global giants, the aeronautical manufacturer Airbus and the car manufacturer BMW, that they might leave Britain after Brexit if the negotiations on a trade deal do not proceed to their liking, especially on customs alignment.
This is Project Fear with a vengeance, a renewed attempt to scare the British people into embracing an emasculated version of Brexit, complete with the continued supremacy of the EU courts and single market regulations.
The same bleak propaganda has been pumped out by the same people for more than two years, yet the forecasts of disaster have never materialised.
We were told by big business that a vote for Brexit would lead to an immediate recession and soaring unemployment. Nothing of the sort happened.
Economic growth has continued, while the jobless rate is at its lowest since 1975.
In the same vein, I remember the mighty engineering firm Siemens predicting — just like Airbus and BMW — that it might be forced to cease investment in Britain in the event of Brexit. But what actually occurred? Since the vote, Siemens has continued to pump millions into this country, including the recent announcement of a £27 million 3D printing factory in Worcester.
One fundamental problem in attaching too much credence to the utterances of big businesses is that such firms, while vital to the economy, are hardly representative of the whole private sector.
We hear a lot about the importance of the global giants, but the vast majority of businesses in the UK employ fewer than ten people, while small and medium-sized enterprises account for 51 per cent of all turnover in the private sector.
In the real world, beyond media spin and politicised briefings, trade with EU is not always as dominant as the public might think. Most of our economy is domestically oriented. Indeed, just 8 per cent of our manufacturing companies export to the EU, accounting for only 12 per cent of our entire Gross Domestic Product.
Simon Boyd, the Chief Executive of Reid Steel, a leading steel construction company, put it well when he said: ‘Big businesses and multi-nationals attract all the attention but they do not reflect the view of businesses like mine.’
He further points out that, far from helping enterprise as the pro-EU lobby argues, Brussels rule has ‘held us back’ through its stream of directives. ‘To prosper and increase our productivity we must be free to trade with the rest of the world, which is where all the growth is,’ he says.
The second essential point to remember when big business intervenes politically is that over decades they have, with amazing consistency, been wrong.
Before World War II, as the historian Andrew Roberts has pointed out, the Federation of British Industries — the forerunner of the CBI — supported both the Gold Standard (which, in its constraints on a government’s ability to manage the economy is an instrument of jobs destruction), and the appeasement of Nazi Germany.
Between 1937 and 1939 while the Nazis were opening their concentration camps, the FBI oversaw the creation of no fewer than 33 separate agreements between British and German business groups.
Undaunted by this sorry record, after the war the CBI supported the socialistic nationalisation of much of the economy by the Labour Government — just as it backed Harold Wilson’s ill-fated introduction of tripartite state planning (social partnership based on affiliations between business, labour and the state to create economic policy) in the 1960s, and the wholesale surrender to trade union power in the 1970s.
It might have been thought that the CBI would at least have welcomed the pro-entrepreneurial spirit of Margaret Thatcher from 1979. Not a bit of it. The big business lobbyists slavishly followed the conventional, soggy, anti-Thatcherite establishment consensus.
In 1980, the CBI Director General Sir Terence Beckett even called for a ‘bare-knuckle’ confrontation with Mrs Thatcher over trade union reforms. And it was towards the end of her time in office that big business took up the new cause of British membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), eventually bullying the Government into agreement.
As we all remember, that move proved a catastrophe, plunging the country into recession and forcing interest rates up to 15 per cent in 1992 as the Treasury desperately tried to maintain the artificial value of sterling. The recovery began the very moment Britain left the ERM.
Having learnt no lessons from recent history, the CBI then campaigned for Britain to join the single currency.
The euro, the organisation argued, would ‘deliver significant benefits to the UK economy’. Then, as now, we were lectured by a succession of business leaders who darkly predicted we faced economic Armageddon if we failed to sign up for the Eurozone. Imagine if we had actually followed such advice. Unable to adjust the exchange rate, the British economy would have crashed and burned — just as it did in Spain and Italy.
Instead, we have incredible figures for both job creation and business start-ups which are the envy of Europe.
Yet the worry is, despite the CBI’s appalling track record, when it comes to Brexit, aggressive corporate campaigning could have a pivotal impact on Government policy by forcing Britain to remain, in effect, under EU rules.
There are already signs that this is happening, with key figures in the Cabinet now acting as cheerleaders for the argument — made by BMW and Airbus — that Britain must remain as closely aligned to the Single Market and Customs Union as possible.
But such an approach would be disastrous on two grounds. First, it is not what the British people voted for in the referendum two years ago this month.
The electorate backed Brexit precisely because they wanted real independence, taking back control of our borders, trade, economy, laws and justice system.
Second, whatever the corporate lobbyists say, a meaningless half-in half-out Brexit would be terrible for the spirit of enterprise in Britain. It would shackle initiative and mean that Britain would remain a rule taker rather than a rule maker.
From the world-beating Dyson company to small start-ups, businesses want to break free from the cloying and costly effect of European regulations.
Just as importantly, EU domination would stop Britain from making its own trade deals with rest of the world. That would mean locking ourselves out of 90 per cent of the global growth that will occur outside the EU over the next 15 years. That is the price we will pay if the anti-Brexit business lobby is allowed to win.
Finally, a word of advice to the Government: its job is to listen to the people who voted by the largest number ever to take back control of their country from Europe and not to the self-serving careerists looking over their shoulders to Brussels.
n Iain Duncan Smith is MP for Chingford and Woodford Green.
 
Two weeks have passed since three judges in the High Court controversially ruled that the Government must have Parliamentary approval to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which sets out the two-year process by which Britain will leave the European Union.
The judges’ defenders argued passionately that their lordships’ ruling — which could delay the beginning of the withdrawal procedure by several months and even water down the terms on which we leave — was utterly impartial. We were told that they were simply interpreting the law in a wholly non-political way.
Subversive
It seemed that the learned judges were godlike creatures far above the realm of politics. We were also told, preposterously in my view, that to criticise what they had said was somehow subversive of the rule of law and in some way ‘anti-democratic’.
Since then, we have all been awaiting the consideration of the Supreme Court’s 11 judges, who will re-examine the matter in early December before delivering their verdict at the beginning of January.
Yet it turns out that one of them has jumped the gun. On November 9 — less than a week after the High Court ruling — the Deputy President of the Supreme Court, Baroness Hale, delivered a revealing speech in Malaysia. It has come to light because the Supreme Court has released the full text. She is presumably proud of what she said.
I don’t believe she should be. In fact, it seems to me that her speech raises questions about impartiality. The timing of her intervention betrays poor judgment. On the other hand, I suppose we should be grateful for her candour.
Lady Hale went further than the three judges in the High Court. She raised the possibility that the Government could be forced to repeal and put in place a comprehensive replacement for the European Communities Act 1972 before Brexit is initiated. 
That in turn might lead to every other bit of European legislation being reviewed. This would be a process that might take years.
It is perfectly true Her Ladyship rehearsed the contrary argument: namely ‘the conduct of foreign affairs, including the making and unmaking of treaties with foreign powers, lies within the prerogative powers of the Crown’, i.e. the Government. This may give the appearance of balance, but I believe it is an illusion.
For Justice Hale has effectively thrown a boulder into the pond which cannot be removed. 
An ineradicable and novel prospect has been raised by a very senior member of the Supreme Court. It is that the Government could be required to delay Brexit almost indefinitely.
Of course we don’t know the thinking of the other members of the Supreme Court. I ardently hope their eventual ruling will not lead to the Government being bogged down for years in a constitutional crisis. 
Moreover, I fear the reputation of the judiciary will suffer if their ruling is seen to thwart the outcome of the June 23 referendum.
It goes without saying that Lady Hale is entitled to express her opinions. But look at the timing. 
Consider the content of her speech as it related to Brexit. Can it be seriously maintained she is completely impartial? Like any intelligent judge operating in the field of constitutional affairs, she has her own viewpoint.
Why do so many people cling to the fiction that our senior judges are Olympian figures who are effortlessly capable of simply setting aside their political predilections?
We are being asked to believe the law is like a complicated mathematical equation (impenetrable to ordinary mortals) that can only admit of one solution. Or that it is inscribed on tablets of stone to which judges have exclusive access.
Look, by way of contrast at the U.S., where it is widely accepted that Supreme Court judges are liberal or conservative, and are, indeed, appointed on that basis. 
Having examined the same body of law, they come to differing and sometimes opposing conclusions on matters such as abortion and gun control.
But in Britain, where our judges are chosen and promoted largely in obscurity, there is this childish pretence that they are unaffected by political considerations.
I obviously don’t mean ‘party politics’, but politics as a set of ideas and principles about society. How could judges not be affected by such beliefs? They are only human beings.
A brief review of Lady Hale’s distinguished career suggests she regards herself as a progressive judge (though given that many modern judges share her views, one might more accurately describe her as ‘conformist’).
She is an unabashed feminist with a somewhat negative view of the institution of marriage. She once wrote: ‘We should be considering whether the legal institution of marriage continues to serve any useful purpose.’
In another article, she asked: ‘Do we still think it necessary, desirable or even practicable to grant marriage licences to enter into relationships?’
Fierce
Unsurprisingly, Baroness Hale is an advocate of easier divorce. Last year, she argued for new divorce laws, which would remove the need for allegations of adultery and other forms of blame.
Her Ladyship is also a fierce defender of the 1998 Human Rights Act. This puts her at odds with many politicians and the Tories’ 2015 manifesto, which undertook to scrap the Act, partly because it has led to foreign criminals and terror suspects not being deported.
Last but not least, she is an enthusiast for judge-made privacy law and not over friendly towards a free Press.
Earlier this year, she was one of four Supreme Court judges who ruled that a ban on the naming of a married celebrity, who had arranged a threesome with another couple, should remain firmly in place, though this person had been identified on the internet and by a foreign newspaper.
All in all, Lady Hale is the very model of a modern senior judge, as well as being cheerfully loquacious on all manner of fashionable subjects. 
Far from concealing her trendily liberal views, she gives vent to them at every opportunity.
And that, of course, is what she did in her Malaysian speech. There was no necessity to address the subject of Article 50, considering the Supreme Court, of which she is so important a part, is due to hear the Government’s submission in a very few weeks.
Hysterical
Indeed, her decision to discuss such matters has been described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘politically unwise’.
One inevitable consequence of this public foray is that Lady Hale can scarcely complain if her utterances are examined and criticised by newspapers. To do so is not to question the independence of the judiciary. That is obviously a vital part of our political arrangements — as is the freedom of the Press.
No, my question is whether, as their sometimes hysterical defenders contend, senior judges are capable of setting aside their own political views on so important a constitutional question as leaving the EU.
None of us can know to what extent Lady Hale’s views are shared by other Supreme Court judges or the degree to which they might be influenced by her. Given that at least four of them have strong links with the European legal establishment, it is difficult to be optimistic about the outcome.
Let’s see what happens. Maybe they will excel themselves. Perhaps they will seek to avoid a constitutional crisis, not least for the sake of the judiciary.
But I fear Lady Hale’s speech has made it even more difficult to believe that our judges are truly impartial. 
After the election, comes the coup. I don’t mean a coup against Theresa May by Conservative MPs. The parliamentary party want to keep her in place, if only as a marionette whose strings they will pull mercilessly until the time comes to cut them.
No, the coup is against the electorate itself — and the plotters are the small number of Tory MPs who see May’s humiliation as an unexpected opportunity to destroy her plan to take the UK out of the EU single market and customs union. Their number, I’m told, is no more than ten, but they are counting on the support of the most formidable woman — no, make that the most formidable person of either gender — in British politics.
I refer to Ruth Davidson, who led the Scottish Conservative Party to triumph last Thursday, increasing their number of MPs from just one to 13.
If it were not for the ebullient and articulate Ms Davidson’s genius as a campaigner (a polar opposite to the party’s leader at Westminster), we might well now be witnessing the first days of the Corbyn government. So the Tory Party is deeply indebted to Ms Davidson.
Control
The problem is the price she wants to extract is one which would almost certainly destroy the party. In interviews immediately after the General Election, using only slightly coded language, Ms Davidson made it clear she wants Mrs May to abandon her Brexit strategy and go for something akin to the Norway model — that is, to remain a member of the single market.
There are three difficulties with this position, sometimes described, reassuringly, as ‘soft Brexit’.
It means the UK would still have to pay billions of pounds a year into the EU budget. It means we would still be subject to ‘freedom of movement’ — so no control over immigration. And it means the British parliament would still be subject to a higher judicial authority, the court of the European Free Trade Association, which is a mere transmitter of the decisions of the European Court of Justice.
Naturally, Ms Davidson did not spell this all out. But when asked on Saturday if her vision involved retaining free movement, she said Mrs May’s plan to withdraw from the single market and go for a free-trade deal would ‘now have to be revisited.
‘What’s really clear is that the Conservative Party, having failed to win a majority, will now have to work with others. That means we can look again at what it is we want to achieve as we leave the EU and I want to be involved in those discussions’.
Ms Davidson, in fact, is not at Westminster herself. She is a member of the Holyrood assembly and her ambition is to become First Minister of Scotland. But the new battalion of Scottish Conservative MPs will follow her lead.
When she said that those 13 MPs ‘will vote entirely as they believe that they should’, this was nothing less than a threat that they would not obediently follow a line on the EU negotiations handed down by the Conservative Whips’ office in Westminster, but hold to their own position: hers. I have been told by one Westminster Tory that she has already made that clear to the Whips’ office.
Be certain about this: given the tiny majority the government will have in the Commons (even with the support of the ten Democratic Unionist MPs) the Conservatives could lose any vote if the 13 Scottish Conservative MPs abstained. This gives Ms Davidson great power — and she intends to exercise it.
There are particular reasons why she is much keener on the so-called Norway model — and not just because she was a passionate Remainer in the EU referendum. Scotland, for centuries, has suffered from de-population, so unlimited immigration from the EU 27 is not the problem that it is in England.
And though Scotland voted largely for Remain, it now wants its ‘own waters’ back: you can be a member of the single market without also subscribing to the hated Common Fisheries Policy (hated, that is, by the Scottish fishing industry).
In that interview on Saturday, Ms Davidson also declared: ‘We have complete autonomy on policies, which is why we published our own manifesto, which we fought on.’
Targeted
On hearing this, I immediately downloaded the Scottish Conservative Party’s 2017 Manifesto to discover its unique line on Brexit. This is what it says: ‘As we leave the European Union, we will no longer be members of the single market or customs union, but we will seek a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.’
In other words, Ms Davidson’s Scottish Conservative party campaigned for exactly the same so-called ‘hard’ Brexit as Mrs May did.
It is true the Conservative Party has not won a parliamentary majority with its manifesto commitment. When Ms Davidson says they should therefore ‘work with others’ on this, she must principally mean the Labour Party.
However, Labour’s own manifesto was explicit in backing the idea of leaving the EU single market, and that this would mean an end to freedom of movement.
This was Labour’s attempt to avoid a haemorrhaging of support in constituencies where a majority of its traditional supporters had voted Leave: it also feared the Tories would otherwise scoop up almost all the votes which had gone to Ukip in the 2015 election. Corbyn’s team achieved its aim: satisfied by Labour’s manifesto commitment to leave the single market and freedom of movement, vast numbers of ex-UKIP voters turned out for Labour last week.
Indeed, when Robert Peston on his eponymous TV programme yesterday invited the Labour Shadow Chancellor to agree with the proposition that Labour could now oppose May’s plan to take Britain out of the single market, John McDonnell immediately rejected the idea.
And when Peston protested that the referendum did not mandate leaving the single market, McDonnell dismissed this, too: ‘People will interpret not leaving the single market as not respecting the result of the referendum.’
So, adding the votes cast for the two main parties’ manifestos, it is clear that there is a colossal mandate for what its critics denounce as ‘hard Brexit’. Add to that the votes cast for the DUP, which won the most seats in Northern Ireland as a pro-Brexit party, and over 90 per cent of ballots were for parties pledged to leave the single market.
Sabotage
While Conservative, Labour and DUP vote shares went up, it was the Liberal Democrats and the SNP — both explicitly opposed to Brexit — who lost popular support. Look at what happened in Vauxhall, where Kate Hoey, London’s only pro-Brexit Labour MP, was targeted by the Lib Dems, who even brought in that indefatigable Remoaner, Bob Geldof, to help.
Hoey massacred them, gaining a 20,000 majority. And the Lib Dem leader Tim Farron had his 8,172 majority annihilated by the Tories, surviving by only 777 votes. Farron then had the gall to say it was the Conservative Party’s Brexit vision which had ‘been rejected’.
Even Farron seems calmly reasonable compared to the Tory MP Anna Soubry, who yesterday told the BBC’s Andrew Neil: ‘The people have spoken and they have rejected hard Brexit — we can all agree on that.’
On this issue, the truth and what comes out of Soubry’s mouth have little in common. During the referendum campaign, the then Business Minister actually claimed that if the UK were no longer a full member of the single market, our exports to the EU would fall to ‘almost zero’.
Soubry is part of that little gang of Tory MPs hoping that Ruth Davidson will aid their sabotage of a trade deal with the EU not tied to free movement. This would be suicidal for the Conservative Party: it would plunge them back into the internal conflict which was supposed to have been settled by the Brexit referendum.
Such an internecine war would destroy the fragile new government — propelling Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street.
Message to Ruth Davidson: you, more than anyone, last week saved the Conservatives — and Great Britain — from that prospect.
Why destroy your achievement?
 
Theresa May’s speech yesterday was a car crash for reasons largely beyond her control. 
But even if that were not the case, it would have come across as timid, defensive and over-crafted. 
Here is an alternative version of the speech she should have given, which has been edited for reasons of space. 
Unlike most of you at this conference, I am not obsessed with Jeremy Corbyn.
At the next general election in nearly five years’ time I don’t believe the British people will choose as their prime minister a Marxist clown who is a friend to terrorists — and whose favourite country in the world is socialist Venezuela, where the rate of inflation reached 800 per cent, and the supermarket shelves are empty of even the basic necessities.
The idea that Corbyn has some magic formula which the Conservative Party should borrow is preposterous. So let’s stop being fixated by this man. I shan’t mention him again.
I’m sorry that we didn’t achieve an overall majority at the election, and I take full responsibility for what happened. We would have done much better if we had spoken proudly of our economic achievements.
In 2010, we inherited a mess from Labour, which is always the way, with the Tories having to pick up the pieces after socialist economic disasters.
And we did. We were told in 2010 that unemployment would soar. It is now at a 40-year low, while employment is at an all-time high.
Wages have not risen as much as we would have liked, but it has been worse throughout most of Europe, where austerity since the Great Recession has bitten much harder.
It’s laughable to read in Remainer newspapers, and hear on the anti-Brexit BBC, that the UK is growing more slowly than the rest of Europe, without it being said that over the past five years this country has grown much more quickly.
Struggle
Look at Italy, whose economy is the same size it was in 2000, and count your blessings that we ignored Michael Heseltine and Tony Blair’s devout wish, and didn’t join the euro.
Of course, we all want a fairer society, but you don’t achieve that by throwing hundreds of billions at doomed projects, as the economically illiterate Labour Party proposes. I actually want to make the moral case for lower taxes because I believe passionately that families spend money more wisely than the State.
Tory policies have reduced the deficit by nearly three-quarters. It’s been a struggle, but we have wiped out most of the mess Labour left us. We can’t rest until the deficit has been brought down to zero, and we start paying off our debt of nearly £2 trillion.
Yes, we should build a fairer society. Labour — which is now engaged in naked class war — is factually wrong when it says the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. According to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, it has narrowed over the past decade, markedly so in London.
That is because we Tories have given tax cuts to the poorly paid, so that nearly half of people now pay no income tax at all. But I accept many people are justifiably outraged when they see fat-cat bosses awarding themselves multi-million-pound pay increases which don’t reflect their companies’ performance.
We will honour our manifesto pledge and give shareholders the right to have a direct say in how much directors are paid.
And we will also honour our manifesto pledge to curb the rapacious energy companies — many of them foreign-owned, and with no discernible feelings of social responsibility — which think they can slap on increases to the bills of loyal customers as they fancy.
They are guilty of abusing their market position, which is why we intend to bring in a draft Bill next week to put a price cap on energy bills.
Dream
Housing is another justifiable grievance. In truth, the dream of a property-owning democracy is under threat. One reason, which is very seldom mentioned, is the recent very high rate of immigration, which according to reputable studies is responsible for not far short of half of housing demand.
How could it be otherwise when, over the past few years, net immigration has averaged around 300,000 annually — roughly equivalent to a city the size of Nottingham? We are where we are, but one among several benefits of bringing down net immigration to below 100,000 is that in future years we won’t have to build so many houses in our already overcrowded country.
As for the present, we will expand the right-to-buy programme, which is an incentive to the building of homes. If necessary we will further liberalise the planning laws to encourage building on greenfield sites, but first of all we will impose a land tax on developers who sit on brownfield sites which already have planning permission.
Let me say a word about my former colleague George Osborne, who now edits the London Evening Standard, from which he daily hurls paper darts intended to undermine the cause of Brexit — and me.
In many ways, George was a good Chancellor, but in his dying days he rashly raised stamp duty on houses over £1 million and on properties for buy-to-let landlords.
This has slowed down the housing market at a time when it is already experiencing some jitters over Brexit. The new Chancellor, Philip Hammond — himself somewhat too prone to Brexit jitters — will address the issue of stamp duty in next month’s Budget.
On student loans I will say this. It’s true some universities have greedily raised tuition fees to the maximum level for courses which in some cases are, frankly, sub-standard. It grieves me to see young people mortgaging their futures for degrees that are not worth the paper they are written on.
But Labour’s idea of abolishing fees, even if it were affordable, which it certainly is not, would have the effect of making an 18-year-old electrician subsidise out of his wages an 18-year-old student doing a Mickey-Mouse course. That isn’t fair. As in so many other areas, Labour’s proposals are both lunatic and inequitable.
Energy
What I intend to say about Brexit is quite simple. It is an opportunity for a new global Britain. Dear old Boris may be wrong about many things, but he is absolutely right to enjoin us all to display more optimism about the future.
We shouldn’t be droning on in a lugubrious way about snags and impediments — are you listening, Philip? — but dwell instead on the wonderful possibilities that lie ahead. If we believe in our country, in its energy and creativity, we should also believe it will have a glorious future after Brexit.
Only today we learnt that the British scientist Richard Henderson has won a Nobel prize for chemistry. Congratulations! Did you know that Britain has won more Nobel prizes than France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands combined? We gather here today in Manchester, the cradle of the first industrial revolution, in whose enterprising university the ultra-light, and immensely tough, material graphene was not long ago discovered.
In the Times World University Rankings for 2017, Britain boasts four universities among the top 20, including the highest placed, Oxford. How many does the entire rest of the EU have? None. Enough of this whingeing about our future.
On the subject of Brexit, we receive regular lectures from Michel Barnier, a former French minister, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the erstwhile long-serving prime minister of Luxembourg (population a quarter that of Greater Manchester), now President of the European Commission. 
We are happy to indulge these garrulous bully-boys. But I should point out that in recent weeks the EU has experienced mounting problems. A far-Right party is — once again — on the march in Germany. Catalonia threatens to break away from Spain, whose aggressive tactics have attracted no reproaches, and certainly no lectures, from Mr Juncker.
Our own Remainers in the Press and Parliament ventilate about the imagined difficulties of Brexit, but disregard the EU’s actual tribulations. May I suggest that the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which so exercises Mr Barnier, may soon become rather less significant than the border between Catalonia and Spain?
I am not a woman for gimmicks. I don’t like soundbites. I simply believe that Tory values will always have so much to offer this country, and that we should stop aping Labour’s half-baked and potentially destructive ideas.
The public will see through them soon enough. We trust the people. We abhor class war. We think that fairness and markets can co-exist.
We also believe the family is the bedrock of society and should be fostered wherever possible by the State — not that I have heard such sentiments being expressed here this week.
I love this country and have every confidence in its future, and know in my bones that the British people will never be drawn to the clapped-out ideas of a dotty, superannuated Marxist.
 
At the height of David Cameron’s botched negotiations with the EU in the run-up to the referendum, the British ambassador in Brussels, Sir Ivan Rogers, had another tantrum.
In increasingly heated exchanges in emails and curt telephone calls with political aides in Downing Street the Foreign Office mandarin threatened to resign. Again.
Oxford-educated Rogers was said to be contemptuous of people, especially politicians, whom he regarded as his intellectual inferiors. 
‘He would send emails that were the stuff of legend,’ one Downing Street aide was quoted saying in All Out War, a new book on the referendum campaign. 
‘I lost count of the times he threatened to resign,’ he said.
When he told Downing Street he was quitting yesterday there was no attempt to persuade him to stay. Quite the contrary, Theresa May and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, will have breathed sighs of relief.
After months of bickering and disagreements, not to mention even more acrimonious emails, they were tiring of Rogers, a staunch and uncompromising supporter of Britain’s membership of the EU. The only surprise is that it took Rogers so long to agree to go.
‘He presided over the negotiations before the referendum, which were an utter failure, so it was surprising that he didn’t leave with Cameron,’ says a senior political source.
‘Neither Mrs May nor her Brexit Secretary expected him to stick around. He never believed in what we were doing, and never tried to hide the fact. The PM is hugely optimistic, he is a gloomy pessimist. It’s so draining.
‘He was like a grieving man who couldn’t come to terms with the fact the British people voted for Brexit.
‘Instead of coming with us he dug in his heels, fought us on everything, telling everyone the PM is too thin-skinned to accept the EU won’t deliver what she wants. He was shown the way to the door. It was a matter of time before he walked through it.’
So it seems the writing had been on the wall for months for a man some say was a sour and sullen presence at the Brexit discussions. ‘Someone with more emotional intelligence would have cottoned on a bit sooner,’ says the source.
With his contract up for renewal in November, the diplomat knew there was no prospect of being asked to stay on, so he fell on his sword.
He will move into another comfortable Whitehall sinecure, but will lose his luxurious grace-and-favour home in Brussels.
The resignation is another political scalp for David Davis, a former SAS reservist, who saw off several Labour home secretaries when he was their shadow in the Tories’ opposition years. 
Clever, tough, and a veteran Eurosceptic, his last job in government was Europe minister under Sir John Major. A political bruiser in more ways than one, Davis’s distinctive flat nose is the result of breaking it five times – three times playing rugby, once in a swimming accident, and once in a fight on Clapham Common.
He was always going to be a match for the scruffy, donnish Rogers who is a classic Sir Humphrey Appleby, the fictional diplomat from Yes Minister.
Rogers, 56, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. A career civil servant, his appointment in 2013 as Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union, to give him his full moniker, was always provocative to Eurosceptics, since even a cursory glance at his CV speaks volumes about his allegiances.
He was principal private secretary to Ken Clarke, the former Tory Chancellor, whose passion for the EU cost him his chance of becoming Tory leader. Clarke was the only Tory MP to vote last month against giving the PM the authority to trigger Article 50, which begins the formal divorce from the EU.
Rogers also served as chief of staff to the former vice-president of the European Commission, the late Lord Brittan. Clarke and Brittan were champions of Britain joining the euro, and of closer political integration with Brussels. 
Rogers, who was knighted last year – a standard procedure for senior civil servants – also served as principal private secretary to Tony Blair, who is now talking of setting up a pressure group to block Brexit. He makes little secret of his disdain of Tory Eurosceptics.
‘He hated the idea of dancing to their tune in the Brexit negotiations,’ says one senior Tory.
While Rogers conceded the Eurosceptics were right to say the EU was in urgent need of reform, he was aghast at the Brexit result because he had become a fully paid-up member of the Brussels Establishment. 
Married with two children, he spent five years outside the Civil Service working in the City for Citigroup, heading up their Brussels arm, and with Barclays Capital.
He was made David Cameron’s EU adviser in 2011, and ambassador two years later on a salary of £175,000. 
Thus it fell to Rogers to mastermind Cameron’s renegotiation with the other 27 EU leaders before the referendum. Even the former prime minister’s most ardent supporters concede his efforts were a miserable failure.
He ‘diluted’ Cameron’s attempts to win significant reforms by repeatedly warning that they would be rejected by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor. This world view meant that he appears to have taken a negative stance on Brexit – which made Downing Street increasingly restless.
When, last month, it was leaked to the BBC that he had warned ministers it could take ‘ten years’ to negotiate a free trade deal with Europe, Brexiteers were enraged – though there was also a suspicion his comments had been leaked from within Whitehall to undermine him.
‘There would be an agreed line between us and the team in Brussels,’ says another Whitehall source. ‘It was felt that he would go off message and give his own views, which made things impossible.’
Little wonder perhaps that protests over his resignation yesterday were led by arch Europhiles Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader, Lord Mandelson, the former Labour EU Commissioner, and Lord Macpherson, an ex-Treasury mandarin who was ennobled by Cameron. The Brexiteers, meanwhile, were all delighted.
 
Boris Johnson promised voters a new parliament for Christmas last night as he finally secured a General Election that experts have warned will be unpredictable and decided by the 'Workington Man.'
A think-tank said the swing seats were populated by older, white, non-graduate male voters living in towns in the North of England with strong rugby league traditions and will be key for Mr Johnson if he is to get the majority he craves.
It comes after another day of high drama last night after MPs backed a Government Bill for a poll on Thursday, December 12, after weeks of dither and delay by opposition parties.
Mr Johnson said a 'revitalised' House of Commons would let Britain leave the EU in the new year.
Jeremy Corbyn, who backed an election just 24 hours after refusing to do so, said Labour would kick out the 'reckless' Conservatives and deliver a socialist Britain.
The Prime Minister told MPs the election – the first in December since 1923 – would deliver Brexit after months of 'unrelenting parliamentary obstructionism'. 
He later addressed Tory backbenchers, giving what one claimed was a 'King Henry V to Agincourt-type speech'.
Conservative MP Robert Halfon said: 'He said forget about the polls, forget about everything you read, this is going to be an incredibly tough election.
Jeremy Corbyn's supporters were accused of hankering after a 'brave new Socialist dawn' that could destroy the party today after he agreed to a pre-Christmas election.   
The Labour leader and his top team were branded 'f***ing mad' by one of his own backbenchers after he agreed to a December vote, saying he would be 'going out there to win'.
He will order his party to back a rushed plan for a vote on or near December 9 later today, less than 24 hours after he told them to abstain on plans for a December 12 election.
It puts him on a collision path with backbenchers who see the party languishing in the polls and fear that he is leading them to a disaster. 
The MP told MailOnline: 'They are f***ing mad. They think they are on the brink of a brave new Socialist dawn.'
They added that the decision was 'proof that turkeys vote for Christmas'.
'No one wants to do an election in December, it's going to be mega-tough and it's going to be one of the toughest elections we could ever do.'
As battle finally commenced:
The election breakthrough came after the Liberal Democrats and SNP broke ranks with Labour and backed an early poll in which they hope to benefit from Mr Corbyn's unpopularity with voters.
 But election experts yesterday warned a 2019 vote – the third General Election in four years – was likely to be the most unpredictable thanks to the prevalence of smaller parties.
One said the election could result in a House of Commons with as many as 100 MPs from neither the Conservatives nor Labour, making it even harder for either of the main parties to win a majority – opening the door to a hung Parliament and yet further delay over Brexit.
The PM faces a tough fight to hold his own constituency – leading to claims he could switch to a safer seat to avoid the risk of humiliation.
Boris Johnson is MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where he has a majority of just 5,034 over Labour.
It would take a swing of just over 5 per cent to snatch the seat – and Corbynista group Momentum will target it with hundreds of volunteers.
Their 'Unseat Boris' campaign would make Mr Johnson the first premier to lose his seat in an election in modern times. Labour claims he will announce in the next few days that he will take the 'chicken run' and stand for a seat with a much larger Tory majority.
Downing Street described the rumours as 'tosh and nonsense'.
Uxbridge in West London – traditionally true blue – has been represented by Mr Johnson since 2015. When he first stood, he clocked up a majority of 10,695. But this halved in Theresa May's disastrous election of 2017.
Labour has chosen Ali Milani, a 25-year-old Muslim, as their candidate.
 
The study by Onward, a Right-leaning think-tank, said today's swing voter was no longer 'Worcester Woman' – seen as a key figure in Tony Blair's victory in 1997 – but 'Workington Man' – named after the town in Cumbria.
He is said to be a typically older, white, non-graduate voter living in rugby league towns in the North. This voter has lived in his home for more than ten years as either a council tenant or owner occupier. He favours security over freedom, thinks the economy and national culture is moving away from his views, and voted Leave.
He works in a skilled manual trade or in a lower managerial role and is likely to live in a town or rural area rather than a city. He is more supportive than most people of a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament.
Workington Man wants government to prioritise apprenticeships rather than cut the cost of student loans and thinks it should promote a shared sense of national identity over a diversity of identities.
He is more likely than the rest of the population to think crime is a major issue facing the country and twice as likely to think immigration is a major issue.
He is particularly sceptical about the benefits of globalisation and thinks we have a special responsibility to protect local institutions such as pubs and post offices from closure.
Onward said without the support of Workington Man, a party cannot win a majority. The Labour-held constituency in which these characteristics are most common among voters is the Cumbrian town of Workington, making it the ultimate bellwether seat in the next election.
Workington is a long-standing Labour seat held by Sue Hayman, which voted Leave and has a 4,000 majority.
Will Tanner, director of Onward, said: 'This election will be the most volatile in living memory and no party should be complacent. But it is clear that the Conservatives' path to victory runs through working-class rugby league towns like Workington, Warrington and Wigan, which usually do not give them a second thought – as well as the party's leafy heartlands in the South of England.'
Workington, Warrington and Wigan, which usually do not give them a second thought – as well as the party’s leafy heartlands in the South of England.’
The seven towns that were founding members of rugby’s Super League – Castleford, Halifax, Oldham, St Helens, Warrington, Wigan, Workington – have returned only one Tory MP in every ten elections since 1918 and currently have a median Labour majority of 13,273.
Mr Johnson had previously sought to get an election through a provision in the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act that allows an early poll only if it is backed by two thirds of MPs.
This effectively gave Labour a veto but the backing of the minor parties allowed Mr Johnson to sidestep Mr Corbyn and bring in legislation for an early election that required only a simple majority in the Commons.
Sensing defeat, the Labour leader yesterday performed a U-turn and told his MPs he was now backing an election less than 24 hours after ordering them to block one. 
Mr Corbyn last night said Labour would launch 'the most ambitious and radical campaign for real change that our country has ever seen'.
But veteran Labour MP Barry Sheerman said it was 'sheer madness' to hold an early election.
Fellow Labour MP Kevan Jones said: 'I will not be backing an election under any circumstances – it's playing right into Boris Johnson's hands.' Another Labour MP said: 'It is mad that we are backing this. We are going to get stuffed.'
Labour MPs made a last-ditch attempt to wreck the election bid by trying to extend the vote to EU nationals and 16- and 17-year-olds. Downing Street insisted there was not enough time to register millions of new voters.
In a significant intervention that could boost his hopes of succeeding John Bercow, deputy Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle ruled that the amendments should not be debated.
Downing Street is confident that Mr Johnson can return a 'workable' majority in December, despite being foiled in his 'do or die' pledge to take Britain out of the EU by October 31.
Senior Tories point to a run of opinion polls giving the Conservatives a double-digit lead. Polling also suggested that Mr Corbyn is the most unpopular opposition leader of all time.
But polling expert Sir John Curtice yesterday warned that Britain could be on course for another hung parliament, in what could be the most unpredictable election of modern times.
Professor Curtice said: 'I will make a prediction. There are going to be a record number of non-Conservative and non-Labour MPs as a result of this election. That makes it difficult for the Tories and Labour to win an overall majority.'
Boris Johnson put forward an election Bill to take the country to the polls before Christmas.
The Bill received approval in principle at second reading, without a formal vote being needed. 
The House then now moved on to committee stage - where amendments were considered. 
Only one substantive change was chosen by Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, after he dismissed others on handing the vote to 16-year-olds and EU nationals as out of scope. 
In the crunch vote of the night, the government's comfortably saw off a challenge to its preferred date of December 12. 
Opposition parties had tried to insist the election should be brought forward to December 9, partly because it is in university term time. 
The House then approved the final version of the Bill at third reading. 
The legislation will move to the Lords next, but few expect serious trouble in the Upper House. 
Some Tory MPs voiced disquiet at the decision to push for a snap election rather than pressing ahead with delivering Mr Johnson's new Brexit deal.
Senior backbencher Simon Hoare said: 'What are we to say to constituents and others about the fact that we may be able to find time for a five- to six-week general election campaign and then the rigmarole of forming a Government and yet not for bringing back the Withdrawal Bill?'
Damian Green, convenor of the One Nation group of Tory MPs, said the 'sensible course of action, which, frankly, voters on all sides would expect of us' was to press ahead with putting the deal into law rather than pushing for a general election.
The Prime Minister pledged that if he wins at the polls he will return immediately to the Commons to get his deal passed and end the 'dither and delay'.
Downing Street said he would get Brexit done in January and devote 2020 to delivering his domestic agenda, including on schools, hospitals and policing.
Amid rambunctious exchanges in the Commons yesterday, the PM began setting out his election pitch for voters.
Rehearsing his arguments ready for the campaign trail, Mr Johnson warned Labour is not interested in delivering Brexit. 'All they want to do is procrastinate,' he said. 'They don't want to deliver Brexit on October 31, on November 31, even on January 31.'
He added: 'They just want to spin it out forever, until the 12th of never. And when the 12th of never eventually comes around, they'll devise one of their complicated parliamentary procedures and move a motion for a further delay and a further extension then.'
Mr Johnson argued 'there is only one way to get Brexit done in the face of this unrelenting parliamentary obstructionism, this endless, wilful, fingers crossed, not-me-guv refusal to deliver on the mandate of the people and that is to refresh this Parliament and give the people a choice.'
He is unknown outside Westminster, but 35-year-old Australian Isaac Levido will play a key role in Boris Johnson's campaign.
A close confidant of fellow countryman Lynton Crosby, Mr Levido is director of politics and campaigning at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.
He will be pivotal in decisions on how the Tories try to defeat Labour and win a majority. He is a protege of Sir Lynton, the electoral strategist known as the 'Wizard of Oz' who worked on Mr Johnson's two winning London mayoral campaigns.
In 2015 and 2017, Mr Levido was in charge of Tory campaign messages.
He recently served as the Australian Liberal Party's deputy director and was at the heart of the campaign that saw Scott Morrison clinch a surprise win. Under plans drawn up by Mr Levido, the Tories are targeting 50 swing seats and defending 50.
He has told ministers he wants to secure a 'functional' majority. Privately, he has described Mr Johnson's 'fundamentals' as 'very positive'.
'The numbers are moving in the right direction,' he said.
 
The Prime Minister told MPs a General Election to deliver Brexit was necessary because 'delaying is becoming seriously damaging to the national interest'.
He added: 'The deal is there. It is ready to be approved by a new Parliament, with a Government yearning with every fibre of their being to be able to get on and deliver our One Nation Conservative agenda.'
Mr Johnson goaded Mr Corbyn for his repeated attempts to block a General Election before yesterday. 'He has called for an election 35 times in the last year alone. I have no idea why he has been so opposed to an election,' he said.
He compared Mr Corbyn to Goldilocks, joking: 'One offer is too hot, one's too cold. I hope he'll be able to stand up this afternoon and say this time, this offer of an election is just right.' The Labour leader tried to scupper Mr Johnson's plans for an early election by allowing 16 and 17-year-olds and EU nationals to vote, as well as calling for a public holiday on polling day.
The Government threatened to pull the early election legislation if any amendment to extend the franchise was passed. The PM's spokesman said: 'The election law on the franchise should not be changed days before the calling of a General Election.
'There are long-standing conventions that election laws should only be changed after appropriate consultation. The Electoral Commission warns against changing electoral laws less than six months before an election.'
But none of the amendments to extend the franchise were even selected to be debated by MPs, and an amendment to change the date to December 9 was defeated.
MPs voted in favour of the legislation for an early election on December 12 by 438 to 20.
Late last night, Mr Johnson was greeted with a rapturous reception as he arrived at a 1922 Committee meeting.
Boris Johnson has restored the Tory whip to 10 of the 21 former Conservative rebels who were expelled after backing a bid to block a No Deal Brexit.
The Prime Minister met with the 10 MPs in his House of Commons office this evening as they were offered the chance to return to the Tory fold.
All 10 accepted the PM's offer and will now be able to stand as Tory candidates at the forthcoming snap general election if they want to.
The 10 who have had the Tory whip restored are: Alistair Burt, Caroline Nokes, Greg Clark, Sir Nicholas Soames, Ed Vaizey, Margot James, Richard Benyon, Stephen Hammond, Steve Brine and Richard Harrington.
The remaining 11 rebels, including Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke, have not been welcomed back.
However, a Tory source said that this evening's events do not mean that the remaining 11 will be permanently deprived of the whip as they suggested there could still be a way back for the PM's critics.
Tory MPs cheered and banged the table as he came in for the meeting in Parliament.
Tory backbencher Robert Halfon said Mr Johnson told MPs it was going to be an incredibly tough election for the Conservatives.
After the meeting, Mr Halfon said: '[Mr Johnson] said we're going to take the fight to Corbyn on schools, hospitals and the police. We're going to take the fight to Corbyn on domestic issues.
'Of course, he said we have to have an election because we've got to get Brexit done and Labour will mess it up... but it was a King Henry V to Agincourt-type speech – very inspirational.
'He said it's going to be the toughest election. He said forget about the polls, forget about everything you read, this is going to be an incredibly tough election.
'No one wants to do an election in December, it's going to be mega tough.'
It was claimed that, if Mr Johnson wins an election on December 12, he could ensure his Brexit deal is ratified by the Commons and Lords by the end of the following week and Britain could leave at the start of the new year.
But the deal would also have to be ratified by the European Parliament under the terms of the 'flextension'.
This would mean MEPs sitting for a special Christmas session before the end of the year.
When asked if there could be an emergency sitting over Christmas to get Brexit over the line for December 31, a spokesman for European Parliament President David Sassoli said: 'The European Parliament is always ready. We will be ready.'
But a No 10 source conceded that if the Conservatives win the election then Brexit will likely not happen until 2020.
'What the Conservatives will be promising if we win is that we will get Brexit done. We will immediately come back, we have a deal, we will be able to go to the European Council and get it ratified and get this done,' the source said.
Asked if this meant departing the EU by the end of this year, the source added: 'Probably the start of January – but 2020 would be about our domestic priorities.'  
Triple threat for Boris Johnson: How the Tories could be caught in a three way squeeze by Lib Dems, Brexit Party and SNP hitting hopes of majority
The Liberal Democrats are confident of huge electoral gains after they backed a December poll to capture the Remain vote ahead of Brexit.
The party will target Remain-leaning seats in London and the South West as they try to pick up voters unhappy with Labour's divisions and Tories' commitment to leave the EU.
Leader Jo Swinson backed the election after conceding that there was not enough support in Parliament to secure a second Brexit referendum. 
She said that while she 'dearly wished' there were the numbers to back another referendum, an election was the next best way forward.
She now believes a Lib Dem surge can prevent the Prime Minister from forcing through a 'bad Brexit deal'. Last night, she said there was 'no limit' to the party's ambitions.
The Lib Dems' official election policy is to stop Brexit by revoking Article 50 if they win. Otherwise, they will continue the campaign for a second referendum.
Tory MPs have begged the Brexit Party to stand aside in their seats amid fears it could split the vote, the party's chairman has claimed.
Richard Tice said he had received 'numerous' pleas from Tory MPs. One texted him to warn that their seat could fall to the Remain-supporting Liberal Democrats in the election. They said that they were a Brexiteer and therefore should be spared, Mr Tice said.
The Brexit Party is understood to have vetted 600 candidates and will field them in most seats across the country – except Northern Ireland.
However, there have been calls from some Brexiteers for an informal electoral 'pact' between Nigel Farage's party and the Tories. Downing Street has so far rejected the idea.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday, Mr Tice urged the Government to form an alliance with his party as soon as a General Election is called. 
He predicted that a 'Leave alliance' between Mr Farage and Boris Johnson would deliver a 'thumping election victory'. 
The MEP said: 'We have made a generous offer to the PM, that if you stand for a clean-break Brexit, we will stand down and not fight with your candidates.'
However, he was reluctant to say whether Mr Farage's party would stand candidates if Mr Johnson campaigned during the election on the basis of his Brexit deal.
He said: 'We will not negotiate live on air. We will negotiate with the Conservatives.'
And although Mr Farage is ardently opposed to the Prime Minister's agreement with the EU, the party leader has also hinted that candidates might not stand in every seat in the next election. 
Asked if the party would place candidates in every constituency if Mr Johnson asks voters to back his new deal, Mr Farage said: 'We will discuss that over the next couple of days.'
The party is already polling well in Golders Green in north London, where Luciana Berger is standing, and hopes to pick up Richmond in south-west London and the Cities of London and Westminster which Chuka Umunna hopes to win. 
They are also confident of taking seats in Oxfordshire and several in Scotland. The party is confident of winning at least 40 seats, and hopes to add 40 more, and 140 on top of that, on a very good night. The plan is known as the 40-40-140 strategy.
Its main policies are to bring about proportional representation, so smaller parties are better represented, and to allow votes for 16-year-olds. The party has also called for reform of drugs laws, greater equality and environmental action.
The Lib Dems need an election before Brexit happens as their revoke policy would no longer apply after we have left.
Going to the polls at this point would also mean the Lib Dems can capitalise on Labour's division ahead of Brexit and Mr Johnson's failure to leave by October 31.
Labour is split between its Leave-backing heartlands in the North, the Midlands and Wales, and its younger Remain-backing voters in big city centres.
It has therefore adopted a fudged position, calling for a second referendum on a deal that it has pledged to negotiate. 
But after Brexit, the party will be able to get back to domestic issues, which it claims helped it do better than expected in 2017.
Speaking in Parliament yesterday, Miss Swinson acknowledged that due to a lack of support for a second referendum, an election was the next best outcome.
'We need to see the path forward, and if it is not going to be through a People's Vote, if there is not the support for a People's Vote in this Parliament, then we need to look at the other way to do that, and right now that is through having a General Election,' she said.
'We have to act, we cannot just wait, because my fear is that either the Government pushes ahead with their Withdrawal Bill and it is delivered and delivers Brexit on the back of Labour votes, or that we end up in January, a couple of weeks away from the deadline of crashing out without a deal, and find ourselves in the same precarious position. 
But that time the EU says, 'I'm sorry we've extended, we've extended again, and we cannot keep doing so if you do not find a path to resolve this'.'
Yesterday, Miss Swinson confirmed that conversations were taking place with the Greens and Plaid Cymru for a Remain alliance, according to Sky. 
She said 'stop Brexit' candidates would be favoured in seats but added that the vast majority of seats will have a Lib Dem candidate.
Second referendum for Scottish independence 'will be at the heart of Nicola Sturgeon's SNP manifesto and any coalition dealings with Labour'
 Nicola Sturgeon will put the SNP's push for a second independence referendum at the heart of her election campaign.
The first minister of Scotland said that her party's message would be 'clear, simple and unambiguous – vote SNP to demand independence and secure Scotland's right to choose'.
The Scottish nationalists are confident of picking up a string of seats from both Labour and the Conservatives. 
At present they have 35 MPs – down from the 56 they picked up at the 2015 general election – their high water mark.
If Jeremy Corbyn fails to secure a Labour majority, it is likely he would be forced to ask the SNP for their support in propping up his government.
That means he may have to sign up for a second independence referendum in 2020 – six years after the last one. At her party conference in Aberdeen earlier this month, Miss Sturgeon was explicit that in the event of a hung parliament her party would make having another independence ballot an automatic condition for gaining the SNP's support.
While she insisted her party would 'never put the Tories into power' her message to Mr Corbyn was: 'If you don't respect Scotland's right to choose our own future at a time of our own choosing, don't even bother picking up the phone'.
Mr Corbyn said on a recent trip north of the border that there would be 'no pacts with any other party'.
Yesterday the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford welcomed an election. He said: 'We on these benches are simply not prepared to sit back and allow Scotland to be taken out of the European Union against its will. 
So on that basis, Mr Speaker, I welcome the opportunity of an election, because make no mistake, the election that's coming is going to be the right of Scotland to determine its own future.'
Earlier he told BBC Scotland that if Brexit went ahead a referendum on independence would be an insurance policy 'making sure we stay in Europe'. 
He added: 'We want to see Boris Johnson defeated and out of No 10.'
The Brexit negotiations dramatically went up in flames today as the EU accused Boris Johnson of a 'stupid blame game' after he said the bloc had made a deal  'impossible'.
An extraordinary public slanging match broke out after the PM condemned a demand from Angela Merkel for Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union 'forever'.
In a pivotal moment drawing battle lines for an election within weeks, Mr Johnson and the German Chancellor clashed brutally in an early morning phone call.
No10 sources said Mrs Merkel told the premier during the 30-minute showdown that the province must remain within the EU's customs union indefinitely.
But Mr Johnson retorted that her position meant a deal was 'essentially impossible, not just now but ever'. 
A Downing Street source said the call - which effectively reads the last rites on hopes for an agreement before next week's EU summit - was a 'clarifying moment'. Mr Johnson now appears certain to boycott the gathering, heralding another low in relations.
'If this represents a new established position then it means a deal is essentially impossible not just now but ever,' the No10 source said. 'It also made clear that they are willing to torpedo the Good Friday Agreement.' 
In response, EU council president Donald Tusk ranted on Twitter that the PM was risking the 'security and interests of our people' by refusing to make concessions. 
The PM's spokesman swiped back that he had 'chosen to conduct these talks by personal telephone conversations with EU leaders, so I will refrain from commenting on social media'. 
Mr Johnson met his Cabinet for crisis talks after the conversation this morning, as ministers stepped up their war footing to go to the country.
The meltdown with the EU appears to have been carefully choreographed, with Brexit minister Michael Gove unveiling a 'preparedness' paper on No Deal shortly after the Merkel bust-up emerged.
Parliament is also due to prorogue tonight ahead of the Queen's Speech - stripping Remainer MPs of their ability to move against the PM.  
Downing Street had already painted a grim picture of the consequences of rejecting the UK's 'fair and reasonable' blueprint.
One source - claimed to be maverick strategist Dominic Cummings - explosively claimed overnight that the government will make clear that any EU country supporting a delay to the October 31 Brexit deadline would be engaging in 'hostile interference' in British politics.  
Any hope of cooperation will be 'in the toilet' and the Tories will end all negotiations to fight an election, switching to a policy of leaving the EU immediately with No Deal.
The Tories will win because Parliament and Remainer MPs are 'as popular as the Clap'. 
However, tensions in the Cabinet over the hardline approach were exposed today with Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith saying the threat from the No10 source to withdraw security cooperation was 'unacceptable'.  
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan is also thought to have voiced concerns during the meeting this morning. 
As the situation threatened to spiral out of control, DUP leader Arlene Foster raged: 'The comments from the German Chancellor to the Prime Minister that Northern Ireland must remain in the EU Customs Union forever now reveal the real objective of Dublin and the European Union. 
Here is how the coming weeks could pan out:  
Today: Parliament prorogues at the close of business. There are rumours Boris Johnson could make a statement after talks effectively collapsed.
October 14: Parliament is due to return for the Queen's Speech. 

October 17-18: A crunch EU summit in Brussels, but Mr Johnson now seems certain to boycott the event in protest at the bloc's intransigence. 
October 19: If there is no Brexit deal by this date Remainer legislation obliges the PM to beg the EU for an extension to avoid No Deal. 
Jeremy Corbyn has said that he will only let Mr Johnson trigger an election after an extension has been secured.
If there is a deal, it will start being rushed through Parliament immediately. 
October 31: The current deadline for the UK to leave the EU. 
'For the United Kingdom to be asked to leave a part of its sovereign territory in a foreign organisation of which the UK would no longer be a part and over which we would have no say whatsoever is beyond crazy. No UK Government could ever concede such a surrender. 
'The EU is not interested in a negotiated outcome at this time. Their position is the UK can only leave with a deal if it agrees a binding piece of international law permanently tying either the whole country or a part of it to the EU's legal order over which it has no control. 
'The true purpose of the 'backstop' is now in the open for an to see. Those who eagerly supported the backstop as the best of both worlds can now see the error of that assessment. It was neither temporary nor an insurance policy.'
Nigel Farage tweeted: 'The EU were never going to negotiate in good faith. We simply have to leave with a clean break.' 
But shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said the government was trying to 'sabotage' the talks.
'This is yet another cynical attempt by No 10 to sabotage the negotiations,' he said.
'Boris Johnson will never take responsibility for his own failure to put forward a credible deal. His strategy from day one has been for a no-deal Brexit.
'It is now more important than ever that parliament unites to prevent this reckless government crashing us out of the EU at the end of the month.' 
While technical talks between officials continued yesterday, EU leaders have so far refused to hold face-to-face talks with Mr Johnson on his plan for replacing the controversial Irish backstop.
The PM said yesterday that Brussels had been presented with 'a big step forward, big advance, big compromise by the UK Government', but complained the EU was not engaging with the details.
And in an incendiary briefing overnight a No10 source told the Spectator: 'They think now that if there is another delay we will keep coming back with new proposals.
'This won't happen. We'll either leave with No Deal on 31 October or there will be an election and then we will leave with No Deal.' 
Voters are more likely to blame Remain-backing MPs and Parliament than Boris Johnson if Brexit is delayed, according to a new poll. 
A survey conducted by ComRes shows that if the UK's departure date is pushed back beyond October 31 then the PM will be at least partially blamed for the extension by just over half of voters. 
But crucially for the PM the numbers show that voters will blame other groups far more than they will the premier if he is unable to stick to his 'do or die' Brexit pledge.
The statistics represent a boost for Mr Johnson and Downing Street because they come as the chances of a Brexit deal appear to be shrinking while the possibility of an extension past Halloween increases. 
Number 10 is adamant that the UK will leave the EU with or without a deal but the government has also conceded that it will have to comply with the so-called Benn Act. 
That anti-No Deal law states that the PM must ask the EU for a delay if the two sides have not struck an accord in the run up to the October 31 deadline. 
However, Downing Street has made clear that while it will ask for a delay in such circumstances it will also make plain to the EU that it does not want an extension. 
Should a delay be agreed, the ComRes poll for The Telegraph suggests Mr Johnson would have to shoulder some of the blame. 
But he is likely to be heartened by the fact other groups would be blamed more than he would. 
The brutal assault - which former Cabinet minister Amber Rudd claimed came from Mr Cummings - emerged after Mr Johnson's proposals hit a huge roadblock.
EU politicians have branded them a 'joke' and Emmanuel Macron set a deadline of Friday for the UK to make more concessions. 
Upping the ante today, Mr Tusk tweeted directly at Mr Johnson, saying: 'What's at stake is not winning some stupid blame game. 
'At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. 
'You don't want a deal, you don't want an extension, you don't want to revoke, quo vadis (where are you going)?' 
Irish deputy PM Simon Coveney also waded into the row, saying: 'Hard to disagree - reflects the frustration across EU and the enormity of what's at stake for us all. We remain open to finalize a fair Brexit deal but need a UK Govt willing to work with EU to get it done.' 
Asked if the PM was playing a 'blame game', the PM's spokesman shot back: ‘Absolutely not. It is not us talking in that language.’ 
The briefing around the call caused anger in some circles, with claims it misrepresented Mrs Merkel's typically diplomatic approach.
But government sources flatly denied the exchanges had been 'made up'.
It is understood Mr Johnson initially asked for the German Chancellor's 'help' with Michel Barnier because he was 'not negotiating' with the UK.
Mrs Merkel 'let the cat out of the bag' by making clear that Northern Ireland in the customs union was a red line, at which point Mr Johnson insisted that was 'not going to be accepted'.
The source said Mrs Merkel 'did not mean it in an aggressive way', but her words had put the EU's stance into sharp focus. 
Ahead of the clashes, Mr Johnson had said yesterday: 'What we're saying to our friends is, this is a very generous, fair and reasonable offer we've made. 
'What we'd like to hear from you now is what your thoughts are. And if you have issues with any of the proposals that we've come up with, then let's get into the detail and discuss them. 
'It's time for us to get together and really thrash this thing out.'
However, EU officials responded last night by leaking to The Guardian a rejection of the UK's offer.
The 'confidential' report said the Prime Minister's plan to take Northern Ireland out of the customs union would cause 'major disruption to the all-Ireland economy'.
And it said Brussels did not accept that the people of Northern Ireland should be asked to consent to the idea of the province remaining aligned to EU rules after Brexit.
The report is said to have been delivered last Friday to Mr Johnson's chief EU adviser David Frost.
A UK official responded: 'Rather than writing documents in order to leak them, the EU's time would be better spent on engaging with our sensible and fair proposals, so the UK can leave with a deal when we exit the EU on October 31.'
The senior No10 source told The Spectator Irish PM Leo Varadkar had reneged on promises to make concessions alongside the UK.
Mr Varadkar 'said if we moved on manufactured goods then he would also move but instead he just attacked us publicly'. 
The source said they would make it clear in public and in private that the interference is not welcome, and any attempt to delay is pointless as Britain will leave regardless on 31 October.
They suggested the government has still not given up on trying to get round the Benn Act, but insisted: 'We will make clear privately and publicly that countries which oppose delay will go to the front of the queue for future cooperation...
'Supporting the delay will be seen by this government as hostile interference in domestic politics, and over half of the public will agree with us.'
Angela Merkel reportedly told Boris Johnson this morning that there could only be a Brexit deal if the UK agreed that Northern Ireland will permanently stay in the EU's customs union. 
Ms Merkel apparently said that if Britain could not agree to that then a deal was 'overwhelmingly unlikely'. 
Meanwhile, a Number 10 source said that if that was the EU's negotiating red line then a deal is 'essentially impossible'. 
The reason the customs demand is so significant, and potentially deal-wrecking, is that it would effectively mean Northern Ireland being treated differently to the rest of the UK forever. 
Under the plan put forward by Mr Johnson, Northern Ireland would stay in the EU's single market for goods but would leave the customs union at the same time as the rest of Britain. 
That would enable the province to benefit from any future UK trade deals. 
If it was kept in the customs union while the rest of the UK left, then it would be excluded from those trade deals. 
As a result, critics would argue that keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union would leave it out in the cold and isolated - technically still a part of the UK but on a very different path. 
That is why Mr Johnson - or any other UK PM - would struggle to agree to such a proposal. 
It would also prompt fury from Unionist politicians who are adamant that Ulster must not be treated differently to the rest of the UK. 
Labour's Brexit plan would see the whole of the UK in a customs union with the EU and so the question of treating Northern Ireland differently would not arise. 
Defence and security cooperation could be affected if the European Union attempted to keep Britain in against its wishes.
The source added: 'Those who supported delay will face the inevitable consequences of being seen to interfere in domestic politics in a deeply unpopular way.'
Spelling out that the Tories will need to harden up their Brexit stance even further to outflank Nigel Farage - who has been demanding a clean break - the source said: 'To marginalise the Brexit Party, we will have to fight the election on the basis of 'No more delays, get Brexit done immediately''.'
In a vicious swipe at Remainer MPs, they added: 'Those who pushed the Benn Act intended to sabotage a deal and they've probably succeeded.
'So the main effect of it will probably be to help us win an election by uniting the leave vote and then a no-deal Brexit. History is full of such ironies and tragedies.' 
Asked if the source quote came from Mr Cummings, Ms Rudd told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think Dominic Cummings, yes, because otherwise it would have been heavily denied and heads would have rolled. 
'So clearly it's come from them, it's in their style. 
'It reveals that there doesn't appear to be an actual plan at all. Instead, what they're doing is angrily, apparently, begging the EU not to support a delay which will be required because of the position that Parliament has taken.' 
With both sides anxious to avoid the blame for a breakdown in talks, Government sources said officials were drawing up their own report setting out concessions Mr Johnson had made after the EU's previous demands. 
These include asking Northern Ireland to remain in the single market for goods after Brexit to reduce the need for border checks. 
EU diplomats suggested leaders could use the summit to instead discuss another Brexit extension, despite the fact Mr Johnson has ruled out asking for one.
Downing Street yesterday insisted it had not abandoned hopes of a last-minute breakthrough, with Mr Johnson speaking by phone with the leaders of Sweden, Denmark and Poland.
The PM's official spokesman said: 'We are ready to have discussions at pace, but for that to happen the EU needs to engage.' But Dutch foreign minister Stef Blok yesterday said the UK needed to provide 'more realism and reality'.
But one EU official said the most that could be offered with the time left would be reverting to a tweaked 'off-the-shelf' model, such as the Northern Ireland-only backstop.
This is a red line for Mr Johnson as it would involve Northern Ireland remaining in the customs union.
Single market
Northern Ireland would leave the Customs' Union with the rest of the UK but stay in the single market. 
This would constitute an 'all island regulatory zone' that covers trade of all goods. It would mean no checks between the two nations, because Northern Ireland would still have to follow EU rules.
Goods from Britain to Northern Ireland would effectively be managed by a border in the Irish Sea, with checks only in that direction, not the reverse. 
Stormont Lock 
The 'all island regulatory zone' will have to be approved by the people of Northern Ireland. This means the Northern Ireland Assembly has the right to veto the zone and could hold a referendum on the matter. 
Customs checks
Customs checks would have to be put in place on trade between Northern and the Republic of Ireland. Most checks would be made using technology, but some would still have to be physical.  
Cash for Northern Ireland 
A promise of a 'new deal for Northern Ireland' means ministers putting money aside for Belfast and Dublin to help aide economic development and ensure new measures work. 
Keeping to the Good Friday agreement 
Freedom of movement between two countries will remain. New deal would confirm commitment to collobaration between UK and Ireland. 
 
Theresa May was losing her grip on the Tory party last night as 16 ministers and aides were allowed to keep their jobs despite failing to vote with the Government. 
Four Cabinet ministers - David Mundell, Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark - and Claire Perry, who attends Cabinet, abstained on the motion, which passed by 321 votes to 278 and makes a Brexit delay likely. 
The PM was battling on two fronts as six Cabinet members including Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid backed a hardline Brexiteer amendment, while Remainers including Amber Rudd pressed for a softer Brexit by abstaining on the No Deal motion.  
Sarah Newton quit her job at the Department of Work and Pensions in order to defy the last-ditch Government whip and vote against No Deal. 
But other rebel ministers stayed in post despite ignoring a three-line whip, a course of action which would usually force them to quit. 
Tory MPs were ordered to vote against the No Deal motion after it was amended to rule out a cliff-edge Brexit in all circumstances. 
Ms Newton, a welfare minister, and Paul Masterton, an aide to the Home Secretary, voted for the motion and both resigned from their jobs. 
A source close to one Cabinet minister said: 'A significant number of ministers made it clear that they couldn't vote against [the motion] in these circumstances and it was understood that they would not have to.' 
Mike Freer, a Government whip, also abstained. Remarkably he was allowed to remain in post despite breaking the whip he himself was meant to be impose.
The rebels were joined by Solicitor General Robert Buckland, foreign minister Sir Alistair Burt, defence minister Tobias Ellwood, health minister Stephen Hammond, business minister Richard Harrington, skills minister Anne Milton, and digital minister Margot James. 
In a separate rebellion, six of Mrs May's Cabinet ministers backed the so-called Malthouse compromise supported by Brexiteers. 
As Tory leadership rivals jockeyed for position, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Home Secretary Sajid Javid were among 164 MPs who voted in favour of the failed plan. 
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson also backed the Brexiteer amendment, as did Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom, who challenged Mrs May for the leadership in 2016.
Also walking through the 'yes' lobby were International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt and Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns.  
The Malthouse Compromise, backed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, set out a plan to delay Brexit and find an alternative solution to the Irish backstop issue.
Its backers want a 'standstill' agreement lasting as late as the end of 2021 but the EU has already rejected the idea, which it views as amounting to a transition period without a formal withdrawal agreement.  
Ultimately, MPs rejected the plan by 374 votes to 164, but the decisions of a string of senior ministers to back the amendment will be seen as significant as uncertainty continues to surround the future of the Prime Minister. 
Ministers who backed it were not under pressure to resign because the vote was not whipped.  
Among those who voted for the amendment were junior Brexit ministers Kwasi Kwarteng and Chris Heaton-Harris, security minister Ben Wallace and children's minister Nadhim Zahawi.
Three Government whips, Rebecca Harris, Paul Maynard and Iain Stewart, also voted for it.
Brexiteers who voted for the amendment included Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis and Steve Baker.
A Downing Street source last night said 'voting against the Government is a resigning matter', but refused to comment on those who abstained.  
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'I have never in 27 years as an MP seen anything like what is happening in Government.
'How can the Government continue if collective responsibility has broken down and when whipped ministers deliberately abstain?' 
Tory former minister James Duddridge tweeted: 'How on earth can the Government ask backbenchers to support a three-line whip if Government ministers refuse to do so?'  
Mr Masterton tweeted: 'Tonight I took the difficult decision to vote against the Government on the final vote. I promised my constituents I would oppose No Deal.
'But it cannot be wished away – the reality is we need to agree a deal and I continue to support the Prime Minister in seeking a way through.' 
Cabinet ministers were earlier urged to tell Mrs May to step down if she loses more votes this week.     
Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, said senior ministers and other top Tories should have a 'conversation' about her future if this week goes catastrophically wrong. 
Ms Morgan, a Remainer who has in recent weeks seemed to ally herself with hardcore Brexiteers to help generate the Malthouse Compromise plan for a managed no-deal Brexit, spoke against the Prime Minister on Newsnight.
The Loughborough MP said: 'I think her position is going to be very difficult if after the end of this week she has lost tonight and then the votes later on in the week go against her.
'It will be up to the Cabinet to have that conversation. You have to do it as a collective, the Cabinet have to be working together on that.
'The chief whip, the chair of the 1922 committee … If I was in Cabinet, I would be having those conversations.' 
Meanwhile Chancellor Philip Hammond appeared to go off-script during his Spring Statement on Wednesday to make a veiled call for a softer Brexit.
The unabashed Remainer called for a compromise on what the Commons can agree to in the national interest to avoid a no-deal Brexit. 
Treasury sources were quick to jump on suggestions of a fresh rift at the top of Government after he pleaded with MPs to lift the 'uncertainty' that 'hangs over' the UK because of the no-deal threat. 
Mr Hammond had earlier warned Britain will face 'significant disruption' in the short and medium term if it crashes out of the European Union without a deal, as he called for no-deal to be taken off the table.
The Chancellor, delivering his Spring Statement to MPs, said there would be a 'smaller, less prosperous' economy in the long term, with higher unemployment, lower wages and higher prices in shops. 
He said: 'Our economy is fundamentally robust but the uncertainty that I hoped we would lift last night still hangs over it.
'We cannot allow that to continue: it is damaging our economy and it is damaging our standing and reputation in the world.
'Tonight, we have a choice: we can remove the threat of an imminent no-deal exit hanging over our economy.
'Tomorrow, we will have the opportunity to start to map out a way forward - towards building a consensus across this House for a deal we can collectively support, to exit the EU in an orderly way to a future relationship that will allow Britain to flourish.'
A Treasury source insisted Mr Hammond supported the Prime Minister's deal, saying: 'He has been very clear that he supports the PM's deal but he has also been saying for months that compromise is how we get through this and he is calling for compromise.'
Hardline male Brexiteer Tory MPs enjoy likening themselves to Spartans – a self-flattering reference to the warrior race in ancient Greece renowned for fighting to the death.
They think it symbolises their implacable commitment to the Brexit cause that has already led to the demise of Theresa May.
In reality, though, most of these Brussels-baiting Tory backbenchers are well past their physical prime. But one of their number is an exception.
Dominic Raab's bulging muscles and athletic frame leap out of a photo taken during his days as an Oxford University boxing blue in 1995. To this day, he does weekly karate classes.
Clearly proud of the snap and the impression he feels it gives of a Tory tough-guy fit to be prime minister, 45-year-old Raab handed it to a TV company to use for their profile of him.
Although some women have described the image as a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger and the TV political sitcom anti-hero Alan B'Stard MP, it wasn't the photo that caused most controversy. 
There has been widespread condemnation of his reply, when asked if he is a feminist, that he is 'probably not'.
Even some of Raab's allies wondered whether he had displayed more political testosterone than was good in this age of #MeToo and male politicians desperate to virtue-signal their feminist sympathies. 
Indeed, allegations of sexism have dogged Raab ever since he said, eight years ago, that some feminists were 'obnoxious bigots'.
His comment came as he criticised Labour's 'outdated and obsolete equality and diversity agenda'. Men, he claimed, were getting a raw deal. There was 'flagrant discrimination' against men.
Self-pityingly, he said men worked longer hours, died earlier, but retired later than women. 
He also talked of 'subtle sexism' – for example men being blamed for the banking crisis and only getting paid more than women because they were 'more assertive in pay negotiations'.
Raab, whose Brazilian wife Erika works in marketing for a major IT firm, said: 'One commentator recently complained that 'high-flying women are programmed to go for high-flying men. 
Most men aren't attracted to women who are more successful than they are'. Can you imagine the outrage if such trite generalisations were made about women, or other minorities? Feminists are now amongst the most obnoxious bigots.'
Finally, in a ill-advised reference to 1960s feminists who burned their bras, he suggested it might be time for men to start 'burning their briefs'.
Perhaps wary of his image as a chauvinist who believes a woman's place is in the kitchen, he launched his leadership bid with a Hello!-style interview and photo of himself and his wife in their Surrey kitchen, displaying the obligatory framed portrait of their two children.
Significantly, he has also been advocating female-friendly policies such as two weeks' paid paternity leave. 
The intended message was that he's big on empathy as well as policy. As well as marital bliss, Raab is proud of his martial arts skills. 
He says karate helped him cope with the premature death of his father, who had fled to the UK from Czechoslovakia at the age of six in 1938 to escape the Nazis. Raab was just 12 when he died. 
'Sport helped restore my confidence, and that hugely benefited my attitude to school and life,' he told the Mail yesterday.
'There were strong role models, camaraderie and an ethos of respect. I take the discipline and focus I learnt from sport into my professional life – and I believe that approach is vital to making a success of the Brexit negotiations and delivering a fairer deal from Brussels.'
After school in Buckinghamshire, Raab studied law at Oxford where he captained the karate club and was a boxing blue.
His MP's website boasts how he 'holds a black belt 3rd dan in karate and is a former UK Southern Regions champion and British squad member'. 
He still trains at a boxing club in Thames Ditton, where he is put through his paces twice a week by two ex-professional boxers, and has a poster of Muhammad Ali in his Commons office.
In 2006, he was appointed chief of staff to fellow Tory David Davis. The former Special Forces reservist said Raab's karate black belt impressed him more than his two Oxbridge degrees.
Davis said it showed 'discipline, the ability to get out and run or train in the rain day after day with no immediate reward, a determined character, able to summon all their resources and focus on an end'.
Despite his karate black belt, Raab is known for his courtesy and was upset when civil servants who worked for him as Brexit Secretary anonymously described him as a bully. 
And during his very brief stint in the job before he stepped down in protest at Mrs May's EU exit deal, EU negotiator Michel Barnier and his colleague Guy Verhofstadt accused Raab of bullying them.
He was also embarrassed last year when a Sunday tabloid newspaper exposed his then diary secretary for selling sex to sugar daddies online.
With regard to this week's 'I'm probably not a feminist' comment, he put it into context to the Mail.
He said a recent opinion poll had showed that only seven per cent of people consider themselves 'feminists', while 67 per cent say, like him, they believe in 'equality for men and women'.
If not a feminist, he does describe himself as 'a champion of equality and meritocracy'.
Referring to his wife, he says they are a 'two-salary couple' and he supports her as much as she supports him.
'I'm all for working women making the very best of their potential and that's something that's really important to me.'
A little patronising perhaps, but as a wannabe prime minister Dominic Raab may be excused being fixated about maximising human potential. 
Am I a feminist? Probably not, admits Dominic Raab 
By Larisa Brown for the Daily Mail 
Leadership rivals came out to declare they were feminists yesterday after Dominic Raab declared he’s ‘probably not’ one.
The former Brexit secretary was challenged over a 2011 comment that some feminists are ‘obnoxious bigots’, to which he hit out at ‘double standards’.
Asked on ITV News whether he would describe himself as a feminist he said: ‘No, probably not. But I would describe myself as someone who’s a champion of equality and meritocracy.’
Last night allies of leadership contenders Boris Johnson, Rory Stewart, Jeremy Hunt and Kit Malthouse entered the debate to insist they were feminists.
Sources close to Mr Johnson pointed to his campaign to deliver 12 years of quality education for women and girls around the world during his tenure as Foreign Secretary. Asked if he was a feminist, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘Yes. I have three children. I want my daughter and my sons to have the same opportunities in life.
‘That is what it means to be a feminist so I’m absolutely a feminist, yes.’ Sajid Javid’s campaign Twitter account posted a picture of animation character Morph – who Mr Javid has suggested looks like him – saying: ‘This is what a feminist looks like’.
Mr Raab also launched a scathing personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn over his response to tackling anti-Semitism.
In a slick campaign video about his family’s escape from the Holocaust, he accused Mr Corbyn of failing to stand up for a ‘free and tolerant’ democracy. He said Labour had become a ‘stain on our country’.
 
Perhaps you weren't watching the TV news at 7.30am on June 24, the morning when those who had slept through the previous night's events awoke to realise we had voted to leave the European Union.
If you were, however, you will have seen the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn on Westminster's College Green declaring that Article 50 of the European Treaties — the approved means by which an EU member state initiates negotiations to depart — should be invoked without delay: 'The British people have made their decision. We must respect that result and Article 50 has to be invoked now.'
The idea of immediate action to invoke Article 50 — without waiting for the passage of parliamentary approval — had also been the line taken by the leader of the Remain campaign, one David Cameron.
Throughout, the then prime minister had said that if the voters chose Leave, he would 'trigger Article 50 straight away'. No one, at the time, argued that Corbyn and Cameron were suggesting something unconstitutional.
So what has changed? Well, first of all, David Cameron instantly broke his word and quit, leaving the issue of handling our EU departure to his successor.
And, yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror that he would only let Prime Minister Theresa May trigger Article 50 if she agreed to what he called 'Labour's Brexit bottom line'. These demands included 'no watering down of EU workplace rights' and 'guarantees on safeguarding consumers and the environment'. 
In other words, the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition was saying he would try to block the Government's attempt to negotiate EU exit, unless it was done on his terms.
Given Corbyn's appalling relationship with his own parliamentary party, his grandiose statement is laughable. Labour MPs will do as they wish. But during the referendum campaign only a handful of them were for Leave. And some of that great majority of the PLP on the losing side have still not accepted the result.
The man who recently challenged Corbyn for the Labour leadership, Owen Smith, told the BBC's Andrew Neil last week that he would continue to press in Parliament for a second referendum in an effort to negate the result of the one on June 23.
And Paul Flynn, until last month Labour's Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, wrote in the latest issue of the New Statesman magazine: 'The Brexit vote deserves the same respect as the vote which chose to name a state-of-the-art ship Boaty McBoatface.'
He went on to argue that MPs 'are under no obligation' to obey the referendum decision, which he dismissed as 'a snapshot of public opinion one day in June'.
Until last Thursday, it was possible to regard such voices as ones in the wilderness: Mrs May had declared her timetable for Brexit, which included invoking Article 50 by next March.
But that day, those who wanted to obstruct and delay the referendum verdict were given a tremendous boost: the High Court issued a strikingly clear judgment in support of a legal action brought against the Government by a former model and now investment manager, Gina Miller (who said the Brexit vote made her 'physically sick').
The three judges accepted the arguments of Ms Miller's lawyers that negotiations to leave the EU could not even be started without the prior approval of MPs — such as Owen Smith and Paul Flynn.
This clearly came as a shock to Downing Street, which, after a moment or two to absorb the blow, declared it would appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, Theresa May reinforced that message: 'The referendum result was clear. It was legitimate. MPs and peers who regret the referendum result need to accept what the people decided.'
When the Supreme Court hears the appeal in a month's time, the Government team will need to do a better job of advocacy than they did in front of the High Court. Ms Miller had employed Lord (David) Pannick, regarded as one of the legal profession's most brilliant advocates in the field of public law. To put it politely, no one would say the same of the Attorney General, 44-year-old Jeremy Wright.
I am sure those High Court judges were acting conscientiously and in accordance with what they believed to be the dictates of the law when they sided with Pannick's arguments, rather than those of the much less impressive Government team.
But that does not mean their judgment can't be questioned. And, indeed, I have received comments from a number of constitutional lawyers saying exactly that. 
First, it's necessary to understand the reason the High Court gave for blocking Mrs May's wish to invoke Article 50 with 'the royal prerogative' — executive action under authority vested in the Crown, as opposed to a vote by MPs.
The judges argued that when Parliament voted in 1972 to join what was then the European Communities, it gave the British people certain 'rights' and that such 'rights' could not be removed from us without Parliament agreeing to reverse its original (44-year-old) decision.
The judges also ruled that the invocation of Article 50 would lead 'inevitably' to that loss of 'rights', since it set in train an irrevocable process towards EU exit.
In fact, this last point is highly contentious. Remarkably, the day that the High Court made its judgment, Lord Kerr, the man who actually devised Article 50, told the BBC that invoking it would not make Britain's exit from the EU 'irrevocable'. He said: 'You can change your mind while the process is going on.'
That view was endorsed by Jean-Claude Piris, the former chief of the EU's legal service.
Not only does this show that matters are much less clear than the High Court suggests, but there is, instead, an obvious moment at which our so-called 'loss of EU rights' would be irrevocable. That is when Mrs May brings before MPs her already announced EU 'Great Repeal Act'. And, of course, Parliament will have a decisive vote on that: the clue is in the name.
In yesterday's Mail on Sunday, the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, defended the High Court's ruling, saying it was simply following the centuries-old constitutional dictum: 'Judges know nothing of the will of the people save to the extent it is expressed through Acts of Parliament.'
But this is like saying that the referendum vote is irrelevant to the matter under discussion. To quote Charles Dickens' Mr Bumble: 'If the law supposes that — the law is an ass.'
For when those High Court judges spoke of the loss of the British people's 'rights', it was as if 17.4 million of us had never voted, of our own free will, to relinquish our 'right' to be a citizen of the EU.
Sure, 16.1 million Britons said that they wished to retain the rights (and obligations) of EU membership. But it was always accepted that whichever side won would have the issue settled definitively in its favour. 
Most importantly, that was accepted by Parliament itself. In 2015, by a six to one majority, it passed the Referendum Bill.
And the measure's proposer, the then Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond (a Remain campaigner), declared: 'The decision about our membership should be taken by the British people, not by parliamentarians in this chamber.'
Later, the Government leaflet backing Remain, distributed to every household across the land at a cost of £9.3 million, declared: 'This is your decision. The Government will implement what you decide.'
As the eminent QC Martin Howe argues: 'It is therefore clear that the referendum was not merely advisory, as the High Court judgment suggests, but was constitutionally decisive and binding.'
Of course, this means nothing to those members of Continuity Remain — such as Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, who made it clear he will use the High Court ruling (and the Liberal Democrats' 104 unelected representatives in the House of Lords) to tie the Prime Minister's hands in her Brexit negotiations.
Not many like-minded MPs will admit it, but their real objective is to stop Brexit altogether. That was encapsulated by the headline on the Guardian's front page commentary by Polly Toynbee rejoicing at the High Court verdict: 'The court's ruling is a chance for MPs to put the national interest first and halt Brexit.'
The truth, inevitably, is the opposite. It is in the national interest for the referendum result to be honoured: anything else would be the greatest betrayal in the history of our democracy — one with unimaginable consequences.
Not long ago I resigned from a club I had joined a quarter of a century earlier. The Secretary thanked me politely for having been a member, and wished me all the best for the future.
There were no threats or insults, and certainly no demand to go on paying a share of the costs of the club — rent, rates and the pension obligations of staff — after I had gone.
Leaving the European Union is a different matter. Not only are we expected to continue paying our portion of its future pension liabilities (which may be as much as £10 billion) as well as a ransom payment of untold billions, we are also being constantly lectured to and harried and abused by Brussels panjandrums.
I've no doubt millions of my fellow countrymen share my amazement at the tone of these admonishments, which resembles that of a strident, ill-tempered teacher dressing down an incorrigibly disobedient pupil.
The extraordinary thing is that while our accusers are unremittingly rude and overbearing towards us, our own negotiators led by the Brexit Secretary David Davis are unfailingly well-mannered and accommodating.
The most risible of the EU bovver boys is Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. Last March, he boasted that no other country would want to leave the EU having seen how harshly Britain had been punished.
From the more sinuous and intelligent Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, we have had multiple threats. Earlier this month, he said he wanted to use Brexit to 'teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means'.
Only last week, in a characteristically terse and charmless intervention, he insisted that Britain produce its Brexit proposals 'as soon as this week'. I marvel that Mr Davis can keep his cool under such provocation.
Then there is the irascible Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's man in the talks, who endlessly chides the Government. He declared its plan was 'not serious, fair or even possible given the negotiating time remaining'. British politicians needed 'to be more honest about the complexities Brexit creates'.
Another member of the gang is Donald Tusk, President of the EU Council. In an unusually constructive statement on Tuesday, he said he was 'cautiously optimistic' about the progress of talks. But he then spoilt it all by insisting there was 'not sufficient progress yet' to begin discussions over a trade deal.
By that he means the EU sets the agenda and timetable for talks, not us. Brussels high-handedly refuses to discuss post-Brexit trade arrangements until the Government has agreed to a ransom payment, and offered acceptable safeguards about the legal status of EU citizens in Britain and the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Let me observe in passing that, with the exception of Mr Verhofstadt, none of these gentlemen has been elected to their powerful jobs. And yet they treat our own elected representatives — from Theresa May downwards — with less grace than is due an incompetent parish councillor.
Isn't it a strange sort of negotiation when one side continually threatens or abuses the other while maintaining that it, and it alone, has the right to decide how talks between the two parties should proceed? Needless to say, I find it is highly offensive that a respectable, law-abiding and hardly negligible sovereign state should be intimidated in this way by a bunch of mostly unelected Eurocrats.
But even more than feeling anger, I am grieved by this aggression. Despite deciding to leave the EU — and what a peremptory and arrogant organisation it is in the hands of Barnier and his intemperate colleagues — we are part of Europe, and wish to remain friends with all its countries.
History seems to count for nothing in the minds of these bullies. Have they forgotten how, more than seven decades ago, Britain impoverished itself, and sacrificed hundreds of thousands, in helping to restore freedom to the European continent?
And throughout the Cold War, British troops in Germany played a leading role in defending Western Europe against the threat of a Soviet invasion.
There may be no such thing as abiding gratitude in the affairs of nations. Yet the absence of even a few tattered remnants of respect or affection in these supercilious bureaucrats is shocking.
I can understand that they may have been hurt and bewildered by our decision to leave, and they should feel that their plan for a united Europe has been imperilled.
But there is no justification — after the horrific history of the last century, when this country bled itself for the freedom of Europe in two world wars — for the constant rebukes, and the imprecations of punishment.
A punishment, moreover, which if delivered would damage EU countries at least as much as us, since they enjoy a considerable trade surplus with Britain, which post-Brexit will be the European Union's biggest trading partner.
The truth is that until this moment the Government has played the game entirely on the EU's terms — accepting their agenda instead of our own, and absorbing their brickbats without complaint or hint of retaliation.
But if the European Union continues to be stubbornly unreasonable after Mrs May's conciliatory speech in Florence last Friday, the Government should consider breaking off negotiations and, as the leading Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith puts it, 'call the EU's bluff on trade'.
In their infuriatingly schoolmasterly way, EU leaders will consider at their summit in just over three weeks whether 'sufficient progress' has been made on talks for them to allow all-important trade negotiations to go ahead.
If their answer is 'No', the Government should walk away for the time being in order to let the repercussions of the EU's domineering approach sink in. It may begin to dawn on them that they have at least as much, if not more, to lose.
According to an entirely plausible report by researchers at Belgium's University of Leuven which was published earlier this week, in the event of there being no agreement, and Britain reverting to World Trade Organisation tariffs, the EU would lose more than twice as many jobs as this country.
They reckon the return of tariffs to goods and services would cost just over half a million British jobs, and more than 1.2 million jobs in the remaining 27 EU states.
I hope there will be a deal, but not at the expense of this country being humiliated at every turn, and forced to stump up an extortionate amount of money in return for access to the single market.
The more that I see of the EU and its institutions, the gladder I am that we are leaving this dysfunctional club. I'm sure the rudeness and bullying of overmighty EU bureaucrats will have confirmed most Leavers in their views, and converted not a few Remainers.
In a mammoth speech on Tuesday extolling the virtues of a united Europe — despite most Europeans not wanting such an eventuality — President Macron of France suggested that Britain might want to re-join a reinvigorated EU.
It's kind of him to think of us but, on the basis of the appalling record of Brussels satraps over the past few months, it is an offer we will just have to refuse.
When the mighty and powerful are questioned by those they consider unimportant, they are apt to squash their interrogators with disdain — especially if they have something to hide.
So it has proved with Chris Heaton-Harris, an obscure junior whip and Tory MP. 
A few weeks ago he wrote to universities asking for the names of professors ‘involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit’.
Heaton-Harris might be accused of naivety in asking such a question. But his short letter did not warrant a tidal wave of incredulous abuse. If he had asked which dons were conducting extra-marital affairs, he would have provoked less outrage. 
First to condemn him was Lord (Chris) Patten — ex-Tory minister, last Governor of Hong Kong and a former European Commissioner — who is now Chancellor of Oxford University. 
His lordship is a man for whom the word ‘panjandrum’ might have been invented: large, ponderous, pompous and more pleased with himself than he has a right to be. The Chinese called him ‘Fatty Pang’.
The fanatically pro-EU Patten swatted away the rather humble letter as ‘an extraordinary example of outrageous and foolish behaviour — offensive and idiotic Leninism’. He accused the unthreatening Tory MP of treating British universities like ‘Chinese re-education camps’.
Strong stuff since the first leader of Soviet Russia, Vladimir Lenin, killed tens of thousands of his political enemies, or threw them in concentration camps. Unassuming Heaton-Harris is evidently a modern version of this monster — as well as being stupid, of course.
Lord Patten, a product of Balliol College, Oxford, thinks he is very clever. But actually he is being the stupid one in conjuring up Lenin, and Chinese re-education camps, in response to a letter politely seeking information from public, taxpayer-funded institutions.
Others also went over the top. Sally Hunt, chairwoman of the university lecturers’ union, said ‘the attempt by Heaton-Harris to compile a hit-list of professors has the acrid whiff of McCarthyism about it’. Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to expose communists in American public life in the early 1950s.
And Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK, which represents university leaders, saw in the letter ‘an alarming attempt to censor or challenge academic freedom’.
Oh, I nearly forgot. The Lib Dems described Heaton-Harris’s missive as ‘chilling’.
I realise that post-referendum we inhabit a febrile, increasingly unreasoning country, but isn’t this reaction to the letter exaggerated almost to the point of lunacy? 
Heaton-Harris — I don’t want to insult him — is very far down the political greasy pole, which he has shown few signs of climbing.
He is no position to censor or challenge or send anyone to a gulag, even if he wanted to, which I very much doubt that he does. 
Whether this one-man band really is writing a book on Europe (as Jo Johnson, the universities minister, yesterday contended) I somewhat doubt, since he doesn’t obviously seem the writing type.
No, more likely, as a keen Brexiteer, he wanted to find out, albeit in a slightly clod-hopping way, how many young minds are being filled with anti-Brexit propaganda. 
Possibly he was trying to be provocative and already knew the answer — which is very many. 
We don’t need Heaton-Harris’s straightforward question, or the hysterical reaction to it, to conclude that the overwhelming majority of university dons are passionate Remainers.
One explanation for their strong pro-EU bias may be that many universities enjoy lavish grants from Brussels (the 24-strong Russell Group of leading universities receives £400million a year in research funds) which staff are frightened of losing.
According to a YouGov survey published in January, 81 per cent of professors and university lecturers voted Remain, whereas just 8 per cent voted Leave. I bet the latter keep their heads down over the coffee and croissants!
It’s probably a fair assumption that in most university political departments — where young student minds could be influenced if they are not already anti-Brexit — the proportion of convinced Remainers is even higher.
But these nice, fair-minded dons wouldn’t want to try to persuade anyone to their cause, would they? You bet they would! 
Before the referendum in June 2016, there were numerous stories that universities were urging their students to vote to stay in the EU.
Sir Ivor Roberts, then President of Trinity College, Oxford (and a former British Ambassador to Rome) was accused of exhorting his students to vote Remain, though he denied the charge.
Sir Steve Smith, Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University, wrote an email to all undergraduates encouraging them to recognise the ‘benefits’ that ‘membership of the EU can offer’.
At Warwick University, the Head of the School of Modern Languages, Sean Hand, used his faculty’s mailing list to send a pro-EU letter signed by academics to undergraduates, urging them to vote with ‘the free mobility of students and staff in mind’. 
In fact, these and other institutions were probably infringing Charity Commission guidelines which stated that universities must be politically neutral in the run-up to the referendum.
But what do they care? Before the referendum, Remainers expected to win. Following the (to them) shocking result, there’s evidence that anti-Brexit propaganda is being poured down the throats of students even more enthusiastically.
The University of York wrote on its website: ‘We are proud that York voted to remain in the EU. We are proud that that vote demonstrates a spirit of generosity and openness that our students experience on a daily basis.’
Meanwhile, the Master of Downing College, Cambridge, Professor Geoffrey Grimmett, used a graduation dinner last June to warn students how disastrous Brexit will be.
Examined in this light, Chris Heaton-Harris’s letter doesn’t seem to me at all outrageous (to use Fatty Pang’s own word). 
Universities are public institutions in receipt of huge sums of public money, and the public surely has a right to know what goes on behind their hallowed portals. 
And all the more so if what was determined by the referendum — a narrow but decisive majority in favour of leaving — isn’t remotely reflected by the nature of the debate in the universities. In truth, it’s pretty clear that on this issue there is little debate at all.
But then universities don’t reflect the country politically. Weeks before the 2015 General Election, a poll in the Times Higher Educational Supplement found that 46 per cent of lecturers planned to vote Labour, 22 per cent Green and 9 per cent Lib Dem. Only 11 per cent brave souls intended to vote Tory.
In other words, the political affiliations of university staff, as well as their views on Brexit, are wildly out of kilter with what the general public thinks. What should be done about it? I am certainly not in favour of censoring or threatening the universities, and I don’t imagine Heaton-Harris is either.
Yet given that universities are publicly-funded, it is surely reasonable that people, including MPs and journalists, should be able to ask questions about how these institutions portray current political issues without being smeared as ‘Leninist’ or ‘McCarthyite’.
What is so deeply depressing is that universities, which are supposed to be the cradle of fresh ideas and open debate, should be revealing themselves as narrow-minded and prescriptive.
And so a lone MP with very little power is dismissed and abused by arrogant representatives of elitist institutions which have a great deal of power, and are used to having everything their own way.
It was partly as a revolt against such patronising attitudes that so many less privileged Britons voted for Brexit.
 
Peers with generous EU retirement packages were last night urged to declare them publicly before intervening in this week’s Lords debate on the Brexit Bill.
More than 20 peers who worked in Brussels built up lavish EU pensions.
They include Labour’s Lord Mandelson who will receive almost £35,000 a year thanks to his former job as trade commissioner.
Yesterday he urged his fellow peers not to ‘throw in the towel’ on Brexit despite the clear Commons vote in favour of the Bill allowing Theresa May to trigger Article 50 – the formal mechanism for leaving the EU.
The former Cabinet minister suggested that he hoped the Lords would inflict a series of defeats on the Government as the Bill passes through the Upper House.
But campaigners said peers with EU pensions should publicly declare an interest. They claim many in the Lords fear they could lose their entitlements if Britain goes for a ‘hard Brexit’ and fails to agree an amicable deal with the EU.
The pro-Brexit group Change Britain said the combined pension pots of former MEPs and EU commissioners in the Lords added up to £10.2million, giving payouts worth more than £500,000 a year in total. 
Ex-Tory minister Dominic Raab said these peers had a vested interest in thwarting Brexit and should be honest about their intentions.
Peers will debate the Bill today and tomorrow before amendments are considered next week. The Bill was passed overwhelmingly by MPs without any amendments.
But the Lords, where the Government lacks a majority, are considered much more likely to pass two main amendments.
One would require a ‘meaningful’ parliamentary vote on the final Brexit deal. Mrs May has said there will be a ‘take it or leave it’ vote – if Parliament votes against, the UK would leave the EU without any deal at all.
Peers headed by Lord Pannick, the QC who opposed the Government in the Article 50 case at the Supreme Court, want to have a vote earlier in the process and for Mrs May to have to go back to Brussels to renegotiate if her first deal is rejected.
The second amendment is to guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in the UK.
Lord Mandelson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show there was a ‘strong body of opinion’ among peers over both issues and in his view the Government could be defeated on them.
He said: ‘At the end of the day, the House of Commons must prevail because it is the elected chamber. But I hope the House of Lords will not throw in the towel early.’
His intervention comes days after Tony Blair was accused of undermining democracy by urging supporters to ‘rise up’ against Brexit. Justice Secretary Liz Truss said Lord Mandelson was a ‘blast from the past’ who should accept the EU referendum verdict.
Yesterday Lord Mandelson did not mention his pension as a former EU trade commissioner.
Mr Raab said: ‘Lords with generous EU pension pots should be open with the British people and declare this when they speak in Parliament on Brexit. The public would be rightly outraged if peers voted to protect their Brussels bonuses rather than respect the referendum result.’
A poll last night found that support for Lords reform would soar if peers obstruct or delay Brexit.
The ICM survey for Change Britain said 43 per cent are more likely to back abolition or reform in such circumstances, compared to 12 per cent who would be less likely.
Despite this, Labour peer Lord Hain vowed to force votes on such issues as forcing Mrs May to keep Britain in the single market. 
Mandelson, Kinnock and the Remainers  with lavish Brussels nest eggs
As peers come under pressure to declare their EU pension pots, ANDREW PIERCE reveals the estimated retirement nest eggs and annual payouts generated by Europhile members of the Lords who once worked in Brussels.
After two spells as an MEP, Lord Inglewood, 65, has a pension pot of £223,000 that pays him £11,500 a year. 
An Eton-educated landowner, the hereditary Tory peer is part of the Conservative Group for Europe and says he backed Remain because the EU meant that – unlike his father and grandfather – he did not have to go off to France to fight the Germans. 
He said: ‘I strongly believe that one should be able to go to Victoria station and get a ticket to anywhere one likes in Europe.’
Outspoken Lib Dem Baroness Ludford 65, was an MEP for 15 years until 2014 when she lost her seat. Her pension pot is £391,000, paying her £21,100 a year. As Lib Dem Brexit spokesman in the Lords, she said there had to be a ‘public endorsement’ before the Government could ratify a final Brexit deal. 
An EU fanatic, she said in 2011 of joining the euro: ‘The idea in principle has its advantages. We are keeping it under review.’
A Labour MEP from 1974 to 2004, Lord Balfe, 72, defected to the Tories in 2002, the first from the Labour Party since 1977. His European pension pot is worth £558,000 and pays him £28,742 a year. 
A committed Europhile, he supported Britain joining the single currency, and pushed for EU citizens in Britain to vote in the general election. 
On the referendum result he said: ‘This whole issue has sent a shiver down the spines of servants of all our international institutions.’
David Cameron’s last EU Commissioner, Lord Hill of Oareford quit less than two years into the job in protest at the referendum result. 
Despite voluntarily resigning from the £200,000-a-year job, he will still be paid by the EU after Britain leaves. 
Commissioners are entitled to a ‘transitional allowance’ of about 40 per cent of their basic salary for three years after leaving. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker called him a ‘true European’.
Passionate Europhile Baroness Hooper, 77, was ennobled by Margaret Thatcher and was an MEP for five years until 1984. She has a pension pot of £31,267 paying her £1,610 a year. Last month she told peers about the referendum: ‘I was bitterly disappointed at the result.’
One of 104 Lib Dem peers threatening to derail the Brexit Bill, former MEP Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, 63, has a £234,000 pension pot, worth £12,100 a year. In the Lords last year she said media coverage of the referendum was ‘shocking’.
An EU Commissioner from 1985-89, Labour peer Lord Clinton-Davis, 88, has a pension pot of £419,000 worth 21,500 a year.
Another obscure MEP who served for 15 years until 1999 is Labour’s Baroness Crawley, 67, whose pension pot is worth £274,000, paying her £14,100 a year. In December she said: ‘The best option for the UK’s future relationship with the EU is to revisit the whole decision with a second referendum.’
Lord Harrison, 69, was an MEP for a decade until 1999, building a nest egg of £183,000, worth £9,400 a year. The Labour peer is a leading humanist.
An MEP for ten years until 1999, Baroness McIntosh of Pickering, 62, was deselected as a Tory MP after a revolt by her local party before the last general election. Her £182,000 pension pot equates to £9,400 a year.
The leader of the unsuccessful campaign to ensure 16-year-olds could vote in the referendum, Baroness Morgan of Ely, 50, was a Labour MEP for ten years. Her £377,000 pot gives her an annual £19,429.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, 75, has a Euro pension pot of £251,000, giving her an annual pension of £12,953. A former Tory MP who defected to the Lib Dems, she has made supportive noises to the Conservative leadership.
Britain’s only president of the EU, Lord Plumb, 91, was an MEP for 20 years until 1999. Plumb’s pension pot is £365,000, paying him £18,800 each year.
Former minister for Europe, Baroness Quin, 72, was a Labour MEP for ten years and her £93,000 pension pot gives her a £4,800 annual salary. After the June 23 vote, she said: ‘As a lifelong supporter of the EU, I was utterly dismayed at the outcome.’
Baroness Rawlings, 78, was a Tory MEP for five years, giving her a £60,000 pot worth around £3,100 each year. An ardent Remainer, she lives in a 13-bedroom mansion in 38 acres in Norfolk. 
She was ridiculed when she gave tips on austerity to Tatler magazine, advising that to avoid the cost of hiring a marquee at garden parties, one should invest in 200 Panama hats to act as a sunscreen.
An EU Commissioner from 1981-85, Labour’s Lord Richard, 84, has a retirement nest egg of £358,000 – generating £18,450 a year.
The Lib Dem former MEP Lord Teverson, 64, has a £91,000 pension pot that pays out £4,700 a year. He is not reconciled to the referendum result, declaring: ‘Brexit does not mean Brexit.’
Labour’s Lord Tomlinson, 77, an MEP for ten years, has built a £182,000 pot with a £9,400 pension. 
He attacked the refusal to give votes in the referendum to expatriates. ‘There is something very wrong if British people who have devoted their careers to working for the EU were unable to vote in a referendum on the future of the EU,’ he said.
Oxford-educated Baroness Billingham, 77, who spent the first years of her life in a Barnardo’s children’s home, was chief whip in the Labour group in the European Parliament in the 1990s. Her pension pot is worth £91,000 and pays her £4,700 each year.
Lord Truscott, 57, hit the headlines in 2009 when he became the first peer to be suspended since the 17th century over allegations of seeking cash in return for influencing legislation. An MEP for five years, he has a pension pot of £91,000, which equals £3,700 a year.
A former vice president of the European Commission, Tory Lord Tugendhat has a £796,000 pot, paying him £41,000 a year. Of the referendum result, he lamented: ‘All the wrong people are cheering.’ 


Boris Johnson took aim at the 'prophets of doom' about Brexit today - and insisted the UK could get a better deal than single market membership.
The Foreign Secretary lashed out at gloomy predictions about the consequences of leaving the EU, insisting European states had a clear interest in giving us a good deal.
But he hinted that a settlement could take longer than two years to finalise, and there was likely to be 'sturm und drang' - German for 'storms and stress - along the way.
The comments came as the Cabinet minister gave evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select committee for the first time since joining the government.
Mr Johnson risked tensions with those demanding a tough crackdown on immigration - currently running at a net 300,000 a year - by insisting 'people of talent' would still be welcome after Brexit. 
'We are taking back control of our borders as we said we would, and that's what we will do,' Mr Johnson said.
'It doesn't meant that we are going to be hostile to people of talent who want to live and work here. I think it is extremely important that we continue to send out a signal of openness and welcome to the many brilliant people who help to drive the London economy and the UK economy...
'Brexit is not any sort of mandate for this country to turn in on itself and haul up the drawbridge or to detach itself from the international community.
'I know as a former mayor of this city how vastly our capital and our whole economy has profited from London's role and the UK's role as a lodestar and a magnet for talent. I believe there is no inconsistency between the desire to take back control of our borders and the need to be open to skills from around the world.'
He refused to be drawn on whether the government wanted to stay in the EU single market, or what kind of trading terms we would be seeking - saying there would not be a 'running commentary' on the negotiations.
Mr Johnson insisted the term 'single market' was 'increasingly useless'.
He joked that people seemed to view it rather like London's 'Groucho Club', where you were either a member or not.
The MP argued that Britain would get a deal of 'equal value... or possibly greater value' from the other EU states. He stressed that the UK purchased more German cars than any other nation in the bloc. 
'It will take time before the full benefits of Brexit appear because obviously we haven't even begun the process of leaving,' Mr Johnson told the cross-party committee.
'I do think that businesses investing in the UK can have the maximum possible certainty... that our friends and partners across the channel have a huge interest in doing the best possible deal.' 
Mr Johnson said the 'prophets of doom' had so far been proved wrong by economic data, and he believed that situation would continue. 
But he conceded that there may be 'sturm und drang' during the Brexit process.
John Bercow called the suspension of Parliament a 'constitutional outrage' and an 'offence against the democratic process'. But pro-Brexit MPs accused him of hypocrisy this evening as he has openly admitted breaking convention by aiding the Remain side in the Commons.
Rather than being an impartial figure, as tradition dictates, Bercow has sided with the Government's opponents.
He helped facilitate the defeat of Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement and he prevented MPs from voting on an amendment to rule out a second referendum.
Interrupting his holiday yesterday, Bercow issued a statement saying: 'However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of prorogation now would be to stop Parliament debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country.
'At this time, one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history, it is vital that our elected Parliament has its say. After all, we live in a parliamentary democracy.
'The Prime Minister should be seeking to establish rather than undermine his democratic credentials and indeed his commitment to parliamentary democracy.'
According to Parliament's website: 'The Speaker is the chief officer and highest authority of the House of Commons and must remain politically impartial at all times.'
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: 'He's a Speaker who has ripped every page about impartiality out of the Speaker's rule book.
'It is hypocritical. He's showing what an arch-Remainer he is. No doubt his impotence to stop prorogation will undoubtedly be making him go apoplectic.'
Bercow's critics say he's on a one-man mission to destroy Brexit – he was spotted driving a car with a sticker saying 'Bollocks to Brexit'. (Bercow told MPs the car belonged to his wife.) He used constitutional theorist Erskine May (who died in 1886) to bolster his opportunistic case to sabotage the EU referendum result.
As a proud expert on parliamentary history, surely Bercow knows that proroguing Parliament is a normal part of the process of government. It happens almost every year as one parliamentary term ends and another begins.
The difference this time is that the prorogation will last longer than normal and will happen at a tortuous time politically.
Bercow's 'outrage' might have been more convincing were it not for his long record of interpreting parliamentary rules and conventions in ways that favour the Remain side. In January, he defied convention and overruled his officials by allowing a vote on an amendment which forced Prime Minister Theresa May to present an EU Withdrawal Bill 'Plan B' to MPs after they rejected her deal.
Bercow admitted he had flouted precedent, adding: 'If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change... I have made an honest judgment.'
He later prevented MPs from voting on a Brexiteer amendment which specifically ruled out a second referendum – even though it had been signed by 127 MPs.
In March, when Mrs May was desperately trying to get her Bill through the Commons at the third attempt, Bercow, seeking to block the vote, was a stickler for precedent. He ruled that MPs could not vote because the motion was substantially unchanged.
His justification was a convention dating to 1604, which, he said, had been used a dozen times – though not since 1920. Clearly, Bercow's contradictory view of historical precedence is based on what he feels can be employed most handily to thwart Brexit. His bias has shown up several times, too, in the Speaker's choice of amendments to select for debate.
In March he chose two motions that, if passed, would have allowed MPs to seize control of the business of the Commons (in the event, both were rejected). He blocked another motion that would have allowed MPs to rule out a second referendum on Brexit.
The fact is that a debate with a partisan moderator is not a true debate. As for his claim about prorogation being an outrage, Tory MP Philip Hollobone pointed out that as PM, Tony Blair regularly prorogued Parliament for 12 weeks. His former colleague Stewart Jackson observed with irony that it seemed fine for 'Remain backbenchers with no mandate take control of legislation to work with Bercow to block voters' decision' on Brexit but that it was an 'outrage' to follow precedent and rules to prorogue Parliament ahead of a new government's legislative programme. 'Hypocrites!' he added.
Sir Christopher Meyer, our former ambassador to the US, tartly commented that it was 'time for Bercow to keep quiet and keep out.'
The Speaker says he has always sought to 'champion the rights of members wishing to put their particulBercow – once a Right-wing Conservative but now a liberal – has repeatedly shown no qualms in advertising his Remainer views, reportedly telling students at Reading in 2017: 'I voted to Remain.' This summer, he travelled to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to tell an audience that he would 'fight with every breath in my body' to stop the Prime Minister proroguing Parliament.
Surely the correct place for such a remark, if at all, would have been the Speaker's chair. It should not have been delivered to an ardently Remain-leaning audience at an arts festival in a country where the majority voted Remain in 2016.
At the same event, Bercow was asked if MPs would be able to stop a No Deal Brexit. Rather than properly declining to answer, he replied with an enthusiastic: 'Yes!'
Already, MPs have condemned the Speaker for staying in his job more than a year beyond his self-declared retirement date. So is it any surprise when he so brazenly makes clear his views on the issue in Britain's recent political history?
Tory MP Peter Bone said on Wednesday: 'Bercow no longer sounds like a referee – he sounds like he is playing for one of the teams.'
The truth is that John Bercow's behaviour shows that he is not an independent defender of the British constitution. He is a partisan figure who has exploited his office to arrogantly wield the political power that eluded him during the years he spent as a backbencher.
 
Theresa May insisted her offer to let 3.2million EU nationals stay after Brexit was 'fair' today - despite it being bluntly dismissed by top Eurocrats today.
The PM defended her bid to break the deadlock on reciprocal rights for citizens, making clear she was determined to take back control of the UK's borders and laws.
But European Council president Donald Tusk complained that the proposals were 'below our expectations'.
And EU commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker waded in to brand the plan 'not sufficient'.
With formal Brexit negotiations less than a week old, the stage is now set for a major row over whether European courts can keep meddling after we leave. 
Some EU figures are pushing for its citizens to keep rights in the UK that would be superior to those of Britons.
Under Mrs May's plans, unveiled on the eve of the anniversary of the Brexit referendum, EU nationals who have lived in the UK for five years by a specific cut-off date would be given the chance to take up 'settled status'.

They would be granted the same rights as British citizens to stay in the country and receive healthcare, education, welfare and pensions.
Those resident for a shorter period will have the opportunity to stay on until they have reached the five-year threshold.
Anyone arriving after the cut-off date but before the date of Brexit will have a 'grace period' - expected to be two years - within which they can pave the way to seek settled status later.
The cut-off date is yet to be set, but will come between the day when Britain formally notified Brussels of its intention to quit on April 29 2017 and the day when it finally leaves, expected to be March 29 2019. 
Despite criticism from Mr Tusk and Mr Juncker, Mrs May told a press conference at the end of the summit this afternoon: 'I remain of the view that this is a fair and serious offer.
'What we are saying is that the citizens who came to the UK ... will be able to stay and we will guarantee their rights.'
Mrs May admitted: 'There are some differences between that and the proposals the European Commission put out.
Theresa May today rejected a claim from former Chancellor George Osborne that she blocked a move to guarantee rights for EU citizens immediately after the referendum.
An editorial in the Evening Standard - which Mr Osborne now edits - said: 'Last June, in the days immediately after the referendum, David Cameron wanted to reassure EU citizens they would be allowed to stay.
'All his Cabinet agreed with that unilateral offer, except his Home Secretary, Mrs May, who insisted on blocking it.'  
But Mrs May told a press conference in Brussels this afternoon: 'That is certainly not my recollection.' 
'That will go into the negotiations.'
Mrs May said she was pleased that other leaders such as Poland's Beate Szydlo had 'reacted positively' to the proposals.

Over dinner with EU counterparts last night, Mrs May sent a tough message on the question of whether the bloc would retain legal control after Brexit.
'The commitment that we make to EU citizens will be enshrined in UK law and will be enforced through our highly respected courts,' she said.
A senior British official added: 'We have been clear on the ECJ that we are taking back control of our own laws.'
German Chancellor Mrs Merkel said the proposal was a 'good start' to discussions.
But she cautioned that the two years of Brexit negotiations that started this week involve 'many, many other issues'.
She specifically cited the bill Britain will have to pay to leave and the border situation in Ireland as examples.
'It means we have lots left to do,' Mrs Merkel said.
Mr Juncker gave the plan a far less effusive welcome, saying was a 'first step, but not sufficient'.
At a press conference wrapping up the summit this afternoon, he suggested the ECJ's role was not up for negotiation.  
'I cannot see the ECJ being excluded from the settlement in future,' Mr Juncker said. 




Mr Tusk told the same press conference: 'The UK's offer is below our expectations and risks worsening the situation for our citizens.'
Meanwhile, former Chancellor George Osborne has claimed Mrs May blocked a move to guarantee rights for EU citizens immediately after the referendum.
Theresa May's offer on reciprocal rights was received in near-silence by EU counterparts - because they are insisting on the talks being conducted through the European commission. 
Under the terms agreed between the EU and UK, the official negotiations will take place in four-week 'rounds'.
Brexit Secretary David Davis and the commission's Michel Barnier are expected to kick off each round before handing over to officials to hammer out technical details.
The first phase of the talks will cover the divorce settlement - with the main topics reciprocal rights for UK and EU citizens, the potential bill for Britain, and the Northern Ireland border.
The first session began on Monday, with the next due to start on July 17. 
Both sides have committed to 'transparency', and are expected to released updates about each round accompanied by press conferences.
English and French are the 'working languages' for discussions and documents. 
The exact timetable of the talks will depend how they progress.
But the hope is to have agreement on the principles of the divorce - potentially including a sizeable bill for the UK - by the Autumn.
Brussels insists that only then can trade negotiations begin. Unless those can be tied up by October next year, there is a danger the ratification process would not be complete before we formally leave the bloc in March 2019.
Extending that deadline would require unanimous consent from the 27 continuing member states.  
An editorial in the Evening Standard - which Mr Osborne now edits - said: 'Last June, in the days immediately after the referendum, David Cameron wanted to reassure EU citizens they would be allowed to stay.
'All his Cabinet agreed with that unilateral offer, except his Home Secretary, Mrs May, who insisted on blocking it.' 
Jeremy Corbyn said the proposal on EU nationals 'fell far short' of what was needed - although it is unclear what Labour would be putting on the table.
'What she has floated falls far short of the full guarantee Labour would make. That isn't just the right thing to do, it's also the best way to guarantee the rights of British nationals living in the EU,' he told the Unison conference in Brighton. 

The issue of legal jurisdiction will be the key point of contention to be thrashed out in talks between Brexit Secretary David Davis and the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
The proposals are likely to meet resistance in Brussels, which has already published its own proposals which would guarantee the rights enjoyed under EU law to any European resident in the UK as soon as Brexit happens.
Current EU proposals stipulate that the European Commission should have 'full powers' to monitor and the ECJ 'full jurisdiction' for as long as citizens' rights remain protected under the withdrawal agreement. 
Mrs May also promised that the system will be streamlined, doing away with the 85-page permanent residency application form which has been the subject of loud complaints from EU expats. 
It is thought that the UK is reserving the option of setting an early cut-off for residency rights in case there is a late surge of migrants arriving as Brexit approaches. 
But the introduction of a 'grace period' raises the possibility that large numbers arriving during withdrawal negotiations may be allowed to remain, at least for a few years. 
Mrs May left the meeting shortly after delivering her statement, in order to allow the EU27 to receive a briefing from Mr Barnier on progress in the first round of negotiations which took place on Monday. 


Nearly £460billion has been added to the value of Britain’s leading companies since the stock market lows following the Brexit vote a year ago.
The FTSE 100 index of blue chip giants has jumped 24 per cent, while the FTSE 250 benchmark of more domestically focused firms has gained 31.5 per cent.
The rally has added £459billion to the value of UK stocks – boosting the pension pots of millions of workers and investments such as ISAs. Following an initial sell-off in the two days after the referendum, the surge has made a mockery of warnings that the stock market would be hammered by Brexit.
The rally has partly been driven by the fall in sterling, making foreign earnings worth more when they are converted into pounds. Sterling is down 14.5 per cent against the dollar and 13 per cent against the euro since the Brexit vote, which has also boosted exports.
Laith Khalaf, of savings and investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said: ‘Overall the UK stock market has performed very strongly since the referendum.’
 
The outline deal leaves questions unanswered over whether individuals with settled status will be permitted to bring in children or spouses and whether the new status will be subject to conditions other than length of residency.
Further details are expected to be revealed in a paper to be published by the UK Government on Monday.
Speaking over dinner at the Brussels summit, Mrs May told leaders of the other 27 EU nations: 'The UK's position represents a fair and serious offer and one aimed at giving as much certainty as possible to citizens who have settled in the UK, building careers and lives and contributing so much to our society.'
She said the UK did not want anyone currently in Britain to be forced to leave. 
There was no discussion of Mrs May's proposal at the Brussels dinner, as leaders of the EU27 stuck to their position that all negotiations must be conducted through Mr Barnier, and not through individual national leaders.
But, despite claims of EU 'unity', one leader broke ranks and offered early backing to Mrs May, saying the UK has every right to enforce citizens' rights in British courts.
Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite said: 'We would like to have a different situation but it's the right of Britain to decide how much they will be involved and use the European judiciary.'
She also showed a chink in the bloc's negotiating stance by saying the 'cut-off date is not so important'. 


The bombshell court ruling which has bogged down Britain's exit from the EU in a legal quagmire has sparked a row over how UK judges are appointed.
The Lord Chief Justice, Baron Thomas of Cwmgiedd, alongside Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales, ruled that the Prime Minister does not have power to trigger Article 50 to start the two-year Brexit process. 

The unelected trio were today accused of 'striking down the will of the people to set in train leaving the EU'. 
Ukip politicians branded the ruling 'judicial activism' and called for a system which would allow judges to be sacked.
Ukip leadership candidate Suzanne Evans said: 'How dare these activist judges attempt to overturn our will? It's a power grab and undermines democracy. Time we had the right to sack them.'
Ukip donor Arron Banks, co-chairman of the Leave.EU campaign, asked: 'Why wouldn't unelected judges want to preserve an EU system where unelected elites like themselves are all-powerful?'
In explaining the judges' decision today, Lord Thomas insisted they were concerned with 'a pure question of law' and were not expressing any view about the merits of leaving the European Union, which is, he said 'a political issue'. 
Lord Thomas was a founding member of the European Law Institute, which says it works towards the 'enhancement of European legal integration'.
He was also President of the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary from May 2008 to December 2010. 
But the judge has previously been critical of European judges. In 2014, in a judgement on whole-life tariffs, he said Strasbourg had been wrong in law to rule that such sentences were in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. 
The judge was handed the job of leading the judiciary in 2013, beating off a strong field including Sir Brian Leveson, who ran the inquiry into press standards.
Lord Thomas's career as a judge was built in the commercial wing of the High Court before he became a Lord Justice of Appeal, overseeing criminals' claims of miscarriages of justice.
Lord Thomas was also one of the judges who presided over the final hearings last year that sent terror suspect Abu Hamza for trial in the US.
Lord Thomas was born in Wales and was educated at Cambridge and the University of Chicago before being called the bar in 1969.
He became an assistant judge 1984 and rose through the judicial system, becoming the UK's most senior judge in 2013.
According to Who's Who, he married his wife Elizabeth in 1973, has two children and enjoys gardens and walking.

Cambridge-educated Lord Thomas, 69, was part of a team of judges who negotiated Tony Blair's constitution reforms of the mid-2000s.
Mr Blair's decision to scrap the ancient role of Lord Chancellor inside government left the Lord Chief Justice as leader of and spokesman for judges, as well as the senior judge in deciding the interpretation of criminal law.
When he was later appointed to the role, Lord Thomas said the judiciary would 'continue to become more reflective of our diverse society.
'It will also continue to play a constructive role in its relationships with Government, Parliament and the media.' Lord Thomas said.
Lord Thomas was assisted in making today's historic decision by two other senior judges; Sir Terence Etherton and Lord Justice Sales.
Master of the Rolls Sir Terence Etherton, 65, is the second most senior judge in England and Wales, after Lord Thomas.
He made legal history almost a decade ago when he became the first openly gay judge to be made a Lord Justice of Appeal, The Guardian reported. 
Sir Terence Etherton studied at St Paul's School in London before Cambridge and was in the British sabre team before becoming a lawyer.
He was called to the Bar in 1974 and was appointed a High Court Judge in 2001 before taking on the role of Master of the Rolls in 2016.
He entered a civil partnership with Andrew Stone in 2006, which was converted to a marriage in 2014.
Lord Justice Sales, 54, meanwhile usually sits in the Court of Appeal and is a former First Treasury Counsel, representing the UK government in the civil courts.
He was criticised for charging the taxpayer £3.3million in his first six years in the job from 1997.
Sir Terence Etherton was called to the Bar in 1974 and became a QC in 1990. He was appointed a High Court Judge in 2001 before becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2008. 
He said his appointment 'shows that diversity in sexuality is not a bar to preferment up to the highest levels of the judiciary'.
He entered a civil partnership in 2006 and in 2014, after a change in the law, he and partner Andrew Stone were married in a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony at West London Synagogue.
Sir Terence, who studied history and law at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was in the British sabre team from 1977 to 1980 and qualified for the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow. He boycotted the games in protest against the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan.
 The Master of the Rolls - a position which dates back to at least the 13th century - is the head of civil justice and the second most senior judge - after the Lord Chief Justice - in England and Wales.
Sir Philip Sales attended the Royal Grammar School in Guildford before studying at both Oxford and Cambridge.
He was called to the Bar in 1985 before becoming First Junior Treasury Counsel, fighting cases for the government, in 1997.
According to Who's Who, he married his wife Miranda in 1988 and they have two children. His interests are listed as theatre and film.
Sir Philip Sales, who studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, was called to the bar in 1985 and was made First Treasury Counsel - also known as 'Treasury Devil' - in 1997.
His appointment led to claims of cronyism, with critics pointing out he was previously in the same chambers the then-Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine of Lairg.
In the year he finished in the role, 2009, London's Evening Standard revealed that he had charged up to £619,000 a year for fighting the government's corner.
The figures led to calls from, among others, former minister Vince Cable, to reform the system for how top government lawyers were able to claim private practice rates. 
At the time, the Attorney General defended the fees, saying they were competitive and the cases lawyers like Sir Philip were dealing with were 'some of the most complex and specialised in the country'.
The mess we are currently in began three and a quarter years ago but reached a cacophonous crescendo this week.
Although the question on the EU referendum ballot paper in 2016 was a simple ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’, it has become clearer than ever that the political class wanted us to vote one way.
If we had chosen ‘Remain’, as most of the Establishment expected, Britain would still be stuck in an unhappy marriage with Brussels. However, the country voted the ‘wrong’ way. We voted to get out of that unhappy arrangement.
As it happens, the British people’s decision wasn’t that extraordinary.
In the past, whenever other member countries were given a vote on the EU, they too had said ‘Stop!’ The Dutch shouted it at the ballot box some years earlier when they were asked to ratify a proposed constitution that drove Europe towards being more of a super-state. The Irish snubbed Brussels in a similar referendum in 2008.
But these countries were ignored and were told to vote again until they swore subservience to Brussels as it steamrollered along regardless. Yet some of us thought Britain was different.
When Prime Minister David Cameron and most others across the political establishment said the 2016 vote would be a final, once-in-a-lifetime decision on Britain’s membership of the EU, we believed them. When they said that if we voted to leave, that wish would be respected, we believed them. When they also warned that we would have to leave the EU without a deal if no good deal with Brussels was forthcoming, we believed them. And we voted accordingly.
After the Brexit vote, an Italian-born friend of mine who voted Leave, said: ‘They’ll never let us leave.’
I thought she was wrong. I naively believed that the legacy of Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd-George, Churchill and Thatcher was an ineradicable one of democracy based on Parliamentary sovereignty. That this was a country whose MPs recognised that they must represent the people, not use Parliament against the people.
Well, it seems that view was wrong.
Because as this disgraceful last week has shown, Britain has an entire political class that has spent three years trying to do just one thing: trick us, force us, or bore us into having that 2016 vote cancelled.
Of course there were ominous signs from the start. Cameron never bothered to plan for Britain to leave the EU. Nobody in Whitehall seriously prepared for a ‘Leave’ result. And, of course, infighting among figureheads of the Leave campaign immediately after the referendum handed the keys to No 10 to Theresa May.
It grieves me to say it, but she proceeded to embrace the opportunities of Brexit with all the enthusiasm of a horse trotting through the doors of a knacker’s yard.
But even the years of the May government did not show the political class in all its horror. It took this past week for that to be revealed.
First, consider the position that the Labour opposition now expounds.
This is a once-proud party. The party of Clement Attlee and other patriots.
All his other vices aside, Labour is now led by a man who has spent the past three years facing three different ways: claiming to respect the EU referendum result; in favour of ignoring the vote and backing those who want to reverse the result.
Yet not until this week had Jeremy Corbyn and his party tried to publicly defend holding all these views, and more, in such a transparently ridiculous and disingenuous manner.
As the appallingly supercilious and patronising Emily Thornberry confirmed on BBC1’s Question Time on Thursday night, her party’s policy is that if it became government, it would do the following.
It would renegotiate the current Brexit deal with Brussels. At the end of that renegotiation, it would hold a second referendum. And during that referendum, it would argue against its own deal.
Could any stupidity better exemplify this wretched political class?
Until this week, watching people such as shadow Foreign Secretary Thornberry and her party’s lamentable shadow Justice Secretary, Richard Burgon, try to explain their views was almost funny if it wasn’t so serious a subject.
For months, they have daily been calling for a General Election, but we suspected they didn’t really want one because they feared they would lose. But then, this week, their tactic turned from silly to sinister.
Thankfully, with Thornberry’s execrable performance, the public now knows the truth about Labour’s confused and unscrupulous policy.
And the rot is endemic across Westminster. A fortnight ago, MPs squealed that the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament — and cut short the autumn break by three days — was a ‘coup’.
How absurd considering that this Parliament has achieved nothing substantial in relation to Brexit in three years and three months. Would sitting for three more days really make any difference?
The truth is that it is long overdue for this Parliament to be put out of its misery — particularly as we have seen this week that it didn’t have the sense or decency to kill itself and put us out of our misery, too. The rot of this Parliament has seeped deep into the foundations of our political system. Every part is now compromised.
We have a Commons Speaker who berates members of the Government on tiny issues of protocol. But he himself has torn up centuries- old conventions.
While the Speaker’s role should be that of a ring-master, John Bercow has taken it upon himself to be a ring-leader. Shamefully, he has spent recent weeks plotting with the opposition against the Government.
Then there are the members of the Conservative party who have chosen to pretend that the 2016 vote is still up for negotiation. It is amazing watching Sir Nicholas Soames, Ken Clarke and others behave the way that they have.
These are serious heavyweights of the political scene — noble and lifelong members of the Conservative tribe. But the Conservative party called the referendum. The Conservative party has said — under three consecutive Conservative Prime Ministers — that it would enact the result of the referendum.
Soames, Clarke and their fellow 19 rebels cannot pretend that they did not know this was the plan. And if they disapproved, they should have absented themselves from this process long ago. It is no exaggeration to say that if the Conservative party does not see the Brexit vote through, then it will be toast. Off to the graveyard of political history, with the National Liberals, at best.
And yet when the Prime Minister needed their votes this week in what was in essence a confidence vote in a precariously positioned Conservative government, these Tory rebels chose to side with its enemies.
Their treachery suggests they would rather have a Jeremy Corbyn government than have the No Deal Brexit that was always a final possibility.
What’s more, by attempting to tie their own government’s hands, they have tried to ensure their boss, the Prime Minister, can’t carry out his policy and is locked into ‘a deal at any price’ despite being opposed to it. What the 21 rebels have done is not just profoundly anti-democratic, it’s dangerous.
I thought this Parliament could not sink any lower. But it continues to do so.
One of Nick Clegg’s few ‘achievements’ as Deputy Prime Minister was to introduce the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act. This stipulated a Parliament should last five years unless there is a two-thirds majority in the Commons to dissolve it.
This week, the Labour party and Tory rebels tried to trap Boris Johnson in that vice. By refusing to give him the majority of MPs needed to call a General Election, they have despicably betrayed the public.
For his part, Johnson, over recent weeks, has shown himself to be perhaps the only leader left in public life in Britain willing to do what the public asked for.
He recognises the central truth — which is that there is no form of Brexit so bad that it would be worse than having no Brexit at all. He is fully aware that not leaving the EU would be the most profound hammer-blow at the heart of our democracy.
I fear we would not overcome the effects for generations.
For failure to deliver Brexit in some form would show that we do not really have a democracy.
Instead, it would send a message to the world that we have a bureaucratic class which decides when it does, and does not, listen to the public’s verdict at the ballot box.
That may have been tolerable in Holland and even Ireland — where votes against Brussels were reversed — but never until this era did it seem imaginable in Britain.
By saying he wishes Britain to leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal, Johnson has shown that he understands the implications of such a potential betrayal.
So JUST how has Parliament reacted?
By seizing control of the Brexit process and attempting to hijack the man trying to see through the verdict of the referendum, MPs have attempted to force Johnson to be as disloyal to the public as they themselves have been.
It was an appalling low-blow for the Prime Minister’s MP brother to stab him in the front.
The Labour party has been crowing about this act of fratricide along with other opponents of Brexit and the Prime Minister.
The brutal fact is that we are now looking into an abyss.
It is not the abyss of a No Deal Brexit. Britain is strong enough, rich enough and resourceful enough to get through any temporary trading hitches that would result from that. I believe that a terrific future could still lie before us.
But the abyss is a political one of Parliament’s making. Whether we fall in or pull back will determine whether we protect the soul of this country.
Of course, history tells us that a number of democracies have faced such abysses before. But Britain never has.
However, this is the terrible prospect considering that we are now faced with a Parliament that is wilfully set against its people.
We can cope with many things in this country. We have dealt with lacklustre governments before. Goodness knows, we have endured third-rate Parliamentarians.
But never before have we had to see our votes stolen by a Parliament packed with men and women who first ignore the people and then refuse to make themselves accountable to the people.
Prime Minister Theresa May is planning to stop EU migrants claiming benefits as part of the Brexit process.
It is understood Mrs May wants to bring those arriving from the EU into line with immigrants from outside the continent, curbing in-work benefits such as tax credits.
The move would revive a deal former prime minister David Cameron had in place with Brussels after he agreed a temporary 'emergency brake' on EU migrant benefits last year.
It was also part of his manifesto prior to the 2015 election, but the deal was scrapped after the EU Referendum result.
According to The Times, the Government believes the move will reduce financial pressures by cutting the tax credit bill while also stifle the number of workers coming to the UK from Europe following Brexit.
But a Downing Street source told the paper there was no 'magic bullet for migration' and that nothing had been finalised.
It is thought at least 300,000 of the two-million-plus EU migrants living the in UK claim in-work benefits, according to government statistics.
Mrs May previously said 'change has got to come' in a speech last October while discussing the effects of low-skilled migrants working in jobs while British workers have their hours or pay cut or lose jobs altogether.  
The move comes as the Government was warned workers will feel 'betrayed' if Britain does not take control of its borders after it quits the EU. 
Gerard Coyne said the Government should 'not even begin to negotiate' over immigration as it attempts to thrash out a Brexit settlement.
The warning from the leadership candidate, who is vying to oust Len McCluskey, one of Jeremy Corbyn's closest allies, as general secretary of Unite, comes as Labour divisions continue to rage over freedom of movement.
Mr Coyne, Unite's West Midlands regional secretary, said migration within the EU has benefited those who are better off by allowing them to hire low cost cleaners and nannies but has put pressure on services and housing for many others.
Prime Minister Theresa May must say now that curbing freedom of movement is non-negotiable and that will inevitably lead to the UK's exit from the single market, he will tell Unite members at a speech in Birmingham.
'The better off have been able to hire Europeans as their cleaners, or nannies, and have their cars washed at little cost, by people eager to work and prepared to accept what are, by UK standards, low wages,' he will say.
'But for the many Britons facing insecurity in the job market, who rely on public services such as the NHS and state schools, and who need affordable homes, the presence of a very large number of foreign nationals has added to the pressures they already face at a time of austerity.
'Theresa May and other ministers should not wait until Article 50 has been triggered to set out a negotiating position on free movement of labour. They should be saying now, without equivocation, that the issue is non-negotiable. There can be no compromise on the principle of taking back control of our borders.'
Labour's immigration policy has been in disarray for months as senior figures have repeatedly appeared at odds over the party's approach to the issue.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer reiterated his calls for curbs on freedom of movement, insisting it was time for a 'fundamental rethink of immigration rules', in an interview with the Sunday Times just a week after the Labour leader indicated he wanted the policy to continue after Brexit.
'My many conversations with Unite members leave me in no doubt that those who voted for Brexit expect that promise of an end to uncontrolled immigration from the EU to be kept, and will feel betrayed if it is not,' Mr Coyne will say.
'Let us not fool ourselves. Brexit means exit. It means a world in which we have to be competitive enough to thrive outside the single European market.'
Mr McCluskey's five-year term was due to end in 2018 but he opted to bring the election forward by a year to spring.

Billions of pounds will be released to help Britain prepare for a no-deal Brexit if talks look set for failure in January, it was claimed today.
Theresa May was said to be building the war chest in the hope it will persuade Brussels Britain really is prepared to walk away without a deal. 
The PM has repeatedly insisted that 'no deal is better than a bad deal' amid fears the EU wants to punish Britain for voting to leave the bloc. 
EU leaders are gathering in just 10 days time for a crucial summit on the Brexit talks. They are widely expected to postpone the start of trade talks and demand more from Britain on the divorce bill, Irish border and citizens' rights.  
The Sunday Telegraph revealed the Treasury plans for the extra spending. It said it would be targeted on making sure Britain's customs checks work without the single market and other measures.
A source told the paper: 'Billions of pounds will be unlocked in the New Year if progress has not been made.
'We have to plan for a no deal.'  
Sources at No 10 and in the Brexit department told MailOnline today the reports were 'speculation' but did not deny the claim.
Brexit Secretary David Davis has repeatedly said Britain is ready to leave the EU without a deal. 
He told the Tory conference this week he remained optimistic of a 'good deal'. 
He said: 'If the outcome of the negotiation falls short of the deal that Britain needs we will be ready for the alternative.
'That is what a responsible Government does. Anything else would be a dereliction of duty.
'So there is a determined exercise underway in Whitehall devoted to contingency arrangements so that we are ready for any outcome.
'Not because it is what we seek, but because it needs to be done.'   
Theresa May was accused of a ‘complete capitulation’ on the future residency rights of EU citizens last night.
In a significant U-turn, ministers announced that any EU migrants who arrive during the Brexit transition period will have the right to settle permanently in the UK.
Previously, this had been on offer only to EU migrants who arrive before Britain formally leaves the EU in March 2019.
The Prime Minister scrapped the ‘red line’ a month after vowing to resist the demand. 
The move appears to be a bid to smooth the path to agreeing a transitional deal.
In January, a report by the Migrationwatch think-tank warned Britain could face an influx of one million during the two-year transition – and Mrs May insisted settlement rights must be ‘different’ for those who arrive after March 2019, as they would be ‘coming to a UK they know will be outside the EU’. 
But yesterday, Downing Street dropped that stance, after the EU warned it would prevent talks beginning on a trade deal. 
The move will enrage Tory Brexiteers who had warned the EU proposal was unacceptable.
One Eurosceptic Tory MP said: ‘This is not good news. There will be a lot of harrumphing behind the scenes.’
Lord Green of Deddington, Migrationwatch chairman, said: ‘This means anyone coming to work, study or be self-sufficient will acquire the right to remain indefinitely and bring their family. 
'This is a complete capitulation to EU demands, as yet with no parallel commitment from EU member states.
‘This will lead to a scale of immigration that the electorate voted against and certainly don’t want to see.’ 
Britain had already agreed that all 3.2million EU nationals residing here can stay for the rest of their lives and enjoy the same rights as British citizens.
Migrants who have lived in the UK lawfully for at least five years will gain ‘settled status’, with full access to schools, hospitals, pensions and benefits. 
Those resident for a shorter period will be allowed to stay on until they have reached the five-year threshold.
The Government had proposed a ‘cut-off date’ after which new EU arrivals will no longer automatically get these residency rights. 
But now No 10 has agreed that EU citizens arriving in the transition period will automatically be granted the right to stay for five years and gain permanent settlement.
Ministers insist they will not enjoy the same rights to bring in family as EU nationals already resident, and will have to pass an income threshold. 
But it is unclear whether the EU will accept this.
I was Home Secretary last year when the UK fell victim to a spate of terrorist attacks after similar incidents in Belgium, France, and Germany.
It felt relentless.
It was a dangerous period, not only because of the attacks that got through but also because of the ones that were stopped – 16 since March last year alone.
The trial against Khalid Ali – arrested in April last year for carrying knives in Whitehall – has recently concluded. I was in the Commons when that arrest happened. Parliament was briefly on lockdown that afternoon. It is now well known that Ali was a trained maker of IEDs.
Each time an incident took place, other home secretaries from European countries offered condolences. I would do the same when an incident took place in their country. It mattered because we were all targets for the radical Islamist propaganda that was leading to this violence. We all are still. With European counterparts, I would share experiences about deradicalisation and how to limit access to weapons and stop convicted terrorists radicalising others in prison. 
But the most important part of protecting our citizens was about sharing data. The UK played a leading role in originating data programmes that allow countries to know more about who is coming into and moving within the EU. We should have no borders in data and intelligence sharing in protecting citizens.
It would be madness if intransigence in Brussels led to this shared law enforcement being diluted as the UK leaves the EU, leading potentially to fatal events. Other EU home secretaries agree. I know a little about resignations – that would be the least of their problems.
The UK is not threatening the EU Commission. Our offer to them on security co-operation is unconditional. Strong security is not a competition, it is a partnership.
The Prime Minister is right. We must have a security treaty that builds on the UK’s role in keeping all European citizens safe. We were ready and patient to make progress last year. Let’s get on with it. Lives must not be risked. 
 
Theresa May is ready to rule out a No Deal Brexit after an extraordinary mass revolt by ministers, the Daily Mail can reveal.
A group of 23 dissidents met secretly at the Commons last night to discuss how to stop Britain leaving the EU without an agreement on March 29, with as many as 15 said to be ready to resign.
In an article for the Mail today, three of the ministers involved say they are prepared to back a Commons move by rebel MPs tomorrow to force the Prime Minister to seek a Brexit delay if her deal is voted down.
Industry minister Richard Harrington, digital minister Margot James and energy minister Claire Perry ‘implore’ Mrs May to say that if there is no deal agreed by Parliament by March 13 then she must seek a way to extend Article 50.
If she fails to do so they warn bluntly they ‘will have no choice other than to join MPs of all parties and fellow ministers in acting in the national interest to prevent a disaster in less than five weeks that we may regret forever’.
And in a dramatic development last night, it appeared the Prime Minister was preparing to bow to their demands and rule out a No Deal Brexit.
It came as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was accused of ‘cynical betrayal’ after performing a U-turn and backing a second referendum – breaking a manifesto vow by his party. 
Allies of the Prime Minister revealed that the Cabinet will discuss proposals this morning that could see the UK request a short extension of Article 50 of around two months if the PM’s deal is voted down by MPs again, for a second time, on March 12.
If ministers back the plan Mrs May could float the idea in a statement to Parliament as early as this afternoon.
The idea is a desperate bid to stave off the mass rebellion by ministers and avert a looming Commons defeat tomorrow over the motion put forward by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory Sir Oliver Letwin that would empower Parliament to force a Brexit delay on the Government.
As many as 15 ministers could resign and vote for the motion unless Mrs May provides assurances on No Deal today, including anti-Brexit Cabinet ministers Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark.
Other Tories believed to be on the brink of resigning to stop No Deal include Scottish Secretary David Mundell, Defence minister Tobias Ellwood, Solicitor General Robert Buckland and Disabilities minister Sarah Newton. All are thought to have attended yesterday’s Commons meeting.
Up to 25 Tory backbenchers are also threatening to back tomorrow’s revolt. It means around 40 Tory rebels could vote against the Government which, with Opposition support, is more than enough to defeat Mrs May.
The developments came on an extraordinary day when Mr Corbyn stunned Westminster by indicating he was ready to back a second referendum. In a string of other Brexit developments:
By Jack Doyle, Associate Editor for the Daily Mail 
Attemps by rebel MPs to delay Brexit pose a ‘clear and present danger’ to the Government, leaked Whitehall papers suggest.
A cross-party group led by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory Oliver Letwin will today table proposals designed to force an extension to Britain’s EU membership beyond March 29.
Supporters argue it will stop a disastrous No Deal Brexit. But a Government analysis of the plans written by Cabinet Office officials says they would strip huge power from ministers. ‘The Government would lose its ability to govern,’ it concludes.
Last night a Whitehall source said the Cooper-Letwin amendment was ‘constitutionally dangerous’ and could become a ‘Trojan Horse’ for a much wider assault on Brexit and the Government.
If the amendment passes it would take power from the Government over what is discussed in Parliament and hand it to backbenchers. ‘Without this (power)’, the analysis warns, ‘the Government has no control over the House of Commons and the parliamentary business and legislation necessary to progress government policies.’
‘It is difficult to judge the long-term consequences of this approach for the relationship between Executive and Parliament...but clearly, if it were to become common practice it would fundamentally alter the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive,’ it says. In theory, the amendment could allow MPs to command civil service resources and attempt to pass Bills on other subjects not related to Brexit.
Last night a senior Tory MP said: ‘This is not just about stopping No Deal. People are being hoodwinked. But in reality it could upend the way democracy works in this country. Their ambitions go far beyond stopping Brexit.’
Allies of the Prime Minister are urging her to try to buy off the rebels with the promise of a vote on delaying Brexit if she cannot get her deal through on March 12. 
At the weekend, Miss Rudd, Mr Clark and Mr Gauke made clear in the Mail that they opposed a No Deal departure and Brexit must be delayed unless there was a breakthrough on Mrs May’s deal this week.
Tomorrow’s vote would empower Parliament to force a Brexit delay on the Government if Mrs May has failed to get a deal passed by March 13.
The Prime Minister remains unconvinced that a delay to Brexit will help the process, warning yesterday that an extension of Article 50 ‘doesn’t deliver a decision in Parliament and it doesn’t deliver a deal.’ 
Speaking at an EU summit in Egypt where she held emergency Brexit talks with fellow leaders, Mrs May said progress was being made and a deal to take the UK out on March 29 remained ‘within our grasp’. 
But she refused to explicitly rule out a Brexit delay. One ally of the PM said: ‘It’s either accept the possibility of a delay or face a potentially heavy defeat in parliament and have it forced on you anyway.
‘It isn’t taking No Deal off the table – you still have to get a deal to do that.’
Another senior Tory said: ‘If 20 ministers have to resign to force this through then they will, but it would have a catastrophic impact on the Government.’
One leading Remainer last night said: ‘I don’t want to resign but if I don’t get the assurances I need from the PM then I will. The Government is not ready to leave without a deal next month – it would be irresponsible.
‘There are enough of us who feel that way to get the Cooper amendment through and everyone knows that.’ 
Now that we know that there will be no parliamentary vote on a deal for Britain to exit the European Union until March 12 three things are clear.
First, if an agreement is not reached and endorsed by then, Britain would crash out on the most basic and disruptive terms on March 29.
Second, even if an agreement were to be reached by March 12, it would be too late to have it ratified by the European Council of Ministers, the UK Parliament and the European Parliament before Brexit day, just over a fortnight later.
Third, British businesses have been plunged into depths of uncertainty and dismay that is ruinous for the interests of the millions of working men and women whose livelihoods depend on the confidence of their employers.
The British Chambers of Commerce, representing small firms in every part of the UK said it is “unbelievable” that there is just “17 days’ notice for businesses, employees, investors and communities on what may be the biggest economic and trading change they face in a generation”.
We can’t go on like this. All three facts point to the same conclusion: we must act immediately to ensure that we are not swept over the precipice on March 29.
The way to do that is to seek a short extension to Article 50 to allow the negotiations to be completed, the legislation to pass and for the panic that businesses face to subside.
It would not take No Deal off the table – only an agreed deal can do that. It would not affect the conduct of the negotiation – both sides are fully aware of the impossibility of ratifying a deal done after this week without an extension to Article 50.
But what it would do is to help save the jobs of thousands of people whose employers risk taking flight rather than putting up any longer with the enforced ignorance they have of how to trade with their most important suppliers and customers.
The best way to do this is for the Government to take a cool-headed, sensible step.
It should say that if there is no deal agreed, it will seek a way to extend Article 50 to avoid leaving with No Deal on March 29. It is a commitment that would be greeted with relief by the vast majority of MPs, businesses and their employees.
We implore the Government to take that step this week.
But if the Prime Minister is not able to make this commitment, we will have no choice other than to join MPs of all parties in the House of Commons, including fellow ministers, in acting in the national interest to prevent a disaster in less than five weeks’ time that we may regret forever. 
Theresa May today slapped down Boris Johnson after he made an audacious pitch for her job in a fiery resignation speech in the Commons.
The former Foreign Secretary launched an excoriating attack on the PM's 'dithering' Brexit strategy in his first Commons speech since quitting.
He exploded back into the political fray by lambasting her 'miserable' strategy as the Prime Minister struggles to contain open warfare in the Tory party.
He complained that a 'fog of self doubt' had descended on the government after Mrs May's landmark Lancaster House speech on Brexit last year, and she had allowed negotiations with the EU to be dictated by questions about the Irish border.
But asked about the tongue-lashing Mr Johnson had given her in Parliament, Mrs May said she is too busy getting on with running the country to watch his speech.  
In a devastating assault, Mr Johnson accused the PM of misleading voters about her intentions and putting the UK 'in limbo' with the Chequers plan she forced through Cabinet.
Making a clear pitch for the top job without directly calling for Mrs May to quit, he added: 'It is not too late to save Brexit.'
The searing assessment - hailed as the 'speech of a statesman' by Jacob Rees-Mogg - could throw Mrs May back into turmoil just as she was hoping to limp into the summer parliamentary break. 
Mrs May was not in the chamber for Mr Johnson's statement, as she was struggling to defend her Chequers plan in a stormy encounter with senior MPs on the Liaison Committee on another part of the estate.
She also faced a showdown with restive Tory backbenchers at a private end-of-term meeting tonight pleading with them to 'take the fight to Labour' rather than squabbling among themselves. Extraordinarily, Mrs May was kept waiting by the 1922 committee outside the room where the gathering is held - leaving her at the mercy of lurking journalists.
Asked whether she would be watching Mr Johnson's speech later, she said: 'I think I'll probably be doing my red box.'
She also shrugged off questions about whether she would survive the summer as leader. 'I think you know the answer to that,' she said. 'We all need a break.'
Mr Johnson triggered chaos in the government on Monday last week when he resigned days after the summit at the PM's country residence.
Allies of the premier have been braced for him to make a bid to oust her - although sources close to the MP have stressed he will not make a 'personal' assault. 
Mr Johnson was flanked by former aide Conor Burns on the famous green benches, as well as Brexiteers Nadine Dorries and Ben Bradley. 
David Davis, who also resigned last week, was also nearby. 
He positioned himself in the almost exactly the same spot where Geoffrey Howe delivered his 1990 resignation speech that dealt a killer blow to Margaret Thatcher
Mr Johnson was flanked by key Brexiteers on the famous green benches, including Iain Duncan Smith, Edward Leigh, Conor Burns, Nadine Dorries and Ben Bradley. 
ON MAY'S LANCASTER HOUSE VISION FOR BREXIT 
'It is as though a fog of self-doubt has descended... 
'We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels and we never made it into a negotiating offer. 
'Instead we dithered and we burned through our negotiating capital. We agreed to hand over a £40billion exit fee with no discussion of our future economic relationship.' 
ON THE PM'S CHEQUERS PLAN 
'So Mr Speaker after 18 months of stealthy retreat we have come from the bright certainties of Lancaster House to the Chequers agreement. You put them side-by-side.
'Lancaster House said laws will once again be made in Westminster. Chequers says there will be an ongoing harmonisation with a common EU rule book. Lancaster House said it would be wrong to comply with EU rules and regulations without having a vote on what those rules and regulations are. Chequers now makes us rules takers.
'Lancaster House said we don't want anything that leaves us half in, half out and we do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. Chequers says that we will remain in lockstep on goods and agrifoods and much more besides with disputes ultimately adjudicated by the European Court of Justice.
'Far from making laws in Westminster, there are large sectors in which minsters will have no power to initiate, innovate or even deviate. 

He added: 'The result of accepting the EU's rule books and of our proposals for a fantastical 'Heath Robinson' customs arrangement is that we have much less scope for trade agreements.'  
ON THE NORTHERN IRELAND BORDER ISSUE 
'When I and other colleagues... proposed further technical solutions to make customs and regulatory checks remotely, those proposals were never properly examined, as if such solutions had become intellectually undesirable in the context of the argument.'
'And somehow after the December joint report whose backstop arrangement we were all told was entirely provisional never to be invoked it became taboo even to discuss technical fixes'  
ON WHAT MAY MUST DO TO DELIVER 'GREAT' BREXIT 
'Because I can tell you Mr Speaker that the UK's admirers - and there are millions if not billions across the world - are fully expecting us to do what we said and to take back control. And to be able to set new standards for technologies in which we excel, to behave not as rules take us, but as great independent actors on the world stage.
'And to do free trade deals, proper free trade deals for the benefit and the prosperity of the British people. That was the vision of Brexit that we fought for, that was the vision, that the Prime Minister rightly described last year.
'That is the prize that is still attainable. There is time. And if the Prime Minister can fix that vision once again before us then I believe she can deliver a great Brexit for Britain, with a positive, self-confident approach that will unite this party, unite this house and unite this country as well.' 
David Davis, who also resigned last week, was also nearby. 
Letting loose on the PM's whole approach with a series of carefully calibrated but damning salvos, Mr Johnson said she must heed anger from Eurosceptics.   
'The result of accepting the EU's rule books and of our proposals for a fantastical 'Heath Robinson' customs arrangement is that we have much less scope for trade agreements,' he said.
Mr Johnson accused the PM of 'saying one thing to the EU.. and another thing to the electorate'. 
'It's not too late to save Brexit. We have changed tack once in these negotiations, and we can change tack again.'
In a rallying cry to Eurosceptics, Mr Johnson said that Mrs May had not even attempted to take a tough line with the EU.
'We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels and we never made it into a negotiating offer. 
'Instead we dithered and we burned through our negotiating capital. We agreed to hand over a £40billion exit fee with no discussion of our future economic relationship.' 
He said despite what some former Cabinet colleagues thought it was not possible to do a 'botched treaty now' and then 'break and reset the bone later on'. 
'We haven't even tried. We must try now because we will not get another chance to get it right,' Mr Johnson added.
Mr Johnson said the Chequers deal would leave Britain in 'limbo' and the government must 'believe' in the country.
He told the Commons: 'We are volunteering for economic vassalage.' 
Mr Johnson insisted that checks away from the Northern Irish border and technical solutions were possible. 
He cited concerns raised by himself and former Brexit secretary David Davis, saying: 'When I and other colleagues... proposed further technical solutions to make customs and regulatory checks remotely, those proposals were never properly examined, as if such solutions had become intellectually undesirable in the context of the argument.' 
Mr Johnson said: 'We need to take one decision now before all others and that is to believe in this country and what it can do.' 
Mr Johnson said it became 'taboo to even discuss technical fixes' regarding the Irish border. 
He added: 'After 18 months of stealthy retreat we have come from the bright certainties of Lancaster House to the Chequers agreement.' 
Mr Johnson said Britain should be 'great independent actors' on the world stage, not 'rule takers'. 
'That was the vision of Brexit that we fought for,' he said. 
'That was the vision that the Prime Minister rightly described last year. 
'That is the prize that is still attainable. There is time. And, if the Prime Minister can fix that vision once again before us, then I believe she can deliver a great Brexit for Britain with a positive, self-confident approach that will unite this party, unite this House and unite this country as well.' 
Earlier, Mrs May was goaded at PMQs by Conservative backbencher Andrea Jenkyns who demanded to know when she had decided that 'Brexit means Remain'.
But amid jeers in the Commons a clearly frustrated Mrs May hit back that she was still committed to leaving the EU and wanted a 'workable' solution.
The clashes, at a raucous last questions session before the summer recess, came after Mrs May narrowly fended off a potentially existential challenge to her negotiating strategy last night. 
Amid dramatic scenes at Westminster last night, a dozen Conservative Remainers defied warnings they would collapse the Government by siding with Jeremy Corbyn to demand Britain stays in the EU customs union.
Mrs May has repeatedly insisted that the UK must not be in a customs union, as it would prevent trade deals being struck elsewhere. 
But rebels ignored warnings from Tory chief whip Julian Smith that defeat would prompt him to call a vote of confidence in Mrs May today, followed by a possible general election. 
Tory insiders said another ten Eurosceptic MPs would have sent in letters of no confidence in Mrs May if she had lost last night's vote - potentially pushing the total over the 48 needed to spark a leadership challenge.  
Rebels inflicted an early defeat on the Government when they voted to keep Britain tied into the European Medicines Agency after Brexit by 305 votes to 301.
But, minutes later, the tables were reversed as MPs voted by 307 to 301 to reject an amendment to the Trade Bill ordering the PM to pursue a continuation of the customs union.
Five Labour MPs voted with the Government: former ministers Frank Field and Kate Hoey and backbenchers John Mann, Graham Stringer and Kelvin Hopkins, who is currently sitting as an independent following suspension. If they had voted the other way, the Government would have lost by four votes. 
Attacking her leader at PMQs, Ms Jenkyns - who has already urged Mrs May to quit - asked: 'Could the Prime Minister inform the House at what point it was decided that Brexit means Remain?'
Mrs May insisted that her mantra of 'Brexit means Brexit' still stood. 
'At absolutely no point, because Brexit continues to mean Brexit,' she replied. 
'And if I can say to her, I know she wants us to talk about the positives of Brexit and I agree with her.
'We should be talking about the positive future for this country. I understand she's also criticised me for looking for a solution that is workable.
'No deal Brexit IS better than a bad deal': May defends her Chequers blueprint from attack by Liaison Committee MPs 
Theresa May today repeated her warning that 'no deal is better than a bad deal' - as she admitted that some of her Brexit plan might not be ready in time.
The Prime Minister tried to fend off claims that her controversial Brexit proposal is 'baffling' - but she struggled to explain how her customs plans would actually work.
And she revealed her plans for the EU to collect tariffs for the UK and vice versa might not be ready before the UK fully leaves the bloc, after the transition period, in December 2020.
Mrs May made the admission as she was grilled by senior MPs sitting on the Liaison Committee amid a Tory civil war over her Chequers plans - which are also known as the facilitated customs arrangement 
The PM told the hostile committee that 'no deal is better than a bad deal' and that 'preparations for a no deal are being stepped up'. 
Her comments came after her International Trade Secretary Liam Fox warned that EU countries could see their GDP - their national income - fall by as much as 8 per cent.
Mrs May told the committee: 'The majority of what is required for this facilitated customs arrangement will definitely - as we have indicated - be in place by December 2020.
'There is a question as to the speed with which the repayment mechanism would be in place. 
'So far the suggestion is that could take longer to be put into place. That has yet to be finally determined.'   
'Thank you Mr Speaker for granting me the opportunity to first to pay tribute to the men and women of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who have done an outstanding job over the last two years.
'I'm very proud that we have rallied the world against Russia's barbaric use of chemical weapons, with an unprecedented 28 countries joining together to expel 153 spies in protest at what happened in Salisbury.
'We have rejuvenated the Commonwealth with a superb summit, that saw Zimbabwe back on the path to membership and Angola now wanting to join.
And as I leave we are leading global campaigns against illegal wildlife trade and in favour of 12 years of quality education for every girl.
'And we have the flag, the Union flag, going up in nine new missions: in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Africa and more to come, so that we have overtaken France to boast the biggest diplomatic network of any European country.
'None of this, Mr Speaker, would have been possible without the support of my right honourable friend, the Prime Minister. Everyone who has worked with her will recognise her courage and her resilience. And it was my privilege to collaborate with her in promoting Global Britain, a vision for this country that she set out with great clarity at Lancaster House on January 17 last year.
'A country eager, as she said, not just to do a bold, ambitious and comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU out of the customs union, out of the single market, but also to do new free trade deals around the world. I thought it was the right vision then, I think so today. But in the 18 months that have followed it is as though a fog of self-doubt has descended.
'Even though our friends and partners liked the Lancaster House vision, it was what they were expecting from an ambitious partner, what they understood. Even though the commentators liked it, and the markets liked it, my right honourable friend the Chancellor I'm sure observed, the pound soared. We never actually turned that vision into a negotiating position in Brussels and we never made it into a negotiating offer.
'Instead we dithered and we burned through our negotiating capital, we agreed to hand over a £40billion exit fee with no discussion of our future economic relationship. We accepted the jurisdiction of the European Court over key aspects of the withdrawal agreement.
'And worst of all we allowed the question of the Northern Irish border, which had hitherto been assumed on all sides to be readily soluble, to become so politically charged as to dominate the debate.
'No one on either side of this house or anywhere wants a hard border. You couldn't construct one if you tried but there certainly can be different rules north and south of the border to reflect the fact that there are two different jurisdictions, in fact there already are.
'There can be checks away from the border and technical solutions as the Prime Minister rightly described at Mansion House, in fact there already are. But when I and other colleagues, and I single out my right honourable friend the honourable member for Haltemprice and Howden, proposed further technical solutions to make customs and regulatory checks remotely those proposals were never even properly examined as if such solutions had become intellectually undesirable in the context of the argument.
'And somehow after the December joint report whose backstop arrangement we were all told was entirely provisional never to be invoked it became taboo even to discuss technical fixes.
'So Mr Speaker after 18 months of stealthy retreat we have come from the bright certainties of Lancaster House to the Chequers agreement. You put them side-by-side.
'Lancaster House said laws will once again be made in Westminster. Chequers says there will be an ongoing harmonisation with a common EU rule book. Lancaster House said it would be wrong to comply with EU rules and regulations without having a vote on what those rules and regulations are. Chequers now makes us rules takers.
'Lancaster House said we don't want anything that leaves us half in, half out and we do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. Chequers says that we will remain in lockstep on goods and agrifoods and much more besides with disputes ultimately adjudicated by the European Court of Justice.
'Far from making laws in Westminster, there are large sectors in which minsters will have no power to initiate, innovate or even deviate.
'After decades in which UK ministers have gone to Brussels and expostulated against costly EU regulation, we are now claiming that we must accept every jot and tittle for our economic health with no say of our own and no way of protecting our businesses and entrepreneurs from rules now and in the future that may not be in their interests.
'My right honourable friend the Chancellor was asked to identify the biggest single opportunity from Brexit. After some thought he said regulatory innovation. Well there may be some regulatory post Brexit. It won't be alas coming from the UK and certainly not in those areas. We are volunteering for economic vassalage, not just in goods and agrifoods but we will be forced to match EU arrangements on the environment and social affairs and much else besides.
'Of course, we all want high standards but it is hard to see, I say to my honourable friends, it is hard to see how the Conservative government of the 1980s could have done its vital supply side reforms with those freedoms taken away.
'And the result of accepting the EU's rulebooks and of our proposals for a fantastical Heath Robinson customs arrangement is that we have much less scope to do free trade deals as the Chequers paper actually acknowledges and which we should all frankly acknowledge because if we pretend otherwise we continue to make the fatal mistake of underestimating the intelligence of the public - saying one thing to the EU about what we are doing and then saying another thing to the electorate.
'And given that in important ways, this is Bino or Brino or Brexit in name only, I am of course unable to accept it or support it as I said in the cabinet session at Chequers.
'I am happy now to speak out against it and be able to do so.
'Mr Speaker, it is not too late to save Brexit. We have time in these negotiations, we have changed tack once and we can change again. The problem is not that we failed to make the case for a free trade agreement of the kind spelt out at Lancaster House, we haven't even tried.
'We must try now because we will not get another chance to get it right. And it is absolute nonsense to imagine, as I fear some of my colleagues do, that we can somehow afford to make a botched treaty now and then break and reset the bone later on.
'Because we have seen even in these talks how the supposedly provisional becomes eternal. We have the time and I believe the Prime Minister has the support of Parliament. Remember the enthusiasm for Lancaster House and Mansion House!
'It was clear last night that there is no majority in this house for a return to the customs union. With goodwill and common sense we can address the concerns about the Northern Irish border and all other borders.
'We have fully two-and-a-half years to make the technical preparations along with preparations for a world trade outcome - those preparations which we should now accelerate.
'We should not and need not be stampeded by anyone. But let us again aim explicitly for that glorious vision of Lancaster House - a strong, independent self-governing Britain that is genuinely open to the world.
'Not the miserable permanent limbo of Chequers. Not the democratic disaster of ongoing harmonisation with no way out and no say for the UK.
'We need to take one decision now before all others and that is to believe in this country and in what it can do.
'Because I can tell you Mr Speaker that the UK's admirers - and there are millions if not billions across the world - are fully expecting us to do what we said and to take back control. And to be able to set new standards for technologies in which we excel, to behave not as rules take us, but as great independent actors on the world stage.
'And to do free trade deals, proper free trade deals for the benefit and the prosperity of the British people. That was the vision of Brexit that we fought for, that was the vision, that the Prime Minister rightly described last year.
'That is the prize that is still attainable. There is time. And if the Prime Minister can fix that vision once again before us then I believe she can deliver a great Brexit for Britain, with a positive, self-confident approach that will unite this party, unite this house and unite this country as well.'
 
 
 
Theresa May yesterday opened the door to taxpayers continuing to pay billions into the EU on ‘transitional’ terms when Britain leaves in March 2019.
In a major boost to the City, the Prime Minister told businesses they would not face a ‘cliff edge’ when we quit the Brussels club.
Her announcement triggered fevered speculation that ministers will strike a so-called ‘transitional deal’.
Under this arrangement, UK firms will continue to have access to the single market while free trade deals are hammered out. In return, Brussels is expected to demand that Britain continues to send billions of pounds to the EU every year and abides by the trade rulings of the European Court of Justice.
Eurocrats could also push for free movement of workers to remain in place. Government insiders said they understood that ending free movement was the public’s ‘No 1 priority’ – hinting it would not be part of any transitional deal.
Tory MPs said it would not be ‘viable’ for the Conservatives to be knocking on doors in the May 2020 General Election if free movement had not been curtailed.
City giants have spent the past few months pushing for a period of ‘transition’, rather than Britain quitting the single market altogether in March 2019.
Yesterday, Mrs May told the CBI annual conference that she understood ‘people don’t want a cliff edge, they want to know with some certainty how things are going to go forward’.
She added: ‘Obviously, as we look at the negotiation we want to get the arrangement that is going to work best for the UK and the arrangement that is going to work best for business in the UK.’
The comments were in response to a warning from CBI president Paul Drechsler, who said: ‘Businesses are inevitably considering the cliff-edge scenario – a sudden and overnight transformation in trading conditions.
‘If this happens, firms could find themselves stranded in a regulatory no man’s land.’
Leading Tory Eurosceptics said they were ‘relaxed’ about the idea of a time-limited transitional period – provided that, at the end of it, Britain took control of its own borders and laws and was free to negotiate its own trade deals.
The Cabinet ministers in charge of Brexit are also understood to have no objections.
Tory MP Steve Baker, a leading Eurosceptic Tory, said: ‘There is a huge amount of trust in the PM to deliver on the pledges that she made in her speech the Conservative Party conference.
‘The PM needs the maximum freedom of movement to deliver a good quality withdrawal agreement.’ Fellow pro-Brexit campaigner Dominic Raab added: ‘The Prime Minister is right to retain some flexibility on this. What matters is getting the best deal for Britain, not the technical process.’
However, MPs made it clear there must be a fixed time period and the process must not be allowed to drag on. One privately warned of an ‘implosion’ in the Tory Party if the arrangement was open-ended.
Eurosceptic MP Andrew Bridgen warned that the EU would seize on any opportunity to seek to delay Brexit. He added: ‘That will exasperate the electorate who voted to leave in good faith. The will of the people delayed is the will of the people denied.’
Richard Tice, co-chairman of Leave Means Leave, said: ‘A transitional deal will fuel more uncertainty and leave Britain in limbo.
‘British voters have made it clear that they want to leave the EU and the Government must deliver on this in full and at the soonest opportunity – two years after triggering Article 50, or sooner if the EU fails to negotiate.’
Yesterday Sir Oliver Letwin, ex-policy chief to David Cameron, said it would be ‘relatively easy’ to strike a trade deal on goods.
The Remain campaigner said: ‘The value of what is exported to us exceeds the value of what we export to the EU.
‘There are powerful commercial and industrial interests on the other side of the negotiation who want to be able to continue to compete effectively for the English market against the American, Japanese, Indian and Chinese.’
Meanwhile, Lloyds said UK workers had record job security.
A record 82 per cent of people feel confident in their personal job security, a rise of two percentage points since September and up four points on October 2015.
Eurocrats relish snubbing of Davis 

From John Stevens, Europe Correspondent in Brussels
Brexit Secretary David Davis faced embarrassment last night as EU officials gloated about how they had given him the cold shoulder on his first visit to Brussels since taking the role.
The European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier agreed to meet Mr Davis over coffee at the EU’s headquarters.
But as soon as they sat down, the Frenchman told Mr Davis he was not willing to hold talks on Britain’s exit from the EU until Theresa May began the two-year formal exit process.
Mr Barnier, who has been dubbed ‘no friend of Britain’, delighted in his snub. In a tweet last night, he said he was preoccupied with plotting his negotiating strategy with the 27 EU member states that will remain after Brexit.
He wrote: ‘This morning’s courtesy visit from David Davis (was) at his request. No negotiation without notification. My work is now focused on EU27.’
A Government source played down claims that Mr Barnier had snubbed Mr Davis. He said: ‘We agree negotiation cannot start before we notify. We’ve been saying the same all day.
‘That was not the purpose of the meeting – it was to lay the ground for a constructive relationship.’
Jumpy British officials refused to give details of Mr Davis’s itinerary, but it is understood he will meet the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt in Strasbourg today.
It could be awkward after Mr Davis said, ‘Satan, get thee behind me’, when asked about Mr Verhofstadt in a Commons select committee meeting. 
What a difference a day makes... 
It was back to business yesterday for the Prime Minister.
Looking more formal with a smart skirt and jacket, and her trademark leopard-print heels, Theresa May addressed the Confederation of British Industry’s annual conference in London.
The Prime Minister had been spotted at church on Sunday in a casual pair of jeans.
How post-referendum Britain beat the world 
Britain was the best performing major economy in the developed world in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, international figures show.
Output in the UK in the third quarter of the year was 2.3 per cent higher than in the same period of 2015.
Britain’s growth rate was stronger than those seen in the US, Germany, France, Italy and Japan, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Canada, the remaining member of the G7 major industrialised nations, has yet to report, the think-tank said.
The pound rose around 1 per cent against the euro to a two-month high of close to 1.18 euros amid renewed signs of optimism. Sterling was also up more than 1 per cent against the dollar to more than $1.25.
The report makes a mockery of claims by the economic establishment, including the OECD and the IMF that a Brexit vote would be a disaster.
John Longworth, of Leave Means Leave, said: ‘We have a strong economy and it is hugely important that people talk Britain up rather than down.’
Facebook yesterday said the UK remains one of the best places in the world to be a technology firm as it announced it is bringing hundreds of new jobs to London.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Theresa May today vowed she would take Britain out of the EU customs union after Brexit as senior ministers threatened an open revolt over the issue.
The Prime Minister is trying to rally support for a unique 'hybrid' model of customs ties Brexiteers fear is a back door to tying Britain into EU rules.
But after her Brexit war cabinet was deadlocked on the issue on Wednesday, Mrs May repeated her commitment to leaving the current system.
Business Secretary Greg Clark was sent out by Downing Street today to advocate for a customs deal that protects jobs, warning on the Marr show that failing in the negotiations meant a hard Brexit with no deal that threatened 3,500 staff at Toyota.
Business groups immediately issued supportive statements raising speculation of a coordinated effort by pro-Remain supporters to bolster the customs partnership.
And the Tory civil war was laid bare in minutes as leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg appeared on the Peston programme to denounce the customs partnership model. 
As infighting over the British position continued, DUP leader Arlene Foster - who props up the Tories in Government - revealed today she spoke to the Prime Minister about the issues yesterday.
Mrs Foster told the BBC's Andrew Marr there was a 'constant conversation' about the final arrangements, which are critical to making the Irish border work after Brexit.  
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Brexit Secretary David Davis and Trade Secretary Liam Fox all opposed the hybrid model in Wednesday's crunch meeting of the Brexit war cabinet.
The idea - one of two Britain placed on the negotiating table last year - would in theory create close enough ties with the EU to avoid a hard border in Ireland and still allow Britain to strike trade deals.
But there are no similar agreements elsewhere in the world and Brexiteers fear it will be used as a 'trojan horse' to effectively keep Britain inside the full customs union, sabotaging any new trade deal.
The other British option is to streamline the UK-EU borders as much as possible but accept some checks as the price for striking new trade deals. 
Brussels has already rejected both proposals.
Mrs May repeated her plans to leave the EU's customs union today.
A customs partnership is less formal than the current EU customs union the UK is a member of.
Under the proposals, Britain would stay in a customs union with the EU for some sectors, while leaving it for others.
This would mean it would impose the same tariffs as the Brussels bloc on some goods, but set its own on others.
Backers of the plan say his would facilitate free trade in areas where Britain does  a lot of its business with the EU, while freeing the country to sign new free trade deals with other countries. 
One possibility could be keeping the UK and EU in a customs union for trade in goods, but allowing divergence for the services sector.
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels and then pay it to the EU.
But Brexiteers are critical of the plan. which they think is unworkable and cumbersome.
They fear it will effectively stop the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit. 
Writing in The Sun On Sunday, the Premier said she had an 'absolute determination to make a success of Brexit, by leaving the single market and customs union and building a new relationship with EU partners that takes back control of our borders, our laws and our money'.
She said the UK was 'making good progress towards that goal and we will carry on doing so with resolution in the months ahead'. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark opened the door to extending a transition period on customs with the EU.
Mr Clark said it could be a case of implementing a new customs arrangement 'as soon as you can do'.
Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Clark said it would take some time for new customs arrangements to be put in place, saying it was 'possible' it may take until 2023 to put new infrastructure in place.
He added: 'What I'm suggesting is as part of the work over the next few weeks, I think it would be a mistake to move from one situation to another to a third.
'If we can make progress as to what, which I think we can, as to what the right arrangement is for the long term, then it may be possible to bring that in over that period of time.' 
Mr Clark cited the example of Toyota, saying it was making major decisions about future production and there were fears over how the firm's 'just in time' manufacturing model would operate with customs checks.
The company employs 3,500 people in the UK, Mr Clark said, adding that jobs had to be at the forefront of Britain's future customs model.  
The Business Secretary went on to say the customs partnership model meant parts could be imported without any checks at the border or paperwork.
Mr Clark added: 'But it's not perfect, because what it means is that if we have imports from other countries where we've abolished the tariff, there has to be an arrangement where you pay back.'
Six peers who voted for a second Brexit referendum have been accused of acting in the interests of Brussels because they are due huge pensions.
Lord Cashman, Baroness Crawley, Lord Tomlinson Baroness Bowles, Baroness Ludford and Lord Teverson are all former members of the European Parliament.
Their parliamentary careers will lead to pension payouts when they retire.
All six voted in the Lords last week for a re-run of the historic 2016 vote. 
Former Cabinet Minister Priti Patel l told the Sun on Sunday the public would be outraged peers were trying to reverse Brexit 'in a show of loyalty to their Brussels pay packet'.
Lord Cashman rejected the claim.
He said: 'To suggest my votes or beliefs are in any way connected to my receipt of a contributory pension is a travesty of the truth.' 
He went on to say: 'Of course business wants certainty. Everyone recognises that. But every business that I talk to wants the certainty that the agreement is the right one.
'No-one wants the certainty, which is available at any time, of simply collapsing the negotiations, saying 'well, we're not going to bother with this, we're going to accept frictions at the border', for example.'  
British Chambers of Commerce director general Adam Marshall immediately issued a supportive statement: 'An agreement to maintain something close to the status quo until new rules, technology, infrastructure and staff are in place is a no-brainer. The alternative is greater uncertainty, disrupted supply chains and one costly adjustment after another.
'Every trading business I speak to wants practical considerations, not ideology, to drive Cabinet decision-making and negotiations with the EU. The customs question is no different.'
The Confederation of British Industry's director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said: 'We therefore welcome the Secretary of State's recognition that any customs solution must deliver this goal, with no tariffs or additional border checks, delays or red tape for EU/UK exports and imports, which account for nearly half of all UK trade.
'This is a time for pragmatic solutions, not ideology.'
Within minutes, influential Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg hit back for Brexiteers and warned the 'customs partnership' model would effectively mean remaining in the European Union.
'The issue with the customs partnership is to be effective it would have to keep us in the single market as well,' he told ITV's Peston on Sunday.
He said it would be 'odd' for the Prime Minister to back a policy that effectively breached her commitment on leaving both the customs union and single market.
'We are supporting the Prime Minister in what she set out in the manifesto - most importantly because that is our deal with the voters - but also in her Lancaster House, Florence and Mansion House speeches.
'I think it would be odd if the Prime Minister were to write one thing for the Sun on Sunday and for another thing to be going on in Downing Street,' he said.
'I trust the Prime Minister not to do things that are odd.'
As the row continues, a Cabinet source told the Sunday Telegraph: 'It would be unimaginable for the Prime Minister to press on with the hybrid model after it has been torn apart by members of her own Brexit committee.
'Overruling the committee would see many Brexiteers lose faith in the current leadership.
'The PM should instead adopt the [highly streamlined] option and not try to force through a plan which would fail to meet the promises made during the referendum and in the Tory manifesto.'
 Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said 'the Conservatives are going to fall apart on this' as wrangling over the Brexit strategy continued.
The Labour frontbencher set out his party's plan on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: 'What we have said very clearly - and I think actually quite a lot of the Conservatives are going to follow us in this - we remain within the customs union during the transition period, we want to negotiate a customs union, that will solve the Northern Ireland border problem, which I think is intractable.'
Mr McDonnell said there 'will be movement from the EU' towards the Labour position.
He told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show that as well as the customs union plan 'we want to get as close to the single market as we possibly can'.
Pro-EU Tories, seeking to capitalise on the lack of agreement in the Cabinet and a Lords victory on the customs union, have pushed for Mrs May to abandon her Brexit strategy and instead commit to a Norway-style approach within the European Economic Area (EEA) and European Free Trade Association (Efta).
Such a move would be unacceptable to many Brexit supporter because it would leave the UK expected to accept free movement, although its advocates claim Mrs May would have some ability to impose conditions.
Former Conservative minister Stephen Hammond told The Independent: 'It allows you to have some conversations over new regulation, in that you are consulted and are part of the process before it comes in, though it's still not co-determination, of course.
'But the other reason I think it's a good idea, is that if you look at the EEA terms of reference, it is clear there is more leeway to impose restrictions on freedom of movement.'
A Lords amendment which would require the Government to negotiate continued membership of the EEA could be put to a vote on Tuesday, but Labour peers have reportedly been told to abstain.
Labour's Lord Alli, one of the signatories to the amendment, accused the party leadership of being 'paralysed by indecision'.
He told The Observer: 'This is complete cowardice. There is no point in being in politics to abstain, If you stand in the middle of the road someone is going to knock you over.' 
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the softer Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
A close ally of the Prime Minister and viewed by some as her anointed successor. He is believed to be siding with the Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain but a relatively unknown quantity on the shape of a deal. Replaced James Brokenshire, another May loyalist, after he resigned on health grounds last month. 
Theresa May today warns her rebellious MPs: back my Brexit deal or voters will lose their jobs.
The Prime Minister uses an article in today’s Mail on Sunday to issue a patriotic rallying cry, telling her opponents that they ‘must realise the risks they are running with our democracy’.
With days to go until the Commons showdown on her deal, Mrs May says that MPs thinking of voting it down should consider the effect on ‘the jobs our constituents rely on to put food on the table for their families’. The vote was pulled at the last minute in December after party whips told Mrs May that more than 100 Tory MPs were expected to join forces with the DUP and Labour to defeat the measure in protest at the Irish ‘backstop’ – which they claim would trap Britain indefinitely in a form of customs union to avoid a hard border with Dublin.
But as MPs return to the Commons tomorrow after their Christmas break, there appears to be little sign of any climbdown by the rebels without a major concession from Brussels – despite No 10 laying on a ‘charm offensive’ programme of drinks with Mrs May in the coming days.
Her only hope of securing Commons backing may lie in her persuading a sufficient number of Labour MPs to support the deal.
This newspaper understands that senior Tory figures were in contact with Labour MPs over the Christmas period, with begging calls even being made late on Christmas Eve in some cases. Concessions on ‘workers’ rights’ are believed to have been offered in an attempt to garner Labour backing.
In her article, Mrs May repeatedly hails the strength of British democracy, and describes ‘our genius for pragmatism’ as ‘a defining British trait’.
Describing 2019 as the year when the UK could ‘turn a corner’, she says: ‘At moments of profound challenge, we always find a way forward that commands the confidence and consent of the whole community. This is such a moment.’
The Prime Minister calls on all MPs opposed to the deal – from Tory Brexiteers to arch-Remainers hoping for a second referendum – to study their consciences.
She writes: ‘MPs of every party will face the same question when the division bell rings. It is a question of profound significance for our democracy and for our constituents. The only way to both honour the result of the referendum and protect jobs and security is by backing the deal that is on the table.’
Tory Brexiteers argue that, far from softening in their opposition to the Withdrawal Agreement, opposition has actually ‘cemented’ over the holidays, with party members using festive social events to convey their scathing view of the exit terms.
Rebel ringleader and former party leader Iain Duncan Smith today brands Downing Street’s attempts to cajole MPs into backing May’s deal as ‘stupid’.
He writes in today’s MoS: ‘Even the most loyal of advisers must know that attitudes simply haven’t changed.’
And he warns any minor additions or legal protocols offered by Brussels to buttress the PM’s ‘charm offensive’ would be worthless.
He argues: ‘The European Court of Justice has historically sidelined protocols and other such devices, meaning the backstop will bind us without the power to withdraw.’
He adds that further talks with Brussels would be fruitless as ‘the problem has been that while our negotiators have behaved towards the EU as friends, they have treated us as adversaries.’
But Downing Street is still pinning its hopes on a ‘white smoke’ moment from Brussels – legally binding concessions over the backstop – by next weekend.
Mrs May is on standby to travel to Europe to welcome the proposals if they are deemed to be sufficiently persuasive.
If that fails, Tory whips are plotting a backbench amendment to the vote – pencilled in for January 15 or 16 – which would order yet more talks between Mrs May and the EU.
That would further delay the main vote on Mrs May’s deal.
No 10’s former legislative adviser Nikki da Costa, who resigned over the terms of the deal in November, said yesterday that party managers would hold back the ‘trick’ if they believe they are still heading for a triple-figure defeat.
She said: ‘If the EU hasn’t moved far enough, the Government may seek to spell out in an amendment what further assurances looks like. The hope would be if that was passed, the EU would feel reassured that it is worthwhile moving further, because the majority has been proven to exist for that package.
‘I expect any amendment will be quietly tested with MPs for 24 to 36 hours before it’s tabled, to see if it is going to get the support.’
But Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the PM would be ‘playing with fire if she refuses MPs the right to vote on her deal’.
Yesterday, the stretched Tory Christmas truce collapsed completely when devout Remainer Ken Clarke dismissed the 2016 referendum as ‘one opinion poll’.
Mr Duncan Smith hit back, describing him as a ‘wrecker’ who ‘typifies what those who have never accepted the referendum believe’.
In her article, Mrs May also attacks Jeremy Corbyn for his ‘cynical’ Brexit policy, saying: ‘He tells one group he would keep the UK in the single market, while promising another group an end to free movement. Throughout, he has provided the opposite of leadership, serving not our national interest but always his own political interest.’
Mrs May’s words come as hundreds of lorries tomorrow take part in a ‘No Deal rehearsal’ for potential chaos at Dover, with truckers testing government plans to use the disused Manston Airport as a holding pen for HGVs.
But critics have suggested TV footage of lorries backed up in rush-hour is a fresh round of Project Fear spin.
People's vote would be a disaster movie says Brexit TV drama writer 
 By Harry Cole for the Mail on Sunday
James Graham says people assume he is a ‘massively leftie, liberally, Remainy, 12-year-old-looking playwright’, but the man behind tomorrow night’s highly anticipated Brexit TV drama has delighted Leave supporters by criticising calls for a second referendum.
Channel 4’s Brexit: The Uncivil War, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, has surprised critics with its even-handed portrayal of the 2016 poll.
And speaking ahead of its screening, Mr Graham, 37, says he is not looking for a re-run, describing the last bout as ‘toxic’ and ‘traumatic’.
‘I just don’t think we would survive going through that exercise again,’ he said.
‘We can’t do that again, no matter what we do.’
Mr Graham insists he is ‘not blaming one side or the other’, but believes ‘Leave, Remain, the public and politicians did not conduct themselves in quite the best way’.
And he called for massive reform of the electoral process if questions of that magnitude are ever to be put directly to the public in the future.
Tomorrow night’s 90-minute drama focuses on how Vote Leave’s eccentric but brilliant campaign guru Dominic Cummings, played by Cumberbatch, blew up the Downing Street-led Remain campaign, pioneered by David Cameron’s spin doctor Sir Craig Oliver. Sir Craig is played by Rory Kinnear.
But in a further blow to those who have declared the referendum was hijacked by Vote Leave’s use of sophisticated data to target adverts at certain groups of voters, Mr Graham scotched the conspiracy theories, saying: ‘Remain were doing it as well.’ He added: ‘The use of data is not an exclusively Right-wing thing, or conservative thing, or Leave thing. [Barack] Obama was the guy who nailed this first.
‘I don’t want the film to suggest – because I don’t believe this is true – that data used to target messages is manipulative. It’s what people have always done. It is not about changing people’s minds – it’s about finding people already sympathetic to that view and getting them to vote.
‘I hope we don’t suggest it is anything close to manipulation.’
Mr Graham said he was not hopeful that his drama will unite the warring factions or please everyone, adding: ‘People will come to it with their own baggage.’
A return to project fear? They can't be stupid 
By Iain Duncan Smith, former conservative party leader
Downing Street have got it into their heads that they can get MPs to back their Brussels deal simply by ramping up warnings about a No Deal Brexit, but they must know that isn’t the case.
Like some broken and distorted record, Project Fear runs on and on, with less and less effect.
Even the most loyal of advisers must know that attitudes simply haven’t changed.
Yet with diminishing effect, there are yet more plans to use this tactic as MPs return to Westminster this week.
First, there have been briefings that there will be an amendment to the vote to allow Parliament to leave the backstop that keeps us tied to EU customs rules, defying any agreement struck.
Second, there is to be a ‘clarification’ on the backstop sought from the European Union by the Government in the form a new ‘protocol’.
The turmoil in Westminster has led senior figures in Brussels to conclude that Brexit will have to be delayed.
The Mail on Sunday has been told that the ‘prevailing assumption’ among EU negotiators is that political paralysis in Westminster will lead to a request from London for Article 50 – the procedure which triggered our departure from the EU – to be delayed beyond Brexit Day on March 29.
An EU source said: ‘We are running out of time. If, as we expect, May loses the vote, she will have to keep trying again over the coming weeks.
‘We just don’t see it passing but nor do we think your MPs will tolerate No Deal. So we are acting on the assumption that we will have to give you more time.’
The source added that there had been a ‘mood change’ about Britain remaining in the EU. After European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker described Brexit as a ‘catastrophe’ and a ‘lose-lose situation’ for both Britain and the EU, some Brussels figures have argued that Article 50 should be extended on condition that the UK holds a second referendum, with Remain as one of the options.
‘But now we increasingly think “good riddance” – we don’t want a reluctant half-member,’ said the source.
 
Third, we are told that the Government will simply go on putting the deal back to the Commons until – worn down by the process – Parliament accepts the deal.
The first doesn’t work because as there will have been a clear agreement, our courts will strike such action down. Second, the European Court of Justice has historically sidelined protocols and other such devices, meaning the backstop will bind us without the power to withdraw.
And third, I really can’t believe the Government could be that stupid.
As MPs come back after the Christmas break, we do so knowing that all has not gone according to plan for the Government, because Project Fear has gone wrong.
Crowded out by the drone chaos at Gatwick and illegal migrants arriving in growing numbers, it hasn’t worked.
In fact, it has been replaced by the growing sense among the public and MPs that preparations to leave with No Deal are finally being put in place.
Leaving without the Prime Minister’s deal is looking more likely – I now put it at a more than 50 per cent chance. People can see that the problem with this agreement is not just the backstop but that it negates all the good reasons to leave and has us hanging on to the worst aspects of the EU.
This deal simply doesn’t work and, far from securing Brexit, it shackles us to the EU.
If the EU really wanted a good relationship after Brexit, they would have made major changes to the deal.
The fact that they have ignored the Prime Minister’s entreaties says all you need to know about their desire to shackle us and stop us competing.
The problem has been that while our ‘negotiators’ have behaved towards the EU as friends, they have treated us as adversaries.
The only chance we have to deliver on the referendum and get a half-sensible deal is to get fully ready to leave on World Trade Organisation terms by March 29.
Theresa May's 'bold new offer on Brexit' does not contain any significant new measures, Cabinet sources warned last night.
The Prime Minister yesterday said the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which MPs will vote on next month, would include 'an improved package of measures that I believe can win new support'.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Mrs May said MPs would face 'decision time' over whether they wanted to honour the 2016 referendum by leaving the European Union with a deal – or risk a No Deal departure or no Brexit at all.
She said the legislation, which is due to be voted on by Parliament in the first week of June, 'represents a new, bold offer to MPs across the House of Commons'.
But a source who has seen the legislation told the Mail that most of the elements billed as 'new' had already been extensively trailed in the months Mrs May has spent trying to build a parliamentary majority for her deal. 
'There is nothing new in it,' the source said.
'It accepts a couple of amendments on workers' rights and Northern Ireland, but we have already said we would accept them.'
Former Brexit secretary David Davis yesterday became the latest Tory Eurosceptic to say he will not back the fourth attempt to pass Mrs May's deal. 
Mr Davis, who backed the deal at its second and third attempts, said it could be used to impose soft Brexit options such as a customs union.
With Parliament thrust into crisis, the need for constitutional expertise is paramount. 
Step forward the celebrity Remainer luvvies, whose howls of outrage are more petulant than ever . . .
PHILIP PULLMAN, author: 'The Prime Minister has finally come out as a dictator. I've had enough of being outraged. We must get rid of him and his loathsome gang as soon and as finally as possible. When I hear the name Boris Johnson, for some reason the words 'rope' and 'nearest lamp-post' come to mind as well.
[Pullman was later forced to clarify: 'Just to make it perfectly clear: I wouldn't kill the Prime Minister, and I don't want anyone else to. But I don't apologise for the anger I feel; only for its intemperate expression.']
JAMES O'BRIEN, LBC radio presenter: 'What's happened so far happened because the people with the strongest opinions about EU membership turned out to be the ones with the weakest understanding of it. What happens next depends on the same people's willingness to admit to career-long ignorance. I'm not optimistic.'
PALOMA FAITH, singer: 'Please sign this petition against this ridiculous UK dictatorship.'
ED MILIBAND, former Labour leader: 'Suspending Parliament to prevent the expression of the will of elected representatives is what autocrats and dictators do. This attempted coup against our democracy to impose a No Deal Brexit cannot be allowed to stand.'
FINANCIAL TIMES editorial: 'History has shown that charlatans, demagogues and would-be dictators have little time for representative government.'
GINA MILLER, anti-Brexit campaigner: 'These actions are more akin to dictatorship than democracy and as such their legality must be tested in the courts.'
PAUL MASON, former economics editor of BBC2's Newsnight: 'To stop Farage and Johnson destroying our democracy we need not just an alliance in Parliament: we need to get on the streets . . . and if it comes to an election — a one-time tactical voting pact for the progressive majority.'
LORD (BOB) KERSLAKE, former head of the Civil Service: 'We are reaching the point where the Civil Service must consider putting its stewardship of the country ahead of service to the government of the day.'
JOHN SIMPSON, BBC world affairs editor: 'Just back from the WiFi-free South African wilderness to find a full-scale constitutional crisis under way. Downing Street assured the BBC on Sunday that it was entirely false to claim Parliament would be prorogued. Is truth just going out of the window?'
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL, Tony Blair's No 10 spin doctor: 'The campaign Take Back Control was meant to be about parliamentary sovereignty, we've had an Old Etonian Prime Minister tell an Old Etonian Cabinet minister to go up and see the Queen in a Scottish castle to shut down Parliament.'
POLLY TOYNBEE, Guardian columnist: 'A constitution that relied on gentlemanly governments' willingness to bow to Parliament has evaporated, blown away now it's led by a man who doesn't give a damn for parliamentary sovereignty: taking back control is for him alone. He is ready to destroy anything that threatens his ambition.'
A.C. GRAYLING, philosopher: 'The people convicted of crimes in the 2016 Leave campaign are now on Downing Street committing constitutional crimes. As former Civil Service head Lord Kerslake in effect suggests, the Civil Service should go on strike. A general strike might be necessary to #BlockTheCoup.'
GARY LINEKER, ex-footballer and TV presenter: 'The Government's argument that they're doing this for democracy is remarkably undemocratic.'
BILLY BRAGG, singer: 'More proof that Johnson will go to any lengths to avoid debating his Brexit plans because to do so would merely highlight his vacuity. The last person who tried to suspend parliament was Charles I and we know what happened to him.'
DAVID WALLIAMS, actor: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing' — Edmund Burke.
GUY VERHOFSTADT, EU Brexit coordinator: 'Taking Back Control has never looked so sinister. As a fellow parliamentarian, my solidarity with those fighting for their voices to be heard. Suppressing debate on profound choices is unlikely to help deliver a stable future EU-UK relationship.'
ANDREW ADONIS, Labour peer: 'Brexit is a revolution weakening and undermining our core national institutions one by one. Yesterday it was the monarchy, commandeered by Johnson to undermine Parliament. This will continue until Brexit is stopped.'
ALAN RUSBRIDGER, former Guardian editor: 'This is a full scale revolution by Dominic Cummings [the PM's senior adviser], who literally holds Parliament in contempt.'
GAVIN ESLER, former BBC journalist: 'Either we have parliamentary sovereignty or we have dictatorship by a Prime Minister not elected by the British people.'
CHARLIE BROOKER, author and TV presenter: 'Liars. Vandals.'
DEBORAH MEADEN, Dragons' Den 'investor' and businesswoman: 'So they suspend Parliament and then shut the doors on communication. People, this is a coup.'
RICHARD DAWKINS, biologist: 'Whatever else 'Take back control' meant, it surely did not mean a coup d'état to wrest control from Parliament and hand it over to a dictator.'
ARMANDO IANNUCCI, creator of TV's In The Thick Of It: 'In this exceptional time, protests should be more than about venting frustration; they need to be effective. Those who've undermined our democracy won't take any notice of protests outside Parliament. They will, though, if they were outside Buckingham Palace.'
Theresa May will begin her Alpine walking holiday next week feeling that her premiership has gradually strengthened after the grievous setback she suffered in the General Election.
Admittedly this is only the early stage of a recovery, but I predict that she will confound expectations and be acclaimed at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester in the autumn.
First, the Prime Minister is reaping the benefit from the resignation, following the June 8 result, of her two arrogant and deeply divisive chiefs of staff, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill.
She now has a much stronger Downing Street machine.
The ruthless effectiveness of this team was witnessed last week in the way it dealt with the disgraceful outbreak of backbiting, briefing against the PM and disagreements about Brexit among Cabinet ministers.
New Downing Street chief of staff Gavin Barwell, in alliance with the chief whip, Gavin Williamson, masterminded a brilliant operation to get Tory backbenchers to rise up and make it clear that such ministerial insubordination could prove suicidal and lead to Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.
Such a nightmare vision helped quell Cabinet insurrection and with her authority restored, Mrs May now has the confidence to sack any minister who steps out of line in the future.
Meanwhile, I expect a Cabinet reshuffle sooner rather than later.
Andrea Leadsom, who pushed herself forward to replace David Cameron when he resigned last summer and has unwisely been touting her leadership prospects recently, is undoubtedly in Mrs May’s sights.
Regardless of recent troubles, Mrs May’s position since the General Election has not been as fragile as many critics have claimed.
It must never be forgotten that she, and not Jeremy Corbyn, won the election. True, the Tories did not secure an overall majority, but thanks to the deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, it is possible to get Government policy through the Commons.
Talk of the need for a fresh General Election has fizzled out — apart from within Labour ranks. Indeed, some wise heads think the next one may not occur until 2022, as laid down under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act.
No, the truth is that the recent hysteria about Mrs May’s future has distracted attention from the many troubles facing Mr Corbyn. He still leads a party riven by Left v Right battles, has a Shadow Cabinet of non-entities and presides over a hard-Left group intent on a wicked —and sometimes violent — campaign to purge Labour of anyone who does not agree with a rabidly socialist agenda.
Policy-wise, Mr Corbyn also faces a major dilemma. In his heart, he is wary of the EU — with a decades-long record of opposition to the Brussels-driven project for a European superstate.
That is why it has been suggested that a Corbyn government would leave the single market — a policy which aligns him with Tory hard-Brexiteers.
However, Mr Corbyn’s stance places him at odds with the majority of his party, particularly his Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer. Sir Keir apparently fancies his chances of replacing Mr Corbyn in due course.
Ironically, the Tory Party has always been considered vulnerable to splits over Europe, but it is now Labour that has the potential to implode over it. Problems will be exacerbated over the coming months as the parliamentary timetable will be dominated by Brexit legislation.
Some of Mr Corbyn’s strategists say he will try to copy the tactics of John Smith, the Labour leader who, 25 years ago, opposed the Maastricht Treaty which extended Brussels’ powers to create the European superstate.
Although the wily Scot supported the treaty, he cynically allied himself with anti-Maastricht Tory rebels in order to damage John Major’s Conservative government. Could Mr Corbyn pull off a similar trick? I doubt it.
Despite his better than expected performance in the General Election and an opinion poll lead, he doesn’t have the same authority Mr Smith exercised over his MPs.
Nor is Brexit Mr Corbyn’s only problem. He has been embarrassed by the admission that Labour wouldn’t have been able to fund its manifesto pledge to abolish university fees — a measure that won the votes of hundreds of thousands of youngsters.
Meanwhile, far-Left supporters are clearly intent on taking over the Labour Party in much the same way that Derek Hatton’s Militant Tendency attempted to in the early Eighties.
This ugly civil war has seen Blairite MP Luciana Berger viciously threatened with de-selection by hard-Left activists in her Liverpool constituency.
Although Ms Berger herself was disloyal to Mr Corbyn when she quit the Shadow Cabinet last year as part of a botched coup against him, such treatment of a woman who is on maternity leave is abhorrent.
Fellow Blairite MPs Chuka Umunna, Margaret Hodge and Stella Creasy also face a similar threat.
Mr Corbyn is seen by many as a man of principle, but he will lose that reputation if he allows the Labour Party to be captured by the 21st-century version of Militant Tendency. He already lost much respect when he shamefully tried to make political capital out of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower by allowing Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to say the victims of the fire were ‘politically murdered’.
Equally, Mr Corbyn should have spoken out publicly against the new ugly Left-wing which is behind an evil campaign of hate which has targeted women Tory MPs.
This has seen them receiving photographs of decapitated children with the words ‘Blood is on your hands. You will be next’ — and anti-Semitic attacks.
By not condemning such behaviour, Mr Corbyn risks giving the public the impression that he condones it.
Complicit in this thuggish behaviour are many of his backbench MPs. Last week, when the Tories tried to hold a Commons debate on the ‘appalling abuse’ by Corbynistas in the election campaign, Labour MPs sabotaged their attempt by spending three hours manipulating parliamentary procedure instead.
I respect Jeremy Corbyn but he should be ashamed of allowing his MPs to block such an important debate on how our democracy is being despoiled by vile harassment, racist and anti-Semitic slurs. Swastikas have been daubed on Tory leaflets, too.
If Mr Corbyn does not manage to discipline his militant outriders, the support he won in June will quickly evaporate.
Contrary to all expectations, it is Jeremy Corbyn and not Theresa May who faces the biggest problems as MPs set off on their 46-day summer recess.
 
The Cabinet's Chequers Agreement, I believe, is fundamentally the wrong deal for the UK and the Conservative Party. With a heavy heart, I resigned as a vice chairman of the Conservative Party.
This deal, which is only the opening bid in a negotiation, will betray our country, the Conservative Party and the millions of people, including the majority of my constituents, who voted to leave the EU.
Implementing Brexit in name only will make a mockery of our democracy and it would tie us to some of the worst aspects of the EU. In particular, the Cabinet agreed to accept what, in practice, is Brussels's rule book. After all, with compliance to EU laws comes EU case law and enforcement.
We are told that we could decide to change any EU law, but there would be 'consequences': the removal of market access and customs.
This 'consequence' could trap us in the rule book and make us unable to accept goods from non-EU countries with equally high, but different, standards. In short, we will be a rule taker, not a rule maker.
We will have to collect EU taxes and no doubt the EU will, in return, want to heavily monitor the process.
We also seem to be allowing the EU to dictate its idea with regard to the Northern Irish border with Ireland.
Is that sovereignty? Hardly.
Faced with that as a deal I think 'no deal' is worth considering. The simple fact is that we can do better.
European Council President Donald Tusk has previously offered a Canada or Japan-style trade agreement. We should have accepted that as a basis for talks. David Davis was working on what seemed a perfectly sensible technical plan for the Northern Irish border before he appeared to have the ground cut from under him.
During the referendum campaign, I was often described as a 'reluctant Remainer'. 
Since then, the realisation of opportunities to change course, to be a free, global Britain trading around the world on our own terms, has been the reason I have backed a full and proper Brexit strategy. Freedom is what my constituents expect, too.
Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, was a Labour seat for a century until last year and I want to win it again, not least because the last thing this country needs is Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister. 
There may be civil servants and big business lobbyists who think the Chequers proposals are a marvellous idea, as they can claim this meets the letter of various promises and the referendum result while keeping us in so many aspects of the EU.
My constituents knew what they were doing when they voted Leave.
And for so many of them, this proposal does not capture the spirit of what they want. It is quite simply the wrong thing to do.
If this deal is bad for our country and democracy, it will be a disaster for the Conservative Party, too. I do not wish to see my party broken over this deal, and I have to say again it's not even the one the EU is going to accept.
During the two years since the referendum, supporters of leaving the EU have put up with a lot, and made compromises. They have accepted the EU's insistence on discussing money first. They have accepted a transition period that will mean we will follow EU rules for nearly two extra years.
To her credit, while Mrs May has stuck to the EU's programme, she has made progress and reached agreement in those areas. We have accepted all of these things in the hope that, in the end, we will leave and be free to chart our own destiny.
Thus it is disappointing to find that we may still to be tied to the EU in so many ways. It is time to stop simply accepting everything that is thrown at us by the EU. We should leave ideally with a deal, but if they won't negotiate in good faith we should stop tying ourselves in knots for their benefit.
It's a big world out there and we can thrive with or without the EU. 
There may not be any tanks on the streets, but be under no illusion: what we’re seeing now is an attempted coup designed to overthrow the will of the British people.
Yesterday’s decision by three unelected judges to side with the sore losers who want to scupper Britain’s departure from the European Union is a constitutional outrage. 
It is a victory for vested interests and the enemies of democracy.
The fix has been in since June 23, when 17.4 million voters handed the Government the biggest single mandate in history. 
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There was no ambiguity about the question on the ballot paper. Did we want Britain to remain in the EU or leave? No ifs, no buts.
By a clear majority of 52 per cent to 48 per cent, the vote was to Leave.
Fanatical Remainers were never going to accept the decision and are resorting to any means available — putrid propaganda, parliamentary obstructionism, and now judicial activism — to keep Britain locked into the EU.
First they smeared Leave voters as moronic racists, too stupid to understand the consequences of their decision, and demanded a second referendum.
Then they claimed that the result was only ‘advisory’ and not binding on Parliament.
They also started to pretend that there was a choice between a ‘hard’ Brexit, which would result in financial ruin, and a ‘soft’ Brexit — effectively not leaving the EU at all.
This so-called ‘soft’ option would commit us to accepting freedom of movement and remaining subject to the rulings of the European Court of Justice — the very things we voted against.
Simultaneously, MPs insisted they should have the final say on triggering Article 50, which gives formal notice of our intention to quit the EU within two years, and be allowed to dictate our negotiating stance.
They maintain that they are entitled to do so because what the referendum was really about was restoring the supremacy of Parliament. 
And they’d have a point if MPs hadn’t voted 6-1 in favour of holding the referendum, the result of which Prime Minister David Cameron promised unequivocally to respect and implement.
Indeed, Call Me Dave said during the campaign that if the popular vote was to Leave, he would invoke Article 50 the very next day. 
That pledge went out of the window when Cameron resigned in a fit of pique — an ignominious departure for a man who claimed during the campaign that: ‘Brits don’t quit.’
Even though he was quickly replaced by Theresa May, who vowed to honour the result, the Remainers realised that all bets were off and the game was now afoot. 
As soon as she made it plain that she wouldn’t be rushed into invoking Article 50, the anti-democratic forces sensed their opportunity.
Although Mrs May said it would be triggered by the end of March, the Remainers’ endgame is to delay the process indefinitely so that the 2020 General Election becomes the second referendum they have so far been denied.
The federast Lib Dems have already said they intend to make the forthcoming Richmond by-election about Brexit, even though it is only happening because Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith carried out his threat to resign over the decision to build a third runway at Heathrow.
So what is supposed to be a vote on airport expansion will become dominated by a rerun of Project Fear.
The campaign to scare us into staying in the EU has, if anything, been ramped up since the Leave vote.
The harbingers of doom have been bleating even more loudly since they lost — and given a megaphone by the BBC, which has reverted to pro-EU type after its admirably even-handed coverage of the referendum campaign.
Sour-faced, rent-a-gob Remainers such as the Tory MPs Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan have taken up permanent residence in the television and radio studios — seemingly wheeled out every hour, on the hour, on all channels — wailing their siren warnings about Britain heading for the rocks.
‘Brexit’ has been blamed for everything from falling house prices to Marmite disappearing temporarily from the shelves at Tesco.
Cynical corporations, such as Apple computers, are using the vote to profiteer at the expense of UK consumers.
‘Brexit’ has become a catch-all excuse, the 21st-century equivalent of: ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’
The most ludicrous exploitation so far came from the managers at a gym at the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth, who announced they would no longer be handing out free towels to clients. 
They blamed Brexit for an increase in laundry bills.
A notice pinned up in reception read: ‘The reason the company has decided to do this is because since the UK voted to leave the EU the pound has dropped significantly.’
This would suggest that the gym is shipping its towels to Germany or Italy to be laundered. 
Er, no. They’re farmed out to a company in Reading, which the last time anyone looked was still in Berkshire. 
So the post-Brexit dip in sterling has no bearing whatsoever on the cost.
How stupid do they think people are? Then again, when did the truth have anything to do with Project Fear?
Yet while the Remoaners continue their alarmist prophesies of impending economic collapse and millions of lost jobs, the exact opposite has happened.
All the signs are that Britain is enjoying a post-Brexit bounce, led by exporters benefiting from the fall in the previously over-valued pound to a more realistic, more competitive level.
Even good news is greeted with carping. There’s no consistency to their arguments, though.
The same people who a couple of months ago were demanding that the Government bail out the ailing steel industry are now howling in fury at assurances given by ministers to Nissan and other car makers that they will not suffer after Britain leaves the EU, even though these guarantees have secured jobs and new investment.
If all we had to endure was the manoeuvring of MPs and the griping of the rest of the defeated Remain campaign, it would be just about tolerable.
But as became painfully apparent yesterday, there are more sinister forces at work.
The legal action which resulted in the High Court ruling was brought by a wealthy City investment manager, Gina Miller, and a hairdresser, Deir Dos Santos, about whom little is known and who is described as a British citizen of Brazilian origin.
Mrs Miller, married to a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager, is fronting for an outfit calling itself People’s Challenge — set up by an expat, Grahame Pigney, who lives in Carcassonne, France, and a Gilbraltarian government employee.
The High Court battle turned on whether the age-old royal prerogative rules trumped the sovereignty of parliament.
Theresa May's lawyers argued that she is able to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the formal two-year process for leaving the EU - using the powers, which have been at the heart of UK foreign affairs for centuries.

Historically, the list of prerogative powers that can be exercised by ministers include declaring war, pardoning criminals, and regulating the Civil Service.
But the judges backed the legal challenge brought by Remain supporters, who said the prerogative powers were not sufficient and parliamentary approval was needed for an act that would in effect repeal legislation.
The action is also supported by something called Fair Deal for Expats, whose leading lights include a British company director who lives in Limoges, France; a businessman who runs a holiday rentals business in Italy; and an English language teacher in Hamburg, Germany. 
They claim not to be trying to overturn the result, simply to ensure that Parliament controls the process.
We have entered a Looking Glass world in which — to paraphrase Humpty Dumpty — referendum results mean exactly what lawyers and judges decide they mean.
Outside the court, David Greene, lawyer for Deir Dos Santos, delivered the following statement, which defies satire: ‘We are the democrats here, not the Government.’
Who voted for him?
No one could have dreamed that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union — which 17.4 million people thought they had made at the ballot box — could be derailed by a rich financier and a mysterious Brazilian hairdresser, bankrolled by hedge fund fat cats and disgruntled expats?
You couldn’t make it up.
In order to justify their ruling, the judges had to dig up precedents dating back to 1610 and 1689.
It was redolent of the Crown Prosecution Service resorting to an ancient statute about ‘conspiracy to cause misconduct in public office’ to prosecute innocent journalists for paying informants and whistleblowers.
Yet again, it proves that the smug, self-selecting, so-called ‘elite’ will stoop to anything to get their own way and crush all opposition.
The Government says it will appeal to the Supreme Court. But, don’t forget, the Supreme Court is subordinate to Europe and was set up by Labour to replace traditional Law Lords sitting at Westminster. 
So don’t bank on it overturning yesterday’s ruling.
Anyway, surely if MPs thought they were entitled to a vote on Article 50, they should have gone about it themselves, in Parliament — not left it to a wealthy City slicker and Brazil’s answer to Teasy-Weasy to do their dirty work for them.
More to the point, for the past four decades, MPs have been content to surrender ever more power to unelected bureaucrats and judges in Brussels. 
So why now should they object to letting the British people make a democratic decision for once?
And here’s a final thought. Just imagine if the referendum had gone the other way and the Leave campaign had tried to stage a judicial coup to overturn the will of the people.
There’d be riots in the streets.

Sir Humphrey Appleby, played brilliantly by the late Nigel Hawthorne in Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s superb BBC series Yes, Minister, is everyone’s idea of the archetypal senior civil servant.
He would use a mixture of guile, flattery and low cunning to bend politicians to his will. Whitehall insiders agreed it was an accurate portrayal of the modus operandi employed by permanent secretaries.
When the wildly successful series and its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, were first broadcast, civil servants began to model themselves on Sir Humphrey, adopting his mannerisms and vocabulary.
Yet while Appleby pulled the strings, he was careful always to maintain the pretence that the politicians were in charge. No such restraint appears to apply to Sir Humphrey’s real-life modern incarnation, Sir Mark Sedwill.
Judging by recent photographs, Sedwill actually looks a bit like Appleby. But there the similarities end. According to a source quoted in a newspaper profile: ‘He can’t cope with the fact that he is not Prime Minister.’ Sedwill is not a man given to false modesty, or respecting the opinions of democratically elected ministers. He treats Cabinet members with undisguised contempt and takes decisions without consulting them.
Effectively, he runs a government within the Government, formulating policies and presenting them to the PM as a fait accompli.
Woe betide anyone who crosses him. One can’t imagine Sir Humphrey ever accosting a minister in a dark corridor and warning him: ‘Don’t underestimate how vindictive I can be.’
That is what Sedwill is reported to have done to former Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who was sacked last week after being accused of leaking details of Theresa May’s decision to involve the Chinese in building Britain’s 5G mobile phone network, despite security concerns.
Sedwill’s threat was made in January, after the two men crossed swords over the defence budget. Williamson, who denies responsibility for the leak, believes his dismissal was payback for crossing Sedwill, who decided he was guilty before the inquiry began.
This column holds no brief for Williamson, aka Private Pike, who appears to be overly ambitious, over-promoted and overly pleased with himself.
But his account certainly seems to have the ring of truth about it. Sedwill has a reputation, in which he revels, for bullying ministers. His overbearing behaviour is apparent at No 10’s morning meetings, where he is said to push people aside to secure the seat next to Mrs May.
More fool ministers if they allow themselves to be intimidated by Sedwill. But he is only able to get away with it because he is indulged by May. Sedwill has ruthlessly exploited the intellectual inadequacy of the Prime Minister and her mistrust of other politicians to become the most powerful civil servant in history.
He is now Cabinet Secretary, Head of the Civil Service and National Security Adviser — the first man to hold all three posts simultaneously. It can’t be healthy for such power to be concentrated in a single civil servant, especially one with apparent contemptuous disregard for elected politicians.
Sedwill first spotted May’s vacuity when she was Home Secretary and set about filling it. Talk to anyone who attended a meeting at the Home Office in those days and they will tell you she contributed next to nothing and always deferred to Sedwill.
May was little more than his glove puppet. From what I can gather, the same now applies in Downing Street. May takes more notice of her civil servants than her Cabinet colleagues. That’s how the ultra-Remainers in Whitehall have managed with ease to hijack the Brexit talks.
Sedwill may resent the fact that he isn’t the Prime Minister, but that doesn’t stop him acting like one. He arbitrarily ordered preparation for a No-Deal Brexit to be scrapped, without consulting ministers or Parliament, thus stripping away our most potent bargaining chip. The fact that Remainer MPs agreed with him is beside the point.
As one of the architects of Project Fear, he wrote a memo (conveniently leaked) warning of a 10 per cent rise in food prices and civil unrest in Northern Ireland unless May’s dismal, defeatist ‘deal’ was passed. So much for the civil service’s much-proclaimed neutrality.
He’d maintain he was only doing his job, acting in the public interest. But why should a mere civil servant have the right to determine what’s in the public interest and what isn’t? Mind you, a mere civil servant isn’t exactly how Sedwill sees himself. Ministers accuse him of behaving like an ‘emperor’.
Certainly he appears to have imperial designs of his own. This week he is due to lead a delegation of 15 senior Whitehall officials to Beijing, in what is described as a vainglorious ‘Mandarin mission for mandarins’ — aimed at bypassing ministers and establishing himself as the main point of contact between the British Government and the Chinese.
Again, sounds about right. It would explain his, and Mother Theresa’s, enthusiasm for giving Huawei part of the contract to build the 5G network, in the teeth of opposition from ministers, the security services and our closest allies.
It would also explain his determination to persuade May to sack Williamson, who refused to send any official from the MoD on the trip. By his own alleged admission: ‘Don’t underestimate how vindictive I can be.’
However rotten our politicians, at least we have an opportunity to remove them at the ballot box every few years. One of the main reasons 17.4 million voted Leave is that we don’t want to be governed by unelected foreign bureaucrats we can never get rid of.
Yet the same applies to our own civil service. Most of the time they behave properly with due diligence. But, occasionally, especially over Brexit, they work deliberately to undermine the democratically expressed will of the people.
Sedwill seems regularly to overstep the mark, to wield vast power without responsibility or accountability, largely because of the limpet-like dependency of the outgoing Prime Minister.
He is the very embodiment of the Deep State.
The good news is that, when May is eventually dragged screaming and kicking from No 10, Sedwill is likely to be out on his ear, too.
Two of the leading candidates to replace her have promised to show him the door. Not before time, either.
This particular Sir Humphrey needs to be cut down to size.
In Mandolin Wind, Rod Stewart sang about the coldest winter in almost 14 years. Now, thanks to climate change, he might have to rewrite the lyrics.
Instead of buffaloes dying in the frozen fields, there’ll be polar bears dying on the melting ice caps.
Mind you, we’ve just had the coldest May bank holiday in over 40 years. That’ll be the global warming, then.
And there was me worrying about developing skin cancer in my deckchair over the weekend.
Not that the alarmists will ever admit that the threat of the Earth catching fire next week may be somewhat exaggerated. Whatever the evidence, they’ll dismiss it as a blip.
But, honestly, frost, snow and minus four degrees in May? That’s what I call a climate emergency.
Marks & Sparks is under fire for flogging an LGBT sandwich in a rainbow packet, and donating thousands to gay charities. Sounds harmless enough. Apparently the ‘G’ stands for guacamole. And presumably, the ‘T’ is for added trans-fats, as a sop to the ‘trans community’. That should be enough to get it labelled ‘junk food’ and banned from being advertised on the London Underground.
 All in the line of duty for Arthur  
While millions of Line Of Duty fans were anxiously waiting to discover the identity of ‘H’, I had a more pressing mystery to solve.
Where had I seen D.I. Michelle Brandyce before? She was the non-binary detective given a memorable dressing down by Kate Fleming. Then it dawned on me.
Brandyce is the spitting image of P.C. Danny Sparks, in Juliet Bravo — the actor Mark Botham who went on to play northern numpty Darrell, who was getting married to Arthur Daley’s niece Trina in Minder.
Curiously, that episode, Another Bride, Another Groom, also featured the late, great Warren Clarke as a bent copper.
Hang on. You don’t think he could be ‘H’, do you? 
Tony Blair today branded Brexit a 'mistake of destiny' as he renewed calls for a rethink and a second referendum.
The former Prime Minister became the latest Remain supporter to make a desperate plea to Theresa May to cancel Brexit ahead of her major speech tomorrow.
Speaking in Brussels today Mr Blair insisted it was wrong to say cancelling Brexit was impossible and insisted 'anything can happen'. 
Mr Blair's new intervention comes a day after former Tory PM Sir John Major enraged Brexiteers with a demand for MPs to be given a free vote on the deal.  
The former Labour leader insisted Europe was ripe for reform and that changes would open the door to Britain changing its mind.
He said: 'If, at this moment, Europe was to offer a parallel path to Brexit of Britain staying in a reforming Europe, that would throw open the debate to transformation.
'People will say it can't happen.
'To which I say in these times in politics anything can happen.' 
Tony Blair today called on the EU to reform its immigration rules to deal with people's fears. 
But he failed to mention his decision as Prime Minister to throw open Britain's borders when the EU expanded into eastern Europe. 
In 2004, when eight new countries joined the bloc, Mr Blair declined to take up transitional controls on people coming to Britain.
It meant millions of people from countries including Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, could come to the UK years before they had access to most other EU nations. 
The decision fuelled mass migration to the UK and has been cited as a major reason why Britain voted for Brexit.  
In a call to Mrs May, he said: 'It doesn't take a miracle. It takes leadership. And now is when we need it.'  
Earlier, Mr Blair said it was 'sickening' that the Good Friday Agreement - which he helped negotiate - was being 'sacrificed' on the 'altar of Brexit'.
He also warned that a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic was inevitable unless Britain stays inside a customs union with the EU.
The comments came in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. Mr Blair said: 'The problem that she (Mrs May) has is that there is no way round the dilemma.
'What she thinks is that it's possible to get the European Union to give us access to Europe's markets without the same obligations that the rest of Europe has in the single market.
'That is not possible. It's not a question of a tough negotiation or a weak negotiation, it literally is not going to happen.
'So the dilemma you have is you're either going to have to stay close to Europe to minimise economic damage, in which case you abide by Europe's rules, or you're free from Europe's rules, in which case you're going to have economic damage.'
Mr Blair repeated his criticism of Brexiteers who dismiss the impasse in negotiations over maintaining a soft Irish border.
'I find it not just disappointing but sickening that people should really be prepared to sacrifice peace in Northern Ireland on the altar of Brexit,' he said.
He said Jeremy Corbyn's commitment to a customs union with the EU to maintain a soft border and maintain tariff-free trade was 'sensible', but warned Labour will 'very soon find that we've got to move further in order to escape the dilemma ourselves'.
In his speech later, Mr Blair is expected to urge EU leaders to take steps to address concerns about immigration.
The former premier will warn European politicians they share the responsibility to 'lead us out of the Brexit cul-de-sac'.
Mr Blair will argue that the British people should be given a final say on the Brexit deal - and if EU leaders offer further concessions, the public could change its mind on leaving the bloc.
He will set out three steps which could lead to a 'reconsideration of Brexit'.
The first would be to demonstrate to the British people that what they were told in June 2016 'has turned out much more complex and costly than they had thought'.
Remainers must also show that there are better ways to respond to the 'genuine underlying grievances beneath the Brexit vote, especially around immigration'.
And Mr Blair will insist EU leaders must accept the Brexit vote is a 'wake-up call' to change and 'not just an expression of British recalcitrance'.
Mr Blair will tell the European Policy Centre think tank: 'Reform in Europe is key to getting Britain to change its mind.'
He will call for 'a comprehensive plan on immigration control, which preserves Europe's values but is consistent with the concerns of its people and includes sensitivity to the challenges of the freedom of movement principle'.
There should also be a 'roadmap for future European reform' which would be 'timely for the evolving British debate on Brexit'. 
 
 
Britain's highest-ranking civil servant has issued a doomsday analysis of how the country would be affected by a No Deal Brexit, as MPs yet again failed to break the deadlock last night. 
The House of Commons rejected all four alternative Brexit plans in another series of votes last night, leaving Britain with no clear plan just 10 days before a possible cliff-edge exit. 
MPs rejected a customs union and a Norway-style agreement, dealing a blow to Remainer hopes of a soft Brexit, and also voted against a second referendum. 
The customs union plan proposed by longstanding Tory Europhile Kenneth Clarke was closest to victory - losing by just three votes, 276 to 273. 
But MPs have now rejected 12 'indicative vote' motions and approved none, after trouncing Theresa May's withdrawal agreement three times.  
Moments after last night's results emerged, Tory MP Nick Boles dramatically announced he was leaving the party, slamming his former colleagues for their failure to find a compromise. 
Sir Mark's bombshell letter to ministers, extracts of which have been leaked to the Daily Mail, comes ahead of a five-hour Cabinet showdown today. 
In the letter, the Cabinet Secretary says leaving the EU without a deal would hamper the police and security services and lead to the return of direct rule in Northern Ireland.
Sir Mark's 14-page letter warns:
Theresa May has summoned her Cabinet for a marathon five-hour meeting in No 10 today to thrash out whether to switch to a soft Brexit, leave without a deal next week or trigger a general election or second referendum.
Sir Mark Sedwill combines roles as both Britain's top civil servant and Theresa May's national security adviser.
Last October, he was appointed Cabinet Secretary by the Prime Minister after Lord Heywood retired through ill health.
In an unprecedented move, Mrs May allowed the 54-year-old to retain his existing role as national security adviser.
She cited the Government's crisis over Brexit to justify installing her long-standing lieutenant without a formal recruitment process. It was unclear if this was a temporary arrangement.
But in February, Sir Mark said his role had been permanently merged with his security brief to help 'make a success of Brexit'.
Sir Mark was Mrs May's permanent secretary at the Home Office from 2013 until she entered Downing Street in 2016. Before then his area of expertise had been in foreign policy.
He started his diplomatic career at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1989 and was posted to Egypt, Cyprus and Pakistan before becoming private secretary to foreign secretary Jack Straw be-fore the 2003 Iraq war, and ambassador to Afghanistan in 2009.
The session will begin with a three-hour meeting of the 'political Cabinet', during which ministers will discuss the political risks and consequences for the Tory Party.
But Sir Mark's letter warns that No Deal would have wider consequences for the UK's economy, security and constitution.
It was sent to every member of the Cabinet last week. It is understood ministers asked for Sir Mark's assessment to ensure they were complying with their duty to govern in the national interest.
The letter will now be kept in the Government's files and could be released in the event of a public inquiry into the handling of Brexit.
Sir Mark, who also serves as the Government's national security adviser, warns that No Deal would affect our security services. 'Our national security would be disrupted,' he says. 'The UK would forfeit access to criminal justice levers. None of our mitigation measures would give the UK the same security capabilities as our current ones.
'A No Deal exit would enormously increase pressure on our law and security authorities and on our judicial system. The UK would be less safe as a result of this.'
Sir Mark warns No Deal could lead to the break-up of the UK, saying: 'The stability of the union would be dislocated.'
He says Northern Ireland would face 'more severe' consequences, particularly as the lack of devolved government would require direct rule from London.
'The running of Northern Ireland under No Deal is a sensitive issue,' he says. 'The current powers granted to the Northern Irish Secretary would not be adequate for the pace, breadth or controversy of the decisions needed to be taken through a No Deal exit. Therefore we would have to introduce direct rule.'
One source said Sir Mark's warning on the union had convinced Mrs May she could not risk taking the UK out without a deal.
The letter says the Government does not expect the banking system to crash. But it warns firms heavily involved in trading with the EU could 'struggle to get credit'.
Sir Mark goes on: 'There would be enormous pressure on the Government to bail out companies on the brink.'
In a separate letter to Mrs May, 170 Tory MPs, including ten members of the Cabinet, have urged her to take us out of the EU next week even if she can't get her deal through. Andrea Leadsom, Steve Barclay, Penny Mordaunt, Geoffrey Cox, Gavin Williamson, Brandon Lewis, Sajid Javid, Liz Truss, Chris Grayling and Alun Cairns are understood to be warning her it would be better to leave without a deal than switch to a soft Brexit.
Miss Truss said: 'I think we are well-prepared for No Deal. I don't have any fear of No Deal.'
Mr Grayling, Mr Javid and Mr Williamson also warned yesterday against pursuing a soft Brexit option such as a customs union.
But a string of other ministers have indicated they could quit if the Government pursued No Deal, including David Lidington, David Gauke, Greg Clark, Amber Rudd, Claire Perry and David Mundell. While the Cabinet is united behind Mrs May's deal, ministers are deeply split on what to do if Parliament continues to oppose it.
MPs rejected the deal for a third time last Friday by 58 votes. Ministers will today discuss the idea of bringing back it for a fourth attempt, possibly on Thursday.
But with the DUP making it clear it will never back the deal, hope is fading that it can be passed before Britain is due to leave on April 12.
If the deal is not passed, Mrs May will travel to an emergency Brussels summit on April 10, where she will either have to request a lengthy delay to Brexit or inform the EU she has opted for No Deal.
Downing Street declined to comment on Sir Mark's letter. 
MPs voted down all alternative Brexit options in a second round of votes aimed at finding a replacement for Theresa May's Brexit deal last night. 
The Commons rejected a customs union, Norway-style soft Brexit, second referendum and cancelling Brexit - less than a week after eight plans were rejected in the first round. 
All of the plans got fewer Aye votes than Mrs May's deal received on its third drubbing on Friday. 
The customs union plan proposed by Ken Clarke was closest to victory - losing by just three votes 276 to 273. A second referendum got the most votes overall for a second week, with 280 votes to 292 against.  
Tory MP Nick Boles sensationally resigned from his party moments after the votes were announced - blaming the Conservatives' refusal to compromise for the failure to find a way forward. His plan for a Norway-style soft Brexit was defeated 282 to 261, having won just 33 Tory votes. 
Four alternative plans for Brexit were voted down by MPs tonight  - the second week in a row the Commons voted down everything.  

Motion C: Customs union with the EU - 276 to 273 DEFEATED 
Tory former chancellor Ken Clarke's customs union plan requires any Brexit deal to include, as a minimum, a commitment to negotiate a 'permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU'. 
This is where tonight's vote could get interesting. This amendment last week lost by the tightest margin of them all.
It went down by eight votes, losing by 272 to 264. It means that a handful of MPs changing their mind could see it across the line. 
But the SNP and Lib Dems abstained last time so those votes may not be easy to find on the polarised Tory and Labour benches. 
And it if did win it would cause havoc in the Government with Brexiteers going on the warpath. 
Motion D: Common market 2.0 - Norway-style soft Brexit - 282 to 261 DEFEATED 
A cross-party motion tabled by Conservatives Nick Boles, Robert Halfon and Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour's Stephen Kinnock, Lucy Powell plus the SNP's Stewart Hosie.
The motion proposes UK membership of the European Free Trade Association and European Economic Area. It allows continued participation in the single market and a 'comprehensive customs arrangement' with the EU after Brexit - including a 'UK say' on future EU trade deals - would remain in place until the agreement of a wider trade deal which guarantees frictionless movement of goods and an open border in Ireland.
Despite Labour backing last week this lost by almost 100 votes, 283 to 188. But 167 MPs abstained on it, including the DUP. If the Northern Irish party could be talked in to backing it there could be some movement. 
Motion E: Second referendum to approve any Brexit deal - 292 to 280 DEFEATED 
Drawn up by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, this motion would require a public vote to confirm any Brexit deal passed by Parliament before its ratification.
This option, tabled last time by Labour former minister Dame Margaret Beckett, polled the highest number of votes, although was defeated by 295 votes to 268. 
Labour MPs were whipped to support it but 27 mainly from northern Leave-voting areas voted against it and a further 18 - including several frontbenchers - abstained. 
Their support would have been enough to pass it but it seems unlikely they will change their minds, given that their concerns remain the same. 
Motion G: Revoke Brexit to avoid No Deal - 292 to 191 DEFEATED 
SNP MP Joanna Cherry joins with Mr Grieve and MPs from other parties with this plan to seek an extension to the Brexit process to allow Parliament and the Government to achieve a Brexit deal.
If if this is not possible then Parliament will choose between either no-deal or revoking Article 50. 
An inquiry would follow to assess the future relationship likely to be acceptable to Brussels and have majority support in the UK.  
In what may become an historic moment during the Brexit crisis and on the brink of tears, Mr Boles admitted his plan to find a consensus had 'failed' and announced he could no longer stay in the party.
An SNP-inspired plan to revoke Article 50 to avoid No Deal was the most heavily defeated. It lost 292 to 191.  
The votes were staged after rebel MPs seized control of the Commons agenda in the wake of Mrs May's deal being repeatedly trounced. After the votes were called, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay warned MPs had still not  voted for a clear way forward and confirmed the Cabinet would discuss the outcome tomorrow.  
Earlier, the debate was interrupted by semi-naked protesters in the public gallery. Demanding action on climate change, they said the endless Brexit debates were a distraction. 
Mrs May has summoned her ministers to an epic Cabinet tomorrow - fuelling speculation she is getting ready for the 'nuclear' option of an election despite her deep unpopularity in her own party. 
Instead of the usual 90-minute discussion, Tory ministers will spend three hours locked in talks without officials from 9am - meaning they can discuss party politics and how to tackle the Brexit endgame in light of the results.  
There will then be a normal two-hour Cabinet where the Government can take decisions on the fate of the nation. 
EU reaction arrived swiftly. Within minutes, European Parliament Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt, tweeted: 'The House of Commons again votes against all options.
'A hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable. On Wednesday, the U.K. has a last chance to break the deadlock or face the abyss.'  
Announcing his shock resignation, Mr Boles said: 'I have given everything to an attempt to find a compromise that can take this country out of the European Union while maintaining our economic strength and our political cohesion.
'I accept I have failed. I have failed chiefly because my party refuses to compromise. I regret therefore to announce I can no longer sit for this party.'
One MP could be heard saying: 'Oh Nick, don't go, come on.'
Independent Group leader Heidi Allen said she did not know Mr Boles was going to quit the Tories but said he was welcome to join their new group. 
Mr Boles later said on Twitter: 'I am resigning the Conservative whip with immediate effect.
'The Conservative Party has shown itself to be incapable of compromise so I will sit as an Independent Progressive Conservative.'
Most Tory MPs had a free vote on the alternatives to Mrs May's deal tonight, with 25 or more junior ministers predicted to be ready to back a softer Brexit. 
Just 37 Tory MPs split from the party line to back a customs union and 33 of them backed Mr Boles. There were 15 Tory votes for a second referendum.  
Cabinet ministers were told to abstain amid deep splits that may see mass resignations whichever way Mrs May chooses to respond to tonight's chaos. 
All eyes will be on the 10 ministers known to back a customs union with the EU if Theresa May's deal is killed off, including the 'gang of four' cabinet remainers: Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Scottish Secretary David Mundell. They would be willing to quit if Mrs May pushes for a No Deal Brexit and could do it by defying her order to abstain in tonight's indicative votes. 
After the votes, Mr Barclay said: 'This house has continuously rejected leaving without a deal just as it has rejected not leaving at all.
'Therefore the only option is to find a way through which allows the UK to leave with a deal.
'The Government continues to believe that the best course of action is to do so as soon as possible.
'If the House is able to pass a deal this week it may still be possible to avoid holding European Elections.
'Mr Speaker, Cabinet will meet in the morning to consider the results of tonight's vote and how we should proceed.'
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock, tweeted: 'Now, please, can we all just vote for the deal and deliver Brexit' after MPs rejected all four Brexit alternatives tabled for the second round of the indicative vote process.' 
Former Middle East minister Alistair Burt  - who quit to push for a soft Brexit - said he believed the Prime Minister would not allow a no deal to take place.
He said: 'The Prime Minister has made it very clear on a number of occasions she is very concerned about a no deal.
'She's said that for no deal to happen we would have to have express consent in the House of Commons.
'I hope we don't have a general election because I don't see what a general election would do to resolve the situation, it leaves the decisions that still have to be made until after the election.'
But former Brexit minister and European Research Group deputy chairman Steve Baker said Theresa May must go back to Brussels and renegotiate the deal - something the EU has repeatedly refused to do.
He told BBC's Newsnight: 'When the Cabinet meet tomorrow they have got some very hard choices to make.
'They face the choice between no deal and no Brexit unless they can go to this forthcoming European Council and table the legal text with the kind of changes which I and others have been setting out.' 
Former minister Nick Boles is the latest Remainer to quit the Tories as Theresa May fights a losing battle to bring the warring factions of her party under control. 
Mr Boles said he would sit as an 'Independent Progressive Conservative' after dramatically crossing the floor last night. 
The final straw for him was a narrow defeat, by 21 votes, for his Norway-plus proposal in the latest round of 'indicative votes' on Brexit. 
But Mr Boles, a prominent gay Conservative and strong David Cameron supporter, who has called himself a 'country boy turned metrosexual' has been on the brink of leaving the party for some time.  
Mr Boles, educated at Winchester and Oxford, was first elected a Tory councillor in 1998 in the City of Westminster in London. 
Now aged 53, he is also a two-time cancer survivor, having successful treatment in 2007 and again in 2017.  
He entered Parliament in 2010, winning the Lincolnshire seat of Grantham and Stamford which he held comfortably in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. 
In 2012 he became a minister under David Cameron, a Tory leader he said recently he was 'proud to support'. 
He served as a junior minister at Communities and Local Government, moving to be Minister of State for Skills in 2014 before returning to the back benches after Mr Cameron left office in the wake of the Brexit vote. 
During the referendum he backed Remain, saying last year he 'didn't believe that leaving the EU was worth the hassle'. 
Nonetheless he voted to trigger Article 50, having to be wheeled from his hospital bed to cast the vote despite undergoing chemotherapy treatment.  
He is gay and married to Israeli-born husband Shay Meshulam, who is 20 years younger than him. 
As a minister he said he had 'played a part in persuading David Cameron' to back the introduction of same-sex marriage. 
'I have wanted my party to be guided by liberal instincts, and inspired by progressive goals while also drawing on a deep well of conservative pragmatism and common sense,' he said recently. 
However he has found himself at odds with the Tory Government in recent months. 
In January he broke with the Tory front bench to champion a Labour-backed amendment, calling for Brexit to be delayed until 2020. 
He also spearheaded initial backbench efforts to seize control of Commons business in order to stop a No Deal departure. 
Two weeks ago he said he would not stand for re-election after efforts by local activists in the Grantham and Stamford Conservative Association to dump him as the party’s candidate. 
His allies have included fellow Remainer Amber Rudd, who called him a 'typically thoughtful' MP after he quit his local party.  
Monday night's votes were the final straw as Mr Boles declared his party had become 'incapable of compromise'. 
He will now sit on the opposition benches alongside other parties including Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and The Independent Group.    
A senior MEP warned last night that Britain must soon 'face the abyss' of No Deal after the Commons rejected every Brexit alternative for a second time.
The European Parliament's Guy Verhofstadt said a hard Brexit 'becomes nearly inevitable' as MPs in London continue to reject every option. 
'A hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable. On Wednesday, the U.K. has a last chance to break the deadlock or face the abyss,' he said.  
His intervention came after a leading German politician branded Brexit a 'big s**show' that is like a Shakesperean tragedy.  
Germany's Europe minister Michael Roth made the pithy assessment as he blasted Theresa May's Cabinet for being out of touch with the people, admitting that he was speaking 'very undiplomatically'.
He told a meeting of the Social Democratic Party in Berlin on Saturday that 90 per cent of Theresa May's top ministers had 'no idea how workers think, live, work and behave', Bloomberg reported.
The minister also lashed out at politicians 'born with silver spoons in their mouths, who went to private schools and elite universities' who would not suffer as a result of any messy Brexit.
He reportedly went on: 'I don't know if William Shakespeare could have come up with such a tragedy but who will foot the bill?' 
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker had told Italian public TV channel Rai 1: 'Our British friends we have had a lot of patience, but even patience is running out.'  
The pound dropped sharply on currency markets after MPs once again rejected every option in a series of Brexit votes. 
Sterling fell against both the pound and the euro as the chance of a softer Brexit appeared to diminish in the wake of the latest Commons results. 
In the moments after Ken Clarke's customs union proposal was rejected by three votes, the pound was at €1.164 and $1.305, a drop of around 0.5 per cent against both currencies. 
The results leave the door open to a chaotic No Deal Brexit in less than two weeks if MPs cannot agree a way forward. 
Earlier in the day the pound had risen as investors hoped the Government might back a soft Brexit, maintaining close ties to Brussels. 
Some ministers including Justice Secretary David Gauke had hinted at a pivot towards a customs union if there was enough support in Parliament.  
But defeats for both the customs union and Norway-style deal proposals has left the future of Brexit more uncertain than ever.  
Age: 46. Former Brexit Secretary. Diehard Brexiteer.
Background: Son of a Czech-born Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1938 and died of cancer when Raab was 12.
EXPERIENCE: Lasted only four months as Brexit Secretary. Voted against May in leadership confidence vote.
STRENGTH: Skilled debater who honed his skills as an adversarial lawyer with blue chip legal firm Linklaters.
WEAKNESS: Seen as too clever by half and lacking people skills.
VERDICT: In second place in ConservativeHome's leadership league table.
Age: 54. Former Foreign Secretary. His support for Brexit was vital to Leave's win.
Background: Known for being identified by just one name, Boris, for his show-off Classics references and for chaotic private life.
EXPERIENCE: Twice voted London mayor.
STRENGTH: Starry, charismatic and clever crowd-pleaser.
WEAKNESS: Bumbling foreign secretary. May struggle to win MPs' support. A 'Stop Boris' campaign is likely.
VERDICT: Party grassroots love him and he's top of the ConservativeHome league table by 12 points.
Age: 40. Health Secretary. Arch Remainer.
Background: Father bought their council house. Ran his own computer software business before becoming Chancellor George Osborne's chief of staff.
EXPERIENCE: Cabinet minister for only 18 months. Seen as a 'coming man'.
STRENGTH: One of life's Tiggers with ambition and enthusiasm to match his brainpower.
WEAKNESS: Never knowingly modest, he once foolishly likened himself to Churchill, Pitt and Disraeli.
VERDICT: Little known among Conservative Party members.
Age: 55. Work and Pensions Secretary. Remain cheerleader.
Background: Daughter of a Labour-supporting stockbroker and Tory-leaning JP.
EXPERIENCE: Became Home Secretary after just six years as an MP. Resigned over the Windrush scandal after inadvertently misleading MPs.
STRENGTH: Tough operator who was restored to Cabinet within six months.
WEAKNESS: Holds seat with majority of only 346. Headmisstressy manner but an accomplished performer.
VERDICT: Ninth in leadership league table.
Age: 51. Former Welfare Secretary. An ardent Brexiteer.
Background: Spent the first two years of her life in foster care. Was a breakfast TV presenter before becoming a Tory MP on Merseyside.
EXPERIENCE: As welfare minister was viciously targeted by Labour.
STRENGTH: Tough and telegenic. Won plaudits with members for resigning from Cabinet over Brexit deal.
WEAKNESS: Some say she doesn't have the intellectual fire power for top job.
VERDICT: Ranked 14th in league table.
Age: 46. International Development Secretary. Arch Brexiteer.
Background: Her mother died when she was a teenager. Cared for younger brother. EXPERIENCE: Was a magician's assistant. Appeared in the reality TV show Splash!
STRENGTH: Only female MP to be a Royal Naval Reservist. Attended Lady Thatcher's funeral in uniform.
WEAKNESS: Inexperienced, having been in Cabinet for less than two years. Has never run a major Whitehall department.
VERDICT: Edged up to 11th in ConservativeHome league table.
Age: 55. Leader of the Commons. Ardent Brexiteer.
Background: A former City trader. Mother of three.
EXPERIENCE: Struggled in her first Cabinet post, as Environment Secretary.
STRENGTH: Blossomed as Leader of the Commons, winning plaudits for taking on Speaker John Bercow.
WEAKNESS: Stood for leader in 2016 but made ill-considered comment comparing her experience as a mother to the childless Mrs May.
VERDICT: Has soared to the top of the ConservativeHome table of competent ministers.
Age: 51. Environment Secretary. High priest of Brexiteers.
Background: Adopted son of a Scottish fish merchant.
EXPERIENCE: Figurehead for Leave during referendum campaign. Cabinet heavyweight who's served as Education Secretary and Justice Secretary.
STRENGTH: Brilliant debater with razor sharp intellect.
WEAKNESS: Still suspected of having a disloyal gene after knifing Boris Johnson in last leadership contest.
VERDICT: Popular with the Tory members, who, crucially, will vote for the new leader.
Age: 42. Defence Secretary. Converted Remainer.
Background: From a Labour-supporting, working class family. Ran a pottery firm before becoming an MP.
EXPERIENCE: Started his rise as Mrs May's Chief Whip. Leap-frogged experienced colleagues to land defence job.
STRENGTH: Matinee idol looks and knack for self-promotion.
WEAKNESS: Military chiefs nicknamed him Private Pike after Dad's Army character. Suggested missiles should be fitted to tractors.
VERDICT: In 19th place in league table.
Age: 43 Chief Secretary to Treasury. Brexiteer.
Background: Raised by Left-wing parents and as a child was marched through the streets on anti-Thatcher protest shouting: 'Maggie out!'
EXPERIENCE: Joint-author in 2012 of a controversial booklet, Britannia Unchained, which alleged 'the British are among the worst idlers in the world'.
STRENGTH: A genuine free-marketeer.
WEAKNESS: Poor public speaker with a mixed ministerial record.
VERDICT: Only 15th in ConservativeHome leaders league table.
Age: 49. Home Secretary. Remainer who changed to Brexit after the referendum.
Background: Son of a bus driver who came to Britain from Pakistan with £1 in his pocket. Was head of credit trading at Deutsche Bank.
EXPERIENCE: Previously Culture and Business secretary, cracked down on union rights.
STRENGTH: An extraordinary rags-to-riches back story that we will hear more of during the leadership campaign.
WEAKNESS: Widely seen as a wooden and a poor speaker.
VERDICT: In 4th place in ConservativeHome league table.
Age: 52. Foreign Secretary
Background: Eldest son of Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt. Married to a Chinese wife and he speaks Mandarin.
Before politics, set up an educational publisher which was sold for £30million in 2017.
EXPERIENCE: Longest-serving health secretary in history.
STRENGTH: Among the most experienced ministers in the field who, unusually, has made few political enemies.
WEAKNESS: Some, though, regard him as a 'bit of a drip'.
Verdict: Seen by many as man who could best unite party on Brexit.
A new Tory Brexit row erupted last night after Boris Johnson was accused of whipping up fears of riots to rescue his bid to take Britain out of the EU on October 31.
Former Conservative minister Dominic Grieve said he feared the Prime Minister intended to declare a state of emergency to force through Brexit, using the threat of civil disorder as an excuse.
In a highly provocative claim, the pro-Remain MP said: ‘The message coming from Downing St is – we have to leave by October 31 or there will be riots.’
He accused the Government of ‘talking up’ the possibility with a view to using riots to justify invoking the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 – which includes emergency powers that would enable Mr Johnson to ignore the anti-No Deal law approved this month in Parliament.
The comments by Mr Grieve – one of 21 Tory MPs thrown out of the party for backing the Labour plot to scupper a No Deal Brexit – were denounced by pro-Brexit ex-Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith as ‘shameful.’
He added: ‘This is the new Project Fear. Having failed to dupe voters in the 2016 referendum campaign into believing they should be frightened of leaving the EU, the opponents of Brexit are now trying to make people frightened of Boris Johnson.’
The new Tory rift followed angry scenes in the Commons this week after Mr Johnson dismissed Labour MPs’ fears that his rhetoric put them at risk as ‘humbug.’ 
The dispute about the anti-No Deal law put forward by Labour MP Hilary Benn – dubbed the ‘Surrender Act’ by the Prime Minister – came as Downing St rejected a claim by Sir John Major that Mr Johnson could use the Privy Council to bypass it.
Sir John warned an Order in Council could be used – a method which would not involve the Queen – but this was dismissed as ‘complete nonsense’ by Government sources.
Most legal experts say they cannot see how Mr Johnson can avoid being forced to ask Brussels to extend the UK’s EU membership unless he has achieved a deal by mid-October. 
Asked how the PM might circumvent the Benn law, a No 10 spokesman said: ‘We will comply with the law, but we are leaving on October 31.’
Mr Grieve intervened after an unnamed ‘senior Cabinet Minister’ reportedly told the Times that Britain risked a ‘violent, popular uprising’, similar to the French ‘gilets jaunes’ protests, if a second EU referendum overturned the first result.
The Minister reportedly said: ‘People don’t think it’s possible in this country just because it has not happened before. Now they have a model – gilets jaunes – and it only takes a couple of nasty populist frontmen to inspire people.’
Tensions were also fuelled by the PM’s chief No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings who said people were angry with MPs for blocking Brexit. He vowed Brexit will happen by October 31 ‘by any means necessary’.
The Civil Contingencies Act contains powers including curfews, travel bans, confiscation of property and in extreme cases, calling in the Army. It can also be used to amend Acts of Parliament, except the Human Rights Act, for up to 21 days.
DOMINIC GRIEVE: We'll go to court to stop Boris Johnson and we will win
While accepting that Boris Johnson is determined to deliver Brexit, I have always assumed that his Government would abide by the same rules that have applied to previous British governments. But events of the last week or so have made me seriously wonder whether that is any longer the case.
I have been astonished to hear ministers talking up the possibility of civil disorder if we do not leave the EU on October 31.  
They are consistent with Mr Johnson’s response in the Commons to female Labour MPs who said they had received threats because of Brexit. In effect, he told them the way to stop the threats was to deliver Brexit.
And it is in line with Dominic Cummings’ comment that the Government will leave on October 31 ‘by any means necessary’.
The message coming from Downing Street is we have to leave by October 31 or there will be riots.
My worry is that this is part of an orchestrated script and part of a Government policy to get around the law drafted by Labour MP Hilary Benn and approved by the Commons – with my support – designed to prevent the Prime Minister taking the UK out of the EU next month without a deal. 
My suspicion is that they may be planning to use the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act to suspend that law on the grounds that otherwise there will be riots before and afterwards.
What I find most shocking is that ministers seem to be actively promoting this idea to justify invoking the Civil Contingencies Act and declaring a state of emergency.
I realise that I am open to criticism by those who support Brexit and who say my main aim is to stop it. 
But however passionately people feel about this, the debate inside and outside Parliament must be conducted in a calm and respectful manner. 
Like many MPs at the forefront of this debate, I have received my share of unpleasant threats but, for the most part, I am struck how the majority of people still discuss the matter in moderate terms.
For ministers to indulge in wild talk about civil disorder if they are prevented from taking us out of the EU with no deal on October 31 is appalling – and even worse if it has the sinister ulterior motive of thwarting any attempt by Parliament to stop it happening.
I do not believe the Government could get away it. If they try to overturn the Benn Act, we will go court to stop them and I believe we will win. 
Theresa May is preparing for a final showdown with the chair of the powerful Tory 1922 committee on Friday, just hours after a potential European election drubbing at the hands of Nigel Farage.
The premier is now facing overwhelming pressure to fall on her sword tomorrow when she meets Sir Graham Brady - with the Tories are predicted to get 12 per cent of the vote in the European elections - 23 points behind Nigel Farage Brexit Party who are on 35 per cent.
It is expected that Mrs May will announce her departure date, but if she refuses to set a timetable for standing down as leader the committee will almost certainly change the rules to allow a fresh no-confidence vote - in which she would be doomed to defeat. 
It comes as former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith stepped up the attack on the premier today by suggesting her husband - known as her 'rock' - must offer her some tough advice. 
'The only person closest to her is clearly her husband, and I think somebody has to say look, nobody likes this, this is horrific what's going on at the moment,' he told TalkRadio. 
'Politics is a nasty, sometimes brutal, ghastly business. But the reality is that she has no confidence any longer, not just in her party but in the Cabinet as well. 
'So the best thing for her and the best thing for everybody else is to break away and say its time to find a new leader, somebody who campaigned for Brexit, who is committed to Brexit in any form.'  
The appeal comes as Mrs May's job is hanging by a thread after a massive Tory mutiny that saw Andrea Leadsom resign on Wednesday night - and left the government's plans in tatters. 
MPs have been told the legislation will not now be published today and the second reading will not take place in the first week of June - despite Mrs May previously laying out the timetable.
The humiliating retreat is the clearest sign yet that Mrs May's time in power is drawing to a close, after fury at her compromise offer for the Commons to vote on whether to hold another Brexit referendum.
Half-a-dozen other senior ministers - including Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Penny Mordaunt - looked ready to follow Mrs Leadsom out the door if she had not changed course. Mr Javid and Mr Hunt both met the PM privately today, with the Home Secretary understood to have had a 'frank exchange' about the need for changes to the legislation - but the issue of whether she should resign was not discussed.  
The meltdown comes as millions of British voters are heading to the polls to give their verdict on Mrs May's failure to deliver Brexit as her own MEPs warned they will all be wiped out spelling 'the end of our party'.
Mrs May tried to put a brave face on the situation this afternoon as she voted with Philip in Sonning, Berkshire.  

The PM's party is also trailing Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the final opinion poll before today's election has revealed, but they may just edge out the Greens. Some polls showed the Tories could win just seven per cent of the vote - their lowest share in history. 
In a sign of the depth of Tory divisions, digital minister Margot James complained that the PM was being 'hounded out' by Brexiteers. Mrs May has also moved to fill the gaps in her team, promoting Treasury minister Mel Stride - an ally of Michael Gove - to fill the Cabinet job vacated by Mrs Leadsom.  
A 1922 Committee source said they expected Mrs May would stay until June 10, but warned there would be 'much greater pressure' for her to go immediately if she introduces the WAB. 
'Hopefully what will happen is she will stand down as Tory leader I think on or before June 10, and she will hopefully remain as caretaker Prime Minister until such time as a new Tory leader is elected,' they said. 'My feeling is that she will stay until June 10.' 
Tories have predicted the party's candidates will be wiped out in today's Euro elections with North West MEP Sajjad Karim warning today his party 'will live to regret' allowing people to vote today by failing to deliver Brexit, and said candidates had been cut adrift.
The powerful 1922 committee last night held a secret ballot on whether to force Theresa May out of No 10, the Mail understands.
The executive of 'men in grey suits' voted to decide whether to change the rules and allow a second no confidence vote in the Prime Minister within six months.
Under existing rules she would be safe for a year, but the committee has been under pressure from MPs to allow a move against her.
The votes will only be opened if Mrs May refuses to quit tomorrow after the European elections.
She has agreed to meet Sir Graham Brady, the committee's chairman to discuss her future and MPs will only open the ballots and consider a rule change if she fails to go.
One source said Sir Graham argued against changing the rules during the meeting of the 18-strong executive. He said it would set a precedent which could undermine future leaders.
Current rules say a Tory leader can only face one no-confidence ballot of MPs in any 12-month period.
A ballot is triggered if 15 per cent of MPs write letters to the 1922 committee chairman. The leader must then win a simple majority of MPs in a secret ballot to stay in office.
In December an attempted coup by Eurosceptic Tory MPs fell short with 117 votes against and 200 in favour.
But MPs opposed to Mrs May have since argued for a change in the rules so she could be forced from office with another vote within six months.
He said: 'We will be annihilated, the Conservative party will be annihilated. It was pretty much a case of sending in the foot soldiers and then the generals abandoned the battlefield. It was quite clear those that were supposed to be backing us up on the battlefield all abandoned as well, and the candidates were all left there looking for where the next round of bullets was going to come from'.
And in private messages, fellow Brussels Tory Daniel Hannan said the Conservatives will be left with no MEPs as voters flock to Nigel Farage's new party.
He also warned that the Tories faced 'the end of our party' and the election of a Corbyn government. 
Mr Hannan, who represents the South East of England, made the comments on a WhatsApp group for Tory activists. 'I am expecting us to end up with zero MEPs,' he wrote. 
'Sadly it will give Corbyn unstoppable momentum and this, paradoxically, will derail Brexit. Funny old world.' In separate messages, he suggested the Tories could slip below 10 per cent when votes are counted.
'If our members stay away, or vote for another party, we may well slip below 10 per cent – a level from which no party bounces back.
'We're looking, not just at a Corbyn government, but at the end of our party as a viable movement.'
Mrs May's grip on power is failing following a dramatic Cabinet revolt yesterday where ministers savaged her concessions to Labour over Brexit.
Mrs Leadsom piled pressure on the Prime Minister by announcing her own resignation from the Cabinet last night. 
In a parting blast, the Commons Leader said she could not stomach the latest version of Mrs May's Brexit deal, with its offer of a second referendum.
Other ministers are said to be ready to go too if the Prime Minister tries to cling to power after today's European elections. 
Mr May is reputed to be his wife's closest adviser, and has been steeped in local politics in her Maidenhead constituency. 
He has also rushed to her side at times of maximum crisis - and often takes up prominent spots in the Commons viewing gallery when she has major statements to deliver. 
Government whip Mark Spencer, filling in for the departed Commons leader today, told MPs that the Bill was being pulled.
It had been due to be published tomorrow, then debated and voted on in the week of June 3, immediately after the half-term recess. 
Mr Spencer said: 'We will update the House on the publication and introduction of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on our return from the Whitsun recess.' 
Tory backbenchers were in uproar over Mrs May's decision to seek Labour support in the hope of getting her deal through the House of Commons at the fourth attempt. 
At one stage yesterday, some aides believed she was on the verge of quitting on the spot – and even started preparations for a resignation statement. 
But chief whip Julian Smith later told the 1922 Committee that Mrs May intended to campaign in today's elections and would instead meet Sir Graham tomorrow.
Sources said meetings with senior ministers were postponed because Mrs May was having her regular audience with the Queen, who she was expected to brief on her intentions. 
Ahead of the PM's showdown meeting with Sir Graham, 1922 Committee treasurer Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: 'I want her to give a timetable for when she will go.
'I think this blank denial from Number 10 today may be a smokescreen because she does not want to influence the outcome of the European elections.
'Maybe she will still quit tomorrow.'
A YouGov poll for the Times showed both main parties being hammered when the results are published on Sunday. 
It put the Brexit Party on 37 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 19 per cent and Labour on 13 per cent, just one point ahead of the Greens. The Tories were in fifth on seven points, just four ahead of Ukip. In a sign of ebbing support among activists, the ConHome website urged Tory supporters to abstain rather than vote for the party unless Theresa May quits ahead of polling today.
A former civil service boss was accused of ditching Whitehall impartiality by announcing he would be voting for the Lib Dems today.
Lord Gus O'Donnell said it was his 'civic duty' to vote for the most consistently Remain party.
The former cabinet secretary rote in the Times that the clearest choice was 'voting Liberal Democrat in England, so that's what I will do'. He said: 'I would urge all those who support Remain to do the same. It feels very strange to be specifying a preference for a particular party.
'However, as a crossbencher in the Lords, and faced with a decision that will affect generations to come, I believe it is my civic duty to vote and there is now no reason not to be clear about how I use this precious power that democracies bestow on their citizens.'
Tory MP Neil O'Brien said: 'The trend of former senior civil servants getting involved in politics and particularly declaring their allegiance is going to be very bad for the civil service longer term.'
Yesterday another Conservative peer was suspended from the party whip for pledging to vote Liberal Democrat in the European elections.
Lord Cooper, the founder of pollster Populus who was David Cameron's director of strategy in Downing Street, received the punishment two days after it was imposed on former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine.
He tweeted: 'I have come to the same conclusion as Michael Heseltine, for exactly the same reasons – and will be voting Lib Dem in Thursday's European parliament elections.'
Lord Cooper was subsequently told by his chief whip that 'endorsing the candidates of another party is not compatible with taking the Conservative whip'.
Labour peer Lord Cashman said he had quit his party to vote Lib Dem.
The former EastEnders actor said: 'I can't trust Jeremy Corbyn or the people around him on the defining issue in postwar Britain, so on Thursday I will not be voting for the Labour Party. As Matthew Parris said, I am not a Liberal Democrat, but I support their absolute consistency. Voting Lib Dem in the EU elections.'
Later he wrote: 'I think I've just resigned from the Labour party by declaring that I will support the Liberal Democrats in the European elections.'
A huge field of candidates is expected to run to replace Theresa May. 
While as many as 25 could run they will swiftly be whittled down into a workable number as MPs show their allegiances and plot to get their chosen man or woman into Downing Street.
Here we look at the main runners and riders, with their odds with Ladbrokes and how they voted in the 2016 referendum:
Boris Johnson: The long-running thorn in May's side  who has recently had a 'prime ministerial' makeover
The former foreign secretary, 54, who quit last July and has been tacitly campaigning for the leadership ever since. He finally went public last week to confirm he would run.
Never far from the limelight the father-of-four recently split from his wife Marina and is in a relationship with former Conservative staffer Carrie Symonds, 20 years his junior. 
As an increasingly hawkish Brexiteer who says we should not be afraid of leaving without a deal he is hugely popular with the party faithful.
At the start of the year he underwent what might be deemed a 'prime ministerial' makeover, losing weight and taming his unruly mop of blonde hair.
Popular with the rank-and-file membership he has less fans in the parliamentary party and may face a concerted campaign to block his succession. Received the surprise backing of Johnny Mercer last night.
Dominic Raab: Brexiteer who quit rather than back Mrs May's deal
Mr Raab, 45, is another Vote Leave member who became Brexit secretary after David Davis quit alongside Mr Johnson last July over the Chequers plan.
But he lasted just a matter of months before he too jumped ship, saying he could not accept the terms of the deal done by the Prime Minister.
Like Mr Johnson and Mr Davis he has become an increasingly hardline Brexiteer, sharing a platform with the DUP's Arlene Foster and suggesting we should not be afraid of a no-deal Brexit.
The Esher and Walton MP's decision to quit in November, boosted his popularity with party members but he lacks the wider popular appeal of Mr Johnson.
And like Mr Johnson he might benefit from having quit the Cabinet at an earlier stage and dissociating himself with the dying days of the May administration.  
His odds have shortened as he is seen as possibly a more palatable alternative Brexiteer to Boris by MPs seeking to block Mr Johnson's run.
He recently posed for a glossy photoshoot with wife Erika at their Surrey home, seen as a sign he will run. 
Andrea Leadsom: May's former rival who finally decided she could take no more
The former Commons' Leader piled pressure on the Prime Minister by announcing her own resignation from the Cabinet last night. 
In a parting blast, the Commons Leader said she could not stomach the latest version of Mrs May's Brexit deal, with its offer of a second referendum.
It was the final act by an MP whose departure had seemingly been on the cards for months.  
Mrs Leadsom, a mother of three, stood against Mrs May for the party leadership in 2016 before conceding defeat before it was put to a vote of MPs.
As collective responsibility largely broke down among ministers she became an increasingly vocal and clear Brexiteer voice in the Cabinet along line similar lines to Mr Johnson and Mr Raab.
She was the host of a Brexiteer 'pizza party' in Parliament that included Michael Gove and Liz Truss as the vying wings of the Cabinet plotted to shape the Brexit deal they wanted.
In her role as Commons' Leader she frequently clashes with Speaker John Bercow over issues including bullying in Parliament.
It is something that will do her no harm among the Tory backbenches where he is widely loathed. 
Jeremy Hunt: Remainer turned Brexiteer unity candidate who wants to heal the party
The Foreign Secretary who has undergone a Damascene conversion to the Brexit cause and is seen as a safe if uninspiring pair of hands.
The 52-year-old South West Surrey MP has reportedly been selling himself to colleagues as a unity candidate who can bring together the fractious Tory factions into something approaching a cohesive party. 
A long-serving health secretary, the father-of three replaced Mr Johnson as the UK's top diplomat and has won some plaudits over issues like the imprisonment of British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran.
But critics point to tub-thumpingly comparing the EU to the USSR at the party conference last year - which was very badly received in Brussels - and a gaffe in which he referred to his Chinese wife  as 'Japanese' as a reception in China.
Last month he went on a tour of Africa in which his Chinese wife Lucia made a major appearance, after he gaffed by forgetting her nationality.
Last week he called for a 'decisive' hike in defence spending to see off the rising threat from Russia and China – in a speech seen as a clear signal of his leadership ambitions. 
Speaking at the Lord Mayor's Banquet Mansion House in the City of London, he said the UK's hard power must be strengthened, with billions more spent on new capabilities to tackle drones and cyber attacks.
Michael Gove: The boomerang cabinet minister with a Machiavellian reputation
A Brexiteer with a Machiavellian reputation after the 2016 leadership campaign in which he first supported Boris Johnson for the leadership and then stood against him, to their mutual disadvantage.
The former education secretary -  sacked by Mrs May -  was rehabilitated to become a right-on environment secretary - complete with reusable coffee cups and a strong line on food standards after Brexit.
Despite being a former lead figure in the Vote Leave campaign alongside Mr Johnson the former journalist and MP for Surrey Heath has swung behind Mrs May's Brexit deal -  which might count against him.
But while he noisily supports the deal - he views the alternatives as worse - the father-of-two - married to Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine -  is quieter when it comes to supporting the Prime Minister and practically mute when it comes to her future.
Seen as one of the Cabinet's strongest political thinkers and having stood once it is unthinkable that he would not stand again.
But like many others he has yet to publicly declare his candidacy. 
If he did it would again pitch him pitched against Mr Johnson in a battle for Brexiteer votes. 
Penny Mordaunt: The highly regarded Brexiteer promoted to take on defence
The new Defence Secretary - the first woman ever to hold the post - is highly regarded in Brexiteer circles. 
The Royal Navy reservist, 46, carved out a niche at International Development with some eye-catching suggests about changing how the UK spends disperses aid cash.
She has become an increasingly serious politician after initially being seen as lighthearted when she appeared in a swimsuit in ITV reality TV show Splash!
She was promoted earlier this month to replace Gavin Williamson when he was sacked for leaking details from a confidential meeting about Huawei.   
Over the preceding few months she was at the heart of persistent rumours that she would be the next Brexit-supporting minister out the door over Brexit. 
She has yet to announce she is running but last month she backed a thinktank report saying the party needed to attract new voters.
She said the party needed to 'act swiftly' to win over the younger generations who were turning away from the centre-Right in 'unprecedented' numbers. 
Yesterday, after other Cabinet Brexiteers including Andrea Leadsom were notable by their absence during Prime Minister's Questions, she remained at her post. It remains to be seen whether this loyalty will count for or against her. 
Sajid Javid: Remainer star who has run into trouble over knife crime and refugees
The Home Secretary, a Remainer who wants to see Brexit delivered, was the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet to replace Mrs May.
After replacing Amber Rudd last year he consciously put clear ground between himself and the Prime Minister on issues like caps on skilled migrants after Brexit.
But his credentials have taken a hit recently. He finds himself facing ongoing criticism of his handling of the knife crime crisis affecting UK cities, which sparked a Cabinet row over funding for police.
He also lost face over his handling of the influx of migrants crossing the English Channel in January, being seen to move slowly in realising the scale of the problem.
But more recently the 49-year-old Bromsgove MP has made a serious of hardline decision designed to go down well with Tory voters. 
Most notably they have included moving to deprive London teenager turned Jihadi bride Shamima Begum, 19, of her British citizenship, after she was discovered among former Islamic State members in a Syrian refugee camp.
Matt Hancock: Waffle-loving health secretary who wants Tories to choose a younger leader 
The Health Secretary is, like his predecessor Jeremy Hunt, seen as something of a unity candidate.
The 40-year-old father of three is seen as a safe pair of hands despite a few teething problems in his latest Cabinet role.
Last year he was accused of breaking ethics rules after he praised a private health firm app in a newspaper article sponsored by its maker.
But he has since make some hard-hitting interventions in ares like the impact of social media on health. 
Last month he joined Ms Mordaunt in backing the Generation Why? report showing that the Tories needed to become more relevant to younger voters. 
He called on the party to change its 'tone' towards modern Britain or face Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, in a speech widely seen as setting out his leadership credentials.
This week he showed his human side by unashamedly chomping calorific stroopwafels before a TV broadcast, saying he people should enjoy things in moderation. 
Rory Stewart: Remainer rising star and friend of royals who is not short of confidence 
The former prisons minister who once vowed to quit if they did not improve within a year declared his candidacy almost as soon as he was promoted to the Cabinet.
He stepped up to International Development Secretary earlier this month to replace Ms Mordaunt and days later declared he will run for the Tory leadership.
The Theresa May loyalist praised the PM for her 'courageous effort' to pass her Brexit deal but admitted he would throw his hat in the ring when she steps down.
Urging his party not to 'try to outdo Nigel Farage', the development secretary said the Tories should 'stretch all the way from Ken Clarke to Jacob Rees-Mogg'.
The Old Etonian former tutor to the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex previously worked for the Foreign Office in Iraq and set up a charity for the Prince of Wales in Afghanistan.
He has also written several books about walking. 
The father of two is married to Shoshana, whom he first met when they worked together in Iraq and she was already married.   
Seen as highly intelligent his staunch Remainer and soft Brexit credentials look likely to count against him in a race set to be dominated by the Brexiteer wing of the party.  
Esther McVey: Former TV presenter and minister who quit Government over Brexit 
The former Work and Pensions Secretary declared her leadership bid last month and has set out a stall as a right-wing blue-collar candidate from a working class  Liverpudlian background.
The former television journalist, is engaged to fellow Tory backbench Brexiteer  Philip Davies, 47, having previously had a romance with ex-minister Ed Vaizey. She has no children.
This week she set out her leadership pitch by calling for the party to use £7billion of foreign aid cash on buckling British police forces and schools.
Launching a 'blue collar conservatism' campaign the Brexiteer MP, 51, said her party had 'lost the trust' of working people by failing to leave the EU already and must pursue 'radical conservative agendas' to win it back'.
She said that keeping cash in the UK that is currently sent abroad would allow an increase of £4billion in spending on schools and £3billion for police, which are both demanding more money.
And she declined to rule out doing a post-election deal with Nigel Farage - but said that if the Tories got the UK out it would mean that his Brexit Party would have no reason to exist. 
Speaking in Westminster she reiterated her call for the next party leader to be 'someone who believes in Brexit' - a dig at Mrs May, who supported the Remain campaign in 2016. 
So what will happen if Theresa goes? May would limp on as 'zombie Prime Minister' while Tories choose new leader 
Theresa May appears to have potentially just hours left as Conservative leader as her authority and Government crumbles around her amid a mass mutiny.
After the Prime Minister was rocked by the departure of Commons' Leader Andrea Leadsom last night she pulled out of a plan to hold a vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in the first week of June.
In little more than 24 hours the besieged leader is due to hold a showdown with backbench kingmaker Sir Graham Brady in which she is expected to announce her resignation.
The mutiny on the green benches has been growing like a volcano over recent weeks but the Prime Minister has so far resisted all efforts to pry her immediately from the leadership. 
However after postponing the WAB vote to see off an immediate rebellion by her Cabinet, she appears to be almost out of options. 
That would pave the way for a summer leadership battle between a wide field of ambitious MPs currently led by Boris Johnson - with the victor having to cobble together Brexit before the October 31 deadline.  
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TOMORROW? 
The Prime Minister will hold the latest - and possibly the last - in a series of meeting with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, whose membership is made up of all backbench Tory MPs.
If she has not already resigned, she is expected to be presented with a simple choice by the Altrincham and Sale West MP - resign or be removed.
Mrs May has clung on thus far but even she seems to finally have become politically hamstrung.
The executive of the 1922 Committee held a vote last night on whether to alter party rules to allow a no-confidence vote to be held in her leadership immediately.
HOW CAN THEY REMOVE HER? 
Wednesday night's vote was a bizarre form of blackmail aimed squarely at the Prime Minister besieged in Number 10.
She faced a party no-confidence vote in December, winning against the odds by 83 votes. Under current party rules designed to maintain stability she cannot face another such vote until December this year.
But such is the scale of the mutiny that MPs including influential 1922 lieutenants like Nigel Evans have pushed for the rules to be relaxed. Otherwise May could remain at the helm of a zombie government for months.
The ballot papers have not been counted but instead placed in an envelope. If Theresa May has not resigned by tomorrow - or does not say she is resigning at the meeting with Sir Graham, it will be opened.
The implicit threat to Mrs May is: fall on your sword or we shall wield it for you.
The 1922 executive has been resisting calls to alter the rules for fear of setting a destabilising precedent but the wave of anger seems likely to mean it is a credible threat. 

IS THERE ANY OTHER WAY TO REMOVE HER?
Even at this late stage there is no other easy way for the mutineers to make her walk the plank at a time not of her own choosing. 
But they have some options:   
 HOW WOULD A NO CONFIDENCE VOTE WORK?
Calling votes of no confidence is the responsibility of Sir Graham. He Brady is obliged to call a vote if 15 per cent of Tory MPs write to him calling for one - currently 48 MPs. 
The process is secret and only Sir Graham knows how many letters he has received.
Before December's vote he revealed that he did not even tell his own wife how many letters he had received. 
The amount of time it takes to hit the magic number can be slightly complicated by the fact that MPs are able to withdraw their letters after they send them in, meaning the umber can go down as well as up. 
But that seems unlikely in the current climate within the party. 
Once triggered, the ballot can be organised very quickly and is a simple yes or no question of whether she should remain leader. The vote and the result announcement can be held on the same day.
IF SHE GOES, WHEN WILL SHE GO? 
Pressure is mounting on Theresa May to step down immediately. Her attempt to woo MPs with the WAB has instead poured petrol on the simmering fire burning among her own MPs. 
There is also the small matter of the European Elections today, in which the Conservatives are expected to suffer a cataclysmic defeat, mainly at the hands of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party. 
The WAB appears to have been kicked into the long grass after the rebellion and in any case, a defeat would be the fourth time her deal with the EU has been rejected by MPs - and Brexit Secretary Steven Barclay has admitted the package would then be 'dead'. 
Which date she sets - if any - could spark yet another row if her opponents feel it is not swift enough.
If the situation was not fraught enough, the PM must also contend with the arrival of Donald Trump for a long-awaited and controversial three-day State Visit at the start of June. He has not been shy of voicing his disapproval for her Brexit deal, and is widely expected to throw some grenades into the debate. 
He could be placed in the bizarre position of meeting Theresa May while she is Prime Minister but not leader of the Conservatives. 
Up to now Theresa May and Number 10 have been insisting - publicly at least - that she wanted to get a Brexit deal done before stepping down.
That would set her up to leave perhaps in the autumn. But that now seems an almost impossible task as calls for her resignation become deafening. 
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO BREXIT? 
Britain still has until October 31 to get Brexit sorted and leave under the current terms of the agreement with the EU.
But if Mrs May does step down her successor will face the same problem she does: MPs will not pass the current deal. 
So they will be faced with a looming deadline and several choices to make:
HOW IS THE NEW LEADER CHOSEN?
If the leader is ousted, they typically remain as Prime Minister until a successor is appointed and ready to be confirmed by the Queen.
Any MP - apart from the ousted leader - is eligible to stand in the subsequent contest.
Conservative MPs hold a series of ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to two, with the lowest placed candidate dropping out in each round.
The final two candidates are then offered to the Tory membership at large for an election. 
 WHO IS THE NEW LEADER GOING TO BE? 
 The current frontrunners are Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Jeremy Hunt.
Mr Johnson is considered the front runner to take the top job, but historically such contests have thrown up surprises. 
Other leading contenders include Sajid Javid, Andrea Leadsom, Michael Gove, Matt Hancock and Penny Mordaunt.
There is also the matter of a 'stop Boris' campaign among MPs to stop him taking over, which means it may be left to someone else to deal with Brexit. 
HOW LONG WILL THE LEADERSHIP VOTE TAKE? 
Party chiefs hope that the first stage can be completed within a few weeks. The run-off could then either be rushed through in July, or take place over the summer parliamentary recess.
But opinion is divided over how long the leadership battle could take.
Lats year Wrekin MP Mark Pritchard suggested it could be done in just two weeks, suggesting that Mrs May's replacement could be in place by July. 
He suggested it would take 'four days in the Commons and six days with the membership' and 'does not need to be an overly long process'.
Others believe it could take longer.  
WHAT IS THE RUSH?
The Tories wants to have a new leader in place before the party conference at the end of September and the by-then looming October 31 Brexit deadline.
The Tory gathering in Manchester this autumn will be the natural time for a new leader to take the stage and try to unite the fractured party.
Assuming no way has been found to force a Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament by this point, they will need to spell out how they intend to approach the Brexit process.
Victory for a harder-line Brexiteer such as Mr Johnson could see the party vow to leave the EU in a matter of weeks, with or without a deal. 
They will also need to consider whether such a policy can be pushed through the Commons with the current batch of MPs - or whether a bold move like a general election has become unavoidable.  
Pictures of a bleary-eyed Theresa May being driven away from Parliament last night bore an uncanny resemblance to those memorable shots of Margaret Thatcher on her last political legs in late 1989.
The then-Mrs Thatcher was seen in tears in the back of her car after a merciless string of Cabinet resignations. 
The Daily Mail's headline on November 22 - six days before she announced her departure - read 'Battling On', as she desperately scrambled for her colleagues' support as they filed in to Downing Street to see her one by one.
But with her Deputy Geoffrey Howe and Chancellor Nigel Lawson gone and the second-lowest ratings of any post-war Prime Minister, it was only a matter of time before the Iron Lady crumbled. She resigned on November 28. 
The final week of Mrs Thatcher's premiership are strikingly similar to the horrific few days Mrs May has had.  
She too faced a key ministerial resignation after Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said she could no longer support her approach to Brexit. 
Other ministers are said to be ready to go too if the Prime Minister tries to cling to power after today's European elections.
It is understood that Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and David Mundell will use ministerial meetings with Mrs May today to warn that they also consider the Withdrawal Agreement Bill unacceptable in its current form.
But she refused to see any of them on Wednesday afternoon, leading to claims she has 'holed' herself up in Downing Street amid the full-scale Brexit revolt.
Similarly Mrs Thatcher initially promised she would 'fight on' and 'fight on to win', despite failing to secure the 15 per cent majority she needed in the Tory leadership vote. 
But she was forced to face facts when her own party demanded she withdraw. 
Michael Heseltine's Tory leadership bid, which was eventually overshadowed by John Major, was also based on profound differences over Europe.
This week Brexiteer Boris Johnson emerged as the favourite to replace the PM, who backed Remain in the 2016 referendum.
And with Andrea Leadsom effectively launching her campaign for the top job yesterday, today is likely to be the day we find out just when Mrs May plans to step down. 

Polls opened in the UK and Netherlands on Thursday as voting got underway to decide the make-up of the European Parliament.
Ballots will be cast across the 28-nation bloc until Sunday, pitting pro-European centrists against a rising tide of populism and Euroskepticism.
It comes against the backdrop of Britain attempting to negotiate its way out of the trading bloc following the Brexit referendum.
Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom party and one of Europe's most outspoken nationalists, cast his ballot at The Hauge on Thursday morning. 
Hours earlier, he had attended a rally alongside other populist, nationalist and far-right leaders in Milan where they issued a cross-continental rallying cry against the European Union.
Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy's Lega Nord party; Marine Le Pen, of France's National Rally; and Jorg Meuthen, representing Germany's far-right AfD, also attended along with leaders of six other nationalist parties.
Aside from Salvini, who serves as the deputy Prime Minister of Italy in a coalition, all of their parties have failed to gain power at domestic elections.
However, big wins at the European Elections - where proportional voting systems often favour smaller, less-established parties - would send a message to Brussels about the direction the continent is heading in.
The pro-European bloc is being led by Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Emmanuel Macron, who insist that unity is the best buffer against shifting economic and security interests of an emerging new world order.
President Macron says the challenge is 'not to cede to a coalition of destruction and disintegration' that will seek to dismantle EU unity built up over the past six decades. 
On Thursday morning, U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn released a message with a warning that 'the far-right is on the rise' and adding that 'the actions we take now will have huge consequences for our future.'
Voters across Europe elect a total of 751 lawmakers, although that number is set to drop to 705 when the UK leaves the EU. 
The Dutch make up just 26 currently and 29 after Brexit. 
The UK has 73 European lawmakers, who would lose their jobs when their country completes its messy divorce from the EU.
Results of the four days of voting will not be officially released until Sunday night, but Dutch national broadcaster NOS will publish an exit poll after ballot boxes close Thursday night.
The Netherlands could provide a snapshot of what is to come. Polls show the right-wing populist Forum for Democracy led by charismatic intellectual Thierry Baudet running neck-and-neck with the center-right VVD party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
While the country, an affluent trading nation, profits from the EU's open borders and single market, it also is a major contributor to EU coffers. 
Skeptical Dutch voters in 2005 rejected a proposed EU constitution in a referendum.
Baudet, whose party emerged as a surprise winner of provincial elections in March, identifies more with hard-line Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban than with the nationalist populist movement led by Salvini.
However, in a debate Wednesday night, Baudet called Salvini a 'hero of Europe' for his crackdown on migration.
'The immigration we get here from Africa and the Mideast is completely contrary to our culture, our values, our way of life, tolerance, love of women and so on,' he said. 
'That has to stop and it will not happen at the European level.'
Meanwhile, in the UK, the governing Conservative party - which has been handling the country's shambolic Brexit negotiations - is braced for an electoral wipeout amid speculation that Prime Minister Theresa May could be forced from power.
Nigel Farage's Brexit Party has been polling strongly ahead of the vote, with the Euroskeptic figurehead warning that anything other than a strong anti-EU result will be used as a reason to hold a second referendum on Brexit.
Pro-Remain Liberal Democrats - who have been leading calls for a second referendum - polled well in recent local elections, leaving the result far from certain.
A breakaway group of MPs from both Labour and Conservative parties campaigning for Remain under the moniker Change UK has further complicated the picture. 
 
The Tory Brexit civil war deepened today as MPs accused Remainer ministers of ganging up with business to try to force Britain to keep closer ties with the EU.
Backbenchers said elements in the Cabinet were colluding to mount 'Project Fear Mark II' and peddling gloom-laden warning in an effort to get the PM to change her approach.
It comes after days of open warfare between ministers who back radically different Brexit visions.
Business Secretary Greg Clark urged companies to keep pushing for a 'soft' Brexit.
By contrast, Jeremy Hunt condemned the dire warning - from Airbus among others - as 'inappropriate' while Boris Johnson bluntly told a private reception 'f*** business'.  
Theresa May was forced to deny the Cabinet is in meltdown today as she faced a torrent of jibes about it in PMQs today.  
Deputy speaker Nigel Evans urged both camps to 'put a sock in it' over fears the public are getting exasperated by Tory in-fighting.   
Jacob Rees-Mogg said Remainer ministers - including Chancellor Philip Hammond - were ganging up with 'politicised businesses'. 
'I think there's cooperation between the Remainers in the Cabinet and some businesses, some of the more politicised businesses,' he told Sky News. 
Asked who he was referring to, Mr Rees-Mogg said: 'Oh, the Chancellor. 
'Boris Johnson was quite right when he said the Treasury is the beating heart of Remain.'
At PMQs this afternoon, Mrs May played down the spat and insisted the government was determined to get a 'good deal for for the UK and a good deal for business'.
'I believe we will achieve that,' she said.
Tensions have escalated ahead of a Cabinet 'away day' at Chequers next week that Mrs May hopes will thrash out proposals for future trade ties.
Brexiteers fear Mrs May will use the gathering to try to bounce them into concessions - anxiety that has been fuelled by the strident intervention from Mr Clark.
Senior Tory and deputy speaker Nigel Evans, a Eurosceptic, expressed his concern about the effects of ministers squabbling.
He said: 'From the Cabinet down we need to get behind the PM in these negotiations. 
'These noises off are deeply irritating, whether they come from Boris Johnson or Philip Hammond. The only person enjoying it is Michel Barnier.
'We have got the best leader, whatever some of these others may think. No-one believes that if Theresa May went the Government would somehow coalesce – forget it.
Downing Street slapped down Liz Truss today after she launched a full-frontal attack on Michael Gove over his 'nanny state' environmental policies.
The Treasury Chief Secretary also branded Gavin Williamson 'macho' for his posturing on the defence budget.
The extraordinary public jibes came in a speech at the London School of Economics last night.  
Miss Truss took aim at Mr Gove over proposed plastic straws ban and crackdown on polluting woodburners.
'Many of the rules that we have in place are important in guaranteeing public safety,' she said.
'But it's hard to shake the feeling that sometimes they just get in the way of consumer's choices and lifestyles.
'And government's role should not be to tell us what our tastes should be.
'Too often we're hearing about not drinking too much eating too many doughnuts, drinking from disposable cups through plastic straws, or enjoying the warm glow of our wood-burning Goves…I mean stoves.
'I can see their point: there's enough hot air and smoke at the Environment Department already.' 
In a remark clearly aimed at Mr Williamson - who is demanding an extra £4billion a year for defence - Miss Truss said it was 'not macho' to call for bigger budgets. 
Asked about Miss Truss's attack on Mr Gove, a No 10 source said: 'As I understand it, several portions of that speech were intended to be humorous.'
The source said the PM was committed to both the ban on plastic straws and the anti-obesity strategy, which were attacked by Miss Truss.
'We have a 25-year environment plans and the PM is committed to reducing single-use plastic waste.'
No 10 said Mrs May retained 'full confidence' in Miss Truss.
But sources confirmed that her advisers are being 'spoken to' about the fact that key passages in the speech – including the attack on Mr Gove – were added after it had been cleared by No 10. 
'The public are getting exasperated, and we know from history where that will leave us. It's time to put a sock in it. 
'Socks usually come in pairs, so I would have one for the Brexiteers and one for the Remainers. Enough is enough.'
Mrs May tried to soothe the row with some of the country's largest firms today by insisting that she would always back business.
Mr Clark told a conference for chief executives in London last night that the 'voice of business... must continue to be heard'. 
'The business voice is absolutely foundational to a successful and effective negotiation,' he said.
He acknowledged that the Cabinet's public rows about Brexit were damaging, saying: 'What business doesn't want is a running debate between different members of the same government.
'Businesses look with dismay when there's disagreement, it does not inspire confidence.'
Warning against the 'certain damage of no deal', Mr Clark urged a Brexit agreement with no tariffs or customs frictions that applied to goods and services - adding that maintaining 'labour mobility' would be crucial.  
Justice Secretary David Gauke sided with Mr Clark today, saying Mr Johnson's blunt jibe at business was 'probably not wise'. 
'Business is hugely important to us and I certainly don't think anyone should be dismissive,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
But Brexit minister Steve Baker delivered a thinly veiled rebuke by tweeting: 'Government policy is, and must remain, to leave the EU's internal market as we leave the EU.'  
David Jones, a former Brexit minister, told The Daily Telegraph: 'Cabinet ministers should be informing business of what the Government is doing to ensure we get a good deal.
'This is ridiculous. You don't take your lead from businesses, you set the policy and then inform the debate.
'What he is doing is communicating a sense of panic, rather than a sense of reassurance. There is a risk he is unwittingly participating in Project Fear Mark II, which is being orchestrated by EU-based businesses.' 
In the Commons, Mrs May said the Tories had 'always been the party that will back business', but did not directly tackle the alleged comments made by Mr Johnson.
Jeremy Corbyn shot back: 'I take the Prime Minister's response as a thumbs down to the Foreign Secretary'.
And she suggested the Labour leader had a decision to make, either to 'back business or he can want to overthrow capitalism - he can't do both'.
He later told MPs: 'No deal is a bad deal, but isn't the truth that the real risk to jobs in our country is a Prime Minister who is having to negotiate round the clock with her own Cabinet to stop it falling apart, rather than negotiating to defend jobs of workers in this country?'
The Prime Minister defended her Government's record, adding that Britain is a country 'fit for the future and leaving the European Union on the 29th of March 2019'.
Mr Corbyn raised concerns about potential job losses if there was a no-deal outcome, as he asked Mrs May to reassure workers and take the 'phoney threat of no deal off the negotiating table'.
Tory MPs cheered as Mrs May replied: 'He has raised the question of Airbus, well if he is so concerned about our aerospace and aviation industry, why did he not back the expansion of Heathrow in this chamber?'
Suspicions have been raised about Mrs May's intentions after sources confirmed the full Cabinet will attend the Chequers meeting on July 6.
Mrs May previously failed to get a customs 'partnership' plan past her smaller Brexit 'War Cabinet' and some MPs believe she is trying to bypass the group in favour of a forum where she has more Remain-minded allies. 
One Cabinet source told MailOnline: 'We haven't seen an agenda yet. This is the moment she tries to bounce a deal through.'
But Mr Rees-Mogg told MailOnline that Mrs May would not be able to get a soft deal past Parliament.
'Now the Withdrawal Act has received royal assent it is the time for the Government to flex its muscles,' he said. 
'In the absence of a good deal we will leave on March 29, 2019 with no deal and I cannot see Parliament agreeing to pay £39billion for nothing.'
Ministers have been deadlocked for months over how close the UK's relations should be with the EU after Brexit.
Brexiteers have been pushing for a 'Maximum Facilitation' customs plan that would rely on technology to reduce friction on trade.
However, supporters of a softer Brexit - including Mrs May - have been pushing a customs partnership that would mean the UK collecting import tariffs on behalf of Brussels. Proponents claim the system could help avoid a hard Irish border, and end the standoff in negotiations with the EU.
Downing Street has denied claims that Mrs May's favoured customs partnership proposal is dead.
Boris Johnson reportedly said 'f*** business' when asked about fears over Brexit at a Foreign Office reception last week.
Mr Hunt, the Health Secretary, piled in at the weekend telling Airbus its gloomy warnings were 'inappropriate' and risked undermining the PM in the talks.
However, the Prime Minister told a CEO summit in London that businesses 'create wealth' and she would 'always listen to you'.
Meanwhile Mrs May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy warned about the dangers of accepting freedom of movement in a Brexit deal.
He said Britain would be signing himself up to the 'worst possible' deal by agreeing to it. 
 Timothy urged the Prime Minister to toughen her negotiating strategy after it emerged that several Cabinet ministers want open borders for workers to continue after Britain leaves the EU.
Mr Timothy, one of Mrs May's closest allies, said she has been 'undermined' by Parliament and her own Cabinet, writing in the Daily Telegraph: 'The time for playing nice and being exploited is over.'
He accused Chancellor Philip Hammond of blocking 'meaningful no-deal planning'.
'This is ridiculous, and it has to stop,' he wrote. 'The EU showed last December – when the talks faltered over Northern Ireland – that they want a deal.
'But they want a deal on the best terms for them, and the very worst for Britain. As things stand, they might well succeed.'
Prime Minister Theresa May
Backed Remain, has since insisted she will push through Brexit, leaving the single market and customs union. 
Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington 
A strong Remainer during the referendum campaign, recently made clear he has not changed his mind about it being better if the country had chosen to stay in the bloc.
Chancellor Philip Hammond
Seen as one of the main advocates of 'soft' Brexit in the Cabinet. Has been accused of trying to keep the UK tied to key parts of the customs union for years after the transition ends. 
Home Secretary Sajid Javid 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely. Said to have bluntly dismissed concerns from pro-EU companies by saying 'f*** business'.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
Brexit Secretary David Davis 
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU. 
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox
Another Brexiteer, his red lines are about the UK's ability to strike trade deals with the rest of the world, and escaping Brussels red tape. 
Business Secretary Greg Clark  
On the soft Brexit side of the Cabinet, Mr Clark has supported Mr Hammond's efforts to maintain close links with the customs union. Came out strongly to defend business from Eurosceptic criticism, and has suggested the UK needs to stay closely tied to the single market.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson 
Formerly a close ally of the Prime Minister and once viewed by some as her anointed successor. 
They appear to have fallen out over defence funding, and he has sided with Brexiteers on customs arrangements and the need for Britain to be able to diverge from EU rules.
Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley 
Supported Remain and has joined the push for soft Brexit. Key backer of the customs partnership plan who has insisted avoiding a hard Irish is the top priority.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt 
A Remainer in the referendum campaign, Mr Hunt has since embraced the Brexiteer arguments - with speculation that he is positioning for a tilt at the top job should Mrs May be abruptly ousted. He has been heavily 
Justice Secretary David Gauke
A former Chief Secretary to the Treasury when George Osborne was Chancellor, Mr Gauke has a keen understanding of the finances and how they might be affected by Brexit. He will take a pragmatic approach but is thought more likely to side with the Remainer faction.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds
A largely unknown quantity on Brexit, having backed Remain in 2016 but kept a low profile since.
Many believe he will take his lead from Mrs May, who fast-tracked his career into Cabinet in January this year.
Communities Secretary James Brokenshire
Another long-term May ally and previously seen as on the Cameroon wing of the party. He was brought back into the Cabinet immediately after returning from sick leave, and is expected to support the PM's decisions on Brexit.
Work and Pensions Esther McVey 
Staunch Brexiteer in the referendum battle - even though she was out of parliament at the time. She took George Osborne's old Commons seat of Tatton when he stood down to edit the Evening Standard, but shows no sign of sharing his Remainer views.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling
The campaign manager for Mrs May's Tory leadership, he is one of the hardest line Brexiteers in Cabinet but prefers to keep arguments behind closed doors.
He is loyal to the PM but will not compromise his commitment to making a clean break from the EU. 
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt
Earned her Brexiteer spurs during the referendum by publicly taking on David Cameron over whether Turkey was going to join the EU.
She is independent minded and highly ambitious, and likely to side with the harder Eurosceptic line in the Cabinet debate.
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock
Mr Hancock was for years seen as an Osborne acolyte, having served as his chief of staff before becoming an MP.
However, he is now starting to move out of his former mentor's shadow. Thought to be Remain minded, but could swing if it looks like opinion is ranged against the PM.
Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis
A triathlon fan, Mr Lewis knows all about battling over the finish line. As a former immigration minister he is also well aware of the emphasis voters put on tightening up UK borders.
Expected to back a pragmatic solution, while sticking to the line that the UK must have the freedom to strike its own trade deals and control regulations.   
Scottish Secretary David Mundell 
Mr Mundell has been under intense pressure from the SNP to push for a softer Brexit within government. But in public he and the dozen other Scottish Tory MPs have succeeded in treading the tricky line between supporting Brexit and calling for close links to be maintained.
Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns
Campaigned for Remain in the referendum, but Wales voted narrowly to Leave. His detailed views on Brexit are not clear. 
Leader of the Lords Baroness Ruth Evans
Well aware of the practical difficulties the government will face in getting a Brexit deal through parliament, having played a key role in stewarding the EU Withdrawal Bill through the Upper House. 
OPTION 1 - CUSTOMS PARTNERSHIP
Under the so-called 'hybrid model', the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Britain would be responsible for tracking the origin and final destination of goods coming into the country from outside the EU. The government would also have to ensure all products meet the bloc's standards.
Firms selling directly into the UK market would pay the tariff levels set by Brussels - but would then get a rebate if Britain's tariffs are lower.
Supporters of the hybrid plan in Cabinet - including Theresa May, Philip Hammond and Greg Clark - say keeping duties aligned up front would avoid the need for physical customs borders between the UK and EU.
As a result it could solve the thorny issue over creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Mrs May has been advised by the chief whip that the hybrid option could be the only way of securing a majority in parliament for a Brexit deal.
But Brexiteers regard the proposal as unworkable and cumbersome - and they were joined by Sajid Javid and Gavin Williamson in criticising it at a tense 'War Cabinet' meeting last week.
There are fears the experimental system will either collapse and cause chaos, or prevent the UK from being able to negotiate free trade deals around the world after Brexit.
Mrs May has instructed official to go away and revise the ideas. Eurosceptics are braced for her to bring back the plan with only 'cosmetic' changes, and try to 'peel off' Mr Javid and Mr Williamson from the core group of Brexiteers.
They are also ready for Mrs May to attempt to bypass the 'War Cabinet' altogether and put the issue before the whole Cabinet - where she has more allies.
OPTION 2 - MAXIMUM FACILITATION
The 'Max Fac' option accepts that there will be greater friction at Britain's borders with the EU.
But it would aim to minimise the issues using technology and mutual recognition.
Goods could be electronically tracked and pre-cleared by tax authorities on each side.
Shipping firms could also be given 'trusted trader' status so they can move goods freely, and only pay tariffs when they are delivered to the destination country.
Companies would also be trusted to ensure they were meeting the relevant UK and EU standards on products.
Senior ministers such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox believe this is the only workable option.
But Remain minded Tories such as Mr Clark insist it will harm trade and cost jobs in the UK.
They also warn that it will require more physical infrastructure on the Irish border - potentially breaching the Good Friday Agreement. It is far from clear whether the government would be able to force anything through parliament that implied a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
The EU has dismissed the idea that 'Max Fac' could prevent checks on the Irish border as 'magical thinking'. 
Phillip Lee compared Brexit to the death penalty today after betraying Theresa May by dramatically quitting the government.
Dr Lee was applauded by Remainers as he said politicians had a duty to defy public opinion over issues that harmed society - such as when parliament banned capital punishment.
The intervention in the Commons came after Dr Lee resigned as justice minister saying he could not 'look his children in the eye' and support the way Brexit is 'currently being delivered'. 
He also insisted he wanted to 'speak up for his constituents' - even though Eurosceptics pointed out his Bracknell seat voted 53 per cent to Leave in the referendum and the local party chair criticised his move. 
After a Government concession meant Mrs May avoided defeat on a crucial amendment, Mr Lee tonight said his resignation was justified - even though he never voted against the PM's orders. 
The resignation, announced live on stage during a speech in London, heaped pressure on Mrs May just hours before a series of knife-edge votes on the EU Withdrawal Bill.
It will have been a particularly stinging betrayal as Dr Lee is one of the premier's few close friends in politics, and she is said to have attended his wedding. 
Dr Lee turned the screw by speaking in the Commons debate this afternoon, saying he was 'devastated' to have to quit, but adding: 'I believe that there is growing evidence which shows that the Brexit policy our Government is currently pursuing to deliver on the 2016 referendum is detrimental to the people we were elected to serve.'
Dr Lee added: 'Sometimes when a majority of people want something that is against the good of society, government and parliament have a responsibility to protect us.
'This was the case for the death penalty, where for decades politicians went against the majority view and refused to restore it.
'Now I believe it has got to be the case for the Brexit process.' 
Tory former minister Anna Soubry intervened in the speech to congratulate him, and fellow Conservative Sarah Wollaston said it was a 'courageous decision'. 
The resignation is a massive blow for Mrs May, who this morning gathered her Cabinet in No10 ahead of the Commons showdown. 
Conservative rebels, Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems hailed the departure as a 'principled' stand.
But Downing Street tried to play down the impact, saying: 'His resignation is a matter for him and we thank him for his service.'  
Dr Lee urged fellow Tory MPs to back a push for a 'meaningful' vote on any final Brexit deal in the Commons - and said there should be a second referendum.
He said: 'If, in the future, I am to look my children in the eye and honestly say that I did my best for them I cannot, in all good conscience, support how our country's exit from the EU looks set to be delivered.'  
Phillip Lee  dramatically quit as justice minister to speak out against the Government's plans for Brexit.
Here is what he has said about Britain's withdrawal form the EU previously:
June 2016:
Dr Phillip Lee, who voted Remain in the referendum, warns of' challenging times ahead' after Leave wins the vote.
October 2017:
He warns that young voters find the looming departure as 'toxic' as Donald trump's proposed wall with Mexico.
He said: 'It's about the virtual signalling of essentially being closed off to the world, because for most young people the world is just 'Amazon', it's just 'there', and it seems retrograde to being seen to be putting up barriers. It's like Trump's wall.
'So, single market access or not, I don't think is what young people are talking about. I think what this is about is closing off, turning away from Europe, and also having controls on migration.'  
31 January 2018:
Breaks ranks with his Government colleagues to warn that their Brexit strategy should be driven by 'evidence not dogma' in a series of Twitter posts.
He was responding to an article which said that leaked  Government analysis shows that Britain will be worse off outside the EU under every scenario modelled. 
He wrote on Twitter:  'But if these figures turn out to be anywhere near right, there would be a serious question over whether a government could legitimately lead a country along a path that the evidence and rational consideration indicate would be damaging.'
He added: 'It’s time for evidence, not dogma, to show the way. We must act for our country’s best interests, not ideology & populism, or history will judge us harshly. Our country deserves no less.'
He was given a ticking off by Tory whip Julian Smith and 'reminded it is better to express such views in private in future'.     
Brexiteers complained that Dr Lee was actually defying his own constituents - and the chair of his local party suggested he might face the risk of deselection.
Delivering his bombshell at a Bright Blue event in London today, Dr Lee said: 'I believe that the evidence now shows that the Brexit policy our government is currently pursuing, on the basis of the 2016 referendum, is detrimental to the people we are elected to serve.
'Certainly it now seem inevitable that the people economy and culture of my own constituency will be affected negatively.
'And I cannot ignore that it is to them that I owe my first responsibility as a member of Parliament.' 
Dr Lee - who had reportedly not even told his wife what he was planning to do - also called for another national ballot on Brexit.
'When the Government is able to set out an achievable, clearly defined path - one that has been properly considered, whose implications have been foreseen, and that is rooted in reality and evidence, not dreams and dogma - it should go to the people, once again, to seek their confirmation,' he said. 
Chris Boutle, chair of the Bracknell Conservative Association, said Dr Lee's move would 'count against him' if an election was called.
'The constituency voted for Leave and although there are a few very enthusiastic Remainers, the majority of his party certainly wants to leave,' he told the Telegraph.
'A number of those who voted for remain are now prepared to accept the democratic decision and leave.'
Tory backbencher Simon Clarke told MailOnline: 'MPs gave the British people the right to make this decision and they voted to leave the EU - including Philip Lee's own constituents in Bracknell by some 53 per cent.
'In my experience, whether people voted to leave or remain, they want us to get on with the job of delivering Brexit and are much more interested in our future after Brexit than they are in trying to refight the referendum or overturn the result.' 
Senior Tory Nigel Evans added: 'Bracknell folk voted out by a greater margin than the UK - we all stood on a manifesto only a year ago to deliver brexit and that is what the people now expect.
'We must not weaken the PMs hands in her discussions with Brussels so I hope Philip backs Theresa in the lobbies over the next two days despite any personal reservations he may hold.'
In fresh signs of Tory infighting, former minister Nick Boles took a swipe at David Davis for his threats to resign over the Brexit 'backstop' last week. 
Mr Boles insisted he did not agree with Dr Lee on holding a referendum, but admired his 'honesty and integrity'. 
'So much classier to resign on principle when nobody is expecting it, than to threaten resignation but never follow through,' he said.
Meanwhile, resident in Dr Lee's constituency of Bracknell, Berkshire residents reacted with fury to his decision to quit.  
Martin Lewis, aged 32 years, said: 'I can't understand why he's stepped down. He's there to represent the British people - who voted to leave the EU.'
The charity shop volunteer added: 'We can't trust politicians anymore, they just aren't looking out for normal people.
'I voted for Brexit because this country has lost its identity but the people in Parliament are trying to stop it from happening,' he said.
Derek Ferguson, aged 51 years, said that he thought that the timing of his MPs resignation was damaging for the public.
The former publican said: 'I'm not racist but we need to look out for our own country. The NHS is falling apart and we need to take back control of our own laws.'
However not everyone in Bracknell was as outraged over Dr Lee's resignation as Brexit voters. 
The Prime Minister's has spent the day trying to save her flagship Brexit legislation after the Lords imposed a slew of amendments.
The threat of catastrophic defeat for Mrs May seemed to have receded after Tory rebels agreed to put off a showdown over whether Britain should stay in a customs union with the EU.
But ministers had to make more concessions over demands for parliament to be given a so-called 'meaningful vote' on any final Brexit deal.
The Lords had insisted that Parliament be put in charge of negotiations if MPs did not accept the terms sealed with the EU, effectively undermining Mrs May's position. 
Downing Street insisted this morning that it would not accept a compromise tabled by former Cabinet minister Dominic Grieve, which would force the government to come up with a new strategy in the event of the Brexit deal being rejected, and put that to MPs again for approval.
But this evening solicitor General Robert Buckland promised rebel ringleader Dominic Grieve his plans to effectively rule out a no deal Brexit would be the basis of talks as soon as tomorrow - but only if he called off a revolt in the Commons tonight.
Here are the 15 Brexit Bill defeats inflicted by peers:
Mr Buckland appeared to concede to Mr Grieve's central demand for a Commons vote either if the Government decides to walk away from talks without a deal, or if there is no deal by November 30.
The concession will not be finalised until the legislation returns to the House of Lords in the coming days or weeks.
But the offer appeared to have been enough as rebels signalled they were prepared to back down for now. 
Passing the amendment would have meant a major shift away from the UK's existing constitutional settlement - which gives the executive powers to negotiate treaties.
Dr Lee was was slapped down by Downing Street in January after breaking ranks to express concern about the economic impact of Brexit on the UK.
The comments came after a leaked government document suggested Britain would be worse off under every Brexit scenario.
Dr Lee said 'evidence, not dogma' should dictate the Government's approach to Brexit. 
But No10 said Dr Lee had been spoken to by chief whip Julian Smith and 'reminded it is better to express such views in private in future'.   
David Davis this morning stepped up warnings that Britain's negotiating leverage would be seriously damaged if key amendments were not overturned.
Last night Mrs May delivered a direct warning to backbench Tory MPs that any defeats would encourage Brussels to turn the screw. 
Former education secretary Nicky Morgan, a leading Remainer, indicated she would support Mrs May in tomorrow's vote on an amendment designed to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU.
Mrs Morgan said she would back a compromise plan – with the words 'customs union' being replaced with 'customs arrangements' – adding that it would help 'buy time' for the Prime Minister ahead of a crunch Brussels summit at the end of this month. 
The fudge was put together by another former minister, Oliver Letwin.  Asked whether the deal was 'kicking the can down the road, Mr Letwin said: 'That is a very sensible thing to do.'
The big moments will come this afternoon – when MPs debate calls for Parliament to be given a so-called meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal – and tomorrow, when they debate the customs union.    
MPs have been voting on the EU Withdrawal Bill - commonly known as the Brexit Bill.
The legislation facilitates Britain's withdrawal from the EU and is one of the most important pieces of legislation debated by Parliament.
Over yesterday and today Theresa May faces one of the toughest tests of her premiership so far as she tries to navigate the legislation through a series of knife-edge votes.
What are the Brexit Bill amendments being debated by MPs?
There are 15 Brexit Bill amendments which are being voted on by MPs in a crunch two-day Commons showdown.
The House of Lords drew up the changes when they debated the Bill last month because they want to change the way the Government is negotiating Brexit.
Changes being voted on include proposals to try to keep the UK in the EU single market and customs union in a move which would mean the UK would have to keep free movement.
Brexiteers say the changes are wrecking amendments designed to thwart Brexit and bind the Government's hands in the talks.
Mrs May has scrambled to try to bargain with Tory rebels to ensure they don't revolt against her in the knife-edge votes.  
What are the most important amendments ?
There are two crucial amendments which the Government feared it would face defeat on.
The first, debated yesterday, was to give MPs a 'meaningful vote' on the Brexit deal. This would effectively have allowed MPs to seize of the negotiations if Theresa May failed to reach a deal by December.
The second is an amendment to try to force the UK to seek to stay in a customs union with the EU after Brexit, which is being debated today.
Mrs May has explicitly ruled this out as it would effectively stop Britain from being bale to negotiate its own trade deals with other countries.   
What happened last night?   
The PM narrowly avoided a humiliating rebellion on the amendment demanding a meaningful vote by making a last-ditch concession to Tory rebels.
No10 promised MPs they will get a vote on the Brexit pans in November, or if the Government walks away from negotiations.  It remains unclear at this stage what significance this vote will have
Mrs May also managed to thrash out an eleventh hour agreement with some Tory rebels on the customs union amendment.
Brokered on Monday night, it calls for ministers to seek a customs agreement with the EU - not a union. The change is far more than one of just language as it effectively means the UK can seek to set up different trade deals outside the Brussels bloc.
This amendment is being voted on today, and it remains to be seen if it has succeeded in peeling enough would-be rebels away from the revolt.
But the issue has just been kicked down the road as Remainers have said they will mount a fresh push to try to keep the UK in a customs union with  Brussels when the Trade and Customs Bills come to Parliament next month  
What does that means for Theresa May?  
The picture is mixed.
After weeks of speculation Mrs May could face two humiliating defeats in the Commons on the Bill - dealing her a heavy blow in the middle of Brexit talks - it looks like she has avoided all out defeat.
But it appears she has been forced to make a major concession to Tory rebels by giving MPs a vote on the Brexit deal later this year. 
She has another battle on her hands when the issue of the UK's customs arrangements with the EU returns to parliament for debate next month. 
What happens next? 
If the PM is successful at axing all of the 15 Lords amendments from the Bill and replacing them with her own then the Bill goes back to the House of Lords on Monday.
Peers will then get the chance to agree with them, or reject them and send them back to the Commons for debate. This back and forth, known as 'ping pong' continues until both Chambers agree. 
 Here are the crucial amendments being voted on:
MEANINGFUL VOTE:
Remainers have been fighting to ensure that they are not left with a choice between accepting whatever package the government thrashes out with the EU, or crashing out without any deal.
The government has already committed that there will be a vote on the terms reached with Brussels.
But the amendment passed by the Lords would effectively give parliament power to dictate subsequent talks if it rejects the deal.
That would be a major break from the existing constitutional position - which gives the executive control over negotiating treaties.
Tory MP Dominic Grieve has put forward a compromise amendment that would force ministers to come up with a new plan, and then put that before parliament for approval.
However, government sources have insisted they will not accept the plan.
CUSTOMS UNION: 
The Lords amendment orders ministers to 'outline' to parliament how they will negotiate to 'continue participating in a customs union' after Brexit.
The idea is that it would force Mrs May to change approach and keep the UK lashed to the bloc - although the effect would be largely political is unclear as it would not be binding.
Ministers appear to have delayed a confrontation with Tory rebels by tabling a compromise amendment that would commit the government to seeking a customs 'arrangement'.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA:
The Lords inserted this demand for the UK to stay in the EU single market against the wishes of both the Tory and Labour front benches. 
It spells out that the government should be seeking a Norway-style deal with the EU - potentially meaning free movement would stay in place. 
This amendment has no chance of surviving in the Commons. However, Jeremy Corbyn is facing a major rebellion by his MPs, dozens of whom have called for EEA membership to be retained after Brexit. 
BREXIT DATE:
The government has specified the date of Brexit as March 29, 2019 - as laid down by the Article 50 process.
But Remainers would like to see the date taken out of the Bill to make it easier to extend negotiations if a deal is not reached.
Tory rebels are not focused on this change and it would not be mission critical for the government, but ministers are expecting to avoid defeat. 
A Tory MP is threatening to wipe out Boris Johnson's majority altogether by defecting to the Liberal Democrats.  
Dr Phillip Lee, who supports a second EU referendum, suggested he will 'spend the summer' deciding whether to cross the floor. 
Mr Johnson suffered a hammer blow last night when the Conservatives lost the Brecon & Radnorshire by-election, slashing his effective majority to just one. 
But Dr Lee switching sides would reverse the numbers - meaning that Opposition parties have one more MP than the government. . 
Speaking on a podcast with fellow Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah, Dr Lee was asked whether he could defect to the Lib Dems under new leader Jo Swinson. 
'The party I joined was the party of John Major and John Major, I think, is probably feeling like this judging by his contributions in recent weeks,' he said.
'I'm really not comfortable about my party pushing for no-deal Brexit without proper consent of the public.
'Purely on the national interest, I think it's wrong to do this. But party politically I think it's narrowing our base in a way that I don't see how we win elections.
'And if you don't win elections in a democracy you don't have power and you can't do things you want to do. It's just simple reality.
'I'm sort of sitting here, looking on and - yeah - I'm going to spend the summer thinking a lot.'
Three Tory MPs - Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen - quit earlier this year to join an independent grouping in the House of Commons.
There are currently 320 MPs who - on paper - would back the Government in a crunch vote in the House of Commons - 310 Tories and 10 members of the DUP.
The DUP agreed to support the Conservatives in certain key votes, such as confidence motions and Budgets, as part of a deal reached in the aftermath of the 2017 general election.
After the by-election, there are 319 MPs from all other parties set against the government total of 320. 
These totals do not include Sinn Fein's seven MPs, who do not take their seats in the Commons, and the Speaker and three Deputy Speakers, who do not vote.
 
 
Theresa May immediately fired one of the 11 Tory rebels as a party vice-chairman last night after she was humiliatingly defeated in the Commons. 
Stephen Hammond was sacked within minutes of the revolt, which consigned the Prime Minister to an historic first defeat on Brexit.  
The Wimbledon MP said he was 'very disappointed' but stood by his decision to 'put country and constituency before party' in the crunch Commons vote.
The former minister contributed to the 309-305 defeat for the Government over demands for a 'meaningful' vote on the final Brexit deal last night. 
Labour MPs punched the air in jubilation and Remain MPs across the Commons cheered and applauded as the extraordinary result was announced.
Mrs May left Westminster and was on the red carpet at the Sun's 'Military Awards' minutes after the humiliating defeat, which risks undermining her when she meets EU leaders in Brussels this afternoon.
As the drama built last night, rebel ringleader Dominic Grieve rejected as 'too late' a desperate last minute concession made by ministers just moments before the crunch vote at 7pm.
Mr Grieve's amendment demands ministers pass a full law enshrining the exit deal before the Government is allowed start implementing it.
It puts huge new pressure on the Brexit timetable approaching exit day on March 29, 2019. Rebels hope it will allow Parliament to reject anything they consider a bad deal for Britain in time for further negotiation.
In the aftermath of the vote, the Government said it was 'disappointed' but that the defeat would not stop it preparing Britain's laws for Brexit - and hinted it could try to overturn the result at a later vote.
Justice Minister Dominic Raab, who made the last second concession, said it was a 'minor setback' on a 'wafer thin margin'.  
Brexiteer Nadine Dorries demanded all the rebels be 'deselected and never allowed to stand as a Tory MP ever again'.  

As the rebellion built, Justice Minister Dominic Raab offered last ditch assurances that powers in the legislation that trouble Tory rebels will not be used until the exit agreement is written into UK law.
Eleven Conservative MPs were enough to defeat Theresa May - despite her concession winning over three others moments before the vote.
The 11 rebels were:
Dominic Grieve
Heidi Allen
Ken Clarke
Nicky Morgan
Anna Soubry
Sarah Wollaston
Bob Neill
Stephen Hammond 
Oliver Heald
Jonathan Djanogly
Antoinette Sandbach
A 12th Tory in the aye lobby was John Stevenson who voted both ways - an active abstention
At 6.45pm he returned to the Despatch Box to promise MPs he would turn his assurance into an amendment if MPs back down.
His concession appeared to peal off at least two Tory rebels as Vicky Ford and Paul Masterton backed down. 
Two Labour MPs - Frank Field and Kate Hoey - voted with the Government.  
But after Mr Grieve declared 'It's too late, I'm sorry, you cannot treat the House in this fashion' other rebels inflicted the punishing defeat. 
Insisting the rebellion would go ahead this afternoon, Mr Grieve quoted Winston Churchill as warned Mrs May: 'A good party man...will put his country before his party.'
After the vote, a Government spokesman said: 'We are disappointed that Parliament has voted for this amendment despite the strong assurances that we have set out. 
'We are as clear as ever that this Bill, and the powers within it, are essential.
'This amendment does not prevent us from preparing our statute book for exit day. We will now determine whether further changes are needed to the Bill to ensure it fulfils its vital purpose.' 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn branded it a 'a humiliating loss of authority for the Government on the eve of the European Council meeting'. 

Twelve Tories rebelled against the Government tonight to consign it to an historic defeat on Brexit.
But the result - a narrow four vote win - does not stop Brexit or even derail this legislation.
What it does do is make significantly more complicated the path to Brexit day and rebels hope it will allow them to change the exit deal or even delay departure. 
The first step for the Government is to keep pushing the legislation through Parliament - there are more votes to win tonight and more debate this evening.
Another dangerous day of committee stage debate is due next week, including the prospect of another defeat.
Then the Bill returns to the Commons in January for more scrutiny and more changes. It must then go through the House of Lords. 
The amendment passed tonight demands ministers pass a full law enshrining the exit deal before the Government is allowed start implementing it.
It puts huge new pressure on the Brexit timetable approaching exit day on March 29, 2019.
Ministers could try to change the new amendment with re-writes of their own at the later stages.  
The debate saw furious blue-on-blue exchanges as Brexiteers Bernard Jenkin and Bill Cash rose to defend the Government.

Mr Grieve warned the Government he had tried to be helpful but that on the issue of a meaningful vote 'we have run out of road - and all rational discourse starts to evaporate'.
He said this has led to 'confrontation' in which it is 'suggested the underlying purpose is sabotage, followed by hurling of public abuse' including by other Tories. 
Signalling support for the amendment, Mr Clarke said the key thing around a meaningful vote was its timing, adding: 'The vote's got to take place before the British Government has committed itself to the terms of the treaty-like agreement that is entered into with the other members.
'Any other vote is not meaningful.'
Mr Clarke said it was 'quite obvious' that the Government was not going to be 'remotely near' a detailed agreement by March 2019.
He added: 'It's not a question, I may say, to my desperately paranoid eurosceptic friends, that somehow I am trying in some surreptitious Remainer way to put a spoke in the wheels of the vast progress of the United Kingdom towards the destination to which we are going.
'But they don't know what Leave means, because nobody discussed what Leave meant when we were having the referendum.' 
Another rebel, Antoinette Sandbach, expressed fears that a vote on a Brexit deal motion outlined by the Government could be 'meaningless'.
In an attempt to sooth rebel concerns, Mr Raab vowed powers they want to modify - that allow ministers to bring in the exit agreement using secondary legislation - would not be used until Parliament has voted on the deal as a whole. 
Offering a political assurance - rather than a change to the bill - Mr Raab said: 'None of the Statutory Instruments will come into effect until Parliament has voted on the final deal.'
He urged the rebels to drop their amendment, adding: 'If we waited for the Withdrawal Agreement Bill not just to be introduced after the withdrawal agreement has been signed, but fully enacted, waiting for the full passage of that to happen we would not have the time deal with the volume of technical legislation that we need to put through under secondary legislation.
'There is no getting around the timing issue, we have got the long tail of technical regulatory secondary legislation we need to get through if we want to provide legal certainty that will make a smooth Brexit.'


Tory darling Jacob Rees-Mogg hinted today that Theresa May should fire her Chancellor to end Remain resistance inside the Cabinet.
Mr Rees-Mogg, the newly elected chairman of backbench Eurosceptic Tories, accused Philip Hammond of speaking out in defiance of official Brexit policy.
He admitted today he was 'biting my tongue' over the Chancellor's future because only the PM could hire and fire in the Cabinet.
Mr Hammond enraged Eurosceptic backbenchers in Davos this week by talking up a 'very modest' Brexit that left Britain as close to Europe as possible.
Backbencher Nadine Dorries repeated her public calls for Mr Hammond to be fired today as pressure grew on the right of the party.
David Lidington, the newly installed Cabinet Office minister and Mrs May's de facto deputy, appealed for calm this morning and said Tory MPs should show 'mutual respect'. 
The new clashes come against a febrile background and rumours of an imminent attempt to oust Mrs May as Tory leader and Prime Minister.
Former party chairman Grant Shapps said Mrs May should set a departure date or face being forced out.
Rumours are swirling around Westminster that Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, has received almost enough letters from backbench Tories to trigger a contest.
If 48 MPs independently write to Mr Brady he must call a leadership election. Only he knows how many letters he has received and he refuses to comment publicly.  
Mr Rees-Mogg told Peston on Sunday: 'I tend to disagree with the Chancellor on many things but on this issue he seems to be disagreeing with Government policy, the Conservative party's manifesto and Mrs May's speeches.  
'This is real trouble for the Government. The history of chancellors being in opposition to prime ministers is not a good one or an encouraging one.'
Asked whether he agreed with some pro-leave MPs that Mr Hammond should be fired, he said it was not him to direct the Prime Minister.
'Of course I've got a view, but I think it's not for me to give that view publicly. I think this really is a matter for the Prime Minister,' he said.
'I'm being as loyal as I could possibly be on the policy question and I am biting my tongue on the personality question.' 
Ms Dorries said: 'He has to go. The Chancellor needs to be singing off the Lancaster House hymn sheet along with the Prime Minister, he needs to have the Prime Minister's back and he doesn't.'  

Former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith told the Sunday Express: 'The Prime Minister cannot govern with Philip Hammond sniping from the sidelines.
'She has got a serious negotiation on and she does not need the Chancellor contradicting government policy. She needs to say to him: 'You do that again and it will be your last comment as a cabinet minister'.' 


Last night, an ambitious Tory MP tipped as a future leader added his voice to the chorus of disapproval – warning unless improvements were made Jeremy Corbyn would win the next Election.
Plymouth MP Johnny Mercer told The Mail on Sunday: 'We need to be doing better, or we will pay the price.'
Mr Shapps reveals that several Tory MPs are this weekend sending letters to Sir Graham Brady, the Chairman of the party's 1922 Committee, calling for a leadership contest. 

Mr Shapps has not yet sent a letter himself, because he says he feared that a leadership contest would destabilise the Government.
But friends say that after Mrs May's reshuffle earlier this month – notable for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's refusal to move jobs – Mr Shapps' stance is shifting.
Writing in this newspaper, he says that Mrs May's loss of authority was making it 'excruciatingly difficult' for her to 'demand obedience from her own Cabinet'. 

Captain Mercer, a former Army captain who entered the Commons in 2015, warned that unless the Government's performance improved the party could face electoral wipeout.
The Afghanistan veteran said: 'We need to be doing better, or we will pay the price with the electorate. We have to face down some of the very clear challenges on the NHS, housing and defence.'
Asked about Mrs May's performance, he stopped short of calling for Mrs May to step down, saying: 'I'm not going to comment on the Prime Minister.' The botched reshuffle – and lack of clarity over Brexit – have stirred resentments on the backbenches among even normally loyal MPs.
Conservative former minister Rob Halfon, who was sacked by Mrs May, suggested the Government resembled a 'tortoise' because it was too slow to bring forward policies.
He told the World At One: 'We need to have less policy-making by tortoise and (more) policy-making by lion. Because we have to be radical. We have to stop seeing politics in transactional terms.'
He added: 'Unless we deal with social injustice, it won't just be Labour that carries on getting a lot of support from the public, we will lose support from the public because they will feel that we don't have an answer to the issues that they care about.'  
Normally loyal Tory backbencher Nigel Mills said Mrs May has not delivered on her promises to tackle 'burning injustices' and that MPs are concerned about the Government's lack of direction.
He told BBC Radio 4's World At One: 'I think the frustration is the Prime Minister had what I thought was exactly the right drive and the right belief when she first came into office and it's hard to see exactly how we're making progress on that.
'We need to show a sense of what our values are, where we're going, where we want to get to, and if that timeframe has to be 18 months or two years to deliver something, well then that's fine, we can explain why that is.'
 

Tory rebel Dominic Grieve was accused of ‘supping with the devil’ last night after he held secret talks with avowed enemies of Brexit.
He was spotted slipping into the European Commission’s Smith Square HQ in London yesterday for a private meeting of campaigners set on reversing the result of the referendum.
Attendees included Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell and Tory and Lib Dem peers who have rebelled over Brexit. Also present were leaders of People’s Vote, which campaigns for a second referendum, Open Britain, the successor organisation to the official Remain campaign, and Best for Britain, the anti-Brexit group backed by financier George Soros.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Tory Leaver, said last night: ‘Dominic should be careful about the company he keeps if he wishes to maintain his position that this is not about stopping Brexit.
‘He is someone I trust and when he says he is not trying to frustrate Brexit I believe him but the people he is associating with are clear they do want to stop Brexit.
‘If you sup with the devil you should use a long spoon and he is using an egg spoon.’
The Smith Square EU building, which is a short walk from Parliament, was once Tory Central Office and the scene of Margaret Thatcher’s election triumph of 1979. But it was sold to the EU in 2007 and is now called Europe House.
An agenda for the ‘Where Next for Brexit?’ meeting was marked ‘in confidence’ but seen by the Mail. It says: ‘This informal forum connects the main operational UK pro-EU organisations and individuals and meets under the Chatham House Rule.’
This rule holds that the discussions should not be made public.
Mr Grieve was expected to talk about the EU Withdrawal Bill, which caused parliamentary turmoil this week.
The QC and former attorney general led a group of 13 Tory MPs who forced Theresa May into making concessions on Tuesday evening.
Despite insisting they are not trying to reverse Brexit, the MPs are threatening to back a House of Lords amendment that would make it impossible to leave the EU without a ‘deal’. It would also put Parliament in charge of the final stage of the negotiations. Minutes after Mr Grieve left yesterday’s meeting the participants started planning on a campaign for a second referendum to stop Brexit.
Mr Rees-Mogg said it was ‘completely improper’ for the Commission to allow its buildings ‘to be used in a domestic political controversy’.
‘We fund the EU and it should not use our money to interfere in our domestic affairs,’ he said.
Sir Bill Cash, the chairman of the Commons European scrutiny committee, said: ‘It’s clear that Mr Grieve is consorting with those people who are all intent on reversing Brexit.
‘It makes his claim that he is trying to be helpful to the Government transparent nonsense.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘I’m surprised if he is meeting with a whole load of people whose sole purpose is to stop Brexit when he has said it is not his intention to do so.’
A senior ministerial source said: ‘This is clear evidence that a certain group of MPs will stop at nothing to keep us in the EU.’
Mr Grieve said it was ‘rubbish’ to suggest the meeting revealed his true intentions. He also claimed the invitation was made ‘a long time ago’.
‘They asked me to go along and explain something about what was going on in Parliament, just as I go and talk to all sorts of groups,’ Mr Grieve said.
‘If I was invited by an audience that was interested in the issue that were Leavers I would go as well. We live in a democratic country where people engage with all sorts of people.’
The revelations came on another day of drama in Westminster during which:
The ex-editor
‘We have to stop Brexit,’ is view of former newspaper editor Patience Wheatcroft, ennobled by David Cameron in 2010. She has claimed in the Lords that ‘the public wants a vote on the final deal’ – a second referendum she hopes will delay Brexit – and has encouraged Remainers, saying ‘history is on your side’.
Pensions queen
A Tory peer since 2015 and a former pensions minister under David Cameron, Ros Altmann has repeatedly voted against the Government on key Brexit issues in the Lords. A regular on TV, the pensions and elderly rights campaigner has threatened to leave the Conservative Party if it pursues a hard Brexit.
The Lib Dem MEP
A former Islington councillor, Sarah Ludford was given a peerage in 1997. Managed to ‘double up’ for 15 years by also being a Member of the European Parliament. Now the Liberal Democrats’ Brexit spokesman in the House of Lords, from where she has led the party’s fight to keep Britain in the EU.
The sore loser
Former Observer columnist and deeply embittered Remainer Henry Porter. Before the referendum he wrote he would be a ‘very sore loser if we came out’ and ‘in mourning for a project that was as brave and beautiful as anything in European history’. True to his word, he still campaigns against Brexit.
The non-believer
Philosopher and atheist AC Grayling said the Government’s attempt to trigger Article 50 – and begin our departure – without consulting Parliament amounted to ‘a kind of coup’ and called for a general strike. ‘The effort to talk about ...what’s going to happen after Brexit is an attempt to normalise acceptance of leaving the EU,’ he said.
The arch-defector
A Tory MP for 27 years and minister under Ted Heath, Lord Hugh Dykes joined the Lib Dems in 1997 after Ken Clarke lost his leadership bid and became an adviser to Paddy Ashdown on EU affairs. He is vice-president of the British-German Association and holder of the German Federal Order of Merit and French Legion d’Honneur. 
Far left: MIliband’s Spin chief
Yet another famously foul-mouthed Labour spin doctor, Tom Baldwin was director of communications when Ed Miliband was party leader. Earlier this year he took a role with the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign which is demanding a second referendum on Brexit in an attempt to reverse the result.
Second left:  Nick Clegg’s sidekick
Former spin doctor for Nick Clegg when he was Lib Dem leader, James McGrory moved to the official Remain campaign, Stronger In, where he was co-executive director. After the referendum he became a board member at Open Britain, the Roland Rudd-funded anti-Brexit campaign group where Peter Mandelson is also a board member.
Far right: Crude voice of Blairism 
Tony Blair’s notoriously foul-mouthed former spin doctor Alistair Campbell is, like his former boss, utterly determined to stop Britain leaving the EU. Was forced to apologise last year after comparing Brexit supporters to jihadi extremists.
The woman at the centre is unidentified
 
Mr Campbell was seen entering Europe House shortly after 10.30am yesterday. Mr Grieve followed just before 10.45am. Shortly afterwards came Tom Baldwin, who was Labour ex-leader Ed Miliband’s spin doctor and now works for People’s Vote, and James McGrory, the former communications director at Stronger In, the official Remain campaign, who now works for Open Britain.
Mr Grieve left just before midday. Most of the other participants left around 1pm, including Baroness Altmann, the anti-Brexit Tory peer, Patience Wheatcroft, the Tory peer and former newspaper editor who has backed a second referendum and has argued ‘we have to stop Brexit’, and the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman in the Lords, Sarah Ludford.
They were joined by AC Grayling, the philosopher who has said it was wrong to ‘normalise acceptance of leaving the EU’.
The meeting reveals that separate Remainer groups are coordinating to try to stop Britain’s departure from the EU. On Tuesday night Mr Grieve told the Commons he was not trying to prevent Brexit but ‘legitimately looking at the detail of one of the most complex legal and political exercises in which we have ever engaged in peacetime’.
In an interview with The Guardian last month, he backed another national poll to ask the public ‘is this what you really want?’ but also claimed he was ‘not working to precipitate it’.
Last night he rebelled against the Government to vote in favour of Britain joining the European Economic Area, which would mean staying in the single market.
A Commission spokesman said it did not organise the Smith Square meeting and suggested it may have been booked by an MEP who can use rooms in the building for free.
The spokesman confirmed that no Commission officials attended the meeting.
A spokesman for ‘Where Next for Brexit’ said: ‘Pro-Europeans meeting to discuss Europe and inviting pro-European guest speakers should not surprise anyone.
‘It is extraordinary that this should be regarded as a news story.’
Mr Umunna’s calls for a new party, reported by the New Statesman, were made at a meeting of a Pro-Remain grassroots campaign group.
A source told the magazine: ‘He came in, huffing and puffing, saying that he’d had enough of Labour’.
Miss Soubry has reportedly told fellow MPs ‘Chuka and I are looking at what the future brings’. 
Patience Wheatcroft is a former newspaper editor who made her name in the early Nineties writing Eurosceptic articles and flattering profiles of City fat-cats.
As City Editor of The Times from the mid-1990s, she was a close confidante of the paper’s Eurosceptic proprietor Rupert Murdoch and a vigorous opponent of Britain joining the Euro.
Later she became editor of the Sunday Telegraph, maintaining its anti-Brussels line, before returning to Murdoch to edit the European edition of his Wall Street Journal.
Over the years, her stories about the EU were peppered with words such as ‘farrago’ and ‘misery’. In 2012, she wrote: ‘We were never Europeans. Appreciating the advantages of a single marketplace for our goods and services did not bring our collection of diverse economies and cultures close to homogeneity.’
However, she then underwent a Damascene conversion.
Made a life peer by David Cameron, the 66-year-old campaigned against Brexit. Days before the referendum, she warned the case for Brexit came from the ‘Fawlty Towers School of Economics’, adding that ‘virtually every respected economic analyst’ reckoned a Leave vote would ‘create a downturn in the short and medium term’.
In fact, unemployment has fallen to record lows, while business is prospering, with the FTSE 100 index up 30 per cent.
Since the vote, she has played a key role in orchestrating a string of Lords manoeuvres not just to soften but, in many cases, sabotage the Brexit process. In a comment typical of many unelected lords, she said the verdict of 17million Leave voters was ‘only advisory’ and backed calls a second referendum.
The passionately pro-Brussels Wheatcroft now chairs the ‘appointments and oversights committee’ for the pro-Remain, Japanese-owned Financial Times. Her posts include work with wealth manager St James’s Place Capital (which pays her around £60,000 a year), law firm DLA Piper, and a £180,000 part-time job at Fiat Chrysler, the Italian car giant which owns the pro-Remain Economist magazine. Cameron also appointed her to the British Museum’s board of trustees.
Her views are shared by husband Tony Salter, a publisher and former Tory councillor so incensed by Brexit he campaigned for the Lib Dems in the Richmond by-election.
To long-standing friends, the crusade on behalf of Remain by this ex-grammar school girl and a former avowed Thatcherite is, at best, confusing.
 
Tory ‘mutineers’ faced a grassroots backlash last night after threatening to frustrate Brexit in Parliament.
Fifteen rebels have told party whips they may vote against a bid to enshrine in law the date for leaving the EU.
Sources believe the number could top 20 – enough to overturn Theresa May’s slender Commons majority when the issue comes to a vote next month. 
Tory councillors and voters in the rebels’ constituencies – many of which voted to leave the EU last year – warned this could usher in a Labour government.
The rebels yesterday claimed they were being bullied because of their stance.
But David Campbell Bannerman, a Eurosceptic Tory MEP, said they were in ‘contempt of democracy’ and should be kicked out of the party. 
In other developments:
The rebels include a number of former ministers sacked by Mrs May, such as former education secretary Nicky Morgan and former business minister Anna Soubry, along with a number of veteran Europhiles, such as the former attorney general Dominic Grieve and the former chancellor Kenneth Clarke.
They claim fixing the Brexit date in law could limit the Government’s options if more time is needed for talks with Brussels. But critics believe it is a ploy to keep Britain in the EU indefinitely.
At a ‘stormy’ meeting with government chief whip Julian Smith they threatened to vote down the Government’s attempt to fix the moment of Brexit as 11pm on March 29, 2019.
Yesterday they struck a defiant tone. South Cambridgeshire MP Heidi Allen said: ‘If fighting for the best possible future for our country and our Government is considered mutiny – then bring it on.’
Miss Soubry said: ‘The bullying begins. We want a good Brexit not a hard, ideologically driven Brexit.’
She said her office had received several threats as a result of coverage of her actions and comments, which she said she had reported to the police.
Former minister Bob Neill, another of the rebels, said: ‘The bullies will not succeed, of course. That tone says more about them than us. We will continue to work constructively for the best Brexit possible – that’s our duty – and what parliamentary democracy is all about.’
But Mr Campbell Bannerman said: ‘All Conservative candidates stood on a manifesto only a few months ago to honour the people’s decision to leave the EU.
‘A vote against this commitment would be a huge breach of trust, show contempt for democracy and should lead to their loss of the whip and deselection by the party.’
And Miss Patel warned fellow MPs it was time to trust the British people.
The former international development secretary said: ‘During our consideration of our withdrawal from the EU, members have tabled amendments – and rightly so – but we should not listen to those who do not have confidence in this house, our democracy and our country.
‘They may want to be governed by the EU because they feel unable to govern themselves, but we fundamentally believe that our democratic institutions, and this house in particular, are held to account by the British people, and that we can make laws in all areas covered by the EU.
‘Do we trust the British people, who voted to leave the EU and to move on, or do we want to go against their wishes?’
Tory whips believe they may be able to pick off some of the less committed rebels in the coming weeks and are anxious not to make martyrs of them.As a result, Mrs May struck a conciliatory tone in the Commons yesterday, saying she was listening carefully to concerns. But local Tories in the rebels’ constituencies urged them to stop destabilising the Government.
Martin Plackett, a Tory councillor in Miss Soubry’s seat, said: ‘I respect my MP tremendously and I respect her stance on these issues. But it does concern me. We’re all Brexiteers now – and I voted Remain – and we have to trust the Government and the PM to get the best deal.’
‘I would be disappointed if she voted against the Government which could bring about a change of government which as far as the Conservatives are concerned would be horrific: a Corbyn government.’ 
David Hayes, a Conservative councillor in Mrs Morgan’s seat, accused the rebel MPs of behaving appallingly.
‘We should be getting behind this not tabling amendments,’ he said. ‘The opposition and Europe will see this as a sign of weakness. It is making a mockery of politics.
‘Nicky needs to be very clear that she’s representing Loughborough, which voted to Leave, and the Conservative party and she’s got to get behind the vote.’
Richard Haddock, a Tory councillor in Sarah Wollaston’s constituency of Totnes, called on the MP to ‘stop messing around’.
The farmer, who represents the ward of St Marys with Summercombe, said: ‘Most of us are saying just get on with it, stop messing around, politicians – we’ve had the vote now we need to get it done. The more they play games the more Europe loves it.’
Veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash dismissed claims that pro-Remain Tories were being bullied for their views.
Sir Bill, who this week warned against ‘collaboration’ with Labour, said those MPs had to understand their actions could spark a ‘constitutional crisis which could end in a general election and a Corbynista government’.
He added: ‘It is also not bullying to point out that if they do decide to side with the turncoats in the Labour Party, the consequences could be seismic.’ Meanwhile, an ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel has claimed Mrs May is on the verge of making concessions to Brussels over the so-called ‘divorce bill’.
Senior MEP Manfred Weber said following a private meeting in Downing Street that a breakthrough could now be possible.
The EU has blamed deadlock on the UK for refusing to guarantee it will pay an estimated £53billion.
ANDREW PIERCE on the Tories plotting to vote against May on Brexit – even though their own constituents voted Leave
1. Anna Soubry
Leave vote in Broxtowe constituency: 50.3 per cent
Rebels have tabled 19 amendments to the EU Withdrawal Bill, many of which are aimed at frustrating the Brexit process.
Miss Soubry backed all of them. One of David Cameron’s most outspoken ministers, she was sacked by Theresa May in her first reshuffle in July last year.
Soubry, 60, went after rejecting the role of deputy to newly promoted Justice Secretary Liz Truss, telling friends it was an ‘insult’ given her seniority in age and background as a barrister.
At a pro EU rally, after the referendum, Soubry struggled to hold back tears as she talked about the ‘terrible mistake’ of leaving the EU. (Fellow Tory MP Nadine Dorries accused her of ‘being inebriated’.)
Soubry consistently lives up to her reputation as a rent-a-quote, describing Brexit as a ‘self-inflicted wound’. She says: ‘The people, not the hardline Brexiteers, are in charge.’ Quite. So why is she riding roughshod over the 17.4million people who voted for Brexit?
2. Sarah Wollaston
Leave vote in Totnes constituency: 54.1 per cent
The former GP backed all 19 rebel amendments. 
Dr Wollaston, 55, was a high profile recruit to the Leave campaign, but switched sides over the claim the NHS would benefit to the tune of £350million a week. 
Many Tory MPs claimed the change of opinion was ‘deliberately staged and political’. 
Wollaston, a serial rebel who is chairman of the Commons health select committee said at the time: ‘The consensus now is there would be a huge economic shock if we voted to leave.’ 
Given there’s been no economic shock, why is she still a Remainer?
3. Jeremy Lefroy
Leave vote in Stafford constituency: 57.2 per cent
Lefroy, a member of the Brexit select committee, backed all rebel amendments. 
In March, an open letter co-authored by him declared there was ‘no covert plot by Tory MPs to keep us in the EU’.
Lefroy, 58, has made little impact in seven years in parliament and has been consistently overlooked for ministerial office. (‘He’s gained some prominence at last,’ sniped one Leave Tory MP yesterday.) 
Lefroy rejects the idea he’s trying to scupper Brexit, insisting his scrutiny of the bill is ‘looking after the interests of my constituents.’ 
As the majority voted to leave, he appears to be looking after the minority not the majority.
4. Nicky Morgan
Leave vote in Loughborough constituency: 50.3 per cent
Morgan, who backed all rebel amendments, has long nursed a grudge against the PM after she was sacked as education secretary in her first reshuffle.
The Oxford-educated solicitor has such an over-inflated view of her own importance that she even toyed with the idea of running for the party leadership after Mr Cameron quit.
Last year she declared that ‘one of the golden rules of politics is that if your opponent is attacking you personally, then they are rattled’. 
And which politician was it who took a personal swipe at May after she was photographed for a magazine wearing a £995 pair of leather trousers which ‘were the height of political vulgarity’?
The same Nicky Morgan who was later photographed with a £950 Mulberry handbag.
Describing the Prime Minister as ‘tin eared and tone deaf’, Morgan says Mrs May is ‘guaranteed to continue to deepen divisions in the Conservative Party rather than trying to heal them, which is what she should be doing’.
Isn’t it the 15 rebels – of which she is one of the most senior – who have sparked the divisions, rather than the Prime Minister?
5. Antoinette Sandbach
Leave vote in Eddisbury constituency: 52.2 per cent
A former member of the Welsh Assembly, Sandbach, a barrister, backed all the rebel amendments.
She was barely known until the day she broke down in tears in the Commons chamber when she movingly revealed how she had lost her son Sam to sudden infant death syndrome. Sandbach, 48, is unrepentant on her position on the EU. She says: ‘The role of MPs is not to be lobby fodder but to scrutinise legislation. I don’t support Hard Brexit and never will not least because I don’t believe the Hard Brexiteers speak for the nation.’
She’s clearly not speaking for her constituency either.
6. Vicky Ford
Leave vote in Chelmsford constituency: 50.5 per cent
Elected in June, Ford was immediately embroiled in uproar by backing moves to allow inmates at Chelmsford prison access to social media and mobile telephones.
A former banker with JP Morgan, the Cambridge-educated Ford, who backed four rebel amendments, spent a decade in Brussels as an MEP. 
Now 50, she was criticised for going on a four day publicly-funded junket to Croatia shortly after the 2014 European elections in which she had campaigned against wasteful spending. 
She says: ‘The country decided. Now we need to make it work.’ 
Hard to see how she will do that by collaborating with the Labour Party.
7. Tom Tugendhat
Leave vote in Tonbridge and Malling constituency: 52.6 per cent
Often tipped as a future party leader, Tugendhat, 44, backed four amendments. He was elected chairman of the foreign affairs select committee this summer after only two years in Parliament. A passion for Brussels runs in his family. His uncle Christopher Tugendhat was an EU commissioner.
He served a decade with the Territorial Army, which included active service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Denying he’s trying to block Brexit, Tugendhat says: ‘I am concerned that fixing a precise time for our departure will give the EU control over the timetable and allow them to restrict our freedom of manoeuvre.’
Once Article 50 is triggered, there is a two-year period to complete negotiations. If negotiations do not result in a ratified agreement, Britain leaves without a deal; which is the opposite of what he wants.
8. Jonathan Djanogly
Leave vote in Huntingdon constituency: 55.3 per cent
Elected in 2001, Djanogly, who will vote against setting a leave date in law, has struggled to make an impression. 
In the 2009 expenses scandal, he was criticised after hiring private detectives to look into his aides and colleagues whom he suspected of leaking information about his own claims. In the event, he repaid voluntarily £25,000.
A solicitor by training, Djanogly, 52, served as a junior justice minister for two years from 2010.
He rejects the charge of being a mutineer, insisting that he is a ‘scrutineer’.
He says: ‘To me this is about upholding our constitution and negotiation position – not remaining.’ Surely, it’s the PM who is doing the negotiating not Djanogly. By voting against her he will weaken her position.
9. Sir Oliver Heald
Leave vote in North East Hertfordshire constituency: 51.4 per cent
A veteran of John Major’s government, he was an architect of a Tory rebellion on a Coalition plan to reform the House of Lords in 2012. 
But Heald, despite making loud noises, never actually voted against the measure.
A barrister, he was rewarded for not voting against the government by being made Solicitor General in 2012.
However, he was sacked after two years and given a knighthood as a sop.
Brought back into the government last summer as junior justice minister, Heald, who employs his wife Christine in his Parliamentary office, proved a poor Commons performer and ponderous at the dispatch box.
He was dismissed for being ineffective in June 2017.
His stance has surprised some Tories with one saying saying: ‘Who knew Oliver had such strong views on the EU.’
Heald hasn’t actually raised the subject of the EU in the Commons chamber for months, and he’s the only one of the 15 rebels who failed to comment yesterday, confirming the view of some of his colleagues that his role in the revolt was purely opportunistic.
Don't forget the 19 Labour MPs snubbing their grassroots too 
By Jack Doyle, Executive Political Editor for the Daily Mail 
Labour MPs who voted against Brexit have been accused of ‘casting democracy aside’ and undermining trust in politics.
On Tuesday night, 19 of them voted against repealing the 1972 European Communities Act.
It is the most important clause in the EU Withdrawal Bill, which must be passed by Parliament to ensure Brexit happens. Among their number were five MPs whose constituents backed Leave in the referendum.
Last night, their actions sparked a furious response from pro-Brexit Tories, who pointed out that the last Labour manifesto explicitly promised to respect the result of the referendum.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘Their cards are on the table. They are opposed to us leaving the EU and they have not accepted the referendum result. The truth is that large chunks of the Labour party simply want to stop Brexit in any way they can.
‘My colleagues on the Conservative benches should be careful with the company they keep.’
Former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers said: ‘These 19 Labour MPs want to overturn the referendum result. That would damage our democracy and undermine trust in politics. I would urge them to think again and respect the will of the people clearly expressed in the referendum.”
Leading Leave supporter Peter Bone added: ‘They didn’t vote in line with how the country voted at the referendum, and they didn’t vote in line with their manifesto, which said we should leave the EU. 
'They are willing to cast aside democracy, and the wishes of 17million people. Parliament delegated that decision to the people and they are now trying by the back door to block the will of the people.’
A total of 68 MPs from all parties voted against a clause which would repeal the 1972 Act which brought Britain into the European Community.
The 19 Labour MPs were joined by 34 Scottish Nationalists, nine Liberal Democrats, four Plaid Cymru, Green MP Caroline Lucas and independent Northern Ireland MP Lady Hermon.
The five Labour MPs whose constituencies voted for Leave were Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley), Mary Creagh (Wakefield), Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East), Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) and Albert Owen (Ynys Mon).
Mr McFadden and Miss Creagh represent some of the most pro-Brexit constituencies in the country, with 68 per cent and 62 per cent of their voters backing Leave respectively.
Three pro-Brexit Labour MPs backed the Government – Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer – but the rest abstained. That so many rebelled to vote against Brexit is likely to prompt questions about Jeremy Corbyn’s authority. During the debate, ministers warned that failing to repeal the 1972 Act would case legal chaos.
Brexit minister Steve Baker told the Commons: ‘If we were to not repeal the Act, we would still, from the perspective of EU law, exit the EU at the end of the Article 50 process. But there would be confusion and uncertainty about the law on our own statute book.’
 
Theresa May is fighting for her political life today after Boris Johnson accused her of killing Brexit and his allies backed him to be a 'brilliant' PM.  
Mr Johnson used his decision to quit as Foreign Secretary to declare war on her Chequers plan for leaving the EU.
Warning that the UK was heading for colonial status, he said the Brexit dream was ‘dying – suffocated by self-doubt’. 
He claimed Mrs May was sending negotiators ‘into battle with the white flags fluttering above them’ and surrendering control to Brussels. Following a chaotic day of resignations and rumours, Downing Street is now braced for a potential leadership challenge.
Sources insisted the Prime Minister would stand and fight for the national interest while her allies derided Mr Johnson, saying he offered no solutions on Brexit. 
Boris also faced criticism in many quarters for taking the time to stage the photos of himself signing the resignation letter and was branded a 'poundshop Churchill'.
In a reference to his decision to resign only after David Davis had quit as Brexit Secretary on Sunday night, one May loyalist said: ‘There’s not much honour in being second over the top.’
Mrs May also swiftly reshuffled her cabinet, bringing in Jeremy Hunt from Health to replace Boris as Foreign Secretary and Dominic Raab to replace Mr Davis.
But, in a significant intervention, Jacob Rees-Mogg last night backed Mr Johnson, saying he would make a ‘brilliant’ prime minister.  
Mr Johnson was branded a 'poundshop Churchill impressionist' for staging the photos by Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, who accused him of 'running away like a coward' after he sensationally quit the Cabinet. 
Slamming the photos, Ms Moran, a leading member of the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain, said: 'This staged resignation photograph is pathetic. This man is a poundshop Churchill impressionist. Its just very sad.
'But Boris is doing what he does best: when the going gets tough he runs away like a coward.
'He did it over Heathrow and he's done it today. Rather than fight for the country he yet again cares only for his own self interest. 
'But at least he will have a little memento of the day his dreams came crashing down around him.' 
Labour's David Lammy said: 'The fact that Boris Johnson arranged for a photoshoot of himself signing his resignation letter for the front pages tells us everything we need to know about him. 
'Self-obsessed, vain egomaniac devoid of substance caring only about himself and advancing his career. Good riddance.' 
Sam Macrory, an ally of Nick Clegg, said: 'We all know that Boris Johnson’s decision to quit is absolutely not about one man and his personal ambitions, but I’m struggling to think of another time where a Secretary of State called in the photographers to record the moment a resignation letter was signed.' 
Gavin Sinclair said: 'This sums up Boris - has a senior minister ever called in a photographer before resigning...and just before the PM’s statement to the Commons?!' 
And Jon David Ellis criticised Mr Johnson's behaviour in the aftermath of the Novichok poisonings, saying: 'Boris literally posed with his resignation letter. Hours after a British citizen died from a foreign agent he chooses self image over basic dignity.' 
More than 80 MPs attended a meeting of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, which Mr Rees-Mogg leads, in order to attack Mrs May’s Chequers plan. ‘This has got to be killed and it’s got to be killed before recess [in two weeks’ time],’ said one attendee.
Another Eurosceptic confirmed MPs were writing to the Tory 1922 Committee backbench group to trigger a no- confidence motion.
Two more Conservative MPs resigned from the Government last night.
Both parliamentary private secretaries, they said they were stepping down because of their concern over the direction of Brexit negotiations.
Chris Green, PPS to Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, announced his departure from the position following last night’s 1922 Committee meeting with the Prime Minister.
Conor Burns, who was Boris Johnson’s PPS at the Foreign Office, also announced his resignation.
Mr Green’s constituency Bolton West voted 55.6 per cent Leave in the 2016 referendum and Mr Burns’ constituency Bournemouth West voted 57.7 per cent Leave.
Although the role of a PPS is often described as a ministerial ‘bag carrier’, it shows growing discontent within the Party and heightens speculation of a challenge to Theresa May’s leadership. 
One said: ‘It’s over now. She’s done. It would be good if it were done quickly. I want to know who will be standing against her. We need to establish a new government because this offer is indefensible’.
One MP told the 1922 Committee that Mrs May had orchestrated a ‘Remain coup’ at Chequers on Friday. All four ‘great offices of state’ are now held by those who campaigned for Remain.
Friends of Mr Johnson, whose aide Conor Burns also resigned, were tight-lipped last night about his next move. But his resignation letter offered no support for Mrs May and, unlike Mr Davis, he did not urge MPs to back her.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid was among those to praise Mr Johnson yesterday, saying he would miss his ‘Reaganesque optimism and passion for global Britain’. On a day of turmoil at Westminster:
In the Commons yesterday Mrs May paid tribute to both Mr Davis and Mr Johnson, who she said had displayed ‘passion’ for the Brexit cause. But in her reply to Mr Johnson’s attack last night, the PM noted that he had initially backed the plan at Chequers last week, reportedly choosing to toast her success with champagne.
Mrs May said she was ‘sorry – and a little surprised’ to receive his resignation ‘after the productive discussion we had at Chequers’.
One of her allies said: ‘For all the flowery language in his letter, what is conspicuous by its absence is anything resembling an alternative plan.
‘He moans about all these things but there is no sense of how he might achieve a different outcome. That is the difference.’
Theresa May faces a mortal threat to her leadership of the Conservative Party and Government. 
A Tory leadership contest can be called in one of two ways - if Mrs May resigns or if MPs force and win a vote of no confidence in her.
Calling votes of no confidence is the responsibility of the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which includes all backbench Tory MPs.
Chairman Graham Brady is obliged to call a vote if 15 per cent of Tory MPs write to him calling for one - currently 48 MPs. 
The process is secret and only Mr Brady knows how many letters he has received.
The procedure was last used in 2003 when Iain Duncan Smith was ousted as Tory leader.
If Mrs May is ousted, any MP is eligible to stand.
Conservative MPs will then hold a series of ballots to whittle the list of contenders down to two, with the last place candidate dropping out in each round. 
The final two candidates are then offered to the Tory membership at large for an election. 
Addressing the 1922 Committee, the Prime Minister acknowledged the controversy the Chequers deal had caused, but told MPs: ‘To lead is to decide.’ Outside the meeting, her supporters claimed she was in a better position following the resignations.
‘She is strengthened by all of this – it helps her,’ said Solicitor General Robert Buckland. ‘She has made decisions and the consequences are that some people feel they cannot be bound by collective responsibility, respect to them for resigning, but she has shown leadership.
‘This idea she is some sort of vacillator who cannot make her mind up and wants to keep everybody in the tent – no – she is showing leadership.’
Tory MP James Heappey said there was ‘huge support’ for Mrs May at the 1922 Committee. He said Brexiteers seeking to depose her ‘can do their worst, but it won’t be enough’.
In the Commons pro-Remain Tories, including Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan, backed Mrs May. But the Prime Minister faced direct challenges from a string of Eurosceptic Tories.
Mr Rees-Mogg said her Brexit promises ‘have been watered down to the point that we are, or would be, in a semi-suspended state of membership of the European Union’.
He said the Cabinet resignations ‘really undermine the credibility of what was agreed at Chequers’.
Andrea Jenkyns, who quit the government to speak out on Brexit last month, said she would be writing a letter of no-confidence in Mrs May.
She said Mrs May’s premiership ‘is over... there’s a feeling we need a PM who believes in Brexit’.
Senior Conservative Sir Bernard Jenkin warned there had been a ‘massive haemorrhage of trust’ as a result of the direction the PM was taking and said it ‘may well come’ to a vote over her leadership.
In the Commons, Peter Bone accused Mrs May of betrayal. Mr Bone, who faced cries of ‘shame’, told the PM that activists in his Wellingborough constituency were questioning why they were still campaigning for the party.
Mrs May replied: ‘This is not a betrayal. We will end free movement. We will end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
‘We will stop sending vast sums of money to the European Union every year.’
Dear Theresa
It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of their democracy.
They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.
Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.
That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.
We have postponed crucial decisions – including the preparations for no deal, as I argued in my letter to you of last November – with the result that we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system.
It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not actually going to be able to make our own laws. Indeed we seem to have gone backwards since the last Chequers meeting in February, when I described my frustrations, as Mayor of London, in trying to protect cyclists from juggernauts. We had wanted to lower the cabin windows to improve visibility; and even though such designs were already on the market, and even though there had been a horrific spate of deaths, mainly of female cyclists, we were told that we had to wait for the EU to legislate on the matter.
So at the previous Chequers session, we thrashed out an elaborate procedure for divergence from EU rules. But even that seems to have been taken of the table and there is in fact no easy UK right of initiative. Yet if Brexit is to mean anything, it must surely give ministers and Parliament the chance to do things differently to protect the public. If a country cannot pass a law to save the lives of female cyclists – when that proposal is supported at every level of UK Government – then I don't see how that country can truly be called independent.
It is also also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods (and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence
Conversely, the British Government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law, without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health – and when we no longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.
In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony – and many will struggle to see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.
It is also clear that by surrendering control over our rulebook for goods and agrifoods (and much else besides) we will make it much more difficult to do free trade deals. And then there is the further impediment of having to argue for an impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.
What is even more disturbing is that this is our opening bid. This is already how we see the end state for the UK – before the other side has made its counter-offer. It is as though we are sending our vanguard into battle with the white flags fluttering above them. Indeed, I was concerned, looking at Friday's document, that there might be further concessions on immigration, or that we might end up effectively paying for access to the single market.
On Friday I acknowledged that my side of the argument were too few to prevail, and congratulated you on at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward. As I said then, the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is that I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat. We must have collective responsibility. Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.
I am proud to have served as Foreign Secretary in your Government. As I step down I would like first to thank the patient officers of the Metropolitan Police who have looked after me and my family, at times in demanding circumstances.
I am proud too of the extraordinary men and women of our diplomatic service. Over the last few months they have shown how many friends this country has around the world, as 28 governments expelled Russian spies in an unprecedented protest at the attempted assassination of the Skripals. They have organised a highly successful Commonwealth summit and secured record international support for this Government's campaign for 12 years of quality education for every girl, and much more besides. As I leave office, the FCO now has the largest and by far the most effective diplomatic network of any country in Europe – a continent which we will never leave.
THE RT HON BORIS JOHNSON MP 
Dear Boris,
Thank you for your letter relinquishing the office of Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
I am sorry - and a little surprised - to receive it after the productive discussions we had at Chequers on Friday, and the comprehensive and detailed proposal which we agreed as a Cabinet. It is a proposal which will honour the result of the referendum and the commitments we made in our general election manifesto to leave the single market and the customs union. It will mean that we take back control of our borders, our laws, and our money - ending the freedom of movement, ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the United Kingdom, and ending the days of sending vast sums of taxpayers' money to the European Union. We will be able to spend that money on our priorities instead - such as the £20 billion increase we have announced for the NHS budget, which means that we will soon be spending an extra £394 million a week on our National Health Service.
As I outlined at Chequers, the agreement we reached requires the full, collective support of Her Majesty's Government. During the EU referendum campaign, collective responsibility on EU policy was temporarily suspended. As we developed our policy on Brexit, I have allowed Cabinet colleagues considerable latitude to express their individual views. But the agreement we reached on Friday marks the point where that is no longer the case, and if you are not able to provide the support we need to secure this deal in the interests of the United Kingdom, it is right that you should step down.
As you do so, I would like to place on record my appreciation of the service you have given to our country, and to the Conservative Party, as Mayor of London and as Foreign Secretary - not least for the passion that you have demonstrated in promoting a Global Britain to the world as we leave the European Union.
Yours ever,
Theresa May 
Jeremy Hunt - Britain's longest ever serving Health Secretary - was promoted to head the Foreign Office after Boris Johnson's shock resignation. 
Theresa May moved to reshuffle her frontbench team after a day of high political drama which threatened to bring her premiership crashing down.
Earlier she faced down her critics at a crunch meeting with her MPs - known as the 1922 committee - in Parliament, warning them they risk handing the keys of No10 to Jeremy Corbyn if they oust her.
Mr Johnson's departure fuelled feverish discussion about whether mutinous Tory MPs will move to topple Mrs May by sending in letters of no confidence.
Theresa May's premiership is hanging in the balance after David Davis and Boris Johnson quit in a shock double cabinet resignation.
Here are the odds, via bookmakers Ladbrokes, on who will be the next PM:
Has buried the hatchet with Mr Johnson after brutally ending his Tory leadership campaign in the wake of David Cameron's resignation.
Thought to be less concerned with short term concessions that Mr Johnson, but focused on ensuring the UK is free from Brussels rules in the longer term.
The labour leader will be hoping to capitalise on Brexit disarray in the Cabinet to seize power himself in an election 
Brought in to replace Amber Rudd after she resigned amid the Windrush scandal, Mr Javid was seen as a reluctant Remainer in the referendum.
Many thought the former high-flying banker would plump for the Leave campaign, but he eventually claimed to have been won over by the economic case. He is likely to focus be guided by evidence about trade calculations in discussions over how closely aligned the UK should be with the EU.
A leading Tory backbencher, he is chairman of the European Research Group - the powerful group of backbench Brexit backing Tory MPs. 
The Brexit champion in the Cabinet until today, has been agitating for a more robust approach and previously played down the problems of leaving with no deal. 
He is unhappy with plans for a tight customs arrangement with Brussels - warning that it could effectively mean being lashed to the EU indefinitely. Said to have bluntly dismissed concerns from pro-EU companies by saying 'f*** business'.
A leading Brexiteer who ran for the leadership last year before pulling out allowing Theresa May to be crowned.
A Remainer in the referendum campaign, Mr Hunt has since embraced the Brexiteer arguments - with speculation that he is positioning for a tilt at the top job should Mrs May be abruptly ousted. He has been heavily 
The new Brexit Secretary, Mr Raab is a leading Brexiteer who has been brought into the Cabinet after David Davis' shock resignation.
A long-time Eurosceptic and veteran of the 1990s Maastricht battles, brought back by Mrs May in 2016 to oversee the day-to-day negotiations.
He has plunged her Government into chaos after sensationally quitting last night. 
He has said the government will be seeking a 'Canada plus plus plus' deal from the EU.   
But the PM has insisted that she will stay on and fight if a leadership contest is triggered.
The promotion of Mr Hunt - a Remainer who now says he would back Brexit - comes weeks after he secured a £20billion a year funding boost for the NHS to mark its 70th birthday. 
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock will move to head up the health service, attorney general Jeremy Wright has become the new Culture Secretary while Brexiteer Geoffrey Cox is being made Attorney General in the shake-up.
Earlier this year Mr Hunt fended off efforts by the PM to move him from the health brief to become Business Secretary - telling her he was determined to stay on and finish the job he had set himself as Health Secretary.
It came hours after Mrs May promoted Brexiteer Tory MP Dominic Raab to the post of Brexit Secretary as Mr Davis' replacement.
Unlike his predecessor, Mr Hunt backed Remain in the EU referendum - but he has said he would now vote for Brexit because he has grown fed up with the 'arrogance' of Brussels.
The PM moved to shore up her support among the Tory backbenches by defending her Brexit plans in the Commons chamber and a packed meeting of the parliamentary party which took place immediately afterwards.
She warned mutinous Tories threatening to mount a revolt to out her that they risk letting a hard left Corbyn- led Government.
And she was given a reprieve tonight with news she will not face an immediate vote of no confidence.
The rare bright spot for the PM came as she issued a defiant message at a stormy session of the Tory 1922 committee in Parliament, with her premiership hanging by a thread.
Mrs May told the gathering that 'to lead is to decide' and raised the prospect of the Labour leader imposing a left-wing revolution on the country.
And in a boost for the embattled PM, the chairman of the powerful 1922, Sir Graham Brady, is said to have confirmed at the session tonight that currently he has not received the 48 letters from MPs that would trigger a no-confidence vote.
After the meeting, solicitor general Robert Buckland told journalists that Mrs May had received strong support from the party rank-and-file.
He said: ‘She talked about Jeremy Corbyn, she talked about the alternative being to deliver the country to the sort of Government people didn’t vote for and any Conservative voter would be repelled by.’
Mr Buckland insisted Mrs May could emerge strengthened from the furore, comparing the turbulent events to the crises which faced German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her early years in office.
He said: ‘I think she is strengthened by all of this, I think it helps her.
'The most striking remark she said was “to lead is to decide”.' 
Tory MP Geoffrey Cox - a Brexiteer who has been promoted to Attorney General in today's reshuffle  - said many Eurosceptics inside the meeting urged the PM to stay on and lead them through Brexit.
He said: 'I regret Boris and David have gone, but I think they were wrong - they should have stuck in and make this deal successful.'
He said the third way deal Mrs May has put forward represents a 'giant step' on the road to Brexit.' 
But Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Tory MP and leader of the European Research Group - the powerful group of backbench Tory MPs - said the PM must ditch her Chequers plan.
He said: ‘You see that those supporting Remain two years ago are supporting quasi Remain now…the key question for today is does the rather bad Chequers deal go ahead.’
And he warned that if the Tory party splits along the two wings of Brexiteers vs Remainers - the fault will lie squarely with Downing Street. 
He said: 'If the Government plans to get the Chequers deal through on the back of Labour Party votes then that would be the most divisive thing it could do.
‘And it would be a split coming from the top, not from the members of Conservative party across the country.’   
Boris Johnson’s dramatic resignation came after he refused to put his name to a Downing Street-drafted article supporting the Chequers agreement, it emerged last night.
Mr Johnson, who quit the Government yesterday, had appeared to have fallen into the line with the negotiating strategy announced on Friday evening – despite apparently referring to it as a ‘t**d’.
He was even said to have congratulated the PM at dinner for securing Cabinet agreement. But on Saturday he refused to sign off a joint newspaper article with the Remain-backing Chancellor Philip Hammond – a long term Remainer – supporting the deal.
A friend said Mr Johnson took one look at the article and said: ‘I can’t put my name to this.’ A text drafted by No 10 was passed to the Treasury, then sent on to the FCO on Saturday. But seeing the consequences of the deal in black and white made him realise he would have to quit, allies revealed.
‘At that point he knew it was indefensible,’ the friend said.
On Sunday a series of articles purporting to be written by Cabinet ministers supporting the deal were placed in newspapers. Both Mr Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis were conspicuous by their absence.
By yesterday, according to allies, Mr Johnson was ‘racked with doubt’ about whether to stay in the Cabinet at all and concluded he simply couldn’t improve the deal from inside government.
He telephoned Downing Street yesterday lunchtime and told them he planned to announce his resignation in the evening.
But No 10 refused to allow him that luxury and – in a clear attempt to spike his guns – made the unusual decision to announce his departure in a short statement at 3pm, before Mr Johnson had even finished composing his resignation letter.
It emerged hours later, warning that the UK was heading for a ‘Semi-Brexit’ as a ‘colony’ of Brussels and that the dream of the Leave campaign – to take back control of our democracy – was ‘dying’.
In her icy reply last night, the Prime Minister said she was ‘a little surprised’ to see Mr Johnson departing the Government after the Cabinet signed off on her deal at Chequers on Friday. She suggested he was going back on his word.
But after Mr Davis quit the Government at midnight, speculation quickly swirled around Westminster that Mr Johnson would follow. The rumours soon reached fever pitch when he failed to attend a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee at 1pm to discuss the Salisbury poisonings.
He had also been expected to host, but was notably absent from, the Western Balkans Summit in London’s Docklands yesterday afternoon, involving ministers from several EU states.
Instead, he spent the day locked in talks with advisers at his official residence, Carlton Gardens. As the atmosphere turned febrile, it was suggested No.10 had enraged Mr Johnson by offering his job to Mr Davis in a desperate attempt to get him to stay inside the Cabinet, something denied by Theresa May’s aides.
Allies of the Foreign Secretary insisted last night that neither this, nor leadership ambitions, was ultimately a factor in his decision to leave Indeed, when his resignation letter was finally released, it was a vivid deconstruction of the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy. Savaging the PM’s Chequers deal, he said vast swathes of the economy would be ‘locked in’ to Brussels rules but with no influence over them.
He also launched a scathing attack on the PM personally, accusing her of being ‘suffocated by needless self doubt’ and of running up the white flag to Brussels.
And he warned this ‘disturbing’ opening bid could be followed by further concessions on immigration and money ‘for access to the single market’.
Unlike Mr Davis – who notably backed Mrs May staying in office in interviews yesterday – Mr Johnson made no such offers of support.
Mr Johnson wrote: ‘Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy. That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.’
Mr Johnson said the failure to prepare for ‘no deal’ means ‘we appear to be heading for a semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system.’
And he condemned Mrs May’s customs proposals, the Facilitated Customs Arrangement, calling it an ‘impractical and undeliverable customs arrangement unlike any other in existence.’ In his letter, Mr Johnson accepted that on Friday he had congratulated the PM on ‘at least reaching a Cabinet decision on the way forward’. He then added: ‘As I said then, the Government now has a song to sing. The trouble is I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat.’
Last Thursday night, David Cameron made an extraordinary appeal to Mr Johnson not to resign.
The former prime minister, acting with the blessing of Mrs May, met for drinks with his fellow Old Etonian at a London club just hours before the make-or-break summit.
Last Wednesday other pro-Leave cabinet ministers met Mr Johnson in the Foreign Office as details of Mrs May’s proposals leaked out. Penny Mordaunt, Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling, Michael Gove and David Davis – as well as Gavin Williamson discussed the plan. A similar group met the next day to plan tactics for Chequers in an attempt to push an alternative plan.           
Back in the 18th century, political reformer Henry Fox was advocating giving the vote to more people. But only, he insisted, to what he called ‘the better sort’. Not ‘the mob or the mere dregs of the people’. Heaven forbid!
Now, in the 21st century, such derogatory sentiments about ‘the people’ are dangerously back in fashion — ever since they dared vote for Brexit in Britain, and for Donald Trump in the United States.
Questions are being asked in high places about whether ordinary voters are fit to make decisions on major issues.
As a result, democracy — the cornerstone of our way of life — is being undermined, its very survival put at risk. Its modern enemies are mustering from all corners — but most worryingly from the Left, the very area where its stoutest defenders should be.
As a long-standing person of the Left, I fear that democratic freedoms are now in danger of being abandoned as elitists in our midst attempt to restrict them.
Every serious politician and thinker declares his or her belief in democracy. Yet, in practice, they seek to separate power from the people. The mantra has become ‘I’m a democrat, of course, but …’
Over Brexit, this profoundly insidious attitude was exemplified by John Major, former Tory prime minister, who denied the referendum result was binding and declared: ‘The tyranny of the majority has never applied in a democracy.’
Some of us might naively have imagined that majority rule was the very essence of democracy. But not, it seems, when millions vote against the wishes of a tiny political elite.
It was, of course, George Orwell in his 1945 novel Animal Farm, who described how ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.’
Fast-forward to today and we find many Remainers similarly convinced that anyone who voted to leave the EU is too stupid to have the vote. The response was the same in America when voters failed to elect Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s victory, one U.S. professor declared, was ‘the dance of the dunces’, the result of ‘uneducated, low-information white people’ being given the vote. He added: ‘Democracy is supposed to enact the will of the people. But what if the people have no clue what they’re doing?’
The fury against the 17.4 million UK voters who dared to back Brexit — and the 62 million Americans who had the temerity to vote for Trump — brings frightening anti-democratic poisons bubbling to the surface of our societies.
The sheer bile that erupted from political and cultural elites in Britain after the Brexit vote revealed a deep-seated contempt for the people and for democracy. The Establishment reacted as if the ground had disappeared from beneath their feet. How could this have happened?
After all, the Remain campaign had marshalled every authority in the Western world to warn that a Leave vote would lead to economic ruination, a descent into barbarism, world war and, worse, falling house prices.
The people had been told to vote Remain by leaders of all Britain’s mainstream political parties, the governor of the Bank of England, the Chancellor of Germany, the then President of the U.S., and every celebrity from David Beckham to Johnny Rotten.
Yet a majority of voters actually disobeyed!
In the eyes of the Establishment, the only possible explanation was that those millions were simply too ignorant, uneducated, gullible, bigoted or emotional to understand what they were being told.
What is curious is that those from the liberal and Left wings — the ones who claim to be most in favour of change in the UK — were most upset.
But instead of trying to understand, the response of many was to dismiss the result as merely a ‘howl of rage’ by voters who must have taken leave of their senses — and to find ways to block it. The Guardian paper, alleged voice of liberal Britain, produced an official post-referendum T-shirt that declares: ‘Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.’
Its columnist Polly Toynbee, grande dame of British liberalism, demanded that 231 Labour MPs — 70 per cent of whose constituencies voted for Brexit — must ‘save us’ from the referendum result. In the name of ‘democracy’, of course.
Such responses let slip the mask and revealed the ugly fact that this country’s political elite believes that matters of government are far too complex and sophisticated to let the governed decide.
For the record, I voted Leave with passion, but my attack is not aimed at the 16.1 million who voted to Remain. They made a rational choice, just as the Leavers did. The difference is that most Remainers now accept the result, unlike elitists such as Tony Blair or Richard Branson — or their poster girl Gina Miller, the City financier who led the court challenge, declaring that the revolting voters’ verdict ‘made her physically ill’.
The reaction from those on the Left was the same when the American electorate handed Trump the keys to the White House.
He had been denounced as a disgrace to U.S. politics not only by the political establishment and the media but also by alpha intellectuals Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and Madonna, Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen. How could Americans resist being dazzled by such a star-studded appeal, you might think?
Yet more than 62 million Americans did just that. They voted Trump in — to the consternation of every ‘liberal’ voice in the land. On campuses, students held protests and college authorities offered counselling and time off to ‘grieve’, as if they were victims of a tragic disaster.
Personally, I have no truck with the illiberal, free-speech-stomping, narrow-minded Trump. But what I don’t get is their astonishment and hysteria at what happened.
After the election, everybody suddenly started asking: ‘How could they vote for him?’
But it should not have been difficult to get a sense beforehand of the growing anger against the political elite among the voters Clinton branded ‘deplorables’.
It was just that nobody had ever bothered to ask those ‘deplorables’ what they thought. The underlying problem in the UK, the U.S. and other Western societies is that politics and public life have increasingly become the preserve of a self-regarding elite of officials, opinion formers, intellectuals and so-called experts. They treat ‘ordinary people’, the masses, as outside of politics and beyond the pale, their concerns marginalised and ignored.
The Brexit vote marked a revolt against the ‘enforced conformity’ preached by this elite. That it came as such a shock to them was a sign of how little contact they had with the real world. And still many of them don’t get it.
In the Left-wing New Statesman magazine, Professor Richard Dawkins, the leading evolutionary biologist and renowned humanist was unable to suppress his true feelings that the large slice of humanity who voted Leave were ‘stupid, ignorant people’. He protested that ‘it is unfair to thrust on to unqualified simpletons the responsibility to take historic decisions of great complexity and sophistication’.
Presumably such decisions would be better left to highly intellectual minds such as his own. Great atheist that he is, he appears to think the rest of us should have blind faith in people like him.
Meanwhile, the normally unflappable ‘leading man of the Left’, philosophy professor A.C. Grayling, wrote to every MP (apparently in the name of his students), demanding that they vote to ignore the result — which he said was driven by mere ‘demagoguery and sentiment’ — and remain in the European Union.
His extraordinary contention was that the majority of people are what he called ‘System One’ thinkers, who make decisions on impulse — and that what we need is to pay more heed to ‘System Two’ thinkers, who seek information, analyse it, and weigh arguments in order to come to decisions. People similar to him, presumably.
Thankfully, not all clever people took this anti-democratic line.
Wolf Hall author Hilary Mantel observed how: ‘As soon as the result was in, millions signed a petition to rub it out and do it again. The bien-pensants suggested the result was not binding, but advisory — an opinion they would hardly have offered had the vote gone the other way.’
Mantel compared the bitter Remain lobby to the ‘army of erasers’ she had encountered in Saudi Arabia, who dealt with things they didn’t like — pork, Israel, women’s equality — by simply removing mention of them from public life.
Interestingly, Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, observed that the disdain the Establishment showed for those worried about the EU had probably encouraged many to vote Leave — and attacked those who claimed ‘if you even contemplate voting for Brexit, you must be either ignorant, uneducated, stupid or racist.’
The emphasis of many critics of the referendum was on the ‘lies’ of the Leave campaign and how they had led gullible voters astray.
Yet research by the Electoral Reform Society leads to the opposite conclusion — that the majority declined to be swayed or bullied into submission.
They kept their eyes on the bigger issues and voted Leave because they wanted more control over their own lives, UK politics and the country’s borders.
Millions made the entirely rational calculation that these reasons were important enough to support Leave, even if the immediate economic impact was uncertain and might prove adverse. A fall in the pound could be a price worth paying for an increase in democracy and sovereignty.
Yet still their motives are impugned. One of the nastiest tricks of those who lost the referendum was to claim that those who voted for Brexit (and Trump) were racists and xenophobes. In which case their votes should be seen as morally illegitimate.
But the small-minded prejudices actually on display here were those of leading Remainers towards working-class voters.
The sad truth is that to the elite, such people are far more alien than suave Brussels bureaucrats.
Significantly, almost immediately after the referendum result, a new scare started over a reported spree of ‘hate crimes’ against immigrants in the UK. The political elite seized upon these allegations as proof that the Brexit vote had been a demonstration of British racism.
But does anybody seriously believe that 17.4 million UK voters backed Leave for racist motives?
The truth is that Britain today is a more tolerant and anti-racist society than ever before.
Yes, immigration was an important factor for many Leave voters. But it was far from the over-riding obsession it has been made out to be: a post-referendum poll found 34 per cent said immigration was their main concern but 53 per cent prioritised the ‘ability of Britain to make its own laws’.
The vast majority wanted EU migrants living and working in the UK to be allowed to stay.
Still the attempts went on to subvert the referendum result, with the intervention of the courts. First the Law Lords and then the Supreme Court saw fit to overrule the express wishes of 17.4 million Leave voters and tell the elected government it could not trigger Brexit without the permission of MPs and Lords in Parliament.
The same Parliament they had allowed to be overridden by Brussels for the previous 40 years.
Then there was the four-million-strong online petition calling on Parliament to hold another referendum that would require a larger margin of victory.
In similar vein was the letter signed by a thousand top lawyers, demanding that Parliament must decide (ie, vote for Remain). The QC behind this initiative explained: ‘In times of crisis people often turn to lawyers to ask them how we should behave in society.’
The arrogance of the notion that the opinions of 1,000 lawyers — whose fees are an affront to civilised society — could outweigh those of 17.4 million voters summed up the Remainers’ ‘some are more equal than others’ outlook.
Even now, the attempts continue to put Brexit back in its box, fuelled by a sense that too much democracy is dangerous.
The Brexit referendum vote opened up the opportunity for a new kind of political debate about the future of our society, engaging many who have previously felt excluded from public life.
Time and again, according to the Electoral Reform Society, its researchers heard people say the EU referendum was the first time their vote ‘had truly counted’. They decided for themselves what the truth was about the EU, and made their own choice in defiance of whatever was flung at them by the political class.
But the plain fact is that the elite in this country do not trust the mass of voters, believing we are too unintelligent, misinformed and emotional to make the right decisions on important issues.
Whichever side you took in June in the UK or November in the United States, we need to resist this with all our might.
The real issue should be to defend democratic principles against those who would tell us that some voters are more equal than others.
Aux armes, citoyens!
Britain cannot be treated like a second class member while it remains an EU member state ahead of Brexit, a top European politician has warned.
Donald Tusk used a speech to euro MPs in Brussels to urge them not to give in to 'fear and scaremongering' claims that the UK could use extra time inside the bloc to 'disrupt' its activities.
To muted applause in Brussels today the European Council president said that the UK had been a 'constructive and responsible' member state throughout Brexit talks, adding: 'We have no reason to believe this will change.'
He also said the the UK 'will' take part in European elections, despite Theresa May's wish to have left before the May 23 poll.
Mr Tusk told MEPs that any returned by Britain would be 'full members of the Parliament, with full rights and obligations'.
He said: 'I know that some have expressed fear that the UK might want to disrupt the EU's functioning during this time but the EU 27 didn't give in to such fear and scaremongering.
'In fact, since the very beginning of the Brexit process the UK has been a constructive and responsible EU member state and so we have no reason to believe that this should change.'
He added: 'One of the consequences of our decision is that the UK will hold European elections next month.
'We should approach this seriously as UK members of the European Parliament will be there for several months - maybe longer.
'They will be full members of the Parliament with all the rights and obligations. 
'I am speaking about this today because I have strongly opposed the idea that during this further extension the UK should be treated as a second category member state. 
'No, it cannot. Therefore I also ask you to reject similar ideas if they were to be voiced in this House.'
It came after a top German politician warned Britain to get its EU departure sorted by the new October 31 deadline, saying 'You cannot drag out Brexit for a decade'.
Heiko Maas, Angela Merkel's foreign minister said that the UK had six months to sort itself out politically, hinting that a fresh extension to Article 50 was not a formality.
'They will have to decide what they want by October,' he told the Financial Times.
Mr Tusk called for the 'dream' that Britain might give up on leaving the European Union not to be dismissed and urged politicians not to let exhaustion with Brexit negotiations make for a hasty exit.
Giving an account of last week's summit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, European Council President Tusk said he was responding to a statement by one national leader who had warned 'dreamers' not to think 'Brexit could be reversed'.
'At this rather difficult moment in our history, we need dreamers and dreams. We cannot give in to fatalism. 
'At least I will not stop dreaming about a better and united Europe,' said Tusk, long a vocal proponent of Britain having a chance to stay.
It was not immediately clear which leader he was referring to, but French President Emmanuel Macron stood out at the summit for pushing for Britain to be given only a few weeks more to decide whether to leave on negotiated terms or without them. The summit compromised by giving Britain another six months.
Tusk said: 'I know that, on both sides of the Channel, everyone, including myself, is exhausted with Brexit, which is completely understandable. However, this is not an excuse to say: "let's get it over with", just because we're tired.'
However European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker struck a less conciliatory tone this morning. 
Speaking after Mr Tusk he said it was  up to Britain when it chooses to exit the European Union and it was not his working assumption that Brexit could be reversed or extended beyond October.
He said the EU was 'ready' for a no-deal Brexit but that the bloc had 'nothing to gain' from the 'disruption' it would cause the UK. 
He said that like the UK the EU was now on a break from Brexit after the new longer deadline was passed last week. 
European Parliament chief Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt said he feared Brexit would 'poison' the European elections.
Referring to the delay to Brexit, he said: 'I fear that it will continue the uncertainty. I fear that it will prolong the indecision.  And I fear most of all that it will import the Brexit mess into the European Union.
'And moreover that it will poison the upcoming European election.'
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage claimed his party would win a general election if Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn agree to a permanent customs union compromise.
He told the European Parliament: 'The Brexit Party will sweep the board in these elections and there is only one way it can be stopped and that is if the governing party of Mrs May and the opposition of Mr Corbyn come together and agree to a permanent customs union, and indeed effectively membership of the single market.
'If that happens, the Brexit Party won't win the European elections but it will win the general election because the betrayal will be so complete and utter, so I don't believe it's going to happen.'
Earlier Theresa May had been urged to use the delay to Brexit to prepare for the next stage of negotiations with the EU and avoid repeating the blunders made during the divorce process.
Talks on a future trade deal with Brussels will be 'more complicated' than the negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement, an Institute for Government (IfG) report said.
In a highly critical assessment of the Government's handling of the Brexit process so far, the think tank's analysis blamed Mrs May for creating the 'unsustainable' split in responsibilities between Number 10 and the Department for Exiting the European Union (Dexeu), with the 'secretive' approach adopted by the Prime Minister and her closest aides fuelling division.
Negotiations on the first phase of Brexit were also 'bedevilled by the difficulty of getting Cabinet agreement' on the kind of relationship the UK wants with the EU.
Politicians, particularly on the Tory backbenches, 'did not trust the UK's official negotiators' led by Olly Robbins.
'Ministers, from the Prime Minister down, were unclear about the instructions they gave to officials,' the report said, meaning that critics could blame the civil servants, undermining their work.
IfG programme director Jill Rutter said: 'The Prime Minister moved quickly to establish the Department for Exiting the EU and the Department for International Trade within a day of taking office.
'Those hasty decisions created completely foreseeable problems for the exit negotiations, compounded by the inability of the Cabinet to reach an agreed position on the key future economic relationship.
'Whoever is prime minister for the second phase of the negotiations needs to ensure that they avoid similar mistakes next time round.'
A UN race relations envoy sparked fury today as she claimed Brexit had made Britain more racist and fuelled a rise in anti-Semitism.    
Tendayi Achiume said the EU referendum had resulted in a rise in 'racial discrimination and intolerance'.
And she pointedly said that anti-Semitic abuse and attacks surged last year in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. 
Labour has been dogged by claims of anti-Semitism ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader in 2016, with Jewish Labour MPs telling how they received death and rape threats after they spoke out.
The Labour leader has vowed to do more to root out the abuse after backbenchers turned on him for allowing racism to fester among some of his supporters. 
MPs tore into Ms Achiume's claims that Brexit had made Britain more racist branding them 'complete rubbish' and 'not worth the paper they are written on'. 
Labour MP John Mann, chairman of the all party campaign group on anti-Semitism, told Mail Online: 'An ignorant and foolish claim which has literally no basis in fact.
'Quite extraordinary buffoonery.' 
The UN inspector has spent the past two weeks travelling the country speaking to victims of racism.
Addressing a press conference in London today, she said suggested Britons are in a state of 'national panic' about terrorism - even though the UK was hit by five terror attacks last year killing dozens and injuring hundreds more.
And she accused the UK of a string of failures which have fostered racism and inequality - singling out the Brexit vote for particular criticism. 
She said: 'I think the environment leading up to the referendum, during the referendum and after the referendum has made racial ethnicities more vulnerable to racial discrimination and intolerance.'
The UN envoy who produced the report is a controversial figure who is a connected to a US pressure group that campaigns to abolish prisons.
Zambian-born academic E Tendayi Achiume, 36, is UN special rapporteur on racism and related intolerance.
She has close links to the LA campaign group Dignity and Power, which campaigns to abolish jails.
Four years ago she claimed attacks against foreign nationals threatened the lives of refugees in countries including the UK, comparing it to Libya. 
Describing her mission previously, she said: ‘Xenophobic discrimination and intolerance aimed at refugees, migrants and even British racial, religious and ethnic minorities will be an important focus’.
She is the latest in a string of dignitaries sent by various branches of the UN over the past decade who have criticised Britain’s human rights record.
Among them was UN adviser Professor Yves Cabannes joined protesters at Dale Farm in Essex in 2011 to condemn the removal of hundreds of travellers from illegal pitches
Two years later a UN housing rapporteur, Raquel Rolnik, demanded an end to the ‘bedroom tax’ that limited housing benefit for people with unused bedrooms in their homes.
The Brazilian academic, who admitted making an animal sacrifice to Karl Marx during a witchcraft ceremony, said the cut was leaving people hungry.
She stayed in a £300-a-night hotel during her visit to London.
South African feminist Rashida Manjoo, UN special rapporteur on violence against women, attacked Britain’s ‘boys’ club sexist culture in 2014.
Earlier this year another special rapporteur, Canadian Leilani Farha, said Britain had a ‘troubling’ attitude to social housing and suggested that the Grenfell Tower disaster showed that human rights laws were being broken. 
She added: 'It is also important to draw attention to the increase in anti-Semitic hate speech and violence that accompanied and followed the referendum. 
'In 2017, anti-Semitic incidents reached a record level in the UK, with 1,382 anti-Semitic incidents recorded nationwide by the Community Security Trust. 
'This figure represents a 3 per cent increase compared to 2016, and was the highest annual total that the organisation recorded since it began gathering such data in 1984. 
'The number of violent anti-Semitic assaults increased by 34 per cent compared to the previous year.'
She said that online hate campaigns tended to single out high profile Jewish women, including MPs, subjecting them to a barrage of hate-filled abuse.      
And she also suggested that Britons are in a state of national panic over terrorism - even though the UK was hit by five terror attacks last year killing dozens.
She said: 'In recent years, a series of terrorist attacks by individuals purporting to act in the name of Islam have served as triggers for national panic regarding Britain's security.'  
Ms Achiumealso said the Government's adoption of 'sweeping austerity measures' since 2010, which have 'disproportionately' affected ethnic minorities.
She slammed Theresa May's 'hostile environment' policy which she oversaw in a bid to crack down on illegal immigration while Home Secretary. 
And she added that the picture for young black boys in Britain 'remains grim and has actually worsened'.
Speaking at a press conference to mark the end of her trip, Ms Achiume said: 'The structural socioeconomic exclusion of racial and ethnic minority communities in the United Kingdom is striking.
'The harsh reality is that race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability status and related categories all continue to determine the life chances and wellbeing of people in Britain in ways that are unacceptable and in many cases unlawful.
'Austerity measures have been disproportionately detrimental to racial and ethnic minority communities. Unsurprisingly, austerity has had especially pronounced inter-sectional consequences, making women of colour the worst affected.'
But today Tory MPs slammed the UN inspector for claiming Brexit had fuelled racism - and said she had completely misunderstood the vote.    
Iain Duncan-Smith, the former leader of the Tory party, told Mail Online: 'It is complete rubbish. These reports are always rubbish. 
'Every single one of these UN rapporteur reports are not worth the paper they are written on – they are a total waste of time.
'The people who come here have always got an axe to grind.'
Tory MP Peter Bone told Mail Online: 'There is no basis for that - she is just plain wrong. 
'I think the person who made this claim that we are somehow more racist now is totally ill informed and doesn't understand Brexit.'
He said that current immigration rules are discriminatory be cause they allow EU nationals to move to Britain freely while hitting other nationalities with strict controls.
He said post Brexit a fair immigration system will be developed it make the system equal for al applicants - no matte where they are from. 
Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the influential backbench group of Brexiteers, the European Research group, said: 'The UN ought to have better things to do than issue tendentious reports abut the UK.'
For a moment, imagine the Queen had intervened in the Tory leadership race, casually dropping into a speech that she didn't much like Boris Johnson. Quite rightly, people would be outraged.
The role of the monarch is to be completely politically neutral and it is one of the great triumphs of the Queen's 67-year reign that she has succeeded in being exactly that.
That quality, too, should be the model for the Speaker of the House of Commons. 
According to Parliament's own website, 'the Speaker is the chief officer and highest authority of the House of Commons and must remain politically impartial at all times'.
We should have no idea what his or her personal political views are, let alone be nursing the dark suspicion that those personal views may be influencing their procedural decisions and parliamentary interventions.
But that's not how the current Speaker, John Bercow – unarguably the most partisan and controversial Speaker in modern political history – clearly sees the role.
This week he's been in Washington, noisily letting it be known with characteristic grandeur that, despite all his promises to the contrary, he won't be stepping down – at least until Brexit is resolved.
If one of his distinguished and wonderfully impartial predecessors, such as Betty Boothroyd or George Thomas, had delayed their departure, that would have been absolutely fine.
It is true that, as Mr Bercow says, 'momentous events' are taking place and procedural continuity in the Commons would be helpful as the complex Brexit debate lumbers towards its as yet unknown conclusion.
However, where he is quite wrong is not only in characteristically placing himself centre-stage in that debate but also doing so little to conceal his personal views. 
It is public knowledge that he voted Remain in the 2016 referendum and that his wife's car has proudly displayed a 'Bollocks to Brexit' sticker.
I voted Remain, too, so it's not his views I disagree with but his right to voice them publicly while in office.
Throw in a series of parliamentary interventions of his which have clearly favoured Remainers and which understandably enraged Brexiteers, and you can see that the Speaker's traditional impartiality seems to be have been tossed out of a Westminster window into the Thames to be carried away by the next ebb tide.
Any other previous holder of the office would have been horrified to have been found out in this way but not the vainglorious Mr Bercow.
In his speech in America, he said: 'The idea that Parliament could be sidelined in the debate over Brexit… is unimaginable.'
What he surely means is that the idea of him being sidelined in the debate over Brexit is unimaginable; at least to him.
He then went on to enthusiastically endorse Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt – both contenders to be the next Tory leader – partly for their intellectual self-confidence and partly because they don't quibble with his decisions.
For goodness sake, the Speaker is meant to be a servant of the Commons, not dramatically intervening in contentious party politics.
But Mr Bercow – who has been described as an 'egotistical preening popinjay' and certainly likes the sound of his own voice – doesn't see it that way. He regards the job of Speaker as far more important than it actually is.
For example, two years ago, after the Brexit vote and at a time when Britain badly needed America as a political and economic ally, Mr Bercow felt it was his place to rule that President Trump should not be invited to address Parliament because of his racism and sexism. 
Such a decision should not have been his to make. The Commons as a whole should have decided. But, characteristically, Mr Bercow made it himself.
On and on he went, with controversial intervention following controversial intervention.
Last December, he enabled the process that eventually resulted in the Government being ruled in contempt of Parliament for its failure to publish the legal advice it had received on the Brexit deal.
Then he enraged Brexiteers by allowing an amendment that forced the Prime Minister to deliver a 'Plan B' within three working days of her own EU withdrawal deal being blocked – something that previously had been thought constitutionally impossible.
The amendment was duly passed, which ordinarily might have vindicated the Speaker's decision.
But this is no ordinary Speaker – Mr Bercow's pro-Remain views were well known, but now they were even more so, damaging both his own standing and that of his office in the process.
We no longer had an impartial Speaker. Instead, we had a clearly partisan one who, unabashed and unrepentant, seemed to be relishing his time in the political limelight. 
Amendments favouring the Remain cause have been called while others that favoured Brexit fell mysteriously by the procedural wayside.
Then he summarily decided that the beleaguered Prime Minister could not present her deal for a third time unless 'substantial changes' were made.
More than once, Theresa May could have been forgiven for believing that her political opponents were no longer led by Jeremy Corbyn but by the Speaker of the House.
Small wonder, then, that Mr Bercow's decision to stay on – after already serving for ten years – has angered Brexiteers. 
Not only must Brexit be approved by the whole Commons but it must get past a clearly biased Speaker. And then came his appearance this week in Washington, encouraging one of his favourite ideas – that political intervention could still block a No Deal Brexit.
So is there nothing to be done? Will no one rid the Commons of this most turbulent of Speakers?
It is a little-known constitutional fact that the Commons can get rid of Mr Bercow whenever it wants.
As someone who prides himself on his procedural expertise, he must be aware that a vote of no confidence can be passed on the Speaker. 
All it requires is a motion proposing that 'this House has no confidence in the Speaker', to be passed by a majority of the Commons. If that happened, Mr Bercow would be out of a job.
There is second way he could be removed. We have a centuries-old precedent whereby the Speaker, who is elected in his or her own right as an MP, is not being challenged when they stand in a general election. 
But that protocol could change if there was unhappiness with Mr Bercow and rivals could stand against him so the good folk of Buckingham could decide his fate.
Even if either of those two challenges to his authority happened, the fact is that the office of Speaker has already been irrevocably tarnished by Mr Bercow's partisan posturings.
Indeed, when a parliamentarian as reasonable and thoughtful as Lord (William) Hague calls for the next Speaker to be elected by secret ballot, you know something has gone very wrong with Britain's long and globally respected tradition of open government.
Sadly, by serving his own ego, Mr Bercow has traduced the office of Speaker. His antics this week underline the fact that it is time for him to go. A vote of confidence in him cannot come soon enough.
Beyond Brexit by Professor Vernon Bogdanor is published by I. B. Tauris
 
Most political schemers like to take their time, considering their options, picking their moment to strike. It speaks volumes about Michael Gove and the poisonous political tendency he represents that he waited only a few hours after Theresa May’s modest ‘triumph’ in Brussels before launching a bid to destroy it.
For, make no mistake, that is what he has set out to do. The male equivalent of a stiletto heel was deployed by this smiling assassin to hurt, diminish and annihilate her politically.
I have never been a supporter of the Prime Minister’s Brexit policy. My party wouldn’t be seeking to negotiate its way out of a close and beneficial trade arrangement with our neighbours. We continue to argue that Brexit could and should be stopped. But I do admire May’s fundamental decency; her dogged determination to make the best of a bad job. And this week showed that’s what she has done.
It was striking that the European negotiators – Michel Barnier and Donald Tusk – were gracious enough to praise May for her negotiation, even though this is a divorce they did not seek or want. But after the obligatory, perfunctory congratulations required of his Cabinet post, Michael Gove had an article ready for The Daily Telegraph, to pour cold water on her achievements such as they were.
‘The British people will be in control,’ he writes. ‘By the time of the next Election, EU law and any new treaty with the EU will cease to have primacy or direct effect in UK law. If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the arrangement will allow a future government to diverge.’
It does not require the skills of a trained Kremlinologist to decipher and deconstruct Michael Gove’s article. His message to the hardline Brexiteers is clear: ‘Don’t worry guys, we may have lost the battle, but we will win the war. Once we have got past Brexit Day in March 2019 (if not earlier) we will get rid of this troublesome woman. Then, under new and inspired leadership (presumably Boris is being lined up as the Brutus for Gove’s Cassius), we will carry the country against Corbyn’s Labour. We can then enjoy the Brexit we want, tearing up all these tiresome agreements with Brussels.’
For Gove and his clique of extreme Brexiteers – Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom among them – May’s success is failure; disaster, triumph. Their aim was and is to precipitate a collapse in the negotiations and then exploit the economic shock and political chaos to press with a ‘hard’ Brexit, whipping up anti-European xenophobia in support.
Like the ideological zealots on the far Left, those on the Brexit Right see revolutionary disorder as an opportunity. But Theresa May, for all her failings – not least her terrible strategic error in unnecessarily committing herself to leaving the single market and customs union – is an old fashioned conservative who looks for pragmatic solutions in the interests of stability. Belatedly, she seems to have realised the dangers of being a ‘useful fool’ for her enemies.
It would be a mistake, then, to see Michael Gove in isolation. He probably speaks for the modern Conservative Party, which has been infiltrated by Ukip supporters in the same way that Labour has been by Momentum.
As a former Tory Cabinet Minister told me, ‘my party is now comfortable in its Brexit skin’. And there are more sinister forces at work like the Legatum Institute, whose links with Russian sources have been exposed by The Mail on Sunday. 
Where does all this leave the Brexit process? Theresa May will brief Parliament tomorrow on her deal. Like a curate’s egg, it is good in parts and bad in others. Citizenship rights – for Europeans in the UK and Brits in Europe – have been partially protected. They do not force deportation but those affected will have to apply to regularise their status, struggling through the notorious bureaucratic thickets surrounding the Home Office.
The divorce settlement – now expected to be around £40 billion – that many Brexiteers thought was money dedicated to the NHS, guarantees nothing and will have to be paid regardless of the outcome of trade negotiations. The Irish border problems remain to be solved.
I take some encouragement from the fact that the agreement commits Britain to remain in the EU single market and customs union until a solution can be found that fully protects the open border across Ireland. If history is any guide, this process may take decades, if not centuries. But Irish conflict is grist to Gove’s mill too; many have forgotten that he opposed the 1998 peace agreement.
After Friday’s fanfare, the serious negotiations start. The issue is whether to keep Britain as closely aligned with the EU as possible in trade terms – the course of action favoured by the grown-ups in Cabinet and the representatives of British business and trade unions – or to weaken those links through the ‘regulatory divergence’, favoured by Gove and his chums. The great irony is that the single market and customs union that represents ‘regulatory convergence’ are among the positive legacies of Mrs Thatcher, the architect of both, and heroine of the Tory Right.
Buried in Gove’s article, there is a sentiment with which I heartily concur – that the British people should approve the final outcome of the Brexit negotiations.
He wants this validation to be pursued through a General Election – which would inevitably become conflated with issues like Jeremy Corbyn’s fitness to rule.
I and the Liberal Democrats prefer a more direct and honest approach – asking the public if they want to go ahead once in possession of the facts about any deal which is struck, or if they want an ‘exit from Brexit’, re-engaging with and building on our membership of the EU.
The Mail on Sunday’s Survation poll last week showed that 50 per cent of the public now supports this position, while only 34 per cent disapprove. Other polls show an overwhelming majority among young people. The call for a vote can only grow.
Theresa May might come to see a ‘first referendum on the facts’ as necessary to rescue the country – and herself – from the disastrous course of action being urged on her by the likes of Michael Gove.
 
Nigel Farage was under huge pressure to rip up his election plans last night after an analysis showed he risks wrecking Tory hopes of snatching dozens of Leave-leaning seats from Labour.
An audit by the Daily Mail found Boris Johnson could miss out in almost 90 battleground constituencies if the pro-Brexit vote is split between the Tories and the Brexit Party.
If the Brexit Party choose not to stand and 70 per cent of their backers switch to the Tories (while 30 per cent go to Labour), then the Conservatives could take 38 target seats off Jeremy Corbyn’s party.
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Boris Johnson has urged voters to back his 'oven-ready' Brexit deal at the ballot box on December 12 as he started the general election campaign with a massive 17 point poll lead over Jeremy Corbyn.
An Ipsos Mori survey conducted for the Evening Standard between October 25-28 has the Tories on 41 per cent - up eight points since September.
But Labour is far behind on 24 per cent and only narrowly ahead of Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent.
The poll has Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party on just seven per cent as Mr Johnson appears to be winning back Leave voters who may have ditched the Tories for the upstart movement.
Meanwhile, the Tories have a 15 point poll lead over Labour in a new YouGov survey conducted for The Times.
The Tories and the Labour Party were in similar positions in the polls at the start of the 2017 general election campaign but ultimately ended up with 42 per cent and 40 per cent of the total vote share on polling day. 
Mr Johnson could win a further 50 Labour-held seats if all those forecast to vote for the Brexit Party instead switch their support to him. The analysis is based on projections produced by the firm Electoral Calculus, based on current polling.
Mr Farage, who will launch the Brexit Party’s campaign tomorrow morning in London, has suggested he will target Leave-backing seats in Labour’s northern heartlands rather than those held by Tory Eurosceptics.
But this could still deprive Mr Johnson of victory because they are the sort of constituencies that the Prime Minister needs to gain if he is to get a Commons majority.
The Electoral Calculus projections, using the latest national polling, show there are swathes of seats currently held by Labour, which the Tories are now in touching distance of snatching.
Dewsbury, where Labour’s Paula Sherriff won with a 3,321 majority in 2017, is now on a knife edge according to the estimates.
The modelling predicts Labour will pick up a 36.6 per cent share of votes in the seat, with the Tories only narrowly behind on 35.2 per cent. The Brexit Party would trail on 12.2 per cent.
If the Brexit Party was removed and its support re-allocated with the majority (70 per cent) going to the Tories and 30 per cent to Labour, then the seat would flip to Mr Johnson’s party.
According to the projections, similar scenarios exist in a total of 37 other seats, including Birmingham Erdington, Burnley, Bury North, Halifax, Hartlepool, Hyndburn, and Sedgefield. 
Should all of the forecast Brexit party vote be transferred to the Tories, then Mr Johnson’s party could gain as many as another 50 seats.
The Brexit Party will kickstart its election campaign at an event tomorrow morning featuring Mr Farage and ‘surprise guest speakers’. It is expected to reveal how many candidates it will field and where they will stand.
Mr Farage and the party’s chairman Richard Tice are also likely to announce which constituencies they will run in. It will be Mr Farage’s eighth attempt at becoming an MP.
The party is understood to be engulfed in a behind-the-scenes row over how many seats to contest, with some MEPs threatening to quit if they create difficulties for the Tories and others saying they will go if they withdraw candidates in hundreds of constituencies.
Mr Farage had originally said that the party would field 600 to fight nearly every seat in the UK, except for Northern Ireland.
Yesterday he refused to rule out the prospect of the Brexit Party withdrawing hundreds of candidates in order to target a small number of Labour-held seats. 
Mr Farage said: ‘I’ve ruled nothing in, I’ve ruled nothing out. I am making a completely neutral comment ahead of our launch.’
But elections expert and Tory peer Robert Hayward said there was ‘no certainty’ that the withdrawal of Brexit Party candidates would automatically help the Tories.
He conceded: ‘In large swathes of the Midlands, North and Wales, Brexit voters are ex-Labour voters and would (to misuse a well-known phrase or saying) rather die in a ditch than vote Tory.’ 
 The Trump bombshell came as Labour's anti-Semitism crisis burst into the open on day one of Jeremy Corbyn's election battle yesterday – as the party's Jewish affiliate refused to campaign for him to be Prime Minister.
For the first time in its 100-year-history, the Jewish Labour Movement effectively went on strike, saying it would no longer send out activists to support candidates across the country.
In a damning statement, the movement said Jeremy Corbyn had allowed a 'culture of anti-Semitism to emerge and fester'.
It came as a rabbi took the unprecedented step of writing to his congregation, warning a Corbyn-led government would 'pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it'.
Dr Jonathan Romain urged those who attend his Maidenhead synagogue to vote for whatever political party stands the best chance of beating Labour candidates.
Labour is being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over whether it is guilty of institutional anti-Semitism.
Earlier this year the JLM's parliamentary chairman Luciana Berger left the Labour Party, citing anti-Semitic bullying. She was followed last month by honorary president Dame Louise Ellman.
The movement is one of the oldest socialist societies affiliated to Labour, and at an election it would be expected to send out activists.
This time it said it will only support 'exceptional candidates' such as its parliamentary chair Ruth Smeeth, and other MPs it views as having been supportive. In a statement, the JLM said: 'We will not be giving endorsements to candidates in non-Labour-held seats.'
The move could prove crucial as Labour seeks to overturn Tory minister Theresa Villiers' slim majority in Chipping Barnet. It could also encourage other Labour supporters to turn to the Lib Dems, now represented by Mrs Berger in Finchley and Golders Green.
 But the organisation will provide assistance to Ruth Smeeth in Stoke-on-Trent North and to Dame Margaret Hodge in Barking, East London, as they campaign to retain their seats.
The group, which has 2,500 members, said: 'When two accomplished and dedicated Jewish Labour MPs no longer see a place for themselves in the Labour Party, it's clear the party has lost its way.
'This crisis of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party stems from a failure of leadership from Jeremy Corbyn. When the answer has been to take swift, decisive action, the reality has been equivocation and token gestures.'
Liberal Democrat  supporters are calling for a Remain alliance to oust Jacob Rees-Mogg from his constituency.
The party believes it has a strong chance of defeating the Commons Leader in the North East Somerset seat he has held since its creation in 2010. Arch-Brexiteer Mr Rees-Mogg has a majority of more than 10,000, with Labour in second place. But Remainers believe that can be overhauled.
The Bath and North East Somerset Lib Dems yesterday tweeted a poll which puts them just six points behind the Tories in the constituency – although it later emerged the poll had asked who voters would pick if the Labour Party were not in the running.
The Lib Dems tweeted: ‘If we work together, and back [Lib Dem candidate Nick Coates] we will beat Jacob Rees-Mogg.’
The constituency voted narrowly for Leave at the 2016 EU referendum but the Lib Dems believe uniting the Remain vote could power them to victory.
The party are in talks with the Greens and Plaid Cymru over a ‘Remain Alliance’ electoral pact. However the pact would not include Labour.
Tactical voting deals could dominate the forthcoming election, at which Brexit which will be the central issue.
    Nusrat Ghani spoke out after a string of prominent women MPs, including Nicky          Morgan and Amber Rudd announced they are going. Several said that abuse                generated by the Brexit debate was a factor in their decision.
    They are part of a wider exodus of Tory Remainers. Moderates pointed out that            many of the men leaving are at the end of their careers, but the women are                  typically much younger. 
Donald Trump tells Nigel Farage: Do a deal with the PM to keep out Jeremy Corbyn 
By Jason Groves, John Stevens and Claire Ellicott for the Daily Mail  
Donald Trump last night piled pressure on Nigel Farage to forge a pact with Boris Johnson and save Britain from Jeremy Corbyn.
In an extraordinary intervention, the US President said the PM and Brexit Party leader would be an ‘unstoppable force’ if they teamed up for the General Election. Mr Trump said of the Labour leader: ‘Corbyn would be so bad for your country. He’d take you into such bad places.’
And the President rubbished Mr Corbyn’s claim that the NHS was ‘on the table’ in talks about a US trade deal, saying: ‘We wouldn’t even be involved in that... it’s not for us to have anything to do with your healthcare system. No, we’re just talking about trade.’
It came as Mr Farage prepared to reveal this morning whether he will bow to calls to soft-pedal against the Conservatives in next month’s election to help ensure a parliamentary majority for Brexit.
Senior Brexit Party figures have urged Mr Farage to stand down hundreds of candidates to give Mr Johnson a clear run and ensure that Brexit is finally delivered.
One source said ‘dozens and dozens’ of Tory MPs had urged the party to stand aside or risk seeing Brexit thwarted again. But Mr Farage last night indicated he will not back down unless the PM abandons his Brexit deal and agrees to go for a ‘clean break’ with the EU.
Mr Trump’s diplomatic hand grenade came as:
Mr Trump’s intervention came in an interview on Mr Farage’s show on LBC Radio.
The US President heaped praise on Mr Johnson, describing him as a ‘terrific guy’ who would deliver Brexit.
Mr Trump repeatedly appealed to Mr Farage to join forces with the Conservatives at the election, telling him: ‘I’d like to see you and Boris get together cause you would really have some numbers – you did fantastically in the last election, and he respects you a lot. I just wish you two guys could get together – I think it would be a great thing.’
On the PM's Brexit deal: 'To be honest with you this deal under certain aspects of the deal you can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t trade, I mean we can’t make a trade deal with the UK.'
On Mr Farage: 'You’re like a great tea leaf reader.' 
On a Tory/Brexit Party pact: 'I wish you two guys could get together I think it would be a great thing... if you and he get together as, you know, unstoppable force.'
On meeting the Queen: 'A great, great woman, and I think we hit it off really well.'
On Theresa May: 'I told her exactly how to make a deal but she didn’t listen to me and that’s okay, not everybody listens to me, some people do.' 
On Jeremy Corbyn: 'Corbyn would be so bad for your country. He’d be so bad, he’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places.'
On Brexit: 'I think they’re gonna get that done. People are tired of hearing about. We’re even tired of hearing about it over here. I think you’ll get that done.'
But the Brexit Party leader was circumspect about the chances of an electoral pact.
Mr Farage said the PM had brought ‘a tremendous amount of energy to the job’.
But he remained critical of Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal – and suggested he would only back down if the PM switched to a No Deal strategy. He told Mr Trump: ‘If he drops this dreadful deal, fights the General Election on the basis that we just want to have trade with Europe but no political influence, do you know what? I would be right behind him.’
Mr Corbyn has repeatedly claimed that US corporations could be given access to the NHS as part of a new post-Brexit trade deal. The claim looks set to be a central part of Labour’s election campaign, despite direct denials from Mr Johnson, Trade Secretary Liz Truss and Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
Mr Trump last night said it was untrue – and suggested Mr Corbyn had made it up.
He said: ‘I mean, it’s so ridiculous I think Corbyn put that out there.’
Mr Corbyn hit back, accusing Mr Trump of ‘trying to interfere in Britain’s election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected’. He said the President had put the NHS ‘on the table’ in trade talks, adding: ‘He knows if Labour wins, US corporations won’t get their hands on it. Our NHS is not for sale.’
Mr Trump’s intervention was not entirely helpful to the Prime Minister.
The President said he was ‘disappointed’ that Mr Johnson – who marks 100 days in office today – had not managed to deliver Brexit, and he warned that a comprehensive free trade agreement could be impossible to negotiate under the terms of the PM’s Brexit deal.  
Sir David Attenborough has launched an astonishing broadside against Brexiteers, claiming that they ‘spat’ in the faces of Europeans.
The 91-year-old naturalist also branded the EU referendum an ‘abrogation of democracy’ and said that people who backed the Brexit campaign did not know what they were voting for.
Sir David said: ‘I’m not an economist … but philosophically I would rather the people embrace one another than spat in one another’s face.’
But the broadcaster was quick to dismiss the ‘philosophical’ instincts of voters who backed Brexit.
Paraphrasing Michael Gove’s, he said: ‘”We’ve had quite enough of experts”. That’s a cry from somebody who doesn’t understand what they’re saying – that’s what that means.’
‘That’s when someone has told them something which they don’t like, and which they probably don’t understand.’
Mr Gove, who led the Brexit campaign with Boris Johnson, famously claimed before the EU vote that Britons ‘have had enough of experts’
Sir David added: ‘The decision to call a referendum was an abrogation of parliamentary democracy in my view because we didn’t know the facts. We weren’t presented with the facts.’
The BBC veteran - whose Blue Planet II is due to launch next month – then appeared to try and soften the blow by conceding that the behaviour of Brexiteers is ‘not evil’.
However, it was too late. His comments, made in an interview with the Greenpeace publication ‘Unearthed’, sparked fury amongst Brexiteers, who accused him of ‘sneering and insulting decent patriotic people’.
One claimed that Sir David is himself ‘spitting’ at Brexit voters, and spending too much time ‘using UK taxpayers’ money filming animals instead of speaking with people.’
Another quipped: ‘David Attenborough should know well about the survival instinct. Brexit is the last ditch attempt to survive the social engineering of the EU.’
The broadcaster’s tirade also raised the hackles of BBC critics, who questioned whether Sir David had broken impartiality rules.
The Corporation’s editorial guidelines state that presenters’ ‘external activities’ should not ‘undermine the public’s perception of the impartiality’ of BBC programmes.
But yesterday, the BBC insisted that Sir David was allowed to wade into political rows like Brexit because he hosts nature series rather than ‘news and current affairs’.
A spokesman said: ‘Sir David’s personal views on Brexit have been widely reported before. He is a freelance broadcaster who presents natural history programmes for the BBC and other channels – he’s not a news and current affairs presenter and is entitled to his personal opinions.’
Not everyone was convinced by the argument, however.
Conservative MP Sir Bill Cash accused the Corporation of hiding behind ‘a smoke screen’.
He said: ‘I don’t know what current affairs is if it doesn’t involve matters of the planet. [The BBC is] just putting up a smokescreen. It comes to the same thing.’
Sir Bill added that Sir David is just the latest in a long line of grandees who have spoken out publicly against Brexit – many of them on the BBC itself - highlighting a wider problem with the ‘BBC establishment’.
Earlier this month, Dame Judi Dench told the Today programme that she backed the Remain campaign because ‘there is something about being inclusive that is more important than being exclusive’.
And last week, novelist Martin Amis went on the Radio 4 programme to brand Brexit a ‘self-inflicted wound’. 

Britons are furious over Brexit meddling by peers in the House of Lords, a damning new poll has shown.
Confidence in the Upper House has plummeted as 76 per cent of voters feel peers are ‘out of tune with the will of the British people’. Even more said the Lords is an ‘outdated throwback’.
A Daily Mail poll, carried out by ComRes in May revealed some 58 per cent of voters believe peers would be wrong to try to thwart Brexit, with 24 per cent thinking they should do so. 
Peers have inflicted 15 separate defeats on the Government’s flagship EU withdrawal bill in recent weeks, including changes designed to keep the UK in the single market – or even prevent the UK leaving.
They have also defied longstanding conventions that the Lords should reflect the manifesto commitments of the governing party.
 There is strong support for reform, with only 17 per cent saying the institution should be left untouched. The poll of more than 2,000 adults also found that:
The poll also shows that 34 per cent of Leave voters think the House of Lords should be abolished and not replaced.
Reacting to the survey, Iain Duncan Smith said voters were outraged by peers repeatedly amending key Brexit legislation.
‘The Lords have behaved appallingly in the last few weeks,’ said the former Tory leader. ‘They have completely defied the views of the elected Commons, ignored the manifesto of the governing party and set out to oppose the referendum vote expressing the will of the British people.
‘They have done this brazenly and in doing so they have been arrogant and rude. The Lords should see these findings as a warning to them, although I think it may be too late. I am appalled by their behaviour and I would like to see the promise of action in our manifesto.’
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading Eurosceptic Tory MP, said: ‘These findings shows the British electorate understand the constitutional conventions better than some in Parliament, and know they have been broken by the House of Lords.
‘The Lords thought they could frustrate Brexit in the twilight, but they have been busted by the electorate, who can see exactly what they are up to. They have weakened the Lords – the Lords are quite vulnerable now.
‘There has been tolerance of the Lords because it was there and because it worked. But it is there under sufferance and there is no large advocacy body campaigning for it.
‘If it breaks conventions and ceases to work, as it has done recently, then it becomes very difficult to defend and makes it easier for the House of Commons to reform.’
Boris Johnson last night urged the Lords to back down over Brexit.
‘The House of Commons has the final legislative say and the Lords know that and must accept that,’ said the Foreign Secretary.
Asked earlier this week whether the Lords had overstepped the mark, Theresa May said: ‘Parliament as a whole gave the British people the choice of whether to stay in the EU or to leave it.
‘The people voted and I think it’s incumbent on all of us to recognise that we have a duty to put into place the result of that vote and to ensure that the UK leaves the European Union.’
In a series of votes on Brexit and Press regulation, peers ignored Tory manifesto commitments and opted to frustrate the Government, which has no Lords majority.
Patrick Barrow of We, The People said: ‘The polling results are very clear. The British people took back sovereignty for the UK Parliament, the House of Lords seems determined to make sure it’s sent back to Europe.
‘The Other Place needs to understand, and quickly, that if they are to be a relevant part of a modern, representative democracy, it’s past time they began to represent – not their own preoccupations, but the ballot box view of the people of Britain.’ 
Ministers believe the Lords have overstepped the mark by voting through amendments that would tie Mrs May’s hands in her negotiations with Brussels over Brexit.
Some pro-Remain peers have also faced accusations of arrogance after vowing to block the referendum result and mocking the decision to leave.
Liberal Democrat peer Lord Roberts of Llandudno sparked fury by likening the legislation to the Nazi enabling act which handed supreme power to Adolf Hitler.
Crossbench peer Lord Bilimoria vowed to ‘stop the train wreck’ of Brexit.
Viscount Hailsham, who as Douglas Hogg was the poster boy of the expenses scandal for trying to claim taxpayers’ money to clear his moat, described the referendum result as an interim decision.
And former Labour cabinet minister Lord Adonis has vowed to sabotage Brexit. 
 
 
An isolated Theresa May was left stuck at the back of the EU's family photo today after Jean-Claude Juncker warned starting trade talks on time would need 'miracles'. 
The Prime Minister arrived in Estonia for an informal summit with a promise of security cooperation and a planned meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after her Florence speech.

But European Commission president Mr Juncker slapped down Britain's latest offers just days after council chief Donald Tusk struck a more positive note.
Mrs May was in the back row, two behind Mr Juncker, and in corner - as far as possible from Mrs Merkel at the front of the picture.
The new clash came as EU leaders gathered in Estonia for an informal meeting ahead of a crucial summit on October 19-20.
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Britain is desperate for agreement at the meeting in three weeks that 'sufficient progress' has been made on the Brexit divorce to allow talks on trade to begin.
But as he arrived at the meeting in Tallinn, Mr Juncker said: 'I'm saying there will be no sufficient progress from now until October unless miracles will happen.'  
This morning at Estonia's Tapa base near the Russian border, Mrs May made a new 'unconditional' offer on Britain's security role after Brexit.
Mrs May met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at today's gathering as she works to try and break the deadlock.
No 10 said Mrs Merkel had 'welcomed' the PM's major Brexit speech in Florence.
As she arrived in Tallinn, Mrs May insisted there had been 'very good progress' on the rights of EU expatriates - one of three key issues Brussels wants resolved before trade talks begin.
'In my Florence speech I set out very clearly how we could ensure that the rights of those EU citizens were guaranteed in the UK,' Mrs May told reporters outside the EU meeting.
'That has been part of the negotiations that we've had, very good progress has been made, that was made clear by the statements made by David Davis and Michel Barnier made yesterday.' 
Following the meeting between Mrs May and Mrs Merkel, a No 10 spokesman said: 'Chancellor Merkel welcomed the speech, and noted the good progress that had been made in negotiations this week. She looked forward to the next round of talks in early October.
'The Prime Minister and the Chancellor both agreed on the importance of settling the issue of citizens' rights at the earliest opportunity.
'The PM pointed to the commitment made in her Florence speech to incorporate the agreement reached on citizens' rights fully into UK law and make sure the UK courts can refer directly to it.
'The PM also stressed it was in everybody's interests to agree to a time-limited implementation period once Britain leaves the EU, to provide certainty to businesses and others in both Britain and the EU.'  


Addressing British troops at the Nato's Estonia mission in Tapa earlier this morning, the Prime Minster underlined the commitment to European security against an aggressive Russia.
Mrs May travelled to the Estonia-Russia border with French President Emmanuel Macron and her Estonian host PM Juri Ratas.
Britain has 800 troops in the Nato mission policing Europe's eastern frontier amid high tensions over Russian involvement in Ukraine.
In her speech, Mrs May said: 'While we are leaving the European Union, as I have said many times, we are not leaving Europe so the United Kingdom is unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe's security.
'Russia's continued aggression represents a growing danger to our friends here in Estonia as well as Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, and our response must be clear and unequivocal.
'By stepping up Nato's deterrence and defence posture you are showing that we are equipped to respond to any threat that we face.
'You are showing that we are ready to do so.'
Mrs May stressed that the UK would continue to provide aid and assistance to EU member states which were the victims of armed aggression, terrorism or natural disasters after Brexit.
'Our resolve to draw on the full weight of our military, intelligence, diplomatic and development resources to lead international action with our partners on the issues that affect the security and prosperity of our peoples is unchanged,' she said.
'And our determination to defend the stability, security and prosperity of our European neighbours and friends remains steadfast.'
Her words echoed her speech in Florence last week when she emphasised Britain's commitment to the collective security of Europe as she sought unblock the stalled Brexit talks.
Speaking in Tapa, where Britain has stationed 800 troops leading a Nato battlegroup, the Prime Minister said it was essential that European nations stood together in the face of the threat from a resurgent Russia.
'When a nation like Russia violates the rules-based international order that we have worked so hard to create, we must come together with our allies to defend that international system and the liberal values, human rights and the rule of law by which we stand,' she said.
'I am clear that Britain will always stand with our allies in defence of these values.'
Mrs May has offered UK expertise on combating cyber threats from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) at a meeting of EU leaders at the Tallinn digital summit.
The recent spate of major cyber attacks across Europe, including an assault on the NHS, shows the need for closer co-operation on tackling the danger to financial systems and the public sector, she said.
The premier told Europe: 'As we prepare for Brexit, I want to build a bold, new security partnership with the EU.
'A partnership that reflects our shared history, promotes our common values and maintains a secure and prosperous Europe.
'Nato remains the bedrock of our collective security and there is no clearer demonstration of the UK's unconditional commitment to Europe's defence than the 800 British troops now in Tapa, leading a Nato battlegroup and standing shoulder to shoulder with their Estonian, French and, soon, their Danish counterparts too.' 

Transition phase:
Britain wants to have a transition period of 'around two years' to provide reassurance to businesses.
During this phase, the UK will have 'full access' to the EU single market. 
EU citizens 
In a major concession, the PM said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will help guarantee the rights of EU nationals living in Britain after Brexit.  
Immigration:
During the two-year transition period, EU nationals will still be able to come and live and work in the UK.
But they will have to sign up to a new 'registration system', which the PM said was 'essential preparation' for new post-Brexit system.
Security:
The PM spelled out plans for a 'new strategic agreement' on security.
But she faced accusations that she has thrown away Britain's trump card in the negotiations by saying the UK is 'unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe's security'. 

Irish border:
Stressed Britain's commitment to protecting the Belfast Agreement and the Common Travel Area which would keep a soft border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
Payments into EU budget:
The PM said the UK will 'honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership'.
Future relationship: 
The PM dismissed going for a model based on the free trade deal struck with Canada or one amounting to European Economic Area membership. Instead she wants a bespoke deal. 

Theresa May made a bold bid to break the deadlock in Brexit talks today by admitting both sides need to face the 'hard facts' needed to strike a deal.
She offered a 'pragmatic' vision of a Britain that trades closely with the EU - but is firmly outside the bloc.
The Prime Minister gave the most detailed picture yet of the unprecedented free trade agreement she wants to strike, saying Britain must regain control of its own destiny and urging the EU: 'Let's get on with it.'
In a long-awaited keynote speech, she also delivered a stark warning to Brussels that it will suffer from failure to strike a deal - and again rejected demands for Northern Ireland to stay subject to EU rules.
But Mrs May moved to appease the EU's complaints about 'cherry picking' by conceding that there will have to be compromises over access to the bloc's markets. 
'The reality is we all need to face up to some hard facts... In certain ways our access to each other's markets will be less than now,' she said.
She added: 'This is a negotiation. Neither of us can have exactly what we want.'  
The crucial address, being held at the historic Mansion House in central London after the cold weather scotched the first choice venue in Newcastle, was the culmination of a series of interventions by ministers dubbed the 'Road to Brexit'.
It was the third landmark speech by Mrs May on the EU, after previous set-pieces at Lancaster House and in Florence.
But it could also be the most important, as tensions with Brussels threaten to spiral out of control and even collapse negotiations altogether.  
The signs are that Mrs May could have pulled off her high-stakes balancing act, with both Tory Brexiteers and Remainers voicing satisfaction. 
Significantly, the premier looked to have headed off a potential revolt by Conservative MPs over the customs union - with several of the prospective rebels lavishing her with praise.
She will hope it ends deadlock in the negotiations ahead of the next crucial summit of EU leaders in three weeks time.  
Crucially, the speech was endorsed by DUP leader Arlene Foster who welcomed the PM's commitment that there would be no divisions within the UK.
On the Brussels side, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier praised the 'clarity' on the customs union and Mrs May's recognition that there had to be 'trade offs'.
Theresa May set out her vision for the future of the UK-EU relationship last week. She said:
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexiteer ring leader in Parliament, told MailOnline he was 'content' with the speech, adding it was 'clear on the major points regarding the European Court of Justice, Customs Union and Single Market'. 
The Institute of Directors also praised the intervention. Director General Stephen Martin said it contained an 'honest admission' about the 'difficult choices ahead'.  
However, there was criticism from Ukip and federalist MEPs, with Guy Verhofstadt accusing her of 'vague aspirations'. 'We can only hope that serious proposals have been put in the post,' he added.
Manfred Weber, an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, tweeted: 'I don't see how we could reach an agreement on #Brexit if the UK government continues to bury its head in the sand like this.' 
Opposition politicians in the UK also slammed the speech. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused Mrs May of having 'failed to bring real clarity to the negotiations'. 
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the speech contained 'more detail but no progress'.  
In the speech, the Prime Minister said both the UK and the EU had 'hard facts to face', and gave a damning dissection of the double-standards from top Eurocrats.
'The commission has suggested that the only option available to the UK is an 'off the shelf' model,' she said.
'But, at the same time, they have also said that in certain areas none of the EU's third country agreements would be appropriate.'
She pointed out that the EU had a range of bespoke agreements with other countries and had to be 'pragmatic' about giving the UK a fair deal.
Brussels had made clear it wanted unprecedented access to Britain's fishing waters after Brexit, she said. 
'The fact is that every free trade agreement has varying market access depending on the respective interests of the countries involved,' she said.
The Prime Minister used today's Brexit speech to set out five tests by which voters can judge the success of her negotiations:
1 Respect the result of the referendum, honouring the pledge to 'take control of our borders, laws and money', while delivering 'wider change' to society.
2 Endure for a generation or longer, so that both sides can 'forge ahead with building a better future for our people, not find ourselves back at the negotiating table because things have broken down'.
3 Protect people's jobs and security by allowing Britain and the EU to 'work together to grow our economies and keep our people safe'.
4 Leave Britain as a 'modern, open, outward-looking, tolerant, European democracy'.
5 Strengthen the union rather than weakening the bonds that hold the UK together.
'If this is cherry-picking, then every trade arrangement is cherry-picking.
'Moreover, with all its neighbours the EU has varying levels of access to the single market, depending on the obligations those neighbours are willing to undertake.
'What would be cherry-picking would be if we were to seek a deal where our rights and obligations were not held in balance.
'And I have been categorically clear that is not what we are going to do.' 
Mrs May said the EU had to recognise that the UK would not accept the 'rights of Canada with the obligations of Norway'. 
In a message to Brussels, Mrs May said the 'world is watching' how they deal with the issues.
'We should not think of our leaving the EU as marking an ending, as much as a new beginning for the UK and our relationship with our European allies,' she said.
'Change is not to be feared, so long as we face it with a clear-sighted determination to act for the common good.' 
The premier said free movement would end, but there should be a broad agreement on the desirability of 'labour mobility'. 
The UK would make a 'strong commitment that its regulatory standards will remain as high as the EU's' to ensure the smooth trade in goods, the premier said.
Tory grandee Michael Heseltine warned Theresa May today that some on her own side would rather hand Jeremy Corbyn power than let her impose a hard Brexit.
Signalling the tightrope she must walk to deliver a Brexit without tearing the Tories apart, Lord Heseltine urged Conservative MPs to do what they 'believe to be right'.
The intervention comes ahead of a crunch vote on a customs union expected next month.
'Look, I hate the idea of Jeremy Corbyn in power,' he told Today. 'I don't have a vote, which is a cop-out answer, I know that. 
'But the real world is that there are an increasing number of people, particularly the young people, and by that I mean under 40, who today think that Corbyn is an alternative they can live with. 
'And there are Conservatives who feel so strongly about the European issue that they would rather risk the short-term damage of a Corbyn government, and let's not under-estimate that, than to see Britain make this calamitous mistake of leaving Europe.'  
'That commitment, in practice, will mean that UK and EU regulatory standards will remain substantially similar in the future.'
She added: 'Our default is that UK law may not necessarily be identical to EU law, but it should achieve the same outcomes.
'In some cases Parliament might choose to pass an identical law - businesses who export to the EU tell us that it is strongly in their interest to have a single set of regulatory standards that mean they can sell into the UK and EU markets.
'If the Parliament of the day decided not to achieve the same outcomes as EU law, it would be in the knowledge that there may be consequences for our market access.' 
Mrs May said the new trade deal should cover the UK's vital services sector as well as goods - where imports from the EU are far higher than exports to the bloc. 
'Just as our partnership in goods needs to be deeper than any other Free Trade Agreement, so in services we have the opportunity to break new ground with a broader agreement than ever before,' she said.
Chancellor Philip Hammond will set out plans for financial services next week, but Mrs May said 'we are not looking for passporting'.
But because UK banks underwrite around half the debt and equity issued by EU companies and provided more than £1.1 trillion of lending in 2015, it was a 'clear example of where only looking at precedent would hurt both the UK and EU economies'.
'Our goal should be to establish the ability to access each other's markets, based on the UK and EU maintaining the same regulatory outcomes over time, with a mechanism for determining proportionate consequences where they are not maintained,' she said. 
Mrs May said the government was ready to keep contributing to European agencies in return for participation in specific projects.  
Mrs May said she had 'made clear' the government's objections to the EU's explosive draft legal text of the withdrawal agreement, which suggested Northern Ireland should remain subject to EU regulations.
She said it was not 'surprising' that the issue was proving difficult, but said there was no way any PM could accept a settlement that undermined the UK.
'As Prime Minister of the whole UK, I am not going to let our departure from the European Union do anything to set back the historic progress that we have made in Northern Ireland – nor will I allow anything that would damage the integrity of our precious Union.'
Britain triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017, starting a two year process for leaving the EU: 
March 2018: Outline transition deal agreed, running for about two years
June 2018: EU summit that Brussels says should consider broad principles of a future trade deal. 
October 2018: Political agreement on the future partnership due to be reached
Early 2019: Major votes in Westminster and Brussels to ratify the deal 
March 29, 2019: Article 50 expires, Britain leaves the EU. Transition is expected to keep everything the same for about two years
December 31, 2020: Transition expected to come to an end and the new relationship - if it has been agreed - should kick in 
The Premier said putting a border down the Irish Sea would be just as unacceptable as a return to a hard border inside the island of Ireland. 
However, she insisted she was 'confident' the issues could be resolved 'in the days ahead'.
Turning to trade across the Irish border, Mrs May promised a series of specific solutions based on a commitment to similar regulatory standards.
She said 'a fundamental principle in our negotiating strategy is that trade at the UK-EU border should be as frictionless as possible with no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland'. 
And in a sharp rebuke to the EU's dismissive approach, Mrs May said: 'Some ideas rest on technology and goodwill but they are serious and they merit attention' 
The premier said neither the EU or the UK courts could be the 'the ultimate arbiter' of disputes under the future trade deal.
She said: 'When we leave the EU, the Withdrawal Bill will bring EU law into UK law.
'That means cases will be determined in our courts.
'But, where appropriate, our courts will continue to look at the ECJ's judgments, as they do for the appropriate jurisprudence of other countries' courts.'
She added: 'This is a negotiation and neither of us can have exactly what we want.'  
Theresa May's Munich Speech
The PM made the case for the UK to continued to have a strong security partnership with the EU.
She said the UK will stay in the European Arrest Warrant and owuld 'respect' rulings by the European Court of Justice. 
Boris Johnson's Valentine's Day address
The Foreign Secretary outlined his vision for a 'liberal Brexit' which would see Britain be a leading free trading nation.
He urged for Remainers and Brexiteers to unite and urged the country to be more upbeat about the looming departure.   
David Davis 
The Brexit Secretary made a pitch for an ambitious trade deal which would see the UK and EU have 'mutual recognition' of each others rules and regulations.
And he insisted gloomy predictions of Britain's future outside the EU w ere wrong - saying the country will not descend 'into some  Mad Max-style dystopia'. 
David Lidington 
The Cabinet Office Secretary hit out at SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon for trying to use Brexit to tear the UK apart.
And he reassured devolved governments across the UK that most of the powers repatriated from Brussels will go back to them rather than Westminster. 
Liam Fox 
he hit out at calls for the UK to stay in a customs union  with the EU - warning this would amount to a betrayal of voters.
He said staying in a union would leave Britain having to take EU rules without being able to make them.
And he said Britain should embrace new opportunities  to strike trade deals with growing  economies outside the EU. 
Mrs May stood behind the Brexiteer vision of new trade deals for Britain outside the EU customs union.
She said: 'We want the freedom to negotiate trade agreements with countries around the world.
'We want to take back control of our laws.
'We want as frictionless a border as possible between us and the EU - so that we don't damage the integrated supply chains our industries depend on.'
Defending Britain against claims Brexit will mean slashed standards and regulations, she added: 'The EU should be confident that we will not engage in a race to the bottom in the standards and protections we set.
'There is no serious political constituency in the UK which would support this – quite the opposite.' 
Mrs May also said the UK would abide by the EU's state aid rules, which are designed to prevent governments subsidising uncompetitive industries.
The commitment opens up a clear dividing line with Labour, after Jeremy Corbyn said he would want freedom to nationalise industry and pump public money into it.
A No10 source said: 'The speech told you quite a bit about the PM's character. She is a pragmatic person, who doesn't believe in theology.' 
Brexit Secretary David Davis and Chancellor Philip Hammond were at Mansion House for the speech - but Boris Johnson has missed out as a visit to Hungary apparently overran and his flight could not take off due to heavy snow.  
Mr Barnier sparked a furious row this week by calling for Northern Ireland to stay in the EU customs union in order to avoid a hard Irish border.
The plan was condemned by Brexiteers as an attempt to 'annex' the province, while Mrs May said it was unacceptable and Mr Davis warned that the UK would not pay a multi-billion pound divorce bill to Brussels unless it backs down.
European council Donald Tusk also publicly berated the PM over her tough stance when he came to Downing Street yesterday, saying he was 'not happy' with her red lines on the customs union. 
Mr Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson yesterday used a two-hour Cabinet meeting about the speech to demand the removal of a line making a 'binding commitment' to align with EU rules and regulations in certain sectors.
The two Brexiteers are said to have feared the commitment could shackle parts of the economy to Brussels forever – making a mockery of the referendum pledge to 'take back control'.
One Cabinet source said the phrase had not been approved by members of the PM's Brexit 'war cabinet' at their Chequers meeting last week and appeared to have been slipped in by civil servants.
Downing Street played down the row, saying the Cabinet had agreed the speech was 'a real step forward' ahead of the start of trade talks with Brussels later this month. Sources said Mrs May's speech would set out an 'ambitious but credible' vision for a comprehensive partnership with the EU after Brexit.
Asked by journalists after her speech whether she still believed that 'no deal is better than a bad deal', Mrs May replied that she did, but added: 'I am confident in reaching a good deal and the right deal because its in the interests of both the UK and the EU.' 
Speaking at Mansion House in the City of London, Mrs May insisted the two sides have a 'shared interest' in getting it right.
She said: 'I want the broadest and deepest possible agreement – covering more sectors and co-operating more fully than any free trade agreement anywhere in the world today.
'I believe that is achievable because it is in the EU's interests, as well as ours, and because of our unique starting point, where on day one we both have the same laws and rules. 
'So rather than having to bring two different systems closer together, the task will be to manage the relationship.' 
The PM spelled out her vision of a UK that is a 'champion of free trade based on high standards… building a bold and comprehensive economic partnership with our neighbours in the EU, and reaching out beyond to foster trade agreements with nations across the globe'. 
But she also warned that Brexit must lead to 'wider change' in society so that 'no community in Britain [will] ever be left behind again'. 
The speech follows weeks of negotiations between senior Cabinet ministers over how far to go in sacrificing Britain's new freedoms in order to maintain trade in key sectors linked to the European economy. 
The Prime Minister said the deal must 'protect people's jobs and security', adding: 'People in the UK voted for our country to have a new and different relationship with Europe, but while the means may change our shared goals surely have not – to work together to grow our economies and keep our people safe.'
The tone of the speech contrasts with the warning from Mr Davis this week that Britain's £40billion 'divorce' bill could be axed if the EU tries to cross the UK's red lines on issues such as the Irish border.
One source said: 'The possibility of no deal is still a live thing, but it is not what we are emphasising here.' 
DUP leader Arlene Foster said the Prime Minister's speech provided a basis 'upon which it would be possible to move forward'. 
She said: 'I welcome the Prime Minister's clear commitment that she will not countenance any new border being created in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. 
'Northern Ireland goods must have unfettered access to trade into Great Britain and the same must apply to Great Britain goods entering Northern Ireland. 
'Indeed, it is particularly welcome that one of the 'five tests' is strengthening the union.'  
Three potential Tory Brexit rebels, whose support for staying in a customs union with the EU has threatened a Commons defeat for Mrs May, backed the speech.
But one, Sarah Wollaston, warned the PM she needs to come up with a 'plan B' if her customs proposals are rejected by the EU.
She tweeted: 'This was a pragmatic and positive speech & of course I hope that EU negotiators listen & recognise the benefits for both sides in flexibility. But if PM's approach to customs partnership is rejected & a refusal to allow sector by sector deals, we are no further on. No plan B'.
Former minister Nicky Morgan said: 'Very welcome tone from @theresa_may of realism, compromise, recognition that we are in negotiation with EU & can't ignore some hard facts as well as a desire to unite the nation & build an enduring economic partnership with the EU. EU cannot say now it doesn't know what UK wants.' 
Another Tory MP who has signed Anna Soubry's amendment to the Trade Bill calling for a customs union, Heidi Allen, tweeted: 'I'm greatly encouraged by PM's speech - categorically said WTO not acceptable, no hard border in, citizens to continue to work and study across UK/EU, science participation, mutual regs for eg medicine, data sharing and tariff free customs arrangement #RoadtoBrexit'. 
Underlining the tightrope Mrs May must walk, Tory grandee Lord Heseltine also said today that some of his colleagues might be willing to see Jeremy Corbyn in power if it would avert hard Brexit.
He urged Conservative MPs to do what they 'believe to be right' rather than toe the party line in a crunch vote on a customs union expected next month.
'Look, I hate the idea of Jeremy Corbyn in power,' he told Today. 'I don't have a vote, which is a cop-out answer, I know that. 
'But the real world is that there are an increasing number of people, particularly the young people, and by that I mean under 40, who today think that Corbyn is an alternative they can live with. 
'And there are Conservatives who feel so strongly about the European issue that they would rather risk the short-term damage of a Corbyn government, and let's not under-estimate that, than to see Britain make this calamitous mistake of leaving Europe.'
Theresa May and the EU effectively fudged the Irish border issue in the Brexit divorce deal before Christmas.
But the commitments to leave the EU customs union, keep a soft border, and avoid divisions within the UK were always going to need reconciling at some stage. Currently 110million journeys take place across the border every year.
All sides in the negotiations insist they want to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but their ideas for how the issues should be solved are very different.
If they fail to strike a deal it could mean a hard border on the island - which could potentially put the Good Friday Agreement at risk.
The agreement - struck in 1998 after years of tense negotiations and a series of failed ceasefires - brought to an end decades of the Troubles.
More than 3,500 people died in the 'low level war' that saw British Army checkpoints manning the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. 
Both London and Dublin fear reinstalling a hard border - whether by checkpoints or other means - would raise tensions and provoke a renewal of extremism or even violence if people and goods were not able to freely cross.
The DUP - which opposed the Good Friday Agreement - is determined to maintain Northern Ireland inside the UK at all costs, while also insisting it wants an open border. 
The UK blueprint:
The PM has made clear her favoured outcome for Brexit is a deep free trade deal with the EU.
The UK side iniset out two options for how the border could look.
One would see a highly streamlined customs arrangement, using a combination of technology and goodwill to minimise the checks on trade.
There would be no entry or exit declarations for goods at the border, while 'advanced' IT and trusted trader schemes would remove the need for vehicles to be stopped.
Boris Johnson has suggested that a slightly 'harder' border might be acceptable, as long as it was invisible and did not inhibit flow of people and goods.
However, critics say that cameras to read number plates would constitute physical infrastructure and be unacceptable.
The second option has been described as a customs partnership, which would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU - along with its own tariffs for goods heading into the wider British market.
However, this option has been causing deep disquiet among Brexiteers who regard it as experimental. They fear it could become indistinguishable from actual membership of the customs union, and might collapse.
Brussels has dismissed both options as 'Narnia' - insisting no-one has shown how they can work with the UK outside an EU customs union.
The EU blueprint:
The divorce deal set out a 'fallback' option under which the UK would maintain 'full alignment' with enough rules of the customs union and single market to prevent a hard border and protect the Good Friday Agreement.
The inclusion of this clause, at the demand of Ireland, almost wrecked the deal until Mrs May added a commitment that there would also be full alignment between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. 
But the EU has now translated this option into a legal text - and hardened it further to make clear Northern Ireland would be fully within the EU customs union.
Mrs May says no Prime Minister could ever agree to such terms, as they would undermine the constitutional integrity of the UK.
A hard border:
Neither side wants a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
But they appear to be locked in a cyclical dispute, with each adamant the other's solutions are impossible to accept.
If there is no deal and the UK and EU reverts to basic World Trade Organisation (WTO) relationship, theoretically there would need to be physical border posts with customs checks on vehicles and goods.
That could prove catastrophic for the Good Friday Agreement, with fears terrorists would resurface and the cycle of violence escalate.
Many Brexiteers have suggested Britain could simply refuse to erect a hard border - and dare the EU to put up their own fences. 
Theresa May has insisted Brexit means quitting the EU customs union - so the UK can strike free trade deals with other countries.
But  this means that customs checks on goods will probably need to be carried out at the border - creating the spectre of long border queues.
Critics of the PM's approach say the UK should stay in a customs union with the bloc to avoid these hard border controls.
Below are three customs deals the EU  has done with countries outside the bloc:
The Norway Option: 
Norway voted narrowly against joining the EU in 1994, but shares a 1000-mile border with Sweden which is in the bloc.
The Norwegian government decided to negotiate a deal which gave it very close ties with the EU. 
It is part of the EU single market which means it must accept EU rules on the free movement of people.
But it is not in the customs union - meaning it sets its own tariffs on customs coming from outside the EU and so must carry out border checks.
There are some 1,300 customs officials who are involved in policing the border with Sweden, and have invested substantial amounts in technology to make these as quick and smooth as possible.
They have IT systems which pre-declare goods to customs and they are developing a system which will allow lorries carrying pre-declared goods to be waved through. 
Norway also pays large amounts into the EU budget and is governed by the court of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The Switzerland Option:
Switzerland is one of the EU's longest-standing trading partners, but the  country voted against joining the bloc in 2001.
It is a member of the EU single market and has signed up to the Schengen area - meaning it must accept free movement rules and does not carry out passport check on other member countries. 
But it is not in the EU customs union - which means that checks on goods crossing over the border from non-EU countries are carried out.
The situation tosses up some anomalies. For instance, a passenger travelling through Geneva Airport can rent a car on the French side of the border for around half of the cost of renting it on the Swiss side.
Border checks are carried out on goods but customs officials say they use intelligence to carry out spot checks, which can be carried out several miles from the border. 
However, there can be long delays as goods are checked at the border.
The Turkey Option: 
Turkey has long eyed up membership of the EU and first tried to start the lengthy application process to join in 1987.
The country signed a customs union with the bloc in 1995 - a move Turkey's rulers hoped would be a stepping stone on the way to full membership.
Turkey's hopes to join the bloc faded over the past few years and have been all but abandoned under President Erdogan after he instigated a major purge of political opponents in the wake of the failed coup against him in 2016.
Under its customs union Turkey must follow EU rules on the production of goods without a say in making them.
It also means that Turkey can only strike free trade deals on goods which are negotiated by Brussels.   
 
We haven't heard a peep from Boris in public for quite a while. Ever since Theresa May's weepy resignation speech last month, he's been under orders to keep schtum. Fermez la bouche has been the 'Back Boris' strategy.
Yesterday, his campaign finally began in earnest. His performance was polished. Professional. Devoid of the customary slapstick. Heck, it was actually bloody dull.
I know, I know. This is the sensible thing for him to do. Currently streaking ahead in the polls, the contest remains his to lose. 
But let us be honest. When you pitch up at Lord's to watch Ian Botham bat, you expect him to swing the willow not block every delivery.
Our venue was Carlton House Terrace behind London's Pall Mall. Such was the interest, this usually genteel London street was transformed into a rolling maul of paparazzi, television crews and other assorted vermin. 
Inside, the gathered press corps sat in a cramped anteroom, sweltering in the muggy mid-morning heat. 
Our host was running late. Nowt new there. Geoffrey Cox did the introductions, the Attorney General's voice, as ever, as pleasing and aromatic as a fine Havana. Boris, he drawled, was the only man capable of seeing off the threat of Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn.
Up strode Candidate Johnson. Crikey, he almost looked presentable. The suit fitted, his sky blue shirt was ironed, the expensive-looking tie put on straight. 
The familiar custard mop even bore the faint trail marks of a comb. He seemed nervy to start with. 
Dry round the mouth. He wasn't helped by an idiot around these parts known as Mr Stop Brexit hollering away outside in protest.
Down in the front row were a bevy of female supporters, Liz Truss, Nadine Dorries and Priti Patel, their eyelashes fluttering in unison: 'Gizza job, luv.' 
We heard mainly about Boris's time as London Mayor, reeling off statistics in a statesman-like manner about lowering crime rates. 
His stint in City Hall, he said, gave him a unique insight into Labour's London cabal and their fondness for 'lefty South American caudillos'.
Phrases like that reassure you that he does at least write a lot of this stuff himself. 
After he finished, he said he would accept a measly six questions. Bah! C'mon Boris – if you want to be PM you need more spine than that.
There were inevitable briny queries about his trustworthiness. Here the old Boris returned. The hair rubbing, the 'Ummms' the 'Ahs'. 
Mainly he responded with waffle. One question from this newspaper about past cocaine use he managed to turn into a rally about free market conservatism. 
Deflected, in other words, like a true politician. But the whole point of Boris is that he is meant to be a politician like no other. Take that away from him and what's left?
Down the road at Millbank tower, Sajid Javid wrapped up the final launch of the week. Hovering by the lift as I shook off my sodden galoshes, ex-SNP leader Alex Salmond and former Labour rabble rouser George Galloway. Not invited, thank heavens. 
Their employer Russia Today merely inhabits the same building. Poor Saj. His campaign seems to have been cursed from the off. 
A Commons vote to block No Deal meant he was delayed over an hour. A gentleman to his bootstraps, we were generously kept, fed and watered until his arrival.
He was introduced by bubbly Scots Conservative leader Ruth Davidson. 'It's not a phrase I use very often… but he's the man for me,' she joked. 
Merriment all round. Of all the candidates, the Home Secretary should be the man Boris fears most. 
His backstory is pure political napalm. A son of a Pakistani immigrant who defied National Front bullies before earning squillions in the City then marrying the love of his life. But he just doesn't execute it.
Don't get me wrong, this was the best speech I have heard 'The Saj' make. It was honest. It was heartfelt. 
But he just falls short of greatness, presentation-wise. His performances have barely kicked on since he entered the Home Office over a year ago. 
He reminds me of one of those X Factor contestants who never quite makes that step up. Cabinet material for sure. Just not the one for Downing Street.
PS: Between all the hustings hoo-haa, I managed to briefly pop my head round the corner on PMQs. Drab stuff, though one minor observation. 
It is not unusual in these sessions to see Amber Rudd and Matt Hancock giggling together like a pair of truculent teenagers. Yesterday they gave each other a wide berth.
A mischievous flunky suggests Hancock was 'spitting venom' when Amber came out in support of Jeremy Hunt's leadership campaign on Monday rather than his. Surely the energetic Health Secretary is too weighty a creature to bear a grudge?
Businesses have hailed Theresa May's vision for our post-Brexit future after she warned the power elite in Davos to change or face the wrath of the public.
Bosses from some of the UK's biggest companies praised the PM for providing 'clarity' and giving 'confidence'.  
The welcome came after Mrs May made a broad pitch to position the UK as a champion of free trade and commerce, saying the country now had a 'unique opportunity' to lead a new agenda for social justice.
But she also used her speech to deliver an outspoken ultimatum to corporate titans and politicians, saying they had 'ignored the legitimate concerns' of the public for too long.
The far left and far right were offering 'easy answers' and feeding off the sense that struggling families are being left behind while the wealth thrive. 
Mrs May made clear the bosses had to pay their taxes - insisting they had to 'play by the same rules as everyone else'.
The rebuke appeared to take some of the power players in the hall aback - but was broadly welcomed by leaders of some of the UK's biggest businesses.
BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said the intervention - accompanied by a speech by Philip Hammond in which he insisted the 'fog is clearing' around Brexit - should 'give people confidence'.
BAE Systems chairman Roger Carr said the message from the ministers had been  'clear, firm and fair'. 
The attitude of the corporate bosses and bankers at the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort could be crucial to the UK's prospects.
As the implications of the PM's bold Brexit speech this week continued to reverberate today:
In her address, Mrs May said the 'forces of liberalism, free trade and globalisation' had harnessed 'unprecedented levels of wealth and opportunity' and 'lifted millions out of poverty around the world'.
But she warned: ‘Forces that underpin the rules-based international system that is key to global prosperity and security, are somehow at risk of being undermined.
ON BREXIT:
The PM praised the 'ambition' of the British people but said the country 'must face up to a period of momentous change'. 
'While it would have been easy for the British people to shy away from taking such a path, they fixed their eyes on that brighter future and chose a bold, ambitious course instead,' she said.
ON THE POWER ELITE'S FAILURE:
'As we meet here this morning, across Europe parties of the far left and the far right are seeking to exploit this opportunity – gathering support by feeding off an underlying and keenly felt sense among some people – often those on modest to low incomes living in relatively rich countries around the West – that these forces are not working for them.'
ON BUSINESS PAYING TAX:
'It means playing by the same rules as everyone else when it comes to tax and behaviour, because in the UK trust in business runs at just 35 per cent among those in the lowest income brackets.'  
ON BRITAIN'S FUTURE:
Mrs May said she wanted to do trade deals around the world and be a champion of international commerce. 
'We are by instinct a great, global, trading nation that seeks to trade with countries not just in Europe but beyond Europe too,' she said.  
‘And as we meet here this morning, across Europe parties of the far left and the far right are seeking to exploit this opportunity, gathering support by feeding off an underlying and keenly-felt sense among some people – often those on modest-to-low incomes living in relatively rich countries around the west – that these forces are not working for them.
‘Those parties who embrace the politics of division and despair, who offer easy answers, who claim to understand people’s problems and always know what and who to blame, feed off something else too – the sense among the public that mainstream political and business leaders have failed to comprehend their legitimate concerns for too long.’
In a particularly stern passage, the PM underlined her determination to lead an 'active' government that ensured wealth was shared more fairly.
Swiping at companies who have been dodging taxes, she pointed out the public's faith in the behaviour of businesses was very low and they must do their bit.
'It means playing by the same rules as everyone else when it comes to tax and behaviour, because in the UK trust in business runs at just 35 per cent among those in the lowest income brackets,' she said.
'It means putting aside short-term considerations and investing in people and communities for the long-term.'  
The premier said Brexit was giving the UK a 'unique opportunity' to spearhead change.
The country 'will step up to a new leadership role as the strongest and most forceful advocate for business, free markets and free trade anywhere in the world'.
At a lunch with business leaders, Mr Hammond said the 'fog of Brexit' was starting to clear.
“We are not going to get rid of it overnight but I hope gradually it will start to lift. A few things are becoming clearer through the mist,” he said.
The Chancellor also reiterated the government's threat to slash corporation tax, effectively turning Britain into a tax haven, if the EU failed to give us a good deal.
'That’s not a threat. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious,' he said. 
Dutch PM Mark Rutte warned that the UK would pay a 'huge price' for putting control of immigration above membership of the single market.
'(The UK) is now making a choice to control migration, and they are paying a huge price because the economic growth rate of the UK will be impacted negatively by the fact that it will leave the biggest market in the world,' he said at a fringe event in Davos.
'So they are willing to pay the price, but it has also a consequence for the rest of Europe but particularly for the UK.' 




Downing Street said Mrs May had not encountered David Cameron and George Osborne, who are also attending the gathering in Davos.
Both men have had lucrative speaking engagements - with Mr Cameron lecturing at a private dinner held by accounting firm PwC last night and Mr Osborne starring at an exclusive HSBC event. 
Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne were also understood to be on the guest list for a party hosted by their old friend PR guru Matthew Freud at the mountain-top Schatzalp hotel last night.
Mr Cameron, who used last year's stage to make the case for staying in the EU, is only speaking at events on the fringe this year and has embarrassingly become the butt of some jokes.

Luiz Carlos Trabuco Cappi, the president of Brazilian bank Bradesco, said: 'A year ago, those who shone in the hallways here included the former British Prime Minister David Cameron. Who thought Brexit was going to happen?' 
The going rate for the pair's speaking engagements is likely to be up to £100,000.
Both have raked in hundreds of thousands of pounds for corporate speeches since being brutally evicted from Downing Street in the wake of the historic EU referendum.
Since being booted out of office, Mr Osborne has declared earning more than £600,000 on top of his £74,000 MP's salary. 
And Mr Cameron got £120,000 for a single speech to Wall Street financiers in November. 
Meanwhile, Mrs May has urged people to 'stop fighting the battles of the past' and accept the UK is going to leave the European Union.
Britain has already started trade talks with a dozen countries in preparation for Brexit, Liam Fox has said.
The International Trade Secretary said laying the groundwork for deals to be announced as soon as we leave the EU.
The prospective partners include China, India, Australia and South Korea, as well as Middle East states such as Saudi Arabia and Oman.
In an article for the Telegraph, Dr Fox said: ‘when we leave we will want to develop new arrangements with countries like Australia, New Zealand and India.
‘We are conducting trade audits with a number of countries to see how we can remove barriers to trade and investment to our mutual benefit.’
‘There is such a big world for us to do business with, and we intend to do just that. We should do so with considerable self-confidence.’
The comments are likely to enrage EU leaders, as under the bloc's strict rules the UK is banned from entering formal trade talks before formally cutting ties.
US President-elect Donald Trump said this week that he wanted to do a 'great' trade deal with the UK as quickly as possible.
Saying the government will unveil a 'modern industrial strategy next week, she painted it as part of her plan to turn post-Brexit Britain into a 'great meritocracy' and create a 'more united nation'.

She said her Brexit plan – leaving the single market but seeking a comprehensive free trade deal with Brussels – would result in a 'new and equal partnership between an independent, self-governing, global Britain and our friends and allies in the EU'.
But the European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt warned it was an 'illusion' to suggest the UK could leave the EU but retain the benefits of tariff-free trade.
Mrs May, who is keen to ensure her administration is not dominated by Brexit, said her approach was part of a wider plan 'to shape the country we want to be when we have left the EU'.
She said: 'Our modern industrial strategy, which we will publish next week, will lay the foundations to build a more prosperous and more equal Britain.
'We will spread wealth and opportunity across every community. And we will help young people to develop the skills they need to do the high-paid, high-skilled jobs of the future.
'We will create a fairer society by breaking down the barriers of privilege and making Britain a great meritocracy where success is defined by work and talent, not birth or circumstance.
'This will include going further in reforming our schools and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive in a post-Brexit Britain.'
A Downing Street spokeswoman said of the Davos speech: 'I think it will be an opportunity for her primarily to engage with a wide range of business leaders and inward investors from around the world, talking to them about the Government's plan for Brexit, the type of relationship we will be seeking with the EU moving forward, the opportunities of strengthening our trading relationships with other countries and the benefits that that can bring for business.'
STILL talking us down! IMF chief warns Britain is in for years of 'pain' from Brexit 
Brexit scaremongering was back in full force at the World Economic Forum in Davos last night as IMF chief Christine Lagarde warned of years of 'pain' for Britain. 
She said the uncertainty over the trading terms between Britain and the EU would affect growth. 
And despite admitting her doom-laden economic warnings in the run-up to the EU referendum had been proved wrong, Ms Lagarde said: 'We are still of the view that it will not be positive all along and without pain.'
In the run-up to the referendum she said the consequences of a Leave vote ranged from 'bad to very bad' and could wipe out nearly 10 per cent off our economy.  
But she and the IMF were humiliated earlier this week when it upgraded its forecast growth for 2017 because of Britain's better-than-expected economic performance since June's Brexit vote.
It now predicts Britain's economic will grow by 1.5 per cent in 2017 - a major uplift from its last forecast of 1.1 per cent. And it said Britain's economy grew the fastest among all G7 nations last year, despite Brexit. 
But Ms Lagarde - in Davos, Switzerland for a summit of global elites - is still talking our economy down. 
She said any Brexit trade deal the UK strikes with Brussels will not be as good as the current arrangements of full membership of the single market. 
'When you belong to a club, whatever that is, the members of the club have a degree of affinity and particular terms under which they operate,' she said. Someone outside the club has different access.' 
PM's Brexit demands are BACKED by public but only one in five think the EU will agree  
Theresa May's 12-point blueprint for Brexit is backed by a ratio of more than two to one, a poll revealed today.
Nearly half of voters also backed her threat to walk away from negotiations and her stance that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’.
But only one in five believe EU leaders will agree to Mrs May’s demands.
More than half (56 per cent) think EU member states will reject her blueprint, while one in four are unsure. 
In today's YouGov poll for The Times, all of Mrs May's key negotiating points were met with a majority of support. 
A majority (57 per cent) support leaving Europe's single market, while 56 per cent back leaving the customs union, which allows tariff-free trade across the continent. 
Nearly half of voters (47 per cent) are confident in Mrs May's negotiating skills, according to the poll, while 38 per cent are not.  
 
 
The clock is counting down to next week’s crunch EU summit in Brussels, which, in the view of many, is D-Day for Brexit. 
Of course, we are not due to leave the EU until next March, but if we are to avoid a serious crisis of confidence and financial jitters between now and then, industry wants to see the politicians agree some sort of framework deal by the end of the month.
A year and seven months after Mrs May triggered Article 50 and began the EU exit process, we really do find ourselves at a crucial juncture. 
We can (and probably will) go on haggling about the final exit terms for years, but business needs to know the boundaries pronto.
Theresa May’s Chequers deal may invoke scorn from both ends of the Brexit spectrum but, in the eyes of German industry, it is a basis for negotiation. It also involves a just-about-swallowable answer to the problem of the Irish border. To many European businesses, it’s at least a start.
Yet EU hardliners such as Macron and the arch-federalists in Brussels keep throwing it back in her face. Why? Because some, like Macron, beset by plummeting popularity ratings, want to show their home audience that they are tough on the treacherous Brits.
It is also because they are deploying a dangerous strategy: the tougher the deal, the more likely (so the theory goes) that Britain will be pushed into holding a second referendum. And if that doesn’t lead to a second vote, it will certainly terrify any other country with the nerve to consider leaving the grand projet.
The knuckleduster approach may play well in Brussels and pander to the sort of Remainer zealots who want Brexit to be a total disaster so they can gloat amid the wreckage. But how does it go down in Europe, among the people who actually pay for it all?
For the answer, I have come to Bavaria. And they are clear that they don’t want Britain dragged outside for a beating. They want common sense.
Germany’s largest state is so prosperous that if it went independent, its GDP (at half a trillion pounds) would put it ahead of most countries in the world. It is the home of global brands including BMW, Audi, Siemens and Adidas.
But it is also home to thousands of smaller companies, many of them family businesses, which form the bedrock of the European economy — and which also happen to export billions of pounds worth of goods to Britain every year.
They are the widget-makers who prop up the German corporate pyramid.
They are hard-nosed commercial people, most of whom are fervent believers in the European dream. Yet they are also realists. They believe a no-deal Brexit would be disastrous for the European economy as well as for Britain because of the vast imbalance in trade. In other words, Britain buys much more from them than it sells to them.
That is why they want Europe’s politicians to cease their posturing, threatening behaviour towards the UK.
‘The UK is essential to our business, so I want a deal. The best thing is to find a solution that does not hurt either the UK or the EU. We need to protect the industry of both players,’ says Reinhold Braun, general manager of Sortimo International, a company that makes racks and shelving, employs 1,400 people and sells 20 per cent of its products to the UK.
He wants German Chancellor Angela Merkel to steer Europe round to a more conciliatory position. ‘It has to happen that Merkel steps in and pushes for a deal. It has to happen,’ says Braun. He adds that the hardline Brexiteers need to give the Prime Minister some leeway, too, as she tries to re-work her Chequers deal.
‘Is Chequers the solution? I don’t know. But it’s there, so personally I’d take it. It is something to work with — and it is getting really late in the day.’
This is a view echoed by German economists such as Wolfgang Munchau, who writes for the fiercely pro-Remain Financial Times.
Writing in the German business paper Handelsblatt last month, he warned German politicians: ‘Given the political situation in Britain, anyone who continues to call for a hard stance in talks with the British Government doesn’t have Germany’s economic interests at heart or is behaving like turkeys voting for Christmas.’ 
This week, the de facto spokesman for German manufacturing warned that unless Europe cuts a deal with Britain in the next month, there will be ‘disaster’ on both sides of the Channel.
‘We have to pave the way for a well-structured exit of the UK in the next four weeks,’ Joachim Lang, director-general of the German Industry Federation (BDI), declared.
The alternative was a ‘worst-case scenario’ that ‘would put tens of thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of workers on both sides of the Channel in the greatest difficulties’.
Note that he was not calling for a second referendum. Nor, unlike President Macron, was he invoking pious devotion to the sacred European ideals of the single market and the customs union.
To listen to French politicians, things such as the Schengen Agreement and free movement of people are somewhere up there with Thou Shalt Not Kill as an article of faith. Unless you happen to visit, say, the French-Italian border or the German-Austrian border, where border controls are rigidly enforced (especially if you happen to be from an ethnic minority).
What is different now is that the people who actually drive and sustain the European economy are no longer wagging fingers solely at Britain. They are turning their wrath on their own.
Lang’s outburst was all the more telling because German business organisations are pretty wary of rocking the boat. They dislike sensational headlines, especially in the naughty British media.
Despite lodging requests with four separate organisations over the past fortnight, including Mr Lang’s BDI, the German-British Chamber of Commerce and two prominent Bavarian trade associations, I was offered just one company that would talk to me. Then, suddenly, that company found it was too busy after all.
So I went knocking on doors instead. And, away from the spin-doctors and the lobby groups, the response was fascinating.
German businesses have not changed their view on Brexit, of course. They still think it is inexplicable, though they concede that Britain and Germany had very different ambitions right from the outset. Whereas the Brits wanted to join a trading bloc, the Germans think of Europe as a political utopia.
But these businesses also accept that we are off and there is no point in punishing us. That is why they favour helping Mrs May rather than siding with all her tormentors.
Take Bernhard Erdl, the founder, president and boss of Puls. ‘I am all for a pragmatic approach, not an idealistic one,’ says Erdl, who started his business in a Munich cellar with one other engineer in 1980. ‘I hope all this talk of punishing Britain is just a bargaining position, not a real position.’
His company, a world leader in industrial power control units, employs 1,300 people, 300 of them in Germany. His transformative moment was getting into Asia ahead of his rivals.
‘I work with the Chinese and they are the most pragmatic people I know. In Europe, we talk about dying for our ideas.
‘The Chinese would never do that. Their main purpose is to keep the country together.’
By common consent, the moment has come for Angela Merkel to intervene. British-born engineer Richard Lawrence, who has built up a successful power repair business in Munich and raised his family here, says he has no doubt the German leader will come on board when things get what he calls ‘hypercritical’ in the coming weeks.
‘Right now, it’s all a show. Everyone has to look like they won,’ he says. ‘Merkel is staying out until the last moment. Once BMW start laying off workers, she’ll be in there.’
No one is keener on resolving the Brexit impasse than the German car industry. One German job in seven depends on it, and Britain is one of its biggest markets. It is not just that Britain buys so many German cars, but that so many are made in the UK.
Dr Tobias Nickel is head of corporate communications for Draxlmaier, one of the world’s biggest makers of door panels and wiring harnesses for cars.
Among the company’s major clients is Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). Such is the advanced state of car design now that his company has just three days to build each bespoke panel for every new JLR car, and must then get it from Germany to the British factory within a precise four-hour window.
Miss that slot and you hold up an entire plant, with punitive results. The idea of 30-mile traffic jams at the Channel is the stuff of nightmares. He dreads a ‘no deal’.
His company is hardly small, with 70,000 workers worldwide. Yet by German standards it is not big enough to enjoy lobbying access to the German government, unlike the car giants.
So does Dr Nickel not support the EU’s attempts to punish and grind Britain into submission? Does he not support the strong stance of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker?
‘Mr Juncker is from Luxembourg, which is a country that does not have a large automotive industry,’ he says carefully. ‘In the automotive industry, we are not in the business of teaching other countries a lesson. We are in the business of making cars.’
I get the same no-nonsense message from business all over Europe. Take Claudio Calabresi, who runs his family textile business near Florence, making clothes for M&S, Ted Baker and others. Up to 40 per cent of his £25 million turnover goes to Britain. A bad Brexit would be very grim indeed.
As in Germany, he wishes Brexit wasn’t happening. But he is practical, too. He places the blame for the current situation equally on the British and EU politicians and wants calm.
‘It is a very confusing situation. From my point of view, the people shouldn’t be punished,’ he says. ‘We must respect the decision — it has come from the people, not the politicians. In fact, there is a feeling in Italy that if we could take a similar decision, many might go the same way.’
In Normandy, meanwhile, political and business leaders have warned President Macron that a no-deal Brexit would threaten the region’s economy.
Herve Morin, the chairman of the regional council, wrote a public letter this week signed by ten other prominent figures in Normandy, including port and ferry operators, to demand financial help should the negotiations end without a deal. ‘A Brexit without an agreement... represents for our economy, and especially for the economy of our ports, a major threat,’ they wrote.
Back in Bavaria, I do meet some who feel that Britain deserves all it gets. But they are in a minority. Most would like to see Angela Merkel assert more authority over her EU counterparts.
After last year’s dismal performance in the general election, there is a sense that she has regained some authority at home. In Europe, she is certainly still queen bee.
But her standing at home may depend on this weekend’s state election here in Bavaria. For years it has been the stronghold of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian wing of her party.
Yet her 2015 decision to open Germany’s borders to more than a million unchecked migrants has seen the CSU lose substantial ground to the far-Right AfD and it is on course for its worst result in living memory.
I meet one of the anti-migrant AfD candidates, Uli Henkel, in the Munich pub that is now his headquarters. ‘It’s my ninth bar,’ he says, explaining that protesters have driven his campaign HQ out of the previous eight.
He cannot envisage Germany ever leaving the EU, but blames Brussels for Brexit. ‘Europe should have done everything to keep the Brits in but it didn’t,’ he says.
At which point two policemen come into the pub. The AfD’s toxic, anti-Islamic message has led to car burnings, broken windows and regular protests. The cops are here to keep the peace.
It dawns on me that there is now only one major EU nation that does not have an extremist Right-wing party making serious inroads into public life.
Britain may have its faults. It may be divided. But unlike France, Germany and the rest, it can still offer a few lessons in community cohesion.
Some EU politicians may want to treat it like a pariah. Fortunately, those who pay their wages now seem to think otherwise.
Has Manchester been taken over by Mexican drugs barons? Or the rulers of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale?
When I saw that banner strung across a bridge, complete with dangling mock corpses, to mark the start of the Tory conference, I thought immediately of the kind of savage, ritual punishment meted out by the Sinaloa Cartel.
Others said it reminded them of The Wall used to display the dead bodies of undesirables, apostates and attempted escapees in the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel.
Yet this wasn't a scene from The Handmaid's Tale, or even the Netflix drug wars drama Narcos.
The banner was on public display in a so-called civilised democracy as the governing party assembled for its annual conference.
It read: '130,000 KILLED UNDER TORY RULE TIME TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD.'
A photo of the banner was posted approvingly on social media by the local branch of Momentum, with the caption: 'Good morning @Conservatives. Welcome to Manchester.'
Even allowing for the hyperbole and hysteria which passes for political debate these days, accusing the Tories of genocide is a bridge too far.
As for 'TIME TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD', I'm assuming that whoever was responsible for this inane piece of agitprop theatre isn't actually calling for the slaughter of 130,000 members of the Conservative Party.
I'm certainly not going to stoop to the level of those sensitive souls who demand that the police prosecute anyone who uses language which they deem 'offensive'.
The most absurd example came at the weekend when some imbecile reported Nigel Farage for 'hate crime' after he said the Brexit Party would 'take a knife' to Whitehall bureaucracy.
Anyone who seriously believes such a colourful expression is a deliberate attempt to incite violence belongs in a room with rubber walls.
Fortunately, for once, the Old Bill saw sense and declined to investigate.
But this won't stop the Left continuing to try to use every means possible, including the criminal law, to close down legitimate debate.
What is always striking is how they foam at the mouth over allegedly 'incendiary' language used by their opponents, yet seem to believe that the normal rules of civilised discourse don't apply to them.
I won't revisit every last cough and spit of last week's demeaning shouting match in the Commons, which has been well aired elsewhere — to the exclusion of pretty much anything else on the pro-Remain broadcast media.
Watching shroud-waving Labour harpies trying to equate Boris Johnson's 'humbug' remark with a crime against humanity was a profoundly depressing experience, even by the subterranean standards of today's political class.
Far more depressing was seeing so-called 'Conservatives' cowering before the onslaught. So top marks to Boris for standing his ground. 
For years, Tories have allowed the Left to dictate the terms of engagement. 
It started back when Mother Theresa gormlessly saddled her own party with the label 'The Nasty Party' and has gone rapidly downhill ever since.
But in my time covering politics, the true nastiness has always come from the Left.
We're all going on a Saudi holiday,
No more drinking for a week or two,
Not much laughter on a Saudi holiday,
Here's a list of things that
you can't do,
Things you just can't do.
Women have to wear a headscarf,
Men aren't allowed to wear shorts,
If they catch you taking photos,
You'll end up before the courts.
Sharia law on a Saudi vacation,
Women ought to take a chaperone,
Homosexuals face decapitation,
So you're better off staying home,
Better off back home . . . 
Can you imagine, for instance, Labour delegates arriving in Brighton for their annual conference being greeted with banners accusing them of mass murder and calling for reprisals on an industrial scale?
I can't ever remember Labour conferences being picketed by thuggish Young Conservatives screaming 'Labour Scum!' Yet this has become commonplace, even acceptable, behaviour on the Left. And it isn't just Tories who have to run the gauntlet of this vile hatred.
At last year's Labour conference in Liverpool, the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg and even the Labour, now Lib Dem, MP Luciana Berger had to have bodyguards to accompany them everywhere.
Demonisation has replaced disagreement. And what was once confined to the internet has now spilled over on to the streets —even to the floor of the Chamber of the House of Commons.
Female Labour politicians absurdly pretending to be oppressed Gilead wives in the face of mild Tory criticism were more than happy to go along with the sick ghouls dancing on Mrs Thatcher's grave and singing 'Ding, dong, the Witch is dead'.
Sadly, some self-righteous women MPs think they can screech like fishwives in the Chamber and then act like shrinking violets when somebody returns their serve.
Because they self-define as 'good' people — and by extension consider their opponents to be the epitome of evil — they believe that whatever they say, however untrue and disgusting, is without consequence.
Yet at the same time they are convinced that they themselves should be immune from criticism they consider 'inappropriate'.
Labour MPs behave like football hooligans in the House, while their shadow chancellor thinks it's amusing to talk about 'lynching' a female Conservative MP.
Meanwhile, Momentum's anti-Semitic gangsters drive moderate MPs like Luciana Berger from the party and are now targeting for deselection another Jewish woman MP, Margaret Hodge.
So is it any wonder that a handful of nutters feel they have licence to string up mock corpses and banners calling for the death of 130,000 Conservatives?
Welcome to Manchester. Or should that be: Welcome to Mexico?
Saudi Arabia has launched a new visa programme to attract tourists.
You can just imagine the Magaluf crowd in downtown Riyadh, battling it out with the Saudi religious police. They'd be lucky to come home with both hands.
And as for anyone trying to drive an old London bus across the Arabian desert, forget it.
So with apologies to Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett, of Cliff and The Shadows . . .
Yesterday, in an impressive and statesmanlike first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, Theresa May brought some welcome clarity to her government’s intentions on the crucial issue of immigration.
In characteristically straightforward language, she said the referendum sent a ‘very clear message’ and that the public want ‘control of free movement’.
To erase any possible doubt, she added: ‘I also remain absolutely firm in my belief that we need to bring net migration down to sustainable levels, and the Government believe that that means tens of thousands ... and that is precisely what we will ensure that we get.’
She repeated this message later in Berlin, standing alongside Angela Merkel, for whom free movement is a sacred principle, and made clear it would no longer apply to Britain, whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.
Significantly, Mrs May spelled out what her Home Secretary Amber Rudd refused to do only a day earlier, and restated the target of reducing net migration – currently running at an utterly unsustainable 333,000 a year – to the tens of thousands.
Adding to the mess on Tuesday was, unsurprisingly, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who must think voters have very short memories indeed.
Having challenged David Cameron over the target during the referendum campaign, he now rejects the idea, warning it would lead to ministers ‘disappointing’ the public when they failed to deliver.
The Mail would like to offer a simple solution – just meet it!
Both Miss Rudd and Mr Johnson, and for that matter any other wobbling Tory MPs, would do well to remember that the tens of thousands promise appeared prominently in last year’s Conservative election manifesto.
Instead of sowing confusion, Miss Rudd should focus her efforts on reducing the level of non-EU migration, currently some 180,000 a year.
This regrettable episode might be written off as the growing pains of a new government, but it nonetheless displays a worrying lack of a coherent message from two of Mrs May’s most senior lieutenants.
It also shows a troubling failure to understand why keeping the target is so critical. As the chairman of MigrationWatch Lord Green argues, it is ‘invaluable’ to achieve ‘policy focus’ in Whitehall. In addition, the public can hold politicians’ feet to the fire if net migration rises.
Mrs May’s only caveat, that it will ‘take some time to get there’, is sensible, as it acknowledges how wildly out of control the situation is.
The public understands this will not be easy. But what voters desperately want, after years of broken promises and politicians paying lip service to their concerns, is action and results.
A rotten industry
The admission last year by the German car giant Volkswagen that it deliberately installed cheat software to falsify emissions tests ranks as one of the worst corporate scandals of recent memory.
Since then, worrying revelations have emerged about other car firms, including Mitsubishi, prompting investigations in the US and Europe.
This week Vauxhall admitted it first received reports that one of its Zafira B people-carriers burst into flames in February 2009, nearly seven years before it recalled the faulty vehicles. Even when the scale of the problem emerged, the firm carried on claiming it was faulty repairs and not a design flaw causing the fires.
It is hard to resist the conclusion that something is rotten across much of the industry, and that its bosses have acted with shameful cynicism towards their customers by deceiving them about what they were buying.
Banking giants are set to move fewer than 4,600 staff out of London as they prepare for Brexit as the climbdown over City jobs continued today.
Some lobbyists claimed that as many as 75,000 staff could be relocated or sacked when Britain leaves the EU in 2019 and a recent study said 10,500 roles would go on 'day one'.
But the latest estimates suggest that fewer than 4,600 jobs in total will shift abroad across the whole banking industry. 
The news will be a big blow to Dublin, Frankfurt and Paris who want to benefit most from the predicted 'Brexodus' starting on March 29, 2019.
Research by the Financial Times after dozens of interviews and statements with banks and executives claims that the jobs figure will be a fraction of the figures touted by the most gloomy predictions.
The newspaper that the big international banks now plan to shift less than six per cent of their UK workforce abroad.
Eurosceptic Tory MP John Redwood said: ‘This is great news but not unexpected. It’s just another example of the Project Fear campaign getting it wrong.’ 
Earlier this year, Deutsche Bank executive Sylvie Matherat said 4,000 of its 9,000 London workers might be shifted abroad.
But the new study suggests only 350 will go by April 2019.
At JP Morgan, the true figure is expected to be around 700, even though in July the US bank, with 16,000 UK staff, warned it could be thousands.
And Swiss bank UBS has scaled back the figure for those affected from 1,000 to an estimated 200.
In October HSBC  climbed down on threats to move jobs out ofLondon and into Europe after Brexit.  
The major City institution posted strong financial results today and admitted it 'may' move fewer than the 1,000 jobs forecast.
Claims of an impending mass exodus were made as long ago as October 2016, when British Bankers’ Association boss Anthony Browne said bosses’ fingers were ‘quivering over the relocate button’.
He warned they would leave before the end of that year unless their needs were made a top priority during Brexit.
When that didn’t happen, there were reports that Japanese banks could being relocations by this June.
June came and went without major announcements.
Sam Woods, deputy governor of the Bank of England, then said that jobs could start shifting unless a deal is done by this Christmas to preserve existing rules until 2021.
This date now also looks certain to be missed – and the City has again retreated without taking action.
Sally Dewar, head of regulatory affairs at JP Morgan, said yesterday that the real day of reckoning will come at the end of March unless the UK bows to big lenders’ demands.
At this point, she claimed, ‘we will start to have to take decisions around informing clients which then becomes more difficult to unravel.’
 
 
Britain has voted clearly in favour of leaving the EU, but that is just the start of a very long process before we officially untangle ourselves from the network of institutions in Brussels. 
The historic result could see us embarking on a path to an enlightened era of prosperous global trade, freed from the shackles of unelected Brussels bureaucracy.
Or if you listen to the Remain camp, it could be the end of Western civilisation, with the continent descending into war and pensioners going hungry. 
Whichever side of the European argument you fall, the only certainty seems to be that things from now on will be pretty lively. So what will the next 100 days of Brexit Britain look like?  
Today  
A shattered and emotional David Cameron has announced he is resigning as Prime Minister as he gave a statement outside 10 Downing Street at 8.20am this morning. 
He spoke to the Queen to alert her of his decision to stand aside in three months time - allowing a new Tory leader to be elected and installed by October.
The Prime Minister promised to implement the wishes of the British people, but his speech was necessarily short on detail and he said he would not immediately trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU 
His main focus in his speech outside Number 10 was an appeal for stability and unity in a bid to avoid further financial and political turmoil. 
Meanwhile the Chancellor George Osborne was heading up emergency discussions between the Treasury, Bank of England and European Central Bank.
They will each activate contingency plans to shore up the pound and the euro, while injecting liquidity to banks to ensure the system keeps working.  

Outside Downing Street this morning Mr Cameron said it would not be right for him to be the 'captain of the ship' while the UK negotiated its exit from the EU. 
But he will stay on as Prime Minister for three months to calm the markets. 
It will also allow the Conservative party to elect a new leader - almost certainly to be Brexit-supporting Boris Johnson - who will lead Britain into negotiating its official withdrawal from the EU. 
In his statement today, Mr Cameron sought to reassure EU migrants living in the UK and expats living on the continent that their circumstances will not change - at least in the short term. 
Goods and services will still be bought and sold between UK and European firms and consumers, he added in a bid to stave off fears of a hit to Britain's trading economy. 
When he made his speech at a press conference later in the morning, Mr Johnson agreed with Mr Cameron that Britain should not trigger Article 50 until a battle plan for negotiations have been drawn up.  
June 28-29
EU leaders are due to gather for a summit in Brussels, at which there will be only one topic - the Brexit vote.
They could even bring the meeting forward by a few days if their anxiety is great enough. 
Mr Cameron is expected to formally notify them of our intention to leave, trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty - the legal process for quitting the 28 nation bloc.
That starts the clock on a two-year period during which we negotiate a new set of arrangements in areas such as trade, justice and reciprocal visas. 
The UK can leave earlier than that if terms are easily found. But if there is no deal by the end of the time we will be outside without any special provisions - meaning much higher trade tariffs. 


However, the PM may hold off as some Leave campaigners do not want to invoke Article 50 at all, believing it puts our negotiators at a disadvantage.
Instead we could try to force the EU to strike a deal without imposing a time limit - but that may depend on whether other states are willing to play ball. 
European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has already warned that 'deserters' will not be treated kindly. 
But leaders will have to navigate the whole process as they go because quitting the EU is an unprecedented move.
Only semi-independent Greenland has quit the EU before, and that was 30 years ago when the island had a population of just 56,000. 

It can be argued that Algeria left too - when it stopped being part of France in the 1960s. 




July 6 
As the immediate shock of the Brexit vote eases, the government machine gears up to the task of negotiating a new deal with the EU and replacing other bilateral trade agreements. 
Despite volatility on the markets, the public will almost certainly be surprised to find that little changes in their everyday lives. 
Importantly, there is virtually no chance that George Osborne's threat of a post-Brexit 'punishment' Budget will happen. 
That is partly because victorious Conservative Eurosceptics will have demanded Mr Osborne is moved from No11, but also because the hit to the real economy will not have been as immediate as some made out.
On July 6, Mr Cameron will be able to lead the government response to the publication of the long-awaited Iraq Inquiry report. Shortly afterwards he is due to attend a Nato summit.
July 21
Parliament is due to rise for its summer break, but there will be little rest for ministers as they are consumed by the negotiations. 
The civil service has been quietly contingency planning for the possibility of our departure, with every department set to be affected by the seismic changes.  
But Mr Cameron, if he is still in place, will be largely peripheral to the process.  
Having been so closely associated with the Remain campaign, it is almost inconceivable that Mr Cameron would be regarded as a credible head negotiator.
It is possible that another, Brexit-supporting minister such as Michael Gove could be appointed to oversee the work. 
Vote Leave said the government should invite figures from other parties, business, the law and civil society to join the negotiating team to 'get a good deal in the national interest'. 
By now the Tory leadership contest is likely to be in full swing.
The party's rules mean MPs nominate two candidates, who are then put forward for an election by the wider membership. 
While Mr Cameron could stay on as PM to oversee the initial stages of leaving the EU, he will almost certainly only be a caretaker while the Tories choose a new leader. 
Brexit champion Boris Johnson would almost certainly emerge victorious.

Mr Cameron would be able to lead the response to the long-awaited Iraq Inquiry report on July 6, and attend a Nato summit shortly afterwards.
But he is likely to become irrelevant to the main workings of government, as the machine focuses on the task of organising the UK's new status. 
Chancellor George Osborne, who would share in Mr Cameron's ignominious defeat, also face being sidelined along with other prominent pro-EU figures like Defence Secretary Michael Fallon.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn could struggle to hang on to his job after criticism of his half-hearted campaign.

As for the nation's finances, sterling is expected to drop in the short term at least, hitting holiday makers and importers but helping exporters.
The FTSE could also be significantly lower as investment dries up pending clarity on the shape of the new trading and border arrangements. 
Mid-August  

The cracks could quickly start to show in the rest of the EU, as other countries wonder whether they too can forge another course outside the club.
EU council president Donald Tusk has questioned whether the Brussels club - and indeed 'Wetern civilisation' - can survive Brexit.
And senior figures such as German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble have also admitted the grouping will be significantly weakened.
Political turmoil will be perhaps the biggest threat to the UK. 

If the Conservative leadership takes a similar length of time as in 2005, this is around when the successor to Mr Cameron could be announced.
Given the need for someone to take charge of the talks, it is likely there would be a strong desire to move as fast as possible.
Mr Johnson would be in a position to win a very strong mandate, as the politician who did the most to deliver the Brexit vote.
September
Parliament is due back, and while the early autumn sitting it usually viewed as a sop to those who complain MPs do not work hard enough, this year it could be extremely busy.
Vote Leave has called for legislation in the current session of Parliament to 'end the European Court of Justice's control over national security and allow the government to deport criminals from the EU'.
The Brexiteers have also pledged abolish the 5 per cent rate of VAT on household energy bills by amending the Value Added Tax Act 1994.
Other parliamentary actions promised by the Leave campaign include ending the automatic right of all EU citizens to enter the UK, and - finally - repealing the European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) Bill.
That is the legislation that guarantees the supremacy of EU law to domestic rules.
However, it is not clear how fast the Brexiteers will be able to cut the ties to Brussels.
Around three quarters of MPs support EU membership, and some are already considering how that weight of numbers can be used to limit the impact of a Leave vote.  
There could be efforts to defy the public will altogether, or keep us in the single market rather than quitting the bloc altogether.
Iain Duncan Smith has said that MPs who ignore the outcome of the referendum it would trigger a 'constitutional crisis' and potentially a snap general election. 
October 5 
The political party conference season is always frantic, but this year it will have an even greater significance. The realignment of politics set in train by the referendum would have been huge for Britain and for Europe.
Just after the first hundred days draws to a close, the new Tory Prime Minister could take to the stage in Birmingham to address activists.
Mr Johnson - if he has emerged victorious - would be able to argue that the UK has made a start in its new life independent from Brussels.
 
 
You could hear the slapping of thighs across the Continent yesterday, from the lunch tables of Brussels to every foreign ministry in the eurozone. 
Have you heard? Those stupid Britishers are about to pay the French to produce their stupid blue passports!
Here in Britain, diehard Remainers were thrilled. 'The irony is unreal,' gloated a spokeswoman for the anti-Brexit pressure group, Best for Britain. 
Except no one is laughing here at the Gateshead factory which currently produces every British passport — ten million of them a year.
Having been granted an exclusive interview inside the fortress-like De La Rue plant, I find a highly skilled, highly motivated, deeply patriotic, Geordie workforce who are not only feeling betrayed but are deeply suspicious of this incomprehensible decision.
The only 'irony', as far as they are concerned, is that this was a part of Britain which voted strongly in favour of Brexit in the 2016 referendum. 
Yet the Government has decided that production of the ultimate symbol of British sovereignty should be removed from the North-East — and from a British company operating since before the Battle of Waterloo — and handed to a French consortium.
'Our workforce really did feel that as a factory in the North of England, in the year of Brexit, with a faultless track record, they were not going to lose this contract,' says Alan Newman, De La Rue's head of advanced engineering. 'So, frankly, we are in shock.'
The fact that no British company would ever be allowed to produce French passports — on the grounds that they are matter of French national security — has compounded the anger. 
Why, the locals ask, does Britain slavishly follow procurement rules cheerfully ignored by the rest of Europe?
To cap it all, this De La Rue production line has never had a single day's industrial action since winning the passport contract — unlike the state-run Passport Office which it supplies. Indeed, it has never missed a single delivery. 
So to lose out to a French company on the same day that France is convulsed by a general strike only adds to the sense of disbelief on Tyneside.
'I suppose it will be interesting if that should happen in the summer, just as everyone wants their passports,' Alan adds with a joyless laugh.
From the moment you approach the De La Rue plant just off the A1, you realise that this is no ordinary factory. 
It is one of the most secure high-tech industrial sites in Britain. I haven't even reached the front door when a disembodied voice greets me through an intercom and orders me to get off private property. 
Aside from a single flag and a small sign, it feels more like a prison than a place of work. The last time I encountered this sort of security was when I visited the Royal Mint.
But then this place produces even more money than the Mint. While the Mint does coins, De La Rue makes bank notes for 150 nations worldwide, including the UK — all of which adds up to some seven billion bank notes each year.
In 2009, it won the new contract to make all our passports, using the same tamper-proof technology it applies to the bank notes. De La Rue's passport technology has even received a design award.
The director of engineering, Barry McDonnell, tells me that there are at least 20 different security measures in each passport, which I would never spot, which together ensure the validity of every British passport.
No one is suggesting that the new French-Dutch supplier, Gemalto, is incapable of making a secure passport. But the De La Rue team are baffled — and extremely sceptical — that the usurper has been able to undercut them by more than £100 million, as the Government is suggesting.
'We are the biggest commercial passport manufacturer in the world, so we know a few things about this business,' says Alan Newman. 'And we are very competitive.' Might the French be cutting some very big corners? He'd rather not comment.
I am sitting in a drab meeting room in the front section of a huge factory site which employs 600 people. Around 150 work on passports, while the rest concentrate on bank notes.
There is no chance of even looking inside one of the production lines, on security grounds. 
I have had to show my passport (made here, of course) and scan my security pass four times to get this far. Nor am I even allowed to record the names of any regular employees, on the grounds that they might be compromised.
But I get a very clear view of what people think inside and out. Karen Young, 51, works at the supermarket over the road and is appalled. 
'It'll have a knock-on effect for everyone round here,' she says. 'And, of course, we should make our own passports here in Britain. It's terrible.'
'Keep 'em here,' chips in her friend, Bev Fitzpatrick. Everyone seems to know someone at the plant. 
'As Barry explains, staff retention is so high that no one ever leaves. It is why the news is especially painful.
'This is a very loyal workforce. When we had all that snow the other day, you had people walking for miles to make their shifts.'
Despite the French ring to its name, De La Rue has its roots in the Channel Islands during the reign of George III.
In 1813, a hot-headed Guernsey printer called Thomas de la Rue had a row with his business partner and set up his own newspaper on the island.
More interested in printing than editorial content, he moved to London to set up a printing business. 
An early 'de luxe' version of the New Testament was acclaimed but not a bestseller. De La Rue sold hats to keep the business afloat.
In 1830, however, he patented a new method of colour printing. As a result, he started producing the first modern playing cards. 
They were so impressive that he earned a royal warrant from William IV and an honourable mention from Charles Dickens.
The company went on to produce postage stamps for the Empire and had a starring role at the Great Exhibition of 1851 with a new-fangled machine that produced a brilliant new invention — the envelope. A century later, it would design the first cash dispenser.
But it is bank notes which have been its core business, ever since it produced the first £5 note for Mauritius in 1860. 
Today, we all have a De La Rue product in our purses and pockets whenever we leave the house.
The company will continue to thrive without the passport business. It has four other operations printing bank notes in Essex, Malta, Kenya and Sri Lanka. 
When Iraq needed an entire new economy delivered overnight, all the De La Rue plants went into overdrive and delivered billions of pounds worth of currency in a fleet of Boeing 747s.
But the biggest factory of the lot is this one in Gateshead.
And it is extremely proud that it has produced tens of millions of the most advanced biometric passports ever made without a complaint.
Surely what is good enough for the Bank of England is good enough for Passport Control? 
A cabinet minister today issues a rallying cry to Tory moderates to stand by Boris Johnson and help him deliver Brexit.
The party was plunged into fresh civil war at the weekend after the resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd.
Amid speculation at least one minister could follow her out, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan insists she would ‘stay in the room’ and give the Prime Minister the ‘necessary support’ to strike a Brexit deal.
Writing for the Daily Mail, she says Mr Johnson is right to keep No Deal on the table and insists the public are ‘fed up’ with the lack of progress over Brexit.
Her comments will be seen as an attempt to calm One Nation Tories disturbed by Miss Rudd’s departure and the eviction of 21 Conservative MPs last week.
But in a challenge to the Prime Minister, Mrs Morgan also says he needs to be more ‘transparent’ about the progress of negotiations with Brussels.
‘With our support, the Prime Minister now needs to show he’s serious about getting a deal,’ she writes. ‘More transparency... on the discussions is needed to ensure everyone is left in no doubt about how a deal is possible and the effort which is being put in to making sure a deal happens.’
Miss Rudd quit the Cabinet and resigned the Tory whip on Saturday over the ‘purge’ of the rebels – who include former chancellors Ken Clarke and Philip Hammond – calling it an ‘assault on decency and democracy’.
She also accused Mr Johnson of a ‘failure’ to pursue a deal with the EU, saying there was ‘no evidence’ he wants a negotiated agreement. In what was seen as a signal others could follow, she said ‘a lot of people are concerned’.
But in her article Mrs Morgan defends Mr Johnson, saying he has been ‘clear from the start that we must leave on October 31 – deal or No Deal’. Her intervention came as:
÷ A Bill designed to force Mr Johnson to delay Brexit if he hasn’t secured a deal by October 19 was set to receive Royal Assent today;
÷ Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Mr Johnson would ‘test to the limit’ the legislation – setting the stage for a Supreme Court fight;
÷ Amid the turmoil, the PM was buoyed by two polls giving the Tories a double-digit lead over Labour;
÷ Therese Coffey, an environment minister, was promoted to Cabinet to fill the work and pensions brief;
÷ Home Secretary Sajid Javid refused three times to rule out an electoral pact with Nigel Farage;
÷ Union leaders pledged to march to force a general election ‘as soon as possible’ despite Jeremy Corbyn standing in the way of one;
÷ Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was accused of ‘putting the EU in the driving seat’ after he suggested Labour would not seek to significantly change Theresa May’s Brexit deal;
÷ The French foreign minister threatened to vote against any Brexit extension next month;
÷ Mr Hammond came under fire from Tory MPs after claiming the party was being turned into an ‘extreme right-wing faction’.
Yesterday a string of Cabinet ministers who backed Remain in 2016 moved to deny they would follow Miss Rudd out, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland and Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith.
There were even claims Mr Smith had threatened to quit after a row over No Deal legislation for Northern Ireland. Mr Buckland indicated he would quit if Mr Johnson refused to abide by the rule of law.
A junior transport minister, George Freeman, tweeted that Miss Rudd’s exit was ‘another massive blow’ and would undermine confidence that there was a ‘serious ambition to get a Withdrawal deal’. The tweet was later deleted.
Like Miss Rudd, Mrs Morgan backed Remain in 2016. But she is seen as a pragmatist and admired by Tory Brexiteers for her work pushing ‘alternative arrangements’ to deal with the border in Northern Ireland.
Today the Prime Minister travels to Dublin for what are expected to be difficult talks with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in what aides said was further evidence of his determination to pursue a deal.
MPs are also expected to vote on Tory demands for an early general election, which Labour and other opposition parties have pledged to block. 
By Nicky Morgan 
Watching talented colleagues walking away from the Cabinet table is never easy. I am sorry to see Amber Rudd and Jo Johnson decide to do so in recent days. I respect their decision, but the Prime Minister has been clear from the start that we must leave on October 31 – deal or No Deal.
In the words of the musical Hamilton, I intend to stay ‘in the room where it happens’ to ensure that together with my colleagues, the Prime Minister has the necessary support to fulfil his priority of agreeing a deal with the EU as we leave by October 31.
Before I joined the Government, I spent months working as part of the Prosperity UK Commission on Alternative Arrangements to the Irish backstop. Our work demonstrated that there were other ways to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Using these alternative arrangements is now key to getting that deal with the EU which will allow an orderly exit on October 31 and finally enable the 2016 referendum to be fulfilled. I know from conversations inside Government that our proposals are being taken on board and this work is happening in earnest.
An overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs and party members backed the Prime Minister’s deal or No Deal plan when he was elected Leader of the Conservative Party in July. Three years on from the referendum, we need to find a way for our country to come back together and bring the volatility of British politics to a close now.
It is no surprise that the public are exhausted and fed up. I share this frustration – they voted to leave three years ago and it is our duty to deliver on that result. People want certainty and that is why Jeremy Corbyn’s constant political games must stop. Mr Corbyn’s Surrender Bill last week is yet again another opportunistic tactic to undermine the Prime Minister’s negotiations and will just see endless delays. People now want Brexit delivered so we can focus on our domestic agenda.
And I agree that the No Deal option has to be kept on the table. While we are all clear that a deal is preferable, I know from my years as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer that no two sides to a negotiation can be compelled to agree a deal. That is why ministers and departments have spent all summer increasing our preparations to ensure the UK is properly ready for a No Deal on October 31 if that eventuality unfolds.
But the whole Government, from the Prime Minister down, is clear that getting a deal with the EU is the priority. That is why he visited Berlin and Paris last month and will be seeing the Irish prime minister today. It is why the Prime Minister’s envoy, David Frost, is spending so much time in Brussels setting out the UK’s position. It is why the Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay, is visiting EU capital cities too.
With our support, the Prime Minister now needs to show he’s serious about getting a deal. More transparency, such as that laid out by the Brexit Secretary yesterday, on the discussions is needed to ensure everyone is left in no doubt about how a deal is possible and the effort which is being put in to making sure a deal happens. Government will face the same pressures around disclosure in our future free-trade agreement negotiations.
I want the Prime Minister to succeed in his priority of finding a deal with the EU. A deal will mean that the ambitious Queen’s Speech programme we have planned can be the main focus after three endless years of Brexit – what a relief that would be for everyone. 
Labour has been left bitterly divided over a second referendum after a major rebellion by 45 of its MPs killed off a plan that could have see it take place.
Some 27 politicians from mainly northern Leave-backing areas refused to follow orders to back a motion by Dame Margaret Beckett calling for any Brexit deal to be put to a 'confirmatory' referendum.
The motion was defeated by 27 votes, meaning their support would have seen it pass.
Shadow housing minister Melanie Onn was among those who refused to back the plan, which lost by 295 votes to 268.
A further 18 Labour MPs abstained, including shadow cabinet ministers Jon Trickett, Ian Lavery and Andrew Gwynne, bringing the total number of rebels to 45.
The backbench plot to snatch control of Brexit hit a wall last night as none of the alternatives to Theresa May's deal secured a majority - but MPs still showed Britain they favour a softer Brexit or a second referendum - and will never deliver No Deal. 
Party MPs from the north are worried about a voter backlash in Brexit-backing seats if they support a new public vote and it succeeded in preventing or softening Brexit.
Grimsby MP Ms Onn tweeted today: 'I’m against 2nd Ref becoz I think 1st ref & all that’s flowed from it has been divisive, don’t want 2 put the country through it all over again. 
'2nd Ref won’t resolve Parliamentary party differences & no guarantee change result. 2 reffers shld admit they want 2 revoke Article 50.'
Labour former foreign secretary Dame Margaret said MPs now needed to be prepared to compromise.
'They are going to have to look over the abyss,' she told the BBC's Today programme.
'For some of them, they were so wedded to particular proposals, and they so passionately believed that those were right, that they didn't want anything get in the way.'
She added: 'The reason there is all this fuss about how terrible it was is because the people who want no-deal want it to look as if everything has failed so we have to go their way.'
Last night, in an unprecedented move, politicians seized control of the Commons timetable from Theresa May to hold so-called indicative votes.
The poll showed Parliament is close to agreeing on a soft Brexit with a plan for the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU defeated by 272 votes to 264, while a second referendum was rejected by 295 votes to 268. 
MPs were handed green ballot papers on which they voted Yes or No to eight options, ranging from No Deal to cancelling Brexit altogether. However, the votes descended into shambles as MPs rejected each and every one of the proposals - although its architect Sir Oliver Letwin always warned there wouldn't be a winner first time.
Ten Tories – including ministers Sir Alan Duncan, Mark Field and Stephen Hammond – supported an SNP plan to give MPs the chance to revoke Article 50 if a deal has not been agreed two days before Brexit. Some 60 Tory MPs backed the option of remaining in the single market.
The results of Wednesday's votes, in order of preference, were: 
Shadow housing minister Melanie Onn resigned after Jeremy Corbyn ordered his MPs to back a raft of soft Brexit plans, as well as a second referendum.
Some 27 Labour MPs defied the whip to reject a so-called 'confirmatory vote' on any Brexit deal. The party had instructed them to support the plan just hours after one of its senior frontbenchers publicly warned that it would be a mistake.
Sir Oliver Letwin, the architect of the Commons move, today insisted the indicative votes were not intended to give a precise answer right away - and will hold another round of votes on Monday. 
MPs are due to hold a second round of votes - unless Mrs May can get her deal through first - after none of the eight options debated on Wednesday was able to command a majority. It could be that the eight options are cut down to the most popular.
Sir Oliver told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'At some point or other we either have to get her deal across the line or accept that we have to find some alternative if we want to avoid no deal on the 12th, which I think at the moment is the most likely thing to happen.
'At the moment we are heading for a situation where, under the law, we leave without a deal on the 12th, which many of us think is not a good solution, and the question is 'Is Parliament on Monday willing to come to any view in the majority about that way forward that doesn't involve that result?''
MPs will take control of the Commons order paper again on Monday, so they can narrow down the options if Mrs May's deal has not been agreed by then – or pass legislation to try and impose their choice on her. Speaking in the Commons after the results, Sir Oliver said: 'It is of course a great disappointment that the House has not chosen to find a majority for any proposition.
'However, those of us who put this proposal forward as a way of proceeding predicted that we would not even reach a majority and for that very reason put forward a ... motion designed to reconsider these matters on Monday.'
The Prime Minister allowed her MPs to vote however they wanted on the choices after she was warned around ten junior ministers would quit if they were whipped against backing a soft Brexit.
Revoke Article 50 - 273 to 184 AGAINST 
Put forward by SNP's Joanna Cherry and backed by 33 MPs including Conservative former attorney general Dominic Grieve, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, Labour's Ben Bradshaw and all 11 members of The Independent Group. 

It demands that if no deal has been agreed on the day before Brexit that MPs will get the chance to cancel the UK's notice to Brussels it would leave the EU.
Britain is allowed to unilaterally cancel Article 50 and stay a member on its current terms, according to a ruling of the European Court. It would bring an end to the existing negotiations - but would not legally rule them being restarted. 
Second referendum - 295 to 268 AGAINST 
Tabled by Labour ex-foreign secretary Margaret Beckett to build on proposals from Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson.
It states that MPs will not sanction leaving the EU unless it has been put to the electorate for a 'confirmatory vote'.
A significant evolution of the plan is it would put any deal agreed by the Government to a public vote and not just Mrs May's plan. 
Customs union - 272 to 264 AGAINST 
Tabled by veteran Conservative Europhile Ken Clarke, backed by Labour's Yvette Cooper, Helen Goodman and chair of the Commons Exiting the EU Committee Hilary Benn and Tory former ministers Sir Oliver Letwin and Sarah Newton. 
It demands that ministers negotiate a new 'permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU' which would prevent the country being able to strike its own trade deals but make it easier for goods to move between the UK and Europe. 
Labour's plan - 307 to 237 AGAINST 
Proposed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
It includes a comprehensive customs union but with a UK say on future trade deals and close alignment with the single market.
The plan also demands matching new EU rights and protections; participation in EU agencies and funding programmes; and agreement on future security arrangements, including access to the European Arrest Warrant.
No deal - 400 to 160 AGAINST 
Proposed by Eurosceptic Tory MP John Baron.
Tabled a motion demanding 'the UK will leave the EU on 12 April 2019' without a deal. However, a No Deal Brexit has already been rejected twice by MPs.
It would instruct the Government to abandon efforts to secure its deal and inform the EU it did not want a long extension to Article 50 either, in line with last week's EU Council. Both sides would then have a fortnight to make final preparations.  
Common Market 2.0  283 to 188 AGAINST 

Tabled by Conservatives Nick Boles, Robert Halfon and Andrew Percy and Labour's Stephen Kinnock, Lucy Powell and Diana Johnson.
The motion proposes UK membership of the European Free Trade Association and European Economic Area.
It allows continued participation in the single market and a 'comprehensive customs arrangement' with the EU after Brexit. It would be very similar to current membership.
The idea is this would remain in place until the agreement of a wider trade deal which guarantees frictionless movement of goods and an open border in Ireland. 
Single Market - 377 to 65 AGAINST 
Tory former minister George Eustice - who quit as agriculture minister this month to fight for Brexit - proposes remaining within the EEA and rejoining EFTA, but remaining outside a customs union with the EU.
The motion was also signed by Conservative MPs including former minister Nicky Morgan and head of the Brexit Delivery Group Simon Hart.
The idea would keep the UK in the European Economic Area (EEA), but unlike the Common Market 2.0 plan would not involve a customs arrangement. It is similar to Norway's deal. 
Standstill with the EU - 422 to 139 AGAINST 
Backed by senior Brexiteers in the ERG including Steve Baker and Priti Patel, this would tell the Government to seek a tariff-free trading arrangement with the EU> 
It would be based on a 'standstill' agreement saying all regulations in the UK would continue to match EU ones for up to two years.  
She and the Cabinet abstained on the indicative votes, helping her to mask the wide gaping divisions among her senior ministers on the way forward.
Commons Speaker John Bercow selected eight out of the 16 Brexit options tabled by MPs for a vote, turning down proposals to demand a unilateral right to leave the Northern Irish 'backstop ' or to require automatic revocation of Article 50 if No Deal is reached. He also rejected the so-called Malthouse Compromise Plan A – drawn up by backbenchers from Leave and Remain wings of the Tory Party – which would have implemented Mrs May's deal with the backstop replaced by 'alternative arrangements'.
Ahead of the votes, Mrs May warned she would not regard the results as binding. But former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke yesterday told BBC Radio 5 Live the Prime Minister 'would obviously have to be removed' if she ignored a consensus emerging from the indicative votes process.
Labour ordered its MPs to back a motion, tabled by former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, requiring any Brexit deal passed during this Parliament to be confirmed in a public referendum before ratification. The party also whipped its MPs to back its own alternative Brexit plan – but four Labour backbenchers voted against it. Three others – including party chairman Ian Lavery – voted for a 'managed' No Deal. Mr Corbyn had also encouraged his MPs to back the so-called Common Market 2.0 plan tabled by Mr Clarke – which would keep the country in the single market as well as a customs arrangement – but did not whip them to do so.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May criticised the Labour leader over his support for a customs union and a second referendum. She said: 'Whatever happened to straight-talking honest politics?' In a tweet, the Department for Exiting the European Union warned that the Common Market 2.0 plan 'would not respect the referendum result'.
'[It] would not end free movement of people, would not let us set our own trade policy, would not stop us sending money to the EU, [and] would make us a rule taker,' the message added.
A number of Tory MPs refused to take part in the votes. Aldershot MP Leo Docherty said none of the options presented a 'coherent path towards Brexit'. He tweeted: 'This is an exercise in Parliamentary navel-gazing and I will be abstaining.' Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom earlier warned that MPs had turned the normal 'precedent on its head' by taking control of the order paper, which sets out the parliamentary timetable for the day. She said: 'Those who are not in government are deciding the business, and there are inevitable ramifications to that.'
But former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell said Sir Oliver had played 'an absolute blinder' by making clear to Brexiteers the consequences of continuing to oppose the PM's deal. He said: 'I think Sir Oliver Letwin has laid out for all my friends and colleagues in the ERG the instruments of torture, of what awaits them if they do not support Mrs May's deal the next time it comes to a vote.'  
Allies of PM said she had reluctantly made the decision to quit over the past fortnight, following conversations with close political friends and her husband Philip.
Mr May stood by her side as she made a 'moving' speech to tearful staff in No 10 after making her announcement to MPs last night. Allies said the decision reflected her determination to push through a plan she believes is 'firmly in the national interest'.
One said: 'She had other options but she has put her country first. It is typically selfless' - but it is unclear if it can save her deal.  
The DUP's support is seen as critical to unlocking the backing of dozens of Eurosceptic MPs.
Downing Street was last night locked in frantic talks with the party in the hope of persuading its ten MPs to support the deal.
'They are tough negotiators,' one source said. 'It's not over yet.'
But one Cabinet minister said: 'If they don't move, then we don't have the votes.'
MPs last night rejected every Brexit option in a series of 'indicative votes', with a customs union, second referendum, Norway-style option and No Deal all failing to get a majority.
That, and the PM's 'Back me, then sack me' plea, sets the scene for a third attempt to pass her Brexit plan tomorrow – the day Britain was due to leave the EU.
Mrs May becomes the fourth consecutive Tory prime minister to have their career wrecked by the issue of Europe.
Pressure on her to quit had been building in recent weeks, with Eurosceptic MPs unhappy with her deal, warning that they wanted a new leader to take forward the next stage of Brexit negotiations.
A senior Tory said party whips believed up to 30 Eurosceptic MPs would back Mrs May's deal only if she agreed to go.
Addressing the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs last night, an emotional Mrs May acknowledged that Brexit turmoil had been 'a testing time for our country and our party'. She called on MPs to do their 'historic duty' and back her plan.
But she acknowledged concerns about her own leadership, saying: 'I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party.
'I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations – and I won't stand in the way of that.'
Her dramatic move fired the starting gun on what promises to be a bruising Tory leadership contest this summer that will choose the next prime minister.
Tory sources said that if Mrs May's plan passes, a leadership contest will start shortly after May 22, when the UK finally leaves the EU. However, No 10 refused to say whether she would still depart on the same timetable if her plan is blocked or defeated.
One source said it would be 'a different scenario', adding: 'It's hard to see how we could have time for a leadership contest in quite the same way if we're still in the middle of trying to take us out.'
Here are the top runners and riders to replace the Prime Minister, their odds with Ladbrokes and how they voted in the 2016 referendum:
 A Brexiteer with a machiavellian reputation after the 2016 leadership campaign in which he first supported Boris Johnson for the leadership and then stood against him, to their mutual disadvantage.
The former education secretary -  sacked by Mrs May -  was rehabilitated to become a right-on environment secretary - complete with reusable coffee cups and a strong line on food standards after Brexit.
Despite being a former lead figure in the Vote Leave campaign alongside Mr Johnson the former journalist and MP for Surrey Heath has swung behind Mrs May's Brexit deal.
At the weekend he denied being involved in a coup seeking to make him a caretaker PM. 
Seen as one of the Cabinet's strongest political thinkers and having stood once it is unthinkable that he would not stand again.
The former foreign secretary who quit last July and has been tacitly campaigning for the leadership ever since returning to the backbenches with a regular stream of attacks on Mrs may and her Brexit strategy.
Never far from the limelight it is his private life that has seen him most in the news recently after splitting from his wife Marina and embarking on a relationship with a former Conservative communications staffer 20 years his junior.
A hawkish Brexiteer hugely popular with the party faithful, in recently weeks he has further boosted his frontrunner credentials with what might be deemed a 'prime ministerial' makeover.
He has lost weight and taming his unruly mop of blonde hair into something approaching the haircut of a serious senior statesman.
The Foreign Secretary who has undergone a Damascene conversion to the Brexit cause in with a series of hardline warnings to the EU.
The 52-year-old South West Surrey MP is the most senior Cabinet minister in contention.
He has reportedly been selling himself to colleagues as a unity candidate who can bring together the fractious Tory factions into something approaching a cohesive party. 
A long-serving health secretary, he replaced Mr Johnson as the UK's top diplomat and has won some plaudits over issues like the imprisonment of British mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran.
But critics point to tub-thumpingly comparing the EU to the USSR at the party conference last year - which was very badly received in Brussels - and a gaffe in which he referred to his Chinese wife  as 'Japanese' as a reception in China.  
Mr Raab, 45, is another Vote Leave member who became Brexit secretary after David Davis quit alongside Mr Johnson last July over the Chequers plan.
But he lasted just a matter of months before he too jumped ship, saying he could not accept the terms of the deal done by the Prime Minister.
Like Mr Johnson and Mr Davis he has become an increasingly hardline Brexiteer, sharing a platform with the DUP's Arlene Foster and suggesting we should not be afraid of a no-deal Brexit.
The Esher and Walton MP's decision to quit in November, boosted his popularity with party members but he lacks the wider popular appeal of Mr Johnson.
And like Mr Johnson he might benefit from having quit the Cabinet at an earlier stage and dissociating himself with the dying days of the May administration.  
The Home Secretary, a Remainer who wants to see Brexit delivered, was the leading candidate from inside the Cabinet to replace Mrs May.
After replacing Amber Rudd last year he consciously put clear ground between himself and the Prime Minister on issues like caps on skilled migrants after Brexit.
But his credentials have taken a hit in recent weeks. He finds himself facing ongoing criticism of his handling of the knife crime crisis affecting UK cities, which sparked a cabinet row over funding for police.
He also lost face over his handling of the influx of migrants crossing the English Channel in January, being seen to move slowly in realising the scale of the problem.
But more recently the 49-year-old Bromsgove MP has made a serious of hardline decision designed to go down well with Tory voters.
Most notably they have included moving to deprive London teenager turned Jihadi bride Shamima Begum, 19, of her British citizenship.
The smile on Gina Miller’s face said it all yesterday. 
Posing on the steps of the Supreme Court, an expensive black shearling coat to ward off the morning chill and with large sapphire and diamond earrings glinting in each lobe, the former model turned businesswoman and self-proclaimed philanthropist was in a triumphant mood.
Though her statement to journalists was measured — that bringing her landmark legal case was about ‘the legal process, not the politics’ — there was no doubting she saw this as a political victory over Brexiteers.
Miller, the subject of countless gushing profiles in newspapers and magazines sympathetic to her cause, has carefully spun her image of a woman — a wife and mother of three as well as a City Superwoman regularly photographed in exquisitely tailored outfits — who fears a ‘treacherous future’ outside Europe.
And because of her principled stand she has, she’s revealed, been the victim of vile online abuse and hideous sexual and racist threats.
Her critics, though, see a shameless publicity seeker, a woman who is using her wealthy (third) husband Alan Miller’s very deep pockets — despite running a loss-making fund management business together — to defy the wishes of the majority of the British people. 
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Some also question her track record in the City, where observers suggest she is determined to be seen as the acceptable face of capitalism: a stellar career as a fund manager and a philanthropist to boot.
So, who is Gina Miller, what exactly is driving her and what is the truth of her claims? 
Born into a land-owning family in Guyana, the daughter of the attorney general, Miller, now 51, says she first took an interest in challenging the Brexit process after discussing with a lawyer her belief that the Prime Minister was not allowed under constitutional law to remove citizens’ rights without parliamentary consent. 
It was, perhaps, not an unexpected position for someone with a law degree as had been claimed on two company websites and an online brochure.
On the website of her firm SCM50, the following statement appeared: ‘Gina has three degrees in marketing, human resource management and law.’ 
A similar statement appeared on her ‘Moneyshe’ website and in an online brochure for SCM Direct.
In truth, Gina Miller does not have a law degree. She did study for one at the University of East London, but left before sitting her final exams. (She does have the two other degrees.)
When asked about the discrepancy, her lawyers told the Mail she was unaware of the false claim prominently displayed on the website and said the responsibility for the mistake lay with a freelance copywriter.
Nevertheless, that reference to a law degree is included in some of the flattering profiles compiled with her co-operation, including one in the anti-Brexit Financial Times.
Separately, controversy has surrounded the business activities of her second husband, the maverick entrepreneur Jon Maguire. 
During their time together, he and Miller set up a marketing company and she was a co-director with him of another business, Capital Communications Consultancy.
Maguire was investigated by City regulators in 2011 — after he had separated from Miller — over one of the most notorious City investment scandals of recent years when investors complained they had been misleadingly sold high-risk investments. 
He was exonerated, but two fund managers were heavily fined.
No evidence was found against Maguire, and he has always maintained he was unfairly treated by the authorities. 
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme paid more than £58 million in compensation to hundreds of victims.
A man with extreme Right-wing views, Maguire stood for the little-known English Democrat party in the 2010 General Election on an anti-EU platform and lost his deposit. 
He once said homosexuality is a cul-de-sac for the human race. Such views were diametrically opposed to those of Miller, who was until recently a long-time Labour supporter.
She has subsequently said that during their relationship, he subjected her to physical attacks.
In an interview last year, Miller told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I am fairly fearless because of horrific experiences in the past. I’m a victim of domestic violence. Having survived that it makes you fearless.
‘I survived for a reason — to be who I am now and to speak up when I don’t think things are right.’
Maguire, a fervent Christian, has denied her claims and retorted that she had a drink problem — an allegation she says is totally false.
Of course, she argues that such personal details are irrelevant to her legal challenge. 
But as the self-proclaimed poster girl for Remain with two successive legal victories to her name that have far-reaching implications for the British people, it is reasonable to subject her life and work to scrutiny.
One important element in this is her own financial expertise. An investigation of the investment firm, SCM Private, shows that it has run up large losses since she and Alan Miller founded it in 2009.
It has yet to register an annual profit and has made total operating losses of more than £2.3 million.
The couple explain the losses by saying that they are investing in new technology and in growing the business. 
They say it is running at so-called ‘cash break-even’ — meaning its income is covering operating expenses. 
There is no risk of SCM going under: the accounts note the Millers intend to support the firm for the foreseeable future, which they can well afford to do.
In the meantime, Ms Miller has taken occasional potshots at rival firms, denouncing them for charging high fees and for bamboozling savers with jargon. 
She has a fair point, of course: rip-off charges and gobbledegook are shamefully common in the financial services industry.
But competitors have responded with counter-claims of double standards by Miller and her husband because they say their firm, SCM, has failed to disclose the size of the fund it is managing for clients, despite her own calls for more transparency in the industry.
The couple claim the performance of their three main sterling portfolios has been good over the past year, beating their target benchmarks.
Rivals, though, are sceptical — though, of course, this may be sour grapes. Either way, SCM’s failure to hit the big time is not for want of trying.
The Millers have worked hard to acquire new clients among London’s assorted wealthy individuals, aristocrats, the nouveaux riche and foreign oligarchs.
Early on, they worked with Alexander Spencer-Churchill, a nephew of the Duke of Marlborough and a distant relative of Winston Churchill, in the hope he would bring in extra blue-chip business. 
Though he had a contacts book of A-list names, he stepped down as a director in September 2009 after just nine months.
Another recruit was Lady Emily Compton, who is married to Ed Horner, a business partner of Pippa Middleton’s fiancé James Matthews. 
The former social editor of Tatler, Lady Emily was hired as an ‘introduction agent’ — but stepped down as a director in 2012.
Whatever the issues in Gina Miller’s own business, they have not stopped her criticising others in the financial world.
In a report for her charity, the True and Fair Foundation, in 2015, she rebuked other charities for financial inefficiency, claiming that 1,000 organisations spent less than half their income on good works.
Inevitably, many of them were contemptuous of its findings. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations said the report ‘wilfully misrepresented the facts’.
More specifically, its director of public policy attacked Miller, saying for her ‘it seems self-promotion trumps accuracy’.
Even more damning, the Charity Commission described her report as ‘flawed’.
As City insiders point out, Ms Miller is not a finance expert by trade, but a marketing woman.
Indeed, finance wasn’t her first choice of profession. Initially, she wanted to be a criminal barrister, but set up several marketing companies before moving into investment management.
She has lived in the UK most of her life, having been sent here by her parents at the age of ten and later attending Roedean, the elite girls’ boarding school in Sussex.
Likening the place to the German prison camp Colditz, she moved to another boarding school called Moira House. 
She has said it was nicknamed Moron House ‘because it produced some very strange girls. We were all very single-minded’.
Because of political turmoil back home in Guyana, she was for a time left to live in a flat and fend for herself, working as a chambermaid to support herself. 
She married her teenage sweetheart at the age of 21, but the relationship broke up, and Miller has said that by 1994 she was reduced to living in a one-bedroom flat in North London, where she was paying her way through university for a second time, studying law.
‘All I could afford was bread and baked beans,’ she has said of that time. 
‘I did everything I could to make money from leafleting for phone shops to working at Pizza Express.’ 
She also did occasional modelling jobs. That is clearly no longer the case since she married Miller, who is said to be worth around £40 million.
He is the investment brains of the SCM operation, having made his fortune at fund management firms Jupiter Asset Management and New Star, which is where he met Miller in 2003.
Three years later he was involved in a bitter divorce case, during which he appealed unsuccessfully against a £5 million settlement awarded to his ex-wife Melissa.
Today, Ms Miller lives in a large house in South West London, bought three years ago for £7 million, and the family has a French holiday home.
Despite her wealth and overseas parentage, she says she has not claimed non-domicile status in order to save on her tax bill. 
Gina Miller sees herself as what she calls a ‘conscious capitalist’ who believes in the three principles of ‘profit, people and the planet’.
Critics, though, say her legal challenge against Brexit was partly motivated by an insatiable hunger for self-promotion and that a fourth principle should be added to her ‘three Ps’— namely publicity hungry.
Brussels Brexit chief Michel Barnier yesterday threatened to teach Britain a lesson for leaving the EU, as the row over demands for a £90billion divorce payment boiled over.
In an incendiary intervention, Mr Barnier said he wanted to use Brexit to ‘teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means’.
Tory MPs branded the EU’s chief negotiator ‘patronising and arrogant’ – and said his comments showed Brussels was starting to panic about the loss of Britain’s financial contributions to the EU.
Nearly half of voters who backed remaining in the EU want a reduction in immigration by unskilled workers from the continent, a survey reveals today.
Mass immigration was central to last year’s referendum debate, with Brexit supporters arguing that leaving the EU was the only way to take back control of the country’s borders.
But a survey for the think-tank British Future today reveals that 48 per cent of Remain voters also want fewer unskilled workers coming to the UK.
This is lower than the 76 per cent of Brexit supporters who want a reduction but it underlines the widespread public concern about mass immigration.
By contrast, most voters, including those who backed Brexit, support the continued arrival of skilled immigrants including doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers and IT specialists.
The survey, conducted by the polling firm ICM, found 82 per cent of Brexit supporters would be happy for high-skilled immigration from the EU to remain at current levels (51 per cent) or increase (31 per cent).
The survey also found the public back Theresa May to deliver a better Brexit deal than Jeremy Corbyn.
Some 46 per cent believe the Prime Minister will get the best deal, compared with 25 per cent who back the Labour leader.
The contrast is starker on immigration, where 54 per cent believe Mrs May is likely to reduce migrant numbers, compared with 14 per cent who believe Mr Corbyn would do so.
 
The former French cabinet minister denied that he was trying to ‘blackmail’ the UK, but vowed to ‘educate’ British voters about the price they would pay for daring to leave the EU.
‘There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn’t been explained to the British people,’ he told a conference in Italy. ‘We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means.’
Mr Barnier’s comments were made at a gathering of the EU elite at a sumptuous Renaissance villa on the shores of Lake Como. His speech to the annual Ambrosetti forum does not appear to have been designed for public consumption.
The event takes place behind closed doors. But parts of it were publicised by a BBC reporter who was attending.
Former Tory Cabinet minister John Redwood said Mr Barnier’s comments were a mark of ‘desperation’, adding that there was no need for the UK to hand over a penny after we leave in March 2019.
‘We don’t owe them anything other than our national contributions until we leave,’ he said.
Fresh food could be left rotting at the border if strict customs controls for EU goods are introduced after Brexit, Sainsbury’s chief executive has warned.
Anything that disrupted established food supply chains, currently governed by EU customs arrangements, would be ‘detrimental’, said Mike Coupe.
‘The UK sources roughly a third of its food from the EU and food is by far and away the UK’s largest export,’ he added.
‘If you take our fresh produce supply chains, for example, we put things on a lorry in Spain and it will arrive in a distribution centre somewhere in England, and it won’t have gone through any border checks. Anything that encumbers that… adds cost and it also has a detrimental effect on freshness – if you’re shipping fresh produce from a long distance, even a few hours of delay can make a material impact.’
Mr Coupe said the repercussions of such disruption are ‘not fully recognised’ in Westminster.
The warning comes after the British Retail Consortium said last week that food prices, already soaring, could rise further unless measures to tackle red tape and improve ports were put in place before Britain left the EU in March 2019. 
‘This seems to be finally dawning on them and they are getting desperate.’
Fellow Tory Peter Bone said: ‘If there is one thing the British people don’t like it is being lectured by foreigners. 
'It is patronising and arrogant, but this is what the EU elite do. They think that the British people have made a silly mistake and need to be informed how wrong they are. It is complete contempt for democracy.’
An EU scheme to breed brown bears in the Pyrenees is among the projects that Britain is being asked to fund after Brexit.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has set out a series of financial demands as part of the so-called Brexit bill.
Among them was a green infrastructure strategy that could involve funding bridges to help wildlife cross roads and ladders for fish to cross streams.
Now it has emerged that Britain is also being ordered to pay for the scheme to breed bears even after leaving the EU, according to The Sun.
The project, backed by £1.6billion in EU funding, will draw up a blueprint on how bears and humans can co-exist in Catalonia, Spain.
It is due to continue past March 2019, when Britain formally leaves the union.
The EU requests for funding, which also included access to green spaces for hyperactive children, as well as foreign aid payments, were branded ‘absurd’ by leading Brexit supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg.
They were among several examples cited by Mr Barnier of spending that the EU wants Britain to contribute to after it leaves the bloc.
These include the £12billion European Development Fund, which distributes cash to African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Previous contributions have been spent on trapeze lessons in Tanzania, a study on coconut development and trips to Jamaica for EU spin doctors.
Brussels has also pledged at least £10.3billion in long-term loans to Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea and threatened the country. 
Mr Barnier’s comments emerged hours after Brexit Secretary David Davis flatly denied reports that Theresa May has agreed to pay Brussels up to £46billion as part of the exit negotiations, describing the claim as ‘nonsense’.
The European Commission has tabled proposals that could see the UK pay up to £90billion as it leaves the EU, but British officials believe the figure is grossly inflated.
Mr Davis also rounded on Mr Barnier for suggesting last week that the Brexit negotiations had produced ‘no decisive progress’, despite significant developments on issues such as the rights of EU citizens and Northern Ireland.
He said the EU bureaucrat ‘wants to put pressure on us, which is why the stance in the press conference – bluntly, I think it looked a bit silly because there plainly were things that we had achieved’.
Mr Davis said concern about filling the financial black hole in the Brussels accounts after Britain leaves was ‘the thing that frightens them most’.
And he accused the EU of deliberately dragging its feet on trade talks in a bid to force the UK to hand over more cash. ‘They have set this up to try to create pressure on us on money,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s about, they are trying to play time against money.’
Last week, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox accused Brussels of trying to ‘blackmail’ the UK. Mr Davis said the ‘strict position’ was that there was ‘no enforceable’ legal basis for the UK to pay money to Brussels.
But he said Britain was willing to pay for its ‘moral and political’ obligations as well as its legal ones in order to smooth negotiations.
In a sign of UK goodwill, the Government is set to announce this week that it will continue to contribute to a number of EU science projects after we have left the EU.
Government lawyers last week gave their EU counterparts a two-and-a-half hour deconstruction of its financial claims, which Mr Davis said had irritated Mr Barnier.                 
Theresa May is unusually slow to reach boiling point. Indeed, many of us wish she were quicker to express her anger at those who have been trying to frustrate her efforts to honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum and leave the European Union.
But yesterday the Prime Minister's preternatural patience finally snapped, with an unprecedented attack on one of her predecessors.
In a statement of withering contempt, she declared: 'For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office he once held and to the people he once served.
We cannot, as he would, abdicate responsibility for this decision. Parliament has a democratic duty to deliver what the British people voted for.'
This message is not, I suspect, meant only for Mr Blair. Senior members of her own party — apparently including the man described as her 'deputy PM', David Lidington — are attempting to push her towards a second referendum as a means of breaking the parliamentary impasse over the passing of the EU Withdrawal Agreement.
Her rebuke, I like to believe, is also directed at them. Parliament has been given its instructions by the British people: it would be fatuous for it now to say: 'We don't know how to do what you asked. Please could you tell us how to proceed, as it's all too difficult.'
But those MPs have not been having meetings in Brussels with the panjandrums of the European Commission, as Tony Blair has, to sew up some sort of Brexit-blocking bargain.
This matters, because the former PM is taken much more seriously there than he is in his own country. A recent poll showed that only two per cent of the British population have a 'very favourable' opinion of Mr Blair.
It is the sort of approval rating a mass-murderer might be expected to get — which happens to be how many members of his own party describe him, in the wake of the Iraq war.
Even if Blair had not been so discredited as a result of leading the nation into a war of choice based on (as we later discovered) fictional claims, there is still something outrageous in his one-man diplomatic mission to Brussels.
 
Last week, he imperiously told the European TV station Euronews: 'I need to get the European leaders to the next stage.' Who the hell does he think he is? By what authority does he act on behalf of this country? He is not even a member of parliament, either elected or — since he refused the opportunity to sit there — in the revising chamber of the Upper House. His presumption is extraordinary.
This came out in an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr last year, when Blair told the astounded presenter that, in promoting the campaign to prevent the UK from leaving the EU, 'I feel a renewed sense of mission'.
Lovely for him to imagine that once again the hand of history has been placed upon his shoulders; but for the rest of us, the idea of Tony Blair leading the nation towards a manifest destiny clearly understood only by him is a deranged prospect. Actually, not quite all of us. He is accompanied on this 'renewed sense of mission' by two of his closest former advisors: his former spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, and his erstwhile 10 Downing Street policy chief, Andrew Adonis.
Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this, but neither of them comes across as entirely rational. Both have been driven to something like hysteria by the 2016 referendum result. Campbell, in the very week of the ballot, demanded that it be ignored on the grounds that it was based on a false prospectus (rich, coming from the author of the Iraq 'dodgy dossier').
Lord Adonis, meanwhile — whom I had hitherto regarded as entirely clear-headed and reasonable — has been littering the Twittersphere with increasingly bizarre assertions. He has become convinced that the BBC's management and journalists are dedicated to the Brexit cause, referring to them as 'the Brexit Broadcasting Corporation'.
And when the Financial Times (which actually hates Brexit) recently declared that Parliament should support Mrs May's negotiating terms with the EU, as the best of a bad job, Adonis tweeted that this was an attempt by the FT's editor to get a knighthood from Mrs May and/or that the paper was cravenly doing the bidding of its Japanese owners (Nikkei).
Given that corporate Japan regards Brexit with undisguised dismay, this suggested that Blair's vicar on earth (I mean Lord Adonis) had gone well and truly off the deep end.
It's important to understand where Blair and Adonis come from in the matter of the UK's relationship with the EU. They are among the tiny minority of the British political class — perhaps only Lord Heseltine is of the same view — who believe it was a terrible error for Britain not to have joined the euro. 
They genuinely think that this country's destiny is to be absorbed in a federal European system with, ultimately, a common government: national parliaments would become more like parish councils.
I remember that the first time I had lunch with Blair after he had become Labour leader, he told me that if there was one thing he was passionately convinced of, it was that the UK should give up the pound to join the mooted single European currency.
That was years before the euro actually came into being: but after it did, he told the BBC's Jeremy Paxman that it would be 'crazy' for the UK to rule it out.
Blair was livid (the word barely does justice to his rage) when in 2003 Gordon Brown used his authority as Chancellor of the Exchequer to thwart him and do just that.
Two years later — perhaps to demonstrate his credentials to the EU after losing that battle — Blair declared that our EU rebate negotiated (with such remarkable toughness) by Margaret Thatcher was 'an anomaly that has to go'.
And so he signed away £3 billion a year of it, in return for unmet assurances from Brussels. So far, Blair's gesture of good will to the institutions of the EU has cost British taxpayers almost £40 billion.
 
On his many trips to Brussels since the referendum, Blair has sought to persuade the European Commission to give some sort of derogation to the UK on freedom of movement while remaining in the EU: he thinks he will, by his own charm and personality, achieve this (and thus cancel out what he believes is the main reason for Brexit). It is delusional.
This is what David Cameron failed to do, despite negotiating with all the authority of being, actually, the British Prime Minister, and despite promising this to the British people ('I will deal with free movement').
As Sir Ivan Rogers (Britain's permanent representative to the EU during those negotiations) observed last week, those campaigning for a second referendum to overturn the result of the first 'seem either remarkably coy about whether they want to remain on the terms Cameron negotiated or whether some great new offer will be forthcoming — notably on freedom of movement from EU elites supposedly desperate to give us something now that they were not prepared to give to Cameron. Let me puncture that fallacy. No such offer will be coming'.
And, on the topic of Mrs May's immediate predecessor, let's note how impeccably he has behaved since the referendum, in refusing to do anything other than support the current occupant of the office he held — even though May sacked every last Cameroon in the government as soon as she took over.
Note also that Cameron has held back publication of his now completed memoirs until after Brexit has been delivered, on the grounds that his revelations might cause Mrs May's government difficulties they could do without at such a delicate stage.
True, Cameron is a member of the same party as Mrs May, whereas Tony Blair was a Labour Prime Minister and remains a member of the Labour Party: in that respect he owes no loyalty to her.
This underlines a point which should weigh heavily with senior remain-voting Tory MPs attracted by the idea of a second referendum. Such a course of action would achieve Tony Blair's other great ambition: the destruction of the Conservative Party.
Last week, Theresa May had the dinner party guest from Hell. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, visited 10 Downing Street for preliminary Brexit talks followed by a private dinner.
Our Anglican-parson's-daughter Prime Minister, abstemious and demure, may not have much in common with Luxembourger Juncker, a boozer with wandering hands, a bad pinball habit and unfortunate family connections with the Third Reich; but, hey, you must sometimes put Queen and country first.
And so Mrs May went out of her way to make Mr Juncker feel welcome, even stepping out into the street to embrace him (kissing Juncker is like grappling with an octopus).
She extended the dinner invitation to his sidekicks. The best silver was polished and the wine was up to its customary standards. Mr Juncker, after all, is a thirsty fellow.
Horror
At the end of the night, the important (if unelected) Eurocrat tottered off to his waiting limousine, waving cheerio apparently full of good cheer. Was it just the vino talking?
A few days later, that poisonous account of the evening appeared in a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, saying the dinner had been a horror from start to finish.
Mr Juncker had snarled at Mrs May that 'Brexit cannot be a success'. He had plonked two fat documents on the table to show her how complicated EU trade negotiations can be.
He had left in a huff, telling her he was now 'ten times more sceptical' than ever about Brexit. Oh, and the British hosts — Mrs May and her Brexit secretary — had squabbled among themselves.
Plainly, someone in the Juncker party had been talking.
Putting to one side the simple bad manners, what should we make of what the Germans are calling 'das desastrose Brexit-Dinner'. Was it indeed 'eine Katastrophe'? If so, for whom? And where does it leave the Brexit talks?
Mrs May has dismissed it as 'Brussels gossip'. By 'Brussels', she probably meant Juncker's chief-of-staff, a German lawyer called Martin Selmayr, who was at the dinner and is said to have been the source of the story.
Indeed, as Juncker left, Herr Selmayr could be seen lingering in No 10's hallway alongside Mrs May who was throwing back her head with laughter. All seemed well. But with Herr Selmayr you must never take things at face value.
His nicknames in Brussels include 'the Monster', 'Lenin', 'Rasputin' and 'Darth Vader'. Rasputin was the sinister adviser to the Russian royal family before the revolution exactly 100 years ago. Martin Selmayr may not be quite as exotic, but he may be no less deadly to his own side.
However, Mr Juncker is his boss and the man who must take responsibility for the 'leak' to the German paper — and what is being seen in Westminster as a taste of things to come, a blatant bullying tactic to over-shadow preliminary Brexit talks.
Mr Juncker likes to 'take ownership' of world statesmen by patting their faces and backs, pinching their cheeks and giving them whisky-scented triple-kisses (his favourite tipple is Glenfarclas single malt, which he knocks back like breakfast fruit juice).
If he has an idealised view of the European Union, that may be because he is emotionally scarred by his father's experience of forcible conscription into the Wehrmacht on the Russian front. (In intriguing contrast, his father-in-law was one of Hitler's so-called Propaganda Commissars.)
Many former presidents of the European Commission (which is the EU's powerful civil service) have regarded the position as an end-of-career consolation. For our friend Jean-Claude, however, it has come as a wonderful boon, propelling this obscure former finance and prime minister of tiny Luxembourg on to the global stage.
His time in charge of his home country, which is the size of Surrey, was flecked by allegations of bibulous womanising, tax evasion by multinational corporations and chaotic extravagance, spending taxpayers' money not only on vanity projects but also on a swanky private jet.
The man who so perfectly embodies all the faults of the European Union and its scheming bureaucracy plainly has a jolly time being EC President, but is he the intellectual power at the Commission, or is that his sulphurous Svengali, Herr Selmayr?
A Westminster journalist colleague of mine who used to work in Brussels gives an example of the Selmayr modus operandi. He once urged my friend to write something that turned out to be untrue.
When the journalist later complained that he had been cynically misled, Selmayr replied: 'That was a tactic. I have tactics. When I speak to journalists, I don't speak because I'm a nice guy. I want to achieve something. You write it. Somebody reads it. I instrumentalise you.'
Obstacle
In early 2016, when David Cameron was trying to re-negotiate UK terms with the EU (in the hope that it would persuade British voters to remain in the EU), Herr Selmayr was seen as an obstacle.
The Cameron team concluded that Herr Selmayr actively wanted Britain to leave the EU. Perhaps he thought a European super-state, dominated by Germany, would be more easily achieved once Britain was gone.
Although Berlin is not altogether keen on Herr Selmayr — Germany's respected finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, once called him a 'meddler' for leaking sensitive material — it was noticeable that after last week's dinner at Downing Street, Angela Merkel took very much the Juncker (or Selmayr) line in saying that Mrs May had Brexit 'delusions'.
In public, Mr Juncker is insisting the dinner went fine (although, with characteristic clumsiness, he joked about the British food not being up to much). In private, we have this tale of antagonism.
Details of diplomatic dinners are normally kept secret, at least until the politicians involved write their memoirs. There is a good reason for that discretion. Privacy allows politicians to speak more openly and to trust one another. That, in turn, makes a final agreement more likely.
Venomous
Does the European Commission, not least Martin Selmayr, want to stymie any Brexit deal? We in Britain could live with that. No deal really would be better than a bad deal —and the Commission must know that.
'No deal' would also allow the Commission to shrug its shoulders, criticise the perfidious British, and make EU exit sound more daunting for other countries.
But 'no deal' would be disastrous — 'eine Katastrophe' — for German car manufacturers, French vineyards and cheesemakers, Spanish farmers and the many industries of the EU which export to us.
The 27 nations of the EU will see that and will want the Commission to reach a compromise with London. Last weekend's venomous briefing needs to be seen in the context of those pressures rather than as a simplistic 'EC versus UK' fight.
Downing Street is keeping out of the fray. The paradox is that the row has probably helped Mrs May. The British voters will look at this puerile behaviour and conclude that they were never wiser than when, last June, they decided to get the heck out of the EU.
Who on earth would want to be ruled by such gossipy oafs as the risible Mr Juncker and his slippery sidekick?
 
Until this week, I never doubted the patriotism of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and their band of Brexiteers. Quite the reverse.
I credited them with a romantic respect for the integrity of this country, our borders and our national institutions.
By contrast, the Remainers argued that membership of the European Union was worthwhile because of the trading advantages, even though Britain was made subject to EU institutions such as the European Court of Justice.
But something strange is taking place this weekend as the Brexit talks reach their final phase. Brexiteers and Remainers have effectively swapped sides.
The ‘hard’ Brexiteers now appear determined to put the United Kingdom at risk. Meanwhile, those seeking to strike a pragmatic deal — led by Prime Minister Theresa May — are fighting to save it.
This is because the central debate between Britain and Europe now hangs on the future of the border between Britain and Ireland.
I have crossed this border, an area of great natural beauty, many times. For much of the past century it was a dangerous place across which illicit goods and weapons were smuggled by criminal gangs and terrorists.
But the Good Friday Agreement, reached in 1998, put paid to all that.
It implicitly committed the British and Irish governments to a guarantee that there should be no border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic — thus helping to open the way to peace after many decades of bloodshed.
Unfortunately, this Irish border reared its head again when the negotiations between Britain and the European Union started over Brexit.
The ‘hard’ Brexiteers are absolutely insistent that Britain must leave the customs union and the single market.
Fair enough. But Brussels says that Britain leaving the customs union and single market means bringing back the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in order to prevent smuggling of goods from the United Kingdom customs area in the north to the Irish EU zone in the south.
The European Union also points out that the resurrection of customs checks runs contrary to the Good Friday Agreement, and therefore insists that Northern Ireland must remain as part of the customs union, even if the rest of Britain chooses to leave it.
This means there would have to be two separate jurisdictions within the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland would be part of the customs union run by Brussels, while in mainland Britain we would determine our own trading arrangements.
The prospect of a two-tier United Kingdom, with one set of rules for Northern Ireland, has been greeted with pleasure by Irish republicans.
They hope and believe that over time Northern Ireland would draw closer to Eire, and eventually leave the UK altogether. This prospect is greeted with horror by unionists, which explains why Theresa May is fighting like a ferret in a sack to stop it.
As for the most determined Brexiteers, they don’t seem to regard the Irish border as much of a problem. They dismiss the EU demands that the Good Friday Agreement should be respected as a cynical contrivance by Brussels negotiators to punish Britain and cause mischief.
It may be that this is partly true. However, it is not just Brussels which appears to be willing to see the effective break-up of the UK. By the same token, so are the Brexiteers themselves.
This troubles Tories like me. I believe, in common with many other Britons, that the United Kingdom has been a force for good in the world ever since its creation more than 300 years ago.
It’s often forgotten that the full name of the Tory Party is the Conservative and Unionist Party.
Certainly, the Conservative Party represents free markets and capitalism. But the one pledge that has held it together since its foundation has been its commitment to the Union and everything that comes with it.
It’s this commitment that took Britain through two terrible World Wars in the 20th century.
These hard Brexiteers seem to have forgotten that.
They appear to regard escaping from the European Union as more important than the survival of the United Kingdom itself.
And consider this: if Northern Ireland is given special status to remain in the customs union in the wake of Brexit, you can be sure that it will not be long before Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party demands the same thing.
Significantly, the great majority of Brexiteers are English. Some see it as part of their duty as politicians to promote an English identity.
Last week in the House of Commons, John Redwood, one of their leaders, asked: ‘Who in this Government does speak for England? I come into the Chamber and hear debates about the Scottish problem and the Irish border, but we must not forget England, our home base for most of us on this side of the House. England expects; England wants better.’
Does this mean the rest of Britain can go hang?
David Davis, who resigned from the Cabinet this summer in order to fight against Theresa May’s handling of Brexit, speaks the same language. He has called for an English parliament.
Indeed, in the wake of the Scottish referendum result he quoted the words of G. K. Chesterton: ‘Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget; For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.’
Haunting words indeed. But how ironic it will be that if in their bid to escape from the European Union, the standard-bearers for a full Brexit end up destroying the United Kingdom.
 
Hot July has been the month our political class finally went the full lemming. Actually, that may be a little unkind to the Arctic ‘Lemmus lemmus’, whose tendency to leap suicidally off cliffs en masse has been exaggerated by Hollywood and cartoonists.
But this has been a month our administrative elite, driven round the twist by the heat, Brexit and general, gibbering fears of its impending demise, has behaved in a manner so hyperbolic and self-damaging that those stubby-snouted, northern hemisphere rodents might justifiably feel aggrieved at comparisons. ‘Excuse me,’ coughs Larry the Lemming, ‘but we small, furry chaps look fairly sane compared with your doom- spreading public servants.’
In a collective attack of the screaming abdabs, our functionaries have been forecasting calamity.
This week, they claimed thousands of us will shrivel and die in future British summers and that our motorways will melt, railways will buckle and sunscreen should be provided free to all outdoor workers.
Brexit is so going to isolate our kingdom from the rest of the planet that we need to start stockpiling food and drugs, and the road to Dover will become a permanent lorry park, amid fears about imports and exports.
The BBC’s (markedly Europhile) business editor, Simon Jack, said a no-deal Brexit would cause a national shortage of sandwiches. And The Guardian reported that we were likely to start killing ourselves in greater numbers. It was not clear if that would be a result of the maddening heat or because we were all so demoralised after reading the latest column by the paper’s resident shroud-waver, Polly Toynbee.
The Met Office, once a level-headed analyst of barographs and incoming weather fronts, issued bubonic plague-style warnings that we should not step outside in this heat and should not open our windows.
Public Health England enthusiastically joined in the ‘amber warnings’ and the NHS issued a ‘level four alert’ on ‘severe heatwaves’. One of the symptoms it listed was ‘confusion’. There’s certainly plenty of that around in our supposedly great institutions at present.
Even if we somehow avoided being banjaxed by heatstroke and dehydration and cramps and ‘intense thirst’ (a reference to the European Commission’s Jean-Claude Juncker?), Brexit was going to do for us all. We were firmly told that leaving the EU without agreement from Brussels would create ‘riots’, ‘horrendous consequences’ and ‘a state of emergency’.
At this point, a theatre director might ask his backstage staff to provide some dark chords and a rattle of King Lear-style thunder and lightning.
Those melodramatic warnings, in fact, came from the British head of the multi-national Amazon shopping website Doug Gurr, from the chief executive of our Civil Service John Manzoni, and from Tory MP Dominic Grieve, who chairs Parliament’s intelligence and security committee. These are three of our supposedly most mature figures, the sort of wise men who habitually assert the importance of proceeding on the basis of rational evidence.
Yet they were hopping up and down with all the sang froid of daft old Corporal Jones shouting ‘don’t panic, don’t panic!’ in Dad’s Army.
Let it be stressed that it is members of Britain’s ruling class who are the leading hysterics, predicting the imminent end of the world as we know it.
Apocalypse soon, folks!
We are not talking here about a grassroots insurrection based on half-heard rumour. It is not the under-educated peasants who are marching on the Citadel of Reason, proclaiming the end is nigh.
It is the opposite: this doom-mongering has its origins among the bosscats, the Sir Humphrys, those ‘top people’ who ‘take The Times’ (as that choicely patronising advertising slogan once put it).
It is they and their allies at the BBC and in the broadsheet (i.e. expensive) Press who are trying to excite a sense of national disaster.
Members of the ruling class once saw it as their duty to try to pacify the populus. Remember those wartime ‘Keep calm and carry on’ posters? That was the attitude officialdom used to take.
Pathe cinema newsreels, narrated by manly voices, would assure everyone that the state had matters under control.
To reinforce the idea of competence at the helm, cinema audiences were shown footage of white-coated scientists nodding in an avuncular way from high-tech laboratories as they calmly planned the protection and promotion of Good Old Blighty.
Laughably paternalistic? Maybe. But quite responsible. It burnished the notion of a secure nation state, and that created confidence which can attract investment and build civic and national pride.
How different things are today.
Any modern Pathe newsreel would need to be narrated by a voice of high-pitched terror.
Those scientists today would have their neckties askew, the buttons of their white coats half-torn from their moorings.
They would be biting their fingernails and staring wildly at the sky to see if it was about to collapse.
A secure and strong nation state? Forget it. It’s almost as if our Euro-federalising elite wants us to think nation states are an absurd aberration. Hot weather, of course, can always turn people a little peculiar. Heat, shimmering off baked country roads, creates corrugations on fervid brows.
And inevitably, the freak summer has been seized on by some in authority as proof of a permanent change towards a tropical climate. They seem to forget that only four months ago much of Britain was under snow and that the rainfall in past summers has been much higher than this year.
The Commons environmental audit committee predicted that heatwave-related deaths will more than triple to 7,000 a year.
These lurid claims secured plenty of airtime for the committee’s chairman, Labour MP Mary Creagh. She relished the attention and did much doleful shaking of her head about man-made climate change. But how accurate are her committee’s claims likely to be?
I attended one of the Creagh committee’s evidence sessions. At that hearing it was stated that there is currently no official definition of ‘heatwave’.
An expert admitted that, under current data, two unseasonably warm nights in succession could represent a heatwave.
Furthermore, although at present 2,000 deaths a year are attributed to warm weather, 40,000 are caused by cold weather.
The committee also heard that hot summers could bring benefits in agriculture and from tourism. More positive angles such as those do not sit comfortably with officialdom’s quasi-religious belief in the alleged disaster of man-made global warming.
And so the Mary Creaghs of this world seize on a few exceptionally hot weeks — we have not had a summmer like this since 1976, though that was so dry that great cracks appeared in the ground — and start issuing all sorts of blood-curdling edicts.
It was claimed this week that British house-builders had failed to design homes capable of withstanding hot weather. Ms Creagh wailed that ministers had ‘ignored’ warnings about man-made climate change and had left Britain ‘woefully unprepared’ for hot spells.
She demanded that houses, offices and public buildings such as hospitals should have ‘resilience’ to heatwaves. Fancy that: a politician demanding more regulations. It’s what they do.
But up pipes a still, small voice of calm, once more to whisper some scepticism. Is it not possible that there are too many regulations? The worst types of building for shade and cool were found to be those designed since the 1960s. If you want a cool hospital, visit an Edwardian or Victorian one with its thicker walls, loftier ceilings and draughtier doorways and windows (much disapproved of by eco-nannies such as Mary Creagh because they are not insulated and therefore ‘leak’ energy).
Alas, older hospitals have often been razed to make way for new buildings which comply with all those blessed regulations which are now found wanting. Such is the mad vortex of modern politics.
How often do the clipboard classes — the don’t-do-that, we-know-best brigade — overstate or invent rules? How often are alleged risks genuine?
Pregnant women are firmly instructed to avoid alcohol. Yet plenty find that a bottle of stout every day or two in pregnancy is a nourishing boost to morale. My wife certainly did.
Doctors admit that it is impossible to lay down hard rules and that alcohol unit guidelines are pretty random. But officialdom goes ahead all the same, wagging fingers and saying we must obey this and that, maybe simply because it can and because it enjoys lecturing us.
We are told at petrol stations and on aeroplanes that we must on no account use a mobile phone because the radio transmitter or battery could ignite a fire or interfere with the plane’s controls.
A book by science writers Michael Hanlon and Tracey Brown noted that no such disaster has ever ensued.
Safety professionals insist that helmets should be worn by cyclists, but when Australia made such helmets compulsory, serious cycling injuries increased.
The ‘man from the ministry’ long stated, with gruesome posters, that importing animals to Britain from the Continent without placing them in quarantine would create a risk of rabies.
Over decades, perfectly harmless pets were forced to spend miserable months in kennels. Not a single quarantined animal was found to be infected with rabies. The bossy rules were eventually dropped 18 years ago.
Perhaps the most notorious of all false alarms was the Millennium Bug scare, whipped up in 1999 by unscrupulous IT consultants, grandstanding parliamentarians and credulous civil servants who claimed that the date change to 2000 was going to cause computer malfunctions.
Aircraft were going to plummet earthwards. Life-support machines would conk out and domestic appliances go haywire. A fortune was spent preparing us for that ‘Y2K’ threat.
It was a mirage. Life just sailed on.
Something similar happened recently with the data protection rules, when companies and charities were encouraged by legal advisers to secure written authorisations from anyone on their databases. This cost millions — and it was quite unnecessary.
But it all made the bureaucracy feel important and it created plenty of work for legal advisers.
When the boss of multinational Amazon predicts ‘civil unrest within two weeks’ of Brexit unless he can have frictionless customs arrangements, is it because he has a unique understanding of the British political temperament or because tax-avoiding corporations like his prefer weak national governments?
When civil service chief Manzoni wails about the ‘disaster’ of a no-deal Brexit, is it because he has truly balanced the long-term consequences of a global free-trading Britain or because staying in the protectionist EU suits his career plans?
When Mr Grieve prophesies plague and damnation from our leaving the EU, is he thinking clearly or is he succumbing to an hysteria driven by personal pique at being sacked as a minister?
These mandarins and magnificoes spurring on the notion of social breakdown clearly believe they are the only ones clever enough to see catastrophes that await us. But sceptics (and when official advice is so palpably over-hyped, scepticism only multiplies) might say it is because they want to boost their own importance and power and keep the rest of us in our places.
And anyway, how much easier to deal with fellow quangocrats here and faceless bureaucrats in Brussels than awkward, irrational, ordinary people in sovereign democracies.
I don’t know but my bet is that if there is a no-deal Brexit, life will just toddle along pretty much as before. I also predict future British summers could be wash-outs.
It is almost as if our political class would love something terrible indeed to occur, so that they could say ‘we told you so’.
Imagine if there is a no-deal Brexit and nothing particularly bad happens. How foolish they would all look.
Imagine if future summers prove to be damp. What idiots all those climate catastrophists would be shown to be.
We will have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, most Britons seem to be coping remarkably well despite this barrage of woes.
The public has this week chewed on its cud and gone about its daily business, rather enjoying the sunny weather.
British stoicism? Or just a shrewd understanding of the neck-clutching neurosis of our ruling class?
Our lemming-like leaders can run towards the abyss if they wish, but we’ll just watch them and quietly laugh.
Even his biggest fans would concede it was an awful start to the Prime Minister’s election warm-up in Yorkshire this week.
Boris Johnson’s big speech, set against a telegenic backdrop of Yorkshire police recruits, was a clunker, the faux-bumbling Boris routine falling dismally flat in front of an audience of mirthless senior Plods.
To cap it all, his declaration that he’d rather ‘be dead in a ditch’ than extend our membership of the EU was upstaged by a poor young copper keeling over behind him.
His opponents gleefully claimed this was all emblematic of a collapsing regime.
In fact, it was merely a vivid reminder that there are no certainties in politics.
Whenever this general election does come, nothing can be taken granted. Normal rules no longer apply. No one, least of all the spin doctors, are in control of anything.
Having travelled to Wakefield to listen to the Prime Minister, I have been listening to the electorate, too. For it is areas such as West Yorkshire that will be key in the next election and, thus, Brexit.
And most people hereabouts view Parliament like a foreign country.
Opposition MPs primly take offence when Mr Johnson accuses Jeremy Corbyn of ‘surrendering’ to the EU or being ‘a big girl’s blouse’.
People in Yorkshire don’t seem bothered. They may not like Mr Johnson but they also believe that if you call the Prime Minister a ‘tinpot dictator’, you can’t whine when he hits back.
They do not regard this week’s Tory MP defector to the Lib Dems as a latter-day saint. Rather, they see a shifty politician abandoning one sinking ship for another.
They do not look upon the prorogation of Parliament as a ‘coup’, any more than they look upon the procedural scheming of the Brexit-blockers and tearful Tory rebels as a noble defence of parliamentary sovereignty.
Rather, they just see MPs on all sides behaving badly.
And I don’t find anyone who thinks a second EU referendum would be anything other than disastrous.
It’s not the usual moan: ‘Those politicians – they’re all the same/They all lie’ etc.
On Left and Right, among Remainers and Leavers, there is a rather more worrying mindset: MPs are merely pointless.
They might bang on sanctimoniously about ‘saving democracy’ but many voters have simply given up on it. As history shows us, that does not end well.
Take Anne and Mark Barber whom I meet in the centre of Wakefield. They run a cleaning machinery business, they both voted to Remain and they traditionally vote Tory.
‘We never wanted to leave the EU but let’s just get it done now. Whatever it takes. Deal or not,’ says Anne. ‘Finish Brexit and then worry about elections.’
They say that people regard Boris Johnson as a ‘clown’ but they don’t care as long as he gets this thing – which they never wanted – over the line.
‘It’s a pantomime, a nonsense. MPs – they’re just playing games,’ says estate agent Louisa Crook, a Lib Dem by inclination. Her husband, Michael, who runs a kitchen business, says he’d need ‘a gun to my head’ to vote for either Corbyn or Johnson – and he is a former Tory voter.
Neither believes a general election will solve anything, let alone solve Brexit, and they’re unsure how they’ll vote.
Yet they are worried: ‘This is really serious for us and our businesses.’
This imponderable mess makes Theresa May’s snap election in 2017 look like child’s play. Back then, it was a largely binary vote: red or blue. Both the Conservatives and Labour were supposedly committed to implementing Brexit.
Ukip had all but vanished and the Lib Dems were a fringe outfit. The next election, however, is a pollster’s nightmare.
The night before Boris Johnson dropped into Yorkshire, Nigel Farage was down the road at Doncaster Racecourse, addressing candidates and supporters of his Brexit Party.
Largely overlooked by the national media, such quasi-revivalist rallies have been packing in all sorts. Polls put the Brexit Party at between 9 and 12 per cent of the vote in an October election. However, if Britain is still in the EU after October 31, its support rockets to 18 per cent.
No wonder Mr Johnson is so keen for an early vote. No wonder Labour and the Scottish Nationalists are concocting ever more laughable excuses for a delay beyond the October 31 cut-off. A difference of just a day or two could change everything.
Among those welcoming Mr Farage in Doncaster was his prospective candidate for Wakefield. Robert Bashforth, 58, confounds any idea that the Brexit Party is just a rebranded Ukip with fresh faces, fewer blazers and no skinheads. A former assistant headmaster at a Wakefield secondary school, he has never belonged to any political party and says he never even thought of voting for Ukip.
‘I’ve come from a more Left-wing, Tony Benn perspective. It’s been about democracy, not parties,’ he tells me. He refused to vote at the last election, only joining Mr Farage’s new party this year when he ‘felt democracy slipping away’ from the people.
‘I’ve been on a lot of demonstrations and I have a pretty good antenna for racism. I’m glad to say the screening process was very strong,’ he says.
Though drawing support from all sides, the Brexit Party threatens the Conservatives far more than any other party. Furthermore, Labour’s core vote is more dependable and tribal than the traditional Tory base. Combine the Tory and Brexit Party figures in the latest opinion polls – 33 per cent and 9 per cent respectively – and you see a formidable electoral machine.
Set them against one another, though, and they could easily let Labour or a pro-Remain coalition slip through.
Nigel Farage has proposed a partial truce with the Tories: Tories would stand aside in Labour seats where there was a strong vote for Brexit while the Brexit Party would stand aside in key Tory seats in areas such as the south-west.
The recent Brecon by-election, when the Greens and Plaid Cymru stood aside to give the Lib Dems enough votes (4.4 per cent) to eject the Tories, shows the potential of these local deals.
However, Mr Farage insists on a Tory commitment to a No Deal Brexit as a precondition.
Any such contract would not only see an exodus of middle-of-the-road Tories from the party but, in any case, would be impossible as long as Mr Johnson insists on pursuing a new deal with Brussels.
Hence the Tory strategy of convincing voters that the only Brexit tough guy is Mr Johnson.
Some party activists, however, believe that some sort of accommodation with Mr Farage is the only answer, particularly if the resurgent Lib Dems look poised to soak up Tories still wedded to the EU.
Wakefield is a case in point. This was strong pro-Brexit country in the 2016 referendum and, in the general election a year later, with no Ukip candidate on the ballot, the Tories came within 2,000 votes of unseating the Labour MP. It was a striking result in an area where the miners’ strike against Margaret Thatcher is engraved in local folklore.
Could a one-off Tory/Brexit alliance here be enough to turf out Labour? In nearby Shipley, local Conservative MP and fervent Brexiteer Philip Davies tells me that the Brexit Party is on the wane now that Boris Johnson is running the Tories.
‘You can understand how the Brexit Party came about while Theresa May was negotiating with the EU,’ he says. ‘But no one could possibly accuse Boris of not meaning business.’
He says that even ardent Remainers on his patch are so exasperated that they would rather Britain crashed out of the EU by end of next month, deal or no deal.
I talk to Jackie Whiteley, a Tory district councillor and businesswoman, who voted to Remain. ‘The EU won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was keeping a lid on nationalism. But it’s not like that any more.’ She now wants out, with or without any deal.
As for this week’s 21 Tory rebels, she’s glad to see the back of them.
‘I have been horrified by the way Boris has been let down by his own MPs. I run a business and I know about negotiating.
‘It is simply not tenable to take No Deal off the table.’
Her company produces organic garden mulch and she has seen the business mirror the political climate. Right now, sales have slumped. After the events of this week, she feels that the only answer is for the Tories and Mr Farage to make some sort of deal.
Given the week he has just had and his dwindling options, the only thing we can safely rule out is Boris Johnson ruling anything out between now and his appointment with the ditch.  
Not for the first time, it fell to Norman Tebbit to speak for Britain. Why was it, he asked his fellow members of the Lords, that they were elevating the rights of foreigners over those of the British people?
‘It seems to me the first duty of this Parliament, of the United Kingdom, is to care for the interests of the citizens of this kingdom,’ he said.
‘If we are to be concerned about the rights of anybody after Brexit to live anywhere on this continent of Europe, it should be concern for the rights of British people to live freely and peacefully in those other parts of Europe. Why is everybody here today so excited about an amendment which looks after foreigners and not the British?’
Fair point. But judging by the reaction in the chamber, you’d have thought Norman had advocated rounding up all foreign nationals living in Britain and deporting them en masse, preferably at gunpoint. His perfectly accurate use of the word ‘foreigners’ had some of the more sensitive Lords and Ladies gasping for breath and hissing their disapproval at this ghastly racist in their midst.
Lord Skinhead of Chingford was, of course, merely questioning the demand that before triggering Article 50, Theresa May gives a cast-iron guarantee that all EU citizens currently living in Britain will be allowed to stay after Brexit.
Actually, she’s already tried to do that in exchange for a reciprocal assurance that the same will apply to UK citizens living in Europe. But she was knocked back by Angela Merkel, who refuses to enter any kind of negotiation until the Brexit process is formally under way.
It has become almost compulsory for everyone to agree that those EU nationals who have settled here keep the right to stay.
And it’s true that the majority of EU citizens who have arrived legally over the past few years make a valuable contribution to our economy.
But could the same be said of some of the less desirable elements who have moved to Britain? The Eastern European beggars and pickpockets littering the streets of our cities, for instance, or the assorted criminals we can’t deport because of the European yuman rites racket?
The Remoaners don’t want to talk about them, naturally. And, frankly, the Lords aren’t really that bothered about the rights of EU citizens living in Britain.
It is merely a convenient device to try to disrupt, and ideally prevent, Britain’s departure from the EU. They hold the democratically expressed wishes of more than 17 million voters in contempt and will do everything they can to frustrate the result of the referendum.
Why else would they want to force Mother Theresa to declare her negotiating position in advance?
No one in their right mind shows their cards before bidding in a poker game. Not unless they want to get taken to the cleaners.
No self-respecting union leader or businessman would offer up one-sided concessions before negotiations had even begun.
What the Remoaners refuse to accept is that Britain holds a winning hand. We buy more from the EU than they buy from us.
The Europeans realise that, which is why they are going to bluff for as long as possible. Can you imagine any politician in Europe behaving like the Remain camp in Britain?
Where’s the European equivalent of Project Fear, warning of the dire consequences of losing access to the lucrative British market?
Where are the apocalyptic warnings from the European Bank that millions of jobs will be lost and the EU will go into financial meltdown unless Brussels can strike a favourable deal with the UK?
Where are the demands in Berlin that Mrs Merkel offers British manufacturers free trade in exchange for BMW, Mercedes and Audi being allowed to continue selling cars tariff-free in Britain?
Where’s Holland’s answer to Anna Soubry, touring the TV and radio studios in the Netherlands, complaining tearfully that the Dutch economy is doomed unless they give Britain everything she wants?
The remake of Beauty And The Beast is to feature Disney’s first ‘exclusively gay moment’.
Why?
It’s not as if we’re short of gay role models on screen, either in Hollywood or on TV. From movies such as Brokeback Mountain to just about every British soap opera and comedy, homosexuality is well represented.
So there really is no need for Disney to ‘make a statement’. We’re not still living in the Seventies, when Dick Emery camping it up on the BBC was about as close as you got.
Oh, you are awful, but I like you!
Why insert gay characters in children’s stories like Beauty And The Beast, just for the sake of it? We already live in an age when even four-year-olds have to be taught about ‘alternative lifestyles’.
Kids grow up fast enough as it is. Why does everything have to be sexualised? And, no, I don’t just mean homosexualised, I mean writing any kind of gratuitous sex into children’s entertainment.
Where’s it all going to end?
Now that Disney seems to think that anything goes, I’m dreading what will happen when they get round to remaking Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.
Hi-ho!


Why aren’t French hardliners marching down the Champs Elysees, smashing windows and setting fire to police cars, demanding that Paris must agree unconditionally to Britain’s terms so they can carry on exporting their cheeses, wines and meat? I don’t recall the European Parliament passing a motion forcing Jean-Claude Drunker to make any concessions to Britain before the formal Brexit talks start.
And unless I’ve missed something, how many former German Chancellors, French Presidents and Italian Prime Ministers have openly sided with Britain, in the same way that Blair and Major have backed Europe against their own people?
No, all we’ve heard from across the Channel are threats to punish us, to cripple us economically, to make our lives hell once we are stupid enough to leave the EU.
Yet the overwhelming instinct of our political class is to bind the hands of our negotiators, to appease, compromise and, ultimately, surrender — with the unelected House of Lords acting as a pro-Brussels fifth column, determined to betray the majority of the people they are paid to represent.
Are they setting themselves up as the EU’s Vichy government? Maybe they should move to Brussels.
In wartime, they’d have been put up against a wall and shot. In peacetime, they should be put out to pasture, for good.
It’s a pity Norman Tebbit isn’t a few years younger. We could have put him in charge of the Brexit negotiations. At least he’d speak for Britain.
Fly-past? No, it's a military tattoo...
It was only a matter of time before the RAF fell to the ‘trans’ brigade. But it was the statement justifying making women in the air force wear trousers instead of skirts which intrigued me:
‘There are concerns that by forcing RAF personnel to wear skirts it’s discriminatory towards a variety of people, such as those with tattoos and transgender people.’
Hang on a minute. Since when did ‘those with tattoos’ become a vulnerable minority? From what I can make out, those of us without tattoos are in the minority these days.
How would RAF staff with tattoos be disadvantaged by wearing skirts?
Surely the whole point of having tattoos is displaying them.
Anyway, how many RAF women — or transgenders, for that matter — have tattoos on their legs?
I know that sailors have traditionally favoured anchors on their arms. Do the RAF go in for fighter planes on their calves?
And if they do, why would they want to cover them up?
Fine pair of Spitfires, show ’em off, show ’em off.
Last week, I wrote that I was having trouble coming up with a funnier nickname for the new Met Commissioner than Cressida Dick. I’ve since heard from a number of readers with their own suggestions.
Most were unsuitable for a family newspaper and some of them could get me arrested.
Best of the bunch came from Mike Robinson, who thought Cressida could be the love-child of the late Jack Warner.
Dick Of Dock Green.
 The police say they are so short-staffed they have been unable to apprehend tens of thousands of suspects, including hundreds of murderers and sex offenders, more than 1,000 of them wanted for rape. 
Perhaps if they didn’t spend so much time and money investigating ‘historic’ sex offences, they might be able to catch some criminals who — unlike Jimmy Savile — are still alive.
 
Yes, I’m one of the 48 per cent who voted Remain. I campaigned energetically for the UK to stay in the European Union.
As skills minister in David Cameron’s government, I toured colleges around the country, urging young people to make sure their voice was heard, to get themselves on the register and fight to keep Britain in the EU.
Like most people on my side of the argument, I was disbelieving when the first results — from Sunderland — were announced on the night of June 23, and was plunged into despair when I woke up the next day to find that a clear majority of the British people had voted to Leave.
But even then, in the deepest slough of despond, it was clear what Remain-supporting MPs like me had to do. That’s why, at 7.19am, I sent the following tweet: ‘The people I work for [ie. the voters, not the Tory leadership!] have made a momentous decision. I advised against it. But they call the shots and I will try to make a success of it.’ 
It’s called democracy, and if MPs don’t respect it then we shouldn’t be in Parliament.
That is why it is depressing to find others in the Remain camp have come to a very different conclusion: they haven’t understood we really are going to leave the EU. In fact, they are doing their damnedest to stop it happening.
The purpose of the guerrilla war being waged by these Remainers is to cling on to as many of the membership arrangements as possible — in the not-so-secret hope a future government of the liberal Left will be able to take us back in.
In the case of Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, of course, they fancy that this future government will be led by people like them — or, preferably, no doubt after a brief pantomime of pretend reluctance, by them.
Following 18 months in which both have been refreshingly absent from our TV screens, it is an astonishing, and frankly nauseating, double act.
In Clegg we have the man who devastated the Liberal Democrats as a political force, taking his revenge on the voters by launching a campaign to neuter the result of the largest exercise in democracy the UK has ever seen.
Having been on the losing side of yet another referendum — his previous attempt to monkey with our voting system was soundly rejected in 2011 — you would have thought a man who styles himself a Democrat might acquire a little humility. But no.
Instead, we find him back on the BBC sofa — where else! — issuing threats that would be blood-curdling if they weren’t so ludicrous, about the catastrophic effect of Brexit on the prices of beef, chocolate and cheese.
How can he predict that export tariffs — of respectively 59, 38 and 40 per cent — will be imposed on those products if we leave the Single Market?
Clegg said this week that a so-called hard Brexit would ‘lead us off a cliff edge towards higher food prices, with a triple whammy of punishing tariffs, customs checks and workforce shortages’.
These are the kinds of things he was saying before the referendum, as part of what turned out to be the wholly futile Project Fear. And here he is fighting the same battles months after the polls closed.
It reminds me of the French diplomat Talleyrand’s comments about the Bourbons: ‘They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.’
And who is Clegg’s sidekick in this attempt to delay the triggering of Article 50, which begins the formal process of decoupling from Europe?
It is, of course, Ed Miliband, whose main contribution to British politics was to surrender Scotland to the Scots Nats and meekly relinquish the sorry husk of a once great Labour Party into the hands of Jeremy Corbyn and his motley crew of Trotskyites and anti-Semites.
Not content with destroying his party — and in no way shamed by the fact 69 per cent of his own constituents in Doncaster rejected membership of the EU — Miliband has a spring in his step. That’s because he’s never happier than when he is telling the Northern working classes what’s good for them.
Frankly, as his most admirable predecessor as Labour leader — Clement Attlee — might have said, a period of silence from both of these gentlemen would be most welcome.
Clegg and Miliband are not alone. They have allies in both Houses of Parliament. In public, most of them go through the motions of acknowledging the referendum verdict.
In last week’s Brexit debate in the Commons, every other speech opened with a perfunctory declaration that the speaker accepted the result or even, if they were feeling very generous, respected the result. Strange then that their next word was almost invariably ‘but . . .’
The ‘but . . .’ of the recalcitrant Remainers takes a number of forms. One popular, though spurious, argument is that the referendum addressed only the narrow question of whether the UK should leave the EU or remain — not what we should do about the Single Market. 
The advocates of this position stop their ears to any examination of the reasons why so many people voted to leave or any discussion of the arguments deployed during the campaign about what leaving would entail — even though both sides asserted it would involve leaving the Single Market.
They calculate the best way to frustrate the referendum result is for Britain to confine itself to a ‘technical’ exit only.
This would mean sliding seamlessly into a position like Norway’s, where we are still in the Single Market, still bound by freedom of movement laws and still subject to rulings by the European Court of Justice.
For the most stubborn Remainers, it doesn’t matter that we would have gained almost nothing while losing any say over future developments in EU rules.
Other MPs have been attempting to champion the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty. ‘I accept the result of the referendum, but Parliament must determine how the Government negotiates Brexit,’ they intone.
This argument is at least superficially respectable. Of course, Parliament must hold ministers to account for their decisions about strategic priorities for the negotiations and must vote on all the stages of the Great Repeal Bill that will formalise our exit. 
So far, so uncontroversial. The problem is recalcitrant Remainers want to have a parliamentary debate on when we should trigger Article 50.
This is despite the fact our Government was elected on a manifesto commitment to ‘honour the result of the referendum, whatever the outcome’. And David Cameron was clear a vote for Leave would require the immediate triggering of the Article.
Even more disreputable is the stance taken by Baroness Wheatcroft. Appointed to the House of Lords by Mr Cameron after a career as a journalist, she has never subjected herself to the people’s verdict.
Yet she had the brass neck to question whether the British people knew what they were voting for in the referendum and to urge her fellow peers to defy the Commons by stalling our departure from Europe.
Noisy and opinionated though these diehard Remainers are, fortunately there are relatively few of them, at least in the Tory Party. Most of us who campaigned to stay in recognise we have a special responsibility to listen to the voters.
In discharging this duty, we know that leaving the EU does not mean we’re turning our back on free trade or denying ourselves the opportunity to welcome talented and hard-working people from around the world.
The EU was a means to an end, but it imposed constraints that ultimately chafed too much. Now the people have rejected it, we must find other, better ways to achieve our goals for the people we serve.
The sooner Clegg, Miliband and their fellow refuseniks understand that, the better.
To great fanfare, and for the first time, a hearing in the Supreme Court has been running live on the news channels all week.
The proceedings were carried for the most part in full, with the broadcasters scouring the country for self-styled legal commentators to pontificate on the proceedings. Personally, I thought the whole thing was like watching paint dry.
Yet, in a world too often dominated by the inane chatter of Twitter and 24-hour news, the ponderous proceedings now playing out in the court have dominated the agenda for weeks. I have even been stopped more than once by constituents who asked me what I think will happen in 'that court case'.
The judges are, of course, considering an appeal by the Government which is seeking to overturn a recent High Court judgment that there must be a vote in Parliament before Article 50 can be triggered to begin our exit from the EU.
Motivation
The Prime Minister wants to fire the starting gun for us to leave, and only after that start to debate the details of exactly how our departure will take shape.
All of that means the decision the Supreme Court will make — which it's due to announce in January — puts the 11 Justices hearing the case in the middle of the most vital constitutional question: which body is supreme, the Law Lords or Parliament? Do unelected judges (about which the public know almost nothing) have the right to supersede the wishes of the elected members of Parliament, and through them the Government?
Because this question goes to the heart of how this country is governed, the media, and particularly newspapers such as this one, have started asking the question: who are these powerful people who dispense judgment on the way our constitution works?
More importantly, what is known of their interests and motivation, and what previous views have they expressed?
The Supreme Court deliberations are important not because of some obscure legal argument, but because in the EU referendum in June (at which the turnout was the largest ever), 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union, and they expect the Government to deliver on that decision. 
How fascinating, then, that as the media have peeled away the anonymity that cloaked the Supreme Court judges to reveal a number who have strong associations with EU institutions, a howl of protest has arisen from the Westminster establishment.
The faux anger of some politicians and lawyers about the personal interests of the judges being made public, as though they were omnipotent, is close to risible. After all, it's not as though this present legal structure is a centuries-old edifice that has stood the test of time.
It is worth reminding ourselves that the Supreme Court was created in June 2003 — when I was Tory leader — right in the middle of a botched Cabinet reshuffle by Tony Blair.
With little thought for the constitutional proprieties, and partly because he wanted to get rid of his troublesome Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine — who opposed the creation of a Supreme Court — he sought to get rid of the post of Lord Chancellor and move the Law Lords out of Parliament to create a Supreme Court that was both legally and physically separate from Westminster.
In one stroke of his all-too-regal pen, Tony Blair dispensed with centuries of constitutional balance. No thought, it seems, was given to the constitutional arrangement that had prevailed until then, that by having the nation's supreme appeal court actually within Parliament, the supremacy of Parliament was assured.
Of all the many ill-considered arrangements made by the Blair government, this had to be among the least considered and most chaotic. Instead of a careful debate about the supremacy of Parliament and the role of the judiciary, or even how that delicate relationship should be settled, Blair rushed the proposal through to resolve his own political difficulties.
When MPs attacked him, saying what he had done was without thought and amounted to constitutional vandalism, he flippantly replied that he believed it was time to get rid of the men in tights. In response, one Tory MP suggested that instead of tearing up the constitution, Mr Blair could try giving the judges some trousers.
The result is that we now have a Supreme Court, and after a number of major adjustments, we are having to learn to live with the notion of a separation of powers and, yes, location.
This has coincided with another huge development. Ever since we joined the EU and accepted that European law was supreme, our judges have moved progressively more towards practising judicial activism (that is, rulings suspected of being based on personal or political considerations rather than on existing law).
One of the main reasons for this is that European human rights legislation — enshrined in British law by Tony Blair's Human Rights Act — is so broadly worded that it allows judges considerable latitude for interpretation.
All of this matters because it helps explain why this current Supreme Court process matters. When the High Court decided that the EU referendum in fact had only been advisory, it strayed into political territory and in doing so triggered a constitutional clash.
Just imagine if the Supreme Court upholds the High Court's decision, and Parliament is required to vote on the triggering of Article 50. What if Parliament rejects the invoking of that article and so stops Britain from leaving the EU at all?
Betrayal
You can be sure there are plenty in Labour and the Lib Dems — and indeed some on the Tory benches — who would dearly love to see that outcome.
Yet that would be the most appalling betrayal of the will of the people. It simply cannot be allowed. During the passage of the Referendum Bill which set out the terms of the EU vote, it was made crystal clear that the British public's decision would be acted on by the Government.
But if the Supreme Court rules against the Government, and then Article 50 is halted, or mired in endless amendments, as Nick Clegg and his allies would like, then the judges will have set Parliament against the people and brought the constitution to a point of crisis.
There was a good reason why, when England's Bill of Rights was crafted in 1689, article nine made plain that proceedings in Parliament must not be overruled in any court or place outside Parliament. It was to stop such an event as this — a democratic referendum being derailed — coming to pass.
The Government's determination to use the prerogative powers of the Crown to invoke Article 50 — without first holding a Parliamentary vote — stems from the desire to avoid such a constitutional debacle.
That said, Tony Blair's messy reform has given us the Supreme Court we have today and there is no going back. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think carefully about how we can find a constitutional balance between the court and Parliament.
Assault
As the courts stray more into political territory, I believe it becomes imperative that we know more about those placed in such positions of power.
It is no good railing against newspapers for seeking to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the interests and backgrounds of our Justices, as though this were some sort of assault on the independence of the court.
In the U.S., such appointees undergo gruelling hearings in the Senate which pore over every aspect of their legal opinions and personal lives. Since our Supreme Court is modelled on that of America (albeit with some differences), I believe it's time for us to introduce a process of Parliamentary hearings to examine candidates for the Supreme Court when a vacancy has to be filled.
That way we would no longer have to rely on newspapers to tell us about the backgrounds of the Justices on whose shoulders rest so much of importance in our daily lives.
Whatever the outcome of the Government's appeal, this process has shone a light on the Supreme Court as never before, and has raised questions about the nature of the Court and the supremacy of Parliament which have until now been shrouded in obscurity. It is surely only right to recognise that, and to allow Parliament to question those who seek to sit in the highest court in the land.
In the meantime, those many millions who voted for Brexit will anxiously sit and wait to see whether the promises David Cameron's government made to them will ever come to pass.
 
Never far from Theresa May’s side at an EU summit – but always a few, respectful steps behind – is the unmistakable figure of her Europe adviser Olly Robbins.
Towering above everyone else at 6ft 3in, and with an intellect to match, the Government’s top Brexit negotiator is a genuine heavyweight in face to face talks with his EU counterparts.
Fiercely loyal to the Prime Minister, he has on more than one occasion been left holding her handbag during walkabouts at EU gatherings. 
But Brexiteers have always been suspicious that this particular mandarin serves not one master but two. 
Now they are convinced of it in the face of his determination to ‘fudge’ Britain’s exit – as voted for by 17.4million people – from the customs union with plans for a customs partnership.
Robbins has been an ardent disciple of closer political and monetary union with the EU since he was at Oxford. 
He was horrified by the referendum result. 
When he was Permanent Secretary in the newly-formed Department for Exiting the European Union, he clashed regularly with Brexit Secretary David Davis. 
Robbins, who had been a senior official at the Home Office with Mrs May when she was Home Secretary, had a habit of going behind Davis’s back to report directly to No 10.
In some EU meetings Robbins would urge Eurocrats to ignore the political noise in Westminster and listen to him, or to Mrs May, often failing to mention Davis altogether.
At one particular meeting, Robbins even suggested that he, and not Davis, should be the opposite number to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator.
Word of his deviousness got back to Davis. 
It was one provocation too far for an exasperated Davis, another imposing six footer, who bluntly reminded Robbins who was in charge of policy. 
Davis made clear that Robbins was his ‘sherpa’, preparing the ‘mountaineers to get to base camp before they tackle the summit’ – and most definitely not the team leader. 
Last September, the unhappy relationship came to an end when Robbins was moved into the Cabinet Office, which has a connecting corridor to No 10, as May’s Europe adviser. 
But the increasing closeness of Robbins to May – and her reliance on his views – is now triggering comparisons with Sir Alan Walters, the economist who advised Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
Lady Thatcher increasingly deferred to Walters, especially on Europe, triggering the damaging resignation of her Chancellor Nigel Lawson and the political mayhem that followed. 
The increasing power of Robbins is underlined by the importance apparently being attached by No 10 to his compromise ‘customs union partnership,’ which is being debated by the Cabinet Brexit committee on Wednesday.
Under the terms of the partnership – an alternative to remaining in the customs union – Britain would collect tariffs on behalf of the EU. 
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leading backbench Tory Brexiteer, describes it as a ‘cretinous’ alternative. 
Davis is more diplomatic, damning it in private as a ‘bureaucratic nightmare’.
A senior source said: ‘It’s classic Olly Robbins, who likes it because it’s the least possible disruption to our relationship with the EU. 
'He wants a middle way and to hell with the Brexit vote which was clear: We voted to leave the customs union so we can negotiate new trade deals.’
Only yesterday, arch Remainer Damian Green, who was Deputy Prime Minister under Mrs May until his departure for alleged sexual harassment, backed the partnership.
No surprise there. Green is a huge fan of Robbins, having worked with him at the Home Office. He says Robbins has the calibre to be a future head of the Civil Service.
So who exactly is this brilliant but blinkered Europhile? Oliver Robbins, 43, was brought up in Lewisham, south-east London, the eldest of two sons and educated at the £17,000-a-year, private Colfe’s School. 
His mother Diana, a civil servant, gave up work to be a full-time parent. 
His father Derek, a professor of international social theory at the University of East London, wrote a book on French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu.
After A-levels Robbins took the seemingly obligatory route for senior civil servants of studying politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford.
He chose Hertford College because it championed a ‘more inclusive’ admissions policy.
Tellingly, he became secretary of the newly-formed Oxford Reform Club whose logo was a crowned portcullis – the emblem of Parliament – shrouded by the yellow stars of the EU.
Founded in 1992 as Parliament was debating the Maastricht treaty, it was established explicitly to oppose the Eurosceptic movement, and to promote European integration.
It was also while at Oxford that Robbins defended the Soviet Union, arguing in an essay that the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that there was ‘no alternative to the mad excesses of modern capitalism’.
He wrote that one of the ‘commonest criticisms… was that Communism in Russia was the experiment which failed’.
Robbins argued the Communists deserved praise for creating ‘a state, a world power, and one that its people could be proud of’. 
He added: ‘The Soviet leaders changed Russia from a backward peasant autocracy, despised by the West, into a technological giant at whom the world cowered in fear for half a century.’
There was no mention in the youthful prose of the many millions put to death by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, or the miserable lives endured by so many more under Communism. 
Even now, David Davis has the mischievous habit of beginning meetings by introducing people to ‘Olly Robbins. People’s Soviet’. 
After Oxford, Robbins, who married wife Sherry in 2005 and has three sons, was fast tracked as a civil servant into the Treasury. 
One of his trickiest roles was helping the then Chancellor Gordon Brown, who was at war with Tony Blair, liaise with No 10. Robbins had to mediate between two men who were paranoid about each other. 
He did such a good job that Blair poached Robbins and made him his private secretary at the relatively young age of 31. Later, Robbins became director of Brown’s private office when the latter was PM.
When David Cameron became prime minister, Robbins was promoted to deputy national security adviser, before moving to the Home Office to work with Mrs May. 
Respected for his grasp of detail, quick wit, and appetite for hard work there was a rare blip on his CV in 2016 when he was ejected from a Commons home affairs select committee hearing. 
The then chairman, Keith Vaz, accused him of failing to respond to questions about the budget for his department. 
Mrs May, then Home Secretary and no fan of Vaz whom she suspected was grandstanding, intervened to ensure Robbins never had to go back before the committee.
His last big job at the Home Office was as second permanent secretary, from September 2015 until summer of 2016. 
He was responsible for immigration and border controls. 
They, of course, are two issues which have returned to haunt Mrs May and her hapless successor Amber Rudd.
For now though, it is the argument over the customs union – and Robbins’s compromise ‘partnership’ – that pre-occupies Mrs May.
As Mrs Thatcher famously once said, ‘advisers advise, ministers decide’. She made an exception with Sir Alan Walters and it cost her a chancellor. 
Let’s hope Mrs May doesn’t make a similar mistake. 
He is the Eurosceptic gift that just keeps on giving. Indeed, he is possibly the greatest weapon at the Brexiteers' disposal — more so even than Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson, or those bonkers EU regulations on the correct shape of bananas.
But for how much longer?
Because time is now surely running out for European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker following the latest evidence of his rank hypocrisy — not to mention his pivotal role in a monumental tax dodge.
As many have argued since last summer's EU referendum, if the member states of the European Union had not appointed Mr Juncker to run the European Commission in 2014, Brexit might very well not have happened.
A less arrogant, less abrasive, less fanatical Euro-federalist might well have shaved a crucial couple of percentage points off the final 52:48 result.
Fortunately for the Leave camp, the finger-wagging former prime minister of Luxembourg just kept on riling the British public right up to polling day.
Threat
Indeed, he was at it again just the other day when he warned other member states not to follow the stupid Brits by holding an in/out EU referendum. 'It is not wise to organise this kind of debate,' he said.
'Not only because I might be concerned about the final result but because this will pile more controversy on to the huge number [of crises] already present at the heart of the EU.'
This week, however, a fresh series of leaked documents show the extraordinary extent to which Mr Juncker has spent years blocking EU attempts to crack down on the predatory tax loopholes constructed in his native Luxembourg for the benefit of international corporate giants such as Amazon.
The same documents go on to show how he has also vetoed any public disclosure of these discussions.
So, here we are at the start of a year in which the EU faces the gravest existential threat in its history from a series of national elections in France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. And despite crystal-clear demands for greater EU transparency and accountability, the man in charge of the EU apparatus has been rumbled as the architect of a huge tax avoidance cover-up.
As yet, we haven't heard a squeak from Mr Juncker. Not that we should necessarily believe what he might deign to share with us. This is the man who, while handling the 2011 eurozone crisis, blithely declared: 'When it becomes serious, you have to lie.'
Well it's certainly looking serious now.
The latest scandal follows the leak of classified documents involving a secretive EU committee set up to establish a code of conduct on tax policies. The idea was to prevent 'harmful competition' between member states.
Since the committee was created in 1998, when Mr Juncker was both prime minister and finance minister in his native grand duchy, the committee has made repeated attempts to toughen regulation.
These have included proposals for investigations of private corporate tax deals with big international corporations. At every stage, these plans were blocked by Luxembourg thanks to a rule requiring unanimity on all the committee's decisions.
Exasperated by this stalemate, a number of countries including Germany and Sweden then argued in favour of a majority vote. 'Nein,' said Luxembourg and vetoed that, too.
So a country with 0.1 per cent of the EU population (think Northamptonshire with fewer people), has been frustrating serious reform of offshore tax avoidance for years.
Then, when it was proposed that the committee's deliberations might be made public, that also received a big fat thumbs down from Mr Juncker and his compatriots.
Given all the bile which Mr Juncker has directed over the years at the British for being 'bad' Europeans, and for obstructing the great European dream, we now find that he has been throwing spanners in the works and getting away with it for years.
There must now surely be serious doubts about this man's ability to remain at the helm of the world's most bloated bureaucracy (one in which 10,000 people earn more than the British prime minister).
It was in 2014 that the first revelations surfaced about Mr Juncker's involvement in cosy Luxembourg tax deals during the 18 years he spent as PM, before being forced out in a phone tapping scandal.
The so-called 'LuxLeaks' episode revealed the extent to which companies such as Fiat and McDonald's had been enjoying potentially illegal arrangements with Luxembourg on his watch — deals which certainly help to explain why it is one of the world's richest nations.
Several EU investigations have since been commissioned, and Fiat has been ordered to repay tens of millions of euros in unpaid tax, while the McDonald's case is ongoing. Mr Juncker has supported the EU's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager in pursuing these matters.
No doubt Mr Juncker had hoped all these pesky leaks had gone away. Instead, the new disclosures amplify the arrogance of a man who has repeatedly voiced his contempt for the democratic process.
'I am for secret, dark debates,' he said in 2011. He also said: 'We all know what to do. We just don't know how to get re-elected after we've done it.'
Contempt
His attitude towards the inconvenient simpletons the rest of us call 'voters', is probably best summed up in his half-jokey, half-menacing prognosis ahead of the 2005 French referendum on a proposed European Constitution: 'If it's a Yes, we will say: 'On we go.' And if it's a No, we will say: 'We continue.' '
No doubt there will be some in Brussels who will try to explain away the latest leaks as rabble-rousing by ghastly Eurosceptic British newspapers such as the Mail.
Actually, the latest Luxembourg leaks have come via German radio, the Left-wing Guardian newspaper and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists — hardly a cabal of scheming Brexiteers. Indeed, it is increasingly hard to find anyone with positive things to say about the 62-year-old uber-bureaucrat, who makes no secret of his own contempt for the UK.
During Mr Juncker's quest to become president of the Commission, even that arch-Europhile Lord Mandelson couldn't come up with anything more enthusiastic than: 'He may or may not be the nightmare candidate.'
Perhaps now, some of Mr Juncker's senior colleagues will come to their senses and realise what a liability they have in the man still running the Commission. Then again, perhaps not.
We need only look at the vast new palace which the EU grandees have just unveiled in Brussels. Called Europa — or the 'Space Egg' — it is beautifully emblematic of the ivory-towered otherworldliness of the EU elite.
Lies
Originally commissioned for £210 million in 2004, it has finally been finished four years late and £80 million over budget.
Multi-coloured floors and ceilings look like a paint chart but are apparently the work of a Belgian artist-cum-essayist called Georges Meurant, who only paints in squares.
This is supposed to be the new conference centre for both the European Council and the Council of the European Union, with the bowels earmarked for the media and the top floor fitted out as a very grand private dining room. Offices, conference rooms and restaurants fill the space in between.
Indeed, the building has 25 per cent more space for eating and drinking (5,800 square metres) than for actual meetings (4,600 square metres), but then that should come as no surprise to those who have spent any time in Brussels, as I did recently.
Mr Juncker would certainly approve. He is well-known for his love of a traditional European working lunch; one local paper chronicled his heroic consumption of a Campari, three glasses of wine and three Sambucas in just two hours. It's one of his more endearing traits.
2017 is going to be a very serious year for the EU, one in which voters will decide on its very survival. And yet it continues to be dominated by a pantomime villain who has blamed Britain's Brexit vote on 'lies and so many half-truths' — when, by his own admission, his own career has been littered with the very same.
 
Hers has been one of the most welcome – and unusual – contributions of the entire Brexit debate. Not only were the Queen’s words a badly-needed dose of common sense but they were supremely understated, too.
Her speech was neither delivered to Parliament nor to some shiny corporate congress. There is no recording of this week’s address to the Sandringham Women’s Institute, let alone any camera footage.
There was not a single reporter or politician in the room.
But let no one in be in any doubt. The Queen was talking about Brexit.
And as the only person in public life today who was personally – and sometimes painfully – embroiled in every stage of Britain’s entry in to what we now call the European Union, she speaks with peerless authority as we leave.
It could hardly have been a more low-key event. The only man inside West Newton Village Hall for this traditionally all-female affair was guest speaker Alexander Armstrong, the TV presenter. Her Majesty’s private secretary, Edward Young, was not present.
The Queen has attended this event since 1943 – staying a couple of hours, enjoying a proper catch-up with familiar faces, some of whom she has known all their lives.
However, this year, it was announced that she would say a few words, too, ostensibly because the Sandringham WI was celebrating its 100th birthday. She is its longest-serving stalwart.
She began by paying tribute to Madge Watt, the formidable founding mother who established the branch in the aftermath of the First World War. And then she switched to a more general theme.
‘Reflecting on a century of change,’ she said, ‘it is clear that the qualities of the WI endure. The continued emphasis on patience, friendship, a strong community-focus, and considering the needs of others, are as important today as they were when the group was founded.
‘Of course, every generation faces fresh challenges and opportunities. As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view; coming together to seek out the common ground; and never losing sight of the bigger picture.
‘To me, these approaches are timeless, and I commend them to everyone.’
This was not an official engagement – it was not even mentioned in the Court Circular yesterday. Buckingham Palace would normally treat it as an entirely private affair.
As such, her words were entirely personal, not ‘on advice’ as official speeches are known. Yet no sooner had the Queen returned to Sandringham than something unusual occurred.
The Palace press office released the text of her speech to news organisations. Evidently, the Queen wanted her plea for unity to reach a wider audience. And with good reason.
In times of trouble, it is the monarchy which has been expected to reassure, to stabilise, to keep calm and carry on.
Politicians govern and the monarch leads, usually by example.
The Queen’s parents were exemplars of that in the Second World War.
She herself has been here before, as with her plea for the Scottish people to ‘think very carefully’ before the 2014 independence referendum. As it happens, those were also ‘private’ remarks – to a handful of people outside Crathie church.
There was also Brexit code in last month’s Christmas broadcast. ‘Even with the most deeply held differences, treating the other person with respect and as a fellow human being is always a good first step,’ the Queen said.
Every side in this saga has tried to claim the Queen at some point.
Some argued that she was a closet Brexiteer on the back of a third-hand story of a private lunch conversation years before the referendum had been called. Remainers, on the other hand, embraced her as one of their own when she opened Parliament in 2017 wearing a hat in EU blue with yellow stars.
This week’s words could be construed as an attack on Jeremy Corbyn for not ‘coming together’ with the Prime Minister. Alternatively, they could be a coded attack on No Deal Tories in her reference to ‘the common ground’. Take your pick, for, in fact, these words lean in no political direction.
Crucially, she well remembers how Britain ended up in the EU in the first place. It was a very turbulent journey for her and she has not forgotten it.
In the early Sixties, when the Government first voiced its intention to join what was then known as the European Economic Community (EEC), there was dismay around the Commonwealth.
Countries such as Australia and New Zealand depended on exports to Britain. It was less than 20 years since a war in which thousands of their young men had fought and died at Britain’s side. Yet, in the eyes of many, the ‘mother country’ was turning her back and canoodling with the old enemy.
What made it particularly difficult for the Queen was that she was their monarch, too. Researching my new book, Queen Of The World, I unearthed many classified files which reveal the impact on the Queen herself. Take her 1963 tour of Australia and New Zealand. Unlike her triumphal Coronation tour of 1953-4, the crowds were much less enthusiastic.
The New Zealand government was initially reluctant to invite the Queen at all. The British High Commissioner, Francis Cumming-Bruce, reported back to London that the small crowd in the capital was ‘mainly silent and there was little waving’. The Queen herself ‘looked drawn and very tired’.
The Commonwealth Office was appalled and demanded an urgent report from British diplomats in Canberra and Wellington. Cumming-Bruce was blunt. ‘Eighteen months of negotiations of British membership of the EEC shook New Zealand opinion profoundly,’ he wrote. It had been ‘a severe shock’.
As the British government pressed on with its EEC plans, previously loyal subjects started to question their devotion to the Queen. Australia’s deputy prime minister, Doug Anthony, renounced a lifetime’s loyalty and joined the republican movement.
France’s President Charles de Gaulle had been the main barrier to Britain’s EEC membership, but his successor, Georges Pompidou, was keen on the idea.
By 1972, a deal was almost complete. Pompidou and Prime Minister Edward Heath wanted the Queen to pay a spectacular state visit to France ahead of Britain’s formal accession on January 1, 1973. The crowning moment would be a banquet at Versailles where Heath wanted the Queen to deliver (in French) a rousing eulogy to the EEC.
I have seen confidential papers showing how the Government wanted her to hail the EEC as ‘a partnership speaking on great matters with one voice and gathering the genius of many’. That was one of the lines chopped by the Palace.
For the fact was that Parliament was every bit as divided on the issue then as it is today. Yet ministers repeatedly urged the Royal Family to trumpet the joys of Europe. Prince Charles’s diaries reveal that Heath had assured him personally that the EEC would make no impact on the Commonwealth at all.
The Queen spoke similarly in her 1972 Christmas broadcast, saying: ‘Britain is about to join her neighbours in the European Community and you may well ask how this will affect the Commonwealth.’
Reassuringly, she went on: ‘The new links with Europe will not replace those with the Commonwealth. Old friends will not be lost.’ Except everything did change.
Europeans no longer had to queue with the rest of the world at British customs posts, whereas loyal Kiwis and Australians did. Within a year, Australia had binned God Save The Queen as the national anthem. A republican bandwagon was under way. So is it any wonder that the Queen wants everyone to be nicer to each other?
As our political class is paralysed by our departure from the EU, our wise head of state still recalls the rancour and pain of going in.
We should heed her words.
Queen Of The World by Robert Hardman (Century, £25)
 
Boris Johnson today pronounced Theresa May's Brexit deal 'dead' - less than 24 hours after he sensationally backed it in return for her leadership sacrifice - and will now urge the Prime Minister to quit rather than fight on.
Mrs May is fighting to pass her Brexit deal by the end of the week and must win a vote tomorrow if Britain is to leave the EU by May 22.
She yesterday offered to stand down if her deal passes in return for the backing of Johnson and his fellow Brexiteer rebels. After that offer, the former Foreign Secretary swung behind the PM after months of criticising her deal as 'an appalling humiliation' and a 'historic mistake'.
Now he appears to be turning on the PM by calling the deal 'dead' and insisting May steps down even if her deal fails, according to allies who spoke to the Evening Standard.
His U-turn comes after the DUP and up to 25 hardcore Tory rebels said they would still oppose the deal, seemingly sinking any chance of it passing this week.
The government will hold a debate vote on its deal tomorrow but has not finalised if it will be a full force endorsement of May's deal or a lesser motion – and if the PM cannot force the plan through the country faces further chaos. 
Downing Street said the Government was awaiting a judgment from Speaker John Bercow on whether Friday's proposed motion is compliant with parliamentary convention before pressing ahead with the formal procedure to stage the debate.
The business motion enabling the House to sit on Friday must be passed before the Commons rises at around 5pm today.
On Monday, MPs will continue their attempts to force a soft Brexit such as a Customs Union on Mrs May before April 12 – and her ministers have threatened to call a general election rather than be railroaded into breaking her manifesto promises.
Theresa May's deputy and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox confronted John Bercow this morning to establish whether he would allow a new vote on the Brexit deal. 
David Lidington and Mr Cox met with the Speaker shortly before Commons leader Andrea Leadsom made a cryptic announcement about a debate and vote tomorrow.
MPs have been ordered to attend Parliament tomorrow, cancelling what was supposed to be a day in their constituencies.
In the weekly business statement, Mrs Leadsom said it would be used for a debate on Brexit - but admitted the final motion has not been decided.
Speculation has been rife all week that Mrs May would try to bring back her deal for a third 'meaningful vote' if she had any hope of winning.
The DUP's continued refusal to back the deal makes it appear an impossible mission - but passing the divorce deal this week is the only way to leave the EU by May 22.
Speaker Bercow threw a further spanner in the plans by insisting any new vote must be on a 'substantially' different question to the last one.
Following Mrs Leadsom's announcement this morning there are two main possibilities.
The first is a full-blown 'meaningful vote' of the kind the Government has lost twice – if the Speaker is persuaded the question is 'substantially different'.
The second is to hold a vote only on the divorce agreement – the legally binding treaty – and not the political declaration.
This would swerve the Speaker's ruling and keep alive May 22 but would not amount to approving the deal in UK law.
If the government does call an election, it is likely to ask for another delay to Brexit from the EU so May can step down and a new Tory leader can be selected. The PM's would-be successors including favourites Michael Gove and Boris are already circling, the latter after finally supporting her deal despite months of trashing it.
The PM also faces opposition to her deal from up to 25 hardcore Brexiteer Spartans who still refuse to back her deal, leaving her needing to win over up to 30 Tory rebels.
Tory rebel Mark Francois said today: 'I wouldn't vote for it if they put a shotgun in my mouth. I am not voting for the deal on the basis of who is or is not the Prime Minister. I am not voting for the deal because I have read it. Nothing has changed - so I'm still happy to vote it down. The British people voted to leave the European Union - let's just leave'.
Yesterday, in an emotional speech, Mrs May told Tory MPs she would quit 'earlier than intended' if Parliament backed her withdrawal agreement.   
There were initial signs that her gamble might pay off when a string of Eurosceptic MPs, led by Boris Johnson and Iain Duncan Smith, said they would now swing behind her.
But, in a bombshell announcement shortly before 9pm, the DUP's said it would not support the agreement because it posed 'an unacceptable risk to the integrity of the UK'.
The party's deputy leader Nigel Dodds indicated it would vote against the plan, saying: 'We don't abstain when it comes to the Union.'
The DUP's support is seen as critical to unlocking the backing of dozens of Eurosceptic MPs and Mrs May's close friend Damian Green, a former minister, says the PM will not give up trying today.
If her deal fails then Parliament is likely to demand she asks the EU for a softer Brexit or draw up a second referendum - and the PM would then be expected to call a general election because it would tear up the Tory manifesto.
She has not ruled out staying to lead the party in a snap election but allies said that they hoped she will because she is seen as one of the few 'adults in the room', one source told The Times. 
Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he still backs the PM's deal and is hoping the DUP 'come over' to it.
He also praised Mrs May's behaviour yesterday and said she 'deserves support'.
Speaking to reporters in London, he said: 'I'm in favour of the deal and I hope the DUP will come over to the deal but we'll have to wait and see what they do.'
Asked if he would be speaking to the DUP's leader after she again ruled out backing the deal on Wednesday night, he said: 'I have no plans to speak to Arlene Foster but I do have conversations with the DUP from time to time in the ordinary course of events.'
He added: 'The Prime Minister behaved very nobly yesterday and I think she does deserve support at this stage.
'I don't like her deal. I make no bones about this. I don't think the deal's suddenly got better, simply that the alternative is now worse. It's not having any Brexit at all and it's letting down the 17.4 million people who voted to leave.'
Damian Green, Theresa May's former de facto deputy, has said she will carry on working to get a Brexit deal.
'She will take the path of soldiering on because she sees the great duty of her and her Government is to get a Brexit deal. She will carry on for as long as she is Prime Minister doing that,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'Absolutely the last thing the country would need now would be a prime minister who walked away and said 'OK, choose someone else'. This is very serious. The next few days are really the crunch.'
Mr Green said the choice for MPs now lay between Mrs May's deal and a customs union - the option which came closest to winning a majority in Wednesday's indicative votes.
'If you want a deal, the choice is now between the Government's deal or a customs union. The customs union was only eight votes off winning yesterday,' he said.
'That's a slightly softer Brexit than the Government's deal. So that's the choice that faces MPs, even the most hard Brexit MPs.'
David Lidington, effectively Theresa May's deputy prime minister, pleaded with MPs to back the Brexit deal.
At the British Chambers of Commerce conference he said: 'I recognise the real frustration that uncertainty around this process has caused in the business community.'
He added: 'From the Prime Minister down, the Government is doing all it can to secure a Brexit that does follow the result of the 2016 referendum but does so in a way that protects jobs and economic growth.'
Mr Lidington acknowledged that a 'chaotic, disorganised Brexit without an agreed deal is something we should not be seeking to have'. 
Downing Street was last night locked in frantic talks with the party in the hope of persuading the DUP's ten MPs to support the deal.
'They are tough negotiators,' one source said. 'It's not over yet.'
But one Cabinet minister said: 'If they don't move, then we don't have the votes.'
Cabinet minister Liz Truss said she wanted a Canada-style trade deal with the EU after Brexit as she urged Tory and DUP MPs to back Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement.
Former prime minister David Cameron  today urged warring MPs to 'compromise' to get some sort of Brexit deal through the 'stuck' Parliament.
The ex-Tory leader, who quit after leaving the failed Remain campaign in the 2016 election said two of four main factions in the Commons - spanning all opinions on Brexit - would have to 'compromise'.
But he declined to say who he would back to replace Theresa May when she stands down, telling ITV News: 'It's not for me to say.'
He said: 'The basic problem is that Parliament is stuck.
'There are four groups in Parliament; people who want the PM's deal, people who want no deal, people who want a second referendum and people who want a softer Brexit.
'We - the Government - has to try and find a way of getting at least two of those groups to work together, to combine their options, to compromise to find that partnership agreement and I hope that is what will happen.'
Addressing the British Chambers of Commerce conference, the Treasury Chief Secretary said there was a 'dawning realisation that the deal the Prime Minister has set out is the deal that will allow us to move forward as a country'.
'The alternatives that have been proposed by Parliament, and we saw that in the House yesterday, do not command support, some of them aren't negotiable.
'What I want to do today is strongly encourage colleagues of mine from the Conservative Party and other parties to back the Prime Minister's deal so we can get on with the next stage of negotiations which is the really important part of us being able to secure a good trade deal with the EU.'
She added: 'I'm a free trader, I believe that we need to open our economy to the rest of the world, I would like to see us do a Canada-style free trade deal once we have left the EU.
Former Tory education secretary Justine Greening, who resigned from Mrs May's Cabinet during a reshuffle last year, said agreeing to hold a second referendum could solve the stalemate.
'There was more support for a second referendum as a route through. It was clear to me if the PM wants her deal to pass she can just allow people to have a say on it and I think it would get through.
'That's something for her to consider, particularly if the DUP themselves say they can't support the deal. She's going to have to find votes from other places.
'The bottom line is: Britain has got to now take some decisions and if Parliament can't, then I think we should allow the public to do it.'
MPs last night rejected every Brexit option in a series of 'indicative votes', with a customs union, second referendum, Norway-style option and No Deal all failing to get a majority. 
But the two options with the closest votes were for any Brexit deal to put put to the people for a 'confirmatory vote' (268 for and 295 against) and to leave the EU with a customs union (264 for and 272 against).
These options are set to be further debated on Monday in the Commons and will be put to another vote if Mrs May fails to convince enough MPs to get her withdrawal agreement passed before then.
Mrs May is hoping the threat of a 'confirmatory vote' from the electorate or 'soft' Brexit by leaving the EU with a customs union will cajole further hardline Brexiteers to support her deal.
This, and the PM's 'Back me, then sack me' plea, sets the scene for a third attempt to pass her Brexit plan tomorrow – the day Britain was due to leave the EU.
Mrs May becomes the fourth consecutive Tory prime minister to have their career wrecked by the issue of Europe.
Pressure on her to quit had been building in recent weeks, with Eurosceptic MPs unhappy with her deal, warning that they wanted a new leader to take forward the next stage of Brexit negotiations.
A senior Tory said party whips believed up to 30 Eurosceptic MPs would back Mrs May's deal only if she agreed to go.
Addressing the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs last night, an emotional Mrs May acknowledged that Brexit turmoil had been 'a testing time for our country and our party'. She called on MPs to do their 'historic duty' and back her plan.
Jobs are being lost and firms are going to the wall because of the 'Brexit black hole' of uncertainty over the British economy, a business leader said.
In an angry tirade at Westminster's politicians, British Chambers of Commerce director general Adam Marshall hit out at the 'political turmoil' caused by Brexit and warned that the country was not ready for a 'messy' no-deal scenario.
There was already a 'growing list of business casualties' and 'in many parts of our economy, real world damage is happening right now'.
Dr Marshall said firms faced: 'Increased costs. Orders lost to competitors elsewhere. Contracts unrenewed or put on hold.
'Investments postponed, cancelled or diverted elsewhere. Queries from customers that simply can't be answered.'
He added: 'Business want to get on and escape from the gravitational pull of the Brexit black hole that has sapped energy, investment and business confidence for far too long.
'But uncertainty is generating a growing list of business casualties and a litany of rising costs. That damage is happening right now.'
In a stark message to MPs he said: 'To Westminster we say - we are frustrated, we are angry, you have let British business down.
'You have focused on soundbites not substance, tactics not strategy and politics not prosperity.
'Listening without hearing.'
MPs could back Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement, agree to a long extension to the Brexit process in order to work out a fresh plan or revoke Article 50 altogether and commit to EU membership for the immediate future, he said.
He acknowledged the options were all controversial but MPs could not carry on 'chasing rainbows'.
'Like all of us in business, they need to start making tough decisions, however personally or politically difficult they might be,' Dr Marshall said.
But she acknowledged concerns about her own leadership, saying: 'I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party.
'I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations – and I won't stand in the way of that.'
Her dramatic move fired the starting gun on what promises to be a bruising Tory leadership contest this summer that will choose the next prime minister.
Tory sources said that if Mrs May's plan passes, a leadership contest will start shortly after May 22, when the UK finally leaves the EU. 
However, No 10 refused to say whether she would still depart on the same timetable if her plan is blocked or defeated.
One source said it would be 'a different scenario', adding: 'It's hard to see how we could have time for a leadership contest in quite the same way if we're still in the middle of trying to take us out.'
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey has said Labour is ready to work with other parties to resolve the Brexit deadlock.
'What is imperative now is that parties across the House - and certainly Jeremy (Corbyn) is going to be doing that before Monday - work with each other to find reasonable compromises to try to navigate a way out of this,' she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'If the Government can't find a majority - and there isn't a majority for anything in Parliament - the only option to take things forward is a general election.
'I know there are many MPs who don't agree with that synopsis so in order to overcome this impasse we have got to reach a compromise.'
Labour former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, who tabled a motion calling for any Brexit deal to be put to a 'confirmatory' referendum, said MPs now need to be prepared to compromise.
'They are going to have to look over the abyss,' she told Today.
'For some of them, they were so wedded to particular proposals, and they so passionately believed that those were right, that they didn't want anything get in the way.'
She added: 'The reason there is all this fuss about how terrible it was is because the people who want no-deal want it to look as if everything has failed so we have to go their way.' 
Jubilant anti-Brexit MPs started singing the EU anthem Beethoven's 9th symphony, Ode to Joy, in the Commons chamber last night as Mrs May's hopes of getting her deal through faded.
Remainer ex-Tory MP Anna Soubry, a member of the breakaway TIG independent group, conducted a mock choir of MPs. Then she tried to get fellow pro-Europeans to join her in a Mexican wave; several other TIG, Scots Nat and Labour MPs joined in.
'This has been a testing time for our country and our party. We're nearly there. We're almost ready to start a new chapter and build that brighter future.
'But before we can do that, we have to finish the job in hand. As I say, I don't tour the bars and engage in the gossip – but I do make time to speak to colleagues, and I have a great team in the Whips' Office. I also have two excellent PPSs.
'And I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party. I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations – and I won't stand in the way of that.
'I know some people are worried that if you vote for the Withdrawal Agreement, I will take that as a mandate to rush on into phase two without the debate we need to have. I won't – I hear what you are saying.
'But we need to get the deal through and deliver Brexit.
She addded: 'I am prepared to leave this job earlier than I intended in order to do what is right for our country and our party.
'I ask everyone in this room to back the deal so we can complete our historic duty – to deliver on the decision of the British people and leave the European Union with a smooth and orderly exit.'
The riotous scenes came during the wait for the result of the votes on the alternative Brexit options shortly after 9pm. 
The antics appeared to have been triggered when news of the DUP's latest rejection of Mrs May's plan reached MPs, dramatically reducing her hopes of getting the withdrawal agreement through.
It was followed by a row as Tory loyalists tried to stop the 'soft Brexit' motions that won most votes in the Commons last night being voted on again on Monday.
Former Tory chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin accused Mr Bercow of double standards by allowing a second vote when he had ruled against a third vote on Mrs May's deal earlier yesterday. 
The Speaker rejected his demand. Allies of the PM said she had reluctantly made the decision to quit over the past fortnight, following conversations with close political friends and her husband Philip.
Mr May stood by her side as she made a 'moving' speech to tearful staff in No 10 after making her announcement to MPs last night. Allies said the decision reflected her determination to push through a plan she believes is 'firmly in the national interest'.
One said: 'She had other options but she has put her country first. It is typically selfless.'
Justice Secretary David Gauke described her address to MPs as a 'very touching, moving speech'.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said: 'There was a sadness in the room when she said she was going to go and a feeling that she has done what she promised. She has fulfilled her commitment to putting the country first.'
Mr Rees-Mogg said: 'There was a great deal of sympathy for the Prime Minister in the room and a recognition that she is both brave and dutiful and that there was a nobility in her statement that she was putting the interests as she sees them of the country and the party first and sacrificing herself.'
Her former policy adviser George Freeman said that the PM had 'tears not far from her eyes' as she admitted: 'I have made many mistakes. I am only human. I beg you, colleagues, vote for the withdrawal agreement and I will go.'
Scottish Secretary David Mundell said: 'She is doing what she thinks is in the national interest.
'I have utmost respect for her. She has an incredible sense of duty. She sees her duty to deliver Brexit and she put that ahead of her own personal interest. It's another day in which she has put the national interest before her personal interest.'
But Labour MP Wes Streeting said the prospect of Mrs May being replaced by a Brexiteer prime minister would make it even harder to secure Labour support.
Mr Streeting said: 'Any commitments or guarantees made by Theresa May to the House of Commons are meaningless. A hard Brexiteer will be leading the country to a harder Brexit.'
The backbench plot to snatch control of Brexit hit a wall last night as none of the alternatives to Theresa May's deal secured a majority - but MPs still showed Britain they favour a softer Brexit or a second referendum - and will never deliver No Deal.  
Last night, in an unprecedented move, politicians seized control of the Commons timetable from Theresa May to hold so-called indicative votes.
The poll showed Parliament is close to agreeing on a soft Brexit with a plan for the UK remaining in a customs union with the EU defeated by 272 votes to 264, while a second referendum was rejected by 295 votes to 268. 
MPs were handed green ballot papers on which they voted Yes or No to eight options, ranging from No Deal to cancelling Brexit altogether. However, the votes descended into shambles as MPs rejected each and every one of the proposals - although its architect Sir Oliver Letwin always warned there wouldn't be a winner first time.
Ten Tories – including ministers Sir Alan Duncan, Mark Field and Stephen Hammond – supported an SNP plan to give MPs the chance to revoke Article 50 if a deal has not been agreed two days before Brexit. Some 60 Tory MPs backed the option of remaining in the single market.
The results of Wednesday's votes, in order of preference, were: 
Shadow housing minister Melanie Onn resigned after Jeremy Corbyn ordered his MPs to back a raft of soft Brexit plans, as well as a second referendum.
Some 27 Labour MPs defied the whip to reject a so-called 'confirmatory vote' on any Brexit deal. The party had instructed them to support the plan just hours after one of its senior frontbenchers publicly warned that it would be a mistake.
Sir Oliver Letwin, the architect of the Commons move, today insisted the indicative votes were not intended to give a precise answer right away - and will hold another round of votes on Monday. 
MPs are due to hold a second round of votes - unless Mrs May can get her deal through first - after none of the eight options debated on Wednesday was able to command a majority. It could be that the eight options are cut down to the most popular.
Sir Oliver told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'At some point or other we either have to get her deal across the line or accept that we have to find some alternative if we want to avoid no deal on the 12th, which I think at the moment is the most likely thing to happen.
'At the moment we are heading for a situation where, under the law, we leave without a deal on the 12th, which many of us think is not a good solution, and the question is 'Is Parliament on Monday willing to come to any view in the majority about that way forward that doesn't involve that result?''
MPs will take control of the Commons order paper again on Monday, so they can narrow down the options if Mrs May's deal has not been agreed by then – or pass legislation to try and impose their choice on her. Speaking in the Commons after the results, Sir Oliver said: 'It is of course a great disappointment that the House has not chosen to find a majority for any proposition.
'However, those of us who put this proposal forward as a way of proceeding predicted that we would not even reach a majority and for that very reason put forward a ... motion designed to reconsider these matters on Monday.'
The Prime Minister allowed her MPs to vote however they wanted on the choices after she was warned around ten junior ministers would quit if they were whipped against backing a soft Brexit.
Revoke Article 50 - 273 to 184 AGAINST 
Put forward by SNP's Joanna Cherry and backed by 33 MPs including Conservative former attorney general Dominic Grieve, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, Labour's Ben Bradshaw and all 11 members of The Independent Group. 

It demands that if no deal has been agreed on the day before Brexit that MPs will get the chance to cancel the UK's notice to Brussels it would leave the EU.
Britain is allowed to unilaterally cancel Article 50 and stay a member on its current terms, according to a ruling of the European Court. It would bring an end to the existing negotiations - but would not legally rule them being restarted. 
Second referendum - 295 to 268 AGAINST 
Tabled by Labour ex-foreign secretary Margaret Beckett to build on proposals from Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson.
It states that MPs will not sanction leaving the EU unless it has been put to the electorate for a 'confirmatory vote'.
A significant evolution of the plan is it would put any deal agreed by the Government to a public vote and not just Mrs May's plan. 
Customs union - 272 to 264 AGAINST 
Tabled by veteran Conservative Europhile Ken Clarke, backed by Labour's Yvette Cooper, Helen Goodman and chair of the Commons Exiting the EU Committee Hilary Benn and Tory former ministers Sir Oliver Letwin and Sarah Newton. 
It demands that ministers negotiate a new 'permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU' which would prevent the country being able to strike its own trade deals but make it easier for goods to move between the UK and Europe. 
Labour's plan - 307 to 237 AGAINST 
Proposed by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
It includes a comprehensive customs union but with a UK say on future trade deals and close alignment with the single market.
The plan also demands matching new EU rights and protections; participation in EU agencies and funding programmes; and agreement on future security arrangements, including access to the European Arrest Warrant.
No deal - 400 to 160 AGAINST 
Proposed by Eurosceptic Tory MP John Baron.
Tabled a motion demanding 'the UK will leave the EU on 12 April 2019' without a deal. However, a No Deal Brexit has already been rejected twice by MPs.
It would instruct the Government to abandon efforts to secure its deal and inform the EU it did not want a long extension to Article 50 either, in line with last week's EU Council. Both sides would then have a fortnight to make final preparations.  
Common Market 2.0  283 to 188 AGAINST 

Tabled by Conservatives Nick Boles, Robert Halfon and Andrew Percy and Labour's Stephen Kinnock, Lucy Powell and Diana Johnson.
The motion proposes UK membership of the European Free Trade Association and European Economic Area.
It allows continued participation in the single market and a 'comprehensive customs arrangement' with the EU after Brexit. It would be very similar to current membership.
The idea is this would remain in place until the agreement of a wider trade deal which guarantees frictionless movement of goods and an open border in Ireland. 
Single Market - 377 to 65 AGAINST 
Tory former minister George Eustice - who quit as agriculture minister this month to fight for Brexit - proposes remaining within the EEA and rejoining EFTA, but remaining outside a customs union with the EU.
The motion was also signed by Conservative MPs including former minister Nicky Morgan and head of the Brexit Delivery Group Simon Hart.
The idea would keep the UK in the European Economic Area (EEA), but unlike the Common Market 2.0 plan would not involve a customs arrangement. It is similar to Norway's deal. 
Standstill with the EU - 422 to 139 AGAINST 
Backed by senior Brexiteers in the ERG including Steve Baker and Priti Patel, this would tell the Government to seek a tariff-free trading arrangement with the EU> 
It would be based on a 'standstill' agreement saying all regulations in the UK would continue to match EU ones for up to two years.  
She and the Cabinet abstained on the indicative votes, helping her to mask the wide gaping divisions among her senior ministers on the way forward.
Commons Speaker John Bercow selected eight out of the 16 Brexit options tabled by MPs for a vote, turning down proposals to demand a unilateral right to leave the Northern Irish 'backstop ' or to require automatic revocation of Article 50 if No Deal is reached. He also rejected the so-called Malthouse Compromise Plan A – drawn up by backbenchers from Leave and Remain wings of the Tory Party – which would have implemented Mrs May's deal with the backstop replaced by 'alternative arrangements'.
Ahead of the votes, Mrs May warned she would not regard the results as binding. But former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke yesterday told BBC Radio 5 Live the Prime Minister 'would obviously have to be removed' if she ignored a consensus emerging from the indicative votes process.
Labour ordered its MPs to back a motion, tabled by former foreign secretary Dame Margaret Beckett, requiring any Brexit deal passed during this Parliament to be confirmed in a public referendum before ratification. The party also whipped its MPs to back its own alternative Brexit plan – but four Labour backbenchers voted against it. Three others – including party chairman Ian Lavery – voted for a 'managed' No Deal. Mr Corbyn had also encouraged his MPs to back the so-called Common Market 2.0 plan tabled by Mr Clarke – which would keep the country in the single market as well as a customs arrangement – but did not whip them to do so.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Mrs May criticised the Labour leader over his support for a customs union and a second referendum. She said: 'Whatever happened to straight-talking honest politics?' In a tweet, the Department for Exiting the European Union warned that the Common Market 2.0 plan 'would not respect the referendum result'.
'[It] would not end free movement of people, would not let us set our own trade policy, would not stop us sending money to the EU, [and] would make us a rule taker,' the message added.
A number of Tory MPs refused to take part in the votes. Aldershot MP Leo Docherty said none of the options presented a 'coherent path towards Brexit'. He tweeted: 'This is an exercise in Parliamentary navel-gazing and I will be abstaining.' Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom earlier warned that MPs had turned the normal 'precedent on its head' by taking control of the order paper, which sets out the parliamentary timetable for the day. She said: 'Those who are not in government are deciding the business, and there are inevitable ramifications to that.'
But former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell said Sir Oliver had played 'an absolute blinder' by making clear to Brexiteers the consequences of continuing to oppose the PM's deal. He said: 'I think Sir Oliver Letwin has laid out for all my friends and colleagues in the ERG the instruments of torture, of what awaits them if they do not support Mrs May's deal the next time it comes to a vote.'  
Allies of PM said she had reluctantly made the decision to quit over the past fortnight, following conversations with close political friends and her husband Philip.
Mr May stood by her side as she made a 'moving' speech to tearful staff in No 10 after making her announcement to MPs last night. Allies said the decision reflected her determination to push through a plan she believes is 'firmly in the national interest'.
One said: 'She had other options but she has put her country first. It is typically selfless' - but it is unclear if it can save her deal.  
The DUP's support is seen as critical to unlocking the backing of dozens of Eurosceptic MPs.
Downing Street was last night locked in frantic talks with the party in the hope of persuading its ten MPs to support the deal.
'They are tough negotiators,' one source said. 'It's not over yet.'
But one Cabinet minister said: 'If they don't move, then we don't have the votes.'
MPs last night rejected every Brexit option in a series of 'indicative votes', with a customs union, second referendum, Norway-style option and No Deal all failing to get a majority.
That, and the PM's 'Back me, then sack me' plea, sets the scene for a third attempt to pass her Brexit plan tomorrow – the day Britain was due to leave the EU.
Mrs May becomes the fourth consecutive Tory prime minister to have their career wrecked by the issue of Europe.
Pressure on her to quit had been building in recent weeks, with Eurosceptic MPs unhappy with her deal, warning that they wanted a new leader to take forward the next stage of Brexit negotiations.
A senior Tory said party whips believed up to 30 Eurosceptic MPs would back Mrs May's deal only if she agreed to go.
Addressing the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs last night, an emotional Mrs May acknowledged that Brexit turmoil had been 'a testing time for our country and our party'. She called on MPs to do their 'historic duty' and back her plan.
But she acknowledged concerns about her own leadership, saying: 'I have heard very clearly the mood of the parliamentary party.
'I know there is a desire for a new approach – and new leadership – in the second phase of the Brexit negotiations – and I won't stand in the way of that.'
Her dramatic move fired the starting gun on what promises to be a bruising Tory leadership contest this summer that will choose the next prime minister.
Tory sources said that if Mrs May's plan passes, a leadership contest will start shortly after May 22, when the UK finally leaves the EU. However, No 10 refused to say whether she would still depart on the same timetable if her plan is blocked or defeated.
One source said it would be 'a different scenario', adding: 'It's hard to see how we could have time for a leadership contest in quite the same way if we're still in the middle of trying to take us out.'
As Tory leadership jockeying gathers pace, MailOnline understands allies of Sajid Javid are contemplating a 'dream ticket' with Michael Gove that could see the pair move into No10 and No11 respectively.
They are mulling whether Jeremy Hunt could be offered Home Secretary to drop his candidacy as part of the pact, while Penny Mordaunt and Andrea Leadsom could also be handed promotions to fall into line.
There are fears that unless the main Cabinet contenders come to an arrangement between themselves their support could splinter, opening the door for Boris Johnson. 
Many believe that if he gets enough endorsements from MPs to be in the final two voted on by Tory activists he will win, but his support on the backbenches is limited.
A senior Tory source described Javid as PM and Gove as Chancellor as a 'grown up and sensible solution' that would match the current Environment Secretary's strategic thinking with the Home Secretary's public appeal and bring 'stability' at the top of the party.
'We know Michael Gove's limitations in terms of public appeal, Lynton Crosby made that very clear in 2014. He has some clear challenges to get over the line without many of the Brexit supporters who will never forgive what happened with Boris Johnson in 2016.
'Sajid Javid has broad support around the country, the polling evidence proves that.  And the fact that he has a back story that no one else in the party has.'
More than a dozen Tory MPs are poised to launch bids for the leadership after Theresa May announced she will quit if her Brexit deal is voted through.
Another MP said today: 'It's like the start line of the Grand National, but in the end Becher's Brook finds many out.'
As many as eight Cabinet ministers are expected to put their names forward, with Hunt, Gove and Javid among the frontrunners.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is seen as a strong outside bet, along with Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson. 
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd is weighing up whether to run.
Among the Cabinet outsiders are Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom, who finished second in the 2016 leadership contest that Mrs May won, but is expected to have another tilt, along with Brexiteer International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
Outside the Cabinet, the leading contenders are former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, both of whom quit Government posts over Mrs May's Brexit plans and will be vying for votes among Eurosceptic MPs.
Other MPs attempting to garner support for a run include former Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey, Tory party vice-chairman James Cleverly, foreign affairs select committee chairman Tom Tugendhat, justice minister Rory Stewart and backbench MP Johnny Mercer. 
Last night one MP said: 'It's going to be like Ben Hur – there'll be a cast of thousands.'
Nigel Evans, joint-secretary of the backbench 1922 Committee, said: 'There's going to be more runners and riders than the Grand National.'
 
Last night, bookmakers Ladbrokes installed Mr Gove and Mr Johnson as early joint favourites at 4/1 and Mr Hunt at 8/1, with Mr Raab and Mr Javid at 10/1. Not all the likely runners are serious about winning the top job, but hope to secure a better job in Cabinet by increasing their profile.
Several of the leading candidates have had 'shadow' campaign operations running for months in anticipation of Mrs May going, with supporters discreetly sounding out MPs.
The first phase of the contest will see all Tory MPs vote in a series of rounds to whittle down the candidates to the final two. Party members across the country then vote in a postal ballot to decide the winner.
Last night, No 10 officials said that if Mrs May's deal goes through in the coming days and the UK leaves the EU on May 22, she will resign as Tory leader but stay on as caretaker until the contest is finished. She would go to Japan for the G20 at the end of June, meaning the contest would last about six weeks.
Mr Hunt has long been seen as a frontrunner because of his seniority and experience, but could suffer from the 'favourite' tag. His opponents have labelled him 'Continuity May'.
Mr Javid's hopes have taken a series of blows in recent months over his handling of the case of teenager Shamima Begum who ran off from her home in east London to join Isis, and for his claim to be taking control of a migration crisis while on holiday in South Africa.
Allies of Mr Johnson believe if he gets to the final round he is likely to win because of his huge popularity among grassroots Tories. 
There is also speculation about Mr Johnson and Miss Rudd forming a powerful joint ticket, which would bring together a leading Brexiteer and a leading Remainer and could help reunite the party.
Mr Gove's prospects have sky-rocketed in recent weeks after several barnstorming performances at the despatch box, including his closing speech in the no confidence debate in January when he savaged Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.  
Two years ago the British people voted by a decisive margin for independence from EU rule. 
Yet instead of embracing the global opportunities offered by the referendum verdict, too many ministers and mandarins now appear desperate to emasculate Brexit, keeping Britain under the governance of Brussels.
Such a fudge would be highly damaging to both the British economy and our democracy. But it seems to be the direction in which the Government is now heading.
Today, Theresa May hosts her vital summit at Chequers, where she hopes the Cabinet will agree a strategy for the final negotiations with the EU on the withdrawal deal. 
By all accounts her plan, drawn up by her chief European adviser Olly Robbins, will involve the continuation of some kind of customs union, single market membership for goods, and the jurisdiction of the European Courts.
That is hardly the outcome that the electorate backed in June 2016.
One of the key arguments used by the politicians to prop up this sort of compromise is that British businesses are terrified of so-called 'hard' Brexit and want as close a commercial alignment with the EU as possible. 
In recent days, major international firms such as Airbus, BMW and Jaguar have made just such a case.
Yet I believe that alarmism is not only unjustified but also unrepresentative of British business as a whole.
Many of the corporate lobbyists – used to decades of operating within the EU's bureaucracy – are only thinking of their narrow, short-term vested interests instead of the long-term future of the UK.
They certainly do not speak for me and many other entrepreneurs.
As an international hotelier with a chain of 11 establishments, including three in Germany, three in Italy and one in Belgium, I might have been expected to join the corporate chorus of anxiety about Brexit.
But I feel just the opposite.
For me, the brighter prospects for Britain lie in national freedom, whereas the retention of control by Brussels will mean the shackling of enterprise and global trade. It is precisely my long experience in business that has left me so disillusioned with the EU.
Working a great deal on the continent, I have seen at first hand that excessive regulations and bureaucratic intervention have created a hostile environment for enterprise.
In many EU countries, the burden of state levies can add an additional 45 to 55 per cent to labour costs, compared to about 12 per cent in Britain. 
Moreover, trade unions are dominant, as are rigid demarcation rules about which employee is allowed to perform which task. 
At times, the workplace culture in parts of continental Europe reminds me of sclerotic Britain before Margaret Thatcher's revolution.
But that is why some global businesses like the EU.
Operating in favour of the corporate giants and trade unions, the heavy-handed Brussels regime can be a vehicle for shutting down competition and stifling innovation.
The same uncompetitive spirit would be forced on Britain if we had to remain in the customs union and single market.
Other concerns voiced by the big business lobby are little more than scaremongering, like the claim that any restriction on European freedom of movement will badly hurt recruitment by British firms. This is untrue. 
My family's hotel chain hired staff from all over the world, including Europe, long before the EU was even created. We will continue to do so after Brexit, especially because so many young people from Europe want to come here to learn English.
Contrary to the hollow warnings from the pro-EU campaigners, migration controls will not mean an end to European migration. Just look at the U.S., which has tough border controls and visa requirements, yet has the highest level of legal immigration in the developed world.
Big business representatives also frequently express their disquiet that Britain could 'crash out' of the EU without a deal, and therefore would be forced to operate on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. But the dangers of such a scenario have been wildly exaggerated.
More than half of our total exports, made up of commerce outside the EU, are traded under WTO rules. There are no cries of anguish from those exporters, no long queues of lorries or great hold-ups at ports. The narrative of doom is misplaced.
WTO rules will work in Britain's favour post-Brexit, because they are based on legal requirements which ban arbitrary discrimination against a particular country's goods, and also insist on seamless customs procedures.
Is the EU or the UK seriously going to ignore the WTO system and act in defiance of international law? Ah, cry the anti-Brexiteers, but traders may have to pay tariffs on goods if Britain leaves the EU without an agreement. But at worst, average customs duties will amount to just 3 to 4 per cent. That's a figure dwarfed by the 15 per cent devaluation in sterling against the Euro since the referendum, a shift that's provided a massive boost for exports.
In any case, it is within the remit of the British Government not to levy any tariffs on EU goods coming into this country: we could even adopt unilateral free trade.
Big businesses should be making those arguments rather than seeking to undermine the democratic verdict of the electorate.
Britain's position is far stronger than the pro-EU lobby pretends. There is no reason for any defeatism.
We are the sixth largest economy in the world, a global cultural force and a major military power. Our huge financial contributions to Brussels, amounting to 11 per cent of the entire EU budget, should give us tremendous leverage in negotiations. So should the EU's £100 billion trade surplus with us.
It is not in the interests of any European exporters – from Italian fashion houses to German car makers – to lessen that trade. The business imperative on all sides is for a sensible deal.
The business lobbying groups, particularly the Confederation of British Industry, are wrong about Brexit, just as they have been hopelessly wrong on so many other policies in the past.
In the 1970s, they were in favour of state control of industrial strategy and appeasement of the unions. In the early 1980s, they were strongly opposed to Margaret Thatcher, a stance that angered me because I recognised that she was trying to free businesses.
In the same vein, they have been wrong about us joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, the single currency and Project Fear. Confounding their grim recent forecasts about a recession in the event of a Leave vote, the economy has boomed, manufacturing is at a record high, and unemployment at a record low.
They keep getting it wrong on European policy because they are not the authentic voice of British business.
Swayed too often by the global conglomerates, they ignore the small and medium-sized companies that are the backbone of the domestic economy.
For all the noise about the EU, it should be recognised that businesses representing 88 per cent of Britain's GDP are not involved in trade with Europe at all, even though they have to follow Brussels' rules and regulations.
One recent survey by the accountancy firm Grant Thornton showed that a large proportion of British businesses are totally unconcerned about the effects of Brexit and have made no special preparations to deal with them.
In their demand for continued alignment with the EU, what the Europhile lobbyists ignore is Brussels' obsession with achieving full political integration.
The whole purpose of the European Project is to create a federal entity through the abolition of national identities. The single market, free movement and the Euro are all political, not economic, instruments to achieve the goal of 'ever-closer union'.
That's why if Britain remains tied to Brussels, British sovereignty will continue to be dramatically eroded.
The pro-EU advocates like to speak of 'our national interest', but that is a delusion. In the long term, there will be no British nation at all if we remain in the EU's bureaucratic empire.
Alternatively, national freedom beckons if the Government seizes the moment and truly liberates us from the bureaucratic and undemocratic monster of the EU.
Theresa May is in a difficult position, with no Parliamentary majority and a divided Cabinet. But the one sure way she can rebuild her authority is by implementing the decision of the British people.
 
Britain will witness a surge in neo-Nazi extremist groups if MPs block or weaken Brexit, a Cabinet minister warns today.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the 17million who voted to leave the EU would feel 'cheated' by any moves to water down Theresa May's deal or thwart our exit entirely.
This would have grave implications for our democracy, he said, ending centuries of moderate politics.
His warning came as a poll found the majority of Tory voters now want MPs to back the Prime Minister's Brexit deal – with 55 per cent in favour, up eight points on last month, and 31 per cent against, down seven.
Labour support for the deal has also risen by eight points to 30 per cent, with 51 per cent opposed, six points down in the same period, according to the Survation survey. Overall the public is still against her deal by 41 points to 34, although the gap has more than halved. In other developments:
In a chilling intervention, Mr Grayling said blocking Brexit could end the 350 years of 'moderate' politics Britain has enjoyed since the bloody English Civil War.
Doing so would provoke more 'nasty' incidents such as this week's 'Nazi' taunts at pro-Remain Tory MP Anna Soubry outside Parliament, he argued.
It would also play into the hands of 'disturbing' extremists such as ex-English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, who has been tipped to take over Ukip.
Brexiteer Mr Grayling, one of Mrs May's closest Cabinet allies, also fired a warning to fellow Eurosceptic Tories.
He said they will rue the day if they join forces with pro-Remain Conservatives and kill off the Prime Minister's deal in Tuesday's crunch Commons vote. 
He told the Mail: 'People have to think long and hard about how they are going to vote. This is too important for political game-playing and I urge Conservative MPs who back Brexit and others to back the deal.
'If not, we risk a break with the British tradition of moderate, mainstream politics that goes back to the Restoration in 1660.
'MPs need to remember that Britain, its people and its traditions are the mother of Parliaments. We ignore that and the will of the people at our peril.'
Nearly 200,000 people died in the English Civil War, which resulted in a short-lived republic followed by the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Mr Grayling's remarks came amid reports that Mrs May could lose next week's vote by up to 200 votes.
But the Transport Secretary, who has known the Prime Minister for more than 20 years and led her successful Tory leadership campaign in 2016, praised her 'Churchillian' resilience.
He said: 'Many people in history eventually succeeded just by keeping going, not giving up. 'Keep buggering on,' as Churchill said. The public can see she is determined and passionate and doing her best for the country.'
Mr Grayling stopped short of predicting riots if Brexit is weakened or reversed. But he added: 'People should not underestimate this. We would see a different tone in our politics. A less tolerant society, a more nationalistic nation.
'It will open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe.
'If MPs who represent seats that voted 70 per cent to leave say 'sorry guys, we're still going to have freedom of movement', they will turn against the political mainstream.'
The minister said reports Tommy Robinson could become Ukip's next leader were 'deeply disturbing', saying he was just the kind of rabble-rouser who would use any attempt to stop Brexit to fan extremism. He suggested the abuse of Miss Soubry by supporters of Robinson in Westminster on Monday could be a taste of worse to come.
'There's already a nastiness and unpleasantness in our politics, more people with extreme views, more people willing to behave in an uncivilised way,' he said.
Several European countries, including Germany and Greece, have seen violent protests by neo-Nazi anti-immigration parties. In recent weeks France has seen a series of riots provoked by the 'Yellow Vest' movement, which has been hijacked by political extremists.
Theresa May was thrown a lifeline last night after a poll showed public support for her Brexit deal has grown among both Tory and Labour voters.
The number of Conservative supporters who want MPs to back her deal has risen to 55 per cent – up eight points in five weeks. Meanwhile the proportion against it has fallen by seven points to 31 per cent, according to a survey for this newspaper.
Some 30 per cent of Labour voters also think MPs should support her deal, a similar eight point increase, with 51 per cent against.
But the Survation poll is further evidence of the huge task Mrs May faces in rescuing her deal, which seems set for defeat in the Commons on Tuesday. Overall, it is still opposed by 41 per cent to 34 per cent of the public, although opposition has fallen by nine points since December.
Worryingly for Mrs May, Labour has also taken a three-point lead over the Tories with the Conservatives on 38 to Labour’s 41.
But the poll – which questioned 1,013 adults on Thursday and yesterday – shows that despite lacking enthusiasm for the Prime Minister’s deal, voters appear to prefer it to the prospect of leaving the EU with no deal at all. 
Given a straight choice between Mrs May’s offer or ‘no deal’, 41 per cent support her deal, compared to 32 per cent who back ‘no deal’. Tory voters’ support for the Prime Minister contrasts with other recent surveys, which have shown Conservative Party members oppose her deal.
Even if her deal is thrown out by MPs next week, voters want her to produce an alternative ‘Plan B’ instead of leaving the EU without any agreement with Brussels, the poll found. A total of 44 per cent favour a ‘Plan B’ – seen by most as likely to offer a ‘softer’ Brexit – with 32 per cent in favour of ‘no deal’.
Mrs May was furious when rebel Conservative MPs defeated her in the Commons this week, joining forces with Labour to force her to produce a ‘Plan B’ in just three days if she loses on Tuesday. But the public backs the rebellion by 42 per cent to 35 per cent – and they also support Speaker John Bercow’s decision to allow it.
The survey offers other crumbs of comfort for Mrs May. Asked who they trust to handle Brexit, 34 per cent chose the Prime Minister, with 21 per cent for Mr Corbyn.
She defeats Boris Johnson on the question of who is ‘best to handle Brexit’ by a margin of 34 per cent to 20 per cent. In another blow to Brexit hardliners like Mr Johnson who advocate ‘no deal’, when voters were asked to choose between that and staying in the EU, ‘Remain’ won by 46 to 41 per cent.
The survey also provides fresh evidence of the deeply-conflicted views that Brexit has provoked in the public. A total of 45 per cent say Mrs May should resign if she is defeated, with 39 per cent in favour of her staying on.
But Tory voters have not given up on her. An overwhelming 66 per cent say she should carry on in No 10 if she loses on Tuesday, with only 26 per cent in favour of her stepping down.
A total of 26 per cent of the public say she is ‘bad’ for EU negotiations, with just 21 per cent stating she is ‘good’. But far more, 37 per cent, say whether she stays or goes will make little difference to Brexit.
Brexit ‘may not even happen’: Biggest Leave donors give up on Brexit ever happening as Jeremy Hunt fears ‘paralysis’ if deal is rejected 
Two of the biggest donors to the Leave campaign say they have given up on Brexit ever happening.
Billionaire Peter Hargreaves and veteran hedge fund manager Crispin Odey do not believe Britain will end up leaving the European Union amid the deadlock in Parliament.
It came as Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned yesterday that it is more likely than ever that MPs will work to block the UK leaving without a deal.
Mr Hargreaves, who gave £3.2million to the Leave campaign, said: ‘I have totally given up. I am totally in despair, I don’t think Brexit will happen at all.’
The co-founder of investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown added: ‘They [pro-Europeans] are banking on the fact that people are so fed up with it that they will just say, “Sod it, we will stay”.
‘I do see that attitude. The problem is when something doesn’t happen for so long you feel less angry about it.’
Mr Odey, who donated more than £870,000 to pro-Leave groups, said that while he does not believe there will be a second referendum, he does not think Brexit will take place either.
‘My view is that it ain’t going to happen,’ he said. ‘I just can’t see how it happens with that configuration of Parliament.’
Amber Rudd yesterday declined three times to say she would stay in the Cabinet if Theresa May opts for a no-deal Brexit.
The Work and Pensions Secretary, who backed Remain during the 2016 referendum campaign, said on Radio 4’s Today she was ‘committed’ to ensuring that the UK does not leave the EU without a withdrawal deal.
Miss Rudd said it was ‘right’ for the Government to make preparations for no-deal, but did not think the outcome ‘would be good for this country’. 
Pressed for a third time by interviewer Justin Webb on whether she would quit if Mrs May went for the no-deal option, Miss Rudd cut him short, saying: ‘Thank you very much, Justin.’ 
But asked again later whether she would resign, following a speech on welfare in south London, she said: ‘I am committed to making sure that we get the Withdrawal Agreement through next week.
‘I have been in and out of Cabinet and I find you have more influence in Cabinet.’
Meanwhile it emerged that former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has received more than £23,000 from Tory election guru Sir Lynton Crosby, in a sign that he may be considering a potential leadership bid.
Mr Hunt yesterday warned of ‘Brexit paralysis’ if MPs vote down Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement on Tuesday, potentially meaning the UK does not leave at all.
In an appeal for Tory MPs to get behind the deal, the Foreign Secretary said the past week has shown they cannot rely on no-deal being the default outcome if the agreement fails to pass.
He said Commons Speaker John Bercow has shown that he is ‘willing to frustrate the Government at every opportunity’, and it was not possible for the minority Tory administration to control what happened in Parliament.
Mr Hunt told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I think Parliament is very committed to try to stop no-deal, but I think we have to recognise that there is a deal on the table, it does broadly deliver the Brexit people voted for, and if we don’t find a way to get this through, we are taking some very big risks. 
'Brexit paralysis potentially leading to no Brexit is something I think would be incredibly damaging for the long-term future of this country.’
Mrs May is expected to spend the weekend in talks with Brussels over last-minute concessions ahead of the Commons vote.
City traders may be paid the big bucks, but it’s gamblers who saw Brexit coming first.
A study has found that those who placed bets on the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum got the Leave result right at around 3am on June 24. 
But it took traders in the City an hour longer to figure it out, potentially losing them millions of pounds.
Based on figures from online gambling firm Betfair, the odds shifted from Remain to Leave between 10pm and 3am.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge suggest traders may have been in a ‘bubble’, making them less able to predict real voters’ intentions.
It should have been possible to predict the Leave victory at 1am based on election results from regions across Britain.
She is also set to speak to more trade union and business leaders in a desperate bid to rally support.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker yesterday said that ‘every effort’ must be made ahead of Tuesday’s vote to avoid no-deal, which he said would be a ‘catastrophe’ for both sides.
But he said the EU was only willing to offer ‘clarifications’ on the agreement and this should ‘not be confused with a renegotiation’.
It is expected there could be an exchange of letters between the EU and UK on Monday with reassurances about how the backstop to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland could only be a temporary arrangement. Downing Street last night dismissed claims that Brexit could be delayed until after March 29 as there is not enough time to pass the necessary legislation.
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve yesterday said that if MPs reject Mrs May’s deal, the Government should immediately strike the date from legislation before asking the EU for an extension of the two-year Article 50 process.
Meanwhile, in a rare boost for Mrs May, former Labour minister Jim Fitzpatrick said he was close to supporting her deal.
The Poplar and Limehouse MP told the Commons: ‘At some point we need to recognise the danger of no-deal is still there and the only real alternative on the table is the Prime Minister’s deal.’
Conservative MP George Freeman, who announced on Thursday ‘with a heavy heart’ that he would back the agreement, yesterday said he expected as many as 40 other critics to do the same.
What is the customs union?
The customs union is a trade agreement between EU states who agree not to impose tariffs on each other’s goods as they cross borders. They also apply the same tariffs on imports from countries outside the customs union.
What are its advantages?
Staying in the customs union – or forming a new customs union after Brexit – would mean the UK could continue to trade tariff-free with other EU states and goods would, by and large, circulate freely. It would dramatically reduce border checks at Dover and other ports and would also go some distance to solving the problem of keeping an open Northern Ireland border.
And the disadvantages?
Britain would be unable to cut tariffs with the rest of the world – or negotiate its own trade deals with third countries. It would not regain its seat at the World Trade Organisation and the idea of an independent trade policy – and significant new deals with the US, China and Japan – would be impossible. Brussels would be able to offer access to the UK market as part of trade negotiations with third countries, without the UK having a veto.
Who wants to stay in?
Labour’s policy is to form a new customs union with the EU. But party leader Jeremy Corbyn also wants a say in negotiating trade deals – widely seen as an impossible demand. Cabinet ministers who backed Remain, including Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and Chancellor Philip Hammond, have urged Theresa May to consider permanent membership of a customs union if her deal falls through – in the hope of winning over Labour MPs.
Could that get the deal through?
In theory there is a majority for a customs union in Parliament, but moving in that direction would break one of the Prime Minister’s red lines and she would be deeply reluctant to take such a step. Equally, it is unclear how many Labour MPs would support the deal even with a customs union attached. Mr Corbyn could say the deal still fails one or other of his tests and whip his MPs against it – or make other demands. On the other side, moving towards a customs union could cost Mrs May Tory MPs’ support and lead to resignations of Cabinet Brexiteers.
What would the EU say?
If the UK wanted to reopen the deal to put customs union membership on the table, the EU could make new demands of the UK. To achieve frictionless trade, the UK might also have to accept EU regulations applying to goods. Might Brussels then say this ‘high-alignment’ Brexit means the UK must accept free movement of people as well?
Just as Britain is finding its feet after the political turmoil of recent months, an unholy alliance of City fund managers, Lib Dem peers and die-hard Remain campaigners have been given fresh licence to unleash their wrecking tactics.
If there is one thing that unites the country, it is a yearning for greater certainty and stability after the wrench of the referendum. We were starting to see just that.
The UK economy has proved far more resilient than the doom-mongers predicted. 
The International Monetary Fund reversed its recession forecast. 
Now, it says, Britain will be the fastest-growing major economy in 2016 even though the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney had warned of recession.
Yesterday, the Bank predicted higher than expected economic growth for the next two years. 
Meanwhile, from Apple to Nissan, international businesses have announced fresh investment in the UK.
In the wider country, however they voted, the British people now want to see a united front among politicians, to get the best deal for Britain as we negotiate our departure from Europe. 
As a member of the Select Committee on Exiting the EU, I am well aware that a huge amount of work is already going into Parliamentary scrutiny of the Brexit process.
Against this backdrop, the High Court has opened a Pandora’s box of uncertainty. 
Its ivory-tower reasoning was that UK citizens would lose certain rights after we left the EU – regardless of the outcome of Brexit negotiations – like the right to appeal to the European Court of Justice.
Yet, it was precisely to avoid such meddling by foreign courts that so many people voted Leave.
The ruling says Parliament must approve the decision to trigger Article 50. But what would Parliament actually vote on? 
The simple decision to start negotiations? Or some kind of legislation governing the Brexit process that could be sabotaged by stubborn Remain MPs adding endless delaying amendments?
The judges were silent as to what would be acceptable. And don’t forget that it’s not just elected MPs who must vote on these issues. 
The unelected House of Lords must, too. And you can bet your bottom dollar there are hordes of Remainer peers just waiting to overturn the decision made by those awful oiks the voters.
Frankly, the prospect of the unelected House of Lords forming a roadblock might just be the last straw that galvanises the political will to remove them altogether.
There must be a strong chance that when ministers appeal against this decision in the Supreme Court, the most senior judges will row back on – if not overturn – yesterday’s maverick decision.
But if the Supreme Court upholds the decision, Parliament will have to hold a vote. 
Then, all those Remain MPs – especially Labour and Lib Dems – who vowed to respect the referendum verdict on June 23 will finally have their bluffs called and will have to prove they meant it.
Ultimately, there is the prospect of an early general election to uphold the verdict of the people.
Conspiracy theorists are already musing that pro-EU Blairites in the Labour party want to use a Parliamentary vote on Brexit to force an early general election as their best chance of getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn (presuming he would get a drubbing at the polls).
Yet for voters in Hartlepool and Harwich, and Sunderland and Surrey, all these Westminster machinations are simply political parlour games of which they take a very dim view. 
Most people now simply want us to get on and deliver Brexit.
The other point to make is that those commentators who say this High Court ruling is a victory for Parliamentary scrutiny are talking nonsense. 
There is endless scrutiny already going on! This week, the Commons held its seventh session on Brexit. 
Parliament’s Select Committee on Exiting the EU has also began its work of investigations and scrutiny.
There will be countless more debates, and no doubt a vote on the final deal we strike with Brussels. 
But there is a world of difference between wanting rigorous scrutiny and allowing Parliament – which voted by six to one to allow the British people a referendum – to backtrack on Brexit.
Die-hard Remainers brandishing the banner of democracy are wolves in sheep’s clothing. 
They are unleashing uncertainty, just as confidence in the economy is growing. 
They are undermining the Government’s negotiating position in Europe. 
And they are sticking two fingers up at the 33million Britons – whichever way they voted – who participated in the referendum.
In truth, this may prove to be Custer’s Last Stand for irreconcilable Remainers. Many are still re-living the referendum battle, but the mood in the country has shifted.
By charging headlong against the will of the British people, they are on a collision course with democracy which they can’t win. 
All they can do is undermine the unity of purpose that we need, now more than ever, as we negotiate Brexit and chart Britain’s course for the future.
The Chancellor yesterday found himself obliged to read out to the Commons figures about Britain’s indebtedness that, if they featured on the balance sheet of a public company, would cause its shares to slump and its bosses to quit.
Because this is Britain, however, which has been living beyond its means since at least 1939, a few Tory optimists applauded the Government’s prudence, while Labour and the Scottish Nationalists renewed their mindless demands for an end to ‘austerity’.
Philip Hammond delivered his first Autumn Statement with considerable brio and some jokes designed to show he is not merely the bland accountant his critics claim.
We are embarking on ‘a new chapter in our country’s history’, he said, and it is his task to ensure our economy is ready ‘to seize the opportunities ahead . . . to prepare it to be resilient as we exit the EU’.
To this end, he plans a big increase in local and national infrastructure spending, and maintenance of planned tax cuts and welfare spending, despite a steeply increased prediction for public borrowing in the coming years, so it will rise from 84 per cent of GDP last year to 87.3 per cent this year and peak at 90.2 per cent in 2017-18.
The Autumn Statement has become a second Budget, which is why the Chancellor announced his intention to abolish it and have a single November Budget to provide breathing space for government and allow business to prepare for announced tax and regulation changes to be implemented in the following April.
Shocks
This is sensible. It is doubtful whether more than one in 20 of the MPs assembled yesterday understood a word Hammond said or a number that he rehearsed.
The average voter would have listened to the speech live only if they fancied taking a pleasant afternoon nap.
The undeniable reality, however, is that Britain is still spending more than it earns. Over the next five years, the national balance sheet will be £122 billion worse off than was predicted in George Osborne’s March Budget.
Our productivity is dire: 30 pc below that of the U.S. and Germany, 20 pc worse than France, even 8 pc under Italy’s.
Public spending has fallen from a high of 45 pc of GDP in 2010 to 40 pc today, which the Chancellor says shows ‘controlling public spending is compatible with world-class public services’.
Yet the figure is still far too high for the long-term health of the national finances.
But Hammond is a politician and he had to deliver his statement at a time of almost unparalleled unease and fear among the political class around the world not only about Brexit, but about the future of the EU and now — almost incredibly — of the U.S.
Those in power in the world’s democracies are feeling terrified of voters, who in recent times have visited upon them such stunning shocks and upsets.
For that reason, the Prime Minister and her Chancellor saw his first task as being to steady nerves, calm markets and strike a note of optimism.
This he did, making the very best of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s predictions that Britain’s growth compares favourably with that of the rest of the world.
While it is predicted to slow considerably next year and there are warning signs about inflation, the Government argues that the economy will continue to defy the doomsters, as it has done since June’s EU referendum.
Hammond knows this country can only prosper outside the EU as a low-tax, low-regulation and low-pay economy, though he didn’t admit to the last bit yesterday.
The first big question about his remarks is whether he can justify his promised big infrastructure spend. Many of us are sceptical about the HS2 rail link and the Hinkley Point nuclear project, which the new Government has endorsed.
There seems a better case for a more modest initiative to fund research and development, together with new super-fast internet broadband links to propel Britain further into the age of the ‘knowledge economy’.
The Chancellor has nodded through all sorts of spending measures previewed in the March Budget by his predecessor.
He has maintained the ‘triple lock’ guaranteeing pensions increases (while announcing it will be reviewed) and freezing fuel duty for a seventh successive year.
Hammond trumpeted the last measure as an effective tax cut to help ‘millions of hard-working people’. But is this really the time for cutting any tax?
Terrified
He made much of funding a one-off £7.6 million grant to save the great crumbling Yorkshire mansion Wentworth Woodhouse, a measure obviously designed to please Our Friends In The North.
But it is hard to imagine any rational case for giving a farthing of public money to Wentworth when the Royal Navy is reduced to sailing its remaining ships in the bath.
Conspicuous by its absence from the statement was any significant mention of the NHS, right up there alongside welfare as the principal charge upon the Exchequer, and facing equally rampant costs.
Almost every man, woman and mouse associated with the health service knows its present financial structure is unsustainable and must be reformed, starting by imposing small charges on those able to pay, just as free travel passes for better-off pensioners should have been abolished yesterday.
David Cameron’s government was terrified of tackling this unexploded NHS bomb, even after winning a General Election with an absolute majority.
Theresa May’s successor regime shows no stomach for doing so, either. May and Hammond are no more ready to announce charges for NHS services than they are to shut down the Brigade of Gurkhas (which would be another economically prudent, but politically lethal measure).
They know they will require all their political capital to steer Britain through the minefields of Brexit and the economic turbulence that was probably coming anyway, whether we voted to leave the EU or not.
They are unwilling to risk trouble anywhere they do not need to have it.
Thus, yesterday, more chunks of dripping meat — or rather, English taxpayers’ money — were pushed through the bars of Scottish cages, and assorted titbits promised to those in the North who feel excluded from the South-East’s prosperity.
Hammond said that nowhere else in the developed world is the productivity gap so wide as it is in Britain between London and the rest of our country.
Most of us recognise this as an inherently unhealthy and politically dangerous state of affairs, but it is hard for the Chancellor or anyone else to do much about it.
Government-launched Industrial Strategies, which the Prime Minister has talked much about since she took office, have a poor record of success.
In the years ahead, neither we nor our rulers must be allowed to forget how many problems we face that have absolutely nothing to do with Europe: a huge trade deficit, failing education system, lagging productivity.
Philip Hammond is a dry stick, but an intelligent man who knows this. He also knows how little room for manoeuvre he enjoys when international confidence is precarious and our national debt monstrously high.
Caution
During Prime Minister’s Questions before yesterday’s statement, one of the SNP’s imbecile commissars demanded to know how Mrs May could ‘sleep in her warm bed at night’, knowing the privations to which her austerity policies are subjecting the nation.
She replied tersely and absolutely rightly: ‘Austerity is about living within our means.’
That mantra can’t be repeated too often. A key question about the Autumn Statement is whether political caution has caused the Chancellor not to be austere enough — to avoid making painful, if necessary, cuts.
In these turbulent times, he deserves the benefit of the doubt, as he put a bold and cheerful face on the prospect before us. ‘We have made our choices and set our course,’ he said.
Yesterday, the Commons did not hear many hard truths about our predicament, nor was it confronted with any tough choices or hairshirt policies.
But Philip Hammond did what was almost certainly essential to avert an economic downturn. He offered an optimistic vision for Britain’s future which we can all unite in hoping to see fulfilled.
Yet again the knives are out for Boris Johnson. Yesterday, Downing Street officials accused the Foreign Secretary of naked disloyalty bordering on outright treachery.
According to senior sources, he was given an almighty slap-down in Cabinet.
His crime? He was blamed for leaking to the Press, ahead of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, that he would tell fellow ministers that the Government should use a so-called ‘Brexit dividend’ to invest an extra £5 billion a year in the NHS.
Theresa May led the charge against Johnson in what The Times called ‘one of the most brutal assaults on a leading member of the Government in recent times’.
In a historical context, there were certainly echoes in the clash between the pair of the feud between Michael Heseltine and Margaret Thatcher. 
That toxic fight ended badly. Heseltine quit the Cabinet in 1986 during the Westland Affair — furious his wish to rescue the European helicopter firm was being ignored as the PM favoured a rival U.S. deal.
It arguably was the beginning of the end of Thatcher’s premiership. I believe the clash between Johnson and May could turn out to be just as serious.
After all, it concerns two of the country’s most senior politicians and involves two of the most viscerally important issues of the age: health service spending and Brexit.
It is no exaggeration to say this Johnson-triggered bust-up could lead to the downfall of the May administration.
Yes, I accept Johnson is a man of unbridled ambition who possesses a near genius for self-promotion.
But, in this instance, I am convinced he was making a principled stand as the champion of those 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU and who he fears are being betrayed as the Government delivers an unsatisfactory Brexit deal.
To say Mrs May and fellow ministers responded badly to this is an understatement.
In a carefully choreographed attempt to humiliate Boris in Cabinet, a number of his colleagues spoke in turn — each plunging in the knife.
Liam Fox, Johnson’s fellow Brexiteer, was first to take aim. Although from the Tory Right-wing, Fox has manoeuvred himself to become teacher’s pet in the May Cabinet.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd, a one-time passionate Remainer, warned the Foreign Secretary that he could not be trusted if he continued to leak confidential material.
Rudd’s school-mistress act comes as no surprise. During the referendum debate, she described Boris as ‘not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening’.
But what is distressing is that it transpires the anti-EU Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, was lukewarm in his support for his Cabinet colleague.
Although the two men fronted the Leave campaign together, this is not the first time Gove has betrayed Johnson.
He torpedoed Johnson’s Tory leadership bid after the fall of David Cameron — putting himself forward as a candidate and saying that ‘Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead’.
The fact is that Brexit has taught us several fascinating lessons about the nature of politics and the fragility of loyalty and friendship.
Needless to say, the BBC and the Remainer Press have revelled in Johnson’s perceived humiliation, while pro-EU Tory MP Anna Soubry called for him to be sacked.
This serial rebel’s reasoning — that Johnson has been ‘disloyal’ — showed a stunning lack of self-awareness.
The real issue here is not whether Johnson showed disloyalty by speaking out of turn.
At issue is a dispute that goes to the very heart of Brexit — and centres on whether Britain genuinely breaks free from the EU or there is a soft Brexit which leaves this country’s economy and laws still connected to the moribund, unaccountable and unelected Brussels-run behemoth.
For more than six months, Johnson has been arguing for a ‘clean Brexit’, whereby total separation from the EU will be achieved in March next year.
However, the majority of the Cabinet — including Chancellor Philip Hammond and Rudd — want Britain to retain membership of key European institutions well beyond that date. Johnson argues that their strategy is fatally flawed.
If Britain can retain privileged trading relations with the remaining 27 EU countries only by staying subject to the control of Brussels, we will be in the worst possible world, where we are neither fully in or out of the EU — leaving us worse off than before the referendum.
While some ministers agree with Johnson, he is the only senior figure to have made clear where he stands on this vital issue.
There is no doubt that by doing so he has shown courage and principle. But as a result he is hated by Cabinet mediocrities jealous of his appeal to all sections of voters and of his deft political skills.
Worryingly, they have Downing Street and most of the Civil Service on their side. 
Whether or not you agree with Boris Johnson on Brexit, I believe he has the moral high ground in this epic battle.
For it cannot be stressed too strongly that he is the only senior member of Mrs May’s Cabinet who did not campaign for Remain in 2016.
This raises an awkward question. How can a Remain-dominated Cabinet force a positive outcome from EU negotiators when it is universally known that they opposed Brexit as recently as 19 months ago?
This is why I take issue with Johnson’s numerous enemies who argue that he is an ambitious rogue, acting purely out of self-interest and the desire to replace Mrs May as PM.
Quite the opposite is the case. As Britain advances towards Brexit, Johnson is one of the very few ministers acting according to their core beliefs.
Yes, I understand the frustration of his colleagues who believe he treacherously gave a private Press briefing ahead of this week’s Cabinet meeting — behaviour which is against Cabinet rules.
Yet his convictions on the subject were no secret. He had already raised the subject with Mrs May.
His views date back to the referendum campaign, when he toured the country on the Leave battle-bus which carried a slogan saying that ‘£350 million a week’ would be saved by Britain leaving the EU.
Two weeks, ago, he said that figure was an underestimate, saying it could be as much as £438 million by the end of a post-Brexit transition period.
Johnson is determined that the promise Brexiteers such as him made ahead of the referendum must be honoured. 
Ever since the Brexit vote, Johnson has been forced to confront accusations that the NHS pledge was a lie.
For his part, he’s entitled to be depressed by the lack of verve and exuberance brought to the Brexit negotiations under Mrs May’s leadership.
The most egregious example of this is Chancellor Hammond seeming to talk of Brexit as though it is a nasty disease which needs to be cured.
By contrast, Johnson wants Brexit to be seen as a huge positive for people — and associate it with a boost to NHS spending at a time when hospitals are under siege.
In doing so, he is bringing drive and a sense of optimism to the Brexit planning which has unquestionably been lacking from the Prime Minister and her senior colleagues.
Inevitably, there have been renewed mutterings about Mrs May’s lack of direction.
Of course, such complaints are dangerous not only for her, but for the country as a whole.
For all her faults, Mrs May has brought stability to the Government since she became Prime Minister 18 months ago.
But she would be wise to listen carefully to her Foreign Secretary’s message.
Extra spending on the NHS, courtesy of Brexit, may be unpopular among the Remainers in her Cabinet.
But, as Boris knows, it is something which resonates widely and very strongly among British voters.
Yesterday’s announcement that Parliament will be suspended is the biggest gamble that any British prime minister has taken in 80 years.
If it pays off, Boris Johnson will be a hero to millions. If it fails, he will be out of No 10 before you can say ‘Jeremy Corbyn’.
Many people have scoffed at the notion that Johnson’s name can ever be mentioned in the same breath as that of Winston Churchill.
Johnson has hardly been subtle in trying to help this idea take root, not least by writing a book five years ago about our national hero — The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History.
Of course, Churchill had gifts of oratory, intellect and statesmanship far beyond anything we’ve seen yet from Johnson.
But one of Churchill’s most obvious traits was his risk-taking. And risk-taking is just what Johnson is doing by suspending Parliament.
Daring
We saw it in Churchill’s advocacy in 1915 of the daring Dardanelles campaign to knock Turkey out of the war and threaten the Germans’ southern flank. But, pinned down by ferocious Turkish resistance, the British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops suffered a quarter of a million casualties, and Lord Kitchener was forced to order a humiliating evacuation.
Churchill’s grand plan to bring a speedy end to the war was a disaster and cost him his Cabinet post.
During World War II, Churchill was oblivious to personal risk. George VI had to talk him out of heading to France to witness the D-Day landings.
Since becoming PM, Johnson’s own physical risks on the other side of the English Channel have so far been restricted to swimming several yards out to sea when he took a dip during the G7 summit in Biarritz last weekend.
But he is entering much deeper waters by proroguing Parliament, involving the Queen in such a fraught and politically divisive decision. For Her Majesty had to approve the advice of the PM for Parliament to be suspended.
Johnson’s aim is brutally clear. He feels he has been ambushed by a coalition of Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru determined to stop a No Deal Brexit. And so he wants to limit parliamentary time that would allow MPs to achieve this.
His move is unquestionably an extreme measure. But it must be seen in the context that his predecessor, Theresa May, took a much milder Brexit deal to MPs and three times they rejected it.
Boris Johnson is crystal clear in his own mind that procrastination must cease.
He worries that Britain will become a laughing stock if it does not leave the EU. He fears for the health of democracy if the 2016 referendum result is not honoured.
Also, all Tory and Labour MPs were elected at the 2017 General Election on party manifestos that vowed they would implement Brexit.
Nonetheless, Johnson faces the threat of losing control of events. No prime minister can afford to do that, least of all one who has been in office for barely a month and whose entire strategy is geared to demonstrating that, unlike his predecessor, he is in control.
But all this fits Boris Johnson’s temperament perfectly. How he would love to be seen as the great risk-taker, wriggling free of Brussels like a modern-day Houdini. Maybe a repeat performance of when he managed — finally — to escape from getting stuck on that zipwire while celebrating Team GB’s first Olympic gold at London 2012.
When he became PM on July 24, one of his biggest hurdles was the lack of time to negotiate a new deal with Brussels. Mrs May had three years and failed; he has been given just three months.
On the face of it, Johnson has very few options.
His Commons majority is just one, with DUP support. He could lose that any time.
Not only has he Corbyn’s new anti-No Deal coalition to contend with, he has powerful figures in his own party trying to wreck his strategy, too.
He faces legal challenges and a Commons Speaker in John Bercow who seems intent on doing all in his power — and more — to make life difficult for him and Brexit.
But, like all leaders must, Johnson has to turn these negatives to his advantage.
For a start, yesterday’s move has deprived his opponents room for parliamentary manoeuvre.
He is also calculating on the fact that, as much as they want to bring down the Government, Labour must be wary of its poor opinion poll showing and less confident than it was of winning a General Election.
Gambit
What’s more, if he fails in his gambit, he must surely be counting on the public’s sense of fair play.
If Tory MPs such as Dominic Grieve and Philip Hammond conspire with Corbyn, the Lib Dems and the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists to evict him from No 10, Johnson has probably sketched out his subsequent speech in his head already.
It would go along these lines: ‘When I was privileged to be asked to become Prime Minister, I promised to strain every sinew to honour the decision taken by the people of this great nation: to honour the result of the 2016 referendum to withdraw from the EU. We cannot carry on as supplicant to Brussels. We have put off the date of departure twice already and we just cannot carry on like this.
‘Now, a rag-bag of parliamentarians is wilfully trying to block the wishes of the people.
‘My message to them is that I will not allow them to do so.
‘If there is a choice about whether the fate of this great nation is to be decided by a remote and out-of-touch political class or by the people of Britain, I stand four square behind the people.
‘That is why I am calling a General Election to take place on November 1, the day after we leave the EU.
‘I ask you in all humility to help me uphold democracy and lead this country to the golden future in store for it when Brexit is done and dusted.’
Crisis
Inevitably, Johnson’s critics say he is trampling on the constitution and breaking with every convention.
But the truth is that so many of these have already been flattened by the political juggernaut that is Brexit, which means he can truthfully counter that the normal rules no longer apply.
This is the biggest crisis Britain has faced since World War II — which brings us back to Churchill.
Sir Winston was a great gambler, and some even pejoratively branded him as a chancer, a showman and, ultimately, a failure.
For his part, Boris Johnson would be very happy indeed to be compared with Britain’s superlative wartime leader.
Yes, he’s a chancer and a showman, too. But considering the title of the book Johnson wrote about Churchill, he has the immutable self-confidence to believe that he can also be a man who ‘made history’.
Sir Anthony Seldon is vice-chancellor of The University of Buckingham. 
It is more than three years since the British people voted to leave the European Union in the biggest democratic exercise in our history, only to reach an agreement that Parliament just could not accept.
The Irish backstop led to deadlock, the machinery of Government gummed up with the same arguments we had in 2016.
We needed a fresh approach and we’ve got one. With a change of Prime Minister, we have the combination of determination and optimism we need to end the impasse.
I am honoured Boris Johnson has asked me to stay on as Secretary for Exiting the European Union to help finish the job of delivering Brexit.
We have a clear and unambiguous position – we will leave the EU on October 31, whatever the circumstances. We would prefer to leave with a new deal, but will be ready to leave without one, having made all the necessary preparations.
The facts are unchanged. Parliament will not accept the withdrawal agreement as it is.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier is telling us his instructions from European leaders mean he cannot change it. As he told me when we spoke last week, his mandate is his mandate – he can only negotiate what the Commission and leaders of member states have agreed.
But the political realities have changed since Mr Barnier’s instructions were set. Since the last mandate was agreed, 61 per cent of all the EU states’ MEPs have changed. Such a fundamental shift illustrates the need for a change of approach.
Mr Barnier needs to urge EU leaders to consider this if they too want an agreement, to enable him to negotiate in a way that finds common ground with the UK. Otherwise, No Deal is coming down the tracks.
The countries of the EU need to ask themselves what is in our shared best interest. This is for the UK to have a smooth and orderly exit. They also need to understand the depth of feeling in Parliament against the anti-democratic backstop. It was voted down three times because it would be easier to leave the EU than the backstop.
MPs have been clear they cannot allow the people of Northern Ireland to have an indefinite period of continued alignment foisted on them. It would mean Northern Irish voters – UK citizens – being governed by rules in which they have no say.
And since we can only leave the backstop by agreement with the EU, once it is triggered we could be locked into it for ever.
It is our firm view that Irish border issues should be dealt with in talks on the future agreement between the UK and the EU – where they should always have been – and we’re ready to negotiate in good faith on this basis.
We do not accept that these issues can be solved only by all or part of the UK remaining in the customs union and Single Market. The evidence is that other arrangements are feasible, can better balance the risks, and will – in due course – be practical. That is the right approach.
We have already started work across Whitehall to find the solutions, and they can and will be found, in the context of the free trade agreement we will negotiate with the EU after October 31.
The unalterable fact is that the withdrawal agreement was voted down and the parliamentary arithmetic remains unchanged. Attitudes have polarised even further since the European Parliamentary elections in May.
There is simply no chance of any deal being passed that includes the anti-democratic backstop. This is the reality that the EU has to face.
Meanwhile, the appointment of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister has only strengthened the UK’s mandate to leave on October 31. He made clear throughout his leadership campaign we would leave the EU with or without a deal.
In recent weeks, there has been much discussion of the possibility of a No Deal Brexit. As Thursday’s announcement of a further £2.1 billion to turbocharge No Deal preparations demonstrates, we will be ready for any outcome.
But the truth is that a deal is entirely possible if the EU takes a reasonable and sensible approach. They should start by giving their chief negotiator, Mr Barnier, the room to negotiate.
 
Heidi Allen will lead a mass exodus of MPs in December after she announced yesterday that she would not stand for re-election.
The Liberal Democrat MP said she was standing down because Brexit had 'broken our politics', joining other senior figures including Father of the House Ken Clarke and Winston Churchill's grandson Sir Nicholas Soames.
In a letter to her South Cambridgeshire constituents, the former Tory said she was 'exhausted by... the nastiness and intimidation that has become commonplace'.
The founding member of anti-Brexit party Change UK added that lines are too often crossed and the effect is 'utterly dehumanising'.
Her decision takes the number of MPs that have said they will quit at the next election to more than 40.  
Before the 2017 election, 31 MPs announced they would be standing down.
Mrs Allen, a committed Remainer, said for the last eighteen months or so, 'the Brexit impasse has made business as usual impossible'.
She said the abuse and threats she had suffered had been 'dehumanising' and forced her to install panic buttons around her home.
'I am exhausted by the invasion into my privacy and the nastiness and intimidation that has become commonplace.
'Nobody in any job should have to put up with threats, aggressive emails, being shouted at in the street, sworn at on social media, nor have to install panic alarms at home.
'Of course public scrutiny is to be expected, but lines are all too regularly crossed and the effect is utterly dehumanising', she wrote.
Mrs Allen originally quit the Conservative Party in February, along with Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry, to join the new Independent Group, later renamed Change UK, formed by ex-Labour MPs.
The following month it was announced that she had been appointed interim leader but she left three months later amid reports of disagreements over strategy.
Her South Cambridgeshire constituency is traditionally a safe Conservative seat which she held with a majority of almost 16,000 at the 2017 general election.
Meanwhile, fellow former Conservative MP Sam Gyimah was selected to stand for the Lib Dems in the Remain-backing London constituency of Kensington, which would be a knife-edge battle.
Mr Gyimah was one of the 21 Tory rebels who were expelled from the parliamentary party by Boris Johnson when they aided efforts to get legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit approved.
Labour's Emma Dent Coad won the seat in 2017 - but only with a majority over the second-placed Tories of 20 votes.
Mrs Allen's resignation follows that of dozens of MPs from across the political spectrum, including a number of high profile Tories.
Long-serving figures - such as Father of the House Ken Clarke and Winston Churchill's grandson Sir Nicholas Soames - are planning to stand down.
Sir Michael Fallon, former defence secretary, has announced he will leave the Commons before the election, as has Jo Johnson, Boris Johnson's brother.
Other Tories stepping down include Rory Stewart, Mark Field, Nick Hurd, Claire Perry, Mark Prisk, Keith Simpson, Glyn Davies, Jeremy Lefroy, Caroline Spelman, David Tredinnick, David Jones, Seema Kennedy, Richard Harrington, Alastair Burt and Richard Benyon – MP for Newbury.    
Labour MP Owen Smith announced his resignation for 'political and personal reasons' last night. 
He followed colleagues including Gloria De Piero, Ronnie Campbell, Kevin Barron, Jim Fitzpatrick, Kate Hoey, Albert Owen, Teresa Pearce, John Mann, Geoffrey Robinson, Stephen Pound, Stephen Twigg and Ian Lucas. 
Sir Vince Cable and Norman Lamb are also quitting from the Lib Dems, as are Independents Oliver Letwin, Guto Bebb, Nick Boles and Justine Greening.      
Ann Widdecombe has flatly dismissed fury over her 'slavery' jibe at the EU - saying critics accusing her of 'white privilege' are being 'melodramatic'.
The Brexit Party MEP said she 'stood by' comparing Brussels to slave owners and 'feudal barons'.
Shrugging off a backlash from Labour MPs, the veteran politician said she was merely highlighting decades of 'oppression' in her incendiary maiden speech at the European Parliament yesterday.
'Frankly if I said good morning people would interpret that adversely,' Miss Widdecombe told the BBC's Newsnight programme.
'They would say Ann Widdecombe is insensitive because it is not a good morning for everyone...
'I said we have been oppressed. I stand by that.' 
The former Tory MP, elected as an MEP for The Brexit Party in May, told her peers in Strasbourg that the direction of the EU, and the backlash against it, was the continuation of a 'pattern consistent throughout history'. 
Ms Widdecombe suggested that Britain was effectively a colony of the 'oppressive' EU's 'empire' as she told them: 'We are off!'
But her decision to compare Britons voting to quit the EU to 'slaves' turning 'against their owners' prompted a furious reaction. 
Critics suggested the comparison was 'impossibly offensive' and that Ms Widdecombe should be ashamed of her remarks while senior EU figures labelled her a 'clown'.
She also used her first speech as an MEP to take aim at the way in which the EU chooses its leaders and to criticise Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's chief Brexit coordinator. 
Ms Widdecombe was one of a handful of star candidates unveiled by party leader Nigel Farage in the run up to the European Parliament elections in May. 
Her address came as The Brexit Party's 29 MEPs continued to disrupt proceedings in the French city after they turned their back on the EU anthem during their first day in their new jobs on Tuesday.  
The MEP for the south west of England said: 'It is a great honour to speak on behalf of the largest single party in this place. 
'May I say that if I needed any convincing at all that the best thing for Britain is to leave here as soon as possible it was the way that those elections were conducted yesterday because if that is this place's idea of democracy then that is a serious betrayal of every country that is represented here because it is not democratic at all. 
'That is just one of many reasons why Britain is right to be leaving this place, hopefully on Halloween. 
'And it is right because there is a pattern consistent throughout history of oppressed people turning on the oppressors.
'Slaves against their owners, the peasantry against the feudal barons, colonies, Mr Verhofstadt, against their empires and that is why Britain is leaving. 
'And it doesn't matter which language you use we are going and we are glad to be going.'
David Lammy, the Labour MP, attacked Ms Widdecombe for comparing the EU to slave owners. 
He tweeted: 'It is impossible to explain how offensive and ahistorical it is for you to equate my ancestors tearing off their chains with your small-minded nationalist project. Shame on you.'
Challenged by Newsnight presenter Emma Barnett that she was showing offensive 'white privilege', Miss Widdecombe said: 'The argument was there is a pattern throughout history that shows if you oppress people for long enough and hard enough they eventually rebel.
'The comparison is between oppressors and the oppressed throughout history, in different ways... 
'If you want to melodramatically interpret it, that is up to you.'  
Last night Mr Verhofstadt hit back and called the newly-elected MEP The Brexit Party's 'chief clown'. 
He said: 'Nigel Farage facing some stiff competition as chief clown of the Brexit Party in the [European Parliament]. 
'By the way, when Widdecombe talks about 'colonies liberating themselves from their empires', is she really referring to the American Revolution of 1776?' 
Ms Widdecombe also said that in the space of just two days she had already witnessed the 'powers that be' deciding to reduce the permissible size of the mesh used in fishermen's nets 'thereby reducing their income by 40 per cent'.  
She added: 'That is what you do here. That is why we are going... We are off!' 
The Brexit Party's European adventure got off to a chaotic start on Tuesday as its MEPs arrived for the start of the new European Parliament session and immediately kicked off a row by turning their backs as the EU anthem was played.
The 29 politicians elected in May's shock election result deliberately turned away as Beethoven's Ode to Joy was played in the parliamentary building in Strasbourg.
It came as Mr Farage warned of a 'turquoise takeover' in the UK if Brexit did not happen by October 31.
In a swipe at Tory leadership rivals Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt over their Brexit stances he told the Telegraph: 'I have to be honest with you, I don't believe a word they say.
'But I will give them this warning: If they don't deliver Brexit on that date they are toast and you will see a turquoise takeover.'
Both Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt have committed to delivering Brexit by Halloween but the latter has suggested he would agree to a slight delay if more time was needed to secure a deal.
The display from the group including Mr Farage, Ms Widdecombe and Annunziata Rees-Mogg against the live performance of the anthem led to a stern rebuke from outgoing  parliamentary president Antonio Tajani.
The British MEPs arrived in Strasbourg, the temporary home of the European Parliament before it returns to Brussels, for what could be their shortest session as European politicians.
Once Brexit occurs they will immediately cease to represent the UK, and so could be out of a job by the end of October.  
If Boris Johnson woke up yesterday thinking the prospect of an early election, combined with his threat to deselect Tory MPs who try to thwart his Brexit plans, would cow the rebels, he was swiftly disabused of the notion yesterday morning.
At 8.10am on Radio 4's Today Programme, Philip Hammond – 22 years a Tory MP, a former defence and foreign secretary and until a few short weeks ago Chancellor of the Exchequer – was defiant.
Not only would he vote for a Labour-backed Bill designed to stop No Deal and force Mr Johnson to ask for a three-month extension to Article 50, but he believed the rebels had the numbers to force the controversial legislation through.
Taking clear aim at Mr Johnson's de facto chief of staff Dominic Cummings, he added: 'I am going to defend my party against incomers, entryists, who are trying to turn it from a broad church to narrow faction.
'People who are at the heart of this Government, who are probably not even members of the Conservative Party, who care nothing about the future of the Conservative Party, I intend to defend my party against them.'
Last night's vote set the seal on a battle that raged around the Palace of Westminster yesterday on what, it is no exaggeration to say, was one of yet another of those extraordinary and exhausting political days.
At the start of the day, the number of Tories publicly committed to rebellion was in the single figures. If Downing Street could keep the numbers down, there was at least some hope of averting defeat.
Both in public and private, No 10 aides condemned a law they called a 'blueprint for legislative purgatory', which would cost taxpayers £1billion a month, which was 'very clearly in Brussels' interests not in the British interest'. One, invoking the kind of classical allusion enjoyed by Mr Johnson, called it 'the worst terms since Rome and the Carthaginians'.
The Romans took Carthage, killed most of the inhabitants, sold the rest into slavery and destroyed the city.
Just before 10.15am, around 15 rebels entered Downing Street.
Nobody was calling them peace talks, and by the end it was clear they had only served to expose the Brexit civil war tearing the Conservative Party apart.
One attendee described it as 'the most extraordinary meeting I have ever been in'. The rebel group included former Chancellor Philip Hammond, former justice secretary David Gauke and ex-business secretary Greg Clark – as well as a raft of former junior ministers and senior backbenchers including Sir Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Sir Winston Churchill.
The meeting was held in the Cabinet room, around which many of the rebels had sat as ministers only weeks earlier.
On the Prime Minister's left sat Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd who has urged him not to pull the trigger on the rebels but to 'hold our party together'.
The Prime Minister began by arguing that progress was being made with the EU, and the threat of No Deal was having a real impact on Brussels.
If the Bill was to pass, he argued, it could result in a second referendum or even the revocation of Article 50 – the death of Brexit. And he made clear to the rebels that, yes, they really would lose the whip if they did not back down. From his seat in the corner, next to Mr Gauke and Michael Gove, Mr Hammond couldn't hide his displeasure. In truth, he argued, No 10 didn't have a negotiating strategy or even team in place.
They weren't really trying to get a deal. Even if Mr Johnson could secure a last-ditch deal at the European Council on October 17, there wasn't time to pass the required legislation ahead of Brexit day on October 31, he insisted.
No, Mr Johnson said, there was in fact time. What's more, he said, there would also be time for the rebels to try again to stop No Deal after the Council.
But Mr Hammond wasn't listening. 'Hammond and Boris were just refusing to listen to one another. Hammond kept talking over him, tutting and shaking his head,' one source said.
'Boris was doing the same.'
At one point the exasperated PM declared: 'You all just want to keep us in the EU.' Hammond hit back: 'We voted for the deal three times.' The row escalated.
PM: 'I will not tolerate a Bill that hands over power to Corbyn.' Hammond: 'We are handing over power to Parliament.' PM: 'You are handing power over to a junta that includes Jeremy Corbyn.'
He added: 'Extension [of Article 50] would be an extinction-level event for the Conservative Party.' 'Their mutual loathing was very apparent,' a source told me.
Dominic Cummings was not present throughout the meeting, but had spoken to a group of rebels waiting outside. One later accused him of 'hectoring' them and starting a row, a claim denied by Government sources. 'I've seen Dom argue and it was not a Dom argument'.
He did, though, make one short cameo appearance in the room, described as 'deliberate trolling' of the rebels. 'Dom turned up just to needle Hammond.' (Insiders also say that while they were waiting for the meeting to start Mr Cummings had told the waiting rebel MPs: 'I don't know who any of you are!')
One hour and 25 minutes after the meeting began, Mr Johnson banged the table, urged the rebels to 'trust my position' and the meeting was over. The PM concluded: 'I assume everyone is with me.' It would quickly become clear they were not. Then the briefing war began. Government sources accused Mr Hammond of having mentioned EU 'legal advice' in a discussion about the extension.
Had he unwittingly revealed his connivance with the enemy in Brussels? No, rebel sources insisted. A Hammond spokesman called the claim 'ridiculous and categorically untrue'. He was simply citing the 'established view of the EU legal service'.
No 10 was not convinced. Rebels accused Mr Johnson of offering an 'unconvincing' account of how he would pass a deal and providing 'no convincing proof' that a negotiation is even taking place.
As that meeting finished, another began in the parliamentary offices of Jeremy Corbyn where the Labour leader and other opposition parties agreed to back the Bill. No such clarity, however, on whether to back an election.
Their masters may have clashed, but their pet dogs appear to be getting along famously. Boris Johnson's rescue pup Dilyn snoozed in a bed with a toy in Downing Street yesterday as Sajid Javid's cavapoo Bailey relaxed nearby. A snap on the pet's 'official' Twitter account said they were 'chilling'.
During the morning and early afternoon, the number of confirmed rebels began to tick up. Former minister Sam Gyimah and Sir Nicholas both confirmed they would be voting against the Government. Yet some still had hope.
At lunchtime, Tory chief whip Mark Spencer told junior ministers that Labour Leavers could come to the rescue, with somewhere between three and ten prepared to vote with the Government.
But by the time the Commons began sitting at 2.30pm the number of publicly declared rebels was up to 15 and several more were still making up their minds. What wasn't expected was Tory Phillip Lee's public defection to the Lib Dems. When Mr Johnson stood up to make his Commons statement on the G7, Dr Lee stood up and crossed the floor of the House to sit with Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and at a stroke he erased Mr Johnson's majority.
Tory MPs were deflated. Only when Mr Johnson baited Jeremy Corbyn with accusations of 'surrender' did they cheer up.
In the briefing for journalists afterwards, Mr Cummings popped up again, in the background, refusing to answer questions on whether he was a member of the Tory party. At a little after 6.30pm, it took barely a minute for leading rebel Sir Oliver Letwin to set out his unprecedented proposal to take control of the House away from the Government, and for the Speaker John Bercow to agree it should be discussed. The fix was on. The House was in uproar.
At one point, the Speaker openly mocked the Prime Minister by throwing a Brexit quote back in his face. To applause from Labour MPs he said he would 'facilitate' the House of Commons 'come what may, do or die'.
Mr Hammond wasn't finished, though. Standing in central lobby with the vote only hours away, he spoke of his 'outrage' that the party he has been a member of for 45 years was 'thinking of throwing me out'.
'Some of my colleagues have chosen to call it a day because they don't like what's going on. My approach is to stay and fight and I will fight for the party I joined and the party that I believe the Conservatives must be, a broad inclusive centre-Right party, for as long as I am able to do so,' he said.
Backing down? Not a chance.
 
With Brexit briefly shelved, there is one urgent question hanging over British politics this weekend. Theresa May: can she survive?
Many senior Tories and furious backbenchers want to oust her. That became clear on Thursday when she made her Commons statement in the wake of the emergency European Union summit in Brussels.
There she had to explain to fellow leaders why she was seeking another extension to Article 50, so delaying our departure from the EU yet again.
Back in Westminster, she was greeted with open contempt by many on her own side. Tory grandee, Sir Bill Cash, expressed the view of many in his party when he called on her to resign.
This weekend Tory MPs start their Easter break, which may well make matters worse rather than better for the Prime Minister.
Back in their constituencies, many will be confronted by the growing frustration and anger of some voters at the delay to Brexit, and Mrs May’s decision to hold talks with Labour in an attempt to get her thrice-rejected withdrawal deal through Parliament.
The Tories have plummeted ten points in the polls in less than a month — the fastest slump since John Major’s government crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism on September 16, 1992.
This is ominous indeed: the Tories never recovered from that debacle and the way was open for Tony Blair and New Labour to sweep into power.
But for Mrs May and her allies, there is a sliver of optimism. In my view Theresa May is still more respected by voters than by many Tories, and that I believe is at the heart of her refusal to quit.
Her objective remains to hang on until Brexit has been completed. That would mean surviving in office until the Conservative Party Conference at the end of September, just a month before Britain’s new departure date from the EU on October 31 (a Halloween to remember if so).
The PM may just make it, but a nightmare obstacle course lies ahead of her if she is to do so.
First up are the local elections on May 2 — less than three weeks’ time. When this set of elections was last held four years ago, the Tories did rather well.
This time, local campaigners tell me they are expecting a bloodbath.
There’s widespread talk of a collapse of the party vote and a surge of support for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. And let’s not forget that it was in the wake of the disastrous local election results of May 2009, that cabinet minister James Purnell launched a failed leadership plot against then prime minister Gordon Brown.
Don’t rule out the same thing happening again.
There will then be a three-week lull until the European elections begin on May 23.
Once again, these elections —which we are compelled to take part in if we haven’t departed the EU — threaten to plunge the Conservatives into electoral chaos. There are fears that Tory voters either won’t go to the polls or will simply defect to rival parties.
If Mrs May has survived thus far, this may be when demands for a change in the Tory leadership become overwhelming.
In any case, June and July are notoriously the most perilous period in Parliament for any Conservative leader. MPs have more time on their hands to plot in the Commons bars.
With Brexit in a shambles, local and European election meltdown, the potential for disaster during the summer is obvious.
While Party rules determine that there can be no vote of confidence in Mrs May’s leadership until the end of this year, it’s not hard to envisage a cabinet revolt and a delegation of the so-called men in grey suits going to Downing Street to tell Mrs May that her time is up. Supporters of Boris Johnson are already comparing the PM to José Mourinho towards the end of his lacklustre term at Manchester United.
Boris would be like Man U’s new manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, they say, and bring life and fizz to the Party and revive its electoral fortunes.
I think there could be some truth in this. Mr Johnson is a superlative campaigner. He brings optimism and ebullience with him wherever he goes. Unlike Mrs May, he gives the impression of enjoying life and politics, too.
It is very hard, however, to see how Mr Johnson could solve the Brexit dilemma. He would be no more capable than Mrs May of mustering the Commons majority needed to press through with a Brexit consensus.
And while Mrs May isn’t popular in Brussels, Mr Johnson is the arch-enemy. I can’t see him extracting concessions that Mrs May was unable to secure.
Were Boris Johnson to become prime minister, there is only one way he could force Brexit through. That is by proroguing — suspending — Parliament and using the power of the executive to force through a No Deal Brexit.
My Downing Street sources tell me that Mrs May has already contemplated and ruled out this course of action.
Mr Johnson might choose otherwise, even though such a move would prompt a constitutional crisis and drag the Queen, who would be required to assent to any prorogation of Parliament, into the heart of the Brexit debate.
And it is for these reasons I believe it is more likely than not that Mrs May will get her wish and deliver her final speech to Tory conference in Manchester this autumn. She aims to have Brexit wrapped up by then so that she can go out on a high and secure her legacy.
But she needs to be careful what she wishes for. It may not go well, although all decent people will hope otherwise. Whatever one thinks of her political competence, she is a woman driven by duty and a sense of right and wrong.
This week the PM will reportedly take a holiday with husband Philip on a walking trip in Wales. She certainly deserves her break from Brexit — and so do the rest of us.
Sacking Sir Roger for his opinions is a sign that free speech is being curbed 
I am troubled by Sir Roger Scruton’s sacking from his role as a housing adviser to the Government.
That is not because I agree with his offensive remarks about Islamophobia, the Chinese and the investor and philanthropist George Soros that were reportedly made in an interview with the New Statesman this week. It’s because I worry about free speech.
Sir Roger has never been afraid to make difficult or unpopular statements during his hugely distinguished career as a writer and philosopher.
As a young man, his support for the political creed of Margaret Thatcher angered Lefties and cost him his university career. He also bravely supported dissidents in the former Czechoslovakia and, when the Iron Curtain fell, was awarded Czech Republic’s Medal of Merit in acknowledgement.
Now, there are suggestions that some of his words in the Left-wing New Statesman may have been distorted and taken out of context. Even so, while I disagree strongly with some of the views he apparently expressed, I cannot for the life of me see what they have to do with his role as chairman of the Government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.
On a personal note, I and countless others have deepened our understanding of conservatism — and much else besides — through Sir Roger’s writing.
His Dictionary Of Political Thought is by my side as I write my columns.
Treasury Secretary Liz Truss has got her leadership campaign off to the best possible start by calling into question the HS2 rail project. I have repeatedly warned that this much-vaunted investment is out of date, out of control and an unforgivable waste of taxpayers’ money. There is undeniable evidence that it will grossly exceed its official £56 billion budget.
Chancellor Philip Hammond has lacked the courage to put this white elephant out of its misery. Now Liz, his deputy, puts Mr Hammond to shame. Asked by The Spectator magazine this week whether she would scrap HS2, she replied: ‘That’s a matter for the zero-based capital review that I’ll be looking at very intently.’
Good for her. There are so many worthwhile ways of spending the money, rather than on this vanity project.
 A few days ago at the Royal Welsh Showground, a new sweet pea variety called Welsh Dawn was launched to mark the festival’s 100th anniversary.
It was at the same place yesterday morning that Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, beaming from ear to ear, felt justified in heralding a new dawn in British politics after her party won Thursday’s Brecon and Radnorshire by-election.
She said: ‘This victory gives hope for a better future for Britain. Voters have shown that the country doesn’t have to settle for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn.’
At first sight, Swinson seemed right that the Tories losing the seat they had held since 2015 was a disaster for Boris Johnson. So much for the ‘Boris Bounce’.
Less than two weeks after he became PM, Johnson has seen his Government’s Commons majority sink to just one seat. He has done even worse than H.H. Asquith, who lost an MP after 16 days during his premiership in 1908.
I have long harboured doubts about Johnson’s ability to succeed as Prime Minister. These are very early days, of course, but I accept that the Welsh by-election defeat is better for the Conservatives than it appears.
The Lib Dems only won because anti-Brexit parties worked together to form a ‘Remainer Alliance’.
The Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and Change UK all stood aside, allowing Lib Dem candidate Jane Dodds a clear run as the only representative of the Remain vote against the incumbent Tory.
Many Labour voters followed suit, abandoning their own candidate to rally behind the Lib Dems, with the result that Dodds won with 13,826 votes and Labour came a humiliating fourth.
Nor was this all. Most significantly, the pro-Brexit vote was split between the Conservatives, who got 12,401 votes, and the Brexit Party, with 3,331 votes.
In crude terms, the total vote was 50 per cent pro-Brexit and 49 per cent pro-Remain. In other words, the Lib Dems would probably not have won if pro-Brexit voters had all coalesced behind the Tory candidate, as Remainers did behind the Lib Dems.
Another key factor was the Tories’ selection of candidate.
Chris Davies was a very bad choice. For reasons I find impossible to understand, Theresa May allowed her party to choose a man to fight the seat again who had pleaded guilty to two false expenses claims that led to the by-election in the first place.
Although most political pundits disagree, I am convinced that the Brecon result makes an autumn General Election far more likely.
Conventional wisdom has it that Johnson will wait at least until early next year.
Before you tell me I’m mad, allow me to explain.
Boris Johnson knows the only way he can win is by making sure Brexit Party voters learn the lessons of Brecon and join with the Tories to form an alliance and vote in a single pro-Brexit bloc.
This would be made easier for Johnson if an election were held after October 31 — assuming Britain had left the EU — because the Brexit Party would have achieved its main aim and there would be no plausible reason for it to put candidates forward.
But I am sure Johnson would be able to attract Brexit Party voters if there were a General Election before October 31.
Hear me out.
Last week, I took soundings with a respected politician who has reason to understand the mind of Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage. I was told that, despite all Farage says, he is ready to order Brexit Party candidates not to stand because he thinks they would have scant chance of victory with Johnson having successfully rebranded the Tories as the dominant anti-EU party and the only one with a chance of being in government.
Such a backdown would be in keeping with Farage’s track record of withdrawing from fights he knows he cannot win.
For example, he resigned as Ukip leader in 2016 after the referendum because the party had achieved its aim and he foresaw that the Tories would become the dominant anti-EU force at the polls.
Farage, like his hero Donald Trump, only likes to be a winner.
This time, I’m sure he would dress up his position as honourably standing aside, job done again, and watch Johnson lead a new Britain outside the EU.
My contact mischievously suggests that Farage may be lined up for a peerage as a mark of gratitude and respect from Johnson once Brexit has gone through.
So let me assess what I see as the run-in to the next General Election. As I say, Johnson would — unimpaired by a rival Brexit Party — lead the Tories into battle as sole representatives of the Brexit cause.
This means he ought to be able to rely on more than 40 per cent of the national vote — which in normal circumstances is easily enough to win a General Election.
But these are not normal circumstances. I believe the Tories ought to reach more than 40 per cent, as the parties that still favour the UK staying in the EU are hopelessly split.
Consider the state of the Labour Party. Under Jeremy Corbyn, it continues to face both ways over Brexit. The leader himself has agonised about the issue but most of his MPs, including Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry and senior organiser Tom Watson, are indelibly wedded to Remain. Like Dr Dolittle’s daft creature, the pushmi-pullyu, Labour faces both ways.
Neither is there any chance of an electoral pact between Labour and the Lib Dems. In fact, they are at war. So the chances of a Brecon-style deal at the next General Election are zero.
That’s why there is every likelihood that Boris Johnson can lead his Brexiteering Conservatives to a substantial parliamentary majority in a General Election.
However, in the meantime, the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election has left him unable to control the Commons. In the long — or even short — term, a government with a Commons majority of just one (and that’s assuming he can continue to rely on support from the DUP) is untenable.
That’s why I believe Thursday’s by-election makes an autumn General Election more likely. And it’s an election Boris Johnson would be favourite to win.
The resilience of the British economy since the nation voted for Brexit on June 23 has been truly remarkable. All the warnings of an economic calamity, recession, surging unemployment and the need for an emergency tax-raising budget have thus far proved misguided.
Indeed, far from being miserable, the new Chancellor Philip Hammond, with the full-throated support of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, forecasts that Britain’s economy will continue to grow and create new jobs in every year to the end of this Parliament.
Normally my quarrel with the official forecasts is that they are too rose-tinted, and fail to take note of the headwinds from overseas likely to buffet our economy.
But yesterday I believe the Chancellor was, if anything, too downbeat about the outlook for 2017, when growth is predicted to drop from a robust 2.1 per cent this year to 1.4 per cent. If anything the economy is heading into the new year looking remarkably sprightly. 
The latest Confederation of British Industry survey shows manufacturing in good health; consumers are spending as if there is no tomorrow; and services, the largest part of the nation’s output, are buoyant. 
The gloomsters insist that next year will be difficult because higher inflation, directly related to the fall in the pound, will weigh heavily on consumer spending.
The reality is that the high street is more competitive than it has ever been for grocery and clothing sales, and this means that the knock-on effect for consumers of higher import costs will be limited. 
Moreover, traditional retailers cannot afford to chase away shoppers with higher prices because of the threat from internet shopping – in which the UK is a world leader.
Nor should we forget that on the other side of the Atlantic, Britain’s biggest and most significant trading partner, the United States, has a president-elect in Donald Trump who is committed to an enormous spending splurge on infrastructure and tax cuts for middle-income Americans and US firms.
One must hope those American consumers will want to buy our goods, and those firms will want to tap into the British market. In the past couple of weeks alone, the US giants Google and Facebook have reaffirmed their faith in a post-Brexit Britain by ploughing new investment and jobs into the country (though whether they will pay their fair share of tax here remains to be seen).
In spite of these bright developments, the OBR felt the need to ladle on the Brexit-related misery. 
While admitting that it had no idea what form Brexit would take, it argued that Britain’s departure from the EU will generate uncertainty for firms, hurt trade over the short-term, cut export growth and cut net migration. All of this, in its view, will be damaging to economic expansion.
Philip Hammond is clearly aware that indecision and pessimism on his part will lead to problems, so he chose to be decisive in pumping money into the economy, gambling that this will kickstart new growth.
This, of course, means he has abandoned his predecessor’s budgetary target of Britain running a surplus by 2019/20. Yes, he has largely kept in place the cuts in welfare George Osborne previously announced. But he has rolled the dice and put his emphasis on modernising Britain’s infrastructure for the post-Brexit age.
Between now and 2020/21, Hammond will inject an extra £33billion into the economy, with the goal of improving productivity and supporting output.
This dramatic choice represents a major turning point in economic policy.
In the aftermath of the 2007-09 financial crisis, the Bank of England was effectively put in charge of keeping the economy afloat. It embarked on an ambitious programme of super-low interest rates and the printing of money, known as quantitative easing, to pull the UK out of a nosedive.
This largely worked and Britain, alongside the US, has been the fastest or nearly fastest-growing economy among the G7 group of richest countries.
Remarkably, despite all the uncertainty over the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, the UK is still growing more rapidly than most of its competitors. This led one of the Bank of England’s distinguished interest rate-setters, Kristin Forbes, to remark this week that the uncertainty caused by Brexit has not had the predictable effect on business confidence.
The Bank still has the option to cut the interest rate again, from the current 0.25 per cent, should the economy falter. But all the indications are that following Theresa May’s Tory Party conference speech last month, that isn’t likely to happen. 
The Prime Minister drew attention to the harm done to millions of hard-working savers and pensioners by this Bank policy of low interest rates and printing money. 
Mr Hammond now appears to have listened to his neighbour at No 10 and chosen to influence the economy in his own way by loosening the Treasury’s purse strings.
His decision to opt for what he calls ‘high-value’ infrastructure projects such as road schemes, and a strengthening of Britain’s digital pathways, is intended to bolster growth in the short and medium term, until the impact of the bigger privately funded schemes – like the Hinkley nuclear plant in Somerset, the HS2 high speed rail link and the third runway at Heathrow – starts to be felt.
The switch towards growth supported by public and private building projects is very much in line with the latest advice to all Western economies from the International Monetary Fund, which believes the era of low interest rates and the printing of money has run its course, and new policies are required to bolster expansion.
That’s all well and good, but of course the Chancellor’s new approach has blown a hole in the Tories’ earlier commitments to end the age of State profligacy and restore order to the public finances. 
Many will consider the figures terrifying. In the period from the March Budget this year to 2021, the nation will need to borrow an extra £122billion on the financial markets, and directly from the public in the shape of national savings accounts.
Our national debt, the accumulated unmet borrowings of Government, will climb to a peak of 90.2 per cent of the nation’s total output by 2017/18, before starting to gradually fall to 81.6 per cent in 2021. In real money, the UK will be almost £2trillion in debt.
The only comfort is that Britain’s debt as a proportion of gross domestic product will still be far less than the United States and Japan, although it compares unfavourably with Germany.
In spite of his severe demeanour, Hammond showed himself yesterday to be something of a spending and borrowing cavalier after the Roundhead austerity of George Osborne. Normally, that would be sending alarm signals. Yet I believe Mr Hammond had little choice.
The era of low interest rates cannot go on for ever, and when they start to rise, families will suffer. There will also be bumps in the road over the Brexit negotiations. 
That’s why it was right for the Chancellor to introduce some shock absorbers in terms of spending to help protect ordinary Britons from economic setbacks. 
We have entrusted our money to a cautious gambler, and he’s placed a pretty big bet in the casino. Now we must wait to see if that bet pays off.
Relations between Theresa May and Philip Hammond were plunged into the deep freeze last night.
The Prime Minister dramatically slapped her Chancellor down after he undermined her Brexit strategy.
Mr Hammond had said he was not ready to release the billions of pounds needed to prepare for leaving the EU without a deal. He also insisted any spending should be delayed until the last possible moment.
His stance contradicts Mrs May’s attempt to convince Brussels that Britain is ready to walk away if trade talks are dragged out. Mr Hammond also risked angering Eurosceptic MPs who have rallied round the Prime Minister after a difficult fortnight.
In the Commons Mrs May directly contradicted her Chancellor, saying: ‘Where money needs to be spent, it will be spent.’

The pair sat side by side on the front bench for the 45 minutes of Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday but barely exchanged a word.
Mrs May revealed the Government had signed off an extra £250million for Brexit preparations this year, including money for ‘no deal’ contingency plans.
And she said the Treasury would be writing to ministries to release further cash for measures such as border controls. The row, which sparked fresh talk that the Chancellor could be sacked in an autumn reshuffle, came as:
Some Eurosceptic MPs last night called for Mr Hammond to resign because of his gloomy pronouncements on Brexit.
Yesterday was not the first time the Chancellor has undermined the Prime Minister, or Brexit:
July 12, 2016
Within days of the referendum, Philip Hammond claims it could take six years to leave the EU.
October 4, 2016
He warns the Tory Party conference of a ‘roller coaster’ ride and ‘turbulence’ as Britain leaves the EU.
October 19, 2016
The Chancellor is slapped down by Mrs May for suggesting international students could be taken out of the Government’s net migration target.
November 20, 2016
He warns that Britain faces higher inflation, slower growth and ‘unprecedented uncertainty’ because of the Brexit vote.
April 4, 2017
Straying again from government policy, Mr Hammond says that leaving the EU without a deal is ‘ridiculous’.
June 22, 2017
The Chancellor warns businesses are not investing in the UK because they fear a ‘cliff edge’ Brexit.
July 27, 2017
He enrages Number 10 by claiming ‘literally nobody’ wants migration to fall sharply after Brexit.
July 28, 2017
While Mrs May is abroad, Mr Hammond announces the Brexit transition period will last three years.
September 25, 2017
He refuses four times to say Mrs May should fight the next election.
‘Large numbers of my colleagues are fed up with him now – it isn’t just the diehards,’ said one. ‘You cannot have a situation where the Chancellor is standing in the way of delivering the Government’s main priority. He has got to go.’
In an article in The Times, Mr Hammond had said: ‘We will find any necessary funding and we will only spend it when it’s responsible to do so.’ He later told MPs that officials needed to identify the ‘last point’ at which spending could begin ‘because every pound we spend on preparations for a hard customs border is a pound we can’t spend on the NHS, social care, education or deficit reduction’. The Chancellor gave another downbeat assessment of Brexit, telling the Commons Treasury committee it had placed a ‘cloud of uncertainty’ over the economy.
Bernard Jenkin, a prominent Eurosceptic, suggested it was the Chancellor who was undermining business confidence. ‘Some of the mixed messages coming out of the Cabinet are the source of the greatest uncertainty,’ he said.
A Cabinet source said Mr Hammond’s comments were ‘either deliberate and divisive or politically stupid’.
Mrs May told MPs her strong preference was to strike a trade deal that would benefit both the UK and EU.
However Brussels is refusing to talk about trade unless Britain agrees a sum for separation payments. Ministers have abandoned hope of making progress ahead of next week’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels. They still hope the bloc will relent by Christmas.
But Mrs May made it clear that contingency planning is under way, releasing two government white papers outlining how border controls would work in the event of a ‘no deal’ exit.
Charlie Elphicke, a member of the Treasury committee which took evidence from Mr Hammond yesterday, said: ‘It is vital to spend whatever money is needed to make sure we are ready for whatever outcome the negotiations produce. We cannot wait until the last moment to make sure we have resilient and strong borders.’   

 
The woman behind a three-million strong petition to revoke Article 50 reportedly made a Facebook comment in which she threatened to shoot the Prime Minister.
Former college lecturer Margaret Anne Georgiadou made a viral petition backed by a host of celebrities, MPs and members of the public who want a second referendum.
In Facebook posts unearthed by blogger Guido Fawkes, she reportedly wrote online: 'If i got hold of her 'gun' I'd shoot her [Theresa May] point blank in the name of patriotism'.
Ms Georgiadou spoke on LBC radio this afternoon, saying how she fed the petition by approaching 'notable' celebrities on Twitter for endorsements. 
The petition has also been backed by physicist Brian Cox, actress Jennifer Saunders, singer Annie Lennox, actors Eddie Marsan and Andy Serkis and author AC Grayling. 
She told an LBC radio show this afternoon: 'The government ignored us, they didn't have any discussion with Remainers.
'With a referendum, this is what happens because it's not very democratic, it's majoritarian, the majority wins, it's ruled by the majority for the majority - sod the minority.
'Whereas true democracy includes everybody's opinion in society.' 
With the highest sign-up rate on record, more than two million people had pledged their support by the time Mrs May fielded questions in Brussels last night.
The latest petition is not the most popular one ever on the Parliament website. 
A petition for a second EU referendum in June 2016 attracted more than four million signatures and was debated in the Commons - but thousands of signatures were removed after it was discovered to have been hijacked by automated bots.
Another popular petition aimed to prevent US President Donald Trump from making a state visit, and attracted 1.8million signatures.
The petition on the Parliament website quickly gained support in the wake of the PM's speech on Wednesday night and Revoke Article 50 started to trend on Twitter.
After signing the petition, Hugh Grant shared a link online and wrote: 'I've signed. And it looks like every sane person in the country is signing too. National emergency. Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU.'  
Professor Cox said: 'I've signed this petition to revoke A50 and deal with the consequences afterwards - referendum, election, whatever. 
'I have no idea whether these things do any good but after May's astonishingly irresponsible speech this evening I'll give anything a go.' 
The petition's support was concentrated in London and constituencies around Cambridge, Brighton, Bristol, Oxford and Edinburgh.
In the 2016 referendum, these six cities were also in favour of Remain. 
The petition reads: 'The Government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. 
'We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU.'
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom dismissed the petition, pointing out it was not on the same scale as the referendum. 
'Should it reach 17.4million, I am sure there will be a very clear case for taking action,' she said. 
During her Downing Street statement, Mrs May controversially blamed MPs for failing to stick to the result of the 2016 vote and told the public: 'I am on your side.'
The Petitions Committee said nearly 2,000 signatures were being completed every minute over yesterday lunchtime, crashing the website because of the unprecedented hit-rate.
It quickly passed the 100,000-signature threshold needed for it to be debated in Parliament.
Anyone can fill it in, prompting fears that bots or foreign agents seeking to interfere could have contributed to the total number of backers.
But people signing petitions on the Parliament website were asked to tick a box saying they are a British citizen or UK resident and to confirm their name, email address, and postcode to sign. 
Data from the petitions website yesterday afternoon suggested more than 960,000 signatures were from people who said they were from the UK, nearly 9,000 from France, nearly 5,000 from Spain and nearly 4,000 from Germany, among others.
Yesterday, EU leaders said Brexit could be delayed from March 29 to May 22 - but only on the condition that MPs vote for Mrs May's deal next week.
If it is rejected in the third 'meaningful vote' then the UK would have until April 12 to tell the European Council a way forward.
An extension could continue for several more months if Britain agreed to vote in May's European Parliament elections. 
In January MPs debated whether the UK should leave the EU without a deal after a petition calling for it got 371,673 signatures.
MPs have been sharing the petition to revoke Article 50 on social media, including Lib Dem Brexit spokesman Tom Brake.
Pro-Brexit Tory MP Nadine Dorries suggested it was 'likely' that foreign governments or bots had intervened in the petition to revoke Article 50.
'I don't think you can trust the authenticity of any petition or social media response any longer as the issues regarding bots and rouge internet sabotage is now an everyday occurrence,' she said.
But the Commons spokesman added that signature patterns are investigated to check for fraudulent activity and suspect signatures are removed, including those that are 'clearly bots'.
He said: 'Anyone who is a UK resident or a British citizen can sign a petition. This includes British citizens living overseas.' 
In December last year the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union and cancel the Brexit process. 
EU countries are secretly wooing Boris Johnson in a bid to thrash out a new Brexit plan that would avoid No Deal, according to reports.   
Senior Irish politicians and diplomats have held talks with two of Johnson's cabinet allies in recent days, and German and French figures as well as the Dutch and Belgian governments have also established contact with Johnson's team and signalled an intention to do a deal, it is claimed.  
Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has indicated Dublin is prepared to compromise, the Sunday Times reported. 
Johnson has pledged to take Britain out of the EU on October 31 with or without a deal but Coveney said in an article for the paper that EU member Ireland wants to avoid a no-deal exit at all costs.
'If Britain decides to leave without a deal it could cause huge damage to us all,' he wrote. 'A no-deal Brexit would devastate the northern Irish economy.'
The news comes amid Justice Secretary David Gauke's announcement that he will quit the Government on Wednesday if Boris Johnson wins the race to become prime minister - over objections to the Conservative frontrunner's plans to brace for No Deal. 
Mr Gauke said that crashing out of the European Union would lead to national 'humiliation'.
Johnson is widely expected to have beaten Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt when the result of a ballot of members of the ruling Conservative Party for their next leader to replace Theresa May is announced on Tuesday. 
The news comes amid reports Brussels will offer Mr Johnson a Brexit extension past October 31 in a final bid to strike an agreement deal and to help him keep the Conservative party together.
The extra time in the EU would be used for negotiation but could apparently be sold to Tory Brexiters as a chance to further prepare for a No Deal exit.
'It will be described as a technical delay to save Boris from political embarrassment but then we will have time to find an agreement,' one senior EU diplomat told The Guardian.
Yet the reported approach will worry hard Brexiters in Westminster who want to leave on 31 October no matter the cost. 
Key member states are said to be increasingly confident that the UK leaving without a deal could be avoided after the House of Commons this week voted to prevent the next prime minister from proroguing parliament. 
The proposal reportedly being discussed in Brussels could see Johnson, who is expected to be the next Prime Minister, insist he is heading towards leaving without an agreement, all while keeping discussions ongoing for a deal with the bloc.
EU leaders are said to also be contemplating how they are going to escape a crisis if Johnson does proceed with No Deal on 31 October. 
A second diplomat told the Guardian: 'How do we build back out of the abyss in a time where minds on both sides of the channel are probably not very consolatory?
'We need to pre-empt that moment and create a platform for re-engagement on the day the UK leaves which might be used once the dust has settled. Provided of course the existing obligations are settled.' 
Yet EU diplomats are confident that a No Deal is now less likely following the events of this week.
On Friday, Philip Hammond and Tory Remainer rebels suggested they could bring down the next government 'in the interests of the country' if Boris Johnson pursues a No Deal Brexit.
Mr Hammond has claimed a further Brexit delay is 'urgently needed' to avoid a disorderly divorce but he also failed to rule out backing a vote of no confidence in a government led by Mr Johnson. 
Meanwhile, Stephen Hammond, a Remain-backing Tory health minister, has hinted he would be willing to push the 'nuclear button' of a no confidence vote as he said politicians must 'do the right thing as they see it for the country'. 
Mr Hammond said he was not going to 'exclude anything at the moment' when asked directly whether he could back a bid to scupper Mr Johnson who has pledged to deliver Brexit by October 31 'do or die'. 
This week, Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the European Commission who will take office the day after Brexit on November 1, said she is 'ready' to agree to a further extension. 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday reiterated the EU's long-held stance that it will not renegotiate the divorce agreement it struck with outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May.
'The withdrawal agreement is the withdrawal agreement,' she said.
However she added: 'But the moment that a solution for the management of the border is found in (the declaration on) the future relationship - so for the European Union's future ties to Britain -- which basically squares the circle - on the one hand I have no physical border but on the other hand the EU Single Market ends - that satisfies both questions, then the backstop will be overwritten, so to speak.'
Merkel added: 'This means the task is to draft future relations that way and perhaps to draft them more specifically and better and more precisely than so far.'
Then there is scope to come to an agreement and determine future relations, Merkel said.
And on Friday, Conservative lawmaker Alberto Costa, who led the cross-party delegation that met EU negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels, said: 'He made very clear that the European commission has at its very top of the political agenda the protection of citizens' rights and it will continue to do everything it can to protect the rights of those 5million citizens even in the absence of a withdrawal agreement.'
When an audacious Boris Johnson vowed to see Brexit through on October 31 ‘do or die, come what may’, few expected the process would actually involve a political body-count.
But his brinkmanship last night — threatening the Westminster equivalent of Mafia-style hit squads against his enemies — means several political lives could be ended prematurely. Very possibly his own, too.
For the PM is pointing a gun at the heads of a group of Tory MPs, estimated at 40 in number, who are opposed to a No Deal Brexit.
No prisoners will be taken. Either they sign up or they will be expunged from the party.
Johnson is fed up with waiting. He entered Downing Street with no intention of delaying Britain’s exit from the EU any longer. He had begun campaigning for Leave in 2016 and is furious it still hasn’t happened.
To him, the prize of Brexit — and the chance for him to invest in his own vision of a ‘New Britain’ — is much more important than keeping the Tory party united and a group of Remainer malcontents on board.
But this means risking a formal split in the Conservative Party, which could lose Johnson an election.
It is impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of this possible schism as Johnson — and his unelected enforcer-in-chief Dominic Cummings — plan to remove the party whip from MPs who vote against their own Government.
Those in the firing line are not just pro-Brussels backbenchers whose names are not generally known by the public.
Among those considering a challenge to the Prime Minister’s authority are Cabinet minister Amber Rudd, who has said it would be wrong to single out MPs opposed to a No Deal Brexit when those who rebelled against Theresa May’s deal escaped punishment.
Also, former Cabinet ministers Philip Hammond, David Gauke and Rory Stewart are expected to defy Johnson and support Labour in the attempt by MPs to force him to seek an extension to Article 50 until January 31 if he cannot get a new deal before October 31.
Compared with the rebels who blocked Mrs May’s EU Withdrawal Bill — mostly hardline Brexiteer backbenchers — these figures are big beasts.
Johnson knows his history and must realise playing with such high stakes is extremely risky.
The Conservatives have governed Britain for the best part of 250 years by avoiding such crises. They have been described as the greatest election-winning machine in the Western world, presiding over the British Empire during Victorian times and surviving all upheavals since.
Yes, there have been bruising internecine battles along the way but nothing as bloody as what is happening now over how we leave the EU.
The scale of the feuding, rancour and bitterness is breathtaking, particularly if you consider how the Tory party’s instinct for survival was founded on it being a broad coalition of interests.
City and country. Protectionists and free traders. Rich and poor. Pro and anti-Europeans.
The great Tory prime minister Benjamin Disraeli came up with a phrase that to this day sums up the generous and pragmatic spirit of the Conservative Party: ‘One Nation Toryism’. He declared, in 1837, that ‘the Tory Party, unless it is a national party, is nothing’.
But despite claiming to champion that tradition — which he says is a bulwark of strong state provision and a free market economy — Boris Johnson risks killing it off.
Rather than uniting his party, he appears happy to become a divisive figure. By demanding a loyalty test from all Tory MPs, he seems to be valuing one quality — loyalty — above all others. Forget talent, service and expertise. Any man or woman who refuses to countenance a No Deal Brexit can get out.
As Cummings told a meeting of ministerial special advisers last week: ‘If you don’t like how I run things, there’s the door. F*** off!’
Thus Brexit-cleansed, what kind of Tory party would fight an election? Would it be a party of non-independent-minded hard Brexit clones? The answer to these questions will become clear, I believe, from the result of one acid test.
Will Sir Nicholas Soames MP, Winston Churchill’s grandson, until now a party loyalist to his marrow, fall in line and compromise his views? Whatever he decides will show whether the Tories are set to be irreparably riven.
For their part, I doubt Philip Hammond and David Gauke will bend to Johnson’s will.
Most crucially of all, what is Theresa May’s opinion? Will she back her successor as he embarks on a policy of embracing No Deal, which she refused to consider when Prime Minister?
Might she decide, in a deeply symbolic move, to take this opportunity to stand down as an MP and not fight any forthcoming General Election?
The former PM is famously loyal to the Tory party. She has been a member all her adult life and is as synonymous with the party as local association bring-and-buy sales and the annual autumn party conference.
The idea of defying a three-line whip is utterly abhorrent to such a loyal woman. But could she find an excuse to abstain? What message would that send!
Regardless of personalities, a Conservative Party riven in two over Brexit — most likely for ever, as there would be no going back — would undoubtedly be punished in the General Election that Johnson has now revealed would be held in just six weeks’ time if he is defeated today.
The fact is, this High Noon has been coming for three decades.
The first fissures date back almost exactly 30 years to a speech by Margaret Thatcher in Bruges on September 20, 1988, when she warned against the growing risk of a ‘European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels’.
This led pro-European Tories such as Michael Heseltine and Geoffrey Howe to galvanise a rebellion against her, and within little more than a year she was out of No 10.
Inevitably, too, the premiership of her successor, John Major, broke over Europe.
And although David Cameron held the Brexit referendum in part to try to end the Tory civil war over Europe, he succeeded only in making it worse and was forced to walk the plank himself.
Battles over the EU could kill the Johnson premiership, too.
History tells us that the Labour Party split in 1931 over austerity plans to reduce benefit payments to unemployed people under the National Assistance scheme. Labour was then out of power for a generation and it took World War II to make it electable again.
It is a gamble that Mr Johnson has decided must be taken. With a strong lead in the polls, he will take his chance by going to the country.
He knows the Labour Party is at war with itself. He can also take comfort in the fact that the Remain vote is deeply divided between Lib Dem voters, Labour voters and other small parties.
The PM undoubtedly calculates that given Nigel Farage’s olive branch last night, the Tories can gain a good proportion of votes from the Brexit Party and thereby unify the Right wing of British politics.
All that said, the British people dislike unnecessary General Elections and punish those who call them unnecessarily.
There is, however, one incontrovertible lesson of history: divided parties never win General Elections.                
This is insane. There’s no other way to describe the deranged behaviour of the political class over Brexit.
Parliament resembles a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. To further the Lewis Carroll analogy, we are living in a Looking Glass world where MPs have decided, like Humpty Dumpty, that words mean whatever they want them to mean.
Only a few days ago we were being told that Boris Johnson was staging a ‘coup’ — shutting down Parliament to prevent democratic debate.
His most severely unhinged critics were comparing him to Adolf Hitler, a surefire sign that someone has lost the plot completely.
Yet for the past 48 hours we have seen a packed House of Commons not only debating Brexit but voting to stop us leaving without a deal. So much for the Nazi Germany nonsense. MPs have taken back control of this country’s destiny not just from the Government but from the 17.4 million people who voted Leave.
Far from being a ‘dictator’ who has trashed ‘democracy’, Boris has even offered to hold a General Election on October 15, two weeks before we are due to depart. Despite having consistently demanded an election, Labour now say they don’t want one, largely because they think Jeremy Corbyn would lead them to inevitable defeat.
If anyone is trashing democracy, it’s the majority of MPs, hell-bent on overturning the result of the 2016 referendum.
The latest dishonest excuse they’ve seized upon is stopping a ‘No Deal’ Brexit. The reality most of them refuse to admit is that they want to stop Brexit altogether.
They bleat about upholding parliamentary sovereignty. But only so they can surrender it to the EU. For the best part of the past five decades they have been content to sit back as the bulk of our laws and trading arrangements have been made by unelected foreign bureaucrats and judges.
Now they have voted to give Brussels the power to decide not just if we should be allowed to leave, but when and on what terms? So where’s the incentive for Michel Barnier and his team to make any concessions?
The self-styled ‘rebels’ say they want a deal. Boris wants a deal. We’d all like a deal. But they have deliberately stripped the Prime Minister of his only chance of securing one.
Labour and Conservative members were elected on a manifesto commitment to implement the result of the referendum. In the case of the Tories, they insisted no deal was better than a bad deal.
Yet 21 Tory MPs voted with the Opposition to defeat the Government this week, even though that could usher in a new government led by a Marxist throwback, propped up by Wee Burney’s tartan separatists, which would bankrupt Britain and destroy the Union.
And they have the audacity to claim risibly that they are defending democracy, a word which has been rendered meaningless by their own antics. In their warped Looking Glass world, something is only democratic if it coincides with what they want.
Boris Johnson became PM with the support of a clear majority of Conservative MPs and the votes of two-thirds of the party’s membership, after a proper contest.
Despite that, in his first parliamentary division, 21 of his own MPs — including former Cabinet members — chose to pull the rug from under him. Labour whines that Johnson is ‘unelected’, yet declines the chance to challenge him in a General Election.
I don’t remember them complaining that Gordon Brown was unelected when he succeeded Tony Blair unopposed.
The three-year, slow-motion Brexit car crash has been an unedifying period in our parliamentary history.
I thought we’d reached a new low in February when a bunch of pro-Remain MPs decided to form a new party, dedicated to demanding a second referendum.
To mark the occasion, they posed for selfies in the Commons alongside members of the SNP gurning and waving at the camera like soppy schoolkids.
Look at me, Mum!
Now selfies in the Chamber are par for the course. Even the Sir Les Patterson lookalike Edward Leigh, a veteran Tory grandee, was getting in on the snap-happy act this week.
An obscure Lib Dem peer called Newby posted a picture of himself arriving at the Lords with a duvet and shaving kit as he prepared to stop a No Deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, Conservative Chief Whip Mark Spencer released a photo of himself dressed up as a Peaky Blinder. Why?
Another Tory I’d never heard of, Phillip Lee, decided to put himself centre stage on Tuesday, theatrically deserting to the Lib Dem benches just as Boris was getting on to his hind legs. He, too, claimed to be striking a blow for democracy, even though he was elected as a Conservative and a majority of his constituents voted Leave.
Like the 11 MPs who set up Change UK, most of whom have now left to join the Lib Dems or set up something else, his belief in democracy doesn’t run to offering himself for re-election when he switches parties.
One of the most depressing aspects of all this is the fact that most MPs seem to be having a whale of time as Brexit burns.
With their self-promoting Twitter feeds and the connivance of the rolling news channels, they all seem to be living in their own movie these days.
College Green plays host daily to a procession of narcissism, giving uncritical platforms to preening political opportunists such as Chuka Umunna, against a constant backdrop of braying exhibitionists waving EU flags. The Palace of Westminster resembles a medieval castle under permanent siege. All that’s missing is a trebuchet, lobbing custard pies.
Whoever said that politics is showbiz for ugly people has been proved more right than they could ever have imagined in their wildest dreams.
And is there a more depressing phrase in the English language than: ‘Coming up after the news, we’ll be hearing from Lord Heseltine’?
The heart sank this week listening to the duplicitous Spread Fear Phil, a man with all the charm of a pox doctor’s clerk, revelling in his role as self-appointed Brexit wrecker-in-chief.
That picture in yesterday’s Mail of his partner-in-crime Mother Theresa — who never believed in Brexit and made such a pig’s ear of the negotiations — sharing a joke with uber-federast Ken Clarke really did say more than 1,000 words.
What on earth was Jacob Rees-Mogg doing slumped across the front bench like Lord Snooty after a long lunch? Hardly a good look for a self-proclaimed traditionalist, who prides himself on having impeccable manners, let alone the Leader of the House.
And at the centre of it all, that appalling pipsqueak Bercow, who has bent every rule in the book to subvert Brexit.
Despite delighting in slapping down MPs he considers uppity, Bercow himself launched into a rabid rant against Michael Gove in the Commons, even dragging Gove’s children into the argument.
Bercow looked just like the former Blue Peter presenter and arch-Remainer Konnie Huq, who threw the most bizarre berserker on Jeremy Vine’s TV show. You’ll have go a long way to find a better example of Brexit Derangement Syndrome anywhere. Check it out on the internet.
Do the political class have the remotest idea how any of this plays outside the Westminster bubble, beyond the television studios?
It’s not just the reputation of Parliament, Britain’s standing in the world as a beacon of democracy is being dragged through the mud. Three years and three months since a Tory government was given a clear instruction to get Britain out of the EU and all its works, it still hasn’t done it.
If they really wanted a deal, they could have voted for Mother Theresa’s dismal, defeatist withdrawal agreement. But they rejected it three times.
Now they’re planning yet another pointless postponement, even though they can’t agree on what they do want. Most normal people, regardless of how they voted in 2016, are sick to the back teeth of the squabbling, grandstanding and showboating.
It’s time for this grotesque circus to up sticks and get out of town for good.
We just want Brexit done, so that normal service can be resumed and we can all get on with our lives.
But MPs still haven’t got the message. Project Fear is still in full swing. Parliament is still playing games. The goal-posts have been moved yet again.
Maybe they hope that if they can keep on prolonging the agony, we’ll forget all about it.
For now, though, we no longer live in a functioning democracy. And the way things are going, there will never be an end to this madness. 
Tory chairman James Cleverly has said he fears there will be riots if Brexit does not happen.
The MP, who worked for Boris Johnson when he was London mayor, referred to the riots that erupted in the capital in 2011, saying: 'I never want to go through something like that again.'
Asked at a Politico event last night whether he feared there would be disorder if Britain failed to leave the EU, he said: 'I do.'
It came after the Prime Minister was accused of whipping up fears of riots before the date on which Britain is supposed to leave the EU.
Former Conservative minister Dominic Grieve said he feared Mr Johnson intended to declare a state of emergency to force through Brexit, using the threat of civil disorder as an excuse.
In a highly provocative claim, the pro-Remain MP said: 'The message coming from Downing Street is – we have to leave by October 31 or there will be riots.' 
He accused the Government of 'talking up' the possibility with a view to using riots to justify invoking the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which includes emergency powers that would enable Mr Johnson to ignore the anti-No Deal law approved this month in Parliament.
The comments by Mr Grieve – one of 21 Tory MPs who had the whip withdrawn for voting with opposition parties to scupper a No Deal Brexit – were denounced as 'shameful' by ex-Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith.
He said: 'This is the new Project Fear. Having failed to dupe voters in the 2016 referendum campaign into believing they should be frightened of leaving the EU, the opponents of Brexit are now trying to make people frightened of Boris Johnson.'
Michel Barnier raised hopes a Brexit deal could be done within days as he said the outlines of an agreement are ready to present to senior ministers tomorrow.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator is said to have told EU ministers the 'parameters of a possible agreement are very largely defined' and ready to be presented to tomorrow's Cabinet.
But the reports were immediately slapped down by Number Ten who said they should be taken with a big 'pinch of salt'.
Negotiating teams worked until 2.45am this morning as they desperately try to make enough progress to thrash out a deal amid bitter wrangling over the Irish border. 
Theresa May is facing a crunch week in the talks and had been hoping to reach a settlement by Wednesday - the deadline for calling a Brussels summit this month.
And after her plans were thrown into fresh chaos by the resignation of Transport Minister Jo Johnson last Friday, Mr Barnier raised hopes a deal could be looming.
According to the Financial Times, he told EU ministers: 'On the basis of our common efforts, the parameters of a possible agreement are very largely defined. 
'On the British side, the cabinet will meet tomorrow [Tuesday] to examine these parameters. 
'We are at an extremely sensitive moment. The smallest public comment from my side could be exploited by those who want the negotiation to fail.' 
Although he also warned that no deal is yet done and said that 'as in any negotiation, the final stretch is always the most difficult'.
But the PM's official spokesman poured cold water over expectations the deal could be approved by the Cabinet tomorrow.
He said: 'I read some quotes attributed to Barnier by some anonymous minister. I have talked about taking things with a pinch of salt before - that applies here - I would apply a bucket of salt to this one. Negotiations are ongoing.'
While government sources dismissed the claim as 'total b******s'. 
And the PM continues to face enormous pressure from her ministers who have vowed to stop her making too many Brexit concessions to the EU.
Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt said the Cabinet would act as a 'check' on what deal the PM does with Brussels.   
If the Wednesday deadline is missed, the next summit is not expected to happen until mid-December - making it almost impossible to get a deal through Parliament before Christmas.
Mrs May now faces mounting pressure to activate large scale no-deal plans, amid warnings that otherwise the country will not be prepared to crash out in March. 
The Brexit divorce negotiations have boiled down to the issue of the Irish border. 
The line between Northern Ireland and the Republic will be the UK's only land border with the EU after we leave the bloc. 
Brussels had initially demanded that Northern Ireland stays within its jurisdiction for customs and most single market rules to avoid a hard border.
But Mrs May flatly rejected the idea, saying she would not agree to anything that risked splitting the UK. Instead, the government has mooted a temporary customs union for the whole UK, and accepted the need for extra regulatory checks in the Irish Sea.
Brussels has also given ground, and now appears to be prepared to sign off a UK-wide backstop in the divorce deal.
That leaves the mechanism for ending the backstop as the final hurdle to overcome - but the two sides have different views. 
 These are the options on the table:
UNILATERAL EXIT
Dominic Raab has been arguing that the UK should be able to scrap the backstop arrangements by giving three to six months' notice.
That would assuage Eurosceptic fears that the country could end up being trapped in an inferior customs union indefinitely, unless the EU gives permission for it to stop or a wider trade deal is sealed.
ALL-WEATHER BACKSTOP
For its part, the EU has been adamant that the backstop must offer an 'all-weather' solution to the Irish border issue and stay in place 'unless and until' it is superseded by other arrangements.
The bloc has already effectively killed off calls for a hard end date to the backstop - and No10 is now convinced that a simple unilateral notice period will not unlock the talks.  
COMPROMISE PLAN 
Mrs May and Irish PM Leo Varadkar have discussed a 'review mechanism' for the backstop, which could involve an independent arbitration body assessing whether the terms were being honoured and if the arrangement should be ended.
Potentially this could provide a solution that allows Mrs May to say the backstop would not go on for ever.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox - an eminent QC and strident Brexiteer - has been tasked with coming up with a text that satisfies both sides.
But the devil will be in the detail, and ministers are keen to ensure there are 'robust' ways for the UK to escape.
The walls appear to be closing in on the PM, with both wings of the Tory party launching furious attacks on her Brexit approach. 
No10 is on high alert for more resignations by Eurosceptics or Remainers, in the wake of the dramatic departure by Boris Johnson's pro-EU brother Jo last week.
In his latest salvo at her blueprint today, former foreign secretary Boris warned that the PM's plans would keep the UK 'in captivity' and urged a Cabinet 'mutiny'.
Meanwhile, Labour has descended into fresh infighting after shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer insisted the process of leaving the EU 'can be stopped' - despite Jeremy Corbyn saying exactly the opposite last week.
The situation is threatening to spiral out of control with just over four months to go until the UK is due to leave the EU.
Ms Mordaunt, a Brexiteer, delivered a thinly-veiled warning to Mrs May today by vowing the Cabinet would act as a 'check' on her plans.
'The important thing is that there are two checks on this deal - there is Cabinet and there is Parliament,' she told reporters.
'Cabinet's job is to put something to Parliament that is going to deliver on the referendum result.'  
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom fueled fears about a meltdown yesterday by insisting the UK must not be 'trapped' in an Irish border 'backstop' agreement.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey are among the other senior ministers on 'resignation watch' if Mrs May makes more concessions.
Downing Street has pinned its hopes of a breakthrough on a proposal drawn up by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox.
The idea is to include a 'review clause' in the Irish border backstop in a bid to convince Brexiteers the UK will not be trapped indefinitely.
But sources in London and Brussels say the EU has so far torpedoed efforts to strike a compromise, once again raising the risk of a no-deal Brexit. 
Wednesday evening is seen as a 'hard' deadline for settling a deal in order to call an EU summit this month that would sign it off.
The next opportunity is likely to be mid-December. That would leave almost no time for a detailed debate in the Commons and a vote before Christmas.
After the briefing for foreign ministers in Brussels today, an EU council spokesman said: 'Michel Barnier explained that intense negotiating efforts continue, but an agreement has not been reached yet. 
'Some key issues remain under discussion, in particular a solution to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.'
According to the FT, Mr Barnier told the session: 'As of this moment, this agreement is still not reached. As in any negotiation, the final stretch is always the most difficult.' 
But is said to have added: 'On the basis of our common efforts, the parameters of a possible agreement are very largely defined. 
'On the British side, the cabinet will meet tomorrow to examine these parameters. We are at an extremely sensitive moment. 
'The smallest public comment from my side could be exploited by those who want the negotiation to fail.'
Ramsgate harbour is set for a massive upgrade in the event of a no deal Brexit.
The dock will need to take on some of the load currently imposed on Dover in the event the main cross-Channel route gets bogged down.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling is scrambling to set up possible alternative shipping and cargo routes.
Ramsgate could open up routes to Belgium and bypass France entirely if President Emmanuel Macron plays hardball in a no deal Brexit.  
A government spokesman told the Express: 'There are two reasons for developing Ramsgate.
'The first is obviously making sure that Dover-Calais doesn't become a serious bottleneck.
'The second is that Ramsgate is better placed for trade with Zeebrugge and the Belgians want a bigger share of cross-Channel freight.
'If Macron really makes life difficult after Brexit, then he would have to explain why trade was moving out of the Pas de Calais to Belgium.'
In public politicians were far less optimistic, with Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders saying: 'For this moment it's difficult to make real progress, but before Christmas I'm hoping it will be possible.'
Asked if a special Brexit summit could be staged in November, Mr Reynders said: 'We are ready to do that but to organise a summit you need to have some progress. 
'If we are in the same situation as 10 days ago it is a nonsense to organise it this month. It will be maybe the case in December. 
'We have seen some movement but it seems to be not enough.' 
French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau said: 'The ball is in the British court. It is a question of a British political decision.' 
In another worrying sign for Mrs May, ministers have been briefing that they had doubts about her Chequers plan for future trade relations with the EU when she pushed them through Cabinet in July.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Trade Secretary Liam Fox, and Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt are also said to have voiced concerns at the crunch meeting over the summer, according to the BBC. 
Former education secretary Justine Greening, a staunch Remainer, today repeated her warning that Mrs May's plan is the 'worst of all worlds' and said she knew other ministers were on the brink of resigning.
'It leaves us with less influence, loses controls over the rules we have to follow and I have to say, if we were to accept it as a parliament, less credibility as a country in the rest of the world, because they would see that we would be prepared to go for a bad deal,' she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Several pro-EU ministers, including universities minister Sam Gyimah and business minister Richard Harrington, are said to be contemplating walking out. 
In his latest Telegraph column today, Mr Johnson backed his brother Jo's resignation from the Government and attacked the Prime Minister's Brexit proposals as 'shameful'.
'I can't really believe it but this Government seems to be on the verge of total surrender,' he said.
A Canada-style trade deal with the EU would inflict a 'heavy price' on the UK, Amber Rudd has warned. 
In a joint article with Tory Brexiteer Andrew Percy, the former home secretary said the favoured option of many Eurosceptics was undesirable and unrealistic.
Britain's relation with the bloc was 'wholly different' and trying to use the model could be 'economically damaging', they said.
'A Canada-style deal is not an extension of the status-quo, and in many ways could be seen as a failure of the UK's negotiating position,' they wrote on the ConservativeHome website.
'The EU-Canada trade deal, positive though it is for that trading relationship, is a somewhat limited agreement, principally focusing on the elimination of tariffs and the raising of quotas on certain sectors, such as dairy.'
The article also warned that the Canada model would be 'constitutionally dangerous' as it would require a hard Irish border.
The final objection was said to be that it is 'politically impossible' as there would be no majority in the Commons. 
'With every day that passes we seem to be getting more craven. 
'We have agreed to become the punk of Brussels, signing up not just to their existing rulebook but to huge chunks of future regulation – even though we will have no say in drafting that legislation.'
He condemned proposals to hand over the timing for leaving the customs union and the backstop to an independent mechanism, saying: 'We are on the verge of signing up for something even worse than the current constitutional position. 
'These are the terms that might be enforced on a colony.
'On the present plans we will be a vassal state, and in the customs union, until such time as our EU partners may feel moved to enter into fresh negotiations on a trade deal. 
'No member of the Government, let alone the Cabinet, could conceivably support them, or so you would have thought. 
'And yet the awful truth is that even if the Cabinet mutinies – as they ought – it will make little difference.' 
That is because, he said, Mrs May wants 'to remain in captivity'.
Mr Johnson added: 'It is a recipe for continued strife, both in the Tory party and in the country. 
'This deal, when it comes, must be thrown out wholesale. It is not too late to do better and the country deserves it.' 
Mr Johnson said the PM would try to 'bludgeon MPs into voting for surrender' by framing the argument as accepting her proposals or the 'chaos of no deal'. 
His brother said Brexit threatened to be the biggest failure of statecraft since Suez in 1956. 
Fears of a no deal Brexit are growing by the hour amid continued stalemate in the negotiations. 
Leaving in March without an agreement would have far-reaching impact and the Government has published more than 100 notices to help people and business prepare.
It could mean: 
MONEY
Leaving without a deal would mean an immediate Brexit on March 29 after tearing up a 21-month transition agreement.
This included giving £39billion to the EU as a divorce payment. The figure would be slashed - but Britain will be legally obliged to pay some of it.
GOODS TRADE
The Chequers agreement effectively proposed keeping Britain in the single market for goods and agriculture to preserve 'frictionless' trade and protect the economy.
Customs checks on cross-Channel freight would cause havoc at ports, hitting food supplies and other goods.
There are contingency plans that will cost billions to effectively turn the M20 into a giant lorry park and the Government could even lease lorry ferries to ease congestion. 
TARIFFS
All EU-UK trade in goods is free of tariffs in the single market. Many prices in the shops would rise if tariffs are applied. 
Trade would revert to World Trade Organisation rules. The EU would charge import tariffs averaging 2-3 per cent on goods, but up to 60 per cent for some agricultural produce, damaging UK exporters.
We have a trade deficit with the EU of £71billion – they sell us more than we sell them – so the EU overall would lose out.
German cars and French agriculture would be worst hit, as would UK regions with large export industries. Tariffs could also mean price inflation. 
IMMIGRATION
The UK would immediately have control over its borders and freedom to set migration policy on all EU migrants.
More than 1million UK nationals living in Europe could lose their right to live and work in the EU.
Britain has unilaterally guaranteed rights for the 3.7million EU nationals living here but almost none of them are so far registered for their 'settled status'. 
CITY OF LONDON
Many firms have already made contingency plans for no deal, but there would probably be a significant degree of disruption and an economic hit.
Ministers would be likely to take an axe to tax and regulations to preserve the UK's economic advantage.
AEROPLANES
Without a side deal, no deal Brexit could see planes grounded. The UK currently is part of the EU 'open skies' system and replacement agreements have not yet been finalised.  
EUROPEAN COURTS
Britain would be free from the edicts of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and all EU laws. Parliament would be sovereign.
FARMING & FISHING
The UK would quit the Common Agricultural Policy, which gives farmers and landowners £3billion in subsidies. Ministers would come under pressure to continue a form of subsidy.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Northern Ireland would be outside the EU, with no arrangements on how to manage 300 crossing points on the 310-mile border.
The EU would want Ireland to impose customs and other checks to protect the bloc's border – something it has said it will not do.
No deal could blow a hole in the Good Friday Agreement, with pressure on all sides to find a compromise.
But in a sign of Downing Street attempting to push the process forward, Mrs May's key Brexit adviser Olly Robbins held talks in Brussels yesterday.
The negotiations ran until 2.45am amid desperate efforts to find a way through.
The two sides have resumed today, with sources saying things could 'move quickly' if the pieces 'fall into place'.
But there is an atmosphere of gloom among UK officials, with apparent resignation that the November summit is a distant prospect. 
A Downing Street spokesman said: 'We have made good progress in the negotiations in relation to the withdrawal agreement but there are substantial issues still to be overcome in relation to the Northern Irish backstop.' 
In another example of the clear and present danger for Mrs May, the DUP and Tory Eurosceptic backbenchers issued a joint threat to vote down the premier's blueprint if it does come to Parliament.
To make matters worse, four more Remainer ministers are said to be on the brink of quitting, after Boris Johnson's brother Jo walked out demanding another referendum to reverse the whole process.  
Mr Johnson said today he decided to quit after reports Mrs was planning a publicity campaign for her deal which he said amounted to a 'calculated deceit'. 
'This is a calculated deceit on the British people,' Mr Johnson told the Evening Standard. 
'I challenge the Government to come clean on the cost of Brexit. The reason they can't look us in the eye, it's because they know this will leave us worse-off and with less control. It's a gross abuse of civil service impartiality.' 
Mr Johnson added: 'It's clear that we are seeing a deepening crisis. The options for a smooth Brexit are non-existent and each day shows this more clearly. We need to consider alternatives, including the public having a final say in a referendum. 
'There is a sea-change in mood among my Conservative colleagues who are focused by this crisis. I would not be surprised if more colleagues in senior positions speak out. 
Downing Street had pinned its hopes of a breakthrough on a proposal drawn up by Attorney General Geoffrey Cox.
The idea was to include a 'review clause' in the Irish border backstop in a bid to convince Brexiteers the UK will not be trapped indefinitely.
But sources in London and Brussels say the EU has torpedoed the 'Cox compromise', once again raising the risk of a no-deal Brexit.
Mrs May might now be forced to pull the trigger within days on full-blown preparations for the country crashing out - after officials warned that there is no chance the contingency plans will be ready by March otherwise.
Billions of pounds is set to be spent on issues like rushing through new customs infrastructure, ensuring supplies of medicine and food, and protecting energy provisions in Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, Labour's Brexit chaos deepened after shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer has said Britain's withdrawal from the European Union can still be halted.
The comments appeared starkly at odds with Jeremy Corbyn, who said last week in an interview with a German magazine: 'We can't stop Brexit.'
The Labour leader has also rejected a call by former transport minister Jo Johnson - who quit in protest at the Government's Brexit policy - for a second referendum.
However, Sir Keir insisted the Labour leadership was fully signed up to the position agreed at the party's annual conference in Liverpool - including the option of another referendum.
'Brexit can be stopped. But the real question is: what are the decisions we are going to face over the next few weeks and months?' he told Sky News.
'Decision one is on the deal. Decision two is if the deal goes down, should there be a general election? And decision three is, if there is no general election, all options must be on the table including the option of a public vote.
'That is the clear position. Jeremy is signed up to it. I'm signed up to that.'
Sir Keir Starmer insisted Brexit can be stopped today in defiance of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's claim there is no way of halting the referendum result.
The shadow Brexit secretary insisted 'all options must be on the table' including a second referendum.
Mr Corbyn said last week he was powerless to stop Brexit but instead wanted to negotiate an exit on his own terms.
Sir Keir's intervention deepens Labour's chaos on quitting the EU. Just yesterday shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry endorsed a new referendum.
Sir Keir told Sky News: 'Brexit can be stopped. But the real question is what are the decisions we are going to face over the next few weeks and months?
'Decision one is on the deal. Decision two is if the deal goes down should there be a general election and decision three is if there is no general election all options must be on the table including the option of a public vote.
'That is the clear position. Jeremy is signed up to it. I'm signed up to that.'
Last week Mr Corbyn said in an interview: 'We can't stop it.
'The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered. What we can do is recognise the reasons why people voted Leave.'
With the clock ticking down on negotiations, Westminster's attention is turning towards what happens if there is no deal.
But the consequences are chaotic and incredibly hard to predict.
Senior Labour figures and Remainers such as Tony Blair insist the government will find it politically impossible to proceed with a no-deal Brexit.
They say rather than crash out, the PM will be forced to call a referendum, or extend the Article 50 process.
But Mrs May is adamant that there is no prospect of her cancelling or delaying Brexit.
Commons Clerks have pointed out that, short of two-thirds of the Commons voting for an election, there is no legal mechanism for MPs to oblige the government to change course. 
The Withdrawal Act has already been passed by Parliament - meaning that the 'default' position is for the UK to leave the bloc on March 29, deal or no deal.
Constitutional Clerk Graeme Cowie said that did not mean MPs could not avert a no deal - but it would come down to the strength of political pressure. 
'There is not any legal mechanism by which they can insist upon an alternative other than no deal,' he told the BBC's Westminster Hour.
'The means by which they might achieve that (avoiding no deal) are necessarily political, rather than legal.' 
Failure to agree a deal by January 21   
Under pressure from Tory rebels, the government ceded a provision in the Withdrawal Act that means they must set out 'next steps' to Parliament if a deal has not been done by January 21.
That could be the starting point for massive pressure to be piled on Mrs May to switch her strategy and avoid a no deal outcome.
But while MPs will be able to hold a debate on the plan, any vote would be on a motion in 'neutral terms' - along the lines of 'take note' - and not amendable.
What could Remainer MPs do?
Government cannot last long without the support of Parliament, as they must pass Budgets and get their policies through.
But since the Fixed Term Parliaments Act was introduced it is considerably harder to force an election.  
MPs keen to avoid a no deal could cause a huge amount of trouble, including wrecking any legislation ministers put forward to ease the impact of a no-deal Brexit.
But a government that is determined to press on, and willing to risk a chaotic exit from the EU, could conceivably cling on until it is too late.
The nuclear option for Tory MPs would be to back a vote of no confidence.
However, under the new rules, that would only force Mrs May out, and trigger a two-week period when she is likely to be replaced by another - and potentially more Brexiteer - PM.   
Will political reality intervene? 
Bulldozing through a no deal Brexit in the face of Parliamentary opposition might be possible in theory - but it could prove all-but impossible in reality.
Mrs May could endure 'death by a thousand cuts' if she tries, and risks tainting the Tories' reputation for economic governance by throwing the country into turmoil.
However, the Conservatives will need to balance the reputational problems from crashing out against the political damage of failing to push through Brexit.
Emergency EU Summit, Brussels, November 25
What will happen? If the divorce package is agreed between the two sides, it will need to be signed off by EU leaders.
EU council president Donald Tusk will convene a summit where formal approval will be given by EU leaders. This is expected sometime between November 22 and 25.
Will the whole deal be agreed? The Brexit deal is due to come in two parts - a formal divorce treaty and a political declaration on what the final trade deal might look like.
The second part may not be finished until a regular EU summit due on December 13-14.
Assuming the negotiations have reached an agreement and Mrs May travels to Brussels with her Cabinet's support, this stage should be a formality.
What if there is no agreement? If EU leaders do not sign off on the deal at this stage, no deal becomes highly likely - there is just no time left to negotiate a wholly new deal. 
The so-called 'meaningful vote' in the UK Parliament, December 2019
What will happen: A debate, probably over more than one day, will be held in the House of Commons on terms of the deal.
It will end with a vote on whether or not MPs accept the deal. More than one vote might happen if MPs are allowed to table amendments.
The vote is only happening after MPs forced the Government to accept a 'meaningful vote' in Parliament on the terms of the deal.
What happens if May wins? If the meaningful vote is passed, there will be a series of further votes as the withdrawal treaty is written into British law.
It will be a huge political victory for the Prime Minister and probably secure her version of Brexit.
What happens if she loses? This is possibly the most dangerous stage of all. 
The Prime Minister will have to stake her political credibility on winning a vote and losing it would be politically devastating. 
Brexiteers do not want to sign off the divorce bill without a satisfactory trade deal and Remainers are reluctant to vote for a blind Brexit.
She could go back to Brussels to ask for new concessions before a second vote but many think she would have to resign quickly. 
Ratification in the EU, February 2019 
What will happen? After the meaningful vote in the UK, the EU will have to ratify the agreement.
The European Parliament must also vote in favour of the deal. It has a representative in the talks, Guy Verhofstadt, who has repeatedly warned the deal must serve the EU's interests.
Will it be agreed? In practice, once the leaders of the 27 member states have agreed a deal, ratification on the EU side should be assured.
If the deal has passed the Commons and she is still in office, this should not be dangerous for the Prime Minister. 
Exit day, March 29, 2019 
At 11pm on March 29, 2019, Britain will cease to be a member of the European Union, two years after triggering Article 50 and almost three years after the referendum. 
Exit happens at 11pm because it must happen on EU time.
If the transition deal is in place, little will change immediately - people will travel in the same way as today and goods will cross the border normally. 
But Britain's MEPs will no longer sit in the European Parliament and British ministers will no longer take part in EU meetings.
Negotiations will continue to turn the political agreement on the future partnership into legal text that will eventually become a second treaty. Both sides will build new customs and immigration controls in line with what this says.
Transition ends, December 2020
The UK's position will undergo a more dramatic change at the end of December 2020, when the 'standstill' transition is due to finish.
If the negotiations on a future trade deal are complete, that could come into force.
But if they are still not complete the Irish border 'backstop' plan could be triggered.
Under current thinking, that means the UK staying in the EU customs union and more regulatory checks between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland.
Eurosceptics fear this arrangement will prevent the country striking trade deals elsewhere, and could effectively last for ever, as Brussels will have no incentive to negotiate a replacement deal. 
This is the most pro-Brexit House of Commons ever elected. More than 90 per cent of MPs have just been returned for parties that are promising to leave the EU, namely the Conservatives, Labour and the Democratic Unionist Party.
That fact is worth remembering as you listen to the excited comments by British Europhiles about stopping Brexit, and the sneering by some in Brussels about the supposed hopelessness of our position now that Theresa May has lost her outright majority.
It's hard to see how Brexit could be stopped even if MPs voted en masse against their party manifestos.
The EU's Article 50, which began the formal process of disengagement, was triggered ten weeks ago. Thanks, paradoxically, to the Euro-fanatical campaigner Gina Miller and her court case, its triggering was endorsed by both Houses of Parliament, giving it unarguable authority.
In both British and European law, the United Kingdom will cease to be a member of the EU on March 29, 2019.
A lot of commentators misunderstand, or affect to misunderstand, this fact. Britain will pull out of the EU, with or without a deal, in less than two years.
The choice is not between leaving and staying. It's between leaving in an amicable way and leaving with no agreement. Nothing that has happened this week will change that.
Everyone agrees it is better to withdraw in an orderly manner. We want to retain the friendship of our European allies. We don't want a rupture that damages our economy or theirs, or that weakens the eurozone. Prosperous neighbours make the best customers.
That's not to say that leaving with no deal would be the end of the world, simply that it is a second-best option.
Pro-EU politicians always use the same hackneyed phrase when they talk about a failure to reach terms.
They call it 'crashing out' of the EU 'with no deal at all'. A more neutral way of putting it might be to say: 'Enjoying normal, friendly relations with the EU, in the way that Australia and the U.S. do.'
Still, to repeat, both sides have made clear that they would much prefer an agreed and cordial withdrawal.
What might the terms of such an agreement look like? Has Britain's hand been weakened by the election? Will Labour MPs work with Tory Europhiles to try to water down any deal? Will Brussels toughen its stance in response?
Again, it is worth looking at the manifestos on which Labour and Conservative MPs have been elected. Both promised to implement the referendum result.
Both accepted that Britain would settle its outstanding debts to the EU, but no more. Both opposed unrestricted migration. Both rejected full membership of the single market.
It is on this last issue, Britain's economic relationship with the EU, that the two main parties are furthest apart, though not always in the way people think. Labour's Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, is keen on the single market. But his leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is more hostile to it than any Tory. He was a Leaver as far back as 1975 precisely because he didn't like the economic regulations coming from Brussels.
His Euroscepticism was never really about sovereignty or reducing our payments or controlling our borders. It was about the way EU rules prevented Britain from implementing socialist policies.
Several trade union and Labour figures, including some Remainers, now see Brexit as an opportunity to withdraw from EU rules that hamper the nationalisation of industries, and encourage contracting out of public services to private firms.
By contrast, almost all Tories, Leave or Remain, believe that competition is good for consumers, and would happily retain single market regulations on, for example, not discriminating against other countries' products. Is a compromise possible on the single market? And, if a compromise could be found that Parliament endorsed, would it be accepted by the EU? Yes and yes.
The single market is not a single entity. It is a collection of different rules and obligations, some of them more important than others. Leaving the EU necessarily implies leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and reasserting the supremacy of British law on our own soil.
But it does not prevent us keeping some of the EU's economic arrangements through domestic legislation.
This is, broadly speaking, the position that Switzerland is in: not exactly in the single market, but not outside it either.
As I kept pointing out before and during the referendum campaign, Switzerland is the second wealthiest country in the world.
Unlike the EU, it has trade deals with China, Japan and other major economies. It manages to have a flourishing financial services sector which, as a proportion of its economy, is twice the size of ours.
It is often pointed out that Switzerland pays a price for these advantages in the form of freedom of movement.
It's true that Switzerland allows EU nationals to enter its territory and claim certain benefits there — as Swiss nationals can do in the EU. But, crucially, those migrants must have jobs.
And their benefits, regulated by bilateral treaties, are not subject to constant extension by the European Commission and Court.
Britain had a similar arrangement until the Maastricht Treaty came into force in the mid-Nineties. We always allowed free movement of labour — the right to accept job offers in each other's countries.
It was the invention of EU citizenship that created enforceable rights, including welfare claims, free university tuition, immunity from deportation and the right to bring family members into Britain.
Formal Brexit talks begin a week on Monday. They will be conducted, on our side, by officials and diplomats who have been preparing for them since last year.
They will answer to a government committed to implementing the referendum result.
The main difference is that, unlike in the last Parliament, most MPs now have a direct mandate for Brexit.
By all means let's make it a friendly and mutually advantageous process. Let's allow for interim arrangements. Let's be flexible about timing. Let's aim to keep bits of EU co-operation that suit both sides.
But let's not pretend Brexit itself is in doubt.
The parties that wanted a second referendum were trounced on Thursday. The result stands.
 
During the cold, grim days of the mid-1970s, as Britain staggered through two deadlocked elections, a minority Labour Government, two miners’ strikes and a three-day week, the London Evening Standard ran one of the most memorable headlines in our recent history.
It read simply, ‘ABSOLUTE CHAOS TONIGHT: OFFICIAL’.
Those were the words that came into my mind at ten o’clock on Thursday evening, as the exit poll flashed onto the TV screen and it became obvious that Theresa May’s great election gamble had ended in utter disaster.
We live, of course, in an age of political shocks. Nobody expected David Cameron to win a majority two years ago. Few pundits expected that Britain would vote to leave the EU this time last year; even fewer thought that Donald Trump would become President of the United States.
Yet even by those standards, this week’s stunning election result represents something extraordinary.
Given how far ahead the Conservatives seemed to be at the outset of the campaign, I cannot think of a modern electoral shock to match it.
More importantly, though, I cannot think of any General Election that has left the country in such a perilous position, with our politics plunged into chaos, our currency hurtling towards an abyss and our position in Europe — the very issue this election was supposed to decide — more uncertain than ever.
As the results were being declared in the early hours of yesterday morning, some commentators made parallels with Edward Heath’s disastrous election gamble in February 1974, when he asked the country for a mandate to take on the striking miners — and lost.
Others looked further back, to 1923, when another Conservative leader, Stanley Baldwin, called a snap election only a few months after becoming Prime Minister, only to lose his majority and hand the initiative to a reinvigorated Labour Party.
But I think the current situation is much worse than in the 1920s, and perhaps worse even than 1974.
Indeed, given that we are about to begin the immensely complicated Brexit negotiations, and given the sheer extremism of Mrs May’s strengthened Labour opponents, I believe this may be the darkest and most dangerous hour for our country since the summer of 1940, when the Nazis rampaged through Europe, Neville Chamberlain fell from office and Britain faced Hitler’s war machine.
Back then, of course, we had Winston Churchill to save us. There is, alas, no such consolation today. Even a few days ago, I would never have imagined that I would be writing these words.
Like most people, I found the election campaign almost uniquely dishonest and dispiriting, and was as shocked by Labour’s shamelessly deceitful attempt to bribe the electorate as I was by the Tories’ astoundingly unimaginative, clumsy and negative efforts.
Even so, as dusk fell on Thursday, I still thought Mrs May might secure a decent working majority and a personal mandate to take into the Brexit negotiations.
Instead, it will be a badly weakened and potentially doomed Prime Minister who faces the Brussels elite on June 19, while an emboldened Labour Party — now completely in thrall to its hard-Left leadership — licks its lips with anticipation.
If nothing else, Mrs May and her colleagues have learned an immensely painful lesson: the country does not like snap elections. What is more, a Prime Minister who calls a snap election cannot dictate the terms of the campaign or limit the debate to a single issue.
Older readers will remember that when Edward Heath launched his own catastrophic gamble in February 1974, he asked the country to answer a simple question: who governs — the government or the miners?
But not only did the British people resent being dragged to the polls, millions of them used their votes to protest about other issues, such as the state of the economy, the cost of living and the difficulty of getting housing.
Alas, the close-knit cabal surrounding Mrs May — for whom many Conservative MPs now have nothing but furious contempt — refused to heed the warning of history.
In their arrogance, they thought they could limit the debate to Brexit and nothing but Brexit, ignoring the fact that many voters were desperate to hear an optimistic economic message after years of austerity.
What was even less forgivable was that they believed they could win by parroting a handful of robotic and, frankly, moronic mantras: ‘Brexit means Brexit’, ‘Strong, stable leadership’ and so on. Apparently, their political consultants had assured them that this would guarantee victory. Well, we all know how that turned out.
For Mrs May, the result is a personal disaster of almost incalculable proportions.
Her colleagues may be rallying round for the moment, and the support of the Democratic Unionist Party should allow her to remain in office in the short term.
Even so, I find it impossible to see how she can possibly rebuild her authority within her own party, let alone with the electorate as a whole.
I say that with some sadness, because she has always struck me as a figure of considerable moral integrity.
But political credibility is a finite resource: once spent, it is almost never regained. And, let’s be honest, as the results came in, you could almost see Mrs May’s authority draining away.
Under normal circumstances, perhaps this would not be such a problem. The Conservatives would form a minority government and then, perhaps in the autumn or next year, elect a new leader. Life would go on.
But these are not normal times.
Whatever your views of Brexit, the fact is that the British people gave the Government an instruction last June, and the Government is honour-bound to deliver on it.
What is now clear, however, is that the Brussels elite are determined to drive the hardest possible bargain, humiliating Britain as a warning to other EU member states. When the talks begin in nine days time, we will find ourselves alone against 27 other nations, who — if the rhetoric coming from Paris and Berlin is any guide — now see themselves as our implacable antagonists.
Even if Mrs May had a clear mandate, this would be a daunting challenge. As it is, she will begin the negotiations as a lame-duck Prime Minister, hobbled by her humiliation at the polls. Perhaps you don’t find this frightening, but I do.
I suspect that the EU negotiating team in Brussels will now take the opportunity to demand the most punitive possible terms, including an £84 billion ‘divorce bill’ that could cripple our economy for years to come. Whether Mrs May could sell those terms to her own backbenchers is anybody’s guess.
Propped up by the Democratic Unionists, and with her authority inside her own party fatally weakened, she may well find it impossible to reconcile the most fervent Brexiteers with the die-hard Remainers.
That raises two, frankly, terrifying prospects.
One is that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal of any kind, which could send the pound into free-fall, shatter confidence in our economy and leave millions of manufacturing jobs at risk. The second, and perhaps even more chilling prospect, is purely domestic. For if the Conservatives tear themselves apart — as history suggests they are perfectly capable of doing — then that could hand power to the most extreme Opposition leadership in my lifetime.
In the past, I have been a fierce critic of Jeremy Corbyn. But to do him justice, he personally fought a brave and upbeat campaign, against all the odds, and achieved a stunning result.
The history books will record this as one of the most extraordinary political shocks of all time, and there is no getting away from the fact that this has been Corbyn’s personal achievement.
Even so, the very real prospect of him as Prime Minister, propped up by a bloodied and bitter Scottish National Party, seems to me utterly terrifying.
Quite apart from the prospect of a wild £60 billion spending spree (free university tuition, billions for the NHS and so on, to be funded by old-fashioned class-war taxes on British businesses), a Corbyn government could mean leaving Diane Abbott in charge of our security, putting John McDonnell in the Treasury and giving Nicola Sturgeon a veto over every line of new legislation.
One of the greatest failures of the Tory campaign, I think, was that it completely failed to impress on the British electorate precisely what this would mean.
I have heard comparisons with the Labour Party under Michael Foot in the early 1980s.
Yet Foot was a seasoned former Cabinet minister, while most of his senior frontbenchers were more moderate than the far-Left stereotype suggests.
In their inexperience and their extremism — Mr McDonnell, for example, is an unashamed Marxist, who boasts of wanting to undermine the capitalist system — the current Labour leadership is not remotely in the same league.
To me, at least, the prospect that Mr McDonnell and his friends could soon be handling our national finances is not just worrying but downright petrifying.
As for the thought of Corbyn and McDonnell running the Brexit process, which will set the direction of our national political and economic life for generations to come, well, that is simply off the scale. ‘Absolute chaos’ does not even begin to cover it.
Are there silver linings? One or two, I suppose.
In Scotland, the tigerish Ruth Davidson once again showed herself the most charismatic presence in British politics. And for those of us who cherish the Union, it was tremendous to see the dogmatic separatism of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalists given such a stinging rebuke.
But I am clutching at straws, I know.
The truth is that Thursday’s result could hardly have been a worse outcome, not just for Mrs May and for the Conservatives, but for our country’s prospects of surviving the inevitable political and economic tempests ahead.
And if you doubt it, just consider what could be coming.
Mrs May could be gone within months. The Government may not even last till the end of the year.
Faced with impossibly punitive terms, Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal.
And at the helm, we could well have the most extreme Labour leader since the 1930s, with a Marxist Chancellor and a Home Secretary who once celebrated terrorist victories against the British state, all reliant on a narrow nationalist who wants to destroy the United Kingdom.
In the future, historians will surely shake their heads in disbelief that, from a position of such apparent superiority, Mrs May’s advisers contrived to plunge us into such chaos.
But for the time being, we can only pray that a shell-shocked Government recovers its composure and its discipline, rallies to its stricken leader and prepares for the horrendously hard work to come.
Never in my lifetime have the stakes been higher.
It is not just the health of our economy, the survival of millions of jobs, the security of our country and our future as an independent trading nation that are now at risk. It is the survival of the United Kingdom itself.
It was Theresa May herself, ironically, who told us that politics is not a game.
I fear that in the coming weeks and months, we will discover how terribly right she was. 
By Jack Doyle for the Daily Mail

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There was no hiding Theresa May’s fury on Thursday night — it was visible all over her face.
‘I’ve never seen her look so angry,’ said one MP who saw her after the result came in.
When MPs’ votes were counted on a motion endorsing her negotiating strategy, she had lost by 303 to 258.
Mrs May, who wasn’t in the Commons to witness the defeat, had been beaten principally because 57 hardline Brexiteers in her own party had defied her and abstained. As MPs filed out of the Commons chamber, the PM’s chief whip, Julian Smith, turned to the green benches where these ultras sit and he glared.
The consequences of Mrs May’s latest parliamentary defeat should not be underestimated. Little over two weeks ago, she had a spring in her step. She had unified her party after MPs voted to approve her EU Withdrawal Bill on condition she could negotiate changes to the Irish backstop. Crucially, the DUP had been won over.
Almost for the first time since the Brexit negotiations began, she could see a point on the horizon when she would be able to command enough votes in Parliament to finally get a deal through.
Finally, she had put the pressure back on the EU’s negotiators in Brussels. But after Thursday evening’s vote, Tory unity is once again in pieces and, more significantly, Mrs May’s hopes of winning concessions from the EU are seriously damaged.
When she next talks to Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker or any of the leaders of the other 27 EU countries, they will — with some justification — say there is no concession they can give her which will satisfy her own MPs. Last night the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier declared the vote showed Mrs May’s Brexit strategy had ‘failed’.
Theresa May was beaten principally because 57 hardline Brexiteers in her own party had defied her and abstained
The blame for this shambles does not lie entirely with the hardline Tory Brexiteers in the European Research Group (ERG). Eleven Tory MPs on the Remain side also rebelled, an equally unbiddable and uncompromising faction determined to force a second referendum and stop Britain leaving the EU.
Arguably, tactical mistakes were made, too, on the Government side, in not recognising and trying to avert the rebellion.
But in the final analysis, it was ERG votes which have hobbled Mrs May at this critical juncture and undermined her prospects of securing the very thing these MPs claim to want: a better deal for Britain.
So why did they do it?
This potentially self-defeating act of sabotage was sparked to a large degree by comments made by Mrs May’s chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins. He was overheard in a Brussels bar this week by journalists who said he remarked that Mrs May would opt for a long delay rather than leaving the EU without a deal. The Tory rebels also believed — despite protestations to the contrary from ministers — that the Commons motion on Thursday explicitly took No Deal off the table.
The ERG’s ‘shop steward’, Steve Baker, desperately attempted yesterday to defend the indefensible by portraying his and his fellow hardliners’ position as one of pragmatism and compromise, insisting he had ‘put an enormous amount of effort into uniting the party’.
Really?
In truth, if this intransigence continues, they risk tearing the Tory Party apart and — more importantly — increasing the chances of an even softer Brexit, a delay, or both. As one senior source told me: ‘The ERG are going to burn the house down. It’s not a question of if, but when.’
The allusion to arson is a very powerful one. Although there are not yet any big flames, the touch-paper has been lit. Of course, not all ERG members hold the same views, and not all deserve the ‘kamikaze’ or ‘nihilist’ labels some of their colleagues privately attach to them. Indeed, what has been described as a ‘party within a party’ is itself riven with division.
Hardline Tory Brexiteers in the European Research Group (ERG) are making Theresa May's job hard. Pictured: Jacob Rees-Mogg
There is a chance Mrs May can yet win over some who are looking for a ladder to climb down.
Others may be biddable as they are cynically positioning themselves for the next party leadership contest and will see how the chips fall before making their move.
A small minority, however, cling on to the belief that they can force through No Deal — and to hell with the economic consequences.
Tory Euroscepticism hasn’t always been so red-bloodedly radical. Various members of the ERG have, in the past, publicly backed staying in the Customs Union (David Davis) or a gradual transition (Owen Paterson), while ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg once floated the idea of a second referendum after the negotiation was complete. How grimly ironic that now, as the prize of Brexit is within their sights, this pragmatism has been abandoned.
One Tory MP told me this week he thought some of the most zealous Brexiteers, who have spent their entire political careers trying to get Britain out of the EU, now perversely don’t want Britain to leave because they would have nothing left to fight against. This interpretation may be going too far.
Of course, the unhelpful arithmetic of Commons votes is the result of Mrs May losing the Tories’ majority in the 2017 general election. As a result, she has been unable to take a harder line with Brussels.
Theresa May is battling both remainers and her own back benchers who seek to stand in her way
But her calamitous miscalculation of calling an election three years before it was necessary led to a Remain-dominated Parliament.
For their part, Tory opponents of No Deal aren’t prepared to sit on their hands much longer, and Thursday night’s antics by their ERG colleagues simply enraged them further.
To date, they have heeded entreaties from the likes of Chancellor Philip Hammond to hold their nerve and give Mrs May more time. But with Brexit just 41 days away, they are running out of patience.
The next crunch point in the Parliamentary calendar is February 27. If Mrs May hasn’t got a deal accepted by then, expect dozens of Tory MPs — among them several ministers — to ally with Labour in an attempt to seize control of the Brexit timetable to avert what they see as a No Deal catastrophe.
If that happened, the prospect of Brexit happening on March 29 would all but vanish, and with it Mrs May’s room for manoeuvre.
These are the darkest fears of those closest to the Prime Minister. Summing up her mood, one tells me: ‘Sometimes she thinks it’ll be ok . . . but sometimes she just despairs.’

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
The Government’s defeat in the Commons on Wednesday has led to a welter of ignorant claims that Theresa May is badly damaged and even more absurd suggestions that Brexit can be reversed.
What nonsense!
Admittedly, a rebellion by backbench Tory Remainers means that MPs will now have a veto on the final deal.
Despite Wednesday’s setback, though, the Prime Minister lives to fight another day, and Brexit remains on course. Britain will leave the EU on March 29, 2019.
Barring some unforeseeable event, Mrs May will still be in No. 10 on that date, and — regardless of a handful of bitter malcontents — leader of a united Tory Party.
However, a similar assertion cannot be made about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Even though his MPs managed to score a cheap political point over the Tories in this week’s Commons vote — a hollow victory they celebrated by singing the Red Flag — the fact is that his party is far more deeply split over Brexit than the Conservatives.
And, Mr Corbyn’s own political posturing — he’s an instinctive Brexiteer — becomes more embarrassing by the day.
Particularly insulted by Labour’s cynical and muddled approach to Brexit are millions of the party’s traditional supporters who voted to Leave in last year’s referendum.
The brutal truth is he heads an increasingly unsustainable coalition made up of two contradictory groups that can never be reconciled.
One group comprises largely the middle classes and younger people. They passionately want Britain to remain part of the EU and do not believe mass immigration places an unbearable strain on social cohesion and public services, jobs, housing. These people mainly live in economically more prosperous London and the South of England.
The second group comprises traditional working class voters in the Midlands and the North of England. A fascinating insight into the attitudes of the latter came on Thursday when BBC1’s Question Time was broadcast from the former mining town of Barnsley in Yorkshire.
As per usual with the BBC, the panel was biased towards Remainers. Three of the five (Tory MP Nicky Morgan — one of the 11 rebels on Wednesday, Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey and Labour peer and fertility expert Lord Winston) wanted the UK to stay in the EU. But their arguments were destroyed by several audience members.
One man expressed views which, I suspect, are shared by a majority of local people.
Fearful that she may be forced out of power before the 2022 German elections, Angela Merkel, I can reveal, is plotting to replace boozy European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, who is accused of perverting justice while at the centre of phone-tapping allegations when he was prime minister of Luxembourg. A source in Berlin tells me: ‘Mrs Merkel does not want to be the first post-war German Chancellor forced out of office. She has a rescue plan — European Commission president is as an appropriately dignified role.’ox text
Turning his fire on Ms Morgan, he accused her of committing a ‘treacherous act’ against the Conservative Party. He also rebuked her Labour rival, saying she belongs to a party which ‘should be defending working class communities’ but which was actually betraying them.
He also pointed out that Labour’s support for Britain remaining in the Single Market would lead to ‘unrestricted migration’ — adding that Barnsley voted by a big majority to Leave. (The number of votes cast in the town in June 2016 was 38,951 to remain a member of the EU, and 83,958 to leave.) Explaining the reason why, he said the EU had ‘damaged the working class communities’.
I have rarely heard such an eloquent contribution on Question Time — from a panellist or a member of the audience.
Ms Morgan and Ms Long-Bailey looked very uncomfortable as the man spoke. He did not say which party he supports, but I guess he speaks for millions of Labour voters in the North and the Midlands.
Strongly-held sentiments such as his explain why Labour has struggled woefully to come up with anything resembling a coherent position on Brexit. The fact is the party’s policy is utterly confusing. One minute it is in favour of the free movement of people — the next it is against. Then a shadow minister wants Britain to stay in the Single Market and customs union — only to be contradicted by another shadow minister. Some in the party demand a second referendum —others claim they are happy to abide by the 2016 vote.
This confusion is an utter insult to the British people.
 There has been a chorus of condemnation of inexperienced new Chief Whip, Julian Smith, after last week’s Commons defeat — and reasonably so. He’s clearly not up to the job.
However, party chairman, Patrick McLoughlin deserves more blame. Wednesday’s humbling would never have happened if he had done his job properly. Mrs May should waste no time in getting rid of this piece of deadwood in her ministerial re-shuffle early in the New Year.
 
No wonder Mrs May teased Mr Corbyn at a recent Prime Minister’s Questions over the vexed issue of the Irish border, saying: ‘Half the Labour party wants to stay in the Single Market and half the Labour party wants to leave the Single Market. The only hard border around is right down the middle of the Labour party.’
Labour’s shambles is based on two factors — serious disagreements between its MPs, and a cynical desire to take any line, however contradictory, if it believes it can embarrass the Tory government.
More worrying, through this cynical opportunism, Labour is also pursuing a seriously amoral strategy. It is trying to woo different parts of the country and social classes with different messages.
While voters in the South and young people are told Labour is in favour of Britain staying in the Single Market and it would still allow unlimited freedom of movement for EU citizens, people in the North are told Labour opposes continued membership of the Single Market and would end freedom of movement. For the time being, Mr Corbyn is just about getting away with such shameless trickery.
But this can’t go on for ever and, at some stage soon, he has to come down on one side or the other.
Crucially, Momentum, the far-Left pressure group which provides the bulk of Mr Corbyn’s most ardent supporters and which is increasingly pulling his strings, appears to favour freedom of movement. (Significantly, Momentum backed Remain in the referendum campaign.)
This probably explains why Mr Corbyn seems to be tentatively moving towards a position that supports remaining in the Single Market.
Meanwhile, Momentum’s power inside Corbyn’s Labour party grows insidiously as it carries out Soviet-style purges to deselect moderate Labour councillors — as is exposed by Guy Adams’s investigation elsewhere in this paper.
To be fair, nothing is certain. Labour’s position has altered so much in the past 18 months that it may change again.
But the more anti-Brexit it becomes, the more it can say goodbye to many of its voters in northern constituencies such as Barnsley.
Such people are being abandoned and taken for granted by Labour — and for that matter, too, the Tories — as happened before the Brexit referendum.
No wonder the veteran Labour MP Frank Field (who voted Leave) said on Thursday: ‘Labour faces wipeout in large numbers of seats which voted determinedly to leave the EU . . . Any more messing around in an attempt to cripple our Brexit negotiators could spell electoral disaster.’
Several weeks ago, I warned that Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity may well have peaked.
I now believe that unless he can resolve his party’s problems over the EU, it will begin to subside — and very fast.
 
The three young men waiting for a bus outside the Hungarian town of Perbal a few days ago so alarmed one local resident that he called the police.
Surely these were illegal migrants. However, they were anything but. They were students from Sri Lanka, working as volunteers at a home for the mentally disabled.
A minor misunderstanding, perhaps. Except that it is part of a familiar pattern. 
A few weeks earlier, death threats were sent to a man and his car tyres slashed after villagers complained that he was offering a family of migrants a free break at his motel.
International condemnation of this incident in Ocseny in southern Hungary was swift but the country’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, assured the villagers that they had his sympathy. 
But then, the Right-wing leader himself has been accused of xenophobia — and even anti-semitism — as a result of his government’s campaign against EU-imposed migrant quotas.
Such is the reality of life on the other side of the EU.
The EU leadership and the European Commission are far too preoccupied with political chaos in Germany and with Brexit to deal with a much greater threat to their grand European dream.
In Britain, bitter Remoaners are fighting a forlorn rearguard battle to try to stop Brexit and sneer at Leavers for their stupidity, seemingly oblivious to the convulsions in the east of the EU. 
Instead of a serene and harmonious Europe of Tuscan villas, Provencal markets, German opera and Bavarian beer halls, we are witnessing rancorous divisions over migration, economic stagnation and incipient independence movements.
And the bitter truth is that in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, there is now a stridently anti-Brussels, anti-migrant and anti-Establishment movement with the increasingly angry peoples of these nations convinced they are being treated as second-class citizens. 
This is a different Europe, too, which has never known multiculturalism and is in no mood to start embracing it now. 
Hence this month’s Independence Day celebrations in Warsaw featured a torch-lit procession by tens of thousands celebrating their ancient Christian heritage. They chanted ‘We want God’ and waved banners with messages such as ‘White Europe’.
Commentators less attuned to Polish traditions and history were quick to accuse these protesters of ‘fascism’. Here in Central Europe, though, the response has been different. According to Poland’s robustly nationalist government, it was ‘a great celebration of Poles’.
The same mood was reflected in the recent elections in Austria and the Czech Republic. Both countries have elected Right-wing Eurosceptic governments — in the wake of the sudden rise of the hard-Right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.
Indeed, AfD emerged as the third-largest party in September’s elections — meaning Angela Merkel has been unable to form a government and is fighting for her political life.
Even in France, where this summer’s shock election victory by Emmanuel Macron’s centre-Left En Marche movement grabbed the headlines, the fact that the far-Right National Front gained ground while the grand old political party machines collapsed was all but ignored.
The ineluctable fact is that Europe is shifting to the Right. Which is why I am in Hungary, because it is the next EU nation to go to the polls and is emblematic of the new anti-Brussels mood in Central and Eastern Europe.
There is no chance of a lurch to the Right here, come April’s vote, because Hungary lurched that way long ago. Its leader is hated by liberal commentators — not least for the Trump-style border fence he has built to keep out migrants. 
But Orban, like Trump, couldn’t care less. He has no problem with being called ‘populist’, though he prefers the term ‘plebeian’. Even his friends call him ‘The Viktator’.
And he is well on course for victory in next spring’s election which will carry profound implications for Brussels.
Few doubt that Orban will be returned to power with anything less than an overall majority. Indeed, he is fast becoming the de facto leader of the alternative EU.
Predictably, just as the Brussels establishment belittled Brexiteers ahead of last summer’s EU referendum, it is now dismissing the Hungarian leader as an authoritarian Right-wing fruitcake. 
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has called him a ‘dictator’ and gave him a half-joking slap on the cheek at an EU summit in 2015. 
The thirsty arch-Eurocrat has never forgotten that it was Orban and David Cameron who were the only EU leaders who dared to oppose his appointment.
But you do not last as long as Orban (he’s already been PM for a total of 11 years) without shrewd political instincts. This former professional footballer — a God-fearing father of five who makes sausages by slaughtering his own pigs — had his first stint as prime minister as long ago as 1998.
He made his name as a young firebrand bravely demanding multi-party elections in Hungary while the Iron Curtain was still standing. Those who like to paint Central Europe’s dramatic turn to the Right as a dark reprise of Germany in the Thirties are missing the point.
No, what goes to the core of Orban’s political DNA — and the current shift across the whole East European region — is a hatred of communism. These are people who remember living under a totalitarian empire less than 30 years ago. Many now regard Brussels and its unelected Commission and unaccountable courts as the new Moscow.
John O’Sullivan, former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher and now president of the Budapest-based think tank the Danube Institute, says that outsiders fail to understand how deep the scars of communism go.
His biography of Orban recounts how, significantly, the politician was arrested in 1988 as he tried to create his movement. He says Orban’s experience of life under Communist rule has made him ‘much more critical of elites the higher he has risen.’
Indeed, Orban’s great modern heroes are those who brought about the pulling down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 — notably German chancellor Helmut Kohl, US president Ronald Reagan and Thatcher. It is a popular sentiment around here, as I discover in Budapest’s Liberty Square where Orban has erected a bronze statue of Reagan.
Looking closely, I see it is in need of repair. A crack has now turned into a hole in Reagan’s outstretched hand — because so many people come here to shake it. 
If Orban and his Fidesz party win a fourth term, as everyone expects, the old European elite can no longer dismiss what is happening here as mere ‘populism’. A clear dividing line now runs from the Baltic to the Danube and the Black Sea.
On one side are the EU’s wealthier, liberal, multicultural nations such as France and Germany (where, in 2015, Merkel controversially — and to her bitter cost — invited more than a million refugees).
On the other are those whose democracies are, in most cases, virtually brand new — the so-called Borscht Belt, the Goulash Gang, call them what you will — whose social outlook on everything from gay rights to immigration is very different.
In last month’s Czech elections, an Islamophobic party which urged voters to walk pigs past a mosque to protect what it called the country’s ‘democratic way of life and the heritage of our ancestors from Islam’ won 10.7 per cent of the vote. (That is a great deal more than the 7.4 per cent achieved by the Lib Dems in Britain four months earlier.)
The default response in the Western half of Europe is to demand that these ghastly people become better Europeans. But the fact is that these ghastly people are no longer afraid of squaring up to Brussels.
Barely noticed, thanks to the general obsession with Brexit and Catalonia’s bid for independence, has been a recent summit of Central European leaders in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava. 
It had been convened to tackle a festering cause of anger and injured pride. The specific indignity was the discovery that sub-standard foods had been exported to the former Eastern Bloc which had not been sold in Western Europe.
Orban’s government has described it as the ‘biggest scandal of the recent past’. Just imagine the protests and smashed windows in Scotland if Sainsbury’s was flogging sub-standard food north of the border but not in Surrey. The Bulgarian prime minister calls this ‘food apartheid’.
Although this controversy was about food, it symbolised to East Europeans how they were being abused by Brussels. 
Stung in to action, Brussels has promised to introduce a new food testing regime from next year. Too late. The damage has been done.
It is just yet another example of why Brussels-bashing is so prevalent to the east of the Alps, particularly here in Hungary.
For when Orban started building his razor wire fence along Hungary’s southern border during the migration crisis of 2015, he was roundly attacked.
Hundreds of thousands who had crossed from Turkey into Greece were heading West via Serbia and Hungary. Some were fleeing the Syrian civil war. But many were economic migrants.
Mrs Merkel was hailed as the ‘angel of Europe’ for saying that Germany would welcome the lot. For his part, Orban was branded the villain for closing the door. 
Today, the memory of the chaos of 2015 and subsequent terrorist incidents by Muslim extremists across Europe mean few here question Orban’s decision.
‘Migration is the big issue here, and the EU is now following Orban on migration,’ says Zsolt Jesenszky, a well-known Hungarian entrepreneur. ‘The Left were totally against the fence when it went up saying: “It won’t work”. And guess what? It works.’
Jesenszky, 45, says that the younger generations want leaders who stand up to Brussels, not people who go on bended knee.
‘Hungary likes a guy who stands up to the big bully,’ he says. ‘They’d never vote for a guy like Macron who spends a fortune on make-up.’ 
(Many here remember that the image-conscious French president, who spent £24,000 on a make-up artist in his first three months in office, has been a stern critic of Hungary and Poland.) 
But Orban is more than happy to be attacked by the ‘old’ nations of the EU because they are playing into his hands.
He has now consolidated his position by outflanking the notorious Hungarian nationalist movement Jobbik, infamous for its fascist uniforms and its anti-semitic, anti-gyspy rhetoric.
Jobbik has just performed a U-turn in search of votes from the Left. It is Orban and his Fidesz movement who are now playing the xenophobia card. 
Even some of his supporters think he has gone too far by leafletting eight million households and erecting posters as part of a campaign against Budapest-born billionaire George Soros.
They claim the 87-year-old gave Brussels a plan to flood Hungary with migrants in order to meet labour market needs and bolster the voter base of Left-wing groups.
Orban has ordered Hungary’s security services to investigate a so-called ‘Soros network’ which it is claimed is pulling strings in Brussels. As a result, Orban has been accused of anti-semitism for his demonisation of the great philanthropist.
Born into a Hungarian Jewish family shortly before the war, Soros only survived the German occupation of Budapest with the use of forged papers.
Though now based in America, Soros has been a very generous benefactor to countless Hungarians, having built the Central European University in Budapest. There, I met students and staff appalled to find themselves at the centre of political controversy.
Earlier this year, in a very disturbing development, Orban’s government introduced laws effectively forcing the university to re-apply for its licence to operate. That approval has still not been granted.
It is a bewildering situation. But the new mood in Central and East Europe has its roots in a proud nationalism that Brussels, for years, has tried to marginalise with its vision of a European super-state.
There’s a message for Britain, too. Perhaps all those Remoaners accusing the Brexiteers of being blinkered little Englanders should open their eyes and look at just how rotten much of the EU is now.
 
On more than one occasion over the past few months I must confess I have thought to myself: if I had known then what a nightmare it was going to be, I might never have done it.
Like 17 million other Britons — many of them readers of this newspaper — I voted in 2016 to leave the European Union. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t changed my mind about leaving. If anything, the intransigence of Brussels in negotiating Britain’s exit deal has only strengthened my view that being out is the only place to be.
As for the relentless campaign on behalf of influential Establishment figures in favour of Remain to overturn the democratic wish of the British people at any cost, I have nothing but contempt for their condescending arrogance and grotesque sense of entitlement. We had a democratic vote — it should be respected.
It is because of the hugely powerful vested interests of the above that this entire process has been so impossibly fraught. Add in an opportunistic Labour Party that cares about nothing but gaining power, a far from impartial civil service (let’s tell the truth and shame the Devil for once, shall we?) and a hard Brexit contingent who just want to crash out at all costs — and it’s little wonder we’ve ended up with an imperfect deal.
In fact, it’s a miracle we have any kind of work-able deal on the table at all. And if we do, it’s not despite Mrs May, as so many have argued and will no doubt continue to argue. It’s because of her.
I’ll be honest, Theresa May was not my first choice as successor to David Cameron. She wasn’t even my second, third, fourth or fifth. And when she got the job, she didn’t exactly go out of her way to make friends.
Not only did she fire my husband from his post as Lord Chancellor, she fired anyone associated with the Cameron regime, which was both a tad ruthless and very short-sighted, since many of them were actually rather good at their jobs and might have been quite useful to her.
Her actions in some ways, though, were understandable: every new leader wants to build a loyal team, and she needed to impose her authority.
What happened next, however, was straightforwardly misjudged. First, she triggered Article 50 — thus initiating the formal notice period for securing a deal — before any serious due diligence had been done by government departments on what a good deal would look like. It meant Britain entered the negotiations ultimately disadvantaged.
And she called that disastrous General Election, which lost her the Government’s already slim majority — and elevated Jeremy Corbyn to cult status. Neither was a good idea, and both have contributed significantly to the Government’s woes.
But we are where we are. Politics, as a wise man once said, is nothing if not the art of the impossible. And what more impossible task could there be than extricating Britain from a European Union whose very existence depends on keeping us in.
The truth is, even the most experienced politician would have struggled against the might of Brussels. Cameron, of course, understood that, which is why he campaigned so hard for Remain in the first place, and why, ultimately, he resigned when Leave won.
May chose to fight — and has borne the brunt of Brussels’ fury because of it. Did she have any inkling of how vicious it was going to be? Who knows. But the fact remains that she has put up with their jibes, their tricks, their lies and their arrogance, all the while battling incessant opposition at home.
And I, for one, cannot help but admire that in her. Perhaps it’s just that, woman to woman, I recognise only too well the feeling of being a lone female in the face of unrelenting male condescension. The fact that she has not given up, not run away, but just kept on going. Because, ultimately, there is no other choice and someone has to do it. That is something all women understand.
And at the end of the day, she has brought back a deal that, while not perfect, nevertheless allows us to control migration, to stem the flow of new EU legislation — and exonerates Britain from future membership contributions. And even if you doubt that or don’t care, the fact remains that all the alternatives are either softer, unworkable — or no deal at all.
Most people in her shoes would consider this a significant victory. But for a woman such as May — a 62-year-old suffering from a serious medical condition that would sap even the youngest and fittest person’s energy — it represents a truly superhuman achievement.
That infamous electoral slogan of hers — strong and stable — that once drew so much mockery now finally starts to ring true.
Today, she stands as a beacon of calm sanity in a sea of hysterical, egomaniacal voices.
Her focus, perseverance and dogged determination have, with this voter at least, finally earned her the respect she tried — and failed — to impose by force at the start of her premiership.
Even if she now fails to get this deal through Parliament — as seems probable when the House votes on it on December 11 — she will have shown the country what she is made of. What she truly is. A leader who, at no small personal and political cost, has done everything within the constraints placed upon her to guide the nation through one of the most testing times in its history.
And if I had not begun to feel this already over the course of the past few weeks, as the voices of those determined to exploit the weakness of the deal to further their own leadership agendas have become increasingly shrill, Monday’s debate in the Commons was a turning point.
The chamber of the House of Commons is, by necessity, a brutal environment. But on Monday, the atmosphere tipped from civilised debate into the political equivalent of a bare-knuckle fight.
Aided and abetted by Speaker Bercow — he of the ‘Boll***s to Brexit’ car sticker — who all but strung her up from the ceiling of the chamber as a punchbag, the gloves were truly off, no holds barred. They set upon her, each one hoping to deal that fatal blow that would bring her down.
And yet they couldn’t. Time and again she fought back, responding each time with renewed vigour, even as the debate wore on and the chamber began to empty.
She was up on her feet and on her brief, battling with every ounce of her strength, batting away questions, from the facetious to the fiendish, with a fierce energy I would not have credited her with.
I saw then in May something I have not seen in a politician for a long while: true grit. Someone prepared to stand up for something she believes in. To put her neck on the line for a deal that, whatever its flaws, gets Britain out of the European Union as per the wishes of the British people and, perhaps just as importantly, will allow the country to move forward out of this interminable, divisive and toxic political limbo. We will have a Brexit at last.
Mrs May still has a long road ahead of her. It will take every ounce of determination and strength to survive the next few weeks.
I have no idea how she is going to do it, but I really hope she does. Because one thing is certain: she will not walk away from her duty, however unrewarding it may be, however stark the choices she faces. And that is exactly the kind of Prime Minister this country not only needs, but also deserves.
First published on Thu 13 Oct 2016 18.01 BST
The UK faces the stark choice of either a hard Brexit or no Brexit, the president of the European council has said – the first time he has taken such a clear line on the likely outcome of the UK’s exit talks.
Just hours after the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, had told a committee of MPs he was confident Britain could strike a better trade deal with the EU after Brexit, Donald Tusk used a speech in Brussels to scotch the idea that Britain can “have its cake and eat it”.
Speaking to an audience of policymakers in Brussels on Thursday, Tusk – who chairs EU leaders’ summits – said it was useless to speculate about a soft Brexit, in which the UK remained a member of the single market. “The only real alternative to a hard Brexit is no Brexit, even if today hardly anyone believes in such a possibility.”
Without naming Johnson, notorious in Brussels for his jokey phrase that Britain could have its cake and eat it, Tusk criticised “the proponents of the cake philosophy” who argued the UK could be part of the EU single market without bearing any of the costs.
“That was pure illusion, that one can have the EU cake and eat it too. To all who believe in it, I propose a simple experiment. Buy a cake, eat it, and see if it is still there on the plate.”
Business groups, Labour, and moderate Conservative backbenchers have all urged the government to strike a deal that maintains many of the benefits of the single market.
Johnson had earlier told the cross-party foreign affairs select committee: “We are going to get a deal which is of huge value and possibly of greater value … We are going to get the best possible deal for trade in goods and services.” But Tusk warned that Brexit would leave both Britain, and the rest of the EU, worse off. “There will be no cakes on the table, for anyone. There will be only salt and vinegar.”
His intervention is likely to heighten anxiety in the City about the potential costs of Brexit after the rapid sell-off of sterling in recent days, which was sparked after Theresa May appeared to signal at the start of the Conservative party conference that she favoured a clean break with the rest of the EU.
Senior ministers privately blame each other for exacerbating the market instability. The chancellor, Philip Hammond, is said to be concerned that some of his colleagues are failing to grasp the full scale of the risks the government faces as it navigates through the complex process of Brexit; he, in turn, is singled out by others for warning of an economic “rollercoaster” in his conference speech last week.
Johnson struck a defiantly optimistic tone at Thursday’s hearing, saying: “Those who prophesied doom have been proved wrong, and will continue to be proved wrong.” He also told MPs he believed the term “single market” was “increasingly useless”
Simon Tilford, deputy director of pro-EU thinktank the Centre for European Reform, said the markets would be scrutinising the government’s actions closely. “They’ve had a honeymoon, and it’s very clearly over,” he said. “It’s pretty clear that of the leading members of the government, only Philip Hammond understands the gravity of the situation.” He added: “What’s really spooked people is the suspicion that they really don’t know what they’re doing.” Tusk stressed that EU leaders would conduct the negotiations in good faith, but said the UK could not get a better deal than if it remained in the EU. May has repeatedly insisted she will not give a “running commentary” on the progress of the talks with Britain’s EU partners, but Tusk’s speech underlined the fact that other participants are unlikely to hold back. The prime minister has rejected the terms hard and soft Brexit as a false choice, promoted by those who have not accepted the result of the referendum, but her statement in her conference speech that she would insist on immigration controls and reject the oversight of the European court of justice was widely interpreted as a signal that she expects Britain to leave the single market.
Tusk said the leave campaign and its “Take back control” slogan showed the UK wanted to be free of EU law while rejecting free movement of people and contributions to the EU budget.
“This approach has definitive consequences, both for the position of the UK government and for the whole process of negotiations,” he said. “Regardless of magic spells, this means a de facto will to radically loosen relations with the EU – something that goes by the name of hard Brexit.”

French Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau scoffs at reports Macron may be open to PM's Brexit plan
rance’s Europe minister dealt a hammer blow to Theresa May’s hopes of saving her Chequers plan today, insisting the EU will not change its rules to accommodate post-Brexit Britain.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, Nathalie Loiseau scoffed at British media reports that her boss President Emmanuel Macron was softening to the Prime Minister’s proposals.
“I read the British press on a daily basis and sometimes I wonder whether we live in the same world,” she said.
Ms Loiseau stated firmly that EU law is “not subject to negotiation” and accused the UK of asking for more rights than full members.
She also backed the tough stance of EU negotiator Michel Barnier, dismissing claims that he might be ordered by the 27 other EU states to make concessions. “It is not as if he is a loose cannon from the Commission,” she said.

Echoing Mrs May’s own slogan that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, she said France was preparing its businesses and citizens for the possibility of the UK crashing out without an agreement, adding: “This is not what we want but we don’t want a bad deal either.”
The firm line from Paris came as Mrs May faced a growing backlash at home over her Chequers blueprint.
Mervyn King, the former Bank of England governor, branded the Government’s Brexit preparations as “incompetent”. He also told the BBC it “beggars belief” that a major economy was stockpiling food and medicine.
A poll suggested a shift in UK public opinion against Brexit, with respondents dividing 59 to 41 for Remain in a second referendum. It was overseen by polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice of Strathclyde University.
Mrs May was facing the wrath of Tory Brexiteers determined to attack the Chequers blueprint at the first Prime Minister’s Questions since the recess.
In her interview, Ms Loiseau warned: “We will not redefine our basic principles because the UK doesn’t want to belong to the European Union any more.
"We have described our priorities and they are not subject to negotiation.” The Chequers proposals seek smooth trade for goods and food, based on a single set of customs rules, but no specific deal on services. Ms Loiseau insisted that while a future trade deal must be “a special one”, it “cannot divide the single market”.
Brexiteers accuse the EU of bringing talks to the brink of collapse with their hardline stance. But Ms Loiseau indicated that for the EU’s point of view, the biggest risk was Mrs May’s lack of a majority. “We have to consider what the Government proposes and what the British parliament would be ready to ratify,” she said. “And there, there is an obvious question mark.”
On the Irish issue, Ms Loiseau claimed that the backstop deal agreed in December “means that there have to be controls in the Irish Sea” — an outcome that Mrs May has ruled out.
She said a no-deal Brexit looked more likely due to the lack of progress in recent months, adding: “I would not have said that six months ago.”
She dismissed UK reports that France was “punishing” Britain by taking a tough line against concessions, and quashed recent claims that Mr Macron had softened. “There is nothing true about the French being tougher than others ... indeed, we want a good deal — but not at the detriment of the EU27,” she said.
On the financial sector, she said: “We are not trying to steal any energy from London. But we are encouraging people who want to settle in Paris or elsewhere in France.”
A Department for Exiting the European Union spokesman said: “We remain confident we will agree a mutually advantageous deal with the EU.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is leading moves in the European Union to stop Britain being “seen to succeed” from Brexit, David Davis claimed today.
In an exclusive interview with the Evening Standard, the former Brexit Secretary said only French president Emmanuel Macron is taking a harder line against the UK. “Other than Macron, Merkel is the most emphatic in Europe about us not being seen to succeed,” he said.
Theresa May should not see Mrs Merkel as a “champion” ready to salvage a good future trade deal for the UK at the eleventh hour in the face of French opposition, Mr Davis continued. He added that the Brexit turmoil was likely to get even “tougher” for the Prime Minister.
He spoke out as Mrs May prepared to head to the annual Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, where she will have to convince members to back her Chequers Brexit blueprint after it was savaged by Brussels, Right-wingers and even some centrist MPs.

Mr Davis lambasted French Brexit policy as being driven by “daft” and “hysterically wrong” views on Britain. He also hit back at Mr Macron after the French president effectively branded him a liar at the Salzburg summit earlier this month, when EU leaders tore into the Chequers plan.
Mr Macron said: “Brexit has shown us one thing ... it has demonstrated that those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well ... are liars.” Mr Davis retorted: “It’s not the mark of a great man to throw insults around.”
While Mr Macron has publicly taken a hard line on Brexit, Mrs Merkel’s position has been less clear, and there have been occasional signs from Berlin of a possibly more flexible approach.
But Mr Davis, who just months ago had a key role in the negotiations before he quit over the Chequers plan, said: “I don’t think Merkel was ever really going to be our champion, ever, ever … neither Macron, nor Merkel.” His views highlighted the difficulties facing Britain to get a good Brexit deal, due to be struck at a special summit in November, because the Franco-German axis is so critical to decision-making in the EU.
The former Cabinet minister believes Mrs Merkel and Mr Macron will come under growing pressure from regional leaders and business at home to strike a deal — but Brussels sources downplay the likely impact of this factor.
In the interview, Mr Davis:
Accused France of trying to use Brexit to “raid” the UK economy.
Said he believes the Prime Minister has to show the Tory conference, starting on Sunday, that she is “tough enough to stand up” to Brussels.
Stressed the UK needs some “specifics” on a future trade deal by March rather than a “woolly” offer.
Branded the Salzburg summit a “collective cock-up ... on both sides”.
Warned of more Brexit turmoil ahead, stressing it is “tough now but it will get tougher”.
Revealed he does not know if his father is alive, having met him only once after being born to a single mother.
Mr Davis pointed the finger firmly at Paris for making Brexit “difficult”, saying that France was “playing hardball”, with three “strong elements” driving its policy.
“Number one, they are the most committed to the, ‘you cannot be seen to succeed argument because it will encourage other people’,” he said.
“It’s a daft argument, frankly. There is nobody like us, in truth, nobody has the upside we have, the upside of the rest of the world.
“The second reason is a very, very narrow French one of trying, as it were, to raid our economy to get businesses to go to France.
“Best demonstrator of that is the special tax deals they have given to some hedge fund people and other big earners in the City ... at least one person whose salary last year was hundreds of millions and who paid no tax on it because he’s based in Paris now.
“The third one is there is a long-term French view of what they think of us as deregulatory ‘Wild West’ Anglo-Saxon approach to economics and somehow we are going to out-compete them by cutting everything, cutting taxes, cutting regulations and so on ... it’s hysterically wrong.”
Mr Davis added: “At Salzburg, which was a sort of collective cock-up, really, on both sides, the people who would have been supportive of us, if they had been, wouldn’t have been France and Germany.”
The European Commission will be “as tough as nails” until there comes a point when the 27 other EU member states start to think “our interest is now at risk”, he predicted.
Mr Davis expects the Brexit talks to “go the distance”, with any trade deal being clinched only at the last minute.

he creator of an anti-Brexit “Deatherendum” website – which provided live forecasts of a second EU vote based on the deaths of older Leave voters – has deleted the page over “horrific” abuse.
The unknown EU-dwelling Remain supporter faced a huge backlash over the website, which boasted about "discounting the deceased".
The macabre website had been designed to highlight the fact that many Brexit supporting voters have perished since the 2016 referendum.
According to polling, the 65 and above age category provided the biggest single share of Leave votes in the referendum, at an estimated 60 per cent.
The influence of older voters was seen as a key deciding factor, while younger voters overwhelmingly chose to Remain but turnout was compatatively low.

Following the backlash, Deatherendum was taken down on Thursday, with a title reading: “ERROR 418: Abuse limit reached.”
David Cameron announces his resignation outside Number 10 Downing Street
David and Samantha Cameron outside Downing Street as the PM announces his decision to stand down
Boris Johnson leaves home following the stunning EU referendum result
Lucy Young
A triumphant Nigel Farage near the Houses of Parliament
Jeremy Corbyn MP, leader of the Labour Party, is followed by journalists as he walks towards the Houses of Parliament
London Mayor Sadiq Khan speaks to the media after Britain voted for Brexit
Matt Writle
Leave supporters cheer results at a Leave.eu party after polling stations closed in the Referendum on the European Union in London
Supporters of the Stronger In campaign react after hearing results in the EU referendum at London's Royal Festival Hall
Vote LEAVE supporter Christine Forrester celebrates with others outside Vote Leave HQ
Supporters of the Stronger In campaign look dejected as results come in
The Houses of Parliament as dawn breaks on London after the vote
Stronger in campaigners look dejected after the result
Leave supporters celebrate opposite the Houses of Parliament in London
Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn leaves his home this morning
A man reacts to a vote count results screen at an 'Leave.EU Referendum Party' in London
Supporters of the Stronger In campaign react after hearing results in the EU referendum at the Royal Festival Hall
UKIP Leader Nigel Farage at the Leave.EU party in London as he claimed victory
A London taxi driver holds a Union flag, as he celebrates following the result of the EU referendum
Toby Melville
Traders react to the fast moving Euro results at ETX Capital in the City of London this morning
People gathered in The Churchill Tavern, a British themed bar, react as the BBC predicts Briatin will leave the European Union, in the Manhattan borough of New York
Traders monitor computer screens with the day's exchange rate at a foreign exchange brokerage at a securities firm in Tokyo
Conservative MP Nigel Evans (left) and UKIP's Paul Nuttall, members of the Vote Leave campaign, celebrate at Manchester Town Hall where the national result in the UK referendum will be declared later
Traders react to the fast moving Euro results at ETX Capital in the City of London this morning
A message underneath read: “Thanks for the feedback, what can I say? It's been horrific. What started out as a website to show that we're more than likely not fighting for the 50% any more, as indicated by this article, has quickly turned into a platform for Leavers to hurl abuse my way. If you want the stats, they're still in the article.
Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha leave after casting their votes in the EU referendum at a polling station in London
Nuns leave a polling station after voting in the EU Referendum in London
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn stops for a photograph with members of the public as he leaves his home to cast his vote at a polling station at Pakeman Primary School in Islington
A dog is tied to railings outside a polling station waiting for its owner to cast their vote on the EU Referendum on June 23, 2016 in Saltburn-by-the-Sea
A member of a polling station stands next to a polling box as she waits for citizens during the EU referendum in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar
London Mayor Sadiq Khan arrives to vote in the EU referendum in Tooting, South London
Lucy Young
Chelsea pensioners arrive at a polling station near to the Royal Chelsea Hospital, London
A polling station being used in the EU referendum at Batley Town Hall in the constituency Labour MP Jo Cox
UKIP leader Nigel Farage carries newspapers as he arrives outside his home in Downe, Kent, as the voters go the polls in the EU referendum
Justice Secretary and prominent 'Vote Leave' campaigner Michael Gove poses with his wife Sarah Vine (R) after voting in the European Union referendum at their local polling station in Kensington
Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samamtha vote at Westminster Methodist Hall
Alex Lentati
Gary Howard, owner of the Little Braxted Bakery in Little Braxted, Essex, arrives at the polling station set up in his own tea rooms by the local council
Scotland's First Minister and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon, poses for photographers as leaves after voting at a polling station at Broomhouse Community Hall in east Glasgow
A man wearing a European themed cycling jersey leaves after voting at a polling station for the Referendum on the European Union in north London
Gibraltar Chief Minister Fabian Picardo and his wife Justine depart after voting in the EU Referendum at a polling station in Gibraltar
A polling station being used in the EU referendum at Birstall library, West Yorkshire, near where Labour MP Jo Cox was attacked and killed outside her constituency surgery
A flooded car park at a polling station in Chessington, south London, after heavy overnight rain
“In the meantime, I'm taking the page down while I consider if it's worth it. I'm not a politician at the end of the day, just a UK citizen that wasn't allowed to vote on my future because I live in the EU (there are a lot of us). Yes, the counter did show a count of those that had passed, but it also showed new eligible voters. It wasn't intended to celebrate death at all, much like this link [a world population counter].
“If this offended anyone, I apologise, but I felt I had to do something in lieu of voting.”
Brexiteer Tory MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan was among those who condemned the site. She tweeted: “Wow. Just wow. People actually think like this?”

heresa May was today grappling with open Cabinet warfare over Brexit amid rising speculation that a general election is on the way.
The Prime Minister called meetings with groups of ministers in a bid to identify compromises that might rescue her withdrawal deal.
But the talks were pre-empted by Cabinet members who took sides on Twitter.
Amber Rudd, Work and Pensions Secretary, wrote “worth remembering” above a CBI message that said “business is united in saying no-deal is unmanageable”.

She was retweeted by Justice Secretary David Gauke, in a show of solidarity between two of the Cabinet’s opponents of a hard Brexit.
Pro-Brexit Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt entered the fray by tweeting that no-deal might be the best option, and that to rule it out would weaken Britain’s negotiating hand.
Supporting members of the Question Time audience who last night cheered the prospect of no-deal, Ms Mordaunt sought to explain their enthusiasm by saying “they might have judged that the upsides of leaving outweigh the downsides of staying/No Deal disruption”.
Alternatively, she mused, they felt “it’s only when ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ is believed by the EU that we’ll maximise our chance of a deal” or that “not honouring the result of the referendum would be appalling”.
Downing Street said the PM was speaking to a “large number” of Cabinet ministers, understood to be more than half, individually and in groups.
The Evening Standard has learned that one group includes Brexiteers Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox, Ms Mordaunt, Chris Grayling and Geoffrey Cox, plus three former Remain campaigners — Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Health Secretary Matt Hancock.
But Environment Secretary Michael Gove was not expected to join the Brexiteer group. One ministerial source said he was believed to be privately backing the so-called Norway-plus model.
Another group was expected to include soft-Brexiteers, including Business Secretary Greg Clark, Mr Gauke and Ms Rudd. They are backing Chancellor Philip Hammond who told business leaders that MPs would be allowed to remove “no-deal” from the table.
Commons Leader Ms Leadsom is understood to believe that moves to veto a no-deal departure are a “Trojan Horse” designed to prevent Brexit. A source said that if there was no majority for any deal, it could be used to force indefinite extensions to Article 50. The key dividing lines, according to sources from the rival groups, were whether to soften Mrs May’s “red line” against a customs union; whether to go to the EU for backstop concessions or seek a soft Brexit deal with Labour MPs; whether to be willing to delay Brexit; and whether to rule out a no-deal exit.
With the Cabinet and Parliament deeply divided, alarm bells were ringing across Whitehall that an impasse could lead to a snap general election. It was revealed Britain’s most senior civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, met Government department heads and ordered them to get ready for an election in case one is needed to break the political deadlock.
A Leaver and a pro-European demonstrator argue during protests opposite the Houses of Parliament in London
A police officer extinguishes a flag that was set alight by pro-Brexit protestors outside the Houses of Parliament
An anti-Brexit protester dressed in a Theresa May costume recreates a scene from the 1997 film 'Titanic,
Pro Brexit supporters outside the Houses of Parliament, London, ahead of the House of Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
John Bercow speaks in the House of Commons
Sky News
Pro-Brexit protestors outside the Houses of Parliament, London
Prime Minister Theresa May listens to the Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox, speak in the House of Commons ahead of the Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
Pro Brexit supporters outside the Houses of Parliament, London, ahead of the House of Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
Anti-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament in London
Effigies of Prime Minister Theresa May, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, current Environment Secretary Michael Gove and former Brexit secretary David Davis, are driven past the Houses of Parliament, London, ahead of the House of Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
Former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union Dominic Raab, Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Arlene Foster, Conservative Peer Lord Lilley and former Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis speak to the media during a press conference to offer an alternative Brexit plan
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg speaks to the media outside the Palace of Westminster
Pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament
Former leader of UKIP Nigel Farage speaks to the media as Pro-Brexit and Anti-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament
Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray outside the Houses of Parliament, London
Pro EU protesters and Pro Leave protesters demonstrate outside Parliament
A man dressed to imitate former foreign secretary Boris Johnson holds a fake bank note for 350 million pounds outside the Houses of Parliament
A pro-Brexit 'battle bus' (L) drives past a mix of pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit protesters outside the Houses of Parliament
Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray (left) talks with a Brexiteer outside the Houses of Parliament, London, ahead of the House of Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
A pro-European demonstrator sings during a protest opposite the Houses of Parliament
Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes leaves 10 Downing Street, London, following a cabinet meeting, ahead of the House of Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
Anti-Brexit and Pro-Brexit protesters fly flags outside the Houses of Parliament, London, ahead of the House of Commons vote on the Prime Minister's Brexit deal
Theresa May leaves a cabinet meeting at Downing Street
A pro remain supporter wears anti brexit badges on his hat, during protests outside of the Parliament
Anti and pro Brexit placards are displayed outside of the Parliament
Anti-Brexit supporters hold up placards outside Parliament
Anti-Brexit demonstrators hold up placards outside Parliament
Pro-Brexit supporters hold up placards outside Parliament
Mrs May’s official spokeswoman said the PM’s “focus is on leaving the European Union with a deal — that is what she believes is the way to leave in a smooth and orderly way”.
The spokeswoman ruled out Mrs May seeking to call a snap election.
The PM spoke to German chancellor Angela Merkel and Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte yesterday and is due to hold further talks with EU leaders, including possibly with French president Emmanuel Macron, Irish premier Leo Varadkar and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council.
She will make a statement to Parliament on Monday when a neutral motion will be tabled on the Government’s latest stance following the crushing of her Brexit proposals in the Commons earlier this week.
There were no plans for her to speak to Jeremy Corbyn today but her door remained “open”.
On the no-deal threat, the PM’s spokeswoman added: “It’s a simple fact that we will leave without one if we can’t come to an agreement.” She said there had been “good discussion” with Opposition leaders and MPs. But doubts remained over whether Mrs May would be willing to compromise, with the spokeswoman saying: “Our principles that were set out earlier in the week remain.” Pressed on reports Britain had so far failed to finalise most of the trade deals needed to replace the EU’s existing ones, the spokeswoman insisted a number were in an “advanced” stage.
The DUP denied a Times report that it would tolerate a customs union for the whole UK as it would ensure Northern Ireland would not be treated differently to the rest of the country.
In a speech today, Boris Johnson opposed a customs union, saying it would empower the EU to “snuff out” the success of British inventions by using regulations. The former foreign secretary said a customs union would make Britain “non-voting members of the EU single market, forced to take rules from Brussels” that could ban new designs.
He was also accused of burnishing his leadership ambitions by calling for careful thinking on immigration.
Gordon Brown used a speech in Edinburgh last night to call on the Government to extend Article 50 by a year — and Britain was urged to remain by Angela Merkel’s likely successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

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heresa May is on course for a crushing Commons defeat on her Brexit deal today after a Labour MP withdrew an amendment that could have spared her the humiliation.
Hilary Benn, Labour chairman of the Brexit select committee, has withdrawn his proposal that would have killed both the Prime Minister's deal and prevented a no-deal Brexit.
It was believed that the amendment was favoured by Government whips because it would have potentially spared Mrs May from a major defeat on Tuesday and was seen by some as an "escape route".
In a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, Mr Benn confirmed he had withdrawn the amendment but said he would pursue a vote to veto a no-deal Brexit at the "earliest opportunity."

He said: "I have decided to withdraw my amendment to the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement motion today which would have rejected both the PM’s deal and leaving with no deal.
"It’s vital that we now get the clearest expression of view from the House on the Government’s deal - like many others I will vote against it - but I intend to pursue a ‘no to no deal’ vote at the earliest opportunity.
"Since I originally tabled the amendment in December, the House has voted for a no deal amendment to the Finance Bill which is a clear and very welcome indication of MPs’ opposition to no deal.
"Dominic Grieve‘s amendment and the Speaker’s ruling that a business motion can be amended are also very important and there is now a proposal for a Bill that would allow the Commons in effect to rule out a no deal Brexit by seeking an extension to Article 50 if necessary.
"All these developments mean that the House will soon have the opportunity to make it clear that it rejects no deal and so offer reassurance to the many businesses and their workers who are very anxious about the disaster that a no deal Brexit would represent.
"If the Prime Minister loses tonight the Government must reach out across the House to try and find a way forward. If this doesn’t happen, then Parliament will have to take the lead."
It comes after Mrs May's eleventh hour appeal for support for her deal apparently failed to win round critics.
On a historic day at Westminster MPs will finally deliver their verdict on the Withdrawal Agreement hammered out with Brussels on Tuesday evening.
With more than 100 Tory MPs having declared their opposition to the plan, there was speculation the Government could go down to one of the heaviest defeats of modern times.
The PM has insisted she is focused on winning the vote - telling Conservative rebels on Monday evening they risked handing the keys of No 10 to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom insisted Mrs May was determined to continue fighting for her agreement in the best interests of the country.
The deal suffered its first official parliamentary defeat in the House of Lords on Monday night as peers voted by 321 votes to 152 - a majority of 169 - to reject it.
Jeremy Corbyn indicated he was finally ready to table a vote of no-confidence in the Government if it loses in the Commons.
"Don't be concerned, it's coming soon," he told a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
It would appear unlikely Labour can muster enough votes to force a general election, with both Tory rebels and the DUP indicating they would continue to back the Government in a confidence vote.
However Downing Street has given little indication as to how the Prime Minister intends to proceed if she is defeated.
Under the terms of an amendment passed last week, she must table a motion on her Plan B by Monday - although in practice she is unlikely to want to wait that long.
Mrs May will make her final appeal when she winds up five days of debate in the Commons before MPs head to the division lobbies.
Voting is due to begin at 7pm and could continue for around two hours, depending on how many amendments Speaker John Bercow calls before the final "meaningful vote" on the deal.

oris Johnson has said he will move to trigger a snap general election after suffering a crushing Commons defeat as 21 senior Tory MPs rebelled  to stop him from crashing Britain out of the EU.
He lost control to a string of grandees who included two former Chancellors, Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond, and Winston Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames.
The Prime Minister lept to his feet after the bigger-than-expected defeat by 328 to 301 – a deficit of 27 votes - to announce he was putting down a motion for a snap election.
"The people of this country will have to choose,” he said.
However, his election gambit looked in danger of failing as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other opposition MPs said they would block it unless a cross-party Bill is passed to prevent an election being used to bounce the country into a no-deal Brexit.
The list of rebels  included ex-Cabinet ministers Greg Clark, David Gauke, Rory Stewart, Oliver Letwin, Justine Greening as well as Mr Hammond and Father of the House Mr Clarke.
Tory chief whip Mark Spencer phoned rebels, including Mr Hammond, to tell them they were being stripped of the whip.
A source close to the rebel group said: “Tonight’s decisive result is the first step in a process to avert an undemocratic and damaging No Deal.
“No10 have responded by removing the whip from two former chancellors, a former lord chancellor and Winston Churchill’s grandson. What has happened to the Conservative Party?”
Earlier, Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom appeared to extend an olive branch by suggesting they would be allowed back into the fold if they behaved in future.
Stripping so many MPs of the Conservative whip was seen as a highly risky step that could leave the Government paralysed in the Commons, echoing the civil war of the Maastricht rebellion 30 years ago.
The drama came on a day that Mr Johnson saw his official working majority disappear altogether with the defection of MP Dr Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats in protest at Brexit.
A crowd of anti-Brexit protesters waiting outside Parliament erupted into cheers, dancing and applause as the result of the vote came in.
Mr Johnson stood up in the chamber immediately said he will be tabling a vote on an early general election on Wednesday.
He said: "The consequences of this vote tonight means that Parliament is on the brink of wrecking any deal that we might be able to get in Brussels.
"It will hand control of the negotiations to the EU."
He continued: "And by contrast, everyone will know that if I am Prime Minister, I will go to Brussels, I will go for a deal and I believe I will get a deal.
"And we will leave anyway, even if we don't (get a deal) we will leave anyway on October 31.
"The people of this country will have to choose.
"The leader of the opposition has been begging for an election for two years.
"He has thousands of supporters outside calling for an election. I don't want an election but if MPs vote tomorrow to stop negotiations and to compel another pointless delay to Brexit potentially for years then that would be the only way to resolve this.
"I can confirm that we are tonight tabling a motion under the Fixed Term Parliament Act."
But Mr Corbyn responded by telling the Prime Minister: "He wants to table a motion for a general election, fine.
"Get the Bill through first in order to take no deal off the table."
Mr Corbyn added: "We do not have a presidency, we have a Prime Minister who governs with the consensus of the House of Commons representing the people within whom the sovereignty rests."
Mr Johnson’s hardball tactics were being criticised by some Tories. A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Chief Whip is speaking with those Tory MPs who did not vote with the Government this evening. They will have the whip removed." But speaking to Sky, Ms Leadsom said that the MPs could keep the whip if they did not vote for the rebel Bill in rhe next showdown due tomorrow.
Former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, a rebel ringleader, said that if the Prime Minister wanted a general election he needed to provide "necessary assurances that there will be a delay to Article 50".
Former Business Secretary Mr Clark tweeted: "I know the harm that an abrupt no deal Brexit would do to our country and to my constituents. Parliament must be able to prevent that harm. So I voted for the legislation tonight, fully aware of the personal consequences."
Tuesday night’s vote was on a procedural motion designed to let backbench MPs take over the Commons agenda and call the shots. On Wednesday, the cross-party group of MPs plan to stage the first vote on a Bill to outlaw a no-deal Brexit, put down by Labour’s Hilary Benn and Tory MP Alistair Burt.
The Commons debate ended in criticism of Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg for showing “disrespect” by reclining in a near-prone position on the Government front bench. Labour MP Karl Turner tweeted a photograph with a caption accusing he minister of “a sense of entitlement”. SNP MP Gavin Newlands offered to call Mr Rees-Mogg’s “footman to get him a pillow”. The minister “politely declined".

EXCLUSIVE: growing backlog of key bills that must be passed could force delay
Follow the latest Brexit developments LIVE here
rexit looks increasingly likely to be delayed beyond the scheduled leaving date of March 29, Cabinet ministers revealed today to the Evening Standard.
A backlog of at least six essential Bills that must be passed before Britain quits the European Union has left ministers convinced the timetable will be extended.
Even asking MPs to sit at weekends and cancel their half-term holiday in February may not provide enough time to avoid asking for a delay, several sources have disclosed.
A senior minister said: “The legislative timetable is now very, very tight indeed. Certainly if there was defeat on Tuesday and it took some time before it got resolved, it’s hard to see how we can get all the legislation through by March 29.”

The development came as:
Senior ministers told the Standard that a majority of the Cabinet now support the idea of staging indicative votes in the Commons to see if a different Brexit plan is supported, despite Theresa May publicly opposing the idea.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd refused three times on live radio to deny she would resign if the Prime Minister attempted a disorderly departure from the EU without securing a withdrawal deal.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned that “Brexit paralysis” was a risk if MPs vote down Mrs May’s deal on Tuesday while lacking a majority for a different deal. He said it was clear that a no-deal Brexit would be blocked by Parliament following the landmark votes earlier this week.
An influential group of Cabinet ministers is understood to be pushing a Plan B designed to attract Labour support. Chancellor Philip Hammond, Mrs May’s de facto deputy David Lidington, Business Secretary Greg Clark, Justice Secretary David tGauke, and Ms Rudd, are said to support permanent membership of a customs union, which Labour has proposed.
Follow the latest developments on Brexit LIVE here
The pound jumped against the dollar as the Standard’s story about the likelihood of a delay was published online, rising to 0.6 per cent to $1.2851.
A No 10 spokeswoman denied the report, saying Mrs May had ruled out extending Article 50, adding: “Yes and she has done on a large number of occasions, including, I think, this week.”
But Mr Hunt appeared to concede that a delay could be forced by a Commons deadlock, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was “very unrealistic to think Parliament wouldn’t find a way” to stop a no-deal Brexit.
No 10 revealed that the assurances and clarifications on the backstop sought by Mrs May from Brussels were expected to be unveiled on Monday.
Speaking in Romania, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed talks were taking place with Downing Street.
But Brussels sources said the assurances may amount only to a joint letter from him and European Council president Donald Tusk, which would not buy off MPs.
Mr Hunt sounded more optimistic, saying he wanted the assurances to be “legally-binding”.
Diplomats believe Brussels may be holding back stronger wording for a re-run of the vote.
BBC analysis estimates the Government is heading for crushing defeat on Mrs May’s withdrawal blueprint next week by a margin of 228 votes.
The Prime Minister is committed to coming back to the Commons by Monday January 21 with proposals for a new way forward, opening the door to MPs forcing votes on Plan Bs.
The prospect of a delay to the Article 50 process has arisen because in addition to the deal itself, MPs need to pass a Trade Bill, Agriculture Bill, Fisheries Bill, Healthcare Bill, a Financial Services Bill and an Immigration Bill.
It follows reports from Brussels this week that British officials have already “put out feelers” about whether the other 27 EU countries would be willing to approve a limited extension of the Article 50 process that set a two-year deadline for Britain to leave the bloc.
A minister said there was “strong resistance” around the Cabinet table to any delay. “Nobody desires it,” they said. “We may have to sit down and really prioritise. But we would then be in an emergency crisis situation.”
Ministers think Mrs May will have to allow indicative votes on alternative plans — such as a second referendum and a Norway deal — if she loses heavily.
But a senior Tory warned: “Junior ministers and parliamentary private secretaries would feel very, very aggrieved if they did not have a free vote. You would get some resignations. Ministers have got to think how the process would work.”
The Tory added: “I’m absolutely certain it’s being examined.” No 10 sources said Mrs May “is not a fan” of the idea, however.
On the Today programme, Ms Rudd said she is “committed” to ensuring that the UK does not leave the EU without a withdrawal deal. She added that it was “right” for the Government to make preparations for a no-deal Brexit, comparing the measures to wearing seatbelt when driving a fast car.

he UK's new Prime Minister will not be allowed to bring a new Brexit deal to the table, European officials said today.
A European Commission spokesman said the Brexit deal that is on the table "has been approved by all member states", adding that "a new prime minister will not change the parameters."
When asked about a pledge from Boris Johnson, the favourite to succeed Theresa May, to withhold billions in liabilities owed to the European Union's budget, the spokesman said: "Everybody knows what is on the table.
"What is on the table has been approved by all member states and the election of a new prime minister will not change the parameters."
It came as several more Conservative candidates embarked on their efforts to become Tory leader by making speeches today.

Andrea Leadsom and Mark Harper have already delivered speeches, while Rory Stewart is due to make his speech later today.
Ms Leadsom said: "With a government whose policy is to leave at the end of October in all circumstances, my view is that putting forward sensible measures that Parliament will agree to, and that I believe the EU will also find very sensible, that have already been agreed in the Withdrawal Agreement, I think that we will have success."
But she made clear the October 31 deadline was a "hard, red line."
Mr Harper said he would go back to Brussels to re-negotiate the Northern Ireland backstop.
While he said he would not take no-deal off the table, he warned the parliamentary arithmetic meant no new leader could promise to take the UK out by the latest EU deadline of October 31.
He said: "One thing I'm not promising, as much as I'd like, is that we will leave deal or no-deal come October 31."
Earlier, Nicola Sturgeon said Brexit and the "horror show" of the leadership contest are signs that Scotland needs to chart a different path, probably outside the UK.
Ms Strugeon, who held talks with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, and was due to meet later with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, said: "Increasingly, Scotland and the UK are on different political paths.
"We have to confront whether the better response to that is to have the ability to be independent and shape our own future."
"The people of Scotland have to have a choice before it's too late to stop the damage of Brexit being done."

ot with a bang but a whimper. Who would have predicted that this was the way Britain would end its five-decade membership of the European Union?
Today, as the 11th hour approaches, there will be no street parties or pealing of bells in celebration, nor are there angry demonstrations and defiant protests of outrage. The exhausted nation is hardly aware that, after all the acrimony, the moment of departure is upon us. Brexit is done.
The best the governing party can manage to mark the event that has consumed all its political energies, and dispatched two of its leaders, is a commemorative mug and tea towel. Why? Because whatever side you have taken in the debate that has cleaved our society in half, today represents a failure.
For the Remainers the defeat is absolute. We can lament the mistaken decision to call a referendum, and the lacklustre, unemotional campaign. We can rue the errors that followed, as overly-moderate Tory rebels pitched their fight on the method rather than the substance of our departure; while the extremist Labour leadership and naive Liberal Democrats proved unwitting handmaidens to our exit and their own destruction.
But the facts are these: after half a century of membership, appeals in the 2016 referendum to a common European identity fell on millions of deaf ears; and after three years of economic stagnation since, and transparent evidence that the promises of Brexit were false, the voters reaffirmed their decision in a second vote in the election last month. So the truth must be faced by all who wanted Britain to remain in the EU, including the Evening Standard: we did not convince our fellow citizens.

If the failure of pro-Europeans is obvious, why are the celebrations of Brexiteers so muted? In part, because they too know they have not convinced the nation.
Britain walks through the exit door with a feeling of melancholic resignation rather than excitement about the future. The nation knows it has chosen the poorer path — the estimates produced by the Bank of England yesterday show an economy barely growing, with a trend rate not seen since the Seventies.
The country also knows it has greatly diminished its voice in the world — already our views on everything from climate goals to the taxation of big tech matter far less.
The more thoughtful leaders of the Brexit campaign know too that they prevailed by harnessing a nativist opposition to change and a resentment at the success of others in parts of the country, outside the cities of the North and South, that felt left behind.
They talk of levelling up, but they won on the argument of levelling down: if you can’t enjoy the fruits of globalisation, then nor should anyone else. No one beyond the offices of a few deluded hedge funds in Mayfair believes Brexit was a vote for less red tape and more free trade.
The party that now represents Sedgefield and Blyth Valley champions more government intervention, higher spending and extra regulation. Yesterday, the Conservatives were trumpeting their re-nationalisation of the Northern railways, the kind of state involvement in the economy that we joined the EU to get away from. “Global Britain” may be the slogan, but neither the globe nor Britain believe a word of it.
So what lies ahead?
Ignore those who say that Brexit isn’t done. It is. Yes, there’s a trade agreement to be negotiated — and the details matter a lot to businesses — but it’s a much less important decision than the existential one we’ve just taken about whether we are members of the EU.
There will be an argument about “divergence” — but the truth is that, in most areas, global standard-setting and the European markets will force us to be a taker of the rules we have until today participated in making. That’s why the hard Brexit on paper will feel much softer in practice.
Even the hour of our departure — midnight Central European Time — is set by others.
It will take time for this loss of control to become apparent — but when it does, the same questions that faced Britain 50 years ago will confront us now: how do we exert our influence in the world? How do we sustain support for the free markets and the open society?
US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously said of post-war Britain that we had lost an empire but not yet found a role.
Back in 1972, we thought we had by joining the European community. In 2020, as we leave, it’s time to come together — because we still haven’t found what we’re looking for.
Listen to today's episode of The Leader:
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he most comprehensive political crisis in decades, the potential rupture of the Union, the incremental collapse of a zombie Government, an Opposition found to be pathetically wanting, the risk of a no-deal departure from the EU that would threaten civil order itself? All that, yes, without question. But — believe it or not — there is an upside.
In content, we all know that Brexit is a fiendishly complex process. But look for a moment at the form as well. It has been the quintessential “post-truth” political saga: which is to say, a dramatic sequence more or less entirely governed by emotional resonance and founded on irreconcilable claims.
Since the referendum campaign of 2016 it has been routinely asserted that we can leave the EU and yet retain all or the vast majority of the advantages of membership; that we can exit safely without a deal; that we can square circles, transcend logic and have our cake and eat it.
The most notorious of all these assertions — that Brexit would yield a dividend of £350 million a week for the NHS — perfectly encapsulated the phenomenon. It was both entirely delusional and extremely effective. It spoke to a world in which feeling mattered more than fact.
I still believe that we live in such a world, and that the primacy of emotion over evidence — turbocharged by the digital revolution — is the greatest cultural challenge of our era. Nietzsche’s famous aphorism, “There are no facts, but only interpretations”, has proved horribly prophetic.

It is a huge mistake to ignore the power of ideas in shaping day-to-day life. As Isaiah Berlin warned: “Philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilisation”. And who, surveying the history of totalitarianism in the 20th century, could deny the force of that warning?
To return to the dilemmas of our own time: the postmodern thinkers of the Seventies and beyond (Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and others) questioned the very notion of truth, preferring to understand the world in terms of competing “narratives” and “social constructs”. In their jargon-ridden relativism they paved the way — albeit distantly — for the “alternative facts” of the Trump era, in which we are invited to choose a bespoke reality, as if from a buffet.
Yet theirs, fortunately, is not the last word. Even Nietzsche conceded that there were “terrible forces” at work in our lives: brute realities that bear down upon us and cannot be swept aside by glib rhetoric or ingenious interpretation.
More recently the so-called New Realist school of philosophers — notably Maurizio Ferraris and the late Umberto Eco — has argued that no amount of postmodern relativism can eradicate “minimal realism” or certain “lines of resistance”.
You can argue all you like about, say, the meaning of gender, or class, or sexuality. What you cannot do — for example — is use a screwdriver to drink orange juice, or a particular textual reading to treat cancer. There is always, as Eco put it, a “hard core of Being”, “a form of Minimal or Negative Realism according to which facts, if scarcely [they] tell me if I am right, frequently tell me that I am wrong”.
What has happened in the past 10 days is that the post-truth train of Brexit has finally collided with this “hard core” of undeniable reality, these “lines of resistance”. The hitherto-hypothetical “backstop” proposal is now all-too-real, the stubborn kernel of trouble at the heart of the 585-page deal.
"We are being reminded, as a polity and a nation, that facts matter and that reality is not shaped by rhetoric"
The fact that the UK may have to remain indefinitely in the customs union until the Irish border issue is resolved has united Brexiteers and Remainers alike in the recognition that the status quo may be preferable to the confused mess on offer.
Theresa May, in Brussels today to seek final concessions before the EU summit this weekend, has had to confront the implacable parliamentary arithmetic that still stands in her way. Jacob Rees-Mogg  and the European Research Group, meanwhile, have been forced to acknowledge that, however you look at it, 26 is fewer than 48.
It is, to coin a phrase, an omnishambles. But it is also an extremely healthy, if rather abrupt, reality check. A mighty constitutional, political and commercial process founded upon a series of phony but (to many) emotionally appealing claims about Britain’s future has, at last and spectacularly, hit the buffers.
Again, it is important to say that this is not some hifalutin philosophical argument. The Brexit and Trump phenomena — and the counterpart populist Right movements springing up around the world — owe much (albeit indirectly) to the postmodern notion that life is just a babel of competing interpretations. It doesn’t matter what you do, or say, or claim to be. All that matters is power.
This is the governing principle of Trump’s Twitter feed; it is the essence of Boris Johnson’s insistence that a triumphant Brexit depends only upon will and patriotic optimism.
But what we are seeing now are the irreducible limitations of that world-view. Sooner or later there are ineradicable realities that cannot be wished away or permanently concealed from the public.
Which leads me to a provocative conclusion: which is that, for all its turbulence and perils, this upheaval may yet prove, in the long term, to be a constructive experience. We are being reminded, as a polity and a nation, of something which we were at risk of forgetting: that facts matter and that reality is not merely shaped by rhetoric.
There is more to politics than tricksterish narratives, populist nonsense and lies on the sides of buses. The Brexit crisis as a good news story? You read it here first.

eremy Corbyn today faced growing calls to back a second referendum before a general election after a shadow Brexit minister said it would be the “most pragmatic” thing to do.
Labour’s policy is to go into an election promising to negotiate a fresh Labour deal which is then put to a public vote.
But Jenny Chapman, the shadow minister for exiting the European Union, said the party could back another referendum before a general election.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour she would like to stick to party policy but added: “If there is an opportunity to have another referendum it may be that the most pragmatic thing to do is to take that opportunity.
“We haven’t seen the [Brexit] deal, we don’t know what we’re going to be presented with on Saturday, but I would be very surprised if there wasn’t an amendment for a confirmatory ballot.” She made the comments as Mr Corbyn, below, came under pressure from senior shadow cabinet members to push for a second referendum before an election.

This weekend will see the first Saturday sitting of the House of Commons since the Falklands War and could provide an opportunity for MPs to force a public vote on any Brexit outcome. This could include a confirmatory referendum attached to any deal Boris Johnson secures.
Mayor Sadiq Khan told Sky News today that he supported a referendum before an election. He said: “My concern is if we haven’t resolved the issue of Brexit it will be the number one issue in a general election and people will use it as a proxy for their views on remain or Brexit.”
His views mirror that of deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry. But shadow cabinet minister Jon Trickett said he believed everybody in the Labour Party would get behind their policy when an election is announced.

As his party splits on Brexit, Michael Gove is keeping his powder dry. He tells Charlotte Edwardes and Joe Murphy about swapping schools for squirrels, his Austrian health farm diet and why Thatcher will always be his number one
Michael Gove: I’d like to make sending children to private school seem eccentric
alfway through our interview with Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, his junior minister George Eustice resigns. We have just walked past his office a few doors from Gove’s own, here in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Gove doesn’t know for a good half hour, and nor do we. But his special advisers are getting agitated. Their phones buzz. Several attempts are made to cut in. Finally Gove is drawn into an anteroom. On return he looks shaken. “I’m disappointed,” he admits. “But I know that George has felt strongly about things for a while.” Did he know Eustice might resign? Long pause. “It’s probably better that I don’t say any more.”
It’s a mark of the state of Westminster that tremors like this are a daily occurrence. But until this moment, Gove had been a picture of political polish, betraying little of the crisis within. He joked, as we arrived, that he’d been advised always to wear a pressed white shirt for photographs. His tie is on-message green, his office carpet hoovered, there’s a faint whiff of Mr Sheen. And in chat too, he’s poised. His voice is a warm Aberdonian purr with which he performs feats of elaborate politeness (such as an apology for accidentally calling Melania “Mrs Trump” instead of “the First Lady”).
Gove, of course, is well aware of the trapdoor nature of politics. Tipped as a potential party leader more than once, his frontline career has been, well, theatrical. To recap: his controversial term as Education Secretary ended in 2014 when he was shunted, some say unhappily, to the job of Chief Whip. He bounced back, as Justice Secretary, in 2015 and arguably turned the revolver on Cameron by siding with Boris Johnson and Leave in a referendum he’d been dead against Cameron holding (“I didn’t think we would win”). The drama continued after Leave won prompting Cameron to resign as Prime Minister. Gove knifed Johnson to launch a rival leadership bid, only to be fired again, this time by Theresa May.
Any regrets? Perhaps the bus that promised £350 million to the NHS? “Absolutely not,” he says. “We’re now spending more than £350 million extra a week on the NHS — it’s future is critical to ours”.

"I won’t say now the things I’d have done differently with the referendum because that might show my hand"
What about the lies told about the queues of Turkish immigrants at our borders? Would Leave claim that in another referendum? “It would be a very different campaign,” he says. “My hope is that we will never go there.” Later he adds, “Given that there might be [another referendum], I won’t say now the things that I would have done differently last time round because that might show my hand. I’ll keep schtum on the mistakes that we may have made.”
But he will say why he thought it was a bad idea. “There were two reasons: I thought that it wasn’t clear what the question would be [on the ballot paper] and the capacity for it to generate further division rather than put the issue to bed was greater. And I also felt that, funnily enough, there were some people in the country and the party who he would never be able to satisfy.”
He describes his co-campaigner Dominic Cummings as an “idealist” and “highly principled”, perhaps as an answer to accusations that there were irregularities in their campaigning.
"My children do argue with me, mainly about how I made GCSEs harder. That’s the principal beef"
The referendum, he says, “was a very difficult period because of the strain on friendships on one side”. By this he means David and Samantha Cameron, old friends and holiday companions. Indeed, during the fallout Gove’s wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, godmother to Cameron’s youngest child, told friends that the Camerons had treated them “like staff”. Gove glosses over this, saying his wife was naturally upset because “if you love someone and that person appears to be on the receiving end of criticism… you will feel angry or annoyed”.
As he talks, his hands are a series of awkward gestures and his feet are twisted into ballet’s first position. He concedes he’s naturally clumsy — “I’m the world’s worst tennis player; I took seven attempts to pass my driving test” — although “not quite Mr Bean levels”.
But that’s in stark contrast to his control over what he says. Despite encouraging us to “ask anything”, he’s painfully careful, let down only by his own furious blushes. When we ask if it’s true that he’s a gifted mimic who does a brilliant impression of Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, he says, florid to his roots, that his skill has been “exaggerated”. Can he do Theresa May? “No, no, no. It’s a very limited repertoire.” The only person he’ll admit to imitating is Gordon Brown, “but this was professional”, he hastens. “When we were practising for Prime Minister’s Questions.”
Few politicians are less like their public persona. He was abhorred in the Education Department, a view not helped by his treacherous leadership challenge. But old friends are adoring (while admitting he is “very complicated”). He is charming and funny, they say, “with a keen sense of the absurd”. Adds another: “Of all the characters in Oz, he is the one with the heart.”
Which makes it all the more frustrating to interview him in politician mode. I ask about views he’s aired in private, such as that May was “brutal” when she sacked him. Gove says that was she was “perfectly polite”. (Later, we ask, Theresa May or Margaret Thatcher? He says, with no apparent sense of irony, “I love them both. But Thatcher”.)
Either way there were no hard feelings. She reinstated him after the disastrous 2017 snap election and he’s been industrious since, championing her withdrawal agreement, scoring for her some of her Government’s few policy successes — such as the triumph of banning single-use plastics.
These days, controversies are small-time: culling badgers and baby squirrels. Those who work at Defra — which has a rus in urbe feel with photos of country scenes decorating meeting pods — describe it as having “a real hum of positive energy, and that’s down to Michael”. His revolution here (accompanied by a picture of Lenin on his bookshelf) is far smoother than his attempt at revolution in Education.
On subjects of government he may be mealy-mouthed but he is fully self-deprecating on the subject of himself. Of his relationship with alcohol he says: “I’m very fond of it. I like relaxing with friends over a glass of wine — or two,” and that “good discipline” is one night’s temperance a week. Where is he on the Government’s recommended units? “Err, I might drink slightly more than 18 units a week.”
Although friends report that he can be prone to “low moods” Gove says, “I always try to look on the bright side,” (but not whether he is successful).
On food, he describes himself as “a glutton” who “will eat almost everything that is put in front of me”. In fact the only farm he mentions in the entire interview is a health farm called the Mayr Clinic in Austria, where Theresa May has also stayed. He went to lose a stone at the suggestion of his wife and ate a single boiled egg with unsweetened yoghurt at breakfast, and clear broth for supper. Rebellion was a lemon slice in fizzy water.
“If one had the self-discipline,” he confides, “you could do it at home.” For many years Gove lived up the road from Cameron in North Kensington with his wife, son William, daughter Bee, and Snowy, their bichon frise. Now they live near Olympia.
We are curious to know what his children think of his stance on Leave — is he stealing their future? Gove blusters. “No, no, no. They, um, they do argue with me about other things, but I won’t say what their position [on Brexit] is.”
So what do you argue about? “Mainly having made GCSEs harder. That’s the principal beef with this Government and with me.” Nice deflection. And how cross are they? “Very. My daughter is taking all her GCSEs this year.” Given her friends all know he was responsible for this policy, “it’s a double dose”. Does he wish he hadn’t made them harder? “No.”
For Gove, education is still unfinished business. In 2014 he famously railed against Eton when asked if it was a mistake to have five of the six people writing the next Conservative manifesto from the same school. “I said yes... More boys from Eton went to Oxford and Cambridge than the entire population of boys eligible for free school meals.” His education policy — if he’d been left in the department — would have been to bulldoze through this privilege because it makes for “a fundamental inequality in society”. There is so much about it that “irritates” him, so much that is “wrong”. It is, in his view, one of the greatest “structural unfairnesses in British society”.
“The key thing is: are children from disadvantaged backgrounds and children from non-privileged backgrounds getting a fair chance?” No. Clearly. So if he’d stayed at Education would he have abolished private schools? “I would have hoped we would have been able to make sending your children to a private school, as it is in Europe, an increasingly eccentric choice.” Got rid of them by stealth? “Well, yes.”
He adds that this would have included higher taxes on independent schools. Hold on, isn’t that Labour’s view? He laughs. “Exactly. That’s why I hesitated, because I think the Labour policy is wrong, of course.
“I am conscious that (and I made this point at Education and Justice) you can have people who because of an accident of birth or a misfortune visited on them go down the wrong track. There can be Sliding Doors moments very early in your life. Having visited young offender institutions and prisons, there are people there who are incredibly bright and intelligent but who made the wrong decision at a critical moment in their lives and then went down the wrong track.”
It’s impossible to ignore the influence of Gove’s own background on his political worldview. He was born in Edinburgh in 1967 and named Graham by his birth mother. After four months in care was adopted by a childless couple in Aberdeen. He says he arrived at Christmas and was bathed on his first night in a tin bath in front of the fire. (Later the ritual was repeated when his adopted sister arrived).
The gratitude he feels to them is enormous — and also a driving force: “They took that risk on me [and] I should try to prove to them that it hadn’t been a mistake.” It explains why — although he has been curious — he will never look for his biological mother while his parents are alive. “It might seem as though I was trying to say that they hadn’t been the perfect and complete parents for me, and as far as I was concerned I was just incredibly lucky.”
Although his father, who ran a fish processing business, was a stern Labour-supporting Scot who disapproved of overt emotional displays, Gove was much hugged and often-reminded how much he was loved. His mother explained his adoption using the phrase “you didn’t grow under my heart you grew in it”.
It’s telling, I think, that when he arrived at Oxford (with a tweed suit he’d bought in a charity shop for £1.50) he felt “disorientated” — conscious there was an aristocratic whirl which would never collide with his own social life.
While Gove claims that listening to his father’s views on Europe and the Common Fisheries Policy (he believed it “had been responsible for the decline of the industry… and the fact that he had to give up his business”) informed his stance on Brexit, others say it would be a mistake to overlook his experience in government, surrounded by those who thought they were born to rule. Is there truth in that?
“I genuinely don’t know,” he says. “We all know there’s the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, the Bash Street Kids versus whatever. But if one looks at the different people who backed Leave, there were some who you could say were establishment figures… different types of establishment.”
Indeed, among those he has recruited to Defra are old Etonian Brexiteers Ben Goldsmith and Ben Elliot (whose uncle is the Prince of Wales). What about Remainers? Unprompted, Gove describes Amber Rudd as “my friend”. There are rumours around the Commons that when Theresa May stands down Rudd and Gove will run on a uniting joint ticket. Does the next leader need to be a Brexiteer? “Nope.”
Has he given up his own leadership ambitions? He smirks. “If Philip Hammond nominated me and Boris Johnson seconded me, I might think about it.”
Ah. You see? He is funny.

igel Farage has warned Tory leadership candidates claiming they could renegotiate a better Brexit deal than Theresa May that the EU is not prepared to change “one dot or comma”.
The Brexit Party leader took aim specifically at Jeremy Hunt, one of 11 candidates to have launched a bid for the Conservative crown, who said a no-deal outcome would be “political suicide”.
Speaking on his LBC show from Brussels, Mr Farage mocked the Foreign Secretary’s claim he will “change” the withdrawal agreement and branded his pledge “absolute rubbish”.
Mr Farage said: “Every single person here in the European Commission, and leading groups in the European Parliament, will not change by one dot or comma that withdrawal agreement.

“And it’s not an agreement, it’s a treaty… Michel Barnier walks around with it under his arm. So I think that side of the argument is absolute rubbish. He [Mr Hunt] is also pledging to create a new negotiating team. I wonder where he got that idea from.
Mr Hunt had earlier warned that the Tories would be committing “political suicide” by pushing through a no-deal Brexit. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said any Prime Minister who tried to leave the EU without a deal would trigger a general election which risked the “extinction” of the Conservative Party.
Mr Hunt said: "The results contain a simple message which we ignore at our peril: if we attempt a general election before we have delivered Brexit we will be annihilated. Attacked by the Brexit Party on the Right and the Liberal Democrats on the Left, we will face extinction.
“Any candidate for prime minister whose strategy leads inexorably to a general election is offering a prospectus for disaster. Trying to deliver no deal through a general election is not a solution. It is political suicide that would delight Nigel Farage and probably put Jeremy Corbyn in No 10 by Christmas."
Mr Hunt, International Development Secretary Rory Stewart and Justice Secretary David Gauke tore into the hardline approach being pursued by Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey for the UK to leave on October 31, with or without a deal.
Mr Stewart attacked no-deal Brexiteers for “Wizard of Oz” thinking and vowed to vote against such a move “without hesitation”.

adiq Khan has called for London to be given a similar deal to Northern Ireland that would allow the city to stay in the single market and customs union after Brexit.
As news broke that Theresa May appeared to make major concessions to Northern Ireland in EU talks today, a post to the Mayor of London's official Facebook page wrote that it had implications for London.
It said: "Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it's possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit."
Mr Khan noted that the majority of the capital's residents who voted in the referendum did not want Brexit to happen.

"Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs," said the post.
Theresa May appeared to make major concessions in talks with the European Union today that triggered anger and alarm among Brexiteers that Northern Ireland would stay in the single market and continue taking direction from Brussels.
A draft agreement was reported to have been inserted at the last minute to say that Britain would guarantee “continued regulatory alignment” between the North and the Republic of Ireland.
This wording replaced the Irish demand for “no regulatory divergence”, allowing both sides to claim victory.
The apparent concessions set alarm bells ringing among both the Democratic Unionist Party, who are propping up Mrs May’s Government in the Commons, and Tory Right-wingers.
Meanwhile there was confusion over exactly what "regulatory alignment" amounts to.
It has been widely viewed as a way to avoid customs and other infrastructure changes that could jeopardise peace in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement.
A tweet by Nicola Sturgeon hinted that she saw the wording as paving the way for Northern Ireland to staying in the single market.
She wrote: "If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can’t."
However, others have said regulatory alignment did not automatically mean an agreement that Northern Ireland will stay in the single market.
Bruno Waterfield, Brussels correspondent for The Times, wrote in reply to Mr Khan: "She [Mrs May] hasn't.
"Text says: In absence of agreed solutions UK will ensure that there is continued regulatory alignment from those rules of internal market and customs union which, now or in the future, support North South co-operation and protection of the Good Friday agreement."

EXCLUSIVE: Sir Oliver Letwin tells Joe Murphy that his Bill to block no-deal Brexit will survive - whatever happens in the courts
lthough Sir Oliver Letwin is as polite and cheerfully patient as ever, the battles of Brexit have left scars on Parliament’s most reluctant rebel.
“This has been a horrible period of my political life,” he admitted at one point in our interview. “I certainly would like to be out of the Commons.”
It is a week since the Conservative whip was stripped from the former Cabinet loyalist whose intellect and instinct for consensus once helped pilot the coalition government safely, but which this year masterminded the historic parliamentary counter-coup to stop a no-deal Brexit.
“It feels rather surreal,” he reflected on being cast out of the parliamentary party along with 20 other senior MPs, including Father of the House Ken Clarke and Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames. “The first I discovered it had formally been withdrawn was when Conservative Campaign HQ very properly wrote to me to say ‘did I hold any Conservative data’, which I don’t,” Sir Oliver said.

An hour after our interview, he phoned to say he had just discovered a voicemail from Chief Whip Mark Spencer giving him the news, a message that had gone unheard for a week.
He has accepted his fate without rancour. “It doesn’t make me angry in the sense that it was a perfectly legitimate process. It isn’t as if we didn’t know what we were doing.” Politicians, he pointed out, had a duty “to try, roughly speaking, to do what is kind-of the right thing”, even if it was painful.
Sir Oliver has the consolation of being confident that he and his allies have prevented a disorderly crash-out from the EU on October 31, though he admitted he was nervous up to the moment that the Queen gave royal assent to the Act requiring an Article 50 extension if no withdrawal agreement is approved.
Did he fear that No 10 had fresh tricks up their sleeve? He bridled: “There’s no question of tricks here. I think we still live in a society that is under the rule of law. This is not a game. This is about the fate of our fellow countrymen, the economy and the livelihoods of many of our fellow citizens. It isn’t a question of clever tricks, or ploys… it’s about what is the right outcome. If we care about anything, we care about the fact that once the law has been decided by our parliament it must be obeyed.”
He predicted the cross-party Act of Parliament would survive even if the Government appeals all the way to the Supreme Court. It was the result of months of meetings, involving a cast of MPs, lawyers, clerks and advisers with Letwin at the intellectual core.
The toughest part of the exercise, he revealed, was getting sign-off for the final wording from the diverse range of politicians involved.
“What takes time is not drafting or procedure but getting consensus among people of widely varying allegiances,” he said. The contrast between Sir Oliver’s patient bridge-building and the Prime Minister’s “die in a ditch” tactics is compelling.
Did he agree with the Scottish appeal court ruling yesterday, following a challenge led by SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, that prorogation was just a ploy to “stymie” debate in Westminster? He said the truth would only come out when No 10 is forced to disclose its confidential communications or else “be found to be in contempt of Parliament”.
Shedding new light on the rebel tactics, he revealed that if it hadn’t been for prorogation, the Commons would have voted to sit through “most of the party conference season this year”.
Sir Oliver also revealed that his soundings make him certain that the European Union will not agree another extension of Article 50 beyond January unless there is an exceptional reason, such a second referendum. So a fresh countdown is already beginning.
“My personal preference remains for a deal,” said Sir Oliver, reminding us that he voted three times for Theresa May’s agreement and would back it, or something similar, again.
If a deal could not pass through the Commons then he would support a confirmatory referendum “to bring this to a close”.
But, still searching for consensus, Sir Oliver was wary of the winner-takes-all nature of another referendum. “In a democracy that voted 52-48 in favour of leaving … I think the only way to knit the country together is by compromise,” he said. “The best way to get that is through a deal rather than a referendum.”
He would definitely oppose trying to decide Brexit in the hurly-burly of a general election campaign. And he is pretty sure MPs are ready to keep postponing the election until after Brexit is decided.
“I can’t see how you can do that [resolve Brexit] very well in a general election where it will get, as Alan Duncan said in a marvellous speech this week, all muddled up in other things,” he said.
Was he in agreement with Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, who yesterday called for a referendum to be held before the election? Sir Oliver replied: “We need to resolve this issue of Brexit before there is a general election so that the election can be about who you want to have govern you, and so the resolution of the Brexit issue is separate. I would prefer that and, like Tom, I would prefer that to be done through the acceptance of a deal in Parliament.”
And where would that leave the Prime Minister’s plea for an immediate general election with Brexit on the ballot paper?
Sir Oliver replied in a musing tone: “I’ve heard all sorts of predictions of the election timing — next week, next minute, next day — but I have never been confident they were right because I think we will get a majority in the House of Commons who agree with the view that I take, which is that it is better to get the Brexit issues resolved first and have an election after.
“That means either you get a deal and get it in place, which is relatively quick, or you have a deal followed by a referendum, which is relatively long.”
So, is he saying a Brexit election, which the PM wants to be held this autumn, would be blocked by Parliament? “I think it is a proposition that is likely to go on being defeated. The Prime Minister can put that proposition any number of times but I don’t think it is one that is attractive to a majority in the House of Commons.
“The reason is that it muddles things up. Elections are decided on the basis of all sorts of concerns that people have about whom they want to have govern them. The Brexit issue is a different kind of issue.”
If he is right, an early election will be possible only if the PM gets a deal. But if it goes to a referendum, it would be delayed until summer 2020 at the least.
Would he support the idea of a government of national unity to take charge if the Johnson administration tries to collapse itself through a confidence vote? Sir Oliver said he would always seek the continuance of a Conservative government. He would not speculate on any alternatives except to say firmly that Jeremy Corbyn would not get enough support in the House to be an interim prime minister.
How about Mr Clarke as a unity PM? “I’m not going to spend my time speculating about such things,” Sir Oliver said.
Should Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s controversial senior adviser, be fired? Sir Oliver said he is “not responsible for the PM’s staffing decisions” but pointed out: “I don’t think the strategy that Dominic Cummings has followed is a sensible one.”
Had Mr Johnson been more or less formidable than he had expected? “He is very formidable and he’s got huge qualities. I’m pretty much in favour of almost all the things he is doing. There is just one we really disagree about.” Of his own future, Sir Oliver said he would accept the Tory whip back if it was offered without strings. “I’m not going to start negotiating or making conditions or making applications,” he said. “If they wish to restore it, they can.”
Sir Oliver has said he is standing down as an MP at the next general election, but would retire tomorrow from Westminster if he could? “Nothing would please me more. I didn’t really want to be here anyway at this point in my life. I found myself in a position where I thought it was a matter of honour to fulfil my commitment to my constituency association [West Dorset] and stand in 2017, which I didn’t really want to do.”
Had he considered “taking the Chiltern Hundreds”, the traditional method for an MP to resign ahead of an election? “Yes, I have repeatedly thought about that for some time now. My view is ... I am under an obligation while I am here to carry on and try to do the right thing. Once there is a general election I really feel I will have done my bit.”

ake back control is a powerful rallying cry for people in this country who, after years of austerity, feel more disconnected than ever from those in power who have badly let them down.
The wealthy elite who sold their false vision of Brexit on the back of imaginary dividends and undeliverable promises have further eroded trust in our political process.
It’s quite clear from my constituents and people I talk to across Britain that nobody voted for this chaos. The false prophets of Leave said Brexit would be easy, would provide extra money for the NHS and make us all better off. But nobody voted to be poorer, to lose their job, or for the ever-deepening austerity Brexit will bring.
Labour campaigned to remain. We respect the referendum result. But we have always been clear we would hold the Government to account for their promises. We won’t support a deal at any price especially if it’s bad for jobs and living standards. That’s why we set six tests for the deal — and the Prime Minister promised she would meet them. Instead, she’s failed every test. Her proposal satisfies no one. It fails to provide certainty for business investment and leaves our trading arrangements unresolved. It will allow employment rights to fall behind our neighbours. It weakens environmental protections. And it threatens to leave us with fewer options for supporting British jobs and businesses than we already have as an EU member.

Since the deal fails Labour’s six tests and is not in the national interest, it will be voted down by Labour, and other parties and MPs will join us. It looks unlikely that it can ever pass the Commons. The Prime Minister wants to make people believe that the only alternative to her bad deal is crashing out of the EU with no deal, leading to food and medicine shortages, factory closures and deeper spending cuts.
But that isn’t the real choice. The Government has no majority, so what happens next will be a matter for Parliament. The Labour Party agreed that if the deal failed the six tests and if a general election wasn’t possible, we would keep all options on the table including a public vote with remain as an option. Cabinet is split, Parliament is deadlocked, and a snap election is not possible under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act without Tory support.
In these circumstances, we must let the people take back control of Brexit and decide our country’s future through a People’s Vote.
BRITAIN is heading for a “fantastic” future of prosperity and opportunity outside the EU, David Davis has said today in an exclusive interview to mark two years since the historic EU referendum vote.
Brexit: A look back at the journey two years since the vote
The leading Cabinet Brexiteer delivered his most upbeat vision yet of what the country can expect from the “big national project” to quit the bloc.Rejecting claims that the departure negotiations are faltering, Mr Davis insisted Theresa May can win a “good deal” with Brussels.He also vowed Brexit negotiation will continue to be taking back control of our borders, control of our laws, control of our money, adding: “Those are the things that matter.”The Brexit Secretary said: “It’s going to be fantastic. We’re going to look back in 10 years’ time and wonder why we were every doubtful about it.”Mr Davis also warned Remainers still plotting to thwart the referendum result that Theresa May’s victory this week in Parliament for her Brexit Bill makes quitting the EU in March next year “inevitable”.He said: “The Prime Minister has now got the freedom to negotiate to get a good deal,” Mr Davis said, adding: “This is a big national project, there is nothing more important.”
Mr Davis spoke in his office at No 9 Downing Street a day after the flagship EU (Withdrawal) Bill passed its final stages in the Commons and Lords. The legislation, which cancels the 1972 European Communities Act underpinning the UK’s EU membership, is set to get the Royal Assent on Tuesday.Mr Davis added: “A lot of Daily Express readers voted to Leave – they would have voted to leave to take back control of our borders, our money and our laws and we’re going to get that, that’s what this negotiation is all about.“They are also going to get a future where their children and grandchildren are going to have fantastic opportunities that they don’t have now in new businesses we haven’t even thought of in markets all over the world.“We’re going to be a more global country.“People, particularly in London, tend to think Brexit is making us more inward.“It’s just the reverse of that.”Mr Davis said Brexit Britain would benefit from English being “the best language in the world for doing commerce, science and medicine and so on”.
He said: “It gives us a fantastic market with one and a half billion English speakers around the world. We’re going to be able to do trade deals with all of the old Commonwealth. It’s a great future.”Mr Davis was in an ebullient mood after the Government’s victory in the Commons this week.His decision to set out an optimistic vision in the Daily Express follows concerns among Brexit-backing Cabinet ministers that the Government needs to set out a bolder and more positive case in the negotiations.Mr Davis insisted the Government could start looking forward to the climax of negotiations now the 260 hours of debate over the Brexit Bill had concluded.He said: “Now it is all about the future, getting back into the negotiation to get a future partnership on the economy, on security, right across the board – a whole series of treaties which will make real the opportunities we think Brexit willdeliver.”Mr Davis warned Brussels that Britain was “able to leave without a deal”.
He added: “We don’t want to do that, never have. The best option is leaving with a good deal but you’ve got to be able to walk away from the table.“When you go to buy a house, you don’t walk in and say – I’m going to buy the house, now what’s the price? So why should it be any different in a big negotiation like this?“We’ve got to have the right to walk away – not that we will – but we’ve got to have that right.”Mr Davis rejected claims from some backbench Tories that the Government had made inadequate preparations for quitting without a deal.“There’s lots going on, we haven’t made it public for very simple reasons,” Mr Davis said. “This is a careful process, it is not designed to scare the horses to worry people, it is designed to get the work done.“Work is being done on migration, on health standards, on the EHIC card when people are going on holiday. Work is going on all these things for both the negotiated outcome and if something goes wrong.”
Mr Davis added: “Negotiations are by their nature turbulent. There are pressure points. The other side uses pressure points, they slow things down if they think it will make us a bit more compliant, that is  perfectly normal.“There will be scary times in the course of the negotiations, there always are.“It’s just important to keep calm and keep in the back of your mind that what is good for us is also good for them.“A million cars from German companies come to this country every year. They are going to want that to continue. “There are very strong forces on both sides to get a good deal.” The EU Exit Secretary also refused to rule out further concessions to Brussels in the negotiations.
BREXIT-backing Tories were furious after a plot by party rivals to rubbish their plan for a Canada-style trade deal with the EU was revealed.
Theresa May: Canada-style Brexit deal not on the table
A leaked memo showed that pro-Brussels Tory MPs were planning to publish a joint letter tomorrow expressing opposition to the alternative Brexit blueprint being championed by Boris Johnson and other Eurosceptics.The memo, sent by former Tory minister Philip Lee to party colleagues, also expressed support for a second referendum on Britain's membership of the EU.Owen Paterson, a former Cabinet minister and leading Leave campaigner, was scathing about the pro-Brussels plot.He said: “17.4 million people voted to leave the EU – more than have ever voted for any issue or political party in British history. It was a decisive vote.
“The country wants us to get on and deliver on the outcome of the referendum by leaving the single market, the customs union and the ECJ, therefore taking back control of our laws, borders and money.“This was laid out in the last manifesto on which every single Conservative MP was elected.“A free trade deal with the EU along the lines of the Canada deal would allow us to regain our sovereignty, strike new trade deals with the rest of the world and continue commerce with the continent. It is the solution to delivering Brexit.”In the memo, Dr Lee wrote that a Sunday newspaper was "keen to publish a joint letter from the moderate wing of the Party stating our dissatisfaction with any 'Canada' type deal and stating that a People's Vote would be preferable to a 'No deal' scenario".
He wrote: "I know many of you share this assessment and have said so publicly and/or privately."I feel this presents a good opportunity on the eve of Conference to show the collective strength of our desire to avoid crashing out of the EU without a deal."Dr Lee also said the letter was part of a campaign to undermine the influence of the European Research Group (ERG) of Eurosceptic backbenchers led by senior MP Jacob Rees-Mogg."It would also show that the ERG do not necessarily hold the whip hand when the deal returns to Parliament - we have strength in numbers too," Dr Lee.
"At this stage, I would be grateful if you would indicate ASAP whether or not you would be a willing signatory to such a letter."And if not, what would you add/take out to make it possible for you to sign up."I think it is important that we send a strong signal, but I am relaxed about the form that takes."Earlier this week, former home secretary Amber Rudd claimed up to 40 pro-Brussels Tories were ready to vote against a Canada-style trade deal if the proposal came before the Commons.
 FURY erupted among Eurosceptic Tory MPs last night after leaked details of Theresa May's new Brexit plan suggested Britain will stay tied into a swathe of EU rules and regulations after Brexit that could wreck hopes of a trade deal with the US.
Senior ministers yesterday received discussion papers ahead of today's crunch Cabinet summit at Chequers which included details of a "common rulebook" covering farm produce and other goods expected to cover both the EU and UK following the country's departure from the bloc.The document also suggested the planned regulatory alignment "would not allow the UK to accommodate" expected US demands for a future trade deal.Downing Street officials insisted it was "categorically untrue" that the plan would make a US trade deal impossible.But senior Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg led calls for Mrs May to "rip up" the proposal.“If this is correct this is not Brexit. This common rulebook means that we are essentially a vassal state," said the MP, who is chairman of the powerful 60-strong European Research Group of Tory backbenchers.
He advised the Prime Minister to follow the example set by Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who was reported to have torn up an earlier Government documents setting out post-Brexit customs proposals."The Prime Minister should imitate Mr Gove and tear up this paper," Mr Rees-Mogg said.Brexit-backing Cabinet ministers including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and EU Exit Secretary were understood to be deeply uncomfortable with the proposals. One Brexiteer source said backbench Eurosceptics did not expect the PM's plans to even reach MPs because "Boris and David aren't having it".Another ministerial source said: “Let’s see what the Prime Minister had to say, but it does sound very concerning.”The document handed to ministers yesterday said: "The UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food."It also said the UK will make "an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods".
Far less regulatory alignment between Britain and the EU was expected for the service sector, the document said."We would strike a different arrangement for services, where it is our interests to have regulatory flexibility, recognising this will result in reduced market access," it added.The document went on to admit that the alignment of regulations between Britain and the EU would “not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal” regarding a mutual recognition of standards.Tory Eurosceptics were particularly incensed that the potential threat to a US trade deal had been revealed just a week before the Prime Minister is due to hold talks about a future UK-US trade deal with Donald Trump on his first presidential visit to Britain.Former Tory Cabinet minister Owen Paterson said: "If true, this would be a complete breach of Theresa May's manifesto commitment, reconfirmed to me at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, to leave single market, customs union and EU Court of Justice.
Jacob Rees-Mogg slams MPs who said he's 'too soft' with May
"We could not eliminate tariffs to reduce prices for consumers and businesses, or strike free trade deals."Again if true, this would deny 100 per cent of British economy the full benefits of Brexit to appease only 12 per cent of UK GDP accounted for by exports to EU and be completely at odds with what 17.4 million voted for."We would be out of Europe but still run by Europe."Lucy Allan, another Tory MP, said: "This is not Brexit."Former Brexit minister David Jones said: “The paper proposes that the UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods, including agri-food and that the UK should make ‘an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods’.“This is entirely unacceptable. To all intents and purposes, it would lock the UK into the customs union and Single Market in perpetuity.“Furthermore, the paper acknowledges that the proposal, if adopted, would preclude a free trade agreement with the United States, the world’s biggest market.“To proceed along such a path would be wholly contrary to the national interest, and I hope and expect the cabinet to reject it.
“Quite simply, this is not what people voted for in 2016. This is not Brexit.”Former Tory frontbencher Andrea Jenkyns said: "We Brexiteers cannot support any deal that restricts our trade with other countries."Need to see the details but from what we are hearing prepared to vote against this."A Downing Street spokesman last night insisted the Prime Minister plan would not jeopardise a US trade deal.The spokeswoman said: "The Prime Minister has always been clear that we will seek a comprehensive and ambitious trade deal with the US that reflects the strengths of our trading and investment relationship."The president himself has always made it clear that he is keen to sit down and talk with the UK about that."The president and Prime Minister will have an opportunity to talk about it next week."It is categorically untrue to suggest that we will not be able to strike a trade deal with the US."
BORIS JOHNSON becoming the next Prime Minister of the UK could be "manna from heaven" for the Brexit Party if he fails to deliver on Brexit, Brexiteer MEP Martin Daubney claimed.
Brexit Party MEP: Boris Johnson failure a 'manna from heaven'
Boris Johnson has pledged he will see Brexit delivered without further delay "with or without a deal" if he is elected Prime Minister before the month is out. Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney warned the Tory leadership hopeful he could cause the Conservative Party to collapse if his pledge is betrayed and the UK is forced to remain in the European Union past October 31. Speaking to talkRADIO, the newly-elected MEP said: "I think Boris is saying what it takes to get the votes and the Tory councillors, MPs, members are going to vote for him because they want Tory continuity.
"They are facing electoral oblivion if they don’t get him in. I don’t think he can deliver – people over here are saying it’s next to impossible he’ll get something delivered for Halloween."What he’ll do next is blue the EU – I mean how can this guy do a deal in three weeks that hasn’t been done by everybody else in three years. Is his name Johnson or Houdini?"Theresa May said we’d leave 108 times, let’s keep tally of how many times Johnson says we’re going to leave on the 31st of October, and when he doesn’t get that it’ll be another failure."It’ll be manna from heaven for the Brexit Party because it will be another Tory betrayal."LISTEN HERE: Latest Brexit news from the Express.co.uk Final Countdown podcast
The Brexit Party stormed the polls at the European elections despite leader Nigel Farage officially launching the movement in March 2019. The Brexiteer party secured 29 seats in the European Parliament, coming ahead of the Conservative and Labour parties both. Speaking in Strasbourg as the new session of the EU chamber was being inaugurated, Mr Farage said: "We are here to be defiant. We shouldn’t be here at all. We are hoping we are only going to be here until October 31."And if we have to stay longer than that they’ll know we’re here.At the moment, we are cheerful because we won the election. We are the biggest party in the whole of Europe - how about that?“We will behave ourselves unless we hear our country being traduced.”
Brexit Party MEP shut down for waving flag in EU parliament
Mr Johnson has emerged as the favourite to become the next Prime Minister but the former Foreign Secretary received a blow on Monday when Tory grandee William Hague backed his opponent Jeremy Hunt. Lord Hague a mistake from the new Prime Minister could have serious consequences for the Conservative Party after Theresa May cost them their majority in Parliament and over 1,000 councillors across the UKMoreover, following the rise of the Brexit Party, Liberal Democrats and the possibility of Jeremy Corbyn led Government, the Tory life peer warned that the “stakes could not be higher”.The former Conservative leader added: “Serious mistakes in the coming months could be terminal for the world’s most enduring political force.DON'T MISS:BREXIT LIVE: Widdecombe set for Westminster return as Farage MEPs plot Commons coup [LIVE]Lib Dem MEPs shout 'stop Brexit' while wearing yellow 'B******s to Brexit' t-shirts in EU [VIDEO]Tory Brexit spenders! Everyone is reaching for the magic money tree, says LEO McKINSTRY [COMMENT]
“If we collectively get this wrong there will probably be no further time to correct it.”While Lord Hague claimed "both candidates have great qualities" he insisted only Jeremy Hunt was the right man for the job.The former Conservative Party leader said: "I am logically and inescapably drawn to vote for Jeremy Hunt.Speaking to Tory members in Belfast on Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary said: "I have four priorities I want to change, but I can’t do any of them until we sort Brexit."I have announced a £6 billion support package for businesses, particularly farmers and the fishing community, to help us weather no deal if that is what we end up with."That is not my first choice, and it isn’t the real choice in this election."Both candidates have said we have to leave the EU. and both have said we have to leave without a deal if that is the only way to do it."The choice we have is who is the pm we send to Brussels that has the best chance of negotiating a deal of avoiding those difficult choices we would face in a no deal situation."
Leo McKinstry
Theresa May has often spoken of the need for an “orderly” Brexit but nothing could be more disorderly than the decision to hold eleventh hour talks with Labour.In the early 1980s, the Irish Taoiseach Charlie haughey famously called one explosive political scandal in Dublin “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented”.To many Tories, that is a perfect description of the Cabinet’s present collusion with Corbyn.For three years, he has been denounced by the Tories as a Marxist who would wreck the British economy if he gained power.
Yet now May has invited him to help decide the fate of our country.If a compromise is reached in these negotiations, it is certain to be based on the softest possible Brexit.Just as in the botched talks with Brussels, where concessions were repeatedly made without a fight, May and her team seem anxious for a deal at almost any price.Indeed, in an extraordinary intervention at the weekend, Chancellor Philip Hammond declared that the Government has “no red lines” whatsoever, which could amount to wholesale surrender.
In practice, that would mean not only acceptance of a customs union and freedom of movement, but even another referendum.All are key demands of Labour activists, though such measures would make a mockery of the 2016 vote.At times of national crisis in the past, as in the two World Wars, cross-party co-operation has worked successfully.But it is unlikely to do so in this case.
That is because Labour has no political interest in helping the Tories deliver Brexit since the vast bulk of its party’s membership backs Remain.Nor does Corbyn want to be seen as the man who saved a doomed Government by enabling Britain’s departure from the EU.His twin aims with these talks are to boost his credentials as a potential prime minister and to maximise the discontent in Tory ranks.Without giving any ground, he is succeeding on both fronts.And he can use any pretext to pull the plug.
Brexit: Theresa May outlines TWO options for UK
Yet if there is no breakthrough in the next couple of days, the choices for the Cabinet are grim.A No-Deal Brexit is hardly a realistic option, since Parliament has repeatedly voted against it.If a further attempt at No-Deal is made this week, then the Government could fall and Article 50 – the legal instrument by which Britain ends its EU membership – might be revoked completely, destroying the dream of Brexit.Alternatively, the Cabinet might feel compelled to accept the EU’s demand for a long delay in our departure, perhaps for a year – the so-called “flextension”.
That would both dramatically enhance the scope for Remainer agitation and require Britain to participate in the European Parliamentary elections in May, the ultimate symbol of our politicians’ shameful failure.In that poll, the Tories could face meltdown at the hands of the newly-created Brexit party, headed by Nigel Farage, one of the most dynamic campaigners in British politics.The theme of Government betrayal will be a rallying cry, while Farage claims his new force is “fully mobilised” and well-funded.On the other hand, the Conservatives are in woeful shape. “The membership is completely demoralised,” says Dinah Glover, chairman of East London Conservatives.Yesterday, more than 100 Tory candidates in the forthcoming local council elections wrote to the Prime Minister, warning they had “never witnessed anger and incomprehension like this” over the Government’s “breach of faith with the electorate”.
The Conservatives used to be the party of democratic freedom and pragmatic competence.Now that reputation has been shattered.The dispiriting mess over Brexit is compounded by other recent failures, such as the inability to tackle crime or mass immigration; the chronic profligacy over the HS2 railway and the colossal foreign aid budget.Just like Brexit, the cause of Conservatism has been repeatedly betrayed by cowardly Tory politicians.The Conservatives have survived before, as with the 19th-century split over the Corn Laws and the huge 1945 Labour landslide.But this time, the fallout could be terminal.
WITH the Withdrawal Agreement Bill having safely passed the Commons this week, we can be sure that the UK will finally leave the EU on 31st January. We can now move on, at long last, to negotiate the comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU that is in the best interests of both sides.
But as we do so, it is vital that we also accelerate negotiations with other countries around the world, and especially the United States. If our negotiations with the US and the EU are not concurrent, we run the risk that the EU will drag its heels in order to keep the UK snared up in European regulations. If that occurs, the UK and the US will have lost a significant opportunity to show the world that we are serious about doing things differently.
The US has been one of the strongest forces for liberalised trade on Earth. A deal with the UK – a country at a similar socio-economic level so there can be no race to the bottom, a country where there is a balanced trade relationship – is the ideal candidate for its bilateral agenda, and vice versa. We are each other’s largest source of foreign direct investment. We both employ over 1 million of each other’s citizens.These strong economic ties are founded upon a deep, enduring bond between our two countries. We are united by our history, our culture and – pace Oscar Wilde – our language. We have a shared system of values. The British Council recently surveyed young Americans, who ranked the UK first against seven other major countries for: “being a force for good in the world”, “valuing individual liberty; and being a strong example of a democratic society.” We have shared interests in sectors like defence, intelligence financial services, and pharmaceuticals where our industries form part of an integrated whole.
I met President Trump last year, so I know that his Administration is enormously pro-British. The President has spoken of looking forward to a “very big and exciting” trade deal. The active and supportive US Ambassador, Woody Johnson, is “very confident about what happens after Brexit.”A UK-US trade deal will be enormously beneficial for both countries. As the UK emerges once again as an independent player on the global regulatory stage, we can make the case for free trade afresh, working with our allies against those who seek to suppress the extraordinary efforts in wealth creation that have lifted so many out of poverty since 1945.But we must act now. Given the pressure on the Presidential timetable with an election coming, I very much hope that the Prime Minister will visit the US very soon to advance negotiations and take full advantage of the unique chances which Brexit presents. With the US so prepared to negotiate in earnest, the Government must press on with both US and EU talks in parallel and ignore advice for the EU negotiations to be concluded first.
SENIOR Brexiteers have warned Theresa May that watering down her Brexit demands to secure a deal at the eleventh-hour would be a “catastrophic misjudgement”.
The Prime Minister has held further talks with Brussels this week as she scrambles to secure last-minute changes to her unpopular Withdrawal Agreement. But Mrs May is facing the prospect of a Remainer rebellion if she refuses to rule out no deal, while Brexiteers have demanded she make good on her pledge to revise the Irish border backstop. Mrs May is working to secure legally binding changes to the contentious arrangement but has now scrapped demands to reopen negotiations into the full Withdrawal Agreement, The Sun reports.
Instead, EU diplomats are reportedly working with their British counterparts to devise a “parallel declaration” which would sit alongside the treaty.The declaration is said to include a mechanism which could bring the backstop to an end within 12 months of it being triggered.But MPs last month voted for an amendment by Sir Graham Brady to replace the backstop with “alternative arrangements” - a demand the EU immediately refused.Brussels instead offered to discuss other guarantees which could allay Brexiteers’ fears that the backstop could trap the UK in a customs union with the EU indefinitely.
A senior source from the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) told The Sun: “It is highly likely that both sides in Brussels are about to commit another catastrophic misjudgement.”And former Brexit minister Steve Baker warned MPs had already made their views on the backstop clear.Mr Baker, who also serves as deputy chair for the ERG, said: “It’s absolutely clear there was a majority for the Brady amendment, replacing the backstop with alternative arrangements.“It is not clear there is a majority for something else.“At this crucial point in our country’s history, I am certain we will analyse with the utmost seriousness whatever the Government brings back, but I am not especially hopeful that a side letter or codicil will satisfy all wings of the Conservative Party and DUP.”
Brexit: Tory MP says UK can walk away from the backstop
Time is running out for Mrs May to bring her Brexit deal back to the Commons, with just 35 days left until the UK is scheduled to leave the EU.The Prime Minister this week held more talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels on Wednesday and insisted that progress had been made.But Mr Juncker struck a less positive tone when he stated the next day that he was "not very optimistic" that a no-deal Brexit could be avoided.MPs will next week take part in another series of crunch votes on the Government’s Brexit deal.Backbench amendments are expected to call for the no-deal option to be abandoned, and Article 50 extended, which would mean the UK remaining in the EU beyond the March 29 exit date.
JEREMY Corbyn’s Labour has finally abandoned the pretence and come out as an anti-Brexit party.
Brexit: Corbyn will ‘give people the choice’ of second referendum
Corbyn has not only demanded that the new Tory prime minister must hold a second referendum on any deal or no-deal Brexit. He has also signed Labour up in advance to campaign for Remain. This new Labour betrayal of Brexit is even worse than that carried out by Theresa May. At least we always knew she was a Remainer at heart. But Corbyn, we were told, was a ‘man of principle’ who learnt his left-wing Euro-scepticism at the knee of his Labour hero, Tony Benn.
Now Corbyn has shamelessly abandoned his principles and given in to the political pygmies of Labour’s Remainer front bench.They have broken every promise that they made to millions of Labour voters – most notably, the 2017 Labour manifesto commitment to ‘respect the referendum result’.While they celebrate at their north London supper parties tonight, the party that claims to represent Leave-voting working-class areas like the North of England and South Wales will be met with more anger than they can possibly understand.Labour has effectively announced that it cares more about the opinion of the new metropolitan middle classes than about its traditional base of support.
Nigel Farage warns Labour Party is in 'REAL trouble'
Coming out as a party of a second referendum and Remain may slightly dent the rise of the Liberal Democrats, who have been making inroads among Remainers. But it will not be enough on its own to restore confidence in the Labour Party - or in Corbyn’s leadership.Even though they have now become a Remain party, still Corbyn tries to use ambiguous phrasing and mixed messages to keep a foot in both camps.The fact is, however, that he has lost Labour’s civil war over Brexit. He knows that if he were to continue to advocate respecting the referendum result and leaving the European Union, his leadership could be over.Like many a Labour leader before him, it seems Corbyn is willing to do anything to hold on to his position and the chance of power.
Labour is now the party of Islington, not Islwyn. It’s the party of Hampstead, not Huddersfield. Its final abandonment of Brexit and millions of Leave voters has opened the door to the Brexit Party in many parts of the country in the most extraordinary way.Because the truth is that almost 70 per cent of Labour MPs represent seats that voted Leave in the 2016 referendum. Yet more than 90 per cent of those Labour MPs backed Remain.The divide between the self-styled ‘people’s party’ and the people has never been wider. As a group of Labour MPs from Leave areas recently warned Corbyn, ‘The strength of the Brexit Party in Labour heartland areas in the European elections revealed a much more potent threat than either the Liberals or Greens present’.Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has now declared itself to be the radical wing of the Remainer establishment. We will not let them get away with it.
SCATHING European Commission documents were kept top secret because they threatened to dismantle Theresa May’s controversial Chequers plan before its release and risk toppling her fragile minority government in Westminster.
Michel Barnier: White paper gives UK unfair advantage
Member states intervened and decided against releasing a set of slides rubbishing large segments of the Prime Minister’s White Paper before its release in July, which goes against the European Commission’s convention of transparent negotiations.The information was, however, kept out of the public eye after the request of a “high level” British official in order to avoid Mrs May’s Government being plunged into chaos.Brussels’ negotiator Michel Barnier sent his economic advisor Stephanie Riso to explain why the Commission’s team of economists believed accepting the British plan would do significant damage to the EU’s single market.Ms Riso outlined, a now public vision, about the issue of accepting the British offer on a common rulebook for only goods and not services.
She argued that a considerable amount of a motor vehicle’s value is tied up in services, such as information technology, research and development, financial services and distribution.The Commission has used various examples of how products traded across the EU are not simply just a 'good' because a lot of their value is made up in 'services', such as the development of GPS navigation systems for motor vehicles.A similar scenario was put forward for the EU’s chemical industry, where she said 69 percent of the value was connected to producing and processing methods.Mr Barnier has since publicly expressed his concern that Mrs May’s White Paper, if accepted by Brussels, would allow Britain to undercut the EU on services in order to gain a competitive advantage.Speaking after a meeting of the EU27’s Europe ministers, he asked: “Are the British proposals in the interests of the EU?
“As you know in any product like your mobile phone between 20 and 40 percent of the value of this good is linked to services.“So how will we avoid unfair competition in services because the UK would be free to diverge on services?”Ms Riso explained to the EU’s top Brexit officials that accepting such an offer from Britain would result in similar damage to a no-deal divorce, albeit over a 15 year period.Some predicted damage of a no-deal Brexit to the EU’s market extends to as much as 8-9 percent GDP.
The blistering analysis of Britain’s offer was due to be published on July 6 to the public after member states had been briefed on the finer details by the Commission’s negotiating team.However, they never saw the light of day after an intervention from a number of member states ensured they would remain unreleased because of their political sensitivity.One senior EU official explained to Express.co.uk that member states and Mr Barnier’s team had been instructed to welcome Mrs May’s White Paper with open arms and not to kill it off instantly.Even if the Chequers plan is not seen as workable by Brussels, officials believed an outright rejection so early on would collapse the Prime Minister’s Government and ultimately end talks with a no-deal scenario on the table.
Michel Barnier: We must find common ground on Brexit
Mr Barnier has seemingly broke away from the theory and torpedoed several elements of the White Paper. But, not before the document caused uproar and huge divides in Westminster.After Mrs May demanded the EU to “evolve its position” now Britain had softened its approach, Mr Barnier said Brussels would not accept anything that weakens the single market.He said: “There’s not an awful lot of justification for the EU running the risk of weakening the singe market.“That is our main asset.”
EUROPEAN Union leaders should extend the Brexit transition period locking Britain into the bloc’s rules and regulations longer in order to negotiate the complex future agreement, according to European Policy expert Andrew Duff.
Barnier: Brexit Withdrawal Agreement to conclude in November
The former MEP and European Policy Centre expert said EU leaders should invite the European Commission’s negotiator Michel Barnier to "force-feed" the UK an extension of the 21-month transition period, which is due to start on March 29 2019 if the withdrawal agreement in concluded.Mr Duff proposes the offer should be made at the informal European Council summit in Salzburg hosted by Austria, the current incumbents of the EU’s rotating presidency, on September 20.He, however, admits the EU should not allow for an extension of Article 50, therefore delaying the UK’s departure, unless there is a constitutional crisis in Britain.Writing in a paper entitled ‘Brexit: Beyond the transition’, Mr Duff said: “Two strategic decisions await the summit meeting.
“The first is to emphasise that there will be no prolongation of the Article 50 process. If Mr Barnier continues to make progress towards the Withdrawal Agreement, an extension of his timetable will in any case be unnecessary.“Theresa May will not ask for an extension, knowing full well that to do so would break her party. But she needs the summit to puncture the delusion of British Remainers who imagine that the EU 27 are ready to indulge in procrastination.“The EU is keen to move on to other matters. Short of a constitutional crisis in Britain, the Union will not postpone Brexit. It would be best to say so at Salzburg.”Mr Duff believes both sides of the Channel require a longer transition period in order to deal with the complex future agreement on customs and the Irish border.
The Prime Minister should be “force-fed” the concept by her European counterparts if she is too shy to ask for it, he adds.Mr Duff said: “The leaders should invite the Commission to include in the withdrawal agreement a provision permitting an extension of the transition period.“Given the complexity of the impending negotiation of the association agreement, especially relating to customs and the Irish border, such flexibility is very much in the EU’s interest.“If Mrs May is too shy to ask for more time for her ‘implementation period’, she should be force-fed it.
Brexit: Michel Barnier outlines the main points left to negotiate
“Brexiteers will not like it, but business and public administration on both sides of the Channel badly need a longer transition period than that presently agreed.”Time has been made on the Salzburg schedule for Mrs May to hold a Brexit discussion with her fellow 27 EU leaders, which goes against normal protocol.Mr Duff believes a successful Salzburg summit can be the driving force by the UK and EU being able to complete the withdrawal agreement, even before the October summit in Brussels.“If Salzburg is a success, rapid progress can be made to complete the Withdrawal Agreement at the October European Council,” he said.
On Tuesday, Mr Barnier cast doubt on the Brexit timeline when he said he wasn’t sure if they can conclude departure negotiations ahead of the perceived October deadline.He said: “When deciding what is realistic and not realistic, you have to take the date that Theresa May chose for the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union – March 30, I think it's actually enshrined in law in the UK now."If you count backwards from that date, March 30 2019, the day on which the UK will no longer be a member of the European Union – while remaining for 21 months, if we reach an agreement, in the single market, customs union and European policies  – the countdown backwards from there has to take account of the time which is necessary for ratification. That is a given, it will take a certain amount of time to ratify the agreement – on the UK side and the European side. "That takes us for a final agreement on the withdrawal agreement and political declaration well before the end of the year – I'm not going to say October, a few days here, the beginning of November, but not much later than that."
THERESA May faces a fresh battle with Brexiteers after it emerged a compromise plan on how to take Britain out of the EU has been sidelined.
Barnier: Brexit talks with Stephen Barclay were 'constructive'
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay took details of “Plan C”, drawn up by Brexiteers and Remainers, to talks with his counterpart in Brussels. But the call for “alternative arrangements” to a backstop preventing a hard Irish border was sidelined in favour of legal assurances. Mr Barclay and Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox will return to Brussels on Wednesday to present EU officials with a “legal way forward”.
Mr Cox will aim to secure a fresh legal text that allows him to reverse his November warning Britain could be locked in the custom union backstop by the EU.After a “positive” two-hour meeting with Brussels negotiator Michel Barnier, Mr Barclay said the Government now wants a document that sets out the temporary nature of the backstop.He said: “The Attorney-General shared his thinking in terms of the legal way forward and how we address the central issue of concern in terms of the indefinite nature of the backstop.“We agreed a next step forward so the Attorney-General and I will be engaging again midweek.”
Brexit: Tim Martin claims WTO will be 'fantastic' for UK
Tory Brexiteer Sir John Redwood said it was not possible to "gloss" the divorce deal.He said: “It needs significant changes, I'm not saying a little change would be sufficient, it requires a renegotiation.”An alternative plan for the backstop that would use technology to ensure there is no hard border was put forward by Tory Remainers and Brexiteers and has been worked on by government officials.They believe it is the only solution and have warned they will reject a legal fudge.Sir Bill Cash, Conservative chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, said, if the changes were just "flowery words", then the deal "won't wash".
Brexit: May needs space to negotiate the backstop says Wright
Ireland’s deputy premier Simon Coveney said Dublin would not be "steamrolled" into making compromises on the backstop.He said: “There is a deal on the table. The British Government signed up to it.“They haven't been able to sell that to their own parliament."And I accept that has created a lot of uncertainty, but it is certainly not Ireland's fault."The responsibility to resolve this problem in terms of the way forward needs to lie where the problem is, which is in London not Dublin."We would be very foolish if we allowed the onus to solve that problem to switch away from Westminster to Dublin.”
The backstop, which would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU, would come into force if a wider trade deal has not been struck by the end of the transition period.Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called on the EU to show "trust and vision" as he met counterparts in the Belgian capital and warned the process was at a "critical period”.Mrs May is expected to head to Brussels later this week to meet European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and will continue speaking to other leaders in the bloc in the coming days.But Number 10 insiders acknowledged it was "hard to judge" what progress would be made this week.
Brexit: Pound sterling improves against the euro
Mr Juncker said Brexit could be delayed.“When it comes to Brexit, it is like being before the courts or on the high seas; we are in God’s hands. And we can never quite be sure when God will take the matter in hand," he told a German newspaper.“If you are asking for how long the withdrawal can be postponed, I have no timeframe in mind. With Brexit so many timetables have already gone by the wayside.”“But I find it hard to imagine that British voters would again vote in the European elections. That to my mind would be an irony of history. Yet I cannot rule it out.”
DONALD Tusk has ignored Theresa May's demands to renegotiate the Irish border backstop and thrown his weight behind Jeremy Corbyn’s vision for a soft Brexit.
Theresa May CONFIDENT she will deliver Brexit 'on time'
The European Council President said Labour’s plan to remain in a customs union with the EU “would be a promising way out” of the current impasse, Sky News reports. Mr Corbyn today set out the terms under which his party would support Mrs May’s deal - including remaining in a “permanent and comprehensive” customs union and close alignment with the single market. And during talks with the Prime Minister today, Mr Tusk reportedly voiced his support for the plan.
Meanwhile, Mrs May offered no concrete proposals on the way forward, according to Sky News’ Europe correspondent Mark Stone, who cited an EU source.Details of the talks have emerged after Mrs May pledged the UK will leave the bloc on March 29 as planned after “negotiating hard” to fight for legally binding changes to the Brexit deal.Speaking to reporters briefly this afternoon, Mrs May said she "saw and heard a desire from European Union leaders to ensure Britain leaves with a deal".She acknowledged securing legally binding changes to the deal at this late stage would be difficult but said she had agreed with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that talks could now reopen.Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier will meet on Monday  Follow live Brexit updates with Express.co.uk:
9.30pm: What is Corbyn’s Brexit plan?Labour had been insisting any Brexit deal must meet its “six tests” before it would support it, but Jeremy Corbyn changed tack today with a new plan.The tests had faced criticism for being unattainable without remaining in the EU, with one stipulating that Britain must secure the “exact same” economic benefits as EU membership, though Brexit Secretary David Davis had once told MPs that would be possible.But today, Mr Corbyn unveiled a new list of demands and vowed to support Theresa May if she adopted the five criteria.They are:1. A ‘permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union’ which would also grant the UK a say in future trade deals.2. Close alignment with the single market, underpinned by shared institutions and obligations, with clear arrangements for dispute resolution.3. Dynamic alignment on rights and protections so that UK standards keep pace with evolving standards across Europe as a minimum, allowing the UK to lead the way.4. Clear commitments on participation in EU agencies and funding programmes, including in areas such as the environment, education, and industrial regulation.5. Unambiguous agreements on the detail of future security arrangements, including access to the European arrest warrant and vital shared databases.8.05pm: Minister could resign to fight no-deal Brexit - ‘clear where my responsibilities lie’A Government health minister has indicated he may resign to vote against a no-deal Brexit next week.Stephen Hammond said he would be "clear where my responsibilities lie" if a series of votes on February 14 turn out to be the last opportunity to block withdrawal from the EU without an agreement.Asked if he would resign to back a similar amendment next week, Mr Hammond told The House magazine: "We will all have to look into our conscience at that stage. But I don't think anyone can doubt my principles and what my view would be if that is the last opportunity."I'm pretty clear where my responsibilities lie, much as I love this job, much as I think the NHS is a wonderful, wonderful institution."I'm also very clear that as Members of Parliament we have a moral duty to our country and our constituencies. If you look at my record over the last year, no one can question my moral view on that."Mr Hammond said he remained "hopeful" that the Prime Minister would be able to secure a deal with Brussels.But he said that, if she had not reached that point by next week, the votes on February 14 would offer "the opportunity to ensure that no deal doesn't happen by mistake".
6.30pm: Ministers looking at Corbyn plan ‘with interest’Downing Street has said ministers are looking “with interest” at proposals for a soft Brexit put forward by Jeremy Corbyn.The Labour leader set out his five-point plan - including a permanent customs union with the EU - in a letter to the Prime Minister.A senior No 10 source said: "It is welcome that the Leader of the Opposition is engaging in this. It is important that we continue to hold discussions to find a way forward to deliver Brexit."We are looking at those proposals with interest but there are obviously very considerable points of difference that exist between us."The PM continues to believe that an independent trade policy is one of the key advantages of Brexit. Her position on the customs union hasn't changed."5pm: Next round of Brexit talks to discuss alternatives to backstopBrexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will discuss possible “alternative arrangements” to the Irish border backstop when he meets with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier next week, Downing Street says.The talks will be a “discussion about the ongoing work to address the concerns of Parliament”, a Number 10 spokeswoman said.MPs voted last month to scrap the contentious backstop arrangement and replace it with an unspecified alternative but the EU has insisted it will not agree to any legally binding changes.A series of ministers are set to be involved in the next stage of talks with Brussels.The spokeswoman said: "The PM has said before politicians would play a more prominent role, so you could expect to see people like the Brexit Secretary, David Lidington and the Attorney General involved, as well as the civil service support team and the Prime Minister.”
3.45pm: 'No breakthrough in sight', Tusk warnsDonald Tusk has painted a less optimistic picture following today's talks in Brussels, warning there is "no breakthrough in sight".The European Council President added Brexit talks will continue. 3.40pm: No mention of REMOVING backstopMrs May told reporters that she will negotiate hard to secure legally-binding "changes" to the unpopular Irish border backstop, but her plan to attempt to try and revise the arrangement will come as a major blow for some Tory hardliners and the DUP. DUP leader Arlene Foster has repeatedly called for the backstop to be completely scrapped and some Tory Brexiteers have previously said they would only vote for a deal if that element of the deal is scrapped completely. 3.20pm: May pledges to ‘deliver Brexit on time’Theresa May has pledged that Britain will leave the EU as planned on March 29 and insisted she will “negotiate hard” for legally binding changes to the contentious Irish border backstop.Speaking after talks with European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, Mrs May said she had “robust but constructive” meetings with the senior EU figures. In a clear signal the Government does not intend to seek an extension of Article 50, she said she would “deliver Brexit” and “deliver it on time”,On remarks made by Mr Tusk yesterday, in which he warned there is a “special place in hell” for Brexiteers who had campaigned for Brexit without any plan of how to deliver it, the PM said she had told him the language was “not helpful”.3.10pm: May to speak imminentlyTheresa May is preparing to address reporters in Brussels after meeting with Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk.Harvey Gavin taking over from Laura Mowat on live reporting.
2:43pm update: Verhofstadt hit out at Brexiteers who support the "disaster" of a no-deal outcome"It is a disaster on both sides of the Channel and it is, in fact, irresponsible from some politicians in Britain to go for such a no deal and to prefer such a no deal."2:07pm update: Tajani ‘we are weeks away from the catastrophe of a no deal Brexit’EU Parliament President Antonio Tajani after meeting Theresa May said: “We are very concerned. We are weeks away from an economic and human catastrophe. This is the reality of a no deal Brexit. It would be a very dangerous solution”.Tajani said: “We need to talk talk talk with the United Kingdom.”Guy Verhofstadt has said there is no question that there won’t be a backstop and it is key for ensuring the Good Friday Agreement.Verhofstadt: “An all weather backstop is absolutely key."A cross-party cooperation in the UK is the way forward. We welcome the letter Mr Corbyn has written to Theresa May today.“It’s important that this leads now to a position in the UK that has the broadest possibility.”Brexit: May assured us there will be a backstop says Verhofstadt
1:41pm update: Civil servants changed my documents without telling me says Brexit ministerThe former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has confessed that he felt pushed out of EU withdrawal negotiations by senior civil servants.He said he was very shocked to find a key change to the terms of the controversial Brexit backstop included in official documents "without his knowledge". Mr Raab said: “The challenge is when the senior civil servant is both the personal adviser to the Prime Minister but also leading the Civil Service team.“That creates problems because you can circumvent the principle of ministerial accountability, which is vital to negotiations. That certainly happened.”1:22pm update: Ministers fear an Article 50 delay is ‘inevitable’ as May set to scrap next week's vote as 'nothing will have changed' The Chief Whip, Julian Smith, has said to the Cabinet the vote will not be held next week as the Prime Minister will not have renegotiated in time.This comes as one minister has said to the Daily Telegraph they had stopped personally endorsing Mrs May’s clam that the UK would leave the EU on March 29 as it “makes us look ridiculous”.The ministers have now been ordered to say it is "Government Policy" that the UK will leave the EU on March 29. The Commons will vote on amendments tabled by backbenchers next week, including one that would force the Prime Minister to request an extension of Artcle 50 if a deal can't be reached. The Business Secretary, Greg Clark, suggested yesterday that the deadlie for a deal on Brexit should be the end of next week as firms exporting to Japan and the Far East by sea need to make decisions. Mr Clark said: “It is one of the reasons why I’ve been very outspoken in saying that we should not regard March 29 or 28 as the time that we should be prepared to take to conclude a deal.”
Brexit: Carney warns of elevated uncertainty due to negotiations
12:18pm update: Morawiecki attacks Donald Tusk’s commentsPrime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki said: “Instead of sending anyone to hell, together find a solution that will be good for the EU, but also allow you to have a strong business partner in Britain after #Brexit. The goal of all must be the interest of Poland and the future of the Community, regardless of its shape."12pm update: Juncker and May provide statement about their “robust but constructive” talksPresident Juncker made it clear that the EU would not open the Withdrawal Agreement but he said he could negotiate the wording to the Political Declaration agreed by the EU27.The Political Declaration sets out the framework for the future relationship between the EU and the UK, which is agreed at negotiators’ level and agreed in principle at political level.The European Commission statement said: “Despite the challenges, the two leaders agreed that their teams should hold talks as to whether a way through can be found that would gain the broadest possible support in the UK Parliament and respect the guidelines agreed by the European Council.“The Prime Minister and the President will meet again before the end of February to take stock of these discussions.”President Juncker did bring attention to Mrs May that any solution would have to be agreed by the European Parliament and the EU27.
Varadkar warns Tusk of 'trouble' after Brexit 'hell' comment
11:55am update: UK and EU ‘will hold further talks’ hinting at a Brexit breakthroughBrussels BBC reporter Adam Flemming tweeted: “I hear that the UK and the EU negotiating teams have agreed to hold further talks”.11:43am Some Labour MPs react badly to Jeremy Corbyn’s letter to Theresa MayLabour headquarters appear panicked by the responses of MPs to Corbyn’s Brexit letter.The HQ is planning on sending out another letter to members to make clear a second referendum is still on the table, as per party policy.The letter offers Labour’s support to May’s deal if she makes five commitments, which include joining a customs union.
11:17am update “Is this hell Prime Minister?”The Prime Minister was greeted by the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker with one reporter asking “Is this hell Prime Minister?”Mrs May is using the meetings to state that Parliament has sent "an unequivocal message that change is required".10:41am update: MP Dennis Skinner has blasted Tusk for his ‘hell’ commentVeteran Labour MP Mr Skinner, attacked the European Council president Donald Tusk for suggesting there was a "special place in hell" for those who pushed for Brexit without a plan.Mr Skinner said: "The minister missed an opportunity in the last question but one - he was invited to talk about a rocket."He should have said this is the answer to Donald Tusk."To get out of hell, we've got to fly a rocket."International trade minister Graham Stuart replied: "As a member in a party so bereft of optimists, he gives the example to the others that this country does have a great future outside the European Union and technology - in which we are the undisputed European leader - is fundamental to putting a rocket up not only our industries, but also many of the people he shares those benches with."
10:21am update: Budget cuts could affect Brexit ferry port plansPlans to reopen a ferry port in the event of a no-deal Brexit could be disrupted if councillors approve a string of budget cuts.The Government handed Seaborne Freight a £13.8 million contract to run a service from Ramsgate, Kent, to Ostend, in Belgium, to alleviate anticipated delays and queues at the Port of Dover. Discussions are ongoing as to how this will work.Councillors will decide whether to make savings over the next year when they vote on their budget this evening.9:32am update: Downing Street has said Mrs May is “open to different ways” of achieving her backstop objectivesOne of the PM’s key messages for EU leaders will be that the Commons has now made it clear it could support the Withdrawal Agreement as long as concerns about the backstop are met.Mrs May will also underline that Labour leader Mr Corbyn also has concerns about the backstop, so it is not just an issue for the Tories and their DUP allies.
9:27am update: Lidington has said he is open to talks with CorbynTheresa May’s deputy prime minister has said he hopes to have Brexit talks with members of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet in an effort to break the Commons deadlock.David Lidington said he and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay want to sit down with Labour frontbenchers.But Mr Lidington said Labour's key Brexit policy on a customs union with Brussels was "wishful thinking".Mr Lidington said: “If it's Keir Starmer or Emily Thornberry or anybody else, the idea is - if this goes forward - it would be me and Steve Barclay who would be sitting down and meeting them."Let's hope those conversations can take place." 8:53am update: Reports that David Lidington believes today is about highlighting to Brussels the need for a planBBC reporter, Laura Kuennsberg has tweeted: “Lidington suggests objective today is to ram home message that according to government, deal won’t go through parliament without a change to backstop rather than discussing any specific plan.”8:07am update: Theresa May is expected to leave Brussels empty handed todayIt is thought the EU officials will resist tabling any concessions until after February 14 when the next House of Commons vote on the Brexit agreement is likely to take place.Additional reporting by Laura Mowat.
LABOUR is braced for a walkout of eight Remainer MPs as early as Monday after the party was plunged into fresh conflict over Brexit.
Brexit: Labour being ‘played like fools’ by Corbyn says Leslie
Rebels are gearing up to form a breakaway group as tensions flare over Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to Britain’s departure from the EU. It comes as up to ten shadow ministers are reportedly planning to resign from the frontbench if the Labour leader refuses to back a second referendum. Party splits boiled over in a heated outburst in the Commons from Chris Leslie, one of the backbenchers believed to be involved in planning a new party.
In a public attack on Mr Corbyn, he claimed "we are being played for fools by the leadership of the Labour Party" and told MPs the divisions over Brexit were “heartbreaking."Mr Leslie criticised the wording of his party leadership's proposals to change Theresa May’s next steps Brexit plan because it did not include the option of another Brexit referendum.He added: "I certainly feel that we are being played for fools by the leadership of the Labour Party on this particular issue because by now we should have reached the stage of a public vote when it comes to the option of remaining in the EU."Mr Corbyn was told that Labour will be punished by its supporters if it fails to push for a re-run poll. 
But the Labour leader’s allies have warned another vote would hit the party hard in its Leave-supporting areas.Labour MP Chris Williamson, one of Mrs Corbyn’s cheerleaders, said: “We should avoid a second referendum if at all possible.”“I just worry that the issue of a second referendum is a distraction,” he told the BBC. “It would be incredibly divisive. It would damage the Labour party, particularly in the northern heartland.”
PMQs: May tells Corbyn he's no longer a 'conviction politician'
Senior figures in the party are braced for leading Remainers in the party to quit as soon as Monday, the Daily Express understands.Labour’s Angela Smith and Luciana Berger are among those rumoured to be planning to jump ship.Threats of party walkouts and frontbench resignations will heap pressure on Mr Corbyn.
The Labour leader’s aides are said to be firmly against a second referendum but shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer believes the party must demand another vote if an agreement cannot be reached to lock Britain into a closer economic relationship with the EU.Shadow treasury minister Clive Lewis, meanwhile, made the incendiary claim that quitting the European Union would mean British youngsters faced being drafted into fight a war on the continent in the future.
He told a "Love socialism, hate Brexit" meeting in Westminster:  "My fear is this, if we walk away from Europe now my children, your children, or possibly our grandchildren, but probably our children could be back in Europe in a few years time - but in uniform. And I don't want to see that happen."He claimed Labour would end up being “utterly and comprehensively destroyed” like the Liberal Democrats if they back Mrs May’s Brexit deal. Mr Lewis, who insisted he supported Mr Corbyn's leadership, added: "We are now sending some mixed messages out there and that is truly dangerous."
Accountability, which is knowing who does what and who answers to whom, is the foundation of public confidence in our democracy.
Brexit: May's deal will create 'endless uncertainty' says Jenkin
But this government’s failure to stand up to EU-ultras is inflicting constitutional carnage. When the history is written, it will be obvious that it was always the wreckers’ intention to seek to reverse the referendum decision by ending the negotiations with a humiliating choice: either an unacceptable withdrawal agreement or the prospect of no Brexit at all. This fulfils the prediction by a former diplomat in the House of Lords: “We will huff and puff but, in the end, we will basically come to heel.” There are many ministers with honest intentions, but they are caught up in an administration riven with dishonesty, incompetence and constitutional decay.
From the start, a fifth column of europhile ministers have campaigned to remain in the customs union. They have delayed and undermined readiness for a ‘no-deal’, about which they promote economic gloom and extreme worst-case scenarios.  They have instructed officials to withhold information which would enable business to plan effectively.  The government is running down the clock, not to force negotiations with the EU to a better conclusion, but to bludgeon our own Parliament to accept the unacceptable.There are reasons why the functions of government and Parliament are divided as they are and ministers are expected to uphold collective responsibility. Voters must know who is accountable. Governments must be able to deliver the programme they were elected on, provided they retain the confidence of the Commons.
The Government is expected to speak with one voice. Parliament’s role is to scrutinise the work of Government, pass laws and control money. These democratic principles have retained the confidence of voters through two world wars, the general strike, hyperinflation, Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair. They are being carelessly trashed by a weak government, which is willingly being held to ransom by those determined to stop Brexit.The final step will be this government choosing to allow MPs to undo the vote of June 2016 altogether. And when that moment comes, we mustn’t forget that it wasn’t Leavers, Remainers or even a divisive referendum that brought us there: it was our elected representatives thwarting democracy.Sir Bernard Jenkin is a Conservative MP and chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
A SORE tooth is enough to put anyone in a bad mood. A sore Tusk, however, is a temperamental event on an altogether bigger scale.

And there is no doubt Donald Tusk, President of the EU Council of Ministers, was feeling very sore when he made his spectacularly undiplomatic outburst against Brexit campaigners, wondering what "special place in hell" lies in wait for us. Tusk is usually a cool character. So while many observers were swept up in the reaction to his remarks, others asked themselves what had brought them about and what the outburst tells us about the pressure on the Brussels high command as Britain's March 29 leaving date looms. The trail, fascinatingly, leads back to a plot to stop Brexit spearheaded by none other than former PM Tony Blair.
EU insiders tell me that Tusk allowed himself to become convinced Brexit was going to be overturned after a plan was constructed between senior Brussels figures and British pro-Remain politicians, led by Blair, that seemed to be working perfectly.Part of the plan involved Brussels playing hardball in negotiations, so that the deal Theresa May was able to put in front of MPs was profoundly unappetising.That advice to Brussels was relayed by a stream of pro-Remain visitors from the heart of the British establishment.One of them, the philosopher AC Grayling, was even caught on camera telling the European Parliament's Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt: "What would help the Remain movement in the UK is if the EU is very, very tough and uncompromising on a deal."
And so it came to pass, with the EU offering Britain almost no concessions but us being tied to the interminable "Irish Backstop" with no unilateral right of escape.Indeed, when the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by Theresa May was defeated by 230 votes in the House of Commons in mid-January, Tusk dropped a public hint that he now thought Britain would stay in the EU, declaring: "If a deal is impossible and no one wants no-deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" For his part, Mr Blair has been a fierce opponent of Brexit from the off, campaigning against it in the referendum and ever since. But it was last year that he stepped up his efforts, insisting he believed he could prevent it. He publicly stated in November: "Up to the end I am going to do everything I can to stop it."
In an interview the previous month he gave a clue as to how: by using the pro-Remain majority in the Commons to defeat the Government and secure a postponement in our leaving date. This in turn would be used to fight and win a second referendum. "If you do get to a blockage in Parliament that is what opens up the possibility of going back to the people," said Blair.It was all going so swimmingly. The trap was meant to spring shut on Brexiteers in a series of Commons votes on January 29.
The key one was an amendment put forward by Labour's Yvette Cooper - a one-time protegé of Blair's - and the Tory MP Nick Boles. It sought to outlaw leaving the EU with no deal and put back the target date for Brexit to the end of the year, leaving time for the Blairite "People's Vote" campaign to force a second referendum in the autumn.Given the 230-vote thrashing May had suffered a fortnight earlier, the Remainers were confident of success. But that was not how it panned out. Instead a motion was passed backing the Withdrawal Agreement provided the Irish backstop was removed.
And the Cooper amendment was defeated by 23 votes, with enough Labour MPs from pro-Leave seats voting against it to counteract the pro-Brussels Tories who supported it.That result was devastating for Brussels and for Tusk in particular. He had been parroting a line that the UK Parliament must stop saying what it didn't want and start saying what it did want, confident that May would fail to assemble a majority for anything.But suddenly she had. And the bid to create space for a second referendum was in ruins.So now the Brussels high command is in a state of disarray. It had come to believe that playing hardball would lead to the blocking of Brexit. 
Now it fears the result will instead be the UK leaving on WTO terms on March 29.That would reduce the EU's access to its biggest export market just as several EU countries are on the verge of recession, put in jeopardy most of a scheduled £39billion UK divorce payment and leave the Republic of Ireland facing a very difficult time.If Mrs May can exploit this new dynamic and hold her nerve then there is a very good chance that the Irish backstop will indeed have to be dumped and a more equitable leaving deal agreed.
And there is no doubt in my mind whom Mr Tusk is really angriest with. Not Brexiteers, but the has-beens of the Remain campaign - Blair chief among them - who led him up the garden path.As he noted coldly in that same press conference on Wednesday, "there is no political force and no effective leadership" for a bid to keep the UK in the EU.Translation: Mr Blair may think he is a messiah, but to the bigwigs of Brussels he is now just a very naughty boy.
BORIS JOHNSON says an election victory for the Tories could see Brexit wrapped up in days. Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Express, the Prime Minister insisted he will drive through his deal at full speed if he wins the election on December 12.
Brexit 'will be done my mid January with election' says Johnson
Mr Johnson said: “You could put it in Gas Mark 4, 20 minutes and Bob’s your uncle. He added: “I’ll get Brexit wrapped up fast. What I would say is, ‘Vote for us and you get Brexit done, you will get it done very fast and you will avoid another infinite period of dither and delay’.” The Prime Minister added: “We get out of this thing – which we will, if I am lucky enough to be returned – then we have the opportunity of not just doing one big free trade deal with the EU but to become the centre of a great new push for global free trade.” 
His comments come as an exclusive ComRes poll for the Sunday Express reveals that Conservative support has surged by three points to an eight per cent lead, which would give them a majority of 70. In a further sign of his positive vision for the country, Mr Johnson – speaking to mark his 100 days in office and launch his election campaign – also said that once Brexit was completed, it would be a time “for prosperity not austerity” as Britain begins a new era. The Prime Minister admitted he was “wary” when it came to committing to a firm date after Remainer MPs prevented Britain leaving the EU on October 31, as he had pledged. But with MPs likely to be back on December 13 or 16, Brexit could be pushed through quickly if the Tories have a majority. The EU “flextension” means Britain can leave the bloc any time before January 31. 
Mr Johnson told how he was furious that the country had effectively been held hostage by Remainer MPs and Labour, and admitted that when officials brought the letters asking for an EU extension to be signed, he threw them in the bin – twice. “It did make me very angry,” he said. “I was so sick they came in to see me at one point and handed me the letter and I filed it vertically, I’m afraid. Then they came back with another copy and I filed that vertically again.” Mr Johnson also insisted he had no regrets about kicking out 21 Tory MPs who had supported Hilary Benn’s “Surrender Act”. Ten of them have since been allowed back in for supporting his “fantastic deal”. The Prime Minister said: “In spite of what the [Remainer] doomsters said, we did get a deal and, if I may say so myself, it was a fantastic deal. It allows us to take back control of money, borders and laws. 
“It allows us to come out of the EU with one whole entire United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. “It does everything we wanted. Whole UK free trade deals, whole UK out of the European Court of Justice. It’s a great deal. “Why would we [renegotiate it again]? This is the deal that will work until we have got the free trade deal with the EU.” Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has offered to form a pact with Mr Johnson if he ditches his deal and allows his MPs to target up to 150 seats. But the Prime Minister said a deal between the two would not work. “My general view is that there is only one way to get Brexit done and there is only one way to get it done fast and that is to vote for the Conservatives,” he said. 
“The risk of voting for any other party – any other party – is that you just get Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party or a chaotic rainbow coalition led by Corbyn. “So that’s what I would say respectfully to anybody who talks about a deal [with the Brexit Party]. In my experience, the best thing to do in life is campaign strongly for what you believe in.” Mr Johnson insisted that he did not want a General Election but said it had to happen because Parliament would never have passed his deal. “I love being Prime Minister,” he said. “I want to go on and do all the things we want to do for the country.” But, banging the desk, he added: “The problem is Parliament again. Having voted for the Surrender Act, they knew they had us over a barrel when it came to October 31. 
“They deliberately voted for delay. They could have easily ratified that thing. “It was pure manoeuvring and the trouble is, I am afraid, that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party who led it couldn’t be relied on to get it over the line by January 31. “For the people of this country that is the worst outcome. “I thought, ‘You are facing infinite delay, so what you need is resolution’. And the only way a Government can get resolution is an election.” 
SADIQ Khan has called for Article 50 – the legal agreement allowing Britain to leave the EU - to be “revoked” in a shocking interview on the BBC this morning.
Brexit: Sadiq Khan says UK should 'revoke Article 50'
The London Mayor and arch-Remainer made the astonishing remark talking to BBC host John Pienaar. Mr Khan blasted unequivocally: “Let's stop the clock, let's revoke Article 50.” Continuing, he expressed his sense of hopelessness surrounding the outcome of cross-party talks between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.
He explained: “Theresa May has been negotiating with the EU and her party and cabinet for a 1000 days.“The idea that in just two or three days there’ll be a resolution between the Tory and Labour leadership is just not realistic.“In those circumstances, I think we should stop the clock.“We don’t want to inadvertently leave the EU without any deal whatever or a bad deal.
“So let’s stop the clock, let’s revoke Article 50.“The reality is we’ve got this clock running down and this artificial date that has been imposed upon us because of the servicing of Article 50.“The thing to do is withdraw that so the pressure’s taken off.“Cool, calm heads can reach a resolution.
Brexit: Jess Phillips GRILLED for supporting second referendum
“That could be some sort of deal, and the deal that secures the most votes in parliament should be one of the options put to the British public. With the option also of remaining in the EU.”Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg blamed Theresa May for the UK's failure to have left the EU already.He told Sky News: "The Prime Minister could have taken us out on March 29. It was the Prime Minister who asked for an extension, it was the Prime Minister who changed the date by prerogative power from March 29 to April 12."This all rests with her and upon her shoulders. The Prime Minister Mrs May has made active choices to stop us leaving and she deserves to be held to account for that."People ought to know the truth of the position, rather than trying to blame everybody else, blaming recalcitrant MPs and other Conservatives."If the Prime Minister had done what she said in the first place and had stuck to the law, as set out in two Acts, we would have left the European Union by now."
THERESA May has been given a deadline of mid-March to get her Brexit deal across the line or Parliament will delay Brexit.
Brexit: Theresa May calls for more time to hold talks with EU
A cross-party group of MPs, including Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin, have said they are ready to table an amendment to delay Brexit if a deal is not in place by then. It is the latest attempt by Remain MPs to block a no-deal Brexit. And speculation is high that some Cabinet ministers could even resign so they can back the rebels’ plan.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Business secretary Greg Clark are set to support the Cooper-Letwin bid, according to a Cabinet source.The insider told The Sun: “February 27 is high noon. This is the line Amber, David and Greg are drawing in the sand, and they will make that clear closer to the time.“No deal must be taken off the table then.”Ms Cooper insisted the amendment was “a Parliamentary safeguard to prevent us drifting into no deal by accident”, adding that it would “prevent those crucial decisions being left until the final fortnight”.
It comes after Mrs May called on MPs to “hold their nerve” as she works to secure last-minute concessions from Brussels to win support for her Brexit deal.But Brexiteers were left furious last night after it was claimed that the Prime Minister’s chief EU negotiator had claimed Brexit would be delayed if MPs did not approve Mrs May’s deal.Civil servant Olly Robbins was overheard in a Brussels hotel bar telling colleagues that the EU would be likely to give the Government an extension to Article 50.
According to ITV News, Mr Robbins said that if MPs rejected Mrs May’s deal, then the delay to Brexit would be “a long one”.He said: "The issue is whether Brussels is clear on the terms of extension. In the end they will probably just give us an extension."Got to make them believe that the week beginning end of March... Extension is possible but if they don't vote for the deal then the extension is a long one..."
THE BREXIT PARTY will sound its own Big Ben bongs on the day the UK leaves the EU after the Commons silenced calls for the iconic clock to ring.
Brexit: House of Lords back Withdrawal Agreement Bill
The 13.7-tonne bell has been under construction since 2017 and the chimes have not been sounded for the safety of workers involved in the four-year restoration scheme of the Elizabeth Tower. The House of Commons Commission ruled out ringing the bells for Brexit after it was revealed that it would cost £500,000 – a massive rise over the original estimate of £120,000.
Sounding the bells just for one night would mean installing a temporary floor and hike up the cost of renovations. But the Brexit Party has another trick up its sleeve to ensure Brexit day can be celebrated in style. Rather than the traditional bells ringing out on January 31, loudspeakers will instead echo around Parliament Square. An open letter, signed by Nigel Farage and Richard Tice, said: “We will be celebrating all those who have made this monumental victory for democracy possible - including politicians on the left and the right, campaigners who handed out leaflets in the rain, and the millions who turned out to vote.“All are invited to the event, which will run from 9.30-11.15pm, with a prestigious line up of speakers, with extra screens, entertainment and momentos.
“We are still working on making the famous bell of Big Ben toll, but if bureaucrats in parliament refuse to allow this, we will recreate the sound with out powerful speaker system. “The world will be watching and licensing. After more than 20 years of EU membership and a three-and-a-half year battle to uphold the referendum result, Brexit is happening. “Join us and make it a night to remember!” The government has its own plans for Brexit day, as a clock counting down to the moment Britain leaves the European Union on January 31 will be projected onto Downing Street.Buildings around Whitehall will also be lit up as part of the light show that evening, and Union Flags will be flown on all the poles in Parliament Square.The commemorative Brexit coin will come into circulation on exit day, and the Prime Minister is expected to be one of the first people to receive one of the newly-minted 50p pieces.Boris Johnson will chair a special meeting of his Cabinet in the north of England on January 31, where ministers will discuss the Government’s plans to spread prosperity and opportunity across the UK.He will then make a special address to the nation in the evening.DON'T MISSHouse of Lords explained: Could the House of Lords be abolished? [EXPLAINED]Boris urged to use ‘Thatcherite spirit’ to boost Brexit Britain [INSIGHT]Jacob Rees-Mogg's brutal university nickname exposed [REVEALED]
Last Tuesday, Mr Johnson said that the Government was “working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”.But Downing Street has since sought to distance itself from the campaign, with a Number 10 spokesman insisting the matter is for MPs and that the Prime Minister’s focus is on the Government’s plan to mark exit day.Mr Johnson has been accused of misleading the public over his “bung a bob” suggestion, after more than £225,000 was donated to the campaign.Tory Party chairman James Cleverly was also asked about the campaign to “bong Big Ben” to mark Brexit.
He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge: ”The Prime Minister made a light-hearted statement about Big Ben, trust me this is not the most pressing issue in Government. “It generates a lot of interest, of course it does, and it’s a good media knockabout.He added that he would not be donating to the crowdfunder to raise money for the costs of recommissioning the bell during its restoration work.He said: “Any money I donate will be to other good causes.“Everyone’s philanthropic acts are up to them. It’s a good fun story, it’s a light-hearted story but ultimately this is not, I can assure you, the main focus.”
TWO of the pro-Brexit campaign’s biggest donors have stunned Leave voters by admitting they think Britain will never leave the European Union.
Peter Hargreaves and Crispin Odey said they think Theresa May will eventually abandon Brexit altogether after concluding it would be impossible to get a deal through Parliament. Mr Hargreaves said he had “totally given up” on Brexit while Mr Odey said “it ain’t gonna happen.” Together the pair donated more than £4million to various Leave campaign groups but criticised Brexiteers for lacking consolidated leadership and direction in the wake of the 2016 vote.
Mr Hargreaves was the second biggest donor to pro-Brexit groups in the run up to the referendum.He donated a huge £3.2 million to help get Britain out of the EU but Brexiteer concerns are growing that it might all have been a waste of money with the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement looking doomed to fail next week’s test in Parliament.The Brexiteer, who is reportedly worth £2.39 billion, made his money founding Hargreaves Landsdown, which became one of the UK’s largest financial services businesses.
Crispin Odey wins £220m on Brexit bet
Meanwhile Crispin Odey blamed MPs for blocking Brexit.He explained the current make-up of the Commons, in which around three-quarters of MPs voted to stay in the EU, makes it impossible to get a deal ratified because no deal can be reached which satisfies a majority of the House.The 60-year-old, who gave £870,000 to Leave groups, said: “My view is that it ain't going to happen.“I just can't see how it happens with that configuration of Parliament."
Mr Odey, who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager and founding partner of Odey Asset Management, slammed top Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Michael Gove as failing to unite the Leave campaign after the referendum.He said: “The unfortunate thing is that almost nobody is leading the Brexit charge, so it's leaderless, which is the problem.”Committed Brexiteer Odey added he would be willing to pour millions more into continuing the Brexit fight if Theresa May called a second referendum, while hesitant Hargreaves would not pledge to make more donations.
BORIS JOHNSON is reportedly planning to form a Brexit “war cabinet” to force through the UK’s exit from the EU in his first 100 days in office.
The cabinet - which has been labelled the “crack team” by a source - would be comprised of senior ministers and advisers who would be responsible for planning and tackling obstacles posed before the UK’s departure on October 31, according to The Daily Telegraph. The team would then report to the broader cabinet which would be comprised of ministers who signed up to Mr Johnson’s deadline. The plans are being led by Sir Eddie Lister, who is also heading up the transition team with Cabinet Minister Oliver Dowden and health secretary Matt Hancock.
One source said: "There will be a Brexit workstream and there are people signed up to it.“It is expected to have senior figures and expertise from across the spectrum looking into it."Campaign Chairman Iain Duncan Smith warned in The Daily Telegraph that “if we fail to leave once more time as Boris has said, then the tsunami that hits us of anger from the British public will this time be irreparable".Mr Johnson is determined to learn lessons after the way Brexit became muddied in several Cabinet sub-committees.A former minister said: "They did get bogged down in things and sometimes were not chaired to a conclusion."Mr Johnson has already started to lay down ground rules after saying last week he expected any member from his new Cabinet to sign up to the October 31 deadline.A spokesman for Mr Johnson confirmed "a transition team headed by Eddie Lister is looking at" plans for his role as Prime Minister.He added: "Boris and his team are totally focused on the task at hand which is selling his vision for Brexit to be delivered on October 31 with or without a deal."
Vice Chairman of the European Research Group of Conservative MPs Steve Baker has already welcomed the proposals and is expected to become the new Brexit secretary after Dominic Raab.He said: "The idea of a small Cabinet sub-committee to secure our exit from the EU is absolutely right - it is imperative that with so little time to go such a committee is agile and absolutely resolute."Former Cabinet Minister and eurosceptic Theresa Villiers said: "A small delivery group could potentially work well but the key thing is that we need people in these positions who believe in delivering Brexit."On Saturday, Mr Johnson dealt a fatal blow to current Prime Minister Theresa May’s “indecision” over Brexit at a Tory leadership hustings.Mr Johnson described her indecision as “fatal for business”.
BREXIT Secretary Stephen Barclay has hinted at a possible breakthrough ahead of tomorrow's crunch meeting with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, suggested progress was being made and a "landing zone" for a deal was in sight.
Brexit: Stephen Barclay confirms 'landing zone' for future deal
Mr Barclay told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: "There's been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes."We can see a landing zone in terms of a future deal but there is significant work still to do."Mr Barclay said he will be meeting Mr Barnier tomorrow.He added: "There has been detailed technical talks led by David Frost, the Prime Minister's Europe adviser.
"They have been meeting with Michel Barnier's team.""The Prime Minister will be seeing President Juncker tomorrow, I'll be meeting with Michel Barnier tomorrow, so there's extensive talks been happening both at a technical level but also at a political level."On Boris Johnson's comments that Britain will break out of EU like The Incredible Hulk, Mr Barclay said: "The Hulk was a winner and was extremely popular and I'd rather be backing a character and a leader who is The Hulk rather than one who is on the chicken run as Jeremy Corbyn is."
Mr Barclay's comments about green-skinned behemouth raised eyebrows on Twitter, with some questioning his characterisation of the Marvel character as a "winner".One user pointed out: "Not as I remember him. He was a disheveled loner with anger issues, always shambling from town to town pursued by a hostile press."Another added: "Sounds like Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay has never picked up a comic book."
Mr Barclay crossed swords with Ireland's deputy Prime Minister last month on the subject of the backstop for Northern Ireland's border with the Republic.He said:  “It would mean Northern Irish citizens, UK citizens, being governed by rules in which we have no say.“The backstop has also been universally rejected by one of the two key communities in Northern Ireland, which means it is an unstable basis for power-sharing in Northern Ireland."JUST IN: 'No more delays', defiant Boris will tell Juncker at showdown
Meanwhile Number 10 is gearing up with a massive legal showdown with MPs with neither side showing any sign of backing down.Mr Johnson, who will meet Mr Juncker in Brussels for a working lunch, is ready to dig his heels in and ignore new legislation ratified last week requiring him to ask for a delay to Article 50 if a Brexit deal has not been agreed to October 19.He will tell Mr Juncker, who will be replaced in his role by Ursula von der Leyen in November: “We’re leaving on 31 October, come what may – so let’s work hard to get a deal in the time remaining.DON'T MISSBrexiteer snaps at angry caller after claim Johnson a 'dictator' [COMMENT]We will never forget this betrayal Brexit Party warns Remainer MPs [OPINION]‘I was clueless on Brexit’ Cameron admission as his vote rips UK apart [INTERVIEW]
Mr Johnson will add: “There should be no doubt about my determination to take us out on 31 October.“I will not ask for an extension."A Number 10 source added: “The PM will not negotiate a delay at the Brussels council.“We expect there to be a major court battle immediately after October 19 and attempts to pass legislation revoking article 50, which the Prime Minister will refuse to consider in any circumstances."
BRUSSELS has finally admitted defeat as a senior official has revealed the EU are now bound by law to finalise a Brexit deal with Britain in 12 months despite relentless attempts to wriggle their way out of an agreement.
Brexit will have 'consequences' for the UK says Olaf Scholz
The EU is now working on the assumption the so-called Brexit transition period after Brexit will terminate at the end in 11 months. A senior official said Boris Johnson’s repeated efforts to rule out an extension to the transition period and Brexit itself has forced the EU into surrender. The bureaucrat, who did not want to be named, said: “We can assume at this point that the transition period will end on December 31, 2020.”
The source did however reiterate that if there were ever to be an extension the UK would have to keep paying the membership fee to the EU, which is around £1.2billion monthly.They said an agreement to extend the transition period “presupposes an agreement on continued financial participation and contribution from the UK to the EU”.Brussels has previously indicated it was unlikely to agree a trade deal before the December deadline and would likely extend the transition period.Ireland’s Simon Coveney said it is “probably going to take longer than a year”, while Ursula von der Leyen said it may not be feasible” to do a deal by the end of 2020.
It comes after EU bosses have signed the Brexit withdrawal treaty confirming the United Kingdom’s departure from the bloc.Mrs von der Leyen and the Council’s Charles Michel put their signature to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal at a sombre ceremony today in Brussels.A copy will now be sent to Downing Street to allow the Prime Minister to complete the process ahead of its ratification in the EU Parliament next week.Writing on Twitter, European Commission President Mrs von der Leyen said: “Charles Michel and I have just signed the Agreement on the Withdrawal of the UK from the EU, opening the way for its ratification by the European Parliament.”READ NOW: John Major could have stopped Brexit with simple move but 'blew it' [NEWS]
EU Council chief Mr Michel added: “Things will inevitably change but our friendship will remain. We start a new chapter as partners and allies.”Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, also attended the event in the bloc’s Justus Lipsius building.The EU’s presidents flew back from Israel, where they had been attending events to commemorate the Holocaust.The 600-page withdrawal agreement will now be transported to the Prime Minister in London to complete the process.DON'T MISS: Brexiteer MEP furious at leaked EU plot to fine UK 'like a child'  [NEWS]How Jacob Rees-Mogg dubbed UK's favouritism to Scotland 'absurd' [ANALYSIS]Brexit travel guide: Will I need a visa for Spain after Brexit? [INSIGHT]
MEPs in the EU Parliament’s constitutional affairs committee recommended their colleagues back the deal in an institutional vote next week.Just hours before the document was signed this morning, Brexit was enshrined in UK law when the Queen granted Royal Assent to Mr Johnson’s deal with Brussels.In a possible sign of looming celebrations, several cases of English sparkling wine were delivered to Downing Street yesterday.The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “It has been a long three years but we have got Brexit over the line and the PM wants to move the whole country forward as one to a brighter future.”
Once Mr Johnson has added his signature to the withdrawal agreement, it will be transported back to Brussels where it will be stored in the bloc’s official archive.The UK is now set for a smooth exit from the bloc on January 31, some nine months after the original departure date.Britain will enter into the so-called Brexit transition period, under which the country will continue to follow the EU’s rulebook until December.This can be extended up until 2022 but Mr Johnson has warned that he is not willing to keep the country in limbo and will instead seek a trade deal with the bloc by the end of the year.
FORMER Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has urged Theresa May to stress the benefits of Brexit – and called for tax cuts to provide the “rocket boosters” needed to see Britain through “a difficult moment”.
And he also acknowledged Mrs May needed to “go in to bat” with the so-called Malthouse Compromise to Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels on Thursday if she is to have any hope of getting her Brexit divorce deal through Parliament. Mr Raab, who quit his job last year the day after Mrs May unveiled her draft withdrawal agreement, made his remarks in an interview with the Conservative Home website. Praising the decision to cut Corporation Tax, Mr Raab said: “There are other tax cuts which sector by sector, and without infringing on state aid rules domestic or international, we could provide businesses, who are undoubtedly feeling a bit uncertain right now, with a bit of confidence.”
Pressed to elaborate on what these might be, he said: “Well there is a strategy under way, so I don’t think there’s any point reinventing the wheel. “But we haven’t heard from Government, publicly, this is what we’re going to do to give you the rocket boosters to see you through what will undoubtedly be a difficult moment.“And so rather than just being reactive and saying Brexit is something that will happen to us, whether it’s the EU dictating terms or No Deal being upon us because we can’t accept those terms, let’s get on the front foot and give the public and businesses that reassurance.”Mr Raab sounded a warning to the Prime Minister, who is preparing to travel to Brussels on Thursday for more talks with Mr Juncker.
Asked about Brexiteer MP Steve Baker’s prediction that her Government would once again be heavily defeated if she fails to gain concessions on the question of the Irish backstop, he explained: “I think what Steve’s worried about is that we have the Malthouse Compromise and it’s not clear whether it’s even been presented in Brussels. “And I suspect that’s a question that’ll be asked this week.“I take the Prime Minister at her word and the Government at its word. We were given a range of assurances. “That’s how the Government won virtually all the votes and certainly the most important votes last Tuesday.
“So I think it’ll be quite important that the Government has, just for starters, been into bat with Barnier, with Juncker, on the Malthouse Compromise and with the legal changes to the Withdrawal Agreement. “And secondly, if it’s the EU that is consistently saying No to reasonable compromises made by reasonable people, being put forward by the Government, I think we need to be outing that and be very clear on whose side responsibility lies for the failure – if this is where we get to, and I hope it isn’t – to get this deal over the line.”Mr Raab - who has been tipped as a possible successor to Mrs May as Tory leader - said public opinion was shifting, with people starting to blame the EU for the ongoing impasse and risk of no-deal.He added: “It will be important for people to see that if the EU remain stubbornly intransigent, they are the ones courting the WTO exit.“People understand that we need to leave on 29th March. 
Dominic Raab tells May to 'RULE OUT' Brexit extension
“Whether they voted Leave or Remain, the one thing you hear is get this thing done and dusted.”Mr Raab, who has also questioned whether Minister for the Cabinet Office and defacto deputy Prime Minister David Lidington should be part of the negotiating team Mrs May takes with her, said: “David Lidington has huge diplomatic expertise. He’s listened to, and he’s got great Cabinet Office expertise. “I think the only point I was making is that there’d been a lot of discussion at the time of the vote last Tuesday about the negotiating team and how it was important it’s politically led and driven. “I’m not going to start naming the people who should go out there. “I want to see us make a success of this and the nature of the political team that is sent out to close this deal is quite important in terms of the message Brussels gets, but also in terms of the confidence that it instils at home.”
AS a major moment in our history approaches all eyes are on parliament and our politicians.
March To Leave: Nigel Farage poses for photos at WWI sculpture
Yet as each nail-biting day passes, there is another group which is being treated as though it is irrelevant - the people. At the cross-party Brexit group Leave Means Leave, we decided some time ago to confront this gigantic snub. For this reason we began a two-week march yesterday from Sunderland to London.The aim of this protest, which is open to everybody, is to send this message to Britain's politicians:We want the Brexit which we voted for delivered.
The march will culminate in a rally in Westminster.Will it be a celebration or a protest? As the final terms of Brexit remain unknown, none of us can answer that question.What is certain is that it is vital to give voters an opportunity to make their feelings known.We know they won't be silenced and we understand that their anger is legitimate. They have been betrayed by a parliament of chumps. I genuinely believe that most Remainer MPs don't have a clue about how the EU works and don't understand what damage they have done to British democracy in recent weeks. Neither do they realise what a horror show they will unleash upon Britain if they acceptTheresa May's Withdrawal Agreement.It's not just the ignorance of our MPs that has shocked me - or even their arrogance. It's their deceit.From Mrs May down, the majority of Britain's 650 MPs have lied.The precious bond that exists between the electorate and our politicians has been seriously damaged - perhaps beyond repair.Pro Brexit politicians now find themselves in an invidious position.They are being told to vote for Mrs May's "deal" or face the prospect of a two-year delay to Brexit - and then perhaps a second referendum or no Brexit at all.
This false choice tells you all you need to know about the Remainers running our country and the way the EU bully boys operate.Under Article 50, the law of the land says that the UK will leave the EU on March 29, 2019 whether a deal has been agreed or not. It is a licence to enact a no-deal Brexit.We simply cannot sit by and watch a proper Brexit being choked off without responding.This march is intended to be a peaceful way of showing our contempt. It is my hope that large numbers of people will lend their support along the route and in Westminster on March 29.If Britain's out of touch MPs think they can march all over us, we have no choice but to march back.
AT just before 3pm yesterday, did anybody else feel a minor earthquake, as 17.4 million Britons head-butted their desks or kicked their tellies?
Once again, it was Brexit Groundhog Day as another vote – this time the Letwin amendment – meant just 16 MPs votes rendered the British public’s vote meaningless. Our zombie Parliament proved it is utterly unfit for purpose. In Parliament Square, the People’s Vote crowd cheered. Onstage, Remainers Anna Soubry, Jess Phillips and Caroline Lucas celebrated like England had won the Women’s World Cup. This should not be happening. It makes an absolute mockery of British politics. We are now a global laughing stock. 
Understandably, our nation is now consumed by Brexit Fatigue Syndrome. We are all desperate to get Brexit done. One good thing that may come of this delay is that when MPs get more time to analyse the detail of Boris’s deal they will see that it isn’t Brexit. The UK would still have to pay at least £39billion before any new EU trade deal and our Parliament will defer to the European Court of Justice.We cannot forge new trade deals with the US or anybody else if it offers us a competitive advantage over the EU – the whole point of being an independent nation. And we cannot cut our corporate tax to make the UK more attractive in case it undercuts the EU. Militarily, we will not be able to act independently. 
Our fishermen have been sold down the river, thanks to a continuation of the Common Fisheries Policy and future “shared quotas”. The UK will be saddled with €500billion (£429billion) liabilities from the European Investment Bank, but with no access to past or future profits The list of horrors is as long as Jean-Claude Juncker’s wine bill. The only way to reset this horror show is a general election. Only when our 75 percent Remain Parliament represents our 52 percent Leave society can we fix this mess. The Brexit Party is ready to spearhead that fight. 
PLANEMAKER Airbus admitted yesterday that ministers were behind a dire warning it sent out about the impact of a no-deal Brexit.
Brexit: No deal will lead to 'harmful decisions' warns Airbus CEO
Bosses at the aerospace giant threatened to pull out of the UK unless an exit agreement with Brussels is signed off. Its chief executive Tom Enders even accused hard Brexiteers of "madness". But Airbus senior vice president Katherine Bennett was later forced to admit the Government had asked the company to "make clear the potential impact of a no-deal".
Former Brexit minister David Jones, whose Clwyd West constituency is near to the Airbus factory in Broughton, Lancs, said: "What it would amount to, if it's true, is that the Government deliberately asked a senior Airbus executive to put out a statement undermining the British negotiating position. It is appalling and the government has got to clarify its position immediately."The Tory MP said Airbus's threat would have caused needless "anxiety" to its workforce.Airbus employs more than 14,000 people in the UK.Mr Enders had said there were "plenty of countries" it could move to. He added: "Please don't listen to the Brexiteers' madness which asserts that 'because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here'.
"They are wrong."Business minister Richard Harrington endorsed the Airbus warnings and challenged Theresa May to sack him after he publicly demanded that she rule out a no-deal Brexit.But Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said: "It would take 10 years to transfer production somewhere new."It's Project Fear on steroids."
TODAY is the third anniversary of the day Britain voted Leave in the EU referendum. In numbers that’s 17.4 million votes. Three years. No Brexit.
Nigel Farage laughs at Remainer's reason for backing Johnson
Brexit has suffered three major betrayals by the political establishment. Yet the worst may be to come. We could be facing the biggest betrayal of all if they prevent the UK from leaving on the new deadline of October 31. Let’s just remind ourselves of those three great Brexit betrayals.
The first was even before the referendum, when the Westminster parties deceived voters into believing that our vote would count.In June 2015, MPs backed a referendum by 544 votes to 43. During the referendum campaign, David Cameron’s government spent £9million of public money sending a Remain propaganda pamphlet to every household, stating clearly that “the Government will implement what you decide”.We have learned that they should have added “…so long as you make the right decision, to Remain”.The second great betrayal came in the 2017 general election. Both the Tories and Labour stood on manifesto commitments to implement Brexit and break free from the rules of the European single market and customs union.Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour promised “to respect the result of the referendum” and that “the freedom of movement would end once we leave the EU”.
Theresa May’s Conservatives spelt out that “no deal is better than a bad deal for the UK”. Two years later, both perfidious parties have been conspiring to block a clean-break Brexit.The third betrayal came on March 29 this year. Mrs May told us we would definitely leave then – indeed she told us on 108 occasions. And then March 29 came and went, without Britain going anywhere.Now, three years of deceit later, we may face the fourth and biggest betrayal of all.I truly hope Boris Johnson keeps his word and delivers Brexit. Yet there are already signs of another betrayal in the making.Like other Leaver candidates, he set aside all his condemnations of Mrs May’s appalling deal and voted for it at the third time of asking.
Brexit: Farage admits Michel Barnier is 'a great negotiator'
Now there is talk of Prime Minister Johnson trying to pass a warmed-over version of that defeatist treaty through Parliament.If we want to see a warning sign, look at the support for Boris from ex-Tory chancellor George Osborne – the architect of Project Fear.Three years and three Brexit betrayals have proved one thing: that 17.4 million Leave voters were right to reject the weasel words of the Remainer establishment. And we’re surely right to think not twice, but 108 times, about trusting Westminster to deliver now.On October 31, not just for the Tories but for British democracy, it is now a case of Brexit – or bust.
BRITAIN voted to leave the EU half a year ago, but what happens next and when will the UK finally start Brexit talks?
Brexiteers are complaining about the lack of progress on leaving the EU since the historic Brexit vote on June 23.  Prime Minister Theresa May plans to trigger Article 50 - the legal step that kicks off two years of EU exit talks - by the end of March 2017. In a report published today, experts from the UK in a Changing Europe initiative have shared their views on what happens next. 
What happens next in Parliament? MPs and peers could vote on triggering Article 50 early in the new year if the Supreme Court upholds a landmark High Court ruling. Unless overturned by the Supreme Court in January, pro-EU politicians could try to delay, or even derail, the Brexit process in Parliament. Professor Anand Menon, director of the UK in a Changing Europe, said that the Government would try to pass a “hasty bill” before the end of March. The politics expert predicted that most MPs will back the legislation, adding: “Even pro-‘Remain’ members of the House of Lords will think twice before being seen to block Brexit.” He added that Parliamentarians are likely to use the opportunity “to force the Government into greater transparency” on its Brexit plans. 
Top lawyer: Brexit could take TEN YEARS
Top lawyer: Brexit could take TEN YEARS
What next happen to the economy? The post-Brexit economy has proved to be far more resilient than expected, according to Iain Begg, from the LSE’s European Institute, and Jonathan Portes, from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.In the report published today, the academics said: “Perhaps paradoxically, this is despite a lack of clarity about the economic framework in which the UK will find itself after Brexit. “However, even after Article 50 is invoked, the likely economic contours and consequences of Brexit will remain ill-defined.”The fall in the pound is likely to boost exports, reduce imports and support growth but will also lead to a rise in inflation, reducing real wages and depressing real consumer spending. The experts said: “Growth will slow, although the probability of a recession in the short term remains low. Unemployment may rise, although not rapidly. “It would thus be bold to claim that the economy has already shrugged off the referendum. “It may have - but the alternative image that comes to mind is of Wile E Coyote, legs spinning furiously as he speeds off the cliff, before realising that there is nothing but air beneath him.” 
What happens next in Europe?Next year there will be elections in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic as well as possibly in Italy.The European Parliament also needs to elect a new President after Martin Schulz announced his departure in order to stand in the German elections. Dr Sara Hagemann, assistant professor at LSE, said these elections mean that the EU is braced for political uncertainty in a number of member states. She said: “Taken together, these events may significantly alter the political landscape on the continent relatively quickly, and everything about the UK’s relationship with its European partners looks uncertain as a consequence. “Of course, developments may turn out favourably for the UK should politics in Europe undergo drastic changes.“But as it stands, the remaining EU member countries are attempting to maintain a common stance, and the UK government is in a weak position vis-à-vis its European partners.” 
WITH every day we approach the leaving date of October 31 the establishment's ruthless campaign against ordinary Britons is exposed for what it is.
Arron Banks' Leave.EU fined £70,000 over electoral law breach
Within the past few weeks, the National Crime Agency and the Metropolitan Police have announced the closure of investigations into me and my Brexit campaign. In America, once the phoney Russian collusion conspiracy was quashed by the Mueller Report, the Attorney General opened up investigations into how so much time and money was wasted on leftist fabrications. It is time we did the same in Britain.
Never in my wildest imagination could I have foreseen the mass delirium of every powerful institution in our country that followed the Brexit vote.The establishment could not comprehend that anyone would actually want to leave the EU, let alone 17.4 million people.Then they started to make up why Britain voted to leave.At first, it was that Leavers are a bunch of thick racists who probably thought Nice was a type of biscuit, instead of where one takes the family for summer.Then it turned more sinister. Cries of Russian interference, illegal campaigns and murky online interference in our elections became rife.Remain MPs needed a bogeyman, a scapegoat, anything to deflect from the fact that their EU dream was crumbling. Their campaign against me was a campaign against every single Leave voter and an excuse to overturn the biggest vote in our history.Labour MP Ben Bradshaw called for an NCA investigation into me eight months before the Electoral Commission did. Its decision to refer to the NCA was taken days before they appeared at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee. In the previous six months, Nigel the Electoral Commission had every opportunity to question me.They didn't get in touch once. A judge has now said that we acted honestly.
To all those who slandered me, my companies, my employees and Brexit voters, you should be deeply ashamed.The cost of the NCA investigation was more than £10million in cancelled business deals and almost daily harassment of the 1,000 employees of my insurance firms.My name became a synonym for "dodgy businessman", and my employees had to face the fallout of the constant attacks. Perhaps the worst affected was Liz Bilney, CEO of Leave.EU who was singled out by the Electoral Commission - and now cleared of any wrongdoing.But their aim was not just personal, it was a coordinated, well-funded campaign to besmirch every Leave voter in an attempt to stop Brexit.And I'm going to prove it.I am currently looking at legal action against the Electoral Commission for damages and potentially misuse of a public office which carries a long jail sentence.These matters need to be examined in a court case and they will be. If it wasn't clear enough to the public how the establishment is trying to halt Brexit, this week the Supreme Court ruled Boris unlawfully prorogued Parliament.In the coming general election, which looms over Parliament like a gathering storm, the people are ready.A day of reckoning is fast approaching.
THERESA May was under fire last night after leaked details of her new Brexit plan suggested Britain will stay tied into a swathe of EU rules and regulations after leaving the bloc.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Soft Brexit would be a 'cheat' on the electorate
Documents handed to ministers ahead of today’s crunch Cabinet summit reportedly included details of a “common rulebook” for farm produce and other goods expected to cover both the EU and UK following Brexit.The papers also suggested the planned regulatory alignment “would not allow the UK to accommodate” expected US demands for a future trade deal.Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg led calls for Mrs May to “rip up” the proposal.He said: “If this is correct, this is not Brexit.
“This common rulebook means that we are essentially a vassal state.”Former Tory Cabinet minister Owen Paterson said: “If true, this would be a complete breach of Theresa May’s manifesto commitment, reconfirmed to me at Prime Minister’s Questions, to leave the Single Market, Customs Union and EU Court of Justice.“We could not eliminate tariffs to reduce prices for consumers and businesses, or strike free trade deals. We would be out of Europe but still run by Europe.”Tory MP Lucy Allan said: “This is not Brexit.”Former Brexit minister David Jones said: “The paper proposes that the UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods.
Jacob Rees-Mogg outlines his 'red line' for Brexit talks
“This is entirely unacceptable. To all intents and purposes, it would lock the UK into the Customs Union and Single Market in perpetuity.”Former Tory frontbencher Andrea Jenkyns said: “We Brexiteers cannot support any deal that restricts our trade with other countries.“Need to see the details but from what we are hearing prepared to vote against this.”The document handed to ministers yesterday said: “The UK should maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agrifood.”It also said the UK will make “an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods”.A Downing Street spokeswoman last night insisted the plan would not jeopardise a US trade deal.The spokeswoman said: “It is categorically untrue to suggest that we will not be able to strike a trade deal with the US. The President himself has made it clear he is keen to sit down and talk about that.”
BRITONS would not be "far away" from exploding into riotous anger should Theresa May give in to demands for a second Brexit referendum, prominent Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith warned
Brexit: UK 'not far away' from RIOTS claims Iain Duncan Smith
Citing rioters protesting in France against the government of Emmanuel Macron as an example, Mr Duncan Smith warned the Prime Minister she could face similar chaos should she agree to a second Brexit referendum. The former leader of the Conservative Party insisted Brexit voters would not stand idly to see their vote betrayed after being allowed to have a say on membership of the European Union in the 2016 vote. He also suggested proponents of a new vote "need their heads examining" in a harsh dig at Remain campaigners. 
Speaking on Pienaar's Politics, Mr Duncan Smith said: "You think the country is divided right now, you wait until you try and hold that second referendum."There’s a very large chunk of people who will feel utterly betrayed and very angry. And I just caution you, look across the Channel. We are not that far away from that kind of process happening here."People voted and they were told that one vote would be acted on, that that one vote would be delivered. Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to deliver Brexit, they did so twice – once on the Article 50 letter and once when they came back under the urgings of the Supreme Court."President Macron was forced to deploy 8,000 officers and 12 armoured vehicles to Paris on Saturday as more than 1,000 campaigners of the so-called “gilets jaunts” movement gathered in the centre of the French capital.Brexiteer challenges Gina Miller's calls for second referendum
Protests have erupted over four weeks ago after the Government green-lit an increase in fuel prices and authorised a freeze in electricity and gas prices for 2019. Mr Macron saw his popularity rating plummet to a new low of 23 percent in November - down by a massive six percentage points from October. Mr Duncan Smith also appeared to disagree with claims suggesting support for a second vote had increased over the past few months.He continued: "I don’t actually agree there is any particular kind of shift. If you ask ‘do you want a referendum?’ the majority still don’t want another referendum."Then, if you ask them ‘what kind of departure or staying in do you want?’ they break in 1000 different directions. That’s the point."He added: "The problem with all this discussion and constant banging on about another referendum is that there is not going to be another referendum. If anybody really, genuinely thinks that they want to hold a second referendum they need their heads examining."
While Theresa May repeatedly rejected demands for a second vote on the final terms of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, Brexiteer Richard Tice announced last week Leave campaigners are now laying out plans to prepare for a rerun of the referendum.Mr Tice suggested the British Government could be forced to ultimately ask Britons to vote again because "Parliamentarians are not carrying out the will of the people."Speaking to the BBC, the co-founder of the Leave Means Leave campaign said: "We at Leave Means Leave had had six big rallies up and down the country, thousands of people – go out to the regions and listen to people. I’m telling you it would be brutal, it will be ugly, it will be the most divisive thing this country has ever seen."But, I regret to say, we are preparing for it because the Parliamentarians are not carrying out the will of the people. They are split, they are divided. It doesn’t matter how it happens, I can see the Prime Minister within a fortnight calling a second referendum."He added: "We’re already preparing for it, we are fundraising for it. We’ve got one battle bus already, we’ve got designs for a second"I wanted to put ‘save £39 billion’ but I was voted down and I believe in democracy. We’re taking this very seriously, we’re taking more office space for it, we’ve got great people who’ve approached us to help and be involved in the campaign."
Leo McKinstry
Brexit: Britain 'always odd man out' in the EU says Hannan
For most British people, the return of sovereignty will be a cause for celebration. After almost half a century of alien, quasi-colonial rule, we will be in charge of our destiny again, taking back control over economy, trade, laws, and borders. But this mood of optimism at Brexit is rejected by the pro-EU diehards. Wallowing in fervent defeatism and federalist dogma, they have long predicted that the advent of our departure will be a disaster for our country. 
According to their relentlessly negative propaganda, national freedom will come at a terrible price, as the loss of governance by Brussels plunges Britain into isolation and decline. This is the bleak message they have peddled for years, ever since Euroscepticism became a powerful cause. During the referendum, the Government tried to spread alarm via Project Fear about the consequences of ending our EU membership. In one paper, the Treasury forecast that “a vote to leave would represent an immediate and pro-found shock to the economy”. The claims included a black hole in public finances, higher inflation, weaker sterling, NHS funding undermined, a hit to household living standards and an increase in unemployment of 500,000 in all regions. Other voices joined this chorus of wailing. The International Monetary Fund prophesied that post-Brexit Britain would slide into recession, while US President Obama sneered that Britain would have to “get to the back of the queue” for a trade deal. 
Even more apocalyptically, European Council President Donald Tusk moaned that Brexit could be the beginning “of the destruction of Western civilisation in its entirety".But all this doom-laden rhetoric sounds hysterical in retrospect. With almost religious devotion, the Remainers have clung to the belief that salvation can be achieved only through Brussels, but that faith has proved absurdly misplaced. But Brexit appears to be a catalyst for a British renaissance. The IMF performed a complete reversal this month on its earlier stance by predicting that over the next two years the UK’s economy will grow twice as fast as that of any other European G7 country. Only last Thursday, the Confederation of British Industry reported the biggest surge in confidence among manufacturers on record. On the previous day came official figures which showed that the British jobs miracle is continuing, with unemployment down to its lowest rate since 1974 and the size of the national workforce at a record high. The NHS is about to receive a massive injection of cash, while negotiations are well-advanced with the US for a comprehensive trade agreement. 
Conditions are set for the boom to accelerate after Brexit. Yesterday, the Cambridge academic Professor Robert Tombs said that freedom would result in savings for every household of at least £1,000 a year and reduced annual costs to businesses of up to £30billion. Britain also enjoys huge global advantages in the prevalence of our native English language, our political stability and our culture of innovation. Alexander Von Schoenburg, of the German newspaper Bild, said he casts an envious eye towards Britain on the eve of Brexit. He wrote: “I see a nation with a strong sense of purpose, built on trust in its own capabilities and a powerful economy. 
I see a vibrant, open place that can attract huge amounts of foreign investment, has unrivalled record in business start-ups and is a global pioneer in scientific and genetic research.” With the approach of Brexit, it is the EU and member states that are in crisis, not Britain. Economic sluggishness is accompanied by political divisions and extremism. France is in turmoil over public sector reforms, Italy in permanent sclerosis, Spain in the grip of socialism and Germany on the brink of recession. For the EU, Brexit represents an existential challenge, not only because of the loss of our budget contributions and our pro-business approach. If Britain prospers, the justification for the European project will be demolished. All the much-vaunted apparatus of EU officialdom will be exposed as unnecessary to national success. That is precisely what the EU dreads so much in Brexit. A thriving, free nation on the Continent’s doorstep is the perfect antidote to federalist ideology. 
DOMINIC RAAB sparked huge cheers from the audience after he claimed he "pushed the EU too hard" during his time as Brexit Secretary before adding it was "about time too", to see that kind of approach in negotiations.
Tory leadership: Dominic Raab gets HUGE cheer from crowd
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab generated huge cheers from the audience as he launched his Conservative leadership bid in London. Mr Raab claimed he pushed the European Union and "told them things that no one else had ever dared". He said: “In that recent BBC documentary with Michel Barnier and Guy Verhofstadt, they complained that as Brexit Secretary, I turned up to Brussels to negotiate each week.
“They said I pushed them too hard, they said I told them things that no one else had ever dared, well about time too”.The quick remark sparked huge cheers and a big applause from some members of the audience.Mr Raab added: “The truth is I just made clear we couldn’t accept that backstop and that our future relationship must be based on a best in class free trade agreement, not the cage of a customs union.“I offered constructive solutions, I predicted the deal would be rejected if we didn’t secure them and ultimately I resigned because I wasn’t in good conscious willing to walk a bad deal over the line.”
During his speech, Mr Raab also claimed he was the “Brexiteer you can rely on”. He said: “If we had a united team, if we had held the line, I know we would have already left the EU on acceptable terms by now.“But, we are where we are, and it is not a good place, we are up against it, and we won’t deliver Brexit with bluff and bluster.“I am the conviction Brexiteer with a plan, the discipline and the focus to lead us out by the end of October. I am the Brexiteer that you can rely on.“I would return to Brussels, I would make a best final offer, to replace that backstop with the Malthouse Compromise, based on and relying on technology, operational cooperation and global practice.“If with good will on both sides it can be made to work, in everyone’s interest. Of course, it is the only solution MPs have actually backed. But, we won’t be taken seriously in Brussels unless we make clear we are willing to walk away on WTO terms if the EU refuses to budge.”
Brexit: Leadsom says she wouldn’t involve Farage in negotiations
Nominations for the Conservative Party candidates to take over from Prime Minister Theresa May will open on Monday at 10am and close at 5pm on Monday.Each Conservative Party candidate will need at least eight nominations from their Tory colleagues to move forward in the leadership race.The full list of final candidates for the leadership will be announced by the 1922 Committee at 5.30pm.Previously Conservative candidates only needed two nominations for the first round, but the rules were changed earlier this month to speed up the contest.
A CROSS-PARTY group of MPs have already held advanced discussions to stop Brexit in a damning blow to the next Prime Minister.
Brexit: Parliament passes Cooper-Letwin bill to stop no-deal
The group including leading Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, are confident of taking control of Parliament and preventing Theresa May’s successor from pursuing a no deal Brexit. Yvette Cooper, Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin are prominent figures in the group, who are plotting a series of measures to ensure the next Prime Minister cannot railroad Britain out of the EU without an agreement on October 31. Leading contenders in the Tory leadership contest including as Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Esther McVey have already signalled their intention to leave the EU, deal or no deal, once the deadline is reached.
However the powerful group of Europhiles has warned the hardline Brexiteers, they risk being the shortest reigning Prime Minister in history if they press ahead with their plan.One Tory MP told The Sunday Times: “We are now confident we have the numbers to bring down any new Prime Minister who tries to pursue no deal Brexit.“It could be the shortest-ever tenure of any Prime Minister in history.”
With the European Union unwilling to re-negotiate Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement, which was defeated three times in the House of Commons, it is unclear whether MPs will even get another deal to vote on.Before the original March 29 exit day, MPs turned parliament on its head, after a bill proposed by Ms Cooper was passed and forced the Prime Minister to extend Article 50.Mr Boles, who resigned from the Tory party in defiance over its stance on Brexit, states this avenue may not be available but was “cautiously optimistic” there is another way.
He said: “We have been working on it. The route we used before is not available, but we are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to find another.”Meanwhile a senior Labour source said: “As parliament has shown before, where there is a will in parliament to stop no deal a way will be found.“The new Prime Minister should be left in absolutely no doubt that we will not allow no deal to happen.”
Brexit: Speaker John Bercow rejects bid to ensure no-deal
Whilst a Lib Dem source added: “All I can confirm is that these discussions are happening and we are involved.”Earlier this week, Commons Speaker John Bercow reassured MPs they would be involved in the Brexit process after he dismissed any suggestion parliament could be shut down to force through no deal.Mr Bercow said: "Parliament will not be evacuated from the centre stage of the decision-making process on this important matter. That's simply not going to happen."
HOPES are high in the US that a blockbuster interim trade deal can be agreed with the UK by the summer, ahead of America's presidential election.
Brexit: Trump ‘wants to do trade deal quickly’ says expert
Sources involved in the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump have told the Sunday Express they expect Boris Johnson to visit the US early in Feb­­ruary – days after Brexit on January 31 – as “a sign of the renewed relationship”. Last night it was reported he could be given the honour of addressing both Houses of Congress, only the sixth British Prime Minister to do so.
The President’s team are keen for the Prime Minister to arrive ahead of Mr Trump’s State of the Union address on February 4. A campaign committee source said: “It would be great if we can have Boris there as a guest of honour. It will be a real signal of what is to come this year. “Boris and the President have a really good relationship so as soon as Brexit has happened the talks for a trade deal between the two countries can get going. There is no reason why an interim deal can’t be done for the summer, with some eyecatching agreements which will help both the President and Prime Minister.” Mr Trump has been a strong international supporter of Brexit and partly put his own victory down to the Brexit effect, with his 2016 election win coming just months after Britain voted to Leave the EU.
He has regularly promised a “great” trade deal and last month, US ambassador Robert “Woody” Johnson said Mr Johnson’s recent election victory had given Britain “an amazing opportunity”, paving the way for a huge boost in trade between the two nations. Republicans in Washington have been pressing for support for a UK trade deal, believing that by linking the City of London with the financial markets in New York, the UK and US can dominate world financial services. Meanwhile, there have been reports that Mr Johnson’s cabinet is split over whether to focus on the EU negotiations or push for parallel talks with the US. But senior Tory MPs and Brexiteers have made it clear that Mr Johnson must start talks with the US at the same time as the EU. Writing in today’s Sunday Express, former cabinet minister Owen Paterson, who met Mr Trump last year, said that the PM “must act now” on a US trade deal. He writes: “It will be enormously beneficial for both countries.” Another leading Brexiteer and former cabinet minister, David Jones, said: “It’s very important that the first act is to go and see President Trump. It will be important symbolically.
“We must work in parallel on a trade deal with the Americans but also look to other opportunities such as Australia and New Zealand.” The need to ensure the Government focuses on US trade talks and does not allow the EU to dictate the next nine months of talks is seen as the primary reason to keep the European Research Group of pro-Brexit Tory MPs running. There have been claims pressure has been put on the ERG to disband after January 31, but MPs have told the Sunday Express that there will still be a role for it. Its AGM takes place on January 28 when its future will be discussed. One senior ERG member, North West Leic­­estershire MP Andrew Bridgen, said: “We are all very happy with what the Prime Minister has done so far. “But we have to ensure that the Government does not make any silly compromises. 
“Also, we have to push the case for the US trade deal. The Prime Minister has to get out there as soon as possible.” While an interim deal by the summer would help Mr Trump’s election chances in November, it would also be a boost to the UK by giving an early indication of the benefits of Brexit. It would also mean that there would be greater pressure on the EU to compromise, to continue to have free access to the world’s fifth biggest economy. Splits have already emerged in the EU over its tactics, with the Hungarian government leading the way in demanding a more flexible approach and “no repeat of the mistakes of the last European commission” in its handling of Brexit. Ireland has also come out against the commission claim that a deal cannot be done by the end of 2020. Mr Johnson has made it clear that he will not extend the transition period beyond this year so the UK will leave the EU with no deal if the EU fails to compromise.
BORIS Johnson yesterday warned any further Brexit delay will “run up the white flag” to Brussels.
Tory leadership: Boris Johnson admits debates are ‘essential’
In his first broadcast interview of the Tory leadership race, the frontrunner to succeed Theresa May said “fortitude and determination” were needed in the negotiations with the EU. And he vowed to “honour the will of the people” by getting the UK out of the EU this autumn with or without a deal. Mr Johnson’s spoke out in an interview on BBC Radio 4 as he confronted criticism that he had been dodging media scrutiny throughout the leadership campaign. He also announced that he will take part in a head-to-head live television debate with other candidates following the second knock-out round of voting among Tory MPs on Tuesday. Setting out his Brexit plans, the former foreign secretary dismissed the idea of ruling out a no-deal departure as a surrender to Brussels. “Unless we get ready, unless we show fortitude and determination, I don’t think we will carry conviction in Brussels about the deal we want to do,” he said.
“We have to get out by October 31 and I think it would be absolutely bizarre to signal at this stage that the UK government was willing once again to run up the white flag and delay yet again.“My commitment is to honour the will of the people and take this country out on October 31 and to get this thing done.“That is what people want. And the way to do it is to disaggregate the current Withdrawal Agreement and move on.“Once we move on, we will be able to do many things, once we get Brexit off the front pages, that will be a massive opportunity for the Conservative Party once again to occupy the centre ground of politics and speak for huge numbers of people in the country who feel they were left behind.”
He said the EU had to recognise that opinion in the UK had hardened.“I think now what they will see is that politics has changed in the UK and in Europe. They have 29 Brexit MEPs in Strasbourg. The parties in this country are facing an existential threat from parties that are feasting on their vote; the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats are leading the polls as a result of the failure of the two main parties to deliver on the will of the people.“That is what needs to happen, it needs to happen by October 31 and we need to get on and do it.“And all those who say that we should delay, that we should kick the can down the road - I think they risk doing terminal damage to trust in politics,” he said.Mr Johnson insisted the “Irish backstop” mechanism to avoid border customs checks at the new EU border between Ireland and the Irish Republic could be ditched.
“The obvious way to do it is to make sure you have checks on anybody who breaks the law as you would expect, but you do it away from the border. That is common ground.“Anybody who breaks the law is clearly going to be subject to checks and investigation.“There already is smuggling across that border and smugglers are intercepted in the normal way. That is the important thing. There are ways of doing this that do not require a hard border,” he said.Mr Johnson said measures to police the border “should not be ordained by the backstop”.“They should be remitted to the implementation period after we have left in the context of our negotiation of the free-trade deal.
“That is the obvious solution, it is something that is agreed on all sides of the House.“I accept that at the moment the EU will say well, we can’t accept that, it’s not possible. They’re bound to say that at present. I think that they will find a way forward.“It simply not be sensible for the EU and the UK to part in that kind of disorderly way. But if we have to get out on no-deal terms, or WTO terms, then it is our absolute responsibility to prepare. It’s by preparing for it that we will prevent that outcome.”Mr Johnson confirmed he will take part in a BBC live debate for Tory leadership candidates next Tuesday while declining to attend a Channel 4 clash tomorrow.
Mr Johnson told The World At One: "I think it is important that we have a sensible grown-up debate."My own observation is that in the past when you've had loads of candidates, it can be slightly cacophonous and I think the public have had quite a lot of blue on blue action frankly over the last three years."We don't necessarily need a lot more of that and so what I think the best solution would be, would be to have a debate on what we all have to offer the country."And the best time to do that, I think, would be after the second ballot on Tuesday, and the best forum is the proposed BBC debate."I think that's a good idea." He told the BBC that he is "more than happy" to take part in the BBC One leadership debate.
Mr Johnson also attempted to end the persistent questioning over whether he had abused cocaine.He indicated that he had once snorted a substance as a teenager that he was unable to confirm was cocaine.During the BBC Radio interview, Mr Johnson said there had been "a single inconclusive event that took place when I was a teenager and which I have extensively described".Asked if he had used the drug since then, he said: "No."Questions about drug abuse have loomed over the campaign since Environment Secretary Michael Gove confessed to having taken cocaine before entering politics.
EXCLUSIVE: A former minister has attacked Project Fear “fibs” about a no-deal Brexit and said it was time to be confident about the country’s future.
Brexit: Farage advises Boris Johnson on delivering no deal
Chris Heaton-Harris, who was in charge of preparations for leaving in March without an EU divorce deal in place, insisted government, business and the public are ready and Britain will “thrive”. The former Brexit minister said no-deal was wrongly “demonised” and some opponents were becoming “quite hysterical”. Mr Heaton-Harris, who quit in April in protest over Theresa May’s decision to delay the UK’s departure from the bloc, hit out at “negative” coverage of the option as the BBC aired a Panorama documentary on Britain’s readiness for no-deal.
"We are ready and we will be ready,” he said."There is a general narrative out there to make people panic and worry about no deal and it is based on fibs."Mr Heaton-Harris, who backs Boris Johnson in the Tory leadership race, said Brexit was not a surprise to businesses or the public."Things are going to change, leaving the EU is a big change, but the government is operationally ready for it, businesses pretty much understand what they need to do, and the public is very savvy and knows what it needs to do,” he said."As long as we all take the action we need to we will thrive."We should be confident about our country's prospects."The Conservative MP dismissed “scare stories” about food and medicine shortages and grounded planes.He said the European Commission had issued a memo that set out plans to keep aviation and haulage systems the same regardless of whether a deal has been struck for at least a year.
Brexit: No-deal bill is a 'political ruse' says Lord Rabathan
“Without us negotiating anything, the European Commission said all these things, financial services, aviation, haulage and a whole host of others, would continue in a no-deal scenario,” he added.The government made assessments about the strains that could be caused to haulage based on a worst case scenario of just two border checkpoints but there are now more than a dozen in place in Calais, he said.He said there had been huge infrastructure investment at the port and the French have said they will guarantee flow.“If flow is guaranteed that means you don’t get a back-up of lorries in Kent and that means lorries can go and pick up food and medicines and just in time products and all that works,” he said.“Short of there being strikes by French customs officers and bad weather in the Channel, which could happen now, pre-Brexit, there are not going to be issues with flow.”Mr Heaton-Harris said he was he was “really confident” in government plans to guarantee medical supplies and said more high risk short life drugs were being brought in by air freight.It comes as the BBC documentary featured an interview with the former permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the European Union, Philip Rycroft, who said a no-deal Brexit is something the public should be "worried" about.
NO Deal Brexit would be "better" than an extension of the Article 50 negotiating process as a clean British withdrawal from the European Union would put an end to months of uncertainty, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė admitted.
Brexit: No-deal is 'BETTER option' says Lithuanian president
Lithuanian leader Dalia Grybauskaitė claimed a no deal Brexit would create less damage than extending the negotiating process under Article 50. Ms Grybauskaitė insisted the European Union would be willing to accommodate a request for postponing the withdrawal date past March 29 but suggested a swift exit would be "better" for all parties involved. Theresa May has refused to take no deal off the table after her draft divorce deal was rejected in the Commons earlier this month, forcing some EU member states to launch contingency plans for an abrupt British exit from the bloc. 
Speaking to Euronews on Thursday, the Lithuanian President said: "The more we try to extend this chaos, the worse it will be for both sides. But if Britain will ask, of course, we will try to be supportive and helpful."But the more we will be trying to extend any kind of uncertainty, the worse it will be for both sides. And in that case, even it's better to finish this chaos sooner even with no deal or with any kind of deal."Ms Grybauskaitė also suggested Lithuania would be open to enter immediate talks with London to maintain the "absolutely special relations" her country and the UK share on matters of economy and security.She added: "I know that even if a worse scenario will come without a deal, we will start immediately to negotiate with the UK for special, narrow sectorial questions to solve."Dalia Grybauskaite: Lithuanian President gives leadership advice
Theresa May is scheduled to submit her revised Brexit divorce deal to the Commons on January 29 after 432 MPs overwhelmingly rejected it over fears the backstop included in the proposal could be exploited to keep Britain locked into a close relationship with the EU in the future.The Prime Minister has said she is seeking a new approach regarding proposals on the Irish border backstop arrangements to ensure no hard border is created on the island of Ireland while protecting Britain’s independence from the bloc.Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has warned if MPs do not back the Prime Minister’s new agreement, they will have to choose between a no-deal exit or revoking the decision to quit the bloc.Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has signalled his party will join Remain Tory ministers and MPs to back an amendment put forward by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, to seek an extension of Article 50 if a Brexit deal is not agreed by February 26.
But leading Brexiteer has Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested the Government could prevent an extension by shutting down Parliament, before MPs have a chance to vote on the plan, under a procedure known as prorogation.International Development Secretary Liam Fox warned that some of the proposals put forward by backbenchers presented a "real danger" constitutionally.Accusing some MPs of plotting to stay in the EU, he said such an act would be politically "calamitous" and worse for the country than a no-deal Brexit.Ireland's Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he still thinks no-deal Brexit can be avoided before March 29.Mr Varadkar made the assertion while speaking to business leaders at the World Economic Forum in the snow-capped Swiss Alps, ironic given the mountain of MPs still opposed to the Withdrawal Agreement.
I WAS nearly 10 years old when the UK joined the European Economic Community. I'm now 56 - and we are making a fresh start.
Like so many, I grew up as part of the EU. And like so many, I felt frustrated by our membership. When I left my career in the City to become an MP in 2010, EU reform was one of my top three priorities. They were what I called “my three Bs".
Babies, giving every baby the best start in life; banks, to reform the excesses in the banking system; and Brussels, or as it turned out, Brexit. I set up the Fresh Start Project with two good MP friends – Chris Heaton-Harris and George Eustice. Almost 200 Conservative MPs came to our first meeting and our plan was to reform the EU with the UK at its heart. Over three years, we explored every aspect of the EU – from budgets to immigration, regional policy to life sciences, and from fisheries to security. We travelled around the EU arguing for reform. But as time went by, it became clear the EU’s direction was towards an ever closer union. And that did not align with the UK’s own ambitions. When David Cameron committed to a referendum in our 2015 manifesto, Fresh Start Project published our own Manifesto for Change, which set out the achievable reforms we believed could make a huge difference.I remember clearly David Cameron’s statement on February 20, 2016, following his renegotiation with the EU.
I had hoped we would be able to forge a new relationship from within, but I was bitterly disappointed. The EU’s offer of reform was no real reform at all. I wrote to my constituents, explaining why we should leave the EU completely. Many did not share this view and I pay tribute to the courage of some in the media who, like the Daily Express, backed the Leave campaign from the start. The campaign was hard-fought and well won. I have never once doubted that the UK has an extraordinary opportunity ahead – as an independent nation, free to determine our own future and partnerships. I am proud of our democracy for delivering on the promise made to the British people over three years ago. Tomorrow, we will start a new chapter in the history of our great nation.
THE Tory leadership contest has been so exceedingly dull, you might even imagine that Theresa ‘the Maybot’ May was running. That seems strangely appropriate.
Because even if Boris Johnson becomes party leader and prime minister, the best we are likely to get from these Tories is a rehash of Mrs May’s appalling Withdrawal Agreement; a warmed-over version of her worst deal in history. There seems little chance of the Conservatives delivering on Boris’s firm promise that we will leave the EU on 31st October. And if they follow in Mrs May’s footsteps and betray Brexit yet again, the British public is unlikely to forgive or ever forget. To date, all of the Tory candidates have been playing safe, hiding behind their PR videos and creating not the slightest ripple of public interest or excitement. Even Mr Johnson has been playing the role of Sensible, Dull Boris this time.
The only exception is Rory Stewart, whose enterprising and entertaining campaign at least makes it appear that he cares and is enjoying the circus.He looks likely to emerge as a much better-known political figure. For the most part, however, the candidates have been talking to themselves rather than the electorate.There is no post-Brexit vision beyond the tired sounding my-tax-cuts-will-be-bigger-than-yours contest.What of Brexit itself, by far the biggest issue facing our country? Half of the candidates are Leavers and half are Remainers, reflecting the new divide in British politics.When we talk about Tory leadership rivals as Leavers, however, let us remember that all of these candidates collapsed at the third time of asking in parliament and voted for Mrs May’s deal – really a punitive treaty, penned by Msr Barnier, that would bind Britain to EU rules.
Tory leadership: Johnson can match Farage's rhetoric says expert
I have little doubt that Boris will win. But what then? He can expect no easy ride if he becomes prime minister.Boris keeps assuring everybody that we will leave by whatever means on 31st October.Several other candidates and his own allies have already expressed doubts that will really be the case. Now Brussels is briefing the media that the UK will not leave the EU this year.When I hear Boris say we will leave on the 31st of October, I am reminded that Mrs May told us 108 times that we would leave on the 29th of March.Of course, Eurosceptic Tory friends assure me that everything will be absolutely fine once Boris wins and that the Brexit Party won’t be needed any more. We shall see about that.
I have no doubt that if he wins, then initially there will be something of a ‘Boris bounce’ in Tory support.But, given the dire state of Conservative fortunes, they will need a bounce about as high as Big Ben.When the Brexit Party won last month’s European elections, the Tories finished fifth with just nine per cent of the vote – the worst result in the party’s history.A YouGov poll published on Friday evening puts the Brexit Party in the national lead on 26 percent with the Tories languishing on 17 percent.The loss of faith in the mainstream parties among Sunday Express readers and many other voters means that, if a General Election was held yesterday, the Brexit Party could well win.
The Conservative Party’s problems are too profound to be solved by a change of face at the top. Any Boris bounce is likely to be short lived.Things could well get worse for them if we do not leave on the 31st October, given that Boris has raised expectations about Brexit. Voters will see it as another betrayal of explicit promises made by a Tory prime minister.On the other hand, if Boris is seen to force the issue, either by proroguing Parliament or simply running down the clock with no-deal the default position, he will face open civil war.Rory Stewart is already saying he will ask MPs to vote to bring down his own government. I have a feeling that any complacency among my Tory Eurosceptic friends may turn to despair soon enough.
Indeed the Conservative party’s historic problem, the fault-line that has always split the party over the European issue, could well be about to get even deeper.All of which presents Conservative voters with a dilemma. As the recent Peterborough by-election showed, the real contest in many seats is now between Jeremy Corbyn’s increasingly Remainer Labour, and the Brexit Party.And if you vote Tory, you are more likely to get Corbyn, a second referendum – and no sign of the clean-break Brexit that 17.4m voted for three years ago.The Tory leadership context is due to drone on for another few weeks.
But even if it is cut short and Boris is anointed leader unopposed, as some senior Conservatives would like, the date that is looming large on the horizon is the 31st of October.On the Brexit Party’s social media pages, we have a calendar counting down the days until the date they have promised we will leave. We will not let them get away with it again.The one thing we can surely agree with Mr Johnson about is that, if they fail to deliver a proper Brexit by that deadline, the Tory Party may well ‘kick the bucket’.And it will surely deserve whatever kicking it gets from voters.
CHIEF Remoaner Gina Miller has unveiled a new campaign to fight against an “extreme Brexit”.
Andrew Neil DESTROYS Gina Miller's excuse for divorce battle
Ms Miller, who made headlines after defeating the Government in the Supreme Court battle to give Parliament a Brexit vote, is hoping to finance a team of Europhiles to push the case for a soft exit from the European Union (EU).She arrived in London this morning to launch 'Best for Britain' after raising £300,000 in six days through a crowdfunding page to support politicians who will push for a "real final vote" on Brexit. Ms Miller told the event: "Only tactical voting at this election will ensure that Parliament plays its full role," before ruling out standing in the election as a candidate herself. 
The 52-year-old, along with a group of EU-supporting protestors, will lead a campaign to “get people to use their vote tactically” when the snap election takes place on June 8.She said it would be “the biggest tactical voting effort in our history” and vowed to tour marginal constituencies to ensure the government does not have a mandate to "destroy our rights and relationship with Europe". Thanking people for donating, she said: "Be assured this will be one of our aims so we achieve our goal of facilitating the biggest tactical voting effort in our history."Ms Miller wrote on her go fund me page:"We need to prevent MPs and the people being forced into an extreme Brexit that is not in Britain's best interests.
"We will support candidates who campaign for a real final vote on Brexit, including rejecting any deal that leaves Britain worse off.
"We will use the money to back candidates who pledge to support a full and free vote on the Brexit deal. We will also work with organisations with the same goals."
NO-DEAL hysteria has reached yet another peak of nonsense this week with normally sensible food suppliers saying we face dire shortages if we don't fix a deal with the EU. Why on earth would we stop food – and medicine for that matter – coming across our borders into our country?
Liam Fox says no deal food shortage claims are 'over the top'
It just doesn't make sense.European suppliers wouldn't stop selling their goods to us.When will every nervous ninny in the UK get their heads around the fact that you don't need a trade deal to trade with other countries?We don't have a trade deal with the US but still billions of pounds of goods go back and forth across the Atlantic.We don't have a free trade deal with China but their cheap products continue to pile up on store shelves.Yet organisations such as the Food and Drink Federation say we face "catastrophe" and leading retailers including Asda, M&S and Co-op have signed a letter to Government fearing "significant disruption" and price rises if we leave without a deal.What is interesting is that when it comes to identifying the actual problem that would cause delays for food entering the UK, these supermarket giants point their fingers at the French.
It would be no fault of ours but, they say, freight trade could be reduced by nearly 90 percent if the French government enforces sanitary and customs checks on exports from the EU.If the French government was foolish enough to harm its own exporters by doing that, it would only be because of political malice.Because President Emmanuel Macron wants Brexit to be seen to be painful to discourage the rest of the uneasy EU from breaking ranks.But you can imagine the scenes if the perishable products of French farmers were allowed to go rotten at French ports because of invented bureaucratic barriers.They would be on the streets in hours rioting and Macron would shortly afterwards cave in to their demands to keep trade flowing.He gave in to the yellow jacket protesters and that was just over a projected rise in diesel tax.EU leaders are on the edge of a political precipice and they don't want to enrage their voters even more by slowing growth and increasing unemployment by deliberately messing up trade to one of their biggest markets.If they did, they deserve to be kicked out of office.The problem is that the EU has always been a political project and allows Brussels politicians to set the agenda.These people are less interested in keeping trade flowing than persisting with their fanatical desire to create a United States of Europe.Our biggest mistake was to let them set the pace for our Brexit negotiations.Instead, after the 2016 result, we should have sent them a letter saying we are promptly leaving the EU but to keep trade moving smoothly we would continue with no tariffs and no increased border checks until a new bilateral trade deal could be agreed in due course.
If the EU rejected that, then it would have been their fault not ours.If they unilaterally imposed tariffs and border checks, we would then respond in kind.Simple as that and we wouldn't hand over any money till we got the free trade deal.Let's not forget either that deals are not about the process of selling goods to one another – that goes on regardless.It's just about setting common standards and as we have been part of the EU we are already in alignment.The worst outcome of all the current political indecision over Brexit is to delay our departure in March.This would extend the agony of a process that really should have been straightforward and will cause prolonged uncertainty for business.It is this manufactured sense of fear that has the very real potential to damage our economy by discouraging investment.If the Conservative Party allows this turmoil to continue and fails to deliver a satisfactory Brexit, it will pay a very heavy price at the next election and our economy will suffer far more from electing a hard-Left government.Last weekend it was revealed by a company insider that Brexit-supporting Sir James Dyson is not shifting his headquarters from the UK to Singapore because he hypocritically fears leaving the EU.He is "future-proofing" his business against a Marxist Labour government headed by Jeremy Corbyn.It is our currently unstable political system that will cause major companies like Dyson to shift somewhere more reliable.
We all need to take a deep breath and let Theresa May's Government leave the EU on her terms or with no deal at all.Truly we have nothing to fear but fear itself.The Government must stop acting irresponsibly by ramping up no-deal fears to put pressure on its own MPs.The only supply problems will occur if silly people start rushing around supermarkets stockpiling food.Hilariously, one family recently started buying up quinoa, couscous and passata to keep them going over the next few months of Brexit.You can probably guess which way they voted in the referendum.Give me a homemade sausage roll and freedom.All this fear-mongering is being fostered by a lily-livered establishment that has long ago lost faith in our ability to rule ourselves.I'm more than happy to forgo a helping of quinoa to see us bring back sovereignty to our fabulous country.
EUROPEAN leaders will take Jeremy Corbyn within 48 hours of a no-deal Brexit in order to force a decision on a general election before any delay is agreed.
Brexit: Labour 'running away from electorate' says Bridgen
Diplomatic sources said EU ambassadors set a Tuesday deadline for their decision as they piled pressure on MPs to back Boris Johnson’s bid to hold the snap vote. France refused to backdown in a row over whether to offer Britain a three-month Brexit delay to prevent further dithering from the Labour Party and Remainer MPs. Emmanuel Macron believes the prospect “short, technical” extension will force MPs to finally pass the Prime Minister’s agreement in the coming days.
But EU capitals fear Paris’ hardline stance could trigger an “accidental no-deal Brexit” on Halloween.During a tetchy, two-hour meeting of senior EU diplomats, several ambassadors accused the French of being “too rigid”.“If we follow your rigid position, there is a really high risk of an accidental no deal or hard Brexit,” one ambassador told the French, according to a source.Another EU diplomat added: “We don’t agree because we don’t want to get involved in Britain’s internal politics.”
Leaving the meeting, EU negotiator Michel Barnier said there had been “excellent discussions but no decision” on the delay.European sources said the January 31 “flextension, which allows Britain to leave the bloc early if the withdrawal agreement is fully ratified, was supported by the remaining 26 member states, plus the European Commission, Council and Parliament.Despite opposing a lengthy delay, Paris joined the other countries in supporting the prospect of an Article 50 extension.“There was full agreement on the need for an extension,” one EU official said.
Brussels has issued a Tuesday ultimatum for member states to reach a “consensus” before making a decision on whether to drag leaders to the Belgian capital for an emergency summit.The knife-edge gathering could be called for as late as October 30, only further raising the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.European sources believe that the bloc’s decision will be made easier when it becomes clearer whether Mr Johnson will be allowed to hold his December 12 general election.One diplomat said the “volatile” situation in London has made it difficult for capitals to make a decision on a lengthy delay.MUST READ: Labour are desperate to avoid general election until December 2020
Another source added the bloc was being tactical with its decision. They said: “It’s mostly about strategy – how can we help the ratification process in the UK and avoid no deal?”A European Commission spokeswoman said: “The EU27 have agreed to the principle of an extension and work will continue in the coming days.“The intension this decision by written procedure.”DON'T MISSRichard Madeley slams Corbyn and McDonnell as marxists [VIDEO]Brexit: How Theresa May ‘deeply angered’ Leo Varadkar in negotiations [INSIGHT]Boris Johnson tells Jeremy Corbyn to ‘man up’ and fight him in vote [VIDEO]
Brexit: Boris Johnson tells Jeremy Corbyn to ‘man up’
MPs will vote on holding a general election on Monday.The Labour Party has signalled it would block the election unless specific legislation was put down to avoid a no-deal Brexit.Jeremy Corbyn last night said: "Take no deal off the table we will absolutely support an election. I've been calling for an election ever since the last one because this country needs one in order to deal with all the social injustices but no deal must be taken off the table."The Labour leader added he would wait until the EU's decision on delay before finalising election plans.
PUBLIC frustration with the UK’s delayed withdrawal from the EU was laid bare last night by a poll showing voters overwhelmingly want Brexit to go ahead on time next week.
Theresa May: Brexit delay is a matter of great personal regret
Nearly half of voters (48 percent) quizzed in the exclusive ComRes survey “just want Brexit sorted” and “don’t really care how”. Nearly eight out of ten (78 percent) blame Parliament for the postponement of the withdrawal date that had been set for this coming Friday. Almost four out of ten think Commons Speaker John Bercow, who intervened to block Theresa May’s plans this week, is trying to thwart Brexit.
And half of voters (50 percent) still want the UK to leave the EU while only 35 percent think the departure should be cancelled.The findings of the online survey of more than 2,000 voters were published yesterday after the Prime Minister agreed a Brexit delay until at least April 12 with EU leaders at a summit in Brussels late on Thursday night.The departure date could be pushed forward to May 22 if MPs approve Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement in a third Commons “meaningful vote” next week.No Brexit delay remained the most popular option for voters in the ComRes survey.
Forty-one percent wanted “no delay at all” with Brexit delivered on time on March 29 while a third (33 percent) wanted a delay of up to three months. Three quarters (75 percent) of people who voted Leave in the 2016 EU referendum wanted no delay.The ComRes poll also appeared to demolish claims that voters are turning against Brexit.Half (50 percent) want the UK to quit the EU while just over a third (35 percent) believe the country should “stay in the EU and abandon the process to leave”.More voters wanted the UK to quit the EU on time without a deal (24 percent) than with a deal (14 percent).
In a warning to the political establishment, no one involved in the Brexit process was judged to have performed well by voters.Parliament was seen to have been the biggest failure in the Brexit process.Only three percent of voters quizzed by ComRes thought “Parliament in general” had done well during just over 1,000 since the UK voted to quit the EU.The figures appeared to back up Mrs May’s claims, in a television address Wednesday night, that voters are overwhelmingly “frustrated” by Parliament blocking Brexit.
Brexit: Theresa May will NOT revoke Article 50
She insisted it was “high time” MPs came to a decision about the departure.More than half (52 percent) of voters quizzed in the survey thought the EU had come across badly in the negotiations compared with 14 percent who considered the bloc had done well.Brussels was also judged to be the winner in the negotiations by the biggest number of people questioned in the survey.Four out of ten voters (40 percent) considered the EU had secured the best outcome for its own interests out of Brexit.
In contrast, the figure for the UK Government was just six percent. Individual leaders were judged to have fared as badly as institutions.Only 11 percent thought Mrs May had performed while 68 percent considered she had handled the process badly.More than half (54 percent) of people who voted Tory at the last general election in 2017 felt she had performed badly.Jeremy Corbyn was also judged poorly for the part he has played as Opposition Leader during the period since the 2016 EU referendum.
Nine percent of voters thought the Labour leader had performed well while 66 percent thought his efforts had gone badly.Fewer than one in five (18 percent) who voted Labour at the election thought he had performed well.Nearly half (44 percent) thought Mr Bercow had performed well while 16 percent judged him to have done badly. Yet 39 percent thought the Speaker was “rightly seeking to put the power to control the Brexit process in Parliament’s hands” compared with 25 percent who disagreed.Three in five voters who backed Leave in the EU referendum thought Mr Bercow was trying to “thwart Brexit”.
Two thirds of Leave voters (64 percent) agreed with the statement: “I just want Brexit sorted and don’t really care how.”Intriguingly, 28 percent of Remain voters also agreed with the statement.Britons were also gloomy about the country’s prospects after Brexit. Just 23 percent were “optimistic” about post-Brexit Britain for themselves and their families while 36 percent were “pessimistic”.Andrew Hawkins, ComRes chairman, said of the findings: “MPs howled in protest at being blamed by Theresa May for being unable to agree on a way to implement Brexit; but this, along with previous ComRes polls, confirms that voters are more critical of Parliament than they are of anybody else for the impasse. “This should not come as much of a surprise, given that the consistently most popular outcomes are to leave sooner rather than later, and on World Trade Organisation terms if a deal cannot be reached.  
“MPs are seen by many voters as having stood in the way of these preferred outcomes and they are clearly unhappy about that.”Support for the political parties remained unchanged compared to a previous ComRes poll earlier this week. Labour was one point ahead of the Tories with a 35 percent potential share of the vote. A similar vote share in a general election would lead to another hung parliament.ComRes interviewed 2,063 adults between March 20 and 21 for the poll.
BORIS Johnson has begun his reign by saying the right things and putting genuine Brexiteers in government. Three years after the majority voted to leave the EU, Leavers are finally in power – and that has outraged the Remainer establishment.
Boris Johnson would be wise to work with Brexit Party says MP
We wish Boris Johnson well and hope he is sincere about delivering Brexit by October 31, “do or die”. But we also want to warn him not to take the British people for fools. If he thinks that reviving the corpse of Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement, with one or two changes or even without the backstop, is acceptable, then he’s got another thing coming. Mr Johnson says he wants a deal with the EU but that this must include “the abolition of the backstop”. Fair enough. The backstop is an imposition that could mean the whole of the UK being trapped indefinitely under the rules of the customs union.
But the problems with the agreement do not begin and end with the backstop.There is no room here to detail all of the dangers in that 600-page document.But they include: the EU’s £39billion ransom demand; the expandable transition period that would leave us subject to new and existing EU rules with “no vote, no voice, no veto”; the risk of being permanently caught in the single market and customs union; the UK being signed up to the EU’s military plans, even after we leave – and much more.Any such deal would not mean “taking back control” of our borders, laws and trade. But then, as I have argued all along, Mrs May’s agreement was not a “deal” at all, but a new treaty dictated by the EU – the sort a nation signs after being defeated in a war.
If any repackaged version of this was to be passed, we would not regard it as Brexit in anything but name. The Brexit Party would fight any parties that backed it in every seat in the country. Mrs May’s spirit needs to be exorcised from the Cabinet room yet there are warning signs behind Mr Johnson’s bold words.After all, he denounced Mrs May’s treaty as reducing the UK to a slave state.But let us not forget that he swallowed his words and voted for it at the third time of asking.Now Boris says he wants a deal – despite the EU making clear the treaty is the only one on offer. It seems reasonable to assume the result will be a bid to resurrect some version of Mrs May’s unacceptable betrayal of Brexit.
We are not the only ones questioning if this sort of betrayal will happen.ERG member Steve Baker and others have also spoken of their fear that they may be asked to vote for a “compromise” agreement with a time limit on the backstop.There has been much speculation about electoral pacts between the Conservatives and the Brexit Party. We share an interest with Leavers from all parties in delivering Brexit and standing up to the Remainer Labour Party and Lib Dems.
As the European election showed, only the Brexit Party is able to fight Labour in their northern heartlands and win.But if this is what Boris means by Brexit, I have to tell him now. There will be no prospect of any pact and the Conservatives will not win a general election. If they try to resurrect Mrs May’s treaty in any form, it is definitely no-deal.And if the Tories can’t or won’t deliver a clean-break Brexit by October 31, then the Brexit Party will.
JEREMY Corbyn’s Labour has finally come out as the anti-Brexit party we always suspected it to be. By demanding a second referendum and pledging to campaign for Remain, Labour may well have signed its own death warrant in the Leave-voting regions.
Just look at today’s exclusive Sunday Express poll. Overall, 37 per cent of voters say they are now less likely to vote Labour. That “less likely” figure goes up to 40 per cent in the North-west, 41 per cent in Eastern England, 42 per cent in the South-west and 43 per cent in Yorkshire and Humberside. In other words, more than four out of 10 voters in the regions feel let down by the Remainer Labour Party. 
This betrayal of Brexit confirms that Corbyn’s Labour is now the party of north London – not the North of England, the Midlands or Wales. Labour has failed the people of the regions. It has taken their votes for granted in the contemptuous belief they would “elect a donkey if it wore a red rosette”. Now, those Labour MP “donkeys” will become an endangered species. Corbyn’s Labour has made a historic mistake and the Brexit Party will be coming after those Labour seats. Labour’s leaders simply do not comprehend the anger that millions will feel. 
Jeremy Corbyn and Yanis Varoufakis criticise the Euro in 2018
They might do well to recall what happened in Scotland in 2015, where Labour collapsed from having 41 MPs to just one. Labour used to like calling itself the “People’s Party” but now the Brexit Party is the true party of the people. We are the only party committed to giving 17.4 million Leave voters what they voted for more than three years ago – a clean-break Brexit. We are also pledging to give the people of the regions a new Brexit dividend, in the shape of £200billion to be invested in transport and digital infrastructure projects. 
The clear message today is “Vote Labour – get a second referendum and Remain”. In many seats around the country, that makes the Brexit Party best-placed to beat Labour. But what about Boris? I truly hope he delivers Brexit as promised, by the October 31 deadline. But why would anybody trust the Tories to keep their promises? Mrs May, after all, promised us 108 times that we would leave on March 29. The people are certainly not sure about Boris. A YouGov poll shows many think he would say anything in order to win power. 
That includes, of course, his promise to make Brexit happen on time, “do or die”. If Boris fails to deliver Brexit by October 31, he is finished – and so is the Conservative Party. We are preparing for a general election that could come at any time – and we will be fighting to win. The new battle-lines in British politics are being drawn around Brexit. Labour and the Lib Dems won’t deliver, and the Tories can’t. If you want to see Brexit, support the Brexit Party. 
NORWAY'S prime minister has ruled out any hopes of Britain striking a Norway-style transition deal post-Brexit during a meeting with Theresa May in Oslo.

Erna Solberg said it was "difficult" for the UK to sign up to the deal, would see the nation shake off it’s full EU membership while remaining in the European Economic Area (EEA), like Norway, for three yearsSpeaking during a Northern Future Forum with Mrs May, she said: "If you asked us if we would welcome Britain, we would welcome any good cooperation with Britain."But I don't think it's easy to think that you should - I know the British discussion - to enter into an organisation you are preparing to leave at the same time is also a little bit difficult for the rest of us. So any good cooperation will be good for us."Both Norway and Iceland, who are in the EEA agreement, have economies that are very linked towards Britain.
"So of course we will work very hard to make sure that we have good solutions."Echoing these remarks, Mrs May said that following Norway's example would not bring the outcome people voted for in the EU referendum after a group of Tories suggested a temporary "Norway for now" option to soften EU withdrawal.She said: "The existing relationship that Norway has with the EU is one that has elements that don't, wouldn't, deliver on that vote of the British people."During the meeting in Oslo, Ms Solberg said she hoped to maintain "good cooperation" with the UK in Brexit talks. She said: "I hope that we will get an agreement between the EU and Great Britain that is easy for us to mirror."I think we will continue to have good cooperation on all of these issues we have been discussing today on healthcare and maybe that will be a renewal of some of the other ways of doing discussions between our countries." 
Mrs May told leaders of countries including Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden she was looking to secure a good Brexit deal with the EU after Brexit. She said: "Yes the UK is leaving the EU, we are not leaving Europe, and we will continue to have, we want to continue to have, a good relationship with the 27 countries remaining in the EU."We are working for a good deal to establish those relationships and that future partnership, but we also want to continue to have good bilateral relations but also work in different combinations of countries as well."The Northern Future Forum is a very good example as we’ve heard, of like minded countries who are often at the forefront of some of the issues around technology and the technological revolutions we see today, and with like minded values we can work together and cooperate more closely together." Follow Express.co.uk for live Brexit updates below
9pm update: A petiiton to stop a second referendum gets more than 90,000 signaturesThe petition was launched by Ronald Mitchell and comes following 700,000 people protesting in central London and demanding a “People’s Vote”.The petition, which has been signed by 93,782 people, said: “Although not legally binding the referendum on whether we stay of leave the EU carried out on the 23rd June 2016 was the clearest indicator of the will of the electorate.“At that time our Prime Minister David Cameron assured us that the result of the referendum would be carried out.“We must ensure the democracy rules.”Once the petition is signed by 100,000 people, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.7pm update: Brexit will mean “much higher” mobile phone bills for UK holidaymakersThe House of Commons EU Scrutiny Committee has found the government is not planning to maintain the EU’s ban on mobile roaming charges after Brexit.This means it will be up to network operators if they want to bring back roaming charges on UK customers. The cross-party committee warned: "It is probable that mobile roaming charges - abolished on an intra-EU basis - will return, and that, even where they do not, increased wholesale roaming costs incurred by UK providers may be passed on to UK consumers indirectly."6pm update: A minister has said employers would need to check EU migrants’ status after a no-deal BrexitCaroline Nokas said: “If somebody hasn't been here prior to the end of March next year, employers will have to make sure they go through adequately rigorous checks to evidence somebody's right to work."She said it would be a challenge for the government to distinguish between EU citizens who had every right to be in the UK and those who did not.5pm update: Loyalists have urged the Irish government to stop the Brexit attacks Leading figures in the Ulster Volunteer Force told officials in Ireland that talk of frontier posts bing attacked by republicans in the event of a hard Brexit was “winding up working class loyalists”.The UVF also said the attacks could strain North and South divides in Ireland. The EU has supported Dublin’s insistence on a backstop.3:30pm update: Theresa May reiterates “there will be no second referendum on Brexit” in NorwayMrs May made the comment during a session of the Nordic Council held in the Norwegian Parliament.This comes after 700,000 people took to the streets of London last weekend demanding another referendum.Mrs May also said: “No. We are not preparing for another General Election. That would not be in the national interest.”The question mark hovering over another general election has come as it becomes evident that it will be difficult for Mrs May to pass any Brexit deal through the House of Commons.1.58pm update: Labour's John McDonnell has attacked the Tories handling of Brexit negotiationsHe said the Government "spent more time negotiating with itself than with our European partners".Time was running out, he added, to present a deal that could respect the result of the referendum and win the support of the House.He said: "Instead, as the Tories continue to indulge in their squabbling, the economy and the whole country are being confronted with a grim prospect of a no-deal car crash."Austerity is not ending, in the weeks and months ahead people will recognise that the Prime Minister's promise has been broken."Do you know there are rumours that this was possibly a pre-election Budget with pre-election tax giveaways? If the Conservatives are contemplating a general election, let me say on behalf of the Labour Party, bring it on."1.31pm update: Hunt refuses to apologise for his comparison of the EU to the Soviet Union Shadow Europe Minister Khalid Mahmood asked if the Foreign Secretary had apologised in person to Eastern European counterparts, who lived under Soviet occupation, for his remarks at the Tory conference.The SNP's Stephen Gethins also asked Mr Hunt to apologise for the "crass" comparison after reading out responses from Latvian and Lithuan dignitaries.But Mr Hunt did not say if he had offered any apology to representatives from Eastern European countries when they visited his official residence in Chevening ahead of a foreign affairs council in Luxembourg.Mr Mahmood said he was sure Mr Hunt was "grateful" to have won the support of his Eastern European neighbours in adopting chemical weapons sanctions at the Luxembourg summit earlier this month.He said: "Did he take the opportunity to apologise to them for comparing their experience under Soviet domination with membership of the EU?"Mr Hunt replied: "We had a very enjoyable time, including getting a bit lost in the maze." 
12.55pm update: Norway says it WILL have agreement with Britain after Brexit Prime Minister Erna Solberg said the nation is very close on agreeing a deal to mirror any deal Britain has with the EU.  Speaking in Oslo, she also confirmed Britain would have an agreement on the rights of Norwegian citizens in the UK and Britons in Norway. Mrs May echoed the committements saying: "I make the same commitment to Norwegian citizens living in the UK. We hope of course to be able to come to the satisfactory conclusion of the current negotiations in relation to this matter.“In the event of no deal we’d look to be able to have an agreement for EEA and EFTA countries, but whatever happens we confirm that people from EEA countries, Norwegian citizens and those others who are living in the UK, who have made their life choice to be in the UK, will be able to stay in the UK."We want them to stay, they’re part of our country, part of our community and we welcome the contribution they make."12.13pm update: MPs warn Brexit may mean "much higher" mobile phone bills for Britons travelling on the continent The Government is not planning to maintain the EU's ban on mobile roaming charges for voice, text messages and data following withdrawal, the House of Commons EU Scrutiny Committee said in a report.This means it will be up to network operators whether to re-introduce roaming charges on UK customers, following their abolition last year across the whole EU.UK consumers will also not benefit from proposed price caps for international calls between EU countries, due initially to be set at 16p a minute for calls and 5p for a text message.The EU decided to introduce the cap after finding that telecoms companies were charging mark-ups for international calls that were "not justifiable", said the report.11.01am update: May has ruled out an early general election Asked at a press conference in Oslo, Norway, whether Monday's Budget paved theway to an early general election, the prime minister said: "No. We are not preparing for another general election. That would not be in the national interest."The Chancellor also used Monday's statement to announce a £100 billion loosening of the purse-strings, with income tax breaks for 32 million voters, help with business rates for the High Street, support for Universal Credit and the promise of increased public spending over the coming years.The package prompted speculation that the Government was preparing the way for an early general election to provide Mrs May with a solid majority in the House of Commons as Brexit comes into effect in the spring.10.23am update: Hammond is prepared for 'shock' to economy Mr Hammond said he had been "very cautious" in maintaining fiscal headroom - the gap between what he can borrow and what he is planning to borrow - in case of a shock to the economy.He told Today: "If the economy suffers a shock - and a no-deal Brexit is an example of a shock, but actually we know from history that sometimes the shocks that hit the economy are not the ones we are expecting but ones we aren't expecting - if there's a shock to the economy, we will deal with it in the usual way."Very often a shock to the economy actually requires a boost to spending in the short term to support demand and to keep the economy going."Mr Hammond said he expected a deal to be agreed with the EU. 
9.11am update: Andrew Neil uncovered PROOF in OBR forecast of May’s Brexit transition planThe Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which provides an independent analysis of the UK public finances and looks at the impact Government policy has on them, has based its latest forecasts on a two-year Brexit transition period.The veteran broadcaster asked Tory MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss about the details behind the UK’s fiscal watchdog’s growth forecasts in a post-budget interview.He told BBC Politics Live: “The OBR’s forecasts are now based on a two year transition period leaving the EU.That must have been done under advice from the Government so it’s a two year transition now.”In response, Ms Truss said: “That is our base case transition, the implementation period, as it is now.”But the BBC host hit back and said: “No, no. Your base case is 21 months but the OBR is now working on two years and I doubt the OBR would be doing that without some guidance from the Government.“So we are now looking at a two year transition period minimum.”8.31am update: Lord Adonis has been blasted for 'appalling' remarks It comes after the prominent Remain campaigner challenged the impartiality of the head of the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom over Brexit.In a hard-hitting rebuke, the Tory peer said the vocal Brexit opponent owed Ofcom chairman Lord Burns and his former deputy Baroness Noakes a "profound apology" for attacking their integrity.His criticism came after the Labour former cabinet minister argued that independent crossbencher Lord Burns and Tory peer Lady Noakes, who retired earlier this year, "do not command general confidence for being impartial".Lord Adonis claimed this had undermined Ofcom and the BBC, which the regulator now oversaw, "at a time of acute sensitivity and controversy" with Britain's withdrawal from the EU.Lord Adonis, who secured the debate, said Lady Noakes was "an extreme Brexiter", while Lord Burns "came to the post with a history of support for Brexit in the House".
8.23am update: Hammond has said a Brexit deal could trigger tax cuts and increased public service spendingAsked what would happen to Monday's announcements if there was no Brexit deal, Mr Hammond told Breakfast: "My Budget stands. The measures I set out yesterday are the right measures for Britain, we will be enacting them in a Finance Bill."I'm very confident that we will get a deal with the EU and what I said yesterday is that if we get that deal, because there will be a benefit to the economy from getting that deal, I hope we will be able to do a little bit better still than I set out yesterday, with a bit more money for public services when we have our Spending Review next year, and perhaps a bit more available going forward for some more tax cuts."8.11am update: Hammond's £500million cash boost for Brexit Mr Hammond on Monday announced a £500million cash boost for Brexit, in a strong message to EU chiefs.During his last budget speech before Britain formerly leaves the EU, Mr Hammond also laid out a “three-pronged” to deal with Brexit.The chancellor said that the £3.7billion already allocated to Whitehall for contingency planning would need to rise by another £500million.This means Philip Hammond has earmarked £4.2billion on Britain’s exit from the Brussels bloc between 2016 and 2020.
I'VE said for some time now that we've got to bring the country back together.
To do that, politicians need to win back the trust of the people - and a good and fair Brexit is critical. That is a Brexit that is good for those who have family or business links to Europe and that is fair to those who voted to leave - to take back control of our laws, our borders and our money. The trouble with the deal in front of us is that it continues to undermine trust in politics by claiming to do this, contrary to the underlying facts.
That's not right. The people are tired of politicians spinning a message.The sooner politicians realise that we have to be straightforward and upfront - even when the news is challenging - the better.The so-called "deal" does not take back control of our laws.The European Court of Justice will continue to have a role and will, in some circumstances, be binding on British courts.
It does not take back control of our borders - we will continue to be in the Customs Union for an indefinite period - and we can't leave without the EU's say so.It does not take back control of our money - we will have paid £39billion without any guarantee of securing a trade deal that works for Britain.Let's take just that last point.Call me old fashioned but I believe in standing by manifesto commitments.
We promised to leave the single market and the customs union.We committed to pursuing new trade agreements with other countries, at the same time as maintaining free trade with European markets.This draft agreement puts these and other commitments at risk too.Surely we should lock down a trade deal with the EU that is free from red tape, boosting trade with the world, before we throw away our ace card by paying £39billion? Britain has an amazing opportunity to seize a new role in the world, as the beacon of free trade.
That's only possible if we leave the protectionist EU.The trouble is that the "common rulebook" proposed by the Prime Minister is actually the "EU rulebook".And that will mean scuppering Britain's ability to do the ambitious deals of the future.We need to be more agile - in control of our own destiny, ready to adapt in a changing world - to make sure that our best days lie ahead.Ranil Jayawardena resigned as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Ministry of Justice. 
BORIS JOHNSON has been issued a desperate plea from the EU over protections for EU citizens living in the UK after Brexit.
Von der Leyen: Agreement can’t be reached without extension
The desperate plea comes in the wake of the first face-to-face meeting between the Prime Minister and the new European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. In a letter to the Brexit Secretary Steven Barclay, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier raised “issues of concern”, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The concerns included the need for an independent watchdog to enable EU citizens to make complaints against the British Government while they are living in the country.The pleas were also echoed by the European Parliament which emerged on Tuesday ahead of Ms von der Leyen and Mr Barnier’s trip to London.The former German defence minister will also deliver a speech at the London School of Economics before holding talks at Downing Street with Mr Johnson.The Prime Minister is likely to stress the importance of having a positive future relationship with the EU by the end of December 2020 based on “an ambitious free trade agreement”.
However, he will also stand his ground on there being no extension to the current Brexit extension period, according to a Downing Street spokesman.Mr Johnson will also clearly reiterate that the future relationship between the UK and the EU should be based on independent free trade, not aligning with EU guidelines.The meetings come at the start of what is expected to be a tumultuous year of negotiations with the EU.EU officials have warned that there is a risk that negotiations could be soured by ongoing concerns over the UK’s commitments to the rights of more than 3 million EU citizens living in the UK after January 31.In a sly attack on the British Government, both the European Commission and the European Parliament have raised concerns about whether the UK will keep to the Brexit withdrawal agreement.Mr Barner said in his letter before Christmas that the proposed watchdog - the ‘Independent Monitoring Authority’ (IMA) - must be able “to act rapidly and in full independence” on complaints from EU citizens.He added that he hoped for “constructive co-operation on these matters”.He also said that the Commission would be monitoring the implementation of the agreement “using all available channels”.DON'T MISSLabour MP sparks Twitter backlash by mocking Brexit date celebrations [INSIGHT]Widdecombe exposes Brussels plot to sink Boris' Brexit trade plan [UPDATE]Jacob Rees-Mogg's surprise relationship with Emily Maitlis revealed [ANALYSIS]
The European Parliament has also expressed its concern over the setup of the IMA and said that the authority should be “truly independent”.The concerns were expressed in a draft resolution which will be debated in Strasbourg next week.The Parliament’s Brexit Steering Group has also raised its “grave concern” over so-called “conflicting” signals about the fate of EU citizens who fail to register for settled status by June 2021.Mr Barnier has also pleaded Mr Barclay for a "generous interpretation" to such cases to avoid criminalisation and deportations.
Downing Street hinted earlier in the week that the Government could conduct post-Brexit trade talks with the US in parallel with those with the EU.The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the UK would be "free to hold trade discussions with countries across the world" after it has left the bloc at the end of the month.It followed reports that Mr Johnson's ministers are split over how best to negotiate a new trade deal with the EU, with some figures, including Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, reportedly pushing for parallel talks with the US to put pressure on the EU.
Pound rises against the euro ahead of Brexit legislation scrutiny
MPs debated plans to rule out a transition period extension in law as the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill continued its passage through Parliament on Tuesday night.Discussions will continue in the Commons on Wednesday and Thursday before the legislation goes before peers next week.
BRITAIN could find itself embroiled in another ‘cod war’ after Brexit if it expels foreign boats from its waters, the European Union has warned.
Brexit: Fishing will see ‘last minute concessions’ says Barnard
Fishing communities the length and breadth of the UK have repeatedly called for European trawlers to be kicked out after the UK leaves the bloc while fishermen on the continent have threatened to retaliate with a blockade of ports. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, whose country holds the rotating six-month presidency of the EU, made clear the team of negotiators who will kick off talks with Britain after January 31 will push for continued access. Mr Plenkovic said: “We want to avoid any fisheries skirmishes in the Atlantic. 
“We have seen them before, we don’t want to see them again.” During the 1970s a series of cod wars between Britain and Iceland saw UK boats lose access to rich fishing area around the Nordic country. And last summer saw tensions flare in the English Channel between British fishermen and their French counterparts over scallops. Boats collided and stones were hurled form one vessel to another in a bitter dispute over the harvesting of the shellfish. 
The French accused British boats of plundering their stocks 12 nautical miles off the coast of Normandy. Being the current holder of the EU presidency means Croatia will head up the post-Brexit talks to thrash out a trade deal before the end of the transition period on December. Speaking alongside Mr Plenkovic at a press concerned in Zagreb, European Council president Charles Michel backed him up, saying the bloc would “promote and defend” its interests in the discussions. Earlier in the week Mr Plenkovic told reporters Britain must be sensible with its demands. “We should adopt a negotiating framework which is inclusive but to approach the negotiations in a realistic manner,” he said. In November it emerged that Brussels will demand access to British waters in trade deal talks after January 31. DON'T MISSBoris shuts down EU’s Brexit demands in crunch von der Leyen meeting [INSIGHT]Brexit fears see desperate Brussels scramble for deal [ANALYSIS]EU fishing CRISIS: Brexit threatens to unleash massive squid war [WARNING]
One EU diplomat warned the first meeting will “be the day that reality hits home” for the British. Ursula von der Leyen has said the UK will fin itself in an “impossible” position if it thinks all aspects of a deal can be finalised before the end of the year. 
Speaking at the London School of Economics this week before meeting Boris Johnson, the president of the European Commission cast doubt on his timetable for an agreement defining the long-term post-Brexit relationship between the UK and the EU. “The transition time is very, very tight ... so it is basically impossible to negotiate all that I have been mentioning, so we will have to prioritise,” she said. 
The Prime Minister has ruled out extending the transition period beyond December 31, although his spokesman said trade talks did not need to be completed all at once. Mr Johnson has said he will not seek a deal based on close alignment with EU rules. 
FURIOUS MPs turned on Theresa May after she accused them of being responsible for a delay to Brexit.
Theresa May: Brexit delay is a matter of great personal regret
The Prime Minister launched the astonishing attack after she confirmed to Parliament Article 50 would be extended until June 30. In a bid to save face, she said “all MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want”. Attempting to appeal to the public, she told the nation she was on their side in the bid to get Brexit over the line.
But her comments left MPs seething, and many took to social media to vent their fury.Labour MP David Lammy wrote on Twitter: “Theresa May's attempt to put Parliament against the people on Brexit tonight is sinister.“It is the populism of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump.“History will judge her brutally. Our country deserves so much better than this.”Anna Soubry, who defected from the Conservative party to join the newly formed Independent Group, tweeted: “No Theresa May you are to blame for the Brexit crisis.“The impasse in Parliament is all of your own making.”Andrea Jenkyns also wrote Mrs May “just needs to get on with it and deliver”.Wes Streeting, Illford North MP, said Mrs May “has not one shred of credibility left” and questioned who she actually represented.
Brexit: Dominic Raab reacts to Theresa May’s statement
Labour’s Jess Phillips claimed that after the Prime Minister’s address, many of her constituents in Birmingham Yardley had emailed her.She added: “Not one says back her deal.“Not one.”Earlier, Dominic Grieve said in an emotional speech that he “never felt more ashamed” to be Conservative member.
THE People’s Vote campaign is being torn apart by bitter infighting, with factions clashing over whether the movement should be openly backing the Remain campaign in the European Union, leaked messages showed.
Brexit: People's Vote chief GRILLED over second referendum
People’s Vote strategists are deeply divided over the group’s position on Brexit, leaked emails and WhatsApp messages published by BuzzFeed News reveal. Six prominent campaigners for a second referendum, including A.C. Grayling and Patience Wheatcroft, complained to Roland Rudd, the chair of the group, over his campaign, saying it was not “fit for purpose” as it didn’t show any “sign of cooperation and unity”. The six also issued a stark warning, saying the infighting could lead to the destruction of the group, “unlikely to endure the pressures of a second referendum campaign”. Among the leading personalities involved in the infighting, there are former Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell and his protege, the group’s communications director Tom Baldwin, who would prefer the group not to be openly pro-EU. 
In their email to the People’s Vote leadership dated April 25, the dissatisfied campaigners said they were “extremely concerned that separate camps have emerged at Millbank and that there is now almost no sign of the cooperation and unity that have made the People’s Vote campaign one of the most successful efforts in recent British political history”.They added: “Lacking unity and governance, the current campaign is not fit for that purpose. There should be no thought of forming a fragile coalition out of currently warring factions, which, anyway, is unlikely to endure the pressures of a second referendum campaign.”The group’s deputy chair, Hugo Dixon, responded saying: “This is not a complaint about Tom Baldwin, an intelligent strategic thinker with great connections.However, he added: “You say that the People’s Vote lacks ‘unity and governance’.  “This is partly because Tom was given the title director of communications of the People’s Vote without Roland or me being consulted. It has never been clear whom he reports to.”This answer triggered the fury of Mr Campbell, who replied saying: “Hugo — Forgive me if I put your email into the ‘seeking to destroy others’ will to live’ department”, going on to defend Baldwin’s role.“The question for all of us is whether we wish to deal with the dysfunctions, properly and maturely, or exploit them as part of continuing silly power games that help nobody.”Mr Campbell also told Mr Dixon to “enjoy your games” amid Mr Rudd’s attempts of quashing discontent in the factions, to which the deputy chair answered: “I think you have a lot more experience in political games than me.”The People’s Vote campaign is backing a second referendum - but while many outsiders may think all the People’s Vote supporters are openly Remainers, some senior group strategists want to focus exclusively on a second Brexit vote rather than taking a stance on Leave or Remain. 
This faction is led by Mr Campbell, Mr Baldwin and Labour peer Peter Mandelson.On the other hand, Mr Rudd is backing grassroots campaigners speaking in favour of a campaign championing for a continued EU membership.Mr Campbell’s allies told BuzzFeed there are two reasons why not openly backing the Remain side would be more beneficial.The first one is that internal polling has shown the public is more keen to back calls for a second referendum when it is presented as an opportunity to end the Brexit deadlock rather than preventing Brexit from happening at all.Mr Campbell’s allies also believe a second referendum campaign will gain more supporters in Parliament than a Remain campaign, with many MPs not wanting to explicitly block Brexit amid fears of estranging their Leave voters. 
Among the MPs more willing to back the People’s Vote referendum campaign there would be Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn.But Mr Campbell, Mr Baldwin and Lord Mandelson have been accused of “control-freakery” by their opponents, who argued campaigners would not fool anyone by claiming they are neutral on Brexit.The former spin doctor commented the leak telling BuzzFeed: “It’s a pity that, for whatever reason, someone who says they are committed to fighting Brexit has chosen to leak selectively some of our exchanges and give you a partial and inaccurate briefing about their significance.“But, hey ho, I’ll leave it to them to tell you why they think playing these political games helps the cause.“I would like to put on record that the emails did not come from me or any of the senior People’s Vote staff. 
“I am not asking you to say anything by way of reply, but it is important that the team knows this is not how a well run, grown-up campaign conducts itself.”  A People’s Vote spokesperson said: “Our campaign is a broad church, but the clue is in the title.“We are making a democratic argument for a People’s Vote as the only legitimate solution to this Brexit crisis.“We have always been clear that a strategy of talking only to people who want to stay in Europe is unlikely to succeed in securing the support of either MPs or the public for the final-say referendum we all need.”A march organised by the People’s Vote group is due to take place in London this Saturday - and has been highly criticised by some group’s leaders behind the scene for its pro-EU nature.    
JEREMY HUNT called Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal a “Turkey trap” that will be voted down by Parliament unless changes are made as Cabinet members express concerns with the deal, leaked documents have revealed.
Jeremy Hunt: UK needs to have more confidence in May
Mr Hunt warned Mrs May her deal put the UK at risk of following the footsteps of Turkey who has been stuck in negotiations with the EU over its status for 31 years. According to the Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary is one of six Cabinet members who has expressed doubts with the proposed withdrawal agreement and has warned that at least 66 Tories could vote against it. Another critic of the deal, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, said it could potentially leave the UK incapable of forming free trade deals following Brexit.
During a trip to Brussels to try to secure her deal with the EU, the Prime Minister failed to finalise the terms of the agreement with European Commission President Jean-Clause Junker.German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other diplomats warned the planned weekend Brexit summit was at risk of being cancelled due to differences in opinion on security, fishing, trade and Gibraltar.Spain, France and Germany have all opposed various parts of the deal with Mrs May planning to return to Belgium on Saturday to try and continue negotiations.On Wednesday, Mrs May stated her deal was the only way forward and that No Deal was no longer an option with the only other alternative being to remain in the EU.While the official minutes for the last week’s Cabinet meeting were marked as “secret”, the Telegraph says that multiple ministers have expressed strong feelings towards the deal.Along with Mr Hunt and Mr Javid, Michael Grove, Andrea Leadsom, Gavin Williamson, Chris Grayling and Penny Mordaunt all shred concerns over the proposed agreement.Mr Hunt warned during the meeting that the customs backstop that keeps the UK as part of the EU customs union could become a “front stop”.He said the Government needed to make sure there were “incentives” in order to avoid being permanently trapped in the backstop and becoming a “satellite” of the EU.
Mr Hunt cited an example of how a temporary customs arrangement could become permanent by comparing the backstop to a “Turkey trap” as Turkey has been applying to be a member of the EU for over 31 years.Environment Secretary Mr Grove also shred Mr Hunt’s concerns and added he was “worried” Northern Ireland would be left tied to the customs union and single market under the backstop.He added the EU could attempt to keep the UK in the backstop as a way of forming a “baseline” for their future relationship and that he was concerned that the Government would lose the vote in Commons next month.However, Mr Gove did say No Deal would also be “very difficult” to get through Parliament and, in the end, gave his support to the Prime Minister.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said he supported the deal, but also deemed it an “ugly sister of a deal” and compared it to “two oil drums lashed together in a plastic sail”.International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt was critical of Mr Cox’s analogy.She said: “Rather than going into the open sea, as Geoffrey said, we’re going to be in a paddling pool.”Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom said the deal will “play into a negative narrative” and would cause the DUP the end its agreement with the Government.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said that No Deal had no majority in the Commons because it would “destroy” the Tories’ reputation for economic competence and would cost them in the polls.Health Secretary Matt Hancock argued he would prefer extending the transition period over having a backstop and that he was told by his Permanent Secretary that the Government was unable to guarantee that they could supply the medicine that people needed if there was No Deal.However, he admitted they could not send the deal back to the EU for renegotiation.On Wednesday, HMRC warned the backstop may not be ready by the end of the transition period in 2020 and could potentially need an extra nine months to properly set up.
A REMAINER professor has said the UK does not understand what it has done by leaving the EU, and vowed "the British won't wake up until December, after the negotiations."
Lord Tebbit: Merkel will back a loose European federation
Nicholas Boyle, a University of Cambridge professor of German philology described Brexit as a “mental breakdown” which would cause Britain damage. He said: “Brexit is a kind of mental breakdown, and this breakdown will continue. The tensions in the kingdom will grow. Northern Ireland will presumably be the first to leave and join the Republic of Ireland.
“Scottish independence depends on economic development. If we face a prolonged recession, Scotland will probably leave.”Professor Boyle also predicted the political landscape in the coming years would turn into a dystopian novel.When asked whether Britain would become more conservative after Brexit, he added: “Probably.“Although it cannot be ruled out that a new, more socialist Labour party will come to power in about ten years, and that we will get a kind of ‘Ingsoc’, a totalitarianism like Orwell had already anticipated in ‘1984’.”
And Professor Boyle went on to make further ’1984’ allusions when speaking about Britain’s post-Brexit relationship with the United States.He said: “In spite of the recent arguments with Trump, they [Britain] are likely to opt for closer ties to the United States.“We always had a choice between Europe and America. George Orwell foresaw that. In his novel 1984, Great Britain and the United States form a country called ‘Oceania’ that opposes ‘Eurasia’. This could happen in a few decades: England as the 51st state of the USA.”Professor Boyle, who is an Irish citizen, is the emeritus Schroder professor of German at the University of Cambridge, who was interviewed by Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German daily newspaper.He came to public attention in 2017 when a letter he wrote in response to a Financial Times article went viral.The article stated the pro-Brexit wing of the Conservative Party should be known as ‘f*ckers’ whilst their opponents should be called ‘w*nkers’.Boyle said “this rhetoric inverts the truth” as “it is the Europhobes who shut themselves away in self-gratifying fantasies, while the Remainers know that real life is possible only through interaction with others”.DON'T MISS: Germany EU should not have given Britain an inch in Brexit talks [POLL]Angela Merkel news: Germany faces hike in EU contributions post-Brexit [SHOCK]Angela Merkel making secret plans to quit - 'She is ready to leave' [REVEALED]
The letter was described as the “letter of the decade” by then-editor Lionel Barber.And Professor Boyle also levelled criticism toward Boris Johnson in his interview.The German scholar did not express gratitude to the Prime Minister for ending the deadlock of Brexit describing it as “the wrong conclusion”.
He also dubbed the PM’s policy processes as “introspective” when asked about how he believed the UK would develop post-Brexit.Professor Boyle said: “It will be more introspective. Boris Johnson is already doing this: one has to think of the regions, he says, of poverty, of the health system.“He seems to prefer to avoid the majority of foreign policy issues.”However, Professor Boyle maintains the belief Britain will regret leaving the European bloc.
He asserted the UK would return in 10 years “after the Conservatives’ final defeat”.Professor Boyle has refused to celebrate Brexit Day.He will instead spend the evening at a Beethoven concert with a German-English couple who were once his doctoral students.Additional reporting Monika Pallenberg.
REMAINER John Bercow could be handed new powers to step in for the Prime Minister and send a “surrender letter” to the EU asking them to extend the Brexit deadline if Boris Johnson refuses to do so, it emerged today.
Brexit: Gauke discusses plan for Bercow to 'bypass' Johnson
MPs are plotting to introduce a new law which would enable Mr Bercow to bypass the prime minister and go straight to Brussels on behalf of the House of Commons to prevent a no-deal Brexit. The politicians want Parliament to sit on Saturday, October 19, to pass the Bill, according to the Mail on Sunday. A senior Commons source said: “The rebels say that, if Boris wants to play with nuclear weapons, then so will they”.
The Speaker of the House of Commons is due to step down on October 31. Former justice secretary David Gauke refused to comment on any new Act which could see the Speaker's powers increased.When asked about the plan during an interview with Sky News, the Tory MP sought to divert attention to the Benn Act, which was passed into law earlier this month.Named after Labour MP Hilary Benn, the Act forces the prime minister to request a delay from the EU to avert a no-deal Brexit. 
“I don’t want to get drawn into specific ideas but what I would say is that the Benn Act is effective, it does what it intends to do and it should be abided by," said Mr Gauke. “And I very much hope that the Government will be clear that they will abide by the law."He added: “There are lots of suggestions of loopholes and so on. As far as I can see, anything that’s been suggested so far can be easily dealt with and, if necessary, the courts will ensure that the will of Parliament and the law is complied with.”Reports suggest MPs are also drawing up plans to use the new law to give Mr Bercow the authority to choose a new British commissioner to the EU.Remainer Amber Rudd is said to be one of the potential candidates.She resigned from Mr Johnson's Cabinet earlier this month, accusing the Government of spending 90 percent of its time on no-deal preparations instead of working on securing a Brexit deal.DON'T MISSMPs ignoring voters, a court accountable to no-one - end of democracy [ANALYSI]John Bercow: How Commons Speaker ‘systematically alienated colleagues' [INSIGHT]John Bercow attacks 'toxic' Commons - it was 'worst day in 22 years' [VIDEO]
Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing has called for the introduction of a new parliamentary committee to remove the power entrusted to a Speaker. The Conservative MP for Epping Forest said: "The time when the Speaker’s role was evolving, it was normal to give enormous power to one man, be it a king, a prime minister, a general, a duke or a Speaker.“All those other very powerful men had their power and their authority tempered, but the Speaker hasn’t.”
Mr Bercow, who has been Speaker since 2009, has faced accusations of impartiality during the many heated Brexit debates in the Commons. But he has claimed he was standing up for Parliament.Downing Street has launched an investigation into alleged links between MPs behind the Benn Act and foreign powers, namely the French Government and the EU. 
When asked what action MPs would take if Mr Johnson attempted to ignore the Benn Act and take the UK out of the bloc without a deal, Mr Guauke warned: “In truth, if there is an attempt to not follow the law then the law will take its course and it will be a question of going to the courts and the court will ensure that the law is compiled with. “But, we are a country that is governed by laws and that is our history, that is our tradition, that is one of the most important things about the United Kingdom."Mr Johnson has vowed not to break the law but also refused to say he would request a delay to Brexit.Mr Gauke said any suggestion by the Government that it was not prepared to obey laws was "dangerous". 
COMMONS Speaker John Bercow is just another establishment figure seeking to frustrate Brexit as MPs launch their last-ditch efforts to betray our democratic vote to leave the EU. Yet again he interprets parliamentary convention to suit the interests of Remainers – and no doubt to the delight of his wife who notoriously displayed a “B*ll**ks to Brexit" sticker on her car.
Earlier in the year, allowing arch-Remainer Dominic Grieve's Brexit-meddling amendment, he was happy to say: “I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so.”Pompously, he added: “If we were guided only by precedent, nothing would ever change.”He also made the decision against the legal advice of the Commons Clerk.But now as no-deal Brexit fast approaches, the self-satisfied Bercow points to a 400-year-old precedent to stop Theresa May asking for a third vote on her deal.His pro-Remain hypocrisy is plain for everyone to see.
Forthright Leaver MP Mark Francois rightly called him out on the first intervention saying: "Mr Speaker, I have not been in this House as long as you but I have been here for 18 years and I have never known any occasion when any Speaker has overruled a motion of the House of Commons."Crucially, he pointed out that the Speaker had "said again and again you're a servant of this House and we take you at your word".The same could be said of all those Remainer MPs who refuse to accept the decision of their constituents to Leave and prefer to play endless games of delay that threaten business confidence in our economy.
They are our elected servants and yet their refusal to get on with Brexit is putting real jobs and real investment at risk. I did smile as Bercow made it clear that the Prime Minister could not put before Parliament for the third time a deal that was not "substantially different" from what had already been defeated twice before.In truth the only difference making the PM think she might stand a better chance with a third vote is that some Brexiteer MPs are fearing that further interventions and delays might well lessen our chance of ever getting out of the EU.It breaks my heart to see Jacob Rees-Mogg, a stalwart champion of a proper Brexit, falter and consider backing Mrs May's flawed deal just to get on with leaving. If support does shift towards backing her deal, it is only because of malevolent obstruction by the EU and bullying by our own Government.
Although I admire the Brexit purity of the European Research Group and DUP sticking to their guns, I must admit I would probably have voted for her deal only on the basis that we could change it later after Mrs May resigns as PM and is replaced by a much bolder Brexiteer.Indeed rumours were that the ERG and DUP might well back her deal in a third vote if she agreed to step down and let someone else lead talks with the EU. That may have been scotched by the Speaker's intervention, saving her bacon for the short term, but it might also have given Mrs May some ammunition with which to confront EU leaders at their summit tomorrow.Citing the Speaker's ruling, she could insist on a real change to the Irish backstop in her deal to get it through. Certainly, the troubled EU cannot want to string out Brexit any longer when it faces crises of its own this summer, including a predicted populist Eurosceptic revolution in the May EU elections that would give Brussels an even greater headache.
At a Westminster dinner last week celebrating the 15th anniversary of the TaxPayers' Alliance, key speaker Mr Rees-Mogg said that the "main purpose of the EU now is managing decline".That's why we need to get out sooner rather than later and forge our own prosperous future.Unwittingly, John Bercow's irritating intervention may well have helped us towards this prospect by wasting yet more time over the next few days as we hurtle towards leaving on March 29.Because despite what any Remainers say, and despite all their anti-Brexit votes supposedly taking no-deal off the table, all that is just advisory, non-binding guff and the law of the land is that if nothing else is agreed, we still leave on that date with no deal. Two-thirds of MPs voted for that as enshrined in their decision to trigger Article 50. Bring it on!Then furious MPs can focus on getting rid of the preening prig that is John Bercow.
Last week’s votes in the Commons were good news for the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU. Amendments allowing an arbitrary group of MPs to seize control of the Parliamentary timetable and force the Government to extend Article 50 were roundly defeated.
Better still, by agreeing to Sir Graham Brady’s amendment requiring “the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements”, MPs have given the Government a firm mandate to return to Brussels, reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and amend it in a manner acceptable to Parliament. President Tusk offered such “alternative arrangements” in March 2018 when he proposed a wide-ranging, zero-tariff trade agreement. That deal foundered on the border question, but the Government can now return to it with knowledge that existing techniques and administrative processes can resolve those issues. This approach is laid out in “A Better Deal” which my colleagues including Steve Baker, Kit Malthouse and Nicky Morgan have come together to agree.
Their view is endorsed by the European professional customs body, CLECAT, who recommend procedures based on intelligence and risk management available in current EU law.These are already used to manage the existing border – for tax, currency, excise and security – so form the foundation for continued seamless trade.We can then immediately start negotiating an optimal Free Trade Agreement without the need for the universally derided Backstop. This is the route the Prime Minister must pursue.The Prime Minister must not use Tuesday’s vote to keep us in the Customs Union or a disguised variation thereof, as the Labour leadership suggests.
This would be a clear betrayal of the referendum result, tying the UK to EU trade policy with potentially no say in its direction, and a contradiction of the 2017 Conservative Manifesto.The Prime Minister has herself ruled out Customs Union membership more than 20 times, including in the Commons. Critics will ask: what if the EU refuses?What if it is unwilling to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement?Will we than “crash out” as the catastrophising Remainers suggest?  No.
The proposals which my colleagues have given the Prime Minister account for that eventuality.The UK will continue to offer its “Plan A”, but will act to ensure that trade is not disrupted, with or without a Withdrawal Agreement on March 30.Indeed, the best way to guarantee no “no deal” is by preparing fully to leave on WTO terms.That is why I welcome the cancellation of the February recess, allowing Parliament to pass all the necessary legislation. “No deal” on March 30 is not an end state.Under Article XXIV of the WTO’s General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, so long as the UK and EU agree to an FTA and notify the WTO of a sufficiently detailed plan and schedule for the FTA as soon as possible, we could maintain our current zero-tariff, zero-quantitative restrictions arrangements while the new deal is negotiated. 
As Nicky Morgan has said, although this approach is not optimal, “it would allow time for both parties to prepare properly for WTO terms, but also provide a period in which the parties could obviate this outcome by negotiating a mutually beneficial future relationship.”With this fresh attitude and a fresh team – which should include Julian Braithwaite, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the WTO, and Crawford Falconer, the Government’s Chief Trade Negotiation Adviser – the Prime Minister can play the strong hand given to her by Parliament and negotiate something new.These approaches alleviate the risk of high tariffs, minimise the disruption of “no deal” and, crucially, deliver Brexit on time and in full.• Owen Paterson served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and later for Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He is a leading member of the pro-Brexit European Research Group and has held talks with Theresa May over her plans for Brexit.
THE deal which the Prime Minister unveiled this week is so bad it cannot possibly proceed.
It betrays the Conservative manifesto promises to leave the single market, the customs union and the jurisdiction of the European Court. Instead, it offers either an extension (up to any point this century!) of the status quo, or the nightmare of a potentially permanent “backstop”. That backstop would see the whole UK remain in a customs union with the EU, with Northern Ireland in the customs union and single market.
So far from protecting the union, the backstop could see the creation of new internal borders within the UK in clear breach of the Belfast Agreement’s Principle of Consent. Worse, the UK would not have the unilateral right to end the arrangement, so we could be locked into it indefinitely as a permanent rule-taker with no say as those rules are made.Who will adjudicate the laws which we receive? The ECJ – both during the transition period and in the potentially permanent backstop. 
This will tie the UK into EU customs, environmental, social, state aid and taxation policies. We will send the EU upwards of £39 billion for the privilege – and the ECJ will even adjudicate our payment of that. In Washington this week, I discussed the deal with senior US trade representatives. There was real enthusiasm for a US/UK trade deal, but were categorical that this would be impossible if the UK does not control its own tariff schedules or our regulatory environment. 
That is exactly the fate which awaits us under the Prime Minister’s current plans.Following her statement in the Commons on Thursday, it is obvious that the Prime Minister will not get her deal through Parliament. Her best option is to change course and negotiate a wide-ranging, zero-tariff trade agreement with solutions to the Northern Ireland border based on existing techniques and processes. Otherwise, she risks failing to honour the largest democratic mandate which the British people have ever delivered.
Nick Ferrari
Nick Ferrari rips into Lord Newby about second Brexit vote
Through­ out the almost two years that have elapsed since that dramatic Brexit vote, a cabal of plotters so under­ hand they wouldn't disgrace the wildest dreams of notorious Italian schemer Niccolo Machiavelli have striven to rev­erse the historic outcome, while simulta­neously subverting what democracy attempted to deliver.Last week their naked ambition was laid bare. Put bluntly, they consider them­selves more intelligent and therefore more influential than you, the voters who delivered the mandate to leave the Euro­ pean Union.In the eyes of those who packed the House of Lords to hand down yet another defeat to the Government over its Brexit stance, the idea of one man, one vote is a fallacy. You can have your votes; they can choose to ignore them.If you were one of the 17.4 million who turned their back on the EU be in no doubt: this ghastly crew of largely un­ elected no-­marks, lacklustre failed politi­ cians and place men and women who pick up a rather handy £300 a day just for turning up, view you as an ill-­informed and potentially racist moron.
Never mind this was the biggest man­date seen in the history of this country. Never mind we gave an unequivocal instruction to those who choose to gov­ern us.Never mind that the Remain-­ supporting Prime Minister, who has been handed a "hospital pass" the size of every infirmary and hospital in the land com­ bined, has said on countless occasions that she respects the will of the elector­ ate and Britain must leave the EU; none of this matters a jot to this tawdry bunch.Courtesy of the vote last week, the Brit­ ish Brexit negotiating team looks to have been stripped of the "nuclear option" of walking away from the negotiating table and resorting to World Trade Organisa­ tion rules.Candidly, can you think of a surer way of weakening our team's posi­ tion? Sniffing out any weakness, the EU now knows the domestic tensions and splits it can exploit.
To add insult to painful injury, a brief study of the architects of this insulting vote is hugely instructive. One of the key peers behind the wrecking amendment was Viscount Hailsham. You're excused if that name means nothing but try Douglas Hogg and "moat cleaning".That's right, he is the chancer who racked up a £2,200 House of Commons' expenses claim for clearing out the moat at his country retreat, as well as tuning his piano and fixing the lights in his stable.That he has become a trail-­blazer for the Remainers tells you everything you need to know about their level of disdain for those who have defied them.He was joined by one of the greatest examples of political failure imagina­ ble. Lord Roberts of Llandudno failed as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Conwy, North Wales, in 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997. Yup, FIVE election defeats and yet he gets rewarded with ennoblement.
Raab: The Lords approach to Brexit is deeply irresponsible
At this rate, it will be arise Sirs Steve McClaren and Sam Allar­ dyce before you know it. Throw in Labour loser Lord Kinnock and his wife Lady Glenys, expenses cheat Lady Uddin, perennially treacherous Tory "Dowager Duchess" Lord Hes­ eltine and the over-­promoted Lady Benjamin of Beckenham and you can see the usual suspects are firmly on parade.It is well documented that many people turned out for the first time in their lives to vote to leave the EU. As much as they were motivated by feelings about national identity, they believed in the cherished principle of democracy that the elite have thrust down their throats for generations.Imagine how they feel now.Because they're deemed not smart enough to know what they were doing, or they didn't know the terms of the deal, or they didn't appreciate it was merely an "advisory vote" or they were "lied to" or any other trumped-­up reason including no one asked the views of the Easter Bunny or there was no "r" in the month, they're told they might have to do it again.Whether commoner or Lord, you were handed a simple instruction. So carry it out... or just get out._________________________________________________________________
THE LAW IS AN ASS: Part OnePolice in Staffordshire have issued a warning to butcher Pete Lymer because of the handwritten saucy signs he put outside his shop bearing messages such as "tenderise your rump" or "big-breasted birds".No official complaints had been made, so just what is the police's "beef" with this saucy seaside postcard-style fun?_________________________________________________________________THE LAW IS AN ASS: Part TwoEddie Cullen, a frail 83-year-old great-grandfather, was confronted by police while walking in a park in Birmingham.Mistaking him for a potential gunman, solely because he was wearing a woolly hat, Mr Cullen was ordered to lie face down in the sodden grass. But when he said he was unable to comply due to a heart condition, he was handcuffed and held in that position for 15 minutes. Lucky they didn't scramble the police helicopter._________________________________________________________________
Julian Howard: It is a tragedy that Amber Rudd resigned
THE CABINET lost one of its best assets last week with the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd. She'd held one of the trickiest briefs in government (if not the downright hardest of the lot) for almost two years and it's worth remembering previous Labour administrations got through six home secretaries in eight years, so it's almost a case of returning to the norm.However, what must not get lost in the wrath and recriminations over the Windrush fiasco, which has shamed virtually everyone it has touched, is that it is not wrong to be hostile to illegal immigration - just as it is right to crack down on any other criminal activity.Incoming Sajid Javid has earned a commendable reputation and were he to be successful in dealing with this shambles his credentials as a future Tory leader or even prime minister would be considerably burnished.Meanwhile, a word of advice. Sack all the treacherous civil servants who clearly briefed so assiduously to ensure the downfall of your predecessor._________________________________________________________________
WOULD it be too much to expect French President Emmanuel Macron to concentrate just un peu on affairs at home rather than continuing to pursue his image as the world's number one statesman?After his love-­in with President Trump in which he gave everyone the benefit of his views on the Israel/Iran conflict, it was off to Australia to lecture on matters such as defence and climate change, inevitably!Meanwhile, in Paris they witnessed the worst May Day riots in half a century. Shops and bus shelters were destroyed and barricades of piles of rubbish were set alight. It is thought a hardcore of around 1,200 masked and hooded activists orchestrated the violence and there were 200 arrests.Perhaps Monsieur Macron could ease up on the air miles and focus on what has happened in his homeland to bring about the return of Les Misérables.
WELL, as first weeks at work go, didn't the Brexit Party have a stonker! From the first day, we defiantly raged against the EU machine - and absolutely dominated the news cycle.
Nigel Farage: Tajani's comment urged MEPs defy EU anthem
On Tuesday morning, in Strasbourg, for the first day of the 2019-2024 EU term, we headed to the main chamber - the plenary - a vast, circular amphitheatre that resembles something out of StarWars. Naturally, they'd stuck the 29 Brexit Party MEPs right at the back, to stop us causing trouble. How wrong could they be! In his opening gambit, the speaker called it "the house of democracy" and we all laughed out loud. Then, when asked to stand for the "country's" national anthem, Beethoven's Ode To Joy, we duly stood - then turned our backs. And why not? For starters, the EU isn't even a country! They gave themselves a national anthem when they aren't even a nation. It's a farce.
For more than three years now, the EU and the British government have turned their backs on the Brexit referendum result, on 17.4 million Leavers and on democracy itself. This was peanuts in comparison.Yet, as predicted, the entire Remainstream media (plus the usual shower of second referendum MPs) went into spasms of virtue signalling. David Lammy called us "plonkers" yet he and other hardcore Remainers were oddly silent about the British Liberal Democrat MEPs childishly sporting bright yellow "*******s To Brexit" T-shirts.Indeed, EU Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt was only too keen to pose for pictures with them, further underlining his brazen contempt for Brexiteers.Outside, I was confronted by a Dutch Liberal MEP who foamed, "We need a United States Of Europe! Only if we unite can we conquer, militarily and economically!" When I pointed out that "conquer" sounded "a tad ominous" he doubled down. "We need to be able to beat the Russians and the Americans! We need an EU Army to match theirs!" These zealots are for real.As for the "elections" for the next EU top brass, they were a sham. As Nigel Farage said in a party briefing beforehand, "The results have already been decided. This is a Brussels carve-up."In this fig-leaf democracy, MEPs don't elect a new president. They just rubber-stamp the approved candidates, all of whom are fiercely pro-EU. It's obscenely undemocratic.So, we abstained en masse.
Why would we want to vote for new leaders of an organisation we want to leave? In these corridors, loyalty to the holy cause of the EU is expected. To help, MEPs are treated like royalty. There's the generous monthly salary, plus tax-free monthly allowance. Every day you sign in is an extra 320 euros on top.Throw in free iPads and free business-class travel, staff to help, plus limousines on tap and you can see why jobbing politicians are queuing up to take the EU oath.Then there's the endless food and wine. Small wonder they call an MEP's five-year sitting the "Two Stone Term" - it seems to be the average weight an MEP puts on while wobbling their way to Brussels and back on the gravy train.Our MEPs' blue badge allows us to queue-jump at the EU's many canteens and bars.Pick of the crop in Strasbourg is the 15-euro all-you-can-eat buffet lunch, complete with silver service and fawning garçons. MEPs stuff their faces with mountains of prawns, delicately poached salmon, perfectly cooked steaks and immaculately glazed patisserie, all washed down with chablis from a giant wine chiller.It's like an all-inclusive holiday resort, only heavily subsidised by taxpayers.In Brussels, some of the offices even have beds: perfect for that mid-afternoon nap before a free wine and canapé shindig.Back at our offices (they'd stuck the Brexit Party in the very farthest building, a 10-minute walk from the voting chamber) a goodie bag awaited, bulging with a bottle of champagne, bags of truffles, drinks tokens and even a freshly cut rose.In our post box, an invite to the Dalai Llama's birthday party awaited.A bell sounded and we learned that EU leaders chose Ursula von der Leyen to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as the leader of the European Union's executive branch - despite the fact she was not on the ballot paper as a candidate and has no manifesto!The next morning, this prompted Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe to deliver a formidable maiden speech where she railed: "If that is this place's idea of democracy, that is a serious betrayal of every country that is represented here."Finally, she roared, "Nous allons, wir gehen, we're off!" And with that defiant cry storming out across the world's media, the Brexit Party left Strasbourg, a job well done shining a bright light into the far corners of the EU's undemocratic heart.This week, we'll be in Brussels. You can rest assured, we will be fighting for every one of the 17.4 million Leavers with the same steely resolve.Martin Daubney is Brexit Party MEP
THE Establishment of Oxbridge-educated, central London-dwelling high-earners has stitched us up.
Brexit delay could help May get ERG to back her deal says expert
Sneakily, away from the public eye, they have stretched every rule to breaking point, relied upon every arcane parliamentary procedure they could find and pulled every lever of power available to them to make sure that the will of 17.4 million "plebs" is thwarted. It started even before the referendum when David Cameron banned the Civil Service from preparing for Leave winning the referendum, forcing the new post-referendum government to start a delivery plan from scratch. It continued when Philip Hammond refused to allow vital spending on no-deal preparation.
And it's ending with attempts by Remain MPs like Hilary Benn to "take control" of parliamentary business so he can ride roughshod over our vote - enabled by a disgracefully partisan Speaker in John Bercow.I could keep listing elites who have used their power to thwart the people's vote, but the longer I go on, the angrier I get.My fury peaks when I think how close we now are to them stopping Brexit altogether.We are days away from a "lengthy" extension to our departure date being forced through Parliament by anti-democracy Remoaner MPs.If we think about how much damage the Establishment has done to the Brexit cause in the last 30 months, imagine how much more they can do if Parliament and the EU bounces us into a 21-month extension.The number who voted the Give these people until December 2021 and they will kill Brexit altogether.
So, it pains me to say it, but I think the honest truth is that Theresa May's withdrawal agreement is now the best Brexit we're going to get.It's not everything Brexit could and should have been, by a long shot - but it is much, much better than giving the Establishment another 21 months of plotting to stop Brexit completely.If we lose it all now then that's it!If we don't get out in the next few months, even on these compromised terms, is there any chance they'll let us get this close again? No. No chance at all.Darren Grimes is a Brexit activist
Ann Widdecombe
Jacob Rees-Mogg accompanied by police after Letwin amendment
The Lib Dems are hell-bent on overturning democracy and the result of the 2016 referendum. The country is an international laughing stock. The EU smirks in happy disbelief. Well, we know all that... what’s new? What’s new is the extent to which we now seem to be engaged in unarmed civil war and to be descending into savagery, for what else can you call it when a mob intimidates a child? 
I watched with horror the pictures of the bespectacled, innocent 12-year-old son of Jacob Rees-Mogg surrounded by police as a mob of Remainers yelled abuse at his father. Most of those engaged in the lynch-mob antics looked old enough to be parents themselves. How would they feel if had been their child? But of course the children of Brexiteers don’t count, do they? 
Remainers like to present themselves as cultured, thoughtful individuals who are intellectually superior to the ignorant masses who voted to leave. Really? Those pictures tell a different story. Some of them are just coarse, hate-filled thugs. Of course Jacob Rees-Mogg could have avoided the scene by taking the ministerial car but he had no reason to believe that in 21st century England a politician and his young son cannot walk along a street without being threatened and abused. 
This is not the domain of some dictator or middle-Eastern trouble spot. This is well-mannered, democratic Britain. Now he knows differently and so do we all. The sooner Brexit is done, the sooner we can return to normal politics and normal civility but getting Brexit done means getting us out of the single market, the customs union and the jurisdiction of the ECJ. 
Boris’s deal fails that specification. We should not let fatigue win, however much we are tempted. 
TORY MEP Daniel Hannan has hit out at the EU over the Irish backstop as Brexit negotiations remain deadlocked.
Brexit: 'We will be ready to leave come what may' says Gove
The Tory MEP insisted the controversial backstop is an attempt by the EU to control the UK’s trade policy after Brexit. Mr Hannan said: “The backstop has nothing to do with the Irish border.
“It is about allowing the EU to control the terms of Britain’s trade with countries like the US and India even after we have left.“No self-respecting nation could ever have signed up to that.”It comes as London and Brussels are at an impasse over fresh Brexit negotiations.Prime Minister Boris Johnson is demanding the backstop is dropped from the Brexit deal.
But the EU is insisting the Withdrawal Agreement, which includes the backstop, cannot be reopened and will only make changes to the Political Declaration on the future relationship between the UK and the bloc.The backstop is aimed at preventing a hard Irish border after Brexit but critics fear it could be used to permanently trap the UK in the EU customs union and prevent Britain striking its own trade deals.Speaking during a visit to Northern Ireland yesterday, Michael Gove, who is responsible for no-deal planning, said Mr Johnson is ready to discuss alternatives to the backstop with the EU.He said: “The Prime Minister is keen to explore with EU leaders how we can ensure we can have a withdrawal agreement that will pass Parliament.“He’s talked to leaders across the EU and he stands ready during the course of the next couple of months to speak to any EU leader and pursue with as much energy and openness as possible what alternative arrangements might be which would ensure we can secure an orderly and timely withdrawal from the EU.”Asked if the Government would accept a compromise on the backstop, such as a time limit, Mr Gove said he would not “pre-empt” negotiations with the EU.He said: “We stand ready to work with the Irish Government, or EU partners and the European Commission in order to attempt to resolve these problems.”DON'T MISSBrexit bombshell: MPs could drag Britain back into EU in November [INSIGHT]How John Major tricked Tory eurosceptics into approving EU key Treaty [ANALYSIS]Brexit boost: Javid predicts no deal will make UK economy 'stronger' [VIDEO]
Mr Gove added the Government would spend “whatever it takes” preparing for a no-deal Brexit.It comes after Mr Johnson told civil servants in a letter yesterday that planning for no deal must be their top priority.The Prime Minister said to officials he would “very much prefer” to leave on October 31 with a new agreement with Brussels in place, but he recognised that “this may not happen”.
He wrote: “That is why preparing urgently and rapidly for the possibility of an exit without a deal will be my top priority, and it will be the top priority for the Civil Service too.”And on Thursday Mr Johnson’s chief strategic adviser Sir Edward Lister emailed all special advisers informing them that no holidays would be allowed until the end of October.The email, seen by The Guardian, said: “There is serious work to be done between now and October 31 and we should be focused on the job.”
Meanwhile, Chancellor Sajid Javid has said he is not “frightened” at the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.He told Sky News: “If it comes to no deal, it is not anything I am frightened of.“I am confident that if that is what it comes to, we will not just get through it, the UK will end up stronger and more resilient. It is something that we can deal with.”
DONALD TRUMP has promised a “big trade deal” is possible with the UK once Britain frees itself of the EU “shackles”.
Brexit: Jeremy Hunt says UK and US must ‘work together’
The US President, in the UK for a controversial state visit, said talks were under way to secure a post-Brexit trading agreement with the world’s largest economy. And in a series of tweets he reassured supporters the special relationship between the US and UK was still “very strong”. He said: “London part of trip is going really well. The Queen and the entire Royal Family have been fantastic."
Mr Trump, who arrived in the UK today, continued: “The relationship with the United Kingdom is very strong. Tremendous crowds of well wishers and people that love our Country.“Haven’t seen any protests yet, but I’m sure the Fake News will be working hard to find them. Great love all around.”And he added: “Also, big Trade Deal is possible once UK gets rid of the shackles. Already starting to talk!”
The White House later released a statement saying Mr Trump wanted to strengthen economic ties with the UK through an ambitious new trade agreement.The statement said: “Donald Trump supports Brexit being accomplished in a way that will not affect global economic and financial stability while also securing independence to the United Kingdom.”It quoted him as stating: "A strong and independent United Kingdom, like a strong and independent United States, is truly a blessing on the world."The statement continued: "The longstanding relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is essential to our shared security and prosperity.“As the United Kingdom continues to work toward a plan to leave the European Union, the United States pledges to maintain a strong relationship with both."The United States will continue to prepare for all outcomes and co-ordinate with governments, financial institutions, and international bodies to protect its interests."
The President has already vowed to “go all out” to swiftly secure a free trade deal between the UK and US within months of Britain exiting the EU.US Ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson said Washington had “lined up” preparations for a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK and will be “ready to go” as soon as Britain resolves its exit from the EU.In an interview with the Sunday Express, Mr Johnson revealed the US was preparing to offer the UK a trade deal “which would blow all others out of the water”.He later told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show that “whatever happens” with Brexit, the US and UK will enjoy a “great relationship”.Mr Johnson said White House officials were already negotiating with the UK trade department to secure a deal which could be deliver quickly once Britain leaves the EU.
He said: “I think the fact that it’s on the President’s desk on day one, the minute that you leave, and we can negotiate.“We are already negotiating; we’re already looking at the terms of the conditions that will allow successful negotiations.”Mr Trump and his wife Melania are enjoying the full pomp and ceremony of a white tie banquet at Buckingham Palace tonight after spending the day with members of Royal Family in London.
LEO VARADKAR has dismissed Boris Johnson’s initial Brexit proposals following talks with the Prime Minister this evening.
Brexit: Varadkar says new deal proposal ‘is not promising’
The Irish President said Mr Johnson’s plan to remove the controversial backstop “do not fully meet the agreed objectives”. The Irish Government has said Mr Varadkar will study the plan in “further detail” and consult with Brussels chiefs over the next few days. Ahead of the October 31 Brexit deadline, Mr Varadkar maintained he “wants to see a deal agreed and ratified” and would also hold further talks with the Prime Minister.
A statement released by the Irish Government said: "The Taoiseach said the proposals do not fully meet the agreed objectives of the backstop."However, he indicated that he would study them in further detail, and would consult with the EU institutions, including the Task Force and our EU partners."The Taoiseach expects to speak with European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and with other EU heads of government over the coming days.
"This will include the Swedish and Danish prime ministers, with whom the Taoiseach has bilateral meetings on Thursday and Friday in their capitals."The Taoiseach said he wants to see a deal agreed and ratified, and will continue to work in unity with our EU partners to this end."The Taoiseach and the Prime Minister agreed they would speak again next week."
Following his bullish speech at the Tory Party conference in Manchester, Mr Johnson outlined his Brexit plans in a letter to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.Mr Johnson said failure to reach an agreement ahead of Britain's scheduled withdrawal from the EU on October 31 would represent "a failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible".Mr Johnson called the backstop a “bridge to no where” and said any deal would be compatible with the Good Friday Agreement.
The Prime Minister’s alternative to the backstop is to create "decentralised" customs regimes, with paperwork conducted electronically as goods move between the two countries.Prior to talks with Mr Varadkar, Mr Johnson spoke on the telephone to Mr Juncker who “acknowledged the positive advances” made by the UK.In a statement, the commission said the EU chief welcomed the proposals for "full regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland and the EU.However both Mr Juncker and Mr Barnier urged caution and stated more work needed to be completed, in a statement the EU commission said there was still "problematic points” in relation to the "governance of the backstop”.The EU Commission said in a statement: "However, the president also noted that there are still some problematic points that will need further work in the coming days, notably with regards to the governance of the backstop."The delicate balance struck by the Good Friday agreement must be preserved."The EU commission also expressed concern about the proposed customs rules and said it needed a "legally operational solution”.DON'T MISSBrexit delay most likely outcome: EU gears up for Article 50 extension [ANALYSIS]Jeremy Vine audience erupts as caller defends 17.4million Leave voters [VIDEO]Car insurance firm warns drivers they must do this before Brexit [INSIGHT]
Mr Barnier said: "There is progress. But to be frank, a lot of work still needs to be done to reach, to fulfil, the three objectives of the backstop - no border, all-Ireland economy, and protecting the single market."That means protecting the consumer, the citizens, and the businesses inside the single market, the 27 member states."So now we will continue to work to reach a deal. The no-deal will never be the choice of the EU. Never. So we will continue to reach a deal and to work with the UK team."
NEXT week the UK will leave the EU and become an independent country again.
Brexit: Barclay hits back at Lucas after EU exit timetable criticism
Nearly four years after the historic referendum, we will finally get Brexit done and deliver what Sunday Express readers voted for. As a huge rugby fan I often see parallels between my political life and the sport I love. Securing the Withdrawal Agreement was the PM’s diplomatic equivalent of Jonny Wilkinson’s last minute drop goal to win England the 2003 World Cup.
We had to lock into the scrum and make the hard yards to get far enough up the field for our key players to make the difference. And at times it felt like we may never get there. But we finally gained a major victory for Britain and for our democracy.The Prime Minister has now signed the Withdrawal Agreement, marking a hugely important moment in the Brexit process which confirms our departure from the EU on 31 January.This success means that the Department I lead will no longer exist on 31 January having fulfilled its mandate. And so it is natural to reflect on what we achieved together, as a team.During my time as Brexit Secretary I’ve spent more than 100 hours at the despatch box in Parliament discussing our exit from the EU. I travelled across the EU, from Cyprus to Sweden, making the case for an orderly withdrawal and have been to Brussels many times.Ministers in DExEU oversaw the drafting of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) and its passage through Parliament, the crowning achievement being that it finally received Royal Assent this week.  It’s not always been a smooth ride, but I’m immensely proud of the work done by the Brexit Department to make good on our promise to the British people to deliver our departure.
The Brexit naysayers have always wanted people to believe leaving the EU means pulling up the drawbridge. This just isn’t true.We look for friendly cooperation with our European partners, as sovereign equals. It is the EU’s red tape and rigid view of how things should be done that we have chosen to unleash ourselves from.Leaving the EU will open up exciting new opportunities for trade as we’ll be able to strike our own deals with countries around the world, forming partnerships with old allies and new friends.And of course we look to agree a Free Trade Agreement with the EU, like the one the EU already has with Canada, as soon as possible after 31 January. We are also ready to work together on security, tackling the threats that do not respect borders.Our new freedom will allow us to encourage new technology and innovation to boost regions across the whole of the UK.31 January is just the start of a bright future for our country. We are taking back control of our borders, laws, money, farming and fisheries, allowing us to focus on issues that matter to the British people, like climate change and workers’ rights. We will finally be able to deliver the change people want to see in their daily lives.
And this work has already started. Our new agriculture laws will release British farmers from the EU’s inefficient and overly bureaucratic rules. That means they will have stewardship over their own land, and can farm in a fairer way that allows them to do the things that matter to them, like protecting the environment.With Brexit done we’ll also be able to deliver on the vital mission of levelling up the country.It will mean we can focus on the priorities of the British people, like funding the NHS, investing in infrastructure, supporting workers and families and strengthening our great union.With certainty over Brexit, it’s time for us to come together as a country. As we maximise all the freedoms that the British people voted for, we must now work to heal divisions that have developed over the past three years, and bring our communities together again.The only question remaining is how we will mark this momentous day? I will be in my constituency, raising a pint of British beer from my local brewer, Elgood’s Brewery. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing let’s take this chance to look forward with optimism.Now is the time for us to come together and look forward to a bright future. Because exit day doesn’t just mark the end of our time in the EU. It marks the start of a new chapter in the history of the UK. 
WITH hindsight it is clear that the senior echelons of the civil service never accepted the result of the referendum. They were following Cameron and Osborne’s lead in refusing to prepare for a Leave result.
Remainers hire bus to protest on Article 50 anniversary
So all the promises made about the result being final and that it would be honoured were made by politicians who never believed that the British public could possibly ignore their dire warnings. In the immediate aftermath of the referendum those, like myself who had campaigned hard to leave, undoubtedly took our eyes off the ball.We were exhilarated, filled with positive feelings about our country’s future outside the EU and so proud of those wonderful men and women across the country who despite the entire establishment urging a Remain vote went out and voted for an independent future for the UK.We were even more proud of the millions who came along to the huge rallies and told us, some with tears in their eyes, that for the first time they believed that it was worth voting. I too believed that the promises made by politicians and enacted in the referendum legislation would be respected.Yet two years later that same establishment backed by much of the broadcast media is bombarding us with messages of fear. Every day another “celebrity” pops up to support a “people’s vote” – shorthand for another referendum. Their aim is to demoralise and frighten, hoping that more and more people will just accept a watering down of the 2016 result.
The EU Commission assumed we would change our minds. There has never been a referendum result it didn’t like that it hasn’t overturned. The Danes, the French, the Irish, the Dutch and the Greeks all voted against the EU and then were forced to vote again or were ignored because apparently the voters were “misinformed”.A friend told me last week of how a week before the referendum his uncle, a labourer who rarely voted in ordinary elections, said to him: “If we vote Leave, just watch. They will make us vote again until we give them the result they want.”Having told him that would be unthinkable in this country he realises now he was being naïve. The fact that elements within the Cabinet seem to be aiding and abetting the EU by being so feeble in standing up for our country is a betrayal of the British people.The EU will never accept when democratic electorates reject the push for further integration. The EU is a market project, not a democratic project. Mistrust of national majorities is at the heart of the EU.Tony Benn described the EU as a coup d’état by a political class who did not believe in popular sovereignty. The EU is dominated by politicians who do not trust their own people. This is extremely dangerous.
Mistrust of national electorates is embedded in the political cultures of some European countries but it goes directly against the way the British constitution has evolved. Nye Bevan, another Labour EU sceptic, praised the tremendous power of the UK system, which gives to a party winning a majority in the House of Commons almost unlimited power. UK socialists traditionally understood that there were few institutional limits on a Labour government with a majority. The EU is a major limit. The commission’s behaviour towards the Greeks and now the Italians is a warning. From their perspective national demo cracies cannot – indeed must not – have control over their own economic futures. It could not have been put more clearly than by the German finance minister when he said after the Greek elections: “We can’t possibly allow an election to change anything.” Brexit is fundamentally a constitutional decision, not a policy one. It opens up a new range of policy options but there is no single set of policies inherent in Brexit. This is why it doesn’t make any sense when people talk about a “Tory Brexit”. It would be like talking about a “Tory first-past-thepost,” a “Tory voting age”. The latest stunt by Remainers is to quote polls supposedly showing that Labour Leave areas are changing their minds. But these are the same polls which told us Remain would win. The vote that mattered was on June 23, 2016. We have had the people’s vote and it delivered to the British establishment the biggest shock since Churchill was thrown out of Downing Street in 1945.
Just think if, after Labour had won that election, the Bank of England issued a warning that a Labour government would be ruinous to the public finances, big business threatened to leave the UK and then Churchill said that he would not resign as prime minister until there was a second vote because he felt the Labour campaign had been misleading?It would amount to little less than an anti-democratic coup, which is exactly what is being staged by these People’s Vote campaigners now. So what should Leavers do?As Callaghan said: “We do not need to throw our hand in, beset by a false and unworthy despair. We need to believe in ourselves again.”We can no longer trust the Government to deliver the result of the referendum. It is time for all those who voted Leave to speak out and make their voice heard.That is why I support the reinvigorated Leave Means Leave campaign. We have to show we will not allow politicians to betray the will of the people.
Let’s avoid going back to square one. My views have always been consistent on Brexit. I made them clear in February 2016 when David Cameron finished his reform negotiations with the EU. Despite his attempt at sensible reform, we were rebuffed, and it became clear our sights should be set on the global stage and we should leave the EU.
Since the referendum, the Prime Minister has negotiated a deal that takes back control of our borders, money and laws and gets us out of the agricultural and fisheries policies, while protecting jobs and security.That's why I pay tribute to our Prime Minister for her determination to seek the best deal for the UK. She deserves our support. Backing this deal means no longer sending the EU vast sums, so we can spend more on UK priorities, like the NHS.It means striking free trade deals around the world while protecting the integrity of the UK. Rejecting the deal will mean going back to square one, leading to uncertainty which could threaten jobs, investment and the economy. Crucially, rejecting it means we risk failing to deliver on the clear will of the people. A second referendum would be a gross betrayal of our democracy and damage the trust between people and Parliament.
Since 2017 my role has included taking all Brexit legislation through Parliament as well as working closely with government departments to plan for Day One after we leave the EU, including “no deal”.We have to make sure nothing happens that can stop Brexit. While I have every confidence in our country to thrive over the medium-term in the event of No Deal – as it stands the Prime Minister’s deal is the only one on the table.Even in the short term, why should we settle for more uncertainty from a "no deal" Brexit – when we could avoid uncertainty altogether? Negotiations have been tough, and I share concerns about becoming stuck in a permanent customs backstop. However, alongside our formal Withdrawal Agreement we have an accompanying Political Declaration. It sets out the shared intentions of our relationship and will form the basis of those further negotiations in April.As a Brexiteer parts of this deal have been difficult to accept, and I have spent time thinking about whether it is compatible with my vote to leave. I do not want the UK trapped in a backstop, but, as I pressed for in the Political Declaration, we have set out alternatives to the backstop including technological solutions or any other solution agreed by the UK and EU.
This is in EU interests too, as they will not want a permanent backstop. In their view, it would give the UK full access to the EU market without the huge payments made by other member states, and vitally, without free movement.We should acknowledge our achievements. We were told we had a binary choice between Norway or Canada. Instead we've secured our own agreement that provides an unprecedented deep and special partnership. Some warned we had to split the UK into two separate customs territories – we've completely avoided that.Others said we would be treated like any other non-EU state on security – but we've secured the EU's deepest security partnership.I believe in the bright future that awaits us when we leave the EU and I am determined we deliver on the referendum result.However people voted, it is now time to come together and support this deal. It is time to get on with it.
GEOFFREY COX'S main task as he negotiates with the European Union is to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse or, as Rumpelstiltskin did in the fairy tale, weave gold from straw.
Brexit: Jacob Rees-Mogg could SUPPORT May's deal says expert
It is not an easy task as the Government's negotiating hand has been undermined by those who never accepted the result of the referendum and think that they - with their preternatural powers - know best. On the other hand, it is simple.TheAttorney General needs to insert an end date into the treaty or something of equal legal force. The Withdrawal Agreement is a rotten accord.
It condemns the United Kingdom to at least 21 months of vassalage at a cost of £39billion, yet everything other than the backstop has an expiry date - after a certain point the nation's freedom and control would be restored.After 47 years of penal servitude a final few months is tolerable. However, the backstop could last forever and would tie this country's hands in terms of regulations, customs and the rulings of the European Court of Justice in these areas without a formal ability to leave.Although fewer areas of British life would be affected than is currently the case, in these departments there would be even less control than there is now.There would also be the absurdity of replacing a treaty that can be revoked with two years' notice with one that is perpetual.The LisbonTreaty, the de facto constitution of the EU, allows a member state to depart after giving two years notice. The Withdrawal Agreement contains no such provision.
There would seem some logic in saying to the EU "let us copy Article 50 and paste it into this agreement" as then the backstop could be cancelled with fair notice and the position would be no worse than today.If Geoffrey Cox could achieve this then his return to Westminster would be a heroic one.If this cannot be achieved then the default position is that the UK leaves without a deal.Some MPs say that they could never agree to this but many of them voted for the Article 50 Act that sets out the timetable and then stood on a Conservative manifesto which stated clearly that "no deal is better than a bad deal".If such people were to use Parliamentary prestidigitation to delay, in the hope of preventing Brexit, the honour and trustworthiness of politicians would fall to a new low. If honour and truth prevail instead, then on March 29 there would be an opportunity to use the gains of departure for the nation's benefit.
Leaving without an agreement is nothing to be frightened about. It opens the door to prosperity.The Chancellor ought to welcome it and use the £39billion, which would otherwise be wasted in Europe.It could be spent on projects that would help the country and taxpayers keep more of their own money which they would, on the whole, spend more wisely than the Government spends it for them.EU taxes that hit the least well off most, such as the requirement to putVAT on domestic fuel, should go, as could tariffs on goods not produced in this country. Perhaps taxpayers may even want some of their money spent on more police to help reduce knife crime.The EU, as its Eurozone economies stagnate again, is jealous of this potential success and obdurate in negotiations. It constantly offers too little and asks for too much and has shown over the last two years why it is so important to leave. If the Attorney General succeeds it is the EU that would benefit, the UK will gain as long as it is out of this failed system.
AFTER three years of being repeatedly told that ‘nothing has changed’, the time has finally come for everything to change.
Tory leadership: Patel calls for 'radical change' with Johnson
Following the failures of the current government to unite and deliver the largest democratic vote in the history of our country we now have the opportunity to be led by a new Conservative leader who will relish the prospect of securing our future as an independent United Kingdom. That means no more missed deadlines or broken promises and an end to the paralysis and the national demoralisation project led by the current Cabinet, which has resulted in uncertainty and expense for businesses.  A new dawn is coming and is about to change the political landscape significantly. With Boris Johnson leading the Conservative Party and as Prime Minister, the United Kingdom, at long last, will have a Prime Minister who believes in Britain and is in tune with the views of the millions of people who voted – over three years ago now – to leave the EU.
He has promised that we will be leaving on 31 October, deal or no deal, so his first job must be to ensure that we are ready to leave the EU and to crack on with securing a deal in the interests of both the UK and the EU.But at the same time we will need to look beyond Brexit and the Conservative Party under renewed leadership must go back to being in touch with the people who elect us and who we are proud to serve.The Conservative Party is at is strongest when it aligns itself with the hopes and aspirations of Britain’s hard-working, law-abiding majority, and when it governs through clear Conservative principles.  Today the public can see that we have lost our way and have become detached from the concerns and priorities of hardworking people.The tax burden is at a 50-year high, crime is rising while offenders are being released early, the young cannot buy their own homes and people are worried about the future of our public services.  
We don’t seem to have the self-confidence to argue the case for Conservatism against a resurgent Left.With Boris as leader we can implement a new vision for the future of the country and a roadmap to move forward and champion our beliefs in low taxes, free markets, the rule of law, property ownership and choice.As the party that believes in economic freedom and low taxes, it is scandalous that we have presided over the tax burden rising for hardworking families and businesses.We must control the public finances and live within our means, but families and businesses are struggling.I argue in my report published by the Centre for Policy Studies that we need an ambitious programme to cut, reform and simplify taxes so people can keep more of what they earn.
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Putting more money into families’ pockets will help them with the rising cost of living, and reducing the tax burden on business will help foster the entrepreneurial spirit of those who want to start-up or grow their own firms.But opportunity must be at the heart of the case we take to the country and the policies we propose.  Delivering more housing so people can enjoy the benefits of home ownership and improving standards and choice in public services can sit quite comfortably alongside a strong, Conservative policy agenda.Forty years ago, under the resolute leadership of Margret Thatcher, Britain witnessed a political revolution following the managed decline of our country by a generation of office holders who were out of touch and too inept to deliver the change our nation desperately needed.  It took a Conservative revolution based upon strong leadership and a desire to deliver change for our country to raise our standing in the world.That time has come once again.  We stand at a crossroads and in order to thrive as a self-governing nation and to show the world that we truly are a global country, now must be the time to be bold and deliver for Britain.
EXCLUSIVE: Public respect for Parliament has plummeted following the Westminster paralysis over Brexit, a damning opinion poll has revealed.
Theresa May delivers speech after no confidence vote win
Three-quarters of voters say the crisis-hit EU departure process has shown that the current generation of MPs are “not up to the job”, according to the data from polling firm ComRes. A root-and-branch overhaul of the country’s entire political system is wanted by a massive 72% of people quizzed in the survey. But despite the chaos embroiling Brexit, a majority of voters (53%) still want the result of the 2016 EU Leave vote to be honoured by ensuring the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc and do not want a second referendum to be triggered.
The scathing verdict on the Westminster political elite is delivered today in the ComRes poll of more than 2,000 voters commissioned by the Daily Express.They were quizzed in the run up to the crushing Commons defeat for Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Agreement earlier this week that has left the Brexit process hanging in the balance.Their response is almost certain to be seen as a warning from the electorate that Parliament is at risk of losing the public’s trust completely.Andrew Hawkins, executive chairman of ComRes, said: “Parliamentarians will be alarmed to see the extent to which the Brexit stalemate has damaged the reputation of politics and politicians and is triggering significant support for constitutional change.“One important legacy of Brexit may well be a clamour for rebooting the wider political system, including electoral and House of Lords reform, scrapping the honours system and more devolution.”He added: “When the dust settles after Brexit, it will take a long time for Parliament to regain the trust of the wider electorate.“Whatever other impact Brexit may have, it is already pitching Parliament against the will of the voting public and the staggeringly low levels of positive sentiment towards politicians should give enormous cause for concern.”
The Prime Minister survived an attempt by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to oust her from office when Tory and Democratic Unionist Party MPs united to back her in a confidence vote in the Commons.She was poised to reach out MPs from both sides of the Commons in coming days to try to build a new Brexit plan with cross-party support.But ahead of the latest political maneuvering over Brexit, today’s Daily Express ComRes poll revealed deepening disenchantment with Westminster among the voters as a result of the deadlock over the issue.Only six per cent of voters agreed that Parliament was “emerging from the Brexit process in a good light”, the Daily Express ComRes poll found. Nearly four out of five (79%) of voters quizzed in the poll disagreed with the statement with very similar feelings among both Tory and Labour voters.Only 10% thought politicians were in touch with the mood of the country while 74% disagreed. Two thirds (67%) of voters in the survey felt the political system did not enable their voice to be heard.Less than a third of voters (31%) wanted Brexit cancelled or a second referendum on the UK’s relationship with the EU to be held.Voters in the survey overwhelmingly wanted a string of radical reforms to overhaul the political system.
A majority (54%) backed reducing the number of MPs in the Commons from 650 to 600, 62% wanted more decisions to be made at a local level rather than in Parliament and 72% wanted a US-style written constitution that set out clear legal rules for how civil servants and ministers should act.Forty-three per cent wanted more decisions made by national referendums as long as the votes were made legally binding. Twenty -seven per cent opposed the idea.More than half (52%) also wanted Westminster’s first-past-the-post system for electing MPs to be replaced with “a more proportional voting system while 45% wanted the House of Lords replaced with an elected senate.The monarchy was one of the only institution in the survey that voters largely wanted to see unchanged. Two-thirds of voters were opposed to the Queen and the monarchy being replaced with an elected president while only 16% disagreed.
Brexit: Theresa May LOSES meaningful vote
Forty-eight per cent of voters in the survey wanted the UK to position itself as the lowest tax, most business-friendly country in Europe after Brexit while 16% disagreed.A third of voters (33%) supported the idea of a legally-binding limit on national debt “even if it meant sharp spending cuts and tax increases if that limit was reached” while 28% disagreed.Labour had a narrow two per cent lead over the Tories when voters in the poll were quizzed about their choice in a general election. Jeremy Corbyn’s party were given a 39% share of support while the Tories were on 37%.The state of the parties was unchanged since the last Daily Express/ComRes poll at the beginning of December.ComRes surveyed 2,010 British adults on January 14 and 15 for the poll.
FORMER Brexit Secretary David Davis has warned he believes Prime Minister Theresa May will lose the game of Brexit chicken with Brussels and agree to an exit deal.

However Mr Davis said Mrs May would find it far trickier to get any deal similar to her Chequers plan through the House of Commons.Yesterday he said "terror will win" in the Brexit negotiations and Britain would succumb to the "irrational fear" of a "no deal" divorce.But he has now made clear he believes any agreement based on Mrs May’s unpopular Chequers proposals will still not get past MP’s when the hold their “meaningful vote” in the Commons.Mr Davies tweeted today: “For the avoidance of doubt I believe the PM will get a deal with the EU but anything based on the Chequers plan or one that keeps us in the Customs Union will not pass the Commons. Time to revert to free trade deal suggested by EU?”
Negotiations are due to begin again in earnest after MPs vote on the budget later this week.A summit of EU leaders in December is seen by Brussels as the last practical point for a Brexit deal to be agreed.Mr Davis, speaking at an event at the Institute of Economic Affairs attended by key MPs from the DUP, was asked for his predictions on the Brexit process.He said: "Terror will win.
"The fear of no deal, I think - we haven't had a chance to talk about it much - but I think that's an irrational fear of no deal or a World Trade Organisation deal."That will win and there will be a deal."It may take a few passes, there maybe a deal passes in Brussels and fails in Westminster."Mr Davis’s comments came after former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who also walked out of the Cabinet over Chequer, described Mrs May’s plans as a “betrayal of Britain”.
Mr Johnson said the UK was “losing control” and urged the Prime Minister to “chuck Chequers” as he warned of a dismal future of European industry controlling the UK.He said: “It cannot be repeated too often that under the Chequers proposals for ‘ongoing harmonisation’ and a ‘common rulebook’ this country is offering Brussels and the powerful European industrial interests behind the Commission the chance to control huge chunks of UK industry, to stifle innovation, to run our trade and commercial policy, to collect UK taxes – and with no British voice round the table to raise even a peep of protest.“It is quite incredible that the Cabinet remains acquiescent. We must chuck Chequers forthwith.”
THE FINAL appearance of British MEPs in European Parliament descended into chaos this week after the MEP chairing the session shut down Brexit Party politicians and refused to let them speak.
Brexit Party MEP's chant 'let's get free' in EU Parliament
Brexit Party MEPs chanted “let him speak” after a German MEP chairing their last session in the European Parliament shut down one of their MEPs. The chaos erupted when Italian MEP Marco Zanni questioned why he and his colleagues were no longer allowed to display national flags on the desks in front of them. German MEP Katarina Barley, who was chairing the session, replied that it was against the rules, as set out by the European Parliament’s president, David Sassoli.
This prompted backlash from the Brexit Party MEPs, with their party whip Brian Monteith quickly standing to raise a point of order.However, Ms Barley told him that he couldn’t raise it until he and his colleagues had removed the Union flags from their desks.She insisted that the British MEPs would have to put away the flags from their desks to be heard.This led to Brexit Party MEPs erupting in a chant demanding that the European Parliament chair “let him speak”.JUST IN: Brexit marks ‘beginning of the end’ as EU already heading ‘down dangerous road'
Ms Barley refused to back down, insisting that the Brexit Party MEP was not allowed to speak until he followed EU orders.She insisted: “We won’t continue the discussion until you follow the orders of the President.“You are the ones that not letting him speak. You are not following the orders of the President.”The incensed German MEP was praised and applauded by the other MEPs in the Strasbourg session.
Labour will ‘never win a majority’ says Alice Grant
Ms Barley has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019 and is a strong ally of Angela Merkel.Ewa Kopacz, the vice president of the European Parliament, backed Ms Barley, adding: :Sorry colleagues but you are not letting him speak, because you are not following the orders of the president so just do so and we'll let him speak."Following the uproar, Nigel Farage tweeted: "We have just had our Union Jack flags removed from our desks in the European Parliament, by order of the president."DON'T MISS:Sajid Javid shuts down any EU hope with bombshell announcement [LIVE BLOG]Polish MEPs spark Brussels panic after standing ovation for 'POLEXIT' demands [VIDEO]Mark Francois fury at Big Ben bong as REAL cost revealed [VIDEO]
He added: "Thank God we are leaving." A Brexit Party MEP retaliated by removing the European Parliament’s Union Jack as his final act in Strasbourg.Martin Daubney “liberated” the flag as Britain’s representatives left the parliament for the final time on Thursday, ahead of Brexit in just two weeks time.He told The Sun that the act was revenge against the an imposed by EU chiefs on flags on members’ desks in the chamber.
THERESA MAY will today ramp up efforts to get her beleaguered Brexit deal through Parliament amid demands from Ministers that no deal preparations are accelerated. The Prime Minister will begin discussions on a new package of measures to be included in the forthcoming Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) aimed at securing cross-party support.
Brexit: May calls to ‘vote Conservative’ ahead of EU elections
Mrs May is planning on offering MPs a “bold offer” in the hope it will be voted through Commons next month and before she steps down as Prime Minister.The move follows the final collapse of cross-party talks with Labour aimed at finding an agreed way forward which would allow Britain to leave the EU with a deal.The WAB - which is needed to ratify the deal with Brussels - is expected to include new measures on protecting workers' rights, an issue where agreement with Labour was said to have been close.However, Government sources made clear the package would not just be aimed at Labour MPs but would seek to secure the widest possible support across the Commons.
It is expected to include provisions on future customs arrangements with the EU and on Northern Ireland, including the use of technology to avoid the need for border controls with the Republic.It will not, however, seek to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement - which included the controversial Northern Ireland "backstop" - after the EU repeatedly made clear it could not be re-negotiated.Mrs May, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, said: "I still believe there is a majority in Parliament to be won for leaving with a deal."When the Withdrawal Agreement Bill comes before MPs, it will represent a new, bold offer to MPs across the House of Commons, with an improved package of measures that I believe can win new support.
"Whatever the outcome of any votes, I will not be simply asking MPs to think again. Instead I will ask them to look at a new and improved deal with fresh pairs of eyes - and to give it their support."Mrs May has said she will bring the WAB before MPs for its second reading vote in the first week of June following the short Whitsun recess.Regardless of how the vote goes, she will then meet the chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, to agree a timetable to elect her successor as party leader, paving the way for her departure from No 10.The Prime Minister expected to set out details of her WAB proposals in a major speech before the end of the month.
Brexit: May launches Conservative European election campaign
But after three previous attempts to get her deal through the Commons went down to hefty defeats, many Tory MPs are sceptical that her fourth will fare any better.Another defeat would almost certainly see a ratcheting up of demands for her to go immediately, amid intense frustration at her failure to deliver on the 2016 referendum result.Nigel Evans, the executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, said: "You can watch the movie Titanic a hundred times, but I'm afraid the ship sinks every time."An increasing number of Conservative MPs - even those who voted for it a second or third time - are saying enough is enough."
Mrs May’s new plan comes amid demands that no deal preparations are ramped up.Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay insisted no deal contingency plans will be restarted "at pace" if Theresa May's deal is defeated in the Commons.He warned that if MPs don't back the existing deal Britain will be on course to leave without one in five months' time.And he hit out at Remainers who assume they'll be able to delay Brexit yet again if the deal falls next month.
Mr Barclay told Sky News: "Members of Parliament do need to face facts, and if the deal were not to go through then there are only two alternatives."Any idea of a second referendum is just a proxy for revoke. You either leave with a no deal, or you revoke."If Parliament won't back a deal, then it needs to confront that reality."I do think we need in those circumstances to bring forward our preparations to mitigate no deal, because we will need to use the additional time we have, and we need to move at pace to do so.”
Mr Barclay praised the Prime Minister’s efforts to deliver Brexit, saying: "She's sacrificed her premiership in order to fight for a deal."International Development Secretary Rory Stewart said the Conservatives and Labour are “half an inch apart” on Brexit.Appearing on BBC 1’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Stewart said: “We do in many ways agree; none of us wants to remain in the EU, none of us wants a no deal Brexit, which means logically there has to be a deal.“If there is to be a deal, the Labour and Conservative positions are about half an inch apart,” he declared.
Brexit: Rory Stewart claims the answer is 'in Parliament'
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gave his strongest backing yet for a second referendum.The Labour leader insisted a second Brexit referendum would not be "disastrous" but said there should be something different for the public to vote on.Mr Corbyn has been criticised by Labour members and MPs who say Labour should come off the fence and back a second poll.Asked if a second referendum would be disastrous Mr Corbyn told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show: "No, I don't think anything like that is disastrous but I think it has to be an opportunity for public debate and public discussion, but it has to be about something and that's why I have made the point clear about a customs union and trade and rights protection."
MARK Harper has insisted he will “destroy” the Brexit Party in a scathing attack against Nigel Farage.
Brexit: Mark Harper claims October 31st deadline is ‘not credible’
Speaking to fellow Tory MPs during today’s leadership hustings, Mr Harper insisted leaving the EU on October 31 was unrealistic, and that making and then failing to deliver such a promise would “put rocket boosters” under Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Speaking to reporters, he said: “I think promising it and failing to do so would put rocket boosters under Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party, whereas what I want to do is destroy The Brexit Party.” In his campaign speech, the MP for the Forest of Dean constituency said it was “not possible or credible” to leave on the terms of a new deal if the UK were to leave the EU on October 31.
He also said that renegotiating and passing a new deal through Parliament would take even longer.Meanwhile, ex-Commons leader Andrea Leadsom insisted UK must leave the EU on October 31 under “all circumstances”.During her pitch for leadership today, Mrs Leadsom said she will impose a “hard red line” on Britain’s leave date with plans to implement a “managed exit” out of the EU.Meanwhile, Health Secretary Mr Hancock said his plan was “eminently deliverable” by 31 October, and that the EU was open to changing the political declaration part of the Brexit deal.
Tory leadership: Nigel Farage warns of 'utter disaster'
However, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has lashed out at Tory candidates who pledged to amend the Brexit deal, insisting the agreement must be “respected”.Speaking at a Politico event in Brussels, Mr Juncker said: “This is not a treaty between Theresa May and Juncker, this is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the European Union.“It has to be respected by whomsoever will be the next British prime minister.”Mr Juncker added that he had “the impression for months now that the main interest for the British political society was how to replace Theresa May, not how to find an arrangement with the European Union”.
Tory leadership: Mark Harper ‘comfortable’ with no deal Brexit
Ten Tory members are running in the leadership race to become Britain’s next Prime Minister.All 313 Conservative MPs will vote for their preferred candidate in a series of ballots.The vote days will be held in June (13, 18, 19 and 20) and will reduce the number of candidates until there are just two contenders left.The party’s 160,000 members will pick the winning candidate in a postal ballot and the results will be announced in the penultimate week of July.
MARGARET THATCHER was “a fighter” and would not have accepted the European Union’s continuous demands in Brexit negotiations in the same way Prime Minister Theresa May has, former Tory MP David Mellor has said.
Brexit: Theresa May 'is not a fighter' says David Mellor
Prime Minister Theresa May has secured a secret Brexit deal with the EU which would keep the whole of the UK in the customs union to avoid a hard border in Ireland, according to the Sunday Times.The former Tory MP ripped into Mrs May and said she is “not a fighter” like former Prime minister Conservative Margaret Thatcher.Speaking to Brexiteer Nigel Farage on LBC, Mr Mellor said: “The trouble with Theresa May, she thinks one more concession and she will get a deal.“You know, that is the worry. I believe that when she exposes this stuff, I think a lot of people will think ‘if you’d fought harder and you’d been a different sort of person’.
“Let’s go back to a cliche. I was Margaret Thatcher’s youngest minister for four years. I served in her Government for nine years and another two under John Major.“Margaret Thatcher was a fighter.“Theresa May is not a fighter.“Would Margaret Thatcher be accepting a lot of this stuff? No, no, no, no.”
While in discussion with Mr Mellor, Nigel Farage warned Britain will not have taken back control after Brexit and could have to pay billions more to the Brussels bloc if it remains in the customs union with the EU. Mr Farage said: “Basically, at the time of the next general election, we are going – if she gets this deal through Parliament – to be in a position where we have not taken back control, not taken back control of our fisheries, we are not able to make our own trade deals.“And, financially, it won’t be £39billion we have given the EU, it will be something closer to £60billion.“So, I have to say, to me, it doesn’t give us any of the possible benefits of Brexit.
Nigel Farage: May's Brexit will give us NO benefits
“I know that school kids in 100 years will read we left the Treaty.“But I think it needs to be opposed.”The Prime Minister will reportedly warn Brexiteers that if they reject this deal they will be blamed for causing a potentially very difficult no deal scenario.The plan is aimed at securing the support of Remain MPs within the Conservatives ranks as well as some Labour ministers, and there would be an exit clause in a bid to win over Tory Brexiteers.The Prime Minister is said to be pushing to keep open the possibility of a Canada-style free trade deal with the EU in the future.Mrs May is expected to discuss the plan with Cabinet on Tuesday and agree on the final details with the EU at a special summit later this month.But Downing Street last night claimed the report was simply “speculation”.A spokesman for the Prime Minister said: "This is all speculation. The Prime Minister has been clear that we are making good progress on the future relationship and 95 percent of the withdrawal agreement is now settled and negotiations are ongoing."
First published on Thu 25 Aug 2016 03.14 BST
Donald Trump positioned himself as an underdog Wednesday night, leaning on Nigel Farage, architect of the British exit from the European Union, to boost morale in the face of sliding polls.
Midway through a speech in Mississippi Trump described “Brexit” as a bid for independence and drew parallels to his own campaign, declaring a Trump presidency would bring about “American independence”.
He introduced Farage as the leader of Ukip who stood up to the EU “against all odds”. Farage told the crowd of thousands, “We reached those people who have never voted in their lives but believed by going out and voting for Brexit they could take back control of their country, take back control of their borders and get back their pride and self-respect.”
The crowd seemed slightly puzzled by Farage’s appearance on stage. But Trump welcomed Farage warmly, and stood by him as he spoke.
Farage, on stage alongside one of the wealthiest men in the United States, said that Brexit was “for the little people, for the real people”.
Farage’s involvement is part of Trump’s latest strategy that centers on his new campaign chair, Stephen Bannon. Bannon was the head of the Breitbart website before Trump hired him, and is an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit.
But the mashup Wednesday night of Trump, New York politician Rudy Giuliani and British affairs left the Mississippi audience bemused. Before the rally, a quick survey of the crowd at random showed that eight in 10 people had never heard of Farage or Brexit. One woman said she had learned of him in the lead-up to the rally, and the other said, “He’s from the Brits. That’s all I know.”
The rally’s audience was almost entirely white, but Trump placed a new emphasis on reaching minority voters. The opening speaker, a black pastor named Mark Burns, worked through a list of anti-Hillary Clinton points from the traditional – Benghazi, state department emails – to the new and novel, like questioning Clinton’s health. But most pointedly he accused Clinton of racism.
“Millions of babies are dying,” he said, referring to abortion, “at the hands of the race-baiting Democrats.”
Trump himself put an even finer point on it, during his speech: “Hillary Clinton is a bigot,” he said, to an audible gasp in the audience, “who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings.”
Amid the unfamiliar talk of British politics, the crowd enjoyed the familiar Clinton and Obama aspects of the speeches, chanting “Lock her up” at the mention of Clinton.
“It’s hard to tell where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins,” Trump said, referring to a recent analysis by the Associated Press that showed more than half the people Clinton met outside the government as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton family’s foundation. “Hillary Clinton does not believe in America first,” Trump said. “She believes in donors first. And special interests. And lobbyists.”
Farage stopped short of endorsing Trump outright, but added: “I will say this: if I was an American citizen, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me!”
After the rally, Bo Smith, a nurse from Florence, Mississippi, said that he enjoyed what he had heard, from the Clinton rhetoric to Farage’s talk on Brexit.
“Yeah, I support it,” he said. “You’ve got to control the borders. They say one in 50,000 might be a terrorist. But if I give you a jar of 50,000 M&Ms and tell you one is cyanide, are you going to take a big handful?”
European Union (EU) leaders are storming ahead with their plans to create a pan-EU army, insisting that a joint defence force is necessary to combat Islamic terrorism and other threats.
Standing on the deck of the Italian aircraft carrier the Giuseppe Garibaldi, France’s President Francois Hollande, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi insisted that they were not downhearted by the British vote to leave the EU, but intend rather to increase the pace of integration, the Telegraph has reported.
Calling for more sharing of information between intelligence services, Merkel, who is known to favour deeper defence integration said: “We feel that faced with Islamist terrorism and in light of the civil war in Syria, that we need to do more for our internal and external security.”
Specifically, she called for a joint strategy in tackling the smuggling of migrants across the Mediterranean, and closer unity in protecting the EU’s external borders.
Mr Hollande agreed, saying: “Europe must ensure its own defence, and France is certainly playing its role.
“I also insisted on defence, because we want to ensure that there is greater co-ordination there, extra means and forces.”
Echoing the call for deeper integration of defences, Mr Renzi turned to the forthcoming departure of the British from the EU, and by extension the common defence policy.
“Many people felt that after Brexit Europe would come to an end, but that is not the case,” he said. “We respect the choice made by the British citizens, but at the same time we want to be able to turn the page on a new future.”
General Vincenzo Camporini, former chief of the general staff in charge of Italy’s military, has elsewhere asserted that building an EU Army would be easier now that Britain had decided to opt out.
“Every step forward was blocked [by the British], he told La Repubblica newspaper.
“The British position was crucial – everyone knew that without London, you couldn’t even begin to talk about a common European defence policy.”
The Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has welcomed the call from the three leaders for further integration, and insisted that an EU Army is required.
“I am convinced that in the long term we won’t be able to do without a common European army,” he told a meeting of Czech diplomats in Prague on Monday, the Daily Mail has reported. He added that the new army must not compete with NATO, but should aim to be a “more actionable and reliable partner.”
Plans for an EU Army – which had previously been blocked by the British – were now on the agenda for the autumn summit of EU leaders due to take place in September, Mr Sobotka revealed, adding that he hoped it “will bring concrete proposals and pledges”.
London / EuropeAngela MerkelBrexitEU ArmyFrancois HollandeMatteo Renzi
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Dim mynediad.
I’r hafan
Last modified on Thu 30 Jul 2020 10.54 BST
I’ve always hated “Irish jokes”. Having an Irish mother, I’ve always been aware how they were used to denigrate Irish people and undermine the cause of Irish nationalism. There’s one joke, though, I’ve always enjoyed. It’s the one where the guy asks the Irishman for directions, to which he replies: “Well, if I were you I wouldn’t be starting from here.” It’s stuck with me because it offers a real life lesson that I find myself regularly referring to.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, it’s a lesson I should have heeded, as I argued and canvassed for a socialist Labour government when, in hindsight, it was clear that British voters had been wowed by Margaret Thatcher’s strong leadership and populist policies. For my arguments to get through, I shouldn’t have been starting from there. People such as Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell recognised this and modified Labour’s message to resonate with these same voters to spectacular effect.
Yet, seeing Campbell announce this week that he’s given up on the Labour party, mainly because under Jeremy Corbyn it won’t go all-out remain, I couldn’t help wondering if he shouldn’t also take heed of that Irish lesson. Because if you want Labour to be a pure remain party – against the wishes of so many of its marginalised, traditional voters, particularly those working-class people in the north – then don’t do it after a referendum in which those same voters had the once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually make their vote count. Don’t choose this moment to tell millions of long-standing party supporters that you’re ignoring their deeply held views.
I, like Campbell, am a remainer. I also still want to reverse Brexit. But you can’t stick two fingers up to a huge chunk of your voter base and not expect a negative reaction. It’s why he spent so many years triangulating in the 1990s, trying to work out a middle way. How ironic that Campbell now condems Corbyn for doing exactly the same.
Corbyn is facing far more flak for this today than New Labour did 20 years ago, and that’s because many on the right of the party don’t actually want to see him win power. (If you want proof, look at Stephen Kinnock’s stony-faced reaction, captured by a BBC documentary camera, as the news broke that Theresa May had lost her majority in the 2017 election.) Many of those in and around politics still yearn for the Blair-Brown era when they were close to power. They’re not worried about the damage Labour would suffer by going “full remain”: an election defeat would merely hasten the day when the hated Corbyn steps down.
Others say that now Boris Johnson has energised the hard right and united his cabinet over no deal, Corbyn must do the same – but for remain. This is nonsense. Johnson has already seen the damage caused by his rash decision-making. He’s boxed himself in by refusing to talk to European leaders until they ditch the backstop; he’s been slapped down by Nicola Sturgeon and learned that his stance is boosting the cause of Scottish independence; he’s faced angry Welsh farmers whose livelihood is threatened by no-deal tariffs; and he’s gone to Northern Ireland, where he’s been told that the peace process is at risk. And in Brecon and Radnorshire he’s tasted defeat after just a week in office, losing an 8,000 majority. Far from rallying supporters, his Brexit stance has just piled up his problems. He can’t even rely on the party’s hardcore Brexiteers to support any deal he might achieve with Europe.
One thing I do appreciate about Johnson, though, is his optimism. I’m an optimist too. In fact, the more I see of him, the more optimistic I get.
An early election – before we’ve left the EU – looks ever more likely. And it will be a choice between Johnson’s no-deal Brexit, and Labour, which has pledged to keep remain on the table but while still showing a sensitivity to leave voters. The precise stance depends on the election’s timing (as it must), but it’s clear that Labour is against no deal, and open to the possibility of negotiating a Labour Brexit, while promising a referendum on any deal that is struck. I’m no fan of a Labour Brexit, but, like I say, I wouldn’t be starting from here, and like it or not a majority of people voted for us to leave the EU.
That policy didn’t work in this year’s European elections, when it paid to have a clear message on leave or remain. Labour finished third, behind the Brexit party and the Liberal Democrats, a result that freaked out many Corbyn supporters. But these elections are notorious for being a repository for protest votes. The election was a proxy referendum, people voted along Brexit lines. There was no nuance. The policies that have made Corbyn so popular were not on the ballot: anti-austerity, support for public services, renationalisation, and fairer taxes for the richest. In a general election, the voters would face a simple choice: back Boris Johnson and the no-deal extremists, or back Labour and the chance to remain.
Of course, if it’s all so rosy, people will ask why the party isn’t way ahead in the polls, especially against this divided and useless government. But now, with the nation in crisis, it’s not that easy to forge ahead. It could just as easily be said: if remain is so great, why isn’t the demand for a People’s Vote way ahead in the polls, especially set against such divisive and useless Brexit negotiations for the past three years?
And I’d also say: cast your mind back just two years to a divided opposition party 20 points behind in the polls, which under Corbyn all but made up the gap in a few short weeks of general election campaigning. The situation may not be exactly the same today (let’s face it, Johnson will be a far better campaigner than May, though, like her when she called the election, he’s had the almost undivided loyalty of the national press so far). But he is untested in a battle for mainstream voters.
The last time the Tories won an election – the only time they’ve won in the past 27 years – they had a great soundbite that struck home in the last few days of the 2015 campaign: Labour, in alliance with the Scottish National party, would “bankrupt Britain and break up Britain”. Today, who would break up Britain? Johnson and his insistence on a hard Brexit that risks Scottish independence and Irish reunification. Who will bankrupt Britain? Again, Johnson and his no-deal tactics, which the Bank of England has warned would lead to an “instantaneous shock” to the economy.
An election victory is no easy feat, it never is, but to those who genuinely want a Labour victory, do not lose hope. In 2014, at the previous European elections, the Conservatives came in third place. Within a year, they were voted into government with a majority.
Maybe here’s not such a bad place to start from.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Everything that could be done had been done to secure a victory for Boris Johnson on what had been billed as “Super Saturday”. He had come back from Brussels with his so-called “new deal” to the sound of the massed brass bands of the pro-Brexit media trumpeting praise for a “stunning achievement”/“personal triumph”/insert more sycophantic hyperbole here. Some European leaders tried to help him frame the choice before parliament as “new deal or no deal”. Suggestions that the EU might not grant another extension to the withdrawal date were designed to spook MPs into voting yes for fear of hurling Britain into a crash-out Brexit.
Cabinet ministers were deployed to “man-mark” any Conservative MP whose vote was doubtful. Heavy-breathing Tory whips said they were going to get “medieval” with rebels. The self-styled Tory Spartans, who would have spat out the Johnson deal as treachery if it had been presented by Theresa May, had fallen into line. Some of them had begun to see the ridiculousness of being Brexiters who never actually vote for Brexit.
Then there was the timetabling. To further ratchet up the pressure, the government staged the crackling drama of an “emergency” Saturday sitting of parliament, the first time that MPs had met at the weekend for nearly 40 years. This meant that everyone had an absurdly limited amount of time to get their heads around the latest tortuous iteration of Brexit. Concluding yesterday’s debate on behalf of the government, Michael Gove declared: “Our democracy is precious and this parliament is a special place.” They had a funny way of showing this supposed reverence for democracy and parliament. MPs were being asked to make a decision with huge consequences less than 48 hours after the deal had been unveiled. Were you able to conduct a confidential survey, guaranteeing to parliamentarians that their responses would remain anonymous, it is my strong suspicion that well under half of them have actually read the legal text and the rewritten political declaration. The government’s desperation to stampede parliament into signing off on the deal was further illustrated by its point-blank refusal to publish any analysis of its economic impact.
These tactics ultimately backfired. There was too much resistance to the attempt to bounce MPs into agreement. The debate was peppered with complaints that a prime minister who couldn’t be trusted was seeking a blank cheque from a parliament being kept in the dark. Justine Greening, the former Tory cabinet minister, tellingly complained that this was like being asked to buy a house without being allowed to see it.
By 322 to 306, a 16-vote defeat for Boris Johnson, MPs thwarted him by backing Sir Oliver Letwin’s amendment to withhold approval of the deal until MPs have had the chance to properly scrutinise the withdrawal legislation. For the prime minister, so-called Super Saturday turned into Squelched Saturday.
To understand why he was defeated, you first have to consider his deal. It bears no resemblance to the have-your-cake-and-eat-it promises peddled to the country by him and his fellow travellers during the referendum campaign in 2016. He succeeded in getting rid of the “backstop”, the element of the old deal so aggravating to the Tory Brexit ultras, but at the cost of inserting a frontstop that will keep Northern Ireland largely aligned with the single market and customs union for at least five years. The creation of an economic border down the Irish Sea made it impossible for him to gain the support of the Democratic Unionists. The other major difference with Mrs May’s deal is that it envisages moving to a much more distant relationship with Britain’s most important trading partners. The Johnson deal is one of the rock-hardest forms of Brexit. That diminished his chances of attracting support from Labour MPs.
In his speech to the Commons yesterday, the Tory leader said it was time to “move on”, a mantra parroted ad nauseam from the benches behind him. But as some of the more clued-up MPs observed, his deal does not “get Brexit done” at all. It covers only the divorce and a period of “transition”. Where Britain ultimately lands is still hugely uncertain. It is merely the prelude to a tougher stretch of bargaining about the terms of trade, customs, tariffs and standards with the EU. These negotiations come with another deadline attached. The cliff edge moves to the end of 2020. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, put it wittily when she remarked that it was “a bad deal with a backdoor to a no deal.”
The fundamental trouble with this deal is the same as with all the many versions of Brexit floated by two Tory prime minsters over the past three-plus years. None offers terms as favourable to the United Kingdom as remaining within the European Union. A study by the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank projects that the Johnson deal will shave up to 7% from the per capita income of Britons over a decade. Other forecasts are available. None of the credible ones suggests that Britain will be better off outside the EU.
There were other reasons why Mr Johnson could not assemble the coalition of support that he needed. The 10 votes of the Democratic Unionists played a decisive role in his defeat. They radiated the fury of people betrayed. Mr Johnson attended their party conference last year to pledge that “no British Conservative government could or should sign up to” regulatory checks and customs controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Now he is pushing a deal that does this very thing.
Without the DUP, it was always going to be a very hard scrabble for the government to command a majority in the Commons. Its hopes depended on convincing enough Labour MPs to vote with the Tories. There is a band of Labour MPs who have their reasons for wanting to “get Brexit done”, but most had even more compelling reasons for not helping Mr Johnson to do it. He gave them less incentive to support him and more reason to distrust him by moving assurances on workers’ rights and environmental standards out of the binding withdrawal agreement and into the non-binding political declaration. His behaviour in his 88 febrile days as prime minister made it yet harder for Labour MPs to lend him their support.
The unlawful prorogation of parliament and the use of incendiary language to attack parliamentarians alienated some of the very Labour MPs he needed to persuade. The fact that it was a Johnson deal was a very big problem for them. The intense loathing he arouses among Labour people is much more visceral than their feelings about Theresa May. It is a very big step for a Labour MP to enable a Tory prime minister, especially when an election is looming. When that Tory prime minister is Boris Johnson, it proved just too much.
In response to his defeat, the prime minister rose to the dispatch box, fixed a smile to his face and spoke as if, to use a phrase made notorious by his predecessor, “nothing has changed”. Of course, quite a lot has changed. By the time you read this, the government will have sent a letter to the EU requesting an extension to the Brexit deadline, something Mr Johnson has repeatedly sworn he would never do, or he will be in breach of the law.
His deal is not necessarily dead. He mustered 306 votes, 20 more than Mrs May ever got for her deal. This leaves him 14 short of what he needs for a majority. Some of the MPs who defied him over the Letwin amendment, including Sir Oliver himself, have said they will support the government when it comes to votes on the Brexit legislation. There’s not much doubt, though, that the road ahead has become a great deal more rocky for Mr Johnson. Parliament will be able to seize the opportunity to subject his deal to the searching and detailed scrutiny that the government sought to evade yesterday. Pressure can be increased on ministers to reveal the true costs of the Johnson deal. Those hoping to take the question back to the people have more time to convince parliament to embrace a fresh referendum.
Boris Johnson called this special Saturday sitting in the hope that it would give him a reputation-boosting, momentum-building victory to flourish. He wanted to be able to claim that Brexit was done and dusted. Instead, Brexit is not done and he is dusted.
Much is in flux after another “historic” parliamentary vote that failed to settle Britain’s future. One thing is certain. Our long national nightmare continues.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
Michael Gove has become the first cabinet minister to lend Boris Johnson some support in the row over his insistence that the UK would take back control of £350m a week from Brussels to spend more on the NHS.
Gove, who led the Vote Leave campaign with Johnson, broke cover on Monday with two tweets tentatively supporting the foreign secretary’s case.
“In the debate on EU contributions it’s important people look at what Boris actually wrote in his Telegraph article – not headlines,” he tweeted. “Debate should be forward looking on how to make most of life outside EU – not refighting referendum.”
The headline of the Telegraph article read: “Boris: Yes, we will take £350m back for the NHS.” The article itself was slightly more carefully worded, stopping short of pledging the whole amount to the NHS, in contrast with the Vote Leave campaign which suggested: “We send £350m a week to the EU. Let’s fund our NHS instead.”
Johnson had been left isolated since writing the 4,000-word piece for Saturday’s Telegraph arguing for a more optimistic Brexit, which was interpreted as a direct challenge to the prime minister’s authority.
Amber Rudd, the home secretary, accused him of “backseat driving”, while Sir David Norgrove, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, said reviving Vote Leave’s claims that the UK pays £350m a week to Brussels was a “misuse of official statistics”.
However, Gove’s tweets are a public sign that the Vote Leave leaders are mobilising to defend the principles of their successful campaign. It also suggests the pair have partially reconciled after Gove scuppered Johnson’s chances of succeeding David Cameron by launching a rival bid for the Conservative leadership after the referendum last year.
Dominic Cummings, the former director of the group and ex-aide to Gove, fuelled speculation of a fightback by former Vote Leave campaigners on Monday as he released a string of tweets arguing that David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, were steering Brexit in the wrong direction.
He said it was wrong to assume that Theresa May, Philip Hammond, Davis and Johnson have agreed a strategy on what Brexit will look like after the transitional period, which is “why the speech is being fought over”.
Cummings said the point about trying to honour Vote Leave’s commitment to the £350m and the NHS was no longer about the referendum but “whether Tory MPs want to keep their jobs/stop Corbyn”. In an appeal to MPs, he claimed that, from a political perspective, the Gove and Johnson approach “gives you a shot of saving your skins” but by backing Hammond or Davis “your seat/government [is] in dire danger”.
His comments reflect nervousness among hardline Brexit supporters that May will make concessions to Brussels and direct the UK towards a softer exit in an attempt to break the deadlock in EU negotiations when she makes a speech in Florence on Friday.
Johnson is expected to meet May at the UN general assembly in New York this week. Downing Street is playing down the idea that the meeting will be a “showdown” but there is frustration in No 10 that Johnson’s article was not cleared with them before publication.
There were reports on Sunday that both Gove and Priti Patel, the development secretary, were supportive of Johnson’s move to defend the principles of the winning Vote Leave campaign.
But subsequently “friends of Gove” briefed newspapers that he was unaware of any “suicide pact” between them and differed from Johnson in that he could support paying some money to the EU in the transitional period after Brexit.
A spokesman for Gove said on Sunday: “The first Michael knew about Boris’s article was when it was published on Friday night.”
Apart from Gove, Johnson has been supported publicly by only the most hardline of Brexiters, including Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage.
Farage, the former Ukip leader, said on Monday that reading Johnson’s article had cheered him up because “someone in government is finally being positive about what we voted for”.
Duncan Smith defended the £350m figure for EU contributions and argued Johnson’s article was “positive about the impact of Brexit and I fully think it is high time to be positive”.
A number of Brexit supporters directed their anger at Norgrove for challenging the £350m figure once again, with Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP, calling for the senior official to resign.
On the other side, a number of Conservative MPs made clear their frustration with Johnson’s tactics a week before May is set to give a key speech in Florence setting out her latest thinking on the approach to negotiations.
Tobias Ellwood, a former Foreign Office minister under Johnson, said the party was “not witnessing our finest hour – at a testing time when poise, purpose and unity are called for”.
George Freeman, a Tory MP and the former chair of May’s policy board, said on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour: “It is just far too early to be able to make wild promises about what exactly is going to be coming out of the Brexit negotiations … It’s not a figure [£350m] I would have repeated, and he’s [Johnson] not the health secretary and it needs to be negotiated.”
Downing Street declined to take a side in the row between Johnson and Norgrove, or even say what May believed about the £350m figure. Seeking to minimise the row, May’s spokeswoman insisted Johnson supported the prime minister’s Brexit plans.
“The foreign secretary’s views are well known,” the spokeswoman said when asked about Johnson’s comments. “He expressed them during the referendum campaign. I think what’s important is that the foreign secretary and cabinet are united behind the government’s plan for Brexit, and Boris Johnson was clear about that.”
Asked what May believed about the £350m figure, May’s spokeswoman said she was “not getting into the ins and outs of the figures”, and suggested people should research the veracity of the sum themselves.
“What I would say more generally, all of the UK’s contributions to the EU budget are published online and you can go and have a look at them,” she said.
Pressed on whether Norgrove or Johnson was right, she said: “I’m not getting into that. The figures are published by the Treasury. They’ve been publishing them every year since the 1980s, a paper called European Finance.”
She then suggested the disagreement between the pair had been resolved: “Since then the foreign secretary has clarified what he was describing, as far as I understand it.”
First published on Wed 2 Nov 2016 10.48 GMT
Ireland’s prime minister has warned that Brexit negotiations between Britain and the rest of the European Union could turn vicious.
Enda Kenny also predicted that Theresa May might respond to pressure from within the Tory party and trigger article 50 to eject the UK from the EU before next spring.
Kenny told an audience of politicians, business leaders, trade unionists and community organisations in Dublin on Wednesday that May has agreed with him that there would be “no return to the borders of the past” after Brexit.
Speaking at an all-island conference on Brexit’s impact on Ireland, north and south, Kenny said he had an assurance from the British prime minister that there would be “no hard border” between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and that the retention of an open border was a critical element of negotiations.
“Neither I nor the prime minister desire to limit the freedom of people on both sides of the Irish sea to trade, live, work and travel freely across these islands,” he said. “Therefore we have agreed that the benefits of the common travel area be preserved.”
Kenny said Brexit was the greatest challenge facing his country since the creation of the Irish state after gaining independence from Britain.
On the subject of hostility towards the UK, he said: “The other side of this argument may well get quite vicious after a while, because there are those around the European table who take a very poor view of the fact that Britain decided to leave.”
Sounding a sombre note as he wrapped up the first session of the conference, he urged the leaders of his fellow EU countries not to become “obsessed” over what Britain may or may not get in the discussions.
Kenny said that otherwise “Europe itself could lose the plot” over where it wants to go over the next 50 years.
All leaders of the nationalist political parties on the island, including Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, are attending the Dublin conference. However, there is no significant representation from the unionist community. Both the Democratic Unionists – the largest party in Northern Ireland – and the Ulster Unionists are boycotting the event. The DUP, under Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, backed a Brexit vote in the June referendum, while the UUP urged its support base to back the remain side.
A majority of votes – 56% – cast in Northern Ireland in the EU referendum were in favour of remaining.
Ireland’s foreign minister, Charlie Flanagan, stressed that Dublin would press the British for a fully open, “invisible” border on the island even after the UK left the EU.
The re-emergence of border controls, security checks, closed secondary roads and customs posts would enrage nationalist opinion on either side of the Irish frontier. The peace process over the past 25 years has resulted in the Irish border becoming virtually invisible with few restrictions.
Referring to an open border, Flanagan said: “I am looking primarily to the views of business leaders, particularly in the border area, in a border that sees in excess of 30,000 people every day cross to work, to go to college, to go to school or indeed for family relations.
“It is vitally important in the context of the [Brexit] negotiations next year that the matter of the invisibility of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland is not only featured but is both preserved and maintained.”
Flanagan said it was a “missed opportunity” on the part of unionists for refusing to attend the conference.
Flanagan and Kenny will be in Belfast on Thursday to meet all the party leaders in Northern Ireland. Flanagan said this was in preparation for a crucial north-south ministerial council meeting in Armagh on 18 November.
The north-south ministerial council is one of the key strands of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which deals with all-island relations between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. Unlike Wednesday’s conference in Dublin, DUP ministers will attend the event in Armagh.
Dave Anderson, Labour’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary, said Kenny’s comments “show the huge level of concern in both the north and south of Ireland”.
“Any hardening of the border will hurt the Northern Ireland economy but it will also disrupt the lives of the many people who live and work in border area,” he said.
“That is why it is so vital that parliament has to get a grip over this process. We look forward to seeing the plans that the government has now committed to bringing before the House as soon as possible.”
A Downing Street spokesman said May had been clear the UK did not want to see a return to borders of the past. “The arrangement that currently exists has served both sides of that border extremely well and we have no desire, and neither does the Irish government, to change that. We want to have constructive dialogue with all member states, a mature debate about the key areas as we negotiate an exit from the EU. What’s important is that it’s as smooth a transition as possible.”
The spokesman said nothing had changed on the timing of Article 50, and that it would not be triggered any later than March next year, though May’s previous statement, that it would not be triggered before the end of 2016, still stood as well.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Over the next year or two we could witness the emergence of a rancid, angry Britain: a society riven by domestic divisions and economic difficulties, let down by its ruling classes, fetid with humiliation and resentment. Any such country is a danger both to itself and to its neighbours. This prospect will come closest, fastest, if there is no deal on Brexit and Britain crashes out of the European Union, with what the country’s top civil servant has described as “horrendous consequences”. We have been warned that these could include miles-long queues of lorries at Dover, planes grounded, and the army called in to distribute emergency supplies of food and medicine.
In such circumstances, Britain’s rabid tabloids would certainly blame the chaos on the bloody Europeans – especially the French – and demand we immediately stop paying any more money to the EU. The new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, has already said London won’t pay its agreed £39bn divorce bill if it doesn’t get a satisfactory deal. Angry Brits will go on to ask: why should our troops be protecting faraway Europeans when the Europeans are screwing us? And then: why not go back to the traditional British policy of trying to divide and rule on the continent?
Such a Britain could also arrive more slowly, if the other 27 member states of the EU impose a humiliating divorce deal – a milder, peacetime, bureaucratic version of the punitive Versailles treaty imposed on Germany after the first world war, which sowed the seeds of German nationalist revisionism. Britain’s Brexiteers are already talking about a Brexit 2.0, to follow and revise any makeshift deal cobbled together so that Britain can formally exit the EU on 29 March 2019.
Am I exaggerating the danger by even hinting at a comparison with Weimar Germany? Indeed I am. I don’t seriously envisage millions of newly unemployed, or a new Hitler coming to power, or a world war started by Boris Johnson. But it’s surely better to overdramatise the risk, to get everyone to wake up to it, rather than do what most of our continental partners have done for the last two years, which is consistently to underestimate the dangers for the whole of Europe that flow from Brexit – especially a mishandled Brexit.
And let’s face it, many things have already happened that most people would not have thought possible, even a few years ago. A far-right, nationalist party in Germany gaining as much support in opinion polls as the Social Democrats? Impossible! A xenophobic, lying narcissist as US president, threatening nuclear war on Twitter? Impossible!
To avert the danger of a humiliated, divided, angry “Weimar Britain” will require wisdom on both sides of the Channel. On the British side, we need three things traditionally associated with the country but of late in short supply: pragmatic realism, a credible democratic process, and robust civility. With all its faults, Theresa May’s Brexit white paper is a step towards pragmatic realism. All serious people inside government know that Britain will have to compromise some more in order to get a deal with the other 27 member states of the EU.
Assuming the EU 27 are also prepared to move, the next step in a credible democratic process is for the British parliament to have its “meaningful vote” on that deal. Realistically, this is likely to be at the very end of this year or early next year. At that point, multiple possibilities unfold, including a fudged Brexit deal securing a narrow parliamentary majority; a rejection of the deal followed by a renegotiation; a new general election; or a second referendum, an idea now supported by several former Conservative cabinet ministers. But sufficient unto the day are the permutations thereof.
Right now, the ball is in the EU’s court. Amazingly, the 27 leaders have not had a major strategic discussion of Brexit since spring 2017. Since then, the negotiation has been left to the European commission team led by Michel Barnier, national officials, lawyers and Brussels theologians. They have had good reason to be firm, to protect the interests of Ireland and the integrity of the single market, and not to make Britain’s deal so attractive that other countries will be tempted to “have their cake and eat it”.
But I am struck by how some of the best informed, most pro-European British experts, such as Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, have begun to argue that the EU 27 side is being too rigid, too exacting, too punitive in its approach. The exclusion of Britain from the high-security development of the Galileo system (Europe’s alternative to GPS) was a quite gratuitous slap in the face.
Yet our European partners could still reasonably say: dear Mrs May, give us a reasonable, detailed explanation of what you want, and we will respond in kind. Well, now she has. Brussels’ initial response has been politely cautious, particularly insisting on clarification of the “backstop” arrangements for keeping an open border on the island of Ireland. But in a notable article, a group of authors including Norbert Röttgen, the chair of the foreign affairs committee of the Bundestag, and Jean Pisani-Ferry, a leading French policy intellectual, have argued that the EU should now stop and think politically, not just bureaucratically, about its response.
Is there no compromise at all to be made, for instance, on the issue of labour mobility, if Britain wants to stay in the single market for goods? Beyond such detailed questions, this group is pointing to the need for European leaders to think strategically about how the cross-Channel relationship might look in five to 10 years’ time – which necessarily means thinking about how the EU itself will then look.
If Weimar Britain, with all its negative consequences for the rest of Europe, is to be avoided, EU leaders need to have that strategic discussion soon. Countries such as Ireland (which has an existential stake in the UK-EU relationship), Germany and the Netherlands (major and often like-minded economic partners of the UK), and Poland (whose security depends on countries like Britain remaining committed to it), should all be pressing for such a debate. And the European Council president, Donald Tusk, should get it on the agenda of a planned informal meeting of EU leaders in Salzburg on 20 September.
In preparation, European leaders could read some history during their August break. This must include the familiar 20th-century European story, which gives us those warning bywords Versailles and Weimar, but I’d also recommend a history of the Holy Roman Empire. That earlier European Union lasted so long because it proved capable of adapting to changing circumstances, living with Europe’s ineradicable diversity and complexity, while still maintaining its central purpose and mystique. A lesson, I think, for today.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Today, the prime minister has to put forward her Brexit plan B. But Theresa May’s repeated delays mean there are now only 67 days left until the 29 March deadline – and I am really worried the government is drifting by accident into a damaging and chaotic “no deal” that would hit manufacturing, jobs, food prices, policing and security.
That is why, with other cross-party select committee chairs and MPs, I’m putting forward a new bill; it means that if we reach the end of February and things still aren’t sorted out, then parliament would get a vote on whether to extend article 50 and give everyone a bit more time.
The bill doesn’t stop Brexit or decide what kind of Brexit we should have or what kind of deal would work. Nor does it affect the result of the referendum. It doesn’t revoke article 50, it just avoids us crashing out with no deal in place at the end of March. The government and parliament still need to resolve the best way forward, but the bill means if needed there can be a bit more time. This plan doesn’t subvert parliamentary processes either. It just means using the provisions of the EU withdrawal act to make sure there is time to debate and pass one bill.
To be honest, we shouldn’t need to do this. The prime minister should be taking a lead and ruling out no deal. People have a right to expect that their government will prevent the kind of crisis that delays their medicines, pushes up the price of food, clogs up motorways and ports, puts manufacturers’ supplies at risk or makes it easier for criminals to evade justice.
One senior police officer told me no deal is good news for criminals and bad news for victims. Currently the police and border force check crucial EU criminal databases over a thousand times a day to identify terror suspects, sex offenders, wanted criminals or dangerous weapons. The European arrest warrant allows suspects wanted for trial abroad to swiftly be sent back. All that stops on 29 March if we have no deal.
The environment secretary, Michael Gove, has warned about tariffs on beef and lamb. Tereos in Normanton told me tariffs meant doubling the price of a bag of the Whitworths sugar it produces. Local manufacturers Haribo and Burberry, small businesses like the nearby florists and local trade unions have warned about the impact of border delays on trade, production and jobs. When families are already overstretched, the government shouldn’t be putting them under more pressure.
But repeated government delays have now run down the clock. Article 50 only provides for 24 months of negotiations, yet May used four of them for a general election, took 16 months before even setting out her objectives in the Chequers plan and repeatedly delayed the final vote even though she knew her deal had been rejected from all sides.
Nor have ministers ever done the consultation and consensus-building needed to get a deal through. No one pretends it would have been easy, but I called on the prime minister after the general election to set up a cross-party commission on the negotiations or consult before setting red lines. Instead she didn’t even give parliament a vote or consult the public on the government’s negotiating objectives. Even now, May has fudged the political declaration so we only really have a two-year stop-gap with no real idea what kind of Brexit comes after.
So to be honest I am fed up of hearing some of the government ministers involved in all these delays, fudges and failings now claiming that MPs trying to sort it out are betraying the public. It’s like students who are about to fail an exam lashing out at the teachers who are trying to get them a bit of extra time.
Also how can it be a betrayal if the practical consequences for most people will be exactly the same as if a deal was in place? Remember that the transition period already proposed would have meant little changed during 2019 anyway because all the single market and EU rules were to continue for two years.
I’m also fed up with the prime minister and her cabinet, who know we need to rule out no deal but are too weak to do so, and instead are standing back in the hope that parliament will do the job for them. That’s not leadership. Unpopular as it is to say it, someone has to admit that if things aren’t sorted soon then the government and country need more time.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
A “temporary solution” to managing cross-Channel traffic in the event of a no-deal Brexit risks turning much of the M20 into a giant lorry park for many years, a report says.
The impact assessment by Dover district council, released under freedom of information, expresses concern over the levels of readiness for the potential situation and states that urgent clarity is needed from the government.
It says: “A 13-mile stretch of the coastbound section of the M20, between junction 8 near Maidstone and junction 9 near Ashford, will be earmarked to hold heavy goods vehicles, in what will effectively become a giant temporary lorry park holding around 2,000 lorries.
“It is likely that a permanent solution will not be in place for many years if enacted through current planning processes and procedures. It will also depend on the post-Brexit customs arrangements reached with the European Union. Therefore, the ‘temporary’ traffic-management system Operation Brock will be in force for some time.”
The document expresses concern at the slow pace of work on Operation Brock, and states “there does not appear to be a plan B”.
More than 10,000 freight vehicles pass through Dover on peak days as it handles one-sixth of the UK’s total trade in goods, with a value of £119bn per year and 99% of the freight moved through the port is intra-EU.
The report says: “The freight vehicles currently only take seconds to clear the port of Dover but if Brexit ends up creating regulatory and tariff barriers between the UK and the EU, it is predicted that there could be gridlock around the town and through to Maidstone and beyond.
“If increased waiting times persisted then perishable goods could be damaged and supply chains interrupted. There is also a potential impact on air quality of any increased traffic queues at border controls.
“Customs checks on imports from outside the common market can take between five minutes to 45 minutes per vehicle. Port officials have warned that increasing the average time it takes to clear customs by as little as two minutes could lead to 17-mile traffic jams.”
The council, which acts as the health authority responsible for food safety checks at Dover and the Channel tunnel, also raised concerns about its powers.
The document asks whether the government fully understands that the port health authority “has powers to examine and detain food, but not to physically stop vehicles in the first place”.
It adds that officials are “in the large ... blind as to what is entering the port”.
The layout of the port is open with no physical boundaries, which means there is nothing to stop vehicles leaving, and the health authority has “inadequate facilities at the port to inspect food or appropriately store food”.
The document states: “We ask that the government fully engages with us to ensure that the food safety function is fully understood and any proposed controls are outlined ... to ensure that they are relevant, workable and logistically feasible bearing in mind the current status.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
If you have been on social media over the last few weeks, you may have seen people tagging posts with the hashtag #FBPE, or using #FBPE in their usernames. But what does it mean?
The hashtag was first used on Twitter in October by Hendrik Klaassens, a Dutch social media user, who posted: “#ProEU tweeps organize Follow Back Saturdays! Type #FollowBackProEU or #FBPE if you want to get more #ProEU followers. Let’s do this!” in an attempt to build up a network of pro-EU users.
With Brexit on the horizon, the idea soon took on a specific twist in the UK, becoming a way for remain voters and pro-EU social media members to identify each other online. Many Brexit supporters have made themselves easy to spot by incorporating flags into their usernames and online biographies, and the aim was to make a similarly easily recognisable signal. The Liberal Democrat activist Mark Pack described it as “a pro-EU version of the #ff ‘follow back Friday’ trend on Twitter – an easy way to highlight who else may be of interest to you”.
Having spotted it, Mike Galsworthy, the co-founder of Scientists for EU, decided it could be useful for encouraging grassroots campaigning, and made several videos promoting it.
Just as there are many different types of leave voter, with different ideas of what Brexit should look like, there are also many different types of remain voter. Klaassens clarified the hashtag’s purpose in December, tweeting:
There have been accusations among some UK users that the hashtag has been used to criticise and undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s position on Brexit and his leadership of the Labour party. In part this reflects a divide along party political lines, with Lib Dem and Scottish National party users of the hashtag being critical of the position Labour has taken. Some Corbynites have instead conglomerated around a different hashtag – #PCPEU – standing for pro-Corbyn, pro-EU.
Galsworthy welcomes this, stressing the need to build a “broad umbrella” of pro-EU activists. “There’s a significant number of pro-EU people among the Corbyn supporter base – the #PCPEU hashtag took off pretty damn quickly.”
The idea of an automatic followback on the basis of your Brexit stance does not appeal to all remain voters. A Twitter user, Michael Goodier, said: “I like to try to keep my Twitter timeline diverse in terms of opinion, and following a load of pro-EU accounts simply for the fact they’re pro-EU would ruin that. I also don’t want people to follow me for my Brexit stance, but based on my tweets. I get that it’s an identity thing, but the fact you’re telling people to follow you seems to me to be a bit of a beg.”
Well, yes. “At first Brexiteers didn’t know quite how to respond,” explains Galsworthy. “There were various attempts to try to set up alternatives, and then to use the #FBPE hashtag and try to infiltrate and redefine it.”
You can now find leave voters on social media with #FBPE in their username or bio – but for them it stands for “Full Brexit Prompt Exit”. That rewording of the acronym started on Twitter at the end of December, and one of the earliest examples was in a reply to Guy Verhofstadt tweeting about European unity.
The talkRadio host Julia Hartley-Brewer was one prominent leave supporter who added the hashtag to her username for a while in early January. At one point it was estimated that about 3,000 accounts that looked like leave supporters had incorporated the hashtag into their social media use.
And some of the apparent leave voters pushing this remade acronym seem happy to give the impression of coming from further afield than the UK’s Brexit voting areas – regardless of where they may actually be posting from.
Those behind the hashtag have encouraged genuine users not to attack leave voters getting involved. “Whenever you see that happening,” said Galsworthy, “we encourage people to welcome them, and thank them for flagging up #FBPE politely.”
Those behind the hashtag believe it is, and they cite the fact that in December Lord Ashcroft blamed the hashtag for swinging an unscientific Twitter poll he was conducting about possible outcomes for a second referendum.
“The network effect has been really useful – spreading news between remain supporters very, very quickly. And whenever anything is successful, people want to jump in on it,” Galsworthy says of the attempts to hijack it, “and the same thing has happened here.”
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
The European Union’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has called on pro-EU forces to defend the fragile union from populism, saying there is now “a Farage in every country”.
In a speech at the conference of the powerful centre-right European People’s party (EPP), Barnier did not go into details of the deadlocked Brexit negotiations, but warned the EU project was “under threat”.
“We will have to fight against those who want to demolish Europe with their fear, their populist deceit,” he told more than 700 EPP delegates in Helsinki, before naming the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
Farage said: “I thank Mr Barnier for the compliment.”
In a wide-ranging speech that moved from European defence to electric vehicles, he mentioned Brexit only to promise to “fulfill my Brexit mission to the end” and make a brief opening joke that his speech would be short because “the clock is ticking”.
Barnier was speaking as Brexit talks were in stalemate over the issue of the Irish backstop – an insurance plan to avoid creating a hard border on the island of Ireland. A crucial cabinet meeting to agree the UK’s Brexit negotiating position was delayed from Thursday to the weekend or early next week amid a row over whether senior ministers should be given the government’s full legal advice on the backstop.
Barnier, a former French foreign minister with a long career in centre-right politics, also issued veiled criticism of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking to present himself as a defender of Europe’s liberal and multilateral values, against populists on the far right and far left.
“We must also respond to those who think that defending Europe belongs to one single party,” Barnier said, without mentioning Macron by name. “More than ever before, Europe needs the EPP’s founding vision. We are patriots and Europeans.”
Touching on the threat of climate change and the need to “rid our cities of smog and particles”, Barnier revealed that his first granddaughter would be born in a few weeks. “In 2050 when our kids are 32, what will our environment look like, if we continue to use the resources of three planets per year?” he said.
He also called for European action to invest in new space technology and artificial intelligence, while revealing anxiety about Europe losing out to China or big tech companies. “The four GAFAs are bigger than Germany[’s economy],” he said, using the French-inspired acronym to refer to Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon.
Delegates also heard from EU leaders Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, but neither mentioned Brexit in their short speeches.
Senior EU politicians see little political capital in Brexit and one senior European source told the Guardian they would now cancel a trip to the UK if their agenda was too full. “I would prefer to go to Prague or Warsaw than London, because I cannot build anything with the UK.”
Meanwhile The Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, reiterated his determination not to see a hard border on the island of Ireland. “We want the future relationship between the EU and UK to be as close as possible, he said. “But it must provide a level playing field and the integrity of our single market must be upheld.”
He added: “The ball is very much in London’s court. Internal British politics is really a matter for them. I just hope Prime Minister May is in a position to get any potential agreement through her cabinet and through her parliament.”
The EU’s concerns about ensuring European firms are not undercut by British rivals operating under laxer rules on environment, workers’ rights, state aid, and health and safety, are not new. But they have come to the fore, as both sides seek to break the deadlock on the Irish backstop, which is hindering a November deal.
Negotiators are looking at a UK-wide customs union for the backstop, a concession by Brussels, which had proposed a Northern Ireland only model.
Barnier was speaking shortly before EPP delegates elected to become the next European commission president when Jean-Claude Juncker stands down in 2019. Party favourite, Manfred Weber, a German MEP since 2004, who leads the EPP in the European parliament, triumphed over his rival Alexander Stubb, a former prime minister of Finland.
The two candidates come from different wings of the large group, that is struggling to deal with its most troublesome member, Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.
Brexit, however, is one issue the candidates agree on: both regret the UK decision. “Brexit is one of the biggest travesties we have seen in international history,” said Stubb, who has a British wife and children with joint nationality. “Leaving the European Union is a bit like leaving the internet. You can do it, but it’s kind of stupid.”
Weber said the EU had to show European voters at the 2019 elections there was a benefit to membership. “If you don’t show the difference between being member of the European Union and being outside that will have a huge impact on the election campaign and that is why we have to be clear,” he said. “It must make a difference when you are leaving the European Union.”

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Philip Hammond’s proposed commemorative Brexit 50p coin is a stone-cold work of art. I mean it. It’s a silly distraction. It’s a medal designed to honour a false sense of misplaced national entitlement. It’s a tangible object that you can watch plummet in global value in real time. Honestly, it’s a masterpiece of form and content. You couldn’t do better if you tried.
That said, you have to admit that the whole notion is heavily skewed towards the 52% of the population who voted for Brexit. And this means that almost half of us are left without a coin. Here, then, are five proposals for a remainer 50p coin.
According to the Sun, the Brexit 50p will read “Friendship with all nations”. And that’s fine, if a subtle reminder that sarcasm doesn’t always translate to currency. But you know what would be better? Coins that came etched with different phrases in various European languages. Maybe (and attentive readers will note my use of Google Translate) Ich habe definitiv für rest entschieden (I definitely voted remain, in German), or Nous ne sommes pas tous comme eux (We’re not all like them, in French), or perhaps Jeg kan passe ind i en kuffert, tag mig med dig, tak, jeg vil ikke have et blåt pas (I can fit into a suitcase, take me with you, thank you, I don’t want a blue passport, in Danish).
Hammond’s 50p is traditional in that it has the Queen on one side and something else on the other. But this doesn’t fully reflect the sensation of living in post-Brexit Britain, so how about a coin that has the Queen on both sides? Something like that would be perfect for anyone in your life who enjoys making decisions based on the toss of a coin. Examples of Brexit-adjacent decisions you make with the two-headed coin include: Heads I shave off my eyebrows; tails I don’t, Heads I set everything I own on fire; tails I order a pizza, and Heads I destroy the welfare of every subsequent generation; tails I go and have a nice cup of tea.
I don’t know how the technology of this would work, but I’d really like to see a coin that mimics the Queen’s actual reaction to Brexit on a minute-by-minute basis. A coin where she slaps her forehead whenever Theresa May leaves the room. A coin with eyes that boggle whenever Britain’s circle of influence is further diminished. A coin that visibly lurches in despair when it realises that the subjects are close to revolt. That would be fun, right?
That’s what you really want, isn’t it? Leaving the European Union isn’t enough for you, is it? You preferred the country before it was ravaged by the scourge of decimalisation, didn’t you? Well, fine. To prove we’re not sore losers let’s mint a commemorative Brexit farthing. Look how beautiful it is; the size of a literal dinner plate, made of contaminated lead and worth a genuinely obscure fraction of a pound. Not enough? Fine. Then, let’s bring back the barter system. Here’s a commemorative Brexit bag of apples. A commemorative Brexit pig. Happy now?
You definitely grabbed a handful of these coins when you left your house this morning. You chose them because they were the best coins and met your needs much better than any of the other coins. But now you’re at the newsagent trying to buy a Twix and you can’t find them. You’re rifling through all your stuff with an increasing sense of panic. Was there a hole in your trousers? Were you pickpocketed? You definitely brought them with you, didn’t you? Behold, the commemorative Jeremy Corbyn 50p; the coin that vanishes into mid-air right when you need it most.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Hold off the jibes and sighs over how much poorer Brexit Britain will be. Forget about the mendacity and slipperiness of Boris ’n’ Nigel. In the six months since the referendum these have been the clever arguments to make, the ones that fill the sophisticated newspapers and BBC discussions. But none answer the far simpler and much harder question: then what? What happens when 17 million people get the feeling they’ve been cheated?
That will be the most profound question in British politics, not just in 2017 but for many years to come. As the broken promises of Brexit pile up one on top of the other, so that they are visible from Sunderland, from Great Yarmouth, from Newport, what will the leave voters do then?
The pledges I mean aren’t the ones about how £350m will flood each week into the NHS, or those others that came out waving a Pinnochio-sized proboscis. I’m thinking of the promises that went far deeper. The vow to “take back control”. To stop being the human punchline to someone else’s macroeconomic joke. To – as our north of England editor Helen Pidd wrote last week – no longer live on crumbs, while others in London enjoy entire loaves.
The Brexiteers were explicitly offering voters a once-in-a-lifetime shot at changing the status quo. And before embarking on what has otherwise been a stiff-backed, fixed-grin, try-hard few months at No 10, Theresa May got it, promising “people voted for change. And a change is going to come.”
Except change, in our new prime minister’s dictionary, just means more of the same. Admittedly, it is only six months into Year Zero and Britain is yet to start disentangling itself from Europe. But whatever is promised – hard or soft, red white or blue – it’s clear that the terms of Brexit will be dictated by Donald Tusk, Angela Merkel and the other 27 members of the EU, rather than by our dream team of May, Boris Johnson and David Davis. We can also see much else of what the next few years will bring. The economic plan for the rest of this decade has been laid out by Philip Hammond, and it equals austerity-lite – but for even longer. The forecasts for wages and living standards are in, and they indicate Britain will suffer its first lost decade since Karl Marx was alive.
More to the point, it’s not clear what May’s initial promises of a fresh start were worth. She steeled herself to call off the expensive disaster of Hinkley C – then meekly waved it through. She vowed to install workers on company boards – then the idea didn’t even make it on to a green paper. She promised to stick up for “just about managing” families, then allowed her chancellor instead to carry on slashing taxes for multinationals.
And then there’s foreign ownership of Britain’s infrastructure. Remember how May promised to scrutinise any proposed takeovers of such strategic assets as water, energy and transport? Well, last week, while the rightwing commentators were diligently huffing and puffing over Gina Miller at the supreme court, another kind of sovereignty was being covered on the City pages. The National Grid announced it would sell a majority of its gas pipelines to a consortium of largely overseas investors, including China and Qatar, and led by an Australian investment bank, Macquarie.
You may never have heard of Macquarie, but my guess is you’ve probably been one of its customers. The bank is known as the “millionaires’ factory” or the “vampire kangaroo” – and it owns a lot of the most prosaic parts of British life. You’ve been Macquaried if you’ve left your car in a National Car Park, or flown out of Glasgow, Southampton or Aberdeen or if you’re among its 14 million customers in Thames Water. And as of next spring, it will lead an international group with a 61% share in our biggest gas distribution network: that’s 82,000 miles of pipe, serving 11m homes and businesses across eastern England, the north-west and the West Midlands.
I have come across Macquarie before, through its handling of Thames Water, which some analysts cite as being among the greatest debacles in all of Britain’s history of privatisation. Just as with National Grid, it led a consortium to buy Thames. Two academics at the Open University examined the accounts between 2007 and 2012 and found that in four out of those five years, Macquarie and its fellow investors took out more money from the company than it made in post-tax profits. They crippled the firm with billions in debt, while Thames customers paid ever more in water bills and got among the worst service offered by any water company.
When I put these findings to Thames, its response was the email equivalent of a shrug: “Some years dividends exceed the years’ profits, sometimes they are less.” This was even while the company successfully managed to offload much of the cost and the risk for the Thames Tideway tunnel on to ordinary households.
The National Grid gas pipelines aren’t the only things Macquarie is set to get its hands on. Even while May was at her party conference at Birmingham talking about a country working for all, journalists were being briefed that the state-owned green investment bank would soon be flogged off to … you guessed it, Macquarie.
One of the canards about the referendum is that the decisive swing came from working-class voters furious at high immigration, and that therefore the primary issue that needs to be resolved in the next few years is who gets to stay in Britain and how. Whenever I hear that, I think of the voters I spoke to in south Wales just before the vote. True, all the leavers volunteered immigration as their main justification. But the longer we talked, in this area that remains almost exclusively white, the more it became clear that they were angry at something else – not the invisible refugees, nor far-off Brussels. One, Gareth Meek, told me: “I’m angry at the British government. They sold the country out. There’s nothing we own any more.” A multitude of frustrations, pushed through a binary vote.
What happens when Meek and his fellow voters realise that their vote for change – however loosely defined – means more of the same? When that call to take back control ends up with them playing the same old captive market, there to be ripped off by multinational capital. Who will take the blame then?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
‘So you’re going home.” This is something I hear a lot when I tell people that my wife and I have decided to move to Germany after 14 years of living in London. My reply is always the same: “Actually, we are leaving our home. This is our home.” We are moving to a country that my wife and I were born in and are citizens of, but which our children know only as a holiday destination. There was – and is – no burning desire on our part to live in Germany. I never missed the impoliteness, control freakery and permanent moaning that I associate with much of German public life.
There is, however, a definite urge to leave Britain, a country that has lost its way and, with it, many of its best qualities. In public discourse, pragmatism, level-headedness and tolerance (or at least benevolent indifference) have been largely replaced by uncompromising partisanship. The result of the EU referendum dismayed me, but did not surprise me. Ever since my time at Oxford University in the mid-90s, I had been aware of the deeply entrenched anti-EU sentiment, especially among politics graduate students – some of whom would go on to work with pro-Brexit politicians and in the media.
What that time did not prepare me for was the absurd spectacle that post-referendum British politics has mutated into. There seems to be no fudge, no disaster, no incompetence to which Britain’s current, distressingly myopic and feckless batch of politicians refuse to stoop, be they in government or opposition. The unworkable white paper thrashed out at Chequers, and the resignations, parliamentary chaos and no-deal threats resulting from it, have thrown the current level of ineptitude in British politics into sharp relief.
After the referendum, there was a shift in my journalistic remit. Before, I had what I will always consider the best job imaginable – reporting on the arts for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from the most culturally exciting and diverse city in the world. It was every arts journalist’s dream: I covered everything from the Turner prize to the Booker prize and interviewed artists such as Anish Kapoor, Ian McKellen and the Rolling Stones.
Since 24 June 2016, however, my job has been wall-to-wall Brexit coverage. I would not have been doing it properly if it had been any different. From a British perspective, it is the defining topic of our era, even though many Brits seem to prefer to ignore it, hoping it will just go away. In the run-up to the implementation of article 50 in March 2017, for instance, I started writing a daily “Countdown” column covering stories such as the diminished “Brexit Toblerone” to the harassment of our Polish friends after the referendum – and tracing how my perception of Britain had been changed by the result.
Brexit even made its way into arts coverage – for example, the National Gallery’s attempt to buy a painting by Jacopo da Pontormo from a US banker was scuppered by the slump in sterling, while the European Union Youth Orchestra, which had always had its headquarters in London, was forced to move to Italy.
My journeys outside the London bubble, before as well as after the referendum, made me aware of the broad spectrum of reasons for the Brexit vote, as well as of the fallout that is already happening, or is on the horizon. They showed me a Britain that is divided and directionless. Yet, looking at much of the domestic coverage, you would not know this. In most British media, journalists seem biased and underinformed in equal measure – and peddle the “will of the people” line unchallenged. One of the untruths repeated unquestioningly is the British government’s assertion that the status of the 3 million EU-citizens in this country is secure. Despite official protestations, it is still unclear what this status will be after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. If the “settlement scheme” that the home secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced goes ahead, we would at best have to apply and pay to secure as a privilege something that free movement has so far guaranteed. Free movement is neither a privilege nor some kind of transactional immigration deal. It is a reciprocal arrangement between EU member states, which formed the legal basis of our move to Britain all those years ago. It has been changed unilaterally by the British government. We had no say in it.
Being used as bargaining chips for two years and then allowed to stay in our home for a fee, turning from citizens into supplicants, is hardly a democratic process – even though, currently, it is the best-case scenario. The assertion that “nothing’s agreed until everything’s agreed”, recently reiterated by the trade secretary, Liam Fox, makes it clear that, should there be a no-deal Brexit, all of this would be irrelevant. At worst, we could be stuck in Britain with no legal status at all. In the light of all this, it is surely better to jump than wait to be pushed.
To those who are tempted to reassure us that “it won’t happen”, I can only say: look at the many instances over the past few years where you said the same, and then precisely that thing happened. Of course, Germany has its own problems. In her capricious interior minister, Horst Seehofer, Angela Merkel now has her own Boris Johnson-type loose cannon. However, in Germany at least we won’t be totally politically disenfranchised. EU citizens had no say in any of the Brexit decisions – Commonwealth citizens living in the UK were allowed to participate in the EU referendum, we weren’t; and we never had the vote in parliamentary elections. What our status would be in local elections (which we have been able to vote in so far) is up in the air, as everything is still legally unclear.
I imagine reactions to our departure will range from, “Oh, but we didn’t mean people like you” to “Good riddance, you won’t be missed”. To the former, I would reply: it doesn’t matter; the damage is done. Brexit will affect all EU citizens in the UK (and UK citizens in the EU) equally, and you don’t get to pick and choose. I do, however, tend to agree with the latter. The country won’t suffer terribly from having one fewer foreign arts journalist. It will be harder to replace the rest of my family, though. My sons – 13, 11, and seven years old – have dual citizenship but are all UK-born and have never lived outside Cricklewood, north-west London. All three were among the best students in their respective classes. They are rooted in Britain, and have visited (and in some cases been dragged to) more National Trust and English Heritage sites than you can shake a stick at.
When a young and very likable England team beat Colombia in their World Cup penalty shoot-out, my sons were delighted about the win. These were English boys supporting England. My children never had to choose between their German and British “identities” – a choice which I still hope they will never have to make. They have been very understanding about the reasoning behind the move. That doesn’t change the fact that they are leaving behind all their friends and, after a life shaped by the multiculturalism of one of the world’s great metropolises, now they will have to get used to an environment that is very different. For example, during our visit to his new school in Germany, one of my sons remarked, with some incredulity: “This is so weird – all the students are white!”
My wife, meanwhile, is leaving behind her post as a paediatric consultant at a London hospital. It was her firm belief in the egalitarian principles of the National Health Service, as well as the excellent medical training, that brought us to Britain in 2004. Her skillset and expertise, which she was fully committed to offer the NHS for the rest of her career, will now be applied elsewhere, just like those of many other excellent healthcare professionals from the EU.
A parliamentary briefing by the British Medical Association noted that almost half of doctors from the European Economic Area surveyed were considering leaving the UK after the referendum. And of those, more than a third have made concrete plans – that is almost one in five EU doctors working in the NHS (18%). A part of my wife’s job entails working with vulnerable children, and it remains unfilled - because the hospital so far has not been able to find a suitable replacement.
Having listened to myself talking about all of this quite passionately to a British friend, I asked him: “Am I overthinking this?” “No,” he said. “You are overfeeling it.” I have never considered myself an Anglophile; hopefully, my response to this complex nation has been more nuanced than uncritical adoration. But perhaps my friend was right. Our response to Brexit is as much emotional as a practical. Isn’t that correct, though, considering that the leave vote was entirely rooted in emotion? It is not easy to stay calm and rational when faced with the visceral, self-aggrandising, jingoistic drivel that flows endlessly from some in the leave camp. It is painful to see how Britain, particularly England, has bought into its own imperial, nostalgic myth and is now falling prey to the resulting delusions.
The discrepancy between the Brexit people thought they voted for and the one they will get reminds me a little of the story of Boaty McBoatface: “The people” voted to give that name to a 125-metre-long, state-of-the-art research vessel with a top speed of 17 knots and a helipad. What they got was a tiny, remote-controlled, unmanned, bright yellow submersible that looks like a suppository. Yet Boaty McBoatface, as disappointing as it may look, is much more useful than any form of Brexit. I would be delighted if this great project of national self-harm were not to happen. Unfortunately, I think it will, and we want to be gone when it does. For whatever shape Brexit takes, it will inevitably be worse than what we – what all of us – had before.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Bank of England deputy governor Ben Broadbent has said policymakers had been too pessimistic about the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, but warned of an “insidious” threat to business investment.
“There’s little doubt that the economy has performed better than surveys suggested immediately after the referendum and ... somewhat more strongly than our near-term forecasts as well,” Broadbent said in a speech at the Wall Street Journal’s offices in London.
“The central projection in the August inflation report didn’t involve a recession, simply a slowing in the economy’s rate of growth. But that slowing looks so far to have been more moderate than we feared.”
But the deputy governor cautioned against reading too much into individual pieces of data following the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
He said that while consumer spending would be “relatively unperturbed”, the greater risk would be a hit to business investment, as companies hold off on big spending commitments because of heightened uncertainty.
“A lack of clarity about the UK’s future trading relationships needn’t result in visible, headline-grabbing closures of productive capacity. The effect is likely to be more insidious: decisions to expand, that might otherwise have been taken, are delayed.”
Last week the Japanese carmaker Nissan said it could scrap a potential new investment at its Sunderland factory unless the UK government pledged to compensate it for any tariffs imposed after Brexit.
Broadbent said a combination of factors had probably helped the UK economy in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, including strong domestic demand and a weaker pound.
He defended the Bank against the accusation that its policy of ultra low interest rates was driving up pension deficits.
In August the Bank announced measures to support the economy following the Brexit vote. Interest rates were cut to an all-time low of 0.25%, and the Bank increased its asset purchasing programme – quantitative easing – by £60bn to £435bn.
Broadbent suggested that while looser monetary policy did play a part in rising deficits – because lower bond yields increase pension liabilities – the key driver was the economic backdrop.
“The decline in policy rates is a symptom not a cause of the forces shaping the global economy,” Broadbent said.
“The main thing to understand is that, even if domestic monetary policy has some bearing on real interest rates, at least for a while, it is not their ultimate determinant.”
He said that while looser monetary policy tended to drive bond yields lower, historically it also tended to increase the value of assets, benefiting pension funds.
“But over the past decade or so, equities and bonds have been negatively correlated. More to the point, the general tendency has been for bonds to do well – for yields to decline – and equities poorly.
“It’s this outperformance of the safe asset, highly unusual over such a sustained period, that has been the main problem for defined benefit [pension] schemes.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Just before Christmas, I spent a day in Cowley, a working-class suburb of Oxford where a factory now owned by BMW manufactures that great British icon, the Mini. The plant closes its doors for an annual “maintenance period”, usually timed to coincide with local schools’ summer holidays. But this year, amid the company’s concerns about Britain’s future relationship with Europe, the shutdown will not only be longer than usual but is scheduled to begin the day after we formally leave the European Union – a decision taken, says the company, to “minimise the risk of any possible short-term parts supply disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit”.
You might imagine the surrounding streets would be full of anxiety and urgency. But once BMW had declined my request to visit the factory and I had resigned myself to long hours spent vox-popping, I was not entirely surprised to find the complete opposite: questions about Brexit being met with an exasperated indifference, as if it were something in which people were barely interested.
Those who mentioned the factory assured me that it was in Cowley to stay. Among a couple of diehard leave supporters there was mention of Winston Churchill, and a suggestion that another referendum would be an offence against democracy. But most of my interviewees confirmed polling that has suggested a majority of both leavers and remainers now find Brexit boring, greeting any mention of it with grimaces and eye-rolling.
“It’s a pain in the backside,” said one man. “Nobody seems to know what’s going on. Every channel you turn on, it’s all they talk about. I’ve had enough of it.”
In 2016, he had voted leave. Did he have any sense of a way through the current mess? “I don’t know what the answer is now,” he says. “They’ve confused it so much.” He appeared to tilt towards staying in the EU, then leaned the other way.
At the start of a week when the parliamentary drama around Brexit will reach fever pitch, all this is worth bearing in mind. Whatever the noise from Westminster, for millions of people Brexit is something that happened two and a half years ago. It has since become synonymous with an indecipherable cacophony about cabinet splits, customs unions and the kind of arcana that might convulse Twitter but leaves most people cold. Clearly, this highlights a huge political failure – not least on the part of the supposed party of opposition – and a debate so distant from the public that any resolution of the country’s malaise seems pretty much impossible.
To outsiders, it must look like a kind of bizarre collective decadence: a watershed moment, replete with huge dangers, that will define our future for decades to come, being played out in the midst of widespread public boredom. Some of this is undoubtedly down to the fact that the realities of Brexit, whether with a deal or without, have yet to arrive. But much deeper things are at play: age-old traits that run particularly deep in England, and much newer changes in how politics reaches its audience.
For both good and ill, England has long been a country where the revolution starts after the next pint, most politicians are viewed with scepticism, and the national motto might as well be “Anything for a quiet life”. The vote for Brexit appeared to momentarily break the rules, but it was only a cross in a box, and it did not take long for people to revert to type. And now we find ourselves in the worst of all worlds: carrying out an act of self-harm we are told is the people’s will, when millions of the same people seem to have all but switched off.
Popular disengagement is made worse by the speed at which information now pours into people’s lives, and a political culture where day-to-day politics amounts to white noise, anything and everything might be fake news, and precious little seems to acquire any traction. Anyone who has had Brexit arguments with friends or relatives will probably recognise the essential story, enacted whenever some or other representative of an industry or profession that has much to fear appears on the television to warn of the consequences of exiting the EU only to elicit the crushingly predictable response: “That’s just an opinion.”
As proved by talk of the best hope for Theresa May’s deal lying with people termed Bobs (“bored of Brexit”), a mixture of tedium and disbelief in warnings about its downsides could be her salvation. One can imagine the scenario: even if she loses the vote on Tuesday, enough of her opponents on the right and left might realise that their passions are not shared by the electorate, and give up. If that happens, the immediate future of British politics will be just as deadened by Brexit as it is now – and in the midst of constant technocratic chatter about trade deals and the like, the public’s alienation from Westminster will deepen.
There are, of course, different possibilities. If a no-deal Brexit happens, maybe the resulting chaos will at last shake England out of its torpor. In the event of another referendum, should the remain side belatedly improve upon the hopeless campaign that led to disaster in 2016, people might finally hear about things that should have always defined the national conversation surrounding this country and its place in the world: the inarguable benefits of an open economy; the complex and often fragile trading arrangements that keep the economy in business and people in work; the fact that our history is not one of isolation from Europe but of being at its heart.
Even as I write those words, I am aware that any of our current politicians managing to get a hearing from people is an unlikely prospect. Even if May falls and we get a general election, the sense of a politics that is neither connecting with voters nor dealing with Britain’s tensions could easily go on. Jeremy Corbyn is among the politicians most sceptically viewed by the kind of voters he needs to get onside, and the fact that the Labour leadership has so far avoided any meaningful conversation about Brexit – let alone the deep questions tangled up in it, about what kind of country we ought to be – suggests that even if the party managed to win, the delusions that led us into our current predicament might be left to fester.
Think of a term such as “national disaster” and you imagine burning cars and violent crowds. But a nation of sleepwalkers, little interested in its politicians and eternally unimpressed by their warnings, is unlikely to do anything nearly as dramatic. Beyond the current sound and fury, where we are headed could well be summed up by an old Pink Floyd lyric sung in crisp Home Counties tones: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
In the generally dismal year of 2018, one of the most cheering spectacles has been the transformation of the People’s Vote movement from a campaign that could plausibly be presented as the liberal elite demanding its job back, to a grassroots insurgency driven by young people that rallied 700,000 people on to the streets of London in October.
Its true faces are not political figures from the past, but tribunes of the future like Femi Oluwole, Lara Spirit and Will Dry. To quote that astute political observer Mr Zimmerman: “Your old road is/ Rapidly agin’ / Please get out of the new one / If you can’t lend your hand.”
It would be a serious exaggeration to say that Westminster has embraced this generational moment – but it is undeniable that the notion of a fresh referendum has moved, in the past 12 months, from the periphery of political discourse to the point where it is being seriously discussed in No 10. In response to a Sunday Times report that he was preparing for such a vote, Gavin Barwell, the prime minister’s chief of staff, tweeted this morning that he did not “want” and was not “planning” a second referendum – not quite an absolute denial, I would suggest.
David Lidington, Theresa May’s de facto deputy, is also said to be in talks with Labour MPs on how to break the impasse. He and his fellow cabinet members Amber Rudd, Philip Hammond, David Gauke and Greg Clark, are certainly open to the idea of second referendum. I am cautious when any such groupings are instantly characterised as a disciplined caucus – in this case the “gang of five” – since the alignments in this extraordinary constitutional crisis are constantly changing, not least as individual cabinet ministers weigh up their leadership prospects: one might call it agenda fluidity.
The point, however, is that senior Tories are now discussing the option of a people’s vote. Their change of heart is not driven by principle or enthusiasm – none of them wants to go through the root-canal treatment of 2016 again – but practicality and empiricism.
As ignominious for May as Wednesday’s confidence vote undoubtedly was, her treatment in Brussels on Thursday was much worse. Having assured her cabinet colleagues on the phone that she would bring home the legal assurances to make her 585-deal acceptable to the Commons, she came back with nothing to offer except a debate about the correct use of the word “nebulous”.
Her agreement with Brussels is fit only for the political mortuary, and everyone knows this. Whether the “meaningful vote” in the Commons is held this week or on January 21 (the deadline), it is not coming back to life. None of the alternatives – “Norway-plus”, “Canada-plus-plus”, or variants thereupon – command a parliamentary majority. So the cabinet and MPs must now consider how they feel about a second referendum and a no-deal exit.
I say “and” rather than “or” because the options are by no means mutually exclusive. Those cabinet ministers who have come round to a “managed no deal” – an oxymoron if ever there was one – know perfectly well that they have to do much more than run out the clock and march forth to glory on 29 March.
For them, the worst outcome is a binary referendum in which the voters are offered a choice between May’s deal and remain. In such circumstances, remain would win by a mile. The Brexiteers would argue – for once, with some justice – that they had been shoddily treated. Hence, those ministers who believe no deal would be merely bumpy rather than completely catastrophic need urgently to persuade the public that it is eminently deliverable, true to the spirit of the 2016 referendum result, and (crucially) a lot better than the status quo of EU membership.
In a Sunday Telegraph interview, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, confirming that he would indeed like a “crack” at the Tory leadership, also asserted “we’ll find a way to flourish and prosper [in a no-deal situation]. We’ve faced much bigger challenges in our history.” Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, is also expected to explain this week how such an exit would be viable.
Meanwhile, Liz Truss, the able chief secretary to the Treasury, is busily allocating a £2bn pot to deal with the challenges of a no-deal exit. That strikes me as a conservative figure, given what we already know about the implications of crashing out of the EU for healthcare, trade, haulage and transport.
It seems to me that there would be a refreshing honesty in a referendum that offered voters a straightforward choice between remain and a no-deal exit. Nobody, on either side, could subsequently complain that the public had not known what it was choosing between.
But I doubt that such a clarity of choice will be easily achieved.
There are plenty of senior Tories and Labour figures who would only accept deal v no deal, on the grounds that a second referendum can only clarify rather than reverse the 2016 decision. Others favour a three-option ballot paper (deal, no deal, remain) with an “alternative vote” mechanism to determine the most acceptable option.
The official Brexit date is little more than 100 days away. Yet in less than a week we have been whisked from “will May go ahead with the meaningful vote?” to “what should appear on the ballot paper in a second referendum?”
So there is a festive whisper of hope that we might yet escape this mess. But only a whisper. It would be highly irresponsible to suggest that anyone is yet safe from – whatever is claimed to the contrary – the appalling risk of a no-deal tumble into the abyss. Because nobody is.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Should an election or a referendum come first? While it is obvious that an election cannot resolve Brexit, the concern about waiting for a referendum is that it would take too long; who would govern in the interim and with what mandate?
However, that concern is based on the false premise that a referendum would take a minimum of 22 weeks to organise. This assumption is based largely on the application of existing legislation, reviewed in a report in October 2018 by The Constitution Unit and The UK in a Changing Europe organisations.
However, what seems to have been forgotten is that in the 1975 referendum, on whether Britain should stay in European Economic Community, it took only nine weeks from the introduction of legislation to the holding of the vote and three of those were taken up with waiting for royal assent. In effect, the referendum took six weeks. It is fair to say that there was a preceding white paper, but it shows that a speedy referendum is possible.
There would be huge advantages to such a course – it would quickly produce much-needed certainty and reduce the time available for further social division. Just as in 1975, people have debated the issues ad nauseam – what is needed now is a chance to vote. It would also cut the time available for massive expenditure. This is important because the rules in relation to campaign spending limits have recently been rendered pointless by a court of appeal decision, which held that campaigns may donate goods and services to other campaigns without them counting as their own “referendum expenses”. In effect, therefore, campaigns are no longer subject to spending limits under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.
Most importantly, pursuing such a course could crack what have seemed like insuperable obstacles. The first is the vexed question of who would run a caretaker government. While Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for not standing aside to allow a more neutral figure to take charge, his position is hardly surprising. As leader of the opposition, Corbyn would normally take on the role of leader of an interim government following a vote of no confidence. In ceding it to a government of national unity, he would not only relegate himself to the backbenches but give up his place as leader of the opposition to Boris Johnson. Labour would also lose “Short money”, funds paid to the opposition.
But it is equally unsurprising that those who oppose Corbyn refuse to support him being installed in No 10, fearing that it could potentially be for as long as six months, during which time no one will know what he might do or what electoral advantage he might gain. A six-week period might be short enough to allay those concerns. Equally, it may be short enough for Corbyn to accept an alternative figurehead, after which an election and normal politics would resume.
The second obstacle is the length of any extension that the EU is willing to grant. The longer there is delay and uncertainty, the more problematic it will be for business and the EU itself. Organising a referendum quickly would bring closure quickly, which would benefit everyone.
The third obstacle is whether a referendum or election should come first. An election can be arranged quickly and in that sense is superficially attractive as a first step. But it cannot provide a clear mandate for any particular course on Brexit. A government based on 37% of the electorate could not claim a mandate either for “no deal” or for “revoke”. As for a coalition, or confidence and supply, government, it is difficult to see what mandate it would have. Only a referendum can produce a clear outcome and allow closure. If it could be arranged as quickly as an election, even the superficial attraction of holding an election first falls away.
A referendum could only provide closure, however, if its result were legitimate, certain and could immediately be implemented. Therefore, it would be most sensible for it to follow the 1979 Scottish post-legislative referendum, in which the relevant legislation was to come into effect on an affirmative vote or, if rejected, would fall away. The way to do that would be for the 2018 withdrawal agreement (which Johnson voted for) and its implementing legislation – the withdrawal and implementation bill – to be debated and adopted by parliament, subject to confirmation by referendum, following which the agreement would be ratified and the bill would come into effect.
If rejected, the prime minister would be required to revoke the article 50 notification to the EU. The consequence would be that within days of the referendum result the position of the United Kingdom would be final and clear in national and international law.
People may argue that not allowing no deal on the ballot would remove legitimacy in the eyes of many. But no deal would not provide closure, it being uncertain in its meaning. Moreover, parliament has overwhelmingly voted against it on the basis that it would be catastrophic in its consequences for the future of this country, including real risk to lives and livelihoods. It is difficult to see how any liberal democracy, that is, a rule-of-law-based system that safeguards fundamental rights and freedoms, could put that to the people as a legitimate choice.
Last modified on Fri 14 Feb 2020 16.55 GMT
We know what the week running up to the glorious day of Brexit is supposed to be like. A few nights before the original chosen date of 29 March 2019, Boris Johnson was “in conversation” with his old boss at the Telegraph, Charles Moore, at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. Johnson was out of office then, and free to indulge himself without constraint.
He told the audience that this “was meant to be the week when church bells were rung, coins struck, stamps issued and bonfires lit to send beacons of freedom from hilltop to hilltop. This was the Friday when Charles Moore’s retainers were meant to be weaving through the moonlit lanes of Sussex, half blind with scrumpy, singing Brexit shanties at the tops of their voices and beating the hedgerows with staves.” Moore replied that Johnson was right, “but in fact I had already stood these good people down, since I could see what was coming”.
This was incestuous Old Etonian/Old Telegraphian joshing, though if anyone on the Remain side of the argument had characterised Leave supporters, even in jest, as drunken yokels, there would have been no end to the outrage. But it is telling nonetheless. It points to one of the great underlying difficulties of Brexit’s Independence Day. It poses as a moment of national liberation, a people freeing itself from the oppression of an alien empire. But what “people” are being liberated?
That the leader of the revolution enjoys imagining his trustiest followers as the Wurzels suggests the awkwardness of the question. For the great problem of Brexit is that it is a populist project without a people, a nationalist project without a nation.
During the referendum campaign in 2016, Johnson puzzled many of his own supporters by claiming Brexit itself as, of all things, “the great project of European liberalism”. This may be like claiming puritanism as the great project of sexual liberation, but it does make a superficial kind of sense. The central idea of Brexit is indeed part of 18th- and 19th-century European culture: the nation state as the primary locus of political loyalty and as the collective manifestation of a unified “people”. Brexit has to present itself in these terms: a suppressed people rising up, as Jacob Rees-Mogg puts it, to set itself “free of the heavy yoke of the European Union”.
But here there is a great irony: Britain is not and never has been a nation state. For most of its history as a state, it has been at the heart not of a national polity, but of a vast multinational and polyglot empire. And the UK is itself a four-nation amalgam of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is no single pre-EU UK “nation” to return to. There is no unified “people” to whom power is being returned. And this is the contradiction that the Brexit project cannot even acknowledge, let alone resolve.
Scotland and Northern Ireland rejected Brexit even more emphatically in the general election of 2019 than they had done in the referendum of 2016 and a clear majority of voters in the UK as a whole voted in 2019 for parties that promised a second referendum and an opportunity to stay in the EU. So while Johnson likes to talk of 31 January as “this pivotal moment in our national story”, there is neither a settled nation nor a shared story. Brexit is not Northern Ireland’s story. It is not Scotland’s story. It is not even London’s story. It is the national origin myth of the place that Anthony Barnett, co-founder of openDemocracy, calls “England without London”.
There is no doubt that Brexit has worked in the way that nationalist movements try to – it has united people across great divides of social class and geography in the name of a transcendent identity. Many of those people, if not quite drunk on scrumpy and bawling Brexit shanties, will feel real joy on 31 January. But the problem is that this unity of national purpose functions within a nation that does not actually exist: non-metropolitan England and parts of English-speaking Wales. And it is purchased at the very high price of creating much deeper divisions between England-without-London and the rest of the British-Irish archipelago.
There is a particular paradox here when we think back on that great Brexit slogan: take back control. It is that the parts of the UK that have actually “taken back control” into their own local democratic institutions reject Brexit; while the parts that support Brexit have no such institutions. The Scottish parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland assembly have all voted overwhelmingly in recent weeks to reject the withdrawal agreement. (Their votes will of course be ignored by the government in London.)
But the voters in England who actually want Brexit are not recognised at all as a “people” with a voice of their own. They are nationalist revolutionaries without a political nation. They are creating a country for themselves, but it is one that dare not speak its name.
At the heart of this dilemma is the illusion that a fragile multinational state can play with the fire of nationalism yet not get burned. The allure of leaving a larger multinational political entity and going your own way is very potent. But once you establish it as the core value of politics, where do you stop? Brexit sets in motion the logic that shared sovereignty is unnatural and that all “peoples” must return to the pure dominion of their ancient nations.
However, it then commands the tide of separatism to stop at the current borders of the UK. It dictates that the nation must take back control of its own fate in order to inaugurate for itself what Johnson and Rees-Mogg unblushingly hail as a “golden age”. But apparently the only nation that is supposed to hear this thrilling call of destiny is the new England that has been conjured into being. You would need to be half blind on scrumpy not to see the fatal contradiction.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Using the threat of other people’s criminal violence to demand you get your way is despicable from anyone. It is the politics of the protection racket. It’s not, sadly, altogether unusual these days, but what’s new in recent weeks is threefold.
First, these threats are coming directly from government. Not from the prime minister on the record, but anonymously, from “senior sources” and “No 10 briefings”. These threats are then being given credibility by widespread dissemination – in print, on broadcast and, above all, online – by journalists who might do well to question whether they should be broadcasting or printing such comprehensive statements to which no one is prepared to put their name.
Anonymity is often one of the worst poisons of our politics and now it’s a key tool of government strategy, not least because it creates process stories that distract from the horrendous damage that government policy is doing, and will go on doing, to working people’s lives.
Second, the people of whose violence we are supposed to be frightened are being both identified and briefed on acceptable triggers by the government. Leave voters, the subtext of all this briefing suggests, are all supposed to be furious, to be liable to resort to unrest. As someone who represents thousands of people who voted Leave, I find this a vile smear on my constituents. I don’t think that Britain would be well served by leaving the EU, but the overwhelming majority of people who voted to leave are not potential criminals: it is appalling to suggest they might be.
Leave voters are not the violent far right: instead, they are decent people with whom, on this issue, I happen to disagree. Most of them voted not for a dramatic rupture with our European neighbours but for leaving with a good deal, as they were so often promised in 2016. The transformation of what Brexit means from “with a deal, of course” to “at any cost, on an arbitrary date” has been extraordinary. The mantra that we can “get Brexit done” quickly is one of the biggest lies of all. Brexit is – at best – a decade-long project that will devour our politics.
As well as smearing half the population, the government’s unsourced briefings tell us quite specifically what the government thinks might trigger violent criminality. An extension to article 50. A confirmatory referendum. Further attempts by parliament or the courts to ensure the rule of law. So the government is preparing not merely to excuse but to shape for its own purposes the threat of violent unrest. Quite why anyone should believe that a referendum will cause riots, but the government’s preferred option of a general election centred on Brexit will be absolutely fine, is entirely beyond me. How can anyone with any shame maintain with a straight face that two democratic events will be so different in this regard?
Third, for all the government’s denials – and it’s hard to trust a government that uses lying so systematically both as a way of evading responsibility and as a tool for creating distractions – there is the possibility that these efforts to whip up civil unrest, and the fear of it, have a darker purpose. That the unrest they claim is a risk is intended not merely to happen but then to provide a pretext. A couple of minor incidents might see the prime minister reach for the emergency powers in the Civil Contingencies Act without time for the courts to stop him. After all, it is no good Brexit being subsequently ruled unlawful, after we have already crashed out in international law.
Now I am used to threats of violence, sadly: like all MPs, I’ve had people making threats about me and my family that are chilling. Many are from people who hide behind false names or strings of numbers. But the government seeking to use these threats to serve its purposes is sickening and unprecedented.
I find it hard to forgive Tory MPs for nearly a decade of voting for the systematic impoverishment of my most vulnerable constituents, but I had thought better of many of them than to support a government like this. I hope in the votes ahead they do not forget that it is their prime minister who has taken us to this dangerous and bitterly divided place.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
So quickly has the unthinkable become unremarkable. US presidents never used to conspire to undermine European security. Nowadays it is normal. We learned last week that, when Emmanuel Macron was a guest in the White House in April, Donald Trump suggested France leave the European Union. And it hardly makes the top 20 Trumpian outrages of the year so far.
It isn’t news that Trump despises the EU. His primary grievance is economic: the US imports too many European goods (German cars, for instance). He believes that the strong sell to the weak, and thus a trade deficit is a symptom of national enfeeblement and a shame to be extirpated. So he launched a tariff war with Brussels. But that is a symptom of a more profound cognitive impairment. The president struggles with concepts of reciprocity and solidarity. His is a zero-sum universe in which benefits enjoyed by anyone else must have been deducted from his portion.
He also knows no history. He does not recognise the underlying ethos of the EU, conceived in the ashes of 20th-century apocalypse, binding formerly antagonistic states into mutual economic obligations. The very idea belongs to a dimension that Trump’s mind cannot visit. No wonder he likes Brexit.
It would be naive to imagine the present-day EU as a perfect realisation of its founding promise. And there is no available counterfactual to show how much poorer and less secure its members might be had their union never evolved. Still, its rise has generally tracked trends of unprecedented peace and prosperity, so it is rational to be afraid when the White House agitates for the whole thing to unravel.
Doubling pro-Europeans’ anxiety is the thought of Angela Merkel reaching her political twilight. The German chancellor is in her 13th year in office. She stands on the continental stage as an ambassador from the past and keeper of its lessons. Her childhood was spent in an authoritarian communist republic that was dissolved in 1990. Her career is a tribute to the merit in tearing down walls.
But her coalition government is fragile. The moderate, liberal consensus it upholds, and of which she has come to be an embodiment, looks haggard and defensive. The Europe that Merkel represents is besieged by populists and nationalists. The trend manifests itself in varied forms from country to country. The new maverick Italian strain is different to the entrenched Polish and Hungarian versions. But a common thread is venomous anti-immigration rhetoric in harmony with the Trump agenda. Richard Grenell, Washington’s ambassador to Berlin, recently gave an interview to Breitbart, the hard-right propaganda outlet, in which he described an ambition to “empower” disruptive movements spreading conservative dissent across the continent.
Consider what embattled European liberals make of Brexit in this context. It is admired by a US president who wishes misfortune on them; and that president is admired by Tory politicians who speak of Brussels as if it were a mortal enemy. From across the Channel, Trump and Brexit look like monstrous conjoined electoral twins, born a few months apart in 2016, both conceived in hostility to prevailing norms of global governance.
Theresa May understands this, and has tried to rebrand Brexit as something Europe-friendly. When speaking with an eye on her continental audience, she emphasises shared history and values. She talks of an enduring, close partnership. She believes it, too. The only significant intervention she made for the remain campaign in 2016 was a speech explaining how an alliance of western democracies amplified the UK’s power in the world. “The European Union does make us more secure, it does make us more prosperous and it does make us more influential beyond our shores,” May said.
One of the crippling delusions that fogged Brexiter judgment at the start of the article 50 process was a belief that individual national interests of the 27 other member states could be gamed to the UK’s advantage: that while the commission was formally in charge of the negotiations, there would come a point when old-fashioned bilateral bargaining could take over. Then the mythical “bespoke” deal – stitched from scraps of old treaty to fit around Britain’s economy – would be available. It hasn’t happened, and Trump is a large part of the reason. His marauding presence on the global stage enhances the value in European community and casts Brexit as its antithesis.
For every effort the prime minister makes to explain that Britain still wants to uphold the rules-based international order, there are a dozen times her cabinet, her party, and the whole frenzied Brexit-boosting carnival proves the opposite. There is Boris Johnson, fantasising aloud how much better Trump would be at handling the negotiations. There are reports that John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser, held private talks with hardline pro-Brexit MPs behind May’s back. And these are the alt-right Tories who stalk the prime minister, daggers half-drawn, signalling that their revolution will be completed either by her or over her political corpse.
How is the EU supposed to accommodate a country whose leader claims to support its project but whose ruling party fizzes with excitement at the prospect of an epoch-shaking schism? How is Merkel or Macron to understand May’s ambition for a “deep and special partnership” when they can see the wreckers over her shoulder; when her friendly words are drowned out by drums that beat in perfect time with sworn enemies of Europe’s founding idea?
The prime minister has ducked many choices since the negotiations to leave the EU began, and avoided many hard questions. But they all flow from one strategic call; one irreducible Brexit dilemma. Our most valuable allies see their problem as the unravelling of European solidarity. Britain has to decide whether it is serious about being part of the solution.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Ever since David Cameron took it on himself to prise open Pandora’s box and call the EU referendum, the only thing that’s been predictable has been the utter unpredictability of what has followed. The prospect of Theresa May now taking on Erskine May, whose work lays down the procedural rules of the House of Commons, is but the latest twist in this epic Whitehall farce. His book was first published in 1844, and there is a simple reason that it’s still the principal point of reference when it comes to our constitution: it has passed the toughest test of all – time.
Once the country voted for Brexit, I wanted the prime minister to make a success of it, but I knew that unpicking 45 years of entwinement with the EU would be impossible without our elected lawmakers being fully involved. I recognised too that neither “taking back control” nor the simple line on the ballot paper “leave the European Union” could be construed as giving her the right to deny parliamentary sovereignty.
That is why I fought my case, first the high court and then, after the government appealed, in the supreme court, for the House of Commons to be given its right to debate and vote invoking article 50. I knew that to allow May to override parliament would set a dangerous precedent. And let us be clear: if the courts had not ruled in my favour, the prime minister’s disastrous withdrawal agreement, which everyone from Boris Johnson to David Lammy has agreed would be terrible for our country, would have gone through unchallenged.
I never doubted that our parliamentarians would vote to trigger article 50 but I expected a detailed, pragmatic debate around the options of how to execute Brexit and the processes involved. I had hoped it would be the start of a collegiate approach to this challenge, but the whole process has been executed back to front. If the government had allowed parliamentary debates and sought the consensus of MPs, then triggered article 50 and negotiated on their favoured option, we would not be in the chaos we are in today.
Instead, we are faced with 10 tumultuous days to potentially exiting the EU, in the worst constitutional crisis since 1909 – when the then Conservative-dominated House of Lords blocked the Liberal government’s so-called People’s Budget. We are now living through equally historic days and the pressure on our parliamentary system is just as intense.
May’s challenge to the authority of the Speaker does not turn on personalities but, instead, on how our country has been run for centuries. Even Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, conceded today that John Bercow is, to all intents and purposes, the “referee” of the Commons, and therefore his rulings must be accepted and respected by all sides, or chaos would ensue.
It is all very well for some MPs and commentators to mock Bercow for reviving a convention dating back to 1604, but what it stated was no more than common sense: no prime minister before May has ever attempted to get through the Commons a vote as historically and comprehensively rejected as hers has been, by the simple process of attrition. Trying to wear down elected politicians by presenting a materially unchanged bill over and over again while the clock runs down was a reckless a course of action. The Speaker, John Bercow, rightly understands that a third meaningful vote in the coming days on “substantially the same” motion that MPs have twice rejected would open our parliament up to ridicule.
May’s greatest weakness is her intransigence. She now appears to see Bercow as standing in her way, and her only strategy is to try to trample him underfoot. No doubt her advisers have told her that the only way round the Speaker’s ruling would be to prorogue parliament and start a new session. There’s no way, feasibly, that this could be done in under a week (minus the two days the PM will be in Brussels), coupled with the fact that a 92-year old monarch can’t reasonably be made to come to parliament in state at a moment’s notice.
To complicate matters still further, any legislation not subject to a carry-over motion would automatically be discarded and be a huge waste of parliamentary time in both houses. Some of the major Brexit-related bills stuck in the Lords may face this fate – in which case they would have to be reintroduced and go through all their parliamentary stages again.
There is an exquisite irony – apparently lost on May and her advisers in their No 10 bunker – that she thinks it’s absolutely fine to keep bringing back her meaningful vote until she gets the outcome she desires, while publicly decrying remainers’ appeals for a second plebiscite.
In the immediate aftermath of Bercow’s ruling, the arch-Brexit supporters Bill Cash and Jacob Rees-Mogg appeared ecstatic, presumably because they believed that this makes no deal more likely. The Commons has, however, indicatively ruled this out, which presumably means an extension is much more likely because, at the very least, it will allow parliament to pass all the required legislation.
The time has come and gone for May to carry on kicking the MV3/MV4 can down the road toward the no-deal cliff edge next week. If she gets nothing substantive out of the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, the Speaker should insist that she and her failing government come to the Commons on Saturday, in an emergency sitting, for a final showdown on her proposed deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Despite another defeat in Saturday’s parliamentary sitting, Boris Johnson may yet have the last laugh. While all eyes are on the Brexit-related legislation, and there is much to get through parliament, there is still the Queen’s speech, which last week laid out the government’s legislative agenda. A vote on that agenda is expected in the coming week – and without a majority of MPs, Johnson could lose again. In the past, such a defeat has tended to result in the prime minister resigning, but with Johnson and his chief adviser Dominic Cummings in No 10 precedent and convention are out of the window.
The opposition could call for a no-confidence vote after a Queen’s speech defeat, but Johnson could himself take the initiative by calling a general election before 24 October – by setting down an amendment to the fixed-term act which would require a simple majority. Johnson and Cummings know only too well that a Tory majority is theirs for the taking, as the current polls stand.
With Cummings in No 10, bullying and propaganda are also what it is about. One such tactic appears to be to encourage the EU not to grant the UK an extension, or make it appear they won’t; but what matters always is the law. A legal opinion I was involved in commissioning earlier this year, written by Kieron Beal QC and three other senior lawyers, states that the EU has a legal duty to all its member states to ensure that any withdrawal is not damaging to what article 13(1) of the treaty on European Union calls the “consistency, effectiveness and continuity of its policies and actions”. Article 13(2) spells out: “Pursuant to the principle of sincere cooperation the EU and the member states shall, in full mutual respect, assist each other in carrying out the tasks which flow from the treaties.” And until we leave, we are still a member state. With my lawyers – public-spirited citizens who are willing to work pro-bono for the good of our country – I am watching closely what Johnson is doing and, rest assured, this government will not be allowed to ride roughshod over our laws and our constitution.
It says a lot, meanwhile, about what is wrong with our electoral system that if Johnson were to win a general election convincingly, he would have a clear path to enact policies that the British public is increasingly resiling from. The hundreds of thousands who gathered in central London on Saturday to demand their say on any deal clearly now represent the majority of voters. According to Kantar, just 20% would back the new deal for Brexit.
Still, looking at the voting records of our MPs, and the political ideology of the cabinet, what Oliver Letwin has achieved with his amendment passed on Saturday will only hold off no deal or the hardest of Brexits in the short term. The fallout for the overwhelming majority of citizens who are struggling to make ends meet, or have taken for granted basic rights and protections, or have been welcomed in a tolerant, multicultural UK, will undoubtedly be very bleak.
This is not, however, a time to give up, but to be ready to vote tactically and to use our imperfect electoral system every bit as cunningly as Johnson and Cummings. My team and I at Remain United stand ready, in collaboration with the experts at Electoral Calculus, to launch a politically unbiased tactical voting website again, as we did for the European elections this year and in the 2017 general election. Back then, polls predicted Theresa May would gain an 80-plus majority, yet due in a large part to tactical voting she was only able to form a minority government – the consequences of which we are still seeing today.
In the election, a repeat of this strategy will involve a lot of people voting – in Polly Toynbee’s phrase – with clothes pegs on their noses as, quite frankly, voting blindly along the old party political lines would be a disaster for our country.
If we do still leave the EU with Johnson’s substandard version of May’s deal – or with no deal, and I still don’t rule it out, even after Saturday’s vote – reality will soon hit home and I believe vast swathes of Johnson’s supporters will turn against him. The damage will, of course, have been done – but what is clear to me is that whoever wins the next election, or whatever parties form a coalition, the government is unlikely to be in power for long.
A lot of far-sighted politicians on all sides of the house are now looking ahead to the general election after this one. Will all the present leaders then still be in place? I would not bet on it. I look to that future government to start to begin the long process of fixing what David Cameron – in such happier times – called Broken Britain.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there is a moment when Augustine St Clare, who owns Tom, suggests that he is better off as a slave than he would be as a free man. “No,” insists Tom. “Why Tom?” asks St Clare. “You couldn’t possibly have earned, by your work, such clothes and such living as I have given you.” “Know’s all that Mas’r,” says Tom. “But I’d rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything and have ’em mine, than have the best, and have ’em any man else’s.”
It has long been a challenge, particularly for those who are comfortable, to understand why anybody who is struggling would choose to be worse off. Liberals can take it particularly personally when those who would most benefit materially from a change in policy or circumstance opt to reject it. The assumption is that they must be misinformed, ill-informed, uninformed, stupid, naive or cruelly misled.
Whether they are poor Americans demonstrating against healthcare provision they don’t have, or direct beneficiaries of European Union funding voting to leave the EU, those who act “against” their material interests invite a mixture of befuddlement and derision.
Since becoming poorer is not a course of action any poor person would consciously take, goes the argument, they are clearly not acting rationally and deserve what is coming.
Quite why well-off liberals in particular would find someone voting against their material interests such a baffling idea is odd. They do it all the time. Whenever they vote Labour, or for any party that plans to raise taxes on the wealthy and redistribute income, they vote to make themselves worse off materially. True, they are better positioned to take a hit than those at the other end of the income scale. But there’s more to it than that. They do so, for the most part, because when it comes to politics they don’t just vote for their own financial wellbeing. They are thinking about the kind of country and world they want to live in, and the values that they hold dear.
The notion that working-class voters approach politics differently is extremely patronising. Indeed it is precisely the kind of attitude that provides fodder to the rightwing culture warriors who rail against the “coastal elites” in the US and “do-gooders”. There really are some liberals who think that they know what’s better for working-class people than working-class people themselves do.
This is not just a problem in and of itself – infantilising people in the name of their own advancement is a bad thing – it is counterproductive. When you start from the premise that those who disagree with you are acting illogically or are too unsophisticated to understand their own interests, no meaningful political engagement is possible – that would demand first understanding the logic and then challenging, converting, subverting or otherwise engaging it in the hope that you might change someone’s perspective and win them round.
This has, of course, been a particular challenge when it comes to Brexit, where the two things we know are that poor people will be the most adversely affected by Britain leaving the EU – particularly if there is no deal – and that the poorer you are, the more likely you were to vote for it.
With some notable exceptions, remain advocates have responded to this apparent conundrum by forsaking respectful engagement in favour of a combination of face-palming at the stupidity of lemmings going for a leap and promising Armageddon when they land. This didn’t work in the run-up to the referendum. And it’s not working now.
This is partly because leave voters don’t believe the hype. A recent poll showed a significant majority of them believed Brexit posed a less serious crisis than either the financial crash or the miners’ strike. In other words, it’s not that they don’t understand things could get worse; they just feel they’ve been through worse. That may, as Fintan O’Toole argued in this newspaper recently, reflect the complacency of those who have only known stability. “Only a country that does not really know what the collapse of political authority looks like would play this game,” he wrote. We won’t know until it’s too late.
But also many did not vote purely for their material interest, but for something bigger that they thought more important. Polling by the Centre for Social Investigation revealed that remain voters significantly underestimated the importance that leave voters attached to sovereignty. The UK making its own rules came a close second out of four (immigration was first) in the reasons why people voted leave. When remain voters were asked why they thought people had voted leave they put the UK making its own laws last, after “teach British politicians a lesson”.
Embodied in that preoccupation with sovereignty, I believe, was a notion of what this country has been, has become and might be – a story many British, and particularly English, people tell themselves about a once independent and impregnable distinct island that has lost its autonomy to a faceless potage of bureaucrats from Babel and how this is a chance to break free. That story did not come from nowhere. From the Falklands war to Fritz, the New Labour bulldog, the entire political class has colluded in its construction. It has now been leveraged by opportunists and is consuming the political class whole.
It is a story enduring enough that when someone argues, “If you do this your factory might close,” you might respond: “It’s not my factory and ‘they’ve’ been closing factories around here for years. But it is my country and I don’t want ‘them’ messing with it.” In this story “they” is a moving target. It could be immigrants, it could be Brussels, it could be foreign companies. The only thing “we” know for sure is it’s not “us”.
I think that story’s deeply flawed. It is mythical about the past: those who evoke the wars conveniently forget that they could not have been won without allies. Those who evoke the empire conveniently forget that it could not have been maintained without brutality (as the current furore over Winston Churchill’s legacy illustrates). It is obtuse about the present: countries evolve, borders shift, identities develop. Our royal family is German; our favourite food is Indian; and if people could only agree on how to spell Muhammad it would be England’s most popular name for a boy. We are not who we were; nor should we seek to be. And it is fanciful about our future: our political sovereignty, like everybody else’s, is primarily constrained not by Brussels, but international capital. And since you can’t vote to leave that, staying in or out of the EU will make us less effective, but not more independent.
But I also think, in the absence of other stories, it is compelling. Far more compelling than the threat of a scarcity of fresh vegetables and a run on the pound if we crash out with no deal. Compelling enough that some would suffer to see it through. Our challenge is not to mock, but to tell a better story. One that includes them, has a future for all of us and, ultimately, turns “them” and “us” into “we”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Unless the UK is willing to submit to the rules and regulations from the European Union, the Norway option is not really on the table. Norway’s relationship with the UK has warmed considerably since our king Harald Hardrada failed to invade England in 1066 and lost the battle of Stamford Bridge. But our status with the EU is complicated.
Norway was one of the founding members of the European Free Trade Association (Efta) together with the UK in 1960. Efta was established more or less to serve as an alternative trade bloc for those European states unable or unwilling to join the then European Economic Community (EEC), later to become the European Union. Both the UK and Norway applied to join the EEC twice in the years that followed, but the French president, Charles de Gaulle, doubted the political will of the UK to join the community, thus blocking not only the UK, but all applicant countries. We could of course blame the UK; but like you, we’d rather blame the French.
When the UK finally joined the common market in 1973, the Norwegian people had already rejected it in a referendum the year before. This was before the Single European Act of 1986 clarified how the common market could advance to create a frictionless, unified market incorporating the “four freedoms”: movement of goods, services, people and money. By the time this framework was finalised, most Efta countries had become full members of the EU. They saw the benefits of being a part of the decision-making process on the inside, rather than just having to accept the rules and regulations to access the market from the outside.
We chose to integrate as deeply in to the single market as possible through the European Economic Area agreement, the Norway option. It allows us frictionless access to the single market because we comply to the EU’s rules and regulations, but leaves us outside the decision-making process.
This is the primary reason why the EEA agreement, or the Norway option, really is not an option for the UK. We are fully integrated into the single market by accepting the rules and regulations from Brussels to harmonise our products and services to EU standards. Not only does this provide frictionless access to our most important market, it also saves us the bureaucratic effort of developing new regulations.
This is not without controversy, but for the most part we welcome updated regulations protecting our citizens’ rights and levelling the playing field as regards trade. The UK’s Brexit supporters want to develop their own legislation.
Secondly, compliance with EU legislation for EEA countries is ensured through the body of the Efta surveillance authority and the Efta court. This corresponds to the European court of justice, which ensures the enforcement of the said rules and regulations, enabling right to triumph over might. We believe this protects our citizens’ rights and our companies against unfair competition. Brexiters reject the ECJ.
In addition, we accept the four freedoms, including free movement of workers. This has for the most part boosted the Norwegian economy and provided both skilled and unskilled labour to industries and services in need. Many in the UK want to regulate this migration.
Lastly, Efta is still a trade block. We already have 28 trade agreements with 39 countries outside the EU. It seems incredible that the UK would prefer to enter 28 trade agreements, putting the interest of the 38,000 citizens of Liechtenstein ahead of the 66 million citizens in the United Kingdom.
More importantly to me, I do not believe it is in Norway’s interest to invite the UK into the Efta bloc. It would certainly upset the balance within Efta – and thus our relationship with the EU. Further, the EEA agreement presupposes a consensus between the countries to harmonise with the same EU laws and regulations the UK wants to veto. These are the laws and regulations we rely on to have frictionless access to our most important market. A veto from one country affects the other countries: letting the UK join Efta and the EEC agreement to veto parts of it could undermine the agreement for all of us.
The UK seems to be considering joining our Efta family as a temporary solution – Norway for now – until it gets a better deal. It really surprises me that anyone would think Norwegians would find that appealing. It would be like inviting the rowdy uncle to a Christmas party, spiking the drinks and hoping that things go well. They would not.
Norway will, of course, be looking for a long-term partnership with the UK after the divorce from the EU, but we’re not interested in being the rebound girl while you look for better options.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Theresa May’s plan for leaving the European Union is a rare moment of victory for common sense in the madness of Brexit. We now know what Mrs May’s Brexit means. The good news is that it is softer than she has previously claimed it would be. The bad news is that it is still Brexit. The prime minister has sensibly realised that her red lines, drawn up to please the hardliners in her party, would have been a disaster for British business and jobs. She has made a decisive, and correct, move to junk them.
Instead of being completely out of the single market and diverging from the EU’s regulations, Mrs May proposes to “maintain a common rulebook for all goods”, including agricultural products, after Brexit. Rather than ending the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, Mrs May’s plans would see that continue, with UK judges paying “due regard” to EU case law. Magical thinking is still being indulged: Brussels won’t allow Britain to reject future EU goods regulation and restrict freedom of movement even if Westminster accepts “consequences” for trade. Neither will it accept the bureaucratic wheeze of a facilitated customs arrangement, which asks the EU to outsource the collection of customs duties to a third country. This has no chance of being agreed with Brussels, which will no doubt ask instead for a permanent backstop in the withdrawal agreement that will see Britain in a customs union with the EU until it can come up with a workable alternative.
It is undoubtedly a good thing that reality has dawned in Downing Street and that cabinet ministers have been forced to sign up to the plan. There are signs that Mrs May’s Brexit has a “landing zone” but she is a long way off from it, especially as the EU will want further concessions and clarity from the UK. Brexit is much more about the crisis in the Conservative party than the reality of what the 27 other nations of the European Union can ever agree. Conservatism, like social democracy, is struggling in an age of disruptive globalisation where habits of life, work and family are in flux. A party designed to protect business heralds its intellectual collapse when a controlling faction opts to wreck capitalism.
There is a glimmer of hope for Britain. Different member states are moving at different speeds in the EU. In such a Europe, being in a form of single market and within a customs union would put Britain in an outer lane. But it would not have been forced off the road altogether. Later, the UK could move closer – or, if it wanted to, farther away. Hardliners might cast this flexibility as a form of bondage. Yet in uncertain times, this option looks like realism. The UK needs a workable model for being out of Europe’s political project but firmly linked to its economy. Brexit, whatever its flavour, is an act of self-harm. Mrs May appears to offer cosmetic changes on free movement while limiting the damage to business. Britain ends up as a rule-taker not a rule-maker. This is demonstrably worse for Britain’s sovereignty than the status quo.
Yet Brexit’s true believers are ideologically opposed to the European Union, which they wrongly blame for all this country’s ills. For this group of MPs, Mrs May’s breach of faith goes beyond the death of an empty slogan. They want to accelerate away from Europe at such a pace that Britain attains a geopolitical escape velocity, a speed fast enough to free itself from what they see as the constraining gravitational influence of the EU. Europe has weakened the right of the party by dividing it. There are those for whom Brexit is desirable but second to the unity of the party. They will live with Mrs May’s fudges. Those who will not are the irreconcilables, who view the EU as an existential threat to this nation. It is this group that Mrs May must confront on Monday when she addresses her MPs at the Conservative 1922 committee. It is of little solace that in two years Mrs May has managed to produce some form of programme that takes into account the realities that face Britain in leaving the EU. But without seeing off the hard Brexit parliamentary rump, she will not be able to come up with a plan for the UK to leave the EU that might ever prove practical.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
The moves not to “re-adopt” Conservative MP Nicholas Boles by his local constituency party because he has “gone rogue”, and to deselect Labour’s Luciana Berger for disloyalty, are straws in the political wind. Both MPs are semi-detached from their party leadership, and both have crucially become so over the issue of Britain’s departure from the European Union. Mr Boles has not endeared himself to Tory party activists in Lincolnshire, who voted heavily to leave, for working with Labour’s Yvette Cooper to delay Brexit and scupper a catastrophic no-deal outcome. Ms Berger backs a second referendum, in defiance of her leadership, and last week refused to rule out leaving Labour for another party.
There are other reasons why some activists in Liverpool’s Wavertree and the east Midlands seat of Grantham and Stamford want to get rid of their MPs. Mr Boles snubbed locals by refusing to move to his constituency and there is a feeling that he is too “London-centric”. In Liverpool Ms Berger has been a thorn in the side of Jeremy Corbyn over what she says is his failure to crack down on antisemitism. Mr Corbyn comes from the left of the party, which has argued that the charge of antisemitism is often levelled without substance to close down criticism of repressive Israeli actions against Palestinians. There are strong views on each side. However, it is welcome that the motions of no confidence were rescinded, particularly as Ms Berger is pregnant and has suffered outrageous misogynistic and antisemitic abuse. Efforts to oust Mr Boles ought to be similarly dropped.
Political parties need to be broad churches to remain relevant. No single thread of political opinion has a monopoly on the popular mood. Parties that slim down their thinking will find themselves shrinking their potential electorate. That is why purging rebel MPs because they disagree is the wrong course of action. In Britain MPs are representatives, not delegates. They obey their own judgment over the opinions of their constituents. They might respect local activists’ views and take them into account when reaching decisions, but MPs ought to retain an independence of thought.
There are good reasons to remove an MP: corruption, criminality, fecklessness or voting to bring down their own government. But expelling someone for a difference of opinion does little to engender faith in political pluralism. It is a turn-off for voters.
As Brexit goes down to the wire, British politics is likely to see rebellions by groups of MPs and cross-party coalitions as well as parliamentarians who dissent from the leadership line. All those involved may face being deselected through campaigns by local activists, radicalised by the pro- and anti-Brexit lines of cleavage. Party affiliations are obscuring the dominant issue in British politics. But to paraphrase John Stuart Mill, Westminster needs dissenters, even if they are wrong, to sharpen our view of the truth.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Britain’s raging argument about Brexit is increasingly morphing into a contest about more issues than just this country’s relationship with the European Union. It is also turning into a contest about the relationship between two sources of democratic power – referendums and parliament. Referendums claim to elevate the people’s will over parliament, which is expected to defer indefinitely and in detail. Yet Britain’s historic constitutional doctrine, still bred in the bone of most MPs, has traditionally been that parliament is sovereign.
The Victorian jurist AV Dicey argued long ago that parliament “has the right to make or unmake any law whatever” and that “no person or body is recognised by the law … as having the right to override or set aside the legislation of parliament”. Much has changed in the laws of Britain since Dicey, including human rights legislation, devolution and Britain’s 45-year membership of what is now the EU. Nevertheless the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty that he set out remains a guiding and established principle for the courts and for all parties and MPs, whether they are remainers or leavers.
However, parliament’s rights are being relentlessly stress-tested by the Brexit crisis. Several times since the 2016 referendum, parliament has asserted its sovereign right to make the final decisions on Brexit, often in the face of government opposition. Examples include the original article 50 withdrawal decision itself, the call for a meaningful vote on the Brexit deal and, only last week, the instruction to publish the attorney general’s legal advice to ministers on the withdrawal agreement. If, in the coming weeks, there is a successful attempt to pause the article 50 process, as Sir John Major advocated on Tuesday, or a vote for a second referendum, then this process will have reached an even greater climax.
There was another interim clash in this process on Monday when Theresa May decided unilaterally to suspend the debate on her Brexit deal, which had been due to come to the vote on Tuesday evening. That decision was an insult to MPs, especially the 164 who had already spoken in the debate. It made a mockery of the belief that parliament, rather than government, is in charge of its own processes.
When a government has a clear majority, this issue is blurred. Yet in a hung parliament, with no overall majority and both major parties split over Brexit, it is painfully obvious that MPs’ claim to control their own house is in fact still dependent on ministers for much of the time. The Speaker, John Bercow, rightly denounced Mrs May’s decision to pull the vote on Monday. He is clearly up for a long fight to defend the Commons against ministerial attempts to railroad MPs. A Labour backbencher grabbed the Commons mace in protest. On Tuesday, rather than debating the Brexit deal, MPs instead found themselves toothlessly debating why they were not debating it.
This is a crucial battle, whose importance goes beyond remain versus leave. Mrs May’s decision to stop the debate must not mean that the procedural concessions that MPs have won are simply wiped from the record when – or if – Mrs May comes back from her travels with a revised version of the withdrawal deal or a new addendum to it. In the Commons on Tuesday the cabinet office minister David Lidington appeared to accept that five days of withdrawal agreement debate are paused, not aborted. It is essential that this should be so.
This country needs to have the vote on the Brexit deal; but it also needs a Commons that is empowered to make its own decision in time to prevent a no-deal alternative. The vote should therefore happen as soon as possible, not at the last minute. The ensuing process should be facilitated and not blocked by the party whips. Many MPs on all sides grasp this. It is vital that they, and Mr Bercow, stand firm and ensure that the Commons takes charge. Brexiters in the government and on the backbenches always claim to regard a sovereign House of Commons as a fundamental pillar of leaving the EU. They have no right to complain when MPs insist on exercising that sovereignty, or when they do so in new ways – perhaps even through a free unwhipped vote – that challenge the excessive power of ministers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Brexit has tested many loyalties in parliament but broken few. The line that divides pro-Europeans and Brexiters cannot be neatly drawn between opposition and governing benches. MPs on both sides have been frustrated by their leaders and defied their whips. But, overall, party bonds have proved remarkably resilient.
The slender majority that Theresa May won on Tuesday night, endorsing a theoretical variant of her Brexit deal (minus the Northern Irish backstop), was a case in point. Mrs May had some Labour votes on loan and was as reliant as ever on the DUP, but the determining factor was a Conservative craving to feel whole again after months of civil strife. Many Tory MPs know that the proposition they endorsed was a fiction. The prime minister herself conceded that there was little appetite in the EU to adjust the backstop. Ministers are unable to describe the “alternative arrangements” that are supposed to prevent any return to a hard Irish border. But those technical problems were set aside for the gratification of appearing unified at last.
That pretence does not come without cost. There are 27 EU member states whose different interests have been painstakingly funnelled into one withdrawal agreement with the UK. For Mrs May to change her mind about it now, two months before departure day, is not just reckless, it is obnoxious. Governments around the world are watching for signs of what kind of actor “Brexit Britain” will be on the international stage. Previously Mrs May looked obtuse. Now she looks unreliable.
The prime minister has often faced a choice between confronting an intransigent strain of Tory anti-Brussels prejudice and indulging it. Each time she has flattered the fanatics. In Brussels, Berlin and Paris it is apparent that the rightwing fringe of the Conservative party harbours nationalistic hostility to the European project, and that some Tory MPs see a purgative value in the chaos that would follow a disorderly collapse of the Brexit process. That wrecking impulse is present within the majority that swung behind Mrs May in the Commons on Tuesday. The Eurosceptic ultras do not expect satisfaction from a renegotiated deal. On the contrary, they make demands in order to mine grievance from the inevitable rejection. They backed the prime minister in preparation for the blame game that will doubtless begin when Brexit fails to deliver its advertised bounties.
Mrs May’s tolerance of that faction costs her credibility and goodwill with European partners who also watched David Cameron being manipulated by the same Tory backbenchers with the same incapacity for compromise. Even if the EU27 want to help the prime minister, they know their concessions would simply provoke more demands. There is no interest for the EU side in pandering to the implacables. Mrs May has done so partly because she lacks a Commons majority but that is not a sufficient explanation. For her not once to have challenged the hardliners after all this time suggests a cultural affinity that goes beyond calculation and cowardice. It indicates a sense of belonging – an irrational loyalty that supersedes the call of serious statecraft.
Most politicians imagine themselves capable of putting country before party in moments of emergency. That patriotic ambition has rarely been tested as thoroughly or as visibly as it is now with a prime minister who buys transient, worthless moments of Tory unity at a heavy price in national credibility. It is a shameful transaction and one for which Mrs May and the Conservatives will one day be held to account.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
The overwhelming and decisive rejection by MPs of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement to leave the European Union is a shattering blow to the authority of the prime minister. She has spent two years negotiating a deal, which in substance was the opposite of what she said she wanted in public, only to see it repudiated by parliament. Her minority government has now been defeated on no fewer than 28 occasions. Britain is leaving the EU in weeks and Mrs May leads a cabinet that is hopelessly split, a party that is riven with disagreements and a country that is deeply divided. So emphatic is the Commons historic rebuff that Mrs May’s deal is finished. Mrs May lost by 230 votes – the greatest defeat of a government ever. The scale of the opposition means it is not credible Mrs May could bring the motion back to the Commons, modified with a few tweaks from Brussels, and hope for success a second time round.
We do not have to settle for the Hobson’s choice of the May deal or no deal. The trouble is the Tory party is split between those who want a deal and those who do not. Mrs May has intensified the divisions within her party, rather than resolve them. She chose to start negotiations over Brexit not with the EU but with her own hardliners. The red lines Mrs May subsequently set made it impossible for her to get a deal that would bring her fractious party together, let alone reach out to her political opponents. Her agreement ended up shaped by Mrs May’s obsession with immigration and placating Brexit extremists. The result is a “blindfold Brexit” – where almost everything about the future relationship with Europe is up in the air for two more years. It required a leap of faith to place trust in a prime minister who, the Commons wisely decided, deserved very little.
In the current circumstances, there is no majority in parliament for any of the alternative Brexit deals. This could lead to a disaster: Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal. That is why MPs must remove it as an option. Labour has triggered a vote of no confidence in the government but is unlikely to win. That points to the need for a mechanism to allow a Commons majority to take control of the Brexit process. This would require innovation, of the kind seen last week, so committees can be empowered and laws brought forward. But to have other options would require asking the EU for more time. It requires parliamentary cooperation of the kind hitherto unseen. Jeremy Corbyn and Mrs May ought not to stand in the way of such dealings. Constitutional devices such as citizens’ assemblies, raised by Labour MP Lisa Nandy, and another referendum would allow leaders to hold their parties together and provide legitimacy for whatever the public decides. These are not denials of democracy but a reinforcement of it.
Mrs May’s decision to put party politics ahead of national interest means this country will aimlessly drift as the government attempts to recast a withdrawal agreement. An absence of leadership can lead to a sense of panic, one inflated by a government stockpiling food and medicines as if preparing for a war. We need to end the chaos and division that have done so much to disfigure our country. The question we face is whether there can be a durable relationship between Brexit Britain and the EU, which allows both to cooperate on the basis of shared interests and values. Mrs May left it far too late to accept the costs of leaving, preferring to pander to MPs whose snake-oil sales pitch is that there will not be any cost associated with Brexit at all. “Having your cake and eating it” is the Brexiter attitude that encapsulates this inability to think in terms of costs and benefits.
Yet coming clean about these things is necessary to move forward. The country now faces a situation without precedent in its constitutional history: how to reconcile the sovereignty of the people with the sovereignty of parliament. The prime minister has been humbled into admitting she needs to win her opponents over. The Brexit vote was driven by stagnant wages, regional disparities and a soulless form of capital accumulation. These were not caused by the EU, nor will they be solved by leaving it. Only policies enacted by purposeful government can do that. Mrs May has not provided either.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Boris Johnson has been prime minister less than four weeks. In the absence of parliament, he has made a spirited attempt to pretend that British exit from the European Union would be straightforward. Brexit will definitely take place on 31 October, he has insisted. It will either involve the EU abandoning the Irish backstop or there will be no deal. The difference scarcely matters to Mr Johnson, who insists Brexit will be a trouble-free exercise in whatever form it comes, whose dangers have been exaggerated and whose rewards underestimated.
Every bit of this was false when Mr Johnson first concocted it. It is even more threadbare now – and getting more dangerous by the day. However, we may now be witnessing the first faint wisps of recognition from within the government that things are not going to work out as they pretend.
Cabinet Office documents on the likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit were leaked at the weekend. They covered every aspect of public policy. They are devastating. All of the impacts are bad; some are likely to be enduringly so. But the Johnson government’s response to the leak was telling. Ministers focused on issues of process, not on the documents’ substance.
This is a classic diversion tactic. The Operation Yellowhammer documents show that no deal will have consequences far beyond the “bumps in the road” of which ministers speak so complacently. Those so-called bumps include: the return of a hard border in Ireland; months of logjams at Channel ports; disruption of fresh food, medicines and fuel supplies; delays at airports; clashes at sea between UK and EU fishing boats; severe restrictions on Gibraltar’s frontier with Spain; insupportable strain on parts of the care system; exceptional demands on UK embassies from expats; and protests requiring extra police. One almost throwaway line observes that “low-income groups will be disproportionately affected” by price rises. To these can now be added the inhuman shambles that would follow the ending of freedom of movement on 31 October, another Windrush in the making, and on an immensely larger scale.
Mr Johnson’s response is not to engage directly with these appalling possibilities. Instead he reiterated in Truro on Monday that the EU will shift its backstop position and let him off the hook. In other words, he recognises that a deal is better than no deal, but still pretends, against all evidence, that the EU will abandon a central part of the withdrawal agreement. This too is a fantasy. Yet it shows that striking a deal – if it can be done – is preferable to crashing out. Mr Johnson will have to be a lot more honest when he meets German and French leaders this week if he wishes to have even a marginal hope of making one.
But European leaders face questions too. They may think, as many in the UK also hope, that the combination of Johnsonian bluster and the parliamentary arithmetic on no deal means that the prime minister’s reign will soon be aborted. They may think, as some here also do, that Mr Johnson’s government will soon be replaced by a one opposed to no deal. But they need to be careful. Neither of these outcomes may happen before 31 October. Neither of them may happen at all.
The dangerous recklessness on the leave side of Britain’s Brexit divide is matched by a worrying haplessness on the remain side. The divisions between remainers and anti-no-dealers, and between the parties within the anti-no-deal majority, remain frustratingly strong. Jeremy Corbyn plays a part in many of these divides, but he also has to be part of any solution. His speech in Corby on Monday, in which he proposed a vote of no confidence in Mr Johnson’s government followed by a time-limited caretaker administration that would avert no deal and call an election, should be taken seriously, not dismissed.
Mr Corbyn’s speech is not the last word on the issues. His proposed caretaker administration might, for instance, involve other parties. But the importance of avoiding no deal is immense and pressing. All opponents of such a cataclysm should be ready to do whatever it takes.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Britain’s convoluted negotiations over leaving Europe have left many in a state of confusion. But now things are becoming clearer. There is a deal with the EU, agreed by the cabinet despite howls from the Tory backbenches, while attempts to bring about a no-confidence vote in the prime minister appear to have fizzled out.
But this still leaves many things unresolved.
If Britain and the European Union sign the “deal” – that is, the withdrawal agreement and the declaration on the future relationship – it must then be ratified by the European parliament and by Westminster.
MPs have been guaranteed a “meaningful vote”. They must approve the deal on a motion and then legislate to ratify the withdrawal agreement. The Lords only have to “take note” of the deal and ratify the agreement.
The Commons vote, however, will not be as “meaningful” as it appears. In practice, MPs have only two choices: to ratify or refuse to ratify. Substantive amendments would not alter the agreement, and would be equivalent to rejection.
Some MPs appear to believe that, if amendments are passed, the prime minister could return to Brussels to seek a better deal. That is implausible. The EU regards the deal as a package that cannot be untied. If Britain seeks to amend provisions that it dislikes, the EU could seek to untie the package in its own favour by amending provisions that it dislikes – Gibraltar and fishing rights being two discussed this week.
Hence, if any amendments were to be carried against the government, the prime minister would have lost her authority. She could hardly return to Brussels to say: “Parliament will not back me – will you please give me something better?” The EU would reply: “We only deal with those enjoying democratic legitimacy.” The truth is, if the bill is not passed in an unamended form, the government will not be able to ratify the agreement.
In 1993, when John Major was defeated on a provision ratifying the Maastricht treaty, he returned to the Commons the next day, declaring it a matter of confidence and threatening to dissolve parliament. The rebels, fearful of an election, duly came to heel.
That procedure, however, is not open to May. Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, passed in 2011, a substantive motion cannot have a confidence vote attached to it. Parliament can only be dissolved if a specific vote of no confidence is carried against the government, and if no alternative government can be formed within 14 days. It would be a bold Conservative or Democratic Unionist MP who would be prepared to oppose the government in a confidence vote.
Alternatively, an early election could occur if two-thirds of MPs voted for it. Given what happened last year, it is highly unlikely, however, that many Conservatives would be prepared to take this risk. Turkeys do not normally vote for Christmas.
If defeated on the approval vote or the legislation, May, therefore, would have little option but to resign. There would then be an election for a new Conservative leader. No one other than a Conservative would be able to command a majority in the Commons.
If, as is likely, there is more than one candidate, the leadership will be settled by party members who would have to decide between the two candidates most favoured by MPs. The election would take at least a month, and probably longer. It might not be completed until just before the Brexit date of 29 March.
Meanwhile, either May would continue as a caretaker prime minister; or there would be an alternative caretaker – possibly her deputy, David Lidington, unless he were himself a candidate. Such an arrangement would be perilous for a country approaching Brexit when so many difficult decisions need to be made; and the new prime minister would face exactly the same dilemmas as May – Brexiteer and remainer MPs opposed to the deal for incompatible reasons.
Many Labour MPs, together with the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and a few Conservatives, favour a people’s vote. MPs might indeed pass an amendment that the deal only comes into effect following a referendum. But that would not be sufficient to provide for one. Since Britain lacks a generic referendum act, specific legislative provision would have to be made.
The legislation providing for the 2016 referendum was introduced in May 2015 and enacted in December. No doubt the procedure could be speeded up; but even so, the Electoral Commission believes there should be six months from introduction of the bill to the referendum, including a 10-week campaign period. There would therefore have to be an extension of the Brexit deadline beyond 29 March.
There would be difficult issues for the Electoral Commission to resolve – in particular whether there should be just two alternatives or three. A simple referendum posing remain versus the deal would not satisfy many Brexiteers, who might favour a no-deal outcome. Therefore, there would have to be three options. MP Justine Greening has argued for a single referendum with a transferable vote. I would favour two referendums held a couple of weeks apart, the first asking voters whether they wished to leave or remain. If leave won, the second referendum would seek a verdict on the terms of departure. No doubt the Brexiteers would still say the cards were stacked against them since a single remain option was being opposed by two leave options.
The other alternative to a deal is a no-deal Brexit. That, perhaps, need not be as terrible as some suggest. Bilateral agreements on specific sectors such as aviation could ensure that chaos is avoided. But there would be a host of customs, VAT checks and regulatory checks at Britain’s borders, involving hours of extra paperwork and delays, not to mention the issue of the Irish border. The queues at the Turkish border with Bulgaria, where a two-hour wait counts as a good day, would be replicated at Dover. That means higher costs and lower revenues. Business is almost unanimous in opposing a no-deal Brexit.
MPs are taking out their frustrations on Brexit by giving May a battering. But perhaps she can console herself by remembering the wise words of Iain Macleod, colonial secretary in the early 1960s. “The Conservative party,” he said, “is a generous party. It always forgives those who are wrong. Sometimes it even forgives those who are right.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
The tide is turning and today is the day that we the people reclaim our democracy. On the streets of London, hundreds of thousands of us will be marching on parliament in support of parliament. We reject the prime minister’s assertion that she is the tribune of the people – uniquely able to divine our interests, divinely entitled to rule. We reject her deal, which leaves us poorer and more isolated. We reject her government, which has humiliated us on the international stage and enfeebled us at home. Instead we say to MPs that now is the time to assert themselves, to reject her threats and her jibes and to give back to the people the final say on Brexit.
Remember why we are where we are. When I resigned from the National Infrastructure Commission to campaign against Brexit and for a referendum – just short of 18 months ago – it felt as though Brexit was a done deal. Everywhere I went I met people who – however they had voted in 2016 – were dismayed by the reality of Brexit but convinced there was no alternative. It was soft Brexit versus hard Brexit – not “no Brexit”, which is in truth the only alternative.
“I wish it wasn’t happening but we can’t stop it” was the refrain. This fatalism is now behind us. In October we saw the biggest political march on the streets of London in a decade. Up and down the country the European Movement has grown from a smattering of small associations to more than 150 branches, with tens of thousands of members. And as I write, more than three million people have signed a petition calling on the government to revoke article 50 (the up-to-date figure is here).
Theresa May is singularly unsuited for high office and lacks political talent. Her late-night rant from No 10 on Wednesday may be remembered as the worst broadcast ever from Downing Street.
But, in truth, it is Brexit that has defeated Brexit, not May. Brexit has always been an impossible project, except at the price of massive self-harm. The hard, populist right sold the myth of “taking back control” because they knew that no one would buy the reality: workers’ rights slashed, welfare broken, Ireland betrayed and Britain turned into a giant tax haven. Theresa May has much to answer for, but it is not her fault that she couldn’t square the circle of the Brexiteers’ lies: nobody could.
I expect today to be the biggest political march in living memory. It will be defined not just by its size but by its diversity. Young and old, of all ethnicities, from every corner of our country, speaking up and speaking out. Refusing to let our prime minister rule as a self-appointed monarch. Rejecting the narrowness, insularity and the extremism of Brexit. Demanding a democratic solution.
In years to come, historians will write approvingly of the British people’s passionate, peaceful and successful fight against Brexit. They will say that as our institutions buckled under the strain, Britain found its voice. And you will be able to say to your children and grandchildren: “I was there. I stood up for my country, I faced down the extremists, I protected your future.” So come today. Join us. Let’s get our country back.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Britain faces a constitutional crisis, according to many, including at least one cabinet minister. But is it a crisis simply because the rules regulating parliament make life difficult for the government?
A conflict between government and parliament is almost inevitable when, as with Brexit, the government cannot command a majority of votes in the Commons. But there is a deeper crisis within parliament itself. MPs have put the European Union (Withdrawal) Act on the statute book, which entails us leaving the EU on 29 March, in just eight days’ time.
But they have rejected every proposal to make Brexit a reality. They have twice rejected the deal; and they have also three times voted against amendments proposing that Britain remain in the customs union or the internal market.
Last week MPs also rejected a no-deal Brexit, while an absolute majority of MPs rejected a “people’s vote” by 334 votes to 85. Without a further referendum, it is hardly possible for MPs to revoke article 50 and reverse Brexit. In addition, on 16 January MPs decided not to replace the government which is steering the Brexit process, when they rejected a motion of no confidence that could have precipitated a general election.
In the classic Marx brothers film Horse Feathers, Groucho, playing Professor Wagstaff, tells his fellow academics: “I don’t know what they have to say, it makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
It is illogical for MPs to keep the government in office while rejecting its flagship policy. Before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, it would have been impossible. The government would have had to make the vote on the deal a matter of confidence. MPs would either have had to accept it, or the government would have had to resign. But under the act the government can only be made to resign after a specific vote of no confidence not attached to other legislation.
MPs have willed Brexit without willing the means to secure it. They have left the country, in the words of Bill Cash, Conservative chair of the European scrutiny committee and rabid Brexiteer, “at a dangerous crossroads in the middle of a fog”. The best course in such a situation is simply to wait until the fog clears. But that option is not available. If MPs do nothing, Britain will leave the EU next week without a deal, so exposing the country to the full panoply of EU tariffs and regulations as well as a hard border in Ireland.
MPs have put Theresa May in the difficult and perhaps humiliating position of seeking an extension to the Brexit date from Brussels. That requires the unanimous consent of the other 27 member states. They may well agree the short extension she requested today, until 30 June. But they will expect, in the words of Donald Tusk, president of the European council, “a credible justification for a possible extension and its duration”. For, as France’s Europe minister, Nathalie Loiseau has said, an extension is a method, not a solution. The 27 will need a clear indication from the government both on the process to be followed and the proposed outcome.
Presumably the fact that MPs could not make up their minds would not seem a “credible justification”. A short extension leaves no time for parliament to reconsider alternative models, already rejected – such as remaining permanently in the customs union, as proposed by Labour, or the Norway option, which has been put forward by a number of MPs. It is in any case doubtful if either could command a majority. They would certainly not command a majority among Conservatives.
Remaining in the customs union would prevent Britain pursuing an independent trade policy; and for many Conservatives that was the whole point of Brexit. Theresa May’s deal does in fact secure most of the advantages of the customs union without its obligations.
Remaining in the internal market entails freedom of movement, which most Conservative MPs, and indeed most Brexit voters, reject. It is in any case rather late for MPs to consider mobilising behind an alternative. They have had two years to do that. It is also a bit late for MPs to object to the Northern Ireland backstop, which was first agreed by the government in December 2017.
Any extension beyond 30 June, which May says she opposes, would require Britain to take part in the European parliament elections at the end of May. The EU charter of fundamental rights gives every EU citizen the right to vote and stand in these elections, to ensure that “citizens are directly represented”. If that right is abrogated, the government could expect to be challenged in the courts. And EU leaders would not relish allowing Britain to take part in elections that would almost certainly result in Nigel Farage and his fellow Brexiteers being returned to the European parliament, and which would allow Britain to take part in EU budget negotiations and the appointment of a new commission.
The choice, therefore, remains stark. Either the Commons votes for Theresa May’s deal, or Britain leaves without a deal. The Speaker has indicated he may judge a further vote on the deal to be out of order. That, however, need not be an insuperable barrier. The convention that he has cited can be overridden by a Commons motion to reconsider the deal “notwithstanding” the convention. If MPs come to favour the deal, they can probably summon up a majority to pass such a motion.
Margaret Thatcher once declared: there is no alternative. MPs seeking to peer through the fog that Bill Cash has identified may well come to feel the same is true today. There is now, so it seems, ultimately no alternative to May’s deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Part of me wants to smash it all up. I want to see the British bubble burst: the imperial nostalgia, the groundless belief in the inherent greatness of this nation; the casual dishonesty of those who govern us; the xenophobia; the intolerance; the denial; the complacency. I want those who have caused the coming disaster to own it, so that nobody ever believes them again. No-deal Brexit? Bring it on.
Such dark thoughts do not last long. It will be the poor who get hurt, first and worst. The rich leavers demanding the hardest of possible Brexits, with their offshore accounts, homes abroad and lavish pensions, will be all right. I remember the eerie silence of the City of London. While the bosses of companies producing goods and tangible services write anxious letters to the papers, the financial sector has stayed largely shtum. Shorting sterling is just the first of its possible gains.
The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, caused by the International Monetary Fund’s insistence that countries removed their capital controls, began with an attack by foreign speculators on Thailand’s baht. As currencies tanked and nations raised their interest rates, indebted companies went down like flies. Foreign corporations, particularly from the US, swept in and bought the most lucrative assets for a fraction of their value. Though the causes are different, it’s not hard to see something similar happening here. If it does, the City will clean up.
But this is not the end of it. A no-deal Brexit might offer the regulatory vacuum the Brextremists fantasise about. The public protections people have fought so hard for, that we obtained only through British membership of the EU – preventing water companies from pouring raw sewage into our rivers, power stations from spraying acid rain across the land, chemical companies from contaminating our food – are suddenly at risk.
In theory there are safeguards. The environment department has been frantically trying to fill the regulatory chasm. It has published more statutory instruments than any other ministry and has drafted an environment bill with plans for a watchdog to hold the government to account. But a series of massive questions remain, and none of them have easy answers.
The environment bill will not be placed before parliament until after the Queen’s speech (probably in May). It won’t be passed until autumn, at the earliest. The green watchdog (the Office for Environmental Protection) will not materialise until 2021. During that time there will be no body equivalent to the European court of justice to ensure that the government upholds the law. Instead there will be a “holding arrangement” – with an undefined “mechanism” to receive reports of environmental lawbreaking, which the watchdog might be inclined to investigate when it eventually materialises.
Replacing just one of the EU’s environmental functions – registering new chemicals – requires, before 29 March, a new IT system, new specialist evaluators, new monitoring and enforcement across several agencies; and new government offices, filled with competent staff to oversee the system, in the four nations of the UK. All this must happen while the government attends to scores of transformations on a similar scale. If the shops run out of food, hospitals can’t get medicine and the Good Friday agreement falls apart, how much attention will it pay to breaches of environmental law?
Already we are witnessing comprehensive regulatory collapse in the agencies, such as Natural England, charged with defending the living world, due to funding cuts. If they can’t do their job before we crash out, what chance do they have when the workload explodes, just as government budgets are likely to slump?
The government’s nomination of Tony Juniper as Natural England’s new chair is a hopeful sign, though the general astonishment that an environmental regulator will be chaired by an environmental champion shows just how bad things have become (since 2009, it has been run by people whose interests and attitudes were starkly at odds with their public duties). But the underlying problem Natural England faces will also hobble the green watchdog. Unlike the European court of justice, the Office for Environmental Protection will be funded and controlled by the government it seeks to hold to account.
Last week the Guardian reported panic within government about the likely pile-up of waste that Britain sends to the EU, in the event of no deal. The combination of a rubbish crisis, administrative chaos and mass distraction could be horrible: expect widespread fly-tipping and pollution. So much for the extremists’ euphemism for no deal: “clean Brexit”.
The government’s commitment to upholding environmental standards relies to a remarkable extent on one man: the environment secretary, Michael Gove, who has so far doggedly resisted the demands of his fellow leavers. Had any one of his grisly predecessors been in post – Owen Paterson, Liz Truss, Andrea Leadsom – we wouldn’t have even the theoretical protections Gove has commissioned. Boris Johnson has suggested that leaving the EU will allow us to dismantle green standards for electrical goods and environmental impact assessments. Iain Duncan Smith has pressed for the removal after Brexit of the carbon floor price, which has more or less stopped coal-burning in the UK.
With Liam Fox in charge of trade policy, and the US demanding the destruction of food and environmental standards as the price of the trade deal he desperately seeks, nothing is safe. A joint trade review by the British and Indian governments contemplates reducing standards on pesticide residues in food, and hormone-disrupting chemicals in the plastics used in toys. This must be heartening for Jacob Rees-Mogg (known in some circles as Re-smog), who has proposed that we might accept “emission standards from India”, one of the most polluted nations on Earth. “We could say, if it’s good enough in India, it’s good enough for here.”
There is no guarantee that Gove, the unlikely champion of public protection, will stay in his post after Brexit. If we crash out of Europe, the dark money that helped to buy Brexit will strive to use this opportunity to tear down our regulations: this, after all, was the point of the exercise. The tantalising prospect for the world’s pollutocrats is that the UK might become a giant export-processing zone, exempt from the laws that govern other rich nations. It’s a huge potential prize, which could begin to reconfigure the global relationship between capital and governments. They will fight as hard and dirty to achieve it as they did to win the vote.
A combination of economic rupture, sudden shifts in ownership, an urgent desire to strike new trade deals and a possible regulatory abyss presents a golden opportunity for disaster capitalism. Our first task is to see it coming. Our second is to stop it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Revolution is not an event. It is a process. So the zealous revolutionary is ever vigilant against backsliding and ideological deviation. For some, the battle never ends.
Brexiteers’ fear of counter-revolution is now stronger in the Conservative party than actual opposition to Brexit – and more disruptive. Only a tiny number of Tory MPs call the whole thing a folly to its face. The overwhelming majority accept the referendum result and expect EU membership to expire in March 2019.
And still discord convulses the government. That is because the true schism is not between pro-Europeans and sceptics but between incompatible theories of Brexit. It is between those who see it as a job to be done within the parameters of normal politics, and those who see it as a revolution in which the old politics should perish.
People who campaigned on the leave side of the referendum find themselves on different sides of this line. The tension was crisply illustrated in an exchange between David Davis and Jacob Rees-Mogg at a parliamentary committee hearing a couple of weeks ago. Rees-Mogg pressed the Brexit secretary to explain the difference between a transition that looked like EU membership and EU membership itself. Davis replied that full EU members could not strike independent trade deals, whereas the government saw that freedom as a condition of transition.
Rees-Mogg then wanted to know why the UK didn’t just “get on with it”. Why not ignore the terms of EU membership? By waiting for technical agreement, were we not acting as “lackeys” of the EU? Davis’s reply is one of the most revealing Brexit statements made by a cabinet minister. “No,” he said. “We are acting as a law-abiding country.”
Davis harbours no closet ardour for Brussels. The difference between his concept of leaving and that of his backbench inquisitor lies in wanting it to be done carefully, in accordance with existing treaties. For Rees-Mogg and his acolytes that is the cowardly spirit of remain. For them, it is not the security of jobs or Britain’s international reputation that matters, but the safety of the revolution from its hidden enemies.
The ultras will not be satisfied with Brexit at the moment when the UK legally ceases to be an EU member. They long for the day when Britain’s relationship with the EU is so completely transformed, the bridges so charred and ruined, that the very memory of membership feels remote. That is why they are so very incensed by suggestions that the UK might form any kind of customs union with the EU. It isn’t just independent trade policy, but the spiritual purity of the project that hangs in the balance. Every thread must be cut.
That pitch of radicalism is hard to sustain inside the cabinet. Ideological Brexiteers have been chastened by exposure to the technical challenges lurking in their ministerial red boxes. Davis is not the only one to have been on a journey. Liam Fox and Michael Gove acquiesced without fuss to all the compromises made by Theresa May to complete the first phase of negotiations in December. It is said around Whitehall that even the most giddy and cavalier ministerial leavers sobered up when they grasped the facts of the Irish border problem. Then they stopped agitating for harder, faster rupture.
Boris Johnson is still capable of mischief but his restlessness stems from frustrated ambition, not impatience for a more puritan Brexit. Tory guardians of the revolution know that the foreign secretary’s hostility to the EU in 2016 was synthetic. They despise him for that lack of principle, while gratefully receiving any help he lends them as part of his perpetual leadership campaign. Johnson is so wrapped up in vanity and the myth of his own intelligence, he can’t see that he is the useful idiot to a cause other than his own.
In ministerial offices, the idea of Brexit collides with the idea of responsible government. But on the backbenches, that dilemma is denied and the thing that diplomats and officials call reality is recast as conspiracy. The nefarious masterminds of counter-revolution are Olly Robbins, May’s chief Brexit adviser, and Sir Jeremy Heywood, head of the civil service. Neither man shows the slightest intention of keeping Britain in the EU. Their sin is trying to organise Brexit in a way that allows Britain’s economic and political institutions to continue functioning properly.
That appears to be May’s preference too, but she lacks the courage to say so in such bald terms. So where does power lie? May looks like the head of a Soviet republic, formally occupying the highest office, yet taking ideological direction from a superior authority in the party. Or, even more bizarrely, Tory politics resembles revolution on the Iranian model, where the elected political leader is subordinate to a supreme spiritual leader, a role performed in this analogy by Rees-Mogg. For all of May’s obvious commitment to EU withdrawal, the Brexit ayatollahs don’t trust her to do it with the correct fundamentalist spirit. And they call the shots.
The travesty is that this is happening in the name of democracy, to honour the sacred referendum result. The mandate from 2016 was to leave the EU, not to scorch the earth on which British governments have stood for a generation. The leave campaign promised many things, but obedience to the scriptures of Rees-Moggery was not among them. The battle now being waged for control of the Tory party is an offshoot of the referendum, but with a crucial difference. It is a campaign for power without even a pretence of wanting accountability. That is the point in every revolution where democracy gets left behind.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
Last year’s Brexit vote “burst the dam” and overwhelmed traditional party loyalties in Labour’s north of England heartlands, says the work and pensions secretary, Damian Green.
In an upbeat interview as Britain prepares to go to the polls, Green said the Conservatives were on course to snatch seats from Labour across the north of England, despite their narrowing lead in some opinion polls.
Green also said Tory canvassers were deliberately raising Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as an issue on doorsteps.
“I was in four north-eastern seats yesterday, and it looks quite good for us,” Green said. “I think in the north east, with Brexit, a dam has burst, and people are questioning what they’ve done all their lives,” he said.
“[For] people who voted for Brexit and people who voted for Ukip in 2015 – that appears to have been an act that broke their lifelong Labour loyalty. There is a lot of: ‘My dad would kill me if he heard me saying this, but I’m going to vote Tory’. You hear that a lot in the north east, and indeed parts of the north west – up in Cumbria as well it’s the same sort of thing.”
The prime minister has repeatedly visited marginal Labour seats in the north of England, including Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland in North Yorkshire, and Halifax in West Yorkshire.
Some Conservative MPs complain that the botched launch of the party’s controversial social care policy has undermined their support. But Green, who has known Theresa May since the pair were at Oxford University together, says “it doesn’t feel like that”. He also says he never believed the early polls that pointed to a Tory landslide.
 “Twenty percent poll leads, or ratings up in 50% – anyone who’s looked at elections and poll ratings going back 50 years, no one ever gets that kind of result, not in a democratic system like ours, so I didn’t believe those.”
Jeremy Corbyn has impressed even critics in his own party with a tight, optimistic campaign, which will culminate on Wednesday with a series of mass rallies, from Glasgow to his home city of London.
However, Green said that the Labour leader was still a positive campaigning tool for May’s party troops. “If a Conservative canvasser is on a doorstep, the question you ask of a Labour voter is: ‘what do you think of Jeremy Corbyn?’. It’s not the first thing, because a lot of them are quite keen on Theresa May separately; but if they’re still wavering, you ask them what they think of Jeremy Corbyn; you ask them whether they think Jeremy Corbyn should be in charge of national security or the economy, and that sets the floodgates going.”
May’s manifesto contained few consumer giveaways, aside from the promise of a cap on domestic fuel bills, and some Tory candidates believe it has given them too few positive things to say on the doorstep.
The party has also faced pressure over its failure to say where the hastilyannounced cap on social care costs will fall, or how many pensioners will lose their winter fuel allowance.
Green admits the slim document is not “stuffed full of goodies”, but said voters would form a judgment based on their “general sense” of what the parties stood for. “The general public as a whole aren’t interested in details of policy. They get the general sense and they want the general sense of who you trust, and what you know about them.”
Labour’s manifesto promises a huge rise in public spending, the abolition of student tuition fees, and the renationalisation of Royal Mail and the railways.
Green says the manifestos present voters with their clearest choice for some time. “The big new factor is that objectively, this is the most leftwing offering since 1983, and people without any of the details get that perfectly. The phrase ‘magic money tree’ has cut through – that’s a phrase you get repeated back at you from the doorstep.”
He makes it clear that in the face of growing public concern about the impact of seven years of austerity, the Conservatives are relying on the familiar argument that Labour cannot be trusted with the public’s money.
“People are reasonably sceptical about all politicians, and politicians who come bearing unicorns and fairy cakes and say it’s all going to be great, and the only people who are going to pay for this are the big corporations and the rich – by and large, from my experience on the doorstep, people don’t buy that. If it was that easy, someone would do it already.”
But Green is keen to highlight a manifesto policy in his remit that has received little attention: a tax break for companies that take on hard-to-reach members of staff. “We will say that if you’re an employer who takes on certain groups of people who have traditionally low rates of employment, you will get a holiday from paying employer national insurance contributions for a year.
 “These are disabled people, veterans, people who are long-term unemployed, care-leavers, and ex-offenders,” he says. “The next great phase of spreading wealth in this country is going to be getting them into the labour market.“One of the big philosophical differences between the left and the right in this country now, is about the attitude to work. I really strongly believe that if you want to relieve poverty in this country, I think you have to support people into work”.
Green said that the Conservatives’ controversial work capability assessment, which tests benefit recipients’ readiness to go back to work, would be reviewed.
May was confronted about the issue by a young, partially sighted woman who had faced the assessment during the BBC’s Question Time leaders’ special. “You have to have some kind of assessment – it was a good idea to introduce it – but it can be improved, absolutely, definitely,” Green said.
Asked why the party had not felt the need to make broad tax pledges, along the lines of David Cameron’s “tax lock” in 2015 that ruled out rises to income tax, national insurance or VAT, Green said: “Bidding wars at elections are unlikely to produce good governance afterwards, and so we haven’t indulged in a bidding war. We don’t want to.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
This week’s debacle in Brussels leads to some very serious questions about the conduct of our exit from the EU.
The article 50 negotiations have been conducted from the very beginning on the wrong premise: the belief that success or failure was determined by whether or not the UK was able to agree a trade arrangement with the EU. By setting that measure, the UK government immediately gave the best hand to the EU, as this outcome was in their gift, not ours.
In fact, the trade deal is worth only a certain amount. The true measure of Brexit success is first and foremost whether we take control of our laws, our borders and our money, and then whether we are economically better off outside the EU than we would otherwise have been by staying in the EU.
On this latter point, there is absolutely no doubt that we can be better off, with or without a trade deal, provided the government adopts the right policies and takes full advantage of the economic freedoms that Brexit affords us.
Unfortunately the leadership had neither the economic nous nor the backbone to face down the naysayers and narrow self-interest of the multinationals in order to pursue the national interest.
We did see, however, in Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech, a level of determination to leave the EU, and were promised that we would not pay too much, and that the writ of the European court of justice (ECJ) would no longer run in the UK. There was also an apparent commitment to the integrity of the UK – witness the facing down of Nicola Sturgeon.
Unbelievably, we have witnessed, over recent weeks and months, starting with the Florence speech, an apparent breach of all of these commitments.
We are now prepared to pay the EU at least £55bn for our so-called “obligations”, an enormous sum. And no doubt, as the clock ticks and we are over a barrel, the EU will ask for more in any trade negotiation. This alone would pay for 14 years of all of the industrial tariffs the EU could apply to the UK!
We have seen our leadership try to sell down the river its own citizens in Northern Ireland, to effectively cede to another power a part of the sovereign UK in a move historically without precedent. To have done this either foolishly, without proper consultation, or knavishly, by stealth, is unconscionable and appears to be a duplicitous act that raises questions about the competence and/or integrity of our leadership.
To complete the triple, there are strong rumours that our leadership is prepared to acquiesce to EU demands that EU nationals (and their offspring) be given a superior class of citizenship, having the ability to call upon a foreign court, the European court of justice. This is something no sovereign state would countenance. Presumably this would have no reciprocity for UK nationals on the continent to have the protection of the UK supreme court above that of the ECJ. You couldn’t make it up!
Our leaders have decided to put the narrow self-interest of multinationals, as espoused by the likes of the Confederation of British Industry, ahead of its citizens, in their headlong rush to pay any price for a trade arrangement of inflated value. Our leaders have lost the plot. Thank goodness there was no landslide majority at the last election giving them the ability to run amok.
Fortunately it is not yet too late and the fickle finger of fate has played into our hands, but our leaders must grasp the nettle, or alternatively the Conservative party must grasp the leadership challenge before it is, indeed, too late.
The EU has overplayed its hand. It has seen the money that it so desperately needs and given us nothing. As such, there is no contract and the money can as easily disappear from the table. We hold the cards.
There remains just enough time to say we are going to commit to World Trade Organization (WTO) rules in March 2019 and start preparing to use this to boost the economy. Declaring now for WTO would give business absolute certainty about the future. Declaring now what future economic measures we will take and what opportunities we will seize will give business confidence. It will also win the next election. Under these circumstances it is not in the interests of the parliamentary majority, Conservative remainers and the DUP included, to support a vote of no confidence. It may also then be in the interests of the EU to stop behaving like a bully.
This is a moment in time, a massive opportunity for real leadership. The Conservative party needs to think very carefully about what it does next.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
When people look back at the political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic in 2016, two words will come to sum up the aftermath of “old politics” more than anything else: executive control. In the era of unexpected consequences, the most unexpected of all is that voters who acted to take back control from politicians have in fact given them unparalleled power to act without oversight.
It has become normal to see the daily work of Donald Trump summed up in a photograph of him – surrounded by his Praetorian guard of gloating white men – signing away freedoms, from travel visas and abortion rights to workplace protections. In the UK the mass rewriting of our country’s laws post-Brexit has been claimed by Theresa May as a job too time-consuming to allow for input from opposition parties. The Conservative party plans to move our rights around using secondary legislation that does not require a parliamentary vote.
When those with absolute power wield it absolutely, women’s rights are always in the firing line. Women are simultaneously exposed and invisible to institutions and decision-makers that define the health of our economies and societies according to whether men flourish – an approach that simultaneously ensures many never will, so long as economic and social opportunities for all go unclaimed. The Women’s Equality (WE) party was formed precisely to spotlight and challenge such political neglect. Current circumstances make this party more necessary than ever.
Because WE saw this coming. Working with the Greens and amassing the widest cross-party support, WE tabled an amendment to the article 50 bill precisely because we saw the government shaping up to remove legislative oversight from provisions in a way that would leave women particularly vulnerable. We wanted to ensure that parliament would have oversight of ministers rewriting laws to interpret EU employment and equality directives such as the working time regulations, which protects rights to annual leave, rest breaks and overtime pay. This was consistently opposed, delayed and challenged by the UK under its EU membership.
Our amendment was thrown out in both houses, meaning that the rights contained in this and other regulations such as health and safety at work, maternity and parental leave and the part-time workers regulations are all open to “reinterpretation” as they are written into UK law. Details like offering pregnant workers alternative work at the same rate of pay, protecting workers from redundancy during maternity leave and preventing less favourable treatment to part-time workers are all subject to the preferred wording of government ministers working behind closed doors.
Amendment or policy shift? Who’s watching? Women will be disproportionately affected by the rolling back of employment rights: they are more likely to take time off to care for young children and other family members, be single parents and be in part-time work. The impact on pregnant and breastfeeding workers would be the greatest.
Granted, we’re talking about laws that sometimes don’t work well. There is much scope to amend and improve the experiences of thousands of women in the UK who lose their jobs after pregnancy or are paid less per hour than their full-time colleagues to do exactly the same job but fewer days a week. But successive governments have demonstrated time and again that they do not care about women.
Tax and benefit changes introduced since 2010 have been paid for largely by women, who by 2020 will have shouldered 86% of welfare cuts, with black and Asian women suffering the most. While many parents choose to spend time at home with young children, the Labour Force Survey shows that at least 600,000 stay-at-home parents would prefer to have a paid job if they could afford to do so, particularly women. Still more have been pushed over the poverty line by failing to meet the tightened criteria of personal independence payments for disabled people or by having their retirement age changed with minimal consultation. And when Philip Hammond is suggesting a future economic model based on Singapore-style tax havens while – you can be sure – hard Brexiteers tour CEO suites making lists of workers’ rights that could be for the chop, it seems likely the provisions we have left may well be further diminished.
Equally, when the government has pushed through repellent rules forcing women to disclose rape in order to receive welfare should non-consensual sex push them over the two-children limit for receiving tax credits, and our main Brexit negotiator is a man who swapped jokes with colleagues about a black female MP being too ugly to kiss, you have to wonder whether protecting women from harassment and violence will be a priority in Brexit Britain. May talks a lot about violence against women, all the while slashing budgets for survivors’ services – but from David Davis there has been total silence on the future of the EU’s victims’ directive, which guarantees specialist support and protection from repeat victimisation for women, the equal treatment directive, which sets standards on preventing sexual harassment, and the anti-trafficking directive, which creates a framework for prevention, victim support and police cooperation.
There has been silence too on the replacement of key EU funding for UK organisations that rely on the European Social Fund to mitigate the cuts to welfare reform that have had such a disproportionate impact on women. Much of this EU money is being redirected by women’s services to counter a range of lifelines now scrapped that supported survivors of violence on the long, slow path back into employment.
A ray of hope is that ministers might be bold rather than brutal when it comes to rewriting our interpretation of human rights law. The European court of justice’s recent ruling that organisations can ban employees from wearing the hijab was shameful, and yet another barrier to work for Muslim women struggling to access employment given the triple discrimination imposed upon them due to their gender, ethnicity and religion. Given the tidal wave of Islamophobia engulfing this country, a clear sign from ministers seeking to escape the jurisdiction of the ECJ that religion remains a protected characteristic – along with gender, age, disability, race and sexual orientation – would help tackle the explosion of hate against “difference” that we’ve seen since 23 June 2016.
Brexit was supposed to be about taking back control and “protecting our own”. With the government taking control back to Whitehall rather than letting it reside in the Commons, the Women’s Equality party will work harder than ever to assert the rights and choices of women who are every bit as much the UK’s “own” as men.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Here we go again. As we return, haggard and hungover, from the Christmas break, the Brexit deal is heading back to parliament. And presumably the debate will also continue where it left off. Prepare for a succession of Brexiteers touting the idea of a “managed no deal” as an appealing alternative to either the deal on offer or the prospect of a no-deal outcome. They’re wrong.
It’s worth tracing the “logic” deployed by proponents of this approach, because it has gone through three distinct stages.
The first was to argue that no deal would be just fine for the UK, and that an immediate move to “WTO [World Trade Organization] rules” would not result in any new barriers to trade, because the EU would be obliged to recognise that the UK already complies with all EU regulatory standards. This zombie claim, made most notably by the Economists for Free Trade, has been debunked by almost every UK trade expert.
The EU intends to treat the UK as a third country – as is its right and, in some respects, its obligation – from day one. And our much-vaunted WTO membership will do little to mitigate this situation. Moreover, as Alex Stojanovic, a researcher at the thinktank the Institute of Government, has pointed out, the WTO makes no provision for things such as truck drivers licensing, pilot certification, or transfer of data. In other words, the potential consequences of a “chaotic” Brexit go far beyond just the implications for trade and supply chains, but extend to medicines, transport and the status of EU citizens in the UK and that of Brits in the EU.
Recognising this, the proponents of no deal have pivoted. Their new approach is a rebranding exercise – not simply “no deal”, still less “crashing out”, but the far more cuddly sounding “managed no deal”. David Davis, for example, explains that it is simply an “illusion” to suggest that no deal means, er, no deal. “Leaving without a withdrawal agreement is not the same as leaving without agreements.”
But while the EU has indeed set out some contingency plans for no deal – and it is true that those will enable us to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios – these are very different from the kind of side deals that Davis seems to envisage. They are distinctly one-sided, temporary, and intended to defend the EU against the worst of the disruption resulting from a no-deal outcome. And they leave important gaps.
So, for instance, while they would allow point-to-point flying between UK and EU cities, as yet they provide no concessions on ownership rules. That means, for example, that International Airlines Group (which owns British Airways and Iberia) will have difficulties maintaining its EU licence. Equally, key areas such as medicines and data are simply not covered. And Michel Barnier has insisted that mini-deals to supplement these basic plans are off the table.
How to solve the Irish question in the event of no deal is perhaps the most glaring omission from the narratives spun by those who claim no deal is not something we should worry about. Showcasing his trademark disdain for detail, Mr Davis airily dismisses the notion that a no-deal outcome would require a border in Ireland – Shanker Singham says we won’t need one, apparently. This argument is unlikely to reassure the 1,000 English and Scottish police officers who will be taken away from their day jobs of actually fighting crime to be trained – at the request of the Police Service of Northern Ireland – for deployment in Northern Ireland in the case of Brexit-related disorder.
The third leg of the no-deal argument, then, is not to claim that no deal will be easy or painless – but that it will be just as painful for the EU27, which will suffer disruption to their largest single trading partner and the massive hole in the EU budget that will result. The logic here is that some member states simply won’t tolerate the minimalist arrangements being proposed. After all, around 13,000 Irish truckers use the UK as a land bridge to the EU, via the Channel Tunnel. The Spanish will be concerned about Iberia’s rights. The French would not want long queues at Calais.
If we just hold our nerve, then, up to and possibly even after 29 March, the EU27 will come to their senses and give us what we want – a stripped-down version of the withdrawal agreement that includes a two-year transition period, avoiding any immediate disruption, and which does not include the “backstop”. Versions of this argument have been advanced both by Boris Johnson and, extraordinarily, by the leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom.
But this simply reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the UK’s bargaining position. The EU insisted from the start on the withdrawal agreement as a precursor to talks on trade because member states identified as the priority issues the rights of EU citizens, the Brexit bill and the Irish border, and it was prepared to leverage the threat of no deal ruthlessly to ensure that. Repeated assertions that the EU was somehow bluffing, and would eventually back down, have proved to be just that – assertions.
It also speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of what article 50 is all about. For all its flaws – and there are more than enough of these to make one wonder why Lord Kerr is so keen to claim authorship – it provides a unique way of managing the passage from membership to non-membership. Not least, it allows for a transition period – basically a unique form of EU relationship with a third state – to be agreed by qualified majority vote. Should there be no withdrawal agreement, there would be no such mechanism to allow for a temporary new relationship to be agreed.
Of course the EU has much to lose from no deal. But both sides know, and have known all along, who has more to lose. As we get closer to 29 March – and even more so, in the weeks after, as reality bites – our negotiating position becomes weaker, not stronger. Our basic choices and trade-offs will not have fundamentally changed – they will just have become even more constrained. So while the snake-oil salesmen have repeatedly reformulated their product, it’s still not a cure for the UK’s current woes.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
The Labour party wasn’t born in Doncaster, but it was conceived here. Every day, thousands of commuters in the town’s red-brick train station walk past a shiny gold plaque commemorating two local trade unionists, Thomas R Steels and Jimmy Holmes, “founding fathers of the Labour party”. It was Steels who, on the eve of the 20th century, penned a motion calling for an alliance of unions, socialist and working-class organisations to secure “a better representation of the interests of Labour in the House of Commons”. It was a proposal that the Trade Union Congress narrowly accepted and, in 1906, the Labour party was born.
It would satisfy Steels and Holmes to know that all three of Doncaster’s MPs are Labour. But the party’s electoral coalition is radically different from those days. There are the working-class towns of the north and the Midlands, their traditional industries battered and replaced by call centres and supermarkets; and the big cities, where diverse working-class communities live alongside cosmopolitan university graduates. The outlooks, values and priorities of the people who live in these places not only differ, they’re on a collision course. It is a faultline that the EU referendum exposed and widened. Both Hackney in inner London and Doncaster are Labour heartlands. While nearly eight out of 10 Hackney residents voted to remain, nearly seven out of 10 Doncaster voters opted for leave.
But towns like Doncaster are far from homogenous: they too are divided along lines of class, education, race and, perhaps most strikingly, age. When I point at the plaque, 26-year-old Kez, a railway worker in a yellow hi-vis vest, shrugs: “I’m personally not really into politics.” Like an overwhelming majority of black Britons, he voted Labour in 2015. “When they were in power they did a lot of all right for people, that’s what I think.” In a classic show of Yorkshire understatement, he tells me: “Jeremy Corbyn’s all right.” And although he didn’t vote in the EU referendum – the turnout here was slightly below the national average – he would have gone for remain.
Jane, a cleaner in her 50s wheeling a trolley through the station, votes Labour too – “I always have done” – but her take on the Labour leader is less charitable. “I just don’t like him at all, just some of his values. I think they need to concentrate more on old people, the health service, cut the majority of benefits for all these young’uns having all these children, getting benefits thrown at them.” Like so many voters, her views straddle traditionally left- and rightwing values; the granddaughter of a miner, she says: “Labour’s more for the working people, and the working people mean more to this country than these millionaires and these rich pensioners.”
Like Kez, Jane didn’t vote in the referendum – “didn’t have time” – but she would have plumped for leave. “We’ve got all these foreigners in our country,” she says, lowering her voice. “Those who’ve come in the last couple of years, just to come live here, to get the majority of our jobs and our benefits, they need to go back.”
A recent poll found that, while Labour had a lead among voters under 50, the Tory lead among Britons aged 50 to 64 was 21 points, soaring to an astonishing 50 points among the over-65s.
In Doncaster, that generational contrast is stark indeed. Emily and Shehnai are both 18 and chat outside the station. Although they were too young to vote last June, they would have gone for remain. “It was all, ‘ooh foreigners’, but a foreigner is just someone who used to live somewhere else, they’re allowed to move. We go to other countries and people don’t complain,” says Emily, an apprentice at a solicitor’s office. Both of them like Corbyn, with reservations: Emily worries he’s seen as “a bit flimsy”. “It’s just a shambles,” says Shehnai, who is looking for work after completing her A-levels. “They’re turning against Jeremy. If you don’t like what he stands for, leave the party. You’re in Labour for a reason, for working people.”
Their views could hardly be more diametrically opposed to those of Keith, a 54-year-old postman sorting mail in the reception of a local charity. He passionately backs leave: “Too many foreigners in the country, way too many, way way way too many.” The NHS will soon cease to exist because of immigrants, he claims, even though he grudgingly accepts the service would collapse without foreign-born nurses and doctors.
I meet Labour councillors Charlie Hogarth and Jane Nightingale at the town’s recently built civic office. Charlie, who’s 60, once worked as an electrician down one of the local pits. He protests that few mention Corbyn on Doncaster’s doorsteps. But there’s no doubt about a generational divide. “We’ve got more concerns with the elderly over the leadership,” says Jane. Why? Charlie blames the press – “they’re so demonising, portraying a split party”. Why did towns like Doncaster vote to leave? “It’s people’s perception,” says Charlie. “If you’ve got a street that’s never had any foreigners on it then suddenly there’s a foreign family on it – suddenly you perceive it being overrun by foreigners.”
Jenny, a 41-year-old council worker who voted remain, tells me about a young man who moved with his family to a row of terraced houses and then felt isolated. “An essentially transient, largely male workforce from some of the factories round here decided to move to that street,” she said. “That wasn’t his desire: I don’t think he was expecting his family to be surrounded by these young guys from eastern Europe.”
Doncaster and Hackney might both vote Labour, but they inhabit different worlds. In the Leopard pub by Doncaster station, I sit with John, a Unite union organiser. “My perception of Hackney would be it’d be a nice commuter belt, people go to the City, decent banking jobs, insurance and all that.” I tell him it has one of the highest rates of child poverty in Britain. “I shouldn’t have these misconceptions, I’m a union activist!” he says. “I bet in Hackney they think Doncaster people walk around with flat caps and whippets, all scruffy.” Thatcherism and New Labour have both left a legacy of disillusionment, he believes.
“Jeremy Corbyn has a massive job on his hands,” he tells me. “There’s the splits not just in the party but among voters too. They’ve got to give people hope in Doncaster – that’s what will defeat fear, it’s hope.”
If anyone needs hope, it’s those who depend on the local foodbank. Mark, a retired teacher, is the enthusiastic manager. The foodbank opened in 2013; two satellite centres have opened in the ex-pit villages of Bentley and Rossington. Last year more than 4,000 locals were fed, the majority because of benefit sanctions and delays. One is Paul, a 49-year-old from Bentley, who has been found fit for work and moved from employment support allowance to jobseeker’s allowance, and found himself hungry while this was processed. One of the hopes of the Corbyn project was to mobilise non-voters, but Paul underlines that those who need politics the most continue to be the most disengaged. “I’m not really bothered, I can’t remember the last time I voted.” Kai, who is 20, whose benefits were sanctioned when he was made homeless, goes blank at the very mention of politics. “Don’t even get half of it. You don’t normally till you’re older do you?”
Here is a town that played a critical role in forging the Labour party. Its older, working-class residents have a view of the world that is utterly different and in conflict with much of the next generation, particularly in big cities. How Labour overcomes such divisions and rebuilds a broader electoral coalition will determine the future of the party – and the country, too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
British universities are some of the best in the world. Their combination of academic rigour and creativity are admired across the globe. The world-class research they produce has, over decades, provided the basis for innovation and thus guaranteed the success of a whole nation.
But to assume that the wonderful success story of Britain’s universities is one entirely of their own making would be a mistake: the UK’s academic system has thrived because, not in spite of, the openness it has shown to foreign researchers in the past.
Higher education, probably even more so than the NHS, is dependent on talented academics from across the rest of Europe. Of the academics teaching and researching at British universities, about 55,000, or 30%, are from outside the UK – and 32,000 are from the European Union, of whom 5,250 are German.
The ties between British and German academia are particularly close: about 14,000 Germans currently study at British universities – some of Erasmus exchange schemes, some as students for the length of a full degree. They make up 11% of the British student body, the largest group of non-British European students in the UK.
Many of these students will be the bridge-builders of tomorrow – as politicians, researchers, artists, diplomats or chief executives. After the US, Germany is the UK’s most important trading partner.
But unless the right priorities are set now, the consequences of Britain’s vote to leave the EU could put this winning collaboration at risk.
Recently the British Council proposed that Brexit need not mean the end of the Erasmus+ programme in the UK. The demise of the student exchange scheme between the UK and Germany and other European countries would be a catastrophe.
However, it’s not only Erasmus+ that’s threatened: should the right priorities not be set during the exit negotiations then wider academic collaborations between the UK and Germany will be endangered.
Like their fellow UK students, German students in the UK currently pay the home fees rate. If this should change, the academic exchange with the UK will collapse – and the groundwork for future cultural ties with it. As the president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), representing 239 institutions of higher education and 105 student bodies, I therefore call on the British government to guarantee that our students do not in the future have to pay higher fees than their British counterparts.
For teaching staff Brexit poses further challenges. The uncertainty with regard to working conditions, to the possibility of staying, and to residence permits for academics and their families is already proving painful. Some top academics are not accepting posts in British universities as they do not know the conditions under which they will be able to work here in the future.
The British government should end this uncertainty as soon as possible and clarify matters. Within an international research context, the mobility of researchers should not be restricted – either for British academics doing research in EU countries, or for EU citizens at British higher education institutions. Both benefit hugely from international exposure promoting collaborative research in all fields.
The DAAD has been involved globally with supporting academic cooperation for more than 90 years. In London we opened our first branch office in 1952 thanks to the far-sightedness of our British partners after the second world war. The UK and Germany have been able to build on cooperation between universities and on academic projects that have grown over decades. I promise that this cooperation will continue, built on this solid base.
We will involve ourselves fully in future negotiations between German and British universities and partner organisations for continuity, expansion and openness of academic exchange.
Now it is up to the British government to ensure this can happen.
First published on Fri 13 Jul 2018 04.38 BST
Donald Trump’s incendiary newspaper interview on the eve of his first official visit to the UK, in which he took aim at Theresa May’s Brexit plans and suggested Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister, has been met with outrage by MPs, who have accused him of “disrespecting” the nation and suggested Theresa May should show him the door.
Trump, who is due to meet Theresa May for bilateral talks at her Chequers residence on Friday, was heavily critical of the Brexit deal and called into question any future UK-US trade deal. “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal,” he told the Sun.
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston said Trump was “determined to insult” May and added that “The divisive, dog-whistle rhetoric in his Sun interview is repulsive. If signing up to the Trump world view is the price of a deal, it’s not worth paying.”
Ben Bradshaw, Labour MP for Exeter, called the courting of Trump by the UK “humiliating”. “Our prime minister is so weak she still rolls out the red carpet for a man who does nothing but insult her. Humiliating,” he wrote.
Darren Jones, Labour MP for Bristol North West, echoed those sentiments, writing: “Well this has gone well then. What a humiliating week for Britain (excluding the valiant efforts of our football team!).”
Former Labour party Ed Miliband tweeted a link to a news story about Trump’s comment, and said: “The theory that if we are nice to Trump he’ll be nice to us doesn’t seem to be going brilliantly ...”
Labour MP Anna Turley questioned whether the US president should now be allowed to meet the Queen during his four-day visit. He is due to take tea with her at Windsor Castle on Friday afternoon.
“Trump is a racist and disrespects our nation. Why does he get to meet our Queen? And those Tories saying we should respect him simply because he is elected president – by that logic shouldn’t he respect our prime minister and London’s mayor?” tweeted the MP for Redcar.
In the US, Democrat congressman Brendan Boyle took issue with Trump’s comment that he was popular in Britain despite the protests planned around the country. Trump had said in the interview: “I believe that the people in the UK – Scotland, Ireland ... they like me a lot.”
Boyle pointed out to the president that “Ireland is not part of the UK. It’s been an independent country for about 100 years ... Please stop embarrassing us on the international stage.”
The Conservative American commentator Ben Shapiro also objected to Trump’s interview, tweeting that undermining May even “as Labour moves toward power” was “classic Bad Trump”.
In his interview the president criticised London mayor Sadiq Khan, saying he had done “a bad job” on terrorism and that there had been too much immigration in Europe.
Rupa Huq, the Labour MP for Central Ealing and Acton, said: “A dash of Islamophobia lobbed at Sadiq Khan who he blames for terrorism. Awful stuff.”
Stella Creasy, the Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow, condemned what she saw as “Trump’s demonisation of immigration and UK” and wrote: “Time to stop holding his hand and instead start holding the door open for him.”
In 2017 the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, vetoed the idea of Trump speaking inside the chamber, saying Trump was unfit to address MPs, because of parliament’s opposition to to racism and to sexism.
Another Labour MP, Lilian Greenwood, shared a picture of Barack Obama, writing that Brits love a US president “worthy of the title”.
There was little in the way of notable responses from pro-Brexit MPs to Trump’s Sun interview, however Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group of pro-Brexit Tory MPs, tweeted a link to it without comment.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
Here he comes, wielding the delayed memoirs that will finally go on sale on Thursday, about to star in the two-part BBC documentary that premieres the same day, and committed to the bare minimum of public appearances. In the midst of such a huge national mess, David Cameron seems to be fulfilling a role that will be familiar to any devotee of country music or TV soap opera: that of the estranged, emotionally constipated husband, who left behind the domestic carnage he created and then hesitantly returned, lost as to what to say but desperate to somehow make amends.
The media has a habit of reducing complex and confounding questions about recent history to a single supposedly momentous event or decision, and so it is proving this time. With Tony Blair and his legacy, everything still supposedly centres on Iraq; in Cameron’s case, 95% of the weekend’s headlines were focused on what he now says about the promise, delivery and conduct of the referendum of June 2016. “I should have done more to mix criticisms of the EU with talking about its very real achievements,” he writes, a sentence that is surely a shoo-in for the understatement of the decade. The two big leave campaigns, he says, were “a cauldron of toxicity”. Boris Johnson backed his side – no, really – “to benefit his political career”, and Michael Gove was transformed into “a foam-flecked Faragist”. His anger and contrition, however, don’t encompass the vote itself: putting our membership of the EU to the public, he reaffirms, was “necessary and, I believe, ultimately inevitable”.
But fixating on the decision to hold the referendum and his woeful politicking with the EU ignores the nitty-gritty of Cameron’s record, and thereby lets him off the hook. Brexit, after all, is symptomatic of things that run much deeper than our relationship with Europe. And on this score, Cameron and his former colleagues have huge questions to answer, if only someone would ask them. In the wake of the crash of 2007-08, they took control of a country that was already starting to show signs of fury, division and seething resentment. Their biggest sin, it seems to me, was to encourage and accelerate those things, to the point that they were probably always going to explode in some awful drama of national self-harm.
As I was getting ready to write this piece, I re-read an essay about Cameron I wrote for the New Statesman in January 2006. It gave off the scent of much more innocent times, two and a half years before the fall of Lehman Brothers, when Blair was the prime minister, and we were still happily stuck in what we might think of as The Long 1990s. Cameron was keen on cycling to work and talking about “social justice, the dearth of female MPs, the gender pay gap [and] organic food”. He was also frantically praising the voluntary sector, and laying the ground for the vague mess of ideas he called the Big Society.
Senior politicians are usually strange creatures, with an amazing capacity for holding apparently contradictory impulses; in the moment, Cameron probably believed that what he was fumbling towards was not just human and kind, but suited to a world in which people can self-organise as never before. But it was also clear that woven into all this stuff was a very familiar Tory antipathy towards what remained of the postwar settlement. In his interview with Cameron at about the same time, the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley noted “his attachment to that Thatcherite phrase ‘rolling back the state’”.
We all know what happened four years later. Mere days before the election of 2010, Cameron said that any Tory minister considering “frontline reductions” would be sent “straight back to their department to go away and think again”. He then commenced the decade of fiscal savagery that has left some of the most fundamental parts of the public realm hanging on for dear life: “an economic rescue job”, he now says, with his seemingly unshakable doublethink summed up in the claim that “the last thing I wanted to do was to make any cuts to anything”. The triteness is excruciating. Quite apart from the fate of adult social care, children’s centres and other vital services, Britain is now a country in which austerity is part of the everyday ambience, all shut-down pools and libraries, broken-down parks, and once-a-day buses. These things inflamed the sense of neglect that played a key role in the summer of 2016: credible academic research shows that pre-referendum support for Ukip correlated strongly with local austerity.
There is a belief around at the moment, encouraged by many of the 21 Conservative MPs recently expelled from the party by Johnson, that it is only now that their party has become unprecedentedly nasty and irresponsible. But in 2013, I can clearly recall seeing huge hoardings at the Conservative conference in Manchester with such crude slogans as “Welfare capped”, “Immigration down”, and the dog-whistling formulation, “for hardworking people”. Cameron’s big speech reduced Labour’s time in power to “millions coming here from overseas while millions of British people were left on welfare”. He also assured his audience that “we must act on immigration directly … and we are. Capping immigration. Clamping down on the bogus colleges … If you are not entitled to our free National Health Service, you should pay for it. If you have no right to be here, you cannot rent a flat or a house … When you are a foreign prisoner fighting deportation, you should pay your own legal bills. If you appeal, you must do it from your own country, after you’ve been deported, not from here.”
No one should now let him get away with styling himself as the failed pioneer of a softer, more sympathetic kind of politics. Whether or not he was privately uncomfortable with them, these words alone confirm not just that Cameron looked like an enthusiastic participant in the hostile environment doctrine that led to the Windrush scandal, but that Faragism had already infected the Tory soul.
Two years later, having fused all this stuff with the crabby English nationalism awakened by all those warnings about Labour teaming up with the SNP, the Tories won an outright parliamentary majority, but that was only this agenda’s first victory. It doesn’t really matter that Cameron himself limply campaigned to stay in the EU and then shamefully departed the scene: if anyone agreed with the essential thrust of what he had been doing for the previous six years, how were they ever going to end up voting to remain?
Politicians’ autobiographies are invariably tedious, truth-eluding things, often destined to be piled up in discount shops. Historians and political anoraks will take what they can from this latest example, but it will not shine much light on connections that are too often ignored. Brexit is partly the fault of irresponsible politicians who were not actually Brexiteers; Johnson’s nasty opportunism is not that different from the approach taken by Cameron and George Osborne, two people whose role in Britain’s current disaster is still under-appreciated. Whatever alibis and excuses are given an airing this week, these things ought not to be forgotten.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
As commentators line up to debate the character and personality traits of the two men running for the Tory leadership – and by default our prime minister – there is only one question on my mind: how credible are the details of how and when they can deliver or resolve Brexit?
This does not appear to be a question 84% of Conservative party members are remotely bothered with, as they would prefer the fantasy of an immediate “clean Brexit”. They welcome their witching hour of 11pm on 31 October becoming Independence Day, as if it’s some sort of Hollywood blockbuster, with no deal.
If only will was reality. There is a raft of legislation required even in a no-deal scenario – for example bills on agriculture, fisheries, financial services, trade and immigration. So, too, the vexed question of the Irish border. Boris Johnson, like an overexcited puppy when interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg this week, grabbed this bone and enthused about “abundant, abundant technical fixes that can be introduced to make sure that you don’t have to have checks at the border”. Johnson is not one to worry about details, given the fact that in January Sabine Weyand, the EU’s deputy negotiator, said: “We’ve looked at every border on this Earth, every border the EU has with a third country – there’s simply no way you can do away with checks and controls.”
Then there is the clause in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Section 10, on the subject of the Irish border, states that nothing in this act “authorises regulations which … diminish any form of North-South cooperation provided for by the Belfast agreement”. This is likely to mean that the Northern Ireland backstop will stay in place until MPs reach an agreement that honours the UK’s obligations under the Good Friday agreement.
I can hear the naysayers now – we are Great Britain, we can leave with a clean Brexit and a smooth transition to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms under which the rest of the world trades. Yes, Britain is a signatory to the WTO in its own right – but there are no WTO terms that apply specifically to the UK, as we have been operating under the EU’s umbrella for decades.
To deal directly under WTO terms will require us to have something called a schedule of tariffs, which applies tariffs to all imports into a country as well as quotas for a certain amount of tariff-free goods. Brexiteers such as Bernard Jenkin MP say we can simply rely on “default terms” or the EU’s schedule of tariffs. But that suggestion has already, understandably, been blocked by many of the 164 WTO members. Why would they allow the UK to take advantage of the negotiating position of a large global trading bloc such as the EU, when they themselves can’t? Unless Britain can set up emergency cover by using the EU schedule or our own schedule without formal approval, we will enter uncharted territory on the morning of 1 November, as no deal means no transition period. Again, Johnson thinks this is “tosh”. He can magic this, too – an implementation period not attached to a withdrawal agreement, but agreed by the EU anyway – even though he has not spoken to a single person on the EU side about this.
Johnson will say we can be like Australia or New Zealand or Norway, conveniently forgetting that Australia has trade agreements in place with more than 17 countries, including the US, China, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, and deals with another 20 countries signed and in the pipeline.
I do not doubt that there are many countries that will wish to trade with the UK post-Brexit, but understandably they will wait to see what the UK’s ultimate relationship with Europe will be. WTO members will be watching Britain’s diplomatic behaviour closely. How the new prime minister and his government conduct themselves, especially if they refuse to pay the £39bn bill, will have a serious impact – and possibly make us devoid of international goodwill.
Trade would not stop, but there will be legal uncertainty, tariffs and barriers, and protectionism from other countries. In some sectors, such as meat and dairy, tariffs as high as 97% would result in British farmers who export lamb and beef seeing their prices double to uncompetitive levels. Imports of animal feed and fertilisers could also face tariffs, so farmers’ costs will increase, squeezing margins in the face of falling sales and no subsidies. This would affect chemicals and machinery parts too, which operate on a “just in time” basis, and also labour. A similar story would unfold across other sectors, with everyday imports we depend on – life-saving drugs, radioactive isotopes for MRI scans, medical equipment, epilepsy drugs, contact lenses, electricity, petrol, even milk – being hit.
Most politicians stay quiet on the fact that we are an 80% service economy. The WTO/Gatt regime into which this would fall would mean other countries being able to impose barriers, such as requiring doctors, accountants or architects to requalify. The financial services sector, which has been world-leading, and the UK aviation services sector, the third largest in the world, would be hugely affected: the EU has a competitive single market for air transport.
Meanwhile, though the prime minister will change, the arithmetic in parliament won’t. And there will be just 20 sitting days to the end of October to resolve the hornets’ nest of issues – and no one on the EU side of the table to renegotiate with until mid-November at the earliest.
But let’s not be bothered with mere details. Who needs policies and practical solutions – sheer force of personality will win the day. Why worry that we would be poorer and less safe than we are today?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have warned of the dangers of Brexit. But where is the former prime minister who called the referendum that will blight Britain for as far ahead as anyone can see? Whatever happened to that likely lad? David Cameron doesn’t want to talk about it, one of his friends tells me. “He doesn’t defend the referendum, but won’t say he made a mistake either. Europe is like a family scandal. We know what’s happened but we don’t say a word: it’s his no-go zone.”
At a personal level, the consequences swirl around him. I may be exhausting your capacity for compassion but the smallest of the casualties of Brexit has been the good fellowship of the Chipping Norton set. Naturally, the Cotswolds’ wealthy Leavers are grateful. But Cameron must resent them. He must know that he has been the useful idiot who succumbed to the demands of Rupert Murdoch’s Rebekah Brooks, a member of the local nouveau gentry by virtue of her converted barn, in the crashingly stupid belief that no harm would come from his surrender.
Invitations to “kitchen suppers” from Remainers, however, can only include Samantha Cameron’s name – if, they are extended at all. Tania Rotherwick invited the Camerons to her pool at the magnificent Cornbury Park estate before she split from her husband and Cameron split Britain from Europe. She is now particularly contemptuous, I hear.
Cameron’s memoirs were meant to be published this month but have been delayed until next year. The early signs are ominous. A book has to be coherent if it is to find a readership: its opening must prefigure its conclusion. As described in the publishing press, Cameron’s effort will have no consistency. He will tell the story of the formation of the coalition, his contributions to economic, welfare and foreign policy, his surprise victory in the 2015 election and then – as if from nowhere – the conventional memoir will end with the author carelessly deciding he will settle the European question, without planning a campaign or preparing an argument and, instead, launching a crisis that will last for decades. Nothing will make sense. Nothing will hang together. It’s as if a romcom were to conclude with serial killers murdering the cooing lovers or Hilary Mantel were to have aliens invade Tudor England on the last page of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
The book Cameron cannot write would accept that his political battles and achievements were as nothing when set against his decision to appeal to the worst of the Tory party. It would begin with Cameron honouring the decision that won him the Conservative leadership in 2005. He would confess that he should have known better than to pull the Conservatives out of the centre-right group in the European parliament and align them with Law and Justice, the know-nothing Polish nationalists who are reducing their country to an ill-governed autocracy. The manoeuvre was pure Cameron: tactics above strategy; appeasement instead of confrontation.
The pattern continued throughout his premiership. He thought he could buy off the right by refusing to explain the benefits of EU membership to the voters. At one point in 2014 he threatened to leave the EU. He then turned around in 2016 and asked the public to believe that leaving would be a disaster and was surprised when 17.4 million men and women he had never treated as adults worthy of inclusion in a serious conversation ignored him.
If he were being honest, Cameron would admit too that Brexit ought to bring an end to a British or, to be specific, English, style that is by no means confined to the upper class, but was everywhere present among the public-school boys who ruled us.
I mean the ironic style that gives us our famously impenetrable sense of humour (which we will need now the rest of the world is laughing at us). The perfidious style that allows us to hide behind masks and has made England superb at producing brilliant actors for the West End but hopeless at producing practical politicians for Westminster. The teasing style of speaking in codes that benighted foreigners can never understand, however well they speak English. The cliquey style that treats England as a club, not a country, and allowed Jeremy Corbyn to say that Jews cannot “understand English irony”, however long their ancestors have lived here.
The deferential style that allowed one Etonian to lead the Remain campaign and another to lead the Leave campaign and for the English to not even see why that was wrong. The life’s-a-game-you-shouldn’t-take-too-seriously style that inspired Cameron to say he holds “no grudges” against Boris Johnson now the match is over and the covers back on the pitch. The gentleman amateur style that convinced Cameron he could treat a momentous decision like an Oxford essay crisis and charm the electorate into agreeing with him in a couple of weeks, as if voters were a sherry-soaked don who could be won round with a few clever asides. The effortlessly superior style that never makes the effort to ask what the hell the English have to feel superior about. The gutless, dilettantish and fatally flippant style that has dominated England for so long and failed it so completely. The time for its funeral has long passed.
A politician who bumped into Cameron said he thinks the referendum result must be respected, but that Britain should protect living standards by going for the softest Brexit imaginable and staying in the single market. This is a compromise well to the “left” of Theresa May and Corbyn’s plans and is worth discussing. Whatever his critics say, David Cameron is a former PM. He not only has the right to offer his solution but a duty. If he is to earn the right to a hearing, however, he must first find not only self-knowledge and courage, but an un-English seriousness of purpose he has evaded all his life.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
When David Miliband fled to New York to run the International Rescue Committee, he cannot have imagined his old country would be most in need of his services. Britain now needs all the help it can get, even from superannuated expatriate politicians. By the autumn the government will have had to choose between the devil of a messy but feasible hotchpotch of soft Brexit and the deep blue sea of no deal. We can dance on the head of a pin for so long, but this year there has to be a choice.
Today, at an Open Reason event in Essex, a tri-party trio of Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nicky Morgan are seeking to advance the cause of a version of the customs union/single market called the European Economic Area (EEA), as enjoyed by Norway. This would not reverse the referendum, an outcome futilely sought by remain fundamentalists. It would honour Brexit, while also honouring Theresa May’s claimed commitment to “frictionless” trade. Each of the “issues” – control on aspects of migration, no border in Ulster, ad hoc deals with third parties – can be accommodated, up to a point, within the terms of an EEA negotiation.
May should now slam her fist on the cabinet table and say yes to Miliband, Clegg and Morgan. She should say yes to the 14 Lords amendments to the Brexit bill now returning to the Commons. She should say yes to a clear majority of her cabinet and all MPs. She should say yes to public opinion. The EEA is the one sensible and consensual compromise through this mess.
Against it stands the apparently insuperable obstacle of the prime minister’s lack of guts. She is in awe of a group of diehards in her cabinet and on her backbenches.
May undoubtedly faces the greatest crisis of Tory leadership in a generation, and there is no question this involves personal risk. She must rescind some of her more reckless hard-Brexit pledges. She will face the resignation of ministers and a probable leadership challenge. But it is doubtful if such a rebellion will terminally undermine her position. Leaders have faced such crises before – as did John Major when he called the bluff of a similar rebellion in 1995.
Seeking a parliamentary consensus is the proper constitutional way forward. May should be able to win support this autumn for a realistic negotiating strategy in Brussels, irrespective of her party’s internal disputes. For the next year, such an outbreak of sanity could lead Britain to a new, perhaps even constructive, semi-detachment from the EU. It would serve the national interest.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
David Davis has written to Conservative MPs warning that the party faces “dire” electoral consequences if Theresa May continues to pursue a Chequers-style deal with the EU27.
As talks in Brussels reach their final, frantic stage, the former Brexit secretary’s pointed letter, sent to all his parliamentary colleagues, was one of a series of interventions on Tuesday by critics of the prime minister’s approach.
“No 10’s stated position that there is only a binary choice between her Chequers plan and no deal is not correct. A third way does exist,” Davis said, urging Downing Street to switch to advocating the Canada-style trade deal he has long preferred.
May told her colleagues at last week’s party conference in Birmingham: “Those of us who do respect the result, whichever side of the question we stood on two years ago, need to come together now.
“If we don’t, if we all go off in different directions in pursuit of our own visions of the perfect Brexit, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.”
But with intensive talks taking place in Brussels all week, backbench MPs critical of May’s approach are making their views known. Brexiters inside May’s cabinet, some of whom lean towards a Canada deal, are also watching developments closely.
Those calling on May to “chuck Chequers” are concerned that the “common rulebook” will mean too much alignment with EU rules, and frictionless trade for goods will restrict the UK’s ability to strike future trade deals.
Davis insisted Chequers would fail to meet the government’s commitments to “take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade” and that the EU would either reject it anyway or “take it as a basis for significant further concessions”.
As Conservative MPs mull over whether they will back May if she brings back a deal to parliament in the next few weeks, he claimed voters would punish the Tories if they implemented Chequers.
“If we stay on our current trajectory we will go into the next election with the government having delivered none of the benefits of Brexit, with the country reduced to being a rule-taker from Brussels, and having failed to deal with a number of promises in the manifesto and the Lancaster House speech,” he said.
“This will not be a technicality, it will be very obvious to the electorate”.
Earlier, Steve Baker, who worked alongside Davis in the Department for Exiting the EU, used a BBC interview to claim that the European Research Group, of which he is deputy chair, could count on 40 MPs voting against the deal.
Baker said his original estimate of 80 potential rebels was “an accurate number”, but conceded efforts by party whips would be likely to halve it.
Cabinet sources have previously told the Guardian they believe the more likely number to be between 10 and 20 rebels, which would still leave the government needing to rely on Labour votes.
Baker hammered home his message in five videos, published on Monday, warning: “The government’s Chequers plan does not deliver a meaningful Brexit and the EU says it doesn’t work.” Britain must pursue Brexit, he added, because “freedom is the fountainhead of prosperity, virtue and dignity”.
Separately, the former chief whip Mark Harper, who has broadly supported the prime minister in the past, used an article in the Telegraph to warn that Chequers would not pass the Commons.
Harper, a former immigration minister, said the issue of the Irish border could be dealt with through technology and by building on existing infrastructure.
He warned that the compromises involved in accepting Chequers, which prompted Davis, Baker and Boris Johnson to resign, would not be the last concessions exacted by the EU as it seeks to protect the integrity of the single market.
“I expect that the EU will demand compromises which are likely to be unacceptable to the prime minister, cabinet and Conservative party.
“Why do I say this? Because it is exactly how the EU behaved when David Cameron was negotiating his deal with them before the referendum, and which I witnessed first-hand as government chief whip.
“Therefore, in my judgment, the most likely way of achieving the good deal we all want to see with our European neighbours is a Canada-style FTA already offered to us by the EU as the basis of a deal,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
The chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has warned that a hard Brexit would have an “absolutely detrimental” impact on the peace process.
During a press conference in Belfast, Simon Byrne painted a stark picture of a potential worst-case scenario of farms and agricultural businesses going bust and animals being culled, leading to potential unrest within communities.
Asked if a hard Brexit would have a detrimental impact, he replied: “Absolutely detrimental.” He added: “Because we know there is a small number of people – bearing in mind how many people live happily and peacefully here – but a small number of people intent on disruption and causing really serious harm.”
Byrne also said he wanted answers from London as to how the PSNI was supposed to police the 300 border crossings in the face of the dissident republican threat that could increase with a hard Brexit.
“I think we are worried that in the short term a hard Brexit will create a vacuum which becomes a rally call and recruiting ground for dissident republicans and clearly any rise in their popularity or their capability would be very serious,” he said.
Byrne said his officers were having discussions with senior civil servants to “make plain” thePSNI’s concerns.
“We are and I am concerned about how Brexit may or may not play out in weeks ahead,” he said. “Firstly, we are all in the same place that we don’t quite know where things will go and we have prepared as well as we can, both as a PSNI and with other organisations. “But on specifics, if we have a hard border the question I have for London, frankly, is how do we police that hard border? “You’ll know how many crossings there are between the two countries, nearly 300 – and that’s the official ones. So I think it raises a whole raft of issues around the potential for smuggling.”
Byrne said that apart from the policing dimension, his personal concern would be understanding the effects on agriculture.
“If tariffs change and drop, we will see the prospect of animals being culled and people going out of business. That may lead to unrest and we are having to protect other agencies as we go to support new arrangements,” he said.The chief constable’s warning came after the Republic of Ireland’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, predicted the UK was facing decades of economic decline following Brexit, as the nation struggled to cope with a diminishing position on the world stage.
On Friday, Varadkar told Newstalk radio that the UK would “fall into relative economic decline for many decades, probably be overtaken by France again. Slowly over time, it’ll be overtaken by lots of countries in Asia.”
He added: “I think that one of the difficulties for Britain is that they’re struggling to cope with the fact that as a country and an economy they’re not as important in the world as they used to be.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The civil war in the Tory party rages, yet these are still only opening skirmishes. Far worse is to come. Theresa May does all any leader of a benighted, broken party can do: procrastinate, drag her famous heels, duck and dive – until that unavoidable moment when the shape of Brexit finally emerges.
We saw how, with May’s Florence speech apparently agreed, Boris Johnson broke ranks, impudently laying down his own red lines, and emerging unchastised, unsacked. Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove and the whole gallery of Euro-fanatic rogues want a brutal wrench out of everything European. No deal devised with the wisdom of Solomon could suit both them and the Philip Hammond, Damian Green, Amber Rudd, Dominic Grieve sensibles striving to limit the damage. Everywhere at this Tory conference, the fever of schism burns.
The irony is that in their Brexit victory is their defeat: the Euromaniacs are destroying the citadel they have just captured. Hammond, the chancellor, ended his conference speech today with what sounded like a mournful yearning for a distant past: “Conference, the Conservative party is the most successful political organisation in history, flexible and adaptable, responding to a changing world. But resolute and unmoving in its principles and values.” Not any more, it’s not.
One of the most unexpected elements in the disintegration of the traditionally “natural party of government” is its overnight loss of nerve. These masters of the universe – owners of most of Britain’s land and capital – and their strutting, entitled establishment have lost their bottle. They imagine the capitalism that they control is in mortal peril from a Labour party storming the Winter Palace of the City of London. The chancellor – supposedly the most grown-up of them all – devoted the bulk of his speech to idiocies suggesting that Britain was destined for a fate worse than Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Cuba.
Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, have plenty of detractors who fear the duo would mismanage the economy – but this was preposterous stuff from Hammond, even by the standards of party conference hyperbole. Other speeches here try to stir this synthetic culture war between Labour Maoism and a Tory market economy. Red scares started back with Ramsay MacDonald, though pollsters find this stuff has little traction. Its purpose now is distraction: the Tories don’t want to talk about Brexit, or austerity – and they certainly don’t want to talk about the faltering economy.
But there is envy too. Corbyn and his 570,000 party members have the Conservatives spooked: their own membership is rumoured to have sunk to 100,000, with half the local parties on fewer than 100. Angsty Tories are calling for a young Momentum-style movement. Some seriously proposed the same £3, or even free, membership. Really? That will be fun in the next leadership vote.
But the Tory crisis runs so much deeper in its psyche. It is devoid of direction, policy or purpose, poisoned by Brexit. The chancellor’s hopeless speech to a somnolent hall rambled along with only one intention – to avoid talking about the dire straits he’s in. Start with the Financial Times front-page splash on conference opening day: “Britain sinks to bottom of G7 growth table”. (On the eve of the EU referendum the UK was top.) Those close to Hammond say he is haunted by the crunch, crash and crisis he expects Brexit to cause, so he hoards every penny he can muster for a war chest to protect us from the worst. Not his fault, he never voted for it, but he’s left to cope with the wicked folly of the Brexiteers. Wages keep on falling, along with productivity and business investment.
Next he confronts the mood of a country that has turned against austerity: there’s nothing such a conventional Tory chancellor will do to ease that. No rabbits, bribes or tax cuts hopping out of his red box. Paltry millions for northern transport were embarrassingly less than May’s shameless electoral bribe to the DUP. Minor tinkering with tuition fees will buy no student votes. Meanwhile, the public will no longer tolerate the growing crises all around – the NHS, social care, schools, further education, council services, public sector pay, and more.
If there is a crisis in capitalism, it’s because ever fewer people have, or will have, any capital at all, as home ownership plummets from 72% to 64%, still falling. Hammond’s reprise of Help to Buy is a disgrace: the Resolution Foundation shows how this scheme, subsidising homes up to £600,000, mainly benefits higher earners and artificially inflates house prices. Give money instead to councils, let them borrow to build for rent and they would multiply the number of homes. But last year less was spent on social housing than at any time since the war.
Expect May’s speech on Wednesday to be peppered with conference slogans – “fighting injustices”, “fairness for working people” and such. But her refusal to stop the roll-out of universal credit should make her blush at any such words. Her government’s tanks are rolling over seven million households, many losing £1,000 a year, with six-week delays plunging them into rent arrears, trapping them in debts they never escape. What can she say about her JAMs – just about managing – whose living standards have fallen since her last conference speech?
If imitation is flattery, Labour should be preening at the Tories’ feeble attempts here to copy them. How to be cool, modern, young and energising? Instead, the half-empty hall snoozes through a parade of possibly the most unimpressive set of cabinet ministers in living memory: half are deranged with Brexit fever, the other half dismally unappealing, with a leader who only survives because none of the others looks any more plausible.
Their condition looks terminal: the abominable Boris Johnson tops his party’s polls, an improvised explosive device in waiting. Has Brexit killed off the visceral instinct for power that has been the Tory raison d’etre for so long? Labour should beware triumphalism and hubris: it’s probably years to another election, public opinion is exceptionally volatile and Labour needs much work to make its spending plans convincing. The death of the Conservative party has been pronounced prematurely on many occasions. Zombies do rise from the grave. But with Johnson and Rees-Mogg the stars of the show, I have never seen this party so frivolously shambolic.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
Ireland’s European commissioner has urged Theresa May to change her Brexit plans dramatically to prevent a mounting crisis over the Irish border from derailing her hopes of an EU trade deal.
The threat of a hard Irish border has emerged as the major obstacle to the prime minister’s aim of securing the green light for Brexit trade talks at a crucial summit only weeks away. She has effectively been handed just days to give stronger guarantees over the issue.
Phil Hogan, the EU’s agriculture commissioner, told the Observer that it was a “very simple fact” that remaining inside the single market and customs union, or allowing Northern Ireland to do so, would end the standoff.
Hogan warned there was “blind faith” from some UK ministers that Britain would secure a comprehensive Brexit free trade deal. He warned that Ireland would “continue to play tough to the end” over its threat to veto trade talks until it had guarantees over the border.
“If the UK or Northern Ireland remained in the EU customs union, or better still the single market, there would be no border issue,” he said. “That’s a very simple fact. I continue to be amazed at the blind faith that some in London place in theoretical future free trade agreements. First, the best possible FTA with the EU will fall far short of the benefits of being in the single market. This fact is simply not understood in the UK. Most real costs to cross-border business today are not tariffs – they are about standards, about customs procedures, about red tape. These are solved by the single market, but not in an FTA.”
The Irish government wants a written guarantee that there will be no hard border with Northern Ireland, something Dublin believes can only be achieved, in effect, by keeping the region within the single market and customs union. However, the Democratic Unionist party, whose support is propping up May’s government, warned on Saturday it would never accept a post-Brexit deal that would effectively see a customs border pushed back to the Irish Sea. May has repeatedly made clear Britain will leave the single market and customs union.
The Irish crisis came as Britain’s former EU ambassador, Sir Ivan Rogers, warned May’s Brexit strategy was “an accident waiting to happen”. Speaking after a speech at Hertford College, Oxford, he said completing the Brexit process was “guaranteed” to take a decade. He said that the prime minister’s unrealistic hopes of securing a bespoke trade deal meant a car crash in the next few months was “quite likely”.
“The internal market is an extraordinarily complex international law construct that simply doesn’t work in a way that permits the type of options that the current government is pushing for,” he said. “So there is an accident waiting to happen ... and it is going to happen because the other side is going to put on a table a deal which looks broadly like a Canada or a Korea deal.
“The only safe way to leave without enormous turbulence and trouble over a lengthy transitional period is to have a reasonable slope ... take your time and try and go for as smooth a glide path as possible from here to the mid-2020s. I can guarantee you that this is going to take a decade to do. We will not have reached a new equilibrium in British economics and politics until 2030.”
Hogan warned Britain may struggle to keep the 59 trade deals it now has through the EU on the same terms. “The UK would be running to stand still,” he said. “When it comes to trying to negotiate new FTAs with the rest of the world, Britain will be pushed around the way the EU – with currently more than eight times the UK population – will never be.
“The US have already started their attack on standards, so chlorine chicken and hormone beef for the British Sunday roast post-Brexit? India will insist on visas that the UK can never give. Australia and New Zealand are a long way away and of very limited economic interest. And any deal with China will be a one-way street in terms of costs and benefits for the UK.”
Ministers are under mounting pressure to come clean over the extent of economic damage that a “no deal” outcome could cause to the economy. In the budget, Philip Hammond announced that the Office for Budget Responsibility revised downwards forecasts for UK growth over the next few years, mainly because of concerns of low productivity growth. But the OBR made clear that these downgrades were premised on a benign outcome to Brexit negotiations. Both the Treasury, privately, and leading independent economists recognise that actual growth will be considerably lower than the gloomy budget projections if the UK does not achieve most of its negotiating goals, or if there is a “no deal” result.
Government sources said ministers would this week release sections of assessments into the potential economic impact of Brexit carried out across Whitehall, which until recently they had tried to keep secret.
Many MPs believe the published sections will be heavily redacted and will not make clear the extent of potential economic damage. Last night Nicky Morgan, who chairs the Treasury select committee, said it was essential that as many projections as possible were made public.
The latest work by economists at the London School of Economics estimates that, if the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal, the impact will be far more severe than the projections in the budget suggested. Thomas Sampson of the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance said Brexit could reduce UK living standards by up to 9% in the most pessimistic case.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Since nearly all of his career has been spent in rebellion against his own party, I guess we should not be too surprised that Jeremy Corbyn seems so determined to defy it over Brexit. Labour members hate Brexit and they want it reversed. With parliament deadlocked and growing public support for taking the question back to the people, a large majority of Labour voters, and an even larger majority of Labour members, wants the party to throw its weight behind another referendum. Compare and contrast with a Labour leader who doesn’t hate Brexit, doesn’t want it to be reversed and will not help facilitate another referendum if he can possibly avoid it.
That divide between leader and members has been pretty obvious for a long time to anyone who contemplated Mr Corbyn with clear eyes rather than wearing soft-focus lenses. The split has become more evident as the Labour frontbench has run through various tactical ruses to try to mask the tension between its members and its leader. He is what he is and that is a lifetime opponent of the EU. He has not once expressed a flicker of remorse about the result of the 2016 referendum and treats the momentum behind a second referendum not as an opportunity to be seized, but as a threat to be smothered.
It is true that Labour’s position has been deliberately fogged in ambiguities, but where Mr Corbyn really stands has always been deducible so long as you were prepared to listen properly. Back in November, he was asked: “If you could stop Brexit, would you?” He replied: “We can’t stop it. The referendum took place. Article 50 has been triggered.”
He said that even though his party conference had only recently adopted a policy that was supposed to keep another referendum on the table. He really couldn’t have been clearer in November that he doesn’t believe in that policy, but some people weren’t listening then or they pretended not to hear him because it conflicted so starkly with the naive image of the Labour leader that they had constructed for themselves. This left them open to being shocked when he said, just before Christmas, that he would not seek an escape from Brexit even if there was an election in the near future and Labour won it.
I suppose you could argue that Mr Corbyn is being consistent with his convictions – or at least one set of them. But his increasing exposure as a Brexit-enabler does rather alter his profile as a rebel. During his decades as a dissident backbencher, he defied Labour leaders in the name of upholding true socialist values, as he interpreted them, against the treacheries, by his definition, of the party’s establishment. This record helped him win the leadership in 2015 with a promise to create a party in which the will of the members would be paramount. That promise was highly popular with Labour supporters. Who doesn’t like to be told that they will be listened to? It sustained him when he was under attack from Labour MPs. They, in turn, were threatened with deselection if they failed to defer to activists and comply with party policy.
The promise to obey the members was easy to keep so long as their desires converged with those of the leader. Labour activists like the idea of hiking taxes on the rich and taking the railways back into public ownership. So does he. Snap. Everyone is happy. The real test of his pledge to the membership was always going to be the hard cases where his ideological convictions came into conflict with what Labour people wanted. What would Mr Corbyn do when he and his members desired something contradictory? How would he act when they had fundamentally different worldviews? Would he put aside his own preferences in deference to the sovereignty of the Labour people? Or would he behave just like the “establishment” politicians he has spent a lifetime condemning and seek to subordinate the will of the members to his own opinions?
We now know. The Brexit blowtorch has burnt away many fantasises. One of the items on the bonfire of illusions is the notion that the Labour leader is in some way a special one, so different to all other politicians as to be almost not a politician at all. It turns out that he is just another manoeuvring, equivocating hack when he wants one thing and his members want the opposite.
This split is not a slight difference of opinion on a low-order issue. We are talking about something a bit more important than how to regulate the provision of manhole covers. This is about the most significant question to face Britain for decades. Some 73% of people currently identifying as Labour supporters think that the UK was wrong to vote to leave the EU. That rises to a whopping 89% among Labour members. As you might expect to follow, most Labour members and most Labour voters want the party to come out in full support of another referendum on Brexit, a move that would transform the chances of the country being given a fresh choice. In another referendum, 88% of Labour members and 71% of Labour voters would cast a ballot to remain within the EU. We know this thanks to the valuable work conducted by the ESRC-funded Party Members Project led by Professor Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London. These are not finely balanced results within the margin of error. Labour members, supposedly the sovereign decision-makers within the party these days, want to remain within the EU by a thumping margin of nearly nine to one.
The Labour leader’s defiance of his members means he has something in common with Theresa May. She is also at odds with her grassroots. A hefty majority of Tory members don’t like the agreement negotiated by their own leader and the first preference of most of them is to leave at the end of March without any deal at all. That would be grotesquely irresponsible, so Mrs May can at least argue that she is trying to put country before party when she refuses to obey the demand of Tory members for a crash-out Brexit.
Labour members have displayed a great deal of loyalty to Mr Corbyn since he became their leader. But even a membership that has been willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt about so much else has begun to notice that he is defying them on Brexit. What’s interesting is how they explain this betrayal to themselves. Asked to say why he is failing to support another referendum, about a tenth think he’s just waiting for the right moment. Since there are now fewer than 90 days left before Britain is scheduled to be out of the EU, I admire these people for their patience more than I respect them for their judgment of character.
About a third of Labour members reckon he’s mainly worried about losing the support of Leave voters. This is certainly true of some members of the shadow cabinet who say things such as “we’ll lose the north”. But I don’t think it is the most important reason for being against a referendum in the case of the leader himself. Nearly a quarter of his members put Mr Corbyn’s unwillingness to embrace a people’s vote down to the fact that he actually supports Brexit. They have been paying attention. The clearest thing he said in his recent interview with the Guardian’s Heather Stewart was when he attacked the EU’s rules on competition and subsidies: “I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country.”
This will have a familiar ring to some older readers: it is a variation on one of the ancient arguments from the 1970s against Europe. It was often heard from Mr Corbyn’s antecedents on the left who opposed what was then the EEC because they saw it as nothing better than a capitalist club constructed to do down the workers and thwart socialism. It is highly disputable whether EU membership would prevent a Corbyn government from pursuing a state-directed industrial strategy. What matters in understanding him and his motivation is that he clearly believes this to be true. It is an argument he often returns to whenever asked about Brexit.
Sometimes, the simplest explanations for human behaviour are the best ones. The Labour leader is not making any effort to prevent Brexit because he doesn’t want to prevent Brexit.
The conclusion for Labour supporters ought to be clear. If they want another referendum, they will have to learn from their leader and rebel against him.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Over the past two and a half years, while the most vocal leave and remain campaigners have endlessly yelled at each other, Brexit has often presented itself as a case study in contradiction and complexity. Certainly, whenever I have spent time in leave-voting areas, I have always felt deeply ambivalent: sick and tired of the delusions that sit at Brexit’s heart, but also keenly aware that in some of the most neglected parts of England and Wales, a huge chunk of the people who voted for it did so because they had not been listened to for decades. As the whole saga groaned on, if I had a position, it was that Brexit probably had to happen – but that in its inevitably awful consequences might lie some eventual realignment of our politics, and the final death of an exceptionalist English fantasy with no place in the 21st century.
Now, as much as similar thoughts still arrive on a daily basis, I wonder. Most of the Conservative politicians who championed leaving the EU and were then given the job of carrying it out have deserted their posts. The story of how key leave campaigners cheated their way to success may only just have started to unfold. And every month brings stories, too often overlooked, of how Brexit will blight the places that supported it: this week it was news about a doomed ball-bearing factory in Plymouth, in business for 50 years and now owned by the German company Schaeffler, but set to close with the loss of more than 350 jobs – partly, says the company, because of the “uncertainties surrounding Brexit”.
This much we know: whatever the stories of the millions of people who ended up backing it, Brexit originated in the failure of successive Conservative leaders to adequately deal with a tribe of uncontrollable Tory ideologues, and in the ingrained tendency of post-Thatcher Conservatives to play fast and loose with the livelihoods and security of the rest of us. In an awful instance of irony, the misery and resentment sown by the deindustralisation the Tories accelerated in the 1980s and the austerity they pushed on the country 30 years later were big reasons why so many people decided to vote leave. What also helped was a surreal campaign of lies and disinformation, both during and after the referendum campaign, waged by entitled people with their eyes only on the main chance.
These things are part of a vast charge sheet not only against the modern Conservative party, but an alliance of old and new money that has set the basic terms of British politics for the past 40 years. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson were educated at the same exclusive school as the prime minister whose idiotic decision to hold a referendum gave them their opportunity. Nigel Farage and Arron Banks are archetypal examples of the kind of spivs who were given licence to do as they pleased in the 80s. For all their absurd bleating about “elites”, we all know what these people represent: the two faces of the modern English ruling class, who have long combined to be nothing but trouble.
Which brings us to the question that, for all my lingering ambivalence, I cannot shake off: if the Labour party leadership is so radical, and allied with the best leftwing traditions, where is its anger about what these people have done?
While some of us have been spitting feathers about the deceptions perpetrated by rightwing leavers, Jeremy Corbyn has seemed barely interested. Is there some kind of awful equivalence between the rightwing Brexiteers, who see national crisis as the ideal seedbed for a free-market utopia, and leftwingers who think socialism is similarly best assisted by disaster? Whatever the explanation, and whatever the levels of support for leave among Labour voters, a supposed party of opposition – and a leftwing one at that – accepting a project birthed and then sustained in the worst kind of rightwing political circles is a very odd spectacle indeed. This, surely, will also be the verdict of history.
As things stand, Labour’s position is apparently built on two fairly incredible beliefs: that it could somehow negotiate a much better Brexit, and that it wants a general election, which parliament is very unlikely to grant. Even if a contest did happen, unless the Tories were mad enough to plunge us into the chaos of no-deal, what exactly would it be about? With Brexit both falling apart and defining the entirety of day-to-day politics, Labour’s crafty fudging of the issue in 2017 would be impossible. Would its central offer be the difference between the current plan, to stay in a customs union for an unspecified period, or Labour’s guarantee to do so permanently? Might voters basically be asked to choose between the negotiating nous of Tories and the supposedly superior talents of Corbyn, Keir Starmer and Emily Thornberry? Contrary to Labour’s hype, there is no chance of any deal delivering “the exact same benefits” as the status quo, nor of the party’s fabled “jobs-first” Brexit: with his usual bloodless candour, Donald Tusk this week reminded us that our passage out of the EU is “a lose-lose situation and that our negotiations are only about damage control”. As if anyone needed reminding, this would apply to a Labour government as well.
The country currently has three options, and parliament seems unlikely to be able to sensibly choose between them: the current withdrawal deal or something very like it, the unimaginable chaos of no-deal, or no Brexit. Self-evidently, leaving the EU without an agreement would be by far the most nightmarish, which is one of the reasons why Labour’s determination to vote down May’s deal is not without hazards. But in the midst of such imperfect options, and with heavy reservations, I think I know what we need to avoid national disaster: a Labour party ready to move beyond Corbyn’s hollow claim on Sunday that another referendum is merely “an option for the future”, and embrace what is now known as a people’s vote, with a recommendation that Britain should stay in the EU.
Given that the Labour leadership has seemingly dug in, the only hope of any such move lies with MPs, and pressure that could be exerted by the party’s vast membership. Clearly, after two wasted years, even beginning to embed the idea of questioning and then abandoning Brexit in places where a majority voted for it would be an onerous task. Doing so would require enough working-class voices – where, for example, have the big unions been? – to convincingly speak to people and places that voted to leave the EU but have the most to lose from its consequences.
Labour would have to find a courage that it has so far failed to discover, and sideline the anti-EU mindset of its own leader. Vocal remainers both inside and outside the party would need to realise that any move in this direction would have to be part of a policy offer that even the boldness of, say, John McDonnell has so far only skirted. All told, it would involve something to which even these supposed radicals are averse: risk.
But what is the alternative: to carry on swallowing not just the endless deceptions of the leave elite but the also the disastrous effects their awful arrogance will have on people and places across the country?
British Conservatism is in decay and disarray; to mark its gravest postwar crisis by accepting its most heinous project would be a strange thing to do, and an evasion of our politics’ central fact: that Brexit is a class issue, and all else follows from that.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
One of the advantages of having been around for a while is that it allows me to hear the echoes of history in current events.
Back in 1975, I was a very junior member of Harold Wilson’s Labour government. And, like much of the party in those days, I was hotly opposed to membership of what was then the European Economic Community.
I thought it was indefensible that the Tories had so blatantly broken the pledge they had made to the British people not to take us into Europe without seeking the explicit consent of the British people.
Our prime minister and many of our most senior colleagues wanted us to stay in Europe, but Harold was – among many other fine qualities – a master pragmatist.
He disliked Tony Benn’s idea of holding a referendum as a way of resolving the question about our relationship with Europe. But he came to see its advantages, especially as a way of preventing deeper divisions in our party. Although our government campaigned to stay in Europe, Harold gave members of his frontbench permission to campaign against this position provided we did not attack each other. In the end, the UK voted to stay by 67 to 33% and the issue was settled for a generation.
Fast forward a few decades, and Labour is much less divided on Europe than it was in those days. Fully three-quarters of our members and voters want a “people’s vote” on Brexit. An almost identical proportion would jump at the chance of staying in the EU if we’re given the chance. Of course, there are still those who are in favour of leaving, but this demand for a confirmatory referendum with the option to remain is still the overwhelming choice of Labour supporters in the so-called heartlands – the north, the Midlands – as well as among our target seats and reachable swing voters.
The reason is that Labour people like me have witnessed Europe’s transformation from what we once regarded as a selfish little club of capitalist countries into a union of 28 states that is doing more to tackle the towering social, economic and environmental challenges of today and tomorrow than any other organisation in the world.
Now, as the Tories prepare to pick a new prime minister who seems hell-bent on a brutal jobs-destroying Brexit, this is surely the time for Labour to be launching an all-out, full-throated, campaign against this democratic outrage being inflicted on the British people.
Labour’s efforts to bring a divided nation together may well have been well-intentioned but they left our voters confused or dismayed as we haemorrhaged votes in recent elections – with four times as many going parties overtly campaigning for a “people’s vote” than to Nigel Farage.
Jeremy Corbyn is now said to be studying the history of the 1970s as he grapples with this problem. Labour can and should back a referendum on any Brexit outcome. And, if we get such a vote, I think it is inevitable that Labour will once more support staying in the EU because the idea that we can secure a deal that will satisfy – rather than impoverish – our voters, has long since been exposed as a fantasy.
Those who still insist they want to leave could, if they wish, campaign alongside Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in such a referendum. Jeremy himself could take a back seat in the campaign, as Harold did in 1975. What matters now is that Labour moves with speed to close the gap that has opened up between party’s position on the one hand – and its members, voters and values on the other.
If we do this in the next few weeks we can still change the course of history. If we don’t, we risk becoming history ourselves.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.44 GMT
Today, Labour MPs will decide whether the country will head to the polls in December. Many are hostile towards the idea, fearing that they are facing an electoral wipeout. Instead, they cling to the prospect of securing a second referendum as an alternative means to stopping Brexit. With the polls where they are, it is understandable that Labour MPs are fearful of facing the electorate.
But this election could be far closer than is commonly imagined. The ascendancy of the SNP in Scotland, the rise of the Liberal Democrats in England, and the schism between the Tories and the DUP means that there are fewer seats in play for the major parties. Labour and the Conservatives must compete for around 540 seats; with no viable coalition partners, the Tories must secure 322 seats for a majority of one. For that to occur, Labour must get no more than 218 seats – far below either its performance in either 2015 or 2017 (232 and 262 seats respectively). Conversely, if Labour can defend its current seats, it would enable an anti-Tory majority to be formed.
Strategically, Labour approaches a general election with three major advantages.
The first is that the deal Johnson has negotiated is truly awful for the country, leaving Britain substantially poorer according to the government’s own figures. The second is that the Tories have the record of their 10 years in power to defend – a decade during which public services and benefits have been cut, wages have stagnated and living standards have been squeezed – alongside Brexit chaos: a winter election highlights these issues, from the rise in concern about homelessness during the Christmas period to the likely winter crisis in the NHS as a result of systematic underfunding. Third, polling shows that Johnson is disliked by large parts of the electorate, and many people might be prepared to vote tactically to keep the party they dislike out of office. This opens up the route to at least some informal electoral pact between the anti-Tory parties – perhaps a loose agreement not to campaign in certain seats.
Absent a settled strategy, Labour languishes behind in the polls. Its MPs focus their interventions on questions of parliamentary process and election timing rather than critiquing Johnson’s plans or articulating Labour’s policies. When politicians talk about their own priorities, not those of the voters, it should be little surprise that they are not rewarded by the electorate. This can and must change. So what would a more effective strategy look like?
The public need to want to fire the Tories before deciding that they wish to hire Labour. It would be a serious error to think that Brexit can be ignored by simply talking about other issues. At the time of the 2017 poll, the chaos and perpetual crisis of the following two-and-a-half years was unimaginable. The mistake that Theresa May made was to call a general election after article 50 notification had taken place; this meant most voters thought that Brexit had been sorted and that it was only a matter of time before Britain would leave the EU. No one thinks that now. Brexit will be front and centre in this election no matter how much some might wish it away.
In any election, the public either want change or more of the same. In 2017, the Tory message of “strong and stable leadership” sounded like an appeal for continuity and so in what became a change election, they paid the price. Labour needs to present this campaign as a choice between more of the same with the Tories or a new start with Labour.
That’s why the first phase of the Labour campaign should be to demonstrate how each strand of Johnson’s deal represents continuity with a decade of Tory austerity and misrule, heaping disaster on dismay. After 10 years of NHS cuts, the Tories now want to sell off the NHS to private corporations. After a decade without a real pay rise, the Tories plan is to strip away workers’ rights for a deal with Trump’s America where there’s no maternity pay, no sick pay, 10 days’ holiday and the ability for bosses to fire people on the spot for no reason. After a decade of putting the bankers first, their sell-out deal will mean the end of decent manufacturing jobs as the price of avoiding banking regulations. A vote for Johnson is a vote for more of the same. And to make matters worse, Johnson’s Brexit plan still includes a trapdoor to a no-deal disaster. The only way to stop a prime minister committed to a no-deal exit from the EU is to fight and win a general election that removes him from office.
Next, Labour has to make, and win, the argument for a second referendum. Its message – “let the people decide” – has failed to cut through precisely because its strongest remain voices on the backbenches have focused more on timing and tactics than on bothering to prosecute the argument. More than that, the message sounds like one of exasperation: that Labour is incapable of making its own mind up, so it has outsourced the responsibility to the public. Instead, Labour needs to make a deeper argument about the kind of country we want to be: this could be extended beyond Brexit into an agenda for economic democracy and more public participation in decision-making.
Labour also needs to offer the country an alternative project of national renewal. With a plan to settle Brexit for good, Labour should then offer to rebuild Britain instead. It can frame this as a 1945 moment: the chance to shape a new settlement for the decades ahead. That means a manifesto bursting with good ideas to improve the state of country and fundamental reform of the status quo. But it also needs to show how change can be meaningful: that will require translating big, bold, national policy commitments into what they could mean for every part of Britain. From the national transformation fund to the green industrial revolution, Labour has been willing to think big about the future of the country: it now has an urgent task to think small about what it might mean for each community and every household.
Finally, Labour should ignore the idea of extending the franchise to 16-year-olds, which will be viewed as the naked pursuit of self-interest. It should instead argue that every voter must be offered a postal vote, given the hours of daylight and the potential for bad weather on polling day. All the evidence shows that electoral fraud is virtually non-existent and that postal voting increases participation, especially from those groups in society that are marginalised or vulnerable. Let the Tories explain why they want to inconvenience people during the cold winter months.
There can be no doubt that Labour has an electoral mountain to climb. But there are reasons to believe that it can do so in this election of generational significance. The country cannot afford and should not expect anything less.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Until today the Labour party’s annual conference had been dominated by one man: John McDonnell. With a speech mixing piety, politics and moral conviction, it very much became Jeremy Corbyn’s. Since last year’s unexpected strong showing in the general election, there has been a recasting of Labour – leaving it uneasily dominated by the left. This has led to a muttering of mutiny by some MPs and constant sniping about the Labour leadership’s ambiguity over Brexit. A torrid summer for Labour over antisemitism raised questions about Mr Corbyn’s judgment which he often struggled to answer. Coming to Liverpool this week, Mr Corbyn needed to calm those fears, explain his vision of a Britain under Labour and give his party belief that it was engaged in a project of which it could be proud. The Labour leader’s hour-long speech achieved that.
Brexit is the biggest issue facing Britain, and the cost of crashing out of the European Union will be borne most heavily by Labour voters. If Theresa May cannot get her Chequers deal through parliament, Mr Corbyn’s preference was for a general election. Failing that, all options – apart from a hard Brexit – remain on the table. Tellingly, the Labour leader, unlike his Brexit secretary, could not bring himself to say remaining in the EU was such an option. In defining the terms under which Labour could back Brexit – a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, while respecting job, consumer and environmental protections – Mr Corbyn showed that Labour could take over and bring direction to a process that a divided Tory party under Mrs May cannot. His line that the Tory Brexiters whom Mrs May is in thrall to “unite the politics of the 1950s with the economics of the 19th century, daydreaming about a Britannia that both rules the waves and waives the rules” was probably the best in his speech because it rang so true. Mr Corbyn’s meeting with the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier tomorrow is now a pivotal political event.
Mr Corbyn framed the government as running a rent-extracting economy which rewarded politically influential insiders. His answer was for “radical solutions”, rather than the “socialism for the 21st century” he offered last year. Significantly, Mr Corbyn mentioned the S-word only once, in passing. After fighting last year’s election on policies from its past, the party has a more transformative agenda concerned with dispersing the rights, wealth and power currently concentrated in a few hands. Mr Corbyn’s levy on those with second homes to help homeless children is sold as a “solidarity fund for those with two homes to help those without any home at all”. His corporate governance reforms would diffuse power through ownership, handing workers seats on boards and equity. Labour’s focus on green energy contrasts with Conservative reluctance to approve onshore wind farms and innovative tidal schemes that would combat climate change and bring jobs to “left behind” Britain.
Mr Corbyn gleefully said Labour, in the words of former Conservative minister Lord O’Neill, had caught “the mood of our time”. People’s experience of private rail, water and energy companies has made them sceptical of corporate efficiency. This has been reinforced by the disaster of privatised prisons and the collapse of giant outsourcer Carillion. Those who caused the 2008 crash, it’s true, have been bailed out rather than punished – making tax and spend policies popular. Without big answers others could, said Mr Corbyn, fill the gap with the “politics of blame and division”. So far, so radical. However, there were missteps: Mr Corbyn ought to protect a “free press”, not attack it. He can only highlight the Windrush debacle because of this newspaper’s reporting. Mr Corbyn did make a sincere expression of solidarity with the Jewish community. Whether this is contrite enough is yet to be seen. He deftly separated his defence of a two-state solution in the Holy Land from antisemitism, and made his most definitive statement about the Russian state’s culpability for the Salisbury attacks. Mr Corbyn says he represents a “new common sense”. Labour does not always have ready-made answers, but it does have a sound political starting point for the right responses. If he continues in this vein then the leader of the opposition could look like a plausible prime minister.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
A fresh Brexit referendum should be only about a departure deal and should not include the option of staying in the EU, John McDonnell has indicated to the dismay of Labour members pushing for a people’s vote.
The shadow chancellor said he would back the idea of a new referendum if a general election did not happen. But he argued that while it was up to parliament to decide the question, he believed it should be just “a vote on the deal itself”.
“If we are going to respect the last referendum, it will be about the deal, it will a negotiation on the deal,” McDonnell said.
He added: “Parliament will determine the nature of the question that will be put, but the first stage of that is to see if we can get a deal that is acceptable and brings the country together again. And I’ve always thought we could.”
Michael Chessum, one of the grassroots organisers who coordinated the push for a Brexit vote at conference, said it was “preposterous” that a future referendum would not include an option to remain.“The Brexit motion set to be debated by conference, which is backed and negotiated by the leadership, clearly keeps remain on the table. That was a key element of what was agreed in negotiating the motion,” said Chessum, a Momentum member of the campaign group Another Europe is Possible.“This idea that any future referendum would not include a remain option is preposterous; if we’re committing to a public vote, it would be an insult to the public not to trust them with all options. All options are on the table and that includes staying in that EU.”
The party’s conference in Liverpool is expected to pass a statement thrashed out by delegates late on Sunday that commits Labour to keeping the option of a second referendum on the table.
After a gruelling five-hour meeting with the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, more than 100 delegates from trade unions and local parties drafted a two-page motion, which members are expected to pass on Tuesday.
The key sentence of the final draft says: “If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.”
The statement has prompted concern from some allies of Jeremy Corbyn, with Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, saying he did not think “remain” should be an option on the ballot paper.
Asked about the issue on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, McDonnell said: “If we don’t get a general election then yes, we’ll go for a people’s vote.”
Asked about what options should be part of a second referendum question, he said: “My view at the moment is that parliament will decide what will be on that ballot paper. We’ll be arguing that it should be a vote on the deal itself, and then enable us to go back and do the negotiations.”
Pressed on whether this definitely meant ruling out a “remain” option, McDonnell declined to fully clarify, but indicated again this was the case. “We’re respecting the referendum. We want a general election, If we can’t get that we’ll have a people’s vote. The people’s vote will be on the deal itself and whether we can negotiate a better one,” he said.
McDonnell’s caution will disappoint Labour members pushing for a second referendum. A people’s vote was overwhelmingly the most popular issue raised by constituency Labour parties (CLPs) that submitted contemporary motions (pdf) to conference.
The final draft of the statement agreed with Starmer said: “If the government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from, they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.”
Campaigners were pleased with other elements of the two-page statement, including a promise to pursue “full participation in the single market”.
One Labour source opposed to the UK leaving the EU said: “This is clear movement from the party. We are now talking with clarity of voting down the deal if doesn’t meet our tests, calling for a general election and if that is not possible – we want a public vote on the deal.
“Last year we didn’t even get a debate. What a difference a year makes.”
An initial motion that proposed a public vote on the terms of Brexit was rejected by delegates as being too prescriptive, as it appeared to exclude the option to remain within the EU.
Several of Corbyn’s senior supporters underlined their concerns about what they said were the risks of a people’s vote.
The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, whose Salford constituency voted leave, told the Guardian she was concerned the Tories would be able to dictate the question.
“My worry about a second referendum is that they will be holding the pen,” she said. “What will the referendum be on?”
She added that some Labour-supporting leave voters may feel the party did not trust them. “I do worry about it, because I think a lot of people will feel sold-out,” she said. “Some people will think: ‘How many times do you ask before you get the answer you want?’”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Almost 5,000 nurses and midwives from EU27 countries have quit the NHS in the past two years, with many of those identifying Brexit as the trigger.
The number of EU-trained nurses and midwives working in the NHS across the UK fell from a record high of 38,024 in March 2017 to 33,035 in March this year, a drop of 4,989, according to figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which regulates both professions.
The 13% fall prompted renewed warnings that Britain’s decision to leave the EU was exacerbating the NHS’s growing staffing crisis.
“The referendum result has made many EU nationals feel unwelcome. It’s no surprise nurses and midwives think they’ll be better off elsewhere,” said Sara Gorton, the head of health at the union Unison.
Gill Walton, the chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, said: “Unfortunately over the last year just 33 midwives arrived from elsewhere in the EU to work as midwives here in the UK, and we used to count them in their hundreds. UK maternity services are already stretched and short-staffed, but Brexit threatens to make things even worse.”
When the NMC asked nurses and midwives why they had left its register, 51% of the EU-trained ones who replied said Brexit had encouraged them to consider leaving the UK.
Overall, though, the number of nurses, midwives and nursing associates has risen by 8,000 over the past year, the NMC’s figures show, because more of those health professionals who have been trained in the UK have joined the NMC’s register and fewer have left.
The headline total has also been boosted by a big rise in the number of nurses and midwives from outside the EU coming to work in the UK. It has leapt from 2,720 last year to 6,157, an increase of 3,437 (126%).
However, the regulator’s research found that more than 11,000 nurses and midwives left its register in a six-month period last year. Almost one in three of the 3,504 who explained their decision said that their jobs were too pressurised and, as a result, they were stressed, had poor mental health or both.
Dame Donna Kinnair, the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Politicians should be alarmed that almost one in three [of those who] quit nursing [did so] because of intolerable pressure. They have abused the goodwill of nurses for too long and that dam is starting to burst.”
Saffron Cordery of NHS Providers, which represents NHS trusts in England, welcomed the rise in overall nurse numbers but, with the NHS in England alone short of more than 40,000, “we need to be realistic about the challenges we face,” she said.
The figures come after a leaked document obtained by the Times disclosed that NHS bosses hoped to recruit tens of thousands of nurses from around the world over the next five years to plug gaps in the NHS.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said: “Nursing is such a rewarding job. It’s excellent news to see more nurses and midwives are joining our brilliant NHS from at home and abroad and we value each and every one.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
“Proud of yourselves?” asked the Daily Mail. “Bruising defeat for May in Commons” splashes the i.
Newspapers in the UK have reacted to the government’s defeat in the House of Commons over parliament’s right to have a meaningful vote on the European Union withdrawal bill.
Only last week, the Daily Mail urged its readers to “rejoice” at the first stage Brexit deal between the EU and the British government. However, now that Brexit is threatened again, it has questioned whether the Tory rebels were “proud of themselves?”
One Tory rebel certainly was. MP Sarah Wollaston tweeted: “Yes. Proud to #TakeBackControl for our Parliament, where there is no majority for a chaotic no-deal Brexit” in response to the front page.
Anna Soubry fought back even harder, and wrote: “Yes. We put our country first exerting British principles of democracy and free speech. You should try it sometime.”
Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach did not respond directly, but retweeted a post by BBC journalist Julia Macfarlane, who wrote “the tone of this is akin to placing a large ‘wanted’ poster on their front page. Only last year an MP was murdered for her beliefs by a deranged extremist. Whipping up hatred in this way is dangerous and has consequences.”
The i concentrated on the effect the vote might have on the Brexit summit later this week, and condemned the high drama as a “bruising defeat for May”.
In November, many of the Conservative MPs who led the rebellion were branded mutineers by the Daily Telegraph. On Thursday, the newspaper continued that theme as it proclaimed a “mutiny in the Commons”.
The Daily Express did not make the vote their main story, but still found space to slam the rebellion as “outrageous”, and warned of “Brexit chaos” to come.
The Scotsman described the Commons defeat as a “galling loss” for the government.
The National used a Star Wars theme to illustrate the British government’s Brexit defeat. “Tories defeated by rebel alliance,” read the front page.
The Guardian struck a similar tone to the i, with “Tory rebellion humiliates PM on Brexit bill”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of central London on Saturday to protest against Britain’s departure from the European Union, just days before Theresa May begins the process by triggering article 50.
Nick Clegg told the crowd in Parliament Square that “sadness” about the outcome of last June’s referendum had given way to “a perpetual sense of anger about the choices that Theresa May and her government have taken since”.
“It was a choice to pull us out of the customs union, it was a choice to embark on that demeaning bout of transatlantic obsequiousness,” the former Liberal Democrat leader said. He accused the prime minister of “threatening to turn our country into a bargain basement cowboy economy”.
David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said many people were changing their mind about Brexit.
“We’re living in a dictatorship. In democracies people are always allowed to change their minds. Over the coming months and years we will fight. Labour needs to rediscover its mojo, and quickly,” he said.
The former Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell told protesters: “I know I am in a minority in thinking Brexit can be stopped, but I’m not in a minority in thinking that it should be.”
He appealed to the Remain movement not to give up: “When you see a car heading toward a cliff, you don’t keep driving ... keep fighting to keep Britain in Europe.”
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron cemented his growing role as the political leader of the Remain movement, with a well-received address that claimed to speak not just for the 48% who voted against Brexit – but also many of those who voted for it.
“We are here to show solidarity and respect for those who voted leave. We do not believe they wanted this. [Theresa May] does not speak for 52%, she barely speaks for 5%,” he told the crowd.
“We are not giving up this week of all weeks. We here are as testament that we refuse to despair. Britain can be better than this.”
The tens of thousands who turned out to protest forced police to delay the start due to congestion as more coaches arrived from across the country.
“I am here to show people who are appalled at what is happening that they are not alone,” said Rachael Shermaur, a 51-year-old protester who had travelled from Devon with a sign that read “Terrorism won’t divide us but Brexit will”.
“I am not naive but I would like to remain optimistic,” she explained, when asked if Brexit could be stopped. “If there is a public protest then in some way, somehow, the message might get through to politicians.”
Organisers had called on those attending to show respect for those killed and injured in Wednesday’s attack in Westminster, but mostly this was a crowd that did not need reminding to be exceedingly polite.
Many carried yellow flowers to lay at the makeshift memorial opposite parliament. Chants of “Boris you bastard” from a woman in Trafalgar Square were drowned out by the sound of The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love as the march turned into Whitehall.
One of the most aggressive signs simply read “Buck Frexit”. Another that did not swap the consonants attracted heckling from a white van stuck in nearby traffic. “You lost mate, we’re leaving” shouted another onlooker.
It was the voices of the many children on the march that brought home how all the political squabbling of the referendum looks to a younger generation. “Half British, half Italian, but 100% European,” one boy’s sign said. “Don’t put my daddy on a boat,” said another, held by a young Londoner with a Portuguese father.
“We are not in denial and we shouldn’t get over it,” added Seb Dance, a Labour MEP. “They are working for the hardest Brexit imaginable which is something they have no mandate for. It’s not us who need to confront reality. It’s the Brexiteers.”
Campaigning lawyer Jo Maugham made the point that much has changed already since the referendum. “Last year we voted in a very different world. We had no president who wanted to tear up the trade rules… or Nato. We did not know what Brexit means and we still do not know what Brexit means,” he said.
“Anyone who says they know what the popular mood is and we should give up is lying to you,” added Maugham. “What will make Brexit happen is if you give up.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
Welcome to the wonderful world of Brexit PLC: a nod here, a wink there, something under the counter and “I-don’t-mind-if-I-do”. No one knows, yet, what a government minister or official said to the Japanese company Nissan, to secure a massive new investment in Britain’s biggest car plant in Sunderland. We can only be sure it is neither the first nor the last.
As Theresa May’s government steers its unsteady course between the shoals of soft Brexit and the storms of hard, it assures all and sundry that everything will be fine on the night. But harsh business reality is immune to the cliches of political spin.
Nissan has to make a decision now on a planned 2018 investment for its new Qashqai and the X-Trail SUV vehicles. Vague assurances would not do. This was hard cash and 7,000 jobs, threatened by a double-figure tariff on trade with Europe under “hard Brexit”. The idea that industry minister Greg Clark could have got away with “just trust me” is ludicrous. Clark’s reported guarantee of continuing “competitiveness”, plus subsidies for training and other forms of job support, must have been expressed in bankable terms.
Similar deals are rumoured to be busting out all over Planet Brexit. The farmers have allegedly been given assurances that the migrant worker schemes on which their harvests depend will be protected. The big banks are told over ministerial lunches there is no question of obstacles to the free movement of their staffs round Europe. Care homes, NHS hospitals, the construction industry, tourism are all beating paths to Whitehall’s doors, relying as they do on low-paid continental and seasonal labour. Within the car industry, it goes without saying that Toyota, Ford and other big manufacturers are awaiting the same soothing words as Nissan has received. Otherwise all hell will break loose.
The British government complains when international companies are offered sweetheart deals from Ireland, Luxembourg or Monaco. When investment becomes a free-for-all, there is a rush to the bottom. Countries compete with each other, either to subsidise business or – the same thing – to excuse them taxes or compensate them for tariffs. The prospect under a “hard” Brexit, and a reversion to World Trade Organisation tariffs, would result in myriad such deals, day in, day out. And when clout is the issue, one thing is for sure: the smaller the business the less clout.
Ever since the industrial revolution, free trade has been one of the greatest boons that politics has brought to mankind. The idea that it should start to unravel within the European cradle of that revolution is appalling. Soft Brexit is a no-brainer. Britain has to trade openly with Europe and Europe with Britain.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
One of my earliest childhood memories is of a circling red light motioning cars to stop near the border, silencing all who encountered its fiery glare. That red light filled my young heart with fear. I didn’t know if the gloved hand holding the torch was that of the RUC, the British army, the IRA or the UVF.
I grew up during the Troubles in the shadow of Cloghogue, one of the largest British army bases in Northern Ireland. Having to make detours to avoid customs and security checks along “bomb alley” – an atrocity-laden eight-mile stretch of road between Newry and Dundalk – was as frightening as it was familiar.
It still is: to this day there are some back roads in South Armagh that I will not drive on alone after dark. It’s hard to explain to those who have not lived through a conflict that claimed more than 3,500 lives, in a region with a smaller population than most large UK cities, how the border permeated every aspect of our lives.
It’s also hard to explain why the Brexit backstop – an insurance policy proposed between the EU and the UK to avoid a hard border, and extended to the whole of the UK at the latter’s insistence – is so critical. As the business editor of the largest media group in Ireland, I can give you chapter and verse about the economic threats a hard or no-deal Brexit poses for the Irish, Northern Irish and British economies. But you know about those already.
The reality is that no amount of economic modelling can capture the unquantifiable human and psychological costs of the return of a hard border. Many argue that technological solutions – drones and suchlike – will do the trick. This is farcical: you only eliminate physical checks between two territories separated by a border when they share a customs union and have broad regulatory alignment. Everything else is infrastructure.
As a journalist, I have been staggered by the scale and speed at which dangerous stereotypes and vituperative tropes – in some cases barely concealed racism – surrounding Ireland’s supposed intransigence have resurfaced in the UK’s political and media discourse. This process has been accompanied by astonishment in some quarters that Ireland, arguably England’s oldest colony, is a saboteur, reprobate or badly behaved underling for refusing to fall into line with the UK’s demands, if we knew what they were. When the BBC’s John Humphrys, one of the most prominent public broadcasters in Britain, asked Ireland’s Europe minister, Helen McEntee, why “Dublin” didn’t just leave the EU and “throw in their lot with this country”, Ireland uttered a collective gasp of incredulity verging on despair. What’s more alarming is that Anglo-Irish political relations, having warmed to a zenith of sorts in recent years, have plunged into a rapid freeze in a matter of months.
I’ve worked hard to understand the rationale of those who voted to leave. But I’m saddened and alarmed at how the lives of those who will be most affected by Brexit have been callously cast aside; how the heartfelt and evidence-basedfears about the border have been mocked and derided. Brexiteers tell us that the customs union and the single market have nothing to do with the Good Friday agreement, the nearly 21-year-old, consent-based international peace deal that placed the constitutional destiny of the divided communities of Northern Ireland – 56% of whom voted to remain in 2016 – in our own hands. They are wrong.
Those who want to tear up the backstop, or feel gleeful at the prospect of no deal, should recall that the first shots of the Troubles were fired at customs posts such as Newry, requiring the RUC, and later the British army, to protect officials, civilians and military alike. These incidents paved the way for the installation of those mammoth watchtowers, helicopter bases and checkpoints – the hard border – that blighted our landscape. Just as the first shots were fired over customs posts, it was our membership of the customs union and the single market – the free movement of goods and people – that allowed us to tear down the physical borders and begin the task of demolishing the walls in our hearts and minds.
Is a return to violence – the recent car bomb in Derry felt like a terrifying foreshock – inevitable? Not necessarily. But the return of a border, even one that starts out as soft and virtual, will – like the customs posts of old – invite a regulatory and security mission creep that will disrupt lives and livelihoods and prove tempting for some who are intent on taking us back to darker times.
It’s a gamble we can’t afford to take. The Brexit backstop – this fundamental need to avoid a border, rightly articulatedin stark, if belated and obvious terms at Davos by the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar – is about so much more than tariffs and trade. It is about our identity. Brexit tears at the heart of the Good Friday agreement, which allows people like me, a Catholic who grew up in Newry, or a loyalist from east Belfast, to identify as British, Irish or both – and to celebrate our different allegiances.
I can say, as an Irish woman from Northern Ireland, that I am Irish-British: in another time, I would have been tarred and feathered for saying so. Brexit strips away at those coveted birthrights. A border will force us, once again, to choose sides. As we stare down the barrel of Brexit, Theresa May has opened another front, securing parliamentary support to reopen the withdrawal agreement and demand significant and legally binding changes to the backstop that she vigorously defended for months.
The prime minister may have scored a short-term pyrrhic victory in the internecine wars that have divided her party and the UK parliament. But backtracking on the backstop is a mistake, and a dangerous one at that. Placing party politics and political survival above the peace process is a risk we cannot afford to take.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Twenty years ago the often lugubrious face of the late Donald Dewar broke into a satisfied grin as he read out the first line of the Scotland Act at the Commons dispatch box: “There shall be a Scottish parliament.” “I like that,” he added. And eight months later he gave an impassioned speech to the inaugural meeting of that parliament in Edinburgh in which he referred to the restoration of a national legislature as “the day when democracy was renewed in Scotland”.
This morning, the day after that parliament overwhelmingly rejected the EU withdrawal bill in its current form, it’s worth remembering that Dewar’s Labour party was godfather to devolution, and that he campaigned alongside the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Greens to deliver the yes vote that brought it into being. And that Labour, alongside the Lib Dems, formed the first coalition administration in 1999. It helps explain why every party at Holyrood bar the Tories voted to reject this UK legislation, all agreeing that it would strike at the heart of the devolution settlement. Tellingly, that perceived disempowerment formed the centrepiece of Tuesday’s debate.
The constitutional battle, which may well end up in the supreme court in July, centres around the C-word. Since its inception the Holyrood parliament needs to pass a legislative consent motion any time Westminster wants to introduce legislation in areas that are devolved. Under the withdrawal bill Westminster is only offering to consult, rather than seek consent. And, it adds in a less than winning rider, we will go ahead if you agree, and we will go ahead if you don’t.
Unsurprisingly Holyrood, by a 93 to 30 vote, failed to be seduced by this “our way or the highway” variation on a devolved theme. In fact the Scottish parliament has already passed a so-called “continuity bill” to protect its core powers when they return from Brussels oversight post Brexit. It is that bill which Westminster plans to test in the supreme court if there is no breakthrough deal at what Scotland’s first minister calls “three minutes to midnight”.
To protect the integrity of the UK market, it says, all powers should come straight back to Westminster, until such time as they sort out the technicalities of who does what. Having watched Theresa May’s finest mud-wrestle for 24 months over the deal they will put on the EU table, the thought of these gladiators sorting out Scotland’s economic direction of travel failed to fill the Scottish government with optimism. Neither were they soothed by a seven-year “sunset” clause. Seven years is a very long time in politics. It’s certainly a very long time in the life expectancy of the current prime minister.
But this is not merely a debate about the dry legal niceties. Under governments of various political hues, the Scottish government has forged a path distinct from that of its Commons cousins. It has just passed social security legislation that veers sharply from the punitive model of the Department for Work and Pensions. Previously it spent a small fortune mitigating the effects of the “bedroom tax”. It pioneered legislation on free personal care for the elderly, a smoking ban in public places, and minimum pricing for alcohol. It has comprehensively more ambitious politics on renewable energy. Its NHS has not been atomised or privatised and its education system has not embraced the academy or free school model. You can legitimately debate the quality of Scottish services, but not that they are philosophically distant from the worlds of Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Scotland voted by almost two to one to remain in the EU. Its legislators have not forgotten that they were told the only way to protect EU membership was to vote no in the 2014 independence referendum. They are acutely conscious of the potential damage of Brexit to core Scottish interests such as agriculture, fishing, financial services and biotechnology as well as exports of whisky and other branded products. The Tories like to pretend Tuesday’s vote was all about another bid for independence. But it wasn’t a bid to grab more power for Scotland. It was a bid to prevent Westminster stripping Holyrood of its existing powers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Next week the EU withdrawal bill finally emerges from the House of Lords. The bill is now a very different piece of legislation to the one launched in the Commons by David Davis last September. It was significantly amended in the Commons just before Christmas. Now the Lords have fundamentally transformed it. MPs must therefore decide what to do with the many changes that the Lords have made. It will be the most important few months of parliamentary activity in a generation, perhaps more.
It was not always clear, when the withdrawal bill was launched, that such a great moment of decision would ever be reached. If the government and Labour leadership had had their way, the soft Brexit opportunities that now face MPs this summer would probably not have existed at all, or in very constrained ways. Both parties had their own reasons for wanting the bill to go through. But a combination of doggedness, craftiness and, above all, the size of the opposition in both houses to a hard Brexit has changed the political agenda through a series of hugely important amendments, often opposed by both the government and the Labour leadership.
This week there have been some particularly striking government defeats in the Lords. The first, moved by the bishop of Leeds, would keep the UK as a participant in EU agencies such as Europol. The second, moved by the Duke of Wellington no less, removes the government’s preferred Brexit date – 29 March 2019 – from the bill, giving elbow room for a possible agreement to pause or extend the article 50 withdrawal process.
The most wide-ranging, however, was the amendment tabled by Labour’s Lord Alli to keep the UK in the European Economic Area, which was passed on Tuesday by a majority of 29, against the advice of both major parties. This would put Britain in a relationship with the EU that is comparable to that of Norway. Norway has twice voted not to join the EU, but it remains in the European single market through the EEA. Now Britain’s MPs will have to vote again, not just on the EEA, but on almost all the pivotal issues that would make the difference between a hard Brexit and a soft one.
When the bill went through the Commons last autumn, relatively few of these issues raised large tussles. The one big defeat for Theresa May in the Commons was Dominic Grieve’s amendment that, in effect, requires parliament to vote to approve the final withdrawal agreement with the EU, on which work still continues. This remains a crunch issue, but it is now joined by the 13 or so Lords amendments on a wide range of other issues. These include continued membership of the customs union in some form, the adoption of the EU charter of fundamental rights into domestic UK law, and Chris Patten’s amendment ensuring that the UK and Ireland must agree any new Irish border rules before they come into force.
For parliament these are all very big questions, on which there could be Commons majorities if MPs were not forced to follow party lines. Coalitions similar to the one that passed the Grieve amendment could be assembled again. Don’t forget, also, that the withdrawal bill is not the only Brexit-related legislation currently under consideration in parliament (the trade bill is particularly significant). And there is the hugely significant possibility that any new bill on the withdrawal terms could be defeated or amended (including by a demand for a fresh referendum).
May’s Brexit strategy is to hold the Tory party together by withdrawing entirely from the EU, while making serious practical compromises to maintain as “frictionless” a relationship as possible with the EU, its institutions, agencies and member states – Ireland above all. Government defeats on crucial questions such as the single market, the customs union or the Irish border would overturn the entire strategy. Yet this is becoming more likely now. May’s strategy worked for her first months as prime minister. But the “lost election” of 2017 and the fundamental differences among Conservative MPs and ministers over Brexit issues that cannot be permanently postponed mean its lifetime is now almost spent. Labour’s caution on Brexit shows little sign of changing, but there are enormous temptations for Jeremy Corbyn to overcome his anti-EU instincts in order to humiliate the government on at least some of the Lords amendments.
This explains why, even as she runs out of road on Brexit, May still acts as if she is hoping that something unexpected will turn up. There is now talk at Westminster of the Brexit bill votes being delayed to the autumn, partly to avoid embarrassing Commons defeats affecting the June EU summit at which the future relationship will be discussed – and partly because Conservative rebels on both sides of the argument might be more disciplined if the talks appear to be nearing a successful conclusion.
It is hard to imagine that the Tory party’s Commons discipline is about to collapse on every single issue that the Lords have put on the table. Nevertheless, the Tory soft Brexiters seem a bit bolder now. That is partly because their numbers are gently creeping up – and also because, in the end, these moderate Tories feel they have to fight harder now if they are to prevent their party collapsing even further to the Ukip right.
That is why every disloyal provocation by Boris Johnson or other ministers – such as the foreign secretary’s “crazy” jibe this week – acts as a recruiting sergeant for the soft Brexiters. The coming weeks and months may be their moment. A hung parliament gives them the means. The slide to the right gives them the motive. And now the Lords have given them their opportunity. It will be a hot political summer.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
The European commission produced its much-anticipated draft withdrawal agreement on Wednesday. The reaction was swift, and polarised. Commentator Ian Dunt said it represented the government’s “chickens coming home to roost”. Arlene Foster, Democratic Unionist party leader, for her part, called the document “constitutionally unacceptable”, adding that the terms laid down would be economically catastrophic. “No UK prime minister could ever agree to it,” was the acerbic rejoinder from Theresa May herself.
Let’s be clear what this draft is and what it isn’t. It is the commission’s idea of what a withdrawal agreement should look like. It has not, as yet, been signed off by the member states, and as such has no formal status in the negotiations. Even if it was to be signed off, it would still represent merely the position of one side in the talks.
The document does, however, contain some incendiary stuff. The commission has insisted that citizens with “settled status” should be entitled to bring over non-EU partners they meet after the exit date, while stating that British citizens in other member states will only be able to enjoy their EU rights in their current countries of residence. On transition, it resuscitates the idea of suspending the benefits of the single market for the UK in the event that it does not fulfil its obligations.
And then, of course, there is Northern Ireland. Here the commission is adamant that the only way to avoid a hard border between north and south is for Northern Ireland to remain party to the EU customs code and maintain full alignment in key areas of public policy such as livestock and agriculture.
Leaving aside the fact that this seems like precisely the kind of cherrypicking the EU has long insisted is impossible, there are real issues to be resolved. However, it is worth stepping back and putting things in perspective. The draft is a gambit in a negotiation that has barely started. The EU, for its part, wants to have the Northern Ireland situation subject to an “operational solution” before we move on to negotiating trade. A comprehensive withdrawal agreement must be signed in October and ratified by the end of March 2019.
There are good reasons for this. One is, of course, that the Republic of Ireland is a member state and the EU protects its member states. Another is related to the trade negotiations themselves. For these, the commission has adopted a highly restrictive position. The UK has two choices, it argues: either it can sign up to membership of the single market with no say over its rules – the Norway option – or it can have a more run-of-the-mill deal that will impose significant restrictions on trade – the Canada option.
In order to square this with its desire to avoid a border in Ireland, the draft agreement insists that the UK should accept the fact that, in the absence of any other solution, Northern Ireland will be “considered to be part of the customs territory of the European Union”.
The UK position is totally different. The government cannot countenance anything that would mean Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK would have different relationships with the EU, since this would effectively mean a border in the Irish Sea.
That substantive problem aside, May has a tactical incentive not to sign up to the commission’s scheme. If the Irish border issue were not resolved by the time trade talks were due to begin, the EU would come under enormous pressure to modify its stance. David Lidington made this clear in parliament on Tuesday when he said that we are at the start of a negotiation. The commission thinks we are at the end of one.
What we have here is a high-stakes game of chicken. Brussels wants to present London with a take-it-or-leave-it agreement. Rejection would raise the spectre of disorderly exit, which, while it would certainly damage member states, would hurt the UK far more. London wants to brazen this assault out, in the hope that ultimately the EU, including the Irish, will balk at the prospect of no deal (which would make a hard border in Ireland inevitable) and grudgingly agree to sort out the border at the same time as trade.
Can the prime minister weather the storm? Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Monday pledging a customs union, and the insistence of Cardiff and Edinburgh that they will withhold legislative consent for the withdrawal bill, add to the pressure. May’s only means of survival may be to play the long game. It remains to be seen if she has the political strength to do so.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
Perhaps it’s all part of a cunning plan. Maybe there’s a secret strategy document stashed in a Downing Street vault, codenamed Operation Wind-up. The classified text will reveal that the UK government’s negotiating tactic is to drive our fellow Europeans mad, to infuriate them through so many contradictions, contortions of logic and outright violations of previous agreements that they’ll end up reduced to a sobbing, gibbering mess, ready to concede to Theresa May whatever she wants, just to make the madness stop.
How else to explain the way London is approaching the Brexit talks with the remaining 27 states of the European Union? The latest double attempt to goad the Brussels negotiators into tearing out clumps of their own hair comes from Boris Johnson. On Tuesday, he managed a full-spectrum insult when he suggested that the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic was of no greater significance than the boundary that separates the London boroughs of Camden and Westminster. In its ability to offend multiple groups at the same time, it was almost brilliant. It simultaneously disrespected Ireland’s status as a sovereign nation, trivialised a conflict that cost thousands of lives, downplayed an issue which matters enormously to the European Union – and all with a London-centric focus that screamed metropolitan elite. Not bad for a single sentence in a radio interview.
Overnight, he’s dialled it up a notch, thanks to the leak to Sky News of a letter Johnson wrote to May suggesting the way the government can solve its Irish border problem is by reneging on the agreement May made with the EU in December. Back then the prime minister solemnly vowed that there would be no hard border on the island of Ireland. In his letter, Johnson tells May that there could be some wiggle room, since all Britain promised was to “stop this border becoming significantly harder”. (That word “significantly” offers plenty of leeway.) He goes further, explicitly countenancing the reintroduction of a hard border since less than 5% of goods would require checks.
You’d forgive Michel Barnier and his team finding the nearest wall and banging their heads repeatedly against it. They thought everyone had understood and agreed on this point: no hard border means nothing tangible or visible that could become a symbol and target for republican paramilitaries, whether used to check 1% or 100% of goods. Yet here is the British foreign secretary either being obtuse or else wilfully urging the prime minister to break her word.
But Operation Wind-up does not rely on Johnson alone. Former Brexit minister David Jones did his bit this morning, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if Northern Ireland ends up remaining in the customs union and single market – as envisaged in the “backstop” scenario, outlined in the draft text of the withdrawal agreement published in Brussels today – then that would amount to “annexure” (he meant annexation) of Northern Ireland by the EU. Without going full Basil Fawlty, Jones was deploying the hoary trope of an aggressive, expansionist EU posing a 1940s-style threat to a defiant United Kingdom.
No less maddening was Jones’s dismissal of today’s EU legal text as an “opening salvo” in negotiations. No: it’s a formal account of an agreement that was reached back in December, following so-called phase one negotiations. The UK might want to tweak the wording, but the fundamentals have been agreed by May and the EU. That phase one stage of talks is not “opening”, it’s closed.
Of course, all these little irritations arise from the big one, which is the Brexiteers’ refusal to see that they are asking for a series of things that are mutually incompatible. They want Britain out of the single market and customs union. They want no EU/UK border in the Irish Sea that would distinguish Northern Ireland from Britain. And they say they want no hard border in Ireland. You can have one or two of those, but not all three. (My long-held suspicion, confirmed by the Johnson letter, is that if something has to give, the Brexiteers’ first instinct would be to sacrifice Ireland.)
The Europeans know that, and are imploring Britain to recognise it too. No amount of magical thinking can wish it away. Jeremy Corbyn acknowledged as much on Monday, with his shift on the customs union. But the Brexiteers pretend this circle can be squared, if only the Europeans would close their eyes tight and believe. Instead, the government is driving our partners to distraction, souring the atmosphere for the next phase of negotiations when goodwill will be an essential commodity. All this might be driving Brussels to bang its collective skull on the desk – but it’ll be Britain that gets the headache.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
The foreign secretary Boris Johnson made a speech on Wednesday in praise of optimism, confidence and a liberal Brexit. It was rich in rhetorical flourish and almost empty of detail. It was the speech of a politician whose only credibility is as the tribune of the leave campaign, a shameless piece of oration that fell back on his old journalistic trick of describing an EU that does not exist in order to justify his determination to get out. It was billed as an overture to the 48% who wanted to stay in the EU and a definitive speech about the shape of Britain’s future relationships outside it. But it was singularly free of the kind of irksome detail needed to understand a world beyond Europe.
It was rich in what Whitehall describes as optimism bias, “an estimate for a project’s costs, benefits and duration [made] in the absence of robust primary evidence”. It was a Valentine’s Day card to himself and his ambition to be the next Tory leader, an ambition he betrayed with his incoherent answer to a question about whether he would rule out resigning this year.
The Johnsonian version of the EU is a grotesque distortion of reality, like the journalistic copy he once fashioned from banana regulations. As the president of the European commission Jean-Claude Juncker pointed out at a press conference that coincided with the foreign secretary’s speech, no one in Brussels harbours ambitions to build a European federal superstate; if some may once have supposed that the European court of justice could drive the process of harmonisation, for years now its judgments have reflected respect for national courts. Mr Johnson’s pretence that he does not understand the distinction between the jurisdiction of the ECJ over the EU’s charter of fundamental rights, and the entirely distinct European court of human rights in Strasbourg, is simply embarrassing. Even the opaque method of choosing the president of the EU commission, the Spitzenkandidaten process, which Mr Johnson enjoyed mocking, is not some treasured institution but an experiment now under attack from the council itself. The shape of the EU and its future direction are not carved on tablets of stone; they are live and much debated questions in which the UK would once have been fully engaged.
In among the picturesque fantasy it was possible to discern exactly how Mr Johnson wants the Brexit process to develop. Contrary to reports that have emerged ahead of what must be of one of the most briefed speeches of recent times, he denied that he was rejecting a transition or – as he preferred to call it – implementation period. After that period, however, he is determined there should be no obligation to observe EU rules that the UK has not had a voice in shaping. There will be no membership of the single market or the customs union, although he did allow that some harmonisation on manufacturing might be desirable. All this is in line with the prime minister’s own preferred options for the future, set out in her Lancaster House and Florence speeches last year. It is also the absolute minimum position for Mr Johnson, if he is to compete in a future leadership contest against the young pretender, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
What neither the prime minister nor her foreign secretary have yet managed to explain is how the option of an almost complete break with the EU can be accomplished without making a nonsense of the government’s competing obligation to ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the south. Without an answer to that conundrum, talks about future trade relations will not get very far.
Nor was it a gesture of reconciliation to remain voters. Rather it was the kind of take it or leave it offer that Mr Johnson once imagined would frighten Brussels. That did not go so well, and nor will this. And if it represents the level of debate in cabinet, the eight-hour awayday next week will be just one more round in a dialogue of the deaf. Mr Johnson is sometimes funny and he is clever, both useful attributes for a journalist but not nearly enough to make him even a half-way competent foreign secretary. After a series of missteps, he looks increasingly ill at ease in the public eye. On Wednesday even his jokes fell flat. He has been rumbled.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
In an ideal democracy, it might be possible to treat the process that begins on Tuesday in the House of Commons as a worthy culmination of the long debate on Britain’s relationship with Europe after Brexit. For two days, MPs will examine many of the most difficult questions raised by Brexit as they look in detail at the Lords’ amendments to the EU withdrawal bill. Issues that have dominated politics for the past two years – such as the Irish border, the customs union, the single market, ministerial powers, EU law, fundamental rights, devolved powers and the final “meaningful” vote when the terms are known – will all come under the microscope.
Yet as Britain moves closer to leaving the EU at the end of March next year, there is no sense of an approaching closure or of a settled national will on any of these issues, let alone on the fundamental future relationship itself. In fact, Britain is as divided, conflicted and uncertain about its future as ever. None of the salient Brexit questions has been satisfactorily resolved, partly because the potential damage from them is so stark and interconnected, but also because the Conservative party – and to some extent Labour – have proved incapable of national leadership. Yet instead of reasoning about Brexit problems, the actions of hardline leavers have grown increasingly shocking. David Davis threatens to resign over a date. Boris Johnson suggests Donald Trump would have been a better negotiator. Liam Fox looks on as the White House upends his trade deal dreams. Meanwhile Jacob Rees-Mogg announces that customs checks are suddenly unnecessary.
But it is not just the main parties that are failing. So is the insurgent movement that caught the anti-political tide in the referendum two years ago. As Paul Dacre steps down, leaving the politicians to clean up the damage after the relentless reactionary campaigning of his Daily Mail years, the Cambridge Analytica and Leave.EU implosions illuminate the leave campaign’s dirty secrets. As MPs debate the bill, Leave.EU’s millionaire founder and bankroller, Arron Banks, will be telling a select committee about extensive contacts with Russian diplomats and trips to Moscow, where discussion included lucrative business deals, all during the Brexit campaign.
The Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, was right to warn on Monday that the worst possible Brexit, a potentially catastrophic no-deal, now looks increasingly possible – just at the very moment when the G7 debacle shows the vital importance of international cooperation. The Brexit project is like a clapped-out car wobbling and wheezing towards the finishing line next year with wheels and bits of bodywork falling off as the line approaches. At just such a dismal moment, MPs face vital decisions about the country’s European links. The worry is that party interest means the debates and votes will not be worthy of the issues. Instead they could be all too glumly representative of the miserable domestic political shambles of the past two years. But there is still time to dump the car.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
As the UK prepares to leave the EU, there will continue to be a passionate debate over the direction our country now takes. Some see this debate as a purely domestic issue: the UK arguing with itself about what to do next. But when it comes to future trade, these discussions are not taking place in a vacuum.
We live in a rapidly changing world, and while Brexit gives us the opportunity to shape Britain’s role on the global stage, we must recognise that the stage itself is shifting. The merits of an international rules-based trading system are being undermined even by those countries that have benefited the most.
One of the great constants of the postwar era has been the growth in global trade. This development has lifted entire nations out of abject poverty, while providing jobs, security, better health and longer lives for billions of people around the world. In 1975, 60% of the population of Asia lived in absolute poverty. Today that figure is 20%.
It’s easy to take such progress for granted, but we would do well to recognise its origin in the rules-based global trading system. Britain played a leading role in the creation of this system, and advocacy of free and fair trade has long been the cornerstone of our economic and foreign policy. We are a founding member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a body that has done so much to facilitate the growth of global trade. This week sees its biggest ever gathering, in Argentina, where the UK will join 163 other members to discuss the rules that govern global trade.
This will be the last major WTO gathering before the UK leaves the EU and takes responsibility for its own trade policy. So the vision for the UK that I and other ministers will take to Buenos Aires will be of an independent trading nation that recognises the progress that trade has delivered for the world’s poorest, and commits to sharing those benefits further. As some countries look to row back that progress, leaving the EU gives us the opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to it.
I want us to lead the way in helping poorer communities through trade, which is why today I am announcing an additional £18m of UK support from the Department for International Development to help 51 of the world’s poorest countries, boosting the business and economic development that will result in sustained and inclusive growth.
Of this, £16m will go to the WTO’s Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) programme, and will help the poorest countries make products fit for export, trade more easily across borders and access untapped new markets. A further £2m will go to the WTO’s Standards and Trade Development Facility, which helps developing countries meet international agricultural standards, enabling them to export more.
The UK has supported the EIF programme since 2008. It helps governments develop tailored national trade strategies that benefit their producers, train officials to manage trade issues and build capacity among small rural businesses – many of which are owned by women – to help them access new international markets for their goods. It has already helped 35,000 women get a regular income through trade.
In Zambia we’re helping farmers export honey – and in Nepal the EIF is helping up to 4,000 families prepare their ginger crop for export, and increase national ginger sales by 25%.
Of course, trade can only support development within the right global environment, so in addition to these specific measures, the UK will remain the steadfast champion of free trade at the WTO. Fulfilling that role has never been more important. As we regain our independent membership, we will use our position to resist attempts to put up barriers to business, including by G7 and G20 countries that are turning their backs on the principles that made them rich and powerful. The economic and moral reasons for doing so are compelling.
Britain has long been on the frontline of free trade. Now, as we prepare to leave the EU, we can move forward with more purpose, for the good of Britain, and the world.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
There are plenty of things I disagree on with Boris Johnson – Brexit, £350m daubed on the side of a bus and his failure to act on the climate crisis. But he was right when he said: “They [the people] haven’t failed. It’s we, us, the politicians, our politics has failed them.”
The north of England, and plenty of other areas, have been abandoned by the political class. Communities with proud histories were hollowed out by de-industrialisation and decades of neglect, followed in recent years by an ideologically driven assault on public services in the name of austerity. Left to decline not because the political class didn’t know what was happening: more likely, they didn’t care.
So when the chance came for those people to give the establishment a good kicking for such arrogance and complacency, it’s hardly surprising that they took it. The result was a leave victory in the 2016 referendum. The status quo in this country is intolerable for huge numbers of people. The social contract is broken, the power game is rigged and it’s primarily thanks to those who voted leave that this crisis at the heart of our democracy can no longer be ignored.
Splashing the cash as Johnson seems intent on doing now isn’t any kind of solution. That was the clear message I heard when I visited leave constituencies earlier this year as part of my Dear Leavers initiative. The problems run far deeper and will only be addressed if we redistribute power as well as resources. Vote Leave’s powerful slogan “take back control” resonated because so many had no control over their lives. But they still don’t. Leaving the EU will not address this, nor will Johnson’s supposed largesse.
This Conservative government threatens our democracy in other ways too. At a time when we need leadership built on honesty and integrity, we have a prime minister whose casual disregard for the truth is legendary and who blows with whatever prevailing winds suit him. With the money and the media behind him, Johnson may be the prime minister who carries out Donald Trump’s wishes and ensures the UK crashes out of the EU – leaving us ripe for US companies to pick over the spoils. That is not what people voted for in 2016.
The White House must be rubbing its hands with glee at what is happening in Britain. Trump is driving a wedge between the UK and the EU (his “foe”) and has a prime minister (a “Britain Trump”) ready to dance to his tune. This doesn’t just risk us becoming mercenaries in Trump’s trade wars. The danger is far greater than that. Trump is openly provoking Iran, spoiling for a new Middle East war, and he will expect full support from his lackey in Downing Street.
This a dangerous moment for our country and if we want to protect and renew it, we need to be bold. To build on the revolution unleashed by Brexit with more democracy – not ignore the result with a “Bollocks to Brexit” campaign, treating half the country with contempt and reinforcing the sense that some views and votes can just be ignored. Nor is Labour showing any leadership. It has failed to use the political fallout of Brexit to put fixing our broken democracy centre stage. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn has put party before country in the hope that Labour will benefit from the chaos of a Tory Brexit.
So what does more democracy mean? Giving people a say on the terms of any deal with the EU is a start. That should be through a people’s vote, with a remain option on the ballot paper. We also need citizens’ assemblies to work through the myriad of difficult issues and trade-offs, to reach a consensus about what we want, as well as what we don’t want.
We need to change our electoral system too so that politicians are held to account by those who put them in power. Our first-past-the-post system leaves too many people with an MP they did not vote for and do not support. Proportional representation has to be part of any democratic renewal.
But it isn’t only our electoral system that has to change; so does where decisions get made. We live in one of the most centralised country in Europe, with nearly all the power and purse strings controlled by Westminster. The frustration at that lack of any representation or real power in the English regions led to so many blaming Brussels, when the problem is actually at Westminster. Where there is a strong sense of enjoying democratic representation, as in Scotland and London, people have the self-confidence to feel at ease with sharing sovereignty with Europe. And it cannot be right that Scotland and Northern Ireland face being dragged out of the EU despite voting to stay.
Johnson and his cronies like to portray themselves as political rebels, anti-establishment outsiders whose campaign for Brexit was aimed at overturning the status quo in favour of “ordinary” working Britons. Nothing could be further from the truth. Working people will be the ones who will lose out the most when he, Nigel Farage, Trump and the rest have finished.
Brexit launched a political revolution in Britain. Johnson is trying to use the upheaval to cement power for himself and his establishment cronies. It is up to the rest of us to stop him getting away with it – starting with an agreement that there can be no going back to rule by the old elite, in whatever form.
We have to work cross-party to forge a new future built on democratic renewal. One in which every single citizen of the UK has a guarantee that their voice will be heard. A future that replaces tribalism and fear with collaboration, and one that understands social, economic and environmental justice can only be delivered through democratic justice.
First published on Wed 25 Jul 2018 20.01 BST
When Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s chief of staff, invited febrile Tory constituency chairs to Downing Street to brief them on the Chequers deal last week, he faced a mutinous band.
His warnings about the dangers to the UK economy went down particularly badly among the Brexit-supporting majority. One veteran activist scolded the fresh-faced aide: “I’ve had more years in business than you’ve been alive. I’m not afraid of no deal.”
Tory activists are not the only ones angered by the way the government has, as they see it, weaponised contingency plans. “It’s Project Fear mark two. Do they think we can’t see that they’re trying to alarm people?” said one pro-Brexit MP.
For many months the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party was desperate for the prime minister to intensify preparations, primarily to show Brussels that she was serious about walking away without an agreement.
Stewart Jackson, a senior aide to the former Brexit secretary David Davis, claimed this week that May constantly blocked his department from planning for no deal. That only changed when, faced with the need to unite her cabinet behind her Chequers plan, she agreed to “step up” preparations.
Since then, ministers seem to have gone into turbo-drive. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, told MPs that drugs and blood products would be stockpiled; thenew Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, promised there would be “adequate” food supplies; eeven the chancellor, Philip Hammond – who initially claimed it would be “irresponsible” to spend taxpayers’ cash on preparations (but has since set aside £3bn) – got in on the act, on Tuesday guaranteeing the Treasury would cover lost EU funding.
Downing Street insists that it is not a deliberate tactic to show the prime minister’s new Brexit proposals in a good light. “We think Chequers is the right way forward … But no deal is not a political strategy,” one source said.
One cabinet minister said the government would be playing “dead straight” when it begins issuing its 70 “technical notes” on preparing for a no-deal Brexit, likely to cover everything from health insurance for tourists to customs arrangements for small businesses.
As for May herself, she said on Tuesday the government was simply being “responsible and sensible” in making sure that individuals and businesses were prepared.
“Far from being worried about preparations that we’re making, I would say that people should take reassurance and comfort from the fact that the government … is working for a good deal,” she said.
“I believe we can get a good one, but it’s actually right that we say, because we don’t know what the outcome will be, let’s prepare for every eventuality.”
Even ardent remainers are reluctant to ascribe a political motive, suggesting that no-deal planning was long overdue, especially when EU states such as the Netherlands have already started putting their own measures in place.
Many Tories believe that the PM’s Chequers plan will benefit. A second cabinet minister said: “It’s really important that people understand what the alternative really means.” A backbench MP added: “It might also bring home the reality of some of the issues we will be facing.”
But not everybody is so sure that the drip, drip of warnings will encourage people to eventually embrace May’s plans. “I’m not convinced it will work,” said one senior Brexiter. “After all, we didn’t have armageddon after the referendum like they had warned we would.” Another cabinet minister added: “I suspect it won’t have any impact either way.”
The risk of a no-deal Brexit has clearly risen. The UK hopes to reach agreement with the EU by October, but the compromise plan agreed by ministers at Chequers has so far found little support in Brussels or in parliament.
And despite the Brexiters’ hopes that stepping up preparations for no deal would resonate in Brussels, some European states clearly think the British government is bluffing. The Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, said on Wednesday: “I’ve heard a lot of comment on this issue in recent weeks and, to be honest with you, I think some of it is bravado.
“The truth is that I don’t believe Britain can afford to have no deal on Brexit. I don’t believe that Ireland and the EU would want that either. The negative implications of a no-deal Brexit are very significant … We all have an obligation to make sure that that does not happen.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Stir salt into water and you get a clear solution. Boil off the water and you have a residue of salt again. But whisked eggs stirred in a hot pan cannot be unscrambled. Some changes are more reversible than others.
Since last year’s referendum, many of those who voted to remain in the European Union have treated Brexit as a contaminant in their lives. Politics tasted different, and it was disorienting that so many people had chosen a pungent new flavour. But reversal was theoretically available.
The letter Theresa May sends to the president of the European Council today changes everything. Lawyers disagree on whether article 50 of the Lisbon treaty is technically revocable, but in practice – in cultural and political terms – that feels irrelevant. The prime minister is not adding salt. She is breaking eggs.
Article 50 is not just something the UK does to itself. It imposes change on 27 other countries. In other European capitals, Brexit is part of a pattern of contagious nationalism that, along with Donald Trump’s election, requires urgent quarantine.
The spectacle of Britain and the US coping with their maverick electoral choices may already be having some inoculating effect on European populations. Geert Wilders, the Dutch far-right leader, failed to press home an early opinion poll advantage in parliamentary elections last month. French moderates are cautiously optimistic that the Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, can be thwarted in a presidential ballot next month. A threatened surge by Germany’s ultra-nationalists has yet to materialise.
Fascism taking the runner-up slots in western democracies is hardly cause for celebration, but it has allowed pro-EU politicians to imagine a navigable route to renewal of their project: Emmanuel Macron, the young liberal, wins in France and, after Bundestag elections in September, forms an alliance with the leader of a grand German coalition, Angela Merkel or her Social Democratic challenger Martin Schulz. This partnership becomes the engine for reform to restore dynamism and legitimacy to the rusting Euromachine.
That is a feasible scenario, but no more plausible than forecasts of multiple crises: a revival of Greek debt woes, fraying Italian attachment to the single currency, a steeper slide towards authoritarian rule in Poland and Hungary, another migration panic, Russian mischief in the Baltic.
Even if the EU muddles through between renaissance and meltdown, there will always be problems that hardline British sceptics can point to as justification for the decision to leave. There will always be reasons to say we got out just in time.
If Britain suffers financial trauma in the coming years, Brexiteers will claim it is the birth pangs of a wondrous new era, to be suffered stoically. If the freedom dividend still doesn’t arrive, it will be because severance is incomplete. The prime minister will be accused of obstructing prosperity by compromising too much with Brussels; foreigners will be charged with sabotage. The problem will always be too little Brexit, never too much.
Pro-Europeans will struggle to disprove those arguments because there will be no demonstrable counterfactual. The claim that Britain would have been better off on a different path will be no more effective than the prediction in last year’s referendum that Brexit would hurt. No one who ignored that warning wants to be assailed with a smug chorus of “we told you so”.
May cannot deliver a fraction of what was promised by leavers, but voters who are left feeling betrayed will not respond well to being told it is their own stupid fault for believing dodgy promises and xenophobic fearmongery.
People do not change their minds anywhere near as often as politicians think they should. We tune into arguments that vindicate past choices and filter out inconvenient data. Pro-Europeans and Brexiters are equally inclined to sift the news for items that flatter their prejudices.
Meanwhile, details of the negotiations – the acronyms and interlocking parts of European regulatory jurisdiction – will not capture the public imagination any more than they did last June. The vast majority of the British public has never been interested in the workings of EU, and is probably less interested now that the decision has been taken to leave.
Pro-European hopes of a change of heart triggered by realisation that the whole thing is a folly are misplaced. Ken Clarke compares Brexit to the Iraq war – a foreign policy choice that enjoyed majority support until gruesome reality intervened. But leavers didn’t passively go along with this new adventure: they voted for it. For many that was an emotional investment, motivated by feelings of belonging to a certain place and fearing it had become somewhere else without their consent. Such allegiances are not casually discarded. Insistence that Brexit is necessary will continue to overpower technical exposition of its impracticality.
The main contest over the coming years is not going to be about regulations and budgets. If those issues penetrate the public consciousness it will be as proxies for bigger questions about Britain’s place in the world: who speaks for the country; what kind of country will it be? That is a rivalry over the terms of national identity and patriotism, not tariffs and trade.
Those of us who wished Britain could have remained in the EU must understand the cultural magnitude of our defeat. We have surrendered the idiom of national destiny. We have been too squeamish in declaring love for our country, and that impedes the warning that it will be ruined by Brexit.
There is no comfort in the technical superiority of complex arguments that no one hears. Those arguments must still be made, but there is a prior task: winning back the right to an audience with people who chose Brexit because it is what they believed was best for themselves, their families, their country.
There may come a time when that faith falters. But by then, the EU will no longer be the thing it was when the UK voted to leave. The case for integration with our neighbours will have to be made anew. Article 50 does not promise a set destination, but it seals off the past. The shell of Britain’s EU membership is broken. Let there be no more talk of remain.
Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2020 17.09 GMT
Theresa May has agreed with her cabinet that restricting immigration will be a red line in any negotiations with the EU, in a move that experts claim will end Britain’s membership of the single market.
The prime minister and her team, who met at Chequers – the PM’s country retreat – also confirmed that MPs will not be given a vote before the government triggers article 50, beginning the two-year countdown to a British exit.
“There was a strong emphasis on pushing ahead to article 50 to lead Britain successfully out of the European Union – with no need for a parliamentary vote,” May’s spokeswoman said, before setting out how restrictions to freedom of movement would be at the centre of any Brexit deal.
“Several cabinet members made it clear that we are leaving the EU but not leaving Europe, with a decisive view that the model we are seeking is one unique to the United Kingdom and not an off-the-shelf solution,” she said.
“This must mean controls on the numbers of people who come to Britain from Europe but also a positive outcome for those who wish to trade goods and services.”
May began the session, which is the first cabinet meeting since the summer break, by telling her ministers that there will be “no attempts to stay in the EU by the back door”.
She said that meant no second referendum, before restating the slogan from the early part of her premiership: “Brexit means Brexit”.
Her spokeswoman said the group also had a long discussion on their commitment to the devolved nations of the UK, promising to “make sure Brexit works for all”. However, they made clear that it would be the UK government’s decision to establish the terms of Britain’s EU exit and when it would begin, ruling out any possibility of a Scottish veto.
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said immigration controls meant Britain’s Brexit deal would not be along the lines of that used for Norway or Switzerland. Instead, it put the UK on track for a Canada-style agreement, with free trade for manufactured goods but not necessarily for services.
“People have been assuming there will have to be restrictions on immigration of some sort, either an emergency brake, or an Australian-style points system for European workers,” he said.
“Whatever system we go for it is going to be unacceptable to our partners if we want access to the single market. We will only have limited access to the single market and have to content ourselves with a free trade agreement, which would not cover many of our key services sectors including financial services.”
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has suggested that Britain could retain membership of the EU with restrictions on freedom of movement but European diplomats have responded by calling it a “pipe dream”.
Officials in Johnson’s department are some of the most keen in Whitehall to remain as close to Europe as possible, while those in the Treasury are also pushing hard for single market access in particular sectors such as financial services.
David Davis, secretary of state for the newly created Department for Exiting the EU, has claimed that European countries will offer Britain a good economic deal because it is in their interest to do so. Liam Fox, who will be leading trade efforts with the rest of the world, has argued that not being in the single market is a price worth paying for border control.
Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, seized on the cabinet’s discussions about no vote for MPs and no veto for the devolved nations.
“The country was dragged into this mess by a Tory party acting as a law unto themselves, and now they want to trust us to get them out of it, acting in exactly the same way,” she said.
“It is sheer, high-handed arrogance for them to say they will take all the decisions themselves, with no consultation of parliament or the public, with the devolved administrations consulted but not listened to, and with the governments of London and Gibraltar now not even mentioned.”
May and her team were keen to emphasise the idea that Britain would still be open for business and agreed to brand the first day of Tory conference as being about “global Britain – showing that we are more outward-looking than ever before”.
During a presentation, Tory party chairman Patrick McLoughlin said the party would have the largest attendance in a decade for October’s event, and said the party’s membership had grown by 50,000 over the summer.
The theme of the four-day gathering in Birmingham would be “a country that works for everyone”, he said, echoing the message delivered by May when she delivered a speech before entering Downing Street as prime minister for the first time.
At Wednesday’s meeting at her country retreat, which stretched across much of the day, with a political session in the afternoon without civil servants, May praised the fantastic success of Team GB in the Olympics. She called it “absolutely great” and wished the country’s Paralympians well.
The prime minister said she wanted to discuss social reform, arguing that a major priority was wanting “to be a government and a country that works for everyone”.
“I want it to be a society where it’s the talent that you have and how hard you’re prepared to work that determines how you get on, rather than your background,” she said.
And she insisted that the government had to discuss how “we can get tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business – again making sure that actually everyone is able to share in the country’s prosperity”.
The ministers were keen to stress that their party was “united” and to contrast that with Labour, which the spokeswoman described as an “inward-looking and divided opposition”.
The cabinet meeting came as a new ICM/Guardian poll gives the Conservatives a 14-point lead over the opposition, with May’s party up one point to 41%, while Labour has fallen one point to 27%.
The survey had Ukip third with 13%, followed by the Liberal Democrats on 9%.
The Tories’ strong lead could be underpinned by consumer confidence, according to ICM director Martin Boon, who said that while 53% of the public were confident in the measure of financial security, just 19% were not confident.
“The gap of +34 is well ahead of the +23 noted in March 2015 and indeed not beaten since June 2002. The rampant fears of Brexit appear to have manifestly failed to dent the hardy British consumer, at least for now,” he said.
The economic outlook was also discussed at cabinet alongside a commitment to fiscal discipline and “seizing the opportunity of Brexit to confirm the UK’s place as one of the great trading nations in the world”.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, who sat next to the prime minister, updated colleagues on the campaign against Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
“The foreign secretary highlighted the progress that had been made in squeezing the territory held by Daesh [Isis], with 40% reclaimed, as well as a fall in support for Daesh’s ideology around the world,” added a spokeswoman.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Theresa May made sweeping changes when she was catapulted into Downing Street. New departments were created, and the government had acquired a fresh mission – navigating our way out of the EU. Science and research could easily have been squeezed out of a picture dominated by migration, trade and market access.
In fact, the reverse is happening: the PM wrote in July that she wants “a positive outcome for science as we exit the EU”; and Philip Hammond followed this up in his autumn statement with a £4.7 billion increase in science and innovation investment. Industrial strategy is back in favour; the prospects for science have been debated in recent weeks in both the Lords and the Commons; and ministers have been queuing up to emphasise its importance to the future of the UK.
The latest report from the House of Lords science and technology committee, published today, highlights three things that government and the science community must work together to tackle over the coming months.
First, preparing us for the challenges of leaving the EU. Successive governments have underinvested in research, such that the UK holds an ever more tenuous grip on its claims to be a world leader. The extra investment that has now been promised allows cracks in the science base to be repaired and provides vital resources to link science to innovation through the new industrial strategy. Philip Hammond told parliament recently that “this is additional money”, distinct from reassurances he has already given on replacing funds lost from EU research programmes after Brexit.
Technical evidence and input will also be vital. Liam Fox’s department for international trade (DIT) will need scientific advice and expertise ahead of any trade negotiations. Such deals may not include a section headlined “science”, but they typically include harmonisation of consumer protection, environmental and manufacturing standards – each of which is underpinned by science. The Lords recommend that DIT appoints a chief scientific adviser, and echo concerns from their Commons counterparts about the absence of such a role in the Brexit department (DExEU). There should be no further delay in making these important appointments.
Second, the science, innovation and higher education community needs to work out realistic ambitions, and feed these into the Brexit negotiations. Jo Johnson MP, minister for universities and science, announced recently that a “high level forum” is being established to capture the views of the community. This is a welcome development: the UK needs an agile, entrepreneurial approach to Brexit rather than a rigid masterplan, so we can respond to opportunities and challenges as the negotiations proceed.
The Lords’ report calls for the voice of the scientific community to be heard alongside the voice of business during the Brexit negotiations. In research, over many years, the UK’s relationship with the EU has been consistently harmonious. This should give it a unique place in the wider negotiations, and the UK could take advantage of science as a point of agreement in more difficult discussions.
Third, the UK can explore new prospects for research collaboration beyond the EU. The Lords’ report suggests that “UK scientific leaders should try not to be consumed by UK-EU negotiations and should make space for discussions with the rest of the world, particularly where there is potential to build on an existing track record…”. They also recommend that the UK sends a powerful signal of its global ambitions, by offering to host a large international research facility –on a scale comparable to the Crick Institute or the Diamond Light Source – in partnership with other countries. There are also some opportunities for positive reforms in public procurement and the taxation of R&D investments that may become possible outside the EU.
One dark cloud hangs over this more positive approach: uncertainty over immigration. The UK’s ambitions for science will be undermined if we fail to attract and retain researchers from the EU and beyond. Increasingly, the chancellor, foreign secretary and Brexit ministers are aligning with the science minister – and public opinion – in recognising that the UK should welcome talented people from overseas. But the home secretary, Amber Rudd, seems unconvinced and the prime minister remains non-committal. And as the Lords argue in today’s report, “The delay in solid reassurances and mixed messages from senior ministers is having a corrosive effect on the UK research base.”
The Lords go further, arguing that tweaking the terms under which scientists are permitted to work in the UK is not enough. Instead, they recommend that we “search the globe for outstanding scientific leaders, and attract them to the UK with compelling offers of research funding for their first 10 years in the UK, and support for their immediate families as they settle into the UK”. Let’s hope that Amber Rudd includes a copy of the report in her box of Christmas reading.
Graeme Reid is professor of science and research policy at University College London, and was a specialist adviser to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry into EU membership and UK science. The committee’s latest report “A time for boldness: EU membership and UK science after the referendum” is published today.
Last modified on Thu 13 Feb 2020 10.35 GMT
Ireland’s remarkable general election clearly marks a turning point for the republic. By topping the poll last weekend, Sinn Féin has broken the old politics wide open. Mary Lou McDonald’s party will now be either part of Ireland’s new government or the main opposition. Either outcome marks an astonishing change of fortune. Only nine months ago, in last year’s European elections, Sinn Féin came a poor fifth in seats. Within living memory, the party was a virtual pariah in the south.
The twin questions of how this happened and what it means for the future are now subjects of intense debate. Two points stand out so far. First, that Sinn Féin overwhelmingly owed its success to domestic left-of-centre pitches on subjects such as housing, health and pensions, not to its demands for Irish unity. And second, in Fintan O’Toole’s words, the heart of the result is Ireland’s desire for something that looks a lot like traditional European political normality. The voters, he argues, have decreed that the two centre-right parties that have carved up Irish politics since the civil war have had their day – and that Ireland will be better off ending Sinn Féin’s half-in/half-out status.
Yet Ireland’s election also marks a turning point for the United Kingdom. This may seem a perverse claim, having just said that the Irish election was mainly about affordable housing, hospital beds and a wish to leave the political past behind. But two different things can be true at the same time. Sinn Féin came top of the poll because of its economic and social policies, but it indisputably also stands for the creation of a united Ireland. Its success will inevitably make the pressure for an Irish unification poll – to unite the republic and Northern Ireland – significantly greater than it already was.
The unification issue became dormant after the Belfast/Good Friday agreement ended the Troubles in 1998. The agreement acknowledged Northern Ireland as part of the UK; but it provides for future unification if majorities in both parts of Ireland agree. The 2016 Brexit vote reawakened the possibility. It threatened to create a new land border between the UK and the EU in Ireland. Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement with the EU then removed that. Instead, it placed much of Northern Ireland’s economy under EU rules, with a border now planned in the Irish Sea.
The UK left the EU two weeks ago, but in Northern Ireland the withdrawal agreement remains unfinished business. The deal gives Northern Ireland no say in the EU rules that govern its economy. Last month, the restored Stormont assembly refused consent to it. Northern Ireland’s politicians want a say in the UK’s future relationship talks with the EU, yet they have less leverage to achieve that aim than in the last parliament. And if Northern Ireland gets a say in the talks, how can Scotland or Wales be denied one? It’s not going to happen.
At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that the Johnson government expects to strike a minimalist trade deal with the EU. That would not work for Northern Ireland or the republic, large parts of whose economies operate on an all-Ireland basis. It is therefore Brexit, not Sinn Féin, that has made full political union between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic (and thus the EU) a much more viable option than it was in the past.
If Brexit evolves on Johnson’s terms, Northern Ireland will become a constitutional adjunct of the UK, with its economic terms set in Brussels and shaped by Dublin. That may not be enough to flip Northern Ireland’s divided public straight into the arms of the republic. But it is likely to wear away at the issue over time. The most recent poll, by Lord Ashcroft last September, showed narrow overall support in the north for unification. That lead may have widened since because of events in both the UK and Ireland.
In the republic’s election exit poll last weekend, 57% backed new unification referendums in the two jurisdictions. That may seem quite modest and cautious. But if Sinn Féin is in government, it is likely to set in motion a process towards an eventual unification vote. If it is in opposition, it will pressure a necessarily weak government into doing the same. One way or another, a unification poll is now likely to receive more support in Dublin than it has in recent decades. That is an important change. The former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, the ultimate pragmatist, is surely right to suggest that a vote is now inevitable in about five years or more.
The unification of Ireland would not be like the reunification of Germany 30 years ago. In Germany, the communist eastern state collapsed and most Germans were keen to embrace one another. In Ireland, it would be different and messier. The terms of any referendum would be crucial, the size of the majority even more so. Suppose, as Jonathan Powell, one of the architects of the Belfast agreement, recently suggested, that the margin for Irish unification in Northern Ireland was similar to the Brexit vote – 52% to 48%. Both the republic and the UK would be bound by the 1998 agreement to implement it. Will Johnson force the 48% into the republic? The likelihood of violence from either loyalists or dissident republicans would be very high, depending on the course he chose. And if Johnson agrees to a border poll in Ireland, how can he continue to refuse one to Scotland?
These are now extremely serious possibilities for the United Kingdom. They will be exceptionally difficult to resist, even under a London government that, unlike Johnson’s, had the skills, judgment and goodwill to attempt the task. Clear warnings were made, both in 2016 and since. They should have been heeded. Instead they were ignored. In the end, it may be democratically impossible to prevent the breakup of the UK. But let no one forget where the responsibility for that will lie. It will be a direct and foreseen consequence of Brexit. The success of Sinn Féin merely makes it a bit more likely than before.
 Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Stand back and look at yesterday’s autumn statement to see our future stretching far, far ahead. Everything that moves and breathes from now on will be infected by Brexit. It’s a dry rot whose tendrils will creep into every last aspect of national life, twisting around every newborn baby and frail pensioner.
Watch how it throttles this government that will not – and dare not – say what kind of Brexit will do least damage, because the rot sprouts from its own benches. Should we pity Philip Hammond, hammered hard by Nick Robinson on this morning’s Today programme? Robinson said we deserve an apology from this former car salesman, because the economy his party sold us at the election turns out to be a wreck that “does nothing you said it would”: higher inflation, more borrowing, living standards to fall and a national debt not seen in 50 years, despite Tories having described Ed Miliband’s more modest plans as “completely mad”.
Whose fault is this? The Brexit fanatics who misled just enough voters to expect shed-loads of EU money to be repatriated. Without Brexit, the government wouldn’t be much off course – but the chancellor dare not turn to the camera and say: you, the people, this is the self-harm you wished upon yourselves. So far, he chooses to suck it up.
The missing £59bn that the Office for Budget Responsibility attributes to Brexit uncertainty is at the moderate end of various forecasts: the Bank of England’s is grimmer. The OBR’s fan chart shows it could be better or worse, but they only assumed the softest of Brexits: hard is beyond reckoning.
Robert Chote, chair of the OBR, often says all forecasting is landing a jumbo jet on a postage stamp, but this one is like sending a probe to a planet in another universe. When the OBR asked for information, the government refused to reveal any Brexit plans, sending a few nonsense lines from a Theresa May speech. When they asked how much they should add to their accounts for sweeteners Nissan were vouchsafed, they were sent away with a flea in their ear.
Imagine if Theresa May and Philip Hammond from the start had stood up and declared their firm intent to protect the nation from grievous harm, whatever it takes. Staying in the single market, staying in the customs union, is vital in order to sustain living standards; yes, we will bargain as hard as we can for new EU rules on migration and there will be trade-offs, but we will not be responsible for any deal that we believe will inflict everlasting economic damage. Markets would have responded well and the pound would have taken a less precipitous plunge. But they dare not.
Hammond said in his conference speech: “The British people did not vote on June 23rd to become poorer, or less secure.” Soon he will have to develop that thought, and put to people the trade-offs ahead: what price do they think worth paying for complete control over our borders?
But May and Hammond are paralysed by the benches behind them, those who instantly shouted betrayal yesterday: experts? Ha! Who believes them? Not the Tory press, not the Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood, Jacob Rees-Mogg brigade, now in full Trump-truth mode. The OBR comes under the same blistering assault as governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, for daring to suggest that Brexit might have any bad effect at all.
Let’s assume that all the expert forecasters are not 100% wrong, because that’s pretty rare. Since the OBR is middle range in its Brexit pessimism, let’s go with that £59bn. What could it buy? Hidden in the statement is a Treasury plan to cut spending again by an unthinkable 7%. Yet right now, the NHS and social care crisis leaves some hospitals with a quarter of their beds blocked for lack of home care, with 380 care homes shut for lack of funds. The cut to the working allowance in universal credit means the bottom third of the working population will take an even harder hit than in the last six years.
If research and development is the hope for the future, even with the extra added yesterday, the UK will only spend 1.75% of GDP on this, compared with Germany’s 3%, which propels its world-wide exports. If councils could borrow to build genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy, that mortgage would turn to profit after 26 years.
These things could be affordable for £59bn, on the OBR’s soft Brexit estimate. If we get the hard Brexit the head-bangers are baying for, sending out a little squad to shout “Out now!” outside the Commons yesterday, then the cost would be far higher – and notional savings from avoiding such insanity even greater.
These choices may not percolate through to most voters until this time next year, when purses and wallets feel the pinch and the NHS crisis is daily news. At some point May and Hammond will need to stop pretending it can all be smoothed over with absurd reassurances about the “strength and resilience” of the British economy. What stops them is the dry-rotters behind them. May’s hint of a transition period to avoid a cliff edge was greeted with more “betrayal” boos. But a transition that stretches on and may take us into a time when Europe itself transitions is the best hope.
Keir Starmer lays out the clearest case for parliament, demanding May says what she wants. Parliament won’t vote against article 50: she would call a snap election and win like no party has ever won before. But it’s not giving away her hand to proclaim a determination to stay in the single market and the customs union. Only fear of her own party stops her setting out that strong negotiating position. Sooner or later she will have to face the “bastards” down, putting country before party. Sooner or later, Hammond will have to stop pretending the economy is OK: this worm will have to turn, no more taking the flak for an economic storm the Brexiters have brought down on his head.
First published on Thu 26 Jan 2017 08.30 GMT
When it comes to Brexit, things are not going entirely Theresa May’s way. The UK supreme court ruled this week that there must be an act of parliament before May can invoke article 50 of the EU treaty, the notice that signals the death warrant for Britain’s EU membership. May’s government must now propose legislation for parliament to adopt and then try to steam ahead to trigger article 50 by its own end of March timetable.
But May’s court-ordained Brexit troubles may be just starting. On Friday, proceedings will begin in Dublin in a crowdfunded legal challenge.
The case, the brainchild of British barrister Jolyon Maugham, is being brought in Ireland but the applicants’ explicit objective is to have the case diverted immediately to Luxembourg. The litigants want the Irish courts to ask the advice of the European court of justice which sits in Luxembourg for its (binding) opinion regarding certain Brexit-related matters.
The European court’s advice is wanted on two main issues. First: can the UK change its mind once it gives article 50 notice and withdraw the notice? If so, that would give new hope to remainers who would like public opinion to shift on Brexit as the economic picture becomes clearer, of continuing their fight in the UK parliament, even after the government gives notice as planned.
Second: is article 50 notice on its own enough to ensure the UK quits the single market, or will that require further notice to be given under the European Economic Area Treaty? If extra notice is needed, that might possibly give the UK parliament a chance to block this step.
The litigants’ intentions are admirable. It is probably in everyone’s interests that we get answers to these two questions. Why should the Irish courts get involved, however, rather than the UK courts? To answer this, the applicants say they have a third question, which must be brought outside the UK. This is the allegation that Ireland, the defendant in the Maugham case, behaved illegally (along with the other non-UK member states of the EU) either by refusing to negotiate with the UK until Britain formally gives notice (the argument being that Britain’s giving informal notice was enough) or else (if that’s not correct) by excluding the UK from European council meetings held since the referendum.
The litigants face serious obstacles. They must establish “standing” in the case, a requirement designed to keep the courts clear of cranks: would-be litigants must establish a personal interest in the result of a case big enough to allow them to bring it. However, the Irish courts have proved generous in finding sufficient standing in previous EU-related cases and that might also happen here.
They must also establish what lawyers refer to as a “justiciable controversy”, which is tougher. Courts are not debating chambers so a case must have a point of law or fact that requires a court to decide it. Neither of the first two issues the applicants wish to raise seems really to have arisen yet: the UK has not yet tried to back out of giving article 50 notice and been refused; UK exit from the single market has not been blocked because of UK government refusal to give notice under the EEA treaty.
As for the third point, this looks utterly contrived. Success would require the belief that Britain has already given notice that it is quitting the EU by accident, or that European council meetings (excluding Britain) were held by accident. Moreover, a large question mark must hang over the appropriateness of proceedings that really appear to be to about getting the Irish courts to ask for advice rather than to succeed against the defendant.
There is a further obstacle: getting the Irish courts to refer the case to the European court. The high court judge may not want to, because that court is perfectly entitled to decide points of EU law itself. The applicants might have to appeal to the Irish supreme court. Under European law, the supreme court has less discretion – but even the supreme court doesn’t have to refer a question, if it feels the answer to it is clear. Let us suppose the litigants eventually get to Luxembourg. What if the court of justice refuses to answer the question? It has in the past declined to answer questions it considers contrived or hypothetical. There is more than a touch of that in this case.
Legally therefore the Dublin case can only be described as a long shot. On the other hand – as Gina Miller’s case shows – long shots, just occasionally, do succeed.
We should in any case be grateful to courageous litigants such as Miller and Maugham. Their cases may not be capable of stopping Brexit. But they may at least inspire a process of reflection – especially in parliament. And that process is surely Britain’s only hope of being one day rescued from those who prefer slamming doors to migrants to ensuring the economic wellbeing of the British people.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
This newspaper’s three-day series on Brexit clearly shows that a life outside the European Union will neither be painless nor without cost for Britain. This country is giving up friction-free access to the world’s largest market and the free flow of its goods across European borders. It will sacrifice ready access to large-scale inflows of foreign direct investment and the knowhow that results from such deals. Gone will be free movement of skilled and unskilled foreign labour that currently picks fruit and populates universities. As City executives tell our reporters, London’s status as a linchpin of global finance might be blown up by Brexit. As the capital contributes the lion’s share of “economic” tax revenue, a potential threat to its future is no trifling matter. It is because of the uncertainties involved in Brexit and the unanswered questions Britain’s departure from the continent raises that there must be parliamentary debate and scrutiny. In this regard the speeches by peers are welcome, not just for their courtesy and fluency but also because they fulfil a constitutional role to review and – if necessary – to amend bills. Peers spoke despite being buffeted by a howling gale of indignation, which culminated with an anonymous “government source” threatening peers with destruction. As Lady Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, reminded Theresa May when she came to the upper house, “if we ask the House of Commons to look again at an issue, it is not a constitutional outrage but a constitutional responsibility”.
The bill to trigger article 50 and Britain’s long goodbye to Europe is just 67 words long. But how heavy those words feel. It starts a process that could tear families apart, may see vital industries depart from towns and perhaps leave Britain’s poorer parts poorer still. Westminster’s resident historian Lord Hennessey described Brexit as Britain’s fourth “great geopolitical shift” since 1945. Given the potential consequences, opposition peers are right to ask for safeguards for EU migrant rights and to ask for the bill to have ongoing scrutiny written into it. Ministerial assurances, given verbally in the Commons, would mean more if they were put down on paper. Having 27 conversations with European governments means supposedly secret negotiations will be anything but. Before MPs read the leaks, ministers should turn up and tell parliament how talks are going. These improvements are the minimum that one should expect to be made to such a historically important bill.
The timidity of MPs is to be regretted. They are not delegates but representatives who could and should have made a better fist of holding ministers to account. The legislation sailed through the Commons partly because of a toxic populist tendency to level hysterical accusations of betrayal and treason against anyone who dissents from a wish to ram through Brexit in an opaque and unaccountable manner. The “people” voted to leave the EU and the government has a view of what that means today: emphasising control of immigration over free trade. However, Lord Kerr, a former foreign office civil servant who wrote article 50, sagely argued that this position should not mean the country ends up with a Hobson’s choice of “deal or no deal” in two years’ time. The peer suggested three ways in which parliamentary democracy could invigorate the process: follow the US Congress and give parliament the right to send the executive back to the negotiating table if it does not like an emerging deal; allow law-makers a vote to extend the two-year deadline for Brexit to get the best outcome; and get ministers to admit that the UK could choose to stay in the EU even after exit negotiations have begun. These are not “remoaner” plots to subvert last June’s vote. Lord Kerr is wily enough to know what would strengthen our hand in Brussels. Britain expects to leave the EU, but on the best possible terms. When the time comes, politicians and the public should be able to make a clear-eyed choice and not relegate themselves to irrelevance at a turning point in modern British history.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
Throughout his career, Gerry Adams relentlessly singled out the British government for the blame in Ireland’s troubles. In truth, the responsibility for Northern Ireland’s miseries was widely shared, not least with the IRA and Sinn Féin, of which Mr Adams has been for so long the chief strategist. Yet it is ironic that the Sinn Féin leader announced his retirement from frontline politics at the weekend. For Mr Adams is stepping down at the very moment when a British government is unambiguously the sole cause of a massively hostile act against Ireland, north and south, in the form of a hard Brexit.
From start to finish, Conservative Brexiters have shown that they simply could not care less about Ireland. In the referendum campaign, few gave even a passing thought to the impact of a leave vote on the relationship between Northern Ireland, the rest of the UK and the republic. When the vote went their way – though they lost in Northern Ireland – the Brexiters then gave bland assurances that the decision would make absolutely no difference to the island’s soft border, the legacy of the peace process, or north-south and east-west cooperation.
This was and is nonsense. The Irish government warned immediately that serious difficulties had been created by the vote and by Theresa May’s wish to leave the single market and customs union. Dublin cannot be faulted for the reasoned and patient way it insisted these issues would have to be solved. In practice, though, none was taken seriously in London. The peace agreements had been the fruit of long years of cooperative work. But the neighbourly mentality that made them possible has gone missing in London.
The truth is that the Brexit wing of the Tory party does not take Ireland into account. This failure is compounded by Mrs May’s foolish pact to construct a majority with the votes of the Democratic Unionist party. Once again, no thought was given to the effect on relations with the republic and the European Union. The bland assurances have continued right up to the present, even though the EU has made absolutely clear that “sufficient progress” on the Irish border issue was one of the three preconditions – along with reciprocal rights for EU and UK citizens and a financial deal – to permit the next phase of talks on future relations.
If good neighbourliness, a feeling for the history of these islands and a clear understanding of the UK national interest truly informed the government’s approach, Mrs May would have said from the outset that Britain should remain in the EU customs union. This would have benefited manufacturers and jobs, and would have largely solved the Irish border problem. Goods would be able to travel across the Irish border without the need for checks and delays – and organised crime, perhaps with paramilitary connections, would have no foothold. Above all, the civic healing between the republic, the north and Britain would continue uninterrupted. This is still what should happen.
The moment of truth at the December EU council is now less than a month away. In marked contrast to the Irish government, which has warned that the governments are diverging not converging, the British government position still lacks political or moral seriousness. This is a national disgrace for Britain and it is time that more people in this country said so.
To much of Europe, Brexit appears to be an exercise in British self-harm, which it is. But in Ireland Brexit is potentially lethal too. If the UK government’s policy is followed, the border between north and south will become hard not soft, guarded not unguarded, controlled not free. The consequences of this change could be deeply destructive to the peace process and secure life. But, even more than that, they would be a gratuitous act of hostility towards the Irish economy and people. Even if the history did not matter, that would be unforgivable.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
There is no concealing divisions within the cabinet on Brexit but there is consensus that Theresa May’s speech in Florence three weeks ago is the basis from which talks should proceed. That is less impressive than it sounds, since there is no consensus on what Mrs May actually said in Italy.
The main point of confusion, made apparent at the Conservative party conference last week, is the form of an “implementation” phase to begin on 29 March 2019 – the day that Britain’s European Union membership formally expires. The prime minister was fairly precise in Florence. Or at least it seemed so at the time. Mrs May proposed a transition during which the EU and UK would enjoy “access to one another’s markets … on current terms”, following “the existing structure” of rules and regulations. That implies continuing membership of the single market and customs union beyond March 2019, with departure deferred until the point when the final status deal takes effect.
Mrs May repeated her Florentine formula verbatim in the Commons on Monday. But, when questioned by MPs, she added that transition might not amount to “full membership” of the single market. That caveat is for the benefit of the faction within her party that angles for the most severe rupture from European ties and has, since Florence, been retrospectively rewriting Mrs May’s position. Liam Fox declared in his conference speech that the UK would be leaving the single market and the customs union in March 2019. Boris Johnson has indicated that new EU regulations and legal judgments should not apply in Britain after that landmark date.
As the EU side has repeatedly made clear, the option of being simultaneously inside and outside the rules does not exist. Yet that non-existent place is precisely the one indicated by the mixed messages now coming from the cabinet and the prime minister. No wonder the EU side is frustrated. At the point when it looked as if progress was being made, the lens was twisted and the British lines have been blurred all over again.
Mr Johnson and Dr Fox have not misunderstood the prime minister. They are testing her authority, exploiting her weakness and trying to ratchet her into a position where transition resembling the status quo becomes unfeasible. This in turn increases the likelihood of talks breaking down without a deal – an outcome that the hardest Brexiters actively seek and that the Treasury considers potentially ruinous.
The chancellor’s reluctance to countenance a wild economic experiment, dropping the country from the edge of its continental shelf and seeing what happens, has brought him into the sights of the hard-Brexit brigade. Backbenchers whisper that Philip Hammond should be sacked and that his preferred type of transition amounts to “Brexit in name only”; a betrayal of the referendum result.
Such is the paranoia typically born of insecurity. It expresses impatience for the most extreme Brexit because that is the least reversible kind. The hardliners suspect that a transition might nurture talk of return to the EU one day, either as full members or in some associate capacity. While some remainers find that prospect appealing, nothing in the current political climate indicates that it is likely. No one in government advocates it and the prime minister’s commitment to Brexit is well beyond question.
Tory MPs’ restlessness betrays their awareness that Brexit is not going well and that the whole enterprise was mis-sold. They feel the need to sustain public support with conspiracy theories of Europhile sabotage. The very idea of a “no deal” Brexit has only become acceptable to leavers because a deal is proving harder to get than they used to claim. It signifies a retreat into abstract ideology by people whose past assertions have been crushed by concrete reality. They hate the prime minister’s implementation phase because it represents accommodation with that reality.
Mrs May must not allow herself to be steered by that wrecking impulse. In parliament on Monday she spoke of her duty to enact the referendum result on behalf of the whole country. That doesn’t mean subordinating her judgment to the whim of one faction within her party. The proposition that Britain should leave the EU prevailed in the 2016 plebiscite. The reckless dogma that would drive us to a Brexit without a deal enjoys no majority in parliament or the country. It deserves no more indulgence by the prime minister.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
When a majority of MPs voted a year ago to authorise the activation of article 50, they did so because they felt it was their duty as mandated by the Brexit referendum. But this does not mean parliament has to agree to whatever Brexit Theresa May offers. Democracy demanded that the vote be honoured, but that doesn’t mean everything done under the banner of Brexit is in the interests of the country or an expression of an irreversible “will of the people”. In reality we are dealing with an ever-shifting battleground of political ideas. Democracy means listening to the majority, but it also means managing conflicting ambitions within that majority. Disentangling all the motives that compelled people to tick the leave box is not easy. Neither should the national mood be seen entirely in terms of the winning side, as though remain voters have disappeared and their ideas are not worth considering.
Democracy also means protecting minorities, and 48% is a big minority. A Brexit that would bring the country together is the softest of soft Brexits. But Mrs May decided, without even consulting her cabinet, to go for an extreme model. She sought a mandate for this in a general election and didn’t get one. She pushed ahead regardless, stitching up a pact with the DUP, who don’t even represent the majority vote on Brexit in Northern Ireland, which backed remain. Ireland is a toxic issue. Northern Ireland was torn apart by strife for 30 years until a fragile, precious peace was secured. Any Brexit must uphold the peace process, the Good Friday agreement and therefore the soft border.
Given the stakes, the government has wantonly squandered half of the time that was available to negotiate a deal. Only a year is now left until the official moment of departure. Last week’s agreement on a transitional phase must not obscure the severity of what will happen next 29 March if the current timetable is pursued. The troubling reality is that outside of the European Union Britain would be worse off in economic terms under every scenario. Brexit threatens the palimpsest of modern Britain on which layer upon layer of a shared European culture has been inscribed. Leaving the EU will not enhance Britain’s place in the world, it will damage it. In an age of aggressive nationalism, when a spirit of contempt for international rules roams the White House, it is hard to see the virtue in withdrawal from a project conceived to protect them.
That is what the referendum vote implies. Yet without sustained evidence that millions of people have had a change of heart, the case for completely reversing the decision is difficult to make at this moment in time. Disappointed remainers must not underestimate the social and political cost of appearing to tell leave voters that their judgment and opinions are invalid; that they were conned, or stupid, or racist. The loss of faith in institutions, ushered in by the 2008 financial crash, stirred resentment against a ruling class. There were previous breaches of trust that created the disillusion with the existing political order: such as Iraq and the fetishising of market forces. The UK has also become deeply polarised, a trend which runs counter to democratic and egalitarian values.
It is important not to lose sight of the ideological genesis of Euroscepticism on the hard right of British politics and society. The path to Brexit required a set of contingencies to occur, but the country set out on this journey when the Tories included an EU referendum pledge in their 2015 manifesto. Many leave voters were Conservatives in well-to-do towns; comfortable baby boomers in southern counties. The extent to which Brexit was a popular revolt by the dispossessed can be overstated, most eagerly by the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who would love to have credentials as champions of the underprivileged but don’t deserve them.
Remainers have yet to find a coherent pro-EU offer to those people who voted leave that would demonstrate to them that Europhiles have at long last listened to voices they had ignored for too long. So here is the paradox: Brexit does not fix the underlying problems that led many people to feel that they simply had to reject EU membership to get some kind of redress from a political system in which they had lost confidence. The negative economic consequences of Brexit will be felt hardest in places where the leave vote most looks like a cry for economic help. Blaming the EU (often as a proxy for immigration) was a misdiagnosis of a chronic ailment, which has its roots in Thatcher-era deindustrialisation, a failure to manage the effects of globalisation on wages, and a demand for decent public services. Brexit is the wrong prescription.
Withdrawing Brexit has vicious side-effects, not least because referendums have a record of stoking divisions, not healing them. With this in mind, MPs will now have to find a way to leave while mitigating the harm done by leaving. Time is tighter even than the one-year mark suggests. To accommodate the need for continent-wide ratifications, including votes in Westminster, the outline of a deal should be reached by autumn this year. Such a complex project cannot be settled in the next seven months. This is not a question of ambition or imagination but of negotiating capacity.
So the likely outcome is a broad agreement on the approximate shape of a future relationship, with details to be filled in during transition. That is a dangerous situation. It sets up a scenario where the UK leaves the EU on terms that even the Brexiters accept are worse than current membership, and then the government gets to fine-tune the details, with the help of Henry VIII powers that it has awarded itself, and to an agenda dictated by a handful of Tory backbenchers. This is not the restoration of sovereignty or the invigoration of democracy that was promised. It looks more like a creeping rightwing coup. Resisting a course that harms the country is not an offence against democracy. It is a patriotic duty to push back against extreme forces that are exploiting, not honouring, the referendum vote. It is in parliament that society’s competing interests and demands are mediated. It is in parliament where the messy, inchoate, often contradictory “will of the people” becomes law. That is the difference between democracy and populism; between government by stable institutions and mob rule. That is why parliament is sovereign – and it always was, despite the claims of Eurosceptics. Their assertion that Brexit was meant to empower parliament has been exposed as a sleight of hand.
The most egregious displays of contempt for parliamentary sovereignty since the referendum have come not from “Brussels bureaucrats” but from Tory ministers. They even tried to thwart efforts to give MPs a vote on a final deal. Luckily, they failed. Labour were moving in the right direction with their customs partnership proposals and the party needs to resist a hard Brexit at all costs. Neither parliament nor anyone else should be cowed into thinking that the only available deal is the one that Mrs May offers. She has no mandate for the Brexit she seeks. In parliament the majority of pragmatic MPs know this. Yet they lack a credible leader, relying instead on patron saints such as Ken Clarke. Time is running out. Now is the moment to demand a change of course, before it is too late.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The outcome of the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union remains provisional. Brexit is coming about not because government or MPs want it but because the people chose it and are said still to want it. What they chose and what they are now offered is less clear than ever. May’s local council, mayoral and European elections offer a window for politicians to re-engage the population about Brexit, listening to their concerns and priorities.
Depressingly, neither the governing party nor the official opposition has grasped the opportunity. Brexit was supposed to force Westminster to venture out of its bubble and rediscover the rest of the country. Yet the political class is more navel-gazing than ever. This is bad for democracy on many levels. Mainstream politicians have to hear what people are saying; they need to test – and if necessary reshape – their arguments; they must balance the people’s wishes with the security of the nation. Instead, the Labour party is split over Brexit and has its work cut out covering the ever-widening cracks in its fragile coalition. The Conservatives’ poll numbers are in freefall; they have resigned themselves to devastating losses in the local elections and are running scared at the thought of European elections. So low are expectations for the Liberal Democrats that the party’s leader announced his departure before the vote.
MPs have been unable to craft a deal, and yet there is only limited engagement with both Brexit’s defenders and its detractors. It is voters who could decide to put an end to the process, to speed it up or reverse the 2016 decision. It has only been a month since hundreds of thousands marched through London in support of a second referendum and six million signatures were amassed on an online petition to revoke the UK’s withdrawal notification. Unless there is compromise, the options look like narrowing to a no-deal Brexit, a parliamentary revocation of article 50 or another vote. This is a dangerous moment in which arch-nationalist politics can flourish. The absence of debate creates the conditions for rightwing populists, and for their racism and authoritarianism. Nigel Farage absurdly poses as the champion of democracy, arguing that his new Brexit party is listening while the establishment does not. Mr Farage is, worryingly, topping some opinion polls .
Even worse lurks in the local elections, where the narrative of betrayal sees voters drifting back to the UK Independence party, which now retails hate speech alongside batty ideas about the purifying effect of a clean Brexit. Waiting in the wings is Boris Johnson, for whom Brexit is a way of finally conquering the Tory party. It ought to be transformed into his route to the margin of political life. The other underwhelming narcissists who subsume the nation to their own egos should join him there.
Politicians need to come clean about the costs of pursuing Brexit – about how it is likely to render poorer many of those places that voted leave; about how it risks peace in Ireland; about the awkward task of redefining the national interest, and trying to give it new meaning while preserving the integrity of the UK. Instead, amid indifference and confusion, politicians have dodged the problem of Brexit. They ought to instead re-engage in these polls, by first organising the millions of EU citizens who have most to lose from Brexit and need to be registered to vote in a week’s time for European elections. Brexit is not going away just because it seems more convenient to ignore it. Politicians have not found a way out; they will only do so by reconnecting with the public.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Theresa May’s plan to bring her Brexit deal back to parliament for a vote at the start of June has generated weary indifference at Westminster and beyond. In many ways it is, of course, easy to see why. Her Brexit deal was defeated in January, and then twice more in March. The deal hasn’t changed much. Her own authority is vestigial. So what is the point of trying for a fourth time, or of treating the attempt seriously?
The parliamentary arithmetic hasn’t altered since the last failure. Talks with Labour have been and gone. The mood in Brussels is hardening against the UK. The Tory party, meanwhile, is expecting another electoral kicking and is increasingly obsessed with the succession, as is the media. Is it any wonder that both are acting as if Mrs May’s government no longer exists?
There is a hard core of unavoidable truth here. Mrs May’s deal is a bad one because it is so dangerously vague about the future. That has not changed. There is no majority for most Brexit outcomes and options in the current parliament. That hasn’t changed either. And Mrs May is being levered out of office by the hard Brexiters who tried to oust her in December and who are now having another go. Nothing new there, then.
But there is also an enormous amount of magical thinking mixed up in what is happening. The Tory right is engaged in a deceitful and self-deceiving bluff that is full of danger for the country. It talks as if a different leader would secure a different and harder Brexit deal that would carry in the Commons and be so popular in the country that the Tories would win a substantial majority in an early election. Yet there is no evidence whatever to support any part of this argument. It is as unimpressive as Jacob Rees-Mogg’s new book appears to be.
A new leader would not get a new deal out of the EU. Neither the public nor the House of Commons supports a hard Brexit, let alone an even harder no-deal one. The public in general has cooled on Brexit. The Tory party’s ratings are falling in the face of Brexit’s failure. Even if there was an early election (which is itself not straightforward), the chances of it producing another hung parliament are high. The rightwing narrative is sloppy and wishful thinking. Above all, it is wrong.
This is not to say that Mrs May’s latest plan stands much chance – let alone that it should. She has squandered too much political capital for that. The moment for such initiatives has probably passed. Nevertheless, this could be a more serious opening than it has been given credit for being. It may not be the “new, bold offer” that Mrs May claimed at the weekend – the details have to get through cabinet this week, which suggests it will be thin stuff. But it is a recognition that the previous strategy of one-off votes on the 2018 EU-UK deal has run out of road.
Instead, the government is now planning to bring forward a withdrawal agreement bill. This allows the government to try to sweeten the original pill by including, on the face of the bill itself, what the international development secretary Rory Stewart yesterday called “extra guarantees” on some of the issues on which the Tory-Labour talks were focused, such as employment rights and the environmental crisis. If nothing else, this means the bill is less likely to be blocked by the Speaker.
Bills are amendable, so it is conceivable that alliances may form to make additional changes. Mrs May offers “votes in parliament to test support for possible solutions”, though this has not worked in the past. She will also have to win on the second reading, before any amendments can be made, which Labour and many Tories may not be willing to allow. But there are issues – from customs arrangements to a confirmatory referendum – on which the government could give assurances and the Commons express views that could perhaps tip the vote their way.
The odds seem slim on Mrs May snatching any sort of victory from the jaws of defeat before she is chased off into retirement. Yet the attempt to pass a bill is an important moment. Without some kind of convergence next month, it seems unlikely that Brexit can be resolved in the current parliament. But that does not make it any more likely that it can be resolved in the next parliament either.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
In a BBC interview this week, the president of the United Kingdom supreme court posed an apparently simple question. After Brexit, Lord Neuberger asked, should the UK judges take into account the rulings of the European court of justice or not? Britain’s most senior judge, who steps down next month, was very clear about his own answer: “If the UK parliament says we should take into account decisions of the ECJ then we will do so. If it says we shouldn’t then we won’t.”
Constitutionally, this was an impeccable answer to his own question. Parliament makes laws; judges interpret them. Yet politically, and even legally, it leaves many profound questions unresolved. The starting point of Lord Neuberger’s unease may well be the current drafting of clause 6 of the government’s EU withdrawal bill, which says that the UK court “need not have regard” to the ECJ’s rulings after Brexit day, while adding that it “may do so if it considers it appropriate to do so”. In essence, this means the decision to take account of the ECJ is up to the UK courts.
As guidance to the judges, that formulation is neither as daft or as buck-passing as it may look. In reality the draft clause reflects current judicial practice in the UK, which for years has been to take account of rulings in other jurisdictions (like the United States, Canada and elsewhere) where that is appropriate, though without being bound to do so. In that respect, the bill merely adds the ECJ to the list of courts that the UK judges can take account of if they choose.
But that is where serious politics kicks in. Theresa May regards ending the role of the ECJ as a major prize of Brexit. It is one of her red lines. Conservative anti-Europeans have made the break with the ECJ into a totem of their yearned-for independence from all things European. The political logic of the government’s position is therefore different from the permissiveness of its own draft clause. It is that Britain’s judges must act as if the European court simply does not exist.
This would have huge legal, as well as political, implications. Comparative international law and national law are deeply entwined. As the late Lord Bingham pointed out in his book The Rule of Law, UK courts already have to take account of international law and precedent in issues as diverse as aviation law, commercial and intellectual property law, crime, employment, industrial relations, the environment, treaty obligations, family law, human rights, immigration, immunities, the law of the sea and the laws of war and weaponry. Countless leading judgments in UK law routinely reflect this reality. Courts in one country learn from courts in another. In the phrase of the former president of the Israeli supreme court, Aharon Barak, comparative law is “an experienced friend”.
To exclude the UK courts from considering European rulings would therefore punch a large, arbitrary and utterly perverse hole in a system of comparative law that has been of historic benefit to international fairness and decency in many lands. It would mean that the UK courts could cite rulings by the US, Canadian and many other courts, but not those of our European allies and neighbours, with whose laws ours have been intimately entwined for nearly half a century. Reactionary judges – like the late US supreme court justice Antonin Scalia – hate such cross-fertilisation. Enlightened judges welcome it, and are right to do so.
Lord Neuberger nevertheless seems to fear a trap. The anti-European press’s “enemies of the people” onslaught, and the scandalous failure of ministers to defend judicial independence, cut very deep. Lord Neuberger surely does not want the judges to risk another populist fusillade whenever they uphold “Europe” after Brexit, as the bill would permit them to do. That is why, though apparently simple, his question matters.
It is also why ministers should come clean. The draft clause in the EU withdrawal bill may not be perfect, but it is far preferable to any attempt to proscribe the ECJ from UK judicial thinking. The consequences of preferring it are profound and desirable. The ECJ should continue to have a proper, though inevitably different, role in UK law after Brexit. The exceptionalist red line must be erased. Mrs May should explicitly permit the UK courts to take account of ECJ rulings.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
In June 2016, when the country held a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, the option to leave seemed very attractive to many. Severing links with the EU would mean breaking free, saving money, winning back independence. It would be all gain and no pain. But crucial information on what Brexit would mean was not available to them then. It was like being given the chance to buy an attractive house in the country without being told the price. Soon we will know what that price is. Then it may be that the house does not seem quite as attractive as once it appeared
On Tuesday, the Lords begins its consideration of the EU withdrawal bill. One of the big questions the upper house faces is: does it have the constitutional right to attach an amendment requiring a referendum on the terms of exit, before Britain finally leaves the EU? In other words, has it got the ability to push for legal changes that would allow voters to think again once they know as much as there is to know about the deal?
There are certainly precedents for such a course. Not only that, but it may just be, down the line, that this government, which currently insists it is totally against such a move, might find that such a vote is in its own interest. In 1985, an independent peer moved an amendment providing for a referendum on the London government bill, abolishing the Greater London council, while in 1993 Lord Blake – Robert Blake, the Oxford constitutional historian – moved an amendment, supported by Lady Thatcher, providing for a referendum on the Maastricht treaty.
Although both were defeated, hardly any peers suggested the Lords were acting unconstitutionally. Indeed, Lord Wakeham, leader of the house in 1993, said: “It is perfectly within the rules and conventions of this house for your lordships to seek to ask the other place to think again on this issue.”
What would not be in order would be for the Lords to insist on a referendum amendment if the Commons rejected it. The current parliamentary session is, on present expectations, to last for two years and so, if the government had to use the Parliament Act to pass legislation over the head of the Lords, the withdrawal bill would not be on the statute book before 29 March 2019, when Britain is due to leave the EU. With EU legislation not incorporated into the statute book, the outcome would be a legal vacuum, if not legal chaos. The Lords, therefore, can legitimately ask the government to think again. What it cannot do is to block the legislation.
The situation with regard to Brexit is, however, crucially different from what it was in 1985 or 1993. For the decision to leave the EU was made, not by government or the Commons, both of which contain a majority of remainers, but by the people in a referendum, who issued an instruction to government and parliament. The Parliament Act of 1949, limiting the powers of the Lords, makes no provision for such a situation since it was passed before referendums had become effectively part of the constitution. Nevertheless, by analogy, if the Lords has the constitutional right to ask the government and the Commons to think again, surely it also has the right to ask the sovereign people to think again.
Of course, as matters now stand, the government and the Commons may well reject a referendum amendment. Yet, ironically, a referendum could prove a lifeline for the government. Theresa May is engaged in a difficult negotiation with the EU. It is in the nature of a negotiation that one rarely achieves all that one wants. Whatever the terms, Jeremy Corbyn will say that Labour would have done better. Tory Brexiters will cry that too much has been given away, while Remainers will argue for a closer relationship with the EU. There could be deadlock in the Commons, while the resulting Tory recriminations could make the squabbles over Maastricht resemble a vicarage tea party. But if the Tories were to vote the deal down, the government would resign and Corbyn could enter Number 10. A referendum, therefore, might prove more attractive to Conservatives than voting for an unpalatable deal.
The government dare not commit itself to a referendum now or the EU would deliberately negotiate stiff terms in the hope that Britain would reject them and remain in the EU. So, for the Tories, the referendum is for the moment the love that dare not speak its name.
But, above all, the people have a right to vote on the framework of the deal once it is known. The 2016 referendum cannot be definitive. The cabinet and Tory party are divided on what the right price should be. But these divisions reflect a divided country. If the country is willing to pay the price, a referendum would legitimise Brexit in the only way possible. If it is not, the people have a perfect right to change their mind. A sovereign parliament, it is often said, cannot bind itself but nor, surely, can a sovereign people; and, as David Davis, the Brexit secretary, reminded us. “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.”
Vernon Bogdanor is professor of government at King’s College London. His books include The New British Constitution
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Be in no doubt. Theresa May’s watershed Brexit speech on Friday was a sobering defeat for the UK. It was a defeat for the Leavers’ vision of a sovereign country freed from the constraints imposed by European politicians, laws and regulations. It was a defeat for those who voted Remain and hoped against hope that Britain would, at the last moment, draw back from this gross act of national self-harm.
May’s speech, signalling a fundamental parting of the ways, was a defeat for the business people, trade unionists and community leaders who rightly fear for the country’s future prosperity, cohesion and jobs. It was a defeat for young people, British and European, who, more so than older generations, will perforce inhabit an ugly new world of harder borders, work permits, bureaucracy and pervasive state intrusion.
Looked at in a wider context, May’s speech marked a moment of British retreat from the shared ideals and principles of collaborative internationalism that have guided the western democracies since 1945. It presaged a historic abdication of leadership that many in Europe and beyond will neither understand nor quickly forgive.
The gaunt post-Brexit future towards which May is stubbornly leading us will make Britain a poorer, meaner, lonelier and shabbier place, hostile to immigrants yet badly in need of their skills, struggling to maintain its trade across the barriers we ourselves erected, and exploited by the world’s big economies whose governments and multinationals, imposing unequal trade treaties, will take what they want and leave the rest.
May’s speech was welcomed by hard Tory Brexiters, who imagine that quitting the EU single market and customs union, whatever the consequences, is a sufficient victory for their blinkered, jingoistic cause. It was seen by Tory Remainers as recognition of the need for compromise. And this blurry reconciliation of her party’s schismatic factions, albeit probably temporary, was May’s main achievement. It may be a good deal for the Tories. It is a bad deal for Britain.
Bad because, in overall terms, the proposed settlement is neither one thing nor the other. Britain will not have its cake and eat it, in Boris Johnson’s preposterous parlance. It will simply have less cake. May rejected the single market largely because of its freedom-of-movement provisions. Even though employers have been telling her for months that Britain relies on EU workers, the prime minister remains foolishly frit of Daily Mail spectres of invading foreign hordes.
Yet even as she rejected it, May recognised the benefits of the single market, sought continued, frictionless, access to it, and lamely admitted that we will all be the poorer for being outside it. What kind of leadership is this? Such self-contradictory thinking would give Descartes a headache. The same applies to her Through the Looking Glass “customs partnership” wheeze that, she said, would “mirror EU requirements”. If she means future customs arrangements will be reversed, back to front and inside out, she may well be right. What a nightmare of red tape is now in prospect from those who promised a liberating bonfire on the cliffs of Dover and will create, instead, a giant lorry-park.
Bowing to Brussels, May accepted that post-Brexit Britain would be obliged to observe EU-approved regulatory standards. She agreed with Michel Barnier that competition rules must remain unchanged, to ensure a level playing field. She confessed that, thanks to her, the City of London would lose valuable passporting rights. And she offered to pay cash to stay in selected EU agencies while surrendering any overall say in how the EU is run.
May has made previous, reluctant concessions to reality. One is that Britain must pay a large divorce bill fixed by Brussels. Another is that the rights of EU citizens must be upheld during the post-2019 transition. On Friday, her unsustainable position was further exposed to the hard light of day. After all that noisome backbench huffing and puffing about sovereignty and the diktats of foreign judges, May agreed that the European court of justice will continue to have a significant role.
Even this prime minister’s special talent for delusional politics cannot conceal the fact that she still has no real clue how to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland. A few cameras and a trusted trader scheme will simply not hack it when the other 27 EU members come to consider their security, migration and trade rules. Nor is there much reason to believe that they will agree a bespoke, pick-and-mix free-trading arrangement that has never been tried and undermines existing practice. Even if they were willing, there is not enough time left before the guillotine falls next March.
When May said she wanted to be “straight” with people and that Britain had to face the “hard facts” of Brexit, it seems she was talking first and foremost to herself. For her, finally, it was wake-up time. This sudden dawn of pragmatic realism is welcome. But at this point a basic question becomes unavoidable: what on earth is she trying to achieve? Given the emerging shape of this unfavourable, damaging and overly complex “EU lite” deal, is Brexit, as now envisaged, really worth the trouble? Better, perhaps, to admit we made a mistake in 2016 and humbly ask for time to reconsider.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
In an era in which yesterday’s inconceivable is making a habit of becoming today’s reality, it is perilous to offer firm predictions about the future, but folk carry on doing it all the same. I was recently at a conference about the causes and consequences of Brexit and the Trumpquake where I heard the French participants try to keep everyone calm by expressing confidence that those shattering setbacks to conventional wisdom would not be followed by the election of President Marine Le Pen. France was not America. Two rounds of voting would see the leader of the Front National beaten when it came to the final choice because moderate voters would coalesce behind whoever emerges as her prime competitor. We could rely on France to be a firewall against the spread of authoritarian nationalism across the west. It all sounded plausible, and their confidence was buttressed by the opinion polling, but given the recent track records of both expert opinion and polling, this forecast was more alarming than it was comforting.
Rather than peer into a foggy crystal ball, liberal democrats might better devote their time to starting to learn some lessons from the seismic shocks of 2016. The first of these is not to surrender to despair, a challenge made easier by reminding ourselves of the narrowness of these defeats. It suits Brexiters here and Trumpeters on the other of the Atlantic to roar that they represent “the people”, for this helps them in their ambition to claim a larger mandate than they have been awarded, just as it also serves their endeavour to silence any dissent. Brexiters represent just over half of a very divided British people. Donald Trump cannot even claim that much. It bears repeated repeating that he lost the popular vote, only gaining the presidency thanks to the quirks of the electoral college. Had 72,000 people across three swing states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – voted the other way, we would now be watching the team-making of President-elect Clinton.
Her bewildering decision not to put more effort into those states – she did not do Michigan the courtesy of one visit – is another lesson to apply in campaigning and policymaking. Don’t take the support of anyone for granted. Particularly, don’t assume that your traditional base is safe when both the Brexit vote and the US presidential contest exposed societies fracturing along economic and cultural lines that don’t match traditional big-party divides.
There was a broad narrative in the US mainstream media, which seemed to be supported by polls, that a Clinton victory was “inevitable”. Just so with the Brexit referendum. The polls, bookmakers and most protagonists on both sides regarded it as “inevitable” that Britons would choose to stay within the EU. The treatment of both contests as foregone conclusions proved calamitous for Remainers and Democrats by inducing complacency among supporters and galvanising their opponents. Treat every fight as tight and never presume that a result is in the bag.
Another takeaway from the US election is that it has become foolish to assume that “experience” is an unalloyed asset in electoral politics. You’re probably better off presuming the opposite. In this age of rage against anything or anyone that can be depicted as “the establishment” or “the elite” choice, it has become a handicap to be an “insider” and a great advantage to be an “outsider”. This was one of Mrs Clinton’s tragedies. She was one of the best qualified people ever to run for president. As a woman bidding for a job that had always been held by men, she felt her credentials had to be superior to those of any male competitors. She would never have secured the Democratic nomination had her career been made in reality TV.
Yet when her turn to have a shot at the White House finally came round, her longevity on the scene was not an asset, but a liability. One of the more obvious lessons is that you take a big risk running a widely distrusted candidate from a political dynasty in a “change election” when many of the voters are expressing anger with the status quo. A similar conclusion can be drawn from the Brexit referendum. The barrage of “expert” opinion deployed on behalf of the Remain campaign proved far less effective at persuading swing voters than In strategists had expected.
It is also no longer safe to assume that portraying your opponent as dangerous – even if they are – will be as effective as it used to be. Trump was repeatedly described as unfit to be president, not least by Republicans. Barack Obama made his excellent joke that a man who could not be trusted with his Twitter account could not be trusted with the nuclear codes. In the Brexit referendum, Outers were often branded as reckless advocates of a blind leap into the unknown. This was true – and counterproductive as a strategy for countering them. First, because calling them dangerous did not amount to an answer to the grievances driving substantial numbers of voters in the direction of the demagogues. Second, telling a voter that something is a risk only works if that voter thinks they have a meaningful stake in society as it is and many clearly don’t. Third, branding the insurgents as rogues burnished their appeal for many aggrieved with the status quo.
A big chunk of the electorate in western democracies are, for various reasons, so discontented that they are willing to blow up conventional politics – if only to see what happens next. A lot of Trump voters told pollsters they didn’t think he was fit to be president, but put him there anyway. Italy’s Five Star Movement, pioneered by the comedian-blogger Beppe Grillo, has taken this to its logical conclusion with the slogan “vaffanculo”. That translates as “fuck off”.
You can say the new “populists” are phoneys and presume their mendacities and contradictions will be exposed once people have experience of how they wield power. Jeremy Corbyn was doing that yesterday when he had a pop at the “fake anti-elitism of rich white men like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump”. The Labour leader makes a good point. But there was a better one he could have made. Why have a former commodity broker and a billionaire property developer proved more effective at mobilising voters discontented with their economic lot than did the Labour party at our most recent general election?
The most disturbing and urgent question for liberal democrats is why their arguments haven’t had traction and why demagogic arguments are proving so resonant to so many; in the US, that included flipping substantial numbers of voters who had been for Obama into the Trump camp. A bit of the explanation is that the new demagogues have been better campaigners. All the sophisticated strategists employed by the In campaign never came up with a message to rival the crude, cut-through clarity of “Take Back Control!” All the expensive consultants on team Clinton never found a match for “Make America Great Again!” Incendiary and divisive language has always been a tool of demagogues. The new breed has taken this to another level and technology equips them with unprecedented ways of amplifying their messages. Donald Trump was recently asked whether he regretted the misogyny and racism of his campaign. He replied: “No, I won.”
His many noxious outpourings on the campaign trail were not said in spite of the fact that they would cause widespread revulsion. They were calculated to elicit a hot response from both his zealots and opponents and by doing so generate massive amounts of media coverage. A similar shock-and-horrify strategy was employed by elements of the Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum. Arron Banks, friend and financier of Nigel Farage and one of the party who were recently received at Trump Tower, has published his account of their battle plan for the referendum campaign. “The more outrageous we are, the more attention we’ll get. The more attention we get, the more outrageous we’ll be.”
This weaponising of outrage consciously creates a dilemma for mainstream politicians and media still operating within the conventional parameters of debate. If offensive and mendacious statements are ignored, bigotry and lies will not be called out. But if they are challenged, the propagators gain the oxygen they are seeking.
A critical reason that liberals have been losing is that they foolishly presumed that the big arguments were so well won that they didn’t need to fight for them. Because it was so obvious to them that liberalism and globalisation have delivered prosperity, security and opportunity, they didn’t think they needed to bother to continue making the case. When politicians of the mainstream did talk about globalisation, for too long they represented it as an irresistible force. Anyone on the receiving end of its negative impacts or unhappy with the distribution of its rewards was essentially told they no choice but to suck it up.
The overarching error was to assume that the arc of history was bent irreversibly in the direction of enlightenment, internationalism, tolerance and liberty. Now they should know better. A very old lesson must be learnt afresh. In politics, there are no final victories.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union is often compared to a divorce: it is painful, expensive and involves breaking up a relationship built without expectation of separation. If one party is determined to do it, the other must go along with it, albeit reluctantly. Even in a unilateral decision there are two sides.
Yet the European response to UK choices has been consistently neglected in Westminster. The Conservative party argued about Britain’s future relationship with the EU as if it could be settled within the cabinet. Labour has acted as if the problem with Brexit is the fact of it being implemented by Tories. The past week has dashed any hope that the motives of EU leaders might be considered more salient once a deal was struck. Faced with Theresa May’s draft withdrawal agreement, some Tory MPs have demanded that she return to Brussels and come back with a different one. Others say she must stand down so someone else can do the job. Labour’s solution is a general election, resulting in Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister and conjuring up a Brexit that does everything the one now on offer fails to achieve.
Continental leaders say Mrs May’s deal is what a negotiated Brexit looks like, given where she started. There are 27 other heads of government involved and not all of them are entirely happy with what was agreed. If a UK prime minister tries to unpick the deal, other nations might want a second bite. The idea that Mrs May lacked the will to get more concessions, asserted by Dominic Raab, former Brexit secretary, is infantile and irresponsible. The deal’s flaws express the impossibility of retaining the privileges of European integration from behind red lines that necessarily sever the UK from the continent.
Mr Raab is positioning himself as a replacement for the prime minister. So is his predecessor, David Davis. It is hard to think of less suitable candidates, although that is a competitive field in the Conservative party. Two men who ran the Brexit department cannot credibly argue that the deal’s shortcomings can be fixed by yet more application of their supposed negotiating prowess. The leavers who have chosen to stay in government, unofficially led by Michael Gove, are no better. They want exemption from collective cabinet responsibility, to half-support Mrs May while undermining her with demands for an upgrade to the deal they nominally agreed to endorse last week.
The prime minister has at least understood that a squandering of time and goodwill have limited the UK’s options. She says there are three: her deal, no deal, or no Brexit. Some MPs who voted remain envisage a fourth: parking Britain in an outer tier of existing European architecture for non-EU members, namely the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association. A deal along those lines might well win a majority in the Commons, although keeping free movement of labour as a condition of single market membership would be politically problematic for all. Would it fly in Brussels? It is hard to know when no one is making the request explicit.
Mrs May’s stated trio of outcomes result from one set of political and parliamentary paths. If MPs want to take a different road then they need to spell their ideas out, with parliament allowed to reassert control over the process and render alternatives plausible. Since before the referendum was even held, there has been far too much reliance on dream scenarios and not enough setting out of options based on realistic appraisal of the situation on both sides of the Channel. Pedlars of delusional fantasy took Britain into this dangerous mess. Their voices can be discounted when evaluating routes to safety.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Rarely has a government suffered such a well-deserved defeat. No amount of bullying, arm-twisting, even making one MP weep, could save the day. Nor did plain lying about its true intent rescue Theresa May from humiliation this evening. She saw it coming, the whips told her it would happen – but on she went, full steam ahead intent, obdurate and wrong. There’s a pattern here.
She and her Brexiteers’ determination to deny parliament a vote gave the game away: who wouldn’t smell a nest of rats? At the referendum the Brexiteers said sovereignty was sacred; but now it turns out that “taking back control” means rule by their diktat, without the deliberation of our sovereign parliament.
What’s truly shocking about tonight’s vote on the amendment to May’s flagship Brexit bill is how few rebels there were in the end: how few Tory MPs were willing to insist on that sovereignty, to ensure parliament debates, scrutinises and amends the most important decision of our lifetime. And it happens in a statute before the final terms are take–it-or-leave-it immutable.
The woolliest of last-minute assurances from Tory minister Dominic Raab, of improvements at a later stage, was excuse enough for many to crumble. George Freeman made a gallant declaration of defiance – and 40 minutes later crept into the government lobby. If they really meant to give a meaningful vote, why did they take such a risk with this one?
Brexiteers, whom John Major called “bastards”, have a long history of rebellion: David Davis rebelled 90 times, Liam Fox 19, Andrea Leadsom seven, Bill Cash and John Redwood countless. But the remainer side has a feeble history of crumbling, claiming “loyalty” to cover its pathetic pusillanimity.
But never mind, 12 votes from 12 brave Tory men and women – led by Dominic Grieve – were enough – just – to save us from a bad Brexit deal steamrollered through. Let’s hope others in their party are inspired by them to grow a backbone on future crucial votes, such as on Henry VIII powers that would turn governments, present and future, into autocrats.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
It was while I was on my way out of a reception, amid the imperial grandeur of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that I learned that our new prime minister had appointed Brexit’s most charismatic liar as her – and, I am afraid, our – foreign secretary.
What a farce. What an insult to us all, and to the world at large. Last week, Alexander “Boris” Johnson got what he deserved from the American press corps travelling with the US secretary of state, John Kerry. They had little time for such characteristically blustering nonsense as Johnson’s protestation: “There is a rich thesaurus of things that I have said that have, one way or the other, I don’t know how … been misconstrued.”
That was not the only surprise of the evening. When I got to Whitehall, whom should I bump into outside the Red Lion pub but my old friend David Davis. “Well, David,” I said, “I am sorry that your side won, but, as you know, I have always admired your stand on civil liberties.”
“Oh, I am not allowed to speak on that subject any more. They have just made me Mr Brexit.”
Wow! That was the first I had heard of his appointment. From the horse’s mouth! (By the way, I should emphasise that I did not get where I am today by revealing the contents of private conversations with ministers or officials, but this was a jovial exchange in the hearing of at least half a dozen members of the public.)
Well, now Davis and his fellow Brexiteers are in the hot seats. But it is already perfectly obvious that they had no plan and they are still struggling to dream one up. They are hopelessly confused about trade and the real meaning of trade negotiations. It is pointless criticising Cameron and his chancellor for not having prepared for Brexit. They quite rightly did not want Brexit. But it is truly amazing that the Brexit camp were happy to mislead sufficient members of an embarrassingly ill-informed British public into voting for something they had no idea how to handle. We seem to be in the absurd position where those of our leaders such as Theresa May, who were in the Remain camp, are saying “Brexit means Brexit” while the Brexit lot are trying to say, “Well, Brexit does not really mean Brexit. After all, we still want all the advantages of the club we have rejected.” And, of course, the shamelessly meretricious Nigel Farage continues to go to the European parliament to collect his dirty EU money.
This means Brexit, does it? But what does Brexit mean?
Apparently, it means keeping all the hard-won advantages of the single market – largely a British initiative in the mid-1980s – while fooling those people whose prime concern was immigration that “something will be done”.
If there are changes in the EU’s approach to the free movement of labour, they will not come about as a result of any desire to yield to the UK, but only if the migration crisis becomes even worse. Meanwhile, it can only be unsettling for the many immigrant workers on whom our economy depends that there is so much uncertainty, and talk of using them as “bargaining chips”.
During a recent visit to University College Hospital, I was told that 1,300 EU nationals were working there, and many fear what may happen next. In which context, it is good to see that London restaurant owners such as Richard Caring are promising to fight “tooth and nail” to preserve their staff’s rights to remain here, after what he describes as the “absurd” Brexit vote.
Many of the people who go on about immigrants are just plain prejudiced, but by now it is commonly accepted that successive governments have neglected to tackle the pressures on public services associated with immigration in certain areas, and there are legitimate concerns.
However, departing from the EU is not a solution. Being serious about governing on behalf of the entire nation and focusing on the concerns and problems of the forgotten towns of the north will be part of the solution – that is, if May actually means what she says. These are early days.
Meanwhile, the postmortems continue. In an article in the Financial Times, Peter Mandelson – a supposedly heavy hitter of the Remain campaign – sounded almost incandescent about David Cameron’s over-confident belief that, after a string of political successes, he could easily triumph in the referendum. I have heard similar charges about the former prime minister’s arrogant approach from one of his ministerial colleagues.
Possibly the most damning criticism of Cameron is contained in an open letter to him from Jeremy Kinsman, former Canadian ambassador to the EU, and high commissioner to the UK.
Referendums, he writes, “are the nuclear weapons of democracy. In parliamentary systems they are redundant. Seeking a simplistic binary yes/no answer to complex questions, they succumb to emotion and run amok. Their destructive aftermath lasts for generations.”
Despite the way in which so many people have meekly caved in to the supposed “will of the people”, I have not given up hope that something could emerge from the wreckage. Delaying the triggering of Article 50 until next year at the earliest may yet offer time for sense to prevail. We live in a parliamentary democracy, and it is estimated by those in a position to know that some three-quarters of the members of the House of Commons and Lords oppose this Brexit farce.
Let us hope they do everything in their power to ward off that destructive aftermath.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
The British political class, like much of the British media, remains foolishly obsessed with America to the exclusion of all other foreign countries. As a result, both refuse to pay consistent attention to German politics, or indeed to the internal politics of any other European country at all. So the news that Angela Merkel may not, after all, continue in office as Germany’s chancellor will have come as a rude shock to many of them.
The British have always blithely assumed that Merkel would somehow ride to the UK’s rescue over Brexit like the Prussians at the battle of Waterloo. David Cameron thought this would happen in the negotiations preceding the referendum in 2015-16. Now Theresa May, and certainly David Davis, seem to have a similar hope over Brexit. It is a foolish error.
Like most German politicians, Merkel is not actively anti-British in any way. She would certainly welcome a Britain that was a committed ally in Europe. But that’s not the Britain that is on offer, the more’s the pity.
The truth has always been that Merkel has more pressing priorities at home than Brexit, and more reliable allies in Europe than Britain. Now that coalition talks between Merkel’s CDU-CSU Christian Democrats, the free market liberal FDP and the Greens have broken down, however, the prospect that Merkel may not even be there as the Brexit talks reach their climax is a real one.
Merkel will still be chancellor when Theresa May goes to Brussels on 14 December for the EU summit that must decide if “sufficient progress” has been made in the Brexit talks. So she will still matter. But the idea that Merkel will or could somehow magic an 11th-hour solution favourable to Britain is simply for the birds. It misunderstands – as too many in the Conservative party do, taking their cue from the insouciant Davis – the nature of the process that is supposed to be taking place.
In these Brexit talks, Germany has the influence that comes from being Europe’s most important country, but the process within which it is exercised is essentially a legal one, laid down by treaty. The British have never understood that they are the appellant not the defendant in the Brexit talks: it’s Britain that wants to leave, so the UK, not the EU, has to make the big moves towards compromise deals.
But this error is compounded by another: the conviction that Germany will go significantly out of its way to help Brexit Britain. Germany’s overriding concern is that the EU must survive, cohere and strengthen in the face of testing events. The big impact on the European level of the coalition talks breakdown is that it sets back Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of persuading Germany to reform eurozone priorities and structures.
Neither France nor Germany has any long-term political interest in assisting Britain to make a favourable bespoke deal that could become both a precedent and a catalyst towards divergence within the EU. As German business leaders told Davis in Berlin last week, they want Britain to make the moves that matter, not to be offered a special deal that suits Eurosceptics.
In any case, Brexit is largely irrelevant to the coalition talks in Berlin. A senior German official recently told me that Brexit was about the eighth or ninth issue on Merkel’s to-do list in foreign affairs, never mind the domestic politics that are any leader’s inevitable priority. As an illustration, the issues that matter in the talks that have just failed were: first, migration policy; second, the future of coal; and third, financial transfers from the regions of the former West Germany to those of the former East Germany.
Germany is a stable country with built-in constitutional safeguards that derive from the determination to avoid the instabilities of the past. In Britain the failure of talks would create a frantic domestic political crisis that would have to solved by next weekend at the latest. Germany has weeks and months to sort out whether it can form a government. During this time Merkel will remain in charge.
But Germany is in a political territory without maps. It has no postwar tradition of minority governments. Yet there are now six parties in the Bundestag, which has the effect that coalitions are even more inevitable than in the past, for all their difficulty. It is not impossible that some in the opposition Social Democratic party will be open to overtures to rethink the party’s refusal to continue in government under Merkel. But that looks a long shot.
The great unknown in future elections is whether Germans decide they have looked over the precipice of a six-party Bundestag, have seen the ultra-right Alternative für Deutschland in parliament, and will now turn once more to Merkel and the Christian Democrats as the best guarantee of stability.
The immediate effect of the break-up of talks will be to weaken the FDP, which is taking the blame for the failure. But the longer-term issue is whether Merkel can restore the Christian Democrats at the heart of German politics. Compared with that, Brexit looks a distinctly second-order priority.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Since 24 June, much has been made of the “bargaining chip” status of EU citizens living and working in the UK. When the conversation turns to the other side of the coin – the 1.2 million British citizens living in an EU state – the mind jumps to those retired in Spain. But what about British millennial expats, most of whose age group voted to remain, and their burgeoning lives abroad?
The freedom of movement afforded by the EU has embedded itself into our national psyche, be it a stag weekend in Bratislava or a post-exam InterRail trip. But the continent is not just for temporary jaunts. Vastly overlooked are those young people who choose to make a home there. Many get their first taste of living abroad through exchange schemes such as Erasmus, which has seen a rise in participation of 115% since its UK launch in 2007. And English-language degrees are offered at several THE-ranked universities around the Netherlands and Scandinavia, making a quality education obtainable for a fraction of the British cost. Along with navigating bureaucracy and learning a foreign language, students also get an invaluable lesson: how their own country is perceived from the outside. Of students who have participated in a placement or exchange in another EU country, 83% agree that they now have “Europe-wide perspectives beyond the national horizon”.
It follows that a later move to another country is enticing. People aged 18 to 34 are looking beyond their homeland’s borders for career prospects almost twice as much as the preceding generation, with around half of those surveyed feeling more secure and fulfilled in their jobs abroad. Cities such as Berlin have gained a reputation for their laid-back atmosphere and low cost of living – appealing prospects in comparison to UK cities, where millennials are hit hardest by the recession. It’s also at the centre of the European technological start-up scene, along with Tallinn and Lisbon. Start-ups are inherently international because of their need for funding and talent regardless of its origin – so knowledge of the local language is generally not required. It’s extremely common for business to be conducted in English. There are fewer barriers to intra-EU opportunities than even a decade ago.
Since the referendum, there has been a level of uncertainty, and a state of anxiety, among expats of all ages. And the young are likely to be disproportionately affected, as their world is turned upside down right at the start of their careers. We feel helpless about the escalating incidences of xenophobia and homophobia back home. We ease the pain facetiously, with jokes about “marrying a European” for their passport.
We were told that our 20s are for exploration and learning – and most pertinently, for not yet having to make serious, long-term commitments. Yet this is exactly what Brexit is forcing on young Britons prematurely. The pressure to make sacrifices, such as taking steps to put down roots far from our families, is exerting a particular strain. We moved to another EU country on certain conditions. We did not expect those to change so suddenly.
It is not just a practical difficulty, but an emotional one. Those who had planned for only a temporary residence in a foreign country are now considering putting in the years to qualify for EU citizenship. However, in certain member states, such as Austria, dual citizenship is either highly restricted or forbidden – causing the applicant the complicated distress of relinquishing their original citizenship. At the same time, it highlights the absurdity of the system; an Australian with one Irish-born parent, for instance, could be eligible to stay in the EU for as long as they like.
While the Conservative government flounders in talks about what will happen to the 3 million foreign EU citizens based in the UK, two German parties have already offered up the idea of bestowing new citizenship upon young British expats in Germany – the Greens citing “their living situation [being] thrown into question in an unexpected way” as a rationale. There has already been a rise in applications for citizenship of other EU states, mainly from British citizens already abroad.
To be part of the EU is to love the security found in flexibility; the knowledge that if things are not ideal in one place, a clean slate awaits elsewhere. We know that our chances of remaining in a permanent job and owning a home have become slimmer, so we embrace the transient nature of modern life while still craving a sense of belonging. The EU skilfully fuses these instincts. We have learned that few things around us are truly stable, but we are determined to make the best of it.
For a generation that has come to expect an international return flight to be more affordable than a domestic single train journey, Brexit is going to be extremely tough.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
On 23 June 2016, the British public voted to leave the EU in a landmark referendum. The decision, which could see restrictions on free movement within the EU, has filled the social care sector, already beset with recruitment and funding problems, with dread and uncertainty. So what could Brexit mean for social care professionals?
EU workers currently make up 6% of the UK social care sector – amounting to 80,000 jobs in England alone – while one in five members of staff are from outside Great Britain. Some parts of the country will be hit harder by Brexit. In London, for example, nearly three in five of the adult social care workforce were born abroad.
“Brexit adds to the existing worries of the sector,” says Patrick Hall, a fellow in social care policy at leading thinktank the King’s Fund. “You’ve got a sector that is already struggling to recruit. Brexit adds to the uncertainty of providers being able to pull in the staff they need.”
There are an estimated 1.3m jobs in adult social care, according to the National Minimum Dataset for Social Care. UK nationals fill 82% of the roles while non-EU citizens account for a further 12%. Meanwhile, one in 20 (4.8%) of positions in adult social care in England are vacant – nearly twice the vacancy rate in the UK’s labour force as a whole.
At the same time, the sector is faced with a rapidly ageing population and significant cuts to social care funding. According to the Moved to Care report, the number of people over 80 is expected to double in size to over 5 million by 2037 and social care funding has been reduced by nearly 11% in the last five years.
Until the UK extracts itself from its obligations under EU treaties, the policy on freedom of movement remains the same. “However, given the current shortfalls in the social care sector, the government must clarify its intentions on the ability of EU nationals to work in social care roles in the UK, not least to avoid EU staff deciding to leave to work in other countries,” writes senior policy advisor Helen McKenna for the King’s Fund.
However, Hall worries that the UK is now seen as a less attractive destination for those abroad seeking work. He says that migrants might feel anxious over issues such as their right to stay and long-term rights in the UK.
Anecdotally, he has heard of instances of racism since the referendum result which he says jeopardise the relationship between professional and service user: “Social care is reliant on good relationships between a care worker and the person who’s having them in their home. Anything that threatens that relationship is a big worry.”
Will the possible upheaval mean more jobs for UK workers then? Hall suggests that recruiting more UK workers should be part of any strategy, regardless of what happens to free movement. “We should be investing more in training, apprenticeships and career development to boost recruitment for people here and investment overall in the social care sector.”
There has been a longstanding problem of retaining people in social care jobs. There is an overall turnover rate of 25.4% (equating to around 300,000 workers leaving their role each year) and Hall says many go into care work as a stepping stone to a career in nursing, seen as a higher esteemed job. Social care providers also struggle to get people into the lower end of the workforce because “people would rather go and work in retail or the service industry,” says Hall.
Peter Beresford, professor of citizen participation at Essex University, says Brexit is the latest in a string of disasters that has hit social care jobs. “It’s a bit difficult to focus on Brexit in isolation. It’s like any sort of situation where it’s just hanging on by a thread. When anything happens to disorganise it, then everything is much more chaotic that you would expect.” He talks of an event he went to recently where Dr Dan Poulter MP said that Brexit was going to be the biggest challenge and destabiliser for the workforce going forward.
Beresford thinks if there’s a reduction in the number of people from EU countries able to work in social care, this will be compensated for by people from non-EU countries. He laments the 15-minute visits to service users and zero-hours contracts that seem to characterise jobs in the sector.
“The real point for me is that it is such a chaotic field, where it could be important and wonderful. It is given such low priority … We have a labour force that people don’t want to work in unless they have to because the terms and conditions are so poor.”
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Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 17.24 BST
Boris Johnson’s government spent £46m on a “Get Ready for Brexit” campaign in October, but demonstrated little evidence it left the public better prepared, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.The National Audit Office said ministers chose to run a £100m campaign – the most expensive of four options – to tell all UK businesses and individuals how they should prepare for leaving the EU. The campaign was launched as the 31 October deadline for leaving the EU approached. But the evidence shows that the proportion of UK citizens who reported that they had looked or started to look for information, did not notably change, auditors said.
Auditors said the numbers of people looking for information about Brexit did not notably change as a result – ranging from 32% and 37% during the campaign, to 34% when it stopped, having spent just under half of the allotted money.
The campaign was halted three days before the UK was supposed to leave after the EU granted another extension.
The report increases concerns over the government’s spending leading up to the 31 October deadline set by the prime minister to leave the EU with or without a deal.
It comes as the government prepares a new “Ready to Trade” campaign on 1 February, the day after the UK is due to formally leave the EU.
Auditors found the Cabinet Office’s business case did not demonstrate increased impact for the proposed spending on the campaign compared with lower-cost alternatives. Auditors said it was “not clear” it left people “significantly better prepared”.
The Cabinet Office, which is in charge of Brexit preparations, said it had to launch a campaign in the run-up to the October deadline or risk “significant and unnecessary disruption”.The department estimated the campaign reached 99.8% of the population, with every member of the public having the opportunity to see the range of billboard, print, TV and online adverts 55 times.The campaign encouraged people and businesses to visit the government’s main gov.uk website to answer questions and receive advice on preparing for the UK’s exit from the bloc.Among those specifically targeted were British citizens who were intending to travel to Europe in the days and weeks after Brexit and businesses that exported to the EU.Gareth Davies, the NAO’s chief executive, said: “At short notice, the Cabinet Office successfully corralled multiple government departments to work together effectively and launched this complex campaign at great speed.“However, it is not clear that the campaign resulted in the public being significantly better prepared.”In response, the government said the watchdog had acknowledged the campaign increased public awareness of the action it needed to take to be ready to leave the EU.“Not undertaking the campaign would have risked significant and unnecessary disruption to businesses and to people’s lives,” a spokesperson for the cabinet office said.
Responding to the report, the Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said it was “a colossal waste of taxpayers money” which was effectively part of the Conservative election campaign.
“This damning report shows what we knew all along: the Conservative government’s ‘Get Ready for Brexit’ campaign was an expensive propaganda stunt designed ahead of the election to help no one but Boris Johnson stay in Number 10.“Once again the Tories are misusing their powers at the expense of our democracy. Given how poorly this campaign performed it should be referred to the Electoral Commission and be included as part of the Tory general election spend,” she said. The UK will leave the EU at 23:00 GMT on Friday 31 January.
Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 18.01 BST
The Brexit vote has been a “huge wake-up call” for the arts to realise they are not reflecting the lives and experiences of much of the UK, the National Theatre’s artistic director, Rufus Norris, has said.
Norris told a BBC Radio 4 debate on Tuesday the NT had initiated a nationwide listening project that would involve one-to-one conversations with people from all backgrounds and all persuasions.
“Art always responds to the time,” he said. “And this has been a huge wake-up call for all of us to realise that half the country feels that they have no voice. If we are going to be a national organisation we must speak to and for the nation. Our principal response initially is to listen: to listen to that voice and art will follow from that.
“We are an art house, we’re a theatre and we are going to be making work – quite what the form of that will be we will discover.”
The listening project, Norris said, would ask questions such as: “What are British values? What are your values? What do you think about where you live and what is the Britain you want to live in?”
The cultural community was overwhelmingly in support of staying in the EU during the referendum, with one poll, for the Creative Industries Federation, putting the figure at 96%.
The live radio debate for the BBC arts programme Front Row was exploring what kind of cultural response there should be to Brexit. The novelist Val McDermid said people in the arts had to take some responsibility for the “fact there is this huge stratum of disaffected people. A lot of people who voted to leave did so as a protest vote: they felt dispossessed because they felt disregarded.”
She said artists in the last decade had ignored the rise of things they were uncomfortable with, so there had been a build up of emotions that had not had any creative release.
Norris said there was no doubt the arts had been surprised by the vote to leave. But the novelist Dreda Say Mitchell, a leave supporter, said: “If the arts community was so shocked, is the arts community out of touch?”
Phil Redmond, the Brookside and Grange Hill creator who chairs National Museums Liverpool, said the arts disconnect was also down to the creative community retreating to London. He asked the audience at the Royal Society of Arts in central London: “Why are we all not talking in Salford, or if you can’t quite make Salford, what about Birmingham? Or go to the easiest place to get to in the world, which is Crewe.”
The designer Wayne Hemingway said that what to do next was currently the liveliest debate in the arts and it was an important one given the importance of the sector to the UK economy. “Britain has been seen as the creative nation, bar none, in the world,” he said. “Suddenly people in Berlin, Brooklyn in New York, in Johannesburg are rubbing their hands together ... all of a sudden Britain is devalued.”
He feared a drain of younger artists to cities like Berlin instead of, say, Manchester, and predicted some form of “youthquake” as young people became more engaged with politics. “We have to take something positive from it. We can’t go round in mourning for very long. The creative industries are brilliant at turning sows’ ears into silk purses – that’s what we do – but it is going to take some form of revolution. We will solve this but it will be a youthful rebellion of sorts.”
McDermid predicted something along the lines of the punk revolution of the 1970s or the rave revolution of the late 80s, saying “we need something to galvanise us”.
Aside from the practical concerns over what freedom of movement changes might mean for individual organisations, and what would happen to the money some get from the EU, there are more existential questions about what the mindset of the arts should be.
Norris believed the vote would be a catalyst to increase collaborations with arts organisations in Europe and further. “We are a world leader and we are not going to give up that position,” he said. “For us it is going to spur an increase in our collaborations with European partners and our international work. Being isolated is bad for culture and is very bad for society and there is no way we are going to go down that path.”
Asked what the cultural landscape might be like in 10 years as a result of Brexit, Mitchell said: “The culture and the art we look at will be much more representative of the Britain that we live in: more black faces, more working-class types of art, more regional representation.”
The Chancellor will tonight use a speech in Berlin to demand the EU sets out what it wants from a Brexit trade deal because it 'takes two to tango'. 
Philip Hammond, who is in Germany with Brexit Secretary David Davis today, is addressing German business leaders later.
In extracts of his remarks to the Die Welt summit, Mr Hammond said Brussels kept complaining Britain had not said what it wanted from the talks.
But he blasts: 'In London, many feel that we have little, if any, signal of what future relationship the EU27 would like to have with a post-Brexit Britain.'
Mr Hammond and Mr Davis used their visit today to demand the City of London be included any future trade deal.
They warned if Brussels refuses to do it could cause a global economic crash because London is such a major financial centre for international banks.
The demand is at the centre piece of Britain's vision, which appears to be a Canada-style trade deal that allows access for goods without demanding specific rules and regulations from Europe be implemented.
Crucially, the model agreed with Canada does not include financial services - the mainstay of the British economy. 
In his speech tonight, Mr Hammond will say: They say ''it takes two to tango'': Both sides need to be clear about what they want from a future relationship.
Chancellor Philip Hammond tonight challenged the EU to spell out what it wants from a Brexit trade deal.
But Britain has been criticised for not having decided what it will ask for. 
Brexit Secretary David Davis has suggested Britain seeks a deal similar to Canada's trade deal but with additional elements.
Most importantly, this means adding financial services to the deal to ensure banks in the City of London can keep trading in euros as it does today.
If the EU agreed it would mean Britain would have to follow broad standards on goods but not have to implement specific EU laws enforced by the EU court.  
I know the repeated complaint from Brussels has been that the UK 'hasn't made up its mind what type of relationship it wants'. 
'But in London, many feel that we have little, if any, signal of what future relationship the EU27 would like to have with a post-Brexit Britain.
'Since the referendum in the UK, there has been a marked asymmetry between the enthusiasm expressed by certain third countries to pursue future trade deals with the UK and the relative silence, in public at least, from Europe on what the EU wants our future relationship to look like.'
Mr Hammond will say he is worried EU 'opinion formers' believe the shape of the future arrangements was a question only for Britain to answer.
But he warns:  'By signalling a willingness to work together in a spirit of pragmatic cooperation on a future, mutually beneficial, partnership, based on high levels of access for goods and services… the EU will send a message to the British people which will resonate as they consider the options for their future.
'And that is my challenge to you.'  

 In their intervention this morning, Mr Hammond and Mr Davis warned the 2008 credit crunch had demonstrated how easily 'contagion' could spread between economies if financial regulation was not coordinated between major nations. 
But there are signs that Angela Merkel is gearing up to play hardball in the looming talks - with claims she will block a UK plan for different levels of regulatory alignment in different sectors of the economy. 
Officials in Berlin are said to regard the proposals as the latest incarnation of Britain's effort to 'have its cake and eat it'.  
The trip to Germany by the two senior ministers is being seen as part of a drive to go over the head of EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and mobilise wider support in the EU for a good trade deal.
Mr Barnier caused anger in the UK recently by urging European companies to start preparing for increased 'friction' in trade.
Mr Hammond is due to address an economic summit in Berlin on Wednesday while Mr Davis will meet chief executives in Munich.
In a joint article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, the ministers said: 'The economic partnership should cover the length and breadth of our economies including the service industries - and financial services.
'Because the 2008 Global Financial Crisis proved how fundamental financial services are to the real economy, and how easily contagion can spread from one economy to another without global and regional safeguards in place.' 
'As two of Europe's biggest economies, it makes no sense to either Germany or Britain to put in place unnecessary barriers to trade in goods and services that would only damage businesses and economic growth on both sides of the Channel.'
The Government wants a bespoke trade deal covering both goods and services after Brexit, with the UK leaving the single market and customs union.
Mr Davis has previously told MPs that he wants the deal to deliver the 'exact same benefits' that the UK has as a member of the EU.
In the joint article the two Cabinet ministers acknowledged that Germany and other EU members want to protect the integrity of the single market 'and that without all the obligations of EU membership third countries cannot have all the benefits'.
But they insisted that 'those priorities are not inconsistent with ours, a deep and special partnership with our closest trading partners and allies'.
There were still 'important choices to be made' about the new relationship and 'we should not restrict ourselves to models and deals that already exist', they said, rejecting the EU's view that a Canada-style free-trade deal was the only option open to the UK outside the single market.
The Daily Telegraph reported that German Chancellor Mrs Merkel is strongly opposed to the UK plan for so-called 'managed divergence' from EU rules after Brexit.
A senior official working on preparations for the next round of EU negotiations told the paper that the plan was viewed as the 'latest episode in the 'cake and eat it' sitcom series' and Germany viewed it as a 'serious risk to the integrity of the EU and its single market'.
Mr Hammond and Mr Davis said they wanted financial services to be covered by the new 'economic partnership', with a deal that 'supports collaboration within the European banking sector, rather than forcing it to fragment'.
The UK and EU should 'maintain our common principles' and continue the 'intelligent co-operation of our regulators', the pair said.
In a speech in Brussels on Tuesday, Mr Barnier warned that, while a trade deal could include regulatory co-operation on financial services, the EU would not be willing to give up the Single Rulebook drawn up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Rejecting any suggestion that he was seeking 'punishment or revenge' of the UK, he said: 'A country which withdraws from this very specific framework and from its consistent application by national authorities takes on the ability to diverge, but at the same time loses the benefits of the single market.
'Its financial services providers will not be able to benefit any longer from a passport into the single market, nor from a system of general equivalence of norms.'
The EU will have the power to deem UK regulations 'equivalent' to its own if it is confident they do not threaten financial stability, said Mr Barnier.
 
First published on Fri 13 Oct 2017 11.35 BST
Jean-Claude Juncker has upped the pressure on Theresa May over Britain’s Brexit divorce bill, acknowledging Europe’s debt of gratitude to the country “during the war, after the war, before the war”, but insisting: “Now they have to pay.”With EU leaders meeting for a summit next week, the European commission president used a speech in Luxembourg to express his frustration at the British government’s failure so far to commit to honouring its financial obligations to the bloc on leaving it.
The Brexit secretary, David Davis, insisted on Thursday at the end of the fifth round of negotiations that the UK would only spell out what aspects of the past commitments it was willing to meet once talks were opened on the future trading relationship. As a consequence, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, claimed the talks were in a “very disturbing state of deadlock”.
Juncker told students at Luxembourg University that the British position was untenable. “We cannot find, for the time being, a real compromise as far as the remaining financial commitments of the UK are concerned,” he said.
“As we cannot do this, we will not be able to say during the European council in October that now we can move to the second phase of the negotiations, which means the shaping of the British-European future. Things have to [be] done. One has to deliver.
“If you are sitting in the bar and you are ordering 28 beers and then suddenly some of your colleagues [are leaving without] paying, that is not feasible. They have to pay. They have to pay.”
To laughter in the audience, Juncker added: “Not in an impossible way. I am not in a revenge way. I am not hating the British. We Europeans have to be grateful for so many things Britain has brought to Europe. During the war, before the war, after the war. Everywhere and every time. But now they have to pay.”
Estimates on the size of the divorce bill have varied from about €60bn to €100bn (£54bn to £90bn).
Juncker also dismissed the negotiations over citizens’ rights as a “nonsense”, claiming he could not understand why the British had not guaranteed from the start that everything would remain the same for European nationals – “or ‘foreigners’, as they are saying in London” – after the UK leaves the EU.
Citizens’ rights is the aspect of the negotiation upon which the two parties are closest to a deal, but differences remain on a number of aspects, including the so-called right of family reunification, which would allow EU nationals to avoid having to meet an income threshold, as British citizens do, when they are seeking to bring a non-EU spouse to the UK.
“Brexit is a serious issue,” Juncker said. “It came unexpected but not totally unexpected. Now we have to deal with the results and first to be impressed by the numerous disadvantages that Brexit – Brexit meaning Brexit – is entailing for the British. They are discovering, as we are, day after day, new problems. That is the reason why this process will take longer than initially thought.”
Juncker continued: “We had the idea that we would clear all the questions related to the divorce, but it’s not possible. Citizens’ rights, yes, we are making progress. I don’t even understand this problem. Why not say, easily, with common sense – which is not a political category, as we know – that things will stay as they are? The Europeans – ‘foreigners’, as they are saying in London – they are there in the island, and so many British friends are here. Let them here, let them there. Why are we discussing nonsense like that?”
The European council summit next week is expected to see the EU’s leaders conclude that talks about any future trading relationship with Britain will have to be delayed because of a lack of progress on the issues of citizens’ rights, the Irish border and the divorce bill.
A document leaked on Thursday suggests that the European council president, Donald Tusk, will, however, invite the 27 EU member states to start working among themselves on their vision of the transition period and the future relationship, in the hope that sufficient progress on the opening issues can be made by a summit in December.
One EU source said the move was both “prudent planning” and an attempt to push the UK to build on Theresa May’s pledge in her speech in Florence to pay its way, including the provision of €20bn to ensure no member state loses out in the two years after Brexit.
During a wide-ranging speech, Juncker also attempted to play down suggestions that his recent state of the union address was an attempt to turn the EU into a single political entity.
“I don’t believe a European citizen would really like to see the creation of a united states of Europe similar to what they have in the USA,” he said. “I’m not in favour of a united states of Europe, but I am in favour of further integration.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Conservative MPs preparing to face down Theresa May next week are not rebels or traitors, but pragmatists who want to stop Britain going over a cliff edge, a leading member of the pro-Europe group has said.
Antoinette Sandbach told the Guardian the media toxicity surrounding even the most basic scrutiny of Brexit was transforming British society. “We are not rebels. We are pragmatic leavers. We don’t want to go off the edge of a cliff which would be a disaster for my constituents,” she said.
The MP for the largely rural Cheshire constituency of Eddisbury has voted against the government line just four out of 631 times since being elected in 2015, twice on a free vote about restoration plans for parliament, and another two on the ‘meaningful vote’ amendment.
“People put a label on you and call you a traitor and it’s ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous,” Sandbach said. “This is the most complex thing that we have done for 40 years. There’s a level of debate and drilling down into the detail which has to be done. To try and do that, you’re accused of betraying the will of the people.
“Britain used to have a reputation for being polite and courteous; have we really turned into this shouty society that just screams at each other?”
MPs are preparing for yet another showdown in the Lords and the Commons next week after pro-European Conservative MPs who compromised with the prime minister to avert rebellion on Tuesday night subsequently rejected the government-drafted amendment to the EU withdrawal bill.
The former attorney general Dominic Grieve had held negotiations with the government over the precise wording of the amendment, aimed at enabling MPs to hold a vote in parliament if the government was on the brink of leaving the EU with no deal in place.
Grieve said the final version, tabled by the government on Thursday evening, had been changed at the last minute and was now unacceptable because the vote on offer would not give MPs the power to stop Britain going over a cliff edge.
Sandbach said it was “extraordinary” for the wording of the government amendment to be changed just before it was tabled. But she said she still trusted May and believed David Davis’s Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) was to blame.
“In the last hour before it was tabled, DExEU appeared to get involved and the process was hijacked and one was tabled that wasn’t agreed to,” she said. “I’d like to see grown-up government and it seems to me that DExEu is trying to reduce parliament to a school debating chamber.”
Peers, who will debate the legislation again on Monday, have tabled Grieve’s own wording in a separate amendment, which is likely to come back to the Commons. It remains to be seen if the pro-European MPs do have the numbers to finally defeat the government on the issue, and May may well have gambled that they do not.
Sandbach said she could not accept the government version, as it would place strict limits on the direction MPs could give in the event of a final Brexit deal being turned down by parliament.
She said: “It’s ridiculous that what we are being offered is an amendable motion in the event of a deal, but an unamendable one in the event of no deal that would cause a huge crisis in our country.”
Sandbach is a fixture in the so-called “naughty corner” of the green benches where Grieve, Bob Neill and Anna Soubry often sit with other Brexit-sceptic colleagues. Like those colleagues, Sandbach is a former barrister and she says it is the lack of attention to complex detail in the Brexit debate that most infuriates her.
“Many of my constituents will have got divorced. They will know how being together with somebody for a long time means that life is intertwined with them,” she said. “Divorce is messy and nasty and can get quite tricky. And this is a major divorce.”
Sandbach is reluctant to go into specifics of threats she has received for speaking out about Brexit, citing no desire to give any abuser “oxygen”. Last week, Sandbach was criticised for reporting a constituent to the police for accusing her of “treachery” and threatening her with deselection.
She will say, however, that it is not just Brexit that has made MPs feel increasingly nervous. The interview comes just after a far-right activist pleaded guilty to a plot to kill the Labour MP Rosie Cooper.
“Regardless of Brexit, we are targets,” she said. “That is wrong. And it is particularly targeted at women in parliament and it is cross-party, not just directed at remainers or Brexiters. So we must take a strong line. What is illegal face-to-face should be illegal online.”
Nor will she accept that she is doing her constituents any disservice by any threat to rebel against her party. “The vote in my constituency was very close and we need to find a Brexit that brings moderate leavers and moderate remainers together,” she said.
“I think the 48% feel nobody is standing up and speaking for them. It’s simply not as black and white as it is being painted in the media.”
Like many of her colleagues, Sandbach is concerned there is little time left for the difficult negotiations on future trade, which are yet to fully begin. The last 18 months have been “evidence building”, she says – a process that could have been done before triggering article 50.
However, Sandbach is more careful than some of her colleagues not to directly criticise the prime minister’s approach. On Thursday night as the compromise agreement crumbled, Soubry called the actions of the government “unforgivable” and said MPs who had trusted the prime minister had been “very badly let down”.
Sandbach firmly believes that the vast majority of Conservative MPs are not purists, but would back a compromise if May could deliver one. May has said her red lines in the negotiations are ending the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, ending free movement, and leaving the single market and customs union.
“There are going to have to be compromises and some blurring of lines,” Sandbach said. “Of course the majority would back a compromise. We’ve backed it already. We backed the [December transition deal] joint report, it was cheered as a great success.”
Looming next in the Commons once the meaningful vote amendment is resolved are battles over both the trade and customs bills, set to be debated by mid-July. MPs have already put down amendments seeking to keep the UK in a new customs union with the EU.
Other likely amendments include mandating the government to seek an EEA-style arrangement, similar to Norway’s deal with the EU.
Sandbach has not ruled out backing either and said she sees some attraction in using the EEA as a framework for Britain’s future relationship. There will be disagreement ahead, she admits, but says it is not “some big crisis” that MPs should seek to amend and improve bills.
“The numbers in parliament make it difficult for the prime minister, there’s no doubt, but that is parliamentary sovereignty,” she said. “That is the will of the people. They elected a parliament with these numbers – and maybe that is no bad thing. It means there has to be a great degree of consensus.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Every year in Davos, there is a lunch organised by the CBI at which the keynote speech is invariably given by one of the senior government ministers in town. The guest list includes the bosses of a good cross-section of FTSE 100 companies as well as representatives of smaller but fast-growing firms. Invites are extended to the media so it is not hard to find out what business leaders are thinking about.
Last Thursday’s lunch was all about politics, with two topics dominating the conversation: where is the government going with Brexit and what are the prospects of Jeremy Corbyn being prime minister by the time the next lunch is held in January 2019?
For those running UK plc, the two issues are linked. They see the government as riven by its Brexit factions and drifting towards disaster. Big business supports the Conservative party and has real misgivings about Labour’s plans for the economy, but is now far more interested in finding out what these would mean in practice. Anybody interested could have found out by seeking out John McDonnell, who made his Davos debut this year with a call for a clampdown on tax havens, for nationalisation and for redistribution of wealth.
The guest speaker at this year’s lunch was Philip Hammond, and business liked what it heard. While accepting (albeit grudgingly) that Britain is going to leave the EU, the CBI and its member firms would prefer as little change to the status quo as possible.
This is Hammond’s position, too. The chancellor said there was something unique about the trade negotiations Britain would have with the EU: normally discussions are about how to bring countries closer together but London and Brussels were discussing what new barriers to trade they wanted to put in place. Hammond said his aim was to move Britain and the EU very modestly apart.
This seemed clear enough, but it was the chancellor’s own view, not a statement of government policy. Within half an hour of the chancellor ending a question and answer session at the CBI lunch, the prime minister walked on stage in the Davos congress centre to deliver a keynote address.
If the government really had decided to aim for as much of a no-change Brexit as possible, this was the perfect opportunity to do so. Instead, Theresa May made one fleeting reference to the result of the referendum in a speech devoted to ways of maximising the benefits and minimising the risks of new technology.
May then met Donald Trump for a 15-minute chat before flying back to Britain. On landing, a Downing Street spokesman said the prime minister did not agree with her chancellor that Brexit could happen with only very modest changes.
The prime minister’s problem is that the bulk of the parliamentary Conservative party is at odds with Hammond. It wants the “clean Brexit” proposed by Liam Halligan and Gerard Lyons in their book of the same name. This involves leaving the single market, leaving the customs union, offering the other 27 nations a deal to carry on trading on existing tariff-free terms but being willing to fall back on World Trade Organisation rules if necessary.
This, though, doesn’t seem to be what May has in mind either. Halligan and Lyons first came up with their clean Brexit idea a year ago, when they argued it was important to give businesses certainty so that they could prepare for the future. That is precisely what May has not provided, but the attempt to keep everybody happy has proved impossible. Tory remainers think the economy will be damaged by leaving the single market and the customs union; Tory Brexiters think the prime minister secretly wants “Bino” (Brexit in name only); business is demanding clarity so it can plan ahead; and voters have picked up on the idea that the government is winging it.
The CBI has suggested a possible compromise: the government should commit to leaving the single market but commit to a customs union with the EU, although not necessarily the existing one.
Staying in the single market would involve contributions to the EU budget and accepting free movement of labour, the two issues at the heart of the leave campaign in June 2016. Whatever the views of its member companies, the CBI has accepted that Brexit involves leaving the single market.
But the employers’ group thinks membership of a customs union is a different matter. It says this would avoid the cost of putting up barriers, put paid to the idea of long queues of lorries at UK ports and provide a solution to the Irish border question.
Membership of a customs union would mean that the UK would have to impose tariffs on non-EU goods and would not be at liberty to strike its own trade deals independently of Brussels. But the CBI says this is a spreadsheet issue: the government should weigh up whether the freedom to cut trade deals with the US or China is worth putting up trade barriers with its biggest export market for.
For a number of reasons, a Brexit compromise now looks increasingly likely. The resilience of the economy means there is no prospect of a recession-induced second referendum. The government’s loss of its overall majority in last year’s election means it doesn’t have the votes for a clean or “hard Brexit”. And the passing of time means that businesses are threatening not to take long-term investment decisions unless they get a clearer idea of where things are heading.
Nothing May has said during her 18 months as prime minister suggests she is ready to compromise. But everything she has done suggests that a compromise is coming. In the context of the current film Darkest Hour, May would have the country believe that she is the hardline Winston Churchill rather than his rival Lord Halifax, who wanted to explore a negotiated peace. But a negotiated peace is all May can offer. She talks like Churchill but acts like Halifax.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Michael Heseltine, the Tory grandee and former deputy prime minister, has suggested a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn could be less damaging than Brexit.
The peer made the claim, which is remarkable for a senior Conservative, in an interview for the Limehouse podcast about liberal and EU politics, as he was pressed on how catastrophic he believes Brexit will be for the UK.
Heseltine, a longstanding pro-EU politician, signalled that he still views a Labour government as having a negative effect on the country, but said leaving the EU could be worse in the long term. He also suggested Labour would eventually turn against Brexit and the Conservatives would be “left holding the baby”, as leaving the EU grows more unpopular.
Asked what could happen under five years of a Corbyn government, he said: “Well, we have survived Labour governments before. Their damage tends to be short-term and capable of rectification. Brexit is not short-term and is not easily capable of rectification. There will be those who question whether the short-term pain justifies the avoidance of the long-term disaster.”
Heseltine argued public opinion was already beginning to move against Brexit and Labour would end up changing its current position to one in favour of the EU, which could put the Conservatives in trouble with their pro-remain voters.
“If you look at the polls there is probably a bigger majority against Brexit than the referendum secured but that, I think, will continue to happen and it will become more and more unpopular as people realise what it’s all about,” he said in the podcast, named after the declaration that gave rise to the Socal Democratic party (SDP), and hosted by activist William Porteous.
“When that happens, the Labour party will move, and the present government will be left holding the baby. But then you have got to realise the present government is supported by large numbers of people as opposed to Brexit as I am. How long will they remain within the tribe and loyal to the party?”
The Conservative peer made clear that his views on the Labour leader had not changed, but argued the “most interesting thing about Jeremy Corbyn is that he is now considered to be a potential prime minister.
“People of my generation could never have anticipated that... He was always someone to the extreme of his party arguing causes for which there was virtually no support within his party. But such is the dynamic of Brexit that he is now seen as a potential prime minister,” he said.
Heseltine is one of a small band of pro-EU Conservatives, along with former chancellor Ken Clarke, who have argued that Brexit should not happen. On the Labour side, former prime minister Tony Blair is campaigning for an end to Brexit, while the Liberal Democrats are pushing for a second referendum.
As for how to stop Brexit, Heseltine said: “I think [a second referendum] would be a vehicle for ending Brexit, but personally I would rather parliament to do it either if this present parliament became hostile or because in an election the issue was rethought and a subsequent parliament did it. My preoccupation is ending Brexit: the means, well anything to hand.”
Clarke told another episode of the same podcast that he would “love to reverse the referendum if I thought we could, but I don’t think we can”.
He said he thought referendums were “a daft way of running things” so it would be better for parliament to decide to back into the EU but this was unlikely to happen.
“The political class are terrified of doing that. So the reality, which I’ve had to come to terms with, is that we obviously are leaving the EU and I’m trying to minimise the damage and retain as close a relationship as we possibly can,” he said.
Clarke also said Corbyn had “risen to the job of being quite a credible leader” of the opposition, but he did not believe the public would vote for him as prime minister.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
 Sometimes it’s the cleverest people who turn out to be the most stupid. Or certainly the most gullible. Before Dominic Grieve had spoken, the debate on parliament having a meaningful vote in the event of a no-deal Brexit had been on a knife-edge.
 The government whips had feverishly patrolled the Tory benches, searching for the slightest sign of weakness in suspected rebels. David Davis had slurred his way through his opening remarks, punch-drunk and out of his depth: the Brexit negotiations have barely started and he already looks as if he has had enough. Kier Starmer had been a model of icy cool lucidity as he tore holes in what passed for the Brexit secretary’s arguments. Game on.
 Then Grieve rose to his feet. The Tory backbencher with the reputation for being one of the sharper brains in Westminster. A man who prided himself on both his intellect and his integrity. A man who had been misled by the false promises of the prime minister on this very issue just a week previously and had declared to the world that he wouldn’t get fooled again. A man with the determination to take on the government a second time. The Luke Skywalker of the Rebel Alliance.
 His was a brilliant amendment, he said modestly. Not just brilliant, but necessary to protect the sovereignty of the parliament he adored. He paused to allow himself a theatrical wipe of the forehead. MPs from both sides of the house leaned in, hanging on to his words. Luke cleared his throat. There was just one problem with his brilliant and necessary amendment. He couldn’t actually vote for it because the government had promised him another compromise that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
 Not that Luke was going to withdraw his amendment, because he couldn’t allow anything so brilliant and necessary to go to waste. So he was letting it stand for others to vote for if they wanted to. It would be wrong of him to deny them the opportunity. But when push came to shove, he had suddenly remembered that his first loyalty was to his party rather than to the country. Every lawyer has his price and Grieve had just established his. He was the rebel who forgot to rebel.
 Luke wasn’t quite finished. Having led his troops up to the top of the hill and marched them down again – Labour MPs weren’t slow to call him the Grand Old Duke of York – he made a sobbing plea for the Brexit debate to be conducted in a kinder, more collegiate way. Now was the time for unity. “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad,” he said. Using the same line that Enoch Powell had used in his “rivers of blood” speech was perhaps an error of judgment. One among many.
 The bullying and the name-calling had made the atmosphere unbearably toxic. It had to stop, Grieve demanded. Now. Julian Smith, the chief whip, looked astonished. Why would he stop doing something that was so clearly effective? He’d seen off Luke Skywalker with a few easy lies and threats. And with the ringleader decapitated, many of the more feeble-minded rebels would melt away. Game over.
 No one could quite believe what they had just heard. Labour’s Hilary Benn and Chris Leslie made desperate attempts to get Grieve to change his mind at the last minute. They tried making things as plain as possible for him. The compromise he had accepted committed the government to do no more than take note of the fact that parliament was a wee bit concerned about the no-deal on offer. And then ignore it. Surely even a halfwit could see that it was a meaningless meaningful vote. Luke smiled beatifically and ignored them. The Force was with him. The Ego had landed.
 With the rebellion dead in the water, Davis chilled out and put his feet up on the dispatch box. Happy days. An ashen Theresa May sneaked into the chamber, looking both relieved and guilty. Unable to quite believe that her indecision and duplicity had won the day again.
 There was even time for the government whips to call off their insistence that even the very ill MPs should be made to pass through the lobby, because the votes were in the bag. But then they thought why bother? Make them suffer. So we were treated to the sight of Labour’s Naz Shah being pushed through the Commons in a wheelchair while clutching a sick bucket. A shabby end to a shabby day.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Parliament has a little over one week to prove that it can do what Theresa May should have allowed it to do after her failure in the 2017 election, and come up with a plan that saves us from the Brexit cliff edge. The question is whether it can, without the constraints of Mrs May’s self-imposed red lines, agree a deal based on the creation of a permanent customs union, and perhaps also continuing membership of the single market.
Only a minority of the Conservative party, which now looks increasingly like the leave campaign, would buy into this, as most now want to leave the EU with as “clean” a break as possible, however painful. But we may find in the coming days that there is a cross-party majority of MPs – including possibly the DUP – who are willing to back a softer form of Brexit. Negotiations to see whether a compromise is possible are the only alternative to what the former Brexit minister, Lord Bridges, has described as the British public being asked to walk a gangplank into thin air.
Take a customs union on its own first. As a former EU trade commissioner and UK business secretary, I can see both the advantages and drawbacks of this proposal. A customs union would create far less friction to trade in goods. It would be easier to keep vital manufacturing supply chains intact and it would obviate the need for the customs part of the Irish backstop, as long as agriculture was included. But it would also mean that Britain could not operate an independent trade policy in respect of goods, because we would be obliged by the EU to operate its external tariff rather than vary our own in bilateral trade agreements with non-EU countries.
It is not true to say that we would simply have to adopt the EU-Turkey model, in which the rules require them to open their own market under EU trade deals without benefiting from reciprocal rights for their exports. The EU, in my opinion, could do better for the UK than that.
The biggest shortcoming of a customs union, however – and it is a major shortcoming – is that it does not in itself address the issue of regulatory alignment between the UK and the EU that single market membership gives us. This is the principal guarantee of the barrier-free trade we enjoy currently with the EU and why every alternative to membership will leave us worse off.
So a customs union is not a panacea. For this reason, many MPs are looking to a deeper agreement with the EU, one they call common market 2.0, which in addition to a customs union would mean continuing membership of the single market. The attraction is obvious: it would keep the UK close to its most important trading partner while fulfilling the mandate to leave the EU. It comes with a set of institutions based on the existing European Economic Area through which the UK could potentially influence (but not determine) EU policy and incur reduced UK payments for market access.
The disadvantages are equally clear. Britain would have to operate EU rules, without a vote or a veto, for both goods and services – becoming a rule taker – making it largely pointless to leave. Free movement of people would also continue. Yes, there is provision for an emergency brake on migration but this would not give Britain “control” of its borders. How important this issue is for UK voters is something upon which MPs will have different views.
Undoubtedly, maximising the trade benefits for Britain requires both continued customs union and single market membership and it would be hailed with relief by most of UK business except some in financial services who do not want to be regulated from Brussels. This route would be relatively easy to negotiate in contrast to May’s favoured alternative – her hybrid half-in, half-out Chequers plan, which is regarded as a unicorn by anyone with knowledge of how the EU works. EU member states would initially welcome it as a means of maintaining the close relationship they seek with Brexit Britain. Do not underestimate, though, the prospects over time for tension and argument as the UK pushes up against the boundaries of what is permitted, for example on questions such as subsidies for firms to advance industrial policy objectives and possibly corporate tax harmonisation.
Which leaves one, big question: would the British people buy it? My hunch is they would not.
Every politician will make their own judgement about the electorate’s likely choice between a pointless Brexit in which we leave the EU but continue to follow its rules – a sort of Hotel California Brexit – and an economically painful one. In 2016, there is good reason to suspect that most people thought it would be neither. It is this uncertainty about what was really mandated in the last referendum that makes it necessary, and democratically legitimate, for the choice of a particular form of Brexit to be validated through the ballot box. A general election would almost certainly fail to give a clearcut answer to any question other than who should form a government, and perhaps not even that.
Where I disagree with those wedded to the original 2016 result is their belief that voters would resent being asked to confirm that the deal on offer is the one they want. Democracy did not end in 2016. It shows an arrogance and a contempt for democracy to suggest otherwise.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Owen Paterson, a former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, argued this week in the Guardian that the UK could leave the customs union, break free from EU rules, and still avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The problem with this claim is that the logic of a hard Brexit means hard borders. The EU is the world’s most advanced legal, technical and institutional environment for seamless border management. As Brexiteers well know, this has entailed common rules and coordinated systems. Paterson’s claims rest on the assumption that the UK can rip up the terms and conditions but stay in the club.
This is seen in his assertion that the seamless management of the Irish border that already exists (such as for VAT, excise and security) can simply be extended after Brexit. This is wrong on two accounts. The first is that the “existing technical and administrative procedures” currently used to manage the Irish border (the VAT information exchange system and the European arrest warrant, for example) have been developed through EU membership. Leave the EU and access to these systems goes too.
This poses serious problems for cross-border security cooperation, which Paterson assumes can manage any post-Brexit increase in smuggling and fraud. The effectiveness of such cooperation today is underpinned by EU membership: a common institutional framework, real-time access to databases, agreed means of dispute settlement, and uniform application of the law. Because none of this can be presumed for a non-member-state, many of the mechanisms for joint security cooperation will be subject to negotiation post-Brexit.
Secondly, in the event of a UK-EU free trade agreement (even of the Canada+++ type many Brexiteers are pushing), the Irish border would become a customs and regulatory border. Technical and administrative procedures would not be sufficient to manage it. Whether they be at a checkpoint on the border or 20km away from it, the enforcement of controls would be necessary. Without them, there would be effectively no border, which would make for a very rickety customs union and single market.
In an effort to prove that border controls in the Irish case can be done through technical rather than rule-based means, Paterson points to the agrifood supply chains that constitute the largest proportion of cross-border trade. But technical solutions for agrifood products are the most obtrusive and resource-intensive of them all. They require trained inspectors, technical equipment (to test for pathogenic micro-organisms, for instance), and physical infrastructure (such as livestock holding pens). Indeed, for practical reasons, such border inspection posts in Northern Ireland are currently located away from the land border and at sea ports – proof that checks on goods crossing the Irish sea need be no impediment to the UK single market.
Such facts are but petty irritation for the European Research Group of hard-Brexit Tory MPs. After all, Paterson shrugs: “Northern Ireland’s sales to the Republic of Ireland account for less than 0.2% of the United Kingdom’s GDP.” But in generating its 2.1% of the UK’s GDP, Northern Ireland currently relies on the Republic of Ireland as its largest export market (31% of its total goods exports in 2016). By making this point, Paterson actually underlines how relatively insignificant Northern Ireland is for the United Kingdom, and how different its economic needs are to those of the UK as a whole. To disregard the material interests of Northern Ireland in favour of an imagined ability (for the UK) to “strike new trade deals around the world” is hardly the mark of a committed unionist, as the DUP might do well to acknowledge.
The truth is that it is not possible to have a hard Brexit – in which the UK and EU move further apart – without Northern Ireland suffering collateral damage. This is because an open Irish border – or, more specifically, the close Northern Ireland/Ireland and British-Irish relationship – has been so important for the development of its economy and for the stability of its peace process.
The purpose of the backstop in the draft withdrawal agreement is to minimise the risk of such damage. It must relate to rules as well as procedures. It is not intended as a final destination: it is an insurance policy for the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland against the reckless consequences of a hard Brexit. Hence business leaders in Northern Ireland are urging the UK to accept a backstop, negotiate for a customs union and avoid the economic catastrophe of a no-deal exit.
Although a former Northern Ireland secretary, Paterson’s intention is not to protect the interests of Northern Ireland but to downplay their importance in order to smooth the path towards a hard Brexit. For anyone concerned for the future of Northern Ireland, such a quest is as dangerous as it is erroneous.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Did Boris Johnson have a Brexit wobble? Certainly, and not just as Craig Oliver – the director of communications for David Cameron – complains in the first of a round of score-settling memoirs from the erstwhile No 10 team. Johnson is an exciting but uncertain political unicyclist, who swerved and side-slipped his way to supporting Vote Leave. If Camp Cameron was surprised to find the great Tory manchild still head-scratching and evoking Eeyore’s depression about the chances of a leave victory while campaigning for it, they were not paying attention to Boris’s mood swings.
When Liam Fox, then in the wilderness, now re-elevated to the outer part of the May inner circle as trade secretary, threw a party early last year dominated by pumped-up Tory leavers, Johnson spent much of his time sighing and hair-ruffling about the referendum – and confided to me (and I guess, several others) that he was still “completely torn” on “this EU thing”.
It did not always suit No 10 to acknowledge the reality – that loyalty to Cameron was skin deep and that aspirations beyond the referendum would nuance how senior Conservatives behaved in the campaign. Ambitious politicians, given an open goal, tend to take a shot at it.
When the wound-licking is done, the more important matter will be what kind of relationship Britain should have with the EU after the divorce. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s powerful but testy finance minister, has just got shirty with the foreign secretary’s blithe suggestion that there was not necessarily a trade-off between the single market and freedom of movement inside the EU. That will not necessarily please Angela Merkel, who has phrased her response to Brexit with deliberate calm. “She knows punishment beatings won’t help get this sorted,” a confidant in the Kanzleramt tells me. Merkel does not remotely like Brexit and believes it a mistake for Britain and Germany. But as a child of the old East Germany, she is keenly aware that elites sounding bitter or resentful about a popular movement is counterproductive.
Absolutists on both sides are reluctant to move on. Yet they must, for the good of Britain and also the wider EU, which is more afflicted by post-referendum turbulence than it can readily admit. Practical inquiry will soon turn to whether Brexit should be of the soft or hard variety. The “softy tendency” wants to retain single market access, or at least as much of it as can be salvaged via trade deals. And while Schäuble is right that the Lisbon treaty links freedoms of movement to single market access, that does not account for the EU’s tendency to state that things are inviolable – and then, under pressure, negotiate on them.
A generous offer on freedom of movement for those with guarantees of work and study places, for instance, would get a better reception in Europe than the hardline anti-immigration suggestion that Fortress Britain needs very few incomers to prosper. Hard Brexit advocates are already staking out their ground: “Some vainly advocate retaining features of EU membership after leaving but this is not practical,” raps the longstanding Tory Eurosceptic Bernard Jenkin.
But the ghosts of pre-EU diplomacy stalk post-referendum Europe. Better to look to the early 19th century and Count Metternich, wheeler-dealing to save the fortunes of Austria by dogged pursuit of détente with France and alignments with Prussia/Russia (“unthinkables” and “impracticals” in their day too), rather than the trumpet blasts of Boris or Jean-Claude Juncker. “Events which cannot be prevented must be directed,” the great Austrian diplomatic fixer once remarked – a lesson for those who have to deliver on the Brexit promise.
Many convinced, outraged, piqued or spuriously confident voices will say that hard Brexit is the decisive way to go. Nigel Farage is already priming his comeback in defence of this proposition. Perversely, it appeals to avowed sceptics in Britain and those in the institutional EU who still believe that putting Britain out in the cold is the best way to cauterise revolt elsewhere. Here is a recipe for deepening animosity. Geography is master of all our fates and post-Brexit, we still have to share a continent.
A gentler methodology requires patience about the pace of negotiations from the British, government and an acceptance in the EU that since Britain is the first big “ex-member state”, its final status will, by definition, be something that has not existed before. The hardest part might not be finding a fudge on freedom of movement, via work permits and a broad deal on student visas – but the right recipe for maintaining trade and cultural links. If soft Brexit’s contours are still vague, it starts with a state of mind, which understands that Brexit needs to be delivered and does not only harp in bad faith on the defeat of remainers, but which also accepts the great jeopardy in leaving the EU, and thus that the process is best undertaken as circumspectly as possible.
A “Usain Bolt” model, in which a race to trigger article 50 becomes the starting gun for the fastest possible Brexit, will cut off compromises, deepen misunderstandings and leave a sulky UK offshore from a bruised and crosser EU, with practical details of how we will associate with member states dangerously unclear.
The softy tendency must start to build a coalition of support and make its case. Rather more than is reflected by the true believers on either side, many voters shared a dollop of Boris’s vacillation: neither so convinced by the EU’s self-praise that they yearned to stay in it, nor convinced by the “better off out” simplicities of outright Brexiters. The May-Hammond duumvirate needs to start defining what the gentler road to Brexit looks like and outline its benefits. It will cause ructions inside the Conservatives and a wider argument about what Brexit is to mean, but the least worst option is better than the alternatives. Metternich had a natty coinage for that too: “The obvious is always the least understood.” Not for the first time, he was on to something.
 Anne McElvoy is senior editor at the Economist
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
Without the European Union’s shackles, Britain will be free to develop new products and innovate for greater success. Like a gleaming stallion racing away from the herd, the UK will leave Europe’s deadbeat economy in the dust. It’s a Brexiters’ image that also pictures Europe falling back, unable to maintain its poise while protecting the interests of unionised workers and ageing elites.
The most recent economic figures appear to bear this out, with lower growth posing a fresh problem for Brussels and European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi, who had presumed that increases in GDP, while still only moderate, were steady and assured.
And it’s true that policymakers in Denmark, Sweden and even some quarters of liberal Germany fear that, without the UK, Europe will turn inwards and ossify, forcing them to question their own membership.
Governments in Portugal and Spain have added to the pain, going head to head with Brussels after they broke through their budget ceilings. Italy wants to pump €40bn into its banks against eurozone rules. In all cases, ministers are attempting to shore up outmoded or bust institutions.
The question for Brexit campaigners is whether Britain is so very different to its continental cousins and can grow in a way that satisfies the demand of most Brexit voters. And to that question, the answer must be no.
Britain has seen a renaissance in jobs since 2013, of that there is no doubt. But most of those extra jobs were among the self-employed or fell into categories that can only be described as insecure and low-paid. When companies finally took the plunge and advertised full-time jobs from 2014 onwards, around a third went to migrants.
If you turn off the migration tap and regulate insecure jobs out of existence, as no doubt the voters of Brexit-loving Stoke-on-Trent would like, you have no growth. Overnight Britain becomes France, weighed down by high unemployment and low growth after sticking with policies that protect the terms and conditions of the current generation of workers, and discourage investment.
It is this mostly older group of workers across the developed world, worried about their pay, pensions and conditions of employment, that want to slam the brakes on globalisation and reject the remedy proposed by big business: greater labour-market flexibility and only limited job protections.
The same issue is causing social turmoil in the US, where a strong economic recovery from the 2008 crash is largely driven by consistently high net immigration filling gaps in the labour market and bringing new ideas and skills to places like Silicon Valley. Voters bridling against a diet of constant change are the bedrock of Donald Trump’s push for the White House.
Economists for Brexit, a 13-strong group who championed the UK quitting the EU, want British voters to embrace the anxiety that comes with flexible working and rates of pay that go up and down in line with the demand for their services, as determined by global capitalism.
Of course their message is more optimistic and is about developing high-skilled jobs. And they are not such principled free marketeers they can’t find room to offset their call for unfettered free trade with a bit of government subsidy directed at hard-pressed parts of the economy, particularly manufacturing and agriculture. Infrastructure spending with borrowed money is also allowed.
But it is noticeable that the US-style green card entry system they propose would shift the balance towards high-skilled workers without necessarily cutting the numbers. As the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said a day after the vote, a points system to determine who can work in the UK and who can’t would not on its own prevent the population growing by 1 million every three years, mostly through immigration.
And when you have new chancellor Philip Hammond saying that Britons need to fall over themselves to attract overseas investors upset at Brexit, putting a lower corporation tax rate at the top of his list, it is only a matter of a few years before the people of Stoke-on-Trent begin to feel conned again.
Like all other countries, Britain needs to increase demand to escape or at least ameliorate the deflationary spiral gripping the global economy. The G20 finance ministers meet this week and will reiterate the need for governments to supplement central bank funds in boosting growth. Only government can provide the cure, with a commitment to invest where the private sector cannot or will not go.
That means Theresa May will need to bust George Osborne’s budget forecasts by more than a few billion to implement an industrial strategy worthy of the name. The temptation will be to spend the money on an industrial commission or research centre to advise ministers on the way forward. Vince Cable did all this when he was business minister and implemented what he could.
He was stopped in his tracks by Osborne when he wanted to spend some money. Yet there are oven-ready projects across the country that could be commissioned, encouraging contractors to invest in new equipment and skills. Will they be commissioned? Not if the nation’s ageing nimbys block each individual proposal. And not if the concern persists that governments cannot be trusted to spend taxpayer funds and get good value.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Two is a coincidence, but three’s a trend – and now three Tory MPs in the space of 24 hours have uttered the phrase “national unity government”. It sounds fantastical, in a country that has had no such thing for three-quarters of a century, but could it happen – and should it?
It’s no mystery why Anna Soubry, Nicholas Soames and, less directly, Dominic Grieve are suggesting an all-party national administration might be necessary. Tuesday’s Brexit votes in the Commons showed that the current Conservative government is hopelessly paralysed. It cannot drive through its own agenda, insofar as it has one at all. Indeed, it ended up whipping MPs to vote for Brexiteer amendments that undermined, if not sabotaged, the Chequers agreement that was meant to be the government’s settled position. In other words, Theresa May feared the Brexiteer rebels so much, she decided that, since she couldn’t beat them, she would compel her MPs to join them.
And that’s even before the tattered and torn Chequers agreement makes contact with Brussels reality and the European Union’s negotiators, who are likely to dismiss it as unworkable. It is possible to conceive of a plan that Britain could propose and that the EU 27 might accept – but we now know that May simply would not have the votes in parliament to get such a plan through. Which is why it’s no surprise to hear that the Netherlands has hired 1,000 extra customs officers for trade with Britain: like many of our continental neighbours, they are sensibly preparing for a no-deal Brexit.
A national unity government could avert that catastrophe. It could draw on the inbuilt Commons majority that exists for averting no deal, combining, as Soubry told BBC Radio 4’s Today, pragmatic MPs from the Tory, Labour, SNP and Plaid Cymru benches – all of whom would agree on one thing, if nothing else: that crashing out of the EU would be a calamity for the country’s economy and security.
It would be an extreme measure, but these are extreme times: the gravest crisis since the second world war, according to Soames. And in some ways the taboo that ordinarily stands in the way of a national unity government – party loyalty – is breaking down anyway. Witness the five Labour MPs (including one who sits as an independent) who defied their party – and thereby saved May from defeat – by voting against the measure that would have kept Britain in a customs union as a backstop arrangement.
And yet, for all that logic, a formal national government remains unlikely. The very phrase still strikes terror into Labour politicians, among whom the betrayal of Ramsay MacDonald – who broke from his party to lead a national administration in 1931 – has never been forgotten or forgiven. Tories who agreed to sit on the same benches as Labour MPs, perhaps – who knows? – under a Labour prime minister, would similarly be cast out as traitors for evermore. As Nick Clegg and his fellow Liberal Democrats can testify, coalition can be career-ending – if not at the hands of your own party activists, then at the hands of the electorate.
So a formal national government, with an all-party cabinet and the like, is not on the cards. That does not, however, rule out a looser scenario. Grieve sketched it out on the BBC’s Newsnight on Tuesday, when he said that, should it be confronted by no deal, “parliament will assert its own authority”. He predicted that MPs would throw off the constraints of party allegiance and: “If it comes to the crunch, there would be a substantial majority to prevent no deal.”
One can imagine such a vote in the Commons, instructing May to do whatever it took to avert a crash exit. But then what? May could attempt to turn that Commons majority into a government of national unity – but that’s unlikely, for all the reasons set out above. She could take it as the cue for a general election, though she would fear that amounted to handing the Downing Street keys to Jeremy Corbyn. Or she could say that, with parliament stalemated on all but its opposition to no deal, the only solution is to throw the decision back to the people in a referendum.
That, for her and plenty of others, would surely be the least worst option. Which is why the likelihood of a “people’s vote” is growing.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
There are a lot of productive ways in which to analyse Brexit – why it happened, how it’s developing, and how it may turn out. One of the most interesting is to look at the idea of an identity to understand both why the process is proving so painful for the UK, and also why the rest of Europe still seems so confused about why the UK is engaging in this process at all.
Identity is one of those concepts that we’re all familiar with on the surface, but would probably struggle to define. Here, we’re going to define it broadly as the image an actor has of themselves. We all imagine ourselves to be a certain person – an image we make up of lots of individual components. We are English, we are a Grimsby Town fan, a gamer, and so on. Those components are what we call roles, and together they create our identity.
Countries, such as the UK, have identities too. They imagine themselves to be some things, and tell themselves and others that they are those things. Comb through the speeches of any British politician and you’ll find an argument as to what the UK is, and what it can be, based on that imagined self. For example, see Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech in January, where she laid out her plan for Brexit. She argued that the UK’s “history and culture is profoundly internationalist”, which positioned it very well to build a “truly global Britain”.
This raises one of the two main sources of crises in identity: the tension between what we imagine ourselves as being, and what we are. The other great source is a tension between our identity and what others believe it is. I might say I’m an avid player of computer games, but if I were oblivious to the unveiling of new, hotly anticipated titles, others may question my claim of being a “gamer”. Both of these processes are destabilising, and disruptive.
Brexit has triggered an identity crisis that captures both tensions. The UK is asking questions about the distance between its identity and the reality of what it is, as well as facing a sceptical audience overseas. Many people outside the UK neither understand why Brexit is happening, nor see it as a positive step for anyone.
Before the election, May argued that the UK should become the “strongest and most forceful advocate” for free trade in the world. Yet, as the UK prepares to leave the single market, it faces less free trade with the European Union than it currently enjoys. How clearly can the UK advocate for free trade, if it seems that it is turning its back on it?
Similarly, May argued that the UK should be open for global talent. Yet at the same time, it is seeking to tighten border controls. If the UK is to be open to talented people, the government needs to clearly lay out a message that it is easy to come and work in the UK. As it is, the message is muddled.
Even among non-EU states, such as Switzerland, there is confusion as to why the UK wants to leave. Their understanding is that the UK had found a clear identity within the European Union – as a leading voice within, which in turn strengthened its voice without. Now, it’s arguing that abandoning that leading position within the union will strengthen its voice without.
This complete reversal compounds their confusion as to what the UK’s identity is – that therefore changes the way they interact with the UK. If, as is often reported, nations such as Germany see Britain as a less pragmatic country than previously, then they will push for greater distance between the UK and themselves, to keep the British away from disrupting processes important to them.
Britain’s reputation within the EU may not always have been a positive one but it was certainly the case that European leaders felt Britain was better within the EU than outside. Now the UK has weakened its reputation for pragmatism among European leaders, that attitude appears to be shifting quickly.
The Brexit identity crisis is consuming the entire country. What does it mean to be the UK and what does that mean for Brexit? What does that mean for what the nation does afterwards? Without clarity on these things, there can be no clarity on what the country wants from Brexit. This confuses both the UK’s negotiating position, but also the responses of others. That, in turn, reduces the likelihood of agreeing on a successful, or even orderly, Brexit deal.
As long as the confusion continues, the crisis will continue. The final resolution of an identity crisis is the formation of a new identity. That requires serious thought about what the UK should aspire to be, and therefore do, in the world. This requires more than breezy assertions about free trade and the like.
It requires instead a return to first principles. What things can the UK not change about itself, or change so slowly as to be beyond the ability of a single government to shift? That the UK is an island, for example, is an important component in such reflections. Similarly, the UK’s proximity to Europe, and the long historical entanglements between the two, need to be included in any consideration of identity. Whether the country is up to the task will become sharply apparent as the Brexit process winds on.
 Timothy J Oliver is a lecturer in politics at the University of Hull. This article was originally published on the Conversation, part of the Guardian Comment Network
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Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Britain’s national conversation is subjecting voters to two dangerous falsehoods. The first, that a no-deal Brexit couldn’t harm us. The second, that it could ever happen.
The first fallacy exposes the worst of Brexit’s toxicity: namely, the casual, unabashed exceptionalism that places the enterprising British beyond the laws of gravity. Brexiters protest that our “clean break” departure on WTO rules will ensure that life continues as normal. The only thing that will break in this scenario is Britain’s economy and social contract.
A no-deal Brexit will tear us from every EU law, instrument and agency overnight. We have nothing with which to replace them. Out of the European Aviation Safety Agency, no British plane or pilot will be certified or insured. Out of the single market and customs union, every British lorry will have to be checked at French ports for tariffs and standards, bringing cross-Channel traffic to a standstill. These outcomes are not only legal, but required. The WTO cannot and will not help.
The first falsehood has birthed the second. Persuade enough people that a no-deal won’t amount to an unequivocal national breakdown, and it follows that we may actually end up doing it with public and parliamentary support. But the plan won’t work. We are not leaving without a deal under any circumstances.
First, the political reasons. Chief among them, Theresa May. She will not accept a no-deal scenario. Everything she has done so far demonstrates her terror of it. The EU has called her bluff on the negotiation sequencing, divorce payment, Irish backstop and transition terms, and to keep the show on the road she has blinked each time.
Assume then that May folds and subsequently resigns. The new prime minister declares that no deal really is better than a bad deal. He or she needn’t come clean about the consequences: reality will step into the breach. Put simply, Britain will start shutting up shop by the new year. Tens of thousands of EU citizens will leave, manufacturers will make show-stopping announcements about the closure of businesses, and the pound will tumble. Can the new prime minister depend on voters’ enthusiastic embrace of an entirely voluntary and pointless Blitz spirit, or will they call for a climbdown?
Imagine the political crisis escalates. The prime minister faces down public pressure to change course and has to confront parliament. Which brings us to the other key block for no-deal: parliamentary arithmetic.
Tory MPs have so far largely swallowed a hard Brexit they do not want. But a no-deal is an unprecedented catastrophe. Many shy rebels will draw the line at licensing national suicide on principle. Others will think more politically. A Tory government that sends the economy and livelihoods over the cliff will collapse the Tory party for a generation. Even MPs who would not save the country might opt to save themselves. Labour, for its part, declared a no-deal scenario its red line in the 2017 election manifesto. Even a handful of extra Tory rebels would break the government’s Brexit majority. After all, government whips last month threatened MPs that losing a key Brexit vote would trigger a general election, and still only won by six votes.
Why then is May talking up the prospect of no-deal even when it remains inconceivable? This is the real “project fear”. She hopes that just enough talk of stockpiling food and medicine will blackmail just enough MPs into voting for her still-elusive EU deal. Far likelier is that she scares the public into supporting a new vote on Brexit, with the option of abandoning it altogether.
The government and hard Brexiters are really engaging in niche games of cakeism. The government wants to scare us with talk of hardship without spelling out the full horror of no-deal. The Brexit fundamentalists prefer the more traditional Orwellian pursuit of promising no new border controls while simultaneously declaring we will take back control of our borders. The electorate will ultimately punish both sides for their duplicity.
Both the no-deal fallacies originate in the biggest lie of all: that Britain’s putative greatness allows it to defy concrete reality. But in the first instance, we have built our interconnected economic life on the floor of EU agreements that a no-deal instantly cuts away. In the second, we lack the bargaining power, legal security or economic might to legitimise the threat either in Brussels or at home.
Here then is the truth. National myth-making may feed our imaginations, but not our stomachs. We are, in reality, not so special. Any country will burn if you set fire to it. The prime minister may see fit to light the fuse, but so long as we live in a parliamentary democracy, MPs will have the power to confiscate the matches.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
The UK Brexit debate has consistently misread the EU’s aims, and its determination to pursue them. We are now at risk of doing so over the negotiating endgame. No deal, if it happens, will be a process – not an event – managed by the EU to their negotiating advantage, just as the article 50 talks have been throughout. The difference is that a no-deal process would be much shorter and more brutal for the UK.
The Brexit debate in the UK often misses the very modern political motivations of the EU27. Yes, they are determined to defend the rules-based single market, built up through decades of compromise. But leading EU member states have a political aim closer to home; they must defeat the idea of a painless Brexit. Otherwise, they fear, the European parliament elections next June will be dominated by their own populist opponents, who will claim that they, too, can shed the obligations but keep the benefits of EU membership.
The UK’s bruising experience in the Brexit negotiations, and the likely outcome, may have already made the point clearly enough. But if British politics remains stuck on demanding the impossible, as the EU see it, no deal can also become a process to make the message crystal clear.
Some key EU governments think that a “managed” no deal, with the worst effects mitigated for the 27 by temporary recognition of UK standards to allow, for example, direct flights to continue, would be bearable. The European commission is preparing plans along these lines. There would be emergency support for those, like Ireland, who were worst hit. And, crucially, the crisis would be short. The impact on the UK from customs delays alone would be so disastrous that London would quickly come back to the negotiating table.
In this sense it doesn’t matter whether the UK government or parliament is the blocker to a deal. For the EU, no deal is not an end state; it is the continuation of negotiation by other means.
This is not fully appreciated in the UK, where – because of the internal struggle for Conservative MPs’ votes – both sides deliberately talk about no deal in extreme, quasi-religious terms. The UK will “fall” into a dark pit of rationing and transport chaos if backbenchers defy the prime minister, or (as hard Brexiteers have it) the country will purify itself of self-doubt in a baptism of fire. Either way, no deal is depicted as a long, hard struggle.
In reality, as cabinet ministers are realising, no deal would quickly bring the UK to a halt, and destroy the government which presided over it. Blaming EU intransigence would not hold as a line for very long, with motorways gridlocked and essential supplies uncertain. Very senior customs officials compare this scenario privately to a first world war battlefield. “It will be triage,” says one; customs officers on the ground making individual decisions to wave through suffering live animals, or medicines, holding back almost everything else. The National Audit Office shows how far away the UK is from being able to cope with the realities of a third-country relationship with the EU at 11pm on 29 March.
The EU will not choose this route just to make a point. It would be painful for many member states, and particular regions – such as Calais and the surrounding Hauts-de-France – would suffer. A prolonged no deal would be disastrous for Ireland, trapped by geography. It could fracture EU unity over Brexit. But the important fact is that key EU leaders think they can take the risk, confident it would only last a matter of days before the UK had to seek a deal.
It is a huge risk. The British government would either come to terms or quickly fall. Even if the UK agreed a deal, we would be facing an unprecedented political crisis. The government would still have to get a deal through parliament, with a substantive bill, as we explain in our report “Time is running out to enact a withdrawal agreement bill”.
Approving a government motion on the withdrawal agreement is just one of two steps needed for the UK to ratify the deal. The second is the passage of primary legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement, which must receive royal assent before the Brexit deadline of 29 March.
That would happen in a mood of shock and, potentially, humiliation. A general election, even a new referendum, are possible. But so is a hung parliament or a popular rejection of the deal. In that scenario, all bets are off.
There will be more negotiating posturing before agreement is reached, and quieter fears of no deal happening by accident. The UK’s decision-makers, in government or on the backbenches, would be better placed to avoid that risk if they understood why the EU can – and will – contemplate no deal. And why they are sure that the UK cannot.
 Paul McGrade provides senior counsel at Lexington Communications. Previously, he worked at the Foreign Office, the European Commission in Brussels and the Cabinet Office as an advisor on EU treaty negotiations
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
 There’s a certain satisfaction to be had from watching Theresa May struggle through prime minister’s questions, but little in the way of enlightenment. Jeremy Corbyn has finally wised up to the fact that all he needs to do to send the Maybot into a death-rattle is to ask her why the government is in such a mess over Brexit and now does so on a regular basis.
 It’s not the toughest of gigs, as every week there’s any number of organisations – not to mention other countries – lining up to say that Brexit is a shambles, so there’s no shortage of material. But someone’s got to do it and after an indifferent start Corbyn is warming to the task.
 “Yes we do have a plan,” insisted the Maybot, “and our plan is to get the best deal we can for this country.” It’s a running commentary on not giving a running commentary that’s wearing so thin not even she gives the appearance of believing it any more. She appears increasingly brittle and her putdowns lack charm and humour; it can’t be long before a few of her working parts come loose.
 But then there’s little to be learned about the government’s Brexit strategy anywhere these days. Not even at the first meeting of the newly convened Brexit select committee. Despite being chaired by Hilary Benn, one of the most thoughtful and sensitive souls in Westminster, who runs proceedings with the avuncular geniality of a daytime gameshow host, the committee gives every impression of having been set up to fail. With 21 MPs, it is twice the size of any other committee and with half the members hardcore Brexiters and the other half equally dogmatic remainers, the battle lines have been clearly drawn in advance. Neither side is prepared to give an inch.
 The first three unlucky contestants were Simon Fraser, the former top civil servant at the Foreign Office, Catherine Barnard, a professor of European law, and Hannah White from the Institute for Government, the organisation which only the day before had said the government’s Brexit planning was in a total mess. A point of view she was – ever so politely – happy to reiterate. “There may be a good plan,” she said, “but it’s not immediately obvious.”
 Fraser nodded approvingly. Everything was absolutely terrible. There weren’t nearly enough civil servants as it was – God stand up for civil servants – and we’d need far more of them after we’d left the EU than we did now. What’s more, he added, many civil servants were feeling a bit down because they weren’t being remunerated well enough.
 Barnard didn’t try to claim that lawyers weren’t also being paid enough, but she did suggest that Britain would need many more of her colleagues than were currently available. There would be lawyers for the pre-article 50 negotiations, lawyers for the post-article 50 negotiations, lawyers for the transitional, arrangements, lawyers for the post-transitional arrangements. Lawyers for everything. “It’s all much more complicated than anyone imagines,” she said, trying not to smile too widely.
 This was all music to the ears of remain MPs, such as Seema Malhotra, Emma Reynolds and Pat McFadden, who fell over themselves to say how deeply they shared their pain. This was too much for Michael Gove. “There’s always a tendency to say we could do with more civil servants and lawyers,” he said, before cutting straight to the chase. “How about if we say we’ll take whatever hit is required just to get a quicky divorce? Could we leave the EU inside two years then?”
 Fraser looked stunned. Hadn’t Gove listened to a word he had been saying? “Dear boy,” he said eventually, shaking his head more in sorrow than in anger. “You simply don’t understand. There would be so many grey areas.”
 “I’m really not that bovvered,” said Eurosceptic Karl McCartney. “Why don’t we just have done with it and leave the EU inside six months?” In McCartney World, negotiations are done unilaterally and the EU can like it or lump it.
 This time it was Barnard’s turn to have a touch of the vapours. “It took three years for Greenland to leave the EU,” she said, once Benn had revived her with smelling salts. “And all they had to talk about was fish.”
 “Thank you all for coming,” Benn said in summing up. “It’s been a very useful session.” A statement that only made everyone more confused.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
That the British political and media establishment is engrossed by this week’s edition of that long-running psychodrama called Brexit is forgivable; it is their country, and the episode promises to be an action-packed one. But for many Europeans, the meaningful vote is just more of the same: the Brits still don’t know what they want, so the politicians go round and round and round, and then round some more.
It is clear that, for political British journalists and commentators around Westminster, each of these circles is immensely exciting – witness their breathless buildup to this week.
But from the distance that being in the EU affords, none of this is new. For beyond all the noise, precious little has moved in Britain politically for the past two and a half years. This is not chaos. This is paralysis. The country still refuses to face the consequences of its decision to leave, again and again deferring a choice from the post-Brexit options available to it.
And the reason is simple: each of these options involve economic or electoral pain that would rip apart either party, comprised as they are with both remainers, soft-Brexiteers and hard ones.
This refusal to live in the real world made the victory for the leave camp possible in the first place, and it has continued to be the state of affairs in Britain in September 2016, or in July 2017 or indeed in January 2019. So forgive Europeans for suppressing a yawn when they are asked once again to take an interest in a vote that will not bring any further clarity in the only question that matters: have the Brits made up their minds?
Yes, this week’s events may lead to the fall of Theresa May’s pathetically inept and casually mendacious government. So what? The alternative is a Labour party whose leader stopped talking straight the moment he got to power. Neither he nor May have ever levelled with their voters, and the British people generally about all the pain and trade-offs that any form of Brexit is going to bring. Meanwhile the billionaire-owned and -controlled Brexit press continues to spread its lies, distortions and fantasies, building up the politicians who echo them.
So another circle is drawn, and another, and then another. It looks increasingly as if Britain needs the mayhem of a no-deal exit to wake up from its delusions – in much the same way that the increasing death toll in Iraq after the 2003 invasion forced an earlier generation of British politicians to own up to the mess they had made.
As for the EU and the governments of its 27 member states, they have played their side of the Brexit drama very well so far, combining the German talent for Gründlichkeit (thoroughness) with the kind of Cartesian precision that embodies the best of France. All through Brexit, the European side has been radically transparent and admirably disciplined while staying unfailingly polite.
As the European council president, Donald Tusk, put it right after the referendum result: “We miss you already.” Back then, he meant that Europeans would miss Britain as a member state. Two and a half years later, what Europeans miss even more is something much deeper that they had always taken for granted: British common sense.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Boris Johnson seems to have taken Lynton Crosby’s advice, to deny any intention of calling an autumn general election once he’s installed in Downing Street – while, in fact, keeping his options open. The Tory frontrunner might also ask his election strategist what are the chances of leading the Conservatives to victory, and securing a large enough majority to implement Brexit on his terms.
Two polls out this week tell very different stories, especially about the threat from the Brexit party.
While YouGov has the Tories and the Brexit party neck and neck, on 24% and 23% respectively, Ipsos Mori shows Tory supporters outnumbering Nigel Farage’s party by more than two to one (26% to 12%).
Which is right? There is no simple answer. The big difference between the two companies is that Ipsos-Mori conducted its survey by phone, and asked respondents how they would vote, without including the Brexit party in the initial list they gave respondents. YouGov conducted its survey online and presented respondents with a list of parties including the Brexit party. By reminding people about Nigel Farage’s party in the main voting question, YouGov seems to have doubled its support.
In a general election – even more than in the election six weeks ago for the European parliament – the media will give Farage and his candidates plenty of exposure. The gap between the figures from prompted and unprompted voting intention questions will narrow. This suggests YouGov would be the better guide.
However, to the extent that voters feel they are choosing a government rather than making a protest, the Brexit party’s support may well be squeezed – and end up nearer Ipsos Mori’s figure.
The fate of the Brexit party’s support matters to Johnson. It may well not win a single seat. But if it siphons off enough of his voters, it could cost him dozens of Conservative seats where Labour or the Liberal Democrats came a close second two years ago. According to Ipsos Mori, 15% of those who voted Tory in 2017 would vote for the Brexit party today. That’s 2 million lost votes.
That’s bad enough for Johnson, though a strong election campaign might reduce that figure substantially. But YouGov, with its prompted question, says that 38% of those who voted Tory two years ago would back Farage today. That, for Johnson, is a catastrophic 5 million voters. Even if that figure could be halved during the course of an election campaign, it would leave dozens of Conservative MPs in marginal seats facing defeat, and could spell an early end to his premiership.
A separate YouGov survey conducted last week suggests a way Johnson could avoid that risk. Like this week’s poll, it shows the Conservatives and the Brexit party level-pegging, this time with 22% each. But YouGov went on to ask people how they would vote: a) if Johnson was prime minister, Jeremy Corbyn was still Labour’s leader and the Brexit saga remained unresolved; and b) if Johnson had already taken Britain out of the EU.
As those figures show, fighting an election once Brexit has happened would offer a huge advantage for Johnson: Farage’s fox would have been shot. Of the 5 million Tories that YouGov reckons have defected to the Brexit party since 2010, getting on for 4 million would return home.
There is one big downside for Johnson in delaying an election. Labour might acquire a new leader. Its current support – even taking Ipsos Mori’s 24% rather than YouGov’s calamitous 18% – is simply awful for an opposition party facing a government whose record is less than glorious. Ipsos Mori finds that Corbyn’s rating has fallen to the worst of any opposition leader: worse, even, than Michael Foot at his lowest point. A new leader might restore the party’s fortunes.
Johnson’s choice, then, is whether to strike early, while Farage is a threat but Corbyn isn’t – or strike later, post-Brexit, with Farage’s balloon punctured but Labour possibly revived. If I were advising Johnson, my judgment would be that delay is the lesser risk – but it’s no guarantee of victory.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Say what you like about Nigel Farage, he shows a knack for pure politics that, unfortunately, the remain campaign never has. His latest double reverse ferret – coming out in favour of a second referendum, while insisting that it’s “the last thing he wanted” – has for some reason been welcomed by high profile remainers.
The mood seems to be that if “even” Farage agrees with their call for a second referendum on Brexit, that is a sign that they’re winning the argument. Nobody has seemingly considered the idea that if Farage is calling for it then it may not be a good idea. Of course he would love a second referendum because there hasn’t been enough Nigel Farage on the telly for Nigel’s liking lately. He is a shameless egotist who ran Ukip as a vehicle for self-promotion of his own brand. While winning the referendum should have been a grand victory, it has resulted in him being sidelined in favour of actual cabinet ministers. A new campaign would put him front and centre where he feels he is entitled to be. It’s a no-brainer.
A rerun is a win-win proposition for Farage. Another victory for leave secures the UK’s commitment to Brexit and solidifies the idea that people opposed to it are “remoaners” who dislike democracy. A reversal putting remain over the top, meanwhile, can be presented simply as the government holding votes until it gets the answer it wants. And most importantly a remain win would get him back on the TV to complain about it – which is, after all, what he wants more than anything.
The original referendum was toxic, but a rerun would be worse. Human rights campaigner Jude Wanga said: “Statistics show that racist attacks and hate crimes increased significantly post Brexit, on the back of a leave win. With the conversation on immigration still embryonic some 18 months later, the conditions for migrants to be able to safely campaign no longer exist, nor have any conversations around a second referendum addressed this point.”
This latter point reveals some of the deeper problems with remain. Like the hashtag “resistance” in the US, the nebulous coalition has done little to engage with the underlying problems that gave rise to Brexit, preferring to engage in symbolic self-indulgences like starting dozens of go-nowhere “centrist” parties on Twitter. By treating the non-London hinterlands of “Brexit Britain” as a place populated by a homogenous blob of white working-class flat-cap wearers with charming accents and misguided view who simply need to understand the truth explained to them by their betters, they have failed to come up with any positive argument for EU membership.
What they have is arguments that leaving will make things worse. The problem is that while they may be correct in the most part, they still amount to an argument for keeping the status quo. “Let’s go back to 2015 when everything was OK for me, personally” will not resonate with the post-industrial areas where the status quo feels bleak already. A new campaign’s best hope would be that people see how badly Brexit is being carried out and decide to not bother, but negative campaigns are dangerous territory where you end up hoping that more of your opponents’ voters stay home than your own, and this can easily backfire.
Strategically, any new remain campaign would have to have Labour onside. Corbyn has reaffirmed this weekend that a second referendum is not Labour policy. As with all political positions this could change, but it’s very unlikely that a significant number of Labour MPs would wish to sway the leadership on this issue. Over 60% of Labour voters may sway remain, but over 60% of Labour’s constituencies went leave. Campaigning for remain again as an MP in a leave-voting area would require careful navigation through numerous land mines, and it’s likely that any nuanced position short of full-throated pro-EU cheerleading will be attacked first and foremost by hardcore remainers, because that’s what they’ve been doing since the referendum and that is what they are comfortable with.
Running a remain campaign that attempts to speak to the crises of underemployment and destitution in high-leave voting areas while facing down the anti-immigrant rhetoric will be difficult enough. Once you factor in the internal splits along centrist/leftist lines, background briefings to the Mail and the Sun about how Corbyn is a closet leaver, and the relentless self-sabotage that will inevitably occur, it looks like a nightmare that is likely to result in any fragile remain coalition permanently fractured and blaming each other for a 55:45 loss.
Democracy is more than just voting, and democratic engagement involves more than simply polling to see whether A or B has a bigger fan club this year. Brexit should have been a wakeup call to get people up and out into the messy world of actual politics – something Labour, despite criticism from referendum obsessives, has started to do. Eighteen months on, it’s clear that the remain hardliners would rather replay a fight with Farage to show that they were right all along than meaningfully engage with any of the ways in which they were, and still are, wrong.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
An eerie truth is starting to dawn. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn agree on Brexit. They are both realists. They know Britain needs a customs union with the EU. Perhaps they should go off to a Welsh mountain together, and do a Trump/Putin? Either way, it is time for parliament to offer united support to Britain’s negotiators in Brussels, as it did to the leave decision on article 50.
On Sunday, May’s former education secretary, Justine Greening, added to her misery by calling her Chequers negotiating compromise a fudge. All compromises are that. In truth Chequers was a tactical way-station to the inevitable: a customs union. It was not ideal, but it was progress, and anything else is fantasy. Greening complains May’s union would leave Britain with “no say on shaping” EU trade rules. But that is what leave meant. In reality, Norway, the US, even China, have plenty of say on trade rules with the EU where it affects them. Trade on goods with the EU is a trivial aspect of Brexit.
Greening, a desperate remainer, joined calls for a second referendum on Brexit, though on the BBC’s Today programme she confused a referendum on “the Chequers deal”, which she calls unworkable, with a referendum on “the final negotiated deal”, which is as yet unknown. The idea of asking the electorate its opinion during a negotiation is absurd. The constitutional position is clear. The vote was “to leave the EU”. It is for parliament and those negotiating on its behalf to decide how.
According to Greening, parliament is in stalemate over Brexit, yet there is wide parliamentary support for customs union. The jam is party political. This week promises more chaos over amendments to the Brexit bill, but out of it must come a “coalition of sanity” in favour of customs union. Britain’s negotiators in Brussels cannot go on talking when the other side knows they have a divided political community behind them.
The reality is that the argument over a customs union is a distraction, largely because it has allowed the hard Brexiters to talk about “making our own trade deals”, when this is pie in the sky. Every poll of leave voters shows them uninterested in trade barriers with Europe. What they wanted, and still want, is a degree of immigration control. This wholly separate issue is hotly debated across Europe at present, and can at least be put on hold.
When this process is over and Britain has embarked on a transitional period of leaving the EU, it might indeed be sensible, as in 1975, to heal the bruised body politic with a second referendum. The mind boggles at the consequence of it being lost. More plausible would be for parliament to agree to seek a fresh electoral mandate for the leadership of post-Brexit Britain. Then I suspect we shall wonder what all the fuss was about.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
One man’s fish is another man’s poisson. Not for much longer, it seems.
French fishermen are growing alarmed. They fear a no-deal Brexit will exclude them from “British” waters where they have fished for centuries. The same applies to fishers from Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.
More surprisingly (to some), fears of a cliff-edge Brexit are also sending waves of panic through parts of the UK fishing industry.
After years of one-sided propaganda – “our fish”, “plundering Europeans”, “a sea of opportunity” – a more complicated picture of European fishing benefits and losses is finally breaking the surface.
The nets of the UK and its maritime neighbours have been inextricably tangled for centuries. Cutting them apart will be calamitous for some European fleets – especially for boats from Brittany, Normandy and the Pas de Calais. It will also be disastrous for locally important and ecologically sustainable parts of the British industry.
Fisheries (0.12% of the UK economy) have been a powerful symbol for Brexiteers. They may now become one of the starkest examples of the folly of no deal.
British shellfish sales to the EU (mostly France and Spain) are worth £430m a year – more than a quarter of all UK fish exports by value. They are vital to small-scale fishermen in Scotland and the West Country. They will be devastated overnight if the UK loses paper-free access to the EU single market.
The promised instant bonanza for longer-distance British fishing fleets has also drifted into a fog bank. With just over two months remaining before a potential no-deal B-Day, utter confusion reigns in Whitehall on what will happen to fishing law and fishing rights on 1 November.
Will EU boats be excluded immediately, as the Brexit party and its acolyte Fishing for Leave stridently insist? Who will enforce the new rules or lack of rules when the Royal Navy has only 12 protection vessels to cover a sea area three times the size of the UK? Will British boats be able to fish whatever and wherever they want to fish?
One fishing industry leader said: “The word is that, if no deal happens, EU quotas will probably be maintained until the end of the year and maybe longer. But on what legal basis? And what happens then? After 10 years of government cuts, the civil service no longer has the manpower or institutional knowledge to sort out stuff like this.”
A myth has been propagated by Brexiteers. There is a single “British fishing industry” which will benefit from reclaiming the “60/70/80% of British fish” caught by EU boats.
No, there isn’t. There are competing interests. English v Scottish; deep-sea fishing v inshore fishing; industrial v family-scale boats; fishers v processors. Some of the most vibrant, locally important and ecologically respectful parts of the UK industry have nothing to gain and everything to lose from Brexit.
They depend on shellfish, lobsters, crabs and langoustines (crayfish) that are quota-free or are overwhelmingly allocated to the UK. More than 80% is sold to the continent (mostly Spain and France). This trade has grown large because of the border-free EU single market.
Post-Brexit, trucks arriving in France with fish caught by scores of small boats will have to supply scores of “origin” and “health” documents – one for each boat and each catch. Traders will have to find UK local inspectors in working hours to verify the origin of the seafood and vets to certify its quality.
Little planning has been done in the UK to make any of that possible. The highly perishable trade will add to, and suffer from, the chaos in cross-Channel trade forecast by the leaked government Yellowhammer document. Add to the bouillabaisse the action likely to be taken by justifiably angry French fishermen …
Justifiably? We are encouraged to believe that it was the EU that first allowed foreign boats to fish in British waters (the exclusive economic zone of up to 200 miles). It wasn’t. The common fisheries policy, first established in 1983, enshrined historic fishing rights. The quotas were based on 1970s catches but the fishing pattern went back for decades and in some cases centuries.
Olivier Leprêtre, the president of the northern France fisheries committee, says: “Fishermen have always followed the fish. At the start of the last century, my great grandfather fished in the Thames estuary.”
He and other French fishermen’s leaders are threatening to block UK fish imports if they lose all access to British waters on 1 November. They are not planning to blockade Channel ports but they will stop British fish from leaving the Calais area.
International law will, arguably, be on their side. When it becomes an independent “coastal state”, the UK is obliged by the UN law of the sea to negotiate conservation and access deals with its neighbours.
A case can be made for changes in the EU quota patterns and extra quotas for British boats. A fairer share for inshore (under 12 metre) boats is long overdue.
But such changes demand patient negotiation not confrontation or instant abrogation of centuries-old rights. No negotiation has yet started. When they do, they may last many months.
In the meantime, several large British boats, dependent on EU-agreed quotas in Norwegian waters, will have to suspend fishing if EU law lapses in the UK on 31 October. Other British fishermen, wound up by the xenophobic rhetoric of Fishing for Leave, will expect to claim their off-shore “bonanza” immediately. Since no new quotas have been drawn up, they look likely to be disappointed – and very angry.
Just how much extra fish might there eventually be for the British fleet? UK boats catch just 40% of the tonnage of fish caught in British waters but they already catch more than 60% by value.
French and German boats take a lot of saithe (a relative of the cod) which UK consumers don’t like. Much of the fish caught by Danish boats is so-called industrial species (sprats and horse mackerel) which go to feed pigs. Horse mackerel and chips, anyone?
Overall, the UK imports 70% of the fish we eat and exports 80% of what we catch. The UK already has most of the quotas for haddock and generous quotas for cod (which is anyway growing scarce once again).
For British boats to catch what EU boats now catch – the so-called “sea of opportunity” – would demand radical changes in British eating habits and/or fish processing and exporting industries. Neither can happen overnight. Where would we wish to export much of the promised El Dorado of fish? To the European Union.
In the immediate wake of a no-deal Brexit, British fishermen may end up with the worst of all worlds. They will face calamitous delays and bureaucracy on overnight fish sales to the continent. The government will be obliged by international law to delay distribution of quotas while it enters lengthy talks with the EU27 and the Norwegians.
One British inshore fishing industry leader said: “If Brexit happens, there will, eventually, be a few people who make a lot of money. But they will probably be the big-scale skippers and industrial-scale companies who are already rich. I don’t see much for struggling coastal communities or smaller fishermen. Those who depend on the EU market could be wiped out.”
Conclusion. You can win a political argument with lies and myths. Governing or negotiating with them is as useful as fishing without nets.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
It is finally happening. After 40 years of membership of the European Union, the UK is now on course for an extreme Brexit that will have serious implications for all of our lives. Many aspects of the UK’s departure from the EU have been pored over. But one of the most profoundly impacted areas, our environmental policy, has barely been discussed.
For those of us in the environment movement, a lack of attention doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Despite “the environment” actually meaning the air that we breathe, the water we drink and the food that eat, it’s rarely talked about in British politics. But, when it comes to Brexit, it is astonishing that the environmental consequences aren’t getting more of an airing.
Membership of the EU has been essential for environmental protection. The habitats and birds directives, for example, provide far stronger safeguards than any of our domestic laws by protecting specific species and the places they live. Moreover, challenges such as air pollution, sewage in the seas and threats to migrating species don’t queue up politely at national borders, waiting for their passports to be checked. By their very nature, environmental problems are trans-boundary. And from wildlife protections to energy efficiency, marine conservation to air pollution, the EU has been at the forefront of measures to keep our shared world clean and healthy.
To measure the effects of Brexit on our environment here in Britain, just look at the numbers of laws that will be affected. According to research by the House of Commons Library, which I’ve made public in a report published today, more than 1,100 of our environmental laws have been made at European level.
The government plans to simply cut and paste these laws into our statute books, but legal and environmental experts have been quick to point out that the transfer process will be far from simple, with the risk that protections will be lost, watered down or – perhaps most likely – ignored. Even the environment secretary, Andrea Leadsom, has admitted that up to a third of these laws won’t be easily transferable.
By leaving the EU we also risk creating a serious vacuum when it comes to enforcing compliance with environmental rules and targets. At present the European commission and European court of justice monitor and act upon breaches of legislation. With no similar system in place in the UK, these laws could become unenforceable.
And that’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the environmental challenges we face. Once the UK is outside the EU, there will be much greater probability of legislative change in the UK, more exposure to short-term political calculations, and a danger that investors will be wary of potentially higher risks. The relative attractiveness of the UK as a place for green investment is in danger of being further eroded.
Britain may be left behind when it comes to the development of existing EU law too. Take, for example, the EU’s chemicals policy known as Reach, amended no fewer than 38 times since its creation in 2006. Chemicals are a crucial British export – worth £24.7bn per year – with over half of all sales going to the EU, and we seriously risk jobs in that industry if a gap opens up between EU standards and our own.
Theresa May’s hasty courting of the United States in pursuit of a new free trade agreement should also be ringing alarm bells, as ministers may be tempted to yield to pressure to water down regulations in their haste to demonstrate the “success” of post-Brexit trade arrangements – such as those on genetically modified organisms, pesticides and animal hormones. US-style “bleached” chicken and hormone-treated beef could soon be making their way on to our supermarket shelves.
From the sheer number of laws to be transposed and the complexity of their enforcement, to the risks to green investment and the dangers of trade deals watering down our environmental protections, the challenges we face are clear. In the midst of the current political chaos, it would be easy for those on the right, who persist in their mistaken view of regulation as a “burden” on the free market, to attack the protections so many of us has fought so hard to win.
To avoid the worst, it will not be enough to trust the government’s warm words. We need a “green guarantee” that will deliver on Leadsom’s commitment “to be the first generation to leave our environment better than we found it”. This would take the shape of a coherent plan to maintain and enhance environmental standards, ambitions and drivers during and after the Brexit process.
Central to a green guarantee would be a commitment to continued membership of cross-border organisations such as the European Environment Agency, introducing key concepts like the precautionary principle into the UK statute – meaning that laws aren’t passed that risk environmental damage. It would also involve creating a new environment act to ensure no protections slip through the net as regulations are transferred to Britain.
With such a cocktail of threats facing our environment, it’s more important than ever that we stand up to defend and enhance the protections that we have. For the sake of our children and grandchildren – and to ensure that the long fought for progress we’ve seen isn’t reversed – it’s down to all of us to unite and push for policies that curtail the very real risks we face.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
A prospect far more threatening than Brexit is emerging: a reasonable deal for the UK. Reports from Brussels suggest a compromise is doing the rounds under which it would be given continued access to the single market plus concessions on freedom of movement. This would be a grave mistake. If Britain comes out of this looking anything less than severely diminished it will be devastating for the EU.
Call it Project Pain. When the EU starts negotiating the terms of its divorce from the UK it must aim to inflict maximum political and economic damage. Financial powers should be repatriated from London and it must become nearly impossible for Asian, US or African multinationals to continue to have their EU headquarters in the UK. Universities, companies and cities must receive generous help to attract the best minds from their UK rivals, for instance by offering EU passports. There are many more blows the EU can deliver to make sure the UK faces a dark decade of economic stagnation and political isolation. Ideally, its economy should not get back to its pre-referendum size before, say, 2030.
The first argument for hurting the UK is by now well rehearsed: prevent another reckless exit on the basis of lies. Europhobe parties across Europe are anxious to repeat the feat of their British counterparts: using distortions, half-truths, racism and delusional fantasies to cheat their way to victory. The Europhobes are fully aware that there exists a clear trade-off between national sovereignty and economic prosperity, with more of the one meaning less of the other. They also know that if they frame the dilemma of European cooperation in these terms they will never win. So they lie, cheat and incite. Taking a leaf from the leave campaign playbook, they are sure to dismiss as Project Fear warnings by experts about the disastrous consequences. What better way to puncture these myths than pointing to the economic disaster that will be Britain?
As with all divorces, hurting one’s former partner is sure to provoke feelings of guilt. But these will dissipate as Europeans finally face up to just how abusive the political relationship has been. Especially in the past decade, the EU has been patient as the UK government has missed no opportunity to undermine, disparage, blackmail and even actively sabotage European politics. Push harder than anyone for enlargement, as the UK did, then criticise the EU for being too big and unwieldy. Pull yourself out of the coalition with Angela Merkel’s party in the European parliament to join a motley crew of Europhobe fringe parties, as David Cameron did with his Conservatives, then claim you are not getting anything done in the European parliament.
When the eurozone was hanging by a thread, George Osborne thought it necessary to announce to the world that no country was better prepared for Grexit than Britain. Then, when there was a deal on the euro mess, the UK vetoed it. Think, too, of when France was trying to reduce inequality by raising taxes on the rich, and the UK government sadistically rolled out the red carpet for French millionaires. Remember the daily heaps of abuse aimed at Europe in British newspapers over the past decades. And then there is Nigel Farage, who seems to have a compulsive need to insult his colleagues in Brussels.
The fact is that much of the British political elite has been using the EU as a football for their own irresponsibly petty ends. Cameron promised a referendum for party political purposes while expecting to trade that promise in coalition talks with the Lib Dems – only to see his side win an absolute majority in the elections, forcing him to act on his promise. Cameron then went to Brussels to blackmail other European leaders into giving him “concessions” – otherwise he would back the leave camp. Boris Johnson, for his part, believed that losing the referendum would land him the job of next prime minister so he joined leave – only to see his side win.
Which brings us to the second argument for Project Pain. Not since the Iraq war has British democracy looked less legitimate, and the parallels are striking: the use of deceitful manipulation to sell the idea, the macho swagger of its proponents and delusions about the outcome. There is no hope of British democracy cleansing itself until the architects of this Brexit disaster are hung out to dry, their careers and reputations destroyed. Indeed, this will be a good way to measure a decade from now if Project Pain has been a success. Will the names of Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom and Nigel Farage evoke the same disgust as Tony Blair and George W Bush do today?
Calling for the ruining of a fellow European country feels terrible, but it is not Europe’s fault that the UK has voted to pit itself against a bloc nine times its size. Still, Europeans need to remind themselves that millions of Britons did everything they could to prevent this catastrophe. It is vital, too, that European leaders – as Merkel and François Hollande did last week – continue to emphasise that this very raw deal for the UK is not about punishment – indeed, the EU has far too much on its plate to indulge in therapeutic vindictiveness.
Project Pain is about protecting the EU from arsonists elsewhere and about helping British democracy reinvent itself. Were the latter to happen this story would have at least something of a happy ending, and we could look back on it perhaps not as Project Pain but as Project Tough Love.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Article 50, providing for Brexit, will be triggered by the end of March next year, Theresa May has promised. Two years after it is triggered, Britain will find itself outside the European Union, unless there is unanimous agreement among the other member states to extend the time limit.
Contrary to popular perceptions, article 50 inaugurates a withdrawal process, not a trade agreement. It will involve negotiating essentially technical issues, though important ones – such as the rights of British citizens in the EU and of EU citizens in the UK – and can be achieved within the two-year limit.
Article 50 does allow for a shadow negotiation on trade matters. But, clearly, the EU cannot conclude a trade agreement with another country until that country ceases to be a member, and it is highly unlikely that a detailed trade agreement can be achieved within two years. When, in 1985, Greenland – whose population is smaller than that of Uxbridge, and whose one staple industry is fishing – withdrew, an agreement took three years to negotiate.
In any case, EU procedures for ratifying most trade agreements are far more stringent than for ratifying a withdrawal agreement, which requires merely a qualified majority in the council and a majority in the European parliament. A trade agreement would probably require unanimity in the council, a majority in the European parliament, and also ratification in national parliaments as well as in some regional parliaments – for example, those of Flanders and Wallonia. That involves 36 legislatures, each of which has a veto.
Matters would be easier, of course, were Britain to emulate Norway and join the European Economic Area. That, however, was established for countries proposing to join Europe, not leave it. The EEA obliges member states to incorporate not only current EU laws but also future legislation into domestic law, and to accept the principle of free movement. It also subjects member states to review by a European court – not the European Court of Justice, but the court of the European Free Trade Association – and requires a contribution to the EU budget. Per head, Norway currently pays around 83% of the British contribution.
Since the Brexiteers wanted to end the supremacy of European law, supervision by a European court and contributions to the EU budget, this option will hardly satisfy them. It would indeed be worse than EU membership since it would involve EU regulation without representation, a kind of colonial status in which Britain would be dependent on others to look after its interests.
Some suggest the Swiss relationship as an alternative. Switzerland has negotiated, over a period of 20 years, some 120 bilateral deals with the EU. These have to be regularly revised and renegotiated to take account of new EU laws, a cumbersome procedure. The EU dislikes this arrangement, and wants it to converge towards the Norwegian model. It is highly unlikely to replicate so broken a model for Britain.
Remaining in the EU customs union but outside the EU is open to the obvious objection that when the EU signs a trade agreement with a third country, that third country would have access to British markets but Britain would have no access to those of the third country.
Britain therefore may well find itself in 2019 trading under the rules of the World Trade Organisation – of which it was an original member – while still negotiating trade agreements with the EU and other countries. WTO membership, if Britain moved towards freer trade, would allow it to benefit from cheaper food from outside Europe – EU prices on beef and veal are currently around 30% higher than world prices – as well as cheaper cars, textiles and other goods subject to the EU’s common external tariff.
But the irony is that, contrary to the hopes of many Brexiteers, leaving the EU will expose Britain to more globalisation, not less; and in a more competitive and harsher world it will be the “left behind”, those most likely to have voted for Brexit, who will suffer the most.
Brexit, therefore, will be Margaret Thatcher’s revenge. It will suit the vision of the Tory right, which hopes that outside the EU Britain could become like Hong Kong or Singapore, a global trading hub. These two territories have no natural resources except for their brains, which they use to the full.
We, by contrast, have a deep-seated skills problem, first noticed by Joseph Chamberlain – the hero of Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s special adviser – well over 100 years ago. The priority, if May’s socially responsible capitalism is to become a reality, must be a radical skills policy. That means more resources devoted to further education colleges, currently the Cinderellas of the education service, and to university technical colleges, for those whose skills are technical and vocational rather than academic.
In 1950 Britain was asked to engage with the continent by joining the European Coal and Steel Community, precursor of the EU. The then foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, declined, warning that once one opened that Pandora’s box, all sorts of Trojan horses would fly out. Today it’s clear that Brexit too will release a multitude of Trojan horses.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
I am what you could call a Brexit Brit – an EU citizen who applied to become British in case the referendum returned a leave result.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve wanted to be British for a long time. My love affair with the UK started when I left Germany aged 16 to do an exchange year at a school in rural Shropshire. One half term, we travelled to London to see The Mousetrap, and as soon as we stepped off the train, I hoped this city would be my home some day.
It now is, and has been for most of the past 13 years, along with stints in Glasgow, Manchester and Howden, east Yorkshire. I have seen and experienced so many sides of this beautiful island, from the bustling cities to stunning countryside. But most of all I love its funny, quirky people, the national love of an underdog, the determination to always find a solution to any problem and the mix of so many different people from other countries and backgrounds who make it such an exciting place to live.
I’m married to a British citizen, I’ve built a life here, this is home. But the more than £1,000 fee for the citizenship application always seemed a bit steep. Not least because I enjoyed all the rights a Brit has anyway, except being allowed to vote in elections.
Then David Cameron actually set a date for that referendum, and suddenly I was in a rush. I didn’t really believe people would vote to leave, but you never know. So last November I painstakingly filled in the application, passed the Life in the UK test, sent everything off to the Home Office and put the fee on my credit card.
I spent four months fretting about whether I had remembered the right date I first arrived at Heathrow, and if I had correctly totted up each and every trip I’ve taken over the past three years. Ironically, the approval letter arrived when I was abroad. I got the news over the phone just outside St Peter’s Basilica in Rome; the assembled pilgrims probably didn’t appreciate my yelps of “Oh my God!”.
I was ecstatic. Finally, I would be both German and British, and even if the UK voted to leave – which was then still a very remote possibility in my mind – I would be “safe”. The ceremony at a London town hall – on April Fool’s Day – was unexpectedly emotional, and as much as I tried to stay cool, I did choke up and cry a little when we sang God Save the Queen.
Since the referendum, however, that initial happiness and pride has been tainted by a feeling of disappointment, a fear I may have misjudged my adopted home, and rejection. Not necessarily the horrendous “you’re not wanted here” kind that some people have experienced, but a sense of a dismissal of the European ideal I firmly believe in.
The leave vote to me was a “no” to nations working together for a better future and to prevent another war in Europe, among all the other things. And that is one way in which I still feel very German. For many young Germans, myself included, being European is something to be proud of, whereas being German is not. The German former head of the V&A, Martin Roth, has said that if you’re born in the 1950s you’re not proud to be German – and that is still true if you’re a child of the 80s, like me.
Speaking to my German friends before the referendum, one thing that kept coming up was how proud they were to be Europeans. It means transcending nationality and meeting, working and living with people from different countries and backgrounds. Germans are particularly invested in the European project because it has ensured peace in this part of Europe for over 70 years.
It has also been a chance to be part of something more than a nation haunted by its brutal history. Reports that descendants of tens of thousands of German Jews who fled the Nazis and found refuge in Britain are now thinking about using their legal right to become German citizens is perhaps indicative of how much Germany has changed. But Germans will also be among the first to understand that some feel ambivalent about doing so.
Most Germans still don’t have the happy patriotism that many of the British have, with union jacks on their cushions and mugs, no questions asked. Many even try to hide their Germanness when they’re abroad; we are obsessed with losing any trace of an accent and thrilled when someone reckons we are from x, y or z, as long as no one guesses Germany.
So for me becoming British was also an expression of feeling able to be proud of the UK’s openness and diversity. While far from being perfect, it always seemed to be miles ahead of Germany in its acceptance of people from all around the world. However, the rise in xenophobic and racist crimes since June – and more recently the hateful backlash against the high court judges ruling on who can trigger article 50 and the campaigners who brought the case – are making me question whether the Britain I thought I knew really is liberal and forward-thinking.
Six months into my new nationality, I still believe Britain to be one of the best countries to live on Earth. But it is vital that we stand up for the openness and diversity that make it great rather than leave our fortunes to those who would rather we turn inwards and close the doors.
Last modified on Thu 21 Feb 2019 14.17 GMT
If a metaphor could sum up last week’s G20 summit, it might be called the “Brownian motion”. In the early 19th century, the Scottish scientist Robert Brown observed pollen grains in water through a microscope and was struck by the continuous, jittery and random movements of molecules. His Brownian motion theory described perpetual, seemingly haphazard fluctuations.
But the chaos on the streets was in the end less worrying than the diplomatic mess: indeed global governance went almost awol. Angela Merkel, German chancellor and host of the summit, perhaps captured this best when she spoke of a “period of unrest in the world”, and the need to make things “somewhat quieter”.
Arguably the biggest blow to that effort came with Donald Trump’s Warsaw speech, in which he tried to single-handedly redefine “the west” and centre it on a white ethnic nationalism with a strong Christian, traditionalist streak. Defending the principles of democracy, or upholding post-1945 and post-1989 international frameworks, do not feature in it. It’s not that Trump wants to dismantle the west, it’s that he wants to recast it as a bigoted and intolerant entity in which the legacy of the Enlightment is all but eradicated. Nato, yes, but with none of the values mentioned in the Atlantic charter.
No European leader was asked to comment on this speech at the G20, but be sure the Russian president will have paid close attention to it. Indeed, Trump’s twisted, anti-pluralistic vision sits perfectly alongside Vladimir Putin’s ideological priorities.
But this was just the first instalment of an increasingly erratic world scene. More Brownian motion was evident when the Europeans appeared to scramble for Chinese support against Trump. To be sure, Xi Jinping has been adept at casting his country as a defender of a rules-based multinational system. On the surface, this looks like the perfect antidote to Trump’s protectionism and disdain for UN conventions and international agreements.
But Xi’s opportunism hardly means he’s a reliable ally for Europe. And if Nobel peace prizewinner Liu Xiaobo’s fate is anything to go by, Xi would be hard-pressed to ever side with Europe’s understanding of individual freedoms.
The much scrutinised Trump-Putin encounter certainly appeared to end with a win for the Russian president. Putin capitalised on Trump’s haste to “accept” assurances that Moscow hadn’t meddled in US elections. A 135-minute discussion in Hamburg was more than enough to fortify the Putin regime’s narrative about restoring a bipolar world, with Russia and the US cast as equals.
Likewise, headlines about Trump being isolated and confronted by the other 19 participants of the summit were striking. He did look like the odd man out, making eyes roll and seeming to draw drawing sarcastic comments, especially when he had his daughter Ivanka sit in for him at a meeting.
But much remains in flux. For one thing, compromises were forged for a convoluted G20 final statement. On climate, it’s true that Trump was given something of a dressing down, but the G20 document partly went his way by referring to the use of “fossil fuels”. And on trade, although the G20 warned against “protectionism”, it also recognised “the role of legitimate trade defence instruments”.
If anything, this was an admission that the anti-globalisation mood around the world cannot be ignored. It sent the message that open, free trade should come with safeguards, like reciprocity and the protection of strategic sectors. Against that backdrop, China’s hardball approach to trade may turn into more of a challenge for the Europeans than Trump’s instincts already have.
In fact, nothing was set in stone at this G20, nor perhaps could it be, in a world of unhinged competition and nationalist passions. The Trump-Putin meeting did look like a bromance in the making, but it was also notable that there was no indication of a “grand bargain” or a Yalta 2.0 under way.
To be sure, Russia will not have given up on its strategic calculus of carving out a sphere of influence in Europe. Nor are Trump’s intentions exactly clear. But it’s hard to overlook the fact that the many scandals plaguing his presidency make it difficult for him to hand Putin concrete concessions, even if he wished to. Trump’s weekend tweet cancelling plans for a joint US-Russia “cybersecurity centre” was a case in point.
In fact, Trump could well be paralysed. This offers Europeans some space, but hardly dispels the many uncertainties. The US retreat from Europe was already at play under Barack Obama, but Trump’s brand of ultra-conservative ideological engagement is more worrying. His Warsaw speech carried an apocalyptic vision of “survival” in the face of migration and Islam. It echoed the thinking of Europe’s far right, as well as Putin’s obsession with the EU’s supposed decadence.
Still, it is hard to know whether a political agenda of this sort will bring concrete policies, such as paving the way for a consolidated US-Russia axis of illiberalism. Trump remains a maverick, after all. And the crises in the Middle East, as well as the situation in Ukraine, hardly make for easy convergence in policies.
So there’s a global Brownian motion happening before our eyes. A lot is happening, but much of it looks absurd, and we are left counting the zig-zags and collisions. It might be that some changes of direction – such as a Europe-China grouping against the US – will deliver results. But it could also be that events will cancel most of this out.
Still, if there’s one thing this G20 will have made plain for a country like Britain, it is that pandering to Trump now comes with greater risks than before. Britain’s government seems to be reaching out to an America that is simply not there any more. Brexit means finding oneself alone, separate from a now reinvigorated European club – a molecule cast around by random colliding forces. If this G20 has had a useful lesson, perhaps that was it: that the world has gone haywire, and the words “take back control” have an empty ring.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
Theresa May launched her election campaign warning about a coalition of chaos and now she is leading one. It won’t work and can’t last. After the election result we have just had, we can’t return to politics as usual with a May-led Tory government. So three things need to happen now.
First we can’t carry on with May as prime minister, propped up by the DUP. The prime minister called an unnecessary election, made it a referendum on her leadership, and then lost. How can she possibly stay in post?
She lacks the skills needed to handle a hung parliament – to be collegiate, to listen, be open and compromise. Much more important, it goes against the national interest for there to be a formal deal between the government and the DUP. The Northern Ireland peace process is very fragile at the moment, with a stand-off under way between Sinn Féin and the DUP. The UK government, which is supposed to be a neutral guarantor, just decided to pick sides.
As for the government’s programme, there is no mandate for cuts to school budgets, ending free school meals or the “dementia tax”. And since a mean and rightwing Tory manifesto has been rejected, it must not be allowed to reinstate it through a backroom deal. What have they promised the DUP? What more will they promise for each crucial vote? Are there any red lines over abortion or LGBT rights?
This deal and this prime minister are not in the national interest and that’s why Labour will keep challenging them and vote against the Queen’s speech next week.
Second, as the political chaos won’t be resolved quickly, we need to find an alternative cross-party way to conduct the Brexit negotiations.
May chose to call this snap election after the article 50 clock started ticking. Negotiations need to start. But they can’t be done by a small Tory cabal. This is the biggest issue for our country for a generation and if the deal is going to be sustainable it needs cross-party support and a broad consensus behind it. After the referendum last year, I called for the government to approach this in a cross-party way to get the best deal. Now it is more important than ever. There is neither strength nor stability in a narrow, bunkered one-party approach; you need to include people with different ideas to get the best deal and widest support.
So we should set up a small cross-party commission to conduct the negotiations, and have a clear and transparent process to build consensus behind the final deal. It should be accountable to parliament but avoid getting caught up in the inevitable hung parliament political rows.
It’s true there is no precedent for this. But there’s no precedent for anything any more. No one will get everything they want. Everyone will have to compromise. But in the national interest we all have a responsibility to work in a grown-up way now over the Brexit negotiations.
Third, we need to be prepared for another general election at any time. We all have an obligation to make work the hung parliament the electorate have voted for. Most people – including probably most politicians, party supporters and journalists – will feel weary at the prospect of yet another poll. But if the government completely unravels, or a new Tory leader wants to gamble again, it could happen at any time.
For Labour that means standing ready to build on the gains and successes of Thursday night, and then go further, winning back places we lost, such as Mansfield, too. Jeremy Corbyn’s campaigning inspired young voters and we need them to support us again, as well as persuading more people to back us in the face of May’s attempt to cling on to power as if nothing has changed.
For the first few weeks of the campaign all we heard was about “strong and stable government”.
Not any more. Business as usual just won’t do as a response to this general election result. For the sake of Brexit negotiations, peace in Northern Ireland and people across the country who voted for something better, politics needs to rise to the challenge and change.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Appearances matter a lot in politics. But in the end, the numbers matter more. On Brexit as on everything else, Theresa May has always behaved as if she is a prime minister with a clear parliamentary majority, a united party and a reconciled country behind her. But the reality is that she is none of these things, and Wednesday’s four-vote Commons defeat has found her out.
May’s prime ministership is doomed to be defined by the jagged interface between two unreconciled mandates. The first, on Brexit, she did not want but has inherited. The second, a post-referendum parliamentary majority, she desired but was denied. The disjunction between the two outcomes still shapes everything about her government.
It is not sufficiently understood that May called the 2017 general election in part so that she would have a post-referendum parliamentary mandate to drive through the hard Brexit to which she committed – consulting only Nick Timothy – in autumn 2016. She needed that majority, so she persuaded herself, in order to compel pro-European Tories to vote in line with the manifesto and against their beliefs, and support her version of Brexit.
Politics today would be different if she had succeeded. True, nothing will stop Ken Clarke and perhaps Anna Soubry from voting against Brexit in whatever form it is presented. But May’s attempt to parliamentarise the referendum result – to translate an advisory plebiscite into a manifesto commitment for a re-elected representative government to carry out – failed. That failure changed everything, even though May has continued to pretend and perhaps believe otherwise.
The result was a corridor of uncertainty between the moral force of the leave vote in 2016 and the moral depletion of the lost majority in 2017. That space is the political achilles heel, not just of May but of Brexit itself. It makes it much easier for MPs of all parties, but crucially for Tory rebel MPs, to oppose a hard Brexit, aspects of Brexit and even any Brexit at all. It has now permitted, in the words of yesterday’s Daily Mail front page, “11 self-consumed malcontents [to] pull the rug from under our EU negotiators” in Wednesday’s vote.
Strictly speaking, this vote was not about Brexit at all, but about legislative process. Dominic Grieve’s amendment is often described as a commitment to give parliament a “meaningful vote” about the outcome of the Brexit talks between the UK and the EU. But it does not say this in the words that have now been added to clause 9 of the EU withdrawal bill. Those new words say that ministers cannot now issue the regulations they intended to use to implement a Brexit deal without passing a new statute to authorise them.
As several MPs from both sides of the Brexit argument pointed out in the debate this week, the government could have nipped the revolt in the bud by withdrawing the clause in the bill authorising the power to issues regulations. Something of that sort may yet happen before the bill heads to the Lords in the new year.
The impeccably principled procedural focus of Grieve’s amendment gave him a defence against being anti-Brexit, and helped to make voting against the government into an act that promoted parliamentary sovereignty against the executive, rather than an attempt to scupper the leavers. But it also produced Wednesday afternoon’s extended debate-within-a-debate in which Oliver Letwin argued, surely correctly, that Grieve’s amendment in practice permitted parliament to throw out a Brexit deal and thus to throw out Brexit itself.
In the end, this is why the vote this week was so important. In the short run, the public reminder of her weakness is embarrassing to May as she confirms her initial Brexit deal with the EU in Brussels – though she’s hardly the only leader round the dinner table with domestic political problems. It is nevertheless also a signal that the rebels can walk the walk as well as talk the talk and have to be taken more seriously – not least next Wednesday, when there is the vote on May’s foolish attempt to write the 29 March 2019 date into the withdrawal bill. All this was dismissed rather too easily before this week. It takes a lot of the gloss off what might otherwise have been a good week for the prime minister in the Brexit process.
Yet the deeper importance of Wednesday’s vote is that it keeps the Brexit issues in play. Remember the key development of the week: the Commons vote means there must be a government bill at the end of the Brexit talks. The earliest realistic date for that would be autumn 2018. Bills can be amended, perhaps over specific soft/hard policy issues in the deal, such as membership of the customs union, but also by the addition of requirements to hold a referendum on the terms, or to request an extension of the article 50 process to accommodate further talks or to allow time for a second referendum to be held. Bills can even be defeated. Though unlikely, it is not inconceivable that the May government could fall on a Brexit issue that it treats as a vote of confidence.
The chances of any of this actually happening are still small. The context in which such possibilities might be serious options are very difficult to predict. The timetable pressures on everything to do with Brexit are incredibly tight. Yet it is a fact that good judges of the political mood do not rule out such things as a second referendum as readily as they did last year. And it is also a fact that outright opponents have an emerging plan to stop Brexit altogether, to bring all the critics under a single campaigning umbrella, and have talked to top officials within the EU about aspects of the plan.
A second referendum is now absolutely central to any such effort. The reasons for this are straightforward. Many pro-Europeans hate referendums and wish to expunge them for ever from the political repertoire. But even they recognise that only a second referendum can possibly overturn the first. Only the people can change the people’s decision. No parliamentary vote would have the political or moral force to do that. If parliament killed Brexit on its own, politics would pay the price for years to come.
It remains government dogma that there will not be a second referendum. David Davis said it again in the Commons yesterday. But public opinion, which has not shifted much on the substantive issue of leave or remain, has moved markedly towards embracing a referendum on the terms. A year ago, opponents of a second vote had a 19-point poll lead. Now supporters have a lead of 16 points. That is a big turnaround. It may not survive the perception, if it develops, that May has struck a good deal in Brussels. But May herself could find that a pledge to hold a second referendum on the terms could protect her from the ups and downs of the Brexit process over the next 15 months.
The passing of the Grieve amendment is a big moment for May and for the Tory party. It may be a freak high tide of revolt against May’s Brexit strategy. Alternatively, it may be a watershed moment after which the whole landscape of Brexit options looks different. Boris Johnson said yesterday that Brexit was unstoppable. Well he would, wouldn’t he? But the events of this week have actually raised the opposite possibility – that May’s Brexit can be still be changed, and perhaps even stopped.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
One third of non-British workers are considering leaving the UK, with highly skilled workers from the EU most likely to go, according to new research into the impact of Brexit on the jobs market.
The consultancy firm Deloitte found 47% of highly skilled workers from the EU were considering leaving the UK in the next five years. In a report on Tuesday, it warns of serious implications for employers, raising the pressure on ministers to come up with sensible immigration plans and to find ways to improve the skills of UK workers and make better use of robots in the workplace.
Overall, 36% of non-British workers in the UK said they were thinking of leaving within the same period, representing 1.2m jobs out of 3.4 million migrant workers in the UK. Just more than quarter (26%) said they were considering leaving within three years.
The research chimes with other evidence that the Brexit vote has prompted some workers from other EU countries to leave already or consider going. This is partly because of uncertainty around the UK’s economic outlook and because any money those workers earn in pounds is now worth less in euros for them to send home. The pound fell sharply after the referendum and is still down 13% against the euro compared with the day of the vote.
Deloitte surveyed 2,242 EU and non-EU workers, half living in the UK and half living outside, to assess their views on what makes Britain attractive and how likely they would be to come to, or leave, the country.
The survey, conducted before this month’s inconclusive election result, found the UK was still an attractive place to work for overseas residents but the referendum had shifted perceptions among those already here.
For respondents based outside the UK, the country was ranked as the most desirable place to work, with 57% of respondents placing it in their top three destinations. That put the UK ahead of the US, Australia and Canada for popularity.
But among workers already in the UK, 48% said they saw the country as being a little or significantly less attractive as a result of Brexit. Only 21% of workers outside the UK shared that view.
“The UK’s cultural diversity, employment opportunities and quality of life are assets that continue to attract the world’s best and brightest people,” said David Sproul, chief executive of Deloitte north-west Europe.
“But overseas workers, especially those from the EU, tell us they are more likely to leave the UK than before. That points to a short- to medium-term skills deficit that can be met in part by upskilling our domestic workforce but which would also benefit from an immigration system that is attuned to the needs of the economy.”
The referendum effect was strongest among highly skilled EU workers in the UK, with 65% describing the country as less attractive since the Brexit vote. Among less-skilled workers, 42% of EU nationals and 25% of non-EU nationals said the UK was now less attractive.
Other research has suggested vacancies are getting harder to fill with one recent poll by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation flagging skills shortages across a range of more than 60 roles. Other figures showed a 96% drop in the number of nurses from the EU registering to work in the UK since the referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
Doom, gloom and despondency are perennials of progressive politics. It doesn’t mean they’re not justified at times. And this certainly feels like one of those moments: the divisions in the Labour party, the deep fissures in our society, and Brexit.
Brexit does indeed represent the biggest crisis for a generation in our politics. Our place in the world, our integrity as a country, our economy and society are all in play. It’s comparable in modern times only to the period after the second world war and the breakdown of the postwar consensus in the 1970s.
And yet … I don’t believe that history somehow axiomatically dictates this as a Conservative moment. Out of crisis comes an opportunity: to rethink profoundly. It happened after 1945. The answer is not to bemoan our fate, but to turn this into a progressive moment.
In our generation’s case, it has to start with understanding the deep lessons of this referendum.
I don’t believe we can simply put Brexit down to an accident that happened on the way to the ballot box, caused by the duplicity of the leave campaign or the inadequacy of remain. It goes much deeper than that.
Disquiet about the big changes happening in our society – including the scale of immigration – built on economic discontent caused by de-industrialisation, insecurity and inequality, feeding into alienation from politics: leave spoke to deep, not shallow, emotions. The day after Brexit a leave voter in Doncaster told me she had voted for “a new beginning for my grandchildren”. I have lost count of similar conversations I have had.
It’s why the idea of a quick parliamentary reversal of the vote – while I get the sentiment – is the wrong answer. It wouldn’t sort the crisis of politics exposed by this referendum, it would give it rocket boosters.
Instead, progressives must rise to the challenge of this vote. This is a mandate for changing the way our country works. The old settlement, which combined a zealous faith in globalisation with neoliberal free markets and low regulation at home, has been rejected.
That’s why Theresa May in Downing Street felt it necessary to talk about the pain and anger that people feel, the discontent about inequality. That she feels the needs to say these words tells you something profound. It represents a repudiation of David Cameron and George Osborne, of course, and should be seized upon as a recognition that the old settlement is dead.
Battle should now commence about what the new world should look like. It must include a radical assault on economic inequality, and political reform, combined with a continued commitment to openness and internationalism.
And these elements are interlinked: we will only be able to remain a relatively open country, trading and indeed open to migration, if we address the profound economic challenge people face and the discontent with politics. If we remain as unequal as this, we will be insecure and anxious and continue to retreat behind our borders.
That means a public investment programme in schools, transport and most of all, housing. A jobs and skills programme, at devolved level, not bargain basement but properly resourced, which invests in young and old.
And we need to be willing to take on and reform the biggest shibboleth of the past 30 years: deregulated labour markets. Too often “flexibility” means exploitation and deep anxiety – from zero hours to low wages.
This focus can, I believe, unite leave and remain voters. They may have voted differently in the referendum but they share these economic worries.
But the answers cannot simply be programmatic. We need to recognise the broken nature of our politics too. Tackling this is very hard indeed, but we have to try. For the Labour party it is about becoming a genuine community organisation and using our members not simply to vote in leadership elections but to reach out and reconnect with the voters in the areas in which they live.
For the country, we need to bring power closer to people. The centralisation of power in Westminster wasn’t the top issue in this referendum, but the yearning for greater control was. That applies just as much to issues determined at the national level as through the EU. So we should champion and indeed extend the patchwork devolution of this government, making it comprehensive with greater powers, as part of a willingness to engage in wider constitutional reform.
It is only by responding to the deeper lessons of the crisis that we can navigate our way through the treacherous waters of Brexit negotiations without doing lasting damage to our country. If the negotiations themselves bear all the weight of the referendum vote, leave and remain voters will both end up even more disillusioned.
As for those negotiations, the strongest cooperation with the EU is in our national interest economically and strategically. That was true before the referendum and it is true now: whether it is negotiating on climate change within the EU, working together on science and research or enabling students to study abroad and EU students to come here.
We should accept that a clear message from this referendum was that free movement should not carry on as before. But we need to make the case that remaining a relatively open country is in our national interest. What’s more, there is an inevitable trade-off between the nature of the limits on free movement and access to the single market.
This must be explored in the negotiations and cannot be wished away with more false promises. These were part of what got the government into trouble in the first place. It is a trade-off so tricky that it may well require further consent in some form from the British people.
If we use this moment to tackle the deep inequality in our economy, mend our broken politics and maintain an outward-looking Britain in a new settlement with the EU, then we can unify the country and use the moment to build something new.
That is why this can be a progressive moment. In any case, there is no point in the left sinking into gloom. The only answer is to rise to the challenge. The optimists have always been the people we need at times of greatest adversity. Today we need them more than ever.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Even as doodlebugs smashed into the surrounding streets, George Orwell consoled himself with this thought: “One thing that has always shown that the English ruling class are morally fairly sound, is that in time of war they are ready enough to get themselves killed.” Present those who governed us with an existential crisis, he argued in his essay England Your England, and they would do what they believed to be right for the country.
Almost eight decades later, the UK stands on the verge of a calamity as great as any since the war. Whatever the protestations in parliament, we could within days crash-land into a world of medicine shortages and food riots. And where are our political classes? According to the lobby correspondents, Monday’s cabinet meeting was spent war-gaming general election strategies and thinking how to timetable voting so as to “scare” Labour. Wherever the national interest actually featured, it was buried under a thick dollop of party interest.
Sunday afternoon was Theresa May’s crisis summit at Chequers, to which Iain Duncan Smith came as Toad of Toad Hall, complete with open-top vintage sports car and cloth cap. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s chosen passenger was his 12-year-old son, Peter, because a national crisis evidently created the perfect occasion for bring-your-child-to-work day. Boris Johnson rocked up in his Spaffmobile before chuntering back to London to publish a column dumping all over the woman with whom he’d just been talking, dubbing her “chicken” and saying she had “bottled it”. (One of the columns, if it’s not too unseemly to mention, for which the Telegraph pays him £275,000 a year.) The BBC reports that these men refer to themselves as the Grand Wizards. Since that is an honorific used by the Ku Klux Klan, the best can be said is they have put as much thought into their nicknames as they ever did into the Irish backstop.
This is how today’s governing classes comport themselves, while the country teeters on the edge of a cliff: they behave with neither care nor caution, let alone concern for the welfare of the nation. These people are laughing at us, even as they take our money to go about their daily business.
I am not going to bleat about “leadership”, as if whatever ails Britain could be set right by the thwack of firm government. I want instead to point out a fundamental trend in public life that is utterly corrosive. Far from resembling the sometimes dim but dutiful set depicted by Orwell, today’s political elite are strangers to collective interest or public responsibility. Their conduct serves to undermine both the establishment of which they are part and the country they run.
This observation runs wider and deeper than a bunch of backbench headbangers. The fecklessness can be seen in the prime minister’s daubing of those red lines in her first conference speech as Tory leader, without consulting or warning cabinet colleagues and civil servants, let alone business or trade unions. It’s there when Ivan Rogers, resigning as ambassador to Brussels, inveighs against “the ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking” of government ministers.
This is playing games with other people’s money, and sometimes with the basics of their lives. Think of Johnson’s love of pointless and expensive monuments to himself, such as the garden bridge or the Boris Island airport. Recall how, in 2015, George Osborne planned to scrap all taxes on savings. The measure would have cost well over £1bn a year, at a time when the chancellor was slashing budgets for schools and hospitals. But as former Liberal Democrat minister David Laws records in his memoir, Coalition, Osborne laughingly said: “It will only really be of help to stupid, affluent and lazy people, who can’t be bothered to put their savings away into tax-efficient vehicles. But it will be very popular – we have polled it.”
Such myopic cynicism has run through our politics for years, under both Tony Blair and David Cameron, and has been captured in historical record and TV satire. Yet it is the serious mess of Brexit that has truly exposed the profound unseriousness of the people in charge. The failure of our governing elite is technical and political, for sure. But it is also moral. They have short-changed the public for so long that they don’t know any different.
In his essential recent book Reckless Opportunists, Aeron Davis charts the breadth and the depth of this betrayal. The sociologist has spent two decades interviewing more than 350 people at the top of Westminster and Whitehall, big business, the media and the City. Across these interlocking elites, he finds common trends: they reach the top far sooner, stay in post for far less time, before rushing through the revolving doors to the next gig. The result, Davis writes, is a generation of leaders who are “precarious, rootless and increasingly self-serving”. They grab whatever they can – be that cheap headlines or fast money – and then crash out, even while loosening the very foundations of the institutions entrusted to them. Crucially, this is a genre of politics that relies on a strong state even as it bilks it of the necessary tax revenue.
There is no heroism here, just moneyed nihilism. There are no ideas, just reheated Thatcherism about low taxes and burning red tape. These people say little about national interest, but their ears prick up when it comes to compound interest. Much has been said about how Brexit Britain might be put back together again, with solutions ranging from more cash to more listening to each other. It’s a healthy and necessary conversation. Yet one of the strongest lessons of this period is that we need a wholesale reimagining of our institutions so that they better serve the rest of us, rather than just those who run them. This was one of the promises of the leave campaign, of course, but it was always destined to be folded and put away inside the pocket of one of Rees-Mogg’s double-breasted jackets. It is up to the rest of us to rescue it and give it some meaning.
Pulsing through Orwell’s essay about England is an anxiety about whether the upper classes might succumb to the lure of fascism, just as they had done in Weimar Germany. Orwell eventually settled on a comforting conclusion: “They are not wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable.” I thought about that line while reading a remarkable recent article in the Financial Times by John Redwood. The arch-Brexiter and Thatcherite MP has a side-gig in the finance industry (or perhaps it is the other way round) and observed here what a tonic populism had proved for markets. Donald Trump’s tax cuts had been great for Wall Street; the Brexit vote had pumped up the FTSE-250.
Of the upcoming European parliament elections, Redwood wrote: “A bit of populism might be no bad thing when I look at the state of the euro area economy.” By “a bit of populism” the MP for Wokingham presumably means the Mussolini-worship and xenophobia of Italy’s Matteo Salvini. And Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, silencing the media and driving judges into retirement, behaviour that has earned him unprecedented sanctions from the European parliament. Chaos and authoritarianism are fine, it appears, as long as they prove good for asset prices. In that elision between morality and financial returns is much that’s gone wrong with the governing classes. Would today’s ruling classes opt for fascism? Perhaps, if the price was right.
First published on Tue 4 Sep 2018 10.17 BST
Angela Merkel has warned her country’s business leaders that the Brexit negotiations are in danger of collapse.
With talks in Brussels at an impasse with just months to go before a deal needs to be agreed, the German chancellor made a rare intervention at a conference in Frankfurt.
She told major players in the world of German finance on Tuesday: “We don’t want the discussions to break down. We will use all our force and creativity to make sure a deal happens. We don’t want these negotiations to collapse. But we also can’t fully rule that out because we still have no result.”
The EU says it needs a deal to be struck on the withdrawal agreement covering citizens’ rights, the £39bn divorce bill and the Irish border, along with the political declaration on the future deal, by November at the latest.
The German chancellor has generally played a backseat role in the talks, preferring to intervene only at crunch points at EU summits.
EU leaders are due to meet in Brussels in October, but an emergency summit is being pencilled in for 13 November in case the negotiations require an extra few weeks for agreement to be made.
The leaderswill gather at a summit in Salzburg later this month where the EU27 are planning a “carrot and stick” approach to Brexit, offering Theresa May warm words on the Chequers proposals to take to the Conservative conference alongside a sharp warning that they need a plan for Northern Ireland within weeks.
The twin statements from the EU leaders would seek to give the British prime minister some evidence of progress in negotiations on the future trade deal as she seeks to fight off the threat of rebelling MPs.
However, under the plans being discussed among the 27, a shot would be fired across May’s bows on the issue of a backstop for Northern Ireland, an issue on which officials and diplomats are becoming increasingly frustrated.
May committed in December, and again in March, to agree on a plan for avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. This would come into force if a trade deal or bespoke technological solution that could do the same job was not available by the end of the transition period, on 31 December 2020.
The British cabinet was told on Tuesday that May’s struggling Chequers plan received a “warm and positive” response from European capitals during a Brexit diplomatic offensive over the summer.
Downing Street suggested the prime minister would increase her direct lobbying of European leaders as negotiations entered their final stages, even as she battles to save her proposals from fierce criticism in the UK.
The move adds weight to the theory that the government plans to go over the head of the European commission directly to the EU27 to secure a deal.
Downing Street did not dismiss this suggestion. May’s official spokesman said: “The negotiations are taking place with the commission; we have always respected that fact. But equally this is a decision that at the end of the process will be taken at a political level by the European council, so you can obviously expect a continued and strong engagement with fellow European countries.”
The EU27 fear the British are seeking to push back the resolution of the Irish border issue into the transition period, after the UK has left the EU on 29 March 2019.
Tempers have flared in recent negotiations over the issue and member states want to send a clear warning that they are not willing to let the issue remain unresolved.
Senior EU diplomats and officials admit that the central tenets of the Chequers proposals, involving a common rulebook on goods and an unprecedented customs arrangement, are dead in the water.
However, it is believed that the “zero tariffs, zero quota” offer made by Donald Tusk, the European council president, in March, along with fresh thinking on how to facilitate customs checks to reduce friction at the border, could be developed and packaged as a substantive counter-offer. “There is a lot that can be done to minimise checks,” said an EU diplomat. “What is an internal market in goods? A lot of this is semantics.”
The EU leaders will meet in the Austrian city on 19 and 20 September. May is likely to have the opportunity to present her thoughts to leaders over dinner on the first evening, with the leaders then discussing the issues over lunch the following day.
EU sources said the Brexit plan and the summit itinerary had yet to be signed off, but there was a consensus among the member states that May should be given some help before what is likely to be a fiery Tory conference less than two weeks later.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
When I interviewed the Conservative MP Nicky Morgan last March, I described her teasingly as a Remain tugboat to Anna Soubry’s galleon under full sail. But perhaps things have moved on since then. The atmosphere around Brexit having grown ever more febrile and nasty, Soubry herself has a different analogy. “We’ve become good friends,” she says of her fellow Tory rebel. “We’re [like] Thelma and Louise’s mothers.” There follows a brief but uncharacteristic pause. And then: “I’m Louise’s mother, obviously.” Should you need a reminder, in Ridley Scott’s film, Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer are best friends who escape their dreary Arkansas lives by embarking on a road trip, during which the older of the two, Louise (played by Susan Sarandon), shoots dead a man who tries to rape her pal. After this, they go on the run; a pair of doomed outlaws for whom most, if not all, of the audience roots right until the movie’s very end.
When Soubry and I meet, it’s almost a week since the Daily Telegraph used its front page to dub Tory critics of the EU withdrawal bill “mutineers” (the 15 Conservatives in question, all of whom were pictured beneath the headline, had indicated they would be voting against the government’s efforts to fix the date of Brexit for 29 March 2019); the previous day, as she talked on Radio 4 about the death threats she had received as a consequence, she sounded to me like her usual self, which is to say only mildly cross. In person, though, it’s clear that her equilibrium is not yet quite restored. “I was wobbled,” she says, hands wrapped tightly around a paper cup. “I’m not going to pretend that I wasn’t. When Sean [her parliamentary assistant] first collated them, I thought, blimey, that’s bad. But it was only on Friday, back in my constituency, that I began to feel uneasy. In the constituency, you often tell people where you are, what church bazaar you’re looking forward to opening. As a Conservative, I’ve had abuse for a very long time. The difference with this is that there is a direct causal link between the way the Telegraph described us and the threats, abuse and Facebook postings that followed.”
What concerns her now is the deafening silence emanating from her own side on this matter. “The party has got to call this out. But yet again, I feel it will be weak. They will not take the sort of robust action they need to. My whip said, ‘Sorry to hear about this’, but there’ll be no further interest because at least one of them [those attacking her] is a Conservative himself: Tom Borwick [leading light of Vote Leave, the son of the former Conservative MP for Kensington Victoria Borwick, and one of those encouraging people on social media to tell their MPs face to face what they make of their so-called attempts to thwart Brexit]. He hasn’t issued death threats, but by calling us anti-democratic, he is stoking and fuelling the fire. There’s something about these hard Brexiters: it’s fascinating, actually. Look at the language some of them use. It’s not enough that you accept the result [of the referendum]; it’s not enough that you voted to trigger article 50. Now it’s, ‘Yeah, yeah, but do you believe?’ It’s like the counter-revolutionary forces of Chairman Mao or Joe Stalin. It’s not enough that you went against everything you ever believed in; you have to sign up in blood. It’s like Orwell’s thought police and the reign of terror combined.”
Who, she asks, are the mutineers of which the Daily Telegraph speaks? “Sir Oliver Heald QC, former solicitor general and bastion of the Conservative establishment? Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general? I mean, come on! Ken [Clarke] made an important point, which is that having supported Conservative policy on European policy for 15 years, he now finds himself a rebel. I am the epitome of someone who is not a professional politician, who came into this after two previous careers [before her election to represent Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire in 2010, Soubry, 60, was a journalist and a barrister] with no ambition other than to represent my constituency. I was very happy to support David Cameron loyally. I was behind his attempts to make us electable and, indeed, I was elected as a result of the changes he brought about. I agreed with everything that was being done and then this… disaster took place.” She runs her hands through her hair. “It is one unholy mess, this country’s politics.”
Theresa May’s government is, she believes, in thrall to just 35 hard Brexiters, a situation she regards as preposterous given that the majority in the chamber now agree the only thing that matters is getting the best deal for Britain. “The government was,” she says, “foolish to make this some sort of test of people’s Brexit credentials by going back on what they had said and suddenly deciding to put the date of our withdrawal on the front of the withdrawal bill, a decision that, as any lawyer will tell you, is just plain stupid [because it allows for no flexibility in negotiations]. Our concerns about this are technical, not political, which is why, for it to be stoked up in such a manner, you wonder what on earth is really going on. Why are these Brexiters behaving like this?” What’s the answer to this question? “They are really, really worried about not getting their hard Brexit and so they have made it a test of their strength and of Theresa May’s strength, too.”
The wing of the party that found succour under Thatcher (when, as a one-nation Tory, Soubry left the Conservatives) and which went on to destroy John Major is now in the driving seat: “And if it doesn’t stop, if the prime minister doesn’t do what she’s perfectly capable of doing, which is to try and unite people as opposed to fuel further division, our party is going to be destroyed.”
Will the government cave in as far as putting the date on the bill goes? (Although it has not yet lost a vote on the withdrawal bill, this could be one point on which it is vulnerable.) “It would be very good if it did,” she says, quietly. However, in truth, she has no idea what the government will do next, just as she has no idea if, or when, it will lose a vote during the eight days devoted to the bill’s committee stage. “We don’t know what amendments will be selected for votes and we don’t know how Labour will vote either. I mean, there’s Dennis Skinner and that other guy [John Mann], who are hardline Brexiters. And Jeremy Corbyn is a proper Brexiter, an old-school Bennite who sees the EU as a capitalist conspiracy; he won’t deliver anything other than Brexit, believe me.” How worried are the whips? She shoots me an exasperated look. “They’re going to have a real problem on amendment 7 [proposed by Dominic Grieve, this would give MPs the final say on any deal with the EU]. But this idea that losing a vote will bring down the government! It’s absolute baloney. That’s just another falsehood that has been put around and I can’t tell you how furious it makes me.”
We’re sitting in the anteroom to Soubry’s Commons office, mere inches from the desks of her two aides, Sean and Emily. “Sean,” she says (Soubry, who is from Worksop originally, sounds much more Notts in person than she does on the radio), “have you got that email? The one that came from a Croydon council address?” Sean duly locates the email and, soon afterwards, so does she, on her mobile phone. “I’m going to read it out because you’ll enjoy it. It says, ‘I simply cannot understand why you wish to destroy the elected government from within with regards to your personal Brexit agenda.’” She looks up again. “Someone is stirring this, aren’t they? Of course I don’t want to bring down the government – and voting against a mere amendment will not bring down the fucking government. I find this bizarre. There are people in the government who have tabled amendments. The whole party has taken leave of its senses.”
All the same, does she believe Theresa May can lead the Conservatives into the next election? “I don’t know.” What about the Brexit secretary, David Davis? Reports last weekend suggested that he was close to resigning, following the “secret” letter Boris Johnson and Michael Gove sent to Theresa May (among other things, they worried that certain areas of government were not adequately prepared for a “no-deal” situation). “That would not surprise me in the slightest. I should think he feels undermined. He’s trying to deliver the impossible and he sees others on manoeuvres and that is not acceptable.” What about the divorce bill? When, and by how much, will the UK’s offer be improved? She can’t answer this either. “Though we are going to have to sort this out. Because we must make progress on these talks.”
She sniffs. “Another thing people seem not to have appreciated is that the government does not even have a policy on the transition arrangement. The other weekend, I felt clearly that David [Davis] had said that during the transition we would come out of the European court of human justice. But by Thursday, he was saying: we will be in it, but as the period goes along we will transition out of it as we transition. How the hell is the EU meant to conduct any form of discussion with us in these circumstances?”
She believes the issue of the Irish border should have been debated before article 50 was even triggered. It amazes her, too, that there has never been a real debate in parliament about either the single market or the customs union. “So here we are, nine months from triggering article 50, and 17 from the referendum, and we still do not know what we even want by way of a transition. No deal becomes more and more of a profound reality. And the electorate was told a deal would be easy, that it would take about a day and a half!” Her voice is thunderous now. “My God. History will condemn this period. It will condemn those who’ve sat back and kept their view to themselves, who haven’t stood up and tried to stop all this nonsense.”
On and on she goes: there are so many things to rage over – although her bellicosity is, like Ken Clarke’s, rarely anything less than winning – and perhaps it makes her feel a little better to have me listening to her for a while, my attention undivided. Finally, though, I do change the subject, wondering if all this has already kicked the issue of sexual harassment, and the lack of adequate procedures to deal with it in Westminster, into the long grass. “I completely agree that it does feel almost like it didn’t happen,” she says, of the series of events that began with the resignation of the defence secretary, Michael Fallon. “But, no. There is a group of people, among them the magnificent Jess Phillips, who will not let that happen. We are very worried. I am worried in particular that the Labour party want to keep everything within the party. This is beyond party. This is about workers and everyone having the same rights as workers in any other place. We need the right sanctions and everyone needs to sign up to it.”
As she says this, it strikes me suddenly that in different circumstances – by which I mean, I suppose, had Labour not moved so far to the left – it wouldn’t be too difficult to picture Soubry crossing the floor of the House of Commons. As things stand, however, she is stuck: her talent and her ambition have nowhere to go. All she can do is deploy her considerable determination and, to go back to where we began, to take heart from the fact that many people will be rooting for her right until, Brexit-wise, the final credits roll. “We are leaving the EU,” she says. “I accept that. But I made a decision I was never again going to vote against my conscience and that stands. I am simply not prepared to stand back and watch my country fall off a cliff edge. If that means voting against my party, so be it.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Leading Brexit campaigner and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith claims members of the cabinet, including Theresa May, are keen to start the formal process of leaving the European Union early in 2017.
The former work and pensions secretary said article 50 of the Lisbon treaty should be triggered in the first quarter of the new year to provide focus and a two-year deadline for Brexit negotiations.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Duncan Smith claimed key figures in the cabinet supported an early exit from the EU.
“I have spoken to them and I am certain that these characters – David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson, and the prime minister by the way – are very clear that they need to get on with triggering article 50 as soon as possible early in the new year.
“And that when we do that we will be bound on a course that means Britain will leave and I believe they are all very positive about the outcome that will entail: we will be out and we will do incredibly well.”
May is committed to withdrawing Britain from the EU, but she has not publicly stated a timescale for triggering article 50.
Duncan Smith called for urgency. “You need to get on with the process, because nothing focuses the mind more than the idea that something is going to happen. If you continue to say ‘we will wait’ all that happens is that the discussions don’t have any focus to them.“It is the same with any negotiation you have done in your life – buying a house, getting a mortgage – you have to have an end point to this otherwise nobody focuses on what that means.”
Meanwhile, a leading US economist said Britain’s better than expected financial performance since the referendum was partly because the markets believed Brexit would take years to complete.
Randy Kroszner, a former member of the US Federal Reserve and professor of economics at Chicago Booth School of Business, said there had been “a bit of hysteria about the short-run consequences of Brexit” in the run up to the referendum.
He told Today: “One of the reasons why we haven’t seen such negative consequences is that this is not going to happen anytime soon. It is going to be a long, gradual process and one that hopefully will be reasonably well thought out. And in those circumstances the negative impacts aren’t as great.”
Kroszner added: “There had been a lot of concern that there would be a lot of negative consequences, at least in the short run from Brexit, and at least internationally there is very little evidence of that. And even within the UK the stock market seems to have made it through this. Obviously the bond market has benefited from the action that the Bank of England has taken.”
Duncan Smith said the remain campaign’s warnings about the consequences of Brexit had proved to be wrong. “The prediction was that within weeks and months there would be dire consequences. I never believed that and I think the British consumer is much more sensible than that.”
Expanding on an article he wrote for the Sun on Sunday, Duncan Smith called for Britain to leave the single market.
“My personal view is that we should not seek to remain a member of the customs union, nor necessarily remain a full member of the single market, because that would entail putting yourself yet again under the rule of European law.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
It might be barely seven years old, but the supreme court has weighed heavily on the constitutional scales to correct a perceived imbalance in the relationship between parliament, government and voters.
“To proceed otherwise would be a breach of settled constitutional principles stretching back many centuries,” intoned Lord Neuberger on Tuesday as he reasserted the right of MPs to be consulted on whether Britain should begin the process of something as far-reaching as leaving the EU.
Yet within minutes of the court judgment, parliament indicated it was not at all sure it was ready to assume such power – especially if it means facing down the result of the June referendum or a media consensus that only the directly expressed will of the people should be sovereign.
“Labour respects the result of the referendum and the will of the British people and will not frustrate the process for invoking article 50,” said Jeremy Corbyn in a statement that swiftly closed off any meaningful likelihood of enough MPs opposing the government’s imminent Brexit bill.
Though the government hopes a short vote on an even shorter piece of enabling legislation will now therefore be enough to proceed as before, there are growing signs that this is only the start of parliament’s newfound responsibilities.
The first battle will come over amendments to the bill. Anything deemed overly obstructive is unlikely to attract a majority, but there are plenty of procedural tweaks that could still have profound implications for how, when and even whether Britain leaves the European Union.
In theory, the supreme court was silent on this issue. “The issues in this proceedings have nothing to do with whether we should exit the EU, or the terms or the timetable,” said Neuberger.
In practice, the door is now open for parliament to continue to have a meaningful role throughout the process – should it choose to do so.
The government has already conceded that MPs should have a vote on whatever deal it manages to secure with the EU at the end of the two-year article 50 process.
Theresa May would like this vote to be a largely symbolic rubber stamp. If MPs do not approve of her deal, the alternative, according to the government, is that Brexit proceeds in a disorderly manner instead, with Britain crashing out of the EU unilaterally and relying on World Trade Organisation tariffs to replace the single market.
Yet there is also a separate legal challenge in the Irish courts which could lead to the European court of justice ruling that article 50 is not a one-way door.
In this scenario, a rebellion by MPs over the terms of a unattractive exit deal could lead to them demanding that the whole question of Brexit be put back to the British people – either in another referendum or, more likely, a general election, perhaps as soon as the spring of 2019.
Little of this was immediately apparent in the political reaction to Tuesday’s supreme court decision. “The British people voted to leave the EU and the government will deliver on their verdict, triggering article 50, as planned, by the end of March,” said a Downing Street statement. “Today’s ruling does nothing to change that.”
Yet much has changed since the referendum and when the courts first took up the question of whether parliament needed to approve Britain’s departure.
As the prime minister acknowledged in her speech last week, Brexit is now certain to mean leaving the single market and customs union in ways that many leave campaigners denied during the referendum campaign.
Even May’s promised concessions on continued market access and an unspecified hybrid customs union are seen as highly unlikely by most European politicians. It may therefore prove increasingly hard for MPs to hide behind the argument that the people have spoken and nothing has changed.
Whether parliament wants to grasp the nettle or not, the supreme court has set up two years of potentially fierce debate over what happens not just at the start of the Brexit process but, perhaps more importantly, also at the end.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
The European Union was once just an audacious dream. A fragile hope built out of the ashes of two world wars. European integration was not just a project led by the French and the Germans; from its birth, the UK had been an active parent. It was built on the values we sacrificed so much to protect: democracy, equality, human rights and freedom.
Many of the Britain’s leaders in the 20th century – Clement Atlee, Harold Macmillan, Roy Jenkins, Harold Wilson – understood this first hand. And it was Winston Churchill who, in Zurich in 1946, first showed the courage and vision to articulate the case for integration. It is debated whether or not he saw Britain within this “kind of United States of Europe”, but months later, in May 1947, speaking in the Albert Hall, he argued: “Britain will have to play her full part as a member of the European family.”
From its quixotic beginnings, European integration relied on the confidence of nations to be able to work together, pool sovereignty and take joint control. Britain at its best has always recognised that sovereignty is not an asset to be hoarded, but a resource that only has value when it is spent. It is why we have become the keenest treaty-signing power in the world, and why we have played an outsized role in the G7, G20 and global climate change negotiations.
In the first European treaties of 1951 and 1957, we lacked this self-assurance, and showed Britain at its worst. Addicted to the drug of nostalgia, we clung to the hope of empire and a “one-world economic system” that put sterling at the centre. Our industry and economy paid a high price. By the time Britain became an EEC member in 1973, the economies of France, West Germany and Italy had grown by 95%, nearly twice the rate of our own.
Edward Heath, the Conservative prime minister who brought us into what would become the EU, saw that Europe was post-imperial Britain’s opportunity to restore its wealth and dignity, and he did so with the memories of a soldier and student observer who had seen Europe tear itself apart. The generation who witnessed the Second World War first hand are no longer involved in British politics, but it would be a tragic error to forget the lessons of their experience.
As soon as we became a member state, we began to shape Europe in our own image. Ironically, Britain’s imperial experience of constitution writing, part of diplomatic training, was useful for drafting EU legal texts. Witness Margaret Thatcher’s crucial role in the creation of the single market in 1986. There is a deep irony now that fears of immigration have pushed us to the exit door, given for decades it was Britain that pushed for more. As a nation we should be ashamed of the violent political rhetoric that has followed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of eastern Europeans from the mid-2000s. Their contribution has been vast. Over their lifetimes, European migrants in the UK will pay in £78,000 more to the exchequer than they take out.
But the prime minister is not alone in turning away from our closest friends and most steadfast allies. Seventy years after 1945, we are drawing the wrong lessons from history. The lesson at Suez, of how the lethal combination of political isolation and imperial delusion led to a moment of excruciating humiliation, has been largely forgotten. Instead we focus on a distorted myth, in which a conflict of alliances, fought by Britain and the former empire is reduced to the “darkest hour” cliche, in which Britain supposedly “stood alone”.
This misremembering of the past has enabled the Brexiters’ fetishisation of isolation and sovereignty. Rather than alliances and diplomacy, we are told all that is needed is that we “believe in Britain”. This is a fantasy that Churchill himself would have dismissed as childishly naive.
In recognising Britain’s story of renewal through Europe, I do not forget that our country is crying out for change. A decade of austerity, of extremity and division has left us as broken as after Suez, but leaving the EU will not help. After Theresa May’s deal is voted down, MPs from all parties have a responsibility to begin a new politics of hope. We need to build a new consensus around pride in our role shaping a peaceful and more prosperous Europe.
One hundred years after the end of the First World War, we should celebrate Europe again. To do this we have to offer the public a chance to right the wrong of 2016 – another chance to vote for Britain at its best and another shot at the audacious, if imperfect, European dream.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
The Brexit debate is coming to a head at a moment when Britain’s political parties seem to be coming apart. Maybe that is not surprising. The 2016 referendum usurped the role of parliament and MPs. And both Labour and Conservative parties are being pulled by the far right and far left. The mess of Brexit is the result. Millions of voters are left feeling not only frustrated but homeless, with unprecedented strain on the stability and legitimacy of the two-party system.
The defections from the main parties last month were not just about Brexit. Labour’s antisemitism crisis also reflects dangerous wider trends. It is horrifying to see the Jewish roots of MPs turned into a weapon against their political views; to see sectarianism so deep that reason is lost; to see the anonymity of social media toxify political debate.
But while the question of Labour’s future will take some time to resolve, the Brexit question is now down to hours. The prime minister is trapped in what can only be called frenetic paralysis, desperately trying to move forward but unable to do so because of the competing pressures on her. Meanwhile the country heads for the cliff edge.
There is only one way to safeguard the political legitimacy, never mind the economic stability, of the country, and that is to re-engage the people. And here is the madness of the current situation: the arguments made against a second referendum apply, in spades, to the prime minister’s deal. It is said that a referendum would be divisive, prolong the Brexit agony, and fuel the far right. But all of these arguments can be made about the prime minister’s deal.
It is true that a further referendum will require people to take sides. But we are divided already, because the 2016 referendum made a mockery of the principle of informed consent, and Theresa May’s deal satisfies no one. Leavers say it is not what they voted for. Remainers say their opinion was not properly taken into account. And the choices, as the recent Institute for Fiscal Studies report made clear, are only going to get harder, as the reality of Brexit works its way through the economy.
The idea that the May deal will end the Brexit trauma is also misplaced. This deal is only the beginning of the negotiations, and in all likelihood the easiest part. The trade-offs associated with the choice of our Brexit future – between alignment with European regulation and the exercise of a new-found freedom to deviate – are only going to get harder.
The argument that a second referendum would boost the far right has been presented in cynical terms by the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, and in an honourable and serious way by various Labour figures. But the counter case is that the politics of anger represented by nativists and nationalists, on the mainstream right as well as the extreme right, is on the march anyway, and finds vent already. While a referendum would give a platform to Nigel Farage, it is not as if he lacks a platform without a referendum.
Ploughing on, when we know that the painful choices that have been avoided by May and Jeremy Corbyn for more than two years will only multiply, is not a salve; it is itself a recipe for more division. May’s bad deal is only an indicator of more pain to come.
A further referendum is not just a way for voters to decide whether to incur the economic and social cost of a final Brexit deal. That would be a good reason – the metaphor of putting down an offer on a house but waiting for the surveyor’s report before deciding whether to sign the contract makes the point. Leading Brexiteers, from Jacob Rees-Mogg to David Davis, previously argued for two referendums as “bookends” of the democratic process. There is nothing undemocratic about giving voters the final say.
A referendum is also a way for the country to renew its democracy. Citizens’ assemblies, local debates, new mechanisms of popular engagement, new focus from broadcasters and social media companies on fact-checking and fake news, new protections against Russian interference – they will all face catcalls that they are high-minded or boring. But they have been shown in other contexts to overcome the danger that it is only those shouting loudest who get heard.
There is a danger that the demagogues take over again in the course of another referendum campaign, but only if we neglect the lessons about how to engage voters in a serious way. The evidence from Ireland – where two referendums covering gay rights and abortion, both core to deeply held views of national identity, served to bring closure and heal divisions rather than allowing them to fester – shows that referendums don’t have to be divisive.
Amid the dangers ahead, the proposal from MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson shines through the gloom. Pass the May deal and put it to a vote. Then there can be a proper debate and a proper answer.
This will require time, which is not on our side – as a result of May’s incredibly unwise decision to trigger article 50 in March 2017, before there was a negotiating position on the British side. The lesson of the past two years is not to rush further, but to use time wisely and sequence decisions sensibly.
I didn’t expect to be arguing this case. I spent three years as foreign secretary arguing against Tory demands for a referendum on Europe. I deplored David Cameron’s argument that he had no option but to put a referendum in his 2015 manifesto, and Labour’s decision after the election of that year to vote for the referendum in parliament. But paradoxically I don’t see any way out of the current malaise without doubling down on popular participation in a national vote. The Brexit that people were promised in 2016 is not available, but Brexit cannot be cancelled without popular say-so.
As MPs try to find a way through the Brexit maze, it is clear the country has driven into a dead end. It is going to take creativity and flexibility to get out of it in a way that unites people for the huge challenges of reform and renewal that lie ahead. A referendum should be part of that process – and for positive reasons, not just the lack of a majority for anything else.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
There is no definition of good neighbourliness in foreign affairs. Alliances are fixed by treaties. Regional trade is measured in goods and services. But those things cannot describe the texture of relations between countries, the way adjacent nations rub along together.
This quality is as important to Brexit as the technical hooks on which negotiations are currently snagged. No European Union member state wanted the UK to leave, and it is hard for them not to feel aggrieved by Britain’s choices. Theresa May urges Brussels not to take offence. Less emollient leavers say the continentals should get over it and focus on mutual trade (as if their own campaign was some case study in cool rationality).
But in Westminster, Brexit does not often look like a foreign policy issue at all. It doesn’t even look much like an effort to weigh national interests. It is a Tory fight club, a rolling bout of ego wrestling among cabinet ministers slamming each other on to the faded canvas of Britain’s reputation as a serious country. Michael Gove and Boris Johnson send menacing missives to No 10 demanding a purge of Brexit dissent in the cabinet. David Davis lets it be known he is “furious” at their meddling. The meddlers respond, via anonymous allies, that Davis is “a fuckwit”. Classy.
They all act as if Brexit is something the Conservative party will claim from Brussels and bestow on a grateful nation. They do not appear to recognise that the gift is not theirs alone to give. It will be shaped by the generosity of the other side in the negotiation. That goodwill was depleted from the start.
Before a penny of Britain’s EU budget contribution has been recouped, the decision to leave the club inflicts costs on its members. It is a tax on their economic stability and diplomatic cohesion. May insists her intent is benign, but the process itself damages everyone. Those closest to the source of grief are hurt most.
The biggest loser by a mile is Ireland. In March, the European parliament published an assessment of Brexit’s impact on EU states. “The most striking result is that Ireland suffers the same magnitude of losses as does the UK,” the authors note. This was true in optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. Whichever way you slice it, Brexit looks like economic aggression across the Irish sea.
The pain starts at the border. There are 275 crossing points on the boundary between north and south, traversed 110 million times per year. Business supply chains weave in and out of the republic. More precious than commerce is the current invisibility of a line that was so recently inked in blood. Those who patrolled it were targeted by terrorists. Many more peaceful borders are the scars of old wars, and Northern Ireland’s schisms are fresh in folk memory. A lucky generation has grown up under the shelter of the Good Friday agreement, but their parents know what violence led them there.
It is in nobody’s interests for a healing wound to be undressed. But that is where determination to leave the single market and customs union leads. Removing Northern Ireland from those arrangements forces the Republic to police what would become an external boundary of the EU – to verify that incoming goods meet the requisite standards. No one who has examined how this might be done thinks it can be achieved without friction, some roadside infrastructure and smuggling by organised crime gangs.
Davis recently told parliament that he was “pretty much absolutely” committed to an invisible border. In slippery Brexiter code, that means not fully committed. The logic of a hard Brexit is implacable: there will be a border. It can be on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea, with special customs status for the north. May must choose. For the Democratic Unionist party, from whom the Tories bought a parliamentary majority in June, the maritime option is a nonstarter. It looks like economic partition of the UK.
The Northern Ireland problem is written into Michel Barnier’s negotiating mandate as one of the three issues to be resolved before talks can progress on to the UK’s final status deal. (The other two are expat citizens’ rights and budget obligations.) That inclusion reflects Ireland’s economic vulnerabilities but also legal and moral obligations, poorly understood in London, that the EU accepts as a co-sponsor of the Good Friday agreement. Promoting peace and security by the dilution of borders is a foundational principle of the whole European project.
So Irish leverage over Brexit terms is at its high point right now, when there is capacity to obstruct progress to the next phase. As a leaked European commission document showed last week, Dublin is applying that pressure, calling for Britain to stop waffling around its open border commitments. The UK has not budged. Unnamed ministers told the Sun that the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, is yielding to unreasonable demands by Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams.
At best, that was failure to imagine a prime minister acting on a reasonable evaluation of the options in a process of existential importance to his country. (With May in Downing Street maybe ministers have forgotten what that looks like.) At worst, it was a malicious effort to poison perceptions of Irish motive by indirect association with the IRA.
Either way, it exhibited the common parochial weakness of British politicians who forget that people outside the UK read English. I was in Ireland last week, and can confirm that the Sinn Féin allusion was noticed and its insidious inference understood. It was surely picked up in Brussels, too. Polyglot officials monitor the unhinged tone of UK tabloids and observe its transmission into government policy.
Yes, Gove, Johnson, Davis and May – they can see you. The rest of Europe is watching your absurd, panic-stricken squabbles and listening to your bluster. They notice how oblivious you are to the consequences of your actions for countries that once counted as your friends. They form judgments on the character of the regime with which they are dealing: its reliability, its sense of responsibility. And this affects the talks. They see a country fast degenerating from trusted ally to nightmare neighbour.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
British businesses have rejected claims by leading Brexiters that trade with the rest of the world can replace free access to European markets, arguing that quitting the single market and customs union without a trade deal with the EU will harm their growth prospects.
In a report by the former shadow chancellor Ed Balls and Peter Sands, senior fellows at Harvard University’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, UK businesses owners warned that a bad deal, or no deal, on Brexit would be disastrous for British jobs, investment and growth.
The warning comes as financial speculators circle London’s stock markets and investors bet on the value of the pound, triggering a period of intense volatility while No 10 attempts to restore a sense of confidence in the government.
On Friday, in the hours immediately after the surprise election result, the pound fell to an eight-week low and shares in banks, builders and retailers fell. The markets recovered as it seemed that the Conservatives had reached a deal with the DUP, but on Sunday the status of that deal looked less clear cut.
Figures out this week are expected to add further pressure on Theresa May as she fends off criticism of her plans to maintain cuts to government spending and restrict public sector pay. Analysts forecast the UK’s inflation rate will remain at elevated levels under May while wages remain stagnant, forcing ministers to admit that living standards will continue to plummet during the summer and most likely into the autumn.
Neil Dwane, global strategist at Allianz Global Investors, said: “Any possibility of another election – and uncertainty over who will lead the next government – puts downward pressure on sterling in the short term.”
More than 50 business owners and trade associations were interviewed for the report by Balls and Sands. It found they were “highly sceptical” that unfettered access to the EU market would be replaced with a growth in trade with other parts of the world.
Balls said: “At the time of the referendum, many British companies thought that Brexit might lead to a reduced regulatory burden. But now they’re worried that if Britain leaves the single market and the customs union, the opposite will be true.”
Companies said they wanted to remain in the single market or customs union, and if this was unachievable they wanted an agreement that made trade as frictionless as possible. The prospect of reverting to WTO standards, which the government has suggested by saying that no deal is better than a bad deal, was of concern to many who feared a sharp increase in tariffs.
Balls said: “British companies are desperate to move beyond the empty rhetoric that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. They are clear that both ‘no deal’ and a ‘bad deal’ would be disastrous for British jobs, investment and growth.”
The study came as the first poll of UK business leaders since the election found a plunge in confidence in the economic outlook and concern over the make up of the government. The survey of almost 700 members of the Institute of Directors found 65% believed uncertainty over the makeup of the government was “a significant concern” for the UK economy. It also showed that 57% were pessimistic about the economy over the next 12 months, compared with 37% the previous month. Reaching a new trade deal with the EU should be the overall priority for the new government, respondents said.
A survey for the Resolution Foundation found many employers were unprepared for a new era of lower migration. Of 500 employers with staff from the EU or EEA, almost half had “totally unrealistic expectations of what the post-Brexit immigration regime might be”, the thinktank said. It added that 17% of firms expected no change to the system of freedom of movement, while 30% expected to see it maintained for those with a job offer.
The foundation said Britain’s post-Brexit migration policy should not be solely determined by what businesses wanted, but it was vital that the new government listened to them and gave them chance to prepare.
Torsten Bell, the thinktank’s director, said: “Whatever people’s views on Brexit, the journey not just the destination matter hugely to growth, jobs and living standards. Now is the time for both firms and government to focus on how we navigate that journey and the changes to our labour market it brings.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
It’s not all about us.
Brexit means Brexit. Theresa May has made it clear that it is she who will ultimately decide what that means. But the prime minister is deluding herself. And I’m not convinced that, despite the recent high court ruling, the House of Commons is about to shape our negotiating strategy. Our fate lies not only in the government’s hands, but also in those of our European partners.
This is all down to the rules of the game. Forget article 50. The real issue is that the deal that the UK strikes with its partners about our future economic relations with the EU will require unanimous ratification, not by leaders meeting in the European council but, rather, by parliaments across the EU (of which, if you include those regions with voting rights, there are 38).
Many, if not most, of the other member states enjoy pretty healthy levels of trade with the UK. This provides an economic incentive for all parties to come to an amicable settlement that preserves these economic relations. Jobs are at stake on the continent too.
Unfortunately, however, economic rationality does not always win the day when it comes to political decisions. Just as, for some in this country, the principle of restoring British sovereignty trumped issues of profit and loss, so too, for some of our partners, issues other than economic advantage might determine their reactions to Brexit.
In an attempt to understand continental attitudes to Brexit for a BBC Radio 4 programme to be aired this evening, I took a short trip and talked to politicians in four member states – the Netherlands, France, Germany and the Czech Republic – where elections are due next year. Not a representative sample, certainly, but enough to give an impression of the incentives that might shape the Brexit negotiations to come.
It should come as no surprise that one person celebrating the referendum outcome was an MEP from France’s Front National. Having described how he had popped open the champagne on 24 June, however, he quickly added that his party’s glee would work against May.
The challenges May’s plan will face include France’s centre-left and centre-right politicians having no interest in allowing Britain an exit deal that strengthens Marine Le Pen. And their desire to send a political message is shared by centrist politicians in the Netherlands, nervously tracking the electoral prospects of their own populist firebrand, Geert Wilders. The Dutch traditionally may have been a close and reliable ally of ours in the EU, but politics is politics, and an attractive Brexit deal is not in the political interest of the governing party.
For politicians in the Czech Republic, it is the threat to their countrymen rather than to the political centre that preoccupies the political class. Reports of increased levels of violence and abuse towards eastern Europeans were given prominence in the domestic press, and political leaders have been quick to promise to do all in their power to address the issue.
And it is against this background that they will approach negotiations with a British government keen to secure as much trade with the EU as possible, while controlling migration into the UK. And here, the Czechs draw a line. Freedom of movement is one of the key attractions of EU membership for the people of central and eastern Europe. Diluting the principle to help London is, to say the least, not a high priority in Prague at the moment.
Which brings us to Germany. The high volume of trade that Germans enjoy with Britain has convinced many in this country that Angela Merkel would not be willing to impose economic pain on her country by insisting on a Brexit deal that imposed barriers to commerce. Surely, so the argument goes, the big German manufacturers will lobby hard to preserve access to a key market?
But to think this is to mistake the mood in Berlin. A senior official from a prominent employers’ association told me ruefully that his members were already suffering ill effects from Brexit. However, frantic efforts to persuade the German government to limit this pain were proving fruitless.
An MP from the governing CDU explained why. As far as Germany’s government is concerned, the challenge of Brexit is akin to that of dealing with Russia after its invasion of Crimea. Then too business leaders warned of economic pain if sanctions were imposed on Moscow. But the government held the political imperative to be more important than the economic calculation. This, he added with someone finality, would prove to be the case in negotiations with London as well.
And it is not just in Berlin that politics will trump economics. The Dutch equivalent of the Office for Budget Responsibility has predicted a loss in the region of €10bn over the next 15 years in the event of a “hard Brexit”. The Dutch government is simply incorporating the figure into its economic planning. My Front National friend explained, with some bitterness, that the French elite was willing to risk French jobs to protect the EU and undermine the prospects of his party in next year’s election.
For all the differences in their domestic political situations, our partners are, for the moment at least, united when it comes to the Brexit negotiations. And this is seen most clearly in their hostility to the idea that the UK should be allowed to benefit from the single market while restricting freedom of movement.
This is not borne out of any desire to punish us. Everyone I spoke to was genuinely sad that we have voted to leave. But ultimately they all acknowledge that their own interests, whether they be domestic politics, or in ensuring the stability of the EU, take precedence over their friendship with us.
Of course, there is a long way to go until the negotiations start, let alone finish. And politics, especially contemporary politics, has a habit of surprising us. Nothing about Brexit is preordained. But, from where we stand now, we don’t just need a post-Brexit plan, we need to overcome the attitudes of our partners, or it is likely to be an economically painful ride.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Theresa May hopes to emerge from Chequers on Friday evening with her cabinet intact and a clear Brexit plan, but she faces an all but impossible balancing act. Here are some of the forces she must weigh:
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s punchy Telegraph article on Monday, warning the prime minister she could meet the fate of Robert Peel, was the clearest indication yet that hardline Brexiters would be willing to bring down the government, rather than accept a Norway-style deal that left Britain inside – or almost inside – the single market.
They could do so by making clear they have a bloc of MPs large enough to vote down any version of the withdrawal agreement they dislike – whatever the consequences.
As Prof Philip Cowley, of Queen Mary University of London, puts it: “if they really are prepared to blow the bloody doors off, it doesn’t take very many of them.”
Part of the aim of Rees-Mogg and his colleagues in the European Research Group is to stiffen the sinews of their representatives inside the room at Chequers – in particular the “three Brexiteers” Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox.
May’s decision to announce a a £20bn funding boost for the NHS and publicly tie it to a “Brexit dividend” – validating the notorious £350m a week Vote Leave bus pledge – was widely read as a sop to Johnson and his colleagues, to prepare them for compromises to come.
It is unclear what the red lines of this group are and what would persuade them to pull the trigger on their strongest weapon: resignation. Certainly they would be wary of any major concessions on migration, but Downing Street has pushed back against the idea that it is preparing to cave in on freedom of movement.
Johnson, whose leadership star has waned after dodging the Heathrow vote and being overheard saying “fuck business”, is said by friends to have no intention of walking out. But if the trio united around opposition to aspects of May’s plan, and collectively cried betrayal, it could be disastrous for her.
Philip Hammond, whose department Boris Johnson memorably described as the “heart of remain”, has kept a low profile in the most recent bout of Brexit infighting.
But he and business secretary Greg Clark have played a long game over the past two years, believing that over time the realities of negotiating – and input from business groups and others – would exert intense pressure on the Leavers to compromise.
They argue that they have won a series of battles since July 2016, including over the need for a transition period, meant to end in December 2020, to avoid a “cliff-edge” in March next year.
Clark argued publicly on Sunday that this might now need to be extended. The cabinet remainers believe the longer the argument plays out, the softer the Brexit – provided Britain stays in the single market, or something close to it, in the meantime.
Theresa May’s determination to keep her Brexit secretary onside was laid bare last month when he insisted on not one but two one-to-one meetings with her to negotiate the detailed wording of the backstop for Northern Ireland, while rumours swirled in Westminster that he was ready to quit.
Davis has had more meetings with May in recent days and has been signing off the briefing papers for Chequers, prepared by his department and the Cabinet Office team of May’s Europe advisor, Ollie Robbins; but his favoured Brexit is a Canada-style trade deal, a long way from the softer approach she appears to be moving towards.
Neither is he a fan of fudge: Davis pushed May to publish the Brexit white paper before last week’s European Council meeting, so is likely to be reluctant to accept further equivocation.
Friday’s meeting includes May’s entire cabinet - not just the smaller Brexit subcommittee, which has at times been deadlocked. That means the balance of power between hard and soft Brexiteers is much harder to judge - particularly when some, including Sajid Javid and Gavin Williamson, fancy their chances in a future leadership race.
Non-members of the subcommittee have been briefed by Robbins; and invited to raise any queries in meetings with May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, or director of communications, Robbie Gibb; but several ministers– Esther McVey, or Damian Hinds, for example – are an unknown quantity.
Mainstream Tory MPs lined up on Monday to criticise Rees-Mogg for his bloodcurdling threat, and urge him to “put a sock in it”, as the veteran moderate Nicholas Soames put it.
Many want to see a “pragmatic” Brexit, which minimises economic damage as much as possible while still respecting the result of the referendum – a job which they believe has been made that much more difficult by May’s “red lines”, drafted by her former advisor Nick Timothy.
But the parliamentary arithmetic is hard to read and after Dominic Grieve backed down in his rebellion against the government last month, the widely held theory that there is a majority in the Commons for the softest of soft Brexits has not been properly tested, and depends on how Labour plays its hand.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The Bank of England has been warned against raising interest rates from as early as November, as a monthly Guardian analysis of the economy indicates pressure growing on households following the Brexit vote.
One year since Threadneedle Street’s emergency rate cut to 0.25% from 0.5% to avert a post-Brexit vote recession, the Guardian’s tracker of economic news paints a tougher picture for consumers. As the Bank prepares to reverse the cut with the first rate hike in a decade, senior economists have warned against raising the cost of borrowing for consumers pinched by low wage growth.
Writing in the Guardian, David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee, said there was “absolutely no basis” for an increase in borrowing costs given weak readings on the economy. “The enhanced uncertainty over the form Brexit will take will constrain growth even further. Cut the stupid stuff. Britain is the sick man of Europe,” he said.
Although the economy has so far avoided the downturn predicted by remain campaigners at the time of the referendum, households are coming under pressure from rising inflation due to the weak pound, while wages are failing to rise as fast. This is despite the economy posting its lowest levels of unemployment since the mid-1970s.
Set against a backdrop of disappointing economic news, the sharp language used by the Bank this month to signal a potential hike in the “coming months” is surprising, according to analysts at the investment bank Goldman Sachs. “Our measure of macro data ... shows a well-below-average flow of positive macro news over this period relative to the post-Brexit referendum period as a whole,” they said.
According to economists at the banking group Credit Suisse: “Such a hike against the backdrop of weak growth, high-currency-generated inflation but weak wage pressures and uncertainty is likely to be a policy mistake.”
France, Italy and Germany are expected to grow faster than Britain as uncertainty from Brexit continues to hit consumer confidence and deters business investment, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The group of wealthy nations forecasts the UK’s GDP growth will drop from 1.6% this year to 1% next year.
Blanchflower said growth was unlikely to pick up any time soon. “The UK was the slowest-growing economy in the EU28 in the first quarter of 2017 and joint last in the second quarter. Pathetic growth of 0.5% for the first half of the year wins the UK the wooden spoon,” he said.
To gauge the impact of the Brexit vote on a monthly basis, the Guardian has chosen eight economic indicators, along with the value of the pound and the performance of the FTSE 100. Economists made forecasts for seven of those barometers ahead of their release, and in five cases the outcome beat expectations.
The latest dashboard shows some bright spots, as consumer spending remains robust despite rising prices, and as manufacturers report increased export demand helped by the weak pound, giving the Bank ammunition for raising the cost of borrowing.
However, another former MPC member, Andrew Sentance, backed an interest rate rise. Writing in the Guardian, he said there had been news of a “more positive flavour” over the past month that should encourage the Bank to raise interest rates.
He said: “[A rate hike] should be seen as a positive development, reflecting the resilience of the economy. A quarter-point rise in the Bank rate would only take it back to the 0.5% level which was set from 2009 to 2016 – and is most unlikely to derail the economic recovery.”
The deficit – the difference between state expenditure and income – came in better than expected last month at £5.56bn, as Britain recorded its smallest budgeting gap for any August since the financial crisis. The boost to the public finances will strengthen the case for raising public sector pay, as it helps the chancellor, Philip Hammond, find wiggle room ahead of his November budget.
The pound recovered to its highest level since the day after the Brexit vote, buoyed by Threadneedle Street’s preparations to raise the cost of borrowing. With sterling still more than 9% lower than before the referendum, manufacturers are reporting increased export demand as their products become more competitive for foreign buyers.
But the same weakness in sterling has pushed up the cost of imports. The consumer prices index (CPI) rose to 2.9% in August, from 2.6% in July, while the MPC expects it to peak above 3% in October. That would force Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, to write a letter to the chancellor to explain his failure to target CPI at 2%.
Despite prices rising in non-food stores and online at the strongest annual growth rate since 1992, consumers continued shopping in August. Growth in retail sales volumes rose by 1% in August, beating analysts’ expectations for a 0.2% rise.
While retail sales growth still remains lower on an annual basis than in recent years, Sentance said this was “consistent with an economic growth slowdown, rather than something worse”.Key barometers of sentiment among companies about business activity were disappointing in August, barring the manufacturing sector, which stands to benefit from the drop in the value of the pound. The UK’s biggest sector, services, missed expectations amid uncertainty over the Brexit talks, while construction also missed expectations.
Without a turnaround over the coming months, analysts said the UK could record another quarter of 0.3% GDP growth, while the annual figure could also struggle to get above 1%.
In a positive signal that the UK is still able to fill jobs despite fears over Brexit, the jobless rate fell to 4.3% from 4.4%, the lowest figure for 42 years. However, wage growth remains stubbornly below inflation, with average earnings increasing by 2.1% in the three months to July. The Office for National Statistics estimates that workers are suffering a 0.4% real-terms fall in the value of their pay packets.
First published on Mon 10 Sep 2018 12.35 BST
The European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said it is “realistic” to believe that a Brexit deal can be agreed between the UK and the EU within the next two months.
The pound jumped in value after Barnier, during a visit to Bled in Slovenia on Monday, said: “If we are realistic, I want to reach an agreement on the first stage of the negotiation, which is the Brexit treaty, within six or eight weeks.
“The treaty is clear, we have two years to reach an agreement before they [the UK] leave ... in March 2019. That means that taking into account the time necessary for the ratification process in the House of Commons on one side, the European parliament and the council on the other side, we must reach an agreement before the beginning of November. I think it is possible.”
EU leaders were expected to announce during a meeting in Salzburg next week that an extraordinary Brexit summit would take place in November, as they give Barnier extra encouragement to strike a deal with the British prime minister.
Discussions on the state of play in the talks will take place over a two-hour lunch at an informal summit in Austria, at which leaders were likely to instruct the EU’s chief negotiator to work with the best of Theresa May’s Chequers proposals.
The EU27 is expected to insist on a resolution over the issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland is achieved by the time of a leaders’ summit in October in order for a deal to be possible.
However, the special summit – likely to be held on 13 November – would then allow EU heads of state and government to wrap up the terms of a political declaration on a future deal on trade, security, aviation and fisheries, among other issues.
EU officials and diplomats confirmed that such an announcement was expected although the plan was yet to be confirmed.
Spokesmen for the European council and European commission declined to comment.
A report in the Financial Times (£) suggested supplementary guidelines – the formal documents produced by the leaders to instruct Barnier – could also be under discussion in Salzburg. If approved, they would then be adopted at the meeting in October, the paper said.
The FT quoted a senior EU diplomat as suggesting the new instructions would “serve as a sort of mandate to do the deal”. EU and UK sources said the likelihood at this stage of such a formal move had been overblown.
Senior diplomats representing the member states in the negotiations said that while there would be warm words at Salzburg, there were no plans yet to offer up a new set of guidelines to Barnier or for them to be discussed by the leaders.
EU sources noted that the heads of state and government had stuck with the same principles on the need to avoid “cherrypicking” from full EU membership since the start of the talks.
It is understood the EU instead wants to highlight the need for movement on the Irish border issue, and the lack of time available, while giving May something to show for her efforts before the Conservative party conference.
By scheduling an extraordinary summit, one EU official said the message would be sent that time was too short to have everything in place by October, given the slow progress on the Irish border and other outstanding issues, such as geographical indications protecting food and drink products.
It would also indicate, however, the determination of EU leaders to take ownership of the final political declaration, sources said, which the EU insisted would be unprecedented in its range.
The British government was said to have been opposed to a November summit, fearing it would allow the negotiation timetable to slip.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Being an EU citizen living in the UK for the past three years has largely had the same rhythm as an undergraduate degree: relax, relax, panic for a week, enter a deep state of denial, relax, relax and repeat.
We have either been forgotten about for months at a time, breezily told that everything will be fine (but we shouldn’t bother filling our pretty little heads with the fine print), or reminded that our main function resides with the services we provide to Britons. EU citizens are mostly great when we pick your fruit or treat your gran; we may choose other professions, but should have the decency to stay quiet if we do so.
At least it hasn’t been boring: forget hobbies or speed dating, if you feel you spend too much time stuck inside your own head, constantly wondering what will happen to your legal status in the country you chose to call home should keep you busy.
In the latest instalment of our saga, the home secretary, Priti Patel, has rejected previous plans to maintain some form of freedom of movement until January 2021 in case of a no-deal Brexit – instead now aiming to end it on 31 October if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal, which it currently looks like it will.
Given that we have been given until 31 December 2020 to apply to the EU settlement scheme – and that the Home Office has a less than tremendous record of dealing with people who have a complex immigration status – this does not seem ideal.
There is a certain element of fatigue to all of this: if previous hare-brained government plans are anything to go by, they will eventually figure out something for us which, while still bad, will at least be marginally less inconvenient. Well, maybe they won’t, but as with everything else in British politics at the moment, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Still, there is something particularly grating about this new development and the nagging feeling that, had she been able to, Patel would have retroactively ended free movement on 24 June 2016.
The past three years has forced EU citizens living in the UK to learn not to take things personally. The country you visited and fell in love with and decided to move to voted to leave the bloc your home country is a member of partly because of people like you who decided to move here.
The country across the Channel from all your family and childhood friends where you decided to spend a while, maybe the rest of your life – who knows? – strangled itself in red lines just so it could make sure that it becomes harder for people like you to move here.
The language you learned and lovingly perfected over the years and now speak every day became deafening in its attacks on the scheme that inspired you to pack up your bags and start a new, hopefully better life here.
The prime minister who made a career out of wanting as few of you as possible moving to her country was ousted, in part because her efforts to make it harder for people like you to move to this country were not deemed ardent enough.
She has now been replaced, and the priority of the new home secretary is to make sure the likes of you find it harder to move here, as quickly as possible. But it’s not about us, of course – the British people voted to leave and now they must leave, but sometimes they do worry about their fruit and their gran, and so we are trotted out once more, then put aside until we are needed again.
The problem with internalising this need to remain quiet and out of the conversation is that unacknowledged melancholy only grows stronger. There are only so many times we can choose to be quiet or pointedly sardonic, lest we be accused of being melodramatic, or told to leave if we no longer like it here.
The UK has not been a pleasant place to live for European immigrants since the referendum, and phases of brief panic followed by months of denial do not make for the most stable of mindsets.
Maybe free movement will not end on 31 October as Patel wants, or maybe it will – maybe it is an overreaction to find this desperate move to close borders as soon as possible profoundly disheartening, or maybe it isn’t. Who knows?
As British people may recognise, the problem with bottling up your emotions for too long means that sometimes they all come out at once, not when they should but when you’ve had enough.
That it is such a typically British way to cope is, at the very least, a decent sign of thorough integration: hopefully that will count towards something if the Home Office changes its mind again.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Members of Britain’s three biggest trade unions now support a new referendum on Brexit by a margin of more than two to one, according to a bombshell poll that will cause political shockwaves on the eve of the party conference season.
The survey of more than 2,700 members of Unite, Unison and the GMB by YouGov, for the People’s Vote campaign, also finds that a clear majority of members of the three unions now back staying in the EU, believing Brexit will be bad for jobs and living standards.
The poll comes as union delegates gather in Manchester for the annual TUC conference, where Brexit will be debated on Monday, and two weeks before the Labour party conference in Liverpool, where delegates are expected to debate and vote on Brexit policy. They will also consider calls to keep open the option of a fresh referendum on any deal Theresa May may strike on the UK’s exit from the EU.
In an interview with the Observer before the poll findings were released, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said his preferred option was still for voters to be offered a say on the government’s handling of Brexit – and any deal brought back from Brussels by May – in a general election. But he said that if Labour was unable to force one in the coming months, he wanted to “keep all options open”, including supporting a new referendum.
McDonnell said he was sure there would be a full debate, and votes, on Brexit at the Labour conference. And he went out of his way to praise the People’s Vote campaign, which he said had been very “constructive” and had made clear that its attempts to influence Labour policy should not be seen “as an attack on Jeremy Corbyn or positioning around the leadership. It should be a constructive debate and that is right.”
The poll found that members of Unite, the country’s biggest union, and Labour’s largest financial backer, now support a referendum on the final Brexit deal by 59% to 33% and support staying in the EU by 61% to 35%. GMB’s members support putting the issue back to the people by 56% to 33% and its members want the UK to stay in the EU by 55% to 37%.
Unison members back another referendum by 66% to 22% and would opt to stay in the EU by 61% to 35%.
Union members think standards of living will deteriorate as a result of Brexit by a margin of around four to one (Unite members by 55% to 11%, Unison members by 61% to 16%, and GMB members by 49% to 11%).
They also believe Brexit will worsen, not improve, job opportunities (Unite members by 57% to 16%, Unison members by 52% to 27%, and GMB members by 43% to 18%).
Despite claims that workers are overwhelmingly against immigration, members of all three unions want to prioritise trade over controlling immigration (Unison members by 68% to 22%, Unite members by 65% to 27%, and GMB members by 58% to 32%).
Last week Tim Roache, the GMB’s general secretary, announced that his union would back another referendum after consulting its 620,000 members. Roache, who will address a People’s Vote March for the Many on the opening day of Labour’s conference, said the country did not vote for a “no deal” Brexit or to damage the economy.
“In trade union terms, if we negotiate a pay deal for our members we put that deal back to the members and they decide whether that’s acceptable or not.”
The TUC is expected to adopt a new position on Brexit that will place an emphasis on jobs, rights at work and peace in Northern Ireland. Its executive council is also likely to back the possibility of another vote on Brexit.
Shakira Martin, president of the National Union of Students, who will be speaking at the TUC, said: “What this poll shows is that rank-and-file members of the three largest trade unions in the country are now united in solidarity with young people and students in backing a People’s Vote on the final Brexit deal.
“The campaign for a People’s Vote is a movement that reaches out across regions, party, age, race and class. As we seem to be moving closer to a no-deal scenario which would be disastrous for the country, the time has come to join our voices for a People’s Vote.”
Writing in today’s Observer, Peter Kellner, the former president of YouGov, said the poll could mark a turning point. “It’s not that rank-and-file trade unionists are indulging in gesture politics or ideological breast-beating.
‘They are worried about the impact of Brexit on jobs, taxes, living standards and the National Health Service. They fear that Brexit Britain would find it harder to sell products and services abroad.”
Kellner says the methods used by YouGov are much the same as the company deployed when it correctly predicted Corbyn’s win in the race for the Labour leadership in 2015.
Baroness Margaret Prosser, a Labour peer and former president of the TUC, said: “Trade unions always listen to members and that’s why we’re already beginning to see them move on this issue. But this poll is important because it shows we need to move further and faster in the next few weeks if we’re going to fight for the best interests of workers.
“A People’s Vote is the last, best hope we have of preventing massive damage on jobs, public services and our most hard-pressed communities.”
Conservative MP and former minister Guto Bebb, who quit as a defence minister in July in protest at Theresa May’s concessions to Tory Brexiters, yesterday added his voice to those backing another referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
It wasn’t the doomy medical diagnosis that caused F Scott Fitzgerald’s mental breakdown. It was moment the doctors told him he was going to be OK. “After about an hour of solitary pillow-hugging,” wrote the novelist in 1936, “I began to realize that for two years my life had been a drawing on resources that I did not possess, that I had been mortgaging myself physically and spiritually up to the hilt.”
Come the day of the supreme-court judgment on Brexit, the progressive part of Britain could be forgiven if it succumbed to a Fitzgerald-style “crack-up”. Nigel Farage will mobilise 100,000 racists and xenophobes to intimidate the court; the justices will probably ignore them and uphold the high-court verdict. But it is beginning to feel as if liberal democracy in Britain is, too, “drawing on resources it does not possess”.
Across the world, a succession of near-catastrophes has over the past two years begun to drain progressive politics of its resilience. Anti-racists, globalists and believers in the virtues of science over mumbo-jumbo are still winning elections. But the effort is going to exhaust us unless we become more radical.
In America, whether he wins or loses, Donald Trump’s candidacy – by sidelining the respectable right and creating a mass movement based on hate – has eroded American democracy to a new and fragile baseline. All the right needs to do in 2020 is to find a more respectable candidate and, until then, unleash a resistance struggle against the legitimacy of Clinton, her supreme court appointments and any Democratic majority in Congress that emerges.
It’s important to understand the new cross-fertilisation that has begun between Trump’s white-supremacist revolt and the revolt being planned by Ukip. Virtually nobody in mainstream politics a decade ago used the term “white working class”. Now it’s common to hear even BBC presenters parrot the phrase, as if the separation between white and non-white populations in Britain’s post-industrial towns were an accomplished fact, not a far-right fantasy.
In Britain, since the high-court decision, and with the tabloids ramping up their attack on the judiciary, people have been asking: what do Jonathan Harmsworth, owner of the Daily Mail, and Rupert Murdoch want? What would make them stop?
The answer is: they want Britain ruled by a xenophobic mob, controlled by them. The policies are secondary – as long as their legal offshore tax-dodging facilities are maintained. They also want a Labour party they can control and a Tory party they can intimidate.
In pursuit of that, they have created what the sociologist Manuel Castells calls a “switch”. You create a constituency of angry rightwing voters, assembled around using language no respectable politician could utter, and you switch them on, or off, against the government of the day as long as that government does your bidding.
It’s facile to call Trump and Farage “fascists”. They are elite, rightwing economic nationalists who have each stumbled upon the fact that a minority of working-class people can be fooled by populism – especially when the left refuses to play the populist game. And they are moving forward fast.
So we need to catch up. “We” is no longer about leave versus remain, still less Corbynistas versus the rest. “We” should include everybody who wants this country to be run by parliament, with the judiciary guaranteeing the rule of law, to remain engaged with the multilateral, global institutions and be tolerant to migrants and foreign visitors.
The first thing we have to make is a rhetorical break with neoliberalism: the doctrine of austerity, inequality, privatisation, financial corruption, asset bubbles and technocratic hubris. It is entirely possible to construct a humane pro-business version of capitalism without these things.
There doesn’t have to be a bunch of apologies and confessions. You could assuage a large part of the anger that’s driving the ultra-right simply by a demonstrable change of path: pump money into communities and hope will follow. Likewise, get HMRC on to the case of the tax-dodging rich, and off the backs of small-business owners.
The next thing is to do something radical about the inequality of voice in Britain’s media. Enact Leveson. Ask companies such as British Airways why they are distributing the Mail mid-Atlantic, for free, as a kind of “unwelcome to Britain” card for visitors. People with resources should set up – or, even better, acquire through hostile takeover – mass-circulation newspapers that champion democratic values, tolerance and restraint. Plus we need to challenge supine editorial leadership of the BBC. There are no minutes of a meeting where the BBC’s bosses decided to give free rein to hate speech and intimidation on programmes such as Question Time; no instructions exist that say reporters should run unchallenged vox-pops with racists, back to back. But this is what’s happening. It would take one email from the director general, Tony Hall, to stop it.
The philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote in the 1930s that the success of the radical right was fuelled by the failure of the radical left. Benjamin took it as read that the business class would either support, or flip over to, fascism once the demagogues had created a street movement and an atmosphere of crisis.
Today, however, the vast majority of business leaders, professionals and educated people operate in a world regulated to global standards, where markets depend on freedom and the rule of law. Today, therefore, it is the failure of the radical centre that’s the problem. It needs, like Fitzgerald after his famous “crack-up” to recharge its batteries.
If Nigel Farage leads 100,000 people to intimidate the supreme court, I intend to be on the other side of a police crash barrier opposing him. I don’t want to be flanked by only my anti-fascist mates from 30 years ago: I want to see an alliance of the left and the radical centre on the streets. That means bond traders from Canary Wharf, arm in arm with placard-carrying Trots. Masked-up Kurdish radicals alongside Mumsnet posters. Eighty years on from Cable Street, we don’t have many dockers and miners around, to help face down rightwing intimidation. Puny as we are, it’s up to us.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
There were warnings of recession before the EU referendum and more such gloomy forecasts have followed the vote to leave. But after a week of official economic data – including inflation and unemployment – gave a clearer impact of the immediate consequences of the poll, what do the numbers so far tell us?
Employment is up, shoppers kept spending and a weaker pound has boosted UK tourism. At the same time, inflation has picked up, house prices have wobbled and businesses say they are nervous about hiring and investing.
Here is what we have learned from the data:
Monthly jobs data can be volatile, but fears that a Brexit vote would trigger widespread job losses were not realised in July. Official figures this week showed that the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance actually fell in the month following the referendum, the first such drop since February. The data also showed the employment rate was at a record high in the run-up to the vote, standing at 74.5% for the three months to June.
Business surveys have suggested some firms are reluctant to hire new workers since the vote and some reports have pointed to jobs being cut. But if the last recession is anything to go by, employers will be reluctant to part with skilled workers before they have a clearer idea of the business climate. Still, the Bank of England is predicting 250,000 job losses and believes the unemployment rate will rise from 4.9% now to 5.6% in two years’ time.
Inflation rose to the highest level in 20 months in July but at 0.6% remained relatively low and well below the Bank of England target for 2%.
Economists are warning of steeper prices rises in the coming months as the full impact of the weaker pound following the Brexit vote is felt. The drop in the UK currency makes imports more expensive and retailers and manufacturers will probably pass on those higher costs to end consumers. The Bank of England predicts inflation will stand at 2.4% in two years’ time.
Hot on the heels of the solid jobs numbers this week, came news of a bounce in high street sales. Warm weather trumped Brexit fears, it seemed, as shoppers splashed out on sandals and summer tops.
Some commentators warn that job cuts will start to bite later this year and spending will then fall. But for now, a relatively stable housing market, low inflation, low interest rates and low unemployment are keeping the tills ringing.
Analysts had predicted a drop in house prices following the Brexit vote. So far the early signs have been mixed but nothing points to dramatic falls.
Lender Halifax said house prices fell 1% in July. But on a less volatile three-month basis they continued to grow. Figures from its rival Nationwide showed prices rising 0.5% in July. But the building society warned that any impact from the vote might not be fully evident in July’s figures.
A survey of estate agents by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) suggested sales and demand from homebuyers dipped in July. But the group expected activity to settle in coming months and surveyors were feeling more positive about prices over coming months and the year ahead.
That is reassuring news for homeowners, says Kallum Pickering, senior UK economist at the bank Berenberg. “Tentatively, data on market expectations improved between June and July, suggesting that the Brexit bark might have been worse than the bite. There’s little evidence yet that points to a Lehman re-run in the UK housing market.”
The British public’s confidence in the economy recovered in August, according to a survey from data company Markit. The rebound in sentiment followed a slump in July as consumers fretted about the impact that leaving the EU would have on disposable incomes.
Expectations for finances over the next 12 months picked up to 49.8 on the Markit household finances index in August, from 47.1 in July. Anything below 50 signals deterioration, so households believe the outlook is stable, though they are still feeling cautious.
Other measures of consumer confidence also signalled a sharp initial drop in July. But data on consumer spending suggested people were still shopping, eating out and going to the cinema.
The public finances were in surplus a month after the Brexit vote as the government earned more in tax income than it spent, but the performance was weaker than expected.
July is typically a strong month for the public finances, with companies settling their corporation tax bills and self-employed people paying their income tax. Economists said it was not yet clear what impact the Brexit vote would have on the public finances over the coming months and years. The ONS itself cautioned: “Estimates for the latest period always contain a substantial forecast element and so any post-referendum impact may not become clear for some time.”
Sterling tumbled against the euro and the US dollar in the wake of the referendum result. That could make life easier for exporters, by making their goods cheaper to overseas buyers. However, it raises import costs.
For UK holidaymakers, the weaker pound has added to the cost of their summer break and they are finding that £1 buys less than a euro at some airports’ bureaux de change. In the week that sterling slipped to a new three-year low against the euro following the Brexit vote, researchers found that bureaux de change at Stansted and Luton airports were offering just 99 cents for every pound exchanged.
At one point on Tuesday, £1 was worth just €1.1476, its lowest level since August 2013. Sterling has since rallied a little, with £1 buying €1.1595 on Friday. That compares with €1.30 the day before the referendum in June, and €1.42 in August 2015.
The FTSE 100 share index hit a 14-month peak of 6,941.19 earlier this week and is not far off setting a new all-time high.
Action from the Bank of England to shore up the economy and its promise of more to come has helped. There has also been a boost from the weaker pound to those FTSE big hitters that earn a substantial amount of sales from overseas. The drop in sterling flatters the finances of companies that report profits in dollars and it helps exporters. It also makes the pound-denominated share index cheaper to buy into for foreign investors.
We won’t get the official take on post-referendum GDP growth until October. But early surveys of the construction, manufacturing and services sectors, point to the economy shrinking in the third quarter, say their compilers. There was a record fall in the all-sector purchasing managers’ index (PMI) in July, which was published earlier in the month. Markit’s chief economist Chris Williamson said that pointed to a 0.4% drop in GDP in the July-to-September quarter, a stark contrast to growth of 0.6% in the previous three months.
Technically, a recession is two consecutive quarters of contraction. For now, the Bank of England is cautiously optimistic that will be avoided after it stepped in with more electronic money creation and a cut in interest rates to a record low. Signs since then that consumer spending, the main driver of UK growth, is holding up will bolster those tentative hopes.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
Boris Johnson has been taken to task by a Swedish MEP who accused the UK foreign secretary of “bad taste” and political insensitivity after he repeatedly referred to Brexit as “a liberation”, in a spat caught on camera at the recent Munich security conference.
According to footage that emerged on Wednesday, Johnson was confronted about his choice of language by Anna Maria Corazza Bildt during a panel discussion on the future of the west.
“I would like to tell the foreign minister of the UK that the word liberation in the history of Europe has a very strong meaning,” she said, to some applause. “In these challenging times talking about liberating Britain from the European Union is just bad taste.”
A uncomfortable looking Johnson responded: “I say, come on. I have to say, I hesitate to accuse you of pomposity, but the word liberation clearly means ... it’s etymologically equivalent to being freed, and I’m afraid it’s an undeniable fact that we, the UK, has been unable to do, to run its own trade policy for 44 years.
“We now have an opportunity to do exactly that. I think people should be very proud and very excited by that and that is exactly what we are.”
Warming to his theme, Johnson told Bildt: “And I want to reclaim the English language, if I may. There is absolutely no reason why I should not use the word ‘liberation’ to refer to our ability to take back control of our tariff schedules in Geneva and do our own free trade deals. And I’m sorry, but I’m going to disagree with you emphatically.”
The MEP responded: “We are neither occupying you or a prison.”
Last month, Downing Street had to come to the defence of the foreign secretary after he warned the French president, François Hollande, to not “administer punishment beatings” in the manner of “some world war two movie”, in response to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.
The former education secretary Michael Gove also defended Johnson against those who criticised his use of second world war terminology in criticising Hollande. He described it as a “witty metaphor”.
However, Johnson’s comments came only 24 hours after the prime minister, Theresa May, had reminded her cabinet ministers in her Lancaster House speech to show restraint by warning “any stray word” could make securing a Brexit deal more difficult.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
He called it all “mumbo jumbo” in his destined-to-be leaked after-dinner speech. The foreign secretary was mocking the Treasury’s anxiety to keep frictionless borders. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he conceded. No deal does mean that, at borders, “there will be some dislocation … some bumps on the road”.
Bumps? Here are just a few for MPs to remember on Tuesday as they vote on the EU withdrawal bill, before blundering another step nearer the precipice.
Leaving the customs union and single market turns out to be a thousand times tougher than anyone imagined. Each week new nightmares emerge that no one saw before the referendum. Brexiters deliberately deceived with breezy promises of fantasy trade in distant Shangri-Las, but remainers knew little of the true perils.
In a 45-year bonding inside the EU, our jobs, lives and economies have grown together like a grafted tree. In the warp and weft of our mutual development it turns out to be impossible to unpick the EU threads without destroying the fabric of our intertwined institutions.
Pick at random from some 40 EU agencies relying on each others’ expertise and resources. As each is exposed to the light, the Brexiters protest, “Oh, we’ll stay in this one”, or “We’ll make a special agreement with that” – with no precedent. Nothing has been fixed, with under 300 days to go. The medicines agency departs to Amsterdam, shedding expertise that keeps big pharmaceutical companies here. Recently these businesses protested at the lack of an interim deal to prevent the 45m medicine packs that the UK exports each month to EU and EEA countries from requiring customs checks on both sides of the Channel.
Leaving Euratom disrupts access to medical isotopes – and the whole nuclear industry. Don’t assume we will stay in the European aviation safety agency, guaranteeing joint flying. Must we leave the European Investment Bank? In the 18 months before the referendum it lent us €13.5bn (£11.9bn) cheaply for 74 affordable housing and capital projects – new trains for Merseyside, €1bn for housing in Wigan, Scarborough, Bradford and elsewhere. Since the vote, the UK has been lent just €3bn, due to Brexit uncertainty. Nothing is agreed on security, on Europol or the European arrest warrant. On farming, the National Farmers’ Union warns the customs union is not enough for exporting our beef and lamb to the EU without friction. And ask the fruit and veg growers about their vanishing EU pickers.
Monday saw the largest manufacturing fall in five years. Many carmakers are seeking alternative post-Brexit plans. A Mini has parts made in Austria, Hungary, Poland and France, plus hundreds more supply lines criss-crossing borders in hours. First Theresa May promised they would work “within the single market”, then outside but with “frictionless trade” and now there is only her unfathomable, “as frictionless as possible”.
Pondering Boris Johnson’s bumpy road, I talked to James Hookham of the Freight Transport Association (FTA). He sees no plan for borders, though “the French are hiring new fast-track customs officers expecting checks”. Every extra two-minute delay for trucks at Dover causes a 20-mile motorway tailback and, he says, “No one voted for paralysis.”
No-dealer Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed on Monday that there would be no hold-ups, as the UK need set no tariffs or checks. But this breaks WTO rules. (Will we join the few – Bhutan and Turkmenistan – outside the WTO?) The FTA has still not been told if the industry can keep its 43,000 EU drivers, or whose qualifications will be recognised. These are not bumps but craters.
The Johnson-Moggites wave all this away. Common sense will prevail, they say: a quality unknown to them. Johnson wishes Trump was in charge: “He’d go in bloody hard. There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos … But actually you might get somewhere.” These no-dealers have no answers, only bluster, while EU negotiators are led by a clear-cut rule book we helped draw up – but that’s all mumbo jumbo now.
On one thing Johnson is right: “We will end up locked in orbit around the EU.” Look at each erupting problem, each agency, each type of trade: the gravitational pull of our great neighbouring trading partner is far too strong to resist. If pusillanimous MPs chicken out this week, by October the only commonsense course is for parliament to tell hard truths we barely knew before. Then perhaps the country can choose to step back from Brexit, when no deal or a miserable, rule-taking, outsiders’ deal will make a mockery of taking back control.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
For now, we know very few details of what Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar agreed at their private summit in Wirral yesterday. We do, however, know that it was enough for the UK and EU sides to enter the “negotiation tunnel” this weekend – an intensive period for hammering out the details of a potential new deal. Think the Channel tunnel, only this time you’re trying to drag two close partners further apart.
When we take a step back from Brexit’s daily developments, it’s clear that nothing really changes. The position in Dublin and Brussels has not fundamentally moved since the day of the referendum. Namely, the EU cannot agree to a scenario which necessitates border infrastructure on the island of Ireland, now or at any point in the future. Theresa May’s deal satisfied that demand, because it kept Northern Ireland in both the EU’s customs union and single market for goods, and ensured the arrangement could not lapse without the consent of all sides. Johnson’s proposal cannot satisfy it, because it institutes a different tariff regime for Northern Ireland without a credible alternative to the backstop, and allows the DUP to suspend alignment as soon as next year.
The mood music so far suggests the concessions have come from one side only. Varadkar’s overt enthusiasm on Thursday contrasted notably with Downing Street’s reticence to comment. Unless Johnson has been deceiving his Irish counterpart, or Varadkar has gravely misunderstood him, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the prime minister has conceded the central point about customs: Northern Ireland cannot leave the customs union without viable alternative arrangements, and there can be no such arrangements without a fallback option enshrined in the withdrawal agreement.
The issue of consent is also vital. The EU may be able to concede a little more ground here, but there can be no question of allowing the DUP a veto – or, put another way, the unilateral power to reinstitute a hard border on the island of Ireland. If the DUP were so empowered, it would also make Sinn Féin unlikely ever to share power with them again. As with so much in Brexit, apparently isolated political choices may set in train ramifications that the initial actors never imagined or understood.
The more immediate point is that all this is academic for Johnson’s basic ambition, which is to take us out of the EU on 31 October at any cost. Consider this for a moment: it is now Friday. The European council summit is on Thursday. The two sides have merely agreed to begin negotiating. They must now find a delicate compromise to satisfy all interested parties, reach concrete agreement in the British cabinet and in every member state, draft a tight legal text with time for lawyers and officials on both sides to examine each word, then secure the final sign-off in EU capitals in order to prepare the council summit conclusions – all in six days. The first time round it took 18 months.
This would all be hard enough if it were simply about resolving the Irish border issue and not endangering western Europe’s most fragile peace. But it encompasses even broader concerns. The EU negotiators must convince Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and the entire European parliament that the deal guarantees the integrity of the single market in all circumstances. The UK negotiators must convince parliament that the deal “delivers Brexit” and is substantively different from May’s settlement, while also placating the concerns of both the communities in Northern Ireland. The DUP is unlikely to back anything that suggests indefinite divergence from Great Britain – and if it does not budge, neither will the Tory hardliners.
If, by some miracle, the government can win round enough no-deal Brexiters and Labour waverers to get this deal over the line, it still does not rescue Johnson from his predicament. There is next to no chance that parliament can vote on a deal by Saturday. Even if MPs wanted to endorse the agreement, they would have no time to scrutinise it. Johnson will be forced to abide by the Benn Act and seek a delay. That may be a technical extension of just a few weeks, but it still breaks the pledge on which he has staked his leadership. More worryingly for the prime minister, Nigel Farage will be apoplectic. Not only will the Tories have extended Brexit yet again, but from the Brexit party’s perspective, they will have effectively rehashed May’s deal. In the election which follows, Johnson will confront the anger both of dedicated remainers and leavers.
We must give the prime minister his due. We said he would have to climb down and he evidently has. But if he really is prepared to die in a ditch over the 31 October deadline, he should be aware that he has dug it himself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Tuesday night’s result is a defeat that Boris Johnson has worked tirelessly to secure. From proroguing parliament to furiously provoking rebels on his own side, Johnson created this moment of crisis. That’s because his political strategy aims to force a general election before Britain leaves the EU – and to use Brexit to win it. In a single day, Johnson managed to drive one Tory MP to walk across the chamber to join the Liberal Democrats, others to announce they would not seek re-election, and more to walk through the opposition lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn. It is quite the political feat.
In his personal life and his political career, Johnson has shown himself to be a risk-taker. But while a general election is a huge risk, for him there is a greater risk of inaction. Johnson has no viable negotiating strategy for Brexit itself and yet he invested all his political capital in meeting the October deadline. For all the bluster about no-deal, the reality is that the chaos it would cause means the only gamble for the Tories bigger than a general election before Brexit is one afterwards.
Johnson risks getting the election he wants but the result he fears. The biggest mistake most political leaders make is to believe that the strategy that got them to where they are will take them to where they want to be. The same is true for Johnson. His rise to power has been propelled by a toxic combination of ruthless ambition, the absence of integrity, and a wholly detached relationship with the truth. The immediate political crisis that he has manufactured is the product of those qualities.
The problem for Johnson is that the top job comes with unprecedented scrutiny, and the strategy has already hit bumps in the road. The lie that progress was being made in the Brexit talks was skilfully exposed by Philip Hammond. The threat to deselect Tory MPs that voted to prevent no-deal blew up in his face as Johnson faces the uncomfortable prospect of deselecting Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames. Unlike a leadership campaign where he coaxed the media into talking about model buses, attention is focused on him like never before.
Indeed, Johnson himself struggled to play the part of “prime minister of the United Kingdom” when he emerged from a Downing Street garden party on Monday evening to claim he didn’t want the general election that he is so obviously seeking – and had little but bluster to offer the Commons when scrutinised about his Brexit plans. This isn’t a statesman at work; it’s a painful am-dram production.
Meanwhile, menacing stage directions spew out of No 10 as if Dominic Cummings was directing a pantomime in a Surrey village hall. We are told Johnson will ignore the law, that he will shut down parliament, that he will even squat in Downing Street should he lose a vote of confidence. This kind of bluster is an import from US politics – or rather Hollywood’s pastiche of Washington. It is alien to our political culture. If Boris Johnson refuses to leave Downing Street, then the police will simply escort him from the building – something Dominic Cummings knows a thing or two about.
Johnson knows that his only viable electoral strategy is to unite the right behind him by vanquishing the Brexit party. Since Johnson cannot out-Brexit the Brexit party, he must usurp Farage as their champion. No matter what Farage would do, Johnson would go further. The problem for the Tories is that a performance targeted at an audience of radicalised pensioners can also be seen by everyone else.
The risk for Johnson is that he has already alienated moderate Conservative voters – those that were fond of Ruth Davidson and still regard the coalition government as a success. In Scotland alone, the Tories could lose up to a dozen seats. The turn to the hard right by Johnson’s Conservative party makes Labour’s shift to the left under Corbyn appear genteel by comparison.
More widely, there is no majority for a no-deal exit, meaning that opposition parties could stand to gain from Johnson’s extreme stance. Tonight’s defeat may secure him the election he wants, but it could well deliver an outcome very different from the one that the “bad boys of Brexit” thought they had in the bag.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Back to the (original) backstop? By conceding that any customs border will have to be in the Irish Sea, Boris Johnson appears to have revived the possibility of a Brexit deal. But the focus on the politics of the Irish border risks missing the implications of his proposals for the economy of the UK as a whole. And, as we reveal in our report for The UK in a Changing Europe, these are significantly worse than was the case for Theresa May’s Brexit plan.
Indeed, Johnson’s motivations for ditching May’s withdrawal agreement have little if anything to do with Northern Ireland. Rather, it is because the new prime minister sees the ultimate relationship the UK should have with the EU very differently to his predecessor. Gone is the notion that a shared customs territory and close regulatory alignment on goods should form a “bridge” to the long-term relationship. As Johnson put it himself in his letter to Jean-Claude Juncker: “The backstop acted as a bridge to a proposed future relationship with the EU in which the UK could be closely integrated with the EU customs arrangements and would align with EU law in many areas. That proposed future relationship is not the goal of the current UK government. The government intends that the future relationship should be based on a free trade agreement in which the UK takes control of its own regulatory affairs and trade policy.”
So this isn’t about Ireland. It’s about our long-term relationship with the EU. And the bottom line is that the prime minister envisages a far looser relationship than his predecessor.
From what we can ascertain (and remember, we cannot be certain what the government will want in the way of a future relationship until negotiations start) the present government is seeking a goods-only or “Canada minus” deal. This will involve only minimal coverage of services. It will also involve significant non-tariff barriers on trade, given that the UK will be in its own customs territory while only Northern Ireland will be bound by EU rules on agriculture and goods.
Even if Johnson were to change his mind and decide he wanted a closer relationship, it is entirely possible it would not be on offer. The current government has refused to sign up to EU level playing field provisions on labour and environmental standards. The proximity of the UK mean that it would insist on such provisions in return for access to the EU market. Without them it will be difficult for the UK to reach a comprehensive free trade agreement with the bloc.
So what would this mean for the economy? Based on the reduction in trade alone, under May’s deal (assuming no productivity effect, on which more in a moment) income per capita would have been 1.7% lower than under membership. The equivalent figure for the Johnson deal is 2.5%, while that for a World Trade Organization Brexit (no trade deal at all) is 3.3%.
However, economists are convinced that reductions in trade also affect productivity. The literature suggests that a 1% decline in trade reduces income per capita by about 0.5%. If, then, we combine this productivity effect with the trade impacts summarised above, we arrive at per capita GDP figures of -4.9%, -6.4% and -8.1% for May’s deal, Johnson’s proposals and a WTO Brexit respectively, as compared with membership.
Our findings, in other words, suggest that, relative both to the status quo of EU membership and to May’s proposals, the economic impact of Johnson’s proposals would be significant and negative.
This being said, there are steps the government can take to mitigate this impact. One obvious policy lever is UK migration policy. This is an area where Johnson, given his relatively more liberal approach, has more scope than May. And there are clearly other important mechanisms, such as fiscal policy and regulatory policy, where choices will be crucial in determining overall economic performance.
As with all forecasts, the findings of our report should be used with caution. Modelling economic impacts of hypothetical scenarios is fraught with difficulty. We don’t seek to reach fine-grained conclusions about the economic impact of various Brexit scenarios. Rather, we hope to have established the broad impacts of leaving the EU, taking into account the major determinants: trade, migration and, indirectly, productivity.
What the forecasts do is give an indication of the scale of the impact of Johnson’s proposals. Our main insight is that his proposals sit somewhere between May’s deal and a WTO scenario. The impact on income per capita is negative in all scenarios, but Johnson’s proposals would be more damaging than May’s deal.
It should be stressed that we have not looked at what might happen to the UK economy as a whole, but the isolated impact of a change in the UK’s relationship with the EU. Overall economic performance obviously depends on many other factors, including global economic trends and domestic policy choices.
It is more than 25 years since the Clinton presidential campaign almost used “It’s the economy, stupid” as a slogan. We have learned a lot since then, not least that it’s not always the economy and that, when it comes to Brexit, there are many who are willing to accept economic losses to achieve what they see as essentially political objectives. We respect such arguments.
Equally, however, we believe that decisions should be taken on the basis of information that is as complete as possible. Brexit might be a largely political project, but in deciding what to think of it we should be in a position to talk knowledgably about its potential economic effects. Making trade harder with our nearest and largest trading partner will inevitably have a negative economic impact. What our findings show is that this impact will be greater for Johnson’s proposals than for May’s deal. That, at a minimum, strikes us as worthy of debate.
Last modified on Mon 22 Jul 2019 11.00 BST
For Theresa May, the worst has been saved for last. After taking her final prime minister’s questions, she will be driven to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday afternoon to perform the most personally disagreeable task of her time at the top. After tendering her resignation, which will be painful enough, she will have the even more hateful duty of recommending that the Queen invites Boris Johnson to become the new prime minister.
Her failings have been a major contributory factor to his ascent. Tory activists think he will deliver them the Brexit that she couldn’t and cheer them up after the torture of the May years. Tory MPs believe that he has the campaign skills to scupper Nigel Farage and squash Jeremy Corbyn. None of which is going to be much use to him in the critical opening weeks of a premiership that will inherit all the problems that defeated Mrs May and with some extra challenges of his own.
He will have to learn how to be prime minister. The schoolboy who wanted to be “world king” has spent many years lusting after the job, but that is entirely different to doing it. Many previous tenants of Number 10 will testify that no other role is an adequate preparation for the demands of the premiership. Tony Blair, a highly accomplished leader of the opposition before he moved into Downing Street, once told me that he didn’t really get the hang of it until he had been doing it for four years and he had the shock absorber of a landslide majority while he was learning on the job. Gordon Brown arrived with a decade as chancellor under his belt, but floundered desperately as prime minister. Boris Johnson has never been in charge of a public service department and was an embarrassment in the one cabinet position that he has held.
The optimistic forecast of a Johnson premiership argues that he understands his own frailties and will surround himself with sensible people who know how to make things work. They point to his time as London mayor, but that experience is distant and not all that relevant. He and the City Hall veterans he will take into Downing Street will soon learn the difference between wielding circumscribed powers over one city and taking total responsibility for the fortunes of a deeply divided nation at one of the most perilous junctures of its modern history.
The civil service is paid to help and will usually look forward to an exhausted premiership being replaced by a fresh one. Contrary to some popular tropes, civil servants respond well to purposeful political leadership. In this case, though, Whitehall is preparing for the Johnson premiership by adopting the brace position. Is this because he is infamously cavalier about detail, bored by complexity, known to react peevishly and sometimes with a ferocious temper when frustrated or contradicted, and has a notoriously casual relationship with the truth? All that and more. The core fear about a Johnson premiership is that officials will not feel confident that they can speak truth to power. Even some of his friends admit that he sent a disastrous message when he failed to stand by Sir Kim Darroch following the leaking of the ambassador’s confidential assessments of the Trump regime. After the briefing on the nuclear deterrent that every incoming prime minister receives, one of the first tasks of the cabinet secretary and other senior mandarins will be to update him on the latest thinking about the EU’s negotiating position and the consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Who will want to puncture his fantasies about what the EU will agree to and warn prime minister Johnson about the hazards of a calamity Brexit when they are likely to be received with a contemptuous lecture to “get off the hamster wheel of doom”? Another deep anxiety in Whitehall is that they will be smeared as scapegoats if it all goes horribly wrong. Since he won’t want to accept the blame for shattering the economy, his instinct will be to accuse others.
His peer group in the European Union will endeavour to put a diplomatic mask on their incredulity that he has been chosen as prime minister. They want an orderly resolution to Brexit, but there is no reservoir of trust for a man who rose to journalistic fame by confecting fabrications that toxified British attitudes towards the EU and who then fronted the mendacities of the Leave campaign. The chances of striking a bargain have been made slighter by the way in which he has campaigned for the leadership. He might have used his dominant position in the contest to introduce some realism into Tory minds about what can be achieved and give himself some scope for manoeuvre. He has instead upped the ante on himself by declaring that Britain will be out on 31 October, “come what may”, “do or die”, deal or no deal. In the closing stages of the campaign, he made reaching an agreement even harder by saying that he wants the Irish backstop ripped out of the agreement altogether.
The case made for him by his cheerleaders is that he is a master of the theatre of politics, a skill that was absent from his predecessor’s rigid repertoire. He will have a chance to display that characteristic once the prime ministerial limousine has conveyed him from Buckingham Palace to Number 10 to make the customary doorstep speech. We should expect typically florid phrase-making about seizing the opportunities of Brexit, looking to the sunny uplands, making Britain great again and similar braggadocio. The grandiosity of his rhetoric will be swiftly mocked by the crimped circumstances in which he is going to find himself. He will not be in the happy position of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 or Tony Blair in 1997 or even David Cameron in 2015. He will not be a freshly elected prime minister with a mandate from the country that he can call his own. He will have been put there by the tiny minority of people who are members of the Tory party. Whenever he claims to speak for the nation, the nation will be entitled to rebuke him for that presumption.
A man who sees himself as a freewheeling buccaneer will be confined in the straitjacket of a hung parliament. Assuming the continued support of the Democratic Unionists, he will inherit a working majority of just three. If the Tories lose the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection in early August, the effective majority drops to two. One defection to the opposition benches by a Tory MP repelled by a Johnson government would then eliminate its majority.
The cohort on the Conservative benches who are adamantly against a crash-out Brexit flexed its muscles last week by combining with the opposition to defeat the government on the issue of shuttering parliament to ram through withdrawal without an agreement. Their numbers will be expanded by an influx of members of the current cabinet – including Greg Clark, David Gauke and Rory Stewart – who will be on the backbenches for a Johnson premiership. We have got so used to the extraordinary and the unprecedented in Britain’s Brexit-addled politics that people were barely surprised when Philip Hammond, while still in post as chancellor, declared that he would not rule out voting for a no-confidence motion in his own government if that is what it took to prevent a calamity Brexit. Mrs May will also be on the backbenches, holding another vote that can be used to thwart the last person she wanted as her successor. One of Mr Johnson’s most vainglorious boasts has been to tell Tories that he can “unite the party and then the country”. A feature of his premiership, as of hers, will be Number 10 pleading with Tory MPs to fall into line. These exhortations will have scant traction with the significant number who feel they owe no loyalty to a man who displayed none to either of his predecessors as prime minister.
The most intense pressures on him will be self-made. En route to Number 10, he has made large promises that are going to be tested to destruction when campaign poses collide with the reality of a precarious premiership. He has told his party that he will get them a much better deal than Mrs May and, if the EU doesn’t succumb to his demands, Britain will leave without an agreement on Halloween. He has also promised his party that there will not be an election before Brexit is done. He has further declared that he will not countenance another referendum. At least one of those pledges cannot be kept. When it has to be broken, I’d quite like to see the look on Theresa May’s face.
Last modified on Sun 9 Feb 2020 20.00 GMT
Brexiteers and big fishing interests say that Britain “betrayed” its fishing fleets when we joined the EEC in 1973. For the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, for instance, Brexit offers a “sea of opportunity” for struggling coastal communities. The first claim is largely a myth. The second is an exaggeration and, for a thriving section of Britain’s fishing industry, a lie.
If Boris Johnson pursues his hard line in trade talks with the EU27, he will betray many industries, from car-making to pharmaceuticals to farming. He will also betray – and genuinely betray this time – a large part of the British fishing fleet.
Much of UK fishing – broadly the small-scale, ecologically sound part – is dependent on frictionless, overnight trade in fish, especially live shellfish and crustaceans, with the EU. About two-thirds of the shellfish, lobsters, crabs and langoustines caught by British fishers are sold to the continent.
That trade only exists because of the paper-free EU single market. It is the larger-scale, rich, noisy part of British fishing that drives the strident demands for a much bigger share of catches in UK waters.
In their opening salvoes in the post-Brexit trade negotiations, the British government and the EU27 have drawn competing lines in the sea. Johnson says Britain will “take back control” of fishing in its “exclusive economic zone” of up to 200 miles from the end of this year. He is prepared to talk about access for EU boats but insists quotas must be “first and foremost” for Britain.
The EU says that unless agreement is reached on continued widespread access by the end of July, there will be no favourable trade deal for Britain – not on fish and not on anything else. In the annexe to its negotiating guidelines, Brussels said that a UK-EU deal must “build on” the existing deal which gives EU boats 60% by weight of landings from British waters. The EU wants a permanent deal; Britain wants annual negotiations.
These are the opening positions. Common sense, economic self-interest and international law may eventually enforce compromise on both sides. That could be awkward for the government, given how absurdly overblown Brexiteers’ expectations have become. Last month Peter Aldous, the Tory MP for Waveney in Suffolk, told BBC Radio 4 that Brexit would bring a “sevenfold growth of our quota stocks in the southern North Sea”.
Talk of the “southern North Sea” is misleading: it is not an especially rich or important fishing area. Taking all “British” waters within the 200 mile limit, we now catch 40% of the fish by weight (60% by value). A sevenfold increase would mean taking 280% of the sustainable catch. To reach the “Aldous quota” our boats would have to throw the fish back and catch them again – twice.
Here are some more reliable fishing facts. Under international law, Britain became an independent coastal state in “control” of its waters up to 200 miles last Friday. But that control is not absolute. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the UK is legally obliged to manage shared North Sea and Atlantic stocks with Norway – and the EU.
The convention also requires – but does not oblige – Britain to consider the historical fishing rights of its neighbours. Despite the Brexit lie that European boats were “given” access to British waters when we joined the EEC in 1973, they have actually fished “our” waters for centuries – just as our trawlers fished off Iceland and Norway.
EU boats were allocated quotas in UK waters broadly in line with their historical catches. While it’s true that these were high in tonnage terms, the catching rights include large quantities of fish for which there is little demand in the UK, such as horse mackerel and saithe.
When Britain and the EU do sit down to talk about the political price of fish, an equable deal on access and quotas is possible. Brexit or not, there is a strong case to reboot the catch shares first set in 1983. As a result of the climate crisis and other factors, fish no longer swim in the same places they did 37 years ago.
Cod and hake have migrated farther north in the North Sea and Atlantic; tuna and anchovies are found in numbers off Cornwall. Some increase in British quotas for mackerel, herring, cod and hake is justified. Removing overnight the livelihoods of hundreds of French, Irish, Dutch and Danish fishermen is not.
Such a deal would fall short of the strident demands for a post-Brexit “bonanza”, which is driven mostly by a few, often foreign-owned, fishing companies in England and a dozen or so wealthy families that control fishing in Scotland. Too bad.
If this government is genuinely concerned about “left behind coastal communities”, it should give priority to increasing the tiny quotas for the thousands of British inshore vessels under 10 metres long.
All of this is possible, but it would require a long, sensible, technical negotiation that sets clear and achievable aims. Nothing in the government’s recent, vacuous fisheries bill suggests that such questions have even been considered.
In any case, quotas are something of a red herring. The real threat to the survival of a large, thriving, ecologically responsible swathe of the British fishing industry comes from Johnson himself. The kind of minimal trade deal envisaged by the government will cripple not only British farmers and factories, but sink a large part of Britain’s fishing fleet. No “sea of opportunity” for them.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Boris Johnson’s plan to prorogue parliament ahead of a Queen’s speech on 14 October is intended to provoke parliamentarians into blocking a no-deal Brexit, or triggering a general election through a vote of no confidence. Both are feasible in the time available.
The last time parliament stepped in to block no deal earlier in the year, the necessary legislation was passed in just three days. Johnson has deliberately left enough time for parliament to seize control again. That’s because Johnson’s real objective is to use Brexit to win a general election, rather than use a general election to secure Brexit. By forcing the hands of his opponents, he has defined the terrain for a “people versus parliament” election. Expect him to run on “Back Boris, Take Back Britain”. He will say that the only way to definitely leave on 31 October is to give him a parliamentary majority to do so. The man of Eton, Oxford and the Telegraph will position himself as the leader of the people against the hated establishment and “remainer elite”.
Johnson’s electoral strategy is simple: unite the Brexit-supporting right of politics behind him while remainers are fractured across Labour, the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Greens. Since the day he took office, Johnson has been acting to consolidate the votes of leave supporters behind him. From Brexit party supporters to leave-backing Labour voters, Johnson has sought to create a winning electoral coalition.
The Tories have spent recent weeks closing off predicted Labour attack lines. Sajid Javid has announced a one-year spending review will take place on 4 September. After nearly a decade of relentless reductions in spending, the public have plainly tired of austerity. Waiting times in the NHS are longer; class sizes are larger; and the police are no longer able to keep up with rising crime or keep many communities safe. Johnson’s government has already promised more spending in each of these areas.
But these are very Tory announcements, with an added rightwing edge. So the leaked proposal to invest in schools is to be accompanied by proposals to allow teachers to use “reasonable force” against pupils, and the additional resources for the police include proposals to allow all officers to carry Tasers. There is no serious public policy discussion about precisely how much force grown adults should use against children, just as the problem with knife crime is not the police’s ability to pacify knife-wielding youths with Tasers. These plans are red meat for the Tory base, designed to distract from rather than solve the problems our society faces.
The political logic is obvious. In 2017, Theresa May lost the slim Tory majority she inherited from her predecessor in an election campaign that turned away from Brexit and towards the state of the country at home. Labour’s clear anti-austerity message resonated across the Brexit divide and paid electoral dividends for the party. Johnson is aiming to prevent such a turn taking place this time.
Yet the public will be sceptical that the same people who needlessly degraded public services are now prepared to invest in them. While Johnson is unconstrained by principle or the shackles of ideology, he leads a cabinet of the hard right of the Conservative party. For those who have dedicated a lifetime to hacking back the state and severing Britain’s ties with the European Union, it seems unlikely that they are on board with a project of investment in public services. But they are certainly committed to a no-deal exit that is an Atlanticist project rather than a unilateralist one – and to the aggressive tax cuts that Johnson has promised. This is a government that intends to realign Britain to the US and is set to govern just like US Republicans – cut taxes first, then maintain spending to blow up the deficit before using that to justify far deeper spending cuts.
So why would the public believe what Johnson says? The real secret of populists, from Donald Trump to Matteo Salvini to Johnson, is the conflation of transgression with truthfulness. The willingness to engage in bigotry and violate hard-won social norms against racist, homophobic or misogynistic language convinces people that these politicians “speak their mind” and “say what they think”. Paradoxically, their lack of virtue confirms their veracity.
Their bigotry is the result of calculation rather than miscalculation – and the predictable howls of outrage from critics only serves to amplify the message. The upcoming election will turn on whether Johnson is found out for what he is: Trump with a thesaurus, whose real agenda of a Brexit for the elite is disguised behind the thin veneer of a few spending announcements that come after a desperate decade of the degradation of Britain at home and abroad.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Never trust a man who can’t master his metaphors. Boris Johnson’s latest outburst has Theresa May’s Brexit tank flying a white flag while losing a wrestling match after being locked in a car boot as it cherrypicks a magnetic field. Is this the scrambled mind that reportedly called the Chequers deal a triumph a month ago – before deciding that writing Telegraph columns was easier than politics. On that point, Johnson was right.
There were good reasons for Britain to leave the European Union. They were largely to do with the future politics of an outer ring of non-eurozone nations. They were nothing to do with the single market, championed as a majestic edifice of free trade by the Brexiter’s darling, Margaret Thatcher, some 30 years ago.
The only argument Johnson deploys for rejecting Chequers is that it would be ruling out “major trade deals with the rest of the world”. By no remote stretch of the statistics could these deals compensate for the 60% of UK trade that is conducted either with or through the EU. This includes 40 deals with the rest of the world that would have to be renegotiated if the UK leaves the customs union. This is not a policy. It is mad.
Johnson likewise ridicules the idea that the Irish border is an “issue”, since only 1.6% of Irish exports go to Northern Ireland. This is mendacious. Ireland sends 13.5% of its export to the UK, while most Irish exports pass through UK ports and would need monitoring. Yet Johnson wants EU tariffs imposed by “spot-checks at warehouses and points of sale”, a solution he would extend to Dover and presumably other borders. It is odd how two years of talks have failed to appreciate the genius of this Heath Robinson scheme.
The Chequers deal is not “humiliating” or surrender or a scandal. It is a desperate effort to rescue Britain’s trade in goods and (some) services from chaos. It resulted from May’s dire decision, under pressure from Johnson and others, to interpret Brexit as a vote against remaining within Europe’s “economic space”. Just 9% of leave voters cited trade as their main reason for voting Brexit. They wanted to escape the political nexus of Brussels, and they wanted new curbs on immigration. That is what May should be discussing in Brussels. “Making our own deals” is an infantile irrelevance.
Johnson claims to want Britain as a “proud independent economic actor”. Surely it was that under his hero, Thatcher, when she revolutionised its economy within the EU? He says he still wants a “free trade deal with intimate partnerships” with Europe. But that is Chequers, and it requires customs and regulatory convergence. All trade is built on rules. As for the rest of the world, the Germans and the French still negotiate deals with Asia and Africa, as does the UK.
This whole argument is allegedly one on which all Britain’s politics now turns. It is bogus. It is the worst basis on which to stage a Tory leadership challenge.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement, it’s sickening to see hard Brexiteers like Boris Johnson undermining it.
That a British foreign secretary would compare the boundary between London boroughs to the border on the island of Ireland speaks volumes. His comments showcase the cavalier approach this government has taken to the Northern Irish peace process.
The threats facing Northern Ireland – of a hard border and the unravelling of the Good Friday agreement – are the product of the government’s own self-defeating red lines, and the reckless demands of the hard Brexiteers. And while they’re quick to attack the position of the European commission, which is published in a draft legal document today, ministers haven’t offered any substantial alternative.
Trade unionists know how precious – and fragile – peace can be. Because over many years, the TUC worked with friends in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to help achieve it.
In the 1980s and 90s, unions led massive peace rallies, bringing together working people from all communities who had had enough of violence, inequality and division. And in the 90s, trade unionists were closely involved in the process that eventually led to the peace treaty.
Foremost among them was Unison’s Inez McCormack, the first woman to chair ICTU’s Northern Irish Committee and the first female president of ICTU. McCormack founded and led a coalition of trade unions and other activists, calling for equality, human rights and fair employment practices to be enshrined in the deal.
Throughout the Troubles, trade unions tried to build bridges between working people from different communities. And at the Good Friday agreement referendum, unions came out in support of the deal and encouraged members to vote yes. We knew what an important moment it was – and that unions couldn’t stand on the sidelines. And of course, voters across the island of Ireland felt the same way, backing the agreement with vast majorities.
Since then, trade unionists have done all we can to support the peace treaty. Not only because it’s the best way to promote jobs and a stable economy, but because working people in Northern Ireland are entitled to peace, prosperity and civil rights.
It was in that spirit that, on stage for the televised debate at Wembley in June 2016, I warned that Brexit would present an extraordinary threat to the Good Friday agreement and to Northern Irish communities.
I really wish that I’d been proved wrong. But instead, over the past few weeks in particular, we’ve seen a shameless assault on the agreement by extreme Brexiteers.
Owen Paterson, a former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, supported the view that the agreement has “outlived its use”, while Labour MP Kate Hoey claims it’s “unsustainable”. And let’s not forget that cabinet minister and arch-Brexiteer Michael Gove previously called the agreement a “mortal stain”, comparing its negotiation to the appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.
These are unjustifiable attacks on a deal that – although not perfect – ended a devastatingly violent 30-year conflict and gave new hope to hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ireland. But while these comments are reckless and offensive, I think the indifference of the rest of government – typified by the foreign secretary – disturbs me even more.
Ministers have known all along that their hard Brexit plans are incompatible with the Good Friday agreement. They know that leaving the single market and customs union will destroy jobs and livelihoods in Northern Ireland, and that imposing a hard border will devastate the economy and threaten the peace.
And they are yet to offer any kind of meaningful plan to offset the damage – not helped by their parliamentary dependence on the Brexit-backing DUP. All Theresa May has offered is the flimsy promise that “there will be no return to the borders of the past”. Working people in Northern Ireland deserve better than that.
So the prime minister should explain how we can have regulatory divergence from the EU, but still allow free movement of people and goods on the island of Ireland and protect the agreement. That’s what the legally binding withdrawal agreement with the EU requires of her. The British government needs to make the next move. If there’s a viable alternative to what the European commission are proposing, May needs to set out exactly what it is.
At the TUC, we’ve identified key tests for the Brexit deal – focusing on jobs, workers’ rights and the Northern Ireland peace process – and measured all the available Brexit options against them. It’s clear that to protect the Good Friday agreement we need to stay in the customs union (and it looks like the best protection will come from staying in the single market, too).
As journalist Fintan O’Toole neatly summarised in the Observer, “You can have hard Brexit or the Belfast [Good Friday] agreement, but you can’t have both.”
It’s clear that the extreme Brexiteers have made their choice. But so have trade unions across the UK and Ireland. Whatever happens, we’ll keep standing up for the Good Friday agreement, for working people in Northern Ireland, and for peace.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
No matter what Boris Johnson or his new Vote Leave cabinet threaten – and the expectation in Brussels is that no-deal planning will be ramped up in an attempt to intimidate other EU countries – be in no doubt: there isn’t time to limit the damage of a sudden severance from the world’s largest trading bloc this Halloween.
Unless a further extension is requested, or article 50 is revoked by 31 October, when the current extension of UK membership expires, a dramatic shock awaits the global economy, and we all stand to lose. The few who may prosper are the wealthy bankers and hedge fund managers who have already bet on chaos.
It is fiction to talk of rewards for citizens or mini-deals to mitigate the damage. Faced with a British government intent on ratcheting up talk of no deal, other European governments have no choice but to prepare for the worst, too – but this is far from a desirable path. In the face of such irresponsible posturing, far from feeling threatened, I fully expect EU governments to remain calm and keep their unity. Attempts to put pressure on Ireland will only be met by waves of solidarity from the rest of the EU.
The European parliament’s Brexit steering group met last week to discuss the new political order in London. We made it clear that Brexit is a British decision and that article 50 can be revoked at any time, as the European court of justice has determined. If an extension is needed, for example for an election, the commission president designate, Ursula von der Leyen, has been clear that this would be considered.
But if Brexit does mean Brexit, we are determined that the negotiated withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, which safeguards the Good Friday agreement, cannot be discarded as Johnson has requested. However, changes are still possible to make the declaration on the future relationship more ambitious, to ensure that the deployment of the Irish backstop is not necessary.
Johnson will find the European parliament an open and constructive partner. I look forward in particular to allaying his concerns regarding the imminent accession of Turkey to the EU, following the claims of the leave campaign he championed, while explaining the EU has no rules on the packaging of kippers in the UK. The EU made a decision to stay out of the UK referendum, but we won’t be afraid to challenge populism and call out disinformation from across the Channel for what it is.
UK-EU relations are at a crossroads. We are re-entering another period of Brexit fever, with the most Eurosceptic cabinet ever formed. Paradoxically, the UK is at the same time calling for a European naval force to protect shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf, as the realities of an America-first foreign policy hit home. No amount of bluster, wishful thinking or fake news can hide the inherent contradictions of the Brexit project.
Despite the irresponsible language of the self-styled disrupters now at the heart of the British government, it is clear that Britain’s prosperity and European security are intertwined. Britain’s rightful place lies at the heart of the European project, fighting for a rules-based liberal world order. Brexit is more than a tragedy – it is a waste of all of our time, in an era when China and the US are fighting for global hegemony and the climate crisis threatens our very existence.
A united Europe could be a bastion of the free world. Together we could become a global leader in tackling the climate emergency and set the terms of global trade. As an anglophile, I still believe the quiet majority of reasonable British people want to see their country engaged as Europeans. The bonds of our collective heritage are too strong for Johnson or Nigel Farage to break. No one should fall into the trap of thinking that a no-deal Brexit is the only way out of the quagmire the Conservative party has led them into.
Johnson repeatedly declares that Britain must leave the EU “do or die” by 31 October, but he misquotes the Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
“Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die. / Into the valley of death / Rode the six hundred.”
It is telling that these three words, do or die, misrepresent a poem about a famous British military catastrophe. We must not allow an injurious Brexit strategy, wrongly wrapped up in an English flag, to harm us all.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
There are lies, damned lies and Boris Johnson’s weasel sums.
By no honest calculation can Britain’s net payment to the European Union be estimated as £350m a week. Nigel Farage admits it. So does the Daily Mail.
Even Johnson admits it. In his “glorious Brexit” essay in the Daily Telegraph last Friday the foreign secretary said that we would “take back control” of roughly £350m a week when we leave the EU.
A reasonable person might assume that Johnson meant that the country would have that amount of extra money to spend post-Brexit. What a “fine thing”, Johnson wrote, “if a lot of that money went to the NHS”.
In his spat with the UK Statistics Authority Johnson now says he is shocked, SHOCKED that his words should be understood in this crassly simplistic way. To suggest that he was claiming that £350m might be “available for extra public spending” is a “wilful distortion” etc. In other words, the foreign secretary’s defence amounts to an admission that the slogan on his famous Brexit campaign bus – “We send the EU £350m a week: let’s fund our NHS instead” – was bogus all along.
I will leave the politics to others. Let’s just look at the £350m figure – and the foggy reality of the EU budget.
Some Brexiteers now cheerfully admit that the figure was fake. To others, perhaps even Michael Gove, it has achieved a kind of mystical importance. The arch-Brexiteer Tim Martin, the founder of the Wetherspoons pub chain, announced on the BBC that the net payment figure was indeed £350m if you include the tariffs on goods imported to the UK from outside the EU.
Martin’s back-of-a beer-mat calculation is incorrect. Three-quarters of those trade tariffs do go to Brussels. They are, however, already included in Her Majesty’s government’s official calculation of Britain’s net and gross payments to the EU.
The European Union is broadly funded in three ways. It takes most of the tariffs charged on imports from the rest of the EU; it takes a small sliver of VAT receipts; and it takes contributions from member states based on their gross national income (GNI). The sums involved are large – but tiny compared with national government budgets. The EU spends roughly 1% of the GDP of the 28 member states – compared with between 35 and 58% spent by their governments. About 40% of EU spending goes to farm and rural subsidies, about 40% to aid to poorer regions and member states.
The system, already complex, has become cosmically unfathomable since Margaret Thatcher won an (entirely justified) rebate for Britain in the 1980s. There is now a rebate on the British rebate and varying forms of mini-rebate for five other EU states.
Such complexity is an invitation to distortion, as Johnson well knows. The foreign secretary has been misrepresenting the EU since he was reporter in Brussels for the Telegraph in the late 1980s. (Full disclosure: I was a reporter for the Telegraph in Brussels just before he was. We have never met.)
Thus Johnson now says that he is not suggesting that the UK net contribution is £350m a week. How could anyone think such a thing? He is making the extremely subtle claim that, post-Brexit, Britain will have full “control” over how it spends the roughly £350m (actually £342m in 2015-6) which Britain “sends” to Brussels. In other words, we might decide to spend the money which Brussels now spends in the UK in other ways.
This is not a subtle claim. It is a misleading statement wrapped in a lie.
First, the lie. Britain, as Johnson knows, does not “send” £350m a week to Brussels. The rebate won by Thatcher in 1984 is deducted first. This reduces our net weekly payment to around £250m (some say £275m).
When EU spending in Britain is included – on agriculture subsidies, research and grants to poorer regions – the UK net payment comes down to about £160m a week. Post-Brexit, Johnson suggests, “a lot of that money” could go elsewhere, and specifically to the NHS.
This is misleading. The government has promised to keep farm subsidies at present levels until 2020 and probably beyond (although maybe in a different form). EU regional grants, for transport and other infrastructure projects, do not go on pet schemes drawn up by Eurocrats. The EU money helps pay for projects that have long been planned at local and national level (which are then accepted by Brussels as suitable for EU support). Presumably many of those projects would continue.
That leaves a notional Brexit “bonus” of around £160m a week. It is uncertain how much of this could “go to the NHS”. The government has proposed a labyrinth of post-Brexit customs and legal institutions which would swallow up some of the savings.
Presumably Johnson fears that reasonable people would regard £160m a week as an acceptable price to pay for the benefits of EU membership. Why, otherwise, would he persist in outright lies and weaselly distortion of the figures?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
As the Conservative party conference starts, the Brexiteers have drawn up the battle lines between the prime minister’s “deranged” Chequers deal and what they claim is a “better” alternative for leaving the EU.
The rightwing thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) accused Theresa May of “approaching Brexit from the wrong end” when it launched its Brexit blueprint earlier this week. “I think the prize is in the independent trade policy,” said its author, Shanker Singham. Even the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, now admits that independent trade deals will not be as easy as previously enthused.
The IEA’s plan would give the UK a “basic” free trade agreement for goods, while allowing the UK government to simultaneously discuss long-term free trade deals with countries including the US, China and India. On the question of the Irish border, Singham said the IEA’s proposal was designed to “avoid a hard border in the island of Ireland”. This would involve a range of elements, he claimed, “including the use of technology”. Basically, this would see the UK accepting a Canada-style deal.
Then up pops Boris Johnson with his “super-Canada plan”, also insisting his vision would also not lead to a hard Irish border. This super-Canada deal would mean:
 zero tariffs and zero quotas on all imports and exports
 mutual recognition agreements covering UK and EU regulations to ensure “conformity of goods with each other’s standards”
 technological solutions to keep supply chains operating smoothly
 a deal covering goods as well as services.
It all sounds so easy, but it’s not. All these plans are being discussed as plausible, yet time is alarmingly running out. There is grave concern that an agreement will not be reached at the EU summit next month. And the EU has suggested the latest a deal could be finalised is November – that’s just eight weeks away.
The Canadians have a trade deal with the EU called the comprehensive economic and trade agreement (Ceta). There are five reasons why this isn’t a viable roadmap for Brexit.
Under Ceta the EU checks products coming from Canada to ensure they do not originate in any other country – because if they did, they would be subject to EU tariffs. The same would happen if the UK had a Canada-style deal with the EU. Products exported from the UK to the EU would need to be subject to EU customs controls so the EU could ensure they were not originally from other countries that did not have free trade agreements with the EU – in effect, to prevent attempts to use the UK as a backdoor to avoid tariffs. These customs controls would probably mean delays at the UK/EU border, causing problems for UK manufacturers.
Technology does not yet exist to alleviate the problem. As the manufacturers’ organisation the EEF has said, a Canada-style deal would require billions to be spent on new technology and infrastructure in the UK and the continent, which would take years to implement. “As a result, it would put thousands of manufacturing jobs and hundreds of billions of pounds of exports at risk and, at worst, could destroy much of Britain’s manufacturing base,” said the EEF’s chief executive, Stephen Phipson.
Canada sells 76% of it products to the US. Because of this, many Canadian standards are similar to or the same as the US’s but different from the EU’s. If Canadian companies want to sell products to the EU, they have to prove those products conform with EU product safety, health and environmental rules. This involves extra bureaucracy, controls and paperwork. If the UK had a Canada-style deal with the EU, UK companies would have to do the same. This would mean no frictionless trade between the UK and the EU. Also, UK companies exporting to the EU would have to comply with EU rules without having any say in setting them.
Border controls would be required between the UK and EU to check compliance – including between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This would be a violation of the Good Friday agreement – and would disrupt two decades of hard-won peace on the island of Ireland.
The UK is a 80% service economy, comprising arts, entertainment, recreation, transport, storage, IT, finance, insurance, professional, scientific and technical services. So a Canada-style deal that covers goods alone would not solve the problems of Brexit. Ceta also does not cover passporting of financial services. Passporting allows UK-based financial services providers to provide services to customers in other EU countries, as long as they are licensed to do so by a UK regulator. This would not be possible under a Canada-style deal, and would have a significant impact on one of the UK’s largest export sectors.
From teaching, the NHS and social care, to cleaning and building, the UK economy depends heavily on EU workers. Under a Canada-style deal for the UK/EU, the ability for EU workers to live and work freely in the UK would stop. Allowing only skilled workers from the EU into the UK will not resolve this issue.
So I would implore Conservative MPs to start talking facts not fiction, stop the peacocking and think of the people of the UK and the human cost of the various Brexit plans they have. Cutting through the bluster and noise, there appears to me only one real choice. If the UK wants to leave the EU, we need to stay in the single market. If the politicians come to their senses and realise this too, then they must let the people of Britain decide if this is what they want or if they want to remain in the EU, fight for reform from within, and keep a deal which has kept Britain prosperous and peaceful.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
European Union leaders have confirmed that “sufficient progress” has been made to move Brexit talks on to the terms of transition and a future trade relationship between the EU and Britain. The EU’s strategy – impose a series of deadlines that force Theresa May to choose between the huge political and economic costs of “no deal” or acceding to the EU’s demands – has worked for it so far. May has agreed to pay up, secure citizens’ rights, and negotiated a form of words on the Irish border vague enough to appease Dublin, Belfast, Westminster and Brussels. The next deadline is March 2018, the first point at which the EU will be ready to talk about the future relationship. EU officials are calling for May to spell out in more detail what sort of relationship she wants before then.
So May has three months to find a consensus among her cabinet colleagues on a desired Brexit end-state. She will need to balance the demands of hardliners such as Liam Fox, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, with those of Philip Hammond and other moderates. But, given her Brexit red lines, the EU will offer a standstill transition for two or three years, in exchange for a non-binding political declaration sketching a trade deal far worse than single market membership.
A standstill transition will let Britain stay in the single market, but the UK won’t have any votes in the council, a commissioner or any members of the European parliament. The UK will have to continue to respect freedom of movement, and continue to be subject to EU laws, including any new laws that are enacted during the transition period. More than 12,000 directives, regulations, European court of justice judgments, and other decisions were made by the EU’s institutions in 2016. The vast majority are uncontroversial, but some will be difficult to accept.
This raises questions about whether Brexiters will accept the transition. Consider EU directives. These are EU laws that must be passed either by the government, using statutory instruments, or, in the case of more important laws, by parliament. The commission will propose new capital markets legislation in 2018, which will have an impact on the City of London; rules for taxing the profits of digital companies; and laws that make it easier for police forces to share electronic evidence. Some of these proposals will not be passed by the council and European parliament. Others will be ready for legislation once Britain has left the EU in 2019, but while it’s still in the transition period – it takes 18 months on average for commission proposals to become law. The passage of new EU directives may prompt revolts by Brexiters against their own government (if the Conservatives remain in power until then). If Britain refuses to pass the legislation, a political crisis will ensue. The commission might take the British government to the European court of justice.
After decades of agitating against the EU, and enjoying power without responsibility, the Conservative right has proposed no method of Brexit that would not result in large economic and political costs. Leaving with no deal is not an option for an economy that is deeply intertwined with that of the continent. A chaotic Brexit would bring down the government and might destroy the Conservative party altogether. A standstill transition should be a certainty. It’s all that is on offer, and it is the only way out of the EU that avoids the cliff edge, providing the political space to deliver a Brexit outcome that will not bring down the government. But Brexiters will have to swallow a transition in which Britain has less sovereignty than it had as an EU member.
What’s more, signing up to the terms of the transition will not buy Britain a comprehensive trade deal. May and David Davis have not yet accepted – at least publicly – that the trade deal will be limited in scope, and will not be ready to be signed “minutes” after Britain’s formal exit at the end of March 2019. The EU will not countenance a trade deal that covers services, the UK’s strongest exporting sector, if May refuses to accept free movement, to abide by past EU rules and download new ones swiftly and automatically. But the Canada-style deal will come with strings attached – rules that prevent the government providing aid to British businesses, and provisions that stop social and environmental “dumping” (the EU, led by France, wants to prevent British firms gaining a competitive advantage through deregulation). The EU will only agree to an outline of the deal before Brexit, the details of which will be negotiated after exit. There will be no guarantees that the trade deal will be ratified by the EU, as it will probably need to go through national and regional parliaments.
At the start of each stage of the Brexit process, May has first been combative to keep her party together, then, as the EU’s deadlines draw near, she has persuaded her party to support a climbdown. We’ve seen it with the sequencing of the talks, upholding EU citizens’ rights, the money and Northern Ireland. By March she will again have to persuade hardliners that avoiding “no deal” requires a transition on the EU’s terms. Can she make it work next time?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
Boris Johnson’s honeymoon was always going to be short-lived. The immediate, unexpected, reason is the sudden escalation of tensions between the US and Iran. But it won’t be long before Brexit once again dominates the headlines.
With the UK set to leave the EU on 31 January, and both sides set to embark on trade negotiations shortly thereafter, the prime minister, his senior ministers and his key aides are keen to lower the temperature. “We want to see Brexit on the business pages, not the front pages,” says one ally.
Two key factors will determine whether this aim is achieved. First, will Johnson stick to his decision ruling out any extension to the transition period, in effect imposing a 31 December deadline for concluding a free trade deal with the EU? Second, will he make good on his desire to “diverge” from EU rules and standards, thereby prioritising the government’s right to do things differently over preferential access to the single market?
The initial signals aren’t promising for industry. Johnson will politely dismiss EU warnings that his timetable is unrealistic when he meets the new European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen in Downing Street on Wednesday. Although he now commands an 80-strong parliamentary majority, extending the transition, and thereby remaining in the single market and customs union with no say over their rules while handing over wads more cash, would seriously anger Eurosceptic MPs and some voters. Senior ministers also believe that the very tight deadline will concentrate minds in Brussels. “We will not extend the transition under any circumstances,” one Downing Street source told me.
This will leave seven months to hammer out a deal. The EU’s 27 member states will only agree on the commission’s mandate to negotiate on their behalf by the end of February. The cabinet and Whitehall will also need time to settle on a final policy. Ratification of the deal will probably take two to three months. In a best-case scenario, that leaves March to September – about seven negotiating cycles – to strike an agreement. It’s an understatement to suggest this might not be long enough.
The prime minister hopes the arrival of Von der Leyen in place of Jean-Claude Juncker will mark a new start, as the two “friends and partners” agree a new relationship. He will also work hard to build personal rapport with EU leaders. Just as bonding with his Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, unblocked the withdrawal agreement talks, he will hope that strong relationships with other EU capitals could smooth the trade talks, too. But even if things are more cordial than during the divorce – and that is a big “if” – the challenge Johnson is setting himself is immense. The risk of a no-deal cliff edge at the end of the year will remain a key concern for financial markets and businesses.
The second, arguably bigger, problem is that many at the top of government see diverging from EU rules as the big prize of Brexit. While legislation enshrining existing EU standards in the areas of workers’ rights and the environment is likely, it’s doubtful this government will agree to follow EU rules in the future. Some senior ministers argue that alignment might actually be easier now as it will be the UK’s choice, but it’s hard to square this approach with the worldview and instincts of those now in power. Indeed, Johnson’s allies rightly point out that his opposition to both Theresa May’s Chequers deal and her withdrawal agreement was not because of details but because he believed it was fundamentally and philosophically the wrong approach.
Could he prove more pragmatic – just as he was when he pulled off the withdrawal agreement against the odds? Perhaps, but probably only when talks reach a climax in the autumn. After all, not agreeing to follow EU rules would make it difficult to defend manufacturing industries from EU tariffs and regulatory barriers – in plain English, there would be a risk of substantial job cuts and factory closures. The newly elected band of Tory MPs from the north and the Midlands will be anxious to avoid that, and this might prompt a rethink. In the end, the government could be tempted to follow EU rules in sectors such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
But this is not a given. Senior voices in the cabinet tell me that the Tories’ new working-class former Labour voters are likely to be used as a justification to deliver a quick deal to deadline and for a tougher approach to immigration. The PM’s aides also acknowledge they will need a big selling operation to explain any new barriers to trade: “We will not go for high alignment; that will mean trade-offs.” Another minister says that “standing up to the EU won’t play badly with these voters. There will be a deep reservoir of support for the PM if he wants to play tough with Brussels.” To the extent there are jobs that need protecting, this could lead to a more assertive industrial policy – including “buy British” procurement rules and state aid for companies struggling to survive, both of which will cause tensions with Brussels.
A final, unresolved tension inside the government is whether to use the prospect of a US-UK trade deal to put pressure on the EU to make concessions. Some ministers want to go all out for “global Britain” from 1 February; others want to prioritise the EU and believe such threats could be counterproductive.
Given all of the above, a scrappy, relatively unambitious, low-alignment trade deal is arguably the most plausible landing zone, in contrast to a deal that keeps both sides economically close and the UK locked into the EU’s regulatory orbit. The risk of tariffs, not just regulatory barriers, is real. Despite hopes for a less fraught “phase II”, it seems likely that the UK’s noisy Brexit psychodrama isn’t going to quieten down any time soon.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Speaking at events before the referendum last year, I took to asking the audience who they thought would win. Throughout, the BritainThinks poll of polls stubbornly showed remain and leave neck and neck, and in the “short campaign” more polls favoured leave than remain. But a show of hands drawn from the usual audience of business leaders, journalists and politicians consistently and confidently predicted a remain victory.
One eminent commentator, often speaking on the same platforms as me, promised: “Remain will win, and will win big”. Another observed that the “great British public would look over the brink, and then vote for the status quo … as they always do”. Discussion usually focused on the inevitability of voters “seeing sense”.
We all know what happened next. But after 23 June the movers and shakers, who had been so sure they were right during the campaign, were, well, still pretty sure that they were right. I was asked again and again to share how my polling and focus group insight revealed voters’ deep disappointment: how leavers, who were now obviously regretting their folly, would vote differently given the chance. The evidence did not support this at all.
Put simply, those who voted leave felt positive, even passionate, about the result – one focus group member told me: “When I woke up and heard we’d gone Brexit, I felt like England had won the World Cup”, going on to describe leaping out of bed and running around punching the air with joy.
Although a small number of remainers did indeed feel the grief that some commentators observed, overall their views were more ambivalent. By November, a similar number of those who voted remain (20%) said they had “come to terms with the result”, as said they felt “depressed” about it (22%); just 5% agreed that “Brexit can still be averted if the remain side continue to put their case to the public”.
Asked to score on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being certain that Brexit will be bad for Britain and 10 certain that it would be good, the same poll also found that leavers were significantly more likely to be positive than remainers were to be negative: 41% of leavers scored 10, while just 27% of remainers scored 0.
BritainThinks’ focus groups highlighted concerns about the slow pace of change, and suspicion that the government was deliberately dragging its heels to avoid carrying out the will of the people – a suspicion that was often felt as strongly by people who voted remain as by those who voted leave.
It was against this backdrop of mounting dissatisfaction with the government’s performance that Theresa May set out her stall yesterday, with 57% – up 4% since December – now saying the government is doing badly.
Although a small majority still think that, in hindsight, Britain was right to vote to leave, there are specific issues to address and growing concerns that we will be worse off economically, with less influence in the world after leaving the European Union, and that leaving will have a negative effect on jobs and pensions.
To really understand how, if at all, these attitudes change as negotiations get under way, BritainThinks has set up an innovative project, working in partnership with the Guardian.
The Brexit Diaries will track the views of 100 ordinary British men and women: 48 who voted remain and 52 who voted leave. Each week they will record what they have noticed, worried about and rejoiced in as Britain prepares to leave the European Union, providing a unique insight into the national mood beyond the Westminster bubble.
The first diary entries, drafted ahead of the prime minister’s speech, make sober reading. Trump, the NHS and extreme weather conditions have all made a far greater impact than anything to do with Brexit. The commentariat will pore over the speech, but voters are more likely to judge the government on what it does rather than what it says.
Last modified on Mon 19 Apr 2021 21.00 BST
Who is really setting the agenda on Brexit? The politician wielding the most leverage has never, in his entire career, held a parliamentary seat, let alone a cabinet position. He runs a party that isn’t a party, with no MPs, no members and no manifesto. But Nigel Farage holds the fate of the government in his hands.
Farage has found himself somewhat overshadowed in recent weeks, as all eyes have been drawn to the new power in Whitehall, Dominic Cummings. But with his threat to stand Brexit party candidates against the Tories unless the government delivers a no-deal Brexit, it is Farage who has blown wide open a long-brewing crisis in the Conservative party. If they don’t give him what he wants, he will hand the next election to Jeremy Corbyn. Most Tories, absurdly, fear Corbyn more than no deal.
The strength of Farage’s position is derived not from what he builds, but from the weaknesses he exploits. As a stockbroker with a nose for vulnerability, he has never led a party capable of taking national power. Whether his vehicle was Ukip or the Brexit party, he has always thrived in elections with low turnouts and which depend more on brand recognition – largely his own brand – rather than on street-by-street campaigning. Its main effect has been to sabotage the Tories. A gambler, buoyed up by hubris, he has taken big risks that no established politician can take. And, as with other radical-right politicians, from Donald Trump to Jair Bolsonaro, detonating a crisis of establishment conservatism has paid huge dividends.
Farage is often called a populist. The main sense in which this is true is that he is not afraid of the dark side of public feeling, whether it is the collective hate of outsiders or the whoosh of excitement as the currency slides, parliament slowly implodes and chaos beckons. To the contrary, he is keenly attuned to the prejudices of middle England, its anguished resentment and its yearning for adventure. He advocates for it and fuses it to his project of creative destruction. It was, after all, Farage and his allies who spotted, well before Cummings and the supposed geniuses of Vote Leave, that people unruffled by European fisheries or subsidy rules would harken to the language of race war. It wasn’t enough just to link the EU to immigration. An atmosphere of national crisis, of “invasion”, of a “breaking point”, had to be invoked, and linked to folk memories of the second world war, Dunkirk and the blitz.
Farage keenly intuits the longings at work in some of the public imagination. It was he who augured, with palpable relish, public violence if immigration was not controlled. It was he who said that if Brexit wasn’t delivered he would don khaki, pick up a rifle and head to the frontlines. The idea of national revival by itself no doubt offers many consolations to people whose life trajectories have been in long-term decline, and who have seen their values rejected by younger generations. But the imagery of war is what makes it compelling. There is a sense in which we all can desire the adventure of violent chaos, but these drives have long been prevalent on the right, where politicians from Margaret Thatcher to Trump have been expert at tapping into them. And, as polling of Tory party activists during the leadership election showed, they are prepared to see a lot that was supposed to be sacrosanct – the Conservative party, the union, even British capitalism – destroyed in the process.
Brexit has become the eschaton of the right, licensing extraordinary measures. In what other circumstance could remain politicians be deemed “quislings”, as Farage dubbed Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg? How else could Tory politicians demand that “extreme” remainers be prosecuted under the Treason Act? In what other situation could an electoral candidate standing for the Brexit party imply that Tory remainers should be dealt with as this country once dealt with “traitors” in the Tower of London? One half of the population is now routinely encouraged to regard the views of the other half as punishably seditious. It can only be the work of a treacherous political class. In such ways has radical-right anti-parliamentarism, not seen on a large scale since 1945, been reborn.
Conservative leaders have tried to conduct these energies into Tory revival, with senior Tories like Sajid Javid larding praise on Farage. Boris Johnson has been better than May at stoking anti-parliamentary sentiment and, with his Churchillian bluster, tapping into war nationalism. He is also ruthless enough to countenance a no-deal Brexit. He has accused colleagues of a “terrible collaboration” with the enemy, as though this were not the country in which Jo Cox MP was murdered by a fascist calling her a traitor. As if journalists so dubbed weren’t being beaten up. As he prorogues parliament to derail opposition, the digital Farageites cheer: finally a politician with “guts”. They can’t lose. There will either be the sort of chaos in which rightwing adventurists thrive or another “betrayal” to agitate against.
Yet the right doesn’t represent “the people”. No deal represents a decided minority. Millions have no truck with end-times nationalism. Even in a deadlocked parliament, it can be defeated. Sadly, Brexit’s opponents have been incapacitated by their fear of popular feeling and by neurotic terror at bringing anything down. Some of them are hamstrung by their equal or greater fear that, if they vote down the government, Corbyn may win an election. Yet, like it or not, his is the only political project with the demonstrated ability to split the leave camp, and countermand disaster nationalism. If they want to stop the radical right in its tracks, the opponents of the Brexit right will have to get over their aversion and take the gamble.
First published on Sat 27 Aug 2016 20.30 BST
The Brexit vote is having “terrifying” effects on the pension schemes of millions of British workers, with 75% of people now expected to have a retirement income below the government’s recommended level, City experts warn.
Leading pensions consultants Hymans Robertson say the combination of interest rates and weaker projections for growth post-Brexit mean people will have to save far more towards their pensions to receive the level of income they were on course for before Britain voted to leave the EU.
A survey by the firm of 600,000 employees, factoring in new economic assumptions post-Brexit, shows that only 25% now have a good chance of meeting the level of retirement income regarded as appropriate by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and that 50% have an extremely low chance of reaching that level.
Chris Noon, head of workplace savings at Hymans, said: “It is terrifying that such a large proportion of the population which is due to retire in the next 20 to 30 years will be receiving an income below the level regarded as adequate by the government.
“But we are in a post-Brexit world of low yields in which risk-free assets are generating little or no returns. This makes the cost of providing pensions more expensive.
“Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that the cost of purchasing an annuity [which provides a guaranteed income for life] is up by as much as 30% since Brexit.”
Since the EU referendum on 23 June, experts have focused mostly on what they believe will be Brexit’s effect in killing off remaining final salary pension schemes, which guarantee a proportion of an employee’s final salary as a pension. The deficits of final salary schemes soared by tens of billions of pounds as a result of the vote.
Hymans and other City firms now say the far larger numbers of workers in defined contribution schemes must face the grim post-Brexit choice of either having to pay far more into their pensions, or accepting lower income in retirement, or working for longer.
Noon added: “Together the changes to the economic outlook mean the average employee may need to save 2% to 3% a year more over their lifetime to deliver the same level of pre-Brexit income [at the same retirement date].”
Calculations used by the DWP advise that someone on an average salary of £30,000 would need a pension of £20,000 to maintain their standard of living, having taken into account their reduced costs in retirement. Someone who retired on a salary of £70,000 would need around £35,000 a year.
Richard Farr, managing director at Lincoln Pensions, which advises pensions trustees, said: “It means people will no longer be working into their 60s but into their 80s before they have a pension they can retire on. Brexit may be liberating in the long run, but in the short term it will be carnage.”
The collapse in interest income and people living longer has wrecked the finances of Britain’s final-salary pension schemes since the financial crash in 2008, and rising life expectancy and a decline in investment returns from 2000 onwards have created huge funding shortfalls.
Jon Hatchett, head of corporate consulting at Hymans, said: “Post-Brexit and with the Bank of England’s policy response to economic uncertainty, the cost of providing a defined benefit scheme has risen to 50% of pay. This is clearly unsustainable for the majority of employers. Unsurprisingly, we’re likely to see the last remaining open private-sector schemes close.”
Unlike on the continent, Britain has relied on private pensions to top up state pensions to provide workers with an adequate retirement income. If, as many expect, the UK’s GDP turns out to be substantially lower than it was predicted pre-Brexit, then previous projections for the new state pension will prove to be overly generous.
First published on Sat 14 Jul 2018 19.00 BST
It is dangerous to assume the past is superior to the present. After going back through all the crises since the end of the Second World War, however, I cannot find a time when Britain was so out of options and so out of luck. By “options”, I don’t mean escape routes liberal readers of the Observer would welcome, just alternatives that seemed plausible at the time.
Suez? Get the troops out of Egypt. Union militancy? Thatcher. The degradation of the public realm? New Labour. The crash of 2008? Austerity. There was always an escape, however unpalatable. Now, to steal William Hague’s description of the eurozone crisis, Brexit Britain is a burning building with no exits. The alarms ring but no rescuers come.
If you try to understand as well as condemn the architects of Brexit, you see at once that their hopes are in pieces. The strategic basis for Brexit was that Britain would cut its ties with its European allies and set out across the oceans to create a new alliance with America. They believed that some as yet undiscovered hereditary principle guaranteed that the Anglosphere – the white Commonwealth plus America – promoted free trade and prosperity.
In vain did their opponents argue that our trade with the EU vastly exceeded our trade with the US and that a strong America would turn on a weak Britain and force it to accept chlorinated chicken and the privatisation of NHS services. Tories of all people were meant to know that life wasn’t fair, we said. The classically educated among them ought to have learned Thucydides’s warning that in international affairs, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. Trump was an America First protectionist who no more believed in free trade than he supported the #MeToo movement.
We have been vindicated on every point. The Trump visit ought to be a moment of national awakening. Instead, it has been a national humiliation. A government and an opposition with an ounce of self-respect would have responded to Trump’s ultimatum that he would not allow a trade deal unless we delivered the Brexit he wanted by reassessing our decision to leave the EU. A Conservative party that still respected itself and the country would have revolted at the impertinence of the leader of an increasingly hostile foreign power telling them to see Boris Johnson as “a great prime minister”.
Instead, Theresa May’s government allowed the special relationship to become an abusive relationship. Like a battered wife lying to the police, it pretended that Trump had not insulted May and that a trade deal would go ahead and then waited for a pathological liar to lie that he had never said what he had said, on the record and on tape.
A second defeat is worth noting. To its proponents, Brexit was never meant to threaten Britain’s security. By last week, it was clear that Trump’s America, on which the Tory right has gambled our futures, is a clear and present danger to Nato. With a wonderful serendipity, as Trump was meeting the Queen, the US Department of Justice indicted 12 alleged Russian spies for helping Trump to power. We already know that Russia wanted Trump because he was against Nato and because, in all his foul harangues, has never once uttered a bad word about Putin.
At the parochial level, the Tories ought to be terrified. They want to attack Jeremy Corbyn for being against Nato and in favour of anti-western dictatorial regimes. But Brexit is tying the Tories in general and Johnson and the Tory right in particular to a US president who is against Nato and in favour of anti-western dictatorial regimes.
Step back from local politics and the global picture looks worse. “The west” is based on the American military guarantee to Nato. If Trump and Putin weaken or abolish it, the west would have to be rebuilt, assuming that it survives at all. A confident government would look around and suspend or cancel Brexit, because this was not the time to tear up Britain’s alliances with Paris and Berlin.
Politicians across parliament know it but dare not say it. The referendum result prevents them from speaking out, as it prevents them from even having a Mueller-style inquiry into Russian interference in our referendum. You could almost burst out laughing.Brexit was meant to have been about taking back control; instead, it has produced a country in the grip of an uncontrollable neurosis.
All the symptoms are there. No one – not Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn – can tell the public the truth that we either stay so closely aligned to the EU that there is no point in leaving or we suffer a shuddering economic shock and a catastrophic fall in our global standing .
Like the First World War generals who thought their men could pierce impregnable defences, if only they threw themselves at them with enough elan, the Tory right pretends we could have our cake and eat it if only we spoke louder. Trump would know how to deal with the EU, an admiring Johnson cried: “He’d go in bloody hard.” The bloody hard strategy is calling the EU’s bluff by preparing for a no-deal Brexit. As the EU knows, no deal would cause chaos; the threat has all the conviction of a man pulling a gun in a bank and shouting: “Give me the money or I’ll shoot myself in the heart.”
Last, but not least, is the paralysis that accompanies advanced neurosis. Quite possibly, there is no majority in parliament not just for no deal or May’s deal (whatever that is) but for any deal and we will slip into chaos for want of an alternative.
The rightwing press accuses supporters of the EU of thinking the 17.4 million who voted Leave are stupid. I don’t, but I do think the 2016 referendum was stupid – cretinously so to the point of idiocy. With unforgivable cynicism, Vote Leave refused to explain what Brexit would entail for fear of weakening its cause. Unlike the Irish government before the abortion referendum, the Cameron government did not spell out what Brexit would mean. We’re working out the meaning of Brexit after rather than before the referendum.
I still believe in the common sense of most (if not all) of my fellow citizens. Their tragedy is that by the time understanding dawns they will find that they have voted to lock themselves in a burning building and to throw away the key.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Theresa May does not easily lose her temper. The icy glare, not the raised voice, is her preferred method for signalling disapproval. I cannot claim to have witnessed this in person but I have seen the signature move re-enacted by ministerial underlings: a slight tilt of the head, a lowering of the chin, a barely perceptible furrowing of the brow, a stern look. It is sufficient, I am told, to lower the temperature in any room.
A reputation for steely reserve rarely does a leader harm, and May’s unflashy temperament plays well with much of her domestic audience. It matches the sober tenor of the times. But for those who have to make big decisions based on a reliable reading of the prime minister’s intentions – civil servants, business chiefs, diplomats, heads of foreign governments – the lack of articulate guidance is causing frustration and anxiety. There comes a point where prolonged inscrutability raises suspicion that there is nothing much behind the facade to be scruted.
That view is advanced in a leaked Cabinet Office memo, drafted by external consultants, depicting a government out of its depth in Brexit preparations, treading water without coordination or an agreed way to swim. According to the document, the civil service lacks capacity and priorities, the cabinet is split between Brexit ultras and moderates, and Tory party management dominates government calculations at the expense of economic insight. Ministers reject that account as partisan and ill-informed. But if Downing Street has a cunning plan, it is certainly well hidden.
Calculated reticence is forgivable given May’s accelerated promotion to the top job. She nurtured the ambition for a long time but she did not anticipate, on the eve of the referendum, that she would be prime minister a fortnight later, nor that her priority would be managing Britain’s exit from the EU. Learning curves don’t get much steeper. One trait of May’s that colleagues have observed is her determination to weigh options in her own time, taking counsel from only the tiniest circle of advisers. She hoards decisions and delegates parsimoniously. This can be a strength, if it means the choices ultimately made are sturdy from stress-testing, but there is a cost in agility. Refusal to be bounced into premature action is a virtue, but from the outside caution can look like paralysis – or incipient panic.
May does not like to be rushed. She has no intention of satisfying demands for detail of her preferred Brexit outcome, let alone her negotiating strategy. On that score, she has the support of former members of David Cameron’s team who have shared lessons from their own botched “renegotiation” with Brussels. They regret exposing their menu of demands to querulous scrutiny by MPs and journalists, so the final deal had been dismantled by implacable sceptics before it could be sold to the public.
Cameron permitted the kind of “running commentary” that May refuses to indulge, and the recommendation of his former lieutenants to the new No 10 team is to hold its nerve. Weighing against that approach is the media’s abhorrence of a vacuum, and the eagerness with which rogue attention-seekers will fill one.
May did not want to be rushed into a public evaluation of the merits of a Donald Trump presidency last week. Her instinct was to stick with normal protocol, reserve judgment, and avoid antagonising a man of notoriously thin skin who is about to assume the most powerful office in the world. Her timetable was disrupted by the sight of Nigel Farage’s triumphant grin, beamed across the Atlantic from the golden portal of Trumpland. Downing Street might dismiss Farage as an irrelevance, but that line is hard to sustain when the acting Ukip leader’s self-certified credentials as “Mr Brexit” are endorsed by the next occupant of the White House.
May needs to retain control of the way her overarching foreign policy project is framed. She needs Brexit to look compatible with mainstream political sensibility in the Conservative party and the country. Association with the wild excesses of Trumpian rhetoric can only alienate those moderates who, while prepared to accept that Britain is leaving the EU, are less relaxed about the prospect the more it is contaminated by a spirit of vandalistic bigotry.
In many European capitals, Brexit is cited as the first panel in a sinister triptych depicting the decline of western liberal democracy, alongside Trump’s election and the candidacy of Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front, for her country’s presidency next spring. Rejecting such associations was one ambition behind a speech that May delivered on Monday.
Naturally, she does not think that the country is debilitated by nationalist fever. She argued instead that a free-trading, post-EU Britain can pioneer remedies to anti-globalisation sentiment. By heeding the anxious cries of insecure workers, by wielding the state’s powers of investment to catalyse a transition from old, declining industries to new ones, by reminding businesses of their social responsibilities, May supposes that the legitimacy of the liberal order can be renewed. It can thus be saved from reactionary, racist populism.
It is a neat theory, but it won’t reverse perceptions in Brussels, Paris or Berlin that Brexit is part of the global instability problem, not a fount of solutions. It did not help that Boris Johnson refused to attend an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers at the weekend, dismissing continental concerns about Trump as a “whinge-o-rama”. Downing Street has been careful not to criticise Johnson’s judgment, although I detect from aides irritation with his habit of aggravating delicate situations with colourful phrases. May needs a foreign secretary, not a roving government columnist. But Johnson, like Farage, cannot see a vacant limelight without cavorting in it.
It is understandable that May is unwilling to give greater clarity about her agenda. Her stubborn, cultivated inscrutability may be vindicated in time. Perhaps there is a plan to justify the wait. But the prime minister’s enigmatic confidence increasingly calls to mind the emperor’s new clothes.
She hired the Brexit tailors, who promised an outfit spun from a new luxuriant cloth with magical properties visible only to those with the political discernment to appreciate it. She comports herself with gravitas, anticipating the moment when this fabulous attire can be paraded. But already doubting voices rise from crowd. Already people are impatient to know the cut and pattern of the suit. And the fear grows that the prime minister, oblivious to impending ridicule, will lead Britain, naked, into a dangerous world.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Even for those who do not share the Brexiteers’ lust for life unshackled from Europe, there is, as with any divorce, something enticing; a frisson of illicit excitement in the prospect of once again being single.
Reasons for the breakup are many, but the common agricultural policy must be near the top of the list. For 40 years Britain has been subject to its perversities, inefficiencies and unintended consequences, creating bafflement, distrust and a generally dysfunctional relationship between farmers and the public. If there is a prize to be garnered from Brexit, it is in resetting this relationship, so fundamental to the health and wellbeing of people and planet.
Within the farming industry, there has been no shortage of talk about the historic opportunity to reshape the future. Michael Gove may bring enthusiasm to the task and greater political clout in cabinet than his department has enjoyed for decades, but if he is to succeed where his predecessors failed, he is going to have to turn his words into actions and actually make something happen. The 25-year environment plan, launched earlier this year, certainly provides an admirably bold ambition “to leave the environment for the next generation in a better state than we found it”.
Achieving this is a challenge in itself, but doing so while feeding a burgeoning population is an order of magnitude greater in complexity and ambition. To leave this challenge to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs alone is to reduce it merely to an issue of agricultural practice and production, as has been the case for the past 40 years, in which time agricultural policy has become a flatulence-inducing stew of compromise, bad planning and incoherent bureaucracy.
The truth is that we all have a vested interest in how we balance the need for food with the needs of our natural world. There has long been a tiresome parrying of points between the National Farmers’ Union – purporting to speak for all of farming – and the environmental zealots purporting to speak for all things “natural”. Both sides have won the odd battle, but neither has won the war. The NFU’s catatonic insistence that the environment must be restricted to both the metaphorical fringes of UK agricultural policy, and the literal fringes of its members’ farmland, has failed to arrest a decline in much of our environment’s natural assets. It also obligingly sets up the environmentalists’ counter-argument that all of farming is presiding over nothing less than an ecological race to the bottom.
While indulging in their mutual myopia, they give the general public a fallacious choice: either feed the people or save the planet. Neither speak for the many farmers, growers and environmentalists who hold a more considered and constructive view that farming and environment can, and must, work in beneficial and mutually sustaining symbiosis. For them, Brexit is an opportunity to restart the conversation.
The premise is simple: the purpose of farming is to deliver health; the health of our natural world and all the natural assets upon which life itself depends, and the health of our people, sustained by a balanced diet of wholesome, nutritious food. Defra’s consultation paper on the future for food, farming and the environment in a “green Brexit” links farming only to the health of our environment. It says precious little about the role of farming to produce nutritious food for a healthy population, and so does the government’s new plan to tackle childhood obesity. This at a time when the UK has surpassed the US as having the highest percentage of obese school-aged children, and obesity and poor diet have beaten smoking into second place for driving poor health in the UK.
The government must now do something it has never done before: enshrine into legislation the common mission to create and sustain a healthy population and natural world.
 Even if some of us don’t yet know it, we really don’t want our farmers to stop producing food from the land they tend, but we – and they – may want to stop those ways of producing food that have the biggest impact on our environment, while making the least contribution to our health. Brexit will give Gove and his fellow ministers a generational opportunity, but on a matter so fundamental we must all participate in the public sphere, acknowledge the need to change our behaviours, and act. Farming has to speak less to itself and more widely with society.
When faced with bare facts such as declining soil fertility, farming’s contribution to the public discourse can no longer be limited to a staunch defence of the status quo. The public also has some changes to make: food waste, and profligate consumption of food, water and energy, drive demand for the most intensive and extractive methods of production. And no foodstuff, whether derived from animal or plant, is free of environmental cost or moral hazard.
The government’s next iteration of its policy on agriculture and environment is as central to all our lives as its policy and spending plans for education and health. An honest, balanced and trusted discourse between farming and society is much needed, but can only be established when we are all prepared to acknowledge our complicity in creating the problem, as well as our responsibility and ability to find a better way to sustain healthy people and planet.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Britain’s financial services are becoming increasingly anxious about life after the Brexit vote, according to the latest detailed survey of confidence in the sector.
Optimism dropped for the third consecutive quarter in the three months to September, according to the research jointly produced by the CBI business lobby group and the accountancy firm PwC.
It marked the longest run of deteriorating sentiment since the first quarter of 2009, when the global financial system was in the midst of a deep and prolonged crisis.
The biggest drop in confidence was among finance houses, building societies and investment managers, and less so among banks. Optimism was broadly stable among life and general insurance providers.
When asked to list their main concerns over Brexit, financial firms cited the top three risks as a negative impact on the economy, changes in access to EU markets and the prospect of lower yields.
Andrew Kail, the head of UK financial services at PwC, said the continuing fall in confidence was a cause for concern, adding that businesses were considering moving their operations out of Britain because of the vote and uncertainty over future trading agreements.
“It’s still early days and there is no real clarity on what future agreements will be reached. Consequently, many of our clients are considering their options, including potential restructuring and relocation of their businesses.”
Kail said there was a danger Britain’s standing as a major financial hub might be damaged. “Two million people across the UK are directly or indirectly employed by the financial services sector.”
He said prolonged low interest rates, as well as complexities caused by changing regulations and technology, were all challenges facing the sector. “Brexit has added an additional ingredient to the mixture.”
Of the 115 firms surveyed, 15% said they were more optimistic about overall business conditions, compared with three months ago, while 28% were less optimistic. That gave a balance of -13%, and comes just after a -16% balance for the previous quarter.
Despite the drop in confidence, business and profits actually picked up in the sector over the three months. Business volumes were higher for 48% of firms, and lower for 13%, giving a rounded-up balance of +35%, compared with +22% in June.
“As firms get back into the swing of things after the summer and continue to digest the implications of the EU Referendum, it’s good to see that demand in the financial services sector has held up,” said Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI’s chief economist.
“But the challenges facing the sector have not gone away – they’ve actually grown. Add the uncertainty caused by Brexit to low interest rates, technological change and strong competition, and it’s plain to see why optimism is falling and pressure on margins remains intense.”
Newton-Smith said central to concerns about Brexit was the risk it posed to the wider economy in the years ahead. More than half of companies in the financial services sector felt the general impact of the vote was negative. About one in 10 said the impact was positive.
She urged the government to calm fears within the financial community by communicating clear plans for negotiations to leave the EU and by producing an “ambitious” autumn statement on 23 November that sets out a clear direction for growth.
The Bank of England responded in August to the uncertainty caused by the Brexit vote by announcing a package of measures that include a reduction in interest rates to an all-time low of 0.25%.
Earlier this month, the Bank’s monetary policy committee left the door open to another interest rate cut this year.
Employment was stable in the financial services sector in the third quarter, the CBI/PwC survey found. It was expected to pick up over the next quarter, with job creation planned in most areas, though not in life insurance.
In the year ahead, financial services firms expect to increase IT and marketing capital spending at a faster pace, but scale back other investments, albeit to a lesser degree than in the previous quarter.
First published on Sat 3 Feb 2018 22.32 GMT
Leading Brexiters who accuse civil servants of sabotaging Britain’s exit from the EU are adopting dangerous tactics similar to those of rightwing German nationalists between the two world wars, a former head of the civil service has warned.
In a stark assessment of the acute tensions developing over the issue, Andrew Turnbull, who led the civil service under Tony Blair, said that Whitehall officials had become the victims of “pre-emptive scapegoating” by Brexiters who feared they were losing the argument.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new leader of the European research group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs, has suggested that Treasury officials could be deliberately trying to frustrate Brexit. Yesterday he repeated a claim that the Treasury was “fiddling the figures” to emphasise the downside of a “hard” Brexit in which Britain would leave both the single market and customs union.
Former chancellor Nigel Lawson also recently claimed that officials would attempt to frustrate Brexit because they were opposed to “radical change”.
Lord Turnbull is among a number of senior figures concerned about attacks on the civil service, with many worried that the atmosphere will deteriorate further as more difficulties emerge.
Robin Butler, another former cabinet secretary, said he believed the actions were part of a deliberate “Brexiteer process of intimidation”.
Turnbull told the Observer that the attacks on Whitehall were reminiscent of the “stab-in-the-back” myth, which emerged in Germany after the first world war and was later taken up by the Nazis.
“‘Dolchstoss’ means ‘stab in the back’,” he said. “After the first world war there was an armistice, but the German army was then treated as the losers. Then, at the start of the Nazi era, the ‘stab-in-the back’ theme developed.
“It argued that ‘our great army was never defeated, but it was stabbed in the back by the civilians, liberals, communists, socialists and Jews’. This is what I think these critics are trying to do. They are losing the argument in the sense that they are unable to make their extravagant promises stack up, and so they turn and say: ‘Things would be OK if the civil service weren’t obstructing us’.
“When you don’t succeed, you find someone to blame for your failure.”
Tensions are running high before a crucial week for Brexit, during which the prime minister and key cabinet ministers will meet over two days to hammer out details of a final deal that can keep all Tory factions on board. The stakes are high, with Theresa May under huge pressure to make her plans clearer.
Insiders said officials were examining options that would reduce delays at the UK’s border without keeping it fully inside the EU’s customs union. The crunch point is whether there is any way Britain can strike up a customs agreement that stops chaos at the border but also allows some flexibility for the government to sign its own international trade deals.
Rees-Mogg made clear yesterday that there could be no limits placed on Britain’s ability to strike deals. He repeated his claim that the Treasury’s Brexit models were politically influenced.
Butler said there was a “movement among the rabid Brexiteers to point the finger at the civil service, which I think is completely unjustified”.
He added: “It is unwise on the part of the Brexiteers, because the government can’t do this operation without the civil service. To demonise them isn’t really very sensible.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
There is a rather large piece of unexploded ordnance in the middle of the Brexit talks, which kicked off last week. It lay buried through most of the referendum campaign – but if not skilfully defused, it could go off with devastating consequences for our food system.
Consider these little-discussed facts: that food and drink is the UK’s largest remaining manufacturing sector – it’s bigger than the car and aerospace industries combined, and contributes over £28bn a year to the economy; that Europe is its most significant export market; that across the whole chain including farming, food accounts for over 13% of national employment; that 55% of all UK farm income is derived from European subsidies; that since we only produce just over half of what we eat, we depend on European imports for a quarter of our consumption; and that the sector has become so dependent on European migrant workers that without them it could collapse, as British strawberry growers have just warned.
Our departure from the EU represents both an existential risk to our food and farming system and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform it. Farmers received about £3bn in support from the much-reviled common agricultural policy last year – over £2bn in direct payments, paid per hectare, and about £600m in rural development payments. The Treasury has been itching to abolish direct payments for years, believing agriculture should be treated the same as any other part of the economy – that is, British farmers must be competitive in international markets without subsidy.
But take subsidies away, and only the largest-scale and most intensive greenhouse-gas-generating British producers are able to compete in globalised commodity markets. Even they struggle. Food is not like other sectors. With climate change and population growth threatening food security globally, keeping our farmers in business matters. They cannot maintain our treasured landscapes if they cannot make money. We need an imaginative new system of subsidy that gives public money to farmers for public goods, or we risk driving them off the land in droves.
Then there are the practicalities of adopting, amending, or abolishing the 4,500 or so EU regulations covering food, farming and environmental standards that fall within the remit of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Brexiters may loathe the Brussels bureaucracy that dictates everything down to the size of olive oil cans, but we need many of these rules to protect us from the sort of food safety scandals and adulteration frauds of the past. They are also what make trade deals and borders frictionless. Our exports depend on this sort of harmonisation of rules.
Take the jam regulations. When they were being reviewed a few years ago, department insiders said the then Tory secretary of state was embarrassed to take proposals to cabinet for fear of provoking humiliating laughter. What could embody red-tape madness of the sort leavers hate more than pages and pages of rules driven from Europe about how much sugar makes a jam a jam, or a jelly or a marmalade? Yet the UK food industry was lobbying for new rules. It wanted to respond to market trends for less sugary food and to bring the UK in line with Europe so it could develop export markets in France and Germany. Business sense won out; amended jam regulations were introduced. So a bonfire of the regulations will meet with resistance not just from consumers, but industry too.
The industry has also been screaming blue Brexit murder about its need for migrant workers. Now the government faces the impossible task of reconciling the Conservative commitment to curb immigration with the economic realities of this sector. Ending freedom of movement will almost certainly require creating a brand new Brexit bureaucracy of UK permits and visas for the 500,000 foreign workers whom farmers, food processors and food manufacturers say they must have to keep in business.
All this will have to be done by a team that suffered the largest cuts of any government department over the two parliaments to 2015. By the end of last year it had only a third of the number of core civil servants it had a decade before; so much expertise has been shed, in fact, that it is not clear that it now has the capacity to deal with its Brexit load.
If you are of the school of thought that the Brexiter Tories should be made to sort out the mess they’ve made, there are few more suitable candidates for the job than Michael Gove.
As the new secretary of state at Defra, Gove landed the task of drafting the agriculture bill promised in last week’s Queen’s speech. The bill is meant to take us out of the common agricultural policy, which has reshaped our farming and landscape over the last 40 years. But it is not clear what will replace it: 40% of all European legislation relates to food and agriculture; 80% of all UK food legislation has been negotiated in the EU. Environmentalists were quick to express dismay at Gove’s appointment. Caroline Lucas, the Green party leader, said that Gove’s record of voting against measures to halt climate change and his attempt to stop schools teaching on the subject made him unfit to be Defra secretary. Jonathon Porritt tweeted that Gove was an “ideologically driven threat to all that environmentalists hold dear”.
But the big farm and landowner-lobby groups are quietly pleased that Gove’s resurrection has at least given them a high-profile secretary of state with sufficient intellect and clout to demand his own seat at the Brexit talks. Whether Gove can force the future of our food and farming to prominence in negotiations – or reduces it to a bargaining chip to be thrown away for other gains – will depend on his approach. Will he treat food, farming and the environment with as much disdain as he did education, and label its establishment the agricultural equivalent of “the blob”? Or will he temper ideology with a more practical energy and intelligence, of the sort he brought to prison reform?
Although when appointed he committed his department to maintaining subsidies until 2022, the instincts of Gove, an economic liberal, will be to get rid of them post-Brexit. He said during the referendum campaign that we would have better trade deals and cheaper food outside the market-distorting protections of the EU. Instead, thanks to a fall in sterling post-Brexit, rising food prices, increasing inflation and labour shortages are likely to make things worse.
Free of EU competition rules, Gove could make all sorts of active state interventions that would change our food system for the better. He could use the powerful lever of government procurement for schools, hospitals, the military and prisons to favour healthy British food. He could adopt a joined-up policy and target subsidies to increase production of the sort we need for health – more fruit and vegetables, less sugar and intensive meat production. He could ensure that new trade deals are built on maintaining welfare and environmental standards, rather than lowering them to compete in new markets. He could insist that continued access to foreign labour is tied to the industry, improving what are often appalling working conditions and pay so British workers are drawn back to jobs they now shun.
He will have to park his ideological preoccupations at the gate to make a success of it. He has said he is in humble and listening mode. Let’s hope he means it.
First published on Wed 21 Sep 2016 00.01 BST
Social services for older and disabled people face crisis because post-Brexit migration restrictions could cause a massive shortage of care workers, leading care organisations have said.
The 1.4-million-strong UK care sector’s reliance on European migrant workers means it is vital they are given the right to remain in any future migration arrangements, the charities Independent Age and the International Longevity Centre UK (ILC-UK) said.
Currently about 84,000 care workers – equivalent to one in 20 of England’s growing care workforce – are from European Economic Area countries. About 90% do not have British citizenship and their future immigration status remains uncertain.
The charities said failure to tackle workforce shortages would mean thousands of older people would lose out on support, meaning they could be left housebound, struggle to recover properly from a stroke or fall, or fail to get assistance in getting up and dressed in the morning.
Simon Bottery, the director of policy at Independent Age, said: “Care services for elderly and disabled people have come to rely on migrant workers, especially from the European Union, so the consequences could be severe if they are unable to work here in future.”
The UK has become increasingly dependent on a European migrant workforce to provide services for its ageing population since 2012, when the coalition government changed immigration rules, making it more difficult for non-EEA people to enter the UK to work in social care.
According to modelling by the charities, a scenario which closed off all migration would leave Britain with a social care workforce shortfall of more than a million by 2037. In a low-migration scenario this would still mean a 750,000 shortfall. Even under a high-migration scenario, the care sector would still face a workforce shortage of 350,000 because of the likely dramatic increase in the population needing care, the charities said.
London and the south-east would be worst hit by a post-Brexit shortage of care workers, with one in nine of the capital’s care workers at risk of losing their right to work in the UK.
Staff turnover and vacancy rates have risen sharply in the last decade, triggering fears that the safety and quality of social care would be affected. Ben Franklin, ILC-UK’s head of economics of ageing, said that as Britain’s population grew older, thousands more care workers were needed. “A continual failure to support and enhance the care workforce could result in thousands of frail and older people losing out on the proper care and support that they need.”
A spokesperson for the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said: “Every minute of every day, millions of people are receiving a service from adult social care thanks to the contribution of staff from all over the world – from the UK, the EU and further afield. The loss of any of this valuable workforce, in a sector already under pressure from increased demand and staffing challenges, would have a profound effect, and we will seek to take part in any relevant discussions to convey our support for EU workers currently working in our adult social care system.
 “It’s important to remind any non-British EU workers, and those whose care is provided by them, that nothing will change for some time: until new laws are passed by the government, the rights of all EU citizens to live and work in the UK will not change. Until then, we will be working to improve recruitment, training and staff retention in the social care sector to make sure it’s ready for any challenges that come in the future.”
A government spokesperson said: “The prime minister has been clear that she wants to protect the status of EU nationals already living here, and the only circumstances in which that wouldn’t be possible is if British citizens’ rights in European member states were not protected in return.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
Quitting the EU could could trigger an economic crisis even greater than the 2008 financial crash, former business secretary Vince Cable has said. Cable predicted that job losses, inflation and falling consumer confidence could send the UK economy into a recession even harsher than the credit crunch if Theresa May presses ahead with a hard Brexit.
The Liberal Democrat made the comments as he launched his bid to reclaim his old seat of Twickenham in June’s general election. He has vowed to battle to keep Britain in the single market and the customs union if reelected.
“For Britain, the economic weather is arguably worse than it was before the credit crunch. The pound has plummeted, which is driving up prices and trapping consumers in a vicious Brexit squeeze,” he said in a statement. “Consumer confidence was all that kept the storm clouds away. But with job losses at everywhere from Deutsche Bank to Nestlé, that confidence is going to drain away further.
“The chancellor clearly has no confidence in the economic strategy of the government, because he knows that leaving the single market and customs union has the potential to devastate the UK economy.  If Britain enters a second economic storm, it will be Theresa May’s economic storm. You can’t have a hard Brexit and a strong economy.
“That is why it is vital that the general election produces a large increase in MPs who understand why it is essential to remain in the single market and customs union.” He went on to assert that only the Lib Dems would be capable of holding a future Conservative government to account.
Cable entered the Houses of Parliament in 1997 and served as business secretary between 2010 and 2015 in the coalition government, but dramatically lost his seat to the Conservatives’ Tania Mathias in the 2015 general election.
Ahead of the 2008 crash, he repeatedly warned the then government about the risks related to the high level of household debt in Britain. He was a vocal critic of Labour’s handling of the Northern Rock crisis, calling for the bank to be nationalised. 
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
There are perhaps few better gauges than this of the confusion still surrounding Brexit: with just 200 days to go before the official departure date, five possible plans are still being touted by MPs, and it is hard to argue that any of them could command a safe majority in the Commons. This is what they propose:
The idea as pushed through the cabinet by Theresa May, and still the only comprehensive scheme. The UK’s departure from the single market and customs union would be offset by a pledge for continued EU regulatory alignment, particularly on goods. It is hated by Brexiters, who say it will derail plans for new trade deals, and mistrusted by remainers who argue the customs plan is unworkable.
Chances of success: a tough call. The leading Eurosceptic Steve Baker says 80 Tory MPs would oppose it, and Labour is still not convinced.
So named as it would be modelled on the Canadian deal with the EU, this would be a fairly straightforward free trade deal, with some add-ons. What these would be remains to be seen – the European Research Group, which represents hard Brexit-minded Tory MPs, has yet to publish its promised plan. Leaks of it show proposals for widespread tax cuts as a “Brexit bonus”, but little in the way of a workable plan for the Irish border. Business groups say it could wreak havoc on supply chains.
Chances of success: slim. Many remainer Tory MPs would seem set to oppose it, as would Labour. Brexiters hope it could pass as the only viable option to no deal.
A default to World Trade Organization rules for international commerce would form the basis of this plan, the proponents hoping it would include arrangements with the EU on areas such as aviation and medicine. The preserve of Brexit true believers, most notably Jacob Rees-Mogg, who on Tuesday will reiterate his long-held argument that the UK economy would thrive under a WTO regime. He is backed in this by the veteran free market economist Patrick Minford – but not by many others.
Chances of success: as a positive choice by MPs, pretty much zero. Only seems possible as a cliff-edge departure if a deal falls apart at the last moment.
The softest of Brexits, which would see the UK out of the EU but still tied to many of its mechanisms via membership of the European Economic Area, the semi-detached model used by Norway. Much talked about during the EU referendum, the Norway model has suffered from the narrative pursued by Brexiters, who argue it would amount to a betrayal of the vote. On Monday, the former education secretary and Tory remainer Nicky Morgan said she believed it had majority support in the Commons. There is, however, one problem: Labour has officially ruled it out.
Chances of success: if it was down to the individual beliefs of MPs, probably quite high. But unless there is a major revolt against Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit policy, it seems doomed.
The option that gives Liberal Democrats and other ardent remainers a giddy feeling. Couched by supporters as a “people’s vote” on any final deal, rather than a re-run of June 2016, this proposes giving voters the choice of accepting a final agreement, or staying in the EU. Proponents have a strong argument that so much has changed since the original referendum that another vote is only logical; opponents say it is a sneaky tactic by bad losers. It has the support of an increasing number of backbench MPs, plus interest is growing among unions.
Chances of success: not great, but worth remembering that Corbyn has yet to definitively rule out backing another vote.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
One of the leading money managers in the City of London has said the fallout from Britain’s vote to leave the EU will be “horrible” and that the Square Mile is still “slightly stunned” by the result.
Richard Buxton, the chief executive and head of UK equities at Old Mutual Global Investors (OMGI), which manages £26bn of funds on behalf of individual investors and institutions, said warnings from the pro-EU campaign about the impact of Brexit before the referendum were well placed.
“I don’t think there was doom-mongering, because it is absolutely going to be horrible,” he said. “Mark Carney’s speech [in which he warned of dangers of Brexit] was absolutely spot on. This is just really bad news.
“You can criticise the Brexit team for a) an utterly mendacious campaign and b) not expecting that they would really win, so never having a plan. I mean the whole thing is literally unbelievable. It is extraordinary how we have ended up where we are.”
Buxton has worked in investments for 31 years and is regarded as the City’s leading stock picker, alongside his rival Neil Woodford. Funds worth more than £1bn left Schroders and went into Old Mutual when Buxton moved between the two companies in 2013.
He said Brexit is not as immediately dangerous as the financial crisis in 2008, when cashpoints were 30 minutes away from running out of money. However, he remains concerned.
“Unlike an election result, where ‘OK, it’s not great, but in five years’ time it can be reversed’, this is stupendously final,” he said. “I don’t always agree with Martin Wolf [the Financial Times columnist], but when he wrote the day after that this is probably the single worst event in British postwar history, yeah, I don’t disagree.
“In terms of the markets, you have seen this massive polarisation, literally 60-70% share price differential within days, between British American Tobacco [which went up due to the weakness of sterling against the dollar] and a housebuilder [that went down]. That is without precedent.”
Buxton said workers in the City and at OMGI were still coming to terms with the vote. “I think people are still slightly stunned,” he said. “Coming to terms with this is that classic cycle that you go through in terms of shock, grief, anger, all of that. We are very early into this.
“Our mood here is we’re ‘glass half full’ people. We have pulled together. A lot of people have come in without being called; they were in early from that Friday [24 June] onwards. People have come together when they have needed to in terms of queries from regulators on liquidity and flows, and so on.”
The threat of redemptions – investors withdrawing their money from funds – is serious in the city. Several property funds blocked investors from taking out their money amid panic that the uncertainty caused by the referendum result could cause property prices to fall.
Buxton admitted that OMGI had seen “modest outflows”, but said a major overseas client had pumped more money into its funds because it believed that the fall in the value of sterling and tumbling share price provided a buying opportunity.
“We are OK, but clearly we have got to accept that over the next six months we will have to work with our clients. At the moment, we are even struggling to get appointments with people because they are just head down, in the bunker, don’t want to know, don’t want to talk anyone and don’t want to think about doing anything. That will fade over time, but it’s how can we get out to people and say ‘look, we do still think there are some amazing investment opportunities here’.”
Buxton said the stock market had already priced in a “pretty significant recession” for the UK, with falls in the value of housebuilders, commercial property companies and financial institutions.
“Now I think the economy is going to judder to a halt [or] have a mild recession, but I don’t think it is going to be as severe as some of these shares are pricing in,” he said. “That said, there is no mad rush to add to or buy into some of those stocks, because the real economy is only going to gradually emerge over the next three to six months.”
The OMGI chief executive also warned of continued volatility in trading for the near term, because of the uncertainty surrounding the deal that Britain would negotiate with the EU.
With Theresa May in place as prime minister and Philip Hammond as chancellor, the City is focusing on what policies the new government might pursue. Hammond, Buxton said, had “walked into one of the most unusual economic environments I have known in my 30-year investment career”.
“I am pretty sure that the government will, in the autumn statement, do some fiscal weakening, such as reducing stamp duty on housing transactions, cutting petrol taxes to offset the increase that will come from the weaker currency,” Buxton said.
“The bigger question is: are they bolder? Do they go ‘right, well we are in a different world; if we can borrow at a ludicrously low rates through extensive debt issuance, then let’s do so, specifically to invest either directly or alongside private investors in infrastructure projects’.
“We could resurface [the] M1 [motorway], we have a clear need for more gas-fired electricity generational plants. The private sector is not stepping up and doing any of this, unsurprisingly, so lets do some funding, some guarantees, make things attractive.
“It will be interesting whether they do that. But clearly, even just the former measures, let alone the latter, mean the budget deficit is going to be swinging out again. Now, that, to my way of thinking, is why sterling is weak and could weaken further, to be honest. Already it [the deficit] wasn’t coming in quick enough, but it is going to start expanding.”
As for the response of his company, Buxton said OMGI would open a new office in Dublin if it needed to, but predicted that there was unlikely to be any “clarity” for two years as the UK negotiated to leave the EU.
“For now, the UK is still a member of Europe [the EU] and we can still do everything that we were doing,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
On Saturday there was a demonstration against funding cuts to the NHS. A quarter of a million people were all willing to lay down a bit of their weekend to protect the institution that represents not just security but generosity, civility, cooperation and everything noble and worthwhile about living as part of a nation. Surely there’s some next move? Surely we don’t just have to stand by and watch as services are cut back and privatised, staff see their pay frozen and conditions worsen, patients get used to expecting less, and the government answers every charge with a bland remark about an ageing population?
The NHS always seemed to have a protective film around it, the decades of human ingenuity and effort it represented shielding it from the political scrum and assuring that even the most determined privatiser couldn’t really lay a hand on it. That turned out not to be true. Marches get a bad rap for having no concrete impact, but the alternative is to not march. Then you’re the kind of populace who merely watches their lives worsening to serve invisible interests on a nonexistent mandate.
If the problem with socialism is that it takes up a lot of evenings, the problem with marching against the destruction of public services is that we should be doing it all the time. We should be marching against the crisis in adult social care, the closure of care homes, the systematic exploitation of carers, the £4.6bn cut from social care budgets this decade. We should be making placards right now, asking: “What exactly is the plan, if we’ve decided we can no longer afford to care for the elderly and the disabled? What do we do with them instead?” Or something snappier.
We should be marching against cuts to education funding – some really simple banner for this: “Educating children costs money, but it is worth it, for civilisation”. Technically, we should be marching on behalf of the police force, stretched beyond their ability to enforce law and order . Sure, it would be a bit confusing to the liberal sensibility, and the officers who had to police it may feel a little bashful. But it’s no small thing to live in a country that can no longer afford functioning emergency services. We should at least make it clear that we’ve noticed. We should also be marching against cuts to the prison service, the overcrowded and inhumane conditions, the understaffing leading to bullying and an increase in suicides.
Every morning we wake up to someone on the radio explaining, despairingly, that you can’t fix the hospital bed crisis until social care is fixed, and you can’t fix that until council tax brings in more, and it can’t bring in more because wages are too low. Every time a long-suffering public servant is called upon to explain the insufficiency of his or her service, and has to tell us again that the money simply isn’t there, we should take to the streets. But when everything breaks at the same time, that is not a coincidence: it is a plan. As surely as Margaret Thatcher had an economic plan on employment, rights, industry and wages, this century’s Conservatives have a plan on public services, which is to smash them beyond all recognition.
Brexit is the new Falklands: in the 1980s, that war was described by the left as a distraction, a bellicose bauble to keep the attention away from much more important and lasting acts of government. That was true, but only half the story: it was also a way to appropriate the language of patriotism for a government that was the opposite of patriotic, utterly committed to breaking the bonds of nationhood that might make a person in the Cotswolds care about a person in Liverpool who lost their job.
Likewise, Brexit has accrued to Theresa May the ammunition both of patriotism and modernity as she makes the UK and its new place in the world the object of all her focus. Yet in the raw and day-to-day business of running the country, she is the opposite of patriotic. Nationhood is about more than shared values (though obviously the Brexit project has taken a torch to those too). Patriotism lies fundamentally in its acts: the resources you pool, the things you build, the promises you undertake to one another, the way you fulfil them.
It would be impossible to make an argument for destroying public services in the name of loving one’s country. Not even May (a politician capable of simultaneously making the case for union and trade to Scotland, and against union and trade to the European Union, with apparently no sense of shame or irony) would attempt it. Instead, she makes Brexit her cause, the priority that obliterates all others, and daubs it red, white and blue, and makes traitors of its opponents.
Brexit, far more consequential than the Falklands war, nevertheless gives her the same battle dress: an armour of nationalistic fervour to neutralise what would otherwise be the constant question: if you love your country so much, why are you dismantling all that is good about it?
Our future relationship with Europe is important. These conversations, in which we balance prosperity against the intoxicating, hitherto unmentioned quality of sovereignty, are unprecedented. But set against the collapse of the NHS and the material damage to people’s lives from so many directions, Brexit should not take precedence. It should be resituated where it belongs, as a florid episode in the Conservative party’s long neurosis, interesting only insofar as its damage can be allayed. It is where the Tories want our attention, and should never be where we leave it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
“We’re clearing up Labour’s mess”: that was the Tory refrain deployed against the electorate until its ears bled. But it was based on a cynical rewriting of history. Labour had not caused the global financial system to implode. The Tories had backed every penny of their opponent’s public investment until the end of 2008, despite their later, shamelessly dishonest narrative that overspending had caused the country’s woes. If Labour committed a crime, it was a failure to properly regulate the banks in an era in which the party was too in thrall to market ideology.
Britain is again in the grip of crisis, and this time the blame can be placed at the feet of only one party. The Tories had a nightmare, and we’re all trapped in it. A referendum was called, not because it was felt it was in the national interest, but because David Cameron had bothersome backbenchers and a Ukip challenge to deal with. And then his successor launched a snap election to extinguish her opposition, and instead destroyed her authority, wasted negotiating time and left Britain a laughing stock among the very governments it needs to agree a deal with. The Tories set the house on fire; now they claim to be the only ones who can put out the blaze.
Yet somehow it is Labour that supposedly finds itself in a vice. Last weekend it committed to a transitional phase after Britain leaves the EU in the spring of 2019: we should seek to remain in the customs union and single market for that period, the party declared. Now that the Tories have made such a hash of the post-Brexit reality, the argument goes, it would be fantasy to pretend that a lasting agreement can be reached in 18 months – business is increasingly nervous about uncertainty, and a cliff edge beckons.
This was portrayed by Jeremy Corbyn’s critics as a U-turn. Yet from the start the Labour leadership’s position has been mischaracterised and misunderstood, often intentionally.
Brexit has long been deemed to be Corbyn’s achilles heel. His lifelong Euroscepticism, the unfair characterisation of his role in the referendum campaign, his whipping of Labour MPs to vote for article 50, his alleged commitment to a so-called hard Brexit: all were wrongly cited as evidence he was heading for a terminal day of reckoning with his own enthusiasts.
Yes, the left has long had a critique of the EU, ranging from a lack of democratic accountability to the enshrining of pro-market ideology. But it recognises the positive impact the EU has had on workers’ rights. Thus, after Labour’s election loss in 2015, when Cameron made it clear he would attempt to negotiate away those rights in any pre-referendum deal, Corbyn, trade unionists and leftwing activists all made it clear they would oppose it. That led to a climbdown by Cameron. Without Corbyn as the hot favourite in the Labour leadership race, Cameron would never have retreated.  In which case the margin for leave might then have been even higher, and this would have given the Tories a mandate for a destructive Brexit.
In the referendum campaign, Labour was conscious of two things. First, that an uncritical defence of the EU would backfire in a country where there was little enthusiastic pro-EU sentiment. Second, it was haunted by the experience of Scotland, where Labour had joined with the Tories in a campaign of fear that led to the near-annihilation of the party north of the border. In the aftermath, it feared the disintegration of a fractious electoral coalition between younger and urban voters, who were despondent about Brexit, and an older, working-class, small-town electorate delighted by the referendum result.
There are those – myself included – who want to stay in the single market and the customs union. The fear is that leaving will produce an economic shock, and those who will pay the greatest price will be Labour’s natural voters. And having spent years making the case that European migrants are not responsible for social injustices caused by the powerful, how could I possibly make the case for ending freedom of movement? So there is a genuine dilemma.
If you keep the single market, the customs union and freedom of movement, you arguably remain a de facto EU member, but subject to laws over which you have little say. “We would become, in effect, a satellite state of the EU, relying on the EU commission or other member states to defend our interests,” as Professor Vernon Bogdanor puts it in his case for a second referendum.
But if the referendum wasn’t a vote on making at least some changes to freedom of movement, goes the argument, what was it? To that end, various options have been floated, such as opting for freedom of movement of workers instead of people. The Labour leadership has emphasised that membership of the customs union remains on the table for the long term, and its repeatedly stated aspiration is to maintain the benefits of the single market. What this means and how it will be achieved need to be spelled out.
It is easy to avoid the complexities of the mess the country is in. Just ignore a referendum won with lies, is the cry on one side; just sever a formal relationship with anything connected to the EU as soon as possible, says the other.
Corbyn won the leadership by eschewing his rivals’ caution. But it is difficult, in good faith, to see how some form of compromise on the terms of Brexit can be avoided. For those of us who fear a destructive and disorderly Tory Brexit, a genuine alternative is at last emerging. That’s encouraging. But the Tories plunged this country into the mire. Never forget it.
 Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
Last modified on Sun 9 Feb 2020 20.00 GMT
The prime minister tells us he wants to bring the country together. This is rich from the politician who made a major contribution to tearing it apart.
In theory, Johnson is monarch of all he surveys: the British political system resembles, in Lord Hailsham’s famous phrase, an elective dictatorship. And Johnson already manifests dictatorial tendencies.
We Remainers have lost. Great Britain has officially left the European Union (it is not at all clear that Northern Ireland has). But, in fact, Brexit has only just begun.
In his acceptance speech when recently being awarded the Olof Palme prize in Stockholm, my good friend John le Carré noted that the shabbiest trick in the Brexiters’ box was to make an enemy of Europe.
He added: “Don’t blame the Tories for their great victory. It was Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, with its unpolicy on Brexit, its antisemitism and student-level Marxism-Leninism, that alienated traditional Labour voters and left them nowhere to go.”
There is much discussion in innumerable postmortems about what went wrong: Labour’s loss of touch with its heartlands and so on. But Le Carré has captured it in that one sentence. Labour lost because it had disastrous leadership; and, alas, from what the people in control of the party machine still seem to believe, there is a danger that, like the Bourbons, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Both our main political parties have let the country down: Labour because of its disastrous mismanagement of a once great movement; the Tories because the 2010 policy of austerity was unnecessary, misconceived and terribly damaging.
Labour should have been there to repair the damage. But, like Captain Oates, they have gone outside and may be some time.
We are therefore landed with a Conservative party led by an opportunist I distrust so much that I should not want to go anywhere near the jungle with him. At his birth, Johnson was blessed by a mischievous fairy with such a Teflon carapace that, although a longtime resident of the metropolitan Islington so despised by voters in the Midlands and the north, he – and for that matter his fellow Islingtonian Dominic Cummings – escape the cheap criticism levelled at Corbyn and co. They were on the ropes before the opposition parties agreed to that one-issue election; but the opposition was fatally divided, so the Conservative and Brexit party, representing a minority of the nation, won with the help of our first-past-the-post system.
However: we are where we are, and people keep telling me I should try to be constructive – make the best of it even though, in common with most economists, I think Brexit is the biggest economic crisis of my professional career. Frankly, it is difficult to be optimistic.
To put it bluntly: what government in its right mind would say goodbye to more than 70 advantageous trade agreements and start all over again? Answer, this government. Again: what government would wish to disrupt the smooth non-tariff barriers afforded by the single market, painstakingly negotiated by Margaret Thatcher, in order to risk queues at the ports and needless disruption to our way of life? Answer: the very same.
So what hope is there? As Anand Menon, director of the thinktank The UK in a Changing Europe, recently pointed out, the tone of this Brexiter government has changed from proclaiming that Brexit is “full of opportunities” to acknowledging that it is “a problem to be managed”.
The problems are so overwhelming that most trade experts conclude Brexit cannot be negotiated within the agreed timeframe of one year; the odds are that we shall crash out of the customs union and single market without anything resembling a sensible deal.
Michael Gove, who has a central role in handling negotiations with our former partners, tells us that if anything goes wrong people can no longer blame the EU. From now on we are on our sovereign own!
Oh yes? I wonder. It is likely to be a slow-burning crisis, and the real culprits will continue to blame the EU. We shall remain in the customs union and single market for the rest of this year. Uncertainty will persist on many fronts, and almost certainly continue to delay private investment. But the EU will, rightly, not relent in its insistence on regulatory alignment, while Johnson and co refuse to abandon their obsession with seizing control. An irresistible force meets an immovable object.
I suspect that people will gradually wake up to the absurdity of Brexit as it begins to affect them in different ways. But by then it will be too late.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Sometimes, in politics, you just have to fight for what you believe in. I believe that – amid the current geopolitical meltdown – staying in the European Union and reforming it is safer than casting ourselves adrift with a bunch of rightwing Tory xenophobes at the helm.
But since the referendum, I’ve understood that a leftwing Labour government can only be achieved by building a coalition of voters across the Brexit divide. It’s a belief based on the experience of the 2017 general election, when I campaigned in solidly working-class areas where, to keep a doorstep conversation going for more than 30 seconds, the first sentence had to be: “We will deliver Brexit.”
However, the voters chose Theresa May to deliver Brexit, and it is she who has to take responsibility for the catastrophe that’s unfolded. As she heads for Brussels, and further fruitless days of negotiatons, those who supported Brexit have to face the fact: there is no form of possible Brexit that you are going to like.
May’s negotiating strategy handed all the power to Europe; she knew the deal would be unsellable to her own voters, so she delayed revealing it until last summer, when – as predicted – it split the cabinet and paralysed the government.
If we ever get to the point where the prime minister summons the courage to stage a vote on the deal, I want Labour to vote it down and then use every possible parliamentary tactic to bring down this government. That could include a no-confidence vote, a censure against May herself or – if the votes are there – a minority government headed by Jeremy Corbyn.
May had one job – to do a Brexit deal and get it through the Commons. Once she fails there is no workable combination of Tory plus DUP votes that can keep the show on the road. So what next? For as long as the referendum result remained valid, Labour was right to try to deliver a form of Brexit that mitigates the economic risks and keeps us geopolitically close to the EU. It would have been electoral suicide for Labour to have become the “remain party” – and would have needlessly polarised the politics along the lines of a culture war, as Trump has done in the US.
But once May’s deal is rejected in parliament, that period should come to an end. The Labour party’s front bench needs to face the fact that – through no fault of its own – the space for a bespoke “soft” Brexit, keeping Britain inside the customs union and close to the single market, is shrinking rapidly.
The only form of softer Brexit available is likely to be the one called Norway-plus, as advocated by both Tory and Labour backbenchers. It means joining the customs union, staying in the single market and applying an “emergency brake” to free movement. Though not ideal, it is a solution that could achieve what so many voters in hard-pressed towns want: to sort the Brexit issue, give us a modicum of control over migration policy, and move on. I would back it, if it were enacted by a temporary coalition of Labour and the nationalist parties. But the numbers don’t seem to be there in parliament and I expect it to fail.
So what is Labour’s fallback? Should it be, as John McDonnell and Keir Starmer have intimated, a second referendum with the party campaigning for remain? Or should it conduct a rearguard action on behalf of the June 2016 referendum majority, in an attempt to get a soft Brexit deal that can unite the population? It’s a challenge that hinges on a question that many in Corbyn’s Labour party don’t want to answer: who does Labour really represent?
Since 2014 it’s been clear that the tribal alliance that used to put Labour into power is pulling in different ways. Traditionally this included the working-class towns of England, the inhabitants of Great Britain’s largest cities and the wider population of Scotland and Wales plus – to seal the deal – the suburban middle-class swing voter. Once a majority of young, educated Scots had swung behind the independence project, and the Scottish radical left joined them, the old tribal alliance began to fall apart.
Meanwhile a cultural divide has opened up: the cities, the university-educated, the public-sector employees and the professional middle class are more socially liberal, more globalist, more supportive of a migration than before. But in small towns, and among those with low skills and low incomes, the cultural pull is in the opposite direction.
Finally, the middle-class swing voter just wants all the chaos and fractiousness to go away. If Labour had remained a hollow shell, bereft of a vibrant intellectual life and mass involvement, the problem would be less acute – the manias and enthusiasms currently energising grassroots politics would, in Ed Miliband’s day, have been filtered through layers of dull technocracy.
But hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to Corbyn’s project – and it is important to recognise that they come both from working-class towns and university cities; from the manual working class and the educated salariat.
What unites most of them – including, I stress here, those from working-class communities – is a globalist and socially liberal attitude to life, the desire for a radical programme of redistribution and investment in, and support for, human rights. In the industrial town where I grew up, the labour movement was always a line drawn through the working class, in favour of values: social justice, tolerance and solidarity. There were always people on the other side, though they used to vote Tory rather than Ukip.
The answer to “who does Labour really represent?” should be a no-brainer. It represents people who are prepared to put evidence before prejudice, fight for social justice, save globalisation by doing less of it – and who are not prepared to throw their black, brown and eastern European colleagues under the bus of xenophobia. It represents women not misogynists, internationalists not nationalists.
Nobody knows that better than the Labour activists who – in the pubs, clubs and high-street stalls of small-town Britain – have to argue face to face with racists and Little Englanders, week in, week out. I know, from talking to my friends among them, that they do not look forward to a second referendum campaign. Even if the numbers supporting leave are falling, their anger is getting stronger as their dreams evaporate.
But I have met hardly anyone inside the Labour party who wants to go into the next election supporting Brexit. Anecdotally, among Labour branches who’ve been loyal to Corbyn, and among Momentum members, I find tolerance for that line at breaking point. Because, as designed and managed by its backers, the Brexit project has failed. The only possible form of it is something its supporters can’t accept.
So if Labour can’t trigger an election, it should push in parliament for a second referendum and vote remain. But what if an election can be triggered? Given that parliament is sovereign, why should Labour tie itself to a failed project that was the brainchild of its enemies, and in which no significant part of its family believes?
The strategy of letting leave supporters learn by experience was a good one: they have learned that hard Brexit is a fantasy, that Boris Johnson is a coward and that the Tories are a chaotic mess. But this strategy has to be superseded by a struggle over principles and vision. To weather the backlash, Labour needs to fight for the values its members, activists and loyal voters believe in. That does not look like any form of Brexit achievable in the conditions of 2019.
So in a snap election I want Labour to embrace its old position: remain and reform – with the offer of a “final say” referendum once Labour is installed in office. The moral authority of the old result will have evaporated. There are three new cohorts of 18-year-olds who should have their say, a worsening geopolitical situation – and three left governments in Europe we can ally with to replace the Lisbon treaty with something better. I don’t dismiss the fears of some union leaders and north of England MPs over a Brexit backlash; I want to hear them debated openly, just as they were at Labour’s conference. That’s why, if we do get a snap election, like the TSSA union leader Manuel Cortes, I want to see the decision on what’s in Labour’s manifesto taken by an elected body of the Labour party – the NEC, a special conference or the Clause V committee – with a public debate inside the party based on evidence.
Labour’s conference left “all options on the table”, including a second referendum and a remain vote. Nowhere in its conference motion on Brexit did it say a second referendum would be a “betrayal”. That’s the language of our opponents. We should counter it with a narrative of hope.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Who backs Brexit? Agriculture is against it; industry is against it; services are against it. None of them, needless to say, support a no-deal Brexit. Yet the Conservative party, which favoured European union for economic reasons over many decades, has become not only Eurosceptic – it is set on a course regarded by every reputable capitalist state and the great majority of capitalist enterprises as deeply foolish.
If any prime minister in the past had shown such a determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism, the massed ranks of British capital would have stepped in to force a change of direction. Yet today, while the CBI and the Financial Times call for the softest possible Brexit, the Tory party is no longer listening.
Why not? One answer is that the Tories now represent the interests of a small section of capitalists who actually fund the party. An extreme version of this argument was floated by the prime minister’s sister, Rachel, and the former chancellor Philip Hammond – both of whom suggested that hard Brexit is being driven by a corrupt relationship between the prime minister and his hedge-fund donors, who have shorted the pound and the whole economy. This is very unlikely to be correct, but it may point to a more disconcerting truth.
The fact is that the capitalists who do support Brexit tend to be very loosely tied to the British economy. This is true of hedge funds, of course – but also true for manufacturers such as Sir James Dyson, who no longer produces in the UK. The owners of several Brexiter newspapers are foreign, or tax resident abroad – as is the pro-Brexit billionaire Sir James Ratcliffe of Ineos.
But the real story is something much bigger. What is interesting is not so much the connections between capital and the Tory party but their increasing disconnection. Today much of the capital in Britain is not British and not linked to the Conservative party – where for most of the 20th century things looked very different. Once, great capitalists with national, imperial and global interests sat in the Commons and the Lords as Liberals or Conservatives. Between the wars, the Conservatives emerged as the one party of capital, led by great British manufacturers such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. The Commons and the Lords were soon fuller than ever of Tory businessmen, from the owner of Meccano toys to that of Lyons Corner Houses.
After the second world war, such captains of industry avoided the Commons, but the Conservative party was without question the party of capital and property, one which stood against the party of organised labour. Furthermore, the Tories represented an increasingly national capitalism, protected by import controls, and closely tied to an interventionist and technocratic state that wanted to increase exports of British designed and made goods. A company like Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) saw itself, and indeed was, a national champion. British industry, public and private, was a national enterprise.
Since the 1970s things have changed radically. Today there is no such thing as British national capitalism. London is a place where world capitalism does business – no longer one where British capitalism does the world’s business. Everywhere in the UK there are foreign-owned enterprises, many of them nationalised industries, building nuclear reactors and running train services from overseas. When the car industry speaks, it is not as British industry but as foreign enterprise in the UK. The same is true of many of the major manufacturing sectors – from civil aircraft to electrical engineering – and of infrastructure. Whatever the interests of foreign capital, they are not expressed through a national political party. Most of these foreign-owned businesses, not surprisingly, are hostile to Brexit.
Brexit is the political project of the hard right within the Conservative party, and not its capitalist backers. In fact, these forces were able to take over the party in part because it was no longer stabilised by a powerful organic connection to capital, either nationally or locally.
Brexit also speaks to the weakness of the state, which was itself once tied to the governing party – and particularly the Conservatives. The British state once had the capacity to change the United Kingdom and its relations to the rest of the world radically and quickly, as happened in the second world war, and indeed on accession to the common market.
Today the process from referendum to implementation will take, if it happens, nearly as long as the whole second world war. The modern British state has distanced itself from the productive economy and is barely able to take an expert view of the complexities of modern capitalism. This was painfully clear in the Brexit impact sectoral reports the government was forced to publish – they were internet cut-and-paste jobs.
The state can no longer undertake the radical planning and intervention that might make Brexit work. That would require not only an expert state, but one closely aligned with business. The preparations would by now be very visible at both technical and political levels. But we have none of that. Instead we have the suggestion that nothing much will happen on no deal, that mini-deals will appear. The real hope of the Brexiters is surely that the EU will cave and carry on trading with the UK as if nothing had changed. Brexit is a promise without a plan. But in the real world Brexit does mean Brexit, and no deal means no deal.
Brexit is a necessary crisis, and has provided a long overdue audit of British realities. It exposes the nature of the economy, the new relations of capitalism to politics and the weakness of the state. It brings to light, in stunning clarity, Brexiters’ deluded political understanding of the UK’s place in the world. From a new understanding, a new politics of national improvement might come; without it we will remain stuck in the delusional, revivalist politics of a banana monarchy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
As Brexiteers shout “forward” and remainers chant “ back”, the battle over the EU dominates British politics. Yet it obscures a more basic British problem. Our clapped-out economy, brilliant at consumption, poor at production, is becoming unviable. A “nation of shopkeepers” has become a nation of shoppers, dependent on debt.
Deindustrialisation and misguided economic policies have reduced the former workshop of the world to a level where Britain can neither pay its way, nor afford the defence and public services an advanced society needs. Everything in which we once were leaders – ships, railways, TV, great bridges, nuclear plants, bicycles, textiles, clothing, even Kit Kats – we now import.
We consume more than we produce, leading to an annual balance of payments deficit rising above 6% of GDP, financed by borrowing and selling companies, property and citizenship to survive. The result is a sluggish economy (a growing proportion of which is owned by foreigners); low productivity (because the manufacturing sector has shrunk to one-tenth of GDP); and static pay, as every sector except finance cuts costs to survive.
Being in or out of the EU has little relevance to this basic problem. The EU is a market, not a mutual support system. Instead of redistributing growth to succour laggards it punishes them, as it has Greece. It drains us and proscribes the techniques of nurture by state aid, protectionism and devaluation by which Germany and France grew. Its “aid” is just our own money back, with the EU’s heavy costs taken out. Even worse, Germany’s huge surpluses mean that deficit countries like the UK, with our £60bn-plus trade deficit, are compounded by the single market.
Yet coming out offers no solution either. It generates uncertainty and deters investment. Most of world trade is controlled by multinationals, and Britain would be more vulnerable to their ministrations. Tory Brexiteers aim at turning us, down and dirty, into a low-wage, deregulated, cost-cutting tax haven-on-Thames. Hardly acceptable to an electorate that has already endured decades of that.
The only solution is to rebalance an economy excessively dependent on finance and services by widening the manufacturing and production base and making it competitive. Neither free trade nor the single market will do that. New industries don’t just come, still less grow to scale, or become national champions like VW, Samsung or Toyota, unaided. The only historic model of rebuilding is that used by Germany and Japan after the second world war, and later by young dragons such as Korea and Taiwan, followed now by China.
All built powerful exporting sectors by the opposite methods to those that have reduced Britain to its present pass. They used a devalued exchange rate, deliberately kept low to penalise imports and boost exports. They built up powerful exporting sectors and strong competitor companies by industrial policy, state support and investment, while restraining domestic demand to channel ability and investment into production. The result was a process of continuous improvement, while Britain wound down.
Harsh treatment, but what alternative do we have? Neoliberalism has damaged, not boosted. Shelf-stacking and delivery driving for the consumer society offer few prospects. The Washington consensus doesn’t work. Training and upskilling are little use without industries to employ the beneficiaries. The financial sector is better at producing wealth for the few than jobs for the many.
The government’s new industrial strategy offers hope without muscle. Our civil servants are hopeless at working with industry. We lack the French pantouflage skill at transferring their elite civil servants between public and private sectors, while Treasury rules make financial support bureaucratic and restrictive. Our governments have been generous to the banks, not to manufacturing. Finance prefers safe lending on mortgages to venture capital. Our unions don’t work like the German ones do in the Mitbestimmung system. Our companies look to short-term profit rather than long-term growth. Our capitalism is better at rent-seeking than competing.
Serious policies of state support, economic discipline, corporate governance and investment priorities are essential to make Britain’s economy fit for use, in or out of the single market. Widening and deepening our industrial base requires a substantial devaluation, a restraint on domestic living standards, an industrial policy sustained by state intervention, investment and a venture capitalism that will allow a hundred plants to blossom. Britain won’t make it unless it can make things and sell them to the world.
The prospect is daunting. Hopes for a government strong enough to do it look slim, and an electorate already alienated by years of austerity to no purpose won’t welcome more tough measures. Perhaps we’re set on a path of decline which has to go further and hurt more, before anything is done. Yet nothing will be, unless our political elite grasps the real problem. The argument over EU membership is just another distraction.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Brexit is messy, complicated and increasingly bad-tempered. The government seems clueless, parliament is rebellious, and the EU is being typically rigid and inflexible. There is much to bemoan. But perhaps there is a silver lining. We’re learning. A lot.
There’s a moment in the film Shrek when the eponymous hero is debating the nature of his species. “There’s a lot more to ogres than people think,” he tells Donkey. “Layers,” he adds. “Like onions, ogres have layers.”
 And it’s the same with Brexit. Peel back the skin from any apparently simple Brexit-related issue, and layers of complexity emerge. Brexit, it transpires, is like an ogre. It has placed all of us in the UK on a steep learning curve. And learning not merely about the process of leaving the EU, but also, more broadly, about our country, our political system and ourselves.
Ironically, it has taken the process of delivering Brexit to clarify for many in the UK what EU membership means. Because of Brexit, we might come to understand the rights and obligations that spring from it.
We all know, for instance, that we pay quite a lot for that membership. Indeed, this is not something we are likely to forget in a hurry after the last couple of years. What was less well-known, perhaps, was the fact that the EU protects its own members. The fate of the whole withdrawal deal depends on a satisfactory resolution of the Irish border issue. The 27, despite their vastly differing perspectives on the issue, have remained united. Being a member of the EU, in other words, entitles one to protection from other member states. We ourselves have benefited from this in the past.
Consider the primacy of the City of London when it comes to the clearing of euro-denominated instruments – some €250bn worth of them daily. The European Central Bank (ECB) has never liked this situation. Indeed, why should it tolerate so much euro-denominated business being done outside of the eurozone? The simple answer is: because of EU law. In 2011 the ECB published a plan to bring an end to this. But this had to be dropped after the British government challenged this decision before the EU’s general court. The protection the European court of justice (ECJ) offers to the Brits is not a phrase we hear too often in this country, but it is something we may come to miss.
But our learning goes further than the EU itself. All those involved in the Brexit debate – including many MPs and peers – have been on a crash course on international trade of late, learning about issues as varied as customs unions, regulatory alignment, rules of origin and phytosanitary certification. Most of those who follow the debate have heard enough about customs unions to last a lifetime.
Meanwhile, Brexit has served to underline the limits of our knowledge. It would be fascinating to know what the public thought about the various trade choices that confront the country. But finding out is hard because it is very difficult to formulate a survey that both digs deeply enough into the issue and is comprehensible to the average voter.
Others have also had to learn very quickly. I’ve heard stories of chief executives having to do some rapid homework about the state of their warehouses and the arcane details of their supply chains – often prior to popping in to see David Davis to let him know what Brexit means for their firm. And Brexit continues to teach us about our own country.
Most people are now starting to realise that Northern Ireland enjoyed a unique position within the British state, and that unpicking this might have damaging consequences. EU membership provided a means of allowing for the smooth operation of a complex and highly differentiated devolution settlement. With many formally devolved powers essentially falling under the competence of the EU, the disruption to the internal market of the UK that would be provoked by their exercise in Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh was avoided.
And the constitutional lessons do not end here. The EU, in fact, provided a constitutional-type bulwark against the erosion of rights. Not only is EU legislation extremely hard to amend or repeal – requiring majorities in both the European parliament and the council of ministers – but the incorporation of the charter of fundamental rights into the Lisbon treaty provided a genuinely constitutional guarantee of certain rights such as the right to equality.
The relative inability of the British system to enshrine and guarantee rights has been clearly revealed since the Brexit talks began. Little surprise that the EU initially insisted on a continuing role for the ECJ in enforcing the rights of EU citizens here. Britain’s “elective dictatorship” effectively prevents the enshrining of such rights beyond the reach of a parliamentary majority.
So much for the system. We’ve also had our eyes opened about the nature of the country itself. Those living in overwhelmingly remain areas of the country have learned that there exist a significant number of people who do not agree with them on key issues (leavers, I suspect, already realised this). The Brexit tribes have noticed each other. We are a country divided and have only just noticed.
Divided, indeed, not merely by political outlook but also economic performance. Another outcome of the Brexit vote has been a renewed interest in economic inequality between both groups and places. Government departments and academic economists are learning at a rate of knots about the nature of our trading relationship with the EU, the supply chains affected by it, and the regions most exposed to its disruption.
What really matters about knowledge, of course, is how – indeed whether – it is put to use. There are already signs that our newly gained self-knowledge at least is changing the way we talk about things. The geographical divisions Brexit exposed are reflected in renewed debates not merely about the powers of the devolved authorities, but also about the need to give other regions greater autonomy. Fairness – whether geographical or intergenerational – is front and centre in political discourse.
None of which, of course, is to suggest anything will actually get done. Brexit might be teaching us things, but it’s also consuming political time and energy – not to mention public money – to a worrying extent. Let us just hope our new-found knowledge will not be squandered in the process. Brexit, after all, presents us with an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and to recognise the errors of our former ways. Failing to do so really would be tragic. Like when Shrek lost Fiona.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
“Nate”, recently introduced at the Edinburgh festival, is the thick, swaggering, toxically masculine alter-ego of a brilliant US comedian, Natalie Palamides. Audiences gawped as the diminutive but lavishly male Nate, adorned with a bandana, moustache and scrawled-on chest hair, entered on a motorbike to the sound of Bad to the Bone from Terminator 2, then, to prove prodigious virility, smashed up various props, chopped wood, got his dick (prosthetic, she’s not a magician) out, and persuaded a male audience member to wrestle, bare-chested.
There’s another chance, happily, to see Nate, when Palamides’s show transfers to London, this autumn. Meanwhile, for those who can’t get to the real thing, there’s always – and now more than ever – Boris Johnson.
Shagging, of course. Swaggering, reliably. Sometimes, pictures show, in a bandana. With proofs of masculinity featuring, as well as a broken Foreign Office, the devastation – if Johnson can get his paws on one – of an entire country. If Johnson is not, yet, man enough to live-wrestle, like Palamides, he revealed his affection for this sport, pre marital announcements, in an extended introduction to his latest attack on Theresa May’s Brexit plans. “So it’s ding ding!” he begins, Nateishly. “Seconds out!”
Even the untutored will get the idea: the crisis engulfing Johnson’s career is grave enough to require the activation of completely new and untested combat metaphors, alongside his traditional Second World War repertoire.
“And we begin the final round of that international slug fest, the Brexit negotiations,” Johnson continues. “Out of their corners come Dominic Raab and Michel Barnier, shrugging their shoulders and beating their chests.”
It’s a while before we return to more familiar Johnsoniana, such as his pre-used “we have gone into battle with the white flag fluttering over our leading tank”; the sort of deranged language that, though it would plainly be regarded as disturbing in any civilian workplace, has been heard so often, from so many, since Brexit’s notables began vociferating in 2016, as to come to sound, in these negotiations, unremarkable.
Not all Brexiters, obviously. It should be stressed that very large numbers of EU-averse individuals, male and female, are capable of discussing the EU without ever mentioning blood, lions or colonies (Farage, Johnson); turds (Johnson); flags (Farage, Johnson); tanks (Johnson); the war/The Great Escape (Johnson, Farage); punishment beatings (Johnson); the “enemy” (Hammond, David Davis’s team); cudgels (Andrew Bridgen); and from Brexit’s more scholarly, Sealed Knot tendency, Napoleon (Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg); Agincourt (Rees-Mogg); vassal state (Johnson, Rees-Mogg).
If nothing else, Rees-Mogg has demonstrated, quite usefully, that quaint diction and a close reading of 1066 and All That are far from incompatible with exhibitions of toxic masculinity, in the commonly understood sense of displays, by covertly insecure men, of extreme bravado, aggression and a disproportionate horror of humiliation (as they call compromise).
As demonstrated by Brexit’s leading sufferers, toxic masculinity’s obsession with winning may be accompanied by leaden declarations of insouciance (Liam Fox, Farage, Davis), by a genuine or affected absence of human feeling (all the above-named), by hypersexualised behaviour (Rees-Mogg’s top hat) and, possibly, by imputations of effeminacy. Johnson refers in his latest attack to the “twanging of leotards” by EU staff, a choice of words that presumably reflects some association, in the great shagger’s mind, between ballet, emasculation and losing – possibly the greatest fear to beset any Nate-minded politician. “Loser” looms large, similarly, in the Trump lexicon.
Did Brexit always have to become, like the current White House, another vehicle for hypermasculine displaying? Certainly, once the debate had been characterised, with the lethal connivance of the BBC (another such platform), as a binary, Westminster-style standoff, as opposed to an exercise in public deliberation, its dominance by bullies, specialists in confrontational flourishes, could have been more often recognised, and deplored. To their credit, Johnson’s “inflammatory” rhetoric was condemned by MEPs. May had rewarded him with a job.
Thus normalised, the language of leading Brexiters has only become more immoderate since the allegedly cerebral Michael Gove began (long before he and Johnson launched their own, more risible hostilities) by comparing (in a Today programme monologue) the UK’s EU membership to the plight of a “hostage”, “locked in the boot of a car”.
Diminishing hyperbole reserves now leave Today favourite Bernard Jenkin scrabbling, like Johnson, for ever more desperate analogies with which to convey the strange violence of his feelings. Brexit averted, the backbencher writes, “would be like deciding to abandon the Falkland Islands in 1982 without a fight”. M Barnier’s negotiators have plainly evolved, since Fox called them gangsters, into something more closely resembling uniformed Argentinians.
Elsewhere, fellow alarmists talk up the potential for civil unrest with what, given the uneventfulness of Brexit demonstrations thus far, sounds suspiciously like longing. Just what – other than their own predilections – convinces Farage or Barry Gardiner that obstacles to Brexit would risk, respectively, angry riots or “civil disobedience”?
Not least of the many compelling arguments for a people’s vote on a final deal is the chance to see what might happen if the preceding discussion were held in civil or, at least, non-toxically masculine language. How would it be, that debate, minus “slug fests” and “cudgels”, but with the addition of younger voices, of informed ones and in particular of more women, 56% of whom support remain (against 51% of men)? A Loughborough University study found that men enjoyed 85% of the press, and 75% of the television referendum coverage, with starring roles for Gove, Johnson and Farage.
Probably, given the demagogic opportunities, the referendum was always going to be dominated, once they were indulged, by the political world’s most unspeakable Nates. We need to have a new one despite – and ideally without – them.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Last week, under a process unique in a thousand years of parliamentary history, MPs had the opportunity to discover “the will of parliament”. Today it will be repeated. Instead of voting to decide between mutually exclusive proposals on Brexit, MPs had a series of indicative votes.
It was supposed to break the deadlock by allowing MPs to say not only what they wanted, but what they would be prepared to accept when it comes to Brexit. Most rational people had long since realised that the prime minister’s deal would not get a majority. So the idea was that indicative votes actually gave MPs the opportunity to secure a majority for something, but only if they honestly voted for all the proposals that they could accept, instead of only voting for the one or two proposals that they most wanted.
I found the experience refreshing. Normally I am clear beforehand about which single proposal in a binary choice I am going to vote for. With the indicative votes I had the chance to vote for lots of things. I didn’t have to rank them in order, I just had to say whether I could live with them. Anything I really could not accept, I could vote against. During the course of the debate I found myself changing my decision. I had originally decided to vote against the European Economic Area with a customs union proposal. It respects the referendum technically by leaving the EU, and it delivers the benefits of a customs union, but the membership of the single market means we would not have control over money, borders and laws in a way that most people who voted to leave would find unacceptable. But my colleague Lucy Powell MP made an excellent speech that made me realise that even though I did not favour it, I could live with it. So I changed my decision and did not vote against. I treated the indicative process as a mechanism to deliver an outcome that most of us could live with.
Looking at the way many other MPs actually voted, that now seems almost touchingly naive. What I did not expect was that some people would vote against positions they actually supported in order to game the system and try to get their number one choice to the top of the list. I, of course, knew Anna Soubry’s top option was to have a second referendum. She does not want to leave the EU and wants to reverse the result of the referendum so of course I expected her to vote to have a second referendum on any deal and to revoke article 50. That is fair and proper. What I had not expected was that she would vote against the Clarke/Benn amendment on a customs union. She and many of her colleagues in the Independent Group are on the record as supporting a customs union, indeed they were signatories to the customs union amendments to the trade bill and the customs bill. They did not even abstain. They voted against something they had always previously supported. The public may wonder if some old scores were being settled or whether tribal loyalties were preventing some MPs from voting for options they might have favoured if only they had been put forward by a different source.
On the whole I believe Labour MPs came out of the process with great credit. They entered into the spirit of the indicative process and were prepared to vote in favour of more options than any other political party or group. Personally I emerged as less amenable than most of my Labour colleagues (only voting in favour of three options and abstaining on two). But on average Labour MPs were willing to vote for four or five options out of the eight available.
The most astonishing fact of the indicative vote process however, is how difficult Conservatives found it to vote in favour of anything at all. On the Guardian spreadsheet the Conservative MPs can be easily identified by the sea of red “againsts” next to their names. On average Conservatives voted against six or seven options out of the eight available, with very few abstentions. Some, such as Mel Stride and Charles Walker, could not find it in themselves even to abstain on a single option, but voted against all eight.
Surely the public had a right to expect better? This was supposed to be a process in which MPs placed the interest of the country first. Where they said yes to all the things they could accept in a spirit of reasonable compromise. For some MPs it appears to have turned into a high-stakes exercise in games theory. We did not find out “the will of parliament” – what we found instead was the wilfulness of MPs.
If parliament is to find a path through the Brexit mess today, then MPs need to stop playing the system, pay no attention to the names or parties of the proposer and seconders and ask themselves honestly “Could I bear to put up with this sort of deal?” Then and only then might we reclaim the right to call ourselves representatives of the will of the people.
Last modified on Wed 5 Feb 2020 05.10 GMT
Brexit is – allegedly – done. The UK is no longer a member state of the European Union, so in this sense at least, the outcome of the 2016 referendum has finally been honoured. But how done is “done”? And what happens next? While Brexit to date has hardly been easy, a new report by the UK in a Changing Europe shows that much of the real work still lies ahead.
First, there are negotiations. These will require trade-offs. The government now faces a choice between aligning with existing EU rules, which will allow for more trade, and regulatory autonomy, which grants the UK national control but makes trade harder. That choice will have consequences.
Before those consequences really kick in, however, the government will need to start forming new policies in areas where the EU has played a significant role to date. Among the most obvious are agriculture, environment and immigration. Under Michael Gove’s leadership, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs developed radical policies on the first two, which it falls to his successor to implement. The EU will be looking on anxiously to see whether Britain’s future legislation on these areas signals its commitment to maintaining and enforcing the high standards that EU membership prescribes.
On immigration, however, change could be rapid. The task facing the government – devising and implementing a new, points-based immigration system – is challenging and potentially disruptive to sectors that currently depend on a steady supply of labour from the EU.
There will also be a simultaneous economic fallout to cope with. Brexit has already weighed on the UK’s manufacturing output and investment, and a bare-bones trade deal could spell trouble for just-in-time supply chains, which require frictionless delivery systems to work. Meanwhile, the apparent decision by the government to prioritise regulatory autonomy means that even a free trade agreement would present new barriers to trade. Tariff- and quota-free trade alone offers nothing for the service sectors, where the UK currently runs a surplus on trade with the EU.
The government’s solid majority will end the legislative stalemate of the past two and a half years. Phase two of the Brexit process might prove less consuming than phase one. But the process of disentangling the UK from EU regulations will still demand much time and attention from ministers and civil servants. And the fiscal impact of leaving the customs union and single market will constrain the government’s ability to deliver on Boris Johnson’s promise to “level up” the United Kingdom. More broadly, there is little evidence that the government has a coherent strategy to reshape the British economy after Brexit – its emphasis seems to be on damage limitation on the one hand, and largely symbolic gestures on the other.
Brexit has also cast light on the institutional structures of British politics, and questions of representation, legitimacy and democratic reform. Parliament will need to decide if – and how – to scrutinise what the EU is doing after the transition. For the civil service to deal with the next phase of the Brexit process it will need an expanded unit in the Cabinet Office (not to mention that some in government seem keen to bring about far more profound and wide-ranging reforms to the civil service). At the same time, the government’s intention to hold a review into constitutional issues could herald reforms to the relationship between politics and the judiciary.
Which brings us to Britain’s territorial constitution. The events of the past three years have placed significant strain on the devolution settlement. Questions over the Northern Ireland border and Scottish independence show no sign of abating. There remains the real, politically contentious prospect of a border in the Irish Sea. After three years without a fully functioning executive or assembly, the newly restored Northern Ireland executive will have its work cut out implementing the NI protocol, and ensuring this is consistent with the deal to restore devolved government.
As if this weren’t enough, we live in a country where social values as well as social class drive the electorate. Politics has changed – and will continue to do so. The interaction between values and class will be crucial for the strategies of individual parties. Can the Liberal Democrats successfully target remainers now remain is now longer an option? Will the Tories be able to maintain their new voters, while winning back more traditional pro-business, pro-European Conservatives who abandoned them over Brexit?
There is an awful lot to be done. But we are better placed than we have been in some time to have a serious debate about our immigration system. Brexit may have been the fillip that was needed to address long-overlooked constitutional issues. The referendum and its aftermath may finally force us to confront enduring economic problems, such as a lack of skills and profound regional inequalities. We may be out of the European Union, but Brexit is not, by a long stretch, out of our system.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Independent business economist and member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC) from 2006-11
The picture of the UK economy since the Brexit vote has been pretty consistent: slow GDP growth but fairly positive employment performance. Growth is being strongly driven by consumer spending – but more recently by stockpiling linked to Brexit.
Inflation was pushed up by the fall in the pound after the referendum result, but that impact has washed through the system. Inflation is is now very close to the 2% target set by the government for the Bank of England, and it will probably stay in that zone unless we get another inflationary shock over the next one or two years.
I would describe the state of the UK economy as being in a “no-man’s land”. We are neither benefiting from being a full-blooded member of the EU, nor experiencing the full impacts of being outside.
The mixed economic data we are currently seeing reflects this state of affairs. The UK economy will be limping on for a while, until Brexit negotiations are fully resolved.
I can see the UK being in this limbo-land for quite a while – certainly until the late 2020s. My best estimate of the underlying growth potential of the UK economy in the 2020s is for GDP growth of 1.75% a year. That would represent the weakest economic growth since the second world war. The short-term economic consequences are plain to see. But the longer-term implications have yet to unfold.
Brexit is bad for the British economy. We have already seen short-term negative consequences. But the bigger long-term issues have yet to unfold.
Against this background, the UK government is trying to recruit a new central bank governor. I wish them luck, but it is not a very attractive job for “rock-star” central bankers in the Carney mould. Andrew Bailey is a good candidate, but in the outside world I am struggling to identify good people to take the job. Hopefully they will make themselves known in the appointment process.
Professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the US and member of the Bank’s MPC from 2006-09
The big news this week is that Mark Carney is leaving as the governor of the Bank of England and the adverts are out for a replacement. The money is pretty good. Ladbrokes has Andrew Bailey, the head of the Financial Conduct Authority, as 2-1 favourite. But there is a long list of candidates including several well-qualified women. I suspect it will be a Bank outsider once again. Whoever gets this poisoned chalice as the UK leaves the EU is going to have a major influence over the UK economy going forward. Brexit fallout will be the new incumbent’s biggest challenge.
The economy appears to be holding up remarkably well at the moment but there are clear fragilities. The worst news is from the purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs), which take into account company bosses’ views of business activity in the economy. They are a scary indicator for the path ahead.
The PMIs suggest the economy is in a similar state to early 2008. The IHS Markit services PMI came in at 48.9 in March, down from 51.3 in February, and below the 50 no-change mark for the first time since July 2016. New orders fell for the third month running. That is not good.
The construction PMI revealed a sustained decline in total activity, with the first back-to-back monthly decline in output since August 2016. Brexit preparations remained a prominent feature in the manufacturing PMI in March, as companies built stockpiles to record levels in anticipation of disruption. The short-term picture has not been bad, but Brexit is still having a chilling effect on the economy.
The big news from the labour market is that real earnings fell on the month, despite the headlines from the ONS that pay rose over the three months to February. By real earnings, I mean pay adjusted for price increases – so it is a measure of what workers can buy with their pay packet. The total weekly pay packet of an average worker, after inflation, has fallen from £525 in February 2008, to £497 in January this year, and then to £494 in February.
In January real wages were 5.3% below their level at the start of the great recession in February 2008. They fell further again still in February and are now 5.9% below their starting level. No wonder people are hurting.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
In a landmark legal decision last Thursday, the high court upheld a legal challenge brought against the government by Gina Miller and others, and ruled the government cannot use the royal prerogative to trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, and so formally commence the process to leave the EU, without parliamentary approval.
The court’s judgment means that the process must be subject to parliamentary control and oversight. Importantly (especially in the light of some recent media comments), the court stressed that this is purely a question of law and that the court is not concerned with, and does not express any view about, the merits of leaving the EU. That is a political consideration.
In brief, the case arose because article 50 allows the UK to withdraw from the EU “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements” – but there was disagreement as to what the UK constitution actually requires.
The government argued that it could use royal prerogative powers (namely, that residue of monarchical authority now exercised by ministers) to authorise the UK’s withdrawal. While it is clear that prerogative powers cover international relations and the conclusion of treaties, it is settled UK constitutional law that an act of parliament – in this case the European Communities Act (ECA) 1972 – cannot be supplanted by the exercise of a prerogative power.
The court accepted the claimants’ arguments that, once notice is given under article 50, some rights under EU law (as incorporated into domestic law by the ECA) would inevitably be lost on completion of the article 50 process. Therefore, the government cannot give notice under article 50 without reference to parliament. This judgment can be seen as a victory for parliament. During the EU referendum, voters were constantly urged to “take back control” and regain parliamentary sovereignty from the EU.
Yet in what sense is parliament taking back control, if the government is able, using its ancient prerogative powers, to manage the whole EU withdrawal process without any significant parliamentary involvement? That would be extremely undemocratic – and democracy is what we are told the EU referendum was about.
Furthermore, the court’s judgment makes clear that the exclusion of parliament in the process is not only undemocratic, it is illegal. There is a wealth of case law supporting the claimants’ case, some of it dating back to the 17th century and the English civil wars. Those wars, and the ejection of two kings during that century, established that parliament is sovereign and that the executive cannot ignore it, where it has no legal authority to do so.
This judgment makes clear that the government does not have any such legal authority in the context of triggering article 50. However, it must be stressed that the judgment also makes clear the importance of rights in the Brexit process. Much of the judgment concerns legal arguments over the ECA, which can seem arcane. Yet they are of vital importance to every citizen.
The EU has been described as a “new legal order” and it is in many important aspects different from ordinary international law. One such aspect has been the extent to which it confers rights on individuals. Through the ECA, every UK national has been endowed with rights under EU law – rights of free movement and residence in other EU countries, but also many other types of rights, such as employment rights, consumer rights, or rights to information. Some of these will vanish as a result of triggering article 50 and the withdrawal process.
The government has said it will transfer some EU law into UK law through a “great repeal bill”, and then decide in future whether or not to retain it. Thursday’s judgment makes clear that decisions that inevitably remove rights may not be taken by the executive alone. Parliament must be consulted.
What are the practical consequences of this judgment? First, a government spokesperson has said the government will appeal, in which case it will be fast-tracked and heard very quickly by the UK supreme court. The government might try to change its position, and argue that a notification under article 50 could be revoked – this would be the opposite of its high court concession that triggering article 50 would inevitably result in the withdrawal of the UK from the EU (and so lead to loss of individual rights). At present both government and claimants are treating the triggering of article 50 as the inevitable point when it becomes clear that the ECA will be repealed.
But if it were acknowledged that such a move is reversible, the point would be that, in triggering article 50 by executive act, the government would not be subverting statute at that point, it would not be rendering the ECA a dead letter, inevitably leading to a loss of rights.
Some believe a notification under article 50 is revocable. But this would involve a question of EU law, and the final answer could only be given by the European court of justice. Moreover, such a reversal of the government’s arguments would be politically risky, as it would amount to acknowledging that the UK might decide not to leave the EU, and that Brexit does not mean Brexit after all, perhaps not a very likely position for the government to take.
Thursday’s ruling is a strong judgment, by a powerful trio of judges including the lord chief justice, and its reasoning looks hard to overturn. If the ruling stands, it will be necessary for a bill to be introduced in parliament. Although it is highly unlikely parliament will vote against triggering article 50, parliament may well seek to impose certain conditions on the government.
The June referendum resulted in a vote for the UK to leave the EU. However, it did not determine the way in which the UK leaves the EU. The court’s judgment means that the elected parliament will have a role in debating and deciding many matters, rather than their being determined in private by the executive.
Finally, the judgment raises a question of the role of the devolved nations. If Westminster is to be involved, what about the devolved parliaments? By constitutional convention, devolved parliaments are asked for their consent when Westminster either legislates with regard to devolved matters (see section 28(8) of the Scotland Act) or where it legislates to increase or reduce their powers. If a bill is introduced allowing article 50 to be triggered, would this require legislative consent motions, and, if so, would the devolved nations give their consent? Conflicting answers have been given on this point, and the issue is highly politically charged.
One thing is clear – Brexit is constitutionally fascinating, as well as constitutionally problematic. It also raises as many difficult questions for our understanding of the British constitution as it does of the UK’s relationship with the European Union.
Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott is anniversary chair in law and co-director at the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context, Queen Mary School of Law, University of London
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
First they were anomalies: the reports of European citizens legally living in the UK, but caught in some dystopian drama with the Home Office after the Brexit vote. Perhaps they were just administrative mix-ups, we might have reasoned: straightforward cases that ran into misinformed, computer-says-no immigration officials. Now the stories are becoming regular. We hear tales of Europeans – some of whom were even born in the UK and have lived here all their lives, or are married to British citizens and have children born in Britain – being forced to regularise their status, appealing to the Home Office for some stability and reassurance via naturalisation.
What they face is not a machinery that seeks to understand their plight or has regard to the sensitivities. Instead, they are confronted by a dysfunctional instrument made blunt and crude by historically inconsistent government policy on immigration – and that, since the EU referendum, has been rendered even more incomprehensible and inhumane by the lack of any coherent government plan for Brexit.
Not only is the Home Office understaffed and under-resourced as the result of public sector cuts, it is also under pressure to deliver whatever results the government needs to stand any chance of meeting its immigration targets. The result is that, for up to 3 million EU nationals worried by the political hiatus, seeking reassurance from the Home Office is like running towards a cliff to flee a predator.
Hitherto, the focus has been on non-EU citizens: on efforts to keep their numbers down both in terms of the right to remain and naturalisation. That has been behind the spasmodic witch-hunts of certain groups regardless of how much they contribute to the British economy. NHS doctors one day, overseas students the next – anyone who is above the radar and good for a headline. The guiding Home Office principle seems to be reject first, ask questions later, and in the meantime hope the applicant does not have the connections or resources to appeal. Immigration lawyers have told me that officials were at one point being incentivised, on the basis of how many applications they rejected, with Marks & Spencer vouchers.
But immigration targets and Brexit are a toxic mix that changes everything: how else to explain yesterday’s baldly expressed admission from the Home Office that it now sees EU citizens in Britain, previously exempt from having to prove residency rights, as “negotiating capital”?
The stories of how officials have already started to behave towards EU nationals speaks to a particular mindset, a bureaucracy infected perhaps by the same ill will, nastiness and recklessness that defined the referendum campaign.
But the Home Office in particular, and the immigration system in general, has long made decisions not on the basis of merit or reason, but as a way of filtering out as many applicants as possible – either via exhaustion of resources or impossibly high barriers. This is why EU citizens who have lived here for decades, and are now applying for UK citizenship but neglect to include their passports (not actually a requirement, but a handy excuse familiar to anyone who has dealt with the Home Office), are not only having their applications rejected, they’re being told to prepare to leave the UK, despite already being entitled to permanent residency.
One such applicant likened her treatment to a Monty Python sketch. That is true in terms of farce, but not levity. If the waiting or the rejections or the appeals don’t exhaust the anxious applicant, the costs involved in protecting themselves from the relentless machine surely will.
Nothing demonstrates this absurdity more than the case of Dom Wolf, born to German parents in London, who applied for a British passport after the Brexit vote and now has to take the UK citizenship test because officials say he cannot prove his mother was legally in the UK when she gave birth. His incredulity echoes that of many shunted into a newly perilous position. “Holding a British birth certificate and having had my parents live, work and raise four boys in the UK for over 42 years, I made the devastating assumption that this would be an easy process,” he said in a letter to the prime minister. “Oh boy was I wrong.”
At this point it is really tempting, for those born outside Europe, to say: welcome to our lives. If your worst-case scenario is a strongly worded letter that is later apologised for, or the inconvenience of having to take a test, don’t expect too much surprise from those of us who have long battled with this mighty bureaucracy.
But Brexit lays bare the brutal way in which decisions about peoples’ lives and families are taken, and how facts they thought immutable – like nationality or the holding of a passport – can be withdrawn by a sudden change in public mood and a reckless government cowering in whatever direction the winds of xenophobia are blowing. Already there are reports of EU citizens being questioned about their right to use the NHS, and concerns about poor and elderly people who may struggle to fortify themselves against whatever ultimate decision will be made about their status.
Brexit has revealed the unpreparedness of politicians, and these deficiencies yield great consequences for ordinary people who suffer when a bureaucracy turns brutal. It has also revealed the extent to which immigration law is damaged by populist thinking and underfunding. The hysterical view that Britain is a soft touch for migrants helped deliver the leave vote. The new plight of EU citizens is exposing the disjuncture between the immigration system we have, and the one we think we have.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Brexit is certainly a big deal. It’s also shaping up to be a miserable one. So the people have a right to decide whether they still want Brexit once they know what it means.
Quitting the EU will affect us for generations to come. It will impact jobs, the NHS, the environment, our ability to stand up to bullies across the world, our pride and even the unity of the United Kingdom.
A good deal would be good for our public services, prosperity, power and peace. But as new facts emerge, it is clear Brexit will fail on all counts.
We won’t get an extra £350m a week for the NHS, as Boris Johnson falsely promised. We’ll have less money for public services, because the economy will be damaged. Kicking out foreigners isn’t the way to get treated faster in A&E departments either. We’re already suffering an exodus of European nurses and doctors – meanwhile, fewer patients are getting treated on time in A&E departments.
Brexiters also promised that we would stride the world like latter-day Walter Raleighs, opening foreign markets to our trade. This is baloney. We’re scrambling to copy deals the EU already has with over 60 other countries. Not only are we going to lose access to the EU market, which accounts for half our trade, but when the US and China see our desperation, they’ll bully us – forcing us to open our markets to their chlorine-washed chicken, subsidised steel and the like.
The leave campaign’s slogan was “take back control”. This is a bad joke. As Theresa May makes one climbdown after another in the Brexit talks, it’s clear we are losing control. This is because we need the EU more than it needs us – exactly the opposite of what Johnson, Gove and co promised two years ago.
We are currently one of Europe’s big powers making the rules. But because the prime minister is desperate not to lose all the EU’s advantages, we’ll end up as a rule-taker. This tail-between-our-legs Brexit will be bad for our pride and bad for our power.
We’ll have less clout on the global stage too. At a time when Russia is flexing its muscles, is it really sensible to burn our bridges with Europe?
Brexit could even imperil the peace process in Northern Ireland. The fact that both the UK and the Republic of Ireland are in the EU has eased communal tensions between Protestants and Catholics. Unless we can stop border controls returning, they could flare again post-Brexit.
As if this was not bad enough, it has now emerged that the official leave campaign might have cheated by breaking spending limits during the referendum. Meanwhile, Facebook’s statement that data on 1.1 million Brits may have been “improperly shared” with Cambridge Analytica has set off alarm bells that this information may have been used to manipulate voters.
Brexiters will, no doubt, seek to trash the idea of a people’s vote by calling it a second referendum. It’s not. In 2016, voters had a choice between the reality of staying in the EU and the fantasy promised by the leave campaign. Once we know what the deal is, we will be able to compare two realities. That’s not undemocratic. It’s common sense.
Brexiters will, no doubt, say we are bad losers and should shut up. But in a free society, everybody has the right to speak their minds. It’s undemocratic to try to silence us. Others may say that people are so sick and tired of the whole goddamn business that they don’t want another vote. Many people do want to get it over and done with. Our task will be to persuade them this is such a big deal that they need to focus on it one more time.
The good news is that many voters realise the importance of this moment. They are suspicious of politicians deciding things that will affect them and their families for generations without having a say. And this is even before our campaign for a people’s vote has taken off.
Yet others may say the referendum was so divisive that the last thing we need is another vote. There’s no doubt Brexit has split families and communities. But if we quit the EU with a bad deal the people don’t want, that will be even more divisive.
After a people’s vote, in which the public get to compare two realities, the country may be able to heal itself – whatever the result. That would give closure to this whole sorry story.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
High-level inter-departmental talks.
Trade minister It’s great that little Owen thingy person lost.
Chancellor Don’t you like Owen Smith?
Trade minister No, he was against Corbyn.
Chancellor So are we, aren’t we?
Trade minister No! We love Corbyn! As long as Corbyn’s leading Labour, we’ll be in power for ever.
Chancellor I think Owen’s harmless.
Trade minister Harmless? No way. He has been saying there should be another referendum, or an election, when we actually know the terms.
Chancellor And what’s Corbyn saying?
Trade minister Nobody can quite work that out. I don’t think he knows.
Chancellor Here’s what I don’t get: why are we different from Greece? The Greeks voted for Grexit. The EU just ignored them. But when we vote for Brexit, they tell us to hurry up and get out.
Trade minister That’s because nobody gives a fig about Greece. Their economy is in the toilet. The point is, the EU are insisting that we trigger article 50, hurry up with the negotiations and get out.
Chancellor How? We have cut the civil service by 20% since 2010. You hardly have anyone in your department to conduct the negotiations. We need to recruit about 10,000 graduates.
Trade minister Ten thousand?
Chancellor That’s the estimate. We’ll have to scour Starbucks and McDonald’s and get all those unemployed grads and linguists who can’t get a job and are living at home with their parents.
Trade minister What will it cost?
Chancellor To employ 10,000 more people? About £5bn.
Trade minister OK. We can take it out of the NHS.
Chancellor But you promised that leaving would enable us to add £350m to the NHS.
Trade minister That’s what we said. But things change.
Chancellor Nothing has changed.
Trade minister Yes, it has – our arithmetic.
Chancellor Well, you’re right that Greece’s economy is in the toilet. So will ours be unless we’re very lucky.
Trade minister Look! You’re supposed to be on our side!
Chancellor Does that mean I should ignore the facts?
Trade minister Of course! That’s how we won the referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
Like Elvis meeting Nixon, the president-elect and Nigel Farage grin, thumbs up, in the gilded vulgarian’s paradise of Trump Tower. This image is a reward as sweet as any the interim Ukip leader might have hoped for – sweeter, perhaps, than the EU referendum result itself. It adds bludgeoning force to his claim to be our man in the new Washington, in practice if not by official appointment.
As for Trump: could there be clearer evidence that the next leader of the free world lacks all sense of decorum and diplomatic protocol? On Thursday he schmoozed the prime minister, Theresa May, in a telephone call, the warmth of which delighted (and relieved) her officials. There is a guarded hope among her allies that she might gently steer the 45th president towards a more realistic position on free trade, Nato and the containment of Russia.
In his conversation with the PM, Trump cited the precedent of Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher. A more productive inspiration would be Macmillan’s bond with Kennedy. In a memo disclosed in the Sunday Times, Sir Kim Darroch, the UK’s ambassador in Washington, expressed the hope that the president-elect would be “open to outside influence if pitched right … we should be well placed to do this”.
I understand that in an unpublished section of Trump’s call to May he signalled that his campaign rhetoric should not be taken too literally. It is understandable that the PM welcomed this – who would not? – and that the government hopes to steer the president-elect towards some version of sanity.
But May’s team should manage their expectations. One cannot assume from Dr Jekyll’s occasional appearance that Mr Hyde is gone for good.
Still, how strong is the yearning to believe that Trump is something other than what he patently is – that office will soften him and smooth his rough edges, that he will be tamed by the presidency. Let us call it Von Papen syndrome.
In 1933 the German vice-chancellor, Franz von Papen, looked forward to “boxing Hitler in”, and claimed: “Within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far in the corner that he’ll squeak.” These boasts were, to put it mildly, mistaken (but just to anticipate seething Trumpist trolls: I am drawing an analogy, not suggesting direct equivalence between the Führer and their American hero).
Here there is a strong parallel with the debate on Britain’s departure from the EU. Just as some politicians imagine that there can be a “soft Brexit”, so the delusion has arisen that the “hard Trumpism” of the campaign will yield place to a soft Trumpism in office. Yet consider how the president-elect responded when the Wall Street Journal asked him whether he had gone too far. “No,” he replied. “I won.” This is scarcely the voice of humility.
The new special relationship, in any case, is not between leaders or governments. It is a malignant cultural tendril that stretches across the Atlantic connecting Brexit to Trump’s election and all it portends. This is what really matters.
The symmetry is not exact. In practice, the “left behind” played a greater part in the referendum result than in the presidential contest: about two-thirds of those with incomes under £20,000 voted to leave the EU. In contrast, a higher percentage of low-income voters opted for Hillary Clinton than for her Republican conqueror.
Trump, furthermore, faces few institutional constraints: his party controls both Congress and Senate, and he has pledged to mould the supreme court in his image. How the Brexiteers must envy him, as they reel from the high court’s decision that parliament must give its approval to the triggering of article 50.
Yet in spite of these differences it would be idle to deny the pulsing connection between the two movements. Both Brexit and Trump’s election have conspicuously released the toxins of racism, xenophobia and homophobia.
According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the number of hate crimes rose by 58% in the week after the vote to leave the EU. In July, August and September, homophobic incidents increased by 147% compared with the same period last year.
In the US a similar pattern is asserting itself: Muslim girls are frightened to wear the hijab. The slogan “Gay families burn in hell!” appears above the hashtag Trump2016. The swastika is enjoying a revival in inner-city graffiti. In their cafeteria, Michigan middle schoolers chant “build a wall!”
These are the wages of a presidential campaign based on hatred, and one that blithely restored to the mainstream language and idiom that had been (one thought) driven out over the years by civil decency. This is Trump’s fault.
So too the Brexit movement and Trumpism share an astonishing vagueness of prescription. This is the greatest weakness of the ascendant alt-right: that loose-linked collection of digital guerrillas, pantomime acts and high-octane attention seekers.
They say they hate globalisation, immigration, and “political correctness”, and I dare say they do. But – like the Brexiteers and the president-elect – what they offer instead lacks detail, depth, and plausibility.
In the UK, we are allegedly “taking back control”. But how, exactly? In his meandering acceptance speech, Trump pledged to “put millions of our people to work”. Again: how? What does he know that his presidential predecessors didn’t?
For a start, the protectionism he has promised is a dead end: we know how that movie ends. As the PM will declare in a speech at the Mansion House on Monday night, the great task now is not to tear down globalisation but to make it work more equitably, not least for those “who see their jobs being outsourced and wages undercut”. This is the task of generations, not years.
What will not change – whoever is in the White House, wherever Britain stands in relation to the EU – is the intermingling, porousness and interdependence of the modern world. No wall or act of secession can halt these forces in their tracks. Nor would it make any sense to do so: the vigorous exchange of goods and labour is the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known. See how all those angry Trump voters like it when their smartphones cost $1,000.
Consider again that unlovely image of the president-elect and Farage: their smugness, their schoolboy brio, their confidence that common sense has at last prevailed. They believe that in their different ways they incarnate the “change” that is needed. God help them both when the voters spot the con.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
If you want to laugh, or despair, go back and read the “automotive sector deal”, unveiled by the government in January as part of its shiny new industrial strategy. The contrast could not be greater between the document’s happy picture of industry and government working in harmony and today’s reality of falling investment and large employers pleading with ministers to take seriously their worries over the impact of Brexit on their supply chains.
“For decades, the UK’s automotive industry has powered our economy forward,” the government’s document declared cheerfully. “Today, automotive firms from around the world choose to set up shop here, citing our history of excellence, skilled workforce and world-leading supply chains.”
As for the future of those world-leading supply chains, one aim of the industrial strategy was to boost the value of UK components in UK-produced cars from 44% to 50% by 2022. Fair enough, fine ambition. But the document was also clear that smooth access to suppliers in the EU would continue to be critical. It talked about “a new relationship that is free from tariffs and without friction to trade – factors that are fundamental to the competitiveness of the UK automotive sector”.
In the circumstances, the idea that BMW and others should shut up and support the UK prime minister, as health secretary Jeremy Hunt seems to believe, is absurd. If the government itself says frictionless trade with the EU is vital, companies are entitled to ask how it’s meant to happen outside the customs union.
The industry’s “just in time” delivery networks are not some idle demonstration of logistical prowess; they are how large manufacturers operate across the world to reduce working capital and keep costs low. Yes, UK-based firms could adapt to slower custom checks at the channel tunnel by holding more stock, but the switch would plainly come at a cost. “Just in case”, as it were, is more expensive than “just in time”.
Those costs are hard to assess precisely and the UK might still score well on other factors, such as skills and science base. But ease of trade will always be near the top of the list for car producers when making investment decisions. It underpins other ways to be competitive.
Thus Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, was merely stating hard economic reality on Tuesday when he pointed out the long-term risks to UK jobs and said “there is no credible ‘plan B’ for frictionless customs arrangements” under the government’s current plan to leave the customs union. The same factors won’t apply to all parts of the economy, obviously, but Hawes’ analysis that “there is no Brexit dividend for our industry” should not be controversial.
The penny finally seems to have dropped in government that these large manufacturing companies – others being Airbus and Siemens – may know what they’re talking about when they warn of the risks and costs of distribution bottlenecks. Theresa May appeared to take a swipe at Hunt and foreign secretary Boris Johnson yesterday when she spoke about the need for an “evidence first before ideology” approach.
One wonders, though, how much damage has been done. It is hard to award any credibility to the government’s long-term industrial policy if leading ministers react like upset children when a few facts of industrial life are put to them.
Astonishing statistic of the day: of the £500m increase in spending in supermarkets in the last 12 weeks against a year ago, some £38m-worth came from extra sales of gin, says retail research firm Kantar.
The gin boom shouldn’t still be happening, according to the big spirits producers, who take the long view that consumer tastes tend to move in cycles; by now, vodka or whisky should be back in fashion.
Not that the big brands mind, of course. Local distilleries producing “craft” gins take the credit for the change in the market, but the large firms are delighted that the artisan crew have endorsed the notion that a spirit previously regarded as cheap ’n’ cheerful can be a “premium” product, to be sold at premium prices. It makes their own marketing efforts much easier and the “craft” volumes, in an overall context, are still tiny.
Their one regret is not making a knock-out bid about four years ago for Fever-Tree, the tonic firm that is the biggest winner from the gin boom. After a share price rise from 170p at the end of 2014 to £34 today, Fever-Tree is now worth a remarkable £3.8bn.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
There’s an element of “back to the future” about this current parliament. Two-party politics is back with a bang, after 25 years away, and with it has come a retro vibe to the economic debate too. There’s talk of re-nationalising key industries such as energy, water and railways; proposals for more public spending and an end to austerity; accusations of financial black holes, tax bombshells and soaring borrowing. You can practically hear the coffin lids creaking as Thatcher-era warriors from the political left and right rise from their graves to re-fight old battles.
But it isn’t quite like that. The issues may look similar, but they’re different in their modernity. Economic history isn’t repeating itself, although at the moment it rhymes.
Take housing. Eight years of quantitative easing-driven ultra-low interest rates and 30 years of not building enough homes have pushed house prices way out of reach of most people in their 20s and 30s. The new divide isn’t between white- or blue-collar workers, or working classes against middle or upper, but instead it’s between asset-owning older people and the insecure, struggling generation behind them. Student loans are steadily eroding the old middle-class stitch-up of access to higher education, but Jeremy Corbyn’s policies to reduce student debt still resonated on polling day. The quest for social justice is morphing into a search for generational fairness as we watch.
Government debts create huge generational questions too, because they pile up IOUs that have to be repaid by our children and grandchildren, rather than by us. If we borrow to pay for today’s spending, we’re expecting future generations to pay the bills for our lifestyle today. The traditional remedy of letting economic growth take care of the problem, by making the bills more affordable as the country gets richer, won’t work here. Most of the IOUs are embedded in our pay-as-you-go state pension and benefits scheme. They dwarf the government bonds that make up the rest of the debt. And it’s structural, so even if we grow our economy, the pension and benefits schemes’ liabilities won’t get more affordable. They will just grow with us.
And this is where today’s economic climate rhymes with our history most strongly. Because if most government borrowing looks increasingly unfair for future generations, there are only two other ways left to fund good, reliable public services: either more austerity, or higher taxes. But the answers of the 1980s are incompatible with the situation we find ourselves in today. There are limits on how far you can raise taxes in a world that’s gone global, because trade, companies, jobs and people are far more mobile than they used to be. If we push taxes up too far, a lot of them will simply move. And if we choose the wrong taxes to raise, they will feed through into higher prices in everyday essentials, which will hit the least well-off hardest.
Having said that, those Thatcher-era warriors shouldn’t start licking their lips, because continuing austerity poses problems too. Our public services are miles more efficient than they used to be, so a lot of the easy savings have already been made. The next rounds of finding new ways to do more with less are undoubtedly necessary, but they will be a grindingly slow, painstaking process rather than a sudden gush of cash. There’s no magic money tree here.
So we will need to look elsewhere, to find new answers. A UK sovereign wealth fund is a good option, where those whopping IOUs in the state pension and benefits systems are funded by a big pool of investments just like a company pension scheme. It wouldn’t only be generationally fair, but socially just too. We’d create an asset-owning society, where high and low earners alike have equal stakes and rights in the investment fund that underpins their pensions and benefits. And we’d have a cushion against the next big economic shock, so we could rebound faster and afford stronger and better public services.
Or we could improve our productivity. Getting even slightly more efficient, so our economy does more with less, would be worth billions. It would unlock extra cash without having to raise taxes and make austerity less painful. Prices would be lower, so hard-pressed families could afford a better standard of living. Our exports would be more competitive, so we could thrive in a post-Brexit global economy. There’d be no need to refight those 1980s battles after all.
The trouble is, at the moment we’re rubbish at productivity. We save less, invest less and build less economically vital, growth-promoting infrastructure (things such as roads, rail and ports) than other countries. It takes a German worker four days to produce what we Britons make in five, so we work longer hours for lower pay.
Brexit could help here, by letting us import things more cheaply once the EU’s high tariff barriers are gone. Building lots more houses, so it costs less for young people to rent or buy, will be essential. Ending rip-off tariffs on everyday utilities such as gas or electricity, by making them fight harder to keep their customers, will cut costs for companies and hard-pressed families alike. The Taylor Review should make low-paid work more secure and less exploitative. A sovereign wealth fund would provide the patient capital that Britain’s infrastructure projects need. And relentlessly modernising everybody’s skills, as new technologies make existing ones redundant two, three or more times in a working lifetime, will be essential.
So the stakes are pretty high, but it would be a mistake to revisit the conflicts of the 1980s. The strongest historical rhyme is with the postwar governments that created new institutions such as the NHS and the welfare state, helping to forge a new society and build a new nation.
Whether we voted for it or not, Brexit offers a similar chance for our generation to match the hopes and ambitions of our forefathers. This government will be the first post-Brexit administration, with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to recast the kind of society and economy we want Britain to be.
We can create a new, stronger, more socially just and generationally fair society; a better Britain with the financial strength to use its post-EU independence effectively, as an international force for good in the world. Attlee, Beveridge, and perhaps even Churchill himself, would be proud.
Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2020 04.48 GMT
How do you take your Brexit? Soft or hard? Quick or slow? It might all seem semantics but for the UK and Europe it is the £1.1tn question. That is the amount banks based in the UK are lending to the companies and governments of the EU27, keeping the continent afloat financially. The free trade in financial services that crosses the Channel each year, helping customers and boosting the economies in the UK and Europe, is worth more than £20bn.
Brexit means Brexit and we are all Brexiters now. But if we get it wrong, that £20bn trade in financial services is at risk and the public and political debate is taking us in the wrong direction. At the banking industry’s annual conference last week, the atmosphere was, as one of the panellists, Lord Mandelson, noted, “gloomy”. The government, and in particular the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the Brexit secretary, David Davis, are making the right noises. The golden rule of negotiations is start big and never ask for less than you want. But we are in danger of talking ourselves into defeat before negotiations have even begun.
There is a consensus that the EU’s integrated financial market is one of its great success stories. It makes it easier and cheaper for French farmers, German manufacturers and Italian fashion designers to secure funding. It helps EU citizens get better returns for their savings. And it also creates jobs, not least in the UK, where financial services as a whole employs more than a million people, two-thirds of them outside London.
But it is now at risk. It is underpinned legally by the “passporting” system enshrined in EU legislation, which allows banks based in the UK to sell services to customers in Europe, and banks based in Europe to sell services to customers in the UK, and access the global financial centre that is London. It also allows banks based in one EU country to set up branches in any other EU country without going through local regulators.
Banking is probably more affected by Brexit than any other sector of the economy, both in the degree of impact and the scale of the implications. It is the UK’s biggest export industry by far and is more internationally mobile than most. But it also gets its rules and legal rights to serve its customers cross-border from the EU. For banks, Brexit does not simply mean additional tariffs being imposed on trade – as is likely to be the case with other sectors. It is about whether banks have the legal right to provide services. As an industry, we have asked for some form of that passporting to continue once we leave, enabling customers on both sides of the Channel to continue getting the services. But in European capitals, and among British Eurosceptics, the rhetoric is hardening. The European council president, Donald Tusk, told Theresa May at her first EU summit last week that she was entering a “nest of doves”, but these are clearly doves that can growl. The French president, François Hollande, said a few days earlier that the UK has to “pay the price” for leaving the EU. Other European leaders have said we have to give up passporting if we don’t want freedom of movement of people (even though there is no rational link between the two policies). Other voices in Paris have gone further, insisting that it must be made as hard as possible for banks based in the UK to serve customers in Europe.
On this side of the Channel, some high-profile Brexiters have poured scorn on the idea that we need passporting at all and that “third-country equivalence” will do. But the EU’s “equivalence” regime is a poor shadow of passporting; it only covers a narrow range of services, can be withdrawn at virtually no notice and will probably mean the UK will have to accept rules it has no influence over. For most banks, having equivalence won’t prevent banks from relocating their operations. It is understandable that other European cities want to attract jobs from London. Delegations from Frankfurt, Paris, Dublin and Madrid are all coming to the UK to pitch to bankers. I am pro-competition and long may they try to make their labour market and fiscal policy more attractive to international investors.
That is not the problem. The problem comes – as seems increasingly likely, judging by the rhetoric – when national governments try to use the EU exit negotiations to build walls across the Channel to split Europe’s integrated financial market in two, in order to force jobs from London. From a European perspective, this would be cutting off its nose to spite its face. It might lead to a few jobs moving to Paris or Frankfurt but it will make it more expensive for companies in France and Germany to raise money for investment, slowing the wider economy.
Banker colleagues in other EU countries all agree that disrupting the free trade in financial services would be self-inflicted damage. The top regulators in the UK and EU also agree that we must retain the integrated financial market. If we left it all to the regulators, we would have a relatively quick and rational economic solution. But politics trumps economics and it will be the politicians who decide. They seem keen to enter what will in effect be anti-trade negotiations. Normally in trade talks you start with barriers and each side negotiates to reduce them in order to increase trade. Here, we start with virtually no barriers and the negotiations will be about which barriers to put up. This economic irrationality is highlighted by the fact that while the EU27 governments are trying to reduce trade barriers with the US and Canada, they want to put up trade barriers with their biggest trading partner, the UK.
The political process also makes it difficult for business. Trade talks between the UK and EU will take years to agree and more years to ratify. In big trade talks, nothing is agreed until it is all agreed, normally at three in the morning. In the meantime, we will have left the EU in 2019.
The real challenge for business was not the day after the referendum – it will be the day after we leave the EU. For banks, there could be a cliff edge, with passporting rights suddenly disappearing and nothing to replace them. Much of the £20bn a year cross-Channel trade in financial services will be thrown into, at best, legal doubt; at worst, it will just become illegal, with banks losing, overnight, regulatory approval to provide services. There is a real risk of disruption to Europe’s financial markets. That is why we have asked for transition arrangements, to ensure an orderly change-over to whenever the new trade deal comes in.
But businesses can’t wait to the last minute. It takes years to move operations. Banks might hope for the best but have to plan for the worst. Most international banks now have project teams working out which operations they need to move to ensure they can continue serving customers, the date by which this must happen and how best to do it. Their hands are quivering over the relocate button. Many smaller banks plan to start relocations before Christmas; bigger banks are expected to start in the first quarter of next year.
London will survive as a global financial centre. Finance is inventive and will find a way through. But putting up barriers to the trade in financial services across the Channel will make us all worse off, not just in the UK but in mainland Europe.
First published on Thu 1 Dec 2016 11.07 GMT
Britain could pay into the EU budget in exchange for access to the single market, David Davis has told MPs, because ministers are considering all options to get the best Brexit deal. The Brexit secretary said the government would not rule out making future payments indefinitely in order to secure favourable access to European markets, in remarks that were endorsed by the prime minister’s spokeswoman and the chancellor.
During questions in the House of Commons, the Labour MP Wayne David asked if the Brexit secretary would “consider making any contribution in any shape or form for access to the single market”.
Davis said the government would look at the options during the article 50 process over the next two years. “The major criterion here is that we get the best possible access for goods and services to the European market,” he said. “And if that is included in what he is talking about, then of course we would consider it.”
Such an approach would see Britain adopt a similar model to Norway, which pays €869m a year to trade in the single market, take part in EU research programmes and for criminal justice cooperation. Similar access could cost the UK €5bn a year, according to some MEPs.
Sterling leapt up 1% against the dollar to $1.26 after Davis’s remarks, its highest level in three weeks. Against the euro, the pound added 0.63%, rising to €1.18, aided by the eurozone currency’s struggles in the face of the Italian referendum on Sunday.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, said Davis was “absolutely right” and stressed that the UK would need to make concessions to secure the most favourable deal. Risking irritation from his party’s Eurosceptic wing, Hammond said the UK needed to give way to Brussels and other EU member states on some issues or face the clear risk that any deal would collapse. Hammond said that Davis meant that the UK had to go into the talks with “as many tools in our toolbox as possible”. He was speaking in Edinburgh before he met Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
“You can’t go into any negotiation expecting to get every single objective that you set out and concede nothing on the way,” he said. “It will have to be a deal that works for both sides. I think David Davis is absolutely right not to rule out the possibility that we might want to contribute in some way to some form of mechanism.”
The prime minister’s spokeswoman said Davis’s view on EU budget contributions was “consistent with what we have said to date, which is that it will be for the UK government to make the decision about how taxpayers’ money will be spent”.
Downing Street stressed that no decision had been made, but that options were being kept open. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We are at the stage of preparing for negotiations,” the spokeswoman said. “What we have said is that we will look at how we get the best possible deal. People are suggesting we should consider [paying contributions], and that was the response he [Davis] gave.”Iain Duncan Smith, the leave supporter and former cabinet minister, said he did not believe Davis was necessarily talking about paying for access to the single market.
“I don’t think he was answering the question that was posed to him, what he was talking about here is: how do you get a deal that allows British and Europeans to access each other’s markets without tariff barriers or artificial barriers for services?” he told the BBC’s World at One. “I don’t think there’s any deal where you can say, we’ll pay money in and you’ll allow us access, because you might as well have tariff barriers.”
German Christian Democrat MEP Reimer Böge, the former chair of the European parliament’s budgets committee, has said the UK could pay up to €5bn a year for the highest levels of access to the single market, equivalent to the status of Norway. “If you want something, you are obliged to pay for it. This is part of the deal,” Böge said. “If you take the Norway calculation for the UK, it will be €4bn to €5bn.”
The UK’s net contribution was £8.5bn a in 2015, so a Norway-style deal would amount to around half the current annual EU bill based on current exchange rates).
Theresa May has repeatedly stressed that she will seek a bespoke deal for Britain, rather than plucking an existing model “off the shelf”. EU diplomats are also sceptical that the UK would opt for maximum access to the single market, which would require accepting EU rules on free movement of people and the writ of the European court of justice.
EU politicians say it is up to the UK to spell out what this bespoke deal means. Jens Geier, a German Social Democrat MEP, who negotiated the 2016 EU budget, said recently it was impossible to come up with an estimate without knowing the government’s Brexit plan. “It is on the British government to make a proposal,” he said. Only then would the European commission be able to outline how much the British bespoke model would cost.
During departmental questions in parliament, Davis said he was keen not to rule out any option before the end of March, the government’s self-imposed deadline for triggering article 50. “There is one chance in this negotiation. It’s unlike almost anything else that comes in front of this house. Anything else, we can come back and repeal it, change it or amend it,” he said. “This is a single-shot negotiation.”
The shadow Brexit minister, Matthew Pennycook, also asked Davis whether the government was expecting to pay an estimated “divorce bill” of up to €60bn to the EU after the UK leaves. Davis described the figure as “an opening bid, that’s all it is, nothing more, the maximum price on departure”. He said: “I’m not going to start chipping away at that bid. We will start from scratch when we go in that door before the end of March, when the negotiation starts.”
Hammond said that Scotland had no chance of securing its own favourable deals or opt-outs on either immigration controls or enhanced access to the single market. “You only need to think about it for a few moments to realise a separate immigration deal for any part of the UK would be impracticable,” he said. There would be no other opt-outs for Scotland. “This is a UK issue and the will of the people of the UK was to leave and we’re clear that we can’t have a different deal or a different outcome for different parts of the UK.”
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said Davis’s department’s strategy was being revealed by “leaked memos, notes caught on camera and the foreign secretary to any one who will listen to him.” He said: “This is serious, because it is damaging the prospects of negotiations getting off to a good start. The secretary of state must realise this will go on for two years unless he releases the basic plan.”
Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2020 17.09 GMT
Managing Britain’s exit from the European Union is such a formidable and complex challenge that it could overwhelm politicians and civil servants for years, senior academics have warned.
Theresa May has announced she will trigger article 50 – the two-year process of negotiating a separation from the EU – by the end of March next year. The government will also publish a great repeal bill, which will transfer all EU-originated laws into British law, so that MPs can decide how much they want to discard.
A report from The UK in a Changing Europe, an independent group of academics led by Prof Anand Menon of King’s College London, warns that this will only be the start of the process of extricating Britain from the EU and establishing new relationships with other member states.
“Brexit has the potential to test the UK’s constitutional settlement, legal framework, political process and bureaucratic capacities to their limits – and possibly beyond,” Menon said.
The group of experts, commissioned by the Political Studies Association, found that identifying and transposing the legislation to be included in the great repeal bill – and then deciding what to keep and what to ditch – will be a daunting task for civil servants.
They also warn that while article 50, as set out in the Lisbon treaty, concerns the terms of a divorce with the rest of the EU – including what share of EU liabilities the UK should take on, for example – it is unclear whether the process can allow for parallel negotiations on Britain’s future status.
And they suggest the repatriation of decision-making in key policy areas including agriculture, the environment and higher education to Britain from Brussels could affect the balance of power between Westminster and the devolved parliaments – another major constitutional headache for politicians.
Pro-Brexit ministers, including the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and Brexit secretary, David Davis, have tended to play down the difficulties of extricating Britain from the rest of the EU.
But Menon said: “An irritating aspect of the current debate is the tendency of Brexiters to accuse those who warn of difficulties of ‘talking Britain down’. It’s a good line but a pathetic argument. Since when was rational debate a bad thing? Forewarned, surely, is forearmed, and this report will help identify potential stumbling blocks ahead.”
On the issue of who at Westminster is in charge of the Brexit process, the academics say it will inevitably be Theresa May.
The study comes as the government’s pledge to protect Japanese carmaker Nissan from the potentially unfavourable effects of Brexit leads to calls from other industries for their causes also to be prioritised.
Stephen Dorrell, the former health minister, warned against sacrificing UK life sciences, saying the wrong “hard Brexit” deal could affect Britain’s access to new drugs.
“Alongside the motor industry and financial services, the life science sector is an essential British interest which must be a priority for ministers in their Brexit negotiations,” he said.
Dorrell, who has co-authored a report with Luke Tryl published by Public Policy Projects, added: “Science and science-based industry is a global activity and we face a simple choice: we either participate in full in that global scientific community or we prejudice a key British national interest.”
Tryl said that “simple commercial reality” meant companies could prioritise the European market for launching products if there were restrictions affecting the UK.
The study comes as parliament once again discusses the issue of the UK’s membership of the customs union, in an adjournment debate tabled by Helen Goodman, the Labour MP and member of the treasury select committee.
She said: “Leaving the customs union would be disastrous for the UK and our manufacturing industry. Outside of the customs union, we may have to pay tariffs and would certainly have to comply with the rules of origin – a bureaucratic procedure to show where all the components in a product come from – when we export into the EU market. The tariffs vary – many are around 5%-10% – but the OECD estimates that the rules of origin can add 24% to costs.” She hit out at “hard Brexiteers” such as Liam Fox, the trade secretary, saying they were being wildly optimistic by relying on deals with third-party countries.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Monday 16 August 1819 was a beautiful summer’s day, when at least 60,000 people came in their Sunday best to St Peter’s Field in Manchester for the peaceful demonstration that turned so tragically into the bloody Peterloo massacre. On 16 August 2019, by contrast, there was a relentless downpour of the worst Mancunian variety. But the spirit of 200 years ago was not the least bit dampened by the torrential rain.
In our complex world of lies and fake news and sinister manipulation, democracy is under threat on so many levels. And the radicals and reformers of two centuries ago have much to teach us – the lessons of Peterloo go far beyond the issue of universal suffrage. As John Thacker Saxton, a real-life radical played by John-Paul Hurley in my film, says: “Though we can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
I was privileged to have been invited to take part in From the Crowd on the bicentenary, a lively community performance on the site of St Peter’s Field. It involved over 100 people from a wide range of backgrounds, including a number of descendants of victims of the massacre. The event was in fact not so much a conventional performance as a bold reflection on the history of protest, especially in the UK, and on the relevance of Peterloo to our contemporary world.
At 1.30pm, the precise time the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry began their violent assault on the crowd at Peterloo, 18 of us read out in turn the names of those who died of their wounds on that fateful day. After the last name had been read out, we were to observe a minute’s silence and then the bells of Manchester town hall were supposed to chime 18 times. But, owing to a technical hitch, no bells sounded. This meant that the minute’s silence went on for several minutes.
Nearly 4,000 people silently meditating in the pouring rain is a deeply moving experience. So many thoughts, feelings, ideas, memories, hopes, fears, all in those few precious minutes …
The Midland hotel, right in front of us, was built on the site of the house from which the misguided magistrates watched the meeting, before so stupidly instructing their forces to attack. Suddenly, I felt a rare sense of connection to those events on this very spot. Odd, in a way, as I’d wandered about there so many times recently in the course of researching my film about the massacre. And I’d already known the area well, both from growing up in Salford, and as an adult, mostly ignorant about Peterloo, which was hardly mentioned in school.
We were so close, too, to the spot where Henry “Orator” Hunt and the others stood on the hustings – two horse carts – by what is now the Radisson hotel, but was in my youth the Free Trade Hall concert venue. Like the nearby Central Library, where I saw my earliest plays in the tiny library theatre, and the town hall itself, Waterhouse’s gothic masterpiece. When we were kids, all these buildings were pitch black, which we thought was their natural colour. How surprising to see them revealed in their true beauty after the Clean Air Acts.
What if the folk at Peterloo, who were fighting for the vote, could time-travel to 2019? Would they not be appalled and disgusted by the fact that we have the vote, yet so many people don’t use it? Would they not be astonished at the deceit of Brexit? At how working-class people still starve two centuries after the iniquitous Corn Laws? That last year there were 1.6 million recipients of emergency food parcels in the UK, half of the contents going to children?
Nellie, the poor mother in my film played by Maxine Peake, referring to the Corn Laws, asks, “When has the government ever done anything to help us?” She would be astonished at the cost of living now that drives so many to despair, by the five-week wait for universal credit, by the likely rise in food bills of £190 per annum per person because of Brexit, by zero-hours contracts, and by a health minister who refuses to rule out deaths caused by lack of medicine if the UK leaves the EU with no deal.
Brexit is the epitome of democracy under threat – indeed, of democracy gone wrong. To end this awful impasse we must have another referendum, one that is not afflicted with the lies and spin of 2016 – the People’s Vote. The spirit of Peterloo must endure.
These thoughts and feelings, and many more, raced through my head and heart as I stood, wet and silent, with many kindred spirits.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Angela Merkel has warned the British government that the 21-month Brexit transition period will not be long enough if the terms of a future trade deal with the UK are not made clear and concrete in the next eight weeks.
In a speech to industrialists, the German chancellor gave her support to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who wants to avoid a vague political declaration on the terms of a future deal.
The move means that the UK parliament will be under no illusions as to the limitations of the future deal the British prime minister strikes before its meaningful vote, in a blow to those who have suggested that a “blind Brexit” could allow Theresa May to muddle through.
EU leaders fear if the parameters and limitations of the future deal with the UK are not made clear now, then negotiations after Brexit will be prolonged and messy.
Currently, an agreement on the framework of a deal will be decided by a qualified majority of member states while after Brexit day each capital would have a veto.
Macron and Merkel are also concerned that Eurosceptic movements may be able to exploit an ambiguous political declaration agreed ahead of elections to the European parliament in May, and be able to point to advantages on offer for those leaving the bloc.
It is understood that there was alarm expressed in EU capitals by a recent suggestion by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, that the UK could change its approach after 29 March 2019.
Merkel said the terms needed to be nailed down now “concretely” in the speech to German industrialists in Berlin.
She told business leaders the goal was “to formulate future relations with the UK as concretely as possible”. She said otherwise the transition period would “very quickly become too short” to conclude what was likely to be a “very intensive” set of negotiations.
“Playing for time, I believe, also doesn’t help the business community, because the business community needs clarity,” Merkel said. “We have six to eight weeks of very hard work ahead of us in which we have to take the political decisions. A lot depends on what Britain really wants.”
Merkel reiterated the rejection of the Chequers proposals, telling business leaders the UK “can’t belong to one part of EU common market but not to the other three”.
She said an agreement “might already be achievable in October” before a deal is signed off on at an EU summit scheduled for mid-November.
The chancellor’s intervention came as the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier privately informed MEPs that the talks were now “frozen”.
The leader of the Greens in the European parliament, Philippe Lamberts, who attended the meeting, said: “I asked him about a cliff edge Brexit, and I had the impression there is a very strong consensus [among EU leaders] that they would go for a cliff edge Brexit over damage to the single market”.
Meanwhile, the director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has said he would seek to minimise the damage of a no-deal Brexit, but said it would be a poor outcome for the UK, involving “pain”.
Roberto Azevêdo said at the same conference in Berlin that “clearly there will be an impact, and it’s not going to be a good one” but that the role of the WTO would be “to try to minimise the negative effects that this is going to have”.
He added: “If we can minimise the disruption, if we can minimise the pain ... that’s what we will try to do.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
The Brexit vote has created instability for the UK banking sector and the wider economy, according to one of the UK’s biggest high street lenders.
Spanish-owned Santander issued the warning in a half-yearly trading update a day after it cut the interest rates on its popular 123 current account by half to 1.5%.
“The UK referendum on EU membership on 23 June marked the end of a period of relative stability for the UK banking sector,” said Nathan Bostock, chief executive of Santander’s UK operations.
Santander also listed the risks to its business, including the possibility that interest rates are cut to below zero. The Bank of England cut rates to 0.25% this month, with its governor, Mark Carney, saying he is not a fan of negative rates.
Even so, banks are making contingency plans for the possibility of below-zero rates. Santander said: “We are also taking action to be prepared for the possibility of negative interest rates in the UK, including a review of our systems and models, and to ensure we manage any potential impact on our customers.”
Banks’ preparations for negative interest rates were highlighted by the Guardian last month when it emerged that NatWest, part of Royal Bank of Scotland, had written to business customers to warn that it might charge interest on deposits. RBS insisted it had no plans to do so.
Bostock had also given the same assurance when he announced last month that Santander’s operations in the UK had made £1.1bn profit in the first six months of 2016, up 16% on same period last year. He said at the time that the bank’s terms and conditions, in theory, allowed it to charge savers to hold deposits although it would need to inform larger corporate customers of any such change.
In Tuesday’s more extensive half-year report Santander said its profits could come under pressure from Threadneedle’s stimulus package intended to ward off any economic downturn after the Brexit vote.
The bank also said it was too early to know whether it needed to increase its provision for payment protection insurance in light of the City regulator’s decision to delay the introduction of a cut-off point for claims, also announced since the publication of its results on 27 July.
Lady Shriti Vadera, chair of Santander’s UK operations and a former Labour minister, said: “The UK economy has entered a period of significant uncertainty. The UK banking sector is facing some headwinds as the economy deals with external pressures in the short and medium term.
“In addition, against the backdrop of large-scale regulatory change already underway, the sector has to navigate the loss of regulatory uncertainty as the UK negotiates new trade relationships with the European Union.”
Santander said on Monday it planned to halve the interest rate on its 123 current account from 1 November. The account has previously offered – at 3% – one of the most competitive rates on the high street.
Santander said this decision was made “in response to the lower for longer bank rate environment, as evidenced by the Bank of England’s recent monetary policy actions and the continuing challenges in the market”.
First published on Wed 15 Mar 2017 17.47 GMT
Theresa May’s nemesis is not Jeremy Corbyn, the ghost leader of the opposition, but Nicola Sturgeon. Witness the vitriol poured on Sturgeon’s head for wanting another referendum on independence for Scotland. She has been called a traitor and a wrecker. We have been told that it can’t possibly have been her idea, it must have been a man’s (Alex Salmond). We have been told that there is no appetite for this in Scotland. May, who sees charm as a form of weakness, used her favoured register – condescension – to inform Sturgeon that “politics is not a game”.
There was a sharp intake of breath at this point. For, of course, Brexit has shown that so much of politics is a game of bending rules simply to stay in power: from David Cameron’s calling of the referendum to May’s desiccated conversion to the cause. The wrecking of the union may be but a byproduct of their recklessness.
Some say they find it unbelievable that the Tories could preside over this mess. I don’t, because much of what was to signal Brexit was set in play by the first Scottish referendum.
Scotland did not vote for independence, but it embodied an idea of what independence may be about, what an engaged populace may look like, what a civic identity could be. I take it for granted that self-determination is a progressive value, so have always supported it. At the time, I wished that we in England could have a similar conversation about who we are, how we distribute our wealth, our position as a small country in the world, our voting system.
No one disputes the heartache and division that erupted during the Scottish referendum process. But no one disputes either the level of political engagement. Westminster did nothing until two weeks before the vote, rushing up in a colonial spasm to get Scotland to stay in a United Kingdom that means absolute domination by England. And by London in particular. This was taken for granted, and still is, by the English polity. But while Scotland was asking itself if it could function on its own as a mature democracy, England was asking itself similar questions seemingly under the radar, seemingly inchoate.
It has been hard to talk about Englishness except through the prism of Scottish independence or through extreme rightwing, racist groups such as the EDL. Englishness then becomes entirely negative and not worth owning. But it doesn’t go away. The result is that we wake up on the morning of the Brexit vote with half the population saying they don’t recognise the country they live in. I hear this said all the time. There is no question that the Brexit vote is an expression of an English nationalism that many have regarded as a kind of embarrassment, as an identity in decline. This identity is English, not British, because it cares not what happens to Scotland – indeed, there is open hostility to Scotland now. It also appears to have no knowledge or care of Wales or, especially, Northern Ireland. The news that there will be a border there to be policed is a trifle to many. This England may be small, but it sees itself as exceptional, as both neglected and swashbuckling.
These feelings have been swilling around for years and were mopped up by Ukip and others on the right. Most of the left sees them as entirely retrograde; nationalism brings up questions about ethnicity and is best avoided. Isn’t it better to have bigger identities? British, European, global? To talk of England in all its complexity has been to veer into the territory of racists. To not talk of it has meant we have ended up where we are now, in the grip of a delusion of English exceptionalism, a turbo-charged nationalism loose from any moorings.
There is almost no purchase on this from progressives beyond telling Brexiters that their feelings are the wrong feelings. Parts of the left have tried over the years to talk of a sense of Englishness, or of belonging, or of a civic identity, or of what a post-imperial country may be, or how Englishness has changed. The talk has been sneered at because patriotism is déclassé, and to enter this territory is “rightwing”. Thus the right has come to absolutely own it.
It is as though we can only see ourselves through others. Many remainers reluctantly admit they can, because of Brexit, now see the case for Scottish independence. In the end, it is for the Scots to decide. Screaming that they are traitors is ridiculous.
In the despair over Brexit, there is a chance to ask what this nation is and what it can be. As the English were prepared to vote in a way that would disrupt the union, there can be no surprise that the union is at risk. This was a vote for English independence at the price of English dominance. Repressing feelings does not make them go away. England was not asked about independence but, in its own irrational way, that is what it was voting for. Why would we begrudge anyone else to do the same?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
Brexit negotiations have got off to a bad start: that much at least is clear. The leaking of details about May and Juncker’s dinner conversation was unhelpful. Domestic elections in the UK, France and Germany leave negotiations trapped in a damaging cycle of tail feather-shaking. But it will soon be time to move beyond the absurdities and negotiate on what really matters.
Contrary to the claims of the commission president, English will remain an important language of Europe. And despite accusations by the UK prime minister, the EU is not maliciously meddling in the general election. Rhetorical attacks might seem harmless, but goodwill is a precious resource in these negotiations.
At least the ensuing war of words and public emotion shows that both sides realise just how much is at stake. The truth is that the upcoming negotiations will be incredibly complicated, for both technical and political reasons.
For example, how can we deal with the land border in Ireland? The new arrangements will have major implications for business and trade but also for the hundreds of thousands of people in the north with a passport from the republic. Nearly 20,000 workers commute across the border. These are not technical issues but questions with far-reaching political consequences, including for the peace process.
And Northern Ireland is only one of many such issues, where technical complexity meets political tension. Perhaps most important is the need to reach a deal that defines the rights of expats on both sides. But which rights should these migrants keep? A British citizen living in Spain currently has the right to vote in local elections. Should this be preserved? What about the French student who pays domestic rates at a London university? And how do we process the pension rights accrued by a Polish worker who spends six years in the UK but then leaves? The EU has mechanisms for these situations, and lives were planned around the existing rules.
Whatever the agreement on citizens’ rights, they must be enforceable and protected. So who will watch over them, and what will be the relevant jurisdiction? Theresa May talks of escaping oversight by the European court of justice (ECJ), while the EU wants the ECJ to adjudicate. All of these questions are technically fraught and politically charged, but both sides have repeatedly insisted that citizens’ rights are a priority. So now they must deliver. The UK and European public rightly expect politicians to sort out the mess and minimise the damage to people’s lives.
A second issue is future trade relationships. On a technical level, this should actually be easy to agree. We are not talking about a trade deal between two vastly different economies: on the contrary, the Great Repeal Act will translate the current body of EU law into British law. Thus, on the day of Brexit, standards and regulations will essentially be identical. The questions here are whether either side imposes tariffs, and how to deal with future regulatory divergence. These are standard topics, often negotiated in trade agreements, and they are less complex than the fine detail of migrant citizens’ lives.
With political will, a sensible trade agreement is in reach. A deal that primarily covers goods, rather than investment and services, could easily be passed on the EU side. More elaborate agreements would require unanimity, and the recent near-collapse of the EU-Canada Ceta agreement shows that this can be tricky to achieve. But still, it is in both sides’ interest to avoid a no-deal scenario and a fallback to WTO rules.
A final big issue is the infamous “Brexit bill”. Although economically insignificant, politically this might be the most toxic issue. It is important to understand that even a sum of €60bn would not be at all threatening to the UK’s economic fortunes – it is around 3% of UK GDP, and it would be spread over a number of years. But for politicians the bill is extremely explosive, mostly because of the emotional headlines it will trigger on both sides.
After Brexit, economic and political links between the EU and the UK will be weaker. But the UK will still be the EU’s closest neighbour and an important ally. It is time to discuss in earnest how to soften the damage of Brexit for citizens and business on both sides. And it is time to explore how to structure future cooperation in fighting terrorism. Brexit will not be a success, but aiming for failure serves no one. Goodwill and a sense of perspective are the way to protect the EU and UK alike.
Guntram Wolff is director at the Bruegel thinktank in Brussels and a former adviser to the French prime minister
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
The costs and benefits of the UK’s membership of the single market were widely debated before the referendum. However, the customs union was hardly mentioned. Yet it is the customs union that permits goods to circulate freely within the EU (and beyond, to a few other countries including, for the most part, Turkey) and which means the EU negotiates trade agreements with non-EU countries as a single entity.
So does Brexit mean leaving the customs union? It seems obvious that it would – what’s the point of leaving the EU if we leave the EU in charge of UK trade policy? On the other hand, the Treasury is now taking a good hard look at the costs and logistical implications of having to reinstate at least some border checks for goods flowing between Dover and Calais, or Felixstowe and the continent (not to mention the thorny issue of the Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border).
There are no simple answers here – while there are undoubtedly short-term costs to leaving, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that if the UK is to make a success of Brexit over the longer term we need the flexibility to formulate our own, independent trade policy. To make an objective assessment of the costs and benefits, you might even want to ask some experts …
What you definitely don’t want to do is to listen to anyone who claims that leaving the customs union has no costs, only benefits. But that’s precisely what Change Britain did when it claimed on Tuesday that leaving the customs union – and concluding new free trade deals with countries ranging from India to Korea – could “create 400,000 new jobs”, because of the projected increase in UK exports.
Let’s leave aside the fact that India has made it abundantly clear that it’s not interested in a trade deal with the UK as long as we continue to go out of our way to make skilled workers and students from India unwelcome. Let’s even brush over the fact that the EU already has a free trade deal with Korea. Since this has been broadly in force since 2011 – and would not necessarily continue post-Brexit, although it may well do so – this is a potential cost of leaving the customs union, not a benefit. Even more fundamental is the obvious point that the impact of free trade deals – if they are successful – is to increase both exports and imports.
Claiming that free trade deals would create British jobs because our exports would go up, but ignoring the fact that our imports would also increase, is either deeply ignorant or deliberately misleading. In fact, almost any economist – regardless of their views of the economics of Brexit – would tell you that over time the impact of trade deals on overall employment in the UK is likely to be negligible or zero. As with its report last week, Change Britain seems to be doing its best to crowd out serious debate on the costs and benefits of leaving the customs union.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the Financial Times’ annual survey found that the vast majority of economists remain of the view that Brexit will be a drag on UK growth over the medium to long term. Of course, economists, like others, should not just be asked what they think will happen next, but be held to account for what they predicted in the past. Last year I said that Brexit would have relatively little impact on the economy in the short term (that is, in 2016) but that it would be significant medium-term costs; we will see how that turns out.
Less definitively, I also said that the UK could survive and indeed prosper outside of the EU, but there are obvious and serious risks. The current framing of the Brexit debate, across the political spectrum – that we are somehow “trading off” the economic benefits of the single market against the downsides of free movement – illustrates those risks. Restricting trade, capital flows and immigration – reducing the openness of the UK economy – all have negative economic impacts.
It is these big choices about the UK’s economic future – not fictional numbers made up for a cheap headline or to support the political agenda of one faction or another – that we should be focusing on as we approach the start of the Brexit process.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
Of course there must be a Brexit transition deal. Brexit without transition is skydiving without insurance. Leavers and remainers must agree on that. The Brexit talks are clearly not going well, even on the simplest of issues. The idea that in 18 months every one of a hundred topics will be done and dusted is stupid. No transition is flat-Earthism.
But that is easier said than done. At present the two areas in most urgent need of reassurance – tariffs and people movement – are already shifting ministerial minds. Yesterday clear signals were given that a deal of two to four years of open borders was likely after 2019, if for no other reason than that anything else would spell disaster for the catering, health, farming and construction sectors. In addition, business leaders have left Downing Street in no doubt that to leave them facing a “cliff edge” of trade barriers on day one would be insane.
The trade minister, Liam Fox, was right to point out that transition is not too hard. It simply means that nothing changes. Borders remain open. People can flow in and out. Britain is already part of a zero-tariff zone with the EU, and has regulatory equivalence, the twin bases of any trading relationship. If they need formalising, that can be had “off the shelf”, through the mechanism of the European Economic Area (the Norway option) or the European Free Trade Area (the Switzerland option). Where there is a will, there is a way.
Two problems remain. One is that transition is not a certainty. Every indication that talks are not going well or that continental countries are lining up to steal British business is one more blow to economic confidence. Ministers can posture and dither and score points in the short term. Business must make decisions. Workers must know whether to return home. Just now, only a fool would gamble on David Davis “beating” Michel Barnier in Brussels.
A second and more serious problem is political. One person’s Brexit transition is another’s back-door remain. Every concession by Davis, every acceptance that Brexit is more complicated than at first thought, is a red rag to the leave bulls. At some point, Theresa May must start cashing in her Brexit chips. She must confront her backbencher Brexiters and tell them to get real.
Britain is going to leave the EU, as commanded by the electorate. But leave has a thousand meanings. Just now there are two options: the medium-term security of transition or instant chaos. Transition is uncertain, but it is better than chaos.
First published on Thu 13 Sep 2018 12.00 BST
In June 2016, Britain voted to leave the EU by 52% to 48%, but Northern Ireland voted by 56% to remain. The frontier between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which runs for 310 miles, is the only border between the UK and the EU. During the Northern Ireland conflict of the latter 20th century, this border was controlled by police and soldiers.
Student, Londonderry
Catriona attends nearby St Mary’s college in Derry. Her journey to and from school threads through the border.
She says: “Ireland’s economy cannot afford to make the border anything more than it already is today – an invisible line that separates the country. At most, we will have checkpoints which will take a great step back into the past of Northern Ireland. My biggest fear is that it will damage my future education through travelling to university, affecting my pathway of study.”
Farmer and landowner, Florence Court
The popular boardwalk on the farmer’s land allows thousands of tourists to walk across the border every year as it meanders between County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland and County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland.
A member of the Border Communities Against Brexit group, Sheridan predicts the UK will lose much of its wealth and status after Brexit. He says: “There is no such thing as a soft border. Over time, it will become a hard border by layer upon layer of legislation. The only practical solution I can see is to have the border in the Irish Sea.”
Vice-chair of Newry Chamber of Commerce and Trade
Marmion, who has two young children, owns a human resources business with offices and employees in Newry in the north and Dundalk in the south. She recalls recently explaining to her eldest child, while they were riding their bikes, that she was unable to use the road they were cycling on when she was young because of concrete blockades placed there by the British army. She says she has no idea what the border will look like after Brexit. “That’s the scary part – nobody knows. My greatest hope is that it would be division-less and prosperous, not just for business and trade but for the navigation of everyday life.”
When asked what concerns her most, Marmion says: “That the border would look like it did when I was growing up: restrictive and fearsome. Absent of both the freedom of movement and unlocked opportunity that my children deserve – and that I have enjoyed since 1998.”
Undertaker, Enniskillen
McKeegan crosses the border several times a week as he attends to the recently deceased from both sides of the frontier. He says: “If the politicians were children you would give them a smack and tell them to get their heads together to sort it out. There’s no reason in the world that they can’t come to some common-sense agreement. In relation to my sensitive line of work, can you imagine waiting in a queue at the border with family sitting in cars behind you as you carry their loved ones home? It’s undignified. You just can’t close the border off with a brick wall and red tape.”
Cancer support worker, Donegal
Holmes is a member of Donegal Action for Cancer Care, which is based in the Republic of Ireland but has access to nearby health facilities in the north. Without access to the new radiotherapy unit in Derry, which the Irish government invested in, cancer patients in Donegal face a five-hour journey to Galway.
When asked what she thinks the border will look like post-Brexit, Holmes says: “There will be a serious division of people who have lived and worked closely together for many peaceful years. Long queues, angry people, loss of jobs, missed appointments, flights and a younger generation who can’t understand why. They will now bere introduced to a time when hate and bigotry were rife and the possible return of paramilitaries. My greatest fear after Brexit is the serious loss of access to cancer services for Donegal patients at Altnagelvin Area hospital in Derry. Without these patients, the North West Cancer Centre will not have the critical mass to sustain the services needed for cancer patients in Derry and the surrounding areas.”
Firework specialist, Newry
McKevitt recalls how, in his youth, IRA snipers would shoot at the customs post from the hills, pictured behind him. He was sent by his parents to the US to avoid getting caught up in the violence that engulfed the province. His fireworks, gardening and fuel business sits on the land the former customs post used to occupy.
He says he has many concerns about Brexit. “My greatest fear is of the government taking my land away with the return of the customs post. I’ve built up all of this and worked hard, what would I do then?”
Oyster farmer, Culmore
As a business owner whose oyster farm straddles both sides of the border, Lynch will be particularly affected after Brexit. He faces tariffs to ship his oysters outside of the UK to nearby Donegal, and indeed the rest of the Europe. He says: “I worry that we will return to the bad old days. I remember the border growing up as a child quite vividly, and I remember the two customs posts sat only a few yards apart from each other, and that you couldn’t cross the border after 10pm without special written permission from the guards.” To further complicate matters, the UK government claims jurisdiction over Lough Foyle to the high-tide mark, while the Irish government disputes this.
Burger van owner, Newry
Clifford, who lives in the Republic of Ireland, owns a fast food stand that trades along the border to lorry drivers transporting goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
He says: “I don’t know what’s going to happen after Brexit, no one does. My biggest fear is that I will lose my job, my livelihood, everything – and that, at the finish of it, the Troubles will come back.”
Fisherman, Kilkeel
Kilkeel is home to Northern Ireland’s largest fishing fleet. Cunningham is concerned that could soon change. He says: “My biggest fear is displacement of fishing effort. We traditionally fished in the bay of Dundalk, a few miles along the coast, but we’ll no longer be allowed in there. It’s a disaster for the inshore fishing fleet.
“There are 40 small boats in Kilkeel harbour that seek shelter through the winter from the prevailing south-west winds. When Brexit happens, where will they go? Small boats exposed 12 miles out to sea, that’s life or death stuff. That’s not bullshit, that’s reality.”
McQuillan says: “The portraits could have been shot digitally and much more simply with a wide-angle lens. However, the perspective would have become warped. Whereas a panoramic camera avoids curvature if positioned correctly, offers less distortion and is much truer to the eye with its even horizon and straight lines. Shooting film again for the first time in almost 20 years would also give the photographs a different look and feel to modern digital cameras, with the colours saturated and borrowed from a different time. However, the film came at a premium, with the size of the panoramic negative only permitting four exposures per roll.
“The panoramic cameras, a Fuji GX617 and a Noblex u150, brought unique challenges. Focus could only be accurately accomplished with the aid of a tape measure. Flash could not be synced to the Noblex because of its rotating drum lens. To further complicate matters, fingers placed incorrectly when holding the camera would fall into frame if not careful. This was something that only became apparent when I was confronted with the negatives in the darkroom, which I built in a corner of the garage to iron out the camera’s idiosyncrasies and quirks. The only downside to shooting on panoramic format was having to go back to what once seemed a full-frame digital camera. I found that the view was much more restricted than had appeared before.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Brexit was the defining political issue in the UK in 2016, unseating a prime minister and unsettling MPs, but the shockwaves unleashed by voters’ decision to leave the European Union will reverberate over the next 12 months and beyond.
The soaring rhetoric of the Brexiters on sovereignty, control and freedom was the constant refrain of political debate in 2016, but it had already begun to be replaced by more prosaic practicalities as the year drew to a close,.
Things are due to get real, and fast. Theresa May has promised to give a speech early in the new year setting out the government’s approach to its Brexit negotiations. These will follow automatically the triggering of article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, something she intends to do before the end of March.
In January, the supreme court will rule on whether the prime minister can invoke article 50 without consulting parliament. If the 11 justices uphold the high court’s judgment, the government will have to push legislation through both houses of parliament in time to meet her self-imposed deadline for beginning the formal process of leaving the EU.
That is likely to create plenty of drama at Westminster. The next act, however, will take place far away from London, in Brussels and across the capitals of the EU member states, as leaders decide what kind of Brexit deal they are willing to offer against the backdrop of their own domestic battles.
Several forks in the road appear to be inevitable. The other 27 members of the single market seem determined to uphold the principle of the free movement of labour if Britain is to retain other benefits such as free movement of goods, capital and services.
European national elections may test this resolve. The Dutch election on 15 March is predicted to leave the anti-immigration Geert Wilders in charge of the largest party if not a coalition government. Marine Le Pen presents a similar longshot challenge in the first round of the French presidential election on 23 April and possibly in the 27 May run-off.
Little real negotiation on Brexit seems likely though before the results of German federal electionsin the autumn. It would take a political earthquake to shake the EU’s determination to extract a steep price for Britain leaving the club. British opposition to internal migrants is of a very different nature to the external flows raising concerns elsewhere in Europe.
The ideological forces unleashed by the referendum debate will continue to shape politics at home. By promising to crack down on immigration after leaving the EU and deliver a “red, white and blue Brexit”, May hopes to become the flag-bearer for leave voters who signalled their anger at a complacent establishment.
Ukip’s new leader, Paul Nuttall, will seek to harness the concerns of working class voters who fear Westminster will row back on the decision made last June. For Labour, the Brexit debate exposed and deepened the divide between the party’s traditional heartlands and its liberal, metropolitan wing.
Tensions in the parliamentary party may have become less overt since Jeremy Corbyn soundly defeated Owen Smith’s leadership challenge, but the electoral squeeze the party faces remains formidable.
The scale of the potential threat - whether from Ukip, May’s pro-Brexit Tories or the ardently pro-remain Liberal Democrats - is likely to become clearer early in 2017, with the Copeland by-election, the May mayoral races and local elections all providing key tests.
The British state will also have to begin flexing muscles it has long forgotten how to use, whether in drawing up an independent agricultural policy, negotiating our own trade deals or deciding how to manage migration from the rest of Europe.
For the time being, other pressing political issues and ambitious social reform plans will simply have to wait.
First published on Sat 13 Apr 2019 22.00 BST
Jeremy Corbyn has been warned by Labour’s leader in the European parliament and other grandees that the party will be deserted by millions of anti-Brexit voters if it fails to clearly back a second referendum in its manifesto for next month’s EU elections.
The message from Richard Corbett, who leads Labour’s 20 MEPs, comes amid growing fears at the top of the party that it could lose a generation of young, pro-EU voters if it does not guarantee another public vote.
That age group, as well as many other Remainers, MPs say, could turn instead to unambiguously anti-Brexit parties, including the fledgling independent group Change UK, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the SNP.
Corbett said: “If Labour does not re-confirm its support for a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal in its manifesto then it will haemorrhage votes to parties who do have a clear message. If on the other hand we do offer clarity and a confirmatory ballot we could do very well.”
While Labour says it is keeping the option of a second referendum on the table in talks with the government, some key figures close to Jeremy Corbyn have been reluctant to confirm that another public vote would be held on any deal that is agreed and approved by parliament. This has prompted speculation that there may be no commitment to one in Labour’s European election manifesto.
Former Labour foreign secretary Margaret Beckett also called for the manifesto to back a second public vote, saying: “It is very important that there is a clear message about where Labour stands and what Labour is offering. In my view that clear and simple message should be that there should be a confirmatory vote of the British people.
“There is a great opportunity for Labour if we are clear. But lack of clarity would cost us support not only in these elections but it will feed through into the next general election and that may not be far away.”
The issue of whether Labour commits to another referendum in its European manifesto, or fudges the issue to avoid alienating its Leave-supporting voters, is already renewing tensions at the top of the party. Those in the shadow cabinet who believe the manifesto should have a second referendum pledge at its heart fear they will be cut out of discussions and that the content and wording will be decided by Corbyn’s office and the national executive committee (NEC), which is dominated by Corbyn supporters. On Saturday night a senior party source said responsibility for what would be in the manifesto would be “an NEC decision in consultation with stakeholders”. Second referendum supporters in the shadow cabinet – Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Tom Watson – are likely to insist, however, that it is also fully involved.
“It would be beyond unacceptable if the shadow cabinet is not able to approve the document and it is all done by the NEC and leader’s office,” said another shadow cabinet member. Opponents of another referendum in the shadow cabinet, including party chairman Ian Lavery, warn that Labour will lose support among its Leave voters if it backs a second vote.
An Opinium poll for the Observer today finds that just 17% of people who say they are certain to vote in the European elections would choose the Tories, against 29% who would back Labour. Some 27% say they would back pro-Remain parties – the Liberal Democrats (10%), the SNP (6%), the Greens (6%), Change UK (4%) and Plaid Cymru (1%) – while 25% would back either Ukip (13%) or Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party (12%). Although it is now almost three years since the June 2016 referendum put the UK on course to leave the EU, European leaders last week insisted Britain would have to take part in European elections at the end of next month as a condition for extending membership until 31 October, unless a Brexit deal passed through parliament before 22 May.
Labour insiders say all but four of the party’s current MEPs, who all back another referendum, want to stand again and will in all probability be confirmed as candidates this week.
One senior party figure said: “The result of this is that even if our manifesto does not confirm a second referendum, that is what our candidates will be advocating on the doorsteps.”
At the last European elections in 2014 – in which Ukip won the most seats – responsibility for writing Labour’s European election manifesto was delegated to a sub-group of the national policy forum. But this time, given the hugely increased profile of the elections, there are demands for the process to widened.
Watson said Labour had to tread carefully and suggested the party follow the lead of Harold Wilson, who in 1975 allowed MPs and his cabinet to vote according to their consciences in the referendum confirming UK membership of the European Community.
He said: “A Labour government would be duty bound to deliver the result of a confirmatory referendum, whatever that may be. The public must trust us to honour that result so it makes sense for our party leadership to take a careful position and our MPs to be allowed to campaign with their consciences. Wilson’s example is a good one. He kept the government and country together.”
Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, who has warned that another referendum would damage trust in democracy, said the focus should be to reach a cross-party agreement. He said: “Most Labour colleagues are very encouraged by media reports – and by the prime minister’s recent comments about a customs union – that we may be within touching distance of an exit deal that protects jobs, environmental standards and workers’ rights.
“If this is indeed the case, then it’s vital that we do not allow the negotiations to be torpedoed by insisting on a public vote. It is just not realistic to hope the prime minister would ever whip her MPs to back a second referendum. The first task should be to get a ‘Labour-shaped’ deal agreed and embedded in the withdrawal agreement so it was not able to be ripped up by future Tory leader.
“There will then of course be ample opportunity for colleagues to press their case for a second referendum on the basis of this renegotiated deal by attaching an amendment to the legislation needed to implement Brexit.”
First published on Sun 24 Jul 2016 00.18 BST
Plans to allow the United Kingdom an exemption from EU rules on freedom of movement for up to seven years while retaining access to the single market are being considered in European capitals as part of a potential deal on Brexit.
Senior British and EU sources have confirmed that despite strong initial resistance from French president François Hollande in talks with prime minister Theresa May last week, the idea of an emergency brake on the free movement of people that would go far further than the one David Cameron negotiated before the Brexit referendum is being examined.
If such an agreement were struck, and a strict time limit imposed, diplomats believe it could go a long way towards addressing concerns of the British people over immigration from EU states, while allowing the UK full trade access to the European market.
While the plan will prove highly controversial in many member states, including France, Poland and other central and eastern European nations, the attraction is that it would limit the economic shock to the EU economy from Brexit by keeping the UK in the single market, and lessen the political damage to the European project that would result from complete divorce.
High-ranking UK officials said that while it was “very early days”, some form of extended emergency brake was “certainly one of the ideas now on the table”.
Any such agreement would, however, mean the UK would still have to pay a substantial contribution into the EU budget, although probably at a lower rate, and would lose its seat at the negotiating table when rules on the single market were determined, because it would not be a full member of the union.
During the referendum campaign, the leave camp, led by Boris Johnson, now the foreign secretary, and Michael Gove, suggested that the UK would save £350m a week in EU contributions as a result of leaving both the EU and the single market. They said the money could be spent on the National Health Service.
But on a visit to the United Nations in New York this weekend, Johnson appeared to change his tune, suggesting he now believed a deal could be struck that would allow the UK access to the single market with new limits on free movement rules for European workers.
“I’ve absolutely no doubt that that balance can be struck, and over the next few weeks we’ll be discussing that in the government and with our European friends and partners,” Johnson said.
“Everybody wishes to make fast progress in the economic interests both of Britain and of the European Union. I think there is very much a deal there to be done, and the faster we can get it done the better.”
EU diplomats and advisers believe the EU should try to keep the UK in the single market if possible, while not giving it such a good deal that other member states would be tempted to follow it out of the club.
Speaking in her capacity as deputy director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs, Nathalie Tocci, who is a special adviser to Federica Mogherini, the EU high representative for foreign and security policy, said she believed that the Italian government would back an emergency brake as a way to keep the UK in the single market.
She added that it would have to be time limited, in order not to violate EU treaties. “But I see no reason why it could not last, say, between seven and 10 years. This was how long temporary derogations lasted after the 2004 enlargement, which the UK chose not to benefit from,” she said.
The Dutch MEP Hans van Baalen, who is president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe party and a member of the same party as the Dutch prime minster, Mark Rutte, said the plan should be taken forward, but would require the UK to give firm assurances about the right of EU citizens currently living and working in Britain to remain in the country.
“If the rights of EU citizens now living the UK can be guaranteed permanently by the UK government, then I think we can look at some form of emergency brake on free movement of labour,” he said. “This could be invoked when the British labour market is under particular pressure. I would try to limit it to the UK at this stage.
“It is difficult to talk in too much detail as this will take a long time to negotiate. But given the difficulties we face, we must try to be flexible. It is vital that we have the UK in the single market as much as possible for the UK economy and for the economies of all EU member states.”
In his attempt to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s EU membership before the referendum, Cameron secured a limited emergency brake that would have enabled Britain to restrict and phase in EU migrants’ access to in-work benefits for the four years after they first arrived in this country.
The UK would be able to apply the “brake” for an initial seven years. But after the Brexit vote the EU declared the deal null and void.
Under current European Economic Area rules (which cover EU member states as well as non-EU members like Norway, which has full access to the single market) there is already an option to apply “safeguard measures” in the event of “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties of a sectorial or regional nature liable to persist”.
This would allow Norway to impose restrictions on free movement but it has never invoked the clause, because, diplomats say, it is wary of reprisals from EU member states.
First published on Fri 29 Jun 2018 11.10 BST
Theresa May has been told by European leaders that an attempt to protect the UK’s industrial base by gaining single market access for goods alone after Brexit is a nonstarter, as the Irish prime minister warned: “We are not going to let them destroy the European Union.”
After being given a “broad brush approach” presentation at a Brussels summit of May’s long-awaited paper, yet to be signed off by her warring British cabinet, the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, told her that unless the final document presented a departure from the UK government’s thinking over the last two years, it would be dead on arrival.
The British government is continuing to push the idea of keeping frictionless trade on goods, claiming that it would be a good deal for Europe, given the large trade surplus it enjoys.
May has promised to publish her vision for the future trading relationship after a cabinet meeting at Chequers on Friday.
Speaking at the end of a summit dominated by a row over migration, Donald Tusk, the European council president, said that “quick progress” in the Brexit negotiations was needed for there to be any hope of an agreement in October, at what is increasingly being billed as a make-or-break summit.
“This is the last call to lay the cards on the table,” Tusk said, of the EU’s call for a workable plan.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “There is a clear message in this respect – we can no longer wait.
“I cannot speculate as to the possibility of an agreement. I would like an agreement now but it is not in our hands ... We need a clear proposal in compliance with our values. The British prime minister is well aware of our treaties because they signed them and ratified them. Brexit can only happen in compliance with our values.
“We are doing what it takes to stick to the deadline but we had no British proposal. Depending how realistic and compatible they are with the rules we have set from the beginning, we will see how we can move forward.”
Belgium’s prime minister, Charles Michel, said he was “not very optimistic at this point”.
He added: “Feeling that dominates is the impression that the Brits continue to negotiate with the Brits and not with the EU. The red lines set by the UK are globally incompatible with the fundamental principles of the EU.”
May told Europe’s leaders, during a 15-minute presentation on Thursday night, that following the publication of her paper she would visit the EU’s capitals to explain her thinking.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she would welcome “a longer debate”.
“We are waiting for the white paper because time is of the essence now,” Merkel said.
Varadkar said the prime minister had, however, taken time in the margins of the summit to give a briefing on her plans.
He told reporters: “What she said to me was that she hoped it would form the basis of negotiations on the final status treaty.
“I did say, and she understood me, that there really isn’t any point in putting forward something that wouldn’t possibly form the basis of negotiations, and that would be anything that would engage in cherrypicking, would have one of the four freedoms but not all four. Trying to have some of the benefits but not the responsibility and costs. If it is still in that space it isn’t going to be the basis of a negotiation ... There would certainly be no point in producing papers similar to those produced last summer.”
Varadkar added: “If that principle were to be conceded there would be Eurosceptics and right-wing populist parties in every second country of Europe who would say cannot we have the same deal. While we really regret that the UK has decided to leave the European Union, we are not going to let them destroy the European Union.”
Earlier in the day, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, focused on what he described as the “huge and serious divergence” between the UK and the bloc on avoiding a border on the island of Ireland.
Barnier, who gave the EU leaders a presentation on the state of the talks, added: “Now we are waiting for the UK white paper and I hope it will contain workable and realistic proposals, but let me mention once again that the time is very short.”
According to Bloomberg, one unnamed prime minister was said to have told aides that he believed there was now a 50% chance of the Brexit talks failing, after listening to May on Thursday evening, up from 20%.
The EU27 subsequently signed off on a joint statement warning in grave terms about the need to prepare for a no-deal scenario.
Spain insisted on the insertion of a warning that the UK also had to come to an agreement on the future of Gibraltar after Brexit if the rock is to be covered by the terms of the transition period, in which the UK will stay in the single market and customs union until December 2020.
The leaders also repeated their offer to reconsider their own proposal of a limited free-trade agreement, in which customs and single market checks would act as a burden for both sides economies, if “the UK positions were to evolve”.
First published on Mon 20 Nov 2017 16.30 GMT
Vote Leave is under investigation by the Electoral Commission over whether it breached the £7m EU referendum spending limit, with allegations being made that it channelled funds for a social Brexit media campaign via £625,000 in donations to a student.
The watchdog said that the new information meant it had “reasonable grounds to suspect an offence may have been committed” and said it would examine if the Boris Johnson and Michael Gove-fronted campaign had filed its returns correctly.
Its unexpected intervention came as the commission was facing a legal challenge from remain grassroots campaigners, unhappy that it had dropped a previous investigation into the spending of Vote Leave and satellite Brexit campaigns that are accused of not being properly independent of it.
During the referendum campaign, fashion design student Darren Grimes, who was then 23 and ran a campaign called BeLeave, was given £625,000 by Vote Leave. The cash was paid directly to a data analytics firm specialising in social media called AggregateIQ that had also been heavily used by Vote Leave.
Electoral campaign records show Vote Leave spent around 40% of its entire £6.8m total spend on using the firm’s data analysis services. Vote Leave’s legal limit as the designated leave campaign was £7m.
As a registered independent leave campaigner, Grimes was permitted to spend up to £700,000 during the referendum campaign. It was also permissible for him to receive a donation from Vote Leave, as long as his BeLeave campaign was run entirely independently.
However, the Electoral Commission is investigating whether the two organisations were completely separate, with individual strategies and organisation. Grimes and Vote Leave deny there was any formal coordination on their campaigns.
Campaigners coordinated by barrister Jolyon Maugham QC, director of the Good Law Project, were due to submit pleadings in an attempt to win a judicial review of the commission’s decision to drop its first investigation into Vote Leave on Tuesday.
In documents submitted to the high court, seen by the Guardian, it is argued that BeLeave was not a separate organisation to Vote Leave, but in effect acted as the campaign’s youth wing.
The BeLeave logo can be seen on Vote Leave’s own website, where BeLeave is listed as an “outreach group”. The logos are remarkably similar, using similar font and the ballot box symbol, but blue rather than Vote Leave’s red.
Maugham said: “We are 18 months after the referendum vote. It is extraordinary that only now is the Electoral commission taking a serious look at whether the rules were complied with. And only in response to legal action.”
If the watchdog finds that the breaches have been committed, it may impose a fine of up to £20,000 for each individual offence. Vote Leave was run day-to-day by political strategist Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings, a former special adviser to Michael Gove. Grimes is now the deputy editor of the Brexit Central website, where Elliott is now editor-at-large.
AggregateIQ, a small Canadian firm, has been highly credited for its work in the campaign by senior members of Vote Leave. Communications director Paul Stephenson called it “instrumental in helping the Leave campaign win... they transformed Vote Leave’s digital offering and helped us to contact voters over one billion times online”.
A second group, called Veterans for Britain, is also under investigation by the commission. It received a donation worth £100,000 from Vote Leave in the run-up to the 2016 vote, which was also paid directly to AggregateIQ. The campaign group assembled to put forward defence and security arguments in support of Britain leaving the EU.
Among its advisory board were high-profile defence and security figures including Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan.
Bob Posner, the electoral commission’s director of political finance and regulation, said there were legitimate questions over the funding of campaigners which “risks causing harm to voters’ confidence in the referendum”.
“There is significant public interest in being satisfied that the facts are known about Vote Leave’s spending on the campaign, particularly as it was a lead campaigner with a greater spending limit than any other campaigners on the leave side.”
The commission told the Good Law Project that its fresh investigation was “commenced after internal consideration of the papers while responding to a judicial review initiated by the Good Law Project of the decision not to investigate following the original assessments”.
Evidence submitted by campaigners highlights the fact that all three groups – Vote Leave, Veterans for Britain and BeLeave – chose to spend their money with the same small data analytics firm, which has a minimal online presence.
A spokesman for Veterans for Britain previously told the Observer they had been contacted by AggregateIQ directly. “I didn’t find AggregateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us,” a spokesman said.
In emails released after a freedom of information request, Grimes told the commission that his spending “was done in isolation of Vote Leave Ltd … we didn’t discuss with Vote Leave how we would spend the money apart from telling them that it was for our digital campaign and that is why we asked for the money to be paid directly to the company were working with AggregateIQ”.
The evidence also cites a leaked letter from Conservative MP Steve Baker, who is now a DExEU minister. Before the referendum, he wrote: “It is open to the Vote Leave family to create separate legal entities, each of which could spend £700,000: Vote Leave will be able to spend as much money as is necessary to win the referendum.” The letter was leaked to the Times in February 2016.
In a blog after the campaign, Cummings wrote that Vote Leave had begun to raise far more money than it could legally spend in the last few weeks of the campaign. Cummings said Vote Leave had donated 5% of its fundraising to other campaigns, writing that this was “suddenly allowed in the last few weeks of the campaign by the Electoral Commission”.
In an endorsement on the firm’s website, Cummings said Vote Leave “owes a great deal of its success to the work of AggregateIQ... We couldn’t have done it without them”.
Electoral Commission guidance requires campaigners to declare if they are working together, to avoid registered campaigns circumventing the spending limits by setting up multiple other campaigns. The guidance states: “Working together means spending money as a result of a coordinated plan or arrangement between two or more campaigners.”
A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: “The decision to open an investigation is not based on the legal argument presented by the Good Law Project, which we continue to contest. The review which has led to this investigation being opened was consequent to the commission reviewing its previous assessment under its own normal procedures.”
Vote Leave, Darren Grimes and Veterans for Britain did not respond to requests for comment.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Not content with a list of daily specials – options on an overcast early spring morning include fried cheese-and-chorizo balls or scotch egg and chips – the cafe down the road from the headquarters of the Gibraltar government also dispenses advice.
“Keep calm and eat British fish and chips,” reads one sign by the door. “Keep calm and drink tinto de verano,” counsels another.
Comfort food and wine spritzers were very much in order when the sun rose over the Rock on 24 June 2016. The joy and relief that greeted the news that 96% of Gibraltar’s voters had cast their ballots in favour of sticking with the EU quickly curdled as referendum night wore on.
“It was apparent as the results came out that things weren’t going to go in the same direction everywhere else,” the deputy chief minister, Dr Joseph Garcia, recalls with a degree of understatement.
“We find ourselves in a position we don’t want to be in: we did not vote for this, we didn’t ask for this, but it’s there,” says Garcia. “We are leaving too and for us it’s now about negotiating the best possible deal for Gibraltar as we exit.”
The territory was not slow out of the traps: by September 2016 it had delivered an economic impact assessment report to the Department for Exiting the EU, and recently it reached a deal with the British government to guarantee access to the UK market for its financial services and online gaming sectors.
Given that 20% of UK motor insurance is estimated to be sold by Gibraltar companies and 60% of all online gaming bets are taken by firms on the Rock, the agreement has helped ease some of the key Brexit anxieties.
“We knew that was coming but obviously now that it’s crystallised, it’s very reassuring and enables us to tell our clients that this has happened and reassure them that it’s business as usual,” says Christian Hernandez, the president of the Gibraltar chamber of commerce.
Rather less certain is what will happen with the border. The frontier issue has long been almost as emblematic of Gibraltar as its population of Barbary macaques. The crossing was closed on Franco’s orders in 1969 and did not fully reopen until 1985, as Spain prepared to join the European Economic Community.
Hours after the referendum results came in, Spain’s then acting foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, suggested Madrid would take a hard line on exit negotiations by claiming the vote had advanced the prospect of a Spanish flag fluttering over the long-disputed territory.
The contention was emphatically dismissed by Gibraltar’s chief minister. “Gibraltar will never pay a sovereignty price for access to a market,” said Fabian Picardo. “Gibraltar will never be Spanish in whole, in part or at all.”
Margallo has gone, replaced by the more emollient career diplomat Alfonso Dastis, who has ruled out closing the border.
But still the worries linger. “Our fear is that once we lose the protection provided by European Union law at the border – we have a right to free movement as EU citizens – Spain might take advantage of the border and be very difficult,” says Garcia.
“We don’t know what degree of frontier fluidity there will be. We want a frictionless border or one that’s as frictionless as possible.”
The Gibraltar government insists that maintaining something like the current status quo would be best for people on both sides of the border. As Garcia points out, about 13,000 people – 8,000 of them Spaniards – cross into Gibraltar to work each day.
What’s more, all of the territory’s construction materials come from Spain. And these factors, alongside overall spending of more than €500m a year on Spanish goods and services, make Gibraltar the second largest employer in neighbouring Andalucía after the regional government.
Garcia and Picardo have been meeting Spanish politicians, trade unions and chambers of commerce to stress the importance of a smooth border and “a sensible, orderly and well-managed Brexit”.
But, should the current good faith sour and Spain use its veto to exclude Gibraltar from any Brexit deal between the EU and the UK, the government has not ruled out rescinding the rights and protections enjoyed by Spanish and other EU nationals living and working in the territory.
A difficult border and a crackdown on frontier workers would prove disastrous for the Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción, which grew up on the trade from Gibraltar.
Its unemployment rates are some of the worst in Europe, with 70% of young people in some neighbourhoods out of work.
“La Línea is a table with only three legs,” says Juan José Uceda, of the Association of Spanish Workers in Gibraltar. “Two of them are Gibraltar’s economy, with its business and jobs. If they break off, the table will fall.”
The border “has always been a target for the Spanish government’s anger over Gibraltar”, he adds. The worry in La Línea now is that the town could again be devastated as it was when Franco closed the border.
“It would send us back to 1969 and that’s what everyone’s scared of,” he says. “There’s no other work here for anyone, young or old.”
Others are more phlegmatic about the coming months and years. “If you closed the border, there’d be a riot,” says Alex Park, the owner of the Victoria Tavern on Main Street. “Obviously one man could bring Gibraltar to a standstill if they wanted to check every car. But it’s been in OK in recent months.”
Park acknowledges the uncertainty – “what will be will be” – and questions Madrid’s commitment to Andalucía: “It’s always been a thorn in their sides.”
But he is very clear on one particular point: “Sovereignty is not up for negotiation: British we are and British we will stay. That flag will never come down. We’re more British than the British and we’ll survive.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
One of Britain’s closest EU allies has likened the UK’s Brexit stance to someone causing a divorce and then seeking to keep the marital home and all the assets. The unflattering comparison was drawn by Ireland’s jobs minister, Mary Mitchell O’Connor, at a cabinet subcommittee meeting last week.
The meeting also heard that the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, had told Irish ministers that if the UK was debarred from access to the EU single market, countries with free trade agreements with the bloc such as South Korea could sue Brussels for depriving them of full access to the European market. It is likely to be seen as significant that Fox is making what appears to be a threat to other EU states over the UK’s access to the single market.
Legal experts said they doubted South Korea would be in a position to sue the EU in reality, because unfettered access to the EU is only an option for full members of the union, and the UK is choosing to leave rather than being forced out.
Steve Peers, a law professor at Essex University, tweeted:
 He suggested damage could be limited by the UK signing free trade agreement with non-EU states.
The Irish government’s thoughts on the UK’s Brexit stance and some of its leading proponents were contained in a memo leaked to the Irish Times. The memo, containing some fragmentary clues about the UK’s still undisclosed negotiating position, also highlights the Irish government’s concern about the wider course of the Brexit talks, including the possibility that countries such as France will force through a hard Brexit.
Given its shared border with the UK, Ireland is anxious to ensure minimal changes to the trading relationship between the UK and the EU, partly to prevent the re-emergence of a hard border controlling trade and population flows.
The memo then goes into wider aspects of the negotiations, and assumes the UK will want a future economic relationship with the EU similar to its present one. It says: “It will be important to identify those member states that, like Ireland, are likely to favour a future status for the UK as close as possible to the current arrangements, and those member states which might not be unduly concerned if a hard Brexit were to happen.
“In the former camp are probably the Nordic and Baltic countries, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Malta, Cyprus and probably Germany. In the latter camp are France, most of the remaining Mediterranean countries, Austria and probably Slovakia.
The memo also says that, in the short term, Ireland is “very much in the mainstream in arguing that the crisis of faith in the union needs to be addressed through pragmatic and concrete responses to practical problems, instead of great treaty-based leaps forward”. It adds that, even if Britain stayed in the EU, Dublin would have to assess its position in the union.
“Optimising Ireland’s overall positioning is a major and continuing challenge for us, as the EU centre of gravity has shifted eastwards following the 2004 and 2007 enlargements and as the outward-looking, competitive trade and investment-friendly policies which we have espoused have become more contentious within the EU, not least because of a global backlash in some member states about globalisation.
“In the medium to longer term, especially if the union overcomes its present crises, it is likely that further integration – in some cases maybe among smaller groups – will be on the agenda, including in the areas of migration, counter-terrorism, security and defence and EMU [European monetary union].
“It will be necessary for us to reflect not just on our approaches on individual policy areas but on how to address the totality of issues in a way acceptable to the Irish public and credible to partners.”
First published on Fri 1 Jun 2018 10.12 BST
Downing Street has dismissed a mooted idea for a post-Brexit customs deal where Northern Ireland would have EU and UK status and a “buffer zone” along its border with Ireland, saying it could not accept plans that treated the region differently from the rest of the UK.
The No 10 statement follows reports that David Davis, the Brexit secretary, had devised the idea as a possible workaround for a maximum facilitation customs scheme, avoiding a delay for the necessary technology to be ready.
According to the Sun, Davis had proposed Northern Ireland have a joint regime of UK and EU customs regulations, allowing it to trade freely with both, and a 10-mile wide “special economic zone” on the border with Ireland, thus avoiding checks there.
The Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) declined to comment directly on the report, but also did not reject it, saying work was underway to “refine” possible customs solutions.
However, sources rejected the idea Davis had personally championed the plan, while a No 10 spokesman said Theresa May could not accept such an approach: “The prime minister has been absolutely clear that we cannot and will not accept a customs border down the Irish sea, and that we will preserve the constitutional integrity of the UK’s common market.”
Work was still ongoing on a customs plan that would do just this, as well as allowing the UK to make trade deals, keeping trade as frictionless as possible and avoiding a hard Irish border, the spokesman added.
Asked about the plan earlier, a DExEU spokesman said: “We have set out two viable future customs arrangements with the EU and work is ongoing to refine these.”
May’s cabinet Brexit subcommittee is currently considering two customs models: “max fac”, which would seek to use technology to avoid border checks, and the PM’s preferred “customs partnership”, under which the UK would collect duties for the EU.
The cabinet has been deadlocked: Brexiters, such as Davis, object strongly to May’s option, but her allies say the technology needed for max fac will not be ready for some time.
With time running out before a key European council summit on 28 June, May split ministers in her Brexit subcommittee into two teams to seek solutions, with Davis heading the max fac group.
 The Democratic Unionist party has described Davis’s proposals as “at best contradictory”.
Sammy Wilson, MP for East Antrim, said the idea of Northern Ireland being under a joint EU and UK regime was a recipe for confusion with no clarity on who would hold legal primacy. It also defeated the purpose of Brexit which was to leave the customs union and single market, he said.
“These convoluted arrangements only arise because of the government’s failure to make it clear to the EU that regardless of [the EU’s] attempts to keep us in the customs union and the single market, we are leaving,” said Wilson.
Davis’s reported plan would also most likely have raised objections from the EU.
There was no immediate response from the DUP. However, a spokesman for the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said Ireland remained concerned that May and her ministers were still not focusing on the broader questions over the border issue, notably a “backstop” position in the event of no immediate solution.
“At this stage in the process, the UK must engage in a more detailed and realistic way on the draft text of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland including the backstop,” the spokesman said.
According to the Sun, Davis was ready to drop his support for technological solutions, after police said systems, such as number plate recognition cameras, could become a target for sectarian attacks.
An unnamed Whitehall source told the Sun: “Max fac 2 is tremendously complicated, but it’s at least something the cabinet can unite around.”
The Labour MP Chris Leslie, a supporter of the anti-Brexit Open Britain campaign, said: “If there was an award for coming up with unnecessarily complicated and convoluted solutions to self-inflicted problems, David Davis would win it every year.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Downing Street is refusing to consider proposals to have EU officials stationed at British ports serving Ireland, intended as part of a solution to the problem of the Irish border after Brexit.
The compromise plan, which is under consideration by Ireland and Brussels, is aimed at “de-dramatising” the Irish border issue, and reflects the fact that many goods enter Northern Ireland via Dublin, and not Belfast or the two other main ports in the region.
But No 10 is insistent that the proposals set out in the Chequers plan, with a common rulebook for goods and agrifood, and a “facilitated customs arrangement”, which would involve the UK levying EU tariffs, will ultimately remove the need for border checks altogether.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “We believe the solution that we set out in the white paper and at Chequers delivers on the issue of the Northern Ireland border. As the PM has said many times, she is a committed unionist; that’s a key fact in where we’ve ended up.”
Checks at ports could also breach an amendment to the government’s customs bill, currently making its way through the Lords, which would rule out a customs border in the Irish Sea.
Michel Barnier has asked the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, for data on freight movements. Belfast sources say there have been delays in producing the data because ferry companies do not register the final destination of freight and some containers could have multiple destinations.
Seamus Leheny, the head of the Freight Transport Association in Northern Ireland, said many members used the route between Dublin and Holyhead in Wales because it was the shortest crossing. Data from the Central Statistics Office in Ireland shows that 1.1m trucks and unaccompanied containers arrive in Dublin every year but the data does not include how many journeys each lorry makes a year.
While Theresa May opposes EU checks in British ports, recent reports suggest there is a loosening of opposition among Brexiters. The Brexit-supporting European Research Group, chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg, will reportedly support the proposal in a Brexit blueprint due to be published this week, believing it will break “the logjam” and show willingness to Brussels.
One source said: “The ERG don’t care enough about Northern Ireland. But they are now very worried about a ‘no deal’ and timerunning out. They don’t want Ireland scuppering everything.”
They argue that EU officials checking trucks in British ports is no different in principle to having French police in St Pancras station in London checking passports of Eurostar passengers, or British border force operations in Calais.
The proposal has not been tabled officially in Brussels but Barnier confirmed it was one of the options under consideration.
In a transcript of his conversation with the Brexit select committee in Brussels, he told MPs that plant and animal checks could be done “on board vessels, in ports outside Ireland”.
Under the proposal, ports such as Liverpool, Holyhead and Fishguard would have red and green lanes for freight. All trucks carrying food and animal produce would be required to have checks under EU law and, along with any trucks without correct paperwork or deemed to be potential smuggling suspects, would be directed into the red channel to be examined.
Trusted traders with non-agrifood loads assessed not to be a smuggling risk would pass through the green channel unchecked provided customs declarations forms, which can be completely electronically, were submitted in advance.
Animals and agrifood that go from Britain to Northern Ireland, and to Ireland, are already checked to protect against the spread of diseases such as BSE and TB and implementing this for other goods would just be an extension of the current system, said one source close to negotiations.
Leheny said having checks at British ports would protect the island of Ireland and could even boost Northern Ireland’s exports.
“If poultry and beef coming in from Britain to Northern Ireland passed through the red channel it could be enough to satisfy the EU,” said. “The meat exporters would also be happy because it would mean they could send their products to GB and across the border into Ireland and the EU.
“They would still have both markets. We have always said if we are going to do checks, we should do them when the wheels aren’t turning, when the trucks are in the port or at sea, that way there is no interruption in the flow of traffic.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Mass deportations of the estimated 2.9 million EU nationals living in the UK would be impractical and they should not be used as a “bargaining chip” in Brexit negotiations, the government is being warned.
In a strongly-worded report published on Monday, parliament’s influential joint committee on human rights (JCHR) highlights the political uncertainty over the residential status of both EU citizens in the UK and the 1.2 million Britons believed to be living elsewhere within the European Union.
“The government must not use human rights as a bargaining chip,” Harriet Harman MP, the former deputy Labour leader and chair of JCHR, said: “The UK government could not deport the large numbers of EU nationals currently in the UK.
“In the unlikely and unwelcome event that the government sought to deport EU nationals there could be the potential for significant, expensive and lengthy litigation leading to considerable legal uncertainty for a prolonged period of time. These cases would have the potential to clog up and overwhelm the court system.”
The government, Harman points out, will continue to have obligations under Article 8 of the European convention on human rights which guarantees the right to privacy, home and family life. “Any dilution of human rights standards would be extremely undesirable,” Harman added.
The JCHR, which is made up of both peers and MPs, stressed the urgency of resolving the question of residence rights. It is concerned about comments made by Liam Fox, the secretary of state for international trade, who described EU nationals in the UK as one of the “main cards” in Brexit negotiations.
Sir Oliver Heald, the justice minister responsible for human rights, told the committee last month that the prime minister was seeking an “early agreement” on the status of UK nationals in Europe and EU nationals in the UK. He confirmed the government’s view that to take a unilateral position on the issue would not be helpful.
The report recommends ministers safeguard the residence rights of UK nationals in other EU states at the outset of Brexit negotiations through a separate preliminary agreement.
UK citizens forced to return from overseas might have problems over entitlement to benefits, including job seeker’s allowance, universal credit and pensions because of the habitual residence test.
Even if not formally deported, their existence are likely to become more precarious. “UK citizens currently benefit from a right to healthcare under EU law,” the report says. “If such benefits were withdrawn, post-Brexit, it is possible that great numbers of UK nationals, many of them pensioners, would need to return to the UK.”
Individuals’ rights will depend on length of residence and other factors. EU nationals who have been in the UK for over five years may nonetheless not satisfy the criteria for permanent residence if they have not been exercising treaty rights – such as working – in the UK, the report suggests.
Family connections and residence rights of any children will be relevant; each case would have to be considered separately. “It would not be possible for the government to establish a rule that would allow the deportation of EU nationals merely on the grounds that they had only been resident for a fixed period of time,” the report says.
The committee says it was contacted by those anxious about residence rights. It was also asked to consider the impact on the hundreds of thousands of couples where one partner is British and the other from another EU country.
The committee criticises the justice secretary, Liz Truss, for declining to appear and answer questions. “We are firmly of the view that the secretary of state should have appeared,” the JCHR report states. “The fact that she chose not to is unacceptable.” Heald gave evidence instead.
It is regrettable, the report adds, that the government has not been able “to set out any clear vision as to how it expects Brexit will impact the UK’s human rights framework”.
A government spokesperson said: “The UK has a long-standing tradition of ensuring our rights and traditional liberties are protected domestically and of fulfilling our international human rights obligations. The decision to leave the European Union does not change that.
“The Prime Minister has been clear that she wants to protect the status of EU nationals already living here, and the only circumstances in which that wouldn’t be possible is if British citizens’ rights in European member states were not protected in return.”

Last modified on Mon 24 Feb 2020 14.11 GMT
Reneging on the special Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland will put trade deals with both the EU and the US at risk, experts have warned.
Concern has been raised after Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiating team has reportedly been ordered to come up with plans to “get around” the Northern Ireland protocol in the withdrawal agreement, which includes checks on goods and food going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Former Irish ambassador to the EU Bobby McDonagh said reneging on it would have serious consequences, including posing a risk to a future deal with Washington, where there is considerable support for Ireland.
“If UK gov were to renege on its legal obligations under Brexit withdrawal agreement to protect Good Friday agreement, it would have many consequences. One would be the end of any prospect of a UK-US trade deal,” he said in a tweet.
And Catherine Barnard, professor of EU law at Cambridge University, said there would be immediate consequences if the UK did not show good faith both legally and reputationally. “If we renege on the terms of the withdrawal agreement, that will trigger the dispute resolution arrangements in the withdrawal agreement.
“But it is not just the legal issue. It would also damage Britain’s reputation in other trade negotiations because it would raise the matter of whether Britain can be trusted.
“If, as some comments suggest, it were to renege on its legal obligations to carry our checks on goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland, it is hard to see what value the EU, or indeed any country, would see in a future trade deal with the UK. If the UK were to walk away from the binding provisions designed to preserve the balances of the Good Friday agreement, which it agreed to after lengthy negotiations, there would seem in particular to be no prospect of any UK/US trade deal being ratified by Congress,” McDonagh said.
A formal dispute could see elements of the Brexit deal, such as fisheries or tariff-free trade taken off the table in a tit-for-tat that could poison the next five months of critical talks on the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU.
The Northern Ireland protocol kicks in from 1 January 2021 whether there is a trade deal with the EU or not.
But Johnson’s chief EU negotiator, David Frost, and his team have been ordered to draw up plans to “get around” the protocol in the withdrawal agreement “so the prime minister can play hardball with Brussels over trade”, the Sunday Times reported. According to the story, Suella Braverman, the new attorney general, was appointed because Geoffrey Cox, her predecessor, was not willing to take such action.
Barnard said one of the issues is the mystery over the size, nature or makeup of the joint UK-EU committees that will thrash out and agree the precise list of controls and checks that will be needed in Northern Ireland from January next year.
“There may be an element of grandstanding here as nobody yet knows who is on the joint committee or the other committees, when they will be set up, or how often they meet.
“Maybe this is the foothills of the battle over what the joint committee and specialised committee will look like as they will have considerable powers,” said Barnard.
According to Whitehall sources, the top committee known as the “joint committee” is expected to be established by the end of March. It will decide on the overall implementation of the deal, with a handful of “specialised committees” and “working groups” set up beneath it to work on issues such as the Northern Ireland checks, EU citizens’ rights and Gibraltar.
Under the terms of the Brexit deal signed off in January, the UK and the EU have already agreed to a series of checks between Britain and Northern Ireland as part of the breakthrough agreement to avoid a hard border between NI and the Irish Republic. That list includes health and safety checks on food and live animals entering the region from Britain.
To guard against any sub-EU standard goods, including factory components and electronics goods such as mobile phones, seeping into the republic and therefore into the single market, there will also be regulatory checks.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
Brexit could have an impact on the City in the coming months as banks decide whether to implement contingency plans to ensure they retain access to the remaining 27 EU member states by moving business out of the UK.
Theresa May, the prime minister, intends to trigger article 50 – the formal process of exiting the EU – in March and some senior officials in the financial district argue that the rest of Europe could lose out if operations are shifted out of London.
The local authority for the financial district, the City of London Corporation, has urged May to arrange transition arrangements “as soon as possible” to allay concerns of businesses which were delaying investment decisions.
Andrew Gray, head of Brexit at the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which is advising several financial services institutions, said announcements could start in late February, when banks publish their preliminary results.
“A number of big banks are finalising plans for announcements they will make [this] year,” he said.
In the run-up to the 23 June referendum, banks warned about the consequences of a vote to leave the EU. US bank JP Morgan said it could move 4,000 of its 19,000 UK workforce. Its main offices are Canary Wharf, Bournemouth and Glasgow. Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, said it might need to shift about 1,000 staff to existing operations in Paris.
A report for the lobby group CityUK by PwC, calculated that there could be 100,000 fewer jobs by 2020.
Banks may not be able to delay moving of some of their operations to the remaining EU member states – even if the government were to announce a transition period beyond the two years after triggering article 50 – because of the time it takes to get authorisation from regulators and installing new management teams.
The director of policy and strategy at CityUK, said businesses did not want to move. “There’s a real stickiness. People are here for a reason. It’s a good place to do business,’ Gary Campkin said.
“The important thing is to make sure we focus on ensuring decisions aren’t made too early or too quickly and that’s why stability is crucial.”
The Corporation of London has published data showing that financial and professional services firms employ more than 2.2 million people across the UK, not just in the City.
Campkin said: “The important thing is there is clear recognition from the UK and the EU 27 that transition arrangements, bridging arrangements, or an interim period

are an important part of the process”.
This involves two arrangements: the first when article 50 is triggered to the point when the UK leaves the EU; the second covers the period from exit to allow businesses time to adapt to the new arrangements.
“This is a negotiation. It’s not just about what the UK wants. The EU 27 needs to think really carefully what’s at stake for them too … That means, whether EU corporates know it directly or not, that they will be getting benefit from access to London,” he said. New York or Singapore could benefit, he added.
Bank of England officials have warned there could be an impact on the wider EU. Sir Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor, has said economies across the EU could lose out and that operations may move to New York, rather than another financial centre in Europe.
Sam Woods, another deputy governor at the Bank, has said the regulator is being kept informed of contingency arrangements being drawn up by City firms.
Anthony Browne, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, said all EU member states had a mutual interest in ensuring the period between concluding the UK’s exit from the trade bloc and any new relationship did not result in disruption to businesses and customers.
“Including transitional arrangements in the UK’s withdrawal agreement under article 50 would avoid a cliff-edge moment and ensure an orderly transition post-Brexit,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
On Tuesday evening the Commons witnessed a scene worthy of a cliffhanger finale to a blockbuster television series that we all know will resume in the autumn. Just before 7pm, with all Theresa May’s enemies closing in for the kill after a long and engrossing buildup, Tory MPs produced a twist in the plot. They saved the prime minister’s skin at the last minute by voting not to keep the UK inside the EU customs union after Brexit. As the Commons chamber emptied and the credits metaphorically rolled, a government whip rose and announced that the summer recess was now not going to be brought forward after all.
With one mighty bound, it seemed, May was free. She lives to star in another series. But for how long? Yesterday the reprieved prime minister celebrated with one of her best sessions at prime minister’s questions in a while. But the Brexit faultline inside the Tory party was still plain to see. The recently resigned ministers David Davis and Steve Baker asked pointed questions that tee up fresh plot lines for September, while leave obsessive Andrea Jenkyns was bombarded with prime ministerial hate rays for asking sarcastically at what point Brexit had become remain.
Two hours later Boris Johnson delivered a personal statement to MPs that also contains clues about how the autumn may evolve. By his standards, it was a carefully crafted, even austere statement, and May will surely be relieved that it – sort of – expressed support for her general approach to Brexit and to her leadership. But its key message (summed up in Johnson’s view that “It is not too late to save Brexit”) is in fact a call to arms, tipped with the venom of implied betrayal, for leavers to make life hell for May when parliament returns. Though Johnson did not explicitly raise the question of a party leadership challenge, his statement was a declaration that he stands ready. When Johnson offers you loyalty, watch your back.
Few things in life are wholly without precedent. A Conservative government struggling to survive in the face of its own divisions over Europe is not one of them. When Ian Blackford yesterday accused May of being in office but not in power, the SNP MP was repeating the words used by Norman Lamont when he was sacked as John Major’s chancellor a quarter of a century ago. “We give the impression of being in office but not in power,” Lamont said then, before finishing his speech with words that seem spookily relevant again today: “Unless this approach is changed, the government will not survive, and will not deserve to survive.”
The Major government did survive, after a fashion, for another four years. Yet the newspapers that carried pictures yesterday showing May behind bars in their morning editions yesterday were not wrong. She remains a prisoner, trapped by her party’s divisions, unable to command the Commons and at odds with the EU over Brexit terms. May won a very important vote over the pro-EU rebels on Tuesday on the trade bill. But she made sizeable concessions to her right wing on Monday over the customs bill, exacerbating the already bitter mood in the party. The Tory remainer Anna Soubry has made clear that she is not in conciliatory mood: “The problem is, I don’t think that she’s in charge any more,” Soubry told Radio 4’s Today programme. “I’ve no doubt that Jacob Rees-Mogg is running our country.”
This too is another echo of a past Tory failure. You have to be in your 60s now to remember much about the February 1974 general election, in which Edward Heath’s Tory government fought an early election in the middle of a miners’ strike – using the slogan (though Heath himself did not actually use it) “Who governs?”. The public’s answer, when the votes were counted, was that Heath didn’t. His demand for a new mandate proved to be his downfall. May made a similar sort of mistake in 2017 but survived. Yet for May’s government to have got itself into a position in which its own backbenchers are asking who is in charge is not a good look.
“There’s a last-days-of-Rome feel to things,” a Tory backbencher said this week. That’s self-important English public school exaggeration. Most European countries, including Britain, have been fairly well governed by weak governments for decades – and still are. Even so, May’s grip on parliament over Brexit is clearly weakening as the moments of decision press in on her. Her Chequers deal and the subsequent white paper are an attempt to unite Tory MPs around a compromise they don’t all want, and the EU is unlikely to endorse. It’s a compromise based on the admission that Britain’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU takes precedence over unilateralist fantasies. The Rees-Moggs of the Tory party simply do not accept this.
A characteristically more insightful Tory view came this week from Justine Greening, the former education secretary, who said that “parliament is stuck in a stalemate”. It is stuck for several intertwined reasons: partly because Brexit is complex, partly because the Tories are divided, and partly because we have a hung parliament. Fundamentally, though, it is stuck because British democracy has not worked out how to reconcile the plebiscitary mandate of referendums with the representative parliamentary system dominated by political parties. As Greening herself observed , parliament is not set up to cope with democracy by referendum. The events of the past two years - and of the past two weeks in particular - have underlined the truth of that.
When Heath asked “Who governs?”, the question was anchored in class politics: was it the elected government and parliament in Westminster, or the extra-parliamentary power of the miners’ union. The answer was an elected government – formed by Harold Wilson’s Labour – that would make peace with the miners. When the “Who governs?” question is asked today, however, the choice is different. Is it the elected government and parliament at Westminster, or a referendum verdict? That’s a more difficult question to answer than the one that Heath posed.
Last week, amid the mayhem of the Chequers fallout over Brexit, the Trump visit and the climax of the World Cup, few will have noticed the publication of the report of the Independent Commission on Referendums by the Constitution Unit at University College London. Few launches can have been worse timed. But the 224-page study by a group of commissioners is one of the very few serious attempts to get to grips with the question that remains at the root of our present political discontents: whether referendums can coexist with representative democracy.
Until Britain can find the answer, the stalemate is likely to continue. Join us again in September to see if Britain’s politicians can come up with the answer that has eluded them for so long.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Stalemate, impasse, roadblock was the ineluctable result of a crude in/out referendum dangling a dozen Brexit rainbows. No one true Brexit was ever put to voters. The closest to a healing compromise now is the well-constructed Kyle-Wilson amendment: let parliament agree a Brexit, but only if voters confirm their support. Put it to the people, as pressed by the million marchers, not a “second referendum” but a new proposition on an actual Brexit seen in the cold light of day: is this what you meant?
This week a series of indicative votes may find a parliamentary majority for something else – customs union, Norway or indeed the prime minister’s miserable offering. Polls show that people have changed their mind quite radically: an 8-10 percentage point lead for remain. Perversely, Theresa May insists scores of MPs should make a U-turn – but refuses voters any right to a change of heart.
To impose any of the Brexits without consent would be the real democratic denial. Those passionately opposed just fear the result. Think ahead: how best to heal this Brexit-riven country? If people back whatever plan parliament puts to them in a fairly run vote, remainers would have to knuckle down and make the best of it. But if some bad Brexit – let alone a no deal – is imposed “by the elite” without public consent, imagine the democratic damage. Everlasting blame for any economic Brexit harm will rage on for a generation, and all who enabled it never be forgiven.
Bob Kerslake rightly predicts a judge-led enquiry into the gross incompetence of every Brexit act: a postmortem will be held. But we are not dead yet. Put this madness to the people and trust them. Only democratic confirmation that voters back a particular Brexit will stop this never-ending debate once and for all. Without a vote, we are doomed to relive it for ever.
 Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Ever since the referendum starting gun was fired around three years ago, the UK has been trapped in a vortex of endless discussions about whether we should or shouldn’t leave the EU. This has paralysed our politics, distracting us from many other issues facing our country. Few people have changed their minds on Brexit but feelings are even more deeply held.
At one extreme of the debate, no-dealers insist we should “believe” in Britain, demanding we just go WTO. On the other, campaigners for a so-called people’s vote seek to rerun a divisive referendum campaign to overturn the 2016 result. Neither side offers a solution and at least one side will lose out, potentially seeing their worst nightmare realised.
Now, three weeks away from a potential new cliff-edge on 12 April, the country still faces the same three broad choices: a no-deal Brexit; a negotiated Brexit; or no Brexit. One of those options must happen. Westminster can’t keep kicking the can down the road.
Theresa May should have sought a cross-party approach on Brexit from the start. Instead, her rhetoric was divisive when it ought to have been unifying. The “citizens of nowhere” speech, and her refusal to guarantee EU nationals’ rights, contributed to a sense of a national culture war.
MPs across parliament have different views about their ideal Brexit – a Norway option (or common market 2.0), a Canada-style trade deal, or a customs union. The details are important, but also secondary to the fact that most MPs want to deliver the referendum result. And Brussels will not allow the UK to negotiate our actual future relationship until after we have left.
The current Brexit deal leaves the options open. With the withdrawal agreement, any relationship is possible as long as it protects the Irish border. It isn’t just Theresa May’s Brexit deal that MPs are being asked to vote on – it’s the only deal to which the 27 other member states of the EU have agreed. MPs should support it as the sole way of guaranteeing an orderly exit from the EU. Then, after Brexit, they will need to work together to find a compromise in the national interest for a sustainable long-term relationship.
 Henry Newman is the director of Open Europe. He has worked in the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Justice
As I write this, 2,000 (3%) of my constituents have signed the parliament petition to revoke article 50 (and they probably all read the Guardian), whereas in Camden the number is currently 16,000. This illustrates the sharp division over Brexit in this country – something the prime minister’s rhetoric has done nothing to heal. It is her brinkmanship that has brought us into this completely self-inflicted crisis, and parliament, when it finally takes control of the process, must – and I believe can – resolve it.
After the referendum I had several public meetings with my constituents and they told me they liked the common market, the social chapter and shared environmental regulation; what they disliked was the political union that developed later. They want economic cooperation, but not a European army. This idea has been brought up to date in a pamphlet, Common Market 2.0, by my colleague Lucy Powell MP and Tory MP Robert Halfon. Like Labour’s policy of a customs union, it is a serious attempt to find the common ground between leavers and remainers – in a way that removes the need for the Irish backstop and provides for frictionless trade. This is why Jeremy Corbyn has been right to reach out across the House to seek a consensus.
The European council has given us three weeks to find an alternative plan and avoid a catastrophic no-deal crash. I entirely understand the democratic case for a public vote, indeed I expect to be voting for one this week. If that were to happen, as well as putting remain on the ballot, it is important that the leave option is one parliamentarians can responsibly put on it too – one that does not destroy our manufacturing heartlands or put at risk the Irish peace process. The problem is that I am far from confident that this will pass through parliament, any more than May’s third meaningful vote can.
So members of parliament now need to work across party lines on the most important aspect of Brexit, bringing certainty to the future relationship in a rewritten political declaration.
 Helen Goodman is Labour MP for Bishop Auckland
To restore faith and trust in our democracy, the two large parties that together won more than 82% of the vote in 2017 must keep their word and implement Brexit.
The Conservative manifesto said the party would take the UK out of the EU, single market and customs union, and stressed that no deal was better than a bad deal. It also promised to negotiate any withdrawal issues at the same time as a future partnership so all could be agreed and wrapped up within two years.
The Labour manifesto opened by saying it “would respect the referendum result”. It went on to expressly state that “freedom of movement will end when we leave”, effectively ruling out staying in the single market which comes with free movement. It also by implication ruled out customs membership by proposing a detailed UK trade policy that we could only follow outside of the customs union.
No one wants to leave with nothing agreed. Fortunately, a lot has been agreed outside the withdrawal agreement itself. Labour recommended we negotiate membership of the WTO government procurement agreement, which has now been accomplished. There are aviation services and haulage agreements ready for exit. The facilitation of trade requirements under WTO rules will come into effect, helping maintain the flow of goods across borders. Labour’s pledge to offer “an integrated trade and industrial strategy that boosts exports, investment and decent jobs in Britain” is still possible, but only if we leave.
I want the prime minister to keep her word that we will leave on 29 March. I agree with all those who say the withdrawal agreement is a bad agreement for the UK. I want her to go back to the EU this week and offer a comprehensive free-trade agreement along the lines of EU-Canada and EU-Japan, preferably with beefed-up provisions reflecting the absence of tariffs and some other barriers today between us.
Were the EU just to accept talks on this, as I think they would, there would then be no need to impose any new tariffs or barriers between us all the time we were in negotiation of a full trade agreement.
The thing to remember about World Trade Organization rules is they are designed to lower barriers and promote free trade, not to force tariffs up. The WTO sees the UK switching to be a full member with vote and voice on trade matters as very positive, given the way the UK would be a voice for freer trade and higher standards worldwide once out of the EU.
Some in Labour are worried about a “race to the bottom” when we leave the EU. Let me reassure readers, many of us who want to leave want more better-paid jobs, higher levels of training and higher productivity. We are not campaigning to cut standards of employment protection. The UK has a proud record under both main parties of raising standards for employment, the environment and much else. That should remain true once out of the EU.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
Continued membership of the European Union single market is the best way to protect British workers after Brexit, the TUC’s general secretary, Frances O’Grady, will say on Monday, increasing the pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to shift Labour’s policy.
Speaking at the TUC’s annual congress in Brighton, as MPs in Westminster prepare for a debate on the EU withdrawal bill, O’Grady will say: “We have set out our tests for the Brexit deal working people need. Staying in the single market and customs union would deliver it.”
Her speech comes after the TUC’s general council, which represents about 50 trade union organisations, officially stated that it was in favour of remaining in the single market after a meeting on Thursday.
On Sunday night the Brexit secretary, David Davis, urged MPs not to vote for “a chaotic exit from the European Union” ahead of a vote on the repeal bill on Monday. “The British people did not vote for confusion and neither should parliament,” he said.
Corbyn and the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, recently announced Labour would back continuing membership of the EU single market and customs union for a transitional period, which should last as long as it takes to strike a new trade deal.
Since that announcement, Corbyn’s spokesman has stressed the disadvantages of the single market – including state aid rules which Labour believes prevent governments from rescuing ailing businesses; and procurement rules preventing them favouring domestic firms.
But unions are a key support base for Corbyn’s leadership and have become increasingly vocal about the risks of plunging out of the single market.
Some of his party’s backbenchers, including former shadow health secretary Heidi Alexander and Progress chair Alison McGovern, have set up a “Labour campaign for the single market” in a bid to influence the party’s policy.
In her keynote speech in Brighton, O’Grady is expected to say: “The prime minister is sticking to the same old script that she can get whatever she wants, that we can all have all the same benefits of the single market without playing by the rules.
“This isn’t a grown-up negotiating position. It’s a letter to Santa. My challenge to all political parties is this: when it comes to Brexit, don’t box yourselves in. Don’t rule anything out. Keep all options on the table. And put jobs, rights and livelihoods first.”
She will be speaking as Theresa May gears up for her toughest parliamentary challenge since her majority was wiped out in June’s general election.
On Monday, a second day of debate in Westminster on the EU withdrawal bill is being held, followed by a series of tough late-night votes, expected after midnight, with Corbyn imposing a three-line whip on his MPs to reject legislation he regards as a power-grab.
The bill will allow the government to transpose EU law on to the UK statute book, but critics say it places too much power in the hands of ministers to make sweeping changes in the process.
Davis said in a statement released on Sunday night: “A vote against this bill is a vote for a chaotic exit from the European Union. The British people did not vote for confusion and neither should parliament.”
May is expecting to scrape through the votes on Monday, because senior Tories who have expressed concerns about the bill, including Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry, are expected to hold their fire until the committee stage later in the autumn, when Davis has signalled he will be willing to listen to amendments.
The prime minister will face a series of further challenges in parliament later in the week over the Conservatives’ bid to pack crucial Commons committeesand a Labour motion aimed at lifting the pay cap for public sector workers, an issue that has become increasingly controversial.
The EU withdrawal bill is one of seven pieces of legislation the government has said it needs to pass to facilitate Brexit by the end of this two-year session of parliament.
On Sunday, Tony Blair urged MPs to speak out against Brexit if they had doubts about it. “Brexit is a distraction, not a solution, to the problems this country faces,” said the former prime minister. “If members of parliament really believe that, then their obligation is to set out solutions that deal with the actual communities and problems people have, and not do Brexit which is actually going to distract us from those solutions.”
In the first of a series of interventions he plans this autumn as Brexit talks intensify, Blair’s Institute for Global Change published a paper setting out a series of ways in which the UK could restrict immigration within existing EU free movement rules.
Speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, Blair said: “If, for example, the anxiety is downward pressure on wages as a result of an influx of EU migrants coming and doing work, say in the construction industry, we have it within our power to deal with that through domestic legislation.”
He suggested the mood within the EU on the meaning of free movement was changing, with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, backing a directive that would crack down on using migrants to undercut the wages of domestic workers.
“If we want to deal with those questions, we can deal with them without the sledgehammer that through Brexit destroys the EU migration that we’ll actually need,” he said.
Last modified on Thu 15 Oct 2020 14.21 BST
International development aid is the latest casualty in the Brexit war of words. Rightwing zealots are now arguing not just for our £14bn aid budget to be redirected to spending at home but also for the abolition of the Department for International Development and the redefining of aid “as we see fit”, with what’s left no longer there primarily to help the world’s poor but to project their own view of British nationalism on to the world stage.
As if comparing overseas aid to the work of a modern Mrs Jellyby, whose eyes, according to Charles Dickens in Bleak House, were fixed on “nothing nearer than Africa” while she neglected her own children at home, the right now caricatures aid not only as inefficient, wasteful and a way of the poor in rich countries subsidising the rich in poor countries, but also as money diverted to dubious causes abroad from good causes at home – the insinuation being that sending British money abroad to people who are not British is in some way unpatriotic.
So when these neoliberal ideologues tell us “charity begins at home” – an aphorism which originally meant charity is first learned at home – what they mean is that charity begins and ends at home, and that we need feel no obligations to the rest of the world. So don’t believe for a moment the Brexiteer contention that “we are leaving Europe to join the world”. Their descent into an introverted, selfish each-nation-for-itself nationalism has gone so far that many of the same people who want to secede from Europe want to secede from long-standing international institutions such as Unesco too.
It saddens me that Theresa May has now offered us the global version of Margaret Thatcher’s view that there is no such thing as society, only individuals; namely that there is no such thing as global citizenship, only individual states. The insularity and bleakness of this view of human nature would astonish the right’s intellectual leaders, from Adam Smith to Winston Churchill, whom they cite as their inspiration. Smith did indeed ask why it was that what he called “the man of humanity” would be unable to sleep if he suffered a small cut to his own finger, but would sleep soundly even as a million Chinese died in an earthquake. But his answer was not to argue that we were self-seeking individualists justified in being out only for ourselves, or that we were narrow nationalists. Instead he argued the opposite: that we were all part of a circle of empathy; that we could indeed put ourselves in other people’s shoes; and that with better information, education and communication, our concern for others would flow outwards from family and nation to include the wider world.
So for Smith there is no contradiction between empathy for the poor at the end of our street and the poor at the other end of the world: we can feel, however distantly, the pain of others; and we do believe in something bigger than ourselves.
So when we ask “who is my neighbour?” we do not just mean a neighbourhood of a few local streets nor confine ourselves to the UK but are including the very people whom the UK aid budget helps, and whom so many other great international organisations support – not least the 10 million impoverished African and Asian children who, because of our direct help, can go to school this week, and the many millions of children who are being vaccinated and protected from formerly lethal infectious diseases.
When we talk of community as a good, we are not just describing small, local enclaves, but a network of relationships that today, at the touch of a screen, can potentially link us to almost anyone anywhere in the world. And when we ask what is citizenship in the modern world, we mean not only legal status within a state but a wider set of obligations that we owe to each other by virtue of our common humanity, including our shared responsibility for our small and now unsustainable planet.
Across history, this is what it has meant to be British: not inward-looking, detached from the world and glorying in isolation – the view of Britain favoured by extreme Brexiteers – but outward-looking, internationally minded and long engaged with the world beyond our shores. And so when we support aid to the poorest people in the world’s poorest countries we are not giving up on the poor in Britain, downplaying or sidestepping our responsibilities to the people of Britain, but demonstrating yet again what it is to be British and doing so for a modern, interdependent world.
And when we consider what lies behind the Brexit impasse, might its root cause not be that these two ideas of what it is to be British are competing against each other, and until we can reconcile these two world views we cannot move on? I worry about a definition of patriotism that implies we are best on our own, sufficient unto ourselves – almost glorying in isolation. It is sometimes characterised by an appeal to what is interpreted to be the Dunkirk spirit, but in fact we stood alone not out of choice but out of necessity.
And while Brexiteers claim they are rediscovering our true spirit as a nation, they are, in my view, disowning our greater, far more powerful internationalist history as a country – a nation of explorers, missionaries, traders, merchant venturers, international diplomats and now NGO leaders who have always seen the English Channel not as a moat cutting us off but as a highway that connects us to Europe and the wider world.
It may be that this Brexit divide is so deep, so pervasive and so entrenched that it could take a generation for our country to resolve these differences and fully recover a unifying sense of purpose and direction. But I am absolutely sure of one truth I take from our history – one that has been sadly absent from our political discourse during and since the referendum – that we will regain our confidence as a country when we rediscover that to be truly British is to be outward and not inward looking, internationally engaged and not disengaged, generous-minded at home and abroad, guided far more by empathy and far less by prejudice, and true to ourselves, our communities and the world.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
“This is the most extreme form of project fear yet, these people are an absolute disgrace.” That was how Nigel Farage, ever the patriot, dismissed the voice of the nation’s doctors last week. The British Medical Association had set out some of the harm a no-deal Brexit would cause. Its prediction that the UK’s ability to fight pandemics would be undermined grabbed the headlines. But in the small print were warnings of “delays in diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients” and adverse effects on “nearly a million patients receiving treatment for rare diseases”.
Brexiteers’ reaction to this morning’s leaked letter from NHS providers, which states that a rupture with the European Union would damage “the entire supply chain of pharmaceuticals”, will unfold along similar lines. “This is just a re-run of the referendum,” they will say. “Project Fear 2.0.”
Two years after Britain voted to leave, it is now a familiar refrain. “It has become clear that Project Fear – the scare-mongering campaign carried out by those who want to remain in the EU – is alive and well,” well-known medico-legal expert Iain Duncan Smith wrote recently. “Hardly a day goes by without another scare story about the UK failing to get medical isotopes.” And who among us, if they had cancer, wouldn’t turn to a failed party leader and benefits system botcher for advice, as opposed to, say, the BMA council chair, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, with his 28 years’ experience as a doctor and CBE for services to primary care?
Somehow, we are back to having “had enough of experts”, in the words of cabinet minister Michael Gove. Or, at least, that’s the kind of mood Brexiteers want to stir up. Being able to paint expert advice as an elitist project to frustrate the will of the people may be their last chance to salvage the “Brexit dream”. Let’s be entirely clear about what that dream is, because few of them have ever been honest about it: a legal separation from our closest neighbours that will retard growth, cost jobs, undermine consumer rights and disadvantage citizens. They are prepared to countenance those things because they think the prize is worth it.
As these drawbacks become more widely understood, however, the public doesn’t seem to be relishing the idea of a hard Brexit. What better way to win them round than arguing that, just like in June 2016, dire predictions of economic collapse will not materialise.
There are two gigantic flaws in this argument. First of all, while much was made of the immediate harm a no vote would cause, many of those dire predictions concerned the potential harms of Brexit itself. It can sometimes seem hard to believe, but Brexit still hasn’t actually happened – so the predictions haven’t been proved wrong yet. In any case, it has gradually emerged that the vote alone did stymie growth and continues to do so. We might have avoided the fireworks of sudden recession and capital flight, but it’s not as though “project sunlit uplands” won the day instead.
Second, many of those now warning about no-deal or hard Brexit are not even political actors, let alone spokespeople for an active referendum campaign. “As experts in delivering health services and providing care for our patients, we have a duty to set out the consequences of leaving the EU with no future deal in place,” says Nagpaul. His sentiment echoes those of many others whose genuine concerns are being snagged in a net marked “enemies of the people”. If we are to believe Farage and Duncan Smith, organisations as diverse as the Port of Dover and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society have been infiltrated by Brexit saboteurs.
The hardliners are now operating under an unfalsifiable premise: there is no negative information about Brexit that they wouldn’t slap the Project Fear label on to. A committee of Nobel prizewinners couldn’t convince them. How very post-truth.
Not only that, but the very notion of Project Fear allows Brexiteers to redefine “not disaster” as success. This increases the likelihood that the public will consent to some thoroughly unpleasant outcomes, since anything that isn’t catastrophic will feel like a relief. An example of this would be accepting the fact that new drugs will become available in Britain long after they are marketed in EU (a likely consequences of leaving the bloc’s medicines agency), because at one point we were worried we wouldn’t have any drugs at all. Brexiteers, yet again, are trying to sell us a pup. Don’t buy it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
One dubious perk of a job writing about politics is free books that no one else would choose to read. Often, ambitious MPs feel they ought to put their vision in print, regardless of whether or not they have one. These unsolicited manifestos are then dispatched to newspaper offices where they are mostly forgotten. Mostly, not entirely.
I recently found myself browsing one such volume, Britannia Unchained, co-authored by five Conservative MPs in 2012 who immodestly described themselves as “rising stars” on the sleeve. One, Dominic Raab, has risen to be secretary of state for Brexit, which is reason enough to revisit his back catalogue.
The premise of Britannia Unchained is that Britain, made torpid by a coddling state, faces decline unless it exchanges timorous risk-aversion for a spirit of buccaneering enterprise. This was not a new theme for Conservatism in 2012, but it has become a kind of mantra in the context of Brexit. Buccaneers, apparently, can’t sail while still anchored to Brussels. Freedom means nothing if it isn’t the freedom to sign trade deals, and EU membership (specifically, adherence to the common external tariff as part of a customs union) therefore amounts to intolerable bondage.
You might imagine that this view was anticipated by Raab and friends four years before the referendum. But no. Nowhere, not once, do the authors so much as hint that EU membership is a problem or that ending it forms part of the solution. There is stuff about venture capital, maths training and welfare reform. On the cruelty of a customs union – not a word. So what? People change their minds. They adapt to circumstance. Who cares that very recently the self-styled intellectual vanguard of Toryism thought EU membership was wholly compatible with national renewal? Now they see things in their proper perspective. The greatest obstacle to prosperity was not a skills shortage or fiscal mismanagement. No, it was the common external tariff all along.
And so we get to autumn 2018. The prime minister was due to set off today on a trip to sub-Saharan Africa with a trade delegation and a familiar pitch: “As we prepare to leave the European Union, now is the time for the UK to deepen and strengthen its global partnerships,” Theresa May said. This has become part of her shtick. She goes somewhere that isn’t Europe and declares that British commercial ambition soars beyond its continental neighbourhood.
Liam Fox can usually be relied upon to chime in with the assertion that 90% of global growth in the coming decade will be outside the EU. This is a popular Brexiteer statistic because it implies that the UK has made the far-sighted choice, switching out of the 10% European slow lane. That would be true if EU membership prohibited access to all other markets – if you could ship goods either within the EU or outside it, but never both. Plainly that is nonsense. Germany’s biggest trading partner is China. Berlin does not see its regulatory obligations to the single market as a brake on global exports.
Of all the nonsensical Brexit ideas to have acquired respectability through sheer force of repetition by Tory MPs, perhaps the flimsiest is this false dichotomy of “global” trade and EU membership. The common external tariff prevents EU members from signing bilateral agreements, but the compensation is being party to deals that Europeans negotiate as a bloc and, thanks to the sheer scale of the single market, on terms befitting an economic superpower. About 49% of Britain’s trade is currently with the EU. Another 12% is with 65 non-EU states that have free-trade agreements with Brussels. The most recent, with Japan, was signed in July this year.
There is no system for replicating those agreements after Brexit. Fox has racked up thousands of air miles crossing the Atlantic and the Pacific, eliciting bland statements of goodwill from overseas counterparts. But the number of deals he has successfully negotiated is a fat zero.
And that’s where reference to the World Trade Organization comes in: won’t that serve as a safety net? Perhaps, but only in the specific metaphorical sense of catching circus performers when they fall. It is humiliating to land in one, a sign of failure, but preferable to severe injury or death. If the ambition is to sustain cross-border trade at anything like its current level, or to provide an institutional framework in which the UK could replicate the clout it has as one of the EU’s biggest members, “WTO rules” are a fiction.
The WTO has become a rhetorical device, disconnected from the organisation behind the initials. It serves a purpose once fulfilled by the Commonwealth: the big thing involving many countries that, slathered in ignorance and seasoned with glibness, can be served up as an alternative to the EU. There was a Commonwealth summit in London in April from which the most memorable news was May apologising for the Home Office’s cruel treatment of British citizens of Caribbean origin who had been unjustly threatened with deportation. No trade agreements were signed.
When the Commonwealth is touted as an alternative to the single market there is, at least, a degree of honesty in the audible pining for empire. There is dismal pathos in Eurosceptic nostalgia for a time when “global” Britain was a territorial reality, not a branding exercise. There is no such excuse where the WTO is concerned. There are no misty-eyed historical or cultural associations, just a cynical diversion. No developed country trades purely on “WTO rules”. The idea that Britain should be the first to give it a go has gained currency in the Conservative party from sheer embarrassment. It is not a model for post-Brexit trade, it is a euphemism for failure to understand the true value of EU membership. It conveys a deep unwillingness to admit any kind of dependency on our European neighbours, even the mutually beneficial dependency of the single market – the largest, most sophisticated free-trade zone in the world, conceived and driven in large part as a British initiative, by Conservative governments.
This is the sad island where a generation of Tories find themselves intellectually discredited and marooned. They wanted to unchain Britannia and they ended up uncoupled from their own history, unmoored from basic geography, and adrift from economic reality.
Last modified on Thu 23 Nov 2017 13.00 GMT
Twenty years after New Labour’s triumphant electoral victory, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are still squabbling. But far more important than the competing accounts of when the former agreed to make way for the latter is understanding why the promise of New Labour turned out to be false.
We all remember Tony sipping champagne with Noel. A wall of flowers for a people’s princess. Damien’s shark in the Royal Academy, just a few rooms away from Tracey’s tent. Geri in her Union Jack, proclaiming the rise of girl power. Doreen Lawrence demanding an inquiry for her murdered son. In 1997, these were seen as harbingers of a fairer, more open and more modern Britain. Today, after a decade of crisis, protest, riots, racism and referendums, we know only too well that New Labour and the liberal culture that enveloped it did not create a “new Britain”.
The English establishment has always had a knack for spotting a good (and subversive) idea – before quickly making it their own. That’s why there hasn’t been a revolution in England since 1688. From the Great Reform Act of 1832 to the construction of the welfare state, grassroots agitators, parliamentary radicals and news of revolution abroad have forced the establishment – both recalcitrant reactionaries and liberals willing to compromise – to absorb a few radical ideas and save itself. In doing so, it strengthened the existing order further.
In 1997 New Labour took this establishment penchant for pursuing marginal reform that reinforces the status quo and developed it into the operating principle of a whole political culture. It defined the historical moment. In his new office at the Treasury, its walls painted brilliant white and its floors cheaply carpeted, Gordon Brown oversaw an ambitious expansion of spending on schools, healthcare and his new Sure Start scheme.
And so the Labour government made marginal but valuable improvements: the neoliberal juggernaut slightly decelerated. But there was no attempt to stop, let alone reverse, it. This would have meant reconstructing the economy and the state on fundamentally fairer terms. Inequality rose more slowly under New Labour than it had during 18 years of Tory rule. Nonetheless, it rose substantially.
Brown’s plan turned out to be not only unambitious, but counterproductive. He funded his expansion of the welfare state using revenues generated by continuing the deregulation of the City, which allowed financial markets to take new risks and make enormous profits that he expected would swell the Treasury’s coffers. But since the 2007 financial crisis, austerity and stagnation have swept away New Labour’s painfully incremental improvements.
Something similar happened when New Labour attached itself to the Stephen Lawrence campaign, and then made only the slightest dent in the racism institutionalised in the state and society. Jack Straw and Tony Blair emphatically endorsed the finding of a judicial inquiry that the failed Metropolitan police investigation into the Lawrence’s racist murder had been “marred by … institutional racism”. This contributed towards a progressive myth of a more tolerant future. Optimistic liberals pointed to the increasingly taboo nature of racist slurs, and the wide acceptance of mixed-race families. But two decades later there has been little change to the racialised imbalance in who gets stopped and searched, and in who suffers police violence. The class divide between white and ethnic-minority communities remains deep and wide. The slow diminishing of personal prejudice not only did nothing to tackle institutionalised racism: it provided cover for inaction.
This dynamic – powerful systems and rigid inequalities being strengthened by changes and reforms that might have been expected to diminish them – reached beyond Whitehall and into our pop culture. The year that Blair moved into Downing Street, the Spice Girls became the biggest band in the world. They did something that, for a totally artificial, middle-of-the-mainstream pop band was exceptional and extraordinary: they introduced their young fans to explicitly ideological ideas of independence and solidarity. “We have come up against a few guys who expect five bimbos,” Geri Halliwell told a reporter. “It just means you’ve just got to shout a bit louder to get your way. We’re freshening up feminism for the 90s.”
Too often, however, the Spice Girls’ marketing taught their fans to value conventional good looks and fashion. Girl power was, as pointed out by the US journalist Rachel Giese, “feminism-lite”; but it was also a marketing ploy designed to turn little girls into demanding and sexualised consumers. Fortune magazine doled out cynical marketing advice: “If you want to sell to the girl power crowd, you have to pretend that they’re running things, that they’re in charge.” This “girl power” wasn’t simply an accessible version of feminism; it was its free-market antithesis – a commercial system that used against women not just women’s lack of privilege, but also their political desire for equality. Geri Halliwell was not in on the con: just as Brown wanted to spend as much as he could on Sure Start, she thought the Spice Girls could make a small difference.
Nonetheless, today we are disappointed that the optimistic vision of 1997 failed to come about. Its compromises and appropriations, presented as acts of grand reform, have paved the way for our current upheaval. People are angry about the cost of living, racism, misogyny, the distance between themselves and centres of power.
Under New Labour the tension between the promise of reform and the reality of the status quo became an unsustainable contradiction. Blair insisted, from the beginning, that what a society worn down by Thatcherite market globalisation needed was more of the same. But he justified this by appropriating the rhetoric of both social democracy and national greatness. He announced, in his conference speech a year after entering office, “a new agenda: economies that compete on knowledge, on the creative power of the many, not the few; societies based on inclusion not division”. He justified Britain’s international role on the basis that “I am a patriot. I want Britain strong.””
Blair built support for the pro-globalisation policies that were eroding the welfare state by promoting nationalist feelings of regret for that erosion, creating a devastating sense of disruption for Britain’s “left-behinds”. His nationalist rhetoric, along with his anti-asylum policies, helped to ensure that when the backlash came, it did so in the isolationist and xenophobic form of Brexit and anti-migrant feeling.
When Brexiters – I’m looking at you, Boris Johnson – talk of “letting the British lion roar” and an extra £350m a week for the NHS, are they also playing the establishment trick of branding stasis as change? They should consider how they will be remembered if Brexit also delivers more of the same – if it reinforces the conditions that motivated many leave supporters: de-industrialisation, precarious employment and insecure housing, and the rolling back of the welfare state.
If that’s the kind of Brexit we get, then history will condemn the current government and its promises of transformative change even more severely than it has judged the happy, smiling and optimistic administration that came to power 20 years ago.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The EU and the US have been squabbling about support for their respective aircraft makers, Boeing and Airbus, for decades. Despite this, the US has never resorted to such heavy-handed tactics with Airbus and the EU as it now has with Canada’s Bombardier, placing thousands of jobs at the firm’s Northern Ireland factory in doubt. And for good reason: the US would have too much to lose from such action. The EU is a big market with a powerful trade authority, and US producers are too dependent on the EU market for the US to risk retaliation. This case gives us a real taste of how the UK will be treated in negotiations over a US-UK trade deal post-Brexit, and how vulnerable the country will be.
Disputes between governments over subsidies to aircraft makers are commonplace. Given the huge barriers to entry into the industry state support is indispensable. Boeing gets its subsidies through US defence spending – which helps to finance the company’s development costs – whereas Airbus has tended to benefit from more direct government assistance. The Canadian government has extended support to Bombardier to develop its new C-series regional jet, leading the US Department of Commerce to claim that the company is selling the jets in the US market at below cost. Both the Canadian and UK governments claim the support they have extended to the firm complies with World Trade Organisation rules. Despite this, the US has taken punitive steps against its two closest allies, imposing tariffs of 219% on the aircraft.
The UK government, particularly its trade minister Liam Fox, places great faith in a trade agreement with the US, arguing that Britain will get a good deal because of the dense commercial links between the two countries. But trade deals are all about leverage, and leverage is determined by the size of the market. A comparatively small economy such as the UK’s would enjoy little leverage in its negotiation with the US. And if the two countries do not agree a deal, the UK would have to settle disputes with the WTO: cases take years and rulings are often ignored. By contrast, the EU is in a strong position when it comes to disputes with the US; its huge domestic market gives it greater negotiating power. And the US cannot afford to take unilateral action against it of the kind seen in the Bombardier case.
Moreover, any US-UK trade deal would have to be heavily skewed in favour of the US in order to make it past Congress. For example, in return for a deal, the US would no doubt put the UK under heavy pressure to reform the drug procurement procedures of the NHS – as the largest buyer of pharmaceuticals in Europe, the British health service essentially sets the prices for many other EU markets, and is thus resented by the US pharmaceutical industry, which sees these prices as unfairly low. The US will also put Britain under fierce pressure to fully open its agricultural markets to US food exports. An EU-US trade deal, should it ever come about, would be much more balanced in favour of European interests.
Brexiters assume Britain will face a benign international environment once freed from the EU to take advantage of open markets elsewhere. They take for granted that the UK would be able to rely on the US underwriting the global trading system. This was always naive, but has become delusional with the election of Donald Trump: globalisation can only flourish with wholehearted US support. And that is, at the very least, now in doubt with a more protectionist White House.
With Trump presiding over the Oval Office, engagement with the EU is the best way of defending the UK’s interests and, for that matter, upholding the liberalism many Brexiters claim to support. Indeed, it further heightens the case for Britain remaining in the EU. With globalisation under pressure, the benefits of single market membership are clearer than ever. A US that is less committed to the multilateral trading system also increases the importance of EU membership as a lever to open up markets around the world. In a world where might is right, acting on its own the UK will be a supplicant in any significant trade negotiations.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Leading Brexiters have criticised the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for his extraordinary break in diplomatic convention in which he branded prominent leavers as liars who had misled the British people.
While Theresa May’s Chequers plan was left hanging by a thread after an ambush at the Salzburg summit, her French counterpart launched an unprecedented attack on Brexiters, warning that leaving the EU was “not without costs”.
Furious leavers immediately hit back, accusing Macron of trying to distract from his own domestic woes, with the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith telling him he should “butt out” of British politics.
After a key summit session at which the other EU leaders discussed the UK’s Brexit proposals, Macron had told reporters: “We are today at the moment of truth.”
He added: “Those who explain that we can easily live without Europe, that everything is going to be all right, and that it’s going to bring a lot of money home, are liars. It’s even more true since they left the day after so as not to have to deal with it.”
Duncan Smith told the Guardian: “Monsieur Macron is not only out of order, he’s completely wrong. The EU is doing their classic case of trying to bully the UK in a variety of ways into taking a different position.
“The honest truth is I don’t get involved in his domestic politics and therefore he should butt out of ours. He has got enough problems at home himself, it’s time he sorted his own country out and stopped messing around with ours.
“But it does open the door to remind people why so many voted to leave. They’re sick and tired of the dictatorial, bossy, lecturing nature of the European Union.”
However, one Brexiter cabinet source shrugged off the criticism. “It’s just all part of ratcheting up the temperature, a bit of something for the home audience; it’s not something I’m particularly worried about,” he said. “At home, people don’t really care about what foreign leaders think – we learned that at the referendum.”
Macron has faced the biggest domestic scandal of his presidency after one of his security officials was filmed, illegally dressed as a police officer, beating people on the edge of a demonstration. The row grew when it emerged that the president’s office had been informed of the misconduct at the time but had not reported it to police.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the hard-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs, said: “Is it an attempt to distract attention from the French senate interviewing his former bodyguard yesterday? It is not unknown for politicians to make outlandish claims to cover up a more interesting story.”
The Tory Brexiter Andrew Bridgen added: “It is a well-known British political truism that when you start insulting your opponents you have already lost the argument; perhaps we need to translate it into French?”
First published on Sun 3 Jun 2018 09.27 BST
Brexiters have hit back at leaked Whitehall advice warning of food and fuel shortages if Britain leaves the EU without a deal, with the Conservative backbencher Jacob Rees Mogg calling it “project fear on speed”.
As Theresa May’s ministers prepared to return to Westminster after the Whitsun recess with the cabinet still deadlocked over customs arrangements, a fresh row broke out over the risks of a no-deal Brexit.
Three scenarios drawn up in Whitehall and obtained by the Sunday Times – the worst of the three referred to as “armageddon” – set out the consequences should Britain walk away from the negotiating table.
“In the second scenario, not even the worst, the port of Dover will collapse on day one. The supermarkets of Cornwall and Scotland will run out of food within a couple of days, and hospitals will run out of medicines within two weeks,” a source told the paper.
A spokesman for the Department for Exiting the European Union dismissed the reports, saying: “These claims are completely false. A significant amount of work and decision-making has gone into our no-deal plans, especially where it relates to ports, and we know that none of this would come to pass.”
And pro-leave ministers hit back, with one describing the reports as “hysterical”.
Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, a backbench pro-Brexit group, insisted nothing could prevent Britain from importing whatever goods it needed. “Except in limited fields such as arms sales, an exporting nation, in the absence of sanctions, has no legal mechanism to obstruct trade. Hence the Whitehall document is project fear on speed,” he said.
But other Brexiters acknowledged the risks of leaving without a deal, and blamed the lack of preparation on the highest levels of government.
A senior government source said: “The remain negotiating team hasn’t bothered preparing to implement its policy of leaving the single market/customs union, and now business and MPs are finally waking up to the consequences.
“There must now be an urgent change of mentality by the Treasury, Cabinet Office and No 10 to prepare to be a ‘third country’, if we are to stop the UK drifting into being an EU colony.”
Another senior Tory inside government said: “This is what you get if you have a group of remain-leaning people running stuff.”
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, told MPs last October that he was reluctant to spend taxpayers’ money on preparing for a no-deal Brexit unless absolutely necessary. “I don’t believe we should be in the business of making potentially nugatory expenditure until the very last moment where we need to do so,” he said.
The leaked no-deal scenarios suggested that in the worst case, officials would have to charter planes to airlift medicines into the country, and within a fortnight petrol would also be in short supply.
The government has suggested it would temporarily waive tariffs and border checks on goods entering Britain in the event of a no-deal scenario, in an effort to minimise disruption at borders. But the EU could still halt the flow of goods in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, EU agreements on everything from medicines regulation to aviation govern key aspects of everyday life, and it has not yet been agreed whether and how Britain could continue to benefit from them as a “third country”.
The papers appear to have been drawn up for the inter-ministerial group on preparedness, which is meant to coordinate the government’s Brexit plans.
Early in the negotiations, May and her senior ministers repeatedly claimed that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, but they have become increasingly alarmed about the risks of crashing out without trade and regulatory arrangements in place.
However, with the cabinet still unable to agree a collective position on what customs arrangements Britain should seek with the EU27 after Brexit, hardline Brexiters on the Conservative backbenches are becoming increasingly bellicose.
An editorial in the Sun newspaper at the weekend claimed a “whiff of panic” was emanating from Downing Street, and said that if May could not “lead us fully out of the EU, with no deal if necessary, she must make way for someone who can.”
May set up two working groups to refine two rival customs plans and report back to her Brexit inner cabinet. But more than three weeks later, the trade secretary, Liam Fox, has acknowledged that his group, which is looking at the prime minister’s preferred new customs partnership model, has met only once.
May must meet her fellow EU leaders at the end of June, and there is continued disquiet among members of the bloc about the government’s lack of progress on setting out its solution to the problem of avoiding a hard border in Ireland.
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 03.17 GMT
“As a local mum, there’s no way you can get on a housing register anymore,” says Fay. It’s a familiar story of what happens when government puts markets ahead of people’s needs.
Mould was growing on the walls of Fay’s ageing home; but she was told her son’s disability was not extreme enough to be classified a priority. The council housing in the east London borough of Barking and Dagenham simply isn’t there: with the failure to replace stock sold under right-to-buy, what remains is reserved for those most in need. And Fay does not qualify.
Britain’s housing crisis has all sorts of consequences: it damages the health and education prospects of young people; it puts strains on families; and it inflames tensions by making locals feel they are in competition with one another. These tensions were part of what led to many communities voting to leave the European Union: in Barking and Dagenham 62% backed Brexit.
Locals are at pains to stress the community solidarity, the warmth, the liberty to knock on a neighbour’s door for help. But pride at Ford’s Dagenham factory – in its heyday it employed 40,000 locals – is accompanied by a sense of loss at its decline.
There are bright spots – the excitement about new film studios – but zero-hour contracts and low-paid service sector jobs are the reality for many youngsters. A housing crisis and a demographic shift – the white British population fell from 80% to 50% between 2001 and 2011 – led to resentment that was exploited. The BNP won 12 council seats in 2006.
Thankfully, the far right was soon voted out and every council seat went to Labour at the last elections. But the borough is far from united. The government’s failure on housing is catastrophic: apart from the years when the Luftwaffe pounded Britain, you’d have to revert to the 1920s for a time when so few homes were being built. In a pokey office near Dagenham East tube station, councillor Margaret Mullane tells me that housing is the top issue in local surgeries, and the number one issue on the doorstep. As home ownership plummets to the lowest level in three decades, a generation is being driven into an unregulated and often unaffordable private rented sector. No wonder the borough voted for Brexit: force people to feel they are competing for scarce resources, and some will start to question if the competition is legitimate.
As I drive around the borough with Darren Rodwell – who grew up on a local estate and now leads the council – he speaks passionately about efforts to resist government policy. The government, he says, has looked at the housing crisis and found innovative ways of making it even worse. Four of 10 council flats sold under right-to-buy are now rented out more expensively by private landlords, sometimes the children of parents who benefited from the policy.
The government is extending right-to-buy to housing associations, and abolishing lifetime security for council tenants. Unwilling to build houses with no security of tenure, the council has found an ingenious way around it: setting up its own private company, Reside, which offers secure tenancies of up to five years. A range of homes are on offer: rents for those on minimum wage, and homes at 65% and 80% of market rates.
There are criticisms, even from the local party. Phil Waker, a councillor who used to have the housing portfolio, doesn’t believe the council is building enough homes for social rents. Indeed, the 30-year-old Labour activist Andrew Achilleos lives in a pilot offering rents at 65% of the market rate, and knows residents who have had to leave because they couldn’t afford it. Yet it’s difficult not to sympathise with a council that has limited options with a government determined to shred social housing.
So housing fuels tensions, but one should not downplay the impact of prejudice. I meet an elderly ex-Ford worker on his way to pay his rent at the council office. A Ukip supporter – he didn’t vote before they came along – he peddles out-and-out myths.
“If you’re the same colour as me you can’t get a flat or anything like that. If you’re one of the other colour you’re alright. It’s all wrong isn’t it!” I tell him I’ve met many white local council tenants, and ask if he accepts that migrants are more likely to be housed by private landlords. He’s having none of it: “You go down to Barking and spot the white man!” I tell him that I have, and he segues into “bloody Romanians”, all “robbing and pickpocketing”.
I meet Litu Cristina Riamona, a Romanian. She speaks five languages and bitterly resents the prejudice she’s suffered since the referendum result, from those who would cast her as part of the housing problem. Tony, a 20-year-old student, was a local Vote Leave coordinator; he let his Ukip membership lapse after the referendum. He stresses that racists represent a minority of leave voters; but during the campaign, he tells me, he repeatedly had to challenge people “on my side who would say horrible things”.
In such a febrile atmosphere, the job is to cool tempers and challenge myths. Rodwell and I talk to 80-year-old Patricia Rogers. She doesn’t object to migrants – her Bulgarian and Algerian neighbours are “as good as gold” – but feels they’re being given houses ahead of locals. In fact, Rodwell explains, they’re highly unlikely to be entitled to a council flat: they’ll either have bought homes, or be living in private buy-to-let flats. An unregulated private rented market is indeed lucrative for landlords: the council recently raided a three-bedroom property housing 35 migrants. It is the government’s ideological failure to regulate the private rented sector – not migrants seeking a better life – that should be our focus.
What’s manifest here are the consequences of one of the world’s wealthiest nations failing to meet one of the most basic rights of its citizens. What happened last June was a product of that. Theresa May said the Brexit result was about “changing the way this country works”. Were she to end the assault on council housing, that would be a start.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
If Britain’s coastal towns simmer with resentment, there’s little wonder: they’ve been the victims of protracted economic decline under successive governments. Like other coastal communities – Blackpool, Rhyl, Skegness and Hartlepool – South Thanet, in Kent, plumped decisively for leave in last year’s EU referendum. It was an opportunity to express a vote of no confidence in a failed status quo. They took it. “Thanet used to be called the Isle of Death,” says 71-year-old Alexandra as she piles shopping into her car in Margate. “That’s where it is really, sticking out like a thumb on the map.” Insecure, low-skilled jobs; a shortage of good quality, affordable housing; some of the highest rates of poverty in Britain: no wonder so many feel abandoned on a geographical extremity. And above all, as pollster Ian Warren puts it to me, a “palpable sense” of loss. “It’s deep, it’s really deep, and it’s serious.”
As part of my journey through the leave-supporting areas, I have come to Brexitland-on-Sea. It is a place of many contrasts. Stand on the harbours of Ramsgate or Margate, and you’re struck by their beauty: the Georgian houses, the little boats bobbing on the sea. Before the age of cheap flights, British families would flock in far greater numbers to towns like this, supporting thriving local hotels and businesses.
And now? “It’s awful. There’s nothing to do any more,” says Amanda, a 39-year-old healthcare assistant from one of the country’s poorest wards. “It’s dead, there’s no shops. Dreamland [a local theme park] isn’t like it was in its heyday. The arcades aren’t like they were. It’s run-down.” Her grandparents once ran a hotel: “It was lovely. You wouldn’t want to walk down that street in the middle of the night now.” The beauty does indeed jar with the visible signs of decline. “If you’re on the harbour looking at the sea, you could be in the Med,” as Stuart, the landlord of Ramsgate’s Churchill’s Tavern tells me. “Turn around, and you could be in Moss Side.”
The pride is still there. Some express hopes that the decline is starting to reverse, with creative bohemian types fleeing London’s high house prices to create a flourishing artistic scene. Labour councillor Karen Constantine joined the party because she grew up in poverty. Her children too lived in poverty in their early years, and she “wanted to fight for a better future”. It is not just the lack of jobs that bothers her: it’s the failure of any economic development strategy to create new jobs.
No wonder Ukip has targeted South Thanet: this was the seat where Nigel Farage launched his last failed parliamentary bid in 2015. If an election expenses scandal consuming the Conservative party – whose candidate Craig Mackinlay won in a three-horse race – forces a byelection, Farage intends to stand again. Ukip took the council, but their councillors were deeply inexperienced, and a series of promises – such as resolving the housing crisis, cleaning up South Thanet and reopening the local airport – were swiftly broken. “On the doorstep it’s proving more positive: people who’d gone to Ukip from Labour or the Conservatives are going back to their roots,” claims Labour activist Harry Scobie, whose son Will stood as Labour’s local candidate in 2015.
It is a cliche to suggest disaffection automatically translates into support for Ukip. As I accompany Karen knocking on residents’ doors in Ramsgate, I meet 29-year-old Georgia. She spent years working at Premier Inn, but was forced to quit after being diagnosed with endometriosis, which causes her agonising pain. But it is not recognised as a disability, leaving her without state support. Her husband has just taken up a low-paid front-of-house job at a carvery after being made redundant. A poor credit rating left them both struggling to get a home, and many landlords refused them because they received housing benefit. But she has contempt for Ukip and Farage – she proudly tells me her three-year-old son Elijah yells “Naughty!” when they pass Ukip stalls – and believes “it is easy to blame someone who isn’t from this country”. The Tories are “stuck-up arseholes,” she says. Labour “are more for the people”.
Karen tells me that some who turned away from Labour were attracted back by Jeremy Corbyn: on the streets of Margate, unemployed 47-year-old Kevin switches from decrying immigrants “taking all our jobs” to emphasising his support for Labour and its leader. Still, others are less fond. Labour activist Margaret, 71, reports that “some are against Corbyn on the doorstep, I’m afraid to say … they like his policies, but he’s not, perhaps, the leader they’d like.” Activists here, as elsewhere, blame an aggressively rightwing press. Strikingly, though, it’s not dislike for the Labour leadership I find on the streets. It’s indifference: a shrug of the shoulders.
And then there is immigration: significantly less here, according to official figures, than the national average. Yet anti-immigration sentiment in South Thanet is high. I meet two young Latvians, both of whom work in a salad factory, walking hand in hand. They say they feel welcome, but the presence of migrants is clearly divisive. How does that play on the doorsteps of Brexitland, I ask Karen: if I were a constituent blaming migrants for my lack of affordable housing, what would she say? “I’d ask how you were managing, whether you’re getting any support from family and friends. I’d agree it’s very tough and a very unfair system, that we have a government that isn’t building something that is affordable.” Above all else, she said, she would show genuine concern for their plight, rather than dismissing them.
There are beacons of hope. The Turner Contemporary gallery opened in Margate in 2011; two years later, the acclaimed Ramsgate Music Hall opened its doors too. But still the headline speaks of loss and decline, of a general lack of confidence in a better future. This pessimism, it strikes me, was what drove so many here to vote Brexit. It’s a pessimism that is lethal in its toxicity.
This is the reality and the challenge, for there is nothing inevitable about decline in our coastal communities. They need money and attention: perhaps a fresh start. When that occurs, as was the case with London’s Olympic Park, metamorphosis happens quickly. And if ever there is a will, there may be a way. The New Economics Foundation, for example, has launched a “blue New Deal” to regenerate coastal Britain, from sustainable fisheries to investing in renewable energy. It’s just a start, but it’s the kind of thinking that is badly needed. Brexitland-on-Sea might be a different place if it felt that someone was listening.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
This is the year when our politicians and the so-called “people” – all 28% of the population who voted to leave the European Union – will reap what they have sown. Unfortunately, unless sense prevails, the rest of us will also suffer the product of their wild oats.
The absurdity, indeed perils, of Brexit become more obvious by the month. Business is nervous; so is the City, which constitutes far more hundreds of thousands of employees than the small, avaricious band of bankers who made their notorious contribution to the financial crisis.
It would be good if the majority of members of parliament could recall and act upon Edmund Burke’s 1774 address to the electors of Bristol: they should summon up the courage to act as representatives, not delegates of constituencies where they fear the threat from the xenophobic forces conjured up by the likes of Nigel Farage (who shamelessly continues to draw a handsome salary from an EU institution he affects to abhor).
They should capitalise on the increasing signs of nervousness and potential panic among the leading Brexiters. For the diehard Liam Fox to decide that perhaps, after all, we should remain in the customs union was rather interesting.
The personal attacks by parliamentary Brexiters on our ambassador to the European Union, Sir Ivan Rogers, were indicative of panic in the victorious ranks. The occasion was the leaking of advice given to Theresa May, in which Rogers suggested trade renegotiations with the EU could last 10 years.
This revelation provoked an unpleasant ad hominem attack on a distinguished civil servant who, in the best traditions of Whitehall, “tells it like it is” to the occupant of No 10, whether that be David Cameron or Theresa May.
The plain, hard fact of the matter, which the Brexiters refuse to grasp, is that the other 27 members of the EU were desperate for us to vote to Remain, but were never going to roll over to the Brexiters’ proposals for a swift offer to this country to “have its cake and eat it”.
Here we come to an interesting historical development. Rogers, while now occupying a vitally important post at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is himself essentially a Treasury man. And the Treasury, unlike the Foreign Office, has traditionally been suspicious of the European Union.
But Rogers knows which side this country’s bread is buttered, and neither our diplomatic nor economic interest is likely to be served by Brexit. In which context, I was especially struck by the way a former Treasury official, who in days gone by was persistently vitriolic in his comments on the EU, recently contacted me to ask whether the nation had lost its senses.
The problem at the moment is that the damage caused by the referendum is on a slow-burning fuse. There are time lags in these matters: the impact on prices and real earnings from the collapse of the pound will become more evident as the year progresses. As it becomes clear that the Brexiters who have captured the prime minister do not have a convincing strategy, plans for major firms to relocate their investments to continental Europe will gradually be implemented.
Meanwhile I have also been struck by the number of people who have contacted me to express astonishment at the Boxing Day intervention of Mervyn King, Mark Carney’s predecessor as governor of the Bank of England.
Lord King has come out as a Brexiter, which is not very helpful to his successor, who can sense a prospective train crash and was quite right to warn about the impact on the pound of a Leave vote – and who, with the help of his colleagues at the Bank, has been doing his best to keep the show on the road since.
But King has long been a Eurosceptic – not just about the eurozone, on which issue I share his concerns, but also about the European Union itself. Personally, I think Brexiters such as King underestimate the damage not only to our trade from Brexit, but also the extent of the sacrifice of our potential contribution to the future of the EU in a troubled world. However, I note even King concedes that Brexit will not be a bed of roses.
He was, of course, speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, which ever since the beginning of the referendum campaign seems to have gone out of its way to give prominence to Monsieur Farage and his ilk.
They were at it again last week, with the shameless Michael Gove heavily revising his castigation of “experts”, seemingly narrowing the field of the accused to the category of economic forecasters.
Well, forecasters do their best. But economists probably regret the way that their noble trade has been associated too much in the public mind with forecasting, as opposed to fundamental economic analysis.
Anyway, while wishing readers as happy a new year as events allow, I should like to end with this wonderful quote from Jan Kamieniecki in a letter to the Financial Times: “I suspect that what Michael Gove meant to say was that the people in this country have had enough of exports.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
We can cancel Brexit. That’s what the advocate general to the court of justice of the EU, Europe’s highest court, advised this morning.
The advocate general, Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona, said that the UK can cancel its article 50 notice unilaterally. This means that if our own parliament decides that our interests are best served by remaining, the EU cannot stand in our way.
His decision is not certain to be followed by the full court – which has yet to announce when it will give its judgment – but courts follow their advocate general in the overwhelming majority of cases. And if it does here, we are much more likely to stay in the EU.
Article 50 is silent about whether a member state that had decided to leave can change its mind. And the issue had been shrouded in doubt since Gina Miller’s barrister told the supreme court it could not be done. But this morning the advocate general disagreed.
We also learned that we should be able to continue to benefit from the perks we presently enjoy – such as the £100m a week rebate and the control over our borders that comes from us opting out of the Schengen agreement on free movement. Politicians know that giving these up would make it much harder to justify staying in the EU – and that’s why only last week Michael Gove stated categorically that “we would be forced to accept far tougher terms than we have now. Keeping the rebate? Forget about it.” But we know now – as he should have known then – that this is highly unlikely to be true.
The opinion also clears the legislative path to remaining. One option is for MPs to just cancel the article 50 notice without a further referendum. That is a course the advocate general has recognised is open to parliament. And the 2016 referendum parliament enacted was only advisory, after all.
Faced with that choice today MPs would undoubtedly reject it. But the European Research Group’s failure to gather the 48 letters to start a Conservative leadership context proves just how little support there is in parliament for a no-deal Brexit. If MPs find themselves approaching the 29 March 2019 deadline without a deal, the appeal of a simple backstop to avoid the no-deal precipice may become overwhelming. And they may reflect on this paradox: if the vote in June 2016 was legitimate, how can we contemplate another referendum? And if it was illegitimate, why do we need another one?
The difficulty with the alternative route – a second referendum – is one of timing. Even after this morning’s opinion we still need the permission of the other EU member states to extend time to hold a second referendum. But, if the political will exists, a referendum could be held in short order. The referendum in Greece on whether to accept the bailout conditions took place only a week after its parliament voted for one. And the opinion gives the EU every reason to extend the time. A choice to remain made by the people may well be considered a stronger mandate than a decision to remain made by MPs alone.
It would be an act of great hubris to pretend any of this was simple, or settled, or done. There are formidable obstacles in the way of MPs seeking to force through a decision against the wishes of the government. We learn that, if nothing else, from the attempts to force the government to disclose its legal advice on the Irish backstop. But there is no denying the path to remain just got easier.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
A continuing refrain of the Brexiteers is that Britain has always lost out to the rest of Europe in negotiations. This derives partly from the way successive governments have portrayed the EU as a battleground in which there is room only for victory or defeat. It is also explained by the tendency of politicians to blame “Europe” for everything – often to divert attention from their own shortcomings.
In fact, the UK has led Europe in a remarkable way, and has rarely failed to gain its major objectives. However the process is one of debate and argument, proof and counter-argument, rather than demanding that the rest of EU should immediately see the sense in our position and give way without question. It is this assumption of always being right that has bedevilled our relationships with our neighbours.
When I first went into the Department of the Environment (DoE) on a Monday in 1993 I looked at my diary. Fresh from four years as minister of agriculture, I knew that there was a two-day meeting of the European Council of Environment Ministers ahead, yet there seemed nothing in the diary. “Why,” I asked. “Oh,” said the civil servant, “the secretary of state doesn’t go to Brussels unless we have something to tell them to do.”
That changed there and then, and I sat at the council table the following Thursday. Facing the first controversial discussion, I asked my adviser what the Spanish position was. “Well,” came the reply, “we haven’t spoken to them since Christmas, so I’m not sure.” Similarly semi-detached attitudes were revealed throughout that first session.
It came as a real shock after my long period at Agriculture, where the UK had built a reputation for informed and committed negotiation. My predecessors there, Michael Jopling and John MacGregor, had built strong relationships with their fellow EU ministers. They trusted us and we trusted most of them. They knew that we would act consensually wherever possible, would try to understand their political drivers, and would be absolutely honest about our own political needs. As a result none of us lost a vote that really mattered – even when the logic was wholly against the British position.
One example suffices. In a single market, the UK’s refusal to allow the export of live horses for food was clearly illegal but politically essential. All the odds were stacked against us, Belgium was becoming increasingly insistent, and a vote was looming. We had one strong card: our relationships. We had helped others in parallel positions, helping to find ways for the EU to meet its common objectives while recognising national differences.
My very effective minister of state, David Curry, and I had formed friendships and we took trouble to maintain them. Many of our fellow ministers had come to Britain and stayed at our homes. Above all, we had never pretended. They all knew that if we said something was really important to the UK, we weren’t bluffing.
We were always communautaire – but in the national interest. When the relatively new French minister, a socialist, in a very restricted session, without his key advisers, had agreed to something that would have been very difficult for France, I slipped round the table and pointed the problem out. He was able to retrieve the situation, the council was saved interminable recriminations, and Britain had a firm friend. Working as a team, clearly putting our national interest first but ensuring we got the best out of the EU, meant that when it mattered we won. I don’t suggest that my counterparts ever really understood the peculiar British view that it’s all right to eat beef but not horse, but they accepted it was a political reality and knew the UK would help when they had to explain their own national singularities.
Mind you, you had to work at it. My first meeting of EU environment ministers was decidedly frosty, as I sought to defend the government’s support for Shell’s decision to dump the Brent Spar oil facility in the North Sea, to a council dominated by the leftwing Danish minister, Svend Auken. Lecturing them would have fitted the British stereotype but done us no favours. Listening, arguing, explaining and showing we believed in the system and wanted to learn as well as teach – that made all the difference.
I learned too that the Department of the Environment’s previous way of working in Europe was shared by other British government departments. Yet, once we got a more constructive attitude to prevail, we found we achieved a better result. And the success for Britain was manifest. The BSE crisis could have destroyed the British meat industry. In the event, solidarity won over the temptation for easy political wins from our continental competitors. They knew that they, too, could have problems that only solidarity and commitment to the science would solve. They knew, too, that in those circumstances we wouldn’t take advantage, although we’d fight our corner as toughly as any.
And active, supportive membership helped us win battles back at home. In 1993 we were still seen as the dirty man of Europe. We were fighting to keep universal landfill; we had sewage on our beaches; and our water quality left much to be desired. EU environment rules made us put all that right. We became leaders on environmental agriculture and on climate change, but we learned as well as led. We were not semi-detached but committed to the EU – the greatest peacetime project of our lives, which through arrogance and poisonous self-regard we now seek to undo.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
In the buildup to the European elections, I travelled around Britain and had the sense of people talking about the state of the country in wildly different ways. “Democracy is broken,” shouted a Brexit supporter in Swindon. I met lifelong Tories on the affluent edges of the Cotswolds, anxious about how England seems to be embracing the politics of extremes. In Manchester, everyone was remain, but remarkably disengaged from the Brexit conversation. In Merthyr Tydfil, a woman who had voted for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, offered the brisk rationale about her town that “it’s the same as it’s always been, so that’s why we need a change”. In retrospect, everything fitted the picture offered by that much-discussed YouGov poll last week, of a politics so turbulent that the Liberal Democrats are suddenly popular again, Farage is newly insurgent, and the two-party carve-up of 2017 seems like a distant memory. What polling wouldn’t pick up, however, was present in encounter after encounter: woven into very different conversations, a shared sense of weariness and exasperation.
Clearly, the debate about Brexit is hardening, at speed. Compromise options seem to have been killed off by the 23 May vote, leaving no deal and the revoking of article 50 at the core of the argument. The most passionate advocates of another public vote seem to see victory as a likely prospect, barely pausing to think about the possible horrors of another referendum campaign. And among the leave and remain hardcore, there is something that is increasingly obvious: loathing and denigration not just of the Brexit debate’s figureheads, but the millions of people seen as being on the wrong side of the argument.
Does anyone remember the few short months after the referendum, when the “in” thing for remainers was to agree that voters who had chosen leave needed to be listened to? No more, it seems. “Gammon” is still a fashionable insult. Some people hang on to the idea that what with so many leave voters on the wrong side of 60, all will be put right when they die. As proved by the writer and activist Paul Mason’s recent citing of “the ex-miner sitting in the pub calling migrants cockroaches” (or writing in the Guardian of people who “don’t care if the economy collapses as long as the migrants go away”), there are now stereotypes rattling around that might just about describe a tiny minority, but run the risk of satisfying a set of middle-class prejudices, and instantly coming to unfairly define a whole chunk of the population.
A dangerous mistake seems to be at play here: the conflation of people who vote for particular causes and parties with their leaders, so that every current supporter of the Brexit party is presumed to be a clone of Farage. That 63% of us – 63%! – didn’t vote at all on 23 May, and that a huge swathe of those who did put their cross in a box did so with the usual sullen detachment doesn’t fit the story, and is thus forgotten, along with a very modern fact: if you spend your waking hours imbibing the ferment on Twitter, the wider world will quickly start to look similar, even if the reality is very different.
There are now Labour activists and polemicists who treat politics as if it were a board game, hanging on to the theories of dead Russians, and dealing in abstractions. Their rationale for maligning much of the party’s supposed base, I am told by some horrified Labour insiders, is to excise a whole chunk of the post-industrial working class from left politics, leave it to Farage and his friends, and install “networked youth” as the new vanguard of the revolution. Where any such manoeuvre would leave Labour’s supposed mission to double down on inequality and the UK’s regional imbalances is anyone’s guess. It would also threaten to pump the left full of one of the worst prejudices of all: snobbery.
Among the prime movers of the rising no-deal movement, there is a kind of misanthropy that is obviously something else again, encompassing not just age-old biases and bigotries, but the idea that each and every advocate of a rethink on Brexit is a hummus-loving citizen of nowhere, and a traitor to boot. But division and polarisation are Farage and his allies’ stock in trade: the liberal left is meant to be different.
Clearly, Brexit and its ongoing furies are only symptomatic of much deeper divisions, and a country that desperately needs to become re-acquainted with itself. We all know what has driven our fragmentation: winner-takes-all economics, the stalling of social mobility, an online discourse that has no room for restraint and compromise, and tends to introduce us to people exactly like ourselves. What is often overlooked is simple ignorance, and failures – of our education system, mainly – that result in even supposedly knowledgeable people understanding little about the country they call home.
It is often said that Brexit is the act of a country too fixated on its history. The truth, it seems to me, is that we are not nearly fixated enough. The kind of free-market capitalism this country was forced to embrace 30-odd years ago always sweeps the past away; now, of all the countries of Europe, we are surely the most weightless. In the absence of any instinctive popular understanding of our national past, the Brexiteers can tell their absurd tales of splendid isolation, the glories of the second world war and the wonders of empire, as well as averting their eyes from the island of Ireland. But history-blindness is there on the remain side as well, in the continuing denial of the great mess of stuff that sat behind the Brexit vote, and how tin-eared many pro-Europeans seem when they sound off.
Without understanding that, say, Hull was once the home of thousands of dockers and trawlermen, that Middlesbrough was once a byword for steel and chemicals or that old mining areas are still brimming with a collective pain almost beyond articulation, how can you even begin to get to grips with where we have ended up? Do we all understand that jobs in distribution centres fail to fill huge holes, and that any viable future for the country has to contain an answer to that? As the only means of averting catastrophe, I think I still hesitantly favour another referendum, albeit one presented in terms that supporters of a so-called people’s vote have barely touched. But whatever your proposed solution to the current mess, you have to acknowledge that without a deep understanding of these things and the people they have affected, any conversation about the future will sound completely unconvincing.
Two big dangers face us right now. One is the reckless Brexit that rightwing politicians seem hellbent on pursuing, whatever the cost. The other is a shrill kind of tribal war that threatens to push us so far away from history, common humanity and the economic nitty-gritty that politics might end up being all but pointless. To oppose the first is the duty of anyone progressive. But if it involves embracing the second, any victory will be pyrrhic. Such are the confounding politics of 2019, and knots that show no sign of being untied.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
What works for a lamb will not work for a lion. This was how a senior European official dismissed the idea that Britain could ever be trusted with the same deal outside the EU as Norway enjoys today. After more than 40 years of membership and nearly two years of endless debate about Brexit, there is still virtually no understanding in Britain of how the British are viewed by the rest of Europe.
The lack of self-awareness is costly. It is impossible to understand the negotiating approach of the EU without first understanding how it views the UK. A successful negotiation should first be a process of discovery: understanding what matters to the other side, why it matters, and where common ground might be found. This has not happened.
The discourse of European officials means it is easy to mistake the motives behind the EU’s position. The article 50 process is often presented as merely the “application of rules” – that it has a legal order that must proceed mechanically, in the arena of technocracy rather than politics. This is not true. The EU’s primary negotiating objective is best understood in a single word: containment – both of a Britain unconstrained by membership and of the exit contagion introduced by Brexit. The EU is in equal measure fearful and resolute.
The fear is that Britain will have its cake and eat it. For the EU, this means enjoying rights without accepting responsibilities, accruing the benefits of European integration without shouldering the burdens. The success of the European project is more important to Brussels than the economic value of the trading relationship with the UK. Brussels is resolute that the British will not “get the better” of the EU. But why is it so fearful?
Perceptions of character, history and politics are what inform the EU’s negotiating approach. In Brussels, the British are viewed with suspicion – seen as hiding cunning behind charm, using manners as a cloak for ruthlessness, and, at their core, being strategic, stubborn and mercantile. These stereotypes of character are joined by experience. It is precisely because Britain has so successfully secured its interests as a member of the EU – shaping the evolution of the European project while securing opt-outs from key parts of it – that the other member states understand how ruthlessly it pursues its interests. One of the great ironies of the current impasse is that Britain’s success in the EU stokes fears of its conduct outside it.
Moreover, that Britain should choose to storm out of an institution where it had thrived diplomatically and journeyed from the “sick man” to the fastest-growing economy, has convinced European officials that British politics is erratic, unstable, and irrational. British politicians are, therefore, not to be trusted. There is a belief that the British – accustomed to great power for centuries – are simply incapable of accepting any rules. Britons lazily project their domestic political model – where one side wins, the other loses, and the winner dominates the loser – on to a European politics that is very different. For two years, the British government has seized every opportunity to amplify these fears.
When European bureaucrats emphasise “the integrity of the single market”, or “the autonomy of the union’s legal order”, as when they rail against “cherry picking”, what they mean is that Britain and the Brexit contagion must be contained, to prevent other countries from seeking to follow Britain’s example. From the EU’s perspective, there are three alternative strategies to achieve this containment.
First, containing Britain in the existing European system as a member state, achieved by reversing Brexit. This strategy is the most preferred but least likely. Wisely, Brussels does not promote this path, but neither does it act to exclude it. The second alternative would be to create a new arrangement whereby Britain remains economically close to the EU, enjoying similar benefits to today, but is contained within a parallel system of rules – not EEA membership but a bespoke deal on similar principles. It is why the EU says the customs union and the single market are on the table, if the UK is interested in them. The third option for the EU is to establish new barriers to trade – outside the single market and without a customs union – and to treat the UK as simply another “third country” with which an interests-based trade deal will be struck. It is understood that new barriers would come at a cost.
For Brussels, the first strategy is unlikely and the third strategy is undesirable. But it is Theresa May who has taken the second option off the table. In Brussels last week, it was apparent that a good deal – one that honours the referendum result but seeks to continue our close economic partnership, as described in the IPPR’s “shared market”proposal – is still possible. Before the referendum of 2016, most Brexiters claimed this was their desired outcome – economically close, but politically separate. Yet since the vote to leave, the Brexiters’ aversion to all things European has developed into a full-blown allergy. The prime minister’s speech shows they have won: while the government might have wisely softened its tone, it has foolishly hardened its stance.
The sharpest critique of Britain’s vote to leave was that the country had blamed problems of its own making on Brussels because it was easier than taking responsibility for them. The UK government is making Michel Barnier’s job easy: Britain seems determined to contain itself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
The New Deal. One of the most ambitious programmes by a government in history, to rescue the US economy from one of its deepest recessions. A radical agenda at a moment of great national uncertainty. If ever the UK needed an equivalent, it’s now.
The principle of the New Deal was simple. As Franklin D Roosevelt, the then president and architect of the New Deal, told the American people: “We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.”
More than 80 years later, that phrase echoes in the words of Theresa May, who set out her stall in June to shape a country that “works for everyone”.
Political rhetoric for a new economic imperative. To thrive outside the EU, the UK needs to come together. No one left behind. Research that Grant Thornton undertook with the Centre for Economics and Business Research shows the possible benefit of this: untapped business potential could generate an additional £479bn for the UK economy by 2025.
We know that article 50 will be triggered by the end of March 2017, but the long-term commercial landscape that will make up post-Brexit Britain is still unclear.
What is evident is that our society needs to be more cohesive, our economy more inclusive and our institutions more representative.
We need to stimulate ideas and actions that can create a truly vibrant economy that realises the shared potential of businesses, cities, people and communities across the UK.
Not just economic success, but an economy that has people and places at the heart of our thinking.
For a British new deal to make a difference, it needs to blend policies that pursue economic regeneration with positive social action. It must give rise to a system where everyone can aspire to build a great life. A new deal for a new Britain.
The Brexit vote was a stark reminder that millions of people across the country feel voiceless. The EU referendum result gave an indelible map of the areas in the UK that feel most disengaged.
This is overlaid with economic reality: research from the Fabian Society found that those in areas of relatively higher public spending were more likely to vote remain.
Bridging this great divide needs to be based on resolving regional funding inequalities, as well as pursuing a grand vision of the kind that Roosevelt gave to the American people: to build a great life.
We need to turn each of our major cities into the cogs around which growth, innovation and inclusion can turn. This starts with developing effective policies, bred out of local knowledge and expertise. Eschewing politicians and civil servants hidden away in Westminster and Whitehall, often naive to the world beyond the metropolitan bubble.
Outside the EU, the UK must claim a new place in the world – innovation Britain. But this will only be attained if diversity of thought can rise to the top.
It is time to wholly reject the tunnel vision approach that stubbornly lingers in certain British policymaking and business circles. Economic and social policy have to be married together, not just to spur innovation, but face down the UK’s complicated issues. Neither world can hope to go it alone.
The responses to the societal and economic divisions that the Brexit vote laid bare cannot rest solely on the shoulders of government. Instead, it calls for collaboration, where the private, public and third sectors work together. That means pooling resources, expertise and ideas, refusing to work in silos, defining key challenges and opportunities together and co-creating a blueprint for positive change.
That is why we have launched the Vibrant Economy Commission, a group of cross-sector leaders who will work with people and organisations across the UK to focus on the resolution of major issues, from health to housing, trust to trade and regulation to regional growth.
Speaking at the Conservative party conference on Sunday, May said “We know that the referendum was not a vote to turn in on ourselves, to cut ourselves off from the world.”
The confidence and optimism displayed by the prime minister for the UK’s future international role must be applied to domestic affairs.
So, let’s start at home and begin with those places that feel most detached from the rest of the country. Working in partnership to capitalise on the great things happening in the UK’s cities and communities, we can develop a Britain that better serves its people.
If we fail to act, disengagement will fester and the gap between the haves and have-nots will continue to widen.
A collision of ideas and ambitious collaboration that brings us together must be the guiding lights for Britain. Our future must be shaped by vibrant businesses, policymakers and civil society. Government should not and cannot be allowed to forge it alone.
It is an optimistic vision, but optimism is what we need. As we learned from the US, dreaming big makes for a bright future.
Norman Pickavance is the head of brand and culture at Grant Thornton and a former policy adviser
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
If you still believe Britain will get a sweet deal out of Brexit because “the EU needs the UK more than vice versa”, ask yourself: why don’t we hear European politicians pleading with Britain “not to punish the EU over Brexit”? Why is the pound plunging against the euro and not the other way around? Why do we not hear of companies escaping from the EU to “free-trading Britain” while there is almost a traffic jam in the other direction? Why do EU leaders look rather relaxed when Brexit comes up, even cracking the odd joke or two about sending the British foreign minister, Boris Johnson, a copy of the Lisbon treaty so he can read up on reality?
The negotiating cards with the EU are “incredibly stacked our way”, the Brexit minister, David Davis, told the House of Commons on Monday. The cards certainly are “incredibly stacked” – but not in the way Davis imagines.
To understand why, get a map of the EU and find Slovenia, a nation of 2 million people. No, that is Slovakia, with 5.4 million, almost three times bigger. Next look up Lithuania (population: 3.3 million), Latvia (2 million), Estonia (1.3 million) and Luxembourg (500,000).
Now repeat after me: all these EU members, as well as the other 21, hold veto power over whatever deal the UK (65 million) manages to negotiate with the EU (population: 508 million).
That is right, 1.2 million Cypriots can paralyse the British economy by blocking a deal, and the same holds true for Malta (400,000). Did I mention the Walloon parliament in Namur (get that atlas out again) has veto power too? And then there is, of course, the European parliament in Strasbourg.
Brexiteers argue that the EU takes ages to conclude trade deals so Britain is better off striking them on its own. The former is certainly true. Consider the Walloons currently threatening to derail an EU trade deal with Canada. But how does EU institutional sluggishness square with the Brexiteers’ promise that the EU is even capable of concluding a swift Brexit deal with the UK, even if it wanted to do? It doesn’t.
And this is true even before we look at whether the EU would have an interest in making things easy for Britain. Remember how, before the EU referendum, David Cameron went to Brussels threatening to support leave unless he was given a range of “concessions”? Well, two can play that game, now that the tables have turned – except the EU has 27 nations. That is a lot of scope for blackmail à l’anglaise.
To make things worse, while 44% of British exports go to the EU single market, British politicians have gone out of their way to undermine, disparage and insult the very parliaments and institutions that now hold so much power over them.
Every country has an angry clown, so Europeans can overlook Nigel Farage. But how about Johnson’s claim during the campaign that he saw no real difference between the EU and the work of the Nazis? This week the Tory MP Stephen Phillips spoke of “what we regarded as the tyranny of the European Union”, while Davis actually warned the EU of breakup if it were to “punish” Britain for Brexit.
That is no way to speak to your neighbours when they hold your economic future in their hands. Yet this is still the tone from London, so it is no wonder that dispatches from Brussels in European newspapers report increasing exasperation and the last bit of goodwill drying up. “The spoilt little prince” is how one EU diplomat described the emerging view of Britain to the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad – traditionally a very pro-British newspaper.
For the many friends and admirers that Britain still has in Europe, these must be trying times. Some of them might have expected the UK to be engaged by now in a serious and wide-ranging debate on how to mend fences with its so-much-bigger brother across the Channel. Instead, Britain is losing itself in delusional grandstanding, talking about itself to itself.
As for “punishing” the UK, the EU has far too much on its plate to indulge in punitive expeditions. It will defend its national and continental interests with as much vigour as Britain will. And, since the EU is more than seven times bigger, it will impose its will.
Whatever the political darlings of the billionaire-owned British press tell themselves and their followers, Brexit will mean what the EU decides it means.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
It wasn’t Britain’s absence from the EU’s birthday celebration last week that shamed me. It was the sight, while I was in Berlin, of our union flag projected on to the Brandenburg Gate. Even as Europe’s capitals stood in loyal solidarity with ours, we plotted a divorce.
The story after the referendum could have been different. Despite the narrowness of the result, there was never an attempt by Europe to persuade us to stay. It is unusual, when an unhappy partner suddenly and unexpectedly asks for a divorce, for the injured half simply to agree and instruct the lawyers.
The British trajectory towards certain departure was sealed by a Conservative party leadership contest that demanded its victor signed up to full-blooded Brexit. But the failure was Europe’s too. At first reacting in disbelief, Europe then behaved as a partner scorned. Well, then – go, it said. But you can’t expect to keep the house and the car, and there’ll be a price for this selfish separation.
Just as Europe’s unwillingness to compromise had denied David Cameron the extent of renegotiation he needed, so costing him the referendum, it would deny the possibility of change after the vote. The smart move by Brussels after the result last June would have been to propose continuing membership for Britain while allowing us to check free movement. After all, we will now control our borders anyway. Better to do so inside the club than outside.
A different prime minister – perhaps Boris Johnson – with a different leader in Europe – Nicolas Sarkozy, perhaps – might have renegotiated after the referendum. Britain, already with the special status of being outside the eurozone, could perfectly well also have been apart from free movement too – able to control migration but otherwise a full member of the EU. The British people would have got what most of them wanted: to be in the market but in control of our borders.
Sooner or later, free movement in Europe will have to be fixed. Already the Schengen agreement is fragile, suspended in some member states. The EU could not contemplate Turkey joining at some point in the future with free movement in its current form. Yet still the policy is regarded as inviolate, a fundamental but in fact latterly invented freedom of Europe.
Europe’s leaders, preoccupied with their own elections and the rise of nationalism in their backyards, find it easy to celebrate the union’s anniversary but remain unwilling to repair its structural flaws. It still doesn’t occur to them that the way to hold their project together is to allow more flexibility. Instead, unrestrained by the UK, they will instinctively reach for deeper integration.
The catechism of ever closer union is just one sign of the near-religious zealotry that has bedevilled both sides of the debate. The ideology of deeper European integration has created its nemesis in Britain: the doctrine of hard Brexit. In Britain, those who express concerns are treated as heretics who must recant and swear adherence to the new faith. Doubting is subverting, questioning is remoaning. All will be well, because we believe it will be well.
For Brexit’s apostles Europe is not an adjacent market of 500 million people, our biggest and most important trading partner, but rather an unexploded bomb from which we should run as far away as possible. This irrational hatred drives its supporters to indefensible positions. It doesn’t matter if we have tariffs as high as 29%. No deal is a good deal, whatever the cost. In the eyes of the ideologues, any economic warning is fake news, as untrustworthy as an expert opinion.
Once our backs are safely turned on Europe, the argument goes, we can become a global nation once again. The greatest excitement is reserved for the prospect of trade deals with the old Commonwealth, especially where it is white. Inconvenient facts, such as that we do less than 2% of our trade with Australia, or that if we lose just 10% of our trade with the EU we will need to double it with India and China to make up, are swept aside.
Global Germany does nearly three times more trade with China than we do – more even than the US does – while being a member of the EU. It seems remarkably unshackled by the “corpse” of Europe. The parody by dismayed civil servants of the Brexiteers’ project as Empire 2.0 was lethal precisely because it betrays the ideological vision.
An animated map of Europe’s changing national boundaries over a thousand years has been watched by millions of people. The story it tells, of empires rising and falling, of war and conflict, is above all the tragedy of nationalism. Yet, as the borders of central Europe have ceaselessly changed, the British Isles remained constant. So lies the difference between our country and the continent: the explanation of why, in the end, Europe values the stability of peaceful political union more than we do.
The government is now relying on a one-way bet that the electorate won’t change its mind, and that the economic warnings about a hard Brexit are wrong. Few dare question the new orthodoxy, and the retired leaders who speak out are the least persuasive. Yet it wasn’t a mere minority who declined to support the event we are all expected to celebrate on Wednesday: it was nearly half of the country. A divorce, said Margaret Atwood, is like an amputation: you survive, but there’s less of you. That won’t matter to those who will rejoice in severing us from our partners with the bloodiest fall of the blade.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
In his recent book Behind Diplomatic Lines, Patrick Wright, a former head of the UK diplomatic service, provides an illuminating account of Margaret Thatcher’s worldview. The former British premier wanted South Africa to be a “whites-only state”, and believed the Vietnamese boat people should be pushed into the sea before they reached Hong Kong. In addition, the late prime minister was particularly gripped by “Germanophobia”.
“She seems to be obsessed by a feeling that German-speakers are going to dominate the [European] community,” Wright writes. “Any talk of German reunification is anathema to her.” At one point it got so bad that the former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd claimed: “Cabinet now consists of three items: parliamentary affairs, home affairs and xenophobia.”
So when the outgoing German ambassador to Britain claimed this week that Brexiteers were fixated on the second world war, he was on to something. Referring to the popularity of films such as Darkest Hour and Dunkirk, Peter Ammon said: “History is always full of ambiguities and ups and downs, but if you focus only on how Britain stood alone in the [second world] war, how it stood against dominating Germany, well, it is a nice story, but does not solve any problem of today.” (If the second world war taught us anything, it was that you couldn’t stand alone. They weren’t called “the allies” for nothing.)
There were some sound reasons for voting to leave the EU – although the campaign was rarely fought on them, and wasn’t won because of them. And this nostalgia for a particular, and peculiar, version of our history long preceded Brexit. Remarking on the chant “Two world wars and one World Cup” that rang out whenever England played Germany at football, academic Paul Gilroy wrote, in After Empire: “The boast to which the phrase gives voice is integral to a larger denial. It declares nothing significant changed during the course of Britain’s downwardly mobile 20th century … We are being required to admit that the nations which triumphed in 1918 and 1945 live on somewhere unseen, but palpable.”
But Ammon was only half right. For while the Brexit vote was certainly underpinned by a melancholic longing for a glorious past, the era it sought to relive was less the second world war than the longer, less distinguished or openly celebrated period of empire. For if memories of the war made some feel more defiant, recollections of empire made them deluded. Our colonial past, and the inability to come to terms with its demise, gave many the impression that we are far bigger, stronger and more influential than we really are. At some point they convinced themselves that the reason we are at the centre of most world maps is because the Earth revolves around us, not because it was us who drew the maps.
It was through this distorted lens (“Let’s put the Great back in Great Britain”) that a majority voted to leave. Ammon puts the fantasies down to war stories from Brexiteers’ childhoods. “Obviously every state is defined by its history, and some define themselves by what their father did in the war, and it gives them great personal pride.” But British history didn’t stop after the war. Empire was more recent and, for a considerable element of the Brexiteers’ campaign, more personal.
Douglas Carswell, the sole Ukip MP during the referendum, was raised in Uganda; Arron Banks, who bankrolled Ukip and the xenophobic Leave.EU campaign, spent his childhood in South Africa, where his father ran sugar estates, as well as in Kenya, Ghana and Somalia; Henry Bolton, the current head of Ukip, was born and raised partly in Kenya; Robert Oxley, head of media for Vote Leave, has strong family ties to Zimbabwe. One can only speculate about how much impact these formative years had on their political outlook, (Carswell attributes his libertarianism to Idi Amin’s “arbitrary rule”) but it would be odd to conclude they didn’t have any.
But if echoes of empire reverberated through the campaign, they have also framed our negotiating strategy. The past 18 months have illustrated the journey from hubris to humiliation. For a couple of generations, we have seen our attributes and others’ weaknesses through the wrong side of a magnifying glass; now our diminished state is becoming fully apparent, and, like Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, reciting Kipling in Myanmar, we are struggling to adjust.
This awakening would be funny (abroad they find it hilarious) if it were not so consequential. Johnson told the Commons the EU27 could “go whistle” for an extortionate Brexit bill. They whistled; now we will cough, to the tune of £35-40bn.
During her 2017 election campaign, Theresa May, channelling her inner Thatcher, boasted about being a “bloody difficult woman”. “The next man to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker,” she claimed. In fact Juncker, the president of the European commission, and his team have found May more overwhelmed and befuddled than overwhelming and belligerent. After one Downing Street dinner, European negotiators concluded that she “does not live on planet Mars but rather in a galaxy very far away”.
In a recent private meeting between May and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the two leaders reportedly found themselves in a tragicomic conversational loop. May kept telling Merkel: “Make me an offer.” To which Merkel would reply: “But you’re leaving – we don’t have to make you an offer. Come on, what do you want?” To which May would retort: “Make me an offer.”
A change of leader won’t make this right. Lacking authority and coherence, haemorrhaging relevance and credibility, May is a faithful reflection not only of her government but of the country at this moment. Brexiteers have ostensibly got what they want: Brexit. They assumed we could dictate the terms; we can’t. They assumed we could just walk away; we can’t. They had no more plans for leaving than a dog chasing a car has to drive it. They are now finding out how little sovereignty means for a country the size of Britain in a neoliberal globalised economy beyond blue passports (which we could have had anyway). What we need isn’t a change of leader but a change of direction.
May is no more personally to blame for the mess we are in with Europe than Anthony Eden was for the mess with the 1956 Suez crisis – which provides a more salient parallel for Britain than the second world war. It took Britain and France overplaying their hand, in punishing Egypt for seizing the Suez canal from colonial control and nationalising it, to realise their imperial influence had been eclipsed by the US and was now in decline.
“France and England will never be powers comparable to the United States,” the West German chancellor at the time, Konrad Adenauer, told the French foreign minister. “Not Germany either. There remains to them only one way of playing a decisive role in the world: that is to unite Europe … We have no time to waste; Europe will be your revenge.”
Once again, Britain has overplayed its hand. Preferring to live in the past rather than learn from it, we find ourselves diminished in the present and clueless about the future.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 13.13 GMT
For centuries, English rulers grappled with an Irish question. Occasionally they have grappled with a Scottish question. Unrecognised by Westminster politicians, the entire United Kingdom now confronts an English question.
As the polemicist and campaigner Anthony Barnett has shown in The Lure of Greatness – his caustic analysis of last year’s EU referendum result – the leave majority was an English majority. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted remain. Though Wales voted leave, a Welsh majority for remain would have made no difference to the result. The May government’s hapless attempts to cope with the fallout from the referendum also stem from English preoccupations.
Though a modest overall majority voted leave, no one knows what they meant by their vote. The result is a contorted debate reminiscent of medieval theologians debating the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin. But today’s debaters operate in the goldfish bowl of an overwhelmingly English Europhobic press, driven by social media, which combine to leave a divided government lurching from one approach to the EU negotiations to another.
“No deal is better than a bad deal,” May said in January. In her Florence speech in September she sounded more conciliatory. But changes in the government’s mood music don’t affect the brutal reality: that the UK is set to leave the European Union because an English majority has voted to do so, ignoring the opinions of two of the UK’s four nations.
The great question is, why? Partly it’s that for centuries, myths, memories and rhetoric have transmitted a vision of Englishness of extraordinary power. Two examples stand out: Shakespeare’s hymn to England as a “precious stone set in the silver sea”, and Enoch Powell’s evocation of the “sceptred awe, in which Saint Edward the Englishman” claimed “the allegiance of all the English” and in doing so symbolised “the unity of England, effortless and unconstrained”.
It is a profoundly reactionary vision, but emotionally powerful. It conveys the message that England is a special, exemplary, even providential nation, set apart from others. Iconography tells the same story, from the mock-Gothic Houses of Parliament to the trooping of the colour on the monarch’s official birthday.
But the England of Shakespeare, Powell, parliament and the trooping of the colour is not the only England. There is a second England, sustained by a second vision of Englishness, which erupted into history with the 1381 peasants’ revolt, one of whose leaders asked a question that has echoed through the centuries: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
Three centuries later, John Milton, secretary for foreign tongues under the Commonwealth established after the execution of Charles I, and the greatest English poet apart from Shakespeare, distilled the second vision of Englishness more powerfully than any other writer in our history. Republican London, he wrote, was the “mansion house of liberty”; the argument that the king had a hereditary right to the crown implied that the subject was “no better than the king’s slave, his chattel, or his possession”.
In Areopagitica, his immortal attack on censorship, Milton argued that the censors’ premise – that virtue needed protection from vice – was not just false, but the reverse of the truth. There was no merit in a “fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed”; true virtue proved itself in intellectual combat. Milton was no democrat, but his argument was quintessentially democratic. The learned and powerful had no lien on truth. The uneducated and powerless could – and should – take part in an effervescent national conversation, without which republican liberty would be an empty dream.
A century and a half after Milton, Thomas Paine published Rights of Man, one of the most explosive attacks on the elaborate nexus of property, power and privilege in the English language. A favourite target was the monarchy. William the Conqueror, from whom the kings of England derived their title to rule, was a “French bastard landing with an armed banditti”. The whole notion of hereditary rule was degrading; it implied that the people could be inherited “as if they were flocks and herds”.
The working-class Chartists at the start of the 19th century interpreted the republican vision in a new way: they campaigned for universal manhood suffrage and annual parliaments, on the grounds that it was only by winning power that the masses could escape “the brand of slavery”. The suffragists and suffragettes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries added a new, revolutionary ingredient to the republican tradition: it was not enough to campaign for Paine’s rights of man; women also had rights, above all the right to belong to the political nation.
With the possible exception of the peasants’ revolt, most of the manifestations of the second England were outward-looking and what we would now call “Europhile”. Milton saw himself as part of a Europe-wide Protestant movement, threatened by a still dominant Catholic church. After leaving England for France during the latter’s revolution, Paine was elected to the national assembly despite speaking no French. The Chartist movement ebbed and flowed in harmony with events on the continent. Its final flicker came in 1848, Europe’s year of revolutions, when a mass meeting on Kennington common was overawed by armed police and troops.
Many leave campaigners in the EU referendum were mendacious and irresponsible, but their victory has a deeper significance. The first England defeated the second. It did so because the leavers had the better tunes. They spoke to the heart, while the remainers spoke to the head. The leavers offered a vision of antiquated glory; the remainers offered a pettifogging list of benefits and costs. Enoch Powell’s ghost was omnipresent. John Milton’s was nowhere to be seen.
Yet there is a glimmer of hope. The leavers’ victory was a one-off. By definition it can’t be repeated. Since the referendum, a bemused and uncertain country has been floundering in an emotional and political bog. We know we are set to leave the EU. We don’t know what kind of country we shall be – or what kind of country we want to be. As a result, the future is more open than it has been since the referendum was called.
The task now is to create a 21st-century vision of republican liberty. Of course, it will be difficult. But it would be a counsel of despair to assume it can’t be done. And what a prize it would be: success would make it possible to again foster a humane, imaginative and generous-hearted relationship with the rest of our continent.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The chair of an influential parliamentary committee is calling for urgent action to ensure that British pensioners living in Spain or other EU countries do not find their payments stopped after Britain leaves the EU in 2019.
UK firms may not be legally able to pay out personal pension or insurance contracts to UK expats and other citizens living in the EU after Brexit, Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury select committee, wrote in a letter to the chancellor, Philip Hammond. She asked whether the problem would be discussed during the first phase of Britain’s exit negotiations with the EU.
At the moment, so-called passporting rights are used by many insurers in the UK and the rest of the EU to sell pensions, insurance and savings products across borders. Unless an agreement is struck between the UK government and the EU, passporting will end on Brexit day, and insurers would face the stark choice of either breaking the contract or the law.
Morgan said: “The possibility that UK providers may not be legally able to pay out pensions or insurance contracts to citizens in the EU – including UK expats – is a stark example of the consequences of a ‘cliff edge’ Brexit.”
Morgan stressed that both the UK and the EU had a strong mutual interest in resolving this problem to ensure a “smooth and orderly Brexit”.
“It is therefore surprising that there have been no position papers from the [European] commission or the government proposing how it might be addressed.”
Morgan wrote to the chancellor that while the UK and the European commission had published papers covering the status of goods on the market once the UK leaves the EU, less consideration has been given to services – in particular the “hundreds of thousands of insurance contracts sold under passporting arrangements with a duration that extends beyond 29 March 2019”. Private pensions tend to run for 30 years or more.
About 900,000 British citizens lived in other European Union countries in 2011, with one in three living in Spain, according to the Office for National Statistics.
“Does the Treasury consider that the problem … poses risks to a smooth and orderly exit, and does it therefore consider it to be a matter for the first phase of the article 50 negotiations?” Morgan said in her letter.
“What proposals are being considered to preserve stability and certainty in respect of insurance contracts that straddle ‘Brexit day’?”
The Association of British Insurers (ABI) said insurers and pension firms must be authorised in an EU country to sell a contract to an EU customer, continue to pay claims, and accept premiums on existing contracts.
The industry body said: “If nothing is fixed, insurers will be left in an impossible position and face an unacceptable choice: break their promise to customers or risk breaking the law.”
Some insurers have started setting up subsidiaries in the EU – a lengthy process that requires approval from a national regulator in an EU state.
Another way to get around the problem would be to sell existing contracts to an EU-based insurer, but this would require a transfer of business that would have to be approved by the UK courts and would take around 18 months.
The ABI is calling for an arrangement whereby contracts written prior to Brexit day retain the same regulatory treatment as when they were first written.
Morgan said the Treasury committee would examine the scale of the problem with the regulators and may call representatives from the insurance industry to answer questions from MPs on the committee.
First published on Wed 29 Mar 2017 06.30 BST
Theresa May’s tactic is clear: to accuse anyone who dares question her headlong, blindfold charge towards hard Brexit of being democracy deniers. This despite it looking increasingly likely that the result of her reckless, divisive Brexit will be to leave the single market and not reduce immigration – the very opposite of what Brexiteers pitched to the people.
As the vast Unite for Europe march last weekend showed, the anger is not ebbing, it is growing, and among some who voted leave as well as remain. Realisation is growing that the Conservative Brexit government is stealing the result of the referendum by wilfully misinterpreting it – and then having the brass neck to accuse anyone who reminds the Brexiteers of their promises of somehow being an enemy of the people.
Similarly, anyone who dares question what ripping Britain out of the world’s largest market will do to our economy is “talking Britain down” – cynically distracting attention from the harm the government is about to inflict on living standards and opportunities.
It was May’s choice to plumb for the hardest and most divisive Brexit, taking us out of the single market before she has even tried to negotiate. That’s why we believe the people should have the final say. Someone will: it will either be politicians or the people. If the people decide they don’t like the deal on offer, they should have the option to remain in the European Union.
This is simply too big to trust to politicians. May wants to hijack David Cameron’s mandate from the general election to deliver hard Brexit. Meanwhile, the recent tough talk from Keir Starmer won’t hide Labour’s feeble deeds: voting for Brexit, failing to stick up for the right of EU nationals to remain, and even now only really threatening to abstain rather than vote against the final deal. I have heard of loyal opposition, but this is craven.
Meanwhile Britain powers towards the cliff edge. By triggering article 50, May is giving herself an incredibly tough, self-imposed deadline to agree what could prove the messiest divorce in history. The EU is asking for a reported £50bn; May will apparently offer £3bn. The EU says it won’t discuss a future relationship until this is settled, and unless the deadline can be extended or an interim arrangement struck, Britain will be locked out of the single market without any new trade agreement in place.
That agreement will depend on the consent of parliaments (and in some cases, regional parliaments) of 27 member states. It could take years. And that’s if Whitehall has the capacity: some have suggested it needs an additional 30,000 civil servants. So much for a Brexit saving, and £350m a week extra for the NHS, and so much for a government taking back control. Steve Woolcock, the expert leading the training for the negotiations, has said Britain risks signing poor deals because ministers are failing to recognise the sheer complexity of Brexit.
And you can see why. The CBI estimates we will need 34 regulatory agencies to replace EU ones. Do you have faith that the merry band of Brexiteers, even now, have the faintest understanding of the sheer scale of the Brexit challenge?
And what happens if we don’t sign a deal? For a start, all UK trade would be subject to tariffs immediately. This is not a matter of negotiation, as pro-leavers claim. World Trade Organisation rules require that the minimum “most favoured nation” tariff is applied to everyone unless there is a future trade agreement in place. So if we wanted to continue trading with the single market without tariffs, we would need zero tariffs on our trade with the rest of the world too.
Immediate customs checks would be required at the EU border, including possibly between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
And there are so many more problems, from City firms losing passporting rights, to the EU no longer being obliged to trail terror suspects, to travellers having to pay a fee to travel to continental Europe and be limited in the time they could stay. The future of UK citizens living in the EU would be thrown into doubt, while British students would no longer enjoy free access to EU universities. All the protection for our beaches, air quality and energy efficiency would be at the caprice of a Conservative government that includes climate sceptics.
So May is triggering article 50 knowing she will almost certainly not have replacement deals in place. And not having a deal will be a disaster. Rarely has Britain been worse governed, or had a feebler official opposition.
But Liberal Democrats remain clear: after article 50 is triggered, we will continue the fight against hard Brexit, and will not stop until the Conservative Brexit government concedes that the people, not politicians, have the final word.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Before heading off for his summer break Mark Carney said the risks of a no-deal Brexit were uncomfortably high. Last week Philip Hammond warned the Treasury would take an £80bn hit if negotiations between Britain and the EU failed completely.
There is a risk to this latest manifestation of Project Fear. If the public really thinks that in eight months’ time Britain is going to be plunged into the economic equivalent of a nuclear winter, the economy will take a serious hit.
So far, though, people seem relatively relaxed and haven’t spent the bank holiday weekend stripping supermarket shelves of baked beans and bottled water. While opinion polls show that voters think – rightly – that the government is making a pig’s ear of the Brexit negotiations, the state of the economy suggests they are taking what Carney and Hammond say with a pinch of salt.
Last week’s survey of manufacturing and retail sales from the CBI were both solid, unemployment was last lower in early 1975, and the public finances smashed expectations last month with the biggest July surplus in almost two decades. If nothing else, the thought that he will have more money to play with in the autumn budget should cheer the chancellor up a bit.
While not exactly booming, the UK grew faster than the eurozone in the second quarter and is doing a lot better than the Treasury predicted before the EU referendum. There has been no collapse in house prices, no 500,000 increase in unemployment, no two-year recession.
The poor track record of the Treasury (and the Bank of England, for that matter) is one reason consumers and businesses do not appear to be hunkering down for a catastrophic recession next year. What’s more, the scepticism about official forecasting is entirely justified. Neither the Bank nor the Treasury spotted the financial crisis coming and both wildly underestimated the damage it would cause.
The economy is now about 15% smaller than it would have been had its pre-recession growth rate continued, something that took the Bank, the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (the body that now does Hammond’s economic forecasts) by surprise. So the Treasury’s confident assertion that the economy could be 10% smaller by 2030 in the event of a no-deal Brexit needs to be treated with caution.
No question, the warnings from Carney and Hammond have some impact. The governor and the chancellor are responsible for the economy and they make headline news. What they say matters. But their influence can be overstated, because most people are too busy getting on with their lives to worry about whether the Bank and the Treasury are radiating gloom and despondency.
Interest in, and awareness of, political developments is much less than imagined. People tune in just before elections, make up their minds based – to a considerable extent – on how well they and their families are faring, vote, and then tune out again.
When David Cameron won the 2015 election, voters thought that was it for another five years. Theresa May’s mistake was to ask them to go to the polls only two years later and, even worse, to do so when living standards were falling as a result of the post-referendum fall in the value of the pound. There could hardly have been a worse time to call an election than in mid-term when real incomes were falling and the electorate was suffering from austerity fatigue.
The summer of 2018 would not have been a perfect time to fight an election either but it would have been better than June 2017. Inflation has started to come down because the impact of sterling’s fall has faded, and this has resulted in gently rising real incomes.
Unemployment has continued to fall – it is now below 4% – and there are plenty of job vacancies. Most people who want a job can find one, even if it is not the sort of job they want, with the hours they want, at the pay rates they want. Taken together, rising incomes plus greater job security means people are less gloomy about their own finances than they are about the prospects for the economy as a whole.
Understandably, perhaps, businesses have been more cautious about investment but just as there have been companies threatening to leave the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit there have been high-profile examples – such as Google and Apple – of companies announcing plans to expand in Britain.
The assumption these multinational companies are making is that Britain is not going to crash out of the EU next March because eventually a deal will be done. Financial markets think the same, putting the chances of no deal at 10%.
This is a reasonable assumption. The history of EU negotiations is that victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat with an agreement made at the very last minute. With the eurozone economy not in especially good health, there is no real appetite in any European capital for a no-deal outcome.
Clearly, it makes sense to be prepared for all Brexit outcomes, but the public has yet to take seriously the more lurid warnings of apocalypse to come.
Expert forecasting is discredited. Life is a bit better than it was a year ago. There is still an expectation that London and Brussels will orchestrate a political fix. For all these reasons, people don’t really believe that at the end of March 2019 there will be no food in the shops, hospitals will be running short of medicines and that planes will be prevented from flying. A no-deal Brexit is seen as another millennium bug.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
“The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history,” tweeted Liam Fox last March. The historical amnesia that afflicts the secretary of state for international trade is now on display in Whitehall, with officials calling their post–Brexit scramble for African trade “empire 2.0”. I guess we should welcome their crude honesty, after all the leave campaign was based on a yearning for the days when Britannia ruled the waves. The only problem is that this kind of talk is as offensive as it is indicative of the arrogant hubris that is steering Britain on to the rocks of a hard Brexit.
Fox could not have been more wrong with his tweet. The problem is that Britain has buried a large part of its 20th century history, along with the rest of the country’s tradition of brutality and crimes against humanity in building its empire. A period in which the nation enriched itself through genocide, slavery and colonial rule is somehow fondly remembered by a majority of Brits.
If we just look at the 20th century, notable atrocities include the coordinated famine in Bengal that killed 3 million people; the persecution of the Mau Mau in Kenya; and mass killings in the concentration camps during the Boer War. While this history should bring a measure of shame, upset and humility, it astoundingly manages to elicit feelings of pride in Britain. The fact that officials would even informally use “empire 2.0” shows how inadequate and insidious society’s understanding of Britain’s not-too-distant past is.
Empire was hallmarked by the noxious arrogance of the British elite that continues to turn people off from the political class today. Britain saw its role as shouldering the “white man’s burden” to spread civilization to the dark and savage parts of the world. I recently had a conversation with a man affiliated to Oxford University who was shocked that I was not appreciative for all the development work that the British had done in Rhodesia.
I was unaware people still use Rhodesia more than 30 years after Zimbabwe’s independence. Nevertheless, I was assured that even given all the brutality and underdevelopment that Zimbabwe (and the rest of the former colonies) suffered, they were better off because of good old Blighty. It seems that the student-led Rhodes Must Fall campaign has had little impact on the wider institution. Yet more evidence of the tone deaf echo chamber that produces the political class.
A spotlight has recently been shone on the influence that Oxford’s politics, philosophy and economics degree has on shaping the political class. This is part of a wider problem as the exclusionary access into politics often runs through institutions that breed British colonial arrogance. It is not just that the students are empowered to feel they were “born to rule”, embedded into education is the assumption of British dominance, a natural place as a leader in the world.
In the 21st century this colonial arrogance is having negative effects on the prospects for the nation. We are no longer in the 19th century when Britain controlled the seas and was one of the most powerful empires in history. Britain is not a military superpower and has to tag along with America to go on expansionary adventures across the globe. The empire is gone, as is most of the manufacturing base.
Meanwhile, the country has just voted to leave one of the most powerful economic blocks in the world. In order to build a prosperous future Britain needs to understand its place in the world; a small island desperately reaching out to countries it formerly ruled in order to try to maintain its relevance. No doubt the former colonies will be willing to trade with Britain. But the idea that these relations will represent anything like those in empire is laughable hubris. Nations no longer ruled by force and fear will not supplicate themselves to Britain because of misty memories of empire.
Due to the inadequacies of the school system, Fox and the government may actually believe that Britain gained its wealth from standing on its own two feet. But the truth is that Britain achieved all it has from standing on the backs of the colonies, enriched from stolen resources and exploited labour. Unfortunately, the nation has never come to terms with the loss of empire and the truth that without that great crutch there is little holding it up.
Rather than accept reality the government has deluded itself into thinking that Britain can just install an update for empire and return to former glories on the world stage. But outside the EU and devoid of colonies, Britain will find that any nostalgic visions of empire are a mirage, providing nothing to sustain it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
We’ll easily cope,” breezes the no-deal prime minister. “This is a great, great country.” Indeed it is. Most inhabitants would certainly agree. But to love your country is not to think it greater than others, nor incapable of making grievous mistakes. Britain has not, as yet, made the fateful error of actually electing Boris Johnson and his cabinet of undesirables. Nor did it vote for a no-deal Brexit. But on he drives, accelerating towards the abyss.
It’s that insouciant ignorance that drives businesses mad; the devil-may-care fecklessness, ignoring the boring details. Andrea Leadsom, our improbable business secretary, writes in the Sunday Telegraph that she has met firms of all kinds and guess what? “They were overwhelmingly positive about our future.” She ends: “Britain’s best years for business and for all our people lie ahead.”
Andrew Varga was driving along when he heard David Davis laughing on the Today programme as he expounded similar airy nonsense about the “trusted trader scheme” – goods checked in warehouses away from the border, all easy-peasy.
“I was climbing the wall! Drives me to despair!” says Varga, managing director of Seetru, a Bristol manufacturer of industrial safety valves. Perhaps Leadsom has only met happy businesses by refusing to hear from those like Varga, a Cambridge engineering PhD, who has failed to find a hearing with any branch of government for the inconvenient facts from companies like his.
“My local Tory MP, Michelle Donelan, wouldn’t come to the factory: when I saw her in her surgery she couldn’t get rid of me fast enough.” Labour MPs have listened and visited but no Tory to date. At a large meeting with Suella Braverman, then Brexit minister, she parroted the usual empty phrases: “trusted trader” and “WTO rules”. Since 2016 he has been trying to raise the alarm, but “no one wants to know”. He wrote to the prime minister, who passed it on to Steve Baker, then at the Department for Exiting the European Union, but got a useless stock reply.
At one time his exports were growing fast, with 130 employees and eight apprentices training to high standards, but since the referendum things have quickly changed. “Some EU customers instantly decided it was too much trouble and switched to EU manufacturers – we lost 10% of the business.” Others with his valves embedded will cut them out next time they redesign their machines. To trade in the EU he needs to obey rules of origin, recording every raw material, tracking every component, requiring “horrendous” new IT systems, his various valves containing 30,000 different configurations and “tripling our admin workload”. New security rules require fencing and guards round his perimeter with checks on staff, costing millions. Delays due to checks “are anathema to our just-in-time customers. They give us three chances: late once is a warning, twice is a final warning and then you’re out.”
This is not just about the bottom line. There are emotional shocks too. “Our EU customers were our friends, but there was a sudden chill after 2016. I hear antagonism, nationalism rising, as if we are ‘other’ and not one of them any more. My people are upset by conversations with old customers who say: ‘You bloody Brits! You’re ruining everything, and we’re not going to pay the extra duty.’” His office staff are remainers, but the factory floor is split in half. “Everyone tiptoes around each other or it gets too heated. The Brexiters are aggressive, the remainers creep into their shell.”
His father praised 1972’s entry into the common market. “Fantastic. Overnight just one gold standard for every product exported to every European country instead of a plethora of kite marks.” When Brexiters castigate EU regulations, “they have no idea how good they are for us”. Varga is a “congenitally liberal Tory, but I can no longer support that party”.
Talk to others in quite different trades and the crescendo of despair rises as “do or die” day nears. Chris Slowey, head of Manfreight, a hauliers in Northern Ireland with 300 employees and 120 indirect jobs, lists just some of the crises ahead: they take Kerry Foods from the Republic to places like Leeds, but with a no deal “taking just one quiche across the border needs three vet certificates, for the milk, the ham and the eggs. That’ll take five times more vets and they’re short already.”
He needs customs agents, who are in short supply. He buys 40 HGVs a year from Europe. “Each will cost £16,000 extra in tariffs, plus 16% on parts.” Here’s what just-in-time means for food deliveries – exactly 47 minutes from factory to ferry, two hours and 10 minutes crossing and eight hours max to stores in Leeds. “Any delay and drivers have to stop and take a break, but food has a short shelf-life.” He fears British stores will stop sourcing from Ireland – and until the Operation Yellowhammer leaks, neither he nor his Freight Transport Association had any warning of possible fuel shortages. “Just let them see what happens when customers can’t get what they want, people used to strawberries on Christmas Day.” And here’s Val Hennessy, director of International House, a large English language school in Bristol where Brexit is already “a disaster”. Five jobs have been lost so far. “Europe is our main market, lovely students bringing lovely money to Britain, a great export. But they sense they’re not welcome, they think we’re a bit xenophobic, a bit fascist – and they might need a visa. So they go to Ireland, whose schools are booming.”
All three of these very different businesses make the same complaint. No one listens. They can’t get the ear of any ministers. No one wants to know what Brexit is doing already, or the devastation no deal will cause to companies like theirs. They warn that bogus reassurances about the UK’s preparedness will come unstuck. Lorry delays at ports may be sorted within weeks, but Varga says his problems are mostly “frog-boilers” – the steady loss of customers that has started already. Why hasn’t business shouted louder from day one? He tried, but others took fright in the face of hostile press coverage. He says businesses were warned that pro-leave customers would turn their back on products from companies that spoke out against Brexit.
What these businesspeople share is sheer incredulity at what is happening, at politicians charging ahead deliberately remaining ignorant of the damage done. Expect the mighty £138m public information campaign to be empty propaganda. HMRC promises to contact “every known trader”, but why bother when they refuse to hear what they’d rather not know? Gordon Brown rightly calls for parliament to hold an independent inquiry into the consequences of a no-deal withdrawal, as Keir Starmer and the former head of the civil service Lord Kerslake demand that MPs be given all the facts.
The prime minister threatens not to honour our EU debts, which would guarantee that no free trade deal could ever be signed. But, he says, none of this is for parliament to decide. As we head towards the cliff-edge, it seems only this most cavalier and feckless of prime ministers is allowed to “take back control”.
First published on Mon 26 Mar 2018 12.36 BST
With only a year to go until Britain leaves the EU, a mounting backlog of unresolved problems is causing business to take evasive action – despite government attempts to buy more time with a transition deal.
More than half of large companies have already put emergency contingency plans into action, according to a survey, and in key sectors such as insurance and transport there are warnings of higher prices and disruption for customers if the fragile truce breaks down.
British and EU governments last week agreed to postpone discussions over Northern Ireland in order to provisionally agree that a 21-month transition phase could begin after March 2019, but only so long as outstanding disagreements are solved nearer the time.
The fudge has met with scepticism in the City, where leading law firms including Ashurst and DLA Piper warn it “provides no legal certainty”. A survey by the law firm Pinsent Masons found 51% of companies had triggered their plans for a no-deal Brexit, including shifting work abroad to European subsidiaries.
Some lobbyists are instead calling on the Bank of England and other regulators to allow them to act as if the deal were watertight in order to avoid further disruption. “Without such political guidance, firms will have to assume that March 2019 is the UK exit date and plans will need to be executed accordingly,” warned Stephen Jones, the chief executive of UK Finance, which represents banks and mortgage lenders.
But in the wider economy, business leaders say there is no substitute for urgent progress at the talks in Brussels. “From product standards, to VAT, to customs, to immigration – businesses need answers fast,” said Adam Marshall, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce. “With one year to go until the UK’s formal exit from the EU, negotiators must redouble their efforts to find pragmatic solutions to the many real-world questions firms face all across the UK.”
One of the most pressing challenges is faced by the insurance industry, which has warned that millions of car and travel policies being sold today could be in limbo if the transition deal fails to materialise.
Annual contracts taken out now for coverage starting next month will take companies beyond the date of departure from the EU. Yet there is almost no clarity on how cross-border regulations will apply in future.
This is a particular problem for travel insurance policies that rely on the reciprocal system of European health insurance cards (Ehic) to defray the cost of emergency treatment in member states. Though industry leaders say it is highly unlikely that the short-term absence of an Ehic replacement would lead to any policies being declared void, prolonged uncertainty would quickly push up costs.
“There is an inevitable cost to insurance policies if you remove the current framework and you don’t replace it with something that works,” said Huw Evans, the director general of the Association of British Insurers.
A similar cloud hangs over car insurance policies that allow drivers to travel on the continent without the need for additional paperwork, known as green cards, to prove they are covered. Until it is clear whether this requirement for non-member states will be waived, insurers and drivers could be falling foul of local laws.
Most alarmingly of all, overseas payouts made under long-term policies such as annuities or corporate liability cover may become illegal in some cases if the UK insurer is not licensed to operate in an EU member state. This is already putting off cross-border activity and forcing insurers to set up local subsidiaries, but represents a ticking timebomb for older contracts unless a replacement for the so-called “passporting” system is found.
“The real issue is less new business and more business that has already been written which in many cases long, long predate Brexit,” added Evans. “The Bank of England estimated there are 30 million of these policy-holders across the EU, of whom 6 million are in the UK.”
A host of practical challenges is also bedevilling the haulage industry, which cannot circumvent hard borders simply by moving work to foreign subsidiaries in the way that financial services can.
The biggest worry, say truckers, remains the lack of any progress in agreeing new systems for avoiding customs checks. “Even a small delay of two additional minutes per truck could result in tailbacks of 29 miles at the borders during peak hours,” warned James Hookham, the deputy chief executive of the Freight Transport Association. “This would create uncertainty and potential damage to deeply integrated and time-sensitive supply chains.”
Such a scenario could paralyse British manufacturing and quickly lead to empty shelves in the shops, according to the Food and Drink Federation. “There is much to do in a short space of time to strike an agreement which matches our current ease of trading with the EU,” said its director general, Ian Wright. “70% of our trade is with the EU – every day raw materials and finished products travel seamlessly over the Channel and the Irish Sea.”
And yet, there has been almost no practical work done to agree new systems of streamlining border checks, at least according to those in charge of liaising with the government. “I don’t see any work being done,” said Peter MacSwiney, the co-chair of an industry working group set up by HMRC. “We have not met this year because there was nothing happening. The next meeting was postponed until after EU council.”
Hauliers also face a looming crisis due to a shortage of licences for their drivers to operate on the continent. Under existing international treaties there are only between 103 and 1,224 permits a year available per non-member state to cover each trip into the EU. The UK government has been forced to consider draconian rationing schemes to work out how they would be shared among an industry that makes more than 300,000 journeys a year with 75,000 British lorries.
Even if the transition agreement survives, time is running out. “There is still much detail to be agreed in the two-and-a-half years between now and the end of the transition period – a tiny period of time in business terms considering the scale of the challenge,” added Hookham. “It is now critical that both sides focus closely on trading arrangements to minimise the potential for delays, which will otherwise hit supply chains and economies on all sides hard.”
An extreme example of the licensing issue could come among airlines, which benefit from aviation services agreements across the EU and with third-party countries such as the US.
With no replacement in sight yet for either, some airlines such as Ryanair have been forced to warn they will soon need to issue tickets that contain a caveat allowing them to be cancelled.
“If there is no regulatory alternative to Open Skies, we will have to consider a change to our terms and conditions for travel to and from the UK after 1 April 2019, as will every other airline,” said a spokeswoman for Ryanair. “We will review this ahead of the announcement of our summer 2019 schedule, which go on sale in the autumn of 2018.”
Although a transition deal provides some respite from this threat, it could return in many guises, according to lawyers specialising in contract law.
“It’s particularly acute in industries where your ability to perform a contract depends on a licence,” said James Smethurst of the law firm Freshfields. “Subject to overriding consumer protection laws, which limit the extent that suppliers can unilaterally change the terms of a contract, there are things that you could do contractually to relieve yourself from some of the potential consequences of a hard Brexit.”
“Where there isn’t that option and you are facing the loss of the licence, that is harder to draft around, other than simply the ability to terminate the contract if it is unlawful to provide the service.”
In the case of some industries, such as derivatives trading, contracts can be for eye-watering sums of money. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that the gross notional value of outstanding derivatives in the world is between $450tn and $500tn (£317tn to £353tn) – many of them between clients in different jurisdictions after Brexit.
Unlike insurers, the industry would still be legally able to make payments and honour the contract itself if there is no replacement regulatory permission granted. But a Brexit deal that does not include financial services could greatly complicate the process of transferring outstanding derivatives contacts or packaging them up in ways demanded by regulators.
This in turn is expected to force many investment banks to begin the complex and risky process of transferring business to other countries to protect themselves against the risk of a hard Brexit.
“Existing trades won’t become invalid whatever happens, but making changes to those trades could become more difficult,” said Scott O’Malia, the chief executive of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. “Without some kind of agreement or legislation, firms might decide to transfer business to local subsidiaries to ensure there’s no interruption.”
“This is a real and present urgent matter,” added O’Malia.“For both sides.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
In every political generation there are decisions that history later reveals to be defining of an era. They are watersheds for individuals and governments, for the fortunes of political parties and entire parliaments. And the choices you make as a politician at these critical junctures are those that you have to live with throughout the rest of a political career, however long or short its course.
The vote on article 50 that will likely follow today’s supreme court ruling is the fork in the road for this generation of Westminster politicians. The decision we take, individually and collectively, will shape the future for our country and for our children, and it may also determine the fate of the current crop of MPs and the parties we represent.
I have reached the decision that whatever the impact on my career, however difficult it may be to swim against the Brexit tide, I cannot, in all conscience, stand by and wave through a course of action that I believe will make our people poorer and our politics meaner. I cannot vote to trigger article 50 on the wing and a prayer that Brexit will do as the prime minister says, and make Britain a fairer, more prosperous and equal society. Because I do not believe that is true.
Of course, I can’t know how Brexit is likely to play out, any more than Theresa May can. But my judgment tells me that the stirring and nostalgic vision she painted last week of a buccaneering Britain striking advantageous trade deals across the globe, while our longstanding competitiveness and productivity deficits are transformed at home, is a triumph of hope over experience, and party politics over the national interest.
Far more likely, in my view, is a protracted and painful withdrawal from the single market and customs union, alongside complex and contested negotiations to forge new free trade agreements and tariff schedules with not just the European Union, but also with all the states across the world with whom our current deals are derived via the EU. Perhaps all the bureaucracy, self-interest, high politics and low skulduggery that have characterised trade relations since time immemorial won’t apply to the UK this time, but I have my doubts.
And if those doubts are even half right, the impact on key sectors in the UK – manufacturing, agriculture, services and the City – will be to constrain activity and profits, jobs and investment. That, in turn, will reduce tax receipts, increase the deficit and trigger further cuts in public expenditure, hitting hardest working class people in places like where I live, who I represent.
Deciding to make a stand against triggering article 50, however, is about far more than the financial impact of Brexit. In truth, one of the gravest mistakes we made on the remain side, especially on the left, was to place too great an emphasis on the economic implications of the vote and too little on the political context and consequences of our withdrawal from the EU.
Too little effort was made to remind people of the role formal economic and social collaboration across Europe played in securing 70 years of peace on our continent. And too little thought was given to the catalytic effect Brexit might have on the forces of far-right nationalism that are resurgent once again in Europe, setting nation against nation.
Brexit Britain, like Trump’s America, is being held up by those far-right leaders as a beacon to light their countries’ way to the nativist (white), protectionist and illiberal future they have long aspired to. Differences in language and accent can’t obscure the common currents of xenophobia, bigotry and aggression that are evident across the west.
Faced with these dark trends, so reminiscent of our European past, the Labour party also has a collective choice to make. We can hedge and triangulate, appease and acquiesce, and hope to ameliorate the worst, in economic and political terms. Or we can take a stand for our values, for what we believe to be in the best interests of our people, our country and the wider world. It is a stand against the political lies that preceded the Brexit vote and the fantasy island economics that have followed it. A properly patriotic stand, which acknowledges the modern challenges of globalisation and migration, but warns against the age-old dangers of blaming the foreigner for all ills, and so rejects the shouty jingoism and deceitful promises of the Brexiteers.
I believe that leadership from Labour has to begin in parliament in the coming weeks, when we see the legislation to trigger article 50. We all heard the threat from May that she would pursue “an alternative economic model” if Brexit turned bad, and we all know what that means: a low-tax, low-wage, low-security economy, as dreamed of by generations of hard-right politicians. If that is even a remote possibility, then Labour has a duty to try and prevent it, in the interests of the people we represent. And the most democratic means to achieve that is to trust the people once more – all of them, including the 16- and 17-year-olds denied a say on their future – in a second, confirmatory referendum, once the reality of Brexit is revealed.
If May refuses to accept amendments that would insert such a failsafe device then it will be obvious to all that she is recklessly pursuing a Brexit of any sort, and at any cost, for party political reasons and at the expense of the British people. In those circumstances, I do not feel I would have any choice but to vote against the government and, if needs be, the Labour whip.
No doubt taking that stand will make me an enemy of the people in the eyes of the Daily Mail, or the “remoaner-in-chief”, as a rightwing radio host described me last week. But I was elected to parliament to exercise my judgment on behalf of the people I represent, and I can be ejected from parliament by those same people at the next election if they choose. That’s democracy – and I cherish it.
So whenever the election comes I will tell my constituents, with a clear conscience, that I stood up for my convictions, and what I believe to be their best interests. I will tell them that in parliament I tried to secure an opportunity for them to be certain that the Brexit description they bought on 23 June matched the goods that will turn up two years from now. I will tell them that I understand the economic and political frustrations they feel, but that leaving the EU will do little to relieve those frustrations, indeed it may compound them. And then I’ll take my chances with the people.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
I have a confession to make: I’m not sure I could trust myself if I actually ran into David Cameron. Ever since the Brexit referendum, I have been trying to avoid any occasions where I think we might have to meet. I know myself, and if I saw him I’m not sure I would be able to stop myself from telling him in no uncertain terms exactly how I feel about the damage that he has inflicted on Britain, both economic and political, and about how he has impaired the chances of young people, while endangering the European project and European values precisely when we need them most.
I might even tell him that I know he did all this out of arrogance, that he chose to put himself and his own party above us all. I’d be tempted to tell him too that he only has to look at just how deeply divided both the country and his own Conservative party are to realise that nothing, absolutely nothing, good has come from what he did in calling the referendum.
My husband, Nick Clegg, who feels pretty much the same about the vote on the UK’s continued EU membership that Cameron so casually convened, reacts differently to the prospect of seeing him. For years, our different attitudes to showing our feelings led us to – in Brexit parlance – “unfrictionless” moments. However, with time we have learned to see this for what it is: a cultural difference – we just deal with our emotions in a different way. As a Brit, he tends to keep them all in check; as a Spaniard, I tend to be open with them.
Indeed, it is because I know full well that many British people tend to hide their emotions that I was surprised to see Theresa May speaking openly about her feelings towards people like me, Europeans living in the UK. This is a woman who often seems robotic, and whose speeches are plagued with meaningless platitudes, so it has been a shock to witness how full of meaning and how openly offensive she has chosen to be.
Her first offensive comment, calling us “citizens of nowhere”, was designed to hurt, and so it did. It skilfully targeted a sore point, a painful sense, which everyone who lives in a country that is not their own carries within them.
We Europeans like to see ourselves as modern citizens of our own country and at the same time citizens of the EU who can seamlessly pile up allegiances at ease. But scratch the surface and you’ll discover an old-fashioned, enduring doubt that lurks within every immigrant: do I really belong to this country? Do I truly belong to my own country? Has my nation changed in my absence? What May told us so plainly is that we did not belong: not to this country, nor to our own. For her, we belong nowhere. Like many other Europeans living in this country, I felt fear when I heard the prime minister utter those words. To this day, she has not even apologised.
Her latest comment about EU migrants “jumping the queue” was more lighthearted but also crueller, for it aimed to deprive us of what every single human being, immigrant or not, hopes for: meaning, making a difference, a life that matters, ensuring you can make your mark on something, anything at all, no matter how small. Never mind the many years of effort in our jobs, our daily struggles to make this country better, our endeavour to educate our children with British values, the causes we have sponsored, the people we have helped, the friendships we have forged. Instead, for her, all we were doing was “jumping the queue” – nothing more than jumping an immigration barrier. As if we were just here trying to cheat the system rather than dedicating years of our lives to contributing to it.
I grew up admiring the UK – its freedom, its ambition, its diversity. When I came to live in London, more than a dozen years ago, I saw for myself that most of what I used to admire from a distance was actually true: that the UK is a place that lets individuals thrive, that it’s a country with a sense of possibility difficult to match elsewhere.
Like many other Europeans living in Britain, I can only deal with May’s comments by refusing to accept that the prime minister was speaking for the country when she used these hurtful words. The British people I know are welcoming, not hostile. They want to help, not reject. They are compassionate, not cruel. They are simply not like her.
Theresa May will pass, as Cameron did; they all do. But while some prime ministers, such as Cameron, do political and economic damage to the countries they govern, by accident as much as by design, May is inflicting moral damage too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
Confirmation bias is everywhere. You are what you read – and you read stories that confirm who you think you are. So Guardian types find their eyes, desperate with hope, drawn to the crescendo of signals that Brexit can’t and won’t happen, to stories that say the sheer impossibility of leaving the EU gets clearer by the day: no way can Britain be out in March 2019, that’s a political and practical non-starter.
Fall off the EU cliff and put a third of our just-in-time food supply at risk. No flying to the EU, warns Ryanair, as easyJet moves its new HQ to Austria, amid warnings tickets will carry no-fly warnings in the event of hard Brexit.
Facts on the ground make the case day after day. Project Fear is made flesh as our economy sinks, while the EU’s charges ahead. Bloomberg lists 10 economic signs warning that “Britain is near a tipping point”. Car sales are down 10%, credit card debt up 10%, wages are falling behind rising inflation. Even rightwing leavers take fright at an exit from Euratom, risking not just the whole nuclear industry and medical isotopes used to treat cancer, but one of Britain’s few cutting-edge research projects on fusion.
The French and Germans are embarking – without us – on a new fighter jet programme, leaving out the 5,000 BAE Systems engineers whose current Eurofighter Typhoon work is ending. HSBC is moving offices to Paris, Barclays to Dublin. All this and much more is happening right now.
But the real world never impinged on Brexiteers’ wild imaginings. None of this touches their faith, and warnings only rekindle their fury. The explosive split in the cabinet shows that they will fight all hint of compromise, even if it brings down their party: they’ve done it before to one leader after another. They couldn’t even wait for negotiations to start before bursting out against their soft Brexit chancellor.
Owen Paterson, the former minister and now backbench headbanger-in-chief, told the BBC Today programme yesterday that as a “sovereign nation” the UK should not have to pay a penny to trade with the EU, branding the idea “discriminatory”, echoing Boris Johnson’s “go whistle”. That’s where these absolutist “no dealers” stand. Not a penny to smooth a path to single-market and customs-union trading, because they want none of it, however low or high the price. The government’s more sensible faction should proceed without trying to meet them halfway, because they are implacable impossiblists.
“We will now delve into the heart of the matter,” Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, proclaimed as the talks began, with no clock ticking – just a time bomb. Every industry is sending up distress flares, each finding the greatest obstacle is Theresa May’s adamant rejection of the European court of justice.
Here’s an example of how industries will try to finesse and finagle their way past her ECJ ban. For some reason Michael Gove and other Brexiteers regard the EU clinical trials directive with particular abomination, claiming that escaping it will spur drug innovation. That’s not the industry’s view, says the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry: research into rare diseases needs the large EU population for joint trials, so it is planning how to stay within the directive’s regulation while sneaking round May’s ECJ barrier. Its “elegant solution” is to license a new drug in Brussels under the ECJ, but with a duplicating UK authority, pretending we are not obeying the ECJ. Similar expensive tricks will abound. And that is the paradigm for where an entire untidy Brexit compromise may end up.
Tony Blair says Brexit need never happen. If only he had made that pitch in his old Sedgefield seat, trying to convince Brexit-minded constituents. The great persuader should try his skills on people like the elderly man at the 31 bus stop I argued with the other day. “Why aren’t we out, right now? Just out! Control our borders.” He didn’t want to know the details: air travel, medicines, food, car parts – with a wave of the hand he said, “Oh, well, we can sort all that, make deals, can’t we?” Should we pay money to make those deals? “If we have to.” What about immigration, would letting in EU people with jobs be worth those deals? “Maybe. So long as they have jobs.” But he was unbending on the big question: “We voted out.” Opinion polls show softening attitudes, yet the referendum stands there as a boulder blocking the pass, ignored at our peril.
One solution is a long, perhaps never-ending compromise. Andrew Adonis, whose House of Lords speech fired up the anti-Brexit peers, says lawyers are taking a case to the ECJ to declare that article 50 can be revoked. That’s the view of Lord Kerr, article 50’s author. The UK could revoke it just before the March 2019 deadline, as a temporary measure to delay exit, in transition time. Even David Davis agrees the need for transition time, as the fiendish complexity of everything finally dawns. There we will sit in the transit lounge, inside the European Free Trade Association alongside Norway, which has lived frozen in a state of perpetual transition ever since Norwegians voted against joining the EU in 1994.
Staying in the single market and customs union might be bought at a price – and Blair is not alone in sensing the chance for a slight shift in free movement rules. What is shocking, says Adonis, is that Davis is so determined to leave both the single market and the customs union that he has not even bothered to ask for the change in free movement rules that might let us stay.
Indefinite limbo is no visionary battle cry, and will satisfy no one: Brexiteers will always be implacable. But it could turn out to be the least worst option, and so long as we are no better off outside the club, the EU might accept a messy compromise, saving us from calamity. We will obey rules over which we have no power, but all alternatives look worse. Elections will come and go, but at some future date Britain may vote for a government that advocates returning, humbled, to an EU that may itself look changed. Not inspiring, but avoiding Armageddon.
But never try another referendum. Haven’t we learned that lesson the hard way? A crude question divides a nation, driven by emotions not on the ballot paper, paralysing politics for years to come. If your confirmation bias draws your eyes only to stories that tell you the tide is turning, cast your eyes occasionally at how Murdoch, the Mail and the Telegraph still ply their venom. They would still be there, poisoning the air, in a second referendum.
Last modified on Sat 25 Nov 2017 03.22 GMT
Scotland can, should and hopefully will leave the United Kingdom. The question for non-Scottish Brits now is, if we are going to say goodbye to the union, how should we frame our own national consciousness after that? What institutions should we design?
The original argument for independence was strong: Scotland has developed a national culture and consciousness on a different trajectory to that of England. Large numbers of its people are convinced their economic interest is harmed within the current structure of devolution. With a hard Brexit, all forms of devolution seem an inadequate protection from the bomb that is about to go off.
Theresa May’s determination to pursue hard Brexit is the equivalent of stepping off a 10-metre diving board without checking there is any water in the pool below. But a no-deal Brexit will not only trigger severe economic dislocation. It will trigger an ideological crisis of all the nationalisms in the UK. English nationalism – half-formed, turbulent and untheorised at the moment it defeated Ed Miliband and then delivered Brexit – will be forced to become concrete. Leaping off the diving board handcuffed to May will be bad enough; leaping handcuffed to a people having a national identity meltdown is definitely something to avoid.
I wrote on the morning after Miliband lost the election, that “I don’t want to be English”. The past 20 months have only strengthened that view.
It is impossible to become passionate about a nationalism that did not exist when you were at school; whose key symbols have had to be cleansed and re-cleansed of association with xenophobia and racism, and which – above all – had no basis in economic reality until last year. My passport says I am British. Thirty years of globalisation, travel and education have left me – unapologetically – one of those “citizens of nowhere” derided by May.
At school, we were taught about the British empire, its crimes and victories. I learned that, at Waterloo, the Gordon Highlanders clung to the stirrups of the Scots Greys as they charged. Nobody told me that image would one day have to become something “other” to my own national identity. Ditto for the image of King’s Own Scottish Borderers dug in at Arnhem.
English literature meant learning not only the poems of Robert Burns alongside Keats but also those of the Irishmen, Yeats and Wilde. Sure, there probably exists a form of Anglo-Saxon English, uninflected by the lilt of Celtic or the syntax of people from Britain’s former colonies. But I don’t know anybody who speaks it.
However, English national consciousness is becoming a logical response to the way the world is changing. Even if, as Gordon Brown proposed at the weekend, Scotland accepts a federal settlement – the Bank of England becoming the central bank of an effective sterling union, etc – England must be given its own democratic institutions.
But if Scotland leaves – and Northern Ireland is given some kind of halfway status to prevent a border being re-erected with the Republic – then what’s left cannot be called “rUK” – the rump or remainder UK. It will be England-Plus. This new country will still be a major global economy, a nuclear power (albeit in need of a new port for its nuclear-armed submarines), a permanent member of the UN Security Council and home to the head of the Commonwealth. And it will need an ideology.
But here is where the problem begins. Just as it’s hard to deglobalise a national economy, breaking up an imperialist ideology into its constituent parts is going to be very tricky. The British imperial ideology, and its post-imperial successor after 1945 was the creation of a national bourgeoisie. Wellington’s reported comment about Waterloo being won on the playing fields of Eton was not fatuous: the creation of an elite with a common approach for conquering and dividing other countries, and ruling its own, required a common set of economic practices.
The modern English elite is scarcely a national bourgeoisie at all. It is, at best, a multi-ethnic community of innovators and financiers who happen to live here, heavily intermarried with old English – and Scottish – money. Watch a rugby match at a top British private school and you will understand how anachronistic Wellington’s comment would seem today.
However, if Nicola Sturgeon leads Scotland to independence by 2020, establishing something close to the Scandinavian model of capitalism on British soil, the English elite will have to come up with a new story.
You can see it forming now, in the pages of the rightwing magazines and websites feeding off the corpse of liberal conservatism. Scotland’s desire for independence is being cast no longer as simply unwise (as in 2014) but unjust. It is being subtly reframed by the English right as a form of theft, disloyalty, disobedience and disruption, a wilful sabotage of the Brexit process.
If the left and centre of English politics do not resist this – and consciously offer something different – this anti-Scottish resentment story will become the core of the new English ideology. It already has, as Patrick Cockburn pointed out in the Independent, something in common with the resurgent European nationalisms: ethnic and cultural exclusivity.
So what can we do? Some figures on the left have argued for an English parliament. I dismissed this proposal two years ago, but Brexit has convinced me the federal argument is strong.
That raises the question: what form should English federal institutions take? Given the opportunity to redesign the English political institutions along federal lines, we should push not for an English assembly, but for powerful regional states, along the lines of the German länder. The result might look a lot like the map of the British isles around 830 AD, once Wessex was a unified kingdom – with the equivalents of Mercia, Northumbria and Wales each having a devolved assembly.
Here is why I favour that solution over a single English parliament: in any English parliament, the south-east will dominate; and the emergent ideology of an English nation state will form itself around the white, military-monarchic and financial elite. With the Scots gone, their replacements as the social laboratory for far-right economics will be the north and the Midlands of England. If we are really unlucky, and Ukip does not evaporate, the racial and religious exclusivity ideologies will get stronger.
Better to create a strong federal institution at the centre – and offer Scotland and the Republic of Ireland strong bilateral arrangements over, for example, defence and trade – and then create strong regional assemblies. That is the best way of representing the separate regional identities of the English, and of allowing Wales to participate as an equal to the other regions, rather than as an appendage to Great England.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.50 GMT
On a balmy July evening in 2012, London officially opened the Olympic Games. As with so much else that summer, the opening ceremony projected a city that was full of confidence: open, diverse, prosperous and good humoured. London had shaken off the financial crisis to retain its status as the cultural and commercial capital of Europe.
Since then, it has dominated rankings of international business competitiveness, overseen the construction of the Crossrail high-speed line, attracted capital and labour from across the continent, and enjoyed economic growth far outstripping the rest of the country.
But for many Londoners, the summer of 2012 now feels like a different era. For while the reverberations of last June’s Brexit vote were felt around the world, it was surely the UK capital that felt the greatest shock.
A city with close economic and cultural ties across Europe and home to almost a million European Union nationals, London firmly backed Remain – with parts of the inner city registering the strongest EU support in the country. More than a fifth of Europe’s 500 largest companies have their headquarters in London, and the mayor, Sadiq Khan, subsequently described the prospect of full exit from the EU market as “economic self-sabotage”.
As anyone who has recently spent time in the UK capital can attest, the referendum itself seems to have done little to dent the animal spirits of London’s consumers. Restaurants, shops and bars seem as busy as ever. Tourism numbers have held up and there is evidence that the weakened pound has encouraged more international visitors to stay and spend.
But London is not Barcelona or Rome. It is a city with a population of more than eight million, and an economy the size of Belgium’s. Its prosperity has depended not simply on tourism, but on being a leading centre for business, finance, education, technology and the creative industries. Will such sectors, so essential to London’s economic and cultural identity, maintain their dominance once Britain is outside the world’s largest trading block?
There is no part of the British economy subject to more speculation and debate than its financial services sector, overwhelmingly centred in London. While there are those, including the former governor of the Bank of England, who emphasise the opportunities of being outside the EU’s regulatory environment, the more common view is that these are outweighed by the benefits of the single market – after all, more than a third of the UK’s financial services surplus comes from trade within the EU.
Before the referendum, a clear majority of British Bankers’ Association (BBA) members believed that Brexit would have a negative impact, while Mark Boleat, one of the City of London’s most senior figures, has repeatedly warned since June that the industry will suffer.
While the political focus is usually on banking, London’s sector is better understood as a broad range of inter-linked services, covering finance and investment, accountancy, management consultancy, communications, IT and much more. There are, for instance, more than 200 foreign law firms operating in the UK, the majority of them in London. Richard Brown, research director at the Centre for London, is clear that, while London has always been a global as much as a European city, EU membership has “played a significant part in London’s growth over the last 25 years, from the way that city institutions have been able to do business across the continent, to the European workers that fill London’s hotels”.
In such highly regulated industries, it is the terms of Brexit that will be so important. But, while concerns are manifold, few are predicting a meltdown in London’s financial and business sector. The House of Lords European Committee has identified numerous threats, such as the loss of “passporting rights” or ability to trade in euro-denominated bonds, but is optimistic that London’s European position can be maintained. Along with the BBA and the City of London, it warns that if there are regulatory problems, it will be New York rather than other European cities that have most to gain.
Brown agrees that London will retain its dominance – even if terms are less favourable: “London has an unrivalled agglomeration of financial and other service firms. Some may relocate, some may choose to expand elsewhere, but many will remain in London. Other cities – like Dublin, Frankfurt, Paris – all have a lot to offer, but none is a perfect rival to London.”
London’s role as a centre for commerce has gone hand-in-hand with its reputation as a cultural powerhouse. According to Paul Owens, director of the World Cities Cultural Forum, which provides data on more than 30 cities across six continents, the reputation is well deserved. “London’s cultural offer is unique not just for its size but for its diversity and dynamism. It combines renowned museums, art collections and institutions alongside global media and entertainment industries, a substantial base of artists, startups and creative entrepreneurs and a thriving night time economy.”
The latest figures confirm the robust health of London’s creative sector, with a workforce of half a million and a turnover of £34bn that is growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole. But this pre-dates a referendum result that was almost unanimously opposed by the sector: a survey undertaken by the Creative Industries Federation showed that 96% of its members backed Remain. While there is little evidence of how the result has impacted so far, there are anxieties across London’s creative industries, from Martin Roth citing the referendum as a factor in stepping down as director of the V&A, to Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising giant WPP, who has warned of Brexit uncertainties hitting revenues.
Certainly, for Owens, the implications of Brexit would seem to be at odds with many of the factors that have made London’s creative industries such a success: “There’s no doubt the decision to leave the EU poses a threat to London’s creative economy. The sector has prospered on diversity, free movement of artistic talent and international supply chains. London’s cultural assets are considerable, but it is likely to be diminished over the next decade unless there is a suitable policy response.”
While some argue that leaving the EU offers the prospect of new trading opportunities, Owens is not convinced this will bring much benefit to London’s creative businesses. “When it comes to creative industries, the likes of China are still relatively small trading partners,” he says. “The UK’s total exports of creative goods to China were about £200m in 2012 – just 3% of what we export to the rest of Europe.”
London is Europe’s undisputed centre for research and learning. There are almost 400,000 students at the capital’s 40 universities and educational institutes, giving a combined turnover of more than £7bn. Its art and design colleges are renowned across the world, while in the area of life sciences, London’s dominance was cemented with the recent opening of the Francis Crick Institute in King’s Cross, which, when fully operational, will employ more than a thousand scientists and become the largest biomedical laboratory in Europe.
Prof Geoffrey Crossick, formerly warden of Goldsmiths College and vice chancellor of the University of London, attributes London’s success as resting on “its ability to benefit from the UK’s global reputation and augment it with very high quality university institutions as well as some world-leading specialist arts institutions. Something special was then added: the fact that London was seen as one of the world’s most culturally exciting, cosmopolitan and multicultural cities.”
For Crossick, the decision to leave the EU is a major blow to London’s higher education sector; 90% of those employed in British universities were thought to have backed Remain. Once again, immigration is a crucial issue. As many as a quarter of students in London are non-British, generating significant revenues for universities, with many research students drawn from EU countries. The regulation of student visas was a fraught political battle when Theresa May was home secretary, which has reached greater intensity as reducing immigration becomes central to government policy.
But the more immediate threat relates to research. Modern academic research is an inherently collaborative activity and increasingly funded through transnational programmes. EU funding is especially important – the Horizon 2020 programme, which covers science and innovation, will allocate some €70bn between 2014 and 2020. The UK has been a substantial net beneficiary of such funding – particularly in London universities, with Imperial and UCL both in the European top 10 in terms of grant revenues, between them delivering well over 300 EU-funded projects at any one time.
Following widespread concerns, the chancellor announced that successful UK applications to current EU programmes will have their grants underwritten by the government. But the future is uncertain, and depending on the UK’s future status in the EU, its leadership role risks being lost. London-based institutes have been at the forefront not only of undertaking research, but also of shaping strategies and determining funding competitions. As Crossick points out, academic colleagues in Europe do not see Brexit as an opportunity for their own institutions – rather they are anxious that “the quality of European research as a whole will suffer from the loss of UK researchers and the UK research environment”.
In recent years, the “silicon roundabout” of Old Street and the wider east London area has grown into Europe’s largest technology cluster. Some 40,000 technology businesses – one fifth of the UK total – are thought to be based in inner London, and the city is rated the best environment for digital startups in Europe, with levels of venture capital activity higher than anywhere outside of the US.
There is no doubt that in the days following the referendum, the mood among a business community known for its optimism and energy was one of anxiety and gloom. Stories of investment deals abruptly collapsing were compounded when a German political party sponsored a van to drive around east London with the message “Dear start-ups, keep calm and move to Berlin”. Mike Butcher, editor-at-large at TechCrunch and veteran commentator on the London tech scene, described how the “Brexit hangover” in the weeks after the result had left entrepreneurs “bewildered” and “reeling”.
Nerves have steadied since the summer with little immediate sign of a slump in hiring or investment. In November, there was a major confidence boost when Google confirmed a new UK headquarters housing 7,000 staff in King’s Cross. But concerns are still prevalent, particularly around restrictions on free movement. It is estimated that a third of London’s technology workers, including many company founders, are born outside of the UK. The mooted skilled visa and work permit systems are difficult to reconcile with a sector characterised by project work, rapidly changing occupations and the need to hire specialist contractors at short notice.
Karen Clements, deputy managing director at consultancy Low Europe, which advises many technology businesses on their overseas strategy, is concerned by the referendum result and subsequent national policy announcements, despite its apparent strengths. She says: “London’s success has largely come from its business connections to the continent’s markets and skilled workforce. If these are damaged, then it is hard to see how it won’t suffer.”
As commentators have observed, the Leave campaign was a coalition of contrasting world views, united in opposition to the EU. There was undoubtedly a libertarian strand which saw Brexit as a chance to embrace free trade, and for London to model itself on the likes of Singapore or Hong Kong. But of more significance electorally were strong protectionist impulses: hostility to immigration in particular, but also to foreign ownership and finance – all of which have been essential to London’s economic dominance. If these impulses prevail, then it is difficult to see how the city can retain its global standing. If London isn’t “open for business” to the rest of the world, then it isn’t really in business at all.
While the question of Britain’s relationship with the EU and rest of the world dominates UK politics, there is also a profound shift of relations between national government and the cities and regions. London, after all, is a city whose electorate diverged strongly from the rest of the country and while its EU nationals were unable to vote in the referendum, many of them work in sectors crucial not just to London’s economy, but to the UK as a whole. As successive mayors often point out, London generates a huge surplus to the Treasury, and is responsible for almost 30% of the national tax revenue. Whatever national politicians may think of London, it is hard to see how they can do without it.
For some years now, leading urban thinkers such as Benjamin Barber, David Adam and Saskia Sassen have been anticipating growing political tensions as world cities grow in economic and cultural importance and find themselves constrained within nation states, increasingly at odds with the more conservative policies of central governments. The relationship between London and the UK in the aftermath of Brexit is a prime example, and in the US Donald Trump is already facing fervent opposition from the largest cities and their leaders.
In the weeks following the referendum, a petition demanding that London declares independence from the UK and remains in the EU received almost 200,000 signatures. While never a serious proposition, it is indicative of the febrile political climate: Sadiq Khan has led a “London is Open” campaign and new policy ideas such as a “London visa”, in which EU nationals are allowed to live and work exclusively in the capital are gaining traction. The Centre for London’s Richard Brown agrees that a “regionalised immigration solution” is needed for the capital, while also insisting that “London government needs more powers over skills, planning and the tax system”. But with a national government that has made reducing immigration a priority, such powers are unlikely to be ceded easily.
Arguments about the economic dominance of London, and its relationship with the rest of the country are almost as old as Britain itself, but they have been hugely exacerbated by the referendum. If 2016 was the year which saw small town conservatism victorious and a resurgence in nationalism, then forthcoming ones are likely to bring a heightened sense of civic identity, and a liberal fight back. Greater political conflict seems inevitable, and London’s status as the commercial and cultural capital of Europe will largely depend on the outcome.
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Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
How should the European Union respond to the narrow decision by voters in the UK to leave? European leaders are now focusing, rightly, on how to prevent other countries from leaving the EU or the euro. The most important country to be kept in the club is Italy, which faces a referendum in October that could pave the way for the anti-euro Five Star Movement to take power.
Europe’s fear of contagion is justified, because the Brexit referendum’s outcome has transformed the politics of EU fragmentation. Before, advocates of leaving the EU or euro could be ridiculed as fantasists or denounced as fascists (or ultra-leftists). This is no longer possible.
Brexit has turned leave (whether the EU or the euro) into a realistic option in every European country. Once Britain gives the union formal notice (by invoking article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon), that option will enter the mainstream of political debate everywhere. Research by the European Council on Foreign Relations has found 34 anti-EU referendum demands in 18 other countries. Even if each of these challenges has only a 5% chance of success, the probability of at least one succeeding is 83%.
Can the genie of disintegration be put back in its bottle? The EU’s breakup may well prove unstoppable once Britain leaves; but Britain has not yet invoked article 50. The bottle could still be sealed before the genie escapes.
Unfortunately, Europe is using the wrong threats and incentives to achieve this. France is demanding that Britain accelerate its exit. Germany is playing the “good cop” by offering access to the single market, but only in exchange for immigration rules that Britain will not accept. These are exactly the wrong sticks and carrots.
Instead of rushing Brexit, Europe’s leaders should be trying to avert it, by persuading British voters to change their minds. The aim should not be to negotiate the terms of departure, but to negotiate the terms on which most British voters would want to remain.
An EU strategy to avoid Brexit, far from ignoring British voters, would show genuine respect for democracy. The essence of democratic politics is responding to public dissatisfaction with policies and ideas – and then trying to change the judgment of voters. That is how numerous referendum outcomes – in France, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, and Greece – have been reversed, even when deeply emotional issues, such as abortion and divorce, were involved.
If European leaders tried the same approach with Britain, they might be surprised by the favourable response. Many leave voters are already having second thoughts, and prime minister Theresa May’s uncompromising negotiating position will paradoxically accelerate this process, because voters now face a much more extreme version of Brexit than they were promised by the leave campaign.
May has stated unequivocally that immigration control is her over-riding priority and that Norway or Switzerland can no longer be models for Britain’s relationship with the EU. Her new “Brexit ministry” has defined Britain’s main objective as tariff-free access to Europe and free-trade agreements with the rest of the world. That means abandoning the interests of Britain’s financial and business services, because services are unaffected by tariffs and are excluded from most free-trade deals.
As a result, the new government will soon be politically vulnerable. In fact, most British voters already disagree with its negotiating priorities. Post-referendum polls show voters giving priority to single-market access over immigration restrictions by a two-to-one margin or more.
Making matters worse for May, her slender parliamentary majority depends on disgruntled remain rivals. As the British economy sinks into recession, trade deals prove illusory, and legal and constitutional obstacles proliferate, May will find it hard to maintain the parliamentary discipline needed to deliver Brexit.
A strategy to avert Brexit therefore has a good chance of success. The EU could advance this strategy by calling May’s bluff on “Brexit means Brexit”. May should be told that only two outcomes are possible: either Britain loses all single-market access and interacts with Europe solely under World Trade Organisation rules, or it remains an EU member, after negotiating reforms that could persuade voters to reconsider Brexit in a general election or a second referendum.
This binary approach, provided EU leaders showed genuine flexibility in their reform negotiations, could transform public attitudes in Britain and across Europe. Imagine if the EU offered constructive immigration reforms – for example, restoring national control over welfare payments to non-citizens and allowing for an “emergency brake” on sudden population movements – to all members. Such reforms would demonstrate the EU’s respect for democracy in Britain – and could turn the tide of anti-EU populism across northern Europe.
The EU has a long history of adapting in response to political pressures in important member states. So why is this strategy not being considered to counter the existential threat of Brexit?
The answer has nothing to do with supposed respect for democracy. The Brexit vote is no more irreversible than any other election or referendum, provided the EU is willing to adopt some modest reforms.
The real obstacle to a strategy of persuading Britain to remain in the EU is the EU bureaucracy. The European commission, once the EU’s source of visionary creativity, has become a fanatical defender of existing rules and regulations, however irrational and destructive, on the grounds that any concessions will beget more demands. Concessions to British voters on immigration would inspire the southern countries to demand fiscal and banking reforms, eastern countries would seek budget changes, and non-euro countries would demand an end to their second-class status.
 Anatole Kaletsky is chief economist and co-chairman of Gavekal Dragonomics
Last modified on Wed 15 Jan 2020 15.35 GMT
Within a day of the announcement of Britain’s decision to quit the EU, Prof Dame Til Wykes was contacted by a leading candidate for a professorship in her department at King’s College London. The candidate no longer wished to be considered for the post, she was told. Three days later, a similar message was received from a second candidate. One of the most important centres for the study of mental illness in the world had suddenly lost its allure, it seemed. It was not hard to work out what was the problem.
“It is pretty straightforward,” says Wykes. “If Brexit goes ahead, then scientists here might not be able to attract European Union research grants in future. And if you are coming here to take up a professorship for the next 10 years of your life, the prospect of losing a major source of grant money in the process looks a pretty poor bet. Frankfurt or Paris suddenly look much better shots.”
The problem is not unique to King’s College. The threat of withdrawal from the EU is already causing scientific tremors across the UK. Candidates are quitting, collaborations are being questioned and the future funding structure of UK science scrutinised as never before. Many believe that the EU research gravy train – from which UK scientists have benefited deeply in recent years – may soon grind to a halt, with grievous consequences. The issues are not straightforward, however, as Royal Society president Venkatraman “Venki” Ramakrishnan makes clear.
“Yes, we put money into the EU and we get money back for various programmes,” he says. “And in terms of science projects we get more proportionally than we put into the EU in general. But a Brexiter would still argue that the UK puts in more money in total to the EU than it gets back.
“It is a point, but it ignores many key facts. For example, when science funding in Britain was flat – and declining in real terms – during the first years of the coalition government, it was EU funding that allowed us to stay competitive. It paid about 10% of our overall university research funding and kept us afloat.”
Scientifically, the EU saved the day, but that funding is now threatened, with potentially grim consequences for UK science. Between 2007 and 2013, Britain contributed €5.4bn to the EU’s research funds – and got €8.8bn back. Our researchers have punched way above their weight, it is now clear, and used European money to fund work that covers cancer projects, mental health research, marine biology, improving fertiliser use on farms and a host of other projects that sustain our industries and keep them competitive. Such projects are now threatened – a prospect that the majority of British people were either ignorant of, or thought was unimportant, when they voted to leave Europe.
A rough rule-of-thumb calculation suggests that an extra £500m a year will now have to be found by the government to compensate our researchers for their loss of EU funding. Many Brexiters insisted, before the referendum, that this would be forthcoming. Few senior scientists believe it will be the case.
“I am very sceptical that the government will compensate for those lost funds,” says Professor Mark Sutton of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, near Edinburgh, and a leader of a EU Horizon 2020 project on nitrogen and phosphorus pollution on farmland. “More to the point, most of my colleagues don’t think it will happen either.”
Neither, for good measure, does the newly reappointed science minister Jo Johnson. He told a House of Lords committee in March it would be rash to pretend it would be easy to replace the financial support the EU provides to UK science in the event of Brexit. “We would not know what other claims there might be on the public purse, or what state our economy would be in,” he said.
Loss of funding seems inevitable, a “worrisome” development, as Ramakrishnan describes it. “Unfortunately, there are even more worrying things in the pipeline,” he says. Consider the networks and contacts that the UK has established with our European counterparts over the decades. Science is a highly collaborative process and thrives on interactions. These could easily evaporate if Britain is no longer involved in EU research projects as a full partner.
“For a start, we learn a great deal from these interactions,” says cancer expert Professor Mark Lawler, of Queen’s University Belfast. “Take the example of early cancer diagnosis. That is something that the UK has been poor at in the past. However, with recent collaborations, particularly with Denmark, we have been learning how to improve them. Now this process is threatened.
“In addition, there is our ability to direct science policy and projects. We have been closely involved at the very beginning of major projects – such as those emanating from the EU’s vast Horizon 2020 research programme. We have played a key leadership role in setting them up, selecting personnel and establishing the direction of research.”
An example is provided by research in precision medicine, which uses the recently acquired ability to study individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle to create new medicines and treatments for cancer patients. A European precision medicine programme is now being set up – initially with the UK playing a key role. “It remains to be seen what our role will be now,” adds Lawler.
A similar concern is voiced by marine biologist Claire Gachon, who is based at the Scottish Marine Institute in Oban and has collaborated on major EU research projects that are concerned with ensuring the health of our seas. “Most EU research programmes are designed in Brussels according to suggestions made by member countries as to what research areas should be funded,” she says.
“From now on – while uncertainty remains following the Brexit vote – it is hard to see how the UK’s interests can be represented in the design of new calls. In other words, other EU countries are likely to gear future funding opportunities towards their own priorities. It is extremely hard to see how the UK’s leadership could be retained in such a context.” In other words, bang goes Britain’s ability to lead European science.
However, scientists stress that all is not lost. Brexit negotiations could still see Britain retain roles in Horizon 2020 projects and other collaborations, just as non-EU nations such as Switzerland, Norway and Israel do at present. “We have got to retain the maximum level of participation,” says Ramakrishnan. “We have to try to be allowed to continue in EU projects.”
However, the UK’s science headaches do not stop here. There is also the issue of recruitment – not just for professors but for PhD students. As Gachon points out, high overseas tuition fees and residential tests already reduce the recruitment of academically excellent non-EU citizens in UK labs.
“Should similar limitations be erected for EU students and employees, I fail to see how I could sustain a world-class research group with a recruitment base shrinking effectively from 500 million people down to 60 million,” she says. “With great sadness, I would seriously explore options to relocate my research group elsewhere in the EU.”
For Wykes, at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College, the problem she and her colleagues face is the nature of funding for mental illness. “We do not get support from major charities, so cannot launch vast research programmes without the help of the EU. It has given us the means to do that,” she says.
“For example, we have just launched the Radar-CNS project with €22m of EU money. It involves 24 universities as well as technology and pharmaceutical companies and aims to perfect ways to monitor the activities and moods of patients with depression and other conditions so that we can help to provide more tailored therapies for them. We got our money a week before Brexit. Who knows what will happen the next time we set up such a programme.”
A similar point is made by Lawler. He points to the Collaborative Oncological Gene Environment network whose funding included an EU grant of €11.7m. UK scientists played a major role in identifying new susceptibilities for breast, ovarian and prostate cancer, and also in recent breakthroughs in cancer immunotherapy by working with their counterparts in Europe.
As he says: “Cancer has no respect for borders. So why are we introducing barriers that will inhibit cancer research and thus lead to poorer outcomes for UK citizens? It makes no sense.”
First published on Wed 13 Jun 2018 11.28 BST
It says a lot about Theresa May’s handling of Brexit that the principle of a “meaningful” vote for parliament on the final deal has been settled, but only by deferring agreement on the meaning of “meaningful”.
The prime minister has promised to satisfy Tory rebel demands that MPs be consulted on future steps in the event that the deal is voted down. This is significant because parliament’s binary right to approve or reject May’s Brexit terms (conceded last year) had set up a game of chicken. The government could tell parliament that the options were May’s deal or no deal at all; capitulation or chaos.
Tory moderates and opposition parties want a more diverse menu. May appears to be offering one. What exactly she is putting on the menu is unclear. The compromise was cooked up in fevered discussion on the margins of a Commons debate and it is easy to get lost in the procedural labyrinth that has led to this point.
But, viewed from a step back, the political dynamic has three forces.
1. Soft Brexiters and unbowed remainers want a safety net to minimise the hazard of no deal.
2. May resists anything that limits her room for manoeuvre.
3. Hard Brexiters dread the creation of legislative trapdoors through which pro-EU feeling might sneak in and kidnap their dream.
Parliamentary arithmetic favours the soft Brexiters. That is the salient storyline in Tuesday’s Commons theatre. If May tries to renege on the substance of what was agreed with the moderates, she will incite a bigger, angrier rebellion. There is plenty of Brexit legislation to which that fury might attach itself. Besides, May is not a Europhobe fanatic. She wants a deal. She also wants to avoid ripping the Conservatives apart. Those things are not easily combined, but her method has proved surprisingly effective. It is sometimes compared by ministers to the “rope-a-dope” – the boxing tactic famously used by Muhammad Ali in his 1974 bout with George Foreman in Zaire. Ali leant into the ropes, rolling with Foreman’s punches, using sheer stamina to drain his opponent of energy before launching a lethal counter-attack.
May is no Ali. She is not The Greatest. She neither floats like a butterfly, nor stings much like a bee. But the rope-a-dope is working against the hard Brexiters. They throw their fists wildly, threatening to resign or to unseat their leader, but May is still standing and her Brexit agenda is softening daily.
How long can this go on? The hard Brexiters feel a creeping sense of betrayal but their options are limited. There is really only one: the nuclear option of challenging May and hoping to replace her with one of their own. But that is high risk. She could survive. She could be replaced by a more moderate leader. The government could collapse, triggering a sequence of falling constitutional dominoes that ends with Labour taking power.
And it isn’t obvious that the Brexit ultras would want to be in control of the process now. Then they would have to negotiate, to own the compromises and explain the disappointments. They would no longer have the luxury of crying betrayal from the sidelines, which is all they really know how to do. But they also have limits and pride. There is surely a point at which the compromises get too big and too bitter to swallow.
There are some Tory MPs whose attachment to the hardest-possible Brexit is greater than their attachment to anything else. They say they would sooner detonate than dilute. They would bring May’s temple down before worshipping at an altar facing Brussels, even if that means making Jeremy Corbyn prime minister. Some of them are bluffing, but how many? Some pro-Brexit Tory MPs feel they are being sold out but others are fed up with the whole business and, mindful that their constituents aren’t fussed about the detail, take the view that any Brexit is better than no Brexit.
May’s gamble is that the number of obedient Tory congregants will grow and the number of temple-trashing ultras will shrink. It is a reasonable bet, but not a safe one. That is the meaning of her compromise on the “meaningful vote”. It leans towards a softer deal, which pushes the hardest leavers towards their breaking point. It makes the prospect of no deal and chaos less likely, but also, to the most extreme Brexiteers, more enticing.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
The lunatics have taken over the asylum. The Labour and Conservative conferences were proof positive that the moderates no longer hold sway. The cheers were for the zealots, whether that was John McDonnell or Jacob Rees-Mogg. And, whether from front or back benches, it is they who rule the roost when it comes to leaving the EU. So where have the centrists (and I acknowledge, as Helen Lewis has underlined, that the term is imprecise and potentially misleading, but I can think of no better one) gone? And how should they react?
The missing middle is all the more striking as there is a clear majority in parliament for a much softer form of Brexit than both leaderships seem committed to. Moreover, public opinion appears to favour such an outcome, too. Indeed, strikingly, a recent poll carried out for the Times found that 42% think the UK is right to leave the EU and 47% think it is wrong, the biggest gap since the referendum.
Yet Brexit elicited barely a mention from the platform in either Brighton or Manchester. From a party management point of view, this made perfect sense. Both Labour and the Conservatives are riven with divisions between leavers and remainers, hard and soft Brexiters. Avoiding debate means the respective leaderships can cling to the line that Brexit means hard Brexit: departure from both the single market and customs union.
Both parties are officially backing policies that will make us poorer as a country. A hard Brexit will dramatically decrease our trade with our nearest and largest trading partner, while impacting on levels of foreign investment here.
Where, then, are the voices of moderation? On the evidence of the last few weeks, desperately rowing in behind their party leaderships. While David Lammy gushed praise for Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech, Philip Hammond hardly mentioned Brexit in his own peroration in Manchester. At fringe events, former remainers acted for the most part like converts. Stephen Kinnock and Yvette Cooper triangulated desperately on free movement, while Charlie Elphicke has clearly drunk the Brexit Kool-Aid. Once home from Manchester, Nicky Morgan wrote of the need for the Tories to reclaim the moderate centre ground – without mentioning the Brexit revolution.
And so, on the biggest single issue of our time, a process that promises to rewrite the political economy of the country, relatively few opposing voices are being raised in parliament.
There are, of course, perfectly good, career-related reasons for this silence. The hard Brexiters hold the whip hand and indeed control the whips. On the Labour side, moreover, non-Corbynite MPs fear deselection processes triggered by Momentum to punish disloyalty.
Moreover, there is genuine loyalty to party. Labour MPs fear prolonging Tory rule by fostering disunity. Similarly, many – if not most – Conservatives believe a Corbyn administration would be more catastrophic than the hardest of hard Brexits.
So on the biggest issue of the day, the centre ground is disappearing before our eyes. Little surprise that this has sparked renewed interest in the idea of a new party to fill the void. Remarkably, at one point during the Tory conference, I noticed Ladbrokes were offering 200-1 on the Democrats – a party that exists solely on Twitter – winning most seats at the next election (the odds have subsequently lengthened).
France, we are told, provides a model. There, the president, Emmanuel Macron, created a political movement from scratch and wiped the floor with incumbents of left and right. Yet beware appealing analogies. Macron certainly saw off the traditional parties, but they largely did his work for him. The incumbent socialist president was polling in single digits, while François Fillon, the candidate of the centre right, became embroiled in a scandal about corruption and nepotism.
The chances of something similar happening over here seem remote. For one thing, far from the two major parties collapsing, they are resurgent. Between them, Labour and the Conservatives won no less than 82% of the votes in the last election. The last time they had gobbled up this proportion of the vote was in 1970.
And of course, we live under an electoral system designed precisely to produce two-party politics. Granted, there have been times in our recent past when it has failed to do so. But that was a moment when Labour and the Conservatives had converged on an ideological centre ground, driving people to experiment with alternatives. When the two big beasts are as ideologically polarised as now, all eyes tend to be on them.
And beyond the electoral hurdles there are financial ones. While a French presidential campaign is hardly cheap, it is far more so than campaigning in a parliamentary system. Running campaigns and gathering data in 650 constituencies is a herculean task.
So the two major parties are following an extreme path, internally hugely divided and yet enormously popular. The structural constraints on a new entrant were perhaps most neatly encapsulated in Nick Clegg’s call for those opposed to Brexit to join Labour or the Conservatives.
Easy, then, to understand why those MPs opposed to the course we are on have chosen to keep their heads down. Kicking the can down the road is, after all, a tried and tested political strategy.
Yet, this time, the road involved is a cul-de-sac. In March 2019 our EU membership will cease. At that point, even under the best-case scenario, large-scale economic adjustment will take its toll in the short term. Under the scenario considered more realistic by the majority of serious economists, leaving the single market and the customs union will significantly disrupt trade with the European Union, imposing a serious hit on the British economy.
What then? Do the moderates really believe that this kind of economic fallout will lead to a lurch back to the political centre ground? Will sensible, centrist politics really be the victor from an economic shock that might rival that of the financial crisis in scale? At a minimum, neither party will have a hope in hell of delivering on its policy pledges. It is hardly inconceivable that even more extreme political alternatives profit from the dissatisfaction that is bound to result.
The prospects for the political middle ground are bleak. Their influence in their own parties is negligible. Speaking out is not safe. Nevertheless, the time for silence is past. Allowing a hard Brexit would harm the country and, in all likelihood, disempower them still further. People who knowingly walk off a cliff are, if anything, more culpable than those who simply refuse to admit that the cliff is there before crashing to earth. Surely it’s time for the centrists to be bold?
Last modified on Thu 16 Apr 2020 12.32 BST
On Saturday, for the first time in living memory, neo-fascists were chanting the name of the serving prime minister. Supporters of the English Defence League and the Democratic Football Lads Alliance wandered around Whitehall some drunk, harassing random remain protesters and shouting into the faces of journalists until, inevitably, they attacked the police.
It’s part of an unnerving trend that’s emerged in the past two weeks: the normalisation of chaos.
We have a parliament suspended against its will. We have ministers threatening to break the law. We have allegations that a network of advisers inside Whitehall are using encrypted messaging to circumvent legal scrutiny. And we have briefings to selected journalists that the government might suspend the rule of law by invoking the Emergency Powers Act.
Yet at the end of the headlines there is always the weather and the same jokey riff between a presenter and a hapless BBC political correspondent. Nine out of 10 stories on the front pages of news sites remain focused on dating, food fads and the antics of minor royals.
Nothing in this bleak and blurry picture is happening by accident. Listen to the reported promises of Dominic Cummings: he will “wreck” the Labour party conference; he will “purge” the Tory rebels; he will “smash” Jeremy Corbyn and he reportedly does not care if Northern Ireland “falls into the sea”.
This is a power-grab run to a script, whereby every time the government is thwarted by MPs it simply ups the ante: between now and the European council meeting in October, it will stage one calculated outrage after another.
One of the most dangerous factors in this situation is the incomprehension of Britain’s technocratic elites. At Eton they might ask pupils to write the imaginary speech they would give while leading a military coup, but on the philosophy, politics and economics course at Oxford, it is generally assumed you are heading for a career in the governance of a stable democracy.
Few are prepared to address the material roots and class dynamics of this crisis, because nobody taught them to do so. But they are clear.
In Britain, as in the US, the business elite has fractured into two groups: one wants to defend the multilateral global order and globalised free trade; another desires to break the system. Here, as with Trump, that group includes the fracking bosses, the tax-dodging private equity bosses and the speculative ends of property and high finance.
Here, as with Trump, the instability they need also suits the geopolitical aims of Vladimir Putin – whose mouthpieces Sputnik, Ruptly and RT are offering quiet support for Boris Johnson’s narrative, if not the man himself. But this is also a transatlantic project of the Trump administration. For Trump, the prize of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October is a pliant, shattered trading partner and a potential accomplice for the provocations he is planning against Iran.
The liberal establishment – found in the corporate boardrooms, among the masters of Oxbridge colleges, in law and medicine and among the old-money landowners – does not know what to do. Meanwhile the working class is more divided culturally than at any point since Oswald Mosley tried to march down Cable Street.
I don’t want to encourage paranoia, but as a mental exercise ask yourself: if there was a single mind coordinating this crisis, what would it be thinking now?
First, that the fragility of the unwritten constitution is a proven fact. If parliament can be prorogued once, it can be prorogued again. Second, that parts of the British media have no stomach for the task of actively defending the rule of law and the principle of accountability.
Third, that an atmosphere of weariness is descending on the mass of people. They were already weary of Brexit and are now getting weary of endless headlines about a constitutional crisis that never seems to end.
In the 1930s, the psychologist Erich Fromm noted that the ideal conditions for the rise of dictators and autocrats was a “state of inner tiredness and resignation”, which he attributed to the pace of life in stressed, industrialised societies.
Among the German working class, Fromm observed “a deep feeling of resignation, of disbelief in their leaders, of doubt about the value of any kind of political organization and political activity … deep within themselves many had given up any hope in the effectiveness of political action”.
It is this above all that we have to fight – like sleep after a night shift – in the next five weeks. Among the urban, educated and salaried working class this moment already feels like the start of the poll tax rebellion. But in small town, deindustrialised communities there is confusion. People in those places thought that Brexit was a rebellion for democracy against the elite, but here’s the actual elite – the Queen, Jacob Rees-Mogg and co – shutting down democracy. How we address that mood will determine the outcome of the situation.
Professional politics has come to focus on micro-polling and message testing, but the most instinctive thing to do is get down to a pub this Friday night, in a place you know there’s going to be support for Johnson, and calmly argue the toss.
The transparent aim of Johnson is to create a chaotic situation, in which decent people become too frightened by fascists and football hooligans to protest; in which the progressive majority of voters are otherised as “luvvies, climate loons and traitors” – a darkest hour in which, though he created the darkness, he eventually gets to switch on the lights.
We need now to reach across party loyalties and demographic differences to explain face to face: what we’re living through is not normal, nor accidental. It’s a fabricated chaos. And the road back to normality lies through getting Johnson out of Downing Street.
First published on Sun 16 Sep 2018 12.34 BST
MPs could undo the Chequers deal once the UK has left the EU, Michael Gove has claimed, saying the prime minister’s proposal was the “right one for now”.
The environment secretary, a prominent Brexiter, has regularly made a similar case in private to MPs, urging them to back May to see through Britain’s exit rather than risk an impasse in parliament or a general election.
If the EU changed its rules to disadvantage Britain, he said, it would be up to parliament to “chart this nation’s destiny” and potentially change the relationship, he said.
His intervention came hours before his former cabinet colleague Boris Johnson launched yet another broadside against the plan, suggesting that ministers had been “taken in” about the implications of the Irish backstop agreement in December.
In that agreement, the UK government agreed if the EU was not satisfied with the arrangements for the border, Northern Ireland would be part of the EU customs union and large parts of its single market. Johnson said ministers had been told it was “only hypothetical … We were taken in.”
Writing in the Telegraph, Johnson said the consequences would “amount to a change in Northern Ireland’s constitutional status without its people’s consent … it is a monstrosity.”
To avoid a border down the Irish Sea, the UK has argued it must be a UK-wide backstop. “That is also the essence of the Chequers proposals,” he wrote. “They mean that the UK will become a rules-taker not just in goods and agri-foods, but almost certainly in the environment and social policy and many other legislative areas.
“The whole thing is a constitutional abomination, and if Chequers were adopted it would mean that for the first time since 1066 our leaders were deliberately acquiescing in foreign rule.”
Gove is among the more sceptical cabinet Brexiters who have been persuaded to back the prime minister’s plans for a common rulebook on goods as part of the proposals brokered at the prime minister’s country retreat in Chequers this summer, which led to Johnson’s resignation.
Others who have stayed in the cabinet but remain in doubt about the plans include the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, and the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom.
On Sunday, Gove told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that “a future prime minister could always choose to alter the relationship between Britain and the European Union.
“But the Chequers approach is the right one for now because we have got to make sure that we respect that vote and take advantage of the opportunities of being outside the European Union.”
He is understood to have made a similar case to MPs repeatedly over the summer, admitting he had some discomfort with some terms of the deal but that it delivered on most key tenets of the referendum, including leaving the European court of justice and ending free movement.
His public argument comes amid a charm offensive in which Brexit-backing MPs have been hosted in Downing Street by senior staff who have made the case for the prime minister’s deal and warned them they risk a second referendum or general election if they vote down any agreement.
Gove said the UK had shown flexibility and it was now time for the EU to show some willingness to compromise.
“I’ve compromised,” he said. “I’ve been quite clear that some of the things that I argued for in the referendum passionately, as a result of Chequers, I have to qualify one or two of my views. I have to acknowledge the parliamentary arithmetic. I believe the critical thing is making sure we leave in good order with a deal which safeguards the referendum mandate.”
The Liberal Democrats’ Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said the comments were “hypocrisy and disloyalty” from the cabinet minister. “He must be running out of daggers. First Cameron, then Boris, now May. If he gets his way, it’ll be the country next.”
Conservative MPs who oppose the Chequers deal, including the former Brexit secretary, David Davis, are to ramp up public opposition in the coming weeks with a series of rallies.
Davis will share a platform with the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the hard Brexit European Research Group of MPs. Others who will speak at the rallies, organised by the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave, include the former Brexit minister David Jones, the former environment secretary Owen Paterson and the Labour MP Kate Hoey.
The rallies will begin next Saturday in Bolton with Farage, Davis and Hoey, an event that organisers say has almost sold out. Other rallies will take place in Birmingham during the Conservative party conference and continue on to Torquay, Bournemouth, Gateshead and Harrogate.Richard Tice, the vice-chair of Leave Means Leave, said: “Leave Means Leave will be travelling across the country to make the case that the prime minister should chuck the Chequers plan and save £39bn. The cross-party nature of the campaign proves how important this battle is. Party politics has been put to one side to secure what is best for Britain’s future.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Economists at major City investment banks have cancelled forecasts of a Brexit-inspired recession amid fresh data showing the economy performing more robustly than expected. Britain’s trade deficit narrowed significantly in July, as exports increased by £800m to £28.4bn, while imports fell by £300m to £36.6bn. Construction output was also steady in July, faring better than expected a month after the Brexit vote.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse are among the major banks that have now withdrawn earlier predictions that Britain is likely to enter recession.
Credit Suisse had been among the most bearish immediately after the EU referendum result, forecasting a 1% contraction in the UK economy in 2017. However, in a note entitled “Bouncing back from Brexit”, its economists now reckon the UK economy will expand by 0.5% next year.
“The negative impact of the UK’s vote to leave the EU on growth appears to have been materially less than we expected in late June … Resumed political stability, a weaker currency and the Bank of England’s policy response look to have stabilised activity ... that may be sufficient for GDP to avoid a modest contraction.”
Other major banks had forecast a “technical recession” with GDP possibly going negative for two quarters later this year or next. Morgan Stanley initially forecast the economy going negative by 0.4% in the third quarter of 2016, but this week changed that to expectations of 0.3% growth. It said: “We’ve ‘marked-to-market’ our growth forecast from a sharp slowdown and Brecession, to a lesser slowdown, which narrowly avoids a technical recession.”
In the days after the vote, Goldman Sachs slashed its growth forecast for the UK by 2.5% over two years. Its chief European economist, Huw Pill, said on 27 June that there would be “a steep fall in activity” as he predicted a “mild recession by early 2017”.
Pill said this week: “The downturn in the UK – while still substantial – is likely to be shallower than we thought in the immediate aftermath of the referendum.” Goldman Sachs is now pencilling in UK growth of 0.9% in 2017.
One forecasting house, Oxford Economics, which maintains a “recession watch” barometer, on Friday lowered the chances of a UK recession from 30% to 25%.
Prominent vote leave campaigner, Ukip’s only MP Douglas Carswell, said the U-turn in recession forecasts showed how far bankers are “marinaded in groupthink”. “Having hyped up the dangers of Brexit, a lot of the banks today look pretty stupid – almost as stupid as they were before the financial crisis, when they were convinced that the bubble would last. If only their bonuses were related to the accuracy of their forecasts.”
However, some economists are standing firm on their forecasts about the possibility of a Brexit-inspired recession, continuing to predict a significant slowdown in the UK economy in 2017, with article 50 yet to be triggered, and businesses deeply cautious about investing while negotiations over Britain’s exit from the EU continue.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research said: “For the year to date, economic growth in the UK has been subdued compared with recent history, and the economy has been flat since April. Given this, the probability of a technical recession before the end of 2017 remains significantly elevated.”
Among the more bearish of City commentators is Pantheon Macroeconomics. In a note to clients earlier this week, its chief UK economist, Samuel Tombs, said the “weak July industrial production figures keep the risk of a contraction in Q3 GDP alive”.
He expects industrial production to decline in August and September, leave production 0.3% lower in Q3 than Q2. He added that the better trade data “is emphatically not a sign that sterling’s depreciation already is having beneficial effects … as it takes time for firms to renegotiate contacts and exporters to invest in new capacity. In addition, multinational companies have warned vocally that they will hold back from investing and relocating production to the UK.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Prominent remain supporters including Tony Blair and John Major have been working with Nick Clegg and Peter Mandelson on a diplomatic mission to try to persuade European leaders to stop Brexit.
Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, began the mission independently but has taken on the role of informal shop steward to the grandees.
In recent weeks Clegg has met Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Bundestag president, Peter Altmeier, the German economics minister, Sigmar Gabriel, a former German foreign minister, and senior officials in the foreign policy team of the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Last week Blair met senior politicians in Germany and Austria and Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Salvini. The People’s Vote campaign, working alongside Clegg, has appointed Tom Cole, a former EU commission official, to stay in regular contact with EU embassies in London.
Reports from the shuttle diplomacy are fed into the weekly meeting on Wednesday mornings of remain-backing MPs, which is chaired by Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP and lead coordinator on the coming parliamentary Brexit endgame.
One source said: “We are not trying to subvert the government negotiations but we are trying to make sure European leaders are plugged into British politics and are not just getting information from the UK government.”
The greatest difficulty of the alternative diplomatic mission is that it is self-appointed and represents no party.
Speaking from Italy, Clegg told the Guardian: “The aim of the visits is to persuade EU leaders that British politics has made the option of remaining inside the EU viable.”
Arguing that the British discussion about a further referendum was often held in isolation from European politics, he explained: “My primary purpose has been to get European politicians just prepared for the possibility that Britain is not capable of delivering a workable Brexit and they may need to be ready for that.
“It is a question of pressing them to keep open the extension of the article 50 process beyond the March deadline to give UK negotiators more time including to prepare legislation on a people’s vote.”
Clegg is well connected to undertake this shuttle diplomacy, having known the chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, for nearly 25 years. Some key members of Barnier’s negotiating team worked alongside Clegg when he worked at the commission.
Clegg said: “For a year after the referendum I was received with a mixture of curiosity and pity on the basis it was not remotely likely anything was going to stop Brexit. The atmosphere has changed.”
He pointed to the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, saying he preferred a pause in the negotiations rather than a hard Brexit.
Clegg is also trying to gather support for a new offer from Europe in the event of a further referendum. “We cannot just turn the clock back to just before the 2016 referendum. There would have to be some changes of freedom of movement; we cannot just put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
Blair, who met Barnier on 18 July, said a large part of his meetings last week were to discuss a new common approach to immigration in the UK and EU.
“You cannot deal with this Brexit issue unless you deal with the questions of immigration and the anxieties that gave rise to it,” he said. “Since 2016 and the referendum, immigration is Europe’s problem. Today it is upending the politics of every single country in Europe – every single one. There are lots of things we as the UK can do without displacing the basic principle of free movement.”
Clegg has also tried to explain how the UK could participate in the European parliamentary elections in May, and have MEPs leave later if necessary.
The remain diplomats are studying the commission’s plans for the political declaration on the future relationship between the EU and the UK, seen as critical to whether wavering Tory MPs eventually support Theresa May’s deal. The declaration, due to be endorsed by majority vote by heads of government, will sit alongside the legally binding withdrawal agreement covering issues such as money.
It is assumed that the less detail in the declaration, and the more the difficult decisions are deferred, the easier it will be for the Brexit-supporting MPs to wave the deal through on the basis that the UK will be over the legal finishing line. Once outside the EU, more maximalist negotiating positions can be readopted, with or without May as leader.
Clegg was one of the first to predict, as far back as December 2017 in the FT, that the political declaration may be a fudge, in effect leaving the critical aspects of the future relationship, including terms of UK access to the single market, to be negotiated during the 21-month transition period.
How strictly to set the parameters on the future trading relationship in the political declaration, and the legal enforceability of whatever is agreed, are among the biggest issues exercising European capitals, Clegg judges.
Remainers doing their diplomatic rounds are struck by how fearful some in Europe are of Boris Johnson. “Some are trying to find some vacuity or weak verbiage to keep Theresa May in office, so they will look for a kind of merger between the Chequers plan and Canada free trade agreement – Cheqada,” said Clegg.
He said it would be “a democratic outrage to embark on a blindfold Brexit”. Yet People’s Vote officials know it is a threat. “It is harder to denounce a blancmange,” said one, especially if Brussels is the co-chef.
Barnier largely regards his job as negotiating the exit, including the Irish border issue, but not the future relationship. Some member states are inclined simply to bundle the UK out the door and park the controversies so they can get on with the reform of Europe.
Remain lobbyists are trying to glean whether Angela Merkel will try to save May by settling for what Lord Mandelson says would be “cosmetic certainty” in a vague declaration on future relations.
Macron, it is thought, is most apprised of the need to pin down the future relationship if he is to save his vision of Europe in the European elections. Brexit has to be seen as a warning to the populists, not an enticement. Polls showing the unpopularity of a blind Brexit have been sent to the French.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
The scale of no-deal panic gripping major companies has been thrown into sharp focus by a series of damage-limitation announcements, as corporate Britain signalled it is running out of patience with Westminster gridlock.
Sir James Dyson, the Brexit-backing billionaire, dealt a further blow to the government by revealing he is shifting his company headquarters to Singapore in a move that drew sharp criticism.
Dyson’s decision to move his HQ out of the UK came on a day in which a series of high-profile names revealed measures to mitigate the impact of a disorderly departure from the EU:
 P&O announced that its entire fleet of cross-Channel ferries will be re-registered under the Cypriot flag, as the 182-year-old British maritime operator activated its Brexit plans.
 Sony confirmed it is moving its European headquarters from London to Amsterdam.
 The chief executive of luxury carmaker Bentley said the company was stockpiling parts and described Brexit as a “killer” threatening his firm’s profitability.
 Retailers Dixons Carphone and Pets at Home announced plans to shore up supplies in the event of chaos at British ports.
P&O, which began life as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation company in 1837, said all six of its cross-Channel ferries will be re-registered from the UK registry in Cyprus to keep EU tax benefits. The ferries include, the Spirit of Britain, the Pride of Kent and the Pride of Canterbury.
Sony confirmed it was merging its London-based European unit with a new entity based in Amsterdam that would become the new continental HQ. Sony said: “In this way we can continue our business as usual without disruption once the UK leaves the EU.”
The boss of Pets at Home, the nation’s biggest pet supplier, said his company had started stockpiling essentials – including cat food – as “we don’t want families to run out of food for their pets” after Brexit day on 29 March.
Sir James Dyson failed to appear at a media event at which his company announced the relocation of its corporate base from Wiltshire to Singapore. Dyson, who was a leading supporter of the leave campaign who urged ministers to walk away without a deal saying “they’ll come to us”, did not explain why he is taking the HQ of the firm he founded in 1991 out of the UK.
The chief executive of Dyson, Jim Rowan, said the move from Wiltshire to Singapore had “nothing to do with Brexit” but was about “future-proofing” the business. The move of Dyson’s legal entity from the UK to Singapore “will happen over the coming months”, meaning it could take place before Brexit.
The decision to leave the UK was made by Sir James together with “the executive team”, Dyson said. Sir James, who owns 100% of the company, has built up a £9.5bn personal fortune making him the 12th richest person in Britain according to the Sunday Times rich list.
A spokeswoman for the 71-year-old billionaire said he would “continue to divide his time between Singapore and the UK as the business requires it”.
His company employs 4,500 people in the UK out of a global workforce of 12,000. It said the HQ move would not affect British jobs
Rowan said moving to Singapore was part of “the evolution” of the company. When asked whether Dyson could still be referred to as one of Britain’s best success stories, he said the firm should now be referred to as a “global technology company”. When he was prime minister David Cameron hailed Dyson as a “great British success story”.
Sir James is not the first pro-Brexit billionaire to pull back from the UK since the referendum. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest person with a £21bn fortune, was reported last year to be planning to leave Britain for Monaco.
Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said the litany of business announcements should send politicians a clear and simple message. “A March no-deal must be ruled out immediately,” she said. “This is the only way to halt irreversible damage and restore business confidence.”
Theresa May told business lobby groups on Tuesday that she was refusing to rule out a no deal as she tries to persuade reluctant MPs to back her Brexit plan by arguing that the only way to avoid crashing out of the EU is to sign up to her proposals. That amounted to a rebuke to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who suggested last week that a no-deal Brexit would be taken off the table in another conference call with 330 corporate executives.
Claire Walker, co-executive policy director at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said it was a significant concern that businesses have been left “in the dark” about Brexit and are being forced to activate emergency plans for 29 March.
Adrian Hallmark, the chief executive of Bentley, said the luxury carmaker was on track to return to profit this year, but will fail to do so in the event of a hard Brexit. He said stopping production at the company’s Crewe plant would cost the Volkswagen-owned business millions of pounds a day.
Dixons Carphone revealed on Tuesday it had been working with suppliers on a back up plan that would shore up its stocks of TVs and laptops. “We can’t rule out that there might be some form of interruption,” said Dixons finance chief Jonny Mason. “If there is, we are as well prepared as we can possibly be. Some suppliers have brought stock into the country so that it’s closer to where it needs to be for us.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
It’s a remarkable thing to witness: senior Conservatives attacking big business. It is not just Boris Johnson exclaiming “fuck business” – it is their furious and sustained response to the corporations threatening to disinvest after Brexit, exemplified by the resignation of the Welsh Conservative leader after his attack on Airbus.
Most remarkable – and least remarked upon – is an article in the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, in which he rehearses what anti-corporate campaigners have been saying for decades. “The public,” he complained, “is urged to accept, without challenge, the views of corporations and their representative bodies such as the Confederation of British Industry.” According to this “fashionable narrative”, the opinions of corporate chief executives “should count for much more than the decisions of voters exercised through the democratic ballot box”.
Who are the authors of this “fashionable narrative”? Among them is a certain Iain Duncan Smith, as you can see from the speech he gave as party leader to the CBI in 2001. Oh, and just about every senior Conservative over the past four decades. Yet this astonishing article passed almost without comment in the rest of the billionaire press. What is going on?
One of the hidden conflicts Brexit has exposed is the contradiction between what Conservatives claim to stand for – something called conservatism – and what they really represent. Everything conservatism is supposed to defend – tradition, continuity, community, national character, the physical fabric of the nation – is ripped apart by the demands of capital, whose permanent revolution the Conservative party assists and accelerates.
The contradictions run throughout conservative Britain. As a young man, I was amazed to see the burghers of middle England look the other way as their beautiful market towns were turned into car parks and the glorious countryside that surrounded them into chemical deserts. They claimed to love a national character exemplified by independent butchers, bakers and greengrocers, but shopped at Tesco. They didn’t blink while our national institutions – universities, schools, the BBC, the NHS, the rule of law – were vitiated by corporate interests. As a road-building programme driven by the demands of construction companies ripped through ancient monuments and nature reserves, they did nothing, leaving hippies and anarchists to defend our national heritage.
I began to realise that the whole thing was a racket. Conservatism professed to be one thing, but in reality was its opposite. Everything could and should be sacrificed to money and its organised form: corporate power. Stripped of its professed adherence to tradition and continuity, all that is left of conservatism is property paranoia, xenophobia and a patriotism so coarse and ill-defined that it loses all meaning. This makes it easy to manipulate. When transnational corporations cannot be blamed for ripping apart communities and national character, immigrants must be blamed instead. A paper by Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig at Bocconi University found that, while there was no relationship between the number of migrants in a region and the extent to which it voted leave, there was a powerful relationship between the leave vote and what they call “Chinese import shock”: the displacement of local businesses and jobs by imports. Brexit was driven, they say, by the uncompensated effects of globalised trade. But as the instigators of the leave campaign were beholden to financial interests, such effects were unmentionable. So scapegoats had to be found.
It would be delightful to imagine that people such as Duncan Smith and Johnson are seeking to defend democracy and popular sovereignty from the perennial threat of corporate power. Nothing could be further from the truth. Intimately associated with the campaign to disentangle us from the EU is an effort to entangle us further with a more distant and less amenable power: the United States. Food, environmental and workplace standards must succumb to the maelstrom of US corporate lobbying and the demand that everything on Earth is exchangeable for something else.
As foreign secretary, Johnson granted free use of rooms in the Foreign Office to the Initiative for Free Trade, a group of dark-money thinktanks that see Brexit as an opportunity to rip down public protections. The trade secretary, Liam Fox, is seeking to force the UK into the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose radical assault on standards, and secretive offshore courts, present a far greater threat to national sovereignty than does the European Union. US and UK banks have already seized their chance, threatening to walk away from London after Brexit unless they get further tax cuts and a new round of deregulation. They have plainly forgotten what caused the last financial crisis. Broadly speaking, Brextremists such as Fox, Johnson and Duncan Smith favour the most ruthless and antisocial businesses over more responsible ones.
Even so, the unusual conflict between transnational corporations and senior Conservatives should also discomfit defenders of the European Union. Why are big companies so keen to stay in? Because the EU, in essence, is a vehicle for their expansion. By regularising standards within the bloc and striking trade deals that are, to a large extent, fashioned by business lobbyists, it helps big companies to sweep away smaller competitors, and extends corporate power at the expense of democracy. As I’ve long argued, as a Eurosceptic remainer, the EU is like democracy, diplomacy and old age: the only thing that can be said for it is that it’s better than the alternative. The alternative is hideous.
If established corporate power is perceived as an obstacle by senior Conservatives, it is not because a higher principle is at stake. It is simply because it conflicts with a more immediate aim: a Brexit that can be played to the advantage of one faction and the disadvantage of another.
But as the contradictions emerge between what the Conservatives profess to be and what they are, it is instructive to watch the party split, as it did around the repeal of the Corn Laws, over the competing interests of different forms of capital. Expect this struggle to continue. But don’t expect to see anything resembling conservatism to materialise, on either side. Perhaps it is time they renamed their party.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
At last, Labour steps up. Brexit is the great national crisis of our times and yet the leaders of the opposition have sometimes seemed so muted it has driven remainers to tear their hair out in frustration.
That changed yesterday at prime minister’s questions. Jeremy Corbyn for the first time turned all guns on the prime minister over her incoherent, incomprehensible and impossible Brexit stance. He used all his questions, every one, to wallop her exactly where she and her party are most vulnerable – and not before time.
If ever there were an open goal, it is the warring party of government whose demented 40-year obsession with the EU is finally driving us all to destruction. On budget day, PMQs may get less attention than usual, but the signs are that Corbyn’s blistering salvos are just the opening shots in what should be a weekly cannonade.
Here’s his best tirade: “Seventeen months after the referendum they say there can be no hard border but haven’t worked out how. They say they’ll protect workers rights, then vote against it. They say they’ll protect environmental rights, then vote against it. They promise action on tax avoidance but vote against it time and time again.”
The prime minister’s lame response was: “Let me tell him, I am optimistic about our future. I’m optimistic about the success we can make of Brexit … blah, blah, blah … building a Britain fit for the future …” Naturally, anyone who questions her nonexistent post-Brexit plans or visions is a traitor, “talking down Britain”.
Half an hour later as the chancellor rose, there was no way he could avoid talking down Britain, no sugar to coat the pill as he read out dire budget figures showing growth and productivity falling further behind the Europe many Tories so despise. And Brexit is the reason.
As the true meaning of the forecast sinks in, everyone sees the longest fall in living standards for 50 years, lasting until the middle of the next decade. And even then, who knows?
Where has Corbyn been? On a journey, say those close by. A lifetime of instinctive “capitalist club” Euroscepticism has been shed. Passionate distress over Brexit from his young supporters and his trade union allies has brought him round. Besides, the facts have changed. His vague, abstract distaste for the EU has given way to facing the hard reality of what Brexit means: inflicting most harm on those he cares about most. If only those on the opposite benches were on the same reality-check journey.
In PMQs he has usually dodged the great issue. But his tone changed recently: on a visit to Shipley, in West Yorkshire, he was asked how he would vote if there were a referendum now – a question the PM and chancellor duck, while those turncoats Jeremy Hunt and Liz Truss cravenly recant. Corbyn unhesitatingly said he’d vote remain: “I voted remain because I thought the best option was to remain. I haven’t changed my mind.”
He added: “We must make sure we obtain tariff-free access to the European markets and protection of all the rights and membership of agencies we have achieved through the European Union.”
He was, say some, hesitant on unfamiliar policy turf. But now he has found his feet, and his voice and confidence. “The danger is, we will get to March 2019 with no deal, we fall out of the EU, we go on to World Trade Organisation rules, and there will be threats to a lot of jobs all across Britain,” he warned. “I think it is quite shocking.”
This time next week the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will deliver his verdict on whether sufficient progress has been made. He has already thrown down the challenge to the chaotic Tories: what kind of country does Britain want to be, a European model country, or something else altogether?
Theresa May doesn’t know, but Jeremy Corbyn does. The European model beckons as the enlightened, internationalist, progressive vision – the Europhobic model is a land of impoverished deregulation.
There were obvious reasons for Labour’s reluctance to go full-tilt against Brexit. Too many Labour MPs in leave seats had taken fright. But since the election, another picture has emerged: Labour lost votes in some leave seats but gained votes in other leave areas as electors lost faith in the government’s chaotic negotiations.
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, has led the way, opposing every government misstep, aligning maximum opposition amendment by amendment. His leaders cannot but see that this is not just right, but politically essential. There is no other place for an opposition to be in this national trauma. My hunch is that the harder Corbyn hits out over Brexit, the stronger Labour’s support will grow. And the word is, that’s what we shall hear from now on.
Last modified on Thu 27 Sep 2018 11.00 BST
As Jeremy Corbyn gazed out over the 2018 Labour conference on Wednesday, after the most confident and relaxed speech of his time as leader, he will have seen an energised party about which two apparently incompatible generalisations can be made. The first is that, three years into the Corbyn revolution, Labour has now been radically transformed into a party in the leader’s own far-left political image. The second is that Labour’s many factions, interest groups and traditions are nevertheless mostly managing to work together in a surprisingly pragmatic way.
There was evidence for each of these claims in Corbyn’s speech. The left radicalism was there in the attacks on privatisation and outsourcing – the “racket” on which a Corbyn government would call time. It was there in the enormous list of uncosted government spending commitments, which covered housing, police, childcare, public sector pay, universal benefits for older people, and investment in transport and green energy. And it was there in the well-trailed section denouncing the political and economic elite (by implication New Labour as well as Conservative) that kept the banking system afloat after the financial crisis a decade ago.
But the practical pluralism that allows Labour’s differing interest groups to all leave Liverpool in something like good order was there in the speech, too. Labour was a broad church, Corbyn acknowledged, invoking an idea that many thought had now gone. The party achieved nothing by being divided, he insisted. So it should not seek out division. It had to draw a line – easier said than done, but said nevertheless – under the bitterness around antisemitism over the summer. Instead, Labour embodied “the new common sense of our time”. It was “the new majority”.
These are mere phrases. Yet many observers of the Liverpool conference will recognise that they chimed with something real in a successful week for Labour. As Corbyn delivered his leader’s speech, the historian David Kogan was highlighting not just the unimaginable shift in Labour policy stances since the Blair-Brown era but also the spirit of give and take that ran through many of the proceedings, not least in the handling of Brexit and in the relationship between the trade unions and the Momentum-dominated grassroots on many policy and process issues, often behind the scenes. Labour is a volatile coalition but even Corbyn seems up for a bit of distinctly Blairite triangulation these days.
The important thing to grasp about the Labour party of 2018 is that the two generalisations – Labour as left party and Labour as broad church – have not yet become incompatible. Corbyn’s speech juggled them rather effectively. If the party of today was the fully Corbynised body that some claim, there would be little room or appetite in it for habits of pragmatism, compromise or experimentation. Yet there is still that appetite.
All this could change. But Labour’s leaders appear to have calculated that an all-out confrontation with sitting MPs over reselection, for example, is not in its interests. Fear of the formation of a new centre party is real. Its creation would prevent the election of a Corbyn government and leave its social democratic programme stillborn. Hence the relative ecumenism on show at Liverpool – with no big splits and almost none of the jeering of the early 80s. Hence the unions’ successful efforts to rein in some of Momentum’s demands on reselection. Hence the open-armed parts of Corbyn’s speech and the role of the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, in pushing to widen their embrace.
The reality, which has been obvious for some time but which was also powerfully apparent at Liverpool, is that Labour is a more complicated party than many of Corbyn’s supporters – and enemies – like to pretend. It is also worth pointing out that this has often been true in the past, too. Labour has never been all one thing or all another, even in the New Labour ascendancy.
Two separate sessions on Tuesday on the conference floor embodied this dynamic complexity. In the first, the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, electrified the conference by saying that “nobody is ruling out remain as an option”. The standing ovation that greeted the comment took even him by surprise. The issue dominated the news cycle and every nuance of Corbyn’s speech regarding Brexit was put under the microscope to see if it aligned. They did, sort of.
In the same hall on Tuesday afternoon the delegate from Harlow, Colin Monehen, moved a motion on Palestine in a fiery speech. He, too, brought the hall to its feet. He, too, stirred prolonged cheering and chanting. All of a sudden there were more flags being waved in the Labour conference on Tuesday than they have in the Albert Hall on the Last Night of the Proms. It was hard to tell which was the larger outburst.
The lazy thing to say is that the part of the conference that gave Starmer a standing ovation in the morning was the Labour right, while the part that waved the Palestinian flags was the left. There’s some truth in that, of course. Labour moderates are passionate pro-Europeans, while the Labour left has always seen Europe as the right’s issue. By the same token, the Palestinian cause has always been principally that of the left, while the Labour right has been more pro-Israeli.
Yet my unscientific impression, sitting there, was that plenty of people in the Labour conference were equally roused by both issues. The support for each was spread wide and randomly within the hall. That’s hardly unreasonable or weird. You can be passionate about the case for Britain to stay in the European Union and also, in a logically connected part of the brain, be passionate about the need to oppose those on both sides who prevent a peaceful two-state solution in the Middle East. The direct impact of the conference on these two issues is, however, very unequal. Labour’s commitment to Palestine remains overwhelmingly rhetorical. Its practical ability to shape Brexit, on the other hand, has never been greater. Labour leaves Liverpool recommitted to a very soft Brexit indeed. It also leaves Liverpool as a party that is open to a general election or a second referendum and even, depending on circumstances, to a second vote in which remain, as Starmer said openly and Corbyn seemed to confirm, could be an option.
All this is incredibly hard to forecast. Only a mug would try. But Corbyn’s recognition of his need to prevent a Labour split has meant that he has allowed a space for the European cause to advance far further up his agenda for government than he might have preferred. Is Labour now capable of solving the European question? That is a stretch. In Liverpool, though, it felt as if a future Labour pitch to combine a £350m pledge to the NHS with a pledge to stay in the EU – not to leave it – is now an almost imaginable combination. It is a strange thought, but it may have fallen to Corbyn to save the country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
As Jeremy Corbyn’s top aide, Seumas Milne, drove to Finsbury Park on election night to watch the exit poll with his boss in an anonymous office lent by a charity to skirt the media scrum, he took a call from the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford.
The genial Scottish MP wanted to prepare the ground for the two parties to enter into immediate talks, if the result was a hung parliament – but Milne told him there was no chance of that.
After a bruising six-week campaign, he and Corbyn’s lieutenants were resigned to humiliation at the hands of Boris Johnson.
Labour’s defeat was a long time in the making. Two years of parliamentary warfare over Brexit had left deep scars on the personal relationships that once formed the glue for Corbyn’s radical political project.
Speaking to many of the leading figures in Labour’s election campaign, a picture emerges of tactical spats, mixed messages and frayed tempers – not least Corbyn’s own.
Many of the senior players were the same as in 2017 – the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, chaired the daily 7.30am calls to set the agenda for the day ahead; the policy chief, Andrew Fisher, oversaw the manifesto; the former Corbyn aide Karie Murphy led the operational side of the campaign, and Milne was in charge of strategy and communications. Jennie Formby, handpicked by Corbyn to be Labour’s general secretary, oversaw management and budgets.
Yet this group had been on different sides in the painful dispute about Labour’s Brexit stance – McDonnell and Fisher were instrumental in helping to persuade Corbyn that backing a second referendum was the only way of safeguarding the leftwing political movement they had built. By contrast, Milne and Murphy – as well as the Unite union’s chief of staff, Andrew Murray, and the Corbynite PR Steve Howell, both of whom sat on the election strategy group – believed that fateful decision would cost Labour dear in leave-supporting seats.
And this difference of analysis continued to reverberate throughout the campaign. There was a strongly held perception in Labour’s HQ at the outset that Labour still had more work to do to pacify remain voters, after its switch to backing a second referendum.
As for leave voters, many of whom were heavily concentrated in a swath of Labour-held seats being targeted by the Tories, the plan was to change the subject – focusing as much as possible on other issues, including public services and the NHS.
“It felt like the People’s Vote campaign in there,” said one senior member of the campaign team, who recalled being warned, in respect of Labour leave voters: “We don’t want to prod the beast!”
Howell, who had overseen Labour’s digital campaigning in 2017 and was brought in this time to look at targeting and polling, was alarmed by the prevalence of the view that Labour could win by focusing on remainers.
“A mythology developed – Paul Mason was one of the early advocates of it – that we could win an election on remain votes. And that even in leave areas, the vast majority of our voters were remain. But, while it’s true that the proportions are something like 70% to 30% nationally, in strong leave areas, as many as 40% to 50%-plus of Labour voters are leavers,” he said.
He and other sceptics about Labour’s shift towards a referendum always felt it was fruitless to try to skirt the issue. “In the end, you can’t just fight a battle and ignore your opponent. You can’t just say: ‘We’re fighting at sea’, if your opponent is mounting a land invasion,” said one party strategist.
Even Labour’s attack line on the NHS – focusing on the risk that it would be handed to Donald Trump as part of a trade deal – had an anti-Brexit undertone to it. And focusing on austerity, which still featured heavily in Corbyn’s stump speeches, was perhaps a less potent weapon against a Tory party that had ditched Philip Hammond’s rigid fiscal discipline.
“That was one of the things that we were a bit caught on the hop about: Boris suddenly started throwing austerity overboard. He had deprived us of our core message,” said the adviser.
Labour’s approach to targeting was almost a mirror image of 2017’s. Then, Corbyn and his lieutenants blamed the excessive caution of party officials for blunting their attacking edge.
This time, they began with an ambitious list of 96 targets – 66 of which were attacking seats, and 30 defensive.
That was partly because the job of any opposition is to get into government, and it would have appeared defeatist to target fewer seats than Labour needed for a majority.
But the campaign team also hoped some of the magic that propelled them to such a close result in 2017 would spark the campaign into life again: the rousing rallies, Corbyn’s comfortable-in-his-own-skin authenticity, Tory missteps. “We were all too hypnotised by our achievement in 2017, and we thought that however bad the situation was, once the campaign got going we would catch up,” said one party source.
Some events – including an upbeat launch at Battersea Arts Centre, and the unveiling of the manifesto at Birmingham City University, where Corbyn held the document triumphantly aloft against a dark pink backdrop – almost recaptured the buzz of two years earlier. But veterans of that election remarked that the crowds in 2019 were generally smaller this time, and failed to build as the weeks went on.
Labour’s manifesto itself was a casualty of the fractious working relationships that dogged the campaign. Milne was widely viewed internally as the most important single decision-maker in the 2017 campaign. But this time, a day before the crucial clause V meeting at which the manifesto was to be signed off, he had not seen the final printed version.
Key policies had been thrashed out in discussions, including among the strategy group – but Fisher’s policy team kept a firm hold on the finished document, and his relationship with Milne had been badly frayed by the Brexit battle.
“No one really knew what was coming until it emerged, from a process only really accessible to Andrew Fisher and John McDonnell,” said one Labour source. “And so major policies were coming out – free broadband, Waspi women – which really nobody knew was coming.” But Labour’s policy wonks insist they were just doing what they could to fill the hole where they felt an electoral strategy should have been. Unlike in 2017, policy and strategy were working in silos.
The general election was Fisher’s final job for Corbyn, after he resigned in September, with an email leaked to the Sunday Times in which he gave a blistering critique of Labour’s incompetence, including what he called “a blizzard of lies and excuses” about the party’s failure to come up with a strapline for its conference until the last minute.
The same indecision dogged Labour’s election slogan. “It’s Time for Real Change” was meant as a riposte to Johnson’s phoney claim to be offering a fresh start for Britain, but was the outcome of a fraught debate, including external consultants and focus grouping, and as such was little loved by anyone.
As the campaign went on, and anxiety increased at the risks Labour faced in defensive seats, “Labour Is On Your Side” took over – though one insider laments with hindsight that voters in leave seats who felt the party had betrayed them over Brexit appear to have been moved to respond with “fuck off”.
The “grid”, overseen by the combative Murphy, and discussed at a 10am daily meeting, was packed with policy announcements: but there was scant sense of a theme or direction for each week or phase of the campaign.
“They had all these policies drafted and waiting, and that would lead the grid – a different policy announcement every day,” said one member of the campaign team. “I think it was pretty obvious that there was a lot of throwing a lot of stuff at a lot of walls and hoping it would stick.”
As the campaign went on, and reports flooded into the Victoria HQ from anxious candidates in defensive seats, those who had always believed Brexit was Labour’s overriding challenge felt increasingly vindicated – and alarmed.
On Sunday 24 November, about halfway through, the strategy group met to review how things were going – and agreed it was necessary to make more of a pitch to leavers – and to resource defensive seats more generously.
As a result, Howell recommended adding another 16 seats to the target list, and it was decided to ask Labour’s regional directors for more recommendations – a process that resulted in a further 21 seats being put on the list, taking the total to more than 130, though not all of those were fully resourced.
The group also decided to focus more on Labour’s bread-and-butter offer to working-class voters in leave-supporting communities – including giveaways such as free prescriptions and social care – and to extend the party chairman Ian Lavery’s campaigning Brexit bus tour.
But in the event, much of the following week was overshadowed by Labour’s record on tackling antisemitism. On Tuesday, as the party prepared to launch its race and faith manifesto, the Times splashed with a letter from the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, claiming Corbyn’s handling of allegations of anti-Jewish racism meant he was “unfit for high office”.
At the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham that morning, Corbyn was more than half an hour late for the race and faith event, and the MP Dawn Butler filled the time by reciting the lyrics to the Labi Siffre classic (Something Inside) So Strong, to a bemused audience of hacks, who bombarded Labour aides with questions and requests. Until the last moment, it was unclear whether she and Corbyn would take questions from journalists.
Later that day, the Labour leader recorded a pre-planned interview with Andrew Neil. Corbyn was at his most petulant, as the broadcaster challenged him to apologise over antisemitism, grumpily interjecting “will you let me finish?” – a clip of which found its way on to that week’s Have I Got News for You.
Colleagues say that throughout the campaign Corbyn was keener to be personally involved in day-to-day decisions than in 2017 – and grumpier, sometimes even angry if he felt his views had been disregarded.
Labour tried to use a moment of political theatre to seize back the agenda the next day, by staging a press conference where Corbyn dramatically held aloft a 400-plus page leaked dossier suggesting the government was ready to put the NHS up for sale. “These uncensored documents leave Boris Johnson’s denials in absolute tatters!” he cried.
But the impact was nothing like the furore in 2017 when Labour’s manifesto was leaked – or when Theresa May insisted “nothing has changed”, after executing a swift U-turn on her social care policy. “It worked for a day, and we had a 36-hour row about whether Donald Trump was going to buy the NHS, but that was it,” said one insider.
And as the strategy group tried to hone Labour’s message, focusing on a bread-and-butter offer to leavers, some began to fear Corbyn’s straight-from-the-heart, unscripted authenticity was not the best medium for delivering it. “It’s just Jeremy, isn’t it?” said one exasperated member of the campaign team. “You judge him on a different marking scheme, almost. Did this person in this stump speech hit the five key messages to get on the evening news? No. Was he ever going to? No. I went to rallies where there was a billboard and he didn’t say what was on the fucking billboard. He just talked about whatever he wanted.”
As polling day loomed, some aides would have liked Corbyn to make more aggressive attacks on Johnson, whose loose relationship with the truth was openly laughed at by the Question Time audience when the pair met in a head-to-head debate. But “no personal attacks” was one of the rules written for Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign by Fisher, and he stuck to it doggedly.
The Labour leader told the Guardian at the outset of the campaign, “they go low, we go high” – though one despairing party aide described it as “they go low, we go wandering across the country”.
After six gruelling weeks of criss-crossing the country, including a dawn rally in Glasgow on the final day of campaigning, Corbyn watched the grim exit poll with his wife, Laura, his fiercely loyal sons – who released a statement shortly afterwards lambasting the media for treating him badly – and a few officials, including Milne.
They had been on a long journey together, from the political wilderness to the brink of government, but they believed their electoral chances had been crushed, in what one rueful Labour source called, “the Brexit vice”.
“This campaign was lost before it began,” the source added. “Even if nothing had gone wrong in terms of targeting, messaging, Jeremy’s schedule, TV interviews, anything – I still think we would not have won.”
Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 17.25 BST
Modern governments respond to only two varieties of emergency: those whose solution is bombs and bullets, and those whose solution is bailouts for the banks. But what if they decided to take other threats as seriously?
This week’s revelations of a catastrophic collapse in insect populations, jeopardising all terrestrial life, would prompt the equivalent of an emergency meeting of the UN security council. The escalating disasters of climate breakdown and soil loss would trigger spending at least as great as the quantitative easing after the financial crisis. Instead, politicians carry on as if nothing is amiss.
The same goes for the democratic emergency. Almost everywhere trust in governments, parliaments and elections is collapsing. Shared civic life is replaced by closed social circles that receive entirely different, often false, information. The widespread sense that politics has become so corrupted that it can no longer respond to ordinary people’s needs has provoked a demagogic backlash that in some countries begins to slide into fascism. But despite years of revelations about hidden spending, fake news, front groups and micro-targeted ads on social media, almost nothing has changed.
In Britain, for example, we now know that the EU referendum was won with the help of widespread cheating. We still don’t know the origins of much of the money spent by the leave campaigns. For example, we have no idea who provided the £435,000 channelled through Scotland, into Northern Ireland, through the coffers of the Democratic Unionist party and back into Scotland and England, to pay for pro-Brexit ads. Nor do we know the original source of the £8m that Arron Banks delivered to the Leave.EU campaign. We do know that both of the main leave campaigns have been fined for illegal activities, and that the conduct of the referendum has damaged many people’s faith in the political system. But, astonishingly, the government has so far failed to introduce a single new law in response to these events. And now it’s happening again.
Since mid-January an organisation called Britain’s Future has spent £125,000 on Facebook ads demanding a hard or no-deal Brexit. Most of them target particular constituencies. Where an MP is deemed sympathetic to the organisation’s aims, the voters who receive these ads are urged to tell him or her to “remove the backstop, rule out a customs union, deliver Brexit without delay”. Where the MP is deemed unsympathetic, the message is: “Don’t let them steal Brexit; Don’t let them ignore your vote.”
So who or what is Britain’s Future? Sorry, I have no idea. As openDemocracy points out, it has no published address and releases no information about who founded it, who controls it and who has been paying for these advertisements. The only person publicly associated with it is a journalist called Tim Dawson, who edits its website. Dawson has not yet replied to the questions I have sent him. It is, in other words, highly opaque. The anti-Brexit campaigns are not much better. People’s Vote and Best for Britain have also been spending heavily on Facebook ads, though not as much in recent weeks as Britain’s Future.
At least we know who is involved in these remain campaigns and where they are based, but both refuse to reveal their full sources of funding. People’s Vote says “the majority of our funding comes from small donors”. It also receives larger donations but says “it’s a matter for the donors if they want to go public”. Best for Britain says that some of its funders want to remain anonymous, and “we understand that”. But it seems to me that that transparent and accountable campaigns would identify anyone paying more than a certain amount (perhaps £1,000). If people don’t want to be named, they shouldn’t use their money to influence our politics. Both campaigns insist that they abide by the rules governing funding for political parties, elections and referendums.
As they must know better than most, the rules on such spending are next to useless. They were last redrafted 19 years ago, when online campaigning had scarcely begun. It’s as if current traffic regulations insisted only that you water your horses every few hours and check the struts on your cartwheels for woodworm. The Electoral Commission has none of the powers required to regulate online campaigning or to extract information from companies such as Facebook. Nor does it have the power to determine the original sources of money spent on political campaigns. So it is unable to tell whether or not the law that says funders must be based in the UK has been broken. The maximum fines it can levy are pathetic: £20,000 for each offence. That’s a small price to pay for winning an election.
Since 2003, the commission has been asking, with an ever greater sense of urgency, for basic changes in the law. But it has been stonewalled by successive governments. The exposés of Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian, openDemocracy and Channel 4 News about the conduct of the referendum have so far made no meaningful difference to government policy. We have local elections in May and there could be a general election at any time. The old, defunct rules still apply.
Our politicians have instead left it to Facebook to do the right thing. Which is, shall we say, an unreliable strategy. In response to the public outcry, Facebook now insists that organisations placing political ads provide it (but not us) with a contact based in the UK. Since October, it has archived their advertisements and the amount they spend. But there is no requirement that its advertisers reveal who provides the funding. An organisation’s name means nothing if the organisation is opaque. The way Facebook presents the data makes it impossible to determine spending trends, unless you check the entries every week. And its new rules apply only in the US, the UK and Brazil. In the rest of the world, it remains a regulatory black hole.
So why won’t the government act? Partly because, regardless of the corrosive impacts on public life, it wants to keep the system as it is. The current rules favour the parties with the most money to spend, which tends to mean the parties that appeal to the rich. But mostly, I think, it’s because, like other governments, it has become institutionally incapable of responding to our emergencies. It won’t rescue democracy because it can’t. The system in which it is embedded seems destined to escalate rather than dampen disasters.
Ecologically, economically and politically, capitalism is failing as catastrophically as communism failed. Like state communism, it is beset by unacknowledged but fatal contradictions. It is inherently corrupt and corrupting. But its mesmerising power, and the vast infrastructure of thought that seeks to justify it, makes any challenge to the model almost impossible to contemplate. Even to acknowledge the emergencies it causes, let alone to act on them, feels like electoral suicide. As the famous saying goes: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Our urgent task is to turn this the other way round.
 George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
First published on Thu 5 Jul 2018 09.51 BST
David Davis has told Theresa May her “best of both worlds” plan for Brexit is unworkable, in a letter written as details emerged of the prime minister’s proposed new customs arrangement.
The Brexit secretary raised concerns that the “facilitated customs arrangement” compromise plan – which would allow the UK to set its own tariffs on goods arriving in the country – was too similar to a discarded idea that the EU had already rejected.
Downing Street indicated that under the plan tracking devices would e used to determine where the goods would ultimately end up, and therefore whether UK or EU tariffs should be paid.
Details of the plan are still emerging and it is not certain whether the cabinet will back it at a key Brexit meeting at Chequers on Friday. But the early hints were that it would be acceptable to other key Brexiters such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, paving the way for the publication of a strategy white paper next week.
The “third way” customs proposal is intended to end the cabinet clash between the “maximum facilitation” model favoured by Brexiters, which relies on using technology to ensure the correct tariffs are levied on goods crossing the UK border, and May’s once favoured “customs partnership”, which involves the UK collecting tariffs on behalf of the EU.
Davis’s concern is that the EU will block any deal for the UK to police its borders. The Daily Telegraph reported that in his letter he said the plan was doomed because it amounted to a customs partnership with some additional technological elements. The EU has previously rejected both the maximum facilitation and customs partnership models.
Downing Street says its plan could be in place by the end of the proposed transition period in December 2020.
May travelled to Berlin on Thursday afternoon to discuss the progress of Brexit negotiations with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. The prime minister is under intense pressure from EU leaders and industry to provide greater clarity, but No 10 has said it will not detail new customs plans to Merkel before they are discussed in cabinet.
As she arrived for the bilateral meeting with Merkel, May said the UK was about to propose “a substantial way forward” which she claimed would “enable the pace and intensity of negotiations to increase”.
However, Merkel said time was running short to strike a Brexit deal and it was important for Britain and Germany to keep talking. “Negotiations will now enter a crucial phase. You know that on behalf of the European Union the commission is leading those negotiations with the United Kingdom,” she said. “So there are a number of issues that we would like to discuss here also bilaterally, a number of substantive issues.”
Before Friday’s away day, there is also ministerial concern that the focus on the details of future customs arrangements is too narrow. Remain-leaning cabinet ministers fear it leaves out the crucial services sector, while Brexiters are nervous that the meeting will fail to address freedom of movement.
Britain’s biggest vehicle manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover, said it needed greater certainty to continue to invest heavily in the UK. “A bad Brexit deal would cost Jaguar Land Rover more than £1.2bn profit each year,” said its chief executive, Ralf Speth.
Two other major employers, BMW and Airbus, have said their positions in the UK would be in doubt if their production processes were threatened by the terms of the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
First published on Sat 2 Jun 2018 16.42 BST
David Miliband has said he would take part in any campaign to vote against the terms of any Brexit deal but has no plans to return to the cut and thrust of UK politics.
Miliband, who has been based in New York as president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) since 2013, is still seen as a future leader of the Labour party and has never categorically ruled it out.
He was asked at the Hay literary festival in Wales whether, if there was ever a public vote on the terms of a Brexit deal, he would be part of a campaign to reject it. “Of course,” he said. “I tried to campaign last time, I hope I’d campaign more effectively next time.”
Miliband, the former foreign secretary, said it was important to him to be in a job where he could make the most impact.
“I am privileged to be someone who was in politics, who had the extraordinary privilege of representing the country, who is now running a $750m [£560m] organisation which helped 27 million people last year. I am passionate about the job I do but I am also able to say, ‘Look, in a personal capacity, I can talk about these issues [of Brexit].’”
The 17,000 people working for the IRC also needed to know, he said, that he was focused “on doing my job today for them”.
Miliband argues there should be a second vote on Brexit, partly on the grounds that what people voted for is not going to happen.
He said the first referendum should not have taken place and reminded the Hay audience that it was Margaret Thatcher, quoting Clement Attlee, who said a referendum was a device used by “dictators and demagogues”.
The remain campaign leading up to the 2016 vote was a flawed one. “David Cameron became the leading cheerleader of the remain side, but he had spent the previous 20 years attacking the European Union,” said Miliband.
He said the government, 780 days after the vote, still had no policy on trade, regulation or market access. “The negotiations to unscramble the eggs of social, of economic, of environmental integration with Europe are going to go on for five or 10 years.”
Miliband said Brexit was squeezing the life out of politics in the UK and preventing “the social and economic reform we desperately need”.
He criticised Theresa May for not setting up a cross-party coalition to campaign to get the best outcome for the UK but also said it was not enough for the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to stand aside and “let events take their course.”
Miliband was asked about accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party – the “purest and oldest and most disgusting” example of racism, he said – and called on people to stay and fight. “It completely grieves me,” he said. “I never believed I would see the day when antisemitism and the Labour party were in the same sentence.”
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Philip Hammond and David Davis have made a direct appeal to German business leaders to help them forge a Brexit deal to secure the future of Britain’s financial services.
The chancellor and Brexit secretary travel to Germany on Wednesday on a charm offensive they hope will shift the EU’s implacable opposition to services being included in a final deal.
They said they were seeking a bespoke deal with the EU described as “the most ambitious in the world” that should “cover the length and breadth of our economies including the service industries — and financial services”.
They warned that a continued integrated approach to banking after the UK leaves the bloc was vital if Europe was to avoid a repeat of the 2008 financial “catastrophe” and the eurozone crisis that followed, prompting bailouts in Ireland, Portugal and Greece.
Their trip comes just weeks after the EU warned that a deal involving the City of London was not on the table as long as the UK insisted on exiting the single market.
The Financial Times also reported on Wednesday that the EU had sent a flurry of memos to 15 industries in November and December ranging from airlines to mineral water producers to “be prepared” for regulatory no-man’s land in March next year if Britain crashed out of the EU without a deal.
The memos are said to explain why Davis accused the EU of trying to spook British business and why he had taken advice on the legality of EU warnings to businesses that Britain would be treated as a “third country” after March 2019.
In an article for a German newspaper on Wednesday, Hammond and Davis argue: “The 2008 global financial crisis proved how fundamental financial services are to the real economy, and how easily contagion can spread from one economy to another without global and regional safeguards in place.”
Hammond and Davis said Britain was seeking a deal that “supports collaboration within the European banking sector, rather than forcing it to fragment”.
Europe, in partnership with the UK, had worked hard “to make sure such a catastrophe doesn’t happen again” by tightening financial regulation, Hammond and Davis wrote.
“That work shouldn’t end because the UK is leaving the EU. On the contrary, we must redouble our collective effort to ensure that we do not put that hard-earned financial stability at risk,” they wrote in Frankfurter Allgemeine, one of Germany’s more respected newspapers, that was at the centre of a storm in October after it claimed Theresa May had “begged” for help in Brexit talks from the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, during a dinner.
A failure to seal a deal including services could be catastrophic for City of London, which is the financial capital of Europe and depends on the pan-European financial passport to operate across the sector in all countries in the EU.
Britain’s decision to leave the EU has already caused havoc in the financial services sector with thousands of jobs in corporate banking, asset management and insurance being moved to Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin.
The Hammond-Davis remarks and speech by the chancellor in Berlin on Wednesday night are the opening shots in what promises to be a challenging 10 months of negotiation on the final Brexit deal.
The EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier warned the UK last month: “There is no place [for financial services]. There is not a single trade agreement that is open to financial services. It doesn’t exist.”
Barnier said the result would be a consequence of “the red lines that the British have chosen themselves. In leaving the single market, they lose the financial services passport”.
The EU could treat some British financial regulation as equivalent to EU law after Brexit, but would not give financial firms a general “passport” to do business in the single market, Barnier said on Tuesday.
The City of London would like to retain the easy access to the EU market it has now, but Barnier said this was not possible. “[Britain’s] financial services cannot benefit from a passport in the single market nor from a system of generalised equivalence of standards,” he said.
When Hammond and Davis meet business leaders in Germany, they will aim to dismantle that argument by appealing to the “shared vision” of business interests.
They say that trade between the UK and EU 27 is worth €750bn (£660bn) a year – and a quarter of EU exports to Britain, worth €113bn, come from Germany, more than any other EU country.
They also claim that Britain’s departure from the single market was not incompatible with the EU’s insistence that third countries could not enjoy the benefits of being a member state.
“Of course we understand that Germany and other EU countries want to protect the integrity of the single market, and that without all the obligations of EU membership third countries cannot have all the benefits,” they write. “Those priorities are not inconsistent with ours — a deep and special partnership with our closest trading partners and allies.”
They also called for barrier free trade to continue. “As two of Europe’s biggest economies, it makes no sense to either Germany or Britain to put in place unnecessary barriers to trade in goods and services that would only damage businesses and economic growth on both sides of the Channel,” they say.
Davis has claimed the UK can have a bespoke deal described as a “Canada plus plus plus” which would be similar to the EU trade deal with Canada “plus the best of Japan, the best of South Korea and the bit that is missing, which is the services”.
While the EU has argued that this is impossible, Theresa May has argued that Britain’s deal with the EU is bound to be different to Canada, Norway or Japan because of the regulatory alignment that flows from four decades of EU membership.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Citizens of Europe, if I am taking the liberty of addressing you directly, it is not only in the name of the history and values that unite us, but because time is of the essence. A few weeks from now the European elections will be decisive for the future of our continent.
Never since the second world war has Europe been so essential. Yet never has Europe been in such danger. Brexit stands as the symbol of that. It symbolises the crisis of a Europe that has failed to respond to its peoples’ need for protection from the major shocks of the modern world. It also symbolises the European trap. The trap lies not in being part of the European Union; the trap is in the lie and the irresponsibility that can destroy it. Who told the British people the truth about their post-Brexit future? Who spoke to them about losing access to the EU market? Who mentioned the risks to peace in Ireland of restoring the border? Retreating into nationalism offers nothing; it is rejection without an alternative. And this is the trap that threatens the whole of Europe: the anger mongers, backed by fake news, promise anything and everything.
We have to stand firm, proud and lucid, in the face of this manipulation and say first of all what Europe is. It is a historic success: the reconciliation of a devastated continent is an unprecedented project of peace, prosperity and freedom. Let’s never forget that. And this project continues to protect us today. What country can act on its own in the face of aggressive strategies by the major powers? Who can claim to be sovereign, on their own, in the face of the digital giants? How would we resist the crises of financial capitalism without the euro, which is a force for the entire EU? Europe is also those thousands of projects daily that have changed the face of our regions: the school refurbished, the road built, and the long-awaited arrival of high-speed internet access. This struggle is a daily commitment, because Europe, like peace, can never be taken for granted. I pursue it tirelessly on behalf of France, in order to take Europe forward and to defend its model. We have shown that things we were told were unattainable, the creation of a European defence capability and the protection of social rights, were in fact possible.
Yet we need to do more and faster, because there is another trap: the trap of the status quo and resignation. Faced with major crises in the world, citizens so often ask, “Where is Europe? What is Europe doing?” To them it has become a soulless market.
Yet Europe is not just an economic market. It is a project. A market is useful, but it should not detract from the need for borders to protect and values that unite. Nationalists are misguided when they claim to defend our identity by withdrawing from the EU, because it is European civilisation that unites, frees and protects us. But those who would change nothing are also misguided, because they deny the fear felt by our people, the doubts that undermine our democracies. We are at a pivotal moment for our continent, a moment when together we need to politically and culturally reinvent the shape of our civilisation in a changing world. Now is the time for a European renaissance. Hence, resisting the temptation of isolation and division, I propose we build this renewal together around three ambitions: freedom, protection and progress.
The European model is based on freedom: of people, diversity of opinions and creation. Our first freedom is democratic freedom: the freedom to choose our leaders as foreign powers seek to influence our votes at every election. I propose the creation of a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies to provide each EU member state with European experts to protect their election process against cyber-attacks and manipulation. In this same spirit of independence, we should also ban the funding of European political parties by foreign powers. We should have European rules banishing incitement to hatred and violence from the internet, since respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation and our dignity.
Founded on internal reconciliation, the EU has forgotten the realities of the world. Yet no community can create a sense of belonging if it does not have protected territorial limits. The boundary is freedom in security. We therefore need to rethink the Schengen area: all those who want to be part of it should comply with obligations of responsibility (stringent border controls) and solidarity (a single asylum policy with common acceptance and refusal rules).
We will need a common border force and a European asylum office, strict control obligations and European solidarity to which each country will contribute under the authority of a European Council for Internal Security. On migration, I believe in a Europe that protects both its values and its borders.
The same standards should apply to defence. Substantial progress has been made in the last two years, but we need to set a clear course. A treaty on defence and security should define our fundamental obligations in association with Nato and our European allies: increased defence spending, a truly operational mutual defence clause, and a European security council, with the UK on board, to prepare our collective decisions.
Our borders also need to guarantee fair competition. What country in the world would continue to trade with those who respect none of their rules? We cannot suffer in silence. We need to reform our competition policy and reshape our trade policy, penalising or banning businesses that compromise our strategic interests and fundamental values such as environmental standards, data protection and fair payment of taxes; and the adoption of European preference in strategic industries and our public procurement, as our American and Chinese competitors do.
Europe is not a second-tier power. Europe in its entirety is a vanguard: it has always defined the standards of progress. In this, it needs to drive forward a project of convergence rather than competition: Europe, where social security was created, needs to introduce a social shield for all workers, guaranteeing the same pay for the same work, and an EU minimum wage, appropriate to each country, negotiated collectively every year.
Getting back on track also means spearheading the environmental cause. Will we be able to look our children in the eye if we do not also clear our climate debt? The EU needs to set its target – zero carbon by 2050 and pesticides halved by 2025 – and adapt its policies accordingly with such measures as a European Climate Bank to finance the ecological transition, a European food safety force to improve our food controls and, to counter the lobby threat, independent scientific assessment of substances hazardous to the environment and health. This imperative needs to guide all our action: from the Central Bank to the European commission, from the European budget to the Investment Plan for Europe, all our institutions need to have the climate as their mandate.
Progress and freedom are about being able to live from one’s work: Europe needs to look ahead to create jobs. This is why it needs not only to regulate the digital giants by putting in place European supervision of the major digital platforms (prompt penalties for unfair competition, transparent algorithms, etc), but also to finance innovation by giving the new European Innovation Council a budget on a par with the United States in order to spearhead new technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence.
A world-oriented Europe needs to look to Africa, with which we should enter into a covenant for the future, ambitiously and non-defensively supporting African development with investment, academic partnerships and education for girls.
Freedom, protection and progress: we need to build European renewal on these pillars. We can’t let nationalists with no solutions exploit people’s anger. We can’t sleepwalk to a diminished Europe. We can’t remain in the routine of business as usual and wishful thinking. European humanism demands action. And everywhere, people are standing up to be part of that change. So by the end of the year, let’s set up, with representatives of the EU institutions and the member states, a Conference for Europe in order to propose all the changes our political project needs, which is open even to amending the EU treaties. This conference will need to engage with citizens’ panels, and hear from academics, business and worker representatives, as well as religious and spiritual leaders. It will define a roadmap for the EU that translates these key priorities into concrete actions. There will be disagreement, but is it better to have a static Europe or a Europe that advances, sometimes at different speeds, and that is open to all? In this Europe, the people will really take back control of their future.
In this Europe, the UK, I am sure, will find its true place. The Brexit impasse is a lesson for us all. We need to escape this trap and make the forthcoming elections and our project meaningful. It is for you to decide whether Europe and the values of progress that it embodies are to be more than just a passing episode in history. This is the choice I put to you: that together we chart the road to European renewal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Dear Jeremy, our generation is set to receive the worst inheritance in peacetime history. The NHS limps from crisis to crisis. The housing market excludes us further each day: in the 1990s, over half of 25-34s owned a home – today barely a quarter do. We might be regarded as the generation to go to university in record numbers, but we do so at the cost of an average £50,000 of debt. And still graduates are luckier than the 790,000 young people not in education, employment or training.
We live in a capitalist economy without capital. It is no wonder that over one in five young people now think that, no matter how hard they try, their life will amount to nothing. In understanding this crisis of optimism, you have given hope to many.
But understanding this is pointless if Brexit goes ahead. It is by far the worst aspect of our inheritance. It will make us much poorer, cut us off from our closest friends and leave us unable to address problems that require international cooperation to solve – such as climate change and rampant inequality. It will deny us opportunities and deprive us of the right to live, work, and love anywhere in Europe. It will rob us of the internationally engaged Britain that we know we want. These are just a few of the reasons why 75% of young people voted to remain.
In the 2017 election, your surge in support mainly came from those who are angry about what is happening to Britain. This extends beyond young people – anyone under the age of 50 tended to support remain in 2016 and then Labour in 2017. The reason for this surge is because we are our angry about our future. Like you, we are appalled by the problems our society faces. But leaving the EU will only exacerbate these issues. The Bank of England tells us that, because of Brexit, we will be £200m a week poorer this year. This is money that should have been channelled into fixing hospitals, schools, and prisons which warrant our urgent attention, and yet receive less by the day. It is hopeless to fight for the radical change society needs while supporting a Brexit that will leave us unable to deliver it.
Jeremy, you should remember that there will be a time when our generation ages. We will soon confront the reality of what we have been left, and if we do not like it we will simply reverse it. If it is a soft Brexit, which represents nothing but a minor loss of sovereignty, then we will return to our seat at the table. If it is a hard Brexit, we will be so furious with the wanton destruction inflicted on us that we will knock down any and all of the barriers imposed between us and Europe.
Either way, you will be forcing us to return on worse terms. The only sustainable Brexit is no Brexit. Seen in this light, Brexit becomes a question of legacy – for you, Theresa May and your generation. Do you want to continue wasting time, energy, and money delivering a project that is already costing us prosperity and influence and that will only cost us more? A project that will be reversed in a few decades – if that? Or do you want to be the generation that energetically and urgently fixes the problems that cannot afford to wait for the Brexit mess to be cleaned up?
We need your help to persuade the country to democratically stop Brexit and deliver the radical change society needs. Brexit will define our country’s future, but will affect the young more than most. We need you to fight for our future, not facilitate a drastic blow to it. We need you to fight for a referendum on the withdrawal deal, and then join us in persuading our parents and grandparents to choose a constructive, not destructive, legacy. You have never compromised on what is right before, Jeremy, do not start on the most important issue of our time.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
British attempts to “blackmail and divide” EU countries in the run-up to Brexit negotiations will lead to a disastrous “crash-landing” out of the bloc, European politicians have told the Guardian.
They add that the approach being pursued by Theresa May’s government will leave the UK without a free trade deal – with perilous consequences for the country.
Formal talks are due to open next month, but a trio of parliamentary leaders and a close ally of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, say those talks risk ending in failure unless Britain changes what they say are “divide and rule” tactics.
They believe the situation is further complicated by domestic hardline political and media pressure in the UK, which they argue makes compromise difficult and reinforces the feeling in London that the country will simply get whatever it wants.
A leaked European parliament report seen by the Guardian goes even further, accusing Britain of trying to “move the goalposts and do away with the referee” in the upcoming international clash of negotiators once article 50 is invoked.
At the root of the anger is the belief that Britain does not appreciate that the EU27 nations also have red lines.
“The benefits go to the UK only,” said Tomáš Prouza, the Czech minister for EU affairs. “There is a real danger that British politics, with all its whipped up resentments of Europe, will mean British negotiators are unable to compromise, and we will head for a crash-landing.”
That view is shared in many national capitals. Elmar Brok, a German MEP and a close friend and political ally of Merkel, said the British government should not underestimate the strength of the EU’s resolve. He said colleagues had told him Britain was seeking to win over MEPs, but it would end in failure.
“The British government tries to divide and rule,” he said. “They believe they can take members of parliament out of certain nations … to win support by dividing us. If they try to negotiate while trying to interfere in our side then we can do that too. We can make a big fuss over Scotland. Or Northern Ireland.”
A Guardian series starting today examining Britain’s Brexit gamble reveals the two sides are further apart than ever on issues ranging from the size of the divorce bill to the legal supervision of any transitional deal and the timing of trade talks.
The Brexit secretary, David Davis, and minister David Jones have held meetings with politicians from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia and Estonia as part of a high-stakes charm offensive designed to find more sympathetic allies in the face of hardening opposition particularly among larger countries.
On Sunday, it was reported that Downing Street officials and senior cabinet ministers wanted to divert part of the annual aid budget to eastern European countries in the hope of winning their support for a good trade deal. And on Monday Davis is understood to be beginning a trip to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to discuss Brexit plans and build ties with the Baltic states.
He maintains that his recent trip to Finland and Sweden was merely to “talk to our old allies” about the upcoming negotiations. “We have a lot in common with both these countries,” he said. “We had an extremely positive set of discussions … about the need for a positive approach.”
Meetings with MEPs in Strasbourg have been matched by visits from European leaders to London that are said to show their mutual interest in retaining constructive backchannels.
A UK government spokesman added: “After the prime minister’s speech and the publication of the government’s white paper on exiting the EU, it is obvious that our allies want to understand more about our position and preparations for negotiations that have not yet begun.”
But Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP, the biggest group in the European parliament, told the Guardian that Britain’s strategy risked the opposite by fracturing any consensus on the EU side about a potential deal.
“They have a plan and that’s clear,” he said. “But there is a commission negotiator. There is not a negotiator from Germany. There is only the European commission negotiator, Michel Barnier, he will be sitting next to David Davis. If you split up Europe into different interests it will not be easy to get unanimity at the European council.”
Other leaders of the three largest groups in the European parliament, which has to ratify an exit deal along with the House of Commons, agreed that the strategy could backfire.
“Any attempts by UK ministers to divide EU countries will only slow down and complicate negotiations,” said Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the liberal ALDE group and the parliament’s Brexit point man. “The EU will negotiate as a united bloc.”
Gianni Pittella, leader of the socialist bloc in the parliament, said the UK’s apparent attempt to split Europe was “certainly not the best way to kick off very complicated negotiations. This inappropriate attitude could undermine the outcome.”
He also said recent threats that Britain could become a low-tax state if it did not achieve a good deal with the EU were a form of blackmail: “I was surprised because I don’t think it is in the interests of the UK to open this phase in an aggressive way. We reject this blackmail. It is not fair, it is not elegant, it is not useful.”
The scale of the challenge the UK faces in even arranging a transitional deal – to cushion the exit and allow space for a free trade deal to be struck – is illustrated in a report by the European parliament’s legal affairs committee.
A foreword to the report suggests it will be “difficult if not impossible” to get agreement among the EU27 and their national parliaments.
On the substance of a transitional deal, it adds that allowing the UK to continue in the single market without respecting the jurisdiction of the European court or permitting free movement would be like “allowing a national football association to decide it will set its own rules on the size of the ball, the number of players on the field and the width of the goal and do away with the referee, whilst purporting still to be able to take part in the European championship”.
Many in Brussels and other capitals feel the biggest threat to an orderly Brexit is domestic political pressure on May from leave hardliners within and outside the government, and from the pro-Brexit press, whose headlines calling the high court judges in the article 50 case “enemies of the people” were viewed on the continent with horror.
European leaders also feel the UK government’s perceived enthusiasm for Brexit masks a profound misapprehension about the real strength of its position in the upcoming exit talks. “They seem to seriously believe they can take without giving,” one London-based EU diplomat said.
While breezily dismissed by British ministers, including the foreign secretary, with suggestions that the value of prosecco, BMW and cheese exports will guarantee the UK a good deal, the EU27 have shown remarkable consistency on their Brexit red lines since the days after the UK referendum.
These have focused on issues such as no negotiations before notification, the indivisibility of the single market’s four freedoms, particularly free movement, and the impossibility of having your cake and eating it – or “cherry-picking”, as Merkel has repeatedly called it.
Nor is it just politicians showing unity. Continental businesspeople, including German car industry bosses, have repeatedly indicated they are willing to take a hit to their bottom lines from inferior trade terms with the UK if it means securing the integrity and continued stability of the single market.
“I don’t think the UK has fully understood that for the most part both politicians and businessmen in Europe still really value the EU and the single market and think it something that is worth fighting for,” one Brussels diplomat said. “Economic rationality will not be the deciding factor here.”
The EU27 are also well aware that once article 50 has been triggered, the clock starts ticking on a two-year negotiating period in which the pressure is plainly on the British. For the EU27, only one thing really matters in Brexit, as Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, among several others has repeatedly made plain.
“We want a fair deal for the UK,” Muscat said. “But that deal needs to be inferior to membership … Thinking it can be otherwise indicates a detachment from reality.”
Few on the continent seem convinced Britain has grasped this. “At the moment, it seems like Mrs May thinks of the EU as a restaurant where she can walk in order everything on the menu and then demand that the restaurant itself pays the bill,” the former Bulgarian prime minister Sergei Stanishev said last week.
“My view this is creating an illusion for domestic purposes, or it’s wishful thinking.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
There is a campaign running at the moment to inform people of the dangers of drug resistance. “Taking antibiotics when you don’t need them puts you and your family it risk,” shout the posters. GPs are familiar with the problem. Patients want medicine and don’t like hearing that their flu is caused by a virus. Antibiotics, which treat bacterial infection, won’t work. Misusing the pills nurtures vicious bugs that defy treatment when it is actually required.
Seeing the slogan, I find it hard not to think that Brexit will one day be recorded as case of quack political medicine on an industrial scale. The obvious diagnosis of the referendum outcome was a majority desire to leave the EU, so the response necessarily begins with a commitment to do just that. The democratic treatment of an election cannot be to ignore the result.
But there should also be investigation of underlying causes. And here Theresa May has strayed into gross malpractice. There is nothing about her Brexit method that begins to address the social divisions that were exposed by the referendum. She doles out only wishful thinking and platitudinous snake oil.
The scale of the divisions is laid bare in Tuesday’s annual report by the government’s Social Mobility Commission. It describes a nation where children’s life chances – shaped by the results they can expect at school and the wages they can expect to earn – are sharply skewed by geography.
The commission’s chair, Alan Milburn, notes that London and its economic satellites look like a distinct country. Remote rural and coastal areas fare worst. But there are also pockets of profound deprivation in affluent regions: in the Cotswolds and West Berkshire, for example. “Growing wealth and growing poverty sit side by side in ways that not only feel uncomfortable, but are frankly unsustainable,” Milburn writes.
Those disparities have poisoned politics, casting Westminster as an inaccessible fortress of self-perpetuating privilege. How decisive that feeling was in propelling us out of the EU is disputed. The numbers can be crunched different ways. There were wealthy leavers in leafy London suburbs and chocolate-box villages in the home counties. It is also hard to stomach Brexiter claims to speak on behalf of the have-nots when their campaign was supported by tax-shy millionaires. Meanwhile, anti-establishment rhetoric in the mouths of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg is, by any meaningful social metric, preposterous.
Still, 60 of the 65 most disadvantaged areas identified by the social mobility commission voted leave. Labour MPs sitting in Brexit-backing constituencies have no doubt that the campaign channelled old frustrations, and that Euroscepticism was weaponised by perceptions of an elite class circling wagons around the status quo. When remainers warned that leaving the EU would have drastic consequences, the response was: “Great, where do I sign?” A health warning about slower GDP growth elicited the response: “That’s your GDP, not mine.”
That is why many Brexiters feel they have little to fear from the publication of government “impact assessments” handed reluctantly and incompletely to parliament yesterday. Remainers expect the verdict to be gruesome – perhaps so harrowing as to shake some leave voters’ confidence in their decision. But if belief in the value of Brexit could be undermined by economic modelling from Whitehall, the UK wouldn’t be leaving the EU at all. It is possible that Cassandra forecasts have more traction now than they did last June, but it is as likely that they will once again be vaporised by public scepticism about the messengers’ motives.
Pro-European excitement about the assessments has been stoked by David Davis’s pettiness in obstructing their release. He agreed only when MPs voted that he must. He has now gutted the dossier, ostensibly to avoid leaks of market-sensitive data and anything that might give Brussels an insight into the government’s negotiating hand. (That supposes the UK knows things about Brexit that the rest of the EU hasn’t thought of yet, when the pattern of talks so far demonstrates that the opposite is true.)
Labour MPs warn that Davis’s partial compliance puts him in contempt of parliament. The essential issue – what Brexit will do, and to whom – has been subsumed into debate about constitutional propriety and government transparency. Such things matter, but they do not swing many votes.
It is already clear that the leave proposition was a banquet of lies: about how easy it would all be, about money for the NHS, about the sweetness of the cake and how it could be had and eaten too.
What has not yet emerged, but can be anticipated, is that the cost of the government’s version of hard Brexit will be felt most acutely in those places where resilience is most depleted. EU agricultural subsidy and development funds for deprived regions will go.
The Treasury, already staring at dismal revenue prospects, will struggle to make up the shortfall. Self-expulsion from the single market will send the UK off to seek trade favours from ruthless giants – the US, India and China (and, of course, the EU itself). This will be a bruising transition. People who already have skills and capital will be best placed to adapt. Places where the leave vote was a plea for protection from inclement winds of globalisation will feel a sudden, icy blast.
This warning needs to go out, but pro-Europeans are not trusted to deliver it and the Brexit doctors insist there is nothing to warn against. They hardly looked at the nation’s ailments before diagnosing inadequate sovereignty, brought on by excessive exposure to European regulatory bacteria. They had written out their prescription long in advance of the consultation, lining up pointless antibiotics for a virus of inequality and social dislocation.
The drugs won’t work. And when the symptoms persist, there will be less scope for remedy. When so much has been promised that cannot be delivered, the result will be increased resistance to ever trusting politics again. Britain is undergoing the wrong treatment for a fever of discontent. It risks incubating an even more virulent strain of anger.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Theresa May is hoping to declare victory at today’s European council summit because she will secure a “transition” deal. In fact, it is a miserable step on the way to a Brexit that damages our pride, power and prosperity.
Just consider for a minute why we need this transition at all. Without it, our economy would fall off a cliff next year. We would also lose access to valuable tools to fight crime and terrorism including membership of Europol and use of the European arrest warrant. If it’s so important to hang on to these things for another 21 months, one may well ask why it’s such a good idea to quit the EU at all.
The prime minister realises that tearing us abruptly out of Europe would be madness, so she is trying to cushion the blow. That’s why she has bent over backwards to secure a transition period. May has relented on virtually every red line she previously drew – with the result that we are losing, not taking back control.
The climbdown that has grabbed headlines is that we won’t have control over fish quotas during the transition. The attention given to this issue is bizarre, because fishing is responsible for only 0.05% of our economy.
But equally, it is right to focus on how May has sold the fishing industry down the river. If she can’t protect a sector that is so symbolically important for Brexiters, what chance does she have to fight for economically more significant parts of the economy, such as finance?
The fishing concession symbolises the tail-between-our-legs Brexit that the prime minister is negotiating. During the transition, we will follow all the EU’s rules without a vote on them. We will become, for that period, what Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg call a “vassal state”. How is that good for national pride?
But the biggest climbdowns are yet to come. To get the transition deal, the prime minister has committed that either Northern Ireland or the whole of the UK could need to follow the rules of big chunks of the EU’s single market and customs union – not just during the transition but afterwards.
May still pretends she can come up with some magical technology that will keep the Irish border open without the need for such “regulatory alignment”. But if she doesn’t come up with this technical fix soon, the EU is going to force her to choose between two lousy options: allowing Northern Ireland to become a quasi-province of the Republic of Ireland, or agreeing to regulatory alignment for the whole UK.
Following the rules of the single market without a vote on them would turn us into rule-takers. That would be an astonishing blow for our proud nation. We, after all, virtually invented the single market and helped write most of its regulations. Meanwhile, by staying in the customs union, we would have to follow meekly any new trade deals the EU cuts with other countries – China and the US, for example – whether they are in our interests or not.
Of course, May’s current plan to leave the single market and customs union is economically foolish. It would be bad for jobs and bad for public services, such as the NHS, because we would have less tax revenue to pay for them. But surrendering our role as a powerful European nation is against the national interest too.
The final deal May is likely to cut is going to hurt us on both fronts, because she won’t keep us in the whole of the single market even if parliament forces her to stay in some form of customs union. As a result, our services industries will get clobbered. But to hang on to even bits of the single market, we’ll lose control.
To avoid getting stuck with such a miserable deal, pro-Europeans need to attack it on both fronts – and explain why the only good option is to cancel Brexit. Concentrating just on the economic damage won’t be enough. It could sound too much like a rerun of David Cameron’s “project fear” campaign two years ago.
We also need to go in hard on how Brexit will mean a loss of power and a loss of pride. This language may not come naturally to some pro-Europeans, as such talk feels like it’s associated with Rees-Mogg and his ilk. But, with the exception of their fishy stunts, the hardline Brexiters are now zipping their lips. They have concluded that any deal, however bad, is worth while so long as we quit the EU.
We must not let the Brexiters have a monopoly over sovereignty, power and patriotism. It’s time for us to take off the gloves and call them out for selling our whole country, not just fishing, down the river.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
In a world as complex as ours, slogans are more important than they have any right to be.
When questions of how to organise society, distribute resources and conduct relations with our neighbours fox even the greatest of experts, it’s human nature to run for the shelter of an easy explanation.
The shorthands we use to skip over messy realities – “budget responsibility”, “war on terror”, “migrant crisis” – shape our understanding of them, for good or ill. They are what linguist Geoffrey Leech once described as “concept forming”. That means that, in any contentious debate, getting in there early with a pithy phrase is half the battle.
When it comes to Brexit, the most intricate political problem Britain has faced for decades, it’s clear who’s been winning the war. “Take back control” was a stroke of genius, boiling down the problem of how to improve lives in an interdependent world to a simple question of self-determination. “No deal is better than a bad deal” was good too: despite the fact that leaving the EU without any kind of agreement represents the worst outcome of all, it recast the government’s weakness as defiance. And now we have the “Brexit dividend”, the fiscal bounty that leaving the world’s largest trading bloc will apparently deliver.
It’s a phrase you’ll have read a lot in the past day or two. As “allies of the foreign secretary” briefed that he was to demand an extra £5bn for the NHS in cabinet this week, it kept cropping up – sometimes with and sometimes without inverted commas, depending on the level of scepticism applied. Johnson “will not relent on demands for a £100m a week Brexit dividend until it is secured”, wrote the Times. His Brexit brother-in-arms Liam Fox backed him up. “I think it’s very useful to remind people that we will get a dividend from leaving the EU,” he told the BBC.
Maybe they were taking their cue from Jacob Rees-Mogg, who told the Sun on Sunday: “Brexit is a great opportunity for the UK to build a new independent trade policy that delivers jobs, cheaper food and clothing — an immediate Brexit dividend for the British people.”
Perhaps they’re ultimately inspired by “peace dividend”, a phrase first used in 1969 to describe the money that would no longer have to be spent on the Vietnam war if it were brought to an end, and used much more widely at the end of the cold war. In any case, it’s a clever formulation: it’s neat, catchy, and appears to sum up the possibilities of the post-Brexit era. The contribution the UK currently makes to the EU budget will soon be ours to spend however we see fit.
But it’s a blatant lie. There is no “Brexit dividend”, because the net effect of Brexit is to cost the UK money. As the FT set out in excruciating detail before Christmas, leaving the EU doesn’t come cheap. Forget the “Brexit divorce settlement”, the forty-odd billion that covers existing budget commitments and some other costs such as pensions. We haven’t even left yet, but the uncertainty has already zapped 1.3% of GDP, according to estimates – the equivalent of £340m per week. And before you counter that this is still less than the fabled £350m a week that was plastered on campaign buses during the referendum, remember that that figure, too, was a lie. The rough cost per week of EU membership adds up to more like £136m – some of which funds regulatory agencies we benefit from and will have to replicate after we leave.
So the phrase “Brexit dividend” should definitely come with flashing lights and sirens, and at the very least inverted commas. But I fear it’s too late. The concept already has currency, and may be unstoppable. It’s incumbent on those who see it for what it is to point this out at every opportunity, and perhaps come up with a reality-based version. Reality, in this case, may be too depressing, too unglamorous a rival. But at least “Brexit burden” or “Brexit penalty” have the ring of truth.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
The three cabinet ministers in charge of Brexit – Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis – resemble “three blind mice” stumbling around the world with inconsistent messages on how to leave the EU, a Conservative former minister has said.
Nick Herbert, who led the Conservative remain campaign during the referendum, joined a number of senior Tories who are warning that there are still severe risks to the economy as government ministers try to work out a Brexit plan. He said it was essential to accept the result but warned against a “naive ideal of a new Britannia” making ministers overconfident that they will secure a good result for the UK.
“Conservatives must beware Brexit fundamentalism, or giving themselves up to a romanticised 1950s vision of Britain, a country of imperialist chauvinism,” he wrote in an article for the Guardian.
The first day of Conservative conference was dominated by Theresa May’s pledge to start the process by March next year, delighting Tory delegates at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham. She faced criticism about the competence of her three senior cabinet ministers in charge of Brexit and warnings against pursuing a “hard Brexit” that sacrificed access to the single market in order to achieve controls on immigration.
Herbert, the former minister for policing and criminal justice, said the government needed to be careful not to be swayed by the most hardline Brexiters and warned that the jury is still out on the performance of Johnson, the foreign secretary, Fox, the trade secretary, and Davis, the Brexit secretary.
“We should be talking about financial passporting and the need to prevent a haemorrhage of banking jobs from the City, not fixating on the colour of our passports. We should be discussing how to strike the best deal with our biggest trading partner, not how to relaunch a royal yacht,” he said.
“The so-called ‘three Brexiteers’ have so far rather more resembled three blind mice, stumbling around the world’s capitals with inconsistent messages, united only in their assurance that it will be alright on the night,” he added.
“Now the politicians who were already inclined to be deaf to business concerns have been emboldened by the apparent resilience of Britain’s economy in the face of a predicted short-term shock. The risk is that important concerns about the long-term impacts of a hard Brexit will be dismissed. We may all be Brexiteers now, but leaving without being able to reassure inward investors or the financial services industry that they will be able do business as usual would be a catastrophe.”
Herbert, the MP for Arundel and former Home Office minister under Theresa May, is now involved in the Open Britain campaign group holding the government to account on leaving the EU. He said there was a “staggering” collective naivety about the ease of doing global trade deals, when these typically took years to negotiate and were “not exactly flavour of the month” with the public when it came to agreements like TTIP. “One senior minister said there would be a trade deal with New Zealand before Christmas,” he said.
Another leading Brexit campaigner predicted a deal with India “faster than you can say masala bond”.
“Those who talk so excitedly do not stop to consider the inevitable first demand of major agricultural exporters, which is that we drop our farm subsidies. And they clearly haven’t understood that even poor deals take years to complete.”
However, such warnings, and others about Brexit from former cabinet ministers Nicky Morgan, Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve, did not dampen the mood of the first day of May’s first conference as prime minister, which appeared optimistic about the prospects for Britain after leaving the EU.
At a fringe event, Fox, who returned to the cabinet as trade secretary under May, was applauded as he spoke with tears in his eyes about his pride in the UK for voting to leave the EU.
“I have never felt so proud of my fellow countrymen and women as I did at that moment. I thought: ‘You have taken on all the doomsayers, you have really had faith in what Britain can do, you really believe in this country and yourselves.’
“No matter what happens to me in politics, that will always be the single moment I remember the most,” he said. “That was history being made and to just be a little part of that, I can’t even begin to describe how that felt.”
Fox also denied there were any tensions with either Davis or Johnson as has been reported, saying he was an admirer of both and worked “very, very closely” with them. He said Davis had “one of the best strategic minds in politics” and Johnson was a “very clever individual who has thought a great deal” with a huge understanding of Europe.
The battle between those who want to minimise the separation with Europe and others who want a clean break was mostly played out on the airwaves rather than the conference floor.
Iain Duncan Smith, the arch-Eurosceptic former cabinet minister, dismissed all fears about the economic consequences of Brexit, saying car manufacturers in the UK would not be “affected adversely” in any shape or form by the decision to leave.
This was challenged by Soubry, who was involved with founding Open Britain and backed the remain campaign, who told ITV’s Peston on Sunday that it was “rubbish” to suggest the future trading relationship with the EU would be as favourable as now.
“We’re going to get something worse, obviously we are, and we don’t hold the cards, the EU does,” she said.
Tory modernisers delivering such warnings were vocal but in short supply, with May enjoying the backing of most backbenchers as well as remain supporters who have joined her frontbench.
David Cameron and George Osborne were notably absent, although Lord Feldman, the former party chairman, was one of the few Cameroons spotted in the crowd.
Conservative delegates in the main hall gave May, Davis and Johnson a rousing reception, while applause for the legacy of David Cameron was more muted.
Dozens of fringes each day at the four-day conference are dedicated to the details of leaving the EU, from the impact on relations with Turkey after warnings from Brexiters against it joining the EU to the future for forestry post-Brexit.
One cabinet minister told the Guardian he was not bothering to make any big policy announcements in his speech because the whole conference was so dominated by the subject of leaving the EU.
Some Conservative remainers were, however, still pining for pre-Brexit times. Flick Drummond, a Tory MP who backed the remain campaign, said she was “still going through the mourning stage” of the Brexit vote.
“It’s more about the influence we’ve lost within Europe rather than anything else. I now feel we’re really on the outside of EU governance,” she said. “But we’ve got to make the most of it. We have to get out there very quickly now.”
First published on Sun 15 Jan 2017 22.19 GMT
Donald Trump has praised Britain as “smart” for opting out of a European Union that he believes is dominated by Germany and on the brink of collapse, in an interview with former Tory leadership contender Michael Gove.
The president-elect promised to draw up a trade deal with the UK “quickly” after Brexit and said he could understand why voters chose to leave in last year’s referendum. “You look at the European Union and it’s Germany. Basically a vehicle for Germany. That’s why I thought the UK was so smart in getting out,” he told Gove.
Gove, the first senior Conservative to meet Trump, spent an hour chatting to the president-elect in what he called his “glitzy, golden man cave” in Trump Tower, New York, for an interview with the Times.
Trump stressed his fondness for the UK and said other countries could follow its lead and leave the EU, something Gove predicted during the referendum campaign. “I believe others will leave. I do think keeping it together is not gonna be as easy as a lot of people think,” said Trump.
Asked whether he would press ahead with a trade deal with the UK that would come into force after Brexit, Trump told the former justice secretary: “Absolutely, very quickly. I’m a big fan of the UK. We’re gonna work very hard to get it done quickly and done properly. Good for both sides.”
He said he was keen to meet the prime minister after his inauguration, which will take place on Friday. “I will be meeting with [Theresa May]. In fact if you want you can see the letter, wherever the letter is, she just sent it. She’s requesting a meeting and we’ll have a meeting right after I get into the White House and … we’re gonna get something done very quickly.”
But Trump also underlined that he is likely to be a tough negotiating partner, threatening to slap a 35% import tax on BMW cars if the German company sticks to a decision to build a plant in Mexico. Such protectionism would risk retaliatory measures from Germany, which was the target of many of the most combative comments in the interview.
Trump blamed the decision of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to welcome refugees fleeing war in the Middle East, for jeopardising the stability of Europe. “I think she made one very catastrophic mistake and that was taking all of these illegals, you know taking all of the people from wherever they come from. And nobody even knows where they come from.
“People, countries, want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity. But I do believe this: if they hadn’t been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it … entails, I think that you wouldn’t have a Brexit.”
In a separate but simultaneous interview with the German paper Bild, Trump said he might contemplate tightening restrictions on Europeans wanting to travel to the US. “That could happen, but we’ll see. I mean, we’re talking here about parts of Europe, parts of the world and parts of Europe, where we have problems, where they come in and cause problems. I don’t want to have these problems.”
The president-elect also made a series of provocative comments about foreign policy, reiterating that he could do a deal with Russia that would result in sanctions being lifted. And he said he believed the Nato military alliance is obsolete and needs reform. “They have sanctions on Russia – let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”
He said he would appoint Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, as a Middle East peace envoy.
Trump’s blunt remarks underlined how radically different his approach will be from that of his predecessors, who have traditionally sought to build a close relationship with the EU – and how difficult he will be to work with for his counterparts from other countries.
Gove, who is usually regarded as being on the liberal wing of the Conservative party – and is known for not suffering fools gladly – praised Trump’s business acumen, saying he “campaigned in 140-character Twitter storms and intends to govern by spreadsheet”. Gove added: “Intelligence comes in many forms.”Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, Gove said Trump appeared “emotionally and financially invested” in seeing Brexit become a success.
Asked if he trusted the president-elect over his promises to seek a rapid trade deal, Gove replied: “I can’t make a window into Donald Trump’s soul. What I can tell is he was enthusiastic about Brexit. He feels, in a way, a vicarious sense of ownership.”
Gove said he was left with the impression Trump “wants to have something signature-ready at the earliest possible opportunity”, on trade with the UK.
Gove said he could not predict the specific timetable for this: “I’m not a trade negotiator, but the president-elect is a dealmaker. He’s confident that he can get a good deal, a win-win, for Britain and America relatively rapidly.”
Asked about Trump’s statements and views, Gove said he found some “outrageous”, and stressed he could not back all the president-elect’s policy positions.
He added: “But if you are making a decision about what’s in the best interests of this country, and what’s in the best interests of people’s jobs, I think a good relationship with the incoming administration is a good thing.”
By securing the interview, which took place alongside a journalist from German newspaper Bild, Gove stole a march on the prime minister, who has not yet confirmed a date to meet her US counterpart. The timing of the interview was awkward for May, taking place as her advisers draw up the final draft of a speech on Brexit that she is due to give on Tuesday. The prime minister will reportedly warn her EU partners that she is ready to walk out of the single market and the customs union.
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, set the tone in an interview on Sunday with a German paper, Welt am Sonntag, saying that Britain would respond aggressively if it were shut out of the EU’s markets. Asked if Britain saw its future business model as being a tax haven, Hammond replied: “Most of us who had voted remain would like the UK to remain a recognisably European-style economy with European-style taxation systems, European-style regulation systems etc. I personally hope we will be able to remain in the mainstream of European economic and social thinking. But if we are forced to be something different, then we will have to become something different.”
In the early days after his election, Trump appeared keener to pose for photos with the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage than to build a relationship with Downing Street. He even suggested that Farage would be a good candidate for US ambassador.
His enthusiasm for drawing up a new trade agreement with the UK is in stark contrast to the warnings of Barack Obama during last year’s referendum campaign that Britain would be at “the back of the queue” for trade talks if it voted to leave the EU.
Since being sacked by May, Gove has written a regular column for the Times. He worked at the newspaper before being elected as the MP for Surrey Heath and is known to be close to its owner, Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News network was often favourable to the Trump campaign.
Trump insisted that he was determined to keep tweeting when he enters the White House. “The tweeting: I thought I’d do less of it. But I’m covered so dishonestly by the press – so dishonestly – that I can put out Twitter – and it’s not 140, it’s now 280 – I can go bing bing bing … and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out – this morning on television, Fox – ‘Donald Trump, we have breaking news’.”
The interview took place as it emerged that Trump had been told by the departing director of the CIA to adopt a more careful approach to US national security, with a warning that the president-elect should not be carelessly “talking and tweeting” without understanding the threat posed by Russia.
In an outspoken television interview, John Brennan added that the president-elect’s recent criticism of the intelligence agencies was offensive, after Trump had accused them of allowing a controversial dossier about alleged contacts between his campaign and Vladimir Putin’s Russia to appear in press reports.
Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, the outgoing CIA director said: “Now that he’s going to have an opportunity to do something for our national security as opposed to talking and tweeting, he’s going to have tremendous responsibility to make sure that US and national security interests are protected.”
Last modified on Wed 21 Jul 2021 10.07 BST
I can see where this is heading. Trump won the US presidency and the populist right are on the march, so the story goes, because people who champion minority rights and women have overreached themselves. “The left pushed too far,” declares one Wall Street Journal columnist. “Identity politics, censoriousness and basing policy on the need of exotic sexual minorities. Now the backlash.”
Exotic sexual minorities: presumably gay men with three heads, lesbians with llama legs and trans people who can vaporise Trump supporters with laser beams. But the message is clear. Minorities who many believe are peculiar, morally depraved, perverted and/or dangerous have agitated too loudly for their rights; women (“nasty women”, perhaps) have been too assertive. They have reaped a whirlwind, and must now accept responsibility for the consequences.
The “elite” used to denote those who, in any given society, had the wealth, power and privilege: for example, privately educated ex-City brokers and billionaire plutocrats who hang out in golden lifts. It now apparently means those who defend the rights of minorities and women. The rightwing populism of our time is comfortable talking about class, but only to define a patriotic working class against a rootless, metropolitan, self-hating bunch of middle-class do-gooders with contempt for their values and lifestyles.
“If you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,” declares Theresa May, deriding a contemptuous elite who look at the working class and “find their patriotism distasteful, their concerns about immigration parochial”.
According to columnist Melanie Phillips, Brexit and Trumpism represent a “people’s counter-revolution: an attempt to move politics back to the true centre of cultural gravity”. Her thesis is that the real bigots are not the white nationalists on the brink of power in Washington, but the “anti-white racism of Black Lives Matter” and other “liberals”. Those with the audacity to oppose blacklisting Muslims from entering the United States drove the decent American people into the arms of Trump, she claims.
The real tormentors of the working class are not financial institutions that plunge their countries into economic calamity, the bosses who don’t pay their workers enough, or the tax avoiders (such as Trump). No: it is the champions of minorities and women who are supposedly on a collision course with the working class. The working class, apparently, consists only of straight white men: not women who want rights, not ethnic minorities, not migrants, not LGBT people.
The old left, dominated as it was (and still is) by straight white men, long echoed this sentiment. The class struggle comes first; after the revolution, we’ll sort out everything else. It was an approach that women and minorities rebelled against. The working class was full of diversity, they argued, and class oppression was not the only injustice that many working-class people suffered.
Oppression didn’t just come from above, but from within their own communities and workplaces. Women were exploited by their bosses, just like their male counterparts: but they were also groped by men (such as Trump), or worse; paid less; and forced to do unpaid housework and the bulk of childcare.
Black workers too had lousy terms and conditions in the workplace, but they were also treated as second-class citizens by the law; harassed by the police; subjected to racist abuse in the streets; and discriminated against in the workplace, making them more likely to be unemployed.
LGBT workers, just like their straight colleagues, could be hired and fired on a whim, but they were also exposed to bigotry their entire life; often suffered mental distress because much of society rejected and hated them; were unable to hold hands with their lovers in the streets without attracting abuse and violence; and lacked the same legal rights as other couples.
Movements emerged to rectify these injustices. Such movements, throughout history, have always been accused of being too aggressive, too angry, not conciliatory enough. “Rage does not work as political opposition,” says US commentator Kurt Eichenwald in defiance of, well, all history. “Moral high ground, peaceful engagement, asking respectful questions of opponents. These work.” If polite letter-writing campaigns and chats over coffee with policymakers achieved dramatic social change, we’d still be living as barons and serfs.
The problem is that rights for women and minorities mean others losing privileges they are desperate to retain. Movements encounter resistance. They are compelled to make a nuisance, to force people who would rather ignore them to listen. And frankly, if you’ve had your life damaged by hatred and discrimination, you may feel justifiable anger and want to express it. Most people do not protest for kicks. They are bored with their oppression. They just want it to go away so they can get on with their lives.
There are those who argue the left has abandoned class in favour of identity politics. There is certainly a type of liberal who has done this: who argues for solutions such as more women in corporate boardrooms rather than addressing systemic inequality. But socialists argue that class is absolutely central to understanding society’s ills, but cannot be understood without gender, race and sexual orientation.
The multiple grievances suffered by working-class communities in Trumpland or Brexitland are caused by the financial sector, the corporate elite, and tax dodgers – not Poles, Muslims, black people or trans rights activists.
Some self-described progressives have become accomplices to the rightwing Brexiteers and Trumpists, agreeing the left has indeed over-reached. Not only does this approach throw women and minorities under a bus, it is also a strategic mistake. The Trumpists will never be satisfied. Whatever is conceded will never be enough, and will simply embolden them.
Yes, we should debate the best strategies to achieve equal rights for all and persuade the currently unconvinced. But that does not mean backpedalling or conceding in the face of a backlash. The emancipation of the working class means the whole working class: men and women, white and black, straight and LGBT. We live in an age when many bigotries have been given official sanction. Ugly demons have been unleashed on both sides of the Atlantic. The right has already won two massive votes this year. If we surrender to their agenda, we’ll be gifting them yet more victories.
Last modified on Fri 14 Feb 2020 16.53 GMT
Brexit has been derailed, as it was always going to be, by the Irish question. And, amid the chaos, there is something oddly comfortable about this. Isn’t that what the bloody Irish always do – disrupt an otherwise placid British polity with their hopelessly convoluted and unresolvable feuds?
In 1922, reflecting on the way Ireland had dominated imperial politics even on the eve of the great catastrophe of the first world war, a rueful Winston Churchill told the House of Commons: “It says a great deal for the power which Ireland has, both nationalist and orange, to lay their hands upon the vital strings of British life and politics, and to hold, dominate, and convulse, year after year, generation after generation, the politics of this powerful country.”
In this very familiarity lies the lure of self-delusion: Brexit would have been gloriously harmonious if only the orange and green disruptors hadn’t laid their hands upon its vital strings and played on them their own eternally discordant tune. Already, among the Brexiters, there is his self-exculpatory narrative: it wasn’t us, m’lud, who brought our country to this disgraceful state. It was the usual suspects across the Irish Sea.
But beneath this tatty comfort blanket, there are two starkly naked truths. They are not at all familiar – indeed they are startlingly new. They are so novel that the British system has been completely unable to fully recognise or process them. And it is this inability that has made the Brexit negotiations so tortuous and their outcome so miserable.
One of them has to do with a breathtaking shift in the balance of power. The other concerns the inability of the existing political culture to deal with the rise of English nationalism and its vast implications for the existence of the United Kingdom. To resort to the old familiar blame game is to miss what is really going on.
First, negotiations will always be determined by the balance of power. The very poor outcome of the Brexit negotiations for Britain reflects the realpolitik: there was a relatively small and isolated country up against a huge multinational bloc. This is the accustomed way of such things. But this time there has been a staggering variation: the places have changed. Britain, not Ireland, is the relatively small and isolated country. Ireland, not the British Empire, has on its side the power of a huge multinational bloc.
This in itself is deeply disorienting. It is a new thing: the first time in 800 years of Anglo-Irish relations that Ireland has had more clout. No wonder the Brexiters and the British government found it impossible for so long to even recognise this new reality. They operated – and some of them continue to operate – under the old rules, in which the game would be settled between the big powers, and the interests of a small country such as Ireland could be easily shoved aside. The Irish would get a few platitudes about peace but the real deal would be done between London and Berlin.
Yet it has not been like that. In part, this is because of simple arithmetic: Ireland is not isolated, it is part of a bloc of 27 states. There is a basic lesson here for the Brexiters: even a very small country inside the EU has more influence than a much larger country on the outside. In part, too, it is because of basic statecraft. The Irish government and diplomatic service, backed by a near-unanimous consensus in the Dublin parliament, had a very clear sense of where Ireland’s vital national interest lay, and hence of what they needed to achieve.
There was one big thing Ireland could not get: Ireland cannot, much as it would love to, force the UK to stay in the EU. Given this reality, Ireland had three priorities. One was to avoid the reimposition of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The second, to protect the 1998 Good Friday agreement and the rights of everyone in Northern Ireland to continuing Irish – and therefore EU – citizenship. The third, to preserve the close personal and economic relationships on these islands by preserving the common travel area and keeping the UK as closely intertwined with the customs union and single market as possible.
Ireland got exactly what it wanted in the draft withdrawal agreement. This undoubtedly shaped the entire deal; but instead of whining about this, the Brexiters might reflect that if they had been as clear about their aims and as skilful in achieving them, we might not all be in the current mess.
The other big new thing is that the force that has shaped one side of Anglo-Irish relations for centuries – British unionism – is visibly faltering. Visibly, that is, everywhere except in Westminster. There is a weird disjunction between what is actually happening in Brexit and the official narrative that has framed it. In part because of the quirk of fate that gave the balance of power at Westminster to a minority Northern Irish party, the DUP, Brexit has been shaped around a sentimental story of rallying behind what Theresa May calls the “precious, precious union”.
But this is fundamentally phoney. There is overwhelming evidence that the English people who voted for Brexit do not, on the whole, care about the United Kingdom and in particular do not care about that part of it called Northern Ireland. Asked in the recent Future of England survey whether “the unravelling of the peace process in Northern Ireland” was a “price worth paying” for Brexit that allows them to “take back control”, fully 83% of leave voters and 73% of Conservative voters in England agreed that it was. Three-quarters of English leave voters said they did not want their taxes to be used to subsidise public services in Northern Ireland. And last week, in a major Channel 4 survey, asked how they would feel if “Brexit leads to Northern Ireland leaving the UK and joining the Republic of Ireland”, 61% of leave voters said they would be “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned”.
These are two seismic shifts. Neither of them is caused by anyone in Ireland. They are products of the rise of English nationalism and of the great Brexit upheaval that has left Britain so deeply uncertain about its identity and its place in the world. To throw up one’s hands in exasperation at the old familiar eruption of the Irish question is to miss the whole point of this moment – which is, of course, the English question.
First published on Wed 27 Mar 2019 09.30 GMT
Donald Tusk issued a rallying call to the “increasing majority” of British people who want to cancel Brexit and stay in the EU, hours before MPs were given the chance to back a second referendum.
In a stirring intervention on Wednesday, the European council president praised those who marched on the streets of London and the millions who are petitioning the government to revoke article 50.
Speaking to the European parliament, Tusk reprimanded those who voiced concerns about a potential lengthy extension to article 50 in the event of the Commons rejecting the withdrawal agreement again this week.
Tusk said: “Let me make one personal remark to the members of this parliament. Before the European council, I said that we should be open to a long extension if the UK wishes to rethink its Brexit strategy, which would of course mean the UK’s participation in the European parliament elections. And then there were voices saying that this would be harmful or inconvenient to some of you.
“Let me be clear: such thinking is unacceptable. You cannot betray the 6 million people who signed the petition to revoke article 50, the 1 million people who marched for a people’s vote, or the increasing majority of people who want to remain in the European Union.”
To heckling from Ukip MEPs, Tusk went on: “They may feel that they are not sufficiently represented by the UK parliament, but they must feel that they are represented by you in this chamber. Because they are Europeans.”
In London, MPs voted to seize control of the parliamentary timetable on Monday to allow the House of Commons to explore over the coming days whether there could be support for alternatives to Theresa May’s twice-defeated Brexit deal, including a possible second public vote.
That proposal, put forward by the former Labour cabinet minister Margaret Beckett, lost by 27 votes on Wednesday evening, the second smallest loss among the eight solutions to the Brexit impasse, offering some hope to campaigners in future votes to come. But EU sources said they were concerned that the UK parliament was still unable to coalesce around a solution, saying: “Our interlocutor remains the British government.”
The Guardian revealed on Wednesday morning that the EU has pencilled in April Fools’ Day 2020 as a first day for the UK outside the bloc since 1973 if May fails to ratify her deal but seeks a long extension of article 50 on the basis that a new plan has emerged.
The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage responded to Tusk by describing him as “deluded” and claiming that a second referendum would deliver a larger majority for leave.
In a pantomime moment, Farage turned to those sat behind him to ask whether they really wanted him to return as an MEP. He ended his speech to the parliament by appealing to the EU’s leaders to “get the British out”.
Later in the debate, Tusk hit back, saying: “Mr Farage, you have presented passionate arguments against a second referendum. But the truth is that the second referendum took place in 2016 because the first one took place in 1975. And then a vast majority of the British public decided that the place of the UK was in the European Economic Community.
“No, it was you who thought three years ago that it was possible to organise a referendum to invalidate the previous one. Then please be consistent also today.”
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, also spoke, saying: “No one is trying to steal Brexit from you, no one is trying to undo the vote of the British people” but, he said, the UK would have to bear the consequences of its decisions.
He said the EU’s leaders last week had allowed an extension of article 50 until 12 April to “open the possibility to the UK to shoulder its responsibility – it is now over to this country to shoulder that responsibility”.
Tusk’s comments came as the British government emailed the 5.8 million people who have signed a UK parliament petition seeking the revocation of article 50. The email informed signatories that “this government will not revoke article 50”.
The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking after Tusk on the subject of Tuesday’s summit, told MEPs he awaited the Commons decision with interest.
“The debate on China was far less complicated than the debate on the UK and I was saying to some of you that if I was to compare Great Britain to a sphinx, the sphinx would be an open book by comparison,” Juncker said. “Let’s see how that book speaks over the next week or so.”
Barnier warned the British government that the Irish backstop, under which Northern Ireland would stay in the single market and the customs union, would continue to form the basis of the EU’s policy to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland even in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
EU citizens will be free to visit the UK after Brexit without having to obtain visas, it has emerged.
Whitehall sources confirmed reports that plans for a post-Brexit immigration system, due to be published later this year, would allow EU citizens to enter the UK freely.
But that does not mean EU citizens will have the automatic right to stay indefinitely, the sources said on Thursday. If they want to work in the UK, they will need to comply with new migration restrictions.
Ministers have repeatedly said that although Brexit will give the government the power to control immigration, that does not mean they want to stop it entirely, and that they want to continue to allow companies to hire skilled workers from the EU.
There had been calls for the government to use quotas to control the number of skilled EU workers coming into the UK. But sources denied a claim in a report in the Times saying that the new system would involve a set number of work permits being issued for EU workers coming to the UK to work in particular employment sectors.
The immigration plans being published later this year will set out the government’s proposals for a new, long-term system. Different rules may apply during the transitional period that is likely to be imposed after the Brexit negotiations.
Although EU citizens will not need a visa to cross the border and enter the UK after Brexit, it does not amount to the continuation of free movement, which refers to the right of EU citizens to work in another member state.
Tory MPs in favour of Brexit told the Times that they were happy with the idea of EU nationals being able to visit the UK without a visa. Andrew Bridgen told the paper he did not object to EU citizens entering the country. “What they won’t be able to do is work or claim benefits,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
The Irish border issue threatens to test the UK government’s newfound unity over Brexit when the European Union unveils the first complete draft of Britain’s EU divorce treaty later this week.
In the document to be finalised on Wednesday, the European commission will spell out that, as a last resort to avoid a hard border, Northern Ireland would remain in the EU customs union and aligned to European single market rules.
One senior EU diplomat said the text would reflect that unless there are mutually-agreed alternatives: “Northern Ireland is to stay in a de-facto customs union with the EU combined with alignment on trade in goods.”
British and European negotiators papered over their divisions on Ireland with an agreement on phase one of Brexit talks in December that allowed both sides to claim victory. That agreement – contained in a 15-page joint report – is now being turned into formal legal treaty by EU lawyers, leaving no room for ambiguity about the status of the Irish border.
The British government will be presented with a 200-page Brexit treaty that consists of more than 160 legal articles. Access to the document is tightly controlled. Diplomats are only allowed to view the draft in a reading room and must leave their phones at the door.
The European commission’s leadership is expected to sign off the draft on Wednesday, before handing it to national diplomats of the EU’s remaining 27 member states who aim to revise the draft by the end of March. Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, wants to agree a final version with the UK by October 2018.
The Brexit treaty will cover all aspects of the UK’s divorce and transition out of the EU – but is not a trade deal. Negotiators expect to agree a non-binding outline of key points on trade, allowing formal talks to begin once the UK leaves the EU in March 2019.
The EU and UK have agreed three options to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
 The first option states that a hard border could be avoided “through the overall EU-UK relationship”, meaning that the UK would remain embedded in EU structures.
EU officials think this is impossible as Theresa May has ruled out keeping the UK in the customs union and single market. In a move to outflank the government, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said on Monday he wanted “a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union”. But a customs union is not enough to solve the Irish question. EU officials think Northern Ireland needs to be aligned in other areas, such as animal, medicine and food standards, to prevent the Irish border becoming a back door for smugglers.
The second option calls on the UK to “propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland”. This remains the British government’s preferred option and the government suggested solving the issue through technology or a unique customs arrangement that would make the UK responsible for customs checks on the EU border.
 But the EU has dismissed these ideas as “magical thinking” and officials are deeply sceptical that the UK has any “specific solutions” that will be acceptable to the EU. “The issue has been up in the air since 15 December and we have not heard anything,” said the senior official.
The final option, known in Brussels as the backstop, states that “in the absence of agreed solutions”, the UK “will maintain full alignment” with the single market and customs union rules that support the Good Friday agreement and all-island economy.
Turning this promise into legal text is likely to re-open divisions between May and the Democratic Unionist party propping up her government. In December, the DUP insisted on inserting text in the EU agreement stating that there would be no new regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Brussels sees this as a promise by London to the DUP that does not bind the EU.
The Irish government has been pressing the EU to move quickly and not leave the border question to be settled at the final hour. So far, the rest of the EU has supported this approach. “There is no appetite among the EU27 to see the ball kicked into the long grass,” one senior diplomat said. “Things have to move; that is clear. Nobody wants a groundhog day moment.”
The Irish text may be contained in a protocol attached to the Brexit treaty, a device that makes it no less legally watertight, but perhaps easier to revise, if the British come up with a different way of avoiding a hard border.
The Brexit treaty will also see the return of the “punishment clause” that angered the Brexit secretary, David Davis. This provision – the idea that the UK could lose single market benefits if it breaks EU rules during the transition – surfaced in a footnote on the transition text.
The loose wording irritated some EU member states, who complained to Barnier that it was presented in a provocative way. The basic idea will remain in the text, but the treaty will spell out that the UK will be subject to usual EU infringement procedures – rather than an ad-hoc arrangement that means the commission is judge and jury.
For the EU, this means the European court of justice, another aspect of the Brexit treaty that is expected to cause conflict with the UK.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
European officials have poured cold water on hopes that Theresa May could negotiate Brexit with other EU leaders in September to break the deadlock over Britain’s departure.
Diplomatic sources have rejected suggestions that May could hold direct talks on Brexit with the 27 other EU heads of state and government at a summit in Salzburg next month.
“That is completely ridiculous, that is complete overspin of Salzburg,” one senior source told the Guardian. “It would mean that we would ditch our negotiating approach of the last two years and discuss at 28 instead of 27 to one, and I don’t see why this would happen.”
Brexit talks are due to resume in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, the start of a new intense phase of negotiations, with the aim of reaching a deal in the autumn.
Since the referendum, the EU has insisted that all formal talks are led by the chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. May is allowed to update EU leaders on her plans at quarterly EU summits but is not in the room for discussions.
Officials expect this approach to be continued at Salzburg, an informal summit on 20 September officially dedicated to migration. The meeting has been organised by Austria, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, but it will be for the European council president, Donald Tusk, to decide whether to add Brexit to the agenda.
The Salzburg gathering comes four weeks before an EU summit in Brussels, pencilled in by Barnier as the moment to strike a deal. Many in Brussels expect the deadline to slip to November or even December, squeezing the time available to ratify the text ahead of the UK’s departure on 29 March 2019.
The British government has tried to get round Barnier by appealing directly to national capitals for greater flexibility, a strategy continued by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who is on a three-day Brexit tour on the continent this week.
Latvia’s foreign minister, Edgars Rinkēvičs, said before meeting Hunt that there was a 50-50 chance of failing to reach a deal. “I believe both the EU and the UK need to have extra effort to reach some kind of deal,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Barnier’s mandate is set by the EU’s 27 leaders and there is little appetite to change it, despite Hunt’s calls for a new approach.
No one is expecting a dramatic breakthrough from this week’s low-key Brexit negotiations in Brussels, which will be led by officials rather than Barnier and the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab.
Last month Raab said that from mid-August there would be “weekly discussions to clear away all the obstacles that lie in our path to a strong deal in October”.
On Thursday negotiators will discuss the problem of the Irish border, with the two sides deeply divided over how to avoid customs checks at the crossing. The second day will be devoted to discussing the UK’s future relationship with the EU, outlined in May’s Chequers blueprint.
The EU sees serious problems with the Chequers plan and has dismissed the customs ideas as unworkable. However, EU negotiators have not entirely written off May’s plan and see the kernel of a free-trade agreement. But this outcome would fall far short of the prime minister’s hopes for deeper economic ties.
EU officials insist they cannot break up the EU’s single market and its “four freedoms” of goods, capital, services and people. “I can’t imagine we would walk away from that,” said one diplomat. “It is the raison d’être of the EU. We can’t have Brexit threaten our political and economic system.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
It promises to be one of the most complicated negotiations in history. Whitehall civil servants are said to have identified 700 different issues of administrative overlap that need to be untangled before Britain can cut itself loose from the European Union. But cutting through the legal verbiage, it is possible to reduce them to eight main political sticking points:
As with any good meeting, much of the opening energy is likely to be expended on talks about talks. “The first conversation between Michel [Barnier] and myself will almost certainly be about this subject,” British negotiator David Davis recently told MPs about contact with his EU counterpart.
It is more than just throat clearing. European negotiators insist they can only deal first with the terms of Britain’s departure, rather than the nature of its future status. For the Brits this violates the spirit of article 50’s instruction to “take account of the framework for [the] future relationship” and they would like to hold discussions about trade in parallel with the departure talks. They would prefer everything to be on the table up front, fearing that otherwise they will have no leverage when it comes to compromises over money.
Legally, London may have a point, but the European commission and parliament are adamant that this is impossible in practical terms, not least because trade talks will take far longer and require a far broader ratification process than the two years set aside to deal with the mechanics of Brexit itself.
Currently neither side is budging, and without agreement about whether talks are consecutive or concurrent, nothing can move forward on any front. London will be hoping for help from other member state governments to break the deadlock.
Until recently, the size of the European alimony request was the subject of conjecture. The unofficial talk in Brussels was of around €60bn (£52bn) to settle all of Britain’s outstanding financial commitments, a figure that was met with amused derision in London.
One Conservative backbencher, Peter Bone, was only half-heartedly dismissed by Theresa May when he claimed instead that the EU actually owes Britain £184bn, which is a full refund of its total net contributions since joining in 1973.
But things are getting real. Asked about the €60bn demand last week, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, confirmed it was “around that”. Davis has acknowledged that Britain will have to pay something; the question is how much.
Some estimates emerging from Brussels have reached as high as €85.2bn, but a lot depends on which accounting principles are applied. The French style of public accounts factors in projects that have been agreed but not yet paid for.
Whitehall insists it is only the threat of non-payment that keeps runaway EU spending in check. Throw in similar disagreements over pensions, buildings and even the assets of the European Investment Bank, and you have a recipe for months of haggling, followed by an agreed figure of anywhere between €0 and €60bn.
The second issue Barnier has insisted must be dealt with before anything else is discussed is the fate of the 4 million EU citizens stranded on either side of the widening Channel.
Britain’s refusal to give any guarantee about the ongoing residency rights of EU citizens living in the UK before receiving similar assurances about the rights of Britons in the EU has been the source of genuine anger in Europe, where it is seen as tantamount to holding foreigners hostage.
Privately, however, many officials regard this as one of the easier issues to resolve. Even hardline Brexiters acknowledge that EU citizens already in the country have a strong claim to be “grandfathered in” to the immigration rules once they change. With many more such individuals in the UK than there are Brits in the EU, there should be political pressure for a reciprocal deal from the continent, too, as long as abandoning the principle of free movement of people still comes with costs in other areas.
There are even signs of British softening over the need to allow some degree of ongoing immigration for economic reasons. Details, such as healthcare rights, will still be tricky, but if both sides want to get off on a good footing this a good place to start.
In contrast, the fate of border controls, especially the sensitive Northern Ireland land border, is one where recent warm words in the political realm belie a number of tough practical challenges.
The British and Irish governments are adamant that they do not wish to see any border controls introduced that would jeopardise the Northern Ireland peace process, a principle enthusiastically endorsed by Barnier and his negotiators in Brussels.
The trouble is that if the UK is outside the single market and customs union – as May has insisted is inevitable – then the land border between it and the rest of the EU takes on an economic and legal importance that may be impossible to ignore.
Whether, as some hope, there are technological ways of introducing a degree of customs enforcement and migration checks without a physical border post remains to be seen. The alternative would be to treat Northern Ireland as if it were still in the EU, or the republic as if it were part of the UK – neither of which are likely to help the peace process.
These intertwined questions over customs, immigration and borders are another reason why Brits would like to see the issue of their future relationship dealt with at the same time as the narrower Brexit discussions. But trade is an area many Europeans fear will be a long, painful awakening for an over-optimistic prime minister who still wants to have her cake and eat it.
For most Europeans, the issue is simple: for the sake of the future cohesion of the union it is paramount that the principle of no shortcut access to the single market without free movement of people remains inviolate. Why should they allow Britain preferential access to their markets on anything approaching the same terms as today unless Britain is prepared to abide by at least most of the current social and political rules that define what EU membership is supposed to be about?
Subsequent Downing Street talk of special carve-outs for prized industries, such as financial services and car manufacturing, is seen as even more irrational, not least because it would be in flagrant breach of World Trade Organization rules governing comprehensive free trade agreements.
Another non-starter in Brussels is the British idea of a bespoke customs union, which gives unfettered access as well as freedom to negotiate independent trade deals elsewhere. Until Britain acknowledges that this will be seen as a dangerous economic backdoor, these talks may go nowhere fast.
There are some totemic issues for Britons that could be easier to resolve as long as there is something to show for it at the end of the talks.
One such apparently intractable problem at the moment is the British reluctance to have anything to do with the European court of justice after it leaves. Much of the opposition to the ECJ is born of media disinformation and a lack of understanding about how all international agreements require arbitration arrangements.
Unlike the unpopular, but unrelated, European court of human rights, the ECJ has done little to offend the average Brexit voter. If Britain signs up to any trade deal worth its name it is likely to have to accept the authority of some sort of supranational body to adjudicate disputes.
Taking back control is one thing, but pretending that Britain can have 100% sovereignty while still being a member of the international community may not be sustainable. That the British are already suggesting simply rebranding such arrangements so they do not have the word European in the title means there may be room for compromise.
One area where some sort of ECJ involvement seems increasingly inevitable is in governing a transition phase between Britain leaving in March 2019 and the introduction of a future free trade deal.
The Europeans are adamant that if the transition continues to offer the benefits of single market access it ought to remain subject to the authority of the ECJ so that disputes can be settled fairly.
This would be a painful concession for May to make if it means going into the next general election without keeping her promise of severing all ties, but it could be a necessary compromise if no lasting trade deal is in place.
Ministers have already bowed to strong pressure from business and the City to cushion the blow of leaving by acknowledging it is important to go slowly. The only concession to politics so far has been the rebranding of this as an “adoption phase” rather than the more open-ended concept of transition.
Expect to see more such spin as Downing Street seeks to soften any cliff edge without looking as if it is backtracking.
Unless talks break down completely and Britain walks away without a single deal, all agreements reached between Barnier and Davis will be subject to ratification by the European and Westminster parliaments.
May has successfully argued that British MPs will have a limited choice when it comes to a vote on her deal: take it, or leave anyway. The glowering presence of the European parliament is already having more of an impact as it insists Barnier takes a hard line.
But at least the provisions of article 50 allow for the agreement on departure to be subject to qualified majority voting, both among EU governments and MEPs. There is little danger of a rogue protest from an individual member state disrupting any hard-won deal at the last minute.
When it comes to trade, however, EU law insists on a much wider consultation for any deal deemed to be “mixed”, ie, affecting both national and European institutions. The need to secure support from every national parliament in the EU, including some regional ones, would be a huge obstacle to British hopes of securing a generous trade deal and will be fought at all costs by its negotiators.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
“Crunch time is coming for the prime minister,” Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, tells the BBC’s Andrew Marr. But, then again, when isn’t it? Theresa May is more familiar with crunch time than an overworked gravel salesman.
What gives force to Starmer’s claim is that the ordeal now facing the prime minister is of a different order and character to the daily miseries that have afflicted her since the general election last June. Ostensibly a principled challenge by Jeremy Corbyn to her position on Brexit, it is really a ruthless political challenge to her position, full stop.
You can be sure that the Labour leader’s speech on Monday will disappoint those in his party who hoped he would embrace full, continued, unambiguous membership of the EU customs union. Corbyn’s longstanding ideological recoil from the EU will see to that, as will the unrelenting pressure from Eurosceptic Labour MPs and some of his closest advisers, who believe that a sellout on Brexit will be fiercely punished by working-class voters.
So don’t expect a tearful declaration that he does, after all, love Big Brussels. There has been no epiphany, no sudden volte-face. Yes, his mind has been focused by the risk of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and the consequent mortal threat to the Good Friday agreement. But the shift he is about to announce is primarily political rather than doctrinal in inspiration.
The potential to cause havoc in the Commons was demonstrated by the success in December of Dominic Grieve’s amendment to the European Union withdrawal bill giving MPs a legally guaranteed vote on the Brexit deal. But there are only so many procedural issues upon which Labour can join forces with remainer Tories if the bombardment is to be sustained.
This is what Corbyn is doing. By shifting the needle even slightly on the question of a future customs arrangement with the EU, he will – at a stroke – create the germ of a cross-party rebel alliance bound not only by an insistence on the supremacy of the Commons but also by shared policy values. This is a hugely significant moment.
I sympathise with the 80 senior Labour figures who signed a statement issued to the Observer urging him to go further and to back membership of the single market. They are right that Britain’s economic interests would be profoundly damaged by our departure from that hard-won commercial arrangement. But they misinterpret what Corbyn is doing, and why. His conversion is not to soft Brexit, but to a hard knock on the door of No 10.
With ever greater clarity, it is dawning upon Labour strategists that there may indeed be a “Corbyn moment” – which is to say, a limited period of maximum electoral opportunity. For an opposition, there is always a case for playing it long, campaigning in more locations, fleshing out the difference you will make to sceptical voters. But time can be a foe as well as a friend – never more so than in the capricious age of novelty politics and fickle social media.
Last summer belonged to Corbyn, in mood, tone and electoral trajectory. But volatility, by definition, destroys that which it creates. Etched into the waves of euphoria is the certainty of the opposite emotion. The only variable is the time span separating infatuation from rejection. It could be years – but not necessarily so. Remember Cleggmania? Remember May’s apparently unbreakable command of the political stage in late 2016? In modern politics, the only mantra worth repeating is: this too shall pass.
So what are Corbyn’s options? He can hold tight and wait for this jerry-rigged government to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. Or he can strike.
The first option is proving risky, as May’s lonely talent appears to be a capacity to turn her party’s confusion and indecision to her advantage. The cabinet’s commitment last week to pursue a Brexit deal based upon “ambitious managed divergence” is yet another tribute to her dreary genius. The wording is completely meaningless in all respects – except that it has extended the Tory truce a little longer.
And this is what May does; all she does, in fact. She leads by procrastination. She insists upon inaction. She is the woman ordering endless Ubers to take her to the place where she already stands.
The alternative option for the Labour leader is to force the pace, and to do so in parliament. In 1992-93, John Smith paved the way for Tony Blair’s victory by tactical alignment over the Maastricht treaty with the Tory Eurosceptic “bastards” – a Commons rebellion that did terrible damage to John Major’s authority.
A quarter of a century later, Corbyn has a comparable opportunity to make common cause with the Tory remainers: not always, but often enough to tip the Conservative tribe from paralysis to panic. His new position on the customs union is meant to light the fuse that leads – however circuitously – to a confidence vote in the PM and another general election. It is not a strategy without peril. It could fail, and embarrassingly so. But it is still, as Michael Corleone would say, the smart move.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
When Theresa May calls the cabinet to order on Wednesday morning, amid the chintz of Chequers, the roses will be past their best and the lawn covered with dew. After Britain’s mad summer, the May administration will convene in Buckinghamshire finally to face the chill autumn reality: Britain voted for Brexit without a plan and the Europeans intend to shaft us.
They may not have actually used the word “shaft” when they met on the Italian aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi last week, but German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president François Hollande and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi know they hold all the strongest cards. French civil servants are trained at the grandes écoles, like diplomatic special forces, to spot and ruthlessly attack the weakness of negotiating partners. And May’s administration goes into this critical negotiating process with an obvious weakness. It does not know whether it wants to remain in the single market.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is said to want “partial” single market access, to keep the City’s passporting arrangements into the eurozone. If, in order to get it, Britain has to soft-pedal on immigration controls, that would be no disaster for the Treasury, whose growth projections in this year’s budget relied on the impact of a million EU migrants over the next five years.
Brexit minister David Davis and international trade secretary Liam Fox are champing at the bit to begin the article 50 process – naturally they have drawn up rival timelines – but have so far failed to produce any kind of blueprint for their preferred outcome, which is to quit the single market and end free movement. This leaves May struggling to assert control over the process of even coming to a negotiating strategy – hence Wednesday’s away day – and in severe danger of floundering once she has to deliver her Brexit plan to the other EU heads of government.
It is a real, serious and material split in the government of a major country. And it is backed by rival forces in society. Those for whom Brexit became a religion in the spring of 2016 do not care about the niceties of the European Free Trade Association and the European Economic Area. They voted to leave all of it and to “take control” of migration. But the economic elite of Britain, which has the strongest voice both in the Conservative high echelons and in the civil service, simply does not want Brexit. Above all it wants to maintain market access for the City, and for the major global service firms headquartered in London. For them, it is logical to hope that Europe stonewalls all May’s requests for flexible market access, and that – by the end of the process, and with the economy suffering – the public will be ready to accept staying in the EU, with some minor variations on migration.
Labour, too, is racked by the same dilemma. John McDonnell’s “red lines” on Europe do not, and cannot, include keeping free movement, but do include keeping the City’s financial passport and single market “access”. For Jeremy Corbyn the additional problem is that the European left wants Britain out of the EU pronto, before it can negotiate any dilution of the social chapter.
Both main parties, then, are trapped between what is possible and what the British people voted for. Owen Smith may be wowing his rallies with talk of a second referendum, but the party leaderships are beginning to realise this will only be sorted out in parliament. It will be complex, messy and reputations will be minced. The only democratic way of doing it is to say – if necessary with May, Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon standing shoulder to shoulder somewhere symbolic – that Britain’s aim is to remain in the single market.
Until the delusion of the giant flounce-out is killed off – and until Liam Fox and David Davies are told to stop dreaming about it – those negotiating with Britain from the other side will have a massive incentive to force us into it. If they think it is our secret desire, or our plan B, for Britain to quit the single market cleanly, Europe will not take seriously any UK government demands for variations to single market rules, designed to keep us on the inside the market, though outside the EU itself.
May should seek cabinet agreement for a baseline request: to remain as part of the EEA, with a humane, time-limited restriction on free movement as Britain’s one demand, and then get on with it. She should make a statement to the commons that rules out leaving the single market. Any confusion that is allowed to fester over this will corrode her own authority as the Europeans sensibly deploy every trick in the book – a book going back to the era when Prince Metternich ran rings round Britain in post-Napoleonic Europe – to make her squirm.
There will be uproar in Ukipland – but there always is. Not only is there no clear mandate for leaving the single market, but the negotiating positions of our major partners are now clear. They have not said “go ahead, pick and mix” from the EU goodie-bag: they have said the single market plus free movement or get lost. The British negotiators’ job is to prise that position apart – not rubberstamp it, which is what Fox, Davies and other hardcore Brexiters want.
May wants to serve a full term. But both logic and principle dictate that were she to give in to the “clean break” brigade within the cabinet, she would have to schedule an election and fight for a mandate to lead Britain into this particularly stupid form of economic suicide. If so, whoever leads Labour should be salivating at the prospect. The Brexit moment caused many in the City to question the long-term direction of centre-right politics. By finessing May into power without a vote, and surrounding her with the grey men and women of provincial Toryism, the grandees of the party restored the impression that they could – just about – hold the line for the City, the big law firms, the service giants and big pharma.
But if Tories want to go into an election promising to destroy 30 years of European financial integration in order to assuage the xenophobes and climate deniers of Ukip, that would be a different prospect.
For the opposition parties, if they can recover their nerve, any confusion coming out of Wednesday’s cabinet – still better any open revolt – will be a big opportunity. They should state, simply, that they will seek a vote in parliament to veto any Brexit strategy that tries to remove Britain from the single market. That principle – which needs no further elaboration since these are opposition parties, not a parallel government – could become the rock upon which Theresa May’s soaraway ratings are broken, and her majority ground down.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
European newspapers were overwhelmingly critical of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.
According to a comprehensive review of the press coverage in 13 countries following the EU referendum, most articles argued that Brexit was bad for the EU.
Furthermore, they believed it would damage their own nation’s interests and would also turn out to be bad for Britain.
One strong theme identified in the study, “Will it kill us or make us stronger? How Europe’s media covered Brexit”, was that the British vote highlighted problems within the EU.
However the majority view, across all political opinions, was that the EU should be reformed rather than be allowed to fail. And most agreed that the EU would be worse off without Britain (81 articles compared to 14).
One Hungarian newspaper argued the EU was only a “rump” without the UK. In only one country, Russia - surprise, surprise - were there more positive than negative articles about Brexit.
The European Journalism Observatory conducted a content analysis of the print editions of three daily newspapers in 12 European countries and also in the United States, between 25 June - two days after the referendum - and 1 July.
In all, 1,638 newspaper articles about Brexit were examined in both EU and non-EU countries (see list below). In a related study, 489 articles were analysed in three British newspapers.
Overall, it was found that 56% of articles in European and US newspapers were anti-Brexit. Only 8% of articles were pro-Brexit, while 36% were judged to be neutral.
Both the European and US newspapers, whatever their political leaning, reported “stunned surprise” and “dismay” after the referendum.
While leftwing newspapers were more strongly in favour of the EU and more critical of the outcome of Britain’s referendum arguing it could damage the EU; rightwing papers were also generally negative towards Brexit, although their analysis tended to be more understanding about the reasons behind Britain’s vote to leave.
In Germany and Italy, most of the articles contended that Brexit would have a negative impact upon Britain. However, Italy’s il Giornale (owned by Silvio Berlusconi’s family) contained some of the most enthusiastic pro-Brexit coverage, depicting it as a victory for the people over EU hierarchies.
In eastern European countries, including the EU’s newest members as well as those hoping to join, such as Albania, papers were predominantly negative about Brexit and positive about the EU.
Many raised concerns over the fate of their citizens living and working, or hoping to go and work in the UK. The Polish tabloid Fakt was the only title to report aggression towards Polish nationals living in the UK in any detail.
Of all 13 countries studied, only Russia’s newspapers contained no articles stating Brexit would damage its national interest. Out of 52 articles, 13 outlined why Brexit would be good for Russia, 12 of which appeared in Regnum, a pro-Putin outlet.
As for the United States, the volume of mainstream news coverage devoted to Brexit was noted by the researchers. Of the 186 stories published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and New York Post, 31 argued that Brexit was bad for Europe while only two opposed that view.
The dominant theme in the New York Times’s coverage was of negative consequences for the Britain.
In the UK, the study concluded that of the three newspapers studied (The Telegraph, Guardian and Daily Mail) two had backed the leave campaign, yet coverage after the vote was mostly anti-Brexit (39%), 27% pro-Brexit and 34% neutral.
Albania: Mapo, Shqiptarja.com (print edition), Panorama; Czech: Mladá Fronta Dnes, Právo, Blesk; Germany: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung and BILD; Hungary: Magyar Idők, Népszabadság and Blikk;
Italy: Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica and Il Giornale; Latvia: Latvijas Avīze, Diena, Vesti Segodņa; Poland: Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, and Fakt; Portugal: Correio da Manhã, Jornal de Notícias and Público
Romania: Adevărul, Evenimentul Zilei, Libertatea; Russia: Regnum,Novaya Gazeta and Moskovskiy Komsomolets; Switzerland: Tagesanzeiger, NZZ, Blick; Ukraine: “День” – Den, “Сегодня” – Segodnya, “Факты” – Fakty.
United States: Wall Street Journal, New York Times and New York Post; UK: Guardian, Daily and Sunday Telegraph and Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
The recent World Chess Championship set a new record, but it was not one likely to give the game more mass appeal. There were 12 slow matches, conducted in a soundproof glass box, between the reigning champion and his challenger – and every one ended in a draw. The contest was finally resolved only by quickening the pace with a deciding run of games in which the players had to think and move much more rapidly.
Something similar is going to happen with the four-dimensional version of chess known as Brexit. Grinding deadlock will be ultimately resolved by a fast-moving tiebreaker phase.
The past 30 months have unfolded at a painfully slow pace as Theresa May has tried and failed to find a match-winning formula without ever quite being defeated by her various opponents. She began with the hard Brexit opening called “red lines”, a strategy conceived in the soundproof box inhabited by the prime minister and her aides during the period when she was impervious to any advice from diplomatic grandmasters. This strategy blew up when it collided with the realities of striking a deal without wrecking the economy. Then there was her early election gambit, initially hailed as a stroke of genius by many of her colleagues, which left her with no parliamentary majority. She subsequently adjusted to a “bespoke” – also known as a spatchcocked – version of Brexit, which has been denounced by both those who want to maintain a close relationship with the EU and those who desire a starker rupture.
I have yet to find anyone at Westminster who thinks that she can win the parliamentary vote on 11 December. Even the dogs on the street know she is heading for defeat. The recent prognostications of the Treasury and the Bank of England have been of no help to her at all. The Moggites, never anything but utterly predictable, have jeeringly dismissed the forecasts that a no-deal Brexit would have a ruinous impact. Those who want to reverse Brexit have noted that every version of it, including Mrs May’s, is worse for jobs, trade and investment than remaining within the EU. The plucky ministers prepared to defend the boss have the unenviable task of trying to argue for a deal that the government’s own forecasters say will leave Britain poorer.
The number of Tory MPs who are declared opponents of Mrs May’s deal is 100 and rising. Even if we halve that, to allow for rebels flaking under pressure from the whips, it is still impossible to see how she can prevail without the assistance of a substantial number of opposition MPs, help that won’t be forthcoming. There are Labour MPs who would prefer her deal, awful as many of them think it is, to any of the alternatives, but to support her would be to risk denunciation by their party leadership and deselection by their local activists. Any Labour MP who might have once thought of voting with the government has even less incentive to throw a lifeline to a Tory prime minister if Mrs May is going under anyway.
Once parliament votes down the deal, the slow games will be over and we will move into quickfire decision-making. This is when all the contestants will have to play speed chess. Here are the possible endgames.
There is a cosmetic tweaking of the terms of Mrs May’s deal, if the EU is prepared to play ball with that, which is designed to make it more palatable to her party and this is followed by a second, successful, attempt to secure parliamentary approval. In so much as Number 10 has an idea that merits being called a strategy, this seems to be it. There is only one snag with this plan: there is a vanishingly small number of people at Westminster who think that enough MPs can be persuaded to change their minds between a first vote and a second.
The next endgame sees Britain crashing towards a no deal, the parliamentary equivalent of a chess player deciding to upend the board and break all the pieces. There is no majority in parliament for this calamitous outcome, but it could happen by horrendous accident if MPs can’t agree on anything else, because no deal is the default position of the withdrawal legislation.
Some are still fastening their hopes to the concept of fashioning a parliamentary consensus for a different form of Brexit, which usually involves the word “Norway”. This is not impossible, but there isn’t coherent agreement on an alternative nor clarity about who would negotiate it and how it could be made to happen in the short time left.
Another referendum, which Mrs May has always set her face against, could end up being her least worst option. Is that her secret plan B? That would help to make sense of otherwise inexplicable decisions, such as running around the country trying to sell her deal to the public when the voters that currently matter to the prime minister are all sitting in parliament. Maybe, some of her colleagues speculate, she is warming up for a referendum campaign. I’ve said before that parliamentary stalemate is the likeliest route to the question being thrown back to the people. It is true that Mrs May has used strong language – words such as “betrayal” – to describe another referendum. Then again, she was never going to have an early election right up until the moment she called one.
Here, Labour’s position will be critical. A big chunk of the Conservative party will oppose another referendum, so one can only happen with Labour support. As we report today, the most recent meeting of the shadow cabinet had a discussion about Brexit – quite a rarity for that body. Several of its members have also started to twig that events will unfold at pace and speedy decisions will be required once Mrs May has been defeated in parliament. In the words of one of their number, Labour will have to be ready to “move quickly through the gears”.
Having long hoped that Brexit might somehow trigger an early election and having repeatedly called for the same, Jeremy Corbyn will have to table a motion of no confidence in the government. He will do so even though most of the people around him think this will be futile. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor and always a man to watch at times such as these, has recently conceded that triggering a general election is “very difficult”. He went on to say that, if there isn’t an election, Labour will “inevitably” call for another referendum.
By my reckoning, a majority of the shadow cabinet either want Labour to come out in full-throated support of another referendum or think that they will have to end up backing one because there will be no other viable positions for the party. This majority includes Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, and Keir Starmer, the party’s chief spokesman on Brexit. It probably also includes Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, though colleagues say that she is being calculatedly cautious about saying so explicitly.
Minds have been concentrated by Mrs May’s suggestion of a TV debate between herself and Mr Corbyn. This has forced Labour people to confront the truth that their Brexit fudges are crumbling before everyone’s eyes. No one thinks Labour could negotiate all the benefits of being within the EU for Britain while no longer being a member. Labour spokespeople struggle to defend that posture through short interviews. Ninety minutes of sustained scrutiny of Mr Corbyn about Brexit on primetime TV comes with substantial perils for Labour, especially if its leader is left exposed on whether the people should have the final say.
There is still significant resistance to another referendum among some in the shadow cabinet and elements of the Labour leader’s inner circle. Their preferred – if never declared – outcome has been for Brexit to happen and the Tories to be held culpable for it. So those who think that Labour will have to embrace another national vote came away from that shadow cabinet meeting encouraged because Mr Corbyn didn’t try to close down the discussion.
Declaring for another referendum would cost Labour support among some of its traditional voters who want out of the EU. But there will also be a price to pay – and probably a much steeper one – for betraying the wishes of Labour members and supporters who are desperate for the British people to be given an opportunity to reverse Brexit. We are coming to the end of the long period when Labour managed to just about get away with suggesting to both Leavers and Remainers that it was on their side. That position will soon be entirely unsustainable.
They say that to govern is to choose. At this critical juncture in Britain’s history, it will also be the case that to oppose is to choose.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
A question for the economists: what is the elasticity of Brexit? To be more precise, at what point is it likely that those who voted – amid the flurry of lies and distortions – to leave the European Union will review that decision and begin to rue it? Is it like one of those addictive products – alcohol perhaps, or cigarettes – that people cling to despite the evidence that they are costly and harmful? Or is it something that, with the right approach and in the right circumstances, people might be willing to critically reassess? How much is pragmatic; how much political?
Even the rookie economist knows the quote often misattributed to Keynes: when the facts change, I change my mind. But how many facts must change before the tipping point? The issue surely becomes more pressing as each day sees the unravelling of the strong and stable Brexit blueprint. Bullish remainers will say few facts have changed. They said at the outset that the Farage/Gove/Johnson promised land was a mirage and saw their warnings rejected as Project Fear. But for the fair-minded non-ideological leaver, of which there were very many, there is no end of new information to take on board.
What do they think now of the belief that immigration will not plummet, as they were assured it would? What do they think, having only sanctioned leaving the EU, of the rightwing mission creep – indulged by too many on the left – that would see us adrift from the single market and the customs union? That’s exactly what people voted for, the leave fanatics say. Nigel Farage insisted as much to me himself. I don’t remember seeing that on my ballot paper, I told him. You’re making it up as you go along. Is the fair-minded leaver content to be strung along in that way? As for control, what does the non-ideological leaver think about our pathetic need, never articulated during the Brexit fanatics’ campaign of sophistry, to keep paying millions to Brussels for access to markets during transition and perhaps thereafter, without any right or ability to shape its decisions? There is a cold wind of reality blowing through leave and remainer territory alike. When does the fair-minded leaver grab a coat?
We have come a long way in a short time: from parliament having to fight for a say, from the profoundly undemocratic attempt to rule the post-Brexit world via Henry Vlll clauses, to polls that show growing support for the single market and/or alignment so close that Brexit may as well not happen. Last month’s Guardian poll quantified how many people believe Brexit will have a negative effect on the UK economy and now want a second referendum once a final departure deal is struck.
Think on this: a 16% margin of support for the idea of a second referendum. Remember how, not so long ago, even those who voted to remain could do nothing but wince at the thought of another campaign, another vote, another national bloodletting. Consider that now even a quarter of the leave voters polled think it necessary to hold a second vote.
Take that Guardian poll and then factor in the Observer survey of Labour voters a week earlier, underlining their growing support for the single market and something way more tangible than the “jobs-first Brexit”, make-do formula offered by Jeremy Corbyn.
So the remainers and the Brexit softies are raising a voice. But what is dispiriting is that in the face of Brexit’s unravelling, few leavers seem willing to reconsider. Brexit appears to have formidable elasticity at this stage – with experts still disbelieved, and the economic damage, chiefly in Brexit- and Labour-voting heartlands, the stuff of doom-laden prediction.
But in one way, that’s no surprise. It is one thing to say, as remainers have made clear, that those who voted to leave chose the wrong solution for their justified grievances, but another, dangerous thing to play down or fail to address those grievances. Jobs, immigration, investment, poor schools, cash-strapped NHS, hollowed-out town centres, housing shortages, a north-south divide: all played their part in creating the spasm of rage that was the referendum verdict. And hasn’t it been the singular failure so far of remain and soft Brexit campaigners to articulate to those leavers how life would be better for them, how their grievances would be addressed by anything other than the Farage/Johnson/Gove hard Brexit? Without that plan, without that promise of a step change for leave areas – some New Deal, or Marshall plan for Brexitland – why would they change their minds or soften their resistance?
They have hope. They won’t give that up for nothing. The best way to eclipse a faulty product is to market a better product. If there is a strong and positive case to be made to those who voted against despair, isn’t it best made now?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
Ministerial speeches on Brexit seem to be a bit like buses. We wait months for one to shed a bit more light on the UK’s negotiating stance, and then they all turn up at once. On Tuesday it was David Davis’s turn to visit a European city and set out the next steps on the “road to Brexit”.
I’m sure his Cabinet colleagues were delighted to hear about a lock-in at Chequers at the end of this week, set to last until they finally agree a position for the Brexit talks. A unified Cabinet is now more important than ever if the Brexit divisions, which the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, tried to bridge last week, are to be overcome. Without it, debates in Westminster and beyond about the single market, the customs union, divergence, tariffs and non-tariff barriers will just go on and on, in ever-decreasing circles.
Successfully delivering Brexit has, in truth, always been about who would be honest enough to set out the compromises needed to actually get the UK to leave. Davis’s speech finally laid out one of those, and offered more clarity on what Brexit can’t deliver if the government really is to keep its “global Britain” promise. The key line is this: “ The future of standards and regulations – the building blocks of free trade – is increasingly global.” UK businesses won’t be relieved of the mythical EU regulations and standards that parts of our media have gone on and on about for decades, because many of them are already global– and in fact, as the secretary of state said, these serve consumers, workers and, in some cases, our environment very well.
As reality bites, it is becoming clearer that those who voted leave because they wanted to pull up the drawbridge on the rest of the world, and because they believed that we could revert to an era when only the UK parliament made our laws, will not be able to get their way. Full marks to Davis for being pretty straight on this and putting an end to the dreams of some that Brexit would herald a low- or minimal-regulatory nirvana.
Davis makes the case, certainly, for intelligent regulation that supports the sectors and industries the UK wants to be expert in and which the industrial strategy has focused on. He also makes the case for us developing regulations that others, including our EU neighbours, will want to adopt, envisaging “continuing to work with other European countries to drive new standards”. This has already happened in financial services, where the UK has often led the way in shaping regulations because of our sophisticated markets.
Now the financial services sector has taken matters into its own hands, thinking through how Brexit can be shaped through the work of the International Regulatory Strategy Group. It proposes a system of mutual recognition, and suggests ways in which disputes about how regulations are judged can be decided. I hope the government takes this on board.
The group’s work is recognition that potentially one of the most damaging things for those trading across EU borders is the reimposition of non-tariff barriers such as product standards. As the government’s analyses reveal, there would be quite a difference in economic impact between something like access to the European Economic Area or a free trade agreement, and reverting to World Trade Organisation arrangements.
Of course, mutual recognition and the desire to be a global standard-setter get us only so far in providing certainty for businesses and citizens. Tariffs matter, and that is why the government’s silence on the difference between a customs arrangement and a customs union is so significant. Those who have thought long and hard about the Irish border issue, and read the December 2017 text on phase one of the negotiations, agree that the regulatory alignment mentioned there must lead to some kind of customs deal.
Those who now say, in the interests of silencing the border questions, that the Good Friday agreement hasn’t achieved its purpose, are being deeply cavalier about the peace and security of people in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. That really is a case of ideology prevailing over sense and practicality – something the prime minister, in her Munich security speech, seemed to want to avoid.
Davis’s remarks lift the lid on how the UK intends to approach a key part of dealing with Brexit and leaving the single market – by asking for a system of mutual recognition. We don’t yet know whether that will apply to all sectors. And, of course, putting a proposal on the table is not the same as securing agreement. But it is a valuable start and a welcome bit of clarity on the direction of travel.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
‘They can smell a rat. But they are keeping quiet for now because they are not yet sure which rat it is they can smell.” At the end of a week that began with humiliation for Theresa May but ended with much of the British press hailing her as a hero, this was how one UK diplomat summed up the muted reactions of Brexit-supporting MPs to the deal struck by the prime minister on Friday.
Was it the triumph that rightwing papers and cabinet ministers were claiming? Or was it, as they suspected, a sell-out that would be exposed as such in the coming days and weeks? No one was quite sure.
May had dashed to Brussels in the early hours of Friday and signed off an agreement that had seemed unachievable four days earlier. She had left the Belgian capital on Monday with nothing, forlorn and seemingly politically broken. The DUP, on whom she relies for a parliamentary majority, had ruthlessly pulled the plug. Arlene Foster, the party’s leader, rang May during a lengthy and late lunch with EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to say the proposals May was ready to sign off on the Irish border issue were unacceptable.
In one devastating act, the DUP had both cruelly exposed the fragility of the prime minister’s grip on Downing Street and put the entire Brexit negotiating process in grave peril, right up against the EU’s deadline. But then, as if by magic and to everyone’s surprise, Tory MPs awoke on Friday to declarations of a new dawn. Humpty Dumpty had been put back together again.
Where there had been deadlock, now there was a path to a negotiated deal on the UK’s exit from the EU. The Irish issue had been solved. An agreement had been struck on money and EU citizens.
All the sticking points were unstuck. Michael Gove, the Brexit-supporting cabinet minister, went on the BBC’s Today programme to say just that, heaping unrestrained praise on May for her brilliant negotiating skills. The environment secretary, who led the Vote Leave campaign, declared May had “won” and could be proud of a “significant personal achievement”. He appeared to have locked himself into the deal before the ink had dried.
Boris Johnson quickly came in behind May too. “Congratulations to PM for her determination in getting today’s deal,” he said. “We now aim to forge a deep and special partnership with our European friends and allies while remaining true to the referendum result – taking back control of our laws, money and borders for the whole of the UK.”
May had won a reprieve among many in her party. “The mess happened earlier in the week,” said one former cabinet minister. “It was a fuck-up over the Irish border, but in terms of recoveries, it’s not a bad one. She has some breathing space. She would have been in very big trouble had talks failed. She deserves a bit of slack now and I think she will get it.”
Tory backbenchers who have followed every twist and turn of the EU debate – some of them over decades – were slower to go public in support. The EU had indeed agreed to move talks on to trade, but at what price for Brexit? Was Johnson right to speak of taking back control of our money and laws when under this deal the UK had signed away about £40bn to the EU (money Johnson had once said the EU could “go whistle” for) and agreed that the hated European Court of Justice (always the Brexiters’ thickest of red lines) would after all be allowed to play a role for eight years in disputes involving EU citizens resident in the UK and UK ones resident in the EU?
Then there was the most ambiguous but potentially most far-reaching part of the agreement, which talked of the possibility of “regulatory alignment” between the Republic of Ireland and the UK in the event that no deal, including on the border between north and south, could be agreed. Did this not imply that the whole of the UK would, in that case, continue to abide by EU rules, under ECJ oversight, and operate as if it was still inside the customs union and the single market?
While the Daily Mail proclaimed “Rejoice! We’re on our way”, doubts were growing among Brexiters. Tory commentator Tim Montgomerie made clear he thought the deal was a betrayal of pure Brexit and what the people had voted for. The former cabinet minister John Redwood said “no deal” could well be cheaper and better than this one.
One Conservative donor warned the agreement was an attempt to deliver soft Brexit by the back door. He said it was time for Brexiters such as Johnson to take a stand by walking out of the cabinet. “It looks like the EU with its cunning Irish manoeuvre has flushed out our soft Brexit PM,” he said. “Interesting to see what Boris does now. What price principles? Or red lines?”
Yesterday the doyen of Tory commentary and the Brexit cause, Charles Moore, who has always had an open line to the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, Redwood, and Bernard Jenkin, wrote in his Daily Telegraph column: “I apologise for sounding negative about poor Mrs May’s efforts, but it seems worth speaking up. This is a moment when sceptical MPs – frightened of seeming disloyal – are pretending to be happy. I know they are not – and the same applies to millions of people across the country.”
Gove, in the same paper, perhaps aware he had oversold the deal at breakfast, was also giving himself a get-out clause. He suggested May’s great achievement was not set in stone and that if the electorate disliked it they could dump it later.
The pro-Brexit right of the party was having doubts and the consensus behind the deal was in danger of fracturing. To go from disaster on Monday night to Brexit delight on Friday morning had always seemed too good to be true, and to some Brexiters that was what it increasingly seemed to be.
It was shortly before 5pm on Monday when word came through to diplomats in a dimly lit negotiating room in the European council headquarters in Brussels that they might as well go home. They’d been cooped up for two hours, waiting for May and Juncker to sign off on a deal that would allow them to move talks on to trade. But there had been a hitch; a big one. Foster had phoned the prime minister to say she could not accept what the proposed agreement said about regulatory alignment with the Republic of Ireland after Brexit.
“That’s it, I quit,” exclaimed one senior diplomat heavily involved in organising the EU’s position, on hearing the news. “I’m going to the Caribbean. Why are we bothering?” It was a clear sign of the frustrations boiling over in negotiations.
May had no option but to leave Brussels with her tail between her legs, facing the real prospect that a Brexit deal had been scuppered, perhaps for good. Tory MPs privately questioned if she could carry on, while Labour taunted her for leading a government that had lost all credibility.
The impression of chaos grew in the middle of the week when Brexit secretary David Davis appeared before the Brexit select committee and admitted the impact assessments of leaving the EU did not, in fact, exist.
That same day, the chancellor, Phillip Hammond, told stunned MPs on the Treasury select committee the cabinet had not yet discussed an end destination for the Brexit negotiations.
With the sense growing that Brexit talks were going nowhere fast, Tory MPs on the right of the party, such as Redwood, began openly making the case for leaving with no deal.
But May was not giving up – and neither was the EU. As staff in Downing Street enjoyed their Christmas party on Thursday evening, she was on the phone to Foster. Late into the night and on through early Friday morning, senior advisers thrashed out the final detail. May slept for just two hours before leaving Downing Street at 3.30am for a drive to RAF Northolt to take the short flight to Brussels.
Juncker and Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, had cleared their diaries to meet May on Thursday afternoon or evening, and throughout the day British officials believed the prime minister could be on her way. By 6.30pm in Brussels, however, ambassadors (the events of Monday all too familiar in their minds) had heard nothing. Tusk was becoming increasingly concerned that the deal was falling away again.
The anxiety was that Downing Street still didn’t understand the tightness of the EU’s deadline. Tusk had been told by member states that Monday had been the latest they could possibly have an agreement with the UK, before this week’s European Council summit. It had taken intense discussions for that deadline to be pushed back to Friday. If nothing materialised now, it really was all over.
There was also a lurking fear in the corridors Brussels that if the worst happened, it might lead to a Boris Johnson premiership.
This weekend, despite the doubts and scepticism in many quarters, there are at least a few certainties. Theresa May is in a much better place than she was at the start of the week. Her job is no longer in immediate peril. But British diplomats and MPs know the deal done was deliberately opaque on many key issues, particularly the question of the Irish border, and that in many ways the real arguments have merely been postponed.
One said: “Everyone in the EU and on the British side knew they had to move forward. For the prime minister, there was the threat from UK business to take jobs abroad weighing on her more than anything else. For the EU, too, it was vital to move on. What they came up with is a deal that was deliberately vague so that all sides could put whatever construction they wanted on it, and sell it as a success.”
May will make a statement to MPs tomorrow and by then the deal will have been more thoroughly examined. Concern is growing in the business community that an agreement on a two-year transition, during which the UK stays close to the single market, must have legal force. But EU insiders say this will not be possible until the final withdrawal deal is done next year.
Paul Drechsler, president of the CBI, said: “They have made significant progress but they have not agreed the transition. We need agreement on transition, the terms of it and the duration of it. That is what enables companies to suspend the execution of contingency plans. Every day that we don’t have that agreement and clarity, there is a negative impact on the UK. The clock is ticking. Decisions are being made. People are being reassigned. Investments are being relocated.”
Others believe it could be too late already. One City executive said: “I’m increasingly coming to the view that Europe will not give us a deal on financial services or anything worthwhile.”
Lord Kerr, the crossbench peer who drafted article 50, said last week that extending the transition period beyond two years may very well be deemed illegal under EU law. However, he is among those who believe a trade deal will take longer than that to complete, raising the prospect of a period in which the UK would have to trade under basic World Trade Organisation rules and significant tariffs.
One UK diplomat said a free trade deal between the UK and EU, similar to that with Canada and excluding services, was all that would be on offer from the EU but would not be ready until 2024 at the earliest. “This would mean we need a transition to last to then, accepting the full EU aquis [body of law]. That would not be popular with the Brexiters but that is the reality of the situation.”
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said: “It suits both the UK government and the EU to pretend that the transition will last only about two years. In fact – as officials on both sides will admit in their more candid moments – it will have to be much longer. Building the border infrastructure at Channel ports will take several years, as will the new IT systems required for customs and registering EU immigrants. Above all, the negotiation of the future relationship – covering trade, research, security, defence and foreign policy – will take at least five years. So any attempt to limit the transition to two years would lead to a cliff-edge – of Britain leaving the single market without new arrangements being in place.”
The question of how close the UK stays to the single market and what degree of “alignment” it chooses to accept has still not been confronted. That will have to be an issue for a cabinet meeting before Christmas, at which the “end destination” will be discussed.
If the UK wants a large slice of the single market it will have to accept ECJ oversight, free movement, and regular payments to the EU budget in return. One EU source said the first negotiations were just the hors d’oeuvre – “The attitude in Europe is going to be, if you thought that was hard, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Senior Tories believe that when these issues have to be resolved, there is a serious chance not just of cabinet resignations but of pro-Brexiters leaving the party should May opt for the “soft Brexit” option in order to ensure maximum market access. One Tory veteran said: “Clearly, there are differences of views between those who want access and are happy to be rule takers, and those who want much less access and be rule makers. The PM is going to have to decide. There could be a group of people who will say, we are just not going to put up with this. How many? That’s a question mark.”
The Brexit process moves on but as it does so it will become ever more difficult to fudge the many fundamental questions that have been left unanswered over recent days, as the price for keeping the show on the road. May’s respite is likely to be short lived.
One Tory summed it up like this. “I think we need a pause now. Certainly members of the public I meet have had enough of Brexit. They just want us to get on with it and for everyone to go away for Christmas. Then it can all start up again afterwards. And rest assured, it will.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The vultures circle a wounded prime minister, who is attacked by the hordes of extremists in her party while beset by new inconvenient facts daily exposing the damage Brexit can do. Look, the British army is preparing for the worst: emergency troops are at the ready. Operation Temperer, which usually provides soldiers for terrorist attacks, is now ordered to make 10,000 soldiers available to keep order on the streets and in shops, and to distribute emergency medicines in case of a no-deal crash-out.
“Our firms are spending hundreds of millions of pounds preparing for the worst case – and not one penny of it will create new jobs or new products,” warns the Confederation of British Industry chief, Carolyn Fairbairn.
The UK chamber of shipping talks of long delays at ports for pharmaceuticals and 40% of our food. The Financial Times reports a large Japanese pharmaceutical company in the UK shifting licences for 60 of its medicines to Germany: it will have to throw away any British-made drugs for export left over after 29 March. Desperate to keep contracts for the Galileo navigation system, Surrey Satellite Technology is moving its security-sensitive contracts to elsewhere in the EU. Every day brings new evidence of damage.
The exasperated chief executive of the UK Chamber of Shipping, Bob Sanguinetti, says: “Those hoping for a no-deal Brexit have a duty to explain in technical detail why this risk is worth taking.” No wonder he finds all this incomprehensible: why is there all this self-induced chaos with no war, terror, epidemic or natural disaster?
What few realise is that we are living through a revolution that has been a long time brewing among Tory party entryists. Those clawing to dethrone Theresa May are of a different ilk, only just within a recognisable Tory penumbra. Infiltrators, bent on destroying from within the party that harbours them, inhabit another planet from Heath, Clarke or Heseltine – but nor are they Thatcher’s children, either. Leaving Europe is only a part of their revolutionary project, a means not an end. Because they are revolutionaries, the more dramatic the break and the wilder the chaos, the better. They are bent on the creative destruction of a stagnant old order, so as to plough up the ground for a fertile new radical right beginning. Tax-haven Singapore beckons.
There is a (mercifully small) handful of leftwing Brexiters who talk the same way: the old order was bad, so bring on mayhem from which a new utopia can flourish. For both red and blue revolutionaries, any Brexit harm – bound to hurt the vulnerable – is only collateral damage in a greater cause.
The recently resigned Brexit secretary Dominic Raab currently leads the betting to take over from May. Since coming into parliament in 2010, he has worked unstintingly for this day. Maybe his ministerial promotion came later than some MPs’ because his seniors could see that glint in his eye: a bit of a loner, he belongs nonetheless to a coterie of the likeminded.
Their seminal work in 2012 was Britannia Unchained, written with other 2010 young turks, Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel and Chris Skidmore. They belong to the much larger – 40 or so – Free Enterprise Group of MPs, sponsored by the Institute of Economic Affairs, which handles their media. (The IEA is under investigation by the Charity Commission after a Guardian/Greenpeace investigation into US cash for ministerial access and Brexit campaigning.)
The group’s website boasts of meeting a former chancellor before budgets to make proposals, “a number of which became policy”. Truss failed to get through her radical deregulation of childminders, or selling off national forests, but her fervour for slashing the state was in high demand at Tory conference fringe meetings.
This cadre is so much more extreme than Thatcherism that they iconoclastically dismiss her era. “The last 30 years of public debate have been dominated by leftwing thinking,” says their book, which gained notoriety for its most famous line: “British workers are the worst idlers in the world” who “prefer a lie-in to hard work”. With that, they blamed low UK productivity on the workforce, not on a failure to invest.
Their dominant theme is “private-good, public-malign”. As with all revolutionaries, evidence is not the point. They castigate the Labour years of public spending growth, pointing to “private productivity rising by 2.3% a year while public sector productivity declined by 0.3%”. What’s wrong with that? If you add nurses to wards and teachers to classrooms then public productivity falls by their crude measure: both NHS and education success rates rose.
They protest at public servants better paid than private – an old rightwing trope that ignores the highly qualified, professionalised nature of most public jobs, compared with a heavy preponderance of low-pay, low-qualification jobs in the private workforce. Raab wanted to screw down the 1% public pay cap more tightly.
In his paper Weight Watchers For Whitehall, he calls for abolishing half the 20 government departments, including International Development, Business, Culture, and the “pointless government Equalities Office”. Browse his essay collection Britain, Tomorrow: the Case for Free Enterprise, Meritocracy and Liberty and you find his views on cutting worker protection and the minimum wage, for “no-fault dismissal” and tax cuts for the better off: “Middle-class Peter should not be robbed to pay working-class Paul.” Boris Johnson’s foreword calls it “a blistering collection”.
On meritocracy, free schools should select as grammar schools do, which would “drive up standards in other schools”. How can you fail to admire the sheer evidence-free effrontery? “In Britain there has been too great a tendency to attribute results to fortune and background.” Evidence abounds to show how much more closely British children’s success is matched to parental incomes than in other EU countries.
The great Brexit rift is a war for the nation’s soul between a radical revolutionary right and a social democracy very much under threat. The right used immigration to capture votes, but Brexit was always a proxy for a deeper project.
Raab says no deal would be a “manageable situation”. Yes, they would find it useful. Just as David Cameron and George Osborne used the cover of the great crash to roll out their state-shrinking agenda, so Raab and his Free Enterprise Group would use Brexit havoc to take a yet more radical axe to the state.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The heckles in the House of Commons can be as revealing as the speeches. When the prime minister was taking questions about her Brexit plans on Monday, Anna Soubry, Conservative MP for Broxtowe, asked about the no-deal scenario – whether the UK would “jump off the cliff”. At which point a male voice, dripping with derision, chimed in: “There is no cliff!”
Hansard doesn’t record the source of the intervention. It could have been one of dozens of Tories who despise talk of cliffs. The prime minister is not among them. She has been taken on an illustrated tour of the edge by her advisory council of business leaders. They describe the elevation and the effect of high-velocity impact: the return of customs controls; barriers to trade; the rupture of supply chains; investors rerouting money and jobs to the continent.
May had come to the Commons fresh from a meeting with those experts in economic gravity, and duly restated her intention to negotiate an “implementation phase”, to run for two years after departure day. It will look rather like EU membership, with mutual market access “on current terms”. Hardliners hate this idea, smelling betrayal – a plot, driven by the Treasury, to enact “Brexit in name only”. They mistrust the prime minister’s assurance that she is only easing the outward path. But they also don’t want a parachute because they crave the giddy surge of adrenaline that comes from a giant leap.
There is a contradiction here that the likes of John Redwood and Bernard Jenkin do not acknowledge, perhaps even to themselves. To make “no deal” sound acceptable, they must belittle the scale of upheaval, yet the only reason for accepting it would be to accelerate drastic change. They do not acknowledge the cliff but they dream of launching from its edge, soaring over the Atlantic once the EU shackles are broken.
The psychology of this is rooted in pre-Brexit Conservative folklore. It starts in veneration of Margaret Thatcher’s pugnacious dismantling of state-run industry in the 1980s. I don’t intend here to relitigate the case for and against those reforms. The point, for the Brexiters, is not whether Thatcher’s vision was the best one (this is beyond question in Tory theology), but that it could be done only by economic violence. The status quo needed smashing.
Tories have subsequently defined political heroism as willingness to inflict tough love. As John Major put it in 1989, when serving as Thatcher’s chancellor: “The harsh truth is that if it isn’t hurting, it isn’t working.” He was talking about controlling inflation, but the maxim has become liturgy in the church of Conservative radicalism.
Interrogate the Brexit no-dealers on detail and they concede that their plan hinges on a doctrine of pain for gain. They advocate the abandonment of tariffs, inviting the world’s exporters to flood Britain with their wares. Thus would a beacon of free trade be lit on Albion’s shores, inspiring others to repent of their protectionist tendencies. This might bring cheap produce to supermarket shelves (consumer gain) but sabotage UK farmers, who would be undercut by an influx of American and Antipodean meat (producer pain).
Manufacturers would suffer too, but that is an intended consequence of opening the doors to invigorating winds of competition. The whole point is to sweep away inefficiency and blow down zombie businesses while fanning the flames of innovation. In this model, the UK economy is a vast pre-Thatcher coalfield that refuses to accept its obsolescence and must be made to confront it by force. If the timid will not jump into the future, they must be pushed.
There are countless problems with this, not least the inane strategy of unilateral economic disarmament, surrendering upfront any leverage with the US and others ahead of trade talks. Britain already has an open, liberal, globalised economy. It has problems with low productivity, an underpaid workforce, patchy infrastructure and, thanks to Brexit, regulatory uncertainty. It is unclear how those issues are addressed by setting fire to agriculture and industry, then waiting for phoenixes to rise from the ashes.
What fascinates me is hard Brexiters’ blindness to the political consequences of a pain-for-gain doctrine. Have they not visited places where voting Conservative is culturally taboo? Do they still not understand how the experience of rapid deindustrialisation produced anti-Tory allergens in the communal bloodstream? Can they not imagine the anger of people who feel pain without the gain?
For a party so doctrinaire about markets, the Tories are strangely uninterested in the balance of supply and demand in the business of government. They have spent seven years cutting the supply side and waiting for demand to shrink too. But people are stubbornly attached to the idea that politicians should help them through hard times. Voters might resent high taxes and unresponsive public services, but the idea of the state as the enemy is the preserve of an ideological fringe.
A lesson of the past few years is that fear of economic abandonment stokes protectionism and nationalism. Backbenchers warn darkly of a public backlash if the Treasury is allowed to dilute Brexit, but it is hard to think of a better formula for inflaming Trumpian rage than the brutal shock accompanying the no-deal scenario. The smarter leave campaigners knew the limited appeal of turbo-Thatcherism, which is why they pretended that £350m would be available to subsidise free public healthcare. It wasn’t that they couldn’t fit “We will break up the NHS at the behest of vast US corporate lobbies” on the side of a bus.
And at no point did leave campaigners claim that a deal with the EU was dispensable. They said it would be easy. Only when the cliff comes into view do they start denying its existence, while reaching to grab the wheel from Theresa May to steer towards the edge. As it gets closer, they will switch to saying the leap is necessary and good – that Brussels has blocked the roads, that the icy water below has restorative properties, that Brexit must hurt to work. But for whom? There will be a tiny minority exhilarated and enriched by the ride. The rest will see what is really going on: that we are not flying but falling.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
One of Britain’s most senior former diplomats, Lord Malloch-Brown, is to take a lead role in coordinating the pro-remain groups towards a more coherent campaign focused on shifting public opinion before MPs hold a “meaningful vote” next autumn on Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
Behind the scenes discussions between the disparate anti-hard Brexit groups have led to an agreement that their messages need to be far better coordinated if public opinion is to be shifted decisively in the next nine months.
Malloch-Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general, political communications consultant and Foreign Office minister under Gordon Brown, said: “We don’t necessarily need a single organisation, but we do want everyone on the same page.
“The aim will be to shift public opinion by the time MPs come next autumn to have the meaningful vote that was agreed last week. We cannot know precisely the Brexit deal that the meaningful vote will be on, but it will be the moment to stop the trainwreck.
“There will not necessarily be a big bang launch, but the new year is likely to see a much more coordinated campaign and a more coherent, consistent message. It will be both more pocketbook and more emotional, looking at issues like the risk to the NHS.
“We need to sway public opinion nationally so that there is a majority to remain at the time of the vote in parliament. We also have to lobby in constituencies in a targeted way so we are reaching leave-voting MPs in constituencies where the majority voted remain, and we have to work in constituencies where remain MPs have been cowed by the support for leave in their seats.”
But he claimed: “The general economic concerns, the higher inflation, the more expensive holidays, the slowing down of UK investment is beginning to seep through, even if it has not yet changed the headline voting on a referendum.”
Most polls show only a small shift towards remain since the 2016 vote, although the poll outcomes are dependent on how the question is phrased.
 Malloch-Brown said public opinion had not yet shifted for two reasons: “People say ‘we made a decision and there is no reason to repeat it’. By British standards, it was quite a heated and divisive debate in the workplaces and at kitchen tables of the country, and people do not want to repeat it.
“The general economic news, the risk to the health service, the levels of growth, and everything else that is important to daily lives is in jeopardy. Collectively that will lead to more people wanting to reconsider. There has never been a more gross example of mis-selling than the leave campaign.”
At present, the pro-remain campaigning is split between Open Britain, a business-oriented group backing MPs who oppose hard Brexit in parliament; Best for Britain, a grassroots-focused campaign; and the European Movement, a longstanding pro-EU network currently headed by the former Conservative cabinet minister Stephen Dorrell. Malloch-Brown has recently become chairman of Best for Britain.
One of the key advocates of greater coordination has been the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg. Last week he warned: “It is frankly a gift to the Brexiters the way that so much anti-Brexit energy is being dissipated in so many disorganised ways.
“For the electorate to hear a message they need to hear it consistently articulated to them in a sustained way by lots of people over a long period of time. At the moment different campaign groups are coming up with their own different reasons for why they don’t like Brexit. The blunt truth is that when we have so little time, a cacophony of different messages is going to cancel each other out – which is one of the reasons why we are not making greater impact on public opinion.”
He said if “a big tent movement” could be created “that speaks with one voice, does the necessary research to know exactly what messages need to be conveyed in a consistent way, then we might just have a chance to shift the dial in the next few months. That is what is needed and time is tremendously short”.
He insisted that “we have a matter of weeks or months to bring this matter to a head when this deal, in whatever form, comes back to the Commons and Lords in a year’s time”.
Malloch-Brown said: “This is very much about trying to get a better uniform, coordinated message in the new year rather than necessarily forming one organisation – a merger could take up a lot time and effort. Perhaps there are advantages to each organisation having their own specialism.”
Pro-Europeans admit privately they are facing four big stumbling campaign blocks: the lack of a single consistent messenger persuasive with working-class and older voters, the ambivalence of the Labour leadership on Brexit, voters’ belief that the referendum is irrevocable, and finding a credible way for Conservative MPs to reject a Brexit deal in the autumn without provoking a general election.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
German firms operating in the UK must brace themselves for a “very hard Brexit”, the Federation of German Industries has warned, as it called on its members to take precautions or be prepared to face heavy economic losses.
Speaking at a conference in Berlin, the BDI’s managing director, Joachim Lang, bemoaned the fact that the UK had failed to produce a clear road map of how it planned to extract itself from the EU.
“The British government is lacking a clear concept despite talking a lot,” Lang said. “German companies with a presence in Britain and Northern Ireland must now make provisions for the serious case of a very hard exit. Anything else would be naive.”
He said German companies were “nervously” observing the “zig-zag course” of the British government and the slow-going Brexit negotiations with the EU.
He pointed out the importance for German industry of ensuring as smooth a transition as possible, stressing that Britain remained one of Germany’s most important trade partners.
German companies export about $100bn of goods (£75.8bn) to Britain every year, and German companies employ about 400,000 workers in the UK.
“The unbundling of one of Germany’s closest allies is unavoidably connected with high economic losses,” Lang said. He said the German economy was preparing for all possible scenarios.
“A disorderly exit by the British from the EU without any follow up controls would bring with it considerable upheaval for all participants,” he added.
German companies felt “not only that the sword of Damocles of insecurity is hovering over them, but even more so that they are exposed to the danger of massive devaluation”, Lang said.
The sectors likely to be most affected by Brexit were the car industry, logistics, energy, finance and insurance.
Lang dismissed suggestions by British negotiators for future customs clearing as unworkable. “They would be associated with a disproportionately high amount of bureaucratic effort, and simply not practical for the day-to-day running of companies,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Ivan Rogers has a reputation in Brussels not only as a knowledgable, accomplished diplomat with decades of EU expertise, but as a decent man. It is no secret that he opposed Brexit, and seems to have doubted the government’s ability to deliver it smoothly. It perhaps did not help that the UK permanent representation to the EU had been transferred from the auspices of the Foreign Office to the Department for Exiting the EU; or that after Brexit, the UK ambassador to the EU, having formerly taken a leading role at the EU table, would no longer be invited into the room.
Following his abrupt departure, and despite what many claim, the government’s immediate problem is not how to find a successor with Rogers’ skills or expertise. (Despite the shock and dismay in many EU capitals at the lack of preparedness for Brexit within Whitehall, Britain’s diplomatic corps is still regarded by other countries as a Rolls-Royce outfit, and boasts numerous qualified candidates.) Rather, it will be to square the circle of recruiting an EU insider with the stomach to face off against peers and friends at the Brexit negotiating table, in the service of a task he or she is unlikely to support.
The alternative would be to appoint an expert official sympathetic to Brexit, but who can command the necessary trust and respect among fellow EU negotiators to deliver a workable deal within the limited time frame. Whoever is appointed should still be a known quantity with an intimate knowledge of the labyrinthine Brussels corridors: now is no time for the initiation of an enthusiastic beginner.
Unlike many Brexiteers, who still assume and assert that the negotiations will be based on trade and economics alone, the new ambassador must understand the deeply political and emotional underpinnings of the EU as it is experienced in so many of the other member states. While attempting to explain what Britain wants, and why it wants it – two things still far from understood in Brussels and national capitals – the representative also needs to emphasise Britain’s willingness to listen to its partners, and make compromises for their benefit as well as its own. If these requirements are not carefully fulfilled, and Britain arrogantly demands a solely mercantilist approach to the negotiations, then acrimony – and potentially economic disaster – could follow.
The resignation of Rogers comes at a particularly precarious time in UK/EU relations. Britain is painfully short of allies. Even our best friends in the EU are saying behind closed doors that they like Britain and want us to succeed, but that ultimately the survival of the EU – the guarantor, as they see it, of prosperity, freedom and identity – must take priority.
Rogers was useful in soothing fears, but even longstanding colleagues suspected the British strategy was to play allies off against one another in order to break the EU27’s apparently united front. His successor will face the same suspicions, but potentially not the same benefit of the doubt. If things get off to a bad start, the isolation could be more awkward – and more damaging – than anything experienced by Theresa May in that excruciating appearance at the European council.
The greatest risk, both to the government and the negotiations, is that Rogers is replaced by a yes-man (or woman), afraid to speak truthfully or plainly for fear of upsetting the bosses. Brexit can be achieved, but only if the challenges are explicitly exposed, analysed and interrogated at every turn. We can rest assured that on the other side, the commission’s negotiator, Michel Barnier, will be up to the task.
As the old saying goes, Britain needs friends in order to wield influence. Ivan Rogers had both. We must hope that his successor brings similar incisive knowledge, and affability.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
For a brief, wonderful moment it looked as if Labour might not manage to hold a conference at all this year, having failed to find a private security firm. That would have been the ultimate symbol of the party’s near-terminal meltdown. As the conference goes ahead in Liverpool this weekend after all, note how fundamentally uninterested Labour’s current leadership seems in the real crisis facing the country: the slow-motion cataclysm of Brexit.
The spectacle of a riven party in what may be its death throes will be grisly sport for all Labour’s enemies. Expect a sea of venom swilling around the floor among delegates. Wild cheering and leader adulation may drown out the paralysing despair of those who wonder, along with former leader Neil Kinnock, if they will ever again see a Labour government in their lifetime. Triumphal videos of mass rallies will strive to blank out where the party stands: worst ever council election results and worst opinion polls for a Labour opposition leader’s first year. Michael Foot stood at -24, Ed Miliband and Neil Kinnock both at -7, while Jeremy Corbyn is on -36. (Tony Blair polled +27.)
Owen Smith supporters glumly hope he can knock some points off Corbyn’s 59.5% result last time. Psychologically, they feel getting over 40% gives them a standing. At their phone banks calling Labour members, some Smithite MPs say they are getting better results than reported; others fear the worst. Two quite separate parties cohabit under one title, each accusing the other of betraying all Labour exists for. Polls show Corbyn scores -36 among pre-2015 Labour members, but +72 among later joiners. That’s how far the old Labour party has been swallowed up by newcomers from elsewhere. But it’s far too late to mourn the misjudgments that let it happen.
Those 172 rebel MPs see clearly how Corbyn’s team is set on deselections, made providentially easy by boundary changes. The more Corbyn floats in a miasma buoyed up by intoxicating rallies, the more they resent the blind eye turned to his cohort’s threats and the torrents of abuse they have unleashed.
The 172 are by no means united on what to do next, but if they don’t stand together they risk being picked off one by one: few think Corbyn “reaching out” will save them from Momentum in their own back yards. Corbyn intends to seize total control of the party by having his shadow cabinet selected a third by himself and a third by the members who will vote for his slate, overriding a token third of MPs’ votes. In the name of “democracy” he would give members policymaking votes too, the likely results of which would be fantasy budgets and manifestos. This would signify the end of representative democracy, with “elite” MPs usurped by rule by referendum from an unaccountable click-ocracy.
Such rule changes rely on the national executive committee, which is not quite in Corbyn’s control. Tom Watson’s attempt to return to a shadow cabinet elected mainly by MPs may succeed. But would the 172 stand for these positions? Some are adamant they wouldn’t; others will because, crucially, with the shadow cabinet positions come an extra three seats on the NEC, ruling out the Bennite/Robespierre rule by members that Corbyn seeks.
What will the refuseniks do? They won’t split: Labour failed to reform an electoral system that kills any who try. Get serious, is the answer. Return to real politics. Stop obsessing about the party issues and devote your considerable talent and experience to the one thing that really matters – the fast-approaching catastrophe of Brexit. It’s for the 172 MPs to fill empty space where Labour should be campaigning hard to rescue the country from the grip of vandals causing maximum mayhem.
Across the house, the Brexiteers are doubling down on their success, with Boris Johnson joining the new “hard Brexit” Change Britain group, alongside the Leave Means Leave group. With Liam Fox and David Davis they are rejecting the single market. All statements from EU leaders make it increasingly clear that there is no cake-and-eat-it option, no “unique British model” on offer; and the full force of the likely damage is dawning on one business sector after another. Brexit advocates crassly gloat: “Look! The economy is doing fine!” But nothing has happened yet. Philip Hammond, the silent chancellor, lets the Financial Times know that he wants to keep as close as possible to the single market and the customs union. Defying clean breakers he is “not afraid to highlight the risks to the economy of Brexit”.
Danger ahead grows as the Visegrad group countries – Slovakia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – say they will tolerate no UK deal that curtails free movement. Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, doesn’t see “any possibility of compromise”, merely stating the obvious, since all 27 countries plus the European parliament have to agree the deal. One thing unites them – the determination to warn others against leaving by making sure Britain will be worse off out.
The lies of the hard Brexiteers continue, even while their claims are exploded. Of our exports, 44% go to the EU, but only between 8% and 17% of their exports come to us. It becomes frighteningly apparent that our finance industry will be struck badly if prevented from trading inside the single market, obliging many to shift to Frankfurt. Rebalancing our dependency on finance is not best done by wrecking it, with no substitute. Hammond was no Europhile, but any chancellor would be horrified at this loss of revenue. British manufacturers are similarly alarmed: the EEF, their umbrella group, warned this week that they “must have ongoing access to the single market … and be able to employ and deploy staff from and across the EU”.
That’s whose side Labour must be on: Smith made that central to his campaign. If Corbyn and John McDonnell are supremely uninterested, the 172 must be the Labour campaign for all who will suffer from Brexit. It’s for them to stand against the ideological saboteurs Theresa May recklessly put in charge of the negotiations. The 172 must put Labour on the side of those at risk of losing jobs and businesses. The Lib Dems are saying as much, but what use is a rump of eight MPs? Labour’s 172 should define themselves not as a warring Labour faction, but as standard bearers for the nation’s pro-EU 48%.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Draw near, true believers, for these are dark days for the ERG Brexit ultras. The Fellowship of the Ringpieces finds itself divided on their next move, and may yet be bitterly sundered as they ponder the big question: could they honestly have played it worse?
Before we help them answer it, a quick update on which bit of Blunderland we’ve tumbled into now. Late on Monday night, the House of Commons voted to take control of the parliamentary agenda and attempt to break the Brexit deadlock via a series of indicative votes masterminded by former Tory minister Oliver Letwin. A clue, a clue! Our kingdom for a clue! Like all initiatives handled by Oliver Letwin since the 1980s, it promises to go spectacularly wrong in ways we haven’t even thought of yet, but let’s pretend otherwise before the shitstorm gets properly under way on Wednesday.
The Commons took this momentous decision after yet another of its Brexit endurance debates, all of which now resemble the grim Depression-era dance marathons of They Shoot Horses Don’t They? Lowlights included Kate Hoey insisting that no deal is simply “a different type of deal”, in that way that farmers will agree that no rainfall is simply a different type of rainfall. Or, indeed, that farmers will agree that no deal is simply a different type of deal, as they prepared to slaughter the estimated 10 million lambs they would not be able to export to the EU.
Reflecting on the Commons decision to take the prime minister into special measures, the No 10 spokesman said May was not happy with it: “She has said that tying the government’s hands in this way by seeking to commandeer the order paper would have far-reaching implications for the way that the UK is governed and the balance of powers and responsibilities in our democratic institutions.”
Mmm. You did that, babe. All you. By way of a reminder, Theresa May’s major intervention in the 2015 general election campaign – she was home secretary at the time – was to warn that a Labour government propped up by the SNP could be “the greatest constitutional crisis since the abdication”. Yes, well. Hold my sherry and all that. In fact, as many contemporary accounts show, almost everyone normal hugely enjoyed the abdication soap opera back in 1936, as is possible with the type of national drama that doesn’t end in the silence of 10 million lambs and economic holy war on the poor.
For some ERG crusaders, though, Monday’s vote all too belatedly appeared to put things in perspective. This morning, Jacob Rees-Mogg was suggesting he would now vote for May’s deal, which has infuriated many of those who have formed a personality cult around the personality of Jacob Rees-Mogg (surely the last people who should be risking medicine shortages).
Naturally, some are still fighting the mad idea that voting for Brexit might be the best way to get Brexit. Take the ERG vice-chair, Mark Francois, a sort of inflatable idiot who has spent the past few months bobbing around the broadcast studios like some remnant of the worst ever stag weekend. Can someone please deflate it? Otherwise we will continue to have situations like the one this morning, when Mark explained to Talkradio: “Europe is free because of us.” I mean … I don’t mean to come across as tolerably informed, but Mr Francois’ recent historical interjections have been of such staggering imbecility that they suggest not simply that he has failed to understand the contributions of the Soviet Union and the United States to the second world war – that is a given – but that the very existence of those powers would be news to him.
And all this after the week had started so well for the Brexiters, who were summoned to Chequers on Sunday in an episode we’ll call Shitheads Assemble. All the big hitters were there, as well as Steve Baker, with Iain Duncan Smith bombing down in his open-top Morgan like they were giving out free girlfriends. Jacob Rees-Mogg was accompanied by his son, which made sense, given that Rees-Mogg has previously spoken of being taken to Chequers himself as a child, where he says Ted Heath gave him Garibaldi biscuits. So rather than fussing about silly things like jobs or the economy, try to picture Brexit as a great dynastic continuation, and a reminder that the likes of the Rees-Moggs essentially believe this country should be grateful that they pass it down from claw to claw – slightly more broken each time, of course, but no less of an amusing second career for all that.
But what of Boris Johnson? By Sunday night, the erstwhile foreign secretary had unleashed another auto-parodic Daily Telegraph column quoting the God of Exodus, imploring: “Let my people go.” Oh dear. Even when he most needs to give the impression that he does, Boris Johnson is a man still unable to take himself seriously. That is his tragedy; unfortunately, he is ours.
Even as he seeks to present himself as the answer to the mess he landed us in, his eyes flicker with the half-amused, half-deranged smirk of the cornered villain. All photos of Boris Johnson now look like they were snatched through the windows of a security van taking a high profile offender from court to begin his sentence. And all his newspaper columns read like the letters that offender might write from prison to one of the 15 fiancees that tend to be acquired in these situations.
Inevitably, then, the Brexit ultras are turning on each other, with Arron Banks’s Leave.EU outfit furiously reminding Rees-Mogg that he recently said the deal made the UK a “slave state”. It does make you wonder whether Rees-Mogg really knows what a “slave state” historically is. Then again, perhaps he does, as the ERG were informally nicknaming themselves the Grand Wizards on Monday night. “I’m sorry, is this for real?” inquired George Osborne on Twitter. “No it’s not,” shot back Steve Baker.
And yet, isn’t it slightly? This afternoon the Brexiter Suella Braverman had opted to cast the Brexit fight as “a war against cultural Marxism”. Challenged on this term’s deep connection with the antisemitic far right, Braverman insisted it was still definitely the one she had meant to use. In the audience at the Bruges Group event at which she’d said it, two men overheard were overheard discussing the formation of a street movement called the blue shirts – Irish fascism klaxon! – to riot until Brexit is delivered.
So … that’s where we are on the eve of Indicative Votes Day, with Theresa May still resisting abdication and even a notional general election not promising to make anything remotely clearer. Has there ever been a taking back of control to rival this one? If so, leading historians of the ERG are invited to get in touch with the relevant parallels.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The boss of Goldman Sachs has waded back in to the debate over Brexit by issuing another veiled threat about the Wall Street firm’s employment plans in London as a result of the UK’s vote to leave the EU.
Lloyd Blankfein sent a tweet of an aerial shot of the new £350m European headquarters the bank has under construction in London, with the words “expecting/hoping to fill it up, but so much outside our control”.
It is the first tweet he has sent since the one a fortnight ago, when he was in Frankfurt and said he expected to spend more time in the German city. It comes amid continued uncertainty over negotiations for the UK’s exit from the bloc.
As part of its Brexit plans, Goldman is taking the top eight floors of a 37-storey block under construction in Frankfurt, which is expected to be ready for occupation in the third quarter of 2019.
It had already begun work on a new European headquarters in London before the referendum in June 2016 and the 10-storey building is scheduled for completion in March 2019 – just as the UK is due to leave the EU.
Goldman Sachs employs 6,000 staff in three premises in London and has the option to take all the space in the new building – just a stone’s throw from its main London location in Fleet Street – or sublet space. Goldman has yet to disclose how many staff will be located in the new building.
Many in the City are watching Goldman’s occupancy plans for the new London headquarters as a gauge for the impact of Brexit on the financial centre. The Frankfurt building could house up to 1,000 staff – suggesting the prospect of adding 800 on top of the 200 already employed in the German financial centre.
In January, Blankfein said that as a result of the vote to leave the EU Goldman was suspending a previous plan to shift some of its operations from New York to London. Sincethen, Richard Gnodde, chief executive of its international arm, has said the bank’s Brexit plans include hiring extra staff in the remaining 27 EU nations to cope with the extra business which will be channelled through Europe instead of London.
Major City firms are calling on Theresa May’s government to clinch a deal over a transition period of two years to help ease uncertainty about the impact of Brexit. The City of London Corporation – the local authority for the Square Mile – last week warned an agreement was needed by the end of the year.
Without an agreement, City firms are planning for a “hard Brexit”, one where the UK leaves the EU without access to the single market or retains any of its previous-style trading arrangements.
First published on Tue 19 Jul 2016 06.00 BST
Theresa May will not trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty initiating the UK’s departure from the European Union before the end of 2016, the high court has been told.
At the opening of the first legal challenge to the process of Brexit, government lawyers conceded that the politically sensitive case was likely to be appealed up to the supreme court.
At least seven private actions – arguing that only parliament and not the prime minister has the authority to invoke article 50 – have been identified to the court.
Confirming that ministers are not aiming to push the exit button until next year at the earliest, Jason Coppel QC, for the government, conceded that there was nonetheless “some urgency” to the issue.
“Notification [triggering] article 50 will not occur before the end of 2016,” Coppel told the court. Should anything change, he promised, the court would be given advance notice.
That timetable is broadly in line with recent comments from the new government frontbench. The defendant appointed to resist the action is David Davis, whose formal title is secretary of state for exiting the European Union.
In an article for the Sun last week, the newly appointed Davis said the process of consulting “should be completed to allow triggering of article 50 before or by the start of next year”. There have been reports that civil servants were working on a deadline of Christmas this year while Theresa May has indicated that she wants to secure the support of the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, before beginning the exit process.

No question of whether the court has jurisdiction to decide the arcane constitutional issue was raised at the opening of the hearing. Sir Brian Leveson, one of two judges in charge of the directions hearing, said the full trial would take place in October.
So many lawyers participated in the first stage of the legal challenge that proceedings were moved to the lord chief justice’s expansive, Gothic wood-panelled courtroom, the largest in the Royal Courts of Justice.
Surveying the benches, Leveson remarked upon the “bewildering array of legal talent” and acknowledged that the case involved matter of great constitutional importance. The lord chief justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, is due to hear the substantive case in the autumn.
The lead case for the legal challenge will be that brought by an investment manager and philanthropist , Gina Miller, 51, who lives in London. Her claim is being coordinated by the law firm Mishcon de Reya.
She attended the hearing and afterwards said: “We believe in a fair society. This is very much along the lines of my belief [as a remain voter] ... This case is all about the sovereignty of parliament. It is very important that the (article 50) issues are dealt with in a serious and grown-up way. We are making sure that happens.”
Lord Pannick QC, who is instructed by Mishcon de Reya, said the law firm had already been subjected to racist and antisemitic abuse.
“The publicity that has accompanied notification of the legal issue has provoked a large quantity of abuse directed at my solicitors, Mishcon de Reya,” Pannick said.
“It’s racist abuse, it’s antisemitic abuse and it’s objectionable. It’s contempt of court for people to make threats [in relation to live proceedings]. We have asked that the names of those people who are making the [additional] claims should be redacted. People have been deterred from [making legal claims] by the abuse. It’s a very serious criminal matter for people to make threats.”
Leveson said that interfering with the course of justice by making threats was “an extremely serious matter”. He added: “Apart from the commission of a criminal offence, there’s a real risk that behaviour of this type is a contempt of court.”
Brexit supporters staged a demonstration outside Mishcon de Reya’s London office earlier this month with a banner and placards declaring: “Invoke article 50 now” and “Uphold the Brexit vote”.
One of the challenges has been brought by Deir Dos Santos, a British citizen who works as a hairdresser. He has also been abused online since his involvement was revealed. His claim will be heard alongside Miller’s though he may drop back to become an interested party depending on whether he obtains a protected costs order. Dos Santos was not in court on Tuesday.
The Dos Santos claim argues: “The result of the referendum is not legally binding in the sense that it is advisory only and there is no obligation [on the government] to give effect to the referendum decision.
“However, the [previous] prime minister has stated on numerous occasions that it is his intention to give effect to the referendum decision and organise the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.
“The extract from [Cameron’s] resignation speech ... makes it clear that [the government] is of the view that the prime minister of the day has the power under article 50 (2) of the Lisbon treaty to trigger article 50 without reference to parliament.”
The government says its powers are based on the royal prerogative.
That approach, Santos’s lawyers maintain, is “ultra vires” – beyond the legitimate powers of the government – because under the UK’s constitutional requirements, notification to the EU council of withdrawal “can only be given with the prior authorisation of the UK parliament”.
Dominic Chambers QC, an expert in international and commercial law from Maitland Chambers in London, and Jessica Simor QC, of Matrix Chambers, are acting for Dos Santos. The London law firm Edwin Coe is coordinating the Dos Santos case.
Lawyers representing Britons living in France are also expected to join the case.
The legal exchanges were permeated with reluctant references to working through the summer holidays to meet legal deadlines for exchanges of documents. Helen Mountfield QC, who represented some of the unidentified claimants, observed: “It’s buckets and spades down”. Leveson, smiling, replied: “August is always a good month to work in.”
The majority of MPs at Westminster are in favour of Britain remaining inside the EU. Moves to hand parliament ultimate authority over article 50 have been criticised as a devious and underhand means of frustrating Brexit.
Lawyers for the claimants insist the legal challenge is concerned with the constitutional principle of parliamentary sovereignty rather than being engineered for a particular political outcome.
Whether the majority of MPs who support remaining in the EU may now feel morally bound to vote in favour of Brexit if the issue comes to parliament is another question.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.31 GMT
Britain has voted to leave the European Union: here is a statement that continues to shock leavers and remainers alike. Earlier this month I wrote that “unless a working-class Britain that feels betrayed by the political elite can be persuaded, then Britain will vote to leave the European Union in less than two weeks”. And this – perhaps the most dramatic event in Britain since the war – was, above all else, a working-class revolt. It may not have been the working-class revolt against the political establishment that many of us favoured, but it is undeniable that this result was achieved off the back of furious, alienated working-class votes.
Britain is an intensely divided nation. Many of the communities that voted most decisively for leave were the same communities that have suffered the greatest battering under successive governments. The government’s Project Fear relied on threats of economic turmoil. But these are communities that have been defined by economic turmoil and insecurity for a generation. Threats that you will lose everything mean little if you already feel you have little to lose. These threats may well have deepened the resolve of many leavers, rather than undermined it. A Conservative prime minister lined up corporate titans and the US president to warn them not to do something: they responded with the biggest up-yours in modern British history.
This was not a vote on the undeniable lack of accountability and transparency of the European Union. Above all else, it was about immigration, which has become the prism through which millions of people see everyday problems: the lack of affordable housing; the lack of secure jobs; stagnating living standards; strained public services. Young remainers living in major urban centres tend to feel limited hostility towards immigration; it could hardly be more different for older working-class leavers in many northern cities and smaller towns. Indeed, the generational gap is critical to understanding this result. The growing chasm between the generations has only been deepened.
Asking Labour voters to flock to back a flawed status quo endorsed by a Conservative prime minister was always going to be a tough ask. Most of them did, but not enough to compensate for the leave flood. And now what? Scotland has been dragged out of the EU against its will, and the demands for another independence referendum will be difficult to resist. Sinn Féin is calling for a border poll. Economic turmoil beckons: the debate is how significant and protracted it will be. A new, more rightwing Conservative administration seems inevitable: it will undoubtedly pursue a new election, hopefully when Labour is in as divided and chaotic a state as possible. Campaigns to defend threatened workers’ rights and the NHS will be more important than ever. The EU will be consumed with panic about its very existence. These are inevitable political realities to confront.
As for David Cameron. He called a referendum not because he thought it was in the national interest, but because it was useful to manage internal Conservative divisions. The referendum was inevitably framed as a struggle between two Conservative factions. Ironically, Cameron winning the last election was his downfall. If he had won just a handful fewer seats and failed to secure a majority – as he expected – he may not have had to honour his referendum pledge. In a matter of months, he went from suggesting he could support British withdrawal from the EU to warning of economic Armageddon if the country did so. It looked preposterous. He spent years suggesting immigration was a huge problem that needed to be massively reduced, and failed to do so, breeding further contempt and fury.
But while much of the blame must be attributed to Cameron, far greater social forces are at play. From Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders, from Syriza in Greece to Podemos in Spain, from the Austrian far-right to the rise of the Scottish independence movement, this is an era of seething resentment against elites. That frustration is spilling out in all sorts of directions: new left movements, civic nationalism, anti-immigrant populism.
Many of the nearly half of the British people who voted remain now feel scared and angry, ready to lash out at their fellow citizens. But this will make things worse. Many of the leavers already felt marginalised, ignored and hated. The contempt – and sometimes snobbery – now being shown about leavers on social media was already felt by these communities, and contributed to this verdict. Millions of Britons feel that a metropolitan elite rules the roost which not only doesn’t understand their values and lives, but actively hates them. If Britain is to have a future, this escalating culture war has to be stopped. The people of Britain have spoken. That is democracy, and we now have to make the country’s verdict work.
If the left has a future in Britain, it must confront its own cultural and political disconnect with the lives and communities of working-class people. It must prepare for how it responds to a renewed offensive by an ascendant Tory right. On the continent, movements championing a more democratic and just Europe are more important than ever. None of this is easy – but it is necessary. Grieve now if you must, but prepare for the great challenges ahead.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
Do you want it hard or soft? In earlier days such a question at the Conservative party conference would probably have been scandalous. Today it is entirely innocent, the question du jour. Does Britain sever its relationship with Europe with one drop of the guillotine’s blade, the “hard Brexit” favoured by the right? Or does it attempt to negotiate a new deal with the EU to preserve privileged access to the single market?
After the prime minister’s announcements on Sunday no one can be in any doubt that Britain will leave the EU. Most remain campaigners, and a clear majority of the populace, have accepted the public’s verdict. There is no serious “continuity remain” campaign to challenge the referendum result – and nor should there be.
The question is not whether we leave the EU but on what terms. Conservatives must beware Brexit fundamentalism, or giving themselves up to a romanticised 1950s vision of Britain, a country of imperialist chauvinism. We should be talking about financial passporting and the need to prevent a haemorrhage of banking jobs from the City, not fixating on the colour of our passports. We should be discussing how to strike the best deal with our biggest trading partner, not how to relaunch a royal yacht.
The idea of Britain as a global trading nation reborn, turning away from an ailing Europe, may superficially be seductive. But our markets on the continent did not suddenly vanish in an act of democratic will. Our businesses still export there. Inward investors with plants in the UK – major companies such as Nissan – still want to sell there, and they are worried. They might have thought of selling in Brazil, India or China already without the helpful advice of politicians that they should just try harder.
The collective naivety about the ease of doing global trade deals or what they would entail is staggering. One senior minister said there would be a trade deal with New Zealand before Christmas. Another leading Brexit campaigner predicted a deal with India “faster than you can say masala bond”. Those who talk so excitedly do not stop to consider the inevitable first demand of major agricultural exporters, which is that we drop our farm subsidies. And they clearly haven’t understood that even poor deals take years to complete.
A high quality trade deal with Australia would be a great thing – but it would account for under 2% of our trade. A deal with India would be a prize – if ever they would open their markets to us. Yes, let’s try to drive trade deals on the far side of the world. Let’s beat our chief executives with their golf clubs until they sell more in Bangalore and Beijing. But it’s folly to believe that new trade deals are a simple or swift substitute for unhindered access to the world’s largest market of 500 million people on our doorstep, a bloc with which we do half our trade.
In case we don’t notice while we’re “re-joining the world”, to use one particularly glib Brexit slogan, trade deals aren’t exactly flavour of the month with the public. On either side of the Atlantic and the Pacific, big proposed deals are foundering. Voters supported Brexit less in a rush of enthusiasm for free trade than to pull up the drawbridge. Prominent Brexiteers who now preach free trade urged sanctions against imports of Chinese steel during the campaign.
So if part of the seduction of a hard Brexit is that there’ll be comfort for us across warm oceans, we need to wake up quickly. There won’t be. That’s why we must above all drive the most advantageous deal possible with Europe. It’s not just a question of ensuring that tariff barriers remain down. The single market removes non-tariff barriers, too, while being in the customs union makes it far easier for businesses to sell into Europe.
The ideologues may see it as obvious that we abandon these arrangements as we leave the EU, but pragmatists will want to weigh the consequences and the options. During the campaign, many Brexiteers extolled the virtues of Norway or Switzerland, countries which are outside the EU but retain access to the single market. We should at least understand the costs and benefits of these kinds of options – if not the exact models – before peremptorily ruling them out.
If there is an emerging consensus, it is that Britain must now have more control of immigration. It suits hardline Brexiteers and European politicians alike to argue that this means a binary choice for the UK, either in the single market with free movement of labour, or outside with control over migration. But weren’t we told, time and again, that Britain is big enough to drive its own bespoke deal? It’s hard to see why it’s wise or attractive to say that what we want from the outset is the most brutal severance with the least advantage to us and the most potential economic damage.
The jury is out on the new government structure to deliver our departure from the EU. The so-called “three Brexiteers” have so far rather more resembled three blind mice, stumbling around the world’s capitals with inconsistent messages, united only in their assurance that it will be all right on the night.
Business, which above all prizes certainty, is not so sure. Now the politicians who were already inclined to be deaf to business concerns have been emboldened by the apparent resilience of Britain’s economy in the face of a predicted short-term shock. The risk is that important concerns about the long-term impacts of a hard Brexit will be dismissed. We may all be Brexiteers now, but leaving without being able to reassure inward investors or the financial services industry that they will be able do business as usual would be a catastrophe.
The article 50 trigger that will now be pulled within months irreversibly counts down the clock to our departure. That negotiating process, in which we are shut out of the deciding EU council, will disadvantage our country enough as it is. We should not make it even more difficult by allowing the naive ideal of a new Britannia to get the better of us.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Imagine my surprise to learn in the Mail on Sunday that I had been a pupil at Eton. And not just that: I was among the “contemporaries of David Cameron”. As Dean Martin sang first and best: how lucky can one guy be? Sadly, this is all nonsense. No fancy waistcoats or winged collars for me. I did my A-levels in Catford, not Slough. True, I have been to Eton a few times over the years. But I never inhaled.
The context of this journalistic schoolboy error (in every sense) was an article about Michael Gove’s allegedly louche lifestyle in his youth – inspired by his admission on Saturday that he “took drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago”.
On Sunday, he went further on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show and admitted that what he did was indeed “criminal”. The other candidates have all now had to go through the same ritual, admitting what drugs they have taken in the past, insisting (where relevant) that they absolutely regret doing so, while hinting that their rivals did a lot more and belong behind bars rather than in No 10.
It all feels a bit 2005 to me. In the contest to succeed Michael Howard as leader, David Cameron and his allies faced a series of allegations concerning youthful drug use. In response, Cameron deployed and stuck to the formula that politicians were entitled to have had “a private life before they entered public life” – and went on to win the leadership contest by a clear margin.
True enough, the issue of drug abuse and class-related double standards is a real one: why do middle-class people who have used cocaine walk free, while our prisons groan with inmates from underprivileged backgrounds convicted of drug offences? This is an important question. But it is not, I would respectfully submit, the most important facing the Conservative party as it – yet again, extraordinarily – selects the next prime minister for the rest of us.
Personally, I am more concerned right now about the middle-class people who so blithely support hard, class-A Brexit at their dinner parties, without thinking of the terrible damage this would do to ordinary lives; to those whose assets cannot be conveniently shifted out of the UK; to the most vulnerable members of society who depend upon the very prosperity that would be wrecked by a no-deal outcome.
All the candidates in this race – with the honourable exception of Rory Stewart – argue (explicitly or otherwise) that Theresa May was the problem in the talks with Brussels, and that they would be able to deliver a new and better deal through sheer brilliance, brio and force of character.
May was indeed a poor negotiator, lacking the agility, cunning and poker-playing skills to outfox the other side. I can believe, for instance, that Jeremy Hunt would have done a better job, not least because he has proved to be a foreign secretary worthy of the role.
What stretches credulity is that there is, and has always been, a low-hanging fruit of a deal just waiting to be plucked by a new leader. Bear in mind, too, that – if the polls of Tory members are accurate – the party is likely to choose one of those hard Brexiteers for whom Donald Tusk, as European council president, reserved a “special place in hell”. The notion that our 27 EU partners will suddenly embrace and yield to a tough pro-Brexit prime minister – Dieu merci! Gott sei Dank! Grazie Dio! – seems to me a really special example of magical thinking.
I’m guessing, too, that Boris Johnson’s threat to withhold the £39bn exit payment to the EU – a sum the UK is legally bound to cough up – wouldn’t get the fresh talks off to the best conceivable start.
Even worse are the reasons that the front-runners are giving for their respective Brexit strategies. Foremost in their minds, it seems, is not the national interest but narrow party-political calculation. According to Johnson in a Sunday Times interview: “The lesson from [the] Peterborough [byelection] is that we must get Brexit done by 31 October or we face the real risk of a Jeremy Corbyn government.”
Meanwhile, Hunt and Gove advance precisely the opposite argument. The foreign secretary, though maintaining that he wants to implement Brexit as soon as possible, refuses to rule out a request for extension beyond 31 October – his argument being that a rushed decision to leave before the present deadline could force a Commons vote of no confidence and a general election that “puts into Downing Street the most leftwing, the most dangerous leader of the Labour party we’ve ever had in our lifetimes”.
In similar style, the environment secretary warned last week that hasty action could make real the “unthinkable thought” of “Corbyn in Downing Street propped up by Nicola Sturgeon”. To hammer home the point, he told Marr that “the real danger to our future and prosperity is Jeremy Corbyn”.
In normal circumstances that might be true. But these are hardly normal circumstances. God knows, I have had some harsh things to say about Corbyn. But electing a prime minister you can then kick out is one thing. Leaving our most important trading alliance – the largest single market in the world – without a deal, permanently, is quite another.
Both would be terrible mistakes (in my view): but only one would be irrevocable. The fact that senior Tories see Corbyn as the greater threat tells you all you need to know about the introspection that has gripped their party. That wouldn’t matter so much were it not the case that one of them is about to become prime minister.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
After his meetings with Theresa May, I gather, Barack Obama has expressed true astonishment to his aides over Brexit. “They’ve got no plan,” he has said. “They’ve just got no plan.” In the prime minister’s first six months, this private assessment has hardened into something close to a general orthodoxy: namely that May and her colleagues have established no clear strategy for Britain’s departure from the European Union. But what if the soon-to-be-ex-president is wrong?
To adapt Sherlock Holmes: we see but we do not observe. This prime minister is not a great exponent of euphemism, metaphor and rhetorical trope. Instinctively, she says what she means. The natural response of a political and media class raised on spin, dog-whistles and devious code is to look for hidden meaning or the absence of any meaning at all.
When May says that “Brexit means Brexit”, it feels like a dereliction of cryptographic duty to take her at face value. Yet her method is, and has always been, to disclose her intentions straightforwardly but according to her own timetable. As she reportedly says to allies: “I don’t care if people think I’m stupid for a bit.”
On Tuesday at Lancaster House she will deliver her long-awaited statement on the government’s plans – potentially the most significant speech on the EU by a prime minister since David Cameron unveiled his referendum blueprint in January 2013. In so doing, she will relax her own rule that there shall be “no running commentary” on Britain’s negotiating strategy. But this statement was the price exacted by the Commons in December for MPs’ commitment to “respect the wishes of the people” and trigger article 50 before the end of March – a price worth paying for such an undertaking.
Every word, every phrase, every inflexion will be analysed within an inch of its life. How could it be otherwise? The burden of expectation borne by this speech is crushing. It reflects months of work by the PM, her closest aides and cabinet colleagues, advised by senior officials such as Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, and Oliver Robbins, the permanent secretary for the Department for Exiting the European Union.
Yet, whatever the prime minister says, it is intrinsic to the exercise that she will disappoint as well as please. In too many minds, “Brexit” has ceased to be an institutional process and become a telos: a destination, even a utopian outcome, in which a newly emancipated Britain will hurtle towards unspecified glories.
The hardcore of the speech will be a readiness for straight withdrawal from the EU: from the single market, the jurisdiction of the European court of justice, the common security and defence policy, the common agricultural policy, the works. No half measures. Out means out.
Is this “hard Brexit”? Only if you see the choice between hard and soft varieties as a one-off decision, a fork in the road, a light switch. In practice, they are better understood as sequential phases rather than adversarial options. First we leave; then we rebuild a multilayered relationship with the EU based on, but not confined to, the deal reached by March 2019. That, at least, is the theory.
Though muscular Brexiteers will be delighted by May’s commitment to a clean break with the EU, they will be less pleased by her remarks on the need to give and take as we negotiate a completely new pact with the remaining 27 member states. As May herself said last April: “The reality is that we do not know on what terms we would win access to the single market. We do know that in a negotiation we would need to make concessions in order to access it.” That we are leaving is not in dispute. That our new alliance with the EU will bear a cost is the next big argument.
Those who know May well suggest that a precedent is under our very noses. As home secretary she opted out of 130 EU crime and policing measures – before opting back in to 35, including the European arrest warrant. This, broadly, is the model she will try to follow.
Indeed, the work has already begun. In Whitehall, detailed analysis of more than 50 industrial sectors is under way to inform future commercial and migration strategy. The Brexit secretary, David Davis, has already floated the idea of continued contributions to Brussels in return for targeted access to particular markets.
The government is quietly committed to Britain’s post-Brexit participation in EU patent protection. Having laboured so hard to ensure we signed up to the arrest warrant, it is difficult to imagine May not seeking a successor deal.
The question is whether the 27 will buy any of this. As the Guardian disclosed at the weekend, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, is seeking a “special” relationship with the City of London after Britain’s departure – one that will protect the access of the remaining member states to Britain’s financial services. Since Europe is our largest market for such services, this is no small breakthrough.
That said, there remains a deeply ingrained resistance on the continent to any deal that encourages the notion of an EU a la carte. Last month Angela Merkel told her party congress that “we will not allow any cherry-picking”. As one senior British ex-minister puts it: “Nobody in Europe sees this as an opportunity. It is something they have to manage and handle. But it’s a big mistake to imagine that they see this as an exciting chance for everyone to benefit.”
We shall soon discover whether Britain’s position as the EU’s largest export partner – accounting for 16% of its traded goods – is sufficient leverage to secure an advantageous deal. Remember that the Canada-EU trade negotiations almost failed because Wallonia’s regional parliament took against them.
All this lies ahead of the prime minster. Her immediate challenge is to calm the political seas around her, and to introduce a measure of realism to a national debate still shrill with anticipation and dread. She will make demands of ardent leavers as well as disappointed remainers.
Amid the cacophony, she will seek to assert her authority. For authority is what she will need most of all as she undertakes the toughest international negotiations to face a prime minister in recent memory. Unlikely as it sounds, Brexit is the easy bit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
This was compelling political theatre. On Wednesday Theresa May sent the country a message about authority. Summoning the cabinet to Chequers and then summoning the television cameras to record her opening statement, she was saying unmistakably: “Keep calm and remember who’s boss.”
But the pith of her short message – no covert attempt to stay inside the EU, no second referendum – made clear which side she is coming down on, despite No 10’s “motherhood and apple pie” briefing that Britain’s future relationship with Europe will involve controls on immigration and be good for trade. The simple truth is that much as we may want access to the single market with no free movement of labour, that is not, and never will be, on offer. By promising to push ahead so firmly with no second referendum and no early general election, May has given comfort to the hardline cabinet Brexiteers.
We know now that her first priority is Conservative unity, even above an easy election victory. Some Tory commentators and politicians are horrified that she has not chosen to go to the country early. Labour, they say, is in a worse state to fight an election than for 35 years, riven from top to bottom. This is the moment to strike, they plead. You shouldn’t waste chances like this.
But May is a cool customer, and she has decided to play long. I assume that during her Alpine walking holiday she concluded that she has nothing to fear from other parties and everything to fear from her own.
If, as the polls strongly suggest, Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership again, there will be moves in the parliamentary Labour party for a breakaway, plunging constituency parties into the turmoil of loyalty oaths and feuds. If (unlikely, I know) it’s Owen Smith, the base and the leadership will be at war. Either way, it doesn’t seem likely that the official opposition will grow more appealing or stronger in the next few years. Let them stew and twist, seems to be May’s approach.
This has profoundly disturbing implications. We have a one-party hegemony. The prime minister, looking around for sources of serious political pushback, knows they are inside her party. The momentum isn’t coming from Momentum: it’s all from the right.
And they are riding high on recent good economic news, which helps the narrative that Brexit was a triumph of popular common sense. However, consumer confidence and employment figures mean nothing yet.
Until new tariffs start to bite, until major City players unable to get their “passporting” deals to continue trading inside the EU start to leave London, until there are concrete examples of major investment being withheld, we can’t begin to assess what leaving the EU actually means for our long-term prosperity. Declaring Brexit a triumph now is like punching the air with delight because you’ve beaten the field in the first 100 yards of a 10-mile race.
Does May understand this? Maybe she does. And perhaps what she’s doing is carefully giving rope to the hard right, so they can hang themselves. Plenty of time – no election yet, no “backdoor” EU membership – let’s see what Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox actually come back with from their negotiations. If it’s grim for business and prosperity by the time of a 2020 general election, the right will be discredited.
However, there is a darker possibility, which is that May isn’t playing a tactical game; that she has accepted their agenda. In normal political times the not insignificant number of Tory MPs who don’t like Brexit would be able to argue for delay, for another chance for the electorate to have their say, pointing out that getting the terms of Brexit wrong would be a gift to Labour.
But at the moment, with opinion polling suggesting a future Tory majority of well over 100 seats, there is no political pressure at all. Labour’s rhetoric about “taking the fight to the Tories” seems merely forlorn.
The Tories are waiting and watching for a Jeremy Corbyn victory followed by the deselections of “Blairites” and moderates. Labour’s battles will be vicious and local, and will leave lasting scars across the political landscape. There is no chance that it will all be healed, forgotten and forgiven by 2020.
But if the Labour centre-right decides to break away and form a new party then the Tories are in an even better position. Across most constituencies, the anti-Tory vote would be divided at least three ways – Corbynite Labour, the new party and the Liberal Democrats – perhaps with the Greens challenging too. Under our first-past-the-post system, with the Tories facing such a divided opposition the result would be slaughter.
And then, as the Guardian revealed at the weekend, there is the potentially devastating effect of the boundary changes, which can’t really be brought in before an early election but will radically tilt the field by 2020. We are, in short, lacking the usual checks and balances that parliamentary politics normally provides. We are going into the huge Brexit experiment with the tiller of state tied fast in a single position, without proper parliamentary opposition and under a new leader who has only to look in one direction to maintain her position.
That’s what May’s political theatre on Wednesday implied. Perhaps she was playing a cynical political game – but I fear she wasn’t.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
The presidential administration is the most powerful institution in Vladimir Putin’s deeply personalised system: it feeds him the intelligence he wants, it oversees ministries and governors, and it coordinates his “active measures” political dirty tricks campaign in the west. This spring, I sat down in Moscow with an astute former staffer of the presidential administration and he remarked that Putin demanded apparent success today at the expense of real success tomorrow. Brexit may prove the perfect case study.
This should not be a great surprise. To portray Putin as the masterful geopolitical chess-player has become a familiar cliche. But in recent years, Putin seems to have become increasingly insulated from bad news and critical opinions, and has made serious mistakes as a result. In particular, he and his cronies time and again have shown themselves unable to understand democratic societies, and the resilience that lies beneath the surface of fractiousness and short-termism.
If Putin ever deluded himself that his campaign of hacks, disinformation, covert political donations and other gambits was going to allow him to shape the western political agenda, he ought now to be having second thoughts. Admittedly Russian meddling has managed to worsen existing political and social tensions throughout the west, from playing to an Islamophobic nativism in Europe, to the populist resentments that fuelled the Trump campaign.
Yet to what real advantage? Nato has regained its focus on the challenge from the east and is now spending more on defence. Key European leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are unequivocal about Moscow being a dangerous influence. Investigations, rumours and court cases are boxing in Donald Trump. Even the Brexit vote, which undoubtedly delighted a Kremlin eager to see Europe divided and discordant, now looks open to question.
All told, it would be a fitting irony if, of all people, it was Putin who saved Britain from Brexit. A steady trickle of hard information and soft rumour about Russian support for Brexit risks becoming a torrent. Some of this support was, frankly, of questionable impact. Too much is often made of the alleged influence of the English-language Sputnik news agency and RT television channel, or even of the online trolling and disinformation campaign. Evidence that they actually changed minds – rather than just pandered to existing prejudices – is still lacking.
However, there is a growing likelihood that later this year or early next we will see solid evidence of financial support for the Brexit camp, too. MP Ben Bradshaw has used parliamentary privilege to raise the question of the mysteriously bottomless pockets of Arron Banks, the main backer for Leave.EU. The Electoral Commission this week launched an investigation into whether he and one of his companies broke campaign finance rules in the run-up to the referendum. George Cottrell, once an aide to the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, has been arrested by the FBI on money laundering charges, and we await the outcome of that investigation.
Meanwhile, according to US intelligence sources with whom I have discussed Moscow’s activities, there are other cases of what the Russian spooks call “black cash” supporting pro-Brexit campaigns and campaigners, likely to be revealed over the course of the several inquiries taking place on the other side of the Atlantic. Of course, assessing the impact of these operations will require careful study and scholarly rigour. But when has this stopped anyone using eye-catching allegations for political advantage?
Ironically enough, this may come at exactly the right time to let a British political elite increasingly alarmed about Brexit off the hook. There is public dismay at the slow progress of talks, but no clear mandate to reverse policy. Hard evidence of active, covert Russian interference would delegitimise the original vote, given the narrow margin of victory. Hardcore Brexiteers will risk looking like Putin’s “useful idiots”.
This would allow the government to re-run or even disregard the referendum without looking as if it is admitting a mistake or challenging the popular will. It would also smooth the way to allowing article 50 to be revoked or ignored with no penalty. (While the EU is formally committed to allowing the UK to change its mind, there are those in Brussels with more punitive intent.)
Putin’s self-harming passion for subversion seems to be the toxic product of a KGB background, a nationalist’s anger at the decline of the superpower and a lack of other, more acceptable, ways of advancing Russia’s agenda. As Putin pushes his spies, trolls, diplomats and lobbyists to take every opportunity to divide, distract and disrupt the west, whatever the long-term cost, he risks making his country into a pariah state.
It is possible that his active measures helped tip the balance in the Brexit referendum. Even more likely, they will help tip the balance back.
First published on Sun 14 Jan 2018 00.05 GMT
Can we just call the whole damn thing off? Could Brexit be stopped so that Britain can get on with the rest of its life? Is there a possibility of doing a Breverse? This question has been nagging away, always in the background and sometimes in the foreground, ever since the narrow victory for Leave. One reason this is so is because it is such a massive issue. Another reason is because such a massive issue was decided by such a tight margin in the summer of 2016.
The argument that there should be another vote before Britain heads out of the door has been pressed aggressively by unreconciled Remainers, the most vocal of them being Tony Blair, Sir Nick Clegg and Andrew Adonis. A hope that Brexit might somehow be averted also flickers in the breasts of some Tory Remainers, including members of the cabinet. They are handcuffed to a withdrawal policy that they still think is madness, even if they can’t say so openly. David Lidington, a former Europe minister, was reshuffled into the hole left by Damian Green and is now the prime minister’s key man on the cabinet’s Brexit committees. I rather suspect Mr Lidington would be a very happy fellow if he came out of the shower one morning to find that the last 18 months have just been a bad dream. Other senior figures around the top table, including the chancellor and the home secretary, would be the opposite of distraught if Britain didn’t leave in the end.
Enter, stage right, Nigel Farage. Remember him? Loves a pint. Loves a ciggie. Loves attention. His recent personal headline drought may be part of the explanation for why he has suddenly ventilated the view: “Maybe, just maybe, I’m reaching the point of thinking we should have a second referendum.”
Since the former Ukip leader did more than any other person to drive the demand for the first vote, this intervention matters, at least a little bit. He has since done something of a reverse ferret, but not before Remainers had welcomed this unexpected ally. “I agree with Nigel,” quipped Sir Nick via Twitter. Chuka Umunna, speaking for the ardent Remainers of Labour, remarked: “For the first time in his life, he [Farage] makes a valid point.”
They don’t, of course, agree on the why. The former Ukip leader thinks a second vote would “kill it off for a generation”, the Remain cause being what he wants to bury. For Remainers, another referendum is the only respectable way to cancel the first one. They have a persuasive case that the public ought to be asked whether they approve of the terms of the withdrawal. The country didn’t know what those were going to be in June 2016 and a democracy is no longer a democracy if there isn’t an opportunity for the voters to change their minds.
But if a second referendum happens, it will not be because of the arguments of principle in favour of holding another vote. It will only occur if key players feel it is to their advantage to put the question back to the country or if they are forced by circumstances to do so.
First of all, parliament will have to legislate for it. Is that likely? Not at the moment. Mrs May has consistently refused a further referendum on the grounds that pledging one would undermine her negotiating position by incentivising the EU to offer Britain a rotten deal. The prime minister would be under more pressure to concede another vote were she getting serious heat from Labour about it. Labour’s official position is that it does not favour a second referendum, though some of the frontbench, including the deputy leader, Tom Watson, have occasionally emitted noises that sound like approval of the idea.
Jeremy Corbyn never sounds like an enthusiast for another vote, which puts him at significant odds with the vast majority of Labour’s members. According to the latest instalment of Professor Tim Bale’s penetrating study of the party memberships, 78% of Labour’s members think there ought to be a further referendum. That could matter later – I will discuss why in a moment – but for now Mr Corbyn isn’t backing the idea. So long as neither the prime minister nor the leader of the opposition thinks they have an interest in asking the country for fresh instructions it isn’t going to happen.
What could change that? Public opinion. If the national mood were to shift decisively, this would alter the context in which the politicians make their calculations about the likely appeal of backing a second vote. Remainers take note: Remain supporters just becoming more passionately Remainy is not what matters. What is required to force a rethink among the political decision-makers is clear evidence of second thoughts among a substantial wedge of Leave voters.
There are some identifiable trends in public opinion. Since Mrs May triggered article 50, there has been a downward movement in the proportion of voters who think the government is making a good fist of the Brexit negotiations. This is not surprising when so many of the Leavers’ promises, including the fantasy about it being child’s play to negotiate and the fib that there would be a massive windfall for the NHS, have been proved false. Levels of public anxiety about where Britain will be left by withdrawal have been rising. The numbers thinking we will be worse off out of the EU have gone up a bit and the numbers thinking we will be better off are down a bit. There are now fewer voters who think Brexit will increase Britain’s influence in the world and more voters who think it will diminish our global clout. There has also been a gentle rise in the proportion of voters who say they favour another referendum, though they are still outnumbered by those who don’t want one.
On the Leave/Remain question itself, opinion is still finely balanced. The polling company YouGov runs a useful tracker on this question. The most recent result has 46% thinking Brexit was the wrong choice, against 42% who say it was the right one. That suggests there is some buyer’s remorse, but not yet enough of it to induce a shift in the positions of the decisive political players. Public opinion will have to shift more dramatically before any of the politicians in a position of influence will be willing to act.
There is another way that a second vote might happen. This is if the government smashes into some kind of brick wall during the Brexit endgame. We have now entered what is commonly agreed to be the tougher phase of the negotiations, the talks that cover the future trading relationship and the length and nature of a transition period. The deadline to sign a withdrawal agreement – this autumn – is hugely ambitious given how much has to be dealt with and the combustibility of many of the issues. It is during this phase that it will become more starkly apparent that the UK cannot expect to continue to enjoy all the advantages of EU membership if it is not prepared to go along with all the rules. It is during this phase that Mrs May will have to become a lot more precise about her desired end state, with all the risks that clarity will ignite the many divisions within her party.
Conventional wisdom says that an agreement will be put together, but there is some chance that we end up in the car crash of a no-deal Brexit. In that circumstance, the Labour leadership would face colossal pressure from both its MPs and its members to back a second referendum asking the public whether they really wanted to go through with this. A lot of Tories would be horrified by the thought of going off the cliff edge. Enough to make it highly conceivable that they would combine with the opposition to demand a referendum.
There is another scenario that is worth thinking about. This is that Mrs May does a deal and then finds that parliament is so unhappy with what she has come back with that it will not endorse her agreement. The main significance of the pre-Christmas revolt by Tory backbenchers was that the government is now obliged to put the withdrawal terms into legislation. This can be amended or rejected in the Commons, where the government relies on the DUP for its majority, and in the Lords, where Tory peers are heavily outnumbered by the rest.
In the event that a Brexit deal is blocked in parliament, there will be a constitutional crisis and it is anyone’s guess what would happen next. A not unreasonable conjecture is this: Mrs May would feel there was no other option but to go to the people by holding another referendum. Remainers could not quarrel with that because they have repeatedly argued that the eventual terms should be subject to the approval of the people.
As of today, I’d say it does not look that likely that there will be another referendum before Britain takes it formal leave of the EU. What we can begin to see is how and why either Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May or both could end up in circumstances in which they are forced to embrace the idea.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
In recent days reports suggested that up to 20 Conservatives would rebel if the former attorney general Dominic Grieve pushed his amendment on the final Brexit deal to a vote in the Commons.
However, as the vote drew close, Theresa May seemed unmoved, despite having conceded on a separate amendment authored by Grieve to build in more scrutiny when ministers adapt EU law into UK legislation.
Urged by Conservative MP Anna Soubry to accept Grieve’s amendment at PMQs, May held firm, saying it could prevent an “orderly and smooth Brexit” process. It was a gamble that did not pay off, though several of the so-called “mutineers” peeled off in the final moments.
After the defeat, many blamed the chief whip, Julian Smith, and some went further, placing the blame on May for promoting Smith’s predecessor in the role, Gavin Williamson, who delivered victories in a string of tight parliamentary votes, to succeed Michael Fallon as defence secretary.
Smith is relatively inexperienced, and was bruised by last week’s chaos over the Brexit deal when the DUP raised last-minute objections.
Relations between whips and the rebels had deteriorated over the course of the day, with Soubry claiming whips had made one female MP cry. “It is right that the whips should exert pressure, cajole people – that’s perfectly proper in my view,” she told the Evening Standard.
“But bullying, reducing colleagues to tears and making them shake is not acceptable. It has got to stop. We are the Conservative party, not Momentum thugs.”
Further extraordinary allegations emerged on the morning of the vote, a symbol of how relations were at rock bottom, when at least one potential rebel was warned by Smith that they could be sued if they made defamatory comments about the whips’ activities.
In the final minutes, it was left to cabinet ministers to try to salvage the vote. MP Vicky Ford said she would take “a moment to reflect” after an 11th-hour concession by justice minister Dominic Raab, who said he would look seriously at the amendment again, just 15 minutes before the vote, as other Tory rebels shouted “too late.”
Appearing to waver in front of the voting lobby, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, took Ford gently by the arm and led her into the “no” lobby. Williamson himself was seen cajoling Scottish Tory MP Paul Masterton, who then tweeted he would abstain.
Another crucial vote lost by the government was Charlie Elphicke, the MP suspended from the party by Smith during the sexual harassment scandal, with Elphicke repeatedly claiming he had never been told what the allegations against him were. He abstained on the vote.
Conservative whips may also have been banking on a crucial factor that did not deliver – Labour Brexiters. Tory backbenchers were asked by whips to contact their Labour neighbours in leave seats to warn them about the case for backing the amendment.
Government whips have become used to counting on around seven Labour MPs who are committed Brexiters to vote with them. Yet there was a Herculean effort on Wednesday by the Labour whips, especially those assigned to the bill, Jess Morden, Alan Campbell and Mark Tami, to ensure those Labour MPs helped inflict defeat on the government.
In the end, just two voted against Grieve’s amendment – Kate Hoey and Frank Field. Whips said that veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner, a longtime Eurosceptic, was persuaded by the chance to inflict humiliation on Theresa May and in turn persuaded others, including Grahame Morris and Ronnie Campbell.
Jeremy Corbyn rang some of Labour’s pro-Brexit MPs himself to urge them to back the Grieve amendment.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
Post Brexit, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will become the only land border between Britain and the European Union, raising the possibility – technically – of passport checks, customs checks and tariffs.
Passport checks are highly unlikely: the EU signalled in its negotiation guidelines that it would like to see a codified version of the 1920s common travel agreement – which means passport-free travel for Irish and British citizens between the two islands – included in a final deal.
However, it will be argued that if there are no passport checks, Ireland could become a back door for EU immigrants wishing to come to the UK. David Davis, the UK’s Brexit secretary, will have to find a way to guard against that.
Short of a Trump-style wall, the 310-mile border, which often zigzags through largely rural areas, would be impossible to police without a huge increase in resources.
To avoid customs checks, a workaround will have to be found as they are a requirement under EU law.
Since the Good Friday agreement ended the Troubles almost 20 years ago, the border has become invisible.
The old British army checkpoints, security barriers and observation posts that became emblematic of the Troubles are long gone. The only clues to drivers that they have moved from one jurisdiction to the other are roadside speed-limit signs changing from kilometres (Ireland) to miles (Northern Ireland) and different coloured number plates.
It is a far cry from the height of the conflict, when anyone crossing the border was subjected to a routine ritual of questions – name, date of birth, address, reason for crossing the border.
Trade and services between the two sides now flourishes. Between 23,000 and 30,000 people commute across the border – a figure that discounts “frontier workers” such as community nurses or farmers who go back and forth across the border several times a day.
The EU and the British and Irish governments are committed to the continuation of an invisible border.
“Negotiations should in particular aim to avoid the creation of a hard border on the island of Ireland,” the EU said in its negotiating guidelines. Theresa May has said she is also committed to a “frictionless, seamless border”.
Customs experts, however, have said this is fantasy.
Each border has two sides and while the British government can decide not to have customs checks, EU law requires Ireland to have them.
On the first day of talks in Brussels, a senior EU source said the Irish and British had been told that while there would be no need for “barbed wire and gun posts”, there would need to be checks.
“If you leave the single market, there must be checks,” the source said. “It might mean lorries turning off into a layby after going through the border but there will be checks.”
The former European commission customs lawyer, Michael Dux, drew gasps from MPs on the Northern Ireland select committee in February, as he told how every vehicle carrying goods worth more than €300 (£264) crossing from Ireland into Northern Ireland would, under EU law, be liable for checks.
Dux, who has 40 years experience in customs trade law, told how pets and horses would also need documentation to leave or enter the EU on the Irish border.
Physical checks of any kind will be strongly resisted by freight owners on both sides of the border.
All-island trade in Ireland has flourished since peace, with production – particularly in food and drink – involving processing on either side of the border.
About a third of milk from cows in Northern Ireland is transported across the border for production into butter, cheese and infant formula. Industry representatives have warned that dairy farms would “go out of business” after Brexit if barriers to trade were erected.
HMRC statistics show Northern Ireland’s economy is highly dependent on exports to the EU, with 52% going to the European bloc including 38% to the Republic of Ireland.
Brexit will have a direct impact on Guinness, as the black stuff crosses the Irish border twice before being shipped from Dublin to Britain and beyond.
The drink is made at the St James’s Gate brewery in Dublin then pumped into tankers, known as “silver bullets”, and driven 90 miles to east Belfast, where it is canned and then sent back to Dublin port for onward distribution.
One solution mooted is to move the border checks to ports and airports under a new unilateral agreement along the lines of the treaty of Le Touquet, which allows French border police to carry out immigration entry checks in Dover and British police to operate in Calais.
Technically, it is also possible that the customs checks on goods can be conducted electronically, with trusted trader status for regular cross-border freight and spot checks for standards.
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, visited border food businesses in May at the invitation of the Irish and told reporters that there was “always a way” of avoiding a hard border if there was “political will”.
An electronic check system could work, but tax chiefs say they are unlikely to be able to deliver this for a March 2019 deadline.
Northern Irish politics is never smooth and both Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party have made electoral gains as a result of Brexit.
The DUP, which is on the verge of being a powerbroker in Westminster, has warned that it does not want special status for Northern Ireland that would allow it to somehow remain in the EU.
Passport controls at Northern Irish airports and ports will also be anathema to unionists, who would see this as an attack on their Britishness, sources have suggested.
Brexit has re-energised the debate about a united Ireland, with Sinn Féin’s rising popularity fuelling calls by party leaders for a referendum on the issue.
The Good Friday agreement accommodates this, but a border poll is seen as unlikely at the moment.
The Dublin government is concerned about the potentially catastrophic impact Brexit will have on the Irish economy.
Britain remains Ireland’s biggest trading partner, with business between the two supporting 400,000 jobs and generating €60bn a year in trade in both directions.
A drop in the value of the pound since the EU referendum has made Irish exports to Britain less competitive, and some smaller businesses have already gone bust.
If tariffs are imposed after Brexit, then Irish goods, in the same way as other European goods, will become less competitive. There is talk of some businesses having to move to Northern Ireland or to places such as Wales in order to survive.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
The sound you heard immediately after MPs’ gasps of astonishment at the scale of last night’s Commons defeat was a herd of unicorns being released from their paddock. Reality bit – and then fled the scene.
According to the prime minister, some amicable discussions with senior parliamentarians, a bit of leeway from Brussels and a few tweaks to her EU deal will end the logjam. According to Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit is only a secondary issue, subordinate to the higher goal of securing a Labour government: once he is in Downing Street, everything will be fixed.
The hardline Brexiteers say that a free trade agreement or a no-deal exit is the answer. Other factions call for the UK’s continued membership of the customs union, or the single market, or both. They must know that none of these constitutional configurations will command a Commons majority – mustn’t they?
In principle at least, this evening’s no-confidence motion is the final obstacle to a full debate about Brexit itself rather than the prime minister’s personal merits (we know she’s useless – but, odd as it may seem, that’s not the most important issue facing the country today).
The question is whether MPs have the courage and honesty to conduct this collective inquiry and to confront its inevitable conclusion: that there is no magical Brexit tree to be shaken, that the 2016 referendum was a colossal exercise in political mis-selling, and that there is no form of departure that also delivers the best features of EU membership.
The only escape hatch from this horror show is a fresh public vote. But who dares lead our political tribe of unicorn-worshippers towards this inconvenient truth?
 Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist
After suffering the worst Commons defeat by any British prime minister in modern history, Theresa May faces an agonising choice: tack to a softer Brexit and risk fracturing her party for good – or hold firm on her Brexit red lines and risk remain Tories turning on her in a confidence vote.
The prime minister has a few days at least to work out which is the least worst option. Although Jeremy Corbyn moved to table a no-confidence vote in the government after the deal was defeated by an eye-watering 230 votes, May ought to win this comfortably. The DUP, European Research Group and Tory remainers all say they are sticking with May while she plans her next move.
Of that next move, May has told MPs she will move to seek consensus with figures from across the main parties on the best way forward. In truth, she has little choice in the matter. There are plenty of Conservative MPs willing to vote against the government in whatever way necessary to secure a softer exit from the EU and, crucially, avoid a no-deal Brexit.
The issue is that it’s hard to see what path to a Brexit deal May can now take which doesn’t involve permanently fracturing the Tory party in two. In order to win bulk Labour votes, May could need to commit to a permanent customs union – an act that would dismay a bulk of Tory MPs.
At cabinet this week, Tory party chairman Brandon Lewis warned the prime minister of the dangers of such a manoeuvre – making clear the party would not take well to the government cosying up with Labour. It’s for this reason that the chance of an early general election has increased significantly. If May can’t find a way forward for her party an election could be seen as the best way to break the deadlock. As one government aide put it last night: “Get your holidays in now.”
 Katy Balls is the Spectator’s deputy political editor
Amid the breathlessness and hurly-burly of the next few days, remember one essential fact: this entire fiasco was dreamed, planned and executed by the Tories. David Cameron imposed the vote in order to quell backbenchers worried that Ukip would take their seats. Peacocking around international summits, he assured other leaders that remain had it in the bag. Theresa May summarily triggered article 50, and started the clock running with neither game plan nor allies. To placate Jacob Rees-Mogg and the other headbangers, she spent two years denouncing any attempt at a Brexit compromise as a betrayal … then the last six months trying to sell a compromise. Last night’s historic, humiliating defeat is her just deserts.
Nevertheless, it is a mess that the rest of us will first have to stew in and then clean up. Certainly, hardly anyone who voted leave in 2016 can be beaming into their cornflakes over the current chaos. Plunged deep into a political quagmire, the country could soon also enter a full-blown constitutional crisis from which we cannot find a way out.
To avoid that, we need a complete change of mandate and plan. May’s plan is dead and if the prime minister tries to enlist Jean-Claude Juncker or Donald Tusk to resuscitate it, she will get short shrift – as both men signalled last night. The trouble is, if any prime minister had the nimbleness to change course it is certainly not the Dancing Queen. Yet she is not inching towards any exit, and the men behind her jostling to take over appear quite happy for her to do their dirty work. Hence the hypocrisy you will see later today, where Tory and DUP MPs who last night stabbed their leader in the back will vote to show they have complete confidence in her. Westminster will never so closely resemble a swamp of crocodiles.
Yet as long May keeps doing the job, nothing is workable. The obvious compromises, such as a Norway agreement, were effectively shut down by her in 2016 with her red line over freedom of movement. She will not call a general election or a second referendum. On the single most important foreign policy decision made by this country in 40 years, we have a lame duck prime minister leading a government in paralysis. Whatever happens after Brexit, mark this: the Tories have blown their name as the natural party of government for at least the next decade.
Against that backdrop, I believe the best thing for Labour MPs to do is calmly to point out that this mess is the Tories’ creation and that they can only try to restore some governance. The no-confidence vote fits that bill, but it is unlikely to succeed. Trying it again and again will likely be a game with diminishing returns, as Labour backbenchers and activists grow increasingly restive. Some will start muttering about working with No 10; others will come out for a second referendum. Events moving at this speed will not allow for inertia. So if today’s no-confidence vote goes then so too does the prospect of a general election. In that case, as I argued here yesterday, Labour should move towards calling for a second referendum to break the Westminster stalemate.
 Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator
It wasn’t just a defeat, but a humiliation. Theresa May’s Brexit deal has been so comprehensively routed that it feels like a broader judgment on her handling of the last two years. Despite lacking a majority she seeks to dictate terms, not negotiate them, as the Tory MP Nick Boles put it. She had barely even tried reaching across party lines, Labour MPs complained, seeking only narrow political advantage.
Yet if so, she’s not alone. Jeremy Corbyn’s preferred Brexit strategy of trying to change the subject will also be torpedoed today, if parliament votes as expected against a general election. Will he then throw everything at working with the hated Tories and Lib Dems for something that can pass parliament, in the national interest? You can probably guess the answer.
Yet that’s the only practical way out, preferably via a formal cross-party process but at a pinch perhaps in a knock-out vote between the options. The more we know about leaving with no deal, the madder it looks, but it will happen on 29 March if parliament can’t agree anything else.
My heart is with advocates of resolving this via a people’s vote, but my head is worried. Never again should voters be offered choices that don’t exist in real life, so returning the decision to the people only makes sense once parliament has stress-tested the options. Yet right now only the Liberal Democrats are close to advocating that Britain remain and reform the EU from inside (which must surely be the referendum message) and no party has a watertight plan for smuggling such reforms past 27 countries expecting a returning Britain to eat humble pie.
So by all means, let’s try to extend article 50 by a few months, since we’re obviously not ready. But this time let’s not squander them.
 Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
If our politics is becoming less rational, crueller and more divisive, this rule of public life is partly to blame: the more disgracefully you behave, the bigger the platform the media will give you. If you are caught lying, cheating, boasting or behaving like an idiot, you’ll be flooded with invitations to appear on current affairs programmes. If you play straight, don’t expect the phone to ring.
In an age of 24-hour news, declining ratings and intense competition, the commodity in greatest demand is noise. Never mind the content, never mind the facts: all that now counts is impact. A loudmouthed buffoon, already the object of public outrage, is a far more bankable asset than someone who knows what they’re talking about. So the biggest platforms are populated by blusterers and braggarts. The media is the mirror in which we see ourselves. With every glance, our self-image subtly changes.
When the BBC launched its new Scotland channel recently, someone had the bright idea of asking Mark Meechan – who calls himself Count Dankula – to appear on two of its discussion programmes. His sole claim to fame is being fined for circulating a video showing how he had trained his girlfriend’s dog to raise its paw in a Nazi salute when he shouted: “Sieg heil!” and “Gas the Jews”. The episodes had to be ditched after a storm of complaints. This could be seen as an embarrassment for the BBC. Or it could be seen as a triumph, as the channel attracted massive publicity a few days after its launch.
The best thing to have happened to the career of William Sitwell, the then-editor of Waitrose magazine, was the scandal he caused when he sent a highly unprofessional, juvenile email to a freelance journalist, Selene Nelson, who was pitching an article on vegan food. “How about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat,” he asked her. He was obliged to resign. As a result of the furore, he was snapped up by the Telegraph as its new food critic, with a front-page launch and expensive publicity shoot.
Last June, the scandal merchant Isabel Oakeshott was exposed for withholding a cache of emails detailing Leave.EU co-founder Arron Banks’ multiple meetings with Russian officials, which might have been of interest to the Electoral Commission’s investigation into the financing of the Brexit campaign. During the following days she was invited on to Question Time and other outlets, platforms she used to extol the virtues of Brexit. By contrast, the journalist who exposed her, Carole Cadwalladr, has been largely frozen out by the BBC.
This is not the first time Oakeshott appears to have been rewarded for questionable behaviour. Following the outrage caused by her unevidenced (and almost certainly untrue) story that David Cameron put his penis in a dead pig’s mouth, Paul Dacre, the then editor of the Daily Mail, promoted her to political editor-at-large.
The Conservative MP Mark Francois became hot media property the moment he made a complete ass of himself on BBC News. He ripped up a letter from the German-born head of Airbus that warned about the consequences of Brexit, while announcing: “My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German, and neither will his son.” Now he’s all over the BBC.
In the US, the phenomenon is more advanced. G Gordon Liddy served 51 months in prison as a result of his role in the Watergate conspiracy, organising the burglary of the Democratic National committee headquarters. When he was released, he used his notoriety to launch a lucrative career. He became the host of a radio show syndicated to 160 stations, and a regular guest on current affairs programmes. Oliver North, who came to public attention for his leading role in the Iran-Contra scandal, also landed a syndicated radio programme, as well as a newspaper column, and was employed by Fox as a television show host and regular commentator. Similarly, Darren Grimes, in the UK, is widely known only for the £20,000 fine he received for his activities during the Brexit campaign. Now he’s being used by Sky as a pundit.
The most revolting bigots, such as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, built their public profiles on the media platforms they were given by attacking women, people of colour and vulnerable minorities. Trump leveraged his notoriety all the way to the White House. Boris Johnson is taking the same track, using carefully calibrated outrage to keep himself in the public eye.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the unscrupulous, duplicitous and preposterous are brought to the fore, as programme-makers seek to generate noise. Malicious clowns are invited to discuss issues of the utmost complexity. Ludicrous twerps are sought out and lionised. The BBC used its current affairs programmes to turn Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg into reality TV stars, and now they have the nation in their hands.
My hope is that eventually the tide will turn. People will become so sick of the charlatans and exhibitionists who crowd the airwaves that the BBC and other media will be forced to reconsider. But while we wait for a resurgence of sense in public life, the buffoons who have become the voices of the nation drive us towards a no-deal Brexit and a host of other disasters.
This video has been removed. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Theresa May has refused to rule out further compromises in order to broker a final deal with the EU, but hit back at Boris Johnson after the former foreign secretary questioned her belief in Brexit.
The prime minister was asked repeatedly whether she was prepared to make further concessions to the EU after European leaders rejected her proposal in Salzburg earlier this month, saying it would risk the integrity of the EU single market.
Speaking on the first day of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that the government had to wait to hear the EU’s specific counter-proposals.
“We need to know what their concerns are,” she said. “This is challenging for the EU and I accept that. It is a deal like no other, they have not done it with anyone else. We believe it does not destroy the single market and we need to have that conversation with them.”
Overnight, May’s pre-conference announcements were overshadowed by comments by Johnson in an interview with the Sunday Times, in which he cast doubt on the prime minister’s commitment to leaving the EU compared with his own beliefs.
“Unlike the prime minister I campaigned for Brexit,” he said. “Unlike the prime minister I fought for this, I believe in it, I think it’s the right thing for our country and I think that what is happening now is, alas, not what people were promised in 2016.”
On Sunday, May said she was the one ensuring Brexit could be delivered. “I do believe in Brexit, but crucially I believe in delivering Brexit in a way that respects the vote and delivers on behalf of the British people, while also protecting our union, protecting jobs and ensuring we make a success of it,” she said.
The prime minister also admitted her party could not rule out a hard border in Northern Ireland in the event of no deal, but said there was not an alternative proposal on the table apart from her Chequers plan for a free trade area for goods, governed by a common UK-EU rulebook.
“If we get to the point of no deal … we as a United Kingdom government are still committed to doing everything we can to ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland,” she said.
“But there is only one plan on the table at the moment that provides for that frictionless trade across the border and indeed between the UK’s other borders with the EU.”
Johnson, the most keenly watched challenger to the prime minister, has called for May to ditch her plan and broker a deal similar to the one the EU has with Canada, but which would require customs checks on the Northern Irish border, which he says could be simplified with technology.
He said May’s proposal that Britain and the EU should collect each other’s tariffs was “entirely preposterous” and called the entire plan “deranged”.
May said it was wrong for critics of her Brexit plan to portray the alternative as a “free trade deal” and said the other alternative proposed was not a Canada-style deal, which took seven years to negotiate, but a very basic free trade agreement.
“People often differentiate Chequers from a free trade deal, but at the heart of Chequers is a free trade deal,” she said.
“If you have a free trade agreement, you have to agree the rules you’re going to trade on. Canada for the UK is not on the table from the EU. What is on the table is a basic free trade deal for Great Britain with Northern Ireland remaining in the customs union and single market.”
The former Brexit secretary David Davis, who departed the cabinet over the Chequers plan a day before Johnson, said he would vote against the prime minister’s plan as it stood.
“It will be a very, very exciting autumn in Westminster because the government, if it sticks with Chequers, will lose the vote,” he told Sky News. “Losing votes is always difficult for governments, but governments have lost votes in the past.”
He also cautioned his former cabinet colleague Johnson and said he would back May in any vote of no confidence. “Where I differ from Boris is that he is conflating the two,” he said. “This is such an important issue we must keep it away from internal Tory party battles and from leadership issues.”
The Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, also made a thinly veiled dig at Johnson in her interview on Sunday morning, especially his admission that he did not fully appreciate the implications of the withdrawal agreement, where leaders agreed to implement a “backstop” to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and parts of the single market to avoid a hard border, should no deal be reached.
“I don’t sit around the cabinet table, I’m not in government. I do attend political cabinet. But I knew what was being said in December, I’m not quite sure how the foreign secretary didn’t,” she said.
“He hasn’t even mentioned the fact that he was foreign secretary for two years and was in the room helping to influence this and, indeed, was praising it as soon ago as December.”
The Labour chair, Ian Lavery, said the interview showed May was “tinkering around the edges” rather than rebuilding Britain. “The Tories are clearly too busy fighting among themselves and have neither the ideas nor the desire to offer real solutions to the problems they have caused,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
If only Brexit would go away. It sucks the political oxygen away from the issues we should all be discussing: like low wages, insecure jobs and the housing crisis. It is a rallying cry for a noxious alliance of anti-immigrant demagogues and regulation-stripping free marketeers. The bigotry, xenophobia and racism stirred up by the official leave campaigns injected an ugliness into British politics which never dissipated, and left hate crimes surging. And, frankly, Brexit is just mind-numbingly, painfully, excruciatingly dull. So yes, if there was a big red button to make it all just go away, I’d enthusiastically push it.
Yes, as a socialist, I had profound reservations about the current incarnation of the EU, and even considered the case for leave. I dismissed the argument because of persuasive pleas from European leftists to stand together to reform and change the EU, and because it was clear that a hellish anti-immigration crusade beckoned. And so, alongside the Another Europe Is Possible alliance, I passionately campaigned against the Brexit juggernaut. Then the vote happened, and we lost. There seemed to be two conclusions that fateful night. One, challenge the bigotry, authoritarianism and intolerance of the Tory Brexiteers. And two, try to reconcile a bad result with the country’s future.
Which brings me to the “stop Brexit” campaign. Many decent and honest people are committed to reversing the referendum result. They fear a completely unnecessary national tragedy is befalling Britain, driven by myths and lies, and believe economic turmoil and national isolation await. It is perfectly legitimate to seek to democratically challenge a referendum result. But it is difficult to see how the current strategy, communication and leadership of this cause achieve anything other than doom it to failure.
First off, I’m not convinced by the campaign’s aim, and here’s why. Some stop Brexiters recite, almost as a mantra, that the referendum was only advisory (despite the government sending a pamphlet to every household in Britain promising them that the government “will implement what you decide”). If the referendum result was simply cancelled, it would be regarded as a coup against democracy not just by leave voters, but by many remainers. Faith in democracy may never be rebuilt – “more people voted for Brexit than for anything else in British history and the establishment thwarted it”, the refrain would go. It would surely be the greatest shot in the arm for the radical right in British history – not least because the result was in part due to a sense of resentment against a contemptuous political elite.
Alternatively, a second referendum could easily be framed as the establishment holding votes until it got the right result. It would mean an even more bitter campaign than the last, leaving deeper national divisions than ever. Either the last result would be reconfirmed, with rightwing Brexiteers more triumphalist and intolerant than ever; or – if remain scraped a narrow victory – furious Brexiteer demands for yet another referendum would be impossible to resist. Would it be best of three? Furthermore, a focus on overturning the referendum surely risks abandoning the debate over what sort of Brexit deal Britain negotiates to the Tory extremists.
Then there’s simple political maths. If Labour committed to overturning Brexit, the party would haemorrhage many of the 3 million or so of its voters who backed leave, losing seats as a consequence. Perhaps it would win a sliver of the 7% of Britons currently supporting the main stop Brexit party, the Liberal Democrats: though even that paltry gain would be in urban remain seats already held by Labour. Indeed, if preventing Brexit is such an inherently appealing prospect, why the derisory level of support for Vince Cable’s party? The consequence would surely be a decisive Conservative electoral victory, enabling the party to implement the most true blue of Tory Brexit deals, and continue everything from austerity to the failure to build affordable homes.
I’m genuinely open to having these arguments rebutted by stop Brexiters: actually, I’d like to be persuaded. But their campaign seems unable to learn from the failures of the official remain movement in the referendum, which was seen by many as an establishment push for the status quo in an era when millions feel angry and disillusioned.
Its prominent spokespeople – Tony Blair, Nick Clegg and unelected peers – simply cement the negative images of what was, after all, a failed campaign, however unfair that might seem to the most devout supporters. A successful movement would have to win over a significant chunk of leave voters, and remainers resigned to the vote. But leavers are often dismissed en masse as racist and ignorant – which, again, does little but confirm their views. Even remainers who believe the vote has to be accepted – and polling suggests there are millions – are beyond the pale to the most committed stop Brexiters.
To have any chance of success, they need a completely different strategy. First, the messenger matters, not just the message. For many leave voters, a thwarted Brexit would be an establishment coup against the democratic will of the people. Having discredited and deeply unpopular politicians, or unelected peers, pushing for this surely reinforces these views. Second, if stop Brexit presents itself as a defence of the status quo – at a time of popular ferment – it will fail: it should combine its signature policy with radical demands.
Third, it should launch itself as a grassroots, populist insurgency: rather than hosting EU flag-waving marches in remain citadels, it should hold mass public meetings and leafleting campaigns in leave areas, focusing on a positive case directed at those who are not enamoured with the EU (which is most people, including many remain voters). Its aim should be to shift public opinion so dramatically that calls for a new referendum become unanswerable.
Instead, it seems that too many stop Brexiters are making the same mistakes some leftists have traditionally made: looking for traitors, not converts; defined by what they are against, not what they are for; purist; cult-like; treating the wider public as politically backward; angrily dogmatic; yelling at people on Twitter.
No, I’m not convinced by their case as things stand, and can’t see clear answers to the questions I pose. A Labour-managed Brexit that doesn’t shred our links with the EU and turn Britain into a low-regulation tax haven still seems preferable. But the case to stop Brexit does deserve to be made, and deserves to be made well.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Westminster feels like a cauldron of fraught emotion. Not just in the chamber, the corridors, and the streets surrounding parliament, but among colleagues, with individual consciences wrestled over with increasing regularity. I was elected in 2017 on a staunch “stop Brexit” mandate by the people of Oxford West and Abingdon, so my voting decisions are straightforward, but I sympathise with those like Ken Clarke, Sir Nicholas Soames and my new colleague, Dr Phillip Lee. It is not easy to walk away from a party that you have aligned yourself with for decades. Many of them say their parties have left them, the moderates, behind. That’s a feeling echoed by much of the electorate.
Anxiety permeates the areas in which all MPs work and live. Protesting is a fundamental aspect of our democracy, and I will always encourage this course of action, but it can be intimidating. MPs put ourselves at the behest of the British people, certainly, but we are not infallible or devoid of sensitivity. Though the Liberal Democrats have been clear and consistent, while walking between appointments in Parliament Square, I have been called a traitor, and worse. We are often warned not to exit the parliamentary estate unaccompanied and we are besieged with threats and abuse online. It is not a healthy environment in which to work, but it does reflect the strength of emotion that is splintering our society. What provides me with the strength and conviction to walk proudly among protesters so angry about the policies I endorse is the support I absorb when I am in my own constituency. Whenever I am at home, I am met with smiling faces, and words of thanks, even hugs.
It is easy to feel unsettled, but I know that I carry the weight of these constituents on my shoulders. Whenever I’m around them, it reminds me that stopping a no-deal Brexit is about protecting their livelihoods, their futures. That, I am sure, is what motivated the 21 Tory MPs who have lost the whip as a result of their votes last night, votes that protected the very people most MPs are honoured to represent, votes that were in their best interests.
This harsh discipline merely demonstrates how low this government is willing to go. It shows that it has no interest at all in ensuring the best for the UK, and it shows contempt for their constituents. These moments, though dramatic, are frighteningly real. We need to wrestle back our country’s democracy from the callous clutches of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings and put it in the hands of someone who we can trust. Right now, I do not believe that is the leaders of either the Conservative or Labour party. One Tory MP told me this morning: “The lunatics are now running both major parties.”
The values that my party embodies have not changed over recent weeks, but Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to working with other opposition parties has. It’s welcome, even if it is long overdue. Jo Swinson has had to drag Corbyn to even this position, a show of unity to block no deal. We have had to put our differences aside, putting the national interest first. As yet, I cannot see us getting to a position where we think Corbyn becoming prime minister is in the best interests of the country – but we do know that his influence, and his MPs, can make the difference, alongside us. Members of the Labour frontbench have also prodded and poked their leader into honouring the wishes of their party membership, something that hasn’t taken place in front of cameras but has been incredibly welcome.
Most of the meetings and negotiations have been precipitated by phone calls crammed into diaries at short notice. The meetings reflect the unity under which opposition parties will operate to defy a no deal, the rules ever shifting and the agenda ever evolving. Johnson has managed to unite parties, and remainers and leavers alike in their anger at his blatant and shameful flouting of democracy. Throwing prorogation on the table has backfired. It has shown our prime minister to be both weak and ruthless in equal measure.
But it is not a longterm solution. Unity will only last on a case-by-case basis. These issues are too important to the people I meet where I live and where I work. That is why I got into politics, to make a difference. I will always believe that my vote, and the votes of my Lib Dem colleagues, are the best thing I can do to save this country from a no-deal Brexit and save it from Boris Johnson.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
A decision as a backbencher to vote against one’s party ought not to be taken lightly. Political parties depend for existence and success, not so much on the holding of identical views, as on a shared philosophy and ties of loyalty and respect between members. So there are good reasons to try to find compromises when differences emerge on a specific matter. Last week, however, I voted against my party on a national issue for the first time in my 20 years in parliament. I felt I had no option, as the attempts I had made to get the matter resolved by compromise had failed. I also considered that the matter was far too important to be ignored.
The vote was not about stopping Brexit. As a matter of international law, Brexit will occur on 29 March 2019, and a refusal by parliament to approve a final deal cannot prevent this, as it could only happen by the agreement of the UK and each of the other 27 member states, either to rescind the article 50 notice or to vary the date of departure that article 50 prescribes.
The problem on which I focused is that, in order to take us out of the EU, the government is seeking, in clause 9 of the withdrawal bill, very extensive powers to implement whatever changes the withdrawal agreement it is trying to negotiate may require. Yet until we know what that agreement is, the need for these powers to rewrite laws by statutory instrument is hypothetical. The government has accepted that a completely separate piece of primary legislation will have to be enacted to approve any withdrawal agreement. But the powers being sought could be used to bypass the promised parliamentary scrutiny of the final agreement, or avoid its outcome. I and a number of Conservative colleagues considered this unacceptable. I was struck by the fact that at least one government minister questioned privately if clause 9 needed to be in the bill at all. I therefore sought an amendment to ensure the powers in clause 9 could only be used once the later legislation was passed by parliament.
Unfortunately the process of negotiation that seems to have been working reasonably well on other issues in the bill broke down. I cannot be certain why this was the case, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that a decision was taken to deliberately face us down. We were offered assurances that did not adequately address the problem we identified , and that is why we put the matter to the vote.
While I was sorry to have to do it, I do not regret the outcome. The bill has been improved and parliament’s role enhanced. MPs of all parties have come together to do the legislative job that is one of our key functions. I am very grateful to all who supported the amendment, but particularly to those Conservative colleagues who joined with me, some of whom withstood intense pressure not to do so.
I do worry that the circumstances around the vote and its aftermath show a worrying slide towards irrationality in our political discourse. As a politician, I should expect sharp challenge from those who disagree with my decisions. But it is troubling that much of the controversy brought in allegations of an intention to sabotage Brexit that is far removed from what we were doing.
Some of this was fuelled and orchestrated by newspapers that seem entirely disinhibited in the inaccuracies they peddle and the vitriolic abuse they are prepared to heap on those who do anything they consider to be at variance with their version of what Brexit should be. This both obscures the real issues and encourages an atmosphere of crisis and confrontation between binary positions that leads directly to the death threats that we have received. In turn, this undermines the ability of politicians to engage in rational debate or make sound judgments on issues where there is often no certain answer.
I hope very much that the fallout from this episode may be beneficial. There are welcome signs from my colleagues in government of a willingness to work constructively with us and others. I have been sustained by the volume of supportive emails and letters and the willingness of many, irrespective of how they voted in the referendum, to denounce the fomenting of hatred. If parliament and government work together in their respective constitutional roles, and respect due processes, we will maximise our chances of making the right decisions as we encounter the many challenges, risks and opportunities Brexit poses for our country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
The Conservative party’s choice of a new leader will also impact on Britain’s influence in the world. Friendship, not showmanship, is valued by foreign governments. Bluster at home diminishes lustre abroad.
Over many years, Brexiters constructed a fable that presents the UK as the helpless victim of an unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels. Their version of history has become ever more at odds with reality. Brave Britannia is increasingly portrayed as a heroic underdog determined to fight for its independence from Europe. It matters not a jot that the organisation from which the UK is purportedly seeking to escape is a decent grouping of democratic nations that the UK willingly joined, which it helped significantly to shape and of which at least half the British people now very much wish their country to remain a member.
It is probably impossible to break the link between the fantastical tale and its fanatical followers. However, in the hope that rational argument still has some role to play in British public debate, the record should be set straight regarding the reality of the influence that Britain has brought to bear in shaping EU decisions and indeed the European project as a whole.
I was in a social setting recently with a group of British people with differing views on Brexit. The issue was simmering below the surface when one of them proclaimed that the UK was leaving the EU because “we don’t like France telling us what to do”. This nonsensical, but not untypical, interpretation of relative French and British influence in Europe will come as a surprise to many; not least to generations of French negotiators for whom frustration with the impact of “perfidious Albion” was a familiar EU experience. There is, of course, a fundamental contradiction between asserting that the EU is run by bureaucrats and that it is subject to excessive influence by other governments.
For three decades I sat around the European negotiating table, worked the Brussels corridors and networked in EU capitals. The truth is that, throughout the years of its membership, the UK has been particularly effective in the pursuit of its interests.
Like other member states, the UK has been represented around every EU negotiating table at every level as the decisions have been thrashed out. Sadly, many British people are not even aware that there were such tables to sit around. The UK also elected its members to the European parliament. Its EU commissioners helped to shape EU legislation. British nationals have held key positions in all the EU institutions.
But British influence in the EU went well beyond that available to most member states. The UK’s impact was exceptional due to several factors. The quality of its civil servants. The effectiveness of its coordination mechanisms. The reach of its diplomacy. The potency of its networking. The admiration for its pragmatism. The predominance of the English language.
British influence in Europe, it is true, was hamstrung in self-inflicted ways. The UK’s decision to opt out of some key policy areas diminished British influence in other areas. London governments, partly driven by a jingoistic media, often favoured short-term tactics over long-term strategy. If the UK had put as much heart as it did head into its European policy, its influence would have been much greater. David Cameron’s decision to pull the Conservatives out of the EPP Group in the European parliament diminished British influence there; a development compounded by extreme British Eurosceptic MEPs more interested in throwing shapes rather than in shaping policy.
Every member state has its strengths and weaknesses. But there is a wide measure of consensus across Europe that British influence on the EU has been exceptional and immense. The EU today looks more like the one the UK wanted a quarter of a century ago than the one France had in mind.
Brexit will change all that. Europe will be the poorer for the loss of British influence. But Britain itself will be diminished even more. It is important that our British friends understand the influence they once had in Europe so that they also know what they are giving up. As an EU, without the UK, continues to shape the legislation and regulatory standards that will affect British business, France will be delighted to find that it has more scope to “tell the UK what to do” than was ever possible when the UK significantly influenced every decision.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
I’m a civil servant working for a UK government department. We haven’t been directly convulsed by Brexit yet, but hundreds of us will soon be conscripted into the Brexit crisis thunderdome. Welcome to Operation Yellowhammer. This is basically an emergency plan that prepares the government for a no-deal Brexit. It is currently winkling thousands of officials from across Whitehall out of their day jobs to focus on helping Brexit-facing departments – Defra, the Department for International Trade and the Home Office – to cope with the havoc that will engulf them if the worst happens.
Yellowhammer, eh? Who dreams up these Brexit crisis-limitation codenames? It’s probably a secret cry for help from some wizened Treasury or Cabinet Office official. That’s why Operation Brock, which tested no-deal readiness to keep the British freight industry moving, was supposed to sound like an army exercise to prepare British people to safely find, kill and cook badger.
It’s been suggested that Operation Yellowhammer alludes to the call of the eponymous bird, whose call sounds like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”, and is therefore a handy precis of the UK’s post-Brexit food rationing policy.
We should by now be in Yellowhammer’s final, perhaps terminal, stage. In my own department, virtually all of the several hundred likely to be Brextracted are still waiting to hear. We know that directors are working behind the scenes to identify these poor buggers. But the worrying fact is that most people don’t yet know when they’re going to be deployed, how long for, or what they’ll be working on when they are. Then there’s the question of whether they’ll actually be qualified to do whatever their new job is, given a) anyone who’s spent even five minutes in a trade negotiating room has already been rounded up like a prized Angus by DExEU and DIT’s HR departments , and b) even now, nobody knows what is going to happen.
As reported by Civil Service World, around ten thousand civil servants are working on Brexit, with tens of millions of additional pounds being spent on consultancy fees. But 5,000 more civil servants will be needed, with the Institute for Government suggesting that even this won’t be nearly enough. You can’t help but wonder what could be achieved if this concentration of treasure and talent was lavished on other pressing national issues – education, housing, health, energy, climate change, the next series of The Bodyguard. We’ll never know, will we?
So what will it look like when the Yellowhammer fuse is finally lit? We don’t know that either, but I suspect a screenwriter will one day pitch a mockumentary about this as The Office meets The Poseidon Adventure with a Benny Hill soundtrack. Not even Benedict Cumberbatch could save it.
My theory is that Yellowhammer hasn’t really got going yet because the grey eminences in charge have calculated that the risk of being defenestrated for wasting billions on a no-deal Brexit that never happens is slightly higher than the risk of being overwhelmed by a no-deal.
Meanwhile, coverage of the civil service’s orbit around the Brexit plughole has become more and more disquieting over the last couple of years, ranging from cautious realism to  despair. Missing from this has been any acknowledgement of the reality that civil servants are only as effective as the ministers they’re legally obliged to serve under. And under the current crop of ministers, with fewer than 60 days to go, the civil service’s morale and ability to deliver any sort of Brexit seems to be evaporating fast. With the clock ticking down, the stakes just keep getting higher.
No-deal Brexit will be horrendously complex and time-consuming to implement, but the mess we are in is political and social, not technical. That’s why officials are haunted by what government ministers still can’t or won’t admit: that any Brexit is going to hurt the country, but a no-deal Brexit is going to rip our arms off, disrupting almost every aspect of British public life except the weather (and maybe even that too).
According to some reports, some senior civil servants insist that Whitehall is more or less prepared for Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal, but my experience of Yellowhammer, plus the almost daily torrent of stories about the stockpiling of food (which alone is a terrifyingly unpredictable scenario), ferries, lorry queues, immigration and other issues covered by 106 technical notices, suggests there are going to be one or two drones on the no-deal runway that we haven’t thought of yet.
And what seems clear is that all Brexit outcomes will damage the UK civil service, both as a place to work and in terms of the faith that the public places in it. The death threat made against HMRC permanent secretary Jon Thompson sadly doesn’t seem to be a one-off – other high-profile civil servants have been targeted too.
My hope is that, whatever outcome the parliamentary tombola eventually coughs up, ministers, the public and the press should resist the temptation to trash us, either for not sufficiently internalising the alchemy of Brexiteer logic, or for not sufficiently resisting it.
Are there any circumstances under which we should resist orders to plan a no-deal Brexit even if we believe this to be a disastrous step? Absolutely not – in fact it’ll be us who are working hardest to make sure the lights stay on, long after Brexiteer MPs have scuttled off into comfortable obscurity. Besides, civil servants need to keep the trust of whichever government follows this one.
I’m a bit of a cynic, but I still believe the UK’s public servants – yes, including some of the current crop of politicians – are among the most committed in the world, even if history is busily repeating the lesson that even top-notch administrations can sleepwalk into catastrophic shitshows.
First published on Tue 19 Jul 2016 14.00 BST
The International Monetary Fund has slashed its forecast for UK growth next year after warning that the decision to leave the EU had damaged the British economy’s short-term prospects and “thrown a spanner in the works” of the global recovery.
The IMF, which voiced strong misgivings about a vote for Brexit before the EU referendum, said it expected the UK economy to grow by 1.3% in 2017, 0.9 percentage points lower than an estimate made in its World Economic Outlook (WEO), in April.
While the fund is ruling out a full-blown recession, the analysis by one of the leading global economic bodies underlines the financial challenges facing Theresa May’s government during a period when slower growth will lead to lower tax receipts and a bigger budget deficit.
On Wednesday in Berlin, the prime minister will hold talks with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Both are keen to minimise the economic fallout of Brexit. Germany, with its heavy reliance on exports, is seen by the IMF as the most vulnerable eurozone country following Britain’s vote.
May is expected to warn that she needs time to consult with the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as industry sectors, before starting formal negotiations with Brussels. Tomorrow she goes to France for a meeting with the president, François Hollande, where she will deliver a similar message about the need to resist triggering article 50 until Britain is fully prepared for talks.
May and her ministers are keen to talk up the prospects for the economy, with the upbeat response from the Treasury to the IMF report contrasting with the pessimistic tone that had been adopted under George Osborne in the weeks leading up to the EU referendum.
A Treasury spokesman said overtures from Australia about a trade deal and the willingness of Softbank to pay £24bn for the technology firm ARM showed the UK could make a success of Brexit. “The decision to leave the EU marks a new phase for the British economy, but our message is this: our country remains open for business. We are the same outward-looking, globally minded, big-thinking country we have always been.”
The IMF urged policymakers in the UK and rest of the EU to end the uncertainty. “Of primary importance is a smooth and predictable transition to a new set of post-exit trading and financial relationships that as much as possible preserves gains from trade between the UK and the EU.”
The IMF said it had cut its forecasts for the global economy due to the likely knock-on effect of the vote on other countries, particularly in Europe.
Maury Obstfeld, the IMF’s economic counsellor, said: “The first half of 2016 revealed some promising signs – stronger than expected growth in the euro area and Japan, as well as a partial recovery in commodity prices that helped several emerging and developing economies.
“As of 22 June [the day before the referendum], we were therefore prepared to upgrade our 2016-17 global growth projections slightly. But Brexit has thrown a spanner in the works.”
The IMF predicted global growth of 3.1% in 2016 and 3.4% in 2017, both of which were 0.1 points lower than forecast in April. Britain is still expected to be the second fastest growing economy in the G7 this year – behind the US, despite having its growth forecast for 2016 trimmed by 0.2 percentage points to 1.7%.
The IMF believes that next year the UK will have similar growth rates to Germany – the eurozone economy most affected by the Brexit-induced slowdown – and France. Germany’s growth is now estimated at 1.2% in 2017, a fall of 0.4 points.
It said: “The vote in the UK in favour of leaving the EU adds significant uncertainty to an already fragile global recovery. The vote has caused significant political change in the UK, generated uncertainty about the nature of its future economic relations with the EU, and could heighten political risks in the union itself. Continuing uncertainty is likely to weigh on consumption and especially investment.”
The WEO update said there was a risk that the impact of the UK’s decision to leave could prove worse than expected. “With Brexit still very much unfolding, the extent of economic and political uncertainty has risen, and the likelihood of outcomes more negative than the one in the baseline has increased.”
The IMF outlined two alternative scenarios to its forecast, one moderately worse, one significantly. However, Obstfeld said the resilience of financial markets since 23 June meant that the fund was putting “less weight” on gloomy forecasts.
A forecast from the European commission, however, was less sanguine. In its first post-Brexit assessment, the commission said the UK would, at best, grow by 1.1% in 2017, but there was a risk that the economy could contract by 0.3%.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said of the announcement: “Today’s report from the IMF is another blow for the government and further highlights that they had no plan whatsoever for after a Brexit vote.”
Matt Whittaker, chief economist at the Resolution Foundation, said that if the IMF forecast were right, the UK economy would be £21bn smaller than thought: “A £21bn [cut] in the … economy alone would reduce the tax take by £150m a week.”
The Adam Smith Institute said the “rebooting” of the economy after Brexit should include the scrapping of corporation tax, abolition of subsidies for farmers, and protection of Britain’s fishing waters.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
At school, you can only tell the teacher so many times that the dog ate your homework. After a while, you have to produce it. Or admit you never did it in the first place. That is the position Boris Johnson finds himself in on Brexit. And whether it’s being accountable to parliament or to the public in an election after a vote of no confidence this week, it’s time he came clean on what his detailed plan is.
Theresa May’s mistake was to promise “Brexit means Brexit” but then negotiate a “vassal-state” deal, as Jacob Rees-Mogg described it, that was the worst of all worlds and more unpopular than the poll tax. Johnson quit his cabinet position as he felt so strongly that May’s Brexit deal was a bad one. Brexiteers said it was because her heart wasn’t in it as a remainer. So it’s hardly surprising there is little trust left in the Brexit process.
But now the leaders of the leave campaign, Johnson and Michael Gove, are running Britain and have the chance to deliver what they successfully sold to the electorate. So where’s the plan? Where’s the homework? Seemingly Dilyn, the new No 10 dog, has eaten it.
May’s cabinet published a white paper on her Brexit proposal, but from Johnson, Mr Brexit himself, we’ve had nothing. No sign at all of any plan, let alone a 98-page white paper.
He told parliament last week that progress was being made on negotiations with the EU. But what exactly is he asking for?
The Brexit campaign never had a manifesto – it was largely limited to a bus advert. Johnson’s officials have made documented proposals to the EU already, yet the British people and their elected MPs are kept in the dark. We have a right to know what Johnson is negotiating on our behalf. Otherwise, people will reasonably conclude that there is no plan, or it is another worst-of-all-worlds Theresa May 2.0 plan and Johnson doesn’t want to admit it. No 10’s lack of transparency can only be a sign of weakness.
It should be especially concerning to Conservative activists in Manchester that no details of the government’s EU proposal will be available until after this week’s conference is over. What is so unpalatable that their own party leader needs to hide it from them?
I’ve served with Johnson in cabinet and worked with him for more than 10 years. It’s clear to me his strategy is dangerous and dysfunctional: get people angry with the judiciary, get people angry with parliament and then, after a fake negotiation, get people angry with the EU. Make the “great poisonous puffball of Brexit”, as Johnson referred to it last week, so toxic for Britain that people will desperately accept any version of Brexit, however damaging, to “just get it done”.
But it’s not the judiciary’s fault that Johnson unlawfully prorogued parliament. It’s not parliament’s fault that he hasn’t produced his plan, or details of how no deal would be dealt with. And it’ll be by design when his fake negotiation produces nothing or Johnson comes back from the EU with something remarkably like May’s original deal.
Boris Johnson is in charge. Failure will be at his door, no one else’s. Offensive and incendiary language intended to distract parliament and Britain won’t distract from the reality that he and his government have produced no detailed plan whatsoever.
A blizzard of spending commitments at this week’s conference won’t hide the fact that the Brexit homework’s late. It’s time for Johnson to hand it in to the British people, or admit he never did it in the first place. Surely Conservative activists in Manchester, alongside the rest of our country, deserve that, above all else.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
To the growing iconography of Brexit, we can add a new image. First place in the collection will forever belong to that shot of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, both ashen-faced the morning after their unexpected – and perhaps unwanted – victory in the referendum. Close behind comes the photograph of Michel Barnier meeting David Davis for their first round of exit talks in Brussels: Barnier and his aides equipped with bulging, cross-tabbed files of briefing notes while the then Brexit secretary and his team sit cheerfully paperless and empty-handed, almost as if they are utterly unprepared for the task ahead.
Now comes the picture, featured on the Guardian’s front page, of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and veteran Eurosceptic MP Peter Bone – best known for his excruciating Commons references to “Mrs Bone” – at a Brexit event on Tuesday. Each man seems to have his head in his hands, as if despairing of the cause all three have made their own. Boris, Rees-Mogg and Bone are the Boggis, Bunce and Bean of Brexit, apparently as defeated in their cunning scheme as the characters in the Roald Dahl tale: all that’s missing is the Fantastic Dr Fox.
Are their miseries individual or collective? Johnson seems pensive, perhaps reflecting on a bruising few days in which the break-up of his marriage has been announced, the papers have feasted on speculative details of his complex private life, and his attempt to divert attention by suggesting Theresa May had wrapped a “suicide vest around the constitution” brought only a few hours’ respite.
Rees-Mogg has his hand to his brow, in a gesture of mild panic, as if he has just seen on the screen before him that the document whose launch the three men were attending predicts a £1.1 trillion boost to the British economy if there is no deal – a prediction so wild that it rather dents the credibility of the Economists for Free Trade organisation hosting the event, and indeed everyone present.
As for Bone, his hair more tousled even than Johnson’s, he looks like a man who, in a final bid to clear his gambling debts, bet the family home on the nailed-on favourite in the 2.30pm at Aintree – only to hear that the horse limped home in last place. He is a broken Bone.
For all their individual woes, the trio’s pain is shared and might have originated from any number of sources. They might have got word that the boss of Britain’s biggest car manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover, had just warned that “bluntly, we will not be able to build cars” if the no-deal worse comes to the worst and the roads to Dover are gridlocked in traffic. The Brexiteers surely know that the most punishing blows to their cause come not from politicians, but from employers issuing warnings that tens of thousands of jobs could go if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. Airbus and BMW have done that, and so now has Jaguar. Voters who tune out the Westminster noise tend to hear the signal of massive job losses.
It’s possible that the three disconsolate Brexiteers were contemplating the gathering evidence that their camp is split. While some remain irreconcilable and committed to vote down almost any agreement May might secure with Brussels, a substantial number of leave-supporting Tories are preparing to follow the lead reiterated by Michael Gove on the radio on Tuesday morning and swallow the Chequers plan, even if they don’t like it. The dismay of the no-deal ultras will have been deepened by recent hints from Barnier that a deal is indeed possible (though they might be in better spirits, now that Jean-Claude Juncker has apparently rejected the Chequers notion of Britain remaining in the single market for goods but not services).
True, Rees-Mogg, Johnson and Bone were probably heartened by the prospect that the hard Brexit-supporting European Research Group was due to meet later that evening, where some 50-odd Tory MPs would explicitly plot a coup against the prime minister. But they would surely have known that all such talk is so much fantasy. For, under Tory rules, even if the anti-May faction reaches the crucial number of 48 letters sent to the backbench 1922 Committee demanding a no-confidence vote, victory remains distant. They might get such a ballot, but they would be a long way from the 158 votes they’d need to win it: until Brexit is done, Tory MPs will vote to keep May in place. Such a vote would, in fact, strengthen her position by renewing her mandate as party leader. Perhaps it was this thought that prompted Johnson to connect his face to his palm.
Alternatively, the angst might have been deeper. Johnson at least surely knows that many of the arguments championed by his fellow leavers are absurd – typified by the demands for a Star Wars nuclear missile shield and an expeditionary force for the Falklands in this week’s ERG manifesto – and that the collision with reality is increasingly exposing them as such. As Brexit day gets nearer, that hard truth is becoming ever more exposed.
This photograph tells that story, too. For there, in the bottom right of the image, attached to an unknown wrist, is a watch. Time ticking on; time running out.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
The opening number in Tim Minchin’s brilliant adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda features one of my favourite lines from the musical repertoire. It is sung by a teacher bemoaning parents’ insistence that their offspring are more gifted than their peers, when it is not statistically possible for all to be so endowed. “Specialness is de rigueur / Above average is average, go figueur! / Is it some modern miracle of calculus / That such frequent miracles don’t render each one unmiraculous?”
The thought that our children are extraordinary is the most ordinary aspect of parenthood. Likewise, lovers in the first throes of infatuation imagine that no one can appreciate the particular nature of their bond, and in that respect their attachment is generic. These sentiments belong to the paradoxical set of things that are alike in the conviction that they are unique.
Religions belong to this set. They are organised around exclusive paths to truth and virtue. Even when they preach tolerance of other faiths, they imply that the tolerated alternative is still, in the final analysis, wrong. And so it is with nationalism. Of course every nation has its special character. But political projects that want to codify and police those qualities – national specialness de rigueur – fit one template. Exceptionalism is the common denominator.
Nationalism posits a mythic golden age, before the fall into corruption. It identifies some alien element – a foreign power, internal parasite or both – that caused the decline. It promises a liberation that will unleash the repressed strength of a heroic people and restore greatness. It is nostalgic and utopian. A rose-tinted lens is applied to the past for projection into the future.
The conformity of Brexit to that pattern is unmistakable: the people suffering under a Brussels yoke, their enterprising spirit stifled, their traditions diluted and their values compromised by the immigrant hordes that Europe sends; a folk memory of prelapsarian innocence before Ted Heath’s treason and forced metric conversion. Liberal leavers who deny the link are kidding themselves or dissembling. They are either being taken for a ride by the nationalists or have cynically hitched a lift.
Just as nationalism’s rhetoric is universal, so is its evolution predictable. The romanticised past it would restore is, of course, unavailable, so it fails to deliver on its promises. Someone must then be blamed. The two commonest candidates are hostile states and a fifth column at home.
It is currently uncontroversial to observe that the concerns of other European countries in the Brexit process are legitimate. Even Brexiteers sometimes try to inhabit a foreign perspective, arguing that the trading interests of other nations will lubricate a felicitous deal. (They think, mistakenly, that German car exporters will persuade Angela Merkel that tariff-free access to British consumers is her number one priority.) But that empathic licence will be revoked when the negotiations turn sticky. Once it becomes clear that the rest of the EU wasn’t bluffing about departing members of the club losing the privileges of membership, the Brexiters’ mood, already sour despite their referendum victory, will curdle. The haranguing of high court judges for daring to interpret the law as it applies to parliament’s role in triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty was a throat-clearing prelude. Next year will be a bumper year for probing divided loyalties, impugning motives, shaming “enemies of the people” and demanding conspicuous displays of patriotism. The Brexit catchphrase will be the old inquisitorial challenge: “Whose side are you on?”
Nationalists do not have a monopoly on patriotism, but they always claim one. The distinction is important. Patriotism is an emotional attachment to one’s country, expressed as pride in belonging to a discrete cultural community.It can be justified or irrational; gentle or aggressive; nuanced or crude; passionate or fond. It doesn’t need official signoff. The state can amplify patriotism but it cannot police it without a repressive accent. Government cannot insert its chosen version of patriotism in the heart of someone who doesn’t feel it that way. Nationalism is when politicians try to do just that, and lash out when they fail. To be moved on hearing “I vow to thee, my country” is patriotic. To make public servants vow to their country on threat of being moved out of a job is nationalism.
The strongest surge of patriotic feeling I had in 2016 was in response to the death of Victoria Wood. Her ear for the inflections of the language, exploring contours of class and regional identity, and her gift for communicating that insight with self-deprecating humour were quintessentially British. She made me feel lucky to be British, so I could be in on the joke. But I can’t see The Ballad of Barry and Freda being played to fire up a political rally – serried ranks of po-faced activists singing in unison: “To quote Milton, to eat stilton, to roll with gay abandon on the tufted Wilton / let’s do it, let’s do it tonight!”
I don’t deny that Euroscepticism has deep roots. It resonates with a sense of historical and geographical detachment from the continent. Nor do I claim that everyone who voted leave is a nationalist. But the politics of Brexit are locked into that trajectory. The saddest part is that rupture from the EU is a dismal national mission statement, a nightmare odyssey of diplomatic haggling for the prize of having one day to rebuild relations that were damaged along the way. The sweetest moment for Brexiters was the morning of 24 June 2016, when the two fingers of anti-establishment, anti-Brussels anger were raised. Point made. Everything that follows is compromise. What nation does Brexit even galvanise? A majority of Scots voted remain (a fact that Scottish nationalists have been quick to weave into their customised narratives of oppression by the English).
Brexit is as dull and soulless as the EU institutions it opposes. As a referendum campaign it struck a chord. As a process it is without music or poetry or any of the cultural depth on which nation-building depends. As a vehicle for the assertion of British exceptionalism it is exceptionally joyless: the creation of uncreative politicians who have nothing special to offer but belief in their own specialness. The more their mediocrity is exposed, the harder they will try to bolster their cause with appeals to patriotic duty.
But there is also a patriotism of nonconformity that cannot be bullied into allegiance. It is not the flag-waving, oath-swearing kind of patriotism, but it is no less indigenous to these islands. Its anthems might not be rousing, but they are more fun. How do we assert this gentler version of British greatness? Victoria Wood had a sense of it. “Not bleakly, not meekly, beat me on the bottom with the Woman’s Weekly. So let’s do it. Let’s do it tonight.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
I fully supported Labour’s three-line whip to vote to trigger article 50 last week. Our union campaigned vigorously to remain in the European Union but we respect the result of the referendum. Had Labour voted to block article 50 at the first hurdle, it’s effect would have been to give millions of voters the proverbial two fingers. Let’s face it, many people voted leave because they felt our political class no longer speaks for them. A vote against starting the process to trigger article 50 would have gone a long way to proving their point. However, no one voted for “Brexit at any cost, which is why the amendments tabled by Labour’s front bench are warmly welcome”.
The 1.2 million-plus British people living elsewhere in Europe and the 3.3 million EU citizens who have made their homes in Britain should not be used as pawns in Tory Brexit negotiations. Across the Labour and progressive movements, irrespective of the position taken during the referendum, there is now overwhelming support for Labour’s amendment on this issue.
Labour is also right that Brexit can’t be used for our country to become a bargain-basement tax haven where workers’ rights, environmental protections and public services are destroyed in a deregulatory bonfire as we rush to seal new trade deals. The signs are already ominous. Theresa May’s cuddling up to Donald Trump is likely to result in a trade deal that will make the defeated Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership look munificent. Make no mistake, our NHS and other vital public services will be put up for auction to the highest bidder.
The Tory cries of “take back control” really stick in my craw. Arch-Brexiteer Chris Grayling could not use these buzzwords enough during the referendum campaign. Funny how, since becoming transport secretary in July, he has allowed the Italian national railway to join the Dutch, German and French state in running our train services. I doubt even many conviction leave voters share a notion of “take back control” that allows even more EU countries to make money at the expense of our UK rail passengers and taxpayers. So Labour is absolutely right to demand any Brexit deal must be brought to parliament to be accounted for before it’s signed off.
Which brings me to Labour’s amendment dealing with access to the single market. My union has strongly objected to the deregulatory impulse of Brussels. As I told our union’s conference last year, the vote on the EU referendum was never a choice between a utopian socialist republic of our dreams and the EU as it stood. The choice we got last June was between the flawed status quo or the prospect of a Tory Brexit led by market fundamentalists. Unsurprisingly, our conference voted comfortably for our union to campaign for remain.
I hope Labour’s amendments are accepted, as they will bring greater clarity and democratic scrutiny to the Brexit process. But the question Labour MPs must ask themselves before they walk into the lobbies tomorrow is: what is their plan if the amendments are defeated? Having set out their stall, they must not then rubberstamp legislation that counters Labour’s shared values. There is no case for a Tory Brexit at any cost. Labour is, after all, the opposition.
I realise feelings on this issue are heated, and understand the political toxicity around free movement of people because of the need to deal with a strong Ukip challenge in many areas; but sometimes in politics you just need to do what is right.
The idea of the Tories deploying the threat of mass deportation of EU families living here as a negotiating ace is unacceptable. That alone should be enough to prove why waving through an unamended Tory Brexit bill would be a big mistake. If Labour’s amendments fail, then the facts change and our Labour party must face that reality, do the right thing and whip our MPs into voting against an unamended Tory Brexit. If it doesn’t, MPs must themselves do the right thing; they must vote against it anyway.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Even now, after all that’s happened over the past few days and with everything to come, Labour politicians and their aides cling to one of two excuses for their position on Brexit. The first will come most often from an MP for some kicked-about northern seat. “I voted remain, of course,” they generally begin, “but my constituents wanted Brexit.” And so, despite all misgivings, Brexit they shall have. Soft Brexit, naturally, as soft and as yielding as a goosedown pillow, because our clear-eyed, good-hearted representative looks at the tragedy at Honda and knows they want no more of that – but enough Brexit, they hope, to satisfy the voters’ appetite.
The second excuse usually comes from those closer to Jeremy Corbyn, by employment or inclination. For them, Brexit is something to be endured for the greater good of enabling Labour to kick out the Tories. So nail those six tests to the door even if they are, to use a technical term, “bollocks”; offer to help Theresa May with her deal; strike a tone both constructive and ambiguous.
In this way does a party that is overwhelmingly remain, from its voters to its members to its MPs to its frontbench, end up as the midwife to leave. True, there is a smaller number at each level who truly believe in a leftwing Brexit, or Lexit, but easily Labour’s biggest motive is a desire not to upset the electorate.
And I can see the logic. This will not be yet another column fantasising about how Labour is run by a cabal of revolutionary grandads all huddled together on some Kremlin-sponsored allotment to plot the downfall of capitalism. It plainly isn’t, although I would pay good money to see that film. Nevertheless, what may seem sensible tactics adds up to dangerous strategy. In its focus on the immediate demands of holding together a fragile political coalition – only heightened by the walkout last week of Chuka Umunna et al – it ignores this moment’s historic significance. It is all trees and no wood.
The jobs lost to Brexit and the havoc it is already wreaking in government are staples of the news, but only in the past week has there been serious talk about how it will reconfigure politics. Yet one of the greatest risks is that Labour will chuck away its position as the most interesting venture in mainstream European politics, merely to tie itself to the back bumper of a hard-right juggernaut.
Brexit was always a project driven by the right to enrich the right. That goes for its most fervent enthusiasts, Thatcherite throwbacks such as her former chancellor Nigel Lawson and Patrick Minford, the economist who in the run-up to the referendum blithely forecast that Brexit would “eliminate manufacturing … But this shouldn’t scare us. Britain is good at putting on a suit and selling to other nations.” It applies to the prizes the right seeks from leaving, such as scrapping paid holidays and other workers’ rights, as reportedly plotted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. And just look at how it is already using this moment to change our notions of who gets to live here and on what terms. Does anyone think that home secretary Sajid Javid would make such a show of leaving a British teenager and her baby to rot in a refugee camp in a failed state were he not hoping to become the first prime minister of Brexitannia? This will be the country that feels no shame because it’s too busy being fuelled by hate.
When I voted remain in 2016, it was not out of love for such sorry characters as Jean-Claude Juncker, but because I didn’t want the UK to be remade in the image of Nigel Farage. Well, I lost and it’s no consolation that the only thing I got wrong was the former public schoolboy: my eyes should have been on a double-breasted jacket and a monocle. Unless something major changes, the end of next month will launch the Rees-Mogg revolution, a reconfiguration of British society as drastic as that begun by Margaret Thatcher.
Why would the British left so blithely enable a Tory project that seeks to cripple it all over again? Should you need a reminder of how disastrous it is for Labour to enshrine Tory arguments as orthodoxy, then just think back to 2010-2015, when no opposition politician could begin a TV interview without disclosing whether they were now, or had ever been, a deficit denier. Now imagine that happening on cutting immigration, on trade giveaways, on slashing taxes.
There are of course the aforementioned Lexiters, who just know 29 March will bring the death of neoliberalism, even though the neoliberals will be in charge. Who claim that cutting immigration from the EU will allow more people to come in from the Commonwealth, although there’s nothing to stop that happening today if May’s government wanted it (spoiler: it doesn’t). Who have never quite grasped that the origins of reactionary British politics lie not in Brussels, but in Britain. In its vaulting ambition and loose thinking, Lexitism most closely resembles gap-year self-indulgence – a flight of fantasy tried out by people secure in the knowledge they’ll never have to suffer the worst consequences.
I don’t believe Corbyn should have greeted the 2016 result by blowing a fat raspberry and pushing to remain, but as Brexit fails to get through parliament, he should stop pushing for a compromise deal. That would only allow the pinstriped mob to argue that we’re still taking EU rules but getting none of the voting rights. Instead, Labour should get behind a second referendum. Leave voters would not punish Labour at the next election anywhere near as badly as its remain base, according to polling from the TSSA transport workers’ union that has been presented to John McDonnell and others in the past three weeks. Just 36% of Labour leave voters rank Brexit in the top three topics they care about. For Labour remainers, that shoots up to 60%. The TSSA briefing notes: “If [Labour] fails to oppose Brexit … there is every indication that it will be far more damaging to the party’s electoral fortunes than the Iraq war.” Its Scottish MPs would face wipeout, while in London there would be heavy losses.
The threat that Brexit poses to the British left is aptly summed up by an essay published 40 years ago. In The Great Moving Right Show, the late Stuart Hall laid out the scale of the challenge he believed the left faced from Thatcher – months before she even moved into No 10, years before she began her scorched-earth economics. But Hall saw it all coming: the populism of Thatcher, the way she would target schools and policing. And he saw how Thatcherism would win mass support: “Its success and effectivity does not lie in its capacity to dupe unsuspecting folk but in the way it addresses real problems, real and lived experiences, real contradictions – and yet is able to represent them within a logic of discourse which pulls them systematically into line with policies and class strategies of the right.”
Just like Thatcher, the Brexiters are poised to define the present, rewrite the past and then shape the future. It would be folly for Labour to aid them.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
In Salzburg on Wednesday the sound of Brexit may be reassuringly anodyne, to ease Maria von May through a perilous Tory party conference. Climb every mountain and agreement is somewhere up there, will be the reassuring message from her ”few minutes over dinner” address to the 27 EU leaders. Only when – or if – she survives contact with her party will they put her impossible demands through the wringer.
Every path looks blocked, every likely or unlikely deal set to be voted down in parliament. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, says Labour will vote down any deal that crosses its six red lines. Remember those were all drawn from promises the Brexiteers made in the referendum campaign. That includes their pledge to keep the “exact same benefits” of the single market and customs union. If that’s impossible, so were all the fantasies sold to voters.
Labour, gathering in Liverpool this weekend, faces its own great conundrums. Here’s its choice: it could emerge as the one party that can rescue the country from the morass the Tories have plunged us into, the one clear route out of both Brexit and austerity. Or it could descend into a hornets’ nest of internal strife incomprehensible to voters it needs to win over. A party at war over changing the rules to make every MP face an open contest at every election, obliging obedience to their local party, is a terrible look. It’s a rum democracy that refuses to propose US-style open primaries where local voters choose their candidate – the way the excellent Sarah Wollaston was selected in Totnes. Cracks run through the party, with new splits among Momentum people, and between Momentum and the unions, over new rules for selecting the leader.
Nor is there unity among non-Corbynites, ranging from a tiny handful who might split, to a large soft-left of many hues who only coalesce when respected MPs come under assault from the hard left. Chris Williamson, witch-finder general, stirring up enmity in his threatening “roadshow” tour of seats of MPs he thinks insufficiently loyal to the leader, may not be organised by the leadership, but he could have been stopped. It did step in when Canterbury’s Rosie Duffield risked a no-confidence vote for attending an antisemitism rally: outrage at threats to a very popular victor of an unexpected seat saw them shut down within hours. But she was left shattered, considering her future in politics – as are many others, distraught at the bile flowing through their party.
In his speech, let’s hear Jeremy Corbyn say something like this: “I will stand for no more vendettas against those who didn’t choose me as leader. Anyone using #JC4PM to abuse other Labour people, you don’t do that in my name. We are always a broad church – I know it better than anyone – and as a broad church, not as narrow sectarians, we will win.” That would be wise peacemaking, when any anti-Corbynites mad enough to split may vanish into the wilderness, but could still prevent a Labour victory.
Here’s the question for Corbyn: after a disastrous summer of feuding over antisemitism, will Labour spend the week on display as a nasty party energised by who controls its own meaningless citadels of power – or a serious party heading for real power?
Internal ructions are of Labour’s own devising, but it was never Labour’s fault that Brexit was destined to cause it agonies: how does it please its voters in Hampstead and Hull? Finally, a path through is emerging. As Brexit destroys the Tories – every deal, let alone no deal, looking worse than the next – this is Labour’s moment to step up as national saviour.
More motions calling for a people’s vote have been put to the conference than for any other issue, mostly from Momentum-backed constituencies. The leadership clings to the formula that when all Brexit options fail in parliament, Labour wants an election. Well, of course it does, but even if the Tories are crazy, the one thing they won’t do is gift an election to Labour. So far, Labour and the unions have put the people’s vote “on the table”. The conference has this chance to turn it into Labour’s first option.
Nervous Labour shadow cabinet members tell me the time isn’t right. Although 100 constituencies have swung from Brexit to remain, the polls are still not flowing fast enough. What if they declare for a democratic vote, and there is an election? A new Labour government would be forced into a deeply unwanted referendum. But there won’t be an election. Better by far to lead the upsurge of support for a popular vote that is coming from left and right of the party. The Tories have made such a mess of Brexit that “let the people decide” should be an easy message.
To all who say it’s an undemocratic rerun, here are some good analogies. If a trade union leader calls a ballot and members vote to strike, when he negotiates with the bosses he brings them back a possible deal: he doesn’t impose it, but puts it back to the vote. A GP says you need an operation and sends you to a consultant, who, being more expert, gives you odds of success and reckons it will do more harm than good: you would change your mind, wouldn’t you? If you agree to buy a house, before you complete you have it surveyed. If the surveyor finds foundations sinking, dry rot in the attic and dodgy title deeds, you change your mind. Well, the Brexit surveys are in and each looks grimmer than the last.
Let’s play optimistic politics. Corbyn should say: “We gave them every chance to produce the Brexit they promised. The endgame is here, but their Brexit promises have vanished. Now only a people’s vote can restore public trust – and only Labour can protect the country against Brexit damage.” That’s the victory path. Can he do that?
For any delegates at the conference tempted by factional warfare, just keep focused on the prospect of a second decade of Torydom. Sajid Javid – regarded as a “moderate” – regaled the last cabinet meeting with a 10-minute leadership pitch worthy of his Ayn Rand spirit-guide. He called for “shock-and-awe” tax cuts for business, deregulation of workers’ rights, abolishing automatic enrolment in pension schemes and scrapping environment controls.
That should knock sense into any Labour sectarians. So too should the success John McDonnell has had in recent weeks laying out policies and principles with the vigour of a man who seriously wants to win. Good to see him espouse the long-needed Robin Hood tax, which Britain has blocked the EU from imposing on financial transactions. He is making surprising friends: Lord O’Neill (ex-Goldman Sachs chief economist) told the Sunday Times: “I find myself struggling to be that scared by the prospect of a Corbyn government. They have captured the mood of the times.” The goal is wide open – if Labour avoids being its own worst enemy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
We now know the Electoral Commission believes that Vote Leave, the “official” leave campaign, broke the law. This comes in the wake of its conclusion that Arron Banks’s Leave EU broke the law. But what does this actually mean – for the referendum and our democracy?
Back in February 2016 – while lobbying for Vote Leave to be recognised as the designated leave campaign – Steve Baker MP (now a minister in the Department for Exiting the EU) wrote of a loophole he believed he had uncovered. The “designated campaign will be permitted to spend £7 million,” he said. But he also added: “It is open to the Vote Leave family to create separate legal entities, each of which could spend £700,000: Vote Leave will be able to spend as much money as is necessary to win the referendum.”
The Electoral Commission ignored this alarming indication of an intention to game the spending caps set down by parliament, and awarded this campaign official designation and £600,000 of public money. Vote Leave “donated” £625,000 of money or advertising to an obscure fashion student in Brighton, and a further £100,000 to an organisation called Veterans for Britain. They subsequently spent this £725,000 – together with a huge chunk of Vote Leave’s £7m – with a then obscure internet advertising firm based above an optician’s in British Columbia, Canada. The Electoral Commission took a cursory look at this and concluded that there was no wrongdoing. But the Good Law Project, which I set up, sued. The Electoral Commission consequently agreed to reopen its investigation. Thanks to Matthew Elliott, the former chief executive of Vote Leave who chose to release the details of the accusations the commission has made against it (in an attempt to pre-emptively challenge and perhaps neuter their impact) we now know it has written to Vote Leave stating it believes it broke the law.
The immediate consequences of that finding are legal. There should be fines for Vote Leave, and there could well be criminal charges to follow.
But an even bigger question is what this means for the referendum result, and the future of our democracy. In 2015, parliament debated whether the EU referendum needed legal safeguards. It eventually went on to jettison a series of legal rules that normally apply to safeguard votes from cheating. The sad consequence is that – although a judge may yet join the Electoral Commission in deciding Vote Leave broke the law – there is unlikely to be any way in which a court might declare the outcome void.
Parliament instead left to MPs the job of choosing what to do with the referendum, which government ministers made clear was “advisory”. And in normal times, where they acted rationally and on the basis of evidence, this would be enough: it is beyond sensible doubt that there is no proper mandate to leave the EU. The notes to the Venice Commission on referendums, to which the UK is a signatory, says “if the cap on spending is exceeded by a significant margin, the vote must be annulled”. Our own courts have said: “In elections, as in sport, those who win by cheating have not properly won and are disqualified.” The rules that parliament decreed to ensure the referendum was not captured by oligarchs will have been breached.
The fact nobody can prove beyond doubt that Vote Leave’s cheating made the difference is beside the point. Did we say to Lance Armstrong’s seven runners-up, “Yes, we know he’s a drugs cheat but can you prove you would have won if he hadn’t taken drugs?” Of course not – how could they prove that?
There are also serious questions about how much Michael Gove knew about these arrangements. In an interview in March, he denied being involved in the day-to-day running of the campaign. But Vote Leave’s own documents record that he, along with Boris Johnson and Matthew Elliott, “meet on a daily basis … to ensure that the campaign is on track”. Is his case that, despite these daily meetings, he did not know of or approve how over 10% of Vote Leave’s cap was used?
Ultimately these are questions for MPs, as they should be in a functioning democracy. But if they once felt shackled by what they were told was the will of the people, those shackles should now be well and truly off.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
The year is 2025 and the prime minister, David Lammy, has just phoned the Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, to congratulate her on victory in Ireland’s unification referendum. The deputy prime minister, Nicola Sturgeon, tweets that she hopes Scotland will follow suit in the referendum she secured at the last election for taking the Scottish National party into coalition with Labour. Gerry Adams gives the dedication as a statue of Jacob Rees-Mogg is unveiled in Crossmaglen. The Tory leader, Amber Rudd, refuses to publicly blame her predecessor Boris Johnson for the breakup of the union but, like the rest of what’s left of the country, she knows the truth.
As anyone involved in the Good Friday agreement will tell you, principles guarantee no deal. It’s why the current Brexit negotiations between the UK and itself are going so well. Theresa May has red lines, the European Research Group (ERG) has absolute red lines, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) has blood-red lines, and Jeremy Corbyn has blurred lines featuring Pharrell. If they all hold firm, we’re heading for a hard Brexit. And a united Ireland.
We were always going to end up here because Brexit has never been about Nissan X-Trails or the shape of your bananas. It’s only ever been about sovereignty. For the gammons and bowler hats on the team, the final destination has always been the top of the white cliffs of Dover dressed as Dad’s Army, straddling Dysons.
Northern Ireland has always been about sovereignty for a different reason – almost half of its population see themselves as Irish. How very rude. Yet as Brexiteers preach about their precious union, Irish nationalists in the same country are meant to park the union they want and just work out how the chicken crosses the border.
Last week I was back in my home village of Dundrum, County Down. It lies in a constituency that in the past has elected both Éamon de Valera and Enoch Powell, but when talk in the pub turned to Brexit, the same truths were repeated again and again: nothing good can come of this for Northern Ireland. And: we knew this would happen.
Most people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU because there have only ever been two options post-Brexit – customs checks at the Irish border or in the Irish Sea. Each would cause divisions just as we were bridging the gaps (in spite of our politicians). Depressingly, there’s no way through this.
As the prime minister Maybots her way through the charade of alternative arrangements, there’s only one thing you need to know – there are no workable alternative arrangements. If there were, you’d have heard of them by now. The details of this technological masterpiece would already be a double-page spread in the Daily Mail with Rees-Mogg mocked up as Alan Turing under the headline “Enigma cracks Enigma – spirit of Bletchley takes back control”. If an alternative arrangement that worked actually existed (or was likely to exist in the next couple of years) Brexiteers would have already accepted the backstop, knowing they could easily replace it with their idea during the transition. The fact that they won’t bet on themselves tells you all you need to know about what they have in the locker.
Yet none of that matters when you’ve inoculated yourself against reality. It’s why the ERG continues to cup its balls and cough while looking at a picture of Winston Churchill. “Did you feel that, too? We need a clean break.” Meanwhile, Corbyn complains the clock is being run down, but knows his last hope of a general election is when time’s up. To those outside the Labour party he’s become the José Mourinho of Brexit, sticking to a system that has lost half the dressing room while a people’s vote remains benched like Paul Pogba for daring to be more popular than the manager.
All of this could have been avoided if the majority in Northern Ireland had been listened to during the referendum campaign. But as Nigel Farage and Johnson trumpeted their migrant-free magic kingdom, we were Kevin in Home Alone – only remembered at the baggage carousel after the plane had landed. It’s why the minutes of the first meeting between Michel Barnier and David Davis will never be released. “So, what do you propose for your land border with Europe?” Polite laughter. “We have a land border with you guys?”
Even at this late stage, it remains the unanswered question – how can you take back control of your borders when the only land border you have can’t be put back in place? The fact that more than 70% of people in Northern Ireland voted to give up control of that border via the Good Friday agreement so they could live in peace remains totally ignored.
When Conservatives say they care about Northern Ireland, they actually just mean the freehold. Like a stable block with planning permission, they know the extra square footage adds value but they’ve no intention of actually developing it. Just as long as they can see it from the big house, they’re happy. As for those who live in the stable? If Brexit has proved anything, it’s that many Tories don’t give a stuff about the people of Northern Ireland – not even the unionists. If they did, they wouldn’t dream of a hard Brexit because it only guarantees one thing – a border poll.
That’s one that will be decided not by Sinn Féin or DUP votes, but by the moderates in the middle – nationalists who once felt Irish enough post-Good Friday agreement and those pro-European unionists applying for Irish passports. The inevitable economic downturn and border circus of a hard Brexit might just be enough to swing those floating voters and Northern Ireland out of the union. So, why would any member of the Conservative and Unionist party take that risk? Because no matter what they say in public, they’ve never honestly believed Belfast is just like Finchley.
All notions of a border poll could easily have been damped if, post-Brexit referendum, the DUP had accepted that Northern Ireland was a special case. Like they insisted it was when they asked George Osborne to drop Northern Ireland’s corporation tax to mirror the Republic back in 2014. Or how same-sex marriage and abortion laws are different to the rest of the UK thanks to a veto by the DUP in the Northern Ireland assembly (apparently, it’s also in a confidence and supply arrangement with the Lord Jesus). But that was never on the cards because, for the DUP, Brexit is about proving they’re biologically British, not adopted. It means the party will always order what Johnson and Farage are having but, unlike them, actually eat it.
Of course, special status for Northern Ireland would mean some form of “dreaded backstop” (pause, pearl clutch, continue), but when a country has more than 300 land border crossings and only five main ports to the mainland, where would you rather try to do the “dreaded paperwork”? And, let’s face it, any customs check that can take place in the middle of the Irish Sea while a lorry driver hoovers a fry-up on the ferry then has a snooze in his bunk has to be a good thing. Cue sash-shaking Brexiteer rage. “Don’t you understand Northern Ireland would then become a rule-taker not a rule-maker?!” Because apparently, it’s all about rule-making – as the Stormont assembly, where rules should actually be made for Northern Ireland, remains in mothballs since 2016 because the DUP backed out of a deal with Sinn Féin to restore power sharing. So we’ve reached the fatberg in the sewer of principle. We’re told that the DUP has the government over a pork barrel and unless the backstop goes, it will bring the house down. But as time runs out, it’s actually the Tories who have the political wing of the Old Testament surrounded.
On the one side is May’s deal (complete with backstop). On the other is the ERG and a hard Brexit. If the DUP buckles on the backstop, party members will walk away with their UK sovereignty between their legs. For those of us who have their early albums, this isn’t going to happen.
Which leaves just one option. The DUP holds firm and jumps off the cliff with the ERG, knowing a hard Brexit is the only scenario that guarantees a hard border in Ireland, a border poll in Northern Ireland and the perfect economic storm where it could lose that vote. By trying to be the most British person in the room, the DUP could actually end up the most Irish.
Whisper it quietly, but the best outcome for the DUP is actually a people’s vote. They’ll scream red, white and blue murder if it happens but privately breathe a sigh of relief. Like Boris Johnson, they never wanted Brexit but wanted to be seen to support it. A second referendum offers an escape from their worst nightmare, while allowing them to reluctantly go along with “the will of the entire country”. Very unionist.
For Northern Ireland as a whole, another EU referendum is also the only way out of this mess. Not to save face. But to save peace, prosperity and a shared future. It’s wrong that Northern Ireland should take one for the team so that others can have their version of Brexit. It’s now time to act, or Northern Ireland might decide the team is no longer worth playing for.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
The trajectory of the spirit of Brexit has all the characteristics of a tantrum – they wanted to leave the EU, and the desire was indivisible from the rage that accompanied it. They prevailed, but the anger didn’t abate. Nigel Farage’s victory speech was as splenetic as his war cry. Next they wanted an end to the single market, and an end to that well-known liberal conspiracy: the customs union. They wanted an end to parliamentary sovereignty, and before long, an end to the rule of law. They wanted everybody who tried to reason with or moderate them, from Mark Carney to Sir Terence Etherton, to just shut up, for reasons that would shame a six-year-old: because they’re foreign, or they’re gay.
This was entirely predictable. A tantrum cannot be reasoned with. Meeting its demands only makes it worse. It isn’t asking for satisfaction, it is asking for a boundary. This is the urgent task of the rest of the nation, whether regretful remainer or sane, puzzled leaver: to stop reacting to the outbursts and set some meaningful boundaries.
It is no doubt possible, but I have so far found it extremely difficult, to engage with what a post-Brexit Britain should look like. Refusing to accept that Brexit is happening makes it very difficult, but the vote for Brexit has happened. Its particulars could range from the merely destructive to the outright disastrous, and depend on many more variables than the qualities and decisions of our own politicians (it is paradoxical that we have never been more reliant on the kindness of the continent than when we try to assert our independence from it).
It is possible, as many have pointed out, that when the full consequences start to emerge, we will find parliamentary means to water them down. But nobody – not Tony Blair, not Nick Clegg, not John Major, not any of these once-vilified figures who periodically pop up as a voice of reason – is going to act the saviour here. No technicality will be found to stop Brexit, nobody will snap their fingers and wake us up.
It’s not enough to point to looming catastrophes and say what we don’t want; it’s not enough to concentrate on what we might lose. We need to consider what could be better, in a Brexited Britain. That is dauntingly open-ended until we establish whose and which interests we want to press: they needn’t be exclusive.
Last week the Fabian Women’s Network launched a charter to protect the rights whose loss would have most impact on women. There were five clusters: maintaining workplace rights; replacing European Social Fund (ESF) money; tackling hate crimes; protecting reproductive autonomy and freedom from violence; and pushing for better female representation at the highest levels of politics and business.
Initially, I thought it was a mistake to set any limit – even the broad limit of one entire gender – when conceiving what “better” would look like, in the context of what will amount to a constitutional remodelling. In fact, each sectional interest, rather than being a limit, is more like a guy rope holding up the whole.
Sticking with a feminist agenda, what could we push for beyond the language of “safeguarding” and “protection”? Are there new ways of discussing old issues – the role of occupational segregation in pay inequality, for example – that would take us beyond simply upholding the law? At a practical level, all organisations whose income partly depends on the ESF have to come together and build a detailed picture of what they need from the Brexit negotiations, as well as a plain, unified argument explaining why they need it. This should be fruitful, as the pressure of the coming crisis forces a new articulation of shared aims and values.
And what of workers’ rights? If we’re building a new framework for employee rights, we can do more than ensure that leaving the EU doesn’t intensify inequality. We can tackle head-on the conditions that have made people’s lives worse, from zero-hours contracts to Uber-style non-contracts to Sports Direct-esque hyper-surveillance. We can determine what decency means, in the relationship between employer and employee, and find a way to iterate it, rather than sliding into neo-serfdom, pausing only for some periodic outrage against Philip Green or Mike Ashley.
Environmental legislation was always one of the strongest arguments in the EU’s favour, the exemplification of all that was long-term, constructive and democratic in its activity, the place you could go to rebut the quite reasonable charge that union was technocratic and overloaded with bureaucracy. It was unwieldy, it was slow, but once it made legislation, it stayed made. Once it decided that beaches should be clean, they stayed clean. We categorically do not need to take a vote to leave as a mandate to re-toxify everything, especially given that the Brexiters scarcely mentioned the environment. The pressing danger is that environmental matters simply slide off the agenda, on a slope of anti-science innuendo and deliberate avoidance. That is a risk we can only take on by establishing a green agenda that is not a bare minimum, but an audacious maximum.
What is extraordinary about the Brexit tantrum is that those having it often dismiss national prosperity – usually as a secondary concern, behind controlling borders, but occasionally even as an irrelevance, a detail that only pessimists and sore losers talk about. It is not an irrelevance, and the fears of businesses, the financial sector in particular, are real.
Creating the blueprint for a workable Brexit that serves the national interest is more than a chance to unite complementary progressive agendas. It can reunite voices that should never have been separated: employers and employees, businesses, equality campaigners, greens. It has served the interests of far-right conservatives to claim that businesses and workers are implacably opposed: the first creating wealth, the second draining it. It was never true – profit is a thin motivator, most businesses think of themselves as working for the social good – and those extremists’ interests have been indulged long enough.
If one positive thing has come out of the past week, indeed, out of the entire referendum fiasco, it is clarity: the hard Brexiters can never be satiated, they know no restraint. The territory of reason, constructiveness, modernity and credibility will take work to describe, but will be easily taken. Those in power have left it undefended.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Take back control. Those three words now govern our politics. They sum up why Britain is leaving Europe, and they make up the yardstick by which Theresa May will be judged. Yet already, in the past few days, their hollowness has been exposed.
This story moves fast – and begins with a threat. Not a subtle moue of displeasure from behind an expensive pair of cufflinks, but a bluntly put, publicly issued ransom. At the end of September the boss of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, goes to one of the car industry’s biggest annual events, the Paris Motor Show, and declares to reporters that Brexit means the UK now has to cut him “a deal”. If cars made in Britain are to face tariffs on export to Europe, he wants “some kind of compensation”.
Extraordinary: one of the biggest manufacturers in Britain effectively wants danger money to carry on investing here. Even more remarkably, Nissan has behind it the full might of the Japanese government, which sent 15 pages of demands on behalf of some of the country’s biggest businesses – along with the veiled threat to pull out of the UK.
Faster than you can say Micra, Ghosn is invited to Downing Street. Within two weeks he has a face-to-face with the prime minister. The UK has just opted to sever four decades of relations with its biggest trading partner, the government has no fiscal policy and her own party is in turmoil – yet May still clears her diary for the Nissan boss.
Then, a few days back, Ghosn announces Sunderland will not only carry on working, but will now make the new-model Qashqai. The obvious question is: what did his company get from our government? Yet business secretary Greg Clark refuses to divulge any detail of how much or even what kind of taxpayer support has been offered to Nissan – after all, it’s only our money. Instead, he waves off the deal as just a slightly prickly chat in the senior common room.
“One can overcomplicate these things,” he airily tells MPs at the end of October. A mere month after Ghosn made his initial threat, what apparently changed his mind was the government’s “intention to find common ground and to pursue discussions in a rational and civilised way”.
To say this doesn’t add up is beside the point: it’s not meant to. Clark and May obviously don’t want a rival carmaker or any other multinational operating in Britain to know how far they will go to keep them onshore. But if the multimillionaire boss of a £33bn auto giant only wanted a “rational and civilised” discussion, , he could try a Melvyn Bragg podcast. The Qashqai has been a massive seller for Nissan; the company would not have opted to make the next model out of Sunderland merely on the basis of some comforting ministerial purrs.
What you’ve just seen, then, is a foretaste of the way big business will deal with the government in Brexit Britain. First the threat, then the bargain, and finally, with unministerial haste, an expensive handshake behind closed doors. Each time, the public will be none the wiser, even as their government commits them to perhaps costly support for some company or sector, each one claiming strategic importance. And don’t think it will stop at cars.
Within 48 hours of the Brexit vote, the National Farmers’ Union was preparing for an extraordinary meeting of its council to draw up demands for Downing Street. Top of the list was the £2.4bn in subsidies that farmers get each year from Brussels. Within weeks, the new chancellor Philip Hammond was promising to carry on the handouts until the end of this decade. He made similar offers to universities and businesses reliant on EU grants.
Put these numbers in context. Starting this week, the government will cut the benefits it gives to 88,000 families. That is huge turmoil – and it will cut just £100m from the welfare bill. Yet at the same time, billions are being committed to keep sweet businesses from the pharmaceutical giants to the landowners of the south-west.
These are businesses that have already done very well out of taxpayers. Consider Nissan UK: Kevin Farnsworth, lecturer in social policy at the University of York and an expert on government subsidies, calculates that over the past two decades it has taken £782m in loans, grants and handouts from the British and European public. In upfront cash transfers alone that comes to £130m.
Farnsworth has calculated this figure by combing Nissan accounts as well as the grant documents from the British government and its various agencies. He has compiled a database for other major businesses, to be found at corporate-welfare-watch.org.uk.
Where this takes you is to the dirty secret of the British business model. From Margaret Thatcher onwards, successive governments have lured multinational investors by promising them access to the single market, a cheap, biddable workforce and a bunch of corporate sweeteners. It was the same offer Dublin made to the tax avoiders of Silicon Valley and – within its own narrow confines – it worked. As Farnsworth points out, Britain has reliably taken in proportionately more foreign direct investment than most of its competitors.
The problem is that now the UK can no longer guarantee access to 500 million European consumers, it will need to make its workers cheaper and even more flexible and offer more handouts.
Surveying this debacle, it strikes me that Lord Acton got it wrong. It’s not power that corrupts; it’s powerlessness. What do you bargain with, when three decades of deregulation and weakening of local and central government mean you have hardly any cards left in your hand? Almost inevitably, the British state becomes even more of a milch-cow for big businesses. Forget about foreigners coming over here and taking our benefits; now think about multinationals cherry-picking our benefits. That trade-off isn’t rhetorical: it’s real. That money will come from our social security, our hospitals, our schools. Brexit Britain: a soft touch for corporate welfare. Is this what was meant by control?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
When someone wants the impossible, in French we say that they want “the butter, the money from the butter, and the dairymaid’s smile”. In more vulgar usage we say they want something rather more from the dairymaid than a smile. This is precisely what we can take away from Theresa May’s speech on the “hard Brexit” she wants. It is “hard” only for the other 27 states but “soft” for Britain – because May wants to keep all the benefits of EU membership and concede nothing in return. That is not really a surprise since she had already announced it in October during the Conservative party conference. She even considers that any other kind of agreement would be unacceptable, because it would amount to “punishing” the British.
May is threatening to turn Britain into a tax haven by way of retaliation, if, by some misfortune, the Europeans refuse to bend to the demands of Her Glorious Majesty’s subjects.
We might think we are dreaming, but no: it is either arrogance or recklessness (or, more likely, a mixture of the two).
Let’s sum up: on the one hand, of course, May would like a clear, “clean break” with the union, which means no longer sitting in its institutions, contributing to the budget or respecting EU law. On the other hand, she does not want the status of some kind of “partial or associate” member, which would imply having to meet EU’s requirements in all kinds of areas.
Thus far, we get it: the UK will be treated like any other third country – Zimbabwe, for instance. That’s clear and “clean”. But after that it gets complicated, at least for a continental mind that lacks the subtleties of reflection of a product of Oxbridge. Because May considers it possible for British companies to retain the greatest possible access to the single market, in particular to negotiate sectoral customs agreements with the union. And that’s where things get interesting. Because customs duty or no, importing goods into a market presupposes compliance with local norms and standards: to be clear, if the British want to export their cars (which are in fact German or Japanese cars) to the continent, they need to respect European laws. That means submitting (I know, what an awful word) to those laws. So in reality, the clear, “clean break” could only concern one part of UK industry – the part that manufactures for the local market.
Above all, May says nothing about services. How, for instance, can banks retain guaranteed access to the continent, a necessity as soon as the City is no longer a financial centre for the euro? What does Theresa May envisage offering in exchange? Because with all due respect to UK national sentiment, the reality is brutal: we are talking about a mid-ranking power of 65 million people, most of whose industry is owned by foreign capital, negotiating with one of the world’s principal trading, economic and monetary powers – a power that comes with a market of 450 million people. Which countries does Britain export to, and where does a good part of its foreign investment come from? Where is the power? Who has the most to lose in all this? Threatening that Britain will become a tax haven if it doesn’t get what it wants amounts to childishness: such a solution might be possible for a micro-state without its own industry, but not for a country like Britain.
Can anyone imagine the other EU nations allowing their companies and capital to relocate to the UK without responding in some way? Would Britain’s new American ally, which has threatened its own companies if they offshore their profits, allow May to transform her country into some kind of aircraft carrier for tax optimisation?
Even worse for May, she should not count on the 27 governments dividing on this issue. They have a huge amount to lose politically if they approve an agreement favourable to the Brexiteers, which would only reinforce their own national europhobes. Seen in this light, a soft exit is not only technically meaningless, it is politically absurd. On the other hand, any agreement must be unanimously ratified by the 27. If not, in March 2019, Britain will simply be out. To divide the remaining member states is to ensure there will be no deal.
In short, you can twist Brexit any way you like, but I see only one loser. And it is not on the continent.
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 08.23 GMT
Are we the nation suggested by the 41% spike in hate crimes that followed the Brexit vote? Where non-white Britons are abused in the street and people harangued for wearing the wrong clothes or presuming that they might speak in anything but English? Where Nadiya Hussain’s popularity after winning The Great British Bake Off could not save her from being confronted by the boor on a train who declared “I ain’t sitting near a Muslim”?
Where women wearing the hijab are attacked in the street. Where a dark-skinned woman exercising her constitutional legal right to challenge the executive is threatened and bullied by assailants who tell her – not that she may be wrong – but that she should leave the country? It feels close to that now. The spike has fallen from its peak; still equilibrium seems distant: the air seems toxic.
And what is extraordinary is that no one in any position of power and authority is doing anything meaningful about it. Were the markets careering out of control, the chancellor would be touring television and radio stations trying to calm them. Were there to be a terrorist atrocity, the prime minister would rush to the scene.
The procedures for dealing with these big-ticket emergencies are well established. Not so the procedure for reacting to a dramatic erosion in the social glue. There is little by way of leadership from No 10. Nothing from the communities secretary to suggest his title is anything other than honorific. There was a statement from Robert Buckland, the solicitor general, declaring saying that levels of hate crimes – 2,778 incidents between 5 and 18 August – had declined to 2015 levels. Some reassurance. In the year to 2015, hate crimes, at 52,000 offences, had jumped more than a fifth.
This is business as usual, a new normal. Against the context of what is happening to minorities on the streets, on social media, that’s a dereliction of duty. All the more so because this acridity is not a given. We’re cranky now, with the handbrake off and inhibitions released, but at times more tense and fearful in our history we have been more willing to show kindness to people of difference. We have been better than this.
Recently published in the UK is Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, first released in the US, about the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, an 800-strong unit of black American soldiers whose contribution to the D-day landings had all but been erased from history. After landing on the beaches, they deployed armed balloons and deterred enemy aircraft – a task for which they largely prepared over seven months in the British countryside, having docked in the north of Scotland.
Before the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the advent of mass immigration, there was an influx of foreigners at a speed and on a scale to give Nigel Farage a coronary. They were soldiers during wartime, so of course they were met with gratitude, you might say; but the point is more specific for in the era of savagely enforced segregation in the US, white GIs showed a brutal and racist disdain for black GIs posted alongside them in Britain. And the British government, to curry favour with white, predominantly southern soldiers – and a like-minded US military establishment – offered the black GIs scant protection. Author Linda Hervieux located 12 of them, and the most striking thing they recall is the extraordinary extent to which ordinary British people – themselves deprived in a time of penury and rations – were their tigerish supporters, protectors and cheerleaders.
Ollie Stewart, a black American journalist, who reported on the deployment of 1,300 black soldiers to Britain, noted: “The English people show our lads every possible courtesy and some of them, accustomed to ill-will, harsh words and artificial barriers, seem slightly bewildered. They never had a chance to leave their southern homes before and never realised there was a part of the world which was willing to forget a man’s colour and welcome him as a brother.” Arthur Guest, a member of the battalion, recalled: “It was a spark of light. A different way of living.”
Hervieux records their billeting in places such as Checkendon, Oxfordshire, Pontypool and Chepstow. “Working-class people in the Welsh villages shared their meagre rations and the yield of their small kitchen gardens. Here they were Americans first.”
Compare and contrast. A few weeks ago, I spoke to a Romanian, a driver, who said he has become wary of asking for directions because of abuse triggered by his accent. And the worst place for that in his recent experience? Genteel Tunbridge Wells.
We can compare the arrogance of those who bully and smear foreigners now with those who did so years ago; with the white GIs who spread rumours that some of the black soldiers – even the college educated – could only bark and many had tails.
We can compare the indolence of our government now with that of Churchill back then. We don’t “want to see lynching begin in England”, noted an aide to Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary. But when Churchill was told of a black GI being hounded from a restaurant by white colleagues, he suggested the soldier acquire a banjo and seek entry as a member of the band.
Ordinary people, however, saw things differently. When a vicar’s wife from Somerset urged separatism, she was castigated. “There is and will be no persecution of coloured people in Britain,” thundered the Sunday Pictorial. When white GIs objected to black GIs at a village dance, they themselves were ordered to leave. To drive home the point, local people taunted the expelled GIs by buying the their black guests drinks. George Orwell, as ever, reflected the grassroots mood. “The general consensus of opinion seems to be that the only American soldiers with any manners are the Negroes,” he wrote in Tribune.
Of course, the comparison is inexact. There is a difference between an influx of soldiers deployed during wartime and the modern examples of difference: Britons who look, speak and dress differently, economic migrants whose presence undoubtedly has an impact on schools, hospitals, jobs and housing. Those who bully and abuse can seek to justify their behaviour by pointing to the stresses that we know exist. Still there is something to be gleaned from the experience of the black battalion. They were not “othered” as dehumanised symbols, even when their presence caused debate and tension. They were seen as flesh and blood individuals.
Jessie Prior, a Welsh woman who had never seen a non-white person before, sent a letter to New Jersey, to the mother of a black GI her family had befriended. “While he is here, we shall take every care of him,” she said. “We look upon him now as our own.”
There are modern versions of her in every community. We should be proud of them, but it’s those who preach division who hog the limelight. With every racist act, every catcall, every rancid tweet, they betray Prior and all like her who once set a higher standard. We have been better than this, and can be again.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
At this week’s summit of heads of government, the European Union and the United Kingdom are likely to agree on a transition period and a timetable for talks on the outline of the future trade deal. In the autumn, the two sides will probably finalise the text of the withdrawal agreement, enabling the UK to leave the EU at the end of March 2019. However, the issue of the Irish border remains unresolved, and could still wreck the Brexit talks. Despite warm words in the run-up to the summit, the British and Irish positions appear fundamentally incompatible.
The UK government plans to leave the single market and the customs union. It says it wants to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. But some in Ireland doubt its sincerity: the British know the EU will need to police its single market and customs union by checking for compliance with its standards for industrial and agricultural goods, as well as tariffs and rules of origin. So how could a hard border be avoided?
The joint report signed by the EU and the UK in December sketched out three possible answers. Option A would sort out the border as part of the overall EU-UK agreement on future relations. Option B would be Ireland-specific solutions based on advanced technology. And if neither A nor B proved viable, option C would apply: in the north there would be “full alignment” with those EU rules required to support the Good Friday agreement and north-south cooperation. The joint report also ruled out – to placate the Democratic Unionist party – new barriers between Northern Ireland and Britain.
The British reckoned that C meant aligning just some rules, while the Irish and the EU thought it meant much more. To remove the ambiguity, the commission spelled out the precise meaning of alignment in the Irish protocol of the draft withdrawal agreement, published last month. This would keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and the single market for goods and electricity, and abiding by EU rules on plant and animal health, VAT and state aid. Northern Ireland would be subject to the European court of justice. The protocol said nothing about excluding a border in the Irish Sea.
The British government was flabbergasted, believing the spirit of the Good Friday agreement – that both communities in Northern Ireland should agree to constitutional arrangements – had been flouted. Even some of the most pro-EU cabinet ministers were perturbed, worrying about the impact on public opinion of an apparent attempt by the EU to impose its rules on Northern Ireland. Theresa May said that no British prime minister could accept the wording of the protocol. But there was not much sympathy for the UK among EU governments. They thought the protocol’s firm line was required to prevent the UK backsliding on its commitments.
The EU has not made agreement on the transition conditional on the UK signing the protocol. But it has insisted that the UK state that it accepts that the withdrawal agreement should include a “legally operative version of the ‘backstop’ [option C] … in the joint report”, and that this will apply unless another solution is found. The UK has also agreed to tackle the border through a new trilateral negotiating process with the commission and Ireland. But all this merely postpones rather than resolves the border problem, which may blow up at June’s EU summit. The Dublin government is adamant that it will not accept any infrastructure on the border lest it become a target for terrorists. It does not believe that option B, clever technology, is viable. Asked how option A could work, it says the UK would have to stay in the single market and the customs union – which May rejects. Hence the importance of option C for the Irish. But the draft protocol’s version of that option remains unacceptable to May and the DUP.
The 26 other EU governments say they are right behind Ireland, but are they? In private, if not in public, some of them hope for a compromise. Their diplomats, like some senior EU officials, believe that if the UK leaves the customs union and the single market, controls of some sort will be necessary.
“We need local solutions that ensure checks can be carried out, in a way that avoids the need for a hard border,” said one official. “The checks would be near the border but not on it,” said another. Some French officials think option B is the best way forward.
However, the UK cannot count on the member states cajoling Ireland to climb down. Even those governments that hope for compromise say that if Dublin calls on their support, they will stand by it.
Some UK officials want to mix options A, B and C. They talk of a “customs partnership”, whereby the UK would police the EU’s customs union on its behalf and vice versa, obviating the need for border checks. But the EU says this is “magical thinking”, and unrealistic. British officials think option B could help solve the border problem, with methods such as number-plate recognition, electronic pre-clearance and trusted-trader schemes. They also think the less sensitive parts of option C, such as aligning with EU rules on plant and animal health, would help. In addition, they would let small traders cross the border unhindered.
All that could reduce, but probably not eliminate, the need for some checks near the border. Could the Irish live with that? They say not. But if they really tried to make May swallow the protocol as it stands, there would be no deal. And that would damage the Irish economy almost as much as that of Britain. Several of Ireland’s EU partners will gently encourage the Irish to accept a less than perfect outcome on the border.
The Irish Prime Minister 'choreographed' his threat to use his Brexit veto with the European Union to flush out Britain's position on Ireland's border.
Leo Varadkar dramatically upped the ante on Friday by saying he would block the talks moving on unless the UK committed to not imposing a hard border. 
It came after months of mounting concern that Theresa May's Government was failing to come up with a meaningful plan for the issue.  
But it has now been exposed that the move came as part of a coordinated plan with the EU to force the UK to spell out its position on the Irish border.
Using the veto would stop Britain moving on to trade talks by the New Year, delaying the ext phase of negotiation by several months and dealing a major blow to the PM. 

EU and Irish sources told RTE that the British had been dragging their feet and refusing to properly engage with the thorny issue of the Irish border.
One told the broadcaster: 'All we have been getting from the British was muzak (background music) and nothing else.' 
Mrs May has said Britain will leave the single market and customs union after a two-year transition period, but this has raised serious questions about the future of the peace process.
Britain, the EU and Ireland have all said they do not want to see a return to a hard border amid fears border controls and guards could reignite sectarian violence.
In the summer the UK unveiled plans to create a new customs arrangement which would use high tech gadgets like number plate recognition to carry out customs checks without a return to a hard border.
But the Irish PM and the EU thought the plans fell far short of grappling with many of the issues.
And they launched a coordinated effort behind the scenes to  try to turn the screw on the British Government and get them to put to come up with more detail.
An EU paper proposing that Northern Ireland will have to stay in the customs union and single market to avoid a hard border was 'designed to be leaked' according to a source.
The paper had been carefully choreographed between the Irish Government and the EU Brexit Task Force, led by the EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier. 
An EU source told the broadcaster: 'There was an understanding that this was an internal document.
'But it was mainly for outside consumption. It was a document that was designed to be leaked.'
The proposal, which would effectively push the border back to the ports on the mainland creating a hard border between Northern Ireland and the the rest of the UK was immediately dismissed by British ministers.
And it was followed by by Mr Varadkar's threat on Friday, when he said: 'We've been given assurances that there will be no hard border in Ireland, that there won't be any physical infrastructure, that we won't go back to the borders of the past,' Varadkar said. 
'We want that written down in practical terms in the conclusions of phase one.' 
Meanwhile, Donald Tusk, the President of the Council, also warned Mrs May had two weeks to make up her mind on the Irish border along with the divorce bill and citizens rights. 

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
In time of conflict, people do awful things to each other.
The book Lost Lives set out just how terrible things were on these islands over more than three decades, with the name of each victim, who they were and the awful circumstances of their deaths. There are more than 3,600 deaths chronicled between 1966 and 1999.
Often the mass killings became synonymous with the places where they happened – Dublin, Birmingham, Darkley, Greysteel, Brighton, Guildford, Deal, Monaghan, Shankill, Loughinisland, Warrington. We had Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday, and many, many other bloody days throughout that period.
Men, women and children died.
Then the peace process began, the killings subsided – but didn’t stop – and political leaders in these islands, in Europe and the United States brokered an uneasy peace.
Our joint peace process, sponsored and nurtured by our governments in Ireland and successive British governments, was dealt a severe blow when the people of Britain voted to leave the European Union. As a democrat, I respect the vote.
However the Irish peace process did not feature in the Brexit debate, except in Northern Ireland, where it was, naturally, a major issue. Elsewhere in the UK, it was simply lost in the noise generated by Brexiteers, with no thought among many of them about how leaving Europe would affect us over here on this island.
And so that leaves the question that hasn’t been answered yet: what will Brexit look like?
As a member of the Irish parliament (the Dáil) for County Donegal, a border county with a land boundary with the Northern Ireland counties of Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh, I can tell you what we don’t want.
There cannot be a return to any sort of physical border, no checkpoints, no technology, no cameras and no personnel. To introduce any of these measures is, in my opinion, a breach of the Good Friday agreement.
An all-Ireland referendum on 22 May 1998 enshrined the peace agreement in the legislation of both the UK and the Republic – in Northern Ireland 71.1% voted yes; in the Republic 94.4% voted yes. An incredible 81% of people in the North went to the polls. The yearning for peace was overwhelming.
That yearning wasn’t just here in Ireland. It was also a deeply held ambition for the people of Britain, and that was recognised in the deal along three strands covering internal relations in Northern Ireland, relations between the Republic and the North and the relationship between the Republic and Britain.
We accept the Brexit vote. However, should the UK decide to also opt out of the single market and the EU’s customs union, it will be going against the spirit of the Good Friday agreement and narrows significantly how we can work together in the future.
The peace process has been punctured on numerous occasions, but every time it has bounced back and continued. The current lack of an administration in Northern Ireland is another puncture in what is a very fragile process.
Now Brexit threatens that, and our hard-won peace. Over the past 20 years communities once divided by checkpoints and terror have become whole again. Families, parishes and businesses have been reconnected. Our peace process has saved lives in ways we never imagined – and includes initiatives such as the Irish government funding world-class cardiac and cancer care centres in Derry so that patients in Donegal can receive treatment there. Critically ill children from Northern Ireland can now be treated in Dublin.
Ireland’s peace process is also Britain’s peace process; it belongs to the people of the UK as much as to the people of Ireland. We have all benefited from it.
The British Irish Council (BIC) was established by the Good Friday agreement. At our meeting in Jersey recently, the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, suggested the BIC forum would become even more important after Brexit.
Relationships within the BIC are good. The Queen’s state visit to Ireland in 2011 is still etched positively in the minds of Irish citizens; as is the first ever state visit to Britain by President Michael D Higgins three years later. Our journey to reconciliation is a good one.
Today the men of violence are fewer in number but terror groups on both sides in the North continue to exist, operate and plot murder. A return to the securitisation of the land border on our island will give these evil people the means needed to fund their sickening campaign.
All parties in the Good Friday agreement must continue to honour all elements of it, and its subsequent additions at Stormont House and St Andrew’s – and that includes the free movement of people, without hindrance.
We’ve come too far to go back.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
What could be unreasonable about giving the people the final say on Brexit? Quite a lot, according to a series of recent articles.
William Hague, the former Tory foreign secretary, wrote a column in the Telegraph that a new referendum “would be the most divisive, bitter, angry, hate-filled and disillusioning process this country could inflict on itself … Millions of people of all ages would be enraged by an elite trying to overturn their opinion, a political system going round in circles, and an impression that consulting them at all is a sham.”
Meanwhile, in the Times, Iain Martin wrote that: “Diehard remainers are playing with fire. If a plan to scupper Brexit looks like it’s coming to fruition, the response from cheated leavers will be swift and furious … For many millions of voters this will be ‘our betters’ saying that what the country voted for should be vetoed.”
If people like me, who want to stop Brexit, were planning to force through a new referendum against the wishes of voters, Hague and Martin would have a point. But the political reality is that the people will only be consulted if they demand it. For there to be a referendum, MPs would have to pass a law calling for one. And, if public opinion doesn’t shift – a lot – that won’t happen. Although many MPs have deep misgivings about the whole Brexit malarkey, few will speak openly against it unless they feel the will of the people has changed significantly.
There does seem to have been a slight shift in favour of staying in the EU. The average of YouGov’s last five polls shows 51% thought that we were wrong to leave the EU versus 49% who thought that we were right to, after stripping out don’t knows. The average of the first five polls this year was bang in line with the referendum – 52% that we were right versus 48% wrong.
My own view is that polls would need to show around 60:40 in favour of remain before parliament gave the green light to a new referendum. Although we haven’t reached that point yet, we could.
After all, as each week goes by, Theresa May and her merry band of ministers are making more and more of a hash of the Brexit talks. Ivan Rogers, our former EU ambassador, told MPs last week that he had warned the government we’d get “screwed” if we triggered article 50 without a plan. The prime minister went ahead anyway – and we’re getting screwed.
The people realise this, and they are not impressed. They see that the Brexit that the Tories are going to thrust down our throats bears little resemblance to what leavers promised in the referendum: European nurses quitting the NHS rather than an extra £350m a week; chlorine-washed chicken from America rather than a wonderful trade deal; and so forth.
Evidence is also emerging that so-called Project Fear is actually Project Reality. Last week alone, retail sales suffered the largest fall since the financial crisis, and Toyota warned that the “fog” of uncertainty threatened the future of its Derbyshire factory. It’s not surprising that the biggest shift in public opinion has been among working-class voters, according to YouGov. In August 63% thought Brexit was right; by October only 56% did.
Where Hague and Martin are wrong is that, if public opinion turns decisively against Brexit, not holding a referendum would tear the country apart. If the Tories pressed on with Brexit after the will of the people had changed, as it became clear what a horrible mess we were getting into, the country would be apoplectic.
It is true that, in those circumstances, the losing side in a referendum wouldn’t be happy. But if the public really was 60:40 in favour of remain – or thereabouts – it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as not giving the people the final say. It is also true that there is no way of magically healing our country. David Cameron set us on a path that divided us right down the middle. The question now is how to minimise the damage. If the people’s will really does change, letting them decide is the best way to achieve this.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Last week, members of parliament came together and a calculated attempt to subvert British democracy by suspending parliament was circumvented. At the end of a difficult few days, the sovereignty of parliament, the first principle of our constitution, is alive and well.
We must however remain vigilant when parliament returns on Monday and prepare for the unexpected in the coming weeks. We are absolutely firm in our determination to prevent a no-deal exit from the EU, and by Tuesday we will have an act of parliament that will make that outcome illegal.
It is alarming to the majority of MPs, and many of my constituents, that this weekend the prime minister continues to say that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October with or without a deal, telling Conservative party members that he will not seek an extension under article 50, even if required to do so by law.
I ask the prime minister to accept what has happened in parliament and think this through. He must be aware that devices to block or ignore the law do not exist. The prime minister should meet the attorney general, take advice and get himself out of this situation. He is subject to the law of the land like anyone else.
Unless a new withdrawal agreement materialises at the EU summit ending on 18 October, the government must apply for the extension the next day. If necessary, a court order can be applied for to require the prime minister to do so. At that point, if he refused he would be in contempt of court and could be sent to prison.
It is astonishing that the government’s reckless brinkmanship and unconstitutional threats have brought us to even contemplate such a possibility.
We need to stand back a moment and make a calm assessment of what happened last week. What has parliament done, why has it done it and is it democratic? What happens next? These are the questions all MPs have been asked everywhere since the bill that prevents a no-deal exit from the EU cleared the Commons on Wednesday.
Since the arrival of Boris Johnson in Downing Street, it has become clear that a no-deal Brexit, of the utmost danger to our country’s economic life and wellbeing, was no longer simply an empty piece of political rhetoric. Threatening the country and the EU with no deal has become government policy. It was therefore absolutely necessary for parliament to exercise its right and duty to act in the national interest and stop it.
The Commons has been accused of denying the will of the people and somehow acting unconstitutionally in doing this. We have done no such thing. All of us were elected on manifestos that either promised “a smooth, orderly Brexit” (the Conservative manifesto); or promised to block no deal (Labour manifesto); or promised “to get the best deal for Northern Ireland, recognising that we share a land frontier with the Republic” (the DUP); or supported the UK’s continued membership of the EU. Any MP who facilitated a no-deal exit would have been tearing up their manifesto promises.
In deciding to ​pursue a ruthless policy of trying to shut down all debate about the future of our country and its wellbeing, it was the government and the government alone that has been acting with reckless disregard for our constitution.
Fortunately, our constitution is adaptable and it is adapting to the reality that the government does not have a majority and cannot act as if it does. Throughout our history, when ministers have sought to abuse their power, MPs have been required to find ways to protect and defend the sovereignty of parliament. So a cross-party group of MPs has come together to act. We have stopped one unnecessary general election that was deliberately designed by the PM to facilitate a no-deal crash-out in October and on Monday we will, if necessary, stop another. There can be no election while the country is still teetering on the edge of an abyss and it would be an abdication of our responsibility at a time of crisis to allow this to happen.
There will not be the parliament v the people election the prime minister seems so desperately to want, despite the highly irresponsible nature of such framing. When one does come, it needs to be focused on sensible options as to how we get ourselves out of the mess and division that Brexit is creating for us all.
It is noteworthy that my mailbag suggests the public understands the issues very well. The Yellowhammer revelations of the consequences of no deal cannot be ignored. The realisation has also come that a no-deal Brexit is the start of a long and wearying journey to find a new trade deal with the EU from a position of maximum disadvantage and not some glorious moment of national self-assertion.
I start the new week therefore with quiet optimism. We have at last a powerful coalition for moderation. The prime minister and his advisers are going to find it rather difficult to knock it down. They would do better to focus on finding a way of going back to the public and asking them what they now want and uniting parliament to deliver it. This would be a genuine exercise in democracy. Seeking to impose their own minority views on our country in the way they are is not acceptable and must be resisted.
Dominic Grieve is the MP for Beaconsfield
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Dominic Raab has walked into a row over his demand that the EU compromises in the Brexit talks, as the European council president, Donald Tusk, warned that the “catastrophe” of a no-deal scenario was “still quite possible”.
In an interview with continental European newspapers, the UK’s Brexit secretary had said it was the EU’s time to move on its red lines, and that warm words would not suffice with so little time left until Brexit day.
“We have shown a lot of flexibility and we have been very pragmatic,” Raab said. “So I think this is the moment to see that matched … The ball is a little bit in the other court now.”
The comments received a swift put-down from Austria’s minister for European affairs, Gernot Blümel, who made it clear that such a move by the EU was not on the cards, despite the growing threat of a no-deal Brexit.
“The reality is that the UK must find a way forward,” Blümel told reporters in Brussels. “The EU has done so, [the] EU27 have a clear position and 80% of the departure treaty has been agreed”.
Raab was speaking on the eve of a leaders’ summit in Salzburg where Theresa May will appeal to the 27 EU member states to soften their stance on the single market and customs union to get a deal done. The leaders will discuss the state of the negotiations over lunch the following day.
“Salzburg is an informal EU summit, but it will be an important milestone – a stepping stone if you like – to show we’ve actually got the contours of an agreement on principles to continue the final weeks of these negotiations,” Raab said. “Positive words are helpful. But what we need now is concrete action and decisions.”
Yet EU officials and ministers indicated that there was no prospect of compromise by the EU on its opposition to the central economic planks of May’s Chequers proposals: a common rulebook on goods and a customs arrangement to allow the UK frictionless trade and the power to strike its own free-trade deals.
A senior EU official said the debate among the leaders in Salzburg would rather focus on whether it might be necessary for the political declaration to be vague in areas, and leave the arguments over the trading relationship until after Brexit, a so-called blind Brexit.
“I know that there are indeed two approaches: have a joint political declaration that is very much clear to the last point or to have a political declaration which, while recognising already an agreement on a number of issues, leaves a certain space for negotiations on a number of issues,” the official said. “I think at this stage this will be at the core of the debate in Salzburg; how detailed it will be.”
Raab said in his interview that a vague declaration would not, however, work for the UK. He said: “In the political statement, we must determine the direction in which we will move in the future. Otherwise it will be difficult to get the necessary support from our parliament and the citizens.”
France is among the member states who want the terms of the future trading relationship clear to avoid ambiguity and prolonged internal and external negotiations after 29 March 2019.
In a letter to the leaders before the meeting, published on Tuesday, Tusk nevertheless said everything must be done to avoid a no-deal Brexit, in a sign that he is open to such a “blind Brexit”. He also proposed that an extraordinary Brexit summit be approved in Salzburg, as first reported by the Guardian.
“With only six months to go before the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU, we are entering the final weeks of negotiations,” Tusk wrote.
“Therefore, I want us to review progress in these talks and to discuss the way forward with three objectives in mind. First, we should reach a common view on the nature and overall shape of the joint political declaration about our future partnership with the UK.
“Second, we will discuss how to organise the final phase of the Brexit talks, including the possibility of calling another European council in November. Third, we should reconfirm the need for a legally operational backstop on Ireland, so as to be sure that there will be no hard border in the future.
“Let me recall that limiting the damage caused by Brexit is our shared interest,” Tusk aded. “Unfortunately, a no-deal scenario is still quite possible. But if we all act responsibly, we can avoid a catastrophe.”
An EU official said the bloc needed to have “something on paper” on its position with regard to the political declaration by October’s European council, should there be any hope of finding agreement within the time left before Brexit.
Beyond the differences over the Chequers proposals, there is still an impasse over the issue of the backstop solution that would ensure that there would never be a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Raab insisted in his interviews with papers including Spiegel and Le Monde that the EU’s proposal to in effect keep Northern Ireland in the single market and customs union remained unacceptable.
“Under no circumstances will we allow a customs border to be pulled through the Irish Sea,” he said. “The territorial and economic integrity of Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK must be respected.”
He further repeated his warning that the UK would not pay its full £39bn divorce bill in the event of no deal. “The agreement we made politically under the exit agreement would not be the sum we would pay in this case,” he said. “The pressure in this country would be too big to do that.”
Meanwhile the Irish government is expected to approve plans to hire 450 new customs and inspection officers for Dublin port before the end of the year as preparations for Brexit are ramped up. A cabinet meeting heard that 90% of food horticultural goods and livestock coming to the island of Ireland comes through the port.
This will mean that inspection on agri-goods destined for Northern Ireland from Britain will be checked in Dublin port first, helping Michel Barnier’s efforts to “de-dramatise” the Irish border issue.
Last modified on Fri 14 Feb 2020 16.54 GMT
At least the Sun thrives on chaos. The savage parliamentary mauling of Britain’s withdrawal agreement with the European Union allowed Rupert Murdoch’s pet tabloid to unveil on Wednesday morning a front page of grandly gleeful malevolence. Under the headline Brextinct, it conjured a creepy chimera of Theresa May’s head pasted on to the body of a dodo. But the thing about such surreal pictures is that it is not easy to control their interpretation. From the outside, this one seemed to suggest much more than the immediately intended message that both May and her deal are politically dead. When, it prompted one to ask, did Brextinction really happen? Was this strange creature ever really alive or was it not always a grotesquely Photoshopped image of something else, a crisis of belonging that has attached itself to the wrong union? Do the events of this week point us, not towards the EU, but to the travails of a radically disunited kingdom?
The dodo, after all, may be proverbially dead but it has a vivid afterlife in that great trawl of the English unconscious, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It is the Dodo, when various characters have fallen into a pool of tears, who suggests how they might dry themselves – the Caucus-race. “There was no ‘One, two, three, and away’, but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out, ‘The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, ‘But who has won?’”
This seems, this week more than ever, a perfect description of the state to which British politics has been reduced – a lot of frantically anarchic running overseen by a defunct creature, the Brextinct dodo. And who has won? Carroll’s Dodo, of course, decrees: “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.” Having emptied Alice’s pockets to provide rewards for everyone else, the Dodo solemnly presents her with the only thing that’s left: her own thimble. “We beg your acceptance of this elegant thimble.”
The Brexit game is patently not worth the thimble to be presented at the end of it. Yet in Theresa May’s humiliation on Tuesday, there were prizes for almost everybody else: a glimpse of opportunity for her rivals in cabinet; a revival of their sadomasochistic no-deal fantasies for the zealots; the hope of a second referendum for remainers; proof of the near-collapse of the Westminster order for nationalists; the hope of a general election for Jeremy Corbyn. But in truth nobody has won anything – it is a losing game all round.
For all of this is the afterlife of dead things. One of them is Brexit itself. When did Brextinction occur? On 24 June 2016. The project was driven by decades of camped-up mendacity about the tyranny of the EU, and sold in the referendum as a fantasy of national liberation. It simply could not survive contact with reality. It died the moment it became real. You cannot free yourself from imaginary oppression. Even if May were a political genius – and let us concede that she is not – Brexit was always going to come down to a choice between two evils: the heroic but catastrophic failure of crashing out; or the unheroic but less damaging failure of swapping first-class for second-class EU membership. These are the real afterlives of a departed reverie.
If the choice between shooting oneself in the head or in the foot is the answer to Britain’s long-term problems, surely the wrong question is being asked. It is becoming ever clearer that Brexit is not about its ostensible subject: Britain’s relationship with the EU. The very word Brexit contains a literally unspoken truth. It does not include or even allude to Europe. It is British exit that is the point, not what it is exiting from. The tautologous slogan Leave Means Leave is similarly (if unintentionally) honest: the meaning is in the leaving, not in what is being left or how.
Paradoxically, this drama of departure has really served only to displace a crisis of belonging. Brexit plays out a conflict between Them and Us, but it is surely obvious after this week that the problem is not with Them on the continent. It’s with the British Us, the unravelling of an imagined community. The visible collapse of the Westminster polity this week may be a result of Brexit, but Brexit itself is the result of the invisible subsidence of the political order over recent decades.
It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these interrelated developments do seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling a referendum and asking people to endorse the status quo.
What we see with the lid off and the fog of fantasies at last beginning to dissipate is the truth that Brexit is much less about Britain’s relationship with the EU than it is about Britain’s relationship with itself. It is the projection outwards of an inner turmoil. An archaic political system had carried on even while its foundations in a collective sense of belonging were crumbling. Brexit in one way alone has done a real service: it has forced the old system to play out its death throes in public. The spectacle is ugly, but at least it shows that a fissiparous four-nation state cannot be governed without radical social and constitutional change.
European leaders have continually expressed exasperation that the British have really been negotiating not with them, but with each other. But perhaps it is time to recognise that there is a useful truth in this: Brexit is really just the vehicle that has delivered a fraught state to a place where it can no longer pretend to be a settled and functioning democracy. Brexit’s work is done – everyone can now see that the Westminster dodo is dead. It is time to move on from the pretence that the problem with British democracy is the EU and to recognise that it is with itself. After Brextinction there must be a whole new political ecosystem. Drop the dead dodo, end the mad race for a meaningless prize, and start talking about who you want to be.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Theresa May has just faced yet another torrid period of Tory revolts over her Brexit strategy. David Davis was on the verge of resignation. Government MPs were publicly rejecting her customs backstop fudge. And Boris Johnson became so exasperated that he was telling his supporters that he wanted Donald Trump to take over the negotiations.
It is now clearer than ever that May will fail to deliver the Brexit deal that Britain needs. She cannot command the confidence of her cabinet, of her party, or of the country. Instead of negotiating for Britain, the prime minister is lurching from crisis to crisis, increasing the risk that the talks break down, and we crash out without an agreement. We cannot go on like this.
There are just four months left before the UK needs to strike a deal on our future relationship with the EU. It will be the most important agreement this country has struck in a generation. People’s jobs, their mortgages and their children’s futures are all at stake. So, with the government in such turmoil, parliament must be prepared to step in and take a more central role.
This week MPs will vote on a series of amendments to the EU withdrawal bill. These changes could help steer the government away from an extreme and damaging Brexit. They could protect fundamental human rights, guarantee no infrastructure on the Irish border, and break the deadlock within the government over our future customs arrangements with the EU.
The most important of these amendments is to give parliament a truly meaningful vote on the final deal. I coined the phrase “a meaningful vote” – and I have been clear ever since that it must be just that: meaningful. I have been equally clear that if the deal the prime minister strikes with the EU does not meet our six tests, then we will vote the deal down. The amendment upon which MPs will vote tomorrow would deliver on the commitment for a meaningful vote. It would provide a safety valve in the Brexit process. It makes clear that – should the prime minister’s proposed article 50 deal be defeated later this year – it would then be for parliament to say what happens next, not the cabinet. It would, in effect, take no deal off the table once and for all.
Last Friday the government revealed its plan to water down the Lords’ amendment: to turn the meaningful vote into a meaningless vote. Not good enough. We must stand up for the principle of parliamentary democracy and not allow the government’s failure in the Brexit process to be a licence for the UK to crash out of the EU without an agreement. So, even at the eleventh hour, I would urge Conservative MPs to reject the government’s proposition and accept the Lords’ amendment.
This is the most important week of the Brexit process since the triggering of article 50. After months of dithering, delay and government splits, there is a chance for parliament decisively to shape the course of the negotiations. A chance for parliament to have its voice heard. We must get it right.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Bravo, Andrew Adonis: the final transformation of this mild-mannered policy wonk into battling anti-Brexiter is a fitting way to end a year no less defiant of prophecy than 2016. And rather a cheering one, as it happens.
In truth, the former Labour transport secretary and No 10 policy chief has been steadily morphing from bookworm to kick-ass over the last 18 months, his interventions growing more trenchant, his cerebral manner increasingly matched by a taste for action.
Yet his resignation as chair of the national infrastructure commission on Friday captured this evolutionary process in a single, splendid moment of political drama. In his letter to Theresa May, Adonis characterised Brexit as a “populist and nationalist spasm worthy of Donald Trump”, described the European Union withdrawal bill as “the worst legislation of my lifetime”, and accused the prime minister of “allying with Ukip and the Tory hard right”.
The list of beefs is plentiful: in his interview with the Observer, he called for Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, to be sacked over the bailing out of Stagecoach and Virgin, presently contracted to run the East Coast line until 2023. He has been, as Rik Mayall would have put it, “pretty fierce” about avaricious university vice-chancellors, the “Frankenstein’s monster” of tuition fees, Birmingham city council, the providers of 4G phone coverage, and much else besides.
But it is Brexit that has energised him and driven his public metamorphosis from the owlish curator of Roy Jenkins’s legacy to an energetic activist campaigning for all he is worth to prevent Britain’s departure from the EU. As he put it on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, this means “arguing passionately with the British people as to why staying in the EU is the right thing to do”.
There are those who say that this is an intrinsically improper project. A referendum was held, a result declared, and an argument concluded. How dare “remoaners” continue to voice their opinions on a settled matter?
To which I am tempted to respond in words of one syllable – but will not, in deference to the festive spirit. Still, it is absurd to suggest that the vote on 23 June 2016 was the final and definitive statement on the UK’s membership of the EU. It is the mark of a free society that debate continues, that dissent is not only tolerated but embedded in political discourse, and that political decisions can be reversed.
The overwhelming probability remains that Brexit will indeed go ahead on 29 March 2019 – as Adonis knows perfectly well. All the more reason, then, for those who regard this as a disastrous course to urge upon the electorate a change of trajectory.
For his part, Adonis calculates that the folly of leaving the EU will become ever more clear in the coming months, and that Labour’s leadership may yet replace its five-sizes-fit-all position with one closer to his own. This persuasive enterprise may well be doomed – but so what? Do we really want our politicians to be a tribe of bobble-heads who long for nothing but a quiet life? True patriotism is often to be found in the courage to challenge majority opinion.
It does Adonis no favours, of course, that he hails from what is presently the least fashionable ideological postcode: the blasted heath of liberal centrism. This battered position has few, if any, defenders in the upper reaches of May’s government; and the founding principle of Corbynism is that the Blair-Cameron era was a period of unmitigated national disaster.
To declare oneself a centrist these days is to invite fairly arbitrary denunciation as a “neoliberal” (or “neoconservative”, take your pick), metropolitan elitist, Old Etonian, Old Mandelsonian, friend of dictators, ally of the banks, relentless privatiser, fox murderer, war criminal … and that’s just the vanilla stuff. Naturally, Adonis is an untouchable because of his close association with Tony Blair and his membership of the House of Lords. Never mind that he is the son of a Cypriot immigrant, and was placed in care until the age of 11: he ended up in the wrong gang, didn’t he?
So it is easy for both Brexiters and the left to sneer at Adonis as an irrelevance from the past, beating his chest in desperation. Easy, but wrong.
For the unfashionable centrism that he incarnates is not defunct. True, it has taken a pasting, as the pathologies of globalisation have become ever more clear and governments around the world have failed to keep pace with the social cost. In consequence, technocrats have been bulldozed by populists.
But much more survives of the liberal inheritance than is commonly supposed. At its root remains a still-precious belief in pluralism, and the conviction that a decent society thrives on both diversity and an agreed core of common principles. It prefers debate, free speech and ceaseless social interaction to safe spaces, no-platforming and digital cantonisation. Its more thoughtful exponents fret that a polarised politics based principally upon identity groupings – of left and right – will never truly favour the vulnerable, the dispossessed and the disenfranchised.
Rules-based systems are often tiresome, but they are preferable to unbridled political tribalism. And as the tide of populism spreads across Europe, the liberal fear is that identity politics will ignite a spitting cauldron of Trumps and Brexits.
The Europhobic right will never be reconciled to what Adonis stands for, or what he proposes to do. But those on the left who deplore him should pause for thought. Progressive politics rarely follows a script. Who, for instance, would have predicted that gay marriage would be legalised by a coalition of Tories and Liberal Democrats? Since the June election, the Labour leader and his acolytes have been quite clear that the triumph of the left and its arrival in government is now only a matter of dates.
Which it may well be. But history is not obedient. It squirms, wriggles and flounces when taken for granted. So – my friendly advice for 2018 – don’t assume that the old alliance of left and centre-ground can be consigned for ever to the ideological dustbin, or confuse the exhilaration of political purity for wisdom. Don’t assume, either, that the next election is won just because the last went well. Don’t, in other words, sneer so readily at Andrew Adonis: you never know when you may need him. Happy new year.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
There is no intrinsic reason why Brexit should be difficult or damaging, but the EU itself has so far demonstrated it wants to make it so; and it has co-opted the CBI, parts of the City and, it seems, the Treasury to assist. They are legitimising EU threats of economic disruption. We are fast reaching the point when the prime minister should assert the authority of her office over the negotiations and call time. A clean break in 2019 would be preferable to the mess they want to draw us into. To be prepared for no trade deal with the EU, Whitehall must focus on planning and readiness without further prevarication.
The Florence speech sets out a credible and conciliatory framework for the negotiations, but more concessions would be damaging, expensive and unnecessary, and would prolong economic uncertainty, damage confidence and enrage leave voters, threatening the stability of the government. Many hardcore leave voters, some 30% of electors, were drawn back to the mainstream parties at the last election, because both parties were clear the UK is leaving the EU. Those voters would feel betrayed, and the broad majority of Conservative MPs would feel that the establishment had imposed its will on the government, despite what the prime minister really wants. No government could sustain a policy of Brexit in name only, which is what some seem determined to pursue, flying in the face of the clear referendum result.
An interim period would allow time for processes and institutions to be adapted or established so that by the end of two years or so, a comprehensive trade agreement can be implemented. As the prime minister has made clear, it must be clear what is being implemented. The EU should stop obstructing these discussions about an agreement, which should be relatively easy to agree in principle, since the UK and the EU will have identical regulatory systems on the day of Brexit, so both sides can aim at maximum mutual recognition of different sectors.
A soft customs frontier should be established from the day the UK leaves the EU. There is no need for zealous enforcement by the UK or by the EU of the “rules of origin” that govern the international trade in goods. There is no need for tariffs if the EU and the UK have jointly notified the World Trade Organisation of our intention to implement a zero-tariff comprehensive trade deal, and of our special customs agreement for the interim. If everyone was intent on being reasonable, the practical or legal problems would be surmountable. However, the EU is determined to be anything but. It refused to enter any discussions at all until the UK had invoked article 50. We did so, and still the EU refused to discuss the future trade relationship, insisting first on “sufficient progress” on citizenship, money and the Northern Ireland border.
Following the Florence speech, where the prime minister conceded, among other things, that money would be on the table for the interim period, the EU is still blocking trade talks. Treasury officials are briefing that we must stay in the customs union for the interim period. They insist we must continue to pay billions of pounds to subsidise other EU states, while we must accept “full regulatory and judicial oversight”, which means we would have to submit to any new European court rulings and new directives and regulations without any say over those new laws. Worst of all, matters are already being decided between the UK and the EU, such as on the dividing of tariff-rate quotas for imports from non-EU countries (for instance, on New Zealand lamb) the joint presentation of which could hobble the UK’s ability to make meaningful trade deals with non-EU countries into the future. That is why the US and other nations have challenged the UK and the EU on this, saying they “cannot accept” this unilateral splitting of tariff-rate quotas without the EU and the UK negotiating separately with all the countries concerned.
The Treasury seems unable to hear any voices except those that reinforce their preconceptions. It seems blind to the facts, preoccupied with preserving “access” to the EU market seemingly at any cost. People such as James Dyson or Anthony Bamford of JCB are ignored. Only a fraction of the UK economy is dependent on membership of the EU. The majority of the economy is either domestic or non-EU export. It will be a benefit to the public finances and to our trade balance when the exchequer is relieved of contributing to the EU budget (a net £10bn a year and growing, and a total of £390bn since we joined, at current prices). A small fraction of the billions demanded by the EU would be far better spent on being ready to leave without a trade deal if no sensible agreement can be reached.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Just as there is no greater threat to a country than patriots who claim to love it the most, so no one is more likely to impoverish the working class than those who claim to be the common people’s truest friends.
We ought by now to be familiar with the links that bind the snob to the mob and how quickly they dissolve. The decision of the investment firm Jacob Rees-Mogg co-founded to move assets into Ireland illustrates with uncanny perfection how the Brexit that the Tory right convinced “the people” to back will be all too real for the many but optional for the few.
I don’t want to pretend that other Conservative politicians are not repelled by the undeliverable promises made by the right to working-class voters. But the crisis in Labour is greater, because leaving the EU raises questions that cast doubt on its very purpose.
The Labour movement was founded to represent the interests of the organised working class. Brexit is shaping up to be the greatest disaster for working-class Britain since Thatcherism, albeit a disaster that large numbers of working-class voters wished on themselves.
I am still enough of a Mancunian to resent the way outsiders present the north as a monoglot culture with nothing more to offer than Alan Bennett and racial prejudice. But even when you notice that its great cities – Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle – supported Remain, the fact remains that much of the traditional Labour heartlands in the north-east, Wales, the north-west and the Midlands voted Leave.
Brexit’s potential to wreck their fragile economies is terrifying. A government assessment concluded that the GDP of the north-east would fall by 16% after a “no-deal” Brexit, by 11% if there is what the Brexit PR men cheerily call “Canada plus” and by 3.5% if Britain leaves in name only.
“Asking me to support Brexit is like asking me to punch my constituents in the face,” said Anna Turley, the Labour MP for Redcar,which voted 66:34 to leave. “It doesn’t make it easier if you tell me my constituents want to be punched.”
A claque of rightwing voices screams that MPs have no alternative to punching their constituents in the face. Punching people in the face is the people’s will. The only choice for democratic politicians is to make a fist and thump their voters as hard as they can, draw back and then thump them again.
The leftwing case against Turley, Phil Wilson in Sedgefield, Mary Creagh in Wakefield and all the other Labour MPs in Leave constituencies who are “defying” the voters by backing a second referendum ought to be made by the Labour leadership. Until 2016, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell had voted on apparently anti-capitalist grounds against British membership of the EU all their political careers. Now the time for “socialism in one country” is upon them, it would be a good to hear what those grounds are. Answer comes there none.
Labour’s leaders have delivered no speeches and published no programme on how a leftwing Brexit might work, presumably because a policy that hits the weakest regions and the poorest people hardest cannot be described as left wing. The tragedy for the Labour party – and for Britain – is at the moment when it most needed effective opposition it found itself with a far left as clueless as the Brexit right.
A more convincing line of leftwing thinking is represented by Caroline Flint, Ruth Smeeth, Gloria del Piero and other northern Labour MPs who say that the urbanised left does not begin to understand the anger in towns where all hope has gone. They talk about Brexit giving their constituents the chance to kick a failed system and speak of the enormous sense of betrayal that would follow its reversal.
Even if you concede that their descriptions are accurate, the questions pile up. Do they think Brexit will remove the causes of the anger? No. So where will the anger turn once we are out? They don’t know. Do they believe their constituents can avoid cuts to income and public services after Brexit? Of course not. When they say your voters have nothing left to lose, are they sure about that? No, there’s always more to lose. When they say: “We must deliver the referendum result”, does that include the catastrophe of a no deal?
I doubt Brexit would have happened if politicians’ reputations had not fallen so low. The opponents of Brexit in Leave seats are inspiring, however, because they can answer any question you throw at them. They’re under pressure to shut up and not just from their leaders, Momentum and their constituency associations. A rightwing terrorist crying “Britain first” murdered Jo Cox in the constituency next door to Mary Creagh’s. After the charmers who edit the Telegraph called the Tory rebel Anna Soubry a “mutineer”, she received death threats.
I could go on, as people always do, about Edmund Burke’s declaration that an MP owes the voters his judgment “and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”. But 18th-century exhortations from the pre-democratic age miss a lesson that does not just apply to MPs but to anyone who aspires to an intellectually honest life. The dissident MPs know that democracy is an argument that never ends. They do not regard their constituents as stuck in boxes marked “Leave” and “Remain”, but see it as their duty to try to make a case that might change minds.
At the very least they insist on this point: it is not an anti-democratic betrayal to ask voters who once said they wanted to be punched to take another show of hands just to double-check that a fist in the face remains their heart’s desire.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
“Brexit will never happen. Too complicated, too damaging to the British economy, too anachronistic.” How many times in the last three years – from Rome to Berlin, Paris to Bucharest – did we hear this belief asserted so confidently as to admit no discussion? The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union is now imminent. Yet much of Europe’s public and many of its politicians have not truly grasped the consequences of the historic break that is about to take place, nor have they tried to understand the reasons.
On 31 January the first concrete step in Boris Johnson’s political game plan will be achieved. And, even if no new barriers will immediately be apparent at the borders, we will from this date start to drift apart. Johnson won his bet using a simple strategy: he sold the illusion that the politicians who lead Europe’s nation states still hold the reins of power in a globalised world. He won on the false promise that Brexit allow the British people to “take back control”.
The mere fact of breaking with the other 27 EU member states, at any price, has allowed him to convince people that, in the 2020s, a British prime minister – or a French president or a German chancellor – is still master of their country’s destiny. That people can, from the false comfort of their nation state, face the geopolitical changes and upheavals of the world (such as the current tensions in the Middle East) all alone. But what do the UK, France, Italy or even Germany weigh today when they each represent barely 1% of the world’s population? We know all this, just as we know that only a deeply integrated Europe will enable us to meet the world’s new challenges: climate change, migration, the need for regulation of financial capitalism to reduce inequalities, the coordinated taxation of multinational companies to stop tax avoidance and maintain revenue for our social systems, the channelling of revolutionary technology.
Brexit is a tragedy foretold, but it is one that we have collectively allowed to unfold. We continental Europeans made the unforgivable mistake of allowing people to believe that the issue was a solely British one, ignoring Brexit’s existential dimension for all Europeans. Some of the continent’s more fervent Europhiles and federalists have even come to claim that Brexit is a positive thing because London was blocking the EU’s progress.
What shameless cowardice. What a wretched excuse for our leaders to hide behind. When we approved Schengen and the single currency, we did so without the UK. Our delays, our missed appointments with history cannot be blamed on British resistance. Perhaps we might even have avoided Brexit if we had been able to follow through on Winston Churchill’s 1946 call to “build a kind of United States of Europe” whose pull across the Channel would have been irresistible.
Instead, we stood by and watched Brexit happen. For the first time since the foundation of the European project in 1957, we conveyed the message that this project was reversible. In doing so, we actually encouraged the return of the very nationalism and xenophobia that the EU was created to oppose. We have betrayed the memory of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox and allowed the spectre of internal UK frontiers to resurface.
We forgot that the roots of the European Union – which should not, of course, be confused with the roots of Europe – lie in the memory of the 20th century, in the desire to overcome two world wars and in the fight against totalitarianism, and that the UK, with its famous democratic tradition, played a decisive and essential part in this fight. We ignored the threat that the Brexiters’ victory poses to all European democracies by the success it represents for the forces of extremism. All this to the great satisfaction of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump who, in their geopolitical ambitions, want nothing more than divided Europeans and the disintegration of the EU, and are working daily to achieve it.
Difficult times lie ahead for our fragile democracies. Beyond Brexit we must remain united, and not abandon the idea of the UK formally returning to the European family in due course. In the meantime, we must continue to reimagine the EU and to act in concert with the British people. All the more so since the UK general election on 12 December showed that opponents of Brexit are in the majority (since the “remain” or second-referendum-backing parties won more votes than the Tories and Brexit party), voters in the big cities and, above all, among younger people in Britain reject a narrow, isolationist future. Together we must continue to work towards our future with redoubled effort, building bridges and joint initiatives. The British people who mobilised against Brexit showed us the way. Never in the history of the EU have we seen such popular demonstrations in favour of Europe. Nor should we resign ourselves to the notion that the EU without the UK is set in stone for ever. Is it not the hallmark of democracies, unlike authoritarian regimes, that voters reserve the right to change their minds?
The new president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wants to involve civil society in a new initiative to discuss the future of Europe. We must demand that citizens and associations from the UK (as well as from Ukraine and the Balkans) are allowed to participate in one way or another. I will confess to something else. For a long time, the supremacy of English as the de facto European lingua franca seemed excessive to me. The dominance of English seemed to challenge the European motto “united in diversity”. Now I think that after Brexit, we should fight to keep English on the European stage, including in the EU institutions – as a reminder of an absence, and the promise of a return.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
The prime minister may not have mentioned the Chequers agreement by name during her speech at the Conservative party conference, but her approach remains the same: securing “frictionless trade” with the European Union, at the incredibly high price of keeping the UK as a permanent rule-taker, unable to repeal or amend EU laws.
Chequers, the proposal for a Brexit deal agreed within cabinet in July, states that the UK “should be consulted” as EU rules are changed. But a sovereign state merely being “consulted” on rules imposed upon it – which may be contrary to its best interests – is not taking back control.
The prime minister’s justification for this is that it can maintain the “seamless border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which “no simple free trade agreement could achieve … not even one that makes use of the very latest technology”.
This ignores the fact that there is already a border – for tax, currency, excise and security – that is managed seamlessly with existing technical and administrative procedures. It’s clear that many people have an outdated vision of borders – some still seem to imagine customs posts manned by officers in tricorn hats and knee breeches, lowering striped poles to stop stagecoaches, inspecting barrels of brandy with wooden ladles.
Modern borders are tax points, not inspection points. World Trade Organization rules do not require checks at the physical border. The UK inspects 4% of imports, and the Republic of Ireland only 1%. Sanitary and phytosanitary checks – which EU law requires “in the immediate vicinity of the point of entry” – can occur considerable distances from the border. In Rotterdam, for instance, posts are located up to 20km from the docks themselves.
Even the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is “convinced that it is possible to carry out the kind of checks we need without creating a physical frontier”. Under his unacceptable proposals, there would be extensive controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain. But if he believes the integrity of the single market can be guaranteed with checks set back from the British/Northern Ireland border, then the same principle can surely be applied to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
As well as being a clear breach of the Good Friday agreement’s principle of consent, Barnier’s proposals are not in Northern Ireland’s economic interests. Less than 5% of Northern Ireland sales are with the Republic of Ireland, compared to 20% with Britain.
It simply would not, therefore, make sense for Northern Ireland to introduce frictions with the UK internal market. Equally absurd is the idea that the whole of the UK should, in effect, remain in the single market and the customs union to “solve” the problem. Were this to form the “backstop” agreement, it would remove all incentive for the EU to negotiate any further. Once agreed, even on a temporary basis, the EU would have absolutely no need ever to change it.
Northern Ireland’s sales to the Republic of Ireland account for less than 0.2% of the United Kingdom’s GDP. In order to facilitate that tiny fraction, it would be ridiculous to forgo our ability to reduce tariffs and strike new trade deals around the world, when the IMF predicts that 90% of global economic growth will be outside Europe in the next decade.
“Solutions” of that type are not necessary. Cross-border trade is characterised by regular, repetitive crossings of goods, often on the same routes in the same trucks, with little third-country traffic. The agri-food sector is particularly important; just under half of the cross-border manufacturing trade is accounted for by food, beverages and tobacco. Around a third of Northern Ireland’s milk heads south for processing every day. Some 13,000 border crossings are made annually purely for the production of Guinness and more than 18,000 for Baileys Irish Cream.
Consequently, much cross-border trade is suited to technical solutions and simplified customs procedures already available in the union customs code, including trusted trader-type status. Additional declarations can be incorporated into the existing system for VAT returns, including for small traders. Licensed customs brokers can be engaged to support businesses in dealing with their obligations.
The EU’s stated concern is that goods could enter the single market through the border without being compliant with EU standards. Exporters to any market must comply with that market’s rules, but, according to the European Research Group’s recent paper, any threats to the integrity of the single market can be resolved within the current legal frameworks of the EU and the UK. There is no need for new physical infrastructure at the border and no reason to hold up a free trade agreement.
Fraud or smuggling can be addressed by effective co-operation by authorities on both sides of the border – who already co-operate to tackle smuggling of drugs, cigarettes, fuel and alcohol – without suggesting that border checks would make their efforts more effective. If a “hardening” of the border would not address illegal activities, how can it be necessary to ensure compliance by law-abiding citizens and companies?
With little time for the negotiations remaining, the prime minister must chuck Chequers for its failure to deliver the largest democratic mandate in British history. And by taking a realistic view of existing technical and administrative measures for border procedures, she can take up last week’s offer from European council president Donald Tusk, and concentrate on delivering a comprehensive, mutually respectful free trade agreement.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
The Telegraph’s front page on Wednesday branded me, along with 14 of my Conservative colleagues, a “Brexit mutineer”. No matter how much they seek to strong-arm politicians, business leaders and the judiciary to conform to their narrow ideological agenda, this sort of journalistic activism, dressed up as speaking for the “will of the people”, will be called out for what it is: complete rubbish.
We have seen it all before, and no doubt will see it again. It’s reminiscent of the press barons attempting to undermine Stanley Baldwin’s leadership of the Conservative party in the 1930s, primarily instigated by Lord Rothermere (ironically, one of the key figures in the development of the Daily Mail). As then, the accusations are easily shown to ring hollow; and like Baldwin, we should not be afraid to challenge what he described as an ambition for “power, and power without responsibility”.
Politicians, like anyone in a position of authority, should be wholly accountable for the decisions they make, and must not be exempt from criticism when they get things wrong. Having been involved in politics since the 1970s, I have taken my fair share of mud-slinging over the years, but what sets apart this most recent outburst is its cynical opportunism. It is shoddy journalism at its worst.
A free press is a cornerstone of an active democracy. It can help keep people informed, ensures those of us who are elected have our feet held to the fire on the issues that really matter, and when done well, can encourage healthy debate and more engaged communities, which can only be a good thing. Journalists rightly have an incredibly important, powerful role to play, but it is one they should exercise responsibly. Many people will not understand the intricacies of the EU (withdrawal) bill, nor should they be expected to. That is the chief reason we elect politicians – to pore over the nitty-gritty of legislation with a fine-tooth comb. But for professional journalists to run with such a misleading headline, deliberate or not, displays a worrying negligence.
Let me be clear: my colleagues and I have no desire to thwart the will of the people. While many of us have made no secret of the fact we believe Brexit to be an error, we respect the result of the referendum and now want to see an orderly departure. That is why all of us, bar Ken Clarke, voted to trigger article 50 earlier this year, and why the Conservative party unanimously passed the EU (withdrawal) bill at its second reading in September. Ultimately, a technical bill of this kind is necessary if we are to incorporate the accumulated legislation of the EU into UK domestic law, providing legal certainty and continuity. It is crucial, though, that we get this right.
That means ensuring that the legislation is legally and constitutionally watertight, with rigorous safeguards in place to see that MPs are afforded ample time to scrutinise measures brought forward by ministers, and perhaps more importantly, protect parliament’s sovereignty. Ironically, this very issue has been at the vanguard of the leave crusade over the past 40 years. Does “taking back control” somehow not apply to our own parliament?
Specifically, on the question of the timing of our exit it makes absolutely no sense to back ourselves into a corner by dictating the precise hour at which we will cease to be a member of the EU. The absurdity of the government’s amendment is that it could force us to crash into a void, which the legislation included in this bill is designed to avoid, solely to appease a few hardliners and get a pat on the back from the rightwing press. Many of my colleagues, leave and remain, are agreed that’s not a risk worth taking.
The amendments I and others have tabled have been drafted in a genuinely constructive manner in the hope of strengthening the legislation rather than wrecking it. In a parliamentary democracy, that is our job: MPs are elected to scrutinise and improve government policy. Even colleagues on the frontbench have recognised that our concerns have been raised with the best of intentions, free from ulterior motive. It’s high time some areas of the pressgot up to speed on that.
Accepting the sort of journalism that intimidates MPs by labelling them, or indeed judges, “mutineers”, “traitors” and “enemies” – all epitaphs I have received – is a very slippery slope. On a practical level, it’s not only putting off many talented individuals from standing for parliament, but in our increasingly post-truth age, characterised by fake news and a ready acceptance of fiction over fact, distorts further our hold on reality, breeding an unjustified suspicion in our institutions – as all populists seek to do. At the constitutional level, it undermines the checks and balances that are a crucial part of the rule of law in an elected democracy.
We must instead work together to give people an improved vision of, and optimism in, politics and the ability of the democratic process to do good at all levels.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Our country has arrived at a moment of profound political significance. For some time, the prime minister knew her deal would not pass in parliament, and all along she has mocked members of all parties with her blathering blandishments. A good deal. The only deal. A deal that is in the national interest.
Even behind closed doors, Theresa May’s government has excluded MPs – including successive Brexit secretaries – from the details of the negotiations.
And yesterday, a week after parliament held the government in contempt for hiding its legal advice on the deal, May again ignored MPs by blocking their ability to hold the vote.
I did not become an MP last year to get a better seat as a spectator as my country is sunk by a government that is as incompetent as it is callous, and that is why I picked up the mace.
Now, I am aware that for the vast majority of people a gangly man in moleskin trousers holding a 5ft golden rod might look a bit odd. But I work in a very odd place, which rests heavily on symbol and ritual.
The mace has for 500 years represented the authority invested in parliament by the crown. By abandoning the vote, May was again abandoning the principle that her authority rests on the consent of the MPs and their constituents.
I am not the first MP to pick up the mace. Other members have picked it up when the parliamentary system has not been working, or when it has been exploited by a cynical executive.
Yesterday May was trying to obscure in procedure her contempt of parliamentary democracy, so I wanted to do something simple to show what she was up to. By ruling without the authority of the parliament, the Tories made the ceremonial mace into a tawdry ornament, devoid of meaning and value.
While I appreciate that May feels personally humiliated, and wanted to escape what was expected to be a three-figure defeat, she has nowhere to escape to.
Instead of facing the music at home, she is back in Europe playing for time and making the same arguments to perhaps get non-binding assurances to a deal that is already signed.
Rather than bringing parliament a rebranded fait accompli, the prime minister should be working on building consensus on a deal here that she can then bring to Europe. This was what the EU did for the Brexit negotiations, and it has proved an effective strategy.
And if our prime minister is unable to unite MPs around a deal, she is simply unfit to hold office and should step aside for a Labour party that can.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Before the Brexit referendum I began walking Ireland’s border. At the start I thought of the border as just a line but after a few dozen miles it began to become its own place, a narrow country with one language and two currencies. When the UK voted to leave the European Union, the ground seemed to contract under my feet, shrinking to just the line on the map once again.
The border landscape is almost entirely rural; farms, bogs and forest. The line itself is invisible, although usually following a feature, often a hedgerow or stream. I found many unofficial crossing places, wooden footbridges and new paths, and I felt north and south were getting to know each other again. There were also major road bridges that were so fresh they weren’t yet on Ordnance Survey maps. “For years and years I lived in a cul-de-sac,” a woman told me at her front gate, “but the new bridge was put up and I can go either way now.” The Good Friday agreement is 20 years old, and the bridge across the Blackwater river, only a few hundred feet from her house, was then eight years old. She could remember when it was opened. “It was bizarre really,” she said, “I’d dander over and meet people I hadn’t seen in years.”
Ireland’s border has been associated with crime, be it smuggling or terrorism. I can report my most dangerous encounter was with a goat. I still thought I sensed a heavy atmosphere of burnt-out aggression in some locations, and there is a definite discretion among borderland people. Discretion was important for a long time on the border. Everybody knew somebody who was probably involved in something. It was impossible not to. In conversation the meaning of a pause was understood, the sentences that faded before closing. Take into account too the fear of violence, sometimes close, sometimes in the middle distance, but always hovering. Discretion was about survival.
Halfway into my journey I arranged to meet a friend in a border-town cafe; he was driving up from Dublin. At our table, with other customers around, I was appalled by his unguarded statements and his loud voice – things that had never bothered me before. I realised that I had become acclimatised to the borderland’s restraint and political sensitivity.
Please note: it is sensitivity as opposed to secrecy. There are people carrying secrets certainly – I’m sure I met some – but for most the evasiveness comes from a lifetime of avoiding sore points. One evening I walked into a bar sited directly on the line of the border. I could pay for my pint in pounds or euros. A sign above the counter read “Please do not discuss politics”. Along the border two neighbours could be friends for 30 years and never once discuss how they vote. They know better. You might think this is a shortfall in their relationship; something for ever held back that means they are not truly friends. You might have a point.
This highlights one of the great treasures of the Good Friday agreement; it moved the conversations on. You did not have to pick one of two sides any more. Most people moved towards areas of consensus, the value of peace and an open border. “Sure there is no border any more,” one farmer told me. Strictly speaking this was untrue, and he was actually pointing towards the border at the time, where it ran with a river along the bottom of his field, but it was true enough that he could make the claim with confidence. The border is not there if your identity prefers it absent. On the other hand, if your identity depends on the border, then it is there for you.
This is a truly extraordinary arrangement to have arrived at, one that could not have been wholly designed in legislation or a peace accord. It took a massive act of group willing for the arrangement to slot together, and it takes ongoing willingness to keep it together. Any sort of border controls will hit it hard. It is delicate; it requires discretion. It probably will for another generation or two.
The good health of today’s border is rooted in the Good Friday agreement. So it is distressing to hear the agreement dismissed as a mere impediment to Brexit. The citizens of the borderland are used to being peripheral, or completely ignored, by the mainstream, but attacks on the Good Friday agreement and attempts to compare the border with boundaries of London districts are something else completely, something more like contempt. The average borderland farmer could do a better job at negotiating both the legal contracts and the social contracts required for an evolving frontier than any team the current British cabinet has produced. He or she would understand that the emotional landscape must also be factored in – while also knowing that you cannot let your negotiations sink into flag-waving and talk of vassal states.
My journey ended at Lough Foyle, a large estuary at the border’s north-western end, on a fine summer’s day, and the water was as flat as glass when I canoed out towards the open sea. For the whole journey it had been my principle to stick as close to the borderline as possible, but here I was free to drift. If you look at a map of the lough you’ll notice it has no borderline. The exact coordinates of the frontier are not set, nor are there plans to set them.
Most nations claim ownership of a certain amount of territory beyond their shores and so Lough Foyle, where Ireland north and south face each other closely, could easily be a subject of dispute. Instead a cross-border office has been created to manage the lough, one of six north-south bodies initiated by the Good Friday agreement. So the border is in the water somewhere – but, for the moment at least, everyone has better things to talk about.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
Despite their famous politeness, the Japanese know how to play diplomatic hardball. In September last year, after the Brexit referendum and ahead of a G20 meeting, Tokyo sent a punchy open letter to the UK and EU calling for certainty, clarity and protecting the business environment. Now, several months later, as Theresa May embarks on a three-day visit to Japan, Japanese concerns about potential ramifications of Brexit are again making political waves.
Over the weekend, Yasutoshi Nishimura, the deputy chief cabinet secretary, briefed that Britain needed to end the “sense of crisis” around Brexit. The Financial Times quoted an unnamed Japanese trade official dampening down the idea of “substantial progress” being made on a UK-Japan trade deal during this visit. A former Japanese ambassador to the UK also suggested that negotiations could not begin “until Britain is out of the EU”, and said the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, needed to know where May was aiming for Britain to “land” post-Brexit.
Where does all this leave the UK’s trade strategy and the prospects of a free trade agreement? About where it was before. Japan is a tough target for a trade deal, as Open Europe noted in our recent report on future UK exports, Global Britain. The EU itself has not signed an agreement with Japan, despite the much-vaunted recent progress on so-called Jeepa. In fact, the same official who tried to quash expectations of UK-Japan progress noted that the Japan-EU deal was only agreed at political level: “We haven’t finished negotiations with the EU … many issues still remain”.
So will Japan – and other countries – inevitably prioritise a large bloc of countries over the UK? Perhaps. The EU certainly represents a very important market. But the EU will always have difficulties reaching trade agreements. It’s hard to make one size fit 27 and the EU has strong producer interests, in agriculture for example, which limit its ability to get deals signed. Even if Japan and other economies would rather have EU trade deals, that won’t stop them signing on the dotted line with the UK. In the real world, it’s unrealistic to think the UK would be at the back of Barack Obama’s infamous queue. But it suits Japan to play hard-to-get with the UK for now.
We shouldn’t be jealous about the EU signing trade deals. First, if the EU is willing to offer Japan an agreement that removes tariffs, addresses customs issues and is liberal on rules of origin, it’s reasonable to think the UK could get such a deal with the EU. We should of course aim for a much deeper agreement. Second, trade is not a zero-sum game. A more liberal EU, trading more freely with other economies, is a good thing for the UK, Brexit or remain.
Overall, it’s important not to be too fixated about trade agreements – whatever Liam Fox’s department may think. Politicians love the ribbon-cutting that signing trade deals offer, and Donald Trump probably imagines them to be the political equivalent of opening a new luxury hotel. But narrow trade agreements are not necessarily the top priority. The UK already trades well with Japan, and average tariff levels are low at 4.2%. The priority for both governments should therefore be non-tariff barriers, focusing on things such as customs cooperation and investment opportunities.
None of that means that it’s not worth the prime minister visiting Japan. There had been a bizarre tendency recently to let the impression develop that Whitehall’s only interest in east Asia was China, and that we were happy to neglect the world’s third biggest economy and a major regional ally. When I visited Japan recently and spoke with senior officials, they were certainly initially perplexed by Brexit, but were nonetheless keen to deepen bilateral relations.
A major concern there is Chinese territorial expansionism, particularly in the South China Sea. Japan knows that the UK is the only European power seriously able to project power in the region, and will be looking carefully at what we say on freedom of navigation. They will also be watching closely the power dynamics within the EU, where countries such as Greece are increasingly reluctant to censure China.
Reaching a comprehensive trade deal with Japan will be a tough prize which may take time to achieve, but in the mean time we should invest in our crucial and historic friendship. We should prioritise easy wins – discrete agreements on specific bilateral matters – and the prime minister should take the opportunity of her visit to reassure Japanese businesses of her plans to keep the UK as a destination of choice for investment in Europe.
But ultimately the single most important thing the prime minister needs to do, both for Japan and more generally, is to update all of us about her plans for Brexit: it’s been over six months since her Lancaster House speech, and it’s time to put more flesh on the bones.
First published on Wed 26 Sep 2018 13.31 BST
Jeremy Corbyn has told Theresa May that Labour MPs will vote against her Chequers plan unless she is willing to accept his proposal to keep Britain in a customs union and protect consumer standards and workers’ rights after Brexit.
The conditional offer came near the end of an hour-long speech at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, in which Corbyn tried to position himself as sitting in the mainstream of British politics, three years after he took control of the party.
The Labour leader told delegates: “As it stands, Labour will vote against the Chequers plan – or whatever is left of it – and oppose leaving the EU with no deal” in the meaningful final vote promised by May after the Brexit talks conclude in November.
But he held out the possibility of supporting May – who is struggling to contain a rebellion against her Chequers plan from the right wing of her party – on his terms.
“If you deliver a deal that includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, if you protect jobs, people’s rights at work and environmental and consumer standards, then we will support that sensible deal. A deal that would be backed by most of the business world and trade unions too,” he told delegates.
Corbyn concluded: “But if you can’t negotiate that deal then you need to make way for a party that can.” That prompted the loudest applause in his fourth keynote address as party leader, in which he argued that since the 2008 financial crash his brand of politics was what the country needed.
The leader highlighted policy ideas unveiled by party colleagues, such as worker representation on company boards, taxation of second homes and reversing cuts to council services and police numbers. He also made pledges on childcare and vowed to maintain the triple-lock on the state pension in a bid to appeal to older voters.
“Conference, we are winning the public debate. We have defined the new common sense, and that’s where our party can stand united,” Corbyn said.
That, he said, explained the party’s relative success in the 2017 election, in which Labour gained dozens of seats and denied May control of the Commons. “That’s why Labour speaks for the new majority, why last year we won the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945, and why Labour’s ideas have caught the mood of our time.”
Corbyn’s carefully crafted statements on Brexit came at the end of a party conference that has been largely dominated by the European question, and in particular whether to support the idea of a second referendum following intense pressure from the party’s membership.
Delegates had supported a motion to keep open the option of campaigning for a second referendum if it cannot force a general election over the issue, but the compromise appeared to come unstuck when the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, seemed to contradict one another over whether remain should be an option on the ballot paper.
The Labour leader, however, stepped back from that debate as he focused his attack on May’s tortuous negotiations with Brussels. He said leaving the EU without a deal would be “a national disaster”, adding: “If parliament votes down a Tory deal or the government fails to reach any deal at all we would press for a general election.”
Referring obliquely to a second referendum, Corbyn added: “Failing that, all options are on the table.”
Corbyn’s declaration increases the chance of May not being able to get a final Brexit deal through parliament, given that the European Research Group faction in the Conservative party has repeatedly said it would also vote against Chequers.
The party leader accused May of being increasingly in hock to the her party’s right, saying that the main negotiations had been between “different factions of the Tory party”. He said that May and other cabinet ministers “see Brexit as their opportunity to impose a free market shock-doctrine in Britain” and cited the prime minister’s pledge made on Tuesday in a speech in the US to cut corporation tax to the lowest level in the G20.
On Thursday, Corbyn will meet the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, to explain his party’s opposition at a time when European commission officials are increasingly concerned that the UK will be unable to agree a final deal, making them fear a no-deal Brexit is more likely.
May’s Chequers proposals would keep the UK signed to a common rulebook of standards for food and goods after the country leaves the EU. May has repeatedly defended the scheme, although the European commission has said it will come back with its own counter-proposals next month as Brexit talks reach their final phase.
The speech contained few new policy pledges, instead citing announcements made by frontbench colleagues throughout conference; although Corbyn did, as had been trailed, promise a green energy policy he said would create 400,000 new jobs by 2030 and pledge that Labour would make 30 hours a week of free childcare available all two-, three- and four-year-olds.
Corbyn also referred to antisemitism, conceding the row over the issue had “caused immense hurt and anxiety in the Jewish community and great dismay in the Labour party”. He said he hoped it would be possible for the party “to draw a line” under the issue a month after the party adopted the full definition of antisemitism for its internal code of conduct as drawn up by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
He declared: “We will work with Jewish communities to eradicate antisemitism, both from our party and wider society. And with your help I will fight for that with every breath I possess,” and, reverting to first principles, added: “Anti-racism is integral to our very being. It’s part of who you all are, and it’s part of who I am”.
The leader did not reference any of the controversies about his own conduct; and he did not make the unconditional apology the former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks had called for after audio emerged of Corbyn accusing a group of British Zionists of being unable to understand English irony.
But Corbyn did attack the Conservatives, and accused the governing party of double standards. “We won’t accept it when we’re attacked by Tory hypocrites who accuse us of antisemitism one day, then endorse Viktor Orbán’s hard-right government the next. Or when they say we are racist, while they work to create a hostile environment for all migrant communities.”
He said race hate was a growing threat in Britain, Europe and the US that had to be confronted and said a rising far right was on the rise “on the rise, blaming minorities, Jews, Muslims and migrants, for the failures of a broken economic system”.
Corbyn also appeared to accuse Theresa May of pursuing a similar approach. “Its victims include the Windrush generation who helped rebuild Britain after the war and were thrown under the bus by a government that reckoned there were votes to be had by pandering to prejudice.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Labour Live was conceived in the spirit of solidarity, optimism, and a playful hubris. The idea behind it presumably went: if you could get all of Glastonbury festival chanting Jeremy Corbyn’s name, who’s to say you couldn’t bring such a crowd to see him headline? Well, there were lots to say it. People at Glastonbury are largely in an incredibly good mood – it would be prim to speculate as to why – and in such conditions, someone you love a bit becomes someone you love a lot. But that doesn’t mean you can be relied upon to chant again.
Primed for the fall after such an act of pride, Corbyn critics turned up ready for a soggy English summer’s day with sparse crowds huddled round a single Unite ice-cream van. A friend who went said she saw so many journalists it was like going to Hay. Yet many of the hacks will have been disappointed. Corbyn’s popularity – not by Survation poll or focus group, but by the sheer human warmth he generates – is unmatched by any other British politician. The doggedness and the petulance with which commentators wave away the fact that he could fill a stadium with people who’d actually paid, while Theresa May couldn’t half-fill a factory floor in Leicester where people were at work anyway, is becoming absurd.
But the event also revealed something much more uncomfortable for the Labour party leadership, something it cannot ignore for ever. Awkwardly for its fixed manifesto position of “respect the referendum”, its membership is 87% remain. “Bollocks to Brexit” stickers were everywhere. Activists from Our Future Our Choice (OFOC) brought a banner saying “Stop backing Brexit”, and were met with a range of responses, according to its spokesman Calum Millbank-Murphy – from the strong support of the young, to the “you lot are childish wankers” evaluation of the old. Eventually, OFOC was persuaded to lay down its banner and some people duly stamped on it.
The faultline among Labour members is not whether this Tory Brexit is a shambles – thinly veiled racism vying with colonialist fantasy to see which can insist more trenchantly that the complicated is simple, a deficit is a dividend, black is white. Most would treat that as a matter of established fact. The argument, rather, is whether Corbyn is best served on his route to Downing Street by everyone swallowing their objections and taking his lead, or whether, conversely, the argument on Europe is absolutely central to a socialist government, and that all of its values – from workers’ rights to the environment, from solidarity with the European left to the defence and enhancement of public services – would be kiboshed by even the softest of Brexits.
The loyalists point to the MPs who use the remain or soft Brexit agenda as a means of returning the party to centrist hands. Those MPs are pretty transparent about it: Chris Leslie on Sunday launched his vision for centrist politics, which was mainly platitudes and occasionally a straight lift from Corbyn’s existing position – the message being, “Let’s not sweat the practicalities: politics is better when there are normal people like me in charge.” So yes, it’s a hiccup that the loudest anti-Brexit voice within the party also has no respect for its leader.
Also, Labour’s soft Brexit proposition – single market membership with a side order of anti-immigration rhetoric to sate their imaginary northerner – is terrible. It serves the interests of capital while casually letting go of the European Union institutions that protected the individual – the only thing the EU has going for it.
However, plenty of leftwing remainers don’t want to be backed into silence by someone else’s agenda. Plenty of us do not swallow this great taboo around respecting a referendum result, when the campaign was built on naked lies (before you even consider Russian troll bots and what other rules were broken). Plenty of us would be savagely critical of the EU, but with the aim of reforming it, not abandoning it. Plenty of us want to see a Corbyn government able to enact its vision without the catastrophic recession that will follow Brexit, the social division that’s already evident, and oh, tiny thing, the fact we need the closest possible left-European alliance to defeat the fascism that is plainly on the rise.
There seems to have been a tacit agreement among pro-Corbyn activists, from constituency parties to Momentum, that respectable people avoid making problems for their leadership, and concentrate on local issues. That argument is starting to unravel, not so much evidenced by that splash of confrontation at Labour Live, but the Momentum petition that launched at the weekend: it called, in much more supportive language, for a conference vote on stopping Tory Brexit.
If they get the signatures, the “democracy” aspect of party policy must be observed, and members must vote. It puts a logic bomb under the sense of apathy and inevitability: this is, in the end, a party committed to democratic renewal. It has to be ready for its debates to mean something. Labour in its “New” era was suffused with what psychoanalysts would call hysterical negativity, members having a mutually reinforcing bitch-fest with no prospect of effecting change. What a tragedy it would be if the Corbyn movement, in quashing debate for strategic advantage, became just Blairism with a beard.
First published on Wed 9 May 2018 12.56 BST
Jeremy Corbyn sought to exploit Tory divisions over Brexit in the House of Commons on Wednesday, as he accused Theresa May of presiding over a shambles.
At prime minister’s questions, the Labour leader said the prime minister had had “23 months to negotiate an agreement” with her cabinet, but was yet to agree what customs arrangement she wants to strike with the EU27 after Brexit. “These negotiations are in a shambles,” he added.
Cabinet divisions over Brexit have burst into the open in the past week, with Boris Johnson launching an unprecedented attack on May’s preferred solution of a customs partnership, under which the UK would collect EU import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
He told the Daily Mail: “That’s not taking back control of your trade policy, it’s not taking back control of your laws, it’s not taking back control of your borders and it’s actually not taking back control of your money either, because tariffs would get paid centrally back to Brussels.”
The interview followed a staunch defence of the customs partnership by the business secretary, Greg Clark, as well as leading business groups on Sunday, in what was regarded by Brexiters as a coordinated intervention.
Brexiters believe there is a majority in May’s Brexit inner cabinet against the proposal, which they describe as a “dead parrot”.
They prefer the alternative maximum facilitation, or “max-fac” approach, which would use technology to minimise border checks.
Corbyn pointed out that this plan had been criticised by the former UK representative in Brussels, Sir Ivan Rogers, who described it as a “fantasy island unicorn model”.
“They have two options, neither of which are workable,” Corbyn said. The government, he said, had “wasted weeks working up proposals that the EU said was unworkable, that her own foreign secretary described as crazy”.
May conceded: “There were two options in my Mansion House speech. Questions have been raised about both of them and further work continues.”
She said there would be a deal where the UK would “leave the customs union, we have an independent free-trade policy, we maintain no hard border in Northern Ireland and we have as frictionless trade as possible”.
Whitehall sources said May’s Brexit inner cabinet would return to the issue again next Tuesday after a fractious meeting last week ended without agreement.
Backers of the customs partnership believe it is the only option capable of solving the challenge of preventing new border checks being introduced in Ireland.
Brussels had previously rejected the idea, but officials from the Department for Exiting the EU are continuing to look at the issue. The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, held out a glimmer of hope on Tuesday, saying May’s approach was a “welcome suggestion”.
“The view of the EU is that it isn’t workable in its current form but it is something that perhaps we could make workable,” he said.
Labour is also divided over Brexit, with 83 of the party’s peers defying the leadership on Tuesday night to back a House of Lords amendment to the EU withdrawal bill aimed at keeping Britain in the single market.
The government is expected to bring the key piece of Brexit legislation back to the Commons in the next fortnight, and seek MPs’ backing to remove 14 amendments made by peers, on issues including the Brexit date and a future customs union.
Labour whipped its peers to abstain on Tuesday’s amendment, which was tabled by Lord Alli and proposed pursuing membership of the European Economic Area. Pro-single market MPs hope it will put pressure on the leadership to shift its position.
Corbyn’s spokesman suggested after PMQs that the party would continue to seek “a new relationship with the single market”; but he stressed that EEA membership “includes a number of different relationships”.
He added that Labour objected to key aspects of the single market, including state aid and competition rules, and would seek “exemptions, clarifications or a negotiated change” to ensure Labour could carry out its manifesto pledges of increasing state involvement in the economy.
May said Corbyn’s approach was contradictory, because signing up to a customs union, as Labour proposes, would force Britain into trade deals it had played no part in negotiating.
“He has spent an entire career opposing a customs union. Now, when the British people want to come out, he wants to stay in. I know he’s leader of the opposition but that goes a bit far,” she said.
Labour insists it would only sign up to a customs union if it were given some say over future deals.
Nick Timothy, the prime minister’s former chief of staff, used a column in the Daily Telegraph to side with Johnson and urge May to reject the customs partnership, which he said would restrict Britain’s ability to strike future trade deals.
He said the government should instead back “max fac” – even if that means extending the transition period beyond 2021 while new technologies are developed.
“If there is a compromise to be made, ministers might accept that ‘max fac’ will take longer to be introduced than the current implementation timetable suggests,” Timothy said.
The same idea was also advocated by Nick Boles, a backbencher and Michael Gove ally on Wednesday.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
It is hard to imagine Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn swapping Brexit confidences, but if it did happen they would find they had a lot in common. Both were chilly remainers who kept the referendum campaign at arm’s length. Both then embraced a leaver’s agenda with an eagerness pro-Europeans found unseemly. May harbours a quietly nationalistic distaste for anything that presumes cultural and political parity between the UK and continentals. Corbyn is steeped in socialist distrust of institutions that uphold free markets. The European Union is too foreign for the Tory leader and too capitalist for the Labour one, but neither wants to be defined by that reaction. They are natural Eurosceptics, not wild Europhobes.
But those vague inclinations don’t help much with the technical choices that Brexit demands. This is a bigger problem for the prime minister, since the stakes are so much higher in Downing Street. An opposition leader can learn from the government’s mistakes. Corbyn is also lucky that his MPs push him in a direction that goes with the grain of diplomatic and economic reality – towards integration with the EU. May is constrained by backbenchers who are bitterly estranged from an evidence-led appraisal of Britain’s options.
That difference accounts for Corbyn’s acceptance in a speech on Monday that the UK should form a customs union with the EU. This decision was long in assembly, then tugged slowly out of dock by a fleet of hints, so its formal launch is not a surprise. But it is important. It lays the foundation for a common platform with rebellious Tory MPs of a pro-European bent. In a hung parliament, power quickly drains from a government that loses votes, and Labour’s customs union has Commons arithmetic on its side.
The shift also stands out as an example of the kind of choice that May can’t make. Even a small opposition action looks big against the expanse of government inaction. Corbyn has dared to name an item on the menu, albeit only a starter, while May describes exotic dishes the chefs have said countless times do not exist.
But the Labour and Tory leaders are still at the same table in the same restaurant. Fevered reactions to the customs union move have obscured the fact that Corbyn delivered the most explicitly pro-Brexit speech of his leadership of the party. Its central premise was that the hazards of leaving the EU have been exaggerated, and that the only real risk comes from the whole thing being done by wicked Tories.
Corbyn’s view is that, quite aside from a democratic duty to honour the referendum result, Brexit is a sensible, indeed desirable goal, just as long as it is handled by a party of the left. This has long been implicit in the Labour leader’s actions. Its explicit declaration will still disappoint anyone harbouring hopes that the opposition is engaged in some cunning guerrilla sabotage, sniping tactically at the Tories and holding back from a full-throated remain cry only because public opinion is unready to hear it. Corbyn’s cards have come away from his chest, and he’s holding a flush of leave.
This is risky when a majority of Labour members opposed Brexit. Many still hate it with a passion, including some of the Momentum infantry whose loyalty is to Corbyn personally. Their allegiance has been unshakable so far, but some might yet feel let down when they discover that their hero will never fly the blue-and-yellow flag for a united Europe. The Labour leadership is gambling that, for the Momentum crowd, personal trust in the man they call simply “Jeremy” is stronger than attachment to the sterile remain badge. The pitch is a cosy Corbyn Brexit.
This formula involves keeping standards for workers and environmental protections that some Tories itch to shred. It imposes migration controls (since the leave-voting public in Labour constituencies demands them) but, being Corbyn-approved, the new border regime would be uncontaminated by racial animus. The most capitalistic bits of the EU – rules limiting state control of industry, for instance – can be dealt with through “protections, clarifications and exemptions”. The whole package means leaving the single market, but in a friendly and piecemeal fashion.
The key word Corbyn used to describe this relationship with the EU is “bespoke”, a term copied from May’s little book of Brexit bluffs. Every European leader has made it clear that the advantages of the single market come as a set, with obligations to uphold the rules. Cherry-picking bits of the apparatus and spitting out ideologically indigestible stones is not an option. That is a legal fact, not a negotiating posture. It makes no difference that Labour is more trusted in Brussels to be pro-European, or that the cherries Corbyn wants to pick are on the left-hand side of the tree, or that he says “jobs-first Brexit”.
Quitting the single market has severe economic costs, regardless of the motive for doing so. Any decent national leader would explain that to the country, but neither the prime minister nor her Labour rival wants to do it. Their positions are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they are symmetrical. Both want to leave the EU and pretend that it can be done without pain. Both are on a halting, meandering journey, like a slow bicycle race, towards the understanding that Brexit in practice looks nothing like the Brexit theories that prevailed in the referendum campaign. After that vote, Corbyn and May embarked on parallel collision courses with reality. The Labour leader’s greatest advantage has been the time and space to amend the trajectory. The prime minister, under pressure from her party, pedalled harder and faster towards the impossible. So she will crash first.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Jeremy Hunt has called on the EU to change its approach on Brexit, and said the risk of failing to reach a deal has risen in recent weeks.
The British foreign secretary was speaking at the start of three-day tour of continental Europe aimed at persuading member states to back Theresa May’s Brexit plan.
“I think the risk of a no Brexit deal has been increasing recently,” Hunt told journalists in Helsinki. “But it’s not what anyone wants and I hope very much that we’ll find a way to avoid that.”
He added: “We do need to see a change in approach by the European commission.”
Hunt, who became foreign secretary last month after Boris Johnson resigned in protest at May’s plan, is also due to meet counterparts in Latvia, Denmark and the Netherlands. While the countries have been strong UK allies, none has budged from the EU’s common position on Brexit.
Over the summer the prime minister has sent senior ministers on trips across the continent in an attempt to persuade governments of her plan while circumventing the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.
Last month David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, went to Paris, while the home secretary, Sajid Javid, was in Portugal, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, took the government’s no-deal warning to Rome. May has been to Austria, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, while Hunt went to Berlin.
So far the government’s attempt to go over the head of Barnier, whose mandate has been agreed by the EU’s 27 leaders, has not yielded visible results.
Negotiations are due to resume on Thursday in Brussels after a three-week gap. Senior officials will attempt to make progress on the problem of the Irish border and will discuss the future relationship between Britain and the bloc. Barnier and the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, are not expected to be present.
Hunt’s warning came after Barnier’s deputy, Sabine Weyand, tweeted on Monday there was “no guarantee we will succeed” and called on business “to prepare for a disorderly Brexit”.
Both sides say they want a deal on the Brexit divorce settlement to be concluded by the autumn. While 80% of the treaty text has been agreed, the two remain far apart on how to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
To resolve the border issue, the EU wants a guaranteed fallback that would keep Northern Ireland subject to the EU customs union and many single market rules. This “backstop” would fall into place should the two sides be unable to agree a new trading relationship. But the UK has said no government could ever accept a de-facto border in the Irish Sea.
While Britain is looking for more flexibility from Barnier, there is no sign of a change in the EU’s basic position. Barnier has said he wants to “de-dramatise” the Irish border question, but the EU regards the UK’s alternative plan as unacceptable.
First published on Sun 22 Oct 2017 23.21 BST
Jean-Claude Juncker has rushed to salvage relations with Downing Street at a dangerous point in the Brexit negotiations by denying claims that the prime minister had begged for help at a recent private dinner, instead insisting she had been in “good shape” and “fighting”.
The European commission president made the comments hours after his chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, felt the need to publicly deny being the source of an account of the meal in Brussels, published in a German newspaper. The report had described May as pleading for her political life at the dinner on 16 October and appearing “anxious”, “tormented”, “despondent and discouraged”.
Juncker, on a visit to Strasbourg University, said the claims and comments attributed to him in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) were untrue. His public denunciation is indicative of a growing fear in Brussels that a narrative is being built in which the EU will be blamed for provoking a “no deal” scenario.
“I am really surprised – if not shocked – about what has been written in the German press,” he said. “And of course repeated by the British press. Nothing is true in all of this. I had an excellent working dinner with Theresa May. She was in good shape, she was not tired, she was fighting as is her duty so everything for me was OK.”
Asked whether May, who is struggling to keep her divided cabinet together, had begged for help in selling a divorce bill of €60bn (£53bn), he responded: “No, that’s not the style of British prime ministers.”
Later, in a speech at Strasbourg University, Juncker again insisted that the prime minister had not appeared tired but was working for a good deal. However, he added of the financial settlement: “We must know what will be the bill of commitments that the Brits are taking.”
Selmayr had tweeted earlier on Monday that he had nothing to do with the contentious report after Nick Timothy, May’s most senior aide until he resigned following the general election, blamed him for the disclosures. “After constructive [European] Council meeting, Selmayr does this. Reminder that some in Brussels want no deal or a punitive one,” Timothy had tweeted.
Selmayr wrote in response: “This is false. I know it does’t fit your cliché, @NickJTimothy. But @JunckerEU & I have no interest in weakening PM”.
He went on: “But it seems some have interest in undermining constructive relations @JunckerEU & PM May. Who? is the real question”, adding:
The FAZ article says Juncker, who had a debrief with the article 50 taskforce after the dinner, described the meal to his colleagues, suggesting a wide cast of people had access to the information.
In an unusual step, the European commission’s chief spokesperson, Margaritis Schinas, had also insisted that Juncker had not made the observations detailed in the report. He suggested that unnamed people were seeking to undermine the EU’s negotiating position, adding that they should “leave us alone”.
Schinas said: “Some people like to point at us to serve their own political agendas, their own political priorities, or even to undermine our negotiating position. We would appreciate it if these people would leave us alone. We have lots of work and no time for gossip.
“I have to be very clear that President Juncker would never use the words attributed to him and never have said anything like this. We have never been punitive on Brexit. We have said at all levels on many occasions that we were working for a fair deal.”After last week’s dinner, a joint statement had been released agreeing to accelerate Brexit talks. It described the meal as having taken place in a “constructive and friendly atmosphere”. Juncker promised to give a “postmortem” of the meal to reporters, but no other details emerged during the week.
However, on Sunday FAZ claimed that when May came to Brussels she had “begged for help”. It said she had emphasised to Juncker the risk she had taken in “giving up the hard Brexit course and asking for a transitional period of two years, in which everything is going to be the same”.
May was reported to have recalled “that she had also moved on the delicate issue of finances”. The paper added: “And she let them know that friend and foe at home were breathing down her neck, waiting for her to fall. She said she had no room for manoeuvre, and that the Europeans would have to make it for them.”
The article went on: “The prime minister is drawn from the struggle with her own party. Under her eyes she wears deep rings. She looks like someone who does not sleep through the night.”
The newspaper claimed that, despite denials from Downing Street, the meal had been arranged at the last minute.
It was claimed that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, also told May in a phone call before the European council summit on Thursday and Friday that Berlin was not willing to solve Britain’s problems.
At the summit, EU leaders ruled that insufficient progress had been made in the negotiations for Brussels to open talks on a future trading relationship with Britain. There were, however, warm words for May from Merkel and the president of the European council, Donald Tusk.
A No 10 spokesman denied the meal had been arranged in haste, but refused to be drawn on any other aspect of the article, including suggestions that she had begged for help.
A report in the Times claimed that the leaks had left Merkel “furious”, fearing they could lead to the collapse of the talks and May being toppled in the middle of negotiations.
Also attending the meal with Juncker and May were the Brexit secretary, David Davis, the prime minister’s chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, and the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.
Earlier this year, Selmayr was accused of leaking to FAZ details of a private dinner in April between May and Juncker at Downing Street, which the commission president was said to have left “10 times more sceptical” than when he arrived.
Last modified on Sat 2 Jun 2018 22.08 BST
Jean-Claude Juncker has thrown the new government in Rome an olive branch, warning that Brussels and “German-speaking countries” must not repeat the error made during the Greek crisis by reading stern lectures to the Italian people.
The president of the European commission said that, while he had been tempted to intervene during the recent political impasse in Italy, he was determined not to feed the populist narrative: that the EU is meddling in domestic affairs.
Juncker noted that the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the rightwing League party had both recently dropped their policy of exit from the European Union, and he would judge them on their deeds and not their rhetoric.
Giuseppe Conte was sworn in as Italian prime minister on Friday after a last-ditch coalition deal between the two parties ended months of political deadlock and narrowly averted the need for a snap election in the eurozone’s third-largest economy.
Conte attended a military parade on his first full day in office, while his deputy Matteo Salvini, head of the League and an ally of French rightwing leader Marine Le Pen, was heading to Sicily as part of his campaign against illegal immigration.
In an interview with German news service RedaktionsNetzwerk, Juncker admitted to “concern” about the recent developments in Italy, but insisted that the recent turmoil in the financial markets in response to the new government had been “irrational” and should not be seen as a guide to how the political story will unfold in Rome.
“I think very highly of President Mattarella, but I have not spoken to him during this crisis. I have not interfered, although I have been tempted to,” Juncker said. “I do not want to feed the accusations spread by the populists that we are sitting in Brussels meddling in Italy’s affairs. I am certain the Italians have a keen sense of what is good for their country. They will sort it out.”
But he went on: “By keeping out of it, I’m not helping. By getting involved, I’m not helping. I am caught between a rock and a hard place.”
The commission president had flirted with danger on Thursday by suggesting that the EU should not be blamed for the state of Italy’s poorer regions, where there needed to be “more work” and “less corruption”. Rather than blaming the EU, there needed to be more “seriousness” within the country about tackling its economic and social problems, he said.
In this latest interview, Juncker claimed that he had personally fought against those who wanted to launch an excessive debt procedure against Italy over the state of its finances, a process that would be designed to give the EU more power to enforce austerity on Rome.
Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone, has a public debt second only to Greece’s and there was a negative reaction from the financial markets to the League-M5S coalition, which plans to significantly raise public spending.
Juncker offered a more placatory tone, suggesting that Brussels and Berlin had learned the lessons of the Greek crisis. He also denied that the eurozone was set on a course for another economic downturn: “The Italians cannot really complain about austerity measures from Brussels. However, I do not now want to lecture Rome. We must treat Italy with respect. Too many lectures were given to Greece in the past, in particular from German-speaking countries. This dealt a blow to the dignity of the Greek people. The same thing must not be allowed to happen to Italy.” Juncker said that the financial markets’ reaction was “irrational”: “People should not draw political conclusions from every fluctuation in the stock market. Investors have been wrong on so many occasions.”
Neither of the coalition parties in the new Italian government campaigned on leaving the euro or the EU, but both have backed such calls in the past and are scathing about the rules that underpin the eurozone.
Mujtaba Rahman, a former European commission and UK Treasury official who now works for consultancy the Eurasia Group, warned that as the cornerstone of the coalition government’s platform was fiscal expansion, it was liable to clash with the commission this autumn.
“Though no official estimates have been produced, independent estimates suggest the proposed measures would cost, combined, upwards of €100bn per annum, around 6% of GDP.“If the government were to propose a very expansionary budget, the commission – which provides its opinions and recommendations on member states’ draft budgetary plans – would have to reject it in September. This would be a first, and would set the stage for a real confrontation with Rome,” he said.
“A significant deviation from EU-mandated fiscal targets may prompt the commission to open a new Excessive Deficit Procedure, a process designed to give the EU more power to enforce austerity on Rome. Yet the symbolism of this move would only strengthen the Italian government’s domestic standing.”The size of the Italian economy means that a bailout in line with that given to Greece – should the financial markets turn on the Italian government – would be a huge and crippling endeavour for the EU. Rumours have emerged in Brussels that Berlin is looking at a plan B which would instead involve seeking to contain the spill over of future economic turmoil in Italy.
Daniel Gros, a German economist, and director of the Centre for European Policy Studies think-tank, said: “The view is that it would be impossible to do a standard European Stability Mechanism programme for Italy because you would exhaust the entire capacity of the ESM. And Italy is not like Greece: it has a strong economy, it has a current account surplus and critically it has very little net foreign debt as a country. It would make no sense. Yet an ESM might be needed, if things get rough, to help Spain and Portugal.
He added: “This is not an economic problem where economic measures are needed but just some crazy politics for which one does not understand the rationale... There is very little Brussels can do. I think they are still hoping that somehow they can bring Italy to reason, but I think that is a forlorn hope”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. If those seven words don’t already inspire a powerful urge to throw something at the wall, then don’t worry, they will soon enough.
This phrase is fast emerging as the new “Brexit means Brexit”, a kind of gnomic verbal chaff thrown up whenever the prime minister needs to sound tremendously definitive while revealing absolutely nothing. But like its predecessor, its very meaninglessness does actually tell us something, if only that there’s trouble ahead.
Today Theresa May came to parliament to explain what just happened in the Brexit talks, which was practically an afternoon’s work in itself. Just to recap, for anyone who has lost the will to live by now: first her deal was unravelled at the 11th hour by the Democratic Unionist party, in a painful reminder that she only clings to power at the discretion of her coalition partners. Then it was heroically re-ravelled in time to be signed on Friday, to genuine gulps of relief on all sides.
And then it was frayed at the edges on Sunday by David Davis suggesting on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that the deal wasn’t binding and therefore perhaps not all that meaningful. Who knows what its state of ravelledness will be by the time you read this, but if nothing else the past few days have taught us something about the hellish political conditions under which May is trying to operate.
The great mystery at the end of last week was how on earth she had convinced Tory Brexiters to embrace a deal they could easily have hated, given how tantalisingly close it brings us to a soft Brexit (or more specifically, a deal where Britain would remain closely aligned with EU regulations in many areas if alternative solutions to the Irish border problem turn out to be as unworkable as they sound). One answer is that they just don’t think the deal is all that meaningful. Much now hinges on whether they are right.
In a strict legal sense, of course, they are. That’s what “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” means. It means both sides can say what they like about the broad outlines of the final deal now, but if the next phase of talks hit the rocks – if it’s clear there won’t actually be a final deal – then all of this is effectively null and void.
Hard Brexiters still have plenty of chances to pull the plug on this whole process, or on May, if they start to get worried about where she’s going – and the knowledge that they can do so is almost certainly necessary to keep them onboard. When Ken Clarke asked the prime minister in the Commons to confirm that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” doesn’t actually mean everything can be torn up on a whim, May tried her level best to confirm as little as possible.
But the fact that Davis was sent out to clarify his Sunday morning remarks suggests Downing Street desperately doesn’t want to be seen as negotiating in bad faith. May will understand the serious risks to the Irish peace process of undermining the assurances given, and she knows business is desperate for more certainty on which to plan ahead. As Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons – with quite some chutzpah, given Labour’s own Brexit strategy seems practically to evolve by the hour – it may well be time for some clarity.
The problem is that clarity is the one thing May dare not provide, because the minute anything is illuminated then it’s a target for someone. Her best hope is generating a sort of permanently confused twilight in which nobody (including her own cabinet, which still hadn’t formally agreed the precise form Brexit should take even as the EU agreed we had made significant progress towards it) is entirely sure what’s going on, and therefore can’t be certain yet that they hate it.
So nothing is agreed until everyone finds out exactly what it is that they’re supposed to be agreeing, at which point it is still perfectly possible that nobody will agree to any of it. But the aim is to push the inevitable moment of truth – the point where both leavers and remainers realise exactly what’s going to happen, and someone goes ballistic – as far down the road as possible.
This is of course the sort of deliberate obfuscation that gives politics a bad name; by turns maddening and baffling, and permanently teetering on the edge of rank dishonesty. But just occasionally, it is also the only thing that makes politics work at all. Labour knows that perfectly well, which is why it has its own version of constructive ambiguity designed to keep both leavers and remainers on board the Corbyn project.
May’s strategy, meanwhile, is starting to feel uncannily like a clumsier version of what happened in the run-up to the Good Friday agreement, when key phrases – putting paramilitary weapons “beyond use”, say – were left just hazy enough to get both sides to agree.
The point then was to keep the momentum going, keep all sides talking. And, as now, to hope against hope that by the time negotiations reached the crunch point everyone would have simply gone too far down the road to turn back.
First published on Thu 23 Aug 2018 09.58 BST
Labour’s Brexit spokesman has said a second referendum should be “on the table” if parliament is not prepared to accept the final divorce deal that Theresa May negotiates with Brussels.
Sir Keir Starmer’s statement contradicted remarks that Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, made earlier this week and comes at a time when the party is coming under pressure from activists to support holding another vote.
Starmer said he had never accepted that MPs should support the Brexit agreement May brings back from Brussels, “however bad it is”, signalling that Labour is likely to vote against May’s divorce agreement when it is brought to the Commons for approval in the autumn.
The Labour MP added: “I do think there needs to be a democratic check. I don’t think the prime minister can simply decide for herself what the future of this country looks like. I have focused on the vote in parliament, and the meaningful vote.
“If that vote is to reject the article 50 deal, parliament must decide what happens next. In those circumstances, it seems to me, all options should be on the table.
“So we’ve not called for a vote on the deal; we’ve called for a vote in parliament on the deal. But I accept the proposition that, if it’s voted down, parliament then decides what happens next and in those circumstances, in my experience in the last few years, keep your options on the table, not off the table.”
When asked again specifically about a second referendum, Starmer said: “We are not calling for it, but in the event that article 50 is voted down, we think all options should be on the table … That is the Labour party position.”
On Tuesday, Gardiner emphasised that a second referendum was not the party’s current policy, and said there could be civil disobedience if an attempt were made to overturn the Brexit vote through another national poll.
“If people want to be able to achieve change through democratic means, if they feel that that is being denied to them, they then turn to other, more socially disruptive ways of expressing their views, and that is the danger here,” he said.
Starmer dismissed these claims in his interview. “Well, we’ve had lots of ups and downs already on Brexit. I’m sure there are many to come, and I have not seen signs of civil disobedience. So I think we can get through this exercise without that,” he said.
The difference of opinion emerges at a time when Labour is coming under pressure from campaigners to hold a vote on whether to endorse the idea of holding a second referendum as policy at its party conference in September.
Labour activists are preparing contemporary resolutions in the hope they will be passed by constituency parties and put forward to conference for debate. Labour policy at the moment is that the party is not calling for a second referendum, but campaigners hope that Jeremy Corbyn will have to give ground on the issue in order to stave off a damaging defeat on the conference floor.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
A year and five days before the UK is due to leave the European Union, Keir Starmer is confronting a series of uncomfortable truths. He never wanted Brexit to happen and still doesn’t – but he accepts there is nothing he or anyone else can do to stop it. Asked if the impending breach with our 27 EU partners is now inevitable, the shadow Brexit secretary is clear. “Article 50 was triggered a year ago,” he says. “It expires in 52 weeks and a few days, and I don’t think there is any realistic prospect of it being revoked. Therefore we will be leaving the EU in March 2019.”
So there it is. The man in charge of the Brexit policy of a pro-European opposition party that could soon be in government, that campaigned for Remain, and two-thirds of whose supporters backed staying in the European Union on referendum day, holds out no hope of reversing the decision. He takes no pleasure in saying so. “I campaigned to stay in the EU. I voted to stay in the EU and I was very disappointed by the outcome. And if there was another vote I would vote to remain in.”
But he doesn’t think there will be a second referendum, nor does he seem to believe there should be one. Starmer may regret deeply what will come to pass on 29 March next year, but he feels equally strongly that what must be must be. “Having asked the electorate for a view by way of the referendum, we have to respect the result,” he says. “If you find yourself in a position you would rather was not there, you have to make it work. We have to do that for the current generation and for future generations.”
Many Labour MPs and supporters will be dismayed to hear him talk this way and he knows that. “Is it difficult? Of course it’s difficult,” he says. “Almost everybody in the Labour party has a view on Brexit. But almost no (two) people have the same view. They all give me their opinions all of the time in texts, in emails, in one-to- one conversations, in groups.”
From the top to bottom of Labour there are differences of view. Jeremy Corbyn may inspire young people but he is a Eurosceptic at odds on Brexit with much of the youthful mass membership that is his powerbase. The left is split within its own ranks. Most of the unions that fund Labour are in favour of staying in the single market, but Corbyn seems implacably opposed. Wherever Starmer treads, there are competing demands he has to try to satisfy. “You have got the basic mathematics that show that, broadly speaking, two-thirds of our [Labour] voters voted to remain and one-third voted to leave. You have then got the flipside of that when you get to the constituency representation, which is the other way round.
“Two-thirds of our MPs are in Leave seats and one-third are in Remain seats, and MPs quite rightly feel strongly that they should be trying to put across the views of those they have been elected by. That inevitably means there are different views.”
It is not just the Leavers versus the Remainers. “There is also the matter of how close people think we should be to the EU [after Brexit]. There are different views in the different groupings in the Labour party.”
The only thing he can do, he says, is try to keep the party together by managing the multiplicity of opinions. His objective is to prevent Labour splitting on Brexit as the Tories have for decades over Europe. “My view has been informed by my strong belief that we really cannot allow the Labour party to divide and break up on this issue. We have got to hold the party together, and of course that means there are huge challenges.”
As if to make the point for him, on the day we speak his shadow cabinet colleague Owen Smith is sacked by Corbyn for saying Labour must back staying in the single market and a second referendum – both of which are against current party policy.
So given this constant internal tug-of-war, what kind of Brexit does Starmer himself want? And what does he believe is deliverable after March next year, and then after the transition period ends in December 2020?
If anyone can finesse an argument it is Starmer. He left a stellar career in law which saw him scale the heights of that profession to become director of public prosecutions before entering parliament in 2010. But while his legal past is an asset in many ways, it has caused some in his party to accuse him of being too much the lawyer, too little the brave politician giving a lead. He is charged by some with favouring policies that amount to no more than “constructive ambiguity” just to keep peace in his party.
Naturally, he strongly contests that view and says that, step by step, a Labour Brexit plan is taking shape that is increasingly bold and distinct. It is one, adds Starmer, that backs close post-Brexit links with the EU and so sets Labour well apart from the hard-Brexit Tories. He has already dragged Corbyn, the shadow chancellor John McDonnell, and the shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner round to the view that Labour should back remaining in a customs union with the EU post-Brexit. It is the only way to resolve the problem of the Irish border, he says. In a speech tomorrow he will announce plans to rally cross-party support behind an amendment to the withdrawal bill which would enshrine into law a commitment to avoid any form of hard border.
But no sooner had he delivered on the customs union commitment a few weeks ago than Starmer faced a barrage of demands from the large pro-EU wing of the parliamentary Labour party to go a big step further and support keeping the UK in the single market, too. Corbyn and McDonnell will not wear that, as evidenced by the summary dismissal of Smith on Friday night. Plenty of pro-single market Labour MPs say Starmer could honour the referendum result (and take the UK out) while remaining in the single market by joining the European Free Trade Association, like Norway. He rejects that route, saying that what suits Norway would not suit the UK. “Why would any country want to borrow the model that another country has that suits their economy and their interests?” he asks.
Instead he is clear that he wants a “bespoke” UK deal with the EU. “We need no persuading of the benefits of the single market and customs union. That is why our manifesto was to maintain the benefits of both. That is not a throwaway commitment. We want the benefits of both to be hardwired into the final agreement,” he says. This sounds at first like having your cake and eating it. Starmer knows as well as anyone that full access to the single market, with all its benefits, would require the UK to agree to EU free-movement rules, opposition to which was the main reason millions of Labour voters backed Brexit.
So what is he thinking? He hints at a possible arrangement, a potential area for compromise, under which the UK could, under a Labour government, meet the EU at least halfway on free movement by giving its citizens preferential terms for coming to the UK to work, over those from non-EU states. Again, he suggests progress is possible only if the party can be held together. “What we are focused on is what is needed for our economy and our communities – in other words a principled, humane and effective approach [to free movement], not an approach – like the government’s – that simply says we should keep to a certain number.”
Over the next few months there will be plenty of flashpoints on Brexit that will expose Labour’s divisions and tensions, as well as Tory ones, and Starmer will be in the middle of them all. Some time after Easter the House of Lords is likely to back amendments calling for the UK to remain in the single market. What will Labour then do when these are voted on in the Commons? Will it whip its MPs to strike them out of the withdrawal bill, or back them?
Starmer ducks the question, saying it depends what the amendments actually say. It is a nightmare issue for a man who, many colleagues believe, would love to be able to back staying in the single market if only his leader would allow it.
But at the same time he rules nothing out. Starmer seems unfazed by the near impossibility of his task. But he does bear the scars of trying to honour the referendum result while forging a policy that would keep the UK as close as possible to the EU after it leaves.
The most exhausting part of the whole process, he says, was over the decision Labour made last year to back triggering article 50 – the process that put the country on course for the Brexit he never wanted.
Starmer was evidently tortured by that decision and it now seems to haunt him with a year to go until exit day. “We are a pro-EU party, we campaigned to stay in the EU. It was a difficult and draining time for all us of us.”
Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2020 17.09 GMT
Ken Clarke has written to constituents who have contacted him with concerns about Britain’s vote to leave the European Union to reassure them: “The referendum is not binding.”
In an email leaked to the Guardian, the Conservative grandee bemoaned the fact that most politicians “paid lip service to the supposedly democratic nature of the exercise”.
He said pro-European politicians should use opportunities in parliament to have a say over Brexit. “I think that MPs should vote according to their judgment of the national interest and the interest of their constituents,” he wrote.
The referendum was not an “instruction to any MP on how to vote” on the practical consequences around the economy, trade, migration or other arrangements that could emerge in Brexit negotiations, he said.
Instead, the MP told a resident in Rushcliffe, he would do his best “to contribute to mitigating the disaster that this decision on 23 June might otherwise cause”.
Clarke, who declined to comment on the contents of the email but did not deny he had written it, also wrote that he would be likely to vote against any move to trigger article 50, the mechanism that would begin the process of the UK leaving the EU.
However, he is unlikely to get the opportunity to do so after Downing Street said the government would not be offering MPs or peers a vote on the issue. The prime minister’s official spokeswoman was responding to a House of Lords constitution committee warning that it would be “constitutionally inappropriate” for Theresa May to trigger article 50 without consulting parliament.
The committee, chaired by the Conservative peer and former trade secretary Ian Lang, said it would set a “disturbing precedent” for May to act without explicit approval from MPs and lords.
But Downing Street dismissed the report, saying the government “takes a different view”, and pointing out that both the Commons and Lords voted in favour of the referendum, which put the decision about EU membership into the hands of the public.
In his message, Clarke described himself as being in the “rather exceptional position” of being a long time Europhile who had opposed the referendum and whose constituents had voted 60/40 in favour of remaining.
Although he said he would like to oppose article 50, he admitted: “There may be only a few eccentrics in the House of Commons in that lobby.”
However, Clarke, who said the constituent was one of hundreds who had written to him with concerns about Brexit, suggested MPs could cause more trouble down the line.
“More significantly, none of the Brexiteers at the moment have any clear idea of what they want to do next by way of actual change to our economy, trade, migration and other arrangements with the EU. A flood of legislation and regulations will probably have to be put before parliament over the next few years, implementing changes,” he wrote.
Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP whoseNorth West Leicestershire constituency is near Clarke’s Rushcliffe seat, said it was “disappointing that Ken Clarke, a great parliamentarian and someone who I thought believes in real democracy could possibly say such things.
”The support he has locally in Rushcliffe delivered the only convincing remain vote in the whole of the east Midlands and as an east Midlands MP he should take that really on board. There is no need for a parliamentary vote. We’ve all had a vote. I had a vote and Ken had a vote. And I am disappointed in those who think some people’s votes are worth more than others. Though I do have the have the highest respect for Ken Clarke, who has been a consistent Europhile and consistently wrong.”
Clarke also called the referendum campaign “quite nasty and not very informative particularly on the leave side but sometimes on the remain side in the national reports in the media”.
It is not the first time that Clarke has made controversial comments. During the short-lived Tory leadership contest he was caught on camera describing May as a “bloody difficult woman” and predicting that Michael Gove would go to war with three countries at once as prime minister.
The email was leaked at a time when there is disagreement between the high-profile groups that have grown out of the remain and leave campaigns.
Vote Leave’s successor, Change Britain, has been criticised after it included a clip of a pro-EU Labour MP on its Facebook page, suggesting he might support the group. The video shows Chuka Umunna welcoming the “overall tone” of an article written in the Sun on Sunday by the high-profile out campaigner Gisela Stuart, and saying it was important to bring people together.
But those working with Umunna said the video was cut short, and that he went on to say: “That doesn’t mean that all these promises that were made during the referendum campaign by the leave campaign ... should be just discarded and forgotten.”
A source from Vote Leave Watch, a group that Umunna chairs, said: “Calling Chuka a supporter of Change Britain is like calling Boris Johnson a campaigner for honesty in politics.
“Change Britain can have their fun, but Chuka and Vote Leave Watch will continue to be relentless in holding them to account for their broken promise to spend £350m more a week on the NHS.”

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
The twin pillars of Tory pro-Europeanism, the two men who defended that lonely cause in the Thatcher heyday and through the long trudge of the Major years, have responded very differently to Brexit. On one side stands Michael Heseltine, belated darling of the remainers, the lion in winter who won a deluge of Twitter love for his speech before a vast crowd at last month’s People’s Vote rally, where he spoke lyrically of his lost European dream. And there, on the other, is Kenneth Clarke, 79 this summer, not in the House of Lords but still slugging it out as a working MP, on his feet asking pointed questions, moving amendments in nail-biting midnight sessions, even tabling the alternative Brexit proposal – continued membership of a customs union – that came closest to success, falling short by just three votes.
It is not merely that Hezza, as Clarke calls him, has retired from the Commons while Clarke is still there: Father of the House, no less, in recognition of the fact that he has served continuously since 1970, a record matched only by Dennis Skinner. It also points to a deeper difference. Clarke is a devout pragmatist, an evangelical realist. Pro-European he may be, but that faith is trumped by his deference to “the real world”, a phrase he uses no fewer than five times when the two of us meet in his corner office at Portcullis House.
And so, while Heseltine or the next generation of (formerly) Conservative pro-Europeans such as Anna Soubry are holding out for a second referendum that might keep Britain in the EU, Clarke is committed to accepting reality, as he sees it. “Unless and until I can see an opportunity of actually reversing Brexit and restoring a stable membership of the European Union, then in the real world I concentrate on minimising the damage,” he says, sitting behind a desk that could only belong to Ken Clarke. (On it are several copies of the Nottingham Post; a cassette of Artie Shaw’s greatest hits; and a small booklet that turns out to be the Rules and By-laws of the Garrick Club.) “Only an ideologue deals with the world as he would wish it to be, as opposed to the world as it is.” When he recalls Edward Heath, the first Tory prime minister Clarke served as a frontbencher, he describes him as a “fanatic pro-European”. It is not a compliment.
This is how Clarke, so vehement a pro-European he once championed Britain joining the euro, has found himself breaking from his one-time comrades in the cause, becoming instead an advocate of soft Brexit. It has made him that rare creature on the Conservative benches: a Europhile MP who has voted for Theresa May’s deal three times, filing into the aye lobby against the ultras who dismiss it as not Brexity enough and the remainers who see it as too Brexity to stomach.
It has been lonely for the former chancellor, former home secretary and serially defeated Tory leadership candidate. “That’s why I’m so annoyed by the fact that nobody’s been able to compromise: everybody votes everything else down apart from their own perfect solution. I have made a very considerable compromise.”
It has been compromise upon compromise for him. When he proposed his customs union amendment, he did it with no love or enthusiasm. It was, he admitted, no more than a “lowest common denominator”. For one thing, it called only for a customs union. “Again, pragmatic old me, not the customs union.”
He knows that’s not good enough. “I personally am desperately anxious that we stay in the single market for economic reasons. And I think we should retain the closest links we can, politically, and within the fields of security and criminal justice enforcement and so on. But it was a start. At least it didn’t exclude anything else.”
Why not hold out for the big prize, of staying in the EU? Winning a second referendum would deliver that, and then he wouldn’t have to compromise. The great European project that has dominated his working life could live on. “Great friends of mine, political friends as well as personal friends, like Michael and Anna, are convinced that another referendum can save us the whole thing,” he concedes. But he just can’t bring himself to join them. “I think referendums are ridiculous. One opinion poll with a simple yes/no answer to a question that contains hundreds of complex questions. Referendums are designed to get round parliamentary government, and people only demand referendums when they think they can’t get a majority in parliament.” He takes a breath. “Mussolini was the most brilliant practitioner of referendums.”
But no one’s urging Clarke to become a habitual user of referendums. Just one, to deal with the mess left by the last one. “Just one they think they might win,” he says of the second referendum crowd, warming to his theme, talking over several attempts I make to interject, although doing it with that trademark laugh in his voice that ensures he never seems rude – a technique that made him one of the Conservatives’ most effective messengers on the airwaves for four decades. “Unless remain won by an enormous majority, I don’t think it would solve anything. I think it would just lead to bitter, angry division, which is already there among the public. I think the campaigning would almost certainly be as silly as it was last time.”
However much Brexit appals him, referendums seem to appal him more. Throughout our conversation, he refers to the ballot of 23 June 2016 as “one opinion poll”. In which case, should parliament simply have ignored the vote to leave, carrying on as if nothing had happened? Seriously, if he were in charge, what would he have said to the British electorate the day after they had voted for Brexit?
“Somehow I would have to say: ‘Well, it’s not quite as simple as that. Leaving the EU probably isn’t going to make the faintest difference to most of the things that so annoy you. What I will take on board is that you feel so angry about the ruling class and politicians, and the establishment and so on.’ Because anger was the main emotion let loose by the referendum campaign and since.”
Which is not to say he is dismissive of those who voted leave or what motivated them. He links the leave vote to “what’s going wrong in every western democracy: Trump, the yellow jackets, anarchists in Italy”. He explains: “We achieved considerable economic success from the 1980s, 1990s, onwards, which hugely advantaged the young, the educated and the entrepreneurial. We neglected that bulk of the population being left behind and living in post-industrial towns where their living standards were static or falling. And the new globalised economy, the rules-based order, the digital revolution meant nothing to them.
“People want scapegoats: they blame foreigners and immigrants. You know, for Trump, it’s all the fault of the Mexicans. For the British, it’s all the fault of Brussels. Now, I blame the political class to which I belong – the establishment, of which I was undoubtedly a member – for failing to see this coming.”
So he does include himself in this failure? Yes, he says. “I did not see it coming.” He represents “the prosperous part” of Nottinghamshire, where the schools were good and house prices were high. But in the old mining towns, the signs were there. He admits he should have seen them earlier.
Still, others bear the chief blame for the current nightmare. He looks back on what will soon be a half-century in parliament and notes what he calls “the symmetry of my career: I started the year we were joining the European Union, I’m finishing when it looks as though we’re leaving”, and thinks he was lucky that his time coincided with EU membership, a period when Britain at last discovered its role in the world: “We found our vocation as a European power.” But then came that dreaded opinion poll, as he calls it, in 2016. “The whole thing’s been thrown away by a silly whim of David Cameron, who thought he’d get some short-term, party political advantage by running this stunt.”
What about May herself, whom he famously was caught calling a “bloody difficult woman”? “She is a bloody difficult woman, because she gets fixed ideas in her head, she sticks to them stubbornly. But I say that with some praise.” So we shouldn’t blame her for this mess? “Oh, it’s not Theresa’s fault. She has walked into the biggest collection of political problems facing any prime minister in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Clement Attlee. Most of them would have been overwhelmed by what she inherited. And she has qualities, among them the rather stubborn doggedness and sense of duty of a traditional home counties Tory lady.”
He refers to Attlee several times: “Quite a hero of mine.” He has praise for Tony Blair, too, as “a good prime minister who made one catastrophic mistake which I bitterly opposed, the invasion of Iraq.” How might Blair have handled Brexit? “He had the political skills; he might well have made a better job of it.” John Major, meanwhile, “would have been worried sick by it”. But at the top of the list is the woman he served for so long: “Margaret was the best prime minister of my lifetime. Mythology has turned Thatcher into someone regarded either as a goddess by her supporters or an evil witch by her opponents. She was a very pragmatic, rather odd, distinctive, determined woman with very, very forceful leadership qualities and absolute determination which might have got her through.” It’s a surprise to hear Clarke describe Thatcher as “pragmatic”. One more reason why he says: “Theresa May is no Margaret Thatcher.”
What would Thatcher have done? The very thought of it makes Clarke smile. Watching her wrestle with Brexit would, he says, have been “quite something”. He’s quite clear on one thing, though. “She was never in favour of leaving the European Union. She got exploited by hardline Eurosceptics in her dotage. When she was in office she was very pro-Europe economically, [even if] deeply suspicious of political Europe.”
How would she have voted in 2016? “She would have voted remain, just as she campaigned very heavily to remain” in the 1975 referendum. True, she had a “bad temper towards Europe towards the end” but that was “because she got on very badly with [German chancellor Helmut] Kohl and [French president François] Mitterrand, who patronised her … They weren’t quite ready for a woman being their political equal, which she certainly was.”
Yet another Tory leadership election is looming; Clarke must have lost count of the number he has witnessed. He won’t say who he likes: “That would be the kiss of death.” Intriguingly, he tells me he has spotted “some very substantial men and women” on both the Labour and Tory benches among those elected in 2010. They’re the ones to watch.
All this talk of leaders and leadership nudges us towards the fact that he never made it himself, despite attempts in 1997, 2001 and 2005. What kind of prime minister would he have been? “Sometimes kind people put me in the category of good prime ministers we might have had. It’s a very good club to be in. Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins, Rab Butler, Geoffrey Howe. And I will say it’s the best club to be in because nobody ever knows how bad you would have been if you’d ever done it.” He will say this, though. “I would have enjoyed it. That was one thing that would distinguish me from John Major: whatever else I’d have done, I’d have been determined to enjoy it.”
I hesitate before making the next suggestion, although his response tells me I needn’t have worried. Is it possible that he’s enjoying, if only a little bit, Brexit itself? After all, it revolves around the great cause of his life; it is pure, compelling drama; and he is at the centre of it. Some politicians would be offended by such a thought, or at least affect to be. Not Clarke.
“It’s hugely entertaining, if it were not so deadly serious. Oh, for a political addict, there’s nothing more fascinating than the bizarre, day-by-day, incompetent manoeuvrings that are going on. It’s like a parody version of student politics. The trouble is, the subject matter is of desperate importance to the wellbeing of next generations … I take an extremely active part in parliament not just ’cause I’m indulging myself as an old parliamentarian who’s got hooked on it. But because I’m actually having an opportunity – a privilege – of taking part in the public debate on vitally important things that matter a lot to me. I’m sure it’s doing me a power of good: it’s very therapeutic to a man approaching his 80th year and all that.”
Therapeutic seems the right word. Clarke was widowed in 2015, losing Gillian, his wife of more than 50 years, with whom he had two children. Does that help explain his decision not to retire from parliament, fighting for re-election in 2017 despite making some earlier noises about standing down?
“I normally avoid getting too personal in interviews, but my advice to all my friends who find themselves bereaved is: the best way of coping with bereavement is to keep yourself busy. Do not become a recluse, feeling sorry for yourself. Try to get busier than you usually are. That’s not the reason I’ve stayed in politics – I’m just an addict – but I think it helps. I think it helped me cope with the bereavement that I remained so absorbed and so obsessed on a daily basis with my political life, yes.”
Our time is nearly up. Clarke gamely agrees to pose for the photographer with an unlit cigar: maverick, he might be, but he’s not going to light up in his office. It strikes me that the difference between him and Heseltine might not just be Clarke’s get-on-with-it pragmatism, but that speaking of heartbreak at the loss of something he cherished for half a century – whether it’s a marriage or the European dream – is just not him.
So he will confess to feeling “dispirited and annoyed” by Brexit, infuriated by it and by a “political establishment that is spectacularly weak and unable to cope with the crisis we’ve created”, but he does not become elegiac. It is a matter of temperament. “I’m so laid-back that I’m almost horizontal, is how I would describe myself. I’m a naturally cheery and gregarious guy.”
He collects his things; he has dinner plans. I assume there’s a function to attend, maybe black tie, perhaps a speech to give. Not tonight, he says. He has a weekly semi-appointment to keep at the Kennington Tandoori: table for one, just him and a copy of the Economist. He’s looking forward to it.
First published on Sun 23 Sep 2018 19.39 BST
Senior allies of Jeremy Corbyn have questioned the rationale for a fresh Brexit referendum as delegates to the party’s conference in Liverpool agreed a statement committing Labour to keeping the option on the table.
After a gruelling five-hour meeting with the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, more than 100 delegates from trade unions and local parties drafted a two-page motion, which members in Liverpool were expected to pass on Tuesday.
The key sentence of the final draft says: “If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.”
It adds: “If the government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from, they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.”
Campaigners were pleased with other elements of the two-page statement, including a promise to pursue “full participation in the single market”.
One anti-Brexit Labour source said: “This is clear movement from the party. We are now talking with clarity of voting down the deal if doesn’t meet our tests, calling for a general election and if that is not possible – we want a public vote on the deal.
“Last year we didn’t even get a debate. What a difference a year makes.”
An initial motion, which proposed a “a public vote on the terms of Brexit”, was rejected by delegates as being too prescriptive, as it appeared to exclude the option to remain within the European Union.
Michael Chessum, one of the key anti-Brexit campaigners from the leftwing group Another Europe is Possible, said it was not everything they had hoped for, but a step forward. “A huge anti-Brexit surge of Labour members has hit Labour conference. It hasn’t been fully reflected in the text – but we have a clear commitment that any public vote won’t just be on the terms of Brexit. It could include an option to remain,” he said.
However, the wording is close to the position expressed in recent days by Corbyn and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell – with both making clear their preference for a general election that could allow Labour to take over the negotiations.
McDonnell said the starting point of the agreement was “a clear statement that we respect the last referendum”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “Secondly, if the deal that Theresa May brings back from Brussels is unacceptable, doesn’t pass the tests we set out, in particular protection of jobs and the economy, we will press for a general election.”
He added: If we can’t get a general election we’re keeping on the table the option of a people’s vote.”
McDonnell insisted he would prefer an election, and that there would be sufficient time to negotiate Labour’s alternative Brexit plan, involving membership of a customs union.
He said: “I think there’s a deal to be had, here. But I don’t think there’s a deal to be had while we’ve got this government.”
Earlier, several of Corbyn’s senior supporters underlined their concerns about what they see as the risks of a “people’s vote”.
The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, whose Salford constituency voted leave, told the Guardian she was concerned the Tories would be able to dictate the question.
“My worry about a second referendum is that they will be holding the pen,” she said. “What will the referendum be on?”
She added that some Labour-supporting leave voters might feel the party did not trust them. “I do worry about it, because I think a lot of people will feel sold-out,” she said. “Some people will think: ‘How many times do you ask before you get the answer you want?’”
Another shadow cabinet minister, Richard Burgon, warned of what he called “a dangerous situation for the whole political class”.
Asked about the prospect of a people’s vote, the shadow justice secretary echoed concerns expressed by McDonnell. “I have a real worry that it would unleash the populist right wing,” he said, adding: “I think the role of the Labour party now is to reduce divisions and bring people together.”
Meanwhile, Steve Howell, who oversaw Labour’s digital strategy in 2017 and has written a book about the campaign, warned that a referendum would be “a gift to Farage and co”.
And Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite and a staunch supporter of the Labour leadership, told the BBC’s Jon Pienaar he did not believe “remain” should be an option on the ballot paper in the event of another referendum.
“The referendum shouldn’t be on: ‘Do we want to go back into the European Union?’”, he said. “The people have already decided on that. We very rarely have referendums in this country. The people have decided against my wishes and my union’s wishes, but they’ve decided.”
A “people’s vote” was overwhelmingly the most popular issue raised by constituency Labour parties (CLPs) that submitted so-called “contemporary motions” to conference – but the final wording was negotiated at a packed meeting on Sunday evening, chaired by Starmer.
Starmer held a series of one-to-one meetings throughout the day in the hope of reaching a compromise.
Grassroots delegates groups including the youth group FFS and the leftwing groups Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a People’s Vote held briefing meetings, to agree their stance.
Though Corbyn, McDonnell and others have repeatedly said they would not rule out a people’s vote, they are under pressure to agree to a firmer position in which Labour would advocate a poll.
People’s Vote campaigners held a well-attended rally in Liverpool on Sunday, close to the conference centre.
Labour is due to elect a second deputy leader, alongside party veteran Tom Watson, as part of a controversial set of rule changes agreed by delegates on Sunday. Some campaigners hope a pro-referendum candidate will stand, as a way of piling fresh pressure on the leadership over the issue.
Eloise Todd, of Best for Britain, said: “Labour’s new female deputy leader should be someone who represents the grassroots of the party, and that means giving the people, not politicians, the final say on the Brexit deal, which is what the overwhelming majority of party members support.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
People always say politics is ugly to watch up close, and they’re talking about the cynicism and manipulation, the treachery, the low cunning beneath the high rhetoric. Democracy in action is ugly in a different way, more like a jumble sale: mess, chaos, mountains of tedium, elbows everywhere. You have to stay alert because you know that underneath the polyester there’s something – not wishing to overextend an analogy, let’s call it a second vote on Brexit – that you would treasure.
The Labour conference in Liverpool this week had that jumble sale feel. In any process that is remotely pluralistic, there are too many people in the room. And so 150 Labour delegates met to discuss their composite Brexit motion, boiling 150 motions from different constituency parties down to one single motion, which was passed  this afternoon.
It was a heroic, multi-houred marathon on which there were scores of perspectives, none of which was “Hallelujah”. Most of the motions that were fed in had a strong anti-Brexit flavour, and were firmly supportive of a referendum on any deal. They were opposed by a loose collection of the cautious, lefty Brexiters and ultra-loyalists who would prefer not to hold the leadership to anything. The final motion read as a series of conditional measures: if the government is defeated, but if a general election isn’t called, then Labour will campaign for a public vote, whose terms are yet undecided.
The post-match analysis seemed to be that this was a defanging of the members, all the better to roll them over later. In fact, this is what participation looks like: frustrating, iterative, inconclusive and interpretable. I’m told one memorable point of the meeting was Keir Starmer saying: “Right, now we have to agree what we mean by ‘consensus’.” The mind boggles as to how they kept it to five hours.
In a period of flux, as a party moves from one version of democracy (nominal) to another (meaningful), proceedings are garishly splenetic. The week began with a vote on proposals from the party’s year-long democracy review. From the outside, it all looks ridiculous, tautologous, self-referential: what kind of a party has, as the first line of its agenda, a battle over its own rules?
At its kernel, inevitably, was the issue of how easy it is for local party members to deselect their Labour MP. Momentum wanted mandatory reselections, which would see all Labour MPs face a selection battle against challenger candidates before every general election. It got another fudge instead: a lower threshold for triggering a full reselection selection process. Now it will happen if a third of local party branches and affiliated trade union branches express dissatisfaction with the local MP, rather than a half.
The argument in favour of mandatory reselection is unremarkable and straightforward. On the one hand, if an MP is chosen by party members, why should that choice be immutable? Circumstances change; the composition of the party changes; MPs change. My local MP, Kate Hoey, appeared at a Brexit rally last week with Nigel Farage and David Davis. The idea that Hoey represents Vauxhall Labour party – which is fiercely anti-Brexit – is flat-out silly. On the other hand, internal contests use energy that could be directed elsewhere – towards one’s political opponents, for instance.
It’s a debate that could play out quite reasonably, both sides having clear elements of truth and strength. But emotions run so high that pragmatism doesn’t get a look-in. MPs who oppose mandatory reselection say their duty is to all their constituents, not just to Labour party members, much as a parent is bound to love all their children equally. The MP Stella Creasy delivered a stinging critique of “toxic” Momentum at a rally: “If you think being political means sitting in meetings … you can do one.”
If a political party is to mean anything, there has to be a mechanism that connects members to its decisions. Those members must, by definition, carry more weight than constituents who aren’t members, with the obvious proviso that anyone who wants more weight can always join. Otherwise, it’s not a democratic party – it’s a kind of political burlesque, where MPs put on a show of representation and party members distinguish themselves by cheering the loudest.
But democracy is extremely painful: even if everyone were courteous, which we know they aren’t, participation is challenging. It doesn’t respect seniority. People cannot really be disciplined, only persuaded. Being political actually does mean sitting in meetings, and worse: having no control over who else is in the meeting, or what they think.
It has become fashionable to say, in weary amusement, that Labour is replaying the 1980s; that this is a cul-de-sac in which it has lost itself before, from which it will sooner or later emerge. But the goal is not to return to a Labour party where we can all move along because there’s nothing to see: it’s a pluralistic ecosystem so densely populated that differences cannot be obliterated by fury or stamped out by discipline, only resolved through creativity.
Two days after that composite meeting, Starmer committed to a second referendum with a remain option on the ballot. It was all anyone wanted: not to erase the referendum, just to revisit it in light of the disaster of its unfolding.
It was, as one conference delegate described, the result of “ordinary people making sound decisions, for the many not the few”. That’s the distinction of democracy. It’s ugly to see its workings, but it’s beautiful when it works.
First published on Wed 13 Jun 2018 21.08 BST
Laura Smith, the Labour frontbencher who resigned in the biggest parliamentary revolt Jeremy Corbyn has faced since he became leader, has defended her decision to vote against remaining in the European Economic Area.
Labour’s divisions on Europe broke out into the open on Wednesday night when, in an extraordinary breakdown of discipline, more than half the party’s backbenchers defied the party whip.
In a vote on a Lords amendment that would in effect mean staying in the EEA, 75 backbenchers defied party instructions to abstain and voted for the EEA. A further 15, also defying the party whip, voted against.
Smith, the now former shadow Cabinet Office minister who had backed remain in the referendum and won her leave-voting Crewe and Nantwich seat by a majority of just 48 in last year’s election, said her first duty was to her constituents.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that staying in the EEA would not be in their interest, and she refused to accept that if she thought Brexit was a mistake she should say so.
“I think a bad idea is giving people a choice and then telling them they’re wrong. I think that is against democracy ... and we need to understand the reasons why people voted in the way that they do. And, no, I’m not then telling people that voted to leave that they’re wrong. It’s my job to understand why they voted to leave and fight to make their lives better.”
In a week at Westminster that has been dominated by the sense that the Brexit debate and the UK’s future relations with the EU are approaching a crisis, many Labour MPs were frustrated at the frontbench attempt to fudge away party differences.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, had said on Monday that the party was too divided to pursue the so-called Norway option of EEA membership.
But rebelling on the bill for the first time on Wednesday, the former shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, who chairs the Commons cross-party Brexit committee, said there came a point where “we have to stand up and be counted”.
He said that remaining in the EEA, which would include membership of the single market, was not a perfect solution but it was better than all the others. Pointing out that the other options proposed by the government and by Labour were only untested proposals, Benn said the EEA was an established alternative to EU membership.
“It has the one great advantage – it at least looks like a lifeboat. And the closer we get to October, the less inviting the cold sea appears.”
In addition to Smith’s departure, five parliamentary aides resigned before the vote: the parliamentary private secretaries Ged Killen, Ellie Reeves, Tonia Antoniazzi, Anna McMorrin and Rosie Duffield.
 Duffield – who won the seat of Canterbury in 2017’s most shocking result – resigned in order to back EEA membership.
But whips were relieved that there were not more rebels. A week ago reports of as many as 120 were being touted, while the New Statesman reported that the leading Labour remainer Chuka Umunna was talking openly of starting a new party, Back Together.
One rebel claimed the result suggested that there would be a majority for an EEA-type amendment to either the trade bill or the customs bill, both of which will be back in the Commons in the next few weeks. With three Tory MPs voting for the EEA amendment and eight abstaining, there is already a core of Conservative dissidents and a customs union amendment is gathering cross-party support.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, anticipating the revolt, admitted in a speech on Wednesday morning that the party was walking a tightrope.
“We campaigned for remain but many of our MPs, including myself, now represent seats which voted heavily leave,” he said. “We are trying to construct at the moment a traditional British compromise and we are trying to drag as many with us as possible both in government and elsewhere around some key elements of that compromise.”
Caroline Flint, a Labour remainer whose Don Valley constituency voted more than two to one to leave, defended her constituents, who she said had been insulted “day in and day out by some of the comments in this place and outside” stressing that they “are not against all migration”.
Flint said she could not support EEA membership because it would mean there would be no restriction on free movement.
She said her constituents “want to have a sense that we can turn the tap on and off when we choose. But also they want us to answer the question, why hasn’t Britain got the workforce it needs, why has social mobility stopped, why do we train fewer doctors than Holland or Ireland and why are these jobs dominated by those in the middle and upper classes so my constituents don’t get a look in?”
But the former Europe minister Pat McFadden said it would be “unwise and rash” to take the EEA, the one viable alternative to a Tory deal on Brexit, or no deal at all, off the table.
Backing the Lords amendment, he said: “We need to address working-class discontent but we do not take the first step to doing that by making the country poorer, to not get the wealth for public services, for housing, and for the better chance in life our working classes deserve.”
The former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, who chairs the home affairs select committee, said she would obey the party whip and not vote for membership of the EEA only because she wanted to try to build consensus.
Cooper and Benn had introduced an amendment calling for EEA membership “with safeguards”. She said her committee had heard evidence about the measures other EU member states were applying to introduce some control over migration, which she had been told could allow the UK to have full single market access without complete free movement.
A spokesman for Corbyn said: “The Labour party respects the outcome of the EU referendum and does not support the EEA or Norway model as it is not the right option for Britain.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Labour is still a “remain and reform party” over EU membership, Tom Watson has argued, as he said it seemed inevitable that a confirmatory referendum would be needed for the party’s MPs to agree to any Brexit deal.
Speaking after the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, told the Guardian that up to 150 Labour MPs would reject an agreement that did not include a second referendum, Watson said he believed this figure seemed credible.
Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that even though talks with the government over a compromise deal were still ongoing – they are due to resume on Monday – it “would be difficult” to get it through parliament without a new public vote.
“I think the difficulty is just parliamentary arithmetic,” he said. “Keir Starmer has alluded to this today as well, John McDonnell did last week. The whipping arrangements for these deals are very difficult, as MPs have hardened their positions within their parties.”
In a sign of the very different approaches within the shadow cabinet, when asked if Labour was now a Brexit party, something the shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, concurred with on Sunday, Watson took a different approach.
“We are a remain and reform party, but obviously when it comes to a deal, people could form their own view,” he said.
Watson said he still thought getting a Brexit deal though the Commons was the best option, but had come round to the idea of a second referendum for practical reasons.
“I’ve wanted a deal. I reluctantly came to the view that there should be a confirmatory ballot, because I thought it was the only way we would break the impasse,” he said. “If a deal could be found that inspires enough votes in Westminster, then fine. But it seemed to me that that’s very difficult.
“My idea of a confirmatory ballot is not a religious point, or a point of ideology, it’s just – how do you get an outcome, how do you sort this out.”
Later on Monday, Watson was due to make a speech marking the 25th anniversary of John Smith’s death in which he was to argue that the former Labour leader, as a pro-European internationalist, would have also backed a second referendum.
“If John was alive today, to witness the great damage this process is wreaking on country and our public debate, I have no doubt that he would have taken a stand very similar to that of his deputy, Margaret Beckett, and backed a people’s vote as a way out of this destructive mess,” Watson was to say.
In an interview with the Guardian, Starmer said a second referendum would be needed to buoy up any deal with the government.
“A significant number of Labour MPs, probably 120 if not 150, would not back a deal if it hasn’t got a confirmatory vote,” he said. “If the point of the exercise is to get a sustainable majority, over several weeks or months of delivering on the implementation, you can’t leave a confirmatory vote out of the package.”
He said finding a parliamentary majority for any deal, whatever the circumstances, was “very difficult”, and suggested he could not sign up to any agreement if he feared it would fail.
“It has got to be something truly deliverable,” he said. “For many of my colleagues, they have made it clear that they will not vote for a deal without a confirmatory vote attached to it. So if you want that stable majority, that has to be taken into account. And without it, it is impossible to see how the numbers would stack up.”
Also speaking on the Today programme on Monday, the communities secretary, James Brokenshire, dismissed reports that the talks with Labour were doomed.
“These talks are very serious, yes – we wouldn’t have committed all of the time and effort on all sides in relation to this. They have been constructive, they have been detailed,” he said.
Starmer’s comments were, Brokenshire added, “a slightly different message to the core message that the Labour party has been giving about a second referendum”.
Brokenshire said he believed a second vote was a bad idea: “These talks are about how to give effect to the referendum, how we give effect to leave the EU, not somehow reopening the debate all over again.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
The EU referendum forced us to acknowledge that people in large sections of the UK had lost faith in political parties and the Westminster elite. While for some, closer integration with the EU had brought greater prosperity, many leave voters felt their jobs becoming under threat, their prospects and those of their children narrowing and the public services they rely on coming under growing strain. The vote in the EU referendum was a fundamental rejection of what our membership of the EU had become, and was an indictment of the failure of successive EU and UK leaders to listen to the concerns of ordinary voters.
On Tuesday the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, to a standing ovation, moved Labour towards being the party of remain. He said Labour would support a second referendum on EU membership which could overturn the 2016 vote. It is hard to know where to begin. Working-class voters across the UK overwhelmingly voted leave. Research during and after the campaign shows they wanted the UK to take back control of its borders, laws, money and trade – something that even the Chequers deal fails to deliver.
But instead of seizing the opportunity to turn against Chequers, the Labour party is turning against its traditional voters. They had been drifting away from Labour since 2005, but in 2017 some returned at least in part because Labour’s manifesto said it would respect the result of the referendum.
To hold a second referendum before the first one has even been implemented does not in any way respect the result of the people’s vote. More than 17 million voted to leave the EU, with a margin of victory of 3.8%. The vote was a rational outcome based on a year of exhaustive debate – just as rational a choice as the 1997 referendum on Welsh devolution that had a turnout of 50.2% and a winning margin of 0.6%. To have overturned that result before it was implemented would have been unthinkable.
And yet this is where Labour finds itself. In 2017, the three parties that stood on a remain manifesto or that pledged to hold a second referendum – the SNP, Green party and Liberal Democrats – each saw their share of the vote decline. As Prof John Curtice pointed out last week, there is no consistent evidence of a shift in support for a second referendum and polling shows no fundamental change in public opinion on Brexit. Last week polling showed that voters in the 25 most marginal Labour constituencies are opposed to a second referendum, and that 19 of those seats would be lost if Labour tried to stop Brexit.
As the party of remain, Labour will turn its back on the concerns of millions of its traditional voters and will have chosen, scornfully, to ignore the largest democratic vote in this country’s history. That is a very strange and worrying position for the Labour party to be in.
A decision was made to leave the EU. Two-thirds of Labour MPs represent constituencies that voted to leave; one-third represent constituencies that voted to remain. This is obviously a difficult decision, but as democrats we in the Labour party have to accept the result.
This is a conclusion that Keir Starmer came to in 2017. There is no reason to change that now.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Labour is proposing an “internal market” that would deliver a new and close relationship with the European Union but falls short of membership of the single market while maintaining many of its advantages.
The proposal was heralded by some as the party’s most significant move so far towards a soft Brexit.
But the move stops just short of calling for the full single market membership sought by a vocal group of Labour MPs, after the Lords backed a Norway-style membership of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said: “Labour will only accept a Brexit deal that delivers the benefits of the single market and protects jobs and living standards.”
The proposal, tabled as an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill ahead of its return to the Commons next Tuesday, fleshes out proposals originally made in a speech by Jeremy Corbyn in Coventry in February.
Corbyn said: “We are confident we can build a new relationship with the EU. We want the UK to have a better deal than the Norway model.”
The timing reflects anxiety among the party leadership about a looming revolt by pro-EU backbenchers on EEA membership.
Labour peers ambushed the party leadership last month when the amendment, tabled by Lord Alli, demanded that remaining a member of the EEA was a negotiating objective.
Although EU negotiators have repeatedly made it clear that there can be no cherry picking to the UK’s advantage in the negotiations, Starmer insists the new proposal would deliver full access to the single market, backed by EU-agreed standards, rights and protections. There would be shared UK-EU institutions and regulations, and no new impediments to trade.
“Unlike the Tories, Labour will not sacrifice jobs and the economy in the pursuit of a reckless and extreme interpretation of the referendum result,” he said. “Labour’s amendment, along with a commitment to negotiate a new comprehensive customs union with the EU, is a strong and balanced package that would retain the benefits of the single market.”
But Chris Leslie, a leading Labour remainer, said: “If the frontbench are missing the opportunity to secure the EEA single market as a UK negotiating objective, there will be utter dismay and shock across the Labour movement.”
Another Labour rebel said the leadership had “scrapped the Lords amendment (which is the only one the Tories will support) and replaced it with fudge”.
Former Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw said the party should back the Lords push for EEA membership instead.
The Labour MP said Tory MPs “won’t vote for a Labour frontbench amendment” and if the party was “serious” about averting a hard Brexit “we must vote for the existing backbench cross-party Lords amendment”.
Some Tory rebels are also looking at some form of relationship as close to the EEA as possible, as a way of averting a catastrophic departure from the EU.
Membership of the EEA itself is incompatible with either Theresa May’s red lines or Jeremy Corbyn’s concerns about the restrictions it would place on the ability of government to intervene in industry or procurement.
Members of the EEA such as Norway, which is not in the EU, belong to the single market but – as Norway’s prime minister made clear in an interview on Tuesday – that means accepting the so-called “four freedoms”, including freedom of movement.
The official deadline for new amendments to the EU withdrawal bill falls on Thursday and Tory rebels are increasingly optimistic that the government is ready to make concessions.
Officially the government is committed to reversing all 15 of the defeats inflicted by the Lords on the key piece of legislation that must be passed before the process of leaving the EU can begin.
But on Tuesday night one senior backbencher who has led revolts in the past suggested that were signs of movement by the government on a meaningful vote. The amendment was one of the most significant victories in the Lords. It would prevent May offering only a take-it-or-leave-it vote on the final deal and give parliament a role in negotiations.
Iain Duncan Smith, a leading Brexiter, also accepted that there could be some acceptable concessions, including on the “meaningful vote”.
“This bill is the critical bill. The government is right to bring it forward. It defines our departure, and it defines our negotiations,” he said, pointing out that MPs nodded the bill through on its third reading in the Commons earlier this year.
Brexiters believe getting the withdrawal bill on the statute book before the key European council meeting at the end of June – barely a fortnight away – would strengthen May’s hand in negotiations, as there will be no prospect of her being forced by parliament to accept, for example, a customs union.
There are likely to be other revolts, however. Rebels believe the Lords amendment tabled by the architect of article 50, Lord Kerr, on the customs union, could be upheld in the Commons. It would require the government to make a statement outlining its efforts to negotiate a customs union.
That vote could be a key test of opinion in the Commons ahead of a more substantive amendment to the trade bill that has been tabled by Tory rebels.
There is also likely to be a significant row over the scheduling of the consideration of the amendments. Only one day has been set aside to consider all amendments, which could mean an all-night sitting on Tuesday.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
The official campaign period for the Brexit referendum may have lasted only two months – but in truth a Eurosceptic campaign had been raging in the UK for many years before that. Boris Johnson made his name stoking those flames as a youthful journalist – straight bananas, the end of pounds and ounces, a once great nation dictated to by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. All distortions – yet they contributed to a powerful narrative.
But now, with Labour’s announcement of support for a transition period delighting remainers pushing hard for a soft Brexit, the country’s decision to leave the EU could make all those empty fears of the Brexiteers a painful reality.
Labour’s suggested transition would essentially be to maintain our membership of the European Economic Area, while attempting to negotiate our own bespoke deal. That’s music to the ears of many – who see this as the best solution: one that respects the referendum result while preserving the benefits of EU membership.
This would prevent the very real damage done if our post-EU future was steered by Conservative fantasies of a “Singapore-on-Thames”. It avoids the thorny issue of the Irish border, protects our economy and retains freedom of movement. It also comes slathered with the delicious irony that many of the scaremongering fantasies that Europhobes have been spreading for decades could finally become a reality.
While we currently have the opportunity to veto many EU-wide decisions – a disproportionate power that we have wielded gleefully, much to the chagrin of our European partners – as a member of the EEA, like Norway, we would be beholden to the EU’s policymakers in much the way Nigel Farage always told us we were.
What chance an indefinite transition, with the EU happy to keep us in limbo knowing their own economies are sheltered from the possibility of Britain crashing out, but without the power to act as a block? Perhaps after those vile campaign posters you’re worried about millions of Turkish people “flooding” into Britain as they are welcomed into the EU fold? Well there’ll be no way we can veto that country’s membership once we’ve left.
Worried about the democratic deficit of EU institutions (despite our many well-remunerated, democratically elected Ukip MEPs)? Guess how many MEPs Iceland has. Sick of the red tape being inflicted by Brussels on all our ingenious British entrepreneurs? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Of course, all trade deals inevitably involve giving up a degree of national sovereignty – that’s a fact Liam Fox, Daniel Hannon and co never want to mention when they talk of Britain regaining its independence as it begins to trade with the world unencumbered by its nearest neighbours.
In signing a bilateral deal with another country over, say, a free market in beef, we’ve got to agree a common policy on the quality of that product. We cannot then unilaterally decide that we want much higher standards of beef production – we would have to renegotiate the entire pact. Of course, we can simply withdraw from the deal – a sovereign act of the kind that Brexiteers are so keen on – but that is a sovereignty we enjoyed just as much within the EU as without.
The difference, once we’re in the EEA – whether during a transition period or permanently – is that, should the EU agree a new beef pact with the US that allows more antibiotics to be pumped into our meat, Britain would have no seat at the table as the deal was drawn up. It would be left to either like it or lump it, or storm off in a huff – crashing out of all our trade deals and destroying our economy in the process. Which do you think is more likely?
The threat of economic disaster looming over any decision you make sounds like the sovereignty enjoyed by someone with a gun pointed at their head being asked if they feel lucky. Well do ya, punk?
Some have posited Efta membership as an alternative form of soft Brexit – but with this you lose some of the benefits of the EEA, and are still subject to many of the same problems. Freedom of movement is, de facto, replicated; a joint trade policy with the EU still pertains; and Britain would be subject to all the same European “red tape” that currently so enrages the right. The EU is sure to insist any bespoke British deal is much the same.
So the obvious answer is to stay in the EU – enjoy the benefits of the EEA and maintain our seat at the table in order to be involved in the decision-making process. Which brings us back to the problem at hand. The country voted to leave. It’s happening – and it’s happening, presumably, because of the toxic combination of a dishonest campaign and well-founded concerns about the way the country was headed that had nothing to do with the EU.
If the EEA is your preferred option, you are under an obligation to explain how this will solve anything for those who voted for Brexit. Crashing out at least offers the distant prospect, even after a period of pain and adjustment, of a better, future. In the EEA nothing much changes, dissatisfaction grows, and our ability to do anything about it is lessened.
It may be true that those who voted to leave the EU weren’t voting for less immigration, a hard Irish border, or even greater sovereignty – but they were certainly voting for change, and for a positive change at that.
Labour knows there are no good options here, and while staying a part of the EEA seems, at face value, to guard against many of the dangers of a hard Brexit, in one fell swoop all those Brexiteer lies would be made reality. Do we want to become a little island, dictated to by foreign politicians, with no possibility of shaping our own economic future? It might still be unclear what it was leave voters wanted – or expected – when they stepped into the ballot box, but I’m quite sure nobody voted for that.
Preserving our fragile economy is of course important, but if we just maintain the status quo while also turning the EU into an actual – rather than an imagined – bogeyman, we’re storing up big problems for the decades to come. In short: there’s nothing soft about this soft Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
Leaving the European Union without a deal in place would not spell disaster for the UK economy, according to a free market thinktank advocating trade with the rest of the world over a “hamstrung” deal with Brussels.
Despite repeated warnings that leaving without an agreement would hurt British companies and consumers, the report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, published on Friday, says the UK could remove all import barriers to achieve lower prices for consumers, increased productivity and higher wages.
However, a separate report from the Institute for Government, which seeks to promote more effective government, said failure to strike a deal would put the UK in a worse place than any other major trading partner and maximise disruption.
Britain should resort to World Trade Organisation rules for its relationship with Europe if a bad deal is offered, while striking free trade agreements with major trading partners such as the US, Canada and Australia, according to the IEA report. It would then be up to Brussels if it wanted to impose tariffs on British imports, which the thinktank said would hurt EU consumers.
The position echoes that of the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, who has advocated deals with the US and other countries and argued that the UK is in a position to walk away from the negotiating table if no deal can be reached with Brussels. EU leaders have poured cold water on Britain’s hopes of such arrangements in recent days.
British consumers could benefit from the removal of all tariffs because the UK would be able to import goods at lower prices from countries on which the EU imposes high tariffs, such as oranges from South Africa, according to the IEA. Such tariffs protect the livelihoods of domestic producers, although 92% of UK workers are employed in sectors that do not benefit from such measures, according to the report.
Although removing tariffs could result in job losses for the 8% of British workers in protected sectors, such as farming, the IEA said new roles could be created to offset the losses.
Jamie Whyte, research director at the IEA, said:  “There are many myths being perpetuated about trade policy – and more specifically about the UK’s relationship with the EU – that must be debunked. We could unilaterally eliminate all import tariffs, which would give us most of the benefits of trade, and export to the EU under the umbrella of the WTO rules.”
Ministers have begun privately admitting that negotiations over the future trade relationship with the EU may not begin until the end of the year, cutting the time for talks to as little as 10 months. Britain agreed in June to discuss the withdrawal agreement first, with talks moving on to trade only once sufficient progress had been made on settling the rights of EU nationals in the UK, the Brexit divorce bill and the border with Ireland.
The Institute for Government said leaving with no deal was a “recipe for maximum disruption” should the UK have to trade with the EU under WTO rules, because it would include higher tariffs and more document checks and inspections at borders.
Leaving the EU would disrupt the flow of goods required by manufacturers in the UK, harming sectors such as car production, and create friction in trade across borders, its report, published on Thursday, concluded.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Politics was once a simple affair. On one side were the lefties, unhappy with the status quo and agitating for something different. On the other side were the conservatives, suspicious of change. When it comes to Brexit, though, the natural order of things has been reversed. The right has come up with all sorts of visions – most of them dystopian – of Britain’s future outside the European Union. The left, for the most part, has spent its time praying for the vote in June 2016 to be reversed.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. There are those on the left who understand that there was a reason people who had never voted before came out in their millions to vote for leave, and who say that something must be done for communities hollowed out by the failed policies of the past four decades. They even have a soundbite: tough on Brexit, tough on the causes of Brexit.
Similarly, there are left-of-centre remainers who recognise that something has gone seriously wrong with the European Union. They too have a slogan: a different Europe is possible.
In reality, though, almost all the energy on the remain side has been spent on keeping the UK inside the EU come what may. There has been nothing from remainers that would suggest that they have a serious plan for tackling the symptoms of Brexit. The same applies to reform of the EU.
A small number of people in the Labour party and in the trade union movement take a different view. For them, Brexit is to be welcomed because the EU’s bias in favour of multinational capital, its hardwired monetarism and its obsession with balanced budgets means it is more Thatcherite than social democratic. For those remainers who say this is a caricature and that the EU is really about protecting labour rights and defending the interests of workers in a harsh, globalised world, left leavers have a one-word riposte: Greece.
Since the referendum, this group has found it hard to get a hearing as the much larger group of left remainers has dominated the conversation with warnings about how the sky will fall in after Brexit. There is nothing new in this: many of the cheerleaders for remain were making exactly the same noises years ago when the UK was deciding whether or not to join the euro.
Yet, in recent weeks there have been two publications that have challenged the mainstream view. The Left Case Against the EU by Costas Lapavitsas, a Soas economics professor, takes issue with the idea that the EU is all about cooperation and togetherness, a borderless paradise of interrailing and Erasmus schemes.
The EU, Lapavitsas argues, is not a nation state that the left could battle to capture and then shape the way it is run. Rather, it is a transnational juggernaut geared to neoliberalism.
The European left’s “attachment to the EU as an inherently progressive development prevents it from being radical, and indeed integrates it into the neoliberal structures of European capitalism”, Lapavitsas says. “The left has become increasingly cut off from its historic constituency, the workers and the poor of Europe, who have naturally sought a voice elsewhere.”
This seems a pretty accurate assessment. The European left sees the EU as promoting democracy, egalitarianism and social liberalism, but the reality is somewhat different. The four pillars of the single market – free movement of goods, services, people and money – are actually the axioms of market fundamentalism, which is why Mrs Thatcher supported its creation. Meanwhile, the European court of justice has gradually turned itself into a body that enforces a free-market view of the world, placing more and more restrictions on the freedom of member states to make their own economic decisions.
This point is taken up by Philip Whyman of the University of Central Lancashire in his book, The Left Case for Brexit, which says the real choice for Britain is whether we would prefer as few changes as possible, because we are happy with the status quo, or whether we would like to do things differently and therefore need the “greater policy independence that is necessary to make these changes”.
Whyman concedes that up until now the UK has failed to take advantage of the leeway that is currently permitted under EU law but says that economic renewal requires freedom from competition, state aid and procurement rules. The pamphlet argues for a free trade agreement with the EU to ensure maximum flexibility.
“Brexit can be a positive event for the left. Withdrawal from the EU offers the potential for an active government to transform our economy for our mutual benefit. Long standing weaknesses in the UK economy need to be dealt with. These include issues relating to low levels of capital formation, poor productivity growth, a large and unsustainable trade deficit, problems with the efficient operation of the labour market and the need to rebuild manufacturing industry to rebalance the UK economy.”
Some of the themes explored in these two books were bubbling beneath the surface of last week’s Labour conference. The reluctance of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell to put the option to remain in the EU on the ballot paper in a second referendum was obvious. They fear those who voted to leave in heartland Labour seats will feel betrayed if told to have another go because they came up with the wrong answer last time. What’s more, it is not so long ago that the Labour leader and the shadow chancellor were publicly expressing similar views to those of Lapavitsas. There is no obvious reason why they should have changed their minds because the events of the past few years have made one thing abundantly clear: this Europe is not for turning.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
Pro-remain Liberal Democrat peers believe they could insert extra clauses into even the most tightly worded Brexit bill to force Theresa May to tell parliament more about her negotiating plans before she triggers article 50.
With the supreme court judgment on whether the government must consult parliament before invoking article 50 – the formal process for leaving the European Union - not expected until the new year, the government is thought to be quietly drafting a basic bill that its lawyers believe would be hard to amend.
But constitutional experts have told the Lib Dems there is no obstacle to adding extra clauses to such legislation, which could force the government to publish a white paper detailing how it plans to approach talks with the other EU member-states – and even offer voters a second referendum.
In a statement, four Lib Dem peers who are also QCs – including Menzies Campbell and Alex Carlile – said: “We welcome the acceptance that a parliamentary bill is likely to be needed. We shall use parliamentary procedure to ensure that the act of parliament that emerges ensures that the government has to have regard to MPs’ and peers’ reasonable expectations of the negotiation process.”
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: “The Liberal Democrats believe that the voters should have a say through a vote on the final deal, because departure is not the same as the destination. We will try to amend the bill and, if necessary, we will do this by proposing extra clauses to it to ensure proper debate and scrutiny of the process and the issues.”
Labour has said it will not join any collective effort to delay or block an article 50 bill, and shadow chancellor John McDonnell has described Brexit as an “opportunity”.
But Labour sources have suggested that this would not rule out the party’s peers backing clauses that would oblige May to report back to parliament regularly on her progress, for example – something that need not cause a delay.
The government is appealing against the high court judgment in the case brought by Gina Miller over whether the government could invoke article 50 using its prerogative powers, without winning parliament’s backing.
May has set herself a deadline of the end of March for triggering article 50, which would leave the government a tight timetable for getting legislation through both houses of parliament if it loses the supreme court case.
In the House of Commons, few MPs have said they would vote against a brief bill triggering article 50 — but even some Conservatives privately suggest they might withhold their support unless the government is clearer about its negotiating stance.
The supreme court case will be heard by all 11 justices because of the seriousness of the issue. One of them, Brenda Hale, caused controversy on Tuesday by discussing the case in public at a lecture in Kuala Lumpur.
Critics including former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith condemned her decision to speak about the appeal, and warned of a “constitutional crisis” if the supreme court upheld the high court’s verdict.
But in an interview with Solicitors Journal on Wednesday, Lady Hale defended herself by insisting she had simply offered a neutral explanation of the issues at stake. “I have exhibited no bias and those that suggested that I have are simply mistaken,” she said.
Hale also lamented the negative press coverage of the high court judgment, which saw the judges who ruled on the case referred to as “enemies of the people”.
“It is unfortunate that it isn’t made clear to the British public, because it is very important they understand what the role of the judiciary is, which is to hear cases in a fair, neutral, and impartial way,” she said. “You have to be independent and true to your judicial oath and cannot allow yourself to be swayed by extraneous considerations that have nothing to do with the law.”
First published on Mon 20 Nov 2017 17.58 GMT
London is losing the European Medicines Agency to Amsterdam and the European Banking Authority to Paris, in one of the first concrete signs of Brexit as the UK prepares to leave the European Union.
The two cities won the agencies after tie breaks that saw the winner selected by drawing lots from a large goldfish-style bowl.
The Dutch capital beat Milan in the lucky dip after three rounds of Eurovision-style voting on Monday had resulted in a dead heat.
Paris won the race to take the European Banking Authority from London, beating Dublin in the final, after the favourite Frankfurt was knocked out in the second round.
The EU’s 27 European affairs ministers, minus the UK, took less than three hours to decide the new home of the medicines agency, which employs 900 people in Canary Wharf, London. The decision on the banking authority, which employs 150 and is also based in Canary Wharf, was made in little more than an hour.
Amsterdam beat competition from 18 cities ranging from fancied contenders such as Copenhagen and Bratislava to outsiders such as Bucharest and Sofia.
Eight cities were in the running for the banking authority, which was set up in 2011 to tighten up regulation after the financial crisis.
The contest provoked the first public recriminations over Brexit among the EU27, after no eastern members made it beyond the first rounds. Slovakia’s minister Tomáš Drucker said he abstained from the final votes on the medicines agency, because no countries from his region had been successful in the opening stage. “I think it’s not fair and it’s not a good message for the European inhabitants.”
Italy’s Europe minister Sandro Gozi said Milan’s loss to Amsterdam in a tie-breaker was like losing the World Cup on the toss of a coin.
But for the victors, there was relief. “We are delighted, it was very tight, it was nerve wracking to be honest,” said Dutch minister Halbe Zijlstra. France’s success will be seen as a victory for Emmanuel Macron, although his minister, Nathalie Loiseau, expressed sadness that Lille had lost out in the race for the medicines agency.
The British government was powerless to stop the relocation of these two prized regulatory bodies, secured by previous Conservative prime ministers. The Department for Exiting the European Union had claimed the future of the agencies would be subject to the Brexit negotiations, a claim that caused disbelief in Brussels.
Speaking before the vote on Monday, the EU’s chief negotiator on Brexit, Michel Barnier, said “ardent advocates of Brexit” had contradicted themselves on EU rules.
“Brexit means Brexit,” he said, turning Theresa May’s line back on her. “The same people who argue for setting the UK free also argue that the UK should remain in some EU agencies. But freedom implies responsibility for building new UK administrative capacity,” he told a Brussels conference hosted by the Centre for European Reform.
“The 27 will continue to deepen the work of those agencies, together,” he said. “They will share the costs for running those agencies. Our businesses will benefit from their expertise. All of their work is firmly based on the EU treaties which the UK decided to leave.”
The former business secretary and Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said Davis’s suggestion the UK could keep the agencies showed just how little grasp the government has of the potential consequences of Brexit.”
“This marks the beginning of the jobs Brexodus. Large private sector organisations are also considering moving to Europe and we can expect many to do so over next few years.”
The European Medicines Agency opened in 1995, having been secured for London by John Major’s government. Seen as one of the EU’s most important agencies, it carries out assessments and issues approvals for medicines across the union. The agency is also a boon for hoteliers, as 36,000 scientists and regulators visit each year.
The European Banking Authority started work in 2011 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to tighten up financial supervision after the 2008 crash.
Malta, which had bid as a country, Zagreb and Dublin dropped out of the race for the medicines agency before voting began. The first two gave up any hope of getting an agency, while Ireland hoped to boost its chances of winning the European Banking Authority.
Barcelona’s chances went up in smoke after Catalonia’s contested independence vote on 1 October plunged the wealthy region into crisis.
Although the relocation was agreed relatively quickly by EU standards, the move will inevitably cause disruption. In the run-up to the vote, the EMA said that even a move to the staff’s top-choice city would prompt some workers to quit. Under the best-case scenario, 19% of staff are expected to resign rather than move.
The agency had argued that a move to less popular cities threatened “a public health crisis”, with “permanent damage” to the European system of drug approval.
The EU laid down six criteria to judge the bids, including the city’s ability to get the agency up and running on time, transport accessibility, school places and job opportunities for spouses.
Some newer member states had complained that the EU was reneging on a 2003 promise to give priority to countries without an EU agency, as “geographical spread” was only one of the elements to judge the bids. Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Cyprus and Slovakia do not have an EU agency.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
The London mayor has called on MPs from all parties to set aside their political careers and consider supporting soft Brexit Lords amendments as they return to the Commons in votes that he said were as significant as those that took Britain into the Iraq war.Sadiq Khan in effect added his voice to those calling on Jeremy Corbyn to oppose Britain’s departure from the single market as he said MPs should “be brave” and support EU withdrawal bill amendments in the coming weeks.
The key piece of legislation was expected to return to parliament within the next fortnight, after being amended 15 times by peers. Fourteen of those amendments were backed by the Labour frontbench but Corbyn is unlikely to support the 15th, a bid to keep Britain in the European Economic Area.
The government is most likely to face defeat over the issue of remaining in a customs union, where Labour will hope to win the backing of as many Conservative rebels as possible.
Khan told the Guardian it was “extremely rare that parliament faces a vote that is more important than party politics, more important than MPs’ ministerial careers and which will define that generation of parliamentarians in the history books”.
Invoking the memory of Labour MPs such as Robin Cook, as well as Corbyn, who voted against the 2003 Iraq war, Khan added: “The last vote of this significance was the vote on the Iraq war – when there were brave MPs from all parties who did the right thing and voted against the war regardless of the consequences.” Khan himself was not in the Commons at the time, having only become an MP in 2005.
“Parliament has the opportunity to reject the Tories’ shambolic and reckless handling of Brexit and preserve our prosperity for the next generation – if MPs are brave,” the mayor added.
Peers inflicted a string of often heavy defeats on legislation that had cleared the Commons, including on an amendment that called on ministers to outline the steps taken to negotiate the UK’s participation in a customs union before leaving the EU and another that called on the government to set remaining in the EEA as a negotiating objective.
In common with many Labour backbenchers, Khan has previously argued that the UK should remain in the customs union and the single market, as he seeks to reflect the views of a city where 59.9% of people voted remain.
But his remarks also came at a time when he faces the prospect of being challenged by Justine Greening, a Conservative MP and former minister who supported remain but has since voted in favour of the government’s version of the EU withdrawal bill.
Greening has emerged as an early frontrunner for the Conservative mayoral nomination after one talked-about candidate, Ed Vaizey, a former culture minister, said on Friday he would not run and endorsed the MP for Putney instead.
Party nominations open this month and a candidate due to be selected by members in September, and although Greening has not said she will run, her name has emerged as a plausible contender. Another former minister whose name has been mentioned, although more speculatively, was George Osborne, but senior London Conservatives question if his hostility to Theresa May would discourage party members from voting for his nomination.Khan called on Conservative and Labour MPs to signal that they are prepared to defy their whips if necessary over Brexit. “My message to my former colleagues in parliament is: don’t think about the headlines, your career or the campaign groups when deciding how to vote – think about your constituents and vote for what you think is in their best interest.”
Furious MPs have accused Jeremy Corbyn of killing hopes of keeping Britain in the single market after Labour tabled a 'cake and eat it' amendment to the Brexit Bill.
The leadership faced an angry backlash after unveiling a fudged position designed to head off a mounting backbench rebellion.
The party is proposing a change to the government's legislation calling for 'full access' to the EU single market.
But it will not back an amendment that was passed by the Lords demanding that the UK stays formally in the single market.
Remainer MPs said the tactic meant both changes were now doomed to failure - as Tory rebels will not vote for an amendment tabled by Labour. 
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer admitted today that the party was not 'united' on the issue of European Economic Area (EEA) membership and there were 'strong and different' views. 
Pressed on why the party will not back an amendment on the EEA, Sir Keir replied: 'The difficulty with that, and I think everybody recognises this, is that there are very strong and very different views across the PLP on that particular amendment.
'So, whilst there's unity on all the others and we will all be voting together, on that amendment there are very divided views.' 
Asked if he was putting party unity before his beliefs about what is right for the country, he replied: 'I'm injecting some honesty about where we are in the Labour Party.'  
A titanic Commons showdown on the Government's Brexit legislation has been set for next Tuesday after the House of Lords rewrote significant parts of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill - including inserting a commitment to staying in the EEA.
The official Labour amendments to the Brexit Bill calls on Theresa May to make maintaining 'full access' to the EU 'internal market' an objective of the negotiations with Brussels.
Labour MPs will be ordered abstain on the Lords EEA amendment, and urged instead to back the call for a 'bespoke' deal which would see shared UK-EU institutions and regulations.
However, critics branded the approach a 'wrecking' manoeuvre and said the single market was the best option.
Backbencher Ian Murray said: 'The new move on EEA can be summed up in two words - political fudge. 
'If you want the exact same benefits that replicates the single market then you have to vote for the Lords amendment on EEA. You can’t create a new single market, especially from opposition.' 
Former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie said: 'We should not be in the business of bailing out Theresa May when she's facing rebellion on the single market.' 
Bermondsey and Old Southwark MP Neil Coyle added: 'Many of us will be supporting the EEA amendment from Lords. Not any lesser alternative.' 
Ex-cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw said Tory MPs would not vote for a Labour frontbench amendment and if the party is 'serious' about avoiding a hard Brexit 'we must vote for the existing backbench cross-party Lords amendment'. 
Chuka Umunna - a supporter of the pro-EU Open Britain campaign - said: 'All the way through the passage of this Bill, the only amendments which have commanded support on both sides of the House and passed are cross-party backbench ones. 
'So, if we are serious about 'protecting full access to the internal market of the EU' and ensuring 'no new impediments to trade', logic dictates Labour MPs should be whipped to support the cross-party EEA amendment sent to us by the House of Lords.' 
Labour former minister Lord Rooker accused Mr Corbyn of being on the side of the PM. 
'The Lords quite specifically sent the Commons amendments tailored to Tory remainers,' he said. 
'And at request of MPs! Lords taken for a ride by Labour Leadership which clearly supports the Prime Minister.' 
Brexit minister Suella Braverman said Labour's policy implied accepting free movement and legal oversight from European judges.
'Labour have shattered their promise to respect the referendum result – this amendment means accepting free movement and continuing to follow EU rules with absolutely no say in them, which is the worst of all worlds,' she said.
It came as MPs were told that losing key Brexit votes next week could have a 'catastrophic' impact on the Government.
On Tuesday, Theresa May will seek to overturn attempts by the House of Lords to thwart Brexit as the EU Withdrawal Bill returns to the Commons.
A document circulating among pro-Brexit MPs sets out the damaging consequences of the 15 amendments to the legislation made by Remainer peers. One amendment will give power to MPs to send her back to Brussels if they do not like the deal she negotiates.
This so-called 'meaningful vote' amendment would give the Lords a potential veto over Brexit and could be used by the Commons to 'reverse Brexit' at the last minute, the document warns.
Another amendment removes the date of Brexit, March 29, 2019, from the Bill. A vote against the Brexit day would be 'catastrophic politically, damage Brexit and the chances of a good deal', the document states.
Labour's Brexit stance has undergone so many changes it can be difficult to keep track.
Even during the referendum in 2016 Jeremy Corbyn was accused of half-hearted campaigning and hedging his bets - admitting he was only '7 out of 10' in favour of Remain.  
SInce then the leadership has been trying to maintain 'constructive ambiguity' so it can keep hold of heartland voters who often back Brexit - without alienating the party's largely Remainer members and MPs.
But critics say Mr Corbyn is even more determined than the government to have his cake and eat it, and has no real answers to what shape Brexit should take.
The latest version of Labour's Brexit policy is due to be voted on at the 2018 conference. Official policy says there should be a new general election but if this is impossible, the party could back a new referendum. 
SECOND REFERENDUM
Last September Mr Watson said the party was 'not ruling it out, but it's highly unlikely'.
But in November, letters emerged from shadow home secretary Diane Abbott to constituents saying she would 'argue for the right of the electorate to vote on any deal that is finally agreed'.
In December, Mr Corbyn said 'We've not made any decision on a second referendum.'
But by January this year he was stating: 'We are not supporting or calling for a second referendum. What we've called for is a meaningful vote in Parliament.'
Numerous backbenchers have said they want to see a second referendum on a Brexit deal. 
By conference 2018 internal debate over a second referendum prompted more than 150 different motions on the issue. A 'composited' version invites members to back a new general election but leave a 'People's Vote' on the table.
Senior Labour figures have split on what any second referendum should mean - with some, such as Len McCluskey and John McDonnell insisting remaining in the EU cannot be on the ballot - but Sir Keir Starmer has said the motion means it could be. 
SINGLE MARKET
After the election in June last year, Mr Corbyn sacked three frontbenchers for voting in favour of a Commons motion calling for the UK to stay in the single market.
The same month shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: 'I think people will interpret membership of the single market as not respecting that referendum.'
However, the following September Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said single market membership was possible 'if the European Union wanted to talk about reform of freedom of movement rules'.
Sir Keir Starmer has said the party wants 'a partnership that retains the benefits of the single market and the customs union'.
Labour whipped its peers to abstain from a vote in favour of the single market earlier this month, but the instructions were largely ignored and many backed the idea. 
Mr Corbyn briefed MPs on his single market stance at a behind closed doors meeting on May 14. But they did not seem entirely clear on his position, with one backbencher emerging to say he had left the prospect open, but another saying he had made clear the option was 'dead'.
A massive rebellion is expected in a Commons vote that could happen next month.
CUSTOMS UNION
Shadow trade secretary Barry Gardiner said in July 2017 that staying in the EU customs union would be a 'disaster' as it would entail an 'asymmetrical relationship' and damage Britain's ability to make deals with other countries.
But in February this year Sir Keir confirmed that the party wants to stay in a customs union with the bloc - although not the current one because that would mean EU membership. He said 'the only way realistically' for the UK to get tariff-free access to the EU.
The following month Emily Thornberry said Labour wanted to maintain the existing customs union.
'What we want to do is we want to remain in the customs union,' she said. 'We don't want any faffing around with any of the nonsense that the Government is coming up with in relation to alternatives to the customs union. We want to remain in the customs union.' 
Last month Mr Gardiner was caught on mic giving a withering assessment of Labour's six tests for approving a Brexit deal, saying they were 'b*****cks'.
'We know very well that we cannot have the exact same benefits,' he said.
Mr Gardiner has also suggested that fears over the Irish border are being whipped up for 'political' reasons. 
PAYING FOR ACCESS TO MARKETS
In December last year, Sir Keir said he would like a 'Norway-style treaty' and as a result 'there may have to be payments to be negotiated'.
However, in January this year, John McDonnell said 'I don't understand why we would have to pay' for access to the single market.
 
 
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
There can be no better illustration of the disconnect between the people and the Tory leadership than its wilful ignorance of the sheer scale of the growing countrywide opposition to its mindless stampede towards a no-deal Brexit. A poll by Hope Not Hate released on Monday will show that, by a margin of two to one, British people think that the economy, their families’ economic prospects, inward investment into the UK and even their exposure to terrorism will take a turn for the worse if we crash out of the European Union on 31 October. Only 17% of women think no deal would be good for Britain.
They are right to be worried: the no-deal Brexit we are now being offered is not the Brexit promised before and during the referendum. “What most people in this country want is the single market, the common market”, Boris Johnson is on record as saying, along with “Personally, I would like to stay in the single market”. “Wouldn’t it be terrible if we were really like Norway and Switzerland? Really?” said Nigel Farage. “They’re rich. They’re happy. They’re self-governing.”
Yet if no deal goes ahead on Thursday 31 October, it will be nothing like Norway or Switzerland. By the following day – what Brexiteers will call “Freedom Friday”- there will be long queues at Dover and by Saturday 2 November many of our motorways will be at a standstill. By that Sunday, food prices will be going up – a 10% rise is the latest estimate – and by Monday the pound will be sharply down on its pre-Brexit value. By Tuesday medical drugs from mainland Europe will be less accessible, and a week after Brexit, companies will be complaining that vital stocks and components are not reaching them, bringing the threat of having to put workers on short time, and economists who have long forecasted recession will not be surprised.
All of the above is not a “project fear” fantasy, but the most conservative conclusions of an assessment by the UK’s most senior civil servant, which was leaked in April. These conclusions have been backed up by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a Commons committee report and countless others.
Indeed, as revealed in a little-known table in a Treasury study last November, a no-deal Brexit could cost the country nearly £100bn in lost revenues and higher social security costs, far beyond the £26bn of “headroom money” that Tory leadership candidates have handed out over and over again to fund their various notions.
When future historians look back, they will be shocked to discover how such an act of economic self-harm that runs wholly counter to the national interest could ever be portrayed by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson as the height of patriotism, and criticism from any quarter dismissed as a betrayal.
Even if some of the immediate chaos forecast by officials is averted on the day, the long-term economic impact of no deal is where the calamity lies. British history includes self-inflicted wounds – military disasters such as the Charge of the Light Brigade and the fiasco of Gallipoli – but no peacetime act of self-harm can rival exiting the EU without a deal when we are so woefully unprepared. Even now the new European commission president is offering to deliver us from this fate – and we are refusing the help. But for the Brexiteers there is little consideration of the consequences of what they propose. Their mission is driven by belief, emotion and ideology and the vehemence with which allegations of “betrayal” and “treachery” are thrown around reveals a profound crisis of identity.
For what message do we send about what kind of Britain we now are if we reject out of hand last week’s European offer to ditch the cliff-edge, and boast instead that we will not pay the money we owe to the EU: the equivalent of declaring an economic war on our neighbours? Brexiteers may be trying to reinvent a “Britain alone” Dunkirk spirit – once again showing its indomitable fortitude. But this all too easily descends into an inward-looking, intolerant and adversarial brand of paranoid nationalism bent on blaming all who disagree.
MPs can and should still prevent no deal. Parliament last week voted against its own prorogation, and Boris Johnson is now more likely to call a final Commons vote between his no deal and staying in the EU. Brexiteers who have campaigned for decades to restore parliamentary sovereignty will argue that a sovereign people cannot be undermined by a now non-sovereign parliament.
Having been an MP for half my life, I well understand the duty an MP has to listen to their constituents – the Brexit referendum reveals grievances that must be addressed – but also the obligation to weigh the balance of risks before a parliamentary vote as important as this.
For each member will have to explain a no-deal Brexit to the mother in their constituency whose child is suffering or even dying because lifesaving drugs cannot get through, and to the small businessman or woman seeing a lifetime’s work ruined and the livelihoods of their workforce with it. MPs will still receive their salaries, and from its new office in Dublin, inside the EU, the City firm co-founded by Jacob Rees-Mogg will still make its millions. But the other 649 MPs must recognise the plight of the less well-protected, whose prospects this mindless course of action so needlessly destroys.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
A symbolic casualty of Britain’s rolling, roiling Brexit debacle is the “commemorative” 50p coin bearing the date 29 March 2019, which the government had planned to release. It was one of their more idiotic ideas to put such an item in the nation’s pockets and purses when the country is so divided and its destiny is swirled with such a dense fog of uncertainty. The coin is now as redundant as the prime minister who signed off on it. Britain won’t be leaving the EU to the deadline that Theresa May has held so sacred that she swore she would not be deflected from it on more than 100 occasions.
Her inability to meet her own date is one illustration of the failure of her broken Brexit strategy. Another is the heel-stamping manner in which she responded to this latest episode in her thick volume of humiliations. Shortly before she went to Brussels to seek a postponement to Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, the prime minister had a temper tantrum that was no prettier for being dressed up as a televised address to the nation. The inflammatory speech from Number 10, in which she sought to rouse voters against parliament by displacing the blame on to MPs, was thought “appalling” by her own chief whip. Other cabinet colleagues condemned it in much riper language.
The first error was tactical. By seeking to make villains of MPs, she was attacking the very people whose assistance she needs if she is to have any hope of getting her deal over the line in the event that she dares to make a third attempt. Whatever she does with her post-prime ministerial life, I do not recommend a career in anything that requires charm, finesse or a mastery of the arts of persuasion. The speech went down badly with both the Tory ultras whom she needed to soften and with those Labour MPs whose votes she had to attract to keep her deal alive. In fact, it went down terribly with virtually all MPs of every flavour. Leadership by ultimatum is unattractive, but can be effective when a prime minister is strong. Leadership by ultimatum is both ugly and hopeless when the prime minister is as enfeebled as Mrs May. That speech crystallised the despair with her combination of reckless obduracy and desperate devices. The consensus in her party is that she has entered the twilight zone of her premiership. One senior Tory figure, who is an astute reader of his party’s moods and has been loyally supportive of the prime minister to date, reports that it is now the “pretty universal” view of Conservative MPs that we are in the closing chapter of her premiership. The only outstanding question is whether Mrs May comprehends the severity of her plight. His concern is that the prime minister is in denial and “may not understand the realities” of her position.
The second error in that speech was simply factual.
When she invoked the “will of the people” against parliament, she spoke as if wilfully obstructive MPs were blocking a deal that is wildly popular with the public. “I am on your side,” she claimed, casting herself as the tribune of the citizenry against these dreadful parliamentarians. But the people are not on her side. The reverse is the case. Her deal is not popular. We have been sucked into this swamp of stalemate because there is no clear public mandate for any Brexit plan, but Mrs May’s deal is particularly unloved. This weekend, more than a million folk have massed in London to demand that the question be put back to the people in a fresh referendum. There are more than 4 million names on the petition seeking the revocation of Brexit. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s tribe, absent its leader for most of the journey, is trooping towards the capital with banners decrying Mrs May as a betrayer of Brexit. I am not aware that anyone is marching or organising a petition in favour of the prime minister’s withdrawal agreement. No one is heading for Parliament Square chanting: “What do we want? Theresa’s terrific deal!”
An analysis by the pollsters YouGov suggests that there are only two constituencies in the entire United Kingdom where there is majority support for Mrs May’s version of Brexit. That is one of the reasons why she has already gone down to two landslide defeats in the Commons. She might have cajoled more support from MPs if the public was behind her, but it is not. Rather, MPs who support her deal are in many cases doing so at the high risk of angering their party members and without the support of the majority of their voters. Those MPs voting against her deal, for their very different and often completely contradictory reasons, are closer to the mood of the public.
Mrs May did say one true thing about parliament in her Downing Street speech, which is that the Commons has been a lot clearer about what it will not have than it has been about what it will approve. MPs have twice rejected her deal and they have twice voted against a no deal. The Commons has not yet demonstrated majority support for anything else. This grim state of affairs is largely of her own engineering. She complains about a situation she has done more than anyone else to create. She has thought to bludgeon her way to a majority by reducing the question to a brutally binary choice between her deal and crashing out and fiercely resisted giving MPs a genuine opportunity to explore alternatives.
That is what the Commons now has to do and with urgency and purpose. By agreeing to an extension, the EU has displayed considerable forbearance and a commendable willingness to try to help save Britain from itself and a calamity Brexit that would hurt us and them. The EU has given Britain a breathing space. Contingent on what happens next, this could turn out to be a lengthy period for rethinking or it could be a perilously short reprieve from disaster. Britain could be back on the brink of the abyss by mid-April. There may be as little as three weeks to locate a solution to this national emergency. That makes it imperative for MPs to get on with exploring means of escape from the Brexit crisis. The government says it will this week facilitate a series of “indicative votes” to test preferences among MPs and try to discover whether there is a resolution capable of attracting majority support. If the government reneges on this promise, or comes up with a process that won’t do the job, then the Commons must insist by wresting control of parliament’s agenda from Mrs May’s desiccated grasp.
For this exercise to be worthwhile, it will have to be conducted on an unwhipped “free vote” basis. Discipline in the Tory party has so imploded and Mrs May’s authority is so shattered that attempts to whip are nigh futile anyway. Governments are traditionally allergic to free votes because they publicly expose and magnify divisions between ministers. That sort of thinking has been rendered irrelevant. The world already knows that this cabinet, which has been warring with itself for months, is utterly split. It won’t be surprising news if the chancellor votes for a different Brexit outcome to the trade secretary. The opposition parties, Labour included, should also unshackle their MPs and allow them to freely follow their own judgment without fear of intimidation.
We should not be naive about free votes. They are not a miracle cure for the Brexit palsy that some suppose. It is possible that unicorn-chasing MPs will concoct fantasy wishlists by voting for versions of Brexit that the EU has already said that it will never agree to. It is also possible that MPs will discover that there isn’t a majority to be found among them for anything if there isn’t a willingness to set aside first choices and embrace compromise. Even if this week’s voting succeeds in indicating where a majority might be found for a viable deal, that will only be a first step towards rescuing Britain. Any solution will then have to be turned into legislation. That takes time and time is short. It will be essential that MPs make a grown-up effort to try to illuminate a path out of this nightmare.
If Mrs May doesn’t like the idea of surrendering power to MPs, or if they can’t make a success of it, there is an alternative. Hand Brexit back to the people for whom both prime minister and parliament claim to speak: let the voters deliver a fresh verdict.
Both these routes to resolution require Mrs May to relinquish control of Brexit, but that is as good as gone anyway. You can’t lose what you’ve already lost.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Parliament has talked about Brexit for too long. We have so far failed to deliver. This week we have a chance to do so. Yet, instead of respecting the mandate of the British people, many MPs appear intent on overruling it.
What we will probably see on Tuesday with the vote on the withdrawal bill and amendments around it won’t be an example of parliament “taking back control” from Brussels or government, but parliament usurping power from the people they are meant to represent.
How so? In 2015, the major political parties supported the idea of a once-in-a-generation referendum on our membership of the European Union. We pledged to abide by the results. There’s every sign that we may now refuse to do so. This is not a heroic parliament taking away arbitrary power from a monarch or dictator, but parliament wresting power from a government trying to enact the mandate of the people to leave the EU.
I intend to support the government in the vote this week because I respect the result given to us by the British people and my own constituents on the Isle of Wight – I would do so regardless of what the referendum result had been. In addition, the only conceivable way of getting Brexit through is with this deal.
I have modest sympathy with those who are critical of it. But I agree with MPs who argue for compromise, a case eloquently made by my colleagues Richard Benyon and George Freeman as well as others last week. As percentage wins go, 52 to 48 is a victory, but it is one in which magnanimity would be a useful ingredient. And it may be that in five or 10 years’ time we vote to change the terms. I think the reality one has to face at this late stage is not between a bad deal and a “good” leave, but between this deal and no deal, potentially a second referendum and no Brexit, with the economics and political uncertainty to follow. And as for Northern Ireland, one should remember it is already treated differently in some of its laws and relationship with the Republic of Ireland anyway. Different laws and customs do not prevent it from being an integral part of the UK.
As it stands, too many MPs are telling our electors: “When we told you we would respect your opinion on our membership of the EU, we didn’t mean it.” There is no greater proof that Britain is becoming a European state than our elites demanding the people vote again because they do not approve of how the vote went the first time round.
Some MPs, such as Tottenham’s David Lammy, are at least honest about it. His message is: let’s just tell the people they are wrong and refuse.
I listen to Tory remain leader Dominic Grieve’s legal pedantry and my heart sinks. I don’t know if he more resembles a latter-day Thomas More or Professor Yaffle from the children’s series Bagpuss I used to watch when I was little. His legalistic approach may be impressive, but he has only one emotional aim, and it is to overturn and ignore the wishes of the people of this country. A fine legal mind is being deployed in the pursuit of undermining our relationship with our voters and damaging our democracy.
Two thirds of Labour constituencies voted to leave. While some Labour MPs do have principled objections, the majority appear engaged in a crassly opportunistic attempt to bring down the government, despite having nothing to offer and no new ideas.
But, of course, challenge any of the obsessive remainers plotting this week’s coup, and they portray themselves as martyrs. Ask them why they ignore the mandate that was given to us and we are accused of bullying. Ask them to explain themselves and they hide behind precedent, or say in mock sincerity: “Well, we’re taking back control, isn’t this what you wanted?” Challenge them as to why they are undermining democracy, and they tut-tut as if that question is not the sort of thing one should be asking.
I intend to call this for what it is. Those on all sides of the House of Commons who try, against our manifestos, against the promises we made, to undermine Brexit are not martyrs. They are representatives of an elite that is trying to block Britain leaving the EU.
They are not “taking back control”. They are usurping power. This is a revolt of the elites against popular democracy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Tuesday’s statement from the prime minister was another shameful moment in a Brexit process that has not been short of them.
We are used to the sight of Theresa May coming to the House of Commons and spending hours taking questions. What we have not had much of are answers. This was the case again when I asked her whether no deal remains on the table. It clearly is – despite parliament voting against it, and the views of her cabinet, ministers and sensible backbenchers.
My colleagues and I in the Independent Group have spoken in the last week of how our politics is broken. Nothing better illustrates that than the sight of Theresa May refusing to rule out no deal, while Jeremy Corbyn ducks and dives around, trying not to commit to a people’s vote in a way that could actually make it happen.
It is worth remembering how we got here – the sorry saga of the last three years.
Take the prime minister first. She triggered article 50 without any clue as to what kind of Brexit could command the confidence of parliament or her party, and she did so without having any conversation with MPs or the country. Instead, the referendum result was taken as an instruction to deliver a hard Brexit, with the UK leaving the single market and the customs union.
That approach was put to the people in the 2017 general election. It was rejected. May lost her majority. Astonishingly, she ploughed on regardless, maintaining her red lines and trying to deprive parliament of having its say on her deal – until she was forced into it by members of what is now the Independent Group and my excellent colleague Dominic Grieve.
Still, no progress was made, because the government did not have an agreed position on what it wanted from the negotiation – until Chequers. Then we had a collective view, until Boris Johnson and David Davis sauntered away from the mess they themselves created. The government kept on kicking the can down the road, delaying the vote on the deal time after time – until it went down to the biggest defeat in the modern history of parliament.
If it is a tale of tragedy on the government side, then on the opposition benches it is best described as farce. We all remember the referendum campaign that Jeremy Corbyn “fought”, and we do not do so fondly. His lacklustre effort was at best ineffectual, and at worst totally sabotaged the campaign.
The day after the result, he demanded that article 50 be triggered immediately. He adopted the same position as May on the single market and customs union, ruling out participation in either. During the general election he almost ignored Brexit completely – and then refused to change his position, declining to back a Queen’s speech amendment tabled by Chuka Umunna, which backed both (as well as, incidentally, calling for no deal to be ruled out).
Even when Corbyn moved, he did so through a fog of ignorance. He shifted to back a slightly softer Brexit, but only being part of a customs union with certain conditions, which Brussels would never agree to. He either didn’t know or didn’t care that there are countries that are part of the single market but aren’t in the EU, claiming that one necessitates the other (it doesn’t). He was dragged kicking and screaming towards the notion of a people’s vote, and ended up backing a ridiculous conference resolution that was falsely spun as progress when all Labour did was commit to the public having the final say as an option, not policy.
It has taken the resignation of eight decent members of his party for him to accept a move towards a people’s vote. Even then, it is stuffed full of terms and conditions. He has come off the fence precisely at the time when it may be too late for him to make a difference, and when he has shown so little enthusiasm that there could be 25 or more of his MPs who will refuse outright to back a referendum. Can there be any greater failure of leadership?
In the Independent Group we are heartily sick of it all, and we know people in the country are, too. It is time for an end to these absurd gambles with the lives and livelihoods of our constituents. We have had another week of these two parties failing to provide direction. Another week of prevarication. Another week closer to the cliff edge. It has to stop now.
That’s why as a group, we have tabled an amendment for today’s Brexit debate that would pave the way for a people’s vote. It is supported by the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Any MP, from any side, who is prepared to put the national interest first must back it.
A week ago, Heidi Allen, Sarah Wollaston and I joined the ex-Labour MPs in taking a stand; in saying loud and clear that our politics is broken and that it has to change. Our problems go deeper and wider than Brexit, but Brexit is the biggest one we face – an existential crisis for our economy and our society, writ large thanks to the inability of our rotten parties to do their job.
High noon is about to arrive. MPs on all sides must now make their stand.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
The relationship between the UK and Spain is as old as the history of our two countries. We are bound by a friendship based on values which we still share today: freedom, democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law.
The rich historical and cultural bond that unites two of the oldest monarchies in the world is reflected in our close political relations. We also have close ties from an economic and trade perspective. The facts speak for themselves: the UK is our fourth largest customer and our seventh largest supplier. In 2016, Spanish exports to Britain amounted to €19.15bn, with imports of €11.18bn. We are visited by more citizens from the UK than from any other country. And more than half a million Spanish and British citizens have chosen to live in the UK and Spain respectively.
The UK is our main investment destination, with a stock of €82bn in 2015, and the second largest investor in Spain (€44.62bn). Spanish companies in the UK operate in industries including finance, telecommunications and energy supply. The UK is also very present in Spain with significant investments in, for instance, the telecommunications industry.
On 23 June 2016, the British people made a decision which we respect, and which confronts us with a complex challenge: to ensure the UK’s orderly exit from the EU and find a new framework for all manner of relations that for 44 years took place within the union. I would not want to exaggerate or underestimate the difficulty of the task ahead.
Citizens are our priority: we must give them certainty and reassurance, and safeguard their rights and interests. It is also essential to ensure businesses can continue operating in a context of legal security and predictability. Doing otherwise would significantly discourage investment, growth and job creation. It is our obligation as leaders to minimise, as far as possible, the impact of this decision on our citizens. It is a matter of pragmatism, but also of justice.
The situation has progressed substantially since the important speech Theresa May gave in Florence in September. Her proposals and constructive spirit have made the talks move forward significantly. I hope that a reasonable agreement which respects the interests of all parties can be reached regarding the financial settlement and the Irish border, preserving the Good Friday agreement.
Time is short. On 14 and 15 December, the European council will meet in Brussels: we are on the verge of an agreement and I hope we will soon be able to move on to the second phase of negotiations. The two teams are making invaluable efforts. I would like to point out that the EU’s lead negotiator, Michel Barnier, has Spain’s full support and trust.
The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union, but not Europe. The aim will be to build a strategic alliance to respond to the common challenges and goals of the 21st century: job creation, migration, climate change, development, cybersecurity and terrorism.
We must not forget that the UK and Spain have always stood firm and united in their fight against the scourge of terrorism, which continues to cause great pain and which has struck both our countries this year. I am convinced that, together, we will be able to better stand up to any challenge.
Our unity can also be seen in the firmness and clarity of May’s government in the face of the events that have recently taken place in the autonomous region of Catalonia.
Britain’s stance is particularly important, as it is the cradle of parliamentarism and the rule of law. I hope that the coming regional elections in Catalonia will allow us to return to the normality and stability that our institutions require and our citizens deserve.
Winston Churchill, whose family history is linked to the Spanish war of succession, said: “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you can see.” The history of our nations is inextricably intertwined, and will continue to be so. Britain can count on Spain’s loyal and sincere friendship. We want the best for the UK, because it is simply another way of wishing the same for Spain.
First published on Tue 12 Jun 2018 18.08 BST
Theresa May has narrowly avoided a humiliating defeat over the Brexit bill after Conservative rebels accepted significant concessions from the government on the “meaningful vote” when it returns to the House of Lords next week.
Just moments before voting began, the prime minister held 11th-hour talks with more than 14 Tory rebels in her Commons office, after which they received personal assurances that she would agree to the broad thrust of their proposals.
One MP in the meeting, which included former cabinet minister Justine Greening and Ed Vaizey said that May told the group it was “a matter of trust”.
The Tory rebels, led by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, later praised the government for “responding positively” to their concerns and claimed that they would be addressed when the EU withdrawal bill goes back to the Lords on Monday.
However, furious Brexiters immediately condemned as unworkable Grieve’s plan to hand over control of the government’s Brexit strategy to MPs, suggesting that May’s attempts to overcome deep Tory splits on the issue was failing.
A Downing Street source claimed that the prime minister had agreed only to ongoing discussions, raising the prospect of an angry showdown when a delegation of rebel MPs sits down with ministers to thrash out a deal.
David Davis’s Brexit department cast further doubt over the rebels’ claims, issuing a statement which read: “We have not, and will not, agree to the House of Commons binding the Government’s hands in the negotiations.”
MPs voted by 324 votes to 298 to back the government in rejecting an amendment passed by peers in April that would strengthen the hand of the Commons in the event of it rejecting the final Brexit deal.
Tory rebels, who were numerous enough to have otherwise inflicted a damaging defeat, claimed that they had agreed to vote with the government after May agreed to address ongoing concerns.
The proposals would mean that in the event of parliament rejecting the final Brexit deal, ministers would have seven days to set out a fresh approach. In the case of talks with the EU breaking down, they would have until 30 November to try to strike a new deal.
However, there did not yet appear to be agreement on the final part – clause C – of Grieve’s proposals, that if there was still no deal by 15 February next year, the government would have had to hand over the reins to the House of Commons to set its Brexit strategy.
The government climbdown, just hours after Downing Street said it would not compromise further on the meaningful vote proposals, underlined the fragility of the prime minister’s grip on her party and her lack of room for manoeuvre on Brexit.
It came amid claims that three ministers had held talks with the anti-Brexit campaign group Best for Britain, which backs a second referendum being held. However, the group has approached almost every MP with details of research that it has carried out on every constituency in the country.
In a day of extraordinary drama, Tory ministers and whips were engaged in frantic negotiations to prevent a damaging defeat over parliament’s ability to block a no-deal Brexit, which came right down to the wire even as the debate carried on.
The Brexit secretary, David Davis, opened the debate by saying that the government could not accept anything that could undermine May, hinting that the amendments proposed by Lords and Tory rebels would hamper negotiations.
But most of the original 11 rebels on the meaningful vote amendment had indicated that they would stand firm. The justice minister, Philip Lee, dealt a blow to the prime minister by resigning, saying he planned to vote against the government.
The former cabinet minister Justine Greening, and George Freeman, Downing Street’s former policy guru, spoke in support of the rebel plans, heightening alarm among government ministers.
The Tory chief whip, Julian Smith, scurried up and down the green benches, speaking urgently to groups of MPs, including Grieve. In between discussions, he spoke to ministers on the front benches, including May, scribbling notes on a Commons paper.
The prime minister had urged Tory MPs not to undermine her negotiating clout with Brussels by voting against the government, but in a series of passionate speeches, the mood appeared to be shifting against her.
In a sign that the government saw the prospect of defeat looming, the solicitor general, Robert Buckland, intervened from the front bench, saying there was “much merit” to parts of the compromise amendment.
Shortly afterwards, the former attorney general left the chamber, later joined by the bulk of the remain rebels, who had been sitting together in a corner of the Commons, raising speculation they had been offered a last-minute compromise.
After the vote, Grieve told the Guardian: “I am very pleased that the government has listened to the concerns of many colleagues and has responded positively to the need to amend the bill further to provide a proper mechanism to enable parliament to act, where necessary, if there is no deal or a deal is rejected by negotiations.
“We will now work with the government to get acceptable amendments tabled in the Lords to address this.”
However, the Brexit minister Steve Baker appeared to rule out the government backing Grieve’s plans for parliament to take back control. He told the Guardian: “It is a constitutional innovation which would be totally unprecedented. You cannot have 650 MPs conducting the negotiation.
“Brexit is about making our constitution work the way a majority think it does, which is parliament making our laws. What we cannot, should not and must not do is overturn the principles by which international relations are conducted, which is that the government negotiates, and must have the support of parliament.”
The Tory Brexiter Andrew Bridgen said: “The Lords have themselves admitted it is a wrecking amendment that is designed to stop Brexit. If the government accepted any version of it, they’d have a much bigger revolt on their hands and it would be led by the electorate.”
But Tory rebels appeared unconcerned by opposition to their plan. One said: “Ultimately, if the government don’t accept the Grieve amendment then the Lords will put it down and we’ll have the fight again.”
MPs return to the Commons for a second day of votes on the Brexit bill on Wednesday, although after remainers and Brexiters struck a compromise deal on Monday over the customs union, kicking that particular battle into next month, no more defeats are expected.
The government won all 11 votes on the Lords amendments, and one more which was not contested. However, by the time the votes were done, there was only 30 minutes left to discuss key concerns over devolution and Brexit, in particular those raised by the Scottish government, to the fury of the SNP.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
Bastards, mutineers, saboteurs, enemies of the people. As the Brexit debate approaches climax, it is running short of terms of abuse. It reverts to the language politics knows best, of the bully in the playground. But this gives it a problem. Today’s bastards are not the Brexiters of old: they are yesterday’s moderates and pragmatists. Yesterday’s wildcats of hard Brexit have become today’s loyal insiders.
This is a serious tactical mistake on Theresa May’s part. She is isolating as rebels and “Brexit deniers” precisely those on whose support any workable deal for leaving the EU will depend. On the other hand, she is giving comfort to the no-dealers and cliff-edgers, who are happy to see the Brussels talks fail and Britain default to the “deep blue sea”. She has demonised common sense, and forced friend and foe alike to the language of extremes.
The Palace of Westminster presented a grim spectacle on Wednesday afternoon. It was as if the stuffing had been knocked out of the place. It was propped up on all sides with scaffolding, and infested with armed police. Every room was thick with crumpled suits, halitosis and bad temper. In the chamber, debate on Brexit roamed into the night, inconclusive and bitter.
The 2016 referendum was nasty because it collapsed the customary courtesy of partisan politics. Voters had to think for themselves, and the politicians found it distressing. Brexit dug deep into the public subconscious. It brought to the surface the insecurities and angers that underpin the new politics of identity.
On the right, it gave rein to the old Powellite politics of “Britishness”, and a voice to those left behind by what they see as an aloof cosmopolitanism. Equally, it brought home to the educated middle class that if you fail to persuade a critical mass of minorities of your case, you will lose.
Even if the “mutineers” – as the Daily Telegraph called them – secure enough defeats to overturn the 2019 deadline, it would take a political earthquake to reverse Brexit. Parliament voted last summer overwhelmingly to accept the referendum outcome, but it did not go further and stipulate the terms of that acceptance. Since the referendum offered no alternative to a blank yes or no, it left millions who might have voted “yes, but” in no man’s land.
That was when May should have stated clearly a desire for “Brexit, but soft Brexit”. She should have forced the no-dealers to choose collaboration or rebellion, and Labour and Liberal Democrats to assist her in that traditional role of Tory prime ministers, to fashion a compromise with her party on Europe.
Every Tory prime minister since Edward Heath has had their anti-European fanatics, a sort of discomfort blanket. Thatcher did, over the single market. John Major did, over Maastricht. David Cameron did, over the referendum. They all had their bastards, but they kept them outside the tent. They caused much damage, but until Cameron they never dictated policy. May has them inside the tent, and called them allies. That is dangerous.
Since that vote in parliament, there has been no sign of a scenario that even begins to suggest what the government wants to do next – about transition, single market, customs union, anything. May said in her Florence speech in September that, while she had to withdraw from the EU, she wanted a fair settlement and a “frictionless” economic relationship with Europe. It was “yes, but”. Yet she remains tongue-tied in articulating what the “but” really means, as it cannot sensibly mean the deep blue sea of hard Brexit.
Wisdom would fasten on to what the British electorate thought it meant in the referendum. Every poll indicates that it meant soft, not hard, Brexit: yes to open borders and open trade; yes to reasonably free movement; no to “unnecessary” regulation and to “unfair” access by foreigners to state welfare, as in other EU countries. May’s task was to allay the fears voters had of their “British identity” being eroded, while maintaining a frictionless relationship with European states. It was to sell some version of a Norway, or other compromise deal.
The prime minister has been unable to master the new geography of Brexit politics. She has driven both sides to the extremes, where they have all the best tunes. The bi-party system and the architecture of parliament favour thesis against antithesis, not synthesis.
Democracy always finds it hard to summon troops to the banner of moderation. The middle ground murmurs sotto voce. Political language has become the language not of discovery, but of attack and defence. But the old politics of Labour and Conservative embraced this dichotomy within the concept of a broad-church coalition.
The new politics holds that broad-church parties are a thing of the past. When people think politically, they no longer think nationally but rather of themselves, their group and its interests. The cry of the group is: “You cannot understand me as you have not shared my experience.” This is the death of representative government. It is De Tocqueville’s “atomised democracy”, the dictatorship of appeased minorities. It is made worse by the “truth decay” of social media and the tyranny of the click. There is nothing identity politics likes so much as hate.
The US political academics Jonathan Haidt and Mark Lilla have warned that a moral confusion over group identity risks “distorting liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing”. This is not just some intellectual reflection. It describes British politics as it is currently: in awe of the hard-Brexit minority, and unable to articulate what a majority of Britons so clearly want, which is an orderly path to a soft Brexit.
As an EU “sceptic”, I long for some lighter-touch, less German-centric framework for European economic collaboration. But if Britain crashes chaotically out of the EU – smashing treaties, agreed disciplines and friendships as it goes – it will put at risk the good of almost half a century of European bonding.
This will not be because of the Brexit referendum. It will be because British politics could not find a language for a sensible compromise. It could not find a grammar of the sensible centre. The truth is, May has chosen the wrong bastards.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Theresa May could once again be on a collision course with the Brexiter wing of her party over a controversial proposal to keep the UK in a single market for goods.
Whitehall sources said they believed free movement of goods was “100% the direction of travel” as the prime minister’s focus shifts to the next battle over Britain’s future relationship with the EU after next week’s Brussels summit.
Downing Street remained tight-lipped, reiterating that the UK would be leaving the single market in its entirety. However, cabinet sources suggested the issue could be on the agenda at the Brexit “war cabinet” awayday at Chequers in early July.
Government insiders believe that Britain might be able to retain a relatively frictionless trading relationship if it sticks to single market rules on manufactured products but diverges elsewhere, such as on services.
But Brussels is unlikely to accept the proposal as it would require concessions on the free movement of people. UK negotiators would also push for an independent trade policy.
One cabinet source said: “If you look at how all the negotiations with Brussels have been structured it looks like the whole process has been geared towards this endgame. But the big kicker for Brexiters will be freedom of movement.
“What No 10 is banking on is that the EU will let them fudge this and give them some sort of flexibility. They’ll come up with clever wording but it will basically be freedom of movement by another name. There’s no way Brussels is going to allow us an opt-out.”
A Whitehall official added: “It is the logical extension of the prime minister’s Mansion House speech that there would be a relatively high degree of alignment … But we want an independent trade policy. It would be a massive negotiating challenge.”
Some Tory Brexiters believe Brussels is gearing up to offer the UK access to its markets this autumn, before the party conference season, on the understanding that May would accept some degree of freedom of movement, currently one of the prime minister’s red lines.
Up until this point debate on the model for Britain’s future relationship with the EU after Brexit has focused on either the “Norway” model, in effect staying within the single market, or a free trade deal like the one the EU has with Canada.
However, officials in both London and Brussels are now beginning to look at a potential third way, a so-called association agreement like the one the EU has with Ukraine and various other countries.
Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, said on Wednesday that a single market for goods was the only way to resolve the Irish border problem and prevent disruption of manufacturers’ supply chains.
However, he acknowledged the move would cross the prime minister’s red lines on freedom of movement and would require a degree of oversight by the European Court of Justice.
The idea has also been pushed by Henry Newman, a former political adviser to Michael Gove who now runs the pro-Brexit Open Europe thinktank.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
British politics now follows the tortured pattern of addiction. Inside the addict’s head the most important thing is getting to the next Brexit fix, scoring the best deal. But from the outside, to our European friends and family, it is obvious that the problem is the compulsive pursuit of a product that does us only harm. On Tuesday night Theresa May thought she had scored: a slender majority in parliament voted for an imaginary agreement in Brussels, stripped of the hated “backstop”. Tory Eurosceptic ultras and the DUP pledged conditional allegiance to the prime minister if she delivers “alternative arrangements” for a seamless border on Northern Ireland. But no one has any idea what those might be and the EU has already ruled out a renegotiation on terms that might satisfy the hardliners. The transient buzz of Tory unity will yield to the chilly comedown of Brexit reality, as it always does.
Some MPs can see the situation spiralling out of control. Today 298 lined up to demand an intervention. They backed a cross-party bid to seize control of the Brexit agenda from the government and delay the day of departure if necessary. But the move failed. There is ample horror of the no-deal scenario across the Commons (a vaguer condemnation of that option won a narrow majority), but clearly the greater fear is association with anything that looks like an active plot to thwart Brexit. Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles, sponsors of the more controversial amendment, insisted their aim was only to guarantee an orderly departure, and there is no reason to doubt them. Parliament is packed with pro-Europeans who say no to the hard junk peddled by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg but are still hooked on softer strains of the leave drug.
There is a booming trade in legal Brexit highs for MPs. The newest variant to hit the Westminster street is a confection put together by Kit Malthouse, a leave-voting Tory. His product has been endorsed by a remarkable spread of Conservative MPs, from former remainers to hardline Brexiteers. They grandiosely call it the “Malthouse compromise” – as if it were a magisterial vision for peace among nations and not a ragged stitch-up to postpone Tory civil war.
The idea has two parts: first, renegotiate the backstop that promises a frictionless Northern Irish border; second, if renegotiation fails, scrap the deal but salvage the transition period contained within in it. Then aim for an exit on WTO terms.
It is a strange kind of compromise plan that offers no compromise. The backstop only exists because May’s Brexit red lines could not be bent around the Good Friday agreement any other way. As for the transition period, it is a condition of the current deal. The idea that it can be cut and pasted into some other deal presumes that the past two years have just been a warm-up before the real match starts. This new Malthouse doctrine is really the old hardline Brexit delusions in shinier shoes. It is the bluff that Britain holds all the cards, and that if we show enough contempt for treaties and economic logic, Brussels will be intimidated into granting favours that could not be won by conventional diplomacy.
There are two possible reasons for pursuing that strategy. One is stupidity: failure to grasp what the negotiations so far have actually been about and how May’s deal was their logical outcome. The second is cynical vandalism: knowing that the plan will fail and hoping, when it does, to pin blame for a chaotic no-deal Brexit on Brussels intransigence. In truth it would be the fruition of Eurosceptic zealotry.
It is sad to see self-styled Tory “moderates” taken in by such a con and alarming to hear May indulge it in the Commons as a “serious proposal”. Her next move is to Brussels, in a quest for something that two years of negotiation have already failed to uncover. But it seems the way to unite Tories these days is to expunge the period 2017 to 2018 from memory. May still acts as if Brexit is something that must be settled to the satisfaction of the Conservative party first, and only then shared with the rest of Europe. The British public is at the very back of the queue.
Such obtuseness infuriates continental leaders more than the intent to quit their club. It was not a secret that Britain had a Eurosceptic political culture, even if the referendum result was shocking and upsetting. But what was also obvious in Brussels, Berlin and Paris was the gap between the idea of Brexit advertised by the leave campaign – the narcotic rush of words such as “freedom” and “sovereignty” – and the practical business of extricating Britain from EU structures. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and others presumed this yawning chasm would be recognised by their British counterpart as a hazard. They expected May to start building bridges from the leavers’ fantasy island to the reality of what was available in negotiations with a bloc of 27 countries – the imbalance of power and the calculus of damage limitation.
But May never confronted that logic. When she took the referendum result as her personal mission she also anointed herself with sacred oils of Brexiteer mythology. Her inscrutable demeanour and robotic speeches conceal a fervour that would be instantly identifiable as demagogy in a more expressive politician. At first, the prime minister’s rigid mask tricked Europeans into thinking she was a reasonable and capable person. It had a similar effect on the domestic audience. May’s bland style flattered a collective belief in the innate moderation of our politics. Her parochial mediocrity has nurtured the complacent assumption that the worst cannot happen here, that we are, at heart, a pragmatic nation not given to fanatical lurches. MPs imagine parliament as a political equivalent to the Greenwich meridian – the zero line from which other countries’ deviations are measured. We are slow to notice when the whole enterprise drifts wildly off course.
Yet no one watching from the outside retains that romantic view of Britain as a bastion of political sobriety. They see instead a weird, stubborn refusal to talk about the crisis in plain English. MPs do battle over amendments to motions that change standing orders to permit bills to insist on extensions to a negotiating period, without saying what they think the outcome of that negotiation should be. Meanwhile, the prime minister invites her backbenchers to vote against something she has agreed in Brussels so she can go back and ask for something that she knows will be rejected.
It is obvious that Brexit is a disaster, yet still so many MPs observe a taboo against saying that it should be stopped. To our continental friends and neighbours it is scarcely comprehensible. It looks like British social awkwardness elevated to the scale of a constitutional meltdown. It is the stiff upper lip chewing itself to pieces rather than name the cause of our suffering: not the deal, not the backstop, not the timetable, not Brussels, but Brexit. The poison in our system is Brexit. We need a path to recovery, not May’s frantic hunt for a stronger, purer dose.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Theresa May will come under intense pressure from leading Brexiters on Monday to ditch her Chequers proposals and back a free trade deal with the EU instead as she faces a bruising cabinet showdown in the wake of the disastrous Salzburg summit.
The former Brexit secretary David Davis and leading Eurosceptic Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg are among those backing a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs which is expected to set out an alternative plan for a hard Brexit departure from the EU.
The launch, attended by a series of high-profile Brexiters, comes just hours before the prime minister comes face to face with her cabinet for the first time since her humiliation at the hands of EU leaders who rejected key elements of her Chequers plan.
Immigration will be one of the key points of discussion at the hastily arranged meeting a week before Tory conference at which May is expected to argue for strict controls to reassure Brexiters and boost her leadership in the face of open revolt.
Several cabinet ministers have privately expressed dismay at the fate of May’s Chequers proposals and are understood to be advocating a move towards a Canada-style trade deal. At least two are thought to be prepared to raise the issue directly.
One cabinet source said: “Chequers in its present form is a non-starter for the EU so it’s time for us to look at the alternatives. We should at least look again at the prospect of a free trade agreement.”
However, the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, was unequivocal on Sunday that such a proposal was “off the table” as it would mean reverting to the EU’s backstop solution for Northern Ireland which would create a hard border down the Irish sea.
“People need to read the small print, not just of our proposals, but the EU’s proposals, because what they’re suggesting is not just a free trade deal but for us to stay locked in, or for Northern Ireland specifically to stay locked into the customs union,” he said.
“Now that would be a clear carve up of the United Kingdom. It’s off the table in the terms that the EU would even plausibly at this stage accept.”
Those in cabinet backing a shift towards a Canada-style deal deny that it would lead to a border in the Irish Sea, although it would be dependent on the EU agreeing to soften its position on border checks if a Brexit deal looked within reach.
No 10 sources said that alternative proposals for the border had already been rejected by Brussels. One said: “There aren’t any easy solutions to any of these problems. We know that the idea of a Canada-style free trade deal cannot and would not happen without the backstop.”
One cabinet minister warned that colleagues should wait to see what counter-proposals to Chequers were put forward by Brussels in early October before looking at other options: “If they wholesale reject Chequers then we will have to do something before we get to no deal, but not until then.”
It comes after the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, appeared to suggest that the government was pivoting away from its existing plans towards a free trade deal, as demanded by the Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party. Hunt and Brexiter Penny Mordaunt will be in New York for the UN general assembly.
There is also likely to be a standoff at the cabinet over the prime minister’s post-Brexit plans for immigration, with May and the home secretary, Sajid Javid, pushing for an end to preferential access for EU citizens and focus on a global migration scheme.
Other cabinet colleagues, led by the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, are understood to harbour some doubts about the proposals and are likely to argue the benefits of a flexible system for skilled workers.
Sajid Javid is among this group, according to reports in the Times and Sun, which claim the home secretary is planning to propose that EU citizens be given free entry to temporarily stay in the EU for 30 months after Brexit in the event of no deal, in order to protect the economy. The reports say that during this period such citizens would then have to apply for a visa under a new migration system.
Meanwhile, leading Brexiters will publish their alternative plan, written by trade guru Shanker Singham, for a future trading relationship with the EU, setting out the benefits of striking out alone to do deals with the rest of the world. It will also suggest a new regulatory environment and present their solutions for the issue of the Irish border.
At an event in central London, key Tory figures are expected to repeat their call for May to “chuck Chequers” and adopt their proposals instead, arguing that the EU’s rejection of her plans in Salzburg meant that they were dead.
Raab also dismissed suggestions over the weekend that May could call a snap general election in the autumn to save her Brexit plans. “It’s for the birds. It’s not going to happen,” he told the BBC.
He insisted the government would keep negotiating with the EU on the basis of Chequers: “This is a bump in the road. We will hold our nerve, we will keep our cool and we will keep negotiating in good faith. I think we need to keep these negotiations going,.”
But Raab added: “What we are not going to do is be dictated to. The UK is one of the biggest economies in Europe, if not in the world. We have come up with a serious set of proposals … We are not just going to flit from plan to plan like some sort of diplomatic butterfly.”
First published on Sun 19 Nov 2017 23.08 GMT
Theresa May will come under pressure from Brexit supporters in the cabinet to spell out what she hopes the UK will gain from paying the EU a higher divorce bill of about £40bn, as her most senior ministers meet to discuss an improved offer.
The prime minister will attempt to reach a consensus over a proposed offer at a meeting of her cabinet committee on EU strategy on Monday as the UK tries to break the deadlock in Brexit negotiations.
But some of the leave-supporting ministers, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, are understood to be applying pressure behind the scenes to make sure that the UK has a clear idea what it wants from a future trading relationship before agreeing to hand over such a large sum.
They are likely to press the prime minister to begin cabinet discussions on the UK’s future trading relationship after the pair sent a joint letter to No 10 in recent weeks demanding an arrangement that allows Britain a wide degree of regulatory freedom.
Philip Hammond confirmed on Sunday that the UK would make an improved offer to the EU within three and a half weeks, after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator in Brussels, said Britain had a fortnight to break the impasse.
“We will make our proposals to the European Union in time for the council [on 14 December], I am sure about that,” the chancellor told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. He promised Britain would honour its debts but also “negotiate hard” on the various aspects of the financial settlement.
However, senior Brexiters are particularly concerned about the idea of signing over a high sum as part of the withdrawal agreement but later ending up with an unsatisfactory deal on the future relationship.
Johnson is not thought to be opposed in principle to a divorce bill higher than the £20bn already offered by May but would need assurances that the UK was heading for the right type of relationship with the EU when it leaves. At the moment, there is a cabinet agreement on seeking a two-year transitional period after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019, but nothing has been agreed on what the future relationship should look like after that.
Some in the former remain wing of the Conservative party are also keen to see clarity in terms of what the UK will achieve by agreeing to pay a higher amount. Stephen Hammond, one of the Conservative MPs opposing a hard Brexit, told the BBC’s Sunday Politics: “I think where we have to be clear is what we’re paying for and what we’re getting. No one is suggesting that we should just hand over money without any proper scrutiny. That would be entirely inappropriate. But it may well be entirely appropriate to put in money to facilitate international trade which will secure jobs in this country.”
May’s meeting comes at a time of continuing tensions over Brexit within the cabinet, including reports that David Davis, the Brexit secretary, was pushed to the brink of resignation by being excluded from Johnson and Gove’s letter to the prime minister making demands over her strategy.
A source close to Davis strongly denied that he had any intention of walking out, saying: “This is completely wrong and anyone pushing this nonsense in order to undermine Brexit is going to be sorely disappointed.”
However, the demanding tone of Johnson and Gove’s letter raised eyebrows among their senior colleagues. May has agreed to one of its requests – a Brexit taskforce on implementation – but Johnson has been left off the list of those on the new subcommittee on preparations for leaving the EU.
May is also facing the continuing parliamentary battles over the EU withdrawal bill on Tuesday. The most significant vote of the week will be over the issue of human rights, led by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve as he attempts to get the EU charter of fundamental rights incorporated into UK law. The senior Tory may withdraw his amendment if the government makes concessions to safeguard human rights.
But Grieve, who is battling to stop May fixing the Brexit date of 29 March 2019 in law, told BBC Radio 5 Live that some of his colleagues, though not the prime minister, had “become unhinged” over the issue of leaving the EU.
“The prime minister’s problem is that she’s surrounded by people who get louder and more strident by the moment as some of the inevitable problems which were going to come with Brexit start to make themselves apparent,” he said.
On the other side, Suella Fernandes and John Penrose, two Tory MPs involved in the strongly pro-Brexit European Research Group, accused rebels of trying to “torpedo” Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
They said the legislation should be a “spectacularly simple” legal “copying and pasting” of EU law in UK law but claimed there was a “danger it will be used as a Trojan horse, to thwart the referendum result by stealth”.
“The issue isn’t really the date: it’s the timing of a vote on the final deal that’s being negotiated with Brussels,” they wrote in a joint article for the Sunday Telegraph.
“If the deal isn’t agreed until the two-year article 50 timetable is up (and whoever heard of an EU negotiation or summit finishing early, after all?) then the vote can only be ‘please choose between this deal or no deal at all’.”
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Theresa May’s EU negotiating strategy came under sustained criticism from Brexiters following the publication of the long-awaited white paper, with the leader of the hardline European Research Group declaring he could not vote for it if it formed the basis of the final deal with Brussels.
Jacob Rees Mogg said May’s plans to strike an association agreement, matching EU rules on goods and collecting some external customs tariffs, was “a bad deal for Britain” and “would not be something I would vote for nor is it what the British people voted for”.
The warning that he and other members of the European Research Group could join with Labour and other parties to vote down a proposed final deal came as MPs debated the white paper in the House of Commons amid a string of misgivings from Tory Brexiters.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative party leader, said: “Having voted to leave, I voted to leave, not to half leave.” David Jones, a former Brexit minister, complained that there remained a role for the European court of justice in interpreting EU rules in disputes once the UK leaves.
The long-awaited white paper, the buildup to which has already prompted the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis, also received a cautious response from the EU, which said it needed to consider the plans – but there was a boost for May with an upbeat assessment by Ireland’s foreign minister.
The 100-page document, entitled the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, also suggested what the migration policy might look like after free movement ends, with businesses able to to move “their talented people” from the UK to the EU – and vice versa – after Brexit.
EU citizens would not require a visa to work temporarily in the UK or to visit on holiday if those rights were reciprocated. There would be special arrangements for students and young people to study at each other’s universities, and the UK hoped to strike a deal to ensure Britons who had retired on the continent would be able to “benefit from their pension entitlements”.
But it was measures on customs and trade that continued to upset Brexiters, several of whom believe that the government should have embarked on an alternative strategy of pursuing a Canada-style free trade deal drawn up by David Davis but ditched by No 10 last week. Comparing the two, Rees Mogg said: “It is a pale imitation of the paper prepared by David Davis.”
A leak of the draft of the “alternative white paper” that had been drafted by Davis had avoided the idea of an explicit recognition of EU standards on food and goods, instead making a looser commitment to “keep UK regulatory standards for good as high as the EU’s” according a draft leaked to the ConservativeHome website. Such an approach is deemed to be closer to the Canadian free-trade deal because it would not involve signing up to standards set by the 27 country bloc.
As had been expected, the official document set out proposals for the UK to agree to a common rulebook of standards for food and goods after Brexit, and a “facilitated customs arrangement” in which the UK would collect both UK and EU tariffs for goods entering Britain.
The publication of the white paper was also accompanied by chaotic scenes at the House of Commons when it became apparent that printed copies of the document were not immediately available to MPs as Dominic Raab, the new Brexit secretary, got up to introduce it.
A clearly unhappy Raab apologised for the late arrival of the white paper, caused because nobody had authorised Commons officials to release it, and prompting the John Bercow, the Speaker, to take the unusual step of suspending Commons proceedings for five minutes so copies could be obtained.
After the hiatus, Raab told MPs: “I’m confident that a deal is within reach, given the success of the prime minister and her negotiating team.” He later said: “Now is the time for the EU to respond in kind.” He said he expected to meet the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, next week.
In response, Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, began: “Can I gently say this: he’s not got off to a very good start. The utter shambles of the last 20 minutes that led to the suspension of the house during a statement is clear evidence of why the government is in such a mess.”
Starmer also condemned the white paper as both unworkable and unlikely to survive opposition from Tory MPs. “Across business communities, among trade unions and, I genuinely believe, across this house, there is growing unity that the UK should remain economically close to the EU,” Starmer said. “And that means negotiating a comprehensive customs union with the EU27, and a single market deal with the right balance of obligations tailored to the UK.”
Barnier said he would analyse May’s proposals with EU member states and the European parliament “in light of guidelines” drawn up by EU leaders – a heavy hint of the conflict to come in Brexit negotiations. European council guidelines state that the UK cannot “cherry pick” its favourite parts of the EU rulebook.
Brussels officials fear the UK proposal for a single market in goods is a form of special treatment that could undermine the entire EU project, by encouraging other countries to seek opt-outs from basic union law. “If we allow this flexibility on the single market, the whole building might crumble,” said one EU diplomat.
However, Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, struck a notably optimistic note, saying that the white paper could solve the Irish border problem: “It’s easy to focus on the problems and the barriers and the negatives, I’m focussing this week on the step forward. A week ago we didn’t have a clear statement that the British government wanted a future relationship that didn’t require border infrastructure, we now have that statement.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
It was a funeral masquerading as a baptism. In Brussels, Theresa May’s Brexit deal was welcomed into the world by the UK’s 27 soon-to-be-ex-partners and the priesthood of the European commission.
Yet she should have been wearing black and a mantilla. The deal is, as Tony Blair told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, a “dodo”. In her open letter to the nation, the prime minister declared that the agreement “is in our national interest – one that works for our whole country and all of our people … a deal for a brighter future”.
But this is an ex-deal. The only reason it is sitting on its perch is because it has been nailed there.
It is dead because – barring a truly dramatic realignment of parliamentary opinion – it simply cannot survive the “meaningful vote” in the House of Commons expected on 10 December.
Julian Smith, the government chief whip – who looks like a dentist who positively enjoys giving his patients insufficient Novocaine – is now May’s most important cabinet colleague by far. In the next fortnight he and his team must use every conceivable inducement and threat to reach the magic total of 320 votes: knighthoods, peerages, gongs and legislative time will be offered to waverers. Those MPs who oppose the deal will be asked whether their families would really enjoy reading about their sexual indiscretions in the newspapers. Most of this nasty work will be carried out by intermediaries (even whips need plausible deniability). But any and every tactic available to the government will be used; this is life and death, and no time for political squeamishness.
But I still don’t see how Smith does it. Some MPs, strapped to the dentist’s chair, will indeed give in when he holds the drill in front of their eyes and asks: “Is your vote safe?” But I have yet to be convinced that he can get from around 260 (if you assume, generously, the support for the deal of 15 Labour rebels) to 320.
What really matters, then, is not the first Commons vote, but the second. Let us assume that the PM is defeated next month: the political world is then plunged into an extraordinary Christmas crisis. May could, of course, force the issue with a confidence motion – or simply resign on the spot (unlikely, given her recent pattern of behaviour). Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, conceded to Marr that it was “not possible to rule out” the wholesale collapse of the government.
The PM might yet, in any case, face the more parochial challenge of a Conservative vote of confidence, threatening her position as party leader: Jacob Rees-Mogg only has the names of 26 Tory MPs in his elegantly tailored pocket, but that could easily increase to the necessary 48 if May’s deal was rejected by the Commons.
The EU would also have to consider its response. Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, declared that “this is the best deal possible. This is the only deal possible.” The history of diplomacy suggests that most such statements contain a footnote written in invisible ink: “Unless we have to amend it a bit.” One can still imagine a few scraps being thrown May’s way to show good faith.
But the fundamental controversies etched into the deal – the Irish border “backstop”, the continued role of the European court of justice, the prospect of the UK remaining indefinitely in the customs union – are not going to be removed by Brussels in a moment of shocked epiphany. Tweaks, maybe; core alterations, absolutely not.
Deplorably, senior government figures are actively hoping that the markets will respond with panic to the parliamentary failure of the deal, and, to adapt Dr Johnson, focus the minds of MPs sufficiently to deliver a majority second time round. The precedent cited in this context is the Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp) devised by George W Bush’s administration in 2008 to prop up the financial system after the crash. After its initial rejection by Congress, the US stock market fell by seven percentage points. Congress promptly endorsed the plan.
But this is a ridiculous parallel to draw. The crash was a clear and present danger. The Brexit deal is simply a damn-fool plan drawn up in response to the result of a referendum involving lies, illegality and foreign interference. The crash could not be halted by popular will: fortunately, with Brexit there is precisely that option, in the form of a people’s vote.
Expect the campaign for a fresh referendum to gather in strength after the parliamentary vote. Those who have always felt that a no-deal Brexit was the cleanest and most honest option – the oxymoronic “managed” no-deal of Dominic Raab’s fantasies – will shift up a gear. Within the cabinet, a new “gang of five” (Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, David Gauke, Greg Clark and David Lidington) are reported by the Mail on Sunday to be ready to quit if a no-deal exit becomes a serious prospect.
Even as May shook hands with Jean-Claude Juncker, the political village was transforming itself into a noisy constitutional souk. At every stall, the traders offer alternative models: “Norway for now!”; “Canada ++!”; “Switzerland!”; “Get yer article 50 extension here!” None of these alternatives, it should be emphasised, has been seriously countenanced by the EU. But they are already being offered to curious MPs at early-bird prices.
What unites this cacophonous marketplace is the absolute assumption that the deal will fail in December. The 585-page agreement and its 26-page political annex are already regarded as redundant. The variables are dizzying, the stakes vertiginous. The worst news that May has ever had to confront is that the past two-and-a-half years were the easy bit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Today, the government publishes its Brexit plan, two long years too late. The Chequers plan in this white paper should be a Magna Carta to lay out the country’s economic future and the destiny of Britain’s place in the world. In practice this poor specimen is dead on arrival. Never has there been a white paper of such profound potential importance and simultaneous absolute insignificance.
No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, said Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Prussian chief of staff; this plan has so many enemies it should never have made it past the drawing board. Least threatening to it are the hard Brexiters putting down killer amendments to kill off its central idea, Theresa May’s facilitated customs arrangement (FCA).
If their mistaken aim is a show of strength, their amendments’ failure will diminish their power, revealing possibly only some 30 or so backers. A useful display of their weakness will help remind everyone – broadcasters take note – that the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson, Owen Paterson and Priti Patel are extreme mavericks: telegenic for their eccentricities, vanities and foibles, but a sideshow to the existential crisis facing the nation. (As for Nigel Farage, there is no political excuse for giving a man of no standing twice the airtime of, say, Sir Vince Cable, who leads actual MPs.)
The EU is not the enemy, but our closest friend: the Nato summit with Trump should have shocked us into remembering who our real friends are. But not even May expects her plan to survive first encounter with the EU27, who will reject her FCA. In evidence yesterday to the international trade select committee, Liam Fox admitted another obstacle: even the World Trade Organisation may reject the legality of the FCA plan. May will be pushed to further softening compromises, inching towards a Norway-lite solution.
But what then? She has eventually brought to parliament a final Brexit offering that still pleases no one: far too soft for the fanatics yet still too menacing to the country’s good to command enough MPs’ support. Whatever new damage limitation it attempts, the deal will still leave us as rule-takers, budget contributors, with no MEPs and no seat on EU councils, brutally exposing how much we lose compared with what we have now.
What then? Gridlock. The head-counters see no majority in the Commons for accepting the deal: Labour and other parties will vote against, along with the Moggites. That will be a painful decision for some remainers, fearing rejection of a Norway-type deal will lead to something even worse. But they will still vote against, because the deal is still so bad for Britain. Barring the madmen, there will also be absolutely no majority in the House for an economy-killing no-deal crash-out. Then what?
This will be an unprecedented constitutional crisis, a logjam, an impasse with the deadline timebomb ticking. Labour will clamour for a general election, but why would a government – even this fractious ragbag – vote for no confidence in itself? They can throw out their leader, but that solves nothing. Do they go for a moderate compromiser – in which case, why not hold on to the one they have – or a Brexit ideologue, when there would still be no majority for either the dead-in-the-water deal or for crashing out?
This is the point where the only majority might be for asking the people to break the deadlock in a new referendum, as William Hague advocates and Labour doesn’t rule out.
The Brexiters will protest that the will of the people has already been fixed for all time, but the mood in the country suggests people are already sick of the whole shebang. However, polling shows a majority would back a vote on the final deal – (48% compared with 25% against the idea (asked if they want a vote, people tend to say yes on most issues). Polling numbers point increasingly towards a victory for remain, by some five percentage points: some people are changing their mind, but more of the pro-EU young are reaching voting age as old Brexit-voters drop off the perch. Though once another virulently mendacious “take back control” ,“80m Turks are coming” campaign gets going, backed by 80% of our press, dubious funding and subterranean foreign intervention, the result is unknowable.
Don’t imagine deciding on a people’s vote is a simple matter either. Parliament will choose the crucial wording of the question – and what will a gridlocked Commons choose? Question one – should the UK accept the deal or remain in the EU? The Brexiters would scream betrayal and demand instead question two – accept the deal or crash out without one?
Others suggest a three-way question, with all three options, which sounds fair. Except that offers the lethal likelihood that the moderate vote splits between remainers and deal-accepters, letting a minority of crash-outers win. So not even the people’s vote is a simple answer to this poisoned constitutional conundrum. No one knows what comes next – and the time is short.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
One of the unanswered questions about the Brexit talks is whether Theresa May is deluded, dishonest or both.
Exactly one year ago, the prime minister stood in Lancaster House and gave a speech setting out her Brexit plan. Following an embarrassing series of flip-flops, it now reads like a long list of broken promises and empty threats.
May said she would provide “certainty” to business. But the lack of clarity over our future deal with the EU – which the cabinet didn’t even start debating until just before Christmas – has led to a virtual freeze in investment.
The prime minister said she wanted the greatest possible access to the single market without being a member of it, her version of Boris Johnson’s cake-and-eat-it approach. She also knew this was going to be tricky to get. That is why she threatened to turn the UK into a Singapore-style tax haven while hinting that we would abandon cooperation with the EU on fighting terrorism if she didn’t get her way.
But threatening the EU wasn’t smart, given that we need it more than it needs us. So it didn’t take long for the prime minister to eat her words.
The same goes for her “no deal … is better than a bad deal” mantra, which was given prime billing in the Lancaster House speech, and her promise that “the days of Britain making vast contributions to the European Union every year will end”. As it is, May has ended up promising £39bn to the EU to settle our past bills, and abandoned her “no-deal” bravado.
Some of the prime minister’s assurances now read as bad jokes.
Take her promise to “strengthen the precious union between the four nations of the United Kingdom”. Many Scots are furious at her decision to rip us out of the single market. Meanwhile, if she sticks to her promise to pull us out of the EU’s customs union, she won’t be able to avoid either a land border in Ireland (which would set back the peace process in Northern Ireland) or a sea border between Ireland and Great Britain (which would infuriate her allies, the DUP).
Or look at May’s pledge to “bring an end to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice”. By the summer, the government was only saying it wanted to stop the court’s “direct” jurisdiction. What’s more, we’ll have to follow all the EU’s rules during the transition period the prime minister is now desperate to agree so the economy doesn’t fall off a cliff next March. So much for “taking back control of our laws”.
May also said she would protect workers’ rights. But just before Christmas, hardline pro-Brexit ministers started campaigning to axe the working time directive, which stops people being forced to work excess hours and guarantees paid holidays.
Yet another of the prime minister’s pledges – to cut a trade deal with Donald Trump – is looking foolish. Despite sucking up to the US president with the offer of a state visit, there’s no indication that Air Force One will land in Britain. And if he ever does a trade deal, it is likely to require us to open our markets to chlorine-washed chicken while letting US companies compete with the NHS.
May’s basic problem was that she had a wishlist, not a deliverable plan. She then went ahead and triggered article 50, throwing away one of the few cards she had in the Brexit talks without securing any concession from the EU. Our former EU ambassador warned the government this would lead to us getting “screwed” – and it has.
The prime minister still isn’t facing the facts. For instance, she says she wants a two-year transition deal, despite the fact that this won’t be nearly long enough to conclude a spanking new trade agreement with the EU. As a result, May is merely shifting the cliff-edge to 2021.
We are told that she is preparing another big speech next month setting our her vision for our future relationship with the EU. If Lancaster House is anything to go by, we should expect the same combination of delusion and dishonesty – when the least the public deserves is realism.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Warnings that Calais could prove to be Brexit’s hidden fireball should not come as a great surprise. While Ireland has, for political reasons, long proved to be the focus of anxiety about the UK/EU goods trade after we leave the bloc, far more traffic crosses the Channel, and, in the worst-case scenario, blocked ports at Calais or Dover could strangle Britain’s economy, manufacturing and food supply.
The manager of the port of Calais and the region’s president were not doom-mongering for their own amusement when they privately warned MEPs about the oncoming dangers. Calais’s boss, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, is entirely correct that compulsory tariff checks (as a result of leaving the customs union) and phytosanitary checks (as a result of leaving the single market) will simply be unavoidable legal realities if the government insists on putting us outside key economic instruments. His predictions of 30-mile tailbacks and rotting food – not to mention the businesses that will be crippled by the disruption to just-in-time manufacturing – must be treated with the utmost seriousness.
Except the government still has its fingers in its ears. Despite her reasonable tone at her Mansion House speech this month, the prime minister has settled in her bunker, refuses to heed warnings, and continues to offer solutions she knows the EU cannot accept. The UK’s only concrete proposals so far – a “customs partnership” and unprecedented technological solutions – have been dismissed outright in Brussels.
If we do not secure a soft Brexit at the end of the transition, we will either have a hard Brexit or no deal at all. A hard Brexit – which is the EU’s expectation if we sign a Canada-style free trade agreement – means compulsory border controls. Outside the customs union, all goods must face rules-of-origin checks at either Dover or Calais to ensure that goods from the rest of the world pay the correct EU tariffs. This will be the case even if UK goods face no tariffs.
Outside the single market, the UK may not implement future EU standards, and could, for example, import currently forbidden US foodstuffs as part of a new trade deal. All agricultural goods crossing the Channel must consequently be inspected in order to guarantee the security and integrity of the EU’s standards and supply chains.
If we leave the EU without any deal at all – which the government still insists is a possibility – there will be no agreements whatsoever to facilitate trade or give preferential access to UK goods arriving in Calais. We will also not have the luxury of a two-year transition to prepare the new infrastructure.
In the event of either a no-deal or hard Brexit – the latter of which is, of course, the government’s declared choice – the infrastructure at our ports will be placed under unprecedented strain. Even if the government chooses not to implement new controls on incoming goods, the French and Belgian authorities will be compelled to do so, which could hold up lorries on the British side before they even board the ferry.
Although a new customs system for British ports is being planned, it is not close to being ready, and there is little evidence of the new lorry parks – or thousands of extra customs officials – that will be required the day the transition ends. Puissesseau stressed that goods from the UK would be treated the same as those from anywhere else in the world – causing potential disaster to British exporters who depend on participating in complex supply chains with roll-on, roll-off traffic.
As ever with Brexit, the solution is staring us in the face. The EU has made clear that the only way of keeping the Irish border invisible is to keep Northern Ireland in a “common regulatory area” with the EU – that is, a full customs union with the EU’s common external tariff, and a single market in goods. If that is the only way to keep the Irish border open and seamless, without any checks, the same is also true of Britain’s borders with France and Belgium. Brussels insists that a seamless border requires both a customs union and a single market. No other kind of frictionless border exists anywhere on Earth. The entire UK must stay in both.
May no longer pretends that we will retain the “exact same benefits” of the EU, as David Davis used to. But last week at Mansion House she did promise five tests for Brexit. One was to protect jobs and security; another was to keep Britain outward-looking. A broken border and rotting food at Calais do not qualify. Nor do they remotely meet any democratic mandate. If this is the best the government can think of, it must think again. So, ultimately, might we.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Is it pantomime, is it psychodrama? What was billed as Theresa May’s “bring your own noose” “killing zone” ended last night only as killingly funny farce, with her MPs’ desk-banging faux-loyal love to the leader they loathe. It failed to convince the journos outside the door of their 1922 Committee meeting. But on the prime minister goes, her one great strength stickability, stuck between impossible Brexit options, safe as long as she moves in no direction and settles nothing. Her great good luck is the factions and groupuscules gathered round the extraordinarily long list of improbable contenders for her job – each prefers to prop her up than see any rival succeed.
The internal insanities and inanities of the Conservatives would usually be a delight to the party’s opponents, except that they have led the country to this death-defying precipice. Their infantile dispute about how many extra months we might be in transition before/if ever signing a final Brexit deal, and their mind-blowing obsession with a backstop keeping the UK in the customs union until the deal is done, has reduced apparently grown men and women to jibbering idiocy in one TV interview after another.
As for May’s claim that her deal is 95% done, most of her MPs think that’s like claiming she’s cooked a dish that is 95% not poison. Or as Labour shadow minister Peter Dowd said, the owners of the Titanic claiming 95% of the trip went well.
What we learned, again, from this latest “kill-her, no-don’t” cliffhanger (episode four, series three) is that the head-bangers don’t have the votes for the “clean break” no-deal they want. They may or may not get together 48 no-confidence letters, but it will only expose their weakness when they can’t assemble even the 100 it might take to embarrass her into standing down. Nor do they have the votes to install any one of them in her place.
But nor does May have the votes for anything like her Chequers deal. She seems to be sliding towards a temporary customs union inside a never-ending transition, but whenever anyone challenges her, she retreats again. She wouldn’t get the votes for that, because it alarms remainers as much as leavers to be left in limbo, where businesses and valuable EU employees would face such permanent uncertainty they would give up on us and join the exodus. In that permanent limbo the head-bangers would still be banging on daily for ever, threatening that “clean break”, frightening away investors. Michael Gove has already said that’s what he intends: get us over the exit line on soft terms, and then go hard.
Just get it done! That’s probably the strongest public sentiment. But what is “it”? The meaning of the clean-break threat needs to be spelled out over and over again: crash out on World Trade Organization rules and you have to treat every country the same, except those you have trade deals with. That means imposing customs and tariffs on all or none, including the EU, including Ireland.
The extremists’ plan would be for no tariffs on anyone, total free trade, the Patrick Minford, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liam Fox dream. They say never mind if it kills all our agriculture and manufacturing overnight – those are minnows anyway. Just import the cheapest from everywhere, regardless of quality, regulations, jobs or safety. Every time you hear Rees-Moggites say “It’s simple, just trade on WTO rules”, that’s what they mean.
They are revolutionaries not Conservatives. Whenever people call John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn dangerous Marxists, absolutely nothing they think, plan or indeed have ever thought or planned in their more extreme days compares to the wilder shores of these Brexiteers. What’s more, these Brextremists stand as polar opposites to most Brexit voters who wanted to regain a stronger sense of national identity, control, protection for our industries and farming. That’s why the hard Brexiteers won’t win, and why parliament will never allow a no-deal.
May lives to die another day mainly because one look at the alternatives sends her MPs scuttling back to her. The hell she inhabits is of her own making, giving far too much rein to the Brexiteers with her original red lines: they never had a bite to match their bark. This time, finally, has she seen through their sham, called their bluff and seen them off?
Meanwhile, her zombie government drags on, doing nothing else. A thin no-change budget on Monday will come with a few decorations to distract from Brexit, but a third of Treasury staff are consumed by Brexit work, and it is seeking to recruit more.
The chancellor has no intention of ending austerity, the cuts will never be restored, but this time he has good cover. Few chancellors would dare spend at this crisis moment while the fallout from a Brexit deal, let alone no-deal, stays perilous and unknowable.
First published on Wed 4 Jul 2018 15.32 BST
Theresa May’s fractious cabinet ministers are warning Downing Street not to skirt controversial issues, including freedom of movement and services, off the table at Friday’s Chequers meeting.
As ministers were prepared for the all-day gathering with briefings in Downing Street, they told the Guardian they were concerned the focus on the details of future customs arrangements was too narrow.
Remain-leaning cabinet ministers fear it leaves out the crucial services sector; while Brexiters are nervous the meeting will fail to address freedom of movement.
Leavers believe Downing Street may be preparing to offer significant concessions on immigration to Brussels, in order to win a generous deal on services – but that discussions on Friday are likely to focus on goods.
The “third way”, as described to ministers, would involve the UK tracking goods as they come into the country, and levying EU import taxes on them only if their final destination is inside the EU. That would allow the UK to set lower tariffs and strike its own trade deals – a key demand of the leavers.
“I think you’ll come out with a customs deal; but without discussing immigration – and we’ll be back at Chequers in September,” said one government source, who expressed frustration with the indecision in Downing Street. “Whether it’s hard or soft, she needs to face down one side or the other.”
Another cabinet source loyal to the prime minister suggested it might even be a good thing if one or two pro-Brexit ministers resigned, and their backbench supporters forced a vote of no confidence in May – because she would win it. “That would shut them up,” the source said.
Allies of David Davis insisted a wide range of issues would be discussed at Chequers. Conservative MPs would then be briefed over the weekend on whatever has been agreed; and May would appear in person at the 1922 committee on Monday.
May heads to Berlin for talks on subjects including Brexit with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, leaving behind a bitterly divided party and government.
The high stakes the prime minister faces in trying to unite her party behind a Brexit plan were underlined on Wednesday by a confrontational meeting between more than 40 pro-leave MPs and the chief whip, Julian Smith.
Backbenchers from the European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, warned Smith that the Conservatives would be “toast” if May reneged on her Brexit promises; and complained about the prominent role of Oliver Robbins, the prime minister’s chief Brexit negotiator.
Andrea Jenkyns, an ardent leaver, stressed the backbenchers’ red lines, which include no extension to the transition period, something mooted by Greg Clark, the business secretary, last weekend.
The chief whip reportedly responded “no, no, no” in what several of those present regarded as a deliberate echo of Margaret Thatcher’s defiant stance against a federal EU.
Smith will attend the Chequers meeting, and is expected to brief ministers about the parliamentary arithmetic for different negotiating options.
Meanwhile, some pro-Brexit cabinet ministers are so concerned about May’s mooted “third way” on customs, they are considering working up a counter-proposal of their own.
“If this third way is going to be what we are being asked to sign up to, there is a mood among the Brexit members of the cabinet that they want to go back with a counter-offer,” said a senior government source.
The proposal may not be formally worded, but amount to a collective agreement. “We may socialise views on where we draw the line.”
One attendee said Smith responded by reading out the commitments in the Conservative party manifesto for last year’s snap general election, which included ending freedom of movement, and leaving the jurisdiction of the European court of justice.
At the day-long meeting, May hopes to unite her cabinet around a plan which can then be published in a formal white paper next week. Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and Clark are expected to warn colleagues of the economic risks of trade frictions.
Clark’s deputy, Richard Harrington, warned in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday that a no-deal Brexit would be disastrous for business. He said politicians who criticised corporations for speaking out did not “really understand how business works”.
He added: “I perfectly understand why Airbus and other companies who have so much invested in this country and employ so many people, are responsible for hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds of exports, of course they’re worried. They’ve got every right to say that.”
Harrington said that if businesses had to comply with two separate regulatory regimes to keep exporting to the EU as well as the domestic market it would be difficult to see how multinationals could continue in Britain.
Downing Street said it remained the prime minister’s position that no deal was better than a bad deal. “We are aiming to get a good deal that works for the whole country,” her spokesman said. “Her position is very clear. We are working hard to get a deal.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn will kick off Labour’s annual conference at Pier Head in Liverpool on Saturday with one of the noisy rallies that have become a kind of political comfort zone over his three years as party leader: soundtrack from The Farm, an uplifting tirade against social injustice, cheering, optimistic crowds.
But the dominant issue on the agenda is one that presents a formidable political challenge for Corbyn and the Labour party: Brexit.
When Theresa May brings her Brexit deal back to parliament for MPs’ approval – perhaps within weeks – what happens next won’t just be critical for Britain’s future, but a moment of truth for Corbyn’s Labour party, and the wave of popular support that helped him sweep away the Tories’ majority last June.
Brexit would have been a headache for Labour, whoever its leader. The party’s electoral fortunes have long depended on bridging the gap between “Hampstead and Hull”, as Andy Burnham called it during the referendum campaign.
Voters’ 2016 decision to leave the European Union, and the brand of populist, identity-based politics the campaign unleashed, struck at the heart of that already-fragile coalition.
Add to that the instinctive Euroscepticism of some in Corbyn’s inner circle, and the ardent Europeanism of many of the younger (and indeed older) members who swept into the party to support him, and every step has been a balancing act.
At last year’s general election, the judgment of Labour’s strategists that Britain’s voters didn’t want politicians to spend the seven week campaign banging on about Brexit appeared to pay off. While Tim Farron’s Lib Dems talked of little else (apart from his attitude to gay sex), and May tried to win over voters by saying the Labour leader would be “alone and naked in the negotiating chamber of the European Union”, Corbyn talked about living standards, schools cuts and workers’ rights.
Former Corbyn adviser Matt Zarb-Cousin said: “I actually think the political strategy for dealing with Brexit, as something that Labour didn’t want – it didn’t call the referendum – has been very, very good. They could very easily have fallen into a trap where we oppose it, oppose article 50: and then I dread to think what would have happened in the last election, if that had been the case – given that most constituencies were leave, and Brexit was still very much fresh in people’s minds.”
But ambiguity became less tenable as the negotiations in Brussels advanced. So Labour’s position has necessarily evolved, through a series of fraught internal negotiations – and sometimes outright confrontation.
When shadow cabinet members arrived at the Brexit subcommittee in January, they were each handed a numbered copy of a policy paper, which they were to give back at the end of the meeting.
Since before Christmas, the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, had been arguing for the party to announce that it would advocate joining a customs union with the EU after Brexit. He and his team believed it was essential to safeguarding manufacturing supply-chains, and avoiding a hard border in Ireland. He had presented a paper arguing the point to Loto (leader of the opposition), as Corbyn’s office is known.
But close allies of the leader were sceptical. Some were anxious about appearing to be railroaded into a policy shift by noisy advocates of a customs union on Labour’s backbenches – Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and others. Others were keen to ensure any stance the party ultimately took could reconcile leavers and remainers, and believed Starmer was ratcheting Labour’s policy, step by step, towards a position that would look to the average leave voter like a bid to overturn Brexit.
So the inner core of Corbyn’s team – which includes Jon Trickett and Diane Abbott, as well as key advisers such as Seumas Milne and Andrew Fisher – had decided on an alternative approach. They would table their own paper, kicking the customs union issue into the long grass.
To Starmer’s evident fury, Corbyn began reading aloud from a pad. As the meeting went on, it became clear several of those present had seen the paper in advance – but the shadow Brexit secretary, the man responsible for Labour’s policy, had not.
Visibly angry, Starmer made clear that he fundamentally disagreed with the approach outlined in the paper. Others spoke in his support, including Labour’s leader in the Lords, Angela Smith, and the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Smith – whose open disagreement with the leadership’s position would lead to his sacking a few weeks later.
Several people present at the meeting told the Guardian the general feeling in the room was that Starmer was willing to resign, rather than sign up to a paper with which he disagreed. “He looked close to telling them to shove it – and I think that did count for something,” said one person present. “I think Jeremy was slightly surprised at how angry Keir was.”
Another said: “Jeremy started speaking, and Keir just said, ‘enough,’ this was just completely outrageous. He did lose his temper. I think they were genuinely shocked at his reaction. They tried to bounce him and it completely backfired.”
When it became clear the cost of stalling on a customs union could be losing the shadow Brexit secretary – one of the few resignees in the “chicken coup” of summer 2016 who had been tempted back on to the frontbench, and a reassuring figure for many in the PLP – Corbyn blinked. The paper was collected at the end of the meeting and never seen again. “The text got dumped,” said one of those present.
That dramatic moment marked the low point for relations between Starmer’s team and the leadership. Little more than a month later, Corbyn made a speech at a slick event at a car factory in Coventry, which shifted the party’s position to recommending a customs union.
Drafts were painstakingly negotiated in advance with the Brexit subcommittee, and signed off by the shadow cabinet. The move was balanced with a series of criticisms of the EU single market, which Corbyn’s aides spun as central to the thrust of the speech.
Trickett said the position they ultimately reached was the right compromise. “I can say to remainers: we intend to remain as close as we can to the single market, and inside a customs union,” he said. “Equally I can say to Brexiteers, that we are going to have an interventionist industrial and regional strategy, which means that for the first time in 30 years, the government can intervene to rebuild the economy that was devastated by the Thatcher settlement.”
He added: “The country remains deeply divided. We have to seek a synthesis between the Brexiters and the remainers; creating a principled vision of another kind of society which can allow both sides to go away with honour.”
All sides attest that there has since been a more collaborative approach at Labour’s top table. But the clash revealed fierce tensions over how to funnel the constructive ambiguity of last year’s general election manifesto stance towards a coherent response to the ultimate question every one of its 257 MPs will have to face in the next few weeks: can they support May’s Brexit deal?
Corbyn himself is often blamed as the driving force behind Labour’s willingness to endorse Brexit – whipping his MPs to support article 50, and rejecting key elements of the single market – but attendees at the Coventry speech drafting session recall the leader being less attached to the criticisms of the EU competition regime, for example, than his cerebral lieutenant, Milne.
Corbyn is certainly instinctively Eurosceptic, but his friends insist he is no enthusiast for Brexit. “I think he finds it completely insufferable; I think he just wants to get through it,” said one close ally. Zarb-Cousin, who worked in Loto in the build-up to the article 50 vote, said: “The idea that Seumas is a Brexiteer is nonsense; Corbyn the same. Of course there’s a strain of Euroscepticism on the left – but who isn’t a bit Eurosceptic?”
Meanwhile, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell – Corbyn’s longtime political soulmate and brother-in-arms – is repeatedly described by those close to the heart of Labour’s Brexit decision-making as pragmatic and tactical – certainly more so than his rabble-rousing reputation might suggest.
The 2017 manifesto stated Labour’s principles in approaching the negotiations – it would put a “strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the single market and the customs union,” and “put jobs and the economy first” – but left plenty of wriggle-room for candidates with different shades of opinion; and space for Labour’s policy to develop as the negotiations went on.
But it didn’t take long for the veneer of unity created by the campaign to crack. Just three weeks after the June general election, when MPs had barely unpacked their boxes and settled into their new offices, the group of anti-Brexit rebels derisively nicknamed the “shinies” by colleagues, laid down a marker for the battles ahead by tabling an amendment to the Queen’s speech, calling for the government to keep Britain in the single market and the customs union.
Three MPs resigned from junior roles to back it, and they were joined by 46 others, in defiance of the exasperated Labour whips – an extraordinary rebellion so early in a brand new parliament.
“From that moment, we knew the EEA was going to be a big issue for us,” said one senior adviser. The leadership were furious. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, went public to say Umunna and his colleagues were “virtue signalling”.
The shinies – Umunna, Chris Leslie, Stephen Doughty, Stephen Kinnock and a shifting group of others – share few political views with the hardline Tory European Research Group (ERG); but their modus operandi is strikingly similar: the WhatsApp-driven whipping operation; the frequent media appearances; the fervent belief in their cause; and the willingness to resort to any and every parliamentary tactic to exert pressure on their leadership.
Time and again over the past 12 months and more, Labour unity has been severely tested over Brexit. Corbyn and his colleagues have consistently been accused of dithering, or vacillating, or lack of clarity.
But senior party strategists insist they have taken a deliberate decision not to get tangled up in the fine detail of Brexit – and to let May play the lead role.
“We want to talk about things that people care about – and ways in which Brexit impacts the things that people care about. Things that impact people’s pay, their public services, their living standards – not some rather technical stuff, like max-fac,” said one senior adviser.
“The whole process has been miles away from the people. It’s been like the bubble, condensed. The challenge for all of us, and has been all the way through, is how do you burst through that into being able to talk about the principles around Brexit?”
In May, the festering division over the EEA issue flared up again in the Lords. Labour’s leader in the upper house, Angela Smith, had led a painstaking, cross-party process to gather support around a series of amendments to the EU withdrawal bill, which they believed had a good chance of winning a strong majority – and crucially, the support of MPs, when the legislation went back to the House of Commons.
But the shinies, frustrated at the refusal of Corbyn and his frontbench colleagues to force the issue of a softer Brexit, took the unusual step of launching a lobbying operation in the “other place”, as MPs call the Lords, to persuade Labour peers they should back an amendment – rejected by Lady Smith – that would commit the government to trying to negotiate membership of the EEA.
Smith – and Starmer, with whom she works closely – were absolutely furious. They were affronted by the MPs’ audacity in taking their war with the leadership to the Lords.
More than 40% of Labour peers – 83 – voted to support the amendment. It was the only one – of 15 passed by peers – that the Labour frontbench wouldn’t back.
That set up another brash confrontation in the Commons, when the legislation was sent back to MPs. Starmer has long argued against the EEA, believing it fails to solve the Irish border problem – because members are not part of a customs union – and would leave Britain a “rule-taker”.
The debate painfully exposed divisions, with Caroline Flint, MP for Don Valley, saying she believed the amendment was aimed at subverting the referendum result.
Starmer sought to defuse the row by tabling Labour’s own amendment, taking another incremental step towards the single market by promising to seek “shared institutions”, and Labour whips urged MPs to abstain.
But ultimately, the party split three ways, in an odd double-rebellion that underlined the capacity of the Brexit issue to create complex political divisions.
Both sides remain angry about what the leadership saw as a confected spat, aimed at embarrassing Corbyn; and the remain MPs saw it as a failure by Starmer in particular to grasp an opportunity to soften Brexit.
It is against this fraught background that the Labour frontbench – and each individual MP – will have to decide whether to support May’s Brexit deal. Formally, Starmer has laid out six tests.
Some, such as “does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU?” seem loosely worded enough to be fudgeable. But test two, “does it secure the exact same benefits as we currently have as members of the single market and the customs union?” appears impossible to meet, at least on May’s current trajectory, boxed in as she is by her own self-imposed red lines, which are rigorously policed by the extremists in her party. So it has long appeared inevitable Labour will whip its MPs to vote down the deal.
Privately, some Labour MPs believe the six tests were set up as a figleaf to allow the party to reject just about any deal as a “Tory Brexit”, in the hope of triggering a general election and catapulting Corbyn into Downing Street.
Labour’s iconoclastic shadow trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, hinted at that view in April at a private meeting, a recording of which was subsequently leaked to the website Red Roar. One party aide recalled that when the first reports emerged, suggesting Gardiner had referred to the six tests as “shibboleths”, the reassuring response from Loto was that the public wouldn’t know what a shibboleth was. That counsel proved less soothing when the full recording emerged, in which he was heard to call them “bollocks”. Starmer was livid, Gardiner was reined in, and some MPs have referred to him ever since as “Barry Bollocks”. But the general sense remains that it would take a significant change of position from the prime minister – one she is highly unlikely to take – for the frontbench to throw their weight behind a deal.
That sets the scene for a seismic political moment, whenever the so-called meaningful vote is held. May’s narrow majority, even with the DUP’s backing, means if all of Labour’s MPs – and its three independents, John Woodcock, Frank Field and Jared O’Mara – vote against, it would take fewer than 10 Tory rebels to defeat the government. Every single MP will count.
Yet in these topsy-turvy times, with the bonds of party loyalty loosened by the solvent of Brexit, it is no forgone conclusion that Labour MPs will fall into line. Labour whips, and Starmer’s team, have already begun the task of working on potential rebels.
Downing Street, in the person of May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, has already made contact with Labour centrists on occasion in recent months – and the Tories will push hard the idea that by opposing the agreement, MPs are tacitly backing Jacob Rees-Mogg, Peter Bone and the other “Brextremists”.
But a significant complicating factor is the growing momentum behind calls for the issue of Brexit to be settled with a second referendum – or a “People’s Vote”, as one deep-pocketed campaign group has it.
Labour strategists remain deeply sceptical about the politics and the practicalities of a referendum. They believe the time before Brexit day is too short; polling doesn’t support the idea unless it is sliced and diced so much as to be all but meaningless; and they believe leave voters would be infuriated by the prospect of being asked to confront the question again. Gardiner has expressed that view publicly, suggesting it could even lead to “civil disobedience”.
One senior Labour figure wearily described a second Brexit vote as a “red herring”; another even suggested it would play into May’s hands, by strengthening her argument that if leavers did not back her deal, Brexit could be unpicked.
“The only way that their deal is going to get voted down, is if some of the ERG vote against it – and they’re not voting against it if they believe one of the options then is a second referendum,” the Labour figure said. “The surefire way to get the ERG to vote with the government is to talk about a second referendum.”
But outside team Corbyn, the pressure to back a second poll is mounting. Smith says: “I would personally prefer another general election, and a clean cut, ‘you can’t handle this, prime minister, you need another government to deal with it.’ But we may be coming to that point where people are clamouring for another vote.”
Meanwhile, a handful of Labour MPs for whom frustrating Brexit is a goal that outranks all others – and whose loyalty to Corbyn was always wafer-thin – are watching and waiting. If the moment comes to take a stand against leaving – at a new referendum, for example – and the frontbench refuses to take it, they are ready to splinter away.
If Brexit goes ahead, they are laying the groundwork for a breakaway party that would claim it could reunite a fractured country. How large a number of MPs follows this small band of diehards will depend in large part on how the party conducts itself in this crucial next six months, until Brexit D-day in March next year.
One leftwing MP who has been supportive of Corbyn’s leadership said: “Brexit is a symptom, and it has to be seen in the context of people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo. It’s the same forces that created Brexit that have led to Jeremy and John; so you can’t say, ‘if only Brexit hadn’t happened we could have had a clear run.’ They came in on the same wave – and now they have to find a way to disentangle themselves from that.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Today’s great Tory schism has been brewing for decades. The virus began with a handful of oddballs long ago who made “Europe” the catch-all cause of all ills, and Brexit the miracle cure. Now the party is infected, spreading the disease across half the country, mainly to their voters. Doughty Tory anti-Brexiters battle to rescue the body politic, but so far they have lost at every stage.
The volcano is ready to blow. Images of mayhem pepper political commentaries. She may be hapless, hopeless and friendless, but Theresa May is not to blame. There is no leader who could bridge the yawning ravine between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anna Soubry. Time was when the Tory party always knew one big thing: how to put power above everything else. No longer. Brexit passions run deeper than mere party loyalty, and rightly so with the country’s future in the balance.
Try this thought experiment: devise a deal that satisfies the crash-out-now Brextremists, the Binos (“Brexit in name only”) and the stay-ins. No wonder every government speech has been fantasy written on gossamer, dreaming of a Brexit made of thin air – frictionless borders but no free movement, perfect free trade but no legal oversight of rules by the European court of justice, a cake-and-eat-it cherry-picking picnic. They block their ears to Michel Barnier and Angela Merkel, repeating wearily yet again last week that there is no pick-and-mix, only hard choices.
No wonder May has just called off her promised speech on what she really wants: her Brexit vision, her plan. But she hasn’t got one. Instead there is a two-year transition to nowhere, implementation of nothing. Nothing she could say would bridge the divide, so it’s best to say nothing. As the Brexiteers suspect behind the scenes, as reality blows away fantasy, she knows the hard choices. She’s not stupid. Mandarins are “forcing May into Brexit betrayal”, blasts the Sunday Telegraph front page, blaming the cabinet secretary and Oliver Robbins, the chief negotiator, for making her face the facts. Theresa Villiers accuses her of betrayal by “dilution”.
Grant Shapps, the former party chairman, calls for May to name the day of her departure. Some want her to go now – letters from MPs calling for a no-confidence vote are mounting up. Others say let her finish Brexit, before they finish her. But for Tories, Brexit will never end. No deal will mollify both camps – so there may be no deal for a “meaningful” vote in October. The Tory party will rankle and wrangle over this for ever.
While every contender was polishing their sabre, the upstart Gavin Williamson tripped over his shoelaces before he was out of the gate. GCHQ is reportedly “furious” at the new defence secretary leaking secret information on Russian cyber threats, as a smokescreen to cover an embarrassing story about his past. His “friends” – if he has any – say all this is “black ops” by other contestants.
The leadership betting is startling: Rees-Mogg has led for months, Boris Johnson second. Rees-Mogg says no to any transition as rule-taking “vassals” of the monster Brussels; wanting an immediate crash-out makes him a kind of destructo-anarchist. Anyone who contemplates either man as leader suggests a party that has taken leave of its senses, devoid of a will to win. Johnson promises a speech soon laying out his “liberal” case for Brexit with a “buccaneering” spirit, unlikely to ease his party’s woes. His demand for £5bn for the NHS was as transparently vote-grubbing as Michael Gove’s comical new green and puppy-saving enthusiasm. Amber Rudd is moving up the table a little – but it would take the transformation of her party and its toxic press for anyone normal like her to stand a chance.
The warring Brexit war cabinet committee meets on Monday, unlikely to “come together in a spirit of mutual respect”, as Cabinet Office minister David Lidington pleaded on Sunday. On Tuesday, the Lords set to on the EU withdrawal bill, likely to force the government into serial climbdowns over Henry VIII powers and devolution. Some peers will press hard for that second referendum, encouraged by the Guardian/ICM poll showing a 16-point lead in favour. Oddly, a murmur among some Tories ponders whether that might be an escape from their own dilemma: let the people decide. But what would the question be? Accept the deal or crash out? Accept the deal or stay in? If remain won and Brexit was reversed by a small majority, think of the ferocious, everlasting political fallout. Referendums make everything worse.
“Bring it on,” Jeremy Corbyn told Andrew Marr on Sunday, not about a referendum but relishing the prospect of May’s toppling causing an election, as any opposition leader would. Labour’s divide looks no more than business-as-usual, compared with the Tory split. Anti-Brexiters may have taken heart at his new tone of warmth for staying close to the EU. In a confident outing on the Marr show, for the first time he sounded completely positive about staying as close as possible to the single market and customs union. Strongly influenced by Labour’s pro-EU young voters and by the big unions’ deep anxiety about Brexit, those close to Corbyn say he has travelled a long way, reassured that nothing in his manifesto is prevented by EU state aid rules.
Keir Starmer, visiting Belfast on Monday, regards the Irish border as the linchpin. Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, he points out that the prime minister’s phase one of the EU agreement promised unreservedly no hard border, “including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls”. There is no way that can be done, he says, except by cleaving to single market and customs union terms in the final deal. Ireland holds the key – and that’s why the anarcho-Brexiteers duck mentioning this anvil on which the final deal will be struck or founder.
Meanwhile, for our entertainment, Tory whips have summoned ministers to warn them they face an annual appraisal, judged on the following tests: their new ideas, engagement with colleagues, teamwork and passion. Presumably the whips knew their leader would fail every one, allowing the great axe to fall.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
It is many people’s idea of the most diabolical circle of hell – Dante meets David Brent – but “the awayday” is suddenly in vogue with political leaders. Theresa May summoned her senior ministers for a well-publicised eight-hour meeting at Chequers where they supposedly thrashed out an agreed position on Brexit. There was definitely a lot of thrashing about; I’m not persuaded that they have actually come to a sustainable agreement. To rather less fanfare, Jeremy Corbyn sequestered the shadow cabinet at an officially undisclosed location for their own Brexit summit. Of the two meetings, it is the one that has attracted much less media attention – the Labour gathering on Monday – which looks to be much the more significant.
The undisclosed location of Labour’s gathering was, in fact, a room with a table in parliament. The “awayday” was not really away and it did not take a day. The meeting was important because, after weeks of tortuous internal debate, the official opposition is finally moving towards a new and much less ambiguous position. This is to commit to Britain remaining within a customs union with the EU after Brexit. It is a development with potentially huge consequences for the future of Brexit and the rather less important matter of the future of Mrs May. In combination with Tory rebels, the opposition will now threaten a major defeat on the government. If the government loses, that Chequers meeting will be made redundant. If defeat triggers a leadership crisis, Mrs May might also be made redundant.
There has always been a natural majority in the Commons for remaining within some form of customs union. The bulk of MPs understand this is the only plausible way of achieving the continuation of “frictionless” trade the government claims to aspire to. Most MPs also believe a customs union would do a lot to mitigate the economic damage of Brexit; the government’s own impact analysis agrees. The idea is popular with businesses, trades unionists and, polls suggest, voters. The people who hate it are the Brexit ultras, the 62 Tory MPs in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s gang. They generate a lot of noise and attract an inordinate amount of attention – as when they sent their menacing “ransom note” to the prime minister – but they are wildly unrepresentative of opinion in parliament.
The majority in favour of a customs union has struggled to find a way to express itself. Mrs May set her face against it, not least because she was too frightened of confronting the ultras and not smart enough to reach across the aisle to Labour MPs. Mr Corbyn, a career-long Eurosceptic, has had a watery position, much to the anguish of colleagues on the Labour backbenches and in the shadow cabinet who have been yearning for him to lead opposition to hard Brexit.
What has happened to change the mind of the Labour leader? Or to “evolve” his position, as the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, likes to put it? Things have been brought to a head by gathering backbench support for amendments to the Brexit legislation, tabled by the Tory MP Anna Soubry, which instruct the government to negotiate a customs union. When I first drew your attention to the potential for the government to be defeated on this issue, I remarked that it would look mighty strange if Mr Corbyn were to try to whip his MPs to vote with the hard Brexiters against the wishes of most of his own party. He has clearly come to the same conclusion. Remaining within a customs union is popular with Labour members and voters. Labour supporters would also prefer to stay within the single market by a margin of more than four to one. The Labour leader may distrust opinion polls, but he can see that the numbers on this one are too large to be ignored.
The issue of the Irish border has played an increasingly prominent part in Labour’s internal debates and the more so since Brextremists started their reckless talk about ripping up the Good Friday agreement. Members of the shadow cabinet tell me this has been particularly influential on Mr Corbyn. Hard Brexit means the return of a hard border. A customs union goes a very long way to resolving that otherwise intractable problem. On top of which, the Labour leader has been presented with a chance to defeat the government, an opportunity that is just too tempting to squander.
It is significant that he is taking full ownership of Labour’s shift – sorry, “evolution” – by announcing it himself. Last summer, when Labour took its first step in this direction, he left the announcement to Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary. This raised doubts about how truly committed the leader was to the tilt towards a softer Brexit. Unless there is some last-minute change of heart, he will be stamping his name on it this time.
Labour is now putting down amendments to the Brexit legislation that parallel the amendments backed by Tory rebels. Though the wording is slightly different, the central thrust is the same. Both sets of amendments tell the government to remain within a customs union. So if the opposition frontbench doesn’t get its amendments selected, then the ground is prepared for Labour to mobilise its MPs in support of the Soubry versions. Something similar happened before Christmas. The opposition parties came in behind the amendment by Dominic Grieve, the former Tory attorney general, which successfully insisted that parliament be given a meaningful vote on the ultimate Brexit deal.
That was a good evening for parliamentary sovereignty and a blow for Mrs May. The Tory whips are frightened that they are now facing an even more serious defeat. Consider the arithmetic. When Mrs May can get all Tory MPs into the same voting lobby and the DUP joins them, she has an effective majority of 13 over the combined opposition parties. So it can take just seven Tory MPs to vote with the opposition to defeat the government. There is a tiny minority of Labour MPs, among them the strange bedfellows of Kate Hoey and Dennis Skinner, who are hard Brexiters. More Tory rebels are needed to counterbalance them. A dozen Tory MPs voted with the opposition in that pre-Christmas defeat of the government. As things look, the Tory rebels have at least that number. Five former ministers and two of the party’s select committee chairs have already signed up and the rebels are predicting the support of at least 20 Conservative MPs.
The Tory whips have done the maths and they don’t like the result. I can say that because I can smell that the government’s business managers are in a panic. To swerve an imminent vote, the report stages of the trade and customs legislation have been kicked back until after Easter. The thinking must be that this gives the Tory whips additional time to try to beg and bludgeon potential rebels to fall into line. We can also expect a bullying barrage from the Brexit press against “mutineers” and “saboteurs”, though when that was attempted last time it had the effect of strengthening the conviction of the Tory rebels and cementing their comradeship.
There is even talk that the government is running so scared that it will seek to delay the critical votes until after the local council elections in May. That would be designed to avoid the scenario in which Mrs May goes down to a humiliating parliamentary defeat and is then plunged into a leadership crisis in the run-up to those polls. But there is no certainty that the landscape will look more promising for the prime minister after the spring elections. Tories are already adopting the brace position in expectation that they are going to be routed in Remain-supporting metropolitan areas, especially London, where some polling has suggested that they could lose “flagship” councils, even Wandsworth, which has been blue for 40 years.
If the Conservatives are smashed in the coming elections, it will strengthen the pro-European Tories in their conviction that it is fatally misguided for their party as well as for the country to pursue a hard Brexit.
So forget Chequers. Mrs May’s “awayday” will likely struggle to be even a footnote in the histories of this saga. The big Brexit crunch is going to be in parliament. Which is exactly where it should be.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
Ken Clarke has been in superb form since becoming the only Conservative MP with the bottle to vote against the Brexit bill, despite so many more sharing his belief that it is counter to national interests. The former chancellor was scathing about suggestions that countries will queue up to give Britain beneficial trade deals. Although never really a party moderniser, he also made pertinent points about the retoxification of the Tories, arguing that the country has in effect fallen under the control of a group of former fringe rebels.
In one telling passage of his speech to parliament last week – slating the Alice in Wonderland vision of Brexit – he said that Enoch Powell would “probably find it amazing that his party had become Eurosceptic and rather mildly anti-immigrant, in a very strange way, in 2016. Well, I am afraid that, on that issue, I have not followed it, and I do not intend to do so.” Quite right too. Nor do I intend to jump on this nativist bandwagon. Yet among the tragedies of recent events has been the fact that this fear-filled mood of division and intolerance was aided by people I once stood alongside in attempting to modernise the Conservatives.
I do not blame Theresa May, although she first branded Tories “the nasty party” and now drives Britain into the wall of hardline Brexit. As prime minister she has no option but to respect the referendum result, although I quibble with her interpretation that immigration controls are more important than anything else. But as divided countries turn to protectionism founded on hostility to foreigners, how sad that the flames of populism engulfing the west have been fanned by British people who proclaim themselves as globalists.
These are the so-called liberal leavers, who provided the veneer of respectability for a Brexit campaign founded on misanthropy. Nigel Farage and his friends were always the sort of small-minded folk who scapegoated foreigners for wider political failures: remember when the then Ukip leader even blamed migrants for his being trapped in a traffic jam? But it is unlikely that Farage would have pulled off that incredible referendum result without having a few prominent Tories on the party’s moderate wing in the vanguard of their pessimistic army.
I thought about joining them – but only for a moment. I am no fan of Brussels, having seen first hand the damage caused by the euro and flawed refugee policies, and I desperately want Britain to be more openly engaged in the world. It did not take long to realise these ideals were unlikely to be achieved in harness with the most extreme elements in politics and in alliance with parties fuelled by hatred – especially in the current climate. Or to work out that disentangling from the world’s biggest economy would be hugely disruptive and probably hinder, not help, the cause of free trade.
So I found it depressing to see the likes of Steve Hilton and Michael Gove promote Brexit in tandem with Farage after all their efforts to make their party more appealing to women, young people and ethnic minorities. As mayor of London, Boris Johnson was leader of a city built on tolerance, but then led the leave campaign. Scores of backbenchers shared their views, then jumped into bed with divisive nationalists. Even Daniel Hannan, perhaps the most persistent Brexit campaigner, espouses a decently liberal global outlook.
These people hold a Big World vision of post-Brexit Britain. Hannan claimed the key issue in last year’s vote was democracy, not migration, and hours after the result even said he hoped free movement would not be impeded. Andrew Lilico, a leave economist used to counter other experts, insisted they never wanted “illiberal and anti-foreigner” policies when pushing to take back control. Yet with weary inevitability the referendum was seized on by the new prime minister, devoid of meaningful opposition, to pursue her relentless immigration clampdown.
Now look at events abroad. In the United States a president lashes out at refugees and endorses Vladimir Putin’s world view. Donald Trump used Brexit as his template for an anti-establishment insurgency founded on falsehoods and smears against foreigners. He called himself Mr Brexit, reportedly wants to see the EU smashed to smithereens, and is admired by white supremacists. Meanwhile in France and the Netherlands we see far-right candidates ride alarmingly high in polls as elections loom, praising Brexit while preaching similar anti-globalisation and anti-Muslim sermons.
How proud those liberal leavers must be as they survey this new world order, having done so much to foster the nationalist revolts. Still these people pose as optimists and rightly promulgate globalisation; but they must bear some responsibility for hitching themselves to forces of fear, then exploiting the concerns of communities buffeted by global forces and suffering from long-term government failures. These Brexiters played with fire by pandering to populism. And now the world is burning.
Instead of bridges being built, walls are going up around the west. Perhaps the liberal leavers will recant and apologise, but more likely they will find excuses and blame others rather than search their own souls. It pains me to say this, since some are my friends, but the truth is that if they really believed breaking from Brussels would lead to a more open nation and outward-looking world, they should hang their heads in shame for stunning naivety.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Dear Jeremy Corbyn,
The words “j’accuse” have probably been overused since Émile Zola used them in his open letter to the French president, Félix Faure, on the Dreyfus affair. They are, however, appropriate when somebody in authority is failing to do what is right, and so I make no apology for using them in this open letter to you.
Mr Corbyn, I accuse you of failing to do your duty by not opposing in any real sense our government on the most important issue of our times – Brexit.
The Brexit motion passed by Labour party conference in September included a clear commitment to “support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”, should the party not be able to secure a general election.
Party policy also dictates that your party should endorse a future relationship with the EU that “guarantees full participation in the single market”. Our democracy only works when the official opposition does its job of opposing the government of the day and offers a clear alternative vision for our country, including giving a voice to the voiceless. An opposition that won’t oppose paralyses our political and democratic system.
Historically, some of our worst mistakes have been made when the opposition has failed in its fundamental duty to question and stress-test the policies of the government of the day, and I believe historians will one day look back on the Labour party under you, Mr Corbyn, and ask a simple question: why did you sit on the fence right from the start? Why did you leave it to me, as a private citizen, to question the unlawful use of the royal prerogative to trigger article 50? Your membership, the vast majority of young Labour voters and the unions, are overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit because the European Union is, I would submit, the most successful union of our time. Brexit will lead to a flight of talent, money and taxes – and the country will have to take on more and more debt. It will of course hit the middle classes, but it will be the poorest and weakest in our society – the left behind, who depend on the NHS, social housing and foodbanks, and so many other public services – who will be its greatest victims.
I had been a member of the Labour party until your non-position on the greatest issue of our times became apparent. It breaks my heart to have to write to you in this way, but you have given me no alternative. David Lammy, one of your most principled Labour MPs, said in an emotional speech last week that if you did not now lead the campaign for a people’s vote, Labour would be kept from office for a generation.
I am afraid to say that I agree with him. At least half of the electorate do not have a voice, and the Labour party can and must give them one. You must listen to the growing number of voters saying that this Conservative government’s Brexit course is “not in my name”. Brexit is simply too fundamental an issue to be used by Labour to calculate how to get into power by deliberately enabling chaos. The Labour party should be about doing things not because they are opportunistic or expedient but because they are right.
This is now a matter of what sort of country you wish the United Kingdom to become. One where the union itself is threatened by an ideological rightwing policy. A policy based on building barriers and walls that will take us not forward but backwards. I beg you, as Labour’s leader, to reject a policy that will so obviously turn our country into a laboratory for one of the most extreme rightwing experiments we have witnessed since the 1930s.
Theresa May’s deal is worse than the special deal we already have with the EU. Accept the reality that neither you, nor another leader of the Conservative party, can negotiate anything different or better – there isn’t the time and the EU has made it clear they are no longer interested in any more talking. You have the power to both ensure an option to remain is included in the parliamentary meaningful vote, and if this vote results in an impasse, ensure there is a public vote, so the people of the United Kingdom can throw parliament a democratic lifeline to end this chaos.
Respectfully, Gina Miller
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has accused Jeremy Corbyn of showing “ignorance, lack of concern, or willingness to let the Tory Brexiters run amok” after the EU referendum, as he endorsed Owen Smith for leadership of the party.
In an article for the Guardian, Lord Kinnock says Corbyn has “either been silent on this central issue or so soft voiced that no one has heard a word” and adds that he believes the poll result could have been different if a Labour leader had made a passionate case for remain.
“It seems that he just wants to leave it all to the Tories who haven’t even got a government majority on the issue. That’s not leadership,” Kinnock wrote.
The Labour Movement for Europe, a party affiliate chaired by Kinnock, nominated Smith, the MP Pontypridd, by a margin of 10 to 1 this weekend, although Corbyn was far ahead of his rival in nominations from constituency parties, leading Smith by 273 nominations to 51.
Sebastian Vogt, LME’s national secretary, said its members viewed Smith as “the more genuinely pro-European candidate” and 81% backed him for the leadership.
Vogt said: “In the face of the biggest challenge facing our country in a generation it is vitally important that the Labour party continues to stand united in its proud internationalist tradition and does not let the Tories take us out of the European Union on this blank cheque they have given themselves.”
Smith, a former shadow work and pensions secretary, has been keen to put clear water between him and Corbyn, his once Eurosceptic rival, over policy on Europe, promising a second referendum and telling a hustings on Thursday that the party should be “fighting harder” to halt a “hard Brexit”.
Kinnock said he had long doubted Corbyn’s commitment to the remain campaign. “He entered the referendum campaign late, took a holiday in June, and described his enthusiasm for staying in the EU as seven out of 10. Plainly, the party leader’s commitment had neither clarity nor conviction – 10 events in six weeks was never going to be enough to mobilise potential support. On the most vital issue of this generation – the future national and international wellbeing of our country – the leader simply didn’t show leadership.”
Kinnock said Labour needed a leader who was “up to the task” of having a key role in shaping the UK’s relations with the EU. Smith, he said, could play that role. “He is a socialist to the core, a dedicated and knowledgeable European reformer, a gutsy campaigner and negotiator with radical and credible policies.”
Smith’s politics have regularly been compared with those of Kinnock; each has characterised themselves as being on the “soft left” of the party, rejecting unilateralism and battling internal opponents.
On Monday evening Corbyn will hold a rally for black and ethnic minority supporters of his leadership campaign in his Islington constituency, alongside the shadow health secretary, Diane Abbott.
The Corbyn campaign has had a testing few days, with the Labour leader using an Observer interview to accuse his deputy, Tom Watson, of talking “nonsense” about far-left entryists in the party. He will mention the appeal court judgment saying that Labour’s national executive committee did have the power to block new members from participating in the leadership ballot.
That case will now not be heard by the supreme court, after the five new Labour members who brought the original crowd-funded case against the party decided they would end their legal fight. Christine Evangelou, Edward Leir, Hannah Fordham, Chris Granger and FM, a teenage member, had argued that the ruling was a breach of their contract with the party. Although the high court ruled in favour of them, Labour brought the case to the court of appeal, which overturned the decision.
More than £93,000 had been raised on the members’ crowdfunding website, but Fordham wrote on Sunday that they had decided not to appeal directly to the UK’s highest court, citing the costs involved. “This has been an odd, emotional rollercoaster of a week for us all,” she wrote. “Unfortunately, given the costs involved in pursuing the case further ... we have taken the decision that this is where this particular legal case has to stop.”
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 08.51 GMT
Brexit Britain is a “new political landscape”, in which Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party could find itself squeezed on all sides, according to a new report marking six months since the referendum result.
The UK in a Changing Europe thinktank argues that the past six months have been the most tumultuous period in British politics since the second world war, with a new prime minister; leadership challenges in Labour and Ukip; the creation of two major new Whitehall departments; and Scottish independence back on the agenda, as well as the prospect of leaving the European Union.
“While none of these alone is unprecedented, there has been no moment in the post-war period when so much has happened almost at once,” says Simon Usherwood.
“Brexit is partly a function of, but is also partly bringing about, a new UK political landscape,” says Anand Menon, UK in a Changing Europe’s director.
Menon, professor of politics at Kings College, London, highlights the rapidly shifting political mood, with MPs on both sides of the House of Commons quickly moving to support restrictions on immigration, as they interpret the referendum result, and subsequent polling, as a clear rejection of the EU’s policy of free movement.
“It has been striking to see how former remainers among Conservative MPs have swung behind the prospect of even a hard Brexit,” he says in his contribution to the report.
Menon argues this political climate will make it unlikely that parliament will exercise much leverage before the government triggers article 50 next March, because so few MPs will want to be seen to block Brexit or argue against the continuation of free movement implied by soft Brexit.
It is unclear which parties will benefit from this period of political volatility, the report argues – but it looks unlikely to be Labour. Political scientist Matthew Goodwin uses his essay, Brexit, Six Months On, to argue that the referendum campaign, “exposed a deep and widening divide in the political geography of Labour support”.
He points to the fact that nearly 70% of Labour-held constituencies voted for Brexit. It is estimated that some, including Ruth Smeeth’s Stoke-on-Trent North and Ed Miliband’s Doncaster North, backed leaving the EU with 70% of the vote or more.
By contrast, in some metropolitan Labour constituencies, including Corbyn’s Islington North and Chuka Ummuna’s Streatham, more than 70% of voters voted to remain.
”This tension between working-class, struggling, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration, and more financially secure, middle class, pro-EU and cosmopolitan wings poses strategic dilemmas for Labour and provides opportunities for its main rivals,” he argues.
Labour MPs appear deeply divided about immigration, with shadow home secretary Diane Abbott warning against the party becoming “Ukip-lite”, while Andy Burnham suggested ignoring voters’ concerns could even provoke violence. Goodwin says Ukip, under new leader Paul Nuttall, is likely to target seats which saw a strong Brexit vote, and where Ukip came second in the 2015 general election.
At the same time, Tim Farron’s Liberal Democrats are making a noisy pitch to remain voters who feel Labour has not opposed Brexit vociferously enough.
“Should the Liberal Democrats, rather than Labour, manage to project themselves as a ‘new’ political home for remainers who loathe Brexit and the Conservative party, but also despair of Corbyn’s leadership, then in some seats this holds the potential to divide the more socially liberal and remain-focused group of voters, at the same time as Ukip is trying to win over working-class voters who used to support Labour,” according to Goodwin.
”In pro-remain Labour seats where the Liberal Democrats are already second, Labour could find itself further squeezed by the beginnings of a realignment, in seats like Hornsey and Wood Green, Bristol West, Cambridge, Bermondsey and Old Southwark, and Cardiff Central.”
In Labour’s northern heartland seats, much may depend on the ability of Ukip to get its act together, according to Menon, who says the Conservatives could also gain if May manages to achieve what he calls a “hard Brexit, wrapped in immigration language”.
”The Conservative government is signalling its desire to try to attract former Labour voters, with its appeals to those who are just about managing. Achieving an exit from the EU that ends freedom of movement could form a logical part of this strategy.”
The by-election in Copeland, where Labour MP Jamie Reed is stepping down, is likely to provide an early test in the new year of whether the party will find itself squeezed.
Other essays in the report spell out what we have learned so far about how the government is approaching Brexit – and how the other 27 EU states may respond.
Jonathan Portes, of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, argues that as far as immigration is concerned, it remains unclear what exactly the government is hoping to achieve. “Progress can be only limited until ministers agree their negotiating objective and key priorities,” he says.
Both currently appear a long way off, with some – such as the chancellor and business secretary – regarding as important the single market and business’s ability to recruit the workers it needs, while the prime minister appears to see restoring full control over immigration policy and reducing migrant numbers as taking precedence.
Economist Angus Armstrong uses his chapter to argue that the formal procedure of invoking article 50 will be less important than how the other EU countries respond. But with a series of elections in key states, and many other pressing issues on the EU agenda, he says, “the likely scenario is one of familiar EU negotiating territory: long interludes of tedium and small print, interspersed with episodes of late-night brinkmanship, leading eventually to a compromise that satisfies no-one but with which everyone can live”.
Last modified on Sat 2 Dec 2017 03.27 GMT
Whatever David Cameron does with the rest of his life, I recommend that he does not pursue a career as a futurologist. On the morning after the referendum on Scottish independence, the then prime minister stood outside Number 10 confidently proclaiming that Scotland’s position in the United Kingdom had been secured “for a generation”. Some of us said at the time that this declaration ought to be taken with a truckload of salt. Evidence from elsewhere – Quebec being a notable example – indicated that it would take two votes before it was ultimately settled one way or another. And we didn’t know then how many forces would conspire to make it even likelier that the Scots would have another on independence.
The surge towards identity politics that is reshaping countries across the democratic world has combined with the machinations and miscalculations of individual politicians to transform the picture. A second Scottish referendum has turned from a highly probable event into an almost inevitable one.
Above all else, the Brexit vote has furnished the Scottish nationalists with the ideal grounds for a further push for secession. They made a manifesto commitment to stage a second referendum in the event of a “material” change in Scotland’s circumstances. There can’t be any serious argument that the UK’s departure from the European Union is a material change. If they were candid, the nationalists might acknowledge that they would have been working towards another attempt at separation whichever form of Brexit was chosen by Mrs May.
If she’d gone for a version of departure from the EU so soft and gentle that even Nick Clegg might have lived with it, you have to suspect that the SNP would still have found a reason to argue that Scots needed to reappraise the decision they made in 2014. But it is no less true that additional and incendiary ammunition has been handed to the nationalists by Mrs May’s decision to pursue a rock-hard version of Brexit that privileges the desires of the Brextremists over everything and everyone else. The prime minister has fuelled the constitutional inferno with her inflexible failure to make any accommodation at all with the large number of voters – a substantial majority of them in the case of Scotland – who didn’t want to leave the EU. The SNP can now contend that it is not they who are the reckless parochialists; they can pitch themselves as the sane internationalists trying to save their country from a rampant English Tory nationalism.
To an extent that is not widely appreciated, Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to go for broke by calling for a fresh plebiscite represents a dramatic shift in her strategy. At the time of their 2015 party conference in Aberdeen, I was told by senior figures in the SNP that they wouldn’t contemplate having another go until they were in possession of robust evidence of a shift in Scottish opinion. They were then saying that they wouldn’t try again until they had seen a 10-point poll lead in favour of independence sustained for at least a year.
There was some dissent from this cautious approach, notably from Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader. He always thought they should have another go sooner rather than later. His view has prevailed even though the polls on independence don’t pass that 10-point-lead-for-a-year test for success SNP strategists used to set. The Opinium poll that we publish today suggests that voters north of the border are almost evenly divided on whether Scotland ought to remain within a post-Brexit UK. The margin is a tight 51 to 49. By the way, the split is exactly the same among English voters, suggesting that about half of the English would be very happy to see the end of the union.
I recently suggested to you that Mrs May is more of a gambler than she realises. The same, we can now say, is true of Ms Sturgeon. It is one of the great ironies of our time that two women both previously renowned as risk-averse operators have become gamblers making massive blind bets on their careers and their countries’ fortunes.
Ms Sturgeon has come round to the view that it is worth going for broke because the next few years could be the best opportunity that her cause will ever get. The stars may never be more promisingly aligned for the nationalists. Labour’s vertiginous decline in Scotland has shrivelled what used to be the primary unionist party north of the border. Though the Tories have enjoyed a bit of a revival under the leadership of Ruth Davidson, they are nothing like strong enough to be the firewall against independence that Labour was before its collapse. It is also worth recalling that at the time of the first referendum in 2014, many folk thought Labour would win the 2015 general election, disabling the nationalist argument that independence was the only way to liberate Scots from the rule of wicked English Tories. The feebleness of Labour under its current management re-arms the nationalists with the traditional argument that Scots are doomed to suffer permanent rule by southern Conservatives if the country remains within the United Kingdom. So for the nationalists, if it were done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.
There is one snag to these SNP calculations. Mrs May has already worked out most of that for herself. From her point of view, there was really no choice but to refuse to concede a referendum to the SNP’s deadline of spring 2019. The prime minister’s allies acknowledge that this runs the risk of playing into nationalist hands by making her look arrogantly intransigent in the eyes of Scots. But it would be even more dangerous from Mrs May’s perspective to be embroiled in a Scottish referendum campaign just at the point when her Brexit negotiations will be at their crunchiest and the UK’s economic future at its most uncertain. As some of Mrs May’s supporters acknowledge, she also wanted to display a bit of steeliness lest anyone, especially the EU negotiators that wait for her, might have got the impression from the ignominious cave-in over the budget that she buckles under pressure.
It is important to note that the Tory leader has not ruled out a second referendum altogether. The prime minister’s blocking formula is designed to sound firm without being unreasonable and has been secretly tested on focus groups of Scottish voters. That formula goes: “Now is not the time.” This is another of those May constructions that superficially sound definitive, but are really quite slippery. What she is trying to do is play it long. She would like to delay the question beyond spring 2021, the date of the next elections to the Holyrood parliament, in the hope that post-Brexit Britain might have stabilised by then and the SNP will be weaker. By 2021, the nationalists will have been ruling the roost in Edinburgh for 14 years, a remarkably long stretch of power. The normal laws of political gravity might have been restored.
To Mrs May’s refusal, the Scottish Nationalists have reacted exactly as you would expect them to respond. They have expressed public fury at what Ms Sturgeon calls “a democratic outrage” while expressing private satisfaction that this gives them plenty of opportunity to stoke grievances. The British prime minister and the Scottish first minister are now engaged in a mine-is-bigger-than-yours boasting contest about who has the larger mandate and greater authority. This rather goes to show that it is not just male politicians who can get into pissing competitions.
On the issue of timing, the Scots appear to be in contradictory minds. Pollsters report that a majority don’t want another referendum soon, but they also object to a plebiscite being blocked by Westminster. I don’t want to eat that – unless you tell me I can’t.
If the voters are being contradictory, they are at least matched in their illogicality by the protagonists on both sides. Pro-Brexit unionists are in the hideously contorted position of arguing that Scots should not “take back control”, precisely the opposite of what they have told Britain in relation to the EU. The SNP is telling Scots that being deprived of access to the single market will be so bad for them that they should compound the damage by quitting the single market with England, the destination for the bulk of Scottish exports.
But the people least qualified to scare Scotland with the economic perils of going it alone are the Brexiters who plan to wrench Britain out of the world’s largest trading bloc. The SNP has a changing and confused line on the EU, with some of its people now saying that they would not necessarily seek membership for an independent Scotland. The fact that a third of Scottish voters chose both independence and Brexit might have something to do with the shaping of that position. Both sides are hurtling through the looking glass.
I suppose we should have realised by now that logic has become an extremely poor guide to the behaviour of many politicians and voters in the current climate. At a time of febrile instability, anyone who tells you that anything is settled for “a generation” is going to be made to look like a complete idiot. Nothing is settled for five minutes.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.30 GMT
At 4am, Nigel Farage delivered a victory speech to his supporters; it was not much more than a couple of minutes, though a woman’s voice, insisting “thank you, Nigel, thank you, Nigel, thank you, Nigel” at the end made it sound both longer and angrier. Head rocking rhythmically back and forth as though banging in a nail, he spoke the language of new beginnings. “Dare to dream,” he said, “that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom.” Technically, of course, dawn was breaking, but it was impossible to miss the unabashed appropriation of the future. The dawn is golden and tomorrow belongs to him.
He spoke the language of victory with the querulous memory of wounds sustained: this was for “the real people, for the ordinary people, for the decent people”, people who, went the subtext, had been sneered at for too long by a politics that wasn’t real, wasn’t decent, didn’t recognise the dignity of the ordinary. And it continued, “honesty” and “dignity” then rolling seamlessly into “belief in nation”, as if the first two were illustrations, proofs, even, of the last, which is no doubt what he believes. He sounded like a man who had set fire to the country club because they never gave him a good enough reason for refusing his application. That’ll show them, with their in-jokes, with their stupidly perfect lawns. There was something chilling about his framing of the politics of the past as a luxuriant, liberated place.
But for poor taste and ugly triumph, nothing matched his assertion that this had happened “without having to fight, without a single bullet being fired”. Never mind that more than a single bullet was fired last week, that we lost the first MP to an act of terror since the darkest days of the IRA and, leaving Ireland aside, the first since 1812. His words seemed to carry a tang of regret – echoing his dark mutterings of some weeks ago, when he predicted violence on the streets and sounded exhilarated by it.
“We have fought against the multinationals, we have fought against the big merchant banks, we have fought against big politics, we have fought against lies, corruption and deceit,” he said, which is certainly consistent with his campaign – everything bad that you hate, we, in some indefinable way, will stand against. But there’s that slide again, from politics into lies into corruption, from the elites who despise you into an old order that was corrupted.
There are emollient and calming people on the leave side – Daniel Hannan, for instance – but if Nigel Farage embodies the new tone, the new politics, it is going to be boilingly unpleasant, way beyond unwatchable.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
Italians have looked aghast at the outcome of the Brexit vote, shocked by the rapid fall of political leaders in a nation previously admired for stability and common sense.
Dire economic performance in the bel paese (beautiful country) has seen hundreds of thousands of Italians move to the UK, which was until recently held up as an example of how a nation should be run.
But in the post-referendum era, Brits in Italy receive sympathetic looks as concerned locals seek to understand how UK voters could have made such a drastic choice. “It’s a mistake for them,” says Luca Miccinilli, a shop worker in central Rome. “Maybe they never really felt European.”
His sentiment is echoed at a nearby coffee bar, where Brexit is described variously as a disaster, an erroneous choice, an irrational decision. “I think it was a mistake, Europe’s already in difficulty,” remarks Simona Barnocchi at the counter. “They had less difficulty than us, because they had their own bank. Our economy isn’t going well,” she remarks as euros are dropped into the till.
Italy was one of the EU’s founding members and the union’s flag flutters atop state buildings nationwide. But Brussels is certainly not viewed with great affection. The failure of Europe to respond adequately to refugees and migrants arriving on Italian shores, coupled with constant negotiations over the country’s finances, has led to a sense of bitterness among many Italians.
But the suggestion Italy might follow in the UK’s footsteps is broadly viewed as preposterous, with a post-Brexit poll finding that two thirds of Italians would vote to remain in the event of a referendum.
The outcome of the British vote was celebrated by the leader of the far-right Northern League, Matteo Salvini, who called for Italy to hold its own vote. But his party has lost support in recent weeks, with one poll showing just 12.4% of voters would back it.
The more significant rise has been that of the Eurosceptic Five Star Movement (M5S), an anti-establishment party founded by comedian Beppe Grillo. The M5S won a quarter of the national vote in 2013 and last month clinched the mayoral seats in Rome and Turin. Polls now show it has 30.6% of the vote, above the ruling Democratic party’s 29.8%.
Luigi Di Maio, the deputy speaker of the Italian parliament, has emerged as the most likely figure to lead the M5S at the next general election. He is critical of Brussels, but says the EU has become a scapegoat. “It was very often used by Italian politics as an alibi, it’s not guilty of everything it has been blamed for,” he told the Guardian.
But he still saw failings. “It’s an EU which has decided to abdicate from its role of protecting the internal market and protecting its citizens,” he said.
Despite its Euroscepticism, the M5S is committed to EU membership, although it has called for a national referendum on the euro. “A referendum which asks citizens if they want to remain in the euro, if they want to go in another direction, renegotiate the euro, or return to the lira,” says Di Maio.
Such a vote would not be legally binding and the Italian government has not backed the idea. While Italians often complain that joining the single currency made them poorer, others are wary of the financial impact of returning to the lira.
Marco Bertolini, an architect in Rome, counts out snacks at the coffee bar to demonstrate the economics of switching currencies. “For those who understand finance, if the lira were to come back, we would pay double,” he says. “It’s not convincing, it’s not right.”
Although the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, does not have an EU vote to worry about, he has put his career on the line by calling a different referendum in October. Italians are being asked to give the green light to the premier’s package of reforms, an attempt to streamline the political system, which are opposed by the M5S.
Renzi has promised to resign if he loses this autumn and early elections could follow. Arianna Montanari, a professor at Rome’s La Sapienza University, is however cautious of predicting that the M5S will soon govern Italy, believing a temporary government could be installed without a public vote if Renzi did stand down.
“It also depends on how Rome works; it seems like it’s not going so well,” she said of Rome’s new M5S mayor, Virginia Raggi, whose unenviable to-do list includes getting basic services such as rubbish collection to function properly.An M5S government led by the young Di Maio, who turned 30 this month, would be a remarkable transformation of Italian politics. But the de-facto party leader is adamant that a vote for the M5S would not lead to a break with the EU: “In the throngs of Brexit, some have begun to speak of ‘Italexit’. But no one talked about this before.”
Di Maio is instead optimistic that Brexit could benefit Italy, suggesting it could attract businesses leaving London and looking for a new European hub. “Italy could have a kind of recruitment drive, with taxation that allows companies that are there and want to come to Italy and contribute to the economic development of this country,” he says.
Milan, Italy’s financial capital, is best positioned to benefit from such a situation. “Milan has a number of advantages. The fact is that for the family of a banker in London, moving to Frankfurt would not be exciting,” said Francesco Giavazzi, a professor at Bocconi University in Milan. But he notes Brexit could see Italian imports to the UK fall, as they become more expensive, and so Italy does not stand to gain hugely in financial terms.
The ongoing fallout from the UK referendum will continue to spark intense debate about Italy’s own relationship with Europe. So far, despite constant criticism of the EU’s monetary policy, a strong sense of European identity is outweighing any will to leave the union.
“I think that the original project was the right one. A political union and a sense of community. We must return to the European community,” says Di Maio.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
On 24 June, while I was on stage at the Comedy Store in London, a man told me to “go home”. The eagle-eyed among you will recognise that date as the night after the UK voted to leave the EU. Obviously, it was jarring. No one has told me to go home for 16 years, and I assumed the idea had been forgotten. It’s the racist equivalent of Limp Bizkit, or being worried about the millennium bug. Also, I come from Croydon, so telling me to go home really is incredibly cruel.
I dealt with the gentleman at the time, using some language and terminology that could generously be described as “fruity”. I hoped that this would be an isolated incident, the consequence of discussing this subject in the eye of the storm. However, I was wrong. According the government data, 6,193 hate crimes have been reported since the referendum, a 20% rise on the same period in 2015. This led to home secretary on Tuesday to announce that police handling of hate crimes will be reviewed.
Now, clearly not everyone who voted to leave the EU is a racist (a phrase I’ve found myself saying so often in the last three weeks, I’m thinking of having it printed on a T-shirt). But these figures do suggest that the intolerant have been emboldened by the result. Last week, Barclays claimed that the referendum had “uncorked a genie” that was causing economic instability. Well, it turns out that genie is also a huge racist. While that isn’t ideal, it is a great idea for a gritty Christopher Nolan-style reboot of Aladdin, where the racist genie has to reluctantly do the bidding of an Arab while intermittently muttering: “Coming over here, taking our wishes.”
It’s easy to be angry with people. But you have always got to look at the root causes of the problem. In his song Only a Pawn in Their Game, Bob Dylan takes on the story of the murder of civil-rights activist Medgar Evers, but instead of just blaming the assassins, Dylan widens his scope:
A South politician preaches to the poor white man“You got more than blacks, don’t complainYou’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explainAnd the Negro’s nameIs used it is plainFor the politician’s gainAs he rises to fameAnd the poor white remainsOn the caboose of the trainBut it ain’t him to blameHe’s only a pawn in their game.
Those words have rattled around my head recently along with two key questions: if we are all the pawns, then who are the grandmasters playing us? Also, when you think about it, what is chess, if not a way of encouraging slow, tactical racism?
For me, at least some of the blame lies with the leadership of the leave campaign. They stoked intolerance, and then refused to take responsibility. In the lead-up to the vote, a pro-Brexit minister told Newsnight: “The only issue we can go on the offensive is on immigration.” The hostility was relentless, from the campaign and its supporters in the media. The writer Liz Gerard found that between 1 January and the date of the referendum, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express each published 34 front-page articles about immigration.
In case you were wondering, none of them were positive. There were no headlines such as: “Immigrant saves boy from killer shark” or “Foreigners make a lovely jam”. There were 174 days between those dates – which means two national newspapers carried front-page stories about immigrants once every five days. What other subject dominates the headlines once a week for six months? The answer is football, a sport that, ironically, in this country is played largely by a talented group of economic migrants.
Boris Johnson and Daniel Hannan have both claimed that there is no relationship between the campaign and the rise in hate crimes. Then last week, Nigel Farage made a cameo at the Republican national convention, bemoaning the xenophobia of other countries and claiming that Donald Trump’s attitude to Muslims makes him “very uncomfortable”. I’d say that this was the pot calling the kettle black, but Farage would probably suggest that I was accusing him of being racist to kettles. Honestly, it’s political correctness gone mad.
In his convention speech, Trump claimed that immigration has impacted negatively on African-Americans and Latinos, simultaneously attempting to position himself as the champion of non-white people, while legitimising the views of people who hate them. His doublespeak is working – a CNN poll on Monday put him ahead of Hillary Clinton. An army of racist genies are licking their lips in anticipation, sensing the cork loosening. In spite of this, I remain optimistic. The audience at the Comedy Store that night came to my defence. Leave and remain voters united in shouting my heckler down. It’s good to remember that non-racists are in the majority. But we need to ensure we make our voices heard. Otherwise, we’re just pawns in their game.
Nish Kumar’s Actions Speak Louder Than Words Unless You Shout The Words Real Loud runs daily during the Edinburgh fringe festival, before touring in the autumn
First published on Sat 25 Aug 2018 19.00 BST
Crashing out of the EU without a deal would risk breaking up the United Kingdom, the former president of the European council has warned.
Herman Van Rompuy, the former Belgian prime minister who was council president until 2014, told the Observer that he believed the threat of a no-deal Brexit was a new “operation fear” tactic being used by the government. But he said it would not work with the EU and warned that such an outcome would end up creating new pressures over Scottish independence.
“The no-deal issue is not just a problem for the UK or Brussels,” he said. “It is also an existential threat to the UK itself. One can imagine that a no deal will have a big impact and cause concern in some of the regions. Speaking of Scotland, it could have consequences for them and others.”
He added: “We could end up with a situation in which the EU27 becomes more united and a United Kingdom less united. This talk about a ‘no deal’ is the kind of nationalist rhetoric that belongs to another era.”
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, said last week that a no-deal Brexit would be an “unmitigated disaster”. David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, has already attempted to calm fears that Scotland’s place in the union could be jeopardised by crashing out of the EU with no deal. Scotland voted for the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% and Sturgeon has pledged to outline her thinking on independence in October. But polling experts say there has been little sign of an increase in support for independence as a result of Brexit.
While Sturgeon is not expected to make the case for backing a new independence referendum soon, Van Rompuy’s warning is a sign of the volatility that could be unleashed by leaving the EU without a deal, a prospect which last week saw the Conservative party descending further into civil war.
Dozens of Tory MPs are now said to be willing to take whatever action is necessary to block such an outcome. But the row is set to rage for weeks, with the government preparing to release dozens more “technical notices” on how businesses and consumers should cope in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Labour remains under pressure over its ambiguous Brexit stance, with a new YouGov poll suggesting that the voters it would need to win a parliamentary majority are principally pro-European. Among voters who did not back Labour last year but said they might or would seriously consider doing so, 68% backed EU membership. The 10,000-strong poll for the People’s Vote campaign found that 59% of these voters wanted a new referendum on Brexit, while 27% did not.
Van Rompuy, the first person to hold the post of European council president, said a no-deal Brexit might lead to another election in Britain. “If there is no House of Commons support for no deal, then you are very close to new elections,” he said. “If you have new elections, then article 50 [the legal process for Britain’s EU exit] will have to be postponed, because it will not be clear that you will have a government – or a government with a programme.”
He suggested Theresa May’s hopes of Britain in effect remaining in a single market for goods but not services might not be accepted by the EU. “It is rather difficult to make a distinction between goods and services. We are living in a new economy where there is a mix of goods and services for the same kinds of products. Saying that we will have a customs union, or even going further with a single market for goods, and completely separate it from a single market in services – this is what [chief EU negotiator Michel] Barnier called unworkable.”
He criticised Liam Fox, the pro-Brexit international trade secretary, for suggesting a no-deal outcome was now more likely than not. “I don’t like this talk of a ‘50/50’ or ‘60/40’ chances,” Van Rompuy said.
“I know there are so-called tactical considerations about all these discussions on the chances of the no deal. Some want to put pressure on parts of the Conservative party. It is an ‘operation fear’. Those threats will not work vis-à-vis the European Union … I cannot imagine that a British prime minister or a responsible British government is even considering seriously a no deal, playing with the economic future of the country and its people.”
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We have always said the United Kingdom would continue to thrive in the event of a no-deal Brexit. But we are confident of getting a good deal – one that delivers for every part of the United Kingdom and takes back control of our money, laws and our borders. That is what this government will deliver.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
While much of Britain’s attention has been on the latest twists, turns and turmoil over Brexit, Northern Ireland has been quietly self-immolating in the corner. The country’s power-sharing parliament collapsed in January after Sinn Féin refused to partner the Democratic Unionists any longer. The deadline for the parties to reach a resolution and save Stormont was Monday – but it came and went without a deal being reached.
Just 48 hours before Theresa May was due to trigger article 50, her Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, took to the steps at Stormont House to announce that Northern Ireland no longer had a government. Almost two decades after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, in 1998, the peace process lies in tatters.
The breakdown of power-sharing in Northern Ireland would always have been gravely serious, but the clash with article 50 means the timing could hardly be worse. As of this week, either a new election will have to be called in Northern Ireland (its third in 12 months), or it may have to be ruled directly from London, in what would be a major step back in the peace process.
Regardless of the option taken, the people of Northern Ireland – who, like the Scottish, voted to remain in the EU – will be left without a government for much of the Brexit negotiations. This will cause considerable frustration locally, where many already resent what they see as London’s decision to drag Northern Ireland and Scotland kicking and screaming out of the EU against their will.
It will also further alienate Northern Ireland’s political parties, which have been vocal about feeling ignored by the prime minister during her plans to trigger article 50. The Democratic Unionists supported the leave campaign, but all other main parties at Stormont backed remain, including Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionists, the Social Democratic & Labour party, Alliance and the Green party.
Equally, there is concern that if Northern Ireland now has to be run from London for a while, in a process known as “direct rule”, the prime minister will do a poor job of it simply because her mind will be on Brexit. Theresa May has shown a complete and utter lack of interest in Northern Ireland since taking office. Her time at No 10 is becoming increasingly defined by how she handles Brexit, and she knows it. She has done as little as possible to get distracted by “smaller issues” such as the trouble brewing across the Irish Sea.
However, whether May realises it or not, Northern Ireland is about to become the frontline in the Brexit battle, as the only part of the UK to share a land border with another EU country, the Republic of Ireland. This border, which stretches for miles between muddy hillocks and farmland, is now poised to become the UK’s frontier to the EU. Currently, EU freedom of movement means people can pass through without being searched or having passport checks.
In order for May’s hard Brexit to be enacted, this would necessitate change. It is unclear if a Trump-esque border wall will be required, or army checkpoints strategically scattered across particular points of the border. Any change will be deeply controversial in Northern Ireland, especially for nationalist and republican communities.
The region merited scarcely a mention in the run-up to the EU referendum, with neither Leave nor Remain campaigns grasping the complexity of how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland. Nine months after the referendum, no one in the British government seems any the wiser about the future of the Irish border.
It is astonishing that May is moving to trigger article 50 without seriously addressing this beforehand. Once negotiations with the EU formally begin and the official countdown to a deal deadline starts, she might just realise the enormity of the problem she has been sidelining thus far.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
One thing we know about Julian Smith is that he did something very bad in a previous life. His soul-sapping stint as chief whip in the most chaotic parliament in living memory has been rewarded with the assignment of re-establishing the Northern Ireland institutions.
That challenge has been made virtually impossible by the other two things Smith has sacrificed some life expectancy for: Brexit, and keeping the 10 Democratic Unionist party (DUP) MPs onside in order to deliver Brexit.
There has been a longstanding tendency in Westminster to generally ignore Northern Ireland. Ignoring it until it becomes a problem inside the region is not new, but Northern Ireland is now the central challenge of Brexit, and the failure of Britain’s entire political and media class to properly understand it has evolved from tendency to pathology.
So it is that over the past few days, everyone from the new prime minister to senior political journalists has blithely asserted that the government should focus on getting the Stormont institutions up and running. As most of Irish history bears out, people in Westminster confidently asserting that things “should” happen on the island of Ireland have not necessarily led to those things happening.
At this moment, Brexit and the associated confidence and supply deal with the DUP that keeps the Tories – just about – in power have changed the structural overlay of Northern Irish politics so dramatically as to make getting the institutions back up and running a virtual impossibility.
The parties are still formally talking about going back to work, overseen by the British and Irish governments. They are attempting to do a deal on the latest incarnations of the perennial challenges: identity and culture, specifically recognition of the Irish language. But also on dealing with the legacy of three decades of intercommunal murder. The latter is becoming especially noxious as the warm fuzzy feeling engendered by the novel first decades of peace wears off and is replaced by unprocessed trauma and anger over unpunished evil.
These are not new issues, but they are now much harder to manage. Until the UK’s decision to leave the EU, and to do so in a way that increased the likelihood of a visible border and divergence between the two parts of Ireland, Northern Ireland’s delicate management was predicated on the appearance of honest brokering between the frequently juvenile main parties and the appearance of joint effort between the UK and Irish governments.
Those appearances are now impossible to keep up. The British and Irish governments are not just in a state of tension on some unrelated matter: they are in open diplomatic dispute over how Northern Ireland should be treated after Brexit. Meanwhile, Sinn Féin and the DUP have glaringly different incentives. They always have done, but now they have separate routes other than the devolved institutions to pursue their constitutional preoccupations, thereby reducing their willingness to compromise and restart an imperfect and unloved executive.
Sinn Féin sees Brexit as an opportunity to point to British poor faith – not just to nationalists but to all of remain-voting Northern Ireland. Successive governments have been most helpful in this regard. If one were to design a caricature Tory administration to spook not just Sinn Féiners, but moderate nationalists and unaligned centrists in Northern Ireland, it would be hard to better a Boris Johnson-led one relying on the votes of the DUP’s mostly outre Westminster contingent.
Modern Irish republicanism relies heavily on grievance, both real and imagined. It is unlikely to waste a legitimate one. Added to which, recent Westminster amendments on equal marriage and abortion mean social reforms long blocked by the DUP will become law in late October if Stormont is not restarted. Which is another incentive not to go back quickly.
It is more unclear what the DUP wants. Despite Johnson’s tub-thumping turn at its party conference and his bullish rejection of the backstop, the party probably doesn’t trust him. It knows a no-deal Brexit is an enormous risk for both the Northern Ireland economy and the long-term consent towards the union of moderate nationalists and the growing number of unaligned others, but what can the party do to stop it? It may cling, barnacle-like, to the confidence and supply deal that gives the DUP some claim of influence, but it seems unlikely that Johnson – or, for that matter, Dominic Cummings – will be as solicitous of its views as Theresa May.
Even while rumours emerge of minute progress and possible deals at Stormont, managing Northern Ireland’s competing nationalisms is becoming ever more difficult as British politics itself veers into nationalism. The constitutional status of Northern Ireland – long treated with delicacy and deference to the strictures of the Good Friday agreement – has become a matter of national concern, with even liberal commentators decrying Brexiters for their indifference to “losing” Northern Ireland.
And in darker portents, Tory MPs and tabloids demand amnesty for British soldiers being investigated over Troubles killings, ignorant or indifferent to the effect on Northern Ireland. This summer, banners in support of “Soldier F”, charged with murder on Bloody Sunday, began appearing in loyalist areas of Northern Ireland. Not quite a decade ago – but in a different era – a Conservative prime minister apologised for Bloody Sunday in the House of Commons.
As Smith will find out, Northern Ireland’s unique political ecology requires the most delicate of balances, both internally and between Britain and Ireland. At the minute, it faces what might be called a hostile environment.
First published on Tue 11 Oct 2016 15.17 BST
The Norwegian foreign ministry has denied local press reports that it rejected a British request to set up a formal joint taskforce aimed at preparing a post-Brexit free trade deal between the two countries.
The business daily Dagens Næringsliv earlier reported that Britain’s international trade secretary, Liam Fox, had asked Norway’s trade and industry minster, Monica Mæland, to form a bilateral trade working group at a meeting on 14 September.
The paper said the request was passed to the Norwegian foreign ministry, which is coordinating Norway’s Brexit response, where it was turned down as likely to jeopardise Norway’s European Economic Area (EEA) agreement and “inappropriate” while Britain was still a full member of the EU.
But a ministry spokeswoman said Mæland had confirmed in a letter to Fox that Norway was willing to “initiate a dialogue” in an attempt to “minimise any potential future disruption to the bilateral trade relationship”. The letter said Norway was “flexible concerning the format of the dialogue, within the framework of our respective obligations”.
No 10 said it was not true that Fox had asked for a joint working group on trade with Norway: “That did not happen. Liam Fox has had dialogue with Norway. It was part of an ongoing dialogue between the Department for International Trade and individual states. It was a friendly conversation as opposed to any specific requests.”
The format – and formality – of preliminary bilateral trade talks is a highly sensitive issue. Fox is eager to begin work on negotiating new trade agreements with non-EU member states, but the UK is legally barred from signing any while it remains an EU member.
Last month the Australian trade minister was forced to row back on earlier enthusiastic noises about setting up a bilateral working group to “scope out the parameters of a future ambitious and comprehensive Australia-UK free trade agreement”.
Steven Ciobo said any formal work on a bilateral post-Brexit deal would take second place to Australia’s trade talks with the EU, and could not begin until Britain had fully exited from the bloc.
Norway is not a member of the EU but has access to the single market though its membership of the EEA, which groups EU member states plus three of the four members of the European Free Trade Association (Efta) – Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Norway has said it could block an eventual UK bid for Efta membership. The European affairs minister, Elisabeth Vik Aspaker, said in August it was “not certain it would be a good idea to let a big country into this organisation. It would shift the balance, which is not necessarily in Norway’s interests.”
The “Norwegian model” had been held up by some pro-Brexit campaigners as a possible way for the UK to access the EU single market via the EEA, although the government’s insistence on controlling immigration and regaining parliamentary and judicial sovereignty after Brexit may rule that out: EEA membership requires the four EU freedoms, including the free movement of people.
Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, the leader of Norway’s Centre party, had accused the Norwegian government of dragging its feet in response to the Brexit vote, telling Dagens Næringsliv that Britain was Norway’s biggest export market.
Britain accounts for about a quarter of Norway’s exports – principally oil and gas, which account for nearly 90% of the total, and seafood – and about 6% of its imports.
Last modified on Fri 14 Feb 2020 16.55 GMT
There will be no chimes at midnight. Anglican vicars have declined the suggestions of Brexiters that they should ring the bells of their churches to hail the beginning of the “golden age” that, as Boris Johnson has assured us, will be inaugurated by Brexit on 31 January. And Big Ben will not bong. The silence that Westminster’s great clock tower has maintained since its clapper was removed while restoration works are in progress will not be broken. Johnson claimed that he was “working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”. The plan turned out to be like all his other Brexit plans, which is to say nonexistent. So at this moment of destiny the prime minister will surely adapt John Donne. Ask not for whom the bell doesn’t toll. It doesn’t toll for thee.
Never mind that the bongs would, rather deliciously, mark the supremacy of Brussels time: midnight in the EU’s capital being the rather less resonant 11pm in London. Never mind that the £500,000 cost of a temporary restoration would work out at £45,000 per bong, surely the most expensive rings since Richard Burton bought jewellery for Elizabeth Taylor.
Still, like some fan fiction version of Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the true believers cry: “The bells! The bells!” Tory MP Mark Francois has donated £1,000 to a crowdfunding appeal for cash to pay for temporary works on Big Ben. Business secretary Andrea Leadsom’s rather more curbed enthusiasm has yielded a contribution of £10 – enough presumably for a millisecond micro-bong.
But the underlying point of the campaign seems to lie not so much in the expectation that the chimes will actually sound to herald the new dawn of British greatness as in the hope that they will not. This will prove again that the elites will stop at nothing to stifle the joy of the risen people of England. (The joy of the people of Scotland being unconfined by virtue of being almost entirely absent.)
Why, even in their moment of triumph, do the Brexiters need this self-pitying narrative? It is another episode in the blame game that has been implicit from the start of the Brexit saga. Brexit is inherently anticlimactic. This is not just because the botched process of negotiating withdrawal has turned the gush of liberation into a dribble, with Independence Days (29 March; 31 October) coming and going like a millenarian preacher’s predictions for the end of the world. It is not just because the special memorial 50p coins had to be melted down. It is because the act of liberation itself is fundamentally spurious.
Revolutions unleash euphoria because they create tangible images of change and inaugurate, at least in the fevered minds of their supporters, a new epoch. Brexit can’t do either of these things. The problem with a revolt against imaginary oppression is that you end up with imaginary freedom. How do you actually show that the yoke of Brussels has been lifted? You can’t bring prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps back into the shops, or release stout British fishermen from the humiliation of having to wear hair nets at work on the high seas, or unban donkey rides on beaches, or right any of the other great wrongs that fuelled anti-EU sentiment – because all of it was make-believe.
And so is the golden age to come. Almost no one actually believes in the dawning of the post-Brexit Age of Aquarius. The real public mood in this month of liberation was revealed in a survey commissioned by the Conservative thinktank Bright Blue at the beginning of January: “The UK public is fairly pessimistic about the next five years. A majority of the UK public expects levels of undesirable trends – poverty (72%), crime (71%), inequality (71%) and national debt (72%) – to increase or stay the same.”
Thus the great moment of departure on 31 January will be like the last lines in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, in which Vladimir asks: “Well, shall we go?” and Estragon answers: “Yes, let’s go.” The stage direction is: “They do not move.” Nothing will really move. The entry into a period of transition of unknown duration and the beginning of trade talks likely to be marked by tedium, indecision and a slow climbdown from grandiose promises really doesn’t ring any bells.
All but the most swivel-eyed of the Brexiters know this. Johnson himself has executed a (highly effective) pivot, turning Brexit from a fabulous moment of liberation to a duty that must be “done”, a trial to be endured, a bad period to be put behind us. The logic of his election slogan is that 31 January will mark not a beginning but an end – an end to the torment that has been endured since the referendum of June 2016.
It is striking that the justification for setting aside £120m of public money for a festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 2022 has changed in parallel with this shift. When Theresa May announced it in 2018, it was meant “to showcase what makes our country great today”. Now, what she hailed as this “moment of national celebration” is repurposed as a moment of national consolation. The recently appointed director of the festival, Martin Green, has said it will have “a big narrative going on around healing and coming together”. You don’t have to come together if you have not been torn apart. You don’t have a festival of healing unless you’re feeling very sick.
But this downbeat narrative cannot fuel spontaneous overflows of popular emotion. The divisions and anxieties created by Brexit will not end on 31 January, but even if they did, it would be a peculiar mode of national rejoicing: a prime minister celebrating the fact that the pain he is primarily responsible for inflicting is going away. However, as we have seen time and again in this saga, it must be somebody else’s fault that things have come to this strange pass. It cannot be that the anticlimax was always going to be part of the story. It must be that all the inherent problems are merely the result of a failure of will.
Brexit is a matter of faith – when the miracles don’t happen, it is because there are too many of what Johnson calls “the doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters”. It is not enough that the people who are delighted to be leaving the EU express their happiness at a great victory over their enemies. Since the story is now about “coming together”, the doubters must play their part in a ritual of forced cheeriness. If they do not, it is their fault that the party is not quite so swell as it was meant to be. The bells won’t ring, not because the bell tower is broken, but because the doomsters don’t believe in the message of the unheard bongs.
First published on Wed 21 Sep 2016 10.00 BST
The west’s leading economic thinktank has backtracked on its warning that the UK would suffer instant damage from a Brexit vote and has thrown its weight behind plans by Theresa May to provide fresh post-referendum support to growth in November’s autumn statement.
The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which issued strong warnings about the likely impact of a vote to leave the EU ahead of the 23 June vote, has revised up its forecast for growth this year as a result of a stronger-than expected performance in the first half of 2016 and action by the Bank of England in August to spur activity.
Until recently a staunch supporter of George Osborne’s austerity plan, the OECD said it was appropriate for the new chancellor, Philip Hammond, to increase public spending in his first major policy statement later this year.
It said it was still predicting a sharp slowdown in the economy, but that this would not happen until 2017. It said that the expected negative effects on the rest of the global economy of the Brexit vote – compared in June to the equivalent of a hard landing for China – had also been delayed.
The referendum result had led to high volatility in financial markets and a rise in uncertainty, the OECD said in its interim economic outlook.
“While markets have since stabilised, sterling has depreciated by around 10% in trade-weighted terms since the referendum. For 2016, GDP growth has been supported by a strong performance prior to the referendum, even though business investment contracted.
“Developments to date are broadly consistent with the more moderate scenarios set out prior to the referendum and reflect prompt action by the Bank of England in August. However, GDP is projected to slow to 1% in 2017, well below the pace in recent years and forecasts prior to the referendum.“Spillovers to the global economy, notably the euro area, have been modest so far, including through confidence and financial markets weighing on investment; more negative effects on the euro area are likely to become apparent in 2017.”
The OECD’s current assessment contrasts with the comments made by its secretary general Angel Gurria in April when he said: “From the moment of a Brexit vote until the arrangements for ‘divorce’ are definitively settled – years later there would be heightened economic uncertainty, with damaging consequences. Brexit would lead to a sell-off of assets and a sharp rise in risk premia. Consumer confidence would fall, as would business confidence and investment, thus holding back growth.”
Catherine Mann, the OECD’s chief economist said it was premature to say there would be no possible consequences for the UK from Brexit and that its pre-referendum estimates had taken no account of possible policy changes by the Bank of England and the Treasury.
“When we made our forecasts we did not presume to speak about what the Bank of England might do. The Bank entered the market forcibly on interest rates and to calm the markets,” she said.
“Nor did we presume to make any judgements about what fiscal policy might do,” she added, noting that Hammond had signalled higher public spending in the autumn statement. “It all adds up to appropriate policy support.”
The OECD said it expected the UK economy to grow by 1.8% this year, a 0.1 point increase on its pre-referendum estimate, but then fall by more than it had previously envisaged. It also shaved its world growth estimates for both 2016 and 2017 by 0.1 point, to 2.9% and 3.2% respectively.
Mann said it was right to say that the OECD, hitherto a strong supporter of austerity policies in the UK and elsewhere in the developed world, was “changing its tune”.
She said there were three reasons for the rethink: countries had implemented a lot of austerity; global growth was flat-lining, and ultra-low interest rates had created conditions in which governments could borrow cheaply.
Action was needed to lift the global economy out of a low-growth trap, she said. “The spiral is not upwards, it is downwards. Downwards on trade, downwards on productivity, downwards on global growth.”
The OECD fears that weak growth, stagnant living standards and rising inequality are eroding support for globalisation and making it harder for governments to pursue structural reforms.
“All countries have room to restructure their spending and tax policies towards a more growth-friendly mix by increasing hard and soft infrastructure spending, and using fiscal measures to support structural reforms” the interim outlook said.
“Concrete instruments include greater spending on well-targeted active labour market programmes and basic research, which should benefit both short-term demand, longer-term supply, and help to make growth more inclusive.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
We will leave the European Union like a drunk tumbling out of a pub at closing time, perhaps with the barman’s boot on our backside. We’ll find ourselves face down on the pavement wondering what just happened. The idea of an orderly, negotiated exit retreats to the margins of possibility: the more likely outcome is chaotic rupture.
No industry will be kicked harder by Brexit than farming. It is uniquely vulnerable for three reasons. Small changes to the amount of goods allowed to enter this country with low trade taxes (a system known as tariff rate quotas) could knock many farmers out of business. There are 86 agricultural products subject to these quotas in the EU, and Britain might have to renegotiate every one of them, in some cases with dozens of other nations. The complexity could be overwhelming.
Without labourers from the EU, fruit and vegetable growers will not get their crops off the fields. As a result of perceived hostility and a weaker pound, migrant farm labour fell by 30% after the referendum last year. If the government ends free movement, many producers will go under.
Most importantly, farmers here have developed a toxic dependency on European subsidies. These now provide, in aggregate, over half their income. It is hard to see how the government could keep paying them in their current form.
Every year €50bn (£43bn) is taken from the pockets of European taxpayers of all stations, and poured disproportionately into the pockets of the very rich. The money is paid by the hectare, so the more land you own, the more cash you are given. In England, the government has refused to limit the money a landowner can receive: some people receive hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in public funds. Social security is capped only for the poor.
Nor are these funds reserved for farming. The government uses this system to keep its members and friends in the style to which they feel entitled. Some of them claim this money for land used to breed racehorses and shoot grouse. David Cameron’s government raised the public subsidy for grouse moors by 86%.
But that is not the worst of it. To claim most farm subsidies, you must keep the land bare: the system amounts to a €50bn perverse incentive for clearing wildlife habitats. Across the European Union, hundreds of thousands of hectares of woods, scrubland, reed beds, ponds and other “ineligible features” have been destroyed for the sole purpose of claiming public money.
The subsidy system sustains the greatest cause of habitat and wildlife destruction in Britain (whose impacts are far wider than all the building that has ever taken place here): sheep grazing on infertile land. Sheep have not so much altered the ecosystem as removed it altogether, stripping most edible plants and much of the soil from the land, leaving nothing of what would once have been a rich mosaic of forest and glade except coarse grass, occasionally interspersed with bracken and bare rock: the only things the sheep can’t eat.
There are no official figures for the amount of land used by sheep in this country, so I commissioned some research of my own. The results are very rough and provisional. (A full survey would take many months and cost thousands.) But they are of this order: the area that is grazed by sheep in Britain is broadly equivalent to our entire arable acreage.
In other words, sheep occupy roughly the same amount of land as is used to grow all the cereals, oilseeds, potatoes, fruit, vegetables and other crops this country produces. Yet lamb and mutton provide just 1.2% of our diet. Nor are they feeding the rest of the world – imports and exports of sheep meat are almost exactly matched. (I explain how these figures are derived on my website.)
In other words, this is an astonishingly profligate use of land. It is hard to think of any industry, anywhere on earth, with a higher ratio of destruction to production. Because it is uneconomic, it depends entirely on European money. It should be a source of enduring shame to Britain’s big conservation groups that, out of sheer cowardice, they refuse to confront this pointless mass erasure of wildlife at public expense.
This spending – £3bn a year in the UK, which is roughly equivalent to the NHS deficit – has been protected only by the fact that our government is not directly responsible for it. As soon as the money appears on national accounts, it will become politically unsustainable. The system has to change. We should ensure it changes for the better.
New Zealand shows how not to do it. When subsidies were suddenly stopped there in 1984, small and medium-sized farms went under, and the government protected the remaining producers by scrapping environmental laws.
It would not be surprising to see this happen here. European measures protecting the natural world, such as the habitats and birds directives, are likely to become zombie legislation in the UK after Brexit, as the institutions required to enforce them will no longer exist. With Andrea Leadsom in charge of farming and Liam Fox in charge of trade, everything could go. Both farmers and conservationists should fiercely resist these outcomes.
The only fair way of resolving this incipient crisis is to continue to provide public money, but only for the delivery of public goods – such as restoring ecosystems, preventing flooding downstream, and bringing children and adults back into contact with the living world. This should be accompanied by rules strong enough to ensure that farmers can no longer pollute our rivers, strip the soil from the land, wipe out pollinators and other wildlife, and destroy the features of the countryside with impunity.
If farmers are to be exposed to market forces, the market should be fair. This means curtailing the power of the chain stores and, where necessary, breaking them up: it is outrageous that farmers receive only 9% of the value of their produce sold in supermarkets.
None of this will be easy; but we could pluck from the wreckage a better system of support for farmers and for the countryside than exists at the moment. It would be hard to think of a worse one.
 You can comment on this article via our Your Opinions thread, which opens at 10am on Wednesday
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
The European Union did not cause the 2007-08 financial crisis. The European Union did not instruct George Osborne to introduce an austerity policy which magnified the deleterious effects of that crisis. The European Union did not impose neoliberal and excessively deregulatory policies which contributed to a situation where the “fruits of globalisation” were concentrated in the top 5% of the population.
However, in a propaganda feat which will go down in history, the Leave campaigners managed to persuade enough British voters that the EU was the source of many of our problems, and, just as bizarrely, that leaving the EU would be the answer.
It was against the background of this farcical development that the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury had to prepare the groundwork for last week’s autumn statement. Thanks to the combined impact of the financial crisis and the austerity programme, the OBR had already revised downwards its estimates of the country’s productivity and the growth of productive potential; this revision took place between last November’s autumn statement and the March budget.
Then came the referendum, and the net result of feverish work going on at the OBR since then is that the fallout from Brexit – indeed, from the very prospect of Brexit – is that the outlook for productivity growth has been revised downwards again, with all that this implies for living standards and the tax revenues that go to finance public spending.
One problem facing the OBR in making its assessment was that it had little idea what the government’s policy was for Brexit. This is not surprising, because the government itself has little idea either.
But Robert Chote and his colleagues at the OBR did not get where they are today without possessing a lot more sense and judgment that the Brexiters who have landed us in this mess. These are Brexiters who are so bereft of common sense that they argue departure from the EU will free this once-great nation to be able to trade with China, India, Australia and the rest of the world, as if we did not trade with them already.
Ah, they say, but freed from the constraints of the EU we shall be able to do even better. Tell that to Germany: an economy that, allegedly constrained by the EU, seems to fare a lot better in world markets than we do.
Now, one thing missing from the latest OBR report is the usual catchy soundbite we have come to expect: remember “economic rollercoaster”? I suspect the reason for the OBR’s more sober tone is that the facts, or lack of them, speak for themselves.
Thus the OBR states: “The OBR is required by legislation to produce its forecasts on the basis of current stated government policy (but not necessarily assuming that specific objectives will be met). In the current context of looming Brexit negotiations, this is far from straightforward.”
I’ll say! Notwithstanding the barrage of propaganda in the Brexit press that everything is fine and dandy with the post-referendum economy, the OBR knows something about economic time-lags. Furthermore, it does not commit the elementary error of assuming away the effects of something that has not yet happened – in other words, it does not confuse post-referendum with post-Brexit.
It says: “We have made a judgment – consistent with most external studies – that over the time horizon of our forecast [that is, the rest of this decade] any likely Brexit outcome would lead to lower trade flows, lower investment and lower net inward migration than we would otherwise have seen, and hence lower potential output.”
It points out that uncertainty will lead firms to delay investment, reducing economic growth, and the impact of that will be compounded as consumers are squeezed by higher import prices, thanks to the fall in the pound.
Now, as the chancellor pointed out in his speech to the Conservative party’s annual conference, the nation did not deliberately vote on 23 June to become poorer. But at the very least all the signs are that it will, via Brexit, become poorer than it otherwise would be. And thinktank after thinktank is telling us that it is the least well-off – many of whom apparently voted for Brexit as a protest – who are going to suffer most.
What is to be done? Well, Nicholas Boyle, emeritus professor of German at Cambridge University, has pointed out that only 28% of the population of this country voted to leave the EU. “Should 28% be entitled to compel 72% to do what they want?” he asks. That, he says, is the real constitutional issue.
“The 17 million [Leave voters] represented no one other than themselves. The members of the House of Commons represent all 64 million of us, whether voters or not.” He adds that if it is true that 70% of MPs do not wish to leave the European Union, then they “have every right to feel they more truly represent the views and interests of the country”.
Unfortunately, there is a timing problem. One suspects that when the true implications of Brexit become apparent in higher prices, squeezed incomes and an aggravation of austerity, large numbers of Leave voters will have second thoughts. The tragedy is that a lot of damage will have been done by then.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
Last week I was in Sleaford, Lincolnshire: a market town, population 17,000, with a very middle-English mixture of Barratt houses and boarded-up shops, and a political atmosphere defined by the increasingly fraught aftermath of the EU referendum.
Thanks to the resignation of its former Tory MP, Stephen Phillips, a leave supporter who admirably quit over the government’s high-handed attitude to parliament, there will be a byelection in the constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham on 8 December, which the Tories will easily win. However, since 62% of people in this part of the country voted to leave the EU, the visit offered an opportunity to find out where Brexit Britain is now at.
Vox-popping for the Guardian’s Anywhere But Westminster series on the main street, within minutes a deep generational divide was clear. Among the over-60s, immigration was a ubiquitous topic. “Brexit means Brexit” was a refrain. And, for reasons that seemed to have more to do with symbolism than practicalities, people wanted the UK out of the EU right now.
The young people I met, by contrast, were relaxed about immigration, and blithely uninterested in the matters of British – or rather English – identity and “control” that so exercised older people. Not entirely surprisingly, the under-30s here who had voted chose the remain option, and were now more worried than ever about the future: an anxiety which informed a few guilty expressions from the Leave voters higher up the age range. “My granddaughter says I’ve buggered up her future,” one woman told me.
Out in the country, this is the reality: loud voices wanting hard and fast Brexit but also plenty of people unsure about what exactly it will mean, and often convinced that leaving the EU will have dire consequences for lives that are already insecure and uncertain. In any decently functioning democracy, the latter group would surely see its views reflected in mainstream politics. The government might couch its approach to Brexit in terms of pragmatism; the opposition would give strong voice to people’s anxieties. But no. Given the pernicious idea that the vote to leave was “overwhelming”, Brexit means Brexit. And that, apparently, is that.
Which brings us to the Labour party, and its approach to the issue that now defines British politics. When it comes to our relationship with the EU, what does it want? Will it hold the government to account? And does it have anything to say to the millions of people – including all those younger voters – so worried about where we are headed?
Last week the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, made a speech at a “tech hub” in central London. He correctly portrayed whole swaths of the country as places defined by “dead town centres, job deserts, stagnant wages, and the constant feeling that the basic things we rely on – our jobs, our savings, our homes – are not safe”. But then he moved on to the question of how Britain should leave the EU, and all sense was lost.
“It is time we all were more positive about Brexit,” he said, claiming that leaving the EU opened up “enormous opportunities”. He also rejected trying to block or delay article 50 in parliament – even, it seemed, as a means of ensuring that our split from the EU avoids the kind of recklessness advocated by some Tories – because to do so would be “against the majority will of the British people and on the side of certain corporate elites”.
Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, was said to be “furious”. But, as often happens these days, it fell to the Green party’s Caroline Lucas to sound a note of loud alarm. “Labour’s premature capitulation on article 50 leaves those of us who oppose a hard Brexit in a weaker position,” she said. Quite so.
In keeping with the image of people who affect to be concerned about Brexit while being fundamentally comfortable with it, Labour’s supposed red lines on Brexit are comically weak. Seemingly thanks to the arcana of EU state aid rules, Labour, rather than insist that the UK should remain a member of the single market, is insisting on mere “access” to it, and the protection of employment rights currently enshrined in EU law. But “access” is pretty much meaningless, and the issue of employment rights has been answered by Theresa May herself.
Besides, these are not red lines at all: if the party dare not hold to them with the threat of blocking or delaying article 50, they amount to nothing. Meanwhile, as the gaping hole in Labour politics leaves room for the rumoured comeback of that ghoulish irrelevance Tony Blair, one gets the sense from the Labour leadership that Brexit – and hard Brexit at that – is exactly what they want. Strange that these people stand at the head of a movement said to be powered by the young.
Among Labour MPs, the mood is as restive and perplexed as ever. The letter this week in the Guardian, signed by 90 MPs and MEPs and warning against hard Brexit, was a thinly coded restatement that they would like their party to back the UK remaining in the single market. Many of them would also like to move towards something the indecipherable Corbyn/McDonnell position leaves untouched: some measure of control over free movement. The EU would presumably scoff at such audacity. In any event, it is hardly likely that Labour will be involved in any negotiations. But the basic point is simple: an insistence on single market membership is a coherent and clear position, by far the best option for the economy, and a vivid point of difference with the government.
But this is about a lot more than the Westminster game. It is also about a view of the future, the left’s chances of speaking to an anxious generation who will sooner or later sit at the heart of our politics, and the idea that in times as grim as these it might fall to the supposedly progressive side of politics to sketch how the worst effects of our split from Europe might be avoided. That, surely, is the least we should expect.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Labour’s dilemma about how to proceed in 2018’s Brexit endgame is genuine. It should be taken seriously and not dismissed. The underlying issue is easily stated. Two-thirds of Labour voters supported remaining in the EU in 2016. Nineteen of every 20 Labour MPs were themselves remainers. Yet two-thirds of Labour constituencies voted to leave.
These tensions are real. Yet Labour – both the party and the movement – is pro-European. Labour members, a survey found last week, are strongly pro-European and overwhelmingly favour a “soft” Brexit: 87% want to stay in the single market, 85% in the customs union, and 78% think there should be a second referendum on the Brexit deal.
But the practical politics cannot be just brushed aside as feebleness. Audacity has a vital place in politics, especially in reformist politics, but it is facile to pretend there are no risks attached. Georges Danton ringingly said in 1792 that French revolutionary policy must be “De l’audace; encore de l’audace; toujours de l’audace … ” They are unforgettable and inspirational words. But 18 months later Danton died on the guillotine with many of his supporters.
In facing up to Brexit, as in everything else, Labour is a coalition. Holding that coalition together is not easy, but it matters. Labour represents many of the most conclusively remain seats in the UK – Chuka Umunna’s Streatham tops that list. Simultaneously it represents many of the most conclusively leave seats – Ed Miliband’s Doncaster North is near the peak. It also holds some of the most equivocal seats, like Angela Eagle’s Wallasey. All three MPs are strong Labour remainers – but their electorates are completely at odds on the EU.
Many Labour MPs and most party leaders therefore remain circumspect about how to proceed. They are frequently denounced for this by passionate remainers. Remainer MPs in leave seats who were re-elected in 2017 with increased majorities, such as Miliband, have had some of their worries eased by their post-referendum election victories (even though there were also some defeats). But caution of a sort strikes me as honourable, even if it is frustrating.
That said, a policy of caution is now as inappropriate for Labour as a policy of recklessness. Phase one of the Brexit negotiations is over. The opening exchanges in phase two are now beginning. The early signs from David Davis and Theresa May are that the government will approach phase two with the same underlying priority as it approached phase one – keeping the fanatical leavers on the Conservative backbenches onside until the business end of the process.
Yet huge national interests are at stake in these processes, irrespective of one’s stance on the vote itself. The two most important of these are Britain’s trading relationship with the EU after Brexit, which should be defended and maximised in the interests of the UK economy and jobs, and its relationship with Ireland, where the need to guarantee the peace process is paramount.
Throughout 2017, Labour moved gradually towards embedding these two priorities at the centre of its policy. It did so behind the scenes, through internal negotiation and step by step. Last August the shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer went public, saying that Labour stood for remaining in the single market and customs union in the transition period following March 2019, and for putting both relationships on the table for the future. It wasn’t Danton, but it was a decisive shift.
The question facing Labour in 2018 is whether and how it can move beyond that. It needs to come clean about the sort of relationship it seeks with Europe. For some, including many in the media, this is a boring question when compared with the more exciting alternatives. Remainers in the House of Lords are poised to press for a second referendum clause to be added to the EU withdrawal bill, which is scheduled to complete its Commons stages next week. Nigel Farage, from the diametrically opposing position, says he is warming to some such replay vote, with the aim of killing off the remain cause for a generation.
There is a strong case for a second referendum on the terms. But Farage is not a party leader or even an MP. Now, as before, he is a weapon deployed by media and business interests against parliamentary democracy. To obsess about a second referendum is to put the cart before the horse. The decision on whether to have a second poll depends on the terms. Those have not yet been agreed. The central issue for the next eight or nine months is what they should be. The referendum’s time will come.
May can’t say what sort of British relationship with Europe she wants. She and her ministers are divided about the terms. And what she says is often at odds with what she has already agreed. If the phase-one agreement means what it says, then last month’s Brussels agreement tilted the talks towards a softer Brexit than May wishes to admit. The Irish border issue is pivotal. It is simply not possible for Britain to maintain a soft border in Ireland while pursuing the separate international trade deals and bespoke EU single market access that ministers pretend. At some stage, something has to give.
This week Jeremy Corbyn told Labour MPs that Britain could not remain in the single market. Labour pro-Europeans were furious. But Corbyn’s remark might not be as portentous as that suggests. The real issue is the future relationship with the single market, the customs union and other European regulatory agencies and enforcement systems. Corbyn has said nothing irrevocable about any of that.
Yet he will need to do so, and in the next few weeks. Labour members will expect it. So will the trade unions. So, come to that, does the Labour-supporting press. All want to see the closest possible ties with the EU if Brexit goes ahead. A 21st-century case for this needs to be made. No one, least of all a Labour leader who thinks of his party as a movement, can avoid this.
Corbyn should not hide behind the third of Labour voters who voted leave. His larger historic responsibility is to the members, unions and the two thirds of Labour voters who are pro-European. The hour calls for audacity, circumspection too of course, but audacity all the same.
Last modified on Tue 25 Feb 2020 17.14 GMT
Historians of the future will not judge us kindly. Historians of the future will vindicate us. (Historians of the future can feel their ears burning.) In the context of the debate around Brexit, and the past few years of turbulent political developments around the world, it feels like future historians have never been more present.
The appeal to the future historian is a common trope in times of crisis. The historian of the future is pictured as a horrified figure, peering back at the madness of contemporary life. So, people claim that the future historian will be baffled, or alarmed, or confused by what is going on right now. Historians of the future, who are rational adults, will not understand why we behave in the ridiculous ways that we do. This functions as a sort of gentle chiding, a call for us to be more sensible.
This always makes me feel slightly defensive on behalf of those historians, who are assumed to be so guileless. In reality, those future historians won’t be so confused. They will probably look at economic inequality, political disenfranchisement, a volatile media with low levels of trust, decades of complicated relations between Britain and the other European nations, decolonisation, deindustrialisation, xenophobia, racism, and the legitimate concerns of middle-class, home counties homeowners, and make an argument to explain why the referendum went the way it did. Historians have distance, and documents. They might see things that we can never understand in the moment, but they won’t be any more baffled than we are now.
It is also worth pointing out that historians are around right now, working right up to the very recent past. We have lots of ideas about why Brexit happened, and about the wider and longer context. When people reach for historical parallels today, historians can also tell you why these things often do not make sense – it is not historians, mostly, who are drawing analogies between Brexit and the Reformation. But the people who invoke historians of the future are less keen on listening to actually existing historians today.
We should also remember that historians of the future will have their own opinions about Brexit: why it happened, whether it was worth it, who it served and how. Invoking historians of the future often supposes that they will be neutral actors. But this is not how historians work. We come to the archive with our own ideas and perspectives. And the archive is often overflowing, and we cannot possibly read everything. We have to make choices about which narratives we emphasise. Those choices are shaped by our existing principles and the ways that we already understand the world: what schoolchildren are taught to call “bias”. Historians of the future will probably already have strong ideas about Brexit: their narratives and stories will not necessarily be less neutral or more trustworthy than ours.
It is worth asking, too: what do we actually want from the historians of the future? Do we really want them to weigh up the evidence, and to judge us based on the facts and only facts? I don’t think so. What we want is to be proved right. This is the other function of the “historian of the future”: to reassure us that our interpretation is correct, and that we truly understand what is going on. When people say that historians of the future will argue X, Y or Z, what they are doing is arguing X, Y or Z themselves, but clothing that argument in the moral and intellectual authority of some mythic future scholar.
This is not only misjudged because historians are fallible and partial; it also shows a naive confidence in the idea that historians of the future will all ever agree. We have not, as a profession, settled on a single agreed narrative of the causes or consequences of any event in history, from the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Britain. Nor should we: historians do not seek to write a single account of what happened, but to explore and offer up multiple overlapping, contested narratives of the past. Historians of the future will not explain Brexit once and for all; they won’t settle on a single story, any more than we can today.
Perhaps most of all, appeals to historians of the future are self-aggrandising in the context of the present. We like to believe that the choices we make are so important that they shift the tides of history – that the actions we take, like a butterfly’s wings, can change the future. We want to sit in the spotlight of historical attention. We want reassurance that our time is special and distinct, and that future historians will care about us: we will not be consigned to the condescension of posterity.
Undoubtedly, historians will write many books about Brexit, its causes and its consequences. But historians will write about lots of other things that happened, too, from our shopping habits, to our divorce rates, to the football teams that we support. Historians don’t only care about big events like Brexit: everyone is living through history, all the time.
First published on Sat 18 May 2019 22.30 BST
Brexit has divided the country – and the Conservative party – like nothing since Irish Home Rule or the Corn Laws.
This crisis of division risks not just public trust in democracy, but a decade of decline.
The only way we can prosper as an independent country is if we come together as One Nation – all four parts of the Union, North and South, Remain and Leave – and make crisis the catalyst for a moment of inspiring reunion and renewal.
All of us believe that the next prime minister must honour the EU referendum result. But they must do so in a way that unites the 52% and the 48%.
To do so would mean Brexit can be the bold moment of change it should be.
This is the time to tackle the underlying grievances that drove the Brexit vote and address the major issues, like the environment, that threaten our very future.
That’s why tomorrow when the One Nation caucus of Conservative MPs, to which we all now belong, launches our declaration of values we will call for the environment to be given equal standing with counter-terrorism.
Brexit can be a moment to reframe the UK’s role in the world as a force for good: using our soft power and through our aid, trade and security commitments to help lead the new fourth Industrial Revolution of sustainable, clean, green, smart development.
That is the One Nation Brexit that we support. And it is a vision that we will be challenging all candidates to endorse during the leadership contest.
To do that, however, we need to be clear about what One Nation conservatism is. That means setting out our values. The new generation of millennial voters are not tribal in their political affiliation. They will never support a party just because it is “the natural party of government”.
So what are our core One Nation values?
We believe in the importance of the United Kingdom, and reject narrow nationalism of all kinds. We believe in our global responsibilities to maintain our commitments on aid and trade and security.
We believe the state must have an active role in fighting injustices and that there is such a thing as society, embodied in a new social contract between all of us as citizens.
We believe that properly funded public services are the key to our wellbeing as a nation.
We believe in the duty of environmental stewardship as core to conservatism: we must continue to lead the global and domestic response to climate change and biodiversity.
We believe in free enterprise – and the power of good regulation to protect consumers and embody society’s values.
We believe in universal human rights as priority for a Conservative government, and will always be vocal about the role of a free press and open debate in protecting our democracy.
Not everyone in the Conservative party will agree with these values. That’s the point.
These are values worth fighting for. We should not just stand on these values but passionately champion them.
The greatest danger our party faces is being overtaken by a divisive and populist movement masquerading as “true”, “grassroots” conservatism. We have all seen the growing tide of extremism gripping the Republican party in America.
We would be naïve to think something similar couldn’t happen in this country. In many places, it already has.
Our nation is at a crossroads and so is our party.
The next prime minister must redefine Brexit as a One Nation project. If they do not, the door will be wide open for Britain’s first-ever Marxist government and a likely decade of decline.
The consequences of that will echo down the generations and serve as our party’s greatest failure. We still have a chance to avoid it.
Signatories: George Freeman MP, Nicky Morgan MP, Bim Afolami MP, Chloe Smith MP, Sir Nicholas Soames MP
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 07.50 GMT
There’s a lady I’ve been thinking about for the past few days, even though we’ve never met. She’s the central character in a true story told by the Europe expert Anand Menon. He was in Newcastle just before the referendum to debate the impact of Britain leaving the EU. Invoking the gods of economics, the King’s College London professor invited the audience to imagine the likely plunge in the UK’s GDP. Back yelled the woman: “That’s your bloody GDP. Not ours.”
Subtle and learned this was not. But in all the squawking over the past few days about what’s wrong in economics and with the economy, her brutally simple criticism is closer to the mark than are most of the pundit class.
Consider: the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, admitted last week that his discipline is in crisis. The crash of 2008-9 was a “Michael Fish moment” for him and his fellow economists, who hadn’t spotted the great hurricane even when black clouds were overhead. Cue much hilarity in the media. Oh, those cracked eggheads! There follows some light joshing about forecasts and less-than-super modelling, while economists go on the BBC to paw at one another like tentatively precoital pandas.
Never mind that the banking collapse was a man-made catastrophe, which will come to be seen as one of the hinge-points of the early 21st century; that it has produced a global slump and prompted a wave of drastic spending cuts and tax hikes everywhere from Aberdeen to Athens; that it has left hundreds of millions of Europeans and Americans permanently poorer; that its toxic waste still pumps into our politics, in which grotesques such as Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump now wield influence and even presidential power.
Never mind all that, because the British pundit class is expert at cutesifying a crisis, at shrinking any debacle to fit within the confines of an eight-minute studio discussion. So it is that Haldane’s chief recommendation to avoid another such disaster is for economists to get more data so they can produce better predictions. As if the crisis in economics and in our economy were really no more than an inability to spy inclement weather.
None of this stacks up, for exactly the reason identified by that geordie heckler. The economic crisis and the crisis in economics aren’t about technicalities. They are about whose economy, whose recovery and whose GDP the social scientists and journalists are discussing. Nearly a decade after the crash, and nearly four decades into the devastation of Britain’s industrial towns and cities, the UK has become so unequal that it can no longer be talked about as one unitary economy.
When I first read that woman’s comment, it reminded me of something I’ve picked up in my reporting during the past half-decade. Even while David Cameron and George Osborne were boasting on camera of a record-breaking recovery, on the road I noticed two things: hardly anyone I spoke to outside London and the south-east believed that there was any such recovery; and hardly anyone I interviewed within the M25 believed the recovery was based on much more than house prices and debt. Whatever else we might talk about, those two themes were constant.
Mention recovery in Newport and locals would laugh at you. Mention it in north London and most people would add a seasoning of scepticism, or a jibe about estate agents. But in neither place did people believe the recovery was real – or that it included them.
And Haldane knows this. A week after residents in the Welsh steel town of Port Talbot voted to leave the EU, he gave a speech there called Whose Recovery?. He began by mentioning a visit to community groups in Nottingham where, he noticed, the “language of recovery simply did not fit their facts”. He went on to show why, pulling out one of the most revealing graphs I have seen in any discussion of the post-crash economy.
Putting together official figures and the Bank of England’s own calculations, it looked at regional GDP per head from the capital up to Scotland. And it showed that only two regions of the total 12 were actually richer than they were before the credit crunch. Those two regions were London and the south-east. Nearly everywhere else was poorer than in 2007 – sometimes, as in Northern Ireland, a lot poorer.
In her riposte to the professor, therefore, the woman in Newcastle was absolutely right. On statistical aggregates the UK is enjoying a recovery. But in reality this has been a recovery for owner-occupiers in London and the south-east. It has locked out those without big assets, such as the young, and those renting in the capital. It has penalised the poor. And it has impoverished those who have been forced on to zero hours or bogus self-employment.
To go back to Haldane’s Michael Fish analogy, the problem with economists isn’t the failure to foresee the storm; it’s that by concentrating on aggregates, they insist it’s sunny outside, when it’s T-shirt weather for a few in central London and the rest of the country is getting soaked.
There was nothing accidental about this result. It was precision-engineered by Cameron and Osborne: make central and local government deliver the cuts, and leave the job of securing a turnaround to the Bank of England with its one-size-fits-all monetary policy. Governor Mark Carney can’t set one interest rate for Port Talbot and another for Pimlico. That task of progressive redistribution falls to the state, and under the Tories it wasn’t on the table.
The end result is that the recovery constantly boasted about by the Tories was so partial, so patchy and so dedicated to putting money in the pockets of the already wealthy that it makes a mockery of Theresa May’s speechifying this week about a “shared society”. As the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change argues, it also renders any discussion of unitary issues such as GDP or jobs almost meaningless.
Margaret Thatcher is famous for claiming that “there is no such thing as society”. Cameron’s legacy will be that there is no such thing as an economy – but a series of regional economies with vastly different prospects. A state-subsidised boom for inner London; a neglected pauperism for the Humber.
If there is to be a rebirth of economics and economic policymaking, my guess is it won’t come from within the discipline. It’s more likely to come from a son or daughter of that woman in Newcastle, looking to fix things after realising they’ve been shafted, while others have gained riches simply for being the kids of London homeowners.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
The people have spoken and the UK stands divided. The English and the Welsh voted to leave the EU. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. Big questions arise: will Scotland want to leave the UK and/or be able to stay in the EU? What happens to the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and, for that matter, the entire Irish settlement? How can people be stripped of rights? What about trade? What about migration?
At the time of the referendum on independence for Scotland from the UK in 2014, Scottish people faced a conundrum. If Scotland had left the UK, then Scotland would automatically have been ejected from the EU.
The Scottish nationalists said that their intention would be for Scotland to apply to become a member of the EU, but the indications from Brussels were that Scotland would have to join the queue for membership. Any Scottish application would have to be agreed by all EU states, including Spain, which is reluctant to see breakaway regions being treated kindly, given the threat of secession by Catalonia.
With article 50 looming large and the government keen to avoid lengthy parliamentary debate on the terms of departure, perhaps it’s worth considering another form of Brexit. Why don’t England and Wales leave the United Kingdom? They would be automatically ejected from the EU and Scotland and Northern Ireland would then be the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, which would remain in the EU.
Under this arrangement, the UK (by then, the UK of Scotland and Northern Ireland) would not trigger article 50 and would not leave the EU. This would mean that there would be no issue between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in terms of trade and the movement of people across the border. The voters there would get what they voted for. Scotland and Northern Ireland could adopt the euro, if they wished. The EU land border with England would be the border with Scotland.
Scotland would be free of rule by Westminster, without having to leave the UK. Edinburgh’s financial services sector would not have to worry about the loss of “passporting rights” and England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would all keep the Queen as head of state, who would continue to live between London, Windsor and Balmoral.
The home nations would then create a new constitutional arrangement, to cooperate closely and to acknowledge the historic kinship between nations. It could be called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As such, the UK would be preserved, but rewired for a post-Brexit world. Financial transfers would need to be agreed between the parts of the UK to preserve stability.
The exit from the EU of England and Wales would allow the Westminster government to negotiate without delay (and in advance) a favourable settlement with Europe without the need for all sides to be constrained by the limitations of article 50. This could include transitional arrangements covering trade, migration and financial contributions. Even the EU would win: there would still be 28 member states, as no member state would have left.
Certain matters would be reserved to the “new” UK on a cooperative basis, including security and the UN seat. English and Welsh citizens should be offered the opportunity to become dual nationals of the UK of Scotland and Northern Ireland, thus preserving their rights to live and work within the EU. The equivalent right could be extended to citizens of Scotland and Northern Ireland, to preserve their right to live in England and Wales. There is a precedent for this in the UK’s arrangements with the Republic of Ireland.
If these measures were taken, then the 48% who voted to stay in the EU would at least feel that their rights as EU citizens were not being stolen.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
The jaw-jaw is about to start. This week the prime minister will pull the trigger on article 50 and Labour must get off the fence and set out the plan we think best for Britain.
Tony Blair is right to say, as he did recently, that the British people have a right to change their minds. We should push for a second referendum on the final deal. But we need to offer a more substantial alternative than that, and we should begin with a triple shift on Europe policy.
Let’s be clear, the stakes are high. If Theresa May fails to strike a bargain with our neighbours, we’ll be trading in Europe on World Trade Organisation rules. The hard Brexiteers pretend this is a rosy outcome. This is false. WTO rules means killer bills for car firms and farmers. It might cost our economy £60bn: £900 for every woman, man and child in Britain.
But there will be no rewards for Labour if we sit whingeing on the sidelines, frozen with doubts about who to try to please. So it’s time to set a course that reflects what the British people actually want: free trade, strong borders and rights at work. How could we offer that? I think there is a way.
First, we should propose that Britain rejoins the European Free Trade Area. Made up of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, Efta is the free trade association we helped to found as an alternative to the EU. It’s a free market, not a political union, and belonging to it would mean the freedom to control our borders. We would be outside the European court of justice, but with a trade court that’s tried and tested. Efta frees us from any mandatory cooperation on fisheries, agriculture, home affairs, defence or foreign affairs – but affords us the flexibility to fix our own terms with the EU. Indeed, Efta offers us the most comprehensive single market access outside EEA membership. It keeps us aligned with the EU’s regulatory framework, plus deep customs cooperation.
Crucially, the free trade deals Efta has in place cover nearly £98bn of our exports. That is more than we export to the United States. Indeed, with Efta membership, the UK would need just five more deals – with the EU, the US, Japan, China and Australia, to cover 90% of exports. Most important of all, Efta membership is but a short step away from renewed membership of the single market, following the example of Norway.
Second, we should propose a points system for European immigration. This is the fastest and best way to bring order at the border, letting in the skills we need. We have a points system for outside Europe. It works well. We should roll it out for the EU citizens - but offer crucial privileges for EU workers, set out on in a “green card”. This would let EU citizens visit Britain with ease and apply for a job once here – but only if the job has first been offered to a British citizen. Students and scientists should be outside this system. We need more of them – not less. And quotas should be introduced for low-skill trades such as retail, agriculture and hospitality. This should be part of a package in which we step up and do far more to assist refugees. We must grant EU citizens already living here the full panoply of citizens’ rights.
Third, its time to use the Council of Europe to lock in decent social rights at work. In the years after the second world war, Churchill helped create a magnificent European Magna Carta to make sure there was never a return to the barbarities of the Nazi era. The Council of Europe, along with the European court of human rights, was set up to police the postwar system. Two Conservative manifestos have proposed we leave the council – along with its centrepiece, the European court of human rights.
Pressure from me and others has forced the government to confirm we’re staying in this club of good behaviour. Now we need to use the council to enforce agreements such as the European social charter, which guarantee world-class rights for British workers.
I don’t believe that Labour can block Brexit. Nor should it try, since the debilitation of Brexit will not help Labour. Let’s remember that in the English super-marginals the party held in 2005 and lost later, the vote to leave was nearly 60%. Voters will not applaud or reward a churlish backseat driver. There are no prizes for standing by, looking puzzled.
We should be the steely, steady sherpas – better navigators than the occupants of Downing Street who seem determined to take us over the cliff, in a last-gasp bid to appease the infamous “bastards” of their backbenches. A triple shift on Europe is the route we should now propose.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
Brexit is often portrayed as just another episode in the long-running and seemingly endless Tory soap opera about Europe – who’s up, who’s down, and who is stabbing whom in the back this week. But the reality is that the outcome of these negotiations will define the future trajectory of our country. From jobs to the value of the pound in your pocket, national security, immigration, food safety and supply, public services funding, employment rights and environmental standards, these talks will shape almost every area of daily life for generations to come.
So we are well within our rights to ask if the people conducting these vital negotiations are up to the job.
Anyone who has taken part in complex, high-stakes negotiations will tell you that to have any chance of a satisfactory outcome, you have to get four basic principles right.
First, you have to know what you’re working toward. If you are lacking a clear and realistic idea of your goal, then you may as well not bother.
Second, you and your team must present a united front. From your overall definition of outcomes to the finest detail of the final terms, there has to be absolute consistency, coherence and clarity.
Third, your team (and particularly your team leader) must possess a sense of authority, as the slightest wobble will be ruthlessly exploited by the other side.
Fourth, you need to invest time and effort in building trust, a constructive relationship, and a reserve of goodwill; it’s very rare that antagonism delivers positive outcomes.
With just 12 months to go until parliament is to be given a meaningful vote on the terms of the deal, it has become clear that – judged against these four principles – Theresa May’s government is fundamentally incapable of negotiating a deal that will protect jobs, livelihoods and our national interest.
Where there should be purpose and clarity there is muddle and fudge – positions change constantly because the goal has never been properly defined.
Where there should be a united front, there is chaos. The referendum took place 16 months ago, and yet the cabinet is still spending more time negotiating with itself than with the EU. The prime minister’s Florence speech was billed as a turning point in the negotiations – but her own foreign secretary, in an act of breathtaking treachery, published a 4,000-word article in a national newspaper that stole her thunder, undermined her credibility and laid bare the divisions in her cabinet.
Exhibit B is her chancellor, who tells the Treasury select committee that no money whatsoever is being set aside to help prepare for us crashing out of the EU without a deal – approximately an hour before she had to use prime minister’s questions to promise precisely the opposite.
Where there should be leadership, there is a vacuum. The negotiations are nominally being led by the prime minister, but her authority is shot to pieces. Utterly discredited by the result of the general election that she called and fought in a heightened state of hubris, she is undermined on a daily basis by the fact that Brexit has morphed into a proxy war for the leadership of the Conservative party.
And where there should be a platform for constructive dialogue, there is bitter animosity. Ever since Margaret Thatcher, the prevailing attitude of Tory politicians towards Europe has been characterised by a toxic combination of paranoia, insecurity and nostalgia for empire. The post-1979 Conservative approach to Europe – exemplified by acts of self-harm such as David Cameron’s 2009 decision to remove his party from the umbrella group of centre-right parties in the European parliament, Theresa May standing on the steps of Downing Street and making the Putinesque claim that malignant forces in Brussels were seeking to interfere in the British election, and Philip Hammond calling the EU “the enemy” – really has provided an object lesson in how to lose friends and alienate people.
Directionless. Divided. Weak. Disliked. Distrusted. The farcical nature of the position in which the government finds itself could almost be funny, were it not so serious. Millions of jobs depend on this government’s ability to secure a transition deal; thousands of businesses are in limbo; airlines are not sure their planes will be able to take off post-Brexit; EU citizens living here and British citizens living in the EU have no idea what their status or rights will be; the Northern Ireland peace process is in jeopardy; and customs officials and operators in Dover and other ports fear gridlock.
The fact is that the government is engaged in the most important, high-stakes negotiation in our postwar history, and it is simply not up to the task.
In the meantime, the Labour party has emerged as the only realistic hope the country has of getting the Brexit negotiations back on track.
Do we have a vision? Yes. We are committed to respecting the result of the referendum, and we are committed to securing a transition deal. We know that “no deal is better than a bad deal” is a dangerous and vacuous slogan. Dangerous, because the economic consequences of crashing out of the EU without a deal would be catastrophic; and vacuous because the prime minister let the cat out of the bag when she used her Florence speech to acknowledge that we need a transition deal.
Can we present a united front? Absolutely. The shadow cabinet, the parliamentary Labour party and the membership are overwhelmingly in favour of securing a transition deal, and are realistic about the fact that compromise and creativity will be required in the negotiations.
Do we have a leader and a team around him who have the authority and credibility that are preconditions for success? Yes, without a shadow of doubt. Jeremy Corbyn has won two leadership elections and has shifted the political centre of gravity, while Keir Starmer possesses the gravitas and forensic skills that make him the ideal chief negotiator. There can be no doubt that Michel Barnier sees David Davis as a lightweight, and that he is deeply irritated by all that swagger and bravado – just look at the body language at those press conferences. It is equally certain that this would not be his view if he were dealing with Starmer.
And what about the deeper reserves of goodwill and trust that are so important to any negotiation? Well, Labour’s relationship with the EU has not always been characterised by sweetness and light, but it has always been constructive and rational. We can and will be tough negotiators, without breeding ill-will. We are a fundamentally internationalist party, and we have none of the antagonistic, Europhobic baggage that the Conservative party carries.
The stark contrast between the incompetence of the Conservative party and the strength of our position, combined with the fact that the stakes for our country simply could not be higher, lead inevitably to the conclusion that Labour is duty-bound to table a motion of no confidence, which could read as follows:
That this House has no confidence in the ability of Her Majesty’s government to negotiate the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in such a way as to protect and promote the jobs, livelihoods and long-term interests of the British people.
The motion should be tabled, debated and voted upon as soon as possible. Time is running out. With every day that passes the government stumbles closer to the disastrous no-deal scenario.
Some may suggest that we should leave the Conservatives to it, so they will “own” the failure, something that would work to Labour’s future electoral advantage. But that is not the Labour way. We take responsibility, even in the face of daunting challenges, when our country needs us.
Similarly, some may say that triggering another election will cause further uncertainty. That may be true, but this divided, shambolic, directionless government is leading the country towards disaster. We must therefore ask ourselves whether that is really something Her Majesty’s loyal opposition can let happen, in all good conscience?
Others may suggest that a no-confidence motion will end up unifying the other side. Well, the answer to that is simply that the government is making such a hideous mess of this supremely important task, that parliament must be given the opportunity to decide whether it should be allowed to continue.
The government’s approach to the Brexit negotiations is heading for the rocks. It is Labour’s patriotic duty to demonstrate that we are ready, willing and able to take the helm, and steer our country into safer waters.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
It has been a tumultuous time. Last Friday a deal was struck that may well allow talks between the British government and the EU to progress to a second stage. But still there are widely diverging views about what should happen in the future.
Today I publish the terms of withdrawal from the EU (referendum) bill, which aims to provide a referendum on the negotiated EU exit package to give voters the final say on Brexit. I, and the majority of my constituents in Swansea West, voted remain in the 2016 referendum. My view immediately after the result was that Brexit was a horrific mistake, that what Brexit promised would not be delivered, and that remains my view today.
In the week following the referendum, I tabled a bill calling for a referendum to give people the final say on the exit package, with an option to continue our EU membership if voters believed their reasonable expectations for Brexit hadn’t been realised. But it’s only recently that this idea has gained traction. Last week a poll by Survation – which correctly predicted the 2017 election results – found that more than half of voters support a referendum on the EU exit package, and recently the Labour front bench also appeared not to rule out a referendum. Meanwhile, the author of article 50 has confirmed that it is not too late to reverse the process, if the government is willing. A referendum on the exit package could pull us out of the fire.
John Maynard Keynes said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” British voters are reasonable and pragmatic, and I believe they can be trusted to look at the facts and make a reasonable assessment.
It’s time to look again at the facts. This week the Brexit secretary, David Davis, admitted to parliament’s Brexit select committee that the government has not produced a single economic impact report on Brexit – despite demands from businesses across the country who are desperate to know their fate.
Voters I speak to on the doorstep are increasingly realising they have been conned. “This isn’t what I voted for,” many tell me. The promises of Brexiteers such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson have turned out to be nothing but barefaced lies. The £350m per week promised to the NHS, and the pledge of single market access are only the tip of the iceberg. We now know that the divorce package alone is likely to cost the UK government up to £50bn. This is before the other economic costs are taken into account, including rising inflation due to a weak pound, tariffs on trade, and job losses resulting from investment moving elsewhere. In the past month firms ranging from technology manufacturers to investment banks have signalled their intention to move out of the UK; the European Banking Authority is off to Paris, the European Medicines Agency to Amsterdam – and Brexit has not even happened yet.
On the political side, Theresa May’s party is in complete disarray, disagreeing on more or less every single issue related to Brexit. Both the PM’s party and my own cannot agree on what they want Brexit to look like – and many MPs (if not most) don’t want to leave at all.
The only way to resolve this, for the sake of all our futures – including those of Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May – is to put the decision back into the hands of the people. They should have the last word on whether the deal on the table resembles the promises they voted for, and whether the emerging costs and uncertainties make it better to maintain the status quo of staying in the EU.
This week’s debacle – and eventual concession – over a hard border in Ireland highlighted how fragile May’s position is: she is subject to the last-minute whims of the DUP, and unable to command a majority in parliament. Mercifully, we have scraped through to the second phase of negotiations on trade, but the worst is yet to come, and the clock is ticking: the package has to be agreed not only by London and Brussels, but also 27 EU member states. “The show is now in London,” said the European commission last week – Brussels has made its stance clear, but the government can’t seem to decide what it wants.
Undeniably, the facts have changed since June 2016: only a fool would say otherwise. My bill offers a blueprint for a way out of this mess: by giving people the final say, the government would allow the British people to choose between its negotiated arrangement and the option of reversing article 50 and remaining in the EU. This honours the will of the people. But it also honours the economic and political reality that is increasingly catching up with our leaders in Westminster.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
When we go back to our constituencies, it’s sometimes hard to explain to people what happens in Westminster because, in all honesty, it doesn’t always make sense.
Try telling someone how Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, could speak in favour of a motion on Thursday night only to vote against it a few minutes later. Or how MPs like us can vote to stop a no-deal Brexit last week only to be told at the end of it that such a prospect was more likely than ever. Or how a prime minister can suffer two of the biggest defeats in the history of parliament on the most important issue facing the country but then, with a completely straight face, say that she plans to bring it back a third (or maybe even fourth) time.
This is what Brexit has done to our politics. It’s not pretty, and we have only just begun to plumb the depth of the madness that awaits.
There will be some reading this wondering why, in that case, we were among the Labour MPs who have called for a people’s vote and yet chose to abstain on an amendment that was designed to enable it.
Nobody is more passionate about giving the people the final say on Brexit than us. But last Thursday’s votes were never going to be the right moment to test parliamentary support; and the amendment tabled by the Independent Group of MPs was, we’re sorry to say, more about scoring political points than anything else.
We are two Labour MPs, one from the north and one from the south, who have come together to try to help parliament and the country to find a way out of this mess. We have spent weeks talking to MPs, both Labour and Conservative, about whether a compromise solution can be found that can satisfy those who say they must honour the result of the last referendum, and those who are desperately worried about crashing out with no deal, as well as all of us who believe there is an overwhelming democratic case for putting this vexed issue back to the people.
Our plan would mean MPs voting for some form of Brexit deal conditional on it being confirmed by the people of the United Kingdom in a new referendum. On the ballot paper would be a straight choice: a real form of Brexit – rather than some fantasy idea that cannot be delivered – which could be debated, warts and all, against the proposition of staying in the EU.
We would not be asking MPs to vote for Brexit but to withhold support for any deal until the public has had their say in a confirmatory ballot. We would be taking the prospect of no deal off the table forever. And we would be giving pro-Brexit MPs who talk so much about the “will of the people” the chance to check back in with those same people.
It won’t pass any purity tests among supporters of a people’s vote or Brexit, but some form of compromise is necessary to break a deadlock in parliament that is not only humiliating for our democracy but deeply dangerous for all our futures.
Other forms of compromise being touted around the bars of Westminster just don’t cut it. The so-called “Norway option,” for instance, would mean following many of the rules and regulations of the EU that Brexiters so despise – including those requiring freedom of movement – but having virtually no say in how they are made. It might offset some of the deep economic damage that other forms of Brexit threaten to inflict on business, but those branding it as an establishment stitch-up of the voting public would be right.
The problem of getting a deal through parliament without a confirmatory vote by the people is that any form of Brexit necessarily falls short of the promises made for it in 2016. Now that we know it is impossible to deliver all or even many of the benefits of being in the EU with none of the costs, it would be strange to force Brexit on people without them having any say.
Nor would forcing through some form of Brexit provide the relief from the endless arguments that so many MPs and voters crave. Instead, any deal now would be filled with unanswered questions about our future trading relationship with Europe that would make the kind of panicked negotiations we have seen from the prime minister in recent days a fixture of our politics.
The good news is that amid all the carnage and incomprehension of last week, there are signs of hope in parliament. A number of Conservative ministers have shown they are ready to do the right thing by their country, even when it means defying Downing Street.
Our own frontbench leadership is reaching a settled view that any Brexit deal – including its own – would only be approved by parliament on condition it goes back to the people. Backbenchers who have been adamantly opposed to a people’s vote are talking to us about how our compromise would work.
If or when an extension to the Brexit deadline is secured, a crunch point is coming, possibly in just a matter of a few days’ time, when MPs will have to decide.
We all want to be able to look our constituents in the eye when we go home and tell them with pride that we have tried to sort this mess out, not make it worse.
Brexit is breaking our politics. Let’s find a new way forward now, before Brexit breaks Britain.
 Peter Kyle is the Labour MP for Hove and Phil Wilson is the Labour MP for Sedgefield

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
We will do everything possible to stop a disastrous no deal for which this Conservative government has no mandate. This is a smash-and-grab raid on our democracy, to force through no deal, which is opposed by a majority of the public.
Most people in Britain reject a Tory no-deal Brexit. Boris Johnson’s government wants to use no deal to create an offshore tax haven for the super-rich and sign a sweetheart deal with Donald Trump.
No deal would destroy jobs, push up food prices and hand our public services and protections over to US corporations. And most of the public want nothing to do with this Trump-deal car-crash Brexit they are being driven towards.
Johnson and fellow Conservatives who campaigned for Leave in 2016 promised people that they would get a deal. In 2017, Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, proclaimed: “There is no plan for no deal because we are going to get a deal.”
But clearly they haven’t got a deal. And now, running scared of being held to account for his reckless plans for a Trump-deal Brexit, Johnson has decided to shut down parliament to stop them doing so.
But you don’t have to go back to 2017 to find our new prime minister flip-flopping and U-turning to suit whatever position he has adopted at the time.
In late July he promised EU citizens he would legislate to protect their rights. Now we learn the home secretary will end freedom of movement on 1 November without any new immigration rules or protections in its place. Clearly, this is not a prime minister people can trust.
Last week the Advertising Standards Agency banned a Home Office ad about EU citizens registering to stay because it was misleading. And the government registration app won’t be ready until the end of the year (months after the home secretary plans to scrap their rights).
As the Spectator – the magazine Johnson once edited – warns: “There are worrying signs of sloppiness, even negligence, in the way the Home Office is handling all this.”
We already know the kind of consequences such decisions can have. The hurt caused to the Windrush generation by the government’s hostile environment policy is now in danger of being repeated on an even bigger scale, with around 3 million EU citizens living in the UK.
Every week I meet EU citizens who are stressed about their future in this country. Sadly, many are leaving – taking with them their skills and support from our NHS, social care and schools.
The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, let the cat out of the bag when he told his French counterpart that parliament is being suspended because “we’ve suddenly found ourselves with no majority”.
There is an obvious and practical solution when a government finds itself without a majority. It is not to undermine democracy. The solution is to let the people decide, and call a general election.
This week could be the last chance to stop Johnson’s Tory government taking us over a no-deal cliff edge that will threaten jobs and our NHS, mean a restoration of the border in Ireland – threatening peace – and cause shortages of food and medical supplies from day one.
Industry after industry is warning of the deeply damaging impact of a no-deal Brexit. During the summer I listened to the fears of farmers, car workers, NHS staff and many others across the country.
And as Trump’s close ally, the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, lets the Amazon rainforest burn, it could not be clearer that we need to build stronger relations with other international allies in the global fight against the climate emergency.
The threat of a no-deal crash is creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. But I am determined to ensure Labour brings people together by giving hope and confidence that a different future is possible, and real change can be delivered for every community, nation and region of our country.
There is a rapidly growing movement of people determined to stop no deal. Last week spontaneous protests sprung up around the country.
People are angry that those who claimed we would “take back control” are now keeping control for themselves – with the aim of handing it over to Donald Trump and US corporate giants in a race-to-the-bottom free market trade deal.
This weekend, Labour MPs have been joining more protests across the country. People are determined that they will not allow a phoney populist cabal in Downing Street, in hock to the vested interests of the richest, to deny them their democratic voice.
It is the people, not an unelected prime minister, who should determine our country’s future.
A general election is the democratic way forward. And in that election Labour will give the people the chance to take back control and have the final say in a public vote, with credible options for both sides, including the option to Remain.
In the maelstrom of the coming days and weeks, we need to remember that sovereignty doesn’t rest in Downing Street, or even in parliament, but with the people.
Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour party
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
In his essay on the 1951 Festival of Britain, Michael Frayn drew a contrast between the carnivores and the herbivores. Carnivores were the better off: those who looked after themselves even if it meant preying on the weak. The herbivores were the gentle ruminants of the middle classes, guilty about their advantages and with eyes full of sorrow for the less fortunate.
Although founded to give a political voice to the industrial working class, the Labour party has always had its herbivore wing, and when enough white-collar workers and intellectuals have lined up alongside the party’s blue-collar contingent it has proved a winning formula. Labour’s big election victories – 1945, 1966, 1997 – were all examples of successful coalition-building.
But the marriage, never entirely comfortable, has come under increasing strain in recent years and looks like breaking down irrevocably over Brexit. The partners have not really been talking to each other, have taken to sleeping in separate beds and are now heading straight for the divorce court.
Jeremy Corbyn has been doing his best in the marriage guidance counsellor role, but the limitations of his approach were illustrated in the European elections, where Labour performed poorly. The party’s share of the vote was less than half what it secured in the 2017 general election, with Labour-leaning remainers opting for the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or nationalist parties, while Labour-supporting leavers went with the Brexit party. His tactics will be further tested today in the Peterborough byelection, where Nigel Farage’s startup is expected to emerge victorious.
Corbyn has edged closer to backing a second referendum in certain circumstances, but it is clear that he still has reservations about going “full remain”. That’s not a particularly comfortable position, and it is strongly opposed by plenty of Labour members. However, it is still a defensible one.
Labour will never form a government if its remainer and leaver wings become permanently estranged. While it is certainly true that the majority of Labour voters back remain, a significant minority voted to leave the EU. It is not enough for Labour to pile up votes in the pro-remain big cities: it needs to win marginals in the north, the Midlands and south-east as well – constituencies that voted leave in June 2016 and for the Brexit party last month. Labour’s remainers believe departure from the EU will make those who voted to leave worse off. Labour’s leavers think the remainers are subverting democracy.
In these circumstances, Labour is right to try to move on from the referendum and focus on healing the country. There has been plenty of armchair psephology since the results of the European elections, designed to show that remainers won when all their votes were added together. All that can really be said is that a second referendum would be as close as the one in 2016 and confirm that Britain is deeply riven along age, class and geographic lines. London, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, is a separate country.
It’s worth noting that Corbyn’s Euroscepticism – for which he takes a lot of stick – was widespread on the left before the referendum. There was opposition to the pro-banker austerity imposed on Ireland and Greece; to the pro-employer and anti-trade union judgments handed down by the European court of justice, and nobody was especially impressed by years of sluggish growth and high unemployment. None of this seems to be relevant any more to Labour’s hardcore remainers. To the extent that they admit to any problems, it is with the euro rather than the EU, and since Britain is not part of the single currency it can have the best of all worlds.
Even putting to one side the fact that many of today’s remainers were gung-ho for the euro in 2003, this is still a curious argument. Because if you’ve got doubts about the euro you should have doubts about Europe’s entire direction of travel. The euro is Europe’s single biggest project. It was intended to be a symbol both of progress towards ever-deeper union and the means of achieving still further integration. This is not some add-on extra, it is what Europe is all about.
Yet the design flaws that were obvious from the outset have become ever more apparent, and there’s no immediate prospect of fixing them. French president Emmanuel Macron thinks more integration – a banking union and a European finance minister – is what’s needed to make the euro work. This would mean German taxpayers writing cheques for the rest of Europe, and there is not the slightest possibility of that happening.
The reality is that Europe has a currency that doesn’t work, an economy that doesn’t work and a political process that doesn’t work. Corbyn is often accused of being starry-eyed about the possibility of creating a socialist utopia in Britain and forever harking back to his formative years in the 1970s. But he is not nearly as starry-eyed as some of his critics, who seem to think either that an earthly paradise already exists on the other side of the Channel, or that with a few judicious tweaks there will soon be one.
On most issues, Corbyn is clear about what he supports: renationalisation, extra borrowing for public investment, higher taxes for companies and the better off. On Brexit it is different. Labour is now more a party of the gentle ruminants than a party of the industrial working class, and over Brexit the gentle ruminants are proving anything but gentle. They should, however, cut Corbyn some slack. From the Maastricht treaty onwards he has got the European Union a lot more right than they have.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Across Europe, rightwing nationalist populism is on the march. Britain is no exception. Polls are putting Nigel Farage’s Brexit party in the lead. If it does as well as expected in the European elections, it will be the second time Farage has pulled it off: in 2014, Ukip topped the poll with 27% of the vote. Farage’s relative success is partly the product of his intuitive understanding of how to deploy the populist playbook: whip up public disenchantment with the establishment, accuse the elites of thwarting the will of the people and offer misleadingly simple solutions to complex problems.
With voters so disillusioned with the two main parties, it’s a seductive formula. But his success is at least as much explained by the eagerness of mainstream politicians to yield to his brand of politics, rather than to challenge it. On Europe, Farage has only ever stoked anti-EU sentiment without ever offering constructive fixes. He has consistently got away with telling untruths: that the EU is on the cusp of creating a pan-European army; that EU membership costs the UK £55m a day; that three-quarters of British law is made in Brussels. He has repeatedly praised Norway as a model for the UK’s relationship with the EU in the past, but last week denied it.
Even worse is Farage’s recent history of deploying racist dogwhistles. During the 2014 European election campaign, he said he thought people had a “perfect right” to be concerned if Romanians moved in next door. He has said migrants with HIV/AIDS should be banned from entering the UK and has claimed 60% of people diagnosed with HIV every year were born abroad and that the NHS should be for “British people”. He also pledged in 2015 that Ukip would scrap much UK race discrimination law. During the referendum campaign, he unveiled the “Breaking Point” poster that depicted a queue of mostly non-white migrants, who actually turned out to be a group of refugees crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border. Last year, the Leave.EU campaign, co-founded by the Brexit party chairman, posted a tweet that featured an image of Sadiq Khan, inflated figures about the number of new mosques in London and dubbed the capital “Londonistan”.
Farage may now be trying to distance himself from all this. But it is part of the Brexit party’s identity: its leader, Catherine Blaiklock, was forced to resign in March after several shockingly Islamophobic social media posts came to light. And there are plenty of other Brexit party candidates with a range of unsavoury views in the mix: from Claire Fox’s refusal to disavow the Revolutionary Communist party’s support for IRA bombing campaigns that killed innocent children (she was a senior activist at the time), to Ann Widdecombe’s shameful invoking of the sacrifice of those who died fighting in the Second World War to set in context the costs of a no-deal Brexit.
Mainstream politicians have cravenly chosen to dance to his tune, in doing so facilitating a culture in which politicians can mislead and lie without consequence. Ed Miliband was lambasted by the left of his party for the mugs branded with the slogan “Controls on immigration” in the 2015 election. Yet Jeremy Corbyn has since made scrapping freedom of movement Labour policy.
But the left’s capitulation has been dwarfed by that of the right. Conservative immigration policy has become steadily more extreme since 2010. Despite wide public support for removing international students from a completely arbitrary immigration cap the government never had any hope of meeting, Theresa May has consistently refused to do so. The hostile environment, designed to make Britain a sufficiently cruel place that it drives out illegal immigrants, has ensnared people who have legally lived and paid taxes in Britain for decades, who have been denied NHS treatment and wrongfully deported. May has made it far harder for young people who have grown up in Britain to secure their permanent status: they face extortionate fees of thousand of pounds. The irony is May is an outrider: the public is far more pragmatic on immigration than the Conservative party; the proportion of the public whose hostility to immigration is driven by opposition to ethnicities and religions other than their own has fallen dramatically in the last few years.
On Europe, too, Farage has called the shots. David Cameron only promised a referendum on a vague question that required no firm proposition, and thus no honesty, from those advocating for Leave in order to quell support for Ukip. During the referendum campaign, senior Conservatives such as Boris Johnson borrowed liberally from the Farage playbook, misleading the public about how much leaving the EU would free up for the NHS and that Turkey was on the cusp of joining the EU. (Johnson has since falsely claimed he made no comments about Turkey during the campaign.) Both May and Corbyn have embraced the deceit of the Leave campaign, misleading voters that there is somehow a Brexit that involves no difficult trade-offs, rather than levelling with them that if it goes ahead, there will be painful consequences.
It’s not too late to challenge the untruths of the Farage brand of politics. But both parties are on the brink of the ultimate capitulation: delivering Brexit, in the naive hope it will make the Farage threat go away. But he stands poised with a betrayal narrative regardless of what happens next: whether politicians hold a confirmatory referendum; whether we get a soft Brexit that leaves Britain a rule taker; or whether there is a hard Brexit that acutely widens regional inequalities. By swallowing the Farage message that Brexit can help fix Britain, Corbyn and May are as much agents of his success as the man himself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.40 GMT
If the United Kingdom is to survive, it will have to change fundamentally, so that Scotland does not secede and our regions can once again feel part of it.
The shift in votes that gave the Conservatives an 80-seat majority does not signal a country at ease with itself or settling down to a post-Brexit stability. Nor does it herald a newfound unity or even an emerging national consensus.
Recent events are better understood as resulting from the power of competing nationalisms: Brexit nationalism, seeking national independence from Europe; Scottish nationalism; Welsh nationalism; and Irish and Ulster nationalisms. The risk is that “getting Brexit done” is leaving Britain undone and, by destabilising the careful balance between the Irish and British identities in Northern Ireland, threatening the very existence of the United Kingdom.
While each nationalism considers itself unique and incontrovertibly powerful, their rise owes far more to common problems shared in every part of the UK: anxieties about stagnating incomes, the rundown of manufacturing, insecure employment, poor-quality public services, boarded-up high streets, a lethal cocktail when combined with a strong sense of cultural loss and of a globalisation that seems akin to a train that has run out of control.
How often do we hear people saying “our country is not what it used to be” and that “it has changed beyond recognition”? With that comes a breakdown in trust (“they’re all out for themselves”) and demands to “take back control”, with both main parties seen as out of touch and easily accused of being patronising London elites who act as if the man in Whitehall still knows best.
In this respect, last month’s election result seems less like an enthusiastic endorsement of any party than a plea for radical change. The old postwar social contract, based on times when manufacturing, making a product in which you had pride, and mining which kept the nation’s lights on, gave people dignity and respect, is seen as at breaking point, with each of its four pillars approaching collapse.
First, for millions, work no longer pays. Second, no matter how hard many strive, opportunities for upward mobility seem limited. Parents no longer feel confident that the next generation will do as well as the last. Third, with boardroom excesses, a bankers’ bonus culture and shocking inequalities in income, top people’s pay can never again be justified as the result of merit and hard work. Finally, our 75-year-old safety net looks threadbare when in every town and city child poverty and homelessness are rising and food banks, clothing banks, bedding banks, baby banks and other charities are substituting for a welfare state in retreat. All of this is magnified by the growing income and wealth gap between London and the north that is far more extreme than in almost every European nation and the US’s richer and poorer states. There is an ever-widening divide in how people perceive their future: how, the further you are from the centre of power, the more you feel undervalued and unfairly treated. Only as NHS patients do people feel treated as equals, though there are increasing regional and social class disparities.
This widespread and rising dissatisfaction is the context for today’s populist nationalisms. The 19th- and 20th-century nationalism that underpinned anticolonial movements and the breakup of the imperial dynasties was driven by anger at cultural discrimination, political exclusion and the economic exploitation of one ethnic group by another.
But the nationalisms we are now witnessing have different origins; at a time when class, religious and even local loyalties have become less salient, nationalists are successfully leveraging economic insecurity, cultural fears and an anti-politics sentiment. Yet none of these grievances can ever be answered by simply changing our borders or raising new flags – or by the act of leaving the European Union.
Nationalism can exploit these injustices but it cannot end them. While the Conservatives are the current beneficiaries of the revolt of the regions, their promise of a northern renaissance will have to mean more than love-bombing the regions with a few infrastructure projects and an airline rescue.
Instead, we must deliver a radical alternative to nationalism. It must start with a plan to address economic insecurity. But it must also recognise that, in a multinational state that is asymmetric (83% of its voters lie in one nation) and where financial, political and administrative power is concentrated in just one city far to the south, the outlying nations and regions require new powers of initiative as decision-making centres – which, given our history as a unitary state, would be something akin to a British constitutional revolution.
I would call a constitutional convention, preceded by region-by-region citizens’ assemblies to listen closely to what communities are thinking and aspire to. But a start could be made with a forum of the nations and regions that will become essential if transferring decision-making powers out of Brussels is not to lead to even more centralisation in Whitehall, and could be a forerunner for a very different second chamber.
The Treasury should also devolve decisions about the allocation of regional resources to new councils of the north and Midlands, comprising mayors, councillors and MPs. With proper financial backing, whether in research, science, technology, new industries or culture, cities and towns in every region – not just London – could become leaders for the UK, capitals in their own right.
If the government won’t act, the regions and nations should mobilise their collective power. For now, it is easy for a PM to prioritise the claims of the centre over any one area. But if Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England’s regions come together as a pressure group for a “Britain beyond the south-east”, their demands could become irresistible and each would carve out a new role and status within the UK.
When George Orwell made the distinction between patriots who love their country and nationalists who see life as a constant struggle between an “us” and a “them” and invent enemies – and grievances – where none exist, he called for a “moral effort” to defeat nationalist ideologies.
In 2020, that means rediscovering the value of empathy and solidarity between nations and regions and the benefits that can flow from cooperation and sharing in pursuit of great causes: from jointly tackling climate change to offering the same floor of rights to universal health, social care and welfare services in every part of the UK.
Only then will we start to prove that the United Kingdom is united by more than its name.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
They booed George Osborne at the 2012 Paralympics, and what a joy it was to hear that great national raspberry ricochet round the stadium. Back then, the public couldn’t know how much damage this pernicious chancellor would inflict or how long his blight would stretch ahead.
And yet, and yet, just possibly, almost inconceivably, he may rally round him the only effective resistance to the coming catastrophe of Theresa May’s article 50 plans. Day by day, Brexit is turning the world upside down in ways unimaginable a year ago. A war – and Brexit is a civil war – creates the strangest bedfellows. Think Churchill embracing Stalin, Movietone News hymning praises to Uncle Joe, our mass-murdering ally – just for the duration. Normal hostilities resumed afterwards.
So it may be with Osborne. Nothing will be forgotten or forgiven but, just for the duration, hold back the vitriol if he can indeed stiffen the backbone of the majority of remain Tory MPs to take back control from the Brexit extremists and their bully press. Facing down those wreckers needs this schemer, yet more Machiavellian than they are.
That’s what he seems to have been hired to do as editor of the London Evening Standard – his new owner, Evgeny Lebedev, proclaims: “He will provide more effective opposition to the government than the current Labour party,” (an abysmally low threshold). Osborne says: “I am going to continue to play a big role in public life,” as he smirks threateningly across at Theresa May. Is this pure revenge and opportunism? But if he means to use the Standard as an antidote to killer Brexit, then urge him on: go for it, George!
Lest we forget, nothing will be forgiven. Let me count the ways he has infected British politics with mean-minded malice, kicking the weak, and leaving in his wake a trail of 500 food banks feeding over a million people made destitute by his policies. As he trousers squalidly greedy rewards for failure, his plan to dwindle the state away continues apace, shredding public services, crippling local authorities, stripping the public realm bare. Wherever you look, things are falling apart. The £3bn skinned from schools, the overflowing NHS, the fewest houses built in living memory, social care collapsing, children’s centres closed, prisons at riot point – wherever you look, his pigeons are staggering home to roost. His genius was in persuading enough voters that all this was essential due to Labour profligacy, a calumny branded into Labour’s hide.
Benefits took the brunt. How cleverly he corroded public faith in all benefit recipients, from newborn babies to the terminally ill in wheelchairs, treating them all as frauds and scroungers. His last budget took £12bn from the pockets of the bottom half, with some cuts sheer populism, such as the two-child limit, the benefit cap mendaciously suggesting £26,000 was the standard benefit level, or the welfare cap that limits the total sum paid out to a family, regardless of how many are in need.
He mainlined poison into the veins of the body politic, removing the last traces of trust in the 1945 welfare state. Only triple-locked pensioners were bribed to flock to vote Tory in gratitude. Behind him he left death traps for his successor – the extravagant raising of personal tax allowances benefiting mainly the upper half, and his deadly manifesto pledge of no tax rises, ever.
Remember his oft-repeated smear about the hard worker leaving home in the dark only to see his benefit-dependent neighbours’ blinds down? Remember his shocking use of deaths of the six Philpott children – who died in a house fire started by their parents – to query taxpayers “subsidising lifestyles like that”.
Economically illiterate, his tourniquet on spending held down growth and ensured the slowest ever “recovery” from any recession, with incomes still not restored. Revenues falling below forecasts caused yet more spending cuts, like a doctor using leeches to bleed a patient dry. His “balanced budget” slid from his promised five years to nowhere in sight. At least he has proved Keynes right, again: never cut into a depression. But hey, incompetence is no bar to £650,000 worth of advice to BlackRock – a job he should drop at once if he hopes to regain a shred of political credibility.
If Osborne now steps forward as national protector against a savage Brexit, he should apologise for all he did to cause that Brexit vote: tumbling living standards and public squalor fostered that sense of abandonment by the “metropolitan elite”. In speech after speech, he sprinkled populist anti-EU abuse: warning of “the constant drip, drip, drip of powers to Europe” earned him Tory party conference applause.
When Tony Blair on the Andrew Marr Show welcomed Osborne taking over the Standard, saying “He’s a highly capable guy and it should make politics more interesting,” he was right to acknowledge the man’s evil genius. He’s a political paladin and a master tactician anyone would want on their side. Too late now to regret all the previous political leaders of all parties who never tried to win hearts and minds or public understanding of the EU. But we are where we are – in a very bad place. Whatever and whoever it takes, pulling the country back from a Brexit disaster is the great national struggle.
A lot of hypocritical cant has been talked about Osborne’s double role as politician and editor. Britain’s press has been forever corrupted by mainly Tory owners using newspapers to promote their party interests. Only the Guardian and the FT are free to plough their own furrows, their views their own and not their proprietors’. Otherwise, the sanctimonious stuff about “independent” journalism should be read with a salt-laden cup of Galaxy Ultimate Marshmallow Hot Chocolate. Journalists posture as a priesthood of truth and beauty, but hear them resist the promised part two of the Leveson inquiry into the press, or the most basic independent regulation that would apply to any other trade (no, we are not a profession). Osborne can try his hand along with the rest of us unqualified, unregulated practitioners if some owner seeking social cachet wants to hire him.
If Osborne can turn the Evening Standard into a truth-telling instrument to strengthen the weak battalion of pro-Europeans, then we should cheer on whatever blows he can land against Brexiteer misinformation. But only for the duration, after which normal politics resumes, with a vengeance.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
So the lady’s not for turning. Well, we knew that, didn’t we? Brexit means Brexit, no “partial membership”, no “half-in, half-out”. This was the section of Theresa May’s speech most heavily briefed in advance – but still gloriously welcome to the hard Brexiteers when she finally uttered the words like an ideological incantation.
Though delivered as an encomium to the comity of nations, this address also had a Thatcheresque sting in its tail. The prime minister would not, she said, accept, a “punitive deal” with the EU. Indeed, the pursuit of such a strategy would be an act of “calamitous self-harm” by the remaining 27 member states.
In such circumstances, they would lose access to crucial supply chains, to the City, and to the goodwill of Britain – which might, in retaliation, recast itself as an offshore tax haven. This was the prime minister as Don Corleone, warning the assembled diplomats of the continent that they were about to be made an offer they couldn’t refuse.
May made her statement with poise, a sign of her under-acknowledged growth in the role of prime minister. But her precision-tooled rhetoric could not disguise the difficulty of what lies ahead. She wants both to leave – fully, unambiguously – and then to negotiate selective agreements with specific EU institutions: the “greatest possible access” to the single market, a new relationship with the customs union, cooperation over law and order, defence, intelligence. She ruled out paying “huge sums” to Brussels for the privilege – but not, please note, an “appropriate” contribution.
As I wrote yesterday, Brexit is the easy bit. The prime minister must also steer the deal through parliament, which, quite rightly, will be given a vote on its content. In her negotiation with Brussels, she must prevent the “phased process of implementation” getting lost in “political purgatory”.
That work alone will dominate her premiership. Today, she maintained the poker face that is her trademark. The other 27 players must now decide how to play their hands.
Call it clean, call it hard, but May’s red, white and blue Brexit threatens epic self-harm – out of the single market, out of the customs union, no half-in, half-out. Immigration she has put above all else, regardless of livelihoods and despite polls showing that Brexit voters would not want border control to cost them dearly.
Enoch Powell from the grave has finally won – Brexiteer leaders are his direct inheritors. Where other Conservative leaders always saw off their little-Englander, closed-border right flank, she is the first to cave in.
How she has sugared that hard truth in fantasy visions of her “stronger, fairer, more global Britain”, as if this “great global trading nation” with its gigantic trade deficit still ruled the imperial waves. Cake-and-eat-it delusions infused all she said: Irish border? We’ll sort it, God knows how. Get all the trade we want for every key sector – no problem, and no contributions either. They need us more than we need them, she boasts. If they try punishment, here’s her fist – a cut-throat tax haven race to the bottom, “our freedom to set a competitive tax rate”. How disgraceful too to use our intelligence capability as a deeply damaging added threat.
More from the realms of fantasy: time and again she claimed the country was united or coming together, at least, when it has never been more sorely split, emotionally, politically, regionally, generationally. Nor was there any comfort for EU nationals here and thus none for UK nationals over there. Had she meant her words of keeping the partnership with old EU allies, that one small gesture of true friendship would have opened her negotiations in a genuine spirit of amity. Instead, this looks like war.
I wonder if the symbolism was deliberate. For it was at Lancaster House that Margaret Thatcher delivered her “Europe open for business” speech in April 1988, extolling the virtues of the single market. Thatcher was one of the principal architects of this idea and her vision of Europe was that of a free trade zone where business could go on uninterrupted by the barriers of the nation state. Here, the free activity of business would not be interfered with by governments, whatever their elected mandate.
Today, May appeared at Lancaster House to rightly insist on our tradition of parliamentary sovereignty – which is why parliament will get the final say on the Brexit deal – but also to undo Thatcher’s disastrous single market model. The EU has become little more than a club for big business, which is why it’s over at the CBI and at Davos that they will be mourning Britain’s lack of membership the most.
Yes, she made lots of warm and compensatory noises about free trade. But from now on we get to decide our trade rules in the House of Commons. Which is why, despite the obvious comparisons between them, May has become the first prime minister to escape from Thatcher’s dark shadow.
The task for the left is not to resist any of this, still less to hope it will fail so that they can bask in an “I told you so” glow, but rather to redouble its efforts to repatriate the best bits of European law, such as workers’ rights and environmental protection, through the power of our own sovereign House of Commons. In other words, not to keep moping on about the downsides of leaving the EU, but to help shape our new relationship and win an election. Because the whole point of Brexit was to insist on our own right to determine our own future.
Twenty-nine years ago, the Berlin Wall was still intact, acid house was in full effect and Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister. In April 1988, she made a speech at Lancaster House that set out the glories of the European single market, seemingly the embodiment of her free-enterprise credo: “a single market without barriers – visible or invisible”, which would give UK businesses “direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of over 300 million of the world’s wealthiest and most prosperous people”.
Well, goodbye to all that: it is one of the most remarkable turnarounds of recent history that we’re now on our way out, set only on “the greatest possible access”. The most vocal spokespeople for the 48% are understandably howling their pain. But in political terms at least, that move and the speech that announced it seemed straightforward and successful.
May is no longer open to the charge that her government has no plan. By way of playing to the populist politics of the moment, immigration is front and centre. Even if MPs will be faced with a choice between a deal and no deal at all and thus vote in large numbers for what the government has negotiated, parliament will get the final say on Brexit’s terms. That faint sound you can hear is Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, struggling to find a response that will have any traction at all.
And yet, and yet. Within May’s speech was an attempt to tie together a huge array of political and economic items that may spectacularly fail. The idea that what 23 June represented was a vote for a Britain “even more global and internationalist, in action and spirit” is clearly laughable. It is no good banging on about a country open to overseas talent – and the glories of scientific and academic co-operation – when you are already moving towards cutting the numbers of EU students by over 30,000. Bromides about Scotland and Wales do not smooth over the fact that single market membership represents a huge red line for Nicola Sturgeon, and that the Union is once again creaking.
One other thing. This was effectively May’s last big moment of political control before article 50 is triggered, negotiations begin, and all that stuff about the best deal in the best of all possible worlds collides with what the EU wants. When that story takes flight, today – and its temporary political dividends – will feel like something from another age.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
There’s a terrific scene in The Favourite, the film about the last of the Stuart monarchs, when Queen Anne is about to propose a European policy to her parliament. Just before she opens her mouth, the bewigged MPs make plain that they won’t have it. The queen faints with shock and hits the floor with a thump.
I don’t expect Queen Theresa to collapse when she loses in parliament this week, not least because the rejection of her Brexit deal is not going to be a surprise to anyone, herself included. If we still lived by the traditional rules of British politics, defeat ought to be the final curtain for Mrs May. Brexit is the defining task of her premiership and she is about to fail it. We’d ordinarily expect the abdication of the PM to follow such a humiliating rejection. Yet no one, neither friend nor foe, expects her to respond to defeat by submitting her resignation. Brexit has so scrambled our politics that it has normalised dramas that we would once have regarded as extraordinary and made the unthinkable routine. We no longer know which of the rules still apply.
Some illumination of how Britain and its parliament got trapped in this howling nightmare is to be found in The Favourite. I hugely recommend this film and not just for the dazzling performances by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone. The drama is footloose with the facts, but it is a prompt to pay more attention to a critical period of our history that is little taught in schools and little known to most Britons. The tensely convoluted relationship between parliament, ministers, monarch and favourites, played out during a war in Europe, echoes into our own era from the age of Anne. Her grandfather, Charles I, had been deprived of his crown and his head after he embarked on a losing struggle with parliament.
When her father, James II, exhibited designs to create an absolutist Catholic monarchy, parliament rebelled again. He lost his crown, but escaped with his head, in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. By Anne’s time, quite a lot of clout was still wielded by the monarch – or by those, such as John and Sarah Churchill, who could get close enough to the monarch to harness the powers of the crown to their own ambitions. The queen could still dismiss her ministers, but power was leaching away. Anne was the last British sovereign to veto a parliamentary bill.
Britain had begun its gradual transformation, centuries in the making, into a liberal democracy with an ornamental constitutional monarchy. One consequence of getting there by evolution rather than revolution is that Britain has never had a properly codified constitution. Other nations have sat down, thought about it and inscribed the rules in famous documents with resonant phrases. We have made things up as we have gone along, with the result that many of the laws governing our politics are ambiguous and contested. We never had the equivalent of the founding fathers of the United States. Unlike postwar Japan and Germany, Britain never suffered a devastating military defeat and then had a constitution imposed on us by the winners.
You can argue that an ad-hoc constitution has not served Britain entirely badly. We have bolted on innovations in recent decades, such as the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and the supreme court, with a relative lack of turbulence. Gaps in the constitution in protecting rights have been filled by membership of the European Union. The previous disinclination of Britons to go to war with themselves over constitutional issues has also meant a high tolerance for absurdities, such as a bloated, unelected second chamber that still calls itself the House of Lords and still contains hereditary peers.
The constitution is stuck together from parliamentary conventions, precedents, international agreements, unwritten understandings, judicial rulings and legislative sticky notes. This seemed serviceable enough – until this spatchcocked structure collided with something as colossal as Brexit. We are partly paying the price for making such a massive decision by simple plebiscite, without having properly settled rules about referendums and how they can be reconciled with representative democracy. It is very hard work to amend the constitution of the United States and a change can only be made if there is a wide and deep consensus. Britain is heading out of the EU, the most consequential act in decades, on the basis of one ballot held nearly three years ago in which just one vote could have decided the outcome. The closeness of the result and the lack of agreement about what it meant spelled trouble from the start. It also led to the inevitable convulsions that were going to follow when a parliament largely against Brexit was tasked with implementing a result most MPs thought a mistake, a challenge without precedent. This conundrum might have been eased had Mrs May responded to her task with a non-partisan, cross-party approach, but she made things harder when she started out by seeking to please one faction of her party alone.
The conventions and culture of parliament have deepened the nightmare. The British way of doing politics is founded in the idea that power is a binary contest between two big and tribal parties. It is expressed in the very architecture of the chamber of the House of Commons that sits the two sides confronting each other two swords’ length apart. It is incarnated in parliamentary rules that vest a large amount of power in the two tribal leaders – the prime minister and the leader of the official opposition. To compound the problem, it is a hung parliament in which the prime minister is a former Remainer trying to find a form of Brexit that can satisfy a majority and the opposition leader is a Brexiter leading a Remainer party who has little interest in trying to resolve the deadlock and lots of incentives to want it to end disastrously. The two of them have great sway over how parliamentary time is allocated and which motions MPs get to debate. This gives them the power to run down the clock – and both have been exploiting this for different reasons. Mrs May has taken Britain perilously close to the precipice of a crash-out Brexit on the gamble that, when MPs are staring into the abyss, they will finally succumb to her deal. This can be fairly called Blackmail Brexit. Even if she does ultimately prevail this way, forcing MPs to approve a plan they hate under the muzzle of the gun will guarantee further trouble and strife.
Parliamentary convention has it that only the leader of the official opposition can table a motion of no confidence in the government. This has given Mr Corbyn an extremely convenient hiding place from his own contradictions. He keeps calling for an election, but repeatedly refuses to trigger the one mechanism that could make that happen because this delays the day when he has to declare whether he is or is not in favour of another referendum. If he fails to table a confidence motion this week, it will become too late to hold an election before Britain is due to leave the EU.
In recent days, we have seen senior MPs from different parties working together to try to navigate an escape from the impasse. There is an embryonic cross-party coalition for seeking a solution, but it is desperately late and the obstacles to coalition-building, both cultural and mechanical, are huge. They have had to resort to parliamentary devices that will seem bewildering and arcane even to the most intelligent and engaged of voters. There was a great fuss when the Speaker allowed an amendment, which subsequently passed, instructing Mrs May to quickly report back to parliament when her deal is voted down. We are witnessing these parliamentary explosions about procedural issues and sequencing questions because MPs lack the tools to properly take control of Brexit decision-making.
People I respect think that when the dust has finally settled, Britain will need to rethink its casual attitude to the rules of its democracy and embrace a properly codified and protected constitution. Professor Vernon Bogdanor will make that case in a book, Beyond Brexit, to be published in February.
Britons might have avoided this nightmare – or at least been better prepared to cope with it – had we understood more of our history. Queen Anne, who lost all 17 of her children, died without a direct heir. Rather than risk giving the throne to another troublesome Stuart, pragmatic British parliamentarians recruited a replacement monarch from Germany who did not speak a word of English. His great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter now wears the crown.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
At 6pm last Wednesday, the Tory MP for Eddisbury, Cheshire, Antoinette Sandbach, rose to her feet in the Commons and called on her Labour counterpart Chuka Umunna, who was progressing serenely through a speech, to offer her some badly needed support. “Does the honourable gentleman agree that it is deeply insulting for those who have time and again voted against their prime minister and their government to suggest in this crucial bill, which will help to set the future course of this country, that it would be wrong for us to do the proper scrutiny and to apply for votes in this house?”
It was a remarkable moment. Here was a Tory MP asking a senior Labour member to condemn some of her fellow Tories for behaving shamefully and hypocritically. Umunna duly obliged.
The Commons had been debating Brexit for five hours. Tempers were fraying. At times there was more unity breaking out between members of different parties than there was within them. Minutes earlier the Conservative veteran Bernard Jenkin, a hard Brexiter and formerly a serial rebel against the Maastricht treaty (which he had argued in the early 1990s represented a grave threat to the sovereignty of parliament), had accused some MPs on his own side of “trying to delay” the UK’s exit from the EU by arguing for a vote on the eventual Brexit deal.
The likes of Sandbach – one of those branded “mutineers” over the previous weeks by the pro-Brexit Tory press – were not prepared to sit back and take it any longer. If Jenkin and others had made it their life’s work to defend parliamentary sovereignty from the clutches of Brussels, how could they be arguing now that the same parliament should be denied a right to scrutinise and vote on the most important issue to have come before it in decades?
Despite the best efforts of the Tory whips to force their rebel MPs into line, discipline in the party had disintegrated. Principle was beginning to trump party loyalty and the threats of the increasingly ineffective whips counted for nothing.
“The whips tried to tell us we’d be responsible for landing the country with a Marxist government under Jeremy Corbyn à la Daily Mail. What bollocks,” said one rebel. “No one really thinks that defeats over Brexit will bring down the government. The DUP will have to desert before that happens and they won’t because there is only one thing the DUP wants less than a hard border in Ireland – and that is Corbyn.”
Less than an hour and a half after Sandbach rose to her feet, she and 10 other Conservative opponents of a hard Brexit held their nerve and rebelled. The 11 voted with the opposition parties in support of an amendment tabled by the former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve that will ensure (unless ministers succeed in removing it later in the parliamentary process) that MPs have a vote to approve the eventual deal. The pro-Brexiters fear it will, in effect, give MPs a veto.
The dramatic events saw Theresa May’s first defeat over the Brexit bill in the Commons and, seemingly, represented a terrible humiliation for her. But, maybe more important, they also marked a shocking, sobering reverse for the hardline, hard-Brexit Tory right.
Has the tide turned against them? All the hardline Brexiters could do in the following hours was to launch fresh assaults on the 11 rebels, accusing them (wrongly) of celebrating wildly and toasting their success with champagne in the Pugin Room at Westminster. The reality was that they had gathered, exhausted, over a glass of wine for a very sombre post-match analysis of where events of the last few hours had left them, the country, and the tangled mess that is Brexit.
Next morning, as the recriminations gave way to more sensible reflection, many agreed a vital corner had been turned. One senior Tory MP said that it had not been so much a humiliation for May as her liberation. “What the vote showed was that there is nothing to be gained for her from continuing to appease the hardline Brexiters. She has done that for too long. She was imprisoned by them. Now it must be clear to her that if she continues along that road, she will be defeated again and again. The hard Brexiters are not important any more. They are outnumbered. The collective view of parliament is what is important, not one extreme faction within. The only way to make progress towards a sensible Brexit is to go with the majority.”
Umunna, who had been instrumental in marshalling cross-party support behind the Grieve amendment, said that attempts to intimidate Tory MPs, not least by the Tory press, had backfired and had merely emboldened the rebels. “The use of inflammatory and threatening language by elements of the rightwing press against these parliamentarians – who have committed the crime of disagreeing with others’ views on the national interest – is grossly irresponsible, dangerous and has a whiff of the 1930s about it.”
Other Labour MPs heaped praise on the Tory rebels, particularly Grieve, hailing them as national heroes. One said: “What he did was bold and brave in the face of a torrent of abuse and his motives continually being questioned, ironically by Tory MPs who have a history of extreme disloyalty towards Tory leaders. Had he not held his nerve, the whole rebellion would have disintegrated. He has done a huge service to the country and his constituents.”
This weekend, as the rebels reel from Twitter death threats and insults from those angered by their actions in the country, they are vowing in private to carry on and impose more defeats on the government if needs be. Already it seems they have forced May to compromise over her plan to insert a fixed date for Brexit into the withdrawal bill, to avoid another Commons defeat this week.
While the date will remain in place, it is understood that allowance will be made for it to be shifted back if more time is needed to complete negotiations. Pro-Brexit MPs on Tory and Labour benches are worried that they are losing the influence, and key arguments. Labour’s Frank Field said he was very uneasy about the so-called compromise, as Tories of like mind would be. “Any wriggle room like this will just be exploited by the Remainers,” he said.
For the moment, the argument is slipping away from the hardliners in favour of moderate Brexiters. Nothing demonstrated this more vividly than May’s trip to Brussels on Friday when she signed off an agreement with the 27 other member states that will allow trade talks to begin – but in return for her agreeing, in effect, that the UK will sign up to what will be another two years of EU membership beyond March 2019.
If there is to be a two-year transition deal, which May insists there must be, it will be on the EU’s terms, with European Court of Justice oversight and freedom of movement continuing to apply to the UK.
This weekend, with the tide turning against their vision of a fast and clean Brexit, the Tory hardline Brexiters are desperately trying to regroup – both in the cabinet and on the backbenches. In recent years they have got used to having things their way, to forcing Tory prime ministers to bow to their will. They pushed David Cameron into committing to a Brexit referendum in the first place, then persuaded the country to back leaving the EU. Under May they thought they had secured her commitment to a hard Brexit. But now, most moderate MPs believe, they may be losing sway just as the real arguments approach over the precise shape that Brexit will take.
So if the numbers are not there in the Commons, and as the largely pro-Remain House of Lords prepares to scrutinise the withdrawal bill, where do the hard Brexiters go now to claw back the initiative?
Some at the extreme end of the spectrum seem intent on whipping the country up into a frenzy of anger against the “traitors” – hoping to foster a hard Brexit revolution in the nation at large. One hardline Brexiter told the Observer that the rebels had got themselves into such trouble in their constituencies that they were at serious risk of de-selection. The only way forward was to show them compassion. “We have to feel sorry for them,” he said. “We gave them this compromise over the date of Brexit because they were in a terrible position and they needed our help. It was a way to help get them off the hook.”
The reality is that it is the hard Brexiters who should be most worried. Senior figures among them, including their leaders in the cabinet, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, seemed determined to give the impression of calm, as they prepare for a series of cabinet meetings, which begin this week, on the “end destination” of Brexit. In the meantime, they are biding their time. The key phrase being deployed among senior Brexiters is: “Eyes on the prize.” Just ensure Brexit happens. Everything else can be dealt with later.
Ironically, given the difficulties that Ireland has created for the process, one Brexit tactician explained that they were taking lessons from Irish independence. Once the Irish free state was declared in 1922, they say, there was a momentum that inevitably led to a full republic being declared by 1949, ending any British involvement.
“There is a ratchet effect to having your own state,” said one influential Brexiter. “One by one, the things that weren’t acceptable to the sovereignty of the Irish free state got cut away, stage by stage. That’s what we need to do. The moment we are out of the EU, everything will be in our own hands. People try to say that our hands will be bound. In the end, they won’t be.”
Big business
Major groups had focused on securing the transitional agreement. They will want that finalised early in the new year, before turning their attention to the final deal. The CBI says the UK should be as close as possible to current arrangements, with immigration to be a key battleground.
The City
Britain’s huge financial services sector will hope the UK achieves a first by securing an EU trade deal with a high degree of access for financial services firms. Many accept they will not get full access (“passporting rights”), and are preparing contingency plans in case of a hard Brexit. They expect the Treasury to fight their corner.
The media
The Brexit-supporting press mostly backed Theresa May, as she finally secured trade talks with the EU, largely by conceding ground to Brussels over money, the role of the European court of justice and the Irish border. It suggests they will not push her towards hard Brexit, and will back her against rebel MPs. Whether they endorse the final deal May is handed will be a big moment.
Popular campaigns
Popular movements on both sides of the debate are likely to become noisier. Leave campaign donor Arron Banks has vowed to fund a pro-Brexit movement, though it has not yet come to pass. Remain rallies will pressure wavering MPs for a softer Brexit as crunch votes in the Commons approach next year. Prepare for a year of political marches.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
The British diplomat who wrote article 50 has claimed that Theresa May should allow the people to vote on the final terms of Brexit, following a Tory party conference which he said had signalled a desire for a hard Brexit and caused consternation across continental Europe.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard said it would be appropriate for a general election or referendum to be held on whether the government’s deal lived up to Boris Johnson’s optimism about negotiations. The foreign secretary said during the referendum campaign that in terms of limiting freedom of movement and retaining single market membership, he was “pro cake and pro eating it”.
Kerr, a former ambassador to the US and permanent representative to the EU, who in 2003 drafted the process by which two years of exit negotiations commences, said: “Once the government, some way down this process, has established clearly what Brexit will be like, if it turns out that Boris’s policy on cake doesn’t work, then it might not be a bad idea to ask the country in a general election, or possibly another referendum, whether this is actually what it had in mind.”
He said parliament might express the view: “‘OK, start the process now and we hope you achieve the following things; if you fail to achieve them – and remember, in the referendum, you said you would achieve them – then we will want to see you again.’ Everything changes in politics but, at the moment, I do [think that is appropriate].”
The crossbench peer, who advised Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair in EU negotiations, also suggested that the prime minister would allow parliament to vote on a motion on triggering article 50, and win with a big majority, even if two current legal cases in the high court, seeking to force the government into such a vote, failed.
“The government seems confident it is going to win the cases; I don’t know,” Kerr said. “I suspect that even if the government does win them, it would provide for some sort of vote in parliament because it seems to be that it is risk-free, actually.
“It wouldn’t be on a bill if the government has won the case but it would, presumably, be on some sort of motion.”
Kerr added, however, that he believed that negotiations over the financial terms of exit would be “nasty” – and that the government had potentially made life harder for itself by upsetting politicians in EU member states with its rhetoric on immigration and its apparent intention to leave the single market and the customs union.
He said that May was “definitely signalling” hard Brexit. “That may be because she is more frightened of the Brexiters in her party than she is of the soft Remainers who are clearly in full retreat at the moment.
“That may change during the negotiations as it becomes clear that Boris’s policy doesn’t work – and things are going to be tougher. At that stage, the funders of the Tory party may start saying: ‘Hang on, are we sure about this?’ May’s vision can change over time.”
Kerr, who admitted that he had not believed that article 50 would be triggered by any state when he drafted it, added of May’s comments in Birmingham: “It has played very badly in continental Europe. There is some relief that she has given a drop-dead date for article 50 but everything else she said has caused consternation.”
Kerr, who was head of the diplomatic service until 2002, and at the heart of Britain’s team during the Maastricht treaty negotiations in 1991, added that it was also a mistake for the UK not be in attendance at the recent EU summit in Slovakia. “I would go about things a slightly different way,” he said, “I would do a bit more chatting them up. I would have gone to Bratislava for the recent meeting. I can’t understand why we didn’t. We should be there. The empty chair is a very bad policy.”
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: “Lord Kerr confirms what the Liberal Democrats have been saying. Voting for a departure is not the same as voting for a destination. Theresa May’s speech caused the pound to crash and the rest of Europe to harden its position. Theresa May must make clear urgently that Britain’s priority in any negotiation will be to stay in the single market.”
First published on Tue 13 Sep 2016 12.39 BST
Theresa May should not trigger article 50 alone – formally starting the UK’s exit from the European Union – without “explicit parliamentary approval”, a parliamentary committee has warned.
In a direct challenge to Downing Street’s authority over Brexit, the House of Lords constitution committee has published a report declaring that it would be “constitutionally inappropriate” for the prime minister to act on an advisory referendum without referring back to parliament.
The report says: “In our representative democracy, it is constitutionally appropriate that parliament should take the decision to act following the referendum. This means that parliament should play a central role in the decision to trigger the article 50 process, in the subsequent negotiation process, and in approving or otherwise the final terms under which the UK leaves the EU.
“It would be constitutionally inappropriate, not to mention setting a disturbing precedent, for the executive to act on an advisory referendum without explicit parliamentary approval – particularly one with such significant long-term consequences. The government should not trigger article 50 without consulting parliament.”
The question of whether parliament or the prime minister has the authority to trigger article 50 is the central issue in the legal challenge against the government to be heard next month.
Article 50 itself merely states: “Any member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.” It does not specify what the constitutional requirements are, an ambiguity which has allowed rival claims of authority to be advanced by parliament and the executive.
Ian Lang, the Conservative peer and chairman of the House of Lords constitution committee, said: “The referendum result was clear and it is right that the government are preparing to take Britain out of the EU. However, our constitution is built on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and the decision to act following the referendum should be taken by parliament.
“Parliament should be asked to approve the decision to trigger article 50 – a decision which will start the formal process of the UK leaving the EU and set a deadline for the UK’s exit. Parliament’s assent could be sought by means of legislation or through resolutions tabled in both Houses of Parliament.
“An act of parliament would give greater legal certainty and could be used to enshrine the ‘constitutional requirements’ required by article 50, allowing for the setting of advantageous preconditions regarding the exit negotiations to be met before article 50 could be triggered. A resolution could be simpler and quicker to secure but might not provide the same watertight legal authority. We consider that either would be a constitutionally acceptable means of securing parliamentary approval for the triggering of article 50.”
The committee’s report concludes: “The referendum result was clear. Parliament is now responsible for ensuring that the government takes forward the complex process of negotiating the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union in a manner that achieves the best possible outcome for the UK as a whole. The focus must now be on how parliament and the government will work together to that end.
“That cooperation should start now. Parliament and the government should, at this early stage, take the opportunity to establish their respective roles and how they will work together during the negotiation process. The constitutional roles of each – the executive and the legislature – must be respected, beginning with parliamentary involvement and assent for the invoking of article 50.”
Disputing the House of Lords constitiution committee report, a spokesperson for the Department for Exiting the European Union said: “The government’s position is very clear. This is a prerogative power, and therefore one that should be exercised by the government.
“Parliament voted by a majority of six to one to give the British people the decision on our membership of the EU in a referendum.
“As the secretary of state for exiting the EU [David Davis] made clear to parliament this week, the triggering of article 50 is the beginning of the process of exit and we expect parliament to be fully consulted and engaged throughout.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
If seizing back sovereignty meant anything, then parliament is supreme. Now MPs must seize the day to ensure they debate and decide at every stage in the Brexit process. No more floundering and prevaricating, this is the time for MPs to lay down the law with strong red line amendments to the bill triggering article 50.
Start out in the right frame of mind, with warmth and goodwill to our European friends and neighbours. Declare unequivocal, unilateral and unconditional love for all our EU citizens resident here, welcoming them to stay with open arms – and get it written into this bill. Just do it. Because we want them and we need them and because surely that will secure the safety of the 1.2 million Brits in their lands. Start out in a spirit of solidarity and these negotiations will be better-natured than many fear. And add in a plea for universal EU visa-free travel, for God’s sake.
For Ireland’s sake, write an amendment committing to a soft border, which is urgent as the Northern Ireland constitution teeters perilously.
What of all those 32 EU agencies we should be sorry to leave? Add in amendments declaring at least an aim to stay in Interpol, the EU environment agency, the marine and aviation agencies, and keeping all current invaluable EU protections for our citizens. “No one worse off” should be a founding principle enshrined here, as the supreme court ruling suggests.
Before triggering this bill, we must know how the story ends. What if the final Brexit deal is so bad parliament simply can’t pass it? What if the EU parliament at the last fence votes it down? Before any MP presses this trigger, each one must know, written into the bill, that this is never irrevocable. Let no MP commit a gross dereliction of duty by signing blindly, obediently, with no clue as to what it means or where it may lead. Taking back control begins here.
The most over-enthusiastic people on each side of the Brexit divide have a vested interest in overstating the importance of this case. However, those remainers and leavers who respectively dream and fume that it will prevent Brexit are simply wrong.
Everyone has a right to have their legal claims heard – even those who hope to use the law as a form of political rearguard action. But this exercise is far more interesting in terms of constitutional law than in terms of politics. As president of the supreme court Lord Neuberger said, the judgment has nothing to do with whether the UK should leave the EU, or the terms on which we do so.
The ruling is fair enough. As a leaver, I wanted parliament to be sovereign once more. That parliament must vote to leave the EU is not a problem in either theory or practice.
What will happen next? The government will present a Brexit bill, which it has been preparing for some months. MPs will vote for that bill – the vast majority of Tories because they believe in implementing the referendum result, the majority of Labour MPs because they fear the retribution of their own voters if they try to defy them.
Peers may delay the bill, but they won’t block it – not least because it would be unwise for an unelected chamber to pit itself against the largest vote in British political history. At worst, the government can use the Salisbury convention; the Conservative manifesto pledged to “honour the result” of the referendum.
The fact the devolved administrations failed to secure a veto on Brexit, and the apparent rejection of deputy president Brenda Hale’s idea that a short bill would be insufficient to replace the 1972 European Communities Act, reinforce what was already clear: article 50 will still be triggered.
The supreme court, deeply conscious of the divisions and rancour that the high court judgment led to in the national debate, has sought to pre-empt similar fury by setting out in the clearest terms that the legal issue had nothing to do with “the wisdom of the decision to withdraw from the European Union, the terms of withdrawal, the timetable or arrangements for withdrawal, or the details of any future relationship with the EU”. All of that remains live, and should be on the table, as the debate now is turned back across Parliament Square.
Like the high court before it, the supreme court has lent its strong support to our centuries-long constitutional tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. Rights are bound to be impacted by withdrawal, and the court recognises that withdrawal from the EU will constitute fundamental constitutional change.
A big question for parliament now is how it tackles the issue of withdrawal and removal of rights, and whether it does so through the bill that Theresa May is settling as we speak, or whether it insists on clarity for the great repeal bill and a white paper setting out how and what rights will be lost, amended or retained.
The biggest disappointment will come to those hoping that the court would rule a practical blow to Brexit by the need for formal involvement of the devolved nations. Unanimously, the court ruled against that by concluding that although the devolution legislation assumed that the UK would remain a member of the EU, it did not go further and require the UK to remain a member of the EU. This may yet bring to bear its own political demons as the political fallout over a hard Brexit deepens.
The judgment is carefully worded, less critical than that of the high court, but nonetheless reminds the nation that parliament was careless with the wording of the 2015 Referendum Act, which the court unsurprisingly concludes simply did not provide for a change in the law of the land. That inherent failure of parliament, and David Cameron’s government, paves the way for the new law that must be drafted. Those drafting it this time, for all the talk of unamendable bills, would be well advised to avoid further appeals and confusion by ensuring that any bill is carefully drafted, and properly debated. A constitutional change of this order should not be hurried.
Some expect leavers like me to have a problem with this judgment. But I won’t hear of talk of “undemocratic judges” or “establishment stitch-ups”.
Don’t forget, we voted on 23 June to go back to being a self-governing democracy under the rule of law. The supreme court has not “blocked Brexit”, all the judges have done is clarify the law. It is now for the government to operate under the framework it has laid down. That is not something to berate – that’s the hallmark of a mature democracy.
As a campaigner for Brexit, I do not see the application of democracy and due process as an obstacle – indeed I don’t expect this decision to even slow down the process. Why?
MPs and Lords know that a refusal to implement the decision made by a majority of the British public last year would erode trust in democratic institutions. Many MPs also know that, if they vote against article 50, they will be voting against their own constituents. The leave campaign won more votes than any campaign in British history. Had it been a general election, leave would have won over 400 seats in the House of Commons, and we’d all be calling it a landslide victory.
And the Lords? They know that if they vote down Brexit they risk making radical reform of the Lords the public’s No 1 priority. Ultimately, an acceptance that the democratic will of the public has to be respected combined with a natural sense of self-preservation will see both houses vote for article 50.
Last month, MPs voted to trigger article 50 within the government’s timetable in a non-binding motion. The polls show that more people than ever before think that Brexit should happen. The political forces are overwhelmingly behind us leaving, and parliamentarians know that there is no mandate to block Brexit.
The judges have done their job, now it’s time for politicians to do theirs.
First published on Tue 14 Nov 2017 16.44 GMT
Amid the gleaming glass towers of Paris’s La Défense business district, cranes dot the skyline as drills clatter away on the building sites of future skyscrapers and acres of new office space. Marie-Célie Guillaume proudly walks the route of the guided tours she gives to companies drawing up Brexit contingency plans and considering moving jobs from London to France after the UK leaves the European Union.
“The uncertainty opened up by the Brexit vote is growing even bigger today,” she said as she took an elevator up France’s highest office building to inspect a luxurious new designer workspace with treadmill desks and meditation rooms. “We have no clarification of the full timeframe or the conditions of Brexit, and if there’s one thing companies hate, it’s uncertainty.”
Guillaume, the chief executive of Defacto, which manages this vast business district that nudges up against the west of Paris, was behind last year’s tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign to lure companies to France post-Brexit: “Tired of the fog? Try the Frogs!” Since then she has seen a growing number of inquiries from international firms about potentially moving staff from London.
La Défense, Europe’s largest business district, happens to be in a building boom just as Paris itself races to construct new office buildings amid a massive extension of the public transport system. The business district is ready with hundreds of thousands of square metres of comparatively cheap office space for any company that might decide to relocate staff from London, particularly if Brexit means the loss of London’s “passporting rights”, which allow international financial firms access to EU markets.
London businesses and financiers are playing a waiting game on the exact terms of Brexit, and are under pressure to take decisions early next year. But Guillaume is also looking to the east to win business from London. She recently travelled to Korea and Japan to make the case for Paris. “Our target is not just companies that are currently in London,” she said. “Until now Asian firms setting up in Europe immediately chose London without a moment’s thought. Now it’s clear that they are hesitating between Germany and France.”
Paris has markedly stepped up its pace in the race among European cities to corner the “Brexit relocation” sector. That has been noted by the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, who praised Paris pointedly in a tweet on Tuesday - raising specualtion that the city could benefit from changes to the bank’s London operations after Brexit.
Valérie Pécresse, the head of the Île de France region that surrounds Paris, was addressing business leaders in London on Tuesday in the latest of several relocation roadshows. But the phase of broad selling points has moved on. Instead, Pécresse brought a vast team of technical experts to answer companies’ very precise questions – from tax to labour laws, visas or the price of office rents – as businesses enter a more urgent phase of preparing detailed Brexit contingency plans and making decisions early in 2018.
“Our first target is French banks,” Pécresse said. “With France’s changes to legislation, French banks no longer have reason to put their workers in London.” She said the ultimate target for the Paris region was to bring 10,000 jobs from London by 2019. “Of course, everything depends on the negotiations in Brussels. If, as seems to be panning out, the negotiations lead to the withdrawal of financial passporting from the UK, I think Paris can gain 10,000 direct jobs.”
Pécresse, a former budget minister under Nicolas Sarkozy and a key figure in the rightwing Les Républicains party, said there was a lot of “psychology” involved, not least convincing businesses that France is changing profoundly.
She said: “French Labour laws have been reformed and the wealth tax has been transformed. So the message is that France is reformable and there is a new state of mind. I think a lot of positive messages have been sent and there is not a single person left in the City of London who thinks France is the enemy of finance.”
The French capital is in competition with several other EU cities, and the most potent challenger is Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank. The Île de France region estimates from company announcements that about 2,500 jobs are already earmarked to move to the Paris area from London. They include staff from HSBC bank and at least 300 traders and support staff from Bank of America. But Frankfurt is ahead, with more than 3,000 jobs already destined for the German financial centre. They are among several cities vying to be the new home for the European Banking Authority that will leave London’s Canary Wharf.
So far, of 50 companies that have consulted the Paris region’s hotline and dedicated Brexit relocation advisers to discuss potential moves, 11 have taken action to locate jobs in France.
Officials in the Paris region said of the Brexodus race: “We’re playing in the same division as Frankfurt.”
France was initially hampered by the country’s image as politically sceptical of the rich. The last president, François Hollande, was elected on a promise that he was “the enemy of finance”, taxes were historically high and costs of hiring and firing more expensive than France’s neighbours.
The current prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has promised that “certain weaknesses” have been addressed with the arrival of the centrist pro-business president Emmanuel Macron. He cited reforms that loosened labour laws, making it easier to hire and fire, the scrapping of France’s wealth tax and its transformation into a property tax, the abolition of the highest bracket of a payroll tax levied on each salaried employee and the cancellation of plans to increase France’s 0.3% tax on financial transactions.
Coupled with this are major efforts being made by Paris and the widerregion, such as streamlining administrative tasks, establishing an international tribunal that can hear cases in English and the construction of three international schools by 2022. Crucially for companies who pay their employees’ school fees, these French state international schools, with bilingual classes, will be free.
For French officials, all depends on the UK’s negotiations with the EU. A hard Brexit would accelerate businesses’ search for alternative bases in Europe.
Thierry Schimpff, head of the French union of relocation professionals, said: “Just after the Brexit referendum result, we noticed a brutal leap in moves from the UK to France by both families and companies. Now there’s a waiting period to see what happens in the negotiations. Some are wondering whether Brexit will happen, others are making plans to leave, concerned about hard Brexit. It feels like we’re in the dark and everything is up in the air.”
Jean-Louis Missika, the Paris deputy mayor in charge of economic development, said there were indications that French expatriates were returning to France, and other evidence suggests some scientists are considering quitting London for Paris. Brexit, he said, is “a slow earthquake – it started the day of the vote and it continues very slowly, but with earthquake effects”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
Continental competition to benefit from Brexit is rapidly heating up as half a dozen EU cities vie to attract London-based banks and financial services companies worried about losing their access to the single market.
From Paris to Vilnius, Milan to Madrid and Frankfurt to Valletta, regulators, local authorities and sometimes national governments are clearing a path for the exodus many feel is coming as Theresa May’s deadline to start negotiations nears.
Each has its plus points – liveability, connectivity, reliability. Each also has its drawbacks: too provincial, difficult language, inflexible labour laws. What all have in common is a desire to cash in.
The prize is certainly substantial: estimates of how many of the City’s 350,000-plus finance jobs could move to the continent if London loses passporting rights that allow a UK-licensed firm to trade across the EU have ranged from 35,000 to 70,000.
But the politics are awkward. With populist, anti-EU parties set to fare well in elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands this year, governments are understandably wary of being seen to bend the rules for bankers.
“There’s a limit to what any of us can realistically do,” said one trade official at an EU embassy in London. “Of course everyone wants a slice of the City pie. But there aren’t many votes in giving special treatment to financiers.”
Most aggressive – and ambitious – is Paris. Long jealous of London’s dominant role in EU finance, the French capital sees Brexit as a unique opportunity if not to take over from the City, at least to redress a historic imbalance.
Vaunting an enviable quality of life and a sizeable finance sector of 180,000 workers, Paris, home to some of Europe’s largest banks and the Euronext Paris stock exchange, hopes to snaffle 20,000 City jobs, its lobby group Europlace said.
France’s finance watchdog and securities regulator have done their bit: London-licensed operators can now get “pre-authorisation” to open in Paris within a fortnight and even do the paperwork in English.
As part of the same government-backed red-carpet rollout, Paris has also pushed through one of the EU’s most generous expat tax regimes, including tax breaks of up to 50%, in the hope of pulling in international high earners.
But while France has plainly moved on from the days when François Hollande could say his true enemy was “the world of finance”, major players remain wary of the country’s rigid employment laws.
The government is reportedly exploring possible workarounds, including a special hiring-and-firing regime for banks in specific EU classifications, but it remains an extremely sensitive subject.
Frankfurt faces a similar problem. Home to the European Central Bank, the Bundesbank, the EU insurance authority and Germany’s financial regulator, it sees itself as a stable, sensible and respected European financial hub.
While not as aggressive as Paris, the state of Hesse is reportedly also exploring ways to change strict German worker protection rules so banks could fire high earners as easily as they can in London – although Berlin has signalled it does not agree.
Frankfurt, which is seeking partnership with London rather than competition, must contend with its perception as a drab place to live: finance workers used to London may see Paris or even Amsterdam as more appealing than a provincial German city with fewer than 700,000 inhabitants.
Highly competitive on tax, and unhampered by continental labour laws, Dublin is a serious contender. It boasts the EU headquarters of Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, plus subsidiaries of more than half the world’s leading financial services firms, according to its International Financial Services Centre.
The city’s pitch is also based on its belief that as the EU’s only English-language country, it is an obvious choice. Insurance companies in particular have already begun setting up subsidiaries, and Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency says more than 100 financial services companies have shown interest.
It, too, has its drawbacks: the city suffers from a serious shortage of quality residential and commercial property for rent. But the government is determined, unveiling in its budget last autumn a full-blown Getting Ireland Brexit Ready programme, including tax relief for foreign firms relocating staff.
Appealingly low-tax Luxembourg, home to 143 banks with assets of some €800bn and the EU headquarters of companies such as Skype and Paypal, bills itself as “the only country that still loves bankers” and has also reported strong interest from international financial services firms exploring post-Brexit options.
Also in the race is Amsterdam, home to the EU offices of Uber, Tesla and Netflix as well as one of the world’s largest data transport hubs. It is unashamedly going after sectors such as fintech, high-frequency trading and above all London’s euro clearing business.
The Dutch capital hopes its central European location and advanced digital infrastructure will attract heavily tech-reliant financial services firms that will prove a better fit for Amsterdam’s relatively sober financial culture.
The Netherlands has been notably tough, for example, on bankers’ bonuses, which are limited to 20% of salary, and unequivocal (in the form of a speech by finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem) about the fact that it is not out to attract Wall Street or City-style excess – a stance some may not appreciate.
While hardly among the frontrunners, several other cities are also seeking a slice of the Brexit cake. Madrid’s #ThinkMadrid campaign – based on affordable housing, a relatively cheap, well-qualified workforce, lenient labour laws and plentiful sunshine – aims to attract some of London’s back-office functions.
The Spanish capital claims it has more vacant office space than any other major European city except Paris – plus a mere 58 days of rain a year, compared with 111 in Frankfurt, 129 in Dublin, 164 in Paris and 185 in Amsterdam.
In Italy, Milan is also making a pitch, particularly for technology and financial firms, with ambitious if probably unrealistic plans to turn the Expo 2015 space into a global tech hub.
Small, user-friendly Valletta, in Malta, fancies some insurance business, while Lithuania’s Vilnius and Riga in Latvia, want a share of fintech and support activities. “We have the talent and we have the infrastructure,” said Latvia’s finance minister, Dana Reizniece-Ozola. “Everyone wants to put themselves on the map.”
In reality, of course, most industry observers expect no single European city to hit the jackpot. Instead, if the UK finds itself outside the single market and without a special deal, financial services firms with major City operations will move some jobs and selected activities to a range of EU locations. Everyone could be a winner.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
Gina Miller, the woman behind the landmark article 50 legal case, has urged the government to forge a detailed plan for leaving the European Union, declaring that the abuse she endured after challenging against the government was “worth it”.
After her victory in the supreme court on Tuesday, she said that in cases of such magnitude there would be a detailed white paper on the government’s position, adding: “I hope that is the direction of travel”.
She said she decided to take the case after feeling “physically sickened” by the result of the referendum. Leaving the EU, she said, would change the fundamental rights of citizens and this couldn’t be done without a parliamentary vote. The supreme court agreed.
But her decision, as an ordinary citizen, to take on the government came at a high price.
Miller, the founder of a private investment firm, found herself at the centre of one of the most toxic media storms in decades as a result of being the most public of figures involved in the case.
She has spoken about the torrent of abuse she has suffered in the past but said she was shocked to find it continuing right up to the day of the verdict despite police intervention in at least eight cases in December and January.
“I’ve been told that ‘as a coloured woman’, I’m not even human, I’m a primate and only a piece of meat and I should be hunted down and killed,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.
“I’ve had somebody told me I needed to be ‘the new Jo Cox’. I’ve had people say there only three positions a woman of colour can have, that is a prostitute, a cleaner or having babies. People who have said, ‘I know how you’ve made your money: on your back.’ I even had some of those this morning on the way to the supreme court.”
Asked if it was all worth it, she replied: “Absolutely, although we don’t know yet. Hopefully we have preserved democracy and the constitution.”
She had to hire private security and review her entire lifestyle, reducing her trips to the office and use of public transport.
Immediately after the verdict, she was branded the “chief Brexit wrecker” by the Sun newspaper and last year endured a stream of abuse after the Daily Mail described high court judges who sided with her in her original case as “enemies of the people”.
She takes it all in her stride. “Society is broken and this case has highlighted that and it’s not too late for it be fixed,” she said.
Flanked by two personal security guards outside the supreme court, Miller said she hoped those in power would be “much quicker in condemning those who cross the lines of common decency and mutual respect” in future.
She said Brexit was “the most divisive issue of a generation”, but insisted that the case was “about the legal process, not politics”. She was spurred to pursue the case not because of any “grandiose” ideas.
“I wasn’t thinking about taking on the government, I was thinking ‘you can’t have something happening which is breaking the law’,” she said.
Her sense of injustice stems from childhood experiences of being bullied and left to fend for herself after her parents ran out of money for boarding school. Born into an influential family in Guyana, at the age of 10 she was sent to boarding school in Britain.
She recalls how her mother had given her a bottle of her favourite perfume Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps to take with her so she wouldn’t feel homesick, but the first weekend in school, girls emptied it out and filled it with water.
At 14, her parents’ financial circumstances had changed and she was forced to become a day pupil, living alone with her 16-year-old brother in a flat in Eastbourne, supplementing her allowance with a stint as a chambermaid.
Her values and principles are the same now, she says, as they were then, and “weirdly” she does not take the abuse personally.
Now successful and wealthy enough to fund a philanthropic foundation, she said she will use the platform she finds herself on to consolidate her work advocating for victims of domestic abuse and other injustices.
She also hoped her experience would help other women realise how the police can help hunt down internet trolls.
“The police have been fantastic,” she said. “What is amazing is that these people imagine that they can’t be tracked down and when they are they are so shocked and it stops.”
She believes the issue is not the internet nor the masks of fictional names and images that people hide behind; it is more fundamental than that and goes to the heart of what values society wants to live by.
“The idea that this abuse is the work of keyboard warriors is just not the case,” said Miller. “These people take the time to make posters with vile images, put them in envelopes and post them. They go to the trouble of finding my email address or office number. This is really pre-meditated stuff.
“It’s the message, it is the content that is what is important here. It’s that these messages can be allowed, it doesn’t matter whether it’s an email or a letter or an attack in a public place, it’s still abuse.”
Police have issued cease and desist notices to eight people warning that if they continued with their abuse, their behaviour could result in police action. On 5 December, a 55-year-old man from Swindon was arrested but, following consideration by the Crown Prosecution Service, the police told him no further action would be taken.
For Miller, who brought the case along with hairdresser Deir dos Santos, the court’s decision brought vindication. “No prime minister, no government can expect to be unanswerable or unchallenged,” she said. “Parliament alone is sovereign.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
As we enter the endgame of Brexit, two countervailing trends dominate our politics. The first is that more and more people have come to see that Brexit is a crisis on a par with any of the great crises in modern British history. And the second is a growing sense – fuelled by those who lurk in the shadows of our embattled prime minister – that there is no time to do anything about this crisis; that we should be focused on “softening” Brexit because there is no time or space to change course. Around the country, at event after event, I hear the same refrain: “maybe we should stop Brexit after all, but can we really do it?”. My answer has always been “yes” and “yes” – we should stop Brexit, we can stop Brexit. But it is important to explain how.
First, we must be clear that the goal must be to stop Brexit entirely. Brexit is a cliff, not a gradient. The mistake we are in danger of making is to believe that some Brexits are better than others when the fundamental problem is Brexit itself.
Being on the edge of a cliff, the necessary course is to step back from the edge, and not delude ourselves with ever more absurd and bizarre schemes for jumping over while clinging to a branch and hoping to find a ledge a third or half the way down. We are at risk of pursuing a Wile E. Coyote Brexit – running so fast over the edge that we don’t notice, until it is too late, that there’s nothing holding us up.
It is now crystal clear that the fatal flaw of Brexit is the act of putting the UK outside the European Union – its markets, its customs union, its institutions, its law, its leadership, its future. Working out what we might do having left is the politics of “least worst” options, unworthy and dangerous for this nation and this people with its European geography and destiny.
After two years of ceaseless Brexiteering by government and parliament, it is a statement of fact that there is no viable Brexit plan on offer, none in sight, and that all of those mooted involve massive dislocation and ongoing uncertainty for our trade, our security, Ireland, and our whole international position as a country. Even if we could get to something like a Norwegian or Swiss option – and don’t get me going on the complexities even of those, and of course such arrangements aren’t remotely government policy – the difference between that and our present position in the EU would have to be measured in miles, not inches. And anything short of this is frankly ludicrous, as the last few weeks of “keep calm and carry on”, Battle of Britain-style planning for food stockpiling and transport chaos has demonstrated.
Point two. The path away from the cliff edge is for Theresa May to announce that the government’s Brexit deal will be put to a referendum after it comes to parliament at the end of the year, giving the people the choice not to proceed and instead to stay in the European Union. If the prime minister will not do this, the House of Commons should direct her or her successor to hold this referendum, as it has directed monarchs and governments in moments of national crisis over the centuries since Magna Carta.
There is a lot being said about democracy and referendum results that must be honoured irrespective of circumstances. Democracy is not a single event; it is a process of constant public engagement, what Clement Attlee called “government by discussion”. That discussion is not over simply because Jacob Rees-Mogg declares it over. The people should make the final decision on Brexit when they see the government’s Brexit deal.
So my second point is to state clearly that a people’s vote – to stop a government potentially harming the people – not only accords with our constitution and traditions, but in my view is necessitated by them. Parliament has, as Gladstone said in respect of self-government for Ireland when he proposed it in 1886: a “golden moment” to resolve an imminent national calamity. True, the moment does not feel especially golden, but nor was it when Gladstone spoke amid continuing Irish terrorism and civil insurrection in parts of Ireland. His point was that parliament had a rare moment of autonomy in the power to act. Which is precisely where we are at the moment with Brexit: we have the autonomy – the privilege indeed – to act now before the timetable to actually leave the EU on 29 March next year overwhelms us and we lose control of events, as we surely will.
Which brings me to point three. Brexit will only be stopped if members of parliament show courage and leadership at this “golden moment”. If, in the historic Brexit votes soon to come, MPs hand their consciences to party whips and leave it to others to do their duty, we will most likely end up in a “blind Brexit” in which we leave Europe next March without a credible plan for our national future, whatever the immediate provisions for stability. For this, we and our children will pay a steadily greater price in economic, diplomatic and possibly security vulnerability until, as we surely will in the next generation, either by our initiative or through European crisis, we once again take our place in the European Union.
So this is the strategy I propose, along with many other parliamentarians and others who have been wrestling with these great issues and with whom I have been in a virtual committee of public safety in recent months.
First: Brexit can and must be stopped, democratically.
Second: this can and should be done by means of a people’s vote.
Third: it is the duty of all MPs who realise that Brexit is wrong to support the people’s vote and give their frank advice to their constituents on the right course to stay in the EU.
It is simple, straightforward, entirely achievable and I believe entirely legitimate. The question now is whether my colleagues in the House of Commons will seize their “golden moment” and act to give the people their say. History tells us that the consequences, should they fail, will be severe. As will be the judgment of history.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
This evening, after two days of heated debate in the House of Commons, MPs will have their first formal say on the triggering of article 50. It’s a seismic moment – and will define this country for years to come.
There will be two votes tonight: the first on a “reasoned amendment” tabled by the Scottish National party with the support of the Green party, Plaid Cymru and the Social Democratic and Labour party. A reasoned amendment – for those unfamiliar with parliamentary language – aims to strike out a bill entirely, and in this case parliament voting in favour of it would stop article 50 being triggered at this stage. If that vote is lost, there will then be a vote on whether the bill proceeds to the next stage.
I put down my own reasoned amendment to the bill – and was pleased to have support from MPs from several parties – but it’s in the gift of the speaker, John Bercow, to select which one to put to debate and a vote. The Labour party leadership did not put forward any such amendment because they plan to walk through the voting lobbies with the Tories tonight.
Labour’s decision is extremely disappointing, particularly now that the government’s plan for leaving the EU is becoming frighteningly clear. A Conservative post-Brexit Britain would be “free” from Europe as we drift towards being a tax haven floating in the Atlantic, desperately begging for friendship from a divisive and dangerous US president to whom the prime minister is patently unable or unwilling to stand up. We’ll be out of the single market, out of the customs union and free movement will be stopped.
Indeed the Conservatives’ extreme Brexit essentially means sacrificing membership of the single market at the altar of limiting free movement. The economic risks are huge and our public services are at threat from a government willing to engage in a race to the bottom on corporate taxation. The NHS is suffering badly now – imagine what it will look like without EU nationals working in it, and if the government cuts taxes even further and has even less money to spend on it.
Such a vision for Britain’s future is chilling, but it is not inevitable if those who want something better are prepared to put aside their differences in the name of cooperating to get the best deal for the country. Labour’s failure to participate in this process has handed the Tories a massive advantage. They are set to benefit hugely from rushing through the triggering of article 50 with as little dissent as possible and it’s given them far more opportunity to morph a narrow referendum result in favour of leaving the EU into an overwhelming mandate to depart from the world’s biggest trading zone, curtailing our social and environmental protections along the way.
By promising early on that they would vote unconditionally to trigger article 50, the Labour party has capitulated to the government, as well as reduced its bargaining position on the things they want to secure from the bill. Labour’s amendments to the detailed content of the bill represent important safeguards against an extreme Brexit but their strategy of unconditional support delivered via a three-line whip, removes all incentive for the government to negotiate and thereby undermines their best chance of securing the changes we all want.
After tonight, assuming we don’t see a last-minute change of heart from Jeremy Corbyn, the bill will pass its second reading and proceed to the committee stage, when MPs will have a chance to scrutinise and amend it in much more detail. I’ve tabled a number of amendments myself – specifically aiming to retain our environmental protections, requiring the government to set out a detailed plan for transitional arrangements, and give the public a proper say on the outcome of the negotiations through a “ratification referendum”.
I’ve also signed a number of amendments tabled by other MPs. From Harriet Harman’s amendment which protects, among other thing, EU-wide action on violence against women, to Chuka Umunna’s to secure spending on the NHS, to Chris Leslie’s ensuring Britain’s continued participation in the European Environment Agency. The Labour leadership’s early white flag waving on Brexit limits the chances of a united opposition passing these amendments, but they remain our best hope of softening the hard Brexit planned by the government, and I’ll be voting for every single one which will better protect this country from falling off an economic and environmental cliff edge.
As the co-leader of a party that stands for environmental, social and economic justice, I will not support a government offering no assurances to EU nationals living in Britain, threatening the funding of our public services, and planning to end our membership of the single market and customs union.
It has been heartening to see such cross-party cooperation on these key issues. I very much hope Labour will rethink their three-line whip on the vote tonight, and that individual MPs will put principle before party loyalty, rather than cast a vote for extreme Brexit. Whatever the outcome, however, I’ll remain open to working with MPs from all parties to amend this bill – that’s the only responsible option if we want to protect this country from the very real dangers of triggering article 50 on the terms Theresa May has so far revealed.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
The government’s push for a hard Brexit could come “at a dangerously high cost” for peace across the Irish border, a former Northern Ireland secretary has warned as the article 50 bill is scrutinised in the Lords.
Peter Hain, who became a peer in 2015, said reintroducing controls on the border might undermine a sectarian peace process which could still “so easily unravel”.
“Frankly, I’m not convinced the government has begun to even grasp the political significance of it,” said the former Labour MP.
Lord Hain has introduced an amendment to the bill which authorises the government to trigger the formal process of leaving the EU, saying the government should “support the maintenance of the open border” as part of Brexit.
The amendment is supported by Paul Murphy, Hain’s predecessor in the Northern Ireland office, and John Alderdice, a former speaker of the Northern Ireland assembly, both of whom are now also in the Lords.
Hain said a hard Brexit “could do profound damage” to the basis of the Good Friday agreement if it restricted use of a border across which about 30,000 people pass each day.
An open border was “politically totemic” to republicans in Northern Ireland, he said, and while political union did not exist, both sides of the border were “becoming united in everyday life”.
“And that is something welcomed by unionists as well, secure in the knowledge that there can be no change in the constitutional position without their consent. Above all it’s a symbol of the normalisation of relations between the two parts of Ireland,” Hain said.
“The government disturbs that at everyone’s great and grim peril. And those who maintain that because the prime minister said she does not want to return to a hard border then it won’t happen, should be aware that the Irish government – which doesn’t want a hard border either – has nevertheless, as a contingency measure, begun identifying possible locations for checkpoints along the border with Northern Ireland in the event of a hard Brexit.”
He continued: “I don’t say that we’ll go back to the murder and mayhem of the Troubles, but I do insist that the process could so easily unravel.
“If the referendum means Brexit at any price, it may well be at a dangerously high cost for the Northern Ireland peace process.”
Speaking in support of the amendment, Lord Alderdice said he feared Brexit was being pursued without proper consideration of the needs of Northern Ireland, or of Scotland and Wales.
“Being the prime minister of the United Kingdom is not just about being the prime minister of England and a few add-on bits,” he said.
Hain’s amendment is not supported by the Labour leadership in the Lords and so is unlikely to be passed. But it illustrates the scale of worries about the issue.
David Trimble, who was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize for his efforts in agreeing the Good Friday deal, said he felt Hain’s amendment was “unnecessary”, arguing that Theresa May had supported a continued open border.
“The prime minister does that, as of now,” the now Conservative peer said. “It’s in the white paper.”
The debate came as the Lords’ scrutiny of what is officially called the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill reached the report stage.
On Wednesday, peers are expected to vote on a Labour-led amendment calling for the government to unilaterally guarantee the rights of EU nationals in the UK after Brexit. Labour sources in the Lords say they are confident this would be passed if voted on.
The junior Northern Ireland minister Lord Dunlop said the government was committed to keeping an open border and the “deeply integrated” two economies.
“Nobody wants to see a return to the borders of the past,” he said. However, Dunlop added, the bill was “a clean and simple bill” only intended to authorise the government to trigger article 50.
Any more details should wait for other legislation, he said, and Hain’s amendment was not needed even though the government agreed with its aims.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
The British chancellor, Philip Hammond, has called on Brussels to accept Theresa May’s Brexit blueprint, saying it offers a “fair and sensible” way forward.
Hammond said the controversial plan hammered out at Chequers last month would enable the UK to remain closely connected to the EU economy in a way that worked for both sides.
His comments came after the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, said “intransigence” on the EU side meant there was now a 60-40 chance that Britain would crash out without a deal.
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has already rejected a key element of the proposals for a “facilitated customs arrangement”, saying the the bloc would not accept anything that undermined the integrity of the single market.
At the same time, May is under fire at home from Tory Brexiters who argue that the plan for a “common rule book” for trade in goods would restrict Britain’s ability to strike free-trade agreements around the world.
Hammond, however, said the Chequers plan represented a “pragmatic” way out of the the current deadlock.
“Getting a deal with the European Union that allows our businesses to continue accessing the European market is clearly in our best interest. I believe that the Chequers white paper represents the best way forward,” he told Sky News.
“It is a fair and sensible and pragmatic offer to the Europeans that will allow us to deliver on the result of the referendum – taking back control of our borders for immigration, allowing us to develop our own trade policy, the ending of large amounts of money to Brussels every year – but at the same time allow us to remain closely connected with the European economy in a way that works for us and works for the Europeans.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
British politicians helped fuel a steep rise in racist hate crimes during and after the EU referendum campaign, a UN body has said.
The committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said many prominent politicians should share the blame for the outbreak of xenophobia and intimidation against ethnic minorities.
It said it was deeply concerned that the referendum campaign was marked by divisive, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric.
“Many politicians and prominent political figures not only failed to condemn it but also created and entrenched prejudices, thereby emboldening individuals to carry out acts of intimidation and hate towards ethnic or ethno-religious minority communities and people who are visibly different.”
More than 3,000 allegations of hate crimes were made to UK police – mainly in the form of harassment and threats – in the week before and the week after the 23 June vote, a year-on-year increase of 42%.
The UN committee said it was concerned that the increase in hate crime notifications did not reflect the true extent of the problem, and that proportionately few reported cases resulted in successful prosecution. “As a result, a large number of racist hate crimes go unpunished.”
The committee did not name any politicians. However, the referendum campaign threw up allegations of racism against the prominent leave campaigner and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, whose notorious anti-migrant “Breaking Point” poster was reported to the police for inciting racial hatred.
The UK government said in response to the committee that it had a “zero tolerance” approach to hate crime. “We have in place one of the strongest legislative frameworks in the world to protect communities from hostility, violence and bigotry. We keep it under review to ensure it remains effective and appropriate – and recently published a comprehensive new hate crime action plan to drive forward the fight.”
The committee added that the negative portrayal of minorities, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers by the UK media, particularly in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, was also a concern.
It called on the British government to investigate all reported acts of racist hate crime and ensure that perpetrators received appropriate legal sanctions. Ministers should also adopt comprehensive measures to combat racist hate speech and “xenophobic political discourse” on the internet.
The government’s anti-terrorism Prevent strategy had created “an atmosphere of suspicion towards members of Muslim communities”, the committee said. Ministers should introduce safeguards to ensure the strategy did not discriminate on grounds of race, colour or ethnic origin.
It warned that government proposals to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a new British bill of rights could lead to “decreased levels of human rights protection” in the UK.
The chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, David Isaac, said: “There is no place for racism and hatred in a modern Britain and we share the UN’s serious concerns about the recent spike in race-hate incidents.
“In the weeks before and after the Brexit vote we saw reports of race-hate incidents rise significantly. We support the UN’s recommendations for effective investigation and prosecution of all acts of racist hate crime and wide-ranging action better to deter and punish perpetrators.”
Dr Omar Khan, director of the Runnymede Trust, said the committee findings shamed Britain: “This report will embarrass the UK on the world stage and restrict the UK’s ability to criticise other nations on human rights unless the government takes urgent action.”
The committee’s conclusions, published on Friday, followed a series of hearings that took evidence from the UK government and charities and human rights agencies. It assesses all nations on a rolling four-year basis. The last UK report, in 2011, was critical of government inaction on tackling race inequality.
The committee was established by a UN treaty, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which Britain is a signatory. The convention is not incorporated into UK domestic law, meaning the government is not bound by the committee’s recommendations.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
The phoney war is over. Parliament has signalled that it supports article 50 being triggered. We are leaving the European Union. The pretence that this was at risk was used by some to argue that those questioning the government are somehow unpatriotic Brexit-deniers. This illusion can now end and the real debate over what Brexit means can begin.
Polling of Brexit voters by the Open Britain campaign shows half are not prepared to be a penny worse off as a result of leaving the EU. That includes 59% in the north; 62% of Labour Leave voters; 46% of Conservative leavers; and even 39% of Ukip voters. Only one in 10 Brexit voters is prepared to lose more than £100 a month.
This chimes with the experience in my constituency, where seven in 10 voted to leave. Many of them were desperate for a new beginning for themselves and their families. The government will rightly be subject to an almighty backlash from Leave voters if it makes decisions that make them far poorer and leaves less money for public services. Having voted for a better future, for them this would be the ultimate betrayal. So, the onus is on the government to ensure a Brexit that is fair to working people.
The reality is that there are very difficult trade-offs and risks ahead which the government has completely failed to acknowledge. It must now make choices to minimise those risks, centring on our relationship with the single market and EU customs union. We should be aiming to remain in both. If the latter is not possible, we should, as Keir Starmer has said, seek to emulate, as closely as possible, the current arrangements for tariff-free trade in goods and services.
It will be hard to achieve this, but there are three reasons that the government’s approach makes this less likely and will leave the country significantly worse off.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have said they want to change the way freedom of movement operates. Following the referendum, I agree that there does need to be change. But there is a wide spectrum of approaches and the government appears to be basing its stance on the undeliverable promise to get net migration into the tens of thousands. Given the trade-offs in the negotiations, this will make it much harder to get single market-style arrangements.
Second, the government is gripped by a dogmatic obsession with the evils of European law and EU standards, which will drive it further away from the single market. But its dogma is absurd and self-defeating because the reality is that any company or country exporting into the single market faces those standards.
The third point is that too many people within government are convinced by grandiose fantasies about the trade deals that we can immediately do, without any evidence. They are drastically underestimating the economic dangers of leaving the customs union. The real risk is that on the back of this fantasy, our companies face bureaucratic obstacles which will make us much poorer and discourage foreign investment.
If it continues with this approach, it will be impossible for the government to put the economy first. So it must publish a real, honest plan – preferably in the form of a white paper – for which it gets a mandate from the Commons before the talks begin.
The stakes that face the country could not be higher. Voters on both sides of the issue share a desire to put our economy first. The government must protect our economic future and address the deep concerns about our unequal country that drove Brexit. Parliament and the country will hold them to account in the weeks and months ahead.
Ed Miliband is MP for Doncaster North and a former Labour party leader.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
The Cambridge Analytica scandal engulfing the official Brexit campaign reached No 10 on Sunday, as campaigners wrote to Theresa May demanding an investigation into what members of her cabinet and her own staff knew.
The letter from the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain came after a whistleblower told the Observer that Vote Leave channelled money through another campaign to a firm linked to the controversial data company Cambridge Analytica in a potential breach of electoral law.
The allegations immediately put pressure on the foreign and environment secretaries, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who were leading members of Vote Leave.
May came under pressure herself over the weekend after Downing Street was accused of outing the whistleblower, Shahmir Sanni, as gay in an official statement released on Friday. It was put out in response to allegations Sanni made about the involvement of one of May’s aides, Stephen Parkinson – a former senior Vote Leave official – in wrongdoing at the campaign group.
Sanni said his family in Pakistan, where homosexuality is criminalised, are now in potential danger.
Sanni had raised questions with the Observer about the validity of a £625,000 donation from Vote Leave to an ostensibly independent campaign group called BeLeave was channelled to the digital services firm, AggregateIQ (AIQ), which has links to Cambridge Analytica.
In its letter, Best for Britain demanded to know:
The letter came after the latest in a string of revelations emerged about the work of the leave campaigns and the data firm Cambridge Analytica.
The £625,000 donation was, Sanni alleged, in breach of electoral rules because Vote Leave shared offices with BeLeave and exerted a measure of control over the smaller organisation. The rules require campaign groups that coordinate with each other to have a shared spending limit. Vote Leave has denied any such coordination.
Sanni also alleged that, after the Electoral Commission opened an investigation, senior Vote Leave figures began deleting traces of their presence in files shared by the two groups. The official Brexit campaign’s director, Dominic Cummings, described that claim as “factually wrong and libellous”. Vote Leave said staff acted “ethically, responsibly and legally in deleting any data”.
In a separate interview with Channel 4 News, Sanni said: “I know that Vote Leave cheated ... I know that people have been lied to and that the referendum wasn’t legitimate.”
He added: “In effect, they used BeLeave to overspend, and not just by a small amount ... Almost two-thirds of a million pounds makes all the difference, and it wasn’t legal.”
The claims were quickly dismissed by senior Vote Leave figures.
On Saturday evening, within hours of the news breaking, Johnson labelled the allegations “utterly ludicrous”, saying Vote Leave won the 2016 referendum “fair and square – and legally”.
The environment secretary, who served as the campaign’s co-chair, chose not to address the claims of maladministration, but to recast them as an attack on the electorate’s decision.
“I respect the motives and understand the feelings of those who voted to remain in the EU. But 17.4 million opted to leave in a free and fair vote and the result must be respected. It’s our job now to work to overcome division,” Gove said.
Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons and a prominent Vote Leave campaigner, was more circumspect than the foreign secretary, telling Sky News: “It is, obviously, a matter for the Electoral Commission. It’s very important that they do look at these issues. I know that there have been a number of investigations already where there haven’t been findings of wrongdoing.”
Asked if she felt the legitimacy of the referendum result would be in doubt if the allegations were proven true, she said: “I think we need to wait for the Electoral Commission to have its investigation.”
The claims were also dismissed by Parkinson, in a personal statement released by No 10. In it, he called Sanni’s allegations “factually incorrect and misleading”.
Downing Street refused to say on Sunday whether May continued to have full confidence in Parkinson. A No 10 source said the question would have to wait until Monday.
Parkinson is one of a number of key figures likely to be considered by the commission’s investigation who now hold senior posts in May’s government. He could also face pressure to step aside voluntarily while the investigation is carried out.
On Sunday, Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “Theresa May needs to make sure the Electoral Commission has the resources to fully investigate the allegations made that there was criminal collusion.
“Because, let’s remember, the people that led these campaigns are now senior cabinet members, and I think we need to make sure that they were not aware of what was going on, and that’s why I think the resources are needed, and if needs be, the police should be resourced to investigate as well.”
An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: “The commission has a number of investigations open in relation to campaigners at the EU referendum; it does not comment on live investigations.”
Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 18.01 BST
The immediate reaction to the EU referendum result in three British national newspapers was negative towards Brexit, according to a study of their content.
It found that despite their differing stances prior to the vote, the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, were - at least in some measure - in agreement with the pro-remain Guardian.
Of the 489 articles about Brexit published in the three titles (and their Sunday equivalents) between 25 June and 1 July, 39% were negative towards the vote to leave the European Union while 27% were positive (and 34% were deemed neutral).
The study’s author, Caroline Lees, remarked: “Even the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, which had enthusiastically backed the leave campaign before the vote, had a neutral, ‘pragmatic’ response.”
She believed “the cautious coverage reflected that the vote to leave the UK was unexpected, even among pro-Brexit newspapers. It was not a time to ‘gloat’, according to one pro-Brexit newspaper, but a time for ‘sober, responsible’ reporting.”
She thought “commercial priorities also influenced editorial decisions. Newspapers were reluctant to alienate readers who voted to remain at a time when the UK was deeply divided over the result.”
Her review of the output of the three papers is part of a wider study conducted by the European Journalism Observatory (EJO).*
Three issues were considered: Brexit’s British impact; its impact on the EU; and whether the EU was better off with, or without, Britain as a member. I am dealing here only with the first of those.
Most of the Brexit-related articles published in the three papers over the course of the seven days after the referendum concerned the impact of the leave vote on Britain. The Mail published 50 (30%) articles arguing Brexit would be “good for Britain”; the Telegraph published 52 (38%); and the Guardian published six (3%).
The Guardian published 113 articles (56%) arguing that Brexit would be bad for Britain. They contained headlines or phrases such as “the pound will weaken”, “investors will pull out”, “businesses will leave the UK”, “unemployment will rise”, “racism will increase”, “divisions in society will widen”.’
Many articles in the Mail took a similar line, with 25 (19%) indicating that Brexit would be bad for Britain. And 18 articles (10%) in the Telegraph reflected that too.
Noting the Telegraph’s somewhat neutral coverage, Lees cited a source at the paper as saying it reflected an editorial decision to “proceed with caution... It would have been wrong to start gloating and saying ‘we told you so’. It was a momentous event and we had to treat it seriously.” The source continued”
According to her Telegraph source, the paper felt it necessary “to carry [with us] the 48% of the population and the 30% of our subscribers, who were anti-Brexit.”
The study touches on the fact that anti-Brexit articles published after the referendum focused on the rise of racist attacks and abuse. It mentions a Guardian example, “A frenzy of hatred – how to understand Brexit racism”.
In an aside, the study looked at complaints about the BBC’s coverage. Was it “too balanced”? It refers to the belief of Ivor Gabor, professor of journalism at Sussex university, that the corporation’s coverage “was stupefyingly predictable”.
In his article, “Bending over backwards, the BBC and the Brexit campaign”, Gabor wrote: “A claim by the remain or leave campaign was automatically contradicted by a rebuttal from the other side. First, it made for tedious listening and viewing, second, it probably left much of the audience confused and third left them vulnerable to simplistic slogans.”
Finally, the study asked whether Britain’s newspapers are still influential. In answer, it quoted a New York Times article by Stig Abell, editor of the Times Literary Supplement (former managing editor of The Sun and former director of the Press Complaints Commission) as writing of Brexit coverage as the “final, Pyrrhic victory for British print journalism”.
He also argued that “fiercely partisan, predominantly right-wing newspapers” had both fed and responded to the anti-immigration and pro-nationalist mood in Britain in the run-up to the referendum.
*The EJO study is part of Will it kill us, or make us stronger? How Europe’s media covered Brexit. I reported on its findings of the Europe-wide coverage last month, European newspapers overwhelmingly critical of Brexit vote.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Theresa May, the then home secretary, kept a relatively low profile in newspaper coverage dominated by pro-Leave articles in the run-up to the EU referendum, according to new research.
Conservative men dominated the coverage, as did reports backing a vote to leave the EU. The detailed study of 2,378 articles for the report, UK press coverage of the EU Referendum, found 41% were pro-Leave, while 27% were pro-Remain. Once reach and circulation figures were factored in, 48% of all articles were pro-Leave with six out of the nine national newspapers surveyed in favour of Brexit.
Jeremy Corbyn was the only Labour MP in the top 10 of those cited. However, as the eighth most quoted politician, he was cited in just 3% of articles in the survey of coverage dominated by Conservative men, including David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne although not all the coverage of these men was positive.
Priti Patel, pro Leave Conservative MP, received more coverage than Corbyn and was the only woman in the top 10, joined by Brexit campaigner and Labour MP Gisela Stuart, Andrea Leadsom, Nicola Sturgeon and May in the top 20.
The research delved into the topics covered and found a surprising emphasis on the personalities involved and the contest rather than the issues.
The economy was the biggest single issue covered in articles, followed by sovereignty and migration. The economy was cited in both pro-Leave and Remain articles, but sovereignty and migration skewed heavily to pro-Leave articles.
Pro-Remain articles tend to use a negative tone, with pessimistic forecasts of a post-Brexit future, however, as pro-Leave articles adopted a more positive tone, on the economy but more strongly around the issues of migration and sovereignty.
“In that sense, in spite of some notable exceptions, the press was generally better at reinforcing the views of decided voters than in giving undecided voters, seeking broad facts and high-quality information, the evidence to make up their own minds.”
With only the Guardian, Financial times and Mirror pro Remain, the research found that the Times published more pro Leave than pro Remain articles in the final week of campaigning and after the newspaper advocated a vote for Remain.
The newspaper’s readership was also more pro-Remain than the newspaper was, according to the research.
In contrast, readers of the Mirror were found to be more pro-Leave than their newspaper, according to the accompanying research by YouGov.
While the Express and the Mail were the most partisan, the study found that the pro-Remain papers became more so in their reporting of the EU referendum in the last week.
The study, which was produced jointly with PRIME Research, focused exclusively on newspapers rather than broadcasters. A report by the Electoral Reform Society published earlier this month criticised broadcast coverage and made several recommendations to improve the way referenda are conducted in the future.
It also studied Tuesdays and Saturdays and so did not cover the difference between the Mail on Sunday or Sunday Times and their daily sister titles.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
A group of remain-backing Tory MPs are plotting to form a rival movement to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s highly effective Eurosceptics, with the aim of voting down Theresa May’s Brexit deal amid concerns that it would wreck the economy.
Senior MPs behind the new group said they believed the Eurosceptics would eventually swing behind May’s final Brexit deal, but Tory whips had underestimated the strength of feeling from the other wing of the party.
It is claimed that up to 30 pro-Europe Tory MPs are sympathetic to the idea of voting against a version of May’s Chequers deal, in particular if she moves towards a Canada-style free trade deal after the final round of frantic negotiations with Brussels.
A number of the MPs hope that this will force a second referendum, breaking the parliamentary impasse and returning the decision to the British people, though the move is highly dependent on the final outcome of the negotiations.
“There’s a significant number of Conservatives who are deeply worried about any kind of pivot towards Canada [a looser free trade deal], which they can see coming,” one former minister said. “I do think that would then lose the other wing of the party. It’s an impossible circle that she can’t square.”
Pro-Europe Conservative MPs are planning to formalise a name and whipping operation for the group by the end of October, in time to organise for the parliamentary vote. One tongue-in-cheek suggestion is “the Patriots”.
The MPs have been inspired by the effectiveness of the European Research Group (ERG) of about 80 Tory MPs who favour a hard Brexit, led by Rees-Mogg and the former Brexit minister, Steve Baker.
“The ERG do have a game plan, but hitherto people on the other wing of the party haven’t really. But there’s a growing sense we need to,” the ex-minister said.
Fourteen pro-Europe Conservative MPs voted against the government in July after May accepted amendments tabled by the ERG to the customs bill.
May’s willingness to cave in to the Eurosceptics sparked anger from remain-backing MPs, who retaliated by rebelling themselves and came close to defeating the government, which was saved only by the votes of Labour Brexiters and a handful of accidental absentees including Liberal Democrat MPs.
Tory MPs who rebelled over those amendments included Nicky Morgan, Stephen Hammond, Sarah Wollaston, Heidi Allen, Mark Pawsey, Ken Clarke and Jonathan Djanogly, though not all of that number have said that they support a second referendum or attempts to defeat any future deal.
Tories who have publicly backed a new referendum include the former education secretary Justine Greening, the former defence minister Guto Bebb, and the former business minister Anna Soubry.
One MP involved in the group cited “reasonable MPs” such as Morgan, Hammond and Dominic Grieve who had negotiated with the whips during various tight votes but had ended up with fewer concessions than hardline Eurosceptics, who had stuck to “it’s my way or the highway”.
“There’s no point campaigning for a meaningful vote and then not actually using it. We’ve actually been pretty reasonable over recent months, but we’re at the end of the road now. It’s all been building up to this moment. At some stage you’ve got to nail your colours to the mast,” one senior Tory said.
However, the focus of the group will be on action around the vote rather than copying the ERG’s public strategy of writing critical letters or hosting events.
Clarke hinted at the threat from remain-backing Tories during an exchange with the prime minister in the Commons on Wednesday. “The maths makes it obvious that a majority can only be obtained if the agreement retains the support of the pro-European Conservative backbenchers in this House and also wins the support of a significant number of Labour pro-European backbenchers on the other side of the House ... which would reveal that the hardline Eurosceptic views of the Bennites on the Labour frontbench and the rightwing nationalists in our party are a minority in this parliament,” he said.
There is no formal coordination with Labour MPs, who are expected to be whipped to oppose the government’s deal when it is put to parliament. It is now unlikely that any deal will be approved at the forthcoming October summit of EU leaders, which means that the next chance for negotiations to conclude would be at an expected emergency EU summit in November.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
What do political leaders hope to achieve by breaking with constitutional rules and conventions? As government policy becomes increasingly hard line, from talk of proroguing parliament to ignoring its laws at the risk of jail, much of the coverage has focused on the goals this may serve. Whether as part of a negotiating strategy intended to force the hand of EU partners by showing how close a no-deal Brexit could be, or as a way to weaken domestic opposition and run down the clock, constitutional transgression can be read as a way to get things done.
But breaking with norms can also be an end in itself. Rather than being about achieving specifics, it can be a way of signalling broader ideas – about the nature and authority of executive power, and about politics itself. In the name of getting a task done, leaders can seek a wider redefinition of themselves and the landscape around them.
Sometimes ostentatious norm-breaking is done by politicians who regard themselves as moderates and want to polish their credentials as technocrats. Breaking with procedural norms can be a way of aligning with the demands of technical experts and showing willingness to adhere to their recommendations. Governments instituting austerity measures have been a familiar example in contemporary Europe – in the early 2010s, governments in Greece, Italy and elsewhere passed new budget laws by decree, marginalising their legislatures in part or in whole. Picking a fight with parliaments can be a way for executives to show the depth of their commitment to a certain set of policy goals deemed responsible – a demonstration of fidelity, and thus a way to garner recognition from technocratic authorities like the European central bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The Johnson government seems to be pursuing a different kind of authority, less technocratic than charismatic, based on a show of strength and resolve. Taking on parliament becomes a way to show sovereign capacity, and ideally to show the impotence of one’s adversaries. Boris Johnson invokes a democratic rationale – challenging parliamentary sovereignty to uphold popular sovereignty – but there is something more arbitrary and personal here too: taking aim at parliamentary procedure not just to champion some notion of the people’s will but to foreground the leadership’s own volition. After all, a change in the opinion polls would probably do little to shift the government’s policy. Unconventional action here is about demonstrating the independence of the executive and its willingness to act.
The response of others in parliament can contribute to the effect. Many have expressed outrage, denouncing the subversion of democracy, but from the government’s perspective this is probably not wholly unwelcome. It has the benefit of making all voices of opposition resemble each other. Differences of principle between parties are set aside, as they find themselves articulating one and the same procedural critique. The transgressive act, by turning opponents into one chorus of unanimous condemnation, makes them look alike. As a general election looms, they are more easily defined as a single bloc of anti-Brexit opinion. Moreover, they are cast as those wedded to rules and procedures – preoccupations that may also mark them apart from sizeable sections of the wider public. Court cases intended to show the illegality of these actions fail to engage the fundamentally political questions at stake.
An opinion poll earlier this year found 54% of respondents agreeing that “Britain needs a strong ruler willing to break the rules”. There is, it would seem, a sizeable constituency for playing loose with the constitution. Even if the government’s efforts to pull out all the stops to pursue a preferred form of Brexit are frustrated – even if moves to bypass parliament achieve little in negotiating terms, or indeed do not happen – they can benefit executive power nonetheless. (Indeed, such gestures may be all the more powerful if frustrated, since they are protected from a reality test.) One way or another, they can foster a form of charismatic authority useful in a general election – one that may appeal to many would-be Brexit party voters in particular, for whom independence of action and will are arguably the very essence of authority.
Ultimately these acts and threats of executive exceptionalism seem designed to convey a much wider point too – less about the government of the day than about how our political system functions. With each new affront to constitutional convention, the Tory leadership enacts a model of politics in which the struggle for power is all. “Justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger,” as Plato has Thrasymachus say. It is as though Dominic Cummings and co want to teach the public that liberal democracy is a charade: that notions of the separation of powers, checks on the executive, procedures and standards of conduct in public life are just so much fluff, that playing dirty is how it must go. Brexit becomes the opportunity to promote a disenchanted vision – a way of resetting the public’s expectations, establishing a new normal, resigning and inuring people to things yet to come. With each new transgression, a new lesson is imparted on “how things work”, a new set of precedents established. This performative aspect explains why so much that is done seems gratuitous – including the denials of each transgression before it is announced.
Why has Brexit become the vehicle of such a vision? For many, politics in Britain and the wider EU has long been a source of suspicion. The more principled strands of leave opinion articulate this, moved by a distaste for authorities that seem always to favour the same interests, and a desire for more political agency. Charismatic exceptionalism proudly announces the style of rule that the technocratic exceptionalism we saw with the implementation of austerity goes about quietly. And with its litany of key dates and deadlines, Brexit carries the suggestion that a clean break may be possible, that a line can be drawn under the existing system. Whether the deficiencies of the status quo will be addressed in this way is naturally open to doubt. Embracing an arbitrary, personality-driven style of politics magnifies the failings of the present system without offering a credible escape from them.
The government claims to be engaged in very specific task – Britain’s exit from the European Union. Everything it does has a kind of deniability – the suggestion it is just a temporary measure, a negotiating tactic, just an instrumental means to achieve a particular goal. But arguably Brexit has become just the occasion for a breaking with norms that has its own appeal – a chance to reshape the identity of executive power, and with it our understanding of how politics works.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
It’s been almost a year since Britain voted to leave the EU by 52% to 48%. Since the vote, David Cameron has resigned, Theresa May became prime minister, article 50 was triggered, and the Conservatives lost their majority after calling a snap election earlier this month. EU leaders have described the UK’s opening Brexit offer to protect EU citizens’ rights as vague and inadequate.
The decision has divided the country. Some feel devastated by the UK’s departure from the EU, others feel frustrated that some remainers refuse to accept the outcome.
We asked readers to tell us how they feel about their vote one year on. Here’s what they said.
I moved to Spain from the UK in February to live with my fiance. I voted leave for sovereignty, UK parliament and UK laws, not EU laws and interference because of the eurozone financial meltdown and immigration.
The vote has impacted my life immensely. The UK government seemed to be set on a hard Brexit which would have a huge impact on my new life in Spain. I am still worried about Brexit, but less so now that the election has forced the government into a less fractious approach to the negotiations. I want a soft Brexit and want EU nationals in the UK to be safeguarded – and people such as me to be seen similarly as a UK national now seeking to be resident in Spain.
Both the leave and remain campaigns were misleading and full of lies. But I would still vote leave, because I believe that the EU was increasingly encroaching on UK sovereignty.
The biggest reason for my vote to remain was to protect our environment. The EU has been successful in helping Britain clean up our rivers and beaches, and is making our government accountable for the air pollution crisis in London. I also value the European workers in our NHS and social care. Being part of the EU meant that they could easily work here without expensive and time-consuming visa restrictions.
While I know there are faults with the EU and some undemocratic aspects, I fundamentally could not accept that our Tory government were up to the enormous task of negotiations to leave the EU and we would be worse off out.
There were no influential arguments in either mainstream campaign. Separately, I had taken the time to research the EU and our relationship before coming to my conclusion.
I would vote remain again, but have no stomach for further referendums and such decisions should be made by parliament.
As a young, healthy and financially comfortable person, Brexit has not affected my life yet, though I I believe we will be stronger on our own, working to or own laws, trading with whoever we like, not propping up EU states that take out far more than they put in, with better control of our own borders, and not paying for the bloated EU parliament. I believe the true cost of EU migrants is vastly underestimated. No one factors in the added pressure to our housing, roads and general infrastructure.
I would absolutely vote leave again. I’m completely pissed off that many have sought to overturn what was one of the most democratic results we’ve had in this country. Those same people have now, through the election result, weakened the UK’s hand in negotiating with the EU. They will be the first to complain about any negative outcomes. Apparently democracy is OK as long as some people get the answer they want.
There are businesses that rely on cheap labour from EU states, but on the whole we have a lot of migrants either taking jobs, or in some circumstances suppressing wages by undercutting UK workers. Maybe they’re good for businesses but it’s not got for UK workers and tax payers.
When the UK opted to join the common market in the 1970s there were plenty of people who didn’t want to. They had to go with the majority. They also had to sit by as the EU became what it is now. After 40 years we’ve finally been given another chance to vote and we voted leave. There’s no need for a second referendum, unless you want a civil revolt!
It seems the younger generation know next to nothing about life, paying bills, scratching out a living. They think they know more than those of us who have already experienced this. They’ve also never known anything other than being in the EU – they’ve no concept of how great this country was and could be, standing on its own.
I really can’t see the point in leaving the EU. I’ve tried, but it just seems like it will be an enormous amount of effort and upheaval to maybe one day break even economically, but culturally be far worse off. I would vote remain again, and feel a bit of embarrassment when I talk to people across the continent.
For me, an independent Scotland in the EU is a very attractive prospect and trying to align ourselves with other small northern European countries is what we should be trying to achieve. Look at every league table for wealth distribution, education, health, happiness, and the winners are usually small northern European nations with natural resources – sound familiar?!
Any opportunity to remove ourselves from the backward-looking little England mindset would be welcome. And to join Europe as an active and willing participant. I’m under no illusion that this would be easy and feel sorry for like-minded people across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. They really have no glimmer of hope that there is a way out of what will become an absolute shambles.
Once we leave with no deal in place, we are in for an economic shock that will make the 2008 financial crash look like a carnival. I don’t think people realise the gravity of what’s about to happen to them. The main protagonists in this drama – Michael Gove and Boris Johnson – will feel no pain, and as always it will be the poor, old and infirm that suffer.
 I feel extremely sad that my daughter won’t have the same opportunity to work and travel across the EU in the same way I have. This is the biggest tragedy and any opportunity to retain this must be the priority.
I feel European and wanted my grandchildren to be Europeans. I have many European friends living here. I voted remain with my heart and my head. It was a no brainer! I would vote the same again, especially now as Emmanuel Macron leads France forward. I feel left out and very low. I have trouble sleeping and feel gloomy and depressed.
I felt the UK was better to be part of the EU and pushing for any changes from the inside rather leaving. I believe Europe is looking forward not backwards like the US.
We benefit from trading within the EU and we need European nurses, care staff and doctors, and all the foreigners who enrich our lives.
I live in hope that, as things change hour to hour politically at the moment, there may still be a hope. But it’s probably very unrealistic.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
The mood in Brussels is pessimistic. Most of those closely involved in the Brexit talks think the likeliest outcome is for the UK to leave without a deal. There is also tremendous frustration with what EU officials see as the incompetence, ignorance and irresponsibility of swaths of the British political class. Over the past three years much of the goodwill that people held towards the UK has evaporated.
The EU expects no deal because it does not trust British politicians not to screw up. There is not much faith that “indicative votes” among MPs will produce a coherent way forward. “We don’t see the transmission mechanism that forces the executive to bend to parliament’s will,” said one EU official. “We cannot negotiate with a parliament.”
Another source of Brussels’ pessimism is the apparent inability of British politicians – including Labour’s leaders – to recognise how much the EU cares about the European elections. Assuming that parliament does not pass Theresa May’s deal, the EU will not extend article 50 – and thus prevent a no-deal Brexit on 12 April – unless the UK agrees to take part in European elections.
If Britain remained a member while skipping the elections, not only British citizens but those from other member-states living in the UK would be disenfranchised. Somebody would go to the European court of justice, arguing that the parliament was improperly constituted and that its decisions – such as the appointment of the new European commission – were flawed. Many governments would rather the UK left without a deal than breach treaty provisions on elections.
The growing talk in London of a general election disturbs Brussels. In the midst of a confusing general election campaign, will there be an executive capable of requesting an extension of article 50 and organising European elections? And what if the outcome is a government led by someone like Boris Johnson, which picks fights with the EU in order to provoke a no-deal situation, or messes up the negotiation of the future relationship?
However fed up they are with the British, most EU governments hope to avoid no deal, but they differ over how far they should go to avoid it. Those member states closest to the UK – Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and above all Ireland – would take the biggest economic hit. And some EU leaders understand that no deal would damage the EU’s international standing.
There are tensions between Germany and France. Angela Merkel fears the geopolitical consequences of an estrangement between the UK and the EU27; it would weaken the west just when it was facing severe challenges from illiberal forces in Russia, China and the US. The Germans worry that an acrimonious Brexit would preclude a close future relationship between the British and the EU. The French, uniquely among the 27, are ambivalent over Brexit, seeing opportunities as well as costs. Emmanuel Macron is focused on his European election battle against Marine Le Pen and fears that she will gain if Brexit lingers unresolved. He wants to demonstrate that leaving the EU carries significant costs.
There is also some tension between Brussels and Dublin, because the Irish government has not spelled out what would happen at their border with Northern Ireland in the event of no deal. According to one Brussels official: “If the Irish do not introduce checks, the French and others will insist on controls between the continent and Ireland.” However, both Dublin and the commission agree that the way around this difficulty is for the EU to refuse to talk to the British about measures to mitigate no deal unless they adopt something like the Irish backstop (in addition to paying the money they owe and protecting citizens’ rights).
Remainers should not assume that everyone in the EU wants another British referendum. Many senior figures worry that if the UK prevaricates or stays it will distract the EU from other pressing challenges, contaminate European politics with its weird Eurosceptic attitudes and block further integration.
Key officials despair at the inability of many leading British commentators and politicians to learn about how the EU works or what it wants from the negotiations. For example, senior MPs such as Nicky Morgan and Damian Green have wasted everyone’s time by backing the “Malthouse compromise” – whereby the UK would reject the withdrawal agreement but ask for a three-year transition, to mitigate the worst effects of no deal – although it is clearly incompatible with the EU’s objectives.
Donald Tusk, the European council president, is at one end of the spectrum in arguing that doors should be left open to the UK, lest it reconsider Brexit. The Dutch, Germans, Irish, Poles and Swedes lean in that direction. But many other governments, and senior figures in the commission, are keen to excise the British cancer from the European body politic.
First published on Sat 2 Jun 2018 21.00 BST
Michael Gove should be installed as the new Tory leader because Theresa May has shown that she cannot “carry Brexit through”, a major party donor has publicly warned.
In a stark sign of the frustration among prominent Brexit supporters over the government’s handling of negotiations with the EU, Crispin Odey, a hedge fund manager who backed the Leave campaign, said he believed the environment secretary had the skills to make a success of Britain’s exit and appeal to voters.
Odey, whose most recent donation to the Conservative party was a £50,000 gift before last year’s general election, said the government needed to be far bolder in its attitude to Brussels. It should be learning from the new Italian populist coalition government, which has plans that would defy EU rules on debt, he said, suggesting that Britain should start breaching EU rules by pursuing policies such as signing trade deals. He also backed a change in leadership.
“We’ve got to have that self-confidence to make breaches,” he told the Observer. “There’s no point in voting for freedom if you don’t know what to do when you’re free. What is true is that you have a whole lot of people who didn’t want this to happen who are in charge of it happening.
“I would go to Gove. He’s the only minister who is still being a minister. Michael has got lots of attributes that make him a non-traditional Tory. He is very aware that he has to appeal not just to the wealthy, but also more broadly. I don’t think May can carry Brexit through any more.”
He added: “Italy has confronted the EU – they’ve said they will go ahead and be in breach of its rules.
“We should say, ‘we’ve got to have life after this, so we’re creating that life. We are creating trade agreements which are in breach of everything, because we won’t be in breach by the time you come to take us to court’. That’s how Elizabeth I would have been leading with this.”
His backing for Gove risks reigniting the Tory debate about May’s leadership, with some Brexiters worried that Britain could end up being locked into a customs union with the EU that would prevent it pursuing an independent trade policy. In reality, few Tory MPs want an unpredictable leadership election which could further destabilise the party. However, a challenge to May’s leadership could emerge should pro-Brexit MPs conclude there is a better alternative.
Gove was one of the figureheads of the successful Vote Leave campaign. His botched attempt to succeed David Cameron in 2016 saw him widely condemned by Tory MPs for betraying Boris Johnson, whose leadership bid he had been supporting. He was then sacked from the frontbench by May. However, he has been enjoying something of a renaissance since returning to the cabinet as environment secretary last year. “No other politician could have made such an impact in that job,” said an ally.
A source close to Gove said the environment secretary was “fully supportive of the prime minister and will continue to be so”. He added: “He believes it’s vital we get behind our prime minister to deliver the Brexit 17.4 million people voted for.”
Odey, who has also donated to Ukip in the past, said he believed that May was a gifted technocrat, but questioned her handling of Brexit. “The European Union are not good at hitting a moving ball,” he said. “The problem is, Theresa May is not good at hitting a moving ball, either.
“As someone said about May, she should have joined the civil service, rather than becoming a politician. She is perfect for that, but she can’t make a decision. So there is no leadership.
“We should be reaching out to Italy. We should be saying that we have so many of the same problems.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
Retailers have warned of challenging times ahead as the weak pound ramps up their import costs and consumer confidence is buffeted by a climate of economic uncertainty as the UK embarks on Brexit negotiations.
The industry’s main trade group, the British Retail Consortium (BRC), took only limited solace from its monthly figures showing strong food sales giving a boost to retailers’ takings last month by making up for a drop in demand for clothing during September’s heatwave.
Underscoring the volatile pattern of recent months, the latest snapshot of high street and online spending showed like-for-like sales were up 0.4% on the year in September, a turnaround from August’s 0.9% drop. Sales growth was capped by warm weather – including the hottest September day since 1911 – which dented appetite for several products, including autumn clothes, flu medicines and duvets.
The small recovery in sales follows news that consumer confidence continued to recover last month, but the BRC said it was too soon to say June’s vote to leave the EU was not affecting household spending.
“While this month’s sales figures may add to the impression that Brexit impacts have been brushed off, it is still too early to judge as we have not yet navigated the roughest waters,” said Rachel Lund, head of retail insight and analytics at BRC.
She said reports of businesses’ reluctance to invest could slowly feed through to consumers and hurt their spending power. “We are also likely to see some upward pressure on prices as we move into 2017 as retailers increasingly feel the impact of exchange rate movements, although the level of competition in the industry may mean increases are more muted than implied by the scale of the devaluation,” Lund said.
The sharp drop in the pound since the vote to leave the EU has raised the prices retailers pay for imports. Sterling fell after the vote and has come under further pressure over the past week on signals from Theresa May’s government that it will go for a ‘hard’ Brexit deal that sacrifices single market access in favour of stricter immigration controls.
On Monday the pound dropped another 0.4% against the US dollar, to $1.2380, but it was flat against the euro at €1.11.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, claimed that the “major part of the fall” in the pound to a 31-year-low had been down to a “flash crash”. He told parliament on Monday: “There will be lots of speculative comments in the next two-and-a-half-years that will drive the pound down and up and down and up and there is little we can do about that.”
The small silver lining for retailers from the pound’s drop has been an influx of bargain-hungry foreign tourists keen to pick up luxury items. The BRC said the jewellery and watches category enjoyed another record performance last month.
But on the whole, the weak pound was added to pressures on retailers and the BRC fears their costs will be further inflated if the government fails to negotiate a Brexit deal that allows easy access to European markets.
The BRC has joined other business groups in warning the government over the potential economic costs of a hard Brexit deal. The BRC said prices of consumer staples such as food and clothes will shoot up if the UK has to fall back on World Trade Organisation rules.
While leaving the EU and potentially the single market could offer up the potential for new trade deals in Europe and beyond, there was also a significant risk from ending existing arrangements, it warned. The group fears that under WTO rules, the new tariff rates on imports from the EU would be highest for food and clothing.
“The average duty on meat imports could be as high as 27%, while clothing and footwear would attract tariffs of 11-16% versus the current zero-rating for all EU imports,” the trade group said as it launched its A Fair Brexit for Consumers campaign on Monday.
But the Economists for Brexit pressure group said analysis failed to recognise that leaving the single market and “embracing” unilateral free trade would allow the UK to cut tariffs altogether, which would in turn reduce the cost of consumer goods. “Our forecasts show that this will reduce consumer prices by an average of 8%,” said the group’s co-chair Patrick Minford.
In the near-term, consumer spending remains the main driver of economic growth in the UK, helped for now by low unemployment, record low interest rates and relatively low inflation.
Separate figures from Barclaycard will bolster hopes that the trend can continue. They showed spending was buoyant last month as people splashed out on pub meals in the hot weather and as consumer confidence picked up – albeit based on a survey before the Conservative party conference fanned fears over a hard Brexit.
Barclaycard, which processes nearly half of credit and debit card transactions, showed spending rose 4.2% on the year in September, making it the joint-strongest month for growth this year after the same increase in August.
Consumer confidence was the highest since Barclaycard began tracking it in 2014, with 48% of the 2,000 people polled between 23 and 28 September saying they felt upbeat about the UK economy, a rise from 34% who felt that way before the EU referendum vote in June.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
A whistleblower who worked for the official Vote Leave campaign has broken cover to raise concerns that the masterminds behind the 2016 vote – including key figures now working for Theresa May in Downing Street – may have flouted referendum spending rules and then attempted to destroy evidence.
The allegations, from former volunteer Shahmir Sanni, are detailed in an interview in the Observer and supported by a mass of documents and files that he has passed to the Electoral Commission and the police.
Sanni’s central claim concerns a donation of £625,000 that Vote Leave ostensibly made to an independent referendum campaign organisation called BeLeave. He claims the money, channelled to a digital services firm linked to the controversial Cambridge Analytica firm, violated election rules because it was not a genuine donation.
The money was registered by BeLeave with election authorities as a donation from Vote Leave to an independent youth operation. Sanni says BeLeave shared offices with Vote Leave – fronted by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – which in practice offered advice and assistance to the group and helped them to decide where their cash would be spent.
British electoral law prohibits co-ordination between different campaign organisations, which must all comply with spending limits. If they plan tactics or co-ordinate together, they must have a shared cap on spending. Vote Leave strongly denies any such co-ordination.
Sanni says that after the commission opened an investigation last March, an account in the name of Victoria Woodcock, the operations director for Vote Leave, deleted Woodcock, campaign director Dominic Cummings and Vote Leave’s digital director, Henry de Zoete, from dozens of files on the drive Vote Leave shared with BeLeave, apparently to hide the fact of co-ordination.
On a blog post on Friday, Cummings said this was “factually wrong and libellous”. Vote Leave say staff acted “ethically, responsibly and legally in deleting any data”. Woodcock told the Observer that any suggestion that she was involved in “knowingly and deliberately” deleting evidence “which would be relevant to an investigation” was “untrue and completely unsupported by the evidence.”
Woodcock added in June 2018, three months after she was originally contacted for comment, that she had nothing to do with the deletions. She explained that the administrator account which made the deletions bore her name because she had originally set up the shared drive. She clarified, however, that she had handed over control to Vote Leave on 17 March 2017 (and no longer had access to the drive) before the deletions took place later on the same day. Vote Leave said, in a statement to the electoral commission in April 2018, that it restricted access to the documents as part of a routine data protection exercise.
Most of the £625,000 donation went to a Canadian data company called AggregateIQ, which has links to Cambridge Analytica, the firm that used harvested Facebook data to build a political targeting system in the US. Christopher Wylie, the former CA employee turned whistleblower, said that at the time of the referendum, the Canadian firm was operating “almost as an internal department of Cambridge Analytica”.
AIQ would eventually soak up about a third of all Vote Leave’s official spending, receiving £2.7m from the group in addition to the money that came via BeLeave. The firm also received £100,000 from Veterans for Britain and £32,750 from the DUP. After the referendum, Cummings stated on AIQ’s website: “Without a doubt, the Vote Leave campaign owes a great deal of its success to the work of Aggregate IQ. We couldn’t have done it without them.”
Other senior figures in Vote Leave included Stephen Parkinson, now Theresa May’s chief adviser. Parkinson said in a statement: “I am clear that I did not direct the activities of any separate campaign groups. I had no responsibility for digital campaigning or donations during the referendum and am confident that Vote Leave acted entirely within the law and strict spending rules at all times.”
Sanni, who was treasurer and secretary of BeLeave at 22, is still a committed Eurosceptic and works at the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group. He says he decided to go public because he did not want Brexit to be tainted by possibly illegal activities.
He was also alarmed by the fact that his friend, Darren Grimes, the former head of the BeLeave youth group, is a focus of an Electoral Commission investigation into breaches of spending limits.
Sanni said Vote Leave “didn’t really give us that money. They just pretended to. We had no control over it”.
He believes Vote Leave’s senior officials may have taken advantage of the group’s youth and the political inexperience of Grimes to ramp up their own spending. He emphasises BeLeave was a small Brexit-supporting outreach group run by twentysomethings with no real experience or background in campaigning or finance.
He says that it was helped by Vote Leave staff to set up its own constitution and bank account so that it could accept donations of its own. Vote Leave’s lawyers did the legal documentation, he said.
“We were advised every step of the way by Vote Leave’s lawyers. They told us what to do and where to sign.”
The payment to AIQ was ostensibly made by BeLeave as the referendum campaign drew to a close. But Sanni claims BeLeave didn’t have any choice about where the cash would be spent, didn’t sign a contract with AIQ, and did not direct what the data firm did with the funds. The money never even passed through the group’s own bank account.
“There was no contract in front of me, as treasurer and secretary,” Sanni said. “I didn’t see any contract.” This process was repeated with a further £50,000, from an outside donor.
Vote Leave said: “It was Darren’s decision to hire AIQ, agreed with and confirmed by Shahmir Sanni.”
Venner Shipley, Vote Leave’s lawyers, said: “We have never been instructed by, nor have we ever provided advice to BeLeave.”
Sanni has shared emails with the Observer and the authorities which appear to show the young campaigners seeking advice from top Vote Leave figures, an invoice to VoteLeave covering work on the BeLeave campaign and messages from Vote Leave lawyers and accountants about the practicalities of establishing it as an independent group.
Sanni explained that Vote Leave also set up and managed a shared BeLeave computer drive with the youth campaign’s messaging, information and other documents.
The emails reveal other senior figures were in regular contact with BeLeave. Cleo Watson, who was head of outreach for Vote Leave and is now a political adviser alongside Parkinson in Downing Street, was in touch with the organisation and was a member of a closed Facebook group for BeLeave contributors. In a statement to the Observer, Watson said: “I absolutely deny the claims being levelled against me.”
This weekend Parkinson was at the centre of a political storm after revealing in a statement delivered without Sanni’s consent that they dated each other for a year and a half, including the period when Parkinson was at Vote Leave and Sanni worked as a volunteer.
Parkinson said he only gave Sanni advice and guidance in the context of that relationship. In a statement released on Friday night, lawyers for Sanni said: “We believe this is the first time a Downing Street official statement has been used to out someone. My client is now having to come out to his mother and family ... and members of his family are being forced to take urgent protective measures to ensure their safety.”
In one email to Vote Leave’s lawyer, Watson acknowledged that BeLeave did not have the experience needed to handle the funds that would be spent in their name, stating: “Darren and the rest of the group (all between 18 & 22) don’t feel comfortable handling the money side of things, having no experience beyond their student loans.”
In a statement to the Observer, Watson said: “To imply that being supportive of their work was to have any kind of control over their activities is absolutely untrue.”
Woodcock, the operations director for Vote Leave, has been described by Cummings as “the most indispensable person in the campaign”. The documents provided by Sanni suggest that after the Information Commissioner’s Office last year announced an inquiry into how the campaigns used personal data, key Vote Leave names, including her own, were deleted from access to dozens of files on the shared BeLeave drive by an administrator’s account under Woodcock’s name.
Woodcock told the Observer that any suggestion that she was involved in ”knowingly and deliberately” deleting evidence “which would be relevant to an investigation” was “untrue and completely unsupported by the evidence.”
Woodcock explained in June 2018, three months after she was originally contacted for comment, that while an administrator account in her name had made the access deletions, she had lost access to the drive before the deletions took place. Vote Leave said in a statement to the Electoral Commission in April 2018, that it restricted access to the documents as part of a routine data protection exercise.
Cummings said: “The allegations about illegal donations to BeLeave are false and are part of a campaign to cancel the referendum result.”
Further evidence of contact between senior figures at Vote Leave and BeLeave during the referendum came in a witness statement from Matthew Elliott, the campaign chief, which was submitted to the High Court on March 13, 2018 as part of a judicial review.
“I can confirm distinct campaigns were run,” Elliott says, who added that he was including some examples of BeLeave publicity work to help clarify details. “I thought it may assist the Court in having examples of the campaign material used by the different campaigns and I attach those.”
A photograph attached shows a group of young people – including Grimes – beneath the BeLeave logo. But emails detail how on 18 March 2016, it was Cleo Watson who organised that photoshoot. In another email from 22 March, it was Stephen Parkinson who signed off on the logo.
In February 2016, a leaked email from prominent Brexit supporter, Steve Baker, now a junior minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union, floated the idea of creating “separate legal entities each of which could spend £700,000”.
Sanni believes this is exactly what happened with BeLeave. “Throughout this whole process Darren and I were victims to very intelligent people trying to find ways to overspend.” Sanni said. He described Grimes as a ‘fall guy’.
Grimes denied to the Observer that there was any collaboration with Vote Leave on campaign material or spending, and threatened legal action.

 13 July 2018: After we received notification from Victoria Woodcock, we clarified this article to make clear what Ms Woodcock had told us, namely that although her name appeared as the administrator for a shared Google drive, her permissions had been removed and she was not the individual responsible for the removal of permissions for herself and others from the shared Google drive. We accept that these removals were made by someone else, using an account bearing Ms Woodcock’s name. We accept that Ms Woodcock did not try to destroy evidence and that allegations of trying to thwart official investigations or pervert the course of justice do not fairly arise against her from this reporting. We regret any distress caused.
 Addendum, 29 March 2018: we are happy to clarify that we did not intend to suggest that AggregateIQ is a direct part and/or the Canadian branch of Cambridge Analytica or that it has been involved in the exploitation of Facebook data or otherwise in any of the alleged wrongdoing made against Cambridge Analytica. Further we did not intend to suggest that AIQ secretly and unethically coordinated with Cambridge Analytica on the EU Referendum. We are happy to make clear that AggregateIQ is and has always been 100% Canadian owned and operated.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Theresa May has drawn up plans for a secret charm offensive aimed at persuading dozens of Labour MPs to back her Brexit deal even if it costs Jeremy Corbyn the chance to be prime minister, the Guardian has learned.
Senior Conservatives say they have already been in private contact with a number of Labour MPs over a period of several months, making the case that the national interest in avoiding a no-deal outcome is more important than forcing a general election by defeating the government on May’s Brexit deal.
Now, with talks in Brussels entering their frantic final phase, the prime minister and her party whips are stepping up efforts to win backing for a compromise deal that one minister described as a “British blancmange”.
They are convinced they will need Labour votes to win, after a fractious Tory conference in Birmingham, at which determined opponents of the prime minister’s approach, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, won plaudits for saying they would vote against it.
One Tory source compared the challenge of striking a deal with the EU27 that would satisfy both sides of his own party to “landing a jumbo jet on the penalty spot”.
Labour MPs will thus be the focus of intense lobbying, in the period between May returning from Brussels with a Brexit deal and the meaningful vote, which is expected to come about a fortnight later.
Conservative whips are rehearsing an argument, the outlines of which were clear in the prime minister’s conference speech, that the deal on offer is a pragmatic one.
One cabinet member identified a string of Labour MPs they thought would take a “reasoned approach”, such as Chris Bryant, Rachel Reeves and Lucy Powell, politicians who have been critical of Corbyn in the past.
Bryant, a remainer, said he had not had any discussions with the government and would only be able to vote for a deal if May shifted towards Labour’s position of backing a customs union. Reeves said she had no intention of backing the government.
Privately, some Labour MPs believe at least 15 of their colleagues could vote with the government, rather than appear to their constituents to be trying to “block Brexit”, with up to 30, including some frontbenchers, prepared to abstain, rather than go through the voting lobbies with hardliners such as Rees-Mogg.
James Cleverly, the Conservative deputy chairman, has been liaising with some in this group.
May appealed directly to Labour backbenchers in her conference speech when she spoke of the “heirs of Hugh Gaitskell and Barbara Castle, Denis Healey and John Smith”, saying they were on the backbenches, not in the shadow cabinet of what she called the “Jeremy Corbyn party”.
She also told the party faithful that her deal “keeps faith with the British people” and was in the national interest. And she pointed to Sajid Javid’s announcement of a tougher migration regime as evidence that her approach delivers on the referendum result by ending the free movement of people.
Meanwhile, the EU is preparing to help May build a majority by offering Downing Street a written commitment to think again on “frictionless trade” if the UK changes its red lines after it leaves the bloc.
EU leaders want to throw the prime minister a lifeline in the long-awaited political declaration on a future deal, a first draft of which is expected to emerge next week.
If she clinches a deal with her EU counterparts in the face of formidable odds, May’s team believe the national mood will shift in her favour.
And they hope a positive bounce from the financial markets will help to convince some Labour MPs to hold their noses and back a deal based on Chequers – though she did not use the word Chequers itself in her speech.
Senior Conservatives have also been stressing the aspects of May’s approach that Boris Johnson and other hard Brexiters object to – including signing up to EU regulations in key areas.
Tory whips are also working on persuading a separate group of MPs from leave-voting constituencies, such as Caroline Flint, from Don Valley, and Gareth Snell, from Stoke-on-Trent Central.
Labour’s official policy is to reject any final deal that does not meet six tests drawn up by Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, one of which is that it must offer the “exact same benefits” as membership of the single market and customs union.
Corbyn said in his conference speech that if the prime minister shifted her position on a customs union, and promised to uphold environmental regulation and workers’ rights, Labour could swing behind her. But his party is keen to secure the opportunity of pushing for a general election by voting down the deal.
A Labour source said: “Labour has been clear from the outset that if Theresa May’s Brexit deal does not meet our six tests then we will vote against it in parliament.” He added: “The Tories are wrong to say it’s a choice between Theresa May’s deal or no deal. No deal is simply not a viable option. There is no majority in parliament to take the UK off a cliff in March 2019.”
The tight parliamentary arithmetic and the likelihood of a rebellion by the Tory right means that Labour votes will be vital, at least as an insurance policy, while having the additional benefit of encouraging a split within Labour.
But Conservative estimates vary as to how many of their own MPs would rebel in such a high-stakes vote. Losing it could unleash a constitutional crisis.
Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister, has suggested as many as 80 Tory rebels could vote against the prime minister, but Tory whips hope to “burn off” the majority, reducing them to around 10 diehards.
The government is also expected to argue that, while it will be possible to amend the final motion put before parliament, there is not enough time to delay article 50 and hold a referendum before the Brexit date of 29 March, because both would require primary legislation.
However, that has been disputed by second referendum campaigners who say the EU’s 27 member states would be willing to extend article 50 to give time for the UK to legislate for and hold a referendum if it were called for by parliament in the autumn.
First published on Fri 12 Oct 2018 15.17 BST
Secret plans to allow an extension of the transition period in the Brexit withdrawal agreement could result in the UK living under all EU rules well beyond the 21 months so far negotiated, the Guardian can reveal.
The expected offer of an extension is designed to convince Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, that the “backstop” plan to avoid the creation of a hard border on the island of Ireland will never come into force.
A longer transition period would mean the whole of the country would be locked into a prolonged period of what EU diplomats have previously described as a state of “vassalage”, with the House of Commons being forced to accept Brussels regulations without having any say on them.
The revelation came as EU ambassadors were informed at a meeting on Friday evening that, following further concessions by the UK, good progress was being made on a Brexit deal in the negotiations and results could be made public as early as Monday should extra ground be made on the Irish border issue over the weekend.
Sabine Weyand, the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, told the 27 member states that the state of play would be assessed by the negotiating teams on Sunday evening. EU officials remain wary, however, that developments in the UK could still derail the deal.
In current plans, the backstop, under which the whole of the UK would stay in a customs union while Northern Ireland alone effectively stayed in the single market, would be enacted in December 2020 if a bespoke technological solution or trade deal could not be reached by then.
Foster has insisted she will not accept any Brexit deal under which Northern Ireland is treated differently to the rest of the UK.
Senior Brexiters, including the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, are understood to be planning to attend cabinet next week before deciding on whether to resign. There was alarm about the language used by Downing Street on Friday that Theresa May “would never agree to a deal that would trap the UK in a backstop permanently”. They were concerned, sources said, about any backstop proposal that risks the UK staying in the customs union without a clear date for exiting it.
The plan to include an extension clause in the withdrawal agreement would be a way to assuage concerns. It is being discussed privately by European commission and UK negotiators at the talks in Brussels. The length of any extension is yet to be agreed.
It is likely that the UK would need to make additional budget contributions on top of its £39bn divorce bill to cover the extra time it would benefit from EU membership. It would not, however, have any representation in the bloc’s decision-making institutions.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, expressed his confidence on Friday that a deal would be struck for the prime minister to sell back home.
“People who put all their chips on the hypothesis of no agreement are wrong; we must find an accord and I think we will find it,” he told Le Monde.
“We need to make substantial progress, which we’ll review next week,” Juncker added, referring to a leaders’ summit that will start on Wednesday night with a dinner at which Brexit will be the focus of the discussion.
A senior EU diplomat said that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, could arrive at the European commission on Monday, should a deal be agreed during intensive talks over the weekend.
“Mr Raab has stated he might come to Brussels on Monday,” the diplomat said. “It all depends on progress still having to be made between now and that moment. The negotiating teams are back in their offices today discussing outcome of talks over the last few days.”
May asked in September last year for a transition period, which she optimistically described in her Florence speech at the time as a period of implementation of aspects of the future trade deal, including migration controls.
The prime minister had said it would be “limited” to a period of about two years. She had added that she did not believe the British people would “want the UK to stay longer in the existing structures than is necessary”.
Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, suggested soon after that he would only be open to an extension if it proved necessary to negotiate a trade deal.
The prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Friday: “When we published our plans in June on a UK-wide customs backstop, we were absolutely clear that the arrangement would be temporary, and only in place until our future economic relationship is ready.”
Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and European commission official, and now head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said an extra six months would be needed if only for a trade deal to be negotiated and ratified by all the member states’ parliaments.
“The UK has no choice but to ask for a mechanism to extend the transition, not least to further mollify the DUP,” Rahman said. “But doing so is also a recognition of reality: both the UK and the EU’s political leadership will change next year, meaning substantive trade negotiations are unlikely to begin until September 2019 at the earliest.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group, said extending the transition “would not necessarily make the backstop redundant and would be very expensive” because of the expected additional contributions to the EU budget.
Last modified on Wed 29 Sep 2021 09.58 BST
Cambridge Analytica has undisclosed links to the Canadian digital firm AggregateIQ that played a pivotal role in the official Vote Leave campaign in 2016, which was headed by the environment secretary Michael Gove and the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, the Observer has learned.
Christopher Wylie, the former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower, has revealed that as well as playing a part in setting up the firm – which is now facing increasing scrutiny from investigators on both sides of the Atlantic over its role in harvesting Facebook data – he was also a central figure in setting up AIQ, which accounted for 40% of Vote Leave’s campaign budget.
The Observer first disclosed connections between the firms a year ago when it published details of an intellectual property licence that linked AIQ and SCL Elections, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica.
In public, the official Leave campaign and Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign were quite separate and appeared hostile to each other. But the connections between the two data firms raise fresh questions about possible overlaps between the two campaigns.
Wylie said that, in 2016, the relationship went far beyond that. Although AIQ and Cambridge Analytica appeared separate, the two were bound by a skein of threads so intimate that some Cambridge Analytica staff referred to the Canadian data firm as a “department” within the company. Wylie said that the two businesses shared the same underlying technology.
“AIQ wouldn’t exist without me,” he said. “When I became research director for SCL [the parent company of Cambridge Analytica] we needed to rapidly expand our technical capacity and I reached out to a lot of people I had worked with in the past.”
That included Jeff Silvester, his former boss, who lived in Wylie’s home town – Victoria, capital of the province of British Columbia. Wylie suggested Silvester should work for the firm in London. “But he had just had a family and wasn’t keen to go to London,” he said.
The Observer has seen an email from 11 August 2013 that Wylie sent to Silvester about SCL. “We mostly do psychological warfare work for Nato,” he said. “But a lot of projects involve a socio-political element.”
Silvester replied: “You need a Canadian office.”
He then set up AIQ with his business partner, Zack Massingham, to work on SCL and later Cambridge Analytica projects. “Essentially it was set up as a Canadian entity for people who wanted to work on SCL projects who didn’t want to move to London. That’s how AIQ got started: originally to service SCL and Cambridge Analytica projects,” said Wylie.
Last March, when the Observer started asking questions about the connection between Cambridge Analytica and AIQ, the former removed “SCL Canada” and Massingham’s phone number from its website and said that AIQ was a “former IT contractor”.
Cambridge Analytica is already under scrutiny for its work for Farage’s Leave.EU campaign, and AIQ is also involved in an investigation by the Electoral Commission into Vote Leave.
On Saturday the Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham said that “AggregateIQ has not been especially co-operative with our investigation. We are taking further steps in that matter.”
The mystery of how Vote Leave even found AIQ, a firm with just 20 staff that operated 4,760 miles away out of a cramped office above an opticians in the Canadian city of Victoria, was raised by the Observer last May.
Dom Cummings, the chief strategist for Vote Leave, told this newspaper that he found the firm “on the internet”. But cached searches show that AIQ had no internet presence at that time and a new source within Vote Leave has come forward to say that Cummings had full knowledge of the connections between the two firms.
“The idea that Dom had no idea of AIQ’s connection to Cambridge Analytica is complete bullshit,” said the source. “It was a former Cambridge Analytica employee who made the introduction. He knew exactly how the two companies operated together. He knew they’d worked together on the [former candidate for the Republican nomination for president] Ted Cruz campaign and that they shared the same underlying technology,” said the source.
But Cummings told this newspaper: “Vote Leave data never went anywhere near Cambridge Analytica and your repeated attempts to show that Vote Leave and Cambridge Analytica were somehow secretly coordinating is not just without foundation but the opposite of the truth.”
Until 2016, AIQ had no clients other than Cambridge Analytica. The lack of a website, Wylie claims, was because at the time of the referendum it was operating almost as “an internal department of Cambridge Analytica. It didn’t have a website and no contact number. The only public contact number was SCL’s website.” However, AIQ says it has had a website since it was founded in 2013.
Wylie said that AIQ managed Cambridge Analytica’s technology platform – Ripon – and its databases. “Because AIQ was operating internally, almost as a department of Cambridge Analytica, it didn’t have a website and no contact number. The only public contact number was SCL’s website,” said Wylie.
He said AIQ also had its intellectual property owned by Cambridge Analytica. “AIQ often traded as SCL Canada for ages and although a technically separate company, the IP [intellectual property] was retained by Cambridge Analytica and SCL.
“They were the ones that took a lot of data that Cambridge Analytica would acquire and the algorithms they build and translated that into the actual physical targeting online, they [AIQ] were the bit that actually disseminated stuff. AIQ managed the Ripon platform, which is Cambridge Analytica’s platform, and built a lot of the tech that would connect the algorithms to social and online advertising networks.”
Wylie claims that the two entities, certainly during the time of the referendum campaign, were operating closely. “Among internal CA staff AIQ was referred to as ‘our Canadian office’. They were treated as a department within the company,” he said.
Cummings would later say: “Without a doubt, the Vote Leave campaign owes a great deal of its success to the work of AggregateIQ. We couldn’t have done it without them.” His quote, emblazoned on the AIQ website for more than a year, disappeared on Thursday.
Silvester said that Cambridge Analytica was not in contact with AIQ during the referendum campaign. “AIQ never worked or even communicated in any way with Cambridge Analytica or any other parties related to Cambridge Analytica with respect to the Brexit campaign. Any claim that we shared Vote Leave data with Cambridge Analytica or anyone else in any way is entirely false.”
He added: “AggregateIQ has always been 100% Canadian owned and operated.”
 This article was updated on 27 March 2018 to clarify which SCL Group company AIQ’s intellectual property was licensed to; and on 29 March to clarify that Victoria, on Vancouver Island, is the capital of the province of British Columbia and is 4,760 miles, not 2,300 miles, from London.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
We now know it beyond doubt: however we leave the European Union, the result is likely to be damage that Britain is in no position to absorb. Job losses are certain. A stack of Brexit impact reports from local authorities obtained last week by Sky News identified a catalogue of dire consequences, from farms in Shetland that could be plunged into impossible losses, through social care services in East Sussex already being hit by labour shortages, to the M26 being turned into a giant lorry park. With his characteristic emollience, the trade secretary, Liam Fox, says a no-deal Brexit is now more likely than a negotiated deal; Jeremy Hunt reckons we could fall off the same cliff-edge “by accident”, and reports about stockpiled food and medicines attest to the awfulness of any such prospect.
March 2019, then, could well mark a watershed point in a drawn-out disaster. But so, in a different way, could somehow nullifying the result of the referendum and staying put. It would be comforting to think that what George Orwell called “the gentleness of the English civilisation” would mean that an overturning of 2016’s outcome would be grudgingly swallowed by the vast majority of leave voters, but I would not be so sure. Ukip is back in the polls, and has newly strengthened links to the far right. A couple of weeks ago, I was in Boston in Lincolnshire, the town whose 75.6% vote for Brexit made it the most leave-supporting place in the UK. Many of the people I spoke to were already convinced that Brexit was doomed, and full of talk of betrayal. Some of what I heard was undeniably ugly, though much of it was based on an undeniable set of facts. People were asked to make a decision, and they did. The referendum was the one meaningful political event in millions of voters’ lifetimes, and we were all assured that its result would be respected. Whatever the noise about a second referendum, this is the fundamental reason why the likelihood of Brexit interrupted remains dim.
If we take that as a given, anyone involved in progressive politics ought to focus on one imperative above all others: the defeat of the zealots who saw the dismay and disaffection of so many potential leave voters, opportunistically seized on it – and now want to pilot the country into a post-Brexit future that is completely inimical to their future. We all know who they are: in the Conservative party, their strength is built on a bedrock of true believers in a weird kind of anarcho-Thatcherism: Jacob Rees-Mogg, Fox, an array of MPs too obscure to mention. Their de facto leader now seems to be that vacant opportunist, Boris Johnson. Close enough for regular chats sit Nigel Farage and the increasingly hapless insurance tycoon, Arron Banks. We might think of them as the reckless right. The left has failed to really go for them for far too long. Part of the explanation, perhaps, lies in both an aversion to offending leave supporters who might vote Labour, and a sense that Johnson, Farage et al are an integral part of the crisis that may yet bring down the government. As a result, these people have been able to exert an influence on politics – and, by extension, the future of the country – way beyond their merit. It is time they were battled with.
Two things pull together some of the most notable members of this coalition: personal wealth sufficient to ride out Brexit with ease, and increasingly evident ties to Steve Bannon, the former strategy guru to Donald Trump, who is now spending half his time in Europe and plotting the arrival of something called The Movement, a pan-European populist organisation. Bannon has reportedly been talking to Johnson and hailed him as a key player on the world stage; his encounter with Rees-Mogg late last year similarly convinced him that the MP for North East Somerset and descendant of coalmine-owners is “one of the best thinkers in the conservative movement on a global basis”.
Keeping Bannon’s company highlights the extent to which these politicians are blazing a trail for a rightwing politics that has decisively left behind any semblance of moderation, and fully embraced the reckless mindset of the revolutionary. There is a reason why the hard Brexiteers cannot coherently explain their vision of Brexit: their chief aim is to break as many things as possible, in the belief that from the rubble might arise a kind of flag-waving, small-state, free-market utopia that even the blessed Margaret might have found unpalatable. This variety of what Naomi Klein famously called the shock doctrine sits behind Rees-Mogg’s breathtaking view of when the supposed upsides of exiting the EU might materialise: “We won’t know the full economic consequences for a very long time … The overwhelming opportunity for Brexit is over the next 50 years.” The sentiment is akin to something Che Guevera might have uttered on the eve of the Cuban revolution, but there is a twist: the City outfit Rees-Mogg co-founded in 2007, and from which he makes a great deal of money, is so unimpressed with Brexit-related “opportunities” that it has set up two investment funds in Ireland.
You can smell it a mile away: the odorous whiff of the hypocrisies and deceptions that tend to come with privilege, and the sense of Brexit as yet another chapter of the class war. In the midst of the summer’s confusion and conflict, it is time it was understood as such, and the real story of the last three or four years was told: of a cadre of moneyed wreckers cynically manipulating a mess of resentments that their own politics triggered back in the 1980s, cheating their way to victory, and then attempting to bring their revolution full circle by treating millions of people like so much cannon fodder.
The post-2015 Labour party would like its supporters to think it is back in the business of class politics – but having resolved to largely keep stumm about Brexit and let the government somehow destroy itself, its key voices have little to say. Even if the big trade unions are formally committed to opposing Brexit, their leaders are similarly quiet. So far, in fact, I have only heard one voice eloquently and passionately tearing into the Brexit officer class: that of the backbench Tory MP Anna Soubry, who back in mid-July rose to her feet in the Commons, eyed her Brexiteer colleagues, and cut to the quick: “Nobody voted to be poorer, and nobody voted leave on the basis that somebody with a gold-plated pension and inherited wealth would take their jobs away from them.”
She well knows something too many Tories choose to ignore: that if these people increase their influence via one of their number becoming the prime minister, they will eventually kill traditional British Conservatism for two generations at least. But the left has to wake up, too. It is the reckless right, not “Blairites” and centrists, that is the real enemy. If we want an end to the fear and anxiety that currently define the national mood and a future worth living for, these are the saboteurs who will have to be crushed.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
MPs and peers will be sent a roadmap next week detailing how they could stop Brexit by the George Soros-backed Best for Britain group, which has amassed £2.3m in donations to spend on a nationwide lobbying effort to persuade parliament to change its mind.
The group will publish a timetable as part of its “campaign manifesto” at a launch event on 8 June saying that MPs need to introduce amendments calling for a second referendum on the final deal secured by Theresa May in which remaining in the European Union is an option on the ballot paper.
Best for Britain says it is theoretically possible for a referendum to be held within 17 working days of parliament legislating for one, meaning it could be held in December. But the pressure group says the EU would allow the UK to have a second referendum as late as February or March.
Eloise Todd, the chief executive of Best for Britain, said a second referendum was necessary to ultimately settle the question of whether the UK should leave the EU: “We think people should have a chance to compare the deal we can get to the one we already have. What’s clear is we can’t have ‘a best of all worlds’ illusory Brexit as the debate about the Irish border shows.”
To have any chance of success, Best for Britain would have to win over Labour’s front bench, plus more than 10 Tory rebels and shore up the support of sceptical backbench Labour MPs in constituencies that voted for leave in the 2016 referendum.
The pressure group is stepping up its efforts to lobby 50 MPs by trying to generate pressure on them in their constituencies. It intends to take out advertisements in regional and local papers, starting on Saturday in the Scotsman, and buy up billboards in the target constituencies “as near to MPs’ offices as possible”.
Campaign adverts, which have already appeared in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool as well as in some national newspapers, are headlined “When will we know what we voted for?” and add: “We all deserve a final say on the Brexit deal”.
Best for Britain said it would spend £500,000 of its £2.3m in donations on the newspaper and outdoor advertising campaign.
The largest donor has been Soros’s Open Society Foundation, which has provided £800,000. He will not be attending next week’s launch event, but the 87-year-old financier and philanthropist gave a speech in Paris on Tuesday in which he trailed the launch, saying that Brexit was “an immensely damaging process”. He added: “Ultimately, it’s up to the British people to decide what they want to do. It would be better, however, if they came to a decision sooner rather than later.”
Labour MPs in targeted leave-supporting areas include Caroline Flint, the Don Valley MP. She supported remain in 2016 but wrote last month that the UK should respect the referendum result and that parliament should stop “game playing” and reject proposals for a second national vote. Others in the campaign group’s focus include Ian Austin in Dudley North and the newly elected Gareth Snell in Stoke-on-Trent Central.
Conservative MPs being targeted include John Stevenson, who holds the seat of Carlisle with a majority of 2,599 from Labour. Best for Britain says that future investment by multinational tyre maker Pirelli at a plant in the city remains at risk, unless the UK can at least remain part of a customs union with the EU.
The pressure group believes the majority of the British public are turned off by the Brexit debate and will only seriously re-engage once the prime minister has concluded her divorce negotiations with the EU. It is trying to train local organisers to organise street stalls or petitions with a target of having 20,000 conversations with members of the public in the 50 target seats.
The involvement of Soros in the campaign has been attacked by rightwing newspapers, with the Daily Mail describing the Hungarian-American as a “foreign billionaire” engaged in a “plot to subvert Brexit”. Best for Britain uses that coverage as part of its fundraising campaigns, encouraging people to donate and “help us take on the Daily Mail” on a gofundme page that has raised £56,000 in the past week.
Todd said: “The will of the people can be subverted by the will of the people in a second referendum. People can take a new decision based on new information.”
The campaign group is not covered by Electoral Commission regulations, which ban foreign donors, because there is no pending national vote. However, a spokesman said the group did not take money from overseas and that Soros’s donations come via the Open Society Foundation’s UK branch, which is a company registered in England and Wales, which would mean they were permissible under election law.
The campaign group hopes that several dozen MPs will attend the launch event, although does not intend to use any of its existing supporters as principal speakers. Labour MPs such as David Lammy and Jo Stevens have acted as spokespeople before, as well as Green party MP Caroline Lucas and Conservative Dominic Grieve.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
So far, we know that the Vote Leave campaign reached its spending limit before it reached the end of its money, and funnelled £625,000 into BeLeave, as well as £100,000 into Veterans for Britain. We have been told, thanks to the testimony of Shahmir Sanni, that this money didn’t even touch the bank account of BeLeave.
One piquant detail is that Sanni had been working as a volunteer, first for Vote Leave, then for BeLeave, and had hoped that this last-minute cash influx might pay for his train fares, only to find that it went straight to AggregateIQ, the data firm with links to Cambridge Analytica. If there’s a more poignant vignette about the exploited millennial – first they use his free labour, then they out him in public, then they contradict him, and they wouldn’t even stand him a Pret a Manger sandwich and a travelcard in the process – I can’t think of it.
The argument appears now to hinge on whether or not Vote Leave continued to coordinate with BeLeave. In his rebuttal, Stephen Parkinson (once Vote Leave, now working for Theresa May) released an official statement from No 10 saying that he had met Sanni through a mutual friend at university – a claim disproved by the email trail in which Sanni introduces himself through the whistleblower Christopher Wylie. Parkinson also said, in another official statement that has now been removed, that any advice given to BeLeave was in his capacity as Sanni’s “date”.
It’s a cliche, it’s been on The West Wing, everybody knows it and yet that doesn’t dent its wisdom: when a scandal breaks, the only thing to do is tell the truth, tell all of it, tell it straight away. In real life, though, this is not what happens. Instead the scandal is dismissed, the dismissals fall apart, the scandal begins to look more serious, the tone plummets, and by the time you know exactly what happened, the event has become a carrier issue for a broader debate: what kind of person are you?
Are you a privacy and transparency kind of person, or a win-any-way-you-can kind? Are you the kind who thinks we’re all being controlled by new media we can’t hope to understand, and the turbulence of the world is merely a reflection of this new wild west? Or are you the kind who thinks a few bob here and there couldn’t possibly make a difference to a result, that people aren’t idiots, and if everyone believed everything they read on Facebook, we’d all have a pair of Mahabis slippers and wake up every morning making a list of the things we’re grateful for?
Those fault lines, as vital as they are for the heating up of divisions that make our current politics so spicy, are diversionary. The use of personal data, its ethics and efficacy, is fascinating but separate. The immediate importance of this story is whether or not electoral spending limits were breached. The harmonised chorus telling investigators – including the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr, Channel 4, Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project – to stop digging has many melodies: that no breach occurred; that no amount of money could have bought this “overwhelming” result; that the electorate is bored of talking about the referendum and just wants done with it; that the Electoral Commission has already investigated twice. There is truth to every argument, in amounts varying from absolute-but-irrelevant to homeopathic, but none makes any difference to the substantive case. If we believe that democracy is made meaningful not by aerated statements in its praise but by the rules that govern its execution, and if we believe there’s a chance that those rules have been broken, it would be incurious not to check.
We can guess the shape of the next argument because it will be exactly the shape of the argument over every other hurdle to Brexit: Northern Irish border? The people have spoken (but … but what about Irish people?) Freedom of movement? The people have spoken. The referendum was an earthquake, a revolution, a surge of anger against the establishment by an honest and passionate populace. Defy them on a technicality? There’ll be blood on the streets if you do.
With a regularity that should be breathtaking but of course, being regular, no longer is, rules and laws are portrayed as the nefarious and opaque means of returning power to the hands of the authorities, whence “society” successfully wrested it 21 months ago. Yet a lawless discursive terrain, one in which rules can be fuzzed away with a deeper appeal to feelings, is nothing more than inept, early-stage authoritarianism.
Yesterday, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, gave a speech in Birmingham that was like a mirage of coherent analysis in a desert of nonsensical assertion; as unusual as it was, in that its arguments were supported and their evidence verifiable, its true distinction was practical. Starmer means to introduce an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill: should the government be defeated on the deal it brings back in October, it must then be for parliament to decide what happens next. The coming 20 years are too important to be decided by an executive that can’t even make its mind up about fish. The current choice – vote with the government or crash out of Europe, or, to give it its full Noel Edmonds title, deal or no deal – fails to meet any basic standards. It is, paradoxically, both dry and terrifying to see politics reach this pitch, where the future of so many can rest on the success or failure of an amendment.
That, ultimately, is the nature of the rule of law: like a seatbelt, it’s not interesting until you need it. Disasters aren’t averted by equally passionate forces hurtling from the other direction; rather, by the sober measures put in place in calmer times, to ensure that heady rhetoric and base cash at least undergo the scrutiny and challenge of representative democracy before they carry the day.
All parliamentarians, leave and remain, need to ask themselves what it means if Vote Leave broke the electoral rules: on what grounds would the result remain valid? And if invalid, is there any alternative to a second referendum? All of them, leave and remain, need to ask searching questions about the role of parliamentarians if it is not to shape the coming negotiations with Europe, when May and her team run out of the ideas that are already flimsy and mutable.
The first step towards healing the national divisions that everyone acknowledges is neither to heap sarcastic love upon our opponents, Boris Johnson-style, nor to harp constantly on about the will of the winners. The way back to any kind of consensus is to insist upon a parliamentary democracy with its rules and principles intact. This is what sovereignty means: building the rules together, not changing them unless it’s together, and playing by them together.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
There was a time, not so long ago, that David Davis was a great fan of the EU charter of fundamental rights. He liked it so much that he used it to take up a legal challenge against the snooper’s charter (brainchild of the-then home secretary Theresa May), which ended up in Luxembourg.
How times change. Yesterday’s draft repeal bill sees Davis knocking out the protection of the charter on the day that we exit the EU. That means a whole swath of rights and protections will be lost to British citizens if it goes through unamended. It’s true that we will still have the rights inherent in the European convention on human rights (ECHR), but the two frameworks are different. While there is some overlap, the EU charter takes up a gamut of protections which are increasingly important in our fast-evolving society.
Take the right to data protection, which Davis relied on with deputy Labour leader Tom Watson for the challenge (until Davis withdrew from the case) leading to the European court of justice ruling against the general and indiscriminate retention of emails or electronic communications by government, with serious implications for the snooper’s charter. Or take the protection of children’s rights, or the freestanding right to equality. As with every argument when human rights treaties are involved, it’s always worth digging to see precisely which rights people are comfortable about losing.
Although May has declared her commitment to workers’ rights, her record on human rights is chequered. Meanwhile, the government’s position is dubious. The parliamentary joint committee of human rights expressed serious concern about the government’s approach to safeguarding individuals’ fundamental rights post-Brexit, other than those protected under the ECHR. It noted that the government “seemed unacceptably reluctant to discuss the issue of human rights after Brexit. The minister of state responsible for human rights was either unwilling or unable to tell us what the government saw as the most significant human rights issues.” Meanwhile the UN high commissioner for human rights recently issued strong words against May’s call for human rights to be overturned if they were to “get in the way” of the fight against terror”.
Some may argue, or at least wish, that abolition of the Human Rights Act has been kicked so far into the long grass that it may not happen at all. But exit day marks a significant change in our direction of travel. No longer subject to the protections of the EU rights framework and its court, we need to make sure our constitutional and legal framework protects us. This week’s supreme court victory for John Walker, ensuring equal pension rights for his husband, was thanks to EU law, and is a timely reminder. We cannot afford to fall (or be pushed) behind European standards; indeed, our rights framework – on employment, the environmental, human rights and other important social protections – may yet be a prerequisite for trade agreements.
Parliamentary time will only be made for new laws to safeguard our rights if MPs insist. Environmental lawyers are gearing up already. Equality lawyers and groups, as well as the Equality and human rights commission, are making the case for a freestanding constitutional right to equality.
None of this may matter to a Conservative government, with its mutterings about abolishing the Human Rights Act. But the government’s position now is precarious, and ministers may have no choice but to listen.
Labour’s position on rights is to be broadly welcomed and shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer has set up a red-flag challenge on the charter, opening up the possibility for proper public debate. It’s the tip of the iceberg of course, and a year late, but it’s now or never. Rather than the warm, fuzzy words of aspirational Brexit cliche, we need a serious assessment of what we want and how we will get it. That means a clear acknowledgement of what rights we stand to lose under the repeal bill as currently drafted, and as a consequence of losing the EU rights framework more broadly. The failure to conduct impact assessments is an inexcusable derogation of public duty.
Which brings me back to David Davis. He declares, on the front page of the European Union (withdrawal) bill that its provisions are compatible with the ECHR. But right there, in the explanatory notes to the bill, is an extraordinary attempted power grab: the government wants to be able to remove the rights of EU citizens in the event of no deal, without a parliamentary vote. The charter may be on its way out, but the rights of EU nationals under the European convention will still apply. Mass litigation, and mass chaos, may follow. No wonder the joint committee was “surprised to be informed that the government saw the question of domestic protection for fundamental rights as a matter for negotiation with the other EU member states”.
Rights don’t often seem as though they matter, until they do. By then, it might be too late.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
In the months leading up to the EU referendum in June, George Osborne had two people he could always rely on to back the argument that Brexit would have immediate, dire consequences for the UK economy. One was Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. The other was Ángel Gurría, the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Osborne’s belief that voters would be swayed by fears of recession meant Lagarde and Gurría popped up regularly during the campaign. In the event, the plan did not work. Those who voted to leave the EU appeared sceptical about the forecasts produced by the IMF and the OECD – and those from the Treasury and the Bank of England, for that matter.
That scepticism has looked increasingly justified in the months since the referendum. The first prediction to go awry was that the economy would plunge into instant recession. It didn’t.
When the economy showed signs of resilience, there was a second prediction: the unexpected strength was driven by consumer spending and a different picture would be painted when figures for investment came in. Figures for investment were published last week. It was up in the third quarter.
There has been another retreat to a new fallback position. Yes, the IMF and the OECD admit, we were taken by surprise by the strength of the economy in the months after the Brexit vote and we have been forced to revise up our growth forecasts for 2016. But, take it from us, the outlook for the UK is still grim. The downturn is coming – it is simply a matter of time.
As such, the OECD expects the UK economy to slow from 2% this year to 1.2% in 2017 and 1% in 2018 – a markedly gloomier forecast than that produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility for last week’s autumn statement (1.4% and 1.7% respectively for the same time periods).
Despite the recent announcements from Google, Facebook, Apple, Jaguar Land Rover and Tata, the OECD is particularly concerned about the outlook for foreign direct investment into the UK.
Who knows, the Paris-based thinktank could be right. The Brexit divorce negotiations have yet to begin, after all. For the time being, however, the OECD should not be surprised if it is the target for the old joke: there are three sorts of economists – the ones who can count and the ones who can’t.
Last modified on Sat 2 Dec 2017 03.27 GMT
The uninitiated, on first encountering an SNP conference, might think that they were already stepping on to independent turf and that only the flourish of a civil servant’s pen was required to make it official. After two or three days of being held in the embrace of such boundless optimism you sometimes find yourself desperately seeking a dose of misery just to feel normal and Scottish once more; a Pink Floyd album perhaps, or a video of Great Scotland World Cup disasters.
Yet, courtesy of Theresa May’s constitutional intervention, the waves of optimism washing over SNP delegates at the party’s conference in Aberdeen this weekend were turned into something approaching certainty. In stating her refusal to sanction a second referendum the day after Nicola Sturgeon had finally expressed her intention to seek one, the prime minister gave the SNP a gift.
In doing so, May looked like an elderly schoolteacher spelling out the terms of detention to an errant pupil: “You can go home when I say you can go home.” Of course, she would have felt that she was occupying safe constitutional ground. The Edinburgh agreement, struck before the first independence referendum, requires the approval of No 10 to expedite the transfer of constitutional powers to enable a referendum on independence. Yet, on Thursday, May seemed merely to be haggling over the date of the referendum rather than its legitimacy.
Thereafter she and her two Scottish representatives – Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives leader, and David Mundell, the Scottish secretary – fell back on to shakier ground. They questioned the mandate of Scotland’s first minister amid flimsy rhetoric about there being no majority of support in opinion polls for a second referendum. Such blithe aspersions, though, fail to acknowledge that the 2015 Westminster election and the Holyrood election the following year were as clear an indication of the will of the Scottish people as you are likely to get.
In 2015, the SNP returned 56 out of 59 Scottish MPs to Westminster. In 2016 the party became the first in the history of Scottish democracy to gain more than 1 million votes as it stormed Holyrood again with 47% of the ballot. In each of these elections the SNP fought on a manifesto that included the pledge to seek another referendum if material circumstances changed in the UK. Even the dogs in the street know that following Brexit and the fact that 62% of Scottish voters elected to remain in the EU, material circumstances have changed significantly. The Conservative political commentator and former MP Matthew Parris freely admitted so later the same evening on the BBC’s Question Time.
In justifying her position, the prime minister stated that now was not the time to hold a referendum, when we all needed to work together to secure the best deal for Britain in the Brexit negotiations. This one won’t sail either, as, in the words of Sturgeon, up until now, “our efforts at compromise have been met with a brick wall of intransigence”.
With each ill-advised statement on the sovereignty of Holyrood, May has merely strengthened the case for Scottish independence. It doesn’t matter that Sturgeon has yet to indicate if an independent Scotland would seek early membership of the EU. What has triggered the call for a second referendum has been the high-handed and disdainful attitude of the UK government in refusing to work with Scotland over Brexit and its seeming determination to pursue a hard Brexit with no access to the single market.
That the prime minister has opted to use the future of EU nationals living in the UK, including many in Scotland, as a bargaining chip with the remaining 27 member states has strengthened Sturgeon’s conviction. The Tory government in sticking to its hardline stance on this has begun to resemble the political wing of Ukip.
In any debate about independence, the state of Scotland’s finances and the true nature of its starting deficit has been the cornerstone of the unionist argument. In recent years Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (Gers) figures have been gloomy reading for nationalists, suggesting that a starting deficit could be as much as £15bn. These numbers, though, are guesstimates that pay little heed to the exceptional needs and different spending priorities of an independent Scotland. They were established by a Tory government in 1992 for the specific purpose of showing Scotland’s finances in a bad light and cheerfully ignore that the fabled black hole in Scotland’s finances is the ultimate responsibility of a UK government, which still exerts the lion’s share of fiscal control.
Last week, the respected tax specialist Richard Murphy produced a detailed and articulate takedown of Gers. He said that they were “failing to collect the data that Scotland needs” and that they were “providing what may be some pretty poor estimates in their place”. Even so, whatever comfort has been gained by unionists in the past in dire economic forecasts is weakened when the full Brexit apocalypse becomes clear.
Yet even without all of this – Brexit; a dictatorial prime minister; the Ukip-style antipathy to foreign nationals – another referendum was always inevitable. The SNP is set fair to rule in Scotland for another generation, but crucially so too is an increasingly hard and reactionary rightwing government in England. The prospect of another 15 years of one-sided austerity, anti-trade unionism, anti-immigration, tax breaks for the super-rich tax evaders was always going to result in another referendum.
This time, though, the SNP believe that a Yes movement, which has retained its 45% support base, can win. They will be up against a weakened Better Together movement with no credible leader in Scotland and a prime minister trying to fight a war on two fronts. The fight is seeping out of some Scottish unionists, who now believe they have been misled by the UK government on Brexit and who are appalled that the UK is now following an agenda set by Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox and their desire to build another British empire.
Kevin McKenna has been nominated in this year’s Scottish Press Awards in the category of columnist of the year
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Short of being photographed skiing at Davos with Bono, nothing says “global elite” like trotting up the steps to your very own private plane.
So no wonder Channel 4 pounced delightedly on the revelation that Nigel Farage recently chartered a private jet to reach Strasbourg, in an interview with the man himself that swiftly went viral. Who’s the man of the people now, eh?
Which is all very amusing, but ultimately changes nothing much. It would barely matter at this stage if it turned out that pint seemingly welded to the former Ukip leader’s hand was actually made of water and food colouring, just as it has never seemed to matter to his supporters that he’s a ex-public schoolboy turned City gent and politician. He will always be an anti‑establishment hero in some eyes because Nigel Farage says things “the establishment” does not. If he just keeps on saying those things, ripping into unpopular truths that politicians who actually care about the consequences of their actions feel obliged to defend, then he and his allies will thrive as long as “establishment” remains an insult. And that’s what any remainer longing for a second referendum needs to confront head-on.
Last week I chaired a panel at an emergency conference in Westminster on prospects for a people’s vote, at which good people grappled impressively hard with the question of how to look more like the insurgents next time. There was widespread agreement when the political organiser Paul Hilder, co-founder of the social action platform Crowdpac, one speaker pointed out that remain would need its own answer to the obvious leave message of “Tell them again”, but louder. For people who only voted Leave because they wanted someone to listen for once, an invitation to show those patronising bastards they can’t ignore you could resonate just like “take back control”. So what’s the comeback?
There were plenty of sensible ideas tossed around, about rooting the campaign in local communities rather than sending celebrities on the train up from London to lecture the people of Hull and Hartlepool, and using tech entrepreneurs or music industry bosses rather than stuffy CEOs to represent the voice of business. But the difficulty second-referendum campaigners have in countering anti-establishment rage is firstly that they generally are the establishment – a fact that would be obvious no matter how many former prime ministers are locked in a cupboard next time – and secondly that there is a glaring problem for any potential cross-party campaign in agreeing on how that establishment has failed some voters in the past.
It hasn’t failed them anywhere near as badly as Farage did, obviously. Remainers were remainers precisely because they didn’t want to wake up to news that pharmacists are already running out of some drugs due to Brexit stockpiling. They voted for the status quo because they worried that promising the voters moonshine while energetically fuelling anti-immigrant hatred would not end well. And – surprise, surprise – it hasn’t.
But nobody loves a smartarse. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. You’re not going to win an argument to stay in the European Union, or even anything close to it, without offering a better answer to the underlying grievances that drove the leave vote and acknowledging the past failures that have discredited conventional politicians, allowing populists their opening. The problem for a cross-party remain campaign is that both parties have fundamentally different answers to those challenges.
Partly that’s because they are talking to different people. Brexit wasn’t won only in Barnsley and Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, in the downtrodden Labour-voting towns conjured up every time this argument arises. It was won in bits of rural Buckinghamshire that are not remotely left behind, and in retirement homes on the Dorset coast, and among golf club bores in blazers who wouldn’t remotely see a problem with Nigel Farage chartering a plane to Strasbourg.
This kind of leave voter was more attracted by the romance of the argument, the sound of freedom, the thrill of the wind in their hair; having personally done rather nicely out of the conventional political orthodoxy, they rebelled against it largely for rebellion’s sake. The last Remain campaign, with all its dreary warnings about what could go wrong, will have sounded nagging and nannyish to them.
Some of them have admittedly gone a little quiet now that it looks as if Nanny might have known best. The appeals to common sense from Tory soft Brexiters arguing that not long ago they could barely have dreamed of getting this far away from Brussels, are aimed at this mildly sheepish demographic. Others might just about heed a remain campaign if it was led by Jeremy Clarkson, say. But they would double down in outrage if confronted by the argument many remainers on the left are most comfortable making, which is that working-class leavers in neglected northern towns were conned into laying wholly legitimate grievances at the wrong door.
What many in the audience of last week’s conference longed to hear from a People’s Vote campaign was a no holds barred case against Tory austerity, making clear that the hardships many are suffering have nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with choices made at home. David Lammy showed how to do it recently in a powerful parliamentary intervention, arguing people have been conned. In its party political broadcasts, Labour too has begun constructing an argument that people were right to want change but that the change they actually need is Corbynomics. It’s as hard to imagine Jeremy Corbyn joining in a campaign where he wasn’t free to make that argument as Theresa May going along with a campaign where he was.
Since the one thing May and Corbyn do agree on is that they don’t want a second referendum, it may simply never happen. (As one Labour MP who has held private discussions with Downing Street over Brexit puts it, in some ways they’re oddly similar characters; both as stubborn as they are mistrustful.) Perhaps parliament will reach around them to produce a compromise soft Brexit of its own devising.
But that still leaves room for a Ukip 2.0 movement to emerge, cynically blaming the wicked establishment’s failure to deliver on “true” Brexit for everything that goes wrong over the next decade. One way or another, the arguments that led us here have to be confronted once the immediate crisis is over. And we’re going to need better answers than calling the other guy a hypocrite, even if it’s true.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Theresa May’s Brexit stance has come under concerted attack from within her party, with senior Tories lining up to warn against making fresh concessions to Brussels as negotiations reach their final, frantic stage.
Ministers have been told to expect extensive discussions of Brexit at next week’s cabinet meeting; and with some preferring a looser, Canada-style deal to May’s Chequers plan, pressure is mounting on Downing Street to change course.
The Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, defended the government’s strategy robustly in the House of Commons on Tuesday, insisting the UK and Brussels were closing in on “workable solutions” to the outstanding issues.
“These negotiations were always going to be tough in the final stretch. That’s all the more reason why we must hold our nerve, stay resolute and focused. I’m confident we’ll reach a deal this autumn,” he said.
But his remarks were ridiculed by Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, who said: “We’ve been here before, many times ... It’s like Groundhog Day. We get the same old story. The secretary of state pretends everything is going according to plan.”
Earlier, Penny Mordaunt, a leading cabinet Brexiter, refused to explicitly back May’s Chequers plan, simply saying she would not give a “running commentary” on the proposals.
While she insisted May had her support for now, the international aid secretary raised the possibility that this could be conditional if the final deal looked like an “attempt to derail or fudge” the outcome of the Brexit vote.
“The prime minister can count on my support. But what I would say is that we don’t know where this is going to end up. We are at a critical moment now. The ball is firmly back in the EU’s court; we are waiting for them to respond,” she said.
David Davis, who resigned as Brexit secretary after the Chequers summit, has written to every Conservative MP warning that remaining on the current course, which envisages a “common rulebook” for goods, would have dire consequences at the ballot box.
“If we stay on our current trajectory we will go into the next election with the government having delivered none of the benefits of Brexit, with the country reduced to being a rule-taker from Brussels, and having failed to deal with a number of promises in the manifesto and the Lancaster House speech,” he said.
Davis’s pointed intervention was one of several by prominent party figures on Tuesday. One senior Brexiter said: “It’s part of a carefully calibrated and timed campaign and there is more to come.”
Mark Harper, a former chief whip who is broadly supportive of May, added his name to those who believe a looser, Canada-style trade relationship would have a better chance of getting through the Commons.
Harper said he had been alarmed by reports that Tory whips were relying on winning over Labour MPs to their cause when the government brings a Brexit deal back to parliament.
“I would prefer the prime minister to come back with a deal that wins over the Conservative party, which means she can be confident she’ll get it through,” he said. “She needs to have her own team behind her.”
He said May’s position would inevitably evolve as negotiations progressed – but it should be towards a looser, Canada-style trade deal, not a closer, Norway-type relationship.
“I think there’s a place she could get to where she could pretty much get every single Conservative MP onside,” he said.
Steve Baker, Davis’s former colleague at the Department for Exiting the EU, also criticised the Chequers approach – and claimed 40 of his colleagues were determined to vote against it, whatever the consequences.
In the Commons, Raab rejected calls from Brexiters for May to dump her Chequers plan and go for a Canada-style agreement instead. He told Baker his free trade proposal would be “a shortcut to no deal”.
“While it is theoretically possible for us to do that, we can’t do it and have a deal with the EU,” he said, pointing out that Brussels had insisted on a legally binding backstop to the Irish border issue that would in reality make a free trade deal impossible.
Raab also denied the government was preparing to accept the whole of the UK effectively remaining in a customs union indefinitely, as a way of avoiding a hard border in Ireland. Pressed on the issue by MPs, he said any extension of a customs union would have to be “temporary, limited and finite”.
The deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist party, Nigel Dodds, angrily warned the government against any deal that would separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. “We’ve been clear about that from day one. It’s why we had the debacle [over the backstop] in December. Let’s not repeat that mistake.”
Last week, May warned her colleagues at the party conference in Birmingham: “If we all go off in different directions in pursuit of our own visions of the perfect Brexit, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.”
With intensive talks taking place in Brussels all week, backbench MPs critical of May’s approach are making their views known. Brexiters inside May’s cabinet are also watching developments closely.
Those calling on May to “chuck Chequers” are concerned that the “common rulebook” will mean too much alignment with EU rules, and frictionless trade for goods will restrict the UK’s ability to strike future trade deals.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
You may not realise it, but Arlene Foster is one of the most powerful politicians in contemporary Europe. In the bizarre and tumultuous state of British politics, this fact is one that will stand among the most historically significant. It is an extraordinary situation. Foster is a member of a regional legislative assembly that hasn’t sat for nearly 1,000 days, the leader of a party with just 10 MPs, and the subject of an inquiry that may well see the end of her political career within weeks.
But at this time, she holds the key to Brexit. And the stability of the pound, the constitution of the UK, the size of the European Union and the future of the continent are in no small way affected by her decisions.
So what is Foster proposing? Her apparent acceptance of a Northern Ireland-only solution stands out in luminescent colours from her recent comments in Dublin. But we should not assume that this clears the way for a Northern Ireland-specific backstop returning to the table, and thus speeding us through to the withdrawal agreement.
Having spent the past two years being decisive about very little, other than resistance and naysaying, Foster is now under a great deal of pressure to move away from her “blood-red line” against any post-Brexit differential between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Even those pushing alternative arrangements acknowledge that there is no way around putting some controls in the Irish Sea after Brexit. It was in Dublin, of all places, last week, where Foster decided to push forward. The question being asked across the European continent now is: how far did she move?
In some ways, it could be seen to be a moot point. If Boris Johnson can lose almost two dozen of his party’s MPs without so much as a shrug, why would he worry too much about what the DUP thinks? The loss of the confidence of the DUP, which long failed to supply his predecessor with the promised votes, is hardly a game-changer.
But the truth is that what the DUP does now will have a determining role in Northern Ireland’s future – for better or worse. And, with that, it will shape the whole outcome of Brexit, including whether it leads, sooner or later, to the dissolution of the United Kingdom itself.
It is absolutely critical that Foster brings unionism with her in accepting the prospect of distinctive treatment for Northern Ireland. This is no small task. Unionism has rallied behind the notion that the withdrawal agreement is anathema to the union itself. Polls have shown that, in the space of a year, support for the backstop among unionists in Northern Ireland has plummeted. This is in no small part owing to the antagonism towards it led by Foster herself.
There is a risk that the UK could exit the EU with a deal but at the cost of stability in Northern Ireland. If unionists are left feeling betrayed by the DUP, then perhaps the party could seek to regain credibility by offloading Foster as leader. But if unionists are left feeling shafted by the British government, then it means a breakdown of trust that will be incredibly difficult to restore.
Of course, the nature of Northern Ireland means that this tension works both ways. If the pressure for a deal sees the Irish government concede so much on the withdrawal agreement that nationalists in Northern Ireland feel exposed and vulnerable, then this too would rock the foundations of the peace process.
Looking more closely at what Foster said in Dublin, it remains fairly clear that the tension that has always been there in DUP (and Conservative party) aspirations for Brexit remains absolutely entrenched: that is, the stubborn belief that it is possible for the UK to leave the single market and customs union yet there be no trade barriers within the UK, and frictionless trade on the island of Ireland.
The backstop cut through this tension but left unionists and Brexiters feeling hard done by. But the backstop is a notion and term that is more toxic for unionists than that of “all-island arrangements”.
Indeed, Foster notes that the DUP “recognises the unique history and geography” of Northern Ireland, which in turn gives a certain logic to specific arrangements for Northern Ireland. While this is something the party has flatly contradicted in repeated comments over the past year, it can also claim that this has long been its position.
In its 2017 manifesto, the DUP sought Northern Ireland-specific solutions, and it wanted to see the “particular circumstances of Northern Ireland” fully reflected in the negotiations.
It is significant that there are strong similarities between these aims and those of all the other main parties in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin has long argued for special designated status for the region. The Alliance party has argued for a special deal for Northern Ireland. The SDLP has argued for its “bespoke” status. And the Ulster Unionists have sought its designation as a special enterprise zone.
If Foster can now act to solidify this common ground between nationalists, unionists and others in Northern Ireland, and if she can steer a path towards an acceptable withdrawal agreement and future deal, it would be a rare and momentous act of leadership that could change the course of European history.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
I didn’t come easily to the position of supporting another vote on leaving the EU. I resisted for more than a year, for a number of reasons. The main reason was that my constituency was a leave majority, but also, I found some of the arguments and rhetoric of the campaign for a People’s Vote arrogant. It was some way distant from my experience of leave voters. The people where I live are not stupid, they are not racist, they are more than capable of looking at the facts presented at any given time and deciding, with either their heads, hearts or in most cases both, what is best for them and their families.
The facts of course have changed. We now know much more about what is on offer. The political class has been forced to remember that Northern Ireland exists, and has come face to face with the reality of leaving an institution we have become completely integrated with.
Parliament has completely failed to come to a decision, not because MPs are useless and out for themselves (although there is a definite smattering of that), but because there is no perfect, gold-plated outcome to all of this. It seems to have come as a huge surprise to those in Westminster that the UK is made up of many different places with many different people who think many different things. Representative democracy in a hung parliament means deadlock, because alas, we do not all dream the same dreams or want the same things. That is what people voted for in the general election in 2017.
I support taking the decision back to the people because I am certain it will not be made in Westminster. I trust the people where I live to look at the facts as they exist today and make the right decision. It is not because I hate what they said last time and want another go. This is not a game.
It will not be easy. We have to accept that we are not coming out of this period unscathed. Trust is low, the economy and jobs are at risk, democracy will be called into question – whether that be direct or parliamentary. But, you know what, it already is. I already wade through voices calling me a traitor, and threatening to “put me down”. I’m already told daily that my support of more democracy, of asking people what they think of where we are today, is going to unleash dark forces and rightwing terror. Fear of evil will only ever make me stand taller. The Labour party does not appease threats from purveyors of hate. Those purveyors are already at it anyway; one of my friends is dead and another was very nearly taken too. The Labour party shouldn’t let them win by offering mealy-mouthed, halfway-house appeasement because we are scared. I’m much more scared of bowing to hate than of fighting it.
There has to be a different way to win back trust, to build hope and foster political honesty. We must at least try. This stuff isn’t easy, but what massive change ever was? The bottom line is this: Westminster is stuck and I trust those who I live among to unstick it one way or another. The Labour party has always been the voice of the people; let’s let them use their voices.
 Jess Phillips is Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley
I was one of the 25 Labour MPs who wrote to Jeremy Corbyn recently asking him not to back a second referendum on Brexit. Despite what you might hear, a second referendum is not the Labour party’s preferred option: that is to get a deal with the EU, and that is why we are in talks with the government at the moment. We have always said that we wanted to negotiate a deal that allows companies in Britain to continue frictionless trade with Europe and one which protects jobs and workers. I want us to continue fighting for this.
A second referendum will only serve to divide the country further. I would need a daily stream of voters telling me that they had changed their minds and wanted another vote in order to be convinced to overturn a democratic result that all politicians at the time said they would honour.
The Brexit vote has in some ways been a class issue – a working-class revolt against a political status quo that has neglected them for far too long. Only one in four Brexit voters had a degree, whereas a whopping 80% of British graduates under 34 voted to remain in the EU. Many leave voters see this as an opportunity to rebuild a country that works for them outside of the European Union.
In one poll, 58% of those who voted to leave said that politicians don’t listen to people like them. Holding a second referendum would just prove that point, and far from being an exercise in democracy, could result in putting off millions of British citizens from ever voting again. I was a remain voter, but a million more people in this country voted to leave than to remain, and we must respect that result. I have spoken to thousands of people who voted for Brexit since 2016, but could count on two hands the number of people who have changed their mind – there has been no seismic shift of opinion. Rather than fantasising about overturning the result, what we need to do now is to bring the country together with a deal that works for both sides of the argument. That is going to mean compromise.
The underlying problems in Britain – the unfair distribution of wealth and power – were not created by being in the EU and will not be solved by leaving. For that, we need a Labour government.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
“I’ve lost count of the number of times Ivan threatened to resign.” Thus is an adviser to David Cameron quoted in Tim Shipman’s indispensable book on the EU referendum, All Out War. And now, at last, Sir Ivan Rogers has made good on his threats, stepping down from his position as the UK’s top diplomat in Brussels.
That he was due to leave in November does not soften the blow to Theresa May, nor diminish the embarrassment to her government. This year is all-important to her long-term Brexit strategy, and it has begun with an abrupt departure that she could well have done without.
Consider: the PM and her ministers await the supreme court’s ruling on parliament’s right to debate article 50 – which she has repeatedly pledged will be triggered before the end of March. Before Christmas, she indicated to the Commons liaison committee that she would be setting out a framework for Britain’s departure from the EU in the first months of 2017 – presumably, though not necessarily, in a speech. Her new year message emphasised the need for national unity, as remainers and Brexiteers continue to squabble and fragment into groupuscules.
Behind the scenes, No 10 officials have been engaged in heavy lifting to prepare for the official two-year negotiations with our soon-to-be former EU partners. To this end, the talented British ambassador to Brazil, Alex Ellis, takes over as director general in the Department for Exiting the European Union on 19 January. By temperament, May is a politician who likes smooth surfaces and calm deliberation. In this context, the sudden departure of Rogers is a brick thrown into the pond of her serenity.
Westminster conspiracists are busily concocting elaborate theories about “Ivexit”. Some say that Rogers signed his own P45 when he told ministers last year that a new trade deal with the EU might take a decade to conclude. Others whisper that personality was more important in this case than policy: that Sir Ivan, appointed by Cameron in 2013, could not get on with the new No 10 and would never have lasted until November.
The truth probably lies somewhere between the two. A diplomat so well-versed in the silken culture and mores of Brussels – and so at home there – was always going to clash with a government embroiled in the atavistic politics of Brexit.
As a former home secretary, May is perfectly well-acquainted with the nuances and complexities of the EU. But she expected and required more from the UK’s permanent representative than to be reminded querulously of the obstacles to exit. As a prime minister who owes her job to a referendum that brought down her predecessor, she wanted the top diplomat in Brussels to offer solutions – and fast.
That said, Sir Ivan has long been a favourite (and useful) whipping boy for senior Tories. It suited them to roll their eyes, accuse him of going native and blame the failure of this or that negotiation upon his lack of patriotic fervour. Now they won’t have Rogers to kick around.
He will be replaced quickly enough, doubtless by someone billed by No 10 as a “safe pair of hands” – code for “more competent”. May will weather this particular squall. But a troubling question will linger and loom over the Brexit talks long after Sir Ivan has moved on: what if he was right?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.44 GMT
Brexit is “oven ready” and will be “done” on 31 January of next year. True enough. Except, of course, virtually nothing will actually change – except that we lose our voice and vote, and what remains of our influence on the future course of the EU. We’ll still be in the single market, free movement will continue, as will our financial contributions, and there will be no tariffs or customs checks, either between Dublin and Calais or in the Irish Sea. Instead, we will enter an uneasy interregnum, the so-called “transition” period – really a standstill period.
So what happens next? A trade deal with the EU by the end of 2020, as per the Conservative manifesto promise, a pledge repeated by Michael Gove on Sunday. The manifesto also included a promise that there would be no extension to this period. And, according to No 10 sources quoted in the Sunday Times, the deal would be on terms dictated by the hardline Brexiteers, meaning no “level playing field” provisions that would stop the UK setting its own course on labour rights, environmental protection and state aid.
There’s just one problem. There’s no chance of the EU agreeing to such a deal. No level playing field – not to mention concessions in other politically sensitive areas, such as fisheries – means no trade deal.
So that appears to leave the government with two unattractive options. First, no trade deal at all, with the transition period ending at the end of 2020. This wouldn’t be no deal; the withdrawal agreement, including citizens’ rights, our continuing financial obligations and the special arrangements for Northern Ireland, would still bind both sides. But it would be the hardest of hard Brexits for British business, with tariffs, customs controls and a cliff-edge exit from the single market. The long-term economic damage, according to both the government’s own modelling and independent estimates by UK in a Changing Europe, – in a report that I worked on – would be up to 8% of GDP, or £2,500 per head. On the plus side, we’d get our fish back, although we’d have to eat them ourselves rather than sell them to the rest of Europe as we mostly do now. And, perhaps most damaging of all, there would be a full customs and regulatory border, with tariffs and more, in the Irish Sea.
So if this hardly seems appealing, what’s the alternative? Once again, we’re entering into a negotiation with a much larger and economically more powerful partner, and with the guillotine of a hard (albeit largely self-imposed) deadline. The outcome seems obvious: a deal, but on the EU’s terms. Those are best summed up by my former, and ever-pessimistic (or, as he would put it, realistic) colleague Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU: “A quick and dirty tariff- and quota-free deal, involving stringent level-playing-field conditions and an agreement on fisheries - their [the EU’s] key objectives, not the UK’s.”
But while economically somewhat less damaging overall, this would have some major drawbacks. For some industries, such as the automotive and chemical industries, not to mention tradeable services, tariffs are the least of their Brexit-induced problems – the impact would still be severe.
And perhaps more important than the economic impacts would be the administrative ones. With transition ended and a deal in place, free movement will end, and the prime minister will have no excuse for not implementing a new immigration system. The problem is that hardly anyone thinks such a system can be delivered in a year. Still worse, it seems highly unlikely that the UK will be ready, either economically, administratively or politically, to implement the new arrangements for Northern Ireland.
So is Johnson caught between a rock and a hard place? Yes, but remember he’s been here before. As recently as October, it seemed his choice was no deal or political suicide. And yet he found a way through. He agreed to the EU’s proposals in substance – the borders of the single market will be in the Irish Sea, not on the island of Ireland. He accepted a deal that he and the hardline Brexiteers had previously claimed – with some justification – would mean a part of the UK will remain, from a trade and regulatory perspective, in the EU. But the EU also blinked. When it came to it, it preferred to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and make some token, but politically important, drafting changes, to sticking to its public line and forcing a cliff edge for its own businesses that trade with the UK.
So what would that look like this time? The withdrawal agreement is clear: unless both sides agree to an extension by July, it can’t happen. And the UK is also now clear: there can be no such extension. There is no obvious way through, either legally or politically.
And yet, when November comes, and we’re faced with another cliff edge, and another deadline, will either side want to force us over? Recent history says no. Of course, it won’t be called an “extension”, and what happens next won’t be called “transition”. Both political and legal flexibility will be required on both sides. But the fundamental interests of both sides in preserving the status quo will remain. So I’m willing to make a bet – with the aforementioned Rogers, no less – that come January 2021, one way or another, the UK will – more than four years after the referendum – still be in the single market. In little over a year, we’ll find out who was right.
First published on Tue 29 May 2018 15.28 BST
A campaign to secure a second Brexit referendum within a year and save the UK from “immense damage” is to be launched in days, the philanthropist and financier George Soros has announced.
The billionaire founder of the Open Society Foundation said the prospect of the UK’s prolonged divorce from Brussels could help persuade the British public by a “convincing margin” that EU membership was in their interests.
In a speech on Tuesday ahead of the launch of the Best for Britain campaign – said to have already attracted millions of pounds in donations – Soros suggested to an audience in Paris that changing the minds of Britons would be in keeping with “revolutionary times”.
Best for Britain had already helped to convince parliamentarians to extract from Theresa May a meaningful vote on the final withdrawal deal, he said, and it was time to engage with voters, and Brussels, to pave the way for the UK to stay in the bloc. It is expected to publish its campaign manifesto on 8 June.
Soros, 87, said: “Brexit is an immensely damaging process, harmful to both sides ... Divorce will be a long process, probably taking more than five years. Five years is an eternity in politics, especially in revolutionary times like the present.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the British people to decide what they want to do. It would be better however if they came to a decision sooner rather than later. That’s the goal of an initiative called the Best for Britain, which I support.
“Best for Britain fought for, and helped to win, a meaningful parliamentary vote which includes the option of not leaving at all. This would be good for Britain but would also render Europe a great service by rescinding Brexit and not creating a hard-to-fill hole in the European budget.
“But the British public must express its support by a convincing margin in order to be taken seriously by Europe. That’s what Best for Britain is aiming for by engaging the electorate. It will publish its manifesto in the next few days.”
Soros said he feared the EU could be heading towards another major financial crisis triggered by austerity and populist political parties intent on blowing the bloc apart.
Sounding the alarm as financial markets fell into turmoil on Tuesday amid a deepening political crisis in Italy, Soros said the EU had lost its way since the 2008 banking crash and required radical transformation in order to survive.
“The EU is in an existential crisis. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” he said.
However, Soros said he was convinced it was the ideal time for the EU to reform itself and prepare the ground for the UK staying inside the bloc.
“The economic case for remaining a member of the EU is strong, but it will take time for it to sink in,” Soros said. “During that time the EU needs to transform itself into an association that countries like Britain would want to join, in order to strengthen the political case.
“Such a Europe would differ from the current arrangements in two key respects. First, it would clearly distinguish between the European Union and the eurozone. Second, it would recognise that the euro has many unresolved problems and they must not be allowed to destroy the European Union.”
Italian bonds dropped sharply on Tuesday, pushing the country’s borrowing costs to the highest levels in more than four years as concerns grew that the EU’s third-largest economy could exit the single currency.
Sergio Mattarella, the country’s president, vetoed the appointment of a Eurosceptic as finance minister over the weekend, laying the ground for fresh elections later this year.
Hungarian-born Soros said an “addiction to austerity” at the heart of Europe was harming economic development, which had in turn been exploited by populist politicians to stoke anti-EU support.
“As a result [of austerity], many young people today regard the EU as an enemy that has deprived them of jobs and a secure and promising future,” he said.
Soros said there were still steps that could be taken to make the EU more appealing to ordinary voters who had been let down by Brussels since 2008.
Calling for an EU-funded Marshall-style plan for Africa worth about €30bn (£26bn) a year, he said migratory pressures across Europe could be relieved by helping developing nations. He called for the EU to abandon rules requiring member states to join the euro, lest they eventually combine with other EU rules to “destroy” the project altogether.
Echoing a call made by David Cameron before the Brexit vote, he argued for the EU to allow member states to pursue “multi-track” relations with the bloc, rather than “ever closer union”.
“Europe needs to do something drastic in order to survive its existential crisis. Simply put, the EU needs to reinvent itself,” he said.
This year, Soros moved to defy his critics over his £400,000 donation to Best for Britain by pledging an additional £100,000 to support efforts to fight Brexit. OSF’s total funding for pro-Europe campaigns and organisations is now at more than £800,000.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
“It’s getting tickly now,” Alex Ferguson famously observed during a title run-in. “Squeaky bum time, I call it.” This was in 2003, seven years after arguably the definitive Premier League bum-squeak. More of a follow-through, in fact, as the then Newcastle manager, Kevin Keegan, succumbed to his now legendary Ferguson-induced rant. “I will love it if we beat them – love it!” he frothed, of Manchester United. The rest, of course, is history.
To watch Theresa May come out of this week’s EU summit with just six weeks of negotiating time left on the Brexit clock, and declare the EU was risking the lives of its citizens by not striking a security deal with her, was to experience a similar look-away moment. The prime minister is this close to jabbing her finger at the camera and declaring the EU27 have got to go to Middlesbrough and get something. Of the many roles in which May has cruelly miscast herself, that of crap blackmailer is the most excruciating.
Still, what happened at the business end of things – the by now traditional bit of an EU summit where May has to leave while the other countries talk about the important stuff? Pas devant les enfants, as my grandmother used to say. In summary, they seem to have come to a tentative arrangement on migration. And the EU’s Michel Barnier appears to be broadly in agreement with the Queen Vic’s Danny Dyer.
Look, without wishing to involve you in what might sarcastically be described as “my process”, I no longer remark that things are “sentences I never expected to type”. We passed the Typed Lands in 2016. Wherever this place is, this is normal. Nor does my keyboard raise so much as a ??? to report that the prime minister’s official spokesman was today formally asked if the prime minister concurred with EastEnders actor Dyer that her predecessor, David Cameron, was “a twat”. This is where we live now. Try not to choke on it.
If you haven’t seen Dyer’s outburst on ITV’s Good Evening Britain, I urge you to take 36 seconds to do so. As fellow studio guests including Pamela Anderson and Jeremy Corbyn cock their heads thoughtfully, Danny begins by observing that Brexit is a riddle. “So what’s happened to that twat David Cameron, who called it on?” he wonders. The inquiry turns out to be rhetorical, as the Real Football Factories legend expands: “He’s in Europe, in Nice with his trotters up, yeah? Where is the geezer?! I think he should be held account for it. He should be held account for it.”
As the producers pan out to get reaction shots from studio guests such as Harry Redknapp and the Conservative party deputy chairman, James Cleverly – like I said, this is where we live now – Dyer can be heard lobbing in a final “Twat”. Speak for England, Danny! Or rather, speak for south-east metropolitan centres, Scotland and Northern Ireland! The rest think you’re the twat, but that’s showbiz.
Wherever you stand on Brexit, though, we can at least thank Dyer for his hilarious addition to Westminster’s annals of quotable quotes. God knows, they can always use the material. I was reminded this week that Neil Hamilton once won the Spectator’s Parliamentary Wit of the Year – an award that certainly puts Nigel Mansell winning Sports Personality of the Year twice into perspective.
Danny’s latest pensée is easily as amusing as his rumination on the 11th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. “Can’t believe it’s been nearly 11 years since them slags smashed into the twin towers,” this ran. “Still freaks my nut out to this day.”
It is, however, not as amusing as the big-hitting Brexiters and four-star political commentators who have spent the hours since Dyer’s Brexit communique mobilising to condemn the reaction to it. Why are people listening to an actor, wonder various sorts who take themselves rather too seriously. I don’t know, guys – but let’s face it, they’ll probably have better luck down the bookies than if they listen to newspaper columnists.
Why is his ghastly swearing being lionised, runs another line of inquiry. That I do know the answer to – it’s because it’s funny. And at this stage in the Brexit U-bend, arguably the best we can hope for is a shit deal on services and a cheap giggle. Contrary to what half you lot told us, they can’t do us a bespoke/haute-couture/red-white-and-blue/money-spraying Brexit. The pretend landlord of the Queen Victoria pub appears to have figured this out, and is trying to salvage a point from the tie. Why haven’t you?
Chiefly amusing, however, is the erstwhile Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men presenter scooping David Cameron on his own memoirs. I don’t know what the former prime minister has been tossing off in his £25,000 shepherd’s hut over the past 23 months, but I can already tell you it will lack the sparse precision of Dyer’s summary. In fact, if they want it to sell the book to people other than nerdy completists like me, then the publishers should consider running Danny’s precis as a cover quote. I’ve no idea what the book’s title will be – let’s hope it’s one of Cameron’s catchphrases, like It Was The Right Thing To Do – but I’d love to see the words “Twat … Danny Dyer” emblazoned above the title, to bring in the punters.
As for how Theresa May will characterise the coming summer of heatwaves and cabinet warfare in her own eventual memoirs, who can say? But with the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator privately warning there are just six weeks to go before both sides are required to sign a final deal, the situation must – in the words of the Chips Channon de nos jours – be freaking her absolute nut out.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
Conservative leadership candidate of the week is Philip Hammond. Well, it is his turn, and he has been in clover since the election, relishing his transition from soon-to-be-sacked to impregnable chancellor. His Mansion House speech on Tuesday last week was a triumphant brandishing of the spreadsheet at his fallen or diminished foes in Downing Street.
Over the weekend, there has been much gossip about a supposed “dream ticket” strategy whereby Hammond, supported by David Davis, would take the Tory helm and steady the ship until the party’s next generation is ready to assume the mantle of leadership.
There are two immediate problems with this plan. First, no self-respecting politician devotes a career to constituency surgeries, late-night votes and red boxes at 1am in the hope of being hailed one day as a “caretaker leader”. To be told “you’ll do for now” is not much of an endorsement.
Second, I do not see Davis as anyone’s running mate – which I mean as a compliment. He gave serious thought to running in 2016 and would be changing the habits of a lifetime if he were not at least to keep his options open in these turbulent times.
It is said that, at 68, the Brexit secretary is too old for the top job. Since Jeremy Corbyn is the same age, and has just conquered Glastonbury, this would seem an otiose objection. More to the point, Davis is a fitness fanatic, who cannot see a sharp incline without ascending it. I would like to watch some of his younger critics keep up with him on a fell walk.
What Hammond and Davis do share is an understanding that the outcome of the Brexit talks is much more important than the identity of the next Conservative leader. When, precisely, Theresa May bows to the inevitable, who replaces her, and by what means: all this will do much to shape the outcome of the next election. But the deal on Britain’s departure from the EU – if there is a deal – will determine the nation’s global status and trajectory for decades to come.
Like Donald Tusk, I am a fan of John Lennon, and have dreamed of a world in which Brexit might be reversed. But one of the few certainties delivered by the election was the dashing of this dream. Both main parties were unambiguously committed not only to leaving the EU but the single market. We are on our way out, and that’s that.
Labour’s Chuka Umunna has performed noble work in trying to square the circle and explore structures whereby the UK might remain part of le marché unique. But I cannot realistically see any party getting away with a deal in which Britain remained subject to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice.
Indeed, the persistent distinction drawn between “hard” and “soft” Brexit seems to me a rhetorical device rather than a reflection of reality. A better way of framing the argument is to ask whether our negotiators’ priority will be to reduce immigration; or to protect prosperity and jobs.
Identity versus economy? Xenophobia versus trade? This is a real choice and an unavoidable one, whatever some Brexiteers may say about cake retention and consumption.
There is no doubt where Hammond stands in this debate. As he put it last week, reinforcing what he has long said: “When the British people voted last June, they did not vote to become poorer or less secure. They did vote to leave the EU. And we will leave the EU. But it must be done in a way that works for Britain. In a way that prioritises British jobs, and underpins Britain’s prosperity.”
Less appreciated is the pragmatism of Davis’s position. Routinely caricatured as a hardline rightwinger, he is, in fact, fully aware of the economic risks of insufficiently porous borders. He grasps that his task is to translate a fundamentally emotional decision – the vote for Brexit – into a technically viable transnational structure. Pressed on the need for extra workers in particular regions and sectors, he has said: “Whatever we do has to be flexible enough to meet these requirements.”
In spite of his leadership of Vote Leave, Boris Johnson has long been a champion of immigration – often the most outspoken in the Conservative party. As I disclosed in March, even the arch-Brexiteer Liam Fox has been heard to say: “We mustn’t do anything that threatens prosperity.” Indeed, I doubt that the Tories’ absurd pledge to reduce net immigration to tens of thousands a year would have survived in the party’s manifesto had May not been its leader.
There is some evidence that voters’ priorities are shifting, too. Before the election, the polls generally suggested that immigration curbs were their prime concern in the Brexit negotiations. But a YouGov survey in the Times last week found that 58% now believe that Britain should trade freely with the EU, even if the consequence is continued immigration by its citizens – versus 42% who took the contrary view.
One must be wary of confirmation bias, especially where polls are concerned. Those of us who regard population mobility as a cultural good as well as an economic necessity are not yet on the winning side of the argument.
As last year’s pro-Brexit campaigns showed, it is easy to stoke up hostility to immigration – especially so when voters are feeling economically stretched, pummelled by change, and unconsulted by those who govern them. Politicians who blame immigrants for the true pressures of modern life – the discontents of globalisation, the challenge of automation, the poison of extremism, the disruptive impact of digital technology – are taking the coward’s way out. What is courageous about directing popular anger at the very people – often vulnerable, low-paid and poorly housed – who keep the economy, NHS and social care system afloat?
The emotions that drove the Brexit vote may flare up again at any time, and there is never a shortage of populist rightwingers delighted to fan the flames. If the last year has a coherent lesson, it is that the only constant is volatility.
So let us put it no more forcefully than this. There are encouraging signs that the political class and public are gathering gradually around the proposition that prosperity matters more than nativism; that post-Brexit Britain will continue to be a pluralist, heterogeneous society in which migration is managed rather than abhorred. In other words: proceed with caution, but with optimism, too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Imagine a British government deciding to apply all its resources to solving one problem. We’re not talking about some run-of-the mill dilemma here. This would be a proper, A-list, head-scratcher of a conundrum: how to meet the cost of social care in an ageing society; how to provide secure, rewarding work in the era of intelligent robots; inequality; climate change. There are plenty to choose from.
Imagine, too, the government giving itself just two years to find an answer. A special Whitehall department is organised for the purpose. The opposition agrees that the mission is the right one, quibbling only over points of emphasis. The full capacity of the state is bent in service to the mission.
Whatever the issue, whatever the question, one thing is certain. The answer would not begin: “First, leave the EU.” Because that would be the most colossal waste of time, effort and money. Half of the two-year period would be spent just deciding the outline of a future relationship with the EU, and the rest would be spent negotiating a deal to make the country poorer and less influential.
There is no substantial problem facing Britain to which leaving the EU offers an effective remedy. Even on its own advertised terms, Brexit is a dud. There will still be immigration across porous borders. There will not be an immediate bonanza of free-trade agreements with other countries, encompassing an area “massively larger than the EU”, as David Davis once forecast. The NHS will not be better off by £350m per week. British courts will still have to take account of judgments made in Luxembourg. The Commonwealth will not be a rival forum for the projection of British influence overseas.
There will not be a great anti-establishment catharsis. A project whose most celebrated cabinet advocate is Boris Johnson, and whose most radical parliamentary exponent is Jacob Rees-Mogg, is no nemesis to privileged elites. (Nor, dear leftist Brexiters, does a policy admired by every fascist in Europe and America contain secret passageways to a progressive utopia.)
Theresa May knows she is in the business of damage limitation. She sounds dogged in her resolve to see the job through, but never enthusiastic about the outcome. She identifies the fight against injustice and the restoration of social mobility as her defining political purposes, but has never explained how Brexit practically advances those causes. She has dismissed the counsels of “no deal” from those who would defiantly flounce from Europe’s table. She sees how they point down a path towards ruin.
But the other path – incremental separation, close regulatory alignment and strategic intimacy, only with diminished market access, additional friction at the border and a surrender of influence – leads inexorably to the question of why we are bothering to do it at all.
Why, indeed? Pour away all the snake-oil claims of the leavers and only one durable answer is left: because that is what people voted for. It is a better argument than many remainers seem to think. The referendum was, without question, a massive democratic event. There is not much mileage for pro-Europeans in complaining about sneaky methods used to persuade voters, and no merit at all in constitutional pedantry around the designation of the poll as “advisory”.
Leave won and there isn’t consistent or reliable evidence that the result would be different if the country were asked again. Some minds might have been changed by the conspicuous political shambles of the May administration, but the process of being asked for a second opinion could also trigger a collective, bloody-minded doubling down. Some would certainly rally around the proposition: “What part of ‘leave’ didn’t you people understand the first time?”
Even if Brexit could be thwarted at the ballot box before next March – in a plebiscite rematch or a general election where the winning party has unambiguously campaigned on a pro-EU platform – the clock would not be reset to 22 June 2016. Another referendum campaign would not bring a harmonious truce to culture wars stoked by the last one. Some former leave voters might not mourn Brexit’s demise. But plenty would feel betrayed and enraged.
I have yet to hear a compelling remain message for people who had never voted before 2016, but who turned out on that June day because they felt that at long last they could push a button and everything would change. What is the pro-European offer to someone who voted leave precisely so that the kind of people who campaigned for remain would have to listen to them for a change? Try the argument out loud: we’re sorry you were angry that remote Westminster politicians appeared to despise your opinions, now please bear with us while we reverse the totemic decision you felt we couldn’t ignore. It doesn’t sound great.
That doesn’t make leaving the EU a good idea. It does mean that the nature of the dilemma facing Britain has changed since the referendum in ways that neither side in the argument likes to admit. The leavers deny the economic price of leaving; remainers want to wish away the political price of remaining. Are those costs equivalent? I doubt that the damage done by Brexit is worth enduring just to avoid the hurt and anger that might be caused by aborting it.
Yet that, when we strip it down to its bare essentials, is the choice that now defines British politics: doing the wrong thing for no good reason because there is not a leader or a party that can make the case for doing something else. Of all the challenges that the country faces, of all the tasks that might have received the same intensity of effort, this is the one we have chosen. And to what end? Only so that when it is done, we can truly say we did it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
I clearly remember pondering, on 24 June 2016, why there was not more public and political outrage at the idea of a British government putting itself above the law, and using the royal prerogative to execute the referendum result. I find myself in exactly the same mindset in terms of the potential undermining of our democracy, government and sovereignty by a hostile foreign power – Russia – in what appears to be a secretive coup.
As a transparency campaigner and a passionate believer in our British values, as well as political and democratic systems, I am worried. People were told that walking out of the EU would liberate us from the clutches of unaccountable bureaucrats and would allow us to “take back control”. Auberon Waugh’s “junta of Belgian ticket inspectors” would be sent packing, the British people would reclaim sovereignty and British courts would decide British law for British people. The fog of bureaucracy would be blown away by the accountability and transparency that we supposedly enjoyed in the days before 1973.
It is turning out very differently. Think of Brexit as a matryoshka, or a Russian nesting doll, with voting to leave the EU as the outer doll, representing all the various things we were sold: free trade, prosperity, sovereignty, transparency, increased control over borders, and less money sent to Brussels. Pulling off the outer doll reveals another doll that represents something much more worrying.
Over the last two months, on an almost weekly basis, we have heard allegations of unidentified sources of money being used in the leave campaigns, which may have circumvented rules designed to uphold the integrity of our democratic process, which said campaigns purported to want to reclaim. The mysterious Constitutional Research Council (CRC) is reported to have routed £425,000 into pro-Brexit ads in London via the Democratic Unionist party. Conveniently, Northern Irish political donations are treated as confidential, a legacy from the Troubles. The same CRC gave the Tory MP Steve Baker £6,500 in 2016. At the time Baker was chairman of a Tory hard-Brexit caucus, the European Research Group (ERG), which was behind the sinister Boris Johnson and Michael Gove letter exposed by the Mail on Sunday. And what is Baker doing now? He is junior minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU).
The Electoral Commission is investigating the funding of Leave.eu and its largest donor, Arron Banks. These allegations focus on whether donations were permissible and on whether Banks or his company acted as an agent for other donors. Banks denies all the allegations against him. Meanwhile, Vote Leave, the official campaign to quit the EU, last week also came under investigation for potentially breaching the rules by giving £625,000 to a 23-year-old fashion student in connection with his campaign to get young voters to back leave.
The third doll in the matryoshka, fittingly, is Russian. All 17 of the US intelligence agencies agree that the Kremlin interfered in the US presidential election – the only debate is to what extent the Trump campaign colluded. Now it seems that Russia weighed in on the Brexit referendum for exactly the same reasons: to divide the west by breaking up Nato and the EU – and excluding the effective and influential US and UK from continental European affairs as far as possible. We now know that thousands of Russian bots were active in pushing the Brexit message on social media, as were workers in the St Petersburg “troll factory”.
The big question now is to what extent Russian money came into the leave campaigns, and is in effect funding a cold war. How deep does foreign interference from a hostile power go in undermining our democratic systems? When leave campaigners try to write off the foreign interference as a ploy by remainers, they fall into a trap set by the Russians, which is to set us against each other. In all of this, we should remember that we are all British citizens and even if we voted on different sides in June 2016, we all value our democracy and fear foreign corruption of our way of life and country. That means standing firm against foreign powers that wish to see our institutions undermined.
Which brings me to the innermost doll: illiberalism. Of the 52% who cast their vote for leave, how many were voting for Britain to become a deregulated, super-low-tax, small-state country? The Vote Leave bus message that told voters “We send the EU £350m a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead” has been widely discredited. But what if the people who have grabbed the Brexit steering wheel were hostile to the very idea of the NHS?
Gove and Johnson are pushing for hard deregulation under the cover of hard Brexit. With the ERG and the highly influential Legatum Institute on their side, the duo have demanded that the prime minister drop taxes and make a bonfire of the regulations that protect us. As Marie Antoinette said of the poor, “let them eat cake” – the modern equivalent being “let them eat chlorinated chicken”. The extremely successful vacuum-cleaner magnate James Dyson has been more open than Johnson and Gove in describing the post-Brexit country he wants: one that sees an end to corporation tax, and a slashing of protection for workers’ rights. In the secret “bullying” Gove and Johnson letter, for Theresa May’s eyes only, they talked about circumventing normal cabinet protocols, getting rid of moderate ministers and parachuting in a Brexit “implementation taskforce” to overrule Whitehall and our civil service.
There is every likelihood that this taskforce would involve Matthew Elliott, the lead Vote Leave campaigner who now works for the Legatum Institute, as well as other Legatum staff, none of them elected by anyone, or loyal to anything other than their employer. The Legatum Institute is a handsomely funded extreme free-market thinktank fuelled by offshore cash from the Caribbean and Dubai. Behind it stand the Chandler brothers, who made their billions in Russia’s most turbulent years, and once owned 4% of Gazprom.
DExEU, of all ministries, has not responded to multiple freedom of information requests about its relationship with Legatum. The Mail on Sunday now has photographic evidence of Shanker Singham, director of economic policy at Legatum, and Gove at a behind-closed-doors Commons seminar on Brexit last Friday, which was also attended by No 10 and officials from the US embassy.
The things being smuggled in under the cover of Brexit will damage so much of what we hold dear. A cabal of tycoons would see their wealth and influence turbocharged, while the mass of the population would see their prosperity, their security and, ultimately, their liberty dwindle away. And this is the dark nature of the inner doll: the end of the western model of capitalism married to liberal democracy. The turbulence caused by crashing out of the EU would just be another opportunity for these individuals.
The matryoshka dolls have only started to come apart and reveal the inner truths in the last six weeks. But this is just the beginning, not the end, of the process. The more people glimpse the inner doll, the more I am convinced that an overwhelming majority of the electorate – irrespective of how they voted in the referendum – will understand the deception that is being perpetrated. They will demand that our democracy be defended.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
As a metaphor for Brexit, the debate on the Lords amendments could hardly have been bettered. A speech cut off in mid-sentence due to an arbitrary time limit set by the government, and the chief whip darting around the chamber desperately pleading with Tory rebels not to defeat the government over a meaningful vote.
The solicitor general making up government policy on the hoof while making plea bargain concessions in public to Dominic Grieve. A government that can barely negotiate with itself, let alone the EU. Hundreds of MPs milling around, unsure of what had and hadn’t been agreed. The rebels reckoned they had a deal, while a government minister briefed that they had been stitched up. A shambles. AKA strong and stable leadership in the national interest.
The proceedings had started slowly with a visibly bored David Davis merely going through the motions. The Brexit secretary increasingly gives the impression he has realised the whole process is far more difficult than he first thought, and that he is hopelessly out of his depth. He barely makes the effort to make eye contact with anyone in the chamber and sticks rigidly to a script that he doesn’t fully understand.
The Lords amendments were all a bit of a fuss about nothing, he mumbled. Unwanted interference from people who just didn’t like Brexit. Sure, some of their suggestions had been helpful in their way, but there had been far too many of them so he had to draw the line somewhere. And that somewhere was that he’d decided to reject them all on the grounds they weren’t sensible. The idea that Davis is the man to judge if something is sensible or not is a disturbing thought.
“There is no mechanism for a meaningful vote on a no-deal scenario,” intervened Grieve, a former attorney general and one of the sharper minds on either side of the house. Davis merely looked bewildered. “A meaningful vote is just an excuse to reverse the Brexit process,” he said. Grieve tried to explain that there were plenty of better ways to stop Brexit if that had been the intention, but gave up once it was clear the lights were on but no one was at home in Davis’s brain.
After Ken Clarke had succinctly summed up the government’s position as “Oh House of Commons, get lost”, and observed that the EU was perfectly capable of realising the UK didn’t have a clue what it was doing without needing the British parliament to point it out to them, Grieve tried to spell out the details of his proposed amendments in more detail. “The irrationality of the debate has been chilling,” he said testily.
By now Davis had been gagged and replaced on the government benches by Robert Buckland, the solicitor general. Buckland was more alive to the possibility of the disaster of a government defeat and immediately started bouncing up and down to offer a few concessions. First, he was really going to think about things in a structured way. When Grieve laughed him off, he came up with something a bit more definite. Buckland would give way on clauses A and B. Again, Grieve batted him away. Clause C was the crucial one.
Just two days previously, the government had been briefing it was going to win the vote at a canter. Now it was clear its maths was fairly hopeless and the chief whip darted around the benches begging Tory rebels not to make Theresa May look any more useless than she already did. He got short shrift and as Philip Lee, the junior justice minister who had resigned that morning so he could vote against the government, stood up to speak, the solicitor general leapt up again. “I need more time to think,” he sobbed.
More time meant the 15 or so Tory rebels – minus the luckless Lee – being summoned from the chamber for a tête-à-tête with the prime minister. Whatever she said to them appeared to have done the trick, as first Jonathan Djanogly and then Antoinette Sandbach stood up to say they would be backing the government after being given assurances that Grieve’s amendments would be taken seriously after all.
The session ended in chaos. Anna Soubry appeared suspicious, but Grieve reassured her they were going to get what they wanted. Almost immediately, prominent Brexiters were claiming they wouldn’t. Not for the first time May appeared to have promised different things to both sides. Indecision and ambivalence are the only things at which she excels. But something has to give. And it’s going to get messy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
It is exam season at the University of Kent and students are longing for the academic year to be over. Many are flitting between revision and the exam halls on their 1960s campus. Others are sprawled on the lawns, poring over laptops and books, with Canterbury cathedral visible in the distance.
These are anxious times for this generation of students. Many fear that, however well they may do academically, life after university will be much more difficult for them than it was for their parents. They worry about the burden of debt after graduation, house prices that seem impossibly high and beyond their reach, and fierce competition for decent jobs.
On this campus, though, there is one over-arching concern about their futures that sharpens the sense of generational unfairness: Brexit.
The University of Kent calls itself “the UK’s European university”. It has huge numbers of European students and lecturers and boasts its own outposts or “study centres” in Athens, Brussels, Rome and Paris. It is fiercely proud of its European links. The 28 flags of the EU nations fly above its buildings.
The president of the Kent students’ union, Ruth Wilkinson, describes a mood of increasing defiance over the Brexit issue. The student body here has a reputation for packing a big political punch, and she knows its power: at last June’s general election a large student vote for Jeremy Corbyn delivered the first ever Labour MP in previously staunchly Tory Canterbury. It was one of the political sensations of a tumultuous election night. Now she wants to have an even bigger impact – by helping to stop Brexit.
“The thing is that young people voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, and it is our future,” says Wilkinson. “We are the people who are going to live with the consequences of this for the rest of our lives – and our children – and this is why we’re so passionate about it. This is going to massively damage our futures.”
Once exams are over, politicians from all parties will begin to feel the full force of young people’s Brexit anger, she says. The protests will be far bigger and better organised than the outcry over student fees after the Tory-Lib Dem coalition came to power in 2010. “This is a case of ‘we’re not taking this’. We’re not just going to be standing shouting in the streets, we’re going to be influencing in every possible way we can.
“Students stereotypically protest – and we’re going to do that. On top of that we’re going to lobby our MPs to influence them. We’re going to be influencing through these open letters, we’re going to be networking with every possible person we can, to make sure we get a people’s vote on the Brexit deal. This is the biggest issue affecting my generation, for generations.”
Sam Mortimer is a first-year physics student at Kent who is also critical of both the Tory government’s handling of Brexit and the Labour opposition’s failure to articulate a clearer line against it. “I voted Remain for a lot of reasons,” he says. “We’re economically and diplomatically stronger in Europe, and we’ve left the EU for exactly the wrong reasons. It’s been very anti-immigrant and xenophobic. I don’t trust the current government to deliver what they said.
“To have an opinion of Labour’s Brexit policy, you’ve got to know what it is – which nobody really does. Corbyn needs to make up his mind on what Labour stands for. He’s been allowed to get away with being vague. I’d be a lot happier if Labour opposed Brexit.”
Kent University’s student union is one of 60 across the UK – representing 980,000 young people in colleges and universities – who by Saturday night had signed a letter to be sent to their local MPs calling for a “people’s vote” (a second referendum) on the eventual Brexit deal that Theresa May brings back from Brussels. The organisers say some student unions were reluctant to sign, out of respect for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – who opposes another referendum – but most did so enthusiastically.
The letter and signatories have been coordinated by the campaign group For our Future’s Sake (irreverently known as FFS for short). It was only launched a few weeks ago but is already making waves in universities and colleges, providing a vehicle through which students and student groups can articulate and coordinate their anti-Brexit protests.
Amanda Chetwynd-Cowieson, the group’s co-director, said it was there for young people “who have passed the point of frustration with the government’s complete lack of progress or success with the Brexit negotiations, and the Labour party’s inability to oppose them. Brexit is the biggest threat facing future generations, and we believe that a people’s vote on the terms of the deal will show that this is not the future that young people want. The youth are revolting.”
Amatey Doku, a vice-president of the National Union of Students, said 120 elected officers of student unions across the country had signed up. “When so many elected officers, representing nearly a million young people, call for something with one clear voice they need to be listened to. Students and young people overwhelmingly voted Remain and cannot see how the government can deliver a Brexit deal that works for them. As an elected representative of 600 student unions, the NUS is calling for a people’s vote on the Brexit deal.”
Among the bigger universities whose unions have signed the letter to parliamentarians are Birmingham, Durham, Cambridge, Swansea, Leeds Beckett, Lancaster, St Andrew’s, Liverpool John Moores and Westminster.
The letter says that there are now a massive number of young people (estimated to total 1.4 million) who were too young to vote in the referendum, but who have since become eligible to do so, and that they deserve a say. So, too, do the millions who feel they were misled during the campaign.
“When the European Union referendum happened, and a slim majority of the voting public voted to leave, we accepted this,” the letter says. “We believe there were legitimate grievances that led to a Leave vote, both economic and social. However, the world is now a different place, both economically and socially. Promises made during the campaign have not been kept.” It adds: “Because of all of this we call on our elected leaders to deliver on a people’s vote on the Brexit deal so that young people can once and for all have a say on their futures.”
The political impact of a well-organised revolt by young people on Brexit could be pivotal over the coming months. If MPs in marginal seats with large or significant numbers of students hear growing calls for a people’s vote, they will ignore them at their peril.
Young people have already shown they are politically more engaged on the subject of the UK’s future relations with the EU than they have been with normal domestic politics. At the 2016 EU referendum, those aged 18-24 voted in far greater numbers than in previous general elections. The LSE put the turnout in this group at 64%, close to double the normal level of participation. Some 71% of 18 to 24-year-olds and 62% of 25 to 39-year-olds voted for the UK to remain in the EU.
Melantha Chittenden, national chair of the Labour students group in the Labour party, said pressure was growing on the party leadership to be more robust in fighting Tory plans for a hard Brexit. She suggested Corbyn should back a people’s vote on the final deal. “Students want the Labour party’s policy to reflect their views and that means having a proper debate and vote on Brexit at the Labour party conference this year.
“It’s wrong to think students only care about student-specific issues like Erasmus [the exchange programme]. They care passionately about staying in the customs union and retaining freedom of movement, they understand the rights and protections that the EU affords us all and will do anything to defend that. That’s why young people voted to remain and it’s why we should get a say on the terms of the final deal.”
Back on the campus at Kent, union president Wilkinson sounded a word of warning to the Labour leader, suggesting that his Euroscepticism might lose him support among the same student voters that backed him so decisively a year ago, unless he listens to their views.
“Young people are overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU, so my word of warning to the Labour party would be to not take that opinion lightly and make sure students’ views are heard. Young people are a massive part of the electorate and they’re the future voters as well, so the party absolutely needs to take that into consideration when they make their choices.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
Neither Theresa May nor Jeremy Corbyn said much about the substance of the Brexit negotiations during the election campaign. Since May’s failure to secure an overall majority, both main parties have started to consider the merits of a “softer” Brexit – one that would enable Britain to retain more economic ties with the EU than May initially planned. But neither seems willing to admit that withdrawing from the EU is going to involve painful trade-offs. As the talks open this week, here are 10 of the most difficult questions that the British government will have to answer.
How can the UK get round the EU’s hard line on what negotiators call “sequencing”, namely that talks on an eventual free trade agreement between the EU and the UK cannot start until the legal separation, the consequence of Britain triggering article 50, has been sorted out? For the other 27 states, this means an accord on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and on the principles of how much money the UK should pay. The EU reckons it is “owed” €55-75bn (£48-66bn), much of it Britain’s share of unspent budgetary commitments. Is May willing to compromise on money so talks can move on to trade, even though the Tory right will kick up a fuss if she agrees to pay even a fraction of the sum demanded?
Britain will leave the EU in March 2019 but the future relationship, including a trade agreement, will take many years to negotiate. Hence the need for interim arrangements, allowing goods, services, capital and data to continue to flow, until the new EU-UK trade deal takes effect. In any case, Britain will take several years to build the infrastructure for its new customs and immigration controls. The EU says that, if the transition involves staying in parts of the single market and customs union, Britain must also accept free movement of workers, budgetary contributions and the jurisdiction of the European court of justice (ECJ) for the interim period. Will May agree to that, and if so, for how long?
Refusing a role for the ECJ is one of May’s red lines. The EU is adamant that, if any part of Britain’s future relationship resembles being in the single market, the Luxembourg-based court must be able to intervene. So if the UK stays in the single market for aviation (as airlines operating out of Britain hope), will it accept ECJ rulings, as do Norway and Iceland, which are in the aviation market although not part of the EU? The same dilemma applies to many other areas, such as financial services, electricity and security co-operation.
The Confederation of British Industry has identified 34 regulatory agencies covering agriculture, energy, transport and communications. Britain will have to either stay in these or create bodies of its own. The European Aviation Safety Agency, for example, authorises British aircraft to fly. The European Medicines Agency advises the European commission on which drugs should be licensed for sale across the EU. Euratom regulates the trade of nuclear materials. The European commission’s competition directorate approves mergers and state aid.
May has never indicated that she will fight for a special deal for financial services – yet they provide about £70bn of tax revenues a year to the Treasury. The City accepts that it will lose the benefits of single market membership but hopes for a deal on “equivalence” whereby the UK and the EU would recognise each other’s rules and consult each other on new ones. The EU thinks that would be far too generous to the UK. The UK might have to pay a high price in terms of ECJ intrusion for a deal that suits the City.
If May pushes for a deal that cuts the numbers significantly, it may satisfy hardliners but harm the economy and public finances. EU migrants are comparatively well educated, young and likely to work. Has the government analysed the economic costs of the various options on EU migration? Will it offer EU citizens a preferential regime, to gain some goodwill from the 27?
Assuming that the UK presses ahead with plans to leave the customs union, how can it deal with the fallout? Physical checks at borders – for tariffs, rules of origin and safety standards – will require a massive investment in infrastructure and IT systems. Delays are likely to inconvenience not only manufacturers, but also retailers and farmers. Can clever technology reduce the paperwork? And though few people want to see a new hard border separating Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, nobody has yet worked out an alternative. Will the re-emergence of border posts provoke terrorists and destabilise the peace process?
Is the UK willing to cede sovereignty to remain in the EU’s criminal databases, Europol, Eurojust and the European arrest warrant? The Manchester and London Bridge terror attacks highlighted the importance of cooperation on policing and security. But staying in those institutions will mean accepting EU rules on data privacy, a role for the ECJ and no vote on decisions.
Does May want the UK to associate itself with the EU on foreign and defence policy? If yes, will the British seek institutional ties that enable them to feed in views before decisions are taken? Or would the UK prefer to act as a solitary diplomatic player, or as a junior partner to the US?
If the talks break down and there is no deal, does May have a real plan B? Would she counteract the likely recession with a fiscal stimulus? Would she push for a plethora of trade deals with countries outside Europe, though they would take years to negotiate? Or would she prefer unilateral free trade, which would provide a bigger and swifter boost to output – even though scrapping tariffs would hurt many manufacturers and farmers? That ultra-liberal approach would sit uncomfortably with her promises to help “just-about-managing” families and to design a more active industrial policy.
The prime minister may well believe that crashing out of the EU without a deal would be disastrous for Britain. In that case, she should explain why, rather than repeat the mantra that no deal is better than a bad one. She has done extraordinarily little to educate either her party or the public about the painful compromises that any deal will require.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
Today parliament returns, led by the most dangerously incompetent and decadent government in modern times. This parliament will seal the country’s fate permanently and, on current form, fatally: nothing in the conduct of Brexit suggests any understanding of the cataclysm ahead. Instead the summer has seen only callow jockeying for position between would-be Tory leaders of unbelievable unsuitability.
Their frivolity was summed up by David Davis dismissing EU negotiator Michel Barnier as “silly”. But silliness is now Britain’s official position. Those who holidayed in the EU this summer will have met that amazement from taxi drivers, bartenders, students and old-timers alike: they think we are mad. And so we are. What else can they make of a country with Boris Johnson as foreign secretary? According to Sunday’s Survation poll, he is favourite to take over from Theresa May, with Jacob Rees-Mogg in second place. As if despairing of politics, many voters seem to prefer any alternative reality to the one we face.
In just a year the deal must be done, in time to be ratified by the 27 nations by March 2019. Our government has approached it like a bunch of England football fans, shouting: “Who won the war?” Supposedly sober politicians boast loudly that they need us more than we need them: “We hold all the cards!” Those with delusions about Britain’s importance should note that in Sunday’s election debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schultz, Brexit was not mentioned once. The EU faces many crises – migration flows across the Mediterranean, Ukraine at war with Russia, Donald Trump and North Korea – and the relentless burning and flooding of our planet.
Of course, they’d like Brexit resolved painlessly, but frankly they’re not that bothered. Some are bemused: Germany’s ambassador to France pondered at a public meeting last week: “I am waiting for the big free-trade deals that a small island can conclude to its benefit with the rest of the world.” Every meeting between our beseeching ministers and potential trading partners in Japan, India or the United States leaves us asking that same question.
Why can’t Barnier be more “flexible” and “imaginative”, David Davis asks, revealing he hasn’t grasped the basics. The memorandum signed by both sides at the outset clearly spelled out the EU 27’s overriding goal: “European integration has brought peace and prosperity to Europe and allowed for an unprecedented level and scope of cooperation on matters of common interest in a rapidly changing world. Therefore, the Union’s overall objective in these negotiations will be to preserve its interests, those of its citizens, its businesses and its Member States.” That’s it. Protecting the EU and its hard-won single market and customs union matters more than any British deal. That means no unpicking, no bending the rules, no “imagination”: it’s our choice to stay or leave.
The UK’s realm of fantasy unravels embarrassingly fast. Only two weeks ago one policy paper proposed an “innovative” and “unprecedented” system to abolish customs checks by electronically tagging goods, cleverly passing on any dues to the EU. It was pure magic, as the EU protested. Only a fortnight later Davis had to take it off the table because no one has invented it: “It was a blue sky idea”, he said with that jovial nonchalance whose charm is fast wearing thin.
The result? If we leave the customs union and single market, it’s a hard border, he admitted, with all goods checked and declared. For Northern Ireland, that’s a disaster – with no ingenious way round it, none at all: all the border constituencies are Sinn Féin seats, now facing hard border posts. Brexiters have a habit of brushing away such impossibilities as mere flies in their ointment, but there is no ointment, only flies. I have interviewed those in an overstretched border force who say already they often abandon customs posts to cope with passport queues: will it take gridlock on both sides of the Channel before Brexit doubts penetrate? Or Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary proving right, that EU flights will stop? Not a week goes by without some new sign of imminent Brexit-caused decline.
The tumbril bearing the EU withdrawal bill rolls in for its second reading on Thursday. Dominic Grieve, the most influential Tory objector, writing in yesterday’s FT, warns of the bill’s draconian Henry VIII powers: “The electorate did not vote to ‘take back control’ to see our domestic constitution dismantled.” Vital amendments will be put, but experience warns that Tory rebellions have a habit of much bark and little bite.
Labour MPs still pinch themselves at finding they are the parliamentary grownups now, watching an infantile government throw the nation’s toys out of its pram. How did it happen that the most radical Labour opposition in years is the sober-sided sensibles, the only hope for rescuing the country? Keir Starmer has steered the party adroitly towards staying in the single market and the customs union during a lengthy “transition”: that’s the place to be when no one can say in this wildly volatile political climate who will be in power, or what the country needs in five years’ time. Astonishingly, the party is growing more united by the week, as Starmer sticks it to Davis today in the Commons, taunting him for his fantasies being forced to give way to brutal reality.
What will persuade the people to rethink? Barnier keeps warning that leaving the single market will have “extremely serious consequences”, and he’s right that that they haven’t been explained to those deceived by Brexit delusionists over the decades.
But I hear too many remainers itch for disaster. Some yearn for the great “I told you so” vindication as trucks stack a hundred miles up on the M2 and “just-in-time” manufacturing and service industries grind to a halt, with unemployment soaring. Secretly they want dire consequences for all to see, to stop Brexiters claiming for ever more that staying in the single market, customs union and European Economic Area was a betrayal of the people’s will.
Never wish for political revenge, however. The great hope must be that we swerve at the last moment and avoid the worst. When countries decline and fail, they don’t turn nicer. We are lucky that no serious demagogue has yet seized the chance of this perilous, fickle mood: so far we are only threatened by a leadership of jokers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
I’m trying to cure this summer’s unattractive impulse before it turns into a bad habit. Whenever I see someone doing something stupid or self-harming like jumping an orange light on a bike or getting tattooed from neck to ankle, I want to shout: “Brexit voter.”
It’s not nice and it’s not fair. I’m trying to stop. As Theresa May’s divided cabinet meets to decide where to go next, ministers and demoralised Whitehall officials should refrain from recrimination too. The “phoney war” lull before the negotiation storm is about to end.
The fact is that all sorts of people voted Brexit for all sorts of reasons. Rich folk voted alongside the poor, anxious immigrants as well as marginalised natives, clever Boris Johnson as well as Arron Banks, the romantic as well as the xenophobic-and-proud.
“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know,” as a bloody foreigner once put it.
In reality, it’s far too soon to predict how the balance of advantage will turn out when Britain finally parts company with the neighbours. What we can be sure of is that it will be both good and bad. An Oxford professor of medicine put it well the other day. He and most colleagues had voted remain but would do their best to make the leave verdict work. He then listed opportunities for cutting-edge UK biosciences when they are freed from the intellectually conservative and bureaucratically cumbersome constraints of EU membership.
Quite so. Good for some sectors, bad for others, a problem here but an opportunity there, a collective wakeup call which we may need, as Larry Elliott puts it. The Guardian’s Katie Allen sets out emerging and mixed evidence very fairly here. And here.
But that’s not how the debate is being played in some quarters. Open the Brexit newspapers or visit websites most days since the 23 June vote and you will find it being debated in two disturbing ways. One proclaims how well everything is going, proving the falsity of alarmist predictions made by George Osborne and other “experts” (pause for hisses). The other is to attack more balanced reporting in rival organs which highlight emerging problems. For this they are dismissed as “project smear” (replacing the “project fear” conceit the Daily Mail borrowed from the SNP) or as “remain fanatics” talking the country down.
“Remain’s drumbeat of negativity,” as one columnist put it. “How Britain is confounding the doom mongers and enjoying a Brexit bounce,” as another headline claimed. In a crowded field the most offensive example of the genre came when the Daily Mail did a sustained hatchet job on the editor of the Financial Times as disloyally “trashing” Britain. Why? Because his paper has just been bought by foreigners (Japanese) and other foreigners (French) have just given him a gong.
 Oh yes, and the FT reports the Brexit downside along with more positive news, even if the latter is fed by unsustainable consumer spending, boosted by summer sunshine and Olympic cheer. Brexit cheerleaders usually acknowledge the point in “it won’t be plain sailing” caveats towards the end of their own breezy articles.
At a time when public opinion is fragile and polarised we need to deploy language and signs of mutual respect that pull us together rather than push us apart. More Team GB Olympic spirit and less professional fouls by overpaid louts in the Premier League penalty box, you might say.
It’s not that bad sportsmanship is confined to either camp in the referendum (here comes my caveat) because remain said some foolish things about emergency budgets and instant recession as the campaign slipped away from it. It relied too much on “facts, facts, facts”, not on feeling, as leave’s Banks put it. I might add that too many remainers have still never admitted they got the euro badly wrong.
But leave won, so its campaign porkies are potentially more damaging. Those 75 million Turks were never going to come here (that lie becomes more obvious by the day as Erdoğan heads east), but the “extra £350m a week for the NHS” painted on the battlebus (also disowned after the result) is going to rankle because the NHS could do with the phantom cash.
All this is going to take a lot of good will, patience and mutual tolerance to negotiate safely at a time when it is in short supply everywhere. From Japan and China to the US, via India (where they have just made it a crime to publish the “wrong” map of divided Kashmir), Russia, Turkey and chunks of the EU, nationalistic and authoritarian populism is on the rise. Just look at the muddle our French neighbours are making over the burkini.
So it’s no accident that shuttle diplomacy doesn’t seem to work any more, as Julian Borger pointed out here. Yet relentless shuttle diplomacy between London and Paris, Brussels and Berlin is what we’re going to need to unpick British membership of the EU with minimum damage to the economies and politics of either side.
It’s good that consumer spending is buoyant, that house prices have steadied and employment is still rising. But there will be setbacks ahead, possibly bad ones, and I am fearful for the future. But I’ll try to be more tolerant towards Brexit scamsters, arrogant remain types, tattoo-festooned teens and even towards gently imploding Jeremy Corbyn, if you promise to try to do the same. It won’t be easy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
That’s it; the way is clear for Theresa May to plunge the country into a self-destructive journey into thickets of the unknown. This will be her legacy, her hand the one that risked breaking the economy and breaking the United Kingdom too.
Look what’s been unleashed. Nicola Sturgeon leaps at the chance, making a hard border along a new Hadrian’s wall a frightening possibility, along with a Trump-fence across Ireland, or Northern Ireland gone altogether. What a curious confrontation to hear May and Sturgeon each accuse the other of reckless folly in wrenching their country away from their biggest markets: both are right. May likes regal comparisons – and Bloody Mary she may be if, through inept intransigence, Edinburgh ends up carved on her heart, with nothing left but a bereft little England, Wales limping alongside, cutting a bedraggled figure in the world.
The country voted to leave, but she had choices: she may yet be devoured by the hard Brexit tiger she has chosen to ride. She could have taken a softer, more pragmatic path of moderation, compromise and neighbourliness, mindful of her country’s other 48%. The letter she sends to sever our 44-year alliance could open in a spirit of generosity by welcoming our existing European Union citizens, but instead she sets out grim-faced, ungiving.
She has handed the helm to the wreckers, on a fanatics’ mission that will allow no swerving to avoid the rocks. Only the hardest of Brexits will do, yet even that’s not enough for these insatiables. Battle-hardened revolutionaries who have fought this eccentric cause for decades can’t lay down their guns, even though they won: the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, John Redwood and Liam Fox can only do politics as guerrilla fighters.
Parliament voted this week, but with no mandate for hard Brexit – out of the single market and customs union, with immigration May’s priority. As the going gets tough, voters might recall how often Brexiteers such as Daniel Hannan said: “Absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market.” Take a look at the Tory manifesto, committed to the single market.
That’s why Michael Heseltine is right to say: “The fightback starts here,” after his sacking displayed the worst of May’s small-minded limitations. “Who can say,” Heseltine writes, “how people will respond when negotiations with Europe lay bare harsh realities, supplanting the shamelessly false prospectus on which the leavers won the referendum?”
Ask psephologist Professor John Curtice, and he says voters may indeed change their minds if the bad consequences of leaving become apparent in a drip-drip of closing factories, emptying City glass towers, a flight of jobs. But, he adds, that all depends on who gets to frame the story: “If the EU is seen as playing hard ball there may be a Pavlovian reaction so leavers feel their choice was justified: they never took the EU to their hearts.” But May is at risk, he says, if she can’t deliver a promised good deal on trade without freedom of movement.
The “framers”, as usual, will be the Mail, the Sun, Express and Telegraph, pouncing on any compromise, blaming foreigners who, not unreasonably, say a Brexit deal must be worse than Britain staying in. Monday’s Daily Mail, ahead of the Lords’ reprised debate, issued a typically thuggish threat across its front page: “Cover-up over ‘dodgy’ payouts to peers.” Vote the wrong way, and we’ll dig out your attendance expenses. That’s how it will be every step of the way with these true “enemies of the people”. Theresa May, who apparently never knowingly opposes the will of the Mail, will surely give way every time. Indeed, it might save a lot of time if she simply asked Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch what, if any, compromises they will stomach to get a deal, and do what they say.
Will they or the Brexit madmen compromise on anything at all? She starts out badly by refusing the modest request for a meaningful parliamentary vote at the end, deal or no deal. Boris Johnson’s throwaway line that it would be “perfectly OK” to fall back on WTO terms shows how far they have vanished into Neverland. A deliberate “no deal” may be all the fanatics will now accept.
Heseltine is right to live in hope when everything is in flux. The German parliament is just passing a five-year ban on all benefits for non-German EU citizens. Had Cameron come home with that, the referendum might have swung the other way. Observers suggest his obnoxious sabre-rattling to pacify his Brexiteers guaranteed he got almost nothing.
If only May looked set to approach these negotiations in a better frame of mind. But that’s never been the British way, and the horrible history of arrogant Albion will tell against us. Thatcher’s handbag swung at them. Blair always brandished “red lines” before summits, making not one pro-Europe speech in this country. In 2007 Brown went to comical lengths to avoid being seen signing the Lisbon treaty, sneaking in late behind closed doors. The pro-remain letter Tory MPs sent out to constituents had five entirely negative bullet points: “No euro … we stayed out of Schengen … we secured opt-outs … we have an emergency brake on in-work benefits …we got the EU to cut red tape.” Not since Edward Heath (a useless communicator) did any leader hymn praise to the EU’s peace and fraternity between close cultures with shared values in a threatening world.
Don’t imagine it’s all over. It’s hardly begun. Ahead lies the so-called great reform bill, re-homing EU laws, which must be done by Brexit-day in two years. Watch the fanatics battle to strip out every regulation they can – on food, environment, work, banking, safe medicines, nuclear power, cyberfraud, everything that touches daily lives. Watch the zealots’ culture wars aim for no rules, no taxes and wild west Trumpish “freedoms”. But they may over-reach, and turn the tide against themselves.
Jean-Claude Juncker gently hopes one day we might return. Guy Verhofstadt hopes we can keep our valued EU citizenship. On past form we may test the EU’s patience to the utmost – but if they can restrain retaliation and remember the other 48% of us, they could persuade enough leavers to change their minds before it’s too late.
Despite everything, this is no time to despair. Be there on 25 March, marching to celebrate the EU’s 60th anniversary, keeping spirits up, because all is not lost.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Britain faces its biggest peacetime crisis since 1945. Leaving the EU on the slightest of referendum majorities, after a campaign in which the leave side was never constitutionally compelled to agree what leave meant, is already plunging Britain into a constitutional, political and legal quagmire. Prolonged economic stagnation, perhaps depression, seem inevitable. A liberal, tolerant, outward-looking country is being transmuted into an illiberal, intolerant, inward-looking one. This is as fundamental as it gets. Battle is being joined for our soul, yet many of those who see all they hold dear being ripped away from them are strangely mute. Nigel Farage was right when he said it was a revolution “without a shot being fired”.
It is time to return fire. But the political truth is that no success is possible without the full-throated support of the Labour party, strikingly absent from the unfolding trauma. That must change – both in the interests of the country and the people it aims to serve.
It is the great unravelling. The painful economic uncertainties of unwinding 43 years of EU membership must surely trigger an investment strike and consequent economic stasis. Britain has a $1tn stock of foreign direct investment – equalled only by China and the US – involving some 500 multinationals. Their regional or global headquarters are in Britain because of our participation in the European single market. Leaving it, as the Japanese government and the US Chamber of Commerce have both unequivocally warned, will seriously affect investment. The impact will cascade down into every nook and cranny of our economy.
Hopes of an export boom are overdone. Our export sector is uniquely weak. Britain’s share of world markets has been falling for decades, largely because of unaddressed systemic economic weaknesses. The response to the devaluation after the financial crisis was paltry. It promises to be paltry again. One prominent economic forecaster – the National Institute of Economic and Social Research – foresees a drop of up to 60% in our service exports as a result of Brexit. Exports of goods will have to boom just to offset that effect. They can’t and won’t.
British society is in no great shape to handle the consequences. Inequalities of income and wealth between generations, regions and classes are unedifyingly high. But addressing these inequalities requires financial resources – which will be reduced by Brexit. The public sector deficit in the current financial year is already £14bn higher than projected. The Resolution Foundation warns that just on a modest downward revision of growth, the deficit will widen by £23bn by 2020-21 – a cumulative shortfall of £84bn. It is almost certainly an understatement.
As serious is the impact on our culture and national conversation. Although leavers talk the language of embracing the globe, they simultaneously talk of controlling borders to keep the foreign “other” out. Mounting anti-foreigner sentiment is morphing into a generalised language of reaction; bigots of all descriptions – racists and misogynists alike – have a new licence to “speak the unspeakable”, as they would describe it. This is not the backdrop for a major mobilisation and programme of enlightened reform. It is the backdrop for retreat, closure and stagnation.
So what to do? The first thing is to get as passionate about what is happening as leavers were in making their case. Britain must not leave the EU. It is not just that leaving is an act of wilful economic self-harm – it is also abandoning the continent’s most noble project. This will be attacked by leavers as defying the democratic will. But democracy is about constant argument and deliberation, not permanently deifying one vote at one moment in time.
But to have traction, the argument has to be coupled with a political challenge. It must be made by a political party serious about winning political power, and capable of doing it. The electorate must be convinced that their darkening circumstances can be feasibly and realistically changed. A second referendum in this context is no more than an enabling building block in a larger programme of improvement.
There are many elements in such a programme. The case needs to be made for a repurposing of British capitalism, housed in a reimagined ownership, financial and innovation system that can seize the opportunities opened up by new technologies. The labour market must be recast to challenge the gig economy with trade unions that enfranchise ordinary people. Risk, which haunts so many lives, must be minimised by a renewed, cradle-to-grave, flexible and skills-based welfare system. The public realm must be reconceived with a sufficiently broad tax base to foster public initiative and enterprise. And Britain must reaffirm EU membership, which is the bridge to international openness and fundamental to our prosperity.
These are the propositions around which the centre and left – and the best of the conservative tradition – can unite. They are what the overwhelming majority of British people want, if only there were a party capable of making the arguments and putting together the coalition of interests to propel it to power to implement them.
Millions are aching to contest what is happening. We need a transformative public conversation – and a willingness to argue our heads off for tolerance, fairness and openness, as well as for membership of pan-European institutions and the markets on our continent.
This is above all a political project. It can encompass social movements, but cannot be delivered by them. This is why a group of centre-left Labour MPs has launched a new movement to make the case. I support their efforts because Britain stands on the verge of a great unravelling with untold consequences for its economy, society, place in the world, and its people’s souls. The standard must be raised: fire must be returned. We need to make the case for a reimagined Britain and its membership of the EU. We say not what we are against, but what we stand for. We want our country back. And we want it now.
This article is part of a speech delivered at the launch of the Labour Tribune MPs Group on Wednesday.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
The speed with which the emergency services responded to last week’s attack on Westminster was rivalled only by the hard right’s eagerness to blame the horror on migration. I mean, why wait for the evidence?
With the same confidence that he had (incorrectly) blamed the Berlin Christmas market atrocity on Angela Merkel’s admission of refugees, Nigel Farage told Fox News: “If you open your door to uncontrolled immigration from Middle Eastern countries you are inviting in terrorism.”
Arron Banks, Ukip’s former paymaster and founder of the new Patriotic Alliance, tweeted in similar vein: “Teresa [sic] May was Home Secretary for 6 year [sic] when over a million illegals were allowed into our country. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more sick.”
As we now know, the attacker, Khalid Masood, was British, born in Kent and brought up as Adrian Russell Elms. His story is one of radicalisation, the question being when and how he embraced extremist Islamist ideology: the path that led him to an act of murderous violence has nothing to do with immigration.
Keep an eye, meanwhile, on that word “illegals”, which is gaining poisonous currency as a catch-all term for all migrants and non-white people. In his interview with the Times in January, Donald Trump used it, quite inaccurately, to describe Syrian refugees welcomed to Germany. The intended force of the word is not hard to fathom. To call someone “illegal” is to strip them of their legitimacy and brand them as – at best – second class.
This is the sharp end of a broader phenomenon in which political language is being used with pernicious elasticity. The true legacy of the fading UK Independence party is not the EU referendum or its outcome. It has been to force the politics of Enoch Powell into the mainstream and to pour all social grievances, dysfunctions and resentments into a vessel, bursting at the seams, marked “immigration”.
We are used to hearing and reading erroneous claims that migration forces Britons from the workplace; that the economy does not really need migrant labour; that migrants represent a net loss to the public purse, contributing less as taxpayers than they cost as users of public services; and that migrants are at the root of Britain’s housing crisis. It is all nonsense. But such claims, repeated again and again, have proved adhesive.
On Sunday the Sunday Times reported that, after Brexit, EU nationals already working here may continue to be paid child benefit to send home to their families. This disclosure is no doubt ill-timed for the prime minister, who will trigger article 50 on Wednesday, and unveil proposals for the “great repeal bill” on the following day. To those outraged by this probable outcome, I ask: what did you expect? That EU citizens already working quite legitimately in the UK were suddenly to have their benefits taken away to make you feel better? This would not only imperil the rights of Britons living elsewhere in the EU. It would be wrong in itself.
The broad claims of the referendum campaign are starting to dissolve into the pixelated reality of policy, practicality and compromise. According to a senior government source, a wonderful irony is now manifesting itself around the cabinet table in the contributions of Liam Fox, David Davis and Boris Johnson: “There’s no doubt that Theresa wants to bring down immigration. But the three main Brexiteers are suddenly becoming more and more vocal about the need to keep the numbers sufficiently high for the needs of the economy. You hear Liam saying: ‘We mustn’t do anything that threatens prosperity.’ It’s becoming more and more clear to them what’s at stake.”
In their defence Fox, Davis and Johnson would doubtless insist that their demand was only ever to “take back control” of immigration from the EU, rather than specifically to reduce the number of newcomers. But this was always disingenuous.
The message that the voters heard loud and clear was that escaping the grip of Brussels would mean fewer foreigners coming to Britain. As Deborah Mattinson’s fascinating Britainthinks panel surveys have shown, leave voters interpret “hard Brexit” unequivocally as being “tough on immigrants” and are uninterested in economic counter-arguments. What motivates leavers, Mattinson concludes, is “broader cultural issues”.
This qualitative research has been reinforced by quantitative findings: according to an Ipsos Mori poll in Friday’s Evening Standard, 61% regard immigration curbs as the priority in the forthcoming negotiations. A recent study by the NatCen thinktank indicated that 68% want the principle of free movement to go.
In this respect, I have absolutely no sympathy for the Brexiteers. Though they maintained the mask of respectability during the campaign, declaring that the argument was about sovereignty not immigration itself, they were perfectly well aware of the popular sentiments they were galvanising and the power of those sentiments to carry them over the finishing line.
When, last June, Farage unveiled his vile poster showing a long queue of Syrian refugees under the slogan “Breaking Point”, the Vote Leave campaign distanced itself fast from the image. Well, naturally. With leaden predictability, Farage had made explicit what was meant to remain implicit. The essence of dog-whistle politics is plausible deniability – exploit bigotry, moi? – and the Ukip leader had just blown everyone’s cover.
As the negotiations with Brussels approach, it is becoming ever more clear that net immigration is unlikely to fall very much, if at all, as a consequence of Brexit. Addressing the need for extra unskilled workers in particular sectors and regions, Davis has acknowledged: “Whatever we do has to be flexible enough to meet these requirements.” In other words: expect the new system of border control to be complex, detailed, and full of exemptions – not the red, white and blue wall that the nativists crave.
Immigration policy is a patchwork quilt and will remain so. The interdependent economy and culture of the 21st century mandate no less. But the gulf between rhetoric and reality has never been greater. As the prime minister launches the EU negotiations that will define her place in history, she faces no less a challenge at home, in managing the expectations of voters who have been grievously misled.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
Nowhere did the slogan “take back control” resound more enthusiastically than in the ears of Tory free marketeers, who imagined themselves as modernist privateers, latter-day descendants of the proud tradition of Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. During the referendum campaign you could almost hear them slapping their leather-clad thighs and looking eagerly ahead to a world where bluster and bravado replace the musty domain of the rule book and the bureaucrat.
Sadly, for these modern-day pirates of the high seas, trade in the 21st century is hedged by rules and restrictions, tariffs and quotas. Ruling the waves is going to require at least as much negotiation as finding our way out of the EU labyrinth. The events of the past few weeks have started to burst the Ripping Yarns bubble and brought the discussion down to Earth.
The first myth was that German manufacturers would put pressure on Angela Merkel to allow the UK to cherry-pick access to the single market without accepting freedom of movement. This has been demolished in a series of steps beginning with the German Employers’ Federation who made clear that the integrity of the single market came ahead of business deals with the UK. Now the Federation of German Industries is warning that German companies with a presence in Britain must “make provisions for a very hard exit”, because the British government doesn’t know what it wants. Perhaps we can turn the 95 production sites of German cars in the UK to innovative jam and biscuit factories. It is clear that Germany industry stands with the German government in placing political stability above narrow economic self-interest.
Before the shock and magnitude of the leave vote had really sunk in, Theresa May was jetting off to the US to hold hands with Donald Trump to beg him for a trade deal. He agreed, apparently with great enthusiasm. “We could have a really, really good trade deal,” he confirmed by Twitter. Great news to Brexiteers still euphoric at the result they had just pulled off. The problem is that Trump didn’t say who this deal would be good for, although the clue is in his campaign slogan: America First. Further information can be found in his book The Art of the Deal, wherein he explains that you always make a deal with your opposite number when they are vulnerable because this allows you to win by making them lose.
What this means in practice was made clear by the US’s decision to impose a 219% import tariff on Bombardier aircraft parts, jeopardising thousands of jobs on this side of the pond. These punitive tariffs are in response to what the US considers anti-competitive subsidies, an argument that we are likely to hear a lot more of in connection with our farmers in the competitive world of global trade.
While Liam Fox may be seeking to Make Britain Great Again, Trump is seeking to Make America Great Again. It is precisely because we learned that nationalistic competition on trade tended to make everybody poorer that we became engaged in trade negotiations in the first place.
This last week has also burst the bubble of the idea that the Commonwealth will be our salvation, a fantasy arising from too much public school education. A rare early agreement between the UK and EU was over the terms of our solo entry into the World Trade Organisation. This body is the dread of a free trader, with its complex system of tariffs, quotas and schedules, all of which have to be unanimously agreed by 164 member states.
The EU’s suggestion that the UK simply inherits its fair share of EU quota on the same terms was instantly rejected by a group of WTO members including Canada and New Zealand. Predictably, Commonwealth countries will be fighting for national interest rather than helping out the former colonial power in distress. Their economies were severely damaged by our shift in trade focus to the EU 40 years ago and they have moved on to find trade partnerships within their own regions.
This leaves only one strategy still available: the ignominious role as the world’s leading arms exporter, which helps to explain why half the secondments to Fox’s trade department are from arms manufacturers. It also helps to explain recent visits by May or Fox to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Philippines.
Then there is the proposal that we might join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal with 12 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean. Our only geographical tie to TPP countries now is Pitcairn island, famous as the refuge of the Bounty mutineers. The symbolism of a bunch of renegades who reject existing rules and norms and find themselves isolated on a barren island could not be more appropriate.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Each time I visit Dublin or Belfast, people immediately want to know about the state of play on Brexit. Can the Conservative party truly be as incompetent and divided as it seems to be? Or could the apparent chaos be a machiavellian ploy, with a diabolically clever plan to be unveiled in the final scene? Now the cabinet has been summoned to an emergency meeting tomorrow, we may be about to find out.
The Democratic Unionist party will scrutinise the withdrawal agreement with a gimlet eye for any evidence that Theresa May has reneged on her commitments to it by granting a backstop agreement that could give Northern Ireland a special status within the UK. But the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, should be careful not to overplay her hand. May’s political bedfellows have wasted no time in throwing their weight around and talking up their role in the confidence and supply agreement, signed after the Conservatives lost their majority in the 2017 election. At any point, they claim, they can sink the government by withdrawing the support of their 10 MPs. But the question of whether May will renege on her commitments to them over the status of Northern Ireland is only one problem faced by Foster’s party. Within the DUP a power struggle is looming.
Rumours have circulated for months that the DUP is preparing the same fate for Foster (who is not an MP) as the one possibly awaiting May after Brexit finally happens. For years the party’s Westminster MPs have vetoed and slapped down Foster’s suggestions as party leader, and they have far greater control of the direction of the party. Both inside and outside the DUP there is the sense that Foster could well be pushed aside after taking her share of the blame for a messy Brexit. Some MPs were making themselves very visible at the Conservative party conference this year, boosting their public image for a potential leadership bid.
The biggest problem for the DUP is closer to home. The business community is exasperated by the party’s refusal to entertain the prospect of a backstop for the north, preserving the frictionless border with the south. Chief executives, lobbyists and large company owners have spent time flying to London and Brussels, explaining how reliant their businesses are on frictionless trade not just with the Republic of Ireland but with the European market as a whole. Already, businesses are struggling to recruit staff because of the pound’s weakness. One company preparing turkeys for Christmas has resorted to bussing people from Dungannon to Coleraine (over an hour away), purely in an attempt to process enough meat to furnish seasonal family tables.
A hard border would also be an open door to criminal gangs, argue business owners in the food and agriculture sectors; talk of it emboldening paramilitary groups and dissident republicans pales in comparison with the money-making opportunities other gangs will spy. As one senior businessman pointed out to me, smuggling is already a huge issue, but “when people realise they can make more smuggling garlic bulbs than cocaine, you’ll do it – who is likely to put you away for that?”
The majority of people in Northern Ireland voted against Brexit, and will be affected far more directly than the rest of the UK population, but their views have been almost entirely ignored by unionists pushing for the hardest of Brexits and kicking back against the prospect of any regulatory divergence for the north, (although the party is happy to diverge by blocking gay marriage and abortion).
In truth, unionism has become increasingly unmoored from day-to-day life. All the business people I spoke to, north and south of the border, had come to the same conclusion: reality had to take over at some point. “We’re talking livelihoods and jobs, lost for ever,” said one unionist business owner who voted leave. “There’s no way I can vote to do that. I’ll tell friends one on one, but publicly pretend I haven’t changed my mind.”
While the DUP won’t budge, its voting base is weighing up the political realities and finding that, in the context of a hard or no-deal Brexit, the union offers far less than does a united Ireland. Increasingly, dyed-in-the-wool unionists are admitting a no-deal or hard Brexit would see them abandon the project. A recent poll found 62% of people believe a united Ireland is more possible because of Brexit. Foster might demand May and the Conservatives move to accommodate her, but the growing grumblings of unionists increasingly suggest the DUP has overreached itself this time.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
If ever proof were needed that headline writers set the tone at the Daily Mail, the newspaper’s online report delivered soon after Tuesday’s ruling from the supreme court provides it.
Above a fairly straightforward news story about the court’s decision to allow the country’s elected representatives a vote on the biggest constitutional upheaval in a generation, initially the headline read: “Yet again the elite show their contempt for Brexit voters!”
Launched within an hour of the verdict, the headline went on: “Supreme Court rules Theresa May CANNOT trigger Britain’s departure from the EU without MPs’ approval … as Remain campaigners gloat.” The copy itself provided little evidence of gloating.
The Mail’s first take response was tougher even than that of its rival pro-Brexit tabloids, which have made no secret of their antipathy to any attempt to delay Britain’s departure from the European Union. The first story in the Express accused judges of “thwarting the will of 17m Britons”, while the Sun originally went with an exhortation to “Just Get On with it!” before a headline that made it less clear who exactly should be getting on with anything: “Theresa May loses Supreme Court Brexit battle forcing MPs vote – but Prime Minister vows to get it out of the way before March – even if Corbyn plots ‘absurd’ appeal to EU.”
Reports launched within minutes of the historic and complex vote are very much the first draft of history, but these stories nevertheless underline how the Mail has led the way with virulent, hard-hitting coverage during the EU referendum campaign and subsequent political upheaval.
Reporters on the Mail know the score. Even if their copy is straight down the line, they expect barbs to be added in the headline and captions.
A headline that accuses supreme court judges of being elitist and contemptuous counts as positively mild, of course, when compared with the most controversial of the Mail’s headlines during the whole imbroglio.
Last November a front page that called the supreme court judges Enemies of the People who had “declared war on democracy” prompted 1,600 complaints to the press regulator Ipso, and international revulsion. Not least because the phrase was more typically associated with murderous revolutionary leaders in both Soviet Russia and France, as well as dictatorships ever since.
Ipso took no action over those complaints, pointing out that as the press code of conduct “gives newspapers the right to editorialise and campaign” it was neither inaccurate nor misleading to call judges “enemies of the people”.
Yet comparisons were swiftly made between that headline and a Nazi newspaper from 1933 that used the same construct – head and shoulder shots and abusive headline. Full Fact, an independent website, pointed out that the Nazis included journalists and politicians and not just judges, however.
Read some of the hundreds of comments below the Mail’s news story and it seems clear that some would not see that as such a leap. One of the most popular comments an hour after the decision read: “After we leave the EEC people should turn their attention to reforming the Establishment, staring with the House of Commons, The Lords and The Judicial system. They are not fit for purpose.”
As ever with the Mail, it is through its print front pages that its editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, likes to set the agenda rather than the first online reports. Dacre did indeed come back from his annual January break to edit today’s paper.
Immediately after the ruling, Downing Street said that it would “respect” the judgment. It remains to be seen whether the Mail will follow suit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
When I referred in my last column to Chancellor Philip Hammond as the only grown-up minister in this chaotic cabinet, I was unaware that he had just put his name to a joint article in the pro-Brexit Sunday Telegraph with his arch-foe Liam Fox, making the following statement: “We respect the will of the British people – in March 2019 the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. We will leave the customs union… we will leave the single market… ”
True, this was followed by reports that he wanted, in effect, to retain quasi-membership for several years, but the two emphasised that such a precaution “cannot be a back door to staying in the EU”. There were also reports that Hammond had in some mysterious way scored a victory, which contrasted vividly with other reports that his attempt at some kind of coup had been foiled.
Certainly, what he put his name to in that article was not good news for those of us who firmly believe it is not too late to arrest the progress of Brexit in its tracks. But then the shenanigans in the present cabinet’s approach to Brexit negotiations call to mind the Queen in Through the looking-glass telling Alice: “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
The fact of the matter is that this government is so unstable that anything could happen in the next two months. It is an open secret that up to half a dozen members of the cabinet, and at least one double-breasted outsider, are metaphorically polishing their daggers. As my colleague Andrew Rawnsley has pointed out, the only thing holding up a revolt against Theresa May is fear that, by precipitating yet another election, the assassins might end up with Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.
But Shakespeare’s “vaulting ambition” is a powerful factor in politics, and there are those who wonder how Theresa May can survive the party conference in October unscathed.
Which brings us to the Labour party’s position on Brexit, which most people seem to regard as every bit as confused as the Conservative one.
It is generally assumed that the problem with Jeremy Corbyn’s lukewarm opposition to Brexit during the referendum was that he is a lifelong Eurosceptic and thinks the EU is a capitalist conspiracy against workers.
But most enlightened Labour MPs and trade unionists are more aware than Corbyn seems to be that the EU is in fact very strong on workers’ rights. As for Corbyn’s apparent fear that the EU is the enemy of publicly owned corporations, he must surely be aware of the degree to which so many of our so-called “privatised” utilities and much of our transport network are already in the hands of continental state-owned concerns.
It seems to me that Labour now has a golden opportunity to capitalise on the strong pro-European feelings of the young, as manifested in recent surveys and, indeed, in the last election.
In which context, there was a powerful open letter not long ago to Corbyn in his (and my) local paper, the Islington Tribune, from a longtime Labour party member, Michael Wolff.
He told Corbyn: “Despite your current popularity, your ambiguity about the EU and that sense that you are out of step with our nation’s youth on Brexit won’t keep the momentum you’ve created rolling in your favour.” The message was epitomised in the headline: “My message to Jeremy: Don’t let our young people down, burst the Brexit bubble.”
For those of us who care more about this nation than the Brexiters, the situation is urgent. Professor Vernon Bogdanor at King’s College, London, maintains that Labour’s electoral gains in June “raise the question of whether the decision in the 2016 referendum is final: for, although Labour was not a Remain party this year, the British Election Study found that the party’s ‘soft Brexit’ policy played a large part in its substantial gain in votes. In constituencies where over 55% voted Remain, the party achieved a swing of around 7%.” Bogdanor concludes that “the election was the revenge of the Remainers”.
The state of our nation is pitiful enough without the addition of self-inflicted damage. The hospitals, the care homes, the rail service – too many services are, to adapt May’s phrase, “just about managing”.
This is bad enough, but the economy has slowed down as well: as the economist Simon Wren-Lewis points out, the slowdown was at first aggravated in 2015 and 2016 by the continuing austerity policy, but more recently has been hit by the impact on real incomes of the Brexit-induced devaluation of the pound.
Now, in theory one of the few benefits of that depreciation should have been a rebalancing towards exports, and some surveys suggest that export orders are rising. But, as Wren-Lewis says, so far the depreciation “has not led to any compensating increase in exports because firms are not going to expand markets that might soon disappear because of leaving the single market or customs union”.
We are coming up to the 50th anniversary of the devaluation of the pound under Harold Wilson in 1967. Then as now, commentators worried that for a long time the trade balance was not improving. Then they discovered the “J-curve” – the immediate effect had been to worsen the balance of payments by making imports dearer and exports cheaper. But eventually the improvement in price competitiveness led to a better trade performance.
But I am with Wren-Lewis: this time, any J-curve effects are likely to be offset by the deleterious impact of Brexit if our political leaders do not have the gumption to tell the electorate it made a grave mistake in last year’s referendum. Time to think again!
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
In delivering the refrain: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Joni Mitchell provides us with an unlikely Brexit anthem. From the freedom to travel and work to the knowledge that you can eat safe food or use your phone abroad without paying roaming charges, we’re beginning to notice how much of what we have come to expect as citizens of a civilised society is provided or supported by the EU. As we struggle our way through the increasingly chaotic process of Brexit, we are left asking ourselves just what will survive our leaving.
Today, it is funding for the regeneration of our regions that is the focus of attention, with Kevin Bentley of the Local Government Association calling on the government to guarantee that it will match the £8.4bn local authorities received during the present EU funding round. It’s a call to protect the vulnerable people they represent and echoes the same plea they made this time last year, straight after the referendum. Rather than reassurance, the country’s poorer regions face continuing uncertainty.
Can we really expect governments that have allowed the UK to become increasingly unequal and more unbalanced towards its capital than almost any other country in Europe to continue to employ the EU’s principle of regional redistribution? Our contributions to the EU budget are returned to a number of groups and areas that might have otherwise found it incredibly difficult to make a case for funding to a government that has ensured the poorest areas of the country have paid the highest price for austerity – and that has cut funding to local authorities in England by 27% in recent years.
In my European parliamentary constituency of the south-west, the local area most clearly at risk is Cornwall; it has benefited from the highest level of EU funding (which was reserved for post-industrial areas) over several decades. Arguments made by increasingly desperate Cornwall council representatives during the referendum fell on closed ears. Cornwall voted leave by 56.5% to 43.5%. The local chat focused on allegations of corruption and an idea that money was ending up with the wrong people. No evidence was brought forward in support of this argument, but the distant spectre of Brussels was definitely to blame, the argument went. Discussion of the EU funding that has enabled Cornwall to become a world leader in renewable technologies was absent from these conversations.
The south-west currently receives around £729.3m of public investment of EU money every year. Since the abolition of regional development associations in 2012, much of the innovative regeneration and business support across the region has been funded from Brussels, rather than Westminster. Take, for instance, the National Composites Centre, based at the Bristol and Bath science park, which was developed with European regional development funding of £9m to put the UK at the forefront of composites technology. The centre is a purpose-built research and development facility that brings together companies and academics to develop technologies supporting the design and rapid manufacture of composites – lightweight, high-performance materials that are transforming the design and manufacture of components used in the aerospace and automotive industries, and marine and renewable technologies.
Another recipient is the Poole-based charity the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which received funding to develop a system for decommissioning lifeboats and reducing the carbon footprint of the organisation. And there is the north Dorset-based company that was awarded funds under the Life programme (supporting environmental and nature conservation projects) to develop an environment-friendly repair system for leaking sewage and rainwater/surface drainage pipes, while Dorset county council received funding for a collaborative project focused on coastal zone management and the development of a strategy for an open coast. And so we could go on, lauding the achievements of the sort of projects funded by the EU that are now at risk.
Cornwall has six MPs, all of them Tories and all but one of them a Brexiteer. Boris Johnson famously launched his Vote Leave battle bus from Cornwall, brandishing pasties and promises. We must now hope that the local councillors hoping to catch the ear of Tory ministers in Westminster won’t be told to go whistle. It’s a long way back to Cornwall, even in the back of a big yellow taxi.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
One of the disconcerting things about Brexit is its capacity constantly to rewrite the script of political dysfunction. The latest government proposals won’t work. They do represent a significant concession, but create an incoherent muddle leading to a bizarre outcome.
Northern Ireland would remain part of Europe’s single market but Britain would leave it. There would be regulatory checks down the Irish Sea but not at the Irish border. There would however be customs checks, so the border would not be open as now. And Northern Ireland’s membership of the single market could be unilaterally revoked by its assembly, which is not presently able to constitute itself, and so the whole plan is subject to the notorious vagaries of Northern Irish politics.
Europe will demand a dropping of the DUP veto and something near to the backstop on the customs union. But even if the Johnson government finally concedes everything, the result would be a horrible deal for the UK. And, as presently formed, the proposal undermines the Good Friday agreement in fundamental respects.
It is almost 100 years since the Republic of Ireland insisted on its independence, after the failure of various home rule initiatives to save the union. The six largely unionist and Protestant counties of the north remained with the UK. The south became the Irish nation. It was always an uneasy peace, because a big part of the northern population was Catholic and nationalist, whereas the southern Protestants, like my mother’s family in Donegal, were relatively few in number.
Crucial to maintenance of the peace was the idea of an open border between north and south in recognition of the fact that around the border families intermingled, did business and trade and moved, often several times a day, across it. They were separate countries but treated for the practical purposes of daily life as if they were the same.
After the second world war, the Republic of Ireland and the UK were in lockstep. We were both out of the EU until, on the same day in 1973, we both joined.
At the time, Britain was more enthusiastic about Europe than Ireland. But Ireland understood that because of the strength of the ties between north and south, and the necessity of keeping the border open, if the UK joined, Ireland had to follow suit.
However, nationalist and republican sentiment had been rising in Northern Ireland, culminating in the outbreak of violence at the end of the 1960s and in the bitter conflict that over the ensuing three decades cost thousands of lives and untold suffering.
When the Good Friday agreement was negotiated in April 1998, the most painstaking and difficult negotiation I was ever involved in, Europe played a role in two ways.
Ireland and the UK had started to put the old enmities behind us, as we co-operated in Europe, often finding common cause on issues, and European trade had become a vital part of the island of Ireland’s economy.
The shared future in Europe meant that the border diminished in significance. In addition, at the core of the agreement was the following deal: Northern Ireland would remain part of the UK for as long as a majority in the north wanted it, but in return the nationalist aspirations and identity of those who wanted a united Ireland would be recognised and given effect.
The open border between north and south was key. Had that been in doubt, there would never have been a peace agreement. Simple as that.
All this is to show that the issue of the Irish border is not some invented ruse by “Remoaners” to derail “the will of the people” – it has deep historical roots and was always bound to be critical to the Brexit debate.
Now, for the first time, the border between north and south will be the external border of the EU. And if, as Brexiters demand, the UK leaves not just the political structures of Europe but its trading structures – the single market and customs union – then it follows that there will be border checks and the principle of an open border breached. However, right at the outset, when Boris Johnson was foreign secretary, the May government insisted the open border would remain untouched. There was therefore a self-evident inconsistency between that commitment and the commitment to leave the single market and customs union. It could have been resolved by treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK. But the government also gave a commitment to the DUP that Northern Ireland would be treated the same.
Hence May’s Chequers proposals, which provoked Johnson’s resignation. Her solution was to align the inconsistent commitments essentially by agreeing that the whole of the UK would remain in parts of the single market and with the backstop to fix the customs union problem.
Johnson’s solution is effectively to breach the commitment to the unionists, but compensate with a unionist veto, treat Northern Ireland and the UK differently for the single market, but the same for the customs union. He has exactly the dilemma of Theresa May. Either Northern Ireland is treated differently for trade in its entirety or the whole of the UK remains in Europe’s trading system.
The present hotchpotch achieves neither outcome, and would undermine the peace so carefully constructed and kept despite all the challenges for more than two decades, with any border-related infrastructure a potential target for violent elements and with a weakening of the “one island” culture at the heart of nationalist aspirations.
And this is a bad deal for Britain. The hard Brexit future relationship Johnson promises for Britain will be a hideously painful negotiation that will mean years more of Brexit distraction and made tougher every time a minister proclaims how we intend to compete with Europe on tax and regulation. Even more so with no deal.
The biggest tragicomic aspect of the whole sorry saga is the erroneous belief that “getting Brexit done” in this way allows us to “move on”.
There is only one way to bring Brexit resolution: to ask the people, given three years of accumulated experience and knowledge and with a specific government position before them, whether they want to tell us again or think again. I live in hope that, having tried everything else, our political leadership will finally realise this.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
Europe will be first on the agenda in every sense when parliament returns next week. Over the summer it has become shockingly clear that a Conservative government with a weakened leader and a delusional policy on Brexit is inadequate to the seriousness of the task. As a result it is hastening Britain towards an exit from Europe that could devastate the economy and jobs in every region of the UK while betraying Britain’s values and future. Shortly after MPs return they will begin debating the government’s EU withdrawal bill, with a key vote on 11 September. By mid-October, while ministers obsess about the Tory conference rather than the national interest, agreement is due on the main terms of UK withdrawal. The need for parliament to take clear and wise decisions on the supremely important issue of Britain’s relations with Europe could therefore not be more pressing.
The immense seriousness of this moment explains why Labour’s newly agreed Brexit policy is both very important and very welcome. Until now, Labour has ducked and dithered on Brexit almost as much as the Conservatives. Divisions about Europe itself and about Labour voters’ views have led many in the party to hide from difficult choices. In fact, a clear majority of Labour voters oppose a hard Brexit, as do most trade unions, most Labour MPs and the overwhelming majority of the young voters who embraced Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Yet Labour’s equivocations over triggering article 50 and about staying in the single market, which culminated in an ambivalent election manifesto stance, have let the people of this country down. On the biggest issue of the day, an inadequate government has faced an inadequate main opposition party too.
That may now change. The new policy, launched by the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, in the Observer today, is agreed, coherent and right. In place of the earlier contradictions, Labour now says that, as Britain leaves the EU, it must remain inside the single market and the customs union for a transitional period of – as yet – uncertain length. The ambiguous key phrase in Sir Keir’s article is that the transitional period will be “as short as possible but as long as necessary”. During that time, existing single market and customs union terms would continue to apply, though Britain would have left the EU in line with the Brexit vote of 2016.
Labour is therefore now a party of soft Brexit. There is much to welcome in that shift. It provides clarity where there was confusion. It unequivocally respects the referendum result, but does not heap pain and cost on British workers who did not vote to become poorer. It keeps open the soft border in Ireland, a vital interest for both the UK and the Irish Republic. It enables a future Labour government to assess its full range of Brexit options without important avenues – like an eventual Norway-style deal to remain in the single market and customs union – being closed off. It thus opens the possibility that Britain could remain in the single market and the customs union long-term. And, while there is nothing in Sir Keir’s article that even hints at this, it keeps in play the possibility of a national mood change on Brexit itself.
There are immediate political benefits. This is a unified Labour policy. Mr Corbyn has signed off on it, as has the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. It puts prosperity and living standards at the centre of the party’s position. It gives Labour’s many pro-Europeans, who were dismayed and hamstrung by the previous ambiguities, something to support openly and creatively. All this suggests a Labour party which, at least on this supremely important issue, is willing to come together rather than conspire and snipe at itself. The country needs such a Labour party.
Labour’s move makes the party more electable. It also puts the party in a place where, providing it is skilful, it can work with pro-European parties like the Liberal Democrats, the nationalists and the Greens. In addition – and crucially, in view of the parliamentary arithmetic – it opens up the space for Labour MPs to work with the many Tories who wish for a softer Brexit than Theresa May is offering. Those conversations – which should immediately focus on amendments to the withdrawal bill – will probably have to take place at backbencher level rather than between the frontbenches. But they can take place – and they must. This is not the anti-Brexit stance that many ideally want from Labour. But it is a coherent step towards defending the economy and jobs from a hard Brexit. It is a moment of hope, and further steps are not ruled out. So far, so good.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
It is sometimes said that the first rule of politics is to learn to count the numbers. In a hung parliament, this is a particularly important lesson to grasp. When there is no automatic government majority, as at present, MPs in the House of Commons hold far more power. Last week, MPs used that muscle to defeat the government on a big issue: the transparency of tax havens, snubbing serious efforts by Theresa May behind the scenes to change the outcome. On Wednesday MPs may do the same thing again, this time on amendments to the data protection bill. These would restore the Leveson inquiry’s sanctions against news organisations that do not sign up to an approved independent regulator and would revive the “Leveson part 2” inquiry. The government whips are understandably very worried.
But the power of the House of Commons in such cases is as nothing to the power that MPs can potentially exert over the Brexit terms in the weeks and months ahead. This is a rule of politics that Mrs May, at least, seems to understand – it is why she went for an early election last year – but her Brexiter ministers and backbenchers do not. It has come to a head over the issue of customs arrangements between Britain and the EU after Brexit. Mrs May wants to leave the customs union but to create a customs partnership with the EU with technological enforcement. She is trying to craft a compromise that might win the support of a Commons majority without destroying her government. The Brexiter ministers and backbenchers appear not to care about that.
Last week, the balance of power in the cabinet Brexit committee shifted against Mrs May after Amber Rudd’s resignation. Yet ministers remain divided. The issue is unresolved within the government, even before any formal negotiations begin with the EU. Yesterday, in an interview given to the Daily Mail while in America at the weekend, Boris Johnson mocked Mrs May’s attempts to craft a customs partnership as “crazy”. Traditionally that would be a double sacking offence, first for breaching collective responsibility, and second for attacking the prime minister while abroad. Instead the Brexiters attacked the business secretary Greg Clark for daring to restate the government’s existing position. Mrs May is too weak to enforce the usual rules. She should not allow Mr Johnson to humiliate her. But she may yet have her revenge.
That is because she may yet win what is, in effect, her negotiation with her own party. She can do the arithmetic that the hard Brexiters, egged on by the Mail and other rightwing papers, ignore. She knows that most Labour MPs and most of the other opposition parties will vote against the kind of customs proposal that Mr Johnson and his allies want to put forward. She knows that the harder the Brexit the foreign secretary and his allies try to secure, the more that it will push pro-European Tory moderates to vote with the opposition. If that happens Mrs May knows she will lose votes on the Brexit terms but will win any confidence vote that might follow. Such a scenario looms ever closer. The House of Lords has made a dozen big amendments to the EU withdrawal bill, including on the customs union. More government defeats came on Tuesday as the Lords voted to continue post-Brexit links with EU agencies and, led by no less a figure than the Duke of Wellington, voted to remove the March 2019 deadline date from the bill in case a delay proves necessary.
Mrs May may try to delay Commons votes on these and other bills in order to avoid her Waterloo and put pressure on wavering pro-Europeans. Yet those who can count know there is a soft Brexit majority in the Commons and that it is increasingly likely to deliver Brexit terms that will upset the Brexiters. That may even happen in the so-called “meaningful vote” of the final terms. If the Tory Brexiters were serious, they would therefore support Mrs May on the customs issue. Not to do so makes it more likely that the Commons will vote for an even softer Brexit. But the Brexiters are not united. They have differing goals. They are damaging the Tory party more than they are damaging the case for a soft Brexit. This is good news for those of us who, if there must be a Brexit at all, support the softest possible version.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
When Boris Johnson arrived in Downing Street, he brought with him a reputation for duplicity in matters personal and professional. Only his most credulous cheerleaders expected that to change when he became prime minister. The pessimists did not anticipate how swiftly and egregiously Mr Johnson’s worst attributes would be displayed. Even by his own shabby standards it is an achievement already to have corrupted the relationship between a prime minister and the monarch. A court has judged that parliament was unlawfully prorogued. Scottish appeal judges accepted arguments that the purpose of the move was “stymying parliament” with intent to obstruct scrutiny of the executive in contravention of constitutional principle. Downing Street insists prorogation was required because a new government needed a new session to enact its agenda.
That explanation does not withstand much interrogation. The government failed to provide a witness statement supporting its account. Before the case came to court there had not been much effort by ministers and supporters of the government to conceal a link between Commons resistance to a no-deal Brexit and Mr Johnson’s determination to shut the legislature down. If the real motive had been a technical reboot ahead of a Queen’s speech, prorogation could have lasted a couple of days, not five weeks. The legality of such a cynical move is still moot, despite Wednesday’s judgment. A parallel case was heard by the high court in London last week with a different outcome. The judges neither rejected nor accepted the claimant’s view of the government’s ulterior motive. They declared instead that a prime minister’s agenda for prorogation was a point of political contention, so not justiciable.
This vexed matter now passes on to the supreme court. If the Scottish appeal court’s verdict prevails, prorogation will have to be undone. The prime minister will be steeped in disgrace to depths that would once have submerged the career of any politician. Even if the English high court interpretation ends up being preferred, the dishonesty of Mr Johnson’s prorogation gambit has been recorded as a matter of fact. The salient technical question is not whether he is a liar, but whether a constitutional procedure based on his lies should be invalidated.
In purely political terms there should be no doubt that Mr Johnson abused his power. In well-functioning democracies the executive does not close down the legislature by fiat just to eliminate opposition and evade scrutiny. A British prime minister acquires the unusual capacity to do such a thing only by misappropriating the royal prerogative. Mr Johnson took a ceremonial function of the crown and weaponised it for ultra-partisan ends. The Palace is rightly sensitive to anything that looks like political activism and so, by default, Elizabeth II grants prorogations when requested by her prime minister. That is the unwritten contract upholding a constitutional monarchy. The whole arrangement is perverse and archaic – overdue for modernisation – but in the absence of reform the only safety valve is trust. It requires whoever sits in No 10 to operate by some basic code of decency and responsibility. Mr Johnson does not play by those rules. He gamed the vulnerability in the system, inveigling the Queen into a potentially unlawful enterprise.
The prime minister could still prove his respect for law by conceding that the prorogation was ill-conceived and seeking its reversal, although that would be out of character. It is revealing that Downing Street’s initial response to Wednesday’s ruling, briefed anonymously, insinuated that a Scottish court might be less reliable than an English one; not impartial on Brexit-related matters. Clarifications were hastily issued, but the damage was done. A trustworthy government does not have to make explicit its belief in the independence of the judiciary and its readiness to uphold the rule of law. But this administration holds fundamental precepts of democracy in contempt. Since Mr Johnson has no respect for the unwritten conventions that underpin the British constitution, he plainly cannot be trusted with the powers afforded by those conventions to the office of prime minister.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
In a world of political spin, a single smart soundbite can sometimes take over an entire complex story. Wednesday’s meeting in Berlin between Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel was a classic example. In advance, it had been billed as a stubborn confrontation with no expectation of agreement on Brexit. Then, in the press conference that followed their meeting, the German chancellor speculated that solving the impasse between the European Union and the UK over the Irish backstop might take two years of negotiation before adding: “But maybe we can find that solution in the next 30 days.”
Mrs Merkel’s remark was a textbook stratagem. Mr Johnson picked up her words and ran with them, calling it a blistering timetable. The words instantly became the story of the day, generating a clutch of British newspaper headlines like “30 days to ditch the backstop” (Daily Telegraph) or “30-day deadline to avert no deal” (Guardian). In Paris on Thursday, Emmanuel Macron endorsed the idea, even while saying that the backstop remained indispensable both for Irish stability and for the single market.
Yet what has really happened as a result of Mr Johnson’s first foray into continental Europe this week? In appearance, a form of progress, in the shape of an openness to further discussion through September. Good as far it goes. But in substance, not a lot. Neither the German nor the French leader moved from their commitment to the withdrawal agreement. Nor, unvisited in Mr Johnson’s travels, has there been any change from the Irish government at whom, on one Brexiter reading, this activity is all focused. For his part, Mr Johnson offered no hint that he might be more interested in a negotiated deal than the no-deal outcome for which active preparations continue and which remains the biggest issue for MPs.
Nevertheless, the German chancellor’s dozen words have had some metapolitical effect. Downing Street has called them a chink of light, implying both that a variant of Theresa May’s negotiated deal may be a possibility after all and that this is actually what Mr Johnson prefers. This has the effect of changing Britain’s Brexit conversation away from the seeming inevitability of no deal, which has been the main message of Mr Johnson’s four weeks in office so far, and towards the more detailed practical and political options that would be involved in a fresh approach to the backstop.
The central question is whether this is anything more than a game, in which all sides try to sound open to reason and alternatives while, at the same time, nothing changes. The worldly answer is that it is not. As Mr Johnson headed back to London, Britain remains headed towards no deal. Nothing that he has said in public is a remotely serious attempt to prevent that. There is no suggestion that he intends anything different in private. The logical conclusion is that we are all bystanders in an elaborate, polite, but irresistible masquerade whose purpose is to prepare the ground for the participants to heap blame on one another when the inevitable comes to pass, Britain crashes out and Mr Johnson calls an election in which he blames everything on Europe.
Yet any deal remains better than no deal. All sides know this. Almost all MPs and the overwhelming majority of businesses know it too. Even Mr Johnson knows it in his way. If the 30-day idea is to mean anything substantive, it means that the country and parliament should redouble their efforts to force the government to be serious about a negotiated deal. That means the Commons sitting through September to stop Mr Johnson running down the clock. It means some difficult compromises. But it is the only way for the words that have been spoken this week to have any chance of being turned into reality.
Last modified on Wed 12 Feb 2020 19.10 GMT
The leading architects of Brexit populism display a troubling pattern of attacking judges in a manner that goes far beyond the tension between government and the judiciary required for the functioning of democracy. It is desirable for there to be stress between the bench and the executive. If there was complete harmony between the two centres of power then voters ought to worry. But the strain ought not lead to conflict of a serious nature.
The flashpoint this week is over judicial review, an essential check on government overreach and abuse. The court of appeal’s decision to halt the deportation of detainees unable to exercise their legal right to contact their lawyers has been impugned as vexatious by Downing Street. The door is being opened to a weakening of this protection against an overmighty state on the grounds that legal challenges to ministerial decisions were being used, in Boris Johnson’s words, to “conduct politics by another means”.
It was government defeats in two judicial reviews in the supreme court in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum that placed judges, unwittingly perhaps, on the losing side of a culture war. Branded “enemies of the people” by the Daily Mail, and their decisions decried as “wrong” by Boris Johnson, the judiciary are firmly in the sights of the victorious Brexiters. Mr Johnson has lost no opportunity to ram this message home. Skulking in the Conservative manifesto were references to massive potential changes to the relationship between government, parliament and the courts.
Two instruments are being floated, notes Lord Falconer, to reduce the courts’ vigilance to servility. The first aims to give ministers a say in judicial appointments. The second proposes that parts of the royal prerogative are put off limits to judicial review. Both would be extremely retrograde steps and fetter judicial independence. No government ought to think it right to pack a court, or give the impression that it could, by asking judges to give up their opinions or their place. At worst this is pure Trumpism: an attempt to remake the courts in Johnson’s own image. At best it would turn the clock back more than 15 years to a different political age when lord chancellors had such powers but were substantial legal figures in their own right, and usually, as Prospect magazine pointed out, resisted the temptation to pick pliable jurists.
The second thrust of Mr Johnson’s charge is even more troubling. As Sir Stephen Sedley, a former appeal court judge, has noted, one of the signal achievements of the last century was “the power of the courts to supervise the legality of perogative acts of the Crown”. It was through this mechanism that the home secretary was found liable for contempt of court in the case of wrongful deportations and that it was ruled, in the case of Prince Charles’ black spider memos, the attorney general could not overturn court decisions because he disagreed with them. Judges know their limits – for example saying that the issue of assisted dying is one for parliament to decide. Public law has a proper sphere of operation which does not include the operation of government. Yet the state must operate within the law and the courts must be able to guard against the elected dictatorship afforded by a parliamentary majority acting otherwise.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.41 GMT
When political historians come to study the arguments and the rhetorical style that shaped this general election, the resignation statement of the British diplomat, Alexandra Hall Hall, should be considered a key document. Ms Hall Hall stood down last week as Brexit counsellor at the UK embassy in Washington because, she wrote, she was no longer able to “peddle half-truths on behalf of a government I do not trust”.
The obfuscatory arts of bluster and baseless assertion have become a house style during the election campaign for Boris Johnson and his allies. But they have been deployed with particular recklessness on matters affecting the two nations within the United Kingdom that voted against Brexit, both of which have profound concerns about their future within the union. With lofty and presumptuous arrogance, Mr Johnson has ruled out, as if by fiat, the possibility of any negotiations between a future Conservative government and Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, over a second independence referendum. In the context of the anger that would be generated by the extreme Brexit he plans to pursue, that will prove a difficult line to hold.
But it is on Northern Ireland, and the nature of its post-Brexit trade relationship with the rest of the UK, that the prime minister’s cynical dissembling has been unforgiveable, given the stakes. Two leaked reports have now exposed the emptiness of Mr Johnson’s pledges. One, from the Treasury, challenged his rhetorical assertions that, under the Brexit deal, Northern Irish businesses would enjoy “unfettered access” to the UK market. Treasury officials judged that for goods travelling in either direction across the Irish Sea: “Customs declarations and documentary and physical checks … will be highly disruptive to the NI economy.” The second leaked document, this time from the Department for Exiting the EU, warns of the logistical complexity of implementing the deal’s protocol on Northern Ireland. Delivering the necessary infrastructure and systems, say the report’s authors, will be a huge “strategic, political and operational challenge” – one so complex that it could delay the implementation of Mr Johnson’s deal beyond December 2020.
The response has been yet more bombast from the prime minister, who has breezily suggested that people should simply believe what he says on the subject of checks. At the weekend he again said the judgment of his own Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, on the subject was “wrong”. Last month he said businesses in Northern Ireland would be able to throw any customs declarations “in the bin”. The characteristic use of the demotic style was revealing. In an important sense, Mr Johnson does not care whether he is believed on this or on other matters. He and his advisers calculate that the voters needed to secure a parliamentary majority care more about “getting Brexit done” than they do about its potential ramifications for Northern Ireland. In an election designed to exploit popular frustration with Brexit stasis, the strategy has been to direct a message of can-do optimism at a largely English target audience.
As a result, at the close of an enervating, strangely lifeless campaign, political resentments are brewing which have the potential to cause an existential crisis for the UK. Ms Sturgeon said today that “the contemptuous way Scotland has been treated” justifies a second Scottish independence referendum, whether or not Brexit takes place. The DUP leader, Arlene Foster, accused Mr Johnson of betraying unionist voters, by breaking his promise that there would be no trade barrier in the Irish Sea. Attention to detail, when it comes to Northern Ireland, should be a moral imperative, for reasons that need not be spelled out. Those future historians may marvel at the fecklessness of a campaign that blithely ignored that, and other truths.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
The convention is that a leader’s speech at a party conference is a serious account of domestic and foreign policy priorities. Boris Johnson characteristically defied that convention in Manchester. His address was trivial and insubstantial, perhaps deliberately so in recognition that the more consequential event was publication of proposals for a new Brexit deal.
The draft deal is meant to address the problem of the Irish backstop, which Mr Johnson has declared unacceptable but which, according to EU leaders, can be replaced only with legally watertight alternatives. The proposed solution is interlocking jurisdictions, with Northern Ireland as a special “zone of regulatory compliance”, aligned with parts of the European single market, while also part of a UK-only customs regime. The problem of future divergence is kicked down the road. Northern Ireland’s unique status would be routinely reapproved by the Stormont assembly.
It is not clear how any of this will satisfy concerns that Dublin and the rest of the EU have repeatedly raised about the integrity of the single market, and the Good Friday agreement. Mr Johnson’s offer makes explicit his intention to effect a significant rupture from EU legal norms. He concedes that his plan requires a new customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but insists that checks can be enforced in ways that are not disruptive, or damaging to the peace process.
This is an old fantasy peddled by hardline Eurosceptics, based on the notion that technology can monitor goods remotely and invisibly. That is true of shipments that are declared in accordance with the rules. It doesn’t deal with smugglers and terrorists who do not comply with the rules.
Mr Johnson’s plan would set up a hazardous future confrontation over Northern Ireland’s economic orientation. What if Stormont fails to settle the alignment question? The assembly has been suspended for more than two years. Ambiguity around that mechanism implies Brussels losing control of an external border of a single market. That is something the EU would not tolerate. Mr Johnson has not considered the concerns of all of Northern Ireland’s communities. He appears to have consulted only one faction – the DUP. That party does not represent the majority view with regard either to Brexit or the Good Friday agreement, which it rejected in 1998.
Mr Johnson’s plan does not look like a credible formula for stable partnership with the EU but, rather, a jumble of half-baked plans. It is worrying to note that this is the kind of deal a cynical prime minister might present without expectation of success, but with the intent of whipping up an electoral base with the claim that he offered a deal and was rebuffed by foreigners.
In his speech, Mr Johnson suggested that the only sticking point might be “a technical discussion of the exact nature of future customs checks”. If he believes that, he is dangerously ignorant of Irish history. If he doesn’t, his belittling of substantial concerns is a deliberate insult to those in Brussels who are negotiating in good faith. He said nothing original in the area of domestic policy, nothing meaningful about economics and nothing at all about foreign relations, beyond the dubious assertion that leaving the EU facilitates trade with other countries.
His urgency about the 31 October Brexit deadline was expressed as an impatience to escape discussion of Europe. The prime minister’s argument appears to be that the UK must hurry up and complete a revolution in its economic and strategic orientation so as to avoid any serious interrogation of the benefits and purpose of that revolution. This is a dishonest position because the moment of legal separation from the EU, with or without a deal, marks only the beginning of an arduous negotiation. The prime minister’s own plan raises more questions than it answers about future relations with the continent. Mr Johnson says he wants a deal. Perhaps he does. But his Brexit priority is plainly the management of domestic opinion ahead of an election, when it should be managing the UK’s national interest in relations with neighbours.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
Her Majesty’s secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, Boris Johnson, is an accomplished confidence man. Like all conmen, he appeals to the larceny in the blood – the wish of the mark to get an impossibly good deal. Mr Johnson’s 4,000-word job application (he wants to be prime minister) in last Saturday’s Telegraph is a masterclass in doublespeak and smarm. Almost everything it says about the prospects of a deal is palpably false, but that hardly matters. It would be worrying in any other foreign secretary, but we know better than to expect this one to share the truth, even if he is in possession of it. However, it is enormously revealing about the state of opinion in the Conservative party. He smells the larceny in the party’s blood; he knows how it wants to be seduced.
The members of the Conservative party who might still make him prime minister want to believe Britain is “the second-greatest power on Earth after America”, or at least that it was that as late as “the early years of this century”.
They want to believe that wicked foreigners are taking from us £350m a week. What other explanation could there be for national relative decline? Perhaps, because they want to believe it, the more imaginative ones will go on believing, even in the teeth of the prompt, official and unequivocal denial by Sir David Norgrove, chair of the UK statistics Authority. Sir David’s unprecedented public rebuke does not only distinguish between gross and net contributions, as most criticism does: he also points out that the subsidies for agriculture and science that Mr Johnson promises will have to come out of the money simultaneously promised to the NHS.
But there are some things Mr Johnson tells his electorate which they take as self-evident. Elderly conservatives don’t have to hope to believe them. They are instinctively convinced they must be true. Chief among these is the claim that you cannot be a patriot and a lover of the European Union. The British civil servants in Brussels are praised to the extent that they sabotaged the work of everyone else there. The only sight that Mr Johnson will admit frightens him is that of “so many young people with the 12 stars lipsticked on their faces … with genuinely split allegiances”.
This is an argument that would be dismissed – quite rightly – if it were applied to Scottish supporters of the union. It is entirely possible to be a true patriot and to feel part of a wider polity than that of one’s own nation. In fact, it’s the only way to be. True patriotism demands a sense of proportion, and a loyalty to political and cultural structures wider and more generous than those of the nations that brought us two world wars.
Being frightened by the idealism and the generous impulses of young people who declare their allegiance to a European ideal is not true patriotism but the last resort of the scoundrels who inflicted on us this catastrophe. It is reminiscent of the Daily Mail’s demand before the election that Mrs May “crush the saboteurs”; and it is laying the foundations for a new legend of the stab in the back, which will be ready when the old stories about how Britain was the second greatest power in the world, bled dry by the envious leeches of Germany, lose their power to enchant.
In this new version of the myth, the humiliations and impoverishment that must follow Brexit will still be the fault of wicked foreigners, but resentment and denial of reality feed on one another, and can never be satisfied. New villains will be needed. The catastrophe will be blamed on everyone who foretold it. We have no need to accept this. The task for all those who believe that Brexit will be a disaster is first to mitigate it and second to ensure responsibility and blame are pinned to the irresponsible clique of Bullingdon boys who brought us to the cliff edge of the referendum and then pushed us off – chief among them Mr Johnson himself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
The Derry bombing this weekend is a stark reminder of what is at stake in Northern Ireland with Brexit: decades of peace where arguments are settled with words not weapons. In reopening the question of whether the physical border between the North and South of Ireland might return, Brexit threatens to turn back the clock to a far more dangerous era. That past, where symbols summon deadly emotions, has been revived by English nationalists in the Tory party who appear comfortably ignorant of the Troubles. Erasing the border in Ireland, once dotted with watchtowers and checkpoints, was necessary. But Brexit put the deadly issues of the Irish border and sovereignty back into mainstream debate. Dissident republicans have been blamed by the police for the van bomb attack on a Derry courthouse. Their ideological patrons have long recognised Brexit’s potential to reignite the conflict, with one quoted in academic Marisa McGlinchey’s new study Unfinished Business as saying it was “the best chance we’ve had since 1916”.
That is why Theresa May and the European Union committed to avoiding the return of a “hard border” – physical checks or infrastructure – after Brexit. The UK and Ireland are currently part of the EU single market and customs union, so products do not need to be inspected. To maintain an open border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal, Mrs May and the EU said it was necessary to have a backstop arrangement that will allow for frictionless trade. The trouble is that the Democratic Unionist party is divided over how to deal with this insurance policy. The party’s “blood red line” of no border down the Irish Sea means it could accept only the hardest or softest of Brexits. Hence Mrs May continues to talk to the DUP in the hope that the party will make up its mind.
The prime minister ought to have realised months ago that the hard Brexit faction within the DUP has its power base in Westminster. It first asserted itself after power-sharing in Northern Ireland collapsed. It became dominant after Mrs May sought DUP support for her parliamentary majority in Westminster in the wake of the 2017 election. The suspended Stormont assembly provided a forum for sane debate: in August 2016 the DUP’s Arlene Foster signed a joint letter with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness on safeguarding the gains of the peace process and the need to protect “the border [issue], the all-island energy market, EU peace funding and the need to maintain tariff- and barrier-free trade with the EU”.
To win support for her deal, Mrs May must seek to revive such sentiments not just within Ms Foster’s party but also within the wider nationalist community. Efforts in this direction won’t be helped by former cabinet ministers ludicrously suggesting that Brexit would have been resolved if not for splits in the Irish government, or that the UK government should simply wait for the EU to dump Dublin in favour of London. The withdrawal agreement already has a provision for Britain to choose whether to enter the backstop or extend the transition. What Mrs May also needs to do urgently is win back the nationalist community and the growing band of Northern Irish non-tribal voters. Departing the EU could see Brexit become synonymous with defending the province’s place within the UK. The risk to unionism is voters could then reassess their constitutional preference. Few want a hard border; they should not block ways to avoid one. Electoral contingency and political expediency cannot be allowed to break up the UK.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
It can probably be assumed that most leave voters gave little thought to the consequences of Brexit for Ireland. Had they done so, they might have thought twice about what they were setting in train; for those consequences are wide ranging and potentially very serious. Of the many historic irresponsibilities that led to the Brexit vote, the failure to consider the Irish dimension is one of the most shameful and consequential. It reflects particularly badly on the predominantly English voters who made that profoundly wrong choice.
Voters in Northern Ireland were, of course, different. They rightly thought about the consequences for the two parts of Ireland a lot. This is one reason why Northern Ireland voted by 56% to 44% for the UK to remain in Europe. Nevertheless, just as in the case of Scotland, this significant part of the UK is being forced out of the EU against the wishes of the majority of its people. But the UK’s vote does not just override the north. It is also a unforgivably hostile gesture to this country’s most intimate and immediate neighbours, the Irish republic and its people.
The UK-Irish relationship is unique in many ways, including the impact of Brexit. Ireland is the only EU state with which the UK has a land border. The histories, cultures and economies of Britain and Ireland are likewise locked together in ways that do not apply in any other case. In particular, the needs of Northern Ireland run through the state-to-state and people-to-people relationship in a manner and to a degree that has no equivalent in the rest of the EU. Cooperation between the UK and Ireland, partly based on EU membership, has been a cornerstone of the peace process. Many in Ireland are justifiably aghast at what Brexit may entail and feel badly let down, or worse, by Britain.
This week, the House of Lords EU committee and its six sub-committees are publishing daily reports designed to underscore the high seriousness of issues raised by Brexit. Today’s first report of the six is about the Brexit challenge for Ireland. This is a good and deliberate piece of symbolism – British insularity too often takes a special toll in Ireland. But it is also more than that.
Brexit raises major questions about every aspect of the British-Irish relationship. These include the broad economic impact on two intertwined countries. More particularly there is the impact on the now softly enforced Irish land border of any future restrictions to the movement of goods, especially serious if the UK left the customs union, and of people. The implications for the common travel area between Ireland and the UK must also be considered, along with the future status, for instance in terms of voting rights, of UK and Irish citizens in one another’s countries. And then there is effect of Brexit on the stability of Northern Ireland, both in the context of structures underpinning the peace process and, just as important, from any sort of hardening of the Irish land border.
The Lords committee is absolutely right to back the Irish government’s view that these relationships require a unique solution within any wider Brexit settlement. The best way to achieve this, as the committee says, is for the EU and its member states to allow the UK and Irish governments to draft a bilateral agreement, along with the Northern Ireland executive, within that wider Brexit deal.
The main aims of that agreement, which the EU would have to approve in the end, should be to maintain the open land border, continue the common travel area, preserve the reciprocal rights of UK and Irish citizens in one another’s countries, uphold the right to Irish (and thus EU) citizenship for people in Northern Ireland, and reaffirm the arrangements in the Northern Ireland peace process agreements. The EU ought to embrace this approach, as should the UK government. But there is no getting away from the fact that, while these are now shared problems which need shared and urgent solutions, it is the lamentable Brexit vote that has inflicted the whole avoidable and destabilising business on Ireland.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Brexit is about drawing lines on maps and hearts. In that respect it is at odds with the 1998 Good Friday agreement which sought to erase them. Key to ending the Troubles was the removal of the hard border between the north and south of Ireland. Theresa May’s problem is that she has committed to leaving the European Union while respecting the peace deal that depended on both London and Dublin being part of it. The agreement made less salient the questions of identity: under its provisions people in Northern Ireland could be, uncontroversially, citizens of Britain or Ireland. What did it matter if they were part of a club that allowed people to travel, work and reside anywhere? North-south institutions were set up to oversee common endeavours. The agreement was sold as a “stepping stone to a united Ireland” to republicans, while unionists held that it was “securing the union”. The symbolism was key: with a hard border you can see that the island is partitioned, without it you cannot.
Aware of this, London and Dublin committed not to return to the days of border checkpoints, which would risk undermining the peace deal’s principles. Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement enshrines this in law in the form of an insurance policy: to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland in the event that the UK leaves the EU without securing an all-encompassing deal, there would be a backstop arrangement to allow for frictionless trade. Fanatical rightwing anti-EU Tory MPs were not bothered about the peace process, or the aspirations of fellow subjects. Instead, they saw in the insurance policy a devious mechanism to force Britain to march in lockstep with EU regulations that hard Brexiters were desperate to get out of. To reverse her government’s historic Commons defeat, Mrs May voted to replace the backstop. She did so to win over the Democratic Unionist party, but her actions enraged businesses in Northern Ireland which had publicly backed her deal.
In Belfast on Tuesday, the prime minister was back to the push-me-pull-you politics of Brexit. She signalled that, rather than the “alternative arrangements” to the backstop floated previously, she was edging towards an insurance policy that could either be time-limited or allow for a unilateral withdrawal. The prime minister may have said more than she intended, as a group of her MPs considering “alternative arrangements” were meeting in London as she spoke. Neither of Mrs May’s offers seem possible in a strictly legal sense, but both could be rendered in political terms. Almost everyone agrees that the backstop must be a temporary measure, but no one wants to say so in law. On such anvils, political follies can be forged. Mrs May’s problem stems from the fact that the only Northern Ireland party represented in the Commons is the DUP. The party’s role in itself undermines a core principle of the Good Friday agreement, that the position of the British government would be “neutral” – it had no selfish, strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland and would accept the unification of Ireland by consent. The DUP-Conservative pact, a result of the 2017 election, calls this aspect into question. The DUP represents only a third of Northern Irish votes cast in 2017.
Even more glaring is that Northern Ireland voted to remain. Unionism risks defeating itself if it becomes too closely identified with Brexit. Belatedly, Mrs May’s ministers have woken up to the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland and called for the restoration of Stormont. These islands are sold as a story of stability. Political scientist Roger Awan-Scully says history would differ. Less than a century ago, the UK lost a greater proportion of its territory – through Irish independence – than Germany had lost in the treaty of Versailles. In 2014, close to half of Scotland voted for independence. Fragmentation is by no means inevitable, but without a sense of common purpose and community it becomes more and more a possibility.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Theresa May is fond of observing that Britain will not be leaving Europe when it leaves the European Union, which could be a statement of geographical banality or strategic significance. The prime minister’s point, elucidated in a speech at the Mansion House last November, is that the UK sees itself as part of a community of democracies, aligned in their attachment to a world order based on internationally recognised rules.
Mrs May argued then that Vladimir Putin’s Russia has proved itself hostile to those rules, seeking to undermine the institutions that uphold them. She argued too that the UK and the EU were on the same side, despite Brexit. So Mrs May will have been heartened by the statement of unambiguous solidarity from the European council in response to the nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury. EU leaders have endorsed the British view that the Russian state is highly likely to be the culprit. The EU’s ambassador to Moscow is to be withdrawn, signalling agreement with Mrs May that the Kremlin looks hostile to the whole of the EU. This is an easier argument to win with some members than others. Baltic states, who feel their independence threatened by Mr Putin’s neo-Soviet statecraft, are natural allies. Others are more cautious.
Mrs May’s position prevailed thanks to the support of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel. Brexit will make France by far the biggest military power in the EU. Paris and London also have a very close intelligence relationship thanks to collaboration in the fight against terrorism. Germany, partly through historical atonement, is a reluctant military power. So Britain’s capabilities are seen by the EU’s two biggest players as an indispensable part of the continent’s security apparatus.
Solidarity is easier to sustain in word than deed. The messy reality of 27 countries, each seeing their commercial and political interests in Russia differently, will soon reassert itself. Mrs May’s maxim about the difference between being part of Europe and part of the EU might easily be adapted – to note that Russia, too, is a European country.
Mr Putin’s regime is undesirable but communication is also unavoidable. There is a line between standing up to an act of aggression and self-defeating bombast. Mrs May and Boris Johnson stand on different sides of that line. The prime minister’s tone has been steely but measured. The foreign secretary’s comparison of this summer’s football World Cup in Russia to the 1936 Munich Olympics achieves nothing but gratuitous offence to ordinary Russians who cherish their nation’s historic role in the defeat of nazism. Unlike the foreign secretary, Mrs May appears to have applied some thought to practical diplomacy.
What is less clear is whether the prime minister appreciates the contradiction between her desire for enhanced solidarity with the EU and the explicit, ideological hostility of many Brexiters to the whole European project. That contradiction is a faultline running through Britain’s policy towards Russia; while asserting that the Kremlin has an agenda to sabotage the unity of the EU, the UK is itself, via Brexit, fracturing the alliance. Mrs May effectively sidestepped that crack at this week’s EU summit. But she has not solved the problem. Her commitment to a hard Brexit impedes her ambition for a common European line against Mr Putin. It is possible to still be “European” in the strategic sense that Mrs May means in her speeches, but it will be a lot harder once the country is no longer a member of the EU.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
On 23 June the people of Scotland voted decisively to remain in the European Union while the people of the United Kingdom as a whole voted to leave. The nationalist government’s immediate reaction to the 62% to 38% vote in Scotland was to ratchet up the rhetoric about a second independence referendum. The first minister Nicola Sturgeon said a second vote was highly likely; the SNP launched what it described as a national conversation about the options; and there was a small shift in the opinion polls in favour of independence. Many observers in and out of Scotland assumed a second vote – and the break-up of the UK – might follow naturally. Since the summer, however, Scottish opinion has drawn back from that first defiant flurry. The most recent poll, at the end of November, found support for independence at its lowest level since the 2014 referendum, with 44% of Scots supporting independence and 56% opposing. Only 31% of Scots said they wanted the Scottish government to campaign for independence in the next two years, with only 60% of yes voters from 2014 in favour of an early campaign either. The reality appears to be that, while the politics of the Brexit vote might appear at first sight to strengthen the case for independence, the economics now seem even more daunting than they did in 2014. Ms Sturgeon has seemed to reflect that caution, aware as she is that she cannot afford to follow Alex Salmond and David Cameron as a leader who calls a referendum, loses it, and who then has to resign.
This is the political context in which Ms Sturgeon launched a plan for Scotland today to stay within the EU single market after Brexit. As ever, the SNP is deliberately promoting demands – in this case Scotland’s continued membership of the EU single market even in the event of the rest of the UK leaving – that the UK government will find difficult to fulfil. As ever, this will position the SNP to reiterate the case for independence as the only way through any resulting impasse. But it is clear at the same time that the SNP is conscious that Scots are concerned about the economic realities, that part of its own support is pro-leave, and that Brexit has not yet triggered the kind of revolt that Ms Sturgeon hopes for. The SNP is waiting for something to happen. Theresa May may be tempted to call Ms Sturgeon’s bluff about all this. She may judge that, when push comes to shove, the SNP leadership will prefer to stay in power in Edinburgh rather than risk everything on an uncertain second referendum. She may well be right. Nevertheless, the right course for the UK government is not to call the Scottish government’s bluff but to make two wise judgments. The first is to recognise Scotland has a genuine concern about Brexit. That concern is not just constitutional, though that exists, but practical. Just as in Northern Ireland, a hard Brexit in Scotland would have real-life consequences on issues like migration (which the Scottish economy needs), budgets and EU transfers. It would be completely wrong to steamroller such concerns aside, least of all because English Tory MPs and rightwing London newspapers don’t care about Scotland.
The second, just as important, is to recognise that good governance in the UK must now mean making compromises with the devolved institutions. Mrs May has described the UK as a country in which the four nations “flourish side by side as equal partners” and has said she will seriously engage with the devolved governments. She needs to turn those words into a permanent reality, partly because that is the modern thing for a UK prime minister to do, and partly because she needs to keep her word. The 21st century United Kingdom will only work if UK leaders recognise that different parts of the country have different interests that must be respected. Mrs May said the right words this week when she was asked in the Commons about the Scottish government’s proposals. She said that the priorities of the devolved administrations matter. She said she would take Ms Sturgeon’s suggestions seriously. Now she should make good on those words. The worst thing the UK government and the Tory party could do with the Scottish plans is to trash them. That’s because, in the end, the thing most at stake in this part of the Brexit jungle is not Scottish independence but the better and less centralised governance of the UK. If that means that Scotland exerts effective pressure on the May government to avoid a hard Brexit, then fine. If it means the UK asking for a differentiated Brexit outcome that works for Scotland, then so be it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Britain’s Brexit argument began life as a dispute between remaining in the European Union and leaving it. After the vote to leave in 2016, that original dispute has gradually been overlaid by the battle between a hard and soft Brexit. The House of Lords debates on the EU withdrawal bill, which have significantly softened the bill, and which come to an end on Wednesday, can best be understood in that hard/soft context. When the bill returns to the Commons (Conservative factions are still squabbling over the terms) the arguments will continue along this same hard/soft axis.
However, hard/soft is not the only axis. In the devolved nations there is a different issue. This asks which should have the final word on Brexit: Westminster or the devolved governments – and in what combination? The answers differ in each devolved country. Though Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, its unionist leaders have backed Theresa May for a hard Brexit. After initial objections to Mrs May’s centralist approach, the Welsh government won concessions that were reflected in a government climbdown; it has now struck a deal. The Scots, however, said those were insufficient, so dispute still rages unresolved there. On Tuesday the Scottish parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject the Brexit bill altogether, with the Conservatives dissenting.
This issue typically gets too little attention in England. Even a lot of Scots are relatively unmoved by what can be a dry dispute. Yet the argument ought to matter to all who care about the functioning of the UK. At stake are essential issues about the working of a devolved state, or even in time a federal one. The question of who decides about issues that were previously EU competences – such as GM crops, fishing quotas, state aid to industries, data protection, energy labelling and internet security – matters. So, though, do the mechanisms for resolving disputes and striking compromises with which all can live. The UK is not so practised at that. This summer the UK supreme court is likely to decide some rules.
Both sides in the Scottish divide have arguments that should be respected. The SNP government leads a country that voted strongly to remain. It is right to fight its pro-European corner. But Westminster is also right to be concerned about protecting the UK single market from too much internal protectionism. The Brexit outcome must be harmonious with the devolution settlement, and not disruptive to either devolution or to the single market within the UK.
Almost inevitably, these arguments are saturated with party politics. The SNP wants a confrontation that puts Scottish separatism back on the agenda. Labour and the Lib Dems, who both backed the SNP on Tuesday, want to compromise, but cannot risk being manoeuvred into alliance with the Tories. Ultimately, the current row reflects the SNP’s separatist yearnings, Mrs May’s fear of concessions that would split her party, and the other parties’ fear of being squeezed. In the short term, however, give and take will be needed. In the long term, Britain needs a devolved politics which, as in countries like Germany and Canada, allows standoffs of this kind to be resolved by rules of law as well as by raw politics.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
The “unfrozen moment” Michael Gove, the new Defra secretary, called the impact of Brexit on agriculture and the environment in his first speech last week. It’s a deft description of the potential for transformation that leaving the EU offers, which is undoubtedly what Mr Gove intended. But it also conveys foreboding. That would be right too. Redesigning what is by far the most important relationship for the UK’s food and agriculture industry is full of risk – to the price the consumer pays for their food, to the familiar landscape of Britain, and to the complex network of relationships that sustains the rural economy.
The Brexit campaign was as light on the detail of what leaving the EU would mean for food and farming as it was for everything else – except for the claim that it would mean cheap food. Stripped of the costly common agriculture policy, the argument went, and able to import from around the world, the price of food in the shops would plummet. That remains an option. But it would come at a heavy cost. It would spell disaster for the farmers who compromise a little on productivity in order to nurture the environment; if, for example, it meant importing meat from the US, it would probably wreck Britain’s long improvement in farm animal welfare; and if it meant importing GM foods, it would almost certainly end the chance of a trade deal with Europe.
It is to Mr Gove’s credit that he appears to recognise now that a cheap food policy may not be quite the Brexit bonus that some of his colleagues in the campaign anticipated. He also acknowledges that there cannot be a Brexit bonus in terms of immigration for the market towns that felt most exposed to the arrival of large numbers of EU workers; ending free movement would be catastrophic for horticulture and for food processing, which is now the largest manufacturing industry in the country. And he accepts that farming, like every other business with a close EU connection, cannot be driven over the cliff edge of a hard Brexit.
Mr Gove’s big idea in his speech was to replace the CAP’s automatic payments to landowners with a system of payments for public goods, where farmers would receive subsidies for farming in an environmentally sensitive way and perhaps for allowing greater public access. Most farming and rural agencies accept that radical change is coming. So far, so good.
But these changes will come hard to smaller farmers. They will lose the basic income that the automatic CAP payment provides, without having the same opportunity as large landowners to replace it with subsidy for environmental stewardship. So it is likely to accelerate the disappearance of the family farm, and jeopardise the patchwork of small businesses that still give parts of rural Britain like west Wales and the English south-west their distinctive landscape. Further – as Mr Gove now knows – nearly four-fifths of the lamb grown in the UK goes to Europe, so these changes might kick-start the rewilding of Britain’s uplands. There may be good arguments about flood risk and habitat in favour of such a policy, but the human cost could rank with the closure of the mines for its impact on local communities.
Leaving the European Union doesn’t have to be catastrophic for British agriculture. Carefully and thoughtfully managed, it could encourage the sustainable use of land as it becomes an increasingly scarce and valuable resource.
But farming is more closely woven into European law and regulation than any other business. More than half of farm income comes in the form of subsidy. Nearly all the UK’s food regulations are made in Europe. To unpick this relationship is a huge task, the consequences of getting it wrong could be terrible. The hope that we could go into an election in 2022 having left the EU and completed a transition period is a dangerous triumph of ideology over common sense.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Under normal circumstances, a government with vital laws to pass in a short space of time would get a move on. But not much about Brexit is normal. The clock is ticking, yet the bill to enable an orderly withdrawal next March is marooned.
Peers voted for amendments to soften the character of Brexit. Uncertain of how this will play out in the lower chamber, the government last week declined to send the bill straight there as would be usual practice. And it isn’t only the withdrawal bill in limbo. Bills on customs and trade are frozen in early stages of the process. Last year’s Queen’s speech promised bills on fisheries, farming and immigration, of which there is as yet no sign.
In the autumn, parliament is supposed to vote on a motion to approve the terms of withdrawal negotiated by Theresa May and a declaration of intent covering the broad framework for post-Brexit trade. The withdrawal deal must also be enacted via an implementation bill, running the full gauntlet of primary legislation.
MPs will struggle to get through this logjam in a way that permits due diligence on the most ambitious and dangerous undertaking by any British government since the second world war. If Mrs May tries to force Brexit through in this fashion she will be asking MPs for a blank political cheque; to sign off on a future shrouded in a dense fog of uncertainty.
What began as misfortune is evolving into a desperate tactic by the prime minister. By leaving everything to the last minute, she narrows the options, betting that parliament will have to acquiesce since the alternatives would risk political, economic and constitutional meltdown. In a newspaper article on Sunday, Mrs May asked for public trust on Brexit, but can’t or won’t explain how she means to break the current deadlock. This is not the way government business of the highest urgency should be conducted. But Mrs May feels trapped. She cannot get her cabinet to agree on technical aspects of Brexit nor even on the fundamental principles that would lead to technical solutions. And she doesn’t have a majority in parliament for the kind of Brexit – outside the customs union, outside the single market – that many of her backbench MPs and key ministers demand.
These look like two problems – a split party and a hung parliament – but they are in fact one. Or, rather, viewed through a non-party lens, a single solution comes into view. There is an available parliamentary majority for a different Brexit, a much softer model that starts from the economically rational base of customs union and single market membership. The readiness of politicians from across party lines to support such a position will be underlined in a joint intervention on Monday by Nick Clegg, former Liberal Democrat leader, David Miliband, former Labour foreign secretary, and Nicky Morgan, Tory chair of the Treasury select committee. None of them speaks for the whole of their respective parties, but they do express a view that would win the support of a larger parliamentary caucus than the one that Mrs May could whip behind a more hardline anti-EU prospectus.
If the prime minister were to change course, the hardliners would denounce her for betraying pro-Brexit voters. They would be wrong in law and principle. Anything that ends full UK membership of the EU is a valid Brexit and partial detachment would be a more democratic expression of the close referendum result than total severance. The 2016 vote does not prohibit a soft Brexit. The 2017 general election result demands one by virtue of parliamentary arithmetic alone. To deliver it, the prime minister would have to relinquish the support of the most fanatical Tory caucus, but she could make up the numbers with support from opposition MPs.
There are enough who would see it as their patriotic duty to set aside tribal allegiance and help the prime minister rescue the country from its current destructive trajectory. The question is whether Mrs May has the courage and imagination to broker such a deal. The evidence of her past behaviour suggests not, yet the logic of the current Brexit impasse leaves no better option.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Bank of England independence, announced just five days after Labour’s 1997 landslide victory, was a tightly kept secret of the kind that Gordon Brown made his trademark. Yet it was almost at once accepted as the last, critical piece of a framework to protect the UK economy from the inflationary tendencies of weak governments on a par with joining the European Community 25 years previously. Today, at a conference marking the 20th anniversary of his coup, Mr Brown added another claim to its significance as a force for stability: only the discipline of independence had enabled him to keep sterling out of the eurozone.
But like other speakers both before and after him at today’s conference, the former chancellor warned that just as the post-crash recession had played a significant role in Brexit, so might it undermine the case for Bank independence: the argument for taking back control could just as easily be extended to the power of the Bank to set interest rates, and with consequences as devastating. Mr Brown suggested that the answer to economic populism might be to set up a strategic oversight group that included Treasury officials as well as Bank economists. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank, suggested it was a bigger challenge. The threat was a response to “QE, nationalism, and loss of trust in globalisation”. No central bank could stop Brexit making the UK poorer. Independence is not the same as omnipotence: the challenge it faces comes from events far beyond its control.
Like most other policy proposals that have emerged this conference season, this conversation underlines just how far the crash and a decade of austerity have transformed democratic possibilities. At the same conference, Theresa May set out her defence of the free market in what was claimed to be a rebuttal of the vision Jeremy Corbyn articulated in Brighton. But in truth, while she hardly shares his entire analysis of Thatcherite economics, both the prime minister and the Labour leader each envisage a retreat from free markets by expanding the role of the state in the economy and making corporate governance more accountable. As Mr Corbyn rightly claimed in Brighton, the centre of gravity has moved well to the left of where it has been since the 1980s. They may have very different ideas about the scale; but the direction of travel is the same. The next election may be decided by which of the two party leaders has the better measure of the public mood.
Yet as Mr Carney pointed out, the cost of Brexit – the very shock to the status quo that has given both of them the licence to think afresh – will also have powerful implications for what is economically possible. As if to illustrate the point, as he spoke in London, in Brussels David Davis, the Dexeu minister, and Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator, reported back on the latest round of talks between the EU and the UK. Hopes that Mrs May’s Florence speech last week would act as a laxative on the process were optimistic: the complex negotiations on mutual protection for citizens’ rights, the Irish border or the exit bill have inched forward but the chances of the October council of ministers authorising progression to phase two of the talks, the substantive ones on the future relationship between the UK and the EU, seem no more likely than a week ago.
Other events in Northern Ireland have already reminded Mrs May how tough the world will be beyond the EU. In her speech at the Bank, the prime minister suggested that she might block imports from Boeing in retaliation for the US aircraft manufacturer’s demand for 220% tariffs on parts imported by its parent company in Canada from Bombardier in Belfast. Clearly even a special relationship with the US president is no guarantee of favourable treatment. But there is a message here for Mr Corbyn’s view of the post-Brexit world too: Boeing is objecting to British subsidies to Bombardier of just the kind he appears to think are impossible in the EU. As the row over Bombardier demonstrates, they are perfectly possible; and so is tit-for-tat retaliation from non-EU trading partners. Clearly, whatever the claims of the leave camp – reiterated at the launch of a new free trade thinktank on Wednesday – Brexit is a recipe not for an outward-looking global Britain but an inward-looking, nationalist, protectionist one. This is the tension between rhetoric and reality that will permeate the Conservative party conference next week. It is the fundamental division in cabinet. For 15 months, the real cost of Brexit has been ducked. It is time to come clean.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Theresa May’s desire to combine exit from the EU’s customs union with an invisible border in Northern Ireland is not in doubt. The issue is not how much the prime minister wants a solution but whether a solution exists. Without one, Mrs May’s entire Brexit strategy unravels.
Downing Street has been working on technical solutions to this problem, fleshing out formulas described by the prime minister in a speech last month as “a highly streamlined customs arrangement” or “customs partnership”. On Friday, it emerged that those proposals have been flatly rejected by the European commission as unworkable, both from a legal and a practical perspective.
The EU has sent No 10 back to the drawing board and there is not much time to draw up something new. An obvious solution is to grab a template that has already been drawn: accepting that the UK and the EU will, after all, end up in a customs union.
This week the House of Lords amended the Brexit withdrawal bill with a clause directing the prime minister down that path. The pressure will increase next week with a cross-party motion in the Commons urging the government to seek a customs union in negotiations.
Hardline leaver MPs resist any compromise in that direction, seeing it as a dilution of Brexit’s essential purpose – sovereignty over trade. Customs unions have common external tariffs and limit the capacity of participating states to strike bilateral agreements. Existing EU variants of the model, such as its partnership with Turkey, involve ceding rights to Brussels without equivalent representation, in ways that even advocates of a soft Brexit find unpalatable.
The Labour view is that the size of the UK economy and the other benefits it brings to European wellbeing – its security capacity, for example – would encourage the EU to grant unique privileges that make a customs union more attractive. That is not so very far removed from the government’s claim that the whole EU-UK trading framework can be “bespoke” – tailored to British specialness. Mrs May has not had much luck translating that principle into actual privileges. It is reasonable to ask why Labour thinks its approach would be more effective.
One difference is that the opposition envisages negotiating enhancements to a recognised model: the customs union. By contrast, Mrs May is trying to reach for special favours from behind red lines that deny her an institutional template for a deal. Also, she is negotiating against a howling chorus of Europhobia from her own party, which corrodes goodwill in Brussels. The EU side was always going to be legalistic – that is in the nature of a negotiation that must accommodate the interests of 27 countries and respect existing treaties. But the commission has been made even less flexible by Tory noises off, which hint at readiness to disregard existing rules and boasting that no deal is required.
It is important to recall how Mrs May came to her current impasse. The commitment not to erect a hard border in Northern Ireland reflects recognition that doing so would sabotage a social and political compact put in place by the Good Friday agreement. Brexiters ignored that hazard during the referendum and have belittled it ever since. Their pursuit of the ideological chimera of absolute trade sovereignty blinds them to the reality of a fragile peace treaty that demands respectful, judicious handling.
The UK staying in a customs union with the EU would not dissolve the border issue in one move, but it is the simplest step towards a solution.
But the lesson of the past week for Mrs May goes beyond the technicalities of cross-border trade. It is that her whole approach to Brexit has been formed in deference to a faction that has pretended – often cynically – that insurmountable obstacles could be swept aside. Her negotiation is based on fantastical precepts of diplomatic alchemy. Inevitably, the EU is not taking her base metal for gold. The prime minister has followed bad advice with stubborn dedication. Time is running out and parliament is offering her another way. She must take it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
It is hard to pinpoint the moment when Brexit enthusiasts stopped claiming that leaving the EU could be painless. The promises of an easy, lucrative separation faded gradually after the referendum campaign. Now even zealous Eurosceptics preface their rosy visions of a post-EU future with caveats of temporary disruption.
Meanwhile, the Treasury has taken a consistently gloomy view, seeing no model of Brexit superior to the deal Britain enjoys as a member of the Brussels club. Government analysis published on Wednesday anticipates slower economic growth under every Brexit scenario. Leaving with no deal would lead to a GDP shortfall of 7.7% by 2036; a managed hard Brexit – trading on the Canadian model – would incur an equivalent 4.9% penalty. A softer Brexit would shave 1.4% from growth over the same period. There are no numbers to match Theresa May’s deal, which is an expression of its vagueness regarding the long-term EU relationship.
Philip Hammond can only defend the prime minister’s approach as damage limitation, with compensating political benefits unrelated to economics. The chancellor’s candour is not helpful to Mrs May but he cannot pretend that Brexit makes financial sense. His emphasis on non-economic factors gets to the nub of the debate that Britain should be having now. Mr Hammond’s comments highlight the only feasible recommendation for Mrs May’s plan: it honours the referendum result. Especially vital from Downing Street’s perspective, the deal includes drastic immigration controls, which the prime minister sees as the most urgent demand of leavers.
Treasury modelling makes it clear that immigration has been good for the economy and so choking off labour mobility has a cost. That judgment gratifies MPs urging a much softer Brexit and campaigners demanding a second referendum, but it does not strengthen their political position as much as they might like. An uncomfortable fact of the pro-European experience to date is the weakness of arguments based on abstract GDP numbers. Many leave voters were sceptical of expert analysis and the absence of a crash straight after the vote reinforces the view that remainer doomsaying can be discounted. Other leavers accept that there will be pain but imagine it to be brief and mostly felt elsewhere, by other people.
A poignant part of the Treasury analysis is the observation of differential regional impacts. London, a remain stronghold, is relatively insulated from harm. The north-east of England and the West Midlands, with higher concentrations of leave voters, look most vulnerable. That disparity represents an opportunity and a challenge to pro-Europeans. They can reasonably point out that Brexit was mis-sold and that calling it off would serve those who voted for it more than those who didn’t. But that message carries a risk: many people who backed Brexit envisaging radical change would be insulted by the claim that their grievances can only be satisfied by refusing to do the thing they had so recently voted for.
In that sense, the chancellor’s joyless defence of the prime minister’s unloved deal illuminates a fundamental truth about the situation. The choice is not between good and bad Brexits but between different types of trauma. Leaving the EU is a painful procedure to which the only real upside is satisfaction of the powerful political demand that it be done. Whether meeting that test is reason enough to inflict the cost of leaving the EU is the real dilemma many MPs are weighing up but dare not express aloud.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Brexit was the dog that didn’t bark in Theresa May’s reshuffle this week. The prime minister did not move any cabinet minister with frontline Brexit responsibilities. Nor did she even attempt to. The pro-Brexit trio of David Davis, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove all remained in post, as did Philip Hammond and Amber Rudd from the pro-European side. David Lidington’s promotion gave Mrs May a pro-European consigliere to replace the pro-European Damian Green. In broad essentials the Brexit balance is unchanged.
Indeed if the reshuffle had a coherent original purpose it was specifically not to do with Brexit at all. The shake-up was supposed to signal that this government has goals other than Brexit, mainly bread-and-butter domestic ones that may attract hard-pressed voters – for example in health, education and housing – and that there are new ministers ready, willing and able to reach them.
In the event, the reshuffle was a botched job, which has drawn attention to Mrs May’s weaknesses and not her strengths, real or imagined. It was a surprise that Jeremy Corbyn did not make more of this weakness in the first prime minister’s questions of the new year on Wednesday. Yet a political killer instinct of that sort is not the Labour leader’s style. He preferred to attack the state of the National Health Service – understandably in many ways, of course, since the health crisis is profound and it is rising fast up the list of the public’s concerns.
Just as the non-barking dog is the key fact in the Sherlock Holmes story, so the absence of Brexit is the key deceit in the reshuffle. This government will be judged on many things, but it will stand or fall in 2018 by its handling of the Brexit talks. The fact that Mrs May did not use the reshuffle to push more determinedly towards her preferred Brexit outcome is an eloquent fact. It proclaims one of two things: either that she still does not know her preferred course; or that she is too weak to enforce it within her divided party and government. Quite possibly it proclaims both of these things together.
The consequence is that 2018 is beginning as 2017 ended – with ministers pretending to themselves and to the public that much more is in play over Brexit than is in fact the case. Yet the completion of phase one of the Brexit talks last month involved large choices by Mrs May whose significance has still not been fully understood. In particular, by agreeing that the Irish border will remain soft – and accepting that this agreement will be binding – she has chosen to take Britain down a path that could, and should, lead to a soft Brexit.
Politically, Mrs May is reluctant to spell this out, and even to face it herself. Perhaps that will change when she makes her next keynote speech on Brexit, possibly next month. If she does, however, it would be a break with all her past practice. Experience says she will use her own form of Brexit doublespeak for as long as she can get away with it. She will pretend that the agreement she hopes for this year will be a detailed deal (no chance), that the subsequent transition period is for implementation (it is for negotiation) and that the UK will leave the single market and customs union for good, while retaining all the advantages of both (dream on).
This week, ministers are still playing this same game. Mr Davis and Mr Hammond were in Germany on Wednesday trying to get a cherry-picking deal that the EU and the Germans have consistently said is not on offer. Mr Davis moans that the EU warns of the perils of a “no deal” outcome even though the UK government itself still treats this as an option. Mrs May has survived until now by pretending that Brexit is one thing when in fact it is another. In the same manner she has started 2018 by pretending that Brexit is sorted when in fact it is not. Yet be in no doubt. This is the year when the fantasy collides with the facts. This dog will both bark and bite. Neither Mrs May nor anyone else should pretend otherwise.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
In his 1961 novel Unconditional Surrender, Evelyn Waugh gave a typically waspish verdict on the Festival of Britain, staged 10 years earlier. “To celebrate the opening of a happier decade,” he wrote, “the government decreed a Festival. Monstrous constructions appeared on the south bank of the Thames ... but there was little popular exuberance among the straitened people.”
Given his Tory sympathies, and distaste for the egalitarian spirit that swept the country after the war, Waugh would have knocked anything that the Labour government of the time came up with. The festival, masterminded by Herbert Morrison, was in fact well-attended and a qualified success. It left a permanent legacy in the shape of the Royal Festival Hall. We will have to wait and see whether Festival 2022, conceived by Theresa May as a post-Brexit jamboree and modelled on the 1951 event, makes a similar mark.
The £120m celebration, billed as a tribute to the United Kingdom, has already been dubbed a “festival of Brexit” by critics. For those who dread that prospect, there are more immediate horrors in store at the end of the month. Nigel Farage and the Conservative MP Mark Francois are leading calls that Big Ben should be brought back into service to chime at 11pm on 31 January, marking Britain’s formal departure from the European Union. The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has backed the idea of a crowdfunder to “bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”, raising the £500,000 that would be required to pause the clock tower’s ongoing refurbishment.
From Leave.EU there are suggestions that church bells should ring out across the land on the morning of 1 February, as on Victory in Europe Day, when the nation celebrated the defeat of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile Mr Farage can’t stop talking about “Brexit night”, which he perhaps hopes will become a fixture in the national calendar, a bit like 5 November. Anyone who objects, says Mr Francois, can stay in and “watch Netflix”.
Where to begin? The reference to VE Day manages to be both fatuous and offensive. Testimonies from that May celebration in 1945 suggest a bittersweet event. A six-year national trauma was over, in which over 450,000 Britons had died. Amidst the parties and the singing, lost loved ones were remembered and mourned. To compare the present with that time, when the country was united in its relief but also in its grief and exhaustion, is shameful self-aggrandisement. In their self-promoting determination to dramatise the politics of the present, Mr Farage and his allies are trivialising the history they claim to identify so deeply with.
As for the church bells, the Bishop of Buckingham puts it neatly: “It’s deeply divisive to ring church bells for something like this,” he said. “Churches are there for the whole community, not for a political faction to crow over people they have beaten.” The same surely goes for a national symbol such as Big Ben.
There is always something to be said for a party. In Noel Coward’s 1951 song, “Don’t Make Fun of the Fair”, the playwright and composer defended the Festival of Britain from the likes of Waugh: “Take a nip from your brandy flask,” went one verse, “Scream and caper and shout/Don’t give anyone time to ask/What the Hell it’s about.”
On this occasion though, the purpose – gloating – is all too obvious. After his election, Mr Johnson promised to be the prime minister of remain voters and well as of leave voters. If he’s serious about that, he will forget about the “bong” and the bells will stay silent.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
It has come to this – and it is scary. As things stand, Britain will leave the European Union on Friday without either a withdrawal agreement or any kind of plan for future relations. It is hard to exaggerate the destructive seriousness of that possibility for Britain. Theresa May has asked for a delay, but the EU will give its response on Wednesday. She bears enormous responsibility for bringing the country’s future to the edge of calamity in this way. But there is blame to be shared. Most of it lies – the word is the right one – with the Tory party over many years. The anti-Europeans caused this mess. But the pro-Europeans have allowed it to happen, too.
Right now, recriminations are an indulgence. The important task is to stop Friday’s no-deal exit. It is imperative that British political leaders do everything they can in the time that remains to prevent this outcome. This requires a parliamentary vote for a new way forward, an agreement between the parties that a way forward will be found and the EU’s agreement to defer Britain’s departure to enable it to happen. It also means the UK will have to hold European elections.
The first of these looks unlikely. Parliament has failed so far to unite around any Brexit proposition. The exception is the determination to prevent no deal – the subject of Yvette Cooper’s bill, which was again being debated in the House of Lords on Monday. This should be an absolute minimum. But something more is required. And it seems equally clear that MPs have failed to coalesce around it. At this late stage, the only option appears to be a form of agreement on the way forward between parties that are prepared to compromise. Easy to say, hard to do. Talks between the government and Labour have focused on three areas: a form of customs alignment that permits the UK to make some trade deals; a lock on that and other commitments, including on workers’ rights, that would prevent Mrs May’s successor from unpicking or ignoring it; and the role, if any, of a confirmatory public vote on the package. Each of these is fraught with political difficulty.
A customs union is hard to square with UK autonomy in trade, so a choice must be made that could split the Tory party. A Brexiter-proof lock may require a constitutional innovation like a veto for devolved nations; the implications of that are huge and should not be drawn up on the back of an envelope. A second vote would deepen all Brexit divisions, but Labour could split if it is ignored. None of these is a reason not to try. Each is pregnant with possibilities, many of them good. But the risks are obvious. A politically sustainable package requires tact, daring and some big calls by party whips.
The tightness of the timetable makes the task immense. The EU’s agreement to defer is therefore crucial. UK participation in EU elections will be unavoidable. Mrs May flies to Berlin and Paris on Tuesday in an attempt to persuade Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to back deferral at Wednesday’s European council summit. But Mrs May will only deserve to succeed if she embraces a new course.
Rescuing a workable and reasonable outcome from the wreckage of Brexit is massively challenging. But it is vital to try, for the sake of future generations above all. It is unlikely that a grand Brexit bargain within Britain and between Britain and the EU can be struck this week. But the foundations can be laid if Mrs May is willing to work across parties and in a new way. This country’s future rests on the mercy of Britain’s patient but firm EU partners. It is in all our interests that they allow us time to get this right if we can.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
The wild promises of those leading the Brexit charge were always based on a fantasy about Britain’s global standing. It harked back to the long-gone empire, portraying Britain as vastly more strong, powerful and important than any realistic assessment might judge; the only thing holding us back was the malign influence of the EU. In this way, Brexiters overstated both the ease of negotiating a satisfying departure from the EU for the UK – as if the EU would quickly deliver an outcome suiting the UK rather than the remaining 27 nations – and the ease of translating that into improved trade relations with the rest of the world. Reality shows otherwise; unfortunately, they are increasingly detached from it.
The problem at the heart of Theresa May’s Brexit nightmare remains the need to strike a deal with Europe that will prove politically acceptable back home, to parliament, her party and the DUP MPs on whom her government relies. It is not a coincidence that as things improve on one score, they deteriorate on the other. Two days after the EU’s chief negotiator said matters were progressing well, the former Brexit secretary, David Davis, called for ministers to revolt against Mrs May’s “completely unacceptable” plan. The Brexiters are demanding a strict time limit on the Northern Ireland backstop agreed with the EU in December. Ideology and bravado, spiced with personal ambitions among the Leavers, have made her party unmanageable.
Meanwhile, Arlene Foster has warned that the DUP is ready to trigger a no-deal Brexit over the backstop and regards this as the “likeliest” outcome. Any divergence whatsoever from the rest of the UK is a “blood-red” line. Denials that she is holding the Conservatives to ransom ring pretty thin: a party that cannot form a government at home is dictating the future of the entire UK. This may please her supporters but is all the more wrong and absurd when a clear majority of Northern Ireland’s population voted to remain.
The volatile domestic situation in turn makes a deal with the bloc harder. EU leaders might prefer Mrs May to any likely replacement on the other side of the table, but giving ground if she can’t get a deal through will only weaken their own position. While all this goes on Brexiters continue to promise an international bonanza awaits, ignoring a worsening global context, as Sir Ivan Rogers, former ambassador to the EU, noted in a speech this week. A trade war-loving US president seeks advantage through threats, and strives to harden other countries’ dealings with China. Commonwealth nations have yet to show wild enthusiasm for the kind of trade deal that sceptical Whitehall officials reportedly dubbed “Empire 2.0”. Even the hardest-line Brexiters are not deluded enough to believe that Toblerone display cabinets and “innovative British jams” will save us. If they are facing up to the problem, they are surely counting on deregulation and a race to the bottom.
The same misplaced view of Britain’s standing in the world that was used to argue for leaving the EU has made that exit far harder. With every fresh outburst from the Brexiters it looks less serious, less valuable and less desirable as a partner; more divided, more marginal and more essentially trivial. Even if a fudge can be found to pass muster in Brussels and Westminster, it will be a long way from the kind of long-term solutions that Britain requires outside the EU. A mission claiming to reassert Britain’s might and authority on the international stage is diminishing it at every step. To renege on promises over the backstop would only do more damage, making us look less reliable and less credible too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Divorce is often a stressful, hostile process, riven by bad feeling on both sides. For Theresa May’s government, leaving a union with Europe is proving to be a humiliating experience. It has been embarrassing to witness ministers pursue a strategy of bluster, blunders and climbdowns to deliver the misguided exit from the European Union. On Friday morning the terms of the divorce settlement were reached, two months later than expected. In surrendering to reality, Britain could begin talking about how we could rub along once the divorce was finalised. It is instructive that Brexiters in the cabinet congratulated Mrs May for her capitulations, which only weeks ago they would have viewed as treason. The Tory leavers know that the ultimate prize – to depart the EU – is within their grasp. They are prepared to put aside their supposed principles to achieve it.
This is not the end of the marriage but it is the beginning of its end. The needed restoration of faith in the stability that a union of purpose provides will not come through recriminations. To inspire confidence one must demonstrate it in oneself. Yet the 15-page deal crystallises the divisions within the Conservative party. It is significant that the passage on Northern Ireland commits the UK to full regulatory alignment with the EU after Britain leaves the bloc “in the absence of other agreed solutions”. This goes beyond areas of cooperation under the Good Friday agreement and would tacitly commit Britain to many facets of EU membership as a default option post-Brexit. Such an outcome would be anathema to ardent Brexiters, who fantasise about being able to conduct free trade deals outside of the “protectionist” EU.
To avoid a damaging split in her government, Mrs May had wanted to put off a decision about Britain’s long-term relationship with the EU until after securing a transitional deal early next year. But solving the puzzle over Northern Ireland forced Mrs May to be less ambiguous than she wanted to be. Logically she has accepted a soft Brexit, but politically she advocates a hard Brexit. This tension cannot be sustained. She has exposed a division in her cabinet – increasing the risk that her government may fall.
The UK government’s failures and incompetence on Brexit are a threat to this nation’s future prospects. The chancellor this week admitted that the cabinet has never had a discussion about the kind of Brexit it is aiming for, probably because the arguments once begun would never stop. However, this failure to face down the fanatics in cabinet and set out a course in the national interest means that the EU is loth to waste any more time having discussions about discussions with the UK. If Britain continues with the farrago of fact and myth about not wanting to be part of the EU’s single market, customs union, nor subject to rulings by the European court of justice, then we would at best get a deal rather like the one Brussels has with Canada. Even Mrs May admits this would be less beneficial than what we have today.
Britain will lose out from exiting the EU. Brexiters want Britain to maintain trade ties with Europe without the constraints of its legislative requirements. The EU has the opposite incentive. It cannot reward Britain’s leavers by granting the UK better terms than it enjoyed as a full member. Hence a punitive element is hardwired into the EU’s bargaining position. If Brexit is to go ahead, it is up to Mrs May to advance an autonomy that embraces cooperation and solidarity with the EU, not least to protect jobs. As every divorcee will tell her, to have cordial future relations, one must avoid a bitter break up.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Brexit is not just one negotiation between two sides. At its heart is the dialogue between the EU and Theresa May’s government, but that process has become increasingly detached from the negotiation that Mrs May conducts with her cabinet, her party, and parliament. The concept of Brexit being presented to British audiences now bears hardly any relation at all to the concept as it is grasped in Brussels.
This disparity is extremely dangerous. For weeks, Mrs May has been bogged down in debate about alternatives to a customs union, as if that is the thing on which a good deal depends. Viewed from Brussels, this looks like refusal to engage with underlying issues, and dereliction of duty to explain to voters what the true choices entail.
The customs union row is a proxy for the question of how far the UK intends to diverge from EU standards and regulations. That issue isn’t addressed directly for two reasons. First, it exposes an ideological schism in the Conservative party. Second, the “joint report” ending the first phase of negotiations in December includes provisions for an invisible Irish border that settle the matter in favour of zero divergence. But Mrs May doesn’t dare say so. The UK government has already signed something in Brussels that requires a soft Brexit and the Tories are performing a pantomime debate behind red lines that require a much harder Brexit. It is an act of monstrous collective irresponsibility.
So what is the real negotiation? In essence, it is about the extent to which the UK can replicate the existing regulatory regime while allowing the prime minister to assert that some “control” has been recovered. In terms of what is most urgent to leave voters, that means immigration control. So the least ruinous deal that might win public consent is an association agreement with the EU. Its potential outline was described this week by Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former ambassador to Brussels: “Quasi single market membership, paying something for it, living under ECJ jurisprudence and jurisdiction in goods, but dis-applying … free movement of people.”
That would be painful for hard Brexiters but also for the EU, since the four freedoms have been said countless times to be indivisible. The prohibition on “cherry-picking” could not have been made clearer. On this point, it is in Brussels that uncomfortable truths must be aired. The European project is imperilled by domestic turmoil in many member states. The formation of a populist-nationalist government in Italy is the latest manifestation of these trends. The Brexit vote expressed peculiarities of British Euroscepticism, but its political and cultural causes were not unique.
After the referendum, Brussels was shaken by fear of contagion. The need for Brexit to fail and be seen to fail seemed imperative. That is no longer the issue. The impossibility of leaving the EU on terms superior to membership has been demonstrated. The new imperative is to show generosity and flexibility to a valued and valuable “third country”. The EU’s big power brokers – France, Germany and the commission – should be imagining alternative models to full membership that might incentivise closer association for non-members, in the western Balkans, for example. Brussels will never be grateful to Britain for creating the Brexit mess, but that doesn’t mean opportunities can’t be salvaged.
The UK government has failed in its duty to level with the public about the scale of compromise and costs involved in Brexit, as indeed has the Labour party. The prime minister is running out of time to realign a delusional domestic debate with international reality. But she has allowed the two spheres to drift so far apart, it is hard to reunite them without triggering a hugely destructive political crisis. Such a combustion would be bad for the rest of Europe, too. Mrs May needs help from Brussels. She cannot unilaterally devise a new, highly integrated model of close partnership. Far from fearing such a partnership as a dangerous precedent, the rest of the EU should welcome it as a sign that their alliance is both more resilient and more flexible than it has so far looked to many ordinary European citizens.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
When Conservative ministers who campaigned for Brexit confront the detail involved in removing the UK from the European Union, they tend either to soften their position or resign. David Davis tried both. The former Brexit secretary started out gung-ho, then flirted with compromise. But, realising in the end that his campaign rhetoric and ministerial duties were incompatible, he quit.
Mr Davis’s successor, Dominic Raab, is already experiencing the pain that comes with trying to accomplish in reality something that was conceived in fantasy. Questioned by a parliamentary committee this week, Mr Raab insisted that the prime minister’s Brexit blueprint – the Chequers plan – is a viable basis for negotiations in Brussels, despite many Tory colleagues openly despising the proposals.
One such is Boris Johnson, who showed no interest in Brexit detail as foreign secretary and now shows no intention of offering viable alternatives to Theresa May’s plan, while manoeuvring against her. Mr Johnson’s approach is unchanged since the referendum. It is to belittle every technical obstacle and present reckless, impossible options as if they were modest and easy.
Brexit cheerleaders have sanitised the likelihood of the UK leaving the EU on acrimonious, chaotic terms. The same people did not hint that such an outcome was possible two years ago. Some were plain ignorant, believing the process would be easy. Others knew that their revolutionary agenda required vast economic disruption and chose not to advertise that feature of it to voters.
Either way, June 2016’s result cannot reasonably be interpreted in 2018 as majority support for any one Brexit model, least of all one that the Treasury believes will make the country weaker and poorer. Philip Hammond this week conceded that a no-deal scenario would require a “refocusing of government priorities” – a euphemism for longer austerity as limited revenues are diverted to absorb the shock of severing EU links.
A minority of fanatical Brexiters has skewed political debate in this country to the point where the most dangerous ideas are treated by ministers as normal items on the menu of available options, while softer models that would limit the damage are dismissed out of hand. It is hardly surprising then that the campaign for a “People’s Vote” on the outcome of negotiations is gaining momentum. This week the GMB, one of the country’s largest trade unions, called for a public vote. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said a referendum would be necessary if the alternative were “crashing out”, although he qualified his remarks with a warning that such a vote could risk public unrest.
Mr Burnham’s ambivalence is not unusual. Many critics of Brexit dislike referendums on constitutional grounds – the UK is a parliamentary democracy, after all – and because they can be socially divisive. Those are justified qualms. They have to be set against the evidence that Brexit is a shambles and time is running out to avert disaster. That is why there must be some consideration given to a democratic avenue towards a no-Brexit model.
Some remainers have always agitated for that outcome. But others, in parliament and the country at large, accepted the referendum result in good faith. They sincerely wanted the government to find a non-destructive route out of the EU. No one in that camp relishes the prospect of another referendum. Those making the case for such a poll argue that the political cost of confronting a Brexit reversal is lower than that of driving into an abyss.
When ministers seriously consider no-deal outcomes that many Eurosceptics would recently have deemed extreme and unwise, it is perverse that there is so little discussion of a proposition recently supported by 48% of voters. The probability that Mrs May’s deal will be superior to the terms of Britain’s current EU relationship is almost certainly zero. Retaining that membership will inevitably start to look more attractive as long as the politicians who created this mess for the country look incapable of fixing it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Yet again, and probably not for the last time, Britain’s hardline leavers and media mouthpieces are knowingly trying to sell the public a lie about Brexit. Their old lie – there were lots to choose from – was that leaving the EU would mean massive new spending on the NHS. Their new lie is that Britain now has only two choices: no deal or a last-minute free-trade deal. The truth is very different. Britain still has time – not as much as it would have if the process had been better handled – to do what it chooses about Brexit, with a range of options from no deal to remaining in the EU. Time for cool heads.
At every turn in the debate, however, hardline leavers have failed to say what they want Brexit to entail. All they have offered are lying slogans and cynical insults. On Monday, to be fair, this changed a little. A report from the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs set out the case for the free-trade deal – sometimes called the Canada option – in some detail. Boris Johnson tweeted his support for a “fine piece of work”. Jacob Rees-Mogg even suggested that the IEA version would be popular with the public and would be passed by the House of Commons if Theresa May buried her Chequers plan.
These are ludicrous claims. They should be called out for what they are. The IEA document is a deregulators’ charter. In the name of market competitiveness, it sets itself against EU (and thus existing UK) regulations and thinking on issues from farming and fishing to pharma and finance. The document is too dishonest to admit the IEA would be willing to get rid of things like workplace rights, food standards, environmental protections and data privacy rules. But such purges are implicit in the report – and occasionally explicit. The report envisages a Britain in which wages, job security, taxes and public spending could all be aggressively lowered as part of a direct offshore challenge to the EU. Holiday pay could be a thing of the past, warned the TUC in its response. Far from getting an extra £350m a week under this Brexit, the NHS would be lucky to survive at all.
Mr Johnson’s description of all this as a fine piece of work shows how shamelessly he has lurched to the extreme right, or that he has not read the document – or both. Mr Rees-Mogg’s lofty claim that the plan would be popular insults the public’s intelligence. His idea that there is a Commons majority for such a blueprint is simply untrue. Look at the parliamentary arithmetic, as the Conservative MP Nicky Morgan did this week. There is no majority for no deal. No majority for the free-trade deal. What there is, on the other hand, is a latent majority (largely dependent on the resolve of Ms Morgan and other Tory remainers) for a European Free Trade Association-style relationship – the so-called Norway option.
This week’s hardline proposals should be seen as what they are: an opening volley in the warfare over Brexit to be expected next week at the Tory conference. The hardliners are trying to stampede the cabinet and Mrs May into abandoning the Chequers plan or anything based on it. They could not care less what happens in Ireland or to employment or environmental protections in the process. Even by the shabby standards of Brexit, this is a display of doctrinaire politics at its most irresponsible.
The Tory party now seems beyond all reason on Brexit. But Britain can do better than this. It is crucial for the future of the country that evidence-based policy reasoning holds steady. Another set of government papers on the dangers of a no-deal Brexit yesterday helped to supply a corrective, spotlighting the disruptions that might face airlines, holidaymakers and road haulage in the event of no deal. They will be brushed aside as mere propaganda by the fanatics. Labour, which debates Brexit options in Liverpool on Tuesday has its own doctrinal divisions over Europe to grapple with. But the party has rarely been presented with a better peacetime opportunity than now to speak for Britain in its hour of need.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
Next week, parliament goes into recess for the summer. Save for a few days in September, MPs are not scheduled to be back at Westminster until 9 October. By then, six of the 24 months allotted for negotiating the UK’s exit from the European Union and Britain’s future relationship with the EU will have passed. In practice, there will only be a year remaining until all the big issues are supposed to be provisionally settled and the process of confirmation begins. As the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, keeps saying, the clock is ticking.
British politics and British society remain in denial about what is at stake, about the issues involved, and about the wasted time so far. Political debate about Brexit has struggled to move on from the 2016 referendum and has barely begun to adjust to the result of the 2017 election. Many in Britain continue to refight the referendum. Ministers remain divided, vague and in too many cases merely flippant. The public remains largely in the dark about the decisions that ministers are on the verge of having to take. That has to change. The country’s future is on the line. Millions of livelihoods are affected.
Summer holidays are not an ideal time to face realities, but the realities must be faced, and faced now – and be explained and debated. Before parliament returns in the autumn, Britain must try to clarify the future relationship it seeks, not just in terms of sovereignty, law and alliances, but in terms of the economy, jobs and standards of living too. An agenda is required on which progressive MPs of all parties might broadly agree.
The starting point for this process is to agree to seek as soft a Brexit as is practically possible. In essence, a soft Brexit puts the economy first. It requires government to commit to making a deal within the time available, not allowing the process to drive off a cliff, unfinished, at the end. That means making it clear that Britain embraces the inevitability of transitional arrangements.
Having accepted that practicality, the first item of business is to agree the terms of departure from the EU. The UK has already conceded that these issues must be dealt with first. Three main items have to be addressed here: EU and UK citizens’ rights in one another’s jurisdictions; the Irish border; and the financial bill payable by the UK. On rights, the aim must be maximal not minimal, and the UK must accept an arbitration system that does not exclude the European court of justice. On Ireland, the goal must be identical border practicalities to those that now exist. On the bill, Britain should pay what it owes to the EU as long as the transitional period continues. In practice that means paying over a longer period of time.
The next imperative is to secure the British economy and the prosperity of the public in the long term. That would be best done by remaining within both the single market and the customs union for the duration of the transitional period and, perhaps, beyond. That is not at odds with Brexit. The UK would still cease to be a member of the EU. This would put the UK at a disadvantage, because it will no longer be a single market rule-maker. That, though, is what the public voted for in 2016.
Remaining within the single market would, however, mean accepting freedom of movement broadly as it exists at present. Many assumptions are made about the public view on this issue. The country now has to decide its priorities and where it stands. Are economic security and social stability enhanced or weakened by accepting freedom of movement? Progressives should seek to win the argument for the former. Even if the decision is to leave the single market, however, the case for remaining in the customs union endures. To leave the customs union would be devastating to modern supply chains. Staying is vital to a positive outcome on the Irish border question. It would also protect the UK against unfavourable trade deals with countries like the US that could undermine UK food and farming regulations.
If Britain is to remain inside the single market and the customs union, while leaving the EU, it must also soften its current resistance to the jurisdiction of the European court of justice. The ECJ is no more a threat to sovereignty than is any other international arbitration system or court to which the UK adheres. Only fanatics obsess about the ECJ. There is no reason for it to be a deal breaker. A more open UK approach to arbitration solutions and the ECJ would also make it easier for the UK to remain within or attached to some of the devolved regulatory agencies that the same fanatics insist on leaving. These include Euratom and the European medicines and environment agencies.
Would we start from where we are now if we could avoid it? Absolutely not. The Guardian opposed UK withdrawal from the EU. Brexit is still the wrong course for this country. But the decision to leave was taken, so it must be honoured, but honoured in a manner which does least harm to the nation and its interests, in particular to those who stand to suffer most from it. This means prioritising the economically vulnerable, whether they are UK or EU citizens. But it also means being constructive about the concerns of the devolved parts of the UK that voted remain, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Unless and until the national mood clearly changes, which it may and which we hope in time that it will, Brexit is a reality. There is no groundswell for a second vote on the issue at the moment. But nor is there a groundswell for paying a high economic price for Brexit. The imperatives are to take the strategic view and to do least damage to the things that matter most. The leave vote was a vote to withdraw from the EU, but it was not a vote to become a poorer, less secure or less law-abiding nation. It was not a vote to build walls against the world, or to turn our back on Europe, of which the geography and culture ensure we shall always be part.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.41 GMT
At the start of the election campaign, Boris Johnson promised to “end the groundhoggery of Brexit”. By this he meant the sensation of being trapped in a loop, condemned to repeat the same story, desperate to escape a repetitive present and begin the future. The appeal of such an escape to millions of people was confirmed in last week’s general election result. There is no disputing the government’s mandate to “get Brexit done”, even if the terms on which it is done remain negotiable.
With that negotiation in mind, the prime minister plans to amend his EU withdrawal bill with more robust Brexit intent. The intention is to explicitly prohibit any extension to transitional arrangements that are due to expire at the end of next year. This is meant to signal Mr Johnson’s determination that the UK’s break with Europe will be swift and total.
Given that complex free trade agreements can take up to a decade to complete, the expectation that one can be negotiated in less than 12 months is silly. Without a longer transition, the UK will face a new cliff-edge this time next year, similar to the one it faced when there was a credible prospect of crashing out of the EU with no deal at all. This is real “groundhoggery”, sending the country back into a cycle of fraught negotiations against a ticking clock. It is a dynamic that favours the bigger and better-prepared side of the table in trade talks, which is not the one on which Mr Johnson will be sitting.
It is never a good idea to use legislation as a form of political advertising. Statutes should serve practical governing purposes, while Mr Johnson’s symbolic anti-transition clause makes good government harder. There could be compelling economic or diplomatic reasons for wanting more time to finalise trade talks. Having just won a healthy majority, Mr Johnson can afford to give himself options.
The preference for limiting those options betrays a misconception of Brexit. Many Tories brush aside the legal significance of the formal 31 January exit date. They imply that transition blurs the distinction between membership and non-membership; that Brexit itself will not be a reality until more severe rupture is achieved.
This is a dangerous mistake. The article 50 phase of talks gave the UK privileges in talks with Brussels that it will not have as a “third country”. Once formal membership has expired, British leverage shrinks. Barriers for ratifying agreement are raised. Mr Johnson is in a hurry to be seen slamming the EU door behind him, unaware of how cold it will feel outside. Transition is not a trap to prevent the UK pursuing an independent trade policy; it is a mechanism to allow both sides time to develop a mutually beneficial arrangement. Cutting it prematurely short increases the likelihood of souring that relationship. It raises the probability of Britain rushing into a bad deal to avoid the disruption that would accompany failure to reach a deal at all – a repetition of the dynamic that brought Mr Johnson to complete his substandard withdrawal agreement in October.
The prime minister is obliged by politics and pride to pretend that the deal he struck is a great one. He imagines he can achieve another such triumph in the next phase of Brexit in the same way. Having learned nothing from the article 50 process, he intends to lead the UK into more brinkmanship with Brussels, ignoring the relative strengths of the two sides, and pretending that bombast can compensate for a lack of technical preparation. It cannot. If Mr Johnson does not change his strategy he will wake up in his very own Brexit Groundhog Day.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
It will certainly help to energise and focus the Brexit process if the high court rules tomorrow that parliament, not the government, has the authority to trigger the process. As longtime critics of the system under which the royal prerogative is exercised by ministers alone rather than by ministers in parliament, this newspaper would welcome such a ruling. In any truly modern state, the consent of parliament should be necessary in a major treaty change, which Brexit unquestionably is, just as it is now in practice necessary, since Iraq, in any major UK military commitment. Yet although tomorrow’s verdict will be constitutionally significant (and may well be appealed against), the reality is that to give greater authority to parliament, though welcome, is only truly meaningful if parliament wants to use it. At the present moment, that seems far from the case.
That has to change. Brexit is the most important immediate problem facing Britain. The prosperity of the country depends on it. The place of Britain in the world hangs on it. Even the survival of the United Kingdom as a functioning entity relies on it being sensibly handled. Our party politics are being reshaped by it. Brexit will be the most consequential international arrangement made by this country in generations.
Yet most of Westminster continues to act as spectators to the Brexit process not as participants in it. Again today, Theresa May was barely challenged on the subject at prime minister’s questions. It is as though the referendum vote has become the totemic one-off unchallengeable source of all political authority on Britain’s future to which every other question must defer in all conceivable circumstances, however dangerous. This may be what the Brexit fanatics want, as they hound sceptics such as the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, and the chancellor, Philip Hammond. But it is bad democracy, bad government and bad politics. It needs to be resisted and stopped.
Today, for example, the government of Ireland called a conference of politicians, business leaders and civil society representatives in Dublin. It was held to discuss the Brexit implications for Ireland’s delicate north-south settlement, and for the future of the open border that Britain and Ireland have broadly enjoyed in one form or another since 1923, as well as before Irish independence itself. The maintenance of that common travel arrangement is a policy that all citizens of the UK should be concerned about. Though opposed to Brexit, the Irish government has been exemplary in attempting to publicise and codify the many complex issues that arise for the island as a result of the referendum vote. Yet the British government has not produced for British voters a tenth of the useful public material that its counterpart in Dublin has been providing.
It was one thing for a new British government to require a bit of time to sort out how to proceed on Brexit following the vote. But that is four months ago now. British government and politics is increasingly living in a fool’s paradise about Brexit and its implications, as well as about the timetable that will be triggered by a formal decision to start negotiations. The scale of some of the reality was made clear in a new report on Brexit from a group of independent academics and political scientists. Its conclusion is that the process, with or without the parliamentary vote on the initial triggering of article 50 on which the high court will rule tomorrow, is as complex as it is unpredictable. But the experts are clear that the process “will test the UK’s constitutional and legal frameworks and bureaucratic capacities to their limits”.
Theirs is exactly the sort of sober and factual document that the UK government is derelict in its duty by not producing for the British public. It performs the practical educative service of spelling out many of the choices facing Britain. These range from when article 50 should be triggered (as late as possible, in our view), whether it can be revoked (yes), how many negotiations are required (it’s hard to avoid several), whether there will need to be a transitional period (almost certainly), the form of consent needed at the end of the process (parliament or maybe an election, in our view) and even the explosive issue of whether the referendum is binding (in practice yes, but in law no). The fanatical anti-EU press has a vested interest in not publicising any of these. MPs and parliament have no such vested interest. Their job is hold the executive to account and to govern Britain. It is time they did so.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Britain is poised to embark on a fraught and uncertain course. Leaving the European Union will weaken the remaining 27 members, and it is likely to set this country on a decade or more of instability. It is the end of a partnership that has brought much more to Britain than can be guessed at from the churlish nature of our relationship, which rarely recognised the wonder of this audacious attempt to mould a community of peace and prosperity from nation states at war for centuries. A largely hostile press made Brussels, just as an early Guardian editorial warned, the default excuse for political failure, economic incompetence and, sometimes, sheer misadventure.
Yet for 44 years, Britons have grown up, or grown old, with the European project; it is woven into our lives. Even those who have lost heart or never believed in the first place cannot now just take back control. They may find they miss some of the undervalued joys of belonging to the club – things like the shorter week delivered by the working time directive, the economic bonus to their town of EU regional funding, the clean beaches on which their children play, and the cleaner air they breathe.
But now the huge, arduous process begins of unpicking the measures that have stitched Britain into the life of 27 other countries, and their lives into Britain’s. It is in the interests of both sides in the negotiations to work to reconstruct a new relationship that does the least harm. The challenge is that Theresa May’s objectives all tend towards a result that will unquestionably disrupt the British economy and likely inflict collateral damage on the rest of the EU. Take the matter of Britain’s continuing financial obligations: they have become a totem for Brexiters who care little for the future of Europe or Britain’s relations with it. They want a can’t pay, won’t pay approach. The EU negotiators, who have it as the top of their agenda, warn that prior commitments are unbreakable. It is potentially a deal breaker. On this, Mrs May has wisely avoided making pronouncements.
The budget is one area that reflects the level of intimacy that grows up in a relationship that has lasted 44 years. Another is the easy flow of citizens from Britain to other EU countries, and into Britain from them. For many remainers, the sense of a shared identity that free movement brought has been one of the great glories of membership. Even those who have experienced immigration as a challenge to their way of life have gained from the doctors and nurses from Germany and Spain, the care workers from Poland; everyone’s supermarket shop is cheaper because of the hundreds of thousands of central Europeans who work in farming and food processing. And everywhere, in science and research, in higher education, the arts and in business, the cultural contribution has felt as important as the financial.
Yet ever since 23 June 2016, the future of the three million EU nationals living and working in Britain, and of more than a million Britons abroad, has been uncertain. These are people who have put down roots, started to raise a family, worked and contributed. Now they are condemned to a limbo of anxiety and uncertainty. In July, a British minister referred to such EU nationals as “bargaining chips”; in October the prime minister talked of them as “negotiating capital”. By December, some people who had been in the UK for most of their adult lives were receiving letters from the Home Office instructing them to “prepare to leave”. And if Britain has sunk low, EU ministers too have insisted that the rights of EU citizens cannot be resolved separately from the rest of the negotiations. The German chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be one of those who did not want the issue settled separately. This affects up to five million people. It is repugnant, in both moral and political terms, to treat our fellow citizens like this.
Now that article 50 is about to be triggered, the fate of all EU nationals who were living in Britain, or Britons living elsewhere in Europe, at an agreed date, should be treated as a matter apart from the other negotiations. Tomorrow, in a joint initiative with France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Spiegel Online, La Vanguardia of Spain and Gazeta Wyborcza of Poland, the Guardian calls for Britain and the 27 member states to recognise on a reciprocal basis the rights of each other’s citizens. The next two years will be tough and no doubt at times bad tempered. It would be wise and right to set a positive and generous tone at the start by reaching a deal on this most human of the many problems ahead.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Next week the House of Commons will take what is probably the most consequential vote of our era. Unless the government again gets cold feet, key aspects of this country’s economic model, social cohesion and international future will be shaped in the so-called “meaningful vote” over Theresa May’s Brexit deal. It will define what Britain is more than any other political event in modern times. It poses questions and choices that cannot be shirked.
This newspaper supported Britain’s entry into the European Community in the 1970s. We opposed Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2016. We took these positions on the basis of the same long-term principles. Britain is a European nation by virtue of its geography and history. It shares enduring economic and cultural ties and values with the rest of Europe. Above all, Britain has a direct interest, born from the suffering of our peoples in decades of war, in the peace and harmony of Europe from which all can prosper. In the era of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, Britain’s engagement in Europe is freshly urgent.
However, the Guardian has never been an uncritical supporter of the EU. It has warned against the delusion of a United States of Europe. It has upheld the centrality of democratic nation states within the EU and stressed the enduring reality of national borders. It was enthusiastic about the epochal re-engagement between eastern and western Europe after the collapse of communism, but measured about the practicalities. It was critical about the reckless way that European monetary union was launched in the 1990s and, after much thought, preferred that Britain should keep its distance from the eurozone and its rules. These concerns have been vindicated by events.
Although we opposed Brexit, it is essential to understand why a majority voted for it. Leave’s victory cannot simply be dismissed as nostalgia for empire or dislike of foreigners, though these were factors. Many leave voters felt abandoned and unheard in an increasingly unequal Britain marked by vast wealth in parts of south-east England and austerity and post-industrial abandonment elsewhere. Income levels in London have risen by a third since the financial crash – but have dropped by 14% in Yorkshire and Humberside.
A cry for change
In June 2016 all this came together in the belief of a majority of voters that the EU did not offer the right solution to Britain’s problems. Those of us who disagree need to show humility about what happened, respect the majority, understand the swirling dissatisfaction underlying it, and address it with sustained and practical answers. Ever since the referendum, the Guardian has tried to follow that approach in these columns. We accepted, without enthusiasm, that leave had won. We saw the vote as a cry for change. We hoped that Brexit would therefore be negotiated in the best way open to Mrs May’s government. We took the view that a “soft Brexit” would be the least bad outcome because it would prioritise jobs and the economy, maintain important links with the rest of Europe, not least in Ireland, and help to bind the wounds of 2016 by ensuring that the concerns of the 48% who voted to remain were taken into account alongside those of the 52% who voted to leave. If the government had produced something along these lines, there might have been a pragmatic consensus around a soft Brexit. We awaited Mrs May’s detailed proposals. This was the fair approach. Yet the Brexit process fell vastly short. Ministers did not say what they wanted before invoking article 50. The government took a hard approach, not a soft one. Mrs May misread the public mood in the election of 2017. Her ministers proved incompetent negotiators. They were dismissive of parliament instead of seeking to build a majority there. Nothing substantial was done to address the social causes of the vote. The prime minister prioritised holding the Conservative party together over uniting the country – and failed in both. Her government was contemptuous of genuine concerns about everything from the economy to civil rights. It took little notice of Scotland and Wales. It failed to see that the DUP’s sectarian interests in Ireland are a world away from the interests of Northern Ireland or modern Britain. Instead of producing a deal which could command a majority in the Commons, it produced one that doesn’t even command a majority in the Tory party.
Collective floundering
This outcome is not the fault of the remainers, the opposition parties or political elites. The government’s failure is squarely its own responsibility. Brexit has never been a properly worked out policy prescription for Britain’s problems. For many Tories, it is an attitude of mind, an amorphous resentment against the modern world, foreigners, and Britain’s loss of great-power status. This explains more than anything else why hardline Brexiters reject all compromise, refuse responsibility for the practical options, and continue to fantasise about a no-deal outcome which would make things far worse and hurt poor people most of all. It also explains why Mrs May’s deal – which leaves almost everything about the future relationship with Europe up in the air for two more years – is a leap of faith, and scarcely more acceptable than no deal at all.
There has been a larger collective floundering across the political spectrum, including in Labour. We are living through a period of national democratic failure. We are deeply divided in many ways, not just over Brexit. Long-term comprehensive reform of Britain’s concentrations of economic, social and political power is essential. Inequality must be tackled in a radical way, from the top as well as the bottom. There must be innovative, sustainable plans for towns, for the north, for the many areas that feel excluded from progress and success. There is no single magic answer to this national need. The past is no solution. That is partly why the Guardian has been and continues to be cautious about advocating a second referendum on Brexit as the solution to this wider failure of politics-as-usual. It may, in the end, be the only practical option facing MPs on Brexit. But badly framed referendums are a crude way of making democratic decisions, especially because referendums empower those who shout loudest.
Parliament’s role is crucial, but parliament is not perfect. Brexit has exposed the decrepit nature of our political system’s hardware (its constitutional arrangements) as well as its software (the way we do politics). We need to open up to new forms of power and politics – better distributed, more diverse, more strongly integrated, and more modern. Parliamentary sovereignty needs to be better rooted in the people. Other forms of deliberative debate are essential buttresses of the parliamentary process. Ireland found a reasoned route through its own long and divisive argument over abortion through such a mechanism. A citizens’ assembly of voters – a representative group of voters selected at random – held a dignified and detailed civic conversation over several weekend sessions about the practical way forward. Its reasoned conclusions formed the basis of the proposal approved by the Irish people last May and passed into law last month. The contrast between this form of political dispute resolution and Britain’s argument in and since 2016 is humbling. This lesson must be learned and applied in the reopening of the Brexit question.
Plausible alternatives
There is no outcome on the table this month that will not be divisive for years to come. That is true of a no-deal Brexit, which would be disastrous for the vast majority, especially younger people. It is true for Mrs May’s deal, as it sets the terms of the UK’s departure but not the nature of the future relationship with the EU, leaving the door open to more venomous debate. And it is true of a second referendum, because leave voters will fear that this is merely a device to rob them of their voice and restore a failed form of politics which has done little or nothing for them.
No one creates division lightly. But divisions can be mitigated and rationally resolved in significant ways if the perils are recognised and the anxieties that underlie them are determinedly addressed. If Mrs May’s deal is rejected, as it should be, Britain should pause the article 50 process and put Brexit on hold. Parliament should explicitly reject no-deal. MPs should then open up the debate to the country: first, by establishing a citizens’ assembly to examine the options and issues that face the nation; and second, by giving parliament the right, if it so chooses, to put these alternatives in a referendum this year or next. Such a vote should not be a repeat of 2016, but a choice between new options for Britain’s future relationship with Europe which are spelled out and which parliament can implement. This would require a set of clear and plausible alternatives, and the time and political support for the assembly to deliberate. Given the schisms that we are seeking to heal, the medicine is not less democracy but more.
A new and fairer deal
This newspaper wants to see a reformed Britain within a reformed European Union. Neither part of this will be better achieved with Britain outside the EU. The issue facing the country this month is not simply Brexit. It is the kind of Britain in Europe we seek to be. All the major parties have, in different ways, let the country down on Brexit. That is why any parliamentary vote for a second referendum must also be rooted in a more radical approach to political economy, in actively reducing the inequality between regions and communities, in a practical debate about immigration control, and ultimately in reform of democratic institutions. The correct relationship with Europe is inextricably linked to the need to invest in future-focused industries and work, and to a whole-nation redistribution of investment and power to the English regions, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
This is a movement that, in the current parliament, can only be achieved if Labour wants it to happen. The responsibility on the Labour party to rise to the occasion is very great and will define its future relevance. The overarching purpose must be to bind Britain together, not force it further apart. This intent must be realised in long-term national promises, strategies and programmes, aiming at leave and remain voters alike and across the political spectrum. The message must be that this country needs a new and fairer deal, and that this is best guaranteed by a better Britain in a better Europe. The government has failed, so we must go back to the people.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Last week MPs voted for the first time since 1906 to take back control of parliamentary business from the government and hold a series of indicative votes on where they thought Brexit should go. The Commons will do so again on Monday. This move ought to be welcomed rather than cavilled at. The fact is the government has run out of road for its Brexit plan. Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement for leaving the European Union suffered the largest parliamentary defeat in history in January. It has been defeated twice since then. There’s no reason to think that Mrs May will somehow win over the 34 Conservatives from both the hardline leave and remain wings of her party who have rebelled. Her promise to quit if Tory MPs backed her deal emphasised her loss of command over the Brexit process.
There is now a straightforward choice: either change Brexit policy or change the parliament. The latter requires a general election, but the odds are against any party gaining a big majority. The predicament the nation finds itself in is in part a consequence of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. This does not allow for the dissolution of parliament when a prime minister has been defeated on the government’s legislation. The act says two-thirds of MPs have to approve a motion for an early election to be called. The legislation’s unintended consequence in the current parliament is that MPs can rebel without risking the collapse of their own government. It is ironic that the Conservative election manifesto in 2017 pledged to repeal an act which Mrs May now relies on to keep her in office.
Parliament has seized the initiative because the prime minister cannot. MPs are looking to see if a form of Brexit might command most parliamentarians’ support. As in the first round, it is possible that no scheme will. However, two ideas came close to securing a majority: one was for the UK to join a permanent customs union with the EU, the other was that a referendum on any Brexit deal ought to be held. Mrs May should pay attention to the outcome of next week’s votes. She is running out of time to come up with a plan that either parliament or her party and its allies can support. Mrs May needs to tell EU leaders at an emergency European council meeting on 10 April how the UK intends to proceed. The UK must also come up with proposals before 12 April to avert a ruinous no-deal Brexit, which MPs have voted against. Restoring the sovereignty of parliament was one of the major aims of Brexit. Mrs May could honour that by accepting what MPs vote for.
The prime minister cannot much longer dodge the fact we are heading for an article 50 extension  that almost certainly will require the UK to hold European parliamentary elections in May. If this were to come to pass, there ought to be no confected outrage from Brexiters. The priority of getting this imbroglio resolved is worth the price of having British MEPs in place while it is being sorted. Like another referendum, such elections ought to be attractive to a political class in search of ways to share the burden for Brexit decisions with the people.
Brexit may prove too complex to deliver in a parliamentary democracy on the current timescale. But the underlying causes of Brexit – economic, cultural and constitutional – will not go away. More than 3 million people voted in the 2016 referendum who don’t normally vote in general elections. A longer spell to consider Brexit could give MPs breathing space to fix Britain’s burning issues. The Cambridge historian Jonathan Parry writes that parliament has a “historic responsibility for ‘educating the nation’ … persuading the people out of utopian ideas, however attractive in theory”. MPs are attempting to do just that. Mrs May erred in thinking Brexit could resurrect a system of untrammelled sovereignty, with little protection against an overweening executive. Instead the 2016 referendum gave no mandate to any form of Brexit. Either that has to be decided by MPs – which, in a hung parliament, must mean working across party lines – or by some deliberative democratic mechanism, or by returning to the voters for more precise instructions. Doing so is not a defeat of democracy but a requirement of it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
For many Brexiters, the European Union was not an institutional arrangement that eased trade, immigration and political disputes; it was nothing short of a conspiracy to sap money from the United Kingdom to Brussels, construct an EU army, or help spread Islam across the continent. This thinking underlies the political project to leave the EU. As they are not grounded in truth, these narratives have produced Brexit’s lengthy saga of political ineptitude.
Magical thinking bred magical thinking. Brexiters indulged fantasies about completing an “easy trade deal” before we left the EU or waiting for German carmakers to ride to their rescue when the chips were down. Meanwhile, the EU focused on getting what it wanted: a legally binding deal on money, citizens’ rights and the Irish border issue. After leaving, Britain will be bound by EU laws and decisions for at least the next two years while the government attempts to negotiate a trade deal with the UK’s largest trading partner.
The thread running through this sorry episode is that of political misjudgment by the Brexiters. It is naive to think that one of their own could have made a better fist of the negotiations than Theresa May. She peddled nonsense about a pure Brexit until reality struck in Brussels and she was forced to make compromises. Contrary to the propaganda, the EU was no pushover. The UK decided to leave the club and there was a simple trade-off to be made: to gain access for its goods but to be outside the customs union, the UK needed to replicate all the features of the tariff regime.
The next stage of the negotiation, if we ever get there, will see ministers trade access to the market in European services for free movement of people. Brexit will be like a divorce where the adulterer returns home because they have nowhere else to go. Mrs May’s retreat to sanity is now viewed as a treasonous betrayal. The prime minister is not blameless. She had sung loudly from the same hymn sheet as the true believers, no doubt for fear of being accused of not having her heart in Brexit. But no one can square this circle. The Brexit revolution might eat her as its first victim. One of her tormentors, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is being lined up as the second.
In a new book, Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, academics say EU conspiracy theories laid the blueprint for the Brexit vote. Should the UK leave the EU, the authors note, the “conspiracy theories that motivated leave voters will have shaken the very foundation of the international order”. These are not charges made lightly, but hard Brexiters have long traded in falsehoods. They are now adopting dangerous tropes of the far right.
There can be no disdain for those who believe Brexit’s hucksters. The past decade has seen voters deal with economic and constitutional crises. People have become used to challenging authority in a good way. But they have also become suspicious, notably after their leaders obfuscated about big decisions such as going to war. They have become susceptible to the idea that life is not full of cock-ups but conspiracies. Such theories are harmful, even deadly. Exposure to one such myth saw fewer children vaccinated, and ministers have now acted to curb its transmission on social media. One way to inoculate the public against Brexit delusions is to be honest. Leaving the EU is a mistake and there will be a cost associated with it. European leaders will not pay for Britain’s decision to leave. The UK is in a hole. Voters must have this explained to them by politicians who can stop digging so the country can get out and move on.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 16.52 GMT
We have lost. We’re out. Stark words and a bleak reality. Britain has now left the European Union. Our departure is a tragic national error, against which this newspaper has consistently argued. It is still opposed by around half of the population, by majorities in Scotland, Northern Ireland and London, and by most young people, all of whom are just as patriotic as those whose cause has won the day. It is a defeat to be mourned and learned from.
Some are celebrating today. Others are in despair. For many, it is simply a relief. All sides, though, should have enough humility to recognise that Britain leaves with an open national wound. It will take action as well as words to close the wound, and there has not been enough action. Commemorative tea towels and cheap triumphalism won’t cut it. But the truth must be faced. The referendum vote and the general election have made Britain’s departure from the EU inevitable. We have lost. We’re out.
In every other sense, though, Britain is still part of Europe. That is as true today, outside the EU, as it was yesterday, inside it. France is still visible from the south coast on a clear day. The Irish Republic is still a short drive from many places in Northern Ireland. The same winds blow over us out of a shared sky. Most travel in and out of Britain is to and from Europe. The EU remains by far our largest trading partner. Our security is rooted, now as ever, in Europe’s security. Many thousands of our ancestors died for it.
The bonds of geography and history, of climate and culture, of industry and commerce, of travel and study, will remain. So must the vast fund of common human sentiment that transcends the differences of language and national borders remain in place. The week in which Britain leaves the EU has been the week marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. The responsibility of passing the Holocaust story on to new generations is profound. That story is Europe’s story, and it is Britain’s story too. We may be out. But we’re not going anywhere. We’re still here. We are Europeans.
Britain must face up to a changed political future. But as it does so, there are important lessons to learn from the immediate past. The Brexit vote was a revolt against many different things. Some unquestionably loathed the EU from the start, seeing it as a threat to sovereignty and even in a few cases as a German or a socialist plot. But membership of the EU may not even have been the most important issue for others. The Brexit majority also drew variously on a mood of discontent provoked by spending cuts, regional neglect, declining real wages, job insecurity, migrant labour, and gross inequalities in wealth. It was also, for some, a roar of rage against London, liberal elites, some of their values and much of the political system.
Only this week, it was revealed that 61% of British voters surveyed last year said they were dissatisfied with the country’s democracy. That does not mean they are right in all respects or that democracy is in existential danger. But it means these issues must be addressed. The three years of argument over Brexit after the referendum illuminated profound issues and had heroic moments. But in the end it was a turn-off for millions. In the election, Boris Johnson was able to carry the day on behalf of Brexit by offering it as a relief from the past, not as a bright beacon for the future.
Yet Brexit is not over. The separation has been agreed. But not the terms. We are now in transition for a further 11 months to an unknown destination. In practice, everyday life today will be the same as before. The country will not plunge into the abyss, a fact that will be shamelessly misrepresented over the coming weeks by Brexit supporters. For the rest of this year, EU rules and obligations still apply. But it is a perilous period of uncertainty that cannot be brushed over with the false pretence that Brexit is “done”. A great public task of this year is therefore to ensure that close practical and commercial ties are maintained with the EU as seamlessly as possible after the transition ends on 31 December.
Mr Johnson continues to get away with having his cake and eating it over many aspects of Brexit. That’s his way. But Brexit is a process of rule-making, not just a slogan. The prime minister will have to make a choice about this. He can opt, as he should, for the overwhelming national strategic and economic interest of close ties. Cooperation with the EU should be at the heart of his approach. Or he can embrace the maximal divergence from the EU that rightwing Conservatives have tried to make synonymous with Brexit. Huge issues are at stake in making this choice, not least the future of this country itself. The futures of Northern Ireland and Scotland as parts of the UK are umbilically linked to the decision. So too is Britain’s place in the world.
Britain is an important nation. But it is not a global power. The power to control the world in the era of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping does not rest with Britain. It rests with cooperation, alliances and enforceable laws. For all its faults, the EU gave Britain far more clout in this effort. A world whose challenges are dominated by climate emergency, unrestrained multinationals, cybercrime, data-harvesting, terrorism and rising nationalism is not a world looking to Mr Johnson for solutions. A Britain that embraced unrestrained competition with Europe and the world would be a loner. It would be a Britain with the power to disrupt but without the power to control or shape. It would be like Russia without the land or the weapons.
We want Britain to have the wisdom to succeed in this new era. But we also want the EU to succeed. Brexit holds lessons for the EU too. This is the first time in the 63 years of the union that a member state has left. Losing an important nation is not good. Britain is not the only European nation, large or small, that sometimes prefers to march to its own drum. A better EU would be one that is more comfortable with the practical union of compromises between large and small, east and west, north and south, than it actually is – not one that hankers, mistakenly, to be more overreaching, intrusive and homogeneous. A better EU would also be a more prosperous and dynamic EU than it is today.
One day, perhaps, Britain will choose to rejoin such an EU. We will miss our membership dreadfully. We fear that Britain risks avoidable suffering for abandoning it. We hope to be back. But that day will not come soon. Anything else is a fantasy. Now as before, Brexit or not, this relationship needs to be based on facts and real connections, not on fantasies. The Guardian, at least, is not leaving Europe. We are a European news organisation. Europe is our back yard. It’s in our hearts and it’s in our DNA. We will do everything we possibly can to report on Europe, to Europe, and for Europe. Perhaps, like many pro-Europeans, we haven’t done everything we could have done over the last 47 years to burnish the links. The lesson for us all is to do more, and to do it better. Long live Britain. Long live Europe.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
Theresa May’s cabinet is limping towards the temporary relief that this week’s start of the summer parliamentary recess may offer. A spate of leaks, mainly against the chancellor, Philip Hammond, nevertheless shows the extent of ministerial disagreement over Brexit and much else, and the weakness of Mrs May’s much-diminished authority. On Tuesday, Mrs May will attempt to lay down the law about cabinet collective responsibility once again. Few expect the lesson to stick for long. That’s because Mrs May lacks the clout to get rid of even Larry the Downing Street cat, much less to sack a disloyal minister. The recess can cover over but cannot conceal a set of divisions that the government must nevertheless confront.
All cabinets leak. Mostly they do it officially in the form of “guidance” to the media. But cabinet ministers leaking against one another is relatively rare. When it happens, it is almost invariably a sign of deep prime ministerial and cabinet weakness. Harold Wilson’s 1964 cabinet was a notable example. So was John Major’s in 1992. If Theresa May’s cabinet now makes that three, it is because all these governments have something in common: small or non-existent majorities. A fragile majority, divisive issues, a weak prime minister and mischief-making ministers always make an unstable mix.
Sometimes it is possible to keep some control over potential instability. The coalition government of 2010 was leaky, but the show was kept firmly on the road by the device of the “quad”, in which four key ministers met regularly to grip the biggest issues, especially on the economy. Mrs May could learn from that example, not least because her government is, in fact, also a coalition. It is kept in place, for the moment, by the general concurrence within the Tory party, particularly among backbenchers, that a leadership challenge would do even worse damage to the Tory party by exposing deep divisions and precipitating a general election that Labour might win. But the real problem for the government is not the immediate threat from Labour. It is its own failure to resolve its disagreements over Brexit.
Mr Hammond will win no admirers at all for his supposed remarks to the cabinet about public sector pay or women’s ability to drive trains. He does not deserve to. It is extraordinary that in 2017 a senior male minister can say that even women can drive trains, or that a senior millionaire minister lacks the awareness to stop himself claiming that public sector workers are overpaid. To say either thing in private or public is a reminder of why the country needs a better government than this one.
Yet these leaks were not made by ministers who are eager to fight for women’s equality or who are determined to secure a fair deal for public sector workers. They were made by ministers who want to stop Mr Hammond’s attempt to put the economy first in the Brexit negotiations that resumed on Monday in Brussels. One of these ministers told the Daily Telegraph on Monday that Mr Hammond was trying to frustrate Brexit and to “**** it up”.
Some might wish that was true. But it is not. Mr Hammond is in fact pressing for some things that the Guardian set out on Saturday as elements of a Brexit deal that could protect the economy, jobs and living standards. This newspaper does not share Mr Hammond’s politics, but he favours a transitional period on single market connection after British exit and he backs continued membership of the customs union to protect UK trade and preserve arrangements on the Irish border. As such, he stands between the Brexit fanatics and their dreams, which would be nightmares for too many British workers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Many people were shocked by the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum, but few felt stronger emotions than the three million citizens of other EU countries living in the UK, whose futures became alarmingly uncertain. That anxiety has hardly diminished since then. On Wednesday MPs offered some reassurance to those contemplating a future in legal limbo. Parliament endorsed an amendment instructing the government to salvage the citizens’ rights portion of Theresa May’s EU withdrawal agreement, even if that deal itself falls.
It is revealing that the prime minister did not immediately see virtue in supporting the amendment, which was tabled by Alberto Costa, a Conservative. On Tuesday, Mrs May told the Commons that Mr Costa’s suggestion was unworkable. But a day later, Sajid Javid, the home secretary, told a select committee that the idea of ring-fencing expatriate rights was sensible. Meanwhile, Mr Costa was forced to surrender his post as a ministerial aide (following a convention that freelancing frontbenchers do not amend government business). Hours later, David Lidington, the cabinet office minister, confirmed from the despatch box that the government supported the substance of the amendment so it passed uncontested.
Such ineptitude would be farcical if it were not also frightening. It reflects chaos at the centre of government and disregard inside No 10 for the fate of millions of people whose lives have been turned upside down by choices the prime minister has made. Mrs May’s handling of the citizens’ rights question has been callous from the start. She has missed countless opportunities to signal magnanimity and cultivate goodwill. She has looked at every turn grudging in her pledges of continuity. She has shown no understanding of the damage that was done to Britain’s international reputation by her readiness to use insecure people as bargaining chips.
That insensitivity is integral to the prime minister’s politics. It is the trait that expressed itself during a decade in the Home Office, cultivating the “hostile environment” that was meant to apply to migrants without legal entitlement to stay in the UK but that evolved into the Windrush scandal. The evidence of Mrs May’s career lends credence to the assertion by Anna Soubry, one of the MPs who quit the Tory party last week, that the prime minister has “a problem with immigrants”. That problem is hardwired into the UK’s Brexit strategy as a determination to end free movement, regardless of the consequences for the economy or for individuals.
Mrs May might believe that her anti-immigration politics are in tune with public opinion, but she pursues her agenda with a rigidity that appals leave voters as well as remainers. Mr Costa’s amendment was supported early on by MPs from every faction in the Brexit debate. Mrs May was a very late convert.
It is right that MPs address the anxiety experienced by EU citizens who felt displaced by the referendum, but today’s symbolic declaration does not reach the root of their peril – removal of the legal basis on which people made Britain their home. Brexit is by definition a curtailment of rights bestowed by EU membership. Mrs May might not value the freedom of EU nationals to choose a life in Britain, nor has she shown much interest in the plight of British citizens who have exercised the reciprocal right in other European countries. She sees the end of free movement entirely as a benefit. Her inability to perceive that it can also be a cost, that it inflicts pain on millions of people, is not just politically obtuse, it is morally suspect.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
The leak of Home Office plans for immigration once the United Kingdom leaves Europe has given a voice to the thinking that drives Brexit; and it is a sound that makes for very uncomfortable listening. If the voters had been soothed by the siren assurances to business and to the public about a smooth transition deal with “no cliff edge” or if they had been lulled by Theresa May’s words about Britain not turning its back on Europe then they should be jolted awake by the cruel laughter that can be heard in this document.
Should the plans for migration outlined become law, Britain would not be part of Europe in a meaningfully similar way that it is today. They would spell the end of the idea that the UK-EU relationship could endure, with a few tweaks, if both sides wanted. The authors of the 82-page proposal work in the department that Mrs May turned into her own personal fiefdom as home secretary and the plans bear all the hallmarks of her thinking during her stint there. The paper, dated August 2017, essentially aims to apply the same bureaucratic “hostile environment” that she worked so hard to create for non-EU migrants, to EU citizens too. Given that this island’s standard of living will depend on Europe – our largest trading partner – for the foreseeable future, it seems faintly absurd that there are such high-level manoeuvrings to sever ties between the UK and EU.
What the proposals seek to do is end free movement of labour and its evolved rights-based approach. Britain has been a land of opportunity for many in recent years, with Europeans arriving to work hard and put down roots. They did so because the labour market demanded it – sometimes filling jobs that Britons did not want to do. Britain attracted EU migrants because they viewed it as an industrious, technologically advanced and socially liberal place open to all. After Brexit they will, if these plans become official policy, not come because Britain will be seen as an insular and introspective island, preoccupied with preventing almost all migrants from having a legal option to settle in this country. As one Italian commentator put it: “Europeans will no longer come to the UK to work. Brits will have to pick their cabbages and wash their elderly themselves.”
It is easy to see why things would sour. EU citizens arriving after Brexit would have to show passports, not ID cards. They would have to apply for two-year visas for low-skilled jobs. Higher-skilled professions might command up to five-year residency permits. EU migrants would be subject to an income test and would be stopped from bringing some family members. If they worked or resided in breach of the new rules, they would face criminal sanctions. Employers and landlords would have to carry out “papers, please” immigration checks. Northern European nations will recognise a “guest worker” policy when they see one; many ran them in the past and understand the resentments that second-class status cause.
What Mrs May should have done is follow the precedents set by a number of countries that are inside the single market but nonetheless have tighter policies than unfettered freedom of movement. The Trades Union Congress, concerned about the impact on jobs, has made the case for sensible immigration controls that can be exercised within the single market. Such measures would represent a significant extension of domestic control over EU migration.
However, the prime minister’s Brexit plans ignore such reasonableness, opting to echo instead the hardline, economically damaging policy on immigration she retailed as home secretary. Mrs May has chosen to stick to the long-promised, and never-delivered, cut in annual net migration from recent levels of between 250,000 and 350,000 to less than 100,000. Thanks to Brexit fears and a falling pound, net migration from the EU is falling anyway but too slowly to hit Mrs May’s target. There’s little to suggest that she has anything substantial to replace immigration and European single-market membership to fuel the British economy. The prime minister might be gambling that the public will suffer to leave the EU. But choosing to be poorer is rarely a decision that voters accept once they understand what it costs.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
There was a time, before the UK voted to leave the European Union, before a referendum posing that question was even planned, when Tory Eurosceptics fixated on parliamentary sovereignty.
They argued that the 1972 Communities Act subordinated UK statute to European law in ways that violated national autonomy. From that initial grievance flowed the long lament about “Brussels” as a hostile power, imposing alien ideas and burdensome bureaucracy on a captive people. That grudge evolved into a culture war against liberal internationalism, made pungent with acute anxiety about immigration. On those terms, far more than the original arguments about sovereignty, was a majority vote for Brexit secured.
But next week, when the EU withdrawal bill has its second reading, Euroscepticism goes back to its roots. The bill pulls up the 1972 EU membership foundation-stone act (which is why it was first conceived as a “great repeal bill”). Paradoxically, that symbolic reclamation of sovereignty requires a vast copy-and-paste exercise, as a mass of European law must be naturalised as British statute. Without that transplant, the moment of Brexit would create intolerable legal gaps and ambiguities. A generation of established practice and precedent would be vaporised.
The withdrawal bill also creates procedures for the subsequent amendment, repeal and rewriting of what will be known as “retained” EU law. And it is here that the lure of Brexit and the principle of parliamentary sovereignty collide, because the mechanism that the government proposes for efficient sifting and pruning of “retained” law is a colossal affront to the legislature.
The contentious device is the deployment of “Henry VIII powers”, so called because they recall that monarch’s impatience with parliamentary restraint and desire to make law by decree. The withdrawal bill envisages Brexit-related statutory reconfiguration being done by “regulations”, most of which will be subject to the “negative procedure” of affirmation. That jargon conceals a process that amounts to ministers (or, as likely, their civil servants) writing laws that are only examined by parliament if an annulment motion is tabled in time. Otherwise they bypass scrutiny altogether and take effect automatically.
Some regulations will require “positive” affirmation – approval by a majority vote – but that process, allowing no amendments, is no substitute for proper debate.
In other words, if the withdrawal bill passes as drafted, countless technical applications of Brexit – regarding everything from workers’ protections to trading standards and environmental safeguards – are practically confiscated from the Commons. MPs would be surrendering the power to shape Britain’s post-EU legal architecture. They would retain a notional veto, but the exercise of that blunt instrument would require an inordinate application of forensic diligence, monitoring the flow of opaquely worded regulations, decrypting the ministerial intent behind them and, within a tight time limit, mobilising opposition. In practice, “delegated legislation” is very rarely voted down precisely because the system exists for maximum executive convenience and to bypass meddlesome lawmakers. In the past, convention has dictated that it be reserved for uncontroversial matters. A revolutionary overhaul of UK law does not fit that template.
The government’s one concession to anyone made queasy by Henry VIII powers is a sunset clause. The scope to make new regulations would expire two years after the formal day of departure from the EU. That date is not stipulated in the bill. More to the point, two years (plus a run-up period between royal assent for the withdrawal bill and Brexit day) would be ample time for a sweeping power to be misused. Such a time limit would be a bogus compensation for MPs who would, meanwhile, languish in a state of vastly diminished authority and credibility – an abject condition that would permanently dent parliament’s reputation.
For those who value Britain’s historic ties to the EU there is plenty to hate about current government policy. The unique achievement of the withdrawal bill is that it should be despicable also in the eyes of Eurosceptics. It tramples on parliament’s supremacy even in the act of pretending to restore its sovereignty. It is badly drafted with cynical intent and corrosive contempt for the checks and balances that uphold British democracy. MPs must amend it to restore their rights and protect their dignity and defeat it if the government will not yield.
Last modified on Sun 4 Mar 2018 12.46 GMT
Balancing symbolism and substance has long accompanied the European project. The EU’s star-studded flag as well as its choice of anthem (Beethoven’s Ode to Joy) point to an era when federalist views once held sway. That era is gone. This week’s informal summit in Bratislava – preceded, today, by European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker’s state of the union speech before MEPs – is likely to be remembered for realism rather than idealism. Europe is struggling with so many crises that it is hard to dispute the need to get back to some basics – which means restoring public confidence in the EU’s ability to deliver for citizens.
Today’s symbolism is crude enough: on Friday, just six months away from the ceremonies due to mark the 60th anniversary of the treaty of Rome, all but one of the EU’s leaders will gather in Bratislava to take a long, hard look into the future. Not invited is the UK. The message, with regret, is that Europe is going one way, Britain is going another.
For the EU 27 there are many unknowns – not least because losing Britain is a big blow. So it is no surprise Mr Juncker tried to boost morale by saying “the EU is not at risk since Brexit”. But if the message is that Europe must not be written off, there is still the challenge of making sure it gets heard outside the offices of EU institutions and in the average citizen’s home.
Mr Juncker’s proposals are wide-ranging, from a near doubling of an EU-wide investment plan, to deploying more border guards and enhancing anti-terrorism cooperation, as well as efforts towards common EU defence policies (which UK membership of the club has long impeded). It is unlikely any of this will lead to any significant announcements in Bratislava – if only because forging consensus takes time.
Mr Juncker and others want to frame a more positive narrative for the EU, at a time when it is under severe attack from populist forces that have been buoyed by Brexit. It was striking that he insisted that nothing Europe does is meant to erode the nation state, nor is it meant to blend separate identities into a single homogeneous bloc.
This may read like an overture to Poland’s nationalist government, which had been criticised for backsliding on democratic norms. But it is not. Mr Juncker’s point was about trying to bridge the differences that emerged last year over the vexed issue of refugee quotas. Next month Hungary is set to vote in a referendum on the quota scheme. A resounding nem is expected. That Luxembourg’s foreign minister has just suggested Hungary should be kicked out of the EU for its refugee policies will have done nothing to help restore a sense of unity.
Some simplistically see Europe’s dividing lines reduced to an east-west clash. The wider picture is that populist forces are on the upsurge almost everywhere, exerting significant pressure in the Netherlands, France and Germany, where key elections will be held next year. With this backdrop, there are now increasing calls for a more social Europe to emerge.
Mr Juncker made that case, reminding Poland and other new member states along the way how much they benefit from EU funds sent to poorer regions. Increased investment plans are meant to favour growth and jobs. This is a welcome development and recognition that European economics are not just about deficits and austerity. There is backing from EU civil society, parts of which want to go further. A group of 177 European NGOs and trade unions wants more “social and sustainable” policies aimed at defusing far-right politics. Adopting a degree of flexibility in interpreting eurozone deficit rules for Portugal and Spain helps cast Europe as pro-growth. Similar leniency should be considered to deal with looming problems in Greece and Italy.
What Europe’s annus horribilis – which ran from the refugee crisis to Brexit – has shown is the need for citizens to see the benefits they can draw from the EU. The question must be asked why political leaders do not highlight Europe’s fight on behalf of ordinary citizens – for example, as when the commission forced Apple to repay a record-breaking €13bn (£11bn) in back taxes. Instead, as Mr Juncker put it, all too often “success is national, and failure European”. Social and economic factors, along with security and a better sense of collective control in the face of globalisation, must surely be a key part of the EU’s survival strategy.
While Europe stares ahead, Britain remains entangled in our own uncertainties; outside but looking in.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
 The unexpected and abrupt resignation of Sir Ivan Rogers from his post as Britain’s ambassador to the European Union is a blow for Britain. He was widely regarded as having the right experience, deft touch and nous to navigate the shoals and shifting currents of continental politics that would buffet the British ship of state as it left its European berth. In going early Sir Ivan will have not helped Theresa May with her Brexit plans. Although he was going to leave by October, his exit – ahead of key elections in France and Germany – means the UK has lost one of its top negotiators just as we were meant to get down to the serious business of leaving Europe.
Sir Ivan was an insider’s insider. He was the government’s top Europe adviser at David Cameron’s side throughout Britain’s EU renegotiation, where some accused him of pusillanimity in the face of Brussels intransigence. In an email to colleagues Sir Ivan says it’s best to go before article 50 is invoked. Personal contacts and networks cultivated over decades will be lost. He was also a seasoned Westminster operator described by Ken Clarke, under whom he worked in the Treasury, as an “excellent British diplomat”. But such a recommendation, coupled with his cautious style, earned him the ire of Brexiters. While Mrs May consulted him on Brexit strategy, Sir Ivan’s relations with some of the prime minister’s team had reportedly begun to deteriorate in recent months. Last month Sir Ivan’s advice to Downing Street was leaked. In it he suggested it could take a decade for the EU to agree and ratify a comprehensive trade deal with Britain. Pro-Brexit MPs accused Sir Ivan of being a “gloomy pessimist”. The Daily Mail reported that “knives were out” for him.
 Sir Ivan may have found it hard to blow up bridges he had built with European neighbours. But we are in dangerous territory if we as a country allow the people we ask to bat on our behalf to be silenced because of a perceived viewpoint. What if the thought settles that, if the UK doesn’t get the deal Brexiters want, it will be the diplomats who get blamed? Do we risk being pushed into a hard Brexit for fear for speaking truth to power? Feelings are running high: a former Treasury chief tweeted that this was a “wilful and total destruction of EU expertise”. The government needs to quash the idea Sir Ivan paid a price for telling ministers unpalatable truths. There has to be room for civil servants to offer blunt, unvarnished advice to ministers without the fear of being seen as too pro-EU and defeatist. Sir Ivan pointedly called on colleagues to “challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking” and deliver “disagreeable” messages “to those who need to hear them”.
There is a structural problem with Sir Ivan’s present role: it has a dual reporting line to both Brexit secretary David Davis and foreign secretary Boris Johnson. The Institute for Government warned that “this will need to be managed carefully to avoid confusion and conflict”. The advice went unheeded but thought will need to be given to it to avoid future turbulence. This is the time for Mrs May to stamp her authority over the way Brexit is being run. Silence is not a strategy. There need to be options for MPs to discuss and an internal analysis so that ministers have a robust basis for the political choices they will need to make. All this when, as Sir Ivan notes, we are short on multilateral negotiating experience but Europe is not. Bizarrely the appointment of Sir Ivan’s replacement will tell us more about the kind of politics, diplomacy and trade that Britain will seek in the negotiations with the EU than Mrs May’s gnomic utterances. Sir Ivan’s successor will need a deep insight into the way Brussels works and have the trust of European capitals. He or she will also need the confidence of the prime minister. The message that Downing Street will send with the appointment of Britain’s person in Brussels will be critical: not just to Whitehall but to the rest of Europe as well.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
If anti no-deal Conservative MPs had been able to meet the prime minister on Monday, they could have asked him what has changed in a few weeks to see a no-deal Brexit go from being a “million-to-one shot” to now having a “50-50” chance of happening. Boris Johnson’s so far mercifully brief time in office has, by his own words, reduced the likelihood of negotiating a deal with the European Union 500,000-fold. Truth has long been a casualty of Brexit, but with Mr Johnson’s ascent to Downing Street Britain has truly fallen victim to a virus of populism. The prime minister is complicit in undermining deliberative democracy and replacing it with lies. The will of the people, absurdly, is now defined by the 52% who voted leave three years ago. The government unfairly tars its opponents as deviously powerful groups of remainers who are adept at using institutions like the courts to frustrate Brexit.
Thankfully, some are still unbowed. Former Tory ministers are threatening to seize control of the order paper in parliament this week and push through a bill preventing a no-deal Brexit. They ought to be backed. Britain teeters on the cliff edge of a hard Brexit. Even with the support of 10 DUP MPs, a dozen or so Tory rebels can bring down a wayward Johnson government by leaving it. In response, the prime minister has refused to rule out automatically deselecting any Tory MP who moves against his administration. With a majority of just one, it is only a matter of time before Mr Johnson will have to go the country in a snap general election. When the prime minister does so, he will want to do it on the best possible terms. To remain in the EU would mean Mr Johnson’s political death. His own party membership has become so radicalised that they would rather break up the United Kingdom than not leave the EU.
Without a withdrawal agreement to offer MPs, Mr Johnson would be forced to own the damaging social, economic and political consequences of a no-deal Brexit – but he would be able to unite the right. The cries of betrayal from Nigel Farage’s Brexit party would ring hollow in the ears of leavers if the prime minister pursued a no-deal Brexit. With a withdrawal agreement, obtained by somehow convincing the EU to remove the Irish backstop, Mr Johnson would have to secure the backing of Labour MPs to offset hardline Conservative MPs from the European Research Group who will accept nothing short of a hard Brexit. If he managed to do so, then the prime minister could claim to have split the Labour party.
Politics is about perception. What ought to worry us all is that Mr Johnson feels he has enough popular support in the country not only to pursue a hard Brexit but to weaponise it in an election campaign. No holds will be barred by a prime minister who has suspended parliament for five weeks – the longest prorogation since 1945 – to narrow the possible window of opposition, or by his ministers who refuse to rule out ignoring any law passed by parliament to stop no deal.
This is in itself an election strategy. Mr Johnson’s experience as the face of Vote Leave has taught him how to turn outrage into political energy. Since taking office, his administration has leaked the idea that it is prepared to do the constitutionally shocking to deliver Brexit. Mr Johnson has then allowed his government to bathe in the flood of negative publicity, and use the media’s coverage – particularly focusing on the storm of fury and indignation – to whip up the Tory grassroots, generate interest in their hard Brexitism, and stoke the belief that a “remainer elite” was against them. The trouble is that Mr Johnson is not bothered about playing fast and loose with the truth. It is part of his plan to paint himself as a victim of remainer bias ahead of an impending election. Whatever the outcome of the UK-EU negotiations in the next few weeks, Brexit is just the beginning of a much longer process that shows no sign of doing this country any good at all.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
British politics is polarised on nearly every axis, so it is strange how little conflict there is between Labour and the Conservatives on the biggest issue: the terms of departure from the EU. Jeremy Corbyn’s challenges to Theresa May over Brexit negotiations at prime minister’s questions last week felt remarkable because he so rarely opens battle on that front. Labour has not obstructed Tory legislation enabling the very hardest of Brexits. The frontbench say they would pursue a different model, putting “jobs first”. But whips have instructed Labour MPs to sit on their hands as the Tory agenda is enacted.
Mr Corbyn’s views in the area are vague, except to insist that for democracy’s sake, the referendum verdict must be honoured. That is a sensible starting point for the leader of a national party, especially one that represents many areas that voted leave. But ending EU membership leaves a spectrum of options, notably in the question of the single market and customs union. The Tories are dedicated to rupture from both; Labour equivocates.
There is a view on the left that the single market, with its rules governing industrial subsidy, prohibits the kind of nationalisations envisaged in Labour’s last election manifesto. This is a misconception (as the prevalence of state-run enterprises across the continent shows). As for the customs union, the objection voiced by the shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, is the mirror image of the one raised by Liam Fox, his government counterpart. Both men want out of the customs union because member countries cannot sign external trade deals.
Dr Fox likes the idea of bilateral deals because they will allow greater deregulation, less protection for workers and fewer restraints on multinational business. Labour’s priority in any post-EU deal would be bolstering those rules and restraints. Meanwhile, UK insistence on leaving the customs union is the direct cause of Mrs May’s current difficulties in Brexit negotiations in relation to the island of Ireland. Were she to soften on that front, the prospect of a restored border and the impasse go away. Challenged on this point on Sunday, Dr Fox insisted the border matter be deferred for a later phase of talks, although the fundamental problem will not change. Mr Gardiner also swerved the question, saying Labour had ruled nothing out, while adding that the opposition was excused from taking a position because it was not a participant in the negotiations.
For the Tories there is at least ideological consistency in flight from the single market and customs union. Dr Fox’s wing of the party has long desired a bonfire of European social protection. Labour’s history and values should tilt the party in the opposite direction. In an interconnected world, the best strategy to avoid a race to the bottom in workers’ conditions is international cooperation, using the combined muscle of many governments to police global capital. This was a historic benefit of the European project for the left – and is why most large trade unions campaigned to remain. Labour’s ambitions of upholding social protections are best met in political and economic alignment with the EU. As Mr Corbyn demonstrated on Wednesday, Labour has already travelled some way on Brexit. Now it is time for the opposition to bring a defence of the single market and customs union out from the shadows of the Tory hard Brexit agenda.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
As the old political adage puts it: “Oppositions don’t win elections; governments lose them.” Many of the dynamics of British politics in 2018 would seem to bear this out. The Conservatives are bungling Brexit big time. The prime minister’s authority is shot. And the Tory conference next week could be a bloodbath. If the adage is right, therefore, then the Labour party may be tempted to spend the next three days in Liverpool avoiding needless mistakes and basking in the advent of a Jeremy Corbyn government.
That would be a complacent mistake. For one thing, Commons arithmetic and the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act make an early election difficult to trigger, even with a Brexit breakdown. For another, in spite of their multiple inadequacies, the Tories remain head-to-head with Labour in the polls, and in some cases ahead, suggesting that the case for Labour has not yet been won. For a third, a grindingly self-absorbed summer for Labour over antisemitism raised questions about Mr Corbyn’s judgment, which he often struggled to answer.
Either way, Labour needs to use this week in Liverpool to do two big things. The first, inescapably, is to clarify and refine its position on Brexit. This is the biggest issue facing the nation today. The cost of Brexit will be felt and borne most heavily by Labour voters. There is no Brexit policy on which the divided Conservatives can go to the country. Labour therefore needs to be the party that, in government, can take over and bring direction to the Brexit policy issues and the process alike.
A key part of that is to propose a precise role for a popular vote on the terms, whether negotiated by the Tories or Labour. An Observer/ICM poll at the weekend showed 86% support among Labour members for such a poll. Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, gave it his backing too. In his weekend media interviews, Mr Corbyn appeared to be reconciling himself to such an outcome, which is supported by some of his most fervent followers. If so, that is wise.
Labour’s second big task this week is to put more flesh on the bones of what a Labour government should promise in economic and social policy. That can’t be separated from Brexit, because the terms on which the UK leaves the EU (if it happens) will profoundly shape the economic circumstances which Labour would face in office. In short, Brexit will make Labour’s social justice and economic rebalancing programmes more difficult. Even in the absence of Brexit, however, these are the issues that will decide whether Labour has the authority and the mandate to make the new kind of Britain it seeks.
That is why the most keenly followed speech at Liverpool may not be Mr Corbyn’s on Wednesday but that of the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, on Monday. Ten years on from the financial crisis, and after a decade of austerity, public opinion is more open to redistributive economic policies of the kind Mr McDonnell favours. But fairness, though very important, is not the only test. Effectiveness matters too. As the economic historian Adam Tooze argues in his recent book Crashed, politicians of the left and the right still default to national policy solutions to tackle globalised digital financial asymmetries that simply have no respect for borders. Here again, an ineradicable European dimension has to be part of the solution. Here also the need to be effective rather than dogmatic is crucial.
During this year, Mr McDonnell has sometimes seemed to be on an interesting journey. He is carving out a rather subtler reputation than his party leader. He has begun to acquire a more respectful press. He has presided over some new thinking by advisers on issues like low pay, part-time work, borrowing and industrial democracy. Much of this is embryonic. Many are still very wary. Mr McDonnell plays to the old gallery when it suits him. But the shadow chancellor is revealing an awareness about the need for political credibility. This really matters. He understands two interlocking truths – that radical economic measures are needed and that a radical government cannot afford to fail. His speech this week needs to show why Labour deserves to win a fresh election – not just why the Tories should lose it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Labour’s policy on leaving the European Union is probably best summed up by the Rolling Stones line “you can’t always get what you want”. On Tuesday morning the party’s Brexit spokesman, and one of its brightest talents, Keir Starmer, tried to explain what Labour’s policy on leaving the EU was and what it was not. Until recently Labour had tried to be many things, understandably so because the party had to bridge the gulf between its remain-voting and leave-voting seats. Since parliament, with the support of most Labour MPs, voted to trigger Article 50, the party’s position has become clearer. Rightly, Sir Keir insisted that EU nationals won’t be bargaining chips in forthcoming talks. He also outlined a significant shift on immigration. Even a few weeks ago, Labour’s position was perceived to be soft on freedom of movement. Labour’s policy is now to prioritise jobs, workers’ rights, and living standards in Britain over the right for people to work and travel around the continent. It is undeniable – and a tragedy – that Britain’s vote to leave the EU was founded on fears over immigration.
Sir Keir’s position, at first glance, looks very much like the one offered by his Conservative opponents. Both Labour and the Tories now accept restrictions on freedom of movement despite the implications for access to the single market. Both will have a vote in parliament on the deal, although Labour envisages time to go back to Brussels if MPs reject it. Both parties want the best deal possible for Britain. Sir Keir differs from the Tories in that he would start negotiations with all options on the table and drop them one by one until a deal is reached. Theresa May would start from a blank sheet of paper and work out a deal that both sides could agree on. So far, so similar. The difference is that Sir Keir has declined to explain what would happen if the EU told Britain that the deal on offer in March 2019 was a “take it or leave it” one. When pressed he said the country could fall back on transitional arrangements and contingency measures – an answer that felt like a political deus ex machina conjured up to escape a seemingly unsolvable problem. If Mrs May could not get a deal from EU that she found agreeable, then Britain would crash out of the EU. This would be a disaster for the country, and a warning about the strength of the hardline Euroscepticism in the Tory party that seeks to remould the country as regulation-lite tax haven on the edge of Europe.
There was an easy way out for Sir Keir. He could have said that he would ask parliament to invoke clause 3 of article 50 to ask the government to seek an extension of the two-year negotiating period. The EU is, after all, a union of democracies. If MPs asked for an extension the pressure would be on Brussels to concede it. If Sir Keir ends up as a member of a Labour government, however unlikely that looks, he might still take this course of action. But Sir Keir cannot make this sensible suggestion policy now because he has to face the world as it is, not how he might want it to be. To engage in the hypotheticals of perhaps staying in the EU until we get the departure deal Britain wants would be taken as trying to avoid leaving. It would be jumped on by the Europhobic press, and would risk the prospects of loyal Labour colleagues in “leave” areas.
Currently voters are more likely to ask “why haven’t we left?” than “why aren’t we staying?”. That might change as the cost of Brexit becomes clear. Unlike the Lib Dems, who have made it their unique selling point, and at best will get a few dozen seats, Labour cannot now offer a second referendum, nor membership of the single market. Tony Blair asks Labour to ensure that Mrs May has no blank cheque on Brexit, and Sir Keir has done what is politically possible. The fact is we are leaving the EU. In doing so Britain must seek the closest relationship with Europe while rebuilding the public finances. Britain might not get what it wants, but as Mick Jagger drawled, “if you try sometimes, well you just might find you get what you need”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Britain after Brexit is a milestone in the UK’s mistaken exit from the European Union. It was a daring address, situating Brexit among other foreign policy crises such as climate change and the refugee emergency. The oration was important because it revealed Mr Corbyn’s sceptical thinking on Europe: he accepts Britain is leaving the EU; he thinks the single market might stop Labour from implementing radical policies; and he is worried that free market orthodoxy is embedded in the EU. He may – or may not – have a point about all these things. But the salient detail was that Mr Corbyn would negotiate a new customs union with the EU. In saying so, Labour appears smarter and less fantastical than the Conservatives. Mr Corbyn is right for two reasons. First, a customs union would make it easier to avoid a hard border between Great Britain and the continent, especially in Ireland. Second, UK industry relies on cross-border supply chains, and without a tariff-free arrangement companies would face costly delays. By considering the issues of business and the peace process in Northern Ireland, Mr Corbyn’s Labour is revealed as a party of sensible thought in the face of adversity.
The contrast with Theresa May could not be clearer. Mr Corbyn leads Labour while the prime minister is being led by Brexiter MPs who operate as a party within her party. Tory Brexiters believe that Britain can diverge in key areas from EU regulations and not face barriers to trade in Europe. This is an illusion: if Britain wants a close trading relationship with the EU, it has to cleave to EU standards. Mr Corbyn understands this. He knows that EU rules have become global standards and UK industries will wish to follow them. Thus Labour, sensibly, accepts EU jurisdiction over the production and trade of goods – committing itself to support EU agencies that regulate industrial sectors. This greases the wheels in any talks about a new customs union.
The Tories have also bought the fiction that global deals with China or the US could replace trade flows with Europe. This fallacy is built on the idea that the UK could undercut and deregulate its way to growth. Labour recognises this is not possible nor desirable. Instead, it is refreshingly realistic and hard-nosed. Mr Corbyn wants an EU-UK customs union but only if the British can have a say – not a veto – in negotiating the bloc’s future trade deals. This would allow the UK to strike trade deals together with the EU. It would also give the UK the same market access as EU member states to third countries that have free trade agreements with the EU. This is a win-win policy for both sides: the EU can offer potential third partners the UK market, as well as its own, in new trade deals.
Mr Corbyn should be congratulated for his pragmatism on the issue of the customs union – arguing for both workers and business amid the crass populist impulses of Brexit. His outbreak of reason should extend to the Tory party. As a first step, Downing Street could stop appeasing the group of MPs who are theologically opposed to the EU. These Tories will not take yes for answer – despite Mrs May being desperate to capitulate. The result is that her position is getting closer and closer to a hard Brexit that abandons the single market, the customs union and the European court of justice. This is popular only on the fringe of politics, so why make it government policy? Mr Corbyn’s offer on the customs union would command a majority in parliament, which ought to bother the Tory leadership. Mrs May should make up her own mind, rather than let irreconcilable opponents of the EU make it up for her.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
For a senior minister to be slapped down on his own departmental special subject is unusual. For that senior minister to be slapped down on his own special subject by his own press spokesperson is surely unprecedented. Yet this is what happened to the always supremely self-confident Brexit secretary, David Davis, on Wednesday. It happened, moreover, on a dimension of Brexit that, in comparison with many, is extremely simple to understand. It was also one on which, unusually, the government has made its goal clear. That is why the episode provides a truly disturbing insight into a government strategy that is now beyond shambles.
It is no secret, Mr Davis told MPs, that the European Union tends to make its decisions “at the 59th minute of the 11th hour”. This was therefore “precisely” what he expected to happen in the case of the UK’s Brexit talks with the EU. So, Labour’s Seema Malhotra asked him, does that mean parliament may not get to vote on any Brexit deal until after Brexit has occurred? “It could be, yeah,” said Mr Davis. “It depends when it concludes.” So it could be after 29 March 2019, the day the UK ceases to be a member of the EU? “It could be,” Mr Davis agreed. “It can’t come before we have the deal.”
Seven months ago, on the day that she formally began the two-year article 50 Brexit process, Theresa May gave MPs and peers a promise that had been forced out of her by a vote in the House of Lords in March. “I have been clear,” the prime minister said in a Commons statement, “that the government will put the final deal agreed between the UK and the EU to a vote in both Houses of Parliament before it comes into force.”
Such a deal, if there is one, will come into force at the end of March 2019. It follows that, for parliament to have its vote, the deal must be made in sufficient time for MPs and peers – as well as the European parliament, which has treaty rights to sign off on the agreement – to consider it. That can’t happen if the deal is only struck at 11.59pm on the last day of the process; “precisely” the timetable that Mr Davis expects.
Mrs May tried to brush the problem aside at prime minister’s questions. She said she was confident that a deal would be done in time for parliament to have its vote, though this was not what Mr Davis had said. A few hours later, Mr Davis’s own spokesperson had another go: “We expect and intend” the vote to be before Brexit, said a statement, adding that “this morning the secretary of state was asked about hypothetical scenarios”. This, too, was a partial reverse, but not a complete one, as the Conservative remainer Dominic Grieve and Labour’s Stephen Kinnock both insisted.
At the very heart of the leave campaign in 2016 was the demand to take back control and to reclaim the sovereignty of the UK parliament. It is impossible to think of a more important peacetime decision for the UK than the terms on which Britain leaves the EU. It would be completely absurd for the government to deny parliament a meaningful vote on that issue. Any vote that took place after the Brexit deadline would be utterly meaningless. It would be the polar opposite of parliamentary sovereignty.
The UK parliament vote should logically precede the vote in the European parliament, This can only mean one of two things. Either the deadline for the talks is really late 2018 – in which case everything has to be tied up in a year from now. Or the EU must prolong the article 50 process, a power it possesses. Whichever it is, Mr Davis has been exposed by this episode. He spent an hour and a half insouciantly implying to MPs that he was the master of the situation and that everything would work out well in the end. But on this and on many other issues in the Brexit process, this is simply untrue. “Expecting and intending” to have a parliamentary vote on the biggest issue facing Britain is not enough. The commitment must be absolute. The guarantee must be unconditional. Parliament must have the power.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
It is just possible that there are still a few undecided MPs who need persuading why they must take control of the Brexit process this week and extend article 50 to prevent a no-deal outcome. If so, the MPs should look at the Ipsos MRBI poll of Northern Ireland opinion published by the Irish Times on Thursday. It is rare to find a poll that reads so emphatically both as a devastating verdict on a policy and, at the same time, as a blunt warning of the need for it to change. But this one does both.
Northern Ireland is again at the very heart of the Conservative government’s Brexit crisis. This is not an accident. It is there essentially because Theresa May’s government is committed to three things that cannot be reconciled. One is the peace process promise that Brexit would do nothing to restore a hard border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The second is the promise that Mrs May made in 2017 to the DUP that there would be no regulatory divergence in the Irish Sea. The third is the Tory’s right’s doctrinaire passion for leaving the EU single market and customs union, which Mrs May very foolishly made into Brexit red lines.
This political pile-up does not just put Northern Ireland at the heart of Brexit. It does it in direct defiance of public opinion in Northern Ireland itself, which is not represented – and indeed is consistently ignored – by the DUP and the Tory right. Here is where the Irish Times poll comes in. The poll is a reality check. It confirms that an increased majority in Northern Ireland would now vote to remain in the EU, as they did in the 2016 referendum. It also shows that in the end only one of the three commitments really matters. That one is the commitment to a frictionless border. Most people in Northern Ireland would prefer to see checks between the North and Britain as opposed to checks between the North and the Republic. Two-thirds of Northern Ireland voters support a very soft Brexit, with the UK as a whole remaining in both the single market and the customs union, an outcome that would make any Northern Ireland backstop irrelevant. The DUP, in other words, is not the true voice of Northern Ireland. It is not even the true voice of its own voters.
The incompatibility of the three commitments has dogged Brexit for two years. It still does. It underpins the row about the backstop, which was the ostensible reason for Mrs May’s 230-vote defeat on the EU-UK Brexit withdrawal agreement in January. Since then, the attorney general has been struggling to reframe the backstop in some way that would prevent it from being a backstop. Unsurprisingly he has failed. Unless the attorney general has a rabbit hidden in his hat, and can reveal it to Conservative acclaim in the next 24 hours, this failure seems certain to produce another decisive defeat for Mrs May’s agreement this week.
If that happens, Mrs May can blame no one but herself, her party and her DUP allies. She has misread British interests, ignored Northern Irish opinion, and is in denial about Europe’s position. She made a terrible underlying blunder by believing that British opinion was committed to a hard Brexit when she should have aimed for an approach that might work for most people. She compounded that by accepting that the DUP speaks for Northern Ireland. Yet not only does the poll show that opinion on Brexit in the North is miles away from that of the DUP. It also shows that only one in five voters in Northern Ireland thinks the DUP is doing a good job, and that satisfaction with the party leader Arlene Foster languishes at only 16%.
It is beyond crazy that Mrs May is still trying to cajole parliament into passing the deal on the basis that the backstop can be unilaterally circumvented, that Northern Ireland opinion can be ignored and that the goal of Brexit should be an autonomous trade policy that would create a hard border in Ireland and cut large swaths of the British economy off from EU markets. The entire approach is wrong and dishonourable. It is being pursued against the wishes of Northern Ireland and in defiance of the interests of the UK more widely. But it is now also a political failure. It must therefore be replaced. MPs of all parties must come together and change the Brexit agenda at last. That is the task of a politically momentous week for our country and these islands.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
To achieve anything in EU diplomacy it helps to speak European. That does not require a command of continental languages. What matters, when dealing at the highest level in Brussels, is an ability to acknowledge the common political and economic interests that underpin the whole European project.
Theresa May has no fluency in that idiom. She cannot even fake it. Since becoming prime minister, her relations with the EU have been marked by tin-eared diplomacy. She is bad enough at cultivating relationships in Westminster. In Brussels she has none.
The letter she sent on Wednesday requesting an article 50 extension is a case in point. Mrs May asked for the wrong thing the wrong way. There is one reason to seek an extension, and two forms it might take. The reason is to avoid crashing out of the EU with no deal. The available forms are short and long. The short route, adding a month or two, provides for a technical interlude to complete legislation once a deal has been approved by parliament. That is what Mrs May requested, although the deal has not been ratified. The longer variant, continuing the UK’s EU membership beyond the summer, is required if there is no deal and the whole process needs rebooting. That is what Mrs May should have requested. In fearful deference to hardliners in her party, she did not.
Mrs May has asked the European council to extend the Brexit deadline to 30 June, by which point she hopes that parliament will have stopped obstructing her deal. Donald Tusk, the council president, responded swiftly, confirming that a short extension was on offer, but only if Commons ratification comes first – next week. This ultimatum expresses personal frustration with Mrs May in European capitals. EU leaders can follow UK news. They can see that the prime minister has no control over her party. They know that concessions are wasted on her because she feeds them to the insatiable beast of paranoid Euroscepticism, then comes back pleading for more.
The EU made it clear that an article 50 extension should not be used by Mrs May to keep going round in the same familiar circles. But that is precisely what her letter promises. It requests permission to carry on playing a game that she has lost. A reasonable expectation, given the scale of the current crisis, was that the UK rethink its whole approach to Brexit. No one in Brussels expects great flexibility from Mrs May but it was not beyond imagination that she would bend to the will of parliament. Even that is beyond this most rigid of prime ministers.
Her crass handling of the situation has revived the peril of no deal when MPs have three times declared it unacceptable. A chaotic Brexit is not the only alternative to the current deal, although Mrs May insists the choice is binary in order to apply pressure on anxious MPs. Mr Tusk said that an emergency summit could still be convened next week where action could be taken to avert calamity. That might mean the longer article 50 extension from which Mrs May flinches. She hinted in the Commons on Wednesday that she would not continue as the prime minister of a country that was still in the EU after June. She might also be forced to name a resignation date as the price for Tory endorsement of her deal next week.
Her political capital is all spent. She has no allies at home or abroad. Her only leverage in parliament comes from the fear that her appalling management of the country provokes – the prospect that she is incompetent enough to allow the worst to happen. She long ago lost sight of diplomacy and strategy. Then she shed authority. Now she has abandoned responsibility, completing the journey from bad prime minister to rogue prime minister.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
It is traditional, on the eve of a party’s annual conference, to highlight the challenges facing the leader. Convention dictates that Theresa May’s performance in Birmingham next week be advertised as the most important of her life. But those cliches are almost redundant given the scale of the mess the Conservatives are in and the improbability of Mrs May describing a remedy.
The prime minister is handling Brexit badly, and the course of action being urged by the most influential Tory faction would make things worse. On Friday Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, published a “six-point plan” to challenge Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint. Its essential features are denial that the single market has been valuable to the UK economy, pretence that the benefits of EU membership are available from the outside, and faith in a Canada-style free-trade deal, although the shortcomings of that model are well documented. It erects barriers where currently there are none and, as applied on the island of Ireland, envisages new border controls that the government has pledged not to apply.
Mr Johnson wishes away those problems with a prefix: his plan is not just Canada, but “super-Canada”. To remove concerns around Ireland he proposes reneging on the December 2017 interim Brexit deal that was signed in Brussels when he was in the cabinet. Here is a man positioning himself to replace Mrs May, recommending betrayal of an existing agreement as the first step towards signing a new deal with the very same partners. That is vandalistic anti-diplomacy in the Donald Trump mould. It demeans Britain that Mr Johnson was ever foreign secretary and that his party takes him seriously as candidate to be prime minister.
A strong leader would deride the vacuity of her Tory rivals and their nonsensical plans, but Mrs May’s position is pitiable. Her Chequers plan is poorly understood in the country, unpopular with Tory members, and has been rejected in its current form by the EU. Even if, by some unlikely feat of negotiating prowess and parliamentary arithmetic, Chequers becomes the final Brexit deal, it would be inferior to the terms Britain now enjoys as a full EU member.
The non-existence of options better than the one rejected in the 2016 referendum is an urgent truth that has yet to be properly expressed during this party conference season. Labour has come closer to it than the Tories, largely as a result of grassroots pressure from pro-European members and campaigners urging another referendum vote. Jeremy Corbyn’s acceptance that “all options” are on the table demonstrates the necessary capacity for pragmatism. But the opposition’s emphasis on a general election has the effect of deferring engagement with the same hard choices and uncomfortable messages that the prime minister has persistently avoided.
Around the fringes of the Conservative conference there will be pockets of moderation. In the shadows, the gravity of the impending crisis may be discussed with reference to rational economic judgment, free from ideological zealotry. Such discussion will include the practicalities of extending the article 50 negotiating period; potential alliance with Labour MPs to form a majority bloc in favour of a much softer Brexit; or legislating for a referendum with remain as one of the options. None of those ambitions is easy to achieve, but simply being possible and not wildly inimical to the national interest distinguishes them from the noisier Brexit discussion conducted by Eurosceptic hardliners and many ministers.
It is not too late for Mrs May to join the serious conversation and distance herself from the reckless and ruinous one. It is not too late for her to address the British public over the heads of her party’s anti-Brussels ultras, standing up to fanatics whose denial of diplomatic and economic reality is making Britain a pariah in Europe. Following the demands of the most Eurosceptic fringe is a strategy that has not served any Tory leader well. Perhaps, in this last conference before Britain is due to leave the EU, Mrs May could break with party tradition and address the European question not as it is imagined by many Conservatives but as it truly affects the whole country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Theresa May’s hard-won deal is done at last; yet its undoing is all but taken for granted. Even as EU leaders gathered in Brussels to approve the draft withdrawal treaty and political agreement today, its myriad domestic foes were plotting their course past it. No one believes that the prime minister can pilot it successfully through parliament next month. The numbers look worse by the day, knighthoods notwithstanding.
So the signing of the deal looks strangely beside the point after all the months of battle. But this is an important moment, sobering to all bar Brexit ideologues and those whose personal ambition precludes all thought of the country’s interests. As Mrs May observed, a new chapter in our national lives is beginning. The precise content of the coming pages is necessarily vague. We know only that they are bringing Britain closer to the unhappy and unnecessary ending of a 45-year story.
The sorrow expressed at the Brussels summit was evinced entirely by the EU27 – it was a “sad day”; “not a day to celebrate”; even “tragic”, in Angela Merkel’s words. Politics obliged the prime minister to sound upbeat. Mrs May insisted, implausibly, that she was full of optimism about the future of the country. But the past weeks have underscored that the loss is Britain’s. Any Brexit deal is a bad deal for the country.
The foreign secretary’s reassurance that Britain has been in far more challenging situations avoided mentioning that we brought this one upon ourselves, and must face up to this act of self-harm if we wish to emerge without more damage. Confronted with reality, the reaction of the Brexiters has been instead to double down on the post-imperial delusions and lies that got us here. They accuse Mrs May of selling out the nation, as if one country could simply stare down a bloc of 27. Britain is already damaged and diminished, weakened in its dealings with the other EU members – as the last minute tussle over Gibraltar showed – and with the world outside. The EU is with Spain, said the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. It was with it for the simple reason that Spain is with the EU. Imagine now how the UK will fare when it goes solo in negotiations with the US, China and others. Good luck with those trade deals.
Mrs May pandered to the Brexiters in the vain hope of assuaging them, triggering article 50 prematurely and laying down reckless red lines. Her letter to the public looks desperate in two ways: first, as a tactic, reflecting the increasing hostility to the deal among both Tory and Labour MPs; and second, in its content. She suggested the deal would clear the political space to address the burning injustices she has often pledged to resolve. If she was ever serious about tackling these – and her record to date shows little sign of it, the last budget perhaps least of all – it is clear Brexit cannot solve the problems that contributed to the vote for it; it will exacerbate them. Shamefully, her letter not only echoed but amplified the bus-side lie about Brexit boosting funding for the health service; the government would be able to spend British taxpayers’ money on the UK’s own priorities, “like the extra £394m per week” it was investing in the NHS.
It is true that the British people mostly don’t want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. But when leavers and remainers are united only in disliking Mrs May’s solution, that offers no way forward. Mr Juncker insisted that this is the only deal possible, though others were more cautious; tweaks are possible, but not the wholesale overhaul Brexiters demand. The alternative they posit, of a “managed no deal”, just means strapping on seat belts as you head for the cliff edge. Meanwhile, remain ministers have reportedly formed a new “gang of five”, hoping to steer Mrs May towards a softer Brexit after defeat in the Commons vote. On Sunday, Arlene Foster said the DUP could back a Norway-style deal, an option attracting increasing sympathy. The campaign for a second referendum is gaining momentum among both the public and politicians. Brexit is an economic and political disaster, fuelling, not healing, divisions. The extent of the folly has grown clearer with each turn of the page. But the ending is not yet written.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
In the two years since the nation voted to leave the European Union, the Conservative party has consistently put politics before country by failing to come forward with a credible Brexit plan. The Tories have also failed to resolve the questions about inequality and powerlessness that were thrown up in too many parts of the country by the poll in June 2016. Instead we have had Theresa May conduct months of parallel negotiations – one set at home and one abroad – to get to a position where this country’s long-term post-Brexit relationship with the EU remains a riddle waiting to be solved.
Mrs May has yet to convince her colleagues that she has a workable plan for what happens when this country leaves the EU, let alone where it is eventually going. The ambiguity is the point: Mrs May’s pitch to the Brexiters is that they ought to wear her temporary fudge while a Canada-style free-trade deal is negotiated. By this ruse Mrs May clings to power. She does not deserve to. The last Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, today aptly quoted Winston Churchill in a thoughtful speech to describe, accurately, Mrs May as being “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent”.
It is not as if Brussels won’t do a deal. It’s just that for Mrs May it must be so vacuous that it will be meaningless. There is no clarity over what the UK’s connection with the single market will be; nor whether it will be in a customs union or not; nor if Brexit Britain will have a concrete plan for dealing with concerns about migration. Yet this suits Mrs May, who prefers to stay in office with a fix than go down fighting for a principle. Such a strategy relies on continuing with an inward-looking, divisive and ultimately corrosive politics.
By law, Mrs May’s government cannot sign a Brexit deal without MPs’ approval. The prime minister hopes a text coupled with a this-deal-or-no-deal choice will concentrate minds. But it seems fairly clear that no majority exists in the Commons for any version of her Brexit plan. If the prime minister’s deal is rejected, parliament must take back control. There is no duty on MPs to vote for a bad deal. The circumstances of a defeat would frame the response. Mr Brown was right to say that MPs must be able to vote on amendments before giving a thumbs-up – or a thumbs-down – to a future Brexit arrangement. It would be wrong to subvert a “meaningful vote” by rigging the parliamentary process – and this must be resisted.
If MPs say the deal is not good enough and ask ministers to return to Brussels to get a better one, even if that requires more time to do so, then that is what Mrs May must do. This might cost her the leadership – though given her instincts for self-preservation she might call the bluff of Tory hardliners by withdrawing article 50 to head this off. Given past events, it would be unwise to discount the improbable as impossible. Key will be Labour’s response: it could offer its own softer version of Brexit and seek support from Tory MPs. It is hard to see how the Conservative benches would support a Labour plan after rejecting their own leader’s proposal. But we live in interesting times.
The impression is of a never-ending Brexit crisis, one that erodes trust in democracy. Mr Brown thinks the situation could become so dire that Britain will end up holding a second referendum – with the prospect of this country rejoining the EU in the future. It is significant that three out of four living former prime ministers – Mr Brown, Tony Blair and John Major – alight on a national plebiscite to solve the Brexit conundrum. This is not without considerable risks. The Tories spent months saying no deal is better than a bad deal. The British public might, given the chance, take them at their word. If MPs were to refuse to support a Brexit plan, or to ask for more time to get a better deal or to vote for a general election, there would be chaos. Given those foreseeable circumstances, it would be foolish to rule out another referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
The government of Theresa May has survived another parliamentary cliffhanger, with a vote that threatened a cabinet walkout almost certainly shelved. She remains in office – to procrastinate another day. The prime minister did so by admitting she has a plan B if her deal to leave the European Union does not win Commons support in a meaningful vote before 12 March. Mrs May’s strategy is now to say that if her deal is defeated she will offer MPs something she has so far refused to countenance: asking the EU to extend the deadline set by the article 50 process of leaving the bloc by a couple of months. She also told MPs that the United Kingdom “will only leave without a deal on 29 March if there is explicit consent in this House”.
Mrs May does not want to extend the Brexit talks. What is not clear, and is an act of political irresponsibility, is whether she would vote against a no-deal Brexit – which would inflict serious damage to the economy but appeals to the fanatics in her party. The prime minister seems to think that by extending article 50 she can offer MPs a choice at the end of June that they would have already rejected: between a version of her Brexit deal and no deal. Mrs May is treating high office as if it were a battering ram, using it to hammer again and again at her opponents until they crack. She says she wants her government to “implement” the 2016 Brexit poll “in a way that commands the support of this House”. MPs, however, have yet to coalesce in a large enough group around a single plan. Parliamentarians are not coming together, they are coming apart.
Like Britain, the Conservative party is split down the middle over Brexit. Mrs May obscures this reality by talking up the prospects of negotiations with Brussels over her withdrawal agreement. She aims to continue in this vein until the summer. Mrs May will use the perception of motion – shuttling between London and Brussels – to give the impression she is getting somewhere. In reality she will be going nowhere. The withdrawal agreement, a legally binding treaty, is not going to be rewritten – though material could be added to the accompanying political declaration on the future relationship between the EU and Britain. Mrs May is in search of changes to her deal that will be big enough to bring her rebels on board – as well as luring Labour MPs to her camp – and small enough for the European Union to accept. The Tory party divide is unlikely to be bridged. In that sense Mrs May’s Brexit diplomacy is a substitute for a predicament that serves only to defer it.
Mrs May’s manoeuvring is about stifling – rather than giving – voice to antagonisms in her party. The same can be said of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. His party is also divided over how to proceed over Brexit, with the membership pushing for a second referendum on the issue. Mr Corbyn has committed himself to a “confirmatory vote” but made progress to it contingent on an improbable sequence of events. Paraded as a noble expression of national dispute, his policy in reality is a repression of it.
For parliament there seems no imaginable route of escape from the Brexit straitjacket. The danger is that the public is being lulled into the idea that the apparently impossible would prove possible somehow. Denial for both Mrs May and Mr Corbyn has worked until now; but it is increasingly reckless, especially for the prime minister. The causes of Brexit are still with us, with levels of inequality and poverty rising. Mastering the mechanics of politics is not enough. Politicians need to master its substance.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
Michael Heseltine has had one of the longest governmental careers in modern British politics. He was first made a minister by Edward Heath in 1970, and served in every Conservative government until 1997, with a dramatic hiatus after he resigned over the Westland affair in 1986. In 1990 he nearly became Margaret Thatcher’s successor, a political might-have-been that would have changed Tory history, for good or ill. Now, nearly 47 years after his first appointment, Theresa May has fired him as a government adviser on industrial strategy and urban regeneration. The pro-European’s offence was to support Tuesday’s Lords amendment to the article 50 bill, which would give parliament a decisive role in the Brexit process that Lord Heseltine so laments.
At 83, Lord Heseltine is a political lion in winter. Inevitably, he has lost a little of his touch, as he showed on Wednesday when, on International Women’s Day, he made the mistake of saying Mrs May has a “man-sized” job to do, for which his interviewer rightly upbraided him. Yet in an age of too-short political careers, his consistency and sustained engagement are an example to others to stay the course. He has pursued his crusade for business and localism with huge energy ever since David Cameron got him to draw up a regional growth strategy in the No Stone Unturned review in 2012. If he hadn’t been sacked, Lord Heseltine would have been in his home town of Swansea to promote a new initiative there today. It is hard to believe that he has swung through the British political jungle for the last time – and we hope he has not done so.
The irony of Lord Heseltine’s sacking is that, with the major exception of Europe, he is one of all too few senior Tories in the post-Thatcher years who grasps the strategic importance of government in the same way that Mrs May does. Lady Thatcher bequeathed a toxic political legacy to her party in the shape of a conviction that government was the problem and that markets could solve all economic and social issues if left to themselves. By contrast Lord Heseltine is the last active representative of a long era of Conservative politicians whose commitment to the one-nation Tory tradition meant they never felt the need or pressure to compromise with Lady Thatcher’s possessive individualism. For Lord Heseltine, government is an irreplaceable enabler. To her credit, Mrs May shares that view too.
On Europe, though, their views are polar opposites. By firing Lord Heseltine, Mrs May presumably wishes to send a signal to pro-remain Tory MPs that they will suffer if they vote to keep the Lords amendments in the bill next week. She may succeed, especially given the less than inspiring performance of almost all pro-European Tory MPs thus far. It is very important that she fails. The country needs our parliament to stand up against the hard Brexit that Mrs May is seeking.
Mrs May’s parting of the ways with Lord Heseltine also sends a larger message. She wants to drive down the middle of the political road towards a more cohesive Britain “that works for all”. But Brexit always pulls her steering wheel to the right. It threatens lasting fractures between regions, classes and communities and over values. These undermine the cohesion she seeks. That’s because Brexit and one-nation goals are not compatible. Hopefully not for the last time in his career, Lord Heseltine has got it right.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Theresa May’s decision to delay the meaningful vote on the terms of her Brexit deal to at least 12 March is the reckless act of a leader running out of ideas. We only have Mrs May’s word that “progress” is being made on changes that might make her withdrawal agreement acceptable to a parliament which last month rejected it in the largest ever defeat for a ruling party. MPs will have to decide which way to vote on one of this country’s most consequential geopolitical acts – leaving the European Union – just 17 days before it is supposed to happen. In the meantime, the country is driven closer to the cliff edge, egged on by fanatics who think Britain ought to leave the EU with no deal at all, wreaking maximum damage on the economy.
But this is the point of Mrs May’s ploy: to rachet up the tension and raise the stakes. The prime minister aims to manoeuvre MPs to a point where a bad deal is better than no deal or no Brexit at all. Mrs May is hoping that her nerve will hold while that of her opponents fails. She is attempting to assemble a coalition to leave on the terms she has negotiated. It corresponds to what her chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins was heard boasting about in a Brussels bar earlier this month: that MPs would end up with a last-minute choice between her deal and a lengthy delay. She would then have the option to cast anyone who voted for a delay as an opponent of Brexit and anyone who voted for her deal as a committed leaver. It’s not a bad plan; it’s just bad for Britain and for this country’s politics.
The prime minister has shown her hand, but it is far from clear that it is a winning one. Others hold their own cards. On Tuesday, Mrs May will make a statement to the Commons. She will do so to forestall a cabinet rebellion that is threatening to erupt later this week when MPs get a chance to vote, thanks to the work of Labour’s Yvette Cooper, for an extension of the article 50 process either to enable parliament to reach a consensus on a Brexit deal or because they wish to achieve a long delay and a second referendum. Yet parliament ought to back such a move. It is time for Mrs May to give up her fool’s errand of attempting to reshape her deal, which is unlikely ever to command a Commons majority. Contrary to her claims, Mrs May is not on her way to get the legally binding changes demanded by hard Brexiters to the Irish “backstop”, a mechanism that guarantees there will be no hard border in Ireland by – if required – keeping the UK in a form of customs union with the EU. For the most part EU leaders remain adamant that they cannot concede this – because it would undermine the scheme’s purpose as an insurance policy to set an end date for the backstop, or to allow Britain a unilateral right of exit from it.
For Conservatives who want to soften Brexit, Mrs May’s game plan has been to suck out the oxygen of parliamentary debate. The prime minister has used every trick in the book to block attempts to test the parliamentary appetite for alternatives – like preventing crashing out of the EU, remaining in the customs union, or a referendum on the final deal – to the Hobson’s choice of her deal or no deal. Even when votes take place, Mrs May ignores the results. This needs to end, as Britain’s government has been left fractious and dysfunctional. It is almost certainly doomed to collapse.
Mrs May puts the Tory party’s interests before the country’s. For Labour MPs she makes the opposite argument: for the sake of nation, collude with the Tory whips, risk your careers, your party’s already-stretched internal cohesion and your authority within the wider Labour movement. Mrs May dangles a slew of worker-friendly laws to entice Labour MPs. This is brinkmanship by the prime minister whose message to would-be Labour rebels is: take my deal or face the wrath of your leave-voting constituents. The prime minister is foolishly ignoring the parliamentary arithmetic and the intense pressure which any parliamentary majority for her deal would have to withstand to sustain the legislation. It stretches credulity to imagine such a coalition could continue to ensure a majority that would deliver for Mrs May in the months ahead. The pressure has already contributed to the splintering of the two main parties. It’s time to delay Brexit, not just the meaningful vote.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
In the general election campaign it was never clear in detail what the Conservative party’s Brexit policy really was. But it was clear who was in charge of it: Theresa May. Today, two weeks after the voters shattered the prime minister’s authority, the policy is even more unclear than it was before – but now no one can say who holds the reins either.
As the new parliament begins business tomorrow with a Queen’s speech very different from the one Mrs May planned in April – reports today suggested a U-turn on plans to limit free school meals, for example – her government battles to maintain surface calm. Beneath the surface, however, the battle of Brexit is under way. It is being fought out with increasing ruthlessness, amid signs that the weakened Mrs May is being pushed into a more liberal deal than the one she wanted.
The sense of a Tory party again in conflict over Europe has been heightened by events since the election. Had it not been for the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Philip Hammond would have given his Mansion House speech last Thursday, four days before the Brexit secretary David Davis headed for Brussels to begin the negotiation process with the European Union. In those circumstances, the chancellor’s economic policy-led approach would have been seen as a signal that Brexit policy had moved in a softer direction, and Mr Davis’s capitulation to EU demands about the phasing as confirming the wish for a smoother deal. Instead, Mr Hammond gave the speech today, 24 hours after Mr Davis had his first meeting in Brussels. Having previously threatened “the row of the summer”, Mr Davis was left looking silly. But the more important inference is that it is Mr Hammond, rather than Mrs May, who has the upper hand in shaping the policy now.
If so, that is a welcome shift from the unrealistic swagger of the earlier approach. Mr Hammond’s rearranged speech did not say, as he did in his interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday, that a failure to agree a deal with the EU would be “a very, very bad outcome”, but in most other respects he was emphatic that jobs and the economy are now at the heart of the UK’s approach to the EU talks. His list of conditions started with jobs, and went on to cover a comprehensive agreement on trade in goods and services, transitional arrangements to avoid any “cliff-edge” collapse in 2019, frictionless customs arrangements (with an implementation period) extending to the Irish land border, and continued migration of selected groups of workers from and to the EU.
Mr Hammond also said two important things that could be easily overlooked. The first is that EU concerns about any UK temptation to create a low-tax, low-regulation financial sector outside the EU were “genuine and reasonable”, and should be addressed by mutually compatible oversight arrangements. If implemented, this makes leaver dreams of Britain as the Singapore of Europe look even more fanciful. The second is that trade regulation in goods and services with the EU must “reflect international standards”. If implemented, this significantly constrains Liam Fox’s international trade department and takes the air out of rightwing fantasies about a new “Anglosphere” alternative to existing multilateral trade deals and alliances.
Mr Hammond’s approach, backed by the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, is a practical improvement on the government’s unrealistic pre-election guff about Brexit. Whether it can now translate into detailed, honest deals with the EU that recognise that economic security matters more than great-power fantasy is much less certain. In his speech, Mr Hammond recognised that austerity has left Britain “weary after seven years of hard slog”. Yet the speech contained no alternative, not even – though change is rumoured – on police spending. The fact is that the Tory party is still in denial about the damage of both austerity and Brexit. Some Tories know that things must change. But rightwing obsessions still hold too much sway for this to be a serious possibility.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Theresa May’s weakening grip on parliament over Brexit has been humiliatingly exposed over the past 10 days. Her Chequers deal and the Brexit white paper, which were intended to unite the Conservative party behind a compromise negotiating position, have succeeded only in dividing it more than before. On Monday on the customs bill, in which she capitulated to the leavers, and again on Tuesday on the trade bill, when she squeaked home against the remainers by 307-301, a political life-saver, while losing a separate vote to them, Mrs May was the plaything of the Tory factions. Her initial response, a now abandoned attempt to cut the parliamentary session short, was close to admitting that, on the most important issue facing Britain, Mrs May is barely capable of governing.
Her wider failure has two deep underlying causes. The first was the referendum vote of 2016 to leave the European Union, which she is committed to implementing. The second, and equally potent, cause was the loss of her parliamentary majority in the 2017 general election, which makes implementation even more difficult. It is not possible to understand the crisis that is battering Mrs May’s government this week without appreciating the very particular toxicity of the combination of the two together.
As the former education secretary, Justine Greening, observed on Monday, parliamentary party politics was never set up to deal with referendums – and the last two years have proved her right. The 2016 vote was an instruction to a sovereign parliament to do something complex and important that a majority of its members in all main parties did not want to do, either in part or at all. The issue split the two main parties. It also challenged all MPs to navigate between their own beliefs on the EU, their party leaders’ post-referendum balancing acts and the presumed views of their own constituents and the electorate at large.
Mrs May called an election in 2017 mainly because she thought she would win. But she also called it in order to get a mandate to deliver the hard Brexit she offered in the Conservative manifesto. The election was an attempt to force the Tory remainers’ hand. If she had succeeded, she might then have been able to “parliamentarise” the referendum verdict, dragoon her backbench doubters into line to carry out the mandate and carry the Commons with her majority. But Mrs May failed. Her version of Brexit was not endorsed. Backbenchers were let off the leash to follow their own views. And now she had no majority among MPs.
Politics has been living with the consequences of all this for the past year. The combination of divisions within the parties, especially within the Tories, along with divisions between the parties, has produced a Brexit impasse at Westminster. There is no majority for overturning the 2016 Brexit vote – MPs are understandably leery of defying the referendum result. But there is absolutely no majority for forcing a no-deal Brexit either – only a few dozen Tory fanatics want that. Now, after the government majority of six on the customs union amendment on Tuesday, there is only the narrowest of majorities for the muddled middle way Brexit around which Mrs May tried to unite her government and her party at Chequers.
It is possible that Mrs May will find the formula that has so far eluded her for harnessing the soft Brexit majority in the Commons in support of a softer outcome than she has yet embraced. That, though, could split her party. But the other escape routes – a Tory leadership election or another early general election – are not straightforward and offer no certainty either, not least because the clock is ticking down on the article 50 EU withdrawal process.
That is why Ms Greening’s call for a second referendum is politically significant. It may fall on increasingly fertile ground if Mrs May cannot control the crisis in which she is currently trapped. The EU has every incentive to seek that outcome. Ms Greening’s plan is controversial in its detail and in itself. Many will question whether any referendum can be relied on to solve Britain’s crisis in a week in which the very idea of a fair referendum has been called into fresh doubt by the shocking referral of Vote Leave to the police. Yet if the country is to extricate itself from this crisis, it could be that only another referendum can free us from the tangle created by the first one.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 13.14 GMT
Theresa May is a prime minister who faces an enormous challenge to recast Britain’s relationship with Europe in the wake of the EU referendum vote. But the Brexit statement she gave to the House of Commons on Monday was based not on reality but on unreality. The picture of Britain and Europe that she painted for MPs following last week’s EU summit does not and will not exist. Mrs May’s Brexit Britain is a fantasy island.
The underlying fantasy is that Mrs May is the master of Britain’s fate in these negotiations. This is not true. It was the European Union, united, clear and principled in its approach, that shaped the first phase of Brexit talks, which came to an end last week in Brussels. It will be the same in phase two, which will begin shortly. The final deal about the future trade terms on which the UK leaves the EU will not be settled by March 2019. All that will be settled before that is what the EU in April called “an overall understanding on the framework for a future relationship”. As the EU then went on to say, any free trade agreement must “encompass safeguards against unfair competitive advantages through, inter alia, tax, social, environmental and regulatory measures and practices”.
Mrs May probably gets this by now. But a significant minority of her cabinet and her party either doesn’t get it or is recklessly determined not to have it. That is particularly true of the part of the Conservative party that sees Brexit as a deregulatory opportunity, for whom “taking back control” means scrapping as many business costs – taxes, regulations, pension obligations, workplace rights and employment protections – as possible. Reports at the weekend suggested that Michael Gove is leading a cabinet push for the UK to abandon the terms of the EU working time directive – which among other things ensures a maximum 48-hour working week. This is the opposite kind of Britain to the one for which large numbers of working-class leavers voted in 2016. They wanted more security, as they saw it, not less. They did not vote for the freedom to work more hours for less pay and fewer rights. But this deregulated country is the one the Brexiter right is determined to give them.
A second fantasy is Mrs May’s insistence that the two-year transitional period that she is seeking is an “implementation” period. This is a trick. In order to calm leavers, Mrs May pretends the framework will be agreed before March 2019 and implemented after Brexit between 2019 and 2021. This is not true either. The negotiation to produce a real trade deal will take place after March 2019, not before. There will be nothing to implement in 2019. That is why there were reports at the weekend that Mrs May is being pressed to stay on until 2021 to prevent trade talks being ruined. But by then the UK will have left the EU and a general election will be upon us. There is no way whatever that this can be the “smooth and orderly” Brexit that Mrs May claims to be overseeing.
The third great fantasy is in many respects the most dangerous of them all. This was embodied in last week’s European council decision on phase one. As Mrs May put it on Monday, Britain is committed to uphold the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, to maintain the common travel area with Ireland and, crucially, to avoid a hard border in Ireland. But these goals – all massively desirable – are not compatible with the UK’s departure from the single market and customs union, to which Mrs May remains committed. Any future regulatory divergence between the UK and the EU – between the UK and Ireland – can only create a dangerous situation on the Northern Ireland border with the republic.
It is hard to know which is worse: that Mrs May knows this and does not mind such an outcome, or that she knows it and is pretending to parliament and the public that it is not a problem. Either way, this is the politics of impossibilism and of circle-squaring. Either way, British politics is crying out for truth not fantasy on Brexit. But Mrs May will not and cannot provide it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Back in February, ITV’s Angus Walker reported on a very public conversation he had overheard in a Brussels hotel bar. The person doing the talking was the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, who was chatting to colleagues over a drink. Mr Robbins voiced his view that the eventual choice for MPs in March would be whether to back Theresa May’s UK-EU Brexit deal or to extend the article 50 talks. The possibility that the extension might be a long one could focus the minds of MPs who had previously voted against the deal, Mr Robbins argued.
In the vertiginous rollercoaster of argument over Brexit, few predictions have survived with much dignity for as long as five weeks. Yet, five weeks on, Mr Robbins’ prediction still looks shrewd. Less than a week after she heavily lost the second “meaningful” vote on her Brexit deal last Tuesday, Mrs May’s agreement has come back from the dead. She is now gearing up for one more heave, perhaps as soon as Tuesday. Over the weekend, Downing Street has been pulling out the stops to bring Tory Brexiters and the Northern Ireland DUP into line. Brinkmanship abounds, especially from the DUP. But there are unmistakable signs of life again in the prime minister’s my-way-or-the-highway approach to Brexit.
She is only back in business because of what happened in the Commons last Wednesday and Thursday. In a series of votes, MPs unlocked a door to a very different Brexit future from the one that Mrs May is battling for. By voting to take a no-deal Brexit off the table, to support an article 50 extension, and by coming within two votes of taking control of the whole Brexit process, MPs have opened up a variety of possibilities, including a much softer Brexit and a second referendum. Mrs May is banking that her own MPs will be frightened back into the fold by these new uncertainties. Special alarm is being generated by the idea that the EU may insist on Britain taking part in this year’s European parliament elections as the price for the now almost inevitable article 50 extension. After many weeks of nonchalantly voting against Mrs May and her deal as though there would be no consequences of doing so, even hardline leavers are now under pressure to bank their Brexit winnings and not end up blowing the lot.
Some of that pressure is coming from below, not just from above. One arch-leaver, the Shrewsbury and Atcham MP Daniel Kawczynski, revealed on Saturday that his local farmers, his local chamber of commerce, most local Conservative councillors and many local Tory members want him to bend the knee and back Mrs May – so he will do so. Other Tories remain more defiant of reality. The DUP’s decision will shape the choice for many MPs before the whips do their sums and advise Mrs May whether to try again.
This febrile mood prompts three conclusions. The first is that the pressure from remainers and soft Brexit supporters is having an effect. Their forces have the upper hand. When it has come to the crunch, it is they who have the stronger arguments, the more resilient support and, ultimately, the more political clout. The second is that these events could have been foreseen – and not just by Mr Robbins. Britain’s divisions over Brexit called out for compromises and choices, especially on alignment with the single market and the customs union, that should have been embraced, not spurned. Parliament has begun to redress a balance that should never have been upset but which Mrs May’s approach seeks to destroy.
The final conclusion is that all this will continue. Brexit is not a single moment but a process. Neither 2016 nor 2019 is the last word. If Mrs May gets her deal through, that is not the end. Her deal is about leaving the EU. The future relationship remains to be negotiated. Her fanatics want that to be minimal. Supporters of a unified Britain need it to be strong. Brexit is a failing process because, above all, it is a bad idea. More people see that now than before. Win or lose the vote, Mrs May is losing the argument.
Last modified on Tue 31 Aug 2021 15.19 BST
A year ago, the annual Munich security conference – the most important gathering of international defence chiefs and ministers in the calendar – met to debate the proposition: “Post-truth, post-West, post-Order?” A year on, this weekend’s Munich conference has a new theme: “To the Brink – and Back?” The sense of relief implicit in the difference between the 2017 and the 2018 themes is unmistakeable and, to an extent, justifiable. The Trump administration has not, after all, trashed everything in the policymakers’ world, as it threatened to do 12 months ago. Explosions in relations with Iran, North Korea and even China have been averted, for now. Washington has not so far rolled over in the face of Russian aggression in eastern Europe. The so-called Islamic State has been pushed back, for the moment. The insurgent political tide that swept the US and the UK in 2016 has mostly been kept at bay elsewhere.
Yet while the worst may have been avoided, genuine positives are thin on the ground. Global confrontations continue and in some cases – the Middle East, for example – to deteriorate dangerously. The alliances that exist to control and resist them are still in shock at the Trump effect. Theresa May is in every context except Brexit a traditional multilateralist. She will certainly give a less thoroughly provocative speech at the Munich conference on Saturday than the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, did at the same venue 12 months ago, when he ludicrously described Brexit as a national “liberation”. Yet, viewed from elsewhere in Europe, Mrs May still leads a country that, by voting for Brexit, has made a serious contribution to the problem of instability, not one that is playing a reliable role in solving it.
Mrs May’s rhetorical answer is the mantra that Britain is leaving the European Union but not leaving Europe. Her visit to Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday and her appearance at the Munich conference are designed to underpin that message and to make it a springboard for her Brexit strategy. Britain, Mrs May says, is fully committed to European cooperation, through Nato and in other ways, to deal with common threats to security. She will cite the fact that British troops are on the frontline against Russia in Estonia, that she has just pledged a new support role with France in the Sahel, that planned troop withdrawals from Germany are now being reexamined, and that the UK is a heavy-hitting and reliable partner in intelligence sharing and police coordination.
Security and intelligence have now been placed squarely in the vanguard of Mrs May’s political effort to persuade the rest of Europe that Britain remains a reliable and committed post-Brexit partner. The head of MI6, Alex Younger, appeared in Munich on Friday with his French and German counterparts to commit themselves to cross-border information sharing. His predecessor Sir John Sawers and the former GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan took to the media with a similar message. And the prime minister will cap this all off on Saturday in a speech that repeatedly urges closer cooperation with Europe and proposes a new UK-EU security treaty.
There are things to welcome here. After a grim two years of government negativity about the EU, it is a relief to hear the prime minister praising the union and being practical about it. Yet it is hard to see what EU partners are supposed to make of a prime minister who embraces the union at one moment then turns her back on it the rest of the time. The one thing that she could do to make her protestations more credible is to bolster it with a soft Brexit strategy. But this, disastrously, is the one thing she is terrified of doing.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
Theresa May routinely overestimates her capabilities as a broker of Brexit truces, both in her government and the country. She sees herself as a unifying figure, but in reality the process has been shaped by her own divisive choices. In 2016, she rejected participation in the EU’s customs union and single market. She then avoided an honest account of the costs incurred by that choice – until today.
In a speech advertised as a blueprint for future EU-UK relations, the prime minister conceded that Brexit has material downsides. Having once pretended that she could secure “the exact same benefits” as are available from EU membership, she admitted market access will be reduced. She also accepted that the UK needs “associate membership” of some EU institutions and must pay for the privilege. Much of the speech was a paean to European integration. She played down the prospect of regulatory divergence and stressed common interests. With few changes, the same arguments could have been deployed as a case for abandoning Brexit all together. But there was no chance of Mrs May taking that route. So she is forced to seek complex technical workarounds from behind red lines drawn 18 months ago. Her grasp of the issues is clearly better now.
There are many reasons why Mrs May painted herself into this corner, but two fundamental elements have most influenced her view of what Brexit must mean: border control and trade beyond the EU. She saw anxiety about immigration as the major driver of support for the leave campaign and concluded that free movement of labour – a condition of the single market – must end. But since then she has also understood that the easy transfer of workers across borders is a necessary feature of modern global commerce. And so on Friday she hinted at a preferential migration regime for EU citizens, called an “appropriate labour mobility framework”. As for trade deals with non-EU countries, the prime minister repeated that this prize was the incentive for leaving the customs union, before assuring her audience that elaborate technical mechanisms can keep the UK-EU border in as frictionless a state as possible – in a “customs partnership”.
The trade deals that Britain will strike post-Brexit are the holy grail for Tory leavers. David Davis once ludicrously boasted that many would be in place even before the article 50 negotiating period had expired. Liam Fox has been on a rolling tour of the globe that has yielded nothing but polite statements of goodwill from potential partners. The reality is that what other countries most want to know is the terms of Britain’s relationship with the EU. Mrs May described her ambition for that relationship as a partnership “covering more sectors and cooperating more fully than any free trade agreement anywhere in the world today” – a description of the single market.
Meanwhile, a free trade deal with the US, promised as a swift Brexit bonus, has never looked less likely. Donald Trump this week stated his intention to impose punitive tariffs on all steel imports, reinforcing his economic aggression with the observation that “trade wars are good”. The collective security and leverage afforded by a pan-European trading bloc has rarely looked so enticing. Mrs May hinted at unwelcome developments across the Atlantic in a pointed reference to a “worrying rise in protectionism” around the globe. That was just one of many moments in the speech that expressed tension between the prime minister’s former belief in what Brexit might allow and her current recognition of the compromises it requires. She lacks the political will to cross old red lines, but has at least grasped the imperative of blurring them.
While the speech ostensibly reinforced the government’s commitment to familiar hard Brexit terms, it offers a glimmer of comfort to remainers. The prime minister conceded that Britain’s economic future is best served by close integration with the EU, because its rules and institutions have served the country well. Her tortured and convoluted answer to the question of what Brexit should look like implicitly posed the question of why such a costly and self-defeating task is worth doing at all.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
It is in keeping with Theresa May’s style of government that a confidence vote on her leadership was provoked not by something she did but by something she did not do. Dither has been her favoured tactic throughout the Brexit process. But in refusing to test the popularity of her deal in a Commons vote, Mrs May tested the limit of Conservative MPs’ patience.
They have let her continue as long as she stands down before a general election. That condition is inseparable from the 83-vote margin of her victory: enough, but far from resounding. The result conveys no depth of loyalty beyond a desultory demand to get on with Brexit. Mrs May’s orders are to settle that matter, then go.
It is a delusion to imagine that a new leader could manage the task much better than the incumbent. That idea expresses denial of how costly it is to deliver any Brexit, and how unrealistic the leave campaign promises proved to be. While Conservatives of all stripes have been frustrated by Mrs May, the most destructive animosity comes from Eurosceptic ideologues who refuse to take responsibility for positions they advocate. That sect has traduced decent, pragmatic Tory traditions and obstructed the path to rational compromise.
Mrs May delayed a vote in parliament to seek EU clarification on “backstop” provisions for the Irish border. But that is a non-negotiable feature of any withdrawal agreement, signed by any prime minister from any party. It is born of tension between the ambition to leave the EU and the duty to honour the Good Friday agreement.
What token assurances Brussels might add will not satisfy Tory hardliners. Nothing will satisfy them, because they see Brexit not as a practical exercise but as fulfilment of a nationalistic fantasy. These are MPs who think there is no serious harm in leaving the EU without a deal, that the UK should refuse to honour financial commitments already made, and that bridge-burning sabotage of a 45-year alliance is the truest realisation of the referendum mandate. Those dangerous beliefs are not shared by a majority of Conservatives, nor by a majority of leave voters.
The very act of calling a confidence vote expressed arrogance and hypocrisy. The arrogance is in believing that Britain’s destiny should be settled by internal debate within the Tory party – that at such a critical juncture, the prime minister can be chosen by around 100,000 Conservative members from a pair of candidates vetted by Tory MPs, disregarding the rest of the country. The hypocrisy is in trying such a thing in the name of democracy, claiming to channel “the will of the people” for a narrow partisan agenda.
Mrs May has many flaws and her misjudgments are a central cause of the current crisis, but not the only one. She has at least admitted that Brexit involves difficult trade-offs – between open trade and closed borders; between regulatory autonomy and market access. Leavers and remainers dislike the balance she has struck, but none can dispute that she has made choices. She does not pretend there is a perfect Brexit, which elevates her above challengers peddling dangerous no-deal fantasies. Mrs May must now be more explicit in excluding that option from the menu of possible Brexit outcomes. She must use her reprieve to marginalise the cabal that has steered the Conservative party – and the country – to the brink of calamity. To save herself she has sacrificed any prospect of serving beyond Brexit. Shabby deals that might have been done to procure support from MPs might also emerge. But yielding to fanatics and wreckers must now end. The hardliners made their big move and blew their chance. It was a fatal mistake for Mrs May ever to seek that faction’s favour or imagine that her interests would be served by satisfying their demands. Her own interests and those of the nation are aligned in seeing Europhobe zealots dispatched back to the fringe of British politics.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
If the test of a speech is how effectively it generates headlines and dominates conversations, Tony Blair’s call for a Brexit rethink today was a resounding success. Less so, perhaps, if the test was to persuade people who do not agree with him already.
Mr Blair always commands attention as the only living British politician to have won three elections and served a decade as prime minister. That experience furnishes insight deserving of an audience. But such insight is routinely obscured by debate about the integrity of the man. Anyone who served so long will animate partisan feelings; Mr Blair’s unusual fate is to have aroused some of the most passionate hatred within his own party.
It is possible to believe that some of the opprobrium is earned, yet also to think that the argument advanced by Mr Blair on Brexit is sound. His case is that Britain voted to leave the European Union without an account of what that would involve in practice. As the terms of separation become clear – if it appears that the government is wedded to a ruinous version of Brexit – it is reasonable to argue for a different course.
This is not a call to overturn the verdict of the people in last year’s referendum. It is a call to those who doubted the wisdom of that verdict to raise their political game, to find new arguments and new strategies fit for the post-referendum context. Context is everything. The path of severe rupture from the EU chosen by Theresa May was not the only possible interpretation of the referendum mandate. It is a road down which the prime minister has been steered by the most radical fringe of her party, bulldozing moderate opinion in Conservative ranks.
The Labour party’s acquiescence to Mrs May’s timetable articulates chaos and weakness in Jeremy Corbyn’s office more than coherent opposition strategy. In other words, the Brexit trajectory that Britain now faces is an accident of weak leadership on both sides. Other trajectories are available. To assert that fact is not undemocratic. The deeper offence against democracy comes from those Europhobic ultras who try to stifle every murmur of dissent with demagogic nationalism – as if reasonable Brexit-scepticism is no better than treason.
In a less febrile atmosphere, Mr Blair’s argument would hardly be controversial. The disproportionate impact of a single speech testifies to a lack of authoritative opposition and a level of infantilisation in the way the debate has been conducted on both sides. Leave supporters are too casually depicted as racists or Little Englander nostalgics. Pro-Europeans are dismissed as embittered “remoaners” and arrogant elitists, detached from the concerns of “ordinary” people. Since the referendum result was so close, with millions in each camp, it is inconceivable that either caricature can be justified.
It is unfortunate that Mr Blair embodies the stereotype on his side of the debate. Few people conform so neatly to the image of a globe-trotting metropolitan. That makes him a problematic messenger for a putative pro-European insurgency, even before all the other baggage of his decade in power is weighed. Yet, when Mr Blair speaks, audiences listen – and on this occasion he had something of substance to say. His was a well-reasoned case made with judicious authority – and by framing the argument between supporters of Brexit “at all costs” and the rest, he showed a familiar skill for appealing to all those, leavers as well as remainers in this case, who abhor the obsessive or fanatical approach. That in itself is worth appreciating in a week when the US president degraded his office and alarmed audiences in a rambling press conference marked by petulant incoherence and wilful ignorance. Mr Blair reminds us what it was like to have grown-ups in charge. Whether he can still be effective in advancing a cause is different. He is entitled to try. No one else is making the pro-European case with much impact.
British politics is in a state of turbulence. Next week sees unpredictable byelections in Labour-held seats in Staffordshire and Cumbria that might just as easily offer reprieve or humiliation for Mr Corbyn; embarrassment or breakthrough for Ukip; triumph or disappointment for the Tories; more evidence of a Liberal Democrat revival or none. The trends have rarely been less clear. This can be alarming to those who like stability, but reassuring to those who feel beaten and demoralised by recent events. That is the most vital part of Mr Blair’s message. New arguments to protect Britain’s place in Europe and the world can still be made and won – even by Mr Blair.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
The intensity of the current political crisis can dull the impact of events that would, in quieter times, be explosive. Until recently it was hard to imagine Ken Clarke’s political affiliation as anything other than Conservative. He has served in government under four Tory prime ministers. But Mr Clarke and 20 parliamentary colleagues have been driven into exile from Boris Johnson’s party. Their offence was supporting a cross-party bill to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
The bill passed its second Commons reading on Wednesday by a majority of 29. Mr Johnson’s aggressive tactics, withdrawing the whip from dissenters, emboldened their rebellion.
This is evidence not of the rebels shedding their Tory values but of the party abandoning its roots. Mr Johnson’s eagerness to shred the UK’s relations with its closest neighbours is one symptom of that change. His readiness to defy conventions that underpin democracy is another. Conservatives have harboured suspicion of the European project since the UK joined in 1973, but the party has mutated into something more extreme than was ever advocated by orthodox Tory Eurosceptics. Brexit is no longer a conservative programme for economic or constitutional reform. It is a faith-based revolution in the way the UK is governed.
The prime minister himself may not see it in those terms. He has no constant belief, aside from confidence in his own entitlement to high office. Brexit happens to be the most powerful vehicle he could find at an opportune moment in pursuit of his ambition. But he is not the driver. Mr Johnson is a hostage to the same ideological sect that besieged, captured and destroyed Theresa May’s administration. The current Tory leader is unlike his predecessor in style and temperament, but he has made the same fundamental misjudgments: that support from his party’s radical English nationalist wing can be borrowed on a temporary basis; that the hardliners can be placated, co-opted or controlled.
Mr Johnson says his preference is for Brexit on orderly terms but his preference hardly matters when he has mortgaged his office to people who see any accommodation with Brussels as treason. He signals capitulation to that ethos by referring to the rebels’ plan to avoid no deal as a “surrender bill”, an insidious device to present legitimate democratic opposition as collusion with an enemy. He has also decried pro-European MPs’ “collaboration” with Brussels.
This belligerent idiom is certain to resonate with the far right, although Downing Street would never admit to cultivating that audience. When it suits him, Mr Johnson presents himself as a social and economic liberal in the “one nation” Tory tradition. Maybe he even believes it. But his Brexit stance has alienated the voters who would be attracted to such a candidate. He cannot appeal to remainers, and liberal leavers are a niche constituency. Electoral logic thus requires that Mr Johnson appeal to supporters of Nigel Farage. He needs to reassemble the voter coalition that delivered referendum victory for the 2016 leave campaign. Naturally, he defers to that campaign’s mastermind, Dominic Cummings, a restless revolutionary with no respect for or attachment to historic political institutions, including the Conservative party.
Mr Johnson won the Tory leadership by posing as the candidate who could deliver Brexit and win an election. He did not say that his method involved purging the party of dissenters, despising its pluralist history, reinventing it as something anti-conservative and risking its destruction in the process.
He has already engineered the loss of the Tories’ majority in the Commons and surrendered control of the legislative agenda to opposition MPs. His discomfort in parliament on Wednesday was palpable, although he tried to mask it with the usual repertoire of bluster. In one awkward peroration, the prime minister declared: “Britain needs sensible, moderate, progressive Conservative government.” Even by Mr Johnson’s standards it was a moment of exquisite hypocrisy, identifying precisely the Tory tradition that his agenda and methods seem certain to extinguish.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
The orthodoxy says that few things are more humiliating for a leader than a U-turn. That’s especially true in the Conservative party, where the ghostly voice of Margaret Thatcher in 1980 – “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning” – still echoes in the Central Office rafters. Sometimes, though, the orthodoxy is simply wrong. In some circumstances, a U-turn can be – and can even be publicly respected as – an act of common sense and even enlightenment. Mrs Thatcher might have survived longer if she had scrapped her delusional poll tax in 1989. Tony Blair’s reputation would be different if he had abandoned the Iraq invasion in the face of the public’s discontent. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s ratings grew stronger after the Fukushima incident persuaded her to phase out the nuclear power programme she had previously backed.
Theresa May’s U-turn on Britain’s relationship with the European court of justice after Brexit is one that should be warmly welcomed. Be in no doubt that a U-turn is what it is. In the past the prime minister’s language on the ECJ has been absolutist and without nuance. She has pledged that “the authority of EU law in Britain will end”, that a return to ECJ jurisdiction is “not going to happen”, and that the laws “will be interpreted by judges not in Luxembourg but in courts across this country”. With the publication of the government’s latest policy paper, on post-Brexit dispute resolution, none of those assertions is now true. Instead the paper sets out a range of ways in which the ECJ and its rulings will continue to play some part in the rule of UK law after Brexit.
These dispute resolution proposals are only presented as options. But Mrs May’s previous policy would have meant the hardest of Brexits. Total exclusion of the ECJ would have meant no possibility of a post-Brexit relationship with the EU single market or customs union, relationships that are profoundly in the interest of British jobs, companies and the British economy. The paper’s claim that leaving the EU will end the “direct jurisdiction” of the ECJ within the UK is a fig leaf to conceal the government’s larger retreat. The future relationship with the EU is now in play. This is a big change. It should be supported and developed.
It was always utterly foolish to treat the ECJ as a red line in the Brexit process. The reality of any future relationship with the EU, in trade, individual rights, family law, crime, the environment and much else, is that it is not going to happen unless the ECJ is a stakeholder in its rule-making and rule enforcement. The only way in which exclusion of the ECJ would make sense is if foreign judges can never say anything about international codes that Britain should take into account. This is not the way British law has evolved and it is not the way that the rest of the world works either, especially in trade. Most trade is governed by multilateral codes, not the bilateral ones the Brexiters fantasise about. Multilateral agreements require multilateral disputes mechanisms, so any agreement with the EU requires its judges, the ECJ, to play a part.
The UK government has now published six Brexit negotiation position papers. More are imminent. All are too cautious. None is bold enough to make the national interest explicit. But the momentum of all of them is towards compromise with the EU and away from unilateralism. All of them to some degree embody consensual aspirations towards the EU. All of them express a recognition that compromise, not defiance, is in the best interest of British jobs and living standards. None of them, as yet, proposes the logical outcome of this direction of travel, that Britain should remain in as close a relationship as possible with the EU after Brexit. But that is the direction of travel. The government is having a necessary encounter with reality. Supporters of liberal values and internationalism must redouble the pressure. This time the lady is for turning.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Size matters in trade talks, as the UK should have learned from the first phase of Brexit. But British Eurosceptics were slow to grasp the challenges faced by a lone member leaving the single market, when the rest of the European Union can negotiate en bloc. Now that the UK is a “third country”, the balance of power has shifted further in favour of Brussels. British refusal to adapt is causing bemusement and consternation on the continent. Earlier this week, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, spoke dismissively of Boris Johnson’s notion of an “Australia-style” deal. She knows that this is a euphemism for no deal at all.
Also this week, Michel Barnier warned that UK ministers “kid themselves” if they think they can secure permanent, automatic access to EU financial services markets. Brussels decides which regimes enjoy regulatory “equivalence” and retains the right to withdraw that status unilaterally. (That is a statement of the obvious, but what is obvious in Europe often sounds like a rebuke to Conservatives.) The Treasury says it does not seek a once-and-for-all equivalence deal, just something more durable than certification that Brussels can revoke with only 30-days’ notice. In theory, that leaves plenty of room for a deal. In practice, the landing strip is narrow because the two sides come at the question of regulatory divergence with different concepts of what is being discussed.
The British side sees only intransigence when Brussels is wary of making exceptions and granting privileges to its neighbour. In Boris Johnson’s view, neighbours should do each other favours. The prime minister says he wants a close relationship and that he does not intend to undercut the EU on basic standards. The prime minister sees divergence as a symbolic right – vital for UK sovereignty, not something a European court can be allowed to enforce.
Viewed from Brussels, Mr Johnson’s statements of intent are worthless, and not just because he is known to have a loose relationship with the truth. They see beyond personality to the strategic nub, where divergence only has meaning as a device to carve out a competitive edge. That is the whole point of Brexit for its ideological architects. Once the decision was made to define national sovereignty as regulatory autarky, Britain set itself on a course of economic rivalry with the rest of the EU. The law cannot be fudged and the UK’s proximity to the single market therefore makes a deal harder to strike, not easier as Mr Johnson claims. This reality has penetrated parts of the government. Michael Gove recently warned industry bodies to expect the return of wide-ranging border controls when the Brexit transition period ends in December. (The government no longer aims to minimise trade friction in the short term – and wants British businesses to pay for the downgrade in ambition.) On this trajectory Mr Johnson’s government is heading towards trade with the EU on WTO terms, not because it thinks that is a good deal but because that is the purest expression of the prime minister’s rhetoric. That might change as the negotiation gets under way.
The EU has good reason to encourage the shift, finding creative ways to satisfy the UK appetite for regulatory autonomy in principle, but with mechanisms that keep a level playing field in practice. Mr Johnson has to swallow some pride, because size still matters, but there is a lesson for Brussels too. The UK is not Switzerland or Norway. No British government could sign up to economic satellite status. If there is a deal available, it will be unlike any arrangement with any other third country. The first step towards realising that ambition would be for Mr Johnson to move on from the pretence that the strategic intimacy of the old relationship can easily be replicated in a new one. It is possible, but only on terms that the Tory party does not yet understand.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
One week after the prime minister released her proposal to leave the European Union, it remains the only Brexit plan on the right of politics. Others have desires but none has been able to answer the question of what can actually be done to leave. Theresa May, to her credit, has. She promises an eventual rupture with the EU in some way which is undefined but which will be costly in economic terms, especially for voters in leave areas. Her argument is reasonable: this is the least worst option. Labour disagrees: it has its own least worst option. Brexit will cost but that is the price of respecting the referendum. The hard Brexiters, whether in the Conservative party or the Democratic Unionist Party, are different. They produce absurd wishlists to burnish their Eurosceptic credentials but do little to further the public understanding of the trade-offs involved. No wonder there are few takers for the hardliners’ heady version of Brexit, an intoxicant that promises a hangover of historic proportions. The leavers’ plan for leaving the EU? Leaving appears to be the whole plan.
Missing from Conservative politics is how to heal the divisions that drove the vote for Brexit. The best that rightwingers seem able to do is drape a union jack over the schisms. Brexit had roots in hostility to immigrants and nostalgia for empire. There was an undoubted revolt of the regions and the left behind in them. Global change had hit both hard, leaving a deindustrialised periphery in the most centralised state in western Europe. But the sucker punch was the Tory policy of austerity, which made the Brexit vote possible by allowing elite Euroscepticism to combine perversely with popular anger. More pertinently, where are the ideas that will reverse the economic inequality that bedevils this country? Where is the money to bridge the regional divide? Where is the offer to the young, who are growing up in the expectation of being worse off than their parents? The Tories have turned a blind eye to the living standards crisis – even though real wages have not returned to their 2008 levels.
Mrs May had been attuned to these questions: she initially declared a clean break with metropolitan elitism and said she would put out the burning injustices of Britain. Mrs May wanted to signal that the lessons of the referendum had been learned. Yet in the words of her most memorable phrase: nothing has changed. Whitehall has seen its energies consumed with the technicalities of EU withdrawal. Instead of dealing with the concrete experience of Britain’s spluttering economy, the Brexit debate has become about abstract economic concepts about free trade and WTO rules which have diverted attention from the real problems Britain is facing.
These stem from the model of capitalism that Britain is evolving, which sees us becoming the financial centre of a globalised economy and using low-value services to provide mass employment. At the same time, we have been reducing workers’ bargaining power and promoting employment practices that engender insecurity. This is a petri dish for resentment and risks incubating bacterial diseases that have the potential to spawn Brexit-sized epidemics. Since the early 1970s Britain’s fissiparous tendencies have been managed by references back to the people, with an unprecedented 11 referendums at UK or devolved-nation level. We may yet resort to another to try to sort out this mess.
What has been exposed is how difficult it is for any incumbent government to survive the political and economic shock of withdrawal from a union in which we are deeply enmeshed. Conservative ministers mouth the words that austerity is over and campaigned last year on a manifesto that rejected the “cult of selfish individualism”. Labour wishes to roll back the Thatcherite settlement. It is a terrible indictment that the cost of failing to address inequalities is losing an EU membership that played little part in creating them.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Michael Gove’s plans for farming after Brexit, which he set out at the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday morning, were greeted with all the excitement that might be expected of groundbreaking innovation. But there was little in his speech that was not in the first he made as environment secretary last July, or his party conference speech in October – or in, say, the Country Land and Business Association’s proposals for the future of farming, also published last July. It is welcome that he plans to end the “fundamentally flawed” EU basic payments scheme, through which some landowners, notoriously the Queen, get millions a year in CAP subsidies. It is a good idea to support schemes according to the public good they deliver, although Mr Gove did not say what public good means. He may have had one eye on the scheme that Ireland has developed with the EU to farm the environmentally fragile area known as The Burren, which is considered a model of farming for conservation and public access.
The minister spoke lyrically about restoring woodland and returning other agriculture land to wetlands and reviving meadowland, although he didn’t acknowledge that that relies on a style of management that would reduce productivity. He might mean producing nutritious, wholesome food in a sustainable way, although Mr Gove did not say that was what he meant when he announced a “national food policy”. Nor did he say if his plans would lead to food becoming more costly.
There are other tensions. Farming is already in decline, and farm incomes are falling. Ending basic payments to the thousands of small farmers who shape the rural landscape in parts of England and Scotland, and much of Wales and Northern Ireland, will be a hard blow. The average farm size in the UK is about 160 acres. Mr Gove suggested the men and women who farm these plots are old and set in their ways; their future is bleak – although while the government relies on the DUP for votes, radical change must remain unlikely.
But then it was implied in much of the speech that nothing would happen in a hurry, certainly not the changes to subsidy payments. Perhaps the man who steamrollered his way through the Department for Education and wanted to upend prisons policy at the Ministry of Justice has realised the advantage of making haste slowly. Or perhaps he has been persuaded to see that not all farmers are the enemy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
In British politics, the fishing industry carries an emotional resonance matched by few others; mining and shipbuilding are the only obvious contenders. Perhaps this is because Britain is an island. Perhaps it is because deep sea fishing was always prodigiously dangerous and heroic. Perhaps it is because fishing communities are particularly tightly knit. Or perhaps it is because, unlike mining and merchant shipbuilding, UK fishing continues to survive. Fishing is a relatively small industry, but it still sustains about 24,000 jobs, a third of them in fishing itself, double that in processing, and half of the total in Scotland, particularly in the north-east.
Whatever the reason, the fact of that resonance is beyond dispute, as the government has again discovered this week. Under pressure from north-east Scottish and south-west English fishing constituencies that voted Conservative, the UK has pressed to be unhooked from the EU’s common fisheries policy as soon as Brexit officially occurs in March 2019. The EU, in contrast, argued that the CFP should continue through the transition period. At the start of March, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, said the government was open to continued inclusion. A week later, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, and the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson – a leaver and a remainer – teamed up to press the case for leaving the CFP during the transition. This week in Brussels, that aspiration was dashed when the transition terms kept Britain firmly within the CFP until December 2020.
That outcome was predictable, as were the political consequences. Although Theresa May made climbdowns on other important issues – including free movement, migrant rights, Northern Ireland and the duration of the transition – only fishing has roused the Brexiters to protest. Much of that is explained by Scottish Tory embarrassment. The Tories have failed to do what their fishing industry voters wanted. The SNP, which backs remaining in the EU and the CFP, has been quick to claim that Scotland is being betrayed. The truth is that both parties have been opportunist – the Tories by pretending that CFP withdrawal was easily attainable, the nationalists by pretending they would give fishing communities what they want.
Mr Gove tried to make the best of a political bad job in the Commons on Tuesday. Wait one more year and all would be well, he argued. But that’s not true. The political disappointments will continue after Brexit because the UK fishing industry is not going to get the total control over fishing in UK waters and access to UK markets that it has pressed for. Nor should it. Inside the EU or out, fishing requires internationally agreed management of fleets, vessels, catches and sustainability. The CFP has been tough for the UK fishing industry, for a variety of reasons, especially in eastern England, where it has been destroyed. But something strikingly similar to the CFP is likely to be the only practical alternative, whether fishing policy is controlled in Brussels, London or Edinburgh.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Most people pay little attention to the chain of production that brings food to their plates. Americans eat tonnes of chicken every year, unaware of, or unconcerned by, the chemical rinse applied to its pre-cooked carcass. British consumers might also eat chlorine-washed chicken if they had acquired the habit, but since they haven’t the idea is unappetising. This is a problem in transatlantic trade talks because US agribusiness wants access to UK dining tables. The politics of serving food prepared to US safety standards is tricky on a number of levels. Alongside chlorinated chicken, the use of growth-promoting hormones and antibiotics in meat production are more tightly regulated in Europe than in many countries that want to export their surplus meat. After Brexit, the UK can abandon EU standards, but if it does so it will find its produce barred from continental markets.
Eurosceptics call that protectionism, and partly it is. European food safety standards have a scientific rationale – the idea is that hygiene should be maintained all along the chain, not dealt with at the last stage by blasting microbes with disinfectant. But those rules are bundled up with a system that insulates the sector from global competition. The EU subsidises farmers, recognising how destabilising it would be if a glut of cheap American produce was dumped on their markets. Some Eurosceptics embrace that destabilisation as an economic tonic, others deny it would happen. Pro-leave campaigners advertised cheaper food as a benefit of Brexit, omitting to explain that a price would be paid by farmers. That sleight of hand was easier to accomplish in propaganda than as government policy. The National Farmers’ Union vehemently opposes lowering regulatory barriers to American produce. The NFU president, Minette Batters, this week said doing so would be “insane” and “morally bankrupt”. Downing Street insists high standards will be maintained, but Boris Johnson wants a trade deal with the US and is not renowned for keeping his word. George Eustice, the environment secretary, tries to assuage farmers’ fears without giving them explicit guarantees.
The EU has been less ambiguous. Michel Barnier insists that the application of common standards across the single market will not be compromised as a favour to Britain. Access depends on alignment and, as Mr Barnier noted this week, the geographical proximity of the UK to the rest of Europe makes the enforcement of standards across post-Brexit borders all the more important. As the European commission sees it, such a near neighbour could easily become an entrepôt for substandard produce. That explains EU frustration at Tory MPs’ habit of downplaying or dismissing the requirement for controls at Irish Sea ports. The preservation of an all-Ireland regulatory space under the withdrawal agreement makes such checks necessary once mainland Britain diverges from EU rules. Northern Ireland’s Unionists hate that idea and Mr Johnson hates admitting that he let them down, but those are not grounds to renege on a treaty.
The prime minister can try persuading Mr Barnier to turn a blind eye to changes in UK food standards; he can try persuading British consumers to eat chlorinated chicken; he can try persuading farmers to accept being undercut by American imports. But he will struggle in two ways. First, standards are settled by law, not trust. Second, Mr Johnson has proved that he cannot in any case be trusted. The prime minister keeps serving up rehashed Brexit promises, but they get ever harder to swallow.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Britain’s departure from the European Union, one of the largest economic powers in the world, is a historic and needless act of political folly, the consequences of which will shape this country and our neighbours for years to come. But now it is happening. It is thus the country’s fourth big geopolitical shift since 1945. First we withdrew from empire, begining with India in 1947. The second was joining what was then the European Economic Community in 1973. The third was the ending of the cold war between 1989 and 1991. They changed the world in ways no one could predict and we are still living today with the results. An abrupt severance from Europe without any transitional link to our nearest neighbours, with whom there are bonds of common endeavour, could still result in chaos. This would place at risk not only our prosperity and security but also deal a blow to the multilateral architecture that could presage a more volatile global era.
The sort of disorder that might be inflicted upon us in the coming years was there for all to see in the hours after Theresa May had sent Brussels our goodbye letter. It had started all so well. In parliament Mrs May wisely chose to make her pitch - both in tone and substance - in emollient terms. She had weighed her words carefully and was at her prime ministerial best at the despatch box where after delivering her speech she stood for hours taking questions. If Mrs May wanted to make a point about Brexit being accountable to parliament, she did so today. However, in Europe her letter was met with claims of “blackmail” and outrage, some of it generated for audiences back home who cannot understand why Britain is leaving. Mrs May’s unsubtle suggestion was that there could be a trade-off between Britain’s security responsibilities with its desire for economic gain. This is an anathema for those who translated it as a modern day form of gunboat diplomacy: open your markets or we will leave you at the mercy of terrorists and Russia. Some of this is undoubtedly overblown. Mrs May knows it is in the interests of the EU and the UK that they should continue to act as close military allies, especially in uncertain times. She made the point several times in her Lancaster House speech. It remains her strongest – and weakest – argument. After all who - if not Europe - will Britain ally with? Better if Mrs May had appreciated quietly that the UK contributes to European security, generating goodwill to secure a favourable trade deal.
This is a revealing error. Until now Mrs May has only had to deal with an audience composed of rabid Brexiters in the press and in her own party. They lapped up any Brussels’ bashing. However, now her critics are the people Mrs May has to do business with abroad. They cannot be bought off with Daily Mail headlines. They are also plainly unhappy with being presented with a trade-off between security and trade when wars are being fought in Europe’s backyard. It shows that Mrs May understands her domestic audience but not her European interlocutors. Remember there are two years of this to come, so Mrs May needs to learn fast. What Eurosceptics have failed to understand is that the European Union is considered an existential inspiration, a destination for those who wanted democracy. To those living in the dictatorships of central and southern Europe which the magnetic power of the EU helped to overthrow, Europe meant freedom. For post-war Germans, a nation’s power could not be exercised without the European Union. That perhaps explains the firm rebuttal from Angela Merkel, who also goes to the polls this year. Mrs May needs to lose her tin ear for European politics. It is obvious that the EU needs to deter others from following the UK’s path. While anti-EU Geert Wilders failed to gain power in the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen remains in contention to become the next French President. Italy is even more troubling; two of the three leading parties in opinion polls are anti-EU.
It was not all bad news for Europe. Mrs May should be congratulated for saying Britain sought to “guarantee the rights of EU citizens” and for putting workers’ rights at the heart of Brexit. It would be an irony if those who voted for Brexit bore the brunt of its failures. There was, however, no mention of protections for the environment, the consumer or over data protection. These promises were made in the government’s white paper and ministers should be held accountable for delivering such pledges. They already appear to be eating their words over claims that in post-Brexit Britain immigration would be reduced. While this newspaper wanted to remain in the EU, no one can be blind to the reality some voters had felt marooned by global forces beyond their control, which had they thought hollowed out their lives. However, this must not mean Brexit Britain should be a narrow-minded place, revelling in anti-immigrant isolationism. At stake is not Brexit, but what kind of Brexit. It was good to hear Mrs May say the world needs the liberal, democratic values of Europe – and Britain shares those values. Mrs May, a remainer, now leads a Brexit government. In January she warned “supranational institutions as strong as those created by the European Union sit very uneasily in relation to our political history and way of life”. Mrs May was in effect saying a breach was always likely on the grounds of deep incompatibility.
What never went away was the bitter rancour of a peculiar British trait: a feeling that we had traded an empire we ran for one, bizzarely it was claimed, that ran us. Euroscepticism has existed ever since the European project has existed. But it was embedded in this nation’s heart by Thatcherite cheerleaders who wanted first a separation and then began to call for a permanent break up. The strongest proof of Europe’s feelings for Britain was all the trouble Brussels had put up with for the relationship’s sake. In the end we have walked out, consciously uncoupling with a divorce letter that bitterly demands a special relationship after years in a marriage of inconvenience.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Broadly speaking, there seem to be two alternative ways of making sense of the government’s increasingly public preparations for a “no-deal” Brexit in March next year, marked this week by the publication of 24 sectoral assessments, with more to follow. The first view says that, in essence, these preparations are serious; the second says that, in essence, they are not.
The first view says that negotiations between the UK and the European Union on Brexit terms to which the Tory party could sign up have indeed proved to be more difficult than had been hoped in London. More detailed preparations for no-deal are therefore a prudent and practical insurance against failure to agree later this year.
The second view says that the preparations are a political Potemkin village. In this view, the preparations are superficial and cosmetic, designed to distract and gratify the Tory party’s troublemaking leavers during the summer and pre-party conference period, ensuring that they are compelled to stay quiet while serious negotiations take place well away from the spotlight.
The second of these perspectives is more persuasive than the first. A key reason can be found in the 25 papers published on Thursday. Most of these documents are bland and policy-light. They contain only limited details. They talk in generalities. They offer little clarity or planning advice for the individuals and businesses who would be in the frontline. They contain relatively little sense of drama about what would actually be at stake. There is barely a hint, for example, of the scale of the bureaucracy – possibly three to four times bigger than the current HMRC – that would need to emerge fully functioning on 30 March to manage the UK’s no-deal customs system.
Nevertheless there is enough in Dominic Raab’s documents and in his speech on Thursday to see what an unacceptable disaster a no-deal Brexit would involve. These range from the possible overnight return of credit card surcharges, through the need to prevent the exhaustion of medicine supplies at a time when flu might be taking a seasonal toll, to the instant suspension of organic food exports to the EU. In several cases – any continuing UK participation in Erasmus projects for university students and researchers is an important example – the documents themselves admit that much will depend upon continuing consultation with the EU. In none of the papers is there any sectoral guarantee that a no-deal Brexit will not damage British people’s livelihoods and choices – and damage those of the EU too.
To some, though not to those directly affected, these may seem like relatively small prices to pay. But the documents are misleading in their complacency. A no-deal Brexit means what it says. There would be no deal on the future for EU citizens in Britain (or of UK citizens in the EU); no deal on future trade with what is currently by far the UK’s biggest trading partner; no deal on the status of EU students wanting to study or currently studying in British universities, which are in many cases dependent on them; no deal on cross-border arrangements in Ireland; and no deal over police cooperation against terror suspects and people smugglers. The chancellor Philip Hammond reminded his party on Thursday that there would be “large fiscal consequences” of £80bn of extra borrowing. Not one part of this is acceptable. To think otherwise is to live in a demented political la-la land in which fanatical dogma outweighs the jobs, security and life chances of ordinary people.
A no-deal Brexit would involve such damage and risk that it cannot be allowed to happen. The government is playing a dangerous game even by allowing the idea to be taken seriously. Ministers may think it is a clever ruse to keep the right quiet and concentrate minds in Brussels. But the closer that the possibility of a no-deal Brexit comes, and the more that ministers give it credibility, the more the support for a popular vote on the deal continues to grow. Majority backing for a “people’s vote” on the Brexit terms is now a real political factor. Labour’s Keir Starmer made clear on Thursday that the option is now on the table. This is a statement of the obvious – and it is a new reality of the Tory party’s own making.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
Last month, Gina Miller stood outside the supreme court and celebrated the judges’ confirmation that parliament must sit behind the wheel in the Brexit process, not the prime minister invoking the medieval royal prerogative. A little more than two weeks later, the House of Commons has decided that Theresa May is the driver after all. Ms Miller fought long and hard, and at great personal cost, to ensure that the Commons could assert its lawful sovereignty over the Brexit process. On that morning in January she invited them to use “their invaluable experience and expertise” to set Britain’s course. But as the European Union (notification of withdrawal) bill comfortably passed its third reading in the Commons she was entitled to ask herself whether her efforts have really been worth it after all.
It is tempting to say that MPs have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. That is because in many respects they have. Faced with a bill that sets in motion the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, which is as profoundly mistaken a decision as any that the UK parliament has taken in the postwar era, MPs have essentially said that last year’s referendum is sovereign and that they are powerless to put their foot on the brake or choose a different route.
Too many on both sides of the Commons nonsensically deployed their experience and expertise to vote for a bill they admitted to not supporting. Too many MPs genuflected to a referendum decision that sets Britain against its neighbours and its own place in the world and puts the UK economy at hazard. It fell hardest for Labour, a pro-European party with many leave constituencies, where the EU dilemma is entangled with other issues about Labour’s future. It is a wrong decision because MPs have given far too little careful attention over the years to deciding the proper place, if any at all, of referendums in a representative democracy. The consequences of that have been painfully clear in the past two weeks.
Referendums are too often cuckoos in the nest of parliamentary sovereignty. But the passing of this bill is also wrong because this particular referendum made such a lamentable choice about the future of Britain. Britain should be part of Europe. That has not changed. However, the Brexit vote took parliament’s authority away, politically if not constitutionally, and not even Ms Miller’s heroic efforts have been able fully to restore that authority. Two thirds or more of MPs think that Brexit is the wrong course. But, as Wednesday night’s vote confirmed, too many of them felt compelled to go through the lobbies in support of a bill that they believe, correctly in our view, will damage Britain. It is not they as individuals who have been found wanting. It is parliament.
Yet not all is lost. Three days of the committee stage of the bill this week, as well as the brief third reading debate, have exposed big Brexit-related issues on which the majority of MPs seek outcomes that Mrs May would have been reluctant to concede or contemplate in the absence of parliamentary pressure. In particular, Mrs May has been forced to make procedural concessions about parliament’s later role in the process. Whether these concessions are real or a con will depend on how MPs act when the time comes. MPs have also made it clear that they expect the existing rights of EU citizens to live in the UK to be an inalienable part of any final deal. Other markers have also been laid down. These do not entirely compensate for the original wrong decision on Brexit or the second reading of the bill last week. But they mean the forces of openness and internationalism live to fight another day. And fight they must.
The most disturbing aspect of an admittedly difficult set of decisions for MPs and parties over the past two weeks has been the caution with which parliament’s “soft Brexit” majority has behaved. That must change. Most opposition MPs and a large minority of Conservative MPs favour a soft as opposed to a hard Brexit. They must surely also want a good deal rather than either a bad deal or no deal at all. Yet cross-party cooperation has been too hesitant. Perhaps the vituperation of the rightwing press against “remoaners” has frightened too many in both main parties. Perhaps Tory liberals don’t want to fall out with Mrs May too soon. Whatever the truth, pro-European MPs in all parties need to relearn the practicalities of using their power as effectively as the Eurosceptics learned to use theirs long ago. There will be plenty more opportunities. They must be taken.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
On Tuesday the supreme court put the responsibility for Brexit back where it should always have been – in parliament. The consequences of that necessary ruling are already making themselves felt. The most important of them is the bill on triggering article 50 that the government will publish on Thursday, against its will. Yet the bill is not the very first fruit of the court’s constitutionally unanswerable decision. Until she stood up at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Theresa May and her minions were also insisting there would be no white paper on Brexit goals either. Yet, faced with a newly empowered House of Commons, Mrs May has now been forced into a U-turn on that refusal too. In the space of less than 48 hours, the government has been compelled to take parliament far more seriously. Good.
Though the courts were responsible for the U-turn on article 50, the one on the Brexit white paper can only be explained by old-fashioned politics. Mrs May changed her mind because of parliamentary numbers. This government has a working majority of only 16. If the main opposition parties can find common cause with pro-remain Conservative MPs, that majority is threatened. That alliance is a fragile one, but when it coheres it wins. It first drew Brexit concessions from the government at the end of last year, which resulted in Mrs May’s Lancaster House speech last week. On Wednesday it carried the day a second time, winning the commitment to publish the white paper.
In itself the white paper is likely to be a fairly minimalist statement of the government’s Brexit aims. It will doubtless centre on Mrs May’s Lancaster House speech. But it will have to go further too. The supreme court ruled this week that the devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had no formal part in the Brexit process, and in particular have no power of veto over the withdrawal from the European Union. Nevertheless, Mrs May has rightly made clear all along that she wants to consult and take the devolved governments into account. She must now do that in the white paper.
This means the government must give a more detailed account than it has yet offered of its goals in Ireland in particular. It could, for example, commit in principle to the idea that the EU should permit the Republic and the UK to agree a post-Brexit Irish arrangement that the EU would pledge to ratify. The white paper must also set out some ways in which Scotland’s remain vote could be reflected in the eventual settlement, including the devolution of current EU competences such as agriculture and fisheries. If the SNP focused rather less on leveraging a second independence referendum out of the Brexit result, and rather more on making common cause with other remain supporters at Westminster, important gains could be won.
The long-term importance of the white paper is as a yardstick. It enables the outcome of the negotiations with the EU – and with others – to be measured against the original goals. That eventual calculus should be the basis for parliament’s momentous future vote on whether to accept the deal. The government will try to minimise and blur any commitments to goals in order to make this easier. This is precisely why pro-remain MPs should have made more detailed and focused demands over the past two months than they have done. It was too easy for Mrs May to wrongfoot Labour on the issue on Wednesday.
Yet Mrs May in fact said two important things at PMQs. One was the white paper U-turn. The other, in an exchange with Labour’s Pat McFadden, was to make it clearer than ever where her “no deal is better than a bad deal” approach will lead. If MPs eventually vote down a deal on her hard Brexit terms, Mrs May indicated, she has no intention of seeking a softer Brexit alternative but would simply fall back on a World Trade Organisation rules relationship with Europe.
This is a defeatist, narrow-minded approach. As aerospace, auto and pharmaceutical industry chiefs warned MPs this week, it would put investment and jobs at risk. It is a graphic reminder of how serious the risks are in a Brexit of any kind; but in particular it is a reminder that a Brexit that allows immigration policy to shape economic policy rather than the reverse could worsen voters’ living standards, not improve them. Yet this is Mrs May’s approach. It is focused on protecting the Tory party, and her leadership, not on defending the economy. As a prelude to her visit to President Trump this week, it could hardly be more worrying.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
What is the toughest challenge facing Theresa May’s government in implementing Brexit? Many people’s answer, especially after the delays and missed deadlines acknowledged in the recent Brussels summit, is striking a Brexit deal with the European Union. In fact the underlying problem is right here in the UK itself and it has nothing to do with Michel Barnier, Jean-Claude Juncker or any of the Brexiters’ usual bogey figures.
That problem, which has existed since the referendum in 2016, is not merely that the Conservative government cannot agree what kind of Brexit it seeks, challenging though that is. The problem is also that, far from being resolved and narrowed, Conservative disagreements about Brexit are deepening and multiplying. The problem, in other words, is here and within the Tory party.
The most immediate evidence for that is the fate of the EU withdrawal bill. Once optimistically dubbed the great repeal bill, this has now become the great standstill bill. It is nearly six weeks now since the bill got its second reading in the Commons, back in the early hours of 12 September. Since then, however, the withdrawal bill has been as immovable through the parliamentary stages as a fatberg in a Victorian-era sewer.
More than 300 amendments have been put down for the Commons committee stage, and more than 50 new clauses proposed. Lacking an overall Commons majority, and with a weak leader and a divided cabinet, ministers are struggling to agree which changes to accept, which to fight and which to try to tweak. Each issue involves having to navigate the Tory party’s obsessive divides, which is hard enough, and then working with the other parties at Westminster.
The upshot is that the detailed committee stage has not begun yet and may not begin before the November recess. With the budget and its necessary legislation looming, and since the government has committed to eight full days of debate in the committee stage (actually too few, and far less than the 23 days allowed in the Maastricht bill in 1993) it seems probable that the committee stage may not be completed – assuming that it starts at all – this side of the new year.
That, though, is only phase one. Next spring, the bill may eventually reach the House of Lords, where there is no Tory majority either, and where pro-European feeling, not least on the Tory backbenches, is strong. There is a real prospect of significant amendments to the bill in the Lords, perhaps for any final Brexit deal to require fresh primary legislation, perhaps including a second referendum on the final terms.
In the past, the Lords have observed the so-called Salisbury convention, which reins in peers’ opposition to bills containing government manifesto commitments. But there is no guarantee that the convention will operate in the Brexit legislation. A report published on 20 October makes clear that all the main parties in the Lords, plus the crossbenchers, take sharply differing views of whether the convention applies under a minority government. The reality is that almost everything is different in 2017 compared with 1945, when the convention was drawn up at a time when an entirely hereditary Lords contained a Tory majority of over 300, and there were only 16 Labour peers. Minority government, moreover, means that government bills have less electoral legitimacy, maybe even none at all.
The withdrawal bill is not a crisis waiting to happen. It is a crisis that is happening already. It is also a Tory crisis. The longer it continues the more it weakens the Tories. On Saturday, Labour’s Keir Starmer proposed six changes – covering transition, ministerial powers, workers’ rights, devolved authorities, human rights and a final say for MPs – that could ease the current gridlock. Mrs May will not want to do a deal with Labour on such terms. But a deal with the EU will only happen if it is clear that Mrs May both knows what she wants and can deliver it. At the moment that is not happening. This way it might.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Brexit is a revolution, so expect revolutionary consequences. It appears the UK has reached a potentially decisive turning point in the direction of the constitutional order. Parliamentary government is essentially a government by means of party, yet the complete breakdown in discipline on the Conservative benches sees ministers of the crown being guided by the decisions of parliament rather than guiding them. Once party organisation fails, leaders can no longer make a parliamentary assembly act steadily. Hence the tragedy of Theresa May’s premiership turning into farce.
The chaos is a direct result of a referendum imposing a decision to leave the European Union upon a parliament that had not worked out how to do so. The trouble is that no one can agree what the terms of departure ought to be. Theresa May’s deal has been resoundingly rejected twice; parliament does not want to leave without a deal and MPs are attempting to work out what the Commons could support. These options Mrs May described as her Brexit, no Brexit, or slow Brexit. She also said a hard Brexit would be taken off the table, which is a very good thing. Less encouraging was that Mrs May saying she will not pursue a softer Brexit, even if MPs vote for it, because no one would “support an option which contradicted the manifesto on which they stood”. This is counterproductive and wrong.
Mrs May’s strategy is to keep Tory hard Brexiters on board – and it has proved flawed with good reason. The prime minister acts in a high-handed manner, a political mode best suited to leaders who command sizable majorities. Leading a minority administration is different, as Mrs May’s European counterparts know, and this reflects why so many cannot understand why the prime minister refuses to compromise and to work cross-party. This behaviour has bred distrust. Rather than engaging in debate and listening, Mrs May has sought to manoeuvre MPs into backing her proposals, which she then smuggles into votes.
What backbenchers lack is the organisation and co-ordination of party to enable a clear choice for Brexit. A series of indicative votes on the different options does not guarantee that one emerges with clearcut support; nor does Ken Clarke’s preferential voting system. Brexit has created constitutional uncertainty, but also opportunity. Meg Russell, of University College London’s Constitution Unit, suggests a novel Commons procedure for breaking the deadlock. Professor Russell suggests holding two ballots. The first would ask MPs to rank in preference: a Brexit deal; a Brexit deal subject to a referendum; and last, revoking Brexit. The second would ask MPs to list, in order of preference, the varieties of Brexit deal. It is a novel idea worth considering for its clarity should the current process fail.
In politics, partisan character often wins out over collegiate character. Parliament is a creature designed, in William Gladstone’s words, “not to govern but to call to account those who govern”. Mrs May exploits this idea ruthlessly. Yet the political moment is unusual because MPs are not voting in a partisan manner. Governments assume that they have control of the Commons agenda. But in truth they only do so on the basis that a parliamentary majority supports the government. When it does not, politics gets stuck. Level-headed parliamentarians are trying to steer a course out of the mire. They ought to be supported by the prime minister, not jeered at for trying to help. Mrs May’s failure to win support from Brexiters for her Brexit policy has sunk her premiership. Let her not take parliament down too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.22 GMT
There have been many leaps forward in history. Since Britain’s industrial revolution, nations have powered ahead thanks to government action. Now this country appears to be taking a great leap backward in leaving the European Union. Or at least that is the conclusion one would reach upon reading a damning House of Lords report on post-Brexit trade options. Noting the vote to “take back control”, peers caution over the balance between politics and economics. The more comprehensive the trade relationship with the EU, the greater the curtailment of national sovereignty Britain will bear. Little wonder that Theresa May wants a “bespoke agreement”. The trouble is, the possible options considered – a reformed European Economic Area membership; a customs union deal; a free trade agreement; and world trade rules – would leave Britain worse off. Little wonder that peers say a transitional deal would “almost certainly be necessary”, and urge ministers to publish “specific proposals as to what form it should take”. This should be obvious. Who would jump out of a plane first and think about organising a parachute afterwards?
None of this should surprise. The central sentence of article 50, the instrument by which Britain triggers its departure, is unambiguous: leaving the EU must take into account the framework for a future relationship. The world that Britain must prepare for will be one in which protectionist sentiment is rising and global deals on trade are a distant prospect. Brussels and Beijing spar over collapsing global green trade talks. Globalisation needs to answer its critics. The truth is we got richer but not as fast as others.
As the economist Richard Baldwin points out, since 1990 a century’s worth of rich nations’ rise has been reversed. The G7’s share of world wealth is now back to where it was in 1914 – and six developing nations account for the rich world’s decline. Our wealth in part came from cheap, unregulated Chinese labour harnessed by western technology. Britain faces a world of global supply chains – and its poorest regions must have ways of attracting a slice of jobs and investment. That might need a radical devolution of power in a new constitutional settlement. A post-Brexit Britain should argue for global minimum standards to regulate labour, tax havens and corporate wheezes like transfer pricing. Whatever happens next, Britain will need policies that share globalisation’s gains and pains fairly.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Boris Johnson has written many dishonest things in his life, but few as consequential as the letter sent on Wednesday to MPs explaining his decision to seek a prorogation of parliament. The prime minister says that a new Commons session is needed to enact a “bold and ambitious legislative agenda”. To that end the current session must be closed. His plan envisages a Queen’s speech in the middle of October
No one is fooled, although government ministers make fools of themselves by parroting their leader’s line. Prorogation is a device to silence parliament during a critical period approaching the 31 October Brexit deadline. Mr Johnson cannot be sure of majority support in the Commons for a withdrawal agreement and he would certainly not have the numbers for leaving the EU without one. So he wants to dispense with legislative scrutiny altogether.
The chosen method for pursuing that goal observes the letter of the law, but in spirit it is revolutionary and dangerous. John Bercow, the Commons speaker, calls it a “constitutional outrage” and opposition MPs have decried what they see as a full-frontal assault on British democracy. At the intemperate end of the rhetorical spectrum (amplified on social media), Mr Johnson’s move is decried as a “coup” and a step down the slippery slope towards dictatorship.
Hyperbole is inevitable at times of political stress and it is true that Mr Johnson is pushing the UK into a constitutional crisis. But to properly assess the gravity of the situation it helps also to keep it in perspective. This is a cynical, premeditated blow against the principle of parliamentary democracy but it is not a total subversion of the constitutional order on a par with a military putsch. The prime minister is exhibiting the irresponsible arrogance of which he has long been known capable. But he is also operating within the technical parameters of what the British political system allows in all its archaic peculiarity.
That is what makes prorogation so devious. Like any confidence trickster, Mr Johnson knows how to leaven a deception with flecks of truth. He is correct in asserting that the current Commons session has been unusually long, that the flow of legislation dried up months ago and that a new government is entitled to set out its stall. Under normal circumstances, prorogation this autumn would be in order – overdue, in fact. But nothing about the present circumstances is normal. In a matter of weeks, the UK faces a total overhaul in economic, diplomatic and strategic relations with the rest of the world. The prime minister and his cabinet have signalled explicitly that they do not care how much damage is done in the process. They would choose ruin over delay. This is a time when the checks and balances of a parliamentary democracy must operate vigorously.
When Mr Johnson asserts that there will be “ample time” to debate Brexit before the deadline, he insults every MP who cares about a functional relationship between Britain and the rest of Europe. The offence is intentional. It is a provocation to sharpen dividing lines between Brexit ultras and the rest. If the prime minister’s efforts to sideline parliament fail, he could find himself in an election. Ramping up confrontation with “remainer” opponents – caricatured in campaign terms as an establishment hell-bent on subverting the “will of the people” – is one way of anticipating that scenario.
But it is not just remainers who are appalled by Mr Johnson’s behaviour. Prorogation is an exercise of royal prerogative that is tolerable in a modern democracy only insofar as it is ceremonial. Its deployment by a prime minister without an electoral mandate of his own, in pursuit of a partisan agenda for which there is no Commons majority, represents a grotesque abuse of the country’s highest political office. Mr Johnson is hijacking powers symbolically vested in the crown and wielding them in aggression against his parliamentary opponents. That he does it in pursuit of a hard Brexit is distressing for pro-Europeans. That he is prepared to do it at all should alarm everyone who values the traditions of British democracy.
Last modified on Thu 7 Jan 2021 00.03 GMT
It is tempting to think of the European Union as being like the Roman god Janus – a two-faced creature who either smiles or frowns, succeeds or fails. It is especially tempting, perhaps, for Britons. The next 12 months may well be this country’s last full year inside the club. But Brexit is not what does, or should, sum up Europe. The continental partners have begun to move on from that June 2016 shock, and from the broader fears of a breakdown of the 60-year-old European project ignited by the multiple crises confronting it. The far right continues to rear its head – it has just returned to government in Austria. Fragmentation continues to pose a threat to member states too – as with Spain and Catalonia, north-south tensions in Italy, and even France and Corsica. But the EU has held on, and that can only be welcome.
Talk of Europe’s demise was much exaggerated. A 500 million-strong, uniquely integrated bloc holds more cards, in a fast-changing world, than many critics care to acknowledge. Censure of the EU comes in all shapes and sizes. An organisation faulted for being weak and lacking both in efficiency and compassion when confronted with a massive movement of refugees is just as quickly lambasted as a domineering, sovereignty-crushing leviathan. A club accused of giving way to uncontrolled capitalism and multinational firms is the next moment attacked for its over-regulating bureaucracy. It doesn’t help that genuine knowledge of how the EU functions, or of how it was set up, tends to be in short supply.
But over-confidence will not help either. Europe’s travails have again led to hearty promises of renewal, in abundant speeches, with even mentions of a “United States of Europe”. But squaring boldness and realism is not easy. The European Janus needs first and most of all to draw itself closer to citizens, demonstrate it can hear grievances, solve problems and uphold values.
Voltaire’s words about God could apply to the EU: if it didn’t exist, it would need to be invented. The EU blends democracy, individual freedoms, market economy and social justice in a combination that, although imperfect, exists in few other places. There is nothing quaint about saying that to safeguard Europe, and make the EU thrive, is simply to contribute to a better world. The European project of cooperation, wellbeing and understanding among a rich patchwork of nations and citizens is a crucial one. Brexit is an act of self-harm which, if it proceeds, will damage and diminish Britain. But the UK’s mistakes will not define the continent’s future.
To be relaunched, the EU must truly reclaim a mission of social justice. Calls for it to “protect” citizens must be made real, because those citizens genuinely feel the strains of globalisation and digitalisation. Economic prospects have slowly improved, but any hope of experiencing a European “golden decade”, after a decade of crises, requires reforms in eurozone governance – and doing so with more than the toolbox currently at hand. Balancing competition and solidarity, with a need for more of the latter, and somewhat less of the former, is long overdue after years of austerity packages.
For Europe to be renewed, citizens must feel they have a stronger voice. The EU is not undemocratic. For one thing, important decisions are taken by freely elected national governments. But popular trust cannot be taken for granted, and extremism thrives on any sense of disconnect. So these questions must be addressed, creatively and realistically. What the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas hoped would be a “European demos”, a European citizenry and public space still belongs to the realm of abstraction. Full-blown federalism is also too distant from the national and local cultural and historical identities that remain essential anchors for all but the European elite.
Reengaging the grassroots is essential. The top-down approach that has largely dominated the EU since the 1957 treaty of Rome no longer works. Citizen movements, civil society and activists must have more of a say: Europe must be their project too, not just the business of bureaucrats. There are many possibilities for progress. Transnational party alliances and Europe-wide “democratic conventions” can be made into realities with a cross-border dimension that does not infringe on the domain of nation states but could usefully complement existing mechanisms. The EU commission must become more transparent and accountable, for example when it prepares trade deals.
To save Europe means to look outwards, not just inwards. Its role is ever more important in a world made even more uncertain by Donald Trump, widespread instability and conflicts, and questions surrounding China’s rise. The EU has a role to play in shaping global developments where it can – not just hunkering down and enduring them. It does not get enough credit for trying to tame internet giants, fight monopolies in energy, counter tax evasion (albeit patchily), or for its efforts on climate change. The EU is also the largest donor in development aid.
Leveraging its role in trade will be key to making sure 21st century rules are not set by those who care little for environmental and social protections. One of the EU’s greatest strengths has been its encouragement of processes of engagement and dialogue. The organisation is committed to a rules-based order, rejecting the Trump administration’s simplistic and dangerous rhetoric of a global “arena” of no-holds-barred competition among states and corporations.
All of this adds up to the need to strengthen the EU as a values-oriented, socially minded endeavour. In income terms, Europe is the most equal region in the world. But renewing the social model, and the stability that can flow from it, will require more active forms of solidarity. Protecting data from manipulation and balancing freedom and privacy will be even bigger challenges than they currently are. Likewise, upholding notions of humanity and asylum are essential if Europe is to live up to its aspirations, and not be defined by barbed-wire fences and the outsourcing of migration problems to dictatorships and armed militias.
The EU can be an easy punchbag. Politicians often blame Brussels for their own failures, shunning responsibility for decisions they had themselves endorsed behind closed doors. Europe must set new ambitions for itself, but this requires political will and a more inclusive outlook. Europe will not run the world in the 21st century; nor should it want to. Yet as illiberal governments elsewhere try to reshape global rules and practice, Europe’s role is pivotal. In the past, EU member states have sacrificed their collective weight for limited individual, short-term advantage. Yet no one nation will grip today’s problems effectively if it tries to go it alone – as Britain will discover.
After two world wars Europe needed to heal its wounds and rebuild itself. The European idea and project were in part, too, a way for some nations to find a new place and vision for themselves in the wake of empire. Democracy spread, not least after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A continent began to come closer together. The EU has always evolved, often when pushed along by the short-term management of immediate crises. Yet there need be no fatalism about reactionary nationalism or the threat of splintering. Populism still exists, but so does a strong pushback against it. Europe is criss-crossed with citizens’ initiatives in which cooperation and solidarity are held high. This is the time for those energies to be tapped.
Last modified on Wed 21 Jul 2021 10.07 BST
Compared with economic inequality or Brexit, the two subjects that dominated political argument in 2017, the state of the United Kingdom’s union may seem a second-order issue for 2018. Yet this should not be so. For, just as inequality and Brexit are themselves intimately linked, so the way the UK works reflects and influences these more obviously dominant issues. The questions “What kind of country are we?” and its companion “What kind of country do we want to be?” are in many ways the overarching issues of our times. They are about more than inequality and Brexit. And they are badly neglected in the way Britain talks about itself and does its politics.
Seen from many parts of the UK, this claim of neglect may seem perverse. Northern Ireland, where the national question slices across the Brexit issue in such powerful ways, is a place where the nature of the nation is a subject of permanent argument. Scotland, where the divide over Brexit connects with the still-simmering argument over independence, is in some respects the same. Wales, where economic inequality helped, as elsewhere, to drive up the leave vote, now marches decisively to its own devolved drum. Even England, where feelings about social neglect and EU membership fired the angry majority whose Brexit writ now stretches across all the home nations, is alive with argument about differences of region, class, wealth, religion, ethnicity and connection.
The health of the United Kingdom matters for us. But it also matters for our neighbours. The future relationship with the EU is the most obviously pressing aspect of this. But other individual countries have perspectives that matter too. Spain, in particular, watches the stresses and strains of the UK, at the same time as it grapples with its own civil society and governance issues in Catalonia. Yet the most important and sensitive of the UK’s external relationships is with the Irish Republic. In one form or another it was ever thus. Most of Ireland has been an independent country for nearly a century, but it is bound to the UK and the rest of these islands in ways even France cannot match. As Brexit is showing, these issues go well beyond even the relationship between Northern Ireland and the republic. In sum, the UK’s true special relationship is not with the US but with Ireland. Any renewal of the UK for modern times must take special account of what the peace process called “the totality of relationships” within these islands, including with the republic.
Such a renewal, though, feels a long way off. In part, that is because the very notion of a renewed UK is so actively contested by so many. It is disputed most obviously by the nationalist populations of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Distant independence dreamers also exist in places from Cornwall to Yorkshire – and even in London. Immigration and the proliferation of identities add other enduring complexities. But change to the UK is most fiercely contested by Anglo-British traditionalists, many of whom think that the existing UK remains perfectly adequate and is not in need of reform or renewal, especially once Brexit has taken place (if it does) or, on the other wing of politics, once a Corbyn government has transformed it (if it does).
There are several self-deceptions here. One is that Brexit or a Corbyn government would somehow magic away the need for reform of the UK. In fact the reverse is true. The solutions to these questions are far from purely governmental. They rest on civil society and, ultimately, on the way we think and act. Another deceit is the idea that traditionalists really give much thought to the UK and its more distant areas at all. Theresa May, for example, routinely asserts that she is passionate about the whole UK, and that she is a dedicated unionist. Yet when she said last January that the leave vote was a vote to restore “national self-determination”, she meant Britain. Her claim ignored nations that voted remain. Mrs May sees nationalism in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as divisive, which it can be, yet talks about Britain as a nation without making qualifications. She speaks of her wish for a “new united Britain”. But as Anthony Barnett observes in one of the most important political books of 2017, The Lure of Greatness: “Apparently, her English nationalism is not divisive. It is unifying. It is British.”
Words and terminology matter in these disputes. Few debates about the Irish border issue are free of terminological arguments with deep historical roots. Mrs May always refers, for example, to the Belfast agreement of 1998, which is the Northern Irish unionist term for what nationalists (and New Labour) always called the Good Friday agreement. Perhaps that is why she, and many Brexiters, misunderstand so badly how it changed the nature of sovereignty in Northern Ireland.
Yet the most common and most revealing, because most insulting, misuse of language remains the elision in the conservative English mind between England, Britain and the UK. When the Daily Mail ran its angry pro-Brexit front page during the referendum campaign, it was headlined “Who will speak for England?”. Buried away inside the paper was a clarification of sorts: “By England … we mean the whole of the United Kingdom.” As Mr Barnett puts it, England-Britain is a “post-empire hybrid … English within and British without”. The English aspect is often whimsical and pastoral; the British aspect exterior-facing and imposing. “The sweet and the violent are attached.”
Readers do not have to agree with Mr Barnett’s account. However, we all need to recognise that there is a powerful and emotive set of issues at stake here. Brexit or not, Britain remains what the US politician Dean Acheson dubbed it in 1962, a country that has lost an empire but still not found a role. But it is also a country that has not worked out how to share its different identities either. It is a country that sometimes overlooks the fact that, even now, it is a union, and in many respects a very successful one. But it is not a unitary state in the way Mrs May pretends. The first thing that modern Britain needs to do in this context is to recognise that fact. The second is to listen much more attentively and respectfully to its divergences and differences. The third is to have a respectful and constructive conversation about them. The fourth is to decide what can be done together about them.
All this is much more easily said than done. The idea that all the parts can be thrown up in the air and then relaid in some perfectly constructed logical way is a fantasy. But there are many things that form part of the answer that can be begun, often in quite small grassroots ways as opposed to grand Napoleonic ones. These Islands, a group that launched in 2017, is one promising approach, based on the crucial recognition that this is an issue that civil society should engage and reason with across borders. But big things will need doing too, in particular by grasping the nettle of England’s needs for its own forms of self-determination and recognition within the larger UK whole. The departure of parliament from Westminster, if it happens, also offers a huge opportunity to rethink the nature of the second chamber along more federal lines. London-based media and other professions need to think with fresh minds too. The turn of the year should be a moment of collective resolution to examine whether and how our union of nations can be renewed most richly. If that union is to survive these testing times and prosper as it can, it needs to be one that is much more equal to the task than the one we have now.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
The prime minister may well have been tempted to pull the duvet over her head this weekend. The calls for a policy agenda beyond Brexit mounted. The personal criticism was unabated. One Tory, Robert Halfon, told the BBC it was time for “policymaking by lion”. The fissure in the party over leaving Europe looks deeper and more set than ever. Mrs May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington, appealed for mutual respect. Her critics are setting up the English local elections in May as a deadline – a stiff test when these largely urban contests were looking difficult anyway. In London and some other cities, hostility to Brexit is likely to consolidate Labour support. In others, the opposite is true: the perceived failure to get on with leaving Europe will further undermine the party’s backing. The sense of drift and the lack of the kind of policies that make a difference to people’s daily lives – the state of local hospitals, the cash crisis in schools, the impossibility of buying a home – will cost the party in areas where it is already at a low ebb.
Mrs May’s weakness will make it all the harder to deal with the next stages of the legislation that have to be enacted before the split with Brussels takes effect. On Tuesday the Lords begins its scrutiny of the European withdrawal bill with a two-day second reading debate. The government would like peers to think the Commons has already done most of the work needed to improve the bill. Peers disagree. The temptation for ministers and their supporters in the media will be to denounce the upper house for trying to sabotage the popular will. Playing the “treachery” card against unelected peers will, in some quarters, be hard to resist. That would be a serious mistake.
In a report published on Monday morning, a cross-party Lords committee including some eminent lawyers and constitutional experts concludes that the bill remains unconstitutional: it gives ministers unprecedented power to make and change law without parliamentary scrutiny, it fails to recognise the voice of the devolved parliaments and assemblies, and it even awards, in some circumstances, lawmaking powers to government bodies. The committee’s opinion is backed by the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, a constitutional thinktank. It warns that the bill puts at risk a fundamental principle – knowing what the law is. By giving ministers power to make law without proper parliamentary scrutiny, it undermines the certainty that makes Britain a good place to live and do business.
These are not an insurmountable flaws. But they will take work to get right. Government business managers, aware of the amount of legislation stacking up behind this bill, all of which will be needed in post-Brexit Britain, want to move fast. Repeated opportunities in the Commons to revisit some of the most contentious clauses have not been taken. On Sunday the leave-supporting Lords Brexit minister, Martin Callanan, was in conciliatory mood in the TV studios, but the proof of whether the government is listening will come when peers – including some of the UK’s most authoritative voices on law, parliament, and the constitution – start trying to make changes.
This is not a rerun of the constitutional crisis of 1910, when peers tried to stop the budget. No doubt some of the 184 people who hope to speak in the next couple of days do think Brexit is a terrible act of self-harm, but many others do not. If in the coming weeks the government is defeated, it will only be by a broad alliance of Labour and the crossbench peers. It will not be an attempt to reverse the referendum result; it will be the revising chamber doing its job.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
If the EU referendum taught this country’s pro-Europeans anything, it ought to be that they lacked the political focus and discipline of the leavers. Pro-EU campaign complacency proved no match for pro-Brexit fanaticism, with catastrophic results. Something similar is now in danger of happening again, as the Brexit process reaches a critical milestone: the end of phase one of the Brexit talks. If Britain is not to pitch out of the EU without a deal, it is vital that history does not repeat itself. But the danger of that is very great.
The trigger for the current crisis was the Democratic Unionists’ derailing of the draft EU-UK phase one deal in Brussels on Monday. That happened because of an inexcusable political oversight. The UK government did not share the content in advance with its DUP backers, who pulled the plug, fearing that Northern Ireland would be put into a special status separate from the rest of the UK.
Since Monday, however, it has become much clearer that the UK government’s failures and incompetence on Brexit go wider and deeper. Philip Hammond confirmed on Wednesday what this column had reported, that the cabinet has never at any time had a specific discussion about the kind of Brexit that it is aiming for. As Sir Keir Starmer said in a Guardian article, membership of the single market, the customs union and a role for the European court of justice were simply swept off the table as options by Theresa May’s grossly irresponsible diktat of October 2016.
David Davis’s revelations at the Brexit select committee on Wednesday compounded that lack of direction with further shocking admissions. Amid clouds of characteristic bluster and solipsistic swagger, it eventually became clear that Mr Davis has at no point set about an assessment of the consequences of Brexit for the British economy and for UK jobs and conditions. The “impact assessments” for 58 UK economic sectors that parliament had demanded in order to better understand the Brexit options turned out not to exist at all. The only rational explanation for this extraordinary neglect of public duty and misleading of MPs is that Mr Davis knows such impact assessments would paint a bleak picture wholly at odds with the vacuous optimism of the Brexiters.
The document that Mrs May had intended to sign on Monday before the DUP vetoed it is a practical one as far as it goes. The thread running through it is the UK government’s quiet willingness to compromise on the key issues – rights, money and Ireland – set out in Michel Barnier’s April 2017 brief, presumably in the over-optimistic hope that this will help secure a beneficial trade deal with the EU in phase two. Yet when Mrs May was challenged on her Brexit strategy at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, she gave none of the leadership that is now needed in defence of compromise, convergence, alignment and the economic security that she should have invoked. Instead she reiterated the deluded and contradictory mantra that has got Britain into this mess in the first place – leave the single market and customs union, no hard border and a close partnership.
This proved enough to see off a disappointingly ineffective, though welcome, set of criticisms of her Brexit handling by Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs. But it cut no ice at all with either the DUP, who are in their element as the tail wagging the Tory dog, or with the Tory party’s Brexit obsessives. Following Iain Duncan Smith’s lead on Tuesday night, in which, completely irrationally, the former party leader accused the EU not the UK of causing the talks breakdown, three hardline Brexit MPs rattled their swords behind Mrs May with insistences that no red lines must be crossed. It is clear that the fanatics scent blood. They see an opening to ensure the talks collapse next week with the no-deal outcome that they crave as the prelude to their desired bonfire of the social regulations.
The crucial question in politics is therefore whether the pro-Europeans have the weapons and organisation to stop this. In an important intervention this week, Nick Clegg made clear that the leave fundamentalists are focused on reaching March 2019 with the minimum of pledges to regulation or convergence. Those who oppose this scorched-earth Brexit must now match them, steel for steel, working as one, as Mr Clegg argued. That approach requires significant amendments to the withdrawal bill and parliamentary votes that put the national interest ahead of party. As so often, for the bad people to triumph it requires merely that their opponents do nothing effective. That happened in the referendum campaign. It absolutely must not happen again now.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
At last, parliament moves to the centre of the Brexit process. Tuesday is the first of two days’ debate on the bill to trigger article 50; after all the talk on the right of a coup, of power ebbing from Westminster, of a vacuum at the centre, MPs have a chance to get into the fight. Next week, there are three more days’ debate on amendments, before the bill goes to the Lords. It seems neither chamber will seriously try to get in the way of Theresa May’s self-imposed deadline of the end of March for triggering the two-year process of leaving. That is a mistake.
For six months, parliament has struggled with the right response to a referendum that returned a result probably supported by fewer than 160 MPs. The vote was held under casually drafted regulations that ignored the importance of ensuring buy-in throughout the United Kingdom, which is why the prime minister was playing catch-up in Wales and Ireland today. Parliament was told officially that referendums are no more than an expression of political will. But both sides insisted that the result would be irrevocable, and, by saying it, made it so. Enfeebled by shock and uncertainty, and with no leave process mapped out, parliament failed to muster the resolve to force its way into the process of departure. Genuinely taken aback by the extent of discontent the referendum exposed, afraid of being portrayed as an obstacle to the will of the people, MPs’ lack of leadership has weakened parliament itself.
After David Cameron resigned, it was clear that his successor’s mandate was to implement the result. The large majority of MPs who fear that leaving the EU will be a catastrophe for many of their constituents have been left in impotent submission to the sheer weight of the vote for the other side. Without Gina Miller and her co-applicants’ determination to fight for parliament in court, ministers might already be negotiating with complete disregard for it. Now Westminster has the chance to claw back its proper role in the most important event in recent British history. It must locate its spine.
The government is too easily tempted to undermine MPs by negotiating directly with the leave constituency. The evidence for that is everywhere, in the attempt to avoid parliament entirely until the supreme court intervened, and in the few short days of debate now allowed to MPs. When parliament voted on the principle (only the principle) of joining the European Community in 1972, there were 10 days of debate on a detailed white paper, and the actual legislation took five months. Tuesday’s bill is a single page and the scope for amendments small. Labour, trying to shape the process over the next two years, has tabled a fistful aimed at securing protection of workers’ rights and common tax and evasion measures. Most significantly, it is determined to get a meaningful vote in parliament at the end of the process. Yet, regardless of the outcome, Labour MPs will be whipped to get the bill through.
Perhaps these are wise objectives for a party trying to find common ground between its diehard leavers and its equally passionate remainers. All the same, there may be smarter tactical objectives that could pull in the kind of cross-party support that might make the government act more cautiously in the years ahead. For example, there are sensible reasons for a delay in triggering article 50, since between now and September – that is, for a quarter of the two-year negotiating period – the Netherlands, France and Germany, key players in the process, will be preoccupied with national elections. If parliament imposed a pause until the new European governments are in place, it would send an unmistakable signal about its seriousness of purpose. More important still is to find a way to frame the demand for a “meaningful vote” that mobilises doubters across the parties. The government should allow the last vote at Westminster to coincide with the European parliament’s ratification process, so that there is a possibility of constructive alliances.
For generations, Europe has deeply divided people and parties. Parliament is the place not for capitulation but reconciliation. By the same token, Mrs May should acknowledge that having Westminster behind her would offer her a badly needed asset in her asymmetrical negotiation with Brussels. And in these anxious days, when Donald Trump treats the world’s fragile interconnections like a vicious crockery smash, and the European parliament negotiator Guy Verhofstadt suggests his real intention is to break up the EU, the prime minister should think hard before slamming the door on old friends.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
On 18 April Theresa May called a snap general election because she was confident it would strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations. As voters head to the polls, it is no small irony that Brexit has factored so little in the campaign. It is difficult to escape the impression of a country drifting into the unknown, while the rest of Europe readies itself to move on. No doubt many reasons led to the absence of a genuine, well informed debate on Brexit in this campaign – but none of them make the situation less surreal, or less worrisome, considering the challenges that lie ahead. In an election ostensibly intended to set the stage for the biggest strategic shift the country has undergone in decades, it is remarkable how little attention has been brought to the process, not to mention the solutions that may allay some of the consequences of self-inflicted harm.
Instead the election has been broached more like a cathartic exercise to deal with the trauma of discovering on 24 June 2016 how deeply the country was divided and fraught, with immigration, austerity and Europe all lumped together in no small degree of confusion. The nation retreated into that most British of mindsets, “Let’s just make the best of it”, rather than questioning the notion of what a hard or soft Brexit might mean. It was also natural that the shock of terrorist attacks focused minds elsewhere than on the intricacies of upcoming negotiations with Brussels. But with the exception of the Lib Dems, party leaders shunned the Brexit debate, convinced they’d never gain from it. Mrs May knew she had no precise answers to provide on how some access to the single market might be preserved, nor on the cost of cutting down immigration.
Mrs May’s interventions have not dispelled the impression that a farce will follow the Brexit drama. She repeatedly claims that she will be a “bloody difficult woman”. But these are likely to be bloody difficult negotiations. The worry during this campaign has been Mrs May’s willingness to tear up agreements to garner applause from her rightwing base. This week it was ripping up human rights laws that, she claims, protect terror suspects. While this might win votes, it is in practice about declaring a “public emergency” to temporarily suspend certain safeguards offered by the European convention on human rights. France, for example, has repeatedly extended what is known as its “derogation” following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Rather than being circumspect in matters of national security, Mrs May threw caution to the wind. The rest of the continent looks on more with bewilderment than angst. However acrimonious the Brexit negotiations may become, the EU has reason to believe that – for Britain much more than for itself – no deal is much worse than a bad deal. Time will run out fast now that article 50 has been triggered, and a cliff-edge withdrawal would have severe costs. Hard Brexit means a bad Brexit. Respecting the referendum vote need not mean adding much more damage to an already bleak outcome. But that needs cool heads to prevail.
On so many issues that matter to Britain but on which its voice is set to fade, progress will be sought and deeper cooperations nurtured among the remaining EU members. The EU has a lot of work to do. Whether on climate, on a digital union, on economic integration, on growth, on social protections, or on defence and security, Brussels knows full well that it has to get its act together if it wants to defend its interests, especially in an uncertain world. With a reinvigorated Franco-German relationship at its core, and signs of economic improvement, Europe seems to be pulling out of its doldrums – showing more confidence. That these efforts will be undertaken with Britain on the sidelines can only be regretted. Mrs May has tried to cast the EU as an entity entirely punitive in its negotiating stance. That is as disingenuous as it is risky. Whoever wins the election, continentals have mostly digested Brexit, and are now trying to look ahead.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
For those who believe, as this newspaper does, that the decision to leave the EU is a calamity for the UK that also risks the stability and prosperity of our European neighbours, there is a bleak week ahead. After the nine long, angry and confused months since last June’s referendum, it is now all but certain that the legislation to trigger article 50 will pass, unaltered, by Tuesday. Brussels is primed to receive Britain’s formal notice of intent to quit this week, just as the celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome begin. There will be no retreat.
The fact of leaving cannot be changed. But both the way we leave and its consequences are all still very much in play. To talk, as all sides now do, of the best possible outcome is first and foremost to talk of the nature of the deal itself. It is about how the question of Northern Ireland’s border with the south is resolved, about the extent of limits to free movement, the rights of Britons living abroad and of EU citizens living here. It is about the possibility of access to the single market and the nature of a tariff regime. It is hard, multidimensional, uncharted territory that will depend a great deal on a negotiating team still being assembled and on personal relations with her peers that the prime minister, Theresa May, has had to start to build in the least promising of circumstances.
In these negotiations with Brussels and our 27 ex-partners, the government is supplicant, our fate in their hands. At home, however, it is the government that controls the agenda. Nothing it has done so far suggests it will use its power in a way that promotes the essential task of healing the divisive consequences of the referendum, or enhances the legitimacy of the final outcome.
At every turn, the government’s actions have undermined parliament, first by trying to exclude it entirely from the process, now by overriding its attempt to insist on its right to have a meaningful say in the final outcome of a negotiation that will profoundly affect the wellbeing of each and every voter. The government belittles its critics and where it can – see Lord Heseltine last week – it sacks them. This morning the Brexit minister David Davis, whose trademark is the jovially delivered threat, used a TV interview to try to intimidate potentially rebellious colleagues who might be planning to vote to keep in the two amendments peers passed to the Brexit bill. It is a sign of what can most kindly be described as government muddle that a politician like Mr Davis, with a long record of fighting in parliament’s defence, is now dismissing the proper exercise of its power as a kind of threat to democracy. But this is not mere personal idiosyncrasy. Every move so far in the Brexit process is marked by a disrespect for institutional authority that sets a damaging precedent in the wider context of the rising tide of populism. A wiser government – certainly one that was forced to pay more attention to parliament by a popular opposition – would treat its critics with all the elaborate respect demanded by constitutional convention.
Mrs May’s approach to parliament is shaped by her decision to treat delivering on Brexit as her mandate. That explains her claim to be ready to leave the EU even if there is no deal. It explains her refusal to allow the Brexit legislation to be amended to allow for a vote on a deal, despite pledging a vote in her big policy speech on Europe in January. And it is why her ministers are adamant that if there is no deal, there can be no vote. Parliamentary intervention in a move that would see Britain abandon its most important economic relationship is to be blocked.
This is only partly a matter of process. It is also a question of substance. It is a concession to the ultra right in her party and her government who refuse to recognise what membership of the EU has meant for Britain. Under pressure on Sunday from a cross-party Commons report condemning the failure to prepare for the consequences of no deal, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said it would be “perfectly OK”, the international trade minister Liam Fox said it wouldn’t happen, and David Davis insisted he did have a contingency plan, although he didn’t say what it was.
Last June’s Brexit vote was a lesson in what happens when governments fail to address voters’ concerns. As we report, a hard Brexit would leave the UK at the bottom of the G20. Many Brexit voters would be the first to feel the consequences. Mrs May should not pretend it is an acceptable outcome. If MPs demand a vote whatever the outcome of the negotiations, they can insist that it is not.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
The Downing Street official spokesperson refused to confirm it on the record, but key members of Theresa May’s cabinet agreed on Monday to increase Britain’s “divorce bill” offer to the European Union from the £20bn that the prime minister had signalled in Florence in September. This is a significant milestone. Three cheers for finally passing it? Certainly not. It would have been better if Britain had not voted to leave the European Union in the first place. Two cheers, then, for at least facing up to reality? That’s overly generous too, because the decision this week is extremely light on detail or figures. The best that can be said is that it is better to have decided to increase the payment than to have refused to do so. The most that the decision deserves is a cautious sigh of relief.
If, in the end, Britain does leave the EU, the least bad departure would be one that takes place on terms that maintain a high level of convergence and cooperation with the Europe it leaves behind. Such a “soft” Brexit would do least damage to the economy, be least disruptive to jobs, wages and working conditions, and do least violence to the rich texture of relationships that bind the British people to our nearest neighbours. Mrs May’s misguided wish to leave the single market and the customs union makes that task much more difficult than it should be. But any hope that this or any successor government can achieve a tolerable soft Brexit depends upon progress in the talks between the EU and the UK that reach an interim climax in Brussels next month. This week’s decision at least opens up that possibility.
This does not mean that the way is now clear ahead to a soft Brexit. It isn’t. There has been no deal yet on any of the three issues – money, rights and Ireland – that form the first part of the UK’s withdrawal process. In a speech on Tuesday the Brexit secretary David Davis repeated the standard government line that the UK and the EU are within touching distance of a deal on reciprocal rights for their respective citizens after Brexit. But there has been no detail there, beyond a rumour, denied on Tuesday, that the European Court of Justice may have a role in the enforcement process. There is certainly little meeting of minds on the UK’s land border with the Irish republic; dismayingly, British policy seems to have hardened against the frictionless border that ministers still profess, with diminishing credibility, to want in Ireland. The decision on money does not mean there is political agreement in London or Brussels about what Britain will get for its money either.
But Mrs May now has some domestic political clearance to talk terms with the EU in advance of the December summit. That was always going to be needed. The nub issues on money are, first, the size of the sum and, second, what it buys. In Florence, Mrs May said the UK would maintain its payments into the current EU budget, which covers the period to 2020. But the EU wants the UK to pay its share of ongoing programmes such as regional and overseas aid too, and to maintain accrued pension obligations to civil servants from its four decades in the EU. Some think that adds up to at least €60bn, which is considerably more than the £40bn figure doing the rounds in Westminster, especially at the current exchange rate.
It is important that Mrs May and the EU have enough time before 14 December to narrow the differences between them. That is made a little easier by this week’s ministerial decision, and by the deliberate vagueness about the numbers, because these will have to increase. Initial responses in Brussels have been cautiously positive. But Mrs May cannot expect to get everything she wants in return, certainly not in December, and in the case of a trade deal with the EU, not before March 2019 either. That means she is going to have to do a lot of dampening of Conservative and anti-European media expectations from now on. Since the Europhobes and the rightwing press wilfully refuse to understand the process on which the UK is embarked with the EU, this could be a time-consuming piece of firefighting. Mrs May has shown little sign yet that she is up for the task.
For once, though, Mrs May’s ministers have behaved sensibly. The cabinet’s big egos have kept quiet since making the decision (though the former minister Owen Paterson has written an article showing that, on the right, Brexit is a fundamentally neoliberal project with no place for higher NHS spending). This cabinet cannot be relied on over Europe, but they have made the least bad decision in the circumstances. They have done what is needed to keep Britain’s options open. And that, at least, is better than closing them off.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
The former Irish taoiseach Bertie Ahern was famous for political negotiating guile. He had one golden rule: brinkmanship is politically essential to sell a deal to the mistrustful. Even if the sides were close to agreement in private, it was important to give the impression to supporters that the wrangling went down to the wire. So the beer and sandwiches had to be delivered in plain view, and the lights had to stay on through the night, so that, as dawn broke, all could emerge to claim a hard-won victory.
A little of that sort of choreography may have been going on this week as the UK and the European commission edged towards what both of them appear to want – an agreement that “sufficient progress” has been achieved in phase one of the Brexit negotiations to allow the two sides to move on to part two at the EU summit next week. All sides need to show suspicious supporters that they are battling to the end. Yet although much of what happened in Brussels on Monday was consistent with such cynicism, it also became clear that something must give on the British side if the multiple disaster of no-deal, still craved by the Tory party’s anti-European and deregulatory zealots, is to be avoided.
At the start of the day, Theresa May’s talks with Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk were being reported as almost a done deal. As the May-Juncker lunch neared, however, the Democratic Unionists marched down the Stormont staircase to raise doubts, though not new ones, about the Irish dimension. By the time Mrs May and Mr Juncker belatedly appeared in public, it was clear the deal was in fact not yet done. Though the language between the two was mutually courteous and complimentary, “a couple of issues” remained to be sorted later in the week.
That may indeed happen. In this hall of political mirrors no one need be surprised if those remaining issues are resolvable (or fudgeable), at least to the extent of allowing disagreements to be carried forward into the next phase of the process. Yet the current taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, could not have been clearer. He thought there had been a deal. Britain had signed off on it. Ireland had signed off too. It was the DUP – which has to play to its own base – that stopped the deal with its Stormont intervention and a later call between Arlene Foster and Mrs May.
Monday may have been the moment when Mrs May’s Brexit strategy came off the rails. She and her ministers have consistently pretended that the Brexit process is simpler and easier than it actually is. They have done this, above all, to keep the government together and to retain political ownership of Brexit for the Conservative party. At the root of this deception are the massive realities that the EU is by far the UK’s most important trading partner and that the single market and customs union are arrangements that benefit Britain. Mrs May’s insistence that the Brexit vote in 2016 means the UK must leave them both, if necessary on WTO terms, is a false and reckless choice. It puts Brexit utterly at odds with our national economic self-interest, as well as being an act of unprovoked economic hostility against Ireland, with dangerous implications on both sides of the Irish border.
As the moment of truth in the negotiations has neared, Mrs May has made sensible and belated concessions to reality that alarm the anti-European fanatics in her party and the press. She has shifted on the transition period, on the money and, it began to appear on Monday, on Ireland. She has always said that she wants a frictionless border and to uphold the Good Friday agreement, rightly in both cases. But a frictionless border requires either that the UK stays in the customs union, which Mrs May has rejected, or that Northern Ireland stays in it while mainland Britain leaves, which the DUP won’t allow and which triggers similar demands from Scotland, Wales and London. One of these approaches will have to give. In the Guardian’s view, Britain should stay in the customs union or guarantee to shadow its regulations.
Mrs May still prefers to look for a fudge. Monday’s language about “continued regulatory alignment” between Northern Ireland and the EU was an attempt to find a square-circling form of words. But if Mrs May had been more flexible about Brexit and had not made her abject pact with the DUP after the general election, she would have got a deal on Monday. That is what most people in these islands want. It is profoundly in both national interests that there is no hard border in Ireland. But it is equally important that Britain stays in the customs union. The DUP must not be allowed to veto either issue.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
At its core, Brexit is a formal process of laws, treaties, timetables and deadlines. But this formal process is a bit like a medieval castle surrounded by a shanty town of often raucous informal pressures from politics, the media, interest groups and civil society. This week there is a classic illustration of the dangerous disconnection between these parallel worlds. In the formal part, the European Union on Monday issued its official guidelines for a transition period between Brexit in 2019 and the start of a negotiated future trading relationship. Meanwhile in the informal part, the Conservative party continued to be preoccupied by a stormy doctrinal argument about real and imagined threats from the formal process, all fired by the heady home brew of prejudice, ambition and self-interest.
A direct challenge to Theresa May’s leadership is a real possibility amid all this chaos. It is the talk of the fleshpots outside the castle walls. The argument within the Tory party at Westminster is also increasingly visceral and acrimonious. At any moment it might spill out into a full-scale brawl. But the decisive event on Monday was not at Westminster. It was in Brussels, where the EU took two minutes to agree its directives for the negotiations about a post-Brexit transition period.
The transition question is not as fraught as phase one of the Brexit talks, dealing with the so-called divorce issues (which was signed off in December), or as phase two, dealing with the future trading relationship (scheduled for completion in the autumn), is likely to be. But it is important nonetheless, for two big reasons: first because the transition period holds the key to the phase two talks that follow, and second because there are substantive issues at stake in the transition that have to be dealt with sensibly and not jeopardised. All the signs are that Britain is handling this latest part of the process as ineptly as it embarked on phase one.
The experience of phase one was that what the EU wants is likely to be at the heart of the eventual deal. The UK failed to make clear what it wanted at the start, because it was incapable of doing so, since to do so would split the Tory party. As a result, it always made sense during phase one to refer to the directives for those talks issued by the EU in April 2017; these duly ended up as the bulk of the deal signed by Mrs May in December. Similarly, this week’s document on transition is likely to become the basic reference point for the conclusion of the stage that is about to begin. David Davis made a speech last week in Middlesbrough pressing for the UK to be consulted about new EU laws during this period. But the effort was too little, too late, and too unserious in the light of the government’s consistent failure to set out its Brexit goals. Michel Barnier had no difficulty dismissing the idea on Monday.
A transition period is indispensable to lay the ground for the prosperous and peaceful relationship that Britain needs with the EU after Brexit. Even the government grasps this in principle. In practice, however, ministers are unable to translate that into anything sensible for British jobs and trade. Mrs May is increasingly focused simply on getting the UK out of the EU next year at the expense of the terms on which it happens; to her, Brexit really does now just mean Brexit, and little else. Hardline Brexiters seemed to go along with that until recently, at the expense of Britain’s best interests in the talks, of course, since they are not concerned about that. Now, though, their fear about a soft Brexit or even a reversal of Brexit – plus their sense that Mrs May cannot survive – is luring them into recklessness.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s and Sir Bill Cash’s complaints about Brexit “in name only” are designed to wreck the kind of transition period that would be good for the British economy and pave the way for a softer eventual landing. Mrs May is too weak to make the counter-argument; her next planned speech on Brexit seems to have bitten the dust. Only the chancellor, Philip Hammond, makes the case on the Tory side; yet even he is cautious. The situation is ready-made for Labour to articulate an alternative approach that speaks for Britain’s interests. That alternative has been too long absent; it has never been more needed.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Theresa May decided to pull the parliamentary vote on her Brexit withdrawal agreement because she knew she would lose. She has been humiliated by her own MPs. It is staggering that this defeat only became obvious to her after it had been clear to everyone else for weeks. In the end, she chose to run rather than stand and fight for what she had agreed with European leaders. Mrs May is not saving her leadership, she is devaluing it to the point of worthlessness. The prime minister has no one to blame but herself for this mess. In the last two years the government has devoted itself to leaving the European Union in a manner consistent with Mrs May’s obsessions – primarily controlling immigration. Her resulting withdrawal agreement has been rubbished by her own unruly troops. They will not be easily instructed to march in a different direction.
The prime minister is trying to buy herself time by getting Brussels to accept some tweaks in her Brexit deal over the Northern Ireland backstop as a means of persuading some doubters to vote for it. These will be cosmetic, as EU leaders say there can be no further renegotiation of the terms of the UK’s departure.
The threats to Mrs May are multiplying. In parliament, the prime minister foreshadowed a constitutional trial of strength in a furious exchange with the Commons speaker, John Bercow. Mr Bercow rightly called for MPs to be allowed to vote on postponing the Brexit debate. In rejecting this, the prime minister continues to treat parliament with contempt.
Crises of this nature are only resolved in line with a Commons majority. Mrs May’s actions invite MPs across parties to coordinate with one another so they make the conduct of the government impossible unless ministers bow to their will. It is important to note that Mrs May’s deal, even in its refined form, will garner less support in the Commons than either another referendum, in which the risk of the option of a catastrophic “no deal” is endorsed by a weary public, or some variant of the Norway deal, in which we give up sovereignty for economic stability.
The prime minister wants to play for time, saying only that the vote on her deal, replete with reassurances, will be held by 21 January – the last possible date to do so. If dodging a defeat becomes the only way for Mrs May to survive, then the indications are that she will delay a vote until the last possible moment. This is playing politics with the nation’s stability. It ill behoves any prime minister to be so cavalier about such a serious issue.
Her decision to stay on is one based on her own self-interest and that of her party rather than the country. The prime minister is now a diminished figure, with her authority draining away on the most important issue facing Britain. It is galling to hear her claim that the 2016 referendum vote was a cry for help from left-behind Britain when it was Tory austerity that hollowed out deprived regions. Since then, Brexit has immobilised the government, leaving it unable to deal with these problems.
Mrs May might claim that she lives to fight another day. But given that the leadership is on the run from the hard Brexiters, she lives on only as a political zombie. Ensnared by her own convictions, she has resorted to dilatory tactics because she has belatedly realised the full weight of their burden. When, at last, she has been forced to recognise this, she found herself alone and politically friendless in a party that prefers accommodation of its prejudices to political calculation – let alone what is best for this country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
As a rule, it is a mistake for the press to write about itself. Journalists will always find journalism fascinating. But readers are not nearly so interested in media navel-gazing. If newspapers spent each day analysing one another, readers would rapidly lose interest, and rightly so. Yet the editorial in today’s Daily Mail about the Tory party and Brexit is such a striking change of course that an exception to normal self-restraint is in order.
The headline on its leader – “Saboteurs endangering the nation” – may have seemed like normal Daily Mail fare. This was the newspaper, after all, which in its “Who will speak for England?” headline in 2016 pushed David Cameron aside and placed itself firmly at the head of the leave campaign; which used stories like “Plans to let 1.5m Turks into Britain” to make leave’s final push explicitly anti-migrant; which charged Britain’s impartial judges with being “Enemies of the people” for ruling that parliament was sovereign in the Brexit process; which welcomed Theresa May’s 2017 election launch with a call to “Crush the saboteurs”; and which, under the snarling headline “Proud of yourselves?”, excoriated 11 Tory MPs who backed a meaningful vote on Brexit for their “treachery”.
Yet the tone and, in particular, the focus of this morning’s leader were, in fact, very different from that confident in-your-face era. Instead of firing up the Brexiters for yet another act of anti-European contempt and defiance, as it had done for so long, the Mail this week turned its fire on them instead. It denounced the “arch-Brexiteers” for their “self-promotion and peacocking” and their efforts to undermine Mrs May. Former Mail heroes like Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis and Mr Johnson were dismissed as “vulgar bit-part players” and “back-stabbing plotters”, compared unfavourably with Brexit secretary Dominic Raab – “grown in stature” – and above all Mrs May, “the only person” who can secure an “acceptable outcome” and “sensible deal”.
Such language is not just a media milestone. It is also a political one. The Mail is in many ways what it was from the start in 1896: a very brilliant newspaper. But at many points in its history – from Lord Northcliffe’s warmongering before and after 1914, through its publication of the Zinoviev letter forgery in the 1920s to discredit Labour, to its support for fascism under Lord Rothermere in the 1930s, it has also been a reckless political protagonist. So it has been, once again, in our own time. The Mail has been a propagandist for Brexit and for a radical reactionary Tory tradition that looks back to empire and Margaret Thatcher as its guiding lights. The rage and aggression that marked its advocacy of Brexit were absolutely in the Northcliffe tradition. But, like him, they left an indelible mark for the worse in politics and public life. The shockingly violent remarks by Tory MPs about Mrs May this week are part of this legacy. So is the gross Brexit-derived insult to the family of a seriously sick child by Mr Davis’s former chief of staff this week.
The easy explanation for this shift would be to attribute it to the new editor, Geordie Greig, who replaced Paul Dacre last month after a 26-year reign. That is a big factor. But the deeper reason is that the national mood is changing. Brexit is becoming a burden on Britain. Doubts about the future are deepening. Last Saturday, parts of middle Britain to which the Mail does not speak took to the streets against Brexit. Today, police leaders, medicine distributors and scientists were the latest to voice Brexit concerns. Meanwhile the cabinet went on squabbling at home and Liam Fox continued chasing a fantasy trade deal with Donald Trump abroad.
Fanatics are often the last to see that their dreams have turned to nightmares. But the British public, who are not fanatics, get it. So, belatedly, does a Mail that drove so hard to the cliff edge. The message has yet to reach many Tories. But they risk being swept aside if it doesn’t. The hard Brexiters are on the run.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
It is impossible not to be both cynical and angry about the government’s “future partnership paper” on customs arrangements with the EU, which was published on Tuesday. Like the other papers on Brexit themes that are expected from Whitehall in the coming days, this one seems less concerned with its ostensible purpose, UK policy towards the EU after Brexit, than it is with the management of internal Conservative party divisions. The document is primarily an attempt to signal to MPs that Theresa May’s government is back at its desks and back in business after its election debacle, and is now working together as one. It is not a serious attempt to set out a desirable relationship with the EU that stands up for Britain, its economy, its workforce and this country’s values.
The document is being spun as a contribution towards the soon to be resumed Brexit negotiations between the UK and the EU. But that is largely pretence. Those discussions, which aim to reach some agreements in October, are not about future customs arrangements. They are strictly focused on the rights of EU and UK citizens in one another’s jurisdictions after Brexit, on the Irish land border and on the financial settlement between the UK and the EU. Even if the new document were remarkably interesting and enlightened – and it is neither – the issues with which it deals are for later in the process, as critics were quick to point out.
Most of what it contains, and most of what the Brexit secretary, David Davis, said about it on Tuesday, is little more than flannel. The paper speculates about ways in which future customs arrangements could be made simple and frictionless – as they are at the moment. But the words are aspirational not concrete. Alternative approaches are rehearsed, yet the government does not say which of them it prefers. Terms like “innovative facilitations” and “technology-based solutions” abound. Mr Davis boasts in an interview about its “constructive ambiguity”. Yet the paper never escapes from magical thinking.
At no point does it say what it should say: “This is what matters to us.” The paper contains no flesh-and-blood recognition that more than half of the UK’s trade in goods is with EU countries, or that Brexit will affect millions of transactions in goods, their certification of origin and the supply chains of which they are integral parts. The closest it comes to reality is to float the possibility of the UK shadowing the EU’s external border customs policies in UK-EU traded goods.
It does not go further because the obvious policy for British business and British workers is not to shadow the customs union but to remain within it. That, though, is too hot for the Tory party. To open up that issue in that way, even though it is the way that would best defend the UK economy and would involve no change in our trade rules, would set off a Tory civil war that might topple Mrs May. As a result we are witnessing another episode in the lamentable story that has cursed this country’s relations with the EU whenever there has been a Tory government. This latest iteration shows that, in the end, Mrs May is more concerned about getting through the Tory party conference than she is about the future of British trade. The country should be truly indignant about that.
There is, nevertheless, a substantive policy announcement in the customs paper. This is the confirmation of the government’s commitment to what used to be called transitional arrangements, now rebranded as an “interim model” of close association with the EU. Precisely what this will mean in practice is unclear, But it represents a political victory for the chancellor, Philip Hammond, in his efforts to save the government from the prime minister’s insane readiness to take the UK over a March 2019 cliff edge with the EU rather than confront the Daily Mail. It means Mrs May’s earlier claim that no deal with the EU is better than a bad deal is now in the dustbin of history. This is something to welcome in an otherwise confused document.
It is not enough. Instead of taking the bold decisions to change course over Brexit policy, and putting the economy first, ministers have again feebly put their party first. It therefore falls to the opposition parties and sensible Conservatives to work together in every way to defend the public interests that this government seems incapable of defending.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
It may not be the crunch, but it is surely the beginning of the crunch. Thursday’s Commons debate on borders and customs regimes after Brexit is a crucial opportunity for MPs to fire a very clear shot across the government’s bows in favour of the softest possible Brexit. The Commons will be debating a motion on Thursday, not a piece of legislation – the latter opportunity will come when the trade bill and the EU withdrawal bill are again discussed by MPs next month. Yet this week’s motion is anything but trivial. It supports frictionless post-Brexit trade borders for manufacturers and it insists on continuing alignments across the Irish border. It is moved by the backbench liaison committee of select committee chairs, so it has backing from senior parliamentarians from Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party. The outcome must send an unequivocal message that we have reached make your mind up time.
As so often in the Brexit process, the government’s approach is to continue to kick the can down the proverbial road. But the end of the road is in sight. With local elections due next week, the Conservatives have imposed a light whip on their MPs. Some select committees, including the Brexit committee, are scheduled to be on overseas visits. It is important, nevertheless, that as many pro-European MPs as possible attend this debate and vote for the motion. Most businesses in Britain, especially in manufacturing, want to remain in the customs union or to join one that is effectively the same thing after Brexit. Crucially, the government has also made a solemn agreement with the EU to maintain a frictionless border in Ireland. Both are essential. This motion must be carried.
The aim on Thursday and next month must be to maximise the pressure on the government to make the best possible compromise with the EU on customs and tariffs, for the sake of both industry and Britain’s commitments on Northern Ireland. Theresa May prefers indecision and brinkmanship. So, at present, does the EU, under strong pressure from France and Germany to make sure Brexit is not rewarded. But the principles at the heart of the argument – and the parliamentary numbers when the bills return – are about to become inescapable.
One further large truth, too often ignored, is that the leavers’ trumpeted alternative of bilateral post-Brexit trade deals – which would not be possible if the UK embraced any version of the EU customs union – is a sham. These deals simply don’t exist. Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, has drawn an embarrassing blank as he tours the world touting for deregulatory deals. MPs face a choice between a fantasy future and a solid commercially secure future based on existing arrangements. It would be phenomenally irresponsible to opt for the former against the latter. It’s a no-brainer.
Some ministers have floated the idea of making this issue a confidence vote. That shows how vulnerable they are. It is why Thursday’s initial skirmish matters. MPs need to increase the pressure on the government as the Lords amendments to the Brexit bill pile up. Sooner or later Mrs May is going to have to get real about the business case, the Northern Ireland case, and the parliamentary numbers. She also needs to get real about the compromises that will be required with the EU if this is to be made to work. Mrs May has got away for too long with promoting the pyrrhic freedom of a fantasy Brexit. That no longer washes. It is compromise time now. Mrs May can’t duck it. And MPs must ensure that she does not.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
The draft of an agreement setting out the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, published by the European commission on Wednesday, has raised the temperature of the Brexit debate. Hot-headed Eurosceptics are treating it as an act of territorial aggression. Provisions covering the need to avoid a hard border in Ireland through near-total regulatory alignment between north and south has been cast as Brussels annexing Ulster.
That fever can be treated with cold facts. First, the document is only a draft. It is an attempt by the EU side to codify as legal text the deal that was done to complete the first phase of Brexit talks last December. The UK government was entitled to propose its own version but hasn’t done so. Ministers might not like the commission’s draft but, with time running out, they cannot deny that something like it is necessary.
Second, the Irish proposals are the EU’s account of a backstop regime in the absence of other solutions. The December deal had north-south harmonisation as the third of three options – the others being a final-status model of UK-EU trade that removes the issue altogether (a much softer Brexit) and technical wizardry to make border checks invisible. The EU view has been that development of options one and two was Theresa May’s job. She hasn’t done that homework, so Brussels has pressed ahead with option three as the default.
Still, the draft agreement’s presumptions of “a common regulatory area” overseen by EU institutions was always going to be provocative to Brexiters. Some provocation was intended. EU patience with Mrs May’s indecision has worn out. In the absence of concrete proposals from the British side to resolve difficult Brexit questions, the Europeans have chosen to force the issue. It is a risky approach given the appetite on the hard right of the Tory party for sabotaging the whole process.
The prime minister on Wednesday promised a “robust” rejection of proposals that she believes would “threaten the constitutional integrity of the UK”. She means the establishment of different post-Brexit regulatory regimes for Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. That is the corollary of her own insistence that Britain must leave the customs union and single market. The external border has to go somewhere so, if not north-south on the island of Ireland, the logical alternative is east-west in the Irish Sea. That is the outcome most feared by the DUP, on whom Mrs May depends for her parliamentary majority.
These problems would go away if Mrs May knew a better way to meet commitments she made under the December agreement. But every available deal featuring invisible borders crosses red lines that the prime minister drew in 2016 and hasn’t had the courage to revisit.
This is the essence of her trouble: the EU’s proposals cannot be amended without counter-proposals and none exist. Mrs May has only aspirations and magical thinking. There is no Brexit model that satisfies the DUP, the Tory right, the cabinet and parliamentary moderates. Choices have to be made: between economic stability and doctrinaire Eurosceptic purity; between a softer Brexit that is available through negotiation and the hard one that looks like kamikaze nationalistic performance.
The rage of many Brexiters expresses the discovery that the balance of power between the UK and a bloc of 27 countries turns out to be nothing like the dynamic they promised. The EU can set the pace and terms of the negotiation. This is one reason why it was the wrong choice to leave. British influence on the rest of Europe and the world was amplified, not constrained, as a member of the club. Relinquishing that power brings costs that the prime minister doesn’t dare admit in public.
The controversy provoked by the draft withdrawal agreement all flows from a single source: an abdication of leadership. The prime minister is due to make a speech on Friday outlining her proposals for the future relationship between the UK and the EU. Perhaps then she will reveal a hitherto invisible streak of courage and imagination. Perhaps she will rewrite her Brexit priorities to serve country ahead of party. None of the evidence suggests she is capable of that.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
It is a sign of how little has actually been achieved in the UK’s Brexit negotiations that the outcome of this week’s European council meeting in Brussels has promptly been hailed on both sides as progress. On the face of it, after all, the Brexit takeaway from the EU summit is extremely thin. The first phase of the article 50 negotiations has not made enough progress, especially on money. The phase one issues – rights, money and Ireland – will have to be re-examined in December. Disagreements and gulfs remain. There is no agreement on a transition after March 2019. Discussion of phase two, the future UK-EU relationship, remains on hold. Meanwhile, the clock ticks on.
Tangible advances to set against that glacial picture are few and mostly ephemeral. Two are worth noting. First, the summit agreed that the EU27 will start “internal preparatory” discussions of the transition and the future relationship. Second, there were positive comments about progress from Donald Tusk in particular (he said reports of deadlock had been exaggerated), as well as Angela Merkel (who hoped to be ready for phase two in December), among others. Characteristically, Jean-Claude Juncker then muddied the waters a bit. Naturally enough, Theresa May declared herself optimistic and positive. There was, she said, “a new spirit”.
It would be ludicrous to depict all this as a breakthrough, since it manifestly is not one. But it does constitute a potentially useful freeing up of the Brexit logjam, as a result of which real progress becomes more possible than it was before. In particular, the choreography of the 24 hours in Brussels suggests a willingness on both sides to heed the calls, not least from this newspaper, for the UK and the EU to find ways of helping one another move away from deadlock. This reflects, it is to be hoped, a shared recognition that the EU and the UK have a common interest in making the best of the distasteful Brexit vote. The absence of shambles, discord and embarrassment in Brussels at least means Mrs May could return to Britain a reasonably happy woman.
That achievement should not be dismissed. But nor should it be exaggerated. The impact of the summit has been marginal. It leaves most of the big and difficult issues – in phase one, money and Northern Ireland; in phase two, free movement, budget contributions and supranational jurisdiction – unaddressed. Another finesse in December will be much harder than this week’s has been, because the substantive issues will have to be dealt with more clearly.
Mrs May spoke in Brussels about the need for “an outcome that we can stand behind”. It is still very unclear what sort of outcome she has in mind. It is also highly uncertain that she would have a parliamentary majority for it, whatever it eventually looks like. The Conservative party’s unconditional Europhobes showed again on Friday that what they may lack in numbers, they more than make up for in message clarity, media presence and disloyalty. No 10 and the party’s pro-Europeans urgently need to raise their game in order to compete with them.
One problem here is that Mrs May is a weak leader. She leads a party she cannot control, as previous stronger Tory leaders have done before her. But she has also weakened her authority and lost her majority in the election. She has her back to the wall, and the EU27 know it. That makes it even harder for the EU27, who already suffer from a very rules-dominated approach to the Brexit process, to offer concessions. Mrs May might also be ousted in the meantime by someone who is even less willing or able to make deals or stick to them.
The larger problem remains how to craft a deal that would satisfy both the EU27 and the Tory backbenches. That gulf seems as unbridgeable as ever. In Florence and Brussels, Mrs May said she backs a transitional deal to avoid a “cliff edge” Brexit. She is right about that. The fanatics who say no deal could be a good deal will never make it so, no matter how often they say it. Yet the post-transition deal Mrs May seems to want is a fantasy too. It would be strong on UK access to EU markets and weak on UK obligations in return. If she wants, as she should, access to markets at something close to EU levels, Mrs May has to be willing to defend obligations on free movement, rights, supranational jurisdiction and budget contributions that would scandalise many Tories and the Europhobic press. She had a decent 24 hours in Brussels, but she is still a long way from getting the kind of deal that protects jobs, living standards and the UK economy.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
The House of Lords will be pilloried by the anti-European press this morning. They will be dismissed as enemies of the people, because on Tuesday they had the temerity to pass, by a clear majority of 98, a vital and impeccably traditionalist amendment to the government’s bill to begin negotiations on Brexit. In this newspaper’s view, they were within their rights to do it and, just as important, they were right. The amendment requires parliament to have meaningful votes on the result of the negotiations before Britain leaves the European Union. This is not controversial. The government had orally promised such votes during debates in the Commons. The amendment turns the promise into a requirement. That is all.
This is not peers versus the people. It is neither a veto grab nor a wrecking amendment. But it is parliamentary sovereignty versus prime ministerial rule – and that’s important. The government has almost got its bill through. Yet without the amendment, there would have been no requirement for parliament to have a say when the negotiations are done. In the absence of that, Theresa May could agree to anything. Now, or until the government overturns the amendment in the Commons, she is again answerable to parliament. That’s how the parliamentary system has always worked. It is how it ought to work now.
Brexiters talk arrogantly as if any and every attempt to give parliament a role in the Brexit process is a betrayal of the British people. Asserting parliament’s role is no such thing. To take an admittedly unlikely example, Mrs May could decide that the decision to leave the EU requires Britain to pay an annual fee of billions of pounds to the EU in perpetuity for the right kind of deal. Most Brexiters would be outraged if Britain had to pay an annual tax to the EU for the right to leave. They would say, rightly, that this was a betrayal of the leave vote. They would insist it must not happen. Yet unless they had allowed parliament to have an effective say over the negotiated deal, Mrs May would be within her rights – even though she would be politically dead in the water for doing it – to authorise the direct debit to the EU.
Those who support Brexit should stop bullying those who are worried about how it may happen. They should admit that parliament must reserve the right to change its mind. It probably won’t come to this. Circumstances will have to alter before there is any chance of it. The Lords are not stupid. They accept the Brexit vote. Monday they voted against a second referendum. In spite of what conspiracy theorists like Lord Forsyth may say, parliament has a duty to decide on the terms. As Lord Kerr said on Tuesday, the mantra that the whole issue has been decided and cannot be revisited in any circumstances is the law of the lemmings. The Brexit secretary David Davis has himself said that a democracy that cannot change its mind is no longer a democracy. Mr Davis is right. Lord Kerr is right. The majority in the Lords are right. Lord Forsyth is wrong. And the Brexiters are wrong.
The government is desperate to meet its own timetable for triggering article 50 next week. Mrs May’s instinct will be to reverse Tuesday’s amendment (along with last week’s on the rights of EU nationals in the UK to remain here after Brexit). She should beware. MPs have made a poor defence of parliament’s rights in the Brexit process so far. But the Lords vote may have emboldened soft Brexit Tory MPs. It is certainly time that they showed more spine on the issue. MPs should uphold the Lords amendments.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Gina Miller’s case has placed a weight on parliament that large parts of it have been politically reluctant to bear. But Brexit is an issue of such importance that parliament must learn to bear that weight. Parliament must defy the opprobrium of the anti-European press. The Lords showed the way to the Commons on Tuesday. Both houses, and the government, should accept the Lords amendments.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Theresa May has three objectives. The first is to remain prime minister. The second is to get a parliamentary majority for her withdrawal agreement made with the European Union. The third is to fulfil the first two objectives without splitting the Conservative party. She is unlikely to succeed. The reason rests with the principal opponents in her own party: those Tory MPs who want a second referendum and those who want a hard Brexit. Mrs May wanted both to act in their narrow self-interest rather than cooperating with each other by simultaneously rejecting her agreement. Her line had been that they must choose from among her deal, no deal, or no Brexit. However, the hardline Brexiters did not think her deal was enough to stop another referendum, while the supporters of another referendum in the Tory party did not see her deal as a way to stop the rightwing absolutists getting a no-deal outcome. Significantly, both wings of the Tory party condemned it as “vassalage”. Mrs May’s failure to win either of these factions to her side has been at the root of her parliamentary troubles.
Things will not improve with her procrastinations. Instead of peeling off internal opponents, she has hardened opposition. Despite claims to the contrary, Brussels has no reason to throw Mrs May a lifeline. Neither will the Labour party. Mrs May yearns for an opposition that would split in the way Labour did in the fractious politics of the early 1970s when Europe divided the left. If only, the prime minister and her allies thought, there were sizable numbers of Labour rebels – 69 rebelled in 1971 – who would back her on the principle of leaving the EU as the referendum of 2016 mandated. It is a sign of how deluded Mrs May’s team were that they seriously weighed such a rebellion.
This country needs to have the vote on the Brexit deal to crystallise where the Commons stands. Late January seems to leave MPs hardly enough time to demonstrate which policy commands the majority or largest minority in parliament. This represents a test for the way the cabinet views the Commons. The riddle of Brexit will not be solved by a series of cabinet leaks which are job applications for prime minister dressed up as serious policy interventions. If the “safety valve” of a parliamentary vote is not opened then Britain’s political system will move inexorably towards an unmanageable level of polarisation, which will render it impossible for the country to manage many basic tasks, let alone implement fresh policies to address emerging social and economic realities. There is a good reason that a no-deal will win very little parliamentary support – it represents too high a price to pay in terms of economic loss for leaving the EU.
For much of her time as PM, Mrs May has hidden behind a mask acceptable to the hard Brexiters. It was not until this summer that the mask was removed, allowing the party to see through the disguise: that the trade-offs and compromises would see Britain knocked about by the EU, a global heavyweight; that smaller countries or old rivals such as Ireland or France could, in the words of the UK’s former top diplomat in Brussels, Sir Ivan Rogers, “take back control of things you would rather they didn’t”; that Britain outside the EU might be a bystander in the setting of policies that would affect voters’ lives; that we had not intended to vote in June 2016 to make ourselves poorer, but that is what we are going to be. The penny has dropped. Brexit has been to the Tory party less of a mask that hid – or even subverted – a reality. Instead Brexit is more akin to a political shirt of Nessus, burning anyone who puts it on.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
When she was interviewed on Sunday’s BBC One Andrew Marr programme, Theresa May knowingly and dishonestly suggested that leaving the European Union was the central dynamic behind her new NHS spending pledges. Having started by saying she was determined to secure the NHS’s future, she immediately invoked the shoddy Brexit campaign bus slogan of 2016 with implied approval. Then she talked about the money Britain would save by leaving the EU; finally she deliberately spoke in ways that would lead any unwary listener to assume that a so-called “Brexit dividend” was the windfall that enabled her to make the new spending pledge. Characteristically, Boris Johnson was even more mendacious, calling the pledge “a down payment on the cash we will soon get back from our EU payments”.
All of this was a lie. It disgraces Mrs May to tell such a whopper. True, by the time that she gave her speech on NHS spending on Monday, her words were rather more circumspect; the essential deception nevertheless endured. “Some of the extra funding” will come from money that now goes to the EU, she said at London’s Royal Free Hospital, “but the commitment I am making goes beyond that Brexit dividend.” That is true with bells on, since the NHS pledge dwarfs any future savings on the UK’s Brexit payments.
That’s partly because the dividend is itself a pretence. The UK has agreed a £39bn divorce payment, plus more for the backstop agreement and further sums if it accesses EU programmes after Brexit. That’s without taking account of any weakening of the public finances – a sum put at £15bn per year by the Institute for Fiscal Studies – as a result of Brexit. But it is also because this scale of support for the NHS, welcome as it may be, can only be paid for in three ways: by cutting other spending programmes; by increasing the tax take; or by borrowing more. Ministers – more specifically the chancellor, Philip Hammond – have not yet settled on the key details and are still fighting over them.
There were others deceits in Mrs May’s speech, not least in her section on NHS history. There is also this week’s politics. It is possible that Mrs May is calculating that she needs to embrace the Brexiter position on the NHS because she knows she will shortly have to upset them on issues like a customs agreement or single market access, or because she expects to lose Wednesday’s vote on MPs’ right to stop her taking Britain out of the EU without a deal. Yet the ultimate criticism of Mrs May’s speech is that she has been unable to say where the money is coming from. The politics of this are massive. For 40 years, the Conservatives have been a tax-cutting party, so to tax income or wealth on the necessary scale would represent a historic (and desirable) change of direction. For eight years they have been an anti-borrowing party too, so to change tack there would be almost equally wise and epochal.
Putting more money into the NHS is desirable. The government’s commitment to do so is necessary and overdue. The sums announced on Monday – a front-loaded 3.4% real terms increase in current spending amounting to £20.5bn extra year for England, plus further sums for Scotland and Wales and to secure NHS pensions – are serious. But they cannot be explained as a consequence of Brexit, and the instant dismissal of that claim from backbench Tories, the IFS and the rightwing Institute of Economic Affairs, among many others (including some Brexit enthusiasts), underlines the sheer economic speciousness of the approach that Mrs May has so far adopted to one of the most profound decisions of her premiership.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
Britain’s political parties await Thursday’s two byelections with anxiety. Politicians from Theresa May down have campaigned in them. On all sides, large conclusions about Britain’s Brexit-dominated politics will be read into the two results. For all that, the contests in Copeland and Stoke Central will do well to attract more than 50,000 voters to the polling stations between them.
A week after the byelections, by contrast, nearly 700,000 voters are expected to turn out at a different set of UK polling stations. These voters will be electing a new Northern Ireland assembly to replace the one that collapsed in January. These contests may have a much more direct bearing on Brexit than the byelections, because of the Irish dimension. However, only a fraction of the attention that is currently focused on Stoke and Copeland is being trained on the election in Northern Ireland.
Not much new there, of course. It was ever thus. British opinion rarely pays attention to Northern Ireland except at times of danger. Right now, though, this is particularly foolish for two reasons. First, because UK politics are moving in an increasingly centrifugal direction in which no one in London can afford to ignore regional dynamics in the way they did when the old UK two-party system still existed. And, second, because this is, in fact, a new time of danger in Northern Ireland and in Ireland as a whole.
It is 10 years since power-sharing was finally established in Northern Ireland but less than a year since the last election of an assembly. The 2 March election is ostensibly taking place because of dreadfully slipshod financial mismanagement of a renewable heat initiative introduced in 2012 when Arlene Foster of the DUP, now Northern Ireland’s first minister, was enterprise minister. Ms Foster has apologised for aspects of the policy, but in more normal parliaments she would have had to resign.
That is because, in Northern Ireland’s zero-sum politics, a resignation would be seen on both sides as a defeat for unionism and a win for nationalism. So it didn’t happen. In January, Sinn Féin therefore collapsed the executive and fresh elections were called. Yet there seems little likelihood that the outcome will soften the current rigidity between the two sides. Both the DUP and Sinn Féin are believed likely to win in their respective communities again. But Ms Foster cannot afford to bend on the RHI row, and Sinn Féin’s new leader Michelle O’Neill has to burnish her own implacability credentials after the retirement of Martin McGuinness. A renewed stand-off seems inevitable, which might in turn trigger renewed direct rule.
After 10 years of power sharing, that would be a very unwelcome outcome. It could be avoided if the two main parties – or the UK government – wanted to avoid it badly enough. The problem right now is that they don’t. But a stand-off would also be avoided if Northern Ireland’s voters prized the peace process highly enough to vote for parties that were more flexible about wanting it to work. Both the nationalist SDLP and the once mighty Ulster Unionists should offer that option, as the Alliance party does. All should encourage second preference voting across sectarian lines in the proportional representation system. It is time for this to happen. It would open an encouraging new chapter for Northern Ireland if it did.
Two realities caution against easy optimism. The first is the familiar weight of sectarian history. But the second is Brexit. The UK’s departure from the EU puts the border back on the Irish agenda, north and south. The harder the Brexit the harder the border. So Mrs May’s hard Brexit plans bring the hard border directly into play, to the enormous alarm of the Republic, where a general election may anyway now be imminent, and in spite of Mrs May’s claims that she wants the open border to continue.
The majority of Irish people, north and south, favour remaining in the EU. The majority of British voters, if they think about the issue at all, probably want the soft border to continue. The trouble is that a hard border in some ways suits the DUP, which campaigned for leave. It may also suit Sinn Féin, which could calculate that a hard border in Ireland, imposed by London, would make the unification goal more likely. In practice, therefore, Brexit is a very strong reason for Northern Ireland voters to think afresh on 2 March about the kind of assembly and executive they want. It is an equally strong reason for British and Irish opinion to urge them to vote for parties that will defend the open border and will work to defend it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
Last week in Brighton, Labour strong-armed the debate on the detailed issues about Brexit. This week in Manchester, the Conservatives have done almost exactly the same thing in their own way. Anyone who – like the European parliament, which debated the state of the Brexit process on Tuesday – was looking for clarity or precision from the Brexit session in Manchester will have come away disappointed and none the wiser. The Conservative party is divided from the cabinet downwards over the key issues. Yet those divisions were never examined on the conference floor during an afternoon that was rich in ministerial smugness but devoid of deeper content. Since unity and survival are the names of the game in Manchester, it is unlikely that Theresa May’s closing speech to the conference on Wednesday will be any different. As policy forums for their parties on the most pressing issue facing Britain in decades, therefore, these party conferences have been a fiasco.
True, there were a few flourishes worth noting in an afternoon of ministerial speeches that began with the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, stating as a fact – rather than his own hope – that Britain will leave the single market and the customs union at the end of March 2019, and ended with the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, doing a Winston Churchill impersonation by calling on the party to “let the lion roar”. True, connoisseurs of Tory ministerial speech codes were able to savour the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, making three barbed insults about Mr Johnson in his characteristically sobersided speech, while those who monitor the solipsism of conference speeches will have noted that the international development secretary, Priti Patel, used the word “I” no fewer than 35 times in one of the most deeply self-regarding addresses to which any party has ever been subjected.
The Brexit secretary, David Davis, claimed to detect a new public mood for pressing on with Brexit in his own speech. People in Westminster seemed to be stuck in an endless debate while the rest of the world wanted to get a move on, he said. A little later in his speech he admitted that the details matter a lot. But there was no hint in his text that he has got any further with resolving any of the issues that are currently holding up progress in the UK-EU talks. There would soon be a deal on citizens’ rights, Mr Davis insisted. But he gave nothing away on how the UK hopes to solve the Irish border question in ways that either Ireland or the EU will accept. And there was nothing said about potentially the most explosive question for Tory delegates – UK payments to the EU as Brexit takes effect. Mr Davis made some friendly pro-European remarks along the lines of Mrs May’s Florence speech, but the larger reality is that he, like all ministers, had come to Manchester determined to say nothing of substance.
That was even true of Mr Johnson, traditionally the conference darling, but now seen by many of his colleagues as too much of an unguided missile to be indulged in the old ways. Mr Johnson produced a vintage performance, a rousing speech which one of the flattest Tory party conferences in years sorely needed. He made some good cracks about Jeremy Corbyn and he reminded his party that its task is to prove that capitalism can be made to work better. But Mr Johnson is a cowardly lion and there was not much genuinely serious politics about it. Nor could there be, because the government cannot afford to have the foreign secretary roam free on Brexit policy or too obviously promote a leadership challenge to Mrs May. But the result is shameful. Tuesday’s sessions showed that the governing party of this country, tasked with the massive endeavour of making a Brexit deal that does not damage the British economy or British jobs, cannot actually say anything specific about these questions at all. If that is not an admission of political bankruptcy, it is hard to know what such words mean.
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 13.54 GMT
The prime minister gripped the biggest issue facing the country on Sunday. Controlling the party conference will be easier than finding an outcome for the Tories to agree on. From 23 June until Sunday there was no steady state for UK relations with the EU. The EU referendum was catalytic. It propelled Britain towards the exit door, but it left Britain with a prime minister who was unable to describe her ideal outcome as she took the country through it. In the increasingly unstable interim, those in the Conservative party who seek the most severe rupture have been emboldened. They could not dictate the terms of Brexit to the prime minister, but they could limit her options by fomenting a climate of Europhobia and generating demands at such a rate that it becomes easier to yield than to resist. It was the same game that hardline Tory Eurosceptics played to great effect with David Cameron.
This was why Mrs May had to grasp Brexit firmly on the first day of the Conservative conference in Birmingham. It was why she told the Sunday Times and the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that she intends a “great repeal bill” – a device to change the status of European regulations in British law so they might more readily be scrapped once the UK has formally quit the EU. It is why she led from the front on the opening day of the Tory party conference in Birmingham, saying that the government will trigger article 50 by the end of March 2017. The plan is presumably to make Britain’s withdrawal formal by March 2019, in time to abort UK participation in the 2019 European elections and giving her time to prepare for the planned 2020 UK general election, too. It is also why she tried to shift the argument away from the increasing tendency to define the options in terms of hard and soft Brexit, terms she explicitly rejected in her speech.
Mrs May also said these things because she was under increasing pressure to clarify what Brexit means. She has not done that in any detail yet. So doubtless the shadow boxing between the government and its most doctrinaire backbenchers will continue. But she did enough to be going on with. She made it more clear than before that she will not seek a Norway or Switzerland-style relationship with the EU single market. On the contrary, her priority is clearly to deliver some of the control over borders. That is one of the things that drove the leave vote in June. She also seeks an advantageous relationship with the single market, though without joining it. This is a very big call and the detail will be crucial. It was encouraging that she went out of her way to stress that European law, including employment rights, will be adhered to after Brexit. But she also put herself on a collision course with any Scottish demand to stay in Europe.
By saying all these things at the start of the conference Mrs May set the terms of the coming three days in Birmingham. She dominates her first conference as leader in ways that will have surprised many doubters. She also regained some of the wider political elbow room that she enjoyed in the first few weeks after succeeding Mr Cameron. In the course of doing it she also conveniently relegated Boris Johnson and the feuding Brexit ministers to the undercard of the day’s proceedings. It was smart media management. But the issues are bigger than that.
This is still a largely symbolic stage of the process. The European 1972 Communities Act, the foundation stone of EU membership, will not be pulled up immediately. Mrs May wants its obsolescence enshrined in law as a gesture of irreversible intent. But it does not bring us much closer to a conception of what Brexit really will mean. There will be some objection to the idea of passing a bill containing the presumption of a deal without any clarity about the terms of that deal. Mrs May will be challenging parliament to legislate for the idea of Brexit when the urgent task is to move from theory to practice.
Mrs May had little choice but to seize the initiative on the European issue this week. A refusal to do so would have ended up dominating her conference as militant Brexiteers on the fringe demanded a change of heart. And the Prime Minister wants to talk about other things before the week is out. This way she has retained control of the agenda. But it is a very dispiriting spectacle to anyone who wants the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU to contain some recognition that 48% of the electorate rejected the proposition altogether. The tone, as well as the content, of Sunday’s speeches from David Davis and Mr Johnson did little to calm the nerves of those who want the prime minister to navigate a wise course between the most extreme appetite for separation and a realistic acknowledgment that economic and diplomatic intimacy with our nearest neighbours and allies remains fundamental to the national interest.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
David Cameron failed as prime minister because he tried to be Eurosceptic and pro-European at the same time. Paradoxically, Theresa May can only succeed by being more Eurosceptic and more pro-European than her predecessor. To honour the instruction she has inherited from June’s referendum she must take Britain out of the EU. Yet to negotiate a Brexit deal that serves the national interest she is having to engage with European leaders, developing arguments about shared prosperity, mutual cooperation and continental solidarity not expressed by a British prime minister since Tony Blair.
If the goal in Mrs May’s discussions with Angela Merkel and François Hollande last week was to establish a pragmatic dialogue in circumstances that none of the participants much welcome, the trips seem to have been a success. The prime minister secured support for a delay in triggering article 50 – the EU treaty mechanism for exit from the club. Mrs Merkel sounded accommodating towards Britain’s quest for a deal that combines tariff-free trade and greater control over labour migration. Mr Hollande was more cautious. He maintains that free movement and the single market are conjoined and inseparable from EU membership. To renounce the latter means surrendering some of the attached privileges.
To what extent those preparations can establish parameters for a deal that might be acceptable to other EU members, to the British electorate and to the Conservative party is the most challenging question facing Mrs May over the coming months. Yet even to state the question in those terms is to oversimplify the multi-dimensional Rubik’s Cube nature of what she faces. Mrs May’s Northern Ireland visit this week and her talks with the Irish prime minister Enda Kenny today underline another hugely sensitive dimension.
And just as Mrs May can never forget about the Irish dimension of her task, so she has to keep the Scottish dimension in the forefront of her mind too. Nevertheless, the essential tension is the one outlined by Mr Hollande: the requirement for new border controls and the hope of preserving borderless trade pull in opposite directions. The referendum mandate makes limiting immigration paramount while economic rationale dictates preference for the single market. That’s why a compromise is required.
Mrs May must make a choice. Whatever she chooses, some people will be disappointed and angry. For that reason, her diplomatic efforts must be combined with a commitment to public explanation on a scale never before seen with regard to the EU. Whether a wider understanding of how the project works would have made a great difference to the referendum campaign is unknowable. It is safe to say that in-depth understanding was scarce. There is a lesson here for Mrs May in Mr Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate EU membership terms before the plebiscite. His deal was not perfect but nor was it without merit. Yet he got no credit for it. A renegotiation that looked robust in Brussels burned up on entry into the toxic British atmosphere of visceral Europhobia and tabloid jingoism.
That climate, hostile to any compromise, remains as much of a hindrance to Mrs May as any of the technical elements of the negotiation to come. No Brexit deal will be palatable to a British audience without some grasp of the process – the competing interests – that are involved. That is a job of strategic communications at home as well as a trading mission abroad. It is one reason why Mrs May ought to respond positively to initiatives such as one launched by the TUC this week, which highlighted both the jobs, industries and employment interests that she must seek to protect and the importance of involving civil society in the process. Mrs May’s task is as much didactic as diplomatic. In order to deliver the ultimate act of Euroscepticism, the prime minister will have to teach Britain to be a little more pro-European.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
The outcome of today’s Chequers cabinet summit on Brexit policy was not yet known at the time of writing. Yet the 11th-hour proceedings, and everything that has led up to them since well before the 2016 referendum, underscore a huge and continuing political truth. That truth is not affected by the Chequers outcome – and it is not sufficiently often stated either. Yet it blights every aspect of our political life as a nation.
Most revolutionaries have a plan for what they want to do after the revolution. Cromwell had one. So did Washington and Robespierre, Lenin and Mao. The plans may have been good ones or terrible ones, but at least they were plans. These revolutionaries were desperate to implement their projects.
Britain’s Brexiters are not like that. They want their revolutionary act – leaving the European Union – and they have got it. But they accept absolutely no responsibility for what comes afterwards. Instead they arrogate to themselves the right to carp, criticise, reject, undermine and denounce as betrayal every aspect of every attempt to define the consequences of their revolution. They have no doctrine other than dislike of the EU. They have no programme to replace it. Their revolutionism is a performance not a project. It’s an act – vacuous, hollow, infantile, fanciful and foolish.
The Chequers meeting has been a classic illustration of this fundamentally frivolous and destructive approach to politics. After two largely wasted years, and with the clock ticking towards Brexit in March 2019, Theresa May finally came up with a plan this week to try to give the Brexiters what they want – Brexit – but on terms that many remainers can live with. She and her officials have spent months trying to craft a compromise that would combine Brexit with terms that allows Britain to keep its promises on Ireland and to maintain jobs and the economy.
And the response? As soon as they got the Chequers draft, the Brexiters did the only three things they ever do. First they denounced the draft as a betrayal, then they leaked their version of it to the anti-European press, and finally they closeted themselves away to threaten and plot against Mrs May. Detailed alternatives? Different drafts that might resolve difficulties, bring disputants together or persuade the EU? Dream on.
Never at any stage do the Brexiters ever accept the practical duty of producing a detailed post-Brexit plan. Instead, David Davis smirks through meeting after meeting, Boris Johnson gabbily chases cheap headlines, Michael Gove spins a wordy web of courteous waffle and Liam Fox insists that black is white and white black. Mr Davis said this week that Mrs May’s ideas would not work. So, what might work instead? There was, predictably, no answer from Mr Davis. There never is. The Brexiters created the mess and the burden with which Mrs May has to wrestle. But it is never, ever, their fault. Nothing ever is. It is only, ever, Mrs May’s fault – or someone else’s fault: the civil service, the judges, business leaders, the Irish, the liberal elites or Brussels.
Before the Brexit vote and since, the Brexiters have never put forward a detailed plan of their own. They did not do so this week. They spent 12 hours at Chequers not doing it. They won’t do it next week either. They don’t do plans. They only do fantasy. They spun a fantasy of takeover by Brussels; now they spin a fantasy of liberation from it. They have held our country, its politics, its press and its shared life hostage to their lazy second-rate dreariness for too long. It is time to take the fight to them.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
If participation in a march counted as membership of a political party, the party opposed to Brexit is now probably the largest in Britain, and on some counts larger than the Labour and Conservative parties combined. 700,000 people demonstrated for a referendum on the final terms of any Brexit deal; the Conservatives claim 125,000 and Labour 540,000 ordinary members.
Both main parties are, to different degrees, divided over the question. The idea that a small group of self-regarding and self-deluding fanatics inside the Conservative party and the DUP should be able to dictate the most damaging possible form of Brexit is an affront to common sense. There is a real concern that a parliamentary majority is cowed by a hardline interpretation of the 2016 referendum result. Those MPs need the reassurance that hundreds of thousands of politically engaged fellow citizens now see Brexit for the self-inflicted wound it looks to be. That is what Saturday’s march supplied.
Many in parliament and the country at large accepted the first referendum result in good faith. They sincerely wished that the leadership of this country could find a non-destructive route out of the EU. No one in that camp yearns for another referendum. But some would argue that the political cost of confronting a Brexit reversal is lower than that of driving into an abyss. Inaction looks attractive while no one knows what terms, if any, will be agreed on which Britain is to leave the EU. No one yet knows what terms any party really wants and what price it is prepared to pay to achieve them.
Discussion of all these questions is still mired in make-believe. Realism still has some way to go. The increasing violence of language that Tory Brexiters are using against their own party suggests their desperation: talk of a “firing squad”, “a noose” and so forth for Theresa May, coming from some of her own MPs, suggest they still believe that if she were gone some other leader could work the magic they require and spin the gold of freedom from the dung-crusted straw of real trade agreements. None could, of course.
Much of the opposition to her now is led by men who as ministers signed up to the agreements which they now revile. They must know now that no government can deliver a Brexit which makes this country stronger and safer than EU membership does, but their hope of power lies in denying this.
There is a danger of magical thinking on the people’s vote side as well. The march was an inspiring statement of intent but it was not a programme of action. A second referendum could not on its own solve any of the problems which led to the vote to leave. It might exacerbate the divisions of the United Kingdom even more than the first referendum did. The stubborn, patient goodwill that the demonstrators showed as they waited – and they were so numerous that they spent far more time waiting than marching – needs to be harnessed towards solving the problems that led to the referendum result.
The Brexit vote was, as one banner said, the wrong answer to the wrong question. Those who reject that answer – and we are surely by now a majority, which will grow steadily as the date of departure approaches – must not be satisfied with getting the answer right this time. The question is still wrong. If the country is not to be consumed by it for decades, we need to discover what are the real questions – inequality and injustice, poverty of hope and of accomplishment– and face them with the courage and honesty which animated Saturday’s marchers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
The document is official, up to date and damning about a major government policy. Predictably, therefore, the government’s response on Tuesday was to dismiss its own EU exit analysis as being of no account whatever. But how can this be so? The document leaked to Buzzfeed this week was prepared this month, January 2018. It deals with the economic cost of leaving the European Union. And it contains no scenario for Britain after Brexit that does not leave the country worse off than it is now.
We do not know – partly because the government will not say and partly because it is divided on the answer – what kind of economic relationship Theresa May wants with the EU after Brexit. But the Whitehall document models three distinctly different scenarios. In the first, with no deal, UK economic growth would be 8% lower over the next 15 years than currently projected. In the second, a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, growth would be 5% lower. In the third, with Britain remaining, Norway-style, in the European Economic Area, growth would be lower by 2%. Remember also that the trend against which these figures are calculated is itself already well below the pre-2008 crash trajectory.
The impact, in other words, would be bad, worse, or worse still. These would be the only choices. There would be no good economic impact. Almost every sector of the economy included in the analysis would be negatively affected. So would every region of the UK. The civil service authors spell these sectors out in clear terms: chemicals, clothing, manufacturing, food and drink, motor cars and retail. These are all major sectors, generating large numbers of exports, jobs and taxes to pay for public services. All will decline, making it even harder to invest in schools, infrastructure and the NHS. The hardest hit regions would be the north-east, the West Midlands and Northern Ireland.
But all this would be offset by all those free trade deals with the rest of the world, would it not? Dream on, for here the nightmare gets worse. Even if Britain made a bilateral trade deal with the US and was able to roll its EU-secured global trading terms into other bilaterals, the impact would be tiny. A trade deal with the US – which since the US is the stronger economy would be concluded on terms favourable to America – would be worth an extra 0.2% to the economy in the long term. Trade deals with other countries like China (where Mrs May arrives on Wednesday), India, Australia, the Gulf states and those in south-east Asia would add 0.1% to 0.4% all taken together.
Challenged on these assessments in the Commons on Tuesday, the Brexit minister, Steve Baker, was utterly cavalier. The Buzzfeed story was a selective interpretation of a preliminary analysis, he said. Yet even if that charge is right, these findings are not just shocking but wholly at odds with the government’s message. Not surprisingly, several Conservative MPs joined the opposition parties in giving voice to completely legitimate concerns about the impact on the country and their own voters. Brexit stirs passions that are hard to alter. Many want Britain to move on. The public’s cynicism towards politics amid cheap claims about fake news and project fear makes reasoned debate on things like impact assessments difficult. When low paid work pervades too many lives, dire warnings about “the economy” can sound like a concern for the rich. Yet this assessment affects everyone. It makes it harder for a future government that was on their side to deliver. It would make poor Britons poorer. The government acts as if it has a blank cheque to vandalise the economy in Brexit’s name. The fight to stop that must not falter.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small,” Norma Desmond insists in Sunset Boulevard. The self-confidence of Brexiters, so flush with victory less than two years ago, looks similarly out of date and delusional. Brexit seems increasingly unimpressive even to its own supporters. David Davis’s message of reassurance to European business leaders gathered in Vienna – that Brexit will not change the kind of country Britain is – is the antithesis of everything the leave campaign promised. Amid the inconsistencies, outright contradictions and untruths, the one unifying strand was the pledge of a transformative moment for the UK (never mind the prevarication over what precise form the transformation might take).
In contrast, the Brexit secretary’s speech was reminiscent of the chancellor Philip Hammond’s remark in Davos that the government would seek only modest changes in its relationship with the EU – comments disowned by the prime minister as pro-leave MPs reacted with fury. Its tone was echoed in a separate speech on Tuesday by the environment secretary, Michael Gove, to the National Farmers’ Union, promising the maintenance of high standards and acknowledging the reliance on migrant workers in agriculture.
The disagreements within Conservative ranks look less and less like a grand ideological division between those for or against Brexit, and more and more like the split between those free to pontificate without having to face up to unpleasant realities (Jacob Rees-Mogg et al), and those forced into realism by actually dealing with the consequences of this folly. The former have become so reckless that, faced with a choice between harmony on the island of Ireland and a hard Brexit, they attack the Good Friday agreement as unsustainable (disingenuously insisting that their pronouncements have nothing to do with leaving the EU at all). The latter, who have to read the details and handle tough negotiations, are becoming ever less ambitious, looking for something – anything – that will do before time runs out in March next year. Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to a customs union with the EU after Brexit reflects and furthers this sharpening of realities.
These are the tensions that will play out when the cabinet gathers at Chequers on Thursday. Unable to lead her party to a solution, Theresa May apparently hopes that they will wrestle out a deal between themselves, producing an outcome that will almost certainly satisfy no one, but will allow them all to stagger across the Brexit line. Once they have done that, of course, the deed is done and Brexiters will be able to reshape their plans.
Mr Davis’s speech sought to reassure his counterparts by emphasising that UK regulations would stay aligned with EU rules, stressing the role that Britain had played in the latter’s creation. He even claimed that Britain would embark upon a race to the top when it came to standards. The image of a bonfire of regulations warmed the cockles of leave campaigners’ hearts. No one put the promise of more red tape on the side of a big red bus. Never mind the nonexistent £350m a week for the NHS. The things that Brexiters really believed in are thin on the ground too.
The acknowledgment that you can’t beat China by being cheaper is sensible. So is the recognition that EU regulations are imperfect; they should be seen as a floor, not a ceiling. But few developed nations aim for the bottom; it’s just that they can end up there when other options are cut off – as Britain’s are by Brexit. Raising your game is easier when you’re part of a big club that can set the agenda, instead of a lone competitor. The Conservatives’ record hardly suggests they are poised to become the champions of workers and environmental protections. Rules aligned in 2019 may be very different in 2021, or 2025.
Brexiters portrayed it as the assertion of a bolder country upon the global stage. That was always a stretch. It is, increasingly, a much diminished vision of a diminished nation: as alarming to remainers as ever and unsatisfactory to all. The closeup is coming into view, and it is not flattering.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
The practical implications of Brexit escaped much scrutiny when Britain voted to leave the EU. But the capacity of British ministers to strike trade deals with foreign states has long been central to Conservative Eurosceptic ideology. Reclamation of that particular portion of “sovereignty” was more important to many Tory leavers even than immigration control, although that worked more powerfully on public opinion. Liam Fox, international trade secretary, is meant to be lining up a banquet of deals for British exporters to feast on post-Brexit. In practice, not much can be achieved on that front before the UK’s end-state arrangements with the EU are settled. But a legal framework is needed in advance. That is the function of the trade bill that was published last week. It attracted little attention when Westminster was distracted by other scandals, but it is a document of paramount importance.
Like the withdrawal bill that continues its passage through the Commons this week, Dr Fox’s trade blueprint relies heavily on “Henry VIII powers” – effectively granting ministers the power to write law behind parliament’s back. It envisages an “appropriate authority” implementing legal changes and future agreements “by regulations”. That is a coded way of saying that Dr Fox reserves the right to do whatever he likes without pesky MPs getting in the way.
The bill was published just 24 hours after the deadline for submissions to a formal consultation, suggesting that Dr Fox was not interested in what businesses, trade unions and other affected parties have to say on the subject. That is consistent with the government’s wider approach to the terms of Brexit. It begins with ideology and proceeds with disregard for dissent. So if a wide-ranging market-access agreement with the US requires a bonfire of safety regulations and social protections – as the Trump administration has signalled it would – Dr Fox does not want to give parliament any means of obstruction.
The government has obvious reason to fear scrutiny of the deals it will strike outside the EU. The UK is a major economy by European standards but not the equal of superpowers such as the US or China. Negotiations will be tough and Britain, as the junior party, will be forced into some ugly compromises. Argument in Westminster about the desirability of importing chlorine-washed American chicken is an early sign of things to come. Ministers will find themselves caught between voters, who expect certain standards to be upheld, certain limits to apply, and business lobbies that want unlimited rights of market exploitation. US health providers and pharmaceutical companies would gladly see the NHS dismantled, for example. Some Tory MPs would be relaxed about that, but they would not have public opinion on their side.
Theresa May is in no hurry to confront the real-world consequences of her grandiose pledge that Brexit heralds the rebirth of “Global Britain” – a beacon of enterprise that can only be lit on departure from the EU’s customs union and single market. Not even everyone in cabinet believes she can redeem it. The Treasury, in line with the vast majority of international economic modelling, is unpersuaded. In reality, the UK will surrender practical influence over trade policy via its seats at top tables in Brussels for the “freedom” to have trading terms dictated by Americans, Chinese, Indians and indeed the EU.
But No 10 dare not confront the possibility that the single market – the biggest and most comprehensive free-trading arrangement in the world – is more valuable than the alternatives. That admission would eviscerate its Brexit policy. It would sabotage the whole case for leaving.
The UK’s entire approach in negotiations with Brussels has been skewed by blind faith in economic wonders available through bilateral trade deals that are, at best, remote. The gains in terms of sovereignty – enhanced control of the nation’s destiny in a globalised economy – might well prove illusory. And the bill for expediting that risk-laden choice is designed explicitly to deny MPs a voice in the process. A battle is already under way to defend parliament’s capacity to hold the government to account for its Brexit decisions with regard to the withdrawal bill. But that is not the only device by which ministers are trying to smuggle their half-baked plans and unchecked powers on to the statute book. It is clear that the battle for a proper democratic debate about Britain’s future outside the EU will have to be waged on many fronts.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
The case for Brexit rested largely upon two misapprehensions – or, to put it less kindly, lies. The first was the belief that engaging in a deep and broad partnership, with the necessary compromises and disadvantages that brings alongside all its benefits, was an act of treacherous self-sabotage. The second was a wholly unrealistic assessment of Britain’s international status and heft, rooted in a vague, nostalgic vision of its imperial past. A third myth sprang from these two: that a post-Brexit Britannia would emerge triumphant, a beacon of democracy, parliamentary sovereignty and prosperity, shining across the waves.
The last three years have left such ideas in tatters; the last week has ripped the remaining shreds away. Its events have left Britain appearing not only backwards-looking, irrational and divided, but fanatical, bitter, frivolous, chaotic and heedless of any legal or customary impediment to the executive. Boris Johnson promised a stroll to sunlit meadows; now he offers a grim, hellish march towards no deal, and his troops have had enough.
The most damning attacks come from within: from his MPs, and now his ministers. Amber Rudd ditched her opposition to no deal as Mr Johnson ascended the throne; now she has quit the cabinet and the Conservative whip, accusing him of an assault on “decency and democracy” for his purge of Tory veterans. In interviews she pressed home her attack, noting that legal advice on prorogation had not been given to the cabinet despite repeated requests and that there is no evidence that the government is seeking a deal, since it is devoting 80% to 90% of its time to planning for no deal.
Days before, Jo Johnson quit, citing a conflict between family loyalty and the national interest. Kenneth Clarke, ejected from the Tory benches after almost half a century, warned that a no-deal Brexit could be far more damaging to Britain’s economy than a Corbyn government. As briefings from Downing Street grew wilder, the lord chancellor felt obliged to announce that he would abide by the rule of law and had spoken to the prime minister about its importance.
Consider now the external view. The EU diplomats with whom we will have to work, with or without a deal, are ever more frustrated by the game-playing and have accused the prime minister of reneging on pledges to uphold the Good Friday agreement. (The taoiseach, who will on Monday meet Mr Johnson, has already warned that he does not expect any breakthroughs.)
But other parties are just as scathing. In his Radio 4 series As Others See Us, Neil MacGregor noted that respect for Britain’s parliamentary democracy and steady pragmatism are much diminished, and that the world sees an unsettled nation cut adrift from its moorings. One American columnist dubbed this week Britain’s stupidest hour, while Canada’s Globe and Mail, describing the appetite for national self-destruction, observed that the Tories had transformed themselves into a protest party “even while continuing to govern a Group of Seven nation with a permanent seat on the United Nations security council”. Implicit in that statement was a question: how long, in these circumstances, can we maintain this standing and hang on to these levers?
That the Trump administration cheers Britain towards the exit, as Vice-President Mike Pence did again in London this week, is a cause for concern, not reassurance. It wants to speed our course not from its deep amity towards the UK, but its deep hostility towards the EU. Any opportunity to undermine European cohesion, weakening it in global trade and diplomacy (notably vis-a-vis Iran), is welcome. A trade deal with Britain, inevitably on terms highly favourable to America, will merely be the glaze on the chlorinated chicken.
With friends like these, who needs to make more enemies? To say that Britain’s hard power has long been in decline is merely an expression of the obvious, not of doomsaying. Now the Brexiters who dreamed of restoring glory are daily eroding the soft power it amassed as its empire shrank. Those who doubted our goodwill and good intentions after the 2016 vote increasingly doubt our good sense too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
The peremptory demand to universities for the details of Brexit lecturers and the content of their courses from Chris Heaton-Harris, a government whip – revealed in the Guardian – has been officially disowned. Downing Street said the letter was sent in a private capacity. The universities minister, Jo Johnson, tweeted that academic freedom is enshrined in the Higher Education Act. No matter. This is the kind of damage that cannot be undone. Its whiff of McCarthyism will linger corrosively along with older memories and earlier offensively antagonistic slogans – enemies of the people, saboteurs, citizens of nowhere – that increasingly divide the two tribes, the them and us of last year’s referendum.
Mr Johnson is technically correct. Following sustained pressure in the House of Lords during the passage of the higher education bill in the spring, academic freedom is expressly protected in legislation. Institutions, the act says, may determine the content of particular courses and the manner in which they are taught, supervised and assessed, and the criteria for the selection, appointment and dismissal of academic staff. So on the face of it, the Heaton-Harris letter can be safely dropped in the bin and university life can move calmly on. But higher education has taken a beating in the past year or so – not always unfairly. Vice-chancellors’ inflated pay packets have been criticised. Private universities with degree-awarding powers have been given the green light. The quality of the student experience has been challenged, and universities only narrowly averted being ranked by an untested system of student assessment in a way that would have influenced their access to fees and government funding. The future looks at best uncertain, and probably troubled: numbers of EU and other overseas students are dropping in the face of the government’s obstinate refusal to exclude them from migration targets, and EU university staff and whole research teams are being broken up by Brexit and the loss of free movement.
Then there was the impact of the Brexit vote itself. Academics, like their students, were overwhelmingly in favour of remaining, and it seems safe to assume that many still regret the referendum result. The mistake is to take it for granted that this must mean universities have abandoned rigour to prejudice. In fact, some of the best informed analysis of the consequences of different outcomes of the Brexit negotiations comes from European studies departments. They are an invaluable public repository of fact-based research, all the more precious when information from Whitehall is so partial and hard to come by. As the general election confirmed, attitudes to leaving the EU are much more nuanced than can be reflected in the binary choice presented in a referendum. But in the face of conviction, facts are dispensable, as Scottish universities discovered when they tried to stick to the evidence during the independence campaign and found themselves under pressure to tone down their warnings.
Mr Heaton-Harris’s letter was not a harmless information-gathering request intended to advance the sum of human understanding. It was part of a campaign to discredit the case for remaining and to intimidate its supporters. It was opening a new front in the post-referendum culture wars between younger and older voters, voters with and without a university education, voters who look outwards and those who look inward. He was advancing from the position staked out last month by the influential Brexiter Tim Montgomerie who suggested that the Tory problem in the battle to win back the hearts and minds of young voters from Labour was the hold that liberal and progressive values have on teachers. Young minds, he argued, were not hearing both sides of the argument. The pitch was rolled against the right.
This line of attack has an unmistakable echo of the aggressive tribalism of Donald Trump in the US. In June, Pew Research found a sharp swing among Republican voters against universities. For the first time, they were no longer seen as a force for good. The swing correlates closely with the rise in Republican circles of criticism of universities for developments such as safe-space policies. In a similar vein, the US education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is planning to redraw campus rules on sexual assault because she believes they are biased against alleged assailants.
Universities could never escape being drawn into the culture wars. Now they find themselves, the values they represent and the benefits they bring, in the frontline.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Every negotiation involves choreography. But when the dancers don’t know the steps in advance, things can go very wrong. Then the blame must be shared. It takes two to mess up a tango.
The UK and EU are not so much stumbling over each other in the Brexit talks as fidgeting on opposite sides of the floor. There is an impasse, according to Michel Barnier, who negotiates on behalf of the European commission with a mandate set by the 27 European heads of government. They will meet this week for a summit, where it will formally be declared that insufficient progress has been made to allow Brexit talks to proceed from the terms of divorce to the question of a future trading partnership.
That is a failure, but not an irreversible one. October was the deadline for phase one, and it has slipped past. The Tories deserve the lion’s share of blame for being unable to express a consistent account of what they want from Brexit. A clearer sense of destination would have allowed a more precise discussion of the kind of concessions involved. Incoherence has been exacerbated by a pointless argument about the “no deal” scenario. Theresa May does not want to indulge that idea, but nor will she rule it out. Philip Hammond does not want to set aside money to pay for a disorderly rupture (yet). Hardline backbenchers think that makes the chancellor of the exchequer a Brussels lackey, practically a traitor.
That routine is absurd. There is no such thing as “no deal”. To function as a state beyond Brexit day, the UK will need some mechanism for cooperation with its neighbours, even if just to facilitate continental air travel. So “no deal” simply means a last-minute patchwork of desperate ad hoc mini-deals – the worst possible arrangement on a spectrum of dismal options. That would be bad for the EU, but worse for Britain, an imbalance that is plainly understood in the negotiating chamber but too often ignored in Westminster.
The problem on the Brussels side is institutional inflexibility. The sequencing of talks and the mechanics of the relationship between Mr Barnier and the EU27 leave no capacity to be agile. Mrs May had hoped that her speech in Florence last month, containing a theoretical concession on money owed, and describing the outline of transitional arrangements, would unlock the next stage. But the financial pledge was too vague for the Europeans. Of course it was. The UK will not say what it will pay if there is no clarity about what it is buying – what combination of old commitments and future perks – and it cannot be sure of that without discussions about final status.
There is a route out of this deadlock. The EU27 will agree to set up a parallel discussion over the shape of transition and trade, described in European circles as a “scoping” exercise. This could give Mrs May a tangible sense of progress, as long as both sides agree to frame it in those terms. The prime minister needs to save face with her domestic audience, otherwise the pressure to detonate the whole process will build further. In exchange for that bridge to phase two, Mrs May will have to go further on the money side. That means shifting towards the commission position in a complex debate over what the UK actually agreed to as an EU member – a concept that lumps together specifically allocated budget funds and less well-defined policy commitments.
That will not be politically comfortable, which is why the EU27 should play their part in a choreography of bilateral concession. It is not, after all, in their interests to see the talks break down. The limitations of the UK’s negotiating hand necessarily gives an advantage to Brussels, but Mrs May’s weak position in her party does not. It makes the whole process brittle and volatile. The biggest hazard is that hardliners in the cabinet conspire to depict the EU’s movement on scoping as a non-concession and a humiliation of the prime minister. That would cut off her avenue to dignified retreat on finance. There are Tories who are more interested in burning bridges than building them.
There are technical remedies for the current impasse – symmetrical compromises on scheduling and money. It is well within the capacity of European leaders, including Mrs May, to choreograph the steps. The problem is a Tory faction that is spoiling to break up the dance altogether.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
The political chaos in Britain is characterised by delusion. The prime minister’s blueprint for Britain to leave the European Union is apparently exactly as she wanted it, despite having been rewritten in the Commons by hard Brexiters. Emboldened aspirants to replace her – old Etonians Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg – are outbidding each other to promise ever more “glorious visions” of Brexit to voters. Ten ministers have resigned over Theresa May’s plans. Apparently she had not noticed all this. She told MPs she had been busy fixing Nato with Donald Trump. If this was meant to be a joke, it was at her own expense.
With the country facing perhaps an unparalleled national crisis over Brexit, one might expect Labour could step up to the plate. Not a chance. Its MPs are too busy resigning the whip. Or facing deselection. Or their attention is being consumed by rows over antisemitism. Don’t look at the Liberal Democrats; their former leader missed a knife-edge Brexit vote this week to give a speech addressing the controversy over his beliefs on gay sex. Politics in Britain is staggering from crisis to crisis just as the great issue at the heart of British life, withdrawal from the European Union, is in flux. There are now well-founded fears Britain could crash out of the EU with no deal, an act of serious self-harm.
The bizarre nature of politics at the moment is that there is a majority in parliament for the least damaging Brexit, in which the country negotiates favourable access to the single market, but accepts it will no longer be part of the EU’s decision-making apparatus. Yet this majority is leaderless. Some suggest that this could be resolved by either a government of national unity or a second referendum. Although neither is very likely, both could offer ways out of the gridlock. The worry is that applying either of these to an existential question – what will be this nation’s relationship with its main political and economic partner? – might not inoculate the body politic against the virus of populism but infect it further. The Tory MP Anna Soubry thinks that her party is being profoundly reshaped by populist forces, going so far as to see a creeping rightwing coup taking place with Mr Rees-Mogg “running the country”. It is vain, and at this moment supremely foolish, to think that sense and order can be spread by a fanatical minority of a political party in power overthrowing its leadership because it is unable to convince the majority of its MPs. Such a minority would have to apply more and more force to maintain itself in power against the majority of opinion. The result is a progressive undermining of the norms and rules of engagement that undergird democracy. The empty apology offered by the Tory chair Brandon Lewis for voting despite being paired with the Lib Dem MP – and new mother – Jo Swinson is just the latest example.
Neither Mrs May nor Jeremy Corbyn can be blamed entirely. They both lead discordant teams and divided parliamentary parties and face rebellious activists. Since Mrs May’s majority disappeared last summer both she and Mr Corbyn have proved to have strong survival instincts. Both appear to exude calm in a storm. Unfortunately beneath the serenity both leaders’ minds are plainly divided over the next steps that need to be taken. It is heartening, if anything can said to be heartening about this mess, that both understand they cannot afford to be diverted by hard-Brexit extremists, despite flirting with their ideas. Yet both seem uncertain how to deal with the impending disaster. Without a surer touch, British politics and Britain could be irreparably damaged.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
The government’s offer to include new commitments on workers’ rights in Brexit legislation is part of a political equation that looks simple enough. The prime minister needs votes in parliament for her EU withdrawal agreement, dozens of Conservatives say they are opposed and some Labour MPs representing leave-voting areas are amenable to a deal. But they need reasons to back one.
A guarantee that workers’ rights will not be shredded on the way out of the EU would help to satisfy some opposition reservations about the project. Labour MPs dislike Brexit for many reasons, but they are especially allergic to the hardline Eurosceptic ideology that sees workplace protection as a menace to enterprise and liberty. Theresa May is not an orthodox disciple of that school. She claims to be a willing guarantor of benefits that evolved under EU membership.
The newest expression of that claim is a plan to give parliament rights to resist a post-Brexit “regression” from European standards. Greg Clark, the business secretary, on Wednesday told the Commons the government would have to show that new laws will not corrode old rights. MPs would also have the opportunity to consider any future improvements in worker rights at a European level and imitate them with British statutes.
This is a tiny upgrade to powers that already exist. If there is a Commons majority for a new regulation, some way to introduce it can surely be found without Mr Clark’s clauses. The government is offering Labour MPs a gesture of readiness not to fall behind EU standards, not a locking device that keeps the two regulatory regimes in step. Mr Clark rejects the idea of automatic alignment on the grounds that it would outsource power to Brussels and so negate the purpose of Brexit.
That is the nub of the problem. Labour MPs do not trust Conservatives to implement a Brexit that respects social protections, and the Tories cannot win that trust because most of the party does indeed see divergence from European social norms as a motive for leaving the EU. It was never plausible that a bridge could be built between those positions, but the prime minister’s dismal attempt says something about how desperate and narrow her political ambition has become. Her current interest in protecting workers’ rights is tactical. It is part of the daily scrabble for a majority. That motive is at best tangential to the good reasons for wanting well-regulated labour markets, which is to resist exploitation and a race to the bottom in terms of pay and conditions.
The relationship between Brexit and labour rights is not simply a transactional question of what Labour MPs will take in exchange for supporting a deal. It is a question of the social and economic conditions in some parts of the country, epidemic job insecurity, and feelings of political and financial neglect that drove millions to crave a drastic upending of the status quo. The challenge in those areas is not to nudge the local MP into an aye lobby to deliver a Brexit deal but to understand and address the underlying grievances that were expressed in the referendum result.
There was a time when Mrs May’s promises to tackle those issues deserved a hearing. Her conservatism is not of the sink-or-swim variety that once treated economic decline in some communities as a market correction, best allowed to run its course. But she has lacked the authority among colleagues and the political space to develop a more compassionate agenda. EU negotiations have consumed her time in office and, beyond the one-off gratification of saying it has been done, Brexit promises no remedy for the anger and disillusionment that compelled many people to vote leave.
EU membership was not the cause of the ailment so losing its economic advantages is no remedy. If the government had demonstrated a meaningful shift in its understanding of Labour MPs’ concerns and the value of workers’ rights, it might have been said that the last-minute hunt for votes in parliament had yielded a long-term benefit. Instead, ministers are offering a concession so small it cannot cover the cynical motive behind it. This is shabby politics, poorly executed.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
The “mutineers”, the 15 Conservative MPs pictured on the front of Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph, looked more like new members of a golf club than a clique determined to undermine the will of the people. But this was not meant as a joke, and it had consequences that were not in the least amusing. The 15, all of them potential rebels against the government’s decision to write the EU exit date on to the face of the withdrawal bill, were the victims of another disreputable move in the same bullying spirit as the Daily Mail’s infamous “Crush the saboteurs” headline. The paranoid Brexit-supporting media persists in trying to entrench the idea that parliamentary scrutiny of government proposals is not the core duty of MPs but in fact a lightly veiled attempt to undermine democracy. In that vein, it was rightly condemned by ministers, including Steve Baker, who is piloting the bill through its committee stage in the Commons. It was also, although rather less roundly, criticised by Theresa May at prime minister’s questions, who said the government was “listening carefully”. None of that was enough to stop at least one of those named, Anna Soubry, receiving threats sufficiently alarming to report to the police.
There is not yet a date for the vote on the amendment introducing the EU departure deadline, but with a handful more rebels (the latest figure is 21), the government faces defeat. Ministers’ difficulty in explaining why it was necessary to write the date into the bill, when it is implicit in the two-year timescale dictated by article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, only added to speculation that it was intended as a piece of performative legislation, to send reassuring signals to committed Brexiters that the transition period, conceded by Mrs May in her Florence speech, would not stretch out into in an infinite period in limbo. It is true that it clarifies exactly when the so-called Henry VIII powers, which give ministers the ability to change the law without parliamentary scrutiny, will come into effect. But that slight improvement must be set against the fear, expressed most powerfully in Tuesday’s debate by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve, that the date might instead become a dangerous barrier to flexibility just as the negotiations approach their climax.
For as long as the Brexit negotiations continue to be a dual-track affair, conducted simultaneously with both the die-hard Brexiters in the Tory party at home on permanent alert against any hint of backsliding, and an increasingly frustrated European commission negotiating team in Brussels who want something substantive to deal with, it is hard to see how progress will be made. There is now less than a fortnight left for the UK to persuade Michel Barnier and his team that enough has been agreed in the past six months to trigger the start of trade talks at the December summit. Mrs May – although conceivably introducing a firm “leave” date as a prelude to making her Brexiters face some hard truths – appears still to be in the mindset of a year ago.
The rebels deserve our unflagging support. The EU withdrawal bill is huge and full of consequence. Some of its impacts are obvious: on Wednesday, Labour was fighting to preserve workers’ rights and environmental protections that derive from EU law. One of the mutineers, Ken Clarke, challenged ministers who insist there is no intention to water them down to say so in the legislation. There are other more complex difficulties to resolve: judges fear that it will be the courts that are left to unpick the consequences of a lack of clarity about, for example, where so-called “retained” law applies. They also want precision over when to take account of European court of justice rulings. After the government’s shocking failure to condemn the hostile media coverage – remember “Enemies of the People” – of the judges hearing Gina Miller’s article 50 case, trust is at a low ebb. However the Daily Telegraph portrays them, it is the MPs who insist on scrutiny that are defending democracy.
Last modified on Fri 14 Feb 2020 16.55 GMT
“Spaff some money on some geeks.” According to Chris Cook’s excellent account of Theresa May’s Brexit negotiations with Brussels, that was the instruction issued to the civil service by May’s enforcer Fiona Hill in late 2016.
It had finally dawned on the British government that it had committed itself to two incompatible things. One was that under no circumstances would there be a return to a hard border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The other was that all of the UK was going to leave the EU’s customs union. May faced exactly the same problem that her successor Boris Johnson is struggling with: you can do one or other of these things but you cannot do both. If Northern Ireland leaves the customs union, there will be border controls.
And so May tried to do what Johnson is still proposing: throw money at nerds and hope that they can somehow transform a political problem into a technical issue. The old (superbly condescending) joke was that whenever the Irish question was about to be solved, the Irish would change the question. But the British government has been trying to solve the riddle of Brexit’s Irish question not just by changing the question, but by changing the entire conceptual framework. It has to be removed from a discourse of history and geography and memory and translated into the languages of technology and managerialism.
That is how Johnson sought to define the problem in his speech to the Tory party conference last week: “Essentially a technical discussion of the exact nature of future customs checks.” Previously, of course, he suggested that crossing the Irish border was similar to going from one borough of London to another, and that any problem it creates could be solved with the same technology used to operate the city’s congestion charge.
This is a way of minimising and dismissing an inconvenient truth. But it also goes to the heart of the complete failure of Johnson’s proposals for a replacement of the backstop designed to keep the border invisible. Everybody in Ireland, north and south, knows that there are many technical questions thrown up by Brexit. But nobody – not even Johnson’s DUP allies – really believes that what Brexit does to John Bull’s Other Island is a matter for a “technical discussion”. In Ireland, it’s about lives – and deaths.
Writing about music is said to be like dancing about architecture. Using the language of technology to address the questions of history and belonging on the island of Ireland is geeking about memory – like trying to make an algorithm for grief. It’s a category error that shunts the problem not just into “alternative arrangements” but into a parallel universe.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, gets this. When she visited Ireland last April and spent time talking to people who live and work on both sides of the border, she said simply that she understood what they were saying because: “For 34 years I lived behind the iron curtain so I know only too well what it means once borders vanish, once walls fall.” She grasps the truth that what is at stake is not “the exact nature of future customs checks” – it is that customs checks (which the British government pledged never to reinstitute but now proposes to make necessary) are the outward bureaucratic signs of an inner anguish: the rebuilding of spiritual and psychological walls that have been demolished since 1998.
Two particular ironies attach to Johnson’s privileging of a technocratic discourse over real human experience. One is that the Brexit project is in every other respect famously contemptuous of “geeks”. The British people, in Michael Gove’s analysis, “have had enough of experts”. But the Irish, apparently, are expected to place all their trust in the experts, nerds and boffins who will come up with magical technologies to create what does not yet exist anywhere on Earth: a frontier between two different customs regimes across which goods move with no controls and no physical infrastructure.
The other irony is that Brexit itself is predicated on the idea that a technocratic discourse is entirely inadequate to the task of understanding how people feel about who they are and where they belong. Its bogeymen are faceless bureaucrats in Brussels who can never appreciate the importance of identity and history to the English. Yet the Irish are invited by the very same people to forget history and identity, to just lie back and think of “maximum facilitation”.
Brexiters’ technofreak obsessions cannot even begin to engage with the memories and anxieties and aspirations that are at the heart of Irish concerns about the collateral damage of the English nationalist project. The disjunction goes so deep that it even involves two different conceptions of time.
While Irish people are painfully aware of the past – the deep history that led to the creation of the border and the living memory of the Troubles – the Brexiters act like dedicated futurists. When Johnson told his party, in relation to the border, that “technology is improving the whole time”, he was repeating the sci-fi utopianism that has been central to the Brexit faith: the technology to ensure a frictionless border does not yet exist, but in these days of miracles and wonder it is just over the horizon. The actual “solutions” may be less Silicon Valley, more the IT Crowd, but tomorrow’s world is almost upon us.
Until they give up this technological illusion and engage with living history, there is no chance of Johnson and his allies coming up with serious proposals. But why should they do that? The great utility of their discourse lies in its distancing effects. The politicians and special advisers only have to spaff the cash – the geeks can find the answers. Technology – that abstract, shifting, supposedly value-free force – removes the burden of public duty. And the beauty of these machines and systems is that they have no memory, no fears, no hopes and, if it all goes wrong, no possibility of blood on their hands.
 Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times and author of Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.17 GMT
The parties’ manifestos tell a new tale of political division. The deep gulf in national opinion revealed by the Brexit referendum is reflected across the main parties; each is struggling to adjust to the uncomfortable discovery that its voters are not thinking what it thought they were thinking. The Tories and Labour are in the process of transformation. The Liberal Democrats, in startling contrast, are – metaphorically speaking – lashed tightly to the mast, committed to the course they embarked on long before the weather turned.
That explains why the top line of the party’s manifesto that is to be formally launched on Wednesday night is the promise of a second referendum on whatever deal finally emerges from the Brexit negotiations. It is completely in line with the party’s bold decision last year to pitch itself as the voice of the 48%. But it’s beginning to look like rubbish politics, and there are plenty of senior Lib Dems who said so all along. Step forward, Vince Cable. But the EU has been at the core of the party’s being since it took shape in the wake of the first Euro vote; anything else must have risked appearing a betrayal of fundamental principle. It seemed, too, to point to a way out of the 2015 catastrophe. It offered a new and positive identity that would at least soften the memory of the coalition years; and it seemed crowned with success when the party snatched Richmond from the Tories in a byelection at the end of last November.
The trouble is that the remain vote has turned out to be much flakier than it felt last June, or even at the time of the Richmond byelection. Polling now suggests that as many as half of those who wanted to stay in the EU are ready to knuckle down and get on with leaving. The wound is healing.
Unsurprisingly, this is not turning out well for the party. Instead of the usual election pattern of the Lib Dems picking up support as their name recognition and familiarity grows, this time it seems to be leaking away. Outside London and the south-east of England, campaigners are barely fighting on the national platform at all. They are fighting old-fashioned local campaigns about schools and hospitals. It’s almost like the old days of Liberal Focus newsletters highlighting the party record on bin collection and pavement repairs.
Fortunately there is a common factor that links activists and leadership: on the doorstep and in the TV studios the party is arguing that its objective in this election is to be the real opposition. Obviously, this pitch is partly forced on it by the overwhelming lead the Tories have in the polls and the complete implausibility (although not one that used to trouble them) of setting out a programme for government. All the same, it makes this year’s manifesto even more of a branding exercise than they normally are.
What is clear is that the party has not completely chucked out Orange Book liberalism: for example, it remains committed to balancing the budget by 2020, which is more than even George Osborne would do, and much more than Theresa May. An extra £6bn a year for the NHS and social care would be paid for by putting 1p on the basic rate of income tax. The nastiest of the latest cuts to welfare (remembering that, however reluctantly, the party conceded many others) – the no third child, housing benefit and all working age benefits – will be uprated at least in line with inflation. There is a big commitment to housebuilding. There are the traditional pledges on devolution and welcome support for a constitutional convention to examine the governance of the United Kingdom. There is even that eyecatching commitment to legalise cannabis.
In his manifesto launch speech, Tim Farron tries to bridge the chasm between devoted remainers and determined Brexiters; he insists that he respects the referendum result. But there are few concessions to the other half of the country. On immigration, the manifesto suggests some form of managed system of work permits and visas, but there will be no target. The Lib Dem rejection of a hard Brexit creates the familiar dilemma between having both the single market and free movement, or neither.
To some degree, all parties always mean different things to different voters. But the referendum has left a livid scar through the country’s politics. Lib Dems in the south-west or in Norfolk, say, who once ignored some of their party’s more fashionable policies because for them it was the natural party of opposition, are newly sensitised to what voting Lib Dem means, and too often that means only opposition to Brexit. Farron and his manifesto are a defence of the essence of liberal Britain: open, tolerant and outward-looking. Fabulous, but not necessarily in a good way.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Today the Liberal Democrats have moved from being a party supporting a second referendum on EU membership to one that simply wants parliament to revoke article 50 at the earliest opportunity. This type of polarising behaviour mirrors the no-deal extremists on the other side of the debate and illustrates exactly why British politics is stuck in deadlock.
Jo Swinson’s decision is nonsensical for two reasons. First, it flies in the face of everything the party has ever stood for. How can any Lib Dem politician look their constituents in the eye, refer to themselves as a “democrat” and then pledge to overturn the biggest democratic exercise this country has ever seen, without even having the courtesy to first ask the public if they have changed their mind? It is as astonishing as it is hypocritical.
Second, it completely misunderstands how most people in the country feel about Brexit. Of course, some remain voters want to stop it at all costs. But they really are a tiny majority, despite what Twitter may lead politicians to believe. There is a far more sizeable chunk who are convinced that, because of parliament’s failures thus far, a second referendum is the best way out of this mess. I do not agree with this position, but I have sympathy with those who have lost trust in parliament to deliver.
What the Lib Dems and other hard remainers miss is that there is a sizeable majority of the public, consisting of both remain and leave voters, who just want parliament to get on with it. They might not accept any old deal – many were far from impressed with Theresa May’s initial “blind Brexit” that was voted down three times – but they do understand that we need to find a way out of this quagmire. They recognise that consensus and compromise are not dirty words, but are in fact the lifeblood of any liberal democracy.
Fortunately, a solution is staring us in the face. After May’s deal was rejected a third time she belatedly reached out to the Labour leadership and began cross-party talks. The discussions broke down, but on 21 May, the then prime minister announced several compromises. These formed the basis of the withdrawal agreement bill (Wab): they included a pledge on workers’ rights, a vote on a customs arrangement, a role for parliament in future UK-EU trade talks, and even a vote on whether to put the deal back to a confirmatory public referendum. Labour fought hard to win these concessions, and it is an absolute travesty that MPs were not allowed to debate, or even study, the bill.
So today Caroline Flint, Rory Stewart, Norman Lamb – a Lib Dem disappointed by his party’s change of policy – and I launched our MPs for a Deal group, calling on the prime minister to recognise that the Wab is a strong basis for a Brexit deal. Why would he ever resurrect a version of a deal he has repeatedly criticised? Because his options are very limited. He is legally bound to ask the EU for an extension on 19 October yet he says he would “die in a ditch” before doing so, giving him only three routes forward. He can simply break the law by not requesting an extension. He can resign. Or he can pass a deal. Tabling a version of the Wab is by far the most likely option for securing a majority.
I really hope more Lib Dems join our cross-party group and understand that their bid to revoke article 50 polarises the debate even further. I also hope my own party recognises that it is in the national interest to back a deal.
It is easy to forget that the vast majority of MPs have voted for a Brexit deal of some kind or another, and that securing one is the most popular way forward. But for far too long our parliament has been paralysed by the extremes. Enough is enough. We must now break the deadlock. It’s time to rediscover the lost art of compromise.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
Here’s the Daily Mail’s comment the morning after: “In an act of betrayal and dishonesty, the House of Cronies, Dodgy Donors and Has-Beens voted last night by 358 to 256 to amend the Brexit Bill.”
Warnings that the upper house will be “signing its own death warrant” may come oddly from the Mail, not a vociferous supporter of reform until now. But hey, Brexit makes all kinds of strange new bedfellows
The Lords debate exposed the prime minister’s contradictory and deceitful arguments against protecting EU citizens living here. If, on this most popular and painfully human question, she will give no inch, that’s a terrible augury for how she intends to conduct these negotiations, opening with a war cry to all 27 countries: we hold your people hostage.
The Mail says: “It’s the bloody-minded Brussels bureaucracy, not her, that is bargaining with family lives and happiness.” Because, of course, she is “pushing hard for a deal that upholds the rights of all expats”. This is just a “remoaner” wrecking tactic, “a naked bid to sabotage Brexit by creating difficulties for Mrs May”.
As the Guardian reports heart-rending cases of threats to longtime EU residents with British spouses and children born here, Helena Kennedy gave the shocking statistic that a third of all their applications for residency are being turned down by the Home Office. Whoever knew that if they hadn’t had private heath insurance in the past they could be cast out for all time?
Yet one Brexit peer after another rose to swear there was never any question of expelling them. Ministers, including the foreign secretary, have assured the TV cameras it will never happen. But if so, why not accept this amendment with good grace when it returns to the Commons?
No, they say: these 3 million people must be used as hostages – though representatives of the 1.2 million Britons in the EU say they want this amendment passed, as an act of goodwill. You can’t bargain unless you sincerely mean to carry out the threat. So which is it?
Mass expulsions would be unthinkable – May as the new Idi Amin? Besides, for a depleted police, border force and administrators, it would be a crippling near-impossibility. Are we really to say goodbye to 55,000 doctors and nurses, a million care workers and prized university students while devastating industries from agriculture to car-washing, hi-tech IT to finance, catering and tourism? Forget tourism entirely – we would become pariahs.
So which is it: they can definitely stay – in which case just accept that amendment and tell the world – or rattle a sabre you may then be forced to use, whatever the self-harm?
Nigel Lawson won top marks for the most duplicitously twisted argument: he was voting against because this amendment would “stir up fear” in these EU residents, when there is “no question” of their expulsion. All this, he said, was just “virtue-signalling”, the new all-purpose insult for anyone the right opposes.
Presumably there are “sin-signallers” – including the 24 bishops who disappointingly didn’t vote for the amendment, led by John Sentamu, the archbishop of York. Only two bishops rebelled.
The poisonous rancour of Norman Tebbit is nothing new, but even their lordships gasped at his complaint about “looking after foreigners and not the British”.
Next deceit: the government claims this would delay triggering article 50, yet all it has to do is accept it with no delay at all. Besides, May’s timetable is plucked out of the air, insensitively ill-timed for distracted French and German leaders facing elections.
Bob Kerslake, former head of the civil service, made another killer point, dismissing promises a quick deal on this could be first priority in May’s negotiations: “The government does not have the power to strike a deal with the EU quickly because it is not in the UK’s gift.” Experienced diplomats rose to agree: there may be no agreement on anything until there is an agreement on everything. That might take years.
Every one of the 27 countries, plus their parliaments and the European parliament has to agree every aspect of a deal. If this is the tone in which the UK proceeds, then throwing spanners in May’s works will be irresistible to many of them. Why not instead welcome with open arms all our much-wanted and needed EU friends and neighbours who are already settled here?
This is just round one, but the bitterness and loathing of the victorious Brexiteers is a mystery. They won. Brexit is happening. But everywhere they spy conspiracies and betrayals, still spoiling for a fight. Why no magnanimity?
Ahead lie thickets of fiendish issues, subtle and dangerous. Is this how they will approach all debate, so any suggestions are howled down as a 48% plot? If so, things can only get worse.
Last modified on Sun 16 Sep 2018 16.19 BST
‘Support for Brexit is in the DNA of both the Daily Mail and, more pertinently, its readers,” writes the paper’s outgoing Paul Dacre. “Any move to reverse this would be editorial and commercial suicide” – 13 June 2018.
“What possible good can Tory Brexiteers hope to serve,” asks the Daily Mail, now edited by Geordie Greig, “at this hugely sensitive moment in the talks, by wielding their daggers against her [Theresa May]?” Chequers, it adds, “is the only blueprint for Brexit on the table” – 13 September 2018.
That would be the same Chequers blueprint that was described, under Dacre’s editorship, as “May’s dementia tax revisited” and “under fire from all sides”.
Although some adjustment of tone or allegiances seemed likely, following Greig’s appointment, the prediction was for a more gradual process, one more respectful, superficially, at least, to the myth of Dacreish genius. Remainers, reduced to parsing the Daily Mail’s internal appointments for glimmers of nation-saving hope, were urged to manage expectations. In the event, Greig’s arrival was brought forward and we can only hope Dacre has learned, from stories such as Amanda Platell’s “Can the Duchess of Cambridge cope with Meghan mania?”, how to rise above that ultimate humiliation: the arrival of a popular moderniser, who unblushingly uses words such as “positive”, “friend” and “tolerance”.
Within 10 days, Greig’s serial, sometimes comically glaring departures from the old, Dacre norms amounted, according to one industry analyst, to a “screaming handbrake turn”. Peter Wilby, in the New Statesman, noted a reduction in rage. Labour’s Emily Thornberry felt safe enough to approve a story with the tweet “not a sneering word in sight!!!” Physical testimonies of enlightenment reportedly include Greig’s clearing of Dacre’s panelled, Scoop-style lair and installation of work by Gilbert and George and Lucian Freud. For reasons that Daily Mail readers will presumably discover, famous artists, as well as writers, have long been drawn to the company of Greig, previously editor of the Tatler, Standard and Mail on Sunday.
Among regular readers, there is, to judge by the comments, some natural consternation. On Greig’s first day, his exclusive had the archbishop of Canterbury proposing wealth taxes. Excuse them? Where was the word “meddling”? Until last week, it was deep in the DNA of the Daily Mail always to rebuke, with this prefix, any bishop urging an effortfully Christian way of life (aka “drivelling soft-Left advice”). A reader (not Dacre) offers: “Another champagne socialist talking out of their rear end.”
It’s possible that Welby’s tax plan, along with other signifiers pleasing to what Dacre may still call “organs of bien pensant opinion”, has been over-interpreted by desperate Remainers. The new Mail’s coverage of Boris Johnson’s collateral damage, Carrie Symonds, has featured a wholly traditional combination of tutting and lasciviousness. Greig’s may be only a short period of ostentatious detoxification; just long enough for his proprietors and friends, the Rothermeres, to start living down Dacre’s “enemies of the people”, and to reassure his own, prodigious number of distinguished friends, that this is no longer the same paper that produced “Never mind Brexit, who won legs-it?”.
Suppose, however, that Dacre, the embodiment of the great man theory of newspaper editing, is mistaken and that the Mail, which can still do great reporting, could prosper minus his trademark rage, xenophobia, misogyny and judge-hating; along with regular monsterings for its enemies, administered pour encourager les autres.
It could be grounds for hope that Greig has, in contrast to the reputedly friendless Dacre, made it his life’s work to become close (to the point, to judge by his numerous tributes, of proximity to their deathbeds) to many heroes to the bien pensants, including the late Lucian Freud, the late Seamus Heaney, the late Ed Victor, the late Tom Wolfe and the late publisher, Matthew Evans. On his last day at the Mail on Sunday, Greig had to hasten to the late VS Naipaul’s deathbed, where he read aloud Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar, a service he seems sure – for any older friends worried about his increased editorial commitments – to continue to make available.
However Brexit ends, we can’t know whether Dacre’s Mail, yelling about lies and elites on the eve of the referendum, generated or reported bad feeling, nor whether a Greig Mail has any moderating potential. Even a coming drop in circulation – inevitable, given existing warnings, an industry in decline – wouldn’t prove that middle England abominates luvvies to the point that Dacre, thinking himself its soul, always believed.
A more important metric, for the Mail’s proprietors, might be the speed with which it tempts back some of the advertisers, including Lego and Center Parcs, needlessly sacrificed to Dacre’s obsessions, or sees a decline in the number of times its brand is mentioned, as it increasingly was under Dacre, in connection with Hitler. As in: “previously Hitler-supporting rag”.
But maybe those best placed to measure the democratic impact of a detoxed Mail are the political favourites whom Dacre ushered, via a co-operative BBC, on to the national stage. How must it feel for Boris Johnson, formerly a blond prince destined to restore his country’s lost glory, to be unceremoniously redefined as a raddled sleazebag, with a photograph to prove it. “Rough night Boris?” The paper is saddened to note that he drives in this reduced condition “an old Toyota Previa”. And to add, in a leading article, that while others worked on Brexit, Johnson “found time to cavort with a woman half his age”.
But the Mail has also, in its allegedly more sentient iteration, chosen to objectify this woman, just as it does the legions of victims on Mail Online, its dedicated, snuff’n’perving website. If there should happen to be any great minds still out there, wondering what to say to Geordie on their deathbeds, they could do a lot worse than mention it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
So, here’s an idea: let’s abolish the wheel. Let’s escape the tyranny of the circular device, and spend the money saved on axles, spokes and hubs on – oh, I don’t know – the NHS. Let’s take back control of rotation! But wait a minute. This can’t be done overnight. We shall still need some means of transporting ourselves and our goods until we have formally renounced the wheel, but before we have agreed on a new device. There’ll probably need to be an “implementation period” in which we remain “aligned” with the existing circular format.
Then, when we’ve finally got rid of the old system – let freedom ring! – we’ll need a new, bespoke mechanism. What we’ll want is our own round component that rolls around an axis; an independently designed disc that turns reliably to enable easy movement. Something that gyrates smoothly along the ground. I wonder what we should call it.
This, of course, is what the Brexiteers fear that Theresa May has signed up to in her initial agreement with Brussels. They look with unease at a passage that decrees “in the absence of agreed solutions, the UK will maintain full alignment with those rules of the internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support north-south co-operation [between Northern Ireland and the Republic]”. That looks suspiciously like leaving the single market and customs union in legal fact, but not in technical practice.
For those of us who voted remain, this is welcome, in as far as it goes. For the leave camp, it represents a tremendous risk. The senior cabinet Brexiteers – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – have been reassured that “alignment” refers to broad goals rather than specific regulations, that last week’s text is non-binding at this stage, and that it will in any case be superseded by the comprehensive trade deal that ministers must now start to draft.
The Brexiteers’ calculation is twofold: first, that at this point, it was not in their interests to be portrayed as wreckers, conspiring with the Democratic Unionist party against the prime minister at a moment of crisis. Johnson, in particular, has an eye to posterity and fears being personally blamed by historians if Brexit goes wrong.
Second, they have gambled upon the power of postponement and their conviction that initially strict “alignment” will morph into something much more nuanced and customised as the putative UK-EU trade deal takes effect. Hence Gove’s wink in Saturday’s Telegraph. “If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU,” he wrote, “the agreement will allow a future government to diverge.”
Like most apparent statements of the obvious in politics, this was no such thing. What he was really signalling to his fellow Brexiteers was this: when she’s gone, chaps, we can fix all this.
It would be churlish to deny that the government is stronger than it was on the day that the DUP scuppered the PM’s first draft and humiliated her on the global stage. But it remains the case that May’s weakness is her only true strength. As unhappy as the DUP and the Brexiteers remain with what has been agreed, they were not ready to risk the fall of the government and Jeremy Corbyn kissing hands at the palace. It was they, not the PM, who blinked.
As so often, it was our old friend “constructive ambiguity” that got May, her party, the Irish government and Brussels over the line. You can read the text as a victory for British sovereignty, a significant retention of power by the EU, a step towards Irish unity or a safeguarding of the union.
This kind of ambiguity was essential to the Good Friday agreement, which entrenched an open-ended process founded upon euphemism. In contrast, the Brexit talks assume and depend upon the eventual achievement of clarity – even if, in many cases, that point is not reached until long after the UK’s formal departure on 29 March 2019.
How, for instance, does the UK claim the right to “diverge” from EU standards if it so chooses, and yet still avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic? The government’s “position paper” on the subject, published on 16 August, raises more questions than it answers, pledging to “continue some of the existing agreements between the UK and the EU, put in place new negotiated facilitations to reduce and remove barriers to trade, and implement technology-based solutions to make it easier to comply with customs procedures”.
Sounds great. But what does it mean? Don’t “facilitations” and “technology-based solutions” put you in mind of David Brent, rather than a great nation planning its future place in the world?
There is another, greater problem, and one about which ministers can do precisely nothing. The negotiation of Brexit is necessarily technocratic, a neuralgic process of shuttle diplomacy, textual emendation, and all-night, Pro Plus politics. Its grit and heft are defined by institutions, rules, jurisprudence and a desire to preserve prosperity.
Yet now, more than ever, I think last year’s referendum outcome was an emotional event rather than a forensic verdict. According to a report published last week by NatCen Social Research, only 28% of leave voters now think the UK will secure a good deal, down from 51% in February. Yet there is no comparable switch towards remain, no surge of buyer’s remorse. It is as if the voters are saying: good or bad, we want out.
This is bizarre only if you look through the traditional analytic prism of policy formulation, institutional development and economic rationalism. Brexit has become (and perhaps always was) an identity-marker, not a progress-determinant. It is not primarily perceived as a means of increasing GDP per head, empowering trade deals or liberating the legal system. It is a banner that you brandish as a means of expressing embattled identity and cultural grievance. It enshrines visceral allegiance – the currency of populism.
The true shame of the leavers is that they inflamed the worst impulses of the electorate – on immigration, cultural uniformity and social change – while maintaining a smile of respectable innocence. They raised expectations that cannot be met (and, in the case of immigration, should not be).
Which raises the real problem: what happens when those expectations are not matched and the New Jerusalem of the 2016 campaign is revealed as the con it always was? What happens when the voters realise that what they have been left with is still, after all, a wheel?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
When politicians can spread untruths with little accountability and few electoral consequences, an irreversible rot starts to set into the political system. There’s no greater indicator that this is happening in Britain today than the fact that a man within spitting distance of Downing Street is getting away with deploying utterly misleading information about what might happen in the aftermath of a no-deal Brexit, in order to strengthen his leadership bid.
In a leadership debate last Tuesday, Boris Johnson said that if Britain were to crash out of the EU without a deal, we could avoid paying any tariffs on imports from Europe. He claimed that there could be a “standstill” under article 24 of the World Trade Organization’s general agreement on tariffs and trades, which would allow the UK and the EU to get around the WTO rule that a country that eliminates tariffs for another country, outside of a comprehensive and mutually agreed free trade agreement, must also do so for all other WTO members.
Johnson’s claims contradict the views of trade experts. The House of Commons library summarises it thus: “Trade law experts have repeatedly and authoritatively dismissed the view that the relevant rule offers an easy solution to UK trade with the EU in the case of ‘no deal’.” So Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, was entirely correct to reject Johnson’s assertion. If there is no withdrawal agreement when Brexit happens, Britain and the EU will have to trade under WTO tariffs, unless they choose to lift tariffs for other countries.
The only way to eliminate tariffs between the UK and the EU after a no-deal Brexit is either through a time-limited “interim agreement”, which other WTO countries have the power to block – it’s why no WTO member has used such an interim agreement since 1995 – or to negotiate a full free trade agreement that would likely take years to agree, not least because, unlike the withdrawal agreement, it would almost certainly require unanimity from EU states.
That Johnson is happy to wilfully mislead voters should come as no surprise. As the public face of Vote Leave in 2016, he claimed that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for spending on the NHS, which saw the head of the UK’s statistics watchdog accuse him of “a clear misuse of official statistics”. During the campaign, he stoked fears that Turkey was on the verge of joining the EU, despite the fact its application had stalled, but earlier this year claimed that he said nothing about Turkey during the campaign. But his propensity to stray from the truth is doing little harm to his leadership campaign.
It is reflective of the extent to which no deal – certainly not the Brexit proposition presented to the electorate in 2016 – has become the Brexit of choice for hardline Tory Eurosceptics. Faced with the reality that the Brexit they presented to voters was only ever a fantasy, they have joined Nigel Farage in clamouring for a “clean” Brexit – in other words, crashing out of the EU. This has resonated with Conservative members: more than half say they prefer no deal to the withdrawal agreement. The two remaining Tory leadership candidates, Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, have been shamelessly playing to this crowd; even Hunt has said he would countenance no deal.
Of course, no such “clean” break from the EU exists. Britain is not legally prepared for a no-deal Brexit: at a minimum, the government needs to get at least five more bills through parliament. Britain would need to re-establish its independent status as a member of the WTO, not necessarily straightforward if other WTO members try to extract concessions. And the UK’s negotiating position with the EU would be significantly weakened: once we have left, a new transitional agreement would likely require unanimous agreement from EU states, including national and regional parliaments, rather than the qualified majority required for the withdrawal agreement under article 50.
A no-deal Brexit will have destructive economic and political consequences for the country. The government’s forecast is that it would depress GDP between 7.7% and 9.3% over a 15-year period and it is the least affluent areas of the nation that will be hit worst in terms of jobs and growth. Moreover, a no-deal Brexit risks the breakup of the UK; it would increase the pressure for a vote on Irish unity and fuel the campaign for Scottish independence. This does not seem to worry the Conservative members who will select our next prime minister. One poll last week suggests they are so ideological about Brexit that they are happy to countenance significant economic damage, the breakup of the union and the destruction of their own party in order to see it happen. Johnson is currently expected to secure a comfortable victory among them, despite the fact that 40% believe he cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
It has never been clearer that the Tories cannot be trusted on Brexit. In failing to rule out no deal, both Johnson and Hunt seem entirely unperturbed about its impact on the least affluent areas of the country. Why would they be, when they have been part of a government happy to load the burden of austerity on to low-income families with children?
But last week, Jeremy Corbyn yet again refused to move Labour to a position of unambiguous support for a referendum on any Brexit deal, and a commitment Labour would campaign for Remain, despite the views of the overwhelming majority of party members. And while Labour remains racked by its own Brexit divisions, the Conservatives will continue to evade scrutiny for the damage they seem all too willing to wreak on Britain.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
‘Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU.” And with that, the government’s Brexit white paper laid to rest one of the dangerous myths perpetrated by those who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union. But, seemingly unaware of the irony of declaring this in a white paper hastily drafted as a concession to MPs, by a government that opposed parliament getting a vote on triggering article 50, it added: “It has not always felt like that.”
It certainly has not always felt like parliament has been sovereign in recent weeks. But that has been because of Theresa May’s roughshod approach to democratic scrutiny rather than any edict passed down from the EU.
Parliament has been given a vote on article 50 not as a result of pressure it applied itself, but because Gina Miller took the government to court. Mrs May shamefully resisted all the way up to the supreme court.
The bill to trigger article 50 continues in that vein. While it might satisfy the courts, it is fundamentally undemocratic. There are no measures to give parliament a meaningful chance to scrutinise the terms of Britain’s EU exit. The white paper says only that parliament will get to vote on the final deal agreed with the EU.
Too little, too late. After a lengthy process that includes approval by the European council, approval by at least 20 countries that make up 65% of the EU’s population, and ratification by the European parliament, it will essentially be a choice between any deal Mrs May has struck and crashing out of the EU after two years on World Trade Organisation terms, risking economic carnage. In other words, no real choice at all.
The terms of our European Union exit are no less critical than the principled decision itself on whether to leave the EU. Yet the government is, in effect, eroding any means by which parliament could scrutinise them. It is nothing short of outrageous. As the bill enters its Commons committee stage, the next few days will prove a critical test of the extent to which parliament is willing to assert itself.
It is all the more important given that there is much to be concerned about in a thin white paper that sheds little extra light beyond the prime minister’s speech two weeks ago. Her faith that we will be able to secure single market-style access for cherry-picked sectors, while ditching freedom of movement and renouncing dispute resolution by the European court of justice, is completely misplaced.
Her belief that we will be able to negotiate a full deal within two years of triggering article 50 appears deluded, given that free-trade agreements typically take far longer to negotiate and ratify, even when they do not include the fiendishly complicated negotiations around services that she wants included in any final deal. There is an alarming lack of detail about implications for the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
It is imperative that parliament asserts itself in the coming days. The Observer supports the triggering of article 50 as the natural next step in negotiating our EU exit, but only if MPs, acting in the national interest, attach two essential democratic safeguards to the bill.
First, parliament must be able to meaningfully scrutinise the terms of any deal the government negotiates with the European Union. This must mean the opportunity to reject any agreement before it goes to the European council for approval, and to give the government a mandate to seek further time for negotiation, should it reject it.
Any MP planning to vote against the amendments to the bill that seek to ensure this – whether or not they supported Brexit – should reflect long and hard on precisely what they think parliament is for, if not to scrutinise the government on this most momentous of decisions. Second, the British people must have the opportunity to accept or reject the deal negotiated by the government. The referendum result provided a democratic mandate for Britain to leave the EU; it did not give permission to the prime minister to negotiate any deal she sees fit.
Voters may choose to ratify the government’s deal in a second referendum or, faced with a concrete set of terms for Britain’s exit, they may choose to reject the deal and deliver a mandate for the government to seek to try to remain in the EU. But the final say should rest with them.
As the Brexit secretary, David Davis, has so eloquently argued in the past, leaving the EU is a process that requires two referendums. There are no legitimate grounds on which to oppose this additional layer of democracy. If parliament passes the bill without democratic safeguards, it would effectively be writing the prime minister, who has not even won an election, a blank cheque.
Leaving the EU is not a black-and-white decision, but one coloured by shades of grey. Without parliamentary scrutiny, there is a real danger that the decision over which of the many existing exit doors that Britain takes is driven not by the national interest but by the political dynamic between Mrs May and the most hardline Eurosceptics in her party.
This would be a travesty. Opposition MPs and Conservative backbenchers must transcend party politics this week to ensure that these democratic safeguards are attached to the bill. It will take bravery, of the sort displayed by Gina Miller, who has been vilified by parts of the press and faced death threats for her role in ensuring that parliament has a say.
It now falls to parliament to ensure that her courage does not go to waste. There are those who will rush to label MPs voting for proper democratic scrutiny as enemies of democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. We cannot allow these forces to continue in their drive to remake Britain in their own often narrow and spiteful image.
Never have we so much needed our parliamentarians to stand up for the sovereignty of parliament and the right of the British people – not the purveyors of hatred – to have the final say.
Last modified on Sun 19 Jan 2020 15.06 GMT
It has been a difficult start to 2020 for the EU and the new European commission, which took office last month. Ursula von der Leyen, who succeeded Jean-Claude Juncker as commission president, is not short of ambition. She believes Europe should take a leading “geopolitical” role in international affairs, reflecting the EU’s status as the world’s largest trade bloc. But turning words into deeds is proving problematic.
“The EU needs to be more strategic, more assertive and more united in its approach to external relations,” Von der Leyen told Josep Borrell, the newly nominated EU high representative for foreign and security policy, in a mission statement last autumn. “We must use our diplomatic and economic strength to support global stability and prosperity… and be better able to export our values and standards.”
It’s early days. But to suggest Borrell, a 72-year-old Spanish former foreign minister, is struggling to fulfil this bold mandate is to put it mildly. Humiliation has been heaped upon humiliation in recent weeks, leaving the EU looking more like an irrelevance than a rainmaker. When Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s senior general, Qassem Suleimani, he totally ignored his European allies.
Trump’s illegal, and unilateral, action effectively blew up the most prized achievement of Borrell’s predecessors, Federica Mogherini and Cathy Ashton – the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which was already on life-support because of US sanctions. Adding insult to injury, the US then insisted that the EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) trigger the deal’s dispute mechanism. They complied. Iran, predictably, reacted with fury.
The point is that the EU opposes Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy towards Tehran and has sought ways to circumvent it, for example by maintaining non-dollar trade in food and medicine. But European businesses, fearing US reprisals, have mostly refused to play ball. When the EU commission mandated the European Investment Bank to support investment in Iran, it balked for the same reason.
Embarrassing, too, was the revelation that Trump secretly threatened to impose 25% tariffs on European car imports unless the dispute mechanism was triggered, a move likened to “extortion” by one official. The EU3 claim they were going to do it anyway. The episode is a troubling example of the US trying, and succeeding, to direct EU foreign policy. It left Europe looking miserably weak.
Weakness also characterises the EU’s approach to the Libyan conflict, which it has a vital interest in halting, given the link to destabilising migrant flows across the Mediterranean. Yet another attempt to stop the war will be made in Berlin today under UN and German auspices. But EU states appear at odds over which of the two warring sides to support.
Angered by a deal between Turkey and the UN-recognised government in Tripoli, which seeks to control disputed energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean, Greece and Cyprus are courting Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan rebel leader, who held talks in Athens last week. France has also appeared at times to support the rebel general, while Italy leans the other way.
The minimalist hope in Berlin is that a permanent ceasefire can be agreed. But the Turkish decision to ignore EU pleas and send mercenaries to join the fight – condemned by Borrell as “very dangerous” – plus blatant meddling by Russia and multiple Arab states show how little influence a sidelined EU has.
Whether the issue is Syria, the conflict in eastern Ukraine or Palestine (where Trump has again ignored EU policy), Europe is punching well below its weight, Von der Leyen’s strictures notwithstanding. This is not a new problem. But it is getting worse. As the US, China and Russia and their imitators play destructive global power games, the EU can only watch and fret. And Britain, drifting off, rudderless and irresponsible, into transatlantic limbo is no help at all.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
For months, trade experts, business organisations – and even the Treasury – have been warning about the calamity of a no-deal Brexit. And for months, the prime minister and most of her cabinet have shrugged those warnings off. “No deal is better than a bad deal” is the standard refrain.
No more. Last Thursday, the government finally published the first tranche of no-deal notices, which set out advice on preparing for a no-deal Brexit. The government didn’t admit that no-deal would be a disaster in so many words. “Our institutions will be ready for Brexit – deal or no deal,” came the reassurance from Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab. But the drily named “technical notices”betray a different reality: the huge upheaval businesses and consumers will face in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
For every business that exports, there will be layer upon layer of additional bureaucracy. Pharmaceutical companies have been advised to stockpile medicines for at least six weeks. Consumers may face more expensive credit card transactions with retailers on the continent, and organic farmers a nine-month block on exports to the EU as they wait for the UK organic certification bodies to be approved by the EU. These are the just some of the gritty realities that will together produce the £80bn annual price tag of a no-deal Brexit estimated by the Treasury.
The government’s own scenario planning rubbishes two of the main arguments Brexiters advanced during the referendum campaign. Voters were told that leaving the EU would allow Britain to take back control. But the technical notices make clear just how much control Britain would give up in a no-deal Brexit. In order to maintain supplies of food, energy and medicines, the government says it will have to shadow EU regulations. This is the first admission that – whether we leave without a deal or remain part of the single market – Britain will shift from rule-maker to rule-taker as a result of Brexit. And that’s before we try and independently forge trade deals with giants such as the US, which will insist on imposing its laxer regulations in areas such as food on British consumers.
The reality is that the Brexiter fantasy of regaining control harks back to a time when Britannia ruled the waves. There’s no such thing as 19th-century-style national sovereignty in an interconnected world where economic success is built on international trade. The future lies in more, not less, intergovernmental co-operation and the European Union – for all its faults – is the most functional model of that. The reality is that the UK is giving up membership of the world’s most significant trading bloc – in which it has exerted real influence for a decade – in exchange for having its terms of trade dictated by other governments.
Second, Brexiters promised that shunning Brussels would lead to the slashing of red tape. But a no-deal Brexit will create a huge increase in bureaucracy, and not just for businesses. Raab has said it would require up to 16,000 extra civil servants – half the number of staff employed by the European commission.
Meanwhile, the impossible conundrum of what to do about the Irish border remains unresolved. And Herman Van Rompuy, former president of the European council, warns in the paper today that a no-deal Brexit could potentially risk the unity of the United Kingdom.
The crazy pretence that all will be well in the event of no deal – the equivalent of the government sticking its fingers in its ears – is the product of the impossible political bind Theresa May finds herself in. The hard right of her party want her to “chuck Chequers” and are actively lobbying for no-deal chaos. The tightrope she walks between keeping them on board, while simultaneously moving negotiations with the EU forwards, becomes ever thinner as the article 50 deadline draws closer.
And the technical notes underline the extent to which the Chequers plan falls short as a starting point for those negotiations. It would require the EU to pick apart its four freedoms, which it has said it is not prepared to do.
The British negotiating strategy rests on the idea that the EU has just as much to lose as the UK from no deal, forcing it to allow the UK to cherry-pick the bits of the single market it likes. But in saying that Britain will unilaterally adopt European regulations in the hope that the EU will return the favour, the technical papers put paid to that strategy: the reality is that the EU is in a stronger position and can dictate the terms on which it would do so.
Raab implied the blame for any no-deal Brexit would lie with the EU. But the public won’t buy this: most voters say they’d blame the government for a bad deal. That’s the problem with mainstream politicians adopting a populist-lite strategy. Once they’ve bought into the idea of a scapegoat – and taken it out of the equation, on leaving – the blame for the ensuing chaos will rightly and squarely be directed back at them. Populists such as Nigel Farage will be standing by to capitalise on it. Theresa May is about to learn a hard lesson: you can’t beat the populists by aping them. And it will be ordinary Britons who suffer the consequences.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Britain stands on the brink of a momentous decision. Under what terms should we leave the EU, to which we have been intimately bound – economically, culturally, socially – for the past 45 years? Yet, extraordinarily, our politicians are no closer to reaching a consensus on a satisfactory form of leaving the EU than they were in 2016, when we voted for Brexit in that fateful referendum. Fearful of the electoral consequences, neither party has been prepared to present us with the painful dimensions of that decision, preferring, instead, to pretend that Brexit requires no hard choices.
This leaves the country in a dangerous political vacuum. Two years on, it will only be resolved by putting a concrete proposal to leave the EU to a popular vote, as the Observer argued 18 months ago. But both parties have failed to back a referendum, claiming that leaving the EU – however we do it and regardless of the cost – represents the unchallengeable will of the people.
It’s time to call this out once and for all. By itself, the 2016 referendum did not afford sufficient democratic legitimacy for taking Britain out of the EU, come what may and however bad the terms. Voters were not presented with a clearly articulated option for leaving. The poll followed a campaign in which voters were told that leaving would be a pain-free way to “take back control” of our borders; to enrich ourselves by seizing economic independence, while freeing up billions to pump into the NHS. Brexiters acknowledged no costs or risks to the painstakingly negotiated peace in Northern Ireland. True populists that they are, they mis-sold voters a disingenuous delusion. And lo and behold, they have failed to deliver.
But Theresa May, the circumspect Remainer who embraced the referendum result as her path to No 10, also has much to answer for. The referendum gave her a mandate to negotiate the best possible exit terms and bring them back for approval. It was not a blank cheque for her to take Britain out of Europe on any terms, regardless of the price. Yet a blank cheque is what she has sought. She has ridden roughshod over parliament. It was only given a vote on triggering the article 50 process setting in train our departure because Gina Miller took the government to court; it will only get a vote on the final deal because Tory MPs rebelled against her.
But the parliamentary vote on offer does not provide sufficient scrutiny for the biggest decision Britain has faced in decades. MPs will only get a vote for or against the deal. If they vote against, Britain will crash out. That forces their hands: reasonable parliamentarians will be obliged to vote for the deal in order to avoid a disaster. To make things worse, both main parties are hamstrung by internecine disputes. Neither has faced voters with the honest truth that Britain cannot leave the EU without making serious trade-offs. Both have absorbed the deceit of the Leave campaign – the idea that Britain can somehow have it all – to advance their own narrow political interests.
At no point has May tried to resolve the trade-off between border control and market access that the EU insistence that we cannot cherrypick from its four single market freedoms implies. At no point has she been clear that if Britain wants to opt out of free movement of people, there will be significant costs. She has swallowed the populism of the Leave campaign as a price worth paying temporarily to neuter the threat from her party’s Eurosceptic flank. Labour has not only failed to challenge her chicanery, it has helped sustain it. It is focused on opposing the process rather than the substance of Brexit. It says it will vote against any exit deal that doesn’t provide the “exact same benefits as our current EU membership”. No such deal exists and, in pretending that it does, Labour is a worthy heir of the Leave campaign.
The country is at a dangerous impasse. No political party is advocating a concrete plan that has any chance of securing agreement from the EU. Our leaders continue to pretend that voters were not deceived. Unchecked, this dishonesty will sow the seeds for popular backlash. You cannot beat the populists by aping them, a lesson that Britain’s governing classes appear to have yet to learn.
What will ensue from this political stalemate? Most likely, the political declaration describing our long-term relationship with the EU that May secures alongside the withdrawal agreement will amount to a vague form of words that allows her to claim she has secured a permanent deal in Britain’s interests, but that leaves all the details to be hammered out after we have left. This would be a democratic travesty, the ultimate blank cheque for the Leavers in her party who will circle around her, looking to replace her with one of their own before the ink on the withdrawal agreement dries. And if May were unable to win the support of parliament, the risk is the UK would crash out without a deal, an outcome without majority support in parliament or the country.
Labour’s proposed way forward is nonsensical. The shadow foreign secretary has said Labour would vote against any deal in order to trigger a general election and that a Labour government would seek to extend negotiations beyond March 2019. But the Fixed-term Parliaments Act makes an election unlikely: why would Tory or DUP MPs join the opposition in a vote of no confidence that is quite separate from a vote on the deal? And a general election in which Labour asks voters to believe that it could somehow negotiate a better deal than May would not deliver the clear verdict the country needs.
The only way out of this democratic conundrum is for MPs to force the government to put its deal to the electorate. This is not about rerunning the referendum: it is the only way of making sense of its result. Voters must be offered the option to accept the deal or to seek to remain in the EU on our current terms. The idea that the 2016 vote is binding – that Britain has to leave the EU regardless of the lack of a realistic exit plan or of changing circumstances – is preposterous. And the circumstances have changed immeasurably. The government has not been able to secure what voters were promised in 2016. The electorate of 2016 does not somehow trump the better-informed electorate of 2018.
Some have argued that there should be a no-deal third option. But there is no significant political constituency positively advocating crashing out with no deal. The hard Brexiters remain defined by what they are opposed to, rather than any concrete proposals. Even crashing out of the EU on WTO terms would require agreements already to be in place: existing EU quotas would need to be allocated between the EU and the UK and our proposals for doing this have already been blocked. Crashing out with no deal would be economically calamitous and this scenario should only be put to the public vote were May to fail to secure a deal.
There are of course risks involved in holding another referendum. Perhaps the greatest is that we see a rerun of the 2016 referendum campaign, in which one side broke the law and neither campaign covered themselves in glory. Those advocating staying in the EU would need to run an altogether different campaign from the project fear of 2016, centred around a positive case for EU membership. We live in a world where the major challenges we face – climate change, microbial resistance, global tax avoidance – don’t respect national borders. International co-operation has never been more important and the EU, despite its imperfections, offers the best mechanism for that. There is no way Britain can leave the EU without undermining our sovereignty. We will either be a regulatory rule taker from the EU or, worse, from economic giants such as the US and China as a result of trade deals negotiated as a junior partner.
The Leave campaign not only lied to voters. It broke the law to cheat campaign spending limits and ran a xenophobic campaign that demonised immigrants. A successor campaign would probably seek to further polarise the public, whipping up a backlash against what it would depict as a betrayal of the people. But these arguments must be taken on or the nasty brand of politics wins by default.
It’s a tragedy that continued division over Brexit will suck life from the debate about the gaping regional inequalities that helped create fertile territory for populist anti-EU sentiment in the first place. But thanks to the duplicity of the Brexiters, there is no other option. Leaving the EU will make people poorer and hit the least affluent parts of the country, already racked by eight years of unnecessary spending cuts.
For two years, we have been failed by Britain’s political class on the most important question this country has faced in decades. Neither party has been prepared to level with us about what leaving the EU might cost. The Observer appeals to all MPs: it’s not too late to put the national interest first. We are being led to the brink of disaster as we prepare to leave the EU. We must be given the chance to deliver our verdict on the terms of departure. We must have a referendum on the deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Early summer, and Westminster politics is a glorified beach read. Will the former SAS (Reserve) hardman David Davis stay or go? How long can dogged Theresa May keep her job? And when will the pinstriped assassin Jacob Rees-Mogg strike next? Grab another drink, slap on the Soltan, and all shall be revealed on page 194. What larks! Yet away from parliament, and far from the tabloid front pages, a serious breach is opening up in British politics. Last week some of the most senior business leaders in Britain came out of a Brexit meeting at No 10, and promptly tore the prime minister to shreds. “We’re playing economics; [the politicians] are playing politics,” said Paul Drechsler, president of the bosses’ organisation, the Confederation of British Industry. “In the world of business, we’re frustrated. We’re angry.”
An extraordinary statement, especially from an executive invited to tea and biscuits with May. If supposedly tame industrialists now talk like this, you have to wonder what sounds come out of the feral lot.
Yet the CBI’s impatience is shared by many. Once the long-haul arm of the Tory movement, the Freight Transport Association lashed out at May last week for “playing chicken with crucial parts of the British economy and the livelihoods of … 7 million Britons”.
These are close friends of the Conservative party.As one senior representative of a leading business organisation says: “Over the past two years, most company bosses would never risk saying openly that Brexit is turning out to be a disaster, in case it scared off their best staff.” With fewer than 290 days before Britain formally leaves the EU, their caution is running out.
This is a far bigger story than the one on the front pages about who promised which amendment to which band of Tories. One of the fundamental relationships in the establishment is fracturing – and the consequences for government and economy could prove to be historic.
An iron rule of British politics is that the Conservatives mean business, and business means the Conservatives. Despite an early falling-out with Margaret Thatcher and a dalliance with Tony Blair, blue remains home corner for commercial companies and champions of cutting taxes and trimming red tape to a minimum. Yet in May’s two years as prime minister, business has either been cast as the enemy or relegated to a walk-on part. In that chaotic summer of 2016, as senior Tories stabbed each other in the back and themselves in the front, May was quick to grasp that many leave voters were sticking up two fingers at the British way of doing capitalism. Neither an ex-banker nor marinaded in Treasury culture, she happily blasted “unscrupulous bosses” and “corporate irresponsibility”. Among her aides was the enthusiastic leaver, Nick Timothy, whose masterplan was to use Brexit to win over working-class voters who had been chucked overboard by New Labour.
Once in No 10, May’s schemes for putting workers on company boards and blocking Chinese funding of British nuclear plants turned to dust. Yet on the central policy issue of our time, business remains stuck in a non-speaking role.
Take the all-important triggering of article 50: May announced it in her first conference speech as leader, just weeks after the referendum vote and before parliament had resumed. Forget about consulting industry and finance: she didn’t even give them notice.
After last summer’s election debacle, and Timothy’s exit, May’s new team set up a conciliatory business advisory council that meets in Downing Street every three months or so. A long way short of the Brexit business task force called for by the CBI and others, its rotating membership – one month WPP, the next Rolls-Royce – makes it almost useless as a forum for formal input. Unsurprisingly, it was after one of these council meetings that Drechsler exploded.
Ministers and aides try to calm the waters. Their efforts, while appreciated by people in business I have spoken to, are rendered void against the bungling and botching that marks the negotiations. The tens of billions taxpayers give business in subsidies and tax reliefs are now taken for granted. For as long as Brexit is treated by May first and foremost as a way to keep her own cabinet and party together, the private sector will remain frozen out. Anything else it would like – from a third runway at Heathrow to a proper industrial strategy – gets parked on the long list marked “any other business”.
Imagine you are a senior manager at a major carmaker. Over the past two years, you have been assured that you would continue to “operate within” the European single market. Except that turned into “frictionless” trade – which then became “as frictionless as possible”. Meanwhile, the cabinet dreams up “customs partnerships” and other unicorns destined only to be waved away by Michel Barnier – and Boris Johnson is wittering on about yet another bloody bridge. How are you meant to plan around any of that? The answer is that the worst-case scenarios your team drew up in 2016 are, by 2018, your base case.
No longer is it just banks and pharmaceutical firms looking overseas. Britain’s biggest car manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover, warned this week it would shift production of its Discovery 4x4 from Solihull to EU member Slovakia. That can be explained away as focusing Midlands staff on making electric cars – but just last September, the firm said its presence in Slovakia was a “hedge” against Brexit uncertainty.
The problem this poses for the rest of us is very real and very easy to sum up. Among all the 28 members of the EU, the UK ranks second only to Ireland on its level of inward investment. As Kevin Farnsworth at the University of York points out, from Thatcher onwards, British governments have touted for capital investment from abroad. It’s why George Osborne cut corporation tax so low and went on tours of China and India. It’s also why the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, says the UK relies on “the kindness of strangers”. That dependence has grown as Britain has lost more and more of its own businesses and become instead a branch-plant economy for the rest of the world. And that kindness is now being strained by a blundering Brexit. Soon the headlines will be not just about a few hundred jobs moving out of the City – but of firms scrapping their expansion plans, or factories shifting to Poland, or thousands of jobs going at a stroke of a pen.
It was always a rotten and unsafe model. The irony is, it is a Conservative government that now appears intent on tearing it down – with nothing to replace it. In place of a strategy, you get the panic that broke out in Downing Street when Nissan threatened to take its money elsewhere – resulting in a private meeting with the Japanese carmaker and a series of promises made in a secret “comfort letter”. This is no more an economic policy than a bunch of flowers bought at a service station is a Valentine’s present.
But then, this has been the decade in which the political and policymaking elite has inflicted upon itself wound after wound. First came the fiasco of austerity, and an economy that refused to bounce back as Osborne and Carney promised it would. Then came the Brexit referendum that Cameron claimed he had in the bag. And that has produced the slow dissolution of the Tory-corporate coalition central to contemporary British capitalism.
With all that as the background, why wouldn’t you opt for a bit of beach-reading escapism?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
If there were another Brexit referendum, who should lead the campaign to stay within the European Union? Pop this question to a prominent politician on the Remain side and you sometimes get the response, usually after a faux modest pause, that maybe the best face of the cause would be the person that you are looking at.
Ask a non-politician who would maximise the chances of reversing Brexit and you will often get the answer: “Anyone but a politician.” Speak to some of those involved in the People’s Vote campaign and they will reply that it wouldn’t necessarily require a single, dominant personality. The Brexiters achieved their narrow victory in the June 2016 referendum without a leader. The campaign to overturn that result looks more appealing, more grassroots and less vulnerable to the charge that it is an “establishment” endeavour and better capable of speaking to people on all points of the spectrum, because it speaks with diverse voices.
There are not always obviously correct answers to these questions. Famous political faces, whether they be a Tony Blair or a John Major, both of whom would be on the anti-Brexit side of another referendum, come dragging loads of baggage. Keeping politicians on the sidelines of a campaign always sounds attractive – until you try to front it with business people or celebrities and they collapse on contact with their first searching interrogation. Assembling a wide cast of campaigners sounds like a good idea, but won’t be if it leads to a rudderless effort accompanied by an incoherent cacophony of messages. How a campaign should be fronted is just one of the issues – and not even the most important – facing those who want to stop Brexit.
They are on a roll at the moment. For a long time, the idea of another referendum looked like a fringe obsession without much backing even among those who voted Remain in 2016. Support has been growing among the public and it is now treated as a plausible scenario in the likely event that there is total deadlock in parliament. This is tribute to the vim and dedication of the People’s Vote campaign, an umbrella for nine organisations. It is also testimony to the chaos unleashed by the Brexiters in the 30 months that have passed since the original referendum. They are falling out and falling apart, collapsing under the weight of their undeliverable promises and irreconcilable contradictions. By castigating Theresa May for coming up with a deal that is worse than continued EU membership, some of the hard Brexiters are helping to make the case for giving the nation the opportunity to think again. By contrast, the anti-Brexiters have a unity of purpose and the sense of vindication that comes from seeing the implosion of their opponents’ enterprise.
The Remain side did suffer from looking like the Establishment party in 2016, but those roles have since reversed. The young and student-led anti-Brexit campaign group FFS, which, obviously, means For our Future’s Sake, has the energy and fun of an insurgency. Brexiters are exposing their fear of another referendum by snarling that it would be “an establishment coup”. This rings very hollow. It was David Cameron (old Etonian) who plunged Britain into this mess in a vain attempt to manage his party’s divisions over Europe. The chief snake-oil salesman of the Brexit campaign was Boris Johnson (OE). The Captain Mainwaring of the hard Brexit platoon in parliament is Jacob Rees-Mogg (OE). You can’t get much more elitist than that Eton mess. There is nothing undemocratic about offering the people the chance to reconsider their decision now that they are in fuller possessions of the facts about what that privileged trio have inflicted on their country.
So the prospects of securing a people’s vote, while still not certain, are looking a lot more promising than at any time previously. Which means anti-Brexiters now have to do some hard thinking. There is an understandable immediate focus on achieving another referendum, but that must not be at the expense of planning for what will have to happen for it to be won.
One of the biggest questions is about the concentration of effort. Should the primary goal be to maximise the mobilisation of those who are already sympathetic to the cause? Or should they be paying at least as much attention to winning the hearts and changing the minds of people who voted for Brexit the first time around?
Most of the focus of the People’s Vote campaign to date has been devoted to galvanising opposition to Brexit and channelling its anger into rallies, marches and lobbying of parliamentarians. One of the unanticipated side-effects of Brexit has been to get people to demonstrate their commitment to the EU and in large numbers. That is a remarkable change to the atmosphere of 30 months ago. During the original referendum, there were very few people willing to make a positive case for membership of the EU. David Cameron was particularly poorly equipped to do so. Having been a party to 20 years of relentless rubbishing of Europe, which never acknowledged the contribution made to the EU by Britain or the benefits that this country derived from membership, he could not credibly pivot into an enthusiast. In the summer of 2016, the worst were full of passionate intensity and the best lacked all conviction.
That is no longer the case. Conviction is no longer the exclusive preserve of the Brexiters. If anything, more of the passion is now to be found among their opponents. You can even get 700,000 people on the streets to march in favour of EU membership, a sight never previously witnessed in British politics. It is conceivable that a referendum could be won and Brexit reversed on the basis of maximising the turnout among the already converted. Combined with changes in the the electorate since 2016 – elderly Brexit supporters are steadily dying to be replaced on the electoral roll by younger, anti-Brexit voters – that might be sufficient to win.
This, though, would be a highly risky route to victory. It might not be enough to win. It might be enough to win, but only very narrowly. Brexiters would instantly cry “cheat” or “best of three then”. Many politicians who might be expected to incline to another referendum are highly wary because they fear that it would inflame the divide exposed by the first. On the one side, younger, more metropolitan, more internationalist, more affluent and better educated voters; on the other, older, more socially conservative and “left behind” voters.
This split is real and serious, but it is not a reason to deny the country another referendum. Otherwise, we’d not have elections either, on the grounds that they can be divisive. It is cause to be concerned that another referendum would widen the chasm between two antagonistic, and often mutually uncomprehending, tribes of Britons.
So it won’t be good enough to have an anti-Brexit campaign that speaks only to those already inclined to be sympathetic. The tougher but equally essential task will be engaging with those who voted Brexit and addressing the deep grievances that led them to do so. Here the anti-Brexiters face a difficulty. It is moot how much you can plausibly promise about tackling economic frustrations and improving life chances when you are a campaign, not a government. What the anti-Brexiters can – must – do is show that they have heard the anger of the alienated and understand the causes of their discontent in a way that the Cameron campaign of 2016 never even tried.
We know that some of these voters are open to persuasion that Brexit is not the answer to their anger. There’s evidence in the polls of Brexit voters suffering buyers’ remorse after 30 months of long and painful education about what it actually entails and the exposure of the Brexiters’ empty promises. Here again, though, anti-Brexit campaigners have to be extremely careful. It is one thing to hold Boris Johnson and his gang to account for the mendacities they peddled in 2016. It is another thing to say that the millions of voters who bought into the bogus Brexit prospectus were idiots and suckers. It is never a smart idea to tell voters that they have been fools. Even, perhaps especially, when they have been. The anti-Brexit campaign has to show respect for Leave voters and for the reasons that they voted Leave. They may be willing to change their minds but they won’t hear the arguments for doing so unless they are convinced that they have been listened to as well.
For anti-Brexiters, preaching to the choir is the easy bit. The big challenge will be engaging the unconverted.
Last modified on Wed 10 Jul 2019 10.46 BST
Communities secretary Greg Clark has told the Financial Times he is “very keen” to devolve further powers to London and spoken highly of new London mayor Sadiq Khan, who he thinks “has shown himself to be a pragmatist that wants to work well with central government, to the advantage of London and the country”. That’s quite an endorsement, given that Clark’s fellow Conservative Zac Goldsmith spent the first four months of the year claiming that Khan is a dangerous, Corbynite ideologue and apologist for Islamist extremists.
If Clark is surprised by Khan’s approach, he shouldn’t be. The mayor has always been on Labour’s practical rather than its doctrinaire left. As he demonstrated throughout the mayoral campaign, he has long understood that unless London mayors work constructively with London boroughs, London employers and national government they get nowhere. Khan was never going to be Jeremy Corbyn’s creature in City Hall, as Goldsmith’s dire campaign falsely and fruitlessly alleged.
It seems possible that Khan might seal a better devolution deal for London than his predecessor Boris Johnson even hoped for. There was always the potential for that. When Johnson was lobbying for extra mayoral powers last year, Tory rivals were discouraging: George Osborne made fun of him and Theresa May kicked him in the water cannon. Now, as a “challenging” post-Brexit economic landscape takes shape - in large part courtesy of Johnson, you may recall - the Labour mayor and what currently passes for the Conservative government seem to be moving on to common ground in trying to protect London’s economy for the good of the country as a whole.
Like or not, the capital is the source of 23% of the UK’s economic output, and a new study by thinktank Centre for Cities has found that it generates no less than 30% of the UK’s “economy taxes” - a growing proportion and as much as the 37 next biggest UK cities put together. Khan’s argument is that giving London more control over its own affairs can help it and the wider economy to better weather the Brexit storm. It is a case that’s gaining strength.
Khan is seeking additional responsibility for the spending of property taxes raised in London, and wants London government to more directly run skills training and further education. He’s also after further powers over housing and planning, transport, health and policing. This is not, Khan stresses, a demand for London to be handed more taxpayer cash than it already receives, but to be put more in charge of how taxes raised in London are spent in London, ensuring that the money is used to best effect.
He has also asked for a “full seat” at the Brexit negotiations, whenever they eventually begin, and has described remaining in the European single market as essential to London’s, and therefore the UK’s, economic resilience. This call underlines the awkward fact that EU leaders have insisted that single market membership means the free movement of people within single market territory too. Given that a wish to lessen foreign immigration was a large motivator for leave voters across the land, it’s hard to see how that circle can be squared.
And yet, as guests of the London Assembly’s economy committee remarked last week, post-Brexit uncertainty means all sorts of things are now worth discussing that were on no-one’s agenda before. Mark Littlewood, director general of free market thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said that “asymmetrical immigration rules” within a UK that went in for devolution on a large scale are not “a technical impossibility”. There could, in theory, he explained, be different visa arrangements for different areas. It was possible, for example, to “imagine a world in which an immigrant qualifies for a national insurance number with an ‘L’ at the end of it”, which would mean he or she could work legally within Greater London’s boundary but nowhere else.
UCL professor Albert Weale pointed out that this might be tricky if a London-based company had offices elsewhere in England, but LSE professor Tony Travers drew attention to an article by Rohan Silva, a former adviser to David Cameron, in which Silva said it would be “straightforward” to implement London-only work visas on a “simple points system”, and that he’d been advocating this for years.
“At first sight that sounds a bit surprising,” Travers said, but added that “place-sensitive immigration systems” were now being discussed, and indeed already exist, notably in Canada. Yes, this was a complex and speculative area. However, Travers observed: “One of the intriguing consequences of the vote is that things are on the table to discuss which have never been considered before.”
London is a long, long way from becoming the independent city-state that some pro-EU Londoners, mostly half-jokingly, have dreamed of in the wake of the referendum shock. But momentum for it - along with other cities within the UK - becoming more independent within the UK appears to be growing in all kinds of fascinating ways.
Watch a webcast of the recent London Assembly economy committee meeting here.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
The autumn statement is one of two set-piece occasions when the chancellor has the opportunity to set out his view of what is happening in the economy and where we want to go. And just like the budget, it is about the economy but also intensely political. Both should give a clear view of where the government is heading. We got neither of these things. The chancellor’s proposals were completely overshadowed by Brexit, and the dire state of the country’s public finances following that vote.
Surely this was the time for the government to confront the uncertainty caused by our vote and give us a clear sense of direction. Yet the chancellor barely mentioned Brexit. It was the classic elephant in the room.
The decision taken five months ago will have profound consequences for our country. It is telling that the Office for Budget Responsibility – the government’s independent watchdog – said on the first page of its report that it had a legal requirement to produce its forecasts on the basis of current government policy.
When, not unreasonably, it asked for a formal statement of government policy so it could make its projections, it was referred to two short paragraphs from a speech made by the prime minister in September.
She seems reluctant to tell parliament what she intends to do. Ministers are rightly expected to engage with parliament and account for themselves. That’s how our democracy works.
I faced very difficult circumstances as chancellor. The complete collapse of the banking system in 2008 had profound consequences. Yet I was expected to, and did, attend parliament regularly to explain what the government was doing and how we planned to get through the crisis.
From this government, incredibly, nothing. So for me the autumn statement has failed the big tests. No sense of direction: are we really expected to wait until March – when article 50 is to be triggered – before we hear anything? Yes, we’ve taken the decision to leave but we are entitled to debate what we do instead.
How else should we judge today’s statement? First, the politics. We have been told that the prime minister’s big concern is to look after people who are “just about managing”. These are the people who used to be described by the last government as hard-working families – a new description, perhaps, but facing the same challenges. Many voted for Brexit because they felt their struggles were being ignored, and I don’t think today will change much for many people who are seeing their living standards fall, and are likely to see that continue.
Yes, confirmation that personal tax allowances will increase is welcome. So too are the minor changes to universal credit, no matter how far off that prospect is. But can Philip Hammond really claim credit for not increasing petrol duty when it hasn’t been raised for years? Politically it is virtually impossible to put up petrol duty, further eroding the tax base. Many people who are “just about managing” depend on public services, like the NHS and social care, which are struggling. Six years of austerity is taking its toll on many of the services on which we depend.
On the economy the chancellor needed to do something, regardless of Brexit: increased funding for infrastructure is welcome. However, most of it seems to be going on housing, which is good, but that leaves less for road and rail. I know from experience that announcing new roads is the easy bit – it will take years to get them built. Reducing corporation tax as planned will be welcome, but many businesses would prefer some certainty on the government’s post-Brexit migration policy. We have a severe skills shortage, much of it met by EU nationals. We simply do not know where the government stands.
Then there is the other massive problem – the UK’s fiscal position. Borrowing will be £120bn more than was planned in March. Debt levels will hit a 50-year high. The new fiscal rules are necessary because the chancellor will need every bit of flexibility he can find.
If the government is going to borrow at that rate, it will have to maintain a credible fiscal policy. I said that we could halve the deficit by the end of the last parliament. The Tories said that was highly irresponsible, but only just managed to achieve it themselves. Now they are telling us they hope to break even in 2025. Even if everything works out with Brexit (don’t laugh) from 2020, the government will face the consequences of the baby boomers starting to retire – they will have to be supported by the millennial generation, who we now know are the first to be poorer than their parents.
A word about forecasts: the Brexiteers are crowing that since the vote, our economy has continued to grow. Of course it has. Because nothing has happened since then. Negotiations have not even begun. Consumers have continued to spend, but behind the scenes decisions are being taken by businesses to put off or cancel investment. They are doing so because, understandably, they don’t know what the new rules are going to be. As the OBR recognises, these decisions take time to show through in the figures.
So our economy has been growing but the threat is now all too clear. Whatever happens we will have to trade with Europe. Of course, we do need to trade with other parts of the world. But we have created a massive problem for ourselves. We must respect the referendum outcome, but the public is entitled to understand what the options are and to hear them debated. The government could at the very least set out all the problems that must be dealt with – from the single market to the customs union and free movement. The public expects government to lead, not to follow. Today was a lost opportunity to try to find an answer to the biggest questions this country has faced since the second world war.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
In May 2016, a few weeks before the EU referendum, I walked 340 miles from Liverpool to London to see what was happening to my country. I was travelling in the footsteps of a 1981 march against unemployment that my late father had helped to organise. In that year, Tory policies had devastated industry and sent unemployment skyrocketing. In 2016, Tory austerity was putting the final nail in the coffin of those broken communities.
Even so, on my walk I was shocked by the level of poverty, by the sheer number of homeless people in doorways and parks, and by the high streets of boarded-up shops and pubs, full of payday loan outlets and bookies. People in those former industrial towns spoke of their anger and betrayal, of having being forgotten by Westminster politicians, of their communities having been destroyed as the manufacturing that had sustained them either folded or moved to low-wage economies.
Nearly everyone I spoke to in those towns said they were going to vote for Brexit. There was a lot of talk of “taking back control”, and in the context of the industrial wastelands, that sentiment made a lot of sense. But the EU issue was, for a majority, a proxy for their pain.
There was a brief moment when it appeared the Conservatives grasped this. When Theresa May became prime minister on 13 July 2016, after David Cameron had fled the post-referendum carnage, she addressed the “just about managing” and said the government “will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours … When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you.”
But since then we have had a government paralysed by Brexit, effectively not governing at all. We have ongoing crises in most aspects of public policy: housing, transport, prisons, the benefits system, health, education. Homelessness is rocketing, as is food bank use. In some areas of our inner cities, Dickensian diseases such as rickets and beriberi have re-emerged. At a time when politicians should be reaching out to leave voters with concrete proposals for rebalancing our economy, heavily based as it is on services and centred in the south-east, we get a continuation of turbo-charged austerity. In their call for a second referendum, remainers should ask themselves whether the anger that drove the result in June 2016 has been even remotely addressed.
That anger has long, deep roots. On my 2016 walk, I spoke to estate agents who told me that buy-to-letters from wealthier areas were scooping up whole rows of houses, paying cash and pricing out locals. Tenants forced into the private rented sector were now spending 52% of their income on rent, compared with 7% in 1981. Thanks to the Tories’ right-to-buy scheme, the stock of council properties had fallen from 5m in the early 80s to 1.7m, a number set to drop further.
In Stoke-on-Trent (which voted 69% leave), 60,000 people had been employed in the potteries industry as recently as the late 1970s, before manufacturing was largely switched to east Asia. In 2016 only 8,000 jobs were left. There, I walked past Stoke City’s Bet365 stadium. Bet365, like most betting companies, relies on poorer people to generate a significant portion of its income. It had become Stoke’s largest private employer. In a city where nearly 40% of households were living on less than £16,000 a year and 3,000 were dependent on food banks, Bet365’s owner Denise Coates was paying herself the equivalent of £594,520 a day. “There’s a sense of powerlessness that pervades everything now,” the local YMCA chief told me. “People are waiting to be rescued.” But he knew it was a forlorn hope.
In Walsall (68% leave), the Labour leader of the council told me how Tory austerity had savaged his budget. In the near future the council would be able to do not much more than adult statutory services in social care and children’s services. He told me that until recently, “The council was seen by residents as a friend that could help and protect you … now we’re the hated enemy.”
That emasculation of local government has turned our country into one of the most centralised in the western world. “The establishment of a neoliberal consensus in Britain has been … an anti-municipal project,” wrote Tom Crewe in a 2016 essay for the London Review of Books. “Austerity is Thatcherism’s logical end-point. People can no longer expect the services they pay for to be run in their interest, rather than the interest of shareholders.”
On I walked, past privatised parks, closed libraries and museums; past a junior school outside which a sign asked parents for donations to make up its budget shortfall. In Nuneaton (66% leave), I met a man who reeled off the names of closed-down factories like you might your football team’s greatest all-time XI. He railed against the amount of money spent on infrastructure projects in the south-east compared with the rest of the country (figures from the IPPR in 2014 showed that every Londoner had £5,426 spent on them annually, compared with £223 in the north-east) and told me he would be voting out in the EU referendum. But that might make the economy even more precarious, I said. He paused for a moment, narrowed his eyes. “If the economy goes down the toilet,” he said, “at least those bastards [in London] will finally know what it feels like to be us.”
Later, I walked through Northamptonshire (59% leave), where the Tory county council had recently reduced its core staff from 4,000 to 150 and become the first council in the UK to outsource to private providers every single one of its services, including child protection, reducing itself to the role of a commissioning body. It is a model that other councils are investigating. In February 2018, the council declared itself effectively bankrupt. Others will surely follow.
In her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein charted the rise of disaster capitalism. In Britain and the US, in 1979 and 1980 respectively, it was introduced with the promise that a rising tide would lift all boats. Klein wrote that the end result was always the same: small groups did very well, sucking up more and more of the wealth, while large sections of the population became fragmented, left with decaying public infrastructure, declining incomes and either rising unemployment or increasingly precarious work.
Towards the end of 2018, Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, undertook a two-week tour of the UK. He concluded – citing figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, that showed around 14 million people were living in poverty and 1.5 million were destitute – that the UK government had inflicted “great misery” on its people with “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous” austerity policies, and that in this country “poverty is a political choice”.
In 1976, three decades of the postwar settlement had seen the UK reach “peak equality”, according to a 2013 economic study, when the country was better off than it had ever been before or since. Forty years of neoliberalism has destroyed that for ordinary people.
If you asked the vast majority of people what they want, they would say that essential services should be renationalised (a 2017 YouGov survey found only 25% and 31% of people respectively thought our trains and energy companies should be privately run). They want properly funded health and education services, and to live in a country where they are not afraid to grow old or sick. They want jobs with meaning and value and security. They want to feel that politicians are in charge, not their corporate paymasters. And many, whether progressives like it or not, want a conversation about immigration.
Brexit will deliver none of this. As driven by the right, it is the final part of the race to the bottom that started 40 years ago. There are no easy answers, but until our politicians begin to acknowledge that the globalised neoliberal economic model is a disaster for human beings and the planet we inhabit, we will remain angry and scared and vulnerable to dog whistles. And maybe that is the point.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
For the most acute comment on the outlook for Brexit Britain, look neither to bankers nor economists – but to the British Museum’s former director. Speaking in Germany last week, Neil MacGregor described his compatriots’ habit of swaddling themselves in their past as if it were a blanket.
“In Britain we use our history in order to comfort us: to make us feel stronger, to remind ourselves that we were always, deep down, good people,” he said. “Maybe we mention a little bit of slave trade here and there, a few wars here and there, but the chapters we insist on are the sunny ones.” Then came the warning: “This sort of handling of history is dangerous as well as regrettable.”
It seems to me that MacGregor’s comments cut straight to the heart of what is most dangerous in Brexit Britain. What he’s describing is delusional thinking: the red-faced insistence on one’s beliefs despite the mountains of evidence that prove them wrong. Delusional thinking helped tip Britain out of the European Union: the promise of those sunlit uplands of £350m weekly cashback and thousands of trading opportunities. Three months later – even after all the warnings from the European leaders soon to be suing us for alimony, the anxiety from business associations and the repeated broadsides from financial markets – delusional thinking remains rife.
Take the helium-filled unreality of the Conservative party conference in Birmingham. There, the top draws were the Brexiteers, Liam Fox and David Davis. Men whose careers were lost down the political U-bend just two years ago were now the star turns.
At one packed fringe event I heard the MEP Daniel Hannan sketch out Britain’s glorious future (“We can trade with Kenya!”), drawing primarily on the 18th-century economist David Hume. Elsewhere, a colleague saw a businesswoman raise with David Davis her worries about foreign trade. The response from the new Brexit secretary was to cite the example of the Congress of Vienna, the diplomatic carve-up of the continent that concluded in 1815.
Then there was foreign secretary Boris Johnson describing his new offices: “When I go into the Map Room of Palmerston I cannot help remembering that this country over the last two centuries has directed the invasion or conquest of 178 countries.” Ah, the good old days, last seen in Rhodesia! How the conference hall loved that.
Were this just the froth of diehard Brexiteers at an otherwise placid time, we’d move on faster than you could say “Bill Cash”. But these men now sit around the cabinet table and make the running in our politics. They and their allies look to have secured a hard Brexit, ensuring Britain will leave the single market entirely by 2019. And if Theresa May won’t offer a “running commentary” on Britain’s departure, you can bet they will.
But even outside the ideological hothouse, both political and media classes are peddling wild over-estimations of the British economy’s strengths, and complete fantasies about its future. Such narratives begin by depicting a manufacturing renaissance, progress to the rebalancing of a lopsided nation, and end by looking forward to a Brexit boom.
While I understand the need for optimism in turbulent times, there are three big problems with these stories. They are spun by the same people who never saw Brexit coming, largely because their travelcards didn’t take them far enough outside central London and its honeyed hinterlands. They suffer from the same delusional thinking as outlined by MacGregor, in which the bad in Britain’s economy and democracy – of which there’s a lot – is considered too rude to bring up.
So let’s have some ugly facts. First of all, the crash in the pound is a reminder of one overriding danger that some of us have been warning about for years: Britain does not pay its way in the world. It buys far more goods and services from other countries than it sells to them.
That deficit is made up entirely by what Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, has called “the kindness of strangers”. Which is fine, for as long as those foreign strangers consider London a safe haven for their cash. That shouldn’t be taken for granted now that Britain is about to take a giant political and economic leap into the dark – and sterling has already plunged further this year than the Argentinian peso. Remember, Whitehall is only beginning to think seriously about the mechanics of leaving the EU: years of this mayhem are still to come.
Ah, we’re told: but all this currency weakness is just brilliant for British exporters. It makes their goods so much cheaper to sell abroad. True, but that is to overestimate the bag of bones that is the British manufacturing sector 30 years after the Thatcher revolution.
Germany has its BMWs and Boschs, its Mercedes and Mieles. Britain? GEC, ICI and the rest were all broken up and sold off years ago. That leaves Rolls-Royce as the only large, world-class, hi-tech company making a complex finished product in this country.
Other manufacturers still work in Britain – but typically they assemble components made elsewhere. That is true of our car industry, and it is true of JCB, the company David Cameron used to love touting in India and China. In 1979, 96% of a JCB digger was made here. By 2010, that had dropped to 36%.
Norway used its oil money to build the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, now worth $882bn (£713bn). Britain spent its money on tax cuts. From trains to energy, many of its utilities have been successfully renationalised – except that the owners are now other countries.
What the pound’s weakness will chiefly achieve is to stop Britons buying as much. The middle classes will swap the wonders of the Alhambra for a week in Anglesey. The working classes will find Zara 15% more expensive. The resulting rise in inflation will really hurt those relying on benefits, such as child and working tax credits and jobseekers’ allowance, frozen by George Osborne.
According to calculations by the Resolution Foundation, a couple with two children in which the husband works full-time and the wife works part-time on or just above minimum wage stand to lose a total of £720 a year by 2020. Half of that is lower wages, the other half will be benefit cuts.
Think about those figures: a Britain that doesn’t make things, that can’t pay its way in the world and where two generations have been brought up believing that what your wages won’t pay, your credit will buy. As the promises for Brexit are broken and people get poorer; as the consumerist model breaks down, who do you think will pay the price?
The answer, I’d suggest, was on show in Birmingham last week. Without Brussels, the right still has one set of scapegoats left. They number the Muslim woman in the headscarf, the Pole in the wrong kebab shop, and the African cleaner on the nightbus.
Last modified on Sun 8 Sep 2019 15.00 BST
A flatlining economy. A political system gripped by inertia. A series of weak governments unable to get anything done. This used to be Italy. Now it is Britain.
Last week, when Boris Johnson was stymied by his lack of a parliamentary majority and Amber Rudd was planning her resignation from the cabinet, Italy was putting together a new coalition designed to prevent the hard right from taking control. It speaks volumes when Italy is giving Britain lessons in stability.
Sooner or later an election will be held in an attempt to break Britain’s political impasse and – judging by the state of the economy – the government should get a drubbing. For Boris Johnson, this could be the equivalent of February 1974 when Ted Heath went to the country on a “who governs Britain” ticket with Britain hobbled by the three-day week. For those who think that an election will clear the air, this is not a good precedent. There was no clear winner in February 1974.
Should an election this year be delayed until November, news will be in of how the economy fared in the third quarter of 2019. Gross domestic product contracted in the second quarter and it is touch and go whether there will be a return to growth in the period from July to September.
In the first three working days of each month, surveys of manufacturing, construction and services are published. These are not official figures but they provide a pointer to how the private sector is faring. The surveys released last week showed manufacturing and construction going backwards and services barely growing.
This is not entirely surprising. A paralysis is gripping businesses and – to a lesser extent – consumers. Until they know how Brexit is going to play out, businesses are going to mothball investment plans and households will be tempted to save rather than spend. Delaying Brexit extends the time in purgatory.
All in all, this looks like a rotten time for Boris Johnson to be fighting an election. In terms of wages and productivity, Britain has been through a lost decade. The recovery from the financial crisis – such as it’s been – has been the function of debt-driven consumption and low-skill employment.
In theory, it should be a cake walk for Labour. The Tory party divisions over Europe are far more serious than they were under John Major in the 1990s, and when Tony Blair won the first of his landslides in 1997 the economy was booming rather than stagnating. Provided Labour doesn’t allow the election to be dominated by Brexit and instead focuses on fixing the symptoms of a failed economic model: austerity, wages, job insecurity and a long-term failure to invest, victory is there for the taking.
In practice, Labour is haunted by the sense it won’t be that easy, which it almost certainly won’t. One weekend opinion poll put the Conservatives 14 points ahead of Labour, and this after Johnson suffered a series of parliamentary defeats, removed the whip from 21 Conservative MPs, faced the humiliation of having his brother resign as a minister, and had the week rounded off by Rudd’s resignation bombshell.
Worryingly for Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservatives have won in the past when the economy is in a lot worse shape than it is currently. Britain had been through a painful recession in the run-up to the 1992 election, with 3 million people on the dole and record home repossessions, but Major won because he convinced enough voters that life would be even tougher under Neil Kinnock.
Johnson has a better story to tell than Major did and is better placed than when Theresa May fought the 2017 election. Two years ago, prices were rising much faster than wages because the post-referendum fall in the pound was making imports dearer. That has now switched around: the lowest unemployment since the mid-1970s is putting upward pressure on wages and leading to increases – albeit modest – in living standards. In the upcoming poll, expect the Tories to cherry pick the best bits of their economic record, ignoring the food banks, the cuts in welfare and the proliferation of zero-hours contracts.
Last week’s spending announcement did not by any means make good the cuts imposed over the past decade but it was the biggest increase in departmental budgets in 15 years. Just as significantly, it deprives Corbyn of the clear-cut narrative that proved effective in 2017: Tory austerity versus Labour investment in the state.
Corbyn’s other great success in 2017 was to neutralise Brexit as a factor in the election. By saying that Labour would abide by the result of the referendum, he managed to hold on to most of the seats Labour was defending in leave-voting parts of Britain while at the same time making gains in remain-voting areas. Quite a lot of voters took a shine to Corbyn and rather liked Labour’s manifesto, which was both radical and unthreatening. May’s ineptitude as a campaigner was an added bonus.
To win an overall majority Labour would need to win more than 60 seats as well as holding on to the ones it currently holds. Given that most of the key battles will be in leave-voting seats in England and Wales, this looks like a tall order.
Two years ago, when May lost her overall majority, it really was a matter of “it’s the economy, stupid”. But, this – as witnessed by Harold Wilson’s victory when Britain was booming in 1964 – is not always the case.
Brexit will dominate the coming election in a way it didn’t in 2017 and Johnson’s message of “the people v parliament’” is a lot easier to understand than Labour’s fudge.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
Almost four weeks have passed since Britain voted to leave the EU, and those who wanted to remain in it are having trouble accepting the result. They feel bereft. They feel that they were defeated by underhand means. They feel that those who voted for Brexit were uneducated and didn’t really understand what they were doing.
There is a nasty undercurrent of disdain, bordering on contempt, to all this angst. Many of those on the losing side of the referendum debate appear to actively want the economy to slide into recession in order to teach the 52% a lesson.
Let’s be clear. The economy is fragile. It was slowing down even before the referendum date was fixed and it is ill-prepared for the shock of Brexit. The UK has a budget deficit of 4% of GDP, a balance of payments deficit of 7% of GDP and the worst recent productivity record of any G7 country bar Italy. The idea that George Osborne “fixed the roof while the sun was shining” is fatuous.
What’s more, it is easy to sketch out the reasons why things are going to be difficult. Traditionally, investment is the swing factor in any economic cycle. When businesses are upbeat about the future, they spend more on new kit, boosting national output. When they are cautious, as they are certain to be now, they mothball spending plans and GDP weakens.
Consumer spending will also be hit by the squeeze on spending power caused by the higher inflation that will result from the impact of the falling pound on the cost of imports. The flipside is that exports become cheaper, which will help boost output, albeit not by much, unless global demand recovers from its current depressed level.
A slowdown, therefore, seems inevitable. The extent and duration of that slowdown will depend on the actions taken by the Bank of England and the Treasury, and how long it takes the government to sketch out what a Brexit Britain is going to look like.
None of this is a surprise. The notion that the economy would struggle after a leave vote was strongly argued during the referendum campaign, but did not carry the day. Hence the view that those who voted for Brexit didn’t understand what was at stake.
Yet the evidence suggests that many of those who voted to leave knew that there would be a short-term hit to the economy, but decided that they were willing to take the risk. They weighed up the pros and cons – as did US investment banks, the CBI and universities – but came up with a different answer.
A speech given last week by Andy Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank, helps explain why so many people were unmoved by George Osborne’s argument that the UK would be voting for a DIY recession if the country opted for Brexit. On a visit to Nottingham, Haldane said he was struck by the fact that for many people, the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 had never ended. When he talked about economic recovery, he was stopped in his tracks by a “forest of furrowed brows”. The message was simple: there had been no recovery. As Haldane went on to explain, this was not a case of false consciousness. The economic facts are plain: the economy is simply not delivering for millions of people.
Earnings are 7% above where they were when the recession ended in 2009, but still 5% below the peak once rising prices are taken into account. This is the longest period of flat or falling real wages since the mid 19th century.
UK national wealth, measured by the value of assets such as property and pensions, has increased by an impressive sounding £3tn since 2009, but the gains have been skewed towards those who owned their own homes or had sizeable pension pots.
Only in two UK regions of the UK, London and the south-east, is GDP per head higher than it was before the recession. Everywhere else, it is lower – strikingly so in some parts of the country.
The argument deployed by the remain side, that the only real risk to Britain’s economic renaissance was a vote to leave the EU, worked in the more affluent parts of Britain, where the recovery was tangible, but fell on deaf ears elsewhere.
During the campaign, Osborne put out figures showing that households in the UK would be £4,300 a year worse off on average by 2030 in the event of Brexit, because the economy would be six percentage points smaller. This had zero impact. In part, that might be because voters were rightly dubious about the Treasury’s ability to make such long-term economic forecasts. But it seems that even those who did think that the economy might be a bit smaller by 2030 took the view that the additional six percentage points of GDP would accrue to rich people living inside the M25 and not to them. All the evidence suggests that this was a perfectly logical assumption.
In essence, the referendum divided Britain between those who were doing well out of the status quo and those who weren’t. The latter group wanted change and appear to be willing to risk a recession to get it.
And change there has certainly been. Osborne has been fired, his ludicrous idea of a post-Brexit “punishment” budget has been scrapped, and the idea of balancing the budget by the end of the parliament rightly abandoned. The Treasury has been told to put growth before deficit reduction, a change of tack that is long overdue, and will have to work with a business department that has the crafting of an industrial strategy as part of its remit. A stimulus package will be announced by the Bank next month.
Brexit has also forced the rest of the EU to have a rethink, with a debate under way between those who think that the response should be a drive for closer integration and a more powerful group, which believes that the dream of political union is dead in the water. As in the UK, budgetary rules will be loosened, and not before time.
None of this should disguise the enormity of the challenges ahead. But Britain’s economy is dysfunctional and needs to be fixed. The same applies to the eurozone, only more so. Brexit provides an opportunity to try alternatives to failed policies. There is no guarantee that this opportunity will be seized. However, when the remainers talk of themselves as a persecuted minority and embrace the idea of recession with such relish, they should be aware of how they might sound to the people that Haldane spoke to in Nottingham: pampered, vindictive and unable to accept that they lost.
Last modified on Tue 13 Jul 2021 15.05 BST
“The connectivity that is the heart of globalisation can be exploited by states with hostile intent to further their aims.[…] The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty.” Alex Younger, head of MI6, December, 2016
“It’s not MI6’s job to warn of internal threats. It was a very strange speech. Was it one branch of the intelligence services sending a shot across the bows of another? Or was it pointed at Theresa May’s government? Does she know something she’s not telling us?”Senior intelligence analyst, April 2017
In January 2013, a young American postgraduate was passing through London when she was called up by the boss of a firm where she’d previously interned. The company, SCL Elections, went on to be bought by Robert Mercer, a secretive hedge fund billionaire, renamed Cambridge Analytica, and achieved a certain notoriety as the data analytics firm that played a role in both Trump and Brexit campaigns. But all of this was still to come. London in 2013 was still basking in the afterglow of the Olympics. Britain had not yet Brexited. The world had not yet turned.
“That was before we became this dark, dystopian data company that gave the world Trump,” a former Cambridge Analytica employee who I’ll call Paul tells me. “It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm.”
Was that really what you called it, I ask him. Psychological warfare? “Totally. That’s what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change. It’s what they mean by winning ‘hearts and minds’. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don’t have many rules.”
Why would anyone want to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask him. And he looks at me like I am mad. “It was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It’s not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit.”
On that day in January 2013, the intern met up with SCL’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, and gave him the germ of an idea. “She said, ‘You really need to get into data.’ She really drummed it home to Alexander. And she mentioned to him a firm that belonged to someone she knew about through her father.”
I had been speaking to former employees of Cambridge Analytica for months and heard dozens of hair-raising stories, but it was still a gobsmacking moment. To anyone concerned about surveillance, Palantir is practically now a trigger word. The data-mining firm has contracts with governments all over the world – including GCHQ and the NSA. It’s owned by Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and major investor in Facebook, who became Silicon Valley’s first vocal supporter of Trump.
In some ways, an intern showing up and referring to Palantir is just another weird detail in the weirdest story I have ever researched.
A weird but telling detail. Because it goes to the heart of why the story of Cambridge Analytica is one of the most profoundly unsettling of our time. What’s clear is that the power and dominance of the Silicon Valley – Google and Facebook and a small handful of others – are at the centre of the global tectonic shift we are currently witnessing.
It also reveals a critical and gaping hole in the political debate in Britain. Because what is happening in America and what is happening in Britain are entwined. Brexit and Trump are entwined. The Trump administration’s links to Russia and Britain are entwined. And Cambridge Analytica is one point of focus through which we can see all these relationships in play; it also reveals the elephant in the room as we hurtle into a general election: Britain tying its future to an America that is being remade - in a radical and alarming way - by Trump.
There are three strands to this story. How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the US. How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a US billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.
My entry point into this story began, as so many things do, with a late-night Google. Last December, I took an unsettling tumble into a wormhole of Google autocomplete suggestions that ended with “did the holocaust happen”. And an entire page of results that claimed it didn’t.
Google’s algorithm had been gamed by extremist sites and it was Jonathan Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, who helped me get to grips with what I was seeing. He was the first person to map and uncover an entire “alt-right” news and information ecosystem and he was the one who first introduced me to Cambridge Analytica.
He called the company a central point in the right’s “propaganda machine”, a line I quoted in reference to its work for the Trump election campaign and the referendum Leave campaign. That led to the second article featuring Cambridge Analytica – as a central node in the alternative news and information network that I believed Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon, the key Trump aide who is now his chief strategist, were creating. I found evidence suggesting they were on a strategic mission to smash the mainstream media and replace it with one comprising alternative facts, fake history and rightwing propaganda.
Mercer is a brilliant computer scientist, a pioneer in early artificial intelligence, and the co-owner of one of the most successful hedge funds on the planet (with a gravity-defying 71.8% annual return). And, he is also, I discovered, good friends with Nigel Farage. Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s communications director, told me that it was Mercer who had directed his company, Cambridge Analytica, to “help” the Leave campaign.
The second article triggered two investigations, which are both continuing: one by the Information Commissioner’s Office into the possible illegal use of data. And a second by the Electoral Commission which is “focused on whether one or more donations – including services – accepted by Leave.EU was ‘impermissable’”.
What I then discovered is that Mercer’s role in the referendum went far beyond this. Far beyond the jurisdiction of any UK law. The key to understanding how a motivated and determined billionaire could bypass ourelectoral laws rests on AggregateIQ, an obscure web analytics company based in an office above a shop in Victoria, British Columbia.
It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t. Vote Leave says the Electoral Commission “looked into this” and gave it “a clean bill of health”.
How did an obscure Canadian company come to play such a pivotal role in Brexit? It’s a question that Martin Moore, director of the centre for the study of communication, media and power at King’s College London has been asking too. “I went through all the Leave campaign invoices when the Electoral Commission uploaded them to its site in February. And I kept on discovering all these huge amounts going to a company that not only had I never heard of, but that there was practically nothing at all about on the internet. More money was spent with AggregateIQ than with any other company in any other campaign in the entire referendum. All I found, at that time, was a one-page website and that was it. It was an absolute mystery.”
Moore contributed to an LSE report published in April that concluded UK’s electoral laws were “weak and helpless” in the face of new forms of digital campaigning. Offshore companies, money poured into databases, unfettered third parties… the caps on spending had come off. The laws that had always underpinned Britain’s electoral laws were no longer fit for purpose. Laws, the report said, that needed “urgently reviewing by parliament”.
AggregateIQ holds the key to unravelling another complicated network of influence that Mercer has created. A source emailed me to say he had found that AggregateIQ’s address and telephone number corresponded to a company listed on Cambridge Analytica’s website as its overseas office: “SCL Canada”. A day later, that online reference vanished.
There had to be a connection between the two companies. Between the various Leave campaigns. Between the referendum and Mercer. It was too big a coincidence. But everyone – AggregateIQ, Cambridge Analytica, Leave.EU, Vote Leave – denied it. AggregateIQ had just been a short-term “contractor” to Cambridge Analytica. There was nothing to disprove this. We published the known facts. On 29 March, article 50 was triggered.
Then I meet Paul, the first of two sources formerly employed by Cambridge Analytica. He is in his late 20s and bears mental scars from his time there. “It’s almost like post-traumatic shock. It was so… messed up. It happened so fast. I just woke up one morning and found we’d turned into the Republican fascist party. I still can’t get my head around it.”
He laughed when I told him the frustrating mystery that was AggregateIQ. “Find Chris Wylie,” he said.
Who’s Chris Wylie?
“He’s the one who brought data and micro-targeting [individualised political messages] to Cambridge Analytica. And he’s from west Canada. It’s only because of him that AggregateIQ exist. They’re his friends. He’s the one who brought them in.”
There wasn’t just a relationship between Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ, Paul told me. They were intimately entwined, key nodes in Robert Mercer’s distributed empire. “The Canadians were our back office. They built our software for us. They held our database. If AggregateIQ is involved then Cambridge Analytica is involved. And if Cambridge Analytica is involved, then Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon are involved. You need to find Chris Wylie.”
I did find Chris Wylie. He refused to comment.
Key to understanding how data would transform the company is knowing where it came from. And it’s a letter from “Director of Defence Operations, SCL Group”, that helped me realise this. It’s from “Commander Steve Tatham, PhD, MPhil, Royal Navy (rtd)” complaining about my use in my Mercer article of the word “disinformation”.
I wrote back to him pointing out references in papers he’d written to “deception” and “propaganda”, which I said I understood to be “roughly synonymous with ‘disinformation’.” It’s only later that it strikes me how strange it is that I’m corresponding with a retired navy commander about military strategies that may have been used in British and US elections.
What’s been lost in the US coverage of this “data analytics” firm is the understanding of where the firm came from: deep within the military-industrial complex. A weird British corner of it populated, as the military establishment in Britain is, by old-school Tories. Geoffrey Pattie, a former parliamentary under-secretary of state for defence procurement and director of Marconi Defence Systems, used to be on the board, and Lord Marland, David Cameron’s pro-Brexit former trade envoy, a shareholder.
Steve Tatham was the head of psychological operations for British forces in Afghanistan. The Observer has seen letters endorsing him from the UK Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and Nato.
SCL/Cambridge Analytica was not some startup created by a couple of guys with a Mac PowerBook. It’s effectively part of the British defence establishment. And, now, too, the American defence establishment. An ex-commanding officer of the US Marine Corps operations centre, Chris Naler, has recently joined Iota Global, a partner of the SCL group.
This is not just a story about social psychology and data analytics. It has to be understood in terms of a military contractor using military strategies on a civilian population. Us. David Miller, a professor of sociology at Bath University and an authority in psyops and propaganda, says it is “an extraordinary scandal that this should be anywhere near a democracy. It should be clear to voters where information is coming from, and if it’s not transparent or open where it’s coming from, it raises the question of whether we are actually living in a democracy or not.”
Paul and David, another ex-Cambridge Analytica employee, were working at the firm when it introduced mass data-harvesting to its psychological warfare techniques. “It brought psychology, propaganda and technology together in this powerful new way,” David tells me.
And it was Facebook that made it possible. It was from Facebook that Cambridge Analytica obtained its vast dataset in the first place. Earlier, psychologists at Cambridge University harvested Facebook data (legally) for research purposes and published pioneering peer-reviewed work about determining personality traits, political partisanship, sexuality and much more from people’s Facebook “likes”. And SCL/Cambridge Analytica contracted a scientist at the university, Dr Aleksandr Kogan, to harvest new Facebook data. And he did so by paying people to take a personality quiz which also allowed not just their own Facebook profiles to be harvested, but also those of their friends – a process then allowed by the social network.
Facebook was the source of the psychological insights that enabled Cambridge Analytica to target individuals. It was also the mechanism that enabled them to be delivered on a large scale.
The company also (perfectly legally) bought consumer datasets – on everything from magazine subscriptions to airline travel – and uniquely it appended these with the psych data to voter files. It matched all this information to people’s addresses, their phone numbers and often their email addresses. “The goal is to capture every single aspect of every voter’s information environment,” said David. “And the personality data enabled Cambridge Analytica to craft individual messages.”
Finding “persuadable” voters is key for any campaign and with its treasure trove of data, Cambridge Analytica could target people high in neuroticism, for example, with images of immigrants “swamping” the country. The key is finding emotional triggers for each individual voter.
Cambridge Analytica worked on campaigns in several key states for a Republican political action committee. Its key objective, according to a memo the Observer has seen, was “voter disengagement” and “to persuade Democrat voters to stay at home”: a profoundly disquieting tactic. It has previously been claimed that suppression tactics were used in the campaign, but this document provides the first actual evidence.
But does it actually work? One of the criticisms that has been levelled at my and others’ articles is that Cambridge Analytica’s “special sauce” has been oversold. Is what it is doing any different from any other political consultancy?
“It’s not a political consultancy,” says David. “You have to understand this is not a normal company in any way. I don’t think Mercer even cares if it ever makes any money. It’s the product of a billionaire spending huge amounts of money to build his own experimental science lab, to test what works, to find tiny slivers of influence that can tip an election. Robert Mercer did not invest in this firm until it ran a bunch of pilots – controlled trials. This is one of the smartest computer scientists in the world. He is not going to splash $15m on bullshit.”
Tamsin Shaw, an associate professor of philosophy at New York University, helps me understand the context. She has researched the US military’s funding and use of psychological research for use in torture. “The capacity for this science to be used to manipulate emotions is very well established. This is military-funded technology that has been harnessed by a global plutocracy and is being used to sway elections in ways that people can’t even see, don’t even realise is happening to them,” she says. “It’s about exploiting existing phenomenon like nationalism and then using it to manipulate people at the margins. To have so much data in the hands of a bunch of international plutocrats to do with it what they will is absolutely chilling.
“We are in an information war and billionaires are buying up these companies, which are then employed to go to work in the heart of government. That’s a very worrying situation.”
A project that Cambridge Analytica carried out in Trinidad in 2013 brings all the elements in this story together. Just as Robert Mercer began his negotiations with SCL boss Alexander Nix about an acquisition, SCL was retained by several government ministers in Trinidad and Tobago. The brief involved developing a micro-targeting programme for the governing party of the time. And AggregateIQ – the same company involved in delivering Brexit for Vote Leave – was brought in to build the targeting platform.
David said: “The standard SCL/CA method is that you get a government contract from the ruling party. And this pays for the political work. So, it’s often some bullshit health project that’s just a cover for getting the minister re-elected. But in this case, our government contacts were with Trinidad’s national security council.”
The security work was to be the prize for the political work. Documents seen by the Observer show that this was a proposal to capture citizens’ browsing history en masse, recording phone conversations and applying natural language processing to the recorded voice data to construct a national police database, complete with scores for each citizen on their propensity to commit crime.
“The plan put to the minister was Minority Report. It was pre-crime. And the fact that Cambridge Analytica is now working inside the Pentagon is, I think, absolutely terrifying,” said David.
These documents throw light on a significant and under-reported aspect of the Trump administration. The company that helped Trump achieve power in the first place has now been awarded contracts in the Pentagon and the US state department. Its former vice-president Steve Bannon now sits in the White House. It is also reported to be in discussions for “military and homeland security work”.
In the US, the government is bound by strict laws about what data it can collect on individuals. But, for private companies anything goes. Is it unreasonable to see in this the possible beginnings of an authoritarian surveillance state?
A state that is bringing corporate interests into the heart of the administration. Documents detail Cambridge Analytica is involved with many other right-leaning billionaires, including Rupert Murdoch. One memo references Cambridge Analytica trying to place an article with a journalist in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal: “RM re-channeled and connected with Jamie McCauley from Robert Thomson News Corp office,” it says.
It makes me think again about the story involving the intern, Cambridge Analytica and Palantir. Is it a telling detail, or is it a clue to something else going on? Cambridge Analytica and Palantir both declined to comment for this article on whether they had any relationship. But witnesses and emails confirm that meetings between Cambridge Analytica and Palantir took place in 2013. The possibility of a working relationship was at least discussed.
Further documents seen by the Observer confirm that at least one senior Palantir employee consulted with Cambridge Analytica in relation to the Trinidad project and later political work in the US. But at the time, I’m told, Palantir decided it was too much of a reputational risk for a more formal arrangement. There was no upside to it. Palantir is a company that is trusted to handle vast datasets on UK and US citizens for GCHQ and the NSA, as well as many other countries.
Now though, they are both owned by ideologically aligned billionaires: Robert Mercer and Peter Thiel. The Trump campaign has said that Thiel helped it with data. A campaign that was led by Steve Bannon, who was then at Cambridge Analytica.
A leading QC who spends a lot of time in the investigatory powers tribunal said that the problem with this technology was that it all depended on whose hands it was in.
“On the one hand, it’s being done by companies and governments who say ‘you can trust us, we are good and democratic and bake cakes at the weekend’. But then the same expertise can also be sold on to whichever repressive regime.”
In Britain, we still trust our government. We respect our authorities to uphold our laws. We trust the rule of law. We believe we live in a free and fair democracy. Which is what, I believe, makes the last part of this story so profoundly unsettling.
The details of the Trinidad project finally unlocked the mystery that was AggregateIQ. Trinidad was SCL’s first project using big data for micro-targeting before the firm was acquired by Mercer. It was the model that Mercer was buying into. And it brought together all the players: the Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, AggregateIQ, Chris Wylie, and two other individuals who would play a role in this story: Mark Gettleson, a focus group expert who had previously worked for the Lib Dems. And Thomas Borwick, the son of Victoria Borwick, the Conservative MP for Kensington.
When my article linking Mercer and Leave.EU was published in February, no one was more upset about it than former Tory adviser Dominic Cummings, the campaign strategist for Vote Leave. He launched an irate Twitter tirade. The piece was “full of errors & itself spreads disinformation” “CA had ~0% role in Brexit referendum”.
A week later the Observer revealed AggregateIQ’s possible link to Cambridge Analytica. Cummings’s Twitter feed went quiet. He didn’t return my messages or my emails.
Questions had already been swirling about whether there had been any coordination between the Leave campaigns. In the week before the referendum, Vote Leave donated money to two other Leave groups – £625,000 to BeLeave, run by fashion student Darren Grimes, and £100,000 to Veterans for Britain, who both then spent this money with AggregateIQ.
The Electoral Commission has written to AggregateIQ. A source close to the investigation said that AggregateIQ responded by saying it had signed a non-disclosure agreement. And since it was outside British jurisdiction, that was the end of it. Vote Leave refers to this as the Electoral Commission giving it “a clean bill of health”.
On his blog, Dominic Cummings has written thousands of words about the referendum campaign. What is missing is any details about his data scientists. He “hired physicists” is all he’ll say. In the books on Brexit, other members of the team talk about “Dom’s astrophysicists”, who he kept “a tightly guarded secret”. They built models, using data “scraped” off Facebook.
Finally, after weeks of messages, he sent me an email. We were agreed on one thing, it turned out. He wrote: “The law/regulatory agencies are such a joke the reality is that anybody who wanted to cheat the law could do it easily without people realising.” But, he says, “by encouraging people to focus on non-stories like Mercer’s nonexistent role in the referendum you are obscuring these important issues”.
And to finally answer the question about how Vote Leave found this obscure Canadian company on the other side of the planet, he wrote: “Someone found AIQ [AggregateIQ] on the internet and interviewed them on the phone then told me – let’s go with these guys. They were clearly more competent than any others we’d spoken to in London.”
The most unfortunate aspect of this – for Dominic Cummings – is that this isn’t credible. It’s the work of moments to put a date filter on Google search and discover that in late 2015 or early 2016, there are no Google hits for “Aggregate IQ”. There is no press coverage. No random mentions. It doesn’t even throw up its website. I have caught Dominic Cummings in what appears to be an alternative fact.
But what is an actual fact is that Gettleson and Borwick, both previously consultants for SCL and Cambridge Analytica, were both core members of the Vote Leave team. They’re both in the official Vote Leave documents lodged with the Electoral Commission, though they coyly describe their previous work for SCL/Cambridge Analytica as “micro-targeting in Antigua and Trinidad” and “direct communications for several PACs, Senate and Governor campaigns”.
And Borwick wasn’t just any member of the team. He was Vote Leave’s chief technology officer.
This story may involve a complex web of connections, but it all comes back to Cambridge Analytica. It all comes back to Mercer. Because the connections must have been evident. “AggregateIQ may not have belonged to the Mercers but they exist within his world,” David told me. “Almost all of their contracts came from Cambridge Analytica or Mercer. They wouldn’t exist without them. During the whole time the referendum was going on, they were working every day on the [Ted] Cruz campaign with Mercer and Cambridge Analytica. AggregateIQ built and ran Cambridge Analytica’s database platforms.”
Cummings won’t say who did his modelling. But invoices lodged with the Electoral Commission show payments to a company called Advanced Skills Institute. It takes me weeks to spot the significance of this because the company is usually referred to as ASI Data Science, a company that has a revolving cast of data scientists who have gone on to work with Cambridge Analytica and vice versa. There are videos of ASI data scientists presenting Cambridge Analytica personality models and pages for events the two companies have jointly hosted. ASI told the Observer it had no formal relationship with Cambridge Analytica.
Here’s the crucial fact: during the US primary elections, Aggregate IQ signed away its intellectual property (IP). It didn’t own its IP: Robert Mercer did. For AggregateIQ to work with another campaign in Britain, the firm would have to have had the express permission of Mercer. Asked if it would make any comment on financial or business links between “Cambridge Analytica, Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon, AggregateIQ, Leave.EU and Vote Leave”, a spokesperson for Cambridge Analytica said: “Cambridge Analytica did no paid or unpaid work for Leave.EU.”
This story isn’t about cunning Dominic Cummings finding a few loopholes in the Electoral Commission’s rules. Finding a way to spend an extra million quid here. Or (as the Observer has also discovered )underdeclaring the costs of his physicists on the spending returns by £43,000. This story is not even about what appears to be covert coordination between Vote Leave and Leave.EU in their use of AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytica. It’s about how a motivated US billionaire – Mercer and his chief ideologue, Bannon – helped to bring about the biggest constitutional change to Britain in a century.
Because to understand where and how Brexit is connected to Trump, it’s right here. These relationships, which thread through the middle of Cambridge Analytica, are the result of a transatlantic partnership that stretches back years. Nigel Farage and Bannon have been close associates since at least 2012. Bannon opened the London arm of his news website Breitbart in 2014 to support Ukip – the latest front “in our current cultural and political war”, he told the New York Times.
Britain had always been key to Bannon’s plans, another ex-Cambridge Analytica employee told me on condition of anonymity. It was a crucial part of his strategy for changing the entire world order.
“He believes that to change politics, you have to first change the culture. And Britain was key to that. He thought that where Britain led, America would follow. The idea of Brexit was hugely symbolically important to him.”
On 29 March, the day article 50 was triggered, I called one of the smaller campaigns, Veterans for Britain. Cummings’s strategy was to target people in the last days of the campaign and Vote Leave gave the smaller group £100,000 in the last week. A small number of people they identified as “persuadable” were bombarded with more than a billion ads, the vast majority in the last few days.
I asked David Banks, Veterans for Britain’s head of communications, why they spent the money with AggregateIQ.
“I didn’t find AggegrateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us. There’s no conspiracy here. They were this Canadian company which was opening an office in London to work in British politics and they were doing stuff that none of the UK companies could offer. Their targeting was based on a set of technologies that hadn’t reached the UK yet. A lot of it was proprietary, they’d found a way of targeting people based on behavioural insights. They approached us.”
It seems clear to me that David Banks didn’t know there might have been anything untoward about this. He’s a patriotic man who believes in British sovereignty and British values and British laws. I don’t think he knew about any overlap with these other campaigns. I can only think that he was played.
And that we, the British people, were played. In his blog, Dominic Cummings writes that Brexit came down to “about 600,000 people – just over 1% of registered voters”. It’s not a stretch to believe that a member of the global 1% found a way to influence this crucial 1% of British voters. The referendum was an open goal too tempting a target for US billionaires not to take a clear shot at. Or I should say US billionaires and other interested parties, because in acknowledging the transatlantic links that bind Britain and America, Brexit and Trump, so tightly, we also must acknowledge that Russia is wrapped somewhere in this tight embrace too.
For the last month, I’ve been writing about the links between the British right, the Trump administration and the European right. And these links lead to Russia from multiple directions. Between Nigel Farage and Donald Trump and Cambridge Analytica.
A map shown to the Observer showing the many places in the world where SCL and Cambridge Analytica have worked includes Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Iran and Moldova. Multiple Cambridge Analytica sources have revealed other links to Russia, including trips to the country, meetings with executives from Russian state-owned companies, and references by SCL employees to working for Russian entities.
Article 50 has been triggered. AggregateIQ is outside British jurisdiction. The Electoral Commission is powerless. And another election, with these same rules, is just a month away. It is not that the authorities don’t know there is cause for concern. The Observer has learned that the Crown Prosecution Service did appoint a special prosecutor to assess whether there was a case for a criminal investigation into whether campaign finance laws were broken. The CPS referred it back to the electoral commission. Someone close to the intelligence select committee tells me that “work is being done” on potential Russian interference in the referendum.
Gavin Millar, a QC and expert in electoral law, described the situation as “highly disturbing”. He believes the only way to find the truth would be to hold a public inquiry. But a government would need to call it. A government that has just triggered an election specifically to shore up its power base. An election designed to set us into permanent alignment with Trump’s America.
Martin Moore of King’s College, London, pointed out that elections were a newly fashionable tool for would-be authoritarian states. “Look at Erdoğan in Turkey. What Theresa May is doing is quite anti-democratic in a way. It’s about enhancing her power very deliberately. It’s not about a battle of policy between two parties.”
This is Britain in 2017. A Britain that increasingly looks like a “managed” democracy. Paid for by a US billionaire. Using military-style technology. Delivered by Facebook. And enabled by us. If we let this referendum result stand, we are giving it our implicit consent. This isn’t about Remain or Leave. It goes far beyond party politics. It’s about the first step into a brave, new, increasingly undemocratic world.
SCL GroupBritish company with 25 years experience in military “psychological operations” and “election management”.
Cambridge AnalyticaData analytics company formed in 2014. Robert Mercer owns 90%. SCL owns 10%. Carried out major digital targeting campaigns for Donald Trump campaign, Ted Cruz’s nomination campaign and multiple other US Republican campaigns – mostly funded by Mercer. Gave Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU “help” during referendum.Robert MercerUS billionaire hedge fund owner who was Trump’s biggest donor. Owns Cambridge Analytica and the IP [intellectual property] ofAggregateIQ. Friend of Farage. Close associate of Steve Bannon.
Steve BannonTrump’s chief strategist. Vice-president of Cambridge Analytica during referendum period. Friend of Farage.
Alexander NixDirector of Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group.
Christopher WylieCanadian who first brought data expertise and microtargeting to Cambridge Analytica; recruited AggregateIQ.
AggregateIQData analytics company based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Worked for Mercer-funded Pacs that supported the Trump campaign. Robert Mercer owns AggregateIQ’s IP. Paid £3.9m by Vote Leave to “micro-target” voters on social media during referendum campaign. Outside British jurisdiction.
Veterans for BritainGiven £100,000 by Vote Leave. Spent it with AggregateIQ.BeLeaveYouth Leave campaign set up by 23-year-old student. Given £625,000 by Vote Leave & £50,000 by another donor. Spent it with AggregateIQ.
DUPDemocratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Spent £32,750 with AggregrateIQ.
Thomas BorwickVote Leave’s chief technology officer. Previously worked with SCL/Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ.
ASI Data ScienceData science specialists. Links with Cambridge Analytica, including staff moving between the two and holding joint events. Paid £114,000 by Vote Leave. Vote Leave declared £71,000 to Electoral Commission.
Donald TrumpUS president. Campaign funded by Mercer and run by Bannon. Data services supplied by Cambridge Analytica and AggregrateIQ.
Nigel FarageFormer Ukip leader. Leader of Leave.EU. Friend of Trump, Mercer and Bannon.
Arron BanksBristol businessman. Co-founder of Leave.EU. Owns data company and insurance firm. Single biggest donor to Leave – £7.5m.
Some names, ages and other identifying details of sources in this article have been changed
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Around 92,000 members who no longer even represent Conservative voters have crowned the “clown prince” as our prime minister. Just when we need a prime minister to bring us together, lead us through the Brexit crisis and on to tackling the serious issues we must confront, the party serves up Boris Johnson. His lifelong ambition has finally been realised; no one and nothing was going to get in his way this time, least of all integrity and truth.
The leadership hustings, far from allaying profound fears about Johnson’s ability and mendacity, went further than merely confirming them. Under friendly fire, he revealed he is actually worse than we had thought.
The hustings also revealed the real Conservative party and its drift to the right. It wasn’t simply that the members don’t look like today’s UK – 71% male and 97% white – it was more about what they said. And the regular applause for Johnson’s dog-whistle rightwing rhetoric proved – as did the election result – that Tory members were prepared, indeed pleased, to lose jobs and the union rather than lose their precious no-deal Brexit. That move to the right, away from the centre ground inhabited by One Nation Conservatives, was the major reason I left the Tory party, after serving it as an MP for nine years.
Johnson is the man who wrote in June 2016, following the referendum, that “the only change – and it will not come in any great rush – is that the UK will extricate itself from the EU’s extraordinary and opaque system of legislation”. He soon changed his mind, agreeing as a member of the cabinet to considerably more “changes”, notably our departure from both the single market and customs union. In late 2017 Johnson approved the foundations of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement but, true to form, changed his mind and resigned when it became a reality. In March this year, Johnson voted for the withdrawal agreement he had described as an “absolute stinker” and the Irish backstop he’d labelled a “constitutional abomination”. Really there’s no end to his shame. Now he threatens a crash-out “do or die” with a no-deal Brexit by the end of October, though he claims there’s only a million to one chance of it happening. Little wonder he is known as the “great charlatan”.
Even before Johnson had been announced as the winner, ministers who had worked with him were queuing up to resign – he has already proven to be the most divisive prime minister ever, and that’s just in his own party. Johnson has a record of ineptitude and irresponsibility, leading to an almost universal verdict that he was the worst foreign secretary in living memory. Johnson has a reputation for laziness and not reading his briefs, and however good his civil servants and the recall of the small army of competent people who protected him as mayor of London, these fundamental flaws will be exposed as prime minister – bluster and buffoonery will not do.
Now he is determined to deliver no deal – a grossly irresponsible Brexit. The 2016 leave campaign leaders, like Johnson himself, specifically promised this wouldn’t happen. His vision has been embraced by the Conservative party, yet further evidence of its race to the right. Johnson now represents an ideologically driven party determined to crash us out of the EU in defiance of the needs and wishes of millions of hardworking people.
What Boris Johnson hasn’t done is tell us how he is going to ensure we leave the EU on 31 October. The EU is adamant the negotiations are closed. In any event, the commission will not be in place until November – one of those details that Boris ignores. It is genuinely difficult to see any Boris-wrestling or any sweetener that could make May’s deal more palatable to the DUP and the European Research Group rebels. Last week’s vote by parliament, in effect, again showed a majority against any crash-out, no-deal Brexit. So how is Johnson going to achieve his promise? Admittedly, as the evidence shows, his standout ability is to change his mind to suit his purpose and audience.
Johnson’s vision has been embraced by the Conservatives. The dominant force of ideologically driven rightwing hard Brexiteers will be the party’s downfall. They would sacrifice the economic future, notably for our young people.
The Tories always used to put the country’s economic interests first. British voters should not forgive them for abandoning the pragmatic centrist policies that once made the Conservatives the natural party of government.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
The Tory Brexit shambles appears to know no end. The grandstanding over the divorce bill, including Boris Johnson’s “go whistle” moment, has all been a waste of time as David Davis might finally have conceded that we will pay the EU the legitimate cost of breaking our contract with it – a sum of between £50bn and 60bn.
But the Tory posturing has cost us more than just money. By poisoning the diplomatic well they have left us with next to no friends among our EU partners and leave our international standing even further on the slide.
In Tory hands, the UK’s future relationship with the EU is guided by what plays well with the party, not the national interest. Frankly, irrespective of which way you voted in the EU referendum, we all deserve better from our government. We are still a long way from agreeing an EU exit package that puts our rights, our jobs and our livelihoods first.
The thorniest of all our problems is the position into which the Tories have thrown the Irish peace process. This is very close to the hearts of our members’ union, as we represent workers from across these islands, and all are united in their condemnation of any return to a hard border in Ireland.
This week I addressed Labour MEPs and urged them to work with their socialist colleagues in the European parliament to block any deal that fails to guarantee a soft border. The truth is that some form of EU customs union will have to be in place for Ireland to maintain its current cross-border freedoms: there is no other way around it. The Tories and their media cheerleaders must stop pretending otherwise and engage with reality. They must end the disgraceful English nationalist, jingoistic and xenophobic statements about our Irish partners.
It is also a priority that we resolve the question over the rights of EU nationals within our borders. These citizens are still being used by the Tories as bargaining chips when they need certainty and security. It is both logical and reasonable to grant the European court of justice (ECJ) continued jurisdiction over them to ensure their protection. Rather than string out another pointless, uncivilised row, the Tories should ditch their unhelpful rhetoric and accept the European court’s jurisdiction over its citizens in our nation post-Brexit.
Even if all of the above is settled, we will still be a long way away from defining our future trading relationship with the EU, and the trickiest part of the negotiations is yet to come. Take our car industry, for instance. Its just-in-time production model means that the components needed to build saloons or hatchbacks in Sunderland or Derby or Ellesmere Port are sourced throughout the EU and transported across multiple borders with minimal delay. But as Honda recently pointed out, there are no frictionless borders outside a customs union. This may mean just-in-time production methods are no longer viable in a post-Brexit Britain.
Warnings of car plants possibly relocating out of the UK are already a reality. There is also the prospect that cars made here will face tariffs when exported to the EU, making the future of the car industry here yet bleaker. The same dismal outlook now applies to anything else exported from Britain to Europe.
Labour’s front bench is right to say it is leaving all options on the table, including remaining within the customs union. This is a pragmatic way of both protecting our jobs and ensuring there is no hard border in Ireland. It would also enable the EU to agree trade deals on our behalf – although the question remains as to why we would go from rule makers to rule takers, as Brexit implies.
If, in order to protect our livelihoods and our peace processes we need to stay in the customs union, let’s go the whole hog – let’s stay put in the EU to retain our seat at the top table. Let’s continue shaping our future, rather than letting others do it for us. And let’s keep Ireland without hard borders.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
So Brexit must be legal. The morning after the night before, most people seem to think yesterday’s court ruling on Brexit means a mess. It does not. The way forward is crystal clear.
High court judges may be secretive, unelected toffs, but these three are right: referendums are not material parts of the British constitution. Parliament, warts and all, is sovereign. It can deny withdrawal and face the consequences.
In 2005, French and Dutch electors voted against the Lisbon treaty but were defied by their governments and/or assemblies. The tabloids may howl, but no one elects them. The British parliament can stop Theresa May in her tracks or force on her an act for withdrawal.
If leave campaigners want “more control” for the UK parliament, they should acknowledge the control it still has. For a government to seek to drastically alter UK law requires parliamentary consent, in such a case as this both before and after the event.
So much for constitutional law. Politics is a different matter. May is today saying she will press ahead, come what will. During the 2015 referendum debate MPs did not so much as hint they would disregard the outcome if they did not like it. The then prime minister, David Cameron, said he would be bound by it and his resignation honoured that pledge. The outcome was not overwhelming but it was decisive. However much leftwing remainers may hate it, democracy is about numbers.
In other words parliament may be constitutionally in control of the process, but politically it is trapped. It freely asked for a clear instruction from the British people, and was given one. It should withdraw the UK from the EU, no ifs or buts.
Channelling this through parliament may complicate and postpone Brexit – for which the economy will give MPs no thanks – but the guidance of parliament should strengthen not weaken the negotiation.
That is why the prime minister should forget her appeal to the supreme court. Instead May should request a swift vote of confidence from the Commons in proceeding to withdraw. The Commons may demand a full Brexit bill, whatever that might say, but woe betide any MP who filibustered or voted against it. May must accept that any eventual deal will require ratification, and in extremis this could of course be refused. (If the Lords know what is good for them, they should keep out of this one.) But that is what the law says.
The Commons can, and in my view should, howl and plead for “soft Brexit”. But if ministers are denied a vote of confidence in pressing ahead with withdrawal, the government would fall and a general election would be politically inevitable. Remain MPs might plead Edmund Burke’s line about owing his voters “his judgment” not his obedience, but it would be a virtual single-issue election, with the moral weight for leave.
Remain may still have shots in its locker, but it is democratically implausible. May can concede what she can to MPs, and promise what she can. She has a nightmare ahead of her. But for now she should obey the judges, call the remainers’ bluff and seek a swift vote of confidence in her decision to withdraw and negotiate.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.45 GMT
This is the sound of British politics. A crescendo rumble, a deafening crash, a four-letter word. The blond skateboard king from behind the cycle shed, his shirt-tails flapping, has fallen off yet again. Unfortunately, the cracked pavement under his wheels is called Britain, or optimistically the United Kingdom, and he and his mates have been pounding it to destruction for more than three years.
In that time, the Brexit ordeal has changed Britain. Not as much as some think. Many of these changes, above all the English sense of powerlessness and resentment of elites, were already gathering speed 10 years ago, as Europe and the world crawled out of the banking disaster. Brexit disputes only accelerated them. The 2016 referendum didn’t so much create new divisions within England as rediscover old ones, especially in its aftermath. It was almost laughable that so few remain voters knew a leaver, or vice versa. England is still a country astonishingly segregated by class, by location, by attitudes towards power and privilege. Before the last war ended, the doomed fighter pilot Richard Hillary asked: “Was there perhaps a new race of Englishmen arising out of this war, a harmonious synthesis of the governing class and the great rest of England?” No, there wasn’t.
One sinister change, still developing, is the breakdown of Britain’s immunity against lies. From about 2010 onwards, Conservative leaders began to blame the public spending of previous Labour governments for the huge financial deficit caused by the bank crash. What was most appalling was not the barefaced untruth. It was that nobody seemed to have the energy to rebut that lie. Millions of people were left to believe it, and probably still do. The Brexit campaign released an avalanche of feebly contested lies, on which the present prime minister still happily slaloms.
Within England, political geography has changed. More accurately, the way people see the enormous gap in wealth, opportunity, infrastructure and innovation between the London region and “England outside London” has sharpened. The “northern powerhouse” efforts, and HS2, only revive a long history of sticking-plaster remedies for what were once called “distressed areas”.
The change now is that two streams of bitter resentment – at London’s unfair wealth and privilege and at Westminster’s unfair refusal to “obey the people” – have converged into a single torrent. London is the most spectacularly diverse metropolis in Europe, which even after Brexit will go on sucking in the money of global oligarchs and hedge funds, and the location of new British institutions. London as an independent city state, like Singapore, would prosper, but in the short term it will bankrupt whatever is left of Hillary’s “great rest of England”.
It’s commonly said that the Brexit years have made the English more xenophobic, less tolerant, more angrily divided among themselves. The first is clearly true. Non-British Europeans confirm a new nastiness, even just a new coldness. So, even more emphatically, will migrants from Somalia, Nigeria, India, Bangladesh.
It’s true that English dislike of foreigners is ancient, abating in the middle 19th century as the public welcomed political refugees from failed revolutions, but only for an interval. A recent example: in a sample of adults in Scotland who list Pakistani as their ethnicity, 31% identified as Scottish. The corresponding sample taken in England found only 15% identifying as English. That tells you nothing particularly wonderful about Scotland, except that it’s a normal country. But it does tell a tale about England: a nation self-consciously unlike others and uneasy about sharing its “essence” with others.
More angry, more violent in the course of these three years? Very angry, certainly, but no angrier (and so far much less violent) than their great-grandparents were over Irish home rule or rights for women. Or, come to that, than some of their fathers and mothers were over the miners’ strike or the poll tax. It’s remarkable that in the past three years it’s the remainer half of Britain that goes roaring down the streets. The leavers, with their own powerful case to feel aggrieved and betrayed, stay at home and share their wrath with family and friends. England has a vigorous history of rioting. But for this generation, the default leave position seems to be: “Leave us in peace! Get it done, and go away.” There is much talk about the need to reform Britain’s democracy, but nothing like any coherent idea of what should replace it.
At the core of the three-year wrangle is constitution fuzziness. Where does final authority rest? Is it with the people, speaking through a referendum? Or with a prime minister claiming in a spooky way that he embodies the Queen and her prerogative ? Or with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty? Nobody knows. The result is skateboard politics: an empty thunder of promises, then reckless plunges and then crashes into failure.
But meanwhile, and quietly, something utterly transforming has been seeping into politics. The law is beginning to infiltrate the tattered old doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. It’s years since “judicial review” of government decisions began to wear moth-holes in the doctrine’s fabric. Now the Brexit arguments have jerked the process into high gear: the supreme court’s decision to strike down Boris Johnson’s prorogation was a blow in favour of democracy. But Gina Miller was mistaken to dash out of the courtroom and proclaim a victory for parliamentary sovereignty. In the long term, Lady Hale and her judges have torn a huge rent in that doctrine. They have brought closer the moment when all the rents and moth-holes run together and parliament (as in all modern democracies) becomes subject to supreme constitutional law.
The other day, Michael Ignatieff – once leader of Canada’s Liberals – disconcerted his British TV hosts by saying that British democracy was working well. What I think he meant was that the civilities were still preserved: “the honourable member” and so forth. Politicians see it differently, after three years of increasingly rude and aggressive language flung about the Commons. But Ignatieff, who knows England even better than his native Canada, sees further. As yet, Brexit has not led to fist-fights in the chamber, as seen in Ukraine or Italy. This is interesting, as in the last century MPs from time to time brawled round the dispatch box, even when sober. But it’s half a century ago that Bernadette Devlin sprang across the floor and belted Reggie Maudling, the home secretary, across the face. Today, passive contempt for the other lot is more common than active fear and hatred. For the moment, basic civility survives between Britons, who take their frustrations out on foreigners.
But the deepest change since 2016 is the weakening of the United Kingdom’s inner bonds. Theresa May went around preaching about “our precious, precious union”. This puzzled me, given massive English indifference. Ask somebody in Durham or Exeter why the union matters, and you get a blank stare, a shrug and perhaps a mumble. Then I understood: it wasn’t Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland that was “precious” to her, but “the union” in the abstract – a sort of legitimising halo hovering over Westminster’s anointed. It’s a cult confined to Britain’s ruling caste and, of course, to Scottish and Irish unionists who genuinely have something to lose.
The “great rest of England” seem to have felt for many years that if the Scots want to leave, “it seems a pity but it’s their right”. Few southerners would feel diminished. Many in England believe that England subsidises Scotland (an incorrect belief, according to SNP leaders, among others – who point to the years of Scottish oil revenues flowing to the Treasury).
Since 2016, Scotland’s heavy vote to stay in the EU, and the SNP’s incessant campaigning against any sort of Brexit, have become a severe irritant to “British” politics. Devolution is working more scratchily month by month, and the common English assumption for the past few years has been that Scottish independence is inevitable. Curiously, this is not how it looks in Scotland, where minds change slowly and where it’s far from certain that the next independence referendum will drag the yes vote over the line.
In the union of four nations, one – England – has 85% of the population. What the past three years have shown is that the big partner is no longer concerned to put its own interests behind those of the others. A poll this year showed that Tory voters would be ready to “lose Scotland” (revealing words) if that ensured Brexit. In turn, devolution only made sense when all four nations were inside the European Union. If England in 2019 can no longer remember why the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland once made sense, Brexit has delivered the United Kingdom to the hospice of history.
 Neal Ascherson is a writer, journalist and historian
Last modified on Sat 25 Nov 2017 04.20 GMT
In an asymmetrical neckline, Theresa May declares her asymmetrical vision. Asymmetrical because there is no balance between so many of her pronouncements; indeed, some are quite contradictory. There is no point at which opposing views are squished together into some kind of Blairite compromise. Nor is it the economy, stupid: it’s about identity. It is a rightwing power grab that hopes to scoop up those who have just about managed to vote Labour in the past.
It is new and it is scary and, although May is the unelected head of a government with a small majority, she is acting as if she has a huge mandate to fundamentally change the nature of the UK. It is not enough that we are leaving Europe, she is attempting to nail down the Tories as the party of the workers, absorb Ukip, intervene in business via the state, and hit the left where it hurts them personally. She is reclaiming the notions of fairness, compassion and moral superiority. Right now, the left is in one of its death spirals of vicious piety. So here is May, the toffs tossed away, to talk of meritocracy and ordinariness. She embodies the notion that, what you don’t have in charisma, you can make up for in long hours. But as she draws people into her big tent, we can already see that it is more of a gazebo and it’s invite only. The decked-out monstrosities of Bake Off have a lot to answer for: a version of the 50s with gays, immigrants and cake – woo! A fantasy that has now been flogged off.
These are new bakes indeed. Chancellor Philip Hammond’s dismantling of deficit targets is part of repairing the failing neoliberal structures, so May talked of tax avoidance and workers’ rights. But this comes at a cost and that cost is social: the dismantling of a liberal consensus. This means hatred of difference, spreading fear, inflexible uniformity, the assertion of one kind of citizenship over another, a puritanical stifling of joy.
May’s vision rewrites the relationship between the state and business, and also insists on the social over the individual. But in this radical garb, she and her ministers found the enemy within. Those who voted remain have overcompensated by offering up suspicion and exclusion of all “foreigners”. Those who take our jobs – even the ones who save our lives – must be listed, and instructed where to be. This is appalling. British workers do have British jobs and won’t work in the fields for £3.50 an hour. Meritocracy is a local policy, it turns out. It is for white English people, though it calls Englishness British, as always. Add to the enemy list of foreigners, human rights lawyers and the liberal elite. We wait in vain for health and safety gone mad. The Tories take on the culture war as the economy shrinks. This xenophobia may result in actual bloodshed.
It is as if the message of Brexit was not mixed, as if it was simply a referendum on immigration. It was more than that. May dismays by playing only one chord. So we now have members of the elite – being PM is fairly elite – and leaders of parties such as Ukip (Farage was leader when I started writing this sentence, but may not be when I have finished) saying they don’t mind being poorer if there are fewer immigrants, but they are never going to be poor, of course.
Yet the walling-in of economies to protect us from globalisation (government is in partnership with the state, the talk of responsible capitalism) is, as the IMF says, not simply a British reaction. May’s version is a closing down and a direct challenge not just to economic neoliberalism, but to liberalism as the dominant discourse. She pitches the chattering classes, the liberal elite, against ordinary people. The liberal elite sneer at patriotism, at ordinary people’s views on immigration and crime. There is some truth in this, although ordinary people are not a monolith.
I now live in a liberal elite bubble made easier for me by social media, which allows me to chat with people who mostly think more or less like me. But because identity is hybrid, a base part of me remains horrified by how narrow-minded this elite is. Those who would lead the masses disdain them. The liberal elite will lead its sheeple out of its Jeremy Kyle-induced pit of despair and into the uplands of good wine, laughing at comedians on Radio 4 and voting the correct way. May is right to say these people do not have the monopoly on compassion. Many are hypocrites. Just after the Brexit vote and the election, there was a total empathy vacuum. The liberal elite boasted it didn’t know anyone who voted Tory or Brexit because these people were thick, immoral. What a lovely socialist and internationalist reaction.
So May will strike home with this. But for all her lefty drag, where she and her ministers have been so divisive is on immigration and race. While the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, has welcomed immigrants, May cannot even countenance Scottish independence – what she calls divisive nationalism.
This move to the centre works only if the centre is white and Scotland keeps quiet. Nicola Sturgeon has provided the best opposition to this nasty fear and loathing. For May is sowing all kinds of division. The centre can’t hold when it cannot keep the union together.
The dots are not joined here at all. The language of belonging matters. The redrawing of these new boundaries is being done in the language of the left, but it is the most extreme move to the right I have seen in my lifetime.
“Stop the world I want to get off” turns into: “If you believe you are citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.” A slight affront to the easyJet generation, a death sentence if you are on a dinghy in the cold sea. This is no move to the centre but a plunge into dark, dangerous waters.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The collapse of the Tory-Labour Brexit talks surprised Westminster as much as did the news that bears conduct their ablutions in forested areas and Boris Johnson is interested in becoming prime minister. A question worth investigating, because it illuminates where we are now, how we got here and where we are heading, is whether that failure was inevitable. Was this bizarre and ultimately fruitless chapter of the Brexit saga never anything but a protracted charade? Was the inability to broker a compromise always written in the stars? Or could different actors have found a way to release Britain from its long national nightmare?
Many believe that these talks, the last resort of an enfeebled prime minister, were fated to fail. One senior figure involved in the six weeks of negotiations speaks as if describing a doomed relationship: “It was always going to end this way.”
Neither side acted from the purest of motives. For Mrs May, this gambit was a desperate roll of the die after repeated defeats in parliament at the hands of her own Brexit ultras. She hoped to buy herself extra time at Number 10 and have something to take to the EU to justify the extension to the withdrawal date. Labour’s main motive for participation was revealed by its spokespeople’s repeated mantra that they had entered the negotiations “in good faith”. They wanted to look like people prepared to make an effort to end the paralysis for fear of being otherwise painted as a cynical gang simply hoping to make an electoral profit from the misery.
The personalities of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, neither of whom is famous as a consensus-seeker, had many doubting that they could ever reach common ground. When they met, others in the room reported that they addressed each other as if they were representatives of alien species from the opposite ends of the galaxy. Yet it is just about conceivable that, left to themselves, they might have struck some kind of deal. Their differences over the withdrawal agreement were not all that great. Mrs May even seemed prepared to embed protection of workers’ rights in legislation, one of the Brexit issues that the Labour leader does care about. She had motive to secure a deal so that she could depart Number 10 with a few shreds of dignity and some kind of legacy.
He had some incentive to resolve the parliamentary deadlock. The Labour leader’s ill-disguised secret is that he wants to move the national conversation off Brexit, where his own views run counter to most of his party, and on to themes such as austerity and inequality where he is much happier and thinks a Labour election victory can be found. Had the two leaders been locked in a room together, and told they didn’t have to worry what anyone else thought, I can almost imagine that they might have struck some kind of bargain. What prevented that was their respective parties. Reading the last rites over the talks, Mr Corbyn blamed the impossibility of negotiating with a Conservative party in such an advanced state of meltdown. In response, Mrs May blamed divisions within Labour between those who want to deliver Brexit and those who seek to reverse it. Both had a point.
One of the biggest obstacles to any compromise was Mrs May’s lack of authority over her warring tribe. Her position was too fragile to be able to guarantee that she could deliver enough Tory MPs behind any deal to make one viable. The talks were regularly punctuated by members of the cabinet attempting to torpedo them by issuing ultimatums. As it became clear that Mrs May had entered the twilight zone of her premiership, the Labour side was increasingly concerned with how any deal could be made “future-proof” against a new Tory leader. Some of the Conservative figures involved in the talks were very open to that idea. Philip Hammond and David Lidington have reason to be anxious that they will not survive a change of prime minister. Yet it was impossible to find a way to bind whoever succeeds Mrs May to any agreement that she might make. This held out the prospect that the Tory leadership contest would ring to the sound of candidates saying they would destroy any compromise. A death knell for the talks was the public letter signed by Tory wannabe leaders threatening to rip up any agreement.
Some involved, both on the Labour side and the Tory, couldn’t help but think that much might have been different had the two parties engaged with each other earlier, rather than meet at one minute to midnight when Mrs May had already gone down to a series of epic defeats in the Commons. Whether she should have looked for a compromise much earlier will be a question that will detain historians. Their judgment will shape a lot of the verdict on Mrs May’s tortured premiership.
She has been a member of the Conservative party all her adult life and anyone familiar with the party’s behaviour over the past three decades might have intuited that it would be impossible to unite Tories around any Brexit strategy. A leader with more foresight than Mrs May could have worked that out and realised that the only way to manage it through the Commons was by building a cross-party majority. Had Mrs May begun Brexit by going to Brussels with a negotiating mandate pre-approved by parliament, she might have enhanced her clout with the EU as well as her chances of securing parliamentary agreement on the outcome.
Fatefully, she made a very different choice. Instead of trying to build a parliamentary consensus and seeking common ground between the 52% and the 48%, she chose to entrench divisions within the Commons and inflame them in the country by taking one side against the other. When she failed to get the mandate for a hard Brexit that she sought at the 2017 election, she might have switched strategy and attempted to reach out to the opposition at that point. She instead doubled down on her original, fatal strategy and made herself a hostage of the DUP and the Tory ultras on her backbenches.
This is not just because Mrs May is a rigid and unimaginative character. She is the product of a political culture that tends to emphasise the adversarial over the consensual. It is expressed in the architecture of a parliament that sits the two sides confronting each other. European countries with more experience of coalition governments are schooled in the art of the compromise. The idea is foreign to the winner-takes-all tradition of British politics. This is especially true of a Tory party that reveres Margaret Thatcher above all its other leaders since Winston Churchill. The Conservative party is in love with the concept of the battling leader and rather disdains the idea of the healing leader.
The collapse of these talks is of a piece with the narrative arc since the referendum in the summer of 2016. For nearly three years, the scope for compromise has steadily shrunk as opinion on both sides has become more radicalised. Advocates of Brexit who once said they’d be content to be out of the EU but stay within the single market have since transmogrified into adamantine no-dealers. Remainers who might once have settled for a halfway house will now accept nothing other than a second referendum. Everyone involved in the Tory-Labour talks knew that any kind of compromise would leave vast numbers of voters hugely unhappy: another factor dooming the effort to failure. For many Brexiters, any outcome which is not the most purist version of that enterprise will now be seen as a betrayal. For many Remainers, any result other than the reversal of Brexit will be intolerable.
This polarisation will be magnified by a strong showing by the Brexit party in this week’s European elections. The looming Tory leadership contest will drag the contenders, even the more sensible ones, further towards the most extreme forms of Brexit as they compete for the support of the party’s anti-deal members.
Pressure is building within Labour for the party to take an unambiguous stand on the other side of the barricades and become an anti-Brexit party. That pressure will be increased when the Euros see large numbers of previous Labour voters desert the party for the Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK. If a general election hasn’t happened by September, Labour’s party conference is highly likely to force its reluctant leadership to make a no-qualifications commitment to a fresh referendum. The middle ground, such as it was, has become scorched earth. The chances of this concluding with no Brexit or a no-deal Brexit are both rising sharply.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Those who persuaded the British people to vote for Brexit have now given up on a glorious future for global Britain. These arguments lie in tatters, buried beneath the government’s own studies into the impacts of Brexit showing it will be disastrous for the economy under any scenario. Instead, they are resorting to the “will of the people” mantra. Take Priti Patel’s recent tweet in which she says: “This is no longer an argument about whether Brexit was a good idea but is about democracy & standing by the democratic decision made by the people.” In other words, no matter how bad the consequences for all of us, we have to go ahead with Brexit because democracy demands it.
But upholding democracy is a selective affair for Brexiteers. The leave campaign has wasted no time in engaging in some mudslinging at the Electoral Commission, the body responsible for regulating our democracy. The commission’s investigation into Vote Leave found the campaign group broke the law by coordinating with sister campaign, BeLeave. Vote Leave has been fined £61,000 and both campaigns have been referred to the police. Yet the response from Vote Leave officials is to accuse the Electoral Commission of “false accusations” and being motivated by a political agenda, “unfounded claims and conspiracy theories”. It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that a host of senior government ministers sat on the Vote Leave campaign committee. These included Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Steve Baker and Chris Grayling, as well as the defender of democracy herself, Priti Patel.
It is also worth noting the strong overlap between Vote Leave members and the odious European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, that is currently holding Theresa May hostage over her Brexit plans. In spite of the shocking weakness of our constitution that Brexit has exposed, we need the prime minister to demonstrate her stalwart defence of the rule of law by sacking cabinet ministers who were on the Vote Leave committee, namely Fox, Gove, Grayling and Raab. She should also recall that we are signatories to the Venice commission which states that campaign overspending is adequate grounds for annulling an election result. The foundations of our democratic systems are being undermined and it is May’s duty to defend them.
Of course, today’s news of Vote Leave breaching electoral law is just the latest in a series of scandals to dog the leave campaigns. Leave.EU, the campaign supported by Nigel Farage and funded by Arron Banks, has also been found to have breached electoral law and fined. Its chief executive has been referred to the police. And then of course there is the whole question of micro-targeting and psychological manipulation techniques and the scandals around AIQ and Cambridge Analytica and the ways in which they were linked to the leave campaigns. The democratic mandate for Brexit has been undermined.
Even if this mandate were strong and stable there would still be reason to question whether we press ahead with Brexit when so much has changed both within our country and across the world. Not least, a US president who is so easily manipulated at the hands of authoritarian tyrants. His failure to denounce Russian meddling in the US presidential election sets him against American law enforcers, defence officials and intelligence agencies, all of whom believe that Russia did interfere in the 2016 presidential elections. There is also the fact that Brexit serves Trump’s agenda of destabilising both UK and US democracies and Putin’s agenda of undermining the EU, which is why there are substantiated claims of Russian interference in the referendum campaign.
So there are good grounds for considering the vote to leave the EU now lacks legitimacy. It is quite clear that the mandate for Brexit lies buried beneath countless occurrences of cheating, voter manipulation and electoral law-breaking.
It is rare I would quote David Davis on anything, but on democracy he is spot on: “If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.” This helps explain the growing chorus from all shades of the political spectrum for a people’s vote. The idea is also proving increasingly popular with the public.
The Brexiteers are using arguments about democracy to try and force through something that will have profoundly negative impacts on the UK economy, society and the environment for generations to come. True democracy acknowledges that we make mistakes and provides opportunities to think again. Not only does this enhance rather than diminish our democracy, it may be necessary to save it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
I’m a remainer, but there’s one result of Brexit I can’t wait to see: leaving the EU’s common agricultural policy. This is the farm subsidy system that spends €50bn (£44bn) a year on achieving none of its objectives. It is among the most powerful drivers of environmental destruction in the northern hemisphere. Because payments are made only for land that’s in “agricultural condition”, the system creates a perverse incentive to clear wildlife habitats, even in places unsuitable for farming, to produce the empty ground that qualifies for public money. These payments have led to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of magnificent wild places across Europe.
It is also arguably the most regressive transfer of public money in the modern world. Farmers are paid by the hectare for owning or using land; so the more you have, the more you get. While in the UK benefits for poor people are capped at £20,000 (outside London), these benefits for the rich are uncapped. Some landowners receive £1m or more. You don’t even have to live in the EU to take this money: you just have to own land here. Among the benefit tourists sucking up public funds in the age of austerity are Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes and Texas oil barons.
It is hard to discern any just principle behind an occupational qualification for receiving public money. Some farmers are poor, but seldom as poor as rural people who have no land, no buildings and no jobs. Why should one profession be supported when others aren’t?
Yet even farmers have been hurt by these payments. European subsidies have helped turn farmland into a speculative honeypot, making it highly attractive to City financiers. The price of land has more than doubled since payments by the hectare were introduced, pushing it out of reach of most farmers. By reinforcing economies of scale, these subsidies have driven out small farmers and accelerated the consolidation of land ownership.
Though we have paid enough money to have bought all the farmland in this country several times over, we have not acquired any direct democratic control over the land: farming, however it might alter landscape features, remains outside the planning system. The system amounts to taxation without representation.
So you might have hoped that this would be a hot topic, surrounded by fierce debates about what should best replace this outrageous boondoggle. But, as the agriculture bill receives its second reading in the House of Commons on Wednesday, there is scarcely a murmur of either enthusiasm or dissent from the main opposition parties. The government’s proposals are a major improvement on the current system. It intends that farmers should be paid for protecting wildlife and ecosystems rather than for owning land. It wants to use subsidies to improve the health of the nation’s soils, the quality of its water and the character of its landscape. It encourages collaboration between different land managers – woefully lacking in our incoherent approach to environmental protection. But there is much to be challenged.
The first problem is that the government proposes to use public money as a substitute for regulation. Much of its new system amounts to payments for not mugging old ladies: rewarding people for not doing things they shouldn’t be doing anyway. Strong regulations, with proper monitoring and enforcement, would keep the soil on the land and nitrates out of the water without the need for this protection racket.
Yet, even as the government proposes to splash our money around, its regulatory agencies are collapsing. Natural England, like Natural Resources Wales, is in meltdown. A leaked document reveals that the government has abandoned even its pathetic target of protecting 50% of our sites of special scientific interest (threatened by farming, above any other industry). Nearly half have not even been inspected for six years. On the day Michael Gove, the environment secretary, announced his new payments plan, he also promised to find ways of reducing or removing farm inspections.
Nowhere is this replacement of rules with money more preposterous than when applied to farm animal welfare. The government acknowledges that standards should be raised. But instead of doing so through legislation, it proposes “targeted payments” for farmers who treat their animals well. Why should animal welfare be a matter of economic choice?
It is also hard to see how its policies would defend small farmers. The European system has been a disaster for them, but will this be any better? The question is sharpened by the government’s ambition to strike a US-UK trade deal, which is likely to sacrifice farming in return for concessions on financial services. Any US government, which has much lower food and welfare standards, will want a deal that lets it sell its disgusting farm products in the UK. If this happens, only the biggest and meanest farmers here will be able to compete.
The evidence from New Zealand, where all subsidies were stopped in 1984, is mixed. Since then, livestock farms have consolidated, but the number of small horticultural farms and vineyards has risen. I want to see opposition parties press the government to do two things. First, to promise that any US-UK trade deal will exclude food and agriculture altogether, even if this means no deal. Secondly, to ensure that supermarkets, which exercise monopsonistic power (too few buyers), pay a fair price to the farmers they currently exploit.
I would argue that payments for environmental goods should be reserved for those that didn’t exist before, while existing wildlife habitats are protected through regulation. I also believe that farmers should seek planning permission before changing a field boundary, ploughing a meadow or felling an orchard.
But I’m less clear about whether there should be a special support payment for small farmers, as some people argue. How would we distinguish between those who owe their living to farming and those who have bought their land as a hobby? Why should small farmers receive this money when small builders do not?
Perhaps we need an entirely different approach. How about expanding the stock of county farms (publicly owned land), which has been steadily shrinking as a result of government cuts? Where the land is suitable, county councils could divide up their farms and offer tenancies to small farmers at below-market rates. This might be a better way of supporting genuine farmers with public money. And how about a community right to buy land, of the kind now exercised in Scotland?
I don’t have all the answers, and I doubt anyone else does. But I do know that good policy depends on constant challenge and debate. And so far, there hasn’t been enough of either.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
If you haven’t bought dollars since the EU referendum, be prepared for a lighter wallet. Over the airport counter, £100 will today buy you just $128 (on 22 June, it was $146). If you’re heading to the Eurozone, it’s €114 (€130 in June). That’s because, ever since they saw Sunderland vote to leave the EU, currency traders have been dumping sterling.
Although some forex traders believe the pound will bottom out at $1.20, the pessimists are predicting parity: one pound buys you one dollar. And I think the pessimists are right. Because there is no situation in economics incapable of being made worse by the uncontrolled antics of politicians. And antics are what we’re getting.
Theresa May’s conveniently short walk to Downing Street is designed to combat the impression that nobody is in control. But without a major change in policy, we are still rudderless on a churning financial sea.
Consider the mechanics of British trade. We’ve been running a current account deficit of 7% – a historic high. That’s because we import more than we export, not just when it comes to goods but to services. For every pound spent in the UK on goods and services, 7p worth of foreign money has to arrive to make up the shortfall.
A falling pound should, under normal conditions, stimulate the flow of foreign money into Britain, because the stuff we sell is cheaper. But these are not normal times.
In order to stave off a post-Brexit recession, it’s likely that the Bank of England will have to cut interest rates to zero. Ever since 2008, the Bank has been keeping this move in reserve in case all else fails, like an ageing centre-forward thrown on in the last five minutes of extra time.But the impact of zero interest rates is to make investing in Britain less attractive. And if the big fat zero does not work, and Mark Carney has to print tens of billions of pounds to stimulate growth, then sterling will become even less attractive.
What “straight” economists worry about is stagflation. Here, the falling pound boosts the price of everything sourced globally – from a Starbucks cappuccino to a MacBook – while growth goes into reverse. What political economists worry about, however, is the absence of a plan. Or a leadership. Or whether the public has consented to be governed by an elite that no longer understands what it is doing.
There’s a good reason George Osborne did not ask the Treasury to design a contingency plan in case of Brexit. What he, or his successor, has to do flies in the face of 30 years of centre-right policy.
A logical contingency plan would say: if the electorate votes for Brexit, we stay in the EEA and accept everything the Europeans demand to do a quick deal. That includes free movement because (yes, George, remember this) our entire growth projection to 2020 depends on 1.1 million migrants arriving, on top of those already here.
Next, even as the shocks of exit hit us, we redesign the economy so it produces wealth in a different way. We slash taxes to boost inward investment, but we can’t cut spending any more. So we borrow like crazy, print money and spend everything we can trying to create capacity to grow long-term. And we wean ourselves off migration, upskilling the workforce, replacing low-wage jobs with machines. However, Britain has not done national-centric industrial policy since Michael Heseltine was in charge, and his policy did not work.
It’s clear that Osborne, Carney and the rest understand what needs to happen in the short-term. But in the longer term, Theresa May does not seem to have in her mind a picture of any alternative economic model around which Britain could stabilise. As for Labour, the person in charge of formulating a new industrial policy was supposed to be Angela Eagle, but she has other things on her mind at the moment.
The IMF’s economists predict the UK’s capacity to grow will slump by 4.5% by 2019 if Britain ends up outside the single market. This “capacity to grow” figure is the measure against which debt sustainability is judged.
The national debt, close to 84% of GDP now, was destined to fall under Osborne’s old austerity plan. But this is being jettisoned – again chaotically – as the neo-Thatcherites toy with promises of a £100bn spending spree. More likely is that our debt rises towards 100% of GDP, crushing the value of sterling even more.
The prospect of Britain turning into a post-global disaster zone is real. Andrea Leadsom’s decision to shortcircuit the leadership race is proof of just how real. Politicians of all sides need to grasp one idea urgently: that Brexit is a mandate to begin making economic policy in the national interest first. Under a working global system, what’s good for your trading partner is usually good for you, because the system feeds the upside back to you.
Once you’ve put a hole in the multilateral system – and Brexit does that – your competitiveness has to be defined differently. Competitiveness now is about: what hikes real wages? What boosts investment? What raises productivity? What expands the export sector? These questions all raise another one: who is going to do it?
In economies that successfully game the currency and export system, the answer is usually the state. The government shapes the economy ruthlessly to ensure that, as the currency depreciates, there is export capacity ready to grow; and it relentlessly games the global trade rules.
This is called “neo-mercantilism”, as practised by Germany, Japan, South Korea and China. But it has not been the British way since Harold Wilson.
Instead, we are in the phase of flamboyant dice throws – Leadsom’s case shows how ill-advised these can be. The more I watch this circus, the more it becomes obvious that – in their subconscious – the political elites of Britain do not really believe we are going to leave the EU.
The total absence of engagement with the question “What is our future economic model?” belies the assumption that Mischon de Reya will stop Brexit with a legal challenge. They won’t.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
Who are the real saboteurs? Is it those who want Brexit to be properly scrutinised by parliament to prevent a disastrous deal which could wreck the economy and shred social provision? Those were, after all, the saboteurs who needed crushing according to the Daily Mail when Theresa May called her calamitous snap election. Or are the real saboteurs those who – through bigotry, twisted ideological zealotry and outright stupidity – are damaging the fabric of the public services we all depend on?
Britain’s National Health Service is propped up by 12,000 doctors from the European Economic Area. Without them, our most treasured national institution – which brings us into the world, mends us when we are sick or injured, cares for us in our final moments – would collapse. So it should be of some concern to us, to put it mildly, that nearly half of them are considering leaving the country, and a fifth have already made actual plans to do so.
What a twisted irony. The leave campaigners made a calculated decision to win the EU referendum with a toxic mixture of lies and bigotry. One of the most striking falsehoods was an extra £350m a week for the NHS after we left: instead it’s being emptied out of desperately needed doctors.
And can you blame them for wanting to leave? We’ve now had years of vitriolic scapegoating of immigrants to deflect responsibility from the banks, the tax-dodgers, the unaccountable corporations, the poverty-paying employers, the rip-off landlords, the neoliberal politicians, and all the other vested interests who have unleashed misery and insecurity upon this country. The positive contribution of immigrants was all but banished from public discussion. The campaign reached a crescendo during the referendum, with immigrants variously portrayed as potential criminals, rapists, murderers and terrorists, validating every bigot in Britain and resulting in a surge in hate crimes on the streets. I wonder why European doctors don’t feel particularly welcome right now?
This is about the worst possible time to haemorrhage doctors. The NHS is enduring the longest squeeze in its funding as a proportion of GDP since its foundation; it’s being fragmented by marketisation and privatisation; it’s under growing pressure because of decimated social care budgets while citizens continue to live longer. Plunging morale – because of privatisation, staff shortages and cuts – is affecting all doctors, regardless of where they’re born: a recent study suggested two-thirds are considering leaving. The consequence? We’re having to look abroad for more doctors. This is a recurring irony of Conservative rule. After the first five years of the coalition government, drastic cuts to nurse training places led the NHS to look for one in four nurses abroad.
How have we allowed the bigots and xenophobes of our unhinged tabloid press and political elite to inflict so much damage? Rather than making our life-saving foreign doctors feel unwelcome, surely we should be focusing on how we can tax the booming wealthy individuals and big businesses so we can invest more in our NHS? It should be abundantly clear who the real saboteurs are. They have already inflicted incalculable damage to our social fabric, our public services, our economy, and our international standing. The question is: how do we prevent them from inflicting even more damage?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
There is no rule that says people have to be interested in the things politicians want them to care about. For years, Eurosceptics got that wrong. Most British citizens went about their lives unbothered by the European Union. Brussels was an object of compulsive loathing for only a tiny number. Their good fortune was to find in David Cameron a malleable prime minister who could be pressed into calling a referendum on a question few voters had ever thought to ask themselves. The cranks got their hobby horse into the political Grand National – and, credit where it’s due, they won.
That campaign raised the volume of EU debate without making the topic more appealing. June 2016 was when Britain’s collective receptiveness to European arguments peaked. A question was asked; an answer was given: leave. How to make it happen was someone else’s problem.
Disengagement is the biggest obstacle to the cause of reversing Brexit. Now unrepentant remainers also come across as cranks, banging on about Europe in ways that cause agnostic eyes to glaze over. I have seen research in this area for one pro-European campaign group, and it is a rebuke to anyone who follows each twist of the negotiations, each barrage in the Tory civil war, and imagines that the nation is gripped.
“I don’t think I’ve heard anything about Brexit since the vote itself,” one young voter declares in a focus group. The participants were selected for readiness to switch between leave and remain positions. Many recall the 2016 campaign as a time of anxiety, even trauma. They resented being forced to choose between options they felt ill-equipped to evaluate, and are in no hurry to relive the experience. Few see Brexit as an imminent personal threat. It is either something settled in the past or whose meaning will be revealed in the far future.
MPs report much the same from their constituencies. The most common EU-related instruction since the referendum has been “just get on with it”. But public opinion is never settled. Polls suggest increasing support for another referendum, and remain is ahead of leave among those who express a preference. Growing support among trade unions for a ballot on final Brexit terms has the potential to shift the political centre of gravity. But 60% of all voters still agree with the statement: “I no longer care how or when we leave the EU, I just want it over and done with.”
With that audience lies Theresa May’s hope of survival. Her Chequers plan is floating motionless in the North Sea, shot down by EU officials and Tory backbenchers. Negotiations in Brussels are not going well and time is short. To get a sane, workable deal, the prime minister must make compromises that would outrage her party’s hardliners. And there is no majority in parliament for the kind of wild Brexit that those same hardliners could cheer. The walls are closing in, winter is coming, it has been an epic journey and tension is building ahead of the season finale …
But that is a Westminster show and most people haven’t been watching. They will only tune in when there is a deal. Then Downing Street has one powerful argument: back this offer and Brexit is done; you don’t need to read the small print (which is boring), you just need to know that this is our chance to move on. This is closure.
Many Tory MPs will embrace that message with enthusiasm. Some Labour MPs will also see the attraction, but not enough to lend votes to a Conservative government at its moment of maximum peril. Meanwhile, Tory hardliners will denounce the deal as submission to foreign powers. Neville Chamberlain’s paper-waving return from Munich will be invoked early and often.
Then it is a numbers game: can May muster enough MPs for a just-get-on-with-it Brexit bodge to outweigh the combined forces of stoppers and wreckers? And if not, what happens? That is where those running the campaign for a People’s Vote see their window. They anticipate a moment where three streams flow together: the public has re-engaged with Brexit because there is a deal; MPs say it is a bad deal; no one has a better idea. Giving the people the option to call the whole thing off then looks not only feasible, but unavoidable.
That is only a route map to keeping EU membership in play, not a strategy for winning the ensuing argument. The remain flame has been sustained by a coalition of pro-European idealists, who see themselves holding the line against a xenophobic putsch, and managerial pragmatists, who lament a reckless act of economic and strategic self-sabotage. Those positions have not changed in the 27 months since the referendum, which is a long time for people who thought the argument was over. There might be more evidence now to support the case against Brexit. It is plainly not the thing it was advertised to be. But remainers have not got noticeably better at marshalling the facts on their side for mass persuasion.
Political warfare over EU relations has raged unabated within already politicised circles and it is hard for the combatants to grasp that it has all just been shadow-boxing. They have only been warming up for the big fight. Remainers have spent a lot of energy arguing with people who believe in Brexit, whose passion for it mirrors their hatred, because those are the only people who can be bothered to argue back. The moment is approaching when they will meet a tougher challenge: that sea of people beyond Westminster who neither love nor hate the EU, who had no strong feelings about membership before they were asked in 2016 and have none now, except perhaps a yearning to get the question out of their lives.
The simplest way to achieve that has generally been to have faith that some kind of deal – any deal – will be done, and not bother with the details. But if the deal comes back a dud, or there is no deal at all, the calculus changes. If Brexit starts to look like a gruelling odyssey, dragging on for years, with real costs now and long into the future, the case for calling it off can be made – and won. But that argument hasn’t properly started yet. It is possible that all of the ideological and technical squabbling, the factional bickering that has consumed politics since the referendum, will turn out to have been only the preamble. And what it will all come down to in the end is a contest between two gut propositions that have very little to do with the EU. For leave: just get on with it. For remain: please just make it stop.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
The appointment of Boris Johnson to the post of UK foreign secretary is no doubt a fine example of British humour: the former London mayor is to diplomacy what Stalin was to democracy.
It’s not every day that a country appoints as its global representative a known liar, a character for whom gross exaggeration, insult and racist innuendo seem utterly untroubling, a man apparently devoid of deep conviction about anything other than his own importance. “It wouldn’t surprise me now if Britain put Dracula in charge of the ministry of health,” scoffed the German politician Rolf Mützenich, spokesman for diplomatic affairs at the SPD.
But this British humour has a price: it devalues what Britain says in the international arena perhaps even more brutally than Brexit has devalued sterling. The reaction of the French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, summed up the feeling of other EU governments: “You know his style,” he said, adding that Johnson had “lied a lot”, and that the EU would need a negotiating partner who was “clear, credible and reliable”. None of the evidence suggests that Johnson meets those criteria.
For many in EU circles the former London mayor’s reputation for mendacity pre-dates the referendum campaign. Nobody has forgotten his activities as a journalist in Brussels, where he was correspondent for the Daily Telegraph between 1989 and 1994. The French tend to mythologise “Anglo-Saxon” journalism as the pinnacle of ethics and rigour, but Johnson was the incarnation of the gutter-press dictum: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Indeed, this is what a grinning Johnson often remarked to his foreign counterparts when they protested about his exaggerated stories.
I observed his methods when I was posted as a journalist to Brussels in 1992. One day he wrote a story claiming that Jacques Delors’ spokesman was so well-paid (as all of these incompetent Eurocrats, of course, had to be in Johnson’s narrative), that he lived in an immense chateau on the outskirts of Brussels. This was vehemently denied at a press briefing, to the hilarity of Johnson.
The story arguably had a grain of truth: Bruno Dethomas, the spokesman, lived in a large 19th-century house that had a turret on the outside, an architectural folly typical of the period in which it was built. “You see, it’s a castle!” Johnson laughed when I challenged him on the accuracy of his reporting.
Johnson can scarcely have believed what he himself wrote, but he kept churning it out. It was a game, a big laugh, especially as his fiercely anti-European newspaper lapped up these stories and gasped for more.
Fundamentally, despite our many conversations, I never actually knew what this son of a Eurocrat actually thought of the European project: was he as Europhobic as his own journalism suggested? Or was he just an opportunist trying to make a name for himself? Was he settling some old score with his father, an intelligent and much-respected EU official?
Either way, it wasn’t truthful journalism, but who cared about that? Johnson managed to invent an entire newspaper genre: the Euromyth, a story that had a tiny element of truth at the outset but which was magnified so far beyond reality that by the time it reached the reader it was false.
He had grasped the fact that some of his compatriots had a taste for conspiracy theories, and he could provide them – with a political scapegoat that was incapable of defending itself. The EU, unlike its member states, lacks an unquestionable political authority, so any reaction from the Brussels commission could immediately be dismissed as “interference” in the internal affairs of the nation state. Attempts to rebut the myths could be easily batted away as a case of no smoke without fire.
Even worse, Johnson created a school of EU reporting: the entire British press, to varying degrees, began peddling Euromyths, fuelling the kind of Europhobia that no UK politician dared to stand up to, and which ultimately has now led to Brexit.
Johnson as politician applied similar methods: so despite a previous ambiguity about the wisdom of Britain leaving the EU, he became head of the leave campaign, never hesitating to lie or insult Britain’s EU partners if it furthered the cause. And, just as when he was a journalist, he had no problem admitting his own lies the day after the referendum victory.
Yet none of it has prevented him ending up at the head of the British diplomatic service. The global face of Britain is now a buffoon (as many in Brussels describe him), whose word is as reliable as a used-car salesman’s.
But fair play to Theresa May: at least now we know that the Brexit negotiations will be brutal and dirty, and that the low blows will come thick and fast. What a delightful prospect.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Theresa May never cast her deciding vote nor even expressed a view at last week’s warring Brexit cabinet committee meetings, deliberately constructed as a five-a-side stand-off. Opening the session on Ireland and immigration, the prime minister reportedly declared, “We don’t need to decide anything today.” And so they didn’t, again. Warfare resumes next week at a Chequers away day. Nineteen long months after the vote, EU negotiators tap their fingers in irritation as Michel Barnier reminds us that “The time is short, very short.” The 22 March deadline for agreeing a transition deal may be missed, derailed by the Mogglodytes’ objection that it makes us rule-taking “vassals”.
There is nothing new for either side to think or say. Brextremists stick their fingers in their ears at each revelation of ill-effects. Take the past few days: we have learned of fruit and vegetables being left to rot in the fields for lack of foreign EU labour, and that road haulage permits will be strictly limited once we depart. Lack of EU nurses worsens the 40,000 NHS nursing vacancies, and the UK will be last to get new medicines. Who knew 90% of official vets in abattoirs, some of whom are already leaving, were EU citizens? Public health laboratories at ports warn they will not be able to cope with import checks, as they too are staffed by EU citizens: food will rot on the quayside. Who knew that Ofcom, on behalf of the EU, checks most broadcasting arriving from non-EU countries? Brexit risks thousands of those jobs.
Day by day, more unconsidered mishaps emerge. Look at last week’s cabinet report showing a hard Brexit would wipe out 16% of economic growth in the poorest areas. Yes, that’s still phoney-war speculation – but right now, despite the weak pound, the trade deficit is widening as imports increase faster than exports. UK growth lags further behind the EU and the US. It was top of the G7, now it’s bottom.
Great new trade deals? Liam Fox gallivants around the globe trying to secure the same EU deals with 60 countries that we lose when we leave – and he finds they have us over a barrel: South Africa demands we accept a flood of agricultural produce, threatening our own farmers. India wants the visas May refuses. Never mind, open up to unilateral tariff-free trade, say Rees-Moggites. They quote the Brexit economist Patrick Minford, who agrees that free trade would kill off our farming and manufacturing, suggesting we stick to selling financial services. That certainly wasn’t their message at the referendum.
I hear that Boris Johnson, if faced with unpalatable facts, has a habit of fluttering his fingers in front of his face, shutting his eyes and going, “Na na na na” to blank out any of his officials bearing bad news. That’s the only way these dishonest fantasists can keep going. Yet he is to make a speech on Wednesday to “unite the country” and appeal to remainers. Good luck with that.
But there is one great question: Ireland. The Brexiteers avoid mentioning it, because Ireland is their roadblock. The border is marked by memories of British bad faith that have been gradually healing over 20 years of peace. What a strange irony if Ireland ends up saving us all from ourselves. The border conundrum can only be resolved by forcing May to abandon her contradictory red lines – no customs union, no single market, no European court of justice – and no hard border.
Barnier says Northern Ireland alone could stay in the customs union and the single market. Naturally, the SNP jumped up to say “me too”. Maybe the Brexiteers are destructive enough to accept an end to the UK as a price worth paying? But the DUP they depend on rejects outright any border with the rest of us.
In the cabinet committee the Brexiteers reached again for technology for the border; some mentioned drones. But CCTV or automatic number plate recognition cameras would be vulnerable: Northern Ireland’s chief constable warned last week that any such technology would be paramilitary targets. Move the border to Belfast, was one Brexit brainwave, but wherever they are, border hangars for lorry customs checks will be emblems of an end to Good Friday peace.
The Irish stand in sadness, dismay and puzzlement. I spoke yesterday to the Irish ambassador, who observes government disarray daily and waits for a sign. He points to the withdrawal agreement, where paragraph 49 is carved in stone. On the border question it says: “In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the internal market and the customs union.” There are no other agreed solutions – none. Clarity is needed fast, says the ambassador, “Paragraph 49 is the failsafe.” Barnier is only obeying European council instructions: the EU27 are rock-solid on their no hard border promise.
“Full alignment” for Northern Ireland meets its parliamentary test this month, when amendments to trade bills call for staying in the customs union. It would be unthinkable for Labour not to vote for that: its own upcoming away day will certainly agree. Otherwise it sides with Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and John Redwood. What’s more, “full alignment” will mean near–as-dammit staying inside the single market too, which is just as vital for keeping the Irish border open.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, says: “No one has explained how the border commitments can be kept unless a customs union with the EU is on the negotiating table and the final deal delivers the benefits of the single market.” Never mind the finessed language, watch that turn into a resounding Labour vote when the crunch comes, as Anna Soubry and Ken Clarke rally Tory rebels.
May dares not see off her ultra wing, but parliament looks set to do it for her. The anvil on which a soft Brexit is forged will be Ireland, because there is no other option. Despite history, it stands to be the United Kingdom’s saviour.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
I don’t mean to display the smallest trace of sympathy when I say that the people who brought us Brexit hid their secrets from themselves as much as others. They are as guilty of failing to face their own motives and contradictions as of deceiving the country. Their failure to be honest has produced the gravest political crisis since the Second World War. It has spread from the tight group around the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Vote Leave campaign to infect both left and right, which, even at this late stage, cannot level with the electorate.
Allow me to start at the bottom with the little creatures who scurry around British conservatism’s fake grassroots, for that is where it began. The very name “the TaxPayers’ Alliance” is a kind of trick. The alliance isn’t the “grassroots campaign” it claims to be. Taxpayers cannot vote for its officials or dictate its policies. If taxpayers say austerity has gone too far, the alliance will not listen. It is a private company dedicated to producing a “pro-enterprise country with lower, simpler taxes”, whether taxpayers want them or not.
So far, it looks like a standard front organisation of the type the far left and corporate right have been sending out to greet credulous journalists for decades. Although it keeps its donors secret, the Guardian found that it was tied into the network of thinktanks, foundations and AstroTurf campaigns billionaires in the Koch brothers mould created to turn the west rightwards. Its belief in the stripped-down state won it evangelical approval and $100,000 from the Bahamas-based Templeton Religion Trust, even though the Jesus of the Gospels’ only utterance on fiscal policy was to tell his followers to render their tax returns unto Caesar.
Theology aside, the underlying philosophy – if that is not too respectful a term – of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Vote Leave makes little sense. Shahmir Sanni worked for both. Indeed, from Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave and a founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, down to IT staff, rightist activists bounced between the two.
The culture of this little world was thoughtlessly libertarian, Sanni told me. If you defended the NHS or showed sympathy for those on welfare, you were a “wet”, an insult that performs the same function on the hard right as “centrist” does on the far left. Wets were at best guilty of faulty thinking and rank sentimentality. At worst, they were renegades. The wetness had to be wrung out of them.
True believers had to admire Donald Trump for bashing the hated liberals and believe in Brexit as a matter of course. Political orthodoxy meant that men and women who claimed to have taxpayers’ interest close to their hard hearts never felt they needed to explain what they were doing to taxpayers. Brexit will hammer the tax base. You can take your pick of the forecasts. The UN special rapporteur’s analysis on poverty in the UK said: “Tax revenues will fall significantly. If current policies towards low-income working people and others living in poverty are maintained in the face of these developments, the poor will be substantially less well off.” City sources estimate that the Treasury could lose £10bn a year from the London financial sector alone.
I could take this as a cue to excoriate Jeremy Corbyn and the far left, who spent their lives accusing Labour governments of “betrayal”, yet are ready to back a Brexit that will betray the poorest people and poorest regions in Britain. But frankly, if you haven’t clocked their political bankruptcy yet, you never will.
As significant are the equally treacherous fiscal conservatives, who rushed to support a shuddering change that will place a greater burden on the taxpayers they claim to support. The conventional liberal-left explanation is that Vote Leave, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and all the other Tory politicians who marched under their banners are operating in the interests of the super-rich, not the 17.4 million people who voted to leave. The financiers behind the investment fund Jacob Rees-Mogg founded can neatly sidestep Brexit by moving assets into the EU; the rest of us will be stuck with stagnation and decline.
But there was never a coherent set of principles behind the Leave campaign, or even a logically thought-through class interest. Instead, there’s a jumble of contradictory imperatives, nurtured in groupthink and sustained by careerism: cut immigration; boost the economy; protect the hardworking taxpayer; threaten the tax base. In what ought to be a notorious moment, Vote Leave refused to define what a vote for Brexit might mean for fear that its own supporters wouldn’t buy it and its flaws would become a target for the Remain campaign.
In what is certainly its most despicable moment, the TaxPayers’ Alliance fired Sanni after he revealed to the Observer how Vote Leave had circumvented election spending limits. The Electoral Commission has vindicated his stance, but Stephen Parkinson, a Vote Leave director and aide to Theresa May, punished him by revealing that Sanni was gay. (Sanni is from a traditional Muslim family and Parkinson did not care if he destroyed his relationship with his parents.)
The TaxPayers’ Alliance claims to defend the common man and woman from the overbearing state. Yet the clique’s first reaction to a whistleblower was to use the overbearing state to punish the heretic by invading his privacy.
The men who led us into this crisis refused to think through what they were doing. It wasn’t so much that they were never honest with the country about Brexit. It was that they could never be honest with themselves. If they had, Britain’s position might now be less perilous.
 This article was amended on 27 November 2018 to remove a reference to Big Brother Watch.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
I considered voting for Brexit. After the referendum was agreed, but before the campaigning had begun, I could have gone either way. My issue was democracy. I didn’t like the fact that the European parliament could not initiate legislation; that turnout for European parliamentary elections had fallen 30% since the first elections in 1979; the way countries that voted “the wrong way” on EU referendums were effectively instructed to vote again (Denmark 1992; Ireland 2001, 2008) and get it right; the fact that Greece’s resounding democratic rejection of the terms of its bailout (2015) was treated with such contempt.
It felt increasingly obvious that this institution had growing control over our lives even as it became less obvious how anyone beyond its ruling bodies could directly influence it. It’s never been obvious to me that the EU’s senior leadership could satisfactorily answer all of the late Tony Benn’s five essential questions for people of power, namely: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?
To frame this as a matter of sovereignty felt too limiting. International capital would have the run of the planet whether we stayed in or out of the EU. So our leaving would not give us “back control” but leave us more isolated than independent. The question was less who had the power than whether that power was democratically accountable.
Once the leave campaign was gripped by xenophobia and post-colonial delusion my voting choice became clear. Basic social democratic protections and open borders were the things I liked most about being in the EU. I’ve heard many remainers insist that people who voted to leave weren’t voting against the EU, but other things. Well so was I – I was voting primarily against bigotry. I feared a leave vote would strengthen an ugly, stubborn strain of small-minded British parochialism that needed no encouragement. That fear has proved well founded.
So my vote to remain was not an endorsement of the EU. I wish we hadn’t left; I wish it were much better. There is no contradiction there. Indeed, I think if it had been better we would not have left and we should have only stayed with the proviso that we would work to make it better.
Two years on, this distinction still matters because the Keystone Cops nature of Britain’s departure has diverted attention from a chronic and ever-urgent issue – the EU still needs to be democratised. The lack of accountability and transparency in its institutions leaves it susceptible to a vast array of haters and hucksters, from the far right to eccentric iconoclasts. This became clear again last weekend in Italy, where Eurosceptic parties – who floated the possibility of a referendum on ditching the euro – fared best. Across the continent the institutions associated with the EU are more tolerated than loved, leaving the EU ruling more by ambivalence than consent. In short, it is only because Theresa May has made herself look so ridiculous that Jean-Claude Juncker is looking so good.
There was a keener sense of this vulnerability early last year when the brazen idiocy of Britain’s negotiating strategy was not fully clear. Back then, the possibility of far-right victories in the Netherlands and France prompted fear of Brexit contagion. The far right did not win. And in the intervening time Britain has kept throwing down the gauntlet, only to pick it up itself, apologise for making a mess, and ask for another chance.
This has forced the EU to negotiate with Britain like a parent negotiates with a petulant child – cajoling, threatening and sometimes just waiting patiently until they come to their senses. They have made clear the boundaries, as they did this week, only stepping in to prevent self harm.(Even before Brexit, Angela Merkel called Britain Europe’s “problem child”.) With an enemy like that, the EU hasn’t really needed friends. So long as Britain acted as a tragicomic, cautionary tale, the EU’s legitimacy has appeared unassailable and longevity beyond doubt. Neither is true.
First of all, while the far right did not win in France or the Netherlands it did gain ground, as it went on to do in Germany and Austria later in the year. Its parties don’t have to win to exert considerable influence. The UK referendum, lest we forget, was promised by the Conservatives to neutralise the electoral threat of Ukip. That party is now a rounding error and a laughing stock; Britain, meanwhile, is heading out of the EU.
A Pew Research poll from last year shows there is widespread desire on the continent for referendums on EU membership – with significant majorities in France, Italy and Spain (the eurozone’s second, third and fourth biggest economies respectively). And even if there is little backing for actually leaving at present, it is not difficult to see where more support might come from.
Only roughly a third of Europeans have a favourable view of the European Central Bank, European commission and European parliament, according to a 2014 Pew survey, while barely half like the EU as a whole. True, 70% believe the EU promotes peace; but 71% believe their voice doesn’t count in Brussels, 65% believe the EU doesn’t understand the needs of its citizens – and 63% think it is intrusive.
Indeed, while Britain has always been something of an outlier in the EU, its scepticism and sense of alienation are not unique. In a Eurobarometer poll, taken a month before the Brexit referendum, majorities in 16 EU countries, including France, Spain and Italy, felt “their voice did not count in the EU”. In 10 nations more, voters felt their voice counted less than in Britain.
There is no suggestion that the EU is vulnerable to another member state leaving in the foreseeable future. Indeed, Eurobarometer polls show that European citizens consistently have more trust in the EU than in their own governments. The trouble is the foreseeable future, at present, is not that far. A few years ago, Donald Trump’s presidency or Britain’s current position would have been unthinkable. And, paradoxically, one of the reasons the EU can perform so functionally is precisely because, while it does have to cater to elected governments, it does not have to respond to the popular will: its leaders don’t go before the electorate.
Shortly before David Cameron announced there would be a referendum, Angela Merkel suggested he “couch the speech in an argument about Europe having to change” for the benefit of everyone. She was right. The fact that he failed to heed her advice is not just bad for Britain. It’s bad for Europe too.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
The foreigner’s political eye can be innocent, failing to see the tangled vernacular in an unfamiliar land. But it can sometimes see the big political picture with greater clarity. Foreigners can see what Americans struggle to accept about their terrible gun culture. Foreigners can see that Italians will demean their country if they re-elect Silvio Berlusconi’s party.
What about foreigners’ views of Britain? What do their eyes see that we too often miss? Here are three examples, all garnered from just the past few days. They are widely representative.
First, politely, Wolfgang Ischinger at the Munich security conference last weekend. Ischinger is an anglophile, a global thinker, a former German ambassador to Britain. As chairman of the Munich conference, he interviewed Theresa May at the weekend, very deliberately saying to her that Brexit was “highly regrettable” and that “Things would be so much easier if you stayed.” May smiled icily at this, like the political hostage she is, as the letter from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s deregulatory fanatics this week so cockily confirms.
Second, frustratedly, in a bar in central London this week, one of my oldest friends. He’s a Canadian, with lots of British roots and experience, just back from a trip to Asia and passing through London. He suddenly pushed back in his chair and said of Brexit: “This just has to be the stupidest decision that any democracy has ever taken.” The accent made it specially eloquent and damning – “the stoopidest decision”.
And third, angrily this time, there is Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times this week with a blisteringly sarcastic column. Britain is a cat up a tree, he writes. It needs to climb down but it hisses and claws at those who clamber up ladders to offer a hand. It’s time for the EU to cajole the hissy cat out of its tree with 15 exasperatedly contemptuous concessions to England – yes, O’Toole gets it that Brexit is mainly about the English. Things such as being allowed to win penalty shootouts, compelling Spanish-language atlases to call the Malvinas the Falklands, and sending children up chimneys.
These are three views from three people who do not know each other but who each know Britain’s oddities. Brexit is a pity. Brexit is stupid. Brexit is an act of English self-love. It is obvious that there are points to be made against each of the three foreign critics. Yes, the German political class is far too complacent about the nation state and Europe. Yes, my Canadian friend ought to know that no political campaign is won by calling people stoopid. And, yes, O’Toole ought to know there is more to Britain than boozy, brassy tabloids and infatuation with the war – sometimes. But the bigger picture is that all three are right. They get it. And they speak for the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world – or at least the bit of the world that doesn’t welcome the weakening of the rules-based order, of international standards, and of open, pluralistic liberal societies. The Germans are right to be sad, the Canadians right to be annoyed, and – in particular – the Irish are right to be angry.
Politically and morally, Brexit will always come back to Britain’s relationship with Ireland. There can be no hard Brexit without a border in Ireland, and the choice you make on this defines you. Six days ago, the former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson, a recklessly hard Brexiteer in the Rees-Mogg mould, endorsed the view that the Good Friday agreement, which brought 30 years of killing and rioting to an end, has “outlived its use”. This is a resonant moment. It is the moment when the Brexit fanatics appeared to be happy to take the risk of Irish people killing each other – and killing British people too – for the good of Brexit. Actually it’s more. It is the moment when parts of the Tory party seemed to be saying that 20 years of peace in Northern Ireland was positively undesirable because it had legitimated the gunmen. Not just not worth preserving – but positively worth destroying. That’s more than a pity, and it’s more than stupid. It is dishonourable. It’s also unneighbourly.
When an electorate does something wrong, such as elect Berlusconi or make Donald Trump president, or vote for Brexit, it isn’t the end of the matter. Yet there are always contrarians who insist on blaming the defeated side rather than the winners. It’s the fault of the previous consensus, they say. There was always something rotten in the established view, they insist.
Get over it, they continue. Look for the opportunities lurking in the setback. That’s what a group of so-called “brains for Brexit” are now doing. These academics think that anti-Brexiteers should move on, be more open-minded about their own faults, and think afresh about the possibilities of Brexit. They think everything isn’t really as awful as the remainers claim. Some interesting people are involved in this little project, people with ideas that are worth thinking about, people who are worthy of serious respect. Some of what they say is genuinely worth considering, as alternative views always are. But these things don’t make them right.
There are some academics who can’t see a consensus without revolting against it. And the truth is that the academics will be fine under Brexit. Their jobs are secure. They will go on writing books about the mistakes that the rest of the world will always make. As this episode reminds us, foolishness is evenly distributed between the clever and the not-so-clever.
A reasonable person has to accept that Brexit may happen and that, if it does, life will go on. However, that does not justify or excuse Brexit. There are serious material and domestic political reasons for opposing it – the loss of jobs, higher-priced imports, weakened safeguards at work and elsewhere. But there is also a bigger picture. That bigger picture is the importance of liberal democracy’s ability to play the long global game.
Liberal democracy has a fight on its hands in the 21st century. It has to maintain the place of rights, freedom, openness and coexistence in a world increasingly marked by nationalism, religious sectarianism, criminal greed and arms proliferation, all amid a changing global balance driven by the rise of Chinese power and the decline of American moral authority. We have to hang in there.
Brexit brings nothing at all to this long game. It only undermines it. Our foreign friends see this from their vantage points. We also need to see it from ours. For Britain to do its bit in the world, Brexit must be softened and eventually reversed. It may take time. But we are in a long game.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
How should Britain leave the European Union? The question hangs over Theresa May’s new administration as it considers when to invoke article 50, which will lay out the procedure for a withdrawal agreement, and indicate what sort of future relationship Britain wants with the EU.
Will it be membership of the European Economic Area, like Norway? A trade agreement with the EU, or reliance on World Trade Organisation rules? Yet the future relationship depends not only on the conditions in Britain but also on developments in the EU. And in that respect there are encouraging signs that European leaders are, at long last, listening to what their peoples have been telling them.
As Donald Tusk, president of the European council, declared before the referendum, the EU needs to take a “long hard look at itself and listen to the British warning signal”. After the vote for Brexit, that is needed more than ever. During the campaign much was made of the dangers of an overweening Europe, aiming to become a federal superstate. Yet things have changed following the eurozone and migration crises.
Despite the rhetoric of ever closer union, the member states are no longer prepared to sacrifice more of their sovereignty. Germany has no appetite for fiscal union, and Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, has said that integration has gone “too far”. Poland has no wish to adopt the euro; there is clearly little desire for a common migration policy; and anti-EU feeling is growing throughout the continent. The EU has become economically, politically and culturally too diverse for any drive towards ever closer union to be successful.
More often than not, a political union of separate states requires an act of will brought about by force or an external threat – as with the United States in the 18th century and Germany in the 19th. The EU is in no position to produce such strength of feeling, so it seems certain to remain an association of states committed, as the European federalist Andrew Duff has lamented, to “never closer union”. The trend towards intergovernmentalism rather than supranationalism – where a power greater than the states takes control – was vividly illustrated when the eurozone crisis was handled largely by the council, made up of EU heads of governments, rather than the commission, which has the sole power to initiate laws.
The EU must now face reality. That means formally recognising the council as the supreme executive of the union, downgrading the commission so that it becomes, as the Gaullists have long wanted, a secretariat of the council without the power to initiate legislation. That would undermine the arguments of Eurosceptics, who thrive on the anathema of an unelected and unaccountable legislative body, something that Britain found particularly difficult to accept.
Further, so long as the idea of “ever closer union” remains enshrined in the EU, it will give eurosceptics a handle for criticism; and it allows the European court of justice to extend its remit too widely. The court should be an arbiter, not a missionary to eliminate states’ rights. So the EU must state clearly that ever closer union is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future.
The EU must also face reality on freedom of movement. That principle was first outlined in the 1950s in conditions very different from those of today, by six member states at a similar stage of economic development and before the era of inexpensive mass transit. It is no longer suitable when Europe consists of 27 member states at very different stages of economic development. It not only imposes strains on the more affluent countries, stimulating the growth of the radical right, but also deprives the less affluent members of their most able and energetic citizens. Modifying this principle would also help Britain to negotiate continued access to the internal market.
It is said that the treaties preclude any interference with freedom of movement. Yet treaties intended to enforce the stability and growth pact, designed to limit the power of national governments, have been disregarded when necessity required. Adoption of the euro was supposed to be irreversible; yet, it is claimed Schauble urged Greece to abandon the euro and leave the Eurozone. Treaties, after all, are human constructs. If they stand in the way of reality, members can and should agree to revise them.
The EU needs not only long-term reform but also immediate measures to prove its value to the ordinary citizen. Tusk has rightly said that Europeans want not more Europe, but better Europe. Many Europeans have benefited from the single market, most obviously in cheap airfares – now, as the banker Sir Martin Jacomb has argued, is surely the time for a radical extension of free market rules into the energy and digital areas, and an effort to ensure that professional qualifications are genuinely transferable across Europe. This would provide citizens with concrete benefits, which would do more than a host of declarations or institutional reforms to prove the value of the European project.
The British contribution to Europe was always to insist that rhetoric is subordinated to reality. Realism is now desperately needed if the European project is to be rescued from the elitist and technocratic establishment which currently dominates it, and which is losing it the support of its people. Perhaps if EU leaders listen to what citizens are saying, it might even be possible to persuade the British public to have second thoughts in a second referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
As we leave the EU, the UK can turn its back on the austerity policies that have been the hallmark of the euro area. My main argument against staying in the EU has been the poor economic record of the EU as a whole, and the eurozone in particular. The performance has got worse the more the EU has developed joint policies and central controls.
The UK public warmed to the idea of spending our own money on our own priorities in the referendum campaign. The main issue between leave and remain was the money. Remain tried to dismiss its importance by claiming there was in practice little money at stake, and disagreed strongly with any reference to the gross figure for UK contributions.
The public did not take away one particular figure from the debate, but did believe that we contributed substantial money that it would be useful to spend at home. Cancelling the contributions would also make an important reduction in our large balance of payments deficit, as every penny we send and do not get back swells the deficit, just as surely as if we bought another import.
During the campaign I released a draft post-Brexit budget, showing how we could scrap VAT on domestic fuel, tampons and green products, and boost spending substantially on the NHS.
The government will be able to choose what to do once we have stopped the payments. The autumn statement showed a saving of a net contribution of £11.6bn in 2019-20 once we are out of the EU, as well as additional domestic spending in place of spending in the UK by the EU currently.
I am glad the chancellor has also adopted more flexible rules for the budget deficit. There is no need to genuflect to the Maastricht debt and deficit criteria once we leave, nor to pretend that we are about to get our overall debt down to 60% of GDP, as is required by those rules. The UK economy needs further stimulus, as the autumn statement acknowledged. There are roads and railway lines to be built, new power stations to be added, more water storage, schools and hospitals to cater for the rising population.
The government is right to say the UK needs to invest more. We need to make new provision for all the additional people who have joined the country in recent years, and to improve the efficiency of our infrastructure. The country is well behind in meeting demand for train and road capacity, and in energy provision.
The UK also needs to make, grow and provide more for its own needs. Leaving the EU will enable the UK to undertake a major campaign for import substitution. When we have our own fishing policy we could move back to being net exporters, instead of being importers. The common fisheries policy means too much of our fish is taken by other member states, leaving us short for our own needs. Designing our own agriculture policy will mean we can put behind us the quotas and regulations that have held back UK output during our years in the EU. We can change our procurement rules, so that the government when spending taxpayers’ money can ensure more is bought from home suppliers.
The UK is embarking on a substantial expansion of housebuilding. Too many materials and components for our new homes are imported. The lower level of sterling provides an opportunity for the UK to put in more brick, block and tile capacity, to prefabricate and manufacture more of the components and systems a new home needs. If more of the home is fabricated off-site – as happens in Germany and Scandinavia – we reduce the impact of bad weather, of labour shortages and other inefficiencies on the building site. Industry by industry there are opportunities for suitable investment and entrepreneurial activity, to meet more of the UK’s own demands. This will be good for jobs, and better for the environment, when more is produced close to the place of consumption.
One of the great unanswered questions of our time in the EU is: why do we run a balance of payments surplus with the rest of the world but a deficit with our EU neighbours? Why has it been so large and so persistent? Part of the reason rests in the way the EU rules were organised.
Early liberalisation was designed to help the sectors the continent was best at, rather than the sectors where the UK had a relative advantage. The continental competitors soon outpaced us in their better areas, leading to UK factory closures and job losses in areas like shipbuilding steel production and cars in the early years of membership. The special designs of the common agricultural and fishing policies also led to larger import bills for us.
Leaving the EU has coincided, so far, with a fall in the value of the pound. The UK should now be very competitive. It is time for business to respond to the favourable levels of domestic demand, and to work with government to put in the extra capacity we need to meet more of our own requirements. Prosperity, not austerity, should be the watchword.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
My football team, AFC Wimbledon, may be languishing down in the third division, as it was once called, but the Conservative MP for Wimbledon, Stephen Hammond, showed himself to be in the Premier League last week.
In that refreshing, surprising vote on Thursday, he and his fellow Tory rebels stood up to be counted in the cause of parliamentary democracy. By voting against Theresa May’s plan to prevent parliament from having the last say on whether the terms of any Brexit deal should be accepted, they joined the noble ranks of “mutineers” and “enemies of the people”.
As regular readers know, I still hope that things will not get that far, and that, somehow or other, sense will prevail as the size of the potential disaster of a Brexit sinks in. And already the deleterious economic impact of the referendum-induced devaluation is becoming apparent.
Incidentally, may I respectfully remind people that Brexit has not happened yet? Even seasoned interviewers on Radio 4 make the mistake of confusing the referendum with Brexit.
The hope among us unashamed Remainers is that opinion will shift sufficiently for the development of a burgeoning realisation that the country made a serious mistake on 23 June last year, not least because enough voters were misled by the blatant lies of Boris Johnson and his ilk. Also, it has to be said, the Remain campaign failed in its patriotic duty to explain the economic and strategic benefits of the European Union – a failure pinpointed in Gordon Brown’s book Britain: Leading, Not Leaving, where he says of our role in the union: “Britain can argue for, and achieve, the best balance between national autonomy and international cooperation for the 21st century.”
And in his recently published memoirs, Brown also tells us that, when he addressed the European parliament in March 2009 on the need for the collective economic stimulus which did indeed “save the world”, the only hecklers were those British founts of Eurosceptical bile, Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan.
They are a curious mixture, the Brexiters. There are the neoliberal ideologues, such as my old friend Lord Lawson, who unashamedly wish to bury the security and protection of Enlightenment values afforded by the EU and, in Lawson’s words, finish the “Thatcher revolution” – as if that revolution had not finished off enough people’s hopes already.
But the ideologues themselves are a relatively small band – the tail that wags the dog, as it were. I am continually surprised, indeed shocked, by the frequency with which I encounter people who have not been “left behind” but who, for minor prejudicial reasons, voted to Leave – often on the not-so-safe assumption that Remain was going to be triumphant and a protest vote would do no harm. Some hope!
Which brings us to the real problem that has engulfed otherwise sensible Remain MPs: most of them have been so pusillanimous in the face of their “left behind” constituents that they have forgotten Edmund Burke’s dictum that their duty is to be representatives, not delegates – to apply their judgment, not act as conduits for prejudices they do not share.
My impression is that the despair, indeed anger, felt by “left behind” Brexit voters is the accumulated result of the Thatcher regime’s neglect of the north and manufacturing, compounded by the impact of globalisation: as analysts are pointing out a lot these days, the losers from globalisation have simply not been compensated from a pot whose proceeds should have been distributed more equitably.
Now, Lawson has proclaimed in his Thatcher lecture that “the time has come to call an end to this demeaning process”. The process to which he refers is May’s attempts to square the circle of the Conservative party’s conflicting demands from Brexit.
No, Lawson wants to leave the EU now, and rely on starting all over again in the World Trade Organisation – a WTO whose very function, and therefore future, is now being questioned and threatened by the egregious Donald Trump. I am not making this up.
The truth is that the time has come to call an end to the demeaning process that has been set in train by a misleading and badly conducted referendum. MPs and others need to tell it as it is. If the governor of the Bank of England can, so can they.
Already, enlightened MPs tell me the ground is shifting slowly in the direction of Remain. One recent poll showed 53% for Remain, against 47% Leave. There seems to be a consensus that if this became 60% versus 40%, that could be decisive.
As the veteran pollster Sir Robert Worcester recently reminded me, beneath a seemingly small shift in polling there can lie a lot of what he calls “churning”: in other words, a net shift of one percentage point may be the result of 6% of people changing their minds one way, and 7% the other.
Can it be beyond the bounds of possibility that, as the economic horrors dawn, the churn begins to favour Remain after all? Meanwhile, the message has to be got across to those “left behind” who said they had nothing to lose that, almost certainly, if they don’t change their minds, they have even more to lose.
First published on Sat 27 Aug 2016 17.18 BST
Theresa May has been accused of displaying the “arrogance of a Tudor monarch” over her reported intention to deny a parliamentary vote on Brexit before beginning the process of pulling the UK out of the European Union.
The prime minister is allegedly planning to prevent MPs from voting on the decision to leave the EU before article 50, the legislation that will trigger the UK’s formal exit from the bloc, is triggered.
There has been a post-referendum debate over whether the result is merely advisory, as the act that created it did not specify whether the result would be binding. Some have argued a vote should be held in parliament to ratify the result.
The Daily Telegraph reported that May had been told by government lawyers that she did not need parliamentary approval to trigger the procedure, but it is believed that the prime minister could face legal challenges over the decision.
The vast majority of MPs – up to 480 – and most peers in the House of Lords have supported remaining in the EU. Some reacted to the news with anger.
Owen Smith, who is challenging Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour party, suggested May would avoid a parliamentary debate because there was not sufficient support for Brexit.
“Theresa May is clearly running scared from parliamentary scrutiny of her Brexit negotiations,” he said.
“She’s looked at the numbers and she knows she might not win a vote in parliament.
“She hasn’t set out what Brexit means and she doesn’t want to be held to account on vital issues such as stripping away workers’ rights and environmental safeguards.”
Smith said that if he was to become the opposition leader, he would “press for whatever final deal she, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis come up with” to be put to the British people, either in a second referendum or at a general election.
David Lammy, the Tottenham Labour MP who has been campaigning for a second referendum, tweeted that the plans were a “stitch-up”, adding that: “In our democracy, parliament is sovereign and must vote ahead of any decision to Brexit.”
The shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, also spoke out against May’s plans.
“The logic of saying the prime minister can trigger article 50 without first setting out to parliament the terms and basis upon which her government seeks to negotiate – indeed, without even indicating the red lines she will seek to protect – would be to diminish parliament and assume the arrogant powers of a Tudor monarch,” he said.
“Parliament cannot be sidelined from the greatest constitutional change our country has debated in 40 years.”
Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who have said they will fight the next general election on stopping Brexit, was also dismayed by the report.
“The people narrowly voted to leave the EU, and we must respect that,” he said.
“But the people did not elect Theresa May, and neither did they vote for the as-yet unknown outcome of David Davis’s negotiations.
“To impose a swift exit on the British people without giving the people or their representatives a say, or an opportunity to scrutinise the government’s as yet nonexistent plan for our country’s future, is a betrayal of Britain’s interests and of British democracy.”
Bill Cash, a Conservative MP and leading Brexit campaigner, welcomed the news about the legal advice reportedly given to May.
“It sounds emphatic, and that’s what we want to hear,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.
“There are people who are threatening to try to stop Brexit. The bottom line is that there is nothing that could possibly be allowed to stand in its way.
“Everyone in Europe is expecting it, the decision has been taken by the British people, and that’s it. Let’s get on with it.”
The logistics of implementing article 50 will doubtless be one of the main topics of debate when May gathers her cabinet at Chequers on Wednesday.
At the meeting, which No 10 announced on Sunday morning, senior ministers will reportedly be challenged to come up with an action plan to “make Brexit work”.
Each cabinet minister will be asked to identify the “opportunities” that could stem from the UK’s departure from the EU in their own particular field of competence, a senior government source told the newspaper.
The UK’s future outside the EU will also be an issue next weekend, when May travels to the G20 summit in China.
First published on Sun 10 Jun 2018 19.21 BST
Theresa May is to urge her MPs to send a message of unity over Brexit this week by reversing Lords amendments to the EU withdrawal bill, with senior government figures saying they are confident a revolt can be headed off.
Ahead of a crucial few days for both the process of Brexit and the prime minister’s authority, May is to address her backbench MPs at the 1922 Committee on Monday evening.
The House of Commons is to consider 15 amendments made to the bill in the Lords, covering areas including giving parliament a meaningful final vote, as well as seeking to keep the UK in the EEA customs union after departure.
The purpose of the bill is straightforward, May will say, according to extracts of her comments released in advance. “It is putting EU legislation into law to ensure a smooth and orderly transition as we leave.”
She adds: “But the message we send to the country through our votes this week is important. We must be clear that we are united as a party in our determination to deliver on the decision made by the British people.
“They want us to deliver on Brexit and build a brighter future for Britain as we take back control of our money, our laws and our borders.”
The message was reinforced by David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister and May’s de facto deputy, who said rebel Tory MPs faced a “stark choice”.
“My parliamentary colleagues will have to decide whether to support the government in restoring the bill to its original purpose of delivering legal certainty, or whether to allow hostile amendments to frustrate those essential aims, restricting the government’s ability to negotiate,” he wrote in the Telegraph. “It is profoundly in our national interest that they should choose the first path.” Ministers and aides have indicated they remain “quietly reassured” that they have the numbers to pass the bill when it returns to the lower chamber on Tuesday.
Ken Clarke, the longest-serving MP in the Commons and former chancellor, on Sunday asked rebels to withstand pressure from Tory whips.
But one informed source said No 10 believed it would have “the numbers to get through” votes on Tuesday and Wednesday without a major defeat. “It will be close, but it will be done,” the source said.
The most likely loss for the government could come on the amendment proposed in the Lords by the Tory peer Viscount Hailsham, which guarantees parliament a meaningful vote on a final Brexit deal.
Sarah Wollaston, who is among the likely Tory rebel MPs, said on Monday she was “minded at the moment to vote for the meaningful final vote”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If it came back to us then, having to have a vote of confidence, we would all vote to support the prime minister. We do support the prime minister.”
Wollaston said she would also like to see further concessions on the amendment on the customs union “because it is just a very sensible amendment that says keep it on the table, don’t completely rule it out”.
Labour is seeking to keep two crucial amendments after the 15 government defeats in the House of Lords – to maintain a role in the customs union, and to guarantee a role for parliament in approving a final deal.
The Brexiter Dominic Raab, the housing minister, said he was reasonably confident the government had the support to see off the revolt. “People thinking about voting against the government this week need to think very seriously about it,” he said on BBC One’s Sunday Politics programme.
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, urged Labour to back away from an amendment backing EEA membership.
“If you are in the EEA, you are not in a customs union with the EU and to test that proposition, I went to Norway and then I went to the Norway-Sweden border to see for myself,” he said. “There is infrastructure there, there are checks there, you have to hand in your papers. It is totally incompatible with a solemn commitment to no hard border in Northern Ireland.”
May has a working majority of 14 in the Commons and relies on the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party.
In a further development, Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, claimed that a “potentially catastrophic” no-deal Brexit was becoming increasingly possible.
As his party prepares to fight the Lewisham East byelection on a platform of guaranteeing a referendum on any eventual deal, Cable said the longer the government appeared deadlocked over Brexit, the greater risk there was of a no-deal departure.
“I’d always assumed that the government would more or less get something, a divorce settlement plus a vague commitment to sort things out – Brexit in name but probably not in fact,” Cable said.
First published on Tue 8 May 2018 21.29 BST
MPs will have a vote on remaining in the European Economic Area – effectively a vote on the single market – after a shock defeat for the government in the Lords.
It means the Brexit strategy of both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn has been blown apart in the last 24 hours.
The rebel Labour amendment in the Lords opened the prospect of a Commons vote on the EEA – a less stringent version of the single market – after 83 Labour peers voted against the party whip.
Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP who co-chairs a pro-European Commons committee with Conservative Anna Soubry, said the leadership would now have to come off the fence and make it clear where it stood.
“The time for constructive ambiguity is over: our members and our voters will be delighted with this clear signal that we will not go along with this Tory Brexit,” he said.
The vote came hours after Boris Johnson called the prime minister’s proposal for a customs partnership “crazy” in an interview with the Daily Mail that dealt a major blow to the government’s strategy of a cautious balance between leave and remain.
Johnson was the subject of fierce criticism from within Tory ranks all day. In the Lords debate the former Tory MP Patrick Cormack asked: “What sort of example are we being given by a cabinet that is rent asunder by the foreign secretary, the second most important cabinet minister, rubbishing the prime minister in the columns of the Daily Mail?”
On the key EEA amendment, Labour peers were whipped to abstain. But 83 defied the whip to back the amendment, including a former party leader, many former ministers and a former chief whip. Seventeen Conservatives also backed the amendment.
It was the third defeat of the afternoon for the government and an unexpected triumph for a cross-party group that included Waheed Alli for Labour, the Conservative peer Sandip Verma and the crossbench peer Karan Bilimoria.
All the amendments to the bill that have been passed in the Lords will have to be considered and voted on by MPs when the bill returns to the Commons, perhaps as soon as next week.
Lord Alli told the House that continued membership of the EEA was vital to ensure the future profitability of the UK’s export business and the jobs and livelihoods of many thousands of people.
 “It is the EEA that deals with services, services like retail, tourism, transport, communications, financial services and aerospace where we have a £14bn trade surplus,” he said.
“The customs union only will benefit our European neighbours in their imports and without an EEA equivalent it will damage our profitable export business.”
In a rowdy and sometimes ill-tempered debate peers, many of whom had been debating the EU for the past 30 years, argued passionately for and against EEA membership.
Officially Labour opposed the Alli amendment because other amendments gave MPs a role in the negotiations.
But the leadership will now have to face the tension between its strongly pro-remain rank and file membership, its largely pro-remain MPs and the policy consequences of remaining in any arrangement with Europe such as the EEA, which limits its plans for greater state involvement in the economy.
The Tories are now likely to try to brand Labour as the party of free movement, which is one of the obligations of EEA membership. The threat of higher EU migration is likely to alarm Labour voters in some parts of the country.
A Department for Exiting the European Union spokesperson said: “The referendum was a vote to take control of our borders, laws and money. Ongoing participation in the EEA would mean having to implement new EU legislation automatically and in its entirety without having a say on how it is formulated – and it would also mean continued free movement. We will now consider the implications of this decision.”
Peter Mandelson, the former trade secretary and one-time EU trade commissioner, said ministers were perpetrating a “Brexit fraud’ by pretending that migration from the EU, which would continue under membership of the EEA, would end after the UK left.
“The time has come for economic reality and commonsense to prevail over wishful thinking and political dogma,” he said. “This gives us the opportunity to do the right thing for the country and in my view that is what we have a duty to do.”
The EEA offers most of the benefits of the single market, without being subject to the European court of justice. It does not cover the common agriculture or fisheries policies.
Earlier, peers voted to remove the EU exit date of 29 March 2019 from the withdrawal bill, warning that it would be a straitjacket for negotiators. The Duke of Wellington, Charles Wellesley, who moved the amendment, insisted he was not trying to undermine the result of the referendum by delaying or averting Brexit.
“We should give ministers a bit more flexibility to secure and obtain ratification of the best possible deal, which will do the least damage to the economy and the national interest,” he said.
The government also lost another vote on an amendment seeking to protect UK membership of EU agencies such as Euratom.
The Labour leader in the Lords, Angela Smith, said it was an opportunity for the Commons to think again.
“The House of Lords amendment is not about stopping Brexit but the fine print of when and how the agreements are concluded,” she said.
The defeats came on the final day of debate on the report stage of the bill in the Lords. Peers are due to send it back to the Commons at the end of the week, and the government hopes it will be on the statute book before the end of May.
The government has been forced to make concessions, as well as losing a dozen votes during the debates, in a series of amendments that have often had cross-party support.
The amendments have been divided between trying to preserve benefits of EU membership, such as workers rights, and other fundamental rights through the incorporation of the EU’s charter of fundamental rights, which has a broader reach than the UK Human Rights Act.
Others were intended to promote the place of parliament at the heart of the process of leaving the EU, including clarifying the significance and consequences of the “meaningful vote” on any Brexit deal.
And some were more narrowly technical, intended to restrict ministerial powers to change laws without proper parliamentary process and debate.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
It’s quiet – too quiet.” It was, I think, John Wayne who first drawled that line of knowing scepticism, in the 1934 B-movie western The Lucky Texan. But it seems no less apt this week, as the Tory prairie remains suspiciously peaceful in response to Theresa May’s speech on Brexit, delivered at the Mansion House on Friday. True, Michael Heseltine has performed his quasi-constitutional role as lord privy Europhile by dismissing the prime minister’s remarks as no more than “phrases, generalisations and platitudes”. There are reports too of a dirty tricks operation at No 10 to undermine the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, (vigorously denied all round).
Yet the Conservative reaction to the speech has been remarkably cordial. Less than a week ago, it was bellicose business as usual. On the eve of the prime minister’s big speech, John Major declared that “many electors know they were misled” over Brexit, that “many more are beginning to realise it”, and: “The electorate has every right to reconsider their decision.”
The reality TV star and occasional MP Nadine Dorries branded Major a traitor for his outrageous suggestion that the public might be consulted again on Britain’s EU departure. And quite right too: this is obviously no time for careful reflection, caution or hard-won wisdom – the telltale sneaky weapons of “saboteurs”, “enemies of the people” and other foes of the popular will.
Yet the gunfire that preceded May’s speech has, for now, fallen almost entirely silent. On the blasted mud of no man’s land, you can see Jacob Rees-Mogg kicking the ball amiably to Anna Soubry, who heads it back to Iain Duncan Smith. Where there was discord, there is, as St Francis of Assisi might observe, a sudden and unexpected harmony. Or so it seems.
Why so? First because, of all May’s significant strategic interventions on Brexit to date, this was the crunchiest and most substantial: plunging into the weeds of policy, recognising some of the “hard facts” of what lies ahead, and acknowledging that “no one will get everything they want”. Much of what has been obvious but unstated was at last made explicit.
There was also something for everyone, which is another way of saying that detail is not the same as decisiveness. For the Brexiteers, there was the repeated guarantee that Britain will leave the single market and customs union; that, in due course, parliament can diverge from EU standards as much as it sees fit; and that May herself will not countenance “anything that would damage the integrity” of the UK. On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show today, she was emphatic that “we would just be a rule-taker” if “financial passporting” – the special arrangements that allow banks and other City companies to operate across the EU – were left in place.
For remainers, on the other hand, there was the reassurance that Britain will continue to be associated with a host of EU agencies; that May will adopt a practical approach to the future role of the European court of justice; and that, on workers’ rights and other social protections, “We will not engage in a race to the bottom.”
The second driver of the present Tory truce – though few Conservatives will admit it – is undoubtedly Jeremy Corbyn’s shift of position last week on Britain’s future relationship with the EU customs union. The Labour leader’s subordination, after much deliberation, of his career-long Eurosceptic instincts to an overtly political strategy has brought home to those Conservative MPs who are paying attention that Corbyn is not just the man who might be propelled into No 10 by Tory incompetence. He really wants the job, and he intends to get it. The Tories are spooked, as well they might be.
As an exercise in tactical party management, therefore, May’s speech was a success. But that’s all it was. The Conservative dilemma over Europe is structural rather than specific. It has bedevilled the party for 30 years, destroying its last three prime ministers, and it may yet claim a fourth before too long.
Here’s the irony: David Cameron’s referendum gamble was meant to solve the problem once and for all, but it has had the bleak effect of compounding it. The wisdom of his decision remains a matter of fierce debate at Tory tables. But he is not to blame for the deeper tribal pathology, which has been reinforced rather than resolved.
One half of the Conservative psyche, well described in an essay by William Davies in the current London Review of Books, is positively drawn to the stoic challenge of Brexit, believing that “toughness, even pain, performs an important moral and psychological function in pushing people to come up with solutions”.
In fundamental tension with this is an alliance of older Tories, who believe in the postwar dream of European harmony, and of pragmatic Conservatives who consider exit from the world’s largest single market and one of its most powerful alliances to be an act of collective self-harm.
I think they are right. But that is not the point. The gulf between the two positions – stoic independence versus practical internationalism – is ultimately unbridgeable. One must prevail, and the moment of victory and defeat has been deferred, not confronted. There is much political blood left to be shed, as each chapter of the negotiations unfolds.
“Now is not the time to nitpick,” wrote Rees-Mogg in Saturday’s Telegraph. But – by heavy implication – that time will come again. The prime minister’s speech was a mere sticking plaster on an old and suppurating wound. Enjoy the peace while it lasts, for it will not last long.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
A lot of confusion arises from the way “Brexit” has come to describe two very different things. It can be heroic liberation from foreign control – a common British definition. Or it can be the task of dismantling the UK’s membership of the European Union, in which heroism plays no part. That is how it is generally understood abroad.
They sound the same and are spelt the same way, but the meanings have diverged so far that really they should be separate words. One is an event, the other is a process. One is booked for 29 March 2019; the other will drag on for a decade or more. One is a fantasy, the other is a negotiation. Fantasies tend to be non-negotiable.
On Tuesday, the Commons starts voting on amendments to the EU withdrawal bill and the debate will be passionate, invoking democracy and patriotism. “Brexit” will mostly be used in its fantastical sense. But some rebellious Tories and many Labour MPs will deploy the B-word according to international usage, speaking the language of negotiable agreement. (That is also what Theresa May will have to do at a Brussels summit at the end of June.)
To understand the difference, it helps to identify the moment when the two meanings parted company. It was 8 December 2017. May presented the “joint report” that closed the first phase of separation talks. To seal the deal, the prime minister promised the EU an invisible border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. She also promised Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist party, that there would be no new differences in the arrangements covering Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. The only way to satisfy both pledges at once is for the UK to retain near-total regulatory alignment with the EU for the foreseeable future. There may have been some ambiguity lurking in the tortured official syntax but, in essence, May signed off on a soft Brexit. That was six months ago. The ink is dry.
If Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson believed half of what they have said about ditching the talks, threatening to go it alone on “WTO rules”, they would have rejected the joint report and demanded May’s head. They didn’t, and so their bluff was called. You do sometimes still hear chat about “no deal”, but only from people who would see setting fire to their own heads as a viable alternative to the hairdresser.
Yet the Tories did not accept the consequences of their actions in December. They still think it should be possible to ditch EU regulations without disrupting trade. They want UK enterprises to be part of a single European commercial space, competing with EU businesses, but with a right to selectively apply EU law. No jurisdiction in the world would offer that privilege. Brussels said as much. But off went the cabinet, hunting for magical ways to restore a border without border controls (“customs partnership”), or to reintroduce border controls without a border (“maximum facilitation”).
None of this made sense outside the UK. In domestic debate, the word “Brexit” was still being used nebulously and dishonestly, as it had been by the leave campaign. In Brussels its definition was refined by the joint report: it meant sticking to the deal. The Tories have wasted 2018 so far arguing about deals with a Europe of their imaginations, as opposed to dealing with the one that exists in law. The parameters of available agreement are known. May could withdraw mainland Britain from the customs union and single market – economically potty, but technically possible – while submitting Northern Ireland to joint jurisdiction with the EU. She would challenge the DUP to suck it up because if they brought the government down they might wake up to find Jeremy Corbyn (whom they dread as an agent of Irish reunification) in Downing Street.
Or, she could sign the whole of the UK up to a customs union and single market membership. That would entail submission to European court rulings, payment into EU budgets and free movement of people. It would be just like EU membership but worse, because there would be no top-table seat to defend national interests. If she plays her diplomatic cards very well, the prime minister might upgrade that package to include a consultative role when big decisions are being made, plus a modest dispensation on free movement. Skirting the boundary between realism and fantasy is a proposal to stay in the single market for goods only – allowing a more independent trade policy in services. Ambitious; maybe not impossible.
Those are the runways on which the Brexit plane can land. It is circling in the air because May doesn’t want to tell the passengers about the destination. Wisely, she rejected advice from her backbenchers to ditch the plane in the sea or slam it into a cliff. The point of departure now feels very remote. Even if she wanted to go back, it isn’t clear whether there is enough goodwill in the EU tank to get us there. Time is the fuel and she is running low.
And May is alone in the cockpit. No one else wants to make the announcement: fasten your safety belts, we are starting our descent. The days when Brexit meant gazing out of the window at wispy cloud castles are over. Corbyn doesn’t want to say it. Johnson can’t say it. They don’t want to tell the public that the options are either: a deal worse than membership or no deal, which is worse than the worst deal.
There is orderly arrival in a second-rate location, or there is a fiery crash-landing. That is what it means to honour the referendum. That is what it meant all along. There is no sunnier destination just over the horizon. But there is also no political leader with the courage to admit it. Instead we have our prime minister, afraid of the runway, without a clue how to turn the plane around, flying on empty.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
They may not see eye to eye on the big issues such as trade and migration, but Theresa May and EU leaders may be closer than you think to agreeing the terms and scope for a transition period.
If the latest reports are correct, the prime minister may be about to double her offer on the financial settlement to £38bn in order to unblock the talks before the December summit of EU leaders.
If she does, she has a realistic route to a deal on the transition. Indeed, the blueprint for a transition period that we would advocate as the most viable – where the UK gives up its membership but accepts EU laws lock, stock and barrel – is the one that they are actually edging towards.
You just have to look at May’s Florence speech, in which she made clear that the UK seeks a transition where “access to one another’s markets should continue on current terms”, ie nothing changes. She even accepted that the framework for this period would be “the existing structure of EU rules and regulations”, with David Davis confirming in his speech last Thursday to German business leaders that the UK wants to remain in all EU regulatory agencies during the transition. Similarly, the EU has also indicated that it would accept a status quo transition, but this would require “existing union regulatory, budgetary, supervisory, judiciary and enforcement instruments and structures to apply”.
An extension of the EU acquis (the full body of EU law) to the UK, without EU membership, is the obvious choice for the post-Brexit transition. It’s comprehensive, meaning that very little changes on Brexit day. It’s relatively straightforward from a legal perspective, at least compared with other options, such as staying in the single market via the European Free Trade Association or an European Economic Area copycat agreement. Crucially, it’s politically feasible.
Of course, there would be bitter pills to swallow. What’s the point of leaving the EU if nothing changes aside from losing your seat at the table? However, May has already accepted free movement, budgetary contributions and a role for the European court of justice (ECJ) in the transition, and the government recognises that wasting time negotiating a bespoke transition is futile when the future relationship is the big prize. Why fill yourself up on the starter when the main course is still to come?
What would an extension of the EU acquis, without membership, actually mean? First, the whole body of EU law would continue to apply in the UK post-Brexit, meaning cooperation in many areas, such as trade and security, could carry on unchanged. Second, the UK would continue to accept the burdens and obligations of membership, despite losing its representation in the EU institutions. Third, it would enable the UK and the EU to continue sorting out their future relationship after withdrawal, with minimal disruption.
However, there would be challenges. For example, the EU would insist on ECJ jurisdiction continuing, and the legal principles of supremacy and direct effect being upheld. It would also not accept bespoke, sectoral carve-outs in areas like fisheries and agriculture – much to Michael Gove’s dismay – due to the interwoven and cross-cutting nature of EU law. Finally, the issue of the UK’s status vis-a-vis the EU’s international agreements with third parties, including a whole series of free trade agreements like Ceta, would remain unresolved.
Despite this, an extension of the EU acquis, without membership, is much easier to sort out, both legally and politically, than every conceivable alternative transitional option (except, perhaps, extending article 50), and the two sides already agree on the fundamentals.
It must be stressed that this status quo transitional arrangement, desirable as it may be, does not resolve the fundamental issues of Brexit. One day, the UK will have to choose what it wants: sovereignty or market access. Also, it doesn’t prevent there from being a cliff-edge at the end of the transition, especially if it’s only a couple of years long. (An indefinite transition is desirable but politically implausible; an easily extendable deal would do the trick). However, it buys time – an invaluable resource when the clock is ticking.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Brexit is the biggest peacetime crisis we have faced and a no-deal Brexit could provoke a national emergency. The depth and scale of the divisions and the narrowness of the majority in favour of leaving the EU mean that the most sensible step would be to put the issue on hold, complete the negotiations and then hold a referendum. Sadly, that option is not available.
But it is in the next phase of negotiations that the details of the UK’s future relationship with the EU will be fleshed out. Depending on what happens in those negotiations, either we will see virtually no change to our current status – in which case, what is the point of leaving? Or, as is much more likely, the Brexiteers will demand significant changes to reflect their own views – views that will appal and frighten much of the electorate when they realise the enormity of what is being done. In essence, Brexiteers want to dismantle much of what we regard as the underpinning of civilised life in the modern world.
A referendum now would at least give people the chance to react to the realisation that the easy and facile promises of three years ago have evaporated. £350m a week for the NHS has become a £39bn severance cost to leave the EU, every penny of it to be borrowed by the current political generation, but to be repaid by the young people coming after them.
I am opposed to all the compromises on offer, from Norway plus to common market 2.0 and the so-called Canada-style agreement. In one way or another, they would make us second-class citizens in a second-class country. MPs have rightly rejected the threat of no deal, which removes one disastrous option. All the other options, half-in half-out, satisfy no one. Only another referendum would give us a chance to stay in and pursue the course we have followed with such success over the past 50 years.
As I told marchers at last Saturday’s demonstration in London, I dismiss with contempt the image of us as an island wrapped in a union jack, glorying in the famous phrase that captured, for so many, Winston Churchill’s spirit of defiance in 1940: “Very well, alone”. I was there. I saw our army evacuated, our cities bombed, our convoys sunk. Churchill did everything in his power to end this isolation. Alone was never Churchill’s hope or wish: it was his fear.
Now, I look back over the years: 70 years of peace in Europe, 50 years of partnership between the UK and the rest of the EU. The fascists have gone from Spain and Portugal, the colonels from Greece. Now we have 28 democracies working together on a basis of shared sovereignty, achieving far in excess of what any one of us could individually. Never forget that it was the memories of Europe’s war that laid the foundations of the European Union today.
Margaret Thatcher would have been appalled to see Britain excluded from the top table. Theresa May dashed across the Channel last week, only to be excluded from a meeting of our former partners, and presented with a take-it-or-leave-it offer. That is what the Brexiteers have done to our country: a national humiliation, made in Britain, made by Brexit.
Britain cannot run from today’s global realities of a shrinking world menaced by terrorism, international tax avoidance, giant corporations, superpowers, mass migration, the rise of the far right, climate change and a host of other threats. Against them, our duty is to build on our achievements in the areas of peace and security that the EU has given us, to maintain our trade access where it matters and to keep our place at the centre of the world stage.
We have a responsibility to hand over and pass on to a younger generation a country richer, more powerful and safer than that which we ourselves inherited. And doing so in partnership with Europe is our destiny, not fleeing to a lonely world and the delusion that Donald Trump offers us an easy way out.
The House of Commons is divided and that reflects what is happening in every village, every town and every city of the UK. But MPs can still do their job and many will do it above party loyalty. They will do what they believe is right.
That is all the more their duty now, because Theresa May is effectively gone. She is a leader in name only because she no longer has any control over events. I am sceptical about changing the singer unless you change the song, and a Tory leadership race would be another massive distraction, but we are where we are.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
They’re back but nothing has changed, so happy 2019 Groundhog Day. Ahead lies more perpetual Brexit hell, so get used to it. Don’t imagine the next fortnight of high parliamentary drama will lead to an ending where we can all return to politics as usual. This won’t end with the 15 January vote on the prime minister’s deal, nor with reprised attempts to revive it soon after. It won’t end by the supposed 21 January deadline either, nor will it all be over on 29 March, exit day. Barring extraordinary and dangerous shocks (yes, dreadful things are possible), Brexitry will go on and on for the foreseeable future. Awful prospect? Yes, but all alternatives are frighteningly worse than extending the process as we back off the precipice.
For now this push-me-pull-you directionless government is leading us to the very edge. They want us to take a good look at the no-deal Tarpeian rock below which we will be dashed to pieces by the likes of Boris Johnson, who on Monday ditched his old Canada deal to back a naked no deal as soon as he saw the Tory membership swing that way.
Now we are treated to a no-deal charade, as those 89 lorries travel from a disused airport simulating the gridlock of 10,000 driving daily through Dover. No-deal preparations reveal epilepsy drugs at risk; medicine refrigerators full; chillers overbooked for food warehousing; stockpiling of just-in-time manufacturing parts; and import-export accountants expensively hired to face mountainous red tape. Phone roaming charges are ready to be reimposed, drivers are warned about international licences, and road hauliers are panicking over only 4,000 permits available for our 40,000 lorry drivers – while useless ports are needlessly dredged.
Every day new no-deal problems emerge. Soon the total cost of this absurdity will be totted up – the Treasury’s £4bn set aside, with shed loads more spent by companies urged to prepare by ads on the airwaves, as if warning of incoming air raids. But this is all phoney war, Maginot lines and gas masks for a “managed no deal” that will never happen.
In the midst of year nine of austerity, each sector whimpers at the sight of so much squandered on a mirage. Hauliers could use this money on much‑needed roadside lorry driver facilities and state aid to train drivers in desperately short supply. The Nautilus mariners’ union protests at the state hiring non-UK crews, wasting money needed to train our own.
All this was done due to the self-defeating stupidity of cabinet Brexiteers protesting that Theresa May was deliberately leaving us unprepared for their “clean-break” exit. Show the EU we mean business, they cried! So that’s what she’s doing, but now she has led everyone to peer over the edge, the Brexiteers don’t like it after all. What they thought would be reassuring is, of course, petrifying. Johnson fulminates in his Telegraph column at these “downright apocalyptic” forecasts, claiming no-deal is “closest to what people actually voted for”.
How tempting to wish revenge on prime minister Johnson, by watching him take chaotic charge of a No Deal Britain. Queen Mary and Sussex University’s party polling shows Tory members strongly back no deal. Paul Waugh of Huffington Post reports a no-deal former cabinet minister blithely predicting: “We won’t be able to get certain foods like bananas or tomatoes but it’s not like we won’t be able to eat.” Oh, the war-time nostalgia. Bring on the Woolton pie and dried egg! Let’s all Dig for Brexit! Given the chance, these lemmings would choose Johnson to lead them charging over the white cliffs of Dover: he who was our most embarrassingly inept foreign secretary truly deserves to go down with them.
But the rest of the country doesn’t. Nor will it be allowed to happen. Britain may have lost its bearings, but not all of its marbles. As May told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, this is “uncharted territory” when her deal is voted down; and Labour seems certain to lose its no confidence motion, leaving no hope of a general election. She can reprise many versions of her deal until the last second – but if neither her MPs nor the EU swerve, what then?
To call May sphynx-like makes her too interesting – but this is when her opaque character is revealed. If she lets time run out, by law we fall into no deal. From all we know of her, I do not think she will lead her country into that hell. A higher sense of duty would stop her. She is no David Cameron, nor has she anything more to gain by listening to her extremists. Johnson likes to ape Churchill, but the wartime leader defied his party to stand alone for his beliefs. May will prove the real Churchillian, ignoring party to put her country first.
Backing her would be the great majority of MPs appalled at the prospect. She may be assisted today by the passing of Yvette Cooper’s amendment to the finance bill (as she sets out here) – making no deal impossible without the command of parliament. The 200 MPs and business people, led by the MPs Jack Dromey and Caroline Spelman – begging her on Monday not to allow a no deal to wreck industry – will strengthen May’s arm, as will other anti-no deal amendments. Whatever it takes, with MPs breaking party ranks, parliament will express its overwhelming will in ways no prime minister could ignore. On Monday her grandly announced “powerful” new Brexit no-deal preparedness committee was just more fraud, feint and cardboard scenery for an event that, mercifully, cannot happen.
What Mrs “No Plan B” does next, no one knows. But if her deal fails and fails again, then extending article 50 looks certain. The EU might allow it – but probably only for an election or referendum. By then, enough MPs may be ready to hand over this mayhem to the people, as they mull the remarkable shift in public opinion.
YouGov finds a 6% swing towards remain. Doesn’t sound much? That’s a greater swing than for any postwar election bar Tony Blair’s 1997 victory. Most people don’t change their minds – do we? So this is a big switch.
What’s more that’s just on the old question – leave or remain. If voters are given a defined leave option the swing is even greater. Remain v no deal gives remain a stonking 16-point lead. Remain v May’s deal gives an even more gigantic 26 points to remain.
Is it a risk? Yes, times are volatile and once another Dominic Cummings/Arron Banks/Nigel Farage racist fear poster campaign spews its poison, no outcome can be certain. But one certainty is any Brexit means national decline. Whatever else her grievous failings as a leader, whatever damage done by her relentless austerity and her Go Home van cruelty to migrants, I detect in Theresa May a core patriotism that would stop her leading the country over the no-deal brink.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Theresa May’s expression is hard to read at the best of times, and almost impenetrable at the worst. So it proved on Sunday when she made her second appearance in less than a month on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. Was the embattled prime minister boldly channelling Marshal Ferdinand Foch during the first Battle of the Marne in 1914: Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j’attaque (“My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking”)? Or did her delphic mask recall the terror one imagines she felt in her youth when wickedly “running through fields of wheat”?
If May is apprehensive, she is absolutely right to be. Last week was bad enough – two senior cabinet resignations, Donald Trump’s helpful interventions – but this week the legislative substance of Brexit returns to the floor of Commons, in the form of the taxation (cross-border trade) bill and the quite distinct trade bill.
This video has been removed. This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason.
Amendments aplenty have been put down by Brexiteer MPs, partly as a means of testing the numerical strength of opposition to the Chequers agreement. On Wednesday, what remains of that deal – torn Post-its and doodled images of Michel Barnier – will be the subject of general debate or a “neutral motion”. The next day, David Davis’s successor as Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, will take questions in the House.
The detail of all these exchanges may be mind-numbingly technical – you just try to break the ice at parties with a one-liner about VAT and the EU – but they symbolise something elemental, deeply unsettling, awesome in scale. This is not just another parliamentary process. It is the drawing up of a new blueprint for Britain’s role in the world, being carried out in the most fractious and blinkered manner imaginable.
For May, there are two interrelated perils. First, the Labour remainers cannot be relied upon to support the Chequers deal and the white paper it spawned as the best hope of a soft-ish Brexit. This was the significance of Peter Mandelson’s article in the Observer, savaging the blueprint as a pathway to “national humiliation”.
At some point, May will lose a significant vote on Brexit in the Commons in such a way that Jeremy Corbyn will find himself under intense pressure to initiate a motion of no confidence in the government. Were the Labour leader the statesman-in-waiting he claims to be, rather than merely the head of Europe’s biggest political club, May would already be long gone. His hand may soon be forced.
Second, the Tory party might soon decide that May has outlived her function as the half-effective glue of an otherwise-collapsing government: the first Pritt Stick to hold the title of privy counsellor she may be, but all Pritt Sticks stop working eventually.
I do not trust claims that Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, has already received close to the 48 letters required to trigger a confidence motion in the party’s leader. What is certainly true is that the remainder of May’s authority – fragile at best since last year’s election – is ebbing away fast and has not been restored by her cabinet reshuffle last week.
Boris Johnson, David Davis, Jacob Rees-Mogg and others are all on manoeuvres, and the first two have resignation speeches to make. As the late Margaret Thatcher discovered in 1990 when Sir Geoffrey Howe had his say, such speeches can make or break a premiership. So vulnerable is this balsa-wood government that a single blast of well-aimed rhetorical aggression could trigger its demise.
Yet the dangers in all this are not confined to the prime minister. The personal dilemma facing May is just a pathetic parable for the much deeper problems facing her party and, indeed, the nation. What the Chequers summit and its grim aftermath have demonstrated is the true nature of Brexit, or rather the sheer nightmare of translating an essentially emotional decision into a practical commercial, institutional and diplomatic arrangement. The hard Brexiteers simply have no patience with the complexities of the disentanglement that they seek: whether those complexities concern the Irish border and the Good Friday agreement; or the need for a “common rulebook” for food and goods; or the white paper’s recognition that the new immigration rules will have to “support businesses to provide services and to move their talented people”.
The Brexiteers hate detail – but, like Trump, they love anger, recrimination and the language of treachery. In the Sunday Express, Rees-Mogg declared that No 10 has behaved in a way that “a more severe commentator would call … untrustworthy”. Steve Baker, who resigned as a Brexit minister last week, identifies a “cloak and dagger” plot masterminded by an “establishment elite”.
It was Daniel Finkelstein, now a Tory peer and Times columnist, who observed when working for William Hague that the more bloody-minded Eurosceptics “would not take yes for an answer”. This has proved to be terribly true. The Brexiteers refuse to act as though Britain is engaged in a negotiation with 27 other nations, preferring to aim at alleged traitors at home than to consider how best to bring about the departure from the EU that they so desire.
All of which connects to another, transnational campaign. As gripping as Trump’s visit to these shores was, the simultaneous presence of Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, was possibly more significant. Bannon’s focus, I understand, is next year’s European elections – his aim being to mobilise a nationalist caucus of MEPs in the European parliament. He also maintains strong contacts in the UK and – like Trump – has concluded that Johnson is the right successor to May.
Never underestimate the populist right, especially when being assisted by US and Russian sympathisers. Its principal protagonists have curated the “Brexit betrayal myth”: the claim that the British volk has been let down by a craven elite of multiculturalists and theatre-goers. Some of their number argue that Ukip should be revived under Nigel Farage. But the more dangerous plan is to colonise the battered Tory movement in the years to come – like a facehugger from Alien – flooding local associations with like-minded members, and turning the party of Disraeli, Macmillan and Churchill into a Trumpite nationalist force.
These are possibilities, not certainties. But the volatility that has created them is sufficient cause for deep concern – and not only to May. As profound a disappointment as she has been, she is only a symptom of a much deeper crisis. It is a historic crisis of political, cultural and national trajectory, in which, to be frank, the identity of the prime minister is only a second-order question.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
On Tuesday, the prime minister will give a speech on Brexit. It is another chance for her to spell out what her government is hoping to achieve in the negotiations.
The stakes are high and difficult judgment calls will have to be made. But time is running out. The phrases “Brexit means Brexit” and “There will be no running commentary” are well past their sell-by date. Where there is uncertainty, we now need clarity.
No one expects the prime minister to disclose details on Tuesday that could reasonably be judged to damage the UK in the article 50 negotiations. But, equally, no one buys the argument that disclosure of the government’s basic approach to the big-ticket items such as the single market, the customs union and transitional arrangements would have any harmful effect, apart, of course, from discomforting those Tory MPs who would feel betrayed on learning that their preferred direction is not shared by the government.
So what should the prime minister say?
First, she should rule out hard Brexit.
Leaving the EU without a preferential trade arrangement in place would make the UK significantly poorer. That would leave us outside and shut off from the European market of 500 million people who could buy our products and services. Reverting to World Trade Organisation rules should not be contemplated. As the CBI has said, that “would do serious and lasting damage to the UK economy and those of our trading partners”.
Such an approach would not only put our economy and jobs at risk, but would abandon our shared scientific, educational and cultural endeavours with the EU and jeopardise our collaboration on policing and security.
By ruling out this version of Brexit, the prime minister would calm nerves and reassure businesses.
But she needs to go much further than that. Having spent the past three months travelling the length and breadth of the UK talking to communities, workers, trade unionists, industry representatives and hundreds of businesses large and small, I have a clear view of their needs and concerns. And when it comes to trade, they are relatively straight forward: no drop in the ability of businesses in the UK to trade successfully with our EU partners.
They want the prime minister to fight for them as hard as she has promised to fight for Nissan. On 31 October 2016, the business secretary, Greg Clark, told the Commons that the government had reassured Nissan that it would seek trading arrangements that are “free of tariffs” and “unencumbered by impediments”. The prime minister now needs unequivocally to extend that commitment to all businesses, whether trading in goods or services. She also needs to demonstrate she understands the importance of “equivalence” in the regulated sectors. Labour is demanding nothing less. The economy and jobs must come first.
The fact that changes to the way freedom of movement rules operate in the UK will have to be part of the article 50 negotiations makes the government’s job more difficult. But we are entitled to expect the prime minister to fight hard for the best deal for our country. And the negotiations will take place during a period of considerable challenge and change for Europe itself.
Labour has consistently emphasised the importance and benefits of the single market. But it now seems highly likely that the prime minister will signal on Tuesday that she is giving up on membership. If she thinks that lowering expectations will help her in the long run, she is mistaken.
Full access to the single market is what businesses and trade unions want. If the prime minister is going down the route of a bespoke trade agreement, Labour will demand that she spells out how such an agreement would be comprehensive enough to ensure that the benefits of the single market – trading “free of tariffs” and “unencumbered by impediments” – are matched. Warm words are not enough.
The government must be open enough to provide robust impact assessments of leaving the single market or the customs union, including region-by-region and sector-by-sector analysis.
They must also be honest enough to acknowledge that any fully comprehensive trade agreement is likely to require transitional arrangements and outline what will happen in the interim to our EU contributions and to our role in negotiating new regulations.
The prime minister also needs to clear up other uncertainties. EU citizens living in the UK and UK citizens living in Europe urgently need reassurance. Their status should be sorted out before article 50 is triggered; their rights should not be a bargaining chip in the negotiations.
Equally, the prime minister needs to indicate that she will fight for a new relationship with the EU that values and maintains our joint scientific, educational and cultural work with our EU partners; that guarantees our continued co-operation in the fight against organised crime and terrorism; and that allows the UK to retain its leading position in the world, influencing and contributing to developments across Europe and beyond.
These are Labour’s demands. They are also the demands of the country. They need to be in the prime minister’s speech; they need to be in the government’s plan for Brexit.
To ensure that is the case, parliament should have a vote on the article 50 agreement that is reached at the end of the negotiations. That will provide both grip and accountability of the process and outcome.
If the prime minister is prepared to indicate her willingness to share these objectives on Tuesday, that would be a big step forward in the national interest.
Keir Starmer is shadow secretary of state for exiting the EU and MP for Holborn and St Pancras
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Brexit is pure poison, polluting everything it touches. The fundamental questions the country should be addressing – the crisis in productivity growth, the lack of affordable housing, the overwhelming strain on public services, our desperately weak export sector – are all sidelined. There is not the bandwith or capacity to address them against the gigantic question of how to weather the greatest shock to our economy and society since 1945.
Be in no doubt. Brexit transcends the 1974 oil shock or the 2008/9 financial crash in the probable scale, intensity and duration of its impact. Every aspect of our economy is going to be affected. Investment decisions are going to be abandoned or reduced.
Of course, there is a degree of uncertainty about how much of a shock it might be. Britain negotiating a custom-made deal that allows a well-managed transition to full participation of the single market would be less of a shock than a sharp, hard Brexit rupture, but it is not going to happen. Every time she hints at it, Theresa May gets beaten back by the powerful, Brexit faction that wants nothing less than rupture. She then retreats, judging that keeping her party together is more important than retaining some association with the EU. Unless and until it becomes obvious that hard Brexit is both avoidable and enormously self-damaging, there is no political coalition strong enough to resist it.
Last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility, recognising that the Brexit faction makes the political weather, buckled and declared that its best guess was that Brexit would only be a short-lived mini-shock. It still earned brickbats aplenty from the new bovver boys in British politics, but the OBR pulled its punches. Its economic forecast of a small slowdown in growth, before it is fully resumed in two or three years’ time, is an optimistic outlier. Even so, the impact is severe. The intense squeeze on spending on public services has to continue to give any hope of balancing the budget – even if this aim has been necessarily deferred until early in the next decade. But the shortfall in tax revenues means there will, cumulatively, be another £58bn of public debt than there would otherwise have been.
Worse, the rise in inflation caused by the fall in the pound means that what peoples’ wages will buy – so-called real wages – are hardly going to rise at all in the years ahead. Indeed, the Institute for Fiscal Studies projects no rise for another five years, so that real wages will be below 2008 levels for 13 years. The Resolution Foundation points out that in every decade since the 1920s real wages have risen by 20%, slowing down in the 2000s and now set to grow by only 1.6% in the 2010s. Both bodies declare that there has been no economic pain on this scale for the mass of wage earners for more than 70 years.
The impact will be hardest felt by the bottom 30% of the population, most reliant on the welfare system, but a welfare system scaling back support, freezing most benefits in cash terms. Public and social housing provision is stagnating. There has been no period like this in modern British economic history.
All the risks are that it could even be worse. The OBR thinks that inflation will peak at 2.6%; other forecasters think inflation could rise to 4% before it falls. That judgment matters: the higher inflation is, the more intense the squeeze on all forms of cash spending – wages, welfare payments and public spending – in real terms and the greater the depressive effect on the economy.
Then there is the judgment on private investment. The OBR sees it as falling a little. It’s hard to imagine what substantial investment can be justified next year or in the following years. Apart from a small real rise in government infrastructure spending, every notch on the dial is negative and all the risks on the downside.
Yet we have to endure Brexiters insisting that anyone who analyses the future in these terms is a Bremoaner, talking the economy down. There is a legitimate argument about how bad things could get – the OBR recognises that in the range of its forecasts – but to pretend all is well is delusional. Philip Hammond has done well to allow himself the capacity to spend compensating funds on infrastructure and science, but it is small beer against the severity of the underlying trends.
The open question is how this is going to play out politically. Negotiating with national governments, the European parliament and European commission simultaneously, across so many complex issues and with so little core agreement in government, is close to impossible. As the uncertainty mounts and the talks become ever more deadlocked, so the economy will suffer more – and the Brexiters will blame it all on Bremoaners and European governments for obstruction and standing in the way of the democratic will of the people. The parts of the country that will hurt most – the old industrial heartlands and left-behind communities – are those that voted Leave and they will be receptive to the message.
Meanwhile, little is being done or can be done to address the economy’s core weaknesses, which is the real source of their distress. The bitterness and distrust can only grow, fuelling an ever more destructive enmity between Leavers and Remainers. This is, without doubt, the greatest crisis through which I have lived in my adult life.
Theresa May knows she wants a long transition to a custom-made participation in the EU single market. In the absence of any opposition or leadership elsewhere, she has to start saying so – and start facing down the Brexiters. Otherwise, not just the economics, but the politics may start to be unmanageable.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
Theresa May has been urged by leading Brexit supporters to withdraw the Conservative whip from Michael Heseltine over his “unprecedented” comments suggesting a Jeremy Corbyn government might be preferable to leaving the EU.
Norman Tebbit, the former cabinet minister and arch-Brexiter, questioned his former colleague’s loyalty to his country and said the peer should be banned from the Tory benches in the Lords.
“I think it is unprecedented for a man in receipt of the Conservative whip to suggest that a Corbyn government would be preferable to a British government governing the UK, given that the alternative he is advocating is Brussels,” he said.
“It must call into question whether his loyalty is to the UK or a foreign power.”
The Bow Group, a rightwing Conservative pressure group whose patrons include Norman Lamont and John Redwood, said: “Heseltine has made clear it is his aim to prevent Brexit at all costs, including the sabotage of his own party and nation.
“The Conservative party must therefore withdraw the whip and end the inevitable continuation of his sniping from inside the tent.”
Tebbit, a former Conservative cabinet minister, said the Bow Group was “absolutely right to make this call”.
Another Brexit supporter, the Tory MP Nigel Evans, told the Sun: “Only a Euro fanatic of the pedigree of Michael Heseltine could believe that a Venezuela-loving Corbyn government would be preferable to leaving his beloved EU.
“A run on the pound and a return to the damaging, state-controlled industries of the 60s would inflict immense damage on the UK.”
Lord Heseltine incurred the wrath of his colleagues after the Guardian reported that he told the Limehouse podcast that a Labour government led by Corbyn could cause less damage than Brexit.
The longstanding pro-EU politician signalled that he still views a Labour government as having a negative effect on the country but said leaving the EU could be worse in the long term.
He also suggested Labour would eventually turn against Brexit and the Conservatives would be “left holding the baby”, as leaving the EU grows more unpopular.
Asked what could happen under five years of a Corbyn government, he said: “Well, we have survived Labour governments before. Their damage tends to be short-term and capable of rectification.
“Brexit is not short-term and is not easily capable of rectification. There will be those who question whether the short-term pain justifies the avoidance of the long-term disaster.”
Heseltine argued public opinion was already beginning to move against Brexit and Labour would end up changing its current position to one in favour of the EU, which could put the Conservatives in trouble with their pro-remain voters.
“If you look at the polls there is probably a bigger majority against Brexit than the referendum secured, but that, I think, will continue to happen and it will become more and more unpopular as people realise what it’s all about,” he said in the podcast, named after the declaration that gave rise to the Social Democratic party and hosted by the activist William Porteous.
“When that happens, the Labour party will move, and the present government will be left holding the baby.
“But then you have got to realise the present government is supported by large numbers of people as opposed to Brexit as I am. How long will they remain within the tribe and loyal to the party?”
Asked about his comments, Heseltine told ITV News that if supporting a Labour government would bring a halt to Brexit he would find his loyalties divided.
Peers cannot vote in general elections but Heseltine said he would hypothetically be “torn, because I realise the enormous damage that both these options [Labour and Brexit] represent. If there is a point at which we have to put party loyalty on one side and national interest and our own convictions on the other, then the national interest is going to win.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
On Wednesday morning, the prime minister will inform the European council that the UK intends to leave the EU. What happens next will be of defining significance for the future of our economy, jobs, security and Britain’s place in the world.
I believe Britain’s response to Brexit must be based on core progressive values: internationalism, cooperation, social justice and the rule of law. A commitment to protect human rights, workplace rights, our environment and to share power and prosperity across the UK. Recognition that in a complex and volatile world we achieve more together than we do apart: not members of the EU, but as partners.
It’s increasingly clear, though, that the prime minister is being led down a very different path: the path of isolation and retreat from our nearest allies and most important trading partners. That is a Brexiteer’s Brexit. Under this view the possibility of Britain leaving with no deal, or at best a threadbare agreement that keeps us at arms-length from Europe is something to aim for, not prevent. And the prospect of changing our social and economic model and ripping up key workplace and environmental protections is seen as an opportunity, not the enormous act of self-harm it would be.
I believe this ideologically driven approach to Brexit would be disastrous and divisive. It would do enormous damage to our economy, living standards and to our society. It would also risk our role in the world as a confident, outward-looking nation.
So on Monday in a speech at Chatham House I will set out how I believe Britain should respond to Brexit. I am setting six key tests for any final Brexit deal. They cover the impact of Brexit on our future relationship with the EU, our economy, national security, fundamental rights, immigration and the distribution of power and opportunity across the country.
The tests are: does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU? This must start with a comprehensive EU-UK trade deal. But it must also include continued cooperation in areas such as counter-terrorism, policing, science, medicine, culture and technology – where working with the EU has delivered significant mutual benefits.
Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the single market and customs union? For this is the standard David Davis has set for the government and it is one I will hold them to. Labour has been clear that jobs and the economy must the priority for Brexit negotiations and that any deal that does not deliver on this will not be acceptable.
Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities? As we exit the EU, there must be a new approach to immigration that has the consent of the British people and is managed in their interests. We need to ensure that the costs and benefits are more fairly distributed, and are seen to be so. The final Brexit deal must contribute to this.
Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom? We must ensure strong, fair and robust workplace rights remain in our country’s DNA. Exiting the EU must not be used as a pretext for rolling back these rights or weakening hard-won protections. Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime? The EU has been vital in helping improve cross-border efforts to prevent terrorism and serious organised crime. The final Brexit deal must ensure there is no diminution in Britain’s national security or ability to tackle cross-border crime.
Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK? There needs to be a national consensus on Brexit. Yet the prime minister has been unable to gain the confidence of the governments of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland as she prepares to trigger article 50. The final Brexit deal must mark a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to devolution.
All of us want the best for Britain, and I do not underestimate the difficulty of the task the prime minister is about to embark on. But the tests I set out today are the yardstick by which Labour will hold the prime minister to account throughout negotiations and how we will judge the final deal she returns with.
I hope the prime minister will see off the Brexiteers on her own benches and do what is right for Britain. But she should be under no illusion that Labour will not support a deal that fails to reflect Britain’s values and the six tests we have set out.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
It nearly always ends in tears, whether they are shed publicly or just inside, but few premierships have drawn to a close with such wretchedness as that visited on Theresa May. She’s not quite out of the door yet and other Tories are already describing her as the worst prime minister in a hundred years. That is a savage verdict when the competition for this dismal accolade includes Neville Chamberlain, Ramsay MacDonald, Anthony Eden and David Cameron.
I think we can safely say she will not be remembered as one of the more strong and stable occupants of Number 10. Hilarious as it may seem today, she seized the keys in the summer of 2016 because colleagues thought her “a safe pair of hands”. She commended herself to Tory MPs – and was pretty popular with a lot of voters – as she seemed to promise a premiership of common sense and calm after the anarchic orgy of backstabbing unleashed by the Cameronian, Johnsonian and Goveite cliques. In that largely forgotten period when she appeared to be monarch of all she surveyed, and the cabinet was terrified of her, she was variously compared to Boudicca and Elizabeth I. To some of us, the early cult of Theresa was ridiculous even at the time. It is now so risible that thinking about it for too long risks permanent injury to your abdomen.
Now her cabinet plots her downfall. Her whips tell her to go – and to her face. She has lost the confidence of her European peer group. Her government has been held in contempt of parliament. She has set a new historical record for a parliamentary defeat. The country, some parts of which did have sympathy for the difficulties of her position, is signalling that it has had enough.
It became her self-defined mission to “make a success” of Brexit by delivering on the referendum result while mitigating damage to the economy and without splitting her party. She has failed in each one of those objectives. The original withdrawal date has been scrubbed. Business leaders are tearing out what remains of their hair about Brexit blight. The Tory party is so vividly divided that it could be heading for a terminal split. Even promising to sacrifice herself wasn’t enough to get her withdrawal agreement through parliament at the third time of asking. The “safe pair of hands” has piloted Britain into extremely dark waters.
I think we can identify her three most significant strategic errors. The first was to act at the start as if the only people who mattered were the 52% of voters who backed Brexit while treating the 48% as an irrelevance to be ignored or insulted. Where she might have endeavoured to bind together a fractured nation and forge an alliance of the sane Brexiters and the pragmatic Remainers, her language and approaches have further polarised the country and radicalised opinion on both sides. This was compounded by concentrating her energies on trying to please the unsatisfiable subset of Brexiters who wanted the most impossibilist versions of the enterprise. One of the more delicious spectacles of the past few days has been watching Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and others in their gang of ultras crack and switch behind a withdrawal agreement that they had previously decried as “vassalage”. They flipped because they finally twigged that their game was up and they did not have the numbers to inflict a no-deal outcome on Britain. They never did have the support for that. Mrs May could have worked that out much earlier and shaped her strategy accordingly.
The second major mistake was to call the hubristic snap general election in the spring of 2017, squander her majority with an atrocious campaign and then respond as if, to use one of her most notorious phrases, nothing had changed. A bolder and more agile leader would have reached out to the opposition benches to see if a consensus could be moulded. I grant you that this would not have been easy when Labour is led by Jeremy Corbyn, as tribalistic as Mrs May in his own fashion. She could still have made an effort to build bridges with the many reasonable people on the opposition benches, but she didn’t even try. She instead made the fatal choice to turn herself into a hostage of the Democratic Unionists and the Brextremists on the Tory benches.
Her third large misjudgment has been the conduct of the endgame. Once it was very apparent her withdrawal agreement was neither popular in parliament nor attractive to the country, she persisted with trying to bludgeon it through. When it became evident this simply was not going to work, she might have pivoted to another strategy. She could have looked at alternative versions of Brexit. She might have allowed MPs to explore other ways forward, as they are very belatedly doing now. She might have embraced the offer from the opposition benches to allow her deal through the Commons subject to it then being put to the people for the final say in a confirmatory referendum. Fixity of purpose can be a virtue in a leader, but the durable ones are successful because they also understand when it is necessary to flex.
The rigidity of her personality has been a key component of her failures. She is not the first prime minister to find it difficult to trust anyone, but she is such a secretive operator even those closest to her struggle to fathom her intentions and motives. She is not the first prime minister to be awkward, shy and introverted, but these are very serious disadvantages in a political age that demands a high level of communication skills from leaders.
No one accuses her of being lazy or trivial. After the essay-crisis, seat-of-the-pants style of the Cameron premiership, the Tory party thought it would do better with a serious swot. One of her few friends once told me that Mrs May approached Brexit as if the country had set her a piece of fiendishly difficult homework. The downside of this doggedness has been inflexibility. When Ken Clarke described her as “a bloody difficult woman”, she embraced the label as a compliment. During their days in government together, Nick Clegg used to call her a “one-eyed politician”, by which he meant that she did not have the imagination to find creative solutions to problems.
She also has a vengeful streak. Many colleagues have been rubbished by her briefers, directly scorned and disdained by the prime minister, sacked or threatened with the boot. They know this vicar’s daughter does not follow the biblical injunction to turn the other cheek. A powerful leader can get away with being punitive towards those who cross them. But when authority drains away, your victims come back to bite you. Her paucity of friends is not just down to her lack of gregariousness – it is also because her conduct towards colleagues has made a great many enemies across the Tory factions.
It is premature to award her the title of worst prime minister in 100 years. How history sees her will depend on what happens next and who follows her. It is not at all a given that any other prime minister would be better than Theresa May – there are candidates who could be much worse. Perspective will likely soften judgments of her tortured premiership. We should remember that Mrs May is not the first Tory prime minister to be incinerated in the crucible of the European Question. Three decades ago, it was a trigger for the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. The party’s long uncivil war made a misery of John Major’s time at Number 10. David Cameron self-immolated by recklessly promising the referendum that he then lost. These were all very different personalities to each other and to Mrs May. She didn’t have the largeness of character and the breadth of political skills necessary to handle the vast complexity of the Brexit challenge, but then it is arguable that such a person does not exist. Even a leader with the power to inspire of Churchill, the team-building talent of Lincoln and the capacity to heal of Mandela would have struggled.
The Tory party is now preparing to find a new chief for its cannibalistic tribe. It will be convenient for a lot of people, especially those planning to contest for the corroded crown, to cast all the blame for 33 months of unrelenting and still unresolved chaos on the woman who will soon be leaving Number 10. Convenient, but not altogether accurate. The problem with the Conservative party is not Mrs May. The problem with the Conservative party is the Conservative party. The problem with Brexit is not Mrs May. The problem with Brexit is Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
The chances of Theresa May striking a deal with Brussels on the Irish border that she can sell to the cabinet and parliament are said by EU officials to be “50-50” as the fraught talks enter their final stretch.
The British negotiating team and the European commission’s taskforce, led by Michel Barnier, are to enter a secretive phase known as the “tunnel” this week, but senior EU figures involved in the talks warned the competing redlines remain “incompatible” in key areas.
The British government has set out its stall to make “decisive progress” on the issue of the Northern Ireland backstop by Friday, in the hope that Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, could then call an extraordinary Brexit summit for the end of the month to seal the deal.
One Whitehall source said, should sufficient ground be made in the coming days, a tentative new date of 22 November is being floated for a meeting of the EU’s heads of state and government.
Downing Street has insisted it does not have a deal ready for signoff, in response to reports over the weekend of there being an agreement in the making.
“We are not sitting on powder keg knowledge that we have signed a secret deal,” the No 10 source said. “We are not on the cusp of some seismic shift.”
Some at the highest levels of government fear that, unless progress is agreed by Tuesday when the May sees her senior ministers and parliament breaks for recess, the cabinet may not have a direct input before a summit announcement is made.
“The reality is that we need a November summit more than the EU do,” a government source said. They suggested that a December deal would mean not only a later parliamentary vote but would require spending on no-deal planning and changes to the roles of hundreds of civil service.
There is chance of progress being made in order for an emergency summit to be called on Friday, government insiders believe, suggesting it is possible the cabinet will not be directly involved if it was last-minute. “It is high stakes,” the source said.
EU officials and diplomats cautioned against the optimism expressed by some about the imminence of a breakthrough, describing the chances of striking a deal that meets both sides needs as “50-50”.
Brussels has so far insisted the withdrawal agreement must contain legal text that could keep Northern Ireland in effect in the customs union and single market as Britain leaves.
The commission has accepted that an all-UK customs union could be referenced and prioritised in the agreement, with a separate treaty, negotiated during the transition period, filling out the details.
An EU official suggested that such a UK-wide customs deal could only replace the Northern Ireland-specific text if it was a permanent arrangement, and even then there would serious legal issues with making such a commitment at this stage.
“There is an evolution in the commission’s thinking. From what they originally proposed, there is a shift towards the UK in terms of the UK-wide thing so, yes, flexible, but whether that flexibility will lead to agreement is something else,” the official said.
The source said any hope of Northern Ireland-specific customs arrangements being removed would involve a “huge jump on the UK side”.
The official suggested that May would need to make a “calculation about what is sellable and how she sells it but it does not correspond to the buccaneering Britain of Bojo [Boris Johnson]”.
Even with an all-UK customs deal at the heart of the withdrawal agreement, there would need to be Northern Ireland-specific elements in terms of both single market regulatory checks and customs.
Exporters entering the Republic from Northern Ireland would, in the normal run of things, need to prove that their goods are from a country that is in a customs union with the bloc and that they have a rule of origin waiver.
Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the leading EU thinktank the European Policy Centre, said he did not believe it would be possible for the EU to satisfy the prime minister’s demands, and that the lack of realism in the UK increased the chances of a no-deal Brexit.
He said: “I don’t see the EU willing to accept a deal without the Northern Ireland-specific backstop.
“What I have found concerning is that people are making very categorical statements that no British prime minister can sign a backstop on Northern Ireland which seems to go against what is agreed in December, and you hear it not from the government but also the opposition. That makes me think we are moving very quickly to a no deal.”
EU diplomats have also scorned the prime minister’s suggestion that significant progress has been made on the political declaration on the future trade deal, with the economic aspects described as a “raw nerve” where the two sides are “talking about different things”.
The prime minister is seeking a commitment to arrangements, including a common rule book that could deliver “frictionless trade”.
Barnier has repeatedly said that this is not possible, and diplomats believe a weaker pledge for trade flows to be “as frictionless as possible” is the most likely outcome.
Number 10 has said it would not accept a deal that would be as wide-ranging as some reports have suggested, encompassing May’s Chequers plan for a “common rule book”, as well as leaving the door open for a possible Canada-style deal.
“We have said that we will come up with a ‘precise’ future partnership,” the Whitehall source said. “That will not be all things to all men. It will be a detailed political agreement which we can use to forge our future trading relationship.”
First published on Thu 4 Oct 2018 10.00 BST
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has taken Theresa May’s failure to namecheck Chequers in her Tory conference speech as a sign that she may be ready to dump the plan and get realistic, according to sources in Brussels.
In her speech in Birmingham, May spelled out her vision of a free trade deal but she notably did not talk of it as her “Chequers proposals”, as she has done in the past. Some Tory MPs who are campaigning for May to drop the proposal of a common rulebook on goods, in particular, have taken that as a positive sign.
David Davis’s former chief of staff in the Department for Exiting the EU, Stewart Jackson, predicted in the wake of the speech that a change of strategy would follow a cabinet meeting next Tuesday.
It is understood that Barnier took some comfort from the absence of the word “Chequers” in May’s speech, although he noted that the prime minister had once again committed the government to “frictionless trade in goods”, an outcome that the EU has said cannot come to pass given the UK’s decision to leave the single market and the customs union.
A European commission spokesman declined to comment.
One source said: “Barnier noted that Mrs May did not name Chequers in the speech, and that this might be a sign that she is getting realistic. But then she talked about frictionless trade, when previously she has spoken of making trade [as] frictionless as possible. So he could only speculate what will happen next. It seems we will know more by the middle of next week.”
A second source said: “[Barnier] believes that unless there is a decisive breakthrough in the talks on the Irish issue within the next two weeks then people need to acknowledge that a no-deal is likely. He has asked for people to calm their language as we get into this crucial phase”.
The EU plans to publish a four- or five-page political declaration on the future trade relationship next Wednesday, which will sketch out a trade deal that covers an unprecedented number of sectors. But it will not offer May any succour on the central planks of her recently published white paper, agreed by the cabinet at the prime minister’s country retreat.
The EU has rejected the suggestion that the free flow of goods can be salvaged by the UK following regulations on goods and signing up to a customs arrangement that avoids checks but allows the British government its own independent trade policy.
In the wake of the Tory conference, Barnier is also said to have privately expressed his gravest concern about the strident position of the DUP. The insistence by the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, that she will not tolerate any new checks on goods flowing between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK was perhaps the most significant development of the conference.
The EU is insisting that in the legally enforceable backstop position to ensure that there is no hard border on the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland needs to stay in the customs territory of the bloc.
A revised EU paper on the proposal, due to be published imminently, will seek to reassure the UK that the scale and type of checks in the Irish Sea would be limited.
However, May repeated in her speech that this would represent a bad deal that “carves off Northern Ireland”. She said: “We will never break up our country. I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same.”
The UK is set to publish its own paper on the backstop within days. It will suggest a temporary customs arrangement that will keep the whole of the UK in a quasi-customs union, although the British government would retain the right to sign trade deals with other countries where such a policy did not clash with the new arrangement. Northern Ireland could also stay in regulatory alignment with the EU should Stormont and the Northern Ireland executive agree.
The Irish government has always supported the idea of a customs arrangement, although it is opposed to Stormont having a veto on regulatory alignment.
Of more concern to the UK, is the opposition of the European commission, France and Germany to the customs plan, which they say is a threat to the integrity of the customs union.
An Irish official told the Financial Times: “It looks like it would resolve that issue [of the border]. Whether Europe accept it or not is another conversation.”
Philippe Lamberts, the leader of the Greens in the European parliament, said the UK needed to “square the circle”, saying: “I’m increasingly worried. We have heard from May, Raab, Johnson. But nothing has changed.”
Asked to comment on the state of the negotiations, following the prime minister’s speech, ahead of which she had danced to ABBA on stage, a spokesman for the European Commission said:  “We appreciate the little dancing. It always takes two to tango. We prefer the tune was ‘Dancing Queen’ than ‘The winner takes it all’. Breaking up is never easy”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
As the UK exits the EU, it will leave the EU’s customs union. Yet with just months remaining of the article 50 deadline, the government still doesn’t have a clear customs policy. It has not endorsed either of Whitehall’s two existing options, which the EU has pre-emptively dismissed. Theresa May needs to break the impasse at her Chequers Brexit cabinet meeting.
Meanwhile the Labour party and some Conservatives demand a new customs union with the EU. Together they may have a majority in parliament, although this has not been tested. Whatever Labour claims, a permanent customs union would mean outsourcing trade policy to Brussels (where we would no longer have a seat at the table), and allowing the EU to sell access to our markets without our control. That’s not a sustainable long-term position.
On the other hand, some Brexiteers too readily dismiss the serious and legitimate concerns of business, especially those with supply chains crossing the continent. Equally, both the UK and EU have agreed that Northern Ireland’s unique circumstances require specific solutions to avoid a hard border.
A few weeks ago, the Brexit cabinet refused to back May’s preferred option of a new customs partnership, which would mean the UK collecting EU customs levies. The alternative – maximum facilitation (“max fac”) – would have to work as part of a broader customs agreement with the EU and will reportedly not be ready by the end of the transition. A possible third way on customs is due to be discussed at Chequers, but will need to address concerns of business and the Irish border.
After Brexit, EU goods trade will cross a customs frontier. If efficiently managed – as much global freight already is – declarations can be completed electronically before goods arrive. Currently just a tiny proportion of non-EU shipments are physically inspected. Future EU trade should be no different. Importers can use bonded warehouses and other schemes to help further alleviate friction, but problems will still need to be resolved.
When the UK becomes what EU treaties define as a “third country”, Brussels would require regulatory checks to ensure imports comply with its rules. The non-partisan and independent policy thinktank Open Europe, which I am director of, has proposed ​ that the UK aligns with EU goods regulations (which many British industries will choose to do anyway). This would mean being a rule taker in those areas, but mutual recognition would allow goods to move freely with the EU. It seems likely that the government will endorse our plan at Chequers.
A UK-EU trade deal would remove tariffs on goods, and matching rules should eliminate the need for regulatory checks. But the issue of rules of origin remains, which would also have to be checked. These require exporters to demonstrate the proportion of a product’s value that is local. If the proportion “originating” in the UK – made or transformed there – falls below an agreed floor, the product would no longer count for preferential trade.
These rules of origin are intended to prevent unfair trading practice. The EU might worry that a future UK-US trade agreement could mean cheaper American car parts ending up in British cars, that then undercut European manufacturers. Rules of origin limits and checks won’t matter much for some product types or industries. But for companies with complex supply chains, they will be an important consideration as well as a potential source of disruption at the border.
So for certain industries – cars and chemicals for example – the government could commit to matching some of the EU’s own external tariffs and relevant aspects of its trade policy for a time-limited period after Brexit. The purpose would be to achieve, in return, the most liberal and light-touch regime possible on rules of origin for those sectors.
If the government chose to align tariffs in particular sectors, that would reduce opportunities to reduce domestic prices on those products. But the UK would be able to reduce tariffs in non-matched sectors.
Future UK customs arrangements will rely on technology that is not yet operational. Reports yesterday that Eurotunnel is developing a new system to clear lorries automatically as they drive through its terminal are encouraging. But it seems likely that UK customs infrastructure will be not ready for the end of the standstill transition, given the government’s slow progress. On that basis it may be necessary, as I’ve already suggested, to remain in lockstep with EU customs policy for a little longer, then to liberalise aspects of our trade policy while agreeing to match specific sectors for a decade or so to help protect those industries.
Some will worry that committing to match EU tariff levels on some industries would limit our ability to negotiate trade deals. But this compromise approach, which would work alongside other options to facilitate trade, is clearly preferable to a full customs union which would leave the UK tethered to all EU tariff lines or indeed to an unwieldily customs partnership. It might make sense in the longer-term to pursue general tariff liberalisation but with a hung parliament, and nervous businesses delaying investment, the government needs a way through on customs – and this might just be it.
First published on Sat 7 Jul 2018 21.00 BST
Theresa May’s desperate attempts to unite her party and country behind a new Brexit blueprint are under severe strain, as more than 100 entrepreneurs and founders of UK businesses dismissed it as unworkable – and hardline anti-EU Conservative MPs warned it could mean an outcome worse than “no deal” at all.
There were also signs that Brussels was less than impressed after an initial examination of the plans, which were thrashed out and agreed by the entire cabinet at an all-day summit at Chequers on Friday.
The proposals would involve a new “facilitated customs arrangement” intended to remove the need for a hard border in Ireland, and the creation of a UK-EU free trade area, in which the UK would abide by a “common rule book” of EU regulations. As the prime minister and her officials renewed appeals for ministerial loyalty and an end to infighting from the likes of the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, it was her own hardline pro-Brexit backbenchers who broke cover to resume hostilities, while business leaders said the plans would mean extra bureaucracy and cost, as they demanded full membership of the customs union.
A letter released on Saturday night by the co-founder of Innocent Drinks, Richard Reed, and signed by the founders of Pret, Waterstones, Zoopla, Net-a- Porter, Domino’s, YO! Sushi and Jack Wills, among others, said that May’s customs proposal would be costly and bureaucratic for UK firms. They called for MPs to back amendments to the government’s trade and customs bills that would secure full customs union membership when the legislation is considered in parliament.
From the other side of the Brexit argument, the Tory MP and leader of the European Research Group (ERG) of hardline Brexiters, Jacob Rees-Mogg, questioned whether signing up to elements of the EU rulebook would amount to Brexit at all.
He warned that abiding by a common rule book could make “trade deals almost impossible”, adding that “it is possible that this deal is worse” than a “no-deal” Brexit.
The Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns said the danger was that British business would “continue to be a rule-taker from the EU”. Jenkyns indicated she would back a leadership challenge against May if she concluded that the plans agreed by the prime minister amounted to a watering down of Brexit.
Speaking to the BBC, May said that the plan was aimed at making sure “we deliver on Brexit for the people, because I won’t let people down”. She insisted that the UK would regain control of its borders, but refused to rule out giving EU citizens preferential treatment under the future immigration policy.
Writing in the Observer, David Lidington, minister for the cabinet office, says: “Free movement will come to an end, restoring control of our borders. The supremacy of British courts will be restored, by ending the jurisdiction of the ECJ [European court of justice] in the UK – giving us back control of our laws. And there will be no more sending vast sums of money each year to the EU, giving us back control of our money.”
However, although many Eurosceptic MPs on the ERG are waiting to see what the prime minister says to the House of Commons on Monday, a damning briefing circulated among ERG members on Saturday night warns that the plan amounts to a “worst-of-all-worlds Black Hole Brexit where the UK is stuck permanently as a vassal state in the EU’s legal and regulatory tarpit”.
After making her statement to theCommons, May will address the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs in the evening, in an attempt to bind her MPs behind the proposals thrashed out and agreed during Friday’s meeting. Tory MPs are being offered one-to-one briefings in Downing Street over the next few days to win them round before publication of a white paper, which will spell out the plans in more detail, on Thursday.
In Brussels, which is giving little formal reaction before it has studied the white paper, sources warned that May’s customs compromise looked very similar to the “new customs partnership” that the EU rejected as “magical thinking” 11 months ago.One senior diplomat said that the Chequers meeting had resulted in a “melange of earlier proposals that were not really feasible”. Stressing that his government needed to see the white paper before taking a position, he said: “A goulash gets better the more it is recooked. I am not sure about whether the customs proposals share the same quality.”
Tory Remainers broadly welcomed progress towards a softer Brexit. Writing in Observer, Nicky Morgan, who chairs the all-party Treasury select committee, says the proposed free-trade area “sounds remarkably like the common market”. In a dig at Johnson, who reportedly commented “fuck business” when reacting to claims that some firms would take jobs abroad, and to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, who said it was irresponsible for business to give such warnings, Morgan writes: “The cabinet have very deliberately chosen to listen to business and not swear at them or ask them to keep quiet. That is good for our future prosperity.”
Asked if a second referendum was now more likely, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said: “I think it means that the issue is going to have to come back to parliament. There’s going to have to be a proper vote on it.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
Like a desiccated woman who is crawling across a scorching desert and thinks she has spotted a source of moisture, for a brief moment Theresa May tasted the sweet tang of relief from her miseries.
She had about 72 hours of experiencing what it feels like to be a prime minister who is in control. This time last week, she had launched her Brexit plan and it had not instantly exploded on takeoff. EU leaders gave the blueprint a polite, if highly guarded, reception. No one flounced out of the Chequers meeting, saying they could no longer sit in her cabinet. Even critics expressed some backhanded praise for the way in which Mrs May choreographed the corralling of her ministers. Opponents revived the old charge, an accusation not heard against her since she blew last year’s election, that an imperious leader had railroaded ministers into signing up to the plan. The poor things had been denied their mobile phones and told that it was a long walk home if they were thinking of quitting.
This narrative of a mission triumphantly accomplished survived for a short period even when David Davis resigned and was followed, some 18 hours later, by Boris Johnson, whose departure from the Foreign Office was as chaotic, self-indulgent and self-serving as his time in the post. Mrs May was not entirely surprised. Threats to resign by Mr Davis had become an almost weekly event; she would have been happy to see the back of Mr Johnson long ago. Her aides had wargamed likely resignations and thought about replacements.
The outgoing Brexit secretary drew some of the sting from his resignation by declaring that he had not quit with the intention of trying to bring down the prime minister. The departure of the foreign secretary was openly celebrated by his own officials and unlamented by everyone else. By getting other cabinet Brexiters, notably Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom, to publicly own her plan, the Tory leader appeared to have pulled off a tactical coup by splitting the Brexiters between Compromisers and Quitters.
Yet for all that superficially successful politicking, her Chequers gambit has not stood the test of time. Barely more than a week later, it is already turning to dust. And her premiership is back in “turmoil”, to quote one of the few trustworthy things said by Donald Trump.
He wasn’t the central cause of her renewed miseries, but the American visitor certainly deepened them by displaying a viciously blatant contempt for his host. He savaged her plan in remarks to Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, which were published just as he was having dinner with the prime minister. His subsequent attempts to bind up some of the lacerations he inflicted on his host only drew attention to how severe the wounds were. His suggestion that Mrs May had betrayed the Brexit vote and “killed” any prospect of a trade deal with the United States hurt her in two ways. This supplied ammunition to the fundamentalists in her party. At the same time, the Trumpian rampage underlined for Remainers what folly it is for Britain to be separating itself from Europe just at the moment when there is a rogue president in White House.
He made things worse, but neither he nor the resignations from the cabinet are the fundamental problem for Mrs May. It is the maths. People have started to do the parliamentary maths. Lyndon Johnson, who was majority leader in the US Senate before he became his country’s president, once declared that the most important talent in politics is “the ability to count”. There aren’t enough people who can count around Mrs May. The fatal flaw in her plan is that there is no majority for it in the House of Commons.
The Brexit ultras are crying treachery and promising havoc. They both express and feed the furies of Tory activists. The Brextremists don’t have an alternative plan, other than to crash out of the EU without any deal at all, a catastrophic outcome that some of them actually wish for, but that hasn’t stopped them before and won’t curb them now. Jacob Rees-Mogg and his cabal can muster the 48 signatures of Tory MPs that they need to trigger a confidence vote in Mrs May. They do not sound confident that they have the numbers – they require 159 – to oust her from the premiership. What the ultras can do is make the government’s life even more hellish by prosecuting a “guerrilla war” in parliament. Even if Mrs May could get the EU to accept her plan, 60-plus Conservative MPs are opponents of her version of a Brexit deal. That number will climb if, as is inevitable, she has to make further concessions in Brussels to secure an agreement. There are more than enough Brextremist rebels to block the prime minister in the Commons unless she can get some assistance from the opposition.
She needs the help of Labour MPs and she is not going to get it. Jeremy Corbyn won’t give her any succour. He is more interested in bringing down the Tories than helping them to solve a mad riddle of their own making. The Labour leadership calculates that defeating Mrs May in Brexit votes is their best chance of collapsing the government and precipitating an early general election. But Number 10 clearly harboured hopes that centrist Labour MPs might embrace her plan as the least worst version of Brexit that they are likely to get in the circumstances. David Lidington, the minister for the Cabinet Office, was sent out to try to woo Labour MPs. This succeeded in giving the Moggites something else to foam about, but failed to recruit support from the opposition. “It didn’t work,” says one Labour parliamentarian. “Labour MPs went along [to hear Lidington] to find out what the Tories were up to – not to buy into the plan.” It is a big ask at any time to get opposition MPs to rescue a prime minister from her own party. In the current climate, no Labour MP fancies going back to their constituency to explain to party activists why they helped save the neck of a Tory prime minister. Even more importantly, Labour MPs aren’t going to throw a lifeline to Mrs May because they think her plan is no good. They may accept that it does represent some extremely belated recognition of the damage that will done to the economy by a bad Brexit. They will also acknowledge that the prime minister has inched somewhat closer towards a sensible form of departure from the EU. But a plan that is too soft a version of Brexit for the ultras is still too economically perilous to secure the support of opposition MPs.
All this before her proposal has even made serious contact with the negotiators for the EU. The initial response from European capitals was muted because it would have looked mean-spirited to instantly throw the plan back in her face. That is very different to saying that European leaders are just going to accept the ideas presented by the prime minister. They are too polite to say that her white paper is rubbish, but there are key parts that they regard as unworkable or unacceptable.
Two years have elapsed since the Brexit vote and only now has the government produced a negotiating position that the EU can engage with. In that wasted time, the atmosphere of the talks has become terribly sour. Even if the EU is prepared to entertain Mrs May’s proposed split in the single market between goods and services – and that’s one of several very large ifs – reaching a deal is bound to involve more concessions in Brussels and to the economic realities of Brexit.
So Mrs May’s grand plan has left her stranded in no woman’s land. She can’t go back. Abandoning her plan and retreating behind her old red lines might win a temporary respite from the furies of the Brexit ultras, but that relief would be purchased at the cost of shredding what remains of her authority over the government and destroying what’s left of her credibility in Europe. Mrs May can’t stand still, not for very long anyway, because the EU won’t buy her plan as it is and she hasn’t got a majority for it in parliament. She can’t go back. She can’t stand still. She can only go forward. If, that is, she has any strength left to go forward. That would involve taking further steps towards a softer version of Brexit, a move that would arouse even more intense rage against her from within her party.
The oasis in the desert was a mirage. There is no relief on the horizon from Mrs May’s agonies. The desiccated woman is still sucking up hot sand.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
Theresa May’s new year video message looked a bit like a royal address: artfully shot in front of a grand Downing Street mantelpiece, a twinkle of seasonal lights relieving the trademark severity. Firmly upholstered in a navy blue jacket, as if taking a brief break from the slog of EU negotiations, May promises a “greige” Brexit, nuanced enough to appeal both to Brexiteers fretting that their victory last June will be unwound by a concatenation of courts, civil servants and parliamentarians – and remain voters too vociferous and numerous to be merely swept aside.
An outbreak of healing unity after the fissures of 2016 is the implied covenant as the prime minister embarks on a countdown to triggering article 50 by the end of March. Out with the remnants of 2016 goes strident rhetoric about arrogant liberal elites, so feistily deployed at the Conservative conference. “Last year’s words belong to last year’s language,” as TS Eliot might have noted of T May.
Carefully balanced commitments are being made to appease both sides. The prime minister’s default knack is to make contentious issues sound dull enough to lull all but the most energetic dissenters into submission. A couple of senior backbenchers, summoned to pre-Christmas chats about the febrile mood among MPs, described the process to me as “like Kaa in The Jungle Book mesmerising Mowgli”. The charge that May has been evasive or uninformative in her approach to Brexit in the latter half of last year misses the point – that is precisely her modus operandi.
Summoning up the memory of the “fantastic MP Jo Cox” in her address will irk those who believe that the Labour parliamentarian’s murder was in some way related to a divided national mood. But it appeals to a broader feeling that the fractiousness needs to abate in the coming months. As strongly as many feel, an awful lot of voters have had enough of the wrangles and hanker for some kind of certainty about what comes next.
Getting to this point, however, entails a formidably tricky act of political triage, determining the priorities that will shape not only the technical structures of Brexit, but its tone and pace.
It has been fashionable to dismiss her “Brexit means Brexit” mantra as vacuous. But using it sends a simple but necessary message: namely that she will trigger article 50 and deliver an exit from the EU on clear terms in short order. Not such an empty pledge, given the original intention by soft Brexiteers that it would end up meaning something very like remaining.
Delphic pronouncements have already bought her time to square competing interests on her team. So Liam Fox, originally positioned as the most vigorous Brexit warrior in the cabinet, has given ground on the possibility of the UK remaining in an EU-based customs union, while David Davis has suggested that Britain could pay for single-market access. Philip Hammond, despite a Downing Street omerta on phrases such as “transitional arrangements”, has declared that a period of “smooth” Brexit could take up to four years.
Smooth, greige or plain equivocal, these concessions hint at the kind of compact May needs to reach among her cabinet and MPs. She will never overcome the opposition of those who believe that exiting the EU is a heinous act, or satisfy spiritual Faragists, who desire a continent cut off by fog. But she does not need to do either. A Brexit mode that non-combatants think represents a not-bad outcome, and a sense that she has endeavoured to find reasonable compromises, will suffice.
For those who wish to play their part in future acts, this poses challenges. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, remains the most outspoken critic of remaining in a customs union – a measure that has come to stand for remaining close to existing EU trade arrangements. That leaves him as the standard-bearer for vigorous Euroscepticism – though boxed in by other cabinet roles. A second Boris offensive on the leadership is a date that could easily slip into the never-never, the latest chapter in the Arthurian legends of Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine as prospective leaders never able to get the sword out of the stone.
In the more forgiving light of a new year, hatchets are being buried in the Tory tribe. May’s conciliatory tone is intended to encourage more of that. So Michael Gove, an intellectually respected player despite his ousting from the ministerial Premier League, writes on ConservativeHome that “it is critical that we recognise and respect the concerns of the 16 million who did not vote to leave” – a late-breaking emollience. Those who wish to play a role in the Tories’ near future have been given to understand that wherever they stood in the bitter internal wars of 2016, they must sheathe their resentments,
That leaves the other great absentee, George Osborne, with an intriguing choice to make. The former chancellor has been, at least in the eyes of No 10, the most sore loser of the Tory remainers. Yet he is also the character most driven to make a return to front-line politics. In 2017 the accessory required of those wishing to prosper under the May supremacy will be an olive branch, even if the bearers come with gritted teeth.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
The nation’s focus is all on Brexit as a Tory soap opera: 48 signatures from the 1922 committee, a few big cheeses from the CBI, away days at Chequers. On the other side, there is this amorphous mass, “the people”, their views registering only in their millions, their protests reported as spectacle. The soap opera hots up when one of its characters says “scrap the Good Friday Agreement”, or “get pensioners to pick fruit”. The people get spooked when they’re told to stockpile food. The plot doesn’t move forward because the Tories can’t even agree a plan to take to the EU. People are endlessly polled on a series of repetitive and incomprehensible options, then commentators wonder why they don’t budge.
The opposition has so far played a minor role. Labour’s ambiguity seemed strategic in 2017, and paid off. It promised to respect the referendum result, yet at the same time assured a “jobs-first Brexit”. It was enough to placate the leavers, while assuring the remainers that nothing diabolical would happen.
The intervening months have shown this to be a fantasy. The softest possible Brexit is simply to accept the old rules with new impotence; any other Brexit would be economically painful, and to what purpose? To execute a project born of an ideological battle between the free-market right and the far right. Brexit corresponds to no Labour values.
In the beltway of Westminster, too much emphasis has been put on shifting the leadership from the top. Even if that were possible, changing the minds of five guys in a room could never represent the rewilded, pluralistic democracy upon which the current Labour project is founded. Pressure to remain in the EU can only come from the grassroots, otherwise it is the elite conspiracy, its critics decry. But the important thing missing from the analysis is that this grassroots movement already exists: constituency Labour parties, trade union branches, local Momentum groups and the broader left – steel workers in Hull, migrant workers within the NHS, and NHS staff more generally, Women Against Brexit – all working in ways both coordinated and spontaneous to stop Tory Brexit.
The remain campaign was dominated by the establishment Stronger In group. Its defining tactic was Project Fear, spearheaded by a cross-party coalition including George Osborne and Alan Johnson. It drowned out grassroots left campaigns such as Another Europe is Possible – led by the academic Luke Cooper and the activist Michael Chessum, who also organised the Stop Trump march. The case they made wasn’t about single markets, export tariffs, tailbacks on the M20, even food shortages. It was about the EU as the only set of institutions ever built on the principles of peace and reconciliation, rolling back the nationalist tide; one of very few capable of the kind of collective action – on climate change, the rise of fascism, workers’ rights and taxation – by which the social conquers the corporate.
The EU looms now as this technocratic body, dominated since Margaret Thatcher by the interests of capital – but those were not its roots, and will not be its future. From the group of European socialists who drafted the Ventotene manifesto – a vision for a united Europe – in the 1940s, to Jacques Delors’ social chapter, European federalism was conceived to avoid war, foster equality and build social solidarity. Many of the leftwing critiques of the present-day EU are fair, but are the product of the UK pulling the EU rightwards. To walk away on a Lexit basis is not just uncomradely, it’s a little bit rich.
Speaking practically, the only orderly way now to avoid Brexit is via a Labour government. The Conservatives will not come to their senses; a centrist party would be a pipe dream even if it had any ideas; the Liberal Democrats would need a bounce that would put them on the moon. And there is a nobler truth beneath these gritty psephological realities, which is that the vote to leave the EU was a vote for discontinuity. Leave areas map almost exactly on to those hardest hit by austerity. Whatever your views on Jeremy Corbyn the man, you would acknowledge, I think, that his is the only party that promises radical change. To overturn leave with no plan to overcome the economic conditions beneath it would be acting in bad faith. To accept leave knowing that those conditions would only deteriorate in the wake of its recession would be worse.
In the immediate aftermath of the referendum, it was by no means plain to us that remain was still a legitimate argument, and yet the leave plan was so flaky, so narrowly won, so riddled with nefarious associations that have since come into focus – racist advertising, Russian troll bots, lying, cheating, dodgy data – that to surrender to it seemed like an abnegation of civic responsibility. It became obvious that demos and pamphlets were necessary but insufficient. Deeper democratic channels had to make the case, in concert.
This is where the unsquarable circles emerge: the legitimacy of the left’s grassroots organisations begins and ends with listening to their members. At an event in Birmingham last month, organised by Another Europe is Possible, there was a passionate man from Unison, Ravi Subramanian, who described the impact of Brexit on his mainly female members, predominantly low-paid and precarious. Yet since their summer conference hadn’t passed a motion on it, he couldn’t – even as he described the catastrophe – come out trenchantly in favour of a vote on the final deal.
Momentum members, likewise, are among the most solid defenders of migrant rights you could find. Stopping a Tory Brexit – as one member’s petition demands – could not be a more natural stance. Yet for Momentum to take a remain stand now could only come from members, which raises a key impediment: loyalty to Corbyn and passion for remain have been ranged against one another, mainly by the activities of Labour’s selfidescribed centrists. Chuka Umunna, Alastair Campbell and Chris Leslie are perceived to be fighting Brexit with the agenda of taking Corbyn down with it.
Another Europe is Possible has spent the summer persuading constituency parties to bring a motion to Labour’s annual conference this September calling for the party to oppose Tory Brexit. Two hundred constituency parties are debating the motion, but the number of sheer man hours spent discussing how this can happen without undermining Corbyn is incredible. Corbyn versus remain shouldn’t be the choice: nobody should have to renounce their values just because someone else is wearing them for different purposes.
Nonetheless, the institution already exists in this country by which people can avert disaster: it’s called the Labour party. Its stance isn’t going to change as a result of Westminster shenanigans. If and when remain comes back on the table in some or other form, it will be because the grassroots left found its power.
Last modified on Wed 12 Feb 2020 14.36 GMT
Hedgehogs, yellowhammers and dormice did not figure highly in the EU referendum campaign, but they may turn out to be some of the first losers from Brexit. Rules on farmers cutting hedgerows and field margins that have protected the habitats of a variety of at-risk species are being lost amid the biggest shake-up of nature regulations in four decades.
For three years, ministers have been proclaiming that leaving the EU would allow Britain to strengthen its environmental protections, and that all the benefits of membership would be faithfully carried over. Now we can see the worth of those promises, in a trio of bills set before parliament. The environment bill, agriculture bill and fisheries bill replace the EU’s comprehensive framework directives, common agricultural policy and common fisheries policy.
All three bills contain major flaws that undermine the government’s claims. They leave gaps, fail on enforcement and oversight, open loopholes for future ministers to quietly backslide from existing standards, and turn what is currently a coherent system of long-term, stable regulation into a patchwork of competing and sometimes contradictory proposals.
Take the environment bill. It sets out four priority areas, some of them critical for human health: air quality, waste and resource efficiency, water and nature. Air pollution contributes to 40,000 deaths a year, and the new bill sets out a framework for standards on key pollutants. Yet although this bill could be law within a few months, the new standards on air – along with those on the other three priority areas – will not be set until October 2022.
The government says the delay is to give time for expert input. Parents struggling to get their breathless children to A&E every time there is a pollution spike might take the view that the World Health Organization, the EU and academic studies around the world have already answered the questions over what constitutes breathable air. Why do they have to wait more than two years without legal safeguards before even being allowed to know what the new limits will be?
The watering down does not stop there. Under the EU’s air quality directive, ministers were obliged not just to adhere to targets for air pollutants but to publish plans showing how the targets would be met. That was where campaigners scored their most notable victories, when they took the government to court over Britain’s filthy air and judges ruled the plans were not valid. The new environment bill dispenses with the need for detailed plans that can be weighed up by experts and used to hold government to account. Instead, ministers will be required only to set out the steps they intend to take, without accountability as to whether those measures are sufficient.
New powers have also been quietly inserted for the government to derogate from high standards at will. Clause 81 of the environment bill gives the secretary of state powers to weaken targets for the chemical status of our water, either by relaxing the targets or changing the rules by which they are measured.
To reassure the public – who will no longer be able to take the government to the European courts over any failures – there is to be a watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection. Will it have the same powers as the European courts? No. Will its judgments be binding? Not necessarily. Who will make up its board? Ministers will decide.
The agriculture bill and the fisheries bill, while containing some admirable aims, are also worrying. The EU’s common agricultural policy was often disastrous for wildlife and nature, and the government was rightly cheered when it proposed paying farmers for providing public goods – clean water, good soil, flood protection. But the new system of environmental land management contracts – to be phased in over seven years – will be voluntary and the measures farmers will be required to take will be decided at the level of individual farms. This leaves gaps.
Currently, there are specific protections for species and habitats that apply across the UK. Under environmental land management contracts, many of those protections – like the ones for nesting birds and hedgehogs – will become voluntary. Farmers could pick and choose what protections they sign up to, and those who do not want the public money could opt out altogether. And who will monitor the farmers who do? With ministers wanting to cut the number of farm inspections, enforcement looks hazy too.
Jettisoning the EU’s common fisheries policy also offered ministers a chance to stop rampant overfishing. They have not taken it. The bill retains a broad aim to restore stocks to “maximum sustainable yield” – the level, worked out by scientists, at which fishing does not harm the ability of the fish population to reproduce. But the fishing quotas each year are still to be set by ministers, with the power to depart from that scientific advice, and to choose which stocks will be fished sustainably and which will not.
Unless the government accepts amendments to these vital bills in the coming weeks and months, the UK will be quietly swapping an agreed set of outcomes and stringent environmental protections for a set of vague promises, voluntary measures, and deliberately loose and leaky legislation. Hedgehogs and voles will not be the only losers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s political editor, will spill the inside beans of Brexit on Monday: how was it possible for David Cameron to have entered this referendum so unprepared, so lukewarm, when it was his idea in the first place? Was Jeremy Corbyn ineffective because he was indifferent, or was he a perfectly effective campaigner, scuppered by a hostile media? How did Michael Gove make his peace with the epic public mendacity his case required? What happened to turn the Labour heartlands to Ukip?
The first three questions are fascinating at the level of character; the Brexit decision was so significant, and the human flaws and vanities that created the moment so petty, that it is impossible not to get drawn in. Yet that final question about Labour heartlands – a well-worn euphemism for “deprived north” – is everything. Already an orthodoxy and inevitability have shaped around it: if you take what was traditionally red, add a bolt of blue in the form of defensive nationalism, then of course you get purple – it has the solidity of a physical law.
How history judges Cameron – between hapless victim and appalling bungler – will not have a huge impact on our political landscape; the verdict on Gove, even less. There will be some lasting effect on Labour’s truths and confidence from an analysis of Corbyn, but we can’t hang anything off his performance during the referendum until we accept that both sides are right: he was beset by a hostile media and he was ambivalent.
This story about the deprived north, however, will have lasting and profoundly misleading consequences for the political landscape, if we don’t think more deeply about it.
The prevailing assumption is that the vote was one in the eye for metropolitan elites, and that the white working classes, the disenfranchised and unheeded, the voters hidden on estates, had finally given a message to the Westminster bubble that knew nothing and cared less about their concerns. In fact, most leave voters were in the south: the south-east, south-west – indeed the entire south apart from London voted leave.
They did so by slightly smaller margins – though it is interesting to note that Wales, apparently the hotbed of a self-sabotaging leave movement, driven by a deprivation that only the EU was interested in alleviating, voted out by a smaller margin than the south-west. Yet southerners voted in greater numbers; their votes were decisive. Furthermore, most leave voters are middle class, or at least were of the generation whose housing and pension windfalls put them squarely in the category of wealth.
Analysing voting data by education – where the more degrees you had, the more likely you were to want to remain – is misleading: it was much less common, before Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge to provide tertiary education for 50% of the nation, to go to university, and a degree was by no means a prerequisite for membership of the middle classes.
The more enlightening figures are those that plot voting against housing; yes, social and council tenants voted leave, but so did those who owned their houses outright, the people we might describe as society’s winners. By housing type, the only groups where remain prevailed were private renters and people with mortgages.
In other words, the very most we can say is that leave had some popularity with the disaffected and the disenfranchised; but it was not limited to that group, and the people who swung the vote were affluent, older southerners. Instead, we’ve taken it as a kicking-off point that the Brexit vote was won by a council estate in Bolton.
The result is, firstly, the othering of the north: people think differently up there, and nobody in London could possibly understand them. In the media and, to a lesser degree, parliament, this has turned into a performative defeatism belied by competitive authenticity: you’re more metropolitan elite than me, because I’ve done some polling in Rochdale; ah, but my grandmother is northern and I met someone once from Wirral South, and I can tell you, on the contrary, that you’re the one who will never understand.
Perhaps defeatism from the elite sounds like a good thing, not a moment too soon; except it carries an attendant assumption that poverty has an immovable set of opinions, which cannot be shifted and which it is disrespectful of the wealthy even to name, let alone discuss. Because we wouldn’t understand.
For every one person who voted leave because the global rat race had left them behind, there was more than one person pretty well served by the economy, who voted leave because they believed the line about sovereignty, or because they were still huffy about the European directive on clean beaches, or because they simply associated the EU with faceless change and preferred things to stay the same. The picture cannot be drawn in simple, binary lines between rich and poor. The divisions are, like the crosscurrents in a family, much more layered; and, like a family, insoluble without the presumption of a fundamental ability and ardent desire to accommodate one another.
Secondly, of course, it has become the immigration election, despite the fact that only a third of leave voters cited borders as their chief concern. And this brings with it a host of assumptions that we might loosely class as swallowing Nigel Farage whole: that people who oppose free movement will always oppose it; that it is pointless explaining the lump of labour fallacy, because that is yet more elitist sneering; that public services are under pressure because of foreigners rather than underfunding; that housing is expensive because of demand rather than rent extraction by a capital class empowered by inequality; that the voters have spoken, and now our humanitarian duties to refugees must come second, to the point that we don’t even mention them; that the metropolitan elite must simply accept that it let immigration get out of control and must pay the price of a mistrust of unknowable proportions and unguessable length.
Remaking this picture, so that it resembles reality rather than regurgitates false absolutes, is far more important than any discussion about a second referendum, or a snap election, or a progressive alliance. It is more important even than the terms under which we exit the EU, if indeed we meaningfully do. At stake is our ability to cohere. For the sake of national unity, we must question, rather than merely accept, the new nationalism.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
“Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out”: the muttered incantation of the emperor in Robert Graves’s Claudius the God has rarely seemed so apposite. It is time for this government to drop the pretence that it is healthy and functioning. A reckoning is long past due. Daily, we see a new pustule or sore – on some days several. According to the Sunday Times, the Brexiteers are plotting to install Boris Johnson as prime minister, Michael Gove as his deputy and Jacob Rees-Mogg as chancellor. The last of those would be especially contentious, since the Moggster has spent much of the past week accusing the Treasury of “fiddling the figures” in its analysis of Britain’s prospective departure from the EU.
Yet – as if to pave the way for an ideological purge of Her Majesty’s Treasury – the leading Brexiteer MP Bernard Jenkin accuses Philip Hammond in the Sunday Telegraph of trying to countermand the prime minister’s argument that we should leave the EU customs union. For those Tories who (mysteriously) regard Brexit as the path to a New Jerusalem, the chancellor’s call in Davos for only “very modest” changes to the UK’s relationship with the EU is simply a provocation too far.
It has become a grotesque pantomime. Tory remainers demand Johnson’s head every time he intervenes – as he did last month, briefing the press that the NHS should be given £100m extra a week as a downpayment on what the foreign secretary still insists will be a grand Brexit bonanza. Whenever Hammond seeks to salvage this or that element of Britain’s economic relationship with Europe, he is accused by leavers of disregarding the “will of the people”.
Few Tories now dispute the length and gravity of the charge sheet against Theresa May: a disastrous general election, a terrible party conference and a reshuffle that merely advertised her weakness. The argument that her resilience is somehow noble is made much less frequently: in the midst of such political mayhem, it looks increasingly like stubborn political delusion.
Still, though, one continues to hear that she should stay where she is, as the only senior Tory who can realistically preside over the “constructive ambiguity” required by the Brexit talks – publicly demanding a clean break while quietly negotiating the complex, nuanced and unheroic deal that anyone remotely sensible knows is the only halfway palatable outcome.
The trouble is, she is doing no such thing. She is not the deft manager of meaning, soothing all sides and persuading each faction that its interests are being respected. She is the stuffed remnant of a once-optimistic prime minister, helpless in the midst of anarchic cacophony. This is government by taxidermy.
It is no longer plausible to argue that a formal test of her leadership would be a fatal disruption of the talks with Brussels. Without a decisive answer to the question “Who leads, and where?” I do not see how those talks can meaningfully proceed. We are an international joke, at risk of being taken to the cleaners by the EU or left with no deal at all. In such circumstances, clarification is not a distraction but precisely the opposite.
Were I in May’s shoes, I would pre-empt a confidence vote forced by letters from 48 of my own MPs, and – in the manner of John Major in 1995 – demand one myself (if necessary by instructing sympathetic backbenchers to trigger the process). I would then set out an explicit, unambiguous and unapologetic strategy for Brexit, and instruct the Conservative parliamentary party to back me or sack me.
Let us say, as seems quite probable, that MPs sacked her, as they did Iain Duncan Smith in 2003. There would then be a period of bedlam as the Tory party fought with teeth bared and daggers drawn to settle not only its future but the future of Britain’s relationship with the EU. It would be ugly, protracted and almost entirely destructive.
Would the answer that emerged at the end be sustainable? Would the new Conservative leader – and, if the Commons pact with the Democratic Unionist party held – prime minister be able to provide the discipline and clear sense of trajectory that has been so conspicuously lacking under May? Quite possibly not. But that is the whole point. It may well be that the Tory party, as presently constituted, is structurally incapable of meeting the patriotic needs of the hour. It really is for the Conservatives, and not the rest of us, to prove that this suspicion is unfounded.
At any rate, the present arrangement is a hideous international embarrassment. It seems to me painfully obvious that we need an extension of the negotiating period set by article 50 – entirely possible under its section 3 – if only to replace panic with some semblance of deliberation. And, sooner rather than later, there should be another general election.
I am scarcely Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest fan, but the notion that the status quo must be preserved simply to thwart his chances of becoming prime minister is not only democratically contemptible but morally outrageous. Indeed, the prospect of a fresh election would force Labour, at last, to spell out its plans for Brexit, and embrace the risks of clarity.
Yes, I know the voters are fed up of trudging to the polling booths. But they’ll be even more fed up if Britain sleepwalks into a second-rate status, with all that implies, because a clinically dead government was permitted by a mixture of squeamishness and boredom to remain on life support. Time to flick the switch and see what happens.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
When Irish republicans sat down with members of the British government in 1921 to negotiate what became the Anglo-Irish Treaty, ending Ireland’s war of independence, the state of Northern Ireland, and thus the partition of Ireland, was already a reality, having formally come into being earlier that year.
To prevent the negotiations breaking down over Irish republican demands for an end to this partition, the British government concocted a cunning plan for a boundary commission to review the border in accordance with the “wishes of the inhabitants” and with due regard to economic and geographic conditions.
Irish negotiators maintained the commission would produce favourable findings that would lead to a significant territorial gain, ultimately making unity with Northern Ireland much more likely. The eventual report of the boundary commission in 1925 – involving only a minimal transfer of territory from Northern Ireland to the south, and even some transfer in the other direction – shattered these illusions, leading to a hasty agreement between Dublin, London and Belfast to leave the border as it was. And so it has remained since, all 300 miles of it.
Historical context is essential to understanding the significance of the news that Britain wants to shift its immigration controls back to Irish ports and airports to avoid the introduction of a “hard” border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit. Despite much rhetorical and emotional attachment to reunification, and a disastrous IRA campaign targeting the border from 1956-62, pragmatism has dominated the southern Irish approach to the border question. Anglo-Irish and north-south relations noticeably improved from the 1960s, with a particular focus on trade. The outbreak of the Troubles, from the late 1960s, led to numerous crises but was eventually solved by the peace process and the Good Friday agreement of 1998. This agreement maintains that it is “for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination”.
Following the Brexit vote in June, when 56% of Northern Ireland’s electorate voted to remain in the EU, historian Ian McBride argued that the Good Friday agreement “clearly envisaged that Northern Ireland’s future constitutional arrangements would be worked out in the context of continuing partnership between the north and the south, and between politicians in London and Dublin”. And he added: “To remove Northern Ireland from Europe without its consent is not only morally wrong and politically risky; it is also a rejection of the fundamental bilateralism of the peace process”.
The Brexit result also raised this bizarre question: given that, under the Good Friday agreement, those born in Northern Ireland can be citizens of the UK or Ireland or both, can they now be both EU and non-EU citizens?
During the referendum campaign, the then Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, claimed that the Common Travel Area between Britain and Ireland – based on administrative agreements of 1922 and 1952 confirming the special status of Irish citizens in Britain and vice versa – means there is no need for a “hard border”. Now her successor, James Brokenshire, insists London and Dublin will work closely together to “strengthen the external border” of the travel area in order to combat illegal migration into Britain once it leaves the EU.
But the reality is that the Common Travel Area would be an external border to the EU as a whole; and what Britain may regard as a better alternative to a “hard” Irish border may be wishful thinking. For all the soothing rhetoric from Irish foreign affairs minister Charles Flanagan about sharing information and systems to counteract illegal immigration, he also warns: “This will be a decision not just by the UK or Irish governments but ultimately also by the 27 EU states.”
This will be a difficult balancing act, given Ireland’s continuing membership of the EU. Brexit represents the Republic’s greatest challenge since joining the EEC in 1973, because the Irish government needs to emphasise both Irish distinctiveness from Britain and the two nations’ common needs. Senior members of the Irish government, because of their fear of a “hard” north-south border, are playing down the significance of Brokenshire’s suggestions; but moves to make ports of entry proxy border posts for Britain are likely to stir opposition. One hundred years after the 1916 Rising, some of the older arguments about Irish psychological independence may resurface as a reaction to Britain seeking to “use” Ireland and its borders to assert its new isolationist status.
Almost 40 years ago, a senior Irish civil servant, irritated that the Republic was being taken for granted by Britain, urged the Irish government “to bring out once more again the fact that we are not an appendage of the British in the European communities”.
In the last few years such tensions have eased, and there have been frequent and accurate assertions that Anglo-Irish relations have never been better. The sense of an “invisible” Irish border has also greatly improved relations between Northern and southern Ireland. The “soft border”, over which 30,000 people travel each day, is even more valuable now as both economies are exposed to the consequences of Brexit.
When he took over as Ireland’s first minister for external affairs in 1922, Desmond FitzGerald said simply: “Britain is our most important external affair.” That was because of what Britain and Ireland had in common, but also because of what fundamentally divided them. This Irish border question has the alarming potential to undermine much of the painstaking progress that has been made in Anglo-Irish relations, shifting the emphasis away from reconciliation and common interests, and back to what divides.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Imagine being the chief financial officer of a corporation whose headquarters is squarely in the path of a high-category hurricane. You are delivering your annual statement to the principal shareholders, many of whom think it would be a good idea to get out of the way of the whirlwind. Others, mysteriously, dismiss the strong advice of “expert” meteorologists and insist that the hurricane will somehow be good for the business, liberating its full potential as it tears the building from its very foundations. Yet another group – the Jeremy and John Consortium – thinks that the battering storm will enable them to transform the business and collectivise its assets.
This is pretty much what it will be like for Philip Hammond when he stands up on Monday to deliver his third budget, the last before Hurricane Brexit hits the United Kingdom on 29 March. By definition, the chancellor of the day is always the cabinet’s party-pooper, the minister whose task it is to contain the spending ambitions of his departmental colleagues.
But there is a special loathing reserved for Hammond. Many of his fellow cabinet ministers seethe about him in private with a ferocity that is simply not warranted by his love of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and aversion to political showboating. No: senior Tories hate Hammond because he challenges their magical thinking about Brexit, their faith that our departure from the EU will be a triumph of the will if we dare to embrace the power of positive thinking. Tediously, laboriously, but entirely correctly, the chancellor maintains that bravado and conviction have nothing to do with it: Brexit will be a highly technical, operational matter, not an exercise in pageantry and rightwing performance art.
Still, he is obliged, ex officio, not to panic and to deliver a budget that as far as possible cleaves to the rules of normal service. As ever, a series of measures has been heavily trailed before his speech: additional defence spending, a fresh box of sticking plasters for universal credit, help for rough sleepers, money for broadband, a boost for the UK’s beleaguered high streets, an extra £420m for potholes and – pure bathos – the announcement of a review to enable couples to be married in the open air. Next Conservative slogan: Britain Just Got Wetter.
There has also been speculation that the chancellor will raise income tax thresholds in 2019 – a year earlier than planned. That would certainly be consistent with the fiscal strategy adopted by the Conservatives since the formation of the Cameron-Clegg coalition eight years ago. But it would sit uneasily alongside Theresa May’s promise in her party conference speech that austerity “is over”.
Hammond might argue, with much evidence on his side, that revenues increase when tax thresholds rise and rates fall. But this is a very difficult argument to make politically at a time when so many are feeling the full impact of eight years of cuts – with more to come.
From Hammond’s interview on Sunday with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, it was clear that the chancellor wants to postpone as many serious decisions as possible until next year’s spending review. Who can blame him? For better or worse, the moment of departure from the EU will be in the rearview mirror: whoever is chancellor will at least have the measure of what is happening, and a sense of the depth of the economic craters (or the height of the sunlit uplands if, against all logic, the Brexiteers prove to be right).
As for this budget, Hammond cannot even be sure that it will get through the Commons. The Democratic Unionist party, whose 10 MPs prop up this minority government, have been explicit in their warning that they may vote against the finance bill if they are unsatisfied by May’s negotiating position on the Irish border. This would be, to use the cliche, a nuclear option. But we are living in one of those phases in politics where cliches regain their original force. It is now more than conceivable that the DUP, perhaps in alliance with a few hard Brexiteer Tory MPs, could vote down the budget.
So shrunken and petty does politics seem these days that it is easy to neglect the scale of what is at stake. Even as we approach the greatest single change in our institutional and commercial arrangements since the second world war, there is a parallel ideological conflict over the very nature of the state and citizenship. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell want a very different system, with nationalisation and Keynesian borrowing, taxation and expenditure at its heart. The Conservatives still stand for fiscal conservatism, moderated to a greater or lesser extent by the occasional spree.
This is indeed an important and necessary debate: the role of the state in the 21st century will certainly change as automation means that there is less work for us to do as we live longer, and as the inequalities of globalisation become ever more intolerable. Yet our political class, as presently configured, is not up to the task of this dual conversation: it is seriously overstretched, tested way past its enfeebled civic capacity. There is terrible weakness on both sides of the dispatch box.
Yes, Labour is (up to a point) defining the battle of ideas, but – to judge, at least, by the opinion polls – it is nowhere near where it needs to be electorally. The Tory minority government could be accused of playground politics – though that would be grossly unfair to the children in most playgrounds. The system is dangerously close to overload. Hammond will doubtless be as smooth as ever. But all around him will fizz and fly the sparks of a political circuitry that may soon be ablaze.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
The siege of Harfleur was a disaster for the English. Henry V was humiliated and had to abandon his march on Paris, turning instead to confront the French cavalry at Agincourt. Here he faced overwhelming odds but decided to rely on bluff, cunning and Welsh archers to rescue a shred of glory from his European venture.
Theresa May must hope she is somewhere between Harfleur and Agincourt. She is embarked on a seemingly life or death project, its outcome wholly unpredictable. It was not of her making, but that of David Cameron and the British electorate. She has two months to go to invoking article 50, at which point she will find herself between 27 European Union devils and the deep blue sea. Small wonder that on Tuesday she decided on bravado and Shakespeare, goading her ministers “like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. The game’s afoot.”
In setting out the terms of engagement, May had no option but to hang tough. That is what her EU opposite numbers have been doing for six months of virtual denial of Brexit. Much of Brussels still does not believe it will happen, while Europe’s elected politicians at least sense that anti-EU sentiment is growing in their backyards. There are stirrings of a peasants’ revolt, with votes for pitchforks. The last thing they want is a crowing, preening British leader seeking “to have my cake and eat it”. Hence their cursory treatment of May in her few EU encounters so far. To them, she is toxic.
That is why the prime minister clearly felt the need to lay the revolver of “hard Brexit” on the table, to tell the Brexit deniers that Britain would be just fine on the deep blue sea. She threatened them with a trade war and fiscal blitzkrieg. She threatened an offshore Singapore, a Grand Cayman, a 51st state of America, a thousand City traders unleashed on Europe’s banks if “passporting” is denied. Much of this was bravado, but jingoism was the tactic of the moment.
There is no way Brexit can avoid going “soft” in the course of negotiation. As the veteran historian David Marquand said last week, Britain is “part” of Europe in so many ways that amputation is not an option. But there are reckless forces behind hard Brexit, on the right in Britain and among EU finance houses that might benefit from it. The fanciful timetables in May’s speech, notably on trade, may serve to spur her troops into battle, but the spectre is not of hard or soft Brexit but of shambles.
Behind the poker table bluff is realism. The prime minister has already indicated flexibility on migration, on which topic all Europe, left and right, is in a state of panic. She regards membership of the single market, even of a customs union, as going beyond her referendum mandate. But she still wants a “comprehensive, bold and ambitious trade agreement”, something called “associate membership of the customs union”. This sounds like a one-sided Platonic affair, which is nonsense. And it will soon have to be resolved.
Britain will need to avoid a “cliff edge” in two years’ time on matters such as finance, fishing and agriculture. This means markets that may require British payments to join. It may mean European court judgments Britain will have to accept. May knows this. Nor is it realistic to rely on a deal with Donald Trump as substitute for open trade with Europe. Britain will need some association with the EU. Beyond that platitude, all is up for grabs.
The reaction of Europe’s leaders to May’s speech was significant. Most welcomed a sight of even vague red lines. The EU’s Donald Tusk acknowledged her speech as “realistic” and “pragmatic”. The official response from the president, Jean-Claude Juncker, was full of bland words such as fairness, respect and hope for “good results”.
The chief EU negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, warned against cherry-picking, but it depends which cherries he is talking about. Picking cherries is precisely what May feels she has been told to do. If she gets none, the British people will eat their own. But deals there will be, slithering backwards from hard towards soft, not as far as the single market, towards what I imagine will be called an “accommodation”. Wheels are starting to turn. Money talks.
Commentators pretend to clairvoyance. They supposedly come unencumbered by prejudice or tribe, confronting the options of those in power with fierce scepticism. They can seem glib. But I have never thought politics easy. Elected politicians must forever wrestle with “the crooked timber of mankind”. For them to succeed is rare, to fail normal. I admire them for it.
In that light, I cannot recall a tougher peacetime task for a modern politician than now faces Theresa May. Europe had blighted British leaders for six centuries or more. The most successful, such as Elizabeth I, Walpole, Pitt the Elder, Gladstone and Salisbury, struggled to avoid its snares and were stronger for it. The EU ultimately wrecked three recent prime ministers – Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron. It would have done the same to Tony Blair if Gordon Brown had not saved him from the euro.
Membership of the EU was never necessary to British prosperity. The country’s overall trade in goods with the EU is not large, and the much larger trade in services is mostly unregulated by Brussels. Britain could survive hard Brexit, and if some of the gilt is shaken off the flatulent City of London it might be no bad thing.
The politics of Europe are a different matter. They have always been fragile, and are more so today than for a long time. I voted to remain in the EU because the eurozone is a disaster and Germany needed an active British presence to help rescue Europe from this ghastly mistake. The threat to Europe is not of war but of nastiness, of a fractious turning in of states on themselves and degenerating into poverty and anti-German hostility. Europe needs Britain’s diplomatic engagement never more than now.
For all the drum-banging, May’s performance on Tuesday was not unfriendly to Europe. It was the first sign she has shown of coherent leadership. No one – I doubt if even the prime minister – can know where this leadership is heading. That is the curse, and the glory, of referendums.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Who would be her? At the Conservative party conference her party of lemmings strain at the leash to plunge over a Brexit precipice. She has little to lose by confronting them head on – and saving her country while she can. Here’s the speech Theresa May could make on Wednesday:
“There are times when prime ministers are called upon to make monumental decisions – on war and peace or on the economic future of our children and grandchildren. When the country faces a grave peril it falls to a leader to meet it without fear or favour to particular factions, ignoring threats to their personal survival. I am well used to this now.
Stepping into No 10, I took on a country in a state of shock; a country so bitterly riven it seemed as if it might be beyond holding together. But I have tried my utmost. Now we have reached a political deadlock: within this party, in parliament and with EU negotiators.
It can be lonely when there is a clamour from all sides urging wildly different courses of action. This has gone beyond orthodox politics. Only a forensic examination of risks and opportunities can guide me now. You know I am not driven to hold on to this job at all costs. My intent is to take us through this so we emerge with the most hope and the least harm done. I will not go on and on – but I will go on until Brexit is fully resolved. That’s my duty.
Our history proves us the natural party of government, in power except when we grow complacent. Through our own folly, we now risk relinquishing power again. When Jeremy Corbyn claims to embody the new common sense, we should be laughing out loud.
One strand of our party has led us astray. A kind of mania has distorted our pragmatic traditions, holding Brexit to be a miracle cure for every problem and only satisfied with an extreme form of departure from the EU.
The fantastical phrase-making of this group is more media-friendly than the sober political style of our chancellor or of myself. Jacob and Boris keep the country entertained – but this isn’t a reality show, it’s reality. Let’s face up to important truths, inconvenient for some. Compromise is the only way forward: you may not get your first choice, but everyone can unite to avoid their worst fear. I warn ardent leavers that by pressing for hard Brexit or no deal, they risk no Brexit at all. The mood of the country is changing. Prof John Curtice’s poll of polls shows support for remaining in the EU at 52%, an 8% swing, while the grim reaper replaces old leavers with young remain voters. The numbers are still close – but pause to reflect further before you claim your extreme Brexit is “the will of the people”.
To passionate remainers, I warn that if you block every deal, we may crash out with no deal, causing a seismic economic shock. Our best estimates suggest that “no deal” will cause an unthinkable 8% drop in GDP: it’s my duty to protect citizens from that fate.
After two years of Brexit uncertainty, the pound has dropped by 12%, with investment falling and the economy already 2.5% smaller than it would have been, leaving the Treasury £26bn less to spend. That’s a national loss of £500m a week. Boris, where is your £350m bus bonus for the NHS now?
“Preposterous” and “deranged” are not the kind of words I use. But your Canada model means long checks at every border, not just in Ireland. It will be the despair of industry. It will grievously damage the interests of farmers and manufacturers. Let us know when you invent your unicorn technology to wave all traffic through.
I tried to accommodate all sides. Perhaps I tried the impossible. Now it’s time to break the deadlock with a compromise that will be no one’s first choice, but which is gaining support. Call it everyone’s plan B, because it avoids everyone’s worst fears. Brexit must happen, but without harm. We will seek to stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association, asking for associate status, such as that once enjoyed by Finland. We will stay close to the single market, in the customs union, as Jersey is. Call it the Jersey plan. But we stay free of the EU common agriculture and fisheries policies.
EEA free-movement rules give us greater control over our borders. There would be no free movement of citizens, only free movement of workers: only those with a job can move here. This will address the concern that EU citizens come here to beg or to be a burden. Migrants with jobs bring prosperity.
This EEA associate status would be temporary, a fixed three-year transition for negotiations. Our sovereign parliament always has power to change it. Our European neighbours will welcome frictionless borders for free-flowing trade, and no threat to the unity of the United Kingdom or of a hard border within the island of Ireland. Make no mistake, this is Brexit. No one knows which Brexit people voted for, but I do know most people want this done and dusted.
Offered this compromise deal, I trust enough of my MPs’ common sense to assert itself: to concentrate their minds, they should just glance over at the opposition. I believe MPs across the House will rally to this EEA associate option, regardless of their leaders’ positions. Every MP carries the same responsibility as I do for seeing the country through this.
But if MPs reject a deal, then the only option is to put this to the people and rely on their good sense.”
Could she? Would she? From all we know of her, Theresa May has no such agility or political imagination. History will record her as the worst of prime ministers if she drags the country down to a bad Brexit. But there is just time for her to rescue her legacy – and us – with a historic act of bravery.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
On the rock-strewn road to Brexit, we seem to have reached a questionable consensus. Few can credibly believe that the appeal court judges usurped the constitution by asserting parliament’s role in deciding how Brexit proceeds. There is, however, the assumption that if and when parliament gets to vote on article 50, MPs will assent, as to do otherwise would be undemocratic and morally indefensible.
Mindful of the 52/48 referendum result, it is said, they would be obliged to mirror the views of those who yearn to leave – including a majority of constituents in most Labour seats. But is that a given? Interrogate for a moment the thinking behind this.
There will be some MPs who could have jumped either way on 23 June. But what are we asking of the others who felt strongly about remaining within the EU? Are we reasonably expecting them, in their possibly deepening belief that Brexit will be calamitous – transforming perhaps a first-ranked nation into a second- or third-ranked one – to actively assist in that process?
Who else would be expected to do that? Imagine an airline pilot instructed by unhappy passengers to crash the plane. Or a surgeon, convinced in a belief that an operation will kill the patient, being ordered to do it by family members. Which constructor would be told to erect a building they know will fall to earth? Which captain would be ordered to sea in a ship they feel sure will sink? It isn’t elitist to acknowledge that – for all the populist disdain of experts – we still expect those we rely on to deploy good judgment on our behalf.
This of course leads to the question posed by Edmund Burke: are MPs delegates, elected to gauge and reflect the popular view; or individuals selected for their intellect and good judgment? It’s a bit of both, for we know that parliament does act as a check on populist impulses. Without it – if one believes years of opinion polling – we would still be deploying the gallows.
I cannot see that, with the elements of Project Fear still a long-term reality, and the chaos of the government’s Brexit operation unfolding before our eyes, it would be unreasonable or undemocratic for MPs to say this path was a ruinous one and that they refused, as individuals, to lead us down it. If ever there were an issue to be debated as a matter of conscience, this is it. One cannot argue that the risks of Brexit are existential and then insist that normal rules apply.
Of course a British people determined to invoke article 50 and achieve Brexit should be able to do so, and parliament as a body cannot ignore the electorate. But fearful MPs can and should use all means at their disposal to avert catastrophe, whether that entails diverting the nation away from the path of hard Brexit towards a softer alternative, or engendering a rethink of the whole thing.
That would be undemocratic, the Brexiters will say. But I don’t think it would. It is perfectly possible to accept the result of 23 June and at the same time use the democratic process to persuade the electorate that the decision it made was a mistake: to say that, while serious problems within the EU exist, this solution is the wrong one.
Is it not through a perennially accepted process of reflection and revision that parliament can repeal bad legislation it has previously enacted; how, every so often, we replace one government – previously and democratically mandated by the people – with another of different outlook?
Get over it, you lost, chant the Brexiters, but our democracy was never designed to be a sudden-death penalty shootout. Prior to 23 June, Ukip’s Nigel Farage said a close vote would not settle the matter. On Sunday he conceded that the result is not legally binding. He can hardly complain now if remainers refuse to sit on their hands.
Last week Stephen Phillips, Tory MP for the Lincolnshire Brexit stronghold of Sleaford and North Hykeham and a leaver himself, resigned his seat over the government’s attempt to keep parliament at arm’s length over the nature of Brexit. He did not say that Brexit should not happen. He said the way Brexit was being pursued was – in his judgment – wrong and that he could not be part of it.
What happened thereafter is instructive. “We look forward to campaigning to elect a new Conservative member of parliament,” said local party chairman George Clark, to help Theresa May deliver on the “exciting” Brexit vision. So Phillips used his judgment, followed his conscience and helped in his own small way to shape this fundamental debate. His local party, meanwhile, exercised its right to pursue its own objectives. This may not on its own change the course of history, but at least in Sleaford and North Hykeham no one is now illogically conflicted.
In time we may say of Phillips that nothing in his Westminster life became him like his leaving it, for he now sets an example to colleagues. If I were an MP convinced that Brexit as envisaged was a momentous error, grievous to to the nation, I would be telling my constituency this was my considered position and that I would be doing everything democratically possible to soften or halt it. This might, after discussion, prompt a rethink, or it might prompt the local party to seek a replacement, as will happen in Sleaford, and that would be its right. But if all MPs who see calamity coming followed their consciences, they would be making a contribution commensurate with the gravity of this moment.
It would be a personal sacrifice for some, but it would also be a public service. A reminder that serving the public and ceding to its populists are often quite different things.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
When President Macron meets Theresa May at the Franco-British summit at Sandhurst, the elite military academy, on Thursday, the vital “take away” for him is that Brexit is not a done deal. It can, and quite possibly will, be reversed by an increasingly likely referendum on May’s Brexit terms early next year – once the Brexit terms are clear, but before Britain is due to leave on 29 March 2019.
It is essential, therefore, that Macron – who believes passionately in a strong and united Europe – continues to express his heartfelt support for continued British membership of the European Union, should that ultimately be the will of the British people.
There are some in Brussels – and Paris and Berlin – who think there might be rich commercial pickings from Brexit. Macron and Angela Merkel rightly understand that the ill effects of European fragmentation and division far outweigh any immediate “beggar thy neighbour” advantages of EU nations gaining short-term business at the expense of Brexit Britain.
Why I am I so confident that Brexit can be halted?
When Theresa May became prime minister 18 months ago, she called for national unity behind the narrow Brexit majority of the June 2016 referendum. An unenthusiastic remainer from the outset, she morphed overnight into to a hard Brexiteer, foolishly hoping to appease the right wing of her party, and Nigel Farage of the populist Ukip insurgency, by supporting the idea of leaving the European customs union and single market.
She failed to obtain that unity. “Hard Brexit” alienated not only the British business community, but swathes of moderate voters and almost all young people who fiercely oppose a “fortress Britain” which limits their ability to live and work across Europe. It also led to a crisis with the island of Ireland because of the near universal determination, in both the Republic of Ireland and the political parties in Northern Ireland, to avoid a “hard border”.
In an attempt to regain the initiative, May called an early election last June. This completely backfired. In a dramatic turnabout determined in large part by younger voters, many of whom had not voted in the referendum, May failed to win the election and the opposition Labour party made big gains. Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour has been reluctant to commit to a firm position on Brexit, but the voters – especially the young – correctly believed Labour to be opposed to hard Brexit and in its “heart of hearts” a pro-European party, and this was a significant factor in the election outcome.
Opinion polls have for months now shown a majority against Brexit and there has been a surge of support for continued EU membership among young and middle-aged people. The costs of Brexit have become apparent, with research suggesting that the value of Britain’s output is now around 0.9% lower than was possible if the country had voted to stay in the EU, which equates to almost exactly £350m a week lost to the British economy – an irony not lost on those who backed leave because of the claim made on the side of the infamous bus.
There has also been a change of tone in national media coverage of Brexit. Until recently, Brexit was regarded as inevitable and the only issue was what terms Britain would secure from Brussels. Now Brexit is regarded as far from inevitable, and commentators have started pointing up the reality that, while Britain obsesses about Brexit, our European partners are going about their business of forging a single market in services and integrating their trade and economies intensively.
A further important new theme is the “opportunity cost” of Brexit in terms of the distraction it represents from the real challenge facing Britain – namely, the social crisis afflicting the poorer cities and regions of the country, which voted heavily for Brexit in the referendum as a protest for being neglected by the elite in London.
As the son of a poor Cypriot immigrant into Britain, I understand this profound sense of alienation. Having become a parliamentarian, and therefore part of the “establishment”, I admit our collective failure to understand the plight of those in this country who didn’t go to university and get well-paid jobs, and whose children are faced with declining living standards. We have let them bear the brunt of the rebalancing act between the west and China and the developing world which we call “globalisation”. It is a big mistake to patronise those who voted for Brexit as if they were ignorant or misinformed. Today’s social crisis is ours to own, with humility.
The imperative, I believe, is for a radically reforming government in the tradition of Clement Attlee, Britain’s great postwar social democratic leader. It needs to work tirelessly to eradicate the inequalities magnified by the deregulation of the Thatcher era which, in key respects, persisted under Tony Blair and his successors. Britain is facing a crisis in housing, education, healthcare, employment and the incessant rise of social and regional inequalities. All this is feeding populism and undermining the fabric of our nation.
I resigned last month as head of the National Infrastructure Commission in order to help create an agenda for a radical “Attlee mark two” government. I believe the British parliament and people can be persuaded to ditch Brexit before “D-day” of 29 March 2019, but it will only come from a new settlement at home.
In the coming months, I will be touring Brexit strongholds around the country, not to convince but to listen and learn. Out of this, I hope, will come a programme to get Britain moving, as a credible antidote to Brexit and the scapegoating of “Brussels”and foreigners which underpins it.
There are still 15 months until Britain’s departure from the EU, time enough to hold a referendum on the government’s proposed Brexit terms. I am confident that the British people, provided with a credible and ambitious social plan, will recognise that the balance of advantages lies in continued EU membership.
The Brexit nationalist spasm can be stopped. But this is a time for humility, purpose and courage, not insults. And we need our European friends and allies to take the same approach.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Ever since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, two things have been clear. No serious attempt to reverse or even moderate the leave decision would ever be uncontroversial. And any such attempt would require a degree of present legitimacy that could be acquired only in the light of new events and with the passing of time. The question today is whether we have now reached such a moment.
Very clearly, there was no such moment in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 referendum. It would have been too soon. It would have been merely a spasm of outrage. The voters had only just expressed their will. No government could defy that decision, even if it had wanted to. Theresa May rightly grasped that she had become prime minister with a mandate to deliver on the vote.
Yet that could never be the end of the matter. Three structural things have ensured that even a stronger and more talented government than this one would struggle to do what May wanted. The first was the difficulty of accommodating any one-off referendum decision within a political system based on parliamentary sovereignty. The second was the general election in 2017, which deprived the government of a majority. And the third was the depth and breadth of the 40-plus years of intertwining of the UK and the EU, which would require years of detailed surgery to separate.
Two and a half years on, things are, unsurprisingly, rather different. The public mood has shifted significantly, though not decisively, against Brexit. Much of that shift is down to the way May has handled the issue – her narrow-minded red lines, her reluctance to reach out – as well as the inevitable wear and tear that begins to affect any prime ministership. A bit of it is also down to extraneous events such as the impact of Donald Trump, the growth of mob politics more generally and the grinding resilience of low economic growth across Europe. Most of it, though, is simply a function of a Brexit timetable that dictates irreversible outcomes after 29 March – and therefore concentrates minds.
Some voters will still be outraged, nearly three years on from the referendum, by the slightest suggestion that any aspect of the government’s approach can be questioned, never mind that the entire Brexit decision might be up for reconsideration in a second referendum. That hostility remains a massive factor that cannot be ignored by those who want a softer Brexit than the government seeks, or who want no Brexit at all. Nor is it ignored. It is the ever-present descant to any and every Brexit conversation or judgment.
But the world, and politics, never stand still. It isn’t just treachery, as the cynical French diplomat Talleyrand once put it, it is chiefly a matter of dates. The same thing goes for political imperatives of every kind. There is a time and a place for everything. It was always likely that February and March 2019 would be the time when those who want to mitigate or reverse Brexit would have their best chance of success. It was always probable that these final weeks of the article 50 process were going to provide Brexit’s high-noon moment. And that is precisely where we find ourselves now.
It is natural to be frustrated by the frequent deferrals in this denouement. But you fight a battle only when you have the best chance of winning. That’s true on all sides, whether pro- or anti-Brexit. Sooner or later there must be a battle, or battles. They cannot be infinitely postponed. Brexit must either take place on 29 March or not. If it does take place, Brexit’s terms must be settled in some form or another, or none.
So the fact that this week looked likely at one stage to be a crucial moment but turned out instead to be a bit of an anticlimax should not distract from the main issue. This week, fearing that more Conservatives could join the independents, May managed to buy a bit more time from the Tory party by her important admission that the 29 March deadline may be missed and that the article 50 process may have to be extended if the government loses its plan B vote on 12 March. Buying time is what May does.
Yet the extension of article 50 is potentially a watershed concession. May’s pretence is that this is just a small matter, a little bit of added time because of unexpected holdups. She talked again on Wednesday of such an extension being short and limited. That is simply an unrealistic position. It assumes that the extension would merely be for the purpose of ensuring that MPs finally give their approval to a revision of her original plan and for putting this on the necessary legislative foundation.
Once again, it shows May pretending – as she always does – that nothing would really have changed. Yet in reality everything may have changed. May’s entire Brexit strategy is now being kept alive by two things. The first is her consistent leaning to the right in order to keep Conservative MPs onside behind her Brexit plan. The second is her hope that the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, can agree some form of legal wording with the EU to enable him to change his advice that the Northern Irish backstop could be a permanent sanction. If he does change his advice, pro-Brexit Tories and the DUP may be persuaded to back the deal.
But both parts of this are smoke and mirrors. More than 100 MPs in May’s party oppose her Brexit strategy. And if Cox gets the form of words that May craves, it will be the only change from the plan A on which May was trounced in January. That doesn’t automatically mean that the Tories who voted against plan A will not vote for plan B either. But it surely means that if May loses on 12 March, and especially if she loses badly, she will have no plan C to put in its place. Extending article 50, in other words, would mean having to embrace a new approach to Brexit.
There are several options here. A second referendum, offering a choice between a deal (possibly May’s) or remaining in the EU might be one, especially now that Labour has shifted its position this week. A more likely approach would involve the European free trade area-style arrangement that cabinet ministers such as Amber Rudd and David Gauke would prefer, though it would involve May trashing her red lines. Or May could try to engineer a general election in the belief that Jeremy Corbyn’s stock is now too low for him to pull off another surprise like 2017’s.
All of these options are possibilities. Most of them would require more than the short extension May mentions – it would be months, not weeks. None of them can be dismissed as complete fantasy. Yet every one is a radical shift from the assumption of 2016 that May’s way was the only way. Partly that’s May’s fault. But the Britain of 2019 is no longer the Britain of 2016. Labour’s shift on a second referendum is part of that. So is the very public revolt by Rudd and her colleagues. The passage of time means the limits of the possible have changed so radically that no Brexit, though not a certainty, is now a real possibility.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Is the date in your diary? The march for a people’s vote on 23 June marks the second anniversary of the Brexit referendum, that day of national meltdown and the harshest social rift of our lifetime. This week the Commons corridors are filled with intensive lobbying of MPs before next week’s pivotal Brexit votes. As amendments to the EU withdrawal bill are made in the Lords, whips demand maximum party tribalism. Meanwhile, rebels call on consciences to save the nation in its hour of peril. The vote on giving parliament a “meaningful say” on the deal was only won by four votes in December, so the decisions on staying in a customs union, a frictionless Irish border and joining the European Economic Area (EEA) hang by a whisker. But there’s a new spring in the step of the soft Brexiters and no-Brexiters. The crunch moment has come. A wind of change is blowing through parliament.
The cabinet’s shocking failure over two wasted years to resolve anything means that the baton passes to MPs. As rival cabinet groups debate impossible options that are not seen as viable by EU negotiators, nothing has changed, and still the clock ticks down to the 28 June summit in Brussels.
On this epoch-defining issue there is no government at the helm. Even Conservative party members say so; two-thirds told ConservativeHome they had lost confidence in their government’s handling of Brexit. With no one at the wheel, MPs must take back control.
Peter Kellner, a cautious pollster, says remain is now five percentage points ahead among voters, according to data from Delta. A majority would avoid the risk of a weaker economy in exchange for losing some sovereignty. By far the biggest gulf, greater than class or region, is between old and young voters: the retired and near-retired are still Brexiters, but by a margin of 65% to 35% working-age voters put the economy ahead of leaving the EU. That five-point remain lead is tight, but so was the four-point referendum victory that gave leavers such confidence that only the hardest Brexit is “the people’s will”.
To gauge the level of change, one need only note the growing fury of the Brexiters. Jumping up and down like raging Rumpelstiltskins, they sense the argument is slipping away. The leak of the Brexit department’s assessment of a no-deal scenario was splashed across the Sunday Times – that arch-Brexit paper. The second-worst scenario – not even their worst imagining of “armageddon” – warned that the port of Dover would collapse on day one, with food, petrol and medicines running out within days.
Cue apoplectic indignation from the Daily Mail, which calls the report “project fear on speed … tendentious rubbish”. It sneers at this report as emanating from Whitehall. But always remember that it was David Davis who commissioned it from the civil servants he appointed to his department. This was not even their worst prediction for the no-deal walkout favoured by the Rees-Moggites. Indeed, the worse the picture that emerges from every industry, the Bank of England, research scientists, the NHS, security and crime agencies – everywhere that matters – the more the Rees-Moggites rage with their fingers-in-the-ears, no-deal denial. They seem to be losing it, in every sense.
The Mail wills MPs to defeat the 15 Lords amendments “all designed to stall, dilute or reverse the referendum result”; all from the “unelected upper house stuffed with cronies and party hacks”. Hear that fear. “Unless Mrs May seizes back the initiative, they may succeed in wrecking the bill,” laments the Mail. And it looks increasingly possible that they will.
If so, expect MPs themselves to be branded “traitors”, “saboteurs”, “enemies of the people”. Expect democracy to be threatened by the Brexit fanatics. And know that this is the moment when each and every MP has to decide if they are merely subservient, or if – as Edmund Burke told the electors of Bristol – each, irrespective of party, has a higher duty. “His unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living.”
What are the odds? It looks possible, maybe probable, that parliament will support a customs union and a frictionless Irish border, which means a close agreement on single market rules too. Sadly, Labour is deeply split on the Lords amendment for joining the EEA. Some 60 Labour MPs of the Caroline Flint, tough-on-immigration variety would vote against – even if the leadership swung to support it – despite enough Tory votes to win this too: 10 Tory MPs have spoken in favour of the EEA.
Even so, if the Commons votes for a customs union and a frictionless border, Brexit does take a far softer shape. And what will May do then? Breathe a secret sigh of relief, declare her hands are tied and pursue the least-damaging Brexit possible? The fanatics and the Mail will explode in fury, her party will be riven. What then? Does she turn to the people to vote on her deal? Do MPs insist that she does what they say?
Some remainers fret about a people’s vote but tellingly, it’s the leavers who fear that vote most. The shadow Brexit minister, Keir Starmer, says Labour is keeping its options open on the issue of a people’s vote. It all depends on the question: is it a soft or hard Brexit versus remain or leave? Or a three-way choice?
I will join the march on 23 June because if, as I hope, parliament votes for the softest Brexit, the claim that the people’s will is denied will need another popular vote to resolve it. And if parliament votes for a hard Brexit, then a vote is the last hope of saving us all. Above all, because I think the no-Brexit position could win. But please God, let there be no other referendum ever again: never forget the near-mortal damage done to Britain by an irrevocable vote on an unfathomably complex question. Instead, trust in general elections to throw the bastards out when they get things wrong.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Whoever is elected Tory leader and becomes prime minister will find the clock is still ticking. Britain is to exit the European Union on Halloween, 31 October. To avoid that outcome, the EU must agree to a further extension so that the government can alter the exit date. The new prime minister will also be confronted with the unforgiving arithmetic of the House of Commons. Most MPs oppose a no-deal Brexit, though Labour’s attempt to enshrine this in law failed yesterday. But MPs have also three times rejected the only seeming alternative: the withdrawal agreement so laboriously negotiated by Theresa May. The EU has insisted that no alternative agreement is available.
Two candidates for the Tory leadership, Dominic Raab and Esther McVey, propose breaking this deadlock by proroguing parliament – ending the session – so that MPs are unable to block a no-deal Brexit. This, some have objected, could involve the Queen – since prorogation, unlike the dissolution of parliament, which leads to a general election, is governed not by statute but by royal prerogative. Indeed, Lord Armstrong, the former cabinet secretary, has suggested that the Queen, before exercising her discretion on so contentious a matter, would consult with Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the opposition, and perhaps also with others.
But the Queen would almost certainly be guided by the rule that has served her so well during her long reign. That rule requires her to act on the advice of her prime minister. Then, if there are objections, they will be directed at the prime minister, not the Queen. As such, a prorogation would be relatively straightforward.
The real objection to proroguing is quite different. It would be more than controversial. The word “unconstitutional” is perhaps too frequently used. But proroguing parliament, under the circumstances envisaged by Raab and McVey, would stretch the constitution to its outermost limits, if not beyond. A Brexit-led prorogation means delaying the new session of parliament until November. Normally this session would be expected to begin as soon as the new prime minister takes office, especially as Corbyn would almost certainly table a no-confidence vote directed against the minority government. In any case, a new session of parliament begins with a Queen’s speech, which would be subject to an opposition amendment ruling out a no-deal Brexit.
If the new prime minister sought to avoid a new session, and prorogued immediately upon entering Downing Street at the end of July, the country would be without a parliament for three months. Since the 1980s the normal length of a prorogation has been two weeks or less. A minority government preventing parliament from scrutinising a decision opposed not only by MPs, but also, according to survey evidence, by the people, would appear an outrage. The ensuing demonstrations would make the People’s Vote march look like a tea party.
Is there any other way to break the deadlock? For most MPs, the main obstacle to the withdrawal agreement is the Irish backstop. That either requires Westminster to replicate all EU tariffs and regulations, making Brexit pointless, or if Westminster diverges, it requires Northern Ireland to retain EU tariffs and regulations to remain congruent with the Irish Republic and avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. The consequence, however, would effectively be a border in the Irish Sea and a weakening of the union, with Northern Ireland becoming detached from the rest of the UK.
It is understandable if Tory Brexiteers, who hoped that leaving the EU would mean “taking back control”, are unwilling to be impaled on this Morton’s Fork. There is no chance of the withdrawal agreement being accepted by the Commons unless the backstop is amended.
The EU has declared that an amendment is not possible. But, though rigid in theory, the EU is often flexible in practice. It has indeed already shown flexibility on the backstop – for the withdrawal agreement allows Northern Ireland to remain in the EU internal market without accepting more than a fraction of the regulations of that market. The EU, with the consent of Ireland, now needs to show further flexibility by providing for the backstop either to be unilaterally terminated by Westminster, or, alternatively, to allow a sunset clause to be attached to it so that it automatically comes to an end after a certain period of time.
The danger of such an amendment, some might object, is that an extreme Brexiteer such as Raab, freed of the backstop, would allow a hard border in Ireland. This would go against the spirit, though not the letter, of the Good Friday agreement.
But this danger is more apparent than real. The vast majority of MPs are determined to avoid a hard border, and the extreme Brexiteers, as well as the Brexit party, would be disarmed once parliament had passed an amended withdrawal agreement.
Of course, EU agreement to an amended backstop must depend upon the consent of the Irish government. But if that consent is refused, and the EU remains adamant, Tory MPs might conclude that the EU has been unnecessarily hostile. In those circumstances, their hostility to a no-deal Brexit might well evaporate, as it in effect did yesterday. The only alternative, given Tory opposition to a further referendum, would be a general election, leading to huge gains for the Brexit party and a possible Corbyn government.
But why, in any case, should the EU grant a further extension? The only argument for it would be that MPs had not been able to make up their minds. That may not prove very persuasive to the leaders of the other EU member states over three years after the referendum. Nor is it at all clear how a further extension could break the deadlock.
A no-deal Brexit would be worse for all concerned, and especially for Ireland – which would suffer both from a hard border and from damage to its economy. Generosity, therefore, on the part of the Irish government would, not for the first time in Anglo-Irish relations, be more sensible than intransigence; and it would help renew the good relations between Britain and Ireland – relations that have been so badly damaged by the Brexit process.
Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 17.53 BST
Tony Blair will be 65 this year. In the Britain he grew up in, that used to mean the male retirement age. Bring it on, many will say. But these once-immovable milestones no longer exist. They certainly do not apply to the former prime minister. For Blair has made it crystal clear in his new year intervention on Brexit that he has absolutely no intention of quitting the public stage any time soon.
This of course appals many people for serious reasons that do not need to be re-rehearsed here. Even those who continue to think well of him have their doubts. Blair is a permanently damaged figure. Whenever he enters the public arena, he always risks making himself, not what he says, into the issue – John Humphrys’ self-important aggression against Blair on the Today programme on Thursday showed this process at its most depressing. But there are three serious reasons why the rest of us should make the effort to focus on what he says, rather than on him.
The first of these is that Blair articulates the case against Theresa May’s Brexit strategy more clearly and more devastatingly than anyone else in British public life. If that is anyone’s fault, it is not Blair’s. He is putting into words things that no one else is managing to do so well, so succinctly or with such urgency. If Jeremy Corbyn made the same case – which is backed by an overwhelming majority of Labour party members, research has showed – things would be very different. But he isn’t. If only the TUC’s Frances O’Grady could be persuaded to take up the mantle of spearheading the opposition to Brexit, many things would be possible.
Please read Blair’s new article on Brexit nevertheless. His arguments are a wake-up call for the political year. As Blair says, 2018 is when real decisions must be made – about the terms, about soft or hard Brexit, and about a referendum on the final deal. The pivotal decision about Ireland – on which so much else hinges – has merely been postponed. The four options that Blair sets out for Britain – remain and reform, leave but stay in the single market and customs union, exit all structures but make a bespoke deal, and make a virtue of leaving – are the only choices facing Britain. Twelve months from now, Britain will have embarked on one of them. This matters, massively.
Blair accepts that securing continued EU membership involves a task of persuasion and good timing. Gordon Brown said much the same a few weeks ago. But the trigger for this particular article is his frustration with the Labour party for its caution and equivocation on Brexit. Though Blair does not mention Corbyn by name, he is explicitly critical of Labour for having its own cake-and-eat-it strategy. The final few paragraphs in particular read like a primer from Blair to Corbyn on how to move beyond that.
As so often, Blair can give the impression that a highly ambitious political goal is achievable by an effort of will, his own leadership skills and by well-honed political messaging. This over-optimism has always been one of his faults. Read his article closely, however, and it is actually more equivocal about the options than it may appear. Blair keeps his views open on a second referendum. And he comes close to saying that the ultimate test of policy is about single-market membership – in other words a soft Brexit rather than no Brexit at all. This puts him quite close to the current stance of Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer.
There is a second reason why the new year is a good moment to be more open to what Blair and those like him are saying. Britain faces several domestic political crises at the start of 2018, all of them made worse by Brexit. Labour is within sight of winning power, but still some way off. Its chances will depend in significant part on how it behaves as a party between now and what may be a distant election, and upon its ability to persuade those who were unpersuaded in June 2017. That means a clear programme, credibility and party unity are paramount.
This in turn means showing that Labour can be a tolerant coalition of traditions and ideas. There is much more to this than bringing a wider group of talent into the shadow cabinet. Labour needs to prove, from top to bottom, that its left respects its right and that its right respects its left. That wasn’t so in much of Blair’s time – with eventual dire consequences – and at times there is not much evidence of it in Corbyn’s either. But the current armistice is better than a civil war. The longer it holds, the better.
To say this is not to ask the Labour left to embrace Blair or everything he says. But it is to suggest that the left acknowledges that the soft left (to use a pre-Blair term) and the Labour right are legitimate alternative traditions within the Labour coalition, which have achievements and principles to contribute. Likewise, it is to suggest that any Blairites who simply dismiss the achievements, principles and, at times, heroism of the left are making the equal and opposite error. As the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik puts it in a review of John Bew’s biography of Clem Attlee this week, it is possible to hold to moral absolutes while at the same time displaying a prolific appetite for conciliation.
This leads to the third reason why Labour supporters should make a New Year resolution to allow a place for Blair’s ideas to be heard. For 15 years, Blair has provided an excuse for some in the Labour party – on the right as much as the left – not to think about the large and difficult questions that face 21st-century Britain, and which would face any Labour government of whatever ideological stripe. Blair and accusations of Blairism have been cynically and very successfully exploited to advance the left’s cause.
I’m not saying that aspects of Blair’s career and the approach of some Blairites did not provoke some of this. They did. There were big New Labour mistakes. But it is time to move on. Labour needs, in another Gopnik phrase about Attlee, to be “radicals of the real”. No issue is more real and more pressing than Brexit. It is time for Labour to stop refighting ancient wars and focus ecumenically on the radical and real task in hand.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
After 43 years of membership, exiting the EU was never going to be easy. But the government’s current tone and approach is making a hard job even more difficult. There have been 165 days since the referendum result and there are only 118 left until the prime minister’s 31 March deadline to trigger article 50. The clock is ticking, but still we do not know the government’s basic plan for Brexit.
We do not have answers to fundamental questions such as the government’s position on the customs union, our likely relationship with the single market or future contributions to the EU budget. The government has also failed to provide much-needed certainty for the 3.5 million EU citizens living in the UK.
This matters, because uncertainty over the government’s plans – and the continuing likelihood that it favours a hard Brexit – is weakening our negotiating position and making it less likely that Britain will get the best possible Brexit deal, one that protects jobs, the economy and living standards.
This uncertainty is already feeding through to the economy, with the Office for Budget Responsibility revising down business investment by 4.7% this year. Uncertainty over the status of EU nationals has also contributed to a surge in applications for UK residency from those worried about what the future may bring.
The prime minister, Theresa May, and her Brexit secretary, David Davis, have repeatedly said there will be no running commentary on their article 50 plans. But in the past few days and weeks, this is precisely what we have seen – a running commentary provided by leaked memos, notes caught on camera and the foreign secretary’s novel approach to diplomacy.
At the same time, parliament is being sidelined and denied the chance to scrutinise the government’s plans on the most important issue facing the country for generations. The prime minister should know that without greater clarity over the basic terms of her Brexit strategy this speculation and uncertainty will persist. And for as long as this is the case, our negotiating hand weakens.
During recent visits to Brussels, I have been left in no doubt that our EU negotiating partners are deeply concerned that the government’s tone and approach are hindering a mutually beneficial Brexit deal.
Instead of providing certainty over the UK’s basic aims, the government has put out mixed messages, veering from the extreme version of Brexit suggested by the prime minister’s party conference speech to the undefined version of Brexit suggested by the Nissan deal and Davis’s comments that EU budget contributions may continue post-Brexit.
We need to end this unnecessary uncertainty. That is why Labour has called an opposition day debate in the House of Commons on Wednesday on a motion that calls for the government to publish a plan for Brexit before article 50 is invoked.
Labour accepts and respects the referendum result. We recognise Britain is leaving the EU and we will not frustrate the process that leads to that.
But we will also fight for a Brexit deal that is in the national interest – not in the interest of the 52% or the 48%, but for the 100%.
That means opposing a hard Brexit that risks jobs and our economy and fighting to ensure that key protections on workers’ rights and the environment are retained and enhanced. It also means holding the government to account every step of the way and making sure it has a proper plan to deliver the smart, sensible Brexit we need.
Labour’s motion in the Commons on Wednesday is an important step in that process. It calls for a basic plan – not the finer detail or minutiae of a negotiating position, but a basic plan – for Brexit to be put before the public and parliament.
On the defining issue of our time, that surely is not too much to ask.
Keir Starmer QC, shadow secretary of state for exiting the EU, is MP for Holborn & St Pancras
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
For many years Britons and Americans have been proud of the quality of their governance. Yet today our politics and government are setting new standards for dysfunction. Rather than stability and global leadership there is confusion.
The US is suffering from a serious inability to legislate. There is a genuine risk of the country defaulting on its debts. Jeb Bush called Donald Trump the “chaos candidate”, but as the American writer Jonathan Rauch has pointed out the Trump candidacy was the product of political chaos – in campaign finance, for example – not its cause.
Meanwhile, Britain is suffering its own governability crisis. Leaving the EU was mis-sold as a quick fix. Now it looks like a decade-long process of unscrambling the eggs of national and European legislation. Ministers cannot even agree among themselves the destination, the route map or the vehicles to get us there.
This transatlantic malaise has a common root: politics based on what you are against, not what you are for. Look at the campaigns against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and against the EU. There is a common trope: the politics of grievance.
Complaints about individual policies became attacks against a whole institutional architecture. There were outright lies in both campaigns. And there was a complete (and effective) refusal to describe, never mind debate, what would replace the status quo.
Healthcare makes up nearly a fifth of the US economy – about $1tn larger than the whole UK economy. Support for Obamacare is growing, dramatically, because the alternative has finally been spelled out. It turns out that populism is popular until it has to make decisions.
In Britain, the implementation of the EU referendum decision has been rash and chaotic. The timing and content has been governed by factions in the Tory party. Our negotiating position is a mystery – even on immigration.
So the fightback against the worst consequences of the referendum has the opportunity and responsibility to get its bearings fast. Recent calls from Stephen Kinnock, Heidi Alexander and William Hague for Britain to embrace the European Economic Area are sensible. Nick Clegg’s point that a reformed Europe centred on the euro implies outer rings which Britain should consider also makes sense.
I never thought I would say this, but the chancellor, Philip Hammond, is also playing a valiant role. The transition he supports is vital. However, a transition postpones a rupture rather than avoiding it. Slow Brexit does not mean soft Brexit. Steve Baker, minister in the department leading the negotiations, has been refreshingly honest in saying the transition period is a “soft landing for a hard Brexit”. We have been warned.
The case against the EU depends on avoiding a discussion of the alternative. It is the equivalent of voting to repeal Obamacare without knowing the replacement. It is a stitch-up. That is one reason it is essential that parliament or the public are given the chance to have a straight vote between EU membership and the negotiated alternative. That is a democratic demand, not just a prudent one.
People say we must respect the referendum. We should. But democracy did not end on 23 June 2016. The referendum will be no excuse if the country is driven off a cliff. MPs are there to exercise judgment. Delegating to Theresa May and David Davis, never mind Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, the settlement of a workable alternative to EU membership is a delusion, not just an abdication.
Brexit is an unparalleled act of economic self-harm. But it was a big mistake to reduce the referendum to this question. The EU represents a vision of society and politics, not just economics. We need to fight on this ground too.
The Europe of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel stands for pluralism, minority rights, the rule of law, international co-operation – and not just a single market. In fact, the real truth about the single market has been lost in translation.
It is not just a market. It is a vision of the good society. Rights (and holidays) for employees, limits on oligopolies, standards for the environment are there to serve the vision. The single market stands against a market society.
This is all the more important in a world where autocratic leadership is on the march. This is not just about China or Russia. The democratic world is itself splitting into authoritarian and pluralist camps. We can see Venezuela has taken a repressive turn. Within the EU, there is a battle to hold Hungary and Poland to their commitments, and Brexit weakens that effort.
And the US is not immune. John Cassidy of the New Yorker has coined the notion of “democratic erosion” – gerrymandered congressional districts, voter suppression and attacks on the media. Half of Republican voters say they would support the decision if President Trump postponed the next election.
The EU is not just a group of neighbouring countries. It is a coalition of democratic states which pledge to advance human rights, the rule of law and democratic rules. That is not a threat to Britain; it is the team we should be in.
So Britain’s choice about its institutional future is not just about pounds and pence. I favour the closest possible relationship with the EU, not only for economic reasons. The EEA does not just make business sense. Europe represents a vital and historic alliance of democracies, founded on the idea that social, economic and political rights go together and that countries best defend them in unison not isolation.
History makes the point. The post-second world war commitments to rights for individuals have their immediate political origins in the Atlantic Charter, agreed between Churchill and Roosevelt in Newfoundland in 1941. It set out the terms of postwar peace – notably human rights, national self-determination and international co-operation. It was called the “birth certificate of the west” by the former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer.
The insight was simple. Globalisation without rules and institutions would not mean more control for ordinary citizens. It would mean less. And less control means more risk to the living standards of those in greatest need. International co-operation was and is a force for social justice and against turbo-capitalism.
President Eisenhower said when you had an insoluble problem, enlarge it. The debate about transitional arrangements and institutional design of our relationship with the EU craves a broader framework. There is nothing more fundamental than the economic, social and political rights that looked like the norm at the end of the cold war. Now they are in retreat. Europe is their bastion. And that is the side we should be on.
David Miliband is president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid, relief and development NGO based in New York. He is writing in a personal capacity
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Privileging career prospects over the call of one’s conscience can terminally damage political credibility. That is the message those Conservative MPs working to prevent a no-deal Brexit will want their colleagues to hear when they go back to work in September.
Soon our elected representatives will have left the poolside and returned to the faded grandeur of Whitehall. Meanwhile those who stayed in Westminster this August, including the vast majority of ministerial special advisers, have been bracing themselves for the great Brexit battle 2.0. (Actually, it’s more like 10.0 – even giving Windows a run for its money. But never mind.)
So, will the first week of September usher in the mother of all parliamentary showdowns? That will depend in part on the decisions and priorities of those who have spent the summer attempting to reconcile their consciences with the prospect of no deal becoming a reality. Health secretary Matt Hancock managed it. So did cabinet ministers Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan.
The consequences of no deal are now in the public domain, and they are grave. The leaked government dossier on Operation Yellowhammer suggests disruption to supplies of fresh food, fuel and medicine and the possibility of civil unrest. Just “bumps in the road” to Brexit says Michael Gove, the man in charge of no-deal planning.
I believe that Boris Johnson’s government is actively working to avoid a deal with the EU. I hope I am wrong. We will soon find out. What is undeniable is that this administration has done a brilliant job of branding and broadcasting its approach. The efficiency and potency with which the “do or die” message has been hammered home is bamboozling even the brave few who have thus far been vocal in their objection to leaving without a deal.
So what are the anti-no-dealers actually doing to prevent their nightmare coming true? There is much debate about how the legal requirement to leave on the 31 October can be upended. I’ll leave that to one side. That’s a practical question with a practical answer, and the various options will be played out soon enough. But this is also a question of principles and sticking to them. Or not.
Last week there was another leak. The former chancellor and my former boss, Philip Hammond, along with 19 other MPs, wrote to Johnson to remind him of his promise that no deal was an unlikely outcome – “a million to one” in the prime minister’s own words. The letter encouraged him to make good on these odds.
All well and good. But we have only two months before a hard Brexit becomes reality. So enough with the epistolary efforts. It’s time for senior Conservatives who know that no deal would be a disaster to get their hands dirty. It’s time to shout the message from the rooftops; to campaign and cajole until it is clear to this government that parliament won’t impose this risk on its people.
Last April, parliament successfully forced through an emergency bill to see off the threat of no deal under Theresa May.
But I am worried that, when the House of Commons returns in a fortnight, fewer and fewer MPs will muster the courage to speak in favour of blocking no deal and then to organise to prevent it. A majority in the Commons remains opposed to a hard Brexit. But I fear that, on the Tory side, too many may see blocking it as career suicide in the Johnson era.
How would we ever be able to trust these senior politicians again, when it would appear that a short summer break was all it took to convert them to the ruthless rhetoric of the prime minister’s approach?
Hammond has always said what he thinks. He’s authentically committed to the things he says he believes. As his communications director, my job was hair-raising at times. But it makes his job this September a straightforward one. What about former ministers Rory Stewart, Greg Clark, and David Gauke? Or Scottish Conservatives leader Ruth Davidson? They need now to step into the glare of the spotlight to lend the campaign against no deal some serious firepower.
Stewart, Clark and Gauke signed the Hammond letter. I expect they’ll continue to speak out against a hard exit. But they’ll not turn the worm.
Davidson may be the key to all this. Less than a week after Johnson was elected leader she made a public commitment that she wouldn’t support no deal. She says she also told Johnson this to his face in their first meeting following his win. Will she be as vociferous and vocal this autumn? I hope so.
But the most difficult questions are reserved for those who have chosen to remain inside the bunker. If you think leaving without a deal is a disaster, can you really have a clear conscience about staying in the cabinet?
Rudd has told colleagues she’s better able to influence Johnson’s hard Brexit instincts from inside government. But was the prospect of losing a second secretary of state job in such short order also a factor?
Rudd has sent mixed signals of late. First she declared that “I will play my part in … arguing strongly for respecting parliamentary sovereignty.” The next morning she doubled down on the no-deal message, writing in the Telegraph: “We will deliver Brexit by the end of October whatever the circumstances.”
Morgan’s website states she had concerns about “the uncertainty surrounding a no-deal Brexit,” and has made her views heard on the backbenches. But now, after three years of the UK stuck in a “holding pattern”, she says she “believe[s] we need to get the withdrawal phase concluded”. Careers, consciences and credibility: in the Conservative party this autumn all three will be tested as never before.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Tory rebels against Theresa May’s Brexit plans could ultimately collapse the government, Dominic Grieve has said, ahead of another key week in parliament over the EU withdrawal bill.
Grieve, the former attorney general, has said he objects to a government amendment to the bill which would limit the power of MPs in shaping policy if parliament rejects a final Brexit bill.
Asked if voting against the government could eventually bring it down, Grieve said: “We could collapse the government.” He told BBC One’s Sunday Politics: “And I can assure you I wake up at 2am in a cold sweat thinking about the problems that we have put on our shoulders. The difficulty is that the Brexit process is inherently risky.”
Grieve, who has drafted his own amendment that would give MPs more scope in directing ministers in the possible event of a likely no-deal Brexit, later clarified to the Press Association that his comments referred to a future vote on a deal, rather than next week’s events.
The ping-pong process of the withdrawal bill between the two houses of parliament returns to the Lords on Monday, when peers are expected to reject the amendment drafted by May and her team, and insert one modelled more closely on Grieve’s idea.
On Wednesday, the amendments will return again to the Commons, where May faces the possibility of defeat over a meaningful vote.
A series of Conservative rebels pulled back from voting against the government last week after the PM promised to listen to their concerns, but then said they felt let down by the eventual government amendment produced on Thursday.
Grieve said: “I can’t save the government from getting into a situation where parliament might disagree with it.
“The alternative is that we have all got to sign up to a slavery clause now saying whatever the government does, when it comes to January, however potentially catastrophic it might be for my constituents, and my country, I’m signing in blood now that I will follow over the edge of the cliff. And that, I can tell you, I am not prepared to do.”
The government’s prospects of defeat were increased last week when the junior justice minister Philip Lee resigned his post so he could vote against the minister on a meaningful vote. He ended up abstaining after the promise of a compromise.
In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Lee said he planned to back Grieve’s amendment, and indicated that other ministers could be prepared to follow his example.
“My intention is to support Dominic Grieve in the amendment that he put before the house, because that’s what I publicly stated last Tuesday,” he told Sky’s Sophie Ridge on Sunday show.
“This amendment I guess may be amended and if that is acceptable I will support that but fundamentally I resigned to support parliament getting a proper truly meaningful vote on the deal to leave the European Union.”
Lee said he had had “conversations with ministers at all levels who are concerned about the direction of travel”. He said he did not know whether any immediate resignations could happen, but added that others did have serious worries.
The rebels were angered after the government amendment offered parliament the opportunity only to vote on a “neutral motion” stating that it has considered a minister’s statement on the issue, if a deal is rejected.
It would not be possible to amend the motion, meaning that MPs could not insert a requirement for May to go back to the negotiating table or extend the Brexit transition.
In an interview with the prime minister, broadcast on Sunday, May rejected the idea she had double-crossed her rebels.
“I did indeed meet a group of my fellow MPs,” she told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “I listened to their concerns and I undertook to consider their concerns.
“And the next day I stood up in prime minister’s questions and said I’d put an amendment down in the House of Lords. I’ve done exactly that. We recognise the concerns people have about the role of parliament.”
She added: “Parliament cannot tie the hands of government in negotiations.”
First published on Tue 14 Nov 2017 21.34 GMT
Theresa May is facing a Tory revolt over her efforts to fix the date of Brexit on 29 March 2019, with former attorney general Dominic Grieve saying he would vote against the amendment regardless of “blood-curdling threats” and “arm twisting” from Conservative whips.
On the first of eight days of debate on the European Union withdrawal bill’s committee stage, the former attorney general was one of several Tory MPs to express their opposition to the move and up to 15 could revolt over the issue when it comes to a vote in the coming weeks.
Grieve, the ringleader of the rebellion, described Brexit as an “extraordinarily painful process of national self-mutilation” as he warned that he would not be ordered to vote against his conscience.
He was supported in the Commons by MPs including Ken Clarke, Nicky Morgan, Bob Neill and Anna Soubry.
The rebels are already among up to 20 Conservatives planning to vote against the government on several issues, from use of Henry VIII powers to securing a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal, unless the government makes concessions.
However, No 10’s attempts to fix the date of leaving the EU opened up a new battle, with May potentially reliant on Brexit-supporting Labour MPs to pass her amendment.
Grieve said there could be some room for compromise on most issues in the coming weeks but the efforts to find consensus were undermined by the government’s “mad” amendment to ensure the EU exit date is fixed at 11pm on 29 March.
He said it was tabled “without any collective decision-making within government … and accompanied by I think blood-curdling threats that anybody that might stand in its way was in some way betraying the country’s destiny and mission, and I am afraid I am just not prepared to go along with that”.
Grieve said he will “vote against it, no ifs, no buts, no maybes about this, no arm twisting” and pledged he would do so if he was the only person in the voting lobby.
Some of his colleagues, including former cabinet minister Morgan, shouted “you won’t be”, indicating they would join him in rejecting the timetable.
The Brexit date amendment was unexpectedly published on Friday but MPs will not get the opportunity to vote on it until much later in the eight days of debate on the withdrawal bill, which are expected to be spread over at least a month.
Clarke, the veteran pro-EU Tory MP, agreed with Grieve that fixing the date of Brexit was “not just ridiculous and unnecessary but it could be positively harmful to the national interest”.
He got an unusual round of applause from some MPs, who are not supposed to clap, for urging the government to reject its own “silly amendments thrown out because they got a good article in the Daily Telegraph”.
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said Labour would vote against the government’s amendment, which he dismissed as a “gimmick”.
However, the idea was supported by Frank Field, a senior Labour MP and Brexit supporter, who proposed an exit date of 30 March 2019, an hour later than the government’s amendment of 11pm on 29 March 2019.
Field said this represented “a little freedom” by ensuring that the UK rather than the EU sets the time for Brexit.
Bernard Jenkin, a senior Tory Brexit supporter, also argued that fixing the date was essential to avoid the impression that the UK could be playing for extra time to strike a deal.
“Any MPs who voted for article 50 but then do not want to fix the date are open to the charge that they don’t want us to leave the European Union,” he said.
“What this amendment does is rumbles those who have not really accepted that we’re leaving the European Union.”
Anna Soubry, a former Conservative minister, could be heard behind him saying: “You disgrace, Bernard. You’re a disgrace.”
She also hit out at a forthcoming front page article by the Telegraph, for its edition of Wednesday 15 November, listing 15 Tory MPs as “Brexit mutineers”. This, she said, was a “blatant piece of bullying”.
Steve Baker, a Brexit minister, was quick to stand up for the Conservative rebels’ right to seek improvements to the bill, saying he regretted any media attempts to divide his party.
The government was not at risk of losing votes on the first day of the debate, as it defeated a Plaid Cymru amendment to give Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a veto over Brexit by majority of 318 votes to 52. It then won a vote endorsing a clause in the bill to repeal the European Communities Act by 318 votes to 68.
However, it only defeated a Labour amendment on how the transitional period will work and an SNP amendment seeking to ensure courts pay regard to European court of justice (ECJ) decisions by 20 votes each time, underlining the slimness of May’s majority.
Her battle with her backbenchers comes against a backdrop of growing concern in Downing Street about lack of progress in the Brexit talks.
The government still hopes the EU27 will agree to move on to the next stage of the negotiations – on Britain’s future relationship – in December.
But the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) believes the position of Brussels has hardened considerably in recent months, particularly on the issue of financial settlement.
David Davis and his colleagues had expected the EU27 to accept agreement on the broad framework for calculating the Brexit divorce bill as the “sufficient progress” it has demanded.
But the EU has made clear it does not regard May’s promise to honour the UK’s financial commitments as sufficient.
The EU is seeking a detailed breakdown of the financial liabilities the UK will accept – something Davis remains unwilling to offer.
First published on Sat 13 Aug 2016 00.01 BST
Philip Hammond is to guarantee billions of pounds of UK government investment after Brexit for projects currently funded by the EU, including science grants and agricultural subsidies.
The chancellor’s funding commitment is designed to give a boost to the economy in what he expects to be a difficult period after the surprise result of the EU referendum in June.
 The Treasury is expected to continue its funding beyond the UK’s departure from the EU for all structural and investment fund projects, as long as they are agreed before the autumn statement. If a project obtains EU funding after that, an assessment process by the Treasury will determine whether funding should be guaranteed by the UK government post-Brexit.
Current levels of agriculture funding will also be guaranteed until 2020, when the Treasury says there will be a “transition to new domestic arrangements”.
Universities and researchers will have funds guaranteed for research bids made directly to the European commission, including bids to the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, an €80bn (£69bn) pot for science and innovation. The Treasury says it will underwrite the funding awards, even when projects continue post-Brexit.
Hammond said the government recognised the need to assuage fears in industry and in the science and research sectors that funding would be dramatically reduced post-Brexit.
“We recognise that many organisations across the UK which are in receipt of EU funding, or expect to start receiving funding, want reassurance about the flow of funding they will receive,” he said. “The government will also match the current level of agricultural funding until 2020, providing certainty to our agricultural community, who play a vital role in our country.”
The chancellor added: “We are determined to ensure that people have stability and certainty in the period leading up to our departure from the EU and that we use the opportunities that departure presents to determine our own priorities.”
One key funding pot that it had been claimed was at risk was the EU Peace programme in Northern Ireland, a community development project to help victims of the conflict.
The pledge to fund EU programmes in the UK until 2020 was made during the referendum campaign by senior figures in the leave camp, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. However, academics have said that EU programmes for research have benefits that go beyond funding, including international collaboration opportunities and mobility for researchers.
According to the Treasury, EU funding for a range of projects amounted to more than £4.5bn in 2014-15, with businesses and universities winning a further £1.5bn through competitive bids.
During the referendum campaign, concerns were raised that the government would be unable or unwilling to compensate bodies for the loss of money from Brussels when Britain eventually leaves the EU. Hammond’s spending pledge is an attempt to allay those fears and at the same time head off the threat of recession.
Hammond’s commitment comes after Liam Fox’s Department for International Trade was forced to delete a confusing statement posted on its website, which appeared to announce that the UK would continue to trade with the EU under World Trade Organisation rules post-Brexit “until any new trade deals are negotiated”.
Businesses have previously warned that trading under WTO rules would be disastrous, meaning the imposition of steep tariffs on goods exported to the EU, including 10% on cars and 12% on clothing.
Chuka Umunna, the Labour MP who chairs the Vote Leave Watch campaign group, said being forced to trade under WTO rules would be “a hammer blow for the British economy, and would demonstrate once and for all the hollow nature of Vote Leave’s promises”. The department said the post had been issued in error.
The Treasury is keen to support the Bank of England in its attempts to stimulate activity and the chancellor has already said he will “reset” fiscal policy – taxation and public spending – in his autumn statement if he deems it necessary.
Hammond hopes that the guarantee to continue funding EU-backed projects will ensure a flurry of activity over the coming months, thus providing a boost to both demand and confidence. The government is also aware that much of the EU money spent in Britain goes to help poorer parts of the country, which voted for Brexit in the referendum.
Treasury policy has shifted markedly since the period before the referendum, when then chancellor George Osborne warned that leaving the EU would lead to a recession that would force him to impose savings of £30bn in an emergency budget.
 Since 23 June, the emergency budget has been ditched, plans to put the public finances into the black by the end of this parliament have been scrapped, and hints have been dropped of higher spending on infrastructure to be announced in the autumn statement.
British scientists receive around £1bn annually from the EU, including through Horizon 2020. In leaving the EU, British access to those funds will be a matter for debate.
Already the ramifications of the Brexit vote have been felt. Jo Johnson, minister of state for universities and science, told scientists in June that “the referendum result has no immediate effect on those applying to or participating in Horizon 2020. UK researchers and businesses can continue to apply to the programme in the usual way.”
However, those in British academic institutions paint a very different picture. Since Britain voted to leave the EU, a number of scientists have revealed that they have been asked to leave existing collaborations for fear that the British share of project funding was at risk, while others say they have been excluded from taking part in new bids.
Andrew Graham, co-founder of OC Robotics in Bristol, said the news would be a huge reassurance to European colleagues and partners in consortia bidding for European commission funding that having a UK partner in those projects would not be a risk to the project.
“I and my colleagues have been campaigning hard for an assurance like that,” he said. “There have been some instances of clear reluctance on the part of some partners in those consortia – this should do a great deal to allay any fears they have about what having a UK partner means for the project. It’s fantastic news for a great many small and medium-sized enterprises and academic institutions across the country.”
Alistair Jarvis, deputy chief executive of Universities UK, said the pledge would offer “much-needed stability for British universities during the transition period as the UK exits the EU, and provide an important signal to European researchers that they can continue to collaborate with their UK colleagues as they have before”.
Jarvis added that the next stage would be to address the uncertainty faced by EU students considering applying to British universities. He said the government needed to “confirm that those beginning courses before we exit the EU will be subject to current fees levels and financial support arrangements for the duration of their course”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
All right: the egregious Donald Trump’s victory is, in his words, “Brexit plus, plus, plus”, and it is far more significantly ominous for the rest of the world than Brexit.
But what Trump’s triumph also does is to strengthen the case for re-examining the Brexit decision. Europe is now faced with huge geopolitical concerns. It should be pulling together, and resisting the centrifugal forces which the result of the British referendum can only aggravate.
Put bluntly, the rest of the European Union needs Britain, and, as it faces up to the implications of Trump’s love affair with Putin and manifest isolationist tendencies, the last thing either we or the other 27 need is for Brexit to dominate the next few years.
I still meet people who are surprised to learn that, on referendum day, Nigel Farage stated that, if the result were to be 52%-48% in favour of Remain, then it should be followed by another referendum.
The very idea that “the British people have spoken”, and that therefore the vote is irrevocable, does not quite stand the test of history. The British people spoke in 1975, but the likes of Nigel Farage did not like what they said, so in due course we saw the rise of Ukip and the emergence of Farage, conveniently financed personally by a salary from the European parliament – a salary which, I understand, he continues to draw. Talk about having it both ways.
Time after time, people change their minds in a parliamentary democracy – there was a time in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s when they seemed to have elections every year. The hysteria fomented by the Brexit press, with attacks on the legitimacy of judges, is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s and the rise of Hitler. We have a prime minister who seems to be obsessed by what the Daily Mail advises; younger readers may care to study the record of that newspaper with regard to fascism in the 1930s.
It is worth repeating that only 37% of the adult population voted for Brexit and many of them were misled by a nasty propaganda campaign from the Leavers, which crossed the boundary from selective use of the facts to outright lies. It is therefore good to see that Professor Bob Watt, an expert in electoral law at the University of Buckingham, has complained to the director of public prosecutions that the lies propagated by the Vote Leave and Leave.EU campaigns – the EU costing £350m a week which could go to the NHS, “Turkey joining the EU”, etc – contravened electoral law.
There is already a bottomless pit of articles and emails on the question of the timing of invoking article 50 of the Lisbon treaty – to begin the process, not of negotiation, but of withdrawal from the EU. We now await the judgment of the supreme court early next year on the high court’s ruling that parliament should be involved.
I thought it was pretty shocking in the first place that our prime minister should have tried to bypass the sovereignty of parliament, and she continued to shock when refusing to criticise the vicious,1930s-style attacks on the judges – merely saying that she believed in a free press. Don’t we all – but, surely, a free and responsible one.
As Private Eye reminds us, the Mail’s picture of the three high court judges used a headline – “Enemies of the people” – that echoed the vile slogans of Robespierre, Lenin, Chairman Mao and the Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher.
It is not as if, according to recent reports, she needs to worry. We are told that, although the vast majority of MPs are against Brexit, most of them are intending to “respect” the result of the referendum.
This country is heading for a train crash. As one political historian said last week: “I don’t think there is any previous example in British history where policymakers were so determined to vote against their true beliefs.”
The problem for those of us who remain unrepentant Remainers is that the economic consequences of 23 June constitute a “slow burner”. This is the biggest British economic crisis of my long experience, and I have little doubt that when the full extent of the damage to investment becomes apparent, it will become increasingly obvious that the vast majority of the people will regret their decision.
As to the crucial point of whether the referendum result can legally be reversed, in a paper presented last week to the European parliament, Andrew Duff – a great expert on all matters European – wrote: “Contrary to the claims made in the English high court, article 50 is indeed revocable. Article 50(2) involves a notification of an intention to withdraw from the union. Intentions can change, especially after a general election and the installation of a new government.”
Meanwhile, our new chancellor faces the daunting prospect when preparing his much-hyped autumn statement (due 23 November) of dire economic forecasts from the Institute of Fiscal Studies – and doubtless, in due course, from the Office for Budget Responsibility.
These will reflect the expected impact on the nation’s finances of the exodus of financial and other institutions that want to ensure their place in the single market. They have to take serious long-term decisions, and are not impressed by the chaotic non-strategy of the Brexiters.
First published on Tue 17 Oct 2017 11.50 BST
The Treasury has flatly rejected calls for a second EU referendum after the west’s leading economic thinktank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, said reversing the decision to leave would significantly benefit the economy.
“We are leaving the EU and there will not be a second referendum,” the Treasury said in a terse statement that reflected the government’s unhappiness with the OECD’s intervention.
The Paris-based group, which has 35 of the world’s richest countries as members, said it would revise the gloomy forecasts it made in its annual health check were Britain to stay in the EU.
“In case Brexit gets reversed by political decision (change of majority, new referendum, etc), the positive impact on growth would be significant,” the report said.
No 10 joined the chancellor, Philip Hammond, in rejecting the OECD’s analysis, though a spokeswoman for the prime minister would not be drawn on whether the statement was irresponsible or on whether the UK’s £10m-a-year membership contribution to the thinktank was well spent.
“The OECD are a respected international body but what we should bear in mind is that it’s based on a no-deal situation, which is not what we are looking for. We are confident we are going to strike a good deal,” she said.
Leave campaigners were more critical of the OECD, which receives most of its funds from other EU member states.
The Change Britain chair and former Labour MP Gisela Stuart said: “It is laughable that the EU-funded OECD, at a time that is the most helpful possible for Brussels, has the gall to intervene in our negotiations and call for Brexit to be reversed.
“These EU elites refuse to accept that 17.4 million people voted to take back control, and meant it. The British public didn’t believe the OECD’s scaremongering before, and nor should they start now.”
Angel Gurría, the OECD’s secretary general, insisted that the thinktank respected the decision of the referendum and sources at the organisation sought to play down the “second referendum” call, saying it was merely sketching out alternative scenarios.
However, the OECD said Britain must secure “the closest possible economic relationship” with the EU after Brexit to prevent the economy suffering a long-term decline.
Gurría said Brexit would be as harmful as the second world war blitz and the British would need to act on the propaganda maxim to keep calm and carry on.
The deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats said it was clear from the OECD report that a second vote was needed to prevent the harm caused by Brexit.
Jo Swinson said: “Brexit has already caused the UK to slip from top to bottom of the international growth league for major economies.
“This will only get worse if the government succeeds in dragging us out of the single market and customs union, or we end up crashing out of Europe without a deal.”
The thinktank, which has predicted the UK’s growth rate will fall to 1% next year, said a “disorderly” exit from the EU single market and customs union in 2019 would hurt trading relationships and reduce long-term growth.
Entering the debate over Brexit at a crucial stage in negotiations, the OECD added that steep falls in the UK’s productivity performance relative to other major economies, allied with the failure of its export industries to grab a slice of expanding world trade, have left the country in a weak position to operate outside the EU.
The warning follows a week of shuttle diplomacy between London and Brussels. The UK government says it has gained a commitment from EU leaders to speed up talks, although there has been no progress in crucial areas, including the divorce bill.
Officials at the OECD have adopted one of the gloomiest outlooks for the British economy with an assumption that a trade deal with the EU would take four years to negotiate after Brexit, leading to further uncertainty and lower growth.
To offset some of the damage, the OECD urged Hammond to spend spare funds on identifying ways to improve productivity, which measures the output per hour of an individual worker, by enhancing the skills of low-income workers.
On the possibility that the UK might change course altogether, it said: “In case Brexit gets reversed by political decision (change of majority, new referendum, etc), the positive impact on growth would be significant.”
The report also called on the chancellor to revive his plans to raise funds through an increase income tax on the self-employed, and end the triple lock on state pension rises, arguing that the state pension should rise in line with average earnings.
Both proposals were immediately slapped down by Hammond, who said there was no intention to revisit the self-employment pension increases, which would continue to be in line with the highest of inflation, earnings or 2.5%.
But the OECD reserved a warning for the Bank of England, which it said must guard against raising interest rates during a period of low growth, declining rates of productivity and while the economy remained vulnerable to Brexit.
It said Threadneedle Street should “look through” the current spike in inflation and maintain a loose monetary policy.
The Treasury said: “Increasing productivity is a key priority for this government, so that we can build on our record employment levels and improve people’s quality of life.
“Today, the OECD has recognised the importance of our £23bn national productivity investment fund, which will improve our country’s infrastructure, increase research and development and build more houses.
“In addition, our reforms to technical education and our ambitious industrial strategy will also help to deliver an economy that works for everyone.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
The UK economy will have to weather a short, sharp shock, with Brexit uncertainty holding back both business investment and consumer spending, according to a leading economic forecasting group.
As forecasters cut growth expectations, a survey of finance chiefs showed caution increasing since the referendum, and retailers reported fewer shoppers on the high street than a year ago.
Severe dents to confidence mean the post-referendum economy is on “a very different path” from three months ago, said the EY Item Club, a forecasting group that uses Treasury modelling. It has slashed its predictions of economic growth for the next few years.
In April, Item said the UK’s GDP would grow by 2.6% in 2017 – a figure it now expects to be barely 0.4%. It expects the pound to have fallen 15% in a year by the end of 2016, and decline further through the decade.
Consolation for borrowers may come from marginally lower interest rates in the short term, while a severely weakened pound will help exports – although not enough to prevent a significant deterioration in the UK’s prospects.
Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser at Item, said: “Longer-term, the UK may have to adjust to a permanent reduction in the size of the economy, compared with the trend that seemed possible prior to the vote.”
Steve Varley, chairman of EY UK, said the next two years would be “undoubtedly challenging”. He added: “The UK government will need to quickly introduce measures to help offset Brexit blues, support the economy and continue to attract foreign investment.
“The focus now needs to be on making sure that the UK negotiates the right trade deals that will allow access to key markets.”
Unemployment is forecast to rise from 5% to 7.1% by the end of 2019, cutting household disposable income. Consumer spending is expected to fall next year – the first decline since 2011.
Spencer said: “Worries about jobs are likely to see shoppers hold back on big ticket purchases, such as cars and housing-related spending. At the same time, higher inflation off the back of sterling’s weakness will squeeze growth in real incomes.”
Meanwhile, the sole member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to vote to cut interest rates last week, as the bank held the rate constant, yesterday said inflation expections beyond the next few years had fallen since the referendum from an already low base.
Gertjan Vlieghe, writing in the Financial Times to outline why he voted for an immediate cut, said: “It was clear enough to me already that we would not return inflation to [the Bank’s] target sustainably without further monetary policy action.” As well as a rate cut, he has argued for further stimulus from the Bank.
Meanwhile, a survey of 132 chief financial officers at major UK companies showed that business optimism had declined to the point where most were gloomier about their firm’s prospects now than during the height of the financial crisis.
According to the poll by Deloitte, more than four out of five CFOs expect to cut hiring and discretionary spending in the next year.
David Sproul, senior partner and chief executive of Deloitte, said: “The outcome of the EU referendum has triggered a sharp, negative response from the corporate sector.”
While the speedy appointment of Theresa May as prime minister had reduced uncertainty, he said a vision for the UK’s future relationship with the EU should be set out for further stability and reassurance.
Elsewhere, retailers reported a drop in shoppers on the high street in the week after the referendum, compared with the same period last year.
While footfall figures for high streets, shopping centres and retail parks have been up in the first week of June, they finished the month 2.8% lower than the same period last year. This is the deepest decline since February 2014.
Poor weather may have played a part, said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium. She added: “June has [also] seen many distractions, from Euro 2016 to Wimbledon, so heading out to the shops seems to have slipped down the priority list for many.”
Dickinson said retailers should redouble efforts in the coming months and, adding: “The EU referendum will not have changed the in-store experience for customers and, crucially, the price of goods on the shelves.”
Although slightly more shoppers were out in the days after the referendum than before, the last week of each month normally sees a surge in spending at a time when many people get their pay packets. Data from Barclaycard released last week showed discretionary spending in pubs and restaurants fell back from 24 June.
First published on Wed 16 Aug 2017 12.00 BST
Britain will seek a series of waivers for goods and people crossing the Northern Ireland border under new plans that risk creating a “back door” with the European Union after Brexit.
The government aims to avoid the need for border posts with Ireland when the UK leaves the EU, an ambitious goal seen as essential to preserving the Good Friday peace agreement.
“The UK and Ireland have been clear all along that we need to prioritise protecting the Belfast agreement in these negotiations, and ensure the land border is as seamless as possible for people and businesses,” said David Davis, the UK’s Brexit secretary.
Details of the plan unveiled by Whitehall officials have, however, sparked a series of difficult questions about what the knock-on impact of having no border may be for wider EU-UK relations.
The issue of the Irish border is a priority for the next round of Brexit talks, due to resume in two weeks. However, some senior government figures now concede privately that the talks may not move on to the substantive issue of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union until December, cutting the time left for complex discussions before the two-year article 50 deadline.
One cabinet minister with knowledge of the negotiations told the Guardian on Wednesday it is “impossible to know” whether they will succeed in tying up initial questions, including the withdrawal bill, by October, as they had previously hoped.
When the talks do resume, Britain will ask for an exemption for all small traders and farmers from a host of customs, agricultural and food safety checks. In return, it aims to seek “regulatory equivalence” with the EU to try to avoid the need for inspections of live animals and billions of pounds worth of goods.
Officials refuse to speculate what consequences this may have for limiting the scope of trade agreements with non-compliant countries such as the US. Without matching regulations, the EU could block imports, fearing that the open border was a back door into its consumer market.
Similar fears of a back door in the labour market were put to officials when they revealed there would be nothing to stop EU economic migrants travelling through the Republic of Ireland and into the UK under a continuation of the common travel area scheme. The government believes it can limit the impact of any such undocumented immigration through tighter checks on UK work permits.
Critics pointed out that the absence of border checks would appear to contradict a key aspect of leave campaigners’ pledge to “take back control”, while officials concede the plan relies on unprecedented trust and cooperation with the EU, but say it is worth it to maintain peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland.
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “This plan has more holes in it than a colander. The Brexiteers claimed it was worth damaging the UK economy to reclaim control of our borders, now we’re told even this isn’t going to happen.”
Pro-EU Labour MP Pat McFadden said: “For the second day running the government is trying to reinvent the wheel. The obvious solution to frictionless trade and the border issues with Northern Ireland is to stay within the customs union. This gives us easy access to trade within the EU and makes us party to a number of trade agreements around the world.
Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, welcomed the document’s clarity, but said the arrangements on customs facilitation would be difficult, given the UK’s proposals to negotiate separate free trade agreements at the same time.
He also warned that Ireland would not allow itself to be “used as a pawn” in the Brexit talks if the UK tried to use border negotiations to gain wider leverage in Brussels.
The European commission welcomed the UK’s position papers “as a positive step towards really starting phase one of the negotiations. The clock is ticking and these will allow us to make progress.”
 Whitehall officials concede that a reason for their flurry of policy papers this week is to try to end the deadlock over divorce talks by demonstrating that everything is interconnected and must be discussed together.
Perhaps the toughest negotiating issue in Brussels and Dublin will be UK proposals to exempt Northern Ireland’s food producers from sanitary and phytosanitary checks in place to ensure animal welfare and consumer health standards are maintained for any imports into the EU single market.
“We think if we can reach a deep enough equivalence arrangement with the EU it is possible to do that via processes that don’t involve the land border,” said one government official briefing journalists on the plan. “We believe we have got a strong track record on food safety. We think this can be done in a way that doesn’t introduce food safety and veterinary risks into the system.”
Britain will have to tread a fine line between satisfying European import concerns and not ceding all control over food and agriculture regulation to Brussels, or preventing any trade deals with third-party countries that may want exemptions on products such as genetically modified crops or hormone-treated beef.
The UK is expected to argue that for the purposes of health checks and customs tariffs much of the trade across the border is in effect local, not international, trade and should be exempted from controls that exist elsewhere in the EU in order to maintain borderless travel.
Concerns have also been raised about the implications of allowing people to continue to travel without any checks, and whether this outsources UK immigration policy to the Irish Republic.
The Home Office refused to comment on Wednesday night on reports that it has drawn up plans for EU citizens to continue to come to Britain and look for work after Brexit, while controlling how many will be allowed to stay by limiting the number of work permits issued. Amber Rudd is expected to publish proposals in the coming weeks on what is likely to be one of the most controversial aspects of post-Brexit policy-making.
The UK government says that maintaining the common travel area should be possible because security and immigration checks are often carried out far away from the border already. It concedes, however, that the plan relies on Ireland staying outside the Schengen travel zone.
“Controls we introduce away from the physical border allow you to complete the required checks,” said the Whitehall official. “People can still be picked up for security purposes.”
This has sparked fears of an increase in electronic tracking, whereby electronic surveillance is used instead of physical border security.
“Using untested technology to police the border won’t instil a great deal of confidence,” said William Foster, a partner at the immigration law firm Fragomen. “The biggest question for businesses is what will this mean day to day? Will people be tracked when they drive from Belfast to Galway? Will software be used to log their movements?”
UK officials said they did not recognise such fears and said there would be no increase in number plate recognition cameras at the border.
Brussels has said it wants to see “sufficient progress” in a deal on the Irish border during the first phase of Brexit negotiations, before talks are allowed to progress to future trade ties. The UK has contended that the timetable is artificial, because any agreement on the Irish border will be linked to future customs rules.
A European commission spokeswoman added that the border question was more than just a trade issue. “We must discuss how to maintain the common travel area and protect in all its dimensions the Good Friday agreement of which the United Kingdom is a co-guarantor. It is essential that we have a political discussion on this before looking at technical solutions,” she said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
British universities face “a moment of great trauma” in the next few weeks unless the government makes clear its post-Brexit plans for EU residents in the UK, a leading vice-chancellor has warned.
Prof Stuart Croft of Warwick University said in an interview with the Guardian that the possibility of no deal being struck to exit the EU was “utterly bizarre”, and that institutions needed certainty over residency rights by the end of the year to avoid seeing staff at all levels deciding to leave.
“A lot of organisations – not just universities – feel that there will be a moment when either some form of deal is likely or no deal is likely. And at the ‘no deal is likely’ moment – it could be in December, it could be four weeks away – then people will start to make some big decisions about their futures,” Croft said.
“For all of us in different organisations, that could be really, really uncomfortable. And four weeks is really not a very long time. We absolutely need a deal.
“I cannot imagine how it has happened that a vote to leave has been turned into a possibility of a vote to leave with no agreement, no plan for the future.”
Exiting the EU without a deal would be “a moment of really great trauma potentially for us as individuals and also for our institutions”, Croft said.
Warwick currently employs around 800 staff from the rest of the EU, out of 6,500 staff in total, and Croft said it was not just professors and senior researchers whose departure would harm the university.
“We have lots of people – we want them all to stay – people who work in all parts of the organisation. We have illustrious professors doing important things, and we have people who work in catering, and they are all really important.
“The whole idea that organisations like ours can be rent apart in this sort of way is utterly bizarre, and actually quite mendacious,” Croft said.
Croft’s blunt warning comes as universities across the UK are reluctantly drawing up plans to cope with the UK’s eventual exit from the EU, although many say they are unable to adequately look ahead because of the lack of detail coming from the government.
Warwick, along with many other British universities, is providing legal advice to EU staff who are able to apply for British citizenship in order to stay with their homes and families – but Croft said that route was itself fraught.
“This is one of the things I find the most painful of all. We have a number of staff who have a number of different nationalities. They are quite happy working here with those nationalities.
“And I’m really uncomfortable with being part of a project, saying to them: ‘You may be Italian but actually now you need to become British.’ That’s a very unhappy place to be,” he said.
Croft and his fellow vice-chancellors – along with other members of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities and the Universities UK lobbying group – have held a series of talks with ministers since the referendum last year, but say they have received little in response.
“There’s always politeness and engagement, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Nothing is done with it. In a sense there has been no fundamental progress in 18 months on these big questions. There have been lots of details, but the big core issues have yet to be resolved,” Croft said.
The Russell Group lists the issue of EU nationals as its number one priority for a post-Brexit deal, saying the 25,000 staff employed at its universities are “indispensable to our world-class institutions”.
“We value them highly and want them to stay, but they urgently need solid guarantees about their future,” the group said in a briefing last week.
The single point of progress since the Brexit vote has been a guarantee by the chancellor, Philip Hammond, that university research funding underpinned by the EU would be replaced by funding from the British government.
“That was a massive shot in the arm,” said Croft, who argues that a similar guarantee is required in other areas such as the funding of Erasmus, the European student exchange programme.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
British universities are considering plans to open branches inside the European Union in an effort to soften the blow of Britain’s exit, as they struggle to navigate new challenges in regulation and funding.
As hundreds of thousands of students across the UK prepare for their first week of lectures and seminars, university leaders, juggling the threat of Brexit, punishing new government appraisals and increased competition both inside and outside the sector, say they are facing a severe period of uncertainty and higher risks over the next 12 months.
The Guardian spoke to vice-chancellors, senior staff and students to assess the state of British universities. A period of huge growth in recent years, fuelled by tuition fees, has provided them with funds to expand significantly – and go on a multibillion-pound spending spree on new facilities and buildings – though there are fears students are paying too much of a price.
The steady increase in the number of people attending university has come in spite of mounting debts among students. Graduates now leave higher education with an average debt of £44,000, compared with £16,000 for those who graduated five years previously.
Now university leaders say they expect that Brexit will make student and staff recruitment much more difficult, cutting off EU research and funding and probably constricting the flow of EU students, who have been the fastest growing proportion of young undergraduates while the number of 18-year-olds in the British population has been shrinking.
“You can imagine a situation post-Brexit where UK universities are operating as aggressively in Europe as they are in China and India and elsewhere.” said Chris Husbands, vice-chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University.
One vice-chancellor said: “Brexit cuts off our head and the HE [higher education and research] bill cuts off our legs,” as he revealed that his institution and others were in the process of “window shopping” regulatory regimes within EU countries, and considering which would be the most cooperative.
Another vice-chancellor predicted that it was only a matter of time. “It’s a question of what the model will be, not whether we’ll adopt the model,” he said.
“Clearly, all research-intensive universities will be focusing on what is the appropriate structure to maintain their credentials as European universities.”
For British universities the attractions of an EU outpost are several: it would allow them to keep a foot in the door in maintaining partnerships with other EU universities, it would spread their risk in the event of a dramatic “hard Brexit”, and it might offer a way of retaining and attracting staff who needed to work within the EU.
The Republic of Ireland, Finland and the Baltic states have emerged as preferred options for some, while others have looked to countries where their university has existing ties, such as Germany.
“A piece of advice I’ve had is, if you are looking anywhere don’t look at France because it’s a nightmare,” said another vice-chancellor, who said his staff had been studying the options for opening a research institute that would allow access to EU research funds.
At the same time as the Brexit challenge, universities are anxiously waiting to find out the results of the government’s initial teaching excellence framework (Tef), which rates universities on a range of student data such as employment and will be linked to universities’ ability to raise future tuition fees.
And just over the horizon looms another threat within the latest higher education bill, the lowering of the barriers to new institutions opening and a fast-track to them gaining degree-awarding powers.
The universities considering EU branches do not want to reveal their plans in progress, and some others remain unsure.
“There’s an open question whether this would genuinely secure access to grants,” said Husbands. “If you are going to do that – let’s say you are operating in Belgium – you are going to be operating in the regulatory regime for higher education for Belgium as well as the regulatory regime in the UK.
“I know people are looking at it as a possible route. If you are a research-intensive university, like the University of Cambridge, you’ve got very serious amounts of money tied up in this.”
Husbands said that cutting ties with the EU would not necessarily cut off students from EU countries, many of whom have been willing to take student loans to meet £9,000 fees rather than free tuition in their home countries.
The combination of problems for rectors and vice-chancellors comes after a period of relative stability since the imposition of the £9,000 tuition fee for undergraduates in 2012, with easier access to finance and the end of government-imposed caps on undergraduate numbers. British universities have enjoyed a bonanza of expansion and construction.
New halls of residence have sprung up, as universities competed to attract students through en-suite bathrooms, gleaming sporting facilities and libraries, alongside the coffee bars and Wi-Fi hotspots that have replaced bars as social hangouts and resulted in plummeting student union income from alcohol sales.
“There are some universities that seem to be pretty exposed in terms of their debt position. There are some that are mortgaged up to the hilt, and that’s dangerous stuff. I wouldn’t want to be their vice-chancellor,” said one university leader.
The more vulnerable institutions will be looking nervously at the higher education bill and the prospect of more competition in the form of a new wave of entrants the government says it wants to encourage.
But Simon Gaskell, the vice-chancellor of Queen Mary University London, a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, says the bill contains a huge risk for the whole British higher education sector.
“We live with cut-throat competition at the moment, so that isn’t the issue,” Gaskell said.
“The UK has a very high reputation that has been established over decades and hundreds of years. It will be lost in a matter of months if we get this wrong, designating as universities or giving degree-awarding powers to institutions which are fly-by-night or low-quality. That is the most insidious problem.”
Gaskell said the move to allow universities unlimited recruitment has also injected a new risk in competing for the same pool of applicants.
“For example we had one year when one of our major London competitors suddenly decided they would massively increase their recruitment in a couple of areas,” he said.
“Students who had slipped a grade were suddenly being accepted by this competitor university, so their recruitment shot upwards and ours was under pressure. This was the sort of factor that we didn’t have to worry about previously, because that competitor institution had a cap on their numbers, as did we, so they couldn’t increase their numbers.
“We have a situation now where everything we do is risky. That might be appropriate, healthy and bracing, but it does give the lie to suggestions that universities exist in this cocooned existence where the vast majority of their funding is predictable.”
Husbands argues that despite the recent expansion, with only 37% of British school-leavers going to university there’s still room for future growth.
“There’s no reason to suppose 37% is a ceiling. The market has been expanding, and there is no reason to suppose that in the UK is it at saturation point, because it isn’t in other countries,” he said.
For many universities, any plans for expansion could be constrained by the Tef, which seeks to rate every university on a combination of metrics from student satisfaction surveys, employment destination and degree completion data. While universities have had decades of experience in having their research output evaluated, the Tef is the first systemic effort to gauge teaching outcomes.
Wyn Morgan, pro-vice chancellor for learning and teaching at the University of Sheffield, said there was no argument over efforts to improve teaching and raise standards, but questioned whether the data being used was the right way to do it.
“The Tef is the biggest issue on my desk. We’ve not got clarity on it yet, we haven’t got Tef data yet so we don’t know what it looks like,” Morgan said.
“It was supposed to be coming out in September but we’ve still not had it. It’s really uncertain territory. We’re not against the notion of raising standards but the way they are trying to metricise it is really tricky.”
Several universities are said to be unhappy enough that they are considering opting out of the Tef second stage, a move that would see their fees revert back to £9,000 rather than rise with inflation. But others have gone ahead and announced higher fees, despite the uncertainty.
Nick Hillman, a former government special adviser and now head of the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank, said that university finances remained healthy. “The sector needs to be careful about crying wolf,” Hillman said, arguing that the effects of the changes and Brexit, while difficult, were not insurmountable.
But Gaskell said of a meeting with his Queen Mary’s colleagues: “I found myself saying at the beginning of an open meeting: ‘We live in times of unprecedented uncertainty in the university sector’. But I thought, can I really keep on saying this? But yes I can, clearly it’s the case with Brexit and the Tef but it was the case last year. The uncertainty is ramping up.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Britain would run out of food on this date next year if it cannot continue to easily import from the EU and elsewhere after Brexit, the National Farmers’ Union has warned.
Minette Batters, the NFU president, urged the government to put food security at the top of the political agenda after the prospect of a no-deal Brexit was talked up this week.
“The UK farming sector has the potential to be one of the most impacted sectors from a bad Brexit – a frictionless free trade deal with the EU and access to a reliable and competent workforce for farm businesses is critical to the future of the sector,” she said.
Batters’ warning comes a fortnight after the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, said Britain would have “adequate food supplies” after Brexit.
While Downing Street has insisted it is confident an agreement can be made in time, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, warned over the weekend that the prospect of a no-deal Brexit was now at “60-40”, fuelling fears at the NFU and among food importers.
Food security in Britain is in long-term decline, with the country producing 60% of what it needs to feed itself, compared with 74% 30 years ago, according to figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).In a statement issued by the NFU, Batters expressed concern that Britain would not be able to meet its food needs if Brexit was mismanaged.
Research showed 7 August 2019 would be the nominal day that Britain would run out of food if it were asked to be wholly self-sufficient based on seasonal growth, the NFU said.
The calculation of the “notional date” by which time Britain would run out of food has been used as a measure of Britain’s food security for several years by experts concerned about the decline in home-grown food.
The temperatures of the past few weeks have put Britain’s food production capabilities into sharp focus and underlined concerns.
Batters said the consequences of there being no agreement could be mitigated if the government took immediate action and gave domestic production its “unwavering support”.
Changing eating habits over the past three decades have helped fuel the increasing reliance on food grown overseas, with perishable items such as tomatoes, lettuce and citrus fruits expected to be available all year round.
But global economics have also contributed to imbalances in foods that can be produced in the UK.
According to figures from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, the UK is a net exporter of meat, but relies heavily on imports such as bacon from Denmark, which exports 90% of its pork.
Defra statistics showed the next most vulnerable food category after fruit is fresh vegetables, with 57% of UK requirements produced in Britain, followed by pork at 61% and then potatoes, of which 25% are imported.
Britain exports more milk and cream products than it imports, and imports almost three times as much cheese as it exports, almost twice as many eggs and almost 20 times as many fresh vegetables, according to HMRC statistics for 2017.
Among the few surplus products are whisky and salmon.
The NFU said the figures showed Brexit is an opportunity for British food producers to redress the balance.
“The statistics show a concerning long-term decline in the UK’s self-sufficiency in food and there is a lot of potential for this to be reversed,” Batters said.
“And while we recognise the need for importing food which can only be produced in different climates, if we maximise on the food that we can produce well in the UK, then that will deliver a whole host of economic, social and environmental benefits to the country.”
First published on Thu 2 Aug 2018 14.21 BST
Michel Barnier has launched his own appeal for hearts and minds in Europe by warning that Theresa May’s Brexit proposals, put forward in the UK government’s recent white paper, pose a threat to the future of the European single market.
In an article published in 20 newspapers across Europe, the EU’s chief negotiator writes: “The UK knows well the benefits of the single market. It has contributed to shaping our rules over the last 45 years. And yet, some UK proposals would undermine our single market, which is one of the EU’s biggest achievements.
“The UK wants to keep free movement of goods between us, but not of people and services. And it proposes to apply EU customs rules without being part of the EU’s legal order. Thus, the UK wants to take back sovereignty and control of its own laws, which we respect, but it cannot ask the EU to lose control of its borders and laws.”
The article will be seen as a direct rebuff to attempts by the British cabinet to persuade individual EU leaders and Europea business leaders to back the UK vision.
He writes of being hopeful of a deal being struck but suggests that the basic free trade agreement lifting tariffs on goods, alongside a security deal, is the best offer he can make.
Barnier’s line is a familiar one in Whitehall, but the publication of his article is incendiary given the push in recent days by May and her cabinet to try and forge a new approach to the negotiations with the EU27 states.
The British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, met his counterparts in France and Austria to warn that the UK was on course for an “accidental no deal” if the EU did not rethink its rejection of the white paper, thrashed out at great political cost at Chequers. The Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, was in Paris on Thursday to see Nathalie Loiseau, the French minister for European affairs.
Raab tweeted: “I had a warm and constructive first meeting with French Europe Minister @NathalieLoiseau. We discussed the progress of negotiations with Michel Barnier, the proposals in our White Paper and our shared commitment to work closely together”.
Loiseau tweeted in response: “Support #MichelBarnier, need to AGREE without delay an orderly withdrawal that respects the commitments made, wishes for a close and future balanced relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom: many topics of discussion.”
On Friday, May is cutting short the first leg of her holiday to meet France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, at Fort de Brégançon, his state residence on the Côte d’Azur.
A spokesman for Macron said Friday’s talks between the two leaders would not constitute a negotiation nor substitute for talks led by Barnier. The spokesman added that Macron had full trust in Barnier’s position on the UK white paper.
Barnier insisted in his article that he is not going beyond his mandate in ruling out the UK’s proposal for free trade in goods, based on a common rulebook on standards, but is reflecting the position of the 27 capitals for whom he works.
Barnier writes: “Let’s be frank: as the UK has decided to leave the single market, it can no longer be as close economically to the rest of the EU.
“The UK wants to leave our common regulatory area, where people, goods, services and capital move freely across national borders. These are the economic foundations on which the EU was built. And the European council – the 27 heads of state or government – as well as the European parliament have often recalled that these economic foundations cannot be weakened.”
Barnier’s article does reaffirm a willingness to be flexible on the Northern Ireland border issue.
The EU’s suggested solution to the problem – a common regulatory area for goods and customs with the rest of the EU – has so far been rejected by the UK as an attempt to constitutionally and economically dislocate Northern Ireland from the UK.
Describing the problem of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland as “the biggest risk” to a deal, Barnier reaffirmed he was “ready to improve” the EU’s proposal.
He also signalled that a backstop solution for the Irish border issue was vital as the political declaration that the EU will make on the future trading relationship will offer no guarantee of a successful negotiation on the details when the haggling starts in the transition period. Earlier this week, The Guardian revealed that the declaration is likely to be short and relatively vague, reflecting a belief that a detailed paper would only be shot down in parliament.
Barnier writes: “Since we will not know what the future relationship will bring by autumn 2018, we need to have a backstop solution in the withdrawal agreement.
“The UK agrees with this, and both the EU and the UK have said that a better solution in the future relationship could replace the backstop.
“What the EU has proposed is that Northern Ireland remains in a common regulatory area for goods and customs with the rest of the EU. We are ready to improve the text of our proposal with the UK.”
Last modified on Wed 25 Aug 2021 14.50 BST
British researchers say they are being shut out of bids for major European research partnerships, or asked to keep a low profile, because of fears that the threat of a no-deal Brexit could contaminate chances of success.
An analysis by University College London of the latest EU research funding data shows that UCL and eight other Russell Group universities were running around 50 big European research collaborations a year in 2016, but only 20 in 2018.
Researchers say that taking a back seat is harmful to prestige, and also means they have less opportunity to steer the direction of research and are likely to have a smaller slice of the funding. Many are voluntarily not leading, however, because they fear that if UK academics are in charge of an important proposal, the research may not be funded.
Prof Michael Arthur, president of UCL, says: “What we are seeing is we are still participating in European networks, but we are leading less.”
Birmingham University has been asked to step down from leading five bids for training networks, funded by the EU’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, in case a UK partner compromises their chances. The networks are designed to share best practice and teach early career researchers to be more entrepreneurial and creative.
Robin Mason, pro vice-chancellor international at Birmingham, says the university’s European partners are, on the whole, being “remarkably forgiving” of the British researchers’ uncertain future, but “patience is wearing thin”.
Prof Pamela Kearns, who heads up Cancer Research UK’s national clinical trial centre at the university, is currently sponsoring 16 clinical trials, the majority for childhood cancers, in 21 European countries. She says the political uncertainty is making research partners nervous.
“In one recent discussion about a funding bid with very longstanding European partners, it was decided they wouldn’t have a UK partner on the project as it would be too great a risk,” she says.
For the past year Kearns has focused on ensuring she can keep her trials running if Britain crashes out of the EU, but the universities and hospitals involved have voiced concerns.
Cancer will be the main theme for health research under the European Commission’s new €100bn (£89.9bn) research funding programme, Horizon Europe, which will succeed the current Horizon 2020 scheme. If Britain crashes out of the EU on 31 October, there is no guarantee it could continue to participate in the programme.
“For the UK not to be able to be a partner in a united European approach to making a difference in cancer would be unacceptable,” Kearns says.
The head of one leading research university, who wishes to remain anonymous, puts it bluntly: “Leaving with no deal will be a fucking disaster for research. We are already hearing that researchers in the EU are being told ‘Why take the risk of partnering with the UK?’.”
Researchers at LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment recently stepped back from leading a new European research network exploring how switching to low-carbon fuels affects countries dependent on coal and oil.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the institute, says: “A lot of the other partners are very uncertain about whether our presence in the consortium will stymie the project. Research collaborations only work if you can establish trust. It doesn’t matter how good your reputation is if the UK is seen to be hostile to the outside world.”
Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at Exeter University, agrees: “It wouldn’t be right for us to lead on new European research projects at the moment.”
Cox says the threat of being shut out of European funding and collaboration if there is no deal is huge. His field of climate prediction has relied on cross-European collaboration for decades, because it is complex and requires local data.
Johannes Angermuller, professor of discourse, languages and applied linguistics at the Open University, says the threat of a hard Brexit feels like “a global production chain breaking down” for researchers.
Angermuller has had two prestigious European Research Council grants, during which he worked in the UK and at an institution in Paris. However, the French institution may no longer host his future projects because of the threat of a hard Brexit.
“I thought I was protected from the storm because I have strong contacts in Europe, but I realise I may be wrong,” he says.
“British researchers simply aren’t being asked to participate in bigger projects because of the uncertainty. I haven’t been invited to participate by anyone over the past 12 months. Normally I might have had three or four approaches.”
Lee Cronin, regius professor of chemistry at Glasgow University, says: “I have noticed a big drop in discussions about new grant applications and collaborations, and a drop in researchers who want to come to the UK.”
Universities UK (UUK), the vice-chancellors’ body, is lobbying the government to accept the European Commission’s offer for it to continue paying into the EU budget for 2019 and 2020 to ensure stability. This would allow researchers to continue to participate fully in the Horizon 2020 programme.
Prof Adrian Smith, vice-chancellor of the University of London, has been commissioned by the government to look into how the UK might set up its own alternative to Horizon Europe in the event of no deal. He is to report to ministers this month, leaving a very small window to have something in place before the exit deadline.
Vivienne Stern, director of UUK’s international arm, says: “In a no-deal scenario we would still hope that we could associate with Horizon Europe. But if not, I would be really worried about our ability to create a decent alternative in three months.”
“The danger is that we replace it with something new and shiny but trivial in comparison, which may not even replace the financial value and won’t come close to replacing the intangible benefits.”
Prof Philip Stier, Oxford’s head of atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics, agrees: “Even if there is a replacement UK fund, it is hard to see how you could replace those close collaborations. If you’re not at the table it’s much harder to influence.”
Prof Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Cardiff University, adds: “One of the biggest arguments in favour of buying into Horizon Europe is continuity. It would make it much easier for universities in the UK to hold on to their best European researchers.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
Academics are accusing a Tory MP and government whip of “McCarthyite” behaviour, after he wrote to all universities asking them to declare what they are teaching their students about Brexit and to provide a list of teachers’ names.
Chris Heaton-Harris, Conservative MP for Daventry and a staunch Eurosceptic, wrote to vice-chancellors at the start of this month asking for the names of any professors involved in teaching European affairs “with particular reference to Brexit”. Neatly ignoring the long tradition of academic freedom that universities consider crucial to their success, his letter asks for a copy of each university’s syllabus and any online lectures on Brexit.
Prof David Green, vice-chancellor of Worcester University, felt a chill down his spine when he read the “sinister” request: “This letter just asking for information appears so innocent but is really so, so dangerous,” he says. “Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and newspeak, naturally justified as ‘the will of the British people’, a phrase to be found on Mr Heaton-Harris’s website.” Green will be replying to the MP but not be providing the information requested.
Prof Kevin Featherstone, head of the European Institute at the LSE, is also outraged: “The letter reflects a past of a McCarthyite nature. It smacks of asking: are you or have you ever been in favour of remain? There is clearly an implied threat that universities will somehow be challenged for their bias.” Featherstone says LSE academics had already feared Brexit censorship after the Electoral Commission made inquiries during last year’s referendum campaign about academics’ debates and research, following a complaint by Bernard Jenkin, another Tory MP. Jenkin filed a complaint when the LSE hosted an event at which the secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said there was “no upside for the UK in Brexit”. Jenkin, a board member of the Vote Leave campaign, also accused the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance of producing partisan research designed to convince the public to stay in the EU. The commission, whose job is to ensure fair campaigning, investigated and took no action against the university.
A spokesman for the LSE strenuously denies all allegations of political bias. “The freedom for academics to study the major issues facing society, reach their own conclusions, and engage in public debate is essential for the health of our universities and the UK’s world-leading research base,” he says.
Featherstone says: “I understand the LSE received calls from the Electoral Commission asking about speakers and the costs of events on an almost daily basis throughout the campaign period.” He argues that both Heaton-Harris’s letter and the Electoral Commission’s investigation pose a threat to the role of universities as free intellectual spaces where academics can explore and question ideas without political interference. He says both developments risk plunging universities into dangerous new political waters.
The Electoral Commission says universities have nothing to fear from its inquiries. “We produce guidance to help all non-party campaigners understand the rules on campaigning and we can advise universities in cases where they may be affected. These do not prevent campaigning or engagement in public debate, but provide the public with transparency about who is spending what in order to influence their vote.”
More than 80% of academics voted to remain, according to a YouGov survey [pdf] commissioned by the University and College Union in January. And within university departments focusing on European affairs, Brexiters are a rarity.
However, university experts on Brexit insist their personal views do not jaundice their teaching, and students are encouraged to question received assumptions and look at issues from all sides.
Julie Smith, director of the European Centre in the politics and international studies department at Cambridge University, says she told a lecture full of graduates about Heaton-Harris’s letter last week. “I told the students what my personal views were and emphasised that they were personal views. I voted to remain, but as an academic, my job is to impart knowledge, encourage debate and develop skills of analytical argument, not to impose doctrine.”
Smith, who is also a Liberal Democrat peer, adds: “If it is the case that a politician thinks he should interfere in the content of what universities are teaching and look at syllabi in order to see whether the correct line is being delivered, that is profoundly worrying.”
Prof Piet Eeckhout, academic director of University College London’s European Institute, says it is unsurprising if most academics working on Europe are in favour of the EU. “I have been teaching EU law for the last 25 years. The fact that I am sufficiently interested to spend all my days working on it obviously means I think EU law is a good thing.”
Pro-Brexit academics working in this area are also unhappy with the MP’s behaviour. Lee Jones, reader in international politics at Queen Mary University of London, is one of the few openly pro-Brexit academics in his field. “During the referendum campaign I said what I wanted and no one tried to shut me up, but I know colleagues elsewhere who have been blanked in the corridors because they voted to leave.”
Yet Jones, too, is outraged by Heaton-Harris’s investigation. “It is really troubling that an MP thinks it is within his remit to start poking his nose into university teaching,” he says. “Universities are autonomous and politicians have no right to intimidate academics by scrutinising their courses. I have colleagues who are die-hard remainers. But I know what they teach and it is not propaganda.”
Chris Bickerton, reader in modern European politics at Cambridge University, and a fellow leave voter agrees. He adds: “In my institution there is strong support for academic freedom. I applied for promotion after the referendum and never did I worry that my views on Brexit would affect the results or my promotional prospects. Nor did I feel any institutional pressure to think one way or the other in the run‑up to the vote itself.”
Heaton-Harris did not respond to requests for a comment.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
There’s a letter. That’s what I was told back in May. Dominic Cummings, the brilliant but unorthodox chief strategist of Vote Leave once called “a career psychopath” by David Cameron, had told people that the Electoral Commission had given Vote Leave permission to donate to other campaigns – and it had it in writing.
Those donations are now the subject of a new investigation by the Electoral Commission. They came in the form of a gift of £625,000 to a fashion student, Darren Grimes, and £100,000 given to an anti-EU pressure group, Veterans for Britain. Both used the funds during the weeks running up to last year’s referendum to campaign for the UK to leave the European Union. The commission now concedes that these donations should be investigated – did Vote Leave make them to avoid exceeding strict campaign spending limits determined by law?
And the letter? The letter that Cummings said granted them permission? It doesn’t appear to exist – though it took me and Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a data researcher based in Switzerland, six months to establish this through freedom of information (FoI) requests.
In September, five months after the first one was filed, as I was appealing against the commission’s decision that “in some circumstances we cannot responsibly release requested information”, Cummings broke cover on Twitter.
“FYI u seem unaware (not blaming u no reason u wd know) of a crucial fact: the EC gave us written permission in advance for what we did… ” he told Jolyon Maugham, the head of the campaigning group the Good Law Project, in response to his announcement that he would be seeking a judicial review of the Electoral Commission’s decision not to investigate these donations. Cummings added: “When they suddenly told us we cd make donations we were so shocked we asked for written confirmation & got it. Extremely surprising…” And finally: “so it wd be pointless them having an investigation/reporting us to cops cos wed [sic] just hand over their own letter giving permission. Hope helpful.”
It was. I FoI-ed the commission again. Cummings says there’s a letter, I wrote. And finally, on 27 October, I got the definitive answer: the commission had reviewed all communications between it and Cummings/Vote Leave. And “we can’t find any record of any exchange with us on the subject of donations between them from that period”.
So there is no letter: that’s what the Electoral Commission says. Either it’s mistaken, or Cummings – the man credited with pulling off the greatest campaign triumph of a generation, who gave Britain Brexit – is in the uncomfortable position of appearing to have been rather economical with the truth. Has he? And if so, what does that mean for the campaign? Because this was the official campaign, sanctioned by the Electoral Commission, which received £600,000 of taxpayers’ money and is now facing an increasing number of troubling and unanswered questions, questions that the commission has for months refused to ask. And some of which it is still refusing to ask.
The new investigation – which the Electoral Commission denies is prompted by the Good Law Project’s judicial review – focuses on the money Vote Leave gave to 22-year-old Grimes, and to Veterans for Britain. They purported to be completely separate campaigns, in which case such donations would have been allowable. But it is Cummings, the campaign’s mastermind, who belongs in the hot seat, a place it turns out he’s been in before.
Because Cummings is not a newcomer to the dark arts. During his time as a special adviser at the Department of Education, he was described by one commentator as “the paramilitary wing of Michael Gove”. And working with another adviser, Henry de Zoete – who also took a senior role in Vote Leave – he left a trail of headlines: the time he was sanctioned by the Information Commissioner’s Office for failing to respond to FoI requests; the time an email was leaked in which he said he used Gmail rather than a departmental address expressly to avoid such requests; and most notoriously, the time the Observer revealed he and De Zoete were associated with an anonymous Twitter account, @toryeducation, that savagely attacked anyone who dared criticise Michael Gove or his policies.
Its operation eventually led to questions in parliament. Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore was “a liar”, Kevin Brennan, a Labour MP, “chubby”, and Tim Loughton, a Tory MP, a “lazy incompetent narcissist”.
“What is unquestionably true is that Cummings and De Zoete were heavily involved with the account,” claims a former political correspondent. “It was a shitbagging account of anyone who opposed Michael Gove run from within the Department of Education. What’s interesting, looking back, is that it was ahead of its time. Cummings has always been very, very clever about knowing how to operate on this line between what is acceptable and what is not.”
A line that, in terms of our electoral law, is increasingly impossible to police. The technology platforms have usurped a hundred years of legislation designed to ensure free and fair elections – a situation that Cummings acknowledged in an email to me: “The law/regulatory agencies are such a joke the reality is that anybody who wanted to cheat the law could do it easily without people realising.”
A 133,000-word essay on education that Cummings wrote proved to be a key incident in the story of the referendum campaign. The essay led to an invitation to Sci Foo, an exclusive invite-only ideas conference hosted by Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, at the Googleplex in August 2014.
And this led him to meet certain people, including Steve Hsu, a physicist at Michigan State University he quotes liberally in his essays, blogs and Twitter account. Hsu’s research into IQ and intelligence, and in particular his project at a state-run genomics lab in China, has troubled some people with what Daniel HoSang, a professor at the University of Oregon, describes as its “Eugenicist overtones”. But in his blog, Hsu writes how Cummings encouraged him to study Bismarck and he urged others to take note of Cummings’s work in politics.
Cummings came away more convinced than ever that it was scientists doing fundamental research who held the key to the future, not politicians. And when it came to building a team for the referendum, his first action was to “hire physicists”. Reading the thousands of words that Cummings has blogged on the subject, it’s clear his political philosophy lies at the intersection of history and physics; his intellectual spirit guides are Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman who united Germany, and Richard Feynman, the theoretical physicist and guru of quantum mechanics.
In Cummings’s view, a political system is the same as any other complex system, subject to non-linear outcomes in which some relatively trivial event can cast a huge shadow. An event that sets off a cascade of “branching histories”. The country takes one course when it could have taken another.
Britain could have voted yes to Brexit. Or it could have voted no. In the end, he writes in his blog, it came down to 600,000 people. The “cold reality of the referendum is no clear story, no ‘one big causal factor’… if about 600,000 people – just over 1% of registered voters – had decided differently, IN [Remain] would have won.” It is, he says, “a small enough margin” that if “a few specific events and decisions” had been different, everything could have been different.
A small enough margin that £775,000 – more than one tenth of the campaign’s total budget – could have made a difference? Money that paid for a firehose of Facebook ads in the last days of the campaign. In his summary of where and how Vote Leave spent its money, Cummings writes that 98% of its budget went online on ads that received nearly a billion impressions. This was where the battle for Brexit was won: on the internet.
Many people, of course, think differently. The fundamental factors that led to Brexit (and Trump) – rising inequality, frustration with elites, economic uncertainty – are complex, multilayered and years, if not decades, in the making. But it’s certainly true that all campaigns look for the winnable gains, the tiny sliver of people who in the US election were swing voters in swing states and in Britain were “persuadable” – either in terms of who to vote for, or whether to vote at all.
In its official application to the Electoral Commission, the campaign noted: “While Vote Leave plans to invest significant time and resources into online activity on networks such as Facebook and Twitter, we do not regard them as appropriate primary platforms for this historic national debate.”
Appropriate or not, it’s where it occurred. Last week, Emily Las, a digital marketer in New York, found a handful of what appear to be Vote Leave “dark ads”, a tiny sample of the thousands targeted at individuals and until now invisible and unrecorded. They included a video that claimed “Turkey is joining the EU. Our schools and hospitals already can’t cope.”
A video that was viewed 515,000 times and that simply wasn’t in any way true. Because this is something else that Cummings and the campaign’s chief executive, Matthew Elliott, had learned along the way. They had worked together on the 2011 No to Alternative Vote campaign, and as the Financial Times noted in an interview with Cummings: “That campaign made exaggerated emotive claims [and] also recognised that the Advertising Standards Authority had no power to regulate political ads, however misleading.”
In Tim Shipman’s book All Out War, the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan describes Cummings’s physicists as “a group of west coast American academics” who were signed up “in great secrecy” from “disciplines like astrophysics”. They “found this way of scraping data off people’s Google searches and feeding it into a program to tell you, by postcode, where your voters were.”
Who were the physicists? It remains a mystery. The Electoral Commission can’t know because they’re not listed on any of Vote Leave’s spending returns. There are some invoices to a company Vote Leave calls “Advanced Skills Initiative”, otherwise known as ASI – a total of £72,018.50 – but this is for “advertising” and “market research/canvassing”. So who did the data modelling? Who were the secret “west coast academics”? And where’s the bill for their services? Was this a “gift”? And if so, was it “permissible”?
None of these questions form part of the new investigation. Nor do they address who knew what, or how high up this goes. “You cannot overestimate how loyal Gove is to Cummings and Cummings is to Gove,” says one former political correspondent. “They are joined at the hip.” Did Gove know? Did Stephen Parkinson, now Theresa May’s most senior political aide but previously Vote Leave’s ground organiser? Did Cleo Watson, another senior Vote Leave director and now another May aide? And what of the Democratic Unionist party? It holds the balance of power in Westminster – but no questions about its role in the referendum are yet being officially asked. Where did the £435,000 it spent came from? What does May know? Or is she not asking?
Cummings, Elliott and Gisela Stuart, Vote Leave’s chair, did not respond to any of the Observer’s requests for a response to this article, but Vote Leave said: “As the Electoral Commission has previously said, Vote Leave complied with the rules on making donations to other campaigns. We will fully cooperate with the commission’s investigation, however as this process is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment further.’
The launch of last week’s investigation is a landmark. Especially in the light of two other ongoing investigations into Leave.EU and Arron Banks, the entrepreneur who funded it (both deny any wrongdoing). The surface has been scratched. It’s what lies beneath that should concern us. What still lies buried. What isn’t being examined. And why it’s not. Whose decision is that?
Brexit is a non-linear event. The history of our nation was set in one direction, when it could have gone another. Cummings deleted his Twitter account in October but before he did, he brought his brilliant strategic mind to bear on it: “I said before REF was dumb idea, other things shdve [sic] been tried 1st. In some possible branches of the future leaving will be an error.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
Does anyone remember Lexit? Back in those oblivious days before the referendum vote to leave the EU, it was the leftwing case for Brexit. The position cohered around the idea that the EU is anti-democratic – witness the way it dealt with the elected leftwing government in Greece – and an enforcer of devastating unfettered free-market economics and austerity programmes (again: see Greece).
But any progressive case for leaving the EU was quickly quashed by the rightward thrust of Brexit, which, with its narrow nationalism characterised by hostility to migrants specifically and foreigners in general, became an outright racist campaign. To argue for exit from the left in such a climate would fuel this tendency. At the time, you could say of Lexit: not bad as a theory, but absolutely not now.
Fast-forward to Labour gaining 40% of the vote on a socialist manifesto and a campaign of unity. It pulled our political spectrum to the left, and voters did not rush in droves to endorse the narrow-minded recklessness of a Conservative departure from the EU. The conversation has shifted, yet we’re still having the same debate about Brexit: a rightwing version on one side and a reaction to it on the other. Within these confines, there’s no such thing as a progressive Brexit. There is only a “soft” deal that might make the outcome less awful than a “hard” deal.
This shows up in the discussions around single market membership. It is seen to define a “soft” Brexit although, as others have argued, this position may well amount to little more than false hope. Securing the best trade access to EU markets is clearly vital – but in addition some have warned that leaving the single market also imperils hard-won employment rights. And that argument presumably holds only if you assume a Conservative Brexit, because in this scenario the government can’t be trusted to put those rights into British law, much less extend them.
A leftwing case for preferential access to – rather than full membership of – the single market might be to do with manifesto policies Labour could roll out if unconstrained by rules around state aid, competition, collective bargaining or “fiscal discipline” mantras that curb government spending. If Labour in government wanted to invest in ailing national industries, or increase state spending to boost growth, these could bump up against membership strictures. Single market rules may not, as is often claimed, be a bar to Labour’s renationalisation projects, although that might depend on the scale and terms of such ventures. The rewards of a progressively run economy would have to outweigh the cost of giving up full common market membership – but these are among many questions that, within the confines of our current debate, we aren’t even asking.
Some commentators assume Labour’s pro-EU voters have not realised its leadership in reality loathes the EU. But why premise your second-guessing of party supporters on stupidity? Perhaps even those certain that Brexit is a disaster would regard a Labour-negotiated exit as preferable. This isn’t just about a different set of principles it would not compromise on – jobs, say, or guaranteed rights for EU citizens in Britain. It may also be that a Labour government committed to tackling inequality would better manage any potential Brexit damage: if we end up with less pie, it would be more equally distributed. Or it may be to do with having a more internationalist approach to – and therefore influence within – European politics, as seen in Labour’s strong affiliation to sister organisations through the Party of European Socialists (the Conservatives cut ties to the European parliament’s centre-right equivalent, the European People’s party, in 2009). Cast into the future with such affinities, you might see a country still close to the continent, partnered with European nations seeking to reform the EU from the left.
That said, a weak link in leftwing Brexit is still migration, because it’s hard to find an argument to end freedom of movement that doesn’t rely on fallacies around migration’s negative impact on wages or access to public services. Labour’s election campaign made clear a commitment to ending free movement, though it also championed diversity and the positives of migration while rejecting “bogus immigration targets”. You might also argue that EU free movement makes migration harder for those beyond the borders of “Fortress Europe”, which a leftwing Brexit could redress. But none of this yet forms a distinct policy grounded in left values.
Of course, all this is asking for a level of detail that neither party has provided. Labour’s approach seems mostly about keeping its leave/remain coalition together while holding the government’s Brexit negotiations to account, which makes sense, if you’re the opposition. But meanwhile, most British people now accept that, like it or not, Brexit is happening (bar a significant change in public mood) – and that meant the Labour party could pivot its recent election campaign on to issues such as austerity, ailing public services, ravaging wealth gaps and economic hardship. It showed the party could gain votes not by trying to fit into a rightwing political framework, but by actively changing the frame of the debate altogether. If there is public appetite for progressive politics, isn’t it time we applied this thinking to Brexit, too?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
The votes in the 2016 EU referendum had not been cast, let alone counted, when some were already calling for the public to take to the polls for a second time. The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, penned a column in the Telegraph to this effect just days after Brexit got the go-ahead. Labour’s David Lammy took the same view: “We need a second referendum at the very least,” he proudly declared, encouraging the British electorate to sign a petition that went on to receive more than 4m signatures. On Tuesday Tony Blair continued to echo this sentiment.
At first it was understandable, given that the leave campaign was characterised by foul play and a xenophobic undercurrent, and evidence suggested leaving the EU would be a disaster for Britain. But in the two years that have followed, many of those once wedded to the idea of remaining have taken time to reflect on how the vote came to pass. A vocal minority have failed to do so, preferring to repeatedly hound the Labour leadership for not demanding another referendum before the terms of Brexit materialise, and despite the British public, including many Labour voters, backing leave.
There’s a simple lesson that the likes of Owen Smith are failing to learn: if you want attitudes to Europe to change in Britain, demanding Jeremy Corbyn commit to a second referendum was never, and is not now, the answer.
It has been Labour’s responsibility to point out that those who voted to leave the EU for a better future were sold a lie by a leave campaign that had no plan of action, and that ministers are gambling with the security and livelihoods of generations to come. Demanding a second referendum from the outset would have been a distraction from this task, giving credence to those Brexiteers who would say Labour opposes leaving the EU not because it’s proving harmful to the population but for dogmatic reasons, despite the “democratic will of the people”. The Tories are digging their own grave. Labour must continue to let them – the latest figures from YouGov suggest 50% of leave voters don’t think Brexit is going well.
Demanding a second vote from the offset would also have proved futile unless the attitudes that underpinned the Brexit vote were first challenged head on. If there had been another vote immediately, is it really credible that the public would have reacted in any other way than with outright fury? Much of the remain campaign in 2016 revolved around the economic impact of Brexit, but for many voters who had lived through longest decline in living standards in modern history, the status quo offered little comfort. To change attitudes on Europe therefore, progressives must also focus on taking on the social arguments harnessed by the right in the referendum.
Take, for instance, immigration – by all accounts a significant issue in the Brexit debate. It is only by challenging the anti-immigrant sentiment the right has whipped up that minds will be changed. This is a task that Labour has for too long neglected.
The British public’s outrage after the Windrush scandal is a case in point. Diane Abbott and David Lammy have helped shift the terms of debate in Britain around immigration – Theresa May’s flagship hostile environment policy has been disowned, Amber Rudd forced into a resignation. The Labour party should be focused on reminding the electorate that migrants – far from being a hindrance or drain on our society – are the very people we all rely upon to keep society functioning. And, consequently, this can slowly be built upon; the same is true for European nationals who for so long have been demonised by the right.
Similarly, economic arguments must also be developed. A radical policy agenda that tackles inequality in Britain can prove to voters it’s our rigged system, not the EU, that is to blame for households struggling. There’s a reason many in the “centre” of British politics are so wedded to shouting about remaining – they’re out of ideas and unwilling to embrace Labour’s transformative, progressive policies.
If you want to see Britain take another look at Brexit, Labour’s path is obvious: highlight the mess the Tories are making, and convince people international cooperation is worth embracing. Don’t simply demand Corbyn wave an EU flag without even considering what a second referendum would look like.
Ideologues in the leave camp are determined to drag Britain out of Europe whatever the consequences. Labour must not mirror them by just shouting at voters that they’ve made a terrible mistake and seeming to be ideologically wedded to the EU come what may. The party must continue to prove that this Tory Brexit will be a disaster, and challenge the narratives that facilitated it. Once the final terms of May’s botched Brexit are presented, Labour can demand, if necessary and there is public appetite, that we have a say over any Brexit deal – whether in the guise of a referendum, a general election, or by some other means. The same old we-told-you so politics will only alienate swaths of the electorate, and ensure the Tories have no real opposition for their disastrous hard Brexit plans.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.09 GMT
Monday, 1 January 1973 was one of the best days of my life. I was starting a seventh year of working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the roles I was being given were getting better and better. My wife and I owned our own tiny cottage, our son was in infant school, and we were expecting the birth of a daughter. I had a little secondhand Renault. And this was the day when the UK finally became a member of the European Economic Community.
I grew up in a working-class home in the industrial West Riding of Yorkshire. My father was a commissionaire at a large chemical plant, and my mother worked, as she had all her life, in a heavy-woollen weaving shed. I visited her at work only once, and the experience revolted me: the noise, the polluted air, the two monstrous looms she operated alone. But she loved the social atmosphere of friendship, fun, companionship, trust and hard work. Also she was a member of a community, and that meant everything to her.
My father had been a regular soldier in the British army. His working life was never as good as it had been during his years of service – in 1945, when he was demobbed, he was regimental sergeant major of the Parachute Regiment. He loved that job for the same reasons that my mother loved hers: community.
I was born in 1940, and I like to believe I was conceived the night before my father went to war. Of course, the war did not affect me directly. I slept in a cot beside my mother’s bed, and later shared her bed. It seemed I didn’t have a father, but I was cared for. There were Anderson air-raid shelters in our backyard, though we never had to use them. My mother’s sister, just across the road, had a cellar – stone-built, no windows, no access except down the steep stone stairs – but we went there only one night, and just before we descended my much older brother, who was in the RAF, pointed out flames in the sky where a V2 rocket was heading for Manchester or Liverpool. That was all the war meant to me.
But the years after the war were very different, with shortages of everything, rationing and the black market. And it was then that, little by little, I learned what the war had meant to the adults around me. The loss of loved ones or severely injured family and friends returning home to a very challenging life. Servicemen like my father suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, as we now call it, with no medical care to help them. The cost of war was everywhere, and many never recovered from it.
That was the Europe I grew up knowing about. And that is why January 1973, when Britain joined the EEC, was so significant for me. The main aim, as stated in the EEC’s preamble, was “to preserve peace and liberty and to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”. Its border stretched from northern West Germany to the toe of Italy, and included most of the territory of Europe over which war had twice raged, only 22 years apart, less than 40 years before. When the UK and Ireland were brought in as members I felt, for the first time in my life, that the brutality of the wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45 could never happen again, and at last collaborative, collective cooperation would assure benefits for everyone.
Perhaps I had too utopian a vision of what a new Europe might be like. The 1990s wars in the Balkans were a ghastly setback. Nevertheless, the term “European” had come to mean something different, and I was proud to describe myself and my family as British and European citizens. On the front of all our passports the first words read European Union, and then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Brexit will erase the first two words, and I will offer my new blue passport to immigration officials around the world with less pride than I now do.
The first time I was back on the continent after the 2016 referendum, on the busy, colourful streets of Ghent and Bruges, I felt distinctly uncomfortable, bordering on ashamed, that my country was now seeking to unravel all that had been achieved. Especially given that the Brexit campaigners had deceived the British people with their false and deliberately misleading slogans and speeches – £350m a week promised to the National Health Service. Where is the £350m now, with our emergency rooms, hospitals and surgeries in the grip of a crisis unlike anything the NHS has ever experienced?
And it is not money alone that has triggered this crisis: doctors, nurses and staff are quitting, many of them to return to the countries they left to find a better life in the UK. Now we have told them, in effect: “We don’t want you. Go home.” Yet without migrants, the economy of our nation would collapse.
A recent report on the likely impact of Brexit from the London School of Economics has found that all EU countries will lose income after Brexit. The overall GDP fall in the UK is estimated at between £26bn and £55bn, depending on the negotiated settlement. In the most pessimistic scenario, the cost of Brexit could be as high as £6,400 for each household.
So I want to urge that we think again, now that we are learning the real cost of Brexit. Why is the government still not providing reliable economic surveys about the effects on every sector? This information should be openly revealed to both Houses of Parliament and to the citizens of the UK. Then, and only then, can an informed and truly democratic choice be made.
According to some predictions, it will be at least 20 years before the UK economy stabilises after Brexit. Millions of people my age will be saying to themselves, “Well, that will not be in my lifetime.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Ministers including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are plotting to scrap the working time directive, according to numerous media reports. This is a crucial piece of EU law that protects working people – and which working people were promised would still apply after Brexit.
If Johnson and Gove succeed, 7 million workers could lose their guaranteed legal right to paid holidays. That includes nearly 5 million women and many workers on part-time and zero-hours contracts.
Stripped of the laws that restrain them, bad bosses could force their staff to work excessive hours, far above the current limit of 48 hours a week. Lunch and rest breaks would be under threat too, as would health and safety protections for night workers.
Workers in sectors like health and transport are more likely to make dangerous mistakes if they’re overworked and exhausted – so we should all worry about the impact of taking away these legal rights.
Since these rules were introduced, in 1998, they have transformed working life – and family life too. Everyone deserves the guarantee of time off to rest, relax and spend with family and friends.
And it’s not just about the working time directive. If Johnson, Gove and their allies win on this, they’ll surely be emboldened to come after other hard-won rights. Those secured by the EU include parental leave, time off for family emergencies, equal pay for women and equal rights for part-time, fixed-term and agency workers.
During the referendum campaign, Vote Leave promised Britain’s workers that their rights from the EU would be safe after Brexit. In the year and a half since, the prime minister has repeatedly stressed her desire to “protect and extend” workers’ rights – including in the Conservative manifesto.
So Theresa May’s promise is now being put to the test. Will she keep her word? Or is she a hostage to the hard Brexiteers in her cabinet?
That’s why I’m so concerned by the prospect of a Brexit deal modelled on the Ceta deal between the EU and Canada. David Davis has called Ceta “the perfect starting point” for trade talks. But Ceta puts the rights of corporations and foreign investors ahead of those of working people.
Worse still, nowhere does Ceta contain any workplace protections to stop countries engaging in a race to the bottom. If we do a Ceta-style deal, we’ll constantly be fighting a rearguard action to protect our rights at work.
Instead, Britain’s workers need a deal that not only safeguards the rights we already enjoy, but also in the long run, keeps UK workers’ rights apace with their equivalent in Europe.
The TUC looked at all the available options for a final deal. We think the best option for British workers is for the UK to stay a member of the single market and the customs union. That will protect our rights at work for the long-term – and protect jobs too.
But when the prime minister ruled out staying in the single market and customs union, she emboldened the Brexit extremists, paving the way for the inevitable attacks on workers’ rights that come with a Ceta-style deal.
Brexit promised ordinary working people more control over their lives, not a draining away of power to bad bosses and big corporations. No one voted for that. No one voted to be forced to work excessive hours. No one voted to lose out on their paid holidays or their lunch breaks.
This week, the prime minister can take a stand for working people by standing up to the rogue Brexiteers in her cabinet – and putting all options for a final deal back on the table. Hardworking Brits deserve nothing less.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
For goodness sake, Theresa May, you have nothing to lose. Do whatever the waverers want. Publish the legal advice on backstop. Publish the Home Office white paper (call it green) on immigration post-Brexit. Go to Brussels and say you must have one last attempt at even the tiniest adjustment to the backstop. Otherwise all Brussels’ work on Brexit will have been a waste of time. Who on earth wants that? At least it is worth one last try. Otherwise we are doomed to a crash.
The course of Brexit is now so shambolic that each day produces a new lurch towards the cliff edge. But it is not helped by May still appearing to be on planet zog. Her energy has been awesome and her conviction truly impressive. But her mantras seem wooden and unreal. She should be frank and admit that this deal is not very good, and that is because it was never going to be.
Boris Johnson’s madcap “have our cake and eat it” slogan was infantile. Neither he nor his ramshackle hard Brexiters have ever presented a remotely plausible alternative. Whatever nonsense was talked during 2016, hard Brexit was going to be wretched to negotiate – which is why those who tried have all resigned. Brussels is the senior partner in any deal, and would not make it easier. So there was no point in presenting any deal to the British people as advantageous. It is the least-worst option, not the pretend-best.
May is rightly determined to forestall no deal, a responsibility abdicated by almost everyone else in parliament. To her, the price of moving on to the next stage of Brexit is staying, for the time being, in the customs union. But since this is supposedly what most MPs want, in some shape or form, why do they not back her? And why does she not sell it to them in these terms – that she is indeed just kicking this can down the road into the transition period. May finds it hard to make conviction sound convincing. The country needs some indication that she sees things as it does: facing an emergency that requires humility and realism from the person in charge.
There are clear signs of furniture starting to shift in the fog. A majority of MPs – not least in the wavering centre on which the deal depends – appear to want a form of Brexit along the spectrum of a customs union/single market/Norway option. That option is plainly available under the deal’s political addendum. Were it formally on the table as the long-term answer to Brexit, as it should be, putting it to another referendum would make sense. For the time being, some last attempt to get the deal as it stands must be the least damaging way of getting through the next three months. Not to see this is wilfully negligent of MPs. Just when the country wants them to rise above party, they revert to their most basic instincts.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
It is nothing less than despicable that, when our opposition and our government can clearly see they need to work together to get us out of this Brexit chaos, they are refusing to do so. And that means Theresa May could quite conceivably allow Britain to exit the EU without a deal, without any serious plans in place, and without reference to parliament. To prevent a no-deal outcome requires MPs to proactively replace this legal default position with something else.
If the court case I brought against the government over article 50 was about anything at all, it was about parliamentary sovereignty. That meant the will of the overwhelming majority of our MPs should prevail on the major issues of the day. It is their duty to represent their constituency, their party and the interests of the country. It is a tenet of representative democracy that MPs are not delegates for their constituents. This means that their decisions and actions are ultimately governed by putting the best interests of all their constituency before all else.
There is a distinct possibility, some would say a likelihood now, that in just 67 days May is going to allow the will of a tiny minority in her party to prevail and, without reference to anyone, set in place a no-deal Brexit. It will be her decision alone, and what a horrifying epitaph it will make.
So as we approach the current legally binding exit day of 29 March, let’s be clear what no deal means. There is a raft of some 800 pieces of legislation that needs to be passed to ensure leaving with no deal is legally executed. Some commentators say this is impossible in the time left. This is not strictly true as under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, passed by MPs, May and her ministers have wide-ranging powers to amend the statute book – the so-called “Henry VIII powers”.
However, such a vast delegation of powers does entail constitutional risks – especially as they are predicated on the fact a deal has passed through parliament. The legislation appears silent on what happens if there is no deal, thus leading to constitutional and legal chaos.
There would be no transitional period. We would face immediate WTO tariffs, and border checks for customs and agricultural products. It is also important to remember the WTO works on consensus of its members – and there are 164 members and 23 observer governments. So if you think getting 27 countries to agree is tricky, think about this.
But the biggest problem for the UK will be to decide whether to apply EU tariffs to the rest of the world – effectively keeping agricultural protection – or no tariffs to anyone. And even if the EU, UK and Ireland do not want to put up a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, WTO members will insist on checks.
Moreover, what is extremely worrying is that we would be leaving all the EU institutions and agencies when we do not have replacements in place – on aviation, energy, medicines, chemicals, banking and the environment.
Neither are we prepared on a practical level. The dress rehearsal we saw to prevent lorry congestion in Dover was an expensive shambles and shows the lack of joined-up thinking at the heart of the government. The plan had been for Manston airport to be used as a parking facility for 6,000 lorries, but only 89 – each driver paid £550 by the taxpayer – participated. What the Road Haulage Association said of that exercise holds good for government and private sector planning across the board: “Too little, too late.”
Among my contacts across the City there is still, generally speaking, a prevailing view that May will ultimately pull back from the brink: that is what Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has reportedly been briefing. But I don’t share this optimism. I would argue that the vast sums of money May has started to randomly spend in areas where she has suddenly realised there might be a problem show her clear intent. Dredging has already started at Ramsgate port to ease the pressure on Dover (when additional crossings will suddenly become a matter of life and death for people who depend on the import of drugs). It has also been announced that army reservists are being placed on standby. It seems the mantra in this Dad’s Army world we are now entering is “don’t panic”. It would be laughable if it weren’t all so tragically unnecessary.
Amid all the noise, May needs to listen to her more principled MPs such as Damian Green, Dominic Grieve, Kenneth Clarke, Justine Greening and her former adviser Lord Heseltine. And now more than ever the prime minister has to think beyond the traditional party divides: the current political argument has no respect for them whatsoever.
And she should talk to the people who we can still call our European partners. Indeed, I was in Paris last week – invited as a concerned citizen with some knowledge of the process we are involved in – to give evidence before the French senate’s Brexit working group. May has been unwilling to talk to people who don’t agree with her; but, behind the scenes, at events such as this, there has been genuine dialogue, and a desire to understand. These were people who know their stuff, who are actively reaching across their traditional lines, and my overwhelming sense, talking to them, is that they care about Britain and the future of its people every bit as much as those of France and the other member states.
Ultimately, of course, whether we leave the EU with no deal will be May’s decision. She does not have to heed anyone – not parliament, not the opinion polls, and not, unless she chooses to have another vote, the democratic will of the people who now know so much more about what leaving the EU means than when they voted two and a half years ago.
That is an awesome responsibility for anyone, let alone someone bruised and battered by treacherous colleagues, who’s suffered one humiliation after another and is no doubt physically exhausted by a gruelling few years in office. It is too much responsibility – way too much – for any one individual to bear. If those around the prime minister cannot clearly and decisively make a decision about how to end this chaos, let the people help.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
I know many remain voters would have preferred Labour MPs to take to the trenches and oppose the triggering of article 50 at every twist and turn, including last night’s vote in the Commons, but it’s time to face facts.
A majority of voters in a majority of constituencies voted to leave the EU. I wish it wasn’t so. I put plenty of shoe leather into campaigning for a different result and still believe that we would be stronger, safer and better off inside the EU. But imagine for a moment what would happen the morning after if parliament blocked the result of a referendum in which 33.5 million people had voted.
Britain would be plunged into a constitutional crisis. There might even be riots. The prime minister would be forced to call a general election in which “remain or leave” would be the central question. The result would be a very different parliament, committed to the hardest of hard Brexits.
That doesn’t mean we should give the government a blank cheque in these negotiations. The absence of a big Conservative rebellion meant we lost Commons votes on amendments designed to bring about better parliamentary scrutiny. But the government does not have a majority in the House of Lords. A heavy weight of responsibility rests on the prime minister’s shoulders to deliver a deal that works in the interests of our whole country, not just a privileged few. A deal that leaves people worse off will deepen the crisis of trust in politics.
Across western democracies we are already witnessing the consequences of what happens when people abandon their faith in mainstream politics. I don’t doubt the integrity or passion of those who have been ringing MPs to demand a different direction, but if people think that overturning a vote at the ballot box by a vote in parliament would take our country to a better place, then I am afraid they are kidding themselves.
At times of economic upheaval and hardship, history tells us that people can become fearful and resentful. We saw that resentment writ large during the EU referendum campaign. People have sent a clear message that they feel left behind, that they feel unheard and that they feel they don’t belong in a world that is changing around them. Sneering at people who voted leave, or dismissing them as ignorant or stupid is part of the problem. Millions are at the sharp end of globalisation, victims of economic inequality and social injustice, best summed up by the phrase we heard again and again from leave voters when told that leaving the EU would make our country worse off: “Things can’t get worse than this.”
William Beveridge wrote 75 years ago: “A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.” Just as the Labour party built the postwar consensus around the foundations of the welfare state, so too now we must reshape post-Brexit Britain, re-imagining social democracy to meet the big economic and social challenges of this century.
Without radical action, we face another lost decade of stagnant wages and falling living standards. Beveridge identified the five giants of want, squalor, ignorance, disease and idleness. We must provide answers to their modern manifestations.
We need an education system that prepares people to seize the opportunities of the 21st century – from tackling the inequality that sees the poorest kids arriving at school at a disadvantage from the age of five to creating a truly lifelong learning system to help people reskill and retrain as they’re living longer and working longer. We have to tackle the massive inequality in infrastructure spending and initiate a radical devolution of power across England to build strong and resilient regional economies; give councils the freedom to borrow to genuinely address the housing crisis; have the courage to work with people from across the political spectrum to address the health and social care crisis to save the NHS from collapse; be brave enough to develop a new model for taxing wealth, not simply income, worrying less about how we tax the dead and more about how we fund the living. These are just some of the ideas that a Beveridge Report for the 21st century might contain.
My party must once again reflect on the painful consequences of defeat. If we want to be in government again to create the kind of world that we want to see, we must first engage with the world as it is. We will defeat the false promises of nationalism, protectionism and populism – not by striking a radical pose, but by providing radical answers.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Ambiguity on Brexit has spawned many Jeremy Corbyns, and they all lie in the eye of the beholder, depending on political allegiances, frustrations and hopes. There is the cunning Corbyn: secretly a hard Brexiter but who doesn’t want to alienate remainers. There is the craven Corbyn: pro-remain but too afraid of Brexit populism to be too open about it. There is also another pro-remain version: coy Corbyn, playing a game of political subterfuge, winking at remain Labour voters and waiting for the government to be completely worn down before he swoops in with a campaign for a second referendum. Then there is calm Corbyn: above all else, a democrat and a respecter of the will of the people, so he will grit his teeth and think of England.
It is likely that none of these Corbyns exist. He has sent signals that can be interpreted in any of these ways. He has been a strong supporter of withdrawal from the single market, but still won’t come completely off the fence on the matter. He consistently denies interest in a second referendum but also indulges speculation, saying late last year that he would vote remain in a second round. When confronted, he won’t rule a second referendum out.
Why all the uncertainty? Perhaps the more straightforward explanation is that Corbyn simply doesn’t care about Brexit enough to engage with it robustly one way or the other.
But “indifferent Corbyn” fits no one’s narrative. He cannot be smeared by Blairites as a parochial anti-trade ideologue leading his naive young remain supporters down the Brexit path; he cannot be lauded by the party faithful as a wise man with a plan, and he cannot be painted by the right as an open-borders-loving softie.
Even his most consistent positions are not necessarily a smoking gun. Voting for article 50, sacking a shadow cabinet minister who called for another referendum, and urging MPs to abstain from votes that make the government’s life harder need not indicate covert support for Brexit. They may be attempts at asphyxiating a combustible issue, one which could be used against him by Brexit-supporting opponents.
Sure, Corbyn is interested in Brexit, but only insofar as it is a tool with which to club Theresa May and the Tories. Like last week, where at prime minister’s questions he nailed her on the weakness of her negotiating hand given the divisions within her own party.
But he doesn’t always show up. In fact, he has received repeated criticism for failing to challenge May in parliament. And his on-off enthusiasm over Brexit exposes the things Corbyn really does care about: austerity, rampant capitalism and inequality. As a frontbench Labour MP told me, Brexit is quite far down his list of priorities. His view of challenging the government does not involve spending lots of time bogged down in technical detail about the Irish border.
And that’s fine. Indifferent Corbyn is not necessarily a bad thing – the reason he became popular in the first place is because he had not been swallowed up by the dulling obligations of technocracy, nor did he have the detached tone of other Labour figures who lost the pulse of the party’s voters. These same figures, incensed by Brexit, still do little but scold leave voters for their ignorance and agitate for a second referendum – despite the fact that there’s little polling to suggest there is a popular appetite for one.
Even if they are right about the impossible technicalities of leaving the EU, the “it’s all above your head” argument isn’t really a vote winner. There’s a reason it didn’t cut through first time round. Corbyn’s strength remains in his ability to focus on issues such as job security (job losses due to businesses relocating over Brexit uncertainty was his focus in last week’s clash with May). Brexit fatigue also works for him. In this month’s English local elections there was a distinct “bins over Brexit” vibe.
But Corbyn’s changeability and inconsistent engagement on Brexit also plays into what could be seen as his greatest weakness: that he is only a flagship values politician, valuable on the back benches but not interested in the mundane daily grind of government. Corbyn is NHS, austerity, nationalisation, social housing. He is Stop The War and nuclear disarmament. As far back as the referendum campaign, Corbyn’s listlessness over Brexit fed the impression that he was lukewarm and not leadership material.
I sympathise with indifferent Corbyn. Brexit came out of the blue, within a year of his election as party leader. It hijacked a space that could have been utilised for returning Labour to its socialist roots and mounting a credible challenge against the Tories, which was all he ever wanted. After all these years in the wilderness he finally had a clean shot, and Brexit got in the way. But now it’s here, he has a chance to burnish his leadership credentials, be forensic, adopt a firm stance (be it hard or soft Brexit) and prove he can do detail as well as drama.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
Political language matters. The Tories understand this: that’s why they repeat the same messages over and over again. We’re clearing up Labour’s mess; we’re balancing the nation’s books; long-term economic plan, all repeated ad infinitum. Opponents mock this message discipline, play Tory bingo or are driven to distraction by it: meanwhile, voters can repeat back Tory attack lines verbatim on the doorstep. It works. The Tories excel at defining both themselves and their opponents. They have a frame for the opposition that they stick to with military discipline: “Labour can’t be trusted with the nation’s finances”. Whenever Labour comes up with a policy – however popular – here is the ammunition to shoot it down before it’s even taken flight.
That’s why the framing of Brexit is so critical. Opponents of the Tories’ approach to Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union call it a “hard Brexit”. This is a mistake. At best, it is abstract. It can simply mean reassuring many of those who voted to leave that Brexit really does mean Brexit, rather than “the Tories’ deal will slash your living standards”. It sounds tough, determined, unlike the wishy-washy “soft Brexit”. Hard Brexit cheerleaders are toying with their own clever frame: a “clean Brexit”. No mess, no fuss, no hassle: simple, efficient and pain-free.
So what for those of us who want a Brexit that isn’t economically and socially ruinous? According to leaked government papers, if Britain were to abandon the single market, the economic hit would be potentially devastating: £66bn lost to the Exchequer every single year, and a fall in GDP of up to 9.5% compared to the status quo. The pound is already collapsing in value. Fraught negotiations – in which Britain is in a position of weakness – will undoubtedly be accompanied by market turmoil. Now, the Tories’ reputation is this: people do not generally like them, and they regard them as principally standing up for the interests of the rich. But while many voters believe the Tories are nasty, they regard them as competent: they are to be trusted with big economic decisions.
That’s why opponents of the Tories’ position should settle on a “chaotic Brexit” (a disclaimer, if they’re reading: this was suggested to me by a fellow activist). The alternative would be, say, “a Brexit that works for Britain” and an “orderly Brexit”. Every time the pound plunges, a business suggests they’re going to withdraw, an international institution predicts economic instability: here’s the “chaotic Brexit” on display. Repeated ad infinitum by Labour figures and sympathetic outriders, it would frame the debate and force the Tories on the defensive. It would chip away at the Tories’ reputation for competence and economic credibility. It would appeal to people’s deeply held desire for security and stability.
Labour are finally crafting a clearer line on Brexit: this morning, the shadow chancellor warned that “losing access to the single market would be devastating for jobs, livelihoods and our public services”, that Britain didn’t vote for “economic misery and the loss of jobs”, and that the government was “abandoning Britain’s clear national interests by putting narrow party political concerns first.” These are good lines – and clarify that Labour’s priority is single-market access – but they will only cut through if repeated in similar language until people can hardly bear to hear them anymore. Here is Labour’s plan for an orderly Brexit that works for Britain. The Tories only offer a chaotic Brexit. This is surely how the debate must be framed.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Theresa May’s mantra should fool no one. While the prime minister insists repeatedly that her Brexit blueprint will mean the UK controlling its borders, laws and money, the real aim of the government is to keep as close as possible to the status quo.
Whitehall, with the Treasury to the fore, was highly pessimistic about Britain’s economic prospects outside the EU and hasn’t changed its mind about the desirability of finessing the softest of all Brexits. Philip Hammond has been able to whistle up plenty of support from employers’ organisations which – unsurprisingly, perhaps – want as little disruption to business as usual as possible.
This pessimism is curious for two reasons. It suggests that the low-wage, low-skill, low-investment economy that existed on the day Britain voted in the June 2016 referendum is as good as it gets. What’s more, the pessimism about the UK is mirrored by an optimism about the health of the EU that is unwavering, despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary.
The unwarranted gloom about the UK and the exaggerated respect for the EU are not new. Many of those who now say that Britain must stay as closely aligned to the EU as possible predicted disaster when the pound left the exchange rate mechanism in 1992; prophesied a decade later that Britain would rue the day that Gordon Brown gave the single currency a wide berth; and said with the utmost confidence in 2016 that a vote for Brexit would lead to an immediate and deep recession and a massive increase in unemployment. None of these things happened.
On the other hand, the predictions made by those who thought the single currency was one of the daftest ideas of all time have come true. The euro, it was said, would lead to economic divergence not convergence between member states, be run along monetarist lines, entrench high levels of unemployment and leave Europe in the growth slow lane. The rise of populism across Europe, which is being documented by the Guardian this week, has everything to do with the failure of Europe’s flagship project.
As the single currency struggled, its devotees took comfort in the prediction from Jean Monnet, one of the pioneers of the original common market, that Europe would be forged in crisis. The design flaws glaringly exposed by the bailouts required for Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus, together with the run on Italian and Spanish bonds would give the drive for integration fresh vigour. But as Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, noted recently, none of the things that would be required to make the euro work have happened. The banking union has not been completed, the capital markets union has not been completed, and there is not the remotest prospect of a common eurozone budget overseen by its own finance minister because Germany fears that would result in its taxpayers footing the bill for public spending in other countries (as it would). Europe is still, as Monnet said, being forged in crisis, but the forces of disintegration are currently much more powerful than the forces of integration.
A prolonged period of slow growth has highlighted another weakness: Europe’s lack of economic dynamism. There are strong, world-beating European companies but almost all of them were created many decades ago. There is no European Facebook or Google, no rival – as there is in China – to eBay. When it comes to artificial intelligence, Europe is lagging well behind the US and China. Europe’s position as the world’s biggest market is a legacy of its success in developing the products that were behind the economic boom in the first three decades after the second world war – cars and other consumer durables. In terms of the fourth industrial revolution, Europe is playing catch-up.
It is this slow-growing and politically riven Europe, not the confident rapidly expanding Europe that gave West Germany its Wirtschaftswunder and France its Trente Glorieuses from 1945-75 that Britain is planning to leave.
And while there would certainly be a short-term hit to the economy from a no-deal Brexit, this would be mitigated by policy easing. Interest rates would be cut by the Bank of England, while the Treasury would sound the death knell for austerity by announcing tax cuts and spending increases. Even at its gloomiest, the Treasury cannot come up with forecasts that suggest the impact of Brexit will be anything like as serious as the financial crisis of a decade ago.
There are those who say the answer is not for Britain to leave but to reform Europe from within, so that it is run along progressive rather than neoliberal lines. But Germany is never going to agree to a common budget and the European Commission wants to fine Italy because the government in Rome is seeking to stimulate growth by running a higher deficit than is allowed under the eurozone’s hardline budget rules, so that might take a while.
In the meantime, there is an opportunity to do things differently, to exploit the policy space that Brexit affords and tackle the structural problems that have plagued the economy for decades. The right has its plan: more liberalisation. It is time for the left to come up with its own vision that would deploy every available policy tool to modernise the economy, rebuild Britain’s industrial space and spread prosperity more widely.
Such a transformation is much more likely to happen outside the EU than inside. That’s because the two most significant UK imports from the rest of Europe – German industrial goods and cheap labour – have helped to bend the economy out of shape by holding back the manufacturing sector and encouraging the growth of low-wage service sector jobs. It is possible to do better than that.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.13 GMT
We are now just 16 months from Brexit – the biggest shock to the UK economy in living memory. And over the weeks ahead parliament will have to decide what the UK’s negotiating goals for a future economic relationship with our European neighbours should be.
The choice you make will determine the jobs and prosperity of millions of people across Britain, and quite possibly the future shape of the United Kingdom. Once we have left the EU, amending our status will need the legal agreement of 27 other member states, a process taking years of painfully slow negotiation. So you will want to get it right first time.
What are the facts? We know the rest of the EU contains 450 million of the richest consumers on the planet, in a wide-ranging single market and customs union. Over the last quarter-century, the British economy has become highly integrated with this market for goods and increasingly for services too – now 80% of our economy. The value of trade flowing through Dover and the Channel tunnel has more than tripled since open EU markets became a reality. Foreign investment has come to Britain to serve integrated EU supply chains and just-in-time production. A range of supporting business services from insurance to software has boomed. Asian and American companies have grown their European headquarters here as the market has expanded
Britain’s science and research base has benefited from that outside investment. Long-term US investors have been joined by newcomers from Japan, Korea and now Chinese firms like Huawei, developing links with our universities and startups as they trade across Europe using the digital single market that Britain has helped to develop. Free movement of people and data has attracted the best European talent to our world-class research teams, making Britain the favoured base for digital and life science startups, despite strong competition from elsewhere in northern Europe.
Our service sector is the leading success story in financial, legal and business services across the EU, creating thousands of well-paid jobs in London and many regional centres including Leeds, Belfast, Glasgow and Norwich. The recent opening of the audiovisual market has made the UK film and TV industry the new hub of European broadcasting. Air travel, telecoms, energy, medicines … the list of direct UK beneficiaries from the single market’s shared regulatory structures is a long one. All of them depend on EU membership. So after we leave, what best protects these benefits?
One option would be to retain effective economic ties through negotiating to join the European Economic Area (EEA) in some form. That would not be straightforward. It would cost money, require us to follow existing and new EU regulations, accept the court of justice as an economic referee of fair play and continue with some mutual free movement of workers. But it would keep prosperity and jobs that would otherwise be lost as firms and investors sought to avoid new costs and uncertainties. The alternative – leaving all EU legal structures – would make us more protected, more regulated and poorer. Building border posts, enforcing rules of origin certificates, paying for thousands of new customs officials and setting up 30 or more exclusively national regulators would cost money which would either be diverted from other public services or need higher taxation.
The delays and complexity of negotiating a bilateral free trade deal with the EU inevitably make UK firms less competitive, and chill foreign investment into key growth sectors such as cars, aircraft chemicals and pharmaceuticals, on which we have relied for decades. Inevitably, large parts of our service businesses would lose their current passport into the EU market. UK qualifications, from accounting to hairdressing, would no longer be accepted across Europe. UK goods and services would have to prove that they continued to meet EU standards, a time-consuming and costly process which would undercut our firms’ ability to compete successfully in the single market.
That option leaves us permanently disadvantaged in EU markets. But some argue that over time there is a third way, a wider world waiting for us to join them and prosper if we can only free ourselves from Europe. Is there? The critical importance of the EU’s single market for Britain is simply a matter of arithmetic. We could double trade to China and triple trade to Australia without making up for half for the service access we would lose in Europe. The Germans already sell more than three times as much to China than the UK from inside the EU. t is hard to argue that the single market is somehow holding us back from being more successfully globally. And it is size of that market which has helped the EU negotiate over thirty preferential trade deals, with more underway.
Even those countries that seek better access to UK agricultural markets, which want more visas for IT software engineers to work here, or more British healthcare funding for their own suppliers, are clear that the European single market is the most important prize. It is, after all, five times our size. So before doing deals with us, they want to know what level of access they will have from the UK into that larger EU market.
The US is a protected market for many services, and even the EU’s negotiating clout has been unable to open it very far. We can choose to follow US rules in farming, healthcare and product safety, at the expense of access to bigger European markets. But no one seriously expects US regulators to guarantee our bankers, lawyers and accountants the market access they enjoy in Europe today.
Is it likely that making our firms less open to Europe would make them more successful in global markets? We have spent the past 40 years opening up the UK economy to stimulate growth and competition. A vote to leave the EU single market would take us back to a protected, smaller-scale economy – while our competitors move towards digital manufacturing across a huge European home market. So vote to leave the single market if you must. But do it with your eyes open. A long and tortuous free trade negotiation with the EU leading to something like the EU-Canada deal, with very limited services access, will damage UK competitiveness and leave us with less investment, lower living standards and long queues at the border.
There is no credible free trade deal outcome able to deliver the guaranteed market access, shared regulation and consumer protection that Britain needs. Wishful thinking does not create well-paid jobs, pay taxes or fund public services.
If you are not sure what to do, wait. Keep the UK in the EEA for a transition period and judge for yourselves if we can find a realistic alternative that meets our economic needs. But please don’t throw away our hard-won competitiveness, our knowledge-based economy which attracts global talent and investment, and our successful services sector exporting across Europe because of false promises that we can leave the single market and everything will be fine. That is not what the facts tell us.
Sir Martin Donnelly was permanent secretary at the department for international trade
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
For all the hype, the long-awaited Brexit speech that Boris Johnson delivered today amounted to no more than, in his words, another inverted pyramid of piffle. What we, the people, were hoping for – yearning for, in fact, and certainly had every right to expect – was his Valentine’s Day message to be the moment he finally came clean about Brexit. We’ve had the snake-oil salesman’s patter. What the country urgently needs are the mechanics: we want to know precisely how this Brexit flat pack you have talked us into buying at great cost is actually going to be assembled.
For a start, he needed to address the worst-case scenario: what would happen if we botched this thing’s construction. He needed to spell out that no deal in the talks with the EU would mean no transitional period – and that would mean, certainly in the short term, a run on the pound, businesses exiting and the likelihood of unemployment rising sharply.
He needed to own up to the fact, too, that there can be no talk of future free trade agreements with other countries. Not because the EU is punishing us or being difficult, but because this is clearly set out in law under article 218 of the Lisbon treaty, which we are signed up to. He should have also said we could all read the unredacted Brexit impact reports, and, after giving the people this information, allow them a vote in October. That is how best to proceed along the road to unity, before we reach the point of no return. It is only right that we, the people, get to have a say on this country’s biggest decision in 70 years.
Instead, Johnson said that a second EU referendum would be bad for us. Bad for us, or bad for him? The government has clearly decided we will be leaving the customs union and single market, but he had not a word to say on the practical consequences of doing either of these things – what exactly will they mean in terms of workers’ rights? Neither did contingency planning seem to be a concern of his, even – astonishingly – in relation to the Irish border.
Johnson’s big speech was extraordinary for what it could not even be bothered to say. Look beyond his hijacking of the word “liberal” and what he shows us is an illiberal, anti-British agenda of lower regulation on food, toys, consumer protection, money laundering, democracy and the rule of law. A Brexit Britain that will navigate its way in the world without a moral compass.
There is no doubt in my mind that for very wealthy people – Johnson supporters such as Rupert Murdoch and the Barclay brothers, for instance – Brexit really will be a wonderful thing. They will be able to operate in a country with fewer obligations to employees and certainly less tax to pay.
The last thing that Johnson would ever want to admit, however, is that Brexit is for the few and not the many. That is why, for anyone wanting to know the finer details, his message was, to all intents and purposes, “go whistle”.
For ordinary working people, however, the foreign secretary’s so-called big speech made it painfully obvious that they are going to have to get ready for a cold, heartless new post-Brexit world.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
The question posed to each voter in the EU referendum was clear. And it was a question, I imagine, that I answered differently from the vast majority of those who read the Guardian. I said at the time, publicly, that our place was at the heart of a reformed European Union that was answerable to its citizens. But that wasn’t on the cards, and so I had to make a decision.
Believing that we should be able to throw out of office the people who make the rules, and knowing from my membership of the European scrutiny committee in the House of Commons that we couldn’t, I exercised my own vote in favour of leave. I hated the campaign that leave ran. I disliked most of the people who ran it. What they said was divisive, xenophobic and untrue. But I persuaded myself that the sovereignty of the parliament in which I sat was more important than the tactics of a bunch of people I declined to have anything to do with. And then we got the result that we did.
What no one who put their cross in the leave box voted for, however, was the form that Brexit should take. It wasn’t on the ballot paper and no one knew, if that were to be the result, how matters would play out.
Frankly, I didn’t think leave stood much of a chance. But I also thought that if there were a vote to leave the EU, the outward-looking, internationalist face of modern multicultural Britain would win through: that although we would leave the EU, we would remain in the single market to which the manifesto of every major political party at the last election committed us – a market on which our prosperity as a nation, and our ability to raise the taxes to pay for public services, is founded.
That, of course, was before the lurch to the right made possible by the absence of any centrist opposition to this government. And the latest feature of the current direction of travel is the government’s desire not to seek the view of the House of Commons as to where its Brexit negotiations should end up. Hard Brexit, with all the damage it will do, has seemingly become the received wisdom, without any mandate at all from the British people, and seemingly without any challenge – at least until this week.
There is a supreme irony in all of this: a government principally led by remainers taking the result of the referendum as carte blanche not only to take Britain out of the EU, but to do so on whatever terms they like without reference to those elected to represent the views of the British people. Principled opposition is coming from only a few, such as Ed Miliband and Anna Soubry, who are prepared to point out that although the government may have a mandate for Brexit, it has no mandate at all for what it should look like.
The campaign to give parliament the right to determine our future relationship with the EU is not about reversing the referendum result. Nor is it about subverting the will of the British people, or having a second bite of the cherry. It’s about the sovereignty that I and others cherish, a sovereignty that resides principally in the House of Commons and in its ability, when given the opportunity, to inform and direct the government of the day.
Not giving parliament the chance, before article 50 is invoked, to say where it thinks these negotiations should end up is, at its core, undemocratic, unconstitutional and likely to exacerbate the divisions in our society to which the referendum gave rise. It also ignores the views of nearly half the people who voted in the referendum, who were perfectly content with our place in the EU.
Ignoring them, even though they were (just) in the minority, is not merely divisive but plain wrong.
The government says, of course, that it can’t give a running commentary on its negotiations with the EU and the governments of its member states. Nobody is asking for that. We are asking for MPs to have the right to have a say in directing a government with no mandate as to the form that Brexit should take. That’s it.
But even if we were asking more than that, as soon as the British government starts negotiating, not only will its position immediately leak but it will be discussed, at length, in the 27 parliaments of every other EU member. Though not ours, apparently.
We’ll be kept informed by periodic government statements, but we won’t get to debate anything. That’s not what I voted for; it’s not what I believe the vast majority of my constituents voted for; and it’s not consistent with the way in which democratic societies should work.
Tomorrow, therefore, I will vote with the opposition to try to wrest back control over the form our future relations with the EU should take from a government that has no mandate at all to decide that question on its own.
There is still time for the government to change its position and accept that this is not only a good idea but the only thing consistent with what the referendum really decided: that the majority of British people want their own parliament to make the rules by which they are governed. They don’t want tyranny from their own government any more than they want it from the EU. It is to be hoped that someone in No 10 is listening.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
The economic complexities of Brexit pale in comparison to the psychological ones, it sometimes seems – and in the response to remarks made by the German vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, yesterday on the consequences of Britain’s decision, we have another case in point. Gabriel, a compelling political figure recently notable for giving the finger to a bunch of neo-Nazis, was reflecting on Europe’s likely response to British manoeuvres, and said something that you might imagine would be self-evident to most people: “If we organise Brexit in the wrong way, then we’ll be in deep trouble, so now we need to make sure that we don’t allow Britain to keep the nice things, so to speak, related to Europe while taking no responsibility.”
Which is just obvious, isn’t it? Depressing, but obvious. And yet in all the Faragiste scoffing at the idea that the EU will take a hard line in trade negotiations – you’ll recall a lot of talk of apoplectic German car manufacturers – the rational case for a punitive approach barely makes an appearance. It bears repeating: in the next couple of years, it seems likely there will be courses of action available to EU states that will be against their own immediate and narrow self-interest as well as Britain’s. It will appear superficially vindictive and foolish to take them.
But the easier our path out of Europe is to navigate, the smaller the disincentives to others who may think of following us. And so those punitive actions may sometimes be wise to take all the same. It may be worth cutting off your nose to spite your face if the infection is in danger of spreading to your eyes and ears. None of this is pleasant, but none of it is surprising, either: any right we had to expect special treatment expired, obviously, when we voted to give it up.
Despite all this, whenever an influential European implies that the EU will not be going out of its way to make our exit a painless one, the howl goes up, on the front of the Express and elsewhere – the sound of a furious neighbour with an acute and unjustified sense of victimhood. Fine, we drove our car into their conservatory, but why won’t they go halves on the repairs? We’ve known them for years! Mates’ rates! It’s hard to understand how the same sort of people who have been hurling abuse at European leaders for months and years (“Virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives!”) are now offended that those same European leaders don’t have their best interests at heart.
The only thing I can think of is this: when you’ve been part of a club for a long time, it is rather hurtful to realise that all of the benefits that you thought were just because everyone thought you were so great were actually because you were giving them money. We might have decided we don’t want to be part of the EU any more – but we have barely begun to come to terms with what that actually means. For now, the Brexiteers’ touching education in the impermanence of relationships continues. No one tell them the mother dies in Bambi, for God’s sake. They’re not ready.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
The Scottish and Welsh governments have issued emergency legislation to prepare for leaving the EU in a significant escalation of their dispute with UK ministers over their powers after Brexit. Their so-called “continuity bills” will increase the pressure on Theresa May’s government to make further significant concessions to the devolved administrations over the powers that will be repatriated to the UK after Brexit.
The measures are intended to transfer EU regulations directly into Scottish and Welsh law if the three governments fail to agree a deal next month on how those powers are shared out after Brexit.
The Welsh and Scottish governments plan to rush their bills through their respective legislatures within the next three weeks to coincide with a crucial vote on the UK government’s EU withdrawal bill in the House of Lords later in March.
In a significant blow for Scottish ministers, however, Ken Macintosh, Holyrood’s presiding officer – who has a role equivalent to the Commons Speaker – ruled that their bill was incompatible with the Scottish parliament’s powers. His ruling weakens Nicola Sturgeon’s longstanding claim that Holyrood is united in its stance against the UK government’s proposals to limit the Scottish parliament’s powers in key policy areas after Brexit.
In a further sign that the Scottish first minister’s coalition is breaking down, the Welsh government is understood to be closer to signing the deal on its post-Brexit powers than she is, provided that UK ministers make further concessions.
Macintosh said in a detailed assessment that Holyrood could not legislate in this area until the EU treaties which it dealt with no longer applied in Scotland. “Legislation cannot seek to exercise competence prior to that competence being transferred,” he said.
Mike Russell, Scotland’s Brexit minister, disputed Macintosh’s ruling as he presented the bill to Holyrood. He said the Welsh presiding officer, Elin Jones, had cleared very similar legislation presented to the Welsh assembly.
With his measures backed by the Scottish Green party, Russell added that James Wolffe QC, Scotland’s lord advocate and chief law officer, had also cleared the bill. “Scottish ministers are satisfied it is within the powers of this parliament to prepare for the consequences of the UK leaving the EU,” he said.
Both governments are pressing ministers in London to reverse proposals they say will allow the UK government to take unjustified control over policies in areas such as farming and fisheries with a UK-wide scope after Brexit.
They are intensifying pressure at a critical moment for the UK government, which is fast running short of time to strike a deal and avoid a political crisis at a highly sensitive juncture in talks with the EU.
UK ministers want an agreement before the Lords votes on the disputed 11th clause of the withdrawal bill in mid-March, and before May hosts a Brexit summit with both first ministers on the eve of a European Council meeting on 22 March.
In further sign of that haste, UK government officials are scrabbling to arrange another joint ministerial committee meeting with the Welsh and Scottish governments next week to settle their remaining differences.
Adam Tomkins, the Scottish Tories’ constitutional affairs spokesman, told Russell the continuity bill was both unwelcome and unnecessaryand said the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments were on the brink of a deal. “A fix is within reach,” he said.
Russell said last week that the UK government had finally conceded that 86 powers currently overseen by the EU would be transferred directly to Scotland after Brexit, but that UK ministers wanted the final say over 25 major powers, such as farming, fisheries and environmental protection.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
The Fast Show, which ran on BBC television from 1994 to 1997 – the last few years of Ken Clarke’s chancellorship – has been voted the second-best television sketch show ever, after Monty Python.
What we are now witnessing is the Slow Show – this excruciating, drawn-out process of Brexit, which shows every sign of eventually proving the most dangerous and self-defeating political tragicomedy of our age.
Towards the end of his memoirs, Kind of Blue, Clarke writes: “I have been repeatedly asked whether I could remember any madder period of political life in the United Kingdom during my career. I have pondered this … but the answer is obviously ‘no’.”
He goes on: “David [Cameron]’s chancer-like gamble, taken for tactical internal party-management reasons, turned out to be the worst political mistake made by any British prime minister in my lifetime.”
Last week Clarke, who is a giant among the current breed of politicians, was the only Tory to vote against the motion to trigger Brexit by the end of March. Clarke believes, as I do, that the government has no strategy, and that leading Brexiters do not agree among themselves. They have pushed the prime minister into a position where she is finding it difficult to cope.
In the past fortnight we have been treated to news that David Davis (whose role in this farce is to play Secretary of State for Exiting the EU) appears to have no problem with the thought of paying a price for retaining some of the current advantages of EU membership, and that Boris Johnson is flexible on migration, at least on some occasions. Yet many of the people who were misled by the Brexit propaganda, indeed by the Brexiters’ outright lies, during the referendum campaign reportedly voted to stop payments to the EU and reduce migration from the EU – migration, by the way, which in every year since we joined the union in 1973 has been less than inward migration from outside the EU.
The political analyst John Curtice calculates that three-quarters of Labour supporters voted Remain. Yet most of the parliamentary Labour party voted last week, with every Tory except Ken Clarke, to trigger article 50 by the end of March. In keeping with the farcical undertones of the way Brexit has divided the nation, both the government and the Labour party claimed victory over the vote.
Labour, deeply concerned about the threat from Ukip in the north, may be playing a long game. When the seriousness of the prospective damage from Brexit becomes more apparent – almost certainly hitting the very people who felt “left out” and ignored by the so-called “metropolitan elite” – Labour may summon the courage to be more forthright about the folly of Brexit.
In which context I was particularly struck last week by an interview in the Times with the playwright Michael Frayn. He told his interviewer, Andrew Billen (like himself, a former Observer man), that Boris Johnson had said during the campaign: “There’s not going to be another war in Europe if we pull out.” Frayn added: “Well, I agree. We can be absolutely confident that there won’t be – but why can we be confident? Because of the painfully slowly constructed structure of agreements and treaties that have been set up in Europe to preserve the peace.”
For, let us face it, this is not just about economics, and voting to make our country poorer while Brexiters fantasise about the freedom to trade with non-EU nations with whom we already trade. The EU was set up primarily to unite a continent that had been tearing itself apart for centuries. And there are now uncomfortable echoes of the 1930s in the rise of extremist parties in mainland Europe.
The last thing that the Europeans we are supposed to be “negotiating with” are prepared to do is let Britain off lightly: they are rightly terrified about a domino effect. It is “Brexit or nothing”. Yet in the fantasy land of current British politics, Brexiters and others are kidding themselves into believing that the others do not mean what they say. All this stuff about “soft Brexits” and “medium Brexits” is pie in the sky. I can hear Paul Whitehouse, in a revival of The Fast Show, asking: “How do you like your Brexit, madam? Rare or medium – or perhaps well done?”
The fact is that at present, by being members of the EU but not of the seriously troubled eurozone, Britain has the best of both worlds. Too many people are caving in to the view that, in a non-binding referendum, “the people have spoken”.
Yes: despite the objections of some readers, I repeat that only 37% of the adult population voted for Brexit, and only 28% of the entire population. And to those who say the latter figure is misleading, because it includes children ineligible to vote, I commend a recent letter in the New European from Mr Warwick Hillman.
He points out that if we leave the EU in March 2019 – the government’s “plan” – some 2 million of the 2016 referendum electorate will have died, being replaced on the electoral roll by a similar number of 18- 20-year-olds.
He concludes, devastatingly, that given the known voting preferences of each group, “at some point in the negotiating process we shall acquire a majority wanting to remain. In this context, does not a repeat referendum in advance of any act of leaving become a democratic imperative?”
Mr Hillman adds that he will be 74 in March.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
Among the multiple absurdities uttered by those who demanded Britain’s departure from the European Union is the claim that, since the sky has not yet fallen in, all those gloomy warnings from the remain crowd have been proved wrong. Absurd because – and it’s odd that they haven’t spotted this – we have not yet left. We remainers believed that it was the actual leaving, not a mere vote to leave, that would bring economic havoc. That the first few post-referendum months seemed steady enough can be attributed to the hope nurtured by some of our trading partners, along with the markets, that we might not go ahead with this planned act of national self-harm, that we might step back from the brink.
Which is why our currency takes a plunge every time Theresa May or her ministers indicate that, no, Brexit really will happen. The harder Brexit threatens to be, the deeper the pound tumbles. This week sterling has been a veritable Tom Daley, somersaulting downward. Next time a leaver cheerily tells you that Brexit has had no economic impact, you don’t have to just roll your eyes and remind them we’re still in the EU. You can tell them that we’ve endured an involuntary currency devaluation to the tune of at least 13%. That helps some exporters, but it’s also made Britons poorer.
Of course, the referendum result has to be honoured. But the only instruction the British people gave on 23 June was to leave the European Union. They did not issue an edict demanding the most extreme rupture possible, one bound to imperil our economy and rip away at the fabric of our society.
Yet that’s what our politicians seem bent on. Right now, the government could have been devoting itself to a diplomatic offensive aimed at persuading the EU’s 27 other members to grant us a Norway-plus arrangement, allowing us to enjoy the benefits of single market membership with a degree of flexibility on how free movement is implemented. (Bear in mind that not all the four core freedoms are applied absolutely: there are exceptions to the free movement of services, for example. Recall too that what Europe originally enshrined in treaty was free movement of labour, not people: that too could allow for some British leeway.) Yes, it would have been a big ask. But with the moral mandate of the referendum behind her, Theresa May would have been hard for the EU 27 to refuse outright.
Instead, the government keeps slamming its fist on the table and insisting on the worst possible deal for Britain. No to the single market, says May. Liam Fox wants to go further, exiting the European customs union as well. Economists warn that if we do that, it won’t just be jobs, investment and people that will steer clear of Britain the day after we leave: basic food imports won’t be allowed in either. We currently lack the basic trade agreements we’d need on day one outside the EU. They will not fall into our lap automatically, and will take a lot longer than two years to negotiate.
Meanwhile, we are methodically trashing our brand, the very international reputation that has made us an attractive place to invest, visit or live. Most countries long to bring in the best and the brightest. We seem determined to turn them away. This week the government signalled to foreign-born doctors and students that they are no longer wanted here, as well as warning diverse, global companies they will be named and shamed for the crime of drawing on a wide, international pool of talent. On Friday the London School of Economics claimed the government had told its non-British experts on Europe that their wisdom was not wanted. The Foreign Office rejected that claim. But a desire to purge ourselves of foreigners does seem to be turning into a fever: hot, irrational and ugly.
And all this while telling EU residents who have made their homes in Britain that they are to be “one of our main cards” in future negotiations with the EU – as if, should Britain not get what it wants, it might actually deport up to 3 million people who came here legally and in good faith. It’s one thing to listen respectfully to those millions of leave voters who want a say over how future migration works. It is quite another to demonise, and terrify, those who are already here.
To do all this, May has had to rewrite the history of 23 June. No longer the winner in a fairly narrow vote of 52% to 48%, leave was recast in the PM’s conference speech as a mass consensus, the unambiguous stance of the great British public. All that had ever stood in their way was a liberal, monied elite, the Davos set of footloose globetrotters devoid of national allegiance, citizens of the world and therefore citizens of nowhere. Before our very eyes the 48% are being rebranded as the 1%.
What’s so odd about this is that it is former remainers who are doing it. Recall that May stood – not very visibly, it’s true – alongside those who wanted to stay in the EU. Amber Rudd, she of the foreigners’ lists, confronted Boris Johnson in a TV debate. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary now eager to denude the NHS of the world’s best medical talent, was a remainer too. They are engaged in a collective act of over-compensation, frantically mouthing the prayers of the new religion now that the old one has been banished as heresy.
So who will speak for the 48%? They – we – are not looking for a champion who will pretend that the referendum never happened, but one who will fight for a Brexit that does not deprive us of all we cherished in our relationship with Europe. It means arguing for a sane, practical deal that serves, rather than harms, our national interest – and that could then be put to the British people in an election or even, if that’s what it takes, another referendum. It means challenging, for instance, Fox’s ludicrous, dogmatic search for commerce with every far-flung corner of the planet except the 500 million-strong market on our doorstep with whom we currently do nearly half our trade.
The key arena for this battle will be parliament. Labour has a national duty to challenge the government’s every step: the combination of Keir Starmer, shadowing the Brexit ministry, and Hilary Benn chairing the relevant Commons committee could deliver sharp scrutiny. But they are impaired by the Labour leadership’s perverse readiness to jettison single market membership, even as it admirably defends free movement.
Labour will need allies. The Lib Dems are too few, though on this Nick Clegg is a serious asset. Tory remainers still outnumber leavers in the Commons, but they’ve gone quiet, with a few laudable exceptions. They need to rediscover their voice – not least because, as our politics currently stands, it is the challenge from within that threatens May most.
Those MPs, of all parties, have a solemn responsibility. But it cannot fall on them alone. We the 48% have to speak for ourselves – and halt this march into madness.
Last modified on Sat 2 Dec 2017 17.55 GMT
Was it the feelgood factor from the Rio Olympics? Or the arrival of some decent weather at last? Was it the abundance of bargains on offer? Or foreign tourists arriving in Britain to pick up cut-price luxury goods courtesy of the cheaper pound post-Brexit?
Whatever it was – and it was probably a combination of all those factors – August was a hot month for the retail trade. Forget the official figures showing a small 0.2% fall in the volume of sales last month: this followed a 1.9% jump in July, which was even stronger than originally estimated.
The underlying picture, reflected in the 1.6% increase in retail sales volumes over the three months to August, is one of strong consumer confidence.
This is perhaps not entirely surprising. Interest rates had been kept at 0.5% for more than seven years before the Bank of England cut them to a new record low of 0.25% last month. That provided those on variable rate mortgages with a bit of extra spending power.
All the other factors that normally lead to more high street spending are also in place. Unemployment is low, house prices are going up and wages are rising more rapidly than prices. The ferocious competition that is affecting the profits of the John Lewis Partnership is good news for consumers.
Those looking for a Brexit effect in the Office for National Statistics data would struggle to find one. The 52% of Britons who voted to leave the EU appear to have gone on a celebratory binge, while the 48% who voted to remain seem to be getting over the referendum blues with a bit of retail therapy. With retail sales growing at an annual rate of more than 6%, the ONS’s comment that there did not appear to have been any major fall in consumer confidence since 23 June is self-evident.
Given the strength of spending, critics of the Bank of England will question Threadneedle Street’s decision to cut the cost of borrowing last month.
The Bank would argue that its package of measures helped to lift spirits when they were particularly low, although the big jump in retail sales over the summer came in July, before its monetary policy committee intervened.
One thing is pretty clear, though. For the time being, the strength of consumer spending has rendered any further action by the Bank unnecessary.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
The single thunderous lesson from the EU referendum is that new technology trumps arcane democratic safeguards. Artificial intelligence, algorithms and invisible money sources can overwhelm democratic rules.
A report by MPs on the public administration and constitutional affairs committee – Lessons Learned from the EU Referendum – gained considerable attention after highlighting the possibility that foreign governments interfered with the referendum. The voter registration website crashed last June, threatening the disenfranchisement of thousands of people, forcing the government to extend the registration deadline. Crashing a website is a technical instance where cause, effect and hopefully blame can be established. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre deals with around 200 such cases a day. The committee reported that the crash had indications of a botnet attack.
Botnets are online tools programmed to manipulate public opinion through social media platforms. A significant number of Twitter users are bots that can act to spam and manipulate public opinion on current affairs. The crash may well have been the result of an attack designed to influence political outcome.
But a much more troubling narrative is emerging. The use of algorithms and artificial intelligence was probably a significant but invisible element in the campaigns. There is no evidence that Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm linked to the Leave.EU campaign, used botnets or any other illegal activity – it seeks to use the web to manipulate public opinion through legal means. Legal though such methods are, the sinister nature of this manipulation requires robust regulation.
Broadcast advertising is subject to strict controls in the interests of fair play, as it traditionally had a wide reach and great impact. Recent shifts have proved unfair advantages are now to be gained from targeted online activity.
An elite group is shaping world politics to suit their private beliefs, and their behaviour has untold and unquantifiable effects. While the plot reads like a comic book, this cyber-manipulation is no fiction and played a role in the EU referendum and Donald Trump’s election.
Exceptional investigative work by Carole Cadwalladr has exposed the wide-reaching implications of this issue. It’s not just the EU referendum. Billionaire Robert Mercer is Trump’s biggest donor. He is also reported to be an owner of Cambridge Analytica. Nigel Farage’s links with Mercer led to Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the Leave.EU campaign. The company proved to be instrumental and taught the campaign how to build profiles, target people and gain data from Facebook profiles.
When interviewed by Cadwalladr, Leave.EU’s communications director admitted Facebook was the key to the entire campaign. A Facebook “like” was their most potent weapon. “Using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.”
So worrying are Cambridge Analytica’s actions that the Information Commissioner’s Office is looking into the firm’s reported use of personal data.
There is contempt for the electoral process. Leave.EU admits that Cambridge Analytica helped the campaign but was not paid. It seems clear that this type of work should have been declared to the Electoral Commission as a services-in-kind donation. It has not been. Arron Banks of Leave.EU has since declared: “I don’t give a monkey’s about the Electoral Commission.”
Lobbyists and billionaires are wilfully manipulating the media and public opinion in defiance of transparency regulations. Cambridge Analytica, while the most high-profile group, is only one element of this sordid tale that sees foreign funds influence our electoral processes.
Cambridge Analytica may not use bots, but other forces clearly do. Research from University College London explains how a large group of bots can misrepresent public opinion. “They could tweet like real users, but coordinated centrally around a specific topic. They could all post positive or negative tweets skewing metrics used by companies and researchers to track opinions on that topic.” Bots can even “orchestrate a campaign to create a fake sense of agreement among Twitter users where they mask the sponsor of the message, making it seem like it originates from the community itself”.
Evidence from Oxford Internet Institute suggest that a third of all Twitter traffic prior to the EU referendum was actually bots and that this type of targeting was used as recently as the Stoke-on-Trent Central byelection.
Together, this evidence makes it clear that democracy is struggling to stand tall in a disturbing era where lobbyists can weaponise fake news for the highest bidder, while bodies such as the Electoral Commission do not have the resources to intervene and sanction. Malign forces can track voters’ personal data and manipulate public opinion as if it were in fact using cyber-deception. All of this they can do under cover of anonymity and free of regulation or oversight.
The EU referendum was a battle of dishonesty. It was won by the side with the means to distribute the most plausible lies.
Last modified on Thu 15 Oct 2020 14.27 BST
While there were many reasons behind the UK’s historic vote to leave the EU, one of the key aspects of the successful leave campaign was its negative stance towards immigration. And this wasn’t confined to the movement of European citizens – from Ukip’s infamous “breaking point” poster to media interviews with members of the voting public, migrants and refugees from other parts of the world (such as Syria) were also targeted.
Voters from both sides of the referendum debate were troubled by the anti-immigration rhetoric, and rightly so: in the aftermath of Brexit, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has recorded a 42% increase in the national reporting of hate crime, while thinktank Demos has reported a significant increase in xenophobic tweets since the referendum.
Those of us interested in international development have much to worry about, not least the impact of the falling pound on aid budgets, the future of EU funding and the outlook for the Department for International Development under Priti Patel. To most of us, these issues and the workings of Whitehall seem distant and beyond our influence, but is there anything that we can do to improve the situation at a grassroots level? We think there is.
Aid Works is a social enterprise based in Sheffield founded by two British aid workers. As well as supporting overseas programmes, we are passionate about harnessing the talent of people in the north of England, and sharing it with the global south via our Get the North to the South programme. Our base in Yorkshire provides opportunities for northerners who may not be able to access relevant information, jobs and training, traditionally focused in London.
A key part of the project is education. We run information events for the general public, training courses for aspiring aid workers and we go into schools. Children are asked to debate current aid-related headlines, complete a rapid needs assessment in a fictional refugee crisis and decide how to distribute UK government funding to respond to the crisis. Within the simulation they learn about the different roles of the UK government, aid agencies and the host government in an emergency.
Post-Brexit vote, the need for this kind of grassroots work has never been greater. The referendum has shone a light on huge differences in public opinion regarding the UK’s place in the world and its responsibility towards other nations. Both sides of the referendum campaign were characterised by misinformation and negative propaganda, and it is clear that straightforward, honest information sharing is needed to provide a platform for informed debate. Duncan Green, strategic adviser for Oxfam GB and author of  From Poverty to Power blog, asks if it would be “better to pull back from the day to day trench warfare of Whitehall and go long term, working with youth, investing more in development education, working on public attitudes to race and ‘Otherness’?”. We say a resounding, Yes!
Not only would this go some way towards healing the racial tensions experienced both before and after Brexit, but it will also protect the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of its gross national income on aid every year. While this commitment is enshrined in law, it has recently been challenged by some Tory MPs, including Liam Fox, the new secretary of state for international trade. If the UK economy falters, the pressure on public finances will increase.
This week we conducted a quick straw poll in the centre of Sheffield, asking 69 members of the general public what percentage of the UK’s budget is spent on overseas development. Over 85% overestimated the amount that we spend on aid, with almost one in five thinking we spend more than 50%.
Some politicians and media outlets have capitalised on this confusion, with a recent petition by the Mail on Sunday to “End the £12bn foreign aid madness” garnering almost quarter of a million signatures, and leading to a debate in parliament.
The Mail on Sunday claimed that “much of this money is wasted and the Great British Giveaway fuels corruption, funds despots and corrodes democracy in developing nations”. There is no denying that some aid money is lost to corruption, poor programming and inefficiency. But donors and aid agencies work very hard to prevent this happening, with many instances discovered and reported by the agencies themselves.
Aid Works participated in the Change the Record campaign, led by Bond – the UK membership body for organisations working in international development. The campaign highlighted the importance of engaging not just those who already share your opinions (step away from your Facebook timeline), but those of different persuasions. It underlined the need to tackle issues such as corruption head on, and to present clear and honest accounts of how aid can be successful.
Current events may seem out of our control – but there are practical things we can all do at a grassroots level to affect change.
Mo and Mia Ali are the founders of Aid Works. Follow @Aid_Works on Twitter.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 16.27 GMT
We’ve had all the surveys. There have been forecasts and predictions by the score. Every thinktank, every City analyst, every international body has a view about whether the UK economy is going to drop into recession following the EU referendum on 23 June. Some of them have sophisticated models of the economy to help them, but the truth is nobody really knows.
 This week will see the first piece of hard evidence of how the economy has fared in the period after the Brexit vote. Thursday’s retail sales report from the Office for National Statistics will show what happened to spending in the shops and online in July.
The ONS data is eagerly awaited because the survey evidence has been so mixed. Reports from the CBI and the polling company GfK have been downbeat, but those from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the Bank of England’s regional agents have been more positive. Interestingly, both the BRC and Threadneedle Street found that consumer behaviour seemed more affected by the weather than it was by the referendum.
If the UK is to steer clear of recession over the coming months, it is important for the tills to keep jangling in the high street. In part, that’s because consumer spending accounts for around two-thirds of national output. But it is also because one of the other big components of GDP – investment – is likely to be weak. By and large, businesses were in favour of remaining in the EU and it may take them some time to get over the shock of the result. The report from the Bank’s agents suggested that investment over the next year will now be lower than it would have been, although not dramatically so.
Companies will only consider investing if they think demand is going to be strong enough to warrant extra spending on buildings, plant, machinery and training. For those that export, the fall in the value of the pound should help, but the strength of consumer spending will be crucial for those that cater for the domestic UK market.
There are umpteen factors that affect consumer behaviour, but the two big ones are the state of the labour market and spending power once the mortgage or rent has been paid. Put simply, people will spend less if they think they are about to lose their jobs or if the value of their wages and salaries is being eroded by higher prices or the rising cost of housing. The recession of the 1990s was caused by a combination of these two effects: a doubling of interest rates to 15% led to much higher unemployment and a sharp reduction in disposable income. Consumer spending fell off a cliff.
The recession of 2008 to 2009 was different from those of the early 1980s or early 1990s. In those episodes, interest rates were raised aggressively to combat rising inflation. Last time round, the trouble was not excess consumer demand, it was a crisis in the financial sector, which led to a global credit crunch.
In terms of the hit to national output, the last recession was more severe than those of the early 1980s and early 1990s. As such, it was reasonable to assume that unemployment would rise even more sharply than it during those previous downturns.
But it didn’t. The labour market felt the strain, but the effects came through in different ways: through under-employment, an increase in self-employment and a sharp drop in productivity growth. People were prepared to accept pay cuts or freezes in order to hold on to their jobs. This was far from an ideal outcome, but better than mass unemployment. The problems that those parts of the UK that suffered de-industrialisation in the 1980s still faced is proof of how joblessness leaves deep and permanent scars.
The labour market looked pretty healthy before the referendum. In the three months ending in May, unemployment was at its lowest level since 2005, a year when the economy was booming ahead of the financial crisis.
The percentage of the population in work has not been higher since modern records began in 1971, but wage growth has remained stubbornly weak. Average earnings are rising at just over 2%, well down on the levels seen in the years leading up to the financial crisis. One explanation is that there is more slack in the labour market than the official figures suggest. Another is that the dice are loaded in favour of employers in pay negotiations, and that the part of the economy where trade unions have a significant presence – the public sector – has borne the brunt of austerity.
The Resolution Foundation provides a third explanation in its latest earnings outlook. Researcher Laura Gardiner says earnings growth for those people who stayed in the same job fell from 4% to 2% between 2008 and 2010 and has never recovered. By contrast, the average pay rise for those who change jobs has risen steadily since the economy started to recover and stood at 7.5% in 2015.
Gardiner says that previous experience would have led her to expect a “knock-on effect on pay settlements for the ‘static’ workforce, via mechanisms such as firms experiencing resignations raising the pay of those who remain for fear of losing them too.”
There has, though, been little sign of such effects. Gardiner speculates that the reason could be that job mobility is still below its peak, that firms don’t think the stayers need higher pay awards to command their continued loyalty, or that the stayers crave job security in what seems like a tentative recovery.
Brexit, she says, may further delay any take off in wage growth, and that seems a reasonable assumption. Even if unemployment holds steady at its current levels, it is hard to envisage average earnings rising at much more than their current level.
This won’t matter much in the short term, because with inflation so low spending power is increasing. The Bank of England’s decision to cut interest rates – and, just as importantly, signal that they will stay low for a prolonged period – means that households have the reassurance that the cost of housing is not going to shoot up.
The fall in the pound will lead to dearer imports and higher inflation. That will eat into real income growth and is likely to lead to slower consumer spending growth. The process, however, will probably not be immediate and it probably won’t be as dramatic as some fear. Policy stimulus and a willingness to accept low pay awards will support employment, but productivity and living standards will be squeezed. Life for most people will go on in much the same way as it has ever since the financial crisis.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
I manage a mixed 500 hectare farm in Northamptonshire growing cereals, and supporting a beef and sheep enterprise. As the weeks went by during the Brexit referendum campaign, it became clear that the plight of British agriculture was something of a footnote, occasionally referenced by remain and leave politicians as a means of supporting their view. However, it is hard to think of any other sectors more affected by the vote to leave the EU than agriculture.
What is now clear is just how much the EU, along with its rules and regulations, has become central to agriculture over the past 25 years – and for good reason. Agriculture is complicated; it oversees the food we eat and the environment we live in. It is, in many respects, an appropriate competence for the EU. But no more – our government is now left with the task of repatriating all these rules, within a department, Defra, that has seen huge cuts to its operations over the past seven years.
There are inevitable impacts that will come from being out of the EU. The withdrawal from the common agricultural policy is one; alongside wondering what will replace it (if anything at all). We are not helped by the fact that we do not have a basic policy direction from any party as to what they envisage for farming. The current scheme pays farmers in the UK a flat rate payment per hectare in return for meeting basic standards. We are currently doing our application for the basic payment scheme, which provides grants and payments for the farming industry, and I cannot help but wonder how many farms will survive without them.
The other biggest impact will come from trade deals. We are blessed to live in an era of accessible and cheap food. Outside the single market, with no trade deals, it is hard to see how there can be no knock-on effect to the price of food – either imported or home-grown. Though higher food prices would appear a good thing for us farmers, input costs would rise for currently tariff-free items such as feed, fertiliser, pesticides and agricultural machinery. Not to mention that governments usually do not like increased food prices, and I fear it could bring about a cheap food agenda that sacrifices basic standards.
This brings me to an important point: standards. We are, rightly, prevented from importing a number of different foods and products from outside the European Union because they do not meet set standards. Reports of possible new bilateral trade deals being done with non-EU countries leave me very fearful that we will have to compete in a marketplace where food is being produced to standards that are much lower than our own, and possibly even illegal if we were to do that here. Hormones in beef cattle, ractopamine in pigs and bromated flour are all such examples of this, and for me no one wins in this scenario.
Another concern is employment. The vote to leave the EU centred heavily on immigration, and migrant labour from the EU, and we have to be mindful of that. However if there are restrictions placed on foreign workers it will have huge knock-on effects for fresh produce, horticulture and pig sectors that rely on a mix of seasonal and permanent workers from abroad.
With changes to support funding and trade deals, there will be uncertainty, but I think there will be opportunities. Some have said with more farmers likely to leave the sector, more land could become available for expanding businesses or new entrants to farming. I am sure Brexit could force many to find alternative income streams or fundamentally change their business model to grow different crops. For example, I know a number of farms that are growing crops for ornamental and pharmaceutical purposes.
We now have an opportunity where farming and the rest of the population can be brought closer together, as decisions over farming and environmental funding are repatriated. It will help us to ask the public what they want their farmers to be. Business people? Food providers? Environmentalists? Whatever the answer to these questions, it will have an inevitable impact on how our countryside is farmed and managed. In areas where farming is more challenging, such as upland areas, support payments have arguably allowed farming families to maintain and manage some of our most iconic landscapes.
Another opportunity is to rationalise some legislation. There is no getting around it, some EU legislation makes little sense. In many cases it does not fit the UK’s environmental or agricultural models and prolonged decision making processes lead to constant uncertainty. Decisions over water quality, approving or rejecting plant protection products or fungicides, GMOs and animal welfare will now have to be taken at a UK level, and for me this is a good thing – irrespective of where you stand.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
Theresa May has outlined her plan for Brexit. The debate over process will doubtless rumble on. However, it is time to start to think about substance. In her Lancaster House speech, the prime minister stressed that Brexit means regaining national control over our laws and our borders. At the same time, however, she expects Brexit to make Britain stronger, fairer and more global.
But how will we know if the government’s plan sets out a coherent strategy for a successful Brexit? How should we judge the terms of any eventual deal and our disengagement from the EU? Over the long term, how will we know if Brexit is really “working for Britain”? In order to answer these questions, we need to move beyond platitudes to focus on likely outcomes for individuals, families, businesses and the country as a whole. We need to know not just what Brexit means, but what constitutes “success” and what “works”.
For this, we need an agreed set of “tests” against which we can evaluate the substantive impact of the process. This is not about rerunning the referendum campaign; it is about assessing the impact of the specific form of Brexit that has been chosen. Consequently, we at The UK in a Changing Europe have come up with what we feel are a set of objective tests capable of reflecting a consensus across the UK – including people from both sides of the referendum debate.
Although the two sides disagreed vehemently about whether we should remain in the EU, there was considerable common ground – reflected in the PM’s speech – about what we, as a country, should be seeking to achieve. Generally, both sides argued that Britain should remain an open, outward-looking country (immigration policy notwithstanding); that both economic growth and social cohesion mattered; that we should invest in, and improve, our public services; and that we needed to preserve – or reassert – control of our own destiny. Any attempt to measure the success of Brexit must reflect this broad range of goals.
So, we have devised four tests that can be applied to the British economy post-Brexit to attempt to elucidate its impact. The first relates to the economy and public finances in general. Will Brexit make the country more prosperous? As the chancellor Philip Hammond put it, nobody voted for (or indeed against) Brexit to make us poorer. A successful Brexit will be one that makes us better-off overall.
Our second test relates to fairness. The referendum campaign crystallised a view that many people had been “left behind” by the relative success of the UK economy since we joined the European Union. A successful Brexit will be one that helps those who have done worst, and promotes opportunity and social mobility for all across the UK, but particularly for the most disadvantaged.
Third, will Brexit preserve and extend the UK’s openness as an economy (to trade, investment, ideas and people)? The prime minister has stressed that a global Britain will be outward-looking, a “great, global trading nation”. The UK has a long and well-established consensus, across the political spectrum, in favour of free trade and open markets as a means to greater prosperity. A successful Brexit will be one that maintains and enhances the UK’s position as an open economy and society.
And finally, will Brexit enhance the democratic control the British people exercise over their own socio-economic destiny? Control is not just about the formal sovereignty of Westminster, but more broadly about whether individuals and communities feel they have a genuine say in the decisions that affect them. A successful Brexit will be one that genuinely increases citizens’ control over their own lives.
We do not have a view on whether the tests are likely to be met, or what Brexit would have to look like to meet them. Rather, we are setting out a framework intended to be, as far as possible, neutral and objective, which will allow for such an assessment in the future. Of course there will be deep and sincere differences on how we achieve them – but we hope that there is a consensus that they are broadly the right objectives.
So how do we test whether those four objectives are deliverable? We have only set out the framework for the tests – we have not sought to specify in detail the necessary measures or indicators, let alone assess whether they are likely to be met. But moving forward, there needs to be some clear, evidence-based and, as far as possible, objective mechanism for assessment. Whatever method is chosen, what is important is that the credibility of both the tests and the process are established in the minds of the public at large.
We are entering a period when the choices we make, collectively, will determine our future for decades – the significance of Brexit to the UK, economically and socially, cannot be overstated. We all have a stake in making a success of Brexit. But to do that we need to have a shared vision of what success means.
Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2020 17.09 GMT
In the run-up to the EU referendum, the Guardian hosted two focus groups in Brighton and Knowsley that shone a light on the impending vote. Sessions organised by the research organisation BritainThinks told a story of voters who were confused, distrustful of politicians and deeply concerned about immigration.
 A picture emerged from discussions both in Merseyside and on the south coast of a battle in which the remain campaign’s focus on the economy was not sticking while the £350m claim of the out camp was getting through.
It was clear that voters had lost faith in politicians, whose integrity appeared to fall further during the referendum campaign, with leavers arguing it was the rich and “unaffected” who were most likely to back the status quo. They were also upset about the intervention of President Obama. Remainers, on the other hand, regarded Brexiters as xenophobic.
On 23 June, Britain voted to leave the European Union. In the month that followed, how did those same voters react in the aftermath of the most momentous vote in the country’s political history?
Brexit – the first weekend
Much like the rest of the country, the Guardian focus group voters woke up after the Brexit vote to an explosion of powerful emotions. An overwhelming sense from leavers was anger at the way they were being portrayed.
“To hear what the remain camp are calling the leave voters is dreadful. They are calling us stupid, uneducated, racist. It’s disgusting. And the fact that they are calling for a further referendum is diabolical,” said one woman who voted leave in Knowsley.
Another called on people to respect democracy. “I would equate it to a football match between two teams and when one team loses they wait outside for the other team’s supporters and beat them up because they won,” she said.
A third woman on Merseyside said she felt low about comments from younger people that the older generation had let them down. She said her son was furious and she questioned her decision but concluded that Britain would have to navigate a “few rocky roads” but eventually would be fine.
For remainers, there was sadness and confusion. “A few skilled – and almost universally posh – politicians managed to connect and lead this anti-establishment tsunami into a direction that has no hope of solving the problems they daily experience,” said one man from Brighton.
One woman added: “Why would they want to take away the opportunities for their children and grandchildren to possibly work or study abroad when they are older? Why would they want their children to live in a country that is intolerant, unequal and that will now probably suffer a horrific recession whilst being an easy target to terrorists ... I’m baffled!”
David Cameron had announced his resignation; Boris Johnson had already pulled out of the Tory leadership race, making Theresa May a clear favourite; Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was destabilised by an attempted coup; and there was a spike in race hate crime.
Britain had entered a tumultuous period with massive instability in Westminster leaving many people still unsure about what the 23 June vote would actually mean.
For remainers in the focus groups, there was a glimmer of hope that something might still change. “I think we should all go for a re-vote and I bet you would see the decision overturned, I can’t believe how many politicians are quitting their posts,” said a man in Knowsley who voted remain.
“Apparently some people think that article 50 won’t actually go ahead and we won’t leave the EU but will try and negotiate a better deal. I like this idea but wonder if we are just in denial,” added a woman in Brighton.
But leavers were left angry by the outpourings of the 48%. “I’ve just read that hundreds of young people have taken to the streets of London in protest of the Brexit vote which makes a mockery of democracy but they obviously feel strongly about the decision. I feel that the country is going to be divided for a long time to come,” said a leave voter in Knowsley.
They were also at odds over the issue of Johnson’s decision not to stand for the Tory leadership. One leaver from Merseyside said that despite her stance, she agreed with a Facebook post that was a scathing attack on Johnson.
“He rallied everyone to leave the EU and now he doesn’t want to face the consequences of what he has done. This too makes me feel really angry – bring us to our knees then desert a sinking ship,” she said. Another said she found him “quite endearing if a little bonkers”.
The voters also talked about the rise in the number of racist incidents. “I saw a YouTube blog about racism and Brexit. I am feeling quite guilty that my vote is involved with this but my intention was never racist, it was merely worry and concern towards monitoring and capping something maybe the government should have prioritised earlier,” said one woman.
A man in Brighton, who voted remain, said: “I’m noticing a lot of racist and xenophobic incidents being posted on my social media. I seriously believe the EU referendum has made some people more xenophobic and confident to challenge people of their intentions to remain in this country.”
Some remain voters involved in the focus groups were still holding on to some hope about what might happen, but there was an overwhelming feeling that Britain needed to move on from the referendum. The number of Westminster resignations had left participants unimpressed, with deep levels of distrust in politicians, and some had started to feel uncertain about the economy.
“I’ve seen a few articles today about the low value of the pound. It does make me feel quite worried for the future of our economy if it doesn’t bounce back. Feeling more and more like we’ve made a really bad decision,” said one remain voter, while another said it “reeks of recession”.
But there was no great sense of buyers’ remorse among leave voters, with most standing by their decision. One admitted to being worried, but said it was the right decision: “I’m surprised at the amount of scaremongering and nasty people around. A bit of fear sure does bring out a bad side in some people and we’ve really seen that. All in all … it’s shown that the public really do have a voice.”
Another said they felt “surprisingly optimistic”. Although one leaver, from Brighton, admitted to feeling a “little isolated” after so many friends voted remain: “It makes me question if I did the right thing.”
Young remain voters felt nervous about the divisiveness that appeared to have exploded, and about racist rhetoric. One said: “I think that there isn’t really a way you could have voted to leave without being closed minded and at least a little anti-diversity and that makes me sad for our country.
“Little hidden racists have come out of the woodwork,” added another who felt “disgusted, horrified, saddened and angry”.
But one leave voter echoed others by arguing it was about immigration concerns and not racism, saying it was great to have a “mixed culture society” but reasonable to be worried about numbers.
There was a debate about why Britain voted to leave, from a remainer who said the working classes were “manipulated”, to others who said people were misguided if they thought leaving would solve their problems.
But one leaver said the referendum had taught them that in Britain “we can fight for what we believe is right for us and we are not scared to make a change even if it does mean we’ll have to make sacrifices along the way”.
Some remainers hoped there was a chance of staying in the EU, but felt it was a risky path. “This morning I saw the EU flag hanging from someone’s balcony. I liked the sentiment but fear that despite people saying we won’t actually leave we will probably have to or there will be riots from all those people who voted leave.”
Another said: “I want another referendum and I want it now. Let’s get back to the EU and work with our neighbours for a better United Kingdom!”
But the more common voice from leavers was to say that things were now settling down and there was a task to get on with. One said: “Things seem to be calming down a bit, people are discussing the Brexit result as if they have accepted it and are moving on to the next stage.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.07 GMT
Call me naive, but I always thought that if the opposition have a rare and clear chance to defeat the government, they would take it. Now we learn that sometimes, even when presented with an open goal, the opposition would rather kick the ball into touch.
The open goal in question is the arrival in the House of Commons next week of an amendment, passed by the Lords, that would keep Britain in the European Economic Area (EEA): in other words, a soft Brexit that would see the UK leave the EU but stay in the single market.
That matters, because single market membership is crucial to Britain’s economic health, and is surely the only way to deliver the “jobs-first Brexit” that Jeremy Corbyn has promised. Also, given that the referendum two years ago was so close, the EEA position would seem a fair reflection of the will of the people. (Arch-Brexiteer Daniel Hannan recently went further, hinting that the narrowness of the win might have triggered no more than a renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership rather than a departure – though he said that on Dutch TV, so perhaps he thought no one would notice.)
Tory rebels reckon they have enough MPs to win a vote on the EEA plan – but only if Labour backs it. Put simply, Labour has a clear chance both to defeat Theresa May and ensure a Brexit that limits the damage Britain is about to inflict on itself. It would be good for both country and party.
But now it’s clear that this is an opportunity Labour would rather pass up. the party released an alternative amendment, one that falls short of joining the EEA. Instead it talks of “full access to the internal market”.
At first, some remainers seized on that as a welcome shift by the party leadership towards the single market. But gradually a more sober view took hold. This was a way to derail a move that might actually have kept Britain in the single market – the EEA proposal – and was little more than a reheated version of Labour’s repeated pledge to deliver the “exact same benefits” of the single market and also to leave it, a position Labour’s own Barry Gardiner memorably described as “bollocks”.
So what explains Labour’s decision? Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Today programme it was merely a pragmatic acceptance of reality: Labour MPs would not unite around the EEA proposal, and this alternative clause is one everyone on the Labour benches can live with. But that’s worth unpacking.
For what exactly is the problem some Labour MPs have with the EEA? The answer is simple: immigrants. They worry that EEA membership would entail free movement of people, and several worry that their constituents, in leave-voting seats such as Darlington or Don Valley, won’t stomach that. Indeed a briefing note to MPs explaining the decision explicitly mentions freedom of movement as a problem with the EEA.
It would be interesting to hear Corbyn explain to some of his younger supporters – who are both pro-remain and relatively relaxed about migration – that he passed up the chance to soften Brexit because Labour wants to keep out immigrants.
MPs from those leave-supporting seats would say they have nothing against newcomers, but they have to bow to the reality of their constituents’ feelings. And that means scuppering the EEA proposal. But does it?
As it happens, Labour’s new amendment surfaced just as Gordon Brown made a valuable intervention. He said that rather than obsessing over the technicalities of Brexit, politicians needed to address the anxieties that had fuelled the leave vote. On immigration, that could be done, he argued, by a series of measures – from ensuring local people have a chance to apply for every job to registering migrants on arrival in the UK – that are all permitted under EU rules. Indeed, they include steps already implemented by that most European of EU members, Belgium.
Put simply, there is a solution here to Labour’s conundrum, as it seeks to keep both leave and remain voters onboard. It could back both the EEA referendum and Brown’s package of measures on immigration. That way, it would, to adapt a phrase coined long ago by Brown himself, be tough on Brexit and tough on the causes of Brexit. And in the process, it would have a chance to inflict defeat on an ailing, failing government. The question for Labour is: why doesn’t it take it?
Last modified on Thu 27 Feb 2020 21.13 GMT
Neil Watson was eight or nine when his dad took him out to sea for the first time. Soon he was earning his first pocket money by washing fish boxes on the quay at Brixham in south Devon. Three years after he started crewing, he got his skipper’s ticket and eventually he bought his own boat. For 30 years, he regularly spent seven days at sea followed by one night off, only stopping when his boat sank two years ago.
“I fished through good times and bad times. Fishing’s like riding a wave – one minute you’re up the top, and the next you’re down in the trough,” he said. Now Watson works at Brixham’s fish market, one of the largest in England, where £40m of fish was sold last year across the UK and Europe. A fisherman’s life is brutal, he said, but he badly misses the camaraderie.
Along the coast, in the picturesque Cornish fishing village of Mevagissey, Andrew Trevarton, a fisherman for 37 years, hasn’t been out to sea for two weeks because of atrocious weather. Nevertheless, Trevarton is feeling cautiously optimistic about the future. “You have to be an optimist to go fishing in the first place,” he said.
In 2016, Trevarton and Watson voted for Brexit, along with the vast majority of UK fishermen. The image of rugged men in sea-slicked oilskins braving weather and waves to put food on the island nation’s plates was a powerful emotional factor in the case for leaving the EU. After decades of battling over Brussels-set quotas, which allow European fleets to take a lion’s share of fish from waters around the UK, the idea of taking back control was irresistible.
Although the industry is a tiny part of the UK economy – worth less than 0.1% of the total in 2018 – it has become emblematic of a plucky, independent Britain, freed from the shackles of restrictions and regulations set by other people in other places, forging its own way in the world.
Much, therefore, is riding on trade talks that are due to begin at the start of March. According to Nigel Farage, fishing will be the “acid test” of Brexit. Boris Johnson reinforced this view in a key speech on EU trade negotiations earlier this month. Any agreement must ensure that “British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats”, said the prime minister, who visited Brixham last summer to meet fishermen and sample hake and chips on the quayside.
The timetable is extremely tight, with the EU saying that an agreement on fishing must be reached by the end of July, and the talks will be tough. A fishing deal is a precondition to a wider trade agreement, the EU has said – and some European politicians and officials have suggested that Britain’s access to the EU’s lucrative financial services markets could depend on EU fleets being allowed to continue to fish in UK waters on the same basis as now.
At the heart of the talks are issues of access and quotas. Under the EU’s common fisheries policy (CFP), all member states have equal access to EU waters apart from the first 12 nautical miles from the coast. At the end of this year, the UK will become an independent coastal state, operating under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea rather than the CFP. As such, Britain will have control over an “exclusive economic zone” up to 200 nautical miles off its shores – some of the most bountiful seas in the world.
Quotas are set for fish species in Brussels each year following scientific advice about the levels of stocks, and are allocated to member states on the basis of historic practice. Currently, EU boats are entitled to more than 60% of overall landings by weight from the seas around the UK, and for some species the proportion is greater. For example, the UK is allocated 9% of Channel cod, while the French get 84%. From next year, quota shares will be negotiated rather than decided in Brussels.
Expectations among British fishermen are high, but history has taught them to be wary. In Mevagissey, memories of what happened in the 1970s when Ted Heath was negotiating the UK’s entry into the European common market are part of local folklore. “We were traded off, basically thrown to the wall, sacrificed for other sectors,” said Trevarton.
Rodney Ingram, 75, who fishes inshore from a 20ft boat after a working life on and off the sea, said: “We were sold down the line, used as a bargaining chip. We gave [the Europeans] everything they wanted.”
Almost half a century later, they want redress. “We’re hoping politicians will recognise the great injustice done to the industry back then. We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put it right,” said Trevarton.
He and Ingram were at pains to stress that they were not looking for European boats to be excluded from UK waters, pointing out that the UK fishing fleet doesn’t have the capacity to land the entire permitted quotas. But, they say, they want the cake divided up more fairly.
Trevarton, who is chairman of the Mevagissey Fisherman’s Association, listed their objectives: control over UK waters, a greater quota share, priority for UK vessels in inshore waters, and a management structure combining industry representatives and scientific experts.
Another point of contention is the EU’s demand that any deal negotiated between March and July is permanent. Britain wants annual talks.
“An annual agreement allows you to be active and nimble,” said Jim Portus, of the South Western Fish Producers’ Organisation. “It can reflect the movement and biology of fish, the needs and aspirations of fishermen, and bend and sway with fisheries science. The CFP had enormous fault lines running through it, but it was only amendable after 10 years.” Norway had been negotiating annually with the EU for 40 years, he pointed out.
Taking fish out of the sea is only part of the overall picture. About three-quarters of the seafood landed by UK fishermen is sold to EU countries – a trade reliant on being fast and frictionless. Brexit is likely to mean more customs delays and inspections – and if Britain restricts access to UK waters, the EU could impose tariffs on British exports. Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French minister of Europe and foreign affairs, warned last week that if European boats were barred from UK waters, France would press for British trawlers to be prevented from selling their catches on the continent.
Some British fishermen fear their militant French counterparts could simply take direct action to prevent fish landed in the UK being brought into French ports. Barrie Deas of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO) said he fully expected blockades. “French fishermen have done it for much less. I would imagine there will be disruption.” There is a long history of fishing skirmishes, most recently between the UK and France over scallops in 2018. But, unlike the French, “we aren’t naturally a confrontational society,” said Trevarton.
In an indication that such concerns are being taken seriously, it was reported this month that Britain has recently beefed up the Royal Navy’s Fisheries Protection Squadron with two extra ships, two aerial surveillance aircraft and 35 extra enforcement officers to police UK waters. A further 22 ships will be on standby.
Some argue that the fishing industry has distorted perceptions by depicting itself as beleaguered and struggling – a strategy that has allowed it to punch above its weight. Chris Davies, a former Lib Dem MEP and chair of the European parliament’s fisheries committee, said there was a national myth of a “small fishing boat with a couple of guys on board, going out from a little Cornish harbour at dawn and returning at sunset”.
In reality, the UK fleet is dominated by a small number of big players, some of them foreign-owned. Seven companies hold 51% of the UK’s fishing quota, and 27 trawlers working from Scottish ports bring in half the UK’s total weight in landings. Net profit in the large-scale fleet increased by 47% to €268m between 2015 and 2016, according to the most recent EU report. “Who is going to benefit from Brexit? The real beneficiaries will be the big guys,” said Davies.
Quotas were treated as property rights to be bought and sold. In England, more than half the quota has ended up in foreign hands. Plus, Davies said, the distribution of the UK quota was decided in London, not Brussels. “Large-scale vessels get 95-96% of the quota. The government could take some of the quota away from the big companies, and give the smaller guys a bigger slice of the cake.” That would benefit the “left-behind coastal communities” that Boris Johnson has promised to help. “But the powerful voices in the industry are the big companies. The guy who’s a part-time fisherman in Cornwall is not in a position to put pressure on the government.”
Rather than focusing on who catches the fish, the key question was how many fish there are to be caught, Davies said. “The industry and the government should make the strongest commitment to sustainability. The last 10 years have been pretty good – stocks are stable and in some cases increasing. The most important thing is not to go back to the days of overfishing.”
For the NFFO, fishing as a symbol of British sovereignty is welcome. “I don’t think fishing has ever been stronger politically,” said Deas. “The idea that past wrongs need to be righted is powerful. I think it would be extremely difficult for the government to come back from talks with fishing having been sold out again.”
He added: “We may not know the full implications of Brexit for years, or decades. But by the end of 2020, we’ll know if fishing has a more positive future.”
Nevertheless, any Brexit dividend would not be enjoyed equally across the sector, he conceded. “It will vary by area, by fleet, by fishery. There will be winners, and there will be lesser winners.”
On the quaysides of Devon and Cornwall, alongside hope there is a deep mistrust of politicians. At Brixham fish market last week, as boxes of sole, monkfish, plaice, brill and scallops were auctioned, loaded with ice and packed on to lorries, Neil Watson said the prime minister had “promised the earth” on his visit to the harbour last year. “I’m hoping Boris will be strong, but we know there could be a slap around the ear coming.”
In Mevagissey, Andrew Trevarton was also worried about being “sold down the line again”. He said: “The biggest fear within our industry is that the government will buckle under EU pressure and maintain the status quo. I hope that anything that comes from negotiations will be an improvement on what we have now. After all, could it be any worse? But it means putting our faith in politicians to push this through, and that’s always risky.”
The 70 registered fishing boats in Mevagissey’s harbour belonged to local family businesses, he said. “This place absolutely relies on a vibrant fishing industry. Our tourism is built on the back of fishing – people come to see a working harbour.”
Mevagissey is unusual in the relatively high number of young men entering the industry. Trevarton, whose 30-year-old son is also a fisherman, said: “I want our industry to thrive, and our fishing stocks to be sustainable. My son has a long working life ahead of him. I want a future for him and the other young men of this village.”
11,961The number of fishermen (and a few women) in the UK
6,036UK- registered vessels
22,000People employed in fish processing and servicing the industry .
£784mThe value of the sector to the UK economy: The value of financial services is £132bn
3The categories of fish landed by UK vessels: 55% pelagic (close to the surface) – mackerel, sardines, tuna, herring, anchovies. 25% demersal (close to the sea floor) – cod, haddock, monkfish, plaice, sole, turbot, hake. 20% shellfish – lobsters, crabs, scallops, whelks
75%The UK exports three-quarters of the seafood it lands, most of it to the EU) Two-thirds of the seafood consumed in the UK is imported
(Based on data from 2018)
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Sometime before the 2015 general election, an aeon ago in the history of British politics but less than two years ago in ordinary time, David Cameron told the Financial Times that he wanted to be judged on his success in resolving the two big questions that had overshadowed British politics for nearly a generation. This is how he described them: “One is, does the United Kingdom want to stay together? Yes. Secondly does the United Kingdom want to stay in a reformed European Union? Yes.”
No need to trouble with the score, then.
But where is Cameron, that sunny optimist, on this bleak morning when half his fellow Britons feel as if their country is being severed from Europe like a limb from its body? Where is he today, the day after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of a second referendum? Cameron is famously even tempered in the face of the buffeting of fate. He is a man said by those who know him to be exempt from the dark nights of the soul that keep ordinary folk tossing and turning at night in agonies of self-loathing. But even that David Cameron must have given some thought to the chaos his catastrophic commitment to a referendum on Europe has unleashed. And wondered why he ever thought it was a good idea.
To govern is to choose, they say, and politicians often make bad choices at big moments. They sweat over the right course to take. They face the risk and take the chance. The real indictment of Cameron is that he didn’t acknowledge that he was taking a risk. It is not that he failed to understand the consequences of failure, it’s just that failure wasn’t something that happened to him. So in the greatest act of hubris since Oedipus tried to defy the prophecy of the gods, he went ahead.
He told Angela Merkel not to worry, he was a winner. He let half the cabinet campaign on the other side of the argument. This disaster did not unleash itself all at once. It was a matter of a sequence of tactical choices that ended up precipitating him and us into the abyss. All future politicians should look at the small steps that led to disaster, and learn from them.
It is just over four years since Cameron conceded a referendum in his Bloomberg speech in January 2013. It was a good speech, thoughtful and insightful about the EU’s strengths and failings. It recognised the extraordinary achievement of peace, how it had happened not “like a change in the weather” but because of “determined work over generations”.
He was also uncompromising about the importance for the UK of remaining a member. And while he promised a referendum, he also said it wouldn’t happen until the EU had reformed and adapted to the changing demands of a globalised economy.
He laid out an ambitious vision of a different kind of EU. It would, he admitted, require extensive remodelling, with the support of all 28 members. He held out the distant ambition of an EU that looked more like the UK. He said he wouldn’t have a referendum until the reforms were made. He said he wouldn’t have a referendum that was a choice between the status quo and coming out. And then he did.
Cameron didn’t mess up through stupidity, or cupidity, or venality or ignorance. He messed up because of the way he did politics. All shine and no substance. He treated politics as a game of chance, a matter of tactics and calculated odds disguised under a veneer of principle by a handful of totemic policies like same-sex marriage. (One of the short list of achievements he mentioned on his departure from public life.)
Unexpectedly in power with a Tory majority for the first time since 1992, instead of facing down the right of the party who were demanding a referendum he was forced to concede. He pledged to have one before the end of 2017.
Then he went early, with no high profile reforms to justify it. And finally, instead of framing the campaign as a battle for a better, stronger future, for a Europe of which Britain was a proud member, dwelling on its achievements and elaborating on its potential – an approach that might have got, say, the Germans and the Dutch fighting on the same side – he allowed it to become a virility contest about whether or not Britain could stand alone. Instead of trying to persuade voters that change was good, he conceded it was bad.
Confident of victory, Cameron did not consider the consequences of the campaign. So in the end, he did not just make defeat possible, he shaped the way that the defeat itself would be interpreted. He accidentally rigged the course for today. Those questions he wanted resolved? It turns out he got the answer wrong. It wasn’t yes, it was no.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn does not have a better plan for Brexit than Theresa May but, so far, he hasn’t needed one. After the referendum, the prime minister and the Labour leader embarked on parallel journeys, each carrying promises of painless, cost-free release from EU membership. May’s path was harder. Her pledges were snagged on governing reality, skewered by Brussels, hung up on parliamentary arithmetic. Opposition has protected Corbyn from those jagged edges, but he cannot avoid them for ever. Rebellion in the House of Lords has brought them uncomfortably close.
The upper chamber has rewritten the EU withdrawal bill so it urges the government to negotiate a much softer Brexit. More than 80 Labour peers defied their whips to support membership of the European Economic Area, thereby preserving British integration in the single market. There are MPs from all parties who will want to endorse that amendment when it comes back to the Commons. They see the EEA as the least-damaging Brexit model: a safety net for jobs and investment.
At a factory in Essex today, three political grandees gathered to make that argument: David Miliband, former Labour foreign secretary; Nick Clegg, former Liberal Democrat leader; and Nicky Morgan, Tory chair of the Treasury select committee. The intended symbolism of the triptych was that averting a hard Brexit is a mission that transcends party boundaries.
That message might resonate with some non-aligned voters, but it is hard to imagine a collection of messengers less likely to shift opinion in Corbyn’s camp. The official Labour view is that single market membership is incompatible with the referendum result. That is a facsimile of May’s argument. It is also untrue. The ballot paper had no subsidiary questions on post-EU arrangements. So why is Labour pumping up the tyres on May’s hard Brexit bus?
Three reasons stand out. First: a fear of being cast as Europhile saboteurs. In legal terms, the EEA is not the European Union, but in cultural terms the accusation of a sellout resonates with many leave voters. Labour is not polling well enough in areas that voted for Brexit to risk letting off a remain-themed firework in parliament.
Second: squeamishness about immigration policy – EEA membership would preserve free labour movement. That doesn’t have to mean totally unregulated borders: there are mechanisms such as work permits for managing migration from within the single market. But to advertise them, Labour would have to take the initiative on a subject that is fraught with risk. Perceived softness on immigration costs the party votes, while any hardening of rhetoric would jar with Corbyn’s caring brand. By rejecting the single market he can be strict on borders without sounding mean to foreigners.
Third: there is ideological hostility to single market rules prohibiting certain forms of industrial subsidy. Those restrictions, it is argued, would obstruct a radical-left economic programme. Whether that is true depends on how radical and how left you want to go. Everything in Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto could have been implemented within existing EU rules. The leader’s office might be fizzing with more drastic anti-capitalist plans, but no one says what they are.
The arguments over Labour’s Brexit position are a tangle of dogma, idealism and electoral pragmatism. They don’t map neatly on to the outdated scheme of a Corbynite movement in conflict with a Blairite reaction. There are Momentum activists who burn with the spirit of remain. There are Labour MPs who would bury Corbynism but also bow to the Eurosceptic will of their constituents.
The more fundamental distinction is between those who start from the belief that any Labour government is always better than any alternative, and those who don’t. For tribal loyalists, Brexit strategy is subordinate to the goal of beating the Tories. That is the lens the leadership applies and it would be bizarre if it didn’t. (Whether it makes the right choices to achieve that goal is a different matter.)
Then there is the ethos expressed by Miliband, Clegg and Morgan today, that getting Brexit right is in the national interest, bigger than any party. There are Labour backbenchers who have no affection for the current leadership but cannot imagine campaigning in a rosette that isn’t red. But others have crossed that psychological Rubicon. They expect to be driven out of the party before a general election, either by the Corbyn machine or their own consciences. Their allegiance is more remain than Labour. They will vote accordingly.
Beyond parliament, tension between pro-European and pro-Labour feelings is strangely submerged. Many of Corbyn’s enthusiastic younger fans are also eager remainers. The leadership strategy seems to be to persuade them that leaving the EU is only a disaster because it is being organised by Tories. Make Jeremy prime minister, the argument goes, and the bad feelings disappear. It is true Corbyn commands phenomenal amounts of trust. But many of his supporters also want to stop Brexit, or at least to vote on it again. And they can see that their leader is less bothered.
Corbyn’s eager acceptance of the referendum result could, at first, be lauded as fulfilling his duty as a democrat. The same could just about be said when he voted for article 50 and again when he ran on a pro-Brexit manifesto. When he sacked a shadow cabinet minister who called for another referendum, it was a question of loyalty and discipline … But then, why doesn’t Corbyn want a public vote on the final deal? Why would he whip MPs to abstain in a vote to make Brexit softer? Why take the afternoon off to make a Tory prime minister’s job easier?
At some point even the most indulgent audience will see these as the choices of a leader who not only likes Brexit, but likes it hard. Then the question is whether Labour remainers trust Corbyn more than they hate leaving the EU. How far can he test their patience? He seems determined to find out.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
There is a weariness to the coterie of diplomats and officials based in Brussels intimately involved in the negotiations over the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European union. Privately they describe it as “Brexit fatigue”, the result of second-guessing a chaotic situation in Westminster for two years, and working through the summer in response to the demand from the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, for continuous negotiations. These officials from the 27 other EU member states were picked as the brightest and the best for the existential crisis of the time, but the hard truth for these ambitious men and women is that the crisis in question is no longer Brexit.
“You go to the capitals, you can see that, because no one talks about it any more,” said Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the leading EU thinktank, the European Policy Centre. Speaking to his parliament on his return to Madrid from the recent leaders’ summit in Brussels, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, put it succinctly: “The British spend 24 hours a day thinking about Brexit and the Europeans think about it for four minutes every trimester.” While the UK’s chaotic withdrawal has become a dreary process to be managed, the EU is being dealt hammer blows from elsewhere – from crises that really could make or break the bloc, along with many diplomatic careers.
Foremost on the list of problem zones right now is Italy. “Nothing and nobody, no big or small letter will make us backtrack,” the country’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, and leader of the far-right League, told his followers in a Facebook video made in his office in Rome on Friday. “Italy will no longer be a slave and will no longer kneel down.”
Last month the European commission took the unprecedented and high-risk step of rejecting the draft budget of the third-biggest economy in the eurozone, in a move designed to force the country’s democratically elected government to rein in its spending.
With borrowing at 130% of gross domestic product, second only to Greece in the EU, Italy is said to be a danger to financial stability across Europe. Its government has been told to come up with a revised financial plan by 13 November, or face huge fines.
The potency of the Italian problem is that it perfectly encapsulates the central, and potentially fatal, issue that the European Union member states and Brussels have repeatedly failed to grapple with in any meaningful sense, either from political cowardice or lack of will.
When Ireland, Greece and Portugal were plunged into severe crisis as a result of the global recession, where they might once have changed their interest rates, or devalued their currencies, to get themselves back on their feet, instead their governments were simply forced to watch their young flee overseas.
Because they were eurozone countries, they had lost those crucial monetary levers. They were simply put on an austerity diet by Brussels in return for loans, and told to get their house in order at a brutal cost.
And for all the later admissions that the EU itself had been at fault in allowing such divergence in the fortunes of European economies in the first place, there has been little attempt since to build the institutional structures that could now help to promote growth in the poorest parts of Europe or respond to future economic shocks.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, has called for a eurozone treasury and finance minister. There are repeated calls for the completion of the banking union, under which savers’ deposits, wherever they are held, would be guaranteed in times of crisis. But while prevarication has ruled the day, the wealth divide between the north and south of the eurozone has deepened.
According to International Monetary Fund data, the GDP per capita in Germany jumped 19% in 2016 from 2010 levels and 14% in the Netherlands and France.
In southern countries, where the GDP per capita was already lower to start with, it grew much more slowly. In Italy it rose only 6%, in Portugal 10% – and it fell 7% in Greece in the same period.
There is, meanwhile, a stench of double standards about the enforcement of the growth and stability pact under which governments have been obliged since 1997 to ensure budget deficits should be no higher than 3% of gross domestic product and that national debt is below 60% of GDP.
Loopholes and exceptions have traditionally ruled the day. “France is France”, Juncker said in 2016 of turning a blind eye to the debt levels being amassed by presidents in the Élysée palace.
Little wonder then that the new Italian coalition government of the populist Five Star Movement and the rightwing League has balked at the attempt to force such an economic strait-jacket upon Italy. And offered others encouragement.
Fabio Massimo Castaldo, a Five Star MEP who is a vice-president of the European parliament, told the Observer: “After some threats to cut the European funds, in 2016 the commission has pardoned Spain and Portugal for their public spending budget.
“This should serve as a precedent for Italy. It’s the path to follow to sort out the problems with the EU. Some EU commissioners should, also, realise that our government is the most appreciated right now among the European big countries. President Conte’s approval rate raised above 60% of the Italian population. Clearly we cannot say the same about [Emmanuel] Macron or [Angela] Merkel.”
Guntram Wolff, director of the Brussels-based Bruegel thinktank, said it was a ominous moment which indicated the potentially fatal contradiction at the heart of this imperfect union. He said: “What we seeing now is a tension between fiscal sovereignty at the national level – the Italian parliament can and should decide its own budgetary policies – and the fact that this sovereign country has subscribed to monetary union and there are conditions, including all the fiscal rules, and they have all signed the treaties.”
The timing could not be worse. Europe goes to the polls next May to elect members of the European parliament. The high drama is perfect succour for the likes of Steve Bannon, the former key strategist in Donald Trump’s White House, who has pledged to use the moment to start a populist revolution, with Salvini’s support.
“The governance and completion of the economic monetary union is important but it goes deeper than that,” Zuleeg said of the clash with Italy. “The issue is the fragmentation and the rise of populist illiberal governments in some countries using this process as a tool to prove to the electorate that they can deliver and also challenge the EU.
“Maybe from an economic perspective there is now an acceptance that you let the markets do their thing. The market will punish Italy, they will punish any other country that goes down that route. But how you deal with that situation politically is the real challenge. How do we deal with the mess that we are going to have after the European parliament election with a big bloc of anti-EU, anti-democracy parties, to put it very bluntly?”
Poland and Hungary, led respectively by the hard-right Law and Justice party and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, are already squeezing the maximum propaganda value out of the commission’s decision to launch its most serious disciplinary action against them for flagrant breaches of democratic norms. They know they are safe from the ultimate punishment of losing their voting rights, as each nation has promised to veto such a move should it come before the 28 member states.
Europe is crying out for leadership. And, perhaps when French president Macron – recently buffeted by approval ratings of 26% – is back from a break next week, said to have been necessary due to exhaustion, he can deliver it. But it not that is not something that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who last week announced her decision not to stand again in 2021, following a series of electoral disasters, is likely to be offering for long.
“Populists are already hoping to bolster their numbers in the parliament next year, and use their newfound influence to affect the EU’s personnel choices and policy output over the next five years”, said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy. “With Merkel now clearly in her twilight zone, they will see next year as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fundamentally change the rules of the game in Brussels.”
With such a gloomy outlook, it might suit Juncker and Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, to avert their eyes from the continent for a moment. But they probably won’t want to gaze towards America, for hanging over Europe is a trade war that could make the bloc a much poorer place.
Last July, Juncker visited the US president in the White House and came back having secured a temporary reprieve from a trade conflict that started with punitive tariffs on European steel and aluminium exports and had threatened to hit the European car market, particularly that of Germany.
An uneasy truce was reached before the midterm elections in which Juncker promised to talk about opening Europe to American imports, and made the absurd suggestion that the EU would buy more soy beans from US farmers in the midwest, a key Trump constituency. European farmers were already buying up soy beans from the US simply because they were the most competitive on the market as a result of the US-China trade war. Perhaps the conceit suited both sides then. But the soybean offensive looks likely to have run out of steam.
While seeking to avoid upsetting Trump on trade, the EU has so far set its position against the White House in relation to the US withdrawal from the so-called joint comprehensive plan of action, under which economic sanctions on Iran have been lifted in return for the regime curtailing its nuclear aspirations.
The EU has signalled its intention to protect European firms from sanctions, something the US ambassador Dennis Shea told the World Trade Organisation’s monthly dispute settlement meeting that Washington was “deeply disappointed” about. “We would encourage the European countries to consider carefully their broader economic, political, and security interests”, he is said to have warned.
The US will this week reimpose all sanctions on Iran that were lifted by the Obama administration after the 2015 nuclear agreement. The midterm elections, meanwhile, will be held on Tuesday, with Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European council for foreign relations, predicting that a good set of results will ‘unleash” Trump from the wiser heads in the US administration, while a bad set could leave him “unhinged”.
Rosa Balfour, a senior transatlantic fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States thinktank, said the fragility of the EU’s unity on foreign affairs, displayed by the contradictory responses to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, could be exposed. “Germany stopped its arms sales, while France didn’t,” she said. “And on Iran we really need to see whether the member states will stick with what they said they will do.
“For me the trade and Iran bit have always been quite combined. Two at the same time is not smart probably if you don’t want Trump to get angry.”
A founding father of the European union, Jean Monnet, prophesied in 1978 that “Europe will be forged in crises”; he foresaw that the bloc would end up being “the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises”.
At a summit next spring, in Sibiu, Transylvania, in central Romania, Juncker has called for his fellow leaders of the remaining 27 member states to renew “a commitment to an EU that delivers on the issues that really matter to people”.
Andrew Duff, a former MEP, author, president of the federalist Spinelli group, and veteran observer of many a European crisis, is sceptical of a great leap forward. But he believes the leaders, buffeted by world events, should, for all their near indifference at times to the Brexit process, have the UK, the world’s fifth-biggest economy, in their mind.
“You can blame the British, and everyone is going to do that, but the fact that the EU has appeared to have been so unsettled and fractious and at odds internally on a whole host of issues from immigration to Putin to Trump, it hasn’t been a glorious spectacle,” Duff said. “The Brits aren’t to be blamed for falling out of love with the EU in those circumstances.”
Duff added that the EU must consider the scenario “where the Brits change their mind”. “And if you can find something that works well, grows the member states’ economies, and provides internal and external security, which is what we all want, there is a chance the Brits will change their minds. Especially if the future isn’t as glorious as the Brexiters claim it can be.” Brexit might not be on the EU’s mind today, but building a Europe that the UK may want to rejoin possibly should be.
November, 5
Washington will next week reimpose all sanctions on Iran that were lifted by the Obama administration after the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran.
Donald Trump, since breaking that deal in May, has vowed to cut off Iranian oil revenue completely, and EU companies trading with oil exporters and tankers face punishment from the US administration.
November, 13
The European commission wants answers from Italy on the budget it has rejected as being a risk to Eurozone stability. Brussels warned this week that it could launch excessive deficit procedure against Rome’s populist government at any time over its insistence on high spending and borrowing.
Leaders from across the EU will gather in Brussels for a summit where it will be hoped that the withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future relationship can be signed off with the UK.
March, 29
The United Kingdom is due to leave the European Union.
May, 9
At a summit in Sibiu, Romania, the leaders of the remaining 27 EU member states will try to grapple with the genuine reform needed, in particular of the Eurozone, so that they can deal with future financial crises, perform as a military union and maintain unity between the east and west of the European union at a time of heightened tensions.
May, 23 - 26
Europeans go to the polls to elect members of the European parliament. The French president, Emmanuel Macron has framed the poll as a battle between progressive and pro-European forces against those of the nationalist, eurosceptic and anti-immigration extreme right.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
Public scientific research is one of Britain’s great unsung industries. Its turnover is around £8bn, it employs some 100,000 researchers and it leads the world. After the US, we produce more cited research papers than anyone else. We’re not as good as we should be in translating all that effort into companies, products and services. But without its stimulus, our moderate levels of private business research, itself employing another 150,000 researchers, would be even lower. Nonetheless, as a self-standing industry, public scientific research is one of our most competitive and a top exporter.
Or it was. It is one of the many areas of our economic life likely to take an irreparable hit as Britain leaves the EU. Britain’s leadership position was built on the excellence of its science, capacity to attract talent and the extraordinary ability of its scientists to build international networks bidding for EU research money. The EU is spending £70bn on scientific research in its Horizon 2020 programme: up until 23 June, more of it was being allocated to British-led partnerships than any other member state.
Three-quarters of all the increase in scientific funding to universities has come from the EU over the last few years. Just as importantly, science has long since gone international, whatever Ukip and Tory Brexiters may think; the world’s biggest research base and generator of science is the EU: 64% of British scientific research is built on international collaborations, unerpinned by EU funding, now contributing nearly one in five research pounds spent in British universities.
Researchers from Europe, joining these collaborations, could live in Britain freely. Unless Boris Johnson and lead Brexit negotiator David Davis stop babbling about possible trade deals years hence outside the EU and become unexpectedly non-ideological and nimble – and Theresa May and home secretary, Amber Rudd, very pragmatic about immigration – British science is about to be very badly hurt.
Mike Galsworthy, director of Scientists for EU, already reports 378 responses to his Brexit impact monitoring database . Over a quarter have encountered problems with being part of consortiums bidding for intensely competitive Horizon 2020 funding. Everyone fears the risks in a few years of having non-EU Britain as a partner. Worse still are reports of xenophobia cited by EU research scientists in their daily life in buses, trains, shops and from neighbours. Word is spreading fast: don’t come to Britain. From being at the heart of European scientific research, Britain is going to the margins, with incalculable consequences for our knowledge base, the standing of our universities and research jobs.
It is the same across the board. All the relatively strong parts of our otherwise weak economy have built their strength on EU membership and after more than 40 years the links are deep – and very expensive to unravel. The single market offers a “passport” to all member state companies, allowing them to do business anywhere in the EU without further certification or regulation.
Banks and insurance companies have already begun quietly moving their bases to within the EU to sustain their ability to trade via the bank passport: Airbus at last week’s Farnborough airshow made the same point – it did not want to plough through thousands of pages of UK regulations to invest in Britain. Rolls-Royce similarly. Bank of England agents across the country report that the majority of investment proposals have been frozen; inward investment has trickled to nothing. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors reports the sharpest fall in expectations of rising house prices since 2004.
This has all the ingredients of not just a Brexit recession but one followed by protracted stagnation. I think the risks of a credit crunch are understated, despite the Bank of England allowing banks to use more of their capital buffer to support new lending. Property prices for farmland and commercial property are dependent on either the common agricultural policy supporting farmland prices or the nearly 500 multinationals headquartered in Britain demanding office space because of our access to the single market. Prices could plunge, with huge loan write-downs inevitable.
Moreover, as the Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, recently remarked in an important speech, the British recovery is much more anaemic than widely reported. “So far at least,” he said, “this has been a recovery for the too few rather than the too many, a recovery delivering a little too little rather than far too much.” It has been a jobs rich but pay poor recovery, with half of UK households seeing no increase in their disposable income since 2005 – a lost decade of income. It has been the young and those in the regions who have suffered worst.
Brexit will make all this much worse, but badly handled by the Brexiters catapulted into leading the negotiations, it could morph into a catastrophe. David Davis airily dismissed these risks in an article for ConservativeHome before his appointment. His favoured option was for Britain to trade with the EU under essentially World Trade Organisation rules in a dreamland where there are only benefits and no costs.
Theresa May is trying hard; including Scotland in the talks as she has promised makes Brexiter stupidity a bit less likely. All the country’s economic constituencies – manufacturing, science, the creative industries, energy, finance – need to make it plain as the recession gathers momentum how crucial it is that we stay as close to the EU as possible and demand their role in the talks too, as should parliament.
Sixteen million of us voted to remain: many who voted to leave will reconsider as the facts that were withheld by a propagandist press and callow, cowed BBC become more obvious. The country was lied to by the hard right and its allies on a scale not witnessed in our history. To argue that the resulting vote at one moment in time represents Britain’s last word on the matter is a travesty of democracy, especially as the consequences unfold.
Democracies discuss and debate, especially when they risk going over a cliff. It may take the 16 million to form a new political party to make the case as Labour dies. It’s our country too and we don’t need to live in a xenophobic economic dead zone.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
Theresa May has just announced her plans for Brexit and they are crystal-clear. At the heart of her proposal is membership of the single market – and the long sought after reassurance that jobs, particularly in the north of England, will be safe. There’s good news for EU nationals, who can continue to live and work here, and free movement for workers will continue in the future too – meaning our economy will be better off and our communities enriched.
Environmental rules and workers’ rights are safe – the prime minister’s decision to remain a part of the biggest trading area in the world will safeguard those protections. We’re set to leave the EU, as the British people voted for by a small majority, but the government has a plan to retain and enhance the many benefits of EU membership, and an interim arrangement with the EU is in place in case the negotiations don’t get done in the two years allowed. May’s promise of “Brexit meaning Brexit” remains true but, at long last, she’s given MPs the details we need to make an informed choice about our vote on triggering article 50.
Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? That’s because it is.
The reality of the situation couldn’t be more different. Five months after the referendum, and with a supreme court appeal on article 50 looming, we’re still left with little more than hot air from a government that is driving us towards the Brexit cliff edge, with the doors of the car locked and its eyes firmly shut.
What will Brexit mean for the EU nationals who live and work in our neighbourhoods? Will our beaches and wildlife still be protected? What kind of trade agreement will we have with Europe? Ministers just keep shrugging their shoulders, demanding our trust when they’ve done nothing discernible to earn it.
Though I’m proud to have fought as hard as I could to stop Britain from leaving the EU, I’m not one of the MPs who immediately pledged to vote against article 50 after the high court’s ruling on the issue earlier this month. In the heat of the moment it would have been easy to offer an immediate kneejerk refusal to trigger article 50 in any circumstance. Similarly rash is the response of those, like the Labour leadership, who have gone too far other way – making an early promise to support the government in beginning the Brexit process. By doing so they’ve given away any bargaining power they had – and given the government’s agenda a real boost.
Instead, I’ve come to a considered conclusion, given the circumstances and based on both principle and logic: I won’t be voting to trigger article 50. Without any plans to properly involve parliament before a vote, to call a general election or offer the protection of a referendum on the terms of any deal, how could I – as a democrat and someone who believes in social and environmental justice – possibly vote to throw the country into the potential nightmare of leaving the EU within two years without any proper plan? I don’t know whether it’s primarily arrogance or incompetence that’s causing such anti-democratic posturing by the Conservatives, but I do know it’s extraordinary they expect MPs to simply fall in line without knowing what we’re voting for.
Ultimately, voting to trigger article 50 – without any firm guarantees about what Brexit would mean, for everything from the security and family life of the many EU nationals working in places such as Brighton’s universities to whether there’s any way to enforce standards for the quality of the air we all breathe – would risk undermining the work that the constituents of Brighton Pavilion put me in parliament to do, and the pledges my party made to the more than 1 million people who voted for us.
The government seems to have morphed a marginal vote in favour of leaving the EU into a phantom majority that wants us out of the single market – and all of the benefits it entails – despite the public never being asked their opinion on it. Without any solid proposals for an interim deal after two years of negotiation, the Conservatives’ plan is particularly reckless.
I still believe that Britain is better off as part of the European Union, and I’ll be campaigning in the next election for our continued membership of the biggest peace project in history. As a constituency MP and co-leader of a national party, I believe that I have a duty both to represent my constituents and to act in the country’s interest – and I firmly believe that voting to trigger article 50, with things as they currently stand, runs counter to both of those roles.
Our country has been shaken to the core by the EU referendum campaign and the divisions it revealed – and what happens next will define us for generations to come. That’s why I’m more committed than ever to both exposing and opposing government recklessness on Brexit, and looking to build a more united, fairer and more democratic Britain – whatever the outcome of negotiations with Europe.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
In 1981, the Gang of Four split from Labour to form the Social Democratic party (SDP). The new party did not come close to power, but it won a huge number of votes – 7.8m in 1983 – and kept Labour out of government for a generation. In this time, Margaret Thatcher set fire to the fabric of British society: depriving schools and hospitals of funding, annihilating British industries, disempowering unions and accelerating privatisation.
Growing up in Tottenham with a single mother who worked several jobs to put food on the table, I experienced first hand how splits on the left let Thatcher turn Britain cold.
Today, Labour’s vision for a fairer society faces a similar threat. The development of a new centrist rival has been an open secret in the Westminster tea rooms for months. Funding from individuals and big business is rumoured to be already in place. As the New Statesman reported, a split has become “inevitable”.
There’s one key reason for this: Brexit. The public has changed its mind on the European Union. Recent polling showed that 100 constituencies that voted to leave the EU have now switched support to Remain; 69% of Brits think Brexit is going badly. Of those asked, nearly twice as many support a new referendum on the government’s final deal than oppose it. But voters who recognise retaining EU membership as the biggest issue of our time are being deprived of an electorally significant opposition party to support.
For the past two years, my party has remained stubborn in its commitment to Brexit, while never fully ruling out the possibility of a referendum on the final deal. While I would never have supported it, tacticians may once have been able to justify a position of “constructive ambiguity”. This time has now passed. With just months remaining until we leave the EU, the clock is ticking for us to save the country from this hard-right Tory fantasy, which was built on xenophobia, lies and a law-breaking campaign.
As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, made clear, the Chequers agreement in its current form will be rejected because it requires the “unravelling” of core parts of the EU. Meanwhile, the reality of the no-deal alternative is so bleak, it is almost impossible. The only deal acceptable to EU that gives the UK the access it needs is something close to European Economic Area membership. Very soon, Labour will have to decide whether to save Theresa May and vote for this or call for a people’s vote, which offers the chance to remain in the EU.
If the official opposition does not stand by the inevitable results of Keir Starmer’s six tests and oppose Brexit, a new party will, with the clear purpose of restoring the UK’s economy, our country’s place at the top table of diplomacy and stealing the open, internationalist vision that for so long has been associated with Labour. It’s impossible to predict how well this party will do. Whether it eventually wins 20 seats or 200, a new party will more than likely block us, the Labour party, and condemn Britain to at least another decade of disastrous Tory dominance.
In the 1980s, Labour had no simple way to kill off the SDP. Today, we can do it with a single press release. A new centrist party without the Brexit issue to distinguish itself would be like a rocket without fuel. By calling for a referendum that crucially offers Britain the right to remain in the EU, Labour would capitalise on the public’s change of mood. It would also unite Labour members, 75% of whom want a vote, as well as the PLP, which at heart remains strongly pro-EU.
Much of the excitement around Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader has been based on his promise to democratise the party. For this, he deserves credit. But to honour this promise, the party conference must be allowed to determine Labour’s Brexit position. Preventing a vote on the biggest political decision this country is facing would be a betrayal.
The strategic argument for Labour’s opposition to Brexit has emerged over time, but the underlying reasons have been self-evident from day one. The party of Keir Hardie simply cannot vote with the government as it kneecaps our economy, savages environmental and workers’ rights and constrains the horizons of our young supporters to this small island, against their will.
If we want to build a fairer and more equal Britain, it’s time for Labour to stop pussyfooting around and lead calls for a people’s vote.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
In the parliamentary drama of the coming week, the term “Namierite” is one you are unlikely to hear often, if at all. But it matches perfectly this moment in the Brexit saga – wretchedly so, in fact. Sir Lewis Namier (1888-1960), one of the great historians of the 18th century, argued, on the basis of detailed forensic analysis, that most political behaviour is not motivated by high idealism, but the complex interaction of faction and connections, the search for personal advantage and the force of self-interest.
In his masterpiece, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, he wrote: “Men … no more dreamt of a seat in the House in order to benefit humanity than a child dreams of a birthday cake that others may eat it … the seat in the House was not their ultimate goal but a means to ulterior aims.”
Which might strike you as horribly cynical – until you look at the present conduct of MPs as they prepare for Tuesday’s “meaningful vote” on Theresa May’s Brexit deal (the second, of course, following her thumping defeat first time round). It is a panorama of snivelling self-interest, squirming caucuses and abject tacticians posturing as statesmen.
Please bear in mind – because it is easy to forget in the political quagmire – what is at stake this week: nothing less than the constitutional, economic and social future of this country. So why are Tories even talking about their party’s leadership – as though the date of the prime minister’s departure will have any impact upon, say, the vexed issue of the Irish border, or the risk that the NHS might run out of life-saving medication, or that certain foods could become unavailable?
I have been arguing that May should quit since she squandered the Conservative majority in the 2017 general election. But – with fewer than 20 days to go until the UK’s official date of departure from the EU – of what possible interest is it that Amber Rudd may now (reportedly) be thinking of backing Boris Johnson, or that Esther McVey is preparing a bid for the top job? Have these people – or their surrogates – looked up the word “priority” in the dictionary?
No less deplorable is the briefing that Philip Hammond’s spring statement will dangle a bung of up to £20bn in additional public spending in front of MPs as an incentive to back his boss’s deal. This message has to be made public, of course, because the chancellor will be delivering his speech the day after the vote on the withdrawal agreement. The Commons needs to be informed of the incentive now, rather than on Wednesday. We have already seen this minority government disburse £1bn of public funds to buy the votes of the Democratic Unionist party. Is it seriously proposing to spend 20 times that amount to force through its disastrous Brexit deal?
Labour, meanwhile, shifts and shuffles on the question of a public vote, often appearing to care less about the consequences of Brexit for the country than the impact of its ever-morphing policy in leave-voting seats. After Jeremy Corbyn’s version of the deal was rejected by the Commons on 27 February, the ground was apparently set fair for the party to embrace, at last, a fresh referendum – as per the sequence agreed at its conference last year.
Yet on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, John McDonnell seemed to imply that he and his colleagues would still be pressing parliament to endorse their own alternative to May’s agreement. So which is it? Will the real version of Labour’s referendum policy please stand up?
Precisely when a clear sense of the public interest matters most, both main parties are locked in deep introspection – staring at the ground, in fear of the sun. For now, the identity of the next Conservative leader and “the difficult balance that Jeremy has to strike between remain and leave voters” should be second- or third-order issues. This week’s parliamentary decisions will determine what sort of country we live in for decades to come. In my book, that counts for more than the sensitivities of the European Research Group and tribal Corbynites.
Assuming that there is indeed a vote on Tuesday – and experience teaches us that No 10’s assurances cannot always be trusted – it is inconceivable that May will present the once-rejected deal unamended. There will, at minimum, be a new Post-it note, scribbled on by Michel Barnier, promising that the EU will be nice if it has to deploy the Irish border “backstop” mechanism.
But it is equally inconceivable that these reassurances, whatever they are, will satisfy the hardline Brexiteers. If it is put to the vote, the deal will fail (again).
On Wednesday – according to the present timetable – the Commons will vote on “no deal”, and will almost certainly mandate the government to rule it out. This, in turn, will force May to do what she has most dreaded, which is to give parliament the chance to seek an extension of article 50.
And it is at this point that the character of our political class should truly be judged. Will it seek a meaningless three-month deferral, as the PM hopes, or – in dialogue with the EU – ask for a longer period, in which parliament can pause, draw breath and, if it sees sense, give the voters a chance to break the impasse?
There are no risk-free options now, no steady-as-she- goes, old-fashioned British compromise. The whole issue has to be reframed, re-energised and rescued from its present captivity. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, told Marr that the deal’s failure this week would risk “Brexit paralysis”. But where do he and his colleagues imagine we are right now?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Is it true that Labour won’t be discussing Brexit at its conference?
Yes and no. Britain’s vote to leave the EU is widely seen as the biggest historical event in a generation and as such, of course, it will be discussed at Labour’s conference. But it is not on the formal agenda as a conference topic.
Why is it not on the agenda?
The party picks eight subjects for discussion. Four are chosen by trade unions and the remaining four are selected in a ballot of constituency Labour parties.
What are they discussing?
The four subjects picked by the unions were employment rights, industrial strategy, public services and energy. The top four subjects selected by the constituency parties were grammar schools (18.32%), housing (16.44%), child refugees (15.53%) and the NHS (15%). Brexit was one of many subjects on the ballot, but as it did not feature in the top four it does not make the formal agenda.
Why was Brexit not picked?
The simple answer is that trade unions and constituency parties care more about the subjects that they picked, such as employment rights and housing. But, more importantly, Brexit is a politically awkward subject for the party. Jeremy Corbyn backed remaining in the EU but with reservations. And his lacklustre campaigning on the issue was one of the key reasons for a challenge to his leadership. The vast majority of Labour MPs backed remaining in the EU, but many of Labour’s heartland areas, such as the north-west, north-east and Wales, voted to leave. The party does not want to alienate these areas by suggesting they got it wrong. But at the same time Labour does not have a clear stance on what it wants to see from the Brexit negotiations.
Is Corbyn likely to set out a Brexit strategy?
No. “He doesn’t see Brexit as a central issue and he doesn’t have a very fixed position of what the policy should look like,” said Simon Usherwood, a reader in European studies at the University of Surrey. “If someone was bold enough to set out a vision then I think they could go a long way. But Jeremy Corbyn is not going to be that man,” Usherwood told Agence France-Presse.
So is the subject of Brexit off limits at the conference?
No. It is one of the key talking points at the sidelines of the conference, in fringe meetings, and it will feature heavily in the speeches of key Labour figures. Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, will focus on the subject during her speech on Monday, when she will say that the party wants to spend billions of pounds on regeneration, among other projects, to make up for the loss of EU funding. “The communities who stand to lose out most from Brexit must be looked after first,” she will say.
Will Labour become the party of the 48% who voted for remain?
No. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, it would be very difficult for Labour to campaign for a second referendum, because so many of the party’s traditional supporters voted to leave. The former leader Ed Miliband dismissed talk of Labour becoming the party of the 48% as “nonsense”. He said: “I don’t just think it’s nonsense electorally, but it is incidentally because more than 400 seats in the country voted for leave, but it’s nonsense in principle because it buys into the same problem people were objecting to in their vote, which is the old: ‘We’re right, you’re wrong.’ I was for remain, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve got to hear people’s message that they’re telling us.” The former shadow welfare secretary Rachel Reeves summed up the party’s dilemma on Brexit, saying: “The big challenge now is between respecting the result of the referendum and maintaining some of those things about the European Union that most of us campaigned for.”
Is Labour being seen as out of touch by not putting Brexit on its conference agenda?
Yes. The result of the ballot on conference topics surprised commentators as it appeared to ignore the biggest political issue facing the country. The ConservativeHome founder, Tim Montgomerie, said the absence of Brexit from the agenda showed the perils of giving members more say than MPs on key decisions. “They have not even chosen Brexit to be debated this week – it [the membership] is not representative of the country as whole,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour. ITV’s political editor, Robert Peston, also expressed incredulity at the decision.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
Last week, in response to a petition seeking a referendum on the final deal, the government not only refused to allow “the people” to decide on the terms of Brexit, it categorically stated that parliament will not be allowed to do so either. Parliament will instead be given what it calls “a meaningful vote … either [to] accept the final agreement or leave the EU with no agreement”.
This is the opposite of “meaningful”; the government intends to refuse parliament the chance to reject both options – it must accept what is offered or take nothing at all. And this is the government’s position, irrespective of the dire consequences for our country or “the will of its people” to avoid them. Even though the UK could before March 2019 change its mind, the government says that it will on no account let that happen.
The reason given for this is said to be the government’s “firm policy” that “there must be no attempts to [reverse the referendum and] remain inside the European Union”; the government does not deny that reversal is legally possible. Its position accords with advice, which I am told from two good sources the prime minister has received, namely that the article 50 notification can be withdrawn by the UK at any time before 29 March 2019, resulting in the UK remaining in the EU on its current favourable terms. Such advice would also accord with the view of Lord Kerr, who was involved in drafting article 50, of Jean-Claude Piris, former director general of the Council of the EU’s legal service and of Martin Selmayr, a lawyer and head of cabinet to the president of the European commission.
As a lawyer, I agree with them. Article 50 provides for the notification – not of withdrawal but of an “intention” to withdraw. In law, an “intention” is not a binding commitment; it can be changed or withdrawn. Article 50(5) is, moreover, clear that it is only after a member state has left that it has to reapply to join. Had the drafters intended that once a notification had taken place, a member state would have to request readmission (or seek the consent of the other member states to stay), then article 50(5) would have referred not just to the position following withdrawal, but also following notification. Such an interpretation is in line with the object and purpose of article 50.
The EU’s competences are based on the consent of its member states. The authority to increase or reduce these competences is within their hands. Article 50 is an example of the principles of consent and conferral; it confirms the right of a member state to withdraw from the union. In the words of the German federal constitutional court in the Lisbon case, the “right to withdraw underlines the member states’ sovereignty… If a member state can withdraw based on a decision made on its own responsibility, the process of European integration is not irreversible”. The purpose of article 50 is therefore to confirm in express terms the member states’ ability to withdraw from the EU and to lay down the procedures for doing so. By confirming the right of states to withdraw from the EU treaties, article 50 maintains the right of states to change their mind on withdrawal, as provided for in article 68 of the Vienna convention on the law of treaties.
I have today sent a freedom of information request to the prime minister seeking disclosure of the legal advice and asking her to waive any privilege and release it in the greater public interest. It is important that this advice is made available to the British public and its representatives in parliament as soon as possible. At any point from now, but certainly when parliament is finally faced with the likely reality; a bad deal or no deal at all, it must act in the interests of the people and order the prime minister to revoke the notification. It can do this whether or not the government says so; parliament is sovereign – in constitutional theory at least, it controls the executive; not the other way round.
There is no time to waste. After 29 March 2019, the UK will no longer have this option (unless time is extended, which requires unanimity of the EU 27). It will have to reapply for membership – the special advantages that we currently have are likely to be lost.
The British public needs to understand that there is now a small window of time in which we still have it in our power to retain the fundamental rights and freedoms that the EU treaty guarantees us, our children and our businesses and in so doing, to protect the future happiness and prosperity of our country.
Jessica Simor is a QC at Matrix Chambers
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Theresa May today chairs her Brexit “war cabinet” to resolve growing tensions in government over the course of Brexit negotiations. This follows further defeats for No 10 in the House of Lords as the EU withdrawal bill is debated.
Some might call us a “house of unelected wreckers” – I was one of three peers pictured alongside this headline on the front page of Tuesday’s Daily Mail. But rather than being at war with the nation, we are its very custodians.
When I joined the House of Lords, as one of its youngest peers, I made it a point to speak in debates about Lords reform. Over nearly 12 years, those debates have shaped my view, giving me an understanding of the unique role of this institution of appointed, unelected members (including 92 hereditary peers and 26 bishops). It is one of the most effective parliamentary chambers in the world, mainly because of the depth and breadth of expertise. Furthermore, a minimum of a fifth of members have to be, like me, independent crossbench peers – not aligned to any political party.
This combination of expertise and independence enables the Lords to challenge the government, debate issues and scrutinise legislation with authority on a day-to-day basis. As the EU withdrawal bill makes its way through parliament, the Lords is a voice of reason, guiding the nation through one of the most challenging times in its history.
We are constantly called on to honour the will of the people. And yet the government has no defence against hundreds of arguments – whether discussing borders, education or the movement of people – other than, “we are implementing the will of the people”, the 17.4 million who voted in favour of Brexit.
However, the referendum was a yes-no vote, not a blank cheque to leave the EU whatever the terms.
This week we debated whether parliament should have a meaningful vote at the end of the Brexit negotiations. The government’s interpretation of “meaningful vote”, spelt out by the Brexit minister Lord Callanan, is that parliament will be given the option to accept the deal or, if not, we would leave the EU on a “no deal” basis, crashing out of the EU on World Trade Organisation rules. This would be an utter disaster – almost 70% of our overseas trade is with countries in the EU, single market and customs union or in a free trade agreement with the EU.
The government has already been defeated nine times, with Conservative members voting against their party whip in almost every instance. Over this latest amendment, promising parliament a “meaningful vote” on the final deal, 19 Conservative Lords – including former ministers – rebelled against the Government.
The Lords’ latest amendment allows parliament to have a proper say over our future deal with the EU, including an option of leaving on different terms, or even remaining in the EU if that is by far the best option.
MPs are caught in a trap. At the time of the referendum, over two-thirds of them thought the best thing for the country would be to remain in the EU. And yet many of their constituencies voted to leave. The confusion is whether they see themselves as delegates or leaders of their constituencies. Are they making these decisions in the interests of their constituents and country, or of their party? The difference between managers and leaders is that managers do things right whereas leaders do the right thing. Are our MPs managers or leaders? Do they have the guts to stand up when the time comes to do the right thing?
And the latest amendment, far from being anti-democratic, could even lead to parliament handing the public a vote on the final deal (or no deal). People were given four months in 2016 to understand the complex issue of our EU membership, spanning four decades. Now, two years after the referendum, so much has changed, the will of the people cannot be interpreted as “take it or leave it”; it is not leave “on whatever terms”.
Surely, with a permanent decision such as this, the public should be asked: “You voted to leave in June 2016 – are you still prepared to leave on these terms, or to accept that there will be no deal?” That, to me, would be real democracy.
In any normal democracy, you have elections every five years and people can change their minds. Deprive us of that option and you have a dictatorship.
The government has already shown that it is willing to bypass parliament. Theresa May wanted to implement article 50 without the assent of parliament, and is now trying to take Britain out of the EU without giving parliament a meaningful vote – let alone giving the people a meaningful say. Far from respecting democracy, it is bypassing democracy.
Whichever way you look at it, if remaining in the European Union is the best option by far, it is our duty in the House of Lords to make sure that option is available to the public.
We learn, day after day, more about the significance of Brexit. It is like watching a train crash in slow motion. Our amendments in the House of Lords are made in the hope that we give MPs the ability to stop this crash.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
One of the curiosities of the long rise of Ukip is that the party that wraps itself in the union flag, and invokes a cartoonish version of Britishness, seems to have such a limited understanding of Britain and its institutions. A ruling last week by three judges that parliament is sovereign and must scrutinise and authorise the triggering of article 50 to begin the process of the UK leaving the European Union should have been a cause for Eurosceptic celebration. The judges listened to legal arguments and, citing precedent, explained very clearly and carefully why parliament is sovereign in these matters and must pass an act to begin Brexit.
Nigel Farage was furious at this supposed incursion. He said that he had a “feeling” (ah, one of his feelings) that “betrayal is near”. Farage in full flow talks in almost mystical terms, as if he has some form of extrasensory perception that provides him with a unique insight into the course of national affairs and the tide of opinion. Having had such an enormous influence on shaping recent history, perhaps the trainee demagogue has started to fall for his own hype?
The establishment, Farage said, is plotting to overturn the result of the referendum and betray the nation. There are certainly a few people trying – mistakenly and pointlessly – to reverse Brexit, but they are not running the government and do not have the numbers in the House of Commons or the country. Brexit will happen, as sensible pro-Remain MPs acknowledge. The question is in what form exactly.
In that context, Farage’s rabblerousing is deeply dangerous, because it creates the false impression that Britain will be blocked from leaving the EU, locked in by dastardly, dark forces.His betrayal narrative has echoes of November 1918 in Germany. Immediately after the country had lost the First World War fair and square, the nationalistic right said that the army had been betrayed by the wicked politicians of the establishment who had sued for peace. In that vein, it cannot be long before a leading figure from Ukip warns of “the stab in the back”, a phrase heavy with Germanic historical import from the same era.
Farage’s dangerous reaction demonstrates again that the party he built has more in common with continental populist parties and the wilder fringe movements on the right and left than it does with the British tradition of parliamentary democracy and respect for institutions. Farage is a Poujadiste, in the mould of the infamous French politician who channelled the anger of small-town France.
But it is not just Ukip that has lost touch with the constitutional fundamentals. Other parts of the broad Brexit movement – some Tory MPs and the Eurosceptic press – have also reacted as if the article 50 decision constitutes a judicial coup against the Brexit vote. A full-blown constitutional crisis is underway, apparently, with parliament supposedly pitched against the people. Some of the more vocal Brexiters in the Tory parliamentary party have indulged this idea, illustrating what happens when campaigners become too hooked on runaway populism. Fresh from undermining the governor of the Bank of England, they are now on to the judiciary. Is there any part of the British system, which theoretically they are dedicated to defending, they won’t attack in lurid terms? Is even the Queen safe?
Everyone needs to calm down. The anger against the judges would be justified if they had declared the EU referendum invalid and banned Brexit. They did no such thing. They simply confirmed that parliament should have its proper place in the Brexit process. Of course it should.
It is not even as if the judges in this case have been particularly “activist”, which has been a problem in recent decades, with some judges pushing the interpretation of the law in a direction in tune with their thinking or trends in European law. Here – in the article 50 case – they took a thoroughly traditional and praiseworthy pro-parliament approach.
For this, they were branded “unelected”, which is unintentionally revealing. The charge that judges being unelected equates to illegitimacy is yet more crazy populist talk. We do not elect judges and for good reason. Centuries of constitutional development and experimentation produced a system, compromised and weakened by EU membership, in which the judiciary is independent. Parliament makes the laws and the courts interpret the law and make judgments. Of course, we could try electing judges, or ordering judges to disregard and ignore the rule of law on the order of politicians, but the international historical precedents do not suggest it ever ends well.
As someone who voted to leave the European Union, I simply cannot see the problem with the courts and parliament doing their respective jobs properly. Indeed, nothing could be more in tune with the vote to leave the European Union than three judges applying the law and declaring that parliament must give the go-ahead for article 50.
But it is important to understand the limits of what the court decided and what parliament can reasonably do next. It is not a mandate to stop the UK leaving the EU. Those who think it is are the mirror image of the hardline Brexiters. Those equally hardline Remainers who refuse to accept that they lost the referendum and want it set aside mount attacks that are almost as frenzied as those of the Faragists.
If the Remainiacs – and some are behaving like Jacobites – are not calling Leave voters stupid, they are the next moment branding them gullible, which is just a nicer way of saying stupid. But neither set of extremists is representative of, nor has a majority in, parliament or the country. What becomes ever more apparent over Brexit is that there is a need for an alliance between moderate (of which there are many) Leavers and moderate Remainers, those who regret the result on 23 June but accept it. If – if – a deal can be done after two years of talks with the EU, it will involve a degree of compromise, which again is supposed to be a British trait.
If there is no bespoke British deal to be done, because the EU refuses, it will be hardish Brexit time. The chances of the former rather than the latter outcome being the result are greatly enhanced by moderate Leavers and Remainers co-operating. If you voted Remain and want to avoid a hard Brexit, organise for compromise.
In terms of immediate next steps and article 50, the Commons wants assurances that the government has reasonable, achievable aims in its negotiations. There is not an appetite for blocking the process. The situation is more complicated in the House of Lords, but even there peers must know that an early election (achievable by the government voting itself out of office) would see Theresa May returned with a landslide majority for triggering article 50 and a mandate to get on with it.
It may not come to that, although the government has not helped calm the situation by rushing to appeal to the supreme court. Theresa May would have done better by calmly accepting the outcome and saying that it illustrated the soundness of a British system that rests on the independence of the judiciary, government accountability to parliament and representative parliamentary democracy. That is what leaving the EU was at root supposed to be about, surely.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Pressure is building on Labour to shift its Brexit stance. Owen Smith’s demand that the party should back a second referendum led to him losing his job. But there are growing calls for the party to adopt a less ambivalent position, either in favour of single market membership or of a second referendum. These arguments are framed as a statement both of principle and electoral common sense – the influential mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has argued that insisting on a further Brexit vote would place Labour “on the right side of public opinion”.
And there is apparently some polling evidence to back this up. A December 2017 survey for YouGov, commissioned by Best for Britain, found that 24% of voters currently planning to support Labour might change their minds before the next election. A few months later, another such survey suggested the Liberal Democrats would surge (in relative terms) to 18% if Labour and the Conservatives remain committed to leaving the EU.
Clearly such figures should be treated with some caution. It is quite hard to foresee an election between now and 29 March 2019, when the UK is due to leave the EU. Not least, the mechanics of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act make it a difficult outcome to engineer. Moreover, there is clearly a question as to whether the Labour leadership actually believes in the value of questioning Brexit.
Yet let’s leave aside whether a party recently characterised as made up of “remainers outside of Westminster led by Brexiteers within it” would favour a policy shift away from leaving the single market, or even the EU itself. Does Labour have anything to gain electorally by shifting in this direction?
Labour policy on Brexit has been driven as much – indeed more – by short-term politics as by concerns about the nature or depth of the future trading relationship between the UK and the EU. Consequently, the positions the party has adopted have generally consisted of soundbites designed to give the impression of distance from the government’s stance.
Jeremy Corbyn’s oft-repeated line that Labour wants “tariff-free access to the single market” sounds good to many of those with better things to do than study single markets, while being utterly devoid of meaning. Labour’s “six tests for Brexit” set out by Keir Starmer, not least his call for the maintenance of the “exact same benefits” of the single market, is as politically savvy as it is divorced from reality. Nowhere is it specified how Labour would pull off this trick.
Recent policy shifts over potential membership of a customs union should be interpreted in the same political light. The Labour leadership saw the prospect of inflicting a humiliating defeat on the government. And this defeat on a customs union is now likely, sooner or later, on an amendment to the trade bill after the local elections.
Yet it is interesting to note the trouble Corbyn went to to triangulate his position. He refrained from committing entirely to “a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union”. Rather he insisted that, in order to accept such a deal, the UK would need to have a say over future trade deals, something on which the EU has blown hot and cold in the last few days. Moreover, he emphasised that Britain would no longer accept freedom of movement, and hence would be leaving the single market.
So ambiguity has been the chosen approach for Labour. And it has worked. What colleagues have labelled Brexit Blairism has proved electorally highly effective. As this table shows, Labour picked up vote share across the board in both leave and remain constituencies.
Now, however, as the moment of Brexit truth approaches, many are claiming that Labour must make a clearer choice and come out more unequivocally for a far softer Brexit than the government seems to want. Implicit here is the assumption not only that this would be the “right” thing to do, but that it would be electorally advantageous.
This, however, is far from self-evident. Consider the figure below. It maps every constituency in England and Wales. To the left are those seats that swung disproportionately towards the Tories in 2017 and to the right are their Labour equivalents. In the top half are seats that went majority remain, while under the line are majority leave seats. Highlighted – in red and blue respectively – are seats where Labour or the Tories have a majority of less than 5% to overturn. These are, in other words, the target seats that really matter to party strategists.
What is apparent is the relative lack of Kensingtons or Canterburys waiting to fall to a Labour party expressing clearer opposition to Brexit. Justine Greening’s seat of Putney – which voted 72% remain and swung 10.23% to Labour last time – is one of the few red dots in the upper righthand quadrant. Of the 15 seats where Labour has the smallest margin to close, only two – Pudsey and Chipping Barnet – voted remain. In total, there are just 12 constituencies that voted remain where Labour require less than a 5% swing to win next time.
Moreover, it is in the bottom right quadrant – places where Labour gained more than average on the Conservatives last time, and that voted leave in the referendum – where the highest number of potential Labour gains are clustered. These are places, in effect, where their Brexit strategy in 2017 hit the electoral sweet spot. Labour needs to gain 34 seats for a majority of one at the next election. Of the 34 seats in England and Wales where they are running closest behind the Conservatives, there are more seats that are estimated to have voted over 60% to leave than to have voted remain.
Equally, there are places – principally in the bottom left of the graph – where Labour are vulnerable if the relatively small, but crucial, number of ex-Ukip supporters break off from their electoral coalition. The 10 Labour seats where the Tories have to do least to win next time round voted, on average, 63% leave. These are places where we might expect the Tories to pour a lot of resources, places such as Bolsover and Wakefield.
Brexit created a shift in our electoral geography. Most voters didn’t shift their allegiances due to Brexit. But enough, in some key places, did. Labour capitalised on this in 2017 via a position of strategic ambiguity. Whether this success was the result of deliberate policy or of blind luck is something for future historians to argue about. What matters here is the future.
And here the choice is relatively stark. Labour can either continue as it has to date, with continued incremental policy shifts keeping its position slightly softer than that of the government while still “respecting the referendum outcome”. Flexible ambiguity, in other words. Or, the party can break with its ambivalence and support either a Norway-type deal or – more ambitiously – a second referendum. For all the obvious hope out there that the party will choose the latter, the electoral maths seems to militate in favour of the former.
Last modified on Wed 10 Jul 2019 10.45 BST
The urge to bluster is universal among reckless men who have risked everything. They boom that events have proved them right, as if booming can drown the thought that they have made a colossal error. As their mistakes can cause the worst damage, politicians, propagandists and the politically committed in general are the worst blusterers of all.
The front page of the Daily Express of 8 August 1939 contains one of the finest blusters in British history. Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor, had so supported appeasing Hitler he dropped Winston Churchill from his pages for warning of the Nazi threat.
Beaverbrook and his journalists were desperate to prove that they had not betrayed their country. Under the headline “No War This Year”, the Express assured its readers that no less an authority than “Mr Selkirk Panton”, its Berlin correspondent, believed that “Herr Hitler, despite all his mysticism, is a hard-headed, hard-boiled politician… He will not risk everything over some hasty action”.
On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. On 3 September, Britain and France declared war on Germany. As luck would have it, on 3 September 2016 – 77 years to the day after its “no war this year” prediction failed so spectacularly – the print edition of the Express led with the headline that Britain was in a “Brexit boom”. Along with the rest of the rightwing press and the politicians who have led us to this pass, the Express is loud in its insistence that the “doom mongers” had been proved wrong.
Now, as then, we see the same desperation to believe that the Conservatives have not betrayed their country and the same refusal to face reality. We are not in recession because the Bank of England has pumped cheap money into the economy with Weimaresque abandon and reduced interest rates to their lowest level ever.
Keynes’s “euthanasia of the rentier” is upon us and might be an appealing prospect if the rentiers whose interest payments were vanishing were the misers of 19th-century fiction. As everyone saving for a pension is a rentier now, however, the Brexit “boom” rests on the bank ordering a miserable future for millions.
The lie direct of the Brexit campaign was that the European Union cost us £350m a week. The bigger lie, which some Leave supporters may even have believed, was that there were no hard choices. We could have it all. Immigration controls, prosperity, access to EU markets, without compliance with EU laws… Whatever we wanted, at no cost at all.
Or as Boris Johnson, a politician who has never made the mistake of believing what he says, told his credulous supporters: “This is a great country and great economy and I think people know we can do brilliantly if we take back control.”
An honest version of Johnson (if you can imagine such a creature) would have gone to the Nissan car workers in Sunderland and said words to the effect of: we may be able to deliver the immigration controls you want if we leave the single market but there is a risk that you will lose your jobs if we do.
The cynicism of Johnson, Gove and Farage’s failure to lay out the difficult decisions shocked the naive. But these men were charlatans fighting a campaign they were prepared to win without honour.
What ought to shock even the most cynical observer of public life is that the deceit continues to this day.
No government minister has gone to farmers in Wales, lorry drivers in Birmingham, Airbus engineers at Filton, let alone car workers in Sunderland, and warned them how the differences between a hard and soft Brexit could ruin their lives.
Tory politicians stay silent because they lack the intellectual honesty to say that Brexit has made Britain smaller. You can see us shrinking in the way leaders at the G20 treated Theresa May as an awkward “crasher” who had got in by mistake ; in Japan’s undiplomatic hints that not just Nissan but all Japanese businesses in Britain will think about leaving if we leave the single market; and in America and Australia’s announcements that securing a trade deal with the EU came before securing trade deals with the UK.
Not that we can secure trade deals just like that. If you wish to get a measure of the mess we are in, read the papers Nick Clegg has produced on the hair-raising practical obstacles ahead.
The right promised it would free us from “Brussels red tape”, to quote one example among many. Yet a new trade deal will result in “significantly more red tape for British companies exporting to the EU as British exporters will have to obtain proof of origin certificates from their national customs authorities”, certificates that will increase trade costs with the EU by between 4% and 15%.
We cannot strike agreements with 50 countries currently covered by our EU arrangements until we strike a trade deal with the EU, because everyone else will want to know where we stand.
We won’t strike a deal with the EU, for – what? – three, five 10 years? How many jobs will be lost and foreign investors driven away in the process is a subject the prime minister needs to start talking about.
Instead of facing up to the scale of the uncertainty, today’s Conservatives kid themselves as their ancestors did in the 1930s. Listen to Conservative ministers and read the rightwing press and delusion is on display everywhere.
Boris Johnson says we are a great country. Not any more. What greatness we possessed came from our alliances. By voting to leave we have ignored the advice of every friend we had in the world. Now we are asking the countries we spurned to help us and they are finding reasons to look away.
The right says the EU will want to give us a better deal out than we had in because the EU nations will still want their exporters to sell to us. They don’t look at how politically impossible it would be for Europe’s leaders to tear up EU rules when they are having to face down their own xenophobes and Europhobes.
They don’t have a shred of evidence that the EU will appease us. Just a forlorn hope and an echo of voices from the time of the British appeasers. They were as convinced that they were dealing with “hard-headed, hard-boiled politicians”, who would do whatever Britain wanted and not “risk everything over some hasty action”. They were as befuddled.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.21 GMT
Britain’s exit from the EU must make the country more prosperous and fair, maintain an open economy and increase people’s democratic rights, a group of academics has urged in a list of four tests for making a success of Brexit.
As Theresa May prepares for a parliamentary vote that is expected to sanction the triggering of the article 50 process to leave the EU, the thinktank The UK in a Changing Europe has set out criteria for uniting leave and remain supporters.
Its report, entitled A Successful Brexit: Four Economic Tests, outlines a framework for judging whether Brexit has been successful, and that the group of academics feels should be guiding principles throughout talks to leave the EU.
“We need to move beyond platitudes to focus on likely outcomes for individuals, families, businesses and the country as a whole,” the report says.
“To find out whether we are headed for a successful Brexit, we need to know not just what Brexit means, but what constitutes ‘success’ and what ‘works’. For this, we need an agreed set of ‘tests’ against which we can evaluate the government’s plan, the EU’s position, and what emerges during the negotiations.”
Launching the report, Andrew Tyrie, the chair of parliament’s cross-party Treasury committee called for his colleagues in government to be more open about what they wanted out of Brexit negotiations. ““Brexit is not poker,” he said, as he repeated a call for the UK to consider transitional arrangements under article 50 that would smooth the process of leaving the EU.
Being upfront about what the UK wanted out of negotiations could help the UK because business partners in Europe would be able to get behind Britain’s view and make a case to their own governments, he said.
“I fail to understand why our chances of getting a good deal will not be enhanced ... by demonstrating what it is we really need,.”
He also emphasised the importance of retaining easy trade access to the rest of Europe but denied that amounted to an attack on May’s decision to exit the single market, confirmed in her speech on Brexit earlier this month.
“Whether the UK makes a success of Brexit, whether it passes your tests ... depends predominantly on how successful it is in retaining access to EU markets,” he said.
But pressed on whether that put him at odds with May, he said: “I am not attacking my prime minister. I think she gave a magnificent speech the other day.”
The four tests set out on Monday were:
 The economy and public finances: A successful Brexit will make the country more prosperous overall and will “improve its ability to finance public services”, the report said.
  Fairness. “A successful Brexit will be one that helps those who have done worst and promotes opportunity and social mobility for all across the UK, but particularly for the most disadvantaged.”
  Will Brexit preserve and extend the UK’s openness as an economy? “A successful Brexit will be one that maintains and enhances the UK’s position as an open economy and society.”
 Will Brexit enhance democratic control? “A successful Brexit will be one that genuinely increases citizens’ control over their own lives.”
Anand Menon, professor of politics at King’s College London and director of The UK in a Changing Europe, said: “As we start to consider the practical impact of Brexit, there needs to be a clear, evidence-based and, as far as possible, objective mechanism for assessment. What is important is that the credibility of the tests, and the process, are established in the minds of the public at large.
“We are now entering a period when the choices we make, collectively, will determine our future for decades. We all have a stake in making a success of Brexit. But to do that we need to have a shared vision of what success means and these tests lay the groundwork for that objective judgment.”
The group, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and based at King’s College London, said its tests were based on points of shared interest between the leave and remain camps, including that the wish that “Britain should remain an open, outward-looking country”.
But the authors cautioned that as negotiations unfold each side would probably attempt to put their own spin on developments and on the emerging economic data. That likelihood strengthened the case for setting out tests for success now, they added.
“Having an agreed set of criteria in advance will make it easier to assess developments in an objective fashion. Developing such a framework now, in advance both of the negotiations and of Brexit itself, will minimise the temptation to move the goalposts later,” the report said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Marvellous! She’s just marvellous,” says Mrs Home Counties, an energetic woman in her mid-60s. “Just the medicine!” Medicine? “She means tonic, Theresa May is just the tonic we need!” says her husband, Mr Home Counties, neither wanting their name in the Guardian.
This is the tribe overwhelmingly responsible for the referendum result, not mainly Labour voters, not the young, but these older folk of the shires. In their migrant-fearing yet migrant-free Tory strongholds, this is what they yearned for. But their vision isn’t Liam Fox’s globalised unfettered free trade: theirs is the drawbridge little England (and Wales) he calls protectionist. “We can go back to making things for ourselves, train up our own people,” hopes Mrs H. They clap every reminder that they are on the stairway to Brexit heaven.
May and her party had better relish every moment. Today Brexit can mean whatever anyone wants it to, and the EU will knuckle under because we are Great Britain and they need us more than we need them. But this time next year the government will be knee-deep and sinking fast in the quicksands of real negotiations, forced to confront what their party has brought upon us. The French and Germans will have had their elections, the far right biting at their heels: being beastly to the British will become an electoral necessity for many EU politicians. The head of Jaguar Rover says that already consumers on the continent are boycotting British cars: we are not popular and risk becoming detested.
Those who made a political career out of insulting fellow Europeans are conducting the negotiations, drawn from that once-eccentric clique of Euro-lunatics John Major called “the bastards”. How did the likes of Bill Cash, John Redwood and Jacob Rees-Mogg inveigle a moderate and sensible country into voting for this colossal self-harm? The Sun headlines May’s great repeal bill the “March to Freedom” as Iain Duncan Smith calls for a harder, faster break: he says if the EU refuses a “take-it-or-leave it deal”, just walk out. Ken Clarke rightly warns these “headbangers” will never be satisfied: no deal will ever be enough.
Turning hard Brexit, the prime minister may be more of a realist than her party, refusing to pose as a cake-and-eat-it pretender. That’s the brutal logic as she rejects free movement and European court of justice jurisdiction. Creating the role of international trade secretary was a hard-Brexit act: Fox would have no job if we stayed in the customs union and the single market, which bars countries from independent trade deals.
May insists there will be “no running commentary”, but oh yes there will. Diplomacy by Twitter has already begun, with Donald Tusk’s “EU27 will engage to safeguard its interests”. The prime minister of Malta tweets, “The 4 freedoms cannot be decoupled” (goods, services, capital and people). The Italian prime minister warns out loud that it will be “impossible” to allow the UK to end up better off outside the EU.
The cards are all in the EU’s hands once article 50 is triggered, with only two years to settle not just exit, but an interim trade deal, pending a tortuous deal with 53 countries the EU already trades with. Every government and a majority of MEPs has to agree – those MEPs who have endured Nigel Farage’s outrageous insults all these years.
What sweeteners might we offer? Some suggest Spain eyes a deal on Gibraltar. Others wonder if eastern Europeans will want copious visas – but if so, what has all this been for?
As speech after speech salutes “taking back control” as “a fully independent sovereign country”, only old sober-sides Philip Hammond throws cold water. There is a price to pay, he warns. He didn’t disagree with Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that Brexit will cost the UK 4% in growth in coming years.
He will press for the softest Brexit, to remain “the best of neighbours … the closest of trade associates”. Here’s his killer alert: “People did not vote to become poorer or less secure.” Will voters reconsider their priorities once they see the price to be paid for limiting immigration? The question for history is whether in the dread process ahead, yet another Tory prime minister will end up bulldozed by her Europhobes.
What a miserable distraction this is from the myriad problems stacked on No 10’s doorstep. Deficit reduction is still the chancellor’s prime purpose: admitting there will be no surplus in 2020 was no more than stating the blindingly obvious, as Osborne missed every target himself. Waiting for an answer is the ballooning health and social care crisis. Abolishing torturing work tests for the severely disabled tells us little about compassionate Conservatism when £13bn of benefit cuts are still set to hit “just about managing” families. Enormous tax cuts for the rich are due in capital gains, inheritance and corporation tax while half these families’ incomes is falling, says the Resolution Foundation.
Will May’s government stop bribing the old and depriving the young? She promises a government “small, strong and strategic” and size matters: Osborne wanted a very small state, under 35% of GDP, 10% below any equivalent countries. No answers yet.
In tomorrow’s speech, submarine May needs to surface and show if there is any substance to her “centre ground” pitch. Her “country that works for everyone” mantra is repeated by every speaker, ear-achingly, brain-deadeningly mindless. It’s time to tell us what will work and for whom – or will everything be swept aside by the destructive pointlessness of Brexit?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Surely those who should be cheering today’s high court judgment the loudest are the people who have been the most passionate defenders of parliamentary sovereignty. So rejoice, Daniel Hannan: the judges have heeded your earnest plea to make parliament supreme. Put out the bunting, Michael Gove: your insistence that Westminster be the ultimate arbiter of our national affairs has been given the judicial seal of approval. Let all those who spent the spring trumpeting the glory of England, hailing it as the mother of parliaments, now celebrate their victory.
Except, of course, they won’t. Those who campaigned for leave in the name of wresting power from Brussels to Westminster went strangely quiet when it came to the question decided by the court today: who has the power to trigger article 50? Suddenly they found that parliament was not quite so sacred or central – that some things were best left to ministers to decide. Well, the judges have called out that hypocrisy. They have decided that the Brexiteers should have to comply with their own logic – and bow to parliament.
Does that mean, as Nigel Farage has said he fears, that a “betrayal” is imminent – that parliament might opt for a “half Brexit”, as the former Ukip leader put it, or even that it might halt Brexit altogether? You can see why that’s a possibility: the remain camp still has a majority in the Commons, when you add up not just Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats but also the estimated 185 Tory MPs who wanted to stay in the EU. If they all united and voted as they did on 23 June, they could block Brexit tomorrow.
They won’t do that. Too many would regard it as a constitutional offence to go against the public’s verdict delivered in the referendum. Others have a more practical fear of contradicting the wishes of their own local electorate, anxious they would pay the price with their own seats.
But that fear will only fully kick in if Theresa May presents them with a straight, up-or-down choice: a one-line motion to trigger article 50 or not. If the choice is any less stark than that, if May proposes detailed legislation – then that would give anti-Brexit MPs plenty of wriggle room. They could say that while the public voted to leave, they did not vote for this kind of leave. That would give the remain majority in parliament the chance to slow things down and demand a much softer Brexit.
Two other factors could prove decisive. The coherence of Labour in parliament now matters. If the party can get its act together and unite around, say, the demand that Britain remains a member of the single market then it will have real muscle. The early signs were not encouraging: recall that the first public figure to demand the immediate triggering of article 50 was Jeremy Corbyn, hours after the vote. But Keir Starmer and others have set a good lead: Labour needs to press the case against hard Brexit strongly and coherently.
The other thing to remember is that parliament is not just the Commons. The Lords will have a say too. Unelected peers thwarting the will of the people may look like a democratic outrage. But Gove, Hannan and the rest can hardly complain. The Lords are an ancient part of our parliament. And parliament – as they never stopped reminding us – is sovereign.
For those of us who voted leave in order to ensure that it’s our MPs who make political decisions in this country, this morning’s ruling in the high court is a nice irony. I personally don’t have a problem with anyone using any democratic or legal means to achieve any political end they want. And there’s no doubt that MPs have the right to cancel Brexit if they choose to do so.
But I would advise them to use their power respectfully and wisely. The reputation of the political classes in this country is already very low, and any attempt to overturn the referendum result is likely to send it down even further with baleful consequences.
Whether it’ll make any difference in the long run is a moot point. There are powerful vested interests in the UK already at work to get the ballot overturned or render it meaningless. There are equally powerful interests in the EU itself who are willing to help them out. Personally, I wouldn’t bet against them succeeding. As the French, Dutch, Irish and Greeks have discovered, referendums in the EU are flexible friends. But that will leave a pertinent question – do votes actually count for anything in Europe these days, or are they merely glorified opinion polls?
Given the Conservative party’s long-standing commitment to the principles of parliamentary representative democracy, it is disappointing that today’s decision had to be made in the court. Ironically, a failure to consult elected representatives of the public on the terms of the negotiation package would undermine the very principles that David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox have championed. Hopefully, this will provide some much-needed clarity on what has been a completely chaotic showing from the government so far.
It will be vital that parliament now works productively together to get the best possible negotiating deal to take to Europe. Given the strict two-year timetable of exiting the EU once article 50 is triggered, it is critical that the government now lays out its negotiations to parliament, before such a vote is held. So far, May’s team have been all over the place when it comes to prioritising what is best for Britain, and it’s time they pull their socks up and start taking this seriously.
Ultimately, the British people voted for a departure but not for a destination, which is why what really matters is allowing them to vote again on the final deal, giving them the chance to say no to an irresponsible hard Brexit that risks our economy and our jobs.
The government has announced that it will appeal against a judgment by a UK court that restores sovereignty to the UK parliament to legislate for the UK’s legal landscape. Even for the sake of appearances, that just looks bad. The Vote Leave camp campaigned for sovereignty to be restored to the UK parliament. It is symptomatic of their many inconsistencies that they now argue that this crucial decision ought not to be taken by parliament.
During three days of legal argument, the writing was on the wall for the government when it was forced to make the significant concession that article 50 is both unconditional and irrevocable. That might be true politically, but it is at least open to challenge legally. The irony of the government’s appeal is that it now opens up the Pandora’s box of whether the article 50 question on irreversibility can be answered only by the European court of justice. If so, what sort of delay will that entail?
In my view, the government has poor prospects of succeeding in the supreme court. The high court’s key reasoning is that the government “cannot without the intervention of parliament confer rights on individuals or deprive individuals of rights”. There is no answer to this. The removal of the ability to seek authoritative rulings of the European court, for example, is but one material change in our law, and it may have a profound impact on fundamental and social rights. So, too, other major rights merely “glossed over” by the government’s arguments. I don’t see a comeback to the various fatal gaps in the government’s reasoning, which the court found to be flawed.
The most fundamental rule of UK constitutional law is that parliament is sovereign, and that legislation enacted by both Houses of Parliament is supreme. If “Brexit means Brexit”, the court has confirmed that only parliament can trigger it. Both Houses of Parliament now need to stand up for the national interest and demand accountability from the executive, and for their constituents. The courts have done their bit for the rule of law. Parliament, on behalf of all of us, now needs to do the same.
Today’s ruling is a huge victory for our parliamentary democracy. This is what real sovereignty looks like, and this is what taking back control really means.
This decision is about parliamentary sovereignty and our constitution. It is not about leave or remain – it is actually about whether we have a sovereign parliament in this country, and as such the decision is the right one.
We got a Bill of Rights in 1689 which gave parliament powers and took power away from the executive and the monarch. Those who wanted to leave the EU campaigned on the basis of parliamentary sovereignty, so it would have been completely inconceivable for the executive to overreach its prerogative powers and trigger article 50 without any form of parliamentary scrutiny or approval.
Parliament specifically legislated to hold an advisory, non-binding referendum, so it is now important that the government puts its plans before parliament so that MPs can scrutinise these plans before the decision on triggering article 50 and beginning the Brexit process.
Keep calm, everyone. Today’s high court ruling does not mean parliament will prevent Brexit. They won’t and, what is more, they shouldn’t. Why won’t they? Well, first, because they may not get a chance to. The judgment is not the end of the story, there is an appeal to come. But let’s assume the supreme court upholds the verdict. Parliament then would have a right to vote on the triggering of article 50. Will they use this opportunity to block the process? Almost certainly not.
Of the 650 MPs, 479 are reckoned to have backed remain (including over half of Conservative MPs). So there was, prior to the referendum, a parliamentary majority in favour of remaining. But things have changed since 23 June. For one thing, elected representatives were shown to be out of touch with their voters: 421 of 574 English and Welsh parliamentary constituencies voted to leave. Polling suggests, moreover, that significantly more than 50% of 2015 Conservative voters and more than 30% of Labour voters backed leave. Voting against a referendum result generated by many of their own voters is not something many MPs would willingly countenance doing.
The most parliament seems likely to do is to impose procedural conditions on the prime minister. These may include the need to report back regularly on the negotiations – providing the kind of running commentary she has resisted to date. Yet even then, it is hard to see how MPs can materially affect the final outcome. Article 50 lays down a two-year deadline. Once a deal is struck, they will face a choice between whatever Theresa May has achieved and no deal at all. There will be no scope to modulate what is on the table.
And this is as it should be. It’s not as if politics was held in high regard before the referendum. I shudder to think what would happen if, following a unique democratic moment that mobilised the population in a way even elections fail to, a parliament that had approved the legislation providing for the vote decided to overturn it because it had come up with the “wrong” answer.
And so to the final irony. The chances are this ruling will not halt Brexit, but further legitimise it. A judgment hailed by remainers will, ultimately, serve merely to place a parliamentary stamp of approval on an outcome they oppose.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
When you can’t ask for much, it’s a good idea to ask for something you really want. And there lies the risk for pro-Europeans in the demand for a national vote on the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU, as chosen by the Liberal Democrats at their conference this week as a flagship policy.
There are impeccable reasons to resist the kind of tyre-screeching flight from Europe preferred by the Brexit ultras. It can also be argued that total rupture was not specified on the ballot paper, and that such a grave decision needs layers of consent. But it’s hard to imagine a campaign that urges leave voters to see the error of their ways prevailing over any deal Theresa May might negotiate. The offer of moving on would easily beat the offer of turning back the clock.
Electoral defeat evacuates stores of political capital, and Europhiles have to consider whether they want to spend their pennies on the sourest political grapes in the shop. The Lib Dems are aware of that hazard. Former business secretary Vince Cable voiced his concern at the conference. Even Tim Farron’s allies concede that the prospect of a second referendum is of value largely as a rhetorical symbol of dissent.
There is tactical logic here: 48% of voters rejected Brexit – six times more than the Lib Dems attract. Millions of pro-Europeans are poorly represented. Labour is busy broadcasting a political colonoscopy, offering voters a tour of its internal pathologies. Tory liberals will not defy their new leader on EU matters before suspicion that she despises them is confirmed.
Not all remain voters are rigid with terror at the prospect of Brexit, desperate for politicians to stand up and scream “no”, but that constituency has the numbers to lift the Lib Dems back into third-party contention, back into the game. Farron’s uncomplicated position – against leaving the EU, for returning if we leave – is a poll-rating defibrillator, an emergency device to restore a pulse, not a long-term remedy.
Farron also has to listen to his members. Thousands joined after the referendum, and not because they were relaxed about the outcome. This is a party whose activists drape a giant blue and gold EU flag across the dancefloor at their conference disco. Debate on a second plebscite aired doubts, but defiance was the theme. Didn’t Nigel Farage say that if the result were close, there should be a rerun? Wasn’t the leave proposition criminally mis-sold – fictional millions for the NHS; imminent Turkish invasion? Don’t lies invalidate the mandate?
If remain had won, the leavers would indeed have cried establishment stitch-up and demanded a rematch, cribbing their strategy from Scottish nationalists who wasted no time moulding their defeat on independence into new grievance, stretching a 45% minority into a moral majority. Many Brexiters were hoping for an electoral martyrdom along those lines. They pace nervily around their unexpected trophy, which turns out to be tarnished with a duty to deliver the impossible.But in Scotland, it was the status quo (or a close variant) that won. It was easy to present the result as a stage in the spread of nationalist consciousness, with contagion to the rest of the country just a matter of time. In the vote on Britain’s EU membership, the status quo was sentenced to death. Even if it could be shown that millions of leave voters were wracked with buyers’ remorse (it can’t), the union they might rejoin will never be the one they asked to quit.
The referendum is already altering Europe’s political geometry. The shock of British rejection is changing debates around integration and immigration. Next spring, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National, will almost certainly make it into the final round of a French presidential election. The Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party is poised to enter Germany’s parliament for the first time next autumn. Nationalist and populist movements are thriving across Europe. Governments in Poland and Hungary are developing anti-liberal doctrines on a model borrowed from Vladimir Putin. To Europe’s radical right, 23 June was a provocation and an inspiration – an incitement to slash harder at the ties of continental solidarity. The idea that moderate leaders in Paris or Berlin will sit with their engines idling while Britain ponders whether to join the convoy and at what speed is delusional.
No one is more in denial about this than the Tory Brexiteers who skim over the detail of their mission as if leafing through the brochure for a pleasure cruise around the Commonwealthtoasting free trade deals on a recommissioned Britannia. They treat practical questions about their agenda and concern that their campaign fuelled xenophobic fires as the sore losers’ whinge.
In truth, they are sore winners. Many resent the burden of political maturity that comes with getting their way. They keep in their pockets the card showing May’s quiet support for remain, ready to play it with a flourish when her first compromise with reality can be cast as betrayal. But it is hard for pro-Europeans to denounce that game while drenched in nostalgia, when the argument sounds like a plan to build a time-machine and return to the late 90s, back to the days when Brussels-phobia was but a yolk-stain on the tie of unelectable Tory reaction.
Lib Dems insist that their position is more nuanced than that, but nuance hasn’t exactly been flying off the shelves in the retail end of British politics recently. A position that lends itself to caricature as contempt for the will of the people will be cast that way.
Britain needs a liberal promise of engagement with Europe that absorbs the result of the referendum, and European liberals need British partners who will engage with their dilemmas on post-referendum terms. I understand why Farron is not ready to plunge his party into that mission without first underlining its anti-Brexit credentials. The Lib Dems are enfeebled, trying to build polling bulk. Undiluted remania is the only available political protein. Building a platform from which pro-Europeans can launch a bid to shape the future –one to rival the flimsy, retrograde prospectus of the militant sceptics is not a task that a shrunken liberal party can easily undertake alone. Sadly, as things stand, they have no choice but to try.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The charade starts again, the charivari, the pantomime “negotiations” between team May and the Corbyn crew. The play-acting, the feinting and feigning, still pretending there is progress, scarifying both parties’ rank and file. Rory Stewart exposed his wet-behind-the-ears arrival in the cabinet by obediently delivering Downing Street’s line that “our positions are only a quarter of an inch apart”. Well, that’s the longest quarter-inch in history.
In the meantime, in unparalleled parliamentary paralysis, the chancellor has abandoned his promised three-year spending review, with no sign of the long-delayed social care green paper. Instead, this week’s only item in the Commons is the wild animals in circuses bill.
A rota of cabinet ministers and their shadows will put up a good show of bogus talks, with codicils, annexes and marginalia to keep them occupied, but no concordance on the substance. After one more week it ends, says David Lidington, Theresa May’s proto-deputy. Then comes mutual blame, though agreement was never remotely plausible. “Let’s do a deal,” May archly implored Jeremy Corbyn in her Mail on Sunday article. A historic May-Corbyn peace pact? Hardly, and she knows it. Unless, that is, when May has finally run out of road she dares to go for a confirmatory vote because there is absolutely nothing else left.
Today Graham Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 Committee, will pay her an intimidating visit. The committee’s treasurer told the BBC’s Today programme that Brady will demand her “roadmap” to a rapid departure “in the very near future”, with no backsliding on the customs union. Brady brings a warning that at the 1922 meeting this evening, the backbench pressure-cooker may explode over the local elections disaster, demanding a rule-change to remove her fast.
Labour’s shadow cabinet also meets today, after a frisson of fright ran through most of the party when Corbyn appeared to ignore agreed policy in responding to the shock election results. The Labour leader claimed it was “very, very clear” that voters want MPs to “get a deal done”. Any deal, just to “get over the line”? But to most Labour supporters this isn’t a marathon, it’s a jump off a 28-country-high tower block with no bungee rope. Both John McDonnell and Keir Starmer rushed to TV studios to correct any idea that a Brexit stitch-up was imminent. McDonnell told Sunday’s Andrew Marr Show he had “no trust” in May and her “bad faith”. Starmer on Sky repeated his unchanging position: there must be a “permanent comprehensive customs union” and a means for “locking in the next Tory leader”. Above all, a confirmatory vote “has to be part of the package”. None of those three has ever been offered by May.
But now her party is giving her weeks not months: MEP Daniel Hannan wants her gone before the European elections. She will leave with no legacy, her profound sense of Brexit duty unfulfilled and nothing but our three years of hell to show for it. Or in that last gasp, she could reach for one last chance by agreeing the Kyle-Wilson compromise – for Labour to nod through her deal but only with a final-say public vote. Voters see a deadlocked parliament with no majority for anything: there is no other jury but them to turn to. Monday’s Telegraph headline read: “May in secret discussions on second referendum.” Downing Street duly denied it, but she must surely consider it.
Could it get through parliament? Senior Labour head-counters think so: 203 Labour MPs, when whipped, voted for it twice, along with just 15 Tories. If May whipped her payroll vote it would get through – if enough obeyed her whip. No one can be sure. But as two shadow cabinet members doing the counting tell me, there’s no chance at all of any Brexit deal getting through without that confirmatory vote. In the last chance saloon, that’s the only drink she has left.
On all sides misinformation and rumours abound. The “leak” that May will offer a full customs union to last until the general election, coupled with Stewart’s promise that a soft Brexit pact is close, has put May’s angry brigade into what the Telegraph calls a fury of “biblical proportions” risking a “Tory implosion”. Yet again, she was just trying to dragoon her deplorables into a panicky vote for her deal by threatening something worse.
They need not fear: the parties were never near agreeing. On the Labour side, rumours that Starmer might resign over Corbyn’s constant Brexit backsliding and prevaricating seem wide of the mark, but someone was sending shots across the bows of the Corbynite pro-Brexit cabal. Labour’s lightweight frontbench can’t afford to lose any heavy-hitting remainers. In the Euro elections Labour is already in grievous peril of losing cascades of voters, unless Corbyn himself campaigns unequivocally for a final-say ballot.
This matters far beyond the risk of Labour getting a bloody nose: these elections are our proxy referendum. It’s a sad folly that the smaller remain parties couldn’t set aside tribalism to stand on a single slate – but they promise in the final week to combine to tell voters how best to elect a remainer in each area – such as voting Liberal Democrat in the south-west and Change UK in London. On the night, aggregate “pro-final say” vote numbers will be counted, totting up Green, Liberal Democrat and Change UK ballots. Labour has to be wholeheartedly for a public ballot, to add those votes to the national tally.
As the knock on her door tells Theresa May her time is up, let her look to her legacy. With her unsurpassed reputation as the most pitiful failure of a prime minister, she has less than nothing to lose. A public vote is her last chance to get any kind of deal through: she should seize it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Who do you trust on Brexit? The air is shrill with people whistling to keep their spirits up, but to me the chancellor’s warning in advance of his autumn statement that there could be trouble ahead sounds more adult. Meanwhile uncertainty grows, as does interest in emigration, especially among young professionals. Imagine you have a son or daughter who, dismayed by the referendum, is thinking of moving abroad. Naturally you would prefer them to stay, but how would you convince them? Already their family will suffer the usual pressures – housing, health, education; now, for the foreseeable future, they will face new potential instabilities, whether of income or employment.
The commonsense Britons seem to have developed a taste for the roulette wheel. Mass immigration was a gamble, and the referendum a second blind leap to escape the consequences of the first. Now it turns out the government has been dicing with the constitution. How long could it take to sort everything out? Two years, five, a decade? Nobody knows. The referendum was a game played by high rollers, but the outcome means we’re all gamblers now, as people like my imaginary son or daughter find themselves forced to place bets on their futures.
How could David Cameron have taken such a risk? The whole thing was a kind of schoolboy dare. Boris Johnson took the bet without expecting to win, as if it were a bit of a jape, the Eton wall game played out on the back of a prostrate nation. Does that make the Tories guilty of putting party before country? No, because in the Cameron/Johnson world the Tory party is the country. Now we are told to stop moaning and return to the Victorian spirit that made us the greatest trading nation on earth, and assert ourselves as Commonwealth leaders, as if the 20th century never happened.
Whether quitting the EU was a serious option, or a Boys’ Own fantasy, and whether the world is once again our oyster, is something we are about to discover. All we know for sure is that the government has no strategy, and that the trio in charge are in different ways inadequate for the task.
I need no persuading about the frustrations of Brussels: I’ve negotiated there, fumed there, sat in on summits with my former bosses Peter Carrington and Margaret Thatcher, who did some fuming herself. And yet confronted with the in/out question, Thatcher would have been cautious. “What is the alternative?” I can hear her say. “If we leave, where do we go?” As a realist, she wouldn’t have banged on about how we’re the fifth biggest economy in the world and could go it alone. True, London has more billionaires than any other city – about 80 – though the fact that our nearest rival is Moscow doesn’t say much for the nature of the competition. What matters is income per head, and on that we’re way down the league.
Might the one-nation reforms Theresa May promises persuade a would-be emigrant to stay? Perhaps, but while you’re doing one thing you’re not doing something else, and that side of the Brexit bill will be enormous. Instead of developing and modernising our society, a stupendous effort will be needed to hold it together.
Can May take the strain? It’s not just a mess Cameron has left her, it’s an ammunition dump that could go up at any moment: the post-Brexit economy, Scotland, our EU negotiating team, the Tory party itself. For someone wondering whether to stay or go, May is a doubtful plus. If she steps down, Johnson could have another bite at the cherry. The only fun there would be that in 2020 he could be up against Corbyn: Laurel against Hardy, the Labour straight man against the Tory joker. As Henry Kissinger said when asked for his opinion of the Iran-Iraq war, “Pity only one can lose.”
I don’t know enough to say “it will never work” – any more than the Brexiteers do when they insist that it will. If Brexit is a gamble, it follows that, given time, it could pay off, as gambles can. Meanwhile, however, I sense a deepening malaise, one that the cockiness and intemperance of many Brexiteers is set to worsen.
The saddest thing about our present condition is how anyone with honest doubts about where we are going is labelled a whiner, unpatriotic or “anti-British”. It’s the intolerance that’s un-British, and if I myself were thinking of going (I’m not), it would be that that tipped me over. To quote Cyril Connolly, there comes a point where it’s better to feel dépaysé (disoriented) abroad than in your own country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.06 GMT
I am feeling more optimistic than I have for some time that there will be an agreement with the EU on Brexit. The prime minister and a large majority of her cabinet are well aware of the serious and lasting damage that would be done to British industry – at a cost of tens of thousands of jobs – if we exited the European Union next March without agreement and without any transition period.
My improved humour is, in part, because of Theresa May’s success in getting the backing of the cabinet for a pragmatic British strategy at the Chequers summit.
It is true that we will have to live with, at least for some years, serious limitations to deregulating some of the laws affecting industry, and negotiating new trade agreements with third countries. But these constraints need not be for ever. As the dust settles, and as British industry adapts to us not being in the EU, we will be able to assert greater freedom even if, over the longer term, we sacrifice some automatic access to European markets. It might take five or 10 years but what is that in the life of a nation?
I am, perhaps, more relaxed than I should be over Boris Johnson’s and David Davis’s departures. The resignations of the foreign and Brexit secretaries are causing a short-term crisis, but a large majority of Conservative MPs do not support them. They are what the Chinese would call “paper tigers”.
Davis’s resignation is more principled. He offered it at a time when his Brexit colleagues appeared to have reached a separate decision. As the person required to take forward the negotiation it is understandable that he decided to call it a day.
Johnson’s behaviour has been disgraceful. Having insulted the prime minister at Chequers he then found, over dinner that evening, unconvincing reasons for continuing in her cabinet. Now he lamely follows in Davis’s wake.
On this occasion he might think that Michael Gove has again stabbed him in the back by supporting the prime minister and not his fellow Brexiteers after the Chequers summit. However, he should remember Churchill’s wise advice that politicians should not commit suicide because they might live to regret it.
In the longer term the most important development today will turn out to be not Johnson or Davis’s departure but Dominic Raab’s arrival.
The cabinet has not been purged of Brexiteers, and rightly so. Raab was a powerful and convinced advocate of departing from the EU during the referendum debate. But he has major advantages over Davis as he becomes our chief negotiator.
Davis was good when he took the trouble to be, but there were long periods when he didn’t deign to take the trouble. Raab has a passion for work, intelligence and an attention to detail. The EU negotiator Michel Barnier will be dealing with a fellow professional rather than a relative lightweight.
The other major benefit is that Raab will be happy to work closely with May and her chief adviser, Olly Robbins. There will be a single British team, something that has not existed for some months.
But there is one further point that needs to be made. If Raab succeeds in his mission, we will have a highly credible new potential successor to the prime minister. John Major came from behind to claim the crown from Margaret Thatcher; this may be the day we see history repeating itself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
The repeal bill aims to achieve something pretty simple: when we leave the EU, all current EU law will become British law so that life goes on as normal after Brexit. Nothing more. It ought to be a rather boring, technical exercise in legal copying and pasting. Very dull. Nothing to see here.
So why all the fuss? Well it isn’t quite as simple as that, because lots of those EU laws will refer to EU institutions and rules that we will no longer be part of. So if we just copy and paste them over wholesale, they won’t work properly after we leave. They will need hundreds of small, detailed changes to iron out the wrinkles.
And imagine this. It’s March 2019 and we have 24 hours to go before our two-year negotiating period with the EU is up. Things are becoming increasingly fraught and, in time-honoured EU summit style, a lot of important issues aren’t agreed until the very last minute. Which means they all have to be written into UK law with incredible speed.
So the bill needs to do more than just “copy and paste”. It needs a bit of wriggle room so the new laws work properly, plus a bit more to cope with any changes that are agreed in the exit negotiations, too. And it’s got to work quickly, so everything’s ready by Brexit day as well.
As a result, the bill rather sensibly gives ministers that wriggle room they need, in the form of a two-year-long power to make changes through a standard process of cut-down lawmaking called secondary legislation, or statutory instruments (SIs). SIs are often used for small, detailed legal changes that don’t justify a full-scale act of parliament. They are a sensible way of keeping our laws up to date.
MPs deal with hundreds of them every year, and no one ever notices or cares, because they are so trivial. They aren’t feudal relics; they have been deliberately created by (mostly pretty recent and modern) acts of parliament after extensive democratic debate.
And so it makes sense for parliament to use secondary legislation to process all the hundreds of detailed changes quickly so the statute books work properly on the day we leave the EU.
And that, you would have thought, should be that. Job done. Except that there is also an important, constitutional point to be made. There is a delicate balance to be struck between efficiently ensuring Britain’s laws keep working on the day after we leave the EU, and the fundamental, constitutional role of parliament.
The current draft of the repeal bill gives lots of power to ministers so we can deliver Brexit – which is essential – but it cuts parliament’s role right down. It’s not just me who is saying this. The House of Lords constitution committee has highlighted the sweeping nature of these delegated powers and said they raise “constitutional concerns of a fundamental nature, concerning as it does the appropriate balance of power between the legislature and executive”.
That’s because a tiny percentage of the legal changes during the UK’s withdrawal from the EU won’t be trivial or detailed at all; they will be really important and will need thorough debate in parliament. And some of those temporary ministerial powers are quite a bit bigger and broader than they need to be.
If Brexit is supposed to take back control of our laws, it’s pretty hard to argue that the small number of substantive changes should simply be waved through parliament without thorough debate. So I am suggesting two changes to keep the bill true to its original, impressively simple aims.
The first is to create a joint committee of both the Lords and the Commons to pick out the genuinely important statutory instruments from the hundreds of small ones, so they get thorough debate in parliament while the rest are processed efficiently. This will stop ministers from marking their own homework, and focus the democratic debate on what matters most, without giving anti-Brexiters an opportunity to gum up parliament with endless, pointless filibusters so that Brexit never happens.
The second is to limit the wriggle room that ministers are given, so they can only produce secondary legislation which is the bare minimum needed to make the new laws work properly, or to reflect whatever is agreed in the exit negotiations. Nothing more. So there’s no prospect of feudal decrees, because if ministers try to do anything more than what has already been agreed, they won’t be able to.
If we make these two changes, we will strike a delicate but vital constitutional balance. Brexit will happen on time, but Henry VIII will stay firmly in his grave. Let’s not disturb his slumbers; those days are gone.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Parliament is now suspended for five weeks, and the outcome of Brexit is as uncertain as ever. The deadlock means we are almost certainly heading for a general election, but the route towards one offers only stark options for both government and opposition – and risks putting severe strain on our constitution.
Parliament has spoken unambiguously on its opposition to a no-deal Brexit by passing a new law mandating an extension. However, Boris Johnson has repeatedly insisted that he will not ask to delay Brexit beyond 31 October. At the same time, he has also said he will adhere to the law. This is an obvious contradiction.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties (which, with the newly independent Conservatives, form a majority in parliament) won’t vote for an election until the Brexit deadline has been extended. So what happens next?
With parliament prorogued, no election is possible before Halloween. The next few weeks will see a continued hunt for a deal, party conferences and the start of a long campaign until the election proper is triggered.
Whatever doubt exists over how serious the government is about finding a deal, this outcome is still a possibility. But even if the UK and EU could agree a deal, it would still need to pass in parliament – as would the ensuing legislation. Getting such a contentious piece of legislation through its many stages looks like a near-impossible challenge for a prime minister who leads a divided party and has a working majority that has gone from three to minus 43.
The competing narratives from the extraordinary parliamentary battles will be rehashed at the party conferences and throughout an election campaign that will not wait for the formal starting gun. The Conservatives will push their line that parliament is against the people. The Liberal Democrats have come out in favour of revoking article 50. Labour will focus on the incompetence and chaos of the government.
Parliament will return on 14 October. The government’s Queen’s speech will be about electoral positioning, but there’s a good chance that it won’t even pass the Commons. This effectively means that a government has lost confidence, and Johnson might even try to bring about a vote of no confidence in himself – a route set out in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act – to get to an election. But the first votes on the Queen’s speech are due on 21 October, two days after the date when it is required that an extension be sought. And this type of no-confidence vote triggers a 14-day period – during which an alternative government could be formed – that will last well beyond 31 October. Opposition parties will be wary of giving him any mechanism to force no deal.
If no extension had been agreed, then the pressure would be back on the opposition parties. To prevent a no-deal Brexit, they might have to vote no confidence in the government and show the Queen that they have a cross-party majority for an alternative government. A clear majority for an alternative meets Buckingham Palace’s test for appointing a new prime minister.
If opposition parties can agree on an alternative caretaker government – and that is still a big if – then they could oust Johnson, request an extension and trigger an election. Perhaps the current PM would be happy with this outcome if he believes it can help a “don’t let them stop Brexit” campaign narrative. But defeat in a vote of no confidence also means Johnson is out of No 10 and power could be handed to Jeremy Corbyn. If this outcome is unacceptable to the government, then it must return to the question of whether it accepts parliament’s demand to delay Brexit.
The government has said it will test the new law on extension “to its limits”. This suggests that it wants a court case, with the PM perhaps keen to portray the courts, like parliament, as part of the Brexit-blocking establishment. It ought not be conceivable that a government would drop hints about defying the law. Yet that is what has happened.
The official line is that the government will adhere to the law. Finding some way to test that law, or implying that every option has been exhausted, could allow the prime minister to argue that he has tried every means possible to get Brexit through but is being thwarted by this parliament, the opposition parties and the courts. At this point, does he reluctantly extend and then ask the people to elect a parliament that would deliver Brexit? If so, expect the rhetoric on parliament versus the people to heat up even more in the coming weeks.
This October showdown risks placing the constitution under huge strain. For a government to defy the law, and therefore undermine the concept of the rule of law, is unconscionable – and the civil service will have repeatedly warned about the gravity of such a situation.
And if a government refused to relinquish power after losing the confidence of the House, and despite an alternative government waiting in the wings, then the Queen would be dragged into the mess. The palace would strongly urge the government to resign.
The idea of that happening while the government is being challenged in the courts ought to be unfathomable. But nothing seems completely impossible as we approach the Brexit endgame.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
When Marmite and PG Tips enter the Brexit wars, reality starts to bite – and sooner than expected. As David Davis was on his feet in the Commons on Wednesday, refusing to defend staying in the single market, the pound plunged again. Anyone changing their money at the airport today will find everything in Europe costing them 23% more than it did on 22 June.
Unilever says all its prices must rise by 10% – which is still less than the 15% fall in the pound, so expect worse to come. The Unilever spat with Tesco over who pays is just a sideshow, as other retailers warn of steep price rises, as we import so many essentials. BT’s chairman says imported phones and broadband hubs are already up 10%. Each day the Financial Times reports more banks declaring they are moving significant functions abroad, while car manufacturers look to invest elsewhere in the EU for their new models. As prices rise, the great majority of the population, whose incomes have been stagnant for nearly a decade, will see their living standards fall.
If this were a sterling crisis knowingly created by some extreme anti-business, ideologically-driven Labour government, the attacks on it from all sides would almost certainly see it fall. In contrast, the Daily Mail’s front page today is “Theresa: I’m siding with Britons who voted for Brexit”, as she warns MPs to “respect the will of the people and stop trying to halt Brexit”. The Express headlines, yet again, “Plot to betray EU exit voters”, after yesterday’s, “Forget angry remainers – slash ties with Brussels NOW”. The Sun’s take on the price rises is that it’s all the fault of “Brexit bandits”. “Remain-loving Unilever bosses threatened before the referendum to hike prices up if a Brexit vote won – in a bitter “extortion” tactic that will hit the pockets of hard-working Brits.”
As the real-world effect of leaving the EU begins, will there come a tipping point when these Brexit-deniers have to confront their reckless 20-year campaign to cut us off from our main markets? Probably not. Post-truth reporting will keep denying it, or will find other enemies to blame, preferably foreign (the Sun points out that Unilever is part Dutch). Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, appearing before the foreign affairs select committee, joins the outright, in-your-face deniers: ”Those who prophesied Brexit doom have been proved wrong.” So that’s all right then.
Could the time ever come when Rupert Murdoch or the Mail’s Paul Dacre might see the country facing such serious disaster that they decide to relent? Unlikely, as day after day they pretend that anyone who wants to stay in the single market is denying the referendum result. It was their non-stop pre-referendum migrant horror headlines that helped bring us to the point where an Ipsos Mori international poll today shows the British put worry about immigration higher (42%) than any of the other 25 countries polled, despite many other countries having far higher immigration rates. That’s the formidable challenge faced by “soft” Brexit advocates.
Every speaker in yesterday’s exceptional Commons debate confirmed we are leaving the EU. There is no “plot to betray” the referendum result. What was revealed was the extremists’ mania for an ever fiercer, harder Brexit: nothing will be enough for John Redwood, Bill Cash, Bernard Jenkin or Peter Bone who spoke out to back David Davis’s refusal to make the single market a priority. Any attempt to salvage favourable trading terms was denounced as anti-democratic treachery.
This is now the one great issue for the future of the country, overriding everything else, jumping party barriers as never before, forging some very strange alliances. The Tory “softs” in full throat gave a remarkable display of boldness: Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry, Claire Perry, Chris Philp and, of course, Ken Clarke, were heroic in confronting their own front bench. Jeremy Corbyn used all six of his questions at prime minister’s questions to fire at Theresa May on Brexit, without drifting off-piste. Behind him suddenly there was a united Labour party, after Keir Starmer’s forensic opening onslaught. Nick Clegg hammered effectively. Nicola Sturgeon joins the same united battle to protect tariff-free trading, though her bombshell on another independence referendum undermines that unity of purpose. But in all, the common cause against May and her Brexiteers looks formidable – and this is just the start.
Today’s court case over parliament’s right to vote before triggering article 50 deserves to be won: if the referendum was about returning sovereignty to parliament, how odd to hear May and her team refusing it. But does it matter much? The majority in parliament is for remain, but what MP would dare vote down the referendum result?
Every day that passes shows how disastrous a referendum can be. Bad election results can be reclaimed by throwing the bastards out, but a referendum falls like a guillotine. Yet its terms were never defined. The public – as expressed inadequately in opinion polls – will have to decide how much pain they are willing to take in living standards for how much gain in migration control. The symbolism of the cost of Marmite may mark the beginning of a shift in people’s priorities. Any change in attitudes would strengthen the great new cross-party alliance trying to steer us to a soft landing and save us from shipwreck on the rocks of the Brexit fanatics.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
Neither of us wanted the UK to leave the European Union. But what matters now, following the vote, is that we get the best deal for working people.
It’s now clear that before last month’s vote, no one had thought through how the UK should go about leaving. While the Lisbon treaty has a process set out in article 50, it’s in outline only, and there’s little sense of how it would work in practice. And once triggered, it puts the UK on a two-year timeline to leave the EU.
In the 43 years since Britain joined the EU, a complex web of rights and obligations has grown up. Some have been directly incorporated into our law and, in theory, would remain in force after the UK withdraws from the EU, although British people would no longer be able to enforce their rights in the European court of justice. Others, which have not been directly incorporated, would cease to apply to the UK when we leave.
The government now faces the mammoth task of sifting through these rights and obligations, determining their legal status and then making a political choice about whether and in what form to keep them – attempting in just two years to consider more than four decades’ worth of accumulated legislation.
Many of the rights up for grabs affect millions of people every day. We are particularly concerned about what will happen to entitlements, to annual leave and rest breaks, to parental leave, to rights for agency, part-time and temporary workers and to protections if your job is outsourced or your company sold off.
In the runup to the EU referendum, we argued that leaving would put all these rights at risk. The leaders of the leave campaign – whose duplicity and recklessness have now been laid bare – branded the voicing of these concerns as “scaremongering”. Yet the threat is real.
In the TUC’s poll in the days immediately following the referendum, the vast majority of both remain and leave voters backed safeguarding vital rights like maternity leave (73% of remain and 69% of leave voters) and maintaining protection against discrimination at work (80% of remain voters and 77% of leave voters).
With all this at stake, the UK must not invoke article 50 in a hurry. We hope that the David Davis, the newly appointed secretary of state for exiting the EU, will talk to all political parties, the devolved administrations and – especially where workplace rights, investment, trade and jobs are concerned – trade unions and employers’ organisations. Similar discussions must happen about other rights and obligations, including those on security, the environment, criminal justice and local government.
The government then needs to set out its negotiating red lines and strategy so that they can be debated in parliament, ahead of a vote on invoking article 50.
This is not just a procedural issue: the government must not trade away employment rights and other vital consumer protections behind closed doors. If these rights are to be removed, limited or changed, that must be transparent to the UK public.
The best way forward is for the government to give working people and businesses certainty by legislating to guarantee that all current EU-derived workplace rights will remain in our domestic law irrespective of our relationship with the EU. Of course, a subsequent government could amend these rights, but only by passing primary legislation, not in behind-the-scenes negotiations.
We call on Theresa May’s new government to give a cast-iron guarantee to millions of working people that workplace protections they rely on will not be bartered away in Brexit discussions. Working people did not vote for fewer rights at work, more dangerous workplaces, fewer paid holidays and less time with their kids. This government must respect that.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
In 2016, the British people voted by a narrow but decisive majority – 52% to 48% – to leave the European Union. Some remainers have responded by suggesting that the people were deceived by the false arguments of the Brexiteers – as if referendum campaigns were jury trials in which the witnesses are on oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Others have said that the people did not really know what they were doing. After the 1953 uprising in East Germany, the playwright Bertolt Brecht sardonically remarked that, instead of the people dismissing the government, the government should dismiss the people so as to secure a new and more acquiescent population.
Other remainers, such as Alan Duncan, a Conservative minister of state at the Foreign Office, argue that there should be a threshold for constitutional change – either a minimum turnout requirement or a supermajority requirement – perhaps two-thirds – before change is implemented. The Polish constitution provides that a referendum outcome shall only be valid if turnout exceeds 50%. That, of course, would not have altered anything in the Brexit referendum since turnout was 72%, the highest in any nationwide election or referendum since the 1992 general election. The campaign aroused the enthusiasm of those who had not voted since the time of John Major. For, by contrast with a general election, every vote counted. So voters in Hartlepool and Sunderland, safe Labour areas, had a real incentive to participate. However, a 50% turnout threshold would have prevented the introduction of a directly elected mayor of London, for the 72% yes vote in the 1998 referendum was secured on a turnout of just 35%.
In Britain, qualified majorities have been required only in the devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales in 1979. In these referendums, as well as a majority yes vote, a 40% majority of the electorate was needed for parliament to implement the devolution legislation. In Wales, devolution was rejected by a four-to-one majority, and so the threshold was irrelevant. But in Scotland, on a 64% turnout, 33% of the electorate voted for devolution while 31% voted against. The government could not proceed with devolution even though a majority had voted for it. Many Scots argued that the rules had been rigged against them, since there had been no threshold requirement in the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should remain in the European Community. The referendum strengthened the Scottish sense of grievance which continues to poison relations with England.
Paradoxically, thresholds are likely to discourage turnout since a no voter might assume that an abstention is equivalent to a no vote. That would of course be the case with a requirement such as that in the Polish constitution. But it would not necessarily be the case with the type of threshold requirement in the devolution referendums. Suppose that, in the Scottish referendum, there had been an 80% turnout with 41% voting yes and 39% voting no, but that one-quarter of the 20% who abstained had done so in the belief that abstention was equivalent to a no vote. Then, the true strength of the nos would have been 44%, not 39%. The threshold would have confused voters and yielded an outcome opposed to their intentions.
There is, however, a case for a threshold in Northern Ireland, divided as it is between two communities. Here a simple majority, composed entirely of unionists, would be unacceptable to nationalists. A majority in both communities is needed to secure legitimacy. But the threshold should not be in the form of a percentage of the electorate as in Scotland, but either a qualified majority – perhaps 70% – or alternatively a minimum turnout requirement as in Poland – though, in Northern Ireland, it would need to be higher than 50% – possibly 65%. There is also a case for a minimum turnout in local referendums, where the average turnout in local elections is under 40%, so as to prevent vociferous local minorities imposing their preferences on the rest, the very antithesis of the purpose of a referendum which is to allow the majority to rule.
But all these arguments for turnout requirements and qualified majorities, together with suggestions that voters did not know what they were doing, evade the crucial point which is that the remainers, of whom I was one, lost the argument. The remainers now have a chance, albeit a slim one, to recoup their position by following the advice of Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, and campaigning for a referendum on the deal negotiated by the government with the European Union. But, if the remainers do secure this second chance, they must not fumble it again. They must learn to respect the sovereignty of the people rather than denigrating or seeking to subvert it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
Would you work on a remote British farm, putting in long days picking fruit and digging up potatoes in the countryside? It is easy to see such work in a romantic light, like something out of the Darling Buds of May. But it is mostly the opposite. Long hours, low pay, dirty conditions and physically demanding work.
This is why British producers of fruit and vegetables are so worried. Most of us would answer no to the above question without a second thought. In a recent report, the chairman of a large produce firm, said that “no British person wants a seasonal job working in the fields. They want permanent jobs or jobs that are not quite as taxing physically.”
So companies like this rely on up to 70,000 foreign workers to pick, sort and pack fruit and vegetables. They are more willing to get their hands dirty for low pay. The same is the case in many other British industries. Not many of us want to be employed cleaning up a slaughter house, for example, so eastern European workers are vital.
But this arrangement is now seriously at risk following the Brexit vote. The British Growers Association has warned that if these seasonal workers are not given special permits to enter the country, the whole industry will be in dire straits. Labour shortages would probably force producers to close or relocate overseas.
This might seem like just another economic problem. But it holds implications for national security according to Erica Consterdine from the University of Sussex’s Centre for Migration Research. For her, the failure to consider the importance of these foreign seasonal workers in a post-Brexit world means that “it’s looking pretty bad in terms of the security of the food supply chain. It would be disastrous.”
Of course, embracing the spirit of Brexit to the full would immediately hurt this and other industries. The issue is one facing a number of countries that rely on cheap labour. For example, if Donald Trump got his way and deported illegal immigrants from the US, the Californian economy would probably collapse overnight.
But the question of cheap foreign labour raises a number of thorny issues. For example, one popular response is to point the finger at the unemployed. Why are we so reliant on foreigners when thousands of people are sitting around doing nothing? Put them to work in the fields, and if they don’t want to get their hands dirty, tough!
The argument is ridiculous not simply because it plumbs the worst depths of populist idiocy. It misses the point that many unemployed people are elderly or ill, rendering them useless for jobs that require hard labour. But even able-bodied people can’t be forced to do work they don’t want to do. That type of thing only happens in countries that have given up on basic human rights.
It’s here that we enter into tricky territory. We’re against British people being forced to do low-paid work, but completely fine if a desperate Polish mother-of-three ends up doing it instead. Something of a double standard?
Insipid nationalism is a great way to displace the problems of “extreme capitalism” on to a particular ethnicity or minority group. Wasn’t this really what Brexit was about at the end of the day? So, instead of fixating on the worker as such (who they are, where they come from, whether they are taking employment from a British person), we ought to look at the work itself. Especially the pay and conditions. The real travesty in this story are the low wages that have become normal in a lucrative industry. If the pay was more reasonable, there would be no labour shortage, regardless of Brexit.
What’s more, if agriculture is really a question of national security, then why couch it in such degrading economic circumstances? Is it wise to underpay a workforce that the country relies upon for its economic stability? On the other hand, it’s striking how the agricultural industry is cast in these terms whereas water, electricity and transport – all of which have been sold off to overseas investors who only care about their next dividend – isn’t framed in the same way.
We should all be in favour of the free movement of workers because it makes Britain such an interesting and diverse place. But we ought to question the ultra-low wages that some industries use to exploit that mobility. This is not about immigration or ethnicity. It’s about the warped way in which work is valued in our society. It’s like we live in an upside down world. Jobs that are the most vital socially – rubbish collectors, cleaners, care givers, midwives, produce pickers – are economically valued the least.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
In this extraordinary glut of news stories, there is a risk that the recent report by the House of Lords economic affairs committee on housing supply, published on 15 July, will go unnoticed.
The report lays out a comprehensive and devastating critique of our failure to deliver the housing we need and puts forward the radical changes in policy required to change this.
It first takes the government to task for setting the target too low, arguing that 300,000 new houses need to be built every year to meet the needs of the country’s growing population, address the backlog and moderate house prices. This is 50% more than the government’s target of 1m over the life of this parliament – a figure subsequently disavowed as even being a target by the former housing minister Brandon Lewis.
The report goes on to argue that private housebuilders, as currently incentivised, are unable to deliver this target and calls for local authorities and housing associations to be freed up to build substantially more homes for rent and sale.
It ought to be required reading for the incoming housing minister, Gavin Barwell. In the hierarchy of Lords’ select committees, economic affairs comes near the top. It is chaired by a Labour peer, Lord Hollick, but is all-party and includes the former chancellor Norman Lamont and former cabinet secretary Andrew Turnbull.
Also included in its recommendations are an ability to levy council tax on development that is not completed quickly, bringing forward the use of public land and giving local authorities the power to increase planning fees. Hallelujah! At last, some common sense in the housing debate.
To my mind these are the right actions and indeed similar to the proposals put forward by the London housing commission I chaired. During the passage of the housing and planning bill through the Lords, I voiced concern that the bill advanced the interests of home ownership at the expense of social rented housing. Apart from being grossly unfair, this approach put far too much reliance on building for sale by private housebuilders and left the government vulnerable to economic shocks.
That shock has come with Brexit. Even if the share values of housebuilders recover to previous levels, the appetite for new development is unlikely to. In these uncertain times, even the 1m new homes figure must be in serious doubt.
What is needed is nothing less than a wholesale review of the government’s housing policy and a new approach set out in the autumn statement. In preparing their new plans, ministers and officials could do a lot worse than follow the recommendations of this excellent report.
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Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
Once again, young people have gotten the short end of the political stick. The outcome of the UK’s EU referendum is but another reminder of a yawning generational divide that cuts across political affiliation, income levels and race.
Almost 75% of UK voters aged 18-24 voted to remain in the EU, only to have leave imposed on them by older voters. And this is just one of several ways in which millennials’ economic future, and that of their children, is being determined by others.
I am in my late 50s, and I worry that our generation in the advanced world will be remembered – to our shame and chagrin – as the one that lost the economic plot.
In the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis, we feasted on leverage, feeling increasingly entitled to use credit to live beyond our means and to assume too much speculative financial risk. We stopped investing in genuine engines of growth, letting our infrastructure decay, our education system lag, and our worker training and retooling programmes erode.
We allowed the budget to be taken hostage by special interests, which has resulted in a fragmentation of the tax system that, no surprise, has imparted yet another unfair anti-growth bias to the economic system. And we witnessed a dramatic worsening in inequality, not just of income and wealth but also of opportunity.
The 2008 crisis should have been our economic wakeup call. It wasn’t. Rather than using the crisis to catalyse change, we essentially rolled over and went back to doing more of the same.
Specifically, we simply exchanged private factories of credit and leverage for public ones. We swapped an over leveraged banking system for experimental liquidity injections by hyperactive monetary authorities. In the process, we overburdened central banks, risking their credibility and political autonomy, as well as future financial stability.
Emerging from the crisis, we shifted private liabilities from banks’ balance sheets to taxpayers, including future ones, yet we failed to fix fully the bailed-out financial sector. We let inequality worsen and stood by as too many young people in Europe languished in joblessness, risking a scary transition from unemployment to unemployability.
In short, we didn’t do nearly enough to reinvigorate the engines of sustainable inclusive growth, thereby also weakening potential output and threatening future economic performance. And we are compounding these serial miscarriages with a grand failure to act on longer term sustainability, particularly when it comes to the planet and social cohesion.
Poor economics has naturally spilled over into messy politics, as growing segments of the population have lost trust in the political establishment, business elites and expert opinion. The resulting political fragmentation, including the rise of fringe and anti-establishment movements, has made it even harder to devise more appropriate economic policy responses.
To add insult to injury, we are now permitting a regulatory backlash against technological innovations that disrupt entrenched and inefficient industries, and that provide people with greater control over their lives and wellbeing. Growing restrictions on companies such as Airbnb and Uber hit the young particularly hard, both as producers and as consumers.
If we do not change course soon, subsequent generations will confront self-reinforcing economic, financial, and political tendencies that burden them with too little growth, too much debt, artificially inflated asset prices and alarming levels of inequality and partisan political polarisation. Fortunately, we are aware of the mounting problem, worried about its consequences and have a good sense of how to bring about the much-needed pivot.
Given the role of technological innovation, much of which is youth-led, even a small reorientation of policies could have a meaningful and rapid impact on the economy. Through a more comprehensive policy approach, we could turn a vicious cycle of economic stagnation, social immobility and market volatility into a virtuous cycle of inclusive growth, genuine financial stability and greater political coherence. What is needed, in particular, is simultaneous progress on pro-growth structural reforms, better demand management, addressing pockets of excessive indebtedness, and improving regional and global policy frameworks.
While highly desirable, such changes will materialise only if greater constructive pressure is placed on politicians. Simply put, few politicians will champion changes that promise longer term benefits but often come with short-term disruptions. And the older voters who back them will resist any meaningful erosion of their entitlements – even turning, when they perceive a threat to their interests, to populist politicians and dangerously simplistic solutions such as Brexit.
Sadly, young people have been overly complacent when it comes to political participation, notably on matters that directly affect their wellbeing and that of their children. Yes, almost three-quarters of young voters backed the remain campaign. But reports said only a third of them turned out. In contrast, the participation rate for those over 65 was more than 80%. Undoubtedly, the absence of young people at the polls left the decision in the hands of older people, whose preferences and motivations differ, even if innocently.
Millennials have impressively gained a greater say in how they communicate, travel, source and disseminate information, pool their resources, interact with businesses, and much else. Now they must seek a greater say in electing their political representatives and in holding them accountable. If they don’t, my generation will – mostly inadvertently – continue to borrow excessively from their future.
 Mohamed El-Erian is chief economic adviser at Allianz and chairman of US President Barack Obama’s Global Development Council.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2016
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.24 GMT
Welcome to our space – open every Wednesday from 10am-2pm – for discussing a selection of the day’s Opinion articles.
Today, we have three articles. First, Guardian columnist Rafael Behr discusses Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, and how he has become the new target for Brexiteers.
Read the full article here
What do you think? Is Mark Carney the latest target for the Leave camp? Will he step down like the Bank of England chief? What impact will this have?
Behr has said below the line: “One question I think - I hope - this column raises, and that I would have gone into had I not squandered so many words on silly Strictly digressions, is whether May will be forced into an early election.”
Join discussion on this article directly here.
Rosamund Mather, a translator and editor based in Berlin, also has an interesting opinion article today on how her life has been turned upside down by the decision. She says that the flexibility and freedom of movement afforded by the EU embedded itself in our psyche, leaving many now wondering: what next?
Read the full article here.
What do you think? Should expats fear Brexit? What is likely to happen next? How do you feel about it? Are you worried?
Rosamund commented below the line, saying: “The chance to have an experience living in another EU country still wouldn’t be an accessible reality for all young people, even if Britain did remain, because moving abroad is not without its costs and other demands. But ...[without the EU] living abroad truly would then be a privilege reserved for a small minority.
Join the discussion on this article directly here.
Finally we are discussing George Monbiot’s latest article on modern society and how what he sees as “our estrangement from each other” means we can be easily manipulated by demagogues, as can be seen in the US and Europe.
Read the full article here.
Join discussion on George Monbiot’s article here.
If you have any questions or comments about this feature, please email sarah.marsh@theguardian.com.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
The chances of EU citizens settled in Britain retaining all their rights to live, work and retire in the UK after Brexit have been rated as zero by legal experts.
A leading barrister who specialises in international public law told a House of Lords panel on Tuesday it was “inconceivable” that the laws would survive entirely intact.
Prof Alan Vaughan Lowe QC said this was the price millions of people – including 1.3 million Britons abroad and 3 million non-Britons living in the UK – were likely to pay for Brexit.
Such was the uncertainty surrounding negotiations and the demands of other EU states, he said, that the British government might have to consider compensation for British citizens abroad if some rights, such as access to Spanish or French healthcare, were lost.
But Lowe told the Lords justice subcommittee that what worried him most was the lack of knowledge about the issue at government level. “There is very little evidence of people knowing what they are trying to do,” he said.
Legal entitlements such as the right to work, reside, retire, vote in local elections and have access to welfare and health systems come automatically from Britain’s membership of the EU.
Only a limited number of rights, namely the right to own property and contractual rights, would be protected by international law, the peers were told.
Lowe said not only was there no clear objective on an individual’s legal rights post-Brexit in Britain or in Spain, France or any other EU state, it was not clear whom the government wanted to protect.
“If it’s been drafted with future citizens in mind, you would take a different view of rights that would naturally fade out with mortality,” he said.
The chair of the committee, Helena Kennedy, said the complexity of the so-called acquired rights was a concern to millions who wanted to plan their futures. Could any reassurances be given?
“Absolutely no,” Lowe replied. “I think there is zero chance [that the] … existing legal system affecting European nationals in this country will not change.”
Lady Kennedy said she was mindful of the number of lobbyists now attaching themselves to governments who would end up as negotiators.
Lowe suggested that in the absence of any evident expertise on the topic, the government could look at “decolonisation provisions” used in the 1950s and 1960s to protect the rights of British nationals in Rhodesia and Burma.
Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, a professor of law at Queen Mary University of London, pointed out there was no transparency in the Brexit negotiations, so it was difficult to assess what interests the government would seek to protect.
She said the Greenland treaty, which governed that country’s exit from the EU following a referendum in 1982, could be a starting point.
On the plus side, the Lords were told, the Greenland model was vague enough to allow Britain to attend to the legal detail over a period of 10 years after Brexit. On the minus side, it was mainly concerned with the protection of fisheries.
Kennedy said it was not clear with what “vehemence” the government would seek to safeguard some rights, and which ones would be “negotiated away”. She also questioned the seriousness with which the issue was being taken. “So it is worrying,” she said.
Safeguarding all EU rights might not be the best strategy, said Lowe. It might be that the government would have to step in to offer protection for Britons abroad.
“If [they] lose rights to access to a free health system, then maybe that is something the British government should pick up,” he said. “I can’t see any practical possibility whatsoever of getting a withdrawal agreement that ties up all the legal issues.”
Douglas-Scott said it was not clear who would be leading the negotiations on acquired EU rights – whether it was a government minister or a collective body that would include experts and opposition politicians.
Both Douglas-Scott and Lowe stressed that EU rights would fall away unless specifically protected under new British law.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.26 GMT
Gordon Brown has called for the House of Lords to be replaced by an elected senate and far greater powers handed to the UK’s devolved parliaments in the wake of the Brexit vote.
The former prime minister said the decision to leave the EU meant the UK needed to have a fundamental rethink of its constitutional structures. It would bring the UK much closer to a federal system, and weaken the case for a fresh Scottish independence referendum, he said.
In a speech at the Edinburgh book festival, written in collaboration with Scottish Labour leaders and policy staff, Brown said Holyrood should be given powers currently controlled by the EU. Those could include control over all territorial fisheries, agriculture and social rights, as well as the European convention on human rights and EU academic programmes such as Erasmus. At the same time, a UK-wide constitutional convention was needed to investigate new structures, including a UK senate for the nations and English regions.
His speech deliberately echoes similar remarks by Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, over the weekend, when she told the Sunday Post there was an obvious case for Holyrood to have full control over international fisheries and agriculture after a Brexit, strengthening its devolved powers in both areas.
In extracts released before his speech, Brown said those reforms would require the carefully constructed deal by the Smith commission to give Holyrood extra tax and policy powers after the 2014 independence referendum would also need to be ripped up.
Brown couched these proposals as the most sophisticated alternative to two entirely competing stances: the unchanging support for the union of the Tories, and the quest for Scottish independence, which first minister Nicola Sturgeon is due to rekindle later this week. “We enter autumn with two entrenched positions which are polar opposites: the UK government wants Scotland in Britain but not in Europe and the Scottish government wants Scotland in Europe but not in Britain,” Brown’s statement said.
New circumstances require a constitutional breakthrough that transcends the sterile standoff between a non-change conservative unionism and an unreconstructed nationalism, both of which would cause Scottish unemployment to rise, he said. “Now is the time for fresh thinking and not a replay of the tired old arguments and slogans. [I] believe that we should examine a way forward that offers a more innovative constitutional settlement, more federal in its relationship with the UK than devolution or independence and more akin to home rule than separation.”
Brown said that overhaul would also include the Treasury sending up to £750m more to Holyrood: his advisers estimate the EU programmes, including agricultural subsidies, academic grants and regional funds, are worth £750m in Scotland. But Labour sources admit that giving Holyrood more money and far greater political autonomy from Westminster would provoke a fresh battle with English MPs over Scottish funding.
The Scottish government’s official fiscal data last week confirmed Scotland has a huge public spending deficit of £15bn, equivalent to 21% of all UK and Scottish public spending there and equal to 9% of Scottish GDP.
While Brown has been edging towards this pro-federal stance for months, having resisted it for much of his political career, his allies in Labour insist this more radical viewpoint is driven by the crisis forced on the UK by the unexpected vote in June to leave the EU. They acknowledge that the political gulf between Scotland, where the Scottish National party is now dominant and voters heavily supported an EU remain vote; and England, where the Tories are now dominant; has strengthened the case for greater autonomy for Holyrood.
Ian Murray, Scottish Labour’s only MP, said some form of federalism was now the most logical middle way. “It’s quite clear from a Scottish Labour perspective that independence is broken as a realistic prospect for Scotland, and the Tories just want to defend the status quo. That is also now broken.”
Similar measures were suggested in July by the cross-party constitution reform group and former Tory cabinet minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, who said the UK should be entirely remodelled on a federal system, with a UK senate at Westminster and a new English parliament.
Meanwhile, Charles Falconer, former Labour lord chancellor, has been drafting proposals for a quasi-federal structure backed by Scottish Labour to feed into UK Labour review on the UK’s future shape and structure after Brexit, under John Trickett.
Brown’s open backing for Holyrood to control fisheries out to the UK’s 200 nautical miles limit, have control over agriculture funding, and to repatriate human and social rights laws from Europe, also echoes the campaigning position of Scottish Brexit campaigners during the referendum.
Although Scottish Labour insists the SNP are fixed on using Brexit as the justification for a second independence vote, there are growing signals from Sturgeon that she now believes the Brexit vote has to be accepted and dealt with by her government in the near term. There are reports she could call a new referendum as early as next spring but the new pro-independence initiative being shown to her MSPs and MPs this Friday is expected to be cautious and longer-term.
Popular support for Scottish independence has risen slightly since the EU referendum but not substantially enough to risk a second referendum while potential yes voters want to see the results of the UK’s Brexit talks. Instead Sturgeon last week appointed one of the SNP’s toughest and most experienced operators, Michael Russell, as her minister for Brexit. She admitted Scotland’s difficult finances presented a major challenge.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
For Boris Johnson, 31 October is a sacred date, beyond which Britain must not still be a member of the EU. But before 31 October, there was 12 April, and 29 March before that. The approach of a Brexit deadline in confusion and crisis is a sadly familiar feeling.
The urgency driving Mr Johnson to strike a last-minute deal in Brussels is a function of political bungling. Time is short because the prime minister squandered it with dangerous games, flirting with no deal and posturing to core supporters. But fear of humiliation in being compelled by law to seek an article 50 extension has focused his mind. He abandoned a convoluted multi-border plan for Northern Ireland in favour of a more realistic approach, closer to options discussed (and rejected) when Theresa May sat in Downing Street.
That shift is important given that Mr Johnson has been slow to grasp practical intricacies and historical sensitivities regarding Ireland and Brexit. But it is also important to set any progress on that front in the wider context of future relations with the EU. The Irish border problem first arose when Mrs May insisted on defining Brexit as withdrawal from the customs union and the single market. But she was then persuaded of the need for the UK to retain a high level of regulatory alignment with the rest of Europe. That judgment flowed from a commitment to frictionless trade, which led to “backstop” arrangements regarding Northern Ireland.
Mr Johnson rejected Mrs May’s deal largely because his ambition was served by appearing fiercer than her in Brexit spirit. But he also has different ideological instincts. Mr Johnson is a Eurosceptic in the tradition that vilifies Europe as the origin of red tape that suffocates enterprise. For Tories of that school, the very purpose of Brexit is liberation from a regulatory yoke imposed by “Brussels bureaucrats”. Hatred of the backstop has its origin in the ambition to extricate the UK economy from social protections preferred by many European countries. The theory is that a competitive edge is achieved by reducing the cost of doing business in Britain. In practice that involves cutting labour protections, lowering environmental standards and depressing wages.
That vision implies a different future relationship with the EU from the one signalled by Mrs May. The similarity of political constraints on the two Tory leaders – the strain of managing a minority government – creates a false impression that their Brexit deals are alike. But Mr Johnson’s approach renounces frictionless trade. It sacrifices access to EU markets on an altar of deregulation. His cut-throat competition model complicates negotiation of level-playing field provisions – the presumption of equivalent market conditions between trading partners. That introduces new hurdles for the completion of a free-trade agreement with Brussels post-Brexit. It erects costly new barriers, not just with Ireland but at every port in the UK. Hard Brexiters imagine compensation for restricted European access in the form of new free-trade deals around the world, but those would take time to negotiate, especially if discussions had to happen in parallel with the next stage of Brussels talks. The certain outcome is a prolonged period of trading limbo, the cost of which would come from the pockets of British workers.
Mr Johnson’s frantic rush to strike a Brexit bargain by 31 October has forced a focus on technicalities of withdrawal, but it also serves his agenda to distract attention from the bigger picture. Next week’s deadline has become a prop in a political drama, scripted by the prime minister, in which the 11th-hour delivery of a deal is meant to be the heroic climax.
But Brexit is not a game to help advance one man’s ambitions. It involves choices that will shape the strategic direction of the country for generations and affect millions of livelihoods. Any deal Mr Johnson can strike now is just the vehicle for withdrawal; what matters most is the eventual destination. The rhetoric he has relied upon, the fanatics he flatters and the political trajectory of his career all indicate a plan to take Britain in entirely the wrong direction.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
We will finally leave the European Union on 31 January. Big Ben won’t toll after all, but a giant clock will be projected on to No 10. Some will celebrate; some will mourn. And the government seems to hope that we will breathe a collective sigh of relief and then move on. It’s almost as if Brexit has become a distraction, something to be got out of the way. The next five years, we are assured, will be about other things.
It’s true that Brexit may not dominate the headlines in quite the way it has done over the last few years. But even if the surface remains calm, beneath it there will be a whole lot of furious paddling. For Brexit will be the dominant driver of the underlying business of this government. Its handling of Brexit is more likely than anything else to define its legacy. A change as profound as our exit from the EU, for good or ill, entails huge and lasting consequences for this country; we are really only now, finally, at the starting gate for sorting out what that will mean.
The impact of this change will reverberate deep into government. This is without doubt the greatest challenge the British civil service has faced in a generation. The scale is vast: the negotiation of our future relationship with the EU will, in its totality, be the biggest negotiation ever undertaken by the UK. Alongside the EU deal, the government will be pushing hard to demonstrate at least one of the hoped-for opportunities of Brexit by concluding trade deals with other countries. Each trade negotiation will be a complex deal in its own right, and the interaction between any one of these and the EU negotiations will take forensic coordination, as well as hard political choices.
Brexit will require significant change to the UK legal order and regulatory state, not least as the UK civil service and UK regulatory agencies pick up the responsibilities previously managed from Brussels. The more the government wants to diverge from EU regulation, the more complex this agenda becomes.
On the economic front, new trade barriers with our major trading partner will make thousands of UK businesses less competitive in their main market. Whitehall will have to be agile and smart to work out how to counteract this drag on the government’s ambition to invigorate growth rates across the UK.
Brexit will require a recalibration of the UK’s diplomatic outreach. Whether that’s re-establishing British credentials in international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, boosting missions in Brussels and elsewhere in the EU or adjusting our relationship with other trading partners, this will require substantial additional commitment of resources and diplomatic capital.
Within the UK itself, Brexit complicates the functioning of our own internal market, as the devolved governments take up the powers in devolved areas, such as agriculture, fisheries and the environment, that were previously managed from Brussels. Alongside the byzantine complexities of the Northern Ireland deal, Whitehall will have to re-engineer its relationship with the devolved governments to ensure the UK internal market is not compromised through the emergence of different standards on different sides of the UK’s internal borders. That will require agreement between the four governments of the UK to work together.
All this will require more civil servants – one of the unintended consequences of Brexit. There are already more than 25,000 civil servants working on Brexit, and that number will rise as we actually leave the EU. But the civil service will certainly be up for the challenge. There will be some nervousness about what lies ahead – and some disruption if the government carries through its reported plans for major changes in the way departments are structured. We know that my old department, the Department for Exiting the EU, is due for the chop at the end of the month. Handled well, this will release the brilliant capability built up in DExEU to support Brexit-related work across government. But it will be critically important to retain a sufficient cadre of DExEU officials who have deep knowledge of the EU machine and Brexit and all it entails at the centre of government to help coordinate what will be an immensely complicated negotiation with the EU.
The civil service will cope with that disruption of structural change and get on with the work it has to do. The notion that it has somehow dragged its feet on Brexit is nonsense. I know from my own experience in DExEU of the huge commitment made by thousands of civil servants across government to drive forward the mammoth task of getting us ready for Brexit. The jamming of the process through political paralysis was just as frustrating for civil servants as it was for the rest of the country.
After three and a half years of intensive engagement with Brexit, the civil service has a pretty good idea of the massive task that lies ahead. The same may not be true of many in the political class or the country more generally. Brexit done on 31 January? Yes – but only in a literal, legal sense. The truth is, we’re just getting started.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.31 GMT
You would expect the streets of London’s Soho, first thing on a Friday, to be teeming with French game designers, Italian interior designers, German music execs, Bulgarian doctors, Portuguese waiters, but if you’d specified to a focus group that you also wanted the view from Norway (“We’re doing well, we stand alone. But we have the oil”, said a woman having coffee with her daughter, who wished to remain anonymous) and Moldova (“For us Moldovans, it is very difficult to understand your decision,” said Pavel, 21. “For us, the EU is the path to wealth and prosperity”), they would have said you were asking a lot.
The capital was diverse, and united: “I think it’s going to be a catastrophe for the UK, but also for the whole of Europe,” said Constanza, 28, who came here from Venice six years ago to study, and is now an interior designer. “If you ask me today, I probably will leave tomorrow, because I am really upset.”
“It’s really bizarre that it came to this,” said Marius, a 28-year-old from Germany. “I don’t see any benefit, any benefit at all. All the things we believe in, the project of coming together … it’s taken a big hit. I don’t understand the anger.”
Anders Carlsson, 25 and from Sweden, understands it better, seeing it as part of a pattern. “We have put up borders, you have to show a passport when you travel from Copenhagen to Malmö now. I think the past year, the refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, I think people in Britain feel the same, that it’s too much.”
But Max, 29, a management consultant from Germany, counters: “If you look at the current situation worldwide in terms of refugees, of Isis, we need a very strong union. This vote came at exactly the wrong time.”
Marie, 26, who comes from France and does artwork for Playstation, was utterly dejected. “Maybe I need a plan B for my life. As hard as it seems, I’m a Londoner. I have no idea what’s happening in France. This is home. When you’re not allowed to vote, you already feel like you’re an under-citizen. I really see it as a beautiful wedding, and one day, instead of fixing the problem, the husband just leaves.”
Max had already made his mind up on a plan B: “To be honest, I’m going back to Germany in four weeks. I’m not angry, but I am disappointed. I expected more support from you guys.” His colleague Samad, 23, said: “It’s a selfish decision. Whoever voted out, they just looked at their own interests, which is obviously not the point of the union.”
There was disappointment, but with more of an edge, from those who have been here for their adult lives and had their children here. Bruno, 39, came here from Portugal just after his 18th birthday and works in Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street. “I’m actually disgusted with the decision. A lot of people come to England to find a better way of life, and …” he tails off. I can’t say for certain what his gesture meant, but it seemed to me: whether or not immigrants are allowed from now on is a moot point. The opportunity years are finished. “I have two little kids,” he continued. “What it means for me personally, I don’t know.”
Connie Greber, from Germany, had just dropped her children off at school. “I am in total shock. I cried this morning. My daughter said, ‘does this mean we have to leave, mummy?’. Having followed the press in Germany, they could not believe that the debate was so vitriolic. Even though I’ve been here for 25 years, my identity is totally European. I cannot believe I’ve made my place in a country that has such extreme attitudes.”
In front of a hairdresser, Colin Smith, 46, originally from the outskirts of Glasgow, was also on the point of tears. “I’m gutted. I’ve got plans for my future and I feel like they’ve been ripped out of my hands. Not that I want Scotland to be independent, but if they go, I’ll be applying for a Scottish passport. I can’t believe this decision was ever allowed to happen.”
A Bulgarian doctor who works at a world class HIV clinic didn’t want to be named, if I’m honest, didn’t really want to be interviewed, but did say: “They’ll want to keep me because I’m a doctor, but why would I stay when I have no rights?”
Linda, 36, came here from the Czech Republic 16 years ago and works in children’s services. “I don’t know what it will do to me as an individual. The contact and energy you get from people you meet, that won’t change. But on a legal level, of course [my status] will change. That’s what people were voting for, to make that difference. I want to see everybody’s vote on them …” “Like a tattoo, in or out?” I queried. “Yes.”
Grace, 24, was having the time-honoured breakfast of a Diet Coke and a fag. She’s from Derby and didn’t vote. “Because you didn’t care?” “No, I cared. I just couldn’t get hold of my polling card. I would have voted in.” Maybe next time we do this, we should try Scottish rules, and give a vote to everyone who lives here. Except, right. There won’t be a next time.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
In early May, Doris Ratnam sat at her kitchen table, trying to scan her German passport with her mobile phone. She was applying for “settled status” in the UK, the new immigration status most of the 3.4 million or so EU nationals living in Britain need to acquire if they want to stay in the country legally after Brexit. Ratnam, who is 72 and has lived in London since arriving as an au pair in 1968, was annoyed that she felt obliged to apply under the scheme to remain more securely in a country she considers her home.
She was flustered by the process of attempting to get her phone to suck all her personal details out of her passport. Something was not working, and we sat for 20 minutes in near silence as she moved the phone slowly over the cover of the passport, as shown in a reassuring Home Office Youtube video, trying to get it to read the chip hidden inside the document. “Move the phone to read the chip,” Ratnam muttered, studying the guidance notes. “What am I supposed to do? Move the phone to find the chip. I feel stressed … it’s the technology.”
After repeated failed attempts, the app informed her she had been locked out of the system for 24 hours. It would take two-and-a-half months, two visits to the local town hall (an hour on two buses each way), a £15 appointment fee and numerous calls to a Home Office helpline before her status was approved. The process was dispiriting. “I shouldn’t be made to feel like a foreigner again after such a long time here,” she said.
Before the end of June 2021, if Britain leaves the EU with a deal, or by 31 December 2020 with no deal, most EU nationals resident in the UK must have applied for settled status if they want to continue living and working here. The EU settled status scheme is designed to fulfil the government’s promise that all EU citizens, their family members, and dependants living here before Brexit, will be entitled to remain, with no diminishment of their rights. Anyone who has lived here continuously for five years should, in theory, be able to get settled status easily; people who have been here for less than five years will be granted “pre-settled” status, requiring them to reapply for permanent status once they have racked up enough years of continuous residence (which means not leaving the country for more than six months a year).
For Europeans in the UK, the Home Office’s “EU Exit: ID Document Check” app is the gateway between belonging and exclusion. How well this piece of software works will be a crucial factor in the government’s attempts to present Brexit as a success. In the past year, almost 1.5 million Europeans living in the UK have grappled with the Home Office application process and managed to secure settled or pre-settled status. The Home Office would like us to celebrate this as a bureaucratic success story, and in a very optimistic frame of mind, perhaps we might.
The government has allocated about £460m to the scheme, of which about £50m was spent on developing this unflashy app, its opening pages headed with the outline of a crown on a royal blue background. At the launch of the scheme in March, a Home Office radio advertising campaign reassured people: “It is free, and all you need is your passport or ID card and to complete an online form.”
Former home secretary Amber Rudd was cheerfully optimistic, promising (in an aside that revealed more about her wardrobe choices than about Home Office reliability) that the digital application process would be as easy to use as setting up an online account at the fashion chain LK Bennett. Home Office figures state that 75% of applicants are completing the identity check “app journey in under eight minutes”.
In May, I was taken on a tour of the Home Office’s Liverpool offices, where 1,500 workers were then handling about 6,000 “settled status” applications a day (it has since risen to 20,000). At the end of the tour, one of the senior civil servants in charge of the scheme said it would be good to see media coverage emphasising how well things are working. “In an ideal world, we want you to write an article saying you have come here, and there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
But what is at stake here is so enormous, and the potential for things to go wrong so real, that it is hard to be sure whether people should be feeling confident or apprehensive. Even if the application process achieves an improbably hopeful 95% success rate, it could still have disastrous consequences for those left out – who could number more than 150,000. (And it is improbable: a report last year found that take-up rates for similar large-population registrations ranged from 43% in the US to 77% in Spain; the only scheme that came close to a 100% take up was an ID card system in India, but this was after almost £1bn was spent on raising awareness.)
After the deadline, those who have failed to apply will gradually be transformed from legal residents into undocumented migrants. In the hostile environment – the obstructive and unwelcoming bureaucratic culture promoted by Theresa May when she was home secretary – they will be unable to work, rent somewhere to live, access free healthcare, drive, open a bank account, get a mobile phone contract or travel without being asked to prove their status. They will gradually discover that normal life has become impossible.
The Home Office has never attempted a digital exercise on this scale. All the unknowns – numbers, timing, terms of the deal – have presented developers with unexpected challenges. By the end of January, two months before it was due to launch nationally, IT specialists working for the Home Office had successfully designed a scheme that charged applicants £65. Days before the app was rolled out for public testing, they were told that the fees were too politically sensitive and needed to be scrapped – leaving them no time to rebuild the app without the fee pages. So, as an awkward last-minute fix, initial applicants were charged anyway and had to get their money refunded later. The decision to scrap the fee also meant the government instantly lost about £190m of revenue that the scheme was meant to bring in.
“They were trying to deliver the biggest, most contentious new system that any of them had likely ever worked on, while the basic requirements were changing around them, even days before they went live,” said Joe Owen, the programme director of the Institute for Government, a thinktank working to make government more effective. Owen has been tracing the development of the scheme since the EU referendum.
One major problem was that the scheme does not yet work on the iPhone. The Home Office has been struggling with Apple’s refusal to allow third-party developers to use its contactless system since the start of the app’s development. Given that iPhones account for almost half the smartphones in the UK, this creates a major headache for applicants. Many people have had to borrow phones, or take the longer route of sending off their passports for manual scanning. Officials say the app should begin to be available on iPhones later this month.
Another complication is that it is not known how many EU nationals there are in the UK. The figure of 3.4 million that the government is basing all its plans on is thought by many to be an underestimate.
“Nobody knows exactly how many are eligible,” said Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. The government’s estimate was “almost certain to be too low because it doesn’t include people living in non-private addresses like hostels or care homes, and the figures are thought to undercount several groups – new arrivals, EU/non-EU dual citizens, and people who spend part of the year outside the UK.”
Nor does the estimate include close family members from non-EU countries, who are also eligible under this scheme. The total number of people who need to apply could perhaps be as high as 4 million.
For the moment the political rhetoric remains warm, and officials say people who have a good reason for missing the deadline will be allowed a “reasonable” further period to apply, but the small print spells out the chilling consequences of failing to get status. Although politicians are not currently choosing to highlight this publicly, the Home Office has made it clear in planning documents that, from January 2021 (in a no-deal scenario), anyone without valid UK immigration status “will be liable to enforcement action, detention and removal as an immigration offender”.
It is not surprising that so many of the 3 million-plus are feeling vulnerable and furious. They were demonised by the leave campaign as the problem to which Brexit was the solution; they have faced years of hostile newspaper headlines; they are angry that the scheme has been developed as an application process rather than a registration scheme (meaning that the status is only acquired by successfully applying for it; under a registration scheme, EU citizens who had failed to apply successfully for the status would not immediately become illegal). They point out that this is not the automatic guarantee of rights the Vote Leave campaign and the government promised. Being forced to apply for the right to stay in their homes has been the final insult. For all its royal blue neutrality, many see the app as performing a distasteful political function – locating them, counting them and classifying them.
Meanwhile, all over Europe, about 1.4 million expatriate Britons are anxiously monitoring the scheme, aware that their own treatment could depend largely on how generously the UK government treats EU citizens.
In April 2018, it emerged that thousands of people who had been born in Commonwealth countries and moved to the UK as children in the 1960s and 70s, when there was free movement between Britain and its former colonies, had become the victims of changes to immigration legislation. In what became known as the Windrush scandal, those who had never applied for British passports found themselves wrongly classified as immigration offenders. Some were detained and removed from the UK, back to countries they had not visited in half a century. Others lost their jobs or homes or were denied NHS treatment.
Their experiences have alarmed EU nationals. The scandal highlighted how poor the Home Office’s capacity is for accurately identifying who is living in the UK legally or illegally, and its reputation has crystallised as an institution that combines malice with incompetence. Many of those obliged to apply for the scheme find the prospect of giving all their personal details to the Home Office disturbing.
For about a quarter of applicants, the process is more complicated than simply submitting passport details and completing an online form. The Advertising Standards Authority has recently ruled that the reassuring Home Office radio advertisement must not be broadcast again, after a complainant pointed out that in some cases applicants had to provide much more documentation than just a passport or ID card.
Since the beginning of the year, Labour has been warning of looming problems with the system, even talking of “Windrush on steroids”. But such warnings are often firmly slapped down as just being part of “project fear”. (“I find your comparisons to Windrush inappropriate,” Priti Patel, the home secretary, told the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, this month.)
There is already concern from immigration lawyers about the upbeat slanting of statistics. The Home Office likes to say that almost 1.5 million people have been granted “some form of status”, but this masks the fact that currently about 40% are getting the inferior pre-settled status, which obliges them to adhere to strict rules on continuous residence for up to a further five years or risk getting pushed out of the system.
Even the Conservative and arch Brexiter MEP Daniel Hannan has voiced concern on Twitter, warning that he has had cases of EU nationals in his south-east England constituency being denied settled status despite living in the UK for years. “This is a breach of the assurances I and others gave during the referendum.” He called on Patel “to sort this out … before we end up with another Windrush scandal”.
Nicolas Hatton, co-founder of the3million, an organisation set up to support EU nationals, describes the decision to introduce an application system with a cut-off date as a timebomb, because so many will fail to apply on time. Switching metaphors, he warns this will be an “illegal immigrants factory … designed to create thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants”.
At the Home Office building in Liverpool, where many of the 1,500 people employed to process the applications are based, there is a relentlessly positive atmosphere. Everyone here is aware of the damage done to the Home Office’s reputation by Windrush. In recent years, the Home Office has been condemned by politicians for being steeped in a “culture of disbelief”, where staff are expected to probe for tiny inconsistencies in the accounts of refugees, and where officials are instructed to “deport first, hear appeals later”.
Many Windrush victims described how they had tried repeatedly to explain that they were not illegal immigrants, but had been ignored, or simply unable to find a Home Office caseworker ready to listen. Before she resigned, Amber Rudd apologised for the “appalling” actions of her own department, blaming a culture in the Home Office which had “lost sight of individuals” and become “too concerned with policy”. In turn, her successor Sajid Javid promised to introduce a “fairer, more compassionate” immigration system. This hasn’t materialised in most of the department, according to immigration lawyers and caseworkers, but in these open-plan offices in Liverpool, up an escalator, above a Tesco and a florist, something does appear to have changed.
Officials are working to instil a new, friendlier ethos within the department dealing with EU nationals. Drawings of cups of tea (with the teabags still in) have been chosen for the branding of the Home Office campaign, to evoke a friendly message of welcome. “We are absolutely, and I can’t stress this enough, not trying to say no,” one of the senior civil servants (who asked not to be named) said. “This is about trying to grant the right. This is not about trying to trip people up. This [application] is something people don’t want to do, and we get that, but we’ve set this up from scratch. All this is here to try to say yes to European citizens, to try to give them their rights.”
If things are working, the full application should take about 15 minutes (there are a few more questions on residency and criminality once ID checks are completed). Under the new scheme, the Home Office doesn’t care if applicants are self-sufficient, studying or working – simply whether they are resident in the UK or not; this is verified by making instant checks with HMRC. Applicants have to do three things: prove their identity, show that they live in the UK and declare any criminal convictions. Once data has been scanned from people’s passports via their phone, they have to take a selfie, so the app can identify if the correct person is applying. The app checks identity through facial matching in the same way travellers are checked in airports at e-passport gates.
To reduce the possibility of fraud, there is no physical document at the end of the process, just a digital record, which can be shared with a landlord or an employer (after Brexit, they will have to check EU nationals’ eligibility) via a time-limited unique code, on a smartphone.
On one floor in Liverpool, staff sit at computers flicking through screens. A passport photograph flashes up, and the employee checks to make sure it matches the selfie taken and submitted through the app. Although much of the system is automated, every case is checked by a human before a decision is made. These human checks can take just 10 minutes. Some people are getting an email back telling them they have settled status within a couple of hours.
When I visited, there was a homely smell of microwaved stew; helium balloons hovered over the desk of someone who had been given a baby shower. Special EU Settlement Resolution Centre teacups have been printed for staff, with inspirational slogans on them. Most of the staff are newly hired, many of them students. One of the few longer-serving members of staff, who has worked at the Home Office for five years, said it was a relief not to have to be so sceptical when dealing with people’s applications. “Before the onus was more on ‘prove it’. Now we are doing everything we can to help,” she said. “When I first joined, it was noticeable that not many cases would result in us issuing the applicant with what they needed.”
The only people likely to be refused will be those with “persistent and serious” criminal records and, so far, only one person has been refused – although a number of people have been dismayed to get the lesser, more precarious pre-settled status, despite having been in the UK for more than five years. Campaigners suspect that the difficult cases may be going to the bottom of the pile, to keep the figures looking favourable.
When the project began, one of the senior civil servants in charge ordered a number of copies of a book called In Limbo, compiled by an Italian translator Elena Remigi, so he and colleagues could read the 144 testimonies of EU nationals resident in Britain, people who were worried about their post-Brexit future here, people who are, the blurb says, “haunted by the poignant question: where is home?” They say the book helped them understand the worries faced by those being asked to apply. Videos have been made for people who struggle with literacy, there is helpline assistance for those who are not confident with technology. The guidance has been translated into all 26 languages (although the helpline advice is only available in English and Welsh). In addition, £9m has been allocated to funding charities (organisations such as Citizens Advice and the East European Resource Centre) to help an estimated 200,000 vulnerable or hard to reach people to apply. Downstairs there is a hotline; this is the first time in 10 years that people have been able to call a Home Office number and speak to a caseworker, rather than an employee at an outsourced firm, reading from a script.
In August, Patel announced an end to freedom of movement in a no-deal scenario at the end of next month. Officials quickly had to clarify on her behalf that free movement would not be ending on that date (since EU law continues to apply until its legal foundation is repealed). Unfortunately, the home secretary’s premature announcement led to a spike in calls leading to long waiting times.
“We’re trying to change the perception of the Home Office,” the woman who heads the call centre said. Staff have dealt with a lot of people who were “upset, frightened and angry”, she said. “We understand why. This is something that has happened to those people. They weren’t consulted or even given a vote in it. They are now having to apply for something that they always had.”
Windrush victims waited years for anyone to pay attention to their difficulties with the Home Office, as they lost jobs and homes and faced detention. By comparison, a mildly famous French baker or Polish chef struggling with the EU status app need only send an irritated Tweet for newspapers to print outraged articles. The reality TV celebrity Fred Sirieix, after tweeting his frustration, had calls from the Home Office within 24 hours to resolve things. Home Office staff seem at pains to act fast to resolve high-profile cases, to quell the noise; but less clear is what happens to those who have less of a public profile.
For some people, the experience is genuinely easy. Some people describe doing it while sitting on the sofa at home, and being pleasantly surprised at getting an email confirming that they have been granted settled status within hours. The difficulty is that while around three-quarters are getting through easily and a quarter need to submit further information, a small proportion will have more complicated experiences.
We already know that too many people are wrongly being allocated pre-settled status instead of the more permanent settled status, a problem that came up during the testing phase, Home Office staff told me. “One of the things we were surprised about in early testing was that people thought they were clicking the button for full settled status, but they were actually accepting pre-settled status, and then being surprised. So we tried to make quite a lot of changes to the guidance to reinforce that,” an official said.
But the problem persists, and campaigners say there are still oddities in the design of the application form, which does not ask people how long they have lived in the UK or which status they hope to get. Only the most well-informed applicants will know they can challenge an incorrect allocation of pre-settled status.
The immigration lawyer Chris Desira has spoken to audiences of EU nationals at more than 200 information sessions arranged by embassies and community groups all over the UK in the past three years. He has identified many vulnerable groups who might find it hard to supply the evidence required to prove that they qualify for settled status – elderly people, people with disabilities, children in care, stay-at-home women who haven’t worked or paid bills, and victims of domestic abuse whose partners have all their papers. He is conscious that the awareness of the need to apply has not got through to everyone. “I am massively worried, massively,” said Desira.
He has seen older people who have been here for decades crying in meetings, worried they are going to be put on a plane out of the country. “Even when you tell them, ‘I am confident that if you fill in this form, you will be fine, you will get settled status’, the anxiety and the stress and everything that is happening around them prevents them from hearing that message.”
His concerns are echoed by Chai Patel of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, who warns that the scheme is set up to be easy for people who are “wealthy, well-educated people”. He is concerned at the absence of a physical document proving status. “The scheme is very easy if you know your rights, you’re online and you’re bolshie enough to be able to stand up for what you’re entitled to. It won’t work so well for the more vulnerable. We are expecting hundreds of thousands of people to be left without status if the scheme continues as it is,” he said.
I met Chris Desira at an event organised in a central London YMCA hall by the German embassy earlier this year, where he and two German diplomats, attempted to answer the questions of people confused by what they needed to do in order to ensure they could continue to live in the UK. While the official line appeared to be “Don’t panic”, the cumulative effect of almost two hours of anxious questions left many feeling disturbed.
One by one, German citizens stood up to voice their alarm. “It’s giving me stomach ache. I’ve been here since 1961,” one woman said, before being reassured that she simply needed to make the application, and she would be fine. (Stephanie Dawoud of the immigration charity Imix, who was translating into my ear, said most of the meetings she had attended had a similar feeling of distress, particularly among older people, who were particularly worried by the unfamiliar notion of apps and applying digitally.) A woman in her 30s was worried about whether she should transfer her business out of the country.
The German diplomat presiding over the occasion (who asked not to be named) exhibited a mournful sense of humour at some of the questions.
“What happens to German civil servants?” someone asked.
“I would love to know that, too!” the diplomat replied.
“Can I come into the country after Brexit?” one woman asked.
“Yes, unless you scare the people are the border into thinking you are a threat to national security,” said the diplomat.
“Should I stockpile food?” another wanted to know, to wry laughter from the room.
“The exciting thing is that you’re jumping into a big black hole,” the diplomat replied.
There were questions about eligibility to healthcare in a no-deal scenario, questions about how to apply for dual nationality and questions about how UK pensions would be uprated if they were paid in Germany. “I have no information whatsoever on how it will pan out. You don’t know what the British government will do,” the diplomat said sadly.
Doris Ratnam was at the back of the room, wondering how she was going to organise herself to apply. She had left her small Black Forest village near Baden Baden in 1968, aged 20, hoping to learn English, a language that neither of her parents spoke. She married a Malaysian citizen in London; he became naturalised decades ago, but she didn’t want to, because for a long time it was difficult to get British citizenship without losing your German passport. (That changed in the pre-Brexit period.)
She felt disheartened at applying for a status she considered to be hers already, as well as alarmed by the digital application. She invited me to watch the process of using the app in May, at her neat north-west London home, reached through a garden of pink roses and trimmed hedges. “I’ve been paying taxes here for 50 years, it should be simple,” she said, offering me coffee and ginger snaps.
But her passport could not be read by the app, even though she had travelled through a passport e-gate, which uses the same technology, only four days earlier.
The process of applying had made her think about her attitudes to Britishness. “I find it difficult to know after all this time whether I feel at home here. I certainly don’t feel British, like a British person, but I have English friends … I feel in-between; I feel both. There’s a saying: the British are too polite to be honest, the Germans are too honest to be polite. I think there is something in it.”
On the helpline, after much time listening to jangly hold music, the Home Office helper was both polite and honest, but had no answer as to why the app was not reading the digital code. She was advised to seek out one of the 80 designated EU settlement scheme scanning offices (in council offices and town hall register offices) where the passport could be scanned manually.
It took weeks for Ratnam to get an appointment at Ealing town hall, but she finally went on 4 July, consulting a photocopied map to find room 1.13, winding right, then left along echoing corridors, then right, then left again, up some marble steps, past a bust of Chopin through the beautiful, almost empty mock-gothic building, soon to be decommissioned and turned into a boutique hotel. Once we arrived at a small, pink-doored room, the official inside was unable to help, also attempting to swipe the passport on a phone until the system locked her out, too. So Ratnam then sat in the waiting room on the phone to the resolution centre in Liverpool for another 40 minutes , asking for help. “I can only advise that the application is locked for 24 hours. We can’t override that,” an official said. “For the time being there is nothing further we can do to help.”
“I’m just fed up,” Ratnam said, a red flush of worry creeping up her neck. “I’m getting worked up; I can’t even get my words out. I don’t want to keep trying.”
She organised a second appointment at the town hall on 10 July. The passport was finally scanned, quite easily, that day, but two days later she received an email asking her to upload an image of her old passport showing a historic stamp giving her indefinite leave to remain. The same email told her that the Home Office could find no record of her indefinite leave to remain and wanted to “confirm that you are related to your EU family member as claimed”. The email was a mistake. She couldn’t work out how to upload the passport; there was another long phone call to Liverpool on 15 July, after which she managed to send off the picture.
“I can hear it in your voice, how anxious you are,” a call handler told her.
“Why can’t you just check my HMRC records?” Ratnam asked. “I’ve been paying tax for long enough.”
On 16 July, an email arrived telling her that her documents had been sent in an “unsupported format and we have been unable to attach the files to your application”. But puzzlingly, a minute later, a second email arrived, saying that her “application to the EU Settlement Scheme has been successful”.
Ratnam has managed to secure her status. Nothing catastrophic went wrong with her application – just a series of irritations that sucked up her time and lowered her mood. Similar irritations will be felt by tens of thousands of others going through the process, reinforcing a sense of alienation. “I’m annoyed that I had to do it after 50 years here. There were mistakes and it was stressful. I don’t feel welcome having to go through a process like that. [See Footnote].
Campaigners worry most about those who do not realise they need to apply, or those who have difficulties converting their pre-settled status into the permanent settled status in the years that follow Brexit. Nicolas Hatton of the 3million charity warns: “On 1 January 2021, if there is no deal, and you haven’t applied, you will be an illegal immigrant. The hostile environment is no joke. That’s when the timebomb will explode.”
 This article was amended on 8 October 2019 to clarify that most but not all EU nationals resident in the UK must have applied for settled status if they want to continue living and working here. Details of the EU Settlement Scheme and who does and doesn’t have to apply are on the government website: https://www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families/eligibility
Last modified on Thu 30 Jul 2020 10.54 BST
I’ve worked in the civil service for most of my adult life, including a stint working in the no-deal Brexit planning bunker Operation Yellowhammer back when we thought we’d crash out of the EU in March. But with a so-called war cabinet “turbo-charging” preparations in the 90 days before we all lurch into a Halloween no-deal meltdown, the UK body politic is in something of a state of shock. And there are no grownups in sight.
After the night of the blond knives, “funereal” is the best word to describe the atmosphere in my patch of Whitehall. Boris Johnson has constructed his cabinet out of the most radioactive remnants of the leave campaign, starting with the installation of the leave campaign witch doctor, Dominic Cummings, at the heart of the No 10 policy machine. What happened? Was Moriarty unavailable? Had the burning Eye of Sauron already turned down the job because it wanted to “spend more time with the family”? It’s difficult to imagine a more alarming appointment – but it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
The most illuminating and disturbing message was delivered by the prime minister himself in that brash, electioneering speech on the steps of No 10. My Whitehall colleagues, not least those crammed up against the railings of Downing Street to watch him, could scarcely have missed its polarising subtext. As former Treasury mandarin Jill Rutter wrote last week, that message is simple: Johnson will simply ignore or disavow those who do not believe in his optimism project.
Well, so what? Surely any new prime minister is entitled to surround himself with kindred souls as he swashes his buckles in pursuit of his Brexit “moonshot”. Why does it matter if the nation’s civil servants feel threatened – if anything, isn’t that what these pusillanimous, backsliding Whitehall gloomsters need to corral them back into the one, true church?
No. It matters because this “optimism on steroids” masks dangerous side-effects that present almost as many risks as Brexit itself. There are a number of core values that every civil servant signs up for – yet each of these is under threat, with potentially serious consequences.
First, objectivity: civil servants are duty-bound to base their advice on rigorous analysis of the best evidence available, whether it’s no-deal economic analysis or how best to run an NHS hospital. Brexiteers, however, including cabinet members, have no problem throwing accusations of bias and apostasy at senior civil servants when evidence inconveniences policy.
That matters because while throwing us publicly under the bus is bad enough, what’s worse is the prospect of civil servants – fearing defenestration or public shaming by ministers – ignoring important evidence, which could potentially put lives at risk.
What would that look like? Forget Brexit for a minute. Only last week, the public accounts committee censured the Home Office for its “unhealthy good news culture”, which led to over-optimistic officials ignoring evidence that a new nationwide communication system for the emergency services (now horrendously delayed) was in fact undeliverable. Expect this corrosive optimism to deliver more of the same.
Second, honesty. At prime minister’s questions, the Labour MP Angela Eagle said “one of the principles of public life is honesty” – and asked if Johnson had always been honest in his political career. What’s ominous is not that he didn’t answer the question; it’s that no one expected him to. That matters because beyond Brexit lie a range of other wickedly disruptive challenges, including climatic, technological and demographic changes. Those challenges can only be overcome by being honest about the risks, benefits and costs. The alternative is an increasingly partisan US-style civil service that falls into dangerous groupthink.
Finally, integrity. The UK’s civil service was rated No 1 in the world a few months ago by a respected international index. Unfortunately, because civil servants take instructions from their ministers, that’s no guarantee against disaster. Also, that assessment of our civil service masks important weaknesses. It turns out that the UK’s lowest score in the index (barely average compared with the civil service machinery in other countries) was for integrity – defined as the commitment to put public service above personal interest. This is where Brexit could hit the civil service hardest, and where we come back to Cummings.
Why has his appointment provoked such alarm? He has declared war on Whitehall. He is a shock doctrine aficionado who has seen in Brexit a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ram through policy ideas that couldn’t be implemented at any other time. Some of those ideas may be good ones. Others, like allowing an increased politicisation of the civil service, are not. The problem with most of them is that they are untested; if they go wrong they would, according to the civil service union chief, David Penman, “impact upon the delivery of public services to millions of citizens”.
This week we saw a growing number of MPs voicing their concern that he represents a threat to democracy itself. That’s unprecedented – and we should heed their warning. This is not about opposing the idea of confidence or optimism – but the normalisation of a myopic ruthlessness and a corrupting desire to go for broke, to win by any means necessary.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.15 GMT
One of the hardest questions surrounding the British government’s approach to Brexit is how much of the blundering is down to incompetence and how much to duplicity. Duplicity suggests a plan towards which the lying is meant to contribute. It also requires a basic understanding of the facts: you cannot deliberately lie until you know what the truth is.
So where does the leaked Home Office document on Britain’s post-Brexit immigration policy that emerged last night fall on this spectrum? As legal experts were quick to point out on Twitter, the document not only contains errors; it also misrepresents the current EU arrangements around freedom of movement. “Highly misleading & inflammatory tabloid bullshit” in the words of one EU law professor, Steve Peers from the University of Essex.
Now ask yourself: why would you as a government put falsehoods in a proposal that is explicitly secret and for internal use only? Because you just cannot get your facts right? Or was the document meant to be leaked so this government could score a few points in the tabloids and the Daily Telegraph?
These are depressingly hard questions to answer with this government. When the international trade secretary and prominent Brexiteer Liam Fox announced in July this year that an EU-UK trade deal should be one of the “easiest in human history”, was Dr Fox being stupid or mendacious? Did the foreign minister, Boris Johnson, ever genuinely believe that Britain could “have its cake and eat it”? And what was David Davis on about when he claimed that the sequencing of negotiations in Brussels would be “the row of the summer”, only to roll over during the first meeting and agree with the EU demands – until revoking that agreement last month?
And, more pertinent to the leaked document, what was behind the promise made three months before the June 2016 referendum by the leading Brexiteer and MEP Daniel Hannan on Twitter: “It is irresponsible to scare EU nationals in the UK by hinting that their status might change after Brexit. No one’s suggesting such a thing.”
Did Hannan really think that after leaving the EU the rights of EU nationals would remain untouched? The rules for freedom of movement give EU nationals in another EU country more rights than the local population. This is an important reason why many Brits of Asian descent voted for Brexit – why should it be easier for a Pole living in Britain to bring over family members from Warsaw than for a British national doing the same thing with family members from Mumbai or Karachi?
Alas, whatever balance between stupidity and malice future historians will strike to explain this government’s Brexit policy, one thing should be abundantly clear for EU nationals living in Britain: they can no longer plan their future. The problem is not just that this government considers them bargaining chips for use in the negotiations (we’ll treat your EU nationals well if in return we can catch more fish): EU nationals have been aware of where they stand for over a year.
Suppose this government were now to disavow the leaked document and guarantee that nothing will change for EU nationals living in Britain? What would that promise be worth, from a government that has already performed one U-turn after another?
And even if this government did now stop lying, there is the question of competence. Earlier this year, 100 EU citizens living in Britain received a deportation letter by mistake – oopsie! Theresa May has stated that the European court of justice, which could protect EU nationals, will play no role in Britain post-Brexit. Or maybe this was a lie. Or perhaps a mistake because the prime minister had failed to grasp the role of the court?
If any EU nationals living in Britain were still in doubt, the leaked document should make it abundantly clear: for the rest of your time in Britain you will face genuine and fundamental legal uncertainty.
First published on Wed 21 Aug 2019 08.29 BST
The government’s plans to give councils an extra £9m in additional funding for no-deal preparations have been criticised as “too little, too late” and “a drop in the ocean”, with the leader of Portsmouth council leader saying the city had spent £4m preparing for potentially thousands more lorries to use the port.The shadow communities secretary, Andrew Gwynne, said: “‘Too little too late’ doesn’t even begin to describe the government’s woeful level of support for councils’ no-deal preparations. The £9m promised last night to some coastal councils is a drop in the ocean when compared to the amount that councils across the country have already had to spend.
“Beyond ports, so many of the vital services that our local authorities provide are put at risk by the government’s pursuit of a reckless no-deal Brexit and they have simply not received the support they need.
“All of this takes place against a backdrop of nine years of savage cuts to local government funding. Councils are already at breaking point and this additional spending means even less money is available to spend on vital services such as adult social care, road maintenance or environmental protection.”Gerald Vernon-Jackson, the Liberal Democrat leader of Portsmouth council, said it had only been refunded £350,000 of its spending on no-deal preparations. The council has been advised that a two-minute delay in vehicles clearing in to the port could mean 60 extra lorries queueing on to the motorway.
“The government has been happy to give money to ferry companies that have no ferries, that was £20m, but they have not helped local authorities get ready and we have had to plan to make sure if there is a no-deal Brexit that the whole of the M27 doesn’t grind to a halt because of queues of lorries trying to get into the port who can’t get in,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday.
Vernon-Jackson said preparations, including triage points and lorry parks, had cost the council millions. “We’ve been out and spent the money anyway. We can’t allow government inaction and inefficiency to crucify Portsmouth,” he said.Asked if the logjam could be averted, he said: “We hope so, but we don’t know. We do 500 lorries a day. Dover dwarfs us, they do 10,000, but we’ve been told to expect up to 2,000 extra lorries a day turning up in Portsmouth because they can’t get through Dover.”
On a visit to Holyhead in North Wales on Wednesday, Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of no-deal Brexit planning, said predictions of a three-month “meltdown” at ports contained in leaked Operation Yellowhammer documents represented a worst-case scenario.
“I’m confident that, if we all do the right thing, on 31 October we will be able to ensure that goods can flow in and out of ports like Holyhead without any significant delay,” he said. “There are a number of scenarios, there is a worst case and we are trying very hard to reduce the risk of that worst case materialising.
“I think the steps that we’ve taken over the course of the last three weeks and more steps that we’ll be taking in the next few weeks and months will ensure that we reduce the risk even further. One of them is making sure that traders have all the information and the systems that they need in order to be able to export.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced overnight that it would allocate £9m to councils to help ensure they are staffed to deal with any issues at ports. Calais alone has spent £20m on no-deal contingency planning, but the ministry says it has already spent significant sums on council’s no-deal preparations.
It said £5m would be split between local authorities which either have or are near a major air, land or sea port, of which Kent council would receive £2.6m because of the pressures on the port of Dover.
 The other £4m is set to be spent on “local resilience forums” across England, which are supporting Brexit preparations for public services.
The communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, said the funds would “help local areas get ready for Brexit, whatever the circumstances” and that the ministry had “stepped up our preparedness significantly in recent weeks, including by asking every council to appoint a Brexit lead officer”.Jenrick said Portsmouth city council would be getting an additional £286,000, well short of the £4m spent by the council. The sum was “purely for staff, communications and planning”, he said.Jenrick also defended the amount announced on Wednesday. “We’ve been giving significant amounts of money to local authorities,” he said. “With the money we’re announcing … we’ll have given £77m to local authorities across the country to prepare for our departure,” he told the Today programme.“This is not money for hard infrastructure, that could come from the chancellor’s additional £2.1bn he’s announced.”
First published on Sat 14 Jul 2018 21.00 BST
Britain’s former trade commissioner in Brussels, Lord Mandelson, is making common cause with hardline, anti-EU Tories, saying Theresa May’s latest Brexit blueprint would lead to “national humiliation” and leave the country in a worse position than if it turned its back on the entire European economic system.
In an extraordinary intervention that shows that even the most ardent Remainers in parliament find the plans unacceptable, the Labour peer says the plans would deliver “the polar opposite of taking back control”, and would mean “the EU would ultimately call the shots, not just now but indefinitely”.
Writing in the Observer – as a new Opinium poll shows support for the Tories has haemorraghed and backing for Ukip has soared since the plans were agreed by the cabinet 10 days ago – Mandelson writes: “Britain, in effect, would be entrapped and the more you think through the implications the more the whole thing looks less like a soft Brexit than a national humiliation.
“Not only would it fail to secure all the trade we have presently but it would severely compromise our ability to negotiate future trade agreements with other countries. Inevitably you are drawn to the conclusion that it would be better to be fully in the economic structures of the EU or out of them all together, and if you are in them, better to stay in the EU itself as this provides a seat at the table where the rules are made.”
The comments from Mandelson, who supports a “people’s vote” – another referendum – on a final Brexit deal, are in line with the latest thinking of Remain-minded Labour MPs, whose outright opposition to May’s proposals would appear to kill off any hope the government might have of relying on opposition supporters of a soft Brexit to force her plans through parliament in the autumn.
On Saturday night, the pro-Remain Labour MP Chuka Umunna said there was no way even the most pro-EU Labour supporters of a soft Brexit would back May’s plans. “There is no Labour Remainer who would support May’s Chequers deal or prop up her sorry excuse for a government – full stop,” he said.
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has written to May telling her to change course or risk doing untold damage to the City. Khan said her plans “would open the door to our competitors, who are already actively working to attract UK-based businesses to export jobs to Paris, Frankfurt, Dublin and other secondary financial hubs”.
He added that “under the kind of Brexit that you are offering, the risk is that these would be the tip of the iceberg. While London’s fundamental strengths, as an open, cosmopolitan and global city will always remain, jobs and investment that could have been ours might in future go elsewhere in Europe.”
After a week that saw the resignations of David Davis and Boris Johnson, followed by criticism of May’s handling of Brexit by Donald Trump, the Opinium poll is devastating for the Tories, who face further battles in parliament this week. It shows May’s party has dropped six points to 36% since the last poll five weeks ago, leaving Labour, on 40%, with its biggest lead since shortly after the snap general election last June.
May’s leadership ratings in the survey, taken between Wednesday and Friday last week as the fallout from the Chequers deal became clear, have also plummeted from -8 in June to -24. She is now well behind Jeremy Corbyn who is on -12. She also has the lowest approval rating on her handling of Brexit since Opinium starting polling on the issue. Just 25% currently approve of the way she is handling Brexit, down from 30% last month.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the prime minister will make a fresh appeal for the Tory party and the country to get behind her plans, but hints that she is listening to critics.
“I know there are some who have concerns about the common rule book for goods and the customs arrangements which we have proposed will underpin the new UK-EU free trade area. I understand those concerns. But the legacy of Brexit cannot be a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland that unpicks the historic Belfast agreement.”
She adds: “It cannot be the breaking-up of our precious United Kingdom with a border down the Irish Sea. And it cannot be the destruction of integrated supply chains and just-in-time processes on which jobs and livelihoods depend.
“I am yet to see a workable alternative future trading arrangement that would deliver on our commitments to Northern Ireland, preserve the constitutional integrity of the UK and deliver on the result of the referendum.”
May faces further problems in the House of Commons early this week as two Brexit-related bills return to the Commons. There are suggestions that some hardline Tory Brexiters in the European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, could vote against or abstain in votes on the taxation (cross-border trade) bill and the separate trade bill. Were they to join with opposition MPs to prevent either bill having a third reading, the government would be thrown into further chaos over its Brexit planning.
Talks with the EU resume on Monday, and the new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, will meet the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in Brussels for the first time later in the week.
David Davis is expected to make a resignation speech in the Commons on Monday, according to his supporters.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
Seventeen years ago Theresa May stunned her fellow Conservatives by telling their annual party conference that they were “just plain unattractive”. The Tories, she said, had become “the nasty party”. Today, from where I sit in western Europe, Britain itself looks just plain unattractive. It seems to have become “the nasty country”. I’m not saying the British people are any worse, or any better, than any other Europeans. I am saying its ruling political party is nasty, as is much of its press. The leader of the Conservative party, and therefore the prime minister, is a man who has personally taken nastiness to an entirely new level, yet is the country’s most popular politician.
Ever since the UK voted to leave the EU, millions of other Europeans like me have been looking for signs that the country is coming around to its old, pragmatic self. It’s a version of Boris Johnson’s cakeism: you want to love Britain and you want to be honest about the kind of country it is now. These two positions have become impossible to hold at the same time.
The UK now seems to be the country whose government lies about nonexistent negotiations with the EU while threatening to renege on its outstanding financial obligations – often misrepresented as the “divorce bill”. It’s the country whose leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, threatened to sabotage the EU from within if Brexit was postponed. It’s the country, too, whose last prime minister (the aforementioned May) threatened to stop cooperating with the EU on terrorism, inspiring the Sun front-page headline: “Your money or your lives”. The country whose former Conservative leader Michael Howard talked up war with Spain over Gibraltar. Whose cabinet minister Priti Patel suggested threatening the people of Ireland with starvation. Whose foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt likened the EU to the Soviet Union and whose current prime minister compared it to the Nazis.
This is just a small sample of the nastiness now being shown towards the EU and to other Europeans by Britain’s mainstream political leaders and cabinet ministers. What comes out of the mouths of some backbench Tory MPs and Brexit party MEPs is so vile it would pollute a sewer. And then there is the far-right-billionaire-owned press.
The dominant four newspapers in Britain by circulation are the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Sun on Sunday and the Mail on Sunday, with the more measured but equally pro-Brexit Sunday Times coming in fifth. Each of these publications has been brainwashing its readers with fake news about the EU for years – in some cases, decades – while building up pro-Brexit politicians and stoking divisions. Terms such as “betrayal”, “surrender”, “plots by traitors” and “enemies of the people” are on the front pages routinely. The top 10 British papers by paid circulation does not feature any pro-European newspaper, unless you count the Daily Mirror. It does feature Boris Johnson’s mouthpiece, the Daily Telegraph, and the triumphantly nasty Daily Star. It is a depressing tally, scarcely improved by knowing how many people rely on social media for their news.
But of course the Britain that most democratic Europeans love, the Britain of say, the doughty supreme court justice Lady Hale, still exists. Yet the terrible truth is that this progressive side of Britain, the side that stands in such sharp contrast to the illiberal authoritarianism that Hungary and Poland have given in to, is in deep disarray. It has almost zero political representation. And there are few signs this is about to change. The Liberal Democrats and Greens are powerless under the country’s outdated first-past-the-post electoral system, while the Labour party is led by someone who campaigned for the leadership on the promise of straight talking, then obfuscated about Brexit from the moment he got the job.
The Tory party has elected the most callous, ruthless, mendacious and superficial politician in living memory as its leader and thereby prime minister. According to the polls this deeply nasty man is easily the most popular politician in the country.
It remains essential for other Europeans to distinguish between the rightwing papers and politicians that whip up hatred in Britain, and the rest of the country. As somebody who has lived in Britain, I know how tolerant and plural it can be. Neither is this a call for EU leaders to boot the UK out by refusing any request for an extension and forcing a no-deal exit by 31 October.
The EU needs to protect Ireland and make sure that if the UK opts for the no-deal disaster so many of its mainstream leaders and publications crave, it is clear to the rest of the world who is to blame. Because Brexit is something that the UK is doing to its European neighbours, not the other way around.
For years now a decisive segment of the British establishment and electorate has been poisoning itself with lies, delusions and the demonisation of everyone with a different opinion about membership of the EU. These people want to throw themselves off a cliff and take their country with them. It is a deeply painful process to follow, especially for those who know that a different Britain is possible. Alas, the EU cannot save a country that does not want to save itself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Last weekend Tim Shipman, the political editor of the Sunday Times, tweeted: “The urge to march for things and against things is one I have never understood. Why not write a letter instead?”
He may have been referring to the start of the March to Leave, Nigel Farage’s much-derided venture that saw a handful of bedraggled Brexit supporters trudging through the rainswept and muddy countryside. But Shipman may also have been thinking about this Saturday’s Put it to the People March, which promises to be somewhat larger, as hundreds of thousands take to the streets of London to demand the final say on any Brexit deal.
Whatever the reason, as one of those gearing up even now to protest in public, I’d like to answer Shipman. First, it’s not like we haven’t been writing to MPs. Our campaign has sent hundreds of thousands of letters, postcards and emails to our elected representatives in the past few months, expressing dismay at the mind-numbing crisis that Brexit has become. These are important. But bulging postbags and cluttered inboxes alone don’t change history.
Saturday’s march will once again allow new and marginalised voices to be heard. And when the dust settles, it’ll be the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets to fight for change who will be remembered.
In recent years marches have fallen short of securing policy change on our nation’s defining questions. They have, however, left a permanent mark on the politicians who ignored them. I was too young to attend the Iraq protests. But I know their effect on those in power at the time and how much harder it would ever be for a government to go to war again in defiance of such public resistance. Today’s politicians ignore us at their peril.
Saturday’s march differs from others in the past because Brexit is not a done deal. The government has stalled, and politics is at a standstill. We march days before our country could crash out of the European Union altogether. Public outrage at the crippling incompetence and indecision in Westminster reached new levels this week when the petition to revoke article 50 and remain in the EU hit 2m signatures, crashing the parliamentary petition website several times. But this crisis must be ended with the public’s consent – and Saturday’s march is another important opportunity to give a voice to this country on the defining issue of our age.
Theresa May’s deal may be voted on again next week, the prime minister hoping that the threat of a no-deal crashout coaxes rebels back into line. Yet MPs still haven’t decided what Brexit means. May’s deal will leave millions of people asking, “What’s the point?”; and no deal will raise the question, “What’s the price?”
We’re facing a crunch week – though the EU has agreed to an extended Brexit deadline of 22 May if the prime minister’s deal is passed, and 12 April if it is not – and reasonable MPs must surely conclude that the only way out of this mess is to put some version of it back to the people. We know any Brexit will damage our futures and leave us poorer. We know that allowing May’s deal over the line will only lead to more years of painful negotiations and bitter arguments. All the while, the chance to tackle issues of climate change and cybersecurity – which my generation are determined to do – will fall by the wayside as our country obsesses further over a disastrous project.
The vast majority of young people opposed Brexit in 2016, and even more of us oppose it now. Nearly 2 million young people have come of voting age since June 2016. Three-quarters of them want to remain in the European Union, and many of them will be among us on Saturday demanding their say on an issue that will define their futures.
When the Brexit deal is so far from what was promised three years ago, and when the costs of Brexit are clear for all to see, we should not have to stand by and allow this government to force through a deal that nobody voted for. Saturday’s protest could not be better timed. It is a chance for all of us to force our politicians to listen, while we still can.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Boris Johnson is insouciantly reluctant to be seen travelling cap in hand to Berlin, Paris or Brussels in pursuit of new Brexit terms. He has not even bothered to make a phone call to the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, even though the Irish border is the crunch Brexit issue. His attitude to the European Union is to try to make the foreigners sweat, even if the result is a slump in the value of sterling, as it was on Monday. And yet, like Theresa May before him, Mr Johnson felt the need to go to Scotland at the very start of his prime ministership.
Why did he come? Why the exception? It is, after all, improbable that the prime minister will get a political dividend from his meetings in Edinburgh. The first, with the Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, was at best an exercise in damage limitation. Mr Johnson’s casual embrace of a possible no-deal Brexit (which he just as casually denied in an interview) has undermined both Ms Davidson and Tory credibility on the issue in Scotland. Meanwhile, although the brutal sacking of the former Scottish secretary, David Mundell, last week may not have received much attention in England, it has been widely seen in Scotland as an act that pulls the rug from under Ms Davidson.
The second meeting with the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, was hardly any easier. Ms Sturgeon was evidently determined not to welcome Mr Johnson to Bute House with a smile. Inside, though, she must have been laughing. Mr Johnson embodies the kind of Englishness that grates most on nationalist sensibilities. He is often seen as a recruiting sergeant for the SNP. His visit provided Ms Sturgeon and her party’s formidable media operation with an ideal platform from which to promote their independence agenda in a way that is already gathering some momentum in the polls.
Very clearly, Mr Johnson came on what was otherwise likely to be an unrewarding visit because he could not afford not to. Scotland voted heavily to remain in the EU in 2016. Yet few in Westminster, particularly on the Tory benches, have ever taken the likely effect of Brexit on Scotland seriously. Mrs May came north in 2016 and said how much she loved the union, but she then went away and forgot about the issue. Mr Johnson, like most fervent leavers, never gives Scotland much thought either, any more than he bothers with Ireland. But it became shockingly clear during the leadership campaign that the Tory party is now full of people who simply do not care whether or not the UK remains together as long as they can have Brexit. Belatedly, even Mr Johnson now appears to get what is at stake, although he characteristically has no plan to address the issue.
This was embodied by the first part of Mr Johnson’s Scottish visit. His morning visit to the Faslane nuclear base on Monday can be explained in two ways. The first was that the security at Faslane ensured that he could give his press interviews against a strong visual backdrop without any interference from protesters. The second was that he was happier emphasising his commitment to the UK’s nuclear submarines and all they symbolise about Britain than in worrying about the signal that this gives to anti-nuclear opinion in Scotland. It was, in short, a visit aimed at the English audience rather than the Scottish one.
Mr Johnson made one important thing explicit in the interviews. Asked if he would rule out a second independence referendum in Scotland, he said the 2014 vote to stay in the UK had been “a once in a generation consultation” and that another vote would undermine trust in politics. That certainly sounded like a no, though it was not as clear as Mrs May’s rejection of the idea. It nevertheless throws down the gauntlet to the SNP, who have said that Brexit may justify a further independence referendum. This renews the possibility that Ms Sturgeon, despite having ruled out the possibility in March, may find herself having to reconsider a Catalan scenario, in which the Scottish government holds a referendum that is not legally binding and potentially illegal. That would be a fraught possibility, as events in Catalonia have shown only too obviously. But Mr Johnson would be reckless to assume that his own eagerness to leave the European Union will not encourage Scots – and others too – to abandon the British one.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
At 7pm this evening, we as MPs will be asked to take the single most important decision that any of us have faced during our time in parliament. The outcome will affect the future of our country, our economy and the lives of the people we represent.
The Brexit referendum showed us to be divided, and those of us who campaigned for remain have to accept that we lost. But that does not mean that we have to agree to the deal the prime minister has brought back – a deal that satisfies no one.
I will be voting against it because it completely fails to give us clarity and certainty about our future economic relationship with our biggest, nearest and most important trading partners – the rest of the EU.
People have been looking for clear direction so we know where we are heading. Instead we have vague language that is not legally binding. Why does this matter? Because businesses, and the people who rely on them for a job, need certainty about how trade will work in future, what access there will be to EU markets for our service industries (which make up 80% of our economy) and what workers’ rights and environmental protections we will have. And for all of us, what will happen to co-operation on security that helps to keep us safe?
These, and many others, are all perfectly reasonable questions for us to ask about what will happen after we leave. The problem is we have no idea what the answers are. And by putting off decisions now about the choices we will eventually have to make, the government has put the country in a weak position because any future deal with the EU will require the unanimous approval of all of the other member states.
It is also not true that there are only two possible alternatives – the prime minister’s deal or leaving the EU with no deal (which would be very damaging). There is an alternative of a much closer economic relationship with the EU. I happen to support joining the European Economic Area (EEA) while remaining in a customs union – this would solve the problem of the border in Northern Ireland and maintain friction-free trade which is so important to many businesses – but other MPs have different views about what they would like to see.
The only reason why a different approach has not been proposed is because the prime minister’s “red lines” have boxed her in and resulted in this profoundly unsatisfactory deal.
Now is the time for all of us to be honest with each other about the choices and the trade-offs that we have to make. We need to find a way of bringing our divided country together. We must recognise that not everyone will be happy with the final outcome. And all of us are going to have to compromise.
I had tabled an amendment for today that sought to do two things – reject the prime minister’s deal and rule out no deal. I have, however, decided to withdraw it because we must get the clearest expression of the view from the House on the single issue of the government’s deal, which I hope will be a resounding rejection.
I do however intend to pursue ways of ruling out no deal at the earliest opportunity. Since I tabled my proposal in December, the House has voted for Yvette Cooper’s no-deal amendment to the finance bill which was a clear and welcome indication of members’ opposition to no deal, and other significant procedural developments – technical though they seem – are fundamentally about enabling parliament to take back control. And now there is a proposal for a bill that would allow the House of Commons to instruct the government in law to seek an extension to article 50, if needed, in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit and to enable parliament to consider various alternative ways forward.
All of this means that the House will have the opportunity to make it clear that it rejects no deal and so offer much-needed reassurance to businesses and others who are very worried about the disaster that a no-deal Brexit would be.
If the deal is voted down by parliament tonight, I hope the government will change its approach, reach out across the parties and try to find a new plan that can win support. But if the government doesn’t do this and if parliament remains deadlocked then, then unless there is general election, it may turn out that the only way forward will be to go back to the British people and ask them to decide.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
Here we go again. After a year in which the government has played down the chances of the UK leaving the EU with no agreement even on withdrawal issues, no deal is back with a bang. It was perhaps inevitable that, as the Brexit endgame approached, people were bound to start thinking again about the implications of the whole thing ending in a car crash, with no deal signed between the UK and the European Union.
And so we at The UK in a Changing Europe decided to revisit the report we did on this subject more than a year ago. After all, for all the sound and fury of the Brexit debate, it has become predictable. Oozing from the pages of the government’s technical reports on no deal was the perceived need to placate Brexiters by signalling that “no deal” preparations were being made, while simultaneously underlining the problems such an outcome would entail. Reactions were equally predictable. Remainers emphasised what they saw as the lunacy of a no-deal outcome, while leavers settled back on tried-and-tested claims about “project fear”. Time, we thought, for an impartial assessment.
Our conclusions are every bit as grim – if not more so – than they were first time round. In sectors ranging from air transport to agriculture and fisheries, the impact of no deal would be profound and overwhelmingly negative. The absence of any clear legal framework to regulate the UK’s commercial and other relations with the EU and numerous other parts of the world will wreak havoc on trade. And the rights and status of millions of our fellow citizens in the UK and in the EU will be put in doubt.
Happily, we do not see a no-deal outcome as the most likely one. Clearly, there are still significant hurdles to be cleared in the negotiations. And it is far from a foregone conclusion that a parliamentary majority can be cobbled together for whatever deal is arrived at. Yet both sides have a vested interest in securing a deal – or at least postponing the day of reckoning – and, let’s face it, the eleventh hour is when the EU tends to strike its agreements.
What has been perhaps most striking as the no-deal debate cranks back into action has been the profound lack of understanding that continues to mark the conversation. For one thing, the analogy of a “deal” has itself proved to be profoundly misleading. In virtually all social and commercial situations where deals are the order of the day, “no deal” simply implies the status quo ante. Take a simple example. If I drive my car to the garage, determined to secure a deal on a new one, the worst that could happen is that I fail and take my old banger home again.
With Brexit, this is simply not the case. No deal does not mean we return to the world as it was prior to the negotiations. It means a whole raft of rules that regulate our commerce with the EU (and, via it, with many other parts of the world) will simply cease to apply. It’s almost as if my old car died on the way back from the garage.
Some people counter such claims with the idea that, in the absence of an overall Brexit agreement, individual deals with the EU might keep the wheels on the wagon. This assumption too shines out from the pages of the government’s technical reports. Yet consider how such an outcome might come about. A collapse in the negotiations would doubtless lead to bitterness and mutual recrimination. We can already see how some politicians are preparing to blame the EU for a damaging outcome. As for the union itself, no deal would mean that those “withdrawal” issues it had prioritised from the start – the Brexit bill, citizens’ rights and the Irish border – were left unresolved. Why should Brussels start negotiating ways of mitigating the impact of no deal before a satisfactory resolution of these issues?
This is why we have focused our analysis on what we have termed a “chaotic Brexit”: a no-deal situation where few if any mitigating deals have been struck with Brussels. This would be the reality of no deal. Whatever the merits of trading on World Trade Organisation terms (and they are overstated by Brexiters) over the longer term, our report makes clear that the WTO provides little or no shield against short-term disruption. The issues would be about day-to-day trading arrangements, about access to supplies of everything from blood to nuclear isotopes, to the components needed for a variety of manufacturing processes.
This is the reality of no deal. Not a glorious trading future under whatever rules we choose to adopt. But uncertainty and strained relations with our largest trading partner. Politics sometimes generates outcomes no one wanted. In this case, politicians would be well advised to prevent it doing so.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Parliament’s verdict on Theresa May’s Brexit deal is struggling to match its billing as a “meaningful vote”, since no one can say what the prime minister’s defeat would really mean. It is especially unpredictable because the battles to come will not run along party lines. Many MPs decided long ago that their Brexit choices transcended attachment to a red or blue rosette. They might have party whips on their backs, but they feel history’s eye on them more keenly.
One Labour veteran, witness to many a parliamentary rebellion, describes loyalties in the Commons today as the most fluid since the repeal of the corn laws 172 years ago. That tussle over tariffs brought down a prime minister, split the Conservative party and created a new Liberal one.
Today’s Tories look more divided than Labour, but that is because a governing party has to do Brexit, while the opposition only has to talk about it. May has made unpopular choices that Jeremy Corbyn pretends do not need making. Labour’s policy is to engineer a general election, win it, then cook up an alchemist Brexit that keeps the benefits of the single market without the obligations of EU membership. The unavailability of that combination has been proven many times.
If Tory MPs cared only about party unity, they would rally behind May’s deal. Their goal would be to get over the finish line without sweating over the small print, mint the commemorative coins and change the subject – enjoying the respite of a transition period before too many people realised they had been diddled. But neither hardcore leavers nor remainers are prepared to play along. Tory Brexit ultras demand a new deal, knowing there is no time to get one. They are just flapping their arms in anticipation of a run at the no-deal cliff edge. But if that is the way things are heading, many pro-European Tories would take their chances on a referendum with a view to aborting Brexit altogether.
For the hard-right Conservatives, Brexit is one stage in a still more radical project – a hybrid of Ukippish nationalism and deregulated market free-for-all. Tory moderates dream of rehabilitating their party’s one-nation tradition and its social conscience. May is still in office mainly because a leadership contest would prise that ideological schism open beyond repair. No Tory can name a candidate to unite the party; many can think of someone whose victory would force them to quit.
Corbyn has more job security than May, but it is built on a devoted membership, not a loyal parliamentary cohort. Even if Labour MPs vote en bloc against the Brexit deal it will be for divergent reasons. Some share the leader’s ambition to provoke a dissolution of parliament. Others dread a general election, but think it unlikely and expect party policy to switch to a second referendum as the next best thing. A third tranche is torn between the impulse to satisfy leave-voting constituents and hatred of May’s government. They want Brexit done, but will avoid throwing the prime minister a lifeline when the waters are closing over her head.
Corbyn himself does not seem naturally interested in Britain’s EU membership. His most commonly stated preference since the referendum has been to leave on terms that remove the UK from single market rules on competition and industrial subsidy (a pretty hard Brexit). But he is mindful that many of his supporters wish he would rally for remain. Corbyn’s ideal outcome would probably be to get Brexit with none of the blame for Brexit. So the Labour leadership has circled over May’s government like vultures, watching a wounded creature crawl across an arid plain. There are worse strategies. Scavenging is an effective evolutionary model, albeit not an inspiring one.
Corbyn has reasons to avoid getting involved in the People’s Vote campaign. It would put him in public alliance with liberal Tories and Blairites, the kind of people with whom he does not share platforms (including the actual Tony Blair). The opposition leader’s team also suspects the People’s Vote movement of incubating a new party and sees no value in political insurgencies outside Labour’s control.
That isn’t entirely paranoid. There are Labour MPs who want a referendum but would not be too disappointed if their leader were to be seen to obstruct one. That decision would give moderate rebels a cause to break with the party on terms that might carry some sympathy with the membership. For Corbyn to be exposed as unequivocally pro-Brexit would test the faith of all but his most dedicated acolytes. The remnants of pre-2015 Labour would fall away and the party, for better or worse, would emerge purely Corbynite.
What form that rupture takes is unclear. Volatility shakes up old allegiances but it doesn’t remove all obstacles to the establishment of new parties. The electoral system still punishes political startup ventures. A craving for different leadership doesn’t conjure ideal leaders into being. And the call of the tribe should never be underestimated. In an election, many MPs who claim now to have floating loyalties would drift back to their original side.
Many, but not all. Much depends on how long the turbulence lasts and how extreme it gets. England’s two main parties are sailing into a rare constitutional hurricane and it isn’t clear whether their vessels are sound. All manner of things will be thrown overboard – policies, MPs, leaders. Some will jump before they are pushed. The parties that emerge on the other side of this storm will not be the same ones we have now, even if they sail under familiar names and colours.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Charlatan Boris Johnson looks set to win the Tory leadership on the basis of his declaration that the UK must leave the EU by 31 October, “do or die”. Some claim he’s merely crowd-pleasing and that, in Number 10, he’ll be transformed into a mature statesman. That is nonsense. Johnson knows that the Brexit party represents an existential threat to the Conservatives, and that the only way to burst the Farage bubble is to deliver Brexit. His two overriding priorities will therefore be to avoid extending article 50 and to ensure there is no general election while the UK is still an EU member.
We are therefore staring down the barrel of a catastrophic no-deal crash-out, which will do the greatest harm to the most fragile communities, compromise our national security and shake the precious Irish peace process to its foundations. MPs can huff and puff all they like, but they are powerless now that the mechanisms used to seize control of the order paper are no longer available. Tory MPs talk about being prepared to overthrow their own government, but will they really usher in a Jeremy Corbyn premiership?
The Brexiters say they’ll force the EU to cave in and drop the backstop by “threatening”’ no deal. But they know this is an empty threat because the EU’s ability to absorb the shock of no deal is far greater than ours. The EU stance will continue: first resolve the divorce items, then we can talk about the future relationship.
Plenty who advocate a second referendum or revoking article 50 have refused to tolerate any form of Brexit, blocking compromises and then dismissing the withdrawal agreement bill (WAB) out of hand. As a consequence, 160,000 Tory no-deal hardliners will decide our fate – a textbook case of purists insisting that the most desirable must block the tolerable.
Yet even Johnson is finally understanding the disastrous implications of a no deal. He now says that his “preference” is to leave with a deal. But he has not yet recognised that the WAB is the only viable option on any table.
The WAB is far from ideal. Yet because of concessions to demands made by Labour during cross-party talks it does provide the only feasible means of preventing no deal. There’s a draft statutory commitment to a customs union until the next general election, to workers’ rights, to environmental standards, and even provision for a binding vote on whether the deal should be put to a confirmatory public vote. I have profound reservations about a second referendum, but in order to break the deadlock and avoid the chaos of no deal I would consider compromising. The WAB is the only pathway to another referendum, and I simply do not understand why advocates of another public vote cannot see this reality.
So, regardless of whether your priority is to prevent no deal, to seek a deal-based Brexit or to secure a second referendum, the WAB is now the only game in town. All else is just unicorn-hunting and virtue-signalling. Labour’s leadership should therefore declare now that if the new prime minister were to table the WAB then Labour MPs would be whipped to support it.
Why help to dig the Tories out of this hole? Because we must put the country first. But there is also a political point: a general election before Brexit would be just as disastrous for Labour as for the Tories. It would be completely dominated by Brexit, and would therefore overwhelmingly benefit single-issue opportunists such as Farage, the Lib Dems and the nationalists.
Brexit is tipping us into a culture war. We must reclaim our politics from the snake-oil salesmen and re-centre it on the vital issues of justice, opportunity, security and prosperity. The withdrawal agreement bill is a lifeline that Labour should grasp with both hands.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The division in the Johnson family over the EU mirrors and, to some extent, has created the divisions in the country. Without Boris, Leave would not have won. But the resignation of his brother Jo on Friday, and his devastating explanation, may prove to be the catalyst for reversing the catastrophe of 2016.
Boris’s opportunistic reinvention from liberal Tory to Trumpite populist helped win the day for Farage et al, but was never wholly convincing even as it triumphed. Jo has remained true to the liberal Tory tradition of the rest of his family and his cri de coeur last week for the EU and pragmatic internationalism would have been endorsed in every respect by Macmillan, Heath and Heseltine. It is now vital for the country that Jo, not Boris, wins an argument that, as the former says, represents “the greatest crisis since the Second World War”.
The resignation marks the end of the phony political conflict – that one way or another Britain will muddle through the Brexit deadline of 29 March 2019 more or less unscathed. Labour can carry on using the crisis for party advantage, pressing for an impossible general election given the terms of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, while not declaring its position. Meanwhile, Mrs May’s first obligation is not to deliver a deal that is in the national interest but rather one that keeps her warring party from disintegrating. The interests of economy, prosperity, trade, defence, security and peace can all go hang as third-rate politicians vie for party advantage. Jo Johnson has triggered a potential change in the rules of engagement.
The conviction of his letter, arguing that the emerging Brexit deal is “a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis”, is indisputable. Never has Britain lost so uniformly and so completely on every position it has staked. Whether discussing our ongoing payments to the EU, the nature of our future trading relationship or the necessity to retain an open Irish border, Britain has been outmanoeuvred and out-negotiated. Brexiters claim that the bad faith and incompetence of May and her fifth-columnist civil service negotiators are the cause. The reality is that Britain’s position was incoherent from the start – simultaneously wanting the benefits of EU membership even while leaving. Moreover, a country of 65 million people is simply weaker than the EU of 450 million, which is doing no more than properly protecting its interests. Brexiter promises of easy trade deals and all the rest, as Jo Johnson ruthlessly exposes, were fantastical lies.
The result, as he writes, is that the country faces the choice of either the chaos of a no deal – risking depression, food and medical shortages and the collapse of the Dover-Calais transport link – or mitigating that debacle by never-ending “vassalage” to EU regulations in a customs union and single market from which we dare not depart because of the economic damage. We will accept EU rules, make contributions to its budget, but play no part in making them. It is this choice that Johnson thinks is so unacceptable he cannot be part of a government that has delivered it – and he wants to put the realities democratically before the British people in a second referendum.
The present crisis has alarming echoes of the run-up to both the First and Second World wars whose legacy we reflect on so sombrely today. In both cases, Britain was both half in and half out of Europe, sending mixed messages about its commitment to the European order. We would not commit to defend Belgium against German aggression until too late in August 1914, while in 1938 the disaster of Munich merely deferred war for months. As Churchill said, Europe is where the weather comes from – a truth our diplomacy should permanently acknowledge. It is as true today as in 1914, 1918 and 1939.
We must give the British people an opportunity, through a new referendum, to give their verdict on our real options as we move towards the fateful deadline.
Last modified on Mon 24 Sep 2018 22.13 BST
“Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake,” tweeted Labour’s international trade spokesman, Barry Gardiner, last week, quoting Napoleon. Like most of Labour’s frontbench he had opted not to engage with Theresa May’s post-Salzburg strop, preferring to let the Tories tear themselves apart unmolested.
But Napoleon also said that when the enemy is in disarray you should send in the cavalry pronto. With the Tories flailing, it is time for Labour to unleash a two-pronged political offensive: it should give a clear commitment to a Norway-style deal, and promise a second referendum to ratify it if achieved.
Though it edged towards this in a composite motion agreed on Sunday night, the position is still frustratingly unclear.
Labour’s refusal to cement its desired end state for Brexit was defensible until July. Jeremy Corbyn’s team wants, above all, to bring down Theresa May’s chaotic administration and get an early shot at government. If it achieves that, launching a radical project of growth and social justice, it could change the political atmosphere across the developed world.
But Labour’s leadership has struggled to understand that, since the Chequers deal fell apart in July, the Brexit issue has become the primary weapon to achieve a Labour government. This is partly due to the memory of 2017. In the last election, Labour activists found that as long as they assured people Brexit would happen, the issue evaporated on the doorstep, allowing them to talk about healthcare, local services and employment rights.
But if, as has been suggested, May’s advisers are planning a second snap election, this would unleash – yet again – a “back me or sack me” campaign focused around Brexit. With the looming possibility of food and medicine shortages, and a deranged tabloid press revelling in the prospect of no deal, it would be hard for Labour to distract voters from the central issue a second time.
In addition, the EU’s flat refusal to discuss the Chequers proposal signals to Labour, just as curtly as it signalled to May, that there are only two options: a Norway-style deal that leaves Britain inside the single market, and a Canada-style free trade deal. Under intense pressure from members dissatisfied with the current line, Labour delegates have agreed to table a resolution committing Labour to “full participation in the single market”. That is significant.
Last December, the Institute for Public Policy Research presented Labour with a white paper advocating Swiss-style “alignment” with the single market, rather than participation. As with May’s Chequers plan, the IPPR wanted Britain to align voluntarily with some single market rules, but diverge from others in order to promote growth and social justice. Though the shadow cabinet refused to endorse the IPPR plan, the document is the closest Labour has ever come to drawing up its own version of Chequers.
But the Salzburg summit showed that a voluntary alignment option is no longer possible. May has wasted two years, and expended almost all the UK’s negotiating capital, only to get her version of it rejected. Labour’s new conference motion, committing the party to participation in the single market, appears to recognise that.
Corbyn’s strategy to date – of spelling out red lines and opposing solutions that crossed them – was always designed to allow Brexit-supporting Labour voters to learn by experience how treacherous the process would be. The Tories had told them that leaving would be easy; it wasn’t. They told them the new treaties would be done and dusted by March 2019. They will not be. They assured voters there would be no downsides to a no-deal solution. Now they urge voters to stockpile food in case it happens.
The gameplan worked up to a point. May’s chaotic negotiating stance has eroded popular support for Brexit, though not decisively. But the process of learning by experience now has to be supplemented with a positive vision, reinforced by Corbyn and Keir Starmer spelling out a clear Brexit proposal of their own.
My position on Brexit has always been a compromise between principle and what’s needed to assemble a voting coalition to put a leftwing Labour government in power. If it had been possible to achieve a leftwing Brexit, I would have supported it: the Lisbon treaty is a machine for destroying jobs and growth, and is stoking disillusion in democracy. But the real-world forces pushing for Brexit in 2016 were always those of xenophobic nationalism, and their project was an even more deregulated and polluted Britain. So I campaigned on remain and reform.
Once we lost, the challenge was how to craft a bespoke deal that respects the result, allowing working-class communities to move on from the bitter arguments that had dominated their public spaces. But after Donald Trump’s election victory, the options for such a deal narrowed.
If Brexit was a crack in the superstructure of globalisation, Trump has aimed a wrecking ball at its foundations. As the world fragments into competing trade and finance blocs, it is imperative for both geographic and cultural reasons for Britain to attach itself as closely to Europe as possible.
With Trump in power, being inside the single market has become the only logical option for a Labour government, even if that might make some of its plans for state ownership, state aid and workplace regulation more difficult to achieve.
I refused to back calls for a second referendum so long as May was engaged in meaningful negotiations to enact what both the referendum and parliament had voted for.
But after Chequers collapsed, and the Tories had to rely on Labour Brexiteers to defeat the customs union proposal, it became obvious that there could be no majority in this parliament for any of the government’s desired Brexit outcomes. The best option is a general election – the sooner the better. In that election, for Labour, the promise of a second referendum could be a powerful weapon – especially if it was combined with a clear outline of a Norway-style deal.
The shock of Salzburg is likely to push the Tories towards a hard, Canada-style free trade agreement. In that case, the way is open for Labour to make a new, broad offer to British civil society and business. A Norway-style deal, and a second referendum to ratify it and confer democratic legitimacy, could create an electoral coalition ranging from fervent remainers to Brexit voters who just “want it over with”, and would resonate strongly with businesses desperate to remain close to Europe.
For hard remainers that too would be a compromise between principle and reality. But if progressives in the political class want to live on this island amicably with the 17 million people who voted Brexit, we have to deliver what they voted for, in the least damaging way, and then offer the entire electorate a final chance to say whether they like the outcome.
A Norway-style deal would also be a lifeline to manufacturing and agriculture. It would leave Britain as a “rule taker” – but so do all other outcomes, such is the global influence of Europe as a regulatory superpower. And it would leave the path clearer for those who want to rejoin the EU, should public opinion change.
For clarity, if a Norway-style deal could be agreed, with assurances from Brussels that Labour’s programme of state ownership and labour market reform would be permitted, I would vote for it in a second referendum. I don’t want to see working-class communities divided for another decade over this issue, and policymakers deflected from the urgent global challenges of automation and climate change.
So Labour’s new composite on Brexit is welcome, but it’s not enough. In a fully democratic party it would be open to amendment – but don’t hold your breath. Corbyn needs to use this moment of intense Tory disarray to get on the front foot. While it’s great to watch the Tories make mistakes, you don’t win battles without attacking.
Because, as Napoleon also said, “Imagination rules the world.” People go into political battle for ideals, not checklists: Labour needs to move on from red lines and objections, and spell out a positive vision for Britain as part of the European single market.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
In the months after the referendum Mrs May came up with two slogans: “Brexit means Brexit” and “No deal is better than a bad deal”. One was obviously tautologous waffle and the other was just as obviously untrue. Now that both have been abandoned, we can see that untruths are sometimes better or at least more informative than waffle.
Brexit will always mean Brexit, but it has become horribly clear that even a very bad deal would be preferable to no deal at all. Leaked research done within David Davis’s Department for Exiting the EU suggests that without deals on customs and trade, parts of the UK would run out of food and even medicines within a fortnight of the present agreements lapsing – and that is not the worst possible scenario: it is one that lies in the middle of the range of possibilities.
The architects of Brexit, the people who brought us to contemplate this brink of ruin, know that perfectly well. Lord Lawson has applied for residence in France; Dominic Cummings publishes a hysterical screed denouncing everyone but himself for the consequences that everyone else had all along warned were inevitable. For the rest of us, those without properties to retire to abroad, money to invest elsewhere, or even a fantasy world to retreat to where everything goes according to the glorious plan, the problem remains. What is to be done?
This is not a problem that the UK can solve on its own, even if it is one we caused. The costs of Brexit will largely be borne by the British but some will fall on the EU27 as well. It is in no one’s interests to have Britain decline into a sullen and impoverished island locked for decades into a bitter and interminable argument with itself over who was to blame for its condition, like a divorced man drinking alone in a bedsit. Who would want that for a neighbour?
The first requirement is realism, on both sides. The long, forensic speech by Sir Ivan Rogers, who was, until he resigned last year, Britain’s chief negotiator in Europe, argues that all three of the preferred political stances towards Brexit at the moment are based on self-delusion. He does not believe it will be possible to reverse the decision nor – of course – to reach the sunlit uplands promised by Boris Johnson. Neither does he suppose that the aim of the present government, to “resume total control of our laws, borders and money and exercise full sovereignty, without intrusion by a foreign court, but still retain virtually all the benefits of current trading arrangements with our former partners, whilst diverging from them to taste, wherever we derive advantage” is anything other than a fantasy. That will become clear enough over the next 10 months, just as the cost of “no deal” has done.
At the same time, the EU cannot expect that a future British government will see the error of its ways and come back begging for forgiveness and a fresh start. The worse the consequences of Brexit become, the more the leavers will blame them on unreasonable foreigners. Nor will this kind of nationalist rage against Brussels be confined to the UK. The inability of the eurozone to deliver prosperity or even hope to large swathes of southern Europe results from policy errors that must urgently be addressed. The “addiction to austerity” of which George Soros recently warned may come to seem an act of collective self-harm that stands comparison with Brexit. The realism to recognise facts, the humility to accept them, and the courage to act on them, have seldom been more needed on both sides of the Channel.
First published on Sat 21 Sep 2019 15.00 BST
As members of parliament, we have borne witness to a change in the way in which politics is conducted in this country that deeply concerns us.
Of course, politics can involve heated debate and there is no doubt that we have both been involved in fiery and impassioned exchanges over the course of our political lives. Politics involves important decisions that can have life-changing impacts and it is unsurprising that such debates and discussions involve emotion on the part of those involved.
Yet something has changed in recent years. We and our colleagues sense an increasingly sharp edge to political exchanges, both inside and outside parliament. The prime minister and his supporters talk of opponents as traitors and collaborators, label legislative proposals as a “surrender bill” and Boris Johnson has reportedly compared himself to the Emperor Augustus, known for leading a bloody purge of his enemies.
Threatening language has crept in to our day-to-day dialogue. Emails or messages on social media from members of the public, instead of simply expressing an opinion or drawing our attention to an important campaign, now sometimes end with barely disguised threats of violence and insults. Tellingly, these often mirror Johnson’s language of “cowards and traitors” and talk of parliament against the people. One recent email insinuated that MPs trying to prevent a no-deal Brexit “should be lined up against a wall and shot for treason”.
Yet we both feel that we are lucky not to have experienced worse. A House of Commons select committee report found in 2017 that members of parliament experience “high levels of racism, misogynistic abuse and other forms of harassment on Twitter” and it feels like the chorus of hate has only become louder in recent months. Our colleagues from all sides of the House, from Diane Abbott to Caroline Spelman, have spoken out about the tidal wave of abuse that has been directed their way.
The threat to political life in the UK is very real. It is hard to think of anything less democratic than a small, shouty minority dominating the communication channels between the people and their representatives, preventing the ordinary debate and exchange of views so necessary in a healthy democracy.
The repercussions of the loss of civility in political life are felt out in the real world. Tell Mama, the watchdog organisation responsible for measuring anti-Muslim attacks, reported a 375% increase in the week after Boris Johnson compared women wearing niqab face veils to “bank robbers” and “letterboxes”. The organisation also received individual reports from Muslim women who had been called “letterbox” as a term of abuse in the street. And hate crime more generally has increased sharply.
Inevitably, a part of the answer to this lies in policy reform and technological solutions to stem the production of inappropriate content, to prevent dogpiling and to ensure that the law provides routes to bring those responsible for stirring hate to justice.
However, these changes can only go so far if the tone from the top serves to encourage, rather than condemn, such hate. The Jo Cox Foundation warned recently that in a context where emotions are running high across the country and anger grows over Brexit, they are “concerned that this anger should not spill over into something more dangerous”.
The prime minister should heed such warnings. So too should the media. Johnson’s rhetoric is dangerous, divisive and we fear there is worse to come. Indeed, MPs have asked: “Who next?” as attacks on their constituency offices continue to occur.
A loss of civility in public life affects us all and we must demand better from those running the country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Parliament must inflict a second defeat on the government – by voting next Tuesday to extend article 50 for a year. Not as a delaying tactic, but for a purpose: to enable a process of nationwide consultation and reflection. Key to this would be a series of citizens’ assemblies whose thinking would then lead to constructive reconsideration by parliament of our relations with Europe, including the option of a renegotiation followed by a referendum.
The direct engagement of the British people is now essential in order to address the triple challenge of a government defying the sovereignty of parliament, an ever more divided country, and mounting distrust between parliament and people.
There is much talk of uncharted waters – but that’s where Britain is just now: in a rudderless boat with no compass, map, or even life jackets. And after a weekend’s work by the prime minister there will be no Monday miracle – just the dogged repetition of the familiar promises to tweak a deal already rejected by parliament, to beg her European counterparts to finesse her deal with what they have already rejected, and to return with the delusional and economically suicidal threat that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
This is no way to deal with a political and constitutional crisis unparalleled in our history. We cannot now end the deadlock or rebuild national unity without repairing the breakdown of trust between the British people and the political establishment – and that cannot be achieved without involving the people as well as the politicians in finding solutions.
In a recent poll commissioned by Hope Not Hate, almost half of those surveyed agreed with the proposition that “Politicians clearly cannot decide how to resolve the issue of Brexit and the country is deeply divided – therefore it would be better to … pause the process and seek a consensus by gathering ordinary people together to discuss the options.”
Brought together in public hearings in each region, a representative sample of 2016 remain and leave voters would take time to engage, deliberate and then pronounce on all the concerns that Brexit raises: about immigration, sovereignty, the costs of membership, and other burning issues such as the state of manufacturing, the condition of our left-behind communities, and the rising child poverty austerity has imposed.
They will have time to range more widely than the binary choices that the current debate has allowed; and they will, I predict, offer wiser and more imaginative answers than an inflexible government and a deadlocked parliament can now deliver.
And even if, as I fear, the closed and warring minds in the cabinet refuse to sponsor such public hearings – despite the views of Keir Starmer, John Major, Rowan Williams and many others across the political spectrum – then the Commons select committees, the mayors, local authorities and the Scottish and Welsh legislatures have the powers and the budgets to do it themselves on our behalf.
The handling of the Irish abortion referendum is evidence of the power and potential of citizens’ assemblies. It could have been a bitter and toxic debate dominated by extremists on both sides. But in part because a representative group – half initially pro-abortion, half against – talked the issues through, exploring differences, asking questions of experts and interacting with each other on their fears and hopes, they managed to defuse the controversies. And they found common ground between devout faith and resolute feminism in an outcome that astonished the world and that everyone accepted.
Critics say Europe will accept neither an extension nor another renegotiation. My 13 years’ experience of bargaining with European leaders suggests the opposite: that if we have a plan and a timetable resulting from this process, they will come to welcome it for its openness and realism.
To those who say another year of uncertainty would lie ahead and would be destabilising, I would answer that uncertainty is already sadly with us in every scenario. Even if there was a deal, we are only at the end of act one of this European drama: the withdrawal deal. Still to be addressed are act two – the transition; act three, the negotiation of our future European relationship; and act four, the renegotiation of our relations with the rest of the world. So we can approach the future either through more and more attempts at short-term fixes that fall apart under scrutiny, or by purposefully and constructively engaging in a systematic and structured national conversation to find common ground.
But any plan needs to be underwritten by a vision of a Britain that is capable of inspiring patriotic pride. Brexit, it was claimed, would reveal Britain’s strength. Yet the deal on offer has simply exposed our weakness: a Britain reduced from rule-maker to rule-taker, with – paradoxically – the very defenders of British autonomy having to accept that the fate of Northern Ireland is not only underwritten by the British-Irish treaty, but ultimately by Europe too.
The Brexit debate – once about what Europe is and is not – is now about who we are and what kind of country we aspire to be. And this should also now be an explicit part of the national conversation. Let the Brexiteers argue for their vision – that Britain is at its best and greatest standing alone and apart, sufficient unto itself and glorying in isolation.
There is, in my view, a more powerful, patriotic vision of a Britain at our best – as an outward-looking, internationally minded country for which the Channel is not a moat defending us from the world but a highway taking us to its every corner. And there can be patriotic pride in what we have achieved for and in Europe: leading in the defeat of fascism, drafting the convention on human rights, championing democracy in eastern Europe, and helping to make Europe the world’s most generous and effective contributor to international aid.
We have led before in Europe, and we can do so again. “Leading not leaving” was a slogan I suggested for the 2016 remain campaign – to remind people of the positive difference Britain makes in Europe, and Europe makes in Britain. Then, as now, people needed a hopeful vision of a patriotic future in which they could take pride. Project fear must give way now to project hope and project trust so that, having taken a more balanced view of our history, we can finally take control of our future.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.10 GMT
The Labour party now supports Britain remaining in a customs union after Brexit. That is also the view of at least 10 Conservative MPs, such as Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan, who have put an amendment to this effect in the Commons. Theresa May’s government therefore faces a real danger of being defeated on this issue by a cross-party coalition. It is easy to see why continued membership of a customs union appears so attractive. It would seem to allow frictionless trade without committing Britain to free movement, budget payments to the European Union, or supervision by the European court of justice (ECJ), and no hard border in Northern Ireland.
The only major country outside the EU with which it has a customs arrangement is Turkey. This was proposed when it was believed Turkey might eventually join the EU. It is unclear whether this would be available for a country that had decided to leave Europe. But even if it were, the deal is highly disadvantageous to Turkey, and would be even more so to Britain.
Intrinsic to the idea of a customs union is that goods cannot enter into it without paying the agreed common external tariff. Therefore only the European commission, and not individual countries, can negotiate trade deals with third countries. So Britain would not be able to negotiate independent trade deals with third countries that involved the lowering of tariffs. That would remove one of the principal advantages of Brexit: the opportunity to secure lower prices for consumers by importing goods tariff-free from outside the EU.
In addition, when the EU negotiates a trade deal with third countries, the deal would open up British markets to these countries; but it would not open up their markets to Britain, since Britain would not be a member of the EU. The Turks were worried that, should the US-EU negotiations over the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership prove successful, American goods would be able to enter Turkey tariff-free, but Turkish goods would still face US tariff barriers in the US.
A customs-union Britain would therefore have to conclude separate trade agreements with third countries so as to secure the benefits of the EU deal. But there would be little incentive for third countries to conclude such agreements, since their goods would already be able freely to enter Britain. We would be, as Barack Obama said in another context, at the back of the queue.
While it is true that membership of a customs union outside the EU would free Britain from the jurisdiction of the ECJ, there would have to be some sort of body capable of arbitrating disputes between Britain and the EU. That body might be the court of the European Free Trade Association (Efta), or it might be a nonjudicial body. But whichever it was, it would in practice have to broadly follow ECJ rulings, as the Efta court does. There cannot be different sets of standards or regulations between different members of a customs union, for that would allow a country to subvert the common tariff.
So Britain would have to align itself not only with EU trade policy but also with the laws of the EU in certain areas: not only as they are now but also as they may be altered in years to come – except without a vote to help decide on them. Britain would be subject to regulation without representation, the very relationship that led the North American colonies to break away from Britain over 200 years ago.
But perhaps the greatest illusion shared by supporters of a customs union is that it would promote a frictionless border. Anyone who has seen the queue of Turkish lorries at the Bulgarian border, sometimes extending 10 miles – a two-mile queue is considered a good day – will realise that this is not the case.
The 60,000 lorries sent from Turkey to the EU every year are required to carry a host of documents, including an export declaration, invoices for the products they are carrying, insurance certificates and a transport permit for each EU nation they intend to drive through. These permits, which are set by agreement with individual countries, can be made subject to quotas.
The EU has so far agreed to frictionless trade and open-access road transport only for countries that accept free movement – members of the European Economic Area (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) and Switzerland, which has bilateral agreements.
The truth is that there is no such thing as a “soft” Brexit without making Britain in effect a client state of the EU. From that point of view, May was absolutely right to have declared that Brexit means Brexit.
The real choice facing Britain is stark: between a “hard” Brexit, and remaining in the European Union.
A hard Brexit – in which the UK retains complete freedom to diverge as much as it likes from the EU – would work only if we were to follow the example of New Zealand and seek to become a global hub by adopting a free-market policy of radical deregulation, drastic cuts in personal and company taxation, the ditching of agricultural subsidies, and the unilateral removal of tariffs. It is, however, difficult to believe the British public would be prepared for so drastic a dose of renewed Thatcherism.
But the choice should be made by the people and not by parliament. And in due course not only the remainers but perhaps also the government – deeply split, like the country, on the issue – will realise that it is in their interests to call a second referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Dear Leo,
As your brother, I was hugely proud and impressed when you entered parliament in 2017. In other circumstances, your recent promotion to assistant whip would be something that I would celebrate. But in the current situation, as your government tries to drive through a ruinous Brexit, I cannot. And now that this government is also seeking to destroy the very principle of democracy by suspending parliament, my despair at your involvement has only increased.
You and I are on opposite sides of the Brexit debate, but I had hoped that we would at least be united on the basic requirements for representative democracy. I have been lobbying you over the last two years in the hope that you would maintain a sensible position on Brexit and other political matters. Now that Johnson is hurling us towards no deal, can you really still support him?
You will of course not have forgotten that you were born in Glasgow, and may be dimly aware that we are descended from a long line of shipyard workers on the Clyde. What you may not know is that our great-grandfather, Robert McK Docherty, was not only a plate riveter but also a committed communist who was very active in the Red Clydeside period of the 1920s and 30s. He was so committed that he was, for a time, planning to move the entire family to the Soviet Union.
It is almost amusing that the great-grandson of a communist riveter from the Clydeside shipyards can, as you have done, serve as an officer in the Scots Guards and be elected as a member of parliament for a safe Conservative seat. It suggests a high degree of social mobility. However it would be much less of a positive story if you go on to use your position to end opportunities for others and damage the lives of generations to come.
Brexit will be such a blight on the country that the social mobility from which you have benefited will be battered. You and I have both gained from the significant social advantage (for that, sadly, is what it remains) of being, at least in part, privately educated. You will recall however that our private education was paid for largely by the state in the form of the assisted places scheme. There is therefore something of a grim irony – possibly even hypocrisy – in you going on to threaten the life chances of others through support for a government that is actively pursuing a policy of economic ruin and a regressive attack on democracy.
I used to joke that your degree in Swahili and Hindi made you “perfectly qualified to be an army officer – in the 1840s”. As you now serve in a government with alarmingly backward intentions, that no longer seems quite so funny.
I must therefore beg you, as your brother, to resign your post in the whips’ office and speak out in defence of democracy. How important is your own job when something as priceless as parliamentary democracy is under threat? I was once proud and impressed as you entered parliament – that was just two years ago. Now I am simply appalled that this government, of which you are sadly a part, has become the principal threat to the lives and liberties of the people. Please do the decent thing, and resign.
Many thanks, yours aye,
Paddy
 Paddy Docherty is a historian of empire and anticolonial resistance
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.14 GMT
For some, Monday’s weather felt like a depiction of a post-Brexit UK: a wind-battered, dystopian hell-scape lit by an eerie red sun, leaving confused citizens feeling for all the world as though they were trapped in a faded sepia photograph.
The last few weeks in Belfast offer a less hyperbolic indication of what might befall the UK after Brexit. The announcement that Bombardier’s C-Series jets would be subject to a 300% import tax in the US (up from the eye-watering 220% duty already imposed by America’s department of commerce), looked set to collapse a sizeable chunk of the Canadian company’s Belfast operations, costing 1,000 jobs in the city.
This put justified pressure on Theresa May to make use of the special relationship she sought to cultivate on her trip to Washington earlier this year, and show off the trade clout that the electorate has been told will result in the UK becoming a global trader outside the European customs union.
Last month the government told journalists that it was “quietly confident” the American aircraft manufacturer Boeing would lose its anti-trust case in the US against its Canadian rival, and that the high tariff would be dropped. The rationale was that despite Boeing’s complaints that Bombardier’s jets were unfairly subsidised and dumped in the American market at below cost, imposing such strict import taxes would unfairly strain trade relations between Canada and the US. Instead, Bombardier lost, leaving May hitting out at the US with no impact whatsoever and thousands of workers in Belfast in limbo.
The firm is crucial to the city’s economy, employing 4,000 workers, of whom a quarter build the wings of the single-aisle jet – the section of the Belfast operation threatened. A sudden loss of jobs with no similar manufacturer able to take on that number of employees would be a huge blow.
So the intervention of Boeing’s European rival, Airbus, appears to be a work of genius. Airbus has negotiated a majority 50.1% stake in Bombardier’s C-series jet programme without having to pay anything for it. In doing so, the 300% import duty can be neatly sidestepped because the final stage of the construction of jets destined for the US market will take place in Alabama, rather than Belfast. In doing so, Airbus will not be importing completed planes but parts, bringing sorely needed jobs to a Republican state – a move that is unlikely to annoy US politicians.
If Airbus’s legal advice is firm, and the deal passes muster with the US government, it will have snatched the much-delayed C-Series from the abyss and hopefully secured a thousand jobs.
But while the US and Boeing are clearly the Goliaths in this parable, May cannot cast herself as the bold and canny David. For all the Conservatives’ insistence that Britain and Northern Ireland will be “open for business”, it was clear that the prime minister had no clout with Trump and Congress – yielding not a deal but only stern and plaintive public pronouncements on the import tax being a travesty.
Instead, Airbus has succeeded in outsmarting the larger Boeing. So as we near the Brexit deadline, a pan-European project has come to the rescue of UK jobs. Boeing’s hardline protectionism means it has stumbled into a trap, with its European rival able to snap up a huge chunk of Bombardier for free, hurting Boeing in the process.
The irony of Europeans coming to the rescue after British ineffectiveness will have stung May deeply. But Bombardier’s nightmare may still not be over: it is difficult to predict how exports will fare outside the customs union and single market, and how Europe, Canada and the UK will work together to keep the plant operational and solvent post-Brexit.
Leaving the EU could affect Northern Ireland-based companies more harshly than those in any other part of the UK. The most difficult question raised by Brexit in Northern Ireland – that is, what will happen to the Irish border – has still not been answered.
The Democratic Unionist party has unequivocally said that it will reject special status for the north, while Sinn Féin opposes any return to the hard border that preceded the Good Friday Agreement. Repeated questions put to the government – will it lead to a semi-militarised border? Will the border end up being the Irish Sea? – haven’t yet been answered.
On BBC’s Question Time from Belfast last week, former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers flippantly dismissed the border question, quipping that there had been a border for two decades with no problems, steadfastly ignoring the fact that the entirety of Ireland is within the European Union at present, but won’t be for long. On Tuesday the Home Office permanent secretary told the home affairs select committee he was “unable to rule out” using troops to police the border in the event of a “no deal” Brexit.
What has happened with Belfast and Bombardier reveals the dangers facing the UK after Brexit – leaping into the unknown with no safety net. May showed us at the general election that she’s a remarkably weak leader with a knack for making terrible decisions – and that is now more evident than ever. Airbus’s rescue is a Machiavellian work of business genius – hence Boeing’s outrage – but the Conservative government cannot claim credit for the rescue of Bombardier jobs.
Instead, we are left with a frightening vision of our bold Brexit future: Theresa May shouting into the wind.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Boris Johnson has insisted Britain must not become a “vassal state” of the European Union by being forced to adopt all its regulations, ahead of a crucial cabinet meeting this week on how the government will conduct Brexit talks.
The cabinet is due to meet on Tuesday for the first substantive discussion of the so-called “end state” the government should aim at in the next stage of negotiations, with Theresa May insisting she “would not be derailed” from delivering Brexit.
In a pair of defiant articles in the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Express newspapers, after her defeat this week in the House of Commons over parliamentary scrutiny of a final Brexit deal, the prime minister said: “Amid all the noise, we are getting on with the job. In the face of those who want to talk Britain down, we are securing the best and most ambitious Brexit deal for our whole United Kingdom.”
She claimed personal credit for securing a deal with the EU27 allowing talks to progress to the next stage – as confirmed in Brussels on Friday.
But with the cabinet divided over how closely Britain should continue to align with EU rules after a transition period of around two years is over, Johnson broke ranks to insist the government must retain the freedom to set its own laws.
“What we need to do is something new and ambitious, which allows zero tariffs and frictionless trade but still gives us that important freedom to decide our own regulatory framework, our own laws and do things in a distinctive way in the future,” the foreign secretary told the Sunday Times.
He cited remarks by the chancellor – the most vocal advocate of close continued alignment with EU rules – in his recent budget, suggesting Philip Hammond was also in favour of Britain setting its own regulations.
“It was very notable in the budget speech that the chancellor majored on the idea of future regulatory divergence. Philip can see that we have a very original economy, very different from other European countries: tech sectors, bioscience, bulk data, this is a very innovative place to be. We may in future wish to regulate it in a different way from the way that Brussels does,” he said.
If Britain simply mirrored EU rules, he said, people would ask: “‘What is the point of what you have achieved?’ because we would have gone from a member state to a vassal state.”
The Brexit secretary, David Davis, has suggested a “Canada plus plus plus” deal, broadly based on the EU’s trade deal with Canada, but covering services, including financial services, and allowing closer ties because the volume of trade covered is so much larger.
Such a deal would still be likely to require considerable alignment of rules and regulations – but many Brexiters prefer it to a closer relationship such as that enjoyed by Norway, which is a member of the European Free Trade Area.
Crucially, Johnson conceded that by insisting on the right to set different regulations, Britain might suffer “trading consequences” in the negotiations with Brussels, but argued that it was worth it so Britain could become a champion of global free trade, and seek advantageous deals in other parts of the world.
Hammond sparked a fresh row this weekend when he set out clearly the fact that the government expected the transition period after Brexit day in March 2019 to “replicate the status quo”, with EU rules still in force.
That echoes the position the prime minister set out in her Florence speech, when she said: “The framework for this strictly time-limited period, which can be agreed under article 50, would be the existing structure of EU rules and regulations.”
But with the details of the transition deal due to be hammered out in the new year, some backbench pro-Brexit MPs, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith, are still fighting a rearguard action over aspects of that approach, including the idea of the European court of justice continuing to hold sway.
Davis has said he hopes whatever new arbitration system is agreed under the trade deal with the EU could start to operate before the end of the transition period.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.20 GMT
There are many problems afflicting the British economy, and many afflicting the European Union. The trouble with Brexit is that it is almost guaranteed to aggravate both.
Although I continue to emphasise the economic damage likely to result from cutting ourselves off from half of our export market, in common with many Remainers I am also exercised by the geopolitical risks in any move that encourages the current outbreak of nationalism in Europe.
One of the many depressing aspects of the referendum has been the way some of the more extreme Brexiters have been exulting in interpreting it as the first step on the road to the break-up of the European Union. What is it about these people? Don’t they realise that the postwar arrangement that evolved into the EU was set up principally so that we should not yet again see Europe tearing itself apart?
It began as a move towards political union by economic means. But even the most zealous “federalists” learn from experience: towards the end of his life, Jean Monnet himself, one of the EU’s founding fathers, told a British historian that he no longer believed in “ever closer union”.
I once met Monnet; he was the honoured guest at a Financial Times dinner. He asked me whether I thought Britain was serious about Europe. I replied that I was not sure …
British politicians of both major parties spent more than a decade trying to persuade the French that we should be allowed to join what was then the European Economic Community. Now the allegiance of France itself is threatened by the possibility that the Front National will triumph in the French elections. And Marine Le Pen has delighted in the thought that our referendum result may be giving an extra push to her own campaign.
One of the motives behind our original application was the realisation that membership of the European Free Trade Area (Efta) was not enough. Yet Brexiters fantasise about the wonders of going back to that primitive state: a state that – as Sir Ivan Rogers, former ambassador to the EU, told the Brexit select committee last week – could take a decade to achieve, if not more.
Rogers is the realist whose judgment and sound advice were too much for that converted Brexiter Theresa May to stomach. He emphasised in public last week what he had previously tried to get across in private: that the road to a satisfactory Brexit deal would be arduous. Indeed, between the lines his view seems to be that a “satisfactory” deal is probably not achievable at all.
If it were not so serious, the course of the Brexit debate could reasonably qualify as the stuff of high farce. The British media seem obsessed by the travails of the Ukip leadership; but who cares about Ukip? They have served their dubious historical purpose, and, to all intents and purposes, what was once the Conservative and Unionist party might just as well be renamed the Conservative and Ukip party.
A central element in this sad tale is, of course, the role of immigration.
We are told that immigration was the main reason for the discontent that surfaced on 23 June last year. Yet my old friend David Davis – many friendships go through trying times – continues to make it abundantly clear that, throughout the nonsense of the Brexit “process”, our economy will continue to need skilled and unskilled immigrants from the rest of the EU. (By the way, contrary to what a Manchester taxi driver recently told me, we are still in the EU and may be for some time. Needless to say, this cab driver was a first-generation immigrant who told me there were too many immigrants in this country.)
Even Liam Fox, a hard-line Brexiter if ever there were one, recently conceded that he knew of no recent free trade agreement that did not also involve concessions on migration.
So why the hell are we having to risk sacrificing much of our European trade, and potential future investment and prosperity, for the sake of offering sops to the Cerberus of Ukip?
It should surely have become obvious by now to May that she is living in a fantasy world if she thinks the rest of the EU is going to take our exit from the EU lying down. It will demand that we pay up for our £50bn of legal obligations, which will dwarf the putative £350m a week promised on the ridiculous Leavers’ battle bus during the referendum campaign.
Ah, but “the people have spoken”, have they not? Well, it is a fine democratic tradition that, after they have spoken in a general election, the people can speak again, often with a somewhat different view. It was therefore a most welcome contribution to the Lords’ debate on Brexit last week when Lord Butler of Brockwell, the former cabinet secretary, said: “My lords, one has to ask why those who base their arguments for Brexit on the will of the people are now opposed to consulting the people on the outcome of the negotiations. One has to suspect that they fear that they will get a different answer.”
The problem is that much damage is likely to be wreaked meanwhile.
Personally, I think it would be an act of real statesmanship if, as things go from bad to worse in the next year, May were to address the nation and say that, while in good faith she had tried to carry out the will of the people, she had come to the view that Brexit would after all be a historic, calamitous mistake.
Alas, some hope!
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
The last time I visited family in north Wales, I was heartened to see the words “Cofiwch Dryweryn” (“Remember Tryweryn”) emblazoned on several walls. I had read about how the patriotic slogan was popping up, meme-like, all over the country, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Call me a misty-eyed Welsh nationalist if you like, but I felt quite emotional. Ever since I was a little girl and my father pulled over the car to show me where a village once stood, I had known the story of Capel Celyn, the community flooded in 1965 to create a reservoir for Liverpool in the Tryweryn valley, and how it became a nationalist cause.
The repeated vandalisation of the original graffiti, which the poet Meic Stephens painted in the 1960s and which has now gained charity protection, has led to a kind of viral graffiti campaign, with Cofiwch Dryweryn appearing on walls and slag heaps, alongside roads and near beaches, and even on the side of mountains. It feels like the most significant display of Welsh pride that I have seen in my lifetime.
Since Brexit, there has been a resurgence of interest in Welsh independence. A recent YouGov poll found a third of people in Wales would support Welsh independence if it meant the country would stay in the EU, rising to 42% among 18-24s. This follows independence rallies in Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil and Caernarfon – where 10,000 people marched. The Brexit party may have come out on top in the European elections, but Plaid Cymru, which has positioned itself as the party for Welsh remainers, took second place with 22.4%, overtaking Labour for the first time in Wales. This “Brexit effect” can partially be put down to the sheer despair many feel about the political chaos in Westminster following the referendum.
In the aftermath of the referendum, in which Wales voted to leave by a majority of 52.5% to 47.5%, I was frequently irritated by the coverage. Wales voted for Brexit, we were told, while commentators were bewildered by the communities who voted to leave despite having benefited from EU funding.
It is a valid point, but it usually ignores the fact that most of the predominantly Welsh-speaking areas voted to remain. It doesn’t surprise me that those who believe their language and culture have been historically oppressed by English politicians would feel they have more in common with, and are more protected by, the EU27 countries (bear in mind that this was before the Catalan crisis). And the potential impact of inward-migration of people from England into Welsh communities on voter demographics had scarcely been covered until research by the geographer Danny Dorling, unveiled last week, suggested what many of us had long suspected: that older English settlers may have swayed the vote in favour of Brexit.
Modern Welsh nationalism is no longer only a question of language, though for those of us who speak Welsh it will always be a part of the conversation. Plaid Cymru’s shift towards a more civic, inclusive form of nationalism, which like the SNP envisages Wales as an independent nation within a larger federal EU, can claim to represent anyone living in Wales – not just those who speak Welsh. At the Merthyr rally, there was more proof that the independence movement has gone mainstream: there were speeches from the former Wales goalkeeper Neville Southall and the former rugby player Eddie Butler. Laura McAllister, professor of public policy at Cardiff University, points out that the conversation has now moved beyond Plaid to other political parties – and to Labour in particular.
A year ago, a fifth of Welsh Labour voters supported an independent Wales; now 40% do. For many on the left, myself included, reconciling leftwing politics with nationalism has been a challenge. But Ben Gwalchmai, of the group Labour for IndyWales, says it’s about liberating citizens from the self-serving clique of Westminster. “The IndyWales movement isn’t about pride – it’s about equality, fairness and a better future for all the people of Wales,” he says. “Socialists like us are waking up to its potential to redress a Britain where three countries can vote 65% one way for something in a UK-wide referendum, but it will be ignored if England votes just 3% the other way.”
With its stronger linguistic dimension, Welsh nationalism will always be different to Scottish nationalism. As the Scottish academic Tom Nairn wrote, the latter was more of a “politically oriented separatism … concerned with problems of state and power, and frequently indifferent to the themes of race and cultural ancestry”. But it seems the IndyWales movement is keenly watching Scotland, and a shift towards political nationalism may emerge (it is also worth noting that the pressure group Yes Cymru is deliberately non-party political to broaden appeal). When the British state is floundering, the idea of self-determination – within a larger, protective European framework – has powerful appeal.
Like their Scottish counterparts, Welsh independence campaigners are now rejecting traditional nationalism. That’s not to say the language is no longer important – to speakers such as me, it is part of who we are – but that campaigners have perhaps realised that the mythology of “the overpowering past that nationalism drools over”, to quote Nairn, is less persuasive to voters than the prospect of a fairer society with more devolved powers.
First published on Thu 10 Nov 2016 20.17 GMT
Global banking businesses will face nightmarish decisions if the UK loses its access to euro-clearing trading as part of the Brexit negotiations, the Japanese ambassador to the UK has warned.
Koji Tsuruoaka said that Japanese companies would be among those affected as he emphasised the seriousness of what is at stake as the UK prepares for Brexit. Some EU countries are determined to stop the UK retaining its euro-clearing rights post-Brexit, so the business would be transferred to Frankfurt and Paris.
Tsuruoaka said most global financial service providers, including Japanese companies, have concentrated resources in London because it was the most efficient way for global capital to operate.
Removal of UK euro-clearing rights “is not something that would be welcomed at all by the financial service providers,” he said. “Companies have come a long way to establish the most efficient clearing house here in London. Now to be told to go elsewhere, it would be a huge challenge.” He added that no other city represented “a natural answer” as a substitute to London and it would be impossible for banks to discuss with each other where to relocate.
“It would be nightmarish if you think about the business decision they would be forced to make,” he said.
Since the euro was first used as a currency in 1999, London has acted as the centre of euro-clearing for derivatives, despite not being within the single currency area. The French have insisted that no one will be prepared to see the main clearing house outside of the EU in the wake of Brexit.
Tsuruoaka also suggested that it might be necessary for the UK to negotiate an interim Brexit deal with the EU due to the complexity of the talks. There is a two-year negotiating period that would start once Theresa May invokes article 50, the means by which the UK notifies the EU of its plan to leave. The foreign affairs select committee has begun an inquiry into the possibility of an interim deal in case this is not long enough to settle a full agreement.
Speaking to an EU Lords select committee, the ambassador said: “You may not be able to come to the final conclusion of the permanent agreement because of the time constraint, or because of the difficult need for co-ordination.” He said a transitional deal may “allow business to continue as usual”. He said that ideally the final agreement would not change how UK-based companies accessed the EU single market.
Japan is one of the biggest overseas investors in the UK but is alarmed that post-Brexit it may see the EU impose tariffs, rules-of-origin restrictions and other barriers.
The ambassador said he has been advising Japanese companies to keep calm and not to jump to any conclusions about the need to relocate. But he knew businesses were starting to research different scenarios.
But he added whenever a final agreement on access to the single market is reached it would be desirable to include a transparent schedule to which any changes would be implemented. “You do not enact laws right after you have adopted them. You have a notice period of, say, a year. You do not change a system of trade all of a sudden to be implemented from the next day onwards.”
He also spelt out the consequences of the loss of access to the EU single market for the Japanese auto industry and not just to Nissan, which has already announced it will reinvest in its Sunderland car plant.
Pointing out that a car involves as many as 20,000 parts, he said it was critical that these parts flow freely along a two-way street without tariffs, taking the final product to the EU continental market. He explained: “If there are tariffs on both sides, the company suffers and that is going to be a very costly procedure that is not currently in place. It applies to all manufacturing. If you put some artificial barriers in the way it is by definition going to be costly and inefficient. That is what the Japanese automative companies are concerned about.”
He added the EU was refusing to engage with Japan on Brexit for the time being because they say they have not even received an official notification for the UK and so cannot discuss Brexit with any third party. “An engaged dialogue has yet to start between the EU and Japan,” he said.
He said he had not been given the reasons why Nissan had decided to reinvest in Sunderland and did not know the precise assurances given to the company by the UK government. “Nissan [is] part of Sunderland and in the Japanese culture when you are part of the community, you do not abruptly break up. They are like family. They are aware of their responsibilities to the people of Sunderland.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.19 GMT
Trade talks are always tough. As someone who spent several years heading the European commission’s trade department, I know this well. But the negotiations to follow today’s triggering of article 50 are no ordinary trade talks. They are complex, multifaceted negotiations like no other: not open ended but time limited.
Negotiators on both sides need some guidance for this unusual exercise (the motivation for a policy paper, How to (Br)exit, that I wrote for the thinktank Friends of Europe). They also need to be told some home truths: to lose the “negotiator’s illusion” of believing that the other side thinks like you. And they need to shake off cultural shortsightedness. The EU shrugs off British concerns over immigration as xenophobic and “un-European”, and therefore unacceptable; Britain must lose the notion that the EU is weak and divided, and therefore a pushover.
So much for attitudes. It is the substance that will count. Both sides will have red lines: for the UK, an end to free movement of people and the application of European court rulings, and the restoration of “sovereignty”, notably over trade policy; for the EU, most probably, an insistence not to unbundle the single market freedoms (goods, services, capital and people). Although these red lines may appear to be mutually exclusive or antagonistic, they need not be so.
Take trade in goods. There has been much uninformed discussion about British access to the EU single market. But it is not a question of “access” in the abstract. Comply with EU standards and rules and you have access; but without a UK-EU deal Britain must pay a price for it – sometimes a high price – in the shape of the EU external tariff. There are two ways to avoid this: a free trade area or a customs union.
Only a free trade area works for the UK politically, allowing British goods to circulate tariff-free in the EU, and leaving the UK free to make trade deals with others (including bilateral agreements identical to those it is already party to as an EU member). Economically it works for both sides, given the high degree of economic interdependence between Britain and the rest of Europe. But trouble would come when discussing agricultural and other imports that could potentially enter the EU through a low-tariff British back door. A customs union is better from a purely economic perspective: it preserves most of the economic status quo and would be preferable for the EU, maintaining protection in areas such as agriculture, fisheries and some industrial sectors. But for the UK it looks like a nonstarter: no “global Britain” seeking trade deals; instead, a continued common commercial policy under which the EU would pay only lip service to Britain’s views.
Under both scenarios, the UK would be well advised, but not legally obliged, to mirror EU standards to maintain completely free access.
A practical solution, to avoid accusations in the UK of “selling out to the foreigners”, could be that both sides agree to exclude sectors as and when product-specific laws diverge – as could happen on pesticides, animal welfare or GMOs. This is a potential future problem – but one that negotiators can resolve.
The same is true on services, an area of trade that Britain will also be particularly keen to preserve. Europe has enough accountants, lawyers and architects to cope without Brits: the cost to the UK of no deal on services would be higher than the cost for the EU27. Mirroring EU laws to preserve free trade seems to be the “cost of independence”. The UK needs to come to terms with these limits to its newly found sovereignty, unless it is ready to lose such exports.
The EU is likely be tough on financial services, a sector that makes up half of Britain’s services exports to the EU27. Europe can do without the City, even sacrificing its own banking services exports. And it may well choose to link openness in this area to free movement of people. I would, if I were the EU.
Free movement of people is, paradoxically, in some ways the easiest part to solve. Those people who have already crossed the Channel (in either direction) must continue to have the same rights and obligations that they have today. If this is unacceptable to the UK I cannot imagine how talks could continue on trade and other issues. Or have we grown so far apart that this basic principle is no longer part of our common heritage? This is the deal-breaking issue, and the British government needs to explain this blindingly obvious fact to its citizens.
Future movement may be different. Insular forces in the UK are winning for now, but common sense will prevail once all other options have been exhausted. UK immigration controls may be met with restrictions on trade in (financial) services, or tit-for-tat controls. The UK may, like the Swiss, play with words like “safeguards” and “significant flows of people”, but this is unlikely to satisfy immigration hawks in Britain or free movement fundamentalists on the continent. It could be a major stumbling block and a reason for the EU to deny the famous “passport” to UK-based banks. To put it simply, if money can move, why should people not?
Time – often a friend of negotiators – is a key factor in all of this. Some topics will need to be addressed quickly: the status of British and European citizens, free movement, free trade arrangements, budgetary and institutional issues; others can be covered by a “continuation clause” that gives negotiators some breathing space. A third set may take a lot of time or very little at all, depending on the UK’s approach to “equivalence” of British and European laws.
There is a route through all this. If both sides can understand and accept the existence of legitimate concerns on the other side, negotiations can succeed. And Brexit need not spell disaster for either Britain or the EU.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
In just five weeks’ time, Britain will have a referendum on Brexit. This will take the form of elections to the European parliament, but in reality this will be a pre-referendum, or, if you like your neologisms ugly, a preferendum. So there is now one simple task: to maximise the vote for parties that support a confirmatory referendum on Brexit, giving the British people a democratic choice between accepting the negotiated Brexit deal and remaining in the EU.
If Labour’s manifesto clearly commits to that confirmatory referendum, then Labour is among those parties. If Labour is not clear enough, then turn to the Liberal Democrats, Change UK, the Green party, the Scottish National party or Plaid Cymru. At the end of the day, what will matter more than the precise allocation of seats is that we can say: “X million people voted for pro-European, pro-referendum parties, while only Y million voted for unambiguously pro-Brexit parties such as Ukip, Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party and the Conservatives.” In this vital, bottom-line reckoning, there is no such thing as a wasted vote. Every single voice will count.
There is still a small chance that Conservative MPs will be so terrified of electoral Armageddon for their party on 23 May that they will swing behind Theresa May’s deal in a desperate final meaningful vote in parliament, thus aborting this election at the last minute; but the probability is small and a chance we have to take.
It’s a pity that the most unambiguously pro-European and pro-referendum parties have not had the time, or the shared political will, to make a single combined candidates’ list. This has been done elsewhere, for example in Poland, where a multi-party European coalition is fielding a formidable list of candidates against its own nationalist-populist governing party, a farrago of Polish Farages.
The new Change UK party gathers some of the bravest, most independent-minded national parliamentarians in Britain (currently sitting as the Independent Group, aka Tiggers), and will probably field some of the most interesting candidates for the European parliament. That will fire up media and voter excitement, to counterbalance the brouhaha around Farage’s Brexit party. But Change UK (aka the Chukas, a hat tip to one of its leading members, Chuka Umunna) does not have anything like the nationwide electoral machine, or ground army, of the Liberal Democrats, and its emergence will further fragment the pro-European vote.
You might think that doesn’t matter, because this is a proportional representation poll. Unfortunately, the d’Hondt system of PR used in Britain favours larger parties over smaller ones (more so – bonbon for nerds — than the rival Saint-Laguë method). Britain is divided into electoral regions for these elections, and the smaller the region, the stronger that distorting effect. It’s scant consolation that there will be a similar split between Ukip and the Brexit party.
There is still some room for tactical voting, with voters gathering behind the strongest pro-European party in a given electoral region. Pro-European parties could even have a tacit division of labour, one devoting more resources to this region, another to that. But the practical effects of such manoeuvres are likely to be small. So the crucial thing is to focus less on the parties than on the shared cause. Forget the seats, look at the votes. Since this is effectively a referendum, only two numbers count: votes for, votes against.
Electoral turnout in European elections is usually low. Last time it was 35.6% – by no means the lowest in the EU – with some 16.5 million people voting. This year the European poll doesn’t coincide with any other elections that might take people to the polling station anyway. Many moderate pro-Brexit voters will feel that it’s pointless to turn out, since we’re supposed to be leaving the EU. Against that, ardent Brexiteers and ardent Europeans will be fired up as never before. Perhaps for the first time ever, this European election is actually about Europe.
The first thing to do is to get registered. The deadline is less than three weeks away, on 7 May. The electoral commission recently tweeted that one out of every three 18- to 34-year-olds is still not registered to vote. Students and young people: your future is more at stake than anyone else’s. Register.
Well over 1 million UK citizens live in the rest of the EU. So long as you haven’t resided abroad continuously for more than 15 years, you can still register to vote at your last place of residence in the UK. But this can be complicated, and there are only days to get it done. UK citizens living anywhere else in the world should get themselves a postal or proxy vote.
Then there are the more than 3 million citizens of other EU countries living in Britain. Even if you are on the electoral register, you have to fill in and return a form saying you want to vote here rather than in your home country. Anachronistically, this can’t be done entirely online, although my local election registrar tells me they will accept a scanned and emailed copy. Irish people resident in the UK are entitled to vote so long as they are on the register, as are qualifying Commonwealth citizens.
Then we need a massive ground campaign to get out the vote. The European parliament has an excellent website, where you can register, volunteer and find events. Activists in all the pro-European and pro-referendum movements, from the revitalised European Movement to the youthful For Our Future’s Sake and Our Future, Our Choice (OFOC), have an important part to play, as do the pro-European parties. For all the fascination with Facebook, targeted advertising and digital influencing, seasoned campaigners tell me that the biggest difference in such elections is still made by people knocking on doors and old-fashioned paper direct-mail shots. This is expensive, so if you have any money to spare, give it to the organisation or party you think will have the biggest impact. For what it’s worth, I’m particularly impressed with the Lib Dems’ digital and physical campaign preparations, but they are short of moolah. And we can all give our time.
The BBC will have to do a lot better than the initial jeering of John Humphrys on the Today programme, treating these European elections as if they are a farce. Our great public service broadcaster’s seriousness and due impartiality is in question. Meanwhile, thousands of other journalists, here and across Europe, are just waiting to write the day-after story as “triumph for Farage’s Brexit party”. With our feet, our voices and our votes, we can tell a different story.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.18 GMT
The moment of clarity – self-loathing swinging pendulum-style into self-forgiveness – came while I was reading ComputerWeekly.com. This is not my regular browsing material. I am not sufficiently interested in computers to need even a quarterly bulletin. I’d got there via Twitter, directed by someone probably just like me – metropolitan remoaner, also not interested in computers – for the headline: “Almost three-quarters of tech workers thinking of leaving the UK after Brexit”.
Obvious negative consequences of Brexit – the weakling pound, the brain drain, the needless, gargantuan cost, the clumsy, gaffer-taped shanty town set to replace the EU’s architecture, the almighty ball ache of going on holiday with a pompous navy passport – fill me with grim delight. I track them like a new hobby: national-catastrophe-bird-watching.
It is partly I-told-you-so. It is partly relief that, however much lazy, airy, neo-imperialist insouciance abounds, real-life actions still have real-life, observable consequences. It is partly outrage at the injustice, that a campaign built on falsehood narrowly persuaded the nation to sign a blank piece of paper, upon which its leaders now write whatever nonsense pleases them. Gina Miller said at the weekend: “I’m not anti-Brexit, I’m anti-lies.” I’m anti-both; indeed, I think the two are indivisible. While it would have been possible to build a case for leave without lying, that’s not what happened, and it would be needlessly generous to separate the outcome from the actions.
And it’s partly that dissent never felt more vital than when Theresa May commanded that it cease. It is partly just funny: each fresh disaster a satirical, faintly surreal release from the determined humourlessness of the march to Brexit. The Germans would have an intoxicating compound noun for these impulses, but our nation has “overwhelmingly” spoken. We don’t need any more of their words, or at least, not as much as they need ours.
This has to stop. It may be the Brexiters who shot us in the foot, but we’re all the same body politic and we’ll all feel the same pain. We cannot rejoice in their chaos and failure at the same time as building constructive, post-EU, pan-European alliances, any more than a person can whistle and cry at the same time; they use different muscle groups, the one gates off the other.
When Jean-Claude Juncker and May have a falling-out, to ignore his part in the sorry affair while disapproving of our prime minister’s conduct is wrong. That’s not because it’s unpatriotic – I applaud the triumph of sense over nationalism – but because it is idle. He doesn’t embody important values any more than she does: any tact, any compromise, any maturity, any urgent care for the people whose lives this posturing will affect.
Juncker may be the enemy of an enemy, but he is also her mirror: self-importance is the main quality he brings to bear on an issue in which the self couldn’t be less important. Never mind the optics of allying with a technocrat against your national interest: worrying about appearances feels rather noughties, these days, like fretting about a manifesto in post-manifesto politics. It is a discursive backwater to revel in May’s unpreparedness, her puffed-up anti-diplomacy. It holds us all in an adversarial limbo, where we can only be overtaken by events and never get ahead of them.
At some point, businesses on the continent and those in the UK, people whose supply chains have always complemented one another’s, people who depend on one another, are going to start clamouring for more adult leadership than “We drink all your prosecco. So ner.” Sooner or later – and demonstrably sooner, as in right now – cross-border law enforcement is going to need a cooperative system that will not just approximate but better what we’ve had until now.
The cyber-attack on NHS computer systems is a fine stick to beat the Conservatives with – persistent underfunding scotched any hope of the modernisation that could have prevented it. Yet given that we are just one of more than 100 countries affected, the only meaningful lesson here is the urgency of building new structures to pool international expertise.
While we wring our hands about the surge of far-right politics here and in the US, we’re failing to learn from Europe’s resilience to it – not just the electoral defeat of extremists in Austria, France and the Netherlands, but the creative new left of Spain’s Podemos and Denmark’s The Alternative. It’s as if our domestic strife is so intoxicating to us, its arguments so compelling, that we cannot look beyond it to make the connections we’re going to need if we’re ever going to carve out some post-EU internationalism.
Perhaps that sounds defeatist, allowing Brexit to be a foregone conclusion without any clear sense of how destructive it will be. But even if you make it your crusade for parliament – or better yet, the people – to get the final say over the deal when it’s finally thrashed out, you need to have built the networks, had the conversations, refined the ideas and scoped out the possibilities for what you want instead of whatever desultory document is put before us.
In a surprise move, three days before the French election, the Greek firebrand Yanis Varoufakis came out in support of the centrist Emmanuel Macron. It was a shock because Macron stands for much that Varoufakis expressly abhors – labour market deregulation, reduction of wealth taxes. And their bond came from an unexpected twist of eurozone history – Macron, billed as a staunch supporter of the troika and its wisdom, was the only politician to lobby in Greece’s favour against the imposition of austerity measures. He was overruled by the then French president François Hollande, who, as a noted socialist, should have been on Greece’s side, but ultimately preferred the safety of being on Angela Merkel’s.
The lesson here is not that we all have to knuckle down and accept a new centrism, as defined by whatever photogenic hotshot the universe delivers. Rather, it’s that sometimes to think critically and creatively about a problem, whether it’s Greek debt or Britain’s place in the world, you need to forget which side you’re on. You need to turn away from entrenched differences and concentrate on common causes. You need to stop looking inwards to your opponents, and start looking outwards for allies.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.23 GMT
They won’t admit it, but there is a pervasive idea among some Londoners, particularly the adopted ones, that the cleverest people from the north of England all end up in the capital, like particularly urbane moths drawn to the irresistible bright lights of the big city.
Exiled northerners are terrible for it, flaunting their Lancastrian or Yorkshire credentials whenever there is an opportunity, wanging on about the Wigans and Bradfords they left behind at least 20 years ago.
The truth, of course, is they now make only annual, fleeting visits to see family members who lacked the wherewithal to get out themselves. In they sweep, silently despairing of getting a good flat white north of Walthamstow, scarcely able to believe the dearth of Pret a Mangers.
The Brexit result confirmed everything these people think about England’s upper half. Idiots, they thought, when Sunderland returned the first decisive Brexit vote. Hasn’t it occurred to those halfwits on Wearside that Nissan might pull out from the Sunderland plant where they employ 7,000 locals? Are they too stupid to foresee the knock-on effect for the 40,000 jobs in the wider UK supply chain?
It is the same snobbery that caused an eminent art critic to recently opine on Radio 4 that he hadn’t seen a few Caravaggios being shown off in a London exhibition – because they had been “hidden away in places like Hull and Preston”. They might as well have been on the moon, though he would no doubt have seen them had they been hung in Florence or Paris.
The mantra goes that those who voted to leave are those who have the most to lose when Britain exits the European Union. But to say that out loud implies that anyone who voted that way hadn’t bothered to think through the consequences. It is a pretty insulting supposition, as a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research North rightly notes today.
“Of course we did! We knew both sides of the argument,” the retired nurse in Sunderland told me. “They said we would go right to the bottom of the heap, but it hasn’t happened. It might happen. We might go through a rough patch. But we will get through it in two or three years’ time, and I think it’s worth it.”
From where she was sitting, things looked pretty good. Nissan had not only decided to stay in the north-east but had vowed to build two new models in the Washington plant, a few miles out of Sunderland, having extracted opaque assurances from the government that no trade barriers would affect their business, which exports 80% of the 500,000 cars produced each year. Even the local Labour councillor for Washington North voted leave, telling me that globalisation had failed his constituents on the doorstep of Europe’s most productive car plant.
I went to visit AV Dawson, a logistics company in the Nissan supply chain, which lost a string of multimillion-pound, 15-year contracts in the immediate aftermath of the referendum result. Most of the workers receiving and delivering steel to make car bonnets at the Sunderland Nissan plant voted to leave. And of course they considered whether Nissan was likely to up sticks. Yet when Nissan’s boss made threats to leave, back in late September, they didn’t take it seriously.
“In my personal opinion it was scaremongering,” a thoughtful 24-year-old crane operator told me. “I always thought that the quality of work that we can produce in England is much greater than anywhere else. So if they really want top quality, they are not going to go over just a couple of quid.” He felt buoyed by the result. “It did make you feel like you counted, this time around,” he said.
Giving evidence in Sunderland to the new select committee on exiting the European Union on Thursday, Ross Smith, policy director of the North East Chamber of Commerce, said the media needed to start to present a more nuanced view of the consequences of Brexit. There’s the view that Brexit will either be a “glorious triumph” or a “complete disaster”, he said: “The reality is that it will probably be somewhere in between.”
Instead of sneering, people need to understand why most of the north, apart from some inner cities and a few wealthy rural exceptions, voted to leave. Could it be that they are fed up with receiving crumbs when London and the south-east get whole loaves? Spending on schools, arts, transport infrastructure and so much more is vastly weighted in London’s favour.
Many northerners look at London getting £50m for a frivolous garden bridge – as well as £4.6bn for Crossrail, more than will be spent on transport in the whole of the north during the same period, according to the IPPR – while they commute on juddering “pacer” trains, literally bus chassis welded on to ancient wheelbases. We keep hearing about the possibility of a “crossrail for the north”, improving east-west links. But what did the chancellor really trumpet in his autumn statement? A new “Varsity” rail line between … Oxford and Cambridge. If there is any track left over when they’re finished, perhaps they’ll send it up north.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
The current political crisis over Brexit has been a wake-up call for my generation: the doctrine that our parents and grandparents will leave behind a better world no longer holds. But, of course, not every young person feels this way. A significant minority – especially those in towns outside London and the south-east – do not necessarily share the enthusiasm of the 78% of young people who would back remain in a people’s vote on Brexit. And those that do will often have different reasons for their convictions too. We don’t want to leave them behind.
This summer the campaign I’m part of, Our Future Our Choice, will join a tour of the whole country, calling on politicians to let us be heard. We will be gathering in Wolverhampton, Sunderland, Leeds, Glasgow, Derby, Belfast and many more towns and cities over the summer, leading up to one more huge rally in London on 12 October.
From our visits to schools, youth centres and universities across the UK over the past year, it’s already clear to us that young people’s anti-Brexit sentiment is more complicated than the typical image you might see on marches, with demonstrators draped in the blue and gold of the EU flag.
Instead, the strongest voices demanding a people’s vote come from those who have been politicised out of necessity: those who see our horizons retreating and our prospects receding, and who have watched the last three years with unease that has turned to disgust and anger.
Rebecca Coleman, 21, is a young activist from Brentwood, Essex, where 59% of voters opted to leave in 2016. Until recently, her parents had stopped talking about Brexit. But, she says, “I’m so involved in it now that we can’t help but talk about it.”
Has it changed minds? “I think my mum voted to leave and that she feels there was a lot of misinformation. Talking about it has made us both much more confident about what should happen next.”
Rebecca’s example shows how, through their families, young people – especially in leave areas – can still have a significant impact on changing attitudes towards Brexit.
Tara Connolly, 21, from west Belfast co-founded Our Future Our Choice Northern Ireland to bring young people from all communities together. “This idea that young anti-Brexit campaigners are ‘the elite’ or ‘idealistic’ is so frustrating,” she says. “Our entire campaign … is about the hard facts of a border in the event of a no deal.” She hates the stereotype that all young people care about is their ability to travel across Europe hassle-free.
The rallies we’ll be holding in every corner of Britain this summer will seek to redefine this image, carving out a more accurate picture of the scope of anger and activism in a campaign that has come so far in representing so many.
Meanwhile, the one in 400 UK citizens who are members of the Conservative party prepare to pick a prime minister for the rest of us. This small, wholly unrepresentative segment of society are deciding the future direction of this country at a time of total political paralysis. They are granted their proxy referendum on Brexit, yet the nation at large is denied a right to the same.
This summer of youth action will be a welcome break from the Tory psychodrama. It will be a source of hope for those feeling hopeless – and for all those who believe in the democratic right of the British public to resolve this crisis ourselves.
 Lara Spirit is co-president of Our Future Our Choice
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.27 GMT
It is two months since British voters surprised themselves by deciding to end the UK’s 43-year relationship with the European Union – “independence day” to some and “the worst political decision since 1945” to others.
As stunned political leaderships on both sides of the Channel continue dithering about what to do next, it is worth looking back at the origins of a crisis the EU elite had not expected.
1) It may have started with Harold Macmillan’s father taking the future prime minister to watch Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee parade in 1897. Aged just three, Macmillan was very impressed by its splendour, but years later he would tell audiences that the pomp and power had been “all an illusion”. Two world wars (Macmillan was wounded in both) and the Great Depression put paid to it. The answer was a Europe that replaced old enmities with cooperation, he decided. But in 1955 Anthony Eden was PM and clung to old illusions. His government sent no minister – only a middling trade official named Russell Bretherton – to the summit in Messina, Italy, that led to the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Britain missed the boat. The French president, Charles de Gaulle, regarded Britain as an American Trojan horse and vetoed Macmillan’s first bid to join in 1963 and Harold Wilson’s in 1967.
2) After De Gaulle’s retirement, Ted Heath achieved entry for Britain on 1 January 1973, splitting both the Labour and Tory parties in the process. Key policies such as fishing and farming had not been designed to meet UK needs, and some people were worried about pooling aspects of sovereignty with the “Common Market” six. They were now nine, as Ireland and Denmark joined too, but Norwegians voted against membership. Heath was a hopeless salesman. When he lost power in 1974, Labour’s Wilson embraced Tony Benn’s idea of a referendum to legitimise British membership. With most of Fleet Street and the new Tory leader, Margaret Thatcher, on his side, Wilson won heavily by a margin of two to one against a coalition of rightwing Tories, Bennites and much of the Labour movement. Union leaders saw the economically booming Europe as a capitalist plot.
 3) The Common Market evolved into the European Economic Community (EEC) and membership expanded, taking in former dictatorships Spain, Greece and Portugal in the 1980s, neutrals and ex-Soviet bloc countries after the end of the cold war. It would be 28 in all when Croatia joined in 2013. To keep growing, Europe needed to reduce tariff barriers and in 1986 signed the Single European Act (SEA), which committed members to free movement of goods, capital, services and people in a “single market” by 1992. Acknowledging emerging fears of a “democratic deficit”, the SEA also gave the elected European parliament greater powers. But it also replaced national vetoes with qualified majority voting on many decisions in the EEC’s council of ministers. Denmark’s parliament rejected the SEA, but it was endorsed by a referendum, as it was in Ireland. An opponent of referendums, Thatcher did not hold a British referendum and only later regretted that she had been deceived by the “federalist conveyor belt”.
4) The next signpost on the road to what EU integrationists hoped would be “ever closer union” was to set up a single currency. By now Thatcher was vocally against such a move and in 1988 made her Bruges speech opposing economic and political union, but backing cooperation between nation states. (It was not meant as a Brexit speech, aides would stress in 2016). Meanwhile Labour’s modernisers, led by Neil Kinnock, had reversed the party’s opposition to EU membership. They had been wooed by the vision of a high-wage workers’ Europe promoted by Jacques Delors, the visionary French socialist who was president of the powerful Brussels bureaucracy, the European commission. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened up the prospect of German reunification, the French insisted on a currency union to tie an ever more dominant Germany to the EU project. Britain wanted the project to be “broader, not deeper” by expanding eastwards. Both policies were implemented; both would later have fateful consequences.
5) As Thatcher’s power weakened she quarrelled with key allies such as Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson over Europe. But her new chancellor, John Major, persuaded her to link sterling to the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) at what some feared was too high a rate for British industry. When Thatcher fell, Major took over and negotiated British opt-outs from the Maastricht treaty (1992), which reorganised the EU and set timetables and rules for a single currency zone and for the no-passport Schengen zone. As part of Major’s “variable geometry” strategy for a two-speed Europe, Britain was also allowed not to join the “social chapter” covering workers’ rights. Denmark needed two referendums before signing; France’s was only narrowly carried. Major won the 1992 election, but opposition to Europe crystallised at this time into demands for an in/out referendum on UK membership. The sterling crisis of September 1992 forced Britain out of the ERM. The economy recovered, but not Major’s reputation. What became Ukip was founded and Major’s government was hobbled by backbench “Eurosceptic” rebellions, billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith’s Referendum party and Thatcher’s criticisms. BSE (“mad cow disease”) turned into an ugly beef war with Europe.
6) Major’s EU problems helped Tony Blair pile up a 179-seat majority in 1997 as the most pro-European PM since Heath. Labour talked a positive game on Europe, but Fleet Street had moved against it in line with rightwing public opinion, and Blair never dared expend much political capital making the positive case for Europe. Instead his turf war with Gordon Brown ensured that the chancellor imposed a near-impossible “five tests” of the British national interest before he would consent to sterling joining the euro, whose coins and notes were launched in 2002. Labour joined the “social chapter” that Major had blocked, but fell out with most of its EU partners over UK support for the US-led invasion of Iraq. The French were denounced as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”.
7) Serious strategic mistakes were then made on both sides of the Channel. Labour decided not to impose transitional restrictions on the free movement of workers when mostly former Soviet bloc states known as the A10 joined the EU on 1 May 2004, unaware that France and Germany would do so. Instead of the estimated 13,000 annual arrivals expected, mostly from Poland, more than a million came in the years that followed. It allowed Ukip to capitalise on fears of wage competition, pressure on social services and cultural resentment in many areas, pushing the Tories to the right. Labour failed to respond to fears shared by many of its supporters. Tony Blair promised a referendum on the EU “constitution” but ducked it when French and Dutch voters said no. Resentment grew when a version of the constitution became the Lisbon treaty (2009).
8) When the global banking crisis began in mid-2007, initially in France and Britain, it was blamed by many in Brussels on irresponsible “Anglo-Saxon” speculative banking. But US and British central bankers proved much more nimble in restructuring and bailing out troubled banks than the EU did at both national and eurozone level. At Germany’s insistence, a tough line was taken against eurozone states, notably Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal – “peripheral” economies that had borrowed heavily on the new currency’s credibility to launch unsustainable booms. The subsequent austerity regime crippled Greece and killed growth elsewhere. Free to devalue and with flexible labour laws, Britain was able to navigate the crisis more adroitly. Badly hit by the rising economic power of Asia, the eurozone looked less like an engine of growth than one of stagnation, and some of its banks a submerged problem that leaders tried to ignore.
9) David Cameron had won the Tory leadership in 2005 by outflanking his main rival, David Davis, over Europe, promising to quit the main conservative group of MEPs. After becoming prime minister in 2010 he talked tough, but Eurosceptic colleagues never trusted him and used his appeasement tactics to demand more. Despite investing less effort and manpower at the Brussels negotiating table, Britain was winning key battles, its language had now replaced French, its approach to law and free trade gained ground and it was outside the floundering eurozone and Schengen’s border free-for-all. It was already half out. But that was not enough for critics. Ahead of the 2015 election Cameron promised an in/out referendum after a “renegotiation” (the tactic Wilson had used in 1975), probably expecting Nick Clegg to veto it again in a renewed coalition. Instead he won an outright majority and decided to resolve the issue early, in 2016 rather than 2017.
10) Cameron’s elevation of party management tactics over strategy was rapidly compounded by a perfect storm for what became known as the Brexit campaign. Tory promises to reduce net immigration from about 300,000 to below 100,000 repeatedly failed, weaponising the “Take Back Control” slogan. Middle East wars (in which British action and inaction made things worse) compounded the economic and asylum migration flow. The spread of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism into Europe added fresh fears to the mix. The eurozone was easily portrayed as a basket case in which failed EU policies were stirring up the very extremism the union had been devised to prevent. Yet the cross-party remain camp’s lacklustre campaign clung to the economic case for membership, revealing an arrogant metropolitan disdain for voters’ fears on immigration in less prosperous regions.
Cameron thought he could keep the wavering Boris Johnson onside. Instead the London mayor became leave’s biggest campaign draw, willing to deploy some of its most unscrupulous claims about migration (“Turkey is joining the EU”) and budget savings (“£350m a week for the NHS”). Cameron had also banked on strong Labour backing. But the official opposition had elected Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong anti-European, as its leader. He declared for Europe, but millions barely noticed his feeble contribution. Nor did they believe remain’s warnings of the dangers of a leave vote, some too crude to impress anyone, some from foreign VIPs like Barack Obama. In the brave new world of Brexit, Michael Gove spoke for the 52% to 48% majority on 23 June when he said: “I think people in this country have had enough of experts.”
It wasn’t quite the outcome Macmillan had in mind when he denounced imperial illusions and sought refuge in Europe. As for EU leaders, as at Messina in 1955, they are back in conference on another Italian island determined to press ahead without the Brits.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
In my innocence, I didn’t expect many people to be in a central Portsmouth Wetherspoons at 10.30am on a Friday morning. But there they all were, in their droves: passionate supporters of Brexit, there to hear the pub chain’s founder and chairman, Tim Martin, make the case for Britain leaving the EU with no deal. Martin has been on the road since November, with the aim of visiting at least 100 of his boozers. The day we crossed paths, he was traversing the south coast, moving on to Southampton and Weymouth: given that it has whetted the appetite of what remains of the country’s local press, drawn large crowds and shifted huge amounts of food and drink, the whole thing looks to have been an unlikely success.
Martin’s case was unconvincing to the point of tedium: a half-argument that ignored what a no-deal Brexit would mean for British exports, and too blithely dismissed all those concerns about supply chains, and chaos at UK ports, let alone what a no-deal scenario would mean for the island of Ireland. But on the level of political sociology, the spectacle presented was compelling: the hardest of the Brexit hardcore, many of them on the pints and riled to snapping point before the speech even got going, and then taken into incandescence by the posse of local Liberal Democrats interrupting Martin’s speech at every turn.
It is quite an experience, watching people repeatedly yell at each other about trade tariffs before they have had their lunch. Even after Martin had put down his microphone, a fierce debate continued. Meanwhile, very familiar mutterings punctuated the argy-bargy, and took the argument out of the realms of politics, into a mish-mash of culture and history: the second world war, the supposedly perfidious Germans, the idea that if we prospered before 1972, why can we not do so again?
Last Thursday, the BBC’s Question Time was broadcast from Derby, where an endorsement for no deal from the writer Isabel Oakeshott triggered mass whoops and cheers, and yet another explosion of Brexit noise on Twitter. The truth that brief moment underlined is obvious: whatever the warnings from politicians, many people currently support the nightmarish prospect of the UK leaving the EU without any formal agreement.
The extent to which that belief is a matter of deep conviction is a moot point: I wrote about Brexit boredom last week, and it seems pretty clear that many people say they would opt for no deal if pushed, but do so in the midst of disconnection and bafflement. Nonetheless, an inconvenient truth remains. Whereas I have never heard any member of the public make the case for what politicians call Norway plus, and belief in a second referendum still seems to be largely the preserve of a certain kind of middle-class person, no deal is the position that scores of people have recently expressed to me without prompting: “We should just get out”; “We have to leave, now”; “Why can’t we just walk away?”
At its heart, I suppose, is a terrible logic, combined with a certain stubborn ignorance, which results in an insistence that the only thing that matches what millions of people thought they were voting for in 2016 is a clean break. Some support for no deal closely echoes the specious stuff repeatedly uttered by leading Brexiteers, about the EU needing Britain more than we need them, a country set free from Brussels diktats and trading again with its former colonies. But the most fascinating element of popular no-dealism is altogether more complicated, and built on a defiant rejection of all the warnings about falling off a cliff edge, so passionate that the refusal of advice feels more relevant to what people think than what the most reckless kind of Brexit actually might entail. In that sense, supporting no deal amounts to the same performative “fuck you” that defined a reasonable share of the original vote for leave.
The gender aspect of Brexit is still too overlooked. Of the people gathered in that Wetherspoons, 90% were men. In a recent YouGov poll, support for no deal was put at 22%, but whereas 28% of men were no-dealers, among women the figure was a paltry 16%. There is something at play here similar to the belligerent masculinity channelled by Donald Trump: a yearning for all-or-nothing politics, enemies and endless confrontation, and an aggressive nostalgia. Some of the latter is shamelessly misogynistic, part of a macho bigotry that harks back to hierarchies of privilege that linger on, and blurs into racism. But there is also an element that ought to attract empathy: a yearning for a world in which men were steelworkers, coalminers and welders, and a desperate quest for something – anything – that might allow their successors to do the same.
More widely, the politics of no deal betrays an urge for drama and crisis that a lot of us ought to be humble enough to recognise in ourselves. Not that long ago, a high-profile supporter of Jeremy Corbyn looked ahead to the new Labour Party taking power, and wondered: “Have we prepared the people who chanted for Jeremy at Glastonbury for the fact that, at some stage, they may only be able to withdraw 50 quid a day if the credit runs dry? If there is a very British coup, will they hold the streets?” A comparable romanticism surrounds the idea of a besieged post-Brexit Britain nobly trying to make its way without the interference of Brussels. It is, perhaps, one of the great failings of mainstream politics that it has been unable to project anything similar on to issues that cry out for public attention: imagine, for example, if people were as worked up about climate change.
Finally, there are questions about no-dealism that are bound up with England, and national traits that go back centuries. One is a tendency to indulge in futile, inexplicable gestures, evident in everything from 18th-century riots to 1970s punk rock, and perfectly summed up in a sentiment mewled by a young man named Johnny Rotten, in the midst of a hit single titled Anarchy in the UK: “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.” These things explode from time to time, but what never seems to go away is the self-image of an island nation, the seductive myth of Britain standing alone, and an eternally mistrustful attitude to the EU, now intensified by the bloodless functionaries – Tusk, Barnier, Juncker – apparently calling the shots on Brexit.
At the moment, mainstream politics operates on the understanding that if no deal came to pass, queues of lorries and thinly stocked shops would spark no end of public outrage, and cause huge political damage to the Conservative party. But if the current procedural complexities surrounding Brexit eventually give way to much starker realities of what the EU calls a “disorderly withdrawal”, I would not be so sure. Somewhere between the Wetherspoons spirit, a mass desire to simply get Brexit over with and the mirage of a wronged country fighting for survival, there might lie the key to why no-dealism is suddenly proving more popular than some people would like to imagine. A no-deal exit would confirm that politics has entered the realms of the darkly surreal, and that 23 June 2016 was only the start.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
If you care about what the Brexiters are doing to our country, then vote on 23 May. All that matters is that on 24 May, Nigel Farage and his allies on the far right of the Conservative party cannot claim they speak for Britain.
Politics is not an exact science. After the vote, there will be a ledger. On one side will be hard or no-deal Brexit with Farage and the Tory fellow travellers. On the other will be those who want an end to Brexit and those who believe that, after this degree of mess and on a decision of this magnitude, the final say should be with the people.
The most important thing to remember is that with the knowledge of these election results parliament will take its decision. MPs will scrutinise the ledger as if their future depends on it.
So, the big message: vote. Because your vote will affect their vote.
Who to vote for if you’re on the anti-Farage side of the ledger. There are unequivocal remain parties – Liberal Democrats, Change UK, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru. If, because of Labour’s equivocation, you simply won’t vote Labour, then vote for them. If, like me, despite everything, you can vote Labour, then vote Labour.
But whatever you do, vote! This is not a vote to choose a prime minister or a government. It is a vote for the Farage Brexit – or against it.
I will vote Labour, because I believe ultimately that Labour will be counted on the anti-Farage side of the ledger. The bulk of Labour party members, MPs and voters are against Brexit and certainly against that Brexit advocated by the Brexit party and its fellow travellers in the Conservative party.
Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, has advocated a people’s vote. Most of Labour’s candidates are strongly remain and the voting system in the EU elections – proportional representation by region – means effectively that a bigger Labour vote means more remain MEPs, especially since the three avowedly remain parties are not under one banner.
But Labour should never have put itself in such a position of destructive indecision. The local elections were terrible for the Conservatives but, on any rational analysis, devastating for Labour.
This is a government not in a state of disarray but of profound dysfunction. No one of any age or any political experience can remember anything like it.
We are almost 10 years into austerity, with the public realm – Labour’s political sweet spot – in disrepair. Yet Labour could not even win the local elections. Despite Keir Starmer’s best efforts, the leadership’s ambiguity on Brexit has brought it confusion, not shelter from principled decision on the most vital question of national interest.
But leave aside principle. Even as a piece of political strategy, it was doomed to fail. Of course, there are Labour seats that voted strongly leave and who feel Labour should deliver Brexit, though, according to some MPs in these former Labour heartlands, it is concern over the Corbyn leadership as much as Brexit that is driving voters away.
But equally, there are seats where for Labour to support Brexit would also be fatal. As Theresa May has discovered, the country is irredeemably split on the issue of whether Brexit is good or bad. Any strategy that tries to face both ways just ends up looking indecisive or unprincipled or both.
What Labour should have done – from the beginning – is to argue that we accept the referendum result but that once any negotiation concludes we should be entitled to compare the future European relationship with what we have now and, if that negotiated outcome is unsatisfactory, reserve the right to give the people the final say.
We could have explained the central dilemma between hard Brexit and soft and critiqued the shambles of the negotiation’s failure to resolve it. We could have mounted a proper attack on the nonsensical Brexit negotiating strategy of “cake and eat it”, instead of having our own version of the same strategy. We could have dismantled the Tories over the distractive effect of Brexit, an argument that would have grown in power over time as the political energy of the entire government got subsumed by Brexit.
We could have made the correct case as to why Brexit is not the answer to anything – the degradation of the NHS, failures in schools, rising crime and social disintegration, the inequalities in our society or, indeed, the climate challenge. We could have given leadership to the Labour Brexit vote, instead of which we tried to follow it while simultaneously trying to appeal to the anti-Brexit Labour vote. Result? We pleased no one and, most of all, let down the country.
The European elections should have been the occasion for a large, unified anti-Brexit vote. Instead, many Labour supporters are genuinely conflicted about voting Labour.
But the big picture remains clear: if you’re in the position of voting Labour or nothing, then still vote, because the reality is on 24May every vote against the Brexit extremism is important and Labour is a vote against that.
There will be a time for examination of Labour’s role in the Brexit debacle, but for the moment stopping the Brexiters is the priority.
A year ago, if we had known that we would knock out the 29 March deadline and fight the European elections, we would have been upbeat. It’s only the weirdness of a campaign without a leader, or a single party to vote for, that is in danger of disorienting us.
But our orientation should be plain: on 24 May, the Brexiters must have lost. Then the bigger battle can be won.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Here in the beautiful Cumbrian countryside, the sun is out, our grass is growing and the sky is blue. Sheep are busily nibbling the pasture while cattle are basking in the summer warmth. These are perfect conditions for farming. The animals are content and the farmers are working hard.
Everything should be fine, but there is a big, dark cloud lurking on the horizon: the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. This is a threat to everything we do. The uncertainty around Brexit and the prospect of trade tariffs that would cripple our business is a real worry. The future direction of UK-produced food is simply unknown.
Will we be forced to adhere to ever higher standards, while our government allows food to be imported from countries where farmers adhere to welfare or other standards that would, rightly, be illegal on my farm? Will our politicians assure British farmers that they will avoid a disastrous no-deal Brexit?
Politicians visit farms and livestock auction markets and tell farmers: “Don’t worry chaps, it’ll all be fine.” Then we hear them on the radio proclaiming that the great prize of Brexit will be cheaper food.
All this plays to my very real fear that we will be sold out as the British government desperately seeks trade deals with anyone who will have us. I believe they would happily open up our highly regulated food sector to all-comers if they’ll buy our financial services.
Selling out British farming could end up being the legacy of Brexit. My fear is that free-trading ministers, who are frustrated by what they dismiss as the “red tape” of the EU, could sacrifice rural Britain in a heartbeat if it meant a trade deal with the US.
We cannot let that happen. Instead of discussing just how many billions of pounds will be needed to mitigate the effects of a no-deal Brexit, politicians should be discussing their vision of what the future of British farming and food production looks like. We need to be thinking further than just 31 October.
Our farm is a family affair, a mixed business that I run in partnership with my brother and my parents, on the edge of the Leven estuary at the head of Morecambe Bay.
The parts of our farm are all complementary. We have sheep, free-range hens, beef and dairy cattle, all accredited by either the Lion code, Red Tractor or RSPCA Freedom Foods. We’re very proud to produce wonderful food to some of the highest standards in the world.
Our family has farmed for more than 400 years and we hope to leave our land in good heart for the next generation. It’s why we’re involved in agri-environment schemes that promote biodiversity, pollinators, good soil health and much, much more. We’re proud custodians of the countryside.
When I look over my farm, I see opportunity. We need our politicians to recognise this too. They need to have a real, genuine conversation about how they will ensure the food and farming sector thrives far into the future, continuing to deliver for the public, providing them with food, shaping our iconic landscape and providing essential services for rural communities.
We need to hear answers and genuine policies from both Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson about how they will establish a sustainable domestic food production system that will stand the test of time. This is about UK food security. Right now, we have none of that. Instead I am having to shelve my plans to expand my business, and reinvestment is put on hold. That’s all down to the current uncertainty.
I despair when I hear those who are dead set on leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October, pronouncing that this will bring the end of uncertainty. The huge irony is that if we crash out with no deal, uncertainty will remain king, but this time it will probably last for years while the powers-that-be grapple with the task of striking a future trading relationship with the rest of Europe.
I don’t have the luxury of waiting to see what any of that produces. A no-deal Brexit could wipe out my business. And where would that leave our farmers’ ability to produce our own food? Shoppers would be subject to US chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef produced to standards much inferior to those I can guarantee.
That’s not a future for British farming I want to see, and I don’t think the public wants to see that either. I believe British people love their countryside and want to see the rural regions thriving. I would love to see a future where British farming continues to produce some of the world’s best food, continues to care for the world’s most beautiful countryside, and provides a real model of sustainable farming for the future.
I want farming to be recognised as part of the solution to climate change, as we work towards a carbon-neutral future. In the UK we’re not cutting down rainforests, we’re planting trees. We are champions of animal welfare, when some other countries don’t know the meaning of it.
We don’t always get it right and there will always be room to improve, but I believe we have limitless potential, and for that to be realised we need some certainty back in our lives. We need real blue-sky thinking, not the black clouds of a no-deal Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
George Osborne has said that MPs are being asked “to deliver something impossible” in leaving the EU without damaging Britain, calling for a long delay in the Brexit process.
Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme before the People’s Vote demonstration, where hundreds of thousands of people will march through central London on Saturday, the former chancellor said: “If you ask politicians to deliver something impossible don’t be surprised if they cannot.
“As it happens, if I was a hard Brexiteer … I’d just get out and rip the plaster off and endure the pain, but it’s a lot of pain and a big shock. The best outcome now would be a long delay, and it’s not the worst thing in the world to ask people to vote for some MEPs, and certainly better than stockpiling medicine and turning Kent into a car park.
“So I think the best outcome is a long delay where we rethink how we deliver on the referendum result and we try and find a majority for a compromise Brexit agreement and possibly have a second referendum.”
Osborne was asked about calling Theresa May a “dead woman walking”, to which he said: “After that election she called [in 2017] … I never thought she could recover authority and I said it at the moment.”
The education minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said: “If parliament decides to vote down the prime minister’s withdrawal agreement, then I think it would be political meltdown and parliament would have failed.”
Zahawi also said he was not prepared to tell his constituents that the UK would take part in the EU elections. “Each and every one of us will have to ask ourselves the question: ‘Am I prepared to go back to my constituents and say we’re not leaving the EU, we’re going to go for a much longer extension, and we’re going to take part in the European elections?’ I’m not prepared to do that. I don’t think the prime minister is prepared to do that.”
The comments came as hundreds of thousands of people head to London on Saturday to march on parliament calling for the public to be given a final say on Brexit. Protesters will travel from all over the UK and further afield for the People’s Vote campaign’s Put it to the People march, after a similar rally in October drew crowds of 700,000. The march will move from Park Lane to Parliament Square from midday, followed by a rally in front of parliament.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, is expected to tell crowds that he believes the only way to resolve the current impasse is “for people themselves to sign it off”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Years of negotiations with the EU lie ahead for Britain whichever of the options we choose. Only revoking article 50, an option dismissed by the prime minister, despite more than 5 million signatures on the petition to the government, would spare us. If the UK goes over the cliff edge on 12 April, British officials will be back in Brussels within days pleading for talks to limit the damage.
Even surprise approval of the withdrawal agreement would raise the curtain on lengthy negotiations on future relations with the EU. The divorce settlement is a beginning not an end. Canada required nine years to negotiate and implement a straightforward free trade agreement with the EU. Switzerland, proudly independent, outside the EU and the European Economic Area, had to negotiate more than 100 bilateral agreements with the EU to ensure frictionless trade and other essential interactions.
What takeaways from the last two years of exasperating talks might encourage both sides to navigate more safely through the murky waters of populist politics in the negotiations that lie ahead?
1​ Take parliament into your confidence
The government at last seems ready to allow MPs to express their Brexit preferences in “indicative” votes. But a broad consultation on Brexit options should have been the first step in 2016. A “green paper” would have provided a recognised basis for such consultations.
The government should have taken parliament and public opinion into its confidence, explaining frankly the complexity of the divorce settlement, the options for future relations and the obstacles to be overcome. Indicative votes in parliament could strengthen the hand of British negotiators in future talks.
2 Know your negotiating partners
Over the past two years, the government consistently underestimated the EU’s unity behind the mandate given to its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier. It tried and failed to drive a wedge between the member states and the commission.
British ministers misled themselves and the public into believing that the continentals would cave in because of their trade surplus with Britain (the alleged Italian prosecco and German car export lobbies), Britain’s geopolitical importance or its special status as a future ex-member state. Ministers, in a classic case of groupthink, either were not briefed or ignored briefings on three core features of the EU that condition its approach.
The first is the EU’s self-image as a “peace project”, reinforced by its receipt of the 2012 Nobel peace prize for advancing the causes of peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. The EU’s peace narrative is so strong that the Irish government could count on unwavering EU support for its position on the backstop.
Second, British ministers ignored the principle of solidarity among member states, which further bolstered Ireland’s position. EU members support each other when a vital national interest is at stake. This is largely based on the expectation of reciprocity if, one day, they too need such backing.
Third, they overlooked the unequal nature of negotiations between the EU and a country seeking to join or leave it. The Brexit negotiations resembled, in reverse, the accession talks by which Britain itself became an EU member in 1973. British officials knew that a candidate or leaving state is required to accept the EU position as the basis for the talks. In the Brexit talks, it was 27 to one. But British ministers gave the impression that the UK had equal political weight to the EU in the negotiations. They minimised the difficulties and implied the talks would be a walkover. When reality dawned, they accused the EU of stubbornness, sharpening the suspicions of Brexiters.
3 Be flexible to achieve a win-win result
A win-win outcome is essential for negotiations to succeed. Both sides need to feel that the outcome serves their interests. To achieve this, compromise is required. But until now neither side has shown flexibility. Theresa May still sticks rigidly to her self-imposed red lines that preclude compromise solutions. To the last, she has been unwilling to consider alternative suggestions from the commission or the House of Commons. Even today she wants to ram her twice-rejected withdrawal agreement through parliament.
The EU​ ​side contributed to the problematic result of the talks through its unbending two-stage approach, which required the divorce agreement to be largely accepted before any discussion of the future relationship could commence. This staging allowed the UK side to pretend that a hard border across Ireland could be avoided through the postponed future framework negotiations. This, in turn, discredited the EU’s insistence that a backstop had to be included in the withdrawal agreement.
A more flexible approach in which the withdrawal arrangement and the outline of the future framework could be negotiated in parallel would either have enabled a solution to be found to the Irish issue or exposed the government’s position as unrealistic.
4 Don’t throw red meat to populists
Brexit is the result of ​Eurosceptic populism​ with British characteristics. It arises from economic discontent, social tensions and “identity politics” that feed on each other. Brexit now dominates British politics, undermining its unwritten constitution and distracting the EU from other urgent challenges.
This worrying situation occurred mainly because British leaders continuously appeased Eurosceptic ultras, fanning extremism in a divided political and social environment. This was an abdication of true leadership and undercut the negotiations.
5 EU-bashing doesn’t pay
Echoing several of his predecessors, David Cameron bashed the EU for seven years before the 2016 referendum. He presented every EU summit as a British victory over foreigners. Little wonder that voters doubted his sudden claim that continued membership was a vital national interest. British ministers in future should refrain from questioning the good faith of their EU interlocutors and from crying victory after every encounter in Brussels.
6 Beware of referendums
A second referendum may be back on the table as an option after Labour’s conversion, Saturday’s march and Wednesday’s indicative votes. It might yet provide a way forward if other possibilities are rejected. But, in general, the country should be wary of referendums that weaken parliament. Rumbling discontent rather than the ostensible referendum question usually determines the result. People like to say “no” to their rulers.
Any of the options that parliament will consider this week, except revocation of article 50, will involve extensive further negotiations with the EU. From now on, British leaders should treat their European counterparts as negotiating partners and not as a foil for use in domestic politics. New teams will soon be in place on both sides of the Channel, and can make a fresh start. By taking parliament into its confidence and being frank with the British people, the next government should eventually be able to achieve a win-win outcome that benefits both the UK and our friends and allies in Europe.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The Good Friday agreement is widely revered as a model of peace and celebrated worldwide. Yet the Home Office has openly disregarded the agreement, and is actively seeking to undermine its very foundation. I should know: I have spent the past four years in legal proceedings battling the Home Office.
The people of Northern Ireland are unique within the UK in that we have the birthright to identify and be accepted as Irish or British or both. However, contrary to the statutory duty on the Home Office to accept the birthright provisions of the Good Friday agreement, it is arguing through the British courts that the people of Northern Ireland are “automatically British” as we were “clearly born in the United Kingdom”. The department regularly and repeatedly forces British citizenship on Irish citizens born in Northern Ireland – citizens who are Irish by birth and by choice – a choice the people of this island voted for overwhelmingly in the Good Friday agreement referendum. With Brexit on the horizon, and EU citizens’ rights in the balance, the situation has become urgent.
I am an Irish national born in Northern Ireland. The position of the Home Office is that I’m a dual British/Irish national due to my birth in Northern Ireland, and if I would like to fully retain and access my rights as an Irish/EU national in the UK, I am “welcome to renounce” my British citizenship and rely on my Irish citizenship. I have never claimed British citizenship and do not hold a British passport.
The Home Office’s position, according to court documents, is that the people of Northern Ireland are “as a matter of law British”, with the counterintuitive argument that there “is nothing in the Belfast agreement to prevent British citizenship being acquired at birth”. Further, the documents troublingly elaborate: “A treaty [the government] is a party of does not alter the laws of the United Kingdom,” and that the “courts do not have the power to force the government to uphold its obligations and commitments to a treaty”.
These arguments have been reaffirmed by the immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, who stated: “Our view is that an international agreement such as the Belfast Good Friday agreement cannot supersede domestic legislation.”
Legally, treaties are to be interpreted in good faith and in accordance with the meaning given to the terms within them, in light of their context and purpose. So why is the Home Office refusing to accept that the Good Friday agreement is a UN-registered international treaty between two sovereign states, and that the government is expected to act in accordance with it? It has become clear that an Irish identity in Northern Ireland comes at great personal cost. It could be losing your right to work. It could be losing your right to travel. It could be losing the right to say a final goodbye to a loved one before they’re gone. Northern Irish citizens are losing their right to be who they are.
At the behest of the Home Office, I, as well as many others, have had to stand in court detailing every moment of our lives where our Irish identity was evident. We are being asked to literally prove that we are Irish.
Theresa May has acknowledged that an incompatibility between Home Office policies and commitments to the Good Friday agreement exists. An urgent review was promised. In response to a freedom of information request, it appears that there is no formal review, no progress – and no terms of reference or timeframe held on record. Under recent policy changes, Northern Ireland-born Irish citizens will be unable to fully retain and access their EU rights and entitlements within the UK. The post-Brexit EU settlement scheme is the British government’s enactment of the citizens’ rights chapter of the withdrawal agreement. It remains open to Irish citizens born in the Republic of Ireland, while it is closed to Irish citizens born in Northern Ireland. This is creating a two-tier system for Irish citizens: those who can fully retain their EU rights and benefits under the settlement scheme, and those who cannot.
While it is noted that the Home Office has advised Irish citizens that they “do not need to apply but can do so if they wish”, it is also important to note that their non-Irish/British family members do need to apply. The common travel area is cited as a reason for Irish citizens to not apply under the scheme, but it remains largely unimplemented and unenforceable. The restrictions on Northern Ireland-born Irish citizens will result in a loss of wider EU rights, such as family reunification. We will be among the only EU citizens within the UK to face such a restriction. How can the home secretary, Sajid Javid, justify the marginalisation of one group of Irish citizens?
We voted for peace and the recognition of the unique status of Northern Ireland. There is no equality in legally allowing Northern Ireland-born citizens to be exclusively British while denying that same right to those who wish to be Irish. No citizen should have their identity questioned or be instructed to renounce any citizenship in order to access an entitlement.
There is an onus on Javid to take responsibility for the derogation of duties to the Good Friday agreement, and to the people of Northern Ireland. We have waited, and we have waited patiently, for the full realisation of our rights. In the face of Brexit, we cannot wait any longer. It is time for the Good Friday agreement to become what it was destined to be.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
The campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller will launch immediate legal action to prevent Boris Johnson from shutting down parliament in order to drive through a no-deal Brexit against the wishes of MPs, the Observer can reveal.
Miller’s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, have written to the likely next prime minister, saying that such a move would be not only “constitutionally unacceptable” but also unlawful, and would lead them to mount an urgent challenge in the courts.
Miller has assembled the same legal team, including the QCs Lord (David) Pannick and Tom Hickman, that successfully forced Theresa May in early 2017 to grant MPs a vote before triggering article 50, the process that set the clock ticking on the UK’s exit from the EU.
Her latest move will add to the drama as the country faces political and economic uncertainty with the approach of the latest Brexit deadline of 31 October.
In a letter sent to Johnson, seen by the Observer, the team at Mishcon de Reya make clear that prorogation of parliament – something Johnson has repeatedly refused to rule out – would involve the use of prerogative powers, which courts would seek to limit. “Such powers cannot be exercised in a manner which is contrary to fundamental constitutional principles,” they say.
The letter adds: “It would seriously undermine parliamentary sovereignty for you, as prime minister, to prorogue parliament to prevent it from considering whether to legislate to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
“You would be closing the doors of parliament to prevent it from legislating on the most important political issue of the day, when time is of the essence. In such circumstances it would be unlawful for you as prime minister to advise Her Majesty to prorogue parliament for the purpose of preventing parliament from considering the enactment of a law to stop the UK leaving the EU without a deal.”
Cross-party groups of MPs who oppose a no-deal Brexit are still hoping to find ways to block such an outcome, which could mean the UK having to apply for a further extension. But Johnson has said that the UK must leave the EU on 31 October “deal or no deal”.
While his opponent in the Tory leadership contest, Jeremy Hunt, has ruled out prorogation to prevent MPs blocking no deal, Johnson has declined to do so.
Miller said that she and her legal team were “absolutely ready to go” to prevent what she said would be an outrageous attempt to bypass parliament, the very institution that Brexiters said they wanted to restore powers to when they campaigned to leave the EU in the June 2016 referendum.
After a case brought by Miller that set a constitutional precedent and upheld parliamentary sovereignty, the supreme court ruled by a majority of eight justices to three in January 2017 that MPs and peers must give their consent before the government could trigger article 50 and formally initiate Brexit.
Last week the former Tory prime minister Sir John Major said he would be willing to go to court to seek a judicial review to stop Johnson proroguing parliament.
“I served in parliament for over 20 years. I’m very proud to have done so,” said Major. “I have huge admiration for our parliamentary traditions.
“I’m not going to stand by and see them disregarded in this fashion. It is utterly, utterly and completely the wrong way to proceed.”
He added: “Let’s strip away the jargon of proroguing and contemplate what this actually means. What it means is that a prime minister – prime minister Johnson, presumably – because he cannot persuade parliament to agree with his policy, will close down parliament so that he can bypass it until his policy comes into operation.
“Now, nobody has done that since the Stuart era and it didn’t end well. And it shouldn’t end well.
“You cannot and should not bypass parliament in this fashion. And I cannot imagine how anyone could conceivably think that is right.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
Keir Starmer’s speech to the Labour conference in Liverpool was significant for two reasons: for what it said, and for how it went down. As usual, time will tell; but both the speech and the response have the potential to push Labour, and Britain, towards the eventual, but still improbable, reopening of the entire Brexit issue.
Starmer isn’t one of the great natural party conference orators. You still feel that he is learning how to perform some of the baser political skills that don’t always come naturally to a senior barrister. But there was no missing the zinger that he launched into the Liverpool hall towards the end of a well-argued speech about Brexit – or its effect.
All the focus before Labour’s Brexit debate today had been on the second referendum. The speculation centred on how Starmer and the party would navigate the delicate politics of Labour’s conditional embrace this week of a “people’s vote” on the Brexit outcome this autumn.
When he got to that part of his speech, Starmer was unapologetic. If Labour cannot bring down the Conservative government over Brexit this winter, there have to be other options, he said. These must include a campaign for a public vote.
Starmer avoided getting too deep into the theology of what might be on the ballot paper – the issue that had ranged John McDonnell and Len McCluskey against the party’s pro-European majority in the last 48 hours. But it was the words that followed that set the debate alight.
“Nobody,” said Starmer, “is ruling out remain as an option.” The response in the hall to that was immediate. First an instant volley of applause, but then, from deeper in the hall, and somehow also from somewhere deeper in the gut of the party conference, came the cheering, prolonged and surging, and then the standing ovation.
It was a powerful moment. As someone who has been reporting party conferences for a very long time, I can’t remember all that many like it in any party. It’s rare for a politician, even addressing their supporters, to hit the spot with something truly unexpected and powerful. But Starmer’s embrace of the possibility of remaining in the EU hit that spot unerringly. It was, it seems, an improvised addition to the speech. The words weren’t in the planned text. But the words mattered – and so did the response in the hall. Most were on their feet. The applause went on and on. This was, it suddenly felt, a Labour party that really is up for a fight to preserve Britain’s place in Europe.
That won’t have gone down well with those in the Labour party who see everything in terms of whether it is a challenge to the leader. But Jeremy Corbyn, along with McDonnell and McCluskey, does not want to see Labour drawn down the road of refighting the issue of UK membership of the EU. The reasons for that caution differ: some, like Corbyn, are anti-EU; others, perhaps like McDonnell, are more pragmatic.
Starmer is tapping into a growing wave of opposition to Brexit, two years on from the 2016 vote. That wave is strong in the Labour party – almost 90% of its members support remain, YouGov found last week. Yet if Labour does indeed campaign for a second vote, and for remaining in the EU in that vote, then it will certainly have to have a strong message for the large minority (35% of its voters) who opted for leave. Claims of betrayal will be loud and potentially lethal. The Tory party machine moved into Get Starmer mode within minutes of his speech ending.
In his closing words, Starmer seemed to be aware of that. The millions who voted for Brexit sent an immense message about the state of Britain, he acknowledged. Much of the rest of the conference Brexit debate was ill-focused and without the quality that Labour remainers will need to summon if this is to go all the way. But Starmer has started something here. He is going to have to carry it through. And, judging by the response in the hall – not always the most reliable guide to public opinion, it has to be said – there are plenty of people willing him on.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
John Mann, the pro-Brexit Labour MP, says the party will lose support if it pursues the policy announced by Jeremy Corbyn, and ends up enabling a public vote on the UK’s relationship with the European Union. There are two problems with his argument. One concerns the nature of Labour’s choice, while the second concerns the polling data.
The choice first. In the 2017 general election, Labour won the support of around 8 million remain voters and 4 million leave voters. Plainly, the party wishes to retain the backing of both groups. This is one reason (albeit not the only one) why the party leadership has tried to ride both horses since the election – sympathising with the concerns of voters on both sides.
However, the two-horse option could not last for ever. At some point, Corbyn would have to decide which one to ride – a new public vote, wanted by most remainers, or an enabler of Brexit, wanted by leavers. In pragmatic, electoral terms, the issue is which will win more voters – or, perhaps, lose least. For Mann’s prediction to be right, riding the pro-Brexit horse would have to be more popular than the pro-remain horse.
This brings us to the second problem with Mann’s view: the numbers. In the 2016 referendum, Labour voters divided 67-33% in favour of remain. According to a recent YouGov survey among more than 25,000 voters, they divide 74-26% for remain, if the 2016 referendum choice were to be rerun. If – as seems more likely – a public vote would pitch remain against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, the majority among Labour voters widens further, to 82-18% for remain.
The latest YouGov poll, published today, reinforces this point. Just 18% of Labour supporters think the UK was right to vote to leave the EU; 74% say we were wrong. Excluding the don’t knows (8%), the party divides: right 20%, wrong 80%.
One consequence of this is that in almost every Labour seat – and it’s possible that we no longer need the “almost” – most Labour supporters voted remain. In these seats, the bulk of leave voters would prefer a Conservative or Ukip MP. Pro-Brexit Labour MPs cannot assume that a majority of their own party supporters share their hostility to the EU.
All this helps to explain the numbers that should really frighten Labour’s leadership. At the start of the year, well before events that led to the Independent Group being formed, 79% of those who voted Labour in 2017 said they would stay with Labour in a fresh election. Now, a week after the Independent Group’s formation, that proportion is down to 72%. That is an exodus of around 800,000 voters in the past six weeks.
That is not all. When YouGov adds the option of the Independent Group, the proportion of Labour loyalists falls to just 57% – a further loss of around 1.6 million votes. As many as 28% of Labour’s 2017 supporters say they would switch to the Independent Group.
Mid-term polls are, of course, unreliable predictors at the calmest of times; and the times we are living through are far from calm. Nevertheless, the risks to Labour of alienating the pro-remain majority of its supporters are huge. In purely pragmatic terms, the party needs to keep them onside. It is not obvious that the best way to do this is to follow John Mann into the pro-Brexit division lobby in the Commons.
What, though, about the potential for Labour winning, or winning back, leave voters by taking Mann’s advice? Bluntly, these votes don’t exist – or, to be more precise, a more committed pro-Brexit stance would actually alienate more leave voters than it would attract.
In its big new year poll, YouGov explored the views of more than 2,000 people who voted leave in 2016 and Labour in 2017. Asked the standard voting intention question, 76% said they would vote Labour today. But when the same 2,000 were asked how they would vote if a Brexit deal were passed “with the support of most Conservative and most Labour MPs”, that figure actually fell further, to 71%.
What about the 5,700 Conservative leave voters in YouGov’s sample – does Labour offset its leave deserters by making inroads into these? Not at all. When asked the normal voting question, 2% say they vote Labour today – and the proportion that would back a pro-Brexit Labour party is exactly the same.
Again, great caution must be taken with hypothetical polls in such a fluid political context. But if I were Mann I would want some evidence that his Brexit policy would be more popular than a pro-remain stance. Not only does that evidence simply not exist; the data we have suggests precisely the opposite.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Stressed out by Brexit? I have a mindfulness exercise for you, one guaranteed to bring calm. Instead of imagining a deep, cool lake or a beach of bone-white sand, comfort yourself by imagining the day, several years from now, when a Chilcot-style inquiry probes the epic policy disaster that was Brexit. As you take deep breaths, and with your eyes closed, picture the squirming testimony of an aged David Cameron under sustained interrogation. Look on as Boris Johnson is at last called to account for the serial fictions of the 2016 campaign. Or perhaps contemplate the moment the panel delivers its damning, final report, concluding that this was a collective, systemic failure of the entire British political class.
Last night’s series of votes in the Commons will provide a rich batch of evidence. Almost everyone involved, from both main parties, showed themselves to be immersed in delusion, trading fantasies and absurdities, each one refusing to meet reality’s eye, let alone tackle it head on.
Most culpable, once again, is the prime minister. If our jaws weren’t already slackened to numbness by the last 30 months, they should have hit the floor at this latest performance. Theresa May had repeated endlessly, and for weeks, that her deal was the only deal on offer. Yet there she was, standing at the despatch box urging MPs to vote for an amendment that trashes that very same deal. The Brady amendment, which passed by 16 votes, demands what May had constantly said, up until yesterday morning, was impossible: the replacement of the Northern Irish backstop with “alternative arrangements”. It’s an extraordinary thing, this ability of May’s: she somehow manages to combine grinding intransigence with a willingness to perform the most brazen U-turns.
Cheering her on was a Conservative party celebrating the rare thrill of unity. For the first time in ages, they could all be on the same side, declaring with one voice that what they really wanted was May’s deal minus the backstop. They beamed as if this result meant something, when it is in fact triply meaningless.
First, it’s really no great achievement to get MPs to agree that they’d like the good bits of a deal but don’t want to swallow the bad bits: yes to the sugar, no to the pill. The Tories have united around a position that says they’d like the benefits of the withdrawal agreement, without paying all the costs.
It’s the familiar Brexit delusion, which Brussels took all of six minutes to crush, by declaring – for the millionth time – that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” In other words, what the Daily Mail calls “Theresa’s triumph” is to have got her party to unite behind a stance that is doomed to fail.
But even on its own terms, the vote is hollow. For what did MPs vote for but “alternative arrangements”? Not a specific, detailed counter to the backstop, spelling out concrete ways that a hard border might be avoided, but the nebulous promise of an “alternative”. When you don’t like x, then “not x” looks mighty alluring, not least because it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Brexiteers know the truth of that, because it was that same logic that saw them win the referendum itself. Their message back then boiled down to: do you want to stay in the European Union, with all its concrete, visible flaws, or would you like “alternative arrangements”? What we’ve all learned since is that the moment an “alternative” becomes real, it loses its all-things-to-all-people appeal. Which means that, even if Brussels were to relent and offer a revised proposal to the backstop, the new plan would enrage as many people as it would please – and would likely face rapid rejection by the Commons, by the Brexiteers swiftest of all.
But the obloquy should not belong to the Tories alone. MPs had the chance to prevent the national cataclysm of a no-deal crash-out last night – and they refused to take it. They rejected Yvette Cooper’s amendment, which would have made such an exit impossible, thanks in part to 14 Labour rebels who concluded that even a slight delay to Brexit – just a few months – poses more of a threat to their constituents than a crash-out that could see shortages of food and medicine, with more warnings along those lines coming this morning from the leader of a major hospitals group. The future public inquiry into this horror show will damn those 14 especially.
Instead, MPs voted for a toothless, non-binding amendment that confirms they don’t like no-deal very much, but are ready to do precisely nothing to prevent it. And while the Tories are still chasing unicorns, Labour is in its own fantasyland. Incredibly, shadow cabinet minister Richard Burgon was on TV last night still mouthing the same vacuities about “Labour’s alternative” Brexit and how it’s going to negotiate a “strong single-market relationship” – all the benefits, none of the costs – as if there isn’t only a matter of weeks to go till Britain leaves the EU. This just 24 hours after the party had embarrassed itself by planning to abstain on Tory legislation ending the free movement of people, only to reverse position 90 minutes later following a backlash on Twitter.
The Sir John Chilcot of the future will note all this, even as she or he exempts the handful of MPs who are using every parliamentary wile they can to stop the country from slamming into the iceberg. The names Grieve, Cooper, Boles and others may earn themselves an admiring footnote in the report that will eventually come. But as for almost everyone else: they will be slammed for their role in a saga that disgraces this country and its supposed leaders more with each passing day.
First published on Wed 16 Nov 2016 11.44 GMT
Michael Gove, the former cabinet minister and leading Brexit campaigner, has pressed experts on how the UK could achieve a “quickie divorce” with the EU regardless of the economic consequences, as he raised concerns that civil servants were over-complicating the process.
The former justice secretary, who led the Vote Leave campaign with Boris Johnson, questioned why the UK cannot just leave the EU without having settled its future relationship with the bloc after having sorted out “housekeeping” related to outstanding payments.
Speaking at the newly formed Commons Brexit committee, he said there was a tendency for civil servants to think any problem requires more civil servants and suggested “Occam’s razor” should be applied, meaning the simplest solution is the best one.
Gove queried the approach of Whitehall after a note by a consultant at Deloitte suggested the government lacked a plan for Brexit and may need to employ up to 30,000 more civil servants to deal with the process.
Gove said: “Can we simplify? What if I were to determine to simply leave the European Union, to trigger article 50 and to conclude the bare minimum in order to leave? What would article 50 actually require me to agree?
“For the purposes of this question, I am not worried about transitional arrangements, I am prepared to take the economic hit or to secure the economic benefits of not being inside the single market and being outside the customs union. I simply want the divorce on the quickest possible terms. What do I need in that quickie divorce?”
Speaking at the same committee, Sir Simon Fraser, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, said the note appeared to exaggerate the problems but agreed there was not yet a central plan for leaving the EU.
“My understanding is that it is indeed proving to be a very considerable challenge in Whitehall to do this [drawing up a Brexit plan], that the government has not yet reached the point where … it is still in information-gathering mode and is not yet at the point of integrating that into a central plan. And that, I assume, will have to happen before the triggering of article 50 next year.
“And I agree that this is a huge burden, a huge additional load, for the civil service. This is an extraordinary complex range of activity across a wide range of domestic and international policies and it will definitely impose a great burden on the civil service.”
He said Gove’s idea of a “quickie divorce” dealing only with institutional issues but not the future relationship with the EU was possible but not the ideal solution.
Fraser argued it would be best to conduct article 50 negotiations winding up the UK’s membership of the EU at the same time as discussing future relations, but it was not realistic that this could be completed within the two-year timeframe. That would mean some kind of transitional relationship with the EU until the final deal is done, he suggested.
Catherine Barnard, a professor of EU law at Cambridge University, told the committee there was no quick solution to the problem of what to do about EU nationals staying in the UK.
She said there could be hundreds of thousands of EU citizens whose records do not show how long they have been in the country.
Fraser said the government will have to “put on the after-burners” if it is to trigger article 50 in the spring. “Not enough progress has been made – more needs to happen and time is relatively short if we are to have a negotiating position in three months’ time. The after-burners need to be put on,” he said.
However, he said the negotiations would inevitably reduce trade with the EU in the short- and medium-term, making negotiations much more complicated than previous trade deals.
“The article 218 [which sets out the EU’s rules for conducting negotiations with third parties] negotiations will not be free trade negotiations of the normal sort. Most [deals] are about increasing trade. This is about reducing trade within the EU. So the range of negotiation will go a lot further,” he said.
Hannah White, from Whitehall thinktank the Institute for Government, said May’s decision not to disclose the stages by which it plans to arrive at a point when it will trigger article 50 had been “unhelpful” for stakeholders.
“The point we have been making is that in the course of negotiations the prime minister has insisted she would not want to give a blow-by-blow account. What we think there could be much more clarity about right now is the process of getting to the position where the government is happy to trigger to article 50.
“We think the degree of secrecy about the process of getting to article 50 is unhelpful.”
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Michel Barnier has said he is “strongly opposed” to the prime minister’s Chequers proposals on future trade, as he advised European car manufacturers that they will have to use fewer British-made parts after Brexit.
In his most damning condemnation yet of the UK government’s plans, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator said the British offer on customs was illegal and its suggestion of a “common rulebook” on goods would kill the European project.
Instead, in an intervention that will concern the 186,000 people directly employed by the car industry in the UK, Barnier warned European manufacturers that the streamlined system of imports and exports between the UK and the rest of Europe would come to an end.
The former French minister added that in order for EU carmakers to enjoy low tariffs on their exports around the world, they would need to shun British manufacturers.
“Outside of the internal market and the customs union, this involves customs formalities and controls that hinder ‘just in time’ production,” Barnier said. “In order for EU carmakers to benefit from the tariff benefits of the EU-Korea agreement (pdf), only a certain proportion of the services may be provided in a car in a third country. Businesses have to be careful not to use too many parts of Britain in their vehicles in the future.”
Brussels has, until now, raised questions, in public and in private, about the UK government’s vision on trade after Brexit, but fallen shy of its outright dismissal.
But speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper during a visit to Germany, Barnier did not hold back.
The European commission official said there were overlapping interests in the fields of security and foreign policy. In response to the 100 pages of the UK’s white paper, the EU offer on the future trade deal would likely only come to “15 to 20 pages” due to a lack of common ground on the economic relationship, he suggested.
“I am often accused in the United Kingdom of being dogmatic,” Barnier told the newspaper. “In fact, I only fulfil our fundamental interests.”
Under the Chequers deal there would be a “free trade area for goods”, under which the UK would in effect retain existing regulatory and customs arrangements by becoming a rule-taker.
In order to avoid border checks, Britain is also seeking a “facilitated customs arrangement”. The UK could control its own tariffs to allow it to pursue an independent trade policy, but its customs officials would collect and pass on the higher EU tariff to Brussels for goods passing through the UK en route to the continent.
May’s de facto deputy prime minister, David Lidington, has recently said the Chequers proposals would protect both the British and European economies from damage, and is the only alternative to a no-deal scenario.
However, Barnier has seemingly ruled out any such arrangement, insisting that the only option that could maintain something like the current economic relationship would be to follow the Norway model, under which there would be free movement of people and large payments to Brussels.
Barnier said of the UK’s customs proposals: “We cannot relinquish control of our external borders and the revenue there to a third country – that’s not legal.
“By the way, infringement proceedings against London are ongoing because, according to the commission, Chinese textile imports have not been properly cleared.
“Moreover, the British proposal is not practical. It is impossible to tell exactly where a product ends up, on the UK market or in the internal market. For example, sugar is transported by the tonne in 25-kilo sacks, so you cannot trace every sack to its destination. That would only be possible with insane and unjustifiable bureaucracy. Therefore, the British proposal would be an invitation to fraud if implemented.”
He said the “common rulebook” idea in the white paper did not reflect the modern world of trade.
Barnier added: “The interest of Europeans is to preserve the integrity of the common market. That is our special strength and the reason why we are respected throughout the world, even in the United States.
“We have a coherent market for goods, services, capital and people – our own ecosystem that has grown over decades. You cannot play with it by picking pieces. There is another reason why I strongly oppose the British proposal. There are services in every product. In your mobile phone, for example, it is 20 to 40% of the total value ...
“As a former minister of agriculture, I can tell you that agricultural products are created under laws governing hygiene, health and environmental issues in the production process. There are services in every litre of milk and every apple.
“We must therefore prevent unfair competition if the United Kingdom has weaker legal requirements than we do. Otherwise we would discriminate and weaken our own companies.”
British and EU negotiators are due to re-engage this week, following six hours of talks on Friday between Barnier and Dominic Raab, the UK Brexit secretary. However, EU sources said the substance of the Chequers deals was effectively “history” as far as Brussels was concerned.
Barnier said in his interview, published on Sunday: “By the way, the British have a choice. They could stay in the single market, like Norway, which is also not a member of the EU – but they would then have to take over all the associated rules and contributions to European solidarity. It is your choice.
“But if we let the British pick the raisins out of our rules, that would have serious consequences. Then all sorts of other third countries could insist that we offer them the same benefits. That would be the end of the single market and the European project.”
Responding to Barnier’s remarks, a UK government spokeswoman said: “We are confident that we have put forward a proposal that is precise, pragmatic and that will work for the UK and the EU.
“This proposal achieves a new balance of rights and obligations that fulfils our joint ambition to establish a deep and special partnership once the UK has left the EU while preserving the constitutional integrity of the UK. There is no other proposal that does that.
“Our negotiating teams have upped the intensity, and we continue to move at pace to reach - as Mr Barnier says - an ambitious partnership, which will work in the mutual interests of citizens and businesses in the UK and in the EU.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
How promising to learn that there is going to be another cabinet “crunch meeting” next Tuesday to discuss the customs issue. Cabinet “crunch meetings” on Brexit are like Super Sundays on Sky Sports. There seems to be one every week, and the only thing that changes is the definition of the word super. And now the word crunch.
A friend of mine at university once pressed snooze on his alarm clock for eight and a half hours. Can you imagine? Every 10 minutes – a sort of torturous, self-punishing deferment that ends up being the worst of both worlds. This remains Britain’s Brexit strategy.
You can’t do it for ever, obviously, as was pointed out this week even by auto-satirical political entity Nick Timothy – not so much a man as a piece of performance art about the limits of self-awareness. In his latest newspaper column, Nick breached his political restraining order to tell his old boss to ditch her customs partnership plan, and back the “max fac” option. Furthermore, he explained, No 10 needed to “get on with it”.
Can anyone – doesn’t have to be election-caller-and-cocker-upper Nick Timothy – think of a reason why the prime minister finds herself even further up this creek than she was a year ago, with the clock ticking ever louder? Whatever that reason may be, it is not mentioned in Nick’s article. Never is. Nick Timothy is the opposite of the Ancient Mariner – he’s compelled to wander the world not telling the story of what he’s done to everyone he meets.
Last year, a senior figure on the leave side reflected to me that “the trouble with Brexit is that it’s the British establishment that has to deliver it”. I mean … who did they think would deliver it? A technocratic brains trust featuring Pep Guardiola, the late Steve Jobs and Oprah? Alas, such fantasising is common among Brexit’s architects, who will eventually tell us that the problem wasn’t Brexit itself, but the way Brexit was done. A lot of people still reckon the same about communism. It’s a nice thought, I suppose, but it isn’t going to butter many car plants.
There was Vote Leave mastermind Dominic Cummings, who explained, just the six months after Article 50 had been triggered, that we needed to “reboot” the civil service and Downing Street. And now there’s Daniel Hannan, who popped up this week to agree the bed was being shat – I paraphrase slightly – and to concede that those suggesting Brexit is not working out quite how he thought it would “have got a point”. As Hannan put it: “I had assumed that, by now, we’d have reached a broad national consensus around a moderate form of withdrawal that recognised the narrowness of the result.” Had you? “Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups” – and if you weren’t a plastic populist, you’d have picked that up from Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.
Ingénu-in-chief, naturally, is our wantaway foreign secretary. Ever anxious to leave the scene of his own fart – presumably so he can sweep in with the Airwick next year – Boris Johnson spent the early part of the week indulging in more provocative insubordination, calling the prime minister’s customs plan “crazy”. Perhaps this is yet another crack at suicide-by-cop. It’s certainly a reminder that Boris will always be the Tories’ Raoul Moat – lionised as a #massivelegend only by a particular type. You know exactly which type; unfortunately we don’t use the word in the Guardian unless it’s in reported speech.
Yes, it’s all getting a bit Lordships of the Flies on Brexit island. Rather cruelly miscast as Ralph is Jacob Rees-Mogg, who this week said of the upper chamber: “It is not a loved institution, it is a tolerated institution.” Bernard Jenkin is another arch-opponent of Lords reform who now conveniently regards the other house as preposterous. How’s Bernard managing this contortion? The Lords are, he reckoned this week, “drunk with their own prejudices”. At some level, it feels apt that Brexit has already descended into a pub car-park fight about who’s more drunk, given that heavy drinking is the only discipline in which we would probably win the world cup every time.
Indeed, the customs endgame is starting to feel like a warm night in a European square, with England two disastrous matches into a tournament. Rees-Mogg is already in a plastic tommy hat and eyeing the cafeteria furniture – the analytic equivalent of the fan who thinks the reason the side aren’t doing well is because they aren’t playing with enough “passion”. They don’t want it enough, was basically his verdict this week on the UK’s negotiators.
Eventually, alas, these big men will settle on a scapegoat they can actually win against. They will find a way to blame the “other” that Brexit was supposed to guard us against. But for now, as the New Statesman’s George Eaton noted this week, the House of Lords joins the BBC, the judiciary, the civil service and the free press in the range of British institutions being blamed by Brexiteers for sabotage. This, more than anything, confirms that the UK has officially left the aegis of Eurony, the EU irony agency, and is operating in a non-regulatory deadzone.
What is the England (and it is an England) that this particular type of Brexiteer is trying to get us back to, if it isn’t the House of Lords, Test Match Special on the Beeb, the quiet Rolls-Roycery of the civil service, out-of-touch high court judges, and a press who’ve mostly printed any old lie about the EU for the best part of three decades? No offence, but that is their romanticised past, their Albion, their Britain as it might dare to be again. Don’t turn on it now, guys! We see you!
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
“It is your decision. Not politicians. Not parliament. Just you. If we vote to leave, we will leave. There’ll not be another renegotiation or another referendum.”
Those were the wise words of David Cameron before the referendum. He was not the only one. MPs across the political spectrum confirmed that this would be the final decision. But what about the final decision come Tuesday’s vote in the House of Commons?
I am a serial loyalist. I have never rebelled against the government. Since being elected in 2015, I have faithfully trooped through the government lobbies – and every fibre of my being instructs me, urges me along the path of loyalty. Yet my every instinct tells me that the prime minister’s deal is wrong.
The prime minister is absolutely right to say that people just want us to get on with it. But this proposal does not do that. It will lead to years more wrangling, both with the EU and among ourselves. As the attorney general set out in his legal advice, there is a risk that we could be subject to protracted and repeating rounds of negotiations. Hardly the level of certainty that our businesses want.
What is worse is that we can’t get out of it of our own volition. Loss of sovereignty was the main reason that I voted leave. To take back control. This proposal leads to the exact opposite: it cedes control to the EU.
Don’t just take it from a committed Brexiteer like me. Listen to some of my colleagues, who voted remain, such as Jo Johnson and Sam Gyimah. Both resigned from the government. Gyimah put it starkly, saying that we will have surrendered our voice, our vote and our veto, and we will be reliant upon the EU to strike a deal that lies in our national interest. He is right.
There is also the European court. It is technically right to say that we will be leaving the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). But that is little comfort when the CJEU will still retain such a significant and prominent role under the proposed treaty. When the backstop kicks in, the European court will have a say over rules such as those relating to the movement of goods, VAT and excise, and agriculture and environment law. Further, in any dispute where interpretation of EU law is in question, the agreement shall be referred to the CJEU to interpret. As we have seen in the recent case seeking to revoke article 50 and stop Brexit, the CJEU is an overtly political court. We need to be out of it. Full stop.
There are other fundamental objections to the deal, such as that it risks the integrity of the United Kingdom. And yet May has said that it is this deal, no deal – or no Brexit. No Brexit would be a betrayal impossible for us to countenance. It is not an option. The trust between people and politicians rightly would be destroyed. If Brexit is stopped, we will never be forgiven. Business fears a Jeremy Corbyn government – yes, far more than Brexit. But if we stop Brexit, a Corbyn government would be inevitable.
So what about no deal? The negativity and fear-mongering around this prospect knows no bounds. If we are driven down this path by an intransigent EU, let’s cut out the scare tactics and get behind what should be called a “clean global Brexit”. Let us be straightforward: if the EU doesn’t accept a sensible free trade agreement such as a Canada-style deal, there will be difficulties. But it is in our country’s national interest to look beyond the immediate short term.
We were warned of this at the time of the referendum. Thanks to the Treasury’s economic forecasts, we know that people voted to leave despite being told that they would lose their jobs; despite being told that they would be poorer; and despite being told that there would be an immediate and profound economic shock. Since when we have seen record levels of employment with more than 600,000 new jobs created.
In any case, there is an alternative to no deal and to no Brexit. A Canada-style trade deal was offered to Britain back in March 2017. We should now go back to the EU and propose “super Canada”, but for the whole of the United Kingdom. That should be our final offer – and we should be prepared to walk away and prepare for a clean global Brexit.
And we must stop the doom-mongering. After all, we have been preparing for no deal for over two years and more than £4bn has been set aside for these preparations. If the EU won’t accept super Canada for the whole UK, we will be ready. And in the fullness of time, when countries like Germany and France realise that they are losing out, they will encourage the EU back to the negotiating table, and sensible discussions will follow.
It will be a clean global Brexit, and one that leads to a bright future for us and a sensible trade deal with the EU. It was the people’s decision to leave. Not politicians. We will leave. And on Tuesday, it is not for parliament to block it.
Last modified on Fri 25 May 2018 17.07 BST
Concern about Russian influence in British politics has intensified as it emerged that more than 400 fake Twitter accounts believed to be run from St Petersburg published posts about Brexit.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh identified 419 accounts operating from the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) attempting to influence UK politics out of 2,752 accounts suspended by Twitter in the US.
One of the accounts run from the Kremlin-linked operation attempted to stir anti-Islamic sentiment during the Westminster Bridge terror attack in March in a bogus post claiming a Muslim woman ignored victims – a claim that was highlighted by mainstream media outlets including Mail Online and the Sun.
For days after, the tweeter was gleefully sharing press clippings. “Wow … I’m on the Daily Mail front page! Thank you British libs! You’re making me famous,” he said, referring to an article that appeared on Mail Online and which still bore the tweet at the time of writing.
A day later, he tweeted: “I’m on The Sun! Thank you again, British libs! Now I’m even more famous!”
Damian Collins, the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, which is investigating fake news, said the Russian agency appeared to be attempting to divide society and destabilise politics.
The Conservative MP wants Twitter to tell the committee how it believes Russia has been attempting to influence UK politics.
“What is at stake is whether Russia has constructed an architecture which means they have thousands of accounts with which they can bombard [us] with fake news and hyper-partisan content,” he said.
“We need to understand how widespread it is and what the impact is on the democratic process.”
Collins has demanded that Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, supply examples of posts from the Internet Research Agency about British politics – citing concern at possible “interference by foreign actors in the democratic process” of the UK.
“This is information they hold and I can’t see any reason they should be delaying supplying it,” he said.
The developments come after the US Congress intelligence committee investigated Russian troll campaigning in the US election of November 2016.
Twitter told the House committee that it had suspended 2,752 accounts which were tweeting about the US election because it believed they were controlled from Russia. The committee said it “may well be just the tip of the iceberg”.
Hundreds of paid bloggers work round the clock at the IRA to flood Russian internet forums, social networks and the comments sections of western publications – sowing disinformation, praising the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, and raging at the west.
The agency has been linked to a businessman who was once Putin’s favourite chef.
Prof Laura Cram, director of neuropolitics research at the University of Edinburgh, told the Guardian that at least 419 of those accounts tweeted about Brexit a total of 3,468 times – mostly after the referendum had taken place.
Archives of the now deleted Russian accounts show they included people purporting to be a US Navy veteran, a Tennessee Republican and a Texan patriot – all tweeting in favour of Brexit.
Labour deputy leader Tom Watson urged Theresa May to “bring political pressure to bear on tech giants to reveal the extent to which their platforms have been hijacked, and to take action against agents of the Russian state who use their platforms to disseminate misinformation and untruths”.
He said tech companies including Twitter and Facebook “haven’t done enough to identify and weed out the fake profiles and automated content that pose a direct threat to our democracy”.
On Monday, May gave a speech in which she said Russia’s actions were “threatening the international order on which we all depend”.
She accused Russia of meddling in elections and planting fake stories in the media to “weaponise information” and sow discord in the west.
Concerns about Russia’s cyber-operations have also been raised elsewhere in Europe.
Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, claimed on Monday that half of the Twitter accounts that amplified the issue of Catalan independence were registered in Russia and 30% in Venezuela.
Others have voiced concerns that Russian social media accounts also sought to influence this year’s French and German elections.
A spokesperson for Twitter said the company “recognises that the integrity of the election process itself is integral to the health of a democracy. As such, we will continue to support formal investigations by government authorities into election interference as required.”
The Russian tweets identified by Twitter as coming from the IRA included one by an account holder using the name @SouthLoneStar.
He reportedly said: “I hope UK after #BrexitVote will start to clean their land from muslim invasion!” and “UK voted to leave future European Caliphate! #BrexitVote.”
The same account posted a widely shared tweet at the time of the March terror attack on Westminster Bridge in London.
It posted a photograph of a woman in a headscarf passing the scene of the attack with the caption: “Muslim woman pays no mind to the terror attack, casually walks by a dying man while checking phone #PrayForLondon #Westminster #BanIslam.”
The woman said later: “Not only have I been devastated by witnessing the aftermath of a shocking and numbing terror attack, I’ve also had to deal with the shock of finding my picture plastered all over social media by those who could not look beyond my attire, who draw conclusions based on hate and xenophobia.”
Another suspended account appeared to be a Republican from Tennessee. @TEN_GOP quoted Nigel Farage telling Fox News about Brexit and Donald Trump: “What you’ve seen this year is just ordinary, decent people, the little people, who’ve said ‘We’ve had enough. We want change.’”
@WadeHarriot, purporting to be a former member of the US Navy, retweeted criticisms of “leftists” for “trying to subvert #Brexit” and predictions of “#Brexit #Frexit #Grexit”.
Cram said the content of the Brexit tweets overall was “quite chaotic and it seems to be aimed at wider disruption. There’s not an absolutely clear thrust. We pick up a lot on refugees and immigration.”
She stressed that more research is needed to establish the extent of the tweets’ influence, and urged caution about drawing conclusions from the relatively small number of troll accounts so far identified. About 78% of the tweets came after the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, she added.
Russia has been adamant it did not interfere in any way in the EU referendum. “We closely followed the voting but never interfered or sought to influence it,” Putin said the day after the poll.
However, there is no doubt that many in Moscow welcomed the outcome. An EU without Britain would be less united on sanctions against Russia, many Russian officials hoped, because it would lose one of its stronger foreign policy voices and would be too consumed with its own internal problems to prioritise Russia policy.
At the time, the former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said the vote to leave the EU was “a giant victory for Putin’s foreign policy objectives”.
The US Congressional investigation into Russian meddling through social media also gathered evidence from Facebook that between June 2015-August 2017 there were 470 accounts on the platform associated with the IRA and that 126 million Americans are likely to have seen content from an IRA page.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
In its ruling on Tuesday that the “prime minister’s advice to Her Majesty was unlawful, void and of no effect”, the supreme court has decided that parliament was never actually suspended two weeks ago. The clock is turned back to 9 September, the last day MPs sat. So parliament will return but, as prorogation did not take place, it is not being recalled. There will be no Queen’s speech, no new legislative agenda, no state opening. Business will resume. But, since this has never happened before, this is not business as usual.
A degree of improvisation and innovation – with the government working with the opposition parties and Commons Speaker John Bercow – will be required to map out the days and weeks ahead. The government is expected to table a motion to secure a short conference recess. If MPs reject this, then the Conservative party conference in Manchester would take place while parliament sits – an unusual and, from Boris Johnson’s point of view, logistically unhelpful clash.
On Wednesday, Johnson, who is flying back from New York, is expected to make a statement in the Commons; Jeremy Corbyn, having brought forward his speech to the Labour party conference, will face him at the dispatch box.
In normal times, losing a high-profile court case – and one that ruled that the prime minister’s advice to the Queen was unlawful – would lead to an immediate confidence vote in the government. But these are not normal times. Corbyn has asked Johnson to “consider his position”; if Johnson resists, Corbyn will face pressure to do the considering for the him with just such a vote. However, Labour and the other opposition parties will resist anything that risks an election before a Brexit extension is agreed.
The immediate Brexit timetable is not affected by the ruling, with the UK still scheduled to leave the EU on 31 October and Boris Johnson – after MPs passed the Benn Act earlier this month – legally compelled to ask the EU for an extension if parliament has not voted in favour of a Brexit deal by 19 October. However, parliament will now intensify its attempts to scrutinise – and perhaps legislate against – the government’s plans.
With parliament returning earlier than expected, but with no new session or Queen’s speech, MPs will attempt to seize the agenda once again. Opposition parties will also table urgent questions, and select committee hearings will take place – with the prime minister’s appearance before the liaison committee, originally scheduled for 11 September, set to be rearranged. And the Speaker has said he will welcome applications under standing order 24 – the mechanism MPs have been using to table emergency debates.
With business resuming where it left off, MPs will no doubt return to some of the other battles they were fighting. Expect demands for the government to publish further details on Operation Yellowhammer – the government’s “Reasonable Worst Case Planning Assumptions” for a no-deal Brexit – and attempts to push the prime minister into revealing his plans for the Northern Irish border after Brexit. While the publication of the Yellowhammer documents was forced through the use of a device known as a humble address, the government refused to comply with parliament’s demand to publish “all correspondence and other communications” between nine named government advisers, including Dominic Cummings, relating to proroguing parliament. MPs will now need to decide what steps to take.
At the same time, the supreme court verdict has resuscitated a collection of bills that would not have been carried over to the new session. These include several important Brexit-related pieces of legislation – such as the immigration, fisheries and agriculture bills – which could now resume their passage through parliament. However, the government’s lack of a majority means those bills are unlikely to succeed. There are other bills, including on domestic abuse, which had a fair degree of cross-party support and may now make it on to the statute book.
The court’s verdict does not prevent the prime minister from attempting to prorogue parliament again in order to end the session and get a Queen’s speech, but only for the more standard four or five days. However, MPs will be bullish now that the supreme court has sided with them. The next two weeks in parliament could well see a return to the frenetic and fraught atmosphere we saw before it was unlawfully prorogued.
First published on Sun 30 Jul 2017 20.56 BST
Senior Conservative MPs are urging members of Theresa May’s cabinet to stop publicly setting out their demands for a transitional deal on Brexit, saying the move could make negotiations with the European Union more difficult.
The warnings from senior leave campaigners and allies of the Brexit secretary, David Davis, come as ministers prepare to clash over issues of immigration and trade in a series of key meetings this autumn.
Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, Damian Green, David Gauke and Greg Clark are among those likely to push the prime minister to accept that while free movement will officially end, there should be no immediate move to reduce immigration.
But the divisions in the cabinet were laid bare as Liam Fox said in an interview that there was no cabinet-wide agreement on what a post-Brexit implementation period should look like, and warned that “control of our own borders” was a key driver of the leave vote.
One Whitehall source who is close to Davis said it would be helpful if other ministers let him get on with the job of negotiating with the EU, stressing that the final deal would determine what any implementation period would look like.
Iain Duncan Smith, former Conservative leader and key Brexit supporter, added: “Conservative backbenchers now wish cabinet members would practise what some are preaching and that they ‘transition’ from saying too much about Europe to saying nothing at all. This is a transition that should last up to two years.” The question of a transitional deal has been forced up the agenda since May lost her majority in June’s election, emboldening the proponents of soft-Brexit in her cabinet.
The ministers will hammer out what would be acceptable to voters this autumn when May chairs a number of sessions of her cabinet sub-committee on leaving the EU.
While the prime minister is on holiday, the chancellor has made a series of interventions, including claiming that the UK’s relationship could look “similar in many ways” for some time after formally leaving the bloc in 2019. He has been supported by Rudd, who ordered an analysis of EU migration, but also made clear that EU citizens would be free to continue coming to the UK during the transition period, as long as they registered.
The Guardian understands that a letter from the home secretary setting out the policy was not shared with cabinet colleagues. Fox and Boris Johnson were also not primed to expect a major government announcement on the issue last week when they were both out of the country, although they were aware of the policy.
Separately, the chancellor has denied that he wanted to turn the UK into a deregulated, Singapore-style economy. Hammond told France’s Le Monde: “I often hear it said that Britain is considering participating in unfair competition in regulation and tax.
“That is neither our plan nor our vision for the future. The amount of tax we raise as a percentage of our GDP puts us right in the middle of the pack.” He argued that after Brexit the country would keep a “social, economic and cultural model that is recognisably European”.
Sources have revealed that senior Treasury officials want to maintain a close association with the EU customs union during transition, but also have not ruled out retaining that relationship in the long term. That could prevent the UK signing new free trade agreements in the future – a move that would increase tensions between Hammond and Fox.
The trade secretary has been using the recess period – when Conservative MPs are not needed in parliament to win votes – to drum up trade business around the world. Speaking to the Sunday Times on his second visit to the US in a month, he said there was no cabinet-wide agreement on migration not being controlled after March 2019, when the UK will formally Brexit.
“If there have been discussions on that, I have not been party to them. I have not been involved in any discussion on that, nor have I signified my agreement to anything like that,” he said.
One senior No 10 figure admitted that the chancellor had used the period that May was away to “fly kites” on Brexit, and “see what he can get away with in coordination with others”. They said overall Hammond was likely to be concluding “So far, so good” because of a lack of pushback from other ministers.
However, when cabinet figures meet for discussions in September, differences may well emerge, and they are likely to come under pressure from MPs on both sides of the argument.
Anna Soubry, an advocate of soft Brexit, said: “Hammond speaks with authority and common sense. It’s clear that at last the economy and jobs are at the heart of a sensible and smooth Brexit.” She urged colleagues to put their ideology to one side and get behind the chancellor and prime minister. “These Brexiteers promised a land of milk and honey – the reality is gruel and chlorinated chicken,” she said.
A cabinet minister agreed that the chancellor was right, saying Hammond had set out a “sensible approach that enables us to deliver the referendum result while protecting the economy from a cliff edge”. They said that meant there would have to be some time before full migration controls were introduced.
But a member of the European Research Group – representing backbench Tories determined that Brexit takes place – said the key was for a “closed end process with a certain outcome: control of laws, borders and money”.
The government’s first hints at what a post-Brexit migration system will look like are likely to land in late autumn when the Home Office publishes a white paper. The immigration minister, Brandon Lewis, is said to be meeting a series of industry groups to help design a framework, and will be looking into how the government’s IT systems will support a registration system that will have to deal with 3 million EU citizens living in Britain.
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Research, said he had visited officials in Paris and Brussels and said that the EU was as determined as Britain that any transitional phase would only last two to three years.
But he warned that free movement may well need to continue in principle, even if it is technically ended. “If we want a transitional deal including the single market and customs union, which is what business wants, it will need to be off the shelf.
“That means it is something similar to the Norway option, with four conditions that will have to be accepted: free movement, paying into the budget, following EU rules including new ones, and accepting ECJ rulings.”
First published on Fri 8 Mar 2019 14.37 GMT
What happens this week?
Theresa May will bring her Brexit deal back to parliament for MPs to be given the chance to accept or reject it in the so-called meaningful vote two.
After the government’s historic defeat by 230 votes on 15 January, the prime minister promised to hold cross-party meetings “to identify what would be required to secure the backing of the house”.
She has since announced £1.6bn for a towns fund in the hope of winning over Labour MPs from leave-voting areas, and new promises on workers’ rights, including the opportunity to vote on new EU directives on the labour market.
Most of the government’s focus, however, has been on trying to persuade the EU27 to provide “legally binding guarantees” on the Irish backstop.
On Monday night the government said it had secured those changes. Theresa May’s deputy David Lidington added that the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, would be publishing advice ahead of Tuesday’s debate, but needed time to consider whether the new changes meant that he could change his legal advice that the backstop could last indefinitely.
Has there been movement among Brexiters since the last vote?
Not much. Some Brexiters, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, have signalled that a time limit on the backstop would be sufficient to win them over.
The European Research Group (ERG) has set up a legal “star chamber”, made up of a clutch of Brexit-backing lawyers and chaired by the veteran Tory Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash, to examine Cox’s advice following May’s talks in Brussels. The mood could still change.
Just over a week ago, however, the ERG was keenly sharing an article by the former farming minister George Eustice, calling on the government to “have the courage to take our freedom first and talk afterwards”.
On Monday night, Steve Baker, a leading figure in the ERG, said the government had put “a very good gloss on something that falls short”. But he later added: “Now we have the outline of what has been agreed, I look forward to the full text and the opinion of the team of lawyers we have set up to advise us … it’s good to see rising enthusiasm and reference in legal text to the Malthouse compromise.”
The DUP, which is seen as key to winning over many in the ERG, appears implacable. Its Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, said last week that only changes to the withdrawal agreement would do.
On Monday night Nigel Dodds, the DUP Westminster leader, would only say: “All of this will need to be taken together and analysed very carefully.”
What happens if May loses the vote?
It depends how badly. Defeat by a narrow margin, of fewer than say 50 votes, could allow her to have another go in a third meaningful vote.
Before she could do that, she has promised MPs two further votes this week, on whether they want no deal and whether to delay Brexit. She will face a dilemma over how, and whether, to whip Tory MPs on the no-deal Brexit vote.
Keeping that option on the table has been an integral part of the government’s negotiating strategy, but May would face a slew of resignations if she tried to whip MPs to vote for no deal with little more than a fortnight to go until exit day.
“What she whips is so emblematic of the whole situation,” says Anand Menon of the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe. “If she doesn’t whip because she’s terrified of both wings of her own party, that’s a government that’s lost control.”
Received wisdom in Westminster is that a loss by more than about 50 votes would be a catastrophe, because it suggests May’s deal is irretrievably unpopular.
In that case, she could come under intense pressure from former remainers, from cabinet downwards, to let parliament decide on the next steps – by which they mean seek a softer Brexit. Under Conservative party rules May cannot be challenged until December, but she could decide she has finally run out of road and step aside.
Has Labour’s strategy changed?
Yes and no. Campaigners for a second referendum hailed Jeremy Corbyn’s support for a “public vote” as a significant milestone, and the shadow cabinet agreed that it would be prepared to whip for a pro-referendum amendment if the right one were tabled.
Labour also remains committed to trying to achieve a softer Brexit. Corbyn’s meeting with the former Tory ministers Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin suggested it was still possible that some compromise might emerge that the frontbench could decide to back.
That could even be tabled as an amendment to this week’s vote on extending article 50, though May could decide to short-circuit that vote by announcing that she has no choice but to request an extension herself.
Might we still get a public vote of some sort?
It is possible, particularly if there is a long-ish extension to article 50, giving advocates of a referendum time to rally support in parliament.
As it stands, it appears unlikely there would be a majority for the idea, with around 10 Conservative MPs willing to support it, and up to 30 Labour MPs willing to defy the whip to vote against.
It is also very unclear which options would be put to the people.
Some shadow ministers and Labour spokespeople have made clear, however, that the party would hope to see a “credible alternative” on the ballot paper to give Labour leave voters an opportunity to choose Brexit.
“We’re consistently trying to push Labour’s deal … and we won’t stop doing that … We have to look at options such as putting her deal and a number of other options to the people,” the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, said.
If the UK decides to ask for an extension to article 50, what is the latest possible date it could do so?
EU leaders would need to confirm any extension, and the natural moment to do so would be at the next European council meeting on 20 and 21 March. They would be keen to receive an application before that.
With just days to go before Brexit day on 29 March, if no extension is signed off at that summit, because MPs have not yet agreed a deal, for example, there would be a very high risk of a no-deal Brexit.
How long an extension will the UK request?
That remains very unclear. Even if the deal is agreed by MPs next week, many ministers are convinced a short “technical” extension of a few weeks would be necessary in order to get the necessary legislation through to exit smoothly.
If the deal is not agreed, Brexiters will be pushing for as short an extension as possible, ending before the new European parliament starts sitting in July, and May herself has repeatedly stressed the risks of a longer delay. Remainers would prefer a longer period to allow time for alternative options, including a referendum, to come into play.
The commission’s secretary general, Martin Selmayr, told ambassadors on Monday that the safest delay to Brexit would only be up to 23 May, ensuring that elections to the European parliament would not create complications. He added, however, that the EU may have to offer the UK a long extension of article 50 should May’s government fall.
So should we start stockpiling?
Not quite yet. It is highly likely that if May’s deal is voted down again, MPs will agree a delay to Brexit this week. The EU27 are likely to follow suit, provided they are able to see some way ahead by which a majority in parliament could be found.
Any extension of article 50, particularly a short one, would only set up another cliff-edge a few weeks or months ahead. Some ministers believe that could finally be the thing that brings Brexiters into line behind May’s deal. If not, a so-called “no-deal by accident” remains a serious risk.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.05 GMT
It can’t be true? The home secretary is seriously preparing for “civil disorder leading to widespread unrest” with a “real possibility” that soldiers will be deployed on the streets to cope with “shortages of food, medicines and other goods” as crime rises. It could last for three months, reports the National Police Coordination Centre, and Sajid Javid tells the BBC’s Andrew Marr he agrees: “We need to prepare for all contingencies and it’s absolutely correct.”
That’s how low the delinquents in the Conservative party have brought us as they dash headlong for a no-deal Brexit. Last week the Whitehall civil contingencies unit held a two-day emergency meeting, not preparing for war or plague but for the calamity we are deliberately inflicting on ourselves, with no upside. No deal “would not be the end of the world”, says the prime minister: that’s a rather low bar.
There is a certain grim merriment to be had from the Brexiteers’ inability to set out any plan for leaving the EU. All these decades of Europhobia and still no publishable Brexit blueprint. With only 200 days left they had to shelve Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 140-page European Reform Group plan at the last minute. What they came up with is such a raving ragbag of rightwingery that they dare not launch it into the light of day. But this is who they are, with their Faragist fantasies bubbling inside Tory politics all these years. The “catastrophic split” predicted by the former minister Steve Baker runs deeper than splitting from the EU.
The recipe is enormous tax cuts, “to give everyone a Brexit bonus”, both households and businesses. At the same time they promise a mammoth uplift on delusional defence spending – a standing “expeditionary force” to defend the Falklands, and untold billions for Reagan-inspired star wars missile defences as yet uninvented. How is this to be paid for? You can see why they dared not let this stuff out to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Boris Johnson picked up the tax cuts plus wild-spending plan in his Daily Telegraph column, urging cuts to income tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty, while promising that £20bn for the NHS and much else too. In his sunlit uplands, “a post-Brexit Britain will be a happy and dynamic economy that fosters enterprise, that rewards strivers and the innovators and where people can hope to take home more of their pay to their families”. He extols Trumponomics as the great recipe for success “to liberate and energise people”, despite the lack of evidence that Trump has done any such thing. All to be paid for with that particular rightwing magic money tree – the Laffer curve – which, Johnson says, proves “that if you cut the right taxes, you can actually increase receipts for government”. This long-discredited theory, so convenient for the rich, has been exploded by the International Monetary Fund – no lefties – which finds that virtually all countries could raise top rates far higher and bring in significant extra sums. The UK could raise top tax to an optimal 60% or more before losing more than it gains.
Check the economic bible, The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, summarising all research, and it finds a Laffer effect doesn’t kick in below a 75% top rate. But don’t expect Laffer to disappear from the lexicon of bad reasons why rightwing governments can cut taxes while pretending to preserve public spending.
How else will they pay for uncosted tax cuts? Some say with that £40bn Brexit bonus when we walk away with no deal, taking our money with us. But if the UK refuses to pay the sum we agree we owe under past contracts, then no deal will mean just that. Renege on our debts and expect no commonsense EU side-deals on essentials, but a crash landing – no aviation, blocked ports, mayhem beyond imagining. Some of these Brexiteers are true revolutionaries who relish the sound of breaking glass.
Johnson and Rees-Mogg seek a deep diminishing of the state, with a low-tax retreat from public to private provision of services. That has been at the heart of true Brexitry from the start, the loathing of Brussels only an extension of deep-rooted anti-statism. When the Brexiteers call for no deal, on World Trade Organization rules, they want a wide-open free trading free-for-all, as their Hayekian high priest of the free market, Prof Patrick Minford, has spelled out to me. Their vision of Britain’s future has no barriers, no regulations, cheap goods, and food from everywhere regardless of chemicals or hormones, regardless of the destruction of our farming and manufacturing. Leave what he calls “metal-bashing” jobs to cheaper countries, though that imposes a dose of the 1980s disruptive “reallocation of labour” from the days he was a Thatcher adviser.
Thatcher, Reagan and Trump – these are the models for the Boris-Moggites. They will not be affrighted by the next rollout of no-deal technical notices from the special cabinet meeting this Thursday. The Institute for Government tells me the first ones warning of huge finance disruption were the least frightening: they are delaying the most terrifying for as long as possible.
More moderate Brexiteers call for a “Canada” deal – Canada sounds so reassuring. But this deliberately ignores the Irish border crisis, the place Rees-Mogg said he didn’t need to visit, the issue Johnson waves away as the “tail” wagging the Brexit dog, the one whose historic significance escapes the Northern Ireland secretary, Karen Bradley, altogether. That contempt for the Irish runs deep in the Tory right’s DNA. Brexit is a belief, a culture, a tic, an instinct, racist in many of its manifestations. They dared not print a manifesto that exposed them in all their political nakedness. Theresa May should call their bluff.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
The cabinet manual’s rule that the Queen “should not be drawn into party politics” has been broken by Boris Johnson. It was his decision, as prime minister, to advise the monarch to issue an order in council to prorogue parliament for five weeks. That order was declared “unlawful, void and of no effect” by all 11 justices of the highest court in the land in the most significant constitutional judgment in modern times. The government’s decision to disregard convention was taken to evade scrutiny by MPs at a moment of constitutional and political crisis. The Commons will now reconvene. A prime minister found to have acted unlawfully in this manner should not stay in office.
A prime minister with honour would tender their resignation. But Mr Johnson has no honour and no shame. The precedent such an act of defiance sets ought to be unthinkable. The sooner that Britain is rid of him the better. In office Mr Johnson has exposed voters to a level of mendacity, opportunism and belligerence that the country has rarely encountered in an occupant of Downing Street. With no legal training, the prime minister peremptorily dismissed the court for having had the temerity to upbraid him. Despite the ruling having nothing to do with Brexit, Mr Johnson blamed the decision, ridiculously, on remainers. Lady Hale, president of the supreme court, posited the court’s argument upon the foundational principle of a constitutional monarchy, first articulated in 1611 by the jurist Sir Edward Coke, that government “hath no prerogative but that which the law of the land allows”. This was treated with contempt by Mr Johnson, much as Sir Edward was dealt with by James I – he considered this troublesome lawyer’s attempts to restrict the personal use of royal prerogative power as treason.
It is barely credible that politicians of a governing party in the 21st century could think it is constitutionally right and proper to suspend parliament in the manner of a Stuart king because MPs are frustrating a political misadventure. Prorogation in the hands of the Brexiters is a constitutional outrage first cooked up by the cartoonish leader of the Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg in January this year. Brexit is becoming a religion in the Tory party, the fundamental tenet of which is that no deal will do no harm, so no safety net is required. For its adherents, the prize of remaking Britain in a reactionary mould was worth dispensing with legislative scrutiny altogether.
It is in many ways desirable for a state of tension to exist between judges and the executive. If there is a state of perfect harmony between them, then citizens ought to worry. But Brexiters chafe against the subordination to the law of the open-ended discretionary power vested in the executive. The supreme court’s decision is the culmination of a long and socially useful process of judicial review. Prerogative powers are much diminished by Tuesday’s judgment. But they still exist, including the power to make treaties, which will become a hot-button issue if Mr Johnson attempts to sign a post-Brexit trade pact with Donald Trump. Prerogative powers ought eventually to come under parliament’s supervision.
The Tory party has been captured by extremists determined to chase a hard Brexit at the expense of long-held principles. Ministers toy with underhand political devices such as recommending the Queen does not enact legislation, or questioning why ministers need to abide by the law. The Tories’ baleful mutation has seen them become law-breakers not law-makers. Dominic Raab, Geoffrey Cox and Mr Rees-Mogg have committed grave acts of constitutional recklessness. Mr Johnson has no majority in parliament. He has lost control of the Commons, is unable to command its confidence and is forced to accept laws drafted by his opponents. He would like the opposition to hand back the initative by bringing a vote of confidence so he can decide the date of the election. They ought to resist the temptation. If the factions opposed to no deal cannot agree, Mr Johnson will win an election and Britain will lose. But if they needed an excuse to set aside their differences to work together to save the country from a no-deal disaster, the judges have just given them one. They should take it.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.12 GMT
Westminster’s world of urgent questions, humble addresses, contempt of parliament and points of order leaves most people cold. Such procedural devices can appear arcane and irrelevant. When MPs give the impression of being fired up over them, as they did on Tuesday, it is tempting to conclude that politics is wilfully deepening the gulf that is felt to separate it from the nation.
That would be absolutely the wrong response to the Commons argument about the so-called Brexit impact reports. Once you get past the recondite terminology, this was a battle about real power. It was a contest about whether ministers or parliament have their hands on the wheel over Brexit policy. It was also a stand-off about whether the public has a right to know what Brexit involves. Underlying these already large issues was an even larger one. How serious is the damage that Brexit may inflict on livelihoods, the ties that bind us together and Britain’s standing?
The importance of that last question explains why the issues that absorbed MPs on Tuesday are important. The immediate dispute was about MPs’ access to 58 sectoral reports that have been carried out across Whitehall into the impact of Brexit. When the existence of these reports became known in June, MPs tried to get them published, but were rebuffed. On 1 November, MPs voted without opposition, with Conservatives abstaining, to instruct ministers to provide the reports to the Brexit select committee. This week, Mr Davis provided some but not all of the information in the reports. Tuesday’s clashes were about getting Mr Davis to do what he had been told to do.
This is not a trivial matter. On the contrary. Ultimately it poses the question of whether parliament is a debating society, where motions are mere expressions of opinion like newspaper leaders, or a legislature, to which ministers are accountable and which they must obey. It has always been axiomatic to the British system that parliament is the latter, not the former. That’s why Gina Miller rightly went to court to force parliament to own the article 50 decision. It’s why MPs and peers are demanding a proper vote on the terms. And now it’s why there is a battle over the impact reports. It is particularly embarrassing for the government that Mr Davis, who railed against executive power from the backbenches, now defends that power from the frontbench.
The row highlights two dangerous claims. One is Mr Davis’s refusal to carry out the 1 November motion to the letter. This may open him to the contempt of parliament charge that the Speaker appears open to debating. As such it is a test case for the rights of parliament’s select committees as well as MPs a whole. If the government wants to restrict the amount of information it is required to publish, it should have tried to amend the 1 November motion. Given the importance that Brexiters claim to attach to parliamentary sovereignty, this is an open and shut case of credibility and even legality.
The second claim is equally important. Brexit is the biggest decision that Britain has had to take since 1939. It is ultimately parliament’s decision. To take it, parliament needs to know the terms of any deal, and the impact that will follow. Hiding those facts from parliament and the public undermines the responsibility that rests on MPs. There are very few facts in this argument that need to remain hidden. And there are many that need to be exposed, from the resilience of banks to the impact on the Irish border.
British voters made a decision in June 2016. But they did not lay down the terms on which Brexit would take place. This government has spent 16 months committed to foolish, disruptive and dangerous versions of Brexit of its own selection, on which neither the voters nor parliament have made a decision. The recklessness of the May government’s approach, refusing to consider forms of leaving that would better protect jobs and the economy, is impossible to ignore. Refusing to tell the truth to MPs is part and parcel of an approach that has failed and should end.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
There is not much logic in supporting a plan on the condition that the one person who thinks it a good plan resigns – except in the Conservative party. In a bid to win hardline Eurosceptic support for her Brexit deal, Theresa May has signalled that she will stand down before the next phase of negotiations with the EU begins.
The prime minister’s calculation is that the most zealous Brexiters will only support her in a third meaningful vote if they think there will be a leadership race soon afterwards. That way, Mrs May might get a legacy of sorts and the hardliners would have a chance to install one of their own in Downing Street. But nothing about this bargain would serve the wider interests of the country. The deal itself is unchanged. The prospect of a different Tory leader would not fix its deficiencies and its opponents would not really have changed their minds. Their support would be dishonest, given only with the intention of reneging on commitments made by Mrs May in the Commons and in Brussels. And since the DUP is still withholding support, a third meaningful vote looks futile in any event.
It is grim to see vital questions about the UK’s future yet again submerged in the fetid water of internal Tory politics. No further proof of that is needed than Boris Johnson indicating sudden readiness to support the deal on learning that a vacancy might open in No 10 if he does.
The Brexit radicals are not interested in creating a legacy for Mrs May but in bundling the UK out of the EU, then burning all bridges. From a European perspective this is appalling. An agreement that is meant to serve as the foundation for a long-term UK-EU relationship is being offered up as a stepping stone for anti-Brussels zealots to complete their capture of Britain’s ruling party. Opposition MPs who have considered voting for the deal will surely reconsider. To lend support for something that Tory hardliners back purely so they can later sabotage it would be unconscionable for a Labour MP.
The manner of Mrs May’s latest gambit is in keeping with her habit of putting the demands of her party ahead of the national interest. An announcement relating to the tenure of a serving prime minister should not have been made behind closed doors, to the backbench 1922 Committee. But she came to office in similar fashion, as the only candidate still standing in a leadership contest that had descended into self-destructive farce. When she tried for an electoral mandate, she failed. Not once has she moderated her Brexit approach in recognition of that humiliation. She has taken dictation from an extreme faction in her party and thereby widened divisions in the country.
A contrast with the way things might have been done was evident in Wednesday’s parliamentary debate ahead of indicate votes on potential Brexit models. A number of MPs noted that the civil, thoughtful discussion showed the constructive spirit in which the whole enterprise should have been undertaken from the start. The votes did not yield a majority for any single course, but softer Brexit models and a referendum on any final deal trumped more severe rupture from the EU.
And the method itself demonstrated a way to drain poison from the process. Yet, in nearby corridors, the Tory party was cooking up more noxious solutions. Many Conservatives would clearly rather terminate EU membership with a deal they know is bad purely because they fear the consequences of parliament weighing Brexit honestly, and on its intrinsic merits.
The Eurosceptic ultras like to invoke democracy when dictating terms to Mrs May. They are less keen on democracy when it involves parliament expressing views they do not share. They bullied the prime minister into doing most of their bidding and when she failed to deliver the full package of their unreasonable demands they set her resignation as the price of support. Even when she offers it, many are not satisfied. While serious MPs were engaged in a discussion of realistic Brexit options in the Commons chamber, the cockpit of British democracy, Tory backbenchers and their failed leader were trying to stitch up the country’s future and democracy was nowhere in the room.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Theresa May won a rare triumph on Tuesday night in the Commons. She came back from the greatest parliamentary loss by a government to secure, miraculously, a majority to refresh her wilted withdrawal agreement. Mrs May has had to vote against her own defeated deal to do so. She has had to offer MPs another chance to judge her government in a fortnight’s time. She has had to offer assurances that workers’ rights would be respected and that going forward she would take MPs of all opinions into her confidence. These are undoubtedly moves in the right direction.
However, it is difficult to see how the prime minister will deliver on her parliamentary success. Much more likely, her victory will turn out to be a pyrrhic one. Mrs May put party before country to be on the winning side of the parliamentary vote. She did so by hitching a lift on a Brexiter flight of fantasy, telling MPs she can achieve a “significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement” which would provide “alternative arrangements” to the Irish backstop. The danger is that Mrs May has raised expectations that cannot be met.
The backstop is an insurance mechanism in the exit treaty – designed to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland – which angered Brexiters who say it potentially traps the UK in a customs union with the EU. Earlier this month Mrs May told MPs: “The simple truth is that the EU was not prepared to agree to [changes in the withdrawal agreement] and rejecting the backstop … means no deal.” What was impossible before is now apparently just difficult. The prime minister effectively told MPs she could renegotiate the backstop element of her Brexit deal and replace it with a free-trade agreement with as-yet-unknown technology to avoid customs checks on the Irish border. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was quick to say the withdrawal agreement would not be reopened, a put down that will be hard to live down.
This may be part of the theatre of this negotiation. Mrs May wanted to remain prime minster and she has revised her deal lightly to get it passed, even if that meant giving up on the facts. Her logical contortions highlight her desire to prevent at all costs a split within her party and a Corbyn-led government. The ultimate source of political authority is parliament. Although MPs resiled from taking control of the Brexit process on Tuesday, parliamentarians did defeat the government to express a strong desire not to leave the EU without a deal. This gave cover to Jeremy Corbyn to meet with Mrs May to discuss Labour’s concerns. While little may come of such a meeting, it is a small step forward for some kind of parliamentary consensus. The problem has always been that it is clear what a Commons majority is against, but not what it is for.
Mrs May will have her work cut out to wrangle a new deal in Brussels. How she does so when barely a month of parliamentary time is left before 29 March is yet to be explained. Another PM, a French one in the form of Pierre Mendès France, wisely said: “To govern is to choose, however difficult the choices.” Mrs May has not made a choice. Instead she opted to seemingly entertain the delusions of hard Brexiters. She is pursuing a fiction that ignores trade-offs. She has used her defeat as an opportunity to deepen the colour of her red lines, endorsing a deal the EU27 is unlikely to accept. This is not governing.
Mrs May’s achievement represents a defeat for sensible thinking. The victory she snatched from the jaws of defeat is a dismal one: reducing Britain’s role in the world and weakening links to our largest trading partner. It is also appears undeliverable. Mrs May has taken this route after a more conventional approach for seeking consensus within her party failed. Instead the concern will be that she is forced into adopting the hard Brexit playbook, characterised by a relentlessness and lack of concern for anything but claiming victory. In backing the Brady amendment Mrs May has made a commitment she cannot easily keep. If it unravels, she will be tempted to blame the other party with a fantastical line of reasoning, leaving Britain listing alone in unfriendly waters. MPs must ensure that does not happen.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
The eccentric and extreme nature of Brexit has led to some bizarre outcomes. Perhaps the strangest is that the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union has been downgraded from a national emergency to a party one. Instead of discussing ways out of the political, constitutional and economic crises that Brexit represents, those in the race to lead the Conservative party are finding ways of getting deeper into them. This can, in part, be explained by the mechanics of the debate. The main contenders are attempting to out-silly the frontrunner, Boris Johnson, who is peddling the fiction that he can get better Brexit terms by refusing to cough up the £39bn Britain has already agreed to pay. As Lord Kerr, former UK ambassador to Brussels, put it: “The unicorns are back, frolicking in the Tory forest.”
Because the electorate is the Tory party membership, it might make sense at this time to give full attention to the party over the competing claims of government and the nation. The trouble is that rather than doing so in a sensible manner, the contest to succeed Theresa May has seen candidates taking up surreal positions. This will have deleterious consequences for the nation. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who at one point had been sane enough to warn hard Brexiters that leaving the EU without a deal was “not a policy choice available to the next prime minister”, dropped out and backed Mr Johnson, who thinks it is.
There is no taxi ride to the door of No 10, where once the electoral fare has been paid there are no further obligations. All the potential candidates for the top job in the country must understand that their words will catch up with them. Their utterances will be used not just by their opponents, but also by allies required to prop up a minority government led by an unelected prime minister in charge of a party that remains at war with itself. It is natural for a PM to seek personal gratification in politics. But a leader must also have the patience to listen to the sentiments of people whom it may be imprudent to neglect but a bore to consult. It’s long been clear that Mr Johnson lacks such a skill set, preferring instead to dole out partisan cheer.
Grassroots Conservatives can hardly be said to be representative of the country as a whole, either demographically or ideologically. Mr Johnson’s supporters seem to be socially conservative no-dealers who want less talk of climate change. The pathogen of Euroscepticism in the Conservative party has taken to living in the party’s gut, and has to a large extent stopped its host absorbing food. This has meant the Tories have been unable to ingest all that Brexit involves. What is clear is that the withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated. It might be possible to lightly amend the agreement in some cosmetic way, but such an offer would fall short of the extravagant promises made on the campaign trail.
Mr Johnson is not shaping a trend, he is following one. It is a concern that a majority of Britons think the country “needs a strong leader willing to break the rules”. Tellingly, Mr Johnson last year pondered in a event with Tory activists how Donald Trump would get Brexit done. It was not encouraging. “He’d go in bloody hard,” Mr Johnson said. “There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere.” The frontrunner has set the pace for the pack. Like lemmings at the cliff’s edge, Tory candidates are now steeped in denial of the risks they face. This will end very badly for the UK, and the Conservative party will have no one to blame but itself.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson have been dubbed the Thelma and Louise of Brexit. Like the characters from the 1991 Hollywood film, the two candidates say they are prepared to end the Brexit adventure by driving us over a cliff. In the movie it was two women on the run who lost their lives. With the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union, a country is at stake. It beggars belief that both men are prepared to plunge the economy into the abyss with apparent disregard for people’s jobs; or that they would stress-test to breaking point the union between the country’s biggest nations; or put the hard-won peace and security of Northern Ireland at risk.
The problem is that the Conservative party membership does not reflect the UK, yet it will elect a prime minister to lead the country. Tory members predominantly are elderly, wealthy and concentrated in the southern half of England. They are also more rightwing than the population as a whole and seriously deluded: they are unconvinced, despite their own government’s best recent efforts, that a no-deal Brexit would cause serious disruption. In a survey earlier this year, three-quarters of them said such warnings were “exaggerated or invented”. Little wonder that Nick Boles, a former Conservative MP who became an independent after failing to convince fellow Tories to compromise over Brexit, thinks only exposure to the disaster of a no-deal exit from the EU would shake former colleagues out of their stupor.
Instead of challenging their electorate, the two prime ministerial candidates have pandered to their worst instincts. The result has been an arms race in no-deal rhetoric that has revealed the outlines of a state-shrinking, low-tax, deregulatory Brexit project that is inimical to the interests of the country and seeks to strip protections hard fought for in the fields of employment, environment and consumer rights. Both men appear to be selling the idea of a managed no-deal. This introduces big problems that – despite claims to the contrary – WTO membership can’t address, and EU crisis negotiations are unlikely to. It also suffers from the very same flaw as Theresa May’s deal – of being dependent on the EU’s goodwill, which would have been exhausted by the determined foolishness of whoever is prime minister.
It looks almost certain that Mr Johnson will win the race to Downing Street. Mr Boles worries that there is no easy route for MPs, even in a parliament that the Tories do not control, to block Mr Johnson taking the UK out of the EU without a deal. He thinks Tory MPs would not vote to bring down their own government to prevent a no-deal Brexit. The former Conservative minister believes Mr Johnson would probably enact a no-deal Brexit and then call an election, a strategy which has the attraction of outflanking Nigel Farage.
The process of choosing the next PM has given greater weight to party interests than those of government or country. With Brexit this is not a good thing. Trouble is being stored up for the future by mainlining nationalism into post-Brexit politics as well as bringing up immigration constantly. The choice of populism as a narrative frame – with an out-of-touch elite intent on depriving a sovereign people of a decision they voted for – is as dangerous as it is trite. Britain’s political crisis has already reached new lows; it ought not to plumb even greater depths.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
To observe the Conservative party at Westminster on Monday was to watch a party that seems closer than ever to falling apart over Brexit. Paradoxically, however, nothing in the politics of Britain’s planned departure from the European Union had actually changed since last week. Theresa May still leads a minority government and a divided party, as she did before the weekend. Talks with the EU remain stalled over the Northern Ireland backstop arrangement, just as last week. Meanwhile Labour remains just as neuralgic about giving leadership to anti-Brexit concerns in the country as before. Many of the essentials remain unchanged, yet something has changed all the same.
That something seems to be the confidence of rightwing Brexiter Conservative MPs that they will get the destructive and comprehensive break with the EU that they crave and are working for. The evidence for this altered mood came in multiple guises. The most chilling was the unusually vicious language which rightwing and Europhobic Tory MPs used over the weekend, under cover of anonymity, to attack Mrs May – that she would be “dead soon”, that the knife would be “stuck in her front and twisted”, that she was “in the killing zone” and that she should “bring her own noose”. These are the words of Tory MPs – male Tory MPs, it can safely be assumed – who have lost sight of propriety and proportion as they rage, not against her but against their own political powerlessness.
There were other signs too. In defiance of the reality of their own lack of numbers and the absence of a unifying Tory leadership candidate other than Mrs May herself, there was renewed talk of a vote of no confidence by Tory MPs against her. A group of Brexiters led by the serially disloyal Iain Duncan Smith chose this otherwise inexplicable moment to travel to Brussels to pretend that they speak for Britain when they do not. Back in the Commons, the pro-Brexit schemer Steve Baker, having put down an amendment to the Northern Ireland bill which aimed to kill the backstop, later had to withdraw it for lack of support. Meanwhile the anti-European MP John Redwood and the pro-European Dominic Grieve, two men who barely seem to belong to the same party any longer, each attacked the government’s approach to Brexit from their diametrically opposed standpoints.
The Tory right and left are both running out of trust in the government’s handling of Brexit. But it is the Tory right where nerves are stretched furthest. There are two contextual reasons for this. The first is Saturday’s enormous march in support of a second vote on the Brexit terms. The size and good sense of that march sent a message that both main parties needed to hear, but which is a particularly lethal threat to rightwing Conservative claims to speak for the public will. The second is the verdict of the most recent YouGov opinion poll. Although the Tories lead Labour in that poll and Mrs May’s ratings are better than Jeremy Corbyn’s, there is little comfort on Brexit, since only 1% of voters think the negotiations are going “very well”, with only 17% saying they are going “fairly well”. Some 71% of the public judge that the talks are going badly. When a government has staked so much of its authority on its ability to deliver Brexit, as Mrs May’s has, that 1% is a doom-laden verdict on the public’s lack of confidence.
Mrs May came to the Commons herself late on Monday to try to restore some calm. She was thorough and dogged in her usual way. But the Tory benches were subdued and sullen. Her MPs sat with stony faces. Her backbenchers asked awkward questions that revealed only anxieties and resentments. Mrs May delivered her well-trailed lines that the finishing line is in sight and that 95% of the Brexit deal is sorted. But she had few supporters. The divisions in the Tory party remained glaring. The fundamentals – that the EU will not agree to her selective Chequers approach and that she lacks the numbers in her party to deliver that kind of deal – remain as true now as before. If she is to deliver a Brexit, Mrs May will have to cave in to the EU and to compromise with the rest of the Commons. The message of this week is that the Tories cannot deliver.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
One of the gravest dangers to any society is “outrage fatigue”. The symptom of this condition is when so many people have been so angry for so long that terrible abuses of power now seem almost normal. Over a decade since the financial crash, after nine years of crippling public spending and tax cuts, and three years on from the bitterly fought EU referendum, poor leadership leaves our country in a state of polarised peril. This is frightening for people all over the United Kingdom, but it poses the biggest threat to the most vulnerable – and now to democracy itself.
The idea of shutting down parliament (no need to dress it up with the fancy language of prorogation) so that a hard-right, minority government can facilitate a “crash-out” Brexit on 31 October, was first suggested during the Conservative leadership campaign by Dominic Raab in June. Boris Johnson has refused to rule it out ever since. So last weekend’s reports of leaked emails between No 10 and the attorney general were hardly a bolt from the blue.
Yet, in the words of that fictional antithesis to Donald Trump, President Bartlet of The West Wing: “Is it possible to be astonished and, at the same time, not surprised?” When Jeremy Corbyn commissioned my formal advice on the subject, I felt able to produce it with complete confidence (for reasons I am about to explain). However, it was still a sobering task for someone who has always believed that in Britain at least, the overwhelming majority of MPs, however divided on almost everything else, share a respect for our representative democracy and the House of Commons in which they have the privilege to serve.
Since Johnson’s election (by 66% of the voters among a Tory selectorate of less than 160,000 members), the new prime minister and his advisers have made their ominous vision clear. Not for them, having to command the support of a Commons majority for their plan to deliver the nation and its world-envied health service into the hands of a grateful US president. The 2017 general election (that provides the mandate for most Labour MPs), means nothing to them. Instead, they see their authority to govern as derived from the result of the 2016 referendum alone. So their strategy is to pit parliament against “the people” with the great golden leader and his friends on the side of the latter. Others can consider which far-right play book they may be copying from. I will simply say that, whatever the nasty anti-politics, the analysis won’t wash under United Kingdom constitutional law.
The leading authority on the relationship between government and parliament (and prerogative and legislative power) comes from our Supreme Court as recently as 2017. The Miller case concerned whether prerogative power alone could be used to trigger article 50. Theresa May’s government argued that it was, and lost 8-3. However, importantly, all 11 justices were in total agreement that parliamentary sovereignty remains the foremost and overarching principle of our constitution. They were clear that the referendum result is a matter of enormous political significance but it does not change the law. The referendum only happened because of an Act of parliament and, under our system, no prime minister can govern without sufficient parliamentary support. If it was not permissible to trigger article 50 without the permission of parliament, it can hardly be acceptable to subject MPs to a “lock-out” to prevent them thwarting Johnson’s smash-and-grab plans.
To those who say: “I’m fed up with the lack of House of Commons agreement,” I understand the frustration and I am glad that opposition MPs have now sat down constructively with the leader of the opposition. I also believe that this latest contempt for our constitution will focus the minds of even previously ultra-loyal Conservative MPs. It isn’t just “no deal” that No 10 might get away with if “shut-downs” are now allowed. If “getting on with Brexit” is an excuse, why not shut down to deal with the social, economic and civil fall-out? Why not in times of war? The Commons met during the Blitz, even when the chamber had been bombed. Right or left, in or out, no one voted for this, and Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, must be spinning in his grave.
Yet No 10 now says that this is not the abusive suspension discussed over the summer. It is something different, a “bog-standard” break in advance of a Queen’s speech. No one is fooled. Every intemperate utterance blaming MPs sends the cat hurtling further out of the bag. If you want to subvert our British constitution, best not to spend so long telegraphing your intent.
First published on Wed 29 Mar 2017 15.11 BST
The era of Brexit fantasy is finally ending. For months, we’ve been told extravagant lies about free millions for the NHS. We’ve been regaled with government tosh about how Britain can agree a giant new trade deal with Europe within mere months – despite the fact we have hardly any actual trade negotiators. We’ve heard post-prandial daydreams about how the former dominions are queuing up to offer us the best access to their markets. All these are the latest burps of Britain’s long post-imperial reflux.
Today marks the day reality starts to intrude. You heard it in the very tone that May struck this afternoon, far more conciliatory towards Europe than usual. You see it in the government letter delivered by our man Tim Barrow, which accepts that a big trade agreement will be “a challenge” to deliver in just two years. Most of all, though, you heard it in the discordancy of Donald Tusk’s response. The EU council president made it clear: this wasn’t about vistas of new opportunity but “damage limitation”. Forget No 10’s carefully prepared line about “a deep and special partnership”, as far as he was concerned Britain was out the door and “we already miss you”.
The immediate response from Europe is far more interesting than the Downing Street letter. The memo was pretty much the same stuff as May unveiled back in January, bar the extraordinary yoking-together of trade with security. But everything that has come out of Europe today makes it clear that from now on it will be 27 countries versus one. Britain won’t get a trade deal with the EU anything like as good as the one it enjoys as a member of the club. The EU will try its best to stop May signing any trade deals with Donald Trump or Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull. Oh, and the UK will have to pay a leaving bill worth tens of billions of pounds.
None of this was unforeseeable or unforeseen. Nor is it unreasonable. In any deal, one side won’t get everything its own way. But we’re getting closer to the day the Brexit brigade – on the Tory backbenches, in Ukip and on Fleet Street – clock that their dreams aren’t worth a euro. Just wait for the combined rage when that realisation finally dawns.
There it goes, the “historic moment, from which there can be no turning back” Perhaps. No one knows.
The prime minister struck a newly generous and warm tone: leaving the EU, but not leaving Europe, remaining “committed partners and allies to our friends”. Behind the scenes, she and her chancellor now approach these monstrously complex 28-way negotiations with more realism and emollience than anything she has said until now. Good, but dangerously late.
What of the sky-high expectations raised among those who voted for this day? Pollsters find attitudes hardened: take back control, take back sovereignty, get our country back and above all – stop immigration. Far from regret, many sound hotter and harder.
Theresa May can shift to a gentler tone, but these people will not forget she said immigration was her first priority, along with freedom from the European court of justice. What will they feel now Brexit minister David Davis says immigration might even go up – and May admits we will, of course, still accept some ECJ jurisdiction over any deal?
YouGov finds a majority expects Boris Johnson’s promised cake-and-eat-it … no free movement yet free trade but today May and Hammond admit that’s impossible. A majority agree with her “no deal is better than a bad deal” but now in her letter she rightly steps back from that.
Reckless Brexiteers have stirred deep nationalistic emotions, easily roused, harder to douse. When, after the tedious process, Leave voters look around and find Polish shops, hijabs and foreign-sounding folk still around, with nothing noticeably changed, what then? When “sovereignty” doesn’t deliver them any extra power over their lives, who do they blame? No richer, probably poorer, no more “in control”, all that righteous anger risks seeking out a “strong leader”, a truly closed border, Trumpism, Peronism, a politics of fear and retribution against “betrayers” at home and abroad.
Indeed, they will have been betrayed by wild Brexit promises, by Farage’s shocking Breaking Point poster, by the £350m a week for the NHS and making Britain great again fairytales – and how the Brexit press will rub it in. The more reasonable and pragmatic May sounded today, the more “betrayed” those who believed in her “red, white and blue Brexit” will feel. Trying to ride these two horses was a dangerous game, and before this is over, Theresa May could end up paying the price.
Together, together, together. That was the prime minister’s word of the day – six times in the last paragraph of her speech. Now that she has triggered our release from the EU she can sue for peace. And her tone in the House of Commons was as conciliatory as May is capable of, her face twisted into something resembling a smile, as if by an undertaker. She even attempted warm and fluffy stuff about European values. And she went out of her way to be inclusive. “Leaving the European Union will mean that our laws will be made in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast.”
But the deepest challenge for togetherness will not be in parliament or across the European negotiating table. This last year has split the country, most acutely on the ground, between those who have felt left behind by globalisation and those who have been its beneficiaries. It’s a new political division that has a long way to play itself out, with old alliances being shattered and new ones coalescing.
With Brexit, the broad left has been pushed to choose between an instinctive solidarity with those who have been left behind and an allegiance to liberal internationalism, often choosing the latter. Which is how those who have long thought of themselves as standing alongside the poor have come to side with the global instincts of the City of London and against the decaying outer-city housing estates of the north and the Midlands, thus abandoning traditional Labour voters to the racist clutches of Ukip. It feels like a betrayal.
This new post-Brexit politics is not left v right, its now liberals v communitarians, with live-anywhere liberals being those wealthy enough to have outgrown the support structures of home and community which they are able to jettison like a space rocket’s unwanted fuel tank. There is no prospect of togetherness between those who still prefer the Ode to Joy and those who stand with pride at the national anthem. The new culture wars have begun.
Believe in better! Theresa May appeared to be channelling Sky’s corporate motto as she confirmed to parliament that Britain has officially triggered the process of cutting nose off to spite face. Stop calling it a disfigurement, everyone! Think of it rather as an opportunity to create new ways of smelling. Theresa May is ambitious for those ways. She “chooses to believe in” those ways. All right, so she can’t say what they are, exactly. But as Maria sang in The Sound of Music, she has confidence in confidence alone. Anyone who says differently is talking Britain down.
Yet beneath the bombast, this felt like the closest May has so far come to expressing her own feelings on Europe, rather than those imposed by the referendum result. It was as if, having finally done the deed, she relaxed enough to remember that she was a Remainer once. Brexiteers know there’s no going back –well, until they read the EU parliament’s draft resolution on Brexit, arguing that Britain could still change its mind halfway through the article 50 process. So May could afford to take some risks.
She provoked both sides of the house by praising Europe’s “liberal, democratic values”, insisting leaving was no rejection of them. (It’s not you, Europe; it’s us). She promised to make Britain a “magnet for international talent” – good luck reconciling that with cuts to immigration – and warned “there will be consequences” of leaving, including loss of influence. And was that a dig at Donald Trump, in her condemnation of protectionism? Rightwing fantasies of ripping up workers’ rights were meanwhile rebuffed with vows to “maintain, protect” and even build on them.
Jeremy Corbyn, on the other hand, stuck firmly to his usual script. Once again he accused the Tories of using Brexit to downgrade workers’ rights, leaving May to point out that she’d just promised the opposite. It remains unclear whether Labour has the will, or skill, to scrutinise this process properly.
This was a speech designed to be read in foreign capitals and so perhaps an unreliable guide to domestic politics. Her promise to negotiate a deal for everyone can’t possibly be true and will soon be tested; as Ed Miliband said, national unity has to be earned, not just asserted. But this was a pragmatic, nuanced speech. Believe in better? Only if we see it.
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 03.42 GMT
Here is the question the people of Scotland will face in the next independence referendum: when England falls out of the boat like a block of concrete, do you want your foot tied to it?
It would be foolish to deny that there are risks in leaving the United Kingdom. Scotland’s economy is weak, not least because it has failed to wean itself off North Sea oil. There are major questions, not yet resolved, about the currency it would use; its trading relationship with the rump of the UK; and its association with the European Union, which it’s likely to try to rejoin.
But the risks of staying are as great or greater. Ministers are already trying to reconcile us to the possibility of falling out of the EU without a deal. If this happens, Britain would be the only one of the G20 nations without special access to EU trade – “a very destructive outcome leading to mutually assured damage for the EU and the UK”, according to the Commons foreign affairs committee. As the government has a weak hand, an obsession with past glories and an apparent yearning for a heroic gesture of self-destruction, this is not an unlikely result.
On the eve of the first independence referendum, in September 2014, David Cameron exhorted the people of Scotland to ask themselves: “Will my family and I truly be better off by going it alone? Will we really be more safe and secure?” Thanks to his machinations, the probable answer is now: yes.
In admonishing Scotland for seeking to protect itself from this chaos, the government applies a simple rule: whatever you say about Britain’s relationship with Europe, say the opposite about Scotland’s relationship with Britain.
In her speech to the Scottish Conservatives’ spring conference, Theresa May observed that “one of the driving forces behind the union’s creation was the remorseless logic that greater economic strength and security come from being united”. She was talking about the UK, but the same remorseless logic applies to the EU. In this case, however, she believes that our strength and security will be enhanced by leaving. “Politics is not a game, and government is not a platform from which to pursue constitutional obsessions,” she stormed – to which you can only assent.
A Conservative member of the Scottish parliament, Jamie Greene, complains that a new referendum “would force people to vote blind on the biggest political decision a country could face. That is utterly irresponsible.” This reminds me of something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
Before the last Scottish referendum, when the polls suggested that Scotland might choose independence, Boris Johnson, then London mayor, warned that “we are on the verge of an utter catastrophe for this country … No one has thought any of this through.” Now, as foreign secretary, he assures us that “we would be perfectly OK” if Britain leaves the EU without a deal.
The frantic attempts by government and press to delegitimise the decision by the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to call for a second independence vote fall flat. Her party’s manifesto for the last Scottish election gives her an evident mandate: it would hold another referendum “if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will”.
Contrast this with May’s position. She has no mandate, from either the general election or the referendum, for leaving the single market and the European customs union. Her intransigence over these issues bends the Conservative manifesto’s pledge to “strengthen and improve devolution for each part of our United Kingdom”.
Her failure to consult the governments of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland before unilaterally deciding that the UK would leave the single market, and her refusal to respond to the paper the Scottish government produced exploring possible options for a continued engagement with the EU after Brexit testify to a relationship characterised by paternalism and contempt.
You can see the same attitude in the London-based newspapers. As the last referendum approached, they treated Scotland like an ungrateful servant. “What spoilt, selfish, childlike fools those Scots are … They simply don’t have a clue how lucky they are,” Melanie Reid sniffed in the Times. Now the charge is scheming opportunism. “We hope the Scottish people call Sturgeon out for her cynical, self-interested game-playing,” rages the Sun’s English edition. If you want to know what cynical, self-interested game-playing looks like, read the Sun’s Scottish edition. It says the opposite, contrasting the risks of independence with “the stick-on certainty of decades of Tory rule with nothing to soften it”, if Scotland remains within the UK.
Whenever I visit Scotland, I’m reminded that Britain is politically dead from the neck down. South of the border, we tolerate repeated assaults on the commonweal. As the self-hating state destroys its own power to distribute wealth, support public services and protect the NHS from ruin; as it rips up the rules protecting workers, the living world, our food, water and the very air we breathe; as disabled people are pushed off a cliff and poor people are evicted from their homes, we stand and stare. As the trade minister colludes with the dark money network on both sides of the Atlantic, threatening much that remains, we shake our heads then turn away.
Sure, there are some protests. There is plenty of dissent on social media; but our response is pathetic in comparison with the scale of what we face. The Labour opposition is divided, directionless and currently completely useless. But north of the border politics is everywhere, charged with hope, anger and a fierce desire for change. Again and again, this change is thwarted by the dead weight of Westminster. Who would remain tethered to this block, especially as the boat begins to list?
Scotland could wait to find out what happens after Brexit, though it is hard to see any likely outcome other than more of this and worse. Or it could cut the rope, pull itself back into the boat, and sail towards a hopeful if uncertain future. I know which option I would take.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
To govern is to choose, and the election of the next Conservative party leader presents a series of important questions: what is Britain’s post-Brexit relationship with the rest of the world? How do we enhance it? Are we still a party of internationalists?
For me – foreign secretary for a little under a year but proud to have visited 29 countries and to have met 49 of my counterparts – the answers are clear. We cannot become the party that pulls up the drawbridge or sticks two fingers up to the rest of world. It has never been more important to re-engage.
The current state of the Brexit process presents challenges at home that get noticed abroad. In the Peterborough byelection, no matter which politician tried to convince them to support us, voters saw we had not delivered Brexit, and turned to the fringes. As a result a deeply unpleasant Labour candidate who ought to have been unelectable was able to squeak over the line. Abroad, long-term allies are asking when the Westminster impasse will allow trade talks to begin and when we will start expanding our horizons again.
So what is the way through?
The first step is to deliver Brexit as quickly and cleanly as possible. We have boasted about our democratic credentials for long enough that we cannot duck the challenge the public set us by voting to leave. As an entrepreneur with strong working relationships across Europe, I believe I am the candidate best placed to deliver a deal that can get through parliament and move the country on.
The second is to re-engage with the world, and to recover our position of strength. I am often struck by the immense respect other countries have for our unrivalled set of international links, our UN leadership and our fantastic diplomatic network. But we are rightly expanding our network further, especially in Asia-Pacific and across Africa, to keep up with the fastest-growing parts of the world.
Much of our strength comes from our transatlantic alliance and leadership position in Nato – the crowning international achievement of the postwar Attlee government. But we must ask ourselves if it is truly sustainable for the taxpayers of one country – the United States – to make such a vast contribution to the defence of Europe. So I make no apologies for committing to a substantial increase in defence spending. Combined with our unwavering commitment to the 0.7% aid target, it will keep us relevant overseas and safer at home.
Third, we must do more to stand up for our values. Alongside the US, Britain did more than any other country to establish the post-second world war consensus that the international realm should be governed by rules rather than brute force. This world order brought unparalleled peace and prosperity, but is now under threat from Russian aggression, Chinese resurgence and instability in the Middle East. The world is looking to Britain and America to defend it.
At our best, we do amazing things defending democracy. I am proud of the work I have done standing against Maduro the dictator in Venezuela, driving forward the peace process in Yemen, and supporting free and fair elections in Africa and Asia. I do this because I know that Britain’s prosperity and influence is best protected when our values are widely shared.
One particular area of leadership is on climate change. I have spent countless hours working on our bid to host the next international climate change conference, five years on from the Paris COP, which would allow us to use our convening power for good on this most important of issues.
At this critical time, the global picture for liberal, democratic values is getting less attractive. According to Freedom House, 68 countries became less free last year. State actors are using elections as a target for influence while populists are shutting down the scope of public debate. At a time like this we need to re-engage with the world and show credible leadership once again.
Jeremy Hunt is foreign secretary and a frontrunner in the Conservative party leadership election
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Deadlock has defined British politics for the past few years. A Brexit deal, no deal, rematch or election all founder. Yet we have now glided into one of the strangest national elections imaginable – the European parliament elections, well past the date Theresa May promised to leave the EU – and few people seem prepared for it.
We know that some 8 million people, mainly young people, renters and EU citizens, weren’t even registered as the stuttering Euro-election campaigns began. Some of the reasons are clear: no one expected this election – students move around, as do renters, and even when younger people are registered, turnout among them is lower. The risk is that on 23 May, these voices will not be heard.
We have till midnight tonight to register to vote. There have been extraordinary steps to get young people to do this. The Give a XXXX campaign, run by the non-partisan Vote For Your Future, spread on social media, university campuses and via Bumble and Grindr, has made strides. But the battle is on right up till midnight.
In 2016 advertisements at the major London airports, National Express, the BT Tower and clean graffiti outside tube stations drove registration for the referendum vote, as I know from working on that campaign. Now there is little time and we are relying on social media and word of mouth.
It is vital because the spectre of Brexit hangs over these elections. Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, Ukip and Tommy Robinson are all campaigning on hard-right, pro-Brexit agendas. Their message will gain further momentum if there is a low turnout of those who oppose them. With Labour on the fence over its Brexit position, and no agreement among the other remain parties on tactical voting, we are heading for a national election that could deliver the message of Brexit at any cost, any how – just as many people are questioning the decision.
The way to counteract this is with a change in the composition of the electorate. If younger people register and vote, it will send a message to the main parties that they must listen to their demands. With more than three-quarters of young voters against Brexit, this can be an equal and opposite force to be set against Farage, Ann Widdecombe and the politics of nostalgia. It is time for a generational shift.
There is one thing to do today: register to vote so you can be heard on Brexit. After that, there are three weeks to work out how to use our vote to send a clear message, when the leadership of the two main parties seem determined to make this an election without a choice.
In 2016, there were some attempts to increase first-time voting – we have to go much further and mobilise to raise turnout. We must send a clear signal or wake up on 24 May to a crowning victory for the Brexit party – and capitulation by the government and Labour to Brexit at any cost. These European elections need a democratic insurgency – of new young voices joining the fray – to see that off.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Channelling the spirit of Monty Python, Father Ted and Oscar Wilde, the voice trolls the Brexit process with a tone that is whimsical, sometimes surreal and always pointed.
“I dislike Brexit but, speaking as a border, I do admire its ability to completely divide a country,” it declared.
It is @BorderIrish, an anonymous Twitter account with more than 47,000 followers, including the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, which gives voice to the 310-mile (499km) border between Northern Ireland and the republic.
“I’m seamless & frictionless already, thanks,” says its Twitter bio. “Bit scared of physical infrastructure.”
Tory tumult over Theresa May’s Brexit deal elicits schadenfreude. “It’s a pleasurable historical irony that I have divided, and created a civil war in, the Conservative party.”
It treats Boris Johnson – who was due to address the Democratic Unionist party conference in Belfast on Saturday – with disdain for the former foreign minister’s blitheness about Irish history.
It mocks proposed “smart technology” solutions for a border which partitioned Ireland in 1922 and gradually became invisible due to Irish and UK membership of the European Union and the Good Friday agreement.
“I currently:– hold together two countries that were once in military conflict– am porous enough to allow two clashing identities to live in peace– allow extensive free movement of goods and people– am as beautiful as the setting sun.So don’t tell me I could be ‘smart’.”
It has compared Brexit to football and cricket. “Invented by the British, then it turns out they’re crap at it.”
It was due to speak to RTÉ radio on Saturday, its sentiments spoken by an actor.
In an email interview with the Guardian, @BorderIrish declined to identify the person behind it but explained why it started tweeting.
“I was living the quiet life, watching the traffic and the sheep go by and then Brexit came along and I listened to people dismissing my importance. I could see the danger coming in the distance, like a cold front on the Tyrone skyline. So I thought, how can an invisible border be heard?”
Its least favourite visitor, it said, was the former Brexit secretary David Davis. “He was very nervous. He only stayed for about 10 minutes. I gave him a stare that put the fear of God into the very depths of his cold, bluffer’s soul. He resigned not long after that.”
It expressed a sneaking admiration for the Tories. “They have a division running down the middle of them that any border would be jealous of.”
A regular target is Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexiter who is trying to rally a vote of no confidence in the prime minister.
“Jacob Rees-Mogg: I have studied you.Me: On a map?JRM: Yes.Me: So you know me?JRM: Yes. You are not a problem.Me: This is one of my boggy bits. You’re sinking.JRM: I’m not.IB: You are.JRM: You’re just using this as leverage.IB: I can only see your head now.JRM: glug glug glug.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Labour will consider calling for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government if her Brexit deal is voted down and it appears the UK is at risk of crashing out of the EU without a deal, the party’s Brexit spokesman has said.
Sir Keir Starmer told members of Labour’s parliamentary party on Monday night he was confident parliament would be able to prevent a no-deal scenario, and if necessary the opposition would stage a vote to call for an early election.
“It would be politically unsustainable for any government to deliver a no deal without the consent of parliament,” Starmer told MPs. “There will be opportunities to make the majority against no deal heard. Motions will be tabled, amendments will be pressed and a no-confidence vote can be triggered.”
A vote of no confidence requires a simple majority of the Commons to pass, although under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, a 14-day period is allowed for a new government to be formed with the approval of MPs.
Labour believes a majority of MPs would not support a no deal, and that any rejection of May’s final deal by a combination of angry hard Brexiters and opposition parties would lead to chaotic and unstable situation.
In theory, if May’s deal were to be rejected, the UK would head out of the EU on World Trade Organization terms, after MPs voted in principle to quit when the European Union Withdrawal Act was passed.
But the party believes ministers would have to prepare emergency legislation in dozens of areas before the end of March, giving MPs a chance to block an immediate exit. “If Theresa May’s deal fails to command the support of parliament, then we will not stand back and allow her to take this country off a cliff,” Starmer said.
Labour has consistently said it will vote against May’s deal, and if the prime minister cannot get it approved by parliament, that it would attempt to force a general election, although the party would need to win the backing of the DUP, which has been propping up the Conservatives.
But while the Northern Irish party has voiced multiple concerns about May’s deal since it was published, its leaders are suspicious of Labour under its current leadership, because Jeremy Corbyn has said he supports a united Ireland, if it can be brought about under the Good Friday Agreement.
Earlier, Corbyn told the CBI he believed May was cynically using the threat of a no deal to keep her party’s MPs in line. “The choice between Theresa May’s deal and no deal is a false choice, designed to scare people into backing the government.”
The Labour leader said the party would tout its alternative proposal in which the UK would remain in the customs union and retain a close relationship with the single market, in an attempt to gain some support in the business community.
“The government is trying to force through this bad deal by threatening us all with the chaos and serious damage to our economy of a no-deal outcome. But the prime minister knows that no deal isn’t a real option,” Corbyn said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Theresa May will attempt to cling to power during the Brexit delay as Conservative sources said she was sticking by her pledge to see through the first phase of talks and pass a withdrawal deal.
As EU leaders gathered to discuss an extension to article 50 of about nine months, May dropped her promise not to allow a delay to Brexit beyond 30 June while she was prime minister.
However, she is abiding by her decision to step down only once a Brexit deal with the EU has been passed by parliament, meaning she looks likely to stay on and keep trying to push through a withdrawal agreement for as long as it takes.
Arriving at the talks, May signalled she would accept a much longer delay from EU leaders – expected to be nine to 12 months – as long as there was a “break clause” allowing the UK to leave as soon as MPs approve a deal with a meaningful vote.
“What matters, I think, is I have asked for an extension to 30 June but what is important is that any extension enables us to leave at the point at which we ratify a withdrawal agreement. So we could leave on 22 May and start to build our brighter future,” she said.
EU sources said May had not pushed back against the suggestion of a long extension in her address to the other 27 leaders, instead insisting that her priority was to be able to leave once the withdrawal agreement was approved. The prime minister also asked the leaders to avoid a situation in which she would have to return to Brussels to ask for a further extension.
The prime minister’s position is likely to cause alarm among pro-Brexit Conservative MPs who are plotting to oust her as soon as a long delay to Brexit is agreed. But in practice, it would be difficult for them to remove her as leader until December because she won a vote of confidence last year and cannot be challenged again for another 12 months.
In a sign of the frustration with May, Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader ofthe Conservatives, and Owen Paterson, a leading Brexiter, will meetwith EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier on Thursday.
They will attempt to get him to budge on the Irish backstop, which is stopping Eurosceptics from voting for May’s deal because it may bind Northern Ireland and potentially the rest of the UK into a permanent customsunion - despite repeated statements from Brussels that it is not upfor renegotiation.
Ahead of that meeting, Foster condemned May for her “weak approach” toBrexit negotiations which “demeans the strength of this great nation”.
Meanwhile, senior Tory figures fighting against a hard Brexit are anxious to keep May until the UK leaves the EU in order to prevent her successor opting for no deal. David Gauke, the justice secretary, told the BBC on Wednesday that the party should not be “rushing to change our leader” if uncertainty remained about the first phase of the negotiations.
EU leaders have also been concerned that a hard-Brexit prime minister such as Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab could cause trouble in Brussels during any extension period to article 50, ignoring May’s promises of sincere cooperation.
The Guardian understands that the Conservative party rules that protect May from a leadership challenge until 12 December were a motivating factor in the offer of a lengthy Brexit delay up until the end of the year, backed by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Despite the frustration with Downing Street, a senior EU diplomat said May was trusted as “a responsible politician” who would respect Britain’s obligations of “sincere cooperation” as a member state during the extra period of membership. “A rogue UK is not a likely scenario under Theresa May,” one senior diplomat said.
A senior Conservative source said May felt a sense of urgency and pressure to get a withdrawal deal passed as soon as possible to enable the UK to leave before the European elections next month or when MEPs take up their seats in June. However, he repeated the pledge that the prime minister was only promising to stand down once the first phase of Brexit was over.
“As a point of fact, when she made the announcement at the 1922 [Committee] and in front of parliament that she was prepared to stand down as prime minister once we had completed phase one of the negotiations and for there to be a new leadership in place for phase two, effectively that is the ratification of the withdrawal agreement. That remains the case,” the source said.
“She understands that the Conservative party feels a sense that new leadership is required for the second phase of negotiations. That was the commitment she gave to her parliamentary colleagues and that’s one she stands by.”
May made the case for a short extension to Brexit by promising that talks with Labour to reach a deal are genuine. No 10 is insistent that it is still possible to pass a version of the withdrawal agreement on the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s support, with talks between the government and opposition expected to continue on Thursday.
However, the two sides are still a long way apart. Labour wants movement on a permanent customs union, regulatory alignment, protection against a future leader unpicking a deal and the possibility of a confirmatory referendum.As the EU27 leaders talked deep into the night, a split emerged between Paris and Berlin about whether to believe May’s assurances.
Merkel clashed with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, both over Berlin’s insistence that May’s government can be trusted, and that a no-deal scenario should not be risked by offering up only a short delay.
Merkel argued that a short delay would not offer any prospect of the impasse in Westminster being broken and the delay should instead end on 31 December.
The German chancellor claimed that the biggest incentive for Conservative MPs to back the deal lay in the threat of having to hold European elections due to a failure to complete Brexit.
Macron instead warned against a long extension, arguing that a no-deal threat should remain. Sources suggested that Paris had “gone in hard”, suggesting that there should only be a short extension up to the European elections.
The French president also insisted on the redrafting of the EU’s summit communique, writing in that the UK – during any extra time as a member state – would have to “refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the union’s objectives, in particular when participating in the decision-making processes of the union”, according to a leak obtained by the Guardian. The EU27 also emphasised their right to meet without the UK on key long-term decisions.
The differences in the Franco-German axis had been evident earlier in the day when Merkel told the Bundestag that May was likely to get a longer extension than she needed, while Macron told reporters on arrival at the summit that “nothing had been decided”, dismissing talk of a long extension as “rumours”.
Macron insisted on “clarity” from May about what Britain wants, warning: “Nothing should compromise the European project.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Labour’s ruling body is facing demands to ballot all party members about whether to start campaigning immediately for a second EU referendum, as thousands sign petitions asking for the party’s policy to change in the wake of the European elections.
Campaigners in the Labour party wanting a “people’s vote” wrote to the national executive committee on Tuesday requesting a members’ ballot or special conference. Each of these options has been endorsed by Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson.
The letter said: “Party members are increasingly concerned that Labour’s chances of winning the next general election could be harmed if we fail to commit clearly to a public vote on Brexit, and to campaign for remain in that referendum.
“Polling over the last year has been clear that over 80% of members, and over 70% of Labour voters, want a second referendum and to remain. Party conference, where policy is normally set, is still four months away, only a month before the end of the article 50 extension. It’s essential that we clarify our position as a party much more quickly.”
Mike Buckley, the director of the Labour For A People’s Vote campaign, said the group had already received thousands of signatures from Labour members calling for a special conference or members’ ballot, to be held before the end of June.
With several grassroots campaigns already beginning to push for a shift in the party’s Brexit policy, Labour is expected to come under more pressure from constituency parties in the coming days.
Jeremy Corbyn shifted his position to saying he would back a referendum on “any deal” after an exodus of voters to the pro-remain Liberal Democrats and Greens. He said he was “listening to both sides” and would consult members about the best way forward.
However, there are calls for the Labour leader to take a more unequivocal position of backing an immediate second referendum, as hardline Brexit supporters take a lead in the Conservative race to be the next prime minister.
Senior shadow cabinet ministers – John McDonnell, Keir Starmer, Diane Abbott and Emily Thornberry – have all moved in recent days to a clear backing for a second referendum.
Labour sources played down the idea of a members’ ballot or special conference but suggested the party could announce ways of consulting constituency parties and trade unions, a bespoke call for evidence or consultation through the national policy forum.
There are several campaigns all now endorsing the idea of a members’ ballot. Michael Chessum, national organiser for Another Europe Is Possible, a leftwing anti-Brexit campaign, said: “A special conference would be better from the point of view of giving unions a vote and allowing delegates to debate the issue properly.
“But ultimately it’s essential that members – who are overwhelmingly anti-Brexit and in favour of free movement – have a serious, binding, say on Labour’s policy, and a poll could be a mechanism for doing this. The fact that the party’s policy has been held back by a tiny number of unelected people at the centre, against the overwhelming will of members, is doing profound damage to the left and giving our opponents a major boost.“It’s clear that Labour and the left are shifting rapidly towards an anti-Brexit position, including at a very senior level, as well as [with] the big majority of the grassroots. What’s missing at the moment is a clear and deliberate announcement, something like a set piece speech from Jeremy [Corbyn] which sets out Labour’s determination to campaign for a final say as part of a wider radical programme.”
First published on Sun 29 Sep 2019 20.07 BST
An electoral victory for Boris Johnson will not solve his Brexit problems with the EU, a senior German MP has said.
Günter Krings, the parliamentary state secretary to the interior minister, told the Conservative party conference the EU is unlikely to change its negotiation position on Brexit even if there is a change of government.
Krings said he was “gloomy” about the prospects of a deal despite Johnson expressing optimism that a deal was close.
“Why am I gloomy? I know that the EU is not willing to make many concessions on this. The deal has been done between 27 members as it is,” he said.
In a setback for Johnson and his strategist Dominic Cummings, who hope a clear majority in parliament will clear the path for a Brexit deal of their choice, Krings said that an election may not solve the issue.
“Even after a new election, there might still be a possibility that you get a deal which is not much different than the one you have now.
“It might solve the internal problem of having a parliament which is in a difficult situation, but it probably won’t do much to solve the problem in finding an agreement with the EU. We have to be realistic about this,” he said.
“I don’t think another government would come [and get] a completely different result,” Krings added.
It was his first time at a Tory party conferenceand he said that he almost cancelled because of the chaos in British politics.
“I had some second thoughts about coming, not that I was not eager to go, but I didn’t want to look like some sort catastrophe tourist,” he said.
He underlined the unity of the EU. “I don’t think the German government will do anything that Ireland does not like,” he said, adding that this was a protective move for the bloc.
“The EU is not in a very positive or good condition either, so that has made it more clear that it was very important for other states to stay together, to have a consensus.”
Krings said that if the UK crashed out of the EU it would be faced with a dilemma with no upsides.
“If you can’t reach a deal soon, I think there’s just a choice between two bad choices for Britain – to leave without a deal, which might risk wrecking the UK economy, or prolonging the Brexit [crisis] which might wreck the UK political system,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
The 28 Eurosceptic Tory hardliners have not said “no” to Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, giving No 10 hope that they will swing behind the prime minister.
The group, known as “the Spartans”, had indicated they would take a lead from the Democratic Unionist party, which categorically said it would vote against Johnson’s deal. But several of the Tory hardliners – from Peter Bone to Andrew Bridgen – suggested they were likely to vote for the agreement.
It was not unanimous, however, as the European Research Group’s steering committee, made up of senior MPs and former ministers, met on Thursday for a “deep discussion” about the new agreement, which they went through line by line.
“There were a lot of mixed views. This vote will cause some agony for some members, but it will be up to each member’s conscience,” said a source.
Particular sticking points included the role of the European courts of justice in solving disputes – “Why can’t it be the supreme court?” said one member – and the failure to give the DUP a veto.
“We have stood with the DUP for so long that for some members it will be painful to choose,” said another.
But even some of the most fervent Brexiters, including Steve Baker and Mark Francois, made positive noises about the settlement, saying there were “limited remaining concerns”. Owen Paterson, the former Northern Ireland secretary and another hardliner, also did not rule out backing it.
Another hard Brexiter, Sir Bernard Jenkin, said: “It looks very much better than [Theresa] May’s deal, but I am going to read the details very carefully before deciding.”
The ERG will hold an emergency meeting on Saturday morning before going to the chamber for the vote.
With many of them considering backing the deal, there were signs of discontent on the other wing of the Tory party, among former remainers and softer Brexiters. Oliver Letwin, a former Conservative who lost the whip, said he would be voting for the “admirable” deal, but also signed a letter, along with David Gauke, the former justice secretary, demanding to see an impact assessment first.
Some of the other former Conservatives who lost the whip were anxious not to be rushed into voting for a hard deal without proper scrutiny. There were also worries that voting for a deal could open the door to the Eurosceptics backing out at a later date, when the withdrawal agreement returns for a second reading, to cause a no-deal crash-out on 31 October. To mitigate the risk of this, there was talk on Thursday night of a cross-party amendment to force Johnson into a Brexit extension if the withdrawal agreement bill was voted down at a later stage in order to wreck it.
At the same time, a number of pro-deal opposition MPs were agonising over whether to vote for the deal. Special advisers were tasked with contacting key Labour MPs on Thursday. Johnson himself is expected to begin calling round wavering ERG MPs and Labour MPs with large leave votes on Friday, Downing Street sources said.
Labour MPs were coming under huge pressure from colleagues not to back a Johnson-led deal, but Ruth Smeeth, MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, said: “I’ve been quite clear publicly since April, I want to vote for a deal. It is my intention to vote for a deal unless [Johnson] has completely undermined workers’ rights, environmental rights and consumer rights.”
But there was silence from many of the other pro-deal opposition MPs, including those who signed a letter telling the EU they wanted to vote for an agreement, such as Stephen Kinnock and Sarah Champion.
One MP said: “Whatever I say I will probably be met with a shower of abuse from one side or the other. I’m still undecided whether to support the deal, which in many ways is less attractive than Theresa May’s deal, but I have to think of the counterfactual, which is dangerous and risky.”
Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP for Limehouse and Poplar, said he voted for May’s deal and he would do the same with Johnson’s agreement, but he said many of his colleagues had not decided. He said up to 20 Labour MPs could back a deal but said the fact it was Johnson made it harder to vote for than an agreement put forward by May.
The only firm Labour switcher was Ronnie Campbell, who previously abstained. He told talkRADIO: “Somewhere along the line, MPs have got to say, ‘Enough’s enough.’ Let’s go for the deal, let’s do it.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Theresa May is expected to reject calls to forge a cross-party consensus on Brexit when she lays out her plan B to parliament on Monday, choosing instead to back new diplomatic efforts in Brussels to renegotiate the Irish backstop.
The prime minister held a conference call with her bitterly divided cabinet from the country retreat of Chequers on Sunday evening.
Cabinet sources said the consensus on the 90-minute call was to renew efforts to find acceptable changes to the backstop arrangement but that the conversation was light on specifics. One said there were “no actual solutions” proposed during the call.
“It is difficult to know – as ever – what she will do,” another said. “But the broad agreement is on the need to bring DUP and Tory rebels on board.”
Despite her claim in the wake of last week’s significant defeat in parliament that she would speak to “senior parliamentarians” from all parties to seek a compromise, government sources insisted her overriding priority was to prevent a historic split in the Tory party.
Several senior Conservative MPs have suggested they could form a breakaway party if May opted to support a customs union – one of Labour’s central demands, which is also backed by Tory supporters of a Norway-style soft Brexit.
Whitehall sources said the prime minister’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, had counselled her to consider a customs union after last week’s catastrophic defeat, when her deal was rejected by an overwhelming majority of 230 votes.
But when the government tables a formal statement on Monday, setting out its next steps, it is instead expected to focus on seeking changes to the Irish backstop in order to win over Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group and the DUP.
The prime minister could then travel to Brussels as early as Monday evening – though Downing Street denied it would be that soon.
May’s move comes as fresh polling evidence suggests the public are sanguine about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit.
A poll by ICM conducted after last week’s government defeat and seen by the Guardian asked voters what should happen next.
The most popular option, backed by 28% of voters, was a no-deal Brexit. Demonstrating the divide in public opinion, the next most popular option, supported by 24% of the public, is to start the process of holding a second referendum.
In the representative online poll of 2,046 adults between 16–18 January, just 8% thought May should press ahead with trying to win support for her deal in parliament, while 11% thought she should call a general election.
Earlier on Sunday, Liam Fox said it was “the overwhelming view” among party colleagues that the prime minister’s deal was salvageable if she could get change on the backstop.
“That seems to me to be the area that we’re coalescing around,” the international trade secretary said. “A lot of my colleagues in the House of Commons have said that if we make changes on the backstop we’d be willing to vote for the agreement.”
However, Downing Street and Irish government sources poured cold water on reports that the government was considering the possibility of a joint UK-Irish treaty that would replace the backstop.
The plan is favoured by some hard Brexiters, including the former cabinet minister Owen Paterson, and was given some weight by Fox, who said he favoured a “different mechanism” to prevent a hard border.
“Of course both Ireland and the United Kingdom have both said that we don’t want to see a hard border and the Irish prime minister has said in the event of no deal, he wouldn’t want to see a hard border,” Fox said. “Now given that we’re in that same place that should be the area that we need to look to find some compromise.”However, a Downing Street source said the plan was “not one we recognise”. Irish sources said the government would reject any approach from May for a bilateral side deal, calling the idea a “non-starter” and saying the EU was very clear the withdrawal agreement could not be reopened unless May changed her red lines.
A No 10 source also dismissed reports that the Good Friday agreement could be amended to add a clause pledging there would be no hard border, saying it was not under consideration and had not been discussed on the call.The Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said: “I can assure you that the Irish government’s commitment to the entire withdrawal agreement is absolute, including the backstop to ensure, no matter what, an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the Good Friday agreement, are protected.”
“The solidarity in the EU is complete there, as Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker made clear: they are waiting to see what Theresa May’s plan B is,” an Irish government source added. “From our perspective, a bilateral deal is just not a credible proposal.”
Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, was sceptical on Sunday that British attempts to push Dublin to accept changes to the backstop would bear fruit for the UK. Asked by the German ZDF television about reports of talks between Britain and the Irish government, Maas said the UK’s goals were “a mystery”.
He said: “We have to negotiate and also agree a withdrawal agreement with Britain. It is a bit of a mystery to me what the British government wants to negotiate with Dublin or what sort of an additional agreement it should be. It won’t have any effect on what was agreed with the [European] commission.
“All 27 members must agree. In the last few days there have been relatively clear statements that there are many who are not ready to and there are some that are open to it. We have to wait to see what the Britons suggest.”
No 10 has repeatedly denied that it is preparing for a general election to break the deadlock, but the Conservative MP Huw Merriman became the first Tory to admit the possibility was likely on Sunday.
“When parliament can’t pass laws, not just on Brexit but on other matters, and the government cannot govern through that, then that’s normally when you have a general election,” he told the BBC.
Tory chair Brandon Lewis emailed all Conservative members on Sunday asking for donations with the subject line “Corbyn wants an election,” though he later insisted the party was preparing for local elections in May.
Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has stepped up his calls for article 50 to be extended for a year, so that a series of citizens’ assemblies could be held to determine what should happen next.
“Parliament must inflict a second defeat on the government – by voting next Tuesday to extend article 50 for a year. Not as a delaying tactic but for a purpose: to enable a process of nationwide consultation and reflection,” he wrote in the Guardian.
“Key to this would be a series of citizens’ assemblies whose thinking would then lead to constructive reconsideration by parliament of our relations with Europe, including the options of a renegotiation followed by a referendum. The direct engagement of the British people is now essential to address the triple challenge of a government defying the sovereignty of parliament, an evermore divided country, and mounting distrust between parliament and people,” he wrote.
Last modified on Thu 30 Jan 2020 00.50 GMT
The result was never in doubt. The European parliament voted for the Brexit withdrawal agreement on Wednesday, sealing the UK’s divorce from the European Union after 47 years.
When the result flashed up on big screens in the Brussels debating chamber – 621 in favour, 49 against and 13 abstentions - MEPs broke into a chorus of Auld Lang Syne. Some were wearing blue and red scarves that merged the union jack and European flag together. Many linked arms. Most appeared to be joining in – a German MEP had circulated the words in advance.
It was a raw and emotional end to a banal debate that had begun two hours earlier, as MEPs sparred over unrelated points of order, such as whether the word “sustainable” should be used in an EU transport strategy.
But the mood soon turned sombre, as the European parliament’s Brexit pointman, veteran Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt opened the debate, putting the divorce papers on the table. “It’s sad to see a country leaving that twice liberated us, twice gave its blood to liberate Europe.”
The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, paid tribute to British civil servants working for the EU “who devoted their lives to Europe”, as well as British politicians who built European integration, such as former European commissioners Lord Arthur Cockfield and Roy Jenkins. The EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier also paid tribute to British MEPs, adding: “In this new beginning I would really and sincerely like to wish the UK well.”
But it was Von der Leyen, a graduate of the London School of Economics, who reached for poetry. “To our British friends and many – perhaps not all – but many of our British MEPs here in the room, I want to use the words of the famous British poet George Eliot. She said, ‘Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depth of love’. We will always love you and we will never be far.”
The debate turned raucous when Nigel Farage took the floor. Brexit marks the point of no return, he said. “Once we have left we are never coming back and the rest is detail.” At the end of his speech Farage and his Brexit party MEPs brandished miniature union jacks – forbidden under European parliament rules. They were reproached by Mairead McGuinness, the Irish European parliament vice-president, who was chairing the debate: “Please sit down and put your flags away …. and take them with you. You are leaving.” The Brexit party MEPs left the chamber, waving flags and opening bottles of sparkling wine.
Earlier in the day Farage said he would miss his leadership role in the parliament - he led a multinational Eurosceptic group for 15 years - a position that gave him a front-row seat in the parliamentary chamber, next to the presidents of the European commission. “In terms of choreography it was magnificent… And I will miss being the pantomime villain, the guy that gets up and 500 start booing.”
While a few far-right and Eurosceptic MEPs applauded Farage’s party, the mood turned more solemn after the Brexiters had left. Green MEP Molly Scott Cato spoke of her grief and regret. Her voice breaking, she said she hoped “one day I will be back in the chamber celebrating our return to the heart of Europe”.
Earlier in the day, Brussels marked a more low-key departure: the exit of the UK from the EU council of ministers. The council gets far less attention, despite being the EU’s most powerful legislative body, an arena where British diplomats set the agenda for a free-trading Europe, vetoed grand foreign policy schemes and haggled over fish quotas.
Diplomats applauded as the UK’s deputy ambassador Katrina Williams left the meeting room for the last time. “History. Switching off the UK microphone for the very last time,” she tweeted. “Over and out.” One non-British person in the room said it had been very emotional. “Brilliant speech by Katrina and standing ovations. Many tears.”
Back at the parliament MEPs were given wooden-framed certificates in tribute to their time as an MEP. Brexit party MEP Alexandra Phillips, still clutching her union jack flag, said she might hang hers in the toilet. Other British MEPs looked emotionally shell-shocked.
“It was a hundred times more emotional than I ever thought it would be,” said Labour’s Rory Palmer, who had ordered the blue and red scarves as gifts for friends and colleagues. He was surprised how popular they were, with many people wearing them and at least one already pinned on an office wall.
Labour’s 10 MEPs had been seated together for the vote, a surprise seating plan that intensified the emotion, he said. “There were tears, there were hugs, not just among the Labour MEPs, but among the Socialist group. It is a tremendously sad day for everyone who cares about the European Union.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
When they go low, we go high.” The publication of Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming, has reminded the world of her spirited campaign slogan. It has also become clear in the past week that the Conservative party has its own, dismal version of her maxim: “When the problem gets big, we get small.”
Britain is approaching the end of formal negotiations with the European Union that will decide this country’s commercial, economic, demographic and cultural character for decades to come. And what are the Tories doing? Fretting over the number 48, that’s what.
This, of course, is the arithmetical threshold that triggers a confidence vote in Theresa May as Conservative leader. Once 48 Tory MPs lodge letters calling for such a motion, she could well be sacked by her own side – as Iain Duncan Smith was in 2003. In the Sunday Telegraph, Zac Goldsmith added his name to the list, bringing the total – as declared in that paper – to 25. In the coming days, as the rest of us fret about the NHS running out of medical supplies and gridlock at Britain’s ports, most Tories will be focusing on this figure like City boys who’ve bet the farm on a single stock. And for what?
I’ve been calling for May’s resignation since the day after she lost the Conservatives’ Commons majority last June. But – come on – there’s a time and a place. Disastrous prime minister though she undoubtedly is, what evidence is there that a different Tory leader would be able to negotiate a better deal in the midst of this crisis and in the time remaining?
The point of hubris, though, is that it defies common sense. There they all are, lining up to replace May at the worst conceivable moment. I should think Boris Johnson in particular was unnerved by Dominic Raab’s smooth performance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
The recently-ex Brexit secretary is terrifyingly relaxed about a no-deal outcome to the talks, suggesting that the disruption could be handily managed by practical measures like increasing the number of lorry inspection cabins at Dover, and more radical steps like cutting taxes to stimulate the economy.
I wonder if he really believes this nonsense. For now, however, what counts is that he looks and sounds as though he does. In the past few days, it has mysteriously been very widely broadcast that he is a karate black belt – almost as if someone is phoning politicians and journalists to tell them what a calm and yet potentially lethal leader he would make. Raab informed Marr that he considers Johnson a “friend” but not an “ally”: game on, I’d say.
Meanwhile, the so-called Famous Five of conditionally loyal Brexiteers – Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, Andrea Leadsom and Penny Mordaunt – have stayed in the cabinet to put pressure on May to “renegotiate” the 585-page plan before the EU council of ministers on 25 November. Again, one marvels at the sheer arrogance of this tactic. Do the five truly believe that a week of intellectual muscle, moral certainty and stern language is going to compel Brussels to hastily rewrite an agreement so long and painful in the drafting? In her interview with Sky’s Sophy Ridge, the PM could offer only the wan guarantee that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.
Kwasi Kwarteng, recently appointed a Brexit minister, conceded to Marr that there might yet be some “tweaks”. Then, in a classic case of psychological transference, this normally unflappable politician reacted angrily to a Sunday Times story about Emily Lydon, a 19-year-old vCJD sufferer who cannot speak, walk or eat by herself. Thanks to the universal credit reform, she was forced to attend a work capability assessment, and has had her benefits cut so sharply that she and her carer may have to sell their bungalow.
Kwarteng responded by denouncing what was supposedly an outrageous attack on the government’s record of economic management. In this uncharacteristic but very telling eruption you could hear the sound of an entire party’s tether being stretched to the very limit.
In all this, May’s position is what it always is. She is staying put. Immobility, stubbornness, stasis: that’s what she does. In her unembarrassable fixity, she makes the Weeping Angels on Doctor Who look like Usain Bolt.
What can she do to stop the showboating of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the European Research Group and those still gripped by the post-truth delusion that Brexit is the path to a new Jerusalem? Not much. A sect bent on bedlam is hard to thwart at the best of times – and these are certainly not the best of times.
As Jo Johnson, who resigned as transport minister on 9 November, wrote in the Financial Times: “there comes a point ... when the internal inconsistencies of a work become so glaring that the effort to stave off incredulity becomes too great for the reader and the spell is broken”. He added, correctly, that it was “not clear whether the campaign promises [of leave] could ever have been delivered in reality, even by the most fervent of believers”.
Which is, of course, the authentic big picture. The nation is stuck on a path that makes no sense, in which those who dare to say that circles cannot be squares, or that cakes cannot be both consumed and retained, are still branded enemies of democracy.
On the contrary: it is democracy, in the form of a people’s vote, that offers the only reliable path out of this crisis. But most Tories still scorn this option. Unless and until they change their minds, they will be locked in an ugly limbo of their own creation, lashing out at demons and clutching at straws. They will be, to coin a phrase, citizens of nowhere.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Parliament is about to enter another decisive week in the Brexit deliberations. On Tuesday MPs will vote on Theresa May’s deal, and, if it falls, on a no-deal Brexit and the question of extending article 50. Yet little has changed since the last time MPs were asked to vote. The deal is essentially the same as before and likely to be rejected once more, yet there appears no clear majority in parliament for any alternative.
Something fundamental has to change. The Labour leadership, having seen its alternative soft Brexit proposals defeated, has formally announced support for a second referendum, suggesting this to be the logical consequence of the formal party conference position established last autumn. Yet this position, while popular among party members, is fraught with danger if handled badly.
The British public are deeply divided over a second referendum. Unsurprisingly, most who voted Leave are against, while those who supported Remain tend to be in favour. In general, those who oppose a second referendum, including large numbers of Labour MPs, remain suspicious of the motives behind the People’s Vote campaign. Essentially they view it as a vehicle to overturn the 2016 referendum result; an outcome the campaigners never accepted. As such, many argue, it will further erode trust in the political system and aggressively fuel the far right.
But does a people’s vote have to be as divisive as many fear? Could it provide a democratic route through the present Brexit impasse? Might handing the British public the final say on a topic politicians have proved incapable of resolving give popular legitimacy to any final Brexit decision, especially when compared with an unpopular deal cobbled together under a last-minute cloud of buy-offs and arm-twisting? The devil is in the detail.
There is no doubt that the British public are angered by the conduct of the Brexit deliberations. Recent polling from Hope not Hate has found that only 2% of the public have been impressed with the way MPs have handled Brexit. More than half the country, 55%, think our political system is broken, with only 34% saying it is working albeit not perfectly. Two thirds of people (68%) say there is not a political party that speaks for them, up from 61% last July.
Part of the public’s frustration is being shut out of the process. Poll after poll has shown that people want to be consulted and involved in the process. The parliamentary impasse has only deepened this frustration. Could a new referendum help resolve these tensions through involving the people in the final decision? Advocates for a people’s vote argue for it on these simple democratic grounds.
Yet a new referendum comes with huge risks. The Labour leadership went beyond the party conference position when it recently announced that a second vote would be a straight choice between May’s deal and remaining in the EU. This would be both extremely dangerous and fundamentally wrong. If anything would create a rightwing backlash, this specific approach to a second referendum would be it.
Keeping no deal off the ballot would disenfranchise 30%-40% of the population and lead to understandable claims that the vote was being rigged. For a second referendum to be legitimate it has to be considered fair. All sides need to feel that they have a chance of winning – all views need to have skin in the game. If not, the process will be seen to have been corrupted.
The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage has already said that he will call for a boycott of any referendum that excludes no deal. Many will follow his lead. The referendum will immediately lose its legitimacy, especially if Remain wins, and the anger will be on a scale we have not yet experienced.
Giving the public the final say on how, or even if, we leave the European Union might prove the most democratic way of breaking the impasse. It might also prove a popular choice, with more than 60% in four separate polls backing the public having the final say in the event that parliament cannot decide.
While a new vote would reopen wounds, it could offer a degree of public consent and legitimacy for the final Brexit decision – but only if seen as part of a legitimate, democratic process. The danger is that the current approach adopted by both the Labour leadership and advocates of a people’s vote will achieve precisely the opposite.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
When the prime minister’s Brexit deal received its crushing defeat in parliament, European council president Donald Tusk tweeted: “If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” This wasn’t the first time that Tusk has suggested the UK could remain in the EU. After the 2017 general election, Tusk discussed reversing Brexit. He said: “The European Union was built on dreams that seemed impossible”, and then quoted John Lennon’s Imagine, adding, “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I am not the only one.” But is the EU serious about this? Have Brussels and member states really thought things through?
Stopping Brexit would almost certainly require a new referendum. Let’s put aside the fact there seems no clear parliamentary path to a second referendum at present (even if Jeremy Corbyn backed it, my Open Europe colleague Dominic Walsh believes it’s well short of a majority). Let’s assume the EU agreed to extend article 50 beyond June to make time for a referendum (something ex-European Council president Herman Van Rompuy and the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt both oppose). And let’s assume the ballot paper offers a choice of leaving the EU with Theresa May’s deal or remain (and so MPs have ensured no deal is not an option). Even if those hurdles were to be overcome, while some polls have shown small leads for remain, it’s impossible to know which way a second referendum would go – a fact often overlooked by advocates of a so-called people’s vote, who seem to forget that people voted the other way last time.
Many Europeans may well be delighted if the UK voted to remain in a new referendum. Almost no one in the EU wanted Brexit, and many see in it a profound challenge to the project itself. There is a small contingent in Brussels who spied an opportunity to accelerate the path to closer union without the recalcitrant UK. But for most in EU institutions and member states, the reaction to the 2016 referendum was sorrow and disappointment.
Yet there is concern among some members and in Brussels that if the UK voted to stay in after a second referendum, it could become a rather unstable member. There are worries there would be demands for yet another vote – a best of three. Or that a future government could simply take the UK out without a referendum at all (precisely what Labour’s 1983 manifesto committed to do, less than a decade after our 1975 referendum on membership). And above all there are major concerns about how the UK would behave in the EU, particularly if it was dealing with widespread domestic discord due to a perceived “establishment” betrayal of Brexit.
There are already jokes in Brussels that the UK could elect 73 Nigel Farages if it took part in the European elections in May. But if the UK voted narrowly to remain in the EU, what would its ministers do in the EU council? Some member states are worried we could become very difficult partners, adding to their existing problems with Hungary, Poland and, to some extent, Italy.
Of course, a second referendum could well go the same way as the first. And there’s been much less focus given to this. On the continent, the dominant narrative is that voters were lied to in 2016 and the facts about Brexit have only become clear since. As President Macron put it last September, Brexit was “a choice pushed by those who predicted easy solutions … they are liars”. He went on to warn: “It’s not so easy to leave the EU.” But if the UK voted again to leave, this argument would be holed below the waterline. And if the new remain campaign sought to focus on the benefits of EU membership rather than the economic risks of leaving, a new vote to leave would indicate a more definitive rejection. The campaign couldn’t even rely on David Cameron’s renegotiation – which fell away after the leave vote in 2016.
In 2016, Cameron’s team were desperate to dissuade European figures from campaigning in Britain. Who could stop them this time? And it’s not as if the public’s image of Brussels has improved. From Jean-Claude Juncker’s bizarre hair-flicking antics to his silly comments that “English is losing importance” in Europe, it would be easy to see how personal things could turn. Since the 2016 vote, we have also seen a series of demands for more European integration – including in areas such as defence – for which there is no UK appetite. And while there are a few impressive MPs pushing for a second vote, the danger is that a new remain campaign would be dominated by its highest-profile backer, Tony Blair – with all the baggage that he brings.
A new referendum still doesn’t seem likely. As a European diplomat put it to me, they are certainly “not putting their eggs” in that basket. They’re right not to – but not just because it seems unlikely. A second referendum would pose “formidable risks” for the UK, but also for the EU. The EU can clearly weather Brexit, but a second referendum campaign would likely be far more damaging, whichever way it went. It offers no safe path out of the current impasse. And so, member states should reflect carefully on how best to address the concerns of parliamentarians about the current agreement and decide what concessions can be made to get this deal over the line.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Since parliament returned this week, the gross injustices and inequalities that should haunt our national conscience are once again taking a back seat as MPs continue to wade through the resource-sapping Brexit quagmire.
Nearly three years after the UK voted to end its 40-year membership of the European Union, in the biggest democratic exercise in a generation, the debate continues to rage. The bitterness of that campaign, which so divided the country and communities, has not gone away. But the reason it continues to fuel such anger is that it struck a chord with communities who for too long have felt held back by a political class that has too often taken them for granted, and an economic system that works against them.
The truth is that much of Britain was on its knees long before membership of the EU was put to the voters in 2016, with austerity, poverty and lack of investment ravaging our country. In the last years of the 20th century, hundreds of cities, towns and villages saw the industries around which they had flourished disappear.
As if losing the reason for their very being wasn’t enough, decades of neglect and the march of technology entrenched the rot. High streets have been decimated not only by the loss of local employment but the birth of out-of-town and online retail. In all communities, pubs and clubs have continued to close apace. Lack of government investment in public services has seen schools, hospitals and councils pushed to the brink of collapse.
In these communities, warning of a catastrophic economic shock is met with derision. Many of them have been in a state of depression since the 1980s. The Labour government of the late 1990s and early 2000s did much good with investment in public services and people, but, sadly, nothing changed structurally.
As Westminster ties itself in knots over Brexit, the lack of action to tackle the extreme poverty in this country described by the UN special rapporteur last year is astonishing and deeply shameful. That report showed the appalling situation the country is in. It said that 14 million people, more than a fifth of the population, live in poverty, with 1.5 million destitute and various sources predicting child poverty rates as high as 40% by 2022.
As Philip Alston, the special rapporteur, put it: “For almost one in every two children to be poor in 21st-century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.”
The voices of doom during the referendum did little to quell the appetite for the change many sought in 2016 and still seek. The same arguments used in the remain campaign are being replayed again, by the same people and often using the same rhetoric. The irony of the same people who led that campaign now claiming Jeremy Corbyn cannot win an election is frankly astonishing.
Theresa May has spectacularly failed to deliver a Brexit deal that will meet the needs of our country. Her attempts to revive her categorically rejected deal seem to have about the same chance of success as the kiss of life would have on the T rex exhibit at the Natural History Museum.
We should not forget that every Labour MP was elected on a manifesto that pledged our acceptance of the result of the referendum. Labour believes that a different deal can be secured. One that puts jobs, workers’ rights, and environmental and consumer protections at the heart of our future negotiations with the EU. That is why we have tabled an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill this week.
The amendment matches the unanimous policy of last September’s conference almost word for word, including, if all else fails to break the deadlock, the option of a public vote. However, we should be in no doubt that asking voters to vote again on an issue to which they have already given an answer, until they come up with the right answer, risks serious damage to the relationship between many citizens and politicians at Westminster.
A radical, redistributive Labour government is the answer to the woes of our country and for our communities, not rerunning a divisive campaign that seems likely to deliver the same result again and do nothing to answer the demand of a country crying out for real change.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
I have been critical, I hope with good reason, of Jeremy Corbyn’s equivocation over what is rapidly becoming a pressing need to call another referendum. But credit where credit is due: at least the Labour leader attempted in the Commons last week to block the possibility of a no-deal Brexit – alas, without success.
In common with this year’s Reith lecturer, Lord Sumption, I do not like referendums, and believe in representative democracy. Moreover, in keeping with Edmund Burke’s address to the electors of Bristol some 250 years ago, I think MPs should regard themselves as representatives, not delegates. Unfortunately, in last week’s vote, eight Labour MPs behaved as delegates of Leave constituencies and voted with the Gadarene rush of Conservative Brexiters.
Sumption, while arguing that the law must not encroach too much on politics, acknowledges that representative democracy has gone wrong, and the extremists have taken over. Thus, whether or not they are real Leavers, Conservative claimants to the succession to the premiership behave as if they are.
Like so many of us Remainers, Sumption believes the 2016 referendum was a mistake. It has produced three years of chaos, and we need another referendum to sort out the mess.
And what a mess it is! There is economic and social chaos all around us. To take a specific example: during those three years, foreign direct investment in the UK has fallen by 30%, while it has increased by 43% in the other 27 members of the EU. And domestically generated investment – the seed corn of productivity and decent jobs – is also near collapse. The Bank of England estimates that, thanks to the uncertainty associated with Brexit, the level of investment in the economy is anything between 6% and 14% lower than it would have been.
And in his new book, Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?, Professor David Blanchflower convincingly demonstrates that behind the boasts of high employment lies the phenomenon of widespread underemployment, with many people working less than they want to, or in jobs way beneath their qualifications.
And this is before we exit – if the likes of Boris Johnson bring us to the edge of the cliff. There are daily stories of bad economic and industrial news, but the slowdown so far is as nothing compared with the damage that will be wrought if the nonsense is not stopped. The CBI is getting desperate; the shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, says a no-deal exit would be like taking “a sledgehammer” to the economy; and Whitehall is in justified panic about the terrifying prospect of leaving the customs union and the intricate network of supply chains provided by the single market.
So what does the Conservative party do? It threatens to unite around a candidate, Johnson, who is publicly contemptuous of business, promises tax cuts for his supporters, and appears to be blissfully unaware or uncaring of the damage caused by almost a decade of austerity.
Three months ago, the fashionable view at Westminster was that although the Conservative party at large might love Johnson, its elected representatives had more sense. But panic about Farage and the Brexit party have put the kibosh on that.
Some commentators have found crumbs of comfort in the history of failed favourites in previous Tory leadership races. But what such comparisons bring to the surface is the sheer mediocrity of most of the present contenders, by comparison with the political giants of the past. In 1975, Margaret Thatcher defeated Edward Heath – they were both formidable figures – for the Tory leadership. In 1976, Jim Callaghan defeated Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and Tony Crosland, among others.
Last week I spoke to Sir Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary, now 86 but as sharp as ever. Although a Brexiter himself, he does not know whether Thatcher would have been, given that the European single market was one of her greatest achievements. Lord (Charles) Powell, the official who also worked closely with her, is quite firmly of the view that, while fighting her corner in Europe, she would not have contemplated leaving.
Ingham points out that Thatcher did not like the aim of “ever-closer union”: but the UK has a get-out-of-jail-free card for that, and it is doubtful whether the Germans are as keen as the French on the original goal.
The prospect of no deal would be such a calamity that, although the Tories are flocking round Johnson to save the party, the consequences would make their previous losses of reputation for economic competence – such as Black Wednesday – look like a vicarage tea party.
First published on Mon 22 Jul 2019 10.50 BST
Alan Duncan, a senior Conservative critic of Boris Johnson, resigned from the government in order to test whether the new prime minister commands the confidence of the House of Commons.
Duncan resigned as a Foreign Office minister on Monday before the expected arrival of Johnson at Downing Street, becoming the latest in a string of ministers to pre-emptively quit their jobs in protest at Johnson’s likely direction as prime minister.
He then revealed to the BBC that he had applied for a debate to test whether Johnson could command a majority, but was turned down by the Speaker.
The motion read: “That this house has considered the merits of the newly chosen leader of the Conservative party, and supports his wish to form a government”.
If he had lost a vote of confidence, Johnson’s tenure in government could have been sunk before it began. However, Tory rebels fighting against a no-deal Brexit have indicated they are prepared to give him a “time-limited chance” to steer away from that path before they consider bringing him down.
Labour is backing away from holding its own confidence motion on Johnson’s government this week because anti-Johnson MPs believe it would probably be won by the likely new prime minister and have the effect of boosting his confidence.
The departure of Duncan followed announcements on Sunday by Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and David Gauke, the justice secretary, that they would quit on Wednesday, just before Johnson formally becomes prime minister.
Other cabinet ministers have been tipped to follow, including Rory Stewart, the international development secretary who was also in the Tory leadership race. Duncan’s decision is arguably even less of a surprise given his criticisms of Johnson, with whom he spent two years working at the Foreign Office.
In a letter to Theresa May, which Duncan tweeted a photo of, the MP said he was resigning ahead of the changeover of PM “in order to be free to express my views in advance of you relinquishing office”.
In the letter, Duncan hailed the work of the Foreign Office, adding: “It is tragic that just when we could have been the dominant intellectual and political force throughout Europe, and beyond, we have had to spend every working day beneath the dark cloud of Brexit.”
The most recent falling out between Duncan and Johnson came this month amid a row over Sir Kim Darroch, the UK ambassador to Washington.
When Johnson pointedly refused to back Darroch after the ambassador was condemned by Donald Trump over leaked UK diplomatic cables critical of the White House – following which Darroch resigned – Duncan accused Johnson of throwing the envoy “under the bus”.
Adding to the awkwardness, Duncan, whose Foreign Office brief covers the Americas, was tasked to answer an urgent Labour question the next day in the Commons on Johnson’s role in the Darroch affair. A series of Tory MPs castigated the likely next prime minister, with Duncan indicating he agreed with them.
On Sunday, Hammond announced his departure on live TV. Asked on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show if he expected to be sacked if Johnson took over, Hammond said: “No, I’m sure I’m not going to be sacked because I’m going to resign before we get to that point. Assuming that Boris Johnson becomes the next prime minister, I understand that his conditions for serving in his government would include accepting a no-deal exit on 31 October and that’s not something that I could ever sign up to.”
Earlier, Gauke told the Sunday Times he would not be able to serve under Johnson if he pursued a no-deal Brexit: “Given that I’ve been in the cabinet since Theresa May came to power, I think the appropriate thing is for me to resign.”
Such resignations have not gone down well with every Tory MP. The former minister Greg Hands tweeted: “In my view, pre-emptive ministerial resignations (if reports are true) in case your own democratically elected party leader is not to your liking are absurd.
“And I say that as a committed Jeremy Hunt supporter. Such moves make a Corbyn government one step more likely.”
While expected, the departure of Duncan will deprive the Foreign Office of an experienced and generally well-liked minister, who was in the role throughout May’s tenure.
The MP for Rutland and Melton since 1992, Duncan has been on the Conservative frontbench for more than 20 years, taking on shadow cabinet briefs including transport as well as trade and industry.
First published on Thu 11 Jul 2019 11.16 BST
Boris Johnson has begun receiving very public job applications from would-be cabinet ministers, with Liz Truss pitching to be a tax-slashing chancellor and Amber Rudd ditching her opposition to a no-deal Brexit in a bid to stay on as work and pensions secretary.
With Johnson on the brink of No 10, senior Tories have begun laying out their credentials for positions in his potential cabinet – some with more hope than others.
Truss told journalists on Thursday that she wanted to be in the “engine room of the economy” driving growth, citing as her favourite chancellor Nigel Lawson – a Thatcherite Brexit supporter who denies climate science.
She praised Lawson for cutting the top rate of tax to 40% in 1988, and set out her view that the Conservatives must not be afraid to reduce taxes for higher earners, claiming this would contribute to economic growth.
Asked by the Guardian to respond to Jeremy Hunt’s criticism that Johnson’s plan for lowering the higher rate of tax threshold made them seem like the party of the rich, she said: “If we are never, ever prepared to cut taxes for people earning £60,000 I think that is a problem … I mentioned Nigel Lawson earlier. In his budget in 1988, he cut the top rates of tax … What it led to is an economic revolution in our country and we have to be prepared to make those arguments.”
Truss, who at one point referred to herself as “the Truss”, stuck closely to Johnson’s script on Brexit and said Theresa May’s deal was a “dead duck”, despite having voted for it three times and Johnson having voted for it once.
The senior Treasury minister was an early backer of Johnson and joked that if Jacob Rees-Mogg were to get her current job then she would leave him a note saying: “I’ll be just down the corridor” – implying that she would be promoted to chancellor.
Truss’s main rival for the role of chancellor is thought to be Sajid Javid, the former leadership hopeful, who is heavily rumoured to have done a deal with Johnson for the job. However, Johnson’s campaign team repeatedly insist that he has not promised anyone any job.
At the same time, Rudd, one of the leading cabinet opponents of hard Brexit, publicly ditched her opposition to no deal on Thursday in a move that appeared designed to show she would be willing to serve with Johnson as prime minister.
Rudd had previously joined with her cabinet colleagues David Gauke and Greg Clark to force Theresa May to take no deal off the table and stop the UK crashing out at the end of March.
But with Johnson on the brink of No 10, she has changed her mind, telling TalkRadio on Thursday morning: “Both candidates have said that no deal is part of the armoury going forward, and I have accepted that.
“The situation is that we are leaving at the end of October but it would be so much better to get a deal. What we really need is for everybody’s effort to go into trying to get a deal.”
Friends of Rudd said she would like to keep her job as work and pensions secretary in a Johnson cabinet and it was better to be around the cabinet table as an influence than on the backbenches.
Rudd is supporting Johnson’s rival for the leadership, Jeremy Hunt, who is also holding out the possibility of no deal. However, this is her clearest statement yet that she could be prepared to serve in the cabinet of a prime minister with an explicit no-deal policy.
Johnson and Hunt have said they want to avoid no deal and believe it is unlikely, but they need to keep it as an option if the EU will not offer changes to the Irish backstop. Critics of the backstop say it could trap the UK indefinitely in a customs union.
One of Johnson’s most senior Eurosceptic backers told the Guardian that the sight of centrist Tories falling over themselves to praise Johnson and saying “pick me, pick me” was now “embarrassing”.
He singled out Matt Hancock, a former leadership candidate, for mockery, saying he was behaving like an “annoying younger brother” on Johnson’s leadership campaign with excessive keenness and volunteering.
Johnson is reported to have told cabinet hopefuls to stop “peacocking” in their desperation to show their fitness for top jobs. Hancock had suggested that public sector workers needed to be shown “some love” with pay rises, and other top backers had put their names to a plan for merging government departments.
Senior backers of Johnson believe he will create a cabinet mostly of Brexit “true believers” who are prepared to hugely increase spending on no-deal preparations.
Johnson has had at least one conversation with Michael Gove and is thought to be considering burying the hatchet by offering him a cabinet-level job and Dominic Raab, another former leadership rival, will also be angling for a senior role.
One MP involved in Johnson’s campaign said they thought Priti Patel would have to get a big job as he is short of senior Brexit-supporting women and that it would be difficult to move Penny Mordaunt from her post as defence secretary.
The MP also said Johnson had a “Gavin Williamson problem” as Williamson would expect a senior role but was not popular with colleagues and could not be allowed in a role involved with security as Theresa May sacked him as defence secretary over suspicions he leaked information from the national security council.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, is understood to be open to a big cabinet job after chairing Johnson’s campaign and keeping Eurosceptics on side. Others who could be rewarded include Grant Shapps, who prepared a hugely detailed spreadsheet to help Johnson keep track of support among MPs, and those who have gone out to bat for him in the media such as Johnny Mercer, James Cleverly and Michael Fallon. He may also remember old allies such as Ben Wallace, Jake Berry and Conor Burns when it comes to putting together his ministerial team.
A string of Tories have hardened their Brexit positions or put aside doubts about his no-deal stance in recent weeks in order to back Johnson.
George Freeman, a Tory moderate, was asked by his former colleague Heidi Allen whether he had “taken leave of his senses” by coming out strongly for Johnson.
He replied: “Couldn’t be more serious. We are, tragically, in a terrible mess: as a government, parliament and party. If we don’t honour the EU referendum result and leave the EU political union, with a bold programme of economic renewal to unlock growth, confidence and spread prosperity, we’ll get Corbyn.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
The next Conservative leader must immediately extend Britain’s EU membership and draw up a new Brexit deal with Labour MPs, a key powerbroker in the party’s leadership race has demanded.
In a significant intervention that will be seen as a warning to candidates embracing a no-deal Brexit, Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, who is regarded as the leading pro-European voice in the cabinet, calls on all contenders to concede that Britain will not leave at the end of October and start work on a new deal with Brussels.
Writing for the Observer, she warns candidates they will lose should they “enter into another battle with parliament over no deal on 31 October”. She says the new leader will have a “brief opportunity to reset the political agenda” with the EU, which should be used to craft a deal that enough backbench Labour MPs would back.
“We need to start being honest,” she writes. “The starting point is that we are not leaving on 31 October with a deal – parliament will block a no-deal Brexit, and there isn’t time to do a revised deal.
“Many good Conservative colleagues will raise their hands in despair at my suggestion that we engage with Labour backbenchers but I know there are many who wish to deliver on the result of the referendum.”
Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Esther McVey are among the candidates who have suggested they could back no deal. Rudd’s remarks come after she met Johnson, the frontrunner, in an attempt to find common ground and persuade him to back away from attempting to leave with no deal at the end of October .
The pair parted ways with Johnson still committed to leaving the EU without any further Brexit extension, whether a deal could be agreed or not. It is understood that Rudd could not commit to serving in a top cabinet job should he win and lead Britain out of the EU with no deal.
Michael Gove, who launched his first campaign video this weekend, is pressing to become the candidate best-placed to avoid no deal. It leaves party moderates wrestling over whether they can bring themselves to back Johnson. While many see him as less ideological than Raab and more capable of winning an election, his embrace of no deal is an insurmountable stumbling block for many.
“It’s all about making sure he is surrounded by sensible people,” said one MP who has decided to back Johnson.
This week will see all the candidates appear at a hustings of the One Nation Caucus of moderate Tory MPs. Rudd calls on them to face up to the realities of the “Brexit puzzle”, adding: “It should go without saying that every candidate is patriotic. So being told to just ‘believe in Britain’ is not a substitute for engaging with the situation we find ourselves in.”
It comes as moderates fear that the party is veering closer towards a no-deal Brexit under pressure from the success of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. According to an Opinium poll for the Observer, the Brexit party has surged into first place for the first time in a Westminster poll. Its support increased by two points to 26%, with the Tories third on 17%.
Such a result would see Farage form the biggest party in parliament, with the Tories losing hundreds of seats.
Johnson has the strongest support among Conservative supporters to be the party’s next leader, the poll found. While 24% want Johnson, the other standout choice is Gove, with 14%.
Meanwhile, there are continuing concerns that hardline Brexit supporters have been joining the Conservative party in order to have a vote in the forthcoming leadership election. Research conducted by the People’s Vote campaign for a second referendum has found dozens of Brexit party supporters who openly claim to have joined the Conservative party in order to vote in a leadership contest.
Nick Boles, who faced a deselection attempt before leaving the Tories to sit as an “independent progressive conservative”, has claimed that there has been a “systematic operation of infiltration of the Conservative party by Ukip and Ukip sympathisers”.
Yesterday, Bracknell Tory MP Phillip Lee, who backs a second referendum, lost a no-confidence vote among his local party. He issued a defiant statement, stating: “We will not be forced into taking a decision one way or the other by this orchestrated, destructive campaign from outside the party.”
The Convention
What’s wrong with British democracy and how to fix it will be the theme of The Convention on Tuesday 4 June at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, London, from 6.30-8.45pm.
In partnership with the Observer, a line-up of distinguished speakers will explore the grave threats faced by the British political system and the rule of law from dark money, social media and the failure to punish electoral wrongdoing.
This groundbreaking event will feature a keynote from the award-winning Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, interventions from Dominic Grieve, Joanna Cherry and Stephen Kinnock, and a speech – with Q&A – from Lord Neuberger, until recently Britain’s most senior judge.
Tickets on eventbrite.co.uk
First published on Thu 12 Sep 2019 16.03 BST
Anti-Brexit campaigners have filed a legal challenge in the Scottish courts in an effort to compel Boris Johnson to seek an extension to article 50.
The litigation was lodged at the court of session in Edinburgh on Thursday afternoon and is being funded by Dale Vince, the millionaire businessman and political donor who founded the renewable electricity company Ecotricity.
The campaigners have applied directly to the inner house of the court of session, the court’s senior tier, as it has a power unique amongst British courts to provide a legal remedy if one is not available elsewhere, a power known as nobile officium.
The action is being fronted by Jo Maugham QC and Joanna Cherry QC, the Scottish National party MP who led the successful legal challenge where appeal judges in Edinburgh ruled on Wednesday that Johnson had illegally prorogued parliament.
They hope the nobile officium power could mean the court will send the article 50 extension letter on Johnson’s behalf, if he refused to do so.
That would be a very controversial decision by the court: Tory ministers and a Downing Street source have been accused of saying that Scottish judges are biased after they found against Johnson, and a court intervening in this fashion is likely to cause a furore.
Their submission names Johnson in person, and asks the court to force the prime minister to sign the letter seeking an extension to article 50 mandated by the Commons vote on Monday backing an emergency motion tabled by Hilary Benn, the Labour MP.
The so-called Benn Act requires Johnson to get MPs to vote for a new Brexit deal or agree to a no-deal exit by 19 October or if he fails to do so, ask the EU for an extension to article 50 until 31 January 2020.
Maugham said that if Johnson refuses to seek an extension, as he has repeatedly suggested he will, they would ask the court to making the extension application required by the Benn Act on the prime minister’s behalf.
“The inner house of the court of session has a special and versatile jurisdiction – its nobile officium – which it can use to, in effect, per procurationem or ‘pp’ any letter that the prime minister refuses to send,” he said. “The rule of law is not a thing to be grifted – not even by the prime minister.”
Vince said on his Facebook page he had funded the action through Maugham’s Good Law Project campaign group. “For months I’ve watched in horror at what’s going on,” he said.
“It feels like we’re on the verge of law and order breaking down in our country. A no-deal Brexit will cause enormous national harm and would be illegal, so we hope the court will order Boris Johnson must abide by the law.”
The group’s lawyers, Balfour & Manson, had already warned the UK government of its legal action. A No 10 spokeswoman said: “We have received the letter from the claimant. We will respond in due course.”
Nicola Sturgeon’s spokesman said the prime minister had no choice but to comply with the Benn Act. “It is pretty outrageous that he or anybody speaking on his behalf would seek to suggest they would try and flout the law,” he said.
He added that the EU had again made clear on Thursday morning there was no new offer tabled by UK. “All this talk of trying to get a deal appears to be just so much window-dressing and the only strategy we can ascertain from Boris Johnson is he is trying to run down the clock.”


Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
After a summer during which arguments over Brexit have raged inside both the Tory and Labour parties, and Brussels and London have conspicuously failed to find any substantial common ground, formal talks on Britain’s departure from the EU in March 2019 resume in the Belgian capital on Monday.
The Brexit secretary, David Davis, will no doubt bounce into the meeting with his characteristic grin and the body language of a pent-up boxer itching to land the first blow. But the context for the latest round of discussions with his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, could hardly be less propitious.
In an attempt to convey an impression of clarity where little exists, Davis’s Whitehall department has spent the past fortnight issuing a series of position papers spelling out Britain’s latest negotiating stances on key issues – including this country’s future relationship with the customs union and the European court of justice (ECJ), and its plans for the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, after the UK strikes out on its own.
With some justification Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer describes the papers as “bland and non-committal”. Many politicians, independent experts and lawyers in London, Brussels and other EU capitals have dismissed them as a “wish list” that says more about irreconcilable divisions in the Tory party over Brexit than it does about realistic options for progress.
The message that rings out from the papers is that the government wants to leave the customs union and single market from March 2019, end pretty much all jurisdiction of the ECJ from that time on, no longer have to accept free movement of people and workers, and pay no further annual financial contribution to Brussels. That is the part the hardline Tory Brexiters want to hear. The part about a clean break.
But to appease “soft-Brexit” Tories and much of the business community, who traditionally support the Conservatives, the documents also spell out how Britain wants a transition period of around two years after Brexit, with maximum access to the single market – and arrangements that in effect mirror those of the customs union. In essence Davis will go into the critical next phase of talks in Brussels seeking to retain all the benefits of European economic union while insisting the UK cannot accept any of the rules that underpin it, or pay a single euro for doing so.
Pro-Europeans in the Labour party have argued for some time that the evident chaos in Whitehall and lack of credibility in the government’s position on Brexit – its “cake and eat it” approach – offers huge political opportunity for the official opposition. But until this weekend Labour’s own Brexit policy has been not dissimilar from the Tories’ – the tortured product of a party almost equally divided over Brexit, and one that as a result has sought safety in deliberately obscure and nuanced messages.
In the run-up to the June general election, in which many Labour MPs feared a wipeout, Starmer had an interest in perpetuating this kind of “constructive ambiguity” that he now says must end.
At the referendum, Labour supporters broadly split between those in urban areas of the Midlands and north of England who backed Brexit at least partly because of concerns about freedom of movement and immigration, and those in the more metropolitan south who backed Remain, seeing the benefits of economic and cultural integration that the EU promotes. It was important, Starmer’s defenders said, to offend neither side of the Labour divide with the party so perilously positioned ahead of polling day. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, were anyway far from starry-eyed pro-Europeans (they still feel the old left’s antipathy towards the EU in their bones), so ambiguity suited them too.
Today, however, marks a highly significant turning point for Labour (and possibly for the country) in its approach to the EU – a move away from the party’s previous defensive ambiguity to one of far more positive engagement. In Starmer’s Observer article, signed off by the leadership and all key players in the shadow cabinet (albeit after days of intense argument), Labour has repositioned itself clearly and decisively as the party of “soft Brexit”. For the first time since the people voted to leave the EU, there is a visible expanse of clear blue water between the “hard Brexit” Conservative approach and the Labour one.
Whereas the Tories will pull the UK out of the single market and customs union on Brexit day in 2019, Starmer announces that Labour would keep the UK inside both and “abide by the common rules” of both, throughout the transition period. This period, Labour believes, could be as long as four years. During this time the UK would continue to abide by EU rules on free movement, accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ in trade issues, and pay money to Brussels. It would also use the time in transition to negotiate reforms to freedom of movement so the UK would regain more control of immigration policy. Perhaps even more significantly, Labour is not ruling out remaining in the customs union and the single market permanently if it can achieve the reforms it seeks. Put simply, a Labour government would try to keep the country inside the EU economic union during the transition period – while leaving the political union – and possibly beyond.
The reasons for Labour’s dramatic Brexit gear shift are many. Certainly a summer of stark warnings from business about the economic damage of a hard Brexit, and the impression that the Tory government is pursuing one for ideological reasons above all else, have shifted the national and party mood. This weekend, unaware that Starmer was preparing a big announcement, many Labour MPs – including Heidi Alexander and Alison McGovern– are launching campaigns calling for Labour to back single market membership with no ifs and buts.
But the change is deeply political too. Labour is now in a completely different position from the one it expected to be in when it approached this year’s snap general election. Rather than strengthening her grip on power on 8 June, and her ability to drive through a hard Brexit, the election left Theresa May without a Commons majority and massively weakened. Corbyn and Labour were strengthened in equal measure.
Labour now senses the possibility of power itself, and the way it is most likely to seize it will be by exploiting Tory turmoil and division on the issue of Europe. To do so, though, it has to have its own distinct approach. Much of Corbyn’s support on 8 June came from anti-Brexit young voters, whose enthusiasm will now be recharged. The scent of power seems to be injecting a new dose of pragmatism into the leadership. Corbyn, McDonnell and Starmer will all know that if they are to form a Labour government in the next few years, the worst possible economic conditions in which to take charge will be amid post-Brexit economic chaos outside the single market and customs union. What chance then would the party have of affording a Keynesian injection of public money into the economy and public services, if tax receipts were plummeting and the economy in headlong retreat?
Labour knows it now has to act fast in this new context if it is to seize its chances. The EU withdrawal bill returns to the House of Commons on 7 September for its second reading. The bill, if passed in its present form, would pave the way for an end to the UK’s single market and customs union membership, and terminate the jurisdiction of the ECJ over UK affairs. Labour’s next move will be to seek support in the Commons from pro-EU Tory MPs and others for its new position, as it tries to amend the bill and stop hard Brexit in its tracks. The stage is set for an autumn of extraordinary Brexit battles in parliament, running in parallel with equally momentous ones in Brussels.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Boris Johnson will have to embark on a whistlestop charm offensive meeting EU leaders over the summer to try to secure an emergency Brexit summit in September if he is serious about avoiding no deal, according to Whitehall sources who have been involved in negotiations.
The senior sources said Johnson, if he becomes prime minister, would immediately need to pull out the stops over parliament’s summer holiday with a round of diplomacy with senior politicians in Europe. He may even need to consider recalling parliament early if he is to achieve the new deal he claims to want.
At the same time, they said, he would need to ramp up preparations for a no-deal Brexit, with small businesses currently complacent about the risks of this outcome.
One senior source who has been involved in talks with Brussels said there were signs there could be some willingness to compromise, but Johnson could not afford to wait until a planned summit in October, weeks before the UK is due to leave.
Another source – a political ally of Johnson – said it would need to be established “extremely quickly” over the summer whether there was enough appetite among European leaders for finding a solution that could satisfy both Dublin and London.
Johnson’s campaign played down the need for such a course of action, but the Tory hopeful has not yet publicly set out how he hopes to achieve a Brexit deal in his first 100 days in No 10.
He has claimed that the chances of a no-deal Brexit are “a million to one”, but his only public strategy so far is to threaten to withhold the £39bn that the UK has agreed to pay the EU in order to secure a new agreement.
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, will head to Brussels on Tuesday for meetings with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, to scope out the areas where there might be a willingness to compromise under a new prime minister.
Barclay, an early supporter of Johnson for the top job, has repeatedly argued in cabinet in recent weeks that spending on no-deal preparations needed to be increased.
Johnson’s team favour leaving the EU on 31 October with some sort of standstill agreement during which a new deal and trading relationship can be negotiated. He would be willing to continue paying into the EU budget during this period.
However, this has repeatedly been rejected by Brussels, with the European commission saying Theresa May’s Brexit deal is the only one on offer and that there will be no transitional period if there is no deal.
Meanwhile, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, is pushing for Conservatives to be given a free vote on a parliamentary move to stop Johnson as prime minister suspending parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Hammond is trying to persuade May that she should lift the whip on certain amendments aimed at preventing the House of Commons being denied a say on whether the UK leaves on 31 October without a deal.
Dominic Grieve, a Conservative MP and former attorney general, is leading a cross-party effort to prevent a no-deal Brexit with amendments to the Northern Ireland bill, but it is not certain of passing if the government whips against it.
Hammond’s best leverage is that he still holds the purse strings as May seeks £27bn of extra education spending as part of her legacy before leaving Downing Street in a fortnight’s time.
It is understood that discussions are ongoing over the education spending, and Hammond may be willing to sign off £5bn for the next year, but he believes May’s successor should make the decision about levels of cash for schools after that.
The Times reported that he was making spending on education conditional on May allowing a free vote on the prorogation amendments.
Grieve, supported by opposition parties and a handful of pro-EU Conservatives, laid an amendment to Northern Ireland legislation on Monday that would stop parliament being prorogued in the autumn to achieve a no-deal Brexit.
He told Sky News he hoped to “persuade my colleagues that I think this bill provides a vehicle by which we can ensure the prorogation of parliament can’t happen”.
He said: “I think that the chances of a prime minister carrying out a no-deal Brexit if there is a majority of the House of Commons that doesn’t want it are very slim indeed. And removing the possibility of prorogation makes them even slimmer.
“Obviously, if a prime minister can persuade the House of Commons that a no-deal Brexit is a good idea, he’s fully within his rights to do it. But attempts to ratchet no-deal through, against the majority wishes of the House of Commons, should not happen and, in my view, we can put in place the necessary provisions to make sure it doesn’t.”
It is understood that while Johnson and his rival for the premiership, Jeremy Hunt, plus their supporters among Tory MPs, will miss the vote owing to an ITV debate in Manchester the same evening, this will not affect the result, as Labour will offer a pairing system if requested.
A Downing Street spokesman denied speculation that officials would seek to avoid amendments to a bill that otherwise had what he called “a very clear purpose”. He said: “MPs will table amendments. It’s for the Speaker to decide whether or not they’re selected. That’s the proper way of doing things.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has urged hard Brexiters to vote for Theresa May’s withdrawal deal or risk a soft Brexit compromise, even if concessions on the backstop can’t be secured from the EU.
Hammond admitted that convincing Brussels to accept legal binding changes to the backstop on the Irish border was proving a “challenge”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said that even if those assurances could not be secured, he urged the “Brexit wing of the party” to get behind the deal in the crucial meaningful vote next Tuesday or risk uncertainty over Brexit.
His warning came after France urged the UK negotiating team, headed by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, and the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, to come up with fresh proposals to end the Brexit impasse.
Hammond said: “I hope they [Cox and Barclay] will come back with an offer that my colleagues on the Brexit wing of the party will consider very, very carefully in the context of the real situation that we are in, because if the prime minister’s deal does not get approved on Tuesday then it is likely that the House of Commons will vote to extend the article 50 procedure to not leave the EU without a deal, and where we go thereafter is highly uncertain.”
He added: “For those people who are passionate about ensuring that we leave the EU on time, it surely must be something that they need to think very carefully about now, because they run the risk of us moving away from their preferred course of action if we don’t get this deal through on Tuesday.”
The chancellor said failing to back the deal could involve signing up to a customs union compromise currently being discussed by senior Tory backbenchers and Labour’s leadership.
Hammond said: “The Labour party has been talking for a long time about the idea of a customs union grafted onto the PM’s deal. Those of my colleagues who feel very strongly against that proposal need to think very hard about the implications of voting against the prime minister’s deal next Tuesday, because we will then be in unknown territory where a consensus will have to be forged across the House of Commons and that will inevitably mean compromises being made.”
He also pointedly refused to say whether he would resign from the government if the prime minister instructed MPs to vote for a no-deal Brexit on Wednesday if her deal was rejected on Tuesday.
He said: “I’ve always said that I believe that it would be a very bad outcome for the UK to leave the European Union without a deal, but there isn’t a motion yet … so I can’t say how I will vote on a motion that hasn’t been tabled.”
Hammond suggested that the government would not whip MPs to vote for no deal.
He said: “I think the government is very clear where the will of parliament is on this. Parliament will vote not to leave the EU without a deal next Wednesday. I have a high degree of confidence about that. But we do need to have a clear confirmation.”
Hammond also claimed that more money would be available for public spending if MPs voted for May’s deal.
He said: “We have got a spending review coming up this summer that will set budgets for the next three years. We will have more money to spend on public services and, if we get the right Brexit deal done and a smooth exit from the European Union so that we can release the money that we have set aside to deal with the possible disruption of a no-deal exit, then that will give us more money still.
“If the money is spent on dealing with the disruption of a no-deal exit it can’t be spent on policing, on social care, on schools, on higher education, on defence and all the other things that people are expecting.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Theresa May could win parliament’s approval for her controversial Brexit deal in return for guaranteeing another referendum, under a new plan being drawn up by a cross-party group of MPs. The new vote would give the British people a simple choice: to confirm the decision or stay in the EU.
The initiative, aimed at breaking the political impasse, is being advanced by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson and has won the support of prominent Remainers in the Tory party including Sarah Wollaston, Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry.
Kyle says the idea, which is likely to be put forward as an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill, is also being taken seriously by “people at a high level in government” as a potential way to resolve the Brexit crisis.
The amendment would offer all MPs the chance to support, or abstain on, the withdrawal bill and would specify that, if passed, the decision would be implemented on the condition it was put to the public for approval in a second referendum.
If the amendment passed through parliament but the deal was rejected in the subsequent referendum, the UK would stay in the EU under current arrangements.
If, however, the British people confirmed the decision of MPs to leave the EU under the terms of May’s deal, Brexit on these terms would immediately come into effect without any need for it to return to parliament.
“The beauty of this plan is that it holds attractions for both Leavers and Remainers. For Leavers, if the deal is confirmed by the British people, it offers a definitive end to the withdrawal process with Brexit sealed once and for all. For Remainers, on the other hand, it offers the chance to make the case to stay in the EU to the public, based on facts not promises as before,” said Kyle.
“Remainers could vote for May’s deal, or abstain, even though they might not like it, in the knowledge that they could campaign against it later in the referendum.
“The key is that Labour and Tory MPs could choose their own way of allowing the bill to pass, yet both will still be able to campaign in the referendum for their real objectives and their principles will remain intact,” he added.
Kyle said the plan should also appeal to Theresa May as the only way to get her deal approved both by the factionalised House of Commons and the British public. May’s deal was rejected by a margin of 230 votes, with 118 Tory MPs opposed.
Together with Commons clerks, the two Labour MPs have found a precedent for the plan in the way the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland power-sharing passed through parliament in 1998.
Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, who has been considering when to table an amendment in favour of a second referendum, said the plan was a “very sensible way forward that I would be happy to support”. Soubry and Grieve welcomed the move, as they had always believed that any Brexit deal should be subject to a second referendum.
Further efforts could also be made this week by MPs to wrest control of the Brexit process from Theresa May, allowing the 29 March exit day to be delayed, after attempts to do so were rejected less than a fortnight ago. An amendment by Labour’s Yvette Cooper would suspend parliamentary rules which say that only the government can propose legislation to delay article 50, and put MPs in charge, giving them three days in control.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been criticised by some MPs in his party for appearing too ready to help the Tories deliver Brexit, said the option of Labour throwing its weight behind a second referendum would remain “on the table” if the prime minister refused to agree to Labour’s Brexit proposals. “We will keep all options on the table – as agreed in our conference motion – including the option of a public vote,” Corbyn said.
Kyle said that his plan had three key advantages. First, it would be a way of reconciling the country to whatever the eventual Brexit outcome turns out to be because it would deliver the “double lock” consent of both MPs and the public. Second, it would offer a definitive end to the Brexit process. And third, it would break the parliamentary paralysis that has long dogged Brexit.
Last modified on Tue 7 May 2019 20.35 BST
Theresa May’s future as prime minister is hanging in the balance as Brexit-supporting members of the 1922 Committee believe they are close to securing enough support for another attempt to oust her.
Members of the Conservative backbench group of MPs will meet again on Wednesday to decide whether to change the party’s rules to permit another challenge to her leadership within weeks, after the last vote narrowly went in her favour by nine to seven.
She is currently protected by guidelines that say she cannot face another challenge from Tory MPs within 12 months of the previous no-confidence vote, which she won in December.
However, more members of the committee are thinking of backing a rule change if she does not commit to setting out a timetable for her departure, after a meeting with Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the committee.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, treasurer of the 1922 Committee, said on Tuesday that May must announce a “road map” for her resignation after the European elections set for 23 May.
Another member of the committee said of the prime minister’s departure: “We want certainty for an orderly and timely exit with or without a deal – and the can cannot be kicked down the road until October.”
Brady had no comment but he was expected to convey the range of views of committee members to the prime minister.
Brexit-supporting members of the committee are pushing for a contest to take place as soon as possible, with MPs agreeing a shortlist of two candidates before the summer recess and then Tory activists voting over the holiday period.
However, the committee is not unanimous in its backing for a change to the rules. Some members – even some who want May to resign – are nervous that it could look bad to alter party procedures solely with a view to ousting the prime minister. Others are worried that changing the leader without Brexit being decided one way or another could cause more problems than it solves, when parliament remains deadlocked.
Charles Walker, vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee, criticised Conservative rebels who have refused to back the prime minister’s deal and accused them of unfairly “laying the blame all on her shoulders”.
“We are playing fast and loose as a party at the moment,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One. “There are colleagues who have suggested the prime minister should go, the prime minister has said that she wants to leave early in her premiership, but she doesn’t want to leave this god almighty mess ... We all need to take personal responsibility for the fact that we are still in the EU and that we are in government. This idea that a new prime minister [will] all be sweetness and light is for the birds.”
He suggested some of the 34 Conservative MPs who refused to vote for a deal might be better off defecting to another party.
“If you just feel that the Conservative party is no longer your natural home, you have to think are there other places that you would feel happier in politics,” he said.
“Three of my colleagues left to join Change UK, we are seeing other parties emerge, it might well be the case that some of my colleagues feel that some of those parties better reflect their political views.”
Another voice of caution came from Simon Hart, a Conservative MP who runs the Brexit Delivery Group of MPs pushing for a deal, who said his colleagues should be careful what they wish for.
“Although a leadership change could feel like the pain relief that everybody yearns for, we need to be careful that we don’t end up in exactly the same place in a few weeks’ time and with it even greater disappointment,” he said.
May has promised to stand down if her Brexit deal passes but has given no indication that she would go early while the issue of leaving the EU remains unresolved.
While Tory MPs are currently powerless to hold another no-confidence motion until December, grassroots activists are planning to hold a vote on her future as soon as 15 June.
The vote by members at an extraordinary general meeting of the National Conservative Convention would not be binding, but would add pressure on May to quit if passed.
In a message to members of the convention, its chairman Andrew Sharpe said they would be asked to vote on a motion stating that “we no longer feel that Mrs May is the right person to continue as prime minister to lead us forward in the negotiations” and “therefore with great reluctance ask that she considers her position and resigns”.
First published on Fri 1 Mar 2019 11.39 GMT
Michel Barnier has told EU ambassadors that he is having to repeatedly rebut British demands for a time limit on the Irish backstop but that he is working on a legal add-on to the Brexit deal to help the prime minister.
During a meeting on Friday in Brussels, the EU’s chief negotiator expressed frustration with the British demands after the latest round of talks. “The UK side keeps on insisting on the same two things,” one EU diplomat said following Barnier’s briefing after the latest week of talks. “And we keep on explaining why it won’t happen.”
But in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, Barnier publicly admitted for the first time that he was looking at drafting a joint interpretative instrument as an adjunct to the withdrawal agreement. He also suggested that the parliamentary arithmetic might be moving in the prime minister’s favour.
“We will not allow a time limit or a one-sided exit right,” Barnier told the newspaper. “What can exist is the commitment to limit the backstop through an agreement on the future relationship … in the form of an interpretive document. Like the joint letter from Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker. If this document were combined with a written commitment from the British, then obviously it would have a much greater power.”
It is the first time the EU official has publicly confirmed that such a legal instrument, previously used by the bloc to sweeten deals by offering an optimistic interpretation of terms of draft treaties, was a possibility.
The EU’s 27 heads of state and government rejected such a step last December as they did not want to offer any suggestion of a time limit to the backstop, even if it involved a soft target for escaping from the arrangement. It had been mooted at the time that the legal document would commit both sides to trying to get out of the backstop within 12 months of it being triggered. The leaders rejected the idea as they were not convinced that such an interpretation was feasible or that it would persuade the Commons to back the deal.
A letter from Tusk, the European council president, and his European commission counterpart, Juncker, sent to May in January had committed the EU to ensuring that the backstop was temporary, although there was no specific time limit.
Barnier declined to offer any further detail when pressed by Die Welt. “That’s currently in the negotiations. The substance has priority. The legal form comes afterwards.”
Barnier disclosed, however, that Jeremy Corbyn had told him during a recent visit to Brussels that Labour was poised to back a second referendum. “Jeremy Corbyn sat at this table last week and told me that he would announce support for a second vote,” he said. “I cannot say if there will be such a vote at all, whether enough MPs would vote for it. That is not my basis. I only work on objective fundamentals.”
Theresa May is seeking legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement to reassure MPs that the Irish backstop will be temporary.
Downing Street is said to have been encouraged by the suggestions that Brexiters in the European Research Group in her party appear to be looking for a way to back down on their resistance to the deal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the ERG, has recently said he would accept a mere add-on to the withdrawal agreement, but insisted that this would need to include a time limit on the all-UK customs union envisaged in the Irish backstop.
Barnier told Die Welt that he sensed that “something was moving” in the UK. An EU diplomat said: “Barnier seemed to think that the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, at least offered a more realistic position, brainstorming to find something that was within the EU’s red lines.”
The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, and Cox were expected back in Brussels on Tuesday for further negotiations.
At the meeting of ambassadors with Barnier on Friday morning, the 27 member states agreed that the length of a delay to Brexit would depend on the reason given by the prime minister.
The EU is examining a range of options if the UK makes a formal request for an extension, with the potential length ranging between two and 21 months. But legal experts have advised the German parliament that any Brexit delay beyond the European elections on 23-26 May could be in breach of EU law and leave the UK open to legal action, according to a confidential report seen by Die Welt.
The newspaper said the Bundestag’s European law experts had concluded that even the “short, limited” two- or three-month extension to article 50 beyond 29 March promised to MPs by May if they again vote down her Brexit deal could prove problematic.
“Failure by the UK to hold European parliament elections in the event of an agreed extension of the negotiation deadline under article 50 raises deep concerns regarding the right of citizens to vote and stand, as well as … possible legal consequences,” Die Welt quoted the advice as saying.
If the UK does not take part in the European elections while it is still officially a member of the bloc, “British nationals resident in the UK would be denied a core set of rights giving them EU citizenship status,” the advice said. This would amount to “a violation of the active and passive voting rights of British nationals”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Michael Gove has been offered the job of Brexit secretary in the wake of Dominic Raab’s resignation, as Theresa May battles to shore up her authority, but he is demanding a shift in the government’s negotiating strategy first, Whitehall sources say.
As the most senior figure from the Vote Leave campaign still inside May’s deeply-divided cabinet, Gove’s backing is regarded as pivotal to her efforts to keep her Brexit deal alive.
But the environment secretary is said to be urging the prime minister to shift her stance, and allow negotiators to go back to Brussels in a last-ditch bid to secure a deal that could be backed by parliament.
Gove’s close ally, Conservative backbencher Nick Boles, has called for the UK to try to secure a close, Norway-style relationship in the short term – and then negotiate a free trade deal.
Former Gove adviser Henry Newman claimed on Thursday that Raab had been frozen out of the Brexit process in recent weeks, with drafting changes sprung on him at the last minute.
Gove was reported to have spoken up in support of May’s deal at Wednesday’s gruelling cabinet meeting, where most pro-Brexit ministers express scepticism.
One senior Brexiter said it was highly unlikely May would accede to Gove’s demands, because she is now so closely associated with the Brexit deal.
The wrangle comes as Downing Street reels from a blizzard of resignations – including that of Raab – after Wednesday’s five hour-long cabinet meeting, at which she initially appeared to have secured her ministers’ backing.
Esther McVey resigned as work and pensions secretary on Thursday morning, as May prepared for a a three-hour marathon session in the House of Commons taking questions from MPs, many of them hostile interventions from her own side.
A growing number of backbench Conservative MPs, including the chair of the European Research Group, Jacob Rees-Mogg, are demanding a vote of no confidence in the prime minister’s leadership.
One cabinet source said: “We think she can survive two resignations. But if it gets to three she’s in trouble.”
Gove stood as Conservative leader after the referendum campaign in 2016, knocking his rival Boris Johnson out of the race, but losing out to Theresa May, who profited from the unseemly squabbling of her rivals.
Even if May is not challenged for the leadership in the coming days, it looks increasingly likely that she will fail to get her deal through parliament when she presents it to MPs, expected to be in early December.
First published on Tue 15 Oct 2019 16.04 BST
Boris Johnson appears to be on the brink of reaching a Brexit deal after making major concessions to EU demands over the Irish border.
A draft text of the agreement could now be published on Wednesday if Downing Street gives the final green light, according to senior EU and British sources.
It is understood that the negotiating teams have agreed in principle that there will be a customs border down the Irish Sea. A similar arrangement was rejected by Theresa May as a deal that no British prime minister could accept.
Johnson will still have to win over parliament – including the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and the hardline Tory Brexiters of the European Research Group (ERG) – on the basis that, under the deal, Northern Ireland will still legally be within the UK’s customs territory.
One Eurosceptic source close to both camps indicated that such an arrangement would be “extremely difficult for the DUP to swallow”, but neither the DUP nor ERG publicly made any criticism of Johnson’s efforts.
The prime minister will brief his cabinet on the situation at 4pm on Wednesday before addressing a scheduled meeting of the 1922 Committee in the evening.
Steve Baker, the leader of the ERG, emerged from a meeting in No 10 saying he was “optimistic that it is possible to reach a tolerable deal that I am able to vote for” and later told fellow Eurosceptics to “trust in” the prime minister.
Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, was due to see Johnson again on Tuesday night, and told reporters ahead of the meeting that she would “do what’s best for the union”.
In a statement released to the BBC after a 90 minute meeting at No 10 on Tuesday night, the DUP said they could not give detailed commentary amid ongoing negotiations but “it would be fair to indicate gaps remain and further work is required”.
Under his proposals, the prime minister would be able to boast that the UK “whole and entire” had left the European Union. “Northern Ireland would de jure be in the UK’s customs territory but de facto in the European Union’s,” one diplomatic source said of the tentative agreement.
Sources in Brussels said they were confident that the commission and UK negotiating team would land the deal overnight. But as negotiations continue, there was nervousness in Paris and Berlin about the rush to find a deal for the EU27 leaders to sign off at Thursday’s European council summit in Brussels.
Speaking in Paris, a senior French official advised “extreme prudence” about the chances of a deal being struck that would satisfy the EU’s capitals.
“It’s not the Irish who will make the deal,” the official said. “Yes, there are better atmospherics, but what matters is the content, and we have seen nothing yet. Whatever it is, we will want to look at it in very serious detail.”
German government officials said reaching a deal this week was an ambitious target and that agreeing on the technical issues could require another two months of talks, unless the UK made significant enough concessions.
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, sought to reassure EU capitals who were fearful a deal was being rushed. “I would never ask the commission or the member states to compromise the single market, because our jobs and our economy and our security depends on that too,” he said.
“We’re going to have to see how the next few days develop. If we can get to an agreement, on Thursday or Friday, and if the House of Commons is able to vote in favour of an indicative vote in favour of that agreement on Saturday, it may not be necessary to even consider an extension.”
Varadkar expressed cautious optimism, telling reporters in Ireland that “initial indications are that we are making progress, that the negotiations are moving in the right direction”.
Foster warned that Northern Ireland must remain in the UK customs union, but did not pour cold water on the deal on the table.
“We are in a negotiation. It is right to give negotiators time and space to do all this. It’s all speculation. People have to get real. We’re not under pressure at all. We’re not the ones under pressure,” she told RTÉ News.
Asked later whether she would concede a customs border in the Irish Sea, she told BBC Newsline: “No. We must remain within the UK’s customs union. It is a principle we have ... and that will forever be there. We have to be integrally within the UK.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Michel Barnier had set Johnson a midnight deadline to concede to EU demands and agree to a customs border in the Irish Sea or be left with nothing to take to the Commons.
The EU’s chief negotiator advised the EU27 would announce on Wednesday afternoon whether negotiations on an agreement would have to continue into next week.
Barnier said the starting point for a deal would be the Northern Ireland-only backstop, keeping the province in the EU’s single market for goods and creating a customs border down the Irish Sea.
After the meeting, Belgium’s deputy prime minister, Didier Reynders, said: “If we have an agreement tonight, it will be possible to go to the [European] council and then again to the British parliament. But it’s not easy. We have some red lines, they are well known by all the partners. I’m hoping it will be possible today to make some progress.”
In a phone call with Johnson on Tuesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, acknowledged the momentum towards reaching a deal, but raised the possible need for a “technical” Brexit extension beyond 31 October to allow talks to bear fruit.
The bloc has insisted the EU27 leaders will not negotiate when they meet. “The European council will be a political moment to tell the story, not to make detailed technical negotiations,” said one French official. “It cannot be a catch-up. We do not do things urgently.”
The thorny issue of how to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland has dogged the negotiations. The UK has accepted that Northern Ireland will remain in the EU’s single market for goods, although it is seeking to find a way to time-limit the arrangement through a consent mechanism for the assembly in Stormont.
Barnier told ministers the UK had dropped the original Stormont lock idea tabled by the prime minister on 1 October, which would have, in effect, given the DUP a veto on arrangements for avoiding a hard border coming into force and staying in force. Under the new thinking, a majority of both nationalists and unionists would need to give consent at a point later in time.
Downing Street last week accepted there would not be a customs border on the island of Ireland. The government has been seeking a way to avoid one in the Irish Sea on the basis that it would represent an economic dislocation of the country.
But the EU rejected the UK’s proposal of a dual customs system at Northern Ireland’s ports and airports that would involve tracking goods entering from Great Britain and applying differential treatment depending on their final destination.
Barnier has instead pushed the UK to accept a model closer to a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
Under the deal being negotiated, Northern Ireland would not be part of the EU’s customs territory, but the bloc’s full customs code would have to be enforced in the Irish Sea.
The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, who was also in Luxembourg and briefly met Barnier on Tuesday morning, had earlier insisted a deal was “still very possible” when speaking to reporters. “The talks are ongoing,” he said. “We need to give them space to proceed but detailed conversations are under way.”
If Johnson does emerge with a deal, he would probably try to pass it through parliament very quickly on a historic Saturday sitting. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons and an ally of Johnson, told LBC he believed the numbers were there for a deal. But the prime minister will need almost all Conservatives, most of the former Tories from whom he withdrew the whip, and either the DUP or a bloc of about a dozen Labour MPs to pass the deal through the Commons.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Boris Johnson would trigger a legal and constitutional crisis that would force his resignation as prime minister if he failed to obey a law mandating him to seek another extension to Brexit, according to high-level legal advice obtained by Labour.
The conclusions of a team of leading QCs, which have been sent to the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, make clear that the prime minister would be declared in contempt of court if he tried to remain in No 10 while refusing to obey legislation to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October. The new law is expected to gain royal assent from the Queen early next week.
The legal advice, from lawyers at Matrix Chambers, says: “If the prime minister refused to comply with this order, then, while we would be in historically uncharted political territory, the legal position would remain clear – the prime minister would be in contempt of an order of the court and would be exposed to a full range of sanctions.”
One of the QCs who provided the unequivocal advice, Philippe Sands, told the Observer: “If the prime minister chooses not to comply with EU (Withdrawal) No 6 Act, he will be subject to an action for contempt which could, logically and as a matter of last resort, lead to imprisonment, but that has never happened and will not happen; Britain is a rule of law country, so he will comply or leave office. All other talk is bluster, as attorney general Geoffrey Cox will already have advised him.”
But Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, warned Johnson that he could end up in prison. “It is convention that if you are found guilty of defying a court order, then you are jailed,” he said.
On Saturday, as violence over Brexit broke out near parliament, Downing Street said Johnson remained defiant and would neither resign, nor comply with the law to delay Brexit.
Drawn up by a cross-party group of MPs vehemently against a no-deal outcome, the legislation mandates the prime minister to seek a further extension to Brexit beyond the current date of 31 October to 31 January next year – unless Johnson has either secured a deal with the EU that is acceptable to parliament, or MPs have voted for no deal before 19 October.
Johnson and his advisers are this weekend exploring further legislative possibilities, including the “nuclear” option of tabling a no-confidence motion in the government and ordering Tory MPs to vote for it, in order to trigger an election. Such a motion would require only a simple majority of MPs to pass, but may not be allowed by the Speaker, John Bercow.
Downing Street sources also said No 10 was examining ways of pushing the EU into expelling the UK by refusing to nominate a new British commissioner. No 10 advisers believe this would mean the European Commission would not be legally constituted as from 1 November.
But Jean-Claude Piris, a former head of the EU council legal service, said Britain’s lack of a commissioner would not pose a major problem. “The commission will be legally able to function and take legal decisions with a member less,” he said.
The crisis engulfing Johnson and his government, which saw the prime minister’s brother Jo resign from the cabinet on Thursday after 21 Tory MPs were stripped of the whip, deepened further last night when the most senior MP, Kenneth Clarke, said he was thinking about voting for the Liberal Democrats at the next election and regarded a Jeremy Corbyn government as less damaging to the UK than a no-deal Brexit.
In his first newspaper interview since being stripped of the whip after almost 60 years in the Conservative party, the father of the house told the Observer that if he were starting out on his political career now, he would not choose the Tories. “If I was 20 years old and thinking which political party I was going to join … I would not join the Conservative party. I would not follow Boris Johnson in this wild, rightwing nationalist stuff,” he said.
Asked if he would vote Conservative at the next election, Clarke said he had not decided, but could choose the Lib Dems: “If I was going to cast a protest vote, I would follow the Conservative tradition of voting Lib Dem.” Both a no-deal Brexit and a Corbyn government were “awful prospects”, but “a no-deal Brexit could cause far more damage to our future economic success than a Corbyn government”.
Sources within government said Johnson’s senior aide, Dominic Cummings, told fellow advisers on Friday that last week’s purge of rebel MPs such as Clarke was “only the beginning” of a ruthless strategy to push Brexit through. It is understood he told advisers: “By the time we get to the end of this, [those opposing Johnson’s plans] are going to melt.”
The legal advice obtained by Labour warns that if Johnson defies the law, the civil service will be placed in an “invidious position in so far as they may be asked to take steps that are either contrary to the law or seek improperly to circumvent the law”.
Starmer said: “If the government does anything other than follow the letter of the law, then this political crisis will very quickly also become a legal one. And that is a path I warn ministers not to take.”
Writing in the Observer, former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve, who helped draw up the new law, said: “Unless a new withdrawal agreement materialises at the EU summit ending on 18 October, the government must apply for the extension the next day.
“If necessary, a court order can be applied for to require the prime minister to do so. At that point, if he refused he would be in contempt of court and could be sent to prison.”
Meanwhile police, including officers on horseback, clashed with anti-Brexit protesters in Parliament Square in Westminster.
About 200 people joined a pro-Brexit demonstration organised by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance, while the anti-Brexit group March for Change held its own protest.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan is impossible as the UK will not be able to leave the EU with a deal or without a deal by the end of October, Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has said.
Hammond, who is fighting against no deal, cast doubt on the viability of the Brexit promises of Johnson and other Tory leader contenders such as Dominic Raab as he gave a speech in Westminster.
He said many of the candidates were pledging things that they could not deliver during their campaigns which they may have to go back on later.
Asked whether Johnson’s plan to leave on 31 October would work, he said: “I don’t think so … I think it’s not sensible for candidates to box themselves into a corner on this. Parliament will not allow a no-deal exit from the EU and our experience has suggested it may not be that easy to secure a deal in parliament.”
The idea of leaving with a deal by that date would be “very difficult or impossible”, he said.
Johnson has promised to overhaul Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement negotiated with the EU and then get it through parliament by the end of October.
Hammond, speaking at a Bloomberg event, said: “Boris and any others are perfectly entitled to say that they need to go and test that for themselves but I can advise them that the EU is not likely to be prepared to reopen the withdrawal agreement that we’ve already negotiated with them.”
He highlighted parliament’s opposition to leaving the EU without a deal as a cross-party group of MPs mounted their latest efforts to legislate against that outcome.
Hammond said: “Parliament will no doubt be very interested to hear what the new prime minister has to say but in my mind parliament is not going to change its decision that it will not license a no-deal exit.
“So I think it will be very difficult, in fact I think it will be impossible to do this by 31 October and I don’t think it will be in our national interest to drive toward this cliff edge.”
The chancellor warned the candidates against making an array of unfunded spending commitments, such as Johnson’s pledge of sweeping tax cuts for higher earners.
“Be mindful of the fact that so long as no deal is a risk,” he said. “We need to retain a war chest to protect our economy from the immediate shock of a no-deal Brexit ... Until no deal is definitely off the table, we need to retain that firepower.
“I would caution any leadership contenders in going beyond committing the headroom we know we already have and starting to move into the realms of unfunded spending or tax cutting commitments. It is simply not the case, as some people have asserted, that tax cuts pay for themselves.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Boris Johnson has been accused of giving MPs contradictory promises on Brexit to win their votes, as one of his highly Eurosceptic backers warned that hardliners want to see him effectively tear up Theresa May’s deal with the EU.
The Conservative leadership frontrunner will face questions on his Brexit stance in a television grilling for the first time in the campaign on Tuesday, amid frustration among his rivals that he is getting away with pledging to be “all things to all MPs” on issues from Brexit to HS2 in one-on-one meetings with them.
His backers currently include most of parliament’s hardline Eurosceptics, as well as moderates including Matt Hancock, Robert Buckland and Damian Collins, raising questions about how he has won support across the spectrum.
Steve Baker, one of his hardline Eurosceptic backers, set out his belief that “too many leadership candidates think the backstop is the only problem with the withdrawal agreement”, arguing that it would also continue an unacceptable supremacy of EU law over UK law.
The implication was that his preferred choice, Johnson, had told Eurosceptics that he would attempt a more thorough rewriting of the withdrawal agreement as well as meeting his strict deadline of leaving the EU by the end of October. Johnson is said to have told leading Eurosceptics in a private meeting that May’s deal was “dead”.
But at the same time, Johnson has publicly said there would only be a very small chance of a no-deal Brexit under his premiership and has been reinforcing those assurances in meetings with moderate Conservatives.
Dominic Raab’s backers believe their chances of securing Eurosceptic votes have been stunted by his unwillingness to tell them he would entirely rip up the withdrawal agreement – something he has told would-be backers he believes would be impossible to achieve by 31 October.
“Boris has been telling colleagues, of course, ‘I’ll rip up the whole thing,’ yet he’s also securing the votes of centrists like Oliver Dowden,” one MP said. “You could say some of us have been naive not to campaign that way, but also that can really come back to haunt you.”
One rival camp also claimed Johnson had been leaving some MPs with the impression that he was in favour of the HS2 rail project, while others believed that he was against it. Johnson announced in the Birmingham Post on Monday that he would set up a review to “look at the business case for HS2 and to think about whether and how we proceed”.
Johnson has been able to avoid questions about the detail of his Brexit plan as he declined to take part in Channel 4’s debate on Sunday and has only done one newspaper interview since the contest began, plus private hustings for party members and MPs.
At a hustings for journalists in Westminster where Johnson did not turn up, Rory Stewart, one of his rivals, criticised him for seeming to face both ways on Brexit. “Somehow he’s convinced Matt Hancock that he agrees with every word that Matt says, that he’s in favour of the softest of soft Brexits; he’s convinced Robert Buckland that he would never go for a no-deal; and at the same time he’s got Mark Francois roaring: ‘This man looked me in the eyes and promised we’re going out on the hardest of no-deal Brexits,’” Stewart said.
With Johnson absent from the airwaves, his supporters, including Johnny Mercer and James Cleverly, have been dispatched to defend his positions. BBC 5 Live’s Emma Barnett even asked Mercer how many children Johnson had, which he batted away as an intrusion into the frontrunner’s private life.
Johnson is expected to cement his position as the favourite in another round of voting on Tuesday, while Sajid Javid, Stewart and Raab are all battling to get 33 votes from fellow MPs in order to stay in the race.
Each of the three camps suggested they were quietly confident of getting the number if all MPs who had promised to vote for their candidate followed through on their pledge. If all reach that number, the lowest-scoring candidate will drop out.
Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove are already past that threshold so are likely to stay in the contest, but sources in their camps said they were not expecting a great increase in supporters on the last round.
MPs from all camps said Stewart appeared to have some momentum behind him, as he unveiled David Lidington, Theresa May’s deputy, as his newest high-profile backer, and also gained the support of former chairman Dame Caroline Spelman.
Gove attempted to halt the flow of former remain-supporting Tories to Stewart by writing in the Times that it would be “a mistake to put forward two candidates into the final round who will polarise our party”.
A source in the Stewart campaign said it would be “tight” as to whether he would make the jump from 19 supporters in the first round to 33 in the second, but they believed they had just about enough pledges.
His colourful past also came under scrutiny as he denied in a hustings ever having worked for the MI6 intelligence agency. However, the Telegraph quoted security sources claiming that Stewart had been employed as a spy for about seven years in his 20s.
MPs will vote on their favoured candidates on Tuesday afternoon and then those left in the race will compete in a BBC debate at 8pm – the first television appearance by Johnson since the race kicked off.
All the other candidates have been critical of his low profile in the contest so far, but some have toned down their attacks in recent days as MPs are increasingly seeing his path to victory as unstoppable.
First published on Wed 8 Jan 2020 12.45 GMT
Boris Johnson and the new European commission president have had a positive first meeting about the next round of Brexit talks in which they discussed their aspirations for a deal based on friendly cooperation, shared history and interests and values, Downing Street has said.
Both sides made a concerted effort to put the bitter divisions of the past three years aside, with Ursula von der Leyen describing the meeting as the start of a new era of “old friends and new beginnings”.
She called on both sides to focus on mutual interests and both leaders agreed there could be common ground on climate change, human rights and security.
A spokesperson said Johnson made it clear in the meeting that the UK would not be requesting an extension to the transition period at the end of December.
Echoing Johnson’s electoral theme about his rush to “get Brexit done”, he told the commission leader that he wanted to seal “a Canada-style free trade agreement as soon as possible after January 31”.
“He said the UK wanted a positive new UK and EU partnership, based on friendly cooperation, our shared history, interests and values.
“The PM reiterated that we wanted a broad free-trade agreement covering goods and services, and cooperation in other areas,” said the spokesperson.
However, in a speech earlier in London Von der Leyen said it would be impossible for the UK to negotiate a comprehensive deal covering all aspects of Brexit within the timeframe set by Johnson.
Unless Britain accepted a level playing field in the UK and the EU’s trade positions after Brexit, there would inevitably be barriers for British manufacturing, she said in a speech at the London School of Economics before the summit.
At the same event, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, warned in an impromptu exchange that leaving the EU was not a simple process and involved the renegotiation of “600 international agreements” as well as a new free-trade agreement.
Von der Leyen said: “It is basically impossible to negotiate all [of the areas].”
She also warned that tariff, quota-free access to the single market came with strings attached and Britain would have to agree to level playing field rules on workers’ rights, the environment and anti-dumping measures.
She warned against a fantasy in which the UK has a hard exit but retains all the benefits.
“The more divergence there is, the more distant the partnership has to be,” Von der Leyen said. “Without an extension of the transition period beyond 2020, you cannot expect to agree on every single aspect of our new partnership.
“Without the freedom of movement of people, you cannot have the free movement of capital, goods and services. Without a level playing field on environment, labour, taxation and state aid, you cannot have highest-quality access to the world’s largest single market.”
Johnson has already indicated he wants to break with EU rules and regulations to achieve the clear sovereignty for which he believes Brexit supporters voted.
Von der Leyen said the EU was ready to negotiate “a truly ambitious and comprehensive new partnership” with the UK and would work “day and night” to make best use of the time the two sides had.
With the prime minister ruling out any extension to the transition period, Von der Leyen said that in practice the UK had “nine to 10 months at most” to get a deal in time for it to be ratified by 31 December.
“Therefore it is not an all or nothing [in the trade talks], it is a question of priorities,” she said.
In addition to laying out the EU’s position, she mounted a charm offensive, telling the audience how she loved her time as a student at the LSE and loved Britain and its humour.
She warned that Brexit day would be hard for those who wished to remain in the EU.
“This will be a tough and emotional day,” she said, adding that both sides needed to be optimistic about the future beyond 31 January.
“When the sun rises again on 1 February the EU and the UK will still be the best of friends and partners,” she said.
She said both sides had to “weave together a new way forward” even though talks would be tough and “each side would do what was best for them”.
She said the EU was ready to negotiate a frictionless trade deal that involved no barriers to manufacturers and a partnership that went “well beyond” trade.
“We are ready to design a new partnership with zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping” and “a partnership that goes well beyond trade and is unprecedented in scope”, she said.
The list of elements beyond trade, which she said was not exhaustive, included “climate action, data protection, fisheries to energy, transport to space [and] financial services to security”.
She added: “We are ready to work day and night to get as much of this done within the timeframe we have.
“None of this means it will be easy, but we start this negotiation from a position of certainty, goodwill, shared interests and purpose. And we should be optimistic. We need to be optimistic.”
Thanking the British people for their contribution to the EU over the past 47 years, she said that, after the difficulties of the fractious past three years, it was time to focus on mutual interests and friendships.
“I say this because Brexit does not only mark the end of something. It also marks a new phase in an enduring partnership and friendship. It will be a partnership for your generation,” she said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
Boris Johnson has ramped up speculation that he is planning to bypass a law that stops the UK from crashing out of the EU without a deal.
The prime minister told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show that Britain can still leave the bloc on 31 October despite the passing of the Benn Act, which aims to prevent a no-deal Brexit by forcing him to ask Brussels for a delay.
He also failed to deny holding talks with EU heads of state to request they block any request for a Brexit extension.
Despite outrage this week after he repeatedly labelled the Benn Act the “surrender bill”, Johnson described himself as a “model of restraint” in what has been described as an increasingly toxic political atmosphere.
During the interview on The Andrew Marr Show on the first day of the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Johnson also refused to apologise for using the word “humbug” in response to the MP Paula Sherriff’s complaint that she has received death threats, claiming he had been discussing a different point.
On whether he had declared an interest when public money was given to the company run by his close friend Jennifer Arcuri when he was mayor of London, he said he had acted with “propriety”.
In a bullish performance, Johnson said repeatedly that the public are weary of Brexit and just want to get it done – the slogan of this year’s autumn conference.
He said there was still a chance of reaching a deal with the EU but that efforts were not helped by the Benn Act, which compels him to ask for a Brexit extension if he has not struck a deal by 19 October.
He said: “Obviously the chances of a deal or no deal depend very much on the common sense of our friends and partners. It has not been helped by the surrender act.
“I do think there’s a good chance [of getting a deal] and we’re working incredibly hard. I’ve been having conversations ... we will continue to work tomorrow and in the course of the next few days … to see if we can get this thing over the line. And there’s a good chance.”
Asked if it was still possible to leave on 31 October without a deal, he replied: “Of course we can.”
Asked about suggestions that the government could use EU law to supersede the Benn Act or use contingency powers, he said it was a hypothetical scenario that he would not discuss.
Asked directly if he had spoken to any other EU heads of state and requested they veto an extension, including the rightwing Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, he said: “I am certainly not now going into the discussions I’m having with other EU heads of state about the negotiations because they are interesting, but they are also delicate.”
However, he said it was clear that “other EU countries do not want this thing to keep dragging on”.
Despite depicting himself as the man who can deliver Brexit, he ruled out quitting should he be forced into a delay. “No … I’ve undertaken to lead my party and the country at a difficult time … and I’m going to continue to do that. I believe it’s my responsibility to do that.”
He said he could not discuss whether he had apologised to the Queen after the supreme court found the prorogation of parliament had been unlawful.
After a week in which he was criticised for his use of language around Brexit and his perceived dismissiveness of MPs’ complaints, Johnson remained unapologetic.
He said there was a “cloud of indignation” around phrases such as “surrender bill”, which he claimed was masking the legislation’s true aim – to keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
“Military metaphors are old, standard, parliamentary terms,” he said, adding that they had been used for centuries and should continue to be used.
“If you cannot use a metaphor like surrender, to describe the surrender act … you are diminishing parliamentary debate,” he said.
He said the abuse female had MPs had received was deplorable and that everyone should act more calmly in politics. Asked if that included him, he replied: “I think I’ve been the model of restraint.”
He was not asked during the interview about a report on Sunday that he inappropriately squeezed the thigh of the Sunday Times journalist Charlotte Edwardes during a private lunch almost 20 years ago when she was a contributor to the Spectator, which he edited.
Edwardes said another woman at the same lunch said he had done the same to her.
He faced a number of questions about his relationship with Acruri, an entrepreneur he is said to have had a close friendship with and who received public money for her business when Johnson was mayor of London. She also attended official trade trips.
The prime minister has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which investigates complaints of misconduct connected to police in England and Wales. As mayor, Johnson was also head of the mayor’s office for policing and crime.
He insisted there was “no interest to declare” amid claims about his association with the former American model turned tech businesswoman. Asked by Marr if he declared an interest relating to his links with Arcuri when he was mayor, Johnson replied: “Everything was done in accordance with the code ... and everything was done with full propriety.”
First published on Mon 5 Aug 2019 16.43 BST
Boris Johnson has no intention of renegotiating the withdrawal agreement and a no-deal Brexit is his “central scenario”, European diplomats have been told, amid hardening evidence in Westminster that the government is expecting to crash out of the EU.
Brussels diplomats briefed after a meeting between the prime minister’s chief envoy and senior EU figures in Brussels said that Britain’s refusal to compromise was understood to have been clear to those attending.
Instead David Frost, the government’s new chief Europe adviser, is said to have sought discussions on how negotiations could be reset after the UK crashes out on 31 October.
“It was clear UK does not have another plan,” a senior EU diplomat said of the meetings with Frost. “No intention to negotiate, which would require a plan. A no deal now appears to be the UK government’s central scenario.”
The disclosure came as No 10 insisted the government was “ready to negotiate in good faith” but made clear that Johnson would only agree to a deal without what he refers to as the “undemocratic backstop” – the mechanism to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland that could keep the UK in a customs union. The EU has repeatedly said the backstop is not up for negotiation.
The UK’s failure to provide any proposals on how to deal with the controversial Irish backstop was felt to be significant by EU officials who spoke to the Guardian.
Frost was said to have told the officials that a technological solution to the Irish border was the UK’s preferred option before admitting that “it would not be ready now for Brexit”.
“Even if EU gave up the backstop there is no alternative,” a diplomat concluded of the discussion.
“That message has now gone loud and clear to capitals, it was useful to hear it from horse’s mouth,” the EU source said. “Reality is sinking in.”
With no new UK-EU talks scheduled, there were meanwhile signs in Westminster that Johnson’s government was readying itself for a no-deal Brexit and preparing to do battle with Tory MPs who have said they will join with opposition parties to prevent that outcome.
The prime minister’s senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, instructed special advisers across the government to keep on top of preparations for a no deal Brexit early on Monday morning and attacked Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, for failing to get the country ready.
Over the weekend, it became clear he believes that Johnson could simply refuse to resign in the event of losing a no-confidence motion and schedule an general election for November – after leaving the EU at the end of October.
Johnson said on Monday that an election was the “last thing” he wanted. But his official spokesman stressed at his regular briefing for journalists that Brexit would take place on 31 October “whatever the circumstances”, even if parliament has voted against a no-deal departure or passed a confidence motion against the prime minister necessitating an election.
Conservative rebels plotting against a no-deal Brexit are already considering how to thwart No 10, believing an alternative government could potentially be created with a majority to challenge Johnson if he loses a confidence vote.
Corbyn indicated on Monday that he may be prepared to bring a no-confidence vote in the government very soon after parliament returns from its summer break in September.
“We will do everything to stop no deal, including a no-confidence vote at the appropriate very early time to do it,” he said on a visit to flood-stricken Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire. “The prime minister seems to be trying to slip no deal through, slip past parliament and slip past the British people.
“Sorry, no deal will be really serious. Serious for food prices, for medical supplies, for trade, for investment, and drive us straight into the hands of the sort of trade deal that Donald Trump wants to do with Boris Johnson.
“I’m sorry, it’s not on, it’s not acceptable. We will do everything we can to block it.”
Several Conservative MPs, including Hammond, have indicated they could vote with Labour to bring Johnson down if he is set on a no-deal Brexit. Friends of Hammond also hit back at Cummings on Monday, saying it was “simply untrue” that the Treasury had failed to prepare.
“The bigger question is why is Dominic Cummings, the de facto deputy PM, so keen to spend yet more taxpayers’ money on something that his boss insists has only a one in a million chance of happening?” one Hammond ally said.
EU officials increasingly believe the UK is heading for a no-deal exit after their meetings with Frost, who replaced Theresa May’s chief negotiator, Olly Robbins. Last week, Frost met Clara Martínez Alberola, the head of cabinet for the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker; Stéphanie Riso, a senior official in Michel Barnier’s negotiations taskforce, who was a key player in drafting the terms of the backstop, and Ilze Juhansone, the deputy secretary general at the commission.
The demand over the weekend by the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, that Barnier seek a new negotiating mandate from the EU’s leaders to allow fresh talks was seen as mere “noise”.
Diplomats said the message was seen as “confrontational – unhelpful” but that more in that vein was expected at a meeting of the G7 in Biarritz, when Johnson will meet Juncker.
A spokeswoman for the European commission said the impact of the UK crashing out would be proportionally heavier on the British side of the Channel.
The spokeswoman added: “For a negotiation to be successful it takes two to tango. If the music and the rhythm is not right then … you have no dance.
“But that doesn’t mean that it was a failure. I think both sides negotiated with the very best intentions and very best efforts. The outcome on the table is the best deal possible and I don’t think there is any fault or blame to be looked for in this.”
A UK government spokesman said: “We are ready to negotiate in good faith an alternative to the anti-democratic backstop.
“There is abundant scope to find the technological solutions necessary – and these solutions can and will be found, in the context of the free trade agreement that we will negotiate with the EU after 31 October.”
The spokesman added: “The prime minister wants to meet EU leaders and negotiate a new deal – one that abolishes the anti-democratic backstop.
“We will throw ourselves into the negotiations with the greatest energy and the spirit of friendship. The fact is the withdrawal agreement has been rejected by parliament three times and will not pass in its current form so – if the EU wants a deal – it needs to change its stance. Until then, we will continue to prepare to leave the EU on 31 October.”
First published on Sat 24 Aug 2019 21.00 BST
Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence.
An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such a move by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.
On Saturday Labour and pro-remain Tory MPs reacted furiously, saying that the closure of parliament, as a method for stopping MPs preventing a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit, would be an affront to democracy and deeply irresponsible, particularly given the government’s own acceptance of the economic turmoil no-deal could cause.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said: “Any plan to suspend parliament at this stage would be outrageous. MPs must take the earliest opportunity to thwart this plan and to stop a no-deal Brexit.”
The prominent Tory remainer and former attorney general Dominic Grieve added: “This memo, if correct, shows Boris Johnson’s contempt for the House of Commons. It may be possible to circumvent the clear intention of the House of Commons in this way but it shows total bad faith. Excluding the house from a national crisis that threatens the future of our country is entirely wrong.”
Senior MPs believe Johnson may think he can win a confidence motion if MPs call one, and believe that having done so he would have a mandate to drive through a no-deal Brexit even if he had to shut down parliament to do so. Any move to prorogue parliament would enrage the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, who said recently at the Edinburgh festival that parliament could stop a no-deal Brexit.
The campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller has said she will spearhead an immediate legal challenge should Johnson try to shut down parliament in order to drive through a no-deal Brexit against the wishes of MPs.
A government source did not deny that legal advice had been sought. They added: “As a matter of routine, No 10 officials ask for legal and policy advice every day.”
Johnson has said he is “not attracted” to the idea of proroguing parliament and that he wants a Brexit deal, but has repeatedly refused to rule it out. After becoming prime minister he immediately promoted Dominic Raab, the first senior Tory to propose the idea of shutting parliament to get Brexit through, to the post of foreign secretary.
The email shows that the feasibility of a five-week parliamentary shutdown is under active consideration, from soon after the date on which parliament returns on 3 September, until the eve of the last EU summit before Brexit, on 17 and 18 October, when it will be too late for MPs to block no deal. The revelation will also anger EU leaders as Johnson makes his international summit debut at the G7 in Biarritz this weekend.
Johnson was due to meet the US president, Donald Trump, for talks on Sunday, with Brexit and international trade high on the agenda. He will also meet EU council president Donald Tusk who said on Saturday that he would not cooperate with Johnson on a no-deal Brexit, but rather wanted to find a way forward with him to secure a deal on issues including the Irish backstop.
Tusk said as G7 leaders gathered that he was “willing to listen to ideas that are operational, realistic and acceptable to all EU member states, including Ireland, if and when the UK government is ready. The one thing I will not cooperate on is no deal, and I still hope that prime minister Johnson will not like to go down in history as ‘Mr No Deal’.”
Pro-remain MPs have spent the summer recess planning how to block a no-deal outcome and, if necessary, force an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond 31 October, when parliament returns on 3 September.
Among the options being considered are taking control of Commons business for enough time to pass legislation that would mandate the prime minister to seek another extension.
An alternative backed by some remainers is to amend Brexit-related legislation to force an extension.
EU leaders will be closely monitoring the clashes in parliament in September. Brussels sources say the bloc is reluctant to make fresh concessions before MPs have had an opportunity to tie Johnson’s hands by seeking to block no deal.
Speaking en route to the French resort, the PM urged MPs not to consider trying to do so. “I think it’s parliament’s job now to respect not just the will of the people but to remember what the overwhelming majority of them promised to do over and over and over again, which is to get Brexit done, to respect the will of the people, and to come out of the EU on 31 October. That is what I am confident our parliament will do,” he said.
The leaked email will fuel speculation that Johnson is prepared to make the delivery of a “deal or no deal” Brexit an issue of parliament versus the people. The email examines whether the prime minister could thwart MPs’ plans by shutting parliament until a Queen’s speech would herald a new parliament on 14 October.
A government source said there was a definite and clear plan to prorogue parliament being hatched by Johnson’s closest advisers.
In particular, the memo examines whether Johnson could circumvent a previous amendment, championed by Grieve, that was inserted into a bill relating to the Northern Ireland Assembly earlier this summer. It requires ministers to report regularly to parliament on progress in restoring the Stormont Assembly. The email suggests the Grieve amendment does not necessarily prevent the prime minister activating the prorogation plan.
The news will add greater urgency to talks that will take place on Tuesday between Jeremy Corbyn and cross-party MPs on how to prevent no-deal. Corbyn has said he will call a confidence motion in the government when parliament returns, and if successful, would seek to become prime minister for an interim period before calling a general election. Starmer is understood to want MPs to try to pass legislation specifically to mandate the prime minister to ask the EU for an extension.
First published on Tue 21 May 2019 19.37 BST
Boris Johnson is launching a bid to court One Nation Conservative MPs in the group of centrist liberals run by Amber Rudd, as he tries to pitch himself as a candidate who can appeal beyond rightwing Brexit supporters.
The former foreign secretary, who is favourite to be the next Conservative leader, is backed by Brexit hardliner Jacob Rees-Mogg but infuriated many Tory colleagues by backing Theresa May’s deal after months of campaigning against it.
Some Conservative MPs have privately threatened to quit the party if Johnson becomes prime minister, with particular anger over his use of populist rhetoric suggesting that Muslim women wearing burqas resemble bank robbers and “choose to go around looking like letterboxes”.
However, Johnson has been making an effort to reach out to the more centrist wing of the party in recent days, endorsing a mini-manifesto released by Rudd’s group of 60 One Nation MPs, which promotes human rights and social responsibility.
His change of tack has provoked fresh speculation that Rudd could back Johnson, even though she has campaigned against a hard Brexit.
Friends of the work and pensions secretary say she privately dismisses the idea that she will end up supporting Johnson’s leadership bid when asked about it. However, one MP in the One Nation group said it was very plausible that she will be tempted by the possibility of a big job from Johnson and his potential to save her seat at a general election, since she is MP for the marginal constituency of Hastings and Rye – where her 4,796 majority from 2015 was cut to just 346 in 2017.
Rudd has not ruled out running for the leadership herself but is thought likely to end up backing one of the other candidates and bringing her supporters with her.
Another One Nation source said it was certainly possible that Rudd could end up backing a first choice candidate and then pivoting to back Johnson in the last round if he were to be in a runoff with Dominic Raab or Esther McVey, the most rightwing pro-Brexit leadership candidates.
“It’s really not a Stop Boris vehicle, if anything it is more Stop Raab,” the One Nation source said. “But it is not about the person; it is about the policies. There is no chance that all 60 MPs in the group will back the same person but there is a chance all 60 won’t back a certain person and it is far more likely that person will be Raab rather than Boris.
“We’ve got to get the next phase of the Conservative party right. This is the prime minister who will take us into an election in 2020 or 2022 and that will determine how the next 10 years plays out. We want the most well-rounded candidate. If that’s Boris, it’s Boris. If it’s not, it’s not. This vehicle is intended to ensure the party stays relevant to the centre ground.”
The success of Johnson as a leadership candidate depends on his ability to woo enough Conservative MPs to put him in the list of a final two candidates who will then be put to the membership. The pro-Brexit, rightwing Conservative membership heavily favours Johnson ahead of other candidates, according to surveys by the ConservativeHome website.
One supporter of Johnson said: “He is a one nation Tory and always has been, and I think many of his colleagues see this.”
They said Johnson was different to Raab who is “very much a rightwinger” on domestic policy. “Everyone can see Boris is on a different place on domestic policy and it is a natural fit for many of them,” they said. “The party has never been as hostile to him as people make out.”
However, while some centrist MPs believe Johnson offers the best chance of winning an election, others are part of a Stop Boris campaign arguing that he is too divisive and hardline on Brexit to be prime minister.
On Tuesday, he was branded an unacceptable candidate to be prime minister by the Conservative minister Margot James, because of his “fuck business” remark when asked about companies’ concerns over Brexit.
James, a business minister and leading member of the One Nation Conservative group, said the comment meant Johnson was not fit for “high public office” as she addressed a Creative England event in London.
Speaking later to the Guardian, she said some of her colleagues promoting Brexit at any cost to business had the “wrong attitude”.
“I don’t think people in the public eye should be using language like that to discuss the concerns of the business community,” she said. “It’s the dismissive attitude to business that’s a problem among some people for whom Brexit is everything.”
She said another pro-Brexit leadership hopeful had privately been dismissive about businesses’ concerns to her, saying: “Oh, the tech industry is always moaning.”
She said: “That these people should be anywhere near the levers of power is quite worrying.”
Johnson was reported to have made the “fuck business” remark in July last year when asked about industry’s concerns over Brexit at a diplomatic event.
He later refused to deny he had made the comments, acknowledging in the Commons that he may have “expressed scepticism about some of the views of those who profess to speak up for business”.
A source close to Johnson said his remarks on business had been aimed at “business lobby groups sending out anti-Brexit propaganda”, and argued that “you would find it hard to find anyone more devoted to business than he has been and his record particularly in London on businesses both great and small”.
Last modified on Tue 14 Jan 2020 12.12 GMT
Boris Johnson has given his first broadcast interview since the general election to BBC Breakfast. Here are the main themes of his interview with Dan Walker:
What he said: he suggested Donald Trump should come up with an alternative deal to the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPoA), which limits Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon. The US abandoned the deal in 2018, which had been brokered by President Barack Obama and was considered one of his foreign policy achievements. In a blatant show of support for Trump, Johnson said: “If we’re going to get rid of it, let’s replace it with the Trump deal. That’s what we need to see. President Trump is a great dealmaker by his own account and many others.”
What he didn’t say: whether he believed the killing of Qassem Suleimani was lawful and his thoughts on not being told about the US action in advance and what that shows about the special relationship.
What he said: a trade deal before 31 December was “epically likely”, the prime minister said when pushed during the interview. Yet he added that it was only common sense to budget for a “complete failure”. This is a significant step away from his typical “do or die” style language when talking about the the EU and he may be laying the groundwork for diminished expectations.
What he didn’t say: with 100% certainty whether Britain will get a trade deal with the EU by the end of December 2020.
What he said: no date was given for when a plan might be implemented to improve social care, but he said: “We will certainly do it in this parliament”. This vague answer will do little to dissuade critics that this is an area of significant weakness for the government as he claimed when he was elected Conservative party leader that he would roll out a “clear plan we have prepared”. He said social care solutions involve moral and social issues, including whether taxpayers should be paying for people who might be able to afford their own care. Interestingly, he pledged that people will not have to sell their home to pay for their care.
What he didn’t say: what his social care plan actually entails in practice.
What he said: broad-brush suggestions to improve the lives of northern voters who backed the Tories at the general election included investment in the NHS, education, police, transport and broadband. “This would give people the chances to exploit their talents,” he said. He also promised to wind up the illegal county lines drugs trade.
What he didn’t say: he failed to name a single infrastructure project or specific investment that would benefit the region.
What he said: on Harry and Meghan’s decision to step back as senior members of the royal family, Johnson said he was “absolutely confident” the issue could be resolved. He refrained from giving any opinion on the matter, saying it could be dealt with “much more easily without running commentary from politicians”.
What he didn’t say: whether media intrusion into the royal family has been a negative factor on the couple and if the government is happy to continue paying for their security when they are in the UK.
What he said: “It’s not for government to step in and save companies that simply run into trouble,” he said of the news that the airline is struggling financially. However, the prime minister said he understood the importance of regional connectivity. “People will understand that there are limits commercially to what a government can do to rescue any particular firm. But what we will do is ensure we have the regional connectivity that this country needs. That is part of our agenda of uniting and levelling up.”
What he didn’t say: exactly how he will make sure places such as Cornwall and the Isle of Man that rely heavily on Flybe will be protected if the airline collapses.
What he said: “I’ll be clear with you, the chances of America responding by sending Anne Sacoolas to this country are very low. That’s not what they do,” said Johnson, in a frank moment of the interview. The UK has issued the US with an extradition order for Sacoolas so she can stand trial for causing the death of the 19-year-old by dangerous driving.
What he didn’t say: what pressure he will be putting on the US to insist they return her.
What he said: he suggested crowdfunding could provide the £500,000 needed to make the bell sound when Britain leaves the EU on 31 January. “Bung a bob for a Big Ben bong,” was his suggestion for a marketing line.
What he didn’t say: whether he personally wants the bell to chime and if it’s all a colossal waste of money, whoever pays for it.
What he said: he has been accused at times of operating as a “submarine-like” PM, doing minimal interviews both during the general election and since he won his majority in December. He said: “The submarine is crashing through the ice floes. The Conning tower is emerging through the ice floes right now. Here I am. I gave two press conferences yesterday. I want to be as available as I possibly can.” Cabinet members will also be left to lead on their briefs, he said.
What he didn’t say: why he did not return from his holiday on the private island of Mustique as soon as he found out about Suleimani’s death.
What he said: “I had thought of it but it requires so much concentration. I take my hat off to vegans who can handle it. You can’t eat cheese, can you, if you’re a vegan? I mean that’s just a crime against cheese lovers,” he said.
What he didn’t say: the word vegan properly. Insisted on pronouncing it ve-GAN.
First published on Tue 30 Jul 2019 14.18 BST
Boris Johnson has said it is up to the EU to compromise to avoid a no-deal Brexit, after his demands for the backstop to be scrapped were met with a flat refusal from the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.
In comments that showed he is preparing to blame the EU if the UK ends up leaving without a deal, Johnson said he was not aiming for a no-deal Brexit but the situation was “very much up to our friends and partners across the Channel”.
“They know that three times the House of Commons has thrown out that backstop, there’s no way that we can get it through, we have to have that backstop out of the deal, we cannot go on with the withdrawal agreement as it currently is,” he said.
“If they understand that then I think we are going to be at the races. If they can’t compromise, if they really can’t do it, then clearly we have to get ready for a no-deal exit.”
He said it was “up to the EU, this is their call if they want us to do this” but “unless we are determined to do it they won’t take us seriously in the course of the negotiations”.
Earlier, Johnson clashed with Varadkar in their first phone call since he entered Downing Street in which the taoiseach said the EU was united in the view that it cannot be scrapped.
Johnson finally spoke to Varadkar almost a week after becoming prime minister, telling him the UK would never put physical checks or infrastructure at the border with Northern Ireland after Brexit but demanding the backstop be scrapped.
The prime minister will travel to Northern Ireland on Wednesday with the overt aim of boosting progressing in the Stormont talks, meeting leaders from five of Northern Ireland’s political parties. His pre-briefed remarks made no reference to the border.
A spokesman for Varadkar said: “The taoiseach emphasised to the prime minister that the backstop was necessary as a consequence of decisions taken in the UK and by the UK government.
“Noting that the Brexit negotiations take place between the UK and the EU, the taoiseach explained that the EU was united in its view that the withdrawal agreement could not be reopened.
“Alternative arrangements could replace the backstop in the future, as envisaged in the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration on the future relationship, but thus far satisfactory options have yet to be identified and demonstrated.”
An Irish government spokesman said Varadkar had also invited Johnson to Dublin for further talks on Brexit. “The taoiseach restated the need for both governments to be fully committed to the Good Friday agreement, the protection of the peace process and the restoration of the Northern Ireland institutions,” the spokesman said.
“He recalled that the agreement requires the sovereign government to exercise power with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in full respect for their rights, equality, parity of esteem and just and equal treatment for the identity, ethos and aspirations of both communities.”
A No 10 spokesman said both leaders committed themselves to maintaining a warm and deep relationship between Ireland and the UK. But Johnson made clear his view the UK would be leaving the EU on 31 October regardless of whether a deal was struck and that any new agreement must be “one that abolishes the backstop”.
Johnson had been accused of snubbing his Irish counterpart by leaving it so long to speak to him, even though Varadkar will be central to whether he can agree a new withdrawal deal with the EU.
He has also drawn criticism for refusing to sit down for talks with EU leaders unless they agree there can be some movement on the Irish backstop. The leader of Ireland’s main opposition party, which is in a confidence and supply agreement with Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael party, has said Johnson’s refusal to engage with Irish and other EU leaders is a breach of diplomatic protocol.
In a strongly worded statement put out on Twitter Micheál Martin said: “To be absolutely clear; the refusal by PM Boris Johnson to engage with European leaders and our taoiseach without pre conditions on the issue of Brexit is unacceptable and not within the realms of normal diplomatic or political behaviour.”
Varadkar has ruled out a deal without the backstop, which Eurosceptic Tory MPs refused to vote for because they argued it could indefinitely trap the UK in a customs union after the end of the transitional period.
Ireland regards the backstop as integral to preventing a return to a hard border with Northern Ireland if new customs arrangements have not been put in place by the time the UK leaves.
Johnson has not yet put forward a clear proposal for replacing the backstop but some senior Tory MPs believe the solution lies in “alternative arrangements”, whereby technology could be used to conduct customs checks away from the border.
In comments before the visit to Belfast, Johnson stressed that devolution needed to be restored as matter of urgency. “The people of Northern Ireland have now been without an executive and assembly for two years and six months – put simply this is much, much too long,” he said.
“Northern Ireland’s citizens need and deserve the executive to get up and running again as soon as possible, so that locally accountable politicians can take decisions on the issues that really matter to local people. I’m pleased to meet each of Northern Ireland’s party leaders today to stress that I am going to do everything in my power to make the ongoing talks to restore devolution a success.”
Julian Smith, the new Northern Ireland secretary, said the trip in the prime minister’s first full week underlined the importance of restoring the Northern Ireland executive to this new administration.
“It is of critical importance that new momentum is now introduced to the ongoing talks process, and that all of the parties work collectively to reach agreement,” he said. “I’m pleased the prime minister has agreed to meet each party and help drive the process forward.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
The Commons Speaker, John Bercow, issued a stinging criticism of Boris Johnson’s intention to prorogue parliament, describing it as a constitutional outrage aimed at preventing MPs from debating Brexit.
In a furious statement he said he had not been consulted by the prime minister, who he said risked undermining his democratic credentials.
Bercow is expected to ensure the Commons has a chance to discuss the move, and table legislation to combat no deal, as soon as it returns from the summer recess.
“I have had no contact from the government, but if the reports that it is seeking to prorogue parliament are confirmed, this move represents a constitutional outrage,” he said.
“However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of prorogation now would be to stop parliament debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country.”
The Speaker, who is away on holiday, added: “At this early stage in his premiership, the prime minister should be seeking to establish rather than undermine his democratic credentials and indeed his commitment to parliamentary democracy.”
MPs are expected to ask the Speaker to either give them time to discuss prorogation when parliament returns next week or fast-forward cross-party legislative plans to try to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
It is understood there will be attempts to push anti no-deal legislation – which was set to be timetabled for the end of the month – through both houses of parliament between 4 and 9 September.
The Conservative MP Dominic Grieve said he and others were working on a plan to organise a “humble address”, which is a direct call from the Commons to the Queen.
He said: “I think the decision to prorogue for five weeks is constitutionally wrong and frankly outrageous. I don’t think parliament can stop prorogation although there may be something that parliament can do to register its deep concern.
“It’s possible to do a humble address to the Queen to say that we should not prorogue. Boris Johnson must assume he is going to escape parliament and I don’t think he is.”
A humble address is binding and can be used by the opposition to express its strength of feeling to the government or request that it hand over documents.
It has rarely been deployed in the past 200 years but Labour successfully used it in 2017 to make a direct appeal to the Queen that the government make public its economic impact assessments of Brexit.
Grieve said he and colleagues working to stop no deal would be working tirelessly before parliament returned on 3 September on a plan to show their unhappiness with prorogation.
He also said Johnson was aware that parliament as a whole had no desire for a suspension during the conference recess period.
“We are in the middle of a national crisis. The prime minister knows very well that the Commons was resolved not to break for the conference recess. Normal prorogation is five, six days at most and his decision to go around and do this shows his reckless disregard for the way the UK functions. It is certainly not illegal but it’s constitutionally wrong.”
First published on Sat 15 Jun 2019 22.01 BST
Boris Johnson’s attempts to appease hardline Tory Brexiters will tilt the party into a “disastrous general election” that could be just months away, senior Conservatives are warning.
The runaway favourite to replace Theresa May is being told that the coalition of support set to deliver him Downing Street “won’t survive the autumn”, when he will have to decide whether to accept a deal with the EU or try to force a no-deal Brexit – a move likely to precipitate an election.
Senior party figures are already warning of a “wipeout” in some parts of the country, such as Scotland and London, should it go into an election pledging to deliver a no-deal Brexit. They believe that once in office, Johnson will either be toppled by hardline Eurosceptic MPs should he back away from no deal, or provoke an election by pursuing such a policy.
With leadership contenders ruling out a coronation on Saturday, Tory critics are demanding increased scrutiny of Johnson’s Brexit plans. David Gauke, the justice secretary, said: “Boris is saying that he will definitely leave the EU by 31 October, but he is refusing to say how he will do this if parliament takes steps to stop a no-deal Brexit. Will he respond by suspending parliament? Will he seek a general election? This lack of clarity is helping him maintain a broad base of support for now but it won’t survive the autumn. This is why his position on Brexit needs to be tested thoroughly now.”
Alistair Burt, the former foreign office minister, said: “The risk of a serious confrontation in the party seems to be growing – the only way to avoid this is to get a deal. Jeremy Hunt is the best bet to open up the impasse, otherwise … we seem to be heading for a disastrous general election, with all the risks.”
It comes as former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke reveals he would be prepared to vote down a Conservative government led by a new prime minister who tried to push through a no-deal Brexit, which a majority of MPs in parliament oppose. In an interview with the Observer, Clarke said that in those circumstances “then you have to bring that government down”.
“If some idiot was sailing into a no-deal Brexit I’d decide politics had finally gone mad and vote against it.” Clarke also said that if it came down to a choice between no deal and a second referendum, he would abandon his lifelong opposition to referendums and back a second public vote.
“If the choice eventually became no deal or a second referendum, then they’d try to win my support – I’d stop abstaining and I’d vote for it.”
Writing in Sunday’s Observer, Johnson’s closest challenger for the leadership, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, takes a swipe at Johnson over his lack of credibility on the world stage.
Hunt says that with the UK facing not only Brexit but a series of threats, including Russian aggression, Chinese resurgence and instability in the Middle East, the UK needs a leader with an internationalist outlook. “We cannot become the party that pulls up the drawbridge or sticks two fingers up to the rest of world,” he writes. “It has never been more important to re-engage.”
Tory moderates are already convinced Johnson has adopted a Brexit strategy that is impossible to deliver. Former universities minister Sam Gyimah said: “There is no sweet spot between what the [European Research Group] sees as the ideal resolution and what is right for the party and country. You either please them and imperil the government, country and party, or you pivot away from them and your own position is at risk. This is going to come to a head pretty quickly.
“For all the differences, this is Theresa May’s script. He will try to say he believes in the project and wants to deliver Brexit, but it is parliament that is standing in the way. This is what Theresa May attempted.”
Alan Duncan, a senior foreign office minister, said: “Those more moderate colleagues who are tempted by Johnson need to think if the arithmetic or issues have in any way changed. If they haven’t, then changing leader is not going to change our fortunes.”
On Sunday, Lord (John) Kerr, former UK ambassador to Brussels and the author of article 50, attacks the leadership candidates for making promises on Brexit that they will never be able to meet.
“What alarms me most about the current Conservative party leadership race is that fiction and fantasy are back, and harsh facts again forgotten, as new promises, no less unrealistic, are made. The unicorns are back, frolicking in the Tory forest. Claims that the withdrawal agreement can be renegotiated ignore the solemn undertakings given by the UK government in March that it will not seek to do so, as well as the EU’s repeated statements saying it will not do so.”
Meanwhile, former Tory leadership contender Esther McVey has come out in support of Boris Johnson. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, McVey – who was eliminated in the first ballot of MPs – said Johnson had agreed to back her agenda for “blue collar Conservatism”.
First published on Sun 2 Dec 2018 17.12 GMT
A leaked draft legal analysis produced for the European scrutiny committee by in-house lawyers warns that the UK will face “a practical barrier” to striking a trade deal with the US or other non-EU countries if the country falls into the backstop customs arrangements.
The remarks, contained within a draft paper that leaked on Monday morning, emerged hours before the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, was scheduled to brief the Commons about his advice on the Brexit deal negotiated by May.
The 27-page document, dated 26 November, says the UK would conform to EU customs rules if it entered the backstop, and adds that this “would be a practical barrier to the UK entering separate trade agreements on goods with third countries”.
The Northern Ireland backstop has become the most controversial part of the legally binding withdrawal agreement struck by May with the European Union, because it ties the UK to EU rules in order to maintain an open border in Ireland if no free trade agreement has been signed.
Last week, Donald Trump unexpectedly declared he believed that Brexit deal would be “a great deal for the EU” and that the UK “may not be able to trade with us” as a result.
However, during the G20 summit over the weekend, May said the US president was wrong. She said: “I’m very happy to tell President Trump and others that we will have an independent trade policy, we will be able to do trade deals.”
Cox is expected to be questioned intensely by MPs as to what his legal advice says about the backstop, amid criticism that the UK could not exit the customs arrangement without the permission of the EU.
He will speak to MPs on Monday afternoon, at a time when then government is at risk of being declared in contempt of parliament in a row over the publication of official legal advice on the departure deal.
Ministers have agreed to publish only a summary at 2pm, despite losing a vote last month over publishing the full deal. The prime minister’s official spokesman said this would be the “full reasoned positioned statement” in line with the commitments given by cabinet office minister David Lidington to the Commons last month.
Downing Street argues strongly that the summary will be sufficient information for any MP to make up their mind on the legal aspects of the deal before the upcoming five-day debate, and that it keeps to the protocol that full advice is seen as confidential between lawyer and client.
But Labour, which last month won a vote on a Commons motion obliging the release of the full advice, is to join forces with other parties, including the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), to try to pressure ministers to accede to their publication demand, using the ominous, if vague, threat of a contempt of parliament motion.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said he believed ministers would be in “really deep water” if they sought to thwart the Commons. Despite Lidington’s assurance to the Commons, MPs made clear this wouldn’t be sufficient, and Labour won on an opposition day motion to have all the legal documents published.
“If they don’t produce it tomorrow, then we will start contempt proceedings, and this will be a collision course between the government and parliament,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge.
“I accept that it’s exceptional to have that disclosed. It has happened in the past, but it is exceptional. That’s why we had a debate in parliament – to say: is this the sort of case where it’s so exceptional that it should be disclosed?”
It is expected Labour will see how much detail is contained in the “legal position paper” – a precis of the advice given by Cox to cabinet – published on Monday, and in the attorney general’s answers to MPs, before deciding on a contempt motion.
In theory, a minister found to be in contempt of parliament could be suspended or even expelled from the Commons, though such sanctions are seen as extremely unlikely.
Any motion would be cross-party, with the DUP, May’s unofficial coalition partners, expected to join Labour’s efforts, along with the Liberal Democrats.
A few Conservative MPs have called for the full advice to be published, amid reports at the weekend that Cox had told the cabinet there was a risk the backstop arrangement could stay in place “indefinitely”.
Two strongly Leave-supporting Tories announced they wanted to see the the full advice. David Jones and Simon Clarke, who were both lawyers before becoming MPs, said the importance of next week’s vote made this vital.
Clarke said: “We are about to embark on the most significant debate in parliament for many decades. The functioning of the backstop and our ability to ever leave it will lie at the heart of it, and the advice the attorney general has laid before the cabinet is crucial.”
Boris Johnson used his latest Daily Telegraph column to add to the calls to publish the advice in full. The former foreign secretary said it was “outrageous that the public should be prevented from knowing the full legal implications of this appalling deal”.
A key issue for May is whether dissent spreads to more moderate MPs. One centrist Tory said: “There is good reason for advice to stay confidential. The issue here is trust. Given Brexit divisions, can this hold? Possibly not.”
Downing Street is publicly confident that the arrangement for Cox to answer questions should be enough to reassure even the most suspicious or curious MPs. “He will be there to answer any question any MP wants to put to him, so there is going to be full scrutiny. It’s important to note that we are making him available,” a No 10 source said.
May will also simultaneously begin a charm offensive to win over Conservative MPs in dozens of face-to-face meetings before the crucial Commons votes on the deal on 11 December.
In another Brexit wrangle, May and Jeremy Corbyn are still yet to agree the format for a mooted TV debate between the pair next Sunday. The Labour leader said he was happy to hold a head-to-head encounter on the BBC, while a No 10 spokesman said Corbyn’s “confected demands” meant he was trying to obstruct the process.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
The prospects of a Brexit deal with the EU appear to be “promising” after negotiations between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar over the Irish border, Nicky Morgan has said.
A day after the British prime minister signalled the possibility of a U-turn on his plans, the culture secretary said the “mood music … seems positive, but clearly there are lots of details to be worked out.”
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There are strong views on all sides and I imagine we’ll all find out around the EU council next week exactly what has happened between the two sides.”
On Friday, EU sources said Johnson had conceded there could not be a customs border on the island of Ireland – a critical step away from his previous position. Officials are continuing talks in Brussels over the weekend after the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, gave the go-ahead for intensive negotiations to start.
However, Morgan would not be drawn on details of the discussions because “there are subtle nuances with all of these things”.
She added: “It’s a question of what is negotiated between the parties and obviously it also has to satisfy people living in Northern Ireland, who are very much at the heart of all of this, and to be approved by members of parliament.”
The Democratic Unionist party and the European Research Group of rightwing Conservatives issued statements promising flexibility, keeping hope alive that Johnson could find support for a new offer in the House of Commons.
But the prime minister faces a frantic race to push through a deal before 31 October. On Friday, he twice refused to deny Northern Ireland could stay in the EU’s customs territory after Brexit.
During a briefing of EU ambassadors on Friday, Barnier did not go into the details of the UK’s new position. But he informed the diplomats that his two-hour breakfast with UK’s Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, had been notable for the apparent pivot by the British government.
One EU source said: “The UK has accepted that there is not a deal that involves a border on the island of Ireland – that is a big break from what they were saying. Now the key is for them to lay out how their new position over the weekend.”
Morgan also said reports that Johnson was preparing to fight a general election on a no-deal platform if he were unable to get an agreement were “wide of the mark”.
She added: “The prime minister has always been clear that a deal is infinitely preferable and that is what we want to see.
“These talks with our EU friends and neighbours are obviously at a very delicate stage. I think it is incumbent on all of us to stand back from briefings and speculation and just allow these talks to happen.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Any delay to the UK leaving the EU could cost the government tens of millions in extra payments to keep its no-deal ferry contracts in place.
The extra costs will be a fresh political blow to the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, after the collapse of one contract with an operator that had no ferries and a lawsuit by Eurotunnel that was settled out of court at a cost of £33m.
It seems unlikely the contracts will now be realised after MPs voted to instruct Theresa May to seek an extension to article 50, which would delay Brexit beyond 29 March. According to the Financial Times, the cost of the delay could reach £28m.
Brittany Ferries, which has contracts worth £46.6m under the deal, said the terms “included fair and proportionate compensation in a deal scenario, taking account of the significant preparatory work and concomitant costs incurred”.
It said the firm had already “incurred a series of direct costs and resource commitments”, including hiring new staff and changing more than 20,000 bookings, and “the new schedule cannot now be changed, even as an extension to article 50 seems likely”.
The contracts are intended to ensure imports of medicines and other vital supplies to the UK continue in the event of a no-deal Brexit causing chaos on the short Dover-Calais and Channel tunnel routes. A National Audit Office memorandum in February noted the potential problems caused by a delay to the article 50 process.
“If the date of the UK’s exit from the EU changes, and there is still the possibility of a no-deal EU exit, the department will need to decide how it wishes to proceed with the contracts,” the NAO said in February.
“There is no provision for the start date to be delayed, but the department may seek to negotiate this with the operators.”
A Department for Transport spokesman said: “As the prime minister has made clear, the legal default in UK and EU law remains that the UK will leave the EU without a deal unless something else is agreed.
“Leaving with a deal is still our priority, but as a responsible government it is only right that we push on with contingency measures, that will ensure critical goods such as medicines can continue to enter the UK.”
First published on Sat 21 Sep 2019 20.00 BST
Jeremy Corbyn was struggling to contain an open revolt by some of his most senior shadow ministers, MPs and party activists last night as anger over his refusal to back a policy of remaining in the EU threatened to wreck the Labour conference.
With delegates already reeling from a failed attempt by Corbyn supporters to oust Tom Watson and abolish his role as deputy leader, anger erupted amid accusations that the leadership was trying to block democratic debate and fudge a decision about where Labour stands on the issue of leaving the EU.
What was supposed to be a conference to showcase a party united behind new policies on education and health before a likely general election instead opened amid bitterness and acrimony, with a defiant Watson still in place, and Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer and Clive Lewis, the shadow foreign secretary, Brexit secretary and Treasury minister, publicly defying Corbyn by backing Remain.
Leading a march through the streets of Brighton in favour of a people’s vote yesterday, hours after Corbyn had tabled a motion to the national executive committee (NEC) in favour of delaying a decision on whether to back Remain or Leave, Thornberry said: “We have got to campaign to remain. We have got to stop messing around.”
At the same event Starmer insisted that he would back Remain because “it’s about what sort of country you want to be”, while Lewis accused Corbyn of trying to use union block votes to stifle the views of the mass membership which had propelled him to the leadership in the first place. Their defiance came as news emerged that Labour’s head of policy, Andrew Fisher, a key Corbyn aide who masterminded the 2017 election campaign, had resigned, reportedly telling colleagues he did not believe the party could win a general election. In a memo to colleagues, Fisher is said to have accused Corbyn’s team of a “lack of professionalism, competence and human decency”.
A leading leftwing activist, Michael Chessum, who has coordinated local party efforts to push a pro-Remain motion through conference, told the Observer that patience among delegates was running out as the leadership appeared intent on defying ordinary members and imposing central control. “There is a really surreal edge to the atmosphere, partly exacerbated by attempts to delete Tom Watson – but also on Brexit,” he said.
“We have a party that wants Remain, voters overwhelmingly wanting clarity, MPs that want Remain and a front bench that wants Remain – and yet a ludicrous insistence that the party machine might not back them.”
The conference is now heading for a series of flashpoint moments. On Sunday there will be key discussions on what Brexit motion goes forward for debate and a vote on the conference floor on Monday. Then on Tuesday Watson is planning to make his own call for unity in his deputy leader’s speech, before Corbyn’s keynote address on Wednesday.
The latest Opinium/Observer poll today shows that Labour (on 22%) has now fallen 15 points behind the Tories (on 37%) despite Boris Johnson’s turbulent start, while the hardline pro-Remain Liberal Democrats are on 17% and the Brexit party on 12%.
Alarmingly for Labour, 58% of those polled now think the Tories have a clear policy on Brexit, against just 31% of voters who say Labour’s approach is clear. The poll also shows for the first time that as many Remain voters (33%) now plan to vote for the Liberal Democrats as for Labour. In April the proportion planning to vote Labour was nearer 50%, with only around 10% saying they would choose the Lib Dems.
Yesterday’s ructions over Brexit broke out after it emerged that Corbyn had tabled a statement to the NEC saying that, while the party backed a referendum and would offer the options of a credible Brexit deal or Remain to voters, a decision on how it would campaign in a second public vote would be left until after a general election. Pro-Remain activists and senior party figures who have campaigned for months to shift policy were outraged. They saw the move as an attempt to kill off debate and block a conference vote on their own pro-Remain motion.
Last night, however, the leader’s office appeared to back off. It told delegates that the pro-Remain motion would not be superseded by the NEC statement, and would still be debated. It now appears that two competing votes – one on the NEC statement, and the other explicitly backing Remain – could be debated and voted on on Tuesday.
Asked yesterday if he had known about the plan to oust Watson, put forward to the NEC on Friday by Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, Corbyn swerved the question. Then after an outcry, and protests from senior figures including the former party leaders Tony Blair and Ed Miliband, Corbyn said that the plan would not proceed and would be replaced by a review into the role of the deputy leader.
Watson, who is understood to think Corbyn was fully aware, described the attempt to oust him as a “drive-by shooting”, adding in a BBC interview: “I got a text message in a Chinese restaurant in Manchester to say that they were abolishing me. It’s a straight sectarian attack on a broad-church party and it’s moving us into a different kind of institution where pluralism isn’t tolerated, where factional observance has to be adhered to completely and it kind of completely goes against the sort of traditions that the Labour party has had for 100 years.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Election slogans are rarely amusing when they are served hot from the political kitchen. It is the cooling breeze of time that flavours the braggery of yesterday with a certain black comedy.
Recall how David Cameron framed the choice at the 2015 election as one between “strong and stable government” led by himself, or “a coalition of chaos” under Ed Miliband. We have no way of knowing how chaotic life might have been under a Miliband government, but it is reasonable to guess that even at his most hapless he would have struggled to match the unblemished record of unleashing havoc achieved by the Tories in the four years since.
This week we will be treated to another spasm of Brexit-induced mayhem when Theresa May has another go at shoving her unloved withdrawal deal through parliament. MPs rejected it back in January by the thumping margin of 230 votes, a defeat on a scale without precedent. The consensus is that she will again fail to secure approval on Tuesday. I can only suppose that the prime minister chose to go to Grimsby on Friday because it was an appropriately named location for a desperate speech that beseeched the DUP and the Brexit ultras on the Tory benches to rally to her deal, at the same time as pleading with the EU to give her something with which to appease them.
Geoffrey Cox, the attorney-general and her point man for the most recent round of text-wrestling with the EU’s negotiators, is rather proud of the Brexiter soubriquet “Cox’s codpiece”. All the signals from sources this weekend suggest that there is nothing in the attorney’s scrotal pouch. The only thing London and Brussels agree on is that they have not managed to agree.
Since bluff and brinkmanship are integral to what is unfolding now, we should not be too dogmatic in our predictions as to how this will turn out. Let us briefly entertain the possibility that the consensus is wrong and Mrs May somehow manages to extract a parliamentary victory from the jaws of defeat. There is a last-gasp rejigging of the Irish backstop and this proves sufficient to change enough minds in parliament and squeeze her deal through the Commons. Mrs May will then enjoy some of the best days of her premiership. She will even be hailed by some voices as a brilliant tactician who held her nerve until everyone else blinked. This adulation could last for maybe as long as 72 hours. Then everyone will remember why they found her deal so awful in the first place. A lot of her own party will remember why they want rid of her as leader. And what of those broad swathes of the electorate who are under the tragic illusion that parliamentary approval of the withdrawal agreement will mean that Brexit is sorted? These voters will then be woken up by the excruciating reality that this only concludes the first chapter – and the relatively easier one. The tougher stretch, negotiating the future relationship with the EU, has not even begun. All we have about that are some fuzzy words in the “political declaration” attached to the withdrawal agreement. For the next two years of Brexit negotiations, Britain will be “in transition” and still a member of the EU in all but name. We will have to carry on paying subscriptions to Brussels and obeying the rules which are written there, with the critical difference that Britain will no longer have any say over those budgets or rules. So even the “good” scenario for Mrs May comes with bad consequences.
As I write, the much more probable result of this week’s vote is that she goes down to another defeat and by another large margin. The deal she has spent so many months negotiating and selling will then have been rejected twice. Her authority shredded again, the prime minister will be an even more enfeebled figure and Britain will plunge deeper into uncertainty. With barely more than a fortnight remaining before Brexit day, we will still not have a clue where one of the world’s largest economies and supposedly most sophisticated democracies will land at 11pm on 29 March.
Defeat this week will present Mrs May with some extremely unappetising choices. Whichever way she turns, she will be obliged to swallow a 10-course meal of her previous rhetoric. In the event that her deal goes down a second time, MPs have been promised a vote the next day on whether they are prepared to allow Britain to leave on 29 March without an agreement. If that vote takes place, it is pretty certain that there will be a Commons majority for rejecting no-deal. MPs have already said no to no-deal in a symbolic vote at the end of January. There is only a small minority in parliament, the most fanatical wing of the Brextremists, who positively yearn to go off the cliff edge without a parachute. There will be a majority to stop it, whether or not the government’s business managers try to whip Tory MPs. I say this because at least some Conservative MPs retain a residual instinct for self-preservation. They have contemplated the consequences of a calamitous Brexit and are very scared of what it would do to the economy and their party’s reputation. They will vote to stop Britain crashing out. That will terminate Mrs May’s strategy of trying to use the spectre of a no-deal outcome to spook MPs into supporting her.
If both her deal and no-deal have been rejected, Britain is going to need more time and parliament will very likely vote to instruct Mrs May to ask the EU for a delay to the withdrawal date. This is something else that she has previously sworn that she would never countenance, but she couldn’t realistically defy a parliamentary instruction to ask for extra time. In which case, it is quite likely that she will pre-empt a parliamentary vote by unilaterally declaring that she is going to seek an extension. She might well do this in the immediate wake of the defeat of her deal, in an attempt to maintain some grip, however fragile, over the process.
An extension is not in itself any answer to the Brexit nightmare because it comes with a host of questions. How long a delay? Three months? Six months? A year? Two years? And for what purpose? The intended purpose of delay is more important than its length.
This will be a big issue for the EU, which has to agree to a postponement. An extension can only happen with the unanimous agreement of every one of its members. Each state, large or small, from Malta to Germany, Estonia to Italy, can wield a veto. Before they grant what they will see as a favour to Britain, they will want to know how it intends to spend the extra time. The EU really doesn’t want to be confronted with Britain coming back again and again to ask for further extensions, like a schoolboy who can never finish his homework.
Emmanuel Macron, who has a record of taking a hard line with the British government, has suggested that France will only support an extension if it involves “new choices”. The EU is unlikely to be impressed by a British request for an extension which isn’t accompanied by a clear plan to bring this to a resolution.
The EU would almost certainly grant an extension for the purpose of putting the question back to the British people and asking whether, after all they have learned over the past 32 months, they really want to go through with Brexit. Mrs May has always set her face against that, and with her characteristic stubbornness, but this doesn’t mean it can’t happen. As we reveal today, Steve Barclay, her Brexit secretary, has opened his door to Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, the two Labour backbenchers who have done most to promote the idea that the Commons should pass Mrs May’s deal on the condition that it is then put before the British people for approval or rejection in a confirmatory referendum, with Remain also on the ballot paper. Since Labour’s shift of position, all the opposition parties are now signed up to another referendum, but it is moot whether there is yet a Commons majority for making it happen. It is not certain that enough Tories will support another referendum to compensate for the minority of Labour MPs who won’t.
It will not be clear until after Tuesday’s vote whether the option of another referendum will be put to MPs this week. Embracing this course would be hateful to the prime minister. It would involve eating an enormous heap of her own words, but then so do all her other options. And she must be used to the bitter taste of swallowing her old slogans by now.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.44 GMT
Senior figures in the Brexit party are divided over whether they should contest every seat in the general election – or give committed Tory Brexit supporters a clear run.
The party, led by the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, is hoping to secure its first MPs this December when it stands in a general election for the first time. But splits are emerging between those who want to run in all 650 seats and others who would prefer to focus on a smaller, targeted list.
The Brexit party chair, Richard Tice, has said the party has vetted 600 candidates so far and hopes to run in up to 650 seats.
Farage is said to be in the middle on the strategy in terms of numbers. Others are urging for caution and suggest working on a much-reduced list of target seats in case they split the Brexit vote and threaten the chance of Britain leaving the EU.
Arron Banks, who co-founded the Leave.EU campaign group with Tice, said that there is a “split view on what to do” within the party, which will go to the electorate with a promise to deliver a “clean Brexit” – a form of no deal.
He said: “What I was saying was, be strategic. Where it makes sense to stand, stand. Where it doesn’t, don’t.”
Farage is currently away in Washington but decisions on where the party is going to stand will take place over the weekend, it is understood, after their election launch due to take place later this week.
Banks added: “He’s got a big decision to take, whether to be strategic about it.”
In dozens of marginals it could be possible that the Brexit party hands victory to pro-remain candidates from Labour or the Liberal Democrats by splitting the vote withthe Tory party candidate who may be an enthusiastic advocate of Boris Johnson’s deal.
He said that some candidates might decide it is not worth running against committed Brexiters and “take matters into their own hands” by standing down.
Among the candidates apparently already withdrawing from the race, according to Banks, is their representative in Stone, the seat of the long-standing Eurosceptic Bill Cash.
A spokesperson for the Brexit party said the idea that they were due to pull out of hundreds of seats so as not to risk scuppering Brexit was “rubbish” and “speculation”, but acknowledged that the party wants to focus on Labour heartlands with a significant leave vote.
He said: “It is complete speculation. We are talking about things but we have got candidates and we are just working out where to place people.”
John Longworth, the Brexit party MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, has suggested the party be “sensible” for its first Westminster election and focus on parts of the country where they have a genuine chance. “I think we ought to be targeted in terms of the number of seats that we decide to address,” he told the Times.
“I can imagine that might be 20 or 30. They would be entirely winnable then if you poured all your resources into them. You probably would not get any more if you concentrated on the 600. But you would also get a better result for Brexit too.”
Last modified on Sat 1 Jun 2019 23.25 BST
Nigel Farage’s Brexit party has surged into first place as voters’ favourites, according to a new poll. It is the first time the party has achieved top position in a national poll. The results suggest hundreds of Conservative seats are at risk.
The Brexit party’s support increased by two points to 26% of the vote in the latest Opinium poll – for the Observer – which asked people how they would vote in the next Westminster election.
Labour is in second place on 22%, but its support has fallen by seven points over the past two weeks. The Tories are third on 17%, with their support down five points, and the Lib Dems are up five points, on 16% of the vote.
These results come after a poll last week put the Lib Dems in first place, in another sign that parties with a clear position on Brexit are gaining support while the Conservatives and Labour continue to grapple with their stances on leaving the EU. Both parties are under pressure to set out their pro-Brexit or pro-Remain positions more unequivocally.
According to a seat predictor by the Electoral Calculus website, the result would leave Farage 20 seats short of a majority, with 306 MPs. The Conservatives would be reduced to 26 MPs, suggesting they could be the minor party in a coalition with Farage. However, inconsistent swings in different seats make any such predictions very difficult.
There is good news for the Greens, who are up eight points to 11% of the vote, but not all the news for the pro-Remain parties is positive. Change UK recorded just 1% support, down two points on Opinium’s previous poll. Most Remain voters (54%) said that Change UK MPs should join the Liberal Democrats to present a united front against Brexit.
Theresa May and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn continue to have incredibly low ratings on the question of who would make the best prime minister. Both are on only 15%, with a record 60% failing to back either party leader.
On balance, 45% of the public think May has done a bad job as prime minister, with only a quarter (24%) saying she has done a good job. Half (49%) also think that no one else in her position as prime minister would have done a better job in the circumstances that she faced.
In the Tory leadership race, Boris Johnson has the most support (24%) among Conservative voters to be the party’s next leader. The other standout choice is Michael Gove, with 14%.
Adam Drummond, from Opinium, said: “All of the big winners from the European elections have seen some sort of a boost, with the Brexit party adding another two points to move into first place, while Labour have fallen back significantly. While the Lib Dems have experienced a boost, the underreported story from the elections and since then has been the Greens, who have gained eight points since our last poll.
“While the Brexit party and the Lib Dems have been taking votes from Leavers and Remainers respectively, the Greens are unique in taking votes from both sides of the Brexit divide.
“While the usual caveats should apply about how much to read into Westminster voting intention polls, given the proximity to the European elections, the fact is that we might be less than six months out from a general election so these might become relevant very quickly.”
Opinium polled 2,005 people online from 28-30 May.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The Brexit party will present a “full slate” of policy ideas once next week’s European elections are over, Nigel Farage has pledged, as he ramped up his attacks on the BBC following a bad-tempered television interview on Sunday.
Addressing a party rally in West Yorkshire, Farage said that up until the European elections, where his party leads in the polls, he would talk only about Brexit-related matters.
“Thereafter, of course we’re going to put a full slate of policies up before the British public – political reform, more help for the regions, scrapping of ludicrous projects like HS2,” he told the crowd in Featherstone, near Pontefract.
The rally saw Farage condemn “career politicians who have never done a deal in their lives” as the cause of the Brexit impasse. Ann Widdecombe, the former Tory minister who is standing in the south-west for the Brexit party, condemned the civil service and said the group would “sweep the traitors out of Westminster”.
In an earlier media interview on Monday, Farage rounded on the BBC in the wake of an interview the previous day in which he was visibly angered after being asked about previous statements he had made.
Appearing on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, Farage said it was “ludicrous” that he should be asked about his previously stated views on areas including the best form of Brexit, a second referendum, privatising the NHS, migration and gun control.
Later that day he told the Politics Home website: “The BBC are now the enemy.”
Speaking to Talk Radio on Monday, Farage said he believed the BBC had “no interest in dealing with this election fairly”, adding: “In fact, until this week nobody from the Brexit party had appeared on any major BBC programme.”
Talking about his series of party rallies, he said: “What I never see at these events are the BBC. They have literally denied our existence from day one, and when we get on to a major interview they don’t want to talk about this campaign, they don’t want to talk about our candidates, they don’t want to challenge Brexit and the way in which we want to do it.
“All they want to do is drag up a series of comments, some made as long as 10 years ago, in many cases hopelessly out of context, and that for me is a failure of public service broadcasting.”
Asked in the same interview whether he could potentially work with the Conservatives to deliver Brexit, Farage said this would only happen if the party elected a leader who supported no deal and “who gets rid of the Hammonds, and all the remainers in the cabinet”.
He added: “I think the Conservatives’ problems are deeper than just who the leader is. I’m not sure that a new leader necessarily turns the Conservative party round, because it will still be the same group of MPs.”
Speaking at the rally, Farage was scathing about the government: “It’s about a group of career politicians who have never done a deal in their lives, going into this negotiation being outwitted and outfoxed at every turn.
“Part of the offering that we have to you from the Brexit party is we have got men and women who have had successful careers in business. They would make a damn sight better job of getting this country ready for its independence.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.16 GMT
A lack of energy and leadership in Theresa May’s government has left hopes of a successful Brexit at risk of falling apart “like a chocolate orange”, a leading government watchdog has warned.
In an extraordinary intervention that will raise the pressure on the prime minister to reassess her approach to Brexit, the comptroller and auditor general of the National Audit Office said the government had failed to take a unified approach to talks with the EU. He also revealed that a request to see a ministerial plan for the changes needed to leave the EU had been met with only “vague” assurances.
Amyas Morse said that the result could be failures across Whitehall as the negotiations unfold. “Can government actually step up in these very difficult circumstances and deliver a unified response?” he asked. “I’m not seeing it yet.”
Morse, whose role as chief auditor gives him a statutory responsibility to scrutinise all public spending, has spoken out in a rare interview with reporters – a reflection of his growing concern. He suggested that the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU), the Treasury and the cabinet office had so far failed to take an “energetic” lead, leaving other departments to set their own priorities.
“These options could have been activated by now. The combined forces of DExEU leadership, Treasury and Cabinet Office should be speaking on one voice on these matters,” he said.
He said he has asked to see, but not been shown, a ministerial plan to guide government departments through structural and legal changes for the UK to leave the EU. He had only received “vague” assurances that the government would support struggling departments trying to enact complex and expensive changes made necessary by Brexit, he said.
Morse’s alarming verdict comes as the National Audit Office said there was “very little flexibility” in plans for a new customs system, which is due to be ready two months before Britain is supposed to leave the EU.
 “Leaving the EU is a negotiation,” Morse said. “It means the results are uncertain and [departments] need to be fast and flexible and react in a unified way. We have an issue there because we have departmental government. What we don’t want to find is that at the first tap it falls apart like a chocolate orange. It needs to be coming through like a cricket ball,” he said.
“There has to be strong integration. To have things start to go wrong and then say, ‘Oops, perhaps we might have to be a bit better integrated’ really is second best.”
There could be hundreds of new projects launched by government departments and hundreds of project managers recruited to help implement Brexit, as well as more than a thousand statutory instruments passed, he said.
Morse said he had “expressed interest” to both the Brexit secretary, David Davis, and Oliver Robbins, the department’s permanent secretary, that he would like to see a cross-departmental plan on Brexit implementation. Neither had so far put one forward, he indicated.
Asked what DExEU’s response was, he responded with a single word: vague. He added that he “wouldn’t be speaking like this” if he believed the coordinated support needed across government to deal with Brexit was in place. “It is symptomatic of whether the government is really able to drive this across departments or whether we leave each department to struggle with it on their own.
“We want to see a more unified approach. That is very much from the point of protecting UK taxpayers’ interests – it is not because of anything else,” he said.
Last summer, Morse told the Guardian that billions of pounds’ worth of projects should be scrapped by May because of a “tidal wave” of pressures from an impending Brexit. So far, his warnings have gone unheeded, and he reiterated the need for the government to re-examine major projects.
Turning to the report into the new customs declaration service, which is being updated for Brexit, he warned that it would be a “horror show” if officials were forced to manually process imports and exports. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) estimates that the number of annual customs declarations will rise from 55 million to 255 million after March 2019.
The new system for processing imports and exports, which was signed off before the referendum vote, is expected to be completed just two months before the Brexit deadline of March 2019.
The report said it was unreasonable to leave HMRC to decide whether more money and resources should be spent on ensuring that there was a working system in place on day one of the UK’s future outside the EU.
Although customs reforms were progressing, there was normally a drift in the timescale of major IT projects, he said. “The reason for emphasising these points is the government really needs to recognise that. I’ve noticed in some of the public comments it is starting to lay off on the risk a little bit.”
Contingency plans have been outlined in case of delays in the CDS being introduced, but they were not well developed, the watchdog said. In the worst case, customs officials could revert to manual processing at border points, but “that would be a bit of a horror show”, Morse said.
An HMRC spokesman said: “The Customs Declaration Service is on track for delivery by January 2019 and will support international trade once the UK leaves the European Union.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Talks between Labour and the government are unlikely to advance much further in the coming week unless Theresa May moves on her red lines over a future customs union, sources close to the talks have suggested.
David Lidington, who is leading the government’s talks with Labour, said a compromise would have to be reached but played down suggestions that a government shift was imminent and added that Labour would also have to move.
Labour has suggested the ball is in the government’s court and, while the opposition will engage on other topics including workers’ rights and security, the key question on customs arrangements remains unresolved. “She needs to take a political decision to move off her red lines – or not,” one source said.
Lidington said both sides had common ground on future customs arrangements but refused to say whether the government was prepared to agree to Jeremy Corbyn’s central demand for a common external tariff policy with the EU.
“We think it is possible to get the benefits of a customs union but still have the flexibility for the UK to pursue an independent trade policy on top of that with other countries outside the EU. Labour has a different approach,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “If we are going to reach an agreement there is going to have to be movement on both sides.”
The government has said three working groups will be established next week: security talks between the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, and his opposite number, Keir Starmer; environmental protections with Michael Gove and his shadow, Sue Hayman; and consumers’ and workers’ rights between the business secretary, Greg Clark, and his shadow, Rebecca Long-Bailey.
Sources suggested the chancellor, Philip Hammond, could meet the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. And a meeting between party chiefs when MPs return to Westminster is being planned to assess the progress that had been made.
Lidington said the two sides “would hope to take stock of where we are as soon as parliament gets back after Easter recess but I don’t think this question can be allowed to drag out”.
He said there was “no date ringed in the calendar” for the talks to end but if agreement could not be reached on some form of Brexit deal then he hoped the two sides would be able to agree a binding mechanism for parliament to agree a way forward.
“What we want to do is agree a set of options with a system for making a choice with parliament actually having to come up with a preferred option rather than voting against everything,” he said.
May and Corbyn are not expected to be involved in the talks this week during the Easter recess, though Tory MPs expect speculation over the prime minister’s position and leadership jostling to continue. The former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said May should resign next month despite her failure to pass a withdrawal agreement.
“I know that the prime minister has already said she’s going. She said she would go as and when the agreement was ratified, which was looking at around about May, June. I think those dates still stand,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
“I think that what the PM has to do is aim everything now towards departure before the Euros [elections], which would then allow her to step away having done what she said she would do, getting the UK out of the European Union one way or the other, and then we can have another leadership election and pick a new leader, which is the way it has to be.”
Two former chairs of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, Michael Spicer and Archie Hamilton, said party rules could be changed to allow a leadership challenge sooner than December.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the two peers said there was “nothing standing in their way” if MPs agreed to change the rules, though the committee’s current chair, Sir Graham Brady, said he was “less certain that it would be possible to change the rules during the current period of grace”.
However, the former party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin warned those agitating for a swift leadership change that installing a hard Brexiter in No 10 would not necessarily solve the Conservatives’ electoral problems.
“Defining ourselves as the Brexit party, pursuing the hardest form of Brexit with a parliament that will not deliver it, is a recipe for paralysis in government and suicide with the electorate,” he wrote for the Sunday Times. “We are the Conservative party, not the Vote Leave party.”
Nadine Dorries, a Eurosceptic MP and keen supporter of Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign, hit back at what she suggested was a concerted campaign against Johnson.
“There has been a stop Boris campaign since the days of Michael Howard pushing forward Cameron and Osborne,” she tweeted. “Boris is a big winner. Many of those with their own eye on No 10 aren’t a fan of that prospect.”
Duncan Smith said many in the party were deeply concerned about the most recent polling predicting a Labour lead of up to seven points and dire forecasts for the local and EU elections.
“It was on the 29th when we didn’t leave; that’s when this has all gone wrong. Up until then, people were prepared to give Theresa May the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “The big problem was as soon as we didn’t leave, you could see all the poll ratings start to crash.”
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Europe’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has raised the prospect of the UK remaining under EU control until the end of 2022, a proposal that would cost billions and infuriate Tory Brexiters.
At a special meeting with ambassadors from the EU’s 27 member states, Barnier floated the prospect of extending the Brexit transition until the end of 2022. His idea would allow an extra two years to negotiate a trading relationship, but means the UK would continue to follow EU rules and pay into its budget with no say for six and a half years after the 2016 vote to leave.
Both sides have already agreed a transition period of 21 months, until the end of 2020, as well as the chance to extend once by mutual consent. The length of the extension is still to be finalised by negotiators.
The transition period, which the British government prefers to call the implementation period, would see the UK following all EU laws and European court of justice rulings, while having no ministers or MEPs in the EU decision-making process.
Theresa May has previously suggested an extension of only a few months would be needed, but the EU is still waiting on the UK to make a formal proposal.
Negotiations between the EU and UK were continuing on Sunday as Brexit talks entered a critical final week, ahead of a special summit on 25 November when both sides hope to seal the deal.
While Westminster remains in political turmoil, with leading Brexiters angling to send the prime minister back to Brussels to renegotiate the 585-page withdrawal treaty, the EU regards the text as finalised.
European leaders have zero appetite to reopen talks, despite some unhappiness about the customs union being offered to the UK as an insurance plan to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. “While certain member states would certainly like to see more, they have to swallow it for now,” one diplomat said.
The ambassadors did not discuss the cost of a transition extension – the UK’s net contribution to the EU budget was £9.6bn in 2016, but would have been £14.5bn without the rebate. The EU has previously said the UK would no longer be entitled to the rebate after 2020.
At the meeting, Spain voiced unhappiness about the status of Gibraltar, but EU sources were not expecting Madrid to stand in the way of an agreement. Spain has publicly welcomed the deal on Gibraltar, but its minority government is under pressure from opposition parties over the status of the dependency.
Instead, EU member states are focusing their attention on the statement on future relations, a political declaration that is expected to be released on Tuesday. France is taking a strict approach to avoid any watering down of the EU’s four freedoms, while economically liberal countries, such as the Netherlands and the Baltic states, are looking for a more ambitious text.
Ministers from EU27 will meet in Brussels on Monday to give further input into the document, which is due to be signed off at the Brexit summit next Sunday.
May said she would be travelling to Brussels to meet the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, this week, but her announcement has not been confirmed in Brussels. “President Juncker is of course ready to meet PM May once the negotiations on the political declaration have advanced in a decisive manner,” a commission spokesman said. “Work on this is ongoing between the negotiators,” he said, adding it was “too early to say when a meeting could take place”.
The president of Britain’s employers’ organisation said that while Barnier’s intentions in proposing an extension may have been constructive, such an announcement “may not be particularly helpful” at this point in time.
John Allan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think he’s trying to be helpful and trying to reduce the risk that the backstop will be needed. Him saying it just at this moment may not be particularly helpful, but I think his intentions are probably good.
“We all hope it won’t be necessary, that the discussions on our future economic relationship with the EU will be concluded by the end of 2020 and within the existing transition period.
“But remember, that transition period only comes into effect if parliament approves the withdrawal agreement. Otherwise we’ve got the cliff edge in March next year.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
It’s done. A triumph of dogged negotiation by May then, briefly, Johnson, has fulfilled the most pointless, masochistic ambition ever dreamed of in the history of these islands. The rest of the world, presidents Putin and Trump excepted, have watched on in astonishment and dismay. A majority voted in December for parties which supported a second referendum. But those parties failed lamentably to make common cause. We must pack up our tents, perhaps to the sound of church bells, and hope to begin the 15-year trudge, back towards some semblance of where we were yesterday with our multiple trade deals, security, health and scientific co-operation and a thousand other useful arrangements.
The only certainty is that we’ll be asking ourselves questions for a very long time. Set aside for a moment Vote Leave’s lies, dodgy funding, Russian involvement or the toothless Electoral Commission. Consider instead the magic dust. How did a matter of such momentous constitutional, economic and cultural consequence come to be settled by a first-past-the-post vote and not by a super-majority? A parliamentary paper (see Briefing 07212) at the time of the 2015 Referendum Act hinted at the reason: because the referendum was merely advisory. It “enables the electorate to voice an opinion”. How did “advisory” morph into “binding”? By that blinding dust thrown in our eyes from right and left by populist hands.
We endured a numbing complicity between government and opposition. The door out of Europe was held open by Corbyn for Johnson to walk through. In this case, if you travelled far enough to the left, you met and embraced the right coming the other way.
What did we learn in our blindness? That those not flourishing within the status quo had no good reason to vote for it; that our prolonged parliamentary chaos derived from an ill-posed yes-no question to which there were a score of answers; that the long-evolved ecology of the EU has profoundly shaped the flora of our nation’s landscape and to rip these plants out will be brutal; that what was once called a hard Brexit became soft by contrast with the threatened no-deal that even now persists; that any mode of departure, by the government’s own estimate, will shrink the economy; that we have a gift for multiple and bitter division – young against old, cities against the country, graduates against early school-leavers, Scotland and Northern Ireland against England and Wales; that all past, present and future international trade deals or treaties are a compromise with sovereignty, as is our signature on the Paris accords, or our membership of Nato, and that therefore “Take Back Control” was the emptiest, most cynical promise of this sorry season.
We surprised ourselves. Only a few years ago, asked to list the nation’s ills – wealth gap, ailing NHS, north-south imbalance, crime, terrorism, austerity, housing crisis etc – most of us would not have thought to include our membership of the EU. How happy we were in 2012, in the afterglow of our successful Olympics. We weren’t thinking then of Brussels. It was, in Guy Verhofstadt’s famous term, a “cat-fight” within the Tory party that got us going. Those cats had been fighting each other for decades. When they dragged us in and urged us to take sides, we had a collective nervous breakdown; then sufficient numbers wanted the distress to go away and “get Brexit done”. Repeated ad nauseam by the prime minister it almost seemed impolite to ask why.
In the early days of the referendum campaign we learned that “on the doorstep” it was all about migration; but we also learned that it was the UK’s decision, not the EU’s, to allow unlimited migration from the accession countries before the permitted seven years were up; it was the UK’s choice to allow EU migrants to stay more than six months without a job; it was the UK that successfully campaigned to enlarge the EU eastwards; it is the UK, not the EU, that lets non-EU migration continue (and why not?) as EU migration declines. We also learned that the UK, not the EU, opted for our maroon rather than patriotic blue passports. Though, as I look, my old passports seem almost black.
There is much that is historically unjust about the British state, but very little of that injustice derives from the EU. Brussels didn’t insist that we neglect the post-industrial towns of the Midlands and the north; or demand that we let wages stagnate, or permit multimillion handouts to the CEOs of failing companies, or prefer shareholder value over the social good, or run our health service, social care and Sure Start into the ground, close 600 police stations and let the fabric of our state schools decay.
It was the task of the Brexit campaign to persuade the electorate otherwise. In the referendum they succeeded with 37%, enough to transform our collective fate for a generation at least. To cause sufficient numbers to believe that the source of all their grievances is some hostile outside element is the oldest trick in the populist handbook. As Trotsky was for Stalin, as the USA is for the mullahs of Iran and Gülen is for Erdoğan, so Brussels has served its turn.
Hedge fund owners, plutocrat donors to the cause, Etonians and newspaper proprietors cast themselves as enemies of the elite. More magic dust. The claim that the Northern Ireland issue has been settled is a dangerous pretence. We have witnessed reasoned argument’s fall from grace. The Brexit impulse had strong elements of blood-and-soil, with hints of Empire nostalgia. Such spooky longings floated high above mere facts.
We acquired an argot. “Article 50”, “frictionless trade”, “just in time”, “the backstop” – how they tripped off the tongue. We learned to respect an “invisible border”. Before it all began, only a very few knew the difference between the customs union and the single market. Three years on, not much has changed. A survey last year showed that quite a lot of us thought that “crashing out” was the same as remaining. If only.
The Brexit leadership and the leader of the opposition were always in a hurry to start article 50’s two-year stopwatch. They feared that leave voters might change their minds, that those who didn’t vote last time were 2:1 for remaining, and that young voters coming on to the rolls would be mostly pro-EU. The Brexiter generals reasonably feared a second referendum.
At least, we can all agree that we will be a bit poorer. As one of my school teachers used to say, if a thing is really worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. Theresa May could never bring herself to say that Brexit would make us better off. She wouldn’t even tell us if she would vote to leave in a second referendum. We should credit her honesty. By contrast, Boris Johnson, laying his post-Brexit vision before parliament, promised he would narrow the UK’s wealth and opportunity gap between north and south, and make it the home of cutting-edge battery technology. He forgot to mention that the EU never stood in the way of either project.
Redefining our new trade relations with the EU will preoccupy us for years. As for the US position, take a long walk in the American midwest and you’ll go a month across a monoculture desert and not see a wildflower. To compete, our own agriculture would have to welcome the hormone hypodermic. Our farmers will need to divest of inefficient hedgerows, boundary trees and three-metre field margins – museum pieces all. When it was in trade talks with the EU, the US wouldn’t contemplate higher standards of husbandry, food standards and environmental protection, even though they would have granted access to half a billion consumers. American farming corporations will not be changing their ways for a nation of a mere 65 million. If we want a deal, it is we who must downgrade.
We sense damage and diminishment ahead. In a dangerous world crowded with loud-mouthed “strongmen”, the EU was our best hope for an open, tolerant, free and peaceful community of nations. Those hopes are already threatened as populist movements have swept across Europe. Our withdrawal will weaken resistance to the xenophobic tendency. The lesson of our nation’s history these past centuries is plain: turmoil in continental Europe will draw us into bloody conflicts. Nationalism is rarely a project for peace. Nor does it care to counter climate change. It prefers to let tropical forests and the Australian bush burn.
Take a road trip from Greece to Sweden, from Portugal to Hungary. Leave your passport behind. What a rich, teeming bundle of civilisations – in food, manners, architecture, language, and each nation state profoundly and proudly different from its neighbours. No evidence of being under the boot-heel of Brussels. Nothing here of continental USA’s dreary commercial sameness. Summon everything you’ve learned of the ruinous, desperate state of Europe in 1945, then contemplate a stupendous economic, political and cultural achievement: peace, open borders, relative prosperity, and the encouragement of individual rights, tolerance and freedom of expression. Until Friday this was where our grown-up children went at will to live and work.
That’s over, and for now the force is with English nationalism. Its champion is Johnson’s Vote Leave cabinet whose monument will forever be a special kind of smirk, perfected back in the days of the old Soviet Union. I’m lying, you know I’m lying and I know that you know and I don’t give a damn. As in, “The five-week prorogation of parliament has nothing to do with Brexit.” Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg were masters of the mocking grin. The supreme court’s inconvenient judgment that this prorogation was illegal clearly still rankles. Recently, the ex-home secretary Michael Howard was set on to murmur against the judges. Extending political control over an independent judiciary would be consonant with the Johnson-Cummings project. Victor Orbán of Hungary lights the way.
The remainers held out for a kinder sort of world, but we were always the herbivores in this debate, with our enormous, good-natured and derided marches – “a hate-filled crowd”, the Sun; “an elite”, the Daily Telegraph. If 16 million remainers are an elite, then we may rejoice that the UK is a model of meritocracy.
We were, in truth, the left-behinds. By the grace of Corbyn and his grim lieutenants, we had no effective voice in parliament. On her first day as prime minister, Theresa May promised outside No 10 that she would govern for us all. Instead, she threw half the country to the dogs to appease her party’s right wing. Initially, Boris Johnson’s elevation was decided by a tiny, ageing constituency, the majority of whose members told pollsters that they wished Donald Trump ruled Britain and that they longed for the return of hanging. In similar spirit, Johnson found fresh depths of populist vulgarity when he spoke last June of pitchforking the EU incubus off the nation’s back. He has realised his dream.
As for the outer extremes, the occasional milkshake aside, we never violently assaulted a Brexiter in the street; we only rarely inclined to sending anonymous death and rape threats such as came so abundantly the way of Gina Miller, Anna Soubry and many female MPs. However, the antisemitic emails from within the Labour party were a disgrace. So too was the bullying mob jeering outside the Rees-Mogg home. But we remainers did not slyly exhort our compatriots to riot in the event of a second referendum going against us. Nearly two-thirds of the electorate did not vote to leave; most of business and the trade unions, agriculture, science, finance and the arts were against the Brexit project; three-quarters of MPs voted to remain. But our representatives ignored the evident public interest and shrank behind party cabals and “the people have spoken” – that bleak Soviet locution – followed by “get Brexit done”, the mind-clouding magic dust which has blinded reason and diminished our children’s prospects.
First published on Fri 16 Aug 2019 17.00 BST
Jeremy Corbyn has hit back at leading Tory MPs orchestrating efforts to stop a no-deal Brexit who are refusing to back him as a caretaker prime minister to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU.
Corbyn’s hopes of forming a unity government are fading as a number of prominent Conservatives working to stop no-deal Brexit have ruled out any mechanism to put the Labour leader in No 10.
Former Conservative minister Sir Oliver Letwin, a key figure in parliament marshalling MPs against a no-deal, dealt Corbyn a blow on Saturday when he ruled out backing him to take over in Downing Street.
He joined fellow Tory Dominic Grieve, who has previously suggested he could vote against the government in a confidence vote, who said he would not go as far as facilitating a Corbyn government. “Jeremy Corbyn is unfortunately a deeply divisive figure and in trying to stop a no-deal Brexit it is not my purpose to help him into Downing Street,” he told the Guardian.
But Corbyn has insisted he should be installed as a caretaker prime minister, accusing the government of failing in its efforts. Speaking on a visit to Bolton on Saturday, he said: “What we need is a government that is prepared to negotiate with the European Union so we don’t have a crash-out on the 31st [of October].
“This government clearly doesn’t want to do that. Boris Johnson just wants to take us into the arms of the Americans and Donald Trump on a sweetheart trade deal. We are not going to do that. We will do everything we can to stop a no-deal Brexit.
“I am the leader of the Labour party, Labour is the largest opposition party by far. That is the process that must be followed.”
The row between the Liberal Democrats and Labour deepened as the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, urged the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, to seriously reconsider Corbyn’s offer to head a temporary government to stop a no-deal Brexit. The former Lib Dem leader Vince Cable demanded that Corbyn name a unity figure whom he would back if his plan failed.
In the latest attempt to convince wavering MPs of Labour’s plan, Khan wrote to Swinson saying her plan to install a Tory or Labour grandee at the helm of a unity government was unviable.
“The Liberal Democrats’ continued insistence that Corbyn could not lead this potential unity government is now the single biggest obstacle to stopping no deal,” he wrote in a letter seen by the Guardian.
Khan, who has previously been an outspoken critic of Corbyn, including on his Brexit policy, said a vote of no confidence and a temporary Labour administration to extend article 50 was the “only certain path” to stopping a no-deal Brexit.
In his letter to Swinson, Khan said it was “crystal clear” that Boris Johnson’s intention was to pursue a no-deal Brexit and he was writing to Swinson “with a personal plea from one ardent remainer to another”.
“Constitutional experts are warning that there may be only one chance left to stop Boris Johnson delivering a no deal,” he wrote. “That involves defeating his government in a vote of no confidence as soon as parliament returns in September, and then forming a short-term government of national unity in order to get an extension of article 50 and trigger a general election.”
Khan said an alternative government forged in the 14 days after a no-confidence vote, before the triggering of an automatic general election, was the only guaranteed way to stop no-deal Brexit.
“There is no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn is the only viable choice to lead a temporary government of national unity in order to stop no-deal,” he said. “There is simply no viable parliamentary majority or justification for any of the alternatives you have put forward … It is not too late to do the right thing in the national interest and change your position for these crucial talks.”
Swinson dismissed Corbyn’s offer on Wednesday but has since said she is open to discussions, while warning that Labour would be unable to get enough Conservative votes – or votes from former Labour MPs sitting as independents – to make the plan viable even with Lib Dem support. Swinson had proposed Ken Clarke or Harriet Harman, the longest-serving male and female MPs, as neutral figures who could lead a temporary government.
Clarke, who told the BBC on Friday that he had been on holiday and had not closely followed the news about a potential unity government, said he was nevertheless willing to be considered as a potential leader of a unity government.
“If it was the only way in which the plain majority in the House of Commons that is opposed to a no-deal exit could find a way forward … I wouldn’t object to it,” he told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme. “But there’s an awful lot to be gone through before then and I haven’t been taking part in any talks with anybody for the last fortnight. I’ve been on the phone to one or two people in the last couple of days just to find out what the devil’s going on.”
Clarke claimed it was wrong “factually and constitutionally” for Corbyn to portray himself as the only viable figure to lead a unity government.
However, the father of the House of Commons offered another role for any unity government – a remit to negotiate a new Brexit deal – when others had suggested it should be restricted to negotiating an extension to article 50 and then calling either an election, which is Corbyn’s preference, or a referendum, which some MPs would prefer.
Clarke said he would lead a “single-issue, short-term government” with a policy to “sort out Brexit” – a far cry from the preferred Lib Dem route of a second referendum.
“I think it would seek an extension, actually put together a mandate for discussions that the majority of the House of Commons approved of, and a mandate that the Europeans would not resist – like staying in the customs union, staying in regulatory alignment, keeping our free flows of trade and investment, protecting our jobs and our key sectors of business and agriculture in this country,” he said.
“Then, once it had got that under way and set, it would call an election probably or resign and let’s see if parliament could form a party government of any kind that took it all forward and started resuming other politics.”
Conservative MPs came under heavy pressure on Friday to distance themselves from Corbyn’s proposal. The former justice secretary David Gauke tweeted: “If anyone thinks the answer is Jeremy Corbyn, I think they’re probably asking the wrong question.”
Other independent MPs also came out swinging against the Labour leader. Anna Soubry, the former Tory MP who now leads the Independent Group for Change, said her five MPs “will not support nor facilitate any government led by Jeremy Corbyn. He cannot command unity of support amongst his own MPs, but now Jeremy Corbyn calls on the rest of us to back him as ‘unity’ prime minister,” she said. “And we won’t even get a people’s vote, but instead a general election, which as we know will solve nothing.”
Cable said Corbyn must now set out his plan B if he could not command a majority himself. “It would be up to the House of Commons to decide who a caretaker prime minister put in place to stop a no-deal Brexit would be,” he said.
“This is not about party leaders, but getting a group together to stop no deal. It is clear Jeremy Corbyn cannot command that majority in the house. I urge him to do the right thing and confirm that if he cannot, he will support someone who can.”
First published on Tue 29 Jan 2019 08.33 GMT
A plan from rival Conservative factions aimed at securing a breakthrough in the Brexit impasse has been greeted with immediate scepticism from EU officials, who said the proposals were not workable.
Senior Tory Brexit supporters including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker hatched the plan with leading remainers including Nicky Morgan and Stephen Hammond.
The proposal involves paying the £39bn EU divorce bill, redrafting the backstop arrangements over the Irish border and extending the implementation period until December 2021.
The extra time would be used to try to agree a free-trade deal, while citizens’ rights would be guaranteed. In that period, there would be no customs checks on the Irish border. The initiative has been called the “Malthouse compromise” after the housing minister Kit Malthouse, who entreated the two warring factions to attempt talks.
EU officials dismissed the suggested compromise, which they said failed to offer Ireland any reassurance on the avoidance of a hard border.
Brussels sources pointed out the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, had said technology to avoid a hard border does not exist. “What a cunning plan,” laughed one official. “This is just nonsense,” echoed an EU diplomat.
Brexit-backing MPs, including Rees-Mogg, were still seeking fresh reassurances from the prime minister before they vote for a government-backed amendment on the backstop on Tuesday evening, which could pave the way for the new plan to be put to Brussels.
Rees-Mogg told journalists on Tuesday morning he would wait and see whether the government interpreted the amendment, tabled by the senior MP Graham Brady, as an instruction to try to reopen the 585-page withdrawal agreement.
“Let’s see what the prime minister says at the dispatch box today and what the Brady amendment really means,” he said.
Theresa May is expected to open the debate for the government, allowing her to set out her next steps for MPs. She faces conflicting pressures from rival wings of her party.
As well as Rees-Mogg’s demands for a pledge to rework the backstop, pro-soft Brexit ministers are demanding a clear commitment that she will hold another vote to allow MPs to reject no deal, if attempts at renegotiation fail.
The business minister Richard Harrington told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday he and colleagues were demanding a promise from the prime minister that she would secure her plan B within a fortnight – or give them another chance to reject no deal.
“If she is prepared to give that irrevocable undertaking – which means at the dispatch box or a similar instrument – many of us feel, ‘Well, OK for the sake of everything, we will give her two weeks.’ But that is it.”
Iain Duncan Smith, the Eurosceptic former Conservative leader, told Today the plan represented “the best hope that we’ve got” and urged the government to get behind it.
The DUP said later it would also back the Malthouse plan. In a statement, the party leader, Arlene Foster, said the proposal “can unify a number of strands in the Brexit debate including the views of remainers and leavers”.
She said: “If the prime minister is seeking to find a united front, both between elements in her own party and the DUP, in the negotiations which she will enter with the European Union, then this is a proposition which she should not turn her back on.”
Should the hunt for a solution involving technology fail, the so-called safety net proposed by the Tory MPs would involve the EU agreeing to a three-year transition period without there being any agreement on a backstop. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has repeatedly said it is “certain” that without the legally operable backstop, there will be no transition period for the British economy after 29 March.
A spokesman for the European commission declined to comment on the proposals emanating from Westminster.
He said: “This is not a Brussels day, this is a London day. Let’s have the vote and we will see.”
Morgan confirmed the proposal had been reached after days of discussion coordinated by Malthouse.
“The prime minister has been aware of the discussions. At some point, there has to be compromise on all sides in order to get a deal over the line,” she said.
Setting out the detail of the “Malthouse compromise”, Morgan said: “The first part of it is to recast the backstop as a sort of free-trade-agreement-lite. That would involve a commitment by all sides to have no hard border on the island of Ireland, but allow trade to continue, while there is a slightly longer implementation period till December 2021.”
In return, Brexit supporters have agreed to drop their demand that the £39bn divorce settlement be withheld, she said.
The remain-supporting MP characterised the proposals as “the withdrawal agreement we have got at the moment with changes to the backstop”.
“People like me want to avoid a no-deal outcome and we have to look for ways to do that, and we are all prepared to compromise on that,” she said.
Steve Baker, one of the leaders of the hard-Brexit European Research Group, tweeted his backing for the proposals.
The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, gave only muted backing to the idea. “There are all sort of ideas being put out, but parliament can’t take a decision unless that is on the order paper, and it is not on the order paper today,” he told Today.
“The government is open to listening to all ideas. It is time that we actually made progress. Voters want parliament to make a decision.”
It is still unclear whether the prime minister is prepared to pursue the offer of compromise.
Some Conservative MPs rejected the plan, with “people’s vote” supporter Anna Soubry saying it was “a recipe for no-deal Brexit”.
“The prospect of the EU ripping up the withdrawal agreement or allowing a transition period without the backstop is very remote – and for good reason given the risks to the Irish peace process. Instead, this scheme backed by Jacob Rees-Mogg is a recipe for the no-deal Brexit that the hard Brexiters have always craved.
“We cannot allow our economy, vital public services and life chances of young people to be sacrificed for a last-minute gesture towards Conservative party unity,” she said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Theresa May is facing fresh opposition from EU countries that have large fishing communities to her demands for an agreement before Brexit day on a temporary customs union to solve the Irish border problem.
A number of key member states are expected to oppose a commitment to an all-UK customs deal on the basis that negotiations are yet to start on what access European fishing boats will have to British waters after Brexit.
The EU has repeatedly said it will only allow British seafood exporters tariff- and quota-free access to the European market in return for an agreement that its fishing fleets can continue to operate around the UK.
Agreeing to a customs union in the withdrawal agreement would mean the EU had ceded its leverage by providing tariff-free trade on seafood into the internal market without reciprocal guarantees on access to British waters.
The issue has been discussed by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, with ministers from the member states.
France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Germany are understood to have deep concerns about ceding such ground in the negotiations.
The problem poses a fresh threat to the British government’s hopes of solving the issue of avoiding both a hard border on the island of Ireland and a customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
The prime minister has said she wants the “backstop” solution in the withdrawal agreement, under which Northern Ireland would in effect stay in the single market and customs union alone, to be scrapped in favour of the whole of the UK staying in a customs arrangement temporarily.
In the latest development, the European commission has floated a plan in which the full terms of a “bare bones” customs union for Great Britain would be laid out in the withdrawal agreement, so there would be no need for negotiations on it after Brexit. Northern Ireland would stay under the full EU customs code.
The backstop would come into force at the end of the transition period should a comprehensive trade deal to ensure there is no need for a hard border on the island of Ireland not be agreed in time.
A senior EU official conceded that the proposal would not remove the need for a Northern Ireland-specific backstop that would keep the province in the single market as the UK gave up its membership.
The issue of what to do about fisheries would also remain with member states likely to reject to any deal that undermines the “trade-off” envisioned in the bloc’s negotiating position papers in which British exporters were only given access to the single market in exchange for European fishing boats keeping access to the seas around the UK.
Norway is not in a customs union with the EU and its exporters of shrimps, mackerel, herring, great scallops and Norway lobster all pay tariffs in order to sell their products, with taxes rising on processed goods. There is a tariff of 2% imposed on the import of whole fresh salmon, while the tariff for smoked salmon is 13%.
“Access to waters will remain a priority,” an EU official said. “The problem now is that … you are basically saying you get tariff-free quota-free access – but we don’t know where we will end up on access.”
Niels Wichmann, the chief executive of the Danish fishermen’s association, which holds a place on the Danish ministry of food’s Brexit taskforce, said: “The issue of access to waters is part of the trade negotiations. That is what we have said from the start, and we discussed this with Michel Barnier when he came to Denmark. And he confirmed that this was also his position.”
The UK environment secretary, Michael Gove, has said he expects British fleets to “keep more of their own fish” after Brexit, in what would be a hammer-blow to the EU fishing industry. According to recent estimates, 33% of the catches of the European fishing fleet are caught in British waters.
The EU fishing industry estimates that a loss of access would lead to a reduction of about 50% in the European fleets’ net profit and thousands of jobs.
The size of the fishing sector in the EU is relatively small but it has an outsized impact on the decisions of politicians given its importance to often deprived coastal communities. An EU diplomat said: “We don’t want dead fish on our doorstep.”
First published on Tue 28 Jan 2020 12.19 GMT
Negotiations on the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU will start on 3 March, more than a month after the UK’s departure from the bloc, the Guardian can reveal.
As a British minister attended an EU meeting in Brussels for the final time after 47 years of membership of the bloc, sources disclosed that officials led by Michel Barnier and Boris Johnson’s Europe adviser, David Frost, would embark on the vital talks in the first week of March with a challenging 10-month deadline.
The UK is due to leave the EU on Friday at midnight central European time – nearly four years since the referendum.
The prime minister has said he will not extend the transition period past 31 December 2020. Until then, the UK will stay in the single market and customs union.
A leaked internal document from the EU member states, seen by the Guardian, notes that without a deal by the end of December 2020, there will be a “cliff edge” in many areas and “no return to the status quo”.
The former European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker had said the negotiations on the future relationship would start on day one after the UK’s exit but preparations on both sides of the Channel were delayed by the general election.
Chris Pincher, the UK’s minister for Europe and the Americas, said after his general affairs council meeting with peers among the 27 other member states – the last by a British minister in an EU setting – that it was a “historic week” when the “government will deliver on its promise”.
Pincher said the UK was leaving the bloc’s institutions as a “sovereign equal” but that it would not be leaving Europe with which the country had a shared “history, civilisation and values”.
Once the talks on the future relationship start in earnest on 3 March, it will be access to fishing waters and the EU’s demand for a “level playing field” that are likely to pose the biggest obstacles to success.
Johnson is expected to give a speech next week spelling out the British negotiating position.
The EU does not have a zero-tariff, zero-quota, traditional free-trade agreement with any country in the world. Brussels is demanding guarantees that the UK will not steal an unfair competitive advantage. The bloc has staked out the uncompromising position that the current fisheries arrangements should largely continue.
During a visit to Brussels for a meeting of ministers, Amélie de Montchalin, France’s secretary of state for European affairs, said the talks could become complicated if the UK failed to recognise the EU’s red lines.
She said: “For us, if there are no clear guarantees vis-à-vis citizens and businesses. If there is no level playing field or fair conditions, the trade openness of the EU will not be total.
“The degree of openness of EU trade will depend on the level of convergence we reach. So, if Boris Johnson wants a deal in 11 months with zero quotas and zero tariffs, we must have guarantees of zero dumping and therefore of a level playing field.
“It’s a fairly simple negotiation. However, we can make it complicated if we are inconsistent. It is impossible to imagine a completely new trading system in 11 months which would require a different normative framework for each area. It’s not realistic. So we’re going to deal with realistic things.”
Brussels’ opening negotiating position will be adopted by EU ministers at a meeting on 25 February. Before then, the two sides will be in “scheduling and scoping” discussions to prepare for the unprecedented negotiation after the end of the UK’s 45 years of EU membership.
A senior EU official said the bloc “will be tough on a level playing field”, adding: “We will not budge.” “We might have a conversation about how we keep to a minimum level of standards but we will not move on the need to have them,” the source said.
The final political act in the UK’s exit from the EU will take place on Wednesday evening when the European parliament is due to ratify the withdrawal agreement.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
France’s state secretary for European affairs has confirmed that the EU27 are not prepared to reopen the Brexit withdrawal agreement, and that without a “new political line” in the UK or a second referendum, Britain must expect to leave the bloc on 31 October.
On the eve of a two-day working visit to London, Amélie de Montchalin also told the Guardian that France regarded the €39bn financial settlement Britain has agreed to pay the EU as part of the exit deal as a matter of international law.
“We are now waiting for clarification from the UK side,” De Montchalin said. “We consider it is up to Britain to decide how it wants to proceed. The exit agreement was not negotiated against the British; negotiators on both sides tried, painstakingly, to find the best solution for all concerned.”
Several Tory leadership candidates have said that if they are selected, their priority will be to go to Brussels and seek to renegotiate the deal agreed last December – and that if they do not succeed, Britain must be ready to leave without a deal. Others have said a further extension could be necessary.
Boris Johnson, the favourite to succeed Theresa May as party leader and prime minister, has pledged to consider withholding Britain’s Brexit “divorce” payment until the EU27 agree to improve the terms on which the UK’s leaves, describing the money as “a great lubricant” in getting a good deal.
But De Montchalin, who replaces France’s former Europe minister Natalie Loiseau, now an MEP, said the bloc was not willing to reopen the 599-page exit agreement. “If Britain does want to leave, and if it wants to leave in an orderly fashion, then this is the way it must do it,” she said.
She said the only condition on which France would be prepared to grant a further extension to the 31 October deadline would be if there were to be a “profound change” to Britain’s current political stance on Brexit.
“As President Macron has said, if there is a totally new political line in Britain, the Europeans would be prepared to reconsider,” she said. “But for now, 31 October is the final deadline.” A no-deal Brexit was “not what France wants”, de Montchalin added, “but we are prepared for it, and so it is now a realistic option.”
Emmanuel Macron said last week he considered 31 October to be the “final, final deadline” for Britain’s much delayed departure, saying he did not want the new European Commission and executive to have to deal with Brexit.
De Montchalin described the €39bn that Johnson has threatened to hold back as “not a settling of scores, or some kind of exit bill – this sum simply represents Britain’s engagements. So this is now a matter of respecting international law … Britain will always be France’s neighbour.”
She said the EU 27 would remain united through the next Brexit stage, dismissing suggestions that some leaders might be ready to break ranks. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, claimed this weekend that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, would be willing to renegotiate the UK’s Brexit deal and possibly the Irish backstop.
“Every single member state realises the importance of maintaining that unity and engaging with the UK through the the EU,” she said. “There can be no mini-deals. It’s a question of the credibility of the bloc. And all have understood the importance of the future relationship with Britain.”
She said it would be “unacceptable” for France or any other EU member state to interfere in the present impasse. “I’m certainly not going to say the UK is wasting its time,” she said. “The problem is that there are almost as many kinds of Brexit as there are MPs. But we do need clarity now. We need a decision.”
First published on Sat 25 Jan 2020 22.35 GMT
The Tory peer and former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has accused Boris Johnson of trying to “rub the noses of Remainers in their defeat”, after the prime minister announced events to commemorate the UK’s departure from the EU this coming Friday at 11pm.
Downing Street said that 3m special 50p coins bearing the words “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” will enter shops, banks and restaurants from Friday with a further 7m coming into circulation by the end of the year. Union Jack flags will also line Parliament Square and the Mall on Friday and the public will see government buildings in Whitehall lit up in red, white and blue.
To add to the celebratory mood the government wants to encourage, “a commemorative light display” will be staged in Downing Street in the run-up to 11pm, the hour that the UK will officially end its 47 year membership of Europe’s club of nations. A countdown clock will be projected on to it from 10pm. Officials said the light display will “symbolise the strength and unity” of the four nations that make up the United Kingdom.
The prime minister said last night: “Next Friday marks an important moment in the history of our United Kingdom. No matter how you voted in 2016, it is the time to look ahead with confidence to the global, trailblazing country we will become over the next decade and heal past divisions. That is what I will be doing on 31 January and I urge everyone across the UK to do the same.”
But politicians who fought to remain in the EU said the events were deeply inappropriate. Heseltine told the Observer: “Brexit is the most divisive issue of modern times. Those of us who fought to remain did so sincerely in the interests of our country and subsequent generations who we believe should be influential at the heart of Europe.
“I think it is unwise of the government to rub our noses in it by celebrating our defeat at this hour, whilst talking about unifying the country.”
He said the only comfort was that plans to chime Big Ben to mark the moment the UK leaves had been dropped.
“At least we are spared the sound of Big Ben being chimed at our discomfort.” Adapting the quote from John Donne the Tory peer added: “Send not to inquire for whom the bells tolls. It tolls for thee.”
The Liberal Democrats’ acting leader, Ed Davey, accused Johnson of using public money for an inappropriate, divisive event. “The prime minister should be seeking to pull the country together, not gloat with an expensive party on the public purse,” he said.
The SNP leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford, said: “It grieves me that we should be leaving the greatest postwar peace project ever created. That is not something we should be celebrating.”
Sometime during the night on Friday, the union flag will be quietly removed from outside the European Parliament buildings in Strasbourg and Brussels, and from the UK representation in Brussels, which will be renamed in due course.
Claude Moraes, who has served as a Labour MEP for more than 20 years and will attend the European Parliament for the last time on Thursday, said the government events to mark Brexit were wrong. “All this make me feels very uneasy. The country is still bruised and divided. The British thing to do would be to mark the occasion in a way that respects the views of both sides, and that recognises the national divide.”
First published on Sun 3 Nov 2019 20.03 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has told his fractious shadow cabinet “the debate is over” on Brexit, as he seeks to stamp his authority on the general election campaign and shift the focus to social justice and the climate emergency.
Speaking to the Guardian in the south-west London seat of Putney, the Labour leader claimed he had instructed frontbench colleagues to fall into line, after divisions over Brexit sparked a furious row over whether to go for an election.
“I just said, ‘look, this debate is now over. We’ve done it, the party has now made its decision, and that’s it; and that’s what we’re going to campaign on’,” he said, describing last week’s shadow cabinet meeting.
Speaking after a campaign visit to a social housing development, an uncharacteristically assertive Corbyn also said he had made a unilateral decision to back Boris Johnson’s plan to trigger a 12 December general election – despite the vocal objections of several colleagues, including Labour’s chief whip, Nick Brown.
“I put it to them quite clearly: I said, our objections are now gone. We are now supporting a general election – and everybody gulped. I didn’t alert anybody in advance – it was my decision. On my own. I made that decision. And they gulped, and said, Yes Jeremy.”
Labour’s stance on Brexit has shifted significantly over the past 12 months, and the party now says it would seek to negotiate a new deal with Brussels – including a closer trading relationship – within three months, and put it to the public in a referendum within six.
Several members of the shadow cabinet, including Keir Starmer, have suggested they would campaign for remain in that referendum, and Emily Thornberry recently described Labour as a “remain party”; but Corbyn has insisted any decision on Labour’s position will not be taken until after the election.
The detailed content of Labour’s manifesto will not be taken until the “clause V” meeting of senior Labour decision-makers, expected to take place next weekend.
But Corbyn insisted the Brexit policy decided at the party’s conference in Brighton, which saw a remain-supporting motion defeated by trade unions and constituency delegates, must stand.
“I don’t see why the clause V meeting would want to change anything, because my whole strategy has been to try and keep the party, the movement and the country together,” he said.
His robust stance echoed a piece written by union leaders including Unite general secretary Len McCluskey in the New Statesman, which called on shadow cabinet members to “keep their powder dry”.
The union leaders, including Dave Ward, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) and Mick Whelan, general secretary of Aslef, alongside McCluskey, said, “Labour’s policy is scarcely going to maintain credibility if the very shadow cabinet members who would, in government, be responsible for negotiating a departure deal with the EU announce now that they will campaign for its public rejection. This is the politics of posturing, and not a serious approach to a pressing problem.”
The Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, has made stopping Brexit the centrepiece of her party’s pitch to the country. But Corbyn said Labour’s aim was to transform Britain.
“This election is about the future of this country. It’s about the environment. It’s about the cohesion of society. We can’t go on with austerity, poverty, inequality and injustice. We need a government that’s committed to reversing that. And we are the ones to do that.”
With veterans of the combative Vote Leave campaign running Boris Johnson’s bid for five more years in Downing Street, attacks on Corbyn’s character are likely to feature heavily.
But the Labour leader insisted he was undaunted. “I’ve had lots of mud thrown at me for a long time, and it doesn’t stick. I don’t care. I know what I believe, I know what we’re doing, I know what our policies are. If they throw personal stuff at me, it says more about them than me. They go low, we go high,” he said.
Asked whether he would attack Johnson’s character, he said: “I’m not doing personal. I don’t do personal. It doesn’t work.”
Corbyn was speaking after a visit to Clyde House – a social housing block in Putney, where residents have fought a long-running grassroots campaign against their landlords, with the help of Labour community organisers.
Sitting on a sofa in a chronically overheated flat, he listened while tenants detailed their struggles to get broken lifts fixed and tackle damp, mould and shattered glass.
Labour has announced that it will spend up to £60bn upfront on retro-fitting existing homes with insulation and clean energy sources, in a “warm homes” pledge.
Corbyn said he believed the policy helped to show how Labour’s “green industrial revolution” could be a vote winner.
“My offer is: we will insulate your home, we will save you £400 a year on your bills, and we will create jobs, in fitting those homes, and manufacturing the sustainable energy sources,” he said.
And he insisted such policies would have appeal beyond allotment-tending north Londoners like himself, describing tackling the climate crisis as a “class issue”.
“It is a class issue – when it’s working-class communities that have the lowest life expectancy, the highest levels of pollution, the least efficient homes and the highest energy bills – whereas the wealthier middle-classes have cleaner air, longer lives, and much better insulated homes. And it’s the poorest children who eat the worst food, and have the greatest problems of obesity as a result of it,” he said.
Labour is kicking off the campaign significantly behind Johnson’s Conservatives in the national polls, and with the risk of the Lib Dems dividing the remain vote.
The Tories are banking on winning a string of Labour-held seats, particularly in Brexit-voting areas, with a tough stance on law and order, and by painting Corbyn as a threat to national security.
Asked whether he could promise voters that he would protect them and their families, the Labour leader said: “What is real security in your life? Real security is somewhere to live, real security is a secure job, real security is a health service, real security is social care, real security is knowing that you can bring up your children in a safe, clean, sustainable environment.”
Pressed on whether he was prepared for the “3am call,” waking a prime minister to warn Britain is under imminent threat, he said: “Of course: absolutely. You have to take decisions at times like that. The principle behind it will be sustainable peace, will be human rights, will be justice.”
Corbyn also rejected the idea that Jewish voters have anything to fear from a Labour government, after the Jewish Labour Movement said it would barely campaign for the party during the general election, amid concerns over its handling of reports of antisemitism among members and supporters.
“Antisemitism and racism is an evil within our society. I’ve done everything to confront it throughout my life, and will always do so. We want this country to be safe for all people. An attack on a synagogue, an attack on a mosque, an attack on a church – an attack on a person walking down the street because they’re perceived to be different from the rest of us – we simply can’t tolerate it.”
First published on Sat 9 Mar 2019 06.00 GMT
An amendment proposing a second referendum from two backbench Labour MPs will not now be put to a vote when Theresa May brings her Brexit deal back to parliament next week.
Labour’s leadership wants attention on Tuesday to focus on May’s deal – but the party has not ruled out a second referendum motion later in the week if the prime minister fails to win MPs’ backing.
Campaigners for a second referendum believe they can only a win a majority in the Commons if it is seen as the sole option to break the deadlock preventing any Brexit deal passing through parliament.
Writing in the Guardian, the former Labour communications chief Alastair Campbell, who is involved with the People’s Vote campaign, said that Tuesday “must belong to Mrs May being made to see her deal will not – and cannot – fly” and called on the backbenchers to hold fire.
Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson had been pushing an amendment that would allow May’s Brexit deal to pass through the Commons on condition that its approval was subject to a second referendum.
They believed their offer could be attractive to some Conservatives because it would at least allow the Brexit deal to pass through parliament, thus ending what could otherwise be months and months of political wrangling.
“I hope they will not push their amendment to a vote on Tuesday,” Campbell wrote. “I think the public needs to see very clearly that even though the ticking clock may have reduced the majority against Mrs May’s deal from the stratospheric level 230 of January, it continues to lack the parliamentary support needed to go through.”
Kyle indicated he was minded to follow Campbell’s advice without being too precise about the timetable he would follow. “Our compromise deal will be pushed when we judge other options have been exhausted and MPs are ready for compromise and a creative way out of this mess,” he said.
Labour sources said the party wanted to have a “clean vote” on May’s deal on Tuesday, and that any amendment the party puts down in the name of Jeremy Corbyn would be designed “not to get in the way”.
With little sign of a breakthrough, it is not clear how May will get her deal approved on Tuesday. However, the opposition wants to keep its options open for later in the week if May fails. The prime minister has promised a vote on whether the UK should leave on 29 March with no deal, and if that is defeated, as is expected, a second vote would follow on whether the UK should delay its exit from the EU for further negotiations.
Labour is considering whether to put its own second referendum amendment to the Brexit delay vote.
Significantly, some backbenchers who had been sceptical about the idea of a referendum believe that resistance to the idea is fading. They say Labour MPs from pro-leave seats are coming under increasing pressure to back what is now party policy.
Sir Keir Starmer will address a meeting of MPs from the Labour Leave Seats group on Monday, accompanied by the pollster Peter Kellner and Kyle and Wilson. Jenny Chapman, from Starmer’s team, who had previously been regarded by colleagues as wary about a referendum, is also expected to make the case for a fresh poll.
One backbencher from the group said: “If you’d asked me last week, was there a majority for a second referendum, I would have said no way. Next week, if it does fail, it will be by a handful of votes.”
They added that the number of MPs willing to defy the whip and vote against a referendum might be just 15 or so Labour MPs – much lower than previously thought. Others had put the estimate at 25 rebels or more.
First published on Wed 31 Jul 2019 22.30 BST
The huge cost of a no-deal Brexit was laid bare on Wednesday as the government announced plans to set aside an extra £2.1bn for preparations including stockpiling of medicines, an extra 500 border officials and a public awareness campaign about disruption.
Boris Johnson is ramping up the funding for a no-deal Brexit on 31 October though he claims that reaching a deal with the EU is his preference.
The move, announced by Sajid Javid, the chancellor, is designed to show Brussels that the UK is ready and willing to countenance leaving without a deal in three months’ time.
Javid will provide a new immediate cash boost of £1.1bn and make a further £1bn available if necessary, taking the total allocation of spending this year alone up to £6.3bn.
From that cash injection about £344m will go to border operations; another 500 officers will be added to the 500 already promised this year. The aim is to improve processing of passport applications, increase training for customs staff to help businesses with declarations, and improve readiness for transport disruption around Kent ports.
Another £434m will go towards ensuring continuity of vital medicines and medical products, covering freight capacity, warehousing and stockpiling, while £108m will be spent on helping businesses understand the challenges they face.
Around £138m is allocated to a new public awareness campaign involving advertising, consular help for Brits living abroad and support for local areas, including Northern Ireland.
Labour branded the spending an “appalling waste of tax-payers’ cash, all for the sake of Boris Johnson’s drive towards a totally avoidable no deal”, especially as the majority of MPs had made clear their intention to block an exit without a withdrawal agreement.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said: “This government could have ruled out no deal, and spent these billions on our schools, hospitals, and people.
“Labour is a party for the whole of the UK, so we’ll do all we can to block a no-deal, crash-out Brexit, and we’ll deliver a transformative economic policy that delivers for the many, not the few.”
Meg Hillier, chair of the Commons public accounts committee, vowed to scrutinise the spending. “Just because Boris Johnson is making it sound like he’s fighting a war, with seven-days-a-week meetings in Whitehall, that is not licence to spend taxpayers’ money like water, throwing good money after bad.
“It is of course responsible for a government to be prepared for an emergency. But this is an emergency of the government’s own making – boring though it may be that taxpayers’ money could be spent on essential public services. There isn’t much headroom. There is a bit more than there was but not much. And I don’t think his spending pledges add up.”
She also cast doubt on how 500 additional border officials could be recruited and trained properly within the next three months. A Treasury source said the border officials would be a mix of existing staff retrained and redeployed on no-deal Brexit duties and new recruits.
Insiders have told the Guardian that in previous planning for a no deal in March, HMRC forecast that around 5,500 extra staff would be needed, with the majority in “customer compliance”. Insiders warned that those working on surveillance and smuggling needed years of training.
There were internal arguments that more staff were needed considering that before the single market there were 100,000 staff dealing with all aspects of customs, passport checks, immigration controls and regulatory standards. While the government has said it will not be imposing any customs or checks such as food standards on the border in a no-deal Brexit, it is planning to impose tariffs which will require extra staff.
A cabinet source said the government was unleashing more spending because of concerns that businesses were not taking the threat of a no-deal Brexit seriously enough, after that possibility had been averted on 29 March.
The business lobby group the CBI warned this week that neither the UK nor the EU was ready for a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, saying “some aspects cannot be mitigated”.
The Institute for Goverment also issued a report on Monday saying there was “no such thing as a managed no deal” and that the hard Brexiters predictions of a “clean break” from the EU would not materialise.
However, Johnson has sought to make clear he will not accept the current withdrawal agreement from the EU with its “undemocratic backstop”. He is gearing up to blame Brussels for a no-deal Brexit if they refuse to take the backstop out of the deal.
In the next 48 hours, David Frost, Johnson’s most senior EU adviser and Brexit negotiator, will go to Brussels to deliver in person the message to officials that the UK will leave without a deal unless the bloc abolishes the Irish backstop.
Javid, a former remain voter, who has said he stands ready to support a no-deal Brexit, said: “With 92 days until the UK leaves the European Union it’s vital that we intensify our planning to ensure we are ready. We want to get a good deal that abolishes the anti-democratic backstop. But if we can’t get a good deal we’ll have to leave without one. This additional £2.1bn will ensure we are ready to leave on 31 October – deal or no deal.”
MPs have started their summer recess from parliament but a number of Conservatives are taking time out to consider how to stop a no-deal Brexit or whether they can even remain as members of their party if Johnson decides to pursue a deliberate path of leaving without a deal.
Phillip Lee, the Tory MP for Bracknell, told the podcast On The House that he was “increasingly feeling politically homeless” and he was “going to spend the summer thinking a lot”. Margot James, another Conservative former minister, told the Guardian last week she could not campaign for a no-deal Brexit at an election, while others such as Philip Hammond, and Dominic Grieve, have signalled that they could vote to collapse a government intent on a no deal.
Johnson is facing extremely tight parliamentary arithmetic to gain approval in the Commons for a no-deal Brexit. He has a majority of two with the DUP that would fall to one if the party lost the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection on Thursday.
The prime minister’s senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, has told senior staff that No 10 was prepared to use “any means necessary” to secure Brexit on 31 October, and that Johnson has not ruled out suspending parliament to try to force it through.
There has been speculation that Johnson could call an election if parliament reached another impasse, although he has repeatedly said he would not do that before Brexit. He is expected to announce more spending on the NHS and details of a hospital upgrade programme within the coming days and has been repeating a campaign pledge about 20,000 extra police at every opportunity.
Speaking to a newly established national policing board on Wednesday, Johnson said the creation of the board was an “absolutely crucial development” for dealing with knife crime.
He said: “We need to be getting crime down. We’ve done very well in some respects but too many crime types have been going in the wrong direction.
“And we can crack it. The answer is, I think, that you need strong, visible policing. Saj [the chancellor] is going to provide the money. And we will get it done in the course of the next three years.”
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First published on Sun 17 Mar 2019 11.32 GMT
Labour’s tensions over Brexit look set to be exposed again this week, as the campaign for a second referendum reaches a moment of truth in parliament.
Jeremy Corbyn appeared to signal on Sunday that his party would back an amendment aimed at securing a second Brexit referendum, set to be tabled this week – but also stressed that Labour had not ruled out tabling another vote of no confidence and still hoped to secure its own, softer Brexit deal.
The Kyle-Wilson amendment was drawn up by two Labour MPs, Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, who consulted the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, over the precise wording.
If May’s deal were brought back to parliament this week, Corbyn suggested Labour was likely to support the amendment, in which approval of the deal would be made conditional on a “confirmatory ballot”.
“I had a very good discussion with Phil Wilson and Peter Kyle last week and we went through what they’re trying to do, which is make sure people do have a say in the final matter, and that we agree with and support,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge.
Asked if Labour would back it, he said: “If the amendment is as I’ve just set out, then we will be supporting it – but we’ve got to see the wording of it.”
Starmer swiftly reiterated that he believed Labour should back the amendment, saying: “We must support the lock of a public vote.”
However, the idea sparked an immediate backlash. Stoke Central MP Gareth Snell rejected the idea of a confirmatory referendum. “It’s an option we’ve already voted down twice and said it doesn’t deliver what leave voters voted for,” he said. “It stinks of establishment stitch-up and disenfranchises the growing band of ‘no dealers’.”
An amendment calling for a second Brexit referendum tabled by the independent MP Sarah Wollaston last week was overwhelmingly defeated, by 334 votes to 85, after Labour opted to abstain.
Seventeen Labour MPs rebelled against the whip to vote against the Wollaston amendment, with five, including Ruth Smeeth and Emma Lewell-Buck, resigning from junior frontbench roles to do so, underlining the strength of feeling among some MPs from leave-voting seats against another poll.
Backers of the formal People’s Vote campaign were furious with Wollaston and her allies in the breakaway Independent Group for forcing the issue, as they saw it, too soon. But they are expected to throw their weight behind the Kyle-Wilson amendment this week.
Corbyn hinted that if Kyle-Wilson was passed, Labour would not then whip its MPs to support the amended motion, which would be to approve May’s deal, subject to a public vote.
“We’re not supporting Theresa May’s deal at all, because we think it’s a blindfold Brexit, which would do enormous damage to our economy,” he said.
The amendment’s supporters nevertheless believe they could still mobilise enough Labour MPs to secure a majority and trigger a referendum.
Kyle insisted his approach was the only way through the impasse at Westminster. “There’s no majority for anything. What we’re trying to do is bring two minorities together: MPs who want to secure a public vote, in one way or another, and MPs who support May’s deal.”
Corbyn has, however, continued to stress Labour’s determination to press home its own alternative Brexit proposals.
“This is ridiculous; this thing has been defeated comprehensively,” he said, of May’s deal. “She has got to do something different – and therefore our proposal of a customs union, market access and guaranteeing rights and environmental and consumer protections, are I think the credible ones that are serious, and that’s what we’re putting forward,” he told Sky.
Asked if he was enthusiastic about a referendum, as Kyle has said, Corbyn replied: “I’m enthusiastic about getting a deal with Europe which guarantees our future trading relationship, protects jobs and industries in this country – and I do think people should have a choice on that.”
“The priority is to make sure that we don’t crash out on 29 March. The priority is to protect jobs and industries in this country. The priority is to make sure that we have the right future trading relationship – and a real, credible choice that the people can make on their future relationship with Europe.”
Corbyn declined to say how he would vote in a Brexit referendum. “It depends what the choice is in front of us,” he said.
Labour later issued a press release saying that Corbyn would be holding a series of meetings this week with “colleagues across parliament ... to discuss our credible proposals of a customs union, market access and guaranteeing rights and environmental and consumer protections”.
His message was echoed by Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, who tweeted after Corbyn’s appearance that Labour’s preferred option is for “a Brexit deal that respects the referendum and demands jobs, rights and protections”.
Some shadow ministers anxious about the impact of what they fear would be a divisive referendum on Labour’s electoral coalition would be likely to push for an alternative form of Brexit to be included on the ballot paper.
Meanwhile, the leftwing anti-Brexit campaign group Another Europe is Possible claimed any Labour MPs who supported May’s deal should face deselection.
Its national organiser, Michael Chessum, said: “The whole labour movement – from the leadership, to the unions, to the rank and file of the party – must do everything within their power to make it clear to MPs that if they fail to oppose May’s deal, they cannot represent the party at the next election.”
A People’s Vote spokesman insisted that even if the Kyle-Wilson amendment is defeated this week, it would not mean the argument for a referendum could not be won in future.
“There is a groundswell of support for the compromise plan of a confirmatory ballot being proposed by Phil Wilson and Peter Kyle, but it may not be enough to get them over the line if it’s tabled as an amendment to the next meaningful vote this week.
“Instead, it’s likely that the best chance of making sure the public have the final say on Brexit will be in an extension period if and when parliament has finally decided what it means by Brexit.
“Once MPs have decided on either a soft or hard version of a deal, the Brexit coalition begins to crumble because whoever has lost that argument will be suddenly a lot more persuaded that this whole vexed question should go back to the people.”


First published on Sun 10 Mar 2019 13.48 GMT
The shadow chancellor has said Labour would back a delay to Brexit to help secure a better withdrawal deal, as the party retreated from supporting a parliamentary vote on a second referendum this week.
John McDonnell said it was no longer the right time to vote on a second referendum on Tuesday, because the priority should be defeating May’s Brexit and then trying to help negotiate a better one.
He had previously said Labour would either put forward an amendment calling for a second referendum or support a backbench one at the time May put her Brexit deal to a vote on 12 March.
His comments will disappoint some in the party who want Labour to have a clear position in favour of a second referendum as the top priority. Senior figures in the People’s Vote campaign, however, believe there is not yet enough support in parliament for a second referendum. Alastair Campbell said this would only happen when “it becomes clear there is not a majority for any specific form of Brexit”.
McDonnell suggested Labour would back an extension to article 50 to give time to seek a better deal when that option is put to a vote on Thursday. He said the party could help to secure such agreement involving a customs union within weeks, but that article 50 should be extended as long as was necessary to strike a deal.
He said it was still Labour’s policy to support a second referendum, but only if parliament proved unable to agree on a better outcome than May’s withdrawal agreement.
He told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We’ve got to abide by exactly what we’ve said at Labour party conference, which is we go through the sequence of respecting the referendum, preventing a reckless deal that Theresa May is bringing forward, preventing a no deal, looking to see how we can construct a deal which we think could protect jobs and the economy, and failing that going for a general election or failing that going back to the people.
“And this week, we thought this would be the week in which Theresa May brought back for a meaningful vote a different deal, a new deal. It doesn’t look like that. It looks as though she’s bringing back the same deal, so I think it will have the same result and it’ll be thrown out. And then we’ll move into a situation where we, at least we can try and vote down a no deal, and then I think, yes, further negotiations will take place.
“My view is everything we do this week has got to prevent a no deal and a bad deal. Other discussions will take place but we’ll always, exactly as our party conference said, we’ll always keep on the agenda if necessary. If parliament can’t agree we’ll have to go back to the people. We’ll be forced to.”
His position was echoed by the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, who suggested Labour wanted a straightforward vote on May’s deal on Tuesday. “I think across parliament now people know the deal is the same. There is a strong sense that it should be an up-down vote on the deal,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
“Now that is not just a Labour position. Back on 15 January, when we first went through this exercise, there were lots of amendments down and, in the end, across the house, everybody pretty well pulled their amendments and said we need to know the size of the defeat, if it is a defeat, and we are back to that moment on Tuesday.
“That doesn’t mean that the public vote is gone, it doesn’t mean we won’t come to it … Tuesday is about exposing the weakness of the prime minister and then moving on.”
Starmer suggested Labour would prefer to back an amendment by backbench MPs than tabling its own, because such a strategy would be more likely to attract support across parliament. He also said Labour’s default position ought to be supporting remain if there were a public vote.
Labour wants to throw its weight behind an amendment by Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, two backbench MPs, which would offer a referendum on any deal achieved by the government versus a remain option.
The MPs, however, are now not likely to put that amendment to a vote this week given the scale of defeat that May is likely to face on her deal.
Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman, accused Labour of pulling its punches. “Labour’s apparent belated support for a people’s vote needs to be put to the test very soon. If not Tuesday, when? And their commitment must go hand in hand with a three-line whip,” he said.
Scottish Labour’s conference voted earlier on Sunday to support a second referendum on Brexit, reflecting UK Labour policy to “put forward or support an amendment in favour of a public vote, between the option on the one hand of a credible leave deal and on the other hand remain”.
First published on Mon 1 Apr 2019 22.26 BST
Theresa May will summon her warring cabinet to Downing Street for a five-hour showdown on Tuesday after parliament once again failed to coalesce behind any alternative to her rejected Brexit deal.
Three options – a common market, a customs union and a second referendum – were all narrowly rejected in the process of indicative votes, prompting renewed talk of a swift general election.
After Conservative MPs failed to support any option in sufficient numbers, there were immediate recriminations in the House of Commons chamber.
The Tory MP Nick Boles declared that he had failed to persuade his colleagues to compromise with his “common market 2.0” plan and announced his departure from the party. Supporters of a second referendum from across parliament were also accused of increasing the risk of a no-deal by refusing to back soft Brexit options.
With just 10 days left until Britain is due to leave the EU without a deal unless the government secures a fresh delay from Brussels, the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, said the cabinet would have to decide the way forward.
“This house has continuously rejected leaving without a deal, just as it has rejected not leaving at all. Therefore the only option is to find a way through which allows the UK to leave with a deal,” he said.
One Downing Street adviser said that a snap election fronted by May was being “tested” and that it was viewed by some in the No 10 bunker as “the least worst option”.
Cabinet ministers were instructed to abstain from Monday’s voting process, which was devised by a cross-party alliance of MPs led by the former Conservative minister Oliver Letwin.
The customs union motion tabled by the former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke was rejected by a margin of just three votes, by 273 to 276, while a second Brexit referendum fell short of a majority by only 12 votes.
The Norway-style “common market 2.0” Brexit deal championed by Boles was also rejected, by 261 votes to 282, despite Labour frontbench and SNP support. Just 33 Conservative MPs backed it.
Boles said: “I have failed, chiefly because my party fails to compromise” – and made the dramatic announcement to MPs that he would no longer sit in the House of Commons as a Conservative before leaving the chamber.
His emotional statement emphasised the toxic atmosphere in the Tory party over Brexit. One outspoken leaver, Mark Francois, told the BBC’s World Tonight he believed the chancellor had been privately encouraging MPs to support a customs union, in what he called a “coup”.
“If you’re listening, Mr Hammond,” he added, “my fraternal message to you is: ‘Up yours!’” Less outspoken Brexiters were also delighted by Monday night’s deadlock, believing it will lead to a no-deal Brexit.
All three alternative Brexit options lost by a significantly narrower margin than the prime minister’s deal, however, which was rejected for a third time by 58 votes last Friday.
MPs also declined to back a separate attempt by the SNP MP Joanna Cherry to allow parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
After parliament had its say, cabinet ministers will have to decide whether to tack towards a closer future relationship with the EU in an attempt to build a majority; head for a no-deal Brexit on 12 April; or give May’s deal a final shot this week, probably on Wednesday.
Several cabinet ministers, including Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox, are adamant that a no-deal exit would be preferable to a customs union – and they claim the support of more than half of the parliamentary party, many of whom signed a letter to May making the point.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, a contender to succeed May as Conservative leader, made his position clear on Monday, tweeting that a customs union might appear to be “some kind of soft comfort blanket” but was “in reality more of a straitjacket”.
However, another well-organised group of ministers, including Amber Rudd and David Gauke, are determined to avoid no deal and believe May should instead seek a cross-party consensus.
A cabinet source said: “I honestly just think the prime minister needs to make a firm decision.”
Ministers have been told to expect three hours of political cabinet – excluding civil servants – on Tuesday morning, and another two hours of full cabinet in the afternoon.
May’s official spokesman underlined her continued objections to Britain remaining part of a customs union on Monday. “She has said on a number of occasions that she believes it is important for the UK to have its own trade policy,” he said.
No 10 has not ruled out bringing the prime minister’s deal back to the House of Commons for a fourth time if the Speaker will allow it.
May could table it together with an amendment submitted last week by the Labour MPs Gareth Snell and Lisa Nandy allowing parliament a greater say in the next stage of the Brexit negotiations. That could help the government to circumvent the Speaker’s ruling that May cannot bring her deal back unchanged.
May said last Friday that she would accept the Snell-Nandy amendment, and Conservative whips hope it could attract the support of a string of Labour MPs from pro-Brexit seats this week. But just five voted for her deal last week after hearing that she would back it.
If she brings her deal back, the prime minister is likely to seek to pit it against a backbench-led effort to push the government towards a softer deal, sharpening the dilemma for Brexiters, who prefer a cleaner break with the EU.
The schools minister, Nadhim Zahawi, said: “I would like the option that parliament comes up with put up against the prime minister’s deal. I am confident that the prime minister’s deal would win the day.”
She is also expected to point to the risks that failure to agree a solution could result in a risky general election.
Many Conservative MPs, including Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, changed sides to support her deal on Friday after May’s promise to leave Downing Street if she won the vote. May has invited those MPs who switched sides in favour of her deal to meet her, in the latest attempt to shore up support.
EU27 leaders have granted Britain an extension to the article 50 deadline to 12 April, but if May wants to avoid no deal she will have to request a longer extension at an emergency EU summit next week.
Brussels sources say that would be granted only if the prime minister points to a plausible alternative Brexit plan that could command the support of a stable majority in the Commons.
While the backbench-led debate on Brexit options continued on Monday, MPs were also holding a separate discussion triggered by a mass petition calling for article 50 to be revoked, which has gained more than 6m signatures. The petition is the most popular in parliament’s history.
The Independent Group MP Chuka Umunna said young people would suffer the worst effects of no deal. “They are the ones who will never forgive this generation of politicians if we allow this catastrophe to happen,” he said.
First published on Tue 26 Mar 2019 11.39 GMT
Theresa May still hopes to bring her Brexit deal back to parliament for a third meaningful vote this week, after the leading Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg said he was reluctantly considering supporting it.
The prime minister’s spokesman said there had been a long discussion at cabinet on Tuesday morning about how to respond to MPs’ vote to seize control of the parliamentary timetable.
But he said the government’s focus remained on trying to find a majority for May’s deal.
“If we are able to hold and win a vote this week, we will be able to leave the EU in two months, which is what the PM firmly believes is the right thing,” the spokesman said.
Asked whether May was hopeful she could yet win over her party, he said “the prime minister and her colleagues understand the need to work hard on this in order to build support”, adding that ministers would continue to hold meetings with MPs from different parties.
The hopes of some in government were buoyed by Rees-Mogg on Tuesday, as he indicated he could back the prime minister’s Brexit deal rather than risk Britain’s departure from the EU being delayed or abandoned.
But the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), her unofficial coalition partners, repeated that its MPs would not vote for the agreement as it stood.
It also remains to be seen how many other Tory MPs in the pro-Brexit European Research Group could follow the lead of Rees-Mogg, who chairs it, with a number of them still insisting they could not support May.
It emerged on Tuesday that May is going to address Conservative MPs at a meeting of the 1922 Committee on Wednesday night – with speculation swirling at Westminster that she could take the opportunity to name a date for her departure, in the hope of winning over more MPs to support her deal.
Speaking to the Conservative Home website for his regular “Moggcast” podcast, Rees-Mogg said fellow ERG members had to recognise they did not have the House of Commons votes to deliver their version of Brexit, and should see departure as a gradual process.
“We have to recognise that what we want and what we can deliver is not necessarily the same because of our lack of numbers,” he said. “The ERG and other Eurosceptics in parliament cannot win any vote on our own.”
Rees-Mogg said May had effectively ruled out a no-deal departure. “The prime minister will not deliver a no-deal Brexit,” he said. This meant, he argued, the options now appeared to be narrowing to being between her deal and potentially not leaving at all.
“That, I think, [could] become the choice, eventually,” he said. “Whether we’re there yet is another matter. But I’ve always thought that no deal is better than Mrs May’s deal, but Mrs May’s deal is better than not leaving at all. And so there is a sort of hierarchy of choice.
“And if the choice is the one that you suggest then, inevitably, leaving the European Union, even leaving it inadequately and having work to do afterwards, is better than not leaving at all. And perhaps the thought processes that people like me hadn’t gone through before is the thought that Brexit is a process rather than an event.”
Many Brexiters had viewed the process as being “29 March, we leave, that’s it, bingo, done”, Rees-Mogg added, and had to adjust their expectations. “If we take this deal, we are legally out of the European Union,” he added.
However, a series of other ERG members remain resolutely opposed to backing May’s plan, with one, Andrea Jenkyns, tweeting that it was “fake news” to suggest she might change her mind.
May also needs to secure the DUP’s 10 votes, a prospect that remains unlikely. On Tuesday, the DUP MP Jim Shannon insisted the party could not back the plan. “The obvious thing for us is that nothing has changed,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
The only way for the DUP to support the plan, he said, was for the government to attach a time limit to the backstop insurance policy for the Irish border, which the EU has repeatedly ruled out.
“We had only one red line, and that red line was clear – the backstop. And that hasn’t changed,” Shannon said.
A change of heart by the ERG would not affect this, he added: “They maybe see Brexit as the greater issue, rather than the union. We see the union as the big issue, the priority.”
First published on Tue 9 Apr 2019 20.50 BST
Theresa May is considering a new plan to bring legislation to the House of Commons to allow MPs to thrash out a compromise Brexit deal among themselves, if talks with Labour fail to reach a consensus.
Numerous cabinet sources confirmed to the Guardian that a plan had been discussed to bring forward the withdrawal agreement bill, which could be a way to attempt to bypass a meaningful vote in parliament.
It is understood May and her team have gone cool on the idea of MPs having more indicative votes, which she had suggested would be binding if talks with Labour do not progress.
However, Labour is keener on bringing forward the withdrawal agreement bill to test support for amendments on various options. A Labour source said this had been discussed in the Cabinet Office on Tuesday, but ruled out frontbench support for the plan at this stage.
Three cabinet sources said the plan was very much on the table, with the bill potentially being brought forward within a week. However, others played down the idea, saying the government acknowledged it still did not have the numbers for the withdrawal bill to pass the Commons.
Under the plan, the government would hope to persuade the Labour frontbench to allow the bill, known in official circles as the WAB, to be used to ratify the Brexit deal and to give legal reassurances on workers’ rights, environmental protections and a “Boris lock” to prevent agreements being unpicked by a future Tory leader, such as Boris Johnson.
Some cabinet ministers believe the bill’s progress could act as an indicative votes process – cross-party groups of MPs would be able to amend it to bind the government into elements such as a customs union, which could then potentially gain a parliamentary majority.
After an amendment passed by Dominic Grieve in 2017, UK law requires a meaningful vote in parliament on the withdrawal agreement and political declaration – but supporters of the move believe the WAB could potentially be amended to remove that requirement.
Talks with Labour on a Brexit deal had more success on Tuesday, with an acknowledgement from the government that it was open to seeking changes to the political declaration, firmer guarantees on abiding by future EU regulations on workers’ rights and potentially changing some of the language around a customs union.
It is understood, however, that the fundamentals of the government’s position on the customs union have not changed and the two sides remain at some distance, meaning talks are likely to drag on into next week.
Labour also has serious concerns that May might not have the full authority of cabinet or her party to pursue such a deal and could not ultimately bind a hard Brexiter successor such as Johnson or Dominic Raab to any agreement.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, raised the issue of Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, writing to Conservative MPs saying a customs union with the EU was the “worst of all worlds” as evidence that it does not look like the government is completely on board with negotiations.
Following the talks, Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, said: “We’ve had really constructive discussions today and covered a number of issues in great detail. There’s not really been any fundamental shift or a change in position of the deal itself. But we’re hopeful that progress will be made. We’re continuing discussions with the government over the coming days.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Theresa May has given way to Madrid’s demands over the future of Gibraltar after the Spanish prime minister threatened to “veto” the Brexit deal due to be signed off by EU leaders on Sunday.
On the eve of Sunday’s special Brexit summit, the British ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, wrote to concede that Gibraltar would not necessarily be covered by a future trade deal with the EU.
The development gives Spain a veto over Gibraltar benefiting from a future trade and security agreement between Brussels and the British government.
The Spanish leader, Pedro Sánchez, reacted immediately, claiming the UK would now have to open talks on “joint sovereignty” of Gibraltar, over which Spain has had a claim since the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Sánchez said: “Once the UK has left the EU, Gibraltar’s political, legal and even geographic relationship with the EU will go through Spain …
“Spain will be a fundamental pillar of the relationship between Gibraltar and the EU as a whole.
“When it comes to the future political declaration, the European council and the European commission have backed Spain’s position, and backed it as never before.
“In these fundamental future negotiations, we’re going to have to talk about joint sovereignty and many other things with the UK.”
The 27 EU member states are set to publish a further statement in solidarity with Spain at the summit, according to a leaked document seen by the Guardian.
“After the United Kingdom leaves the union, Gibraltar will not be included in the territorial scope of the agreements to be concluded between the union and the United Kingdom,” the EU will say.
In the statement, the EU will go on to warn that any separate deal to protect Gibraltar’s economy will “require a prior agreement of the Kingdom of Spain”.
The news was met with anger by politicians across the political spectrum. The Liberal Democrat’s Brexit spokesman, Tom Brake MP, said: “The prime minister has caved in once again. In a desperate bid to get her disastrous deal across the line, May appears to have cast the people of Gibraltar aside.
“She has conceded that Gibraltar won’t necessarily be covered by a future trade deal, simply another example of why what she has negotiated is completely unacceptable. She has left the status of Gibraltar in jeopardy.
“This is a day of shame. The only way to sort out this chaos would be through a People’s Vote, with the option to remain in the EU”.
Labour’s MEP for Gibraltar, Clare Moody, said: “What is remarkable is that Theresa May has gone to Brussels to concede further text at this stage, before we’ve even left.”
The Conservative MP, Andrew Bridgen, said: “It appears that there is no-one the prime minister will not betray to achieve her sell-out deal”.
Amid the growing outcry over the concession, the prime minister, insisted that nothing had changed over the UK’s territorial claim to Gibraltar, as she visited Brussels on Saturday night for meetings with EU officials, including European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker.
May also dismissed claims from Spain’s foreign minister that the agreement on the Rock had been a victory for Madrid delivering a treaty that was “the most important one since the Utrecht Treaty of 1713”, which had handed the territory to the British.
May said: “The UK’s position on the sovereignty of Gibraltar has never changed and will not change.
“I’m proud Gibraltar is British and I will always stand by Gibraltar. The UK’s position on Gibraltar has not changed and will not change.
“We have negotiated on behalf of Gibraltar, they are covered by the whole withdrawal agreement and by the implementation period. In the future we will continue to negotiate on behalf of the whole UK family and that includes Gibraltar. I’m proud Gibraltar is British I will always stand by Gibraltar.”
The move does, however, resolve the final outstanding issue in the Brexit negotiations. Donald Tusk, the European council president, sent a letter of invitation to Sunday’s summit to all the leaders on Saturday afternoon.
Tusk wrote: “During these negotiations, no one wanted to defeat anyone. We were all looking for a good and fair agreement. And I believe that we have finally found the best possible compromise.
“Given all of the above, I will recommend that on Sunday we approve the outcome of the Brexit negotiations. And although no one will have reasons to be happy on that day, there is one thing I would like to stress: at this critical time, the EU27 has passed the test of unity and solidarity.”
The development threatens, however, to open up a new front in Downing Street’s battle with the critics of May’s deal.
Sánchez had demanded a written assurance as the price for his support for the withdrawal agreement and accompanying political declaration on the future relationship.
Spain does not have a formal veto over the 585-page withdrawal agreement and the 26-page joint declaration by the leaders, but the EU would have been unlikely to go ahead with the summit without Madrid’s support.
The prime minister had promised in the House of Commons and on the steps of Downing Street that she would work for the entire “UK family”, including Gibraltar – a disputed territory.
Spain has always insisted that Gibraltar could only be covered by any agreements struck between the EU and the UK with Madrid’s consent.
A bilateral agreement on tax evasion, police cooperation and tobacco smuggling had persuaded Spain that Gibraltar could be covered by the 21-month transition period after Brexit, during which the UK would stay in the single market and customs union without representation in EU decision-making institutions.
Spain was furious when an article in the withdrawal agreement appeared to suggest that any future trade deal would cover Gibraltar. Downing Street was accused of “acting under the cover of darkness” in inserting the clause.
The letter from the British ambassador to the European council laid down Downing Street’s understanding that article 184 in the withdrawal agreement “imposes no obligations regarding the territorial scope” of a future trade deal.
A separate letter made public on Saturday, from Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, and Tusk, said the two EU leaders wanted to “underline our solidarity with the Kingdom of Spain on this matter”.
Tusk spoke to Sánchez on Saturday afternoon to ensure that he was content.
When asked if this was a British climbdown, a UK government spokesman said: “No. This is the same position as for the first phase of the negotiations. We will negotiate outcomes which work for the EU and the whole of the UK family.”
First published on Mon 10 Dec 2018 08.13 GMT
Theresa May has dismissed the idea of abandoning Brexit after the European court of justice ruled that the UK could stop the article 50 process without seeking EU approval.
The court in Luxembourg delighted remain campaigners by issuing an emergency ruling on Monday morning that, under EU law, the UK was able to unilaterally halt the article 50 process – fuelling renewed calls for a second referendum.
Speaking to MPs later as she fought to defend her decision to delay a Commons vote on her deal, the prime minister admitted the ECJ’s ruling meant she was able to revoke article 50 – a decision her government had bitterly opposed.
May was challenged by Liz Saville Roberts, a Plaid Cymru MP, who said the European court ruling meant it was in the prime minister’s gift to personally take Brexit off the table.
The prime minister indicated that was true but made clear she had no plans to do such a thing. It would be a short-term fix, she said, but would betray voters who won the 2016 referendum. “Revoking article 50 would mean going back on the vote of the referendum and remaining in the EU,” May said.
Scottish judges are to hold an emergency hearing in response to the ECJ ruling next week, chaired by Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Carloway, the lord president, and two other judges, who now have to transpose it into domestic law.
Lawyers for the cross-party group of Scottish parliamentarians who took the case to Luxembourg are expected to argue it means the prime minister is lawfully able to cancel the article 50 process without needing new legislation.
Andy Wightman, the Scottish Green party MSP who led the legal challenge, said it was a momentous ruling which now meant the UK could stay in the EU and keep all its existing benefits, including its rebate, its opt-outs and the pound.
“MPs now know that stopping Brexit altogether is an option open to them before the end of the article 50 period,” he said.
The pro-Brexit environment secretary, Michael Gove, played down the significance of the ECJ decision, which was announced just before he was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We voted very clearly – 17.4 million people sent a clear message that they wanted to leave the European Union. And that also means leaving the jurisdiction of the European court of justice,” he said.
“So this case is all very well, but it doesn’t alter either the referendum vote or the clear intention of the government to make sure that we leave on 29 March.”
While the UK could abandon Brexit before 29 March, the date on which its withdrawal from the EU under article 50 takes effect, staging a second referendum would require the EU’s agreement to extend article 50 beyond its normal two-year time limit.
Rob Murray, a partner at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, which represented Gina Miller, the activist who won a supreme court ruling in 2016 that article 50 had to be authorised by parliament, said new legislation would be needed.
After reading the European court ruling, Murray said: “Critically, as clarified by the Miller decision, an act of parliament would be necessary to reverse the notification of intention to withdraw.”
Jolyon Maugham QC, the founder of the London-based Good Law Project, whose supporters helped fund the legal challenge, said he believed this was not necessary. All that was required, he said, was a Commons vote ordering the prime minister to stop Brexit.
“We’ll obviously need to discuss it internally. But I expect we’ll say that there’s no need for fresh legislation. Parliament can direct the PM to revoke and that’ll be that. It may even be that the government doesn’t disagree,” Maugham said.
He cited reports from Sky News that government ministers also privately believed no new legislation is required. However, the case is expected to be vigorously contested by the UK government, which could appeal against it to the UK supreme court in an effort to delay a final ruling.
The ECJ judgment, which came only two weeks after it held an emergency hearing on the issue, had itself been expedited to coincide with the crucial vote on May’s Brexit deal in the Commons tomorrow.
That vote has now been postponed as May fights to save the deal and her government after more than 100 Tory MPs, including numerous loyalist, pro-remain backbenchers, threatened to vote the deal down.
Maugham and other members of his group believe the ECJ ruling raises doubts about the supreme court’s ruling in Miller in 2016 because it was partly based on the assumption that article 50 could not be unilaterally revoked.
Miller’s legal team and the UK government agreed to that position because it was legally simpler to do so, Maugham said, and increased the constitutional role of parliament. The European court has now said that was wrong.
First published on Tue 14 May 2019 15.31 BST
Theresa May has pledged to give MPs another opportunity to vote on Brexit early next month, with or without Labour’s backing, after Jeremy Corbyn raised concerns about her ability to deliver on a cross-party deal.
The prime minister called a meeting with the Labour leader on Tuesday night to take stock of the Brexit negotiations, as the government sought to inject fresh urgency into the process. The pair held an hour-long meeting alongside the two parties’ chief whips.
A Labour spokesperson said: “[Corbyn] set out the shadow cabinet’s concerns about the prime minister’s ability to deliver on any compromise agreement. In particular, he raised doubts over the credibility of government commitments, following statements by Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers seeking to replace the prime minister.”
But Downing Street insisted that the government was determined to bring forward the key piece of Brexit legislation – the withdrawal agreement bill – in the week beginning 3 June. “It is imperative we do so then if the UK is to leave the EU before the summer parliamentary recess,” a spokesman said.
May’s divided cabinet agreed on Tuesday that the talks with Labour should continue, despite the lack of substantive progress so far, but set a fresh deadline of the summer recess for parliament to pass the bill.
The 3 June date for tabling the legislation suggests the government is effectively setting a deadline for achieving progress in the cross-party talks – although neither side is keen to walk away before the European parliament elections on 23 May.
Labour has repeatedly suggested that May and her colleagues have refused to budge on the central issue of a customs union with the EU.
Fourteen senior Tories, including the leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, wrote a letter to May on Monday warning that adopting a customs union would alienate the “loyal middle” of the Conservative party.
With the prime minister under intense pressure from her backbenchers to abandon the talks, cabinet ministers held what Downing Street called an “extensive” discussion on Tuesday morning.
“Ministers involved set out details of the compromises which the government was prepared to consider in order to secure an agreement which would allow the UK to leave the EU with a deal as soon as possible,” the prime minister’s spokesman said. David Lidington, who has been leading the Brexit talks for the Tories, gave an overview of progress.
No date has yet been set for parliament’s summer recess, which usually begins in mid-July. MPs are due to go on a Whitsun recess from 23 May – the day of the European elections – to 4 June.
With the Tories apparently heading towards a crushing defeat by Nigel Farage’s Brexit party at the European elections, the prime minister spoke out against the risk of succumbing to “absolutists” on the subject of Brexit, according to one cabinet source.
She reminded colleagues of the need to abide by collective responsibility, in remarks regarded by some as a dig at Jeremy Hunt, who made a wide-ranging speech this week that included a demand for a doubling of defence spending. “She didn’t sound like someone preparing to resign,” said one cabinet source.
The week chosen for the next Brexit vote will also see a state visit by the US president, who will take part in D-day commemorations on Wednesday 5 June.
May hopes that by setting a clear date for the bill, she can fend off calls for an imminent no-confidence vote. She is due to appear before the executive committee of the 1922 Committee on Thursday. Up to 10 of its members plan to demand that she set a date for the end of her premiership or face immediate demands to go.
The party is increasingly struggling to contain widespread anger among its MPs and members at May’s failure to lead the UK through Brexit. Several key committee members, including the chair, Sir Graham Brady, and the treasurer, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, have said May should draw up a clear schedule for her departure.
The Guardian understands that other executive members, including Sheryll Murray, the South East Cornwall MP, have discussed plans to tell her to stand down immediately if she does not arrive at the meeting with a short, unambiguous timetable for departure. “If she has to be told to her face, so be it. Enough is enough,” said one source.
May’s spokesman reiterated that the prime minister intended to step down once she had completed the first phase of the Brexit talks.
As a crowded field of senior Tories have begun making their pitches for a potential leadership contest, Labour has become increasingly concerned about the impact of May’s fragile authority on the outcome of the Brexit talks.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, speaking at a Wall Street Journal event, said it was becoming hard to see how Labour could “march our troops up the hill” when Johnson and Raab were prepared to overturn any cross-party deal.
Asked whether the talks were going anywhere, he said: “The customs union is absolutely key to us. We are not near what we want.”
McDonnell said Johnson had made clear he was not going to accept a customs union and would overturn any deal agreed in negotiations. “It gives us no security and we expect a response from government to that,” he said.
McDonnell echoed the views of Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, that a cross-party deal would attract the support of large numbers of MPs only if a second referendum was attached.
In Brussels, the prime minister’s Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, provided EU officials with copies of agreed text that has emerged from the cross-party talks designed to be included in the withdrawal legislation, it is understood.
Brussels was briefed that a meeting of minds had been found in some areas, including parliament’s role in future trade talks and commitments on social and environmental protections demanded by Labour.
But EU sources said there was scant evidence of an imminent breakthrough on the more contentious areas, including a permanent customs union or confirmatory referendum.
Additional reporting by Rowena Mason and Daniel Boffey
First published on Sat 8 Dec 2018 22.00 GMT
A deep cabinet split has opened up over whether Theresa May should back a second referendum in a final attempt to end the political deadlock over Brexit, as senior Conservatives predicted on Saturday night that her blueprint for leaving the EU was heading for a crushing House of Commons defeat.
Adding to a mounting sense of constitutional crisis ahead of Tuesday’s crucial parliamentary vote, No 10 is braced for more resignations of ministers and aides who want another referendum, or who believe May’s deal fails to deliver on Brexit. Will Quince, the Colchester MP and aide to the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, quit his post on Saturday night in protest at the Brexit deal.
Cabinet ministers have told the Observer that attempts to convince May to delay the vote to avoid one of the largest and most humiliating defeats in recent parliamentary history had not been heeded. This was despite what they saw as a clear danger that such a result could provoke a leadership challenge and split the party irrevocably. Some cabinet ministers now believe that May is so wedded to her Brexit deal that her only method of gaining approval will be through another referendum – and that the arguments for a second vote are emerging as stronger than those for a soft Brexit. The prime minister has so far refused to entertain any idea of a second public vote.
One cabinet source said it might prove to be the only way of saving May’s deal and her reputation. “She is so committed to her deal, and a second referendum could now be the only way of getting it. The polls have been remarkably stable for a while, but there does seem to be some kind of movement [to Remain], and that could well develop in the coming days and weeks.”
Another senior Tory backing a second referendum said: “There are people in the cabinet who back a second referendum, but they are riding several horses so they don’t have to quit.”
There is even talk among senior ministers that May should form a temporary government of national unity should she be defeated, as a “last throw of the dice” to find a majority for a Brexit plan that works.
Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, broke ranks on Saturday to become the first cabinet minister to openly suggest alternatives to May’s plan. Rudd argued that a Norway-style soft Brexit could be the way through the impasse. She also said in an interview with the Times that she did not rule out a second referendum and made it clear that if there were to be one, she would vote remain.
Writing on the Guardian website, however, the justice secretary, David Gauke, dismisses both the Norway option and a second referendum, which he says would come with “great risks”. Strongly backing May’s deal, Gauke says a second referendum “is by no means guaranteed to be a silver bullet. In fact it is more likely to entrench division and lead to at least a further year of damaging uncertainty.”
Downing Street said it remained firmly opposed to a second referendum, and insisted the prime minister was focused on winning the “meaningful vote”. In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, May warned Tory rebels that the country would be in “uncharted waters” if the deal was rejected with “a very real risk of no Brexit or leaving the European Union with no deal”. She also said voting down the deal would risk handing the keys of No 10 to Jeremy Corbyn.
But a senior Conservative backbencher, aware of the level of opposition to May’s deal in the party, said there could be at least 100 Tory MPs who would not support her. A close ally of the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said a defeat on that scale would leave May no choice but to resign. “If it is under 50 she can probably go on and try to ask for concessions from Brussels, then put it back to a second vote. If it’s 50 to 100 it is more difficult but if it is over 100 it is impossible to see how she can carry on. People are already saying it is like the last days of Rome and it cannot go on like this.”
In a further blow to the prime minister, the all-party select committee on exiting the European Union, which contains 10 Tory MPs, published a unanimous and scathing report on her deal on Sunday. The committee says many of the most important questions about the UK’s future relations with the EU have been left unanswered because of ministers’ unwillingness to confront key issues. The committee chairman, the Labour MP Hilary Benn, said the deal lacks clarity and would represent “a huge step into the unknown”.
The committee unites behind a conclusion that “there are no realistic, long-term proposals from the government to reconcile maintaining an open border on the island of Ireland with leaving the single market and customs union”. As far negotiations on an UK-EU trade deal is concerned it says negotiations could be further delayed and complicated “because the government has yet to set out clear objectives for the future relationship that are realistic, workable and have the support of parliament”.
On Sunday, the Tory MP Sarah Wollaston reveals a new strategy to secure cross-party backing for a second referendum. Rather than tabling an amendment to Tuesday’s main motion, as previously planned, she will launch a campaign to rally MPs behind a second vote if and when May’s deal is defeated. Tory MPs in favour of a second vote hope Labour will officially back the call allowing a parliamentary majority to be formed. Wollaston said: “If the vote in parliament goes ahead then, once rejected, I will be bringing a cross-party amendment at the earliest opportunity to press for a people’s vote. I urge the Labour frontbench to then stick to their promise to support it. No responsible government or opposition frontbench could knowingly unleash the dire consequences of crashing out with no deal and no transition and MPs on both sides must be realistic and honest with the public that no further concessions or alternative deals are on offer.”
Downing Street revealed that the environment secretary, Michael Gove, will close the debate for the government on Tuesday evening. Voting will take place at 7pm. On Tuesday morning, the Speaker, John Bercow, will select up to six amendments to the main government motion that seeks approval for May’s deal. One of these – tabled by Benn and with strong cross-party backing – calls both for the deal to be rejected and for parliament to rule out a no deal outcome. Senior MPs believe that if the Benn amendment is chosen by the speaker and voted on before the main motion, it could be passed, meaning the government motion would be superseded. The effect would be a double defeat for May, and narrow her options down, as she would not be able to proceed towards a no deal. Some senior MPs say this will make a second referendum more likely.
The Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan said on Saturday night that May had to stay even if she was heavily defeated. “Whatever happens Theresa May must not resign,” he said. “The country needs her. No one can do any better. We need her to see it through. Nothing could be worse than a leadership contest while Brexit remains unresolved.”
Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the European commission, speaking at a conference in Portugal attended by Jeremy Corbyn, on Saturday urged the Labour leader to back a second referendum. He said: “The Brexit vote was the lowest point in my political life. We respect the vote. But since that vote, much has changed in the world. And the EU has changed. Looking at the UK and having listened to Jeremy Corbyn and his plans, I have a question: Can you achieve what you want more easily as a member of the EU family or on your own?”
First published on Thu 1 Nov 2018 06.29 GMT
Downing Street has quashed speculation that a Brexit agreement has been reached on financial services, after an overnight report that a tentative deal had been struck caused the pound to soar briefly.
No 10 sources said no deal had been agreed, although the government added in a statement that it continued “to make good progress reaching new arrangements for financial services”.
The remarks came after reports that the two sides had agreed to give UK banks access to European markets as long as British regulation remained broadly equivalent to the EU’s.
Responding to the reports at a briefing for reporters, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “When the BBC choses to lead its bulletin on a speculative [Times] page 14 news story, it is time for everybody to take a deep breath.”
There is considerable frustration in No 10 that the Times report gained traction overnight when the BBC decided to lead early morning news bulletins on it. Officials said everybody needed to calm down when reporting on the status of the Brexit negotiations.
In a rare public comment on a press report, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, tweeted: “Misleading press articles today on #Brexit & financial services. Reminder: EU may grant and withdraw equivalence in some financial services autonomously. As with other 3rd countries, EU ready to have close regulatory dialogue with UK in full respect for autonomy of both parties.”
The prime minister’s spokesman said: “Our objective is go beyond existing EU equivalence regimes and agree a new economic and regulatory partnership with the EU over financial services.
“This will be based on the principle of autonomy for each side over decisions regarding access to its market, with a bilateral framework of commitments to underpin the operation of the relationship, to ensure transparency and stability and promote cooperation.”
However, the EU has consistently said it will not give the UK a special deal for its financial services sector, insisting the system that works for US companies wanting to operate in the European market should be good enough for the City of London.
Barnier said over the summer that he was open to consultations between regulators on either side of the Channel over regulatory changes. Brussels is also changing the terms of its equivalence regime, under which service providers in a non-EU state are permitted to operate in member states.
But the EU has not engaged with UK negotiators on the changes and Brussels is opposed to any attempt to prevent the EU from unilaterally blocking companies in the City of London from operating on its territory.
Earlier, No 10 insiders had suggested it was “very premature” to be talking about the future trading relationship, but did not deny the future of financial services was being discussed. Others dismissed the reports as “unsubstantiated rumours”.
In addition to the withdrawal agreement, both sides are looking for a deal on a high-level declaration of intent that will form the basis for a political statement on the future partnership, to be voted on by MPs. The legal and technical details will be hammered out after Britain leaves the EU in March.
With five months left to secure a deal, anxious business leaders are demanding more clarity over the trade terms the divorce will deliver.
On Thursday, Theresa May told a group of chairmen and chief executives of large European industrial companies that her principal concern was getting her Brexit deal through parliament, according to one of those present. She told them that she needed to conclude the Brexit negotiations in the next “two or three weeks” and that she was confident of doing so.
But she warned that securing the consent of MPs remained a hurdle, particularly given that a version of her Chequers plan to keep the UK in a common rulebook for food and goods after Brexit, which is hated by the Tory right, was still on the table.
Industrialists present said they wanted the UK to remain as close as possible to the status quo of British membership of the EU and described the meeting as largely constructive. Those present at the meeting of the European Round Table of Industrialists included the BP chair, Carl-Henric Svanberg, as well as Iain Conn, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica, and Leif Johansson, the chairman of Anglo-Swedish drugs company AstraZeneca.
Many global banks have reorganised UK operations, setting up European hubs and beginning to move staff to ensure they can continue to serve continental clients if the UK leaves without a deal.
The UK’s banking regulator wants Britain to stay closely aligned with the EU but without having to copy all the bloc’s rules, according to the Financial Conduct Authority’s acting director of strategy, Richard Monks.
The prime minister’s Europe adviser, Oliver Robbins, is continuing negotiations in Brussels, and Downing Street sources have privatively indicated they hope the Brexit talks will be concluded in November.
However, the two sides are yet to agree on an appropriate backstop to avoid a hard border in Ireland if no free-trade deal can be concluded by the end of the transition period in December 2020.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Three cabinet ministers who signalled they could vote to delay Britain’s withdrawal from the EU should resign, a Tory Brexiter MP has said.
Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke should step down, said Andrew Bridgen, a member of the hard-Brexit European Research Group (ERG). He said the ministers were rejecting government policy in breach of cabinet collective responsibility.
“What they are actually saying is that they are rejecting collective responsibility of being in government, they are rejecting government policy,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “In that case, they should do the honourable thing and resign from the government immediately.”
He accused Downing Street of orchestrating their actions in an attempt to pressurise Tory Brexiters into backing Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. “This is partly organised by No 10 – potentially Robbie Gibb, the comms director – to try to bully Brexit-supporting MPs into supporting the withdrawal agreement. I am afraid this is not going to work,” he said.
But the Conservative former minister Nick Boles, who is backing moves to delay Brexit if there is no deal, welcomed the intervention of the three cabinet ministers. “I think it is courageous and it is principled, and I applaud them for doing it,” he told Today.
In a joint newspaper article in the Daily Mail on Saturday, Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, David Gauke, the justice minister, and the business secretary, Greg Clark, said they wanted to ensure the UK does not crash out of the EU without a deal on 29 March. They said they were prepared to defy the prime minister and join those MPs pushing for an extension to article 50 if there is no significant progress next week.
The ministers said a no-deal Brexit would wreck the country’s economy and put security at risk. “If there is no breakthrough in the coming week, the balance of opinion in parliament is clear – that it would be better to seek to extend article 50 and delay our date of departure rather than crash out of the European Union on 29 March,” they added.
“It is time that many of our Conservative parliamentary colleagues in the ERG recognised that parliament will stop a disastrous no-deal Brexit on 29 March. If that happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves for delaying Brexit.”
It comes after the Guardian revealed cabinet ministers will make it clear they believe May should step down after the local elections in May and allow a new leader to take charge of the next phase of the Brexit negotiations.
Senior figures in government have suggested they want the prime minister to leave shortly after the first phase of the Brexit negotiations finishes, or risk being defeated in a vote of no confidence at the end of the year.
May wants to stay in place for long enough after Brexit to secure a political legacy beyond the fraught negotiations. But some ministers believe she should announce the timeline for her departure “on a high” after the local election results, paving the way for a Conservative leadership contest over the summer.
Brexiters in the cabinet are keen to see a new leader take over for the next stage of the negotiations with the EU, which May has already pledged will involve more active involvement for politicians rather than advisers.
The hardening mood among cabinet ministers on the timeline for her departure will place further pressure on May before a critical week of Brexit talks and votes amid a febrile climate in Westminster.
She will fly to an EU-Middle East summit on Sunday, where she will hold bilateral meetings with senior figures including the European council president, Donald Tusk, as part of attempts to secure “legally binding” changes to the backstop.
Downing Street said the prime minister had spoken to 26 of the EU’s 27 leaders in the past fortnight, as she tries to convince them to make changes she can sell to MPs.
“She will have a period of engagement again, on Sunday and Monday, with EU leaders,” a spokesman said. “She has said it is not easy.”
The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, and the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox – whose legal advice on the backstop is critical to convincing Brexiters to support the deal – will return to Brussels on Monday, as technical talks between the two sides continue.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Keir Starmer has warned Boris Johnson that MPs will “do everything to stand in his way” if he tries to force through a “bad deal or a no-deal Brexit”.
Johnson, the frontrunner in the race to be Britain’s next prime minister, has suggested he will “disaggregate” Theresa May’s “otherwise defunct” withdrawal agreement and implement its less contentious elements.
But research commissioned by Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, from the House of Commons library suggests this would still require the government to bring legislation before parliament, which MPs could then reject or amend.
The library’s experts said: “Without an act of parliament, the UK cannot ratify the withdrawal agreement.”
They added that aside from “undertakings” the government gave that did not require changes to the law, “the UK cannot in any meaningful sense ‘implement’ individual parts of the withdrawal agreement otherwise than by primary legislation”.
Starmer said: “Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan is a non-starter. If he tries to force through a bad deal or a no-deal Brexit then parliament will do everything it can to stand in his way.”
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, earlier this week became the latest Conservative MP to signal that he could vote to block a no-deal Brexit, and will join a growing band of rebels on the Tory backbenches if he is sacked by the new prime minister as expected.
Starmer said: “Labour will work with all sides, even former members of Theresa May’s cabinet, to protect the country from a no-deal Brexit.”
Johnson’s team believe parliament would be unable to block a no-deal Brexit on 31 October because it remains the legal default.
But separate analysis by Labour suggests a string of emergency bills on issues from medicines regulation to new rules and systems for the border in Northern Ireland would still need to be passed, even in a no-deal scenario.
Any of them could potentially be seized on – and amended – by MPs looking for a mechanism to block a no-deal Brexit, or perhaps even revoke article 50.
Starmer said: “It’s simply unsustainable to sideline parliament on an issue of this importance. And it’s deeply irresponsible to ignore the legal black hole that a no-deal Brexit would cause.”
However, Johnson’s team insist they are likely to be able to persuade the EU27 to make changes to the withdrawal agreement, including the contentious Irish backstop.
They then believe Johnson will return in triumph to Westminster and win a majority for his Brexit deal in parliament.
Johnson hopes the threat to Tory seats from Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, combined with a perception that he – unlike May – would be willing to press ahead with a no-deal departure if MPs reject his agreement, will change the political mood.
This interpretation has been supported in recent days by several Labour MPs including Lisa Nandy and Gareth Snell suggesting they could vote for something similar to the withdrawal agreement if it were put before parliament.
Labour’s position, reiterated by Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons on Wednesday, is that any Brexit deal should be subject to a referendum.
He asked May: “Does the prime minister agree that whoever succeeds her should have the courage to go back to the people with their preferred Brexit option to end the uncertainty and get Brexit resolved?”
May responded by criticising Labour’s refusal to support her Brexit deal.
Starmer is one of the shadow ministers, alongside the key Corbyn allies Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, who are pressing for Labour to declare it would support remain in any such referendum.
But Corbyn has insisted he is continuing to consult on the issue. And he has made reference to the precedent set by the former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson.
Wilson called the 1975 referendum on common market membership when he was presiding over a deeply divided Labour cabinet, but while the government’s official position was to recommend staying in, he allowed ministers to campaign on both sides.
First published on Tue 9 Apr 2019 09.36 BST
Theresa May’s request for a short Brexit delay has been torn up, putting the EU on track to instead extend Britain’s membership until 2020.
Despite the prime minister’s desperate dash to Paris and Berlin to convince leaders of her plan to break the Brexit impasse, the European council president, Donald Tusk, signalled EU politicians’ lack of faith in her cross-party talks.
Against a backdrop of growing support among the EU27 for a lengthy Brexit delay, Tusk picked apart May’s appeal for a shorter delay to 30 June in a letter to the leaders inviting them to Wednesday’s summit, where they will agree the new end date.
An EU diplomat said on Tuesday, following a late-night meeting of ambassadors, that the two end dates crystallising in EU capitals were the end of December or the end of March 2020.
A cabinet source voiced doubts over whether May could survive after presiding over such a long delay to Brexit, after previously having said she could not “as prime minister” accept a longer delay than 30 June.
The source said some in No 10 now accept it is nearly game over and described all options as very difficult for the prime minister, raising questions about whether she can keep her warring party together much longer.
May is facing a bitter backlash within her party over the likelihood of a long delay to Brexit and participation in EU elections, especially if that leads to any sort of deal with Labour involving a customs union.
Four cabinet ministers – Andrea Leadsom, Chris Grayling, Liam Fox and Geoffrey Cox – were among more than half of Conservative MPs who refused to back a June extension to article 50 in a vote on Tuesday, underlining the plummeting support for May within her own party.
In a damning indictment of Downing Street’s strategy, Tusk claimed the EU’s “experience so far, as well as the deep divisions within the House of Commons, give us little reason to believe that the ratification process can be completed by the end of June”.
Twenty-four hours before May was due in Brussels to address leaders, he warned that “granting such an extension would increase the risk of a rolling series of short extensions and emergency summits, creating new cliff-edge dates”.
“This, in turn, would almost certainly overshadow the business of the EU27 in the months ahead,” Tusk wrote. “The continued uncertainty would also be bad for our businesses and citizens. Finally, if we failed to agree on any next extension, there would be a risk of an accidental no-deal Brexit.”
Cabinet sources said pro-Brexit ministers are being severely tested by the turn of events but would probably not walk out yet if a longer extension involved the option of it being cut short, as is expected.
One source said there was a reluctance among the Brexiters to be replaced with more remainer MPs, but their patience could run out if May does agree to a deal with Labour involving a customs union.
Fox, the international trade secretary, hinted he could not put up with that outcome in a letter to the 1922 committee describing a customs union as “the worst of all worlds”.
The scale of anger among Conservative MPs about May’s talks with Jeremy Corbyn is such that ministers are now speculating about whether she would even command the support of enough her own MPs to have a chance of getting any soft Brexit deal through parliament.
The prime minister’s request for a shorter extension had garnered some support among member states. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, advised ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg that a longer delay would lift the pressure on MPs to vote for the Brexit deal.
But, according to a diplomatic note of the meeting seen by the Guardian, there is now growing support for the idea of a lengthy extension, sources said.
France believes a full year extension, with the option to leave sooner, as proposed by Tusk earlier this month, would be “too long”, but it has been softening its position.
Slovenia, Austria and Spain had all voiced concerns about a lengthy extension during the meeting on Tuesday, citing the risks to the EU of Britain behaving badly during the extra period of membership.
But even those capitals most wary of prolonged delay are now merely insisting on a “mechanism” to keep a check on the British government’s behaviour.
A draft summit communique, obtained by the Guardian, and to be agreed by the EU27’s leaders on Wednesday, assumes in return for an extension a “commitment by the United Kingdom to act in a constructive and responsible manner throughout this unique period in accordance with the duty of sincere cooperation”.
It goes on to say the EU “expects the United Kingdom to fulfil this treaty obligation in a manner that reflects its situation as a withdrawing member state”, while the length of the extension is left blank.
“To this effect, the United Kingdom shall facilitate the achievement of the union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the union’s objectives,” it adds in reference to the EU’s long-term plans, senior appointments and budget decisions. It adds that the UK will leave on 1 June unless it has held European elections between 23-26 May.
The threat made by the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg to disrupt the union from inside in the event of a long extension to Britain’s membership was raised in the meeting of ministers, according to a leaked cable.
Barnier told the group: “We will not tolerate this”.
France’s Europe minister, Amélie de Montchalin, told her colleagues during the meeting: “[The UK] mustn’t stand in the way of any decisions that the EU would have taken without them”.
An option, not included in the draft communique, that has been discussed in recent days is a requirement on the prime minister to set out in writing her intention for the UK to act in “sincere cooperation” with the bloc, and for a “weighing point” to be set up in October when Brussels would judge whether the UK was living up to its commitments.
According to the leaked note, a number of member states told Barnier that they did not believe Labour and the Conservatives were genuinely seeking a compromise position.
Luxembourg questioned why Labour had voted down the withdrawal agreement to which it is not opposed and concluded that its main focus was forcing an election.
Speaking to reporters, Barnier had hinted at the points he had made to the EU’s ministers during a 50-minute address on Tuesday morning, by noting that a key factor in the bloc’s thinking would be the “pressure you might want to assert” on MPs.
But even France showed signs of accepting the need for a longer extension, as May met Macron in Paris following her earlier meeting with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin.
“We cannot keep holding repeat Brexit summits,” an Élysée source conceded. “The EU has other things to do. Only a few weeks before the European elections, the EU must show that it knows how to do other things than holding summits about Brexit.”
First published on Sun 11 Nov 2018 10.49 GMT
Theresa May’s Brexit plan is under siege from across the Tory party as she attempts to overcome the final sticking points with Brussels in time to push it through a critical meeting of her cabinet ministers on Tuesday.
As time runs out, leading Brexiters have told the prime minister they remain deeply opposed to her version of an exit mechanism that would prevent the UK unilaterally quitting a temporary customs arrangement if Brexit talks collapse.
Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader and a prominent Eurosceptic, said she was “sticking in government” to make sure the UK did not end up trapped in a customs arrangement, warning May she would struggle to get her plans past MPs.
May also faces a growing rebellion from the remainer wing of her party with rumours that four more pro-Europe ministers are on the brink of resigning after the departure of the transport minister Jo Johnson last week.
One former cabinet minister told the Guardian it was a question of “when and how many go, rather than if”, while other prominent Tory remainers claimed they were aware of a several ministers “who are hanging on by their fingertips”.
As the prime minister struggled to keep her Brexit plans – and her party – on track, her chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, was in Brussels on Sunday trying to thrash out the final details of the withdrawal agreement before Tuesday.
EU diplomats have cautioned against over-optimism about a breakthrough this week, with the legal text said to remain “fluid”. Sources suggested negotiators on both sides had agreed it would be impossible for the UK to unilaterally exit its backstop on Northern Ireland, a key Brexiter demand.
But as some sought to reconcile the Tory party’s divided positions, Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, used his Telegraph column published in Monday’s newspaper to call for a Cabinet mutiny and wrote that the government ‘‘seemed to be on the verge of total surrender”.
The prime minister, he continued, had “recommended to the cabinet not only that we agree to stay in the customs union under the so-called ‘backstop’ arrangement, but that we actually abdicate the power to leave that backstop.
“Under the shameful proposals now before cabinet it will be up to some joint UK/EU committee, or some ‘independent arbitration mechanism’ to decide whether the UK – an ancient and sovereign nation – is finally allowed to come out.”
A review mechanism involving a joint committee, with European court of justice oversight, allowing May the ability to claim that her all-UK customs union backstop was not permanent, is likely to be the best the government can expect in negotiations.
The talks are now focusing on EU demands on “level playing field” commitments over competition and state aid, as well as social and environmental protections, to ensure UK businesses are not able to undercut European industry.
The UK has already said it is open to non-regression clauses in a future trade deal that would prevent it from lowering standards. Brussels is demanding “dynamic” alignment, which would force parliament to “cut and paste” EU regulations as they come in after Brexit, without giving Britain any say.
The Guardian has learned that EU member states are insisting on having time to scrutinise this part before it is made public. One senior diplomat said: “We cannot be left in the dark on this now, it is too important.”
UK government sources attempted to play down expectations that negotiators would reach agreement in time for the cabinet meeting. If they fail, there will not be an emergency EU summit in November and the prime minister will have to press ahead with “no deal” preparations in case negotiations ultimately falter.
May is expected to face anger from cabinet Brexiters over her exit mechanism plans.
Yet cabinet sources suggested that disgruntled ministers would stop short of quitting over the exit mechanism plan. Even if they were “bounced” into agreeing to the deal, May would still face a serious challenge getting it through the Commons.
Leadsom told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I am working towards getting a deal that does not require the UK to be stuck, trapped in a customs arrangement. I’m sticking in government to make sure that’s where we get to in the end.”
She added: “The UK cannot be held against its will in a customs arrangement. It must be capable for the United Kingdom to decide to leave that customs arrangement and it cannot be something that the European Union can then hold us to.
“And, frankly, it’s because that would be to then fail to fulfil on the will of the people expressed in the referendum and I very much doubt that we would get it through parliament.”
Cabinet Brexiters have pushed for a unilateral route, with the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, the first to say publicly the power to leave the backstop – the UK’s insurance policy if talks fail – should rest with the “sovereign” British government.
The education secretary, Damian Hinds, said the EU would not accept that plan. “If you have too hard a line about saying, ‘well, we must just have a totally unilateral exit, or there’s an absolutely fixed, hard end date’, that is very, very unlikely that is going to be negotiable with the other side,” he said.
He urged an alliance of Conservative hard Brexiters and the DUP, who have said they will join forces to vote down May’s withdrawal plans, to “think about the alternatives”, saying there would be “trade-offs” in any deal.
The latest plan under discussion is believed to include the option of pushing ahead with a “successor agreement” that would set out the full trading relationship between the EU and UK by late 2020, and extending the transition period if needed.
As a last resort a UK-wide backstop would kick in, with Northern Ireland aligned more closely with single market rules to avoid a hard border, inevitably prompting a showdown with the DUP, who oppose any trade border in the Irish Sea.
The prime minister also faces growing pressure to press the button on her no-deal preparations. Gen Sir Nick Carter, chief of the defence staff, told the BBC the military “stands ready to help in any way we can” in the event of no deal.
First published on Fri 17 Jan 2020 10.05 GMT
The UK government has sought to reassure the EU that its citizens living in the UK will not be deported if they fail to apply for settled status, the European parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator has said.
Speaking after a meeting with the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, on Thursday night, Guy Verhofstadt said he had raised a number of concerns regarding the status of EU citizens in the UK after it leaves the bloc.
He said he had been told there would be no automatic deportation of people, after the existing grace period, if they failed to apply for settled status. “I wanted to be sure that there would be no automatic deportation for people after that period because it can be people who are very vulnerable,” he said.
“The idea would be that even these people, after the grace period, they will have the possibility to apply giving the grounds for why it was not possible [to apply for settled status] within the normal procedures.”
The application process for EU citizens to obtain settled status opened at the end of March 2019. It will close, following the six-month grace period, on 30 June 2021.
Responding to Verhofstadt’s comments, the Home Office issued a statement saying there were a number of misconceptions about the settlement scheme which were unhelpful. “We have made it clear that where people have reasonable grounds for missing the original deadline, they will be given a further opportunity to apply,” it said.
On Wednesday, the European parliament issued a stinging rebuke to the British government when an overwhelming majority of MEPs backed a resolution raising “grave concerns” about the settled status scheme.
EU fears were fuelled by the Home Office minister Brandon Lewis, who told a German newspaper last year that EU nationals risk being deported if they failed to apply for special status by the end of 2020.
Following the meeting with Verhofstadt – which an EU source described as “constructive” – Barclay said: “The EU settlement scheme has been a huge success, and 2.5 million people have already been granted a status guaranteeing their right to live, work, study and access benefits such as healthcare.
“The focus should be on offering reassurances and avoiding misconceptions about the EUSS and on ensuring that EU member states step up and provide a similar level of reassurance for UK nationals.”
MEPs also fear the absence of physical documents puts EU27 nationals at risk of discrimination by prospective employers and landlords, who may be reluctant to do online checks. EU sources said Verhofstadt was told the government would look into making printouts available so people could show paper proof of their settled status.
The statement from the Home Office on Friday morning appeared to contradict this, saying: “There is no change to our digital approach. It has always been the case that people could print a copy of their confirmation letter, but this can’t be used as evidence of status.
“The EU settlement scheme grants people with a secure, digital status which future-proofs their rights. Physical documents can get lost, stolen, damaged and tampered with.”
British officials think the European parliament’s criticisms of the settled status scheme are unjustified, especially when UK citizens face three-figure fees and bureaucratic hurdles to secure their own future in EU member states.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Verhofstadt acknowledged that there were also anxieties among UK citizens living in EU countries, which the EU would seek to address.
“There is a problem also with anxiety for the UK citizens living on the continent,” he said. “So what we’re going to do now is increase the pressure in the coming days. There will be a letter going out from all sides – parliament, the council – to member states saying: ‘Look, in 12 countries things are going very well.’
“In 12 countries they have a declaratory system, so there’s no need to advocate for citizenship of that country. In others it is more difficult and we want to be sure that, in 2020, in these other 15 countries of the European Union, things are going smoothly.”
The UK government has also sought to offer reassurance on the independent monitoring body it is creating to uphold citizens’ rights under the withdrawal agreement. Changes to the body proposed by Boris Johnson’s government prompted the EU chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, to warn about its potential effectiveness in dealing with citizens’ complaints and problems.
Verhofstadt told the BBC he was still pushing for plans that would create “associate” membership of the EU, a move that would allow Britons to sign up to be citizens of the EU even after Brexit.
“My idea is that the European Union and European citizenship has to be possible for the European living somewhere else in the world,” he said.
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Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
Two of Boris Johnson’s senior cabinet ministers have talked up the possibility of securing a Brexit deal through some divergence on the rules in Northern Ireland, as the government’s rhetoric showed fresh signs of shifting ahead of crucial talks next week.
With Johnson due to meet Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, on Monday, Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, and the home secretary, Priti Patel, accepted the Irish border was likely to be key to any potential agreement.
In a later interview, Barclay also suggested one potential way to smooth an agreement would be to extend the transition period following departure, currently due to end in December 2020, for another one or two years.
Following weeks of government discussion about preparedness for a no-deal departure, both ministers said the overwhelming focus was on leaving with an agreement.
“The entire machinery of government, now, is focused on getting that deal and is planning and preparing to leave on 31 October with a deal,” Patel told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.
With Johnson vehemently committed to leaving the EU on 31 October but bound by law to seek an extension if a deal is not in place by the time of the European council summit on 17 October, there has been intense focus on ways he could find a plan acceptable to Brussels but which would not be seen by Conservative MPs as a betrayal.
This has centred on ways to allow Northern Ireland to stay converged on some regulatory and standards border issues with the Republic of Ireland, preventing frontier checks while not having a full customs border in the Irish Sea.
Speaking to Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, Barclay said it was important to get the consent of all political sides in Northern Ireland, but also to abide by the Good Friday peace deal, which could potentially be breached by a hard Irish border.
“It is important we move forwards with the consent of both sides of the community in Northern Ireland,” said Barclay, who is due to meet the EU’s chief negotiatior, Michel Barnier, next week. “That’s very much part of the thinking and part of the consultations that we’re having.”
He insisted there had been definite progress in finding a successful compromise: “There has been detailed technical talks led by David Frost, the prime minister’s Europe adviser. They have been meeting with Michel Barnier’s team,” he said.
“The prime minister will be seeing President Juncker tomorrow, I’ll be meeting with Michel Barnier tomorrow, so there’s extensive talks been happening both at a technical level but also at a political level. So there has been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes. We can see a landing zone in terms of a future deal but there is significant work still to do.”
Johnson is committed to getting rid of the backstop, the guarantee central to Theresa May’s rejected deal in which the UK would effectively stay within the EU’s customs union if no other solution for the Irish border could be reached before the end of a post-exit transition period.
Another option would be a backstop just for Northern Ireland, but the government has rejected this. Barclay said while it was vital for the UK to “leave as a whole”, some divergence already existed between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
“We can get into those details as part of the talks. But that is different from the principle of the backstop, and the backstop needs to go,” he said.
In a later interview on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics, Barclay noted that in the event of a deal none of the issues connected to the Irish border would apply “until the end of the implementation period, which is December 2020 or one or two years later by mutual agreement”.
Asked about a possible extension, Barclay said he was only stating “what the legal text says” and that “the point is, there is scope for an extension but it is by mutual consent”.
Patel was more cautious, saying she did not want to pre-empt the talks, but accepted the Irish border issue had moved on from the backstop in terms of discussions with the EU.
“The reality is we have to deal with the backstop issue, and people said, under the Theresa May deal, that the withdrawal agreement would never be considered or looked at again, and neither would the political declaration,” she said.
“We are in different territory right now, so it’s no point arguing about the past. We are moving forward now as a government, collectively, focused on leaving but leaving with a deal.”
She added: “We have to leave and we have to leave with a deal on 31 October, and there’s no point right now trying to prejudge the discussions that are taking place.”
First published on Sat 4 May 2019 21.03 BST
Last-ditch efforts by Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn to strike a compromise on Brexit looked doomed on Saturday as the party leaders faced mounting revolts from their own MPs and activists.
Following Thursday’s local elections, in which both the Conservatives and Labour were punished severely by voters for failing to break the political deadlock, May and Corbyn have insisted their parties must now urgently agree a way forward in cross-party talks which will resume on Tuesday. On Saturday the prime minister reiterated her appeal, saying: “We have to find a way to break the deadlock. I believe the results of the local elections give fresh urgency to this.”
But opposition MPs and Tory Brexiters warned any deal the leadership teams stitch up behind the scenes would face inevitable defeat in parliament and cause more acrimony in the parties.
The Observer can reveal that 104 opposition MPs, mainly from Labour but also SNP, Change UK, Green and Plaid Cymru, have written to May and Corbyn insisting they will not back a “Westminster stitch-up” unless there is a firm guarantee that any deal is then put to a confirmatory referendum.
The MPs say: “The very worst thing we could do at this time is a Westminster stitch-up whether over the PM’s deal or another deal. This risks alienating both those who voted leave in 2016 and those who voted remain.” They say that, “whatever the deal” is, it must be the subject of another referendum so voters can have the “final say”.
Separately, senior Tory MPs insisted that any deal struck with Labour that involved anything close to a customs union – Corbyn’s central demand in the talks – would be rejected by more than 100 of the party’s MPs, who would see it as a betrayal of May’s promises on Brexit.
Nigel Evans, executive secretary of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, said: “If there is a compromise that turns out to be a kind of ‘Brexit in name only’ involving anything close to a customs union there would be more than 100 Tory MPs who would never support it, particularly following the local elections.”
Another member of the 1922 executive said that, even if a cross-party deal were struck that could command the support of two-thirds of Labour MPs, it would then be likely to be opposed by two-thirds of Tory backbenchers.
As both parties continue to digest the local election results, which saw the Tories lose around 1,300 seats in their worst result since the 1990s and Labour shed more than 60, anger at the leaders’ handling of Brexit intensified among MPs and members.
Alanna Vine, chair of Cheadle Conservative Association, said: “Our party’s failure to deliver Brexit has been toxic. If we don’t change course – immediately cease discussions with Corbyn about us remaining in the EU customs union and stop endlessly extending our leaving date – our party will be wiped out for a generation.”
Alexander Curtis, chair of Hertford and Stortford Conservative Association, said: “Colleagues have paid dearly for our prime minister’s failure to believe in and back the decision of 17.4 million voters to leave the EU. People are sick of our incompetence and inability to deliver and to honour our promises. We will be annihilated in the Euro elections if we break another promise and adopt Corbyn’s customs union plan.”
Writing for the Guardian, Bridget Phillipson, Labour MP for Sunderland South, said her party’s loss of councillors was not the result of leave voters deserting but that the area’s remain supporters “gave us a bloody nose and showed us their support is not unconditional”. She adds: “It should be a source of shame to us all that Labour’s position on the most urgent challenge our country faces has been to wallow in fudge for three long years.”
In the Observer, the Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, whose party made strong gains, along with the Greens, on Thursday, suggests that if pro-remain parties are to stop Brexit they need to look at ways to work together after the European elections on 23 May. Cable says: “Once the immediate bunfight for votes is over, liberals and social democrats in all the parties need to look afresh at how we make an impact when a general election finally comes. Millions of voters are politically homeless and looking for a voice.”
In Saturday night’s statement May said: “We will keep negotiating and keep trying to find a way through. Because the real thing that matters now is delivering Brexit and moving on to all the other issues people care about. The longer that takes, the greater the risk we will not leave at all. We need to get out of the EU and get a deal over the line.”
On Saturday, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, suggested the government could reach a compromise with Labour on a post-Brexit customs union arrangement with the EU.
He said the local election results on Thursday were a call from voters to “deliver Brexit and then move on”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Theresa May is to embark on a frantic round of European diplomacy in a final attempt to salvage her Brexit deal and her premiership after a chaotic day in which she pulled Tuesday’s scheduled meaningful vote in the face of overwhelming opposition.
The prime minister will meet the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Berlin on Tuesday to seek “further assurances” to ensure that the Northern Irish backstop would never come into force, although No 10 warned a rapid breakthrough was unlikely.
Downing Street said the vote could be delayed until January, reducing the time available to pass the necessary legislation to complete the UK’s departure – leading to growing concerns that a no-deal Brexit would result.
With more than 100 Conservative MPs lining up to vote against the Brexit deal, May made the humiliating admission to the Commons that “if we went ahead and held the vote tomorrow the deal would be rejected by a significant margin”.
The prime minister now hopes to secure an exchange of letters or side-declarations pledging that the backstop in the withdrawal agreement, which could keep the UK in an indefinite customs union, would be temporary and unlikely to come into force. However, Downing Street admitted that the document may not be legally binding, meaning it was not clear they would satisfy sceptical MPs, amid intense pressure from rebel Tories and the Democratic Unionist party to ditch the backstop.
Labour indicated it would table a vote of no confidence if May were to fail in her emergency negotiations, saying that if she returned without significant changes “she will have decisively and unquestionably lost the confidence of parliament”.
Hard Brexiters questioned what May could achieve. Jacob Rees-Mogg said it was a “rotten and humiliating day” for the government, having earlier accused May of failing to govern because she did not “have the gumption” to put her deal before MPs to approve.
Cabinet sources also voiced concern about May’s strategy, having cancelled the vote – which some had wanted to take place – without the EU being signed up to anything yet. “There doesn’t seem to be any sort of plan,” one said.
In a dramatic moment at the close of Monday’s Commons debate, as the government formally deferred the deal vote, the Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle marched forward to grab the mace in protest and held it aloft. The ceremonial object represents the Queen’s authority in parliament – without it parliament cannot meet or pass laws.Tory MPs shouted “Disgrace”. Russell-Moyle appeared unsure of his next step and handed the mace back to Commons officials, as the Speaker, John Bercow, demanded he put it back down. The MP was suspended for the rest of the sitting – only a few minutes.Labour MPs had earlier won an emergency debate on the vote’s cancellation, set to be heard on Tuesday, and backed by the Tory MPs Peter Bone and Sarah Wollaston.
As well as meeting Merkel, May will fly out to meet Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, in the Hague, on Tuesday morning and is expected to meet Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, in Brussels.
Her aim is to soften up sympathetic EU leaders before the European summit on Thursday and Friday. Significantly, however, there were no plans for May to meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is battling a wave of civil unrest in his own country and who recently demanded that the UK give special access to EU fishing trawlers in order to secure a future free trade deal.
Tusk said he would allow May to discuss Brexit at the end of the week, but made clear that there were limits to what the EU was willing to do.
The pound fell to its lowest level in two years amid fears that a no-deal Brexit was more likely, while the CBI said the delay to the deal was a blow for business and that the UK “risks sliding towards a national crisis”.
There is no formal deadline for holding the meaningful vote before the UK leaves the European Union on 29 March next year but the government needs to leave enough time to pass the relevant legislation that will give effect to the 585-page withdrawal agreement that the UK has drawn up with the EU.
MPs raised concern that May could never return to the Commons to seek approval from parliament, although Downing Street said that the five-day Brexit debate – halted after three days – would be resumed when the prime minister was ready. No 10 added that enough time would be left to pass the withdrawal bill legislation, although there would be less than three months left.
The day had begun amid intense speculation about the meaningful vote given the scale of parliamentary opposition, but with ministers insisting that it would take place on Tuesday evening as planned.
Michael Gove was asked on the BBC’s Today programme shortly after 8am if the vote was “definitely, 100%” going to happen, Gove replied: “Yes.” Pressed on the point, he said: “The vote is going ahead.”
A Downing Street spokesman told reporters shortly after 11am that the vote would take place as scheduled, only for the news that it had been pulled to leak within minutes of a cabinet teleconference beginning at 11.30. Despite the leaks, No 10 would only say that May would make a statement to MPs at 3.30pm, and refused to publicly confirm what everybody knew in Westminster until the prime minister got on her feet.
May began her address to MPs by saying that during the debate she had “listened very carefully to what has been said in this chamber and out of it by members of all sides”, prompting laughter.
Jeremy Corbyn asked May to clarify if she was seeking actual changes to the withdrawal agreement with the EU, or “mere reassurances” about change. The Labour leader added: “Bringing back the same botched deal, either next week or in January – and can she be clear on the timing? – will not change its fundamental flaws and deeply held objections right across this house, which go far wider than the backstop alone.”
Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, who spoke to May on Sunday, said such a clarification of the EU’s intentions would be possible, but pointed to the lack of substance to such an offer.
“I have no difficulty with statements that clarify what’s in the withdrawal agreement [like Gibraltar], but no statement of clarification can contradict what’s in it,” Varadkar said.
A backstop is deemed necessary to avoid a hard border in Ireland if the UK and the EU cannot agree a free trade agreement by the end of the Brexit transition period in 2020. May has proposed a UK-wide backstop that would result in the whole country remaining in a customs union with the EU, while, additionally, Northern Ireland would remain in some aspects of the single market.
First published on Sat 6 Apr 2019 20.30 BST
Theresa May’s mutinous MPs are warning her that they will move to oust her within weeks if the UK is forced to take part in European elections next month and extend its EU membership beyond the end of June.
Tory MPs are increasingly angry at the prospect of voters being asked to go to the polls to elect MEPs three years after the Brexit referendum, in an election they fear will be boycotted by many Conservatives and be a gift to the far right and Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party. Senior Tories said one silver lining of a long extension would be that it would allow them to move quickly to force May out, and hold a leadership election starting as soon as this month.
The warnings came as the prime minister made a last desperate appeal on Saturday night to MPs to back a deal, saying there was an increasing danger Brexit would “slip though our fingers”. May said: “Because parliament has made clear it will stop the UK leaving without a deal, we now have a stark choice: leave the European Union with a deal or do not leave at all.
“The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all. It would mean letting the Brexit that the British people voted for slip through our fingers. I will not stand for that. It is essential we deliver what people voted for, and to do that we need to get a deal over the line.”
Conservative MP Nigel Evans, an executive member of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers said on Saturday night that, if May failed to deliver Brexit and all she could do was secure a long extension at an EU summit on Wednesday, she would face overwhelming pressure to step down. “At the moment there is focus on delivering Brexit, but if a long delay becomes a reality I believe the noises off about removing the prime minister will become a cacophony,” he said. “I and many other Conservatives would prefer leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation terms to any humiliating long extension that forces us to take part in the European elections.”
Nigel Adams, a former minister who quit last week over May’s decision to hold talks on Brexit with Jeremy Corbyn, said: “Over 170 Conservative MPs including cabinet ministers signed a letter to the PM last week urging her to ensure the UK does not take part in the European elections. Doing so will not end well.”
With discussions on Brexit between the government and Labour appearing to have stalled on Friday, there are fears among senior Conservatives that EU leaders will demand the UK remains in the EU for up to a year and takes part in European elections, unless parliament can agree a Brexit deal before 22 May.
Last month May told Tory MPs that she would stand down once Brexit had been delivered. If there was a lengthy extension to membership, the Tory party rulebook means she could not be forced out before December if she wished to go on. But an increasing number of her MPs and ministers believe her time would be up.
It is also understood that the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, a potential frontrunner to succeed May, has been informing backbenchers that he would prefer to leave on WTO terms rather than accept a long extension and made this clear in cabinet discussions last week.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, told the Observer: “British participation in European elections three years after a majority of the British people voted to leave the EU would be a massive political mistake. The results for the mainstream parties would be likely to be poor and more extreme parties would be looking forward to a massive opportunity.
“Everything should be done to ensure the UK leaves in the near future, obviating the need to participate in the European elections.”
On Saturday night Downing Street said discussions with Labour to find a Brexit compromise that could pass through parliament before Wednesday’s EU summit were “ongoing” at a technical level, but declined to be drawn on whether there were any plans to hold votes tomorrow or Tuesday, before May heads to Brussels.
In an attempt to persuade Labour to sign up to a deal, No 10 is offering to enshrine in law a plan that would hand parliament a say in future trade talks with the EU. They believe it would stop a new Tory leader, such as Boris Johnson, shifting to a harder Brexit once May has been replaced.
Meanwhile the new Independent Group of 11 former Labour and Tory MPs said it had been approached by more than 200 people, including one former Tory minister, who wanted to stand for the embryonic party in the European elections. It sees the elections as a chance to mobilise remain voters and make its first electoral breakthrough.
First published on Sun 24 Mar 2019 21.19 GMT
Theresa May’s prospects of getting her Brexit deal through parliament this week dramatically receded on Sunday night after a high-stakes summit with Boris Johnson and other leading hard-Brexiters at her country retreat broke up without agreement.
Tory rebels present said that the prime minister repeated “all the same lines” about her deal and that nothing new emerged during the three-hour meeting, at which Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab were also present.
One source said May was told by some of those present, including Rees-Mogg, that to get her Brexit deal through she needed to spell out when she was quitting No 10 so that another prime minister could lead the next phase of EU trade negotiations. But the prime minister did not respond to the suggestion.
The talks took place amid reports of an imminent coup to remove the prime minister – claims which were forcefully denied by Michael Gove, David Lidington and Philip Hammond.
But before a critical cabinet meeting on Monday morning, May remained in a perilous position, with no breakthrough and Downing Street only able to tell reporters that she had discussed “whether there is sufficient support” to hold a meaningful vote this week. A front-page editorial in Monday’s Sun urges May to quit, with the headline “Time’s Up, Theresa”, saying she should announce that she will stand down as soon as her Brexit deal is approved and the UK leaves the EU.
MPs are due to vote on Monday night on whether to take control of the parliamentary agenda and hold a series of indicative votes on alternative options, including a customs union and a second referendum.
That could leave the prime minister at risk of losing control of the Brexit process, although there was speculation on Sunday night that she may announce her own version of the multiple choice plan on Monday morning.
As the prime minister’s allies sought to play down speculation over the reported coup, senior members of the European Research Group and former ministers arrived at Chequers, where Duncan Smith appeared in an open-topped sports car – while Rees-Mogg brought along one of his sons.
Others in attendance included David Davis, a former Brexit secretary, Steve Baker, a leading hard Brexiter, and May ally Damian Green.
The prime minister, the only woman present, also invited her effective deputy, Lidington, and the environment secretary, Gove, plus Julian Smith, the chief whip, and Brandon Lewis, the Conservative party chairman.
Cabinet colleagues at the meeting, including Gove, had hoped it would be possible to persuade Johnson and Raab – both rival Tory leadership contenders who are holding out against the deal – to end their standoff by dropping their opposition together.
However, any compromise from Johnson appeared unlikely as he used his latest Telegraph column to attack the government, saying it had “bottled” Brexit and the UK should leave the EU immediately.
One argument advanced at the meeting by the government’s side was that if MPs were permitted to hold indicative votes on their preferred Brexit option, “the most likely scenario would be that they would go for a softer Brexit” – a threat that it was hoped might bring the rebels into line.
They also believed that Duncan Smith and Rees-Mogg were looking for reasons to sign up to a Brexit deal if May could offer them a plausible justification for ending months of opposition to her deal.
After the meeting, Downing Street released a short statement confirming the attendees and adding: “The PM and a number of government ministers met today at Chequers for lengthy talks with senior colleagues about delivering Brexit. The meeting discussed a range of issues, including whether there is sufficient support in the Commons to bring back a meaningful vote this week.”
May had been expected to try to bring her deal back to the Commons on Tuesday, but that now looks increasingly unlikely given that Johnson and other high-profile holdouts seem unwilling to change their minds.
Earlier on Sunday, May appeared to have seen off talk of a plot to replace her with Lidington or Gove as a caretaker prime minister. The idea of appointing Lidington was said to be supported by soft-Brexit ministers such as Greg Clark, the business secretary, and Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, while Gove was said to have the backing of others, including Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury.
Lidington and Gove were quick to deny the speculation. “I don’t think that I’ve any wish to take over from the PM, who I think is doing a fantastic job,” Lidington said. “I tell you this: one thing that working closely with the prime minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task.” Gove said he “absolutely” supported the prime minister.
Although few took the idea of an immediate plot seriously, May’s failure to make progress during the weekend will increase the fragility of her position with senior colleagues.
Cabinet is expected to discuss whether it will be necessary to hold indicative votes as an alternative after signs of sharp disagreements between leading ministers on the issue. Earlier on Sunday, Hammond admitted that May may not be able to get her deal through the Commons and that Tory MPs he had spoken to were very frustrated and desperate to find a way forward.
The chancellor suggested that indicative votes could be the answer. He said: “I’m realistic that we may not be able to get a majority for the prime minister’s deal and if that is the case then parliament will have to decide not just what it’s against, but what it is for.”
He said he could not support no deal or no Brexit, but that a second referendum was an idea that deserved to be considered.
But there was sharp opposition from Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, who said that if MPs voted for something that was not in the Conservative manifesto, which ruled out staying in the customs union and single market, that could provoke a constitutional crisis – or a general election.May is expected to meet Jeremy Corbyn for a one-on-one meeting on Monday morning to discuss how to resolve the Brexit crisis. Labour has accused the government of indicating that it would try to ignore the will of parliament.
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said: “Having lost control of events, the Brexit secretary indicates the government would frustrate any attempt by parliament to break the deadlock. We are only in this crisis because ministers have pushed parliament away at every turn.”
First published on Sat 20 Apr 2019 20.30 BST
Labour will never defeat Nigel Farage if it continues to “sit on the fence” over Brexit and offers only “mealy-mouthed” support for a second referendum, the party’s deputy leader says today.
In an extraordinary intervention that exposes the tensions at the top of the party over Brexit strategy, Tom Watson warns that Labour will lose to Farage’s new “far right” Brexit party in May’s European elections if it continues to give the impression that “we half agree with him”.
Writing in today’s Observer, Jeremy Corbyn’s deputy argues that Labour needs to give much clearer and more enthusiastic backing to another referendum and also spell out a positive, radical vision of how a Labour government could advance socialist values by working with other centre-left parties inside the European Union.
Stressing that Farage is a real threat not just to the Conservatives but also to Labour, he writes: “We cannot just sit back, watch this fight on the far right, and allow Farage to prosper with a backward-looking brand of politics that offers no solutions. Instead we must offer a radical alternative based on our values that speaks directly to the people we represent and demonstrate Labour has a way forward out of the crisis.”
He adds: “Labour won’t defeat Farage by being mealy-mouthed and sounding as if we half agree with him. We won’t beat him unless we can inspire the millions crying out for a different direction. We won’t win if we sit on the fence about the most crucial issue facing our country for a generation.”
His comments – after opinion polls last week put the new Brexit party ahead of Labour and the Conservatives – reflects the frustration among senior Labour remainers about Corbyn’s lukewarm support for another referendum in which remain would be on the ballot paper.
They come as campaigners from both sides of the Brexit debate this weekend step up efforts to persuade millions of young people to register to vote in the 23 May elections so they have their say in the Europe debate.
The Vote for Your Future campaign, which attracted huge online interest as soon as it was launched last Thursday, is trying to reach about 3 million people aged 18 to 30 who are not registered before the deadline of 7 May.
The Electoral Commission says a third of the 9 million people in the UK in this age group are not currently registered to vote. This compares with just 4% of those over 65.
Callum Warriner, a young Brexit supporter and Dover councillor involved with the campaign, said: “It’s a national scandal that one in three young people aren’t registered to vote. With this year’s European elections being some of the most important ever, it’s critical that – no matter how they vote – young people are registered by 7 May.”
Student activist Amanda Chetwynd-Cowieson, who backs another referendum, added: “No matter how you vote in this year’s European elections – it’s critical that young people take part. On Thursday, within hours of launching, we were trending on Twitter and videos by our supporters had been watched by hundreds of thousands of people.”
Senior Labour party sources said arguments over whether Labour would commit to another referendum in its European election manifesto would break out in the parliamentary party as soon as MPs returned from their Easter break this week. Members of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC), dominated by Corbyn supporters, have been told that the NEC will approve the manifesto at a meeting on 30 April.
This will alarm remain-supporting shadow cabinet members who insist they should be fully involved.
While Corbyn is under pressure to back another public vote from the 80% of party members and many MPs who want the Brexit issue to be put back to the people, other Labour MPs say another public vote would damage faith in democracy.
A letter is circulating among Labour MPs who say that cross-party talks between the government and Labour on a possible soft-Brexit deal, which will resume this week, could collapse if Corbyn and his team insist that any agreement be conditional on a confirmatory referendum taking place.
Stephen Kinnock, one of the authors of the letter, said: “It is vital that the public is left in no doubt about the fact that Labour is participating in the negotiations in good faith, and we believe that it would be a mistake if we were to start introducing our own red lines at the very moment that the prime minister appears to be softening hers.
“Let’s get a cross-party negotiated deal over the line first, and there will of course then be ample opportunity for colleagues who are campaigning for a second referendum to attach a confirmatory vote amendment to the withdrawal agreement implementation bill, should they wish to do so.”
Meanwhile, a survey of Tory party members by the ConservativeHome website found almost eight out of 10 now believe Theresa May should now resign, up from seven out of 10 a month ago.
Writing on the ConservativeHome website, the editor Paul Goodman says: “The second postponement of Brexit and the talks with Jeremy Corbyn are undoubtedly huge contributors to this lamentable rating. The latter especially is making campaigning uphill work indeed for many local government candidates. However, we suspect the biggest factor is the European parliamentary elections that are due to take place.”
First published on Sat 8 Jun 2019 11.27 BST
The Tory leadership contender Dominic Raab has said the possibility of sidelining parliament to force through Brexit should not be ruled out, as to do so would weaken the UK’s negotiating position in Brussels.
“I think it’s wrong to rule out any tool to make sure that we leave by the end of October,” Raab told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, as the Conservative party reels from its disastrous results in the European election, in which Eurosceptic voters flocked to the Brexit party.
“The exam question in this contest is: who can be trusted to lead us out by the end of October and end this paralysing uncertainty,” he said.
Critics of the approach have warned that prorogation would involve the Queen in a constitutional crisis, because formally it is the monarch who ends a session of parliament.
Raab said it was unlikely to come to that because MPs’ powers to block a no-deal Brexit were limited. He said that if chosen as Tory leader he would return to Brussels with a “best, final offer” - including the removal of the Irish backstop – but insist there could be no further delay, and that the UK would be prepared to leave without a deal.
“I think anyone who is talking about delay or who is taking [World Trade Organization trade terms] off the table is having the perverse effect of weakening our negotiating position in Brussels. That’s the lesson of the last three years,” he said.
“It’s a test of nerve here and if candidates cannot stand up their resolve to lead us out by the end of October in a leadership contest, what chance would they have under the heat of the negotiations in Brussels?”
Raab said the Peterborough byelection, in which the Tories finished third, and the party’s drubbing in the European election, showed it was “devastating for the Conservatives if we don’t keep our promises on Brexit”.
He said: “What we can’t have is this paralysing uncertainty, bad for the economy, bad for trust in democracy, bad for the Conservatives – as we are seeing – of just going on and on with this prolonged torture of haggling with the EU when we haven’t got a deal in sight.”
The Commons Speaker, John Bercow, said on Thursday that it was “blindingly obvious” the new Conservative prime minister would not be able to suspend parliament to push through a no-deal Brexit.
“That is simply not going to happen. It is just so blindingly obvious that it almost doesn’t need to be stated, but apparently, it does and therefore I have done,” he told MPs.
Following Theresa May’s formal resignation as Tory leader on Friday, the starting gun has been fired in the race to succeed her. The nomination process will take place on Monday, with candidates requiring eight MPs to back them in order to enter the race, with the first round of voting on Thursday.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab have been warned that Tory MPs would be prepared to bring down any prime minister backing a no-deal Brexit, triggering a general election, amid fears the leadership hopefuls will veer to the right in response to a surge in support for Nigel Farage at the European election.
A string of senior Conservatives, led by Philip Hammond, the chancellor, delivered a sobering message to candidates that many Tory MPs are prepared to take drastic action to stop a no-deal Brexit.
“Any prime minister would find it very difficult to govern if he or she were to pursue a no-deal Brexit without parliament’s permission,” Hammond said, while refusing several times to rule out losing the whip in order to vote against his own prime minister in a confidence motion.
There are fears among Tory moderates that many of the eight declared leadership candidates will adopt hardline Brexit positions to win over the Conservative membership. The highly Eurosceptic selectorate of 160,000 will choose who is to be the next prime minister from a shortlist of two candidates whittled down by MPs.
The leadership hopefuls will also be desperate to win back supporters tempted by Farage’s Brexit party, which is expected to top the European elections, with the Tories pushed as far back as fourth or fifth place.
Johnson and Raab, two of the leading candidates, both said they would take the UK out of the EU at the end of October with a deal or no deal, as they positioned themselves on the hard Brexit side of the contest.
Raab even suggested he would be prepared to ignore the will of parliament in order to do so, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “It’s very difficult for parliament now to legislate against a no deal, or in favour of a further extension, unless a resolute prime minister is willing to acquiesce in that – and I would not.”
In contrast, Michael Gove, the environment secretary, is pitching himself as a leave supporter who is more willing to compromise on a deal in an attempt to keep the party together.
He threw his hat into the ring to be prime minister on Sunday, saying he was the candidate with both the belief in Brexit and the “wherewithal” to negotiate a better deal with Brussels. That appeared to be a swipe at the organisational skills of Johnson, his old adversary, whom he turned against in the last leadership contest and forced out of the race with a withering critique of his suitability for the job.
Gove, along with most of the other candidates in the Tory leadership contest, is still saying he would keep no deal on the table but has not made leaving at the end of October a red line.
Andrea Leadsom, the former leader of the Commons, has the same position as Raab and Johnson on leaving by the end of October regardless, while Esther McVey, the hardest Brexit candidate, said she wanted a “clean break” no-deal Brexit without even trying to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement.
Jeremy Hunt, the leading candidate among MPs, said he would keep no deal as an option, while using his business experience to negotiate a better deal.
Only Rory Stewart, the international development secretary, and Matt Hancock, the health secretary, have effectively ruled out pursuing a no-deal Brexit and stressed they would be in favour of negotiating a compromise. Hancock said May’s successor must be more “brutally honest” about the “trade-offs” required to get a deal through parliament.
Stewart said a no-deal Brexit was “undeliverable, unnecessary and is going to damage our country” and revealed that Johnson had privately told him that the was “not going for a no-deal exit”, before publicly taking a different position in Switzerland on Friday.
Conservatives on the soft Brexit and remain wings of the party said on Sunday they were serious about stopping a no-deal departure from the EU.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Hammond told the candidates: “Parliament has voted very clearly to oppose a no-deal Brexit. A prime minister who ignores parliament cannot survive very long.”
Justine Greening, a former cabinet minister arguing for a second referendum, also warned that the contest was becoming a “beauty parade of hard Brexiteers”.
The government currently only has a majority of four, even with the support of the Democratic Unionist party, meaning it would take just two Tory MPs to withhold their support for a new prime minister to lose the ability to get legislation through.
Several Conservative MPs said they thought the chances of a general election will quickly rise if any candidate decides to pursue a no-deal Brexit policy.
Currently, Hunt is leading the race among his colleagues with around 29 endorsements, while Johnson and Raab both have about 22 publicly declared supporters. Raab has about 18 public backers, while Sajid Javid, the home secretary, who has not yet declared his candidacy, has about 11.
In surveys of members by the ConservativeHome website, Johnson beats all the other candidates in head-to-head runoffs, making him the clear favourite if he makes the shortlist.
However, many of those involved in the “Stop Boris” campaign among Tory MPs are concerned that he would be too divisive in a general election against Labour because of his involvement in the Vote Leave campaign.
Labour is also braced for difficult results at the European elections, with John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, saying he expects the party to get a “good kicking”.
There is likely to be pressure on Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, to shift his position in favour of a second referendum in the coming weeks if the party loses ground to the Liberal Democrats and Greens as expected.
Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, criticised the party’s “mealy-mouthed” failure to fully endorse a second referendum. He won support from Shami Chakrabarti, the shadow attorney general and an ally of Corbyn, who said it was “past midnight” for shifting to support for a public vote.
But Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite and another ally of Corbyn, accused Watson of being an ineffective Machiavelli using the issue of a second referendum to attempt a coup against the leadership.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Did you march for a second, “people’s” referendum in the hope of fending off Brexit? Are you banking on a fresh slew of ministerial resignations and the new political balance in the Johnson family to clinch the argument? And might you then be expecting a civilised, fact-based campaign to reverse the result of June 2016?
Well, I hate to disappoint you. But even in the unlikely event that the prime minister executes a U-turn on a new referendum (or someone does it for her), that civilised, fact-based campaign is not going to happen. How do I know? Because I spent some time this weekend with the Bruges Group, at its conference “Brexit or Bust” – and if you thought the Brexiteers of middle England were going to roll over quietly and accept either a new vote or a different majority, you are grievously mistaken. To a man and woman they are livid, even in the anticipation.
Now the members of the Bruges Group – founded in February 1989 – see themselves, rightly or wrongly, as the heirs of late-period Thatcherism, and take their name from the speech, widely interpreted as Eurosceptic, that she had given the previous September. Their sacred text is this well-known passage: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels”, which members can (and do) recite verbatim at the slightest prompting.
But it is not just, or even mainly, a second referendum they want to stop. It is the document now known as the Chequers plan (which they see as continuing the UK’s membership of the single market in perpetuity) and the Northern Ireland “backstop” (which they see as a manufactured pretext for remaining in a customs union) – these are the more insidious enemies.
Nor, alas, can they be accused of ignorance. Many attendees showed a fine grasp of the small print, which they could quote (to boos, hissing or applause, as required). Some wielded the argument that future growth will be concentrated in the wider world, not the shrinking economies of the European Union (minus the UK). And they are not completely wrong to see the concept of “full alignment” as limiting the UK’s freedom to go it alone. Isn’t that, after all, part of what commends it to some remainers as the least bad option?
But it was less any command of detail that struck me, or the themes, or the sometimes Ukippy tinge, than the tone of the gathering and how far these Brexiteers are united and fired up in their fury towards anything less than “Brexit means Brexit” – “Just get on and do it!” they shouted. And then the extent to which they see themselves once again (as they did pre-referendum) as right-minded rebels challenging an all-powerful establishment, which is now held to include Theresa May (boo, hiss); Commons Speaker John Bercow (loud barracking); civil servants (cries of “traitors”), and, oh yes, the media (especially loud boos).
News halfway through the afternoon that Facebook had blocked the livestream for, it was said, “breaching community standards” was met with more jeering and indignation, along with calls of “shame, shame”. Then again, what could one expect from “the establishment”? When one speaker asserted that tariffs would hurt the EU far more than the UK, the delighted audience response was “hooray!”.
At the centre of the opprobrium, though, was May, who has become a particular hate figure as sponsor, if not author – that role is allotted to Oliver Robbins, aka “Sir Humphrey” – of the diabolical Chequers plan. “If we have to chuck Chequers, we have to chuck the prime minister” was an ambition greeted with ecstatic cheers. The cry “Deceit, deceit” went up in response to the suggestion that “May-ites” were already plotting when May became prime minister; a remainer, deep down, her whole purpose from the start, it was claimed, had been “to sabotage” Brexit. More calls of “traitor”, before someone warned that Chequers could cost the Conservatives their majority. “Serve them right,” came the collective reply.
All this might, of course, simply reflect the raucous camaraderie of a particular group of Brexiteers enjoying a welcome away-day among friends. At best, it might be a last defiant shout of “down with the traitors” before the necessity of accepting a “deal” sinks in. But that is not how it felt on Saturday afternoon. Rather, it seemed that the passions which forced the EU referendum remain defiantly alive, and that at least this strand of Brexiteer will not go down without another, possibly bloody, fight. The UK’s war about Europe is not over yet.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine will warn politicians that Britain’s youth will “never forgive us” unless they are offered the chance to reverse Brexit.
The Conservative veteran, 85, will address a rally calling for a second referendum ahead of Tuesday’s crunch Commons vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
He will claim that the government appears to have “lost control” and there were signs that MPs were prepared to take action to “assert the authority” of parliament.
Highlighting a generational split in the result of the 2016 referendum, he will say “those of a certain age who voted 70:30 to leave” are “rapidly being replaced by a younger generation who voted 70:30 to stay”.
At the rally in London’s ExCel centre, which will also be addressed by politicians including Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, Tory former ministers Anna Soubry and Philip Lee, and celebrities including Charles Dance and Jason Isaacs, Heseltine will claim that those campaigning for a second vote are “British patriots” who are “proud of our Commonwealth and empire”.
The event, organised by the Best for Britain and People’s Vote campaigns, will feature politicians from the Tories, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green party and Plaid Cymru.
Heseltine will hit out at Brexiters who have called pro-EU politicians “traitors”, saying: “May our opponents never be forgiven for their allegations that it is us who are letting Britain down.”
He will say: “Let us make our position clear. We are the British patriots. We want a Britain at the heart of Europe because we want the voice of Britain, the tolerance of Britain, the culture of Britain, at the heart of Europe. We are proud of our Commonwealth and empire. Our voice is their voice in Europe.
“It is the Brexiteers who seek to belittle us, to undermine our influence, to slam windows, to close doors with the suggestion that our membership of the European community blunts our influence.”
In comments echoing a youthful William Hague’s address to the Tory conference in 1977, when he told his ageing audience “half of you won’t be here in 30 or 40 years’ time” as he discussed the future, Lord Heseltine will say: “Let me repeat his warning. Let me paraphrase his words. ‘I certainly won’t be here.’ But neither will my generation.
“The parents, the grandparent will have gone. The younger generation, they will be here. They will be here.
“They will never forgive us if we now exclude them from the corridors of European power. Offered a seat in an anteroom as others decide behind closed doors. Invited to submit their views in writing so others may decide behind closed doors.
“Trying to negotiate trade deals on behalf of the United Kingdom in competition with a European Union six times our size offering bigger, better deals behind closed doors.”
Heseltine will add: “No one can predict the events of next week. Every news bulletin, every headline, every leak tells us of a government that has lost control. These are the first promising signs that a growing number of members of the House of Commons are prepared to assert the authority and sovereignty of that place.
“Our country’s future depends on their judgment and will. They must act in the national interest. Their conclusions must be put back to the people for their endorsement.”
Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has said in an article for the Sunday Telegraph that he could launch a new political party and fight the 2019 European election if Brexit is delayed.
Just days after quitting Ukip, the party he led to victory in the 2014 European elections, Farage said he was “thinking about vehicles” to contest the elections next year if the UK is still in the European Union.
“I am not going to lie down and watch it go down the plug hole. I couldn’t do that. And I won’t do that.”
He said the move would be “the birth of something much more remarkable than Ukip was”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Brussels is preparing to offer Boris Johnson a no-deal Brexit extension beyond 31 October in an attempt to help him keep the Conservative party together and provide one more chance to strike an agreement deal.
The extra period of EU membership would be used for renegotiation but could be billed to Conservative Brexiters as an opportunity to prepare further for leaving without a deal.
“It will be described as a technical delay to save Boris from political embarrassment but then we will have time to find an agreement,” said one senior EU diplomat.
There is growing confidence among key member states that a no-deal Brexit can be avoided after the Commons voted this week to prevent the next prime minister, likely to be Johnson, from proroguing parliament.
The details of the approach shared with the Guardian will aggravate hard Brexiters in Westminster who will see it as a serious threat to their expectations that the UK should depart on 31 October at any cost.
Under the proposal discussed in Brussels, Johnson could maintain that he is on course to leave without an agreement while keeping open the option of coming to a deal with the bloc.
EU leaders are also considering the steps they would take to avoid a crisis in the event that Johnson does press ahead with no deal on 31 October. A declaration has been mooted expressing the EU27’s regret at the lack of a deal and offering to re-engage if the UK accepts its financial commitments.
“How do we build back out of the abyss in a time where minds on both sides of the channel are probably not very consolatory?” a second diplomat said. “We need to pre-empt that moment and create a platform for re-engagement on the day the UK leaves which might be used once the dust has settled. Provided of course the existing obligations are settled.”
If Johnson is elected as Conservative leader next Tuesday and becomes prime minister, he is expected to visit key EU capitals in early August. A G7 meeting in Biarritz at the end of next month is regarded as an important stepping stone to finding a mutually advantageous way forward. An emergency Brexit summit could be held in September.
But the events this week have left key EU diplomats and officials convinced that no deal is now significantly less likely.
Philip Hammond signalled in an interview on Friday that he was prepared to vote to bring down a Johnson government should he push for no deal. The chancellor said it was “absolutely necessary” for the UK to extend its EU membership beyond 31 October.
Asked whether he would rule out voting in favour of a no-confidence motion against Johnson, he told Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung: “I will take steps to avoid an exit without agreement apart from an explicit parliamentary approval. There should be a new and sincere attempt to reach a consensus. If we do not find a solution with the members, we may have to ask the British to give their opinion again in one form or another.”
Asked again to rule out supporting a motion of no confidence, Hammond responded: “I do not exclude anything for the moment.”
This week the European commission president-designate, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was open to a further Brexit extension.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has been consistently tough on the issue and would be likely to question whether the UK’s continued membership with Johnson in Downing Street would serve the EU well, but Berlin remains determined to avoid the economic damage of Britain crashing out.
On Friday Angela Merkel said the withdrawal agreement struck by Theresa May would not be revised but it remained possible to redraft the political declaration in such a way that the Irish backstop would be defunct.
“The withdrawal agreement is the withdrawal agreement,” Merkel told a news conference. “But the moment that a solution for the management of the border is found in [the declaration on] the future relationship … which basically squares the circle – on the one hand no physical border but on the other hand the EU single market ends – then the backstop will be overwritten, so to speak.”
Merkel added: “This means the task is to draft future relations that way and perhaps to draft them more specifically and better and more precisely than so far.”
Senior EU sources said discussions had been held on how to manage the 24 hours before a no-deal Brexit should it happen. The belief voiced in Paris that the UK would react to the economic shock by urgently seeking to reopen talks is not shared by a number of member states that would be most directly affected by a no-deal departure.
“There is the worry among some that a kind of wartime spirit will take over, but we have to put out a hand to Britain,” said one EU diplomat.
On Friday Alberto Costa, a Conservative MP who is fighting to secure post-Brexit rights for EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU, led a delegation to meet the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier.
Costa said: “He made very clear that the European commission has at its very top of the political agenda the protection of citizens’ rights and it will continue to do everything it can to protect the rights of those 5 million citizens even in the absence of a withdrawal agreement.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The president of Britain’s most powerful employers’ body, the CBI, is to endorse Theresa May’s draft European Union withdrawal agreement, arguing that while not perfect it opens “a route to a long-term trade arrangement”.
Joining a growing chorus of business leaders warning that a cliff-edge Brexit could be calamitous for the UK economy, John Allan will use a speech on Monday at the CBI’s annual conference in London to warn that Brexit turmoil is “damaging our country now”.
The CBI president is expected to say: “In the past few days alone, I’ve heard of a life sciences firm in the north-west that has cut almost all investment in the UK – putting it instead in Germany and China. I’ve heard of a Northern Irish tech firm that has stopped winning contracts because their aerospace customers are worried about Brexit. And a construction firm says it now costs an extra £20,000 to build a house, due to a shortage of materials and labour since Brexit. These stories are repeated across the country.”
Allan’s show of support for May comes as concerns mount among businesses that a no-deal outcome will severely disrupt supply chains and cause widespread shortages. The UK is already running out of food warehouse space as no-deal fears rise. Owners of storage facilities say demand has reached “fever pitch” since last week’s chaos over the publication of May’s plan.
The CBI has thrown its support behind the proposed deal after its policymaking committee canvassed the views of 900 business leaders across Britain and found unanimous support for the withdrawal agreement.
Allan is expected to say: “We’re trying to reach a deal that respects the result of the referendum and minimises damage to our economy. I know how hard it’s been to get to this point. In the five months I’ve been president of the CBI, the team and I have met ambassadors, MPs, MEPs, heads of state.
“And I know this: every single one of them has had to compromise in reaching that deal. While companies in this room would be the first to say that it is not perfect, it does open a route to a long-term trade arrangement and unlocks transition – the very least that companies need to prepare for Brexit. And most importantly, it avoids the wrecking ball that would be a no-deal departure.”
Allan will refer to research by Oxford Economics which suggests that the UK’s GDP will fall by 2% in the short-term andcould be 8% lower in the longer term as a result of a hard Brexit.
Other high-profile figures in the corporate world who have backed May’s draft agreement include Jürgen Maier, the UK chief executive of German engineering giant Siemens, and Warren East, the chief executive of Rolls-Royce.
But not all business groups have thrown their support behind May. The Alliance of British Entrepreneurs is expected to send letters to every MP in the country on Monday signed by 200 chief executives, founders and entrepreneurs – including JD Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin – urging them to vote down the proposed Brexit deal. The ABE was founded in 2018 to represent firms that believe Britain can thrive after Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Britain’s Brexit decisions have been damaged by a year-long culture of cabinet leaks, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said in an apparent swipe at some of his colleagues, including Gavin Williamson who was sacked as defence secretary.
Referring to the effect of leaks on Brexit, Hunt said: “I think it has made it harder to deliver what we have been trying to achieve and yes, of course it damages trust.
“When we are faced with very difficult judgment calls on Brexit issues, it is obviously of great benefit to the country if everyone can discuss them freely without having to think how decisions will be leaked afterwards. So I am hoping this will be a moment of change for the whole machinery of government works.”
Asked whether the constant leaks from cabinet had hurt the Brexit process, he said: “Yes, I think it has.” He added that in the past year leaking had become the norm.
Hunt was speaking in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, as part of a five-day tour of Africa as the fallout from Williamson’s sacking continued. Williamson was fired after an inquiry concluded he was the source of leaked details about a decision by the National Security Council (NSC) to grant the Chinese firm Huawei a role in the UK’s 5G network.
Hunt said: “You have to have that element of trust and in the last year that has changed and I think it is highly regrettable because it means everyone that sits around the cabinet table has to be careful about how the comments they might make might be spun subsequently.
“I hope this [Huawei] incident will cause everyone to reflect on [those] kind of leaks. Full stop.”
Hunt suggested it was better if disagreements were aired within cabinet rather than publicly via leaks.
“When I think back to when I joined the cabinet nearly nine years ago, one of the best things about those cabinet meetings is that you would have someone like Ken Clarke sitting around the cabinet table who would politely rubbish George Osborne’s economic policies. You would have a very good debate and the result was a better decision would be made at the end of it.”
Hinting about how he may like to see cabinet conducted were he prime minister, Hunt said: “The way cabinet has to work is total honesty in private and total loyalty in public.
“The truth is the politics of the past year has created the most perfect storm. We have had the most controversial issue of our lifetimes combined with a hung parliament and that gives cabinet ministers a lot more power sitting round the cabinet table than they would normally have and so the question is whether cabinet ministers use that power responsibly or not.”
Asked whether he believed Williamson was responsible for the Huawei leak, Hunt said: “The prime minster has seen the evidence and she believes he was responsible and in that situation no prime minister can have a minister sitting around the table because she has to have absolute confidence that everything that is said will remain confidential.”
He also defended the cabinet secretary from suggestions that he had been prejudiced against Williamson, saying: “That is not the Mark Sedwill I know.”
Hunt said the NSC had to be seen as “the inner sanctum of government” at which very highly classified information was discussed.
He said he hoped Williamson’s political career would not be defined by the leak episode, saying the former defence secretary had shown an incredible commitment to the armed forces.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Cabinet ministers are bitterly divided over whether Brexit talks with Labour should broach the possibility of a customs union, with several sceptical that such a deal could even command a majority in parliament or survive hostile backbench amendments.
A senior cabinet minister suggested a deal involving a customs union could be backed by as few as 90 Tory MPs and would mean a slew of resignations from the government payroll.
It is also likely to be opposed by the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and other smaller parties, as well as dozens of Labour MPs who would only back a deal if it included a confirmatory referendum.
Concerns that a deal with a customs union would still not command a majority were publicly aired by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on Tuesday, one of the cabinet member’s who is most strongly opposed to a customs union. Other opponents include the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, and the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom.
Other ministers are more optimistic, with one cabinet source saying they believed up to 160 Tory MPs would eventually back a customs union deal.
“You get 60 just from the One Nation group – they would back a deal with a customs union,” the source said, referring to the group of soft Tories backed by ministers including David Gauke, Amber Rudd and Claire Perry.
At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday both the environment secretary, Michael Gove, and the chief whip, Julian Smith, were said to have urged ministers to accept that a deal with Labour may be the only path to delivering Brexit. “Julian clearly thinks the numbers are there,” one cabinet source said.
However, there were also grave concerns that no alliance with Labour would be solid enough to hold to pass the legislation required – or to withstand any hostile amendments being successfully added to the bill.
“If I were [the Labour chief whip] Nick Brown, I would say that after it was amended, the deal has changed and it’s no longer the deal we agreed to,” one cabinet minister said.
Theresa May told the liaison committee on Wednesday that she had an “open mind” on a deal to be done with Labour. “There are differences on issues but on many of the key areas – particularly on the withdrawal agreement – there is common ground,” she said.
The prime minister added: “We know that we need to end this uncertainty and do it as soon as possible and I hope a deal can be done. We certainly approach this with an open mind. But if we are not able to do that, then we will bring votes to the house in order to determine what the house will support. We stand ready to abide by that decision if the opposition are willing to do so.”
Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman was positive about the talks, describing them as “serious and constructive” and expressing optimism they could reach a conclusion.
He told reporters: “I think we’ve seen clear evidence that the government is prepared to explore shifts in its position. And that’s what we need to nail down – how far and where those shifts are going to go. Any idea that they’ve reached some kind of breakdown or deadlock is not correct.”
There will be more official-level and one-to-one ministerial meetings this week, with a meeting of the full delegations likely to take place next Tuesday that Downing Street has hinted is likely to be key if a deal is to be agreed.
“From the basis of the point they’ve got to this week, I would say that there is significant movement being discussed,” Corbyn’s spokesman said, though he suggested it would be unlikely anything could be sealed in time to prevent European elections on 23 May.
It is understood that Gove’s role has been crucial, acknowledging the need to find ways of locking in any guarantees, so that they could not be immediately unpicked by a future Tory leader.
Gove is said to have told cabinet ministers at their meeting on Tuesday that the risks of losing Brexit entirely outweighed an “unpalatable” customs union.
Both sides acknowledged that there was now a brief window to strike a deal and expected the pace to pick up once this week’s local elections were out of the way.
They have also discussed how backbench-led amendments could be used as part of the process of offering reassurances to Labour.
The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who is part of the Labour negotiating team, indicated a solution could be found. “I think pragmatically that they potentially may have no option in order to be able to push this deal through,” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
She suggested Labour wanted to see movement from the government first before considering whether it could also compromise. “We are fleshing out the details to see how far the government can move towards us and then we will be able to ascertain how far we are able to move towards them,” said Long-Bailey.
MPs have speculated that Labour could agree a deal with the government but then whip the party to back an amendment by Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson to add a confirmatory referendum to the deal but with the expectation that it would fail without significantly more Tory backing.
The former Labour cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw, a supporter of the people’s vote campaign for a second referendum, said MPs’ views on a fresh poll were now so entrenched that few would be prepared to back any deal that did not trigger a public vote.
He said: “There is no path to a deal, including one with a customs union, without a confirmatory referendum. It would be opposed by most Labour MPs. If anything, views have hardened in recent weeks, especially given May’s successor will not feel bound by any deal struck now.
“It would also split both parties, lead to resignations of shadow frontbenchers and to a further loss of Labour members and votes to the smaller parties that back a public vote. I cannot conceive that Jeremy [Corbyn] would want to risk all that and, along with it, the possibility of a Labour government. The only way out of this mess will be public vote.”
First published on Mon 18 Feb 2019 18.29 GMT
Four cabinet ministers have demanded the prime minister stop using the threat of a no-deal Brexit as a negotiating tactic, telling Theresa May that businesses and manufacturers now needed to be given certainty.
The demand was made in a meeting with the prime minister on Monday by the justice secretary, David Gauke, the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, the business secretary, Greg Clark, and the Scottish secretary, David Mundell.
Cabinet sources suggested it would be a key intervention before May’s expected visit to Brussels on Wednesday and described all four as loyalists who were keen to deliver a Brexit deal.
The ministers who requested the meeting with May believe that while no deal had once been a sensible negotiating tactic, a number of alarming announcements by businesses and manufacturers over recent weeks meant it was time for the option to be categorically ruled out.
Downing Street described it as a “private meeting” and gave no further details, but the discussions are likely to inform the weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
The intervention is likely to set the ministers firmly at odds with rebel Eurosceptics, determined to keep no deal as a viable option.
May was defeated in parliament last week at the hands of the European Research Group of Tory MPs, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, who abstained on a government motion because it appeared to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
The prime minister is expected to meet the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Wednesday, departing for Brussels after prime minister’s questions.
Speaking earlier on Monday, May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington, said a no-deal Brexit would cause “serious damage to our economy and, I think, put strain on the union of the United Kingdom”.
The attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, is expected to set out in a speech this week what changes would be required to eliminate the legal risk of being indefinitely trapped in the Irish backstop, the key sticking point for many of the pro-Brexit rebels.
Downing Street hopes that any changes that Brussels can offer will be enough to materially change Cox’s previous legal advice – which they believe would be enough to win over significant numbers of Tory MPs.
Cox and the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, held talks with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, on Monday over Theresa May’s request for the withdrawal agreement to be reopened.
Cox laid out to Barnier what assurances would be needed for him to be able tell MPs the backstop would be temporary. It is understood that text offering MPs assurances will be on the table this week, although sources stressed discussions were at an early stage.
Lawyers from the UK and the European commission, who sat in on the meeting on Monday, are expected to work together in the coming days on precise legal text but neither side has suggested the withdrawal agreement itself would be reopened.
Barclay and Cox are expected to return to Brussels on Wednesday to discuss a “legal way forward”.
Barclay said: “The attorney general shared his thinking in terms of the legal way forward and how we address the central issue of concern signalled in the Brady amendment in terms of having an outcome that addresses this issue between the article 50 legal underpinning that’s temporary and his advice to parliament in terms of the indefinite nature of the backstop.
“We agreed a next step forward so we’ll be engaging again midweek, the attorney general and I, and we’ll firm up the precise logistics of that in the morning.”
The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said the outcome of the Brexit talks was “in God’s hands”.
In an interview with a German newspaper, he said: “When it comes to Brexit, it is like being before the courts or on the high seas; we are in God’s hands. And we can never quite be sure when God will take the matter in hand.”
Juncker said the EU was not “opposed” to an extension of article 50, but suggested it could not be longer than a few months.
“If you are asking for how long the withdrawal can be postponed, I have no timeframe in mind,” he said. “With Brexit so many timetables have already gone by the wayside.
“But I find it hard to imagine that British voters would again vote in the European elections. That to my mind would be an irony of history. Yet I cannot rule it out.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
In the stormy Westminster debate on Brexit, one idea that is gaining ground each day is that the UK should seek to delay its departure from the EU. The SNP is only the latest to call for extra time: the party said on Monday it wanted an extension of article 50 beyond March 2019 so that the government could “go back and negotiate a better deal”.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, thinks the EU and the government could be persuaded to extend article 50 if MPs reject Theresa May’s deal on 11 December. Meanwhile, prominent supporters of a second referendum, such as the Conservative former cabinet minister Justine Greening, think the exit clause could be extended until the end of July 2019 to allow time for another vote.
In 115 days’ time, if nothing else happens, the UK will leave the EU. Like everything else in Brexit negotiations, extending article 50 is not simple, and the EU holds all the cards.
The EU treaty is clear: a country’s exit negotiations can be extended with the unanimous agreement of the remaining member states. But article 50 is otherwise silent about procedure or timing.
Since the day the British government lit the fuse on article 50, EU officials have suggested a few weeks’ extension would be possible – in certain circumstances. The point of extra time would be to finalise ratification and tie up legal niceties (such as translation of texts), to avoid an accidental no-deal. Now, the talk of the Brussels coffee bars is whether the UK could get to delay Brexit because of a political shift, such as a second referendum. In this case, extension is not ruled out but runs into the hurdle of European elections due on 23-26 May 2019.
France was among the first to insist Brexit must be over before the European elections. This is the Brussels consensus, although no formal discussions have ever taken place. Officials think it would be legally impossible for a country to be an EU member state without participating in elections. To hear otherwise from the UK, which has long been the source of complaints about the EU’s “democratic deficit”, sounds a bit rich to some EU officials, who fear that any British citizen could take the EU to court for denying them representation. “Legally, it’s easier to postpone the European elections [than have the UK in without taking part] and that’s absurd,” one senior source said.
Nevertheless, some diplomats speculate that it could be possible to engineer an extension until mid-summer, before the first sitting of the European parliament, which is usually in July. This reflects a desire to find a pragmatic answer if the UK needs more time, but it is a minority view, not backed up by formal legal opinion. The majority insist the UK would still need to take part in May’s elections, even if the extension expired in June or July.
Simpler than extension, could the UK simply cancel the article 50 notification? That is the nub of a case before the European court of justice on “whether, when and how” article 50 notification “can unilaterally be revoked” by the UK. Remainers, as well as the Scottish politicians who brought the case, received a massive boost on Tuesday, when a senior jurist at the ECJ concluded that article 50 could be withdrawn by the state that triggered it. Preventing the revocation of article 50 could mean the “forced exit” of a country that was still an EU member state, said an ECJ advocate general, whose advice is usually followed by the court.
The ECJ’s final ruling is not expected until the end of this month, so MPs will not have a definitive answer when they vote on May’s deal.
But the preliminary opinion suggests that if the UK chose to revoke article 50, it would be a decision to cancel Brexit, not gain extra time for negotiations – the UK would be expected to withdraw its notification in “good faith”. In this way, the advocate general seeks to tackle the arguments of EU lawyers, who contended that allowing a state to cancel article 50 would leave the union in “endless uncertainty”, allowing a country to stop and start the countdown clock to get better terms.
Faced with the looming deadline, some think the UK would be better off leaving and trying to return during the Brexit transition. In other words, forget article 50 and focus on article 49, the EU treaty provision on joining the club. One member of the European parliament’s Brexit steering group, the Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts, has counselled remainers to adopt this strategy – assuming the option to return won in a referendum or general election.
EU officials are less convinced a return would be so straightforward or quick. The UK’s readmission would require the consent of 27 countries, some led by populist anti-EU governments and coalitions. The UK would not regain the special deal it has now, including a generous rebate and opt-outs on other EU policies. “It is a high-risk strategy,” one senior official said. If that was the plan, “they really have to stop the train before it leaves the station”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Carmakers are ramping up their preparations for a no-deal Brexit, with a host of major manufacturers moving regulatory approval for their vehicles from the UK to other parts of Europe.
Manufacturers are preparing alternative regulatory arrangements, a key concern for the closely supervised vehicle industry. Toyota, Honda and Bentley are among the car manufacturers with major British factories who have looked to new regulators in the EU since the Brexit vote.
Meanwhile, Vauxhall and BMW have joined the list of manufacturers to start stockpiling parts to cover at least a few days of disruption. Brexit border delays threaten to disrupt the supply of parts from the EU to the UK immediately after the planned departure date, on 29 March.
All new car models sold in the UK and the EU must gain “type approval” from regulators. Type approval from Britain’s Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) is currently valid across Europe but the European commission in February warned carmakers that this will cease after Brexit, forcing multiple companies to look outside the UK.
The VCA is considered by industry insiders to be one of the more capable national agencies across the EU, meaning it has also been used by European manufacturers who do not have factories in the UK. Skoda in March said it would switch back to its home Czech authorities.
The Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda, which make cars in the UK, have started working with the Belgian authority. The luxury carmaker Bentley has chosen Luxembourg, although a company spokesperson said the move was made to align it with Volkswagen, its parent company.
Even James Bond cannot escape Brexit: Aston Martin Lagonda, which makes the film character’s cars, chose to gain type approval for its new Vantage in the EU. Vauxhall, another venerable British brand – albeit owned by France’s PSA Group – currently uses European agencies, underlining the integrated, criss-cross nature of the industry on either side of the Channel.
Jaguar Land Rover, the UK’s largest carmaker, certifies the “vast majority” of its vehicles with the VCA. A JLR spokesperson said it currently uses regulators in other EU countries “when needed” but it – and others such as luxury carmaker McLaren – may be forced to apply for type approvals outside the UK if there is no deal.
While preparations are ongoing, most large car manufacturers believe there is nothing they can realistically do to prevent damage from a no-deal Brexit, given the lean supply chains used in modern manufacturing. Delays of only a few hours at ports would be disastrous for companies that rely on parts arriving minutes before they are required in factories. The bosses of carmakers such as Ford and Nissan have warned that longer-term barriers to trade between the UK and the EU would threaten investment in British factories – potentially costing thousands of jobs in one of the few industrial success stories in Britain’s recent history.
Mike Hawes, the chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the British industry body, said a no-deal Brexit was “not an option for the UK car industry”.
He said: “It would cause immediate and irreversible damage to our sector, putting business and thousands of jobs at risk. A no-deal scenario could result in severe disruption at the borders and, with over 1,100 trucks crossing into the UK every day, such delays would render just-in-time manufacturing impossible, stopping production. Stockpiling is not a viable alternative, given the scale and complexity of the products and thus the space needed.
“Current regulatory harmonisation allows the UK to sell vehicles across the many EU markets without having to seek approval from each individual country. Removing this permission would add significant costs and barriers, seriously undermining our competitiveness and threatening the future viability of the sector.”
In the longer term, divergence between regulations in the UK and the EU could raise costs for manufacturers who have to produce slightly different vehicles – costs that carmakers say would eventually be borne by consumers. If there is no deal on the mutual recognition of type approvals, all car manufacturers could be forced to apply in parallel to an EU agency alongside the UK’s Vehicle Certification Agency.
However, the industry is hopeful, and some are quietly confident, that a deal of some sort will be agreed to prevent a divergence in regulations, given the lack of appetite from executives at the largest companies.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
The chancellor, Sajid Javid, will commit an extra £2bn for no-deal Brexit planning, the Treasury has announced, taking the running total for preparations to more than £8.3bn since the 2016 referendum.
Javid is due to formally unveil the money as part of his spending round statement to MPs on Wednesday, although it remains to be seen whether this will take place as planned given moves by backbench MPs to take control of the Commons agenda.
Downing Street insisted the spending review would happen in some form. However, it is understood that if the order paper is revised to make space for the backbench bill seeking to delay Brexit, it could take place as a written statement.
The Treasury said the extra £2bn would be spent on post-Brexit projects and would include cash for the Border Force, for the Department for Transport to assist ports, and for a possible UK replacement for the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system.
The £8.3bn running total for no deal comprises the original £4.2bn, an extra £2.1bn allocated in August for contingencies such as stockpiling medicines, an additional 500 border officials and a public awareness campaign, and the new £2bn.
In a statement before the spending round, Javid said: “One of my first acts as chancellor was to announce £2.1bn additional funding to prepare to leave the EU. We’ve now provided £8.3bn to help departments prepare for Brexit. This new funding will ensure that departments can grasp the opportunities created by Brexit after we leave on 31 October.”
In an earlier update to MPs on no-deal planning, Michael Gove, who leads on the issue for the government, said the Operation Yellowhammer dossier on no-deal risks – which has been leaked but not published – depicted a “reasonable” worst-case scenario.
“Operation Yellowhammer assumptions are not a prediction of what is likely to happen. They are not a best-case scenario or a list of probable outcomes, they are projections of what may happen in a worst-case scenario,” he said.
Gove conceded there would be issues connected to no deal, such as tariffs and checks on the Irish border. He added that while businesses and the public should not be “blithe or blase” about the challenges, the risks could be mitigated and “we can be ready”.
Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said Gove’s statement was “rather vacuous”, adding that if a general election was called he would ask the civil service to publish all documents related to no-deal preparations.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
The decision to cancel the £14m Seaborne Freight contract marks the inevitable ending of another farcical chapter in the government’s pre-Brexit preparations. But it should nonetheless send a further chill down the spines of those nervously awaiting what 29 March may bring – and once again leave many marvelling at the continued survival of Chris Grayling in post.
The hapless transport secretary, who avowed as a leading Brexiter that leaving the European Union would be easy, has been maintaining a tricky course since the referendum: continuing to project a glassy-eyed confidence that planes will fly and lorries will cross borders, while belatedly trying out some no-deal plans, just in case.
Yet every time Grayling has enacted his contingency planning, the panic has worsened. Local Kent MPs and councils were outraged to find work quietly starting to turn their motorway links into lorry parks.
Hauliers hired by the Department for Transport openly mocked a planning exercise at Manston airport, that cost tens of thousands of pounds to simulate a traffic jam roughly a hundredth of the size of the ones expected around the Channel ports. They laughed less when the DfT told them to apply in a lottery for permits for international travel, of which there were barely enough for a tenth of those who applied.
The Seaborne debacle has been even worse: smacking of a combination of insouciance, carelessness and desperation. There is a reason that Ramsgate has fallen out of use by ferry companies – yet Grayling signed a deal with a firm with no boats or experience to operate a link to Ostend, Belgium, when neither port is near ready, according to local politicians. Due diligence on the directors, one of whose previous companies had been wound up leaving HMRC millions out of pocket, appeared not to have been done.
And worst of all, this was Grayling’s answer to fears that critical supplies – including vital medicines – would fail to get through once the frictionless trade route of Dover-Calais is jammed. Grayling has defended the deal time and again, while now even the firm’s backers, Arklow, have walked away. The only silver lining to the cancellation is the knowledge that, for all practical purposes, the venture was already doomed, and no taxpayer money has been paid out.
Will Grayling go? In less chaotic times, with a governing party united and in control of events, a prime minister would surely not give him the choice. Yet Grayling appears to genuinely believe he sees things clearer than those around him: as psychologists term it, an unconscious incompetent, the worst kind of useless. Those who have watched Grayling deny all responsibility for the dysfunction of the railways – even to the point where he blamed others for an industry board he had just established and appointments he had personally overseen – won’t be putting much money on him doing the decent thing.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Britain’s worst politicians, which is to say the leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties, pretend that the democracy of a second referendum is a danger to democracy. Outsiders may believe that the true danger lies in a Brexit that threatens the hard-won peace in Ireland, the union with Scotland, the living standards of the poorest people and regions and Britain’s influence in the world, for the sake of a fantasy that was invented by charlatans and is being implemented by incompetents, so unqualified in statecraft they can neither agree among themselves nor be honest with the public about the dismal choices ahead.
Not so, according to the far left and far right that drive the agendas of the major parties – and when in our history have such minor figures dominated “the major parties”? After all other arguments against putting the Brexit choices to the electorate fail, they turn to the threat of violence. “There will be a backlash the likes of which the political classes in this country simply cannot understand,” warned Nigel Farage. Rather than say that a decent left must fight Farage and the thugs he imagines swarming on to the streets, John McDonnell agrees, as he and Jeremy Corbyn have agreed with Farage on Brexit throughout their careers. Trump’s ally was correct. There cannot be a second referendum because it would provide “opportunities for the far right”.
Once democracies boasted they “would never give in to terrorism”. Now Britain’s leaders say they cannot allow a democratic vote and not only because far-right terrorists could forbid it; Theresa May says a referendum on the Brexit settlement would be “a politicians’ vote” that told the “people they got it wrong the first time and should try again”. Forget if you can the mendacious logic that allows the prime minister to pretend that allowing the electorate rather than parliament to decide is an elite stitch-up and ask yourself: does she or any Tory who hasn’t yet resigned from her administration think that if “the people” learn they have got it wrong, they will blame themselves?
Conservatives were once realists. They knew “the people” never blamed themselves. Now they believe “the people” will greet economic hardship and a long, slow national decline with a stiff upper lip and rousing cheer.
Tony Blair, who I think it is fair to say knows more than most about how the love of “the people” can be given and withdrawn, tells me the naivety of Labour and Tory politicians astonishes him. If they cannot take a stand on political principle, he implies, surely they can stand by the time-honoured cause of self-preservation. As he wrote in the Observer last week, by the 2022 election voters will have learned the falsity of the Brexit campaign’s promises. What ought to be clear now will be blindingly obvious by then: we will either have the powerlessness of following EU rules without a say in EU policy or the chaos of a wrenching break. But that is not all.
Conservative activists, who are growing ever more Faragist, will not thank Tory MPs if they vote for May’s vassal state. Their constituents will not thank them if they ally with the Tory right and push us into chaos. Jo Johnson put it as bluntly as Blair, when he told his brother Boris and all the Leave campaigners that “inflicting such serious economic and political harm on the country will leave an indelible impression of incompetence in the minds of the public”.
Sane Tory MPs would watch their backs and say words to the effect that they had tried to make the referendum result work. Unfortunately, they had discovered that the options facing Britain are so grim only a second referendum that included the question whether it wouldn’t be better, after all, to stay could decide between them. As Blair puts it: “If politicians don’t get the political cover of a second vote, they will be totally exposed.”
The dilemma facing conformist Labour politicians is as stark. When I interview the cowards among Labour’s northern MPs, they say they must vote for a Brexit they know will hurt their constituents because their angry voters demand it. If you ask whether they believe a Brexit that produces cuts in income and public services will lessen their voters’ rage, the tribunes of the people fall silent, In their hearts, they know it will not and cannot.
The self-preservation principle applies as much on the left as the right. Any ambitious Labour politician must know that a large majority of Labour voters now back Remain. Our coming men and women should also be wondering how much longer Labour members will chant “Love Corbyn, hate Brexit”, a slogan as deluded as “Love cigarettes, hate lung cancer” or “Love beer, hate hangovers”, before they realise the far left has duped them. The next generation of Labour leaders will be Remainers. My advice to unscrupulous Labour hacks determined to get on is to go with the flow or be swept away.
I have almost reached the end without making the essential point, that the right’s concept of the unified “people”, who denounce the “mutineers” and “enemies” who betray them in a single voice, is inherently anti-democratic. It was invented in the terrorist phase of the French Revolution, a sanguinary moment our leaders ought to study with greater care.
As he urged his fellow revolutionaries to dispense with the legal formalities and simply execute Louis XVI, Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just uttered an eternal political truth: “One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident.” British politicians believe that they can play the innocent because the referendum has freed them from responsibility. All they must do is execute the “people’s will” and “the people” will thank them. Saint-Just learned about the people’s gratitude when he went to the guillotine a year after the king. If British politicians do not protect themselves with a second referendum, they will discover in turn that “the people” believe many things about their leaders. But they never think them innocent.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Civil servants across Whitehall have been instructed to ramp up their emergency no-deal planning, with preparations including hiring staff for a 24-hour “emergency centre”.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), one of those likely to be worst hit by a no-deal Brexit, has advertised 90 new posts for civil servants to staff a crisis centre. The centre is being set up to plan for and manage “the reasonable scenario of no deal”, the job advert says.
The EU Exit Emergencies Centre is intended to be a temporary measure for three to six months. Staff will be expected to work shifts, to be on call 24/7 and will be trained in multiple roles, according to the job description.
“If you are on call and a situation arises that requires the mobilisation of the EUXE centre, you will have to drop everything and make yourself available,” the job description says.
The roles include response managers and situation managers to deal with the fallout of a no-deal exit, and staff will be required to “see through the fog”.
The advertisement on the website describes the emergency centre as “managing any situations that arise if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal”.
There are also vacancies for staff to liaise with the government’s crisis headquarters , the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS).
The job description for the operations centre manager says the role is about “taking the lead … in a response to an emergency situation” and that the candidate “will have to react quickly to obtain the facts and delegate the immediate and next-day agenda”.
It was reported earlier this week that the Cabinet Office was recruiting another 50 staff for the CCS, which handles major disasters such as terrorist attacks, floods and disease epidemics.
The job advert for those roles, first reported by the Financial Times, said: “It is anticipated that the pool might be drawn upon from the middle of February 2019. Those selected will be asked to support until at least late June 2019 [although this may be extended].”
Some opponents of no deal briefed overnight that Theresa May’s success against hard-Brexit opponents in her party showed how limited the support was for leaving on WTO terms, but one source said the result had been read in Whitehall as signalling that there was almost no chance of parliament passing the prime minister’s deal.
Cabinet ministers had been briefed to expect another alarming no-deal paper to discuss at the cabinet meeting this week, but that meeting was moved in order to allow May to fly to Berlin and Brussels on Tuesday for last-ditch negotiations, and then rescheduled again from Wednesday after May faced a no-confidence vote.
Appearing before the public administration and constitutional affairs committee, the Cabinet Office’s chief civil servant, John Manzoni, said the government had been preparing for the possibility of no deal, and was now “progressively ramping this up”.
Of the £2bn the Treasury has allocated for doing so, about half had been distributed, he said. To prepare for no deal, 10,000 people had been hired, 5,000 more new jobs were in the pipeline and 5,000 more staff would be recruited if it happened.
The government had already set up “various arm’s-length bodies” to take on powers repatriated immediately from the EU if there was no deal, Manzoni said.
“All of that is taking place and now we are moving to the next phase, which is, if you like, what I would call operational preparedness,” he said.
Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary and head of the of the civil service, told MPs on the committee that the government was prepared for no deal, but was aware the process would be affected by external factors.
“Government is in pretty good shape, but of course the big dependencies are outside,” he said. “It’s about the private sector in this country, but it’s also about, in the circumstances, what arrangements can we agree with our EU partners?”
A written parliamentary question last month by the Green MP Caroline Lucas discovered that since the Brexit referendum 937 Environment Agency staff had been moved to work in Defra, almost 10% of the agency’s workforce.
Lucas said moving so many staff away from frontline protection efforts was “putting our most precious wildlife, beautiful landscapes and the basic safety of our air and water at serious risk”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Andrea Leadsom has told MPs their only real Brexit choice is whether to accept any final deal Theresa May negotiates with Brussels when it comes to the Commons to be signed off.
Leadsom, the leader of the house, sought to narrow the options for MPs on Thursday, saying that “the reality before the United Kingdom” would amount to an either/or choice on May’s deal, even if the Commons were to debate possible amendments.
The cabinet minister addressed MPs the day after the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, provoked backbench outrage by saying parliamentary approval for May’s deal needed to be unconditional because amending it could prevent it from being ratified.
Some MPs are considering an amendment to the approval motion to authorise a second referendum. Other amendments could extend or reduce the transition period during which the UK stays in the single market after Brexit.
Valerie Vaz, the shadow leader of the house, accused the government of trying to “take sovereignty away from parliament” and said that Raab’s warning about amendments meant there would not be a meaningful vote on a final deal. “This is the most outrageous power grab,” she said.
Leadsom acknowledged that it would ultimately be for the Commons to decide how it handled the “meaningful final vote” to approve the Brexit deal, because it would be organised by a business motion that MPs would vote on. Her remarks, however, were a clear sign that the government wants to reduce the choice availableto MPs.
“What I want to say is that the house will be aware that whether or not debate should be organised through a business of the house motion, and the form of any such motion, will be in the hands of the house itself, which has the power to amend, approve or reject such a motion,” Leadsom said.
“But it is very important to recognise the question that will be in reality be before the United Kingdom, and that is whether or not to accept the deal that the government has negotiated with the European Union.”
It emerged on Wednesday that Raab had written the Commons’procedure committee hoping to secure its endorsement of his position that “amendments … may actually result in the government being unable to ratify the withdrawal agreement through creating uncertainty as to whether such approval had in fact been given”.
A revolt led by the Labour MP Helen Goodman at the committee’s meeting prevented MPs from endorsing the minister’s conclusion. The committee is now seeking further opinions from independent constitutional experts over the next week before issuing its guidelines on how the debate should be organised.
Pro-remain Tories have also expressed concern. Nicky Morgan said on Twitter: “This appears to be an attempt by the executive to frustrate our sovereign parliament – it is clumsy, it won’t succeed and it shows how hollow ‘taking back control’ was for some people.”
Tory strategists, worried about whether hard Brexiters will vote for May’s deal, are hoping to win the support of Labour MPs in leave-supporting seats, arguing that it is in the national interest to vote for Brexit. Their argument is that MPs will be left with only two choices once the negotiations conclude: an imperfect deal negotiated by May or a highly damaging no deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Nick Boles, a former minister, quit the Conservatives on Monday night and walked out of the House of Commons chamber after his alternative plan for Brexit, which involved a Norway-style single market membership, was defeated for a second time.
Boles’ voice cracked with emotion as he told the House of Commons that he would no longer sit as a Conservative MP. Raising a point of order, he told parliament: “I have given everything to an attempt to find a compromise that can take this country out of the European Union while maintaining our economic strength and our political cohesion.
“I accept I have failed. I have failed chiefly because my party refuses to compromise. I regret therefore to announce I can no longer sit for this party.”
While some on the opposition benches in the House of Commons applauded, one MP could be heard saying: “Oh Nick, don’t go, come on.”
He had already resigned from his local Conservative party in Grantham and Stamford, where he was facing the prospect of deselection over his soft Brexit views.
At the time, he told local members he was “not willing to do what would be necessary to restore a reasonable working relationship with a group of people whose values and views are so much at odds with my own”.
It is the latest example of the Conservatives fracturing over Brexit, after Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen quit to campaign for a second referendum as part of the Independent Group, which is applying to become the new Change UK party.
Boles said he would sit as a “independent progressive conservative” MP rather than join that group. The former planning minister was one of a quartet of Tory and Labour MPs who had worked for months on the common market 2.0 plan.
Under the proposal – also known as “Norway-plus” – they wanted the UK to join the European Free Trade Area (Efta) and in that way regain membership of the EU single market. The government would have then sought to negotiate a customs arrangement to avoid border checks in Northern Ireland.
Boles said last month that he had enjoyed working across the parties. “It’s been a real pleasure,” he said. “We don’t pretend not to be different. We don’t pretend not to have different philosophies, different priorities: and if anything we actually take some pleasure in finding out more about the others. It’s been a great experience, almost whatever the result.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Theresa May is set to face intense pressure from remain-minded Conservative MPs to finally face down hardline Brexiters in her party after a planned restatement of a departure strategy agreed two weeks ago by the Commons was defeated.
Abstentions by MPs from the pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) played a big part in seeing the government motion voted down after the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, was unable to persuade them it did not take a no-deal departure off the table.
While May loyalists scrambled to play down the importance of the vote, privately MPs and even some ministers were furious at the ERG and insistent the prime minister had to change course in the coming days.
“There is a degree of wishful thinking going on that the EU can ever do enough to satisfy the Brexit extremists,” one minister said.
“She wants to try to square the circle and it’s just not looking likely. She has a choice: seek the agreement across the House or the country will be out without a deal. They don’t compromise, they never have.”
Ahead of another promised government Brexit motion at the end of the month, a number of ministers are known to be considering voting for amendments that could meaningfully stop no deal or extend article 50, such as one proposed previously by Yvette Cooper.
“[May] is worried about splitting the party but the party could split either way,” the minister said. “She should be worried about our side of the party. In parliament there is nowhere else for the ERG to go but there is potentially somewhere else for the remain wing to go, we are more likely to trigger a realignment.”
A cabinet source said: “Once again the ERG have made life hell for the prime minister and put their own fantasies in the way of pragmatic politics.”
One former minister said the “fake consensus” in the party around the Brady amendment had been exposed by Wednesday night’s vote. “It was never going to last. She has to pick. Either she’s serious about doing a no deal if necessary, in which case she’s a Ukip prime minister, and keeps the ERG onside but fractures the rest of the party, or she rules it out and she’s a Conservative PM but loses the ERG. At the moment she’s nowhere and pleasing no one. It’s about choices. And she won’t make one.”
Others were as outspoken in public. After the defeat Nick Boles, the Grantham MP who has been central to efforts to prevent no deal, tweeted: “Maybe, just maybe, the penny will now drop with prime minister and her chief whip that the hardliners in the ERG want a no-deal Brexit and will stop at nothing to get it.”
Tory MP Heidi Allen said it was clear the Eurosceptics were now intending to force a no-deal Brexit. “The ERG, as many of us have been saying to the prime minister for well over a year now, are in control and always have been,” she said.
“Their game plan has been unwavering from the beginning in its determination to achieve no deal. Parliament must be given the opportunity to take control of the process and try and coalesce around a softer Brexit position. If this is not possible, as is highly likely, we must put the question back to the public.”
Anna Soubry, an anti-Brexit Tory MP, said she was “absolutely delighted” the government agreed to release details of cabinet briefings on the consequences of no deal, meaning she could withdraw her amendment seeking this.
But Soubry told the BBC: “What an absolute fiasco this is. It’s a lack of leadership in both of our broken parties, and frankly we need a different, better way of doing politics in this country, and we need it now.”
Brexiter Tories blamed the defeat on what one, Bernard Jenkin, called “the government’s clumsiness”.
Steve Baker, deputy chair of the ERG, used a point of order after the vote result to urge May to devote her efforts to pushing the so-called Malthouse compromise, a plan drawn up by a series of Conservative MPs to circumvent the controversial Irish border backstop through as-yet-unknown technology to avoid customs checks.
James Cleverly, a Conservative party vice-chair and a key May loyalist, insisted that MPs and the EU should read “not very much” into the vote.
“The more significant votes were the votes we had last month which showed that the House didn’t agree with the first draft of the withdrawal agreement, made the point that the backstop was where the difficulty lay, and that if she were able to make amendments around the backstop, that would be something that would probably command a majority,” he told the BBC.
The complex and precarious choreography for the government was obvious from the start of the opening speech in the debate, by Barclay.
While the mass of Tory MPs were happy with the main element of the motion – tasking May with seeking a revised departure deal – the other amendment passed a fortnight ago, which sought to rule out no deal, was worrying Brexiters.
In what seemed like a planned move, Barclay’s predecessor as Brexit secretary, David Davis, intervened in the speech to seek reassurance Brexit would happen on 29 March, whatever the circumstances. Barclay said he was “very happy” to do that.
While this was intended to mollify the ERG it prompted angry interventions from other Conservatives, including Caroline Spelman, whose amendment two weeks ago had sought to stop no deal. It would be “contemptuous of this house” if Barclay sought to erase the vote for her amendment, Spelman said.
Justine Greening, the former education secretary, also raised her concerns: “The reality is that the vote against no deal in this house was more convincingly passed, including with cross-party support, than the vote to have the prime minister go back and negotiate on alternative arrangements. The government can’t simply just pick and choose which votes it wants to support.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has said a second referendum is “some way off” and that Labour still wants to negotiate a better Brexit deal, resisting pressure from shadow cabinet ministers to commit to campaigning immediately for a public vote.
Speaking in Dublin, the Labour leader said the only way to break the deadlock would be a general election or a second referendum after negotiating a softer Brexit deal with Brussels.
Corbyn said there must not be a repeat of the 2016 referendum on Britain’s EU membership, and argued that Labour could strike a better agreement with Brussels that would include a customs union, which would then be put to a public vote.
He said: “We don’t back a rerun of 2016. That happened. That is gone. What I do say is that if parliament comes to an agreement, then it’s reasonable, and if parliament wishes it, there should be a public vote on it but that is some way off.”
Speaking to reporters before meetings with Irish politicians and trade unions, Corbyn said Labour would still like a deal negotiated with the EU that includes a customs union and greater protections for workers rights and environmental standards.
He also said that the choice in a referendum would be about whatever deal was negotiated, with Labour later confirming that remain would be on the ballot under any circumstances.
Corbyn said: “I would go back to the EU, explain that we had fought an election campaign in order to make sure there was a good relationship with Europe in the future, that we weren’t afraid of public opinion on this, and ask them to seriously consider what we are suggesting, which is a customs union with a British say and trade relationship with Europe, and a dynamic relationship on rights would not be undermining Europe on workers rights, on consumer rights, on environmental protections.”
Corbyns’s remarks leave open the option of Labour campaigning in favour of a Brexit deal in any second referendum, rather than for the option of remaining in the EU, which is favoured by many shadow cabinet ministers.
He also said he would do whatever was necessary to stop a no-deal Brexit, which could include working with Conservative moderates to bring the government down.
“Faced with the threat of no deal and a prime minister with no mandate, the only way out of the Brexit crisis ripping our country apart is now to go back to the people,” he said. “Let the people decide the country’s future, either in a general election or through a public vote on any deal agreed by parliament. For Labour any outcome has to work for our whole country, not just one side of this deliberately inflamed divide.”
Labour’s preference is still for a general election but Corbyn’s tone on a second referendum shifted earlier this week to say he would back a poll on any deal. The move came after Labour fell to third place in the European elections on just 14% of the vote, losing ground to both the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
In contrast, Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, is campaigning for Labour to get fully behind a second referendum. He released the results of a survey suggesting that the vast majority of Labour members who replied wanted an all-member ballot to decide on whether to change the party’s Brexit policy.
“The results of my Brexit poll are clear: 84% of Labour members and supporters who took the survey want an all-member ballot to decide our party’s Brexit policy. As deputy leader I’ll support them to make this happen,” he said.
In response to Corbyn’s interview, the Labour MP Wes Streeting, who is campaigning for a “people’s vote”, said: “It’s time for Jeremy Corbyn to stop wriggling and start leading. The overwhelming majority of Labour members and Labour voters now know that giving the public the final say on Brexit is the only way to deliver a lasting and stable conclusion to this crisis.
“If the simple fact that continued ambiguity on Brexit is badly damaging our party wasn’t clear enough already, the disastrous results of the European elections for Labour should have rammed it home. Our vote share sunk to historic lows, it was arguably the worst ever election result for the Labour party in its modern form. And by a margin of more than four to one Labour voters were flocking to parties that give unequivocal backing for a final-say referendum rather than Nigel Farage’s party.”
On the other side of the debate, the shadow cabinet ministers Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett have opposed a second referendum, along with Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite. McCluskey told ITV’s Peston: “My message to the Labour party is don’t be spooked by these Euro elections.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has demanded a general election in response to Theresa May’s 149-vote Brexit deal defeat – but made no mention of a second referendum.
The Labour leader also pledged that his party would vote against a no-deal Brexit outcome in Wednesday’s vote and signalled that he would continue to press for a customs union with the EU.
“The prime minister has run down the clock and the clock has been run out on her,” he said in the House of Commons. “It’s time that we have a general election and the people can choose who their government should be.”
But despite Corbyn’s call for another poll, the party is understood to not have immediate plans to call for a vote of no confidence that could precipitate what would be the third general election in four years.
The opposition will initially focus on opposing no deal – which is expected to be defeated on Wednesday – and believes that an extension to the 29 March deadline is inevitable because more time is needed to negotiate an alternative.
Only three Labour MPs voted with the government, the serial rebels John Mann and Kevin Barron plus former minister Caroline Flint, despite May’s attempt to woo them with promises on workers’ rights and a £1.6bn seven-year regeneration fund. Two independent former Labour MPs, Frank Field and Ian Austin, voted with the government.
Flint intervened while Corbyn was speaking in the Commons earlier in the day, arguing that May’s revised deal was better because Downing Street had promised that “if the EU raised standards in health and safety and employment rights” MPs “could vote to support that increase, and not only that but go further than the EU”.
But other Labour MPs who had considered voting for May’s deal indicated they had little interest in expending political capital in voting for a proposition that was going to be overwhelmingly defeated with so little from the government on the table.
One of the party’s MP representing a seat in the north of England said they believed that “around 30 Labour MPs” could yet vote for a Brexit deal if a third meaningful vote were to happen and May were to offer more.
Corbyn made no mention of a second referendum – which the party is theoretically committed to supporting if it cannot secure a general election – in his remarks after the vote, and hardly referred to it in his earlier speech in the Commons debate.
“If this deal narrowly scrapes through tonight – I don’t think it will – we believe the option should be to go back to the people for a confirmatory vote on it,” Corbyn said, suggesting there is little sign that Labour will reactivate the idea soon.
The Labour leader is instead expected to focus on winning support for a scheme that involves a customs union with the EU. Last week he met two Conservative former ministers, Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin, to discuss their “Common Market 2.0” plan, which involves staying in the single market and having a customs union with the EU after Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has condemned as a “power grab” the UK government’s plans to share powers between Whitehall and the devolved administrations after Brexit, despite Welsh Labour agreeing to the deal two weeks ago.
On a visit to Glasgow on Friday afternoon, the UK Labour leader echoed the phrase used consistently by Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, during the long-running dispute over how to jointly manage areas such as genetically modified crops, fishing quotas and farm payments after Brexit.
The Welsh Labour government left Sturgeon unexpectedly isolated last month after agreeing to a consultative mechanism with UK ministers, but on Friday Corbyn described the UK government’s behaviour as unacceptable.
MSPs from the SNP, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens are expected to reject the EU withdrawal bill when it comes before Holyrood on Tuesday, increasing pressure on Theresa May after she suffered a series of defeats on her Brexit plans in the House of Lords this week.
Corbyn said: “I’m very happy that the Scottish Labour party will be voting against [the bill] because frankly there is a power grab going on by Whitehall on the EU withdrawal. What they’re doing is taking powers from Brussels that ought to go to Scotland, Wales and the regions and instead pooling them in Whitehall. That is unacceptable to us.”
In an implicit acknowledgement of Welsh Labour’s differing position, Corbyn said: “Devolution sometimes throws up interesting answers. That is what devolution is about: people making their own decision. But as far as I am concerned there should be the maximum devolution from EU withdrawal for Scotland and Wales.”
Speaking with Corbyn at a shipbuilding heritage centre in Govan, the Scottish Labour leader, Richard Leonard, said that he was “quite relaxed” about the Welsh government’s position, although his own party would “almost certainly” vote to reject the EU withdrawal bill next week.
The Labour leader used his trip to Glasgow to call for all navy shipbuilding contracts to remain in the UK, describing current government policy that non-combat vessels can be built overseas as “trashing” shipbuilding tradition.
His visit comes as candidate selections are under way across Scotland in 20 marginal Westminster seats that will be critical to Labour’s success at the next general election.
While Scottish Labour has not experienced the same level of factionalism in these selections as seen south of the border, party moderates are deeply concerned about the fate of the disability rights campaigner Pam Duncan, who came within 1,000 votes of unseating her SNP rival in Glasgow North at last year’s general election but now faces a selection challenge from Agnes Tolmie, a former chair of Unite in Scotland.
Duncan, who has introduced Corbyn on previous visits to Glasgow, backed Anas Sarwar against the leftwinger Richard Leonard in last autumn’s Scottish Labour leadership contest.
One senior Scottish Labour source said: “Anyone in the Labour party who believes we should oust Pam as our candidate should question if they’re in the right party. Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto recognised there is more to do until parliament reflects the society it serves, so these manoeuvres against Pam are a betrayal of our cause.”
Next Monday, nominations open for the Scottish Labour deputy leadership contest, with the expectation that moderates will avoid putting up a challenger to Corbyn ally and the shadow Scottish secretary, Lesley Laird, to avoid another public split over Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn could face up to a dozen resignations from the Labour frontbench if the party backs a second referendum as a way out of the Brexit crisis.
A string of junior shadow ministers have told the Guardian they are strongly opposed to the idea of a second referendum, which they fear would expose Labour to a vicious backlash in leave-voting constituencies.
The development follows another tense day of brinkmanship in Westminster between Theresa May and the Labour leader as they seek a way out of the crisis that has engulfed both major parties.
Corbyn refused to enter talks with Theresa May on Thursday until she ruled out the idea of a no-deal departure, and demanded that his party’s MPs refuse similar invitations. Later May wrote to Corbyn telling him that ruling out no-deal was “an impossible condition” and calling on him to join cross-party discussions.
With no sign of the impasse being broken, pressure is growing on Labour to consider a so-called people’s vote as the UK prepares to leave the EU on 29 March.
With Corbyn’s hopes of a general election fading with the prime minister’s narrow victory in the no-confidence vote, some Labour supporters are raising pressure on Corbyn to support a second referendum.
A snap poll conducted after the crushing defeat of May’s Brexit plan has found a 12-point lead for remaining in the EU – the largest margin since the 2016 vote.
But the Guardian has contacted several senior shadow ministers from constituencies that voted to leave the EU who say they would consider their positions if Corbyn conceded to pressure to back a second referendum.
One said: “I would be in a really difficult position if we backed a second referendum. I would have little choice but to stand down if I was to have any hope of retaining my seat and representing my constituents.”
Another said they had made their views clear to Corbyn’s office and the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer.
“I would feel deeply uncomfortable about going into a people’s vote at this stage. Given all the commitments that we made in the general election, we have to carry them out. This concept of blocking Brexit is wrong and would break a link with millions of our traditional voters who expect us to keep our word,” the shadow minister said.
Anti-Brexit campaign group Labour for a People’s Vote published a list of 71 Labour MPs who support its cause on Wednesday, and claimed many more were privately supportive.
But backbench MPs who have been canvassing opinion claim that number is matched by vehement opponents of a referendum, some of whom would be prepared to break the whip rather than support it.
Several shadow cabinet ministers, including the Labour chair, Ian Lavery, and the shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, are also sceptical, believing the party’s first priority must be to keep up the pressure for a general election.
Lavery made a passionate intervention against a new referendum at last week’s shadow cabinet meeting. Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the Unite trade union, has also said it would be a “betrayal” to seek to reverse the 2016 result.
Gloria De Piero, the shadow justice minister, told the Guardian she was not in favour of a second referendum. “I stood on a manifesto that promised to respect the referendum result,” she said.
Other shadow cabinet ministers, including the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, and the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, are more sympathetic towards a second referendum.
Labour strategists have not ruled out a free vote on a second referendum, believing that whipping MPs either to support or oppose a referendum would open a deep rift.
Lucy Powell, the MP for Manchester Central, said that with no agreed Brexit deal in place, it was unclear what options would be offered on a second referendum – and referendums were the wrong way to resolve the complex situation.
“I think they’re terrible ways to make rational decisions,” she said. “And there’s a swathe of the public who would never forgive us.”
At a meeting in Hastings, East Sussex, Corbyn remained uncommitted on the idea of a second referendum, saying again that it remained one of several options if an election did not happen.
Explaining why he was the only opposition leader not to meet May for one-to-one talks, Corbyn dismissed the cross-party discussions as a “stunt”, adding that May appeared unable to grasp the fact that her withdrawal agreement was now “dead”.
“She seems to be prepared to send the country hurtling towards a cliff-edge,” he said.
But Labour’s former prime minister Tony Blair said Corbyn was wrong to refuse to meet May.
“If, in a moment of national crisis, the prime minister asks the leader of the opposition to come and talk, of course he should,” Blair told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Another former Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, called for the Brexit deadline to be extended by a year, as he said the country was now “more divided” than at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax.
MPs should force the government to extend article 50 and then give the public the final say on a renegotiated Brexit deal, he said.
Speaking in Edinburgh on Thursday evening, Brown condemned the “paralysed and immobilised” parliament in Westminster and said there was rising anger from the public who wanted to be involved in the decision-making process.
In a further development, a poll conducted by YouGov of more than 1,000 voters on Wednesday found 56% would now vote to stay in the EU, against 44% who want to leave.
Exactly the same proportion of voters said they wanted a second EU referendum – three points higher than recorded in a similar poll before Christmas. Backing for a so-called people’s vote among Labour supporters stood at 78%.
The remain lead was extended further when respondents were asked to compare it to May’s withdrawal agreement or the option of leaving the EU without a deal.
Against the prime minister’s deal, remain led by 65% to 35%, while against no-deal was 59% to 41% in favour of staying in the EU.
First published on Wed 2 Jan 2019 12.01 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn will defy calls to change course on the party’s Brexit policy ahead of parliament’s vote on the deal, insisting that the government should secure a new deal with the EU if MPs reject Theresa May’s agreement.
Under increasing pressure from Labour members and MPs to reconsider his approach as preparations for the delayed “meaningful vote” ramp up over the next week, Corbyn said on Wednesday that the party’s policy remained “sequential” and that no decision could be made on a second referendum until parliament voted down the deal on offer.
His remarks come as Westminster gears up for the end of recess and the return in earnest of the Brexit debate. MPs are expected to hold the delayed vote in the second week of January.
With Corbyn’s position coming under increasing scrutiny ahead of the crucial vote, it is understood that a number of high-profile leftwing Labour figures, including Ann Pettifor, a former adviser to the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, as well as the economics commentator Paul Mason, and Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the TSSA trade union, are in advanced discussions about forming a policy commission to make the left’s case for remaining in the EU.
Their planned intervention follows the publication of a new study revealing that an overwhelming majority of party members want the Labour leader to back a second referendum, though most remain loyal to Corbyn’s leadership.
Corbyn and several of his closest allies have been both publicly and privately sceptical of the policy, and the Labour leader has said in a previous interview with the Guardian that the party would pursue a negotiated Brexit deal even if it won a snap general election.
Corbyn said May should return to Brussels once her deal is voted down to find an agreement that Labour could support, including a full customs union.
“What we will do is vote against having no deal, we’ll vote against Theresa May’s deal; at that point she should go back to Brussels and say, ‘This is not acceptable to Britain’ and renegotiate a customs union, form a customs union with the European Union to secure trade,” he said.
Negotiations for any future permanent customs union with the EU would be likely to form part of the next stage of talks, once the UK has agreed the terms to leave in March. MPs are due to vote on the negotiated withdrawal agreement as well as a political declaration on the future relationship, which is not legally binding.
Labour frontbencher Chi Onwurah said the party’s policy should be to push for an extension to article 50, rather than to allow May to run down the clock towards no deal, a move also backed by the TUC.
In an article for the Guardian, Onwurah, the shadow minister for industrial strategy, said the threat of no deal was “an act of supreme economic sabotage” and would not be carried out. “We must recognise the challenge of negotiating a deal that obtains cross-party support before the March deadline,” she said. “Labour’s conference motion does not reference an article 50 extension, but we have acknowledged it may be necessary.
“Increasingly, it is clear that the options to avoid an economic and social catastrophe are a general election, a public vote and/or article 50 suspension. With each day that passes, Theresa May’s inept blackmail makes it harder to do anything responsible without stopping the clock.”
After a lull over the Christmas recess, pressure on May is also expected to step up again as MPs prepare to return to Westminster.
Over the festive period, May embarked on a round of telephone diplomacy with EU leaders, speaking to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Christmas Eve and again on Wednesday, as she attempted to negotiate a new legally binding wording to provide reassurances on the Irish backstop arrangements.
The Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, is to meet junior ministers from all other government departments to receive updates on no-deal planning at midday on Thursday, the Guardian understands.
A Whitehall source described the meeting as a “stock-take” and said all departments had assigned one junior minister the responsibility for no-deal planning, after the cabinet agreed to significantly increase preparations before Christmas. No other cabinet ministers are expected to attend.
The study of Labour members found that 72% believed their leader should back a second referendum. The research, part of the Party Members Project led by Prof Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London, found that while Labour members still strongly supported their leader overall, they appeared to be sceptical about his reasons for refusing to support a referendum.
However, the study also found a majority of Labour members said they supported the party’s current position, with 47% in favour versus 29% who opposed it.
The party’s policy, which was decided at its annual conference in Liverpool, is that there is a priority to force a general election and only after that could a second referendum be considered.
Corbyn restated that position on Wednesday. “The issue of another referendum was of course one of the options, but that was very much after the votes have taken place in parliament,” Corbyn said on Wednesday. “We haven’t yet had a vote, and I think the government really should be ashamed of itself. This vote has been delayed and delayed and delayed. This government is just trying to run down the clock and create a sense of fear between either no deal or May’s deal.”
Backbenchers urged the Labour leader to plot a path towards a second referendum. MP Phil Wilson said the leadership was “hidden behind myths” that Labour voters were evenly divided on the issue, when the study had shown they were overwhelmingly in favour of remaining.
Luciana Berger, another supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said it was wrong-headed to believe that either Corbyn or May could negotiate a better deal. “No renegotiations are on offer and the EU have been clear that the Irish backstop is unavoidable in all circumstances,” she said. “All the evidence shows that Labour voters and Labour members are at one in their support of a People’s Vote. It’s time the leadership stopped hiding behind process and faced up to the scale of the crisis and took the side of the people.”
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Jeremy Corbyn has refused to rule out seeking to revoke article 50 to prevent Britain from sliding into a no-deal Brexit, as senior EU officials privately talked up the possibility before a crucial summit in Brussels.
Speaking outside the European commission headquarters in Brussels, the Labour leader insisted his focus “at the moment” remained on trying to push the prime minister into a soft Brexit.
“These are hypotheticals,” Corbyn said in response to reporters’ questions over cancelling Brexit. “So far as we’re concerned we think there’s an urgency in constructing a majority for an agreeable solution and that’s what we’re concentrating on at the moment.”
Corbyn was holding talks with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, and Martin Selmayr, the European commission’s secretary general, before Theresa May’s arrival at a leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday. Labour subsequently issued a statement saying cancelling Brexit was not its policy.
A spokesperson said: “As we have always said, we respect the result of the referendum and will do whatever is necessary to prevent a no-deal outcome. We do not believe that revoking article 50 is in any way necessary.”
Selmayr privately suggested this week that the UK would end up seeking to revoke article 50 if the alternative was a no-deal Brexit. However, Corbyn made clear his preference would be for the prime minister to engage with his vision of a softer Brexit and permanent customs union.
“We think that what we’re proposing can be achieved in the British parliament; we do believe we can construct a majority that will prevent the crashing out and all the chaos that will come from crashing out and that’s what we’re absolutely focused on,” he said.
Corbyn has called for cross-party consensus to achieve that but drew criticism for walking out of a meeting in Downing Street earlier this week because Chuka Umunna, who quit Labour to form the Independent Group, was present.
Asked why people should believe that he was committed to cross-party cooperation in the light of what happened, he replied: “There was a confusion over that meeting. I had a separate and very extensive discussion with the prime minister later on. I’m also arranging to meet the prime minister next week, on a one-to-one basis as leader of the opposition. I have met with the leaders of all the other parties in parliament in my office this week, and Keir [Starmer] has also met with delegations from all across the House of Commons. We have done a great deal.”
Corbyn’s refusal to rule out revocation of article 50 will cheer many of those in Labour campaigning for the UK to have the chance to remain in the EU. But it would also be divisive, as some Labour MPs with leave-voting seats are concerned about the electoral consequences of failing to back Brexit.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland and the SNP leader, gave her support to revocation on Thursday, saying that SNP MPs would never accept May’s framing of the argument as a “choice between her deal and no-deal”.
“Just because she’s not willing to contemplate the alternatives, doesn’t mean there aren’t any alternatives,” she said. “One of those alternatives undoubtedly is the revocation of article 50 and if all else fails by this time next week, that is exactly my view of what MPs should do.”
Asked about the possibility, May’s deputy official spokeswoman said there was no chance of the prime minister supporting such as course of action. She said the prime minister had said “about 12,000 times” that she would not be prepared to revoke article 50.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has pledged that Labour will back a second referendum on any Brexit deal put to parliament, but warned of a “deliberately inflamed divide” as he sought to calm tempers among senior party figures.
The Labour leader, who is visiting Dublin to meet Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Thursday, said his party would “do whatever is necessary to stop a disastrous no-deal outcome” and said Labour would work across party lines to block a new Brexiter prime minister who could crash the UK out of the EU.
“Faced with the threat of no deal and a prime minister with no mandate, the only way out of the Brexit crisis ripping our country apart is now to go back to the people,” he said, speaking ahead of his visit to Ireland.
“Let the people decide the country’s future, either in a general election or through a public vote on any deal agreed by parliament. For Labour any outcome has to work for our whole country, not just one side of this deliberately inflamed divide.”
A bitter row has raged in the party’s top echelons about the response to the European election, which saw the party pushed into third place behind the Brexit party and the Liberal Democrats, a result blamed on the party’s unclear Brexit position.
Two of Corbyn’s closest allies, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, publicly said they fully supported a second referendum. Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, and Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, have also said they would back Labour arguing for a people’s vote.
Tom Watson, the deputy leader, has been even more strident, saying he supports the idea of a ballot of all members or a special conference to immediately change policy to back a second referendum.
On Wednesday, Watson released a poll of Labour members and supporters taken from a survey he launched after the election results, suggesting 84% wanted an all-member ballot to decide the party’s Brexit policy. “As deputy leader I’ll support them to make this happen,” he tweeted.
Further pressure has come from both Scottish and Welsh Labour, with leaders of both saying they are now firmly committed to a second referendum in any circumstances.
However, moves to push Corbyn into a more full-throated endorsement of a referendum have been resisted publicly by some of his closest allies, including the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, and the shadow cabinet office minister, Jon Trickett.
A senior Labour source on the party’s remain wing said internal strife had not been resolved, despite hints from the Labour leader of the Welsh assembly, Mark Drakeford, that a major shift would be seen in the coming days. “The battle is still raging in [Corbyn’s office] about how far to go,” the source said.
On Wednesday, the party chair, Ian Lavery, issued a rebuke to “leftwing intellectuals” and some remain campaigners who sought to push Labour into backing a public vote, saying they were sneering at “ordinary people” with pro-Brexit views and sniping at those who want to see the results of the 2016 poll respected.
In an article for the Guardian, Lavery said Labour would not win a general election “simply by fighting for the biggest share of the 48% [who voted remain]”.
He said both sides needed to come together to fight the prospect of a no-deal Brexit being pushed by some of the Conservative leadership candidates.
“As someone who has opposed a so-called public vote, not least because parliament has no majority for it in principle and nobody has the faintest idea what we would actually put on the ballot, I have been doggedly attacked by certain sections of the party, as well as those on the outside,” he said.
“It does feel that a certain portion of ‘leftwing intellectuals’ are sneering at ordinary people and piling on those trying to convey the feelings of hundreds of thousands of Labour voters. Perhaps, in reflecting on the results, we should consider the effect all of this has had.”
Tensions have been compounded by the reaction of dozens of party members to the expulsion of Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, who admitted voting Lib Dem in the EU elections.
In a rebuke to Labour’s HQ, Watson called the decision spiteful and said members who voted for other parties should be listened to rather than punished.
The expulsion of Campbell led to a torrent of admissions from senior Labour figures that they had also voted for other parties in protest at Labour’s position on Brexit and the hashtag #ExpelMeToo was briefly trending on Twitter.
The former Labour home secretary and party chairman Charles Clarke said he had also voted Lib Dem in the election, while the ex-defence secretary Bob Ainsworth said he voted Green.
Fiona Mactaggart, a former Labour minister, admitted she also voted Lib Dem and said it was “time for us all to declare: ‘I am Spartacus.’”
Watson said members who had voted for other parties to send a message to Labour had been right about its lack of clarity on the issue of a second referendum, compared with rivals such as the Greens, Lib Dems and the SNP.
“It is very clear that many thousands of Labour party members voted for other parties last week,” he said. “They were disappointed with the position on Brexit that a small number of people on the national executive committee inserted into our manifesto. They were sending the NEC a message that our position lacked clarity, and they were right.”
The former lord chancellor and Labour peer Lord Falconer said it remained unclear whether the rules had been followed correctly over Campbell’s expulsion.
“The rules say you’re not allowed to support another political party; does voting for another political party and only saying you’ve done it after the event involve ‘supporting another political party’?” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“If it was an offence under the rules, then I suspect thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of members of the Labour party at the European elections broke the rules and that’s not a tenable position.”
Falconer, who said he had voted Labour and did not back a second referendum, said the decision to swiftly expel Campbell was “bound to have been taken high up the chain” and said it would send a message about what the disciplinary process would prioritise.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Jeremy Corbyn will throw himself into the middle of the negotiations with the EU by holding talks with Michel Barnier in Brussels just hours before Theresa May seeks to persuade leaders at a summit to accept a short delay to Brexit.
The EU’s chief negotiator disclosed to ministers for the 27 member states on Tuesday evening that the Labour leader had sought the meeting.
Corbyn will see Barnier in the EU’s Berlaymont headquarters on Thursday morning. A few hours later in the Belgian capital, Theresa May will appeal to the EU’s heads of state and government to accept her expected request for a three-month delay to Brexit.
Corbyn is also attending a meeting of fellow socialist opposition leaders and prime ministers, such as Spain’s, Pedro Sanchez, which is taking place in Brussels in the morning.
The appearance of Corbyn in Brussels at what Barnier told reporters on Tuesday evening was a “very, very sensitive” time will be cause of concern in Downing Street.
There will be fears that EU leaders will receive mixed messages as they mull over the prime minister’s formal proposal to prolong the article 50 negotiating period. A delay will require unanimous approval by the EU’s leaders.
The meeting will give Corbyn an opportunity to discuss again the outline of his vision for Brexit, and update Barnier on the cross-party talks.
The EU has been pushing May to shift her red lines and sign up to permanent customs union in order to garner Labour support for her deal.
Barnier will is also likely to be interested in the suggestion that Labour could abstain on another vote on the deal to allow it pass on the basis that there would then be a confirmatory referendum.
The SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and Greens had urged Corbyn during a cross-party meeting on Tuesday to throw his weight behind a second Brexit referendum.
Speaking on Tuesday evening, Barnier had said that if May could not get her current deal past parliament, the EU would be open to a long extension but only if Downing Street changed tack or there was a “new event” such as a general election or second referendum.
“I recall this political declaration, which sets out the framework of our future relations, could be made more ambitious in the coming days if a majority in the House of Commons so wishes,” Barnier said.
“If not, what would be the purpose and outcome of an extension? And how can we ensure that at the and of a possible extension we are not back at the same situation as we are today? In any case, the EU council will need to access what is the best interests of the EU.”
He added: “My feeling is that a longer extension needs to be linked to something. There needs to be a new event, a new political process and obviously I cannot attempt to preempt such a process.”
The EU is not legally allowed to set conditions on an extension, but understandings are being sought. May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington, was engaged on Tuesday in intensive preparatory talks in Brussels on a way forward.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has walked out of an early evening meeting of party leaders with Theresa May after he realised that the prime minister had invited the Independent Group spokesman, Chuka Umunna.
The Labour leader had been due to meet May to discuss the Brexit crisis alongside the SNP’s Ian Blackford, the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable, and the parliamentary leaders of Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
But those present said he quit the meeting once he realised that former Labour MP Umunna, who is not a party leader but the spokesman for the newly formed group of MPs made up of Tory and Labour defectors, had also been invited.
A Labour spokesperson said afterwards: “It was not the meeting that had been agreed … the terms were broken” and that the party was talking to No 10 about holding a face-to-face meeting that Corbyn had earlier proposed at prime minister’s questions.
Umunna, however, claimed it was “extraordinary behaviour” and added: “I don’t think this is what people expect from a leader of the opposition at a time of crisis when the people that elect us to come together and see if there is a way forward.”
Cable said: “Jeremy Corbyn’s kinder, gentler politics was found wanting as he stomped out of the meeting before it began rather than breathe the same air as Chuka Umunna.”
Corbyn subsequently spoke to May on the telephone, and complained that she had offered nothing new beyond a choice between her deal and no deal next week. The Labour leader said the prime minister was “in complete denial about the scale of the crisis we are facing and unable to offer the leadership the country needs”.
During the day, there were also signs that a small number of Labour MPs were now prepared to switch sides and back May’s Brexit deal after the EU said it had to pass the Commons next week.
Lisa Nandy, the Labour MP for Wigan, said she would be “minded to vote” for May’s Brexit deal if the prime minister accepted an amendment submitted in her name and that of party colleague Gareth Snell on Wednesday evening.
Earlier in the day, Snell said he too was considering a switch to backing May. “I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the only way to stop no deal may be to vote for her deal. I’m not happy about that. I think that was her plan all along.”
Nandy, however, would not predict exactly how many Labour MPs might support her amendment, other than to say that she thought it would win the backing of “a number of us”. She added: “It is the best prospect May has.”
But late on Wednesday, after Nandy had said she might back the prime minister, the MP reacted badly to May’s evening televised statement where she expressed frustration with parliament repeatedly blocking her Brexit deal.
“Pitting parliament against the people in the current environment is dangerous and reckless,” Nandy said. “Now she’s attacking the MPs whose votes she needs. It will have cost her support.”
The prime minister would need the support of about 30 Labour MPs to have a chance of forcing her deal through, assuming she managed to also sign up the Democratic Unionist party, to offset the estimated two dozen Tory diehards who will never support the prime minister.
Other Labour MPs reacted with a mixture of anger and scepticism to Nandy and Snell’s intervention. One said that he and party colleagues were very unhappy with the idea that the pair were willing to engage in discussions with the Tories.
The amendment, if accepted, would require May – or whoever is the prime minister – to accept three conditions to the next phase of Brexit negotiations on a future trade deal that would begin if the withdrawal agreement is passed by the Commons. It would require the prime minister to agree a negotiating mandate with the Commons before trade deal talks start, report back on progress every three months, and require a confirmatory vote by MPs at the end of the process.
Nandy said she had discussed the idea with May “three or four times” and said that she would link the amendment to a third meaningful vote next week. Otherwise it would be put forward on Monday, when MPs are due to discuss the next Brexit steps.
Earlier in the day, Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, secured an emergency Commons debate to discuss the crisis by invoking a procedure that required the support of at least 40 MPs.
But a cross-party attempt to submit an amendment to that debate, calling for a long delay to Brexit, collapsed after it emerged that Labour’s leadership was not prepared to support a lengthy extension, sources said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has defiantly restated Labour’s policy of leading Britain out of the European Union with a refashioned Brexit deal, shrugging off intense pressure from Labour MPs and activists for the party to throw its weight behind a second referendum.
The Labour leader insisted that even if his party won a snap general election in the new year, he would seek to go to Brussels and try to secure a better deal – if possible, in time to allow Brexit to go ahead on 29 March.
“You’d have to go back and negotiate, and see what the timetable would be,” he said.
Corbyn underlined the fact that he cannot set Labour’s policy unilaterally, saying: “I’m not a dictator of the party.”
In an exclusive interview, Corbyn also:
Twenty-four hours after the furore in the House of Commons in which he was accused of insulting the prime minister, the Labour leader appeared much more relaxed on a visit to the Hope Centre, a homelessness charity in Northampton whose campaign against eviction he is supporting.
He admitted he had lost his temper when confronted with a wall of jeering Conservative MPs at prime minister’s questions after May had accused him of lacking a clear Brexit policy.
“I was extremely angry: the last point I’d made was, they’d suddenly found £4bn to prepare for no deal. £4bn. At the same time, police officers have lost their jobs; 100,000 vacancies in the NHS, a housing crisis; a homeless man dies on the steps of Westminster; and she and the Conservative party turned the whole thing into some pantomime joke,” he said.
Conservative MPs challenged Corbyn’s claim that he muttered “stupid people” and not “stupid woman”, as many viewers of video footage believed.
But he was unrepentant. “It’s interesting their sudden concern about these matters. Where is their concern about the homeless people of this country?” he said, repeatedly jabbing a finger on the table to emphasise his point.
“Where is their concern about universal credit? Where is their concern about 200,000 children living in poverty in this country?”
The prime minister was taunting Corbyn for declining to table a motion of no confidence in her government – as some shadow cabinet ministers wanted him to do.
Instead, he exasperated many of his own MPs by putting down a symbolic motion criticising the prime minister – which the government refused to allow time to debate.
“The reason I tabled the motion in the way I did was to try and maximise support around the specifics of the vote in the House,” he said. “The reason I took that judgment is I thought it was the best way and the best chance.”
With the clock running down to 29 March, when Britain is due to leave the EU, a vocal group of Labour MPs – including some in the shadow cabinet – are pushing for the leadership to endorse the idea of a “people’s vote”.
But asked if he could imagine a referendum emerging as a solution if it becomes clear that parliament is deadlocked – as the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, mooted this week – he said: “I think we should vote down this deal; we should then go back to the EU with a discussion about a customs union.”
As to what stance Labour would take if a referendum were held, Corbyn said, “it would be a matter for the party to decide what the policy would be; but my proposal at this moment is that we go forward, trying to get a customs union with the EU, in which we would be able to be proper trading partners.”
And he struck a distinctly Eurosceptic note by again highlighting Labour’s concerns about the state aid rules that form part of the architecture of the single market.
“I think the state aid rules do need to be looked at again, because quite clearly, if you want to regenerate an economy, as we would want to do in government, then I don’t want to be told by somebody else that we can’t use state aid in order to be able to develop industry in this country,” he said.
Neither is he willing to countenance the idea that Labour should support May’s deal, to avoid Britain crashing out with no deal in place at all – a move the prime minister has repeatedly said is in the “national interest”.
“The national interest is for parliament to have a vote on this deal now,” Corbyn said, pointing out that it was May who had pulled the vote, which MPs had agreed to hold on 11 December.
“They reneged on that. And then she suddenly turns round and starts accusing us of playing politics with it. She’s the one that reneged on the deal. Not me.”
In his party conference speech, Corbyn surprised some activists by saying Labour could back the prime minister’s deal if she secured a permanent customs union and offered stronger assurances on workers’ rights and environmental standards.
He said that offer remains open. “It’s there: at no stage since I made that in October has the government been in touch with us at all.”
To those activists who support his leadership but ardently hope he will stop Brexit, Corbyn said: “We have to recognise a number of things. One is, as a party, about 60% of Labour voters voted remain; about 40% voted leave. We have to recognise why people voted in those directions.”
“Labour is unique as a party, because it’s got to bring all sides together – hence my view on a customs union, on access to the market.”
In Northampton, after hearing the personal stories of three of the Hope Centre’s clients, Corbyn said Labour would act quickly to end rough sleeping, which has more than doubled since 2010 to 4,751 – a figure charities believe is a drastic underestimate.
The shadow housing secretary, John Healey, has announced that a Labour government would allocate £100m to buy emergency cold-weather accommodation for rough sleepers, part-funded by a levy on second homes.
Corbyn said he would also repeal the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which criminalises rough sleeping and begging. It dates from the period of the Napoleonic wars, when destitute soldiers were returning from the battlefield – but was invoked almost 3,000 times in 2016.
“It’s an absolute relic of the kind of politics of the Duke of Wellington, being used against people now, on the streets of this country. Can’t we just move on from the Duke of Wellington, and get rid of it?” he said.
He said he was “very, very disappointed, and very sad” about the case of Onasanya, who was suspended from the party after being found guilty of repeatedly lying to avoid a speeding ticket.
Onasanya, along with the Sheffield Hallam MP, Jared O’Mara, who remains an MP despite resigning from Labour, was selected for 2017’s snap election by a small panel of members of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC).
“In any future election, we’ll have a much more democratic process,” Corbyn said. “It was no secret I was not happy with NEC panels selecting candidates.” He added, “I’m very determined that the party membership should be enfranchised in doing this. I’m very clear about that.”
He said Labour was “very ready” to fight a general election, if the impasse at Westminster resulted in a snap poll – and asked if he was ready to become prime minister, he replied: “Yes. Absolutely.”
He joked that he would take with him to Downing Street a reconditioned garden fork, bought during his visit from a social enterprise run from the Hope Centre’s workshop.
Meanwhile, with business at Westminster suspended for the Christmas break, Corbyn said: “I’ve got an appointment with my allotment on Sunday.”
* This article was amended on 27 December 2018 to correct a picture caption which said Corbyn was given a garden fork by the Hope Centre. As the main article made clear he bought that item.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has called on the UK’s most senior civil servant to intervene to stop Boris Johnson forcing a no-deal Brexit in the middle of an election campaign, amid rising signs the country is heading for the polls again this autumn.
The Labour leader wrote to Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, accusing the prime minister of plotting an “unprecedented, unconstitutional and anti-democratic abuse of power”, after it emerged No 10 would be prepared to delay an election until immediately after 31 October if Johnson loses a no confidence vote among MPs.
In his letter, Corbyn demanded urgent clarification of the rules around purdah, which are meant to prevent the government taking major policy decisions during an election campaign.
He asked Sedwill to confirm that if the UK is due to leave the EU without a deal during an election campaign, then the government must seek an extension to article 50 and allow an incoming administration to take a decision about Brexit on the basis of the result.
“Forcing through no deal against a decision of parliament, and denying the choice to the voters in a general election already underway, would be an unprecedented, unconstitutional and anti-democratic abuse of power by a prime minister elected, not by the public, but by a small number of unrepresentative Conservative party members,” he said.
“I am therefore writing to seek your urgent clarification on the proper application of ‘purdah’ rules in such a scenario and the constitutional implications of failing to abide by those rules.”
Corbyn released the letter as No 10 refused to rule out delaying an election until the immediate few days after Brexit on 31 October if one is triggered by MPs voting down Johnson’s government and failing to form another administration.
Asked by the BBC on Thursday if he would resign if he lost a confidence vote, Johnson swerved the question, and stressed the need to leave the EU on 31 October.
“I think that what MPs should do and what I think they’ve already voted to do, when triggering article 50 and reconfirmed several times, is honour the mandate of the people and leave the EU on 31 October,” he said.
He also insisted there was “bags of time” for the EU to “show some flexibility” and agree to ditch the Irish backstop, which he claimed could make the UK into a “satellite state” of Brussels.
No 10 and the Conservative machine appear to be getting into election mode with the appointment of Isaac Levido, a former staffer for Lynton Crosby, as a new director of politics and campaigning.
The Treasury also announced it would begin a one-year spending review in September, raising the prospect that Johnson wants to make money available for pre-election giveaways in education, health and policing.
Sajid Javid, the chancellor, said it was aimed at giving departments certainty about funding ahead of Brexit on 31 October and delivering on promises of 20,000 extra police officers, additional funding for schools, as well as delivering the government’s pledges on the NHS.
But John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said it “smacks of pre-election panic measures by the government”.
“Johnson is splashing a little bit of cash as a publicity stunt, but keeping the door open for even more austerity if a no-deal Brexit breaks the economy,” he said.
The prime minister could face a confidence vote as soon as he comes back from recess in the first week of September, which he may lose if Tory MPs decide to join with opposition parties to bring down the government.
Parliament would have 14 days to find an alternative government, but if that failed, then an election would be triggered. There would be time to hold one before the scheduled Brexit day of 31 October but the law says the date is “on the recommendation of the prime minister”, implying Johnson might be able to choose the date – possibly in the first week of November.
No 10 had no comment on Corbyn’s letter, but a senior Conservative source echoed a statement from Dominic Cummings earlier this week, saying: “No amount of letter writing political stunts will change the fact that politicians don’t get to choose which public votes they respect.”
The Cabinet Office declined to provide clarification of the purdah rules on Thursday but said Sedwill would respond to Corbyn in due course.
Labour is taking no chances and preparing heavily for an election, releasing a highly personal attack advertisement on Thursday that portrayed Johnson as someone who cannot be trusted.
It referenced his sacking by former Tory leader Michael Howard for lying about an affair, and accused him of lying about policy issues such as shutting ticket offices on the London Underground after promising to keep them open.
Labour has selected candidates in 75 target seats but some MPs said they were also concerned about the party’s own readiness and financial situation. Little progress had been made on selections in seats where MPs have defected or plan to retire, though that has been ramped up this month with new candidates being chosen in Birkenhead and Stockport.
Backbench Conservative MPs were highly alarmed about the idea of an election just days after an unpredictable no-deal Brexit, possibly in the midst of food shortages, travel disruption and trade difficulties.
One former cabinet minister said they believed Tory prospects would be dire in a post-Brexit election anyway, because of the under-appreciated threat from remain voters.
“We shed Scotland MPs, demographically die in London, get killed in the south-west by the Lib Dems and lose south-east heartlands because of jobs loss worries. Where is the core? It’s madness, and all predictable,” they said.
Several Tory MPs said they were sceptical about whether No 10 really would pursue such a risky move, and regarded it as a possible ploy to scare would-be rebels away from voting down the government in a confidence motion and triggering an election that could put Corbyn in No 10.
The cross-party group plotting against a no-deal Brexit is already nervous about holding a confidence motion without being completely sure of having the numbers to support an alternative government, in which a compromise candidate such as Ken Clarke or Yvette Cooper would request an extension to article 50. They are increasingly nervous after the Labour frontbench said they would not support an alternative government and the rebels would have to get behind Corbyn as a temporary prime minister if they wanted to stop a no-deal Brexit.
McDonnell quipped on Wednesday that he would send Corbyn in a taxi to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen if Johnson lost a confidence motion and refused to resign.
One Labour MP involved in cross-party discussions said there was a preference among many Tories to try legislative routes for stopping no deal, before going for the more radical option of replacing the government.
Even some pro-Brexit supporters of Johnson were highly alarmed about the idea of an early November election. A senior Tory close to Conservative campaign headquarters said the party would obviously be ready for any eventuality but he was “highly doubtful” that Johnson would risk such a move.
First published on Sat 23 Mar 2019 18.44 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet is set to clash again over Brexit this week, with supporters of a second referendum concerned that the Labour leadership will opt to facilitate a soft Brexit. With senior Labour figures openly calling for another public vote at the anti-Brexit march in London on Saturday, other influential MPs believe Corbyn’s inner circle is actually warming to a Norway-style Brexit that would see Britain leave the EU, but remain closely aligned to it.
Tensions between Labour and its pro-Remain activists are already high after the party released a tweet on Friday evening asking if supporters had any “big weekend plans” and called on them to go out leafleting for May’s local elections.
The party’s official position is to explore all possibilities to resolve the Brexit impasse, including a public vote if other avenues prove impossible. The position has allowed Labour to keep its options open amid widespread support for a second referendum among party members. However, a plan to hold a series of indicative Commons votes this week on possible Brexit options is set to force Labour to decide whether it can allow its MPs to back a soft Brexit.
A previous Commons vote over a Norway-style soft Brexit last year resulted in a huge row within Labour. Jeremy Corbyn told his MPs to abstain, but 75 MPs voted for the idea, while 15 voted against. Six quit their Labour roles as a result of the vote.
But several Labour sources believed the party leadership was now warming to a Norway-style Brexit, dubbed “Common Market 2.0”, which would see Britain remain inside a customs union with the EU and part of its single market. Customs union membership would stop Britain signing its own trade deals, while single market membership would force Britain to adhere to the EU’s free movement rules on immigration.
Corbyn had seemed to be edging to the idea of backing a “confirmatory referendum”, which would see May’s deal put to the people. That idea has been drawn up by Labour backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, and will be voted on when May puts her Brexit deal to a third vote in the Commons, expected this week.
That option is still the preference of some in Corbyn’s team, said to include shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer. Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader, appeared at Saturday’s march for a second vote and said he would back May’s deal if she put it to a public vote, with an option to Remain. “When the deal fails this week we are going to face the prospect of a huge delay to the process – I don’t think the people that voted Leave want that and I don’t think people who voted Remain want that,” he said. “So I have an explicit message for Theresa May.
“I will support your deal going through parliament or a revised deal you can agree with my party. I will help you get it over the line to prevent a disastrous no deal exit. But I can only vote for a deal if you let the people have a vote on it too.”
The rally was also addressed by London mayor Sadiq Khan, who said it was “time to withdraw article 50”. Speaking from the stage in Parliament Square, he said he was “a proud European”.
“No matter how you voted in the referendum, no matter what political party you support, we can all agree that Brexit has been a complete and utter mess,” he said. “With days to go we’re in danger of falling off the cliff, which will have catastrophic consequences... it’s time to give us, the British people, a final say on Brexit.”
Writing in the Observer on Sunday, shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey said parliament should now “consider the other options – including our alternative plan, the Common Market 2.0 proposal, a customs union, and a public vote”.
“Labour’s starting point is our alternative plan based around a new customs union and a close alignment to the single market. It abides by the result of the referendum without wrecking our economy. And it will work for the whole country, not just those at the top,” she said. “Unlike the prime minister, Labour is willing to be flexible to find a way through. But we will not vote for Theresa May’s terrible deal, and we’ll never countenance a disastrous no-deal crash.”
Some Labour MPs are also backing an amendment that would order May not to back a no-deal Brexit. It would give parliament the chance to block a no-deal outcome, a week before departure is set to take place.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Theresa May faces a concerted campaign of parliamentary warfare from a powerful cross-party alliance of MPs determined to use every lever at their disposal to prevent Britain leaving the EU without a deal in March.
The former staunch loyalist Sir Oliver Letwin signalled that he and other senior Conservatives would defy party whips, repeatedly if necessary, to avoid a no-deal Brexit, as the government suffered a humiliating defeat during a debate on the finance bill in the Commons.
Letwin and 16 other former government ministers were among 20 Conservatives who banded together with the home affairs select committee chair, Yvette Cooper, and the Labour leadership to pass an anti no-deal amendment.
They defeated the government by 303 votes to 296 – a majority of seven – making May the first prime minister in 41 years to lose a vote on a government finance bill.
The move came after the PM conceded to senior ministers she was on course to lose next week’s historic Brexit vote, as the first cabinet meeting of the new year exposed deep divisions about the best way out of the deadlock.
May told her cabinet she would respond swiftly with a statement to the House of Commons if she failed to win MPs’ backing for her deal next Tuesday. But cabinet sources said it was unclear what course she planned to take – and the general mood was of how “boxed in” the government was.
Several pro-remain ministers, including David Gauke, Amber Rudd and Greg Clark, used the meeting to stress the importance of avoiding a no-deal Brexit, with Rudd saying that would have to mean reaching out across the House of Commons.
Rudd told her colleagues: “More than ever we need to find the centre, reach across the house and find a majority for what will be agreed. Anything will need legislation.”
However, opponents of a softer Brexit, including the House of Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, played down the risks of no deal and joined May in strongly rejecting the idea that has gained traction in Westminster in recent days of extending article 50.
Leadsom has told friends she would refuse to table the legislation necessary to extend article 50, so that May would have to sack her if she wished to pursue such a policy.
But Tuesday’s rebellion by erstwhile Tory loyalists underlined parliament’s determination to take control of the next steps in the Brexit process.
Letwin, who gave an emotional speech saying he had almost never rebelled against his party, made clear Tuesday’s vote was the first step in a concerted effort by parliament to bind the government’s hands in the run-up to Brexit day.
“The majority tonight that is expressed in this house will sustain itself,” he said. “We will not allow a no-deal exit to occur at the end of March.”
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said the vote was an important step to prevent a no-deal Brexit. “It shows that there is no majority in parliament, the cabinet or the country for crashing out of the EU without an agreement”, he said. “That is why we are taking every opportunity possible in parliament to prevent no deal.
“Theresa May must now rule out no deal once and for all.”
At cabinet earlier on Tuesday, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, had warned that too many MPs were holding out for the ideal Brexit deal, instead of facing the reality that there was no alternative to May’s approach.
One source said he had compared MPs hoping for a better deal to “mid-50s swingers,” wishing Scarlett Johansson would turn up to one of their parties. “Or Pierce Brosnan,” said Rudd.
Later in the discussion Gauke, the justice secretary, compared Labour’s Brexit position to Johansson turning up on a unicorn, the Whitehall source said.
Clark stressed his determined opposition to a no-deal Brexit publicly on Tuesday, telling MPs, “I’ve always been very clear representing the views of small business and large business that no deal should not be contemplated.”
The prime minister was expected to announce fresh reassurances on her deal in the coming days, including a beefed-up role for parliament in framing the next stage of negotiations on Britain’s future relationship with the EU.
Downing Street has also been expecting the EU27 to offer further written reassurances about the Irish backstop, which has proved the most controversial aspect of the exit deal among Brexiters.
However, they appeared likely to fall short of the legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement the Democratic Unionist party has demanded.
French EU affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, said on Tuesday, “regarding the Irish backstop no one wants to activate it”, adding, “these are political assurances but there is nothing more that we can do”.
Loiseau also stressed that the deal MPs would vote on next week represented “the best possible agreement”, and “the only one”.
Tory MPs were whipped to vote against the no-deal amendment on Tuesday evening, despite rumours that the government would concede.
Privately, some cabinet Brexiters believe May would rather exit with no deal than tack towards a permanent customs union, or single market membership. But Tuesday’s vote suggested MPs were resolved not to let that happen.
Before the vote, the prime minister had addressed a packed room of MPs, mostly from Labour and other opposition parties, who had signed a letter urging her to rule out no deal.
Those present said that the prime minister tried to sell her Brexit deal, arguing that no Brexit would have “serious consequences for our democracy” and that the best way to avoid no deal “was to back a deal”.
One Labour MP said after the meeting she was “a lot more concerned about no deal” because she had heard several other MPs warning of the risks of it in their constituencies.
Those behind the amendment’s success conceded it may have little material effect on no-deal preparations. Instead, its purpose had been to galvanise MPs across the house and prove there was a parliamentary majority to oppose no deal. The rebels said they could seek to amend any and every piece of legislation the government brings to parliament between now and March.
Cooper, speaking in the Commons, said MPs across the house agreed on the dangers of no deal. “I’m worried we could come to the crunch and parliament will not have the powers to stop [no deal] happening,” she said. “I think we have a responsibility not to just stand by.”
Letwin, during his speech in the Commons, sounded almost tearful as he said he would rebel against the Tory whip. “I will be voting with [Cooper] against my own government, very much against my own will, and I will continue to do so right up until the end of March in the hope we can put paid to this disastrous proposal.”
The government also confirmed on Tuesday that there would be five more days of debate on the Brexit deal, starting on Wednesday, with the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, opening the debate.
However, the business motion tabled by the government suggested it would effectively be a resumption of the debate that was unexpectedly paused on 10 December, when May conceded she was likely to lose “by a significant margin”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
 The deputy leader of the DUP said on Friday he would rather see the UK stay in the European Union than back the withdrawal agreement.
Nigel Dodds, a Brexiter, urged the government to return to Brussels to demand changes that would make the border backstop acceptable to parliament.
Insisting the withdrawal agreement would undermine the union, Dodds said the EU’s resistance to amending the deal must be challenged by Theresa May.
“I think it would be actually better staying in the European Union than living under this withdrawal agreement, which would mean you would accept all the rules of the European Union, pay in all the money, but have no say whatsoever,” he told LBC radio.
Dodds said his party had “consistently and repeatedly” made it clear it will not support the deal until the contentious backstop protocol is changed.
Reacting after May’s withdrawal agreement was defeated for the third time in the Commons, Dodds said: “We have reached this view from a principled position, as we do not believe the withdrawal agreement is the best way forward for the United Kingdom.
“We have said that were the backstop to become operational, Northern Ireland would sit in a separate legal position from the rest of the United Kingdom in economic and trade terms.
“In those circumstances, there is the strong possibility that we could have a long-term outcome whereby Northern Ireland would inevitably pull away from its biggest trading market in Great Britain as there would be new internal barriers within the United Kingdom.”
It is thought that May could try to bring back her deal to parliament yet again next week despite the continued opposition of the DUP.
However, despite Dodds’ comments, the Daily Telegraph reported that some of the DUP’s MPs were considering switching to support her deal.
Any renegotiation of the backstop with Brussels appears unlikely.
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was one of several European leaders who have underlined that there will be no more movement from the EU on the issue.
On Friday night, he tweeted: “The European council has agreed unanimously that the withdrawal agreement will not be reopened.”

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The DUP could consider backing a Norway-style deal for Brexit as a way to prevent Northern Ireland being treated differently to the rest of the UK, Arlene Foster has said, stressing there is no way her party can back Theresa May’s plan as it stands.
Speaking immediately after EU leaders gave their formal backing to the proposed deal, Foster was adamant that the party she leads, which supports May in government, could never back the arrangement.
Asked on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show if there were any circumstances in which the DUP’s 10 MPs could vote for the deal, Foster replied: “No, there aren’t.”
She declined to say whether her party would remove its confidence and supply arrangement keeping May in power if the Brexit deal was passed by the Commons, saying only that she would “review” the issue in this case.
“We will have to see what happens at this time,” she said.
But Foster said it seemed very unlikely the plan would pass: “As far as I can see there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of enthusiasm in the House of Commons for this deal, quite the contrary. So let’s wait until we get to that vote. I don’t see any circumstances at present where that vote will be a vote to go ahead in Theresa May’s favour.”
The DUP’s main objection to the plan is the so-called backstop arrangement, the insurance policy insisted on by the EU to avoid a hard Irish border if no suitable permanent arrangement is found by the time the transition period ends, which would keep Northern Ireland aligned with Brussels regulations.
May has argued that there is no plan for this to happen, as the deal would be done in time. But Foster said this made no sense.
“It’s a legally binding text. You can’t have it both ways – you can’t say it’s not going to happen so don’t worry, and then on the other hand sell it as the best of both worlds,” she said. “There’s been an inherent contradiction with that argument.”
There was, Foster added, “the time now to look for a third way, a different and better way”.
According to the Sunday Times, the DUP has been discussing alternative plans with remain-minded cabinet ministers, including Philip Hammond, David Lidington and Amber Rudd.
Asked whether the party had been talking to ministers about the idea of a deal based on a model such as Norway’s, in which the UK would join the European Economic Area (EEA) and thus stay aligned to the single market, Foster did not dismiss this.
“Well, there are conversations going on right across government,” she said. “I don’t think that will surprise you. We’re talking to everybody across government. We’re talking to people in the remain side, we’re talking to Brexiteers, we’re talking to everyone, as I think you would expect us to do.”
Asked if the DUP could live with an EEA-type arrangement, Foster said: “We’ve always been very keen to give the government space to negotiate a deal in terms of Brexit. That’s the way we’ve always operated. But the one thing that we could not have was a difference between us and the rest of the UK in terms of international trade, in terms of customs and in terms of regulation.”
Pressed again, Foster said: “I’m not going to be prescriptive with the government. What I am saying to the government is: this deal, this current deal, does not allow us to take back control, certainly not in terms of Northern Ireland – we stay within the European Union structure and we will have no say on those rules. We will have a democratic deficit. We will have to take the rules with no way of influencing those.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Theresa May has been told by the leader of the Democratic Unionist party at Westminster that she does not have the support to get her Brexit deal through parliament and demanded that she negotiate “a better deal” from Brussels.
The ominous warning from Nigel Dodds came as the Northern Irish party – who are supposed to prop up May’s government – refused to support Conservative legislation in the Commons for the second day in a row.
The DUP’s abstention led the government to accept two amendments to the finance bill from Labour and one from the SNP on Tuesday night rather than face a vote that it risked losing.
“It is increasingly clear this deal does not have support necessary to pass the meaningful vote in parliament,” Dodds said in a statement, adding that Tories from both wings of the party were against it, as well as Labour and the other opposition parties.
The MP said that unionists across the UK were “appalled at the constitutional implications of the deal” and demanded that May negotiate better terms without making any specific requests as to how the Brexit deal struck last week could be improved upon.
His statement was rounded off with an explicit warning that May needed the DUP’s 10 MPs “to deliver its domestic agenda” – and so remain in government. Without the DUP, May’s Conservatives no longer command an automatic majority in the Commons and could be at risk of defeat in a no-confidence vote.
The DUP’s decision to abstain from voting on the finance bill on Tuesday night came despite the confidence and supply agreement struck after the 2017 election, under which the DUP pledged to support May’s Conservatives on all finance and money bills.
The finance bill followed the party’s refusal to support the Conservatives on Monday night in a series of amendments on the same bill. On one amendment, the DUP voted with Labour, but the Tories squeezed home by five votes – 292 to 287 – after several opposition MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, failed to attend.
No 10 declined to comment on the DUP’s actions, although the government regards the confidence and supply arrangement as still intact despite the DUP’s disobedience.
Downing Street insiders noted that the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, Sammy Wilson, had said in television interviews earlier on Tuesday that the party was continuing to honour the arrangement because despite “having sent a message to the prime minister”, the party wanted “to continue to work with the current government to see if the deal can be changed”.
John McDonnell MP, the shadow chancellor, said: “It’s absolutely staggering that the government has accepted all Labour amendments to the finance bill because it couldn’t rely upon the DUP’s support. The Tories are in office, but not in power. We’re watching a government falling apart in front of us.”
The DUP is holding its annual conference on Saturday in Belfast and has invited former foreign secretary and leading Brexiter Boris Johnson to give a keynote speech in a deliberate effort to shore up links with dissident Conservatives.
Phillip Hammond, the chancellor, is also due to appear at the event, after he promised to spend an additional £320m of government money in Northern Ireland from 2021 in last month’s budget.
Shortly after the 2017 general election, the Conservatives agreed to spend an extra £1bn in Northern Ireland over five years, a noticeable boost in public spending compared with the £14.5bn the region receives from the Treasury annually.
DUP concerns centre on the customs backstop, designed to be used to avoid a hard border in Ireland if no long-term free trade deal can be signed. Although all of the UK would remain in a customs union, the DUP is unhappy with details in the deal that it says shift Northern Ireland into an EU customs territory, separate from Great Britain.
First published on Fri 26 Jul 2019 14.18 BST
A month into 2016, two men were dining one evening in Rotorino, an Italian restaurant in Kingsland Road, Hackney. It rapidly became clear that one of those at the table was deeply distracted, taking regular calls and going outside into darkness for 10 minutes at a time to remonstrate. Each time he returned, he was more contemptuous. An operation was under way to remove him from his job. He started blaming dysfunctional idiots. The name Bernard Jenkin came up a lot. As the punctuated evening wore on, and his linguine rapidly cooled, the dishevelled figure popping up and down from the table gradually relaxed, telling his patient companion he thought it was going to be OK. “The donors are going to see them off.”
It was probably the most concerted effort of many that have been made to marginalise Dominic Cummings from British politics, on this occasion his leadership of the Vote Leave campaign in particular. If it had succeeded, it is quite possible the leave campaign, instead offering a one-dimensional message about immigration, would have lost. But history turned a different page.
Now Boris Johnson has decided to appoint Cummings to Downing Street, a brilliantly kept secret that his new adviser will have adored. It propels possibly one of the most controversial and fascinating figures in British politics right into the heart of government. He has a chance to finish what he started back in 2016. The era of lobbing bricks from the sidelines is over.
The unique aspect of Cummings is that he is so many different things at once. He has a fascination with strategic long-term challenges akin to that of Oliver Letwin. He has base campaigning instincts to rival Steve Bannon, and a similar contempt for Whitehall systems failure to Louise Casey, Tony Blair’s antisocial behaviour tsar. But in one respect he is completely unmatched: his ability to conduct feuds, or to put it another way, put into practice his highly developed theory about achieving change in unresponsive bureaucracies.
For Cummings, corners exist only to be cut and orthodoxies to be challenged.
David Cameron, bewildered by the endless incoming fire from the education department during Cummings’s period as a special adviser under Michael Gove, famously described him as a “career psychopath”. Bizarrely the two never met.
Equally Nick Clegg, a figure of risible contempt to Cummings, found himself under a ceaseless barrage over a proposal on free school meals. “Dreamed up on the back of a cigarette packet” was his most friendly description of the policy. Clegg said Cummings had “anger management problems”. Even the chief inspector of schools Sir Michael Wilshaw, once seen as a scourge of teaching mediocrity, was derided by Cummings as out of his depth and insufficiently radical.
Gove, polite to a fault, would often feign ignorance of his adviser’s methods, but knew full well the dark arts that Cummings deployed to get his master’s way. It was only after Cummings – no longer in Gove’s employ – in one of his highest-octane outbursts called Cameron “a sphinx without a riddle”, his chief of staff Ed Llewellyn a sycophant and his director of communications Craig Oliver clueless, that Gove felt obliged to distance himself. The caustic character assassination was Cummings at his best.
His voluminous writing, if it is not bogged down in eugenics, mathematics or causation theory, specialises in a fin de siècle absurdity. “As the black flags of Isis fly and Putin seeks to break Nato, William Hague poses for the cameras with Angelina [Jolie] and Cameron’s closest two advisers stick with the only thing they know – a 10-day planning horizon (at best) of feeding the lobby (badly) and changing tack to fit the babbling commentariat (while blaming juniors for their own failings).”
Now, as he knows full well, there is no one left to blame, but himself. He will act as the interface between Gove and Boris Johnson.
Despite predictions that Gove would be put in charge of a major government department, such as Communities, he has instead been put into the Cabinet Office, the government engine room. The Cummings-Gove diarchy is back in harness, preparing for no-deal Brexit, and possibly an early election. The team that brought free schools and expansion of Blairite academies in the face of what they dismissed as “the blob” are now going to get ready to cut the umbilical cord with the single market.
The ministerial civil service code will not quite be chucked in the bin, but it is not likely to be the most heavily thumbed manual in the months ahead.
It is not just that Cummings hates individual civil servants – Olly Robbins and the deceased Lord Heywood were particular objects of his ire – he hates the whole Northcote-Trevelyan civil service system and believes it is one of Britain’s decrepit institutions that will most benefit from Brexit. “It keeps out great people, it hoards power to a small number of people who are increasingly crap. And the management of the whole thing is increasingly farcical, like that of any closed bureaucracy keeping its perks. It cannot manage public services, it cannot deal with counter-terrorism. It’s programmed to fail – and it does.” Brexit, he told the journalist Tim Shipman, “would force people to think about these things rather than being in the brain dead stupor they have been in the last 20 years where Whitehall just thinks about being in a Brussels meeting”.
The temptation will be to see Cummings as the next Steve Hilton, the modernising free-thinking guru to Cameron who arrived in Downing Street in 2015, only to leave spent and defeated after two years. The two men after all share the same betes noires: distant, unaccountable power, thick-witted rules, many from Europe, gold plated by slovenly bureaucrats. Cummings views Europe as like the Ming dynasty: it dwindled because it cut itself off from outside influence.
The problem in Hilton’s case was, in the words of Giles Wilkes, then a Liberal Democrat adviser, that he developed “policies doomed to dissolve on contact with the world they hoped to change”. He became a “fizzing catherine wheel of chaotic political force spiralling through Whitehall. Prejudices formed in a blink threatened entities that had stood firm for years.” It emerged that Hilton knew more about marketing than about the free market.
But Cummings is very different to Hilton, much more directed, focused and target-driven. He has also been around the Conservative party scene much longer. He will have written a plan, not a vision, even if the timing was not perfect, since he had to delay a minor operation to be ready to go into No 10.
So what drove him to return? One friend says he simply did not go into government after the Vote Leave triumph because his wife, Mary Wakefield, had just had their baby (during the referendum) and she pretty much forbade him.
He could often be seen in the morning outside his local cafe with his baby. Occasionally, if it was hot or indeed very cold, he sat with a scarf over his head, bent double over a book. Anna Karenina, maths and Bismarck are his three obsessions.
Wakefield remains a very close friend of Johnson from when he edited the Spectator, but Cummings was not in the loop when Gove decided first time round to have a tilt at the leadership, an event that soured the Johnson-Gove relationship for nearly a year. His child was a few months old, and his energies elsewhere. Now he thinks the risk of a Corbyn government is high if the Tory party opts for a soft Brexit.
So will he survive, given the enemies he has made? Cummings’s caustic pen, and tongue, can also hide his true character. “He is also the first person to say if he doesn’t know something. He has a gentle manner. Truly modest. A good listener. He is very keen to find brilliance in unusual places,” says one friend. “He is neither hierarchical nor deferential. But alongside that, he makes no apology for brutal political judgments. He doesn’t think his job is to take the pay cheque and be pleasant – he is there to bring about change. He hates bullshitters.”
He is also not an establishment type. The Spectator annual party is not his scene, even if by necessity he knows his way around the donor class.
He may be a disruptor, almost anarchist, but he also takes public service seriously. “When working in government for the first time he he taught himself maths to A-level and then degree level in order to properly process info and understand concepts of uncertainty in modelling. He’s also behind the push for maths in specialist schools,” says another friend.
“He brought in physicists to help Vote Leave properly crunch data. Such people will be involved in his plan for any general election. He will via Vote Leave have a huge bank of very helpful data of how people said they would vote in the referendum and how they did vote and therefore how they could behave in the next general election.”
It is too early to say whether Cummings is a short-order chef – contracted to get the UK out of the EU and then provide Johnson with a parliamentary majority – or is inside No 10 for a long haul. But even if it is only the former, he will have changed the UK forever.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Business groups have stressed the importance of continued frictionless trade with the EU after Dominic Raab used his first overseas trip as foreign secretary to urge UK firms to “raise their game” and focus more on exporting to other regions.
Organisations including the CBI and Make UK, which represents the manufacturing sector, said that while British companies had already expanded to countries across the globe, exports to the EU accounted for almost half of the total.
Raab is due to join a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Bangkok on Wednesday to push for closer trade links with the 10-member bloc.
In comments released in advance, he said UK companies were not being sufficiently ambitious in targeting non-European markets: “For too long, our trade focus has been on Europe. We need to expand our horizons, and raise our game.
“That means grasping the enormous global opportunities for the UK - and my first trip as foreign secretary will look to strengthen our friendships across Asia.”
While Asean – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – has a combined population of 650 million, its bilateral trade with the EU is worth £36bn a year, just over 5% of the value of UK-EU commerce.
A CBI spokesman said post-Brexit it was vital that the UK seized “the many opportunities in rapidly growing markets across the globe”.
He continued: “We cannot forget, however, that the European Union is our closest trading partner, with 45% of UK exports heading to the continent. The absolute top priority for firms is to secure a good trade deal with the EU, with frictionless trade for goods and ambitious access for our world-beating services sector.”
Ben Fletcher, head of policy for Make UK, said: “From a manufacturing perspective, about half our exports go to the EU, but that’s in keeping with pretty much every major economy – you trade in majority terms with your nearest neighbours.”
Fletcher said about 20% of UK exports went to the US, with almost as much again going to other major economies with free-trade agreements with EU such as Japan and South Korea.
“If you add those together, you’re already talking about 35% or 36% of all your exports, which isn’t so far from the 45% or 46% with the EU. We trade globally already, and there isn’t a country in the world where British manufacturing isn’t exporting to.
“We get help from the government on expanding exports, but in some cases even more intelligence from the Foreign Office about big projects or new markets would be incredibly useful.”
Martin McTague, head of policy for the Federation of Small Businesses, said it was necessary to increase exports to south-east Asia.
“However, it’s crucial we have an orderly exit from the European Union which is the number one priority market for our members as well as replicating the 30 overseas trade agreements that are currently in place,” he said.
“At the moment, 92% of small business exporters do so with the EU, compared to just 25% in south-east Asia. It’s important not to fall into binary thinking.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has conceded Theresa May’s Brexit deal would be “even worse” than staying in the EU.
The leading Brexiter, who dramatically quit the cabinet last week in protest over the withdrawal agreement negotiated by the prime minister, said he did not advocate staying in the EU but that May’s plan was an inferior option.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme what he would do if he had to choose between May’s deal or no Brexit at all, Raab said: “Well, I don’t have to choose that. I’m sorry, I’m not going to give way to hypothetical scenarios. I’ll keep fighting for the best, most successful Brexit.”
Pressed further on whether he thought the deal would be worse than staying in the EU, he replied: “Well, I’m not going to advocate staying in the EU but if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership – we’d effectively be bound by the same rules without a control or voice over them – yes, I think this would be even worse than that.”
Asked about reports cabinet ministers were considering a negotiated no deal, asking the EU to give the country another year of transition and paying some money in return, Raab said: “I would certainly be up for making a best final offer and then considering no-deal deals like that but I think, in fairness, that’s not the course the prime minister has taken. I respect all of my cabinet colleagues, from those that campaigned remain to leave, and those in between.
“But the reality is the deal we’ve got on the table is … I think inevitably we will see parliament vote this deal down and then I think some of those other alternatives will need to come into play.”
Raab resigned last Thursday, a day after tense cabinet talks over May’s EU exit strategy, saying he could not “in good conscience” support the deal agreed by the cabinet. He singled out in his resignation letter the proposed arrangement to avoid a hard border with Ireland through a backstop arrangement, calling it a “very real threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom”.
He added: “I cannot support an indefinite backstop arrangement where the EU holds a veto over our ability to exit.” He also said the deal amounted to a “hybrid of the EU customs union and single market obligations”.
But defending May’s “bespoke” withdrawal proposals, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, told the Today programme: “I think the British public do want us to get on with it and that’s what I hear repeatedly from constituents, but what we have now is actually a very compelling deal.
“This political declaration contains the instructions for negotiators for the next phase to basically deliver an economic relationship between the UK and the EU which will be stronger and closer than any other advanced economy has with the EU. That didn’t look possible a few months ago. We’ve come an awful long way since then and, as I say, this is a very strong proposition.”
May is set to attend a crunch summit of EU leaders on Sunday where it is hoped her deal will be endorsed.
Hinds, who backed remain during the referendum, added: “This is a political commitment and we’re going to have 27 nations coming together on Sunday to consider it and to commit to it and it is basically about how that future relationship is going to be shaped. It’s the legal position with the EU, that they can only negotiate with a country when it’s not a member so we’ll be negotiating on that after we’ve left.
“But the framework is there. Actually, there’s quite a lot of detail, more detail and more ambition than many people were expecting and it does mean that we’ll have that very close economic relationship with it but still being able to strike our own trade deals around the world. That is explicit in the text, and also making sure we deliver firmly on the instruction from the British people in the referendum on things like ending free movement. We can move to a skills-based immigration system, out of the common agricultural policy, out of the common fisheries policy but in a way which is good for our economy and good for people’s jobs.”
Asked about reports of cabinet colleagues discussing an alternative no-deal strategy, he replied: “There are no leavers and remainers. From the moment the referendum was over we all have a duty to deliver on the clear instruction that we got from the British people.”
He also warned: “There’s a risk on the one hand, beyond that, of no Brexit at all. There are people who are trying to thwart Brexit, and there’s also a risk of no deal. Neither of those two things are attractive and that is why this deal, which is a strong deal, I believe will gain more and more traction.”

Last modified on Wed 10 Jul 2019 10.37 BST
Donald Trump will land in the UK on Monday amid anger over comments made by his ambassador suggesting the NHS should be “on the table” in future trade negotiations.
His visit also came as cabinet ministers vying for the Tory leadership suggested they could tear up plans for the Chinese tech giant Huawei to build parts of the UK’s 5G network, after the ambassador, Woody Johnson, warned it was “a big risk”.
Trump, who will meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace on the first day of his state visit, will be met by thousands of protesters in London the following day during a visit packed with pomp, pageantry and controversy that has seen numerous calls for its cancellation.
Johnson stoked opposition on Sunday after suggesting the UK would need to allow US agricultural products, including chlorinated chicken, on to the UK market as part of any post-Brexit trade deal, as well as US private sector involvement in the NHS.
The administration is said to see the visit as an opportunity for a “reset moment” on trade, with Theresa May set to formally resign on Friday.
Addressing the prospect of a transatlantic trade deal, Trump told reporters before leaving the US: “(We’re) going to the UK. I think it’ll be very important. It certainly will be very interesting. There’s a lot going on in the UK. And I’m sure it’s going to work out very well for them.
“As you know, they want to do trade with the United States, and I think there’s an opportunity for a very big trade deal at some point in the near future. And we’ll see how that works out.”
May called the visit “a significant week for the special relationship and an opportunity to further strengthen our already close partnership”. She stressed the need to build closer trading ties.
“We are the largest investors in each other’s economies and our strong trading relationship and close business links create jobs, opportunities and wealth for our citizens,” she said, adding that the government was looking forward to “building on the strong and enduring ties between our countries”.
Trump, who has endorsed the Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson, had been a vocal critic of the prime minister’s proposed Brexit deal, which would have kept a customs arrangement with the EU for free movement of goods, which the US believed would scupper any comprehensive deal.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, became the first leadership contender to explicitly rule out any trade deal that put the NHS on the table.
“I love our NHS – it’s been there for me and my family when we have needed it most, and I want to make sure it is always there for all families,” he said ahead of the president’s arrival. “So I have a clear message: the NHS is not for sale and it will not be on the table in any future trade talks.”
The US ambassador, who is a close friend of the US president, said every area of the UK economy would be up for discussion when the two sides brokered a trade deal.
Asked if the NHS was likely to form part of trade negotiations, he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “I think the entire economy, in a trade deal, all things that are traded would be on the table.” Asked if that specifically meant healthcare, he said: “I would think so.”
His comments prompted an alarmed reaction from opposition politicians. The shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, said the comments were deeply concerning.
“The ambassador’s comments are terrifying and show that a real consequence of a no-deal Brexit, followed by a trade deal with Trump, will be our NHS up for sale. This absolutely should not be on the table,” he said. “Nigel Farage and the Tories want to rip apart our publicly-funded and provided NHS. Labour will always defend it.”
Johnson was also pressed on whether the US would seek a loosening of agricultural standards, including the importation of chlorinated chicken. He said the products should be offered to British consumers who could decide whether to buy them.
“There will have to be some deal where you give the British people a choice,” he said. “American products can come over … but if the British people like it, they can buy it; if they don’t like it, they don’t have to buy it.”
In his Sunday interview, the US ambassador also issued a veiled warning to May’s successor over the involvement of Huawei in UK infrastructure, saying he would “caution” the British government not to make any rushed decisions.
The highly controversial decision is reported to have been given the go-ahead after a tense national security meeting where May had the casting vote to allow Huawei to build “non-core” parts of the network, despite cabinet opposition. The defence secretary Gavin Williamson was sacked for leaking details of the meeting.
Speaking to CBS, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, underlined the growing UK government doubts about Huawei being given access to UK 5G networks.
He said that China “have said they want to have an 80% market share of telecoms technology and in other areas like artificial intelligence, they want a 90% market share by 2025 … And we have to ask as western countries whether it’s wise to allow one country to have such a commanding monopoly in the technologies that we’re all of us going to be depending on.”
He added that the UK would “never take a decision that affected our intelligence-sharing capability with the United States”.
Sajid Javid, who is also running to be Tory leader, said he would oppose Huawei’s involvement in the network. “I would not want any company, whatever country it is from, that has this high degree of control by a foreign government, to have access to our very sensitive telecommunications network,” he said.
Other topics likely to be on the president’s agenda will include the Middle East peace plan, set out in meetings with British officials by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and architect of the so-called “deal of the century”, though the UK is likely to warn the plan needs more emphasis on political rights for Palestinians.
The Trump team are also likely to probe Downing Street to see if, once outside the EU, the UK might support US economic sanctions to force Tehran to reopen the nuclear deal. The US has hopes that a Boris Johnson premiership might back Trump’s approach.
Trump will be accompanied by his wife Melania and his four adult children for the three-day visit. He will attend a state banquet at Buckingham Palace with May and the Queen on Monday. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn,, the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, and the Lib Dem leader, Sir Vince Cable, have declined invitations to attend.
Trump is expected to meet May for formal talks in Downing Street on Tuesday and on Wednesday will travel to Portsmouth for the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings at Southsea Common, alongside over 300 D-day veterans and other world leaders.
The Stop Trump coalition said it was expecting huge crowds at its demonstration on Tuesday, after an estimated 250,000 people protested during Trump’s last visit. A giant inflatable Trump baby blimp, last seen when it was flown at his previous trip in June 2018, will fly again on Tuesday.
The protests have been backed by a senior Church of England bishop, who suggested Christian followers of Trump in the US were misinterpreting the faith. Paul Bayes, the bishop of Liverpool, said Trump’s populist way of doing politics was “toxic and dangerous”.
He said: “I don’t agree with him, I think he’s mistaken in many of his policies, and I think that the Christians who identify with him, especially in the US, are not properly responding to what our Christian faith says they should do.”
First published on Tue 15 Jan 2019 21.04 GMT
Donald Tusk has made a thinly veiled call for the UK to stay in the EU, suggesting the prime minister’s historic loss in parliament left a deal looking “impossible”.
As the scale of the defeat was announced, the president of the European council called for Theresa May to urgently clarify her next move. Brussels had expected the prime minister to lose the vote on the deal she had agreed with the EU, but the size of the majority against – 230 votes – meant there was little hope of the agreement being salvaged.
Tusk tweeted: “If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?”
May was expected to return to Brussels within days of the vote to consult with Tusk and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, but it is unclear now what those discussions would involve.
In a statement, Juncker echoed Tusk’s remarks by urging the British government to “clarify its intentions as soon as possible” while reminding the British parliament that “time is almost up”. The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March.
Juncker, in a defence of Brussels’ role in the negotiations, said the EU and its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, had shown “creativity and flexibility throughout” and that, in recent days, it had “demonstrated goodwill again by offering additional clarifications and reassurances”.
“The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening’s vote,” Juncker said. “While we do not want this to happen, the European commission will continue its contingency work to help ensure the EU is fully prepared.”
A senior EU official said that when May did return to Brussels, Juncker would simply ask her: “What’s next?”
That call for clarity was matched by EU leaders, in their responses to the news from Westminster.
In France, the president, Emmanuel Macron said the UK now had three options: a no-deal, which would be “scary for everybody”; seek to get an improved deal from the EU – to which he said “maybe we’ll make improvements on one or two things but I don’t really think so”; and finally an extension in order to “take more time to renegotiate something”, an option that he said “creates a great deal of uncertainty and worries”.
Michael Roth, Germany’s EU affairs minister, tweeted in response to the vote: “Disaster. Too bad. But EU’s door remains open”.
The Spanish government said it regretted “the negative result” but still hoped the deal would win approval, adding that a no-deal exit would be “catastrophic” for the UK.
A statement from the office of the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, warned that a “disorderly Brexit is a bad outcome for everyone, not least in Northern Ireland”.
“It is not too late to avoid this outcome and we call on the UK to set out how it proposes to resolve this impasse as a matter of urgency,” he said.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said: “No-deal Brexit is a bad solution, both for the UK and the EU. Together with our partners in the EU we will respond to new British proposals.”
Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s prime minister, called for the British government to find “solutions not problems”. “Now we need a fast and clear plan on how to proceed,” he said.
From The Hague, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said: “Despite this setback, it does not mean we are in a no-deal situation. The next step is up to the UK.”
Barnier was engaged in late night talks with MEPs after the vote, but sources said Brussels would wait until after the weekend, giving British MPs time to coalesce around a clear plan, before engaging in substantive talks.
He told reporters: “Now it’s time for the UK to tell us the next steps. On our side we will remain united and determined to reach an agreement.”
EU officials predicted the first step would be for MPs to tell May to request an extension of the two-year negotiating period, removing the cliff edge of 29 March and setting off a debate among the other 27 member states on the terms of a prolongation.
Brussels has repeatedly insisted it would not renegotiate the 585-page withdrawal agreement and the political declaration on the future relationship. Last month the EU27 rejected a 2021 target for completing trade talks, a request May believed could break the parliamentary deadlock.
Juncker reiterated in his statement that the deal was “a fair compromise and the best possible deal”.
However, in a sign of growing anxiety at the prospect of the UK crashing out, earlier on Tuesday the head of the eurozone’s finance ministers, Mário Centeno, had said he believed the EU and Britain would talk further and adjust their positions to avoid a no-deal Brexit, as the latest data confirmed the 19-member bloc was moving towards a period of slower growth.
“We can adjust our trajectory,” Centeno said. “We can open all the dossiers … We need to take informed decisions with total calm and avoid a no-deal exit. Practically anything is better than a no-deal exit.”
Before the vote, Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, also hinted at the flexibility the EU would show in the final act of the Brexit talks.
“If it goes wrong tonight, there could be further talks,” he said, while adding that he could not foresee “fundamental” changes.
The European parliament’s Brexit coordinator said the British parliament had said “what it doesn’t want”, and asked MPs to tell the EU what it did want.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Donald Tusk has warned after the second big defeat of Theresa May’s deal that he expects a credible reason for any delay to Brexit.
Moments after the prime minister announced that the House of Commons would vote on an extension to the article 50 negotiating period beyond 29 March, the European council president issued an EU red line.
“Should there be a UK reasoned request for an extension, the EU27 will consider it and decide by unanimity,” a spokesman for Tusk said. “The EU27 will expect a credible justification for a possible extension and its duration. The smooth functioning of the EU institutions will need to be ensured.”
A spokesman for the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, echoed Tusk’s position in a coordinated statement.
There is frustration in Brussels at the failure by Downing Street to lay down any groundwork over a potential extension, raising the risk that leaders could reject any request.
At an EU-Arab summit in Sharm el-Sheikh last month, the prime minister had broached the issue of an extension of a few weeks during a meeting with Tusk to allow legislation to go through the Commons should her deal be ratified. But she declined to engage in any further discussion of the options if the deal failed again in the Commons, leading officials to remark that there had been “no charm in Sharm”.
After losing by 149 votes, the fourth largest defeat ever on a government motion, May nevertheless told the Commons she would allow a free vote in her party on an article 50 extension. She said such an extension would be short, and that it risked a new cliff-edge in June, suggesting the British government is looking at a three-month delay.
The EU’s 27 heads of state and government are set to discuss any request next Thursday afternoon at a leaders’ summit on 21 March in Brussels.
Juncker had said that the Commons was being given a “second chance” when he unveiled a package of assurances over the temporary nature of the backstop on Monday evening in Strasbourg, adding that there would be “no third chance”.
A letter published at the same time from Juncker to Tusk stated that in the event of an extension request the UK’s withdrawal should be complete before the European elections on 23 May as British MEPs would otherwise need to be elected.
But officials representing Tusk informed ambassadors on Monday that they believed an extension until July was still feasible as the European parliament would not have convened until that point.
Sources suggested that the European commission, as “guardian of the EU’s treaties”, was simply preparing the ground for a formal infringement notice on the UK should the government not organise elections but that 23 May was not the outer limit of an extension.
The EU has become increasingly concerned that the British government is seeking to pin blame for a no-deal Brexit on Brussels.
Across Europe, leaders and senior officials expressed their dismay at Tuesday’s result. The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the “impasse can only be solved in the UK”, adding that the EU’s “no-deal preparations are now more important than ever before.”
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, tweeted that he expected a “creditable and reasoned” justification should an extension request be made, reiterating Tusk’s line: “The smooth functioning of the EU institutions needs to be ensured.”
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, tweeted of his “regret” at the Commons decision.
The European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, said the UK had “spiralled out of control”. Edgars Rinkēvičs, the Latvian first minister, said he hoped “common sense will prevail and we will find a way out of this rather difficult situation”.
A spokesman for Tusk said the EU was “disappointed that the UK government has been unable to ensure a majority for the withdrawal agreement agreed by both parties in November”.
“On the EU side we have done all that is possible to reach an agreement”, the spokesman said. “Given the additional assurances provided by the EU in December, January and yesterday, it is difficult to see what more we can do. If there is a solution to the current impasse it can only be found in London.”
The spokesman went on: “The EU for its part continues to stand by the withdrawal agreement, including the backstop, which serves to prevent a hard border in Ireland and preserve the integrity of the single market unless and until alternative arrangements can be found.
“With only 17 days left to 29 March, today’s vote has significantly increased the likelihood of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. We will continue our no-deal preparations and ensure that we will be ready if such a scenario arises.”
Elmar Brok, a German MEP close to the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the EU would not accept a long delay to Brexit because London “doesn’t have a clue”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Dozens of Conservative MPs are prepared to vote against the government in order to block the UK leaving the EU without a deal, one of the leaders of a group of more than 100 Tory politicians has said.
The warning to Theresa May was delivered on Friday by Andrew Percy of the Brexit delivery group – regarded in the party as a moderate band of remain and Brexit-supporting MPs – who said many wanted to act if the “intransigence” of hardline Brexiters led again to the prime minister’s own deal being rejected by parliament.
Percy, who voted to leave the EU, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme “Some of my colleagues have got to recognise that the game they have thus far been playing with regards to this whole process is not going to end well for them and could potentially end with the delaying of – perhaps even no Brexit – which some of us have spent a lot of our parliamentary and political careers campaigning for.”
The threat, which was also contained in a letter from the leaders of the group to the party whip, leaves May facing the most serious cabinet revolt of her premiership next week as at least four cabinet ministers and almost a dozen junior ones are understood to be prepared to back a motion to delay Brexit.
Amid expectations that Tory MPs from the hardline European Research Group (ERG) would continue to oppose the prime minister’s package even if she returns from Brussels with changes to the backstop arrangements on the Irish border question, Percy said dozens of his colleagues were saying they would support such motions as the one proposed by the Tory MP Oliver Letwin and Labour’s Yvette Cooper, which is due to be debated on Wednesday.
A senior source close to those plotting the rebellion said there was no way the members of the government would resign voluntarily and May would have to sack them.
In what would effectively result in parliament taking control of the Brexit process, the amendment would require May to extend the article 50 deadline rather than allow the UK to leave the EU without a deal.
“A lot of colleagues have compromised from their positions,” Percy added.
“We are a group that has brought together leavers and remainers and I think people are seeing intransigence in other colleagues, people who are perhaps in denial about what the parliamentary arithmetic actually is on some of these matters and people are just growing increasingly frustrated that whilst we are prepared to make compromises other are not.”
While he accepted that the government could choose not to hold a meaningful vote next week, he said it was inevitable that this would happen at some point and that fellow Tory MPs would “naturally decamp”.
A letter sent by Percy and the other co-leader of the Brexit delivery group, Simon Hart, to the government chief whip, Julian Smith, said the reputation for competence of both the party and the government depended on their ability to delivery an orderly exit from the EU.
“Whilst we fully expect some changes to the backstop arrangements to be made by ministers in Brussels this week, there remains a chance that these will not satisfy some colleagues.”

Throughout my time in Downing Street, a portion of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the arena” speech sat framed on a desk outside the prime minister’s office. “It is not the critic who counts”, it read. “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”
As Theresa May sits bloodied and bruised in her constituency this weekend, she would do well to reflect on Roosevelt’s words of more than a century ago.
Hers was perhaps an unlikely premiership. An introvert who eschews the spotlight – who, as she said during the brief leadership campaign in 2016, doesn’t spend her time hanging around in Westminster’s bars – was a departure from the confident extroverts of the past few years. Yet she never sought to play their game. She believed that hard work, diligence and decency would get her to the top. And her victory in the 2016 Tory leadership contest proved that she was right. “Politics is not a game”, she would often say. And she had no time for those who treated it as though it were.
She had no time for the trappings or hassles of office either. In one early meeting, she complained loudly that her security team had insisted on putting a fence around her constituency home. The inconvenience of having to go through a gate to access the compost heap was, it seemed, an unnecessary fuss too far. In another, the revelation that she – like her predecessors – could claim a clothing allowance for her and her husband from party funds was treated with that familiar eye-roll of disdain. “Philip can buy his own suits.”
All of which tells you a lot about May. She is, in many ways, a simple, unremarkable person. Never happier than when going about her daily life in her constituency – collecting the shopping, the dry cleaning or keeping her regular appointment at the gym. Yet she contains remarkable strengths.
You can’t get anything past her in a meeting, because having read every briefing paper many times over, she will always know more detail about the subject than you. You can’t shake her from something she believes in by arguing it may not serve her best interests, because she will always come back at you with the simple question: “But is it the right thing to do?” And you can’t outwork or outlast her, because her stamina and focus are renowned.
Foreign trips with the prime minister are brutal. You cross time zones and pack endless diplomatic meetings into the schedule. For her aides, the flight home is an opportunity to relax. But I remember looking up on one such flight after a particularly hectic trip and seeing her quietly and diligently working through the papers in her red box. I felt I had to try and keep going even though I was exhausted. The prime minister, though, won’t rest until every bit of work is done.
This is the side of May the public doesn’t see. Many have said recently they don’t know how she keeps going. But for everything we see in public, there is just as much going on behind the scenes. The security briefings, the policy meetings, the commitments to charities that she would do everything in her power to meet. Woe betide anyone who suggested an appearance should be cancelled and she would have to let a particular charity down. Duty is everything, after all.
And perhaps this offers a clue to what comes next. The prime minister will retreat to her constituency where she has always been happiest, and her quiet life of public service will go on. She will probably stay on as an MP, the job she loves above all. And she will embrace charities working on causes that are dear to her heart – like tackling multiple sclerosis, child abuse, modern slavery and mental health. But the lecture circuit will remain unbothered. The books, I suspect, will be for others to write.
Yet whatever the future holds, some day soon a portrait of the introverted vicar’s daughter will be hung on that staircase in No 10. Only the second female to appear there. Because, for a time, she was the woman in the arena. She may have erred and come short, but she strove valiantly. And, as Roosevelt tells us, it is to those who step forward as others step back that the credit should ultimately go.
Chris Wilkins is former director of strategy and chief speechwriter to Theresa May
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Senior Tory Eurosceptics believe they and the Democratic Unionist party could be persuaded to back Theresa May’s Brexit deal if Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, gave clearer legal advice about how the UK could withdraw from an international treaty.
It is understood the DUP is back in talks with senior government figures about what it would take for them to back May’s deal at a third Commons vote. A party source said: “Channels are open.”
The majority of Eurosceptic MPs from the European Research Group (ERG) voted against May’s revised deal, defeating it for a second time, because Cox advised there was only a “reduced risk” that the UK could be trapped indefinitely in the Northern Ireland backstop and therefore a customs union with the EU.
However, discussions are taking place around a point that Jacob Rees-Mogg, the ERG chair, raised in the House of Commons before Tuesday’s vote, relating to “how article 62 of the Vienna convention could be used”.
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, replied that the UK would have the ability to terminate the withdrawal agreement “if the facts clearly warranted that there had been an unforeseen and fundamental change of circumstances affecting the essential basis of the treaty on which the United Kingdom’s consent had been given”.
He added: “It would, in the government’s view, be clear in those exceptional circumstances that international law provides the United Kingdom with a right to terminate the withdrawal agreement. In the unlikely event that that were to happen, the United Kingdom would no doubt offer to continue to observe the unexhausted obligations in connection, for example, with citizens’ rights.”
An ERG source said this had been written by Cox but had not made it into the final legal advice. “If we’d had it earlier in the day it could have changed the vote,” the source said.
He said not everyone in the ERG had the potential to be convinced, but many still wanted to back an improved deal rather than leave on no-deal terms. If there was some more momentum in favour of a deal, a few more Labour MPs could potentially be convinced.
No 10 is still holding out hope of getting the deal passed through the Commons on a third or even fourth attempt.
Earlier on Wednesday, Steve Baker, the ERG’s chief organiser, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the group had been “really yearning” to vote for a deal but Cox’s bombshell legal advice on the Northern Ireland backstop meant that was impossible.
Rees-Mogg also did not rule out changing his mind on the deal in future.
Speaking to the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast, due out on Friday, Rees-Mogg said: “I think leaving without a deal is better than the prime minister’s deal as it is currently announced, though I would have preferred a deal had that proved possible and if this deal could be made more palatable I would still prefer a deal to no deal. It is not a cunning plan to get us to no deal by default.”
Asked whether he would vote for the deal if the DUP were happy with it, he said: “Yes. I am a unionist but it is difficult for me to be more unionist than the DUP and if they are happy with the way of getting out of the backstop and that is good enough for Northern Ireland then I expect it would be good enough for some of us.”
Asked whether he would vote for May’s deal on 28 March if it was a choice between that and losing Brexit, Rees-Mogg said: “In the words of the deceased prime minister Lord Oxford and Asquith, wait and see.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
The British government has expressed anger after the EU offered tentative support for Spain’s territorial claim over the land on which Gibraltar airport is built.
Direct flights between the UK and EU destinations will continue to operate for nine months in the event of a no-deal Brexit under contingency plans agreed by Brussels.
Gibraltar airport, however, is not included in the scope of the plans, and EU legislation on the issue includes reference to Spain’s claim to land on which it is built.
Gibraltar’s territory includes an 800m isthmus with mainland Spain, on which two housing estates and the airport are located, but Madrid does not acknowledge Britain’s sovereignty over the strip.
The Treaty of Utrecht, under which Spain ceded Gibraltar to the UK, does not refer to British sovereignty beyond the fortified perimeter of the town as it was in 1713. The UK says it has rights through continuous use of the land.
The EU’s no-deal legislation notes that the regulation is “without prejudice” to the “position of the Kingdom of Spain with regard to the sovereignty over the territory in which the airport of Gibraltar is situated”, and fails to mention the UK’s rival claim.
The UK’s deputy ambassador to the EU, Katrina Williams,, has made a formal statement rejecting the language used in the EU’s legislation, complaining that both the Spanish and British claims over the territory should have been cited as both states are currently EU members.
The UK’s statement “reiterates certainty over its sovereignty over Gibraltar, including the territory in which Gibraltar airport is situated”, and says the UK government is “adamant that, as this measure will be adopted while the UK is still a member state, the legal position of the UK should be reflected”.
The British government also made clear “its regret that Gibraltar has not been included in the scope of this measure and reiterates its intention that, when it comes to the future relationship with the EU, it will negotiate on behalf of the entire UK family, including its overseas territories”.
EU sources said the UK needed to realise that the decision to leave would have repercussions. They pointed out that the UK made Spain “swallow” the British position on Gibraltar when the country sought to join the then European economic community in 1984, even threatening to veto it if Madrid failed to reopen the land border.
A British government spokesman said the practical impact was limited, because there were no flights between Gibraltar and EU destinations other than the UK.
The spokesman said: “We welcome the substance of this proposal, which will ensure that flights between the UK and EU continue in a no-deal scenario, helping minimise disruption to citizens and businesses. The UK will reciprocate and provide, as a minimum, equivalent rights to airlines from those European states.
“However, we disagree with the language inserted by Spain in relation to sovereignty over the land on which the airport is built as it does not recognise the UK’s position on sovereignty.
“We are certain of our sovereignty over the whole of Gibraltar. We are also disappointed that the text that will go forward for adoption does not cover Gibraltar.”
The issue of Gibraltar also continues to hold up visa-free travel for British nationals in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The European parliament is blocking the regulation because it currently describes Gibraltar as a colony, a contentious term for the British government and others.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Brexit was caused partly by “nostalgia for the past” that served no purpose in politics, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said.
In an interview with the New York Review of Books, Barnier identified “typically British” causes for the vote to leave, saying one was “the hope for a return to a powerful global Britain, nostalgia for the past”.
He also warned Tory leadership hopefuls that Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement was the only option for leaving the EU.
Barnier, a former EU financial services commissioner, who crossed swords with the City of London when he introduced tighter regulation after the financial crisis, said some Brexit voters had wanted to “speculate freely” without the restrictions of EU rules.
Returning to a familiar theme, he suggested others voted for Brexit because they felt abandoned and believed public services were in decline.
Speaking about anti-EU sentiment across the continent, he said: “People on the ground feel lost, that they have been abandoned; they feel their cultural identity is in danger … we have to respect these local identities.
“The more the economy is global, the more people need to be reassured that their roots will be respected.”
Asked whether it was possible for the EU to convince the UK to stay, he said it was probably too late, but added: “It’s not too late for other countries where we have exactly the same problems, including my own country.”
During the interview, conducted on the day Theresa May announced her resignation, Barnier declined to comment on the turmoil at Westminster, but described the British debate as “very stimulating”.
EU leaders reiterated this week they would not renegotiate the Brexit withdrawal agreement with the UK – a line they have repeated countless times during the six months since May signed the deal last November.
“If the UK wants to leave in an orderly manner, this treaty is the only option,” Barnier said. “If the choice is to leave without a deal – fine. If the choice is to stay in the EU – also fine.”
He also repeated negotiations on Britain’s future relationship with the EU could start immediately once the agreement was signed. “We are ready, we are waiting,” he said.
The two-times EU commissioner and former French foreign minister, is increasingly seen as the next president of European commission. “That’s not a question for today,” Barnier said.
Talking about the EU, he stressed the importance of Europe speaking with one voice to increase its clout in the world: “The fact that we speak with one voice on issues of trade or competition makes us a global actor. Otherwise, Europe would turn into a museum.”
Speaking of his political heritage on the French centre right, Barnier recalled that Charles de Gaulle had once said merging all the peoples of Europe would be like making a purée de marrons (chestnut puree). “That doesn’t sound very appealing, so we cannot merge all the nations.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt’s Brexit plan to axe the Irish border backstop from the withdrawal agreement will be rejected outright by the European Union, EU sources have said.
Informed sources say it is doomed to failure and if the next prime minister goes to Brussels with such a proposal, he will be told in “no uncertain terms” that it amounts to a declaration of no deal.
Brussels had already rebuffed such a plan when the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, who is part of Johnson’s campaign, met the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, last week.
In what was seen as “spinning for a Boris plan”, Barclay told Barnier five times during the meeting that the backstop was dead. Sources say he told Barnier they wanted a series of mini-deals and alternative arrangements for the Irish border.
He was told that was Brexit fantasy and a non-starter, and that the “mini-deals” outlined in EU contingency plans were temporary and covered only the “bare bones” such as aviation, mobile phone roaming and haulier driving licences. They did not include the major issues such as trade or the Irish border.
The EU is watching developments in the UK very closely and has already prepared responses on a range of possibilities including a call for the EU to endorse the so-called “Brady amendment”, which was passed in the House of Commons in January. It called for the backstop, or the mechanism by which a hard border will be avoided on the island of Ireland in case there is no post-Brexit free trade agreement, to be scrapped.
This will also be rejected.
Johnson and Hunt have declared the Northern Ireland backstop “dead” and promised to throw it out of any deal they negotiate with the EU, in comments that significantly harden their Brexit positions.
While their words may be the source of alarm, the Irish fully expected this and see it as campaign spin.
Leo Varadkar, the taoiseach, said in a radio interview over the weekend that he would give whoever became prime minister “a fair hearing” but warned that the victor would be in for a “reality check” when he got the keys to Downing Street.
“Politicians when they are in campaign mode, and both of those men are in campaign mode, tend to campaign in poetry, in simple terms and high-level messages.
“When you get into office you have to govern in prose, and I imagine whoever is the new prime minister is going to face a very serious reality check when they sit down with their officials,” he told Pat Kenny on Newstalk.
The Irish senator and Brexit spokesman Neale Richmond said on Tuesday the remarks did not mean Ireland would be budging on the backstop. “The backstop is a vital aspect of the withdrawal agreement, an aspect that was developed in light of the UK government’s own red lines.
“While it is no one’s preferred destination, it gives all sides the vital insurance policy to allow a new relationship between the EU and the UK to be formulated. The withdrawal agreement is the only vehicle towards a managed Brexit. It won’t be reopened.”
On Monday night, the Tory leadership rivals both ruled out trying to tweak the backstop, which critics say could trap the UK indefinitely in a customs union with the EU.
The EU is watching carefully and is expecting that if Johnson, the frontrunner, is selected, he will make immediate plans to fly to Brussels and Dublin for talks.
If he decides to make his first visit the US, this will “embolden” EU member states because it will send a clear signal that he deems the US more important than the EU, the UK’s biggest trading partner.
There is an expectation that Johnson and his negotiators will come to Brussels in September with an early outline of his new Brexit plan. But EU sources warn it will have to be tested first in parliament because they will not waste time negotiating anything that does not have a mandate in the House of Commons.
The new UK prime minister might seek a string of protocols on alternative arrangements that would guarantee the backstop would never be used.
“That would mean an insurance policy that would never be used. There would be no point to that,” said an EU source.
Varadkar said in a lengthy interview with Kenny that Ireland was prepared for no deal but he hoped it would not happen.
“It will be incredibly severe on Northern Ireland because it will face tariffs … and will face huge difficulties, because a huge amount of trade from Northern Ireland goes through Dublin.
“The impact on Northern Ireland will be more severe than anywhere in Europe. The impact on the UK and Ireland would be pretty severe too. I hope a new British prime minister wouldn’t willingly do that,” he said.
First published on Thu 31 Jan 2019 15.06 GMT
EU officials fear Theresa May is setting the UK on course for a no-deal exit at the end of June because she will not have the political courage to ask for the longer Brexit delay they believe she needs.
Senior figures in Brussels have been war-gaming the likely next steps by the British government, and believe a delay to the UK’s exit date of 29 March is inevitable.
But they fear the prime minister’s strategy of seeking simply to survive from day to day will lead to her requesting an inadequate short three-month extension for fear of enraging Brexiters in the Conservative party.
EU officials and diplomats said the danger of the UK then crashing out in the summer was an underappreciated risk given that the escalation of no-deal planning and the cries of betrayal by Brexiters would give momentum to a cliff-edge Brexit.
On Thursday the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, became the first cabinet minister to admit that the two years of negotiations allowed under article 50 may have to be prolonged, describing the Brexit impasse as “a very challenging situation”.
EU sources suggested it was unlikely that the heads of state and government of the 27 member states would reject such a request given the pressure that would be applied from the business community.
On Thursday, Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said he believed a delay would be the wisest course given May’s hopes of a renegotiation.
“We have negotiated an agreement and the British parliament now says: we do not like this backstop clause, we have a better one,” Silva said. “What we are saying is: show us a better one. Still more preferable would be to prolong, to delay the moment of departure, to have time to rationally revisit all this.”
The EU will try to shape the process if the UK makes a request, and its deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, said on Monday that the EU’s heads of state and government would need information on “the purpose of an extension”, adding: “The idea of going into serial extensions really isn’t very popular in the EU27.”
But EU diplomats say the bar is likely to be low should the UK want to delay Brexit, “although that might well just be delaying the agony”, one said.
Mujtaba Rahman, a former UK Treasury and European commission official, who is head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said: “There’s a growing realisation in the EU that the UK might need longer to get its house in order than the UK itself realises.
“The bar to extending article 50 for the EU will be quite low – leaders love to kick the can. If there is a contentious issue, it’s more about the length of any article 50 extension as opposed to the principle of whether there should be one.”
May is getting ready to head back to Brussels, in an attempt to reopen the Brexit deal that she negotiated over the past 18 months, having been told by parliament to replace the Irish backstop in the withdrawal agreement with an “alternative arrangement”.
Brexiters fear the backstop, which would keep the UK in a customs union unless an alternative solution can similarly avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, will stand in the way of the forging of an independent trade policy.
In a call with Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, on Wednesday afternoon, May was asked to come up with “concrete proposals” but did not offer any new thinking, failing even to cite the previous suggestions of a time limit or unilateral exit mechanism.
On Thursday, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, tweeted after a phonecall with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, that Brexit was “now in final phase”.
“The EU is united; the withdrawal agreement is the best and only deal on the table. Awaiting proposal from UK that is acceptable to EU and will enable ratification in the UK,” he said.
The EU is not planning any concessions before the prime minister faces another vote in the Commons on 14 February. It is feared there will instead be a series of difficult weeks before a regular leaders’ summit in March, just seven days before the UK is due to leave the bloc, when the two sides could be forced to act.
Next Monday, the Commons select committee for exiting the EU, led by the Labour MP Hilary Benn, is planning to travel to Brussels to question the European commission’s secretary-general, Martin Selmayr, and the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, over the next steps.
First published on Thu 18 Oct 2018 17.28 BST
EU leaders are preparing to back Theresa May in building a “coalition of the reasonable” in the UK parliament, in a desperate bid to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Following what has been described by diplomats as a “call for help” by the prime minister at a crunch summit in Brussels, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, stressed that the EU had to pursue “all avenues” to find a deal that can get through the Commons.“I think where there is a will there is a way,” she said.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, said: “It will be done.” He is understood to have told EU leaders that May needed “help” to sell a deal in parliament.
While ruling out major concessions, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said it was clear that the roadblock to a deal did not lie in Brussels.
A potential agreement had been derailed on Sunday when Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, made an unscheduled visit to Brussels to inform the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, that May could not get an agreement past her cabinet or the DUP, on whose votes her government relies.
Tory whips are now seeking to win over enough Labour MPs to outnumber hardline rebels, and are set to urge them to act in the “national interest” rather than risk the potentially severe economic consequences of no deal.
“It’s no longer a technical issue, it’s for the political ability of the UK to reach an agreement that can be presented to us,” Macron said. “Mrs May has been extremely committed and I’m convinced she will work in finding a political solution to get back to the EU negotiators.”
Under the EU’s plan to help May sell a deal, negotiations on an all-UK customs union are to be intensified, with a reference to future negotiations on its terms likely to be included in the withdrawal agreement.
Donald Tusk, the European council president, also said that EU leaders would wave through any request by the UK for an extension of the 21-month transition period.
They would do so in the hope that it will offer reassurance that the backstop solution, in which Northern Ireland remains in the customs union and single market as the rest of the UK withdraws, never comes to pass.
“If the UK decided that an extension of the transition period would be helpful to reach a deal, I am sure that the leaders would be ready to consider it positively,” Tusk said.
“This prolongation of the transition period probably will happen,” Juncker added. “It is a good idea. It is not the best idea the two of us had but it is giving us some room to prepare the future relationship in the best way possible.”
Tusk and Juncker refused to comment on the potential cost to the British taxpayer of a prolonged transition period – the prospect of which has sparked a furious backlash among Tory Brexiters.
But speaking at a press conference in Brussels, May seized on the positive comments of the EU leaders.
Asked whether the deadlock could be broken in time for a deal to be ratified in parliament, she said: “We’re intensifying the work on these issues that remain, and what I heard from leaders around the table, over the last hours since I have been around in Brussels yesterday, is a very real sense that people want that deal to be done.
“And I think if you look at some of the comments that have been made, Chancellor Merkel said, where there’s a will, there’s normally a way; Jean-Claude Juncker said let’s focus on the large areas where there is agreement.”
Brussels is continuing to insist on an “all-weather” solution in the withdrawal agreement that would keep Northern Ireland in the EU’s orbit should a trade deal or bespoke solution not be available by the end of the transition period in December 2020.
Following a meeting with May, the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said the two leaders had been “in broad agreement” that the backstop insurance plan “would have to apply unless and until there is a new agreement between the EU and the UK to supersede it”, quoting wording used in a previous agreement between the EU and British government. “I was very reassured that the prime minister didn’t attempt in any way to row back on those commitments, which the UK made back in March.”
May’s promise of an open-ended backstop – an insurance plan to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland – will infuriate Brexiters and the DUP, who have threatened to remove their support for the government.
It is hoped, however, that a commitment within the withdrawal agreement to negotiating a customs deal along with the offer of a transition extension if required, can persuade Labour MPs, in particular, about the merits of a deal.
In a recent meeting with Jeremy Corbyn, Barnier told the Labour leader that nothing signed today on the future trade deal would tie his hands should there be a general election during a transition period.
Varadkar said: “We are all politicians and we do understand that May has to get a deal that she can get through Westminster.”
Juncker is understood have responded to May’s “nervous” 15-minute appeal on Wednesday evening by urging the leaders to “help” the prime minister, after she had spelled out the seriousness of her position at home.
A senior EU diplomat said that such were May’s nerves, Merkel had struggled to understand some of the address.
But EU officials have described the current hiatus in the negotiations since Sunday’s visit by Raab to Brussels merely as a “pause”, and stressed that they are acutely conscious of the political pressures May faces at home.
Asked whether she was confident of getting a deal to take back to parliament, given the lack of progress, May said: “There’s a real sense that what we’re doing is working to ensure that we can do this deal within a reasonable timetable. I’m very aware of the legislative requirements we have in the House of Commons and the period of time that will take.”
May’s political conundrum was underlined by the furious reaction back home to news that she is prepared to consider an extension to the post-Brexit transition period – aimed at allowing enough time for a UK-wide solution to be negotiated and implemented.
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, said the idea was “unwise” and it was the wrong time to “take the pressure off” in the negotiations. European Research Group chair Jacob Rees-Mogg asked: “Why is this government so wet?”
Another former minister, Nick Boles, described any attempt to extend the transition period as a “desperate last move” and said May was losing the confidence of her party. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday that the EU was demanding “humiliating concessions”.
“I’m afraid she is losing the confidence now of colleagues of all shades of opinion, people who have been supportive of her throughout this process.”
The DUP’s deputy leader, Nigel Dodds, said an extension “offers nothing significant on the key issue of the unacceptable EU backstop proposals”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
The EU is pinning its hopes on British negotiators reverting to the Northern Ireland-only backstop previously rejected by Theresa May as a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK.
With Boris Johnson facing a choice between breaking his word and extending the UK’s membership of the EU beyond 31 October, or bringing back a tweaked deal for a last-gasp vote in parliament, officials and diplomats have expressed hope the prime minister will make a U-turn.
EU sources insisted there was no other approach that could work and the negotiations were otherwise doomed to hit a “zombie stage” given the likelihood of an imminent general election.
“We don’t know what mandate the prime minister has to propose something and obviously there is a strong division between the parliament and the government,” said Nathalie Loiseau, a former French minister for EU affairs.
It is hoped in Brussels that Johnson’s EU envoy, David Frost, will further pursue a Northern Ireland-only backstop during meetings with the European commission’s Brexit taskforce on Wednesday and Friday.
The newly nominated EU commissioner for trade, Phil Hogan, a former Irish minister, told the Irish Times he believed the “penny is finally dropping” in Johnson’s government over the lack of alternatives.
The idea was originally rejected by May on the grounds it was unpalatable to her partners in the Democratic Unionist party, on which she relied for her working majority. At the time, she said “no British prime minister” could accept a regulatory border being drawn in the Irish Sea.
No 10 insisted on Tuesday that Johnson was not pursuing the idea again in the hope of winning the support of more hardline Eurosceptics. “We are not seeking a Northern Ireland-only backstop,” a No 10 spokesman said.
However, Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, was sufficiently alarmed to demand a private meeting with Johnson in Downing Street on Tuesday evening, which lasted an hour.
Following the meeting, Foster said: “The prime minister rejected a Northern Ireland-only backstop in a letter to Donald Tusk on 19 August. It is undemocratic and unconstitutional and would place a tariff border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That would be unacceptable.
“During today’s meeting, the prime minister confirmed his rejection of the Northern Ireland-only backstop and his commitment to securing a deal which works for the entire United Kingdom as well as our neighbours in the Republic of Ireland.”
Hogan later told RTÉ News that constitutional issues in the withdrawal agreement that concerned the DUP could be “improved”, suggesting space could be opening up for a deal that might win the party’s approval.
Johnson has not been specific about how he will get a new deal with Brussels, but before his meeting with Foster, he said “there is a way” to achieve one “but it will take a lot of hard work”, as he fought back against accusations that his five-week prorogation of parliament is anti-democratic. “Donnez-moi un break – what a load of nonsense,” he said, switching to Franglais.
The prime minister has said he wants to remove the Irish backstop from the withdrawal agreement as it would tie Northern Ireland into the single market and the whole of the UK into a shared customs territory with the EU. He has described the arrangement as “undemocratic” and railed against signing a treaty that he says would be “inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK”.
But his proposal in recent days of a single all-Ireland agrifood zone has offered some hope in Brussels that the government may return to the initial EU suggestion of an arrangement that solely keeps Northern Ireland within the EU’s structures.
Hogan said Johnson, who visited the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, in Dublin on Monday, had offered some grounds for optimism in his recent talks.
“Mr Johnson has made a proposal in the last few days talking about an all-Ireland food zone. That is certainly a clear indication of divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland/the EU and the rest of the UK,” he said.
“This is the first time that this has been spoken about by a British prime minister where they are prepared to accept some level of divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. If we can build on that, we certainly might get closer to one another in terms of a possible outcome.”
Hogan warned, however, that the single agrifood zone was some distance from a solution to the Brexit impasse. “It would have to include all goods … in terms of any agreement,” he said.
“I remain hopeful that the penny is finally dropping with the UK that there are pragmatic and practical solutions that can actually be introduced into the debate at this stage, albeit at the 11th hour, that may find some common ground between the EU and the UK. The taoiseach has indicated in the last 24 hours that the Northern Ireland-only backstop is quite an interesting idea to revisit.”
Fabian Zuleeg, the chief executive of the European Policy Centre thinktank in Brussels, said the only point of the talks in Brussels would be to discuss an extension of article 50 beyond 31 October or the detail of a Northern Ireland-only arrangement.
“But in reality I don’t believe that the UK government wants to go down this route,” he said. “So at the moment I don’t see anything of substance that is being discussed because nothing else can be opened.”
After his nomination on Tuesday by the European commission’s president-designate, Ursula von der Leyen, Hogan is to take over any trade talks with the UK once the country leaves the bloc, with the former deputy chief EU negotiator Sabine Weyand as his director general.
Hogan said the establishment of a new negotiating team “will take probably six to eight months once we know what the outcome of the present negotiations are … Then I expect it will take a number of years before we conclude the negotiations.”
Last modified on Wed 18 Dec 2019 15.15 GMT
The European Union is poised to extend Brexit talks into as late as next summer after the European council and commission presidents dismissed Boris Johnson’s strategy as a “blame game”.
A “range of dates” will now be in play at the meeting of European leaders next week but sources suggested the natural cut-off date would be June.
With an extension of the UK’s EU membership now looking inevitable, other diplomatic sources suggested an unlikely outlier for an end date could even be ahead of a possible general election so as to force the Commons into accepting a deal. “But politicians like to keep things off their plates for as long as possible and so pushing it longer seems more realistic,” a senior EU diplomat said.
The negotiations over a deal are said to be effectively dead in Brussels after Downing Street’s extraordinary claims over the substance of a phone call between the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the UK prime minister.
Merkel was said by an unnamed UK source to have told Johnson that Northern Ireland had to stay in the EU’s customs union. The official claimed that as a consequence a deal looked “essentially impossible, not just now but ever”.
Tusk, the European council president, gave an insight into the frustration at the anonymous briefings over the Merkel call, the alleged content of which described by senior politicians in Berlin as “improbable”. The chancellor’s spokesman declined to comment on “confidential conversations”.
“What’s at stake is not winning some stupid blame game,” Tusk wrote in a tweet directed at the prime minister. “At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. You don’t want a deal, you don’t want an extension, you don’t want to revoke. Quo vadis? [Where are you going?]”
The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, said: “I do not accept this ‘blame game’ of pinning the eventual failure of the negotiations on the EU.
“If that’s the case the explanation is actually in the British camp because the original sin is on the islands and not on the continent.
“Nobody would come out a winner in this scenario. A no-deal Brexit would lead to a decline of the UK and a clear weakening of the roots of growth on the continent.”
Juncker said that Johnson’s Brexit proposals would leave the UK with a relationship with the EU that was “less intimate than with Canada”.
In Berlin Detlef Seif, the point person on Brexit for Merkel’s party, the CDU, rejected the account given by Downing Street of the call between the two leaders.
He said: “In my mind it is completely improbable that the phone call between Merkel and Johnson took place in the way it has been reported in the British media.
“It would run counter to all the principles the German government has followed for the last three years, namely that the negotiations are led by the European commission.
“For the German chancellor to insist on Northern Ireland remaining in the customs union would completely breach these guidelines.”
Germany has been one of the most outspoken advocates for allowing the UK as much flexibility as possible to avoid a no-deal scenario on 31 October or at a later date.
The unnamed Downing Street briefings have been widely attributed to Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave supremo who is now the prime minister’s chief adviser.
“There has been a lot of scepticism about Johnson’s proposal in Berlin, but Merkel’s attitude has always been a positive one, to find out if there is room for a compromise,” Sief said.
“The only explanation I can see for these reports is that Johnson is trying to build a story where he blames Germany for a no-deal Brexit. To brief out a confidential phone call in such a manner is utterly unprofessional and infuriating to anyone who has been working on a deal”.
On Tuesday, Johnson spoke to the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in a 40 minute call and agreed to meet later this week in what will be seen as a last-ditch chance to find a deal.
The briefings attributed to Cummings had suggested that Varadkar had gone back on his word by attacking Johnson’s proposals for the Irish border, which involve a customs border on the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland staying in the single market for goods.
In Brussels, thinking is moving to how to react to what is seen as an inevitable request for an extension of the UK’s EU membership.
A debate among EU27 states over the end date for any extension is yet to take place.
Following a meeting with Johnson in No 10 on Tuesday, the European parliament’s president, David Sassoli, said there had been “no progress” in talks but MEPs were open to a Brexit extension.
Johnson has repeatedly said that he will not comply with the Benn act, which would instruct him to request an extension by 19 October if a deal is not secured with the EU. He has also insisted that the UK will leave on 31 October with or without a deal.
The unnamed source had suggested to the Spectator magazine on Monday night that the UK would be a truculent member, blocking the EU’s plans.
But the only key issue on which the UK could wield its veto would be the EU’s seven-year budget which is unlikely to come to a vote until June, or September at the latest. “We could extend to September without any problem, but what would you achieve over the summer? So June seems more likely,” said an EU diplomat.
“Beyond the UK being able to veto a budget, an end date by then is important because we don’t want the UK to be in and net recipients to be able to argue that there is no reason for a cut to the budget.”
The Benn act suggests an extension until the end of January 2020 but there will be some concern in EU capitals that this will not provide sufficient time for any fallout from a general election to play out.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
EU officials have rejected Boris Johnson’s claim that “a huge amount of progress” is being made in Brexit talks, as Jean-Claude Juncker warned that time is running out.
Juncker, who will stand down as European commission president on 31 October, is expected to ask Johnson to spell out his ideas for replacing the Irish backstop when the pair meet over lunch in Luxembourg on Monday.
Johnson told the Mail on Sunday there were “real signs of movement” in Berlin, Paris and Dublin on getting rid of the backstop, the persistent stumbling block to a Brexit agreement. “A huge amount of progress is being made,” he said.
But EU officials involved in talks with Johnson’s envoy, David Frost, have dismissed his upbeat account.
“No, in fact people are a bit dismayed,” said one EU source, describing the mood after the latest talks. “I am not even going to call them negotiations – the last session on Friday did start touching on content – that’s actually quite a step forward … but we still should have been there a long time ago and [an end result] is still quite far away.”
The lunch meeting with Juncker comes 26 days after Johnson met Angela Merkel in Berlin and declared he had 30 days to persuade the EU there was a viable alternative to the backstop.
That meeting in Berlin, followed by others with EU leaders in Paris and Biarritz, raised hopes that the prime minister was serious about a deal. But optimism in Brussels rapidly dissipated, after Johnson prorogued parliament and stepped up his no-deal rhetoric, while failing to put any proposals on paper.
A spate of recent reports from London analysts that a deal was becoming more likely were dismissed as “completely wrong” by one senior EU official.
Johnson’s latest rhetorical fancy – that, like the Incredible Hulk, the UK would break out of its “manacles” on 31 October – has further fuelled EU scepticism about his sincerity.
Describing the language as “not very surprising”, the EU source said: “It all makes it look like it’s a bit of a joke. We are talking about something extremely serious. The consequences of no deal will be extremely serious and it looks like this is being treated as a game in which you are the hero sort of story rather than [dealing] with real lives.”
Juncker said a no-deal Brexit would be a mess and take years to resolve. Speaking to Deutschlandfunk, he said patriots in the UK “would not wish your country such a fate”.
He said the EU knew what the British did not want, but were still waiting for alternative backstop proposals: “I hope we can get them, but time is running out.”
EU officials hope the meeting will create momentum towards an agreement. The outgoing commission president is not involved in day-to-day Brexit talks, but has intervened at crisis points. In March, for example, he tried to help Theresa May sell the deal to Conservative backbenchers, with pledges that the EU did not want to trap the UK in the backstop.
The backstop, a fallback plan for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, continues to keep both sides at loggerheads. Johnson is adamant the backstop must go, while the EU insists any exit agreement must contain the backstop or a legally watertight equivalent.
In Friday’s talks, Frost outlined ideas for an all-Ireland regulatory regime for food and agriculture, which Downing Street thinks would go a long way to replacing the backstop.
Brussels thinks these ideas fall far short of what is required to protect European markets from dangerous goods, fraud or unfair competition. EU officials say food safety, animal, plant and health measures cannot be separated from customs, because otherwise no one would know what is entering European markets.
Officials say the UK has put forward unfinished ideas on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, which leave many questions unanswered, such as definitions of SPS goods and the scope of SPS regulations.
“As the UK starts exploring the question and starts to put ideas forward, they are starting to realise how complex SPS is,” the source said.
However, officials see some positive steps: they think the UK has agreed to “dynamic alignment” on food and agriculture, meaning Northern Ireland would automatically accept updates to the EU rulebook in these areas.
With time running short to resolve highly technical issues that touch on sensitive political questions, the EU is also uncertain whether Johnson can get a Commons majority for a deal.
The Johnson government has a “credibility problem” over whether it could get a revised agreement passed in the Commons, one EU diplomat said. “What kind of mandate does Mr Johnson have? Since he doesn’t have a majority and no party is really clear on [Brexit] then it would certainly be good to engage the opposition.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
The British government is “pretending to negotiate” with the European Union and has not presented any new proposals to break the Brexit deadlock, according to EU officials.
Theresa May’s de-facto deputy, David Lidington, and the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, met senior EU officials and MEPs in Brussels and Strasbourg this week, but the talks yielded no obvious results.
The British side thinks a crucial process has begun and hopes progress will have been made by 27 February when MPs are expected to have another crunch Brexit vote.
However, on Wednesday night European council president Donald Tusk said the EU27 was still waiting for proposals. “No news is not always good news,” he tweeted, after meeting with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier. “EU27 still waiting for concrete, realistic proposals from London on how to break Brexit impasse,” Tusk said. Barnier, has said current talks with the UK do not even qualify as negotiations. In a call on Tuesday morning with Guy Verhofstadt, chief Brexit representative for the European parliament, Barnier said there were “no negotiations” with the British.
“These are courtesy calls at best and we have nothing new to say,” Barnier was reported to have said, by a source familiar with the conversation.
Verhofstadt had asked the EU negotiator for an update, following Barnier’s meeting with Barclay over dinner at the British ambassador’s residence in Brussels, where they dined on North Sea sole, roast duck and British cheese, washed down with sancerre and saint-émilion wines.
“They are pretending to negotiate while they still don’t know what they want and how they want it,” the source said, who described this week’s meetings as “kicking up dust” and a series of “photo opportunities and pictures”. “We are willing to negotiate, but there is nothing on the table from the British side.”
Verhofstadt asked Lidington four times what the British proposal was and “four times didn’t get an answer”, according to the EU official, who described the encounter as “very surreal”.
With only 44 days until Brexit day and speculation about the PM’s plan swirling, the potential for muddled messages is high. Lidington sowed confusion among parliament officials and MEPs about the crunch date when he talked about a vote on “the 27th” without specifying which month. “The whole room thought it was February except [one official] who thought it was March,” the source said.
Questions over what Lidington really meant were magnified by Wednesday morning, as officials digested media reports of a late-night bar-room conversation where Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins appeared to suggest a showdown in late March.
Another EU source said a separate meeting with the British ministers in Strasbourg revealed “nothing really groundbreaking”.
An EU diplomat said May’s strategy was probably to run down the clock “sending her negotiators here and there” to buy time ahead of a European summit on 21-22 March. “They come forward with the same proposals and they get the same answers,” the diplomat said.
Numerous EU sources have insisted in public and private that there will be no re-opening of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, stressing that it is up to the British government to work out a plan that commands a stable majority in the House of Commons.
The EU is ready to discuss the non-binding political declaration, which sketches out a vision of the UK’s post Brexit ties with the EU. But officials say the UK has not engaged in any talks on re-writing the political declaration.
Roberto Gualtieri, a Socialist member of the European parliament’s Brexit steering committee, urged British ministers to look seriously at Jeremy Corbyn’s customs union plan. But they told him it was unlikely to command a majority in the Commons, according to an EU source.
Donald Tusk, the European council president, also suggested May should look at the Corbyn plan as a way to break the impasse when the pair met last week, but the prime minister did not respond.
The British hope the EU will agree to changes on the contested Irish backstop, which Tory Eurosceptics say they cannot accept in its current form. After his meetings in Strasbourg, Barclay told journalists that Westminster needed to see “legally binding change to the backstop”, saying this was the “the clear message” of the Graham Brady amendment MPs voted for last month.
The UK is pursuing three avenues for those changes: a time limit, an exit mechanism and “alternative arrangements” being examined by a Conservative MPs working group.
“Time limit, exit clause, magical solutions based on technology, these are all things we have heard before,” a senior EU official said. “We cannot start inventing solutions for the British.”
The EU remains reluctant to firm up previous reassurances on the temporary nature of the backstop by putting them into a different legal document. Tory backbenchers have floated the idea of a codicil, a format that has no formal status in EU negotiations.
EU sources remain unconvinced such a legalistic move would change minds. “I don’t think she has shown to anyone she could muster a majority,” said one EU diplomat. “There is not much incentive to move.”
The senior EU official described the Brexit outlook as “not encouraging”, arguing that the prime minister’s decision to seek changes on the backstop had closed down options for a deal. “Theresa May chose to ally herself with the most radical Brexiteers. She did so to reunify her party and frankly I don’t think any deal is possible on that basis.”

Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
The European Union is pressing ahead with plans for a no-deal Brexit, amid uncertainty about when high-level negotiations will resume.
With 149 days until Brexit day, time is running out to secure a deal that the British government wants to nail down this autumn, to allow time for the agreement to gain assent from parliament and the European parliament.
EU diplomats meeting on Tuesday agreed to hold a series of no-deal planning seminars in November, covering citizens’ rights, aviation, ground transport, customs, border controls and financial services.
Senior British and EU officials are in constant contact and neither side has given up on holding a special Brexit summit in mid-November to strike a deal. With British politics focused on the budget, EU diplomats do not expect talks between the EU chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, to resume this week.
Some European officials see a growing risk of sliding into an accidental no-deal, if the British parliament votes down any agreement the embattled prime minister strikes with the EU.
Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian MEP, who sits on the European parliament’s Brexit steering group, said he had become more pessimistic about a Brexit deal, following Theresa May’s speech to parliament last week, where she again rejected the EU proposals on Ireland, which the EU sees as reneging on earlier agreements. “Since the British government started backtracking on its commitments in the joint report [of December 2017] I have become less optimistic about a deal being clinched,” he told the Guardian.
EU leaders decided they would not come to a November summit unless there was substantial progress in talks, which are deadlocked over a solution to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. Barnier told EU leaders earlier this month not to expect progress until December, which leaves very little time for UK parliamentary ratification.
A UK government spokesperson said: “We want to get a deal as soon as possible and agreed in the autumn. We will continue to work with the EU to make this happen.”
Talks remain stuck over the Irish backstop, an insurance plan that would keep Northern Ireland in the EU customs union and subject to many single market rules. May has said no prime minister could accept it and the government is searching for alternatives. While EU negotiators have been discussing an all-UK customs union and extension of the transition, EU diplomats insist these cannot be alternatives to an open-ended guarantee on the backstop.
Senior EU sources say little progress has been made since March on Ireland, with the British rejecting Barnier’s efforts to “de-dramatise” the issue by moving most customs checks away from the border, into company premises.
EU leaders are said to be confident of a deal, but some officials are less sanguine. Several sources have rubbished claims that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will ride to the rescue of the British by watering down the EU position. “Germany has not budged one inch,” a senior EU diplomat said. “The UK has been misreading the German position for years,” the source added, a reference to David Cameron’s misplaced hopes in Berlin on a series of issues.
Merkel’s decision to step down as leader of the CDU party, which is seen as weakening her authority, is unlikely to have any impact on Brexit. “The Germans are pretty laid back,” said one diplomat, who predicted it would not change anything.
British politicians campaigning for a second referendum, including the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, urged Barnier last week to start planning for an extension of the two-year negotiating period, article 50. Khan said whatever deal May brings back would definitely be rejected by parliament.
Diplomatic sources say the EU has made no plans for prolonging article 50, while any extension beyond the European elections on 23 May 2019 is deemed legally impossible, unless the UK takes part in the vote.
The UK will automatically leave the EU on 29 March 2019 unless all 27 member states agree unanimously to a British request to extend article 50.
Lamberts argues that British remainers should accept leaving the EU and campaign for re-entry during the 21-month transition period.
He voiced confidence the EU would fast-track the UK’s re-admission. “This is a special case, where you cannot as EU27 demand full re-application,” he said. “If during the transition a popular majority or a political majority in the House of Commons or House of Lords come to the conclusion that the UK should exit the transition by stepping back into the EU I really do not see how, politically, the EU27 could say ‘no thanks’.”
The UK would already be “100% like a member”, because it applied all EU rules and would be paying into the EU budget, he said. “The only negotiations would be on which conditions the UK would rejoin and of course it would be a hard negotiation, but I do not see how it would fail.”
Many remain campaigners staunchly oppose this strategy because the UK would lose the rebate and have to renegotiate existing special privileges, such as opt-outs on joining the euro and justice and home affairs.

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
The EU is preparing to delay Brexit until at least July after concluding that Theresa May is doomed to fail in getting her deal through parliament.
The country’s 29 March deadline for exiting the EU is now regarded by Brussels as highly unlikely to be met given the domestic opposition facing the prime minister and it is expecting a request from London to extend article 50 in the coming weeks.
A special leaders’ summit to push back Brexit day is expected to be convened by the European council president, Donald Tusk, once a UK request is received. EU officials said the length of the prolongation of the negotiating period allowed under article 50 would be determined based on the reason put forward by May for the delay.
A “technical” extension until July is a probable first step to give May extra time to revise and ratify the current deal once Downing Street has a clear idea as to what will command a majority in the Commons.
An EU official said: “Should the prime minister survive and inform us that she needs more time to win round parliament to a deal, a technical extension up to July will be offered.”
Senior EU sources said that a further, lengthier extension could be offered at a later date should a general election or second referendum be called although the upcoming May elections for the European parliament would create complications.
One EU diplomat said: “The first session of the parliament is in July. You would need UK MEPs there if the country is still a member state. But things are not black and white in the European Union.”
The European commission will publish a letter on Monday giving fresh assurances on the temporary status of the Irish backstop in a hope to win over some MPs to the deal but EU officials are downplaying expectations.
The heads of state and government said at a recent summit that the withdrawal agreement, and the contentious backstop that a large number of Tory MPs fear will trap the UK in a permanent customs union, could be neither altered nor reinterpreted.
But officials said Brussels would be in listening mode, and take guidance from the prime minister as to the next steps should she suffer a heavy defeat as is widely expected.
May has to give parliament a statement on her next move within three parliamentary working days of the vote. EU officials believe that whatever emerges will likely require a prolongation of the two-year negotiating period.
That conclusion is shared in a forecast by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a leading risk analyst, which will be published on Monday.
Danielle Haralambous, a UK analyst at the EIU, said: “Time is simply running out, and we’re at a stage where Brexit can probably only happen in late March now in the unlikely event that parliament approves Mrs May’s deal on 15 January, or if parliament supports leaving without a deal. For all other options, the government will need to buy more time, and we think the EU will be willing to provide it to avoid a cliff-edge situation.”
On Sunday, the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, insisted there had been “some movement” by MPs in favour of May’s deal while suggesting the prime minister would take guidance from parliament on what MPs could support should it fail.
“The country does have a right to know what members of parliament are for, not just what they are against, and it’s important that the house comes to a view as to what it can back,” Barclay said.
EU officials were quick to deny reports this week that discussions about extending article 50 had already begun with the UK. “The Brits have certainly not talked about this recently,” said one official. “If anything it is the last thing they want to talk about.”
It has been suggested that the EU would respond generously, and even renegotiate the terms of the withdrawal agreement, should May pivot towards a permanent customs union in order to get her deal through parliament.
One official said the refusal of EU leaders at a December summit to give May a 2021 deadline for the end of talks on a future trade deal was grounded in a belief that she had yet to offer a compelling vision that could get through parliament.
“The leaders are much more savvy than people think – they can see what is happening in the UK, and they were left unconvinced that it would be possible to get a trade deal done quickly because the British government remains opaque on what it wants.”
Mujtaba Rahman, a former Treasury and commission official and head of Europe for the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, said: “We think the EU will be willing to go back into the withdrawal agreement and rethink the backstop if the UK can reach a credible position that leaders believe will land an orderly withdrawal.
“If the UK position were, for example, to evolve towards a permanent customs union, that could alter the dynamic of thinking around the backstop.”
First published on Tue 13 Nov 2018 14.24 GMT
The EU has ratcheted up the pressure on Theresa May’s cabinet to agree on a deal by publishing a fresh batch of no-deal plans including the warning that it will allow UK nationals to make short visa-free visits to EU destinations only if the policy is reciprocated by the British government.
With the Brexit negotiations at their most intense, and Downing Street seeking to get agreement among ministers within the next 24 hours to secure a November summit, the commission made public its emergency preparations.
They range from residency and visa-related issues to financial services, air transport, customs, the transfer of personal data, and climate policy.
Among the contingency plans, is a proposal to allow British nationals to enjoy visa-free visits for up to 90 days within a 180-day period, but only if the UK government offers the same terms to EU nationals. After 90 days, a British national would be regarded as illegally over-staying.
“This proposal is entirely conditional upon the UK also granting reciprocal and non-discriminatory visa-free travel for all EU member states, in line with the principle of visa reciprocity,” an official said.
Frans Timmermans, the vice-president of the European commission, warned: “We will do upon you what you do upon us.”
The two negotiating teams appear to be now largely agreed on the legal text on the thorny issue of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, with the real test now being whether the prime minister can get a deal past cabinet. “We are not there yet”, Timmermans said.
The EU documents published on Monday, held back earlier in the year due to the sensitivity of the talks, warn that a no deal Brexit will cause “inevitable disruption” only the very worst aspects of which can be mitigated against.
Brussels has warned British travellers:
* they would be subject to extra border checks on the duration and purpose of their travel and will lose access to the EU lane at passport control. Passports will also have to have at least three months validity left to be recognised.
* luggage may be subject to customs checks, and there will be limits on the amount of tobacco and alcohol that travellers bring into the bloc.
* pet passports will no longer be valid and “those travelling from the UK to the EU with pets should check” whether they need a new “third country pet passport, or an animal health certificate”.
* mutual recognition of driving licences will no longer apply and further documents may be needed to use a car on the continent.
* passengers may not be due compensation in case of delays and cancellations of UK flights, as well as ship, bus, coach and rail travel.
The commission said it would act on a temporary basis to mitigate some of the worst disruption for citizens and businesses.
UK airliners will be allowed to continue to land on its territory, although carriers such as Ryanair and British Airways parent International Airline Group who do not have more than 50% EU ownership will not be able to keep their European operating licences.
The level of mitigation for the road haulage is also limited o 5 per cent of existing traffic.
“While the European commission is working hard for a deal, and continues to put citizens first in the negotiations, the UK’s withdrawal will undoubtedly cause disruption – for example in business supply chains – whether or not there is a deal,” the commission said. “Contingency measures cannot remedy the full effects of this disruption.
“In the event of a no-deal scenario, these disruptions will be even more significant and the speed of preparations would have to increase significantly. Contingency measures in narrowly defined areas may, exceptionally, be needed in order to protect the interests and the integrity of the EU.”
A UK government spokesperson said: “We welcome the proposal by the European Commission which reflects the future relationship that the UK wants with the rest of the EU.
“We have been clear in our proposals that we want to ensure reciprocal measures on visa-free travel for tourists and short term business visitors with the EU.”
ends

First published on Tue 22 Oct 2019 09.12 BST
The EU is set to accept the Boris Johnson’s reluctant request for a Brexit delay up to 31 January with the option of leaving earlier after Donald Tusk said he would recommend to heads of state and government that they sign it off without need for a summit.
“Following PM’s decision to pause the process of ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement, and in order to avoid a no-deal #Brexit, I will recommend the EU27 accept the UK request for an extension,” Tusk tweeted. “For this I will propose a written procedure.”
The European council president’s announcement followed MPs’ rejection of the prime minister’s timetable for passing the withdrawal agreement.
Before Tusk’s tweet, a spokeswoman for the European commission made a pointed reference to the new exit date sought in the extension request sent on Saturday. “The European commission takes note of tonight’s result and expects the UK government to inform us about the next steps,” the spokeswoman said. “Donald Tusk [president of the European council] is consulting leaders on the UK’s request for an extension until 31 January 2020.”
After MPs dealt their latest blow on Tuesday to the government’s hopes of leaving the EU by 31 October, Johnson said he would speak to Europe’s heads of state and government and pause the Brexit legislation until he had an answer with regard to an extension from Brussels.
Johnson said earlier in the day that he would seek a general election if the EU gave a three-month extension. EU sources had suggested that Brussels would seek to avoid being dragged into a domestic row by offering a flexible extension that would allow the UK to leave upon ratification of the deal.
However, an EU source said that if the bloc was to think again on the length of the extension then Johnson would need to make a second formal request for a shorter delay, but that it did not seem legally possible under the Benn act.
Tusk’s intention to sign off on an extension without recourse to a summit of leaders suggests that the EU is content to simply accept the UK government’s proposed extension up to February with the option for an earlier departure if ratification is achieved earlier.
During a debate in the European parliament on Tuesday, Tusk confirmed the EU would grant a Brexit delay beyond 31 October, with the terms of the extension of UK membership depending on developments in Westminster.
He told MEPs in Strasbourg the EU would respond to the government’s extension request in “the coming days”.
Tusk said: “The situation is quite complex following events over the weekend in the UK and the British request for an extension of the article 50 process. I’m consulting the leaders on how to react and will decide in the coming days. It’s obvious that the result of these consultations will very much depend on what the British parliament decides or doesn’t decide.
“We should be ready for every scenario but one thing must be clear, as I said to Prime Minister Johnson on Saturday, a no-deal Brexit will never be our decision.”
After several MEPs backed a further delay during the debate, Tusk reiterated his backing for an extension. “Thank you for your responsible position on Brexit and the extension,” he said. “After what I have heard today in this chamber, I have no doubt that we should treat the British request for an extension in all seriousness.”
Leo Varadkar expressed the EU’s relief that the Brexit deal had received MPs’ backing in a vote on the second reading.
The Irish taoiseach said: “It’s welcome that the House of Commons voted by a clear majority in favour of legislation needed to enact the withdrawal agreement. We will now await further developments from London and Brussels about next steps including the timetable for the legislation and the need for an extension.”
An extra hurdle to the Johnson’s hopes of leaving by 31 October appeared to be put in the way by Guy Verhofstadt, the coordinator of the European parliament’s Brexit steering group.
He told MEPs the chamber should withhold its approval for the deal until further assurances were received over the UK government’s treatment of EU citizens, including 200,000 people who are regarded as being vulnerable.
“We do not want EU citizens involved in another Windrush scandal in Britain,” the former prime minister of Belgium said. “That cannot happen.”
In comments that will antagonise the Democratic Unionist party, which is opposing the revised deal, Tusk said the agreement struck had been possible due to Johnson’s acceptance of a border being drawn in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
“[The deal] is based on the deal that we agreed with the previous government,” Tusk said. “The changes concern the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland formerly known as the backstop.
“Prime Minister Johnson’s acceptance to have customs checks at the points of entry into Northern Ireland will allow us to avoid border checks between Ireland and Northern Ireland and will ensure the integrity of the single market.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.44 GMT
The EU’s trade commissioner has suggested there could be a last-minute trade-off with Brussels offering the City of London access to European markets in return for European fleets retaining their fishing rights in British waters.
The UK’s financial services sector will lose its automatic right to serve Europe-based clients at the end of the transition period and the EU will need to negotiate access to UK waters for its fishing boats.
Phil Hogan, the former Irish minister who is now trade commissioner in Brussels overseeing the next stage of the Brexit negotiations, told the Irish Independent: “There certainly will be trade-offs, particularly at the end of the negotiations. The EU will be seeking concessions on fishery access and the UK will very probably be seeking concessions on financial services.”
Hogan, a longstanding critic of prominent Brexiters including Boris Johnson, described claims that the EU would be put under pressure to seal a deal by parallel UK-US negotiations as “fairytale economics”.
Negotiations on the future relationship between the EU and the UK after 31 January, the scheduled date for Brexit, are expected to start in early March once both sides have settled positions on the main issues.
EU diplomats were presented with the main principles of the free trade agreement on Monday in which “access to waters and quota share for fisheries” would be made “within the context of the economic partnership”.
Speaking in Luxembourg on Monday, Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, reiterated that the British government would also need to sign up to a series of commitments on state aid, environmental and labour standards to allow tariff- and quota-free trade.
She said: “Great Britain is our friend, the Brits are our friends, it is a friendship that has been growing for a long time but we have to break new ground with each other, and here it applies as well: it is the decision of Great Britain how close or distant of the biggest single market in the world they want to be.
“The closer they are, meaning a level playing field, the more they are ready to respect the European rules, the easier accession to the European single market will be. The further away, the less there is of a level playing field, the more difficult their access to the European single market will be. It is a decision Great Britain has to make and in the negotiations we will have to sound out the scope that we want to use to then determine the negotiations accordingly.”
Last week, Andrej Plenković, Croatia’s prime minister, whose country is taking over the presidency of the EU, conceded that Brussels would be unashamedly “political” and could threaten to block the City of London’s access to European markets if Johnson tries to exempt the UK from its laws. He also warned of the risk of skirmishes at sea similar to those during the 1970s cod wars if a deal on fishing rights was not secured.
Asked whether the EU would use its power to switch off the City’s ability to serve European clients, to gain leverage in the coming negotiations with Britain, Plenković said: “I wouldn’t go into the vocabulary of weapons but what I have learned in international and European negotiations [is] that all arguments and considerations are treated as political.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
The EU has been on a Brexit break since the UK secured a six-month delay to its departure. With Theresa May soon to leave 10 Downing Street, Brussels is tuning in to the Westminster drama of the Tory leadership race – with both amazement and exasperation.
“People in Brussels are fed up that the political class in the UK has gone a little bit crazy,” Jean-Claude Piris, a former head of the European council’s legal service said. British politicians seemed to have gone “on holiday”, since gaining the extension, he added.
For the EU, the bookies’ favourite Boris Johnson, is a Trumpian figure whose disputed claims and bombastic rhetoric played a major role in plunging the UK into what is seen in Brussels as the Brexit nightmare.
The former foreign secretary is remembered for his early 1990s stint as Brussels correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, where he made his name mocking EU regulations, promoting what the European commission calls “Euromyths”. He achieved wider prominence for his claims during the EU referendum campaign. “He lied a lot to the British people,” the then French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said in 2016.
“The idea of Boris Johnson in the European council is probably quite abhorrent to some EU leaders,” an EU source said. “Boris is known in foreign policy circles, certainly not respected. He’s also seen as part of a wider Trump world and no one wants that.”
The EU’s most senior civil servant, Martin Selmayr, once described a Johnson premiership as a “horror scenario”, classing him with Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump.
Many EU insiders think the chances of no deal have increased, with the Tory party expected to choose a Brexiter prime minister.
“For me it is very clear the odds of no-deal Brexit are more than half and clearly if Boris Johnson becomes prime minister the odds will go up again,” said Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian MEP and member of the European parliament’s Brexit steering group.
Another favourite, Dominic Raab, is held in low-esteem in Brussels. During his four-month tenure as Brexit secretary, he lost trust of his EU counterparts. “He was seen to be working against his prime minister and making things up,” the first EU source said.
The European commission recently accused Raab of making “fraudulent” claims and spreading “pure disinformation” in a campaign video about the views of its secretary-general, Selmayr, on the future of Ireland.
Responding to unfavourable reports from Brussels, Raab told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show that it “probably tells you that I was doing my job in terms of pressing them hard and making sure that Britain’s interests were resolutely defended”.
Candidates deemed compromise choices at Westminster have also inspired mistrust in Brussels. The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is reported to have struck a different tone on Brexit with his EU counterparts than the public stance he takes in the UK. “He gave a very different impression than what he is suggesting now,” an EU diplomat said. More recently, Hunt has toned down his views on no deal, warning it would be “political suicide”.
EU officials expect Tory candidates will be falling over themselves to prove their hard-Brexit credentials, following the party’s poor showing in the European elections, where just four of its MEPs were elected and Nigel Farage’s Brexit party won the most votes. “The Tory party will be in survival mode and … will have to regain credibility as the party of Brexit,” another EU source said.
For many, the leadership race is an unedifying fight for power, while the clock ticks down remorselessly to Brexit day on 31 October.
More governments are coming round to the tough position of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who argued against a long extension on the grounds that Brexit would become a damaging and distracting burden for the EU.
Donald Tusk, the European council president, helped persuade member states to back a longer extension, which he urged the UK not to waste.
“We were definitely on the other side of Macron,” the diplomat recalled. “Now I think Macron was right. We were wrong. Tusk was wrong.”
“[Macron] closed the door [to another extension] and it’s not shut, but the wind is blowing against it. And the harder Johnson’s rhetoric, and harder Raab’s rhetoric, the harder it is to open the door.”
Asked about the Tory contest last month, Tusk said there was “nothing promising” in “the state of affairs in London”.
Many in the EU would support an extension for what is known in Brussels as “a democratic event”, meaning a general election or a second referendum.
Without that, Piris thinks EU leaders could say no to a further extension. “But even if they say yes. What would happen? There is an inability to solve this question in the House of Commons.”
He stresses the Brexit conundrum is not down to an individual Tory leader. “It is a question of the political system of the UK being unable to answer to such a unique event in the life of the nation.”
Lamberts warns that nothing will change for May’s successor, as the EU will refuse to reopen the withdrawal agreement, including the Irish backstop. “Anyone who steps into Downing Street will face exactly the same constraints. Saying you want to renegotiate this agreement is nice and well, but it won’t happen,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Tory contest is not keeping Brussels on the edge of its seat. “We really don’t care very much [who wins]” the diplomat said. “From an EU point of view, we would rather see someone that could deliver a smooth, orderly Brexit. Whether Johnson is going to be able to deliver it, the UK is going to have to ask itself.”
First published on Thu 25 Jul 2019 16.05 BST
The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has told Boris Johnson that the EU27 will not give in to his demand to renegotiate the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
On Thursday in his first telephone call with Johnson as prime minister, Juncker called the existing deal “the best and only agreement possible”.
Johnson has insisted the agreement to leave the EU and arrangements regarding the Irish border are not good enough and should be renegotiated.
Juncker said the EU would analyse any ideas put forward by the UK provided they were compatible with the withdrawal agreement, his spokeswoman Mina Andreeva tweeted in a readout of the phone call.
Juncker declined to speak to Johnson on Wednesday when it emerged that the earliest opening for a conversation was past midnight in Brussels.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiater, said on Thursday that Johnson’s “combative” rhetoric since becoming prime minister was an attempt to crack the EU’s unity, and he rejected the new UK government’s central demand over the Irish backstop.
In a note sent to diplomats in Brussels, Barnier counselled the EU27 to stick to its principles in the face of Johnson’s no-deal threats.
Johnson had insisted the UK would leave on 31 October “no ifs or buts”, in his speech on the steps of Downing Street on Wednesday. In his first address to the Commons as prime minister on Thursday he said his government would not accept any agreement containing the “undemocratic” Irish backstop.
Barnier said in his note that he would not engage in talks with the British government over binning the backstop, an arrangement designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
“PM Johnson has stated that if an agreement is to be reached it goes by way of eliminating the backstop. This is of course unacceptable and not within the mandate of the European council,” Barnier wrote.
“While he has declared that he will only engage with the EU on this basis, we are on our side ready to work constructively, within our own mandate. We will analyse any UK idea on withdrawal issues that are compatible with the existing [withdrawal agreement], and we are of course ready to rework the political declaration, in line with the EUCO guidelines.
“But as suggested by his rather combative speech, we have to be ready for a situation where he gives priority to the planning for no deal, partly to heap pressure on the unity of the EU27. No-deal will never be the EU’s choice, but we all have to be ready for all scenarios.”
The backstop contained in the withdrawal agreement agreed by Theresa May would keep Northern Ireland under large swathes of single market regulations and the whole of the UK in a shared customs territory “unless and until” an alternative arrangement can be found to avoid the need for border checks on the island of Ireland.
Some Conservative MPs are opposed to the arrangement in the belief that it will trap the UK in a close economic relationship with the EU that would prevent the British government from developing an independent trade policy.
But Barnier noted in his email to diplomats the rejection by many MPs of any attempt by Johnson to take the UK out of the EU without a deal.
In comments that signal the growing belief in Brussels that the UK is heading towards a general election, Barnier wrote: “I note also the many strong reactions to the speech in the House of Commons. In this context we must follow carefully the further political and economic reactions and developments in the UK following this speech.
“In any case, what remains essential on our side is to remain calm, stick to our principles and guidelines and show solidarity and unity of the 27. I remain available throughout the summer for talks with the UK and of course with you should you have questions.”
Barnier ended his missive by promising to send an analysis of any British proposals to the member states on receiving them.
Luisa Porritt, the deputy leader of Liberal Democrat MEPs, said: “It is welcome that Michel Barnier, the EU27’s chief negotiator, acknowledges the inherent weakness of the Conservatives’ grip on power here in the UK. Boris Johnson’s government is as unstable as Theresa May’s was. Beyond the bluster there is no good reason to believe he can implement Brexit. He must break the deadlock in parliament by putting the deal back to the people.”
First published on Mon 21 Oct 2019 12.35 BST
Germany’s economic affairs minister has wholeheartedly backed the option of a Brexit extension beyond 31 October, as the European parliament pulled plans to hold a vote on Boris Johnson’s deal this week.
Peter Altmaier, a key ally of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said he believed a technical extension would be offered to allow extra time for legislation to pass or a longer period to accommodate a general election or second referendum.
“We have already twice agreed to an extension. I have repeatedly said as my own opinion I am not ideologically opposed to extending again a few days or a few weeks if you then get a good solution that excludes a hard Brexit,” Altmaier said.
“If the British are to opt for one of the longer-term options, that is new elections or a new referendum, then it goes without saying that the European Union should do it, for me anyway.”
The likelihood of an extension beyond 31 October increased after the European parliament’s Brexit steering group recommended that a planned vote on the deal, scheduled for Thursday, should be suspended in light of developments in the Commons. The parliament has a veto on any agreement.
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU parliament’s Brexit coordinator, said there needed to be “full ratification in Britain before we do our final vote”. Sources said Westminster would need to complete all stages of legislating the withdrawal agreement bill before the European parliament would hold its crucial vote to allow the UK to leave with an agreement.
The leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, told MPs the government wanted the legislation to have passed all its stages by the end of Thursday in a move that leaves the European parliament without time to stage its own vote this week.
After this week, the next scheduled sitting of the European parliament is 14 November but parliamentary sources said an extraordinary session could still be held as late as 31 October if necessary. “It is not on the agenda for this week – and it is not going to be added,” the EU source said.
It is understood the European parliament’s leading MEPs had been heavily lobbied by the UK government to hold their vote this week as Downing Street seeks to keep hope alive of leaving by Halloween.
France’s EU affairs minister, Amélie de Montchalin, expressed Paris’s frustration but also its willingness to again extend the UK’s membership of the EU. She said: “What is certain is that we need a yes or a no before October 31. We need clarity. There cannot be a new delay without it being justified.”
David Sassoli, the European parliament’s president, said the EU chamber would “be the final actor to have its say in this matter”.
On Saturday, the Commons voted to withhold its approval until all the legislation relating to the withdrawal agreement bill has been passed. The prime minister subsequently complied with the Benn act by sending three letters on Saturday evening to ask the EU to provide for a delay beyond 31 October.
Alongside an unsigned photocopy of the request he was obliged to send under the act, there was an explanatory letter from the UK’s ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, and a personal letter from Boris Johnson explaining why Downing Street thought a further delay would be corrosive.
A spokeswoman for the European commission said the request had been formally received, despite its unconventional “form”.
The spokeswoman added the EU’s ratification processes had been launched in preparation for approval by the Commons but that it was up to London to take the next steps.
“The request to extend article 50 was made by the UK’s permanent representative to the EU,” the spokeswoman said. “President Tusk acknowledged receipt of the request on Saturday and stated that he was now consulting with the EU27, so this form does not change anything.”
Speaking to the German radio station Deutschlandfunk, Altmaier said the onus was on Downing Street to provide clarity on the next steps as soon as possible for Brexit to be possible on 31 October.
“What we need is clarity and we need it quickly,” Altmaier said. “In recent months we have repeatedly taken into account the difficult situation in the UK. At the moment, the hardest part is that we do not know who actually speaks for this country: is it the government or is it the elected parliament? Both represent different positions.
“The government would like to quit on 31 October; parliament has requested a delay. This is a very difficult topic now. We will talk about this with our European partners.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
The Treasury will need to find almost £2bn a year to fill the hole left when EU funding for some of Britain’s poorest communities ends after Brexit, ministers have been told.
A body that represents local authorities in the industrial areas of England, Scotland and Wales said the government needed to match the money currently coming from Brussels and allow for extra EU cash that would have arrived over the next few years.
The Industrial Communities Alliance said the new shared prosperity fund – designed to replace EU funding to the regions – needed to be at least as generous as the schemes it was replacing.
It urged ministers to take advantage of the freedom provided by Brexit to broaden the scope of the fund so that it could tackle a wider range of problems than allowed under EU rules.
Russell Imrie, acting national chair of the ICA, said: “Many voters in older industrial Britain backed Boris Johnson. Now is the time for him to ensure that our communities do not lose out from Brexit and to support our efforts to rebuild the economies of our areas.
“Thanks to European funding over the years, we’ve been able to make progress in replacing the thousands upon thousands of jobs lost from industries such as coal, steel, engineering and textiles, but we still have a long way to go to match the prosperity in other parts of the country.
“We want to see the prime minister’s electoral promise translated into hard cash and real action on the ground to help deliver the jobs and growth that our communities still so clearly need.”
The UK currently receives £1.4bn a year from the European regional development fund and the European social fund and a number of smaller payments. However, the ICA said that after adjusting for inflation and the fact that more UK communities would be eligible for EU funding were it not for Brexit, the budget for the shared prosperity fund needed to be £1.8bn a year.
It added that the range of activities on which EU funds could be spent had become too restrictive and the creation of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund allowed a fresh start. “There is a strong case for greater flexibility in spending in order to tackle a wider range of regeneration issues than those presently addressed by EU funding.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Back in 2016, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU. And if today’s rumours about the government wanting to extend the 21-month transition period are true, we still won’t have left the EU way into 2021.
It’s vital we give effect to the referendum result. People voted to take back control of our borders, laws, money and trade. They wanted us to radically transform our country into a self-governing, free-trading nation and for us to build a stronger and more prosperous future outside the EU.
Of course, it’s important that we leave in an orderly fashion. When we formally exit on 29 March 2019, it’s crucial that there’s a smooth path to a future, permanent trading relationship. Businesses understandably need some time to prepare for the new arrangements.
But this must be time-limited. The end of 2020 is already long enough. I see no point in us building a bigger bridge to nowhere. Why would we extend the transition phase when we don’t know where or what we are even transitioning to?
The transition period will only kick in at the end of March next year if we secure a withdrawal agreement. And to secure this, both sides have committed to agreeing an Irish border backstop – an insurance policy designed to prevent the need for customs checks. It is this that is causing the deadlock.
But extending this transition period will not in any way solve people’s concerns about the border in Ireland. If the EU is refusing to help us to solve the border issue now, why would another three years resolve this?
Most importantly, though, this meaningless extension would leave the UK subject to EU rules and paying into the budget while we have no say over how taxpayers’ money is spent. We’d be half in and half out – bound by the EU’s rules, but not able to help shape them.
And then there’s the money. Back in the mid-1980s, when we had influence in Europe, Margaret Thatcher went in to bat for the UK. She demanded “our money back” and secured a rebate for the UK, reducing our contribution and saving our money instead for vital public services.
Now, it seems as though we will just accept anything because we are so desperate to secure a deal. We will lose our rebate (worth £4.5bn a year on average) at the end of 2020 because the EU has, sensibly, planned its 2021-27 budget without us in mind. So if we extend the transition past 2020, we won’t just have to cough up the usual £10bn a year, it will more likely be £10bn-15bn.
MPs are already struggling to justify things to their constituents when they are asked tough questions about budget cuts. If we can’t find the money to fund universal credit, schools, hospitals and other public services, how on earth do we suddenly find an extra £15bn to hand over to the EU for an unnecessary and undemocratic additional year of purgatory?
We’re already being asked to stomach handing over a cheque for £39bn as part of our “divorce” settlement, without having a trade deal agreed in return. The British public simply won’t accept this.
This extension will cost the taxpayer billions more, it won’t provide any reassurance to anyone about Ireland, we’ll be bound by the EU’s rules and be in the single market and customs union for even longer, and it will give the EU even less of an incentive to agree a timely trade deal with us. Nothing will change unless everything changes.
First published on Wed 24 Apr 2019 13.45 BST
Nigel Farage has returned to the seaside town where Ukip had its first MP elected five years ago, promising at a rally in Clacton-on-Sea that his new Brexit party will use the momentum of European elections to oust a “remain parliament”.
Railing against a “political class” who he said had betrayed the people of Britain, Farage claimed to more than a thousand supporters on Clacton pier that what was at stake was not just Brexit, but whether or not Britain was a democratic country.
“Can you imagine in an African country if an election was overturned? There would be uproar and they would be calling for the UN to be sent in … and yet it’s happening in our own country,” said Farage, who was introduced as “the godfather, the ‘guvnor’ of Brexit”.
On his latest visit to the Essex town, which has neighbourhoods with some of the highest levels of deprivation in Britain, Farage described it as the most patriotic and Eurosceptic place in the country.
“So what would Brexit do for Clacton? It would make us proud of who we are again and you can’t put a price on that,” he said.
Back in 2014, Farage had tucked into a McDonald’s McFlurry as he and a beaming Douglas Carswell strolled through the streets of the town after the latter had become the first Tory MP to defect to Ukip, then a rising force in British politics.
It was a relationship that was to sour, however, as splits within the party came bubbling to the surface even before the men joined different leave campaigns during the Brexit referendum.
These days, the Westminster constituency of Clacton has turned from Ukip purple back to Tory blue, with the former actor Giles Watling representing it in parliament.
“Here you are, one of the biggest leave towns in the country and yet you are represented by a remainer. Doesn’t that sum up everything that is wrong in the country today?” said Farage at the rally, indicating that Clacton would be a key target seat in any future general election.
Whether its considerable leave vote breaks in any number during the European elections either for Farage’s Brexit party or for Ukip – now led by Gerard Batten who has forged explicit links to far-right activists such as Tommy Robinson – remains to be seen, however.
But the party also has its eyes on Labour’s heartlands in the north of England and Wales.
Farage told the Guardian: “Back in the period 2013-14 and 2015 every body completely misunderstood the Ukip vote. They assumed it was gong to hurt the Tories and not Labour and actually in the 2015 election we hurt Ed Miliband a lot more and Cameron got a majority because of the Ukip vote.”
“I believe those sorts of dynamics could be very similar with the Brexit party.”
The leader of the Brexit party was mobbed by waiting media after arriving on an open-top doubledecker bus before the rally.
Rebecca Evans, a Californian bearing a blue and white Brexit placard, said she had come from the US to dedicate her life to the cause of leaving the EU and was hoping to be taken on as a worker for the party. “I’ve given up my entire life to come here because I don’t think there is anything more important right now for western democracy,” she said.
Michael and Janet Smith, former Ukip and Conservative voters, had driven down from Ipswich after learning of the rally on Facebook. “The tickets to come along were free but we would have happily paid for them,” said Michael.
They believed Farage’s party would win out over Ukip in the battle for Brexit supporters’ votes. “Ukip have been taken up with … how can I say this? … some very strange bedfellows. This new party I think is a bit more liberal.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
After just three months, the party that was supposed to be Britain’s answer to Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance (formerly known as En Marche!) has split after taking just 3.4% of the vote in the EU elections. Six of Change UK’s MPs, including the interim leader Heidi Allen and spokesperson Chuka Umunna, have left the party to sit as independents, with (highly plausible) rumours that they will go on to join the Lib Dems.
It would be tempting to point out how this is a bit like Brian McFadden splitting from his own solo career after leaving Westlife. Or take cheap shots about how they’re so crap that they’ve rehabilitated the Lib Dems, like a political version of a frat-boy wingman deliberately making themselves look rubbish in order to let Vince Cable look “bang-worthy”. Or mock the fact that the new party is now called – and I’m not even remotely kidding, Continuity Change UK – like a kids’ rock band thinking it’s cool to name themselves Hot Ice.
But this split isn’t anything to be happy or smug about. It’s especially not a time for gloating from other parties. Laughing at Change UK from a position of being affiliated with another party at the moment is like a trouserless clown laughing at a second clown because their trousers fell down. Nobody is coming out of this looking dignified.
Mocking a party that’s already a fragment for fragmenting again isn’t going to unfuck the dire political situation we’re in.
And the party that had more names than it did months, funny though that objectively is, did start from a position of principle. Whether you agree with it or not, their decision to leave both parties was a bold move, and you have to respect them at least a tiny bit for that.
But it did sort of go downhill from there. For people who thought they were going to save us from Brexit, these months must have been like watching a version of Star Wars where Luke shows up to fight and finally defeat Vader only to watch him slip, accidentally shit himself, and then run away from the fight desperately trying mop up the mess with a spare Ewok while blurting out embarrassing secrets.
Let’s take a look at some of their highlights and over-analyse where they might have gone wrong.
Fair play, they said they were going to do it differently, and they did. Most parties standing on the platform of being anti-racist would probably leave it a few weeks before doing a racism. This bunch of spritely young go-getters knocked that it of the park on day one, when Angela Smith appeared to refer to people from BAME backgrounds as having a “funny tinge” just two hours after the new, non-racist party officially launched.
Later on, several candidates for the EU elections had to step down after it turned out one of them tweeted: “Black women scare me. I put this down to be [sic] chased through Amsterdam by a crazy black whore”, and another wrote “70% of the pickpockets caught on the [London Underground] are Romanian”.
Granted, in the era of Johnson and Trump, this is positively governmental.
With strong competition, the most cringeworthy moment came when Joan Ryan MP asked a rally of adults to look at their hands.
“You’re really good, you’re doing that ever so well,” she told them, complimenting the way, to reiterate, a crowd of grown adults were looking at their own hands. “That’s the best I’ve seen it done, brilliant.”
She then went on to tell the audience: “That’s it, it’s there, that’s the answer to this. [The future is] in your hands.”
Five centrists in the audience are believed to have cringed to death.
What every new party needs is brand recognition. Labour has the rose, Tories have the tree. Ukip has a lion that looks like it’s overcome with worry that the more xenophobic Ukip members will find out that as a lion he’s not as “from Kent”, as he implied on his CV.
Change UK commissioned designers and eventually thought: “Yep, what we need is a big barcode. When people think of CHUK I want them subconsciously thinking of how much of a ball-ache it is to scan stuff in Tesco.”
When it comes to names, quantity has never been a problem for Change UK, originally called The Independent Group (TIG), aka the Tiggers.
Keen to avoid the accusation that the whole thing was an ego project, it quickly got changed to Change UK or CHUK, which by wild coincidence is the first four-fifths of Chuka Umuna’s first name.
Problems not over, the petition site Change.org sought legal guidance, believing that the name was too similar to its own and infringed on its brand. This was sort of backed up a bit when Anna Soubry accidentally (and passionately) announced “we call ourselves change.org” when she announced the new name to the House of Commons.
The surviving members of the split have saved the situation by renaming themselves Continuity Change UK (CCUK), clearly wanting their first act as a renewed political party to be a bitter fight for a name with a charity, say Crohn’s and Colitis UK who also go by the acronym of CCUK.
Due to constant name changes, they had trouble keeping up with their own admin. When they changed their Twitter handle, their old handle got hijacked by a pro-Brexit group that tweeted out messages like “I’d like to apologise to the British people for the absolute fucking state of me and my views” under pictures of Soubry’s face.
On a big list of political no-nos, telling people to vote for a party other than your own is up there with (allegedly) recording a pee tape in Russia, but that’s what Change UK did during the first election it ever fought.
One MP spent the last week in the run-up to the EU elections spreading a message to the effect of “Hi, I’m Heidi Allen of the Independent Group or Change UK, or whatever the shit we’re calling ourselves these days. Anyway, as I was saying, please vote Lib Dem.”
Though it was probably the right move for the remain cause during the EU elections, campaigning for a different party isn’t great for party cohesion and was one of the reasons that seems to have caused the split.
Unfortunately, analysis shows that if they hadn’t existed at all, maybe remain parties would have got another crucial seat. Their main problem, if they want to achieve the goal of remaining in the EU, may just be one of existing in the first place – rather than skipping to the part where they regenerate into Lib Dems.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
The government has announced it will launch a “global talent visa” on 20 February to encourage scientists, researchers and mathematicians to come to the UK, with no limit on how many people can be accepted.
In addition, Boris Johnson said he was making available a £300m package for research into advanced mathematics. It will double funding for new PhDs and boost the number of maths fellowships and research projects.
With Brexit day approaching on 31 January, the prime minister said: “As we leave the EU I want to send a message that the UK is open to the most talented minds in the world, and stand ready to support them to turn their ideas into reality.”
The fast-track visa is a replacement of the old tier-one “exceptional talent” visa route that allowed applicants to be endorsed by the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, the British Academy, Tech Nation or Arts Council England.
Applications were previously capped at 2,000 per year but the limit was never reached. Under the new scheme, the UK Research and Innovation funding agency will also be able to recommend applicants.
Applicants will not need a job offer before arriving in the UK under the visa and it will provide an accelerated path to settlement for all scientists and researchers who are endorsed.
Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokeswoman, dismissed it as a “marketing gimmick”. She said: “Boris Johnson is showing that he fundamentally doesn’t understand what makes our science sector so successful. Changing the name of a visa and removing a cap that’s never been hit is not a serious plan.”
Last modified on Fri 24 May 2019 17.15 BST
Spare me the inevitable pity for Theresa May after her tearful farewell address this morning. “Oh, wasn’t she given such a terrible hand!”, people might cry, or “is it her fault that her backbenchers are such a bunch of Neanderthal extremists?”, and “it’s not her fault Brexit is such an undeliverable mess, is it?”. We must see through this. May is the worst prime minister – on their own terms – since Lord North’s reign in the late 18th century, when the US colonies declared their independence.
May did indeed inherit a terrible hand. She then proceeded to douse it liberally with petrol and set it alight.
Let’s start with Brexit. The official leave campaigns, and their vitriol about migrants and refugees, merely built on the foundations laid by a home secretary who sent “go home” vans around mixed communities, who spread pernicious myths of being unable to deport illegal migrants because they owned a pet cat, and under whose watch gay refugees felt obliged to film themselves having sex to avoid deportation. There is only one discernible consistency in May’s ideology – and that is bashing migrants.
When she became prime minister, May and her coterie of advisers – defined by a swagger and bravado that would swiftly become hubris – hungrily set their eyes on devouring Ukip’s voting tally in the 2015 election in order to hand the Tories the landslide victory they’d been denied for three decades. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” became her defining mantra, raising expectations to impossible levels and conferring respectability, desirability even, on a disastrous Brexit outcome: the chutzpah, then, of quoting Nicholas Winton when he said, “compromise is not a dirty word”, in her farewell speech.
Her allies in the media set about monstering her opponents, poisoning the well of political discourse: the notorious “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE” Daily Mail front page was penned by James Slack, who promptly became her press secretary. The May premiership will be remembered for creating an environment where terms like “traitor” and “saboteur” became commonplace. She, too, deliberately stoked a culture war that threatens to consume Britain, most notoriously in her demagogic “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere,” speech. She appointed Boris Johnson as foreign secretary, antagonising the EU states with whom she needed to strike a deal and reducing Britain further to the status of a laughing stock.
For purely domestic partisan gain, she repeatedly made inflammatory speeches about the EU that achieved nothing but fostered bad will. Her chancellor, Philip Hammond, made threats that if Britain did not get what it wanted, the government would undercut the EU in a race to the bottom of tax cuts and deregulation. This was not just a commitment to repeal the hard-won rights and freedoms of the British people, but a near declaration of war on what are supposed to be Britain’s partners. But whatever her demagoguery, whatever her laughable empty platitudes of a “red, white and blue Brexit”, May had no meaningful plan at all, other than undeliverable red lines. She couldn’t negotiate a deal with her own party, let alone with 27 foreign governments.
Holding back tears, May ended her speech describing “the enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love”, but her real commitment was only to her party. She promised over and over again that she would not call a general election, but believing she had the opportunity to obliterate her opposition and turn Britain into a de facto one-party state, she broke her word. Deceit and dishonesty were the hallmarks of her doomed reign. When the Tories had their majority snatched away, May became a zombie prime minister: sadly, as any avid watcher of the genre can testify, zombies can cause a lot of damage, and are very hard to dispose of.
Having hyped up “no deal is better than a bad deal”, May led Britain to the entirely predictable humiliation of a bad deal. That her party’s zealots increasingly embraced pushing Britain off the precipice was unsurprising: she kept throwing them red meat, and they had only grown fatter and hungrier.
But it’s not just Brexit, for we must judge a prime minister by her own promises. When she fatefully assumed the premiership, she declared war on the “burning injustices” she correctly identified had paved the road to Brexit. And then, in the subsequent three years, she oversaw the biggest jump in child poverty for three decades; a housing crisis which has only worsened; the rollout of a universal credit system which is a life-destroying disaster. The Grenfell fire will endure as a reminder of a social order built by Toryism which prioritises money over human life. The Windrush scandal – in which British citizens were denied medical care, kicked out of their homes and even deported from their own country – will remain a salutary lesson of where the migrant-baiting May promoted leads. The surge in violent crime will always testify to the disastrous consequences of the austerity May herself championed.
And however more insular Britain has become, let’s not forget May’s foreign policy record, either: whether it be selling weapons to Turkey’s murderous regime, or arming and backing a Saudi dictatorship that has rained British weapons on Yemen, slaughtering thousands of innocents and creating the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. If you wish to spend a moment expending valuable human sympathy, do it not for May – do it for them.
The only leeway I will give May is this. With Britain in turmoil, it will be so easy for the Tory party to claim this is all on her; to treat her as a human sponge, soaking up all the blame. But to paraphrase George Osborne – himself one of the chief architects of the chaos of our time – they are all in this together. They all imposed cuts that ripped up our social infrastructure and fuelled discontent and anger. They all whipped up resentment against migrants for the “burning injustices” they, and their party’s wealthy bankrollers, were responsible for. They all promoted an ideology which prioritises markets ahead of human needs and aspirations.
The May era was a time of chaos; but something worse now beckons. Until Britain is rid of being ruled by a disintegrating Tory party – the proximate cause of our ills – and a rotten social order that decays further with every passing day, then the turmoil will not only continue but deepen. What a legacy to leave.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Until recently I was a committed remainer and wedded to the belief that the best way out of this Brexit mess for the EU was simply to try to ensure it didn’t happen. But the events of the past month illustrate why there is, rightly, a growing mood in Brussels for a completely different outcome: for the EU to prosper, Britain must leave.
The rationale is simple, Brexit is – either now or in the not-so-distant future – inevitable. That is because Britain continues to demand impossible conditions for its membership of the community-based, compromise-led, multinational organisation the modern EU represents. Even in trying to exit, Britain is still arguing about “red lines” of its own making. This approach would only amplify if it somehow ended up remaining a member.  Britain already enjoys a privileged position in the EU, much to the chagrin of many other member states. Opt-outs from the euro, the Schengen agreement on passport-free travel, the charter of fundamental rights and on any European legislation related to freedom, justice and security have all been negotiated by successive British prime ministers.
European diplomats are exasperated at how this situation is still portrayed in Britain as the creep of an EU super-state. The Luxembourg prime minister, Xavier Bettel, put it best when he said the British “were in with a lot of opt-outs, now they are out and want a lot of opt-ins”. This situation is untenable for the future cohesiveness of the EU; it slows decision making, makes the setting of meaningful objectives difficult to achieve and acts as a brake on meaningful reform.
From a historical and political economy perspective, Brexit is an inevitability. Since Margaret Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech of 1988, where she set out a vision of a Europe based on “willing cooperation between sovereign states”, Britain and the EU have been like a married couple living increasingly separate lives. And the fault here is shared. Britain – most noticeably under Labour from 1997 to 2010 – lived the myth that the UK could have its EU membership but stand aloof from its development. Brussels refused to acknowledge that all the real love had long since passed.
British attitudes towards the Irish border question are a good example of the UK misunderstanding the EU at a most fundamental level. The backstop, which is designed to prevent the reimposition of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, is neither about trapping the UK in a permanent arrangement nor seeking to break it up. The widespread British view of the backstop shows a deep distrust of EU institutions and their role in protecting the interests of member states and maintaining a level playing field.
Another example is Britain’s famous “rebate” from its budget contributions to the EU. Were Brexit somehow to be reversed, there would be no support among other member states for these rebates to continue. Although unreported in Britain, the current negotiations in Brussels for the next budgetary period (2021-27) are progressing at pace. The shortfall (€12bn-15bn) caused by Britain’s exit will be met with higher contributions from other member states. Much more money will be allocated to emerging priority areas such as border control, research and development and climate change.
Britain never understood that contributing to the EU’s budget is not a commercial transaction, it is about investing in peace, stability and growth right on your doorstep. The fact is, without Britain, the internal functioning of the EU, including agreeing what to spend money on, becomes easier.
But here lies the crux of the problem for Britain. The sovereignty-sharing, legalistic model of integration embodied by the EU only succeeds because member states see the bigger, sometimes almost incalculable, benefits of membership. Raging arguments over migration, Russia and populism may be a feature of European council summits in Brussels. The European commission might take Hungary or Poland to task over reforms which threaten democracy. But none of these debates question the wider integrity of the EU project.
Britain today – from the gleaming towers of the City of London to the rusting coalfields of the Welsh valleys – is a microcosm of the challenges facing all post-colonial powers. But while France and Germany see European integration as the mechanism to secure peace and maximise their global role, Britain’s failing relationship with the EU shows that it is still searching for the right expression of its place in the world.
The future remains to be written, but for Britain and Europe one solution is obvious: a no-blame divorce followed by respect and friendship. After all, families are complicated, friends with benefits less so.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Germany and France have signalled their willingness to delay Brexit as Michel Barnier offered to renegotiate with Theresa May in the event that she is able to build a majority with Labour in favour of a closer relationship with the EU.
EU ambassadors also discussed the issue for the first time at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, as the member states attempted to decide on their terms for extending the negotiating time beyond 29 March.
With Downing Street opening cross-party talks after the government’s historic defeat, EU politicians and officials were looking ahead in case the prime minister finds a majority in the Commons for a fresh approach.
On Tuesday night, Emmanuel Macron, coming to the end of a seven-hour town hall meeting as news of May’s Brexit vote defeat came through, said he believed the British government would seek an extension to article 50 in order to renegotiate the deal before a second parliamentary vote. “I think that’s what they’ll do. I know them a bit,” said the French president. “In that case, we’ll look into it, and maybe we’ll make improvements on one or two things.”
However, he cautioned: “We’ve reached the maximum for what we can do with the deal.” He warned that the EU would not stop defending European interests “just to solve Britain’s domestic political issues”.
He added that the whole basis for Brexit was flawed: “It’s a referendum that has been manipulated, manipulated from outside by a lot of what we call fake news.”
Peter Altmaier, Germany’s economics minister, suggested he would see it “as a reasonable request” if the UK wanted an extension. Nathalie Loiseau, France’s EU affairs minister, confirmed that a delay would be possible in the right context.
A similar argument was made by Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, during a late-night private meeting with senior members of the European parliament in the hours immediately after the Commons vote. The EU has previously suggested that only a general election or second referendum could persuade them to delay Brexit.
On Wednesday, Macron became the first EU leader to publicly raise the prospect of an extension beyond European elections in May. “Maybe they will step over the European elections in order to find [negotiate] something else,” Macron said, comments that represent a subtle shift in tone, as France has long insisted that there could be no prolongation of article 50 beyond the elections.
During Wednesday’s meeting of ambassadors and senior EU officials, several member states raised the issue of extending the two years allowed under article 50 for withdrawal talks.
It is hoped that May might be able to construct a cross-party position to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Labour has said that it would support a deal involving a permanent customs union, a position that the prime minister nevertheless reiterated her opposition to on Wednesday.
Speaking to a full chamber of the European parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Barnier said the motivations of the MPs who delivered the rebuff to May – a defeat by 230 votes, the largest ever for a sitting government – were “contradictory”.
He said the Commons had failed to offer an alternative vision, and warned May that no progress could be made until she found a majority for a deal. “Objectively speaking, this vote is not a clear manifestation of a positive majority which would define an alternative project, and an alternative to the proposal on the table today,” Barnier said.
“So, in this context, it is up to the British authorities today or tomorrow to assess the outcome of this vote, and up to the British government to find how we are to take things forward on 29 March towards an orderly withdrawal.”
Barnier, whose speech was applauded by MEPs despite the problems being faced in ratifying the deal he brokered, told the parliament that he would not speculate on the “scenarios” opening up following the rejection of the deal. “Now, with this standstill, until we have found a way forward which will see a full majority we won’t be able to move forward, so this is why the future steps must be indicated very clearly … by the British government,” he said.
But the former French minister added: “I would like to remind you that your parliament, and unanimously the European council, have always said that if the UK chooses to shift its red lines in the future, and it makes that choice, a choice to be ambitious, and go beyond a simple free trade agreement, which would be quite something, then the European Union will be immediately ready to go hand in hand with that development and to give a favourable response.”
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said on Tuesday that there would be time to negotiate, but that it was “up to the British side, as the prime minister has announced, to tell us what happens next”.
The EU is willing to reopen the political declaration on the future relationship, a 26-page document that is not legally binding, but remains highly resistant to any suggestion of unpicking the 585-page withdrawal agreement.
Barnier told MEPs that whatever emerged from future talks, the withdrawal agreement would still need to contain the contentious Irish backstop for avoiding a hard border, which Brexiters fear will trap the UK in a customs union.
Philippe Lamberts, the leader of the Greens in the European parliament, said the withdrawal agreement containing the backstop would likely be received by rapporteurs, the MEPs who would present the draft to the chamber, next week as the EU continued on with its ratification process. “The withdrawal agreement will not be reopened because whatever deal we have, we need that”, he said.
Critics of May’s deal have called for a time limit or unilateral right to exit the arrangements. Barnier told MEPs: “The backstop that we agreed with the UK must remain a backstop, must remain a credible backstop. The backstop must remain a backstop.”
While EU officials once ruled out the UK remaining in the EU beyond elections in May 2019, attention is turning to legal fixes to permit an extension if Brexit talks drag on through the summer.
One idea is writing text into the 585-page withdrawal agreement that would allow British representatives to sit in the parliament Brussels and Strasbourg temporarily. The model would be a reverse copy of arrangements for countries joining the EU, when national parliaments send delegates to the European parliament if they join halfway through a term.
But not everyone agrees with this analysis. “The logical consequences of an extension is that they will have to participate in European elections,” the senior official said. EU lawyers have yet to express a view.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Germany will stand fully in “solidarity” with Ireland over Brexit, the country’s president has said, and look to “underpin rather than undermine” the peace process that has kept the border with Northern Ireland invisible in the past 20 years
Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Ireland’s president, Michael Higgins, on a visit to Berlin that Germany “stands firmly by Ireland’s side”, raising questions about Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson’s optimism that the Irish border backstop can be revisited.
“Politically and economically, Ireland is more directly affected by Brexit than any other EU member state. For this reason, too, your country has our full solidarity. We have reiterated this pledge in recent months: Germany stands firmly by Ireland’s side,” he said.
“The European Union’s value and internal cohesion have rarely been so plain as during the withdrawal negotiations. Ireland is part of this union. And Ireland’s core interests are and will remain the EU’s core interests,” he added.
His remarks come just days after the Conservative party leader contender Hunt claimed he had assurances from the German chancellor that to “look at” his plan to strike a new Brexit deal if he won the keys to No 10.
Steinmeier said Germany was aware of the “great achievements there have been in building reconciliation since the Good Friday agreement” in 1998.
“We want to strengthen you in your endeavours to find a solution for the border which will underpin, rather than undermine the peace process. Obviously this will involve the free movement of goods and persons. What it will not involve is barriers, customs duties and trade barriers.
“Here, Ireland’s concerns are also our concerns,” he added.
His remarks echo those of Merkel during a private meeting this year with representative of Northern Irish communities. Those attending said she paid great interest to the history of Ireland, noting that Germany too had once had a border dividing the country.
In a further blow to the leadership contenders’ hopes to get the backstop changed, the German president said:
“All EU member states have clearly stated that renegotiations is not an option. We just have to hope that the new government in London realises that too.”
Hunt and Johnson have claimed they will be able to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement by threatening to crash out with no deal, with Johnson describing the deal as a “dead letter” in Belfast this week.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The former prime minister Gordon Brown has backed calls for a second Brexit referendum and said Britain should leave the door open to rejoining the European Union if it leaves as planned next March.
Speaking in London, Brown said MPs should be prepared to tell the government to renegotiate with Brussels should the Commons be unhappy with a proposed deal, but that at some point the public would demand another say.
“I believe a referendum will happen as people come to the conclusion that since 2016 the situation has changed and at some point they will want to have the final say,” Brown said in a speech at the Institute for Government thinktank.
He called for the setting up of a royal commission to take evidence from leave and remain voters in order to heal the divisions caused by the 2016 Brexit vote.
Brown said that more than two years after the decision to leave, none of the important issues – such as what sort of relationship Britain wanted with the EU and the scope to sign trade deals – had been finalised. Theresa May’s attempt at a quick fix would inevitably be followed by years of talks that would leave the public feeling let down.
“If the next two years of negotiation involve a process as inward looking, divisive and partisan – as dominated and driven by internal Conservative politics as the past two years – we will become an even more divided country, more divided than in the 70s during the three-day week, than in the 80s during the miners’ strike and than in the early 90s because of poll tax.”
Brown’s intervention in the Brexit debate came as Theresa May faced hostility from Conservative remainers and Brexiters over her proposed deal with Brussels.
Brown said there had been none of the careful assessment of the issues that had been undertaken by Harold Macmillan’s government before Britain first applied to join what was then the Common Market in the 1960s, or when he as chancellor was weighing up the pros and cons of joining the euro.
“The failure to agree and the prolonged uncertainty that arises, means ignoring the real long-term challenges – the four major threats for the future – long-term investment plans by companies put at risk; the union put at risk; British global influence in danger of reaching its lowest-ever ebb and Britain’s social cohesion in jeopardy because of our failure to face up to the issues raised in the Brexit vote.”
Brown said it was important to tackle the grievances that had led to 52% voting to leave the EU, but added it was possible to deal with issues such as managing immigration while being an EU member.
The toxic atmosphere was creating “fertile ground for populist politicians whose main claim is not that they offer serious alternatives but whose stock in trade is to articulate people’s anger”, he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
The government is facing a high court judicial review over an alleged “large-scale breach” of EU citizens’ rights after they were denied their vote in May’s European elections.
A letter before action has been sent to the de facto deputy prime minister, David Lidington, by the law firm Bindmans, acting on behalf of the grassroots campaign group the3million.
“The government has created a bizarre system … automatically depriving most EU nationals of their voting rights on an annual basis,” said John Halford, the lawyer acting for the3million. He said the requirement to fill in a special form that only assigns the right to vote for one year was discriminatory and did not exist in other EU member states.
“Well over half of EU nationals who are registered to vote in the UK are systematically disenfranchised in this way,” he added.
He said the government had known that its system was stripping EU citizens of their rights since 2014 and had “promised to put it right”, but had failed to do so. “It now needs to accept that is unlawful or face the courts,” added Halford.
The letter accuses the government of four breaches of law including discrimination.
In the UK, EU citizens were required to fill in a UC1 form which remained valid for only 12 months. No such requirement is made in EU law and other member states do not interpret the law in this way, underlining the legal case that the hurdle is exclusively a British invention.
The3million, a grassroots campaign for EU citizens’ rights, is hoping to raise the funds to take the case forward through crowdfunding.
“Many such citizens were deprived of their right to vote because of unlawful systemic flaws in the processes under which the 2019 elections were conducted,” said the letter to Lidington.
The failure of many EU citizens to vote caused shock and outrage in May, and calls followed in the House of Commons for a public inquiry. Guardian data shows that as few as one in 10 EU citizens were able to vote in some local council areas.
Labour MP David Lammy described it as “ugly discrimination” for people who had endured “three years of being insulted, exploited and asked to apply to stay in their own homes” while the head of the electoral commission, Bob Posner, said it was time that its warnings and calls for electoral reform were “properly heard and acted upon”.
First published on Wed 27 Mar 2019 01.34 GMT
The British government has rejected a petition calling for Brexit to be stopped, which gathered more than 5.8 million signatures.
The petition is due to be debated by MPs on 1 April, after breaking the 100,000 threshold for consideration and becoming the best-supported proposal in the history of the House of Commons and government’s e-petitions website.
Rejecting the oft-repeated claim that EU withdrawal is the “will of the people”, it calls for the revocation of the Article 50 letter informing the European Council of the UK’s intention to leave.
The Article 50 letter can be withdrawn by the UK unilaterally, without the need for EU agreement, leaving Britain free to continue as a member on its current terms.
But in its official response to the petition, the department for exiting the EU said: “It remains the Government’s firm policy not to revoke Article 50. We will honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum and work to deliver an exit which benefits everyone, whether they voted to Leave or to Remain.
“Revoking Article 50, and thereby remaining in the European Union, would undermine both our democracy and the trust that millions of voters have placed in government.”
The department said while it acknowledged the “considerable number” of people who had signed the petition, the government had written to every household prior to the 2016 referendum promising the outcome of the referendum would be implemented and people voted with that understanding.
“17.4 million people then voted to leave the European Union, providing the biggest democratic mandate for any course of action ever directed at UK government,” said the department’s statement.
The department added that 80% of those who voted in the 2017 general election voted for parties who committed in their manifestos to uphold the referendum result.
“Revoking Article 50 would break the promises made by Government to the British people, disrespect the clear instruction from a democratic vote, and in turn, reduce confidence in our democracy.
“As the Prime Minister has said, failing to deliver Brexit would cause ‘potentially irreparable damage to public trust’, and it is imperative that people can trust their Government to respect their votes and deliver the best outcome for them.”
The petition will be debated by MPs in the Commons’ secondary chamber Westminster Hall. A Government minister will be required to respond to the petition, but there will be no vote on the action it demands.
The woman behind the petition, Margaret Georgiadou, said on Saturday she had received death threats.
She also said she had deleted her Facebook account after receiving a “torrent of abuse”.
MPs will also debate a petition calling for a second EU referendum, which has received more than 120,000 signatures, and another - signed by more than 140,000 - demanding that the UK leave with or without a deal on 29 March.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
The government wants the option of extending the Brexit transition period up to the end of 2022, the business secretary, Greg Clark, has said, a move likely to further enrage the Conservative party plotters who hope to remove Theresa May this week.
Amid predictions from hardline Brexit-backing Tories that the crucial mark of 48 MPs seeking to depose May could be reached on Monday, Clark endorsed an idea raised by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, which could keep the UK tied to Brussels rules for up to two further years.
At a meeting of ambassadors from the EU’s 27 member states, Barnier proposed the idea of extending the transition period beyond the agreed 21-month limit, taking it to December 2022, allowing two extra years to negotiate the relationship.
Asked about the idea, Clark said the option of extending the transition period at “our discretion” could help businesses having to potentially change working practices twice, but avoiding the chance of the backstop guarantee coming into force if a final trade deal had not been sealed in December 2020.
“Businesses, especially small businesses, have said very clearly that they would much prefer to have one change, rather than have to change things twice, to two different regimes,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“It would be at our request, and that would be a maximum period. But it would be for this purpose – if the negotiations are making good progress but haven’t quite been finalised, to have the option – and it would be an option for us, and there is value in having an option – in rather than going in for a temporary period into the backstop and having a second change, to have the option, if the UK wanted, to extend the transition period.”
Asked if this meant the transition period could extend, as detailed by Barnier, to the end of 2022, Clark did not reject this, saying: “The point is that if we have the option we don’t have to use it. Our strong preference is clearly to complete the negotiations.”
The idea is seemingly intended to appeal to businesses, before May addresses the CBI business group conference on Monday morning, as she seeks to resume control of the political narrative after a bruising week.
May travels to Brussels later this week to hammer out the final details of the political declaration on Britain’s future relationship, in the hope the whole package can be approved at a special EU summit next Sunday.
But the idea of the UK following EU rules and paying into its budget with no say on how the bloc operates for up to six-and-a-half years after the 2016 referendum is likely to infuriate discontented MPs, as well as alarm some of May’s other ministers.
MPs from the Brexit-backing European Research Group reiterated on Monday that this still hoped to force a no-confidence motion on May by gathering the 48 MPs’ letters they needed, to be sent to Graham Brady, chair of the backbench 1922 Committee.
One ERG member, Newton Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris, told BBC1’s Breakfast there was “no question” the threshold of 48 letters would be reached this week. She said May “has had one of the most difficult jobs” to do, and that the prime minister is “not going to deliver Brexit”.
Simon Clarke, the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP and another ERG member, urged fellow MPs to act immediately.
“Today is I think a really important day in that process, because colleagues who had said that they will act now need to search their consciences and follow up on what they’ve pledged to do,” he told Today. “This day must be the day at which action is taken. We now have a deal on the table, it’s gone from theory to reality, and our worst fears have been realised.
“Every hour, every day, that we delay the moment of reckoning on this, every day that elapses without having rejected this deal is one day less to embark either on credible negotiations to try and remove the backstop that is the issue at the heart of these negotiations, or failing that prepare with an intensity that we simply have not seen for a no-deal scenario.”
As well as the threat of being ousted, May faces pressure from a group of cabinet ministers who have stayed in her government but hope to persuade her to seek an amended deal with Brussels, including the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, and the environment secretary, Michael Gove.
But in his interview, Clark dismissed the idea that the deal could be changed at this stage. He said: “If you think about the time that’s gone into that negotiation, and the detail it comprises, I think this deal – which is a good one in my view – is the one that will go to the European council.”
Asked if the outline for a future relationship could be changed, he added: “Not in any substantive sense.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, has said it is “terrifying” that one of Boris Johnson’s close allies, Jacob Rees-Mogg, believes a no-deal Brexit will boost the economy.
The chancellor, who is expected to exit the government next week, expressed his horror after Rees-Mogg used a Daily Telegraph opinion piece to dismiss the “pure silliness” of Treasury forecasts suggesting a £90bn hit to the economy.
Rees-Mogg claimed there were economic models that showed “the total positive impact of no deal could be in the region of about £80bn”.
Hammond hit back at the argument, saying on Twitter: “Happy to debate scale of negative impact of no deal on the economy – but terrifying that someone this close to a potential future government can think we’d actually be better off by adding barriers to access to our largest market.”
Rees-Mogg told the Guardian this was part of “project fear”, which he claimed had been “consistently wrong”, adding that his article made clear that the “barriers to trade that the chancellor is fretting about would be against World Trade Organization rules, while he ignores the benefits of future trade deals”.
The clash highlights the looming problems that Johnson is likely to have as prime minister if he wins the Tory leadership contest next week.
He has said he wants a deal with the EU that scraps the Northern Ireland backstop by the end of October, but if that fails, many of his Eurosceptic backers are keen to proceed to a no-deal Brexit.
Hammond is one of many senior Tories on the other wing of the party who will fight hard against that outcome, with the chancellor even suggesting he could vote down his own government to stop it.
Johnson has not ruled out proroguing parliament to achieve a no-deal exit but Andrea Leadsom, one of his backers, suggested she was among those who would not support that and did not believe he would go for it.
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary and a supporter of Johnson, told a Commons committee on Wednesday that no-deal Brexit was “underpriced” and he believes preparations needed to be ramped up.
Following reports that he clashed last week with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, by telling him the EU withdrawal agreement was dead, Barclay said this was “not a controversial observation”.
“In terms of the withdrawal agreement, what I said was that the House had rejected it three times, including the third time by a significant margin; that the European election results in my view had further hardened attitudes across the house and that the text, unchanged, I did not envisage going through the house,” he said.
He said: “A no-deal Brexit would be disruptive,” but added: “No Brexit is the worst of those two outcomes.”
Barclay also revealed that the government was looking at compensating sheep farmers in the event of a no-deal Brexit, following warnings from the National Farmers’ Union that this would result in shepherds being forced to slaughter their flocks because there would be no market for their meat.
He said the sheep meat industry was an “outlier” because 97% of exports went to the EU but the government was working on intervention measures and compensation.
Barclay set out his view that parliament would be asked to vote on any new deal achieved by the next prime minister, and then if that was rejected, it would be offered a choice of revoking Brexit or leaving with no deal.
“But the question then will be is there a deal that is palatable to parliament and if not will parliament vote to revoke or will we leave with no deal?”
However, any prime minister going down that path could face a no-confidence motion first. Tory backbenchers fighting a hard Brexit, including Hammond, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening and Guto Bebb, would have to weigh up whether to vote to bring down their own government and risk a general election rather than allow the UK to depart on no-deal terms.
First published on Sat 27 Jul 2019 21.36 BST
The former Tory chancellor Philip Hammond held private talks with Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer shortly before Boris Johnson entered Downing Street last Wednesday, to plot cross-party moves aimed at preventing the new prime minister agreeing to a no-deal Brexit.
The meeting in the House of Commons – which took place shortly after Hammond had resigned from the government – is evidence of the fierce backlash Johnson faces from MPs of all parties if he tries to defy parliament and take the UK out of the EU without an agreement on 31 October.
It is understood that the former political opponents Hammond and Starmer agreed to work together through the summer recess with other leading parliamentarians who oppose no deal, including former Tory ministers Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, to thrash out how best to use parliamentary votes to torpedo no deal.
On Saturday night Starmer confirmed that Johnson’s arrival in No 10 had spurred more cross-party discussions at high levels involving senior Tories sacked by Johnson, or who chose to resign, as opponents of no deal prepared a cross-party counter-offensive against his new hard-Brexit cabinet and government.
“The political direction of travel under Boris Johnson is clear,” said Starmer, “and so it is more important than ever that we build a strong cross-party alliance to stop a no-deal Brexit.
“That work will intensify over the summer, before parliament resumes in September.”
The plans being hatched include amending Brexit-related legislation that has to pass through parliament before the UK can leave the EU in a way that would force the Johnson to ask for a further extension to the UK’s membership if no Brexit agreement has been reached by early October.
A “last resort” option is for Hammond and other Tory Remainers to vote for a no-confidence motion in their own government if no deal still appears on the cards.
A new Opinium/Observer poll on Sunday will heighten fears among Remainers that Johnson could resort to calling a snap Brexit election to seek a mandate for a no-deal Brexit if he fails to persuade EU leaders to reopen talks on the Irish backstop and Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement.
The poll, conducted after Johnson was elected Tory leader, shows a marked “Boris bounce”, putting the Tories up seven points compared with a fortnight ago, on 30%.
The Conservatives have leapfrogged Labour (which is 3 points up on 28%) to retake the lead. The surge in support appears to come at the expense of the Brexit party which has dropped 7 points to 15%.
The Liberal Democrats, whose new leader Jo Swinson took office last week, are up 1 point on 16%.
Johnson also has a 21-point lead over Jeremy Corbyn when voters are asked who would make the best prime minister. It is the biggest lead since May forged ahead of Corbyn before the 2017 election. Half of the public think, however, that Johnson will divide the nation.
Professor Robert Ford of Manchester University said that Johnson’s pursuit of Labour voters who backed Brexit could win the Tories some seats but could also cause losses for the party in Remain areas, where voters would reject his talk of no-deal Brexit.
“ A dramatic gamble may be needed to break the Brexit deadlock, but such gambles can easily backfire, as we saw in 2017,” Ford writes.
On Saturday Johnson further fuelled speculation that he was preparing for an election on a visit to Manchester. In a speech that bore all the hallmarks of an election pitch to disillusioned Leavers in Labour areas, he pledged a £3.6bn fund for deprived towns, a new Manchester-to-Leeds rail line and major investment in buses, broadband and police.
“The centre of Manchester, like the centre of London, is a wonder of the world. A few miles away from here, the story is very different,” he said.
“The story has been for young people growing up there of hopelessness, or the hope that one day they will get out and never come back.
“It certainly isn’t really the fault of the places, and certainly isn’t the fault of the people growing up there.
They haven’t failed. It’s we, us, the politicians, our politics has failed them.” Officially Johnson has ruled out a general election before Brexit has been delivered, but many MPs believe he will be prepared to switch to backing one if he cannot secure a deal on Brexit that he can sell to his own party and get through parliament.
 Meanwhile Corbyn, who is having to step up election preparations, on Sunday will accuse the Tories of causing a £40bn of lost investment in 2019 as a result of the Brexit impasse.
Labour claims that it has reached the figure by comparing forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility before and after Brexit. It said businesses are expected to invest around £187bn this year, compared to the £227bn forecast in 2016.
“Boris Johnson won the support of fewer than 100,000 Tory party members by threatening a reckless no-deal Brexit, leaving businesses and workers facing serious risks and huge uncertainty,” Corbyn said. “He is staking all our futures on a sweetheart trade deal with Donald Trump that would risk the takeover of our NHS by US corporations, while handing out tax cuts to the richest.
“With Johnson and his divisive hard-right cabinet gambling with people’s jobs and living standards, it is now clear that the only way Brexit can be resolved is by taking it back to the people.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
It all has the feel of the world’s most boring thriller. Though there are only just under seven weeks left until Britain’s official date of departure from the European Union, public life seems drowsy with a lethal brew of fatalism, insouciance and burrowing cowardice.
On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning, James Brokenshire, the communities secretary, looked less like the minister charged with preparing local government for the social chaos of a no-deal outcome than a beaming salesman politely urging a client to renew his contents insurance policy.
As for the voters, they give the impression of impatience rather than trepidation. Why can’t the political class just get on with it? If Brexit was ever a principled uprising, it now more closely resembles a form of boredom longing to be curtailed: it has more in common with a delayed Deliveroo order than a popular revolution.
Yet that could still change if the mood of scratchy resignation were supplanted by urgency and a demand for clarity – a transformation that can only be accomplished by leadership and courage.
It is true that many remainers have fallen into a deep gloom since the House of Commons votes on 29 January, in which the Conservative party manufactured a temporary unity over Graham Brady’s call for “alternative arrangements” to the Irish border backstop, while Yvette Cooper’s pathway for an extension to article 50 was rejected. It has become increasingly orthodox to argue that the idea of a people’s vote is now, in practice, off the table.
But that is not how the most ardent Brexiteers read the runes. There is no doubt that Nigel Farage, though dreadful, is also one of the most cunning politicians of the age. The fact that he is now a figurehead of the new Brexit party and is issuing explicit electoral threats to the Conservatives and Labour alike – get us out of the EU on 29 March or suffer the consequences – should give remainers both pause for thought and an unexpected form of solace.
On Friday’s Newsnight, Farage’s ally, Steven Woolfe MEP (formerly Ukip, now independent), made clear that the party had been registered with two purposes in mind: first, to field candidates in the European elections on 23 May if Britain has not left the EU; and second, to give preliminary structure to the new leave campaign that would be needed in the event of a public vote.
How might this happen? Theresa May, who has revealed herself to be an Olympic class can-kicker, now proposes to return to the Commons by 27 February, either with a new deal or an amendable motion that will allow MPs to revisit the many permutations of the Brexit conundrum. As the Observer disclosed today, Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, supported by a group of Tory remainers, now propose that the Commons should be given the chance to back a deal – and then to put it to the electorate in a referendum.
Though this is an idea in its germinal phase, it has the great merit of intellectual coherence. A public vote is not, as it is so often presented, merely one option among many – an alternative, say, to “Norway plus”, “Canada-plus-plus”, or no deal – but a means of settling the thus-far-insoluble contest between the many plans on offer.
Indeed, the case for a plebiscite is much stronger than it was in 2016: three years ago, the public was voting about lies on the side of a bus in an emotionally charged shouting-match about nothing and everything. This time, they would be called upon to break a genuine parliamentary impasse about a specific and describable predicament. This would not be a re-run, but – at last – the real thing.
Assuming that Theresa May has not cobbled together a sellable deal by the end of this month, the votes that will be held on 27 February are the most important facing this generation of MPs. In all conscience, they cannot possibly countenance the suggestion that the prime minister be permitted yet more time to negotiate – a final vote being held on 25 March after the European council. No self-respecting parliament can be expected to take such monumental decisions only four days before the official date of departure.
So, two weeks from now, MPs must decide whether they do, indeed, value their contract with the electorate and their collective sense of dignity. They face that rarest of things: an authentically defining moment. Which means that this need not, after all, be the last pages of a dreary thriller. It could yet be high noon.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The draft Brexit agreement will be rubber-stamped by a special European council meeting this weekend. But the current deal has little chance of making it through the Commons. Without parliamentary approval there is no path to a negotiated UK-EU agreement. Yet, so far, neither the UK nor EU has a proper plan B, other than a messy no deal. Time is running out to make changes to the deal to help it pass parliament.
A series of EU figures have been wheeled out to claim this deal is the final offer. They say they won’t change anything. But if that’s actually the case, there’s a serious danger things will go wrong. Because I’ve heard from three former Conservative chief whips, all of whom argue that this deal will not now pass parliament. Even Labour Brexit-backers threaten to vote against it.
Of course, it’s not going to be possible to tear up everything and start again. It’s taken over a year and a half of snail-like negotiations to get here. And it’s hard to see the EU offering Theresa May an agreement without a backstop at this stage, even if she demands they drop it. Equally, calls to accept the EU’s supposed offer of a Canada-style trade deal miss the point that such an agreement is only on offer via a backstop.
However, the overarching goal of Michel Barnier and his team is a deal. This draft agreement is far from ideal for the UK. But it’s also true that British negotiators won important concessions precisely because Brussels is keen to reach agreement. The EU climbed down on various points, from the size of our financial contribution, to governance of the withdrawal agreement, and from a UK-wide customs union, to the backstop itself. Although problematic and undesirable for the UK, the backstop is nonetheless an example of a bespoke relationship with neither free movement of people nor significant membership contributions – exactly what the EU pretended was not on offer.
When the prime minister meets EU leaders she should level with them and admit that the domestic reaction to the deal has been worse than she expected. At cabinet last week, her chief whip told ministers the DUP would abstain and predicted the deal would pass the Commons. That no longer seems plausible at this point, with dozens of Conservatives lined up to vote it down. So Theresa May should tell the assembled dignitaries that the deal is a dead duck, unless there can be limited but substantive changes to the withdrawal agreement and a significant development of the political declaration.
The political declaration, which was published alongside the draft withdrawal treaty, was almost painfully thin. Rather than giving confidence, it exacerbated concerns about the backstop by revealing that agreement about our future was so inchoate. Crucially, a revised text should set out a choice of future relationships: either a looser economic model closer to that of Canada’s free trade agreement with technological solutions on the Irish border, or a more integrated agreement based on “deep” regulatory cooperation, as well as perhaps ultimately an even closer relationship designed to meet Labour’s concerns. One line in the current draft helped trigger the resignation of former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab. The commitment that the “customs arrangements” will “build on the [backstop’s] single customs territory” was added at the last minute. It should be removed, or explicitly refer to just the path towards a more integrated relationship.
Next the prime minister needs to agree three key changes to the divorce text – the withdrawal agreement. First, a “lock” for the Northern Ireland executive and assembly, the institutions of the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast agreement. Back in December, both the UK and EU agreed a joint report that said that there would be “no new regulatory barriers” between Northern Ireland and Great Britain unless the “executive and assembly agree … distinct arrangements are appropriate”. That lock should be reintroduced, to help address DUP concerns about the backstop.
Second, hidden within an annex is an article that some interpret as allowing the EU to levy tariffs on goods moving from the UK to Northern Ireland or the EU. All UK political parties have ruled out a customs border down the Irish Sea. So this article should be amended explicitly to prevent the EU unilaterally imposing such a customs border within the UK.
Third, the UK has been unable to secure a workable unilateral exit mechanism from the backstop, despite Raab’s best efforts. This failure has exacerbated concerns that the UK could be “trapped” in the backstop. One way to break the impasse could be to state that the backstop does not create a permanent relationship, yet applies “as long as” the EU was working “to negotiate and conclude” a permanent agreement with the UK. This would be a fudge but would give both sides some surety.
EU leaders will be loath to reopen the deal. But if they refuse they need to think carefully about the consequences. The drama of a potential leadership challenge, as well as Labour’s desire to play political games, underscore the weakness of May’s domestic political position. By the time the deal is rejected by parliament at its first vote, her space for manoeuvre may be even less. There’s no point securing a deal that works perfectly in Brussels theory, but doesn’t survive contact with Westminster politics – after all, that would be to repeat the mistakes of David Cameron’s renegotiation.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
A no-deal showdown is expected in the House of Commons on Thursday after peers passed stronger protections against the prospect of a Boris Johnson administration attempting to prorogue parliament to force an exit from the EU in October.
The House of Lords passed an amendment by a majority of 103 on Wednesday that would ensure parliament would sit in the weeks leading up to the 31 October deadline. Fears have been growing that Johnson could prorogue or dissolve parliament in order to allow the deadline to pass without MPs interfering.
Thirteen Tory peers rebelled against the government to vote for the amendment from the crossbench peer David Anderson, a former independent reviewer of terror legislation, with support from Labour and the Lib Dems.
The amendment to the Northern Ireland (executive formation) bill builds on an amendment passed in the Commons last week, when MPs backed a proposal from the pro-European Tory Dominic Grieve calling for fortnightly reports from the government on the efforts to restore the power-sharing executive.
The new Lords amendment would ensure these have to be debated in the weeks before the Brexit deadline. The bill could theoretically make it illegal for the government to prorogue parliament in the autumn if the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland has not been restored.
The Commons vote is likely to be extremely tight on Thursday. Grieve’s amendment passed by a single vote last week, after a government whip forgot to vote. Grieve lost votes on other related amendments.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said Labour would fight hard to try to ensure the bill’s progress on Thursday. “This is another important step to prevent the suspension of parliament. We will do everything to support this measure in the Commons tomorrow,” he said.
The former Commons leader Andrea Leadsom earlier hinted that Johnson could use the timing of his first Queen’s speech to lock out MPs and prevent them from blocking no deal.
The former Conservative minister Guto Bebb told Sky News he believed Johnson was “quite seriously contemplating” using a Queen’s speech to suspend parliament, by scheduling it for early November. Parliament traditionally does not sit for around a fortnight leading up to the speech.
Leadsom said she was not in favour of prorogation in principle. “I do not think that prorogation is a tactic that any prime minister would employ,” she told LBC. “But there are different aspects to this. Prorogation can take place in the event a general election is called, or a decision to prorogue at the end of a session. All of these things are very well established parliamentary procedures.
“Boris is quite clear we are going to leave the EU, we’re going to reunite the country, then we’re going to defeat Jeremy Corbyn. In that order. We need to get on with it.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
There are many paradoxes in the whole Brexit process. And one of them is that my MP colleagues who now say they will use the “meaningful” vote in the Commons on the proposed withdrawal agreement to vote against it objected so strongly when 11 of us rebelled against the government in 2017 to secure that vote. As I know to my personal cost, that rebellion led to a torrent of abuse, threats of violence and deselection for the 11 Conservative “mutineers”.
And now, nearly 12 months later, that vote is almost upon us. We often hear how important votes in the House of Commons are, but this one really, really matters.
We live in a representative democracy. Each MP has to vote as a representative, thinking each time about the implications of how they vote for their constituency and constituents. Sometimes those votes and the decisions are easier than others. This time we owe it to our constituents to think extremely long and hard before we cast our vote in December on the withdrawal agreement and the outline of a future relationship with the EU.
We owe it to them to read the 585-page draft agreement and the evolving future framework declaration. We owe it to them to talk to a wide selection of our constituents, not just our local party members and supporters, and to remember that for every standard letter campaign there are thousands of local residents who don’t contact us. What do they think? Do they want us to “just get on with it”? This is what I hear most frequently as I talk locally.
We owe it to those who elected us to speak to local employers, local charities who have benefited from European Union funding, local students and others who want to continue to have the option of working, studying and travelling around Europe in the future. And we should definitely speak to the EU citizens living in our constituencies and those constituents married to, or with family members who are, EU citizens.
The vote will then arrive and we will have to explain the choice we make – that day, at the next election and long into the future, because the vote and what happens next will determine the UK’s place in the world and our relationship with Europe for decades to come. And after a weekend spent remembering the enormous sacrifice of our predecessors as they fought and died over a divided Europe, these issues have added poignancy. Our debates should be long and impassioned. I’d be worried if we weren’t passionate about something so important.
Some of us have extra responsibilities. I am working with the Treasury select committee, of which I am chair, to secure a government economic analysis of the longer‑term impact of the proposals and an analysis by the Bank of England of the shorter-term implications of what has been agreed. We will take evidence from ministers, regulators, economists, businesses and others on that analysis. I want all MPs to have both the analysis and our conclusions on it before they vote. I know other select committees will be doing the same in their respective areas.
And we will have to explain the alternatives of not approving this withdrawal agreement to our constituents. On Wednesday night I received an email from a lady who said she was a strong remain campaigner (as I was) and wanted me to reject the deal. The trouble with that is that the most likely alternative is we leave the EU with no deal at all. And I believe that would be deeply damaging to our economy and our constituents. I cannot sign up to that.
For me the ability to mitigate the damage caused by Brexit is best measured in protecting the jobs and financial security of my constituents. No deal was ever going to be perfect. No side in a negotiation ever gets its own way. It would have been better if the prime minister had been honest about this in 2016 and not allowed people to think a Lancaster House-style Brexit was even remotely deliverable.
There are 650 people in this country who now need to do their jobs. We need to act as representatives of our constituents and not on the basis of our personal ideologies or preferences. UK politics has been in a holding pattern since June 2016. We have to move on. We have many, many pressing issues that we need ministers and civil servants, no longer quite so distracted by Brexit, to tackle.
And we can only do that if we approve the withdrawal agreement, however imperfect it may be, so we can move forward as a country.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
If I’ve learned anything in the past three years, it is that many MPs seem to have forgotten that “politics is the art of the possible”.
I know some people may have been surprised when I took a role in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, but what the critics miss is that there is nothing ultimately to be gained for our country or our constituents in any of us remaining stuck in our views from three years ago. It has been clear for months that the current Brexit situation simply cannot continue and that an end to this first phase must be found.
For that reason, I can support the prime minister’s clear view that we must leave the European Union on 31 October – with a deal or without one.
I voted Remain, but I also believe in democracy. The 2016 referendum was the largest popular vote in the UK’s history and it cannot be ignored. Three years on from the result and businesses and the public are fed up, not just with the lack of certainty but with MPs, and rightly so. They want us to get Brexit done so we can move on to those issues at home that they care much more about – I share that frustration.
Three times the previous deal did not get through parliament and the only option that ever passed the house was the so-called Brady amendment, the essence of which was to get rid of the backstop in favour of alternative arrangements.
Before I joined the government, I spent months working as part of Prosperity UK’s Commission on alternative arrangements to the Irish backstop. This work convinced me that it is possible to utilise customs declarations and arrangements, such as trusted trader schemes, that do not undermine peace and stability on the island of Ireland and avoid any need for a hard border.
The whole government, from the prime minister down, have a clear objective – we want to leave with a deal. That is why all colleagues should be encouraged by the prime minister’s new constructive and reasonable proposals.
The government is determined to sustain the Good Friday Agreement and the new proposals respect the peace process, as well as protecting the regulations that Northern Ireland farmers and businesses on both sides of the border need. We have proposed the potential creation of a regulatory zone on the island of Ireland covering all goods. The zone would eliminate all regulatory checks for trade in goods between Northern Ireland and Ireland and crucially, unlike the so-called backstop, this regulatory zone would be sustained only with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland.
Historically people have voiced outrage at a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and rightly so, but the prime minister has been clear that there will be absolutely no need for checks or infrastructure, at or near the border.
Instead, all customs checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland would take place either electronically or, in the small number of cases where physical checks would be necessary, at traders’ premises or other points in the supply chain. Northern Ireland will be completely part of the UK customs territory and not the EU customs union.
This demonstrates a sensible and hugely workable proposal that should unite MPs from across the House.
I hope the EU will come to the table in the same spirit of compromise, but if not ministers and departments have spent all summer increasing preparations to ensure the UK is properly ready for leaving without a deal on 31 October.
Sadly, the reaction from Jeremy Corbyn and some opposition MPs demonstrates that they are not interested in a deal and they simply want to put a stop to Brexit. I don’t believe they speak for a majority of MPs or the country.
I urge colleagues from across the house to come together in the national interest and look at these proposals seriously. The same applies to the EU – it needs to look seriously at this proposal, talk to us, and negotiate a deal that works. This is the best chance we have to break the deadlock and leave with a fair and reasonable deal.
The British public wants to move on. Parliament needs to move on, so let’s all unite in the national interest and get Brexit done, so we can bring the country back together and focus on the priorities people care about.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Some of my best friends will be marching for a people’s vote on Saturday. Some of them are the type who don’t normally go on marches, but they feel strongly and they want to make their voices heard. I won’t be joining them. Not because I don’t care about their feelings or voices, but because of the strange denial of what this is all about.
Remainers would like a second referendum where all the deluded leavers suddenly see the light. They see themselves as wholly on the side of good. They want collaboration and cheap flights, good cheese and Spanish carers. They want to safeguard scientific research and human rights. Sure, I want those things too.
Brexit, as it is being played out, is a disaster, boring beyond words and full of words that mean zilch. The dreadful feeling is that it will all go on for ever. Are we going to be Canada or Norway? No, we are going to be England. Does May know what she is doing? The friendless, sleepless leader ploughs on. The Labour party, meanwhile, has absented itself, mainly with an eye on its many leave-voting seats. Principles are traded like derivatives. Who knows what a Labour Brexit would look like?
But really this is all about feelings – and I wonder why politicos are so bad at even beginning to understand this. Two years on, it is all, as Danny Dyer said, “a mad riddle”. Progressives still prefer to bully leavers rather than understand what drives them. Despising half the country is now the progressive position. So half the country are racist, old, small-minded, poor people who were seduced by a combination of Aaron Banks and delusions of empire. What these people really need is to be lectured constantly by a motley crew of metropolitan celebrities and has-been politicians (Clegg, Heseltine, Blair). Spare me, please.
Maybe these people are supremely persuasive. But the reality is not – as is so often claimed – that leave voters regret their vote (some do, but not many). They mostly just wish it was over. Me too. I wish it was over.
At one level, it is a disaster for progressives – and part of that is the refusal to see the Brexit vote as a revolution. It was, but just not the one we thought was coming. There was a massive turnout, and it was close. The simplistic idea that really people didn’t understand anything at all and were just very angry about austerity and neoliberalism is just that. Remove the agency of half the people, why don’t you? Sticking two fingers up to the establishment in an irrational and possibly self-harming way remains an analysis that no one wants to deal with. I see why. Self-harm is a form of agency when all else fails – but it is hard to watch.
The remain campaign, from its passion-free name and its inherent self-righteousness, is the worst campaign I have seen in my lifetime. In 2016, before the referendum, I wrote: “Much of England is ready to roll that dice [voting leave]; this part of England, so often despised, demonised and disrespected by those who claim to represent it, does need to be spoken for. This England will not do as it is told.” It turns out that I was right.
All the portents of that vote were there – and if you want to change things, you need to understand them. The remain tactic was to dismiss leave as irrational, and it still is. Understanding the power of the irrational is not the forte of political analysts.
We are all familiar with the economic arguments and yet the earthquake of leave turned on its head the mantra that everyone votes out of economic interest. Something deeper and darker is going on. Identity matters, belonging matters. If the left don’t address these issues, the right owns them. Brexit was an act of transgression in terms of the articles of faith of liberal democracy – and it is this transgression that we need to address.
A few thinkers recognise this, and a great collection of writings from Compass, The Causes of Brexit and the Cures, brings together Caroline Lucas, Lisa Nandy and John Harris among others to try and unpick what is happening. For all those marching on Saturday – marching because you are so sure in your hearts that you are on the side of good – can you not for one minute examine your own hearts and ask yourselves why half the country doesn’t share your cultural capital? Why Arts Council England spends £8 in Islington for every £1 it spends in the former coalfields? Why, as Neal Lawson puts it, so many people hit “the panic button”? Are you so convinced that we want another vote? Is this not a huge loss of faith in democracy?
I myself sometimes waver – but I see a second referendum as undoable, expensive and part of a strange denial by the great and the good. And in the end, I don’t want to be told what to do by those who could not see it coming. Why am I to trust them? Because, yes, this is about hearts not just heads, as even the redoubtable Timothy Garton-Ash tells us today. Yet we don’t want to talk about the visceral. Everything must be subsumed to reason even when reason has been shown not to work.
Often I think of an interview Mark Rylance did about the success of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, long before Brexit. He spoke of the play “satisfying a hunger in audiences for wildness and defiance. There’s a feeling that they’ve eaten something they haven’t eaten for years – something they’d forgotten, that’s really needed for their health.”
What was that thing? Nasty nationalism, a sense of agency, a revolt? Has that thing gone away, or will it be played by the likes of Steve Bannon? For while we dawdle in technocratic limbo, that thing remains and it will not be overcome by the rehearsal of numbers. Brexit is happening. The people voted. They were the wrong people.
But raise your voices on Saturday. I will listen to your anger as you say no one voted for this. For the reason we are in this mess is a basic refusal to listen. And learn.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
It all seemed so simple back in the 1990s. Barriers were coming down, the free market was advancing to all corners of the world, and in return for production being shifted to low-cost countries, consumers in the west were getting cheaper clothes and gizmos. Globalisation was said to be unstoppable. The end of history was nigh.
The financial crisis and its aftermath have changed the political weather, with a decade of low growth, unevenly distributed pain and business as usual prompting a backlash. Voters in the west have started to focus on globalisation’s dark side: the multinational companies that avoid paying tax; the towns hollowed out by de-industrialisation; the loss of democratic control over market forces; the uneasy sense that the entire edifice is poised precariously on a mountain of debt.
Somewhat belatedly, the politicians and officials who are responsible for running the show have woken up to the threat. As Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, rightly noted earlier this week, trade tensions and Brexit are manifestations of fundamental pressures for a different form of globalisation, perhaps even deglobalisation. Britain’s departure from the EU, according to Carney, is “an acid test” of whether a way can be found to broaden the benefits of openness while enhancing democratic accountability. Put simply, can you have your globalisation cake and eat it?
The answer is that cake-ism won’t be remotely feasible until the basic assumption that has underpinned economic policy for the past four decades – freer markets are always better markets – is challenged, and there is no real evidence that it has been. The direction of travel in trade deals, for instance, is for governments to press for the things that business groups want – protection of intellectual property rights and investor-state dispute settlement clauses that allow companies to sue governments for alleged discriminatory practices – rather than changes that benefit workers.
Consider, too, the way in which MPs of all stripes have been obsessing about the need for frictionless trade with the EU after Brexit, to ensure that there is no disruption to the supply chains of multinationals. The benefits of just-in-time production are seen as more important than the environmental costs of shipping parts and semi-finished goods backwards and forwards across Europe. Frictionless is good.
It is curious to hear centre-left politicians talking in these terms, because progressive politics for the past two centuries has traditionally been about the need to inject friction into markets, in order to soften the impact of capitalism and make it compatible with democracy. The economy of the early industrial revolution was as close to frictionless as you could get. There was no collective bargaining, so wages were set by the interplay of demand and supply of labour. There was no welfare state, so those who fell on hard times went to the workhouse. There were no health and safety regulations to protect workers or the environment, so industrial injuries and pollution were rife.
It eventually became apparent that this model of capitalism was sowing the seeds of its own destruction, and that there would have to be reform if the revolutionary outcome predicted by Karl Marx was to be avoided. The century from 1850 to 1950 saw the birth of the trade union movement, public provision of education, the development of a redistributive tax system and the creation of a welfare state. Social democracy, Keynesian demand management and full employment all interfered with the workings of the market, and when James Tobin first proposed a financial transaction tax in the early 1970s to curb currency speculation, he talked explicitly about throwing sand in the wheels of the foreign exchange markets.
Generally, though, reformers talked about injecting fairness rather than friction into the system – and were wise to do so. Language matters a lot, which is why, when the counter-revolution began in the mid-1970s, the talk was of economies becoming freer. Frictionless sounds so much more attractive than friction, in the same way that flexible sounds preferable to inflexible.
But the past decades have shown what frictionless or flexible markets are like in practice, and it’s really no surprise to find that voters don’t like them very much. Abolishing the Glass-Stegall Act – which separated investment from commercial banking in the US for more than half a century – removed friction from the financial markets but at the expense of an orgy of speculation that led to the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s. The neutering of trade unions and the decline in collective bargaining made labour markets more flexible by allowing firms to hire workers on zero-hours contracts, to fire them more easily and to secure a bigger share of the gains of growth for themselves. Employers’ organisations are the biggest champions of free movement of labour because it allows them access to an unlimited supply of labour, holding down wages.
The quest for a frictionless economy has its supporters, and they like to cite the fact that, since the current era of globalisation began in the early 1990s, a billion people have been lifted out of poverty. What they don’t say is that most of them live in China, which has grown rapidly because it has chosen a development path that is far from frictionless.
Carney is no free-market utopian, but it is a lot easier to talk about a new form of international cooperation built on a better balance of the local and the supranational than it is to bring it about. A good starting point would be to rediscover the joys of managed markets, to recognise that a frictionless economy is like a car without brakes, and that the right amount of friction makes countries fairer, safer and happier.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. With just 45 days to go until the UK leaves the EU, the government still has no idea on what terms a deal – if any – can be reached. Nor does anyone seem particularly bothered. We are now in a world where the prime minister can rewrite history, Gavin Williamson can declare war on China, Chris Grayling has mystic visions of non-existent ferries and no one bats an eyelid. Shares in Mogadon have rocketed as parliament sleepwalks towards Brexit.
Theresa May couldn’t believe her luck. At the very least, she had expected some grief for having missed yet another essay deadline. But everyone appeared to have forgotten she had missed the previous deadline. And the one before that. And the one before that. Even better, no one even asked her if she had made any progress since the last deadline she had missed. Which was just as well because she hadn’t made any.
Instead, in her latest statement to the Commons on what she hadn’t been doing to push the Brexit peanut forward, the prime minister was allowed to get away with reading out a letter she had written to Jeremy Corbyn some days earlier about how – sucks teeth – everything was very tricky but though she really, really cared about workers’ rights – yawn – she couldn’t possibly agree to a customs union as the ERG wouldn’t go for it. So thanks, but no thanks.
Everyone should just hold their nerve and continue to do nothing very much. Time to take a leaf out of David Cameron’s playbook and chillax a little. It was clear the EU wasn’t going to change its mind on reopening the withdrawal agreement, so she would just waste a bit of time in pointless meetings and run down the clock a little further. Then, when it was too late to do anything else, she’d give MPs a choice of either voting for her deal, which they’d already rejected, or taking a chance on no deal. She was easy either way. It was no skin off her nose as she’d be gone as prime minister by the summer anyway.
As so often, May was given a helping hand by the Labour leader. He and the prime minister are locked in a symbiotic death spiral; they are going to miss each other when they’re gone. Even if no one else will. Corbyn’s main failing is that his memory is almost as bad as May’s. He had a vague inkling that she had missed countless previous deadlines and that time was running out, but he just couldn’t remember the details precisely sufficiently to pin her down.
Corbyn did just about get round to asking when the meaningful vote would take place, but that was about that. So rather than call out May and insist on tabling an amendment to extend article 50 – heaven forbid he’d be seen to do anything to delay Brexit in order to get a better deal – he was reluctantly happy to give her another two-week extension. But he was putting her on a final warning here and now that if she missed this extension then he’d have to give her another two-week extension in a fortnight’s time.
A few MPs did try to make a stand. The SNP’s Ian Blackford called the prime minister a liar – it’s so hard to tell if she’s not telling the truth or just delusional – an outburst for which he was forced to apologise. Meanwhile, the usual suspects of Labour’s Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband along with Conservatives Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening and Heidi Allen implored May to treat Brexit as something more than a minor piece of internal Tory party management.
May wasn’t having any of it. Rather, she was encouraged by the fact that almost all her MPs had long since left the chamber. They’d heard it all before and it was now in one ear and out the other. If they weren’t going to have their heads in the sand in the Commons then they were going to have their noses in the trough in the cafe.
The few who did remain, including the Stockholm syndrome-struck Nicky Morgan, congratulated her on her brilliant negotiating skills that had resulted in precisely no new concessions whatsoever, and urged her to take another two weeks in achieving nothing. Dominic Raab even concluded that if the UK were to leave with no deal it would be entirely the EU’s fault for trying to agree a deal with someone quite so stupid as him while he had briefly been Brexit secretary.
Two and a quarter hours in, the tedium finally came to an end. Nothing had happened. Nothing had changed. Just the way May liked it. Inertia was her default programme setting. Let the clocks keep ticking. And strike thirteen.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Boris Johnson’s proposal to solve the Irish border question with a single regulatory regime north and south of the border for food and agriculture will never be enough to replace the backstop, Ireland has said.
The country’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, said Ireland will give a “generous” response to the proposal but dampened hopes that it amounted to a major breakthrough after a 90-minute meeting with Michael Gove in Cambridge on Friday night.
“I wouldn’t like to pretend that if we can solve the agri-food issue, then technology can solve the rest,” Coveney told a meeting of the British Irish Association also attended by Gove, the minister in charge of no-deal Brexit planning.
The idea of an epidemiological zone covering the whole island had been mooted previously in early Brexit talks but ultimately rejected because of the implacable opposition of the Democratic Unionist party, who said it would amount to checks down the Irish sea.
However, Johnson revealed the shift in policy on Tuesday and sources have confirmed it is a “serious proposal” which will be put to the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, when the two premiers meet in Dublin on Monday.
There was some scepticism that what the British prime minister had in mind was regulatory alignment on food between Ireland and the UK, something suggested by the Alternative Arrangements Commission, the privately funded body which has been examining how to replace the backstop.
But sources have confirmed that this is not the case and Johnson’s thinking is that Northern Ireland would remain aligned to EU standards in the Republic of Ireland if the UK diverged from EU standards at a future point.
Asked if there was merit in this proposal, Coveney said “yes” and added that he had a “good conversation” with Gove during his meeting.
But Coveney warned that Ireland found Johnson’s decision to backslide on commitments to Ireland in his letter last month to the president of the European council Donald Tusk a major problem that was unlikely to be resolved in the six weeks to Brexit day.
“The letter from PM Johnson to Donald Tusk, and the element of that letter which no longer committed to the commitments made in December 2017 [in the joint report ending the first phase of Brexit talks], that [said] the fallback was regulatory alignment if all else fails – for us that was really concerning, significantly denting trust between the two governments.
“If there is emerging thinking within the British government moving back towards regulatory alignment, rather than trusted trader schemes, scanners etc, then that is progress,” he said.
First published on Wed 30 Jan 2019 17.56 GMT
Theresa May has been told by Donald Tusk that it is her job to find a solution to the Brexit impasse during what sources have described as an “open and frank” 45-minute phone call in the wake of her demands for a renegotiation.
The European council president warned the prime minister that a precondition for any further talks was a concrete plan from Downing Street that could clearly command the support of parliament.
She in turn insisted to the EU’s most senior official that parliament had highlighted the issue that needed to be addressed in its vote on the so-called Brady amendment on Tuesday evening. But the EU source said May then subsequently failed to offer any proposals during the conversation.
Tusk is understood to have replied that the prime minister could not expect Brussels to come to her rescue with a solution. EU officials and leaders are increasingly concerned that Downing Street is seeking to blame Brussels for their failures.
After the call, which overran as the two leaders grappled over the next steps in the talks, Tusk tweeted: “My message to PM Theresa May: the EU position is clear and consistent. The withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation. Yesterday, we found out what the UK doesn’t want. But we still don’t know what the UK does want.”
There are no talks yet planned in Brussels, although the prime minister told Tusk that a face-to-face meeting would be useful in the coming days.
The call came just hours after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, accused May of distancing herself from her own Brexit deal as the EU steadfastly rejected each of the demands the prime minister made in parliament on Tuesday evening over the Irish backstop.
“She took distance from the agreement she herself negotiated and on which we had reached an agreement,” Barnier told MEPs holding a debate in the European parliament. The UK government, he went on, was explicitly supporting an amendment calling for the backstop to be replaced by alternative arrangements that were never defined. “Calmly, I will say, right here and now, we need this backstop as it is.”
Barnier also launched a thinly veiled attack on the former Brexit secretaries, Dominic Raab and David Davis, as he called for a “lucid and realistic” approach from the UK. “When I hear some people who were even part and parcel of the negotiations saying what they’re saying, it’s tough. I find it hard to accept this blame game they’re trying to play against us,” he said.
On Tuesday night, May celebrated the passing of the amendment tabled by Sir Graham Brady sending her back to Brussels to replace the Irish backstop solution for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland.
May said the vote would send a clear message to Brussels about what parliament needed for it to support the withdrawal agreement, citing the need for a time-limit or unilateral exit mechanism from the custom union that is envisaged within it.
Speaking before Barnier, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, disputed that claim.
“The withdrawal agreement remains the best and only deal possible,” he said. “The EU said so in November, we said so in December, we said so after the first meaningful vote in the Commons in January. The debate and votes in the Commons yesterday do not change that. The withdrawal agreement will not be renegotiated.”
“We have no incentive or desire to use the safety net but at the same time no safety net can ever truly be safe if it can just be moved at any time,” Juncker said.
“Sometimes from time to time I have the impression that some hope that the 26 other countries will abandon the backstop – and so Ireland – at the last moment, but this is not a game … It goes to the heart of what being a member of the European Union means. Ireland’s border is Europe’s border and it is our union.”
To the prime minister’s wish-list, Barnier also said heads of state and government had already “rejected a limit in time or leaving unilaterally the backstop as that would undermine the very idea of the backstop”.
EU diplomats on Wednesday voiced concerns in a private meeting that the prime minister had failed to achieve a mandate from parliament to secure a specific change, and concluded that the UK would have to ask for Brexit delay to avoid a no deal scenario.
Juncker said the “alternative arrangements” to the backstop backed by the Brexiters and sought by May did not exist, describing it as a “concept not a plan”.
Meanwhile, the European commission announced further no-deal contingency plans affecting students, British researchers, farmers and other recipients of EU funding, citing the increased risk of the UK crashing out of the bloc.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 29 March, the government will be handed a three-week deadline to decide whether to fully honour the £9.7bn budget contribution the UK is due to pay into the EU this year.
If the UK agrees by 18 April to continue payments and accept EU checks and controls, the EU will continue to release funds for British researchers and farmers and others with existing EU contracts.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
On Thursday evening in the local elections, Labour had disappointing results in some parts of the country. But it was a mixed bag. Amid the raging “what does it mean for Brexit?” discussions, we made gains in key marginal constituencies, which, on the basis of the vote share, mean Labour would win bellwether seats that we need to form the next government.
By contrast, the Tories had one of the worst kickings from the electorate in recent memory – to misquote the Liberal Democrats, they were losing everywhere. Their disintegration in Westminster was mirrored by their woeful performance on the ground, and it’s only the fear that grips the Tories and their wealthy backers of a radical, redistributive Labour government that is slowing its inevitable collapse.
The Lib Dems had a good night by their recent standards, but let’s not forget that the majority of their gains were in their former strongholds that they lost when these seats were last fought on the day of the 2015 general election. Most of their gains were where the Tories were the challenger, not Labour. Let’s not pretend that there was any significance to Labour’s Brexit position. The eminent professor John Curtice said the Lib Dems were mainly taking their place back as the protest vote party and there was no great switch of remain voters to them.
But, yes, people did protest and it’s hard to blame them.
I said earlier in this campaign that people aren’t talking about indicative votes on the doorstep. That is true. However, the backdrop of Brexit was everywhere, be it through boredom, frustration or anger, and this was directed at both main parties. While the election results are instantly analysed in such a way as to reflect the conclusions of whichever viewpoint you have on Brexit, I can say as someone who campaigned all over the country, and probably heard more feedback on the doorstep than anyone, that there is frustration at what the public regard as a failure of the political class – the Tories in particular – to sort something on Brexit, so that we can all focus on the issues that people care about more.
Labour’s campaign focused on the issue of austerity and the cuts that have devastated communities for nearly a decade, and on the doorsteps, people wanted to talk about rising crime, and cuts to police and schools. I found that often the dominance of Brexit on the news every night only inflamed people’s anger at the political establishment even more.
What needs to be acknowledged by my party is that the areas where we suffered losses were largely areas where Labour is seen as that political establishment: our most traditional heartlands, safe Westminster seats for generations. These are areas damaged by years of austerity and deindustrialisation. They voted in large numbers for Brexit. It’s no good telling them the current system works for them when it patently doesn’t.
There is still analysis to be done, but some facts speak for themselves. Of 248 councils contested, there were just 21 where Labour lost five seats or more, and all of them were in heavily leave-voting areas in the Midlands and northern England. While you can read too much into low-turnout council elections, it is clear from the reaction on the doorstep that the talk about another referendum was a difficult message to explain to many of our traditional voters.
But it is far more complex than that. Many voters see what is going on in Westminster, and it is reinforcing the feelings of betrayal that emerged as their industries disappeared. Beyond Brexit, Labour has to step up and show that our vision for rebuilding communities through investment and an interventionist industrial strategy can make a difference. If the volatility of the last few years has shown anything, it is that there can be no more tinkering around the edges.
On Brexit, what Labour is trying to achieve is much harder and more complex than those who say we need to simply swing behind remain admit. It would be the easiest option and perhaps superficially give us a short-term boost, but we are a national party seeking support from people all over the country, unlike the “leave means leave” charade of the Tories and Nigel Farage, or the “stop Brexit” simplicity of the smaller parties.
Given the difficulty that British politics has with nuance, our vote held up relatively well. Our anti-austerity message of investment may have been overshadowed nationally, but on a local level there was good cut-through. We are making progress in the parts of the country where we need to win at the general election.
And the Tories got an absolute hammering, their worst performance since 1995. Support for the Tories is haemorrhaging with a toxic combination of their total failure on Brexit and anger at a decade of austerity.
But we must not be complacent. These local elections have also shown us that we have more to do to convince some voters that Labour can bring about the change people desperately want, and that we are not simply part of the same political class that has been holding them back.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
It is hard to remember a moment in my lifetime when Britain faced a greater crisis. A coup led by a small group of rightwing libertarians is all but complete, as the Vote Leave team has been reassembled and taken control of 10 Downing Street. They are set upon implementing the most extreme no-deal version of Brexit – and, most terrifyingly, we are running out of time to stop them.
At times of national crises political leaders need to bring a country together. But that is not happening. The government is hellbent on creating more divisions, scapegoating our friends and neighbours, and ignoring the inequality and democratic deficit that fuelled the Brexit vote.
It is not only a crash-out Brexit that threatens our future. There’s the climate emergency too, and an unscrupulous leader would have no qualms about manipulating it to justify the sweeping aside of democratic guarantees and people losing their rights. We have to avoid this danger.
Mending our broken democracy should underpin the response to both the Brexit and climate crises – with elected politicians setting aside our political differences in the national interest. When the 16-year-old Greta Thunberg visited Britain earlier this year I convened cross-party talks with her on how to end our climate emergency. The same degree of cooperation is needed to confront what’s happening in the name of Brexit.
We need an “emergency cabinet” – not to fight a Brexit war but to work for reconciliation. And I believe this should be a cabinet of women.
Why women? Because I believe women have shown they can bring a different perspective to crises, are able to reach out to those they disagree with and cooperate to find solutions. It was two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, who began the Peace People movement during the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland; it was two women, Christiana Figueres and Ségolène Royal, who were key to the signing of the Paris climate agreement; intractable problems have found the beginning of resolution thanks to the leadership of women.
So I have reached out to 10 women colleagues from across the political spectrum at Westminster and Holyrood – Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Independent Group for Change and independent – asking that we join together to stop the dangerous pursuit of a crash-out Brexit.
This is not an attempt to replace one coup with another. A small group of us should not be deciding on Britain’s future and that is not what lies behind my initiative. But we need to find a way forward that allows the British people to decide which course they want to take.
To begin with that means denying Boris Johnson the reins of power through a no-confidence vote and establishing a national unity government. Political tribalism would likely scupper any moves that are just about putting Jeremy Corbyn in charge. So far the Labour leadership’s reaction has been to suggest they would not work in coalition with other parties, and politicians from some other parties have made clear that they would not serve under his leadership. A government of national unity must do exactly that – unite parties. And I believe that a cross-party cabinet of women has the potential to do exactly that.
We then need to press the pause button in order to organise a confirmatory vote that offers people the choice of the status quo or pressing ahead with the latest government plan – whether that is a revised withdrawal agreement or, as seems more likely, a proposal to leave with no deal.
It also means a commitment that, as politicians, we accept the outcome of that fair, transparent and informed vote, even if it delivers a result we do not agree with.
I believe we can make this happen. I’m asking my colleagues to meet with me in the coming days so together we can transform the conversation about Brexit. So together we can find a positive way forward, revitalise our democracy, and stand up to this government’s reckless gamble with Britain’s future.
First published on Mon 2 Sep 2019 14.03 BST
Jeremy Corbyn has responded to speculation that Boris Johnson is planning a general election by stating that he “will be delighted” when it comes, telling supporters: “We will win.”
The Labour leader made the remarks after giving a wide-ranging speech in Salford on Monday that was largely seen as a pitch to prospective voters in a snap election and focused on the party’s manifesto promises and support for the north of England.
However, his attempts to put Labour on a general election footing were somewhat undermined by contradictory statements made by senior party figures suggesting that legislation to stop no deal should take precedence over a national poll.
Corbyn is due to host leaders of other opposition parties in his offices on Tuesday morning to discuss cross-party legislation to block no deal to be laid in the Commons later in the day. MPs attending are understood to include the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, Ian Blackford of the Scottish National party, Liz Saville Roberts of Plaid Cymru, Anna Soubry of Change UK and the Green party’s Caroline Lucas.
The Labour leader told the audience in Salford that the party’s priority was trying to pass the bill. However, when he was asked if he would back a general election, he said he would, even in event that the prime minister put it forward for a vote himself.
An hour later, Jenny Chapman, a shadow Brexit minister, told the BBC that an election was a secondary issue. She said: “Our mission here is to prevent no deal. We do want a general election … [but] our mission is very clear, and it is about preventing no deal. If that means that a general election cannot happen at that particular point, then stopping no deal must come first.”
But on Monday evening, Corbyn reiterated his eagerness to go to the country, telling a rally in Salford: “I will be delighted when the election comes. I’m ready for it, you’re ready for it – we’ll take that message out there and above all we will win.”
A senior Labour source said that avoiding no deal and wanting a general election could run concurrently as party policies and discussions about timing were an attempt to “split hairs”.
Earlier, the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, said Labour was working with other parties to deliver the no-deal legislation in parliament, but also supported a general election and that the shadow cabinet was working on a bigger manifesto than Labour’s 2017 platform.
However, the Labour leadership faced criticism for expressing enthusiasm at the prospect of an election. The former Labour prime minister Tony Blair gave a speech to the Institute for Government earlier on Monday in which he urged against the “elephant trap” of an election before the UK’s departure from the EU was resolved and warned that polling rated Labour as unlikely to win.
The shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Tony Lloyd, told BBC Two’s Newsnight that Labour and Corbyn would “absolutely” vote against an election if one was proposed this or next week: “We don’t want to fight an election that allows Boris Johnson to crash us out [of the EU].”
Fellow Labour MP Mary Creagh agreed, telling the same programme: “I think we are all ready for a general election … we aren’t going to agree to one when there is a threat of a no-deal Brexit hanging over the country.”
Corbyn touched on the majority of the party’s policy areas during the 30-minute address in Salford and focused particularly on pledges for the north of England, in what could be seen as overtures to Labour supporters in leave-voting areas.
Promises to invest in Crossrail in the north, which would link Liverpool and Hull, received a cheer from the audience, and he pledged to rebalance the economy away from London, reverse council cuts and invest in manufacturing.
Corbyn said Labour was prepared to work with other parties to stop no deal. “We will do everything we can to stop a no-deal exit from the European Union. That is our priority,” he said.
A vote of no confidence in Johnson also remained on the table, he said: “We will do everything we can in the coming weeks to prevent no deal. We want a general election so the people of this country can decide their future and we are very clear that we would in the Labour manifesto include a public vote under a Labour government with the option of remain or whatever alternative parliament has come to.
“If it’s no deal, then we vote to remain. If it’s any other deal, then our party’s democratic processes will decide what position we take.”
Long-Bailey said: “Ultimately, we are in a position now where we’ve got to put country before party to stop a no-deal Brexit from happening and any MP shouldn’t be precious about what piece of legislation [is put] down as long as it does what it says on the tin.”
The shadow cabinet met in Salford on Monday afternoon to finalise their position. A source said there had been a “bit of back and forth” between MPs but that they had galvanised around the proposed no-deal legislation.
“We haven’t had any pushback on the bill,” a source close to the shadow cabinet said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn is poised to back a plan to block a no-deal Brexit as pressure builds within Labour and the trade unions for a delay to Britain’s EU departure.
It is understood that the leader and his shadow cabinet team are preparing to support a proposal that would force Theresa May to request an extension to Britain’s EU membership should no Brexit deal be agreed by early March.
The plan would need the endorsement of the Labour frontbench to have a chance of being passed when the next round of critical votes takes place next week. While no final decision has been taken, senior figures said the move was in line with Corbyn’s demand that May take a no-deal Brexit “off the table”.
The deliberations come with the Brexit options narrowing for Labour’s leadership amid an internal battle over whether it should back a second referendum. Having tried and failed to secure an election, figures in the party say the choice is now between a Norway-style soft Brexit, which would effectively have to include free-movement rules, and another public vote.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, who has been trying to keep open the option of a second vote, repeated the demand on Saturday. “A public vote has to be an option for Labour,” he told a Fabian Society conference. “After all, deeply embedded in our values are internationalism, collaboration and cooperation with our European partners.”
There are also continued efforts among Labour’s overwhelmingly pro-remain membership to push it towards backing a second referendum. In a letter in the Observer, more than 170 activists call for a special party conference on Brexit to endorse the idea. “A Norway-style deal would leave a Corbyn government with no say over laws which affect us,” they write. “We therefore call on the Labour party NEC [national executive council] to call a special one-day conference to determine Labour’s position on Brexit in light of recent events.”
Labour MPs are planning to ambush the leadership at a gathering of the parliamentary party a week on Monday. MPs want to force a debate at the meeting on the party’s position on a second referendum.
However, several shadow ministers have told senior party figures in the last week that they would resign should the party back another referendum. “There are an awful lot of Labour MPs, even some who backed remain, who just aren’t there yet,” said a senior party source. “It is a real political problem. They might get there, but there is some way to go.”
Many figures are coalescing around a delay to article 50, the legal process that dictates that Britain will leave the EU – with or without a deal – at the end of March. Writing in the Observer, Dave Prentis, the leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unison, says the time has come for a suspension of article 50. He suggests that a so-called people’s vote should be backed only if a softer Brexit cannot be agreed.
“The chances of forcing an election anytime soon are receding,” he writes. “Other options now have to come into play ... It’s vital immediate steps are taken to extend article 50. Not to stop Brexit, but to ensure there’s time to force a change of government, or find a solution parliament can back.
“A customs union would minimise the risk of a hard border in Northern Ireland … A Norway-like deal, allowing the UK to participate in the single market too, would further minimise the risk to our fragile economy and to employment rights.”
In a sign that there is still some way to go before Labour backs a second referendum, he says such a policy should only be adopted “if other avenues fail”.
Under a plan devised by the former Tory minister Nick Boles and Corbyn’s former leadership rival Yvette Cooper, parliamentary rules would be temporarily suspended, allowing parliament to pass a law forcing May to try to delay article 50 if no deal looked likely. It would require frontbench Labour support, which is now looking likely.
With anger among some members about Brexit growing, several party sources suggested that Labour’s huge membership had begun to fall. Several party sources said that the number of paying members had fallen well below 500,000 – meaning tens of thousands had left. However, the suggestions were denied by a senior Labour source, who said: “We are proud of our mass and vibrant membership and claims about this sort of drop-off are just wrong.”
The union movement is also split on Brexit. Manuel Cortes, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, said remaining in the EU was the “best outcome for working people”.
First published on Thu 21 Feb 2019 11.34 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn is inching closer to backing a second referendum, with the Labour leader under intense pressure from senior figures including Keir Starmer to prevent more restive MPs from leaving the party and spike the guns of the splitters.
At a Brexit policy meeting this week, Starmer spoke out in favour of an amendment drawn up by the Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, the Guardian understands. Under the terms of the amendment, MPs would support the prime minister’s deal in exchange for it being put to a public vote.
Other supporters of a second referendum, including the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, have expressed more scepticism about the approach envisaged by the amendment.
The idea of supporting a more straightforward, pro-referendum amendment also remains in play, the Guardian understands. “If there was a freestanding second referendum amendment on its own we would have to vote for it,” said one shadow minister.
The eight former Labour MPs who split from the party this week to form the Independent Group in the Commons all back a second referendum, and have attacked Corbyn for what they perceive as a “betrayal” on Brexit.
Starmer and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, were charged with meeting Kyle and Wilson to discuss the precise wording of the amendment, which would not be tabled until May brings her final deal back to parliament for the “meaningful vote”.
If that does not happen next week, May has promised to table another amendable motion, like the one that resulted in her being defeated by Brexit rebels this month.
Labour is likely to table its own amendment to that motion, which would put forward Corbyn’s alternative Brexit policy. It will also back efforts spearheaded by the Labour MP Yvette Cooper to secure an extension to article 50 if a deal is not ratified in time for exit day.
Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Corbyn sounded markedly warmer towards the idea of a second referendum than in recent weeks. Following meetings with senior EU officials, the Labour leader called for the prime minister to back a customs union in order to build a Commons majority for the Brexit deal.
He told reporters his discussions confirmed that Labour’s proposals, which include having a say in the bloc’s trade policy, were “credible”. But Corbyn said the option of holding a second referendum, should May fail to back a close economic partnership with the EU, remained “very much part of the agenda put forward by the Labour party”.
Some key figures, including Corbyn’s close ally Jon Trickett and the party chair, Ian Lavery, remain deeply sceptical about the merits of a public vote on the Brexit deal, fearing the impact on Labour’s popularity in Brexit constituencies.
But Starmer and Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, are keen to avoid the party providing a pretext for any further departures.
Abbott is understood to have argued that as a longtime supporter of enhancing party democracy, it was hard for Corbyn to ignore the voice of Labour members, who are overwhelmingly pro-remain. Up to 10 shadow ministers have said they would be prepared to resign rather than vote against a second referendum amendment.
Some senior party figures believe much of the appeal of the 11-strong Independent Group would be neutralised if Labour leant towards backing a referendum.
Kyle said his amendment was “100% in play” and he was hopeful that Labour’s leadership would back it. To allay concerns it would require Labour to back May’s deal, he said the party could abstain, allowing the deal to pass the Commons with Conservative votes.
“I recognise that is a compromise, and compromises are not meant to be totally comfortable. But it would end the Brexit nightmare by ensuring there was a confirmatory vote after Theresa May’s deal passed through parliament,” he said.
Kyle said, if Corbyn and Labour’s leadership do not vote for his amendment, “I believe that the divisions in our party would rapidly grow”. Asked if he would consider defecting if Labour was not prepared to support a second referendum, he said: “I will not be making any threats over this.”
Labour members continue to press for a second referendum in local constituencies. On Thursday night, members of the Islington South constituency party voted in support of a second referendum with the local MP, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, in attendance.
Thornberry had urged members not to pass the motion, and hinted there would be developments in Labour’s position in the coming days.
At last month’s Brexit vote, Corbyn proposed a Commons vote on the options, including his alternative Brexit plan, and whether to legislate “to hold a public vote on a deal”.
Speaking in Brussels, he said the option of a second referendum would remain key to Labour’s strategy for next Wednesday, when the Commons is due to vote again on the Brexit options.
“We will put a motion to parliament, as I have already,” Corbyn said. “Keir Starmer and I have put a motion to parliament, which included the option of a popular vote to confirm otherwise agreements that have been reached. That was rejected by parliament at that stage. Clearly it is very much part of the agenda put forward by the Labour party.”
Corbyn, who met the European commission secretary-general, Martin Selmayr, during his day in Brussels, made his comments shortly after the commission president said he was not optimistic about the chances of avoiding a no-deal Brexit.
EU diplomats briefed on recent meetings involving the prime minister and the Labour leader with Brussels officials said the risk of a no-deal Brexit had increased in recent days.
May told the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Monday that she would not seek to extend article 50 despite the lack of progress towards a deal. Corbyn told Selmayr and Michel Barnier, the main EU negotiator, that he was determined to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
But ambassadors were advised that Corbyn appeared more concerned with triggering a general election if he could.
Juncker, who held talks with May on Wednesday night, said: “If no deal were to happen, and I cannot exclude this, this would have terrible economic and social consequences in Britain and on the continent, so my efforts are oriented in a way that the worst can be avoided. But I am not very optimistic when it comes to this issue. Because in the British parliament every time they are voting, there is a majority against something; there is no majority in favour of something.”
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, and the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, were to meet the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, later on Thursday.
Corbyn said he feared the prime minister was “running down the clock” in the negotiations. “We put forward what we believe to be a credible process which would be to negotiate a customs union with the EU and alignment to ensure market access,” he said.
“We are strongly of the belief that these proposals are credible. That has been confirmed by our meetings today. The problem is the prime minister is insisting on her deal, which has already been defeated very heavily in parliament, and running down the clock by trying to keep the threat of no deal on the table with all the damage that does.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has issued an urgent plea to MPs to unite to stop no-deal Brexit “before it’s too late”, amid cross-party demands for an immediate recall of parliament to deal with the crisis.
In a show of defiance, a group of more than 100 MPs representing every Westminster party except the DUP has signed a letter stating it is “unacceptable” for parliament to wait until next month to sit again, with the Brexit deadline looming.
The call comes with more Tory MPs opposed to leaving without a deal making clear that they will not back Corbyn’s offer of heading a temporary government that is committed to delaying Brexit and calling an election. Corbyn told the Observer that MPs were flirting with disaster.
“My message to MPs across parliament is simple and urgent: only by working together can we stop no deal,” he said. “Three years after the EU referendum, the country stands at a precipice. Boris Johnson has become prime minister without any popular mandate. He has no right to drive our country off a cliff and into the arms of Donald Trump with his no-deal fixation. The plan I set out last week is the simplest and most democratic way to stop no deal. We have to seize the opportunity before it’s too late, so the people, rather than an unelected prime minister, can decide our country’s future.”
Corbyn’s opponents insist that any temporary government will only gain enough support if it is led by a neutral figure. The former Conservative minister Sir Oliver Letwin, a key figure in parliament directing efforts against a no-deal Brexit, said on Saturday he could not back a Corbyn-led emergency government. It is understood that Richard Harrington, a Tory MP who quit as a minister over Brexit, also feels he could not back a Corbyn-led government.
Senior MPs are now preparing alternative methods of ensuring parliament can block a no-deal Brexit, but know they face a race against time. The Tory MPs Dominic Grieve and Guto Bebb are among the signatories of a letter, sent to Boris Johnson on Sunday, that calls for him to recall parliament. It accuses him of “creeping and disturbing populism” over his dealings with the EU. Labour’s leadership is also understood to be supportive of the idea of recalling parliament. “Since the second world war, parliament has been recalled multiple times in every decade for a wide range of political, security and economic reasons,” states the letter, co-ordinated by backbenchers Luciana Berger and Stephen Doughty.
It continues: “Our country is on the brink of an economic crisis, as we career towards a no-deal Brexit which will have an immediate effect on food and medical supplies, damage our economy, jobs, the public finances, public services, universities and long-term economic security. A no-deal Brexit also threatens our crucial security cooperation to keep our country safe from criminals and terrorists.
“We face a national emergency, and parliament must be recalled now in August and sit permanently until 31 October, so that the voices of the people can be heard, and that there can be proper scrutiny of your government. A true democrat should not fear such scrutiny. The question is whether you are one.”
According to leaked government documents on “Operation Yellowhammer”, published by the Sunday Times, the “most likely aftershocks” of a no-deal Brexit include the UK being hit with a three-month “meltdown” at its ports, a hard Irish border and shortages of food and medicine after it leaves leaves the bloc.
A senior Whitehall source told the paper: “This is not Project Fear – this is the most realistic assessment of what the public face with no deal. These are likely, basic, reasonable scenarios – not the worst case.”
The report came as attention is turning to the battle to pass a new law forcing Johnson to delay Brexit to avoid leaving without a deal. Allies of Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, are warning Tory MPs not to wait until October to take part in attempts to block no deal. “There are too many Tories thinking, ‘Let’s wait until October, get through party conference and see where we are’,” one said. “We simply cannot afford to do that.”
Campaigners are also claiming an early legal victory. Gina Miller, the businesswoman who won a previous Brexit case, believes government lawyers have conceded that Johnson cannot suspend parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit. She argues that, in a letter to her legal team, government lawyers state they cannot prorogue parliament to stop MPs from blocking no deal. The letter states the issue is “entirely academic” because parliament has already voted to ensure it sits in key periods in the run-up to the Brexit deadline of 31 October. “Parliament has ... afforded itself the ability to scrutinise the terms of any exit of the UK from the European Union and to hold the government to account,” the government lawyers state. “There is no question of parliament being denied these functions prior to 31 October 2019.”
Miller’s legal team is seeking further guarantees from the government over its plans. “The clarification in this letter settles much of the debate, and I am delighted this has been achieved without, so far, having to approach the courts,” Miller said. “The government’s carefully worded response does not specify that parliament will have an opportunity to legislate to resist a no-deal Brexit, which ignores the central tenet of our argument that it would be abusive to prevent parliament from doing so.”
But other legal experts say the government has left itself significant wiggle room to prorogue parliament. They also warn that its lawyers have not ruled out dissolving parliament before an election to force a no-deal exit.
First published on Fri 7 Jun 2019 14.28 BST
Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he will not bow to party pressure and move immediately towards demanding a second referendum, after Labour narrowly beat the fledgling Brexit party in the Peterborough byelection.
Corbyn – arriving in the Cambridgeshire city after the party’s candidate Lisa Forbes won by 683 votes, leaving the Tories trailing in third position – called for the “squabbling contenders” within the Conservative party to give the public a general election.
The Labour leader, flanked by Forbes and MP Louise Haigh, who masterminded the byelection victory, told Labour supporters in the city centre the party “is not at the stage yet” to push for a public vote.
Asked about Labour splits over a people’s vote, he said: “Obviously every party discusses its own position and its own strategy. I have said all along that we would put to parliament our proposals on a customs union on a trade relationship and the dynamic protection of consumer and workers’ rights.
“As our conference resolution agreed last September, we would then be prepared to put that to a public vote. We are not at the stage yet where parliament has actually voted on that. I think it would be much better if there was actually a general election.”
Corbyn’s comments came as the internal Labour row about Brexit warmed up after the party’s disastrous result at last month’s European elections.
There has also been unease from some Labour MPs and Jewish campaign groups about Forbes’ election. The new MP had previously apologised for liking a Facebook post that said Theresa May had a “Zionist slave masters agenda”, saying she had meant to “like” the video of children praying in solidarity with the victims of Christchurch attacks, not the accompanying views.
The Times reported on Friday that the Labour MP Louise Ellman was calling for an investigation. She said: “These serious allegations must not be brushed under the carpet. Lisa Forbes should be suspended while the Labour party carries out an investigation.” The paper said the Labour MP Margaret Hodge had also put in an official complaint about Forbes.
The Jewish Labour Movement said Forbes needed to go “far further” to demonstrate to the Jewish community that she was not racist. The Times reported that the group was calling for Forbes’ suspension.
The Labour backbencher Jess Phillips tweeted she could not be as “gleeful or proud as I’d want to be [after the byelection in Peterborough] because of how it shows that antisemitism is becoming normal in the party.”
Phillips added: “Lisa ignored and endorsed antisemitic things, I’ll take her explanation and apology at face value and look forward to her proving, as others have, that actions not excuses alone can heal. But with every case the party’s values chip away and our ability to stand up against hate erodes.”
Haigh, who worked closely with Forbes, said the emergence of the postings was a low point for the campaign. She said: “The whole campaign team were really upset when the posts that Lisa had mistakenly engaged with came to light and that was definitely a very difficult point for the campaign. But Lisa fully accepts they were wrong. She is really, really sorry.
“I will be working with her to engage with the community and deepen her understanding and help her to be an ally in the future.”
On Brexit, grassroots activists are organising for constituency Labour parties (CLPs) to pass motions demanding a second referendum in the run-up to the party’s autumn conference – the same process that laid the groundwork for the shift in policy last year.
Mike Buckley, of the campaign group Labour for a Public Vote, said: “Hundreds of CLPs are already set to debate motions for conference calling for the party to back a new referendum, and to campaign for remain. We’re confident of winning in September – but would much prefer the party to shift now. If we don’t, we’ll lose more voters over the summer and we won’t be able to oppose no deal as effectively.”
The Labour MP Clive Lewis, of the pressure group Love Socialism Hate Brexit, tweeted in response to the Peterborough result: “We’ve blunted our opponent’s momentum with an overwhelming home field advantage. Now we must arm our activists with the radical policies they need to finish the job in the long slog ahead, including a public vote”.
Party insiders said tensions between Corbyn’s office and those pushing for a more full-throated anti-Brexit stance were running high.
The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, was dropped as Corbyn’s usual stand-in for prime minister’s questions this week after she spoke out about Labour’s strategy for the European elections. On polling day last month, Thornberry said Labour was “not clear on the one single thing that people wanted to hear”. She was replaced at the dispatch box by Rebecca Long-Bailey, a rising star on the left of the party and a staunch Corbyn loyalist.
Meanwhile, there is growing chatter about the possibility of the party’s rules being changed to create a second deputy leader, alongside Tom Watson, who has pursued a vocal campaign to toughen Corbyn’s Brexit position.
The proposal was mooted last year, but dropped at the last minute because of fears that a vote among party members could be used as a proxy referendum on Labour’s Brexit policy.
A source close to Watson said: “Lashing out by expelling Alastair Campbell, publicly humiliating Emily Thornberry and challenging Tom for the deputy leadership is not the way to resolve this situation.
“No matter how many punishment beatings are meted out, Tom will continue to speak out for what he believes in – a confirmatory ballot and a broad church Labour party that is avowedly pro-European.”
However, one close ally of Corbyn suggested the idea of challenging Watson may just have been “loose talk” in the aftermath of the European elections shock, which was then being “actively briefed by Corbyn’s opponents” to “add to the sense of victimhood” on the right of the party.
In Peterborough, amid cheers from supporters, Corbyn called for Tory leadership contenders to give the general public a chance to vote them out of office. “On the day that Theresa May ceases to be leader of the Conservative party, my message is to all the squabbling contenders for the Tory party leadership: bring it on. We are ready for a general election at any time,” he said.
Forbes won 10,484 votes, beating the Brexit party’s Mike Greene, who took 9,801 votes, a margin of 683. The Conservatives were beaten into third place with 7,243 votes. Turnout was 48%.
Farage left the count through a back door minutes before the result was announced. But Greene said the Brexit party had made a significant breakthrough, despite not winning. “We have shaken up British politics with none of the data that is necessary to win a parliamentary election,” he said. “We’ve had two parties ruling for decades; that’s not happening any more.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Momentum activists and MPs from Labour’s left who have consistently backed Jeremy Corbyn have warned the leader’s decision to support Brexit even in the event of a snap election could demotivate campaigners and cost the party seats.
Their comments follow Corbyn’s interview with the Guardian on Saturday, in which he said he would recommend the party seek to implement its own form of Brexit if it won an election and criticised EU laws on state aid, which he said blocked investment.
While Corbyn has already faced criticism from the centrist wing of his party, which has long been sceptical of his approach to Brexit, the expressions of dismay from his base will raise concerns of broader disillusionment with his strategy.
Labour passed a motion at its party conference in September that it would seek a general election as its first choice, but left open the option of supporting a second referendum.
Responding to the interview, Clive Lewis, the shadow Treasury minister who nominated Corbyn in 2015, wrote on Twitter that he has become increasingly worried by the number of left-leaning party members saying they could not campaign for a party manifesto offering Brexit at a snap election.
Retweeting comments from one campaigner in his constituency in Norwich, he wrote: “Have known this member for a good while. Solid comrade and local community campaigner. She’s not the first member to say this to me and it’s becoming a genuine concern.”
Lewis’s posting resulted in a furious exchange with George Galloway, the Brexiter and a friend of Corbyn for 30 years.
The former Respect MP wrote to Lewis on Twitter: “I think you’re the slippery two-faced intruiging [sic] scheming plotting coup-enabling deeply deeply untrustworthy shit mate.”
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Kemptown and Peacehaven MP and Corbyn backer, warned Labour would lose his and other seats in southern England if it supported Brexit.
“I’ve had hundreds of emails of good left remain voters, lifelong Labour who will not vote for us now,” he wrote on Twitter.
“If we back Brexit I’m gone in Brighton, it really is that bad, and it’s worse for other southern seats, we have hundreds that are abandoning us already and I had Ukip councillors in my area, but even those areas are wanting us to fight for remain. We need all seats to form gov.”
With Theresa May’s Brexit deal due to come back to parliament for a vote in the week beginning 14 January, anti-Brexit campaigners have used Corbyn’s latest statement to call for a special conference to discuss the party’s next steps.
Alena Ivanova, a Momentum activist and organiser for the anti-Brexit pressure group Another Europe is Possible, said the party’s policy passed at conference was the result of an unprecedented wave of support for a fresh referendum at Labour’s grassroots.
“It was a compromise, but the spirit of the policy is absolutely not for Labour to implement Brexit if it comes into office – it is to reject anti-migrant narratives and fight for a socialist Europe,” she said.
“The policy clearly states that if the government is confident it has negotiated a good deal, it should put it to the people. Why would that principle not apply to a Labour government?”
In the Guardian, Corbyn insisted his party would not try to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum. “You’d have to go back and negotiate, and see what the timetable would be,” he said.
“I think we should vote down this deal; we should then go back to the EU with a discussion about a customs union.”
Reinforcing these comments, Corbyn told the Sunday Mirror he did not foresee support for a second referendum in parliament.
When asked how he would vote in one – he voted to remain in the EU referendum – he told the newspaper: “It would depend what the question was – but we’re quite far from that anyway and I’m not sure there’s the support for it in parliament.
“The issue is protecting jobs, manufacturing and the rights and conditions we’ve got – not making us the bargain basement of Europe.”
He also said he will make sure May’s Brexit blueprint is defeated in the Commons. “I’m determined to hold this government to account, vote the deal down and reopen those negotiations,” Corbyn said.
A poll last week appeared to show Labour’s young supporters would leave the party in droves if it votes to back a compromise Brexit deal.
According to a YouGov poll of more than 5,000 people commissioned by the People’s Vote, Labour’s support among 18 to 29-year-olds is currently at 60%. However, if Labour backed a form of Brexit, support for Corbyn’s party among the young would halve to 33%.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.44 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn is facing significant pressure from his own MPs to resist any government calls for an immediate general election, as Labour refused to confirm when they might back such a poll even if a lengthy Brexit extension is agreed.
While the official Labour position remains that Corbyn will support an election once the immediate threat of a no-deal Brexit no longer exists, the party leadership is refusing to be pinned down on what reassurances would be needed for this to happen.
The deliberate ambiguity is partly caused by extreme anxiety among Labour MPs about the prospect of abandoning the idea of a Brexit referendum for a pre-Christmas election, especially with the party a dozen or so percentage points behind the Conservatives in recent polls.
One Labour backbencher told the Guardian they believed up to half the parliamentary party could rebel if Corbyn decided to whip his MPs to support a motion seeking an election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (FTPA).
Another MP described the opposition to an election within Labour as “very strong and widespread”. A party source added: “It’s fair to say there’s not a great appetite for an election in December.”
Under the FTPA, which came into force in 2011, if a government wants to force a general election sooner than the standard five-year cycle it must pass a motion with a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons, or at least 430 votes.
Boris Johnson has twice called such a vote to seek an election, but failed to attract the necessary number of votes after Labour abstained.
One ardently pro-remain Labour MP said some colleagues believe a general election may be the party’s last, best hope of blocking Brexit, and he was “totally split” about whether to support it. Another warned: “I think only a very small fraction would vote for it.”
At the shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Corbyn loyalists including Dan Carden and Laura Pidcock spoke out in favour of supporting an early poll – but others would prefer to push for a referendum.
Corbyn’s spokesman, giving a briefing to reporters after prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, repeated that the party’s policy remained backing an election once no-deal was prevented, but repeatedly refused to say whether this would happen if the EU agreed a Brexit delay until 31 January.
“Exactly how the extension is made, and how it’s communicated and what the legal status is, will determine whether we consider [no deal] taken off the table, and the risk of a crash-out there or not,” he said.
“As soon as the threat of a no-deal crash-out is off the table, and that is clear and guaranteed, then of course we would support an election.”
The spokesman declined to say what further guarantees would be sought on preventing no deal, saying only: “We need to wait and see what it is that they’re going to come up with, which I think is going to be quite soon.”
Asked if the concern would be the fact that under law, if Labour supported an election motion under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act then it would be up to the government to set a poll date, the spokesman said this was “one of the worries”, but not the only one.
If Corbyn did decide to support an election, it would seem unlikely that a backbench Labour rebellion could prevent this.
If Conservatives in the Commons were joined by the SNP and Liberal Democrats, both of whom have liaised with Labour over whether to back an election, it would need little more than a third of Labour MPs to back the plan for it to reach 430 votes.
Additionally, Labour whips would try to suppress any rebellion by impressing on MPs the need to show the party as united before an election.
The timing of any election hinges in part on whether Johnson pushes for an immediate poll or tries instead to again shepherd his Brexit-enabling withdrawal agreement bill through the Commons after MPs rejected the accelerated timetable on Tuesday.
At a meeting between Corbyn and Johnson on Wednesday, called to discuss a possible revised parliamentary timetable, Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief of staff, appeared keenest on pushing Brexit through parliament in time to hit the 31 October deadline – even if it meant holding all-night sittings.
The meeting was good-natured but inconclusive, according to one person present, who claimed the No 10 side had kicked off by asking how Labour might respond if a Brexit extension was vetoed by France.
While Theresa May and her advisers faced Corbyn across the table in her Westminster office, Johnson, who has inherited the room, chose to conduct the conversation on sofas.
While the talks were described as “cordial”, it quickly became clear that there was no common ground at all over Labour’s idea of a longer timetable for the Brexit bill.
Asked if the process would resume, a Downing Street source said: “I do not expect any further talks.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
A new cross-party group of MPs plans to thwart Brexit by swinging the Commons behind a second referendum as soon as Theresa May requests parliament’s backing for a deal with the EU, as pressure mounts on party leaders to put the issue back to the people.
Tory, Labour and SNP members say they will table a “killer” amendment in favour of a public vote. The amendment, if passed, will state that acceptance of the prime minister’s deal must be dependent on a public vote taking place beforehand, in which people would be offered the choice of leaving on the terms of that deal, or staying in the EU.
The group, led by the Tory MP and former GP Sarah Wollaston, is determined to maintain the momentum from last weekend’s march through London by 700,000 people in favour of a people’s vote, by showing remainers that MPs in all the main parties are prepared to fight for them in parliament.
Wollaston is working with a team of two other GPs – the Tory MP Phillip Lee and Labour’s Paul Williams – and the SNP’s Philippa Whitford, who is a surgeon. They are particularly concerned by the effect Brexit will have on the NHS but warn it will also be a catastrophe for the economy and jobs.
They believe the move has the backing of more than 100 MPs, and that they have a chance of pushing the amendment through if the Labour leadership shifts position and whips its MPs in favour of a second vote.
A senior Labour figure who backs the move said: “There are some supporters of a second referendum who think the main push should come later, amid the chaos that would ensue from May’s deal failing to get through parliament or a no-deal. But we believe a killer amendment like this could be our only chance. We cannot afford to miss it.”
The prospect of such a vote will increase the pressure on the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who would prefer a general election to a second vote. A majority of his party members and activists want a second referendum, and most would prefer to stay in the EU rather than accept a poor Brexit deal.
Wollaston, who spoke at the “people’s vote” march, said: “Without a second referendum vote on the final deal there is no informed consent to Brexit. The consequences will last for generations. Valid consent requires the government to set out the final version of Brexit and allow people to weigh up the risks and benefits.
“Quite simply Brexit will be bad for health, science and the economy in ways that will touch all our lives. As a group of four current and former clinicians we feel that the principle of informed consent is as important when it comes to Brexit as it is to patients when weighing up the pros and cons of surgery.
“People must have the right to look at the final plans, the evidence about consequences and have the opportunity to change their minds.”
Williams said: “Before politicians make the biggest leap that this country will make in all of our lifetimes, we should check with people to make sure this is really, really what they want to do. We now know so much more than we did in 2016. Companies are stopping investments in the UK. NHS staff are leaving because they don’t feel welcome. Medical research collaboration with Europe is ending.
“Our country will become poorer, have less influence and have less control with the type of Brexit deal that Theresa May is agreeing. Is this really a price worth paying?”
Senior ministers confronted the prime minister last week over their suspicions that No 10 will agree a deal that they could never accept. At a stormy cabinet meeting on Tuesday, May was told there must now be the “closest possible political supervision” of the Brexit negotiations.
Ministers demanded a full cabinet discussion, including an assessment by the chief whip, Julian Smith, and a legal ruling by attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, before Britain signs anything. The so-called “Irish backstop”, demanded by the EU and agreed to by May last year, would at the very least keep Northern Ireland tied into the EU’s customs and standards rules.
Ireland’s EU commissioner, Phil Hogan, told May there was no chance the EU would back down on the issue. “Nobody should be in any doubt about the unity of the EU to ensure that the commitment to an operational backstop on the island of Ireland is honoured and included in the withdrawal agreement so that a hard border on the island of Ireland is avoided,” he told the Observer.
In a hair-raising rundown of planning for a no-deal Brexit, Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, told colleagues he was looking at whether trade could be rerouted through Dutch and Belgian ports should the French take a “tough stance”. He said Britain was highly dependent on the Channel tunnel and said the private sector should “think creatively” to help solve the capacity problem at UK ports.
On aviation, it was pointed out that while companies such as Ryanair could move their headquarters to keep planes flying between EU destinations, this was “not an option for British Airways”. It was also announced that the government was about to tender for warehouse space to store crucial medicines.
Leaders of the SNP, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats met the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, in Brussels last week. In an article written after the talks, Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid’s leader at Westminster, and the Lib Dem leader, Vince Cable, said one message had been that Labour was now the main obstacle to another referendum.
At its party conference earlier this month Labour said it would push for a general election in the event of Brexit chaos, but another referendum was an option if it could not force one.
First published on Mon 25 Feb 2019 17.47 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has finally thrown his party’s weight behind a second EU referendum, backing moves for a fresh poll with remain on the ballot paper if Labour should fail to get its own version of a Brexit deal passed this week.
The decision to give the party’s backing to a second referendum follows a concerted push by the shadow Brexit secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, and the deputy leader, Tom Watson, who fear any further delay could have led to more defections to the breakaway Independent Group (TIG), whose members all back a second referendum.
Although the move has delighted MPs who are backing the People’s Vote campaign, Corbyn is likely to face determined opposition from dozens of MPs in leave seats if the party whips to back a second referendum, including a significant number of frontbenchers.
The former shadow minister Lucy Powell said she believed at least 25 MPs would vote against any whip to back a second referendum, meaning that it would face an uphill struggle to pass the Commons without significant Conservative support.
A private briefing sent to Labour MPs on Monday night and seen by the Guardian makes it clear that Labour’s policy would be to include remain as an option in any future referendum.
“We’ve always said that any referendum would need to have a credible leave option and remain,” the briefing said. “Obviously at this stage that is yet to be decided and would have to be agreed by parliament.”
The briefing also makes it clear that the party would not support no deal being included on the ballot paper. “There’s no majority for a no-deal outcome and Labour would not countenance supporting no deal as an option,” the briefing says. “What we are calling for is a referendum to confirm a Brexit deal, not to proceed to no deal.”
The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, indicated on Monday evening that both she and Corbyn would campaign for remain if there were a future public vote.
“We would have a referendum on whatever deal it is that may or may not pass through parliament and we would be saying to people: ‘Do you want this, or do you want to remain?’” she told Channel 4 News.
Thornberry said she “would certainly be campaigning for us to remain” in those circumstances and, when asked if Corbyn shared that view, she added: “If it’s a choice between a disastrous Tory Brexit or no deal, and remaining, then that is what we will have to do.”
The redrawing of Labour’s objectives is likely to stem any fresh flood of resignations to TIG, whose members include the former Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and Chris Leslie as well as the ex-Tory MP Anna Soubry, all key figures in the People’s Vote movement.
Corbyn told MPs the party would back a fresh poll as a final resort in order to stop “a damaging Tory Brexit being forced on the country”.
Speaking to MPs on Monday night, a week after seven MPs who backed a referendum quit the party, Corbyn said Labour would first table its own version of a Brexit deal, including a permanent customs union.
That amendment is set to be tabled to the government’s Brexit motion on Wednesday, when Labour will also whip to back another amendment tabled by Yvette Cooper and the Tory Oliver Letwin, which would legislate for a delay to the UK’s exit date in order to avoid no deal.
May is expected to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid a serious cabinet rebellion over that amendment this week. The Guardian reported last week that at least four cabinet ministers and almost a dozen junior ministers and many others on the government payroll were ready to rebel and vote for the measure.
The prime minister’s most likely option is a pledge to let MPs vote on delaying Brexit if the withdrawal deal does not pass by 12 March, though Cooper and Letwin’s backers have suggested they will reject that approach.
Party sources said Labour would not introduce or back any amendment for a second referendum this week, but see the crunch point at the next opportunity – likely to be the next meaningful vote on the Brexit deal that May has promised to hold by 12 March.
It is highly unlikely Labour’s amendment on its own Brexit deal will pass on Wednesday, making it almost inevitable the party will move to back another referendum.
Corbyn told MPs that Labour “cannot and will not accept” May running down the clock towards no deal. “One way or another, we will do everything in our power to prevent no deal and oppose a damaging Tory Brexit based on Theresa May’s overwhelmingly rejected deal,” he said.
“That’s why, in line with our conference policy, we are committed to also putting forward or supporting an amendment in favour of a public vote to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit being forced on the country.”
Yet recriminations came from leave-supporting Labour MPs almost immediately in the private meeting on Monday night. John Mann, a Brexit supporter, said the decision to back a second referendum would cost Labour in the Midlands and the north. “The price will stop you being prime minister,” he told the meeting.
Outside the meeting, the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said he had “deep reservations” about the possibility of a second referendum and suggested it would not pass the House of Commons.
“I think it would be deeply divisive. It has a corrosive impact on the sovereignty of parliament and it is not clear to me still what should be on the ballot paper,” he said.
It is understood that about a dozen shadow ministers could consider their positions if Labour whips MPs to back a second referendum.
Those who vocally oppose a second referendum include the shadow justice minister Gloria de Piero, the shadow housing minister Melanie Onn and shadow education minister Tracy Brabin as well as backbenchers including Caroline Flint, Gareth Snell and Lisa Nandy.
Seventeen Labour MPs, including eight shadow ministers, voted against or abstained on Cooper’s previous amendment to extend article 50 last month.
Future Labour support for a second referendum could come in the form of backing for a proposed amendment to the meaningful vote proposed by the Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson.
That proposal would approve May’s deal subject to a fresh referendum, though senior Labour officials are thought to be uneasy about backing any amendment that endorses the Tory Brexit deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
John Bercow has said he plans to stay in his post as Speaker of the House of Commons despite previous expectations he was about to leave, risking the fury of hardline Eurosceptics who believe he wants to thwart a no-deal Brexit.
The Speaker told the Guardian it was not “sensible to vacate the chair” while there were major issues before parliament. And, amid growing indications that frontrunners for the Conservative leadership are willing to depart the EU without a deal, he warned candidates not to try to force such an outcome without the permission of MPs.
Bercow had told friends he intended to stand down as Speaker this summer, possibly in July, after concluding 10 years in the post. But his remarks on Tuesday appear to confirm reports he was reconsidering after the UK did not leave the EU at the end of March.
Speaking to the Guardian after a speech in Washington, Bercow said: “I’ve never said anything about going in July of this year. Secondly, I do feel that now is a time in which momentous events are taking place and there are great issues to be resolved and in those circumstances, it doesn’t seem to me sensible to vacate the chair.”
He added: “If I had any intention to announce on that matter … I would do so to parliament first.”
The clarification of his position will enrage hard-Brexit Conservatives who had once expected his departure to ease their task in the months ahead of the 31 October deadline.
His comments will be read as a rebuke to the favourites to succeed Theresa May, including Boris Johnson, who have said that the UK must leave the EU on 31 October no matter what. They suggest he will stay on to see through the parliamentary battle likely to emerge in the coming months, as a cross-party group of MPs gear up to prevent the new Conservative prime minister trying to force through a no-deal Brexit.
In a forthright speech at the Brookings Institution, Bercow said it was “for the birds” to think that parliament could be sidelined in the debate over Brexit. But he added: “The idea that parliament is going to ….. be evacuated from the centre-stage of the debate on Brexit is unimaginable. It is simply unimaginable.”
MPs have already voted against leaving the EU without a deal at the end of March, but some of the Conservative leadership candidates – Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Esther McVey – have said they would be prepared to leave the EU, deal or no deal, at the end of October.
Raab even suggested he would be ready to ignore the will of parliament in order to do so, telling BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “It’s very difficult for parliament now to legislate against a no deal, or in favour of a further extension, unless a resolute prime minister is willing to acquiesce in that – and I would not.”
Johnson, Raab, Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt have all signalled they would try to change the EU withdrawal agreement as a first option but Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, said on Tuesday he was “crystal clear” that there would be no renegotiation.
Pro-remain MPs are worried they may have run out of parliamentary mechanisms to prevent a no-deal Brexit, and the Institute for Government has said there may be no decisive route left for parliament to block a no deal. However, there is the potential for an engaged Speaker to grant emergency motions or be more flexible in his interpretation of parliamentary convention to create opportunities for MPs to have their say.
Bercow’s intervention followed another day of jockeying for position among the Tory leadership hopefuls, with candidates’ positions on a hard Brexit viewed as the central issue after the Brexit party’s success in the European elections helped drive the Conservatives into fifth place.
After the entry of Kit Malthouse, a former deputy mayor to Boris Johnson, to the race, an 11th candidate, James Cleverly, was also preparing to announce his candidacy.
Malthouse was a surprise addition to the race, who said he was the man to deliver the “Malthouse compromise” on Brexit, which was named after him. The compromise – replacing the Irish backstop with alternative arrangements, or negotiating a longer-term transition to a no-deal exit – has been backed by Conservative leavers and remainers but was rejected as unworkable by Downing Street.
He raised eyebrows on Tuesday by suggesting the government could buy up lamb chops to feed to schoolchildren in the event of no deal. Malthouse told LBC: “Something like 80,000 tonnes of sheep meat is exported every year. Now if we go out with no deal, they think that will be significantly affected … could we use it in hospitals and in schools?”
The pair join Johnson, Raab, Hunt, Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey, Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock and Rory Stewart in a crowded field of candidates.
Others who may yet declare include the hardline Eurosceptic Steve Baker, Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, Penny Mordaunt, the defence secretary, the Treasury minister Jesse Norman, the former development secretary Priti Patel and Graham Brady, until recently the chair of the 1922 Committee.
While many Conservatives view Bercow’s claims of neutrality with scepticism, he insisted to a mostly academic audience at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday that he was simply a fierce defender of parliament’s rights.
He said: “My reading of the situation is that legally, the default position in the absence of an agreement …… is Brexit on 31 October – that is to say in the absence of a deal and in the absence of a further extension. That is the legal position as I understand it.”
 But he added: “There is a difference between a legal default position and what the interplay of political forces in parliament will facilitate.” He said he would like to be remembered “as a backbenchers’ champion”.
 If Bercow stays on longer as Speaker, it will infuriate pro-Brexit Tories who regard him as biased against leaving the EU, potentially resulting in another attempt to oust him, although it would be unlikely to succeed at this stage.
 This month, Bercow was reported by his local paper to have said he would not be staying on as Speaker “much longer”. But in January, friends of Bercow told the Observer he was “seriously reflecting” on whether to stay on – possibly until 2022 – after cabinet ministers threatened to deny him a peerage because of his alleged “bias” against the government over Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
The Tories don’t agree on much these days. Some even want a general election now as a way to deliver what they view as a true Brexit. However, they can all get behind some good, old-fashioned John Bercow bashing. Ministers report that the only good cabinet meetings these days are those where they can go around slagging off the House of Commons Speaker over his latest – aggravating – decision on Brexit.
So Bercow’s announcement that he has no plans to step down this summer – or in the foreseeable – will be generally ill received in the Tory party. When it comes to the challenges any Conservative leader faces delivering Brexit, the Speaker ranks in the top three – alongside a hung parliament and Brussels’ reluctance to renegotiate.
In the past few months, Bercow’s decisions on Brexit – at times seemingly inconsistent – have been blamed by the government for making an uphill task of delivering Brexit even harder. His ruling that MPs could not vote on the same thing twice – but could vote on the same amendments repeatedly – meant the government’s timetable for bringing the various meaningful votes had to be redrafted. Members of government believe that this meant they lost momentum at a crucial juncture.
Now Bercow looks set to cause Theresa May’s successor problems, too. Speaking from the US, he told the Guardian that he had no plans to stand down this summer as previously reported. “I do feel that now is a time in which momentous events are taking place and there are great issues to be resolved and in those circumstances, it doesn’t seem to me sensible to vacate the chair.”
On the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, Bercow used his speech that night at the Brookings Institution in Washington to say the idea – as some Brexiter candidates have mooted – that the government could force through a no-deal Brexit without parliament having a say was “for the birds”. “The idea that parliament is going to … be evacuated from the centre-stage of the debate on Brexit is unimaginable. It is simply unimaginable.”
This throws a spanner in the works of the leadership pitches of Brexiter candidates Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson. Both have said they believe they can push through a UK exit from the EU on World Trade Organization terms without parliament’s say if it was necessary. They know that parliament is opposed to no deal, so if there is a vote it won’t pass. Bercow’s latest intervention plays into the hands of candidates like Jeremy Hunt and Matt Hancock – who have warned pursuing a no deal would be stopped by parliament and would therefore lead to an early election, which could be catastrophic for the Tories.
Given that the vast majority of MPs – and nearly all Labour MPs – are opposed to a hard Brexit, don’t expect to see Bercow’s latest move leading to him coming under any Commons pressure. The role of Speaker is meant to be an impartial one, yet the perception that Bercow is partial on Brexit is what is currently keeping him in more secure employment than most of his colleagues can dream of.
Despite facing serious bullying allegations in the past year, Bercow remains in place. A report, led by Dame Laura Cox, found the current leadership in parliament were incapable of changing a widespread culture of bullying and harassment. It concluded that officials including Bercow should consider standing down.
Usually this type of conclusion would be something the Labour party would go on the attack on – standing up for the junior staff who have suffered harassment in the workplace from figures in positions of authority, including comments about their appearance, inappropriate touching and bullying behaviour. Only, many Labour MPs took a different view of the report’s finding in light of Bercow’s perceived stance in favour of the EU. As Margaret Beckett put it, “the most difficult decision we’ve made for hundreds of years trumps bad behaviour”.
But before the likes of Beckett celebrate Bercow’s extended reign and the trouble it could cause the Brexiters, they would be wise to consider the longer implications of keeping Bercow in a role that was meant to be neutral. After all, there’s a chance that this new tradition sticks. While pro-EU MPs may reap the benefits for now, they may well hum a different tune if it eventually leads to a Speaker who leans the other way.
First published on Thu 12 Sep 2019 20.04 BST
John Bercow has threatened Boris Johnson that he will be prepared to rip up the parliamentary rulebook to stop any illegal attempt by the prime minister to take the UK out of the EU without a deal on 31 October.
In a direct warning to No 10, the Speaker of the House of Commons said he is prepared to allow “additional procedural creativity” if necessary to allow parliament to block Johnson from ignoring the law.
“If we come close to [Johnson ignoring the law], I would imagine parliament would want to cut off that possibility … Neither the limitations of the existing rulebook or ticking of the clock will stop it doing so,” he said, delivering the annual Bingham lecture in London. “If I have been remotely ambiguous so far, let me make myself crystal clear. The only form of Brexit that we have, whenever that might be, will be a Brexit that the House of Commons has explicitly endorsed.”
He also proposed a written constitution to stop “executive malpractice or fiat”, which could potentially have avoided the constitutional crisis that the UK has found itself in over Brexit.
Bercow’s dramatic intervention will be one of his last as Speaker, as he has announced that he will stand down at the end of October just two weeks after parliament is due to return from its current state of suspension.
Johnson faced yet another difficult day on Thursday as he was forced to deny having misled the Queen over his reasons for proroguing parliament, which was judged unlawful this week by a Scottish court. The full ruling of three appeal court judges was published on Thursday, in which they agreed unanimously it was to prevent proper parliamentary scrutiny of his Brexit strategy, and for no other reason.
Lord Carloway, the Lord President, said prorogation was sought “in a clandestine manner” during a time when Downing Street knew that 75 MPs and peers were taking the government to court to block prorogation.
Speaking after an event about shipbuilding, Johnson said it was “absolutely not true” that he lied to the monarch in advising her to suspend parliament, insisting it was a decision taken to facilitate a Queen’s speech in mid-October. The prime minister, who is due to give a speech in the north of England on Friday, highlighted a differing judgment by the high court in London and said it was for the supreme court to make a final adjudication next week.
Johnson also sought to play down a row about the role of Scottish judges in ruling prorogation unlawful after the business minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, claimed “many people” thought judges were biased in relation to Brexit.
With his options narrowing, Johnson appears to be increasing efforts to secure a deal with the EU, possibly by moving more towards a watered-down form of Northern Ireland-only backstop. However, he maintains that a no-deal Brexit on 31 October is still possible and sought to minimise the significance of the Operation Yellowhammer documents published by order of parliament on Wednesday. These set out the threat of food and medicine shortages, travel disruption and public disorder in a worst-case no-deal scenario.
The prime minister has pledged to abide by the law in general but he has also said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask the EU for another Brexit extension and suggested in a letter to Tory members that he is only bound by the legislation forbidding a no-deal exit on 31 October “in theory”. His top adviser, Dominic Cummings, is said to believe that the law does not make the government bound to secure a delay from the EU, but various options – such as sending a contradictory letter to Brussels – have been dismissed as illegal by experts. Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has suggested Johnson could be a “Brexit martyr” if he holds out against requesting an extension.
In his speech Bercow lambasted the idea that Johnson could even consider ignoring legislation passed by MPs, which mandates the prime minister to seek a three-month Brexit delay if no deal is struck by mid-October.
He went on to compare any attempt by Brexit advocates to ignore the law in pursuit of what they believe to be a higher cause to “robbing a bank on the basis that the cash stolen would be donated to a charitable cause immediately afterwards”.
“Not obeying the law must surely be a non-starter. Period. Surely. In 2019, in modern Britain, in a parliamentary democracy, we parliamentarians, legislators, cannot in all conscience be conducting a debate as to whether adherence to the law is or is not required,” Bercow said.
“What conceivable moral force do the public’s representatives have in seeking to tackle antisocial behaviour, in seeking to prosecute the fight against knife crime and seeking to argue the state should protect itself against all sorts of nefarious illegality if we are to treat for a moment the proposition it might be in order in the name of some higher cause to disregard … It is astonishing that anyone has even tried to entertain the notion. It would be the most terrible example to set to the rest of society.”
Bercow, who is standing down after 10 years in the Speaker’s chair, said the “Brexit maelstrom” had exposed weaknesses in the country’s political framework.
“I have been a sceptic in the past about the desirability of a written constitution for the UK,” he said. “I have come to the conclusion that it’s worth establishing a royal commission or a Speaker’s conference to explore [the options].”
It should aim to ensure, he said, that the authority of the House of Commons is “never distorted by executive malpractices or fiat ... We must consider whether a written constitution is what we need.”
Three outcomes, Bercow explained, were most likely when parliament returns on 14 October: a new withdrawal agreement supported by parliament, a no-deal Brexit backed by a Commons majority, or a request by the government to Brussels for a future temporary extension of the UK’s membership of the EU.
Bercow has become a vilified figure among Brexiters who believe he has been complicit in thwarting efforts to leave the EU.
Addressing his critics, Bercow said he believed he had never bent or broken the rules of the House of Commons.
He condemned those “bigots” who conduct personal attacks on MPs. Portraying MPs such as Dominic Grieve in newspapers as “enemies of the people” is a dangerous development, he said. And using such terms as “Go back” is noxious and repellent, he added.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
In schlock horror movies there is a moment when the monster, assailed by every weapon and presumed dead, lurches back to life. And so Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement comes crawling from behind the closed doors of parliament, where it was killed at least three times.
Boris Johnson says he wants a deal and there is neither time nor diplomatic goodwill sufficient to craft a new one. Erasure of the backstop – the Brexiteers’ big demand – is not available. As a candidate for the Tory leadership, Johnson boasted that Brussels would yield once confronted with a UK government prepared to quit the bloc with no deal at all. Conversations in Paris and Berlin have disabused him of that notion.
The EU position, restated by Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, in a press conference on Monday, is that the basic provisions of May’s deal would survive even a no-deal scenario. They would return as conditions for the opening of talks that Britain would crave to normalise relations with the continent.
Johnson stood next to Varadkar in Dublin, shuffling like a chastened child. He said that inability to reach a deal by 31 October would be a “failure of statecraft”. The phrase is revealing because the Tory leader has always fancied himself as a serious statesman, even if he doesn’t look the part. That ambition has been superseded – but not extinguished – by admiration for the Donald Trump model of endless provocation. Last summer Johnson invited a private meeting of business leaders to imagine how Trump might handle Brexit: “There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere.”
Application of that theory has not gone to plan. Moderate Tories have proved less indulgent of unhinged leadership than their Republican counterparts, imposing a legal duty on the prime minister to reject a chaotic Brexit. Johnson could break the law, but that would carry a high risk of eviction from office – martyring himself for beliefs that he doesn’t hold firmly enough to justify the cost in personal discomfort.
Those who depict the Tory leader as a British Trump (including the US president himself) underestimate his capacity for cowardice. He also likes to be liked, which is why he promises contradictory things to different people. As mayor of London, he could be persuaded to support and oppose the same idea in consecutive meetings. I have heard from a number of sources how Johnson, as foreign secretary, asked officials to explain the problem with Brexit and the Good Friday agreement, and decided that the solution was to hide the border in the Irish sea. Northern Ireland could be an exclave of regulatory alignment with Brussels – the original “Northern Ireland-only” backstop model proposed by the EU. Only when the DUP freaked out – and hardline Tory backbenchers cried betrayal – did Johnson recoil from customs checks at the port of Larne.
Reversion to this “NI-only backstop” is now the object of much speculation among seasoned Brexit-watchers. A notable side-effect of Johnson’s decision to withdraw the whip from 21 Tory MPs is that their exile renders the 2017 confidence-and-supply deal with the DUP obsolete. Johnson is so far short of a majority that Arlene Foster’s party can’t get him over the line. That doesn’t make it easier for the prime minister to ratify a Brexit deal, but it does remove a privileged power of veto from the unionist ultras.
One reason to suppose that Johnson is malleable on the detail is that on 29 March he voted for May’s deal – the same one he denounces as an affront to democracy. The hypocrisy is not surprising, but it does illuminate that tension in Johnson’s self-image, between the wannabe statesman and the Trump tribute act. One enjoys the hobnobbing with world leaders at global summits, the other is an accomplice in vandalising the architecture of a rules-based international order.
The same tension is expressed in domestic politics. There is affable Boris who thought he could charm his way to an elegant Brexit solution, unify his party and woo the country with a healing message. He was barged aside by bullying Boris who purges dissent from his party and stokes division in the country. One belongs to the old Tory party that venerated stability and reached out to liberal voters. The other leads a new revolutionary leaver party, recruiting admirers of Nigel Farage for a nationalist insurgency.
The Downing Street calculation appears to be that a majority is most easily won by stripping the Conservative party down and reassembling it as something unconservative. Johnson will run as a populist tribune, the man who would rather be “dead in a ditch” than surrender to tricky continentals and their Westminster collaborators.
It might work. Current polling doesn’t offer much of a guide when the vital choices have been punted to the end of October. That doesn’t leave much time for the prime minister to tweak May’s Brexit deal and, in defiance of all the odds, persuade a hostile parliament to vote for it. But that doesn’t mean he has given up on the idea. Or, rather, it isn’t certain that the battle between Johnson’s conflicting instincts has been settled. He reads from the Trump playbook at home, but puts it hastily down when grownup EU leaders enter the room. He is too weak-willed to play the typical nationalist strongman. He saddled the populist tiger and rode it towards a no-deal Brexit, but look closely and you see a queasy expression, as if there is a part of him that wants to get off.
First published on Mon 16 Sep 2019 19.51 BST
Boris Johnson will still need a bloc of Labour MPs to vote for any Brexit agreement struck with the EU, even if his whips have managed to reduce the number of Tory Eurosceptic “Spartans” holding out against a deal down to just eight.
The prime minister insisted again on Monday that he wants a deal with Brussels that removes the Northern Ireland backstop. But even if he secures some concessions that he can sell as a new deal, his chances of getting that agreement through the House of Commons remain extremely finely balanced.
On the current numbers, he has 287 MPs who voted for a deal last time, while there are 289 MPs from opposition parties and independents who are against a deal.
Johnson would need to reach a total of 319 MPs to win a vote, discounting Sinn Féin MPs, the speaker and his deputies, who all do not vote, and three Labour MPs who abstained last time round.
Analysis by the Guardian shows there are about 60 MPs who potentially could go either way. These include 28 Spartans who refused to vote for Theresa May’s deal but could potentially be persuaded to back a Johnson-led agreement, plus 10 DUP MPs who Johnson is trying to sign up to his new plan for a watered-down version of a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
Tory sources have told the Sun that the Conservative whips believe that the 28 rebels can be squeezed down to about eight of the hardest Eurosceptics. But even in the best case scenario for the prime minister of an extra 20 Tories and 10 DUP MPs on board, Johnson would still need some Labour votes to very narrowly squeeze a deal through the Commons.
There are 26 Labour MPs who have signed a letter publicly urging Jeremy Corbyn to try to strike a Brexit deal before 31 October, of whom five have already previously voted for a deal and one abstained. Of the remaining bloc of 21, many of them would want to see at the very least concessions offered by May during talks with Labour enshrined in the agreement before voting for it, but several have indicated to the Guardian they are getting to the point where they are likely to vote for almost any agreement to end the impasse and avoid a second referendum or no-deal situation.
The closeness of the numbers would be likely to put huge pressure on individual MPs and lead to some big personal decisions. Jo Johnson, the prime minister’s brother who resigned from his top team over Brexit, previously voted against May’s deal because of his support for a second referendum, but could potentially switch sides this time.
Sir Norman Lamb, a Liberal Democrat MP, is also now on the record expressing support for some sort of deal, which goes against his party’s new policy of being in favour of revoking article 50.
A source close to one pro-deal cabinet minister said Johnson had not yet started wooing Labour MPs but that would come at the last minute if it appears more likely that an agreement palatable to the DUP is taking shape.
The source said most of the Spartan Tories have, politically, “nowhere else to go” now that the prime minister is mandated by law to request an extension on 31 October if no deal is passed.
A cross-party group of MPs last week formally launched a campaign to win support in the Commons for Brexit via a managed deal, arguing both a no-deal departure or a second referendum would cement political divisions and cause endless uncertainty.
The organisers – including the Labour MPs Caroline Flint and Stephen Kinnock as well as Lamb and the former Tory Rory Stewart – claim up to 50 MPs so far may back the plan, which would involve using elements of May’s Brexit proposals as the basis for an agreement which Boris Johnson could steer through parliament, possibly in time for a 31 October departure.
First published on Wed 31 Jul 2019 13.30 BST
Boris Johnson has sent his most senior EU adviser and Brexit negotiator to Brussels to deliver in person his message that the UK will leave without a deal unless the bloc abolishes the Irish backstop.
David Frost, a former British ambassador to Denmark who was also an adviser to Johnson when he was foreign secretary, is to hold talks with EU officials over the next 48 hours.
As Johnson’s choice to replace Olly Robbins, Frost is to be the new government’s main interlocutor for fresh negotiations. His contact is the most significant so far between Johnson’s administration and Brussels.
He will meet Clara Martinez Alberola, the head of cabinet for the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker; Stéphanie Riso, a senior official in Michel Barnier’s negotiations taskforce who was a key player in drafting the terms of the backstop, and Ilze Juhansone, the deputy secretary general at the commission.
The meetings will be held over Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning but a government spokesman reiterated the prime minister’s position that without a radical EU rethink of the backstop there would be no significant talks.
Johnson has insisted that removal of the “undemocratic” backstop – which would keep Northern Ireland under single market regulations and the whole of the UK in a customs union to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland – is necessary for a deal to be struck on the terms of the UK’s departure.
A government spokesman said: “In his role as the prime minister’s Europe adviser, David Frost is visiting Brussels to have introductory meetings with key officials and to pass on the prime minister’s message in person.
“The UK is leaving the EU on 31 October whatever the circumstances. We will work energetically for a deal but the backstop must be abolished. If we are not able to reach an agreement then we will of course have to leave the EU without a deal.”
During a phone call on Tuesday, Barnier told the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, that there was no chance of the EU changing its position or offering a “managed no deal” through side-deals to cushion the economic impact.
The EU’s chief negotiator “confirmed that the EU no-deal measures are unilateral in nature and aim at the protection of the EU27 interests”, a spokesman said of measures already announced to keep planes in the air and haulage routes open for up to nine months.
Frost’s appointment has been well received in Brussels, where he is a known and respected figure. He first worked in Brussels at the UK’s permanent representation to the EU in 1993 and went on to work closely with the current UK ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, in the European Union department, of which he would later become director.
From May 2006 until October 2008, Frost was the ambassador to Denmark, after which he became the chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association. He returned to the Foreign Office as Johnson’s special adviser between 2016 and the foreign secretary’s resignation in 2018.
Frost moved to his current role in Downing Street from his job as chief executive of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Diplomatic sources who know Frost have counselled against any suggestion that he would be sympathetic to remaining in the EU. He is understood to believe the UK should leave both the single market and customs union in order to benefit from Brexit.
In recent years he has called for better no-deal preparations by the government. Commenting on Theresa May’s ousting, Frost tweeted: “The prime minister’s departure is an unavoidable necessity for moving beyond the country’s political log-jam.”
Johnson has demanded the ditching of the backstop in phone calls in recent days with the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Writing for the Guardian on Wednesday, the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, echoed the recent comments by all EU leaders by insisting the withdrawal agreement would not be reopened.
“Faced with a British government intent on ratcheting up talk of no deal, other European governments have no choice but to prepare for the worst too, but this is far from a desirable path,” he said.
“In the face of such irresponsible posturing, far from feeling threatened, I fully expect EU governments to remain calm and keep their unity. Attempts to put pressure on Ireland will only be met with waves of solidarity from the rest of the EU.”
First published on Sat 19 Oct 2019 20.05 BST
Boris Johnson was warned on Saturday that he risks a fresh challenge in the courts after he reacted to a humiliating Commons defeat over Brexit by calling on EU leaders to reject any extension of Britain’s membership of the European Union.
After MPs voted by 322 to 306 to withhold approval of his EU exit deal, the prime minister was obliged to write to Brussels by 11pm on Saturday to request an extension until 31 January 2020, in order to comply with the law under the terms of the Benn act.
But with the deadline approaching, Johnson wrote to Tory MPs saying he would tell the EU that “delay is not a solution”.
Shortly before the deadline European council president Donald Tusk tweeted: “The extension request has just arrived. I will now start consulting EU leaders on how to react.”
Johnson had sent three letters: an unsigned photocopy of the request he was obliged to send under the Benn act, an explanatory letter from the UK’s ambassador to the EU and a letter explaining why Downing Street did not want an extension because a Brexit extension would be “deeply corrosive”.
An EU source said that in the call between Tusk and Johnson at 8.15pm Brussels time on Saturday the prime minister had confirmed that the request would be sent within hours. Officials in Brussels said there was no doubt that an extension request would be granted, despite the prime minister’s attempts to throw doubt on such a decision. A decision on the terms could be taken later this month to allow for events to unfold in London.
Tusk will now speak to the EU27 heads of state. “This may take a few days,” the source said.
A former Tory cabinet minister said Johnson was clearly behaving in a way that was “against the spirit of the Benn act”, which required him to have asked for an extension by 11pm on Saturday if no Brexit deal had been approved by parliament by then, or parliament had not given its backing to a no-deal outcome.
The former minister said: “I think this will end up in the courts again. This is clearly against the spirit of the Benn act and is not consistent with the assurances that were given by Downing Street to the Scottish courts about applying for an extension. It will also put government law officers in a very uncomfortable position.”
Earlier on Saturday, in a day of high parliamentary drama, MPs withheld approval for Johnson’s new Brexit deal until legislation on the UK’s withdrawal has been debated and passed through parliament. The result was announced as an estimated one million people marched on Parliament Square to demand a second referendum as a way to break the three-year Brexit deadlock.
As the news of Johnson’s latest, and arguably most crushing, defeat was broadcast to the marchers, a huge roar went up from those who had travelled from all over the country to take part in the protest. Supporters of a second referendum now plan to table an amendment to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which will have its second reading in the Commons on Tuesday, to make approval of any deal conditional on another public vote.
Immediately after the vote Johnson said he was “not daunted or dismayed” by the defeat but would push on with the bill in order “get Brexit done” by 31 October.
Pre-empting questions about whether he would comply with the Benn act Johnson chose his words carefully saying: “I will not negotiate a delay with the EU, and neither does the law compel me to do so.”
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, told the Commons: “The prime minister must now comply with the law. He can no longer use the threat of a no-deal crash-out to blackmail MPs to support his sell-out deal.”
The vote was swung by a decision by the 10 DUP MPs, who have propped up the Tory administration since the 2017 general election, to vote for the amendment demanding approval of his deal be withheld.
MPs said the DUP only decided to vote in favour of the amendment tabled by Oliver Letwin, rather than abstain, one minute before the doors of the voting lobbies were shut.
Ten former Conservative MPs, including the former cabinet ministers Philip Hammond and David Gauke, supported the amendment. Six Labour MPs rebelled against the party line to vote against the amendment: Kevin Barron, Caroline Flint, Ronnie Campbell, Kate Hoey, Jim Fitzpatrick and John Mann.
Another three abstained: Melanie Onn, Rosie Cooper and Sarah Champion.
After the vote, the leader of the house, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said the government would attempt to hold another “meaningful vote” on the Johnson deal tomorrow in an attempt to seize back the initiative, though the Speaker, John Bercow, suggested that if the purpose was to override Saturday’s vote then he might not allow it. Saying he would reflect over the weekend on what to do, Bercow described the move as “curious” and said pointedly: “The government is not the arbiter of what is orderly.”
Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, tweeted on Saturday that it would “consider the outcome of today’s vote for the Letwin amendment on Monday”. He appeared to applaud those who had marched in favour of another referendum adding: “Whatever happens next, the marches outside the parliament show just how important a close EU-UK future relationship is.”
Under the terms of the Benn act any extension granted by the EU will end as soon as a Brexit deal has passed through the Commons and Lords.
There are signs that the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill will be difficult and lengthy, with some MPs even predicting it could be voted down. MPs opposed to the Johnson deal and those in favour of a second referendum are expected to table numerous amendments, meaning it may not pass by 31 October.
Johnson has insisted numerous times that he will not ask for an extension to Brexit under any circumstances. Last month he said he would rather “be dead in a ditch” than do so.
On Saturday evening there was speculation that the DUP – which came out strongly against Johnson’s deal because it establishes a customs border in the Irish Sea, and deprives it of a veto over future arrangements for Northern Ireland – might come round to the idea of a second referendum.
After spelling out the reasons why his party rejected the Johnson deal, the party’s Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson told MPs that the DUP would do everything it could during the passage of the withdrawal agreement bill to protect Northern Irish interests while the party leader at Westminster Nigel Dodds said it would scrutinise all amendments very closely.
“We would be failing in our duty if we do not use every strategy which is available to try to get guarantees, changes, alterations which will safeguard the interests of the United Kingdom,” Wilson told the Commons.
Johnson had described his Brexit plan, approved on Thursday by EU leaders, as “a great prospect and a great deal” and urged MPs to vote for it. “It is my judgment we have reached the best possible solution,” he said.
The public are evenly divided on whether there should be another referendum, according to the latest Opinium/Observer poll. Some 42% think there should be another public vote, while 43% disagree.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Jean-Claude Juncker has told Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her red lines in favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the EU revising the Irish backstop.
Without a major shift in the prime minister’s position, the European commission president told May that the current terms of the withdrawal agreement were non-negotiable.
Details of the call, contained in a leaked diplomatic note, emerged as Juncker’s deputy, Frans Timmermans, said there had been no weakening of the resolve in Brussels in support of Ireland, and accused the Tory Brexiters of a “cavalier” approach to peace.
“Let me be extremely clear: there is no way I could live in a situation where we throw Ireland under the bus,” Timmermans said. “As far as the European commission is concerned, the backstop is an essential element for showing to Ireland and to the rest of Europe that we are in this together.”
On Tuesday, the Commons will vote on a series of amendments that might variously force the prime minister to delay Brexit or go back to Brussels to demand the ditching of the Irish backstop or a time limit on its enforcement.
Critics of May’s deal believe that the backstop, an “all-weather” solution for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland, could trap the UK in an indefinite customs union, limiting the country’s ability to pursue an independent trade policy. May’s deal was rejected this month by a historic 230 votes.
At a confidential meeting of the ambassadors in Brussels last week, EU officials said there had been no back-channel talks in recent days with Downing Street nor talks between May and other heads of state and government.
The European council’s Danish secretary general, Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, told the ambassadors he believed the impasse could continue into February.
“Next week there is a vote,” he said. “There have been no talks in the last week. I do not expect any clarity or any position in the course of next week. This will take time. In the meantime, pressure will increase. On our end we will need to find ways to deal with that.”
A commission official said: “Yes, difficult, and President Juncker told Mrs May that the backstop was non-negotiable and only if May changed red lines then we can move on the backstop.”
It is understood that one solution discussed by senior officials would be for the backstop to be downgraded to be Northern Ireland specific, as was originally proposed by the EU, should there be a commitment from the British government to negotiate a permanent customs union with the whole of the UK.
But Timmermans said attempts to rip out the backstop from the withdrawal agreement or put a time limit on it were doomed to fail. Delaying Brexit, he added, did not solve the problem of finding an agreement that could avoid a no-deal scenario.
“The problem is that the House of Commons can say they don’t want a no-deal Brexit but if they don’t say what they want there will be a no-deal Brexit on the 29th,” Timmermans said. “The thing with Europe is that if you know our history so many things have happened in our history that nobody wanted that I think we need to be well prepared for a no-deal Brexit.”
“Come together around an idea, and we will listen,” Timmermans told MPs. “Mind you, a backstop is called a backstop because it doesn’t have a time limit. If it has a time limit it is no longer a backstop, so that backstop for the European Union is very important. And there can be no uncertainty about that.”
Asked whether May should respond to Juncker’s advice and move to support a permanent customs union, Timmermans said: “Well, that is an internal debate in the UK. I am just looking at the number 230. Yeah.
“I don’t know what [Juncker] has been saying privately, I am not privy to that. I am just observing the debate and she will have to command a majority in the House if she wants something done.”
Brexiters were given hope in recent days by the EU’s prevarication over whether a hard border would be enforced in the event of a no-deal Brexit, and by the suggestion from Poland’s foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, that a five-year time limit could solve the problem of the backstop.
“I am not quite sure minister Czaputowicz was speaking on behalf of the Polish government,” Timmermans said. “I have not seen the Polish government repeat that.”
The commission’s first vice-president added he would expect the EU’s leaders to have an open mind towards an extension of the negotiating period beyond 29 March.
“One of the things that irks me most in all of this is this image that has been created of this vindictive unfriendly European union,” he said.
“I think, from where I stand, we have been bending over backwards. Mrs May’s red lines are Mrs May’s red lines ... I also hear people in the UK always saying, ‘oh God, they have been treating us so badly.’ Frankly, I really don’t understand how you can say that.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Theresa May was accused last night by a former cabinet colleague of planning the “biggest giveaway of sovereignty in modern times”, as she faced a potentially devastating pincer movement from Tory remainers and leavers condemning her Brexit plans.
The day after Jo Johnson, the pro-remain brother of former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, resigned from the government and called for a second referendum on Brexit, former education secretary Justine Greening launched an attack on the prime minister, saying her plans would leave the country in the “worst of all worlds”.
Piling yet more pressure on May, Greening – who resigned from the cabinet in January – backed the former transport minister’s call for another public vote and said MPs should reject the prime minister’s deal. Greening told the Observer: “The parliamentary deadlock has been clear for some time. It’s crucial now for parliament to vote down this plan, because it is the biggest giveaway of sovereignty in modern times.
“Instead, the government and parliament must recognise we should give people a final say on Brexit. Only they can break the deadlock and choose from the practical options for Britain’s future now on the table.”
Greening added: “Like many of us, Jo Johnson is a pragmatist on Britain’s relationship with the EU. But Conservative MPs can increasingly see that this sovereignty giveaway from No 10 leaves our country with less say over rules that govern our lives … That is not in the national interest, it’s the worst of all worlds and it resolves nothing.”
Her intervention – just days before May hopes to win agreement for her plans in her deeply divided cabinet – shows how Tories on both sides of the Brexit divide are finding common cause, protesting that her blueprint would leave the UK tied to the EU’s economic systems but with no say over the rules that govern them. As a result, they say that rather than seizing back control from Brussels, it would do the reverse and leave the UK with less power.
A letter to the prime minister, organised by the StandUp4Brexit campaign and circulated among Tory party constituency chairs, seen by the Observer, states that May’s proposals represent a “significant blow to our sovereignty”.
It says that an agreement that would leave Britain “trapped in a customs union with the EU indefinitely”, as current plans could do, would “fly in the face of the referendum result” and risk “delivering a Corbyn government at the next election”.
The letter goes on: “As Conservative chairmen, we therefore call on you … to ensure that the final deal complies with those red lines that you set out in both the 2017 election manifesto and your Lancaster House speech – namely leaving the customs union, the single market and ECJ over-all.”
In his resignation statement on Friday, Jo Johnson said the country was “on the brink of the greatest crisis” since the second world war and argued that the Brexit deal on offer wasn’t “anything like what was promised”. He denounced the choice between May’s plans or a no-deal outcome as a “failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis” that had left Britain facing “vassalage” or “chaos”.
On Saturday, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he went further, saying another referendum would be the first opportunity for voters to have a say on what Brexit would actually mean, after two years of tortuous negotiations. “My view is that this is so different from what was billed that it would be an absolute travesty if we do not go back to the people and ask them if they actually do want to exit the EU on this extraordinarily hopeless basis,” he said.
Asked whether he believed other ministers should quit over the issue, he encouraged them to do so if they shared his views. “I think this is so important that it’s up to MPs to take a stand. I’ve done so, if others feel that it’s right for them to do so, good on them.”
One Tory donor warned last night that May was now heading towards an “explosion” with her own party. “She made incompatible promises to different constituencies,” he said. “An explosion is now the best forecast.”
Campaigners for a second referendum claim that support for another vote is growing. The pro-remain Best for Britain group said that, for the first time, a poll showed a majority of leave voters now backed a second vote. The Populus poll of more than 8,000 people found 52% of those that voted leave now support a final say on the Brexit deal.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has come under pressure from some of his own MPs for saying that “we can’t stop” Brexit, just two months after he insisted “all options are on the table”, and shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said a second referendum with the option to remain in the EU should be kept open. Many Labour MPs say that if Corbyn were to back a second referendum, there would now be a majority in parliament to hold one.
In an interview with Der Spiegel published on Friday, Corbyn said it was necessary to “recognise the reasons why people voted leave”. Luciana Berger, Mike Gapes, Wes Streeting and Chuka Umunna were among the Labour MPs to criticise the remarks, as a major row brews within the party over whether it should back a second poll if May’s deal were voted down in parliament. Asked on Saturday whether he agreed with Johnson’s call for a second referendum, Corbyn reiterated his opposition: “Not really, no,” he said. “The referendum took place. The issue now has to be how we bring people together.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, has blamed “wannabe Tory leaders” for the breakdown of cross-party talks as he renewed his call for a second referendum on leaving the EU.
The government and Labour sought to blame each other after talks to find a compromise Brexit plan collapsed on Friday, leaving any remaining hopes of an imminent solution to the impasse in tatters.
While both sides insisted the discussions had taken place in good faith, the prime minister said a key sticking point had been Labour splits over a second referendum, while the opposition said May’s imminent departure from Downing Street meant there was no guarantee any promises would be kept by her successor.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Starmer said: “The real problem was this question of how on earth do you future-proof any deal – if there was a deal – against an incoming Tory leader?. Because … the prime minister said before we started the talks that she would be going. It’s not for me to criticise that, that’s her judgment about when she wants to go.
“But it does mean that during the talks – almost literally – sitting in the room as we’re talking, cabinet members and wannabe Tory leaders were torpedoing the talks with remarks about not being willing to accept a customs union.”
He echoed the words of the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, last week that the negotiations were like “trying to contract with a company about to go into administration. There was a weakness, because circling around those in the room trying to negotiate were others who didn’t want the negotiation to succeed because they had their eye on what was coming next.”
He said the situation put May “in a position where she was in reality too weak to deliver, in our judgment”.
Starmer said the government had to find a way to end the stalemate, and suggested: “They could seek to break the impasse by putting a confirmatory vote on the face of a bill.”
Starmer’s comments came as Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said May’s successor should not call a general election until Britain had left the EU.
He said an early poll could hand the keys of No 10 to the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and risk “killing Brexit altogether”.
He said it was essential the Conservatives delivered on the 2016 referendum result in the current parliament.
A poll of Tory members made Boris Johnson the frontrunner to succeed May after she bowed to pressure and agreed to set a timetable at the start of next month to elect a new leader.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Hancock, who voted remain in the referendum, said: “I think a general election before we’ve delivered Brexit would be a disaster. People don’t want it. I’m with Brenda from Bristol. We need to take responsibility for delivering on the referendum result.”
May is to make one final attempt to get her Brexit deal through parliament when she introduces the withdrawal agreement bill in the Commons in the first full week of June. But after the cross-party talks collapsed, few in Westminster give her much chance of success.
Whatever the result, May has agreed to meet the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, Sir Graham Brady, after the vote to agree a timetable for the election of her successor.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Labour will seek immediate talks with Tory ministers who resign from the government on Wednesday – including the chancellor, Philip Hammond – in the hope of building a cross-party alliance to prevent Boris Johnson from embracing a no-deal Brexit.
The plans, revealed to the Observer by shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, underline the extent of opposition the probable next prime minister will face from across the House of Commons if he fails to negotiate a new Brexit deal that can pass through parliament by late autumn.
Johnson, firm favourite to win the Tory leadership contest on Tuesday and enter No 10 the following day, has promised to deliver Brexit on 31 October come what may, which means he will be prepared to leave without a deal if necessary.
But after MPs last week voted by a majority of 41 to make it more difficult for a new prime minister to force through no deal by shutting down parliament, further cross-party plans are being made to block that option.
Starmer will approach Hammond and others, including the justice secretary, David Gauke, for talks on how to prevent no deal this week. Writing in today’s Observer, Starmer says parliament must be put on a “war footing” to prevent a no-deal outcome, with party allegiances put aside in the national interest.
“On Tuesday morning some ministers will sit around the cabinet table for the last time,” Starmer says. “They know very well the dangers of no deal. They will have been briefed about what it would mean for jobs, the economy, our public services and the union. They will have seen the advice and read the evidence.
“After they have resigned this week, I will want to work with all those former ministers who, like me, want to ensure parliament can stop a disastrous and chaotic exit from the EU.”
Starmer says Johnson and his rival for the Tory leadership, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, have competed over recent weeks in an “arms race towards a more and more extreme form of Brexit. Deeper red lines, even more ludicrous promises, but absolutely no coherent or workable plan for the country.”
Last week the government’s independent forecasting body, the Office for Budget Responsibility, said a no-deal Brexit would plunge Britain into a recession that would shrink the economy by 2%, push unemployment above 5%, and send house prices tumbling by around 10%. It said the result would be a year-long downturn that would increase borrowing by £30bn a year.
Hammond suggested in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde and Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung last week that he could vote to bring down a Tory government that sought to drive through no deal against parliament’s wishes. Asked to rule out supporting a no-confidence motion in a Johnson government, the chancellor responded: “I do not exclude anything for the moment.” He added: “I will do everything in my power from my position to make sure that parliament blocks a Brexit without agreement.”
The chancellor has also expressed concern about spending pledges and promises to cut taxes made by both Hunt and Johnson during the leadership contest, urging them to “stop and think” before announcing measures that the country will in all probability not be able to afford.
Johnson will also come under intense pressure over whether or not to press ahead with the proposed HS2 rail project after it was reported that the costs could surpass the current budget of £56bn by almost £30bn. According to a report in the Financial Times, the chairman of the project, Allan Cook, has written to Bernadette Kelly, the permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, to warn that the high-speed line from London cannot be finished within the official £56bn limit.
The paper reported that, according to Cook’s preliminary findings, the project’s final cost could spiral to between £70bn and £85bn.
A source close to the project told the newspaper the costs had increased because of a “combination of poor ground conditions found during the surveying work, the costs of engineering a railway to a very high specification, and the further additional costs of it being designed to run at even higher speeds than other comparable rail projects”. Johnson has said during Tory leadership hustings that he wants a review of the costs of the project.
Andy McDonald, shadow transport secretary, said yesterday that additional rail capacity was urgently needed, but that confidence was waning in the government’s ability to deliver HS2.
“We desperately need additional rail capacity that connects with a fully developed Northern Powerhouse rail network,” he said. “These are critical elements of the advanced railway network that our country needs over the coming decades to address the climate crisis.
“We also proposed a peer review of the project, but the government said no. They should reconsider their stance and embrace that independent review. It is clear that the government and HS2 have a lot of work to do if they’re to restore confidence in this project.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Any withdrawal agreement is likely to require a backstop, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, has said, admitting for the first time that a renegotiation was unlikely to be possible in the time before the UK is set to leave the EU.
Starmer has previously been highly critical of the backstop, which would keep Britain in an effective customs union with the EU as an insurance policy to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland, with no unilateral right for the UK to exit until a technological solution to keep open the border can be found.
However, speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Starmer suggested Labour was open to keeping the terms in the withdrawal agreement as long as other key changes were made – such as a commitment to a full, permanent customs union and a high alignment with the EU’s single market.
“At this stage any deal probably does require a backstop and we’ve got to recognise that,” he said. “There are problems with this backstop and we have got to recognise that but because we are in this stage of the exercise, nearly two years in, the chances now of a deal that doesn’t have a backstop are very, very slim.”
The EU has repeatedly said changes cannot be made to the legally binding withdrawal agreement struck by Theresa May and EU leaders and which contains the terms of the backstop.
It is more likely that changes could be made to the non-legally binding political declaration, which sets out the direction for the future relationship between Britain and the EU.
A Labour source said it had long been the policy that an insurance option would be needed for Northern Ireland but viewed it as far less likely to be used if the intention was to negotiate a permanent customs union arrangement.
The source said Starmer’s view was reflecting the reality of the short time period available and that the majority of changes Labour would be seeking would be to the political declaration, as well as some clarification on the scope of the withdrawal agreement.
Starmer said the prime minister must be prepared to shift her red lines in order for constructive discussions with Labour – but if that was not possible then the party should consider backing a second referendum.
“If she won’t do that, it’s very hard to see where we go from here. That’s why at conference we said, to break the impasse, if we get to an impasse, that’s why you need an option of a public vote,” he said.
Starmer denied Labour would automatically seek to block any deal the prime minister proposed. “I have said for two years we will faithfully look at any deal that is brought back which is what we did on Tuesday,” he said.
“If she stood up on Tuesday [after the meaningful vote] and said she was genuinely now open to looking at other options – but she hasn’t done that. She is the block.”
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has said his party will not open discussions with the prime minister until she pledged that she would not take the UK out of the EU with no deal.
“If she moved into that space and said, my red lines have gone, I’m not going to hold a gun to your heads about no deal, that would shift the position incredibly,” Starmer said.
The shadow Brexit secretary stressed again that he believed an extension to the article 50 timeline was inevitable.
“It’s extremely difficult to see how the prime minister can achieve what needs to be achieved in 68 days and therefore I think it is inevitable article 50 is going to be extended. And the blame with that lies with the prime minister,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
Since he entered parliament in 1970, Kenneth Clarke has served under eight Conservative leaders, from Edward Heath to Theresa May. He has also stood three times, in 1997, 2001 and 2005, to be Tory leader himself during difficult periods for his party. But throughout it all he has never known a political crisis remotely like the present.
Now aged 78, he still describes himself as “a natural optimist”. But a combination of Brexit and the Tory leadership contest are testing his positive thinking to its limits.
“As someone who has seen a few leadership elections in my time, this one’s quite different,” Clarke said in an interview with the Observer last week, within hours of the announcement that Boris Johnson had stormed into the lead in the first round. “This is a tragic farce of a crisis in which anger and protest are wide sentiments across the public scene. The Conservative party is in turmoil internally and deeply unpopular with the general public.”
As a lifelong europhile its hurts Clarke, who as father of the House of Commons is its most senior MP, to think that he will be retiring at the next election with what he calls this “extreme crisis” caused by Brexit overshadowing everything. He describes leaving the EU as a “crazy decision” – one which will leave in ruins much of what he has tried to do over the past five decades.
“My entire political career has been based on building up Britain’s political standing and economic prosperity through our membership of the EU and the European project,” he says. “Now it’s all come to an end and the political system and parliament is in such mayhem and incapable of dealing with the crisis that this referendum has provoked.”
He is also dismayed by the way the Tory party is going about choosing its new leader and the country’s next prime minister. “There’s an air of fantasy about just about every candidate’s campaign,” he says, with promises being made on Brexit that cannot be met. And the way the eventual decision will be handed over to the Tory membership, he finds simply “extraordinary”. “Most dictatorships have a better way of choosing their leader than this one.”
On Boris Johnson, Clarke is withering in a way that borders on contempt. He says he was a “disaster” as foreign secretary, and when asked if he could be equally terrible as prime minister, he answers in an instant. “Yes, he certainly has the potential to be. Unless he suddenly starts taking it seriously. I am not sure he knows what he would do to get us through the crisis.
“With the exception of Rory Stewart [the most pro-EU candidate, who Clarke is backing] they seem to be implying that they have some magic key to changing reality and getting the withdrawal agreement re-opened, or getting some marvellous technology that can check every lorry crossing the Irish border without having to have any customs officers there. The idea that we just leave on 31 October with no deal is utterly farcical.”
That the Tory party’s most senior MP and highly respected elder statesman, who has been chancellor of the exchequer, home secretary, health secretary, education secretary and lord chancellor, can describe the probable next Conservative prime minister in such a way, and the entire political system as in the grip of a self-inflicted crisis, is remarkable. And it is not just an isolated view from one veteran politician.
Many at Westminster share Clarke’s analysis that politics is utterly broken, and that what is currently happening, particularly with the Tory party leadership, could well make things worse. Most MPs, though, are far more discreet about saying so, as their careers lie ahead of them. Clarke, by contrast, no longer has ambitions to fulfil nor does he feel he has to answer to his local party. He says precisely what he thinks. And much of what he says resonates very widely with the public, as shown by the striking polling and focus group work conducted by Britain Thinks that we publish today.
The Britain Thinks examination of the nation’s confidence levels and views of its leaders uncovered a deep pessimism and extraordinary distrust of politicians.
Some 74% of voters say the British political system is not fit for purpose, with only 6% saying that UK politicians understand them, and 72% saying they don’t. Some 52% think that Johnson will be the next prime minister, but only 21% have faith that the next prime minister, whoever it may be, will be up to the job.
The polling found people felt more engaged with politics post-Brexit, but that extra engagement seems to have left them more frustrated than ever at their politicians’ failings.
“I feel pessimistic about the future simply because of the uncertainty, not knowing what’s to come and the lack of trust I have in all politicians and all parties,” said one focus group participant in Leicester. Increasingly, also, Britain’s inability to cope with its political crisis is being noticed abroad.
The latest cover of Time magazine is headlined “How Britain went Bonkers. The Brexit fiasco” with a picture of Theresa May and Tory leadership contenders, including Johnson, on top of a London bus grinning, as the bus sinks.
Scott Wightman, Britain’s outgoing senior diplomat in Singapore said in a valedictory note last week that the UK was now seen overseas as a country beset by division and oblivious to truth. The nation that Singaporeans “admired for stability, common sense, tolerance and realism grounded in fact, they see beset by division, obsessed with ideology, careless of the truth …” He added: “I fear many around the world share their view.”
Today John Kerr, a former UK ambassador to the EU and the author of article 50, says he is dismayed by the false promises being pushed out by the Tory leadership candidates, which will be treated with disdain by the EU if and when they have to try to deliver on them.
“What alarms me most about the current Conservative party leadership race is that fiction and fantasy are back, and harsh facts again forgotten,” Kerr says. “The unicorns are back, frolicking in the Tory forest.”
He says the claims by Johnson and others that the withdrawal agreement can be renegotiated “ignore the solemn undertakings given by the UK government in March that it will not seek to do so, as well as the EU’s repeated statements saying it will not do so”.
All this feeds the impression abroad that UK politicians are not operating in the real world any more. “Margaret Thatcher and John Major knew that bluff and bravado doesn’t work in Brussels. Not paying what we owe, and have promised to pay, wouldn’t change the game in our favour: it would end it. And, as the CBI and TUC rightly warn, leaving with no deal, and hence no transition period, would be catastrophic. “No deal isn’t backed by the country, or the Commons. So it really matters that an auction of promises to ultras doesn’t become determinant of our nation’s future. Facts matter.
The central promise of Johnson’s campaign is that he will take the UK out of the EU on 31 October “deal or no deal”, saying that not to do so would be a betrayal. The implication is that parliament will not be allowed to stand in the way of Brexit.
His supporters hope that if he wins among Tory members in the country, he could instantly revive morale and win back the many Brexit-supporting voters who have deserted to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. Some believe he could then call a general election in early autumn, to gain his own mandate from the country to take the UK out of the EU on time.
But while Johnson looks on course to win the leadership of the Tory party, that is as much as it would be wise to predict. Honouring his promise to deliver Brexit will be no easy task. “If we get lured into thinking that Boris solves everything, we could be in for a very nasty surprise indeed,” said one former minister last week. “He could actually make this whole crisis much, much worse.”
If and when he enters No 10, Labour will almost certainly table a vote of no confidence in a Johnson government that tries to take the country out of the EU without a deal, against the majority will of MPs in parliament. Last Wednesday the Tory MP and former attorney general Dominic Grieve said he would be prepared to vote down any government if it tried to act in defiance of parliament’s will.
In an emotional statement in the Commons he told MPs that “the only way of stopping that prime minister [implementing a no-deal Brexit] would be to bring down that prime minister’s government... I will not hesitate to do that ... Even if it means my resigning the whip and leaving the party.”
Clarke told the Observer he, too, would feel bound to do the same and thinks other Conservatives could follow suit, though he does not know how many. Tory MPs bringing down a Tory government? Would that not elevate the political crisis to new levels?
“Well, I mean, if there’s no other way ... then you’ve got to bring that government down,” Clarke said. “You can’t have somebody saying ‘I’m going to be a dictatorial president for a month or two and fix everything despite parliamentary disapproval. If ... some idiot was sailing onto a no-deal Brexit, I’d decide politics had finally gone mad and I was not going to support this.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
A powerful group inside Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet is urging Labour to be ready to campaign for a possible second Brexit referendum if Theresa May’s deal is defeated and the party cannot force a general election. The move comes amid signs that support for another public vote is widening at Westminster.
The shadow cabinet alliance pushing Labour to prepare for the option of a second public vote includes Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, deputy leader Tom Watson, shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd and Richard Corbett, the leader of Labour MEPs in the European parliament.
Support for the idea from top Labour figures comes after shadow chancellor John McDonnell said last week that Labour could well end up backing another referendum, with the option to Remain in the European Union being on the ballot paper.
The Observer can reveal that Starmer told a meeting of the shadow cabinet last Wednesday that Labour should be ready to “move quickly through the gears” to call a no-confidence vote in the government immediately if, as expected, May’s blueprint is defeated when MPs vote on it on 11 December.
As the no-confidence vote is unlikely to pass – meaning the push to trigger an election would fail – it was made clear at the same meeting that Labour should then be ready to take up the option of backing a second referendum campaign if there is no viable alternative.
Starmer received strong support from Watson, Lloyd, and Corbett, with only two shadow cabinet members, Ian Lavery and Richard Burgon, arguing against, according to sources.
It is understood that Corbyn, who had previously resisted the idea of a second public vote, did not oppose the strategy, though he stressed the need to focus on defeating May in the forthcoming “meaningful vote”.
The growing support for the idea of a second referendum at the top of Labour comes after universities minister Sam Gyimah resigned on Friday over May’s Brexit deal and said a second referendum should now be considered.
Gyimah argued that Britain would be “hammered” in future trade talks with the EU if the deal was passed and said that putting the issue back to the people might be the “most sensible” way to resolve the impasse.
“The prime minister has already taken one step in that direction by appealing to the country to put pressure on MPs to vote for her deal,” he told the BBC.
It is also understood that a serving minister has been showing a possible blueprint for a second vote to members of the cabinet, suggesting more MPs could quit to support the idea should May’s deal be defeated.
Shadow cabinet sources said that, while it was entirely right that Labour should focus on defeating May’s deal and trying to force an election, there was wide acceptance that it was unlikely to achieve that goal, so the party would soon be unable to argue that it could negotiate a better deal than May.
One shadow cabinet source said: “So we have to have a policy for when the no-confidence vote fails – a clear line. We should be ready to back a second referendum.”
There is also concern that unless Labour devises a clear line on what its policy will be after Theresa May’s likely defeat, and after it fails to force an election, Corbyn could be exposed in a TV debate that is being planned for two days before the Commons’ meaningful vote.
On Sunday, a cross-party group of MPs, including several Tories, issued a public statement urging party leaders and MPs to rally behind a second referendum as the only way to break the parliamentary impasse.
The group calls on MPs to back a people’s vote amendment to the meaningful vote as a way to build further support across parliament. This, it says, is “the only guaranteed opportunity – written in statute – for the Commons to back a people’s vote.”
Meanwhile, a new YouGov poll published on Sunday shows support for staying in the EU at the highest level recorded by the company since the 2016 referendum. The poll of 1,655 people conducted last week shows remaining in the EU now has a 10-point lead over leaving when people are asked whether or not they want to proceed with Brexit.
In the survey for the People’s Vote campaign, support for staying is now at 55% compared with 45% for leaving the EU once “don’t knows are excluded”. Separate surveys conducted in the four neighbouring London seats represented by Corbyn, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and Starmer show overwhelming support, and suggest all four would lose votes to other parties if Labour eventually backed a Brexit deal.
While Theresa May, who was attending the G20 summit in Argentina on Saturday, insists she will win over sufficient MPs to get her Brexit deal through parliament, evidence emerged on Saturday night that Conservative activists overwhelmingly oppose the deal. A survey of Tory members by ConservativeHome found 72% of Tory members are against it while only 25% back it.
On Saturday the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe urged May to do everything she could to avoid a no-deal Brexit, suggesting that investors from Japan need predictability and stability.
He said he wanted to “pay tribute” to May’s leadership in securing the deal. But he added that any prospect of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal risked international consequences.
“I would like to once again ask for your support to avoid no deal,” he said. “As well as to ensure transparency, predictability [and] legal stability in the Brexit process.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Labour would vote for a second referendum to be added to any deal proposed by Boris Johnson on Saturday, a shadow minister has said.
Jenny Chapman, the shadow Brexit minister, said Labour would push for a confirmatory vote along with other opposition parties and Tory rebels.
The move would mean Labour prioritising a second referendum over a general election, despite Jeremy Corbyn having repeatedly said he would favour the latter.
Chapman told the BBC’s Andrew Neil: “The expectation would be: should a deal be tabled on Saturday, I’m as sure as you can be that there will be an amendment tabled that would want to see a referendum attached to the deal. I would expect us to support that.”
Pressed on why Labour would support a second referendum, keeping Johnson in power for months to come, rather than an election, Chapman said: “I would rather have a general election but we are not in control on this. So should that opportunity come on Saturday, to have that referendum on a deal … the pragmatic, sensible thing for the Labour party to do, given we’ve been asking this, would be to take that opportunity.”
Her remarks indicate a shift in position since Corbyn suggested he would only support a referendum on a deal that accorded with Labour’s “five pillars” including a customs union and more protections for workers’ rights. The Labour leader also cautioned MPs as recently as this weekend against the idea of a referendum on a Johnson-backed deal.
Asked whether Corbyn had been told of the position, Chapman said: “He’s told me this … I’m telling you today what the situation is. I think on Saturday if there is that opportunity that the Labour party will take it.” Asked if Labour would go for a general election if it cannot get a referendum, she said: “We’ll see.”
Labour MPs pushing for a second referendum said they believed the numbers would now be pretty close as many pro-deal backbenchers on both the Labour and former Tory/independent side are balking at the hardness of the Brexit being proposed by Johnson.
Labour sources said the party’s position would depend on the amendment but there could be a motion that allowed it to support a referendum while making clear MPs rejected Johnson’s Brexit deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn will not be able to get enough of his MPs to back a Brexit deal without the promise of a second referendum, even if Theresa May makes a big offer on a customs union and workers’ rights this week, senior Labour figures believe.
Senior party sources said they believe two-thirds of Labour MPs, including several shadow cabinet ministers and many more frontbenchers, would refuse to back a deal without a people’s vote attached.
Theresa May is preparing to make new proposals of a temporary customs union until the next election, matching EU employment rights in the future and alignment of single market regulations on goods.
The prime minister wrote an article in the Mail on Sunday urging Labour to “put our differences aside for a moment” to do a deal when negotiators meet on Tuesday, while Corbyn said after the local election results that voters wanted MPs to “get a deal done” on Brexit.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, had said on Friday that the election results meant voters were saying “sort it” on Brexit but he sounded a more cautious note about the prospect of a deal on Sunday, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he had no trust in May and accusing her of negotiating in “bad faith”.
He said any customs union would need to be permanent and warned No 10 that “to get any deal over the line you’ve got to recognise there will be a large number of MPs in parliament who actually do support a public vote”.
Labour is incensed that details of May’s intended offer were leaked to Sunday newspapers when they had kept their side of a bargain to keep the talks confidential. Asked whether he trusted the prime minister over the talks, McDonnell said: “No, sorry, not after this weekend when she’s blown the confidentiality I had and I actually think she’s jeopardised the negotiations for her own personal protection.”
McDonnell also raised the issue of May’s weak position as leader and the threat of hard Brexiters vying to take over from her, likening the cross-party talks to “trying to enter a contract with a company going into administration and the people who are going to take over are not willing to fulfil that contract”.
The shadow chancellor made clear that Labour would need changes to the withdrawal agreement and political declaration negotiated with the EU to make sure future Tory leaders could not tear up the agreement after Brexit.
More than 100 opposition MPs, including 66 from Labour, said at the weekend they would not tolerate a “Westminster stitch-up” on a Brexit deal without a second referendum.
But a number of MPs close to the People’s Vote campaign believe there are actually more like 150 to 180 Labour MPs out of 229 who will refuse to back a deal struck with May unless there is a confirmatory vote.
One shadow cabinet minister said: “Jeremy cannot be sure he has the numbers – even if he whipped it – so he cannot do a deal without a confirmatory vote.”
Several MPs talked of more colleagues quitting the party, frontbench walkouts and a “catastrophic split” if the leadership were to pursue a policy of a deal without another referendum.
May is opposed to offering a second referendum but parliament could decide to back one if the talks collapse and the government proceeds with a plan for binding votes on what MPs would prefer as an outcome. In that scenario, there could be a binary referendum on May’s Brexit deal or some kind of three-way poll on Brexit with the options of a deal, no deal or remaining in the EU.
Although striking any deal with May would be controversial within Labour, some within the party, such as party chair Ian Lavery and MPs Lucy Powell and Stephen Kinnock, have been arguing that the referendum result needs to be respected. There is also an argument being made that it could be the best way of drawing a line under Brexit and moving on to talk about other pressing national issues such as schools and hospitals.
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, is sticking to his promise to keep the negotiations confidential but a number of MPs said they had been reassured personally that he would not sign up to any deal without a public vote.
Even some of those who had been considering backing any cross-party deal were spooked by May’s Mail on Sunday article that tries to sell a temporary customs union until 2022 on the grounds that whoever wins a general election can set the future direction. They fear this could amount to signing up to a “blind Brexit” in which hard Brexiter successors to May such as Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab could set the terms of the future relationship.
Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader who has been pushing for an unequivocal second referendum policy, told the BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics that “the Labour party membership and vast numbers of my colleagues in parliament don’t want us to just sign off on a Tory Brexit”. He said a deal would only be done if Starmer, who backs a second referendum, approved it.
Meanwhile, May is facing the prospect of a Tory revolt and losing votes for her deal if she makes any promise of a permanent customs union, with at least 100 of her MPs unwilling to vote for such a compromise.
Two senior Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, and Rory Stewart, the international development secretary, both offered a view that the major parties needed to find a compromise. Stewart even suggested a split in the Tory party could be a price worth paying to get a Brexit deal done, telling Pienaar’s Politics: “Yes, there will be short-term pain.”
He also urged the prime minister to find a binding solution on a customs union with Labour, claiming: “We need investors to feel this will be there for 30 years not just for four years and a cross-party deal is a way to do with.”
However, the idea of a binding customs union incensed Conservative Brexiters, who are ramping up their efforts to oust May in the wake of the dire local election results for the party.
Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, warned May in the Telegraph that she must not cave on the issue of the customs union.
“The temptation for the government now to do whatever is necessary to secure some kind of Brexit agreement is obvious but it must be resisted,” he said.
“To reach an agreement with Labour that locked the United Kingdom into the customs union might pull in enough Labour votes to allow an agreement to limp over the line but the price could be a catastrophic split in the Conservative party and at a time when the opposition is led by dangerous extremists, the consequences for our country would be unthinkable.”
Brady is expected to lead a delegation of the 1922 to see May on Tuesday asking her to set out a timetable for her departure or face serious attempts to remove her.
First published on Wed 13 Feb 2019 17.40 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn faces up to 10 resignations from the Labour frontbench if he fails to throw his party’s weight behind a fresh attempt to force Theresa May to submit her Brexit deal to a referendum in a fortnight’s time, frustrated MPs are warning.
With tension mounting among anti-Brexit Labour MPs and grassroots members, several junior shadow ministers have told the Guardian they are prepared to resign their posts if Corbyn doesn’t whip his MPs to vote for a pro-referendum amendment at the end of the month.
Corbyn has been struggling to balance the conflicting forces in his party over Brexit, as the clock ticks down towards exit day on 29 March..
Many party members and MPs would like him to take a lead in seeking to block Brexit before time runs out – but some frontbenchers are equally adamant they could never support a referendum.
Len McCluskey, the general secretary of the Unite union and a close ally of Corbyn, risked stoking the conflict in the party on Wednesday when he argued that stopping Brexit was “not the best option for our nation”.
“My view is that, having had a 2016 referendum where the people have voted to come out of the EU, to try and deflect away from that threatens the whole democratic fabric on which we operate,” he told Peston on ITV. “I’m saying that in reality it is not the best option for our nation.”
The party’s conference policy, thrashed out in a late-night meeting chaired by the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, suggests that if it has failed to secure a general election “Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”.
And it includes the line: “If the government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.”
Since the prime minister’s deal was overwhelmingly rejected by parliament last month, Labour has continued to engage with the government after Corbyn initially declined a meeting with May.
The pair exchanged letters last week setting out their respective Brexit positions, and senior Labour figures met ministers on Tuesday.
Starmer and the shadow Cabinet Office minister, Jon Trickett, were accompanied by Corbyn’s close advisers Seumas Milne and Andrew Fisher as they met the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, and May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington.
A Labour party spokesperson said: “Keir Starmer and Jon Trickett had a frank and serious exchange with Stephen Barclay and David Lidington following Jeremy Corbyn’s five-demands letter to Theresa May.
“Starmer and Trickett set out Labour’s five demands and pushed the government to change its red lines.” Senior Labour sources said they believed the meeting had gone well, and expect a follow-up session to be held next week. But anti-Brexit MPs believe it is time to shift the policy towards supporting a referendum, as May has rejected Labour’s advances by continuing to rule out a customs union.
Some see Starmer as the most likely champion for their cause inside the shadow cabinet. Other key figures, including Trickett and the Labour chair, Ian Lavery, are more sceptical.
Attention is focusing on plans made by the Labour MPs Phil Wilson and Peter Kyle, under which parliament’s endorsement of a deal would be made subject to the public’s approval, echoing the model pursued for the Good Friday agreement.
“That’s where the action is,” said one backbencher. There could also be a straightforward “people’s vote” amendment when May brings an amendable vote to MPs on 27 February.
Several frontbenchers, including the shadow Treasury minister, Clive Lewis, and the shadow business minister, Chi Onwurah, will speak at a Love Socialism, Hate Brexit rally at parliament before the vote on Thursday. The rally is being promoted by the pro-referendum group Another Europe is Possible.
Lewis previously quit as shadow defence secretary in order to rebel against the triggering of article 50, but has since returned to the Labour frontbench.
He said last week: “I’m on the frontbench because I live in hope that the party will get to the bit of our conference policy where it supports a people’s vote.”
Even some shadow frontbenchers opposed to a second referendum are coming to the view that the party needs a “cathartic moment” to whip for a new referendum and prove that the plan has no parliamentary majority, with more than 20 Labour MPs likely to oppose. One sceptical shadow minister said the February deadline would be the time for “peak agitation”.
Tensions over the party’s Brexit policy have been simmering since Corbyn made his offer of a Brexit compromise in a letter to May last week, prompting former leadership candidate Owen Smith to suggest he could quit the party if Labour eventually backed a Brexit deal.
Anger spilled into the open on Wednesday. The MP Neil Coyle claimed the party was losing members and councillors, and could yet lose MPs over its Brexit policy.
One Labour MP, Geraint Davies, tabled an amendment attempting to bring forward the crunch point for the Labour leadership by calling for a referendum on May’s deal but it was not directly connected with that of Kyle and Wilson. “It’s very premature,” one MP said.
Davies’ amendment, which he submitted on Wednesday, will be attached to a government motion laying out the next stage of Brexit negotiations. MPs are due to vote on the motion on Thursday.
Davies said his amendment would help build support for another legally binding amendment on a second referendum at the next opportunity.
“There is a hidden majority in the house that want to support this position, but they are all waiting around for some guiding north star for them to follow before they take action, but we are running out of time,” he said. “MPs are in danger of being complicit if they do not take action now.”
But Kyle said he was not behind Davies’ amendment and had hoped to wait until there was more momentum behind the move.
“The main push for this will be the meaningful vote. Clearly the landscape changes but this vote tomorrow is not binding and this amendment should not be interpreted as the main bid for support,” he said.
Corbyn was criticised for failing to take tougher action against MPs who declined to back Yvette Cooper’s amendment aimed at averting a no-deal Brexit; but chief whip Nick Brown has made clear to MPs he would deal with all Brexit votes in the round, at the end of the process.
First published on Thu 20 Dec 2018 16.52 GMT
Senior Labour and Conservative MPs are to ramp up efforts to block any possibility of a no-deal Brexit ahead of the vote on Theresa May’s deal, with a plan to mandate the prime minister to extend or cancel article 50 if the prospect of crashing out looms.
Efforts were kickstarted on Thursday by a cross-party group of prominent MPs led by Yvette Cooper, who tabled a new amendment to the finance bill that would only allow a no-deal exit if MPs voted to proceed with one.
Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, said the risks to the UK’s economy and security were “far too high and it would be irresponsible to allow it to happen”.
The MP said she believed there was no majority in parliament for a no-deal Brexit. “But if the government won’t rule it out, then parliament needs to find opportunities to stop the country reaching the cliff edge by accident – starting with the finance bill in the first week back, then looking at every other legislative opportunity too,” she said.
The amendment has been signed by a number of influential Labour and Tory MPs and is expected to be voted on when the House of Commons returns from the Christmas recess.
MPs who have signed include Nicky Morgan, the Conservative chair of the Treasury committee, Labour’s Hilary Benn, who chairs the Brexit committee, Rachel Reeves, the Labour chair of the business committee, the Tory former ministers Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles, and the former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman.
The effect of the amendment would be to halt one clause in the finance bill, designed to give the government the power to keep tax law working in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
If it were passed, it would mean that clause would only be allowed to come into force if there were either a Brexit deal, a decision to extend article 50, or a vote in the Commons specifically approving a no-deal Brexit.
Should the amendment fail, other bills that could be targeted with amendments include immigration, fisheries and trade.
There remains a degree of scepticism, however, as to whether no-deal amendments to those bills would be ruled within the scope of the bill and the decision would ultimately lie with the Commons Speaker, John Bercow.
Multiple cabinet ministers have privately and publicly briefed their preferred alternative routes if the prime minister’s deal fails to pass,including a second referendum and a “managed no-deal”.
The work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, suggested there was a “plausible argument” for a second referendum if parliament could not reach agreement on a deal. Other ministers – including the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt – have suggested the UK could mitigate the effects of no-deal, with Mordaunt suggesting a “managed glidepath” including a two-year transition to trading on World Trade Organization terms.
The justice secretary, David Gauke, is understood to have argued that a managed no-deal is “not a viable option”, telling the cabinet on Tuesday: “The responsibility of cabinet ministers is not to propagate unicorns but to slay them.”
However, on Thursday the Commons leader, Andrea Leadsom, said a managed no-deal Brexit was possible, and suggested she had been looking at the option as an “alternative solution” to the deal on offer.
In coded criticism of Rudd, Leadsom said: “We won’t have a second referendum. That is not government policy.”
May insisted on Thursday that all her ministers were “very clear … what government policy is.”
At a press conference in Lancaster House alongside the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, May said: “Cabinet ministers and I have all been very clear that we are focusing on working on ensuring that we can get the deal that we’ve agreed with the European Union agreed and through parliament in the meaningful vote.”
She repeated that the UK was “seeking greater political and legal assurances” on the Northern Ireland backstop.
“Everybody is very clear not only what government policy is, but what we are all individually and collectively focused on is working to ensure that that deal is able to be agreed by and go through a meaningful vote in the House of Commons,” May said.
At the press conference, May said the way to avoid no-deal was to persuade MPs to vote for her deal, but she reiterated that EU citizens would have their rights protected in any event.
Brussels has said that will not necessarily be reciprocated for UK citizens in EU countries, who may not get long-term guarantees that they can remain there.
“I’ve been clear, EU citizens here would have their rights protected in a no-deal scenario,” May said, adding that the Morawiecki had offered a reciprocal guarantee.
First published on Mon 7 Jan 2019 14.08 GMT
Theresa May’s Brexit preparations could be thrown into fresh difficulty on Tuesday, with Labour poised to support a backbench amendment tabled by Yvette Cooper that could restrict the government’s tax powers unless a no-deal Brexit is taken off the table.
The government may be forced to concede after the Labour frontbench suggested it was likely to whip its MPs to back the cross-party amendment to the finance bill, significantly increasing its chances of success in the Commons. Around a dozen Tory MPs have signalled their intention to back the amendment.
Downing Street and Treasury sources suggested on Monday night that the material effect of the amendment on no-deal preparations for tax administration would be inconvenience rather than disaster.
The instinct in No 10 is to ride out the possible damage and push ahead with the vote on the finance bill on Tuesday, though it is undecided if Tory MPs will be whipped to oppose the amendment or if the government will concede to avoid a defeat.
Yet the amendment’s supporters are also understood to see it as a vehicle to demonstrate the strength of parliamentary opposition to no deal. MPs are also beginning preparations to target other bills with similar amendments that would give parliament more levers to avert a no-deal Brexit.
Downing Street announced on Monday that there were seven bills that have to be implemented in order to provide a smooth exit, including trade, agriculture, healthcare, financial services, fisheries and immigration, as well as legislation for the withdrawal agreement.
Writing for the Guardian, Cooper said there was a growing danger that “brinkmanship, political paralysis, siren voices” could lead the UK over a Brexit cliff-edge.
“Just because most people don’t want something to happen, doesn’t mean it won’t,” she said. “So it is with a no-deal Brexit. I believe the majority of MPs, ministers and most people across the UK are opposed to the self-inflicted damage to our economy and security that would result from crashing out of the EU.”
The amendment has the backing of a number of Labour and Conservative select committee chairs, including Tories Nicky Morgan and Sarah Wollaston, Labour’s Hilary Benn and Frank Field, the pro-Brexit chair of the work and pensions select committee. Former minister Nick Boles and Tory grandees Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicholas Soames have also given their support.
The House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow, must rule on whether to accept the amendment ahead of the finance bill debate on Tuesday but it is understood to have a high chance of selection if the debate goes ahead.
Cooper said the amendment had support from MPs on both sides of the Brexit debate, including from those committed to backing May’s deal and those opposing it. “It doesn’t avoid the difficult debates and disagreements ahead over the best way forward, but it at least gives us the chance to rule out the worst outcome,” she said.
The amendment to the finance bill would be attached to a clause designed to give the government the power to keep tax law working in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
If it were passed, it would mean that clause would only be allowed to come into force if there were either a Brexit deal, a decision to extend article 50, or a vote in the Commons specifically approving a no-deal Brexit. It is this format of three options that MPs may later decide to attempt to apply to other bills going through the Commons.
Morgan said it was time for parliament to create a mechanism to stop no deal by default. “Many of us have been clear that parliament will not allow a no-deal situation to unfold, and with less than 12 weeks to go until 29 March it is time for parliament to show our opposition to a no-deal exit,” she said.
Experts and Whitehall sources are divided about the effectiveness of the amendment. One Treasury source said: “It makes things more difficult but compared to the general effect of no deal, it adds to problems but it is quite a long way down. It does not stop no deal.”
Nikki da Costa, the former Downing Street head of legislative affairs who has extensive experience navigating the difficult parliamentary arithmetic since 2017, said the Treasury would have to weigh up if the powers could be reinstated via another route.
“The easiest route is to see if those powers really are essential and how quickly they may be needed,” Da Costa said, saying she believed the actual effect to be “relatively minor”.
“If those amendments, for example to EU references in tax law, aren’t really problematic, and you can afford not to amend for some time after exit day, then you might just accept the amendment and find another legislative vehicle at a later date.”
Other efforts are also under way to demonstrate the extent of parliamentary opposition to a no-deal Brexit. Some of the 200 MPs who signed a letter organised by Tory ex-minister Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour’s Jack Dromey, calling for May to rule out a no-deal Brexit, are set to meet the prime minister on Tuesday.
Separately, Labour is expected to face renewed attempts by grassroots party members to back a second referendum this week. Left-wing activists from the anti-Brexit group Another Europe is Possible have organised for members for more than two hundred 200 local parties to submit pro-referendum motions for the party’s national policy forum on Wednesday.
The party’s policy cannot be officially changed again until its 2019 conference, which will happen after the UK is expected to have left the EU, but organisers hope that the sheer number of motions submitted for debate at the policy forum will have heavy symbolism in the crucial weeks ahead.
First published on Wed 14 Nov 2018 17.39 GMT
Labour is confident it can convince the majority of potential rebels to vote with their whip against the prime minister’s proposed Brexit deal, with a number of the party’s prominent Eurosceptics suggesting they would vote it down.
Tory sources had briefed that they believed up to 20 would back the government, but a number appeared to be already wavering on Wednesday, putting the deal at significant risk.
If the Democratic Unionist party vote against it then Theresa May would be reliant on Labour votes to get the deal through parliament.
On Wednesday night, the Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and chief whip, Nick Brown, met May for a 20-minute meeting after she briefed her cabinet, in order to discuss the run up to the vote. Corbyn tweeted after the meeting: “This is a bad deal which isn’t in the interests of the whole country.”
A Labour source said Corbyn had stressed importance of giving parliament and committees sufficient time and information for serious scrutiny of the deal and that Labour would put down its own amendment when the deal was put to parliament.
Key to Labour calculations have been the 15 Labour MPs who defied the whip in June to vote against an amendment to the EU withdrawal bill which would keep the UK in a Norway-style EEA agreement. MPs had been instructed to abstain on the amendment, though Labour eventually split three ways, with dozens more voting to back it.
Those 15 included prominent Brexiters, such as Kate Hoey and Dennis Skinner, but also MPs who have been vocal about the need to honour the result of the referendum in their leave constituencies, such as the Don Valley MP, Caroline Flint and the Stoke-on-Trent Central MP, Gareth Snell.
However, Skinner was understood to have told allies he would not back the prime minister’s deal. Another leftwing Brexiter, Graham Stringer, said he was “almost certain” he too would vote against.
Hoey has confirmed she would not back the prime minister, writing in a blogpost for LabourList that the deal was “pandering” to threats from the Irish government.
“At the end of the day, it will come down to what team you play for,” one Labour source said. “Our MPs are tribal and there’s not much the whips will need to say to make some people come to that decision on their own.”
Snell told the Guardian he would need significant reassurances about how the party would prevent a no-deal Brexit should MPs vote against. “The Labour party is committed to leaving the EU and that means the only option to no deal is leaving with a deal,” he said.
“If we vote down this deal, then we need to be clear: what we will do in the 12 weeks that follow to facilitate a new deal? We should be saying, in concrete terms, what we are going to do to prevent no deal. People like me need to have that reassurance.”
Frank Field, a Brexiter who resigned the Labour whip, also said he had yet to decide how to cast his vote. “I want to give a considered response and not commend or condemn it without having seen its contents,” he said. Field has previously said he was deeply concerned about the prospect of no deal.
MPs were likely to come under intense pressure from grassroots Labour members, the majority of whom are both keen backers of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and against leaving the EU.
Momentum was to launch a campaign to persuade wavering Labour MPs, specifically targeted in leave-leaning seats where MPs were most likely to be torn. The Guardian understands that the pro-Corbyn blog Skwawkbox has also been emailing MPs to ask whether they would vote down the deal.
Momentum’s leadership has previously been reluctant to take specific positions on Brexit, but recently surveyed its membership and found more than 92% said they backed voting down any deal in parliament.
Anti-Brexit groups were also likely to ramp up the pressure. Best for Britain, fronted by the Labour peer Andrew Adonis, was set to target the constituencies of the party’s wavering MPs, producing Brexit impact assessments for them and giving them new election data to allow MPs to see the remain versus leave splits in their seats. Those seats would also be targeted with local paper adverts and posters.
“There are people who feel they need to signal to their constituents that they are not against Brexit,” another Labour source said. “But when this version of Brexit is going down so badly with hard Brexiters, it makes it difficult to square.”
Corbyn’s spokesman has made it clear that Labour’s first priority if the government’s deal fails to pass the Commons will be to press for its “different, alternative Labour plan for Brexit”.
Speaking to journalists after prime minister’s questions, he said if May lost the meaningful vote, Labour would consider it to be a vote of no confidence in the government, although formally, under the Fixed Terms Parliament Act, this would not be the case.
“Clearly, if the government is defeated on this absolutely central part of its programme, then it would have shown it was unable to govern, and unable to deliver the most essential priorities for the country.”
Corbyn irked many Labour members with an interview last week where he said “we can’t stop Brexit”. Pressed repeatedly on the question, his spokesman said the party was committed to carrying out the result of the referendum but a number of options remained on the table in the event May’s deal failed to pass.
“Obviously, from a technical point of view, Brexit can be stopped, that’s clearly the case,” he said. “But Jeremy said, ‘we can’t stop Brexit’. That’s not either our policy, nor our priority, nor do we have the mechanism to do it.”
First published on Tue 26 Mar 2019 20.09 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn was considering throwing Labour’s weight behind a “common market 2.0” soft Brexit deal as MPs considered which options to back in indicative votes on Wednesday.
MPs voted on Monday to seize control of the parliamentary timetable to allow the House of Commons to explore whether there could be support for alternatives to Theresa May’s twice-defeated deal.
Labour frontbenchers held a wide-ranging discussion at a weekly shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday about how to manage the complex process and whether the party’s MPs should be given a free vote.
They broke up with no firm decision having been made, although one shadow minister said: There was a clear sense that we will whip along the lines of what our party policy is.”
MPs will be offered a series of options on a paper ballot and given the opportunity to choose as many as they want to support, in the hope it will become clearer whether any alternative to the prime minister’s agreement could command a majority.
Another set of votes is likely to be held next Monday to continue the process of whittling down options, though it is probable May will have another go at winning a majority for her deal in the interim.
Labour tabled its own Brexit policy on Tuesday night as one of the options to be considered by MPs. The motion reflected the wording in Corbyn’s recent letter to the prime minister calling for a customs union and single market alignment.
In a statement accompanying the motion, Corbyn said: “The government’s approach to the Brexit negotiations has been an abject failure and this house must now come together to find a way forward. Labour’s credible alternative plan can be negotiated with the EU and bring people together, whether they voted leave or remain.”
However, the party is also considering whether it can support a separate motion tabled by the Labour MPs Stephen Kinnock and Lucy Powell, and signed by several Tories, including Robert Halfon and Nick Boles.
Kinnock and Powell are part of a cross-party group that has been working for months on proposals for a Norway-style arrangement after Brexit, involving membership of the European Free Trade Association.
This soft-Brexit alternative would keep the UK in the single market by remaining in the European Economic Area and Efta.
Corbyn has held a series of meetings with the MPs proposing such a departure in recent weeks, and the Guardian understands key members of the Labour leader’s team have discussed the drafting of the policy, which is aimed at winning support from members of all parties.
Kinnock said: “Labour’s frontbench motion calls for single market alignment and shared institutions. “Common market 2.0” simply puts flesh on the bones of that motion, by committing to full participation in the single market through membership of the European Economic Area.
“Our cross-party group of MPs has had very constructive and positive discussions with Jeremy, Keir [Starmer] and John [McDonnell].”
However, supporting any version of Brexit will be anathema to Labour MPs campaigning for a fresh referendum in the hope of revoking article 50 and remaining in the EU. And some Labour MPs from leave-voting constituencies are likely to have worries about the lack of control over immigration.
There were also concerns as to whether Labour could trust May, or any potential successor, to implement a softer Brexit if that is what parliament decides.
“If we can get a majority for May’s withdrawal agreement plus a customs union, the risk is that either this prime minister won’t deliver it, or you vote for it, write that into a political declaration and that is handed to a new Tory prime minister like Boris Johnson who can just rip it up,” one shadow cabinet minister said. “It will come down to a very difficult call for the party.”
Tensions in Labour over Brexit have abated somewhat in recent weeks after some of the fiercest critics of the leadership’s stance left to join the breakaway Independent Group.
Corbyn and the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, subsequently announced Labour would support a pro-referendum amendment earlier this month.
But Corbyn’s decision to skip the anti-Brexit march on Saturday, while frontbenchers including Clive Lewis and Tom Watson attended, underlined the divisions in the party.
Supporters of a people’s vote decided to table a motion calling for a referendum as one Brexit option on Tuesday night, after an intense discussion over tactics. Some had earlier suggested the moment to press the issue was after parliament had chosen a deal to support.
One leading supporter of the People’s Vote campaign said they would vote for “referendum or revoke, nothing else”. Labour was expected to encourage its MPs to support the motion, though no final decision had been taken.Some of those backing a referendum said it was the wrong tactic to table the option now. The Conservative former minister Justine Greening said: “Indicative votes are about what substantive route forward we have on Brexit. That is distinct from the question about having a confirmatory public vote on whatever parliament decides.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
The botched Brexit deal that Theresa May has put to parliament this week is a monumental and damaging failure for our country. Instead of the sensible agreement the prime minister could have negotiated, it is a worst-of-all-worlds deal that works for nobody, whether they voted leave or remain.
Instead of taking back control, it gives up control. Instead of protecting jobs and living standards, it puts them at risk by failing to put in place the basis for frictionless trade. For two and a half years the Conservatives have been negotiating with themselves, rather than the European Union. The result has been a lockdown withdrawal agreement, which ties Britain either into extending the transition phase at unknown cost – or tips us into a lopsided backstop agreement from which there is no independent exit. As the legal advice the prime minister tried to prevent us from seeing this week spells out, the backstop would “endure indefinitely” without the say-so of the EU.
What that means in practice is that the wish list of the government’s “future partnership” agreement with the EU would remain just that, without the leverage to get a long-term and effective trade deal. Meanwhile, Britain would have no say in either its own customs arrangements or key market regulations. While workers’ rights would be allowed to fall behind, restrictions on state aid to industry would be locked in.
May claims this is just an insurance policy. But it’s now clear the backstop is at the heart of her deal. It would leave Britain with no say in a humiliating halfway house which we couldn’t leave without the EU’s permission. There is no precedent I am aware of for a British government signing up to an international treaty it cannot withdraw from without the agreement of other countries. It is clearly unacceptable.
The only reason the government has agreed such a convoluted package is to manage the warring factions of the Tory party. But it has failed. Instead it has united Conservative leavers and remainers, the DUP and every opposition party against it.
This dreadful deal must be defeated when it is put to the vote next week. We are working with MPs and parties across the House of Commons not only to ensure it is rejected, but also to prevent any possibility of a no-deal outcome.
But its defeat cannot be taken for granted. In an effort to drag Tory MPs back onside, May is claiming that defeat for her deal means no deal or no Brexit, because there is no viable alternative. That is false. Labour’s alternative plan would unlock the negotiations for our future relationship with the EU and allow us to move away from such a damaging backstop.
A new, comprehensive customs union with the EU, with a British say in future trade deals, would strengthen our manufacturing sector and give us a solid base for industrial renewal under the next Labour government, especially for our held-back communities. It would remove the threat of different parts of the UK being subject to separate regulations. And it would deal with the large majority of problems the backstop is designed to solve.
Second, a new and strong relationship with the single market that gives us frictionless trade, and the freedom to rebuild our economy and expand our public services – while setting migration policies to meet the needs of the economy, not fuelling xenophobia with phoney immigration targets or thresholds – makes far more sense than the prime minister’s dismal deal.
Lastly, we want to see guarantees that existing EU rights at work, environmental standards and consumer protections will become a benchmark to build on – not fall behind and undercut other countries at our people’s expense. These rights and protections, whether on chlorinated chicken or paid holidays, are what people actually want. But the government is determined to trade them away in a race to the bottom.
Labour has very different priorities. Our alternative plan would ensure an open border in Ireland, provide security for investment, give our manufacturing sector a springboard for renewal, ensure we have the powers to rebuild our economy and public services and guarantee world-beating support for workers, consumers and our environment. We are absolutely committed to internationalist cooperation and anti-racist solidarity across Europe, in or out of the EU, and determined to ensure opportunities for students to study in other countries are protected.
Unlike the Norway-plus option now being canvassed among MPs, our plan would not leave Britain as an across-the-board rule-taker of EU regulations without a say. It’s a plan that can be negotiated with the EU, even at this late stage, with most of the building blocks already in place. The EU has shown it is prepared to renegotiate even more complex agreements than this, such as the Lisbon treaty. And ours is a plan I believe could command a majority in parliament and bring the country together.
The stakes could not be higher next week. If the prime minister’s deal is defeated, the government will have lost its majority on the most important issue facing the country and lost its ability to govern. The best outcome in those circumstances would be to let the country decide on the way ahead and the best team to lead it. That means a general election.
In the past, a defeat of such seriousness as May now faces would have meant an automatic election. But if under the current rules we cannot get an election, all options must be on the table. Those should include Labour’s alternative and, as our conference decided in September, the option of campaigning for a public vote to break the deadlock. Two years ago, people voted remain because they wanted an open, international relationship with Europe and a multicultural society. Many voted leave out of anger at the way the political class had left them behind, with crumbling infrastructure and low-paid, insecure jobs. Our job is to unite people with a plan that works for the whole country.
Given the decisions taken in parliament this week, it should now be easier to build support for an alternative plan to bring the country together. The government’s deal must not stand. In those circumstances parliament has shown it is ready to take control, and Labour will give the leadership the country needs.
First published on Fri 26 Apr 2019 18.53 BST
Labour has denied being forced to hastily rewrite a leaflet for next month’s European parliamentary elections, after a backlash from pro-remain MPs and MEPs.
The text of a campaign leaflet for the south-west of England sparked fury among supporters of a second referendum, who insist Labour’s backing for the idea in recent House of Commons votes means it is now official party policy.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, was among those angered by the wording of the draft.
It promised: “Labour will bring our country together,” and urged voters to use the European elections as an opportunity to “tell the Tories you are fed up with their divisive and incompetent government”, but did not mention a referendum.
Hilary Benn tweeted: “Labour has twice supported a confirmatory referendum in votes in the House of Commons. It’s our policy. Why isn’t it mentioned in this leaflet?”
Remain supporters claimed on Friday that the leaflet was being redrafted, before a crunch meeting of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) on Tuesday to decide Labour’s manifesto for the poll on 23 May.
But a Labour spokesperson insisted: “There are a number of different texts for different leaflets in circulation, including for a freepost and for other campaign purposes. They all reflect existing party policy. Our manifesto for the European elections will be decided next Tuesday.”
Opinion ahead of the meeting appeared to be finely balanced. Some NEC members, including the deputy leader, Tom Watson, want to see a policy platform that includes a clear commitment to a second referendum; while others, including the MP Jon Trickett, prefer the party to seek to represent leavers as well as remainers.
The view of the Momentum founder Jon Lansman is expected to be critical. Momentum was created to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, but many of its members and senior figures are enthusiastic supporters of a second referendum.
Laura Parker, Momentum’s national coordinator, spoke at the Put it to the People rally last month, and missed out on being among the party’s top candidates for the European parliamentary elections, after a row.
Some MPs in Eurosceptic seats have asked the party’s leadership to hold off from announcing any policy shift until after next week’s local elections, fearing that a full-throated commitment to a referendum would further infuriate their constituents.
The Stoke-on-Trent Central MP, Gareth Snell, said: “Labour’s policy – as agreed at conference – was to work for a better deal and respect the referendum result. Committing our MEPs to a divisive second referendum, which is solely the preserve of Westminster and not something they have any control over, does nothing to help win votes in the regions of England.”
But 75 MPs and 14 sitting MEPs have signed a letter to Jeremy Corbyn, urging him to promise a referendum, coordinated by the campaign group Love Socialism, Hate Brexit.
“We need a message of hope and solidarity, and we need to campaign for it without caveats. To motivate our supporters, and to do the right thing by our members and our policy, a clear commitment to a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal must be part of our European election manifesto,” the letter says.
“We understand the many different pressures and views within our movement, but without this clear commitment, we fear that our electoral coalition could fall apart.”
Signatories include Clive Lewis, the shadow Treasury minister, and Benn, who is chair of the Brexit select committee.
The leader of Labour’s MEPs said he expected the NEC to back a referendum on a Brexit deal in the manifesto for the European elections.
Richard Corbett said: “We have got to the point now where not holding another referendum is tantamount to saying to the general public: ‘You had your say three years ago, now you have to shut up and let the politicians serve up whatever they want to and you can’t have a say on it.’
“I expect the NEC to continue with what is Labour party policy, which is to say that there should be a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal that this government comes up with.”
All the main parties are cranking up their campaign machines for the European elections, which the government had hoped to avoid by striking a cross-party Brexit deal.
Negotiations between Labour and the government do not appear to be making significant progress – although both sides continue to insist they are “serious”.
Talks in recent days have focused on workers’ rights, and on “entrenchment” – locking in any concessions made by the government, so that they cannot be unpicked by Theresa May’s successor.
First published on Thu 7 Feb 2019 10.24 GMT
Labour has denied it would automatically move to back a second referendum if Theresa May rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s offer of support for a revised Brexit deal, despite a shadow minister suggesting that would be the next step.
The shadow Brexit minister, Matthew Pennycook, said that if the government rejected the offer from Corbyn, made in a letter to the prime minister on Wednesday night, the party would have “no other credible options” but to back another public vote.
Labour sources denied it was the party’s official position but said the option of a public vote was still on the table, as per the policy agreed at the party’s conference.
Corbyn is expected to move to reassure party members after the letter he sent to the prime minister sparked an angry backlash from some backbenchers and party members.
In his letter to the prime minister, Corbyn called for the government to rework the political declaration with the EU to offer five commitments, including staying in a customs union, in part to avoid the need for a backstop over the Irish border.
It also called for a say on future EU trade deals and “dynamic alignment on rights and protections”.
Labour MPs who support a second referendum reacted with dismay to Corbyn’s letter. Pat McFadden said his leader was giving MPs in leave constituencies permission to back May’s deal. “He wants it to happen, and even if he doesn’t vote for it himself, he’s sending a signal to Labour MPs that they can do so,” he tweeted.
David Lammy and Owen Smith said Corbyn was compromising too far in favour of Brexit. Smith said the compromise offer was “weaker than our six tests” and trusted the Tory government to legislate to protect workers.
Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, suggested Labour had now abandoned its six tests on Brexit in favour of Corbyn’s five demands.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “It is not about tests now. What we are doing is saying: ‘We believe these are the options that are available that would actually secure a majority in the House of Commons.
“It is trying to set out, in a spirit of cooperation and compromise, a way forward that we feel not just the majority of Labour MPs, but actually the majority of parliament, could say: ‘Yes I can support that, it may not be my dream Brexit or my dream remain but it is something that we can move on for and that would be good for the country’.”
Other leading figures in the People’s Vote campaign, including Chuka Umunna, Ben Bradshaw and Mike Gapes, said their leader was trying to facilitate Brexit.
Government ministers were on Thursday cautious and vague in their response to the letter. David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister and de facto deputy prime minister, said he had not had any direct “overtures” from Labour about talks but added: “We should be talking to the official opposition and understand their point of view.”
Speaking on the Today programme, Lidington questioned Labour’s demands but said he wanted to “understand exactly where the Labour frontbench is coming from”.
He said: “It doesn’t mean we will necessarily come to an agreement, but we need to take this forward … let’s hope those conversations can take place.”
He added: “I would be asking what on Earth they mean when they want to be in a customs union with the EU but also for Britain to have a say in EU trade policy with other countries. That’s not something that is allowed under the European treaties. This seems to be wishful thinking. So let’s get down and have those talks with them.”
MPs from both sides of the House who back a “Norway plus” option for a softer Brexit, expressed some optimism at Corbyn’s offer, including the Conservative MP Nick Boles and some of Corbyn’s critics on the Labour benches, including Stephen Kinnock and Lucy Powell.
Boles tweeted that Corbyn’s letter was a significant move towards a cross-party compromise.
Powell tweeted links to a Norway Plus Group pamphlet to show how Corbyn’s suggestions could work.
The response in Brussels to Labour’s proposals was mixed, with officials welcoming the backing of a permanent customs union, and even indicating the UK might have a chance of a consultative role in future trade negotiations.
The member states have not had any discussions on the possibility of the UK taking such a role and France would be likely to take a tough stance. However, officials are loath to rule it out given the size of the British economy, and the benefit it would offer the EU when embarking in trade talks with the rest of the world.Concerns were expressed, however, that Corbyn was being unrealistic in seeking “shared institutions” with the EU, wording that appears to suggest an equal role for the UK and the 27 member states.
Senior EU officials also doubt the sincerity of Labour’s offer to the prime minister, fearing it is an attempt to weaken May’s hopes of getting a deal through parliament. One official said: “It is a shame that we have this perfect storm: a lousy government and an even lousier official opposition.”
First published on Wed 27 Mar 2019 11.50 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow housing minister has resigned and three shadow cabinet ministers abstained in protest against a three-line whip to vote in favour of plans for a second referendum.
Melanie Onn confirmed she had resigned to vote against the option in the ballot of MPs on Wednesday and the shadow cabinet ministers Jon Trickett, Ian Lavery and Andrew Gwynne all abstained to register their discomfort with the plan.
Labour confirmed on Wednesday that it would expect MPs to support a motion, tabled by Margaret Beckett, which said parliament should not ratify any Brexit deal “unless and until” it has been approved in a “confirmatory public vote”.
Corbyn wrote to Labour MPs on Wednesday afternoon stressing that his party’s first priority was “to deliver our credible Brexit plan” in an attempt to avert a wave of resignations from his frontbench.
But the Labour leader was already facing a fierce backlash from a group of shadow cabinet ministers, many of them strong supporters of his leadership, who are wary of supporting a measure that appeared to be aimed at overturning Brexit.
Onn was among 27 MPs who rebelled and voted against the amendment, including the mayor of the Sheffield city region, Dan Jarvis, as well as other vocal referendum sceptics Caroline Flint, John Mann and Gareth Snell.
Eighteen more MPs abstained, including the three shadow cabinet ministers and others including Tracy Brabin, Stephen Kinnock and Lisa Nandy.
Corbyn was visited earlier on Wednesday by sceptical colleagues including Gwynne, Lavery, Trickett, Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey, after which he issued his letter to Labour MPs.
He wrote: “Labour’s proposed deal remains our preferred solution: based on a customs union, close alignment with the single market and dynamic alignment on rights, standards and protections.”
Corbyn told MPs the party was supporting Beckett’s proposal, “even where it can be read as going beyond our policy”, to “keep the option of a public vote on the table in order to stop a disastrous no deal or May’s unacceptable deal”.
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One shadow minister had earlier warned that Labour would face “a very significant rebellion” if it tried to force MPs to back the motion, and another said: “If we whip for it, we won’t have a shadow cabinet by the end of the day.”
However, the Guardian understands that most shadow cabinet ministers agreed to support the amendment, on the condition that the letter was sent; although some junior frontbenchers were still considering their options.
However, there was also a angry comeback on Wednesday morning from the pro-referendum wing of the party against an interview by the shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner, in which he said Labour was “not a remain party now” and that it could have difficulty supporting a motion for a referendum on any Brexit deal.
Gardiner also suggested Labour was concerned that the motion could suggest the party would allow Theresa May’s deal to pass if it led to a referendum.
“It would be saying we could accept what we have always said is a very bad deal. Therefore it looks as if the attempt to have a public vote on it is simply a way of trying to remain because nobody likes this deal,” Gardiner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“To put that up as the only alternative in a public vote and say we will let it go through looks as though you believe that, at the end of it, remain would be the result. It is not where our policy has been.
“Our policy is clearly that we would support a public vote to stop no deal or to stop a bad deal, but not that we would allow a bad deal as long as the public had the opportunity to reject Brexit altogether.”
He said Labour could not be portrayed as a party that wanted remain at any price. “We have accepted the result of the referendum,” he said.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, tweeted within the hour that he supported the referendum approach and later pushed Corbyn to impose strict discipline on Labour MPs who defied the whip and failed to vote for the amendment on Wednesday evening.
Corbyn’s spokesman confirmed the party would whip for Beckett’s “confirmatory public vote” option – as well as the one put forward by Snell and Ken Clarke, calling for a customs union, and the one setting out Labour’s own Brexit policy.
He said whips would also be “encouraging” Labour MPs to support common market 2.0, the cross-party proposal drawn up by Labour’s Kinnock, among others.
Asked if shadow frontbenchers would be sacked if they disobeyed the whip, he said: “The discipline arrangements are a matter for the chief whip.” But he stressed that the indicative votes process was “unusual”.
No decision is expected to be made until Thursday about the future of the shadow cabinet ministers who abstained, but a Labour spokesperson said the circumstances “are exceptional,” a hint that they may face no sanction.
“It’s clear we need to find common ground in parliament to stop either a disastrous no deal Brexit or the prime minister’s botched deal,” the spokesman said. “Labour is well placed to lead these efforts as our MPs represent constituencies that voted both leave and remain. It is now a matter for the leader and the whips.”
First published on Sun 28 Apr 2019 10.27 BST
Labour is prepared to sign up to a Brexit deal with the government without the promise of a referendum attached if cross-party talks make significant progress in the coming days, one of the party’s negotiators has said.
With talks set to resume on Monday, Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, made clear that if Labour’s Brexit demands were met, she would not expect the party to insist it be put to a public vote.
“Our party policy has always been that firstly we want to get a Brexit deal that puts our economy and living standards first and protects our environmental protections, workplace protections, health and safety standards,” she said.
“If we don’t get a deal that satisfies those objectives – if it’s a damaging deal, a damaging Tory Brexit deal, or there’s a risk of us moving towards a no deal – in that circumstance, we’ve said that all options should be on the table, and that includes campaigning for a public vote,” she added.
Her intervention came ahead of what is widely expected to be a combative meeting of Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) on Tuesday, to sign off its manifesto for the European parliamentary elections.
Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, who sits on the NEC, made clear on Sunday that he will use the meeting to push for a confirmatory vote on any Brexit deal to be included in the manifesto – even urging Labour supporters on Twitter to lobby potential waverers.
He received unlikely support from Jon Lansman, the founder of the Corbyn-backing campaign group Momentum, who replied: “At conference we agreed: ‘If the Govt is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy & communities will benefit from they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public.’ So surely we too can all agree to a confirmatory vote on any govt deal in our manifesto!”
Meanwhile, 21 of the party’s candidates for the European elections, including 11 sitting MEPs, sought to increase the pressure on the NEC, by signing a pledge to say they will push for a referendum with remain on the ballot paper, and if a ballot is called, campaign for remain.
Andrew Lewin, of party campaign group Remain Labour, said he hoped more candidates would sign up in the coming days.
“Remain voters across the country who want to defeat Nigel Farage’s Brexit party can now vote with confidence and enthusiasm for Labour candidates who have pledged to fight for our future, as members of the European Union,” he said.
Many at Westminster believe the cross-party Brexit talks, convened by Theresa May after her deal was rejected three times and due to resume this week, are destined to fail.
But Long-Bailey insisted negotiations had been productive and “gone into a lot of detail”, and hinted that the government was signalling a willingness to compromise on some issues, including workers’ rights.
“There has been movement in specific areas – we’ve had fantastic discussions on workers’ rights, for example, and the government seems quite amenable to moving towards what I’ve been asking for. We’re waiting at the moment to see if that turns into pens on paper,” she told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge.
The NEC will consider a draft manifesto, presented by Labour’s policy chief, Andrew Fisher, which is expected to stick closely to the conference policy of supporting a referendum only in specific circumstances.
However, shadow cabinet ministers keen for the party to back a people’s vote argue that Labour’s formal position changed when Corbyn whipped his MPs to support a confirmatory referendum earlier this month.
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, who attends the cross-party talks alongside Long-Bailey and John McDonnell, said in the House of Commons during the debate: “At this late stage it is clear that any Brexit deal agreed in this parliament will need further democratic approval.”
He was among those angered by the text of a campaign leaflet for the European elections leaked to the Huffington Post last week that failed to mention a referendum.
However, the Grimsby MP Melanie Onn, and the Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Gareth Snell, are among the backbenchers who believe any mention of a referendum will put their voters off – not least in this Thursday’s council elections. Their view is shared by several members of the shadow cabinet.
First published on Sun 18 Nov 2018 16.35 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn’s team were cheered by the weekend’s polls, which showed voters seem prepared to punish the Conservatives for the internecine squabble over Brexit that has dominated the headlines.
They now plan to spend the next fortnight or so, before May’s deal comes before the Commons (if her own MPs allow her to get that far), explaining why they reject her approach.
And they will try to use every parliamentary tool at their disposal to make a no-deal Brexit impossible – in part to give comfort to those Labour MPs, including Caroline Flint and Gareth Snell, who are tempted to support the government’s deal for fear the only alternative is crashing out.
But Labour strategists are also conscious that “stop a Tory Brexit” is not a strong enough argument on its own.
Their plan involves voting down the deal and then trying to win over a majority in parliament for an alternative, Labour approach; but some of its own MPs fear it is not yet clear what that is – and whether it would be negotiable.
Like much of the debate, Corbyn’s objections to the deal in his Sky interview appeared to slide over the distinction between the whopping withdrawal agreement, due to be turned into a binding legal text, and the political declaration, which will be open to renegotiation after March.
The withdrawal agreement includes much that Labour has called for, including a status quo transition; and while they believe some details of the Irish backstop are troubling, it might be hard to object too vehemently if Dublin is content.
But on the political declaration, the details of which are yet to be filled out, they believe the government has rowed back drastically from its original ambitions: all talk of “frictionless” trade appears to have gone, for example.
Labour’s alternative includes a “comprehensive” customs union, within which the UK would get a say over future EU trade deals; and a closer relationship with the single market – but one which would hold a future Labour government to weaker rules on, for example, state aid, than full single-market membership would demand.
Corbyn and Keir Starmer have a formidable challenge on their hands if they want to win over the entire Labour party to that approach, let alone the Tory MPs they would need to attract to make the idea of winning parliament’s backing plausible.
Indeed some Labour MPs have passed the point of being able to back any form of Brexit and will focus their energies on fighting for a people’s vote.
And that’s why Labour’s plan A, which is to push hard for a general election and hope the public have lost confidence in the Tories’ ability to govern, is not as straightforward as it may seem.
Many of its members, and MPs, would push hard for a manifesto that included a commitment to hold a referendum on any future Brexit deal negotiated by Labour, with an option to remain.
As the proliferation of “Love Corbyn, Hate Brexit” merchandise at September’s conference in Liverpool underlined, others would want their party to try to stop Britain leaving the EU altogether – something likely to be rejected by MPs fighting leave seats and confronting voters who want politicians to get on with it.
Feelings are running high. After Corbyn told Der Spiegel Labour “can’t stop Brexit” last week (allies later said he meant they could not do so alone), the Luton MP Gavin Shuker described it as a “moment of betrayal”, of “those the Labour party was first established to protect”, and said it “will not be forgotten for generations”.
If an election does come, Labour is relying on the Tories being so divided and discredited that Corbyn will sweep to No 10; but drawing up a manifesto, let alone fighting the campaign, would expose deep divisions on his own side, too.
For a small number of MPs, it could even precipitate the decision they have been mulling over for a long time – to leave Labour altogether.
The stakes are highest for Theresa May over the coming weeks, but Labour strategists know they must do more than simply sit back and watch the Tories fail.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign motivated thousands. Enthused by an unequivocal, principled call to build a fairer Britain and a more peaceful world, I was one of hundreds who joined volunteer phone-banking sessions. In Labour’s 2017 general election team, I played a small part in the by then huge movement which inspired millions to vote for the party and which has since inspired socialist parties across Europe and beyond.
Making a decisive break with lowest common denominator politics, calling out austerity as a political choice and not a necessity, our reinvigorated party has forced cracks into the consensus supporting neoliberal economics worldwide. It has helped to restore the fight for social justice to the heart of left politics.
Labour has been bold, unapologetic in its defence of the marginalised and unafraid to challenge vested interests. This week it will be bold again, pushing for the UK to become the first country in the world to recognise that we are facing a climate emergency. Once accepted, this is a truth from which there can be no reversing. No half measures will be possible and the consequences for public policy-making and how we live will be – should be – significant.
So, to Europe. Three years after the Brexit vote, there is no easy way out of the near cul de sac into which an inept Tory government and a fractured parliament have driven us. The divides in our country will not fade if we simply wish them away or be tidily stitched up by a “deal on a customs union”. We will have to work hard to repair Britain, community by community.
The challenge we face in the forthcoming European elections is not whether Labour should back a “confirmatory vote” or a “public vote on a Tory deal”, or any of the other variations on these themes circulating in Westminster’s WhatsApp world. The real challenges we face are those described by the phenomenal Greta Thunberg – and the rise of the far right.
Nigel Farage – who in 2016 stood in front of the infamous “breaking point” posters, whipping up hate against immigrants – is now on tour, vaunting his aim to “put the fear of God” into politicians and stoking anger about the “betrayal of the people”. This is populism unplugged. There is no manifesto to argue about, there will not be one. Just the simple offer of “Brexit” – which the past three years have taught us is anything but simple.
And Farage is just the rightwing warm-up act. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – stage name Tommy Robinson – a far-right racist thug, is standing to be an MEP too.
Across Europe, Farage and Robinson are united with others in an online world of untruths and hate. From viral videos of fascists with swastikas to an endless stream of propaganda from Matteo Salvini, whose League party is now at a worrying 32% in the national polls (my Italian family and friends are confronted with the same).
My husband’s home town Dogliani is in the only region in northern Italy still run not by the Lega but by the Partito Democratico. The PD is hoping for renewal after primaries in which some 1.8 million people turned out to elect a new leader, motivated by the memory and fear of populism and fascism. The parents and grandparents of Dogliani’s PD remember fascism. As its dark colours seep again across the Italian map, they know they must do what they can to halt it.
To take on Salvini, the PD activists know that a rupture with the politics of refusing-to-take-a-side is needed. Because there is only one side when it comes to the question of why ordinary voters pay more in taxes than global corporations. There is only one side when it comes to the defence of migrants’ rights, wherever they are and wherever they are from. There is only one side if we are to save our one planet.
For the PD, the Labour party under Corbyn offers enormous hope because it has decided to take a side.
Labour must take a side again now. We must fight these European elections with a positive vision, with honesty about the challenges we face, determination to run at and not away from them, and clarity about where we want to go. The party should continue across Europe the campaign it has begun in the UK: ending the age of European austerity, promoting public investment, tackling international tax cheats and returning wealth to those workers who have created it. There is more than enough for the many if we take on the few.
In doing this we will deprive Farage, Robinson, Salvini – and their friends Marine Le Pen in France and Viktor Orbán in Hungary – of the oxygen of inequality that feeds the flames of despair and hate. Energy spent fighting fascists can be converted into the energy needed to take on the epic task of meeting Greta’s challenge.
Labour’s members already know which side they are on. The party should commit to bringing whatever Brexit deal is done back to the people, for our final say – and then to lead and win the argument for remaining in, and transforming, the EU.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.41 GMT
Modern Britain has been shaped by two events: the banking crisis of 2008 and the Brexit vote eight years later. The reason Boris Johnson is sitting in No 10 is that the Conservatives have learned the right lessons from these episodes and Labour has not.
The Tories have understood that their response to the financial meltdown – a prolonged period of austerity that squeezed living standards – was unpopular and wrong. They also twigged that Brexit was a revolt against austerity and free-market economics more generally – so they have embraced the decision to leave the European Union and positioned themselves as the party of intervention and the working classes.
Labour got the first part of this narrative but not the second. In this general election it sought to divorce austerity from Brexit – with disastrous results. Labour won seats in 2017 when it said it would respect the referendum result, but saw its “red wall” breached when it moved steadily closer to remain. Having chosen not to listen to what voters in its former heartlands were saying, Labour now seems bemused to find that they have migrated to a party that did.
Labour’s Brexit stance was not the only reason it lost the election. The number of seats won by the party has fallen, with one exception, at every election since 1997. Corbyn bucked the trend in 2017 and although he only managed to emulate Gordon Brown’s performance in the defeat of 2010, there was hope that Labour could avoid becoming as politically irrelevant as the social democratic parties in Germany and France. But to do so Labour had to keep its broad electoral coalition together.
The problem in doing so became evident as the campaign wore on. Voters in the former industrial parts of the country are not mugs. They could see that Labour’s stance on Brexit had moved from respecting the referendum result in 2016, to telling the public to have another think (and to come up with a different result) in 2019.
And when canvassing returns showed the likely loss of seats in the red wall, Labour made matters worse by coming up with a string of panicky, and expensive, electoral bribes. To many voters, these seemed an insult to their intelligence, which indeed they were.
All of which leaves Labour in a terrible place. It is not just that the Conservatives are in power for at least the next five years. It is not even that seats once thought impregnable have been lost. It is the failure – for a second time in a decade – to be able to exploit conditions that looked tailor-made for a party of the left.
The financial crisis marked a watershed for global economic liberalism, because its fundamental tenet – that markets worked best when governments took a back seat – came under scrutiny. Brexit was one of the ways in which the pushback against the orthodoxy manifested itself, but much of the remainer left in the UK has been unable to grasp this. Instead of seeing Brexit as a vote for a different sort of economy, it has demonised leave voters as nativists and racists. It decided early on that no matter what form Brexit took, it would be worse than the status quo.
This was a curious argument, because it presupposed that nothing ever changes: that there would be no new policies, no attempts to improve on what currently exists, no attempts to respond to any short-term problems that Brexit might cause. By this token, Labour’s national investment bank and its Keynesian infrastructure programme would have made no difference either.
Brexit has already been a catalyst for change. It has forced the government to spend rather than cut. The Conservatives are committed to increase both the minimum wage and have pledged to use the money saved by scrapping a planned reduction in corporation tax to spending on the NHS. The need for state intervention in the economy is now accepted: regional policy is back in vogue.
So Labour’s remainers face a choice. Option one is to move straight from supporting a second referendum to arguing for rejoining the EU. This is an entirely negative strategy and relies on UK voters looking at the dismal growth across the Channel and saying: “We want what they are having.” It seems a tad unlikely.
Option two involves grudgingly accepting that Brexit is a reality and that Labour’s approach should be to make the best of a bad job. This would be a continuation of Corbyn’s triangulation strategy and have the same baleful result. The message sent to leave voters would be the same as it has been consistently from remainers since 2016: you got it wrong, you idiots. This doesn’t seem to be a particularly good way of rebuilding the red wall either.
Strategy three is the hardest for remainers to swallow but it is the only option that offers a way back for Labour: embrace Brexit and argue for a left version of Britain outside the EU. This could take many forms: a devolution of power to local mayors; a new deal for the north; state support for green industry that would provide well-paid jobs in every constituency. It means exuding optimism that things can get better rather than telling people who are struggling, but not destitute, that only state handouts can alleviate their misery.
The choice is simple: start putting together a post-Brexit progressive project or have a monster sulk and watch the Tories make the political weather.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
It is, perversely, a sign of the government’s weakness, not its strength, that it has inevitably seen off a vote of no confidence. All that unites a bitterly fractious Conservative party is panic at the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government coming to power in a general election, a likelihood many are admirably honest about. If Theresa May was confident about the Tories’ prospects, she would risk throwing the dice. But Labour started the last election campaign 24 percentage points behind the Tories in the polls, and ended two points behind six weeks later. Today, the polling average has Labour slightly ahead. Conservatives fear that a Corbyn-led administration would not be like a “normal” Labour government, and would upend an economic consensus established by Margaret Thatcher. And they would be right.
The media will now attempt to shift the narrative, claiming that it is Labour under pressure. This is absurd. The government has just suffered the biggest parliamentary defeat in the history of British democracy. A disastrous near-decade of Tory rule has left Britain in its worst combined political and social crisis in modern times, the consequence of ideologically driven austerity and catastrophic political decisions by both David Cameron and May. Labour will be pilloried for not having a magical solution – when there is none – to a crisis engineered by its opponents.
There will be claims that, having lost this no-confidence attempt, Labour’s democratically agreed official policy dictates that it must now support a second referendum. But this is inaccurate. The policy states that the “best outcome for the country is an immediate general election that can sweep the Tories from power”, but if such an election cannot be engineered, the party “must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”.
What is Labour’s strategy? Let’s take a second referendum. Whatever the leadership decides, it is not even clear that a majority can be found for it. One Labour MP – who resigned from the frontbench in 2016 – tells me that, in a free vote, “the parliamentary Labour party would be split down the middle, possibly [with] even more against. It’s just they aren’t the people on the telly all the time!” In the shadow cabinet, there are those, such as Diane Abbott (the single most influential Labour MP in Corbyn’s inner circle, a point neglected by most commentators for depressing reasons) and Keir Starmer, sympathetic to a second vote, with laudable reasons, too; others, such as Richard Burgon, against; and others, such as John McDonnell, pragmatically straddling the divide. Around 100 Labour MPs were predicted to declare in favour of a second referendum today; in the end, just 71 did so. If half of the parliamentary party voted for a second referendum, that would amount to less than a fifth of parliament; well over 100 Tory MPs would have to support it too. It is really difficult to see this happening, meaning that Labour would risk alienating its leave voters for nothing.
If Labour imposed a three-line whip in support of a referendum, shadow cabinet members representing leave constituencies have told me they will resign. If a referendum becomes the only option left, then Labour will have to campaign for remain, and make a great fist of it. But don’t have any illusions. The campaign will be even more bitter and vicious than the last; the culture war that has enveloped the country will get worse; millions of leave voters will be angered and even more disillusioned than before; and under a slogan of “tell them again”, leave may well win once more. Tory rule is the source of the nation’s ills: wishing to remove this Conservative government – and the only means of doing so is a Labour victory – is not putting “party before country”, it’s an attempt to save the nation from the most calamitous administration since the war. Of Labour’s 54 Tory-held target seats, 41 voted leave. Just 13 opted for remain. Without holding on to its existing leavers and winning over more, Labour cannot win an election, and the injustices that helped lead to the Brexit vote will be exacerbated.
So what does the party do? It must make a pitch to unite the country. The Tories have sought to represent only the leave side – and even then, not the bread-and-butter concerns of leave voters – and their key media supporters have demonised remainers. Labour must emphasise that the real conflict is not between supporters or opponents of Brexit, but the vast majority against the elite. It must refocus the debate on what unites both tribes, such as living standards, jobs, the NHS, taxing the rich and public ownership. That means advocating a compromise. A majority does exist in parliament for a customs union. And although many within the Labour leadership regard it as unsatisfactory, so-called Norway plus, combining the single market and a customs union, has a good chance of winning support across the parliamentary divide. The EU has made it clear that a shift in Britain’s red lines will open up new opportunities. That will refocus the debate on bitter Tory divisions, too.
Labour will be shouted down by a vocal lobby if it fails to back a second referendum. But, for now, the party must surely direct its efforts at constructing a new deal.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Labour’s leadership is determined to hold out against backing a second referendum on Brexit unless all other options have been exhausted, despite growing calls for the party to tack towards remain, according to senior party sources, amid reports that Theresa May could seek a TV debate with Jeremy Corbyn.
The Labour leader’s close allies are acutely conscious they may have to make momentous decisions at high speed if May’s deal is rejected by MPs in the meaningful vote expected to be held on 12 December: a scenario that looks increasingly likely.
The prime minister would have to return to parliament within 21 days and set out how she intended to proceed.
Labour sources say they would probably wait to see what she proposed before tabling a vote of no-confidence, in the hope of triggering a general election. “We’ll only get one shot at this,” one party strategist said.
If the bid to trigger an election fails, “all options are on the table”, according to the motion hammered out at the party’s conference in Liverpool in September.
But Labour strategists believe they cannot get to the 45% or so of the vote they would need to win the next election if they are seen to represent only what they jokingly refer to as “Remoania”.
Monday’s Daily Telegraph reported that May would seek a TV debate with Corbyn on her Brexit deal as the showpiece of an election-style campaign to seek the country’s backing before the parliamentary vote. A Labour party spokesperson said: “Jeremy would relish a head-to-head debate with Theresa May about her botched Brexit deal and the future of our country.”
Some hold out the hope that Labour could pick up many of the leave-backing voters who feel sold out by the prime minister’s deal.
“They’re available to us provided we don’t sound like remainers,” one shadow cabinet minister said, adding that the party must also guard against the risk that these voters switch to Ukip.
In the run-up to the 2017 general election, Labour’s then-pollsters, BMG, suggested the party needed to sound pro-Brexit, or risk alienating voters in a swath of heartland constituencies, two senior Labour figures who saw the report have told the Guardian – one of whom added: “We don’t think the picture’s changed that much since.”
In Corbyn’s inner circle, the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, has told friends she is on a “vigil” against any move that could alienate Labour supporters in staunchly remain seats such as her constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. However, the Hemsworth MP Jon Trickett is more exercised about the anxieties of northern leave voters.
Labour’s determination to reject May’s Brexit deal when she brings it back to Westminster has been bolstered by private polling showing only 21% of voters believe it will be better than EU membership.
Internal research is telling the party that 42% of voters think the deal negotiated by the prime minister will be worse than staying in the EU; against only 21% who believe it will be better. Voters have also told Labour’s pollsters – by a two to one margin – that they supported MPs’ right to vote it down if they thought it was damaging for the country.
“This is a bad deal for the country,” said Corbyn on Sunday. “It is the result of a miserable failure of negotiation that leaves us with the worst of all worlds. It gives us less say over our future and puts jobs and living standards at risk.
“That is why Labour will oppose this deal in parliament. We will work with others to block a no-deal outcome and ensure that Labour’s alternative plan for a sensible deal to bring the country together is on the table.”
However, the majority of the public also say they want Brexit to be over and done with – a sentiment the prime minister has been keen to play on as she ramps up Downing Street’s bid to sell the deal to a wary public.
Nevertheless, a growing number of frontbenchers believe Labour may need to “swerve” towards a “people’s vote”, as one put it, if public opinion swings behind the idea; and the leadership will come under intense pressure from the party grassroots to do so.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said recently it was “more likely given the weakness of Theresa May’s position”.
Abbott is among those shadow cabinet members who have publicly expressed concern about the risks of a second referendum. She told the BBC’s Nick Robinson last week: “People should be careful what they wish for, because my view is that if we had a second referendum tomorrow, leave would win again and not only would leave win again but leave voters would say ‘What didn’t you understand about leave winning the first time?’”
Keir Starmer, who said publicly last week he would vote remain if a second referendum were held, is keen to ensure the parliamentary Labour party is united behind any shift in policy.
A general election would risk exposing the bitter tensions within the party about Brexit. The leadership is clear it would want to go into an election promising to press ahead with leaving the EU, but strike a less economically damaging deal.
But a vocal cohort of Labour MPs could find it impossible to stand on a manifesto that did not state stopping Brexit as an aim. One MP campaigning vigorously for remain said: “I think it would rip the party apart, simple as that.”
A small number could even seek to split from Labour and stand as “stop Brexit” independents. Some of Corbyn’s closest lieutenants are relaxed about that happening, believing official Labour candidates would beat them.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Labour would almost certainly seek a vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government if she loses the key Commons vote on her Brexit deal in nine days’ time, Keir Starmer has said.
Setting out the likely choreography for opposition efforts if, as expected, May is defeated on 11 December, the shadow Brexit secretary said it seemed impossible that May could remain in office if she was defeated on her flagship policy.
“I think the prime minister, as we all know, is going to struggle between now and that vote,” Starmer told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show, saying that if she were to lose, May would have to outline her next move to the Commons.
“We need to see what that is. But it seems to me that if the prime minister has lost a vote of that sort of significance, then there has to be a question of confidence in her government,” he said. “I think it’s inevitable that we will seek to move that.
“Obviously, it’ll depend on what actually happens in nine days. It depends on what the response is. But if she’s lost a vote of this significance after two years of negotiation, then it is right that there should be a general election because, but for the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, the convention was always, if a government loses what’s called a confidence vote – something of such significance – then that government has to go.”
Labour’s policy has long been to push for a general election if no Brexit deal can be reached, but Starmer’s comments firm up the likely timetable. If May’s government were not deposed, he said, Labour would start seeking a second referendum.
“Obviously, if that doesn’t happen, we need to press on to other options such as a public vote because, having gone through the first two options, we would need to look at what happens then,” he said.
The likelihood of the party pushing for a new Brexit referendum has appeared to grow over time. Last week the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said Labour would “inevitably” back a second referendum if the party was unable to force a general election.
Asked about those comments, Starmer said: “John is going through exactly the same process as me – if a general election is not possible, then options such as a public vote will have to be looked at.”
If this took place, Starmer added, the vote should not include the option of a no-deal departure from the EU, as this would be too damaging for the UK.
“I don’t actually think that this prime minister will move to a no-deal situation,” he said. “She knows the risks. She’s very serious about counter-terrorism and security. I don’t think, when she stands up if she loses this vote, that she’s likely to say: ‘I’m now going to take the country off the cliff. I’m going to go for the no-deal scenario.’”
This was, however, later contradicted by Labour’s shadow international trade secretary, Barry Gardiner. Quizzed on BBC One’s Andrew Marr show about the idea of a second referendum, Gardiner said that if this happened, “remain and, I think, no-deal would both be on the table”.
Speaking later on the Ridge show, the Conservative party chair, Brandon Lewis, again urged MPs to back May’s deal, saying there was no plan B.
“Well actually, plan B is plan A – to get this deal agreed. It is the only deal that’s there on the table. It’s the only option we have got. If this deal doesn’t go through we have the risk of no Brexit, no deal potentially,” he said.
First published on Wed 23 Jan 2019 12.39 GMT
Labour looks set to whip its MPs to back Yvette Cooper’s amendment, paving the way for legislation that would mandate ministers to extend article 50 if a no-deal Brexit looked imminent.
The amendment, tabled by Cooper to a motion laid by the government after the defeat of its Brexit deal, would give parliamentary time for the private member’s bill to be debated, which it otherwise would not get.
Cooper and her fellow Labour MP Rachel Reeves, who has put down a separate amendment on extending article 50, met Jeremy Corbyn for talks about the party’s strategy on Wednesday.
It is understood the party leadership would prefer the legislation to contain a shorter extension than the nine months specified in Cooper’s bill, which would mean going beyond the European elections.
Cooper, who has devised the plan with former Tory ministers Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin, has previously said the nine-month extension is a starting point and they would expect MPs to amend their bill to find a sensible consensus about how long the extension should be.
Labour has also been cautious about the potential constitutional implications of allowing MPs to dictate time for a bill but party sources have indicated they are likely to back the amendment as a way of closing down the prospect of no deal. The motion, and any amendments selected by the Speaker, will be voted on next Tuesday.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, signalled Labour could back the plan in an interview with BBC Two’s Newsnight.
“Yvette Cooper has put an amendment down, which I think is sensible ... so I think it’s increasingly likely already that we’ll have to take that option because the government has run the clock down,” he said.
McDonnell said the party would need to go through its own process to make a final decision. “It’s highly likely but we’ll go through our normal process of consultation with our members,” he said.
The eventual bill, if passed, would give parliament control over the final stages of the Brexit process if there is no parliamentary consensus on a Brexit deal by 26 February. It would give MPs a vote on preventing a no-deal Brexit and extending article 50.
Should the amendment pass, it would still be a difficult route for the bill through the Commons in the face of government opposition. If it is made law, it would still need the agreement of the 27 other EU states for an extension to be allowed.
The Labour peer Andrew Adonis, a prominent supporter of a second referendum, said he would introduce the bill to the House of Lords on Wednesday, a necessary step to getting the legislation though the upper house. It is possible the Lords could still derail the bill if it passes through the House of Commons, such as by filibustering the legislation.
The amendment itself is highly likely to pass on Tuesday with Labour frontbench support. Privately however, some moderate Tory MPs have suggested they favour a different amendment laid by former minister Caroline Spelman and Labour MP Jack Dromey.
Their version would not be legally binding, whereas Cooper’s would pave the way for legislation, but says more simply that the House of Commons “rejects the UK leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement and a framework for the future relationship”.
One Conservative MP said the government would need to pay heed to the amendment even if it was not legally binding and that there was concern Cooper’s plan would be derailed as it proceeded through the Commons.
“This amendment is very likely to get significant support across the house,” the MP said. “It’s the clear-cut ‘no to no deal’ message this government needs.”
The Labour MP Caroline Flint, who has been outspoken about the need to deliver Brexit, said Cooper’s amendment would not resolve the impasse. “Yvette Cooper’s amendment is suggesting we delay Brexit until 31 December 2019. I think that is a disaster,” she told the BBC.
“I have to say some of these people involved in process, I hear little about what deal they want, I just hear about them kicking the issue down the road.”
Tory Brexiters in the Commons may attempt to derail Cooper and Boles’s plans by restricting the number of days in parliament where private members’ bills can be debated.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group of MPs in favour of a hard Brexit, told a lunchtime conference the Queen should suspend parliament in order to stop Cooper’s bill. “If no deal were taken off the table, Her Majesty’s government would have had to have connived in doing it. It cannot be done if the government is determined to stop it,” he said.
Rees-Mogg hinted that Brexiter MPs could cause chaos for the government if it appeared to be tacitly allowing the bill a passage through parliament. He said the government could instruct the monarch to prorogue parliament if it were serious about stopping Cooper’s bill.
“Prorogation normally lasts for three days, and any law that is in the process before prorogation falls. I think that would be the government’s answer. That is the government’s backstop, to use a choice phrase,” he said.
“And if the government allows no deal to be taken off the table, that would be a failure of the government, and then it would be the job of backbench MPs to hold the government to account.”
The Tory MP Christopher Chope also attempted to table an amendment to a government motion on Wednesday to prevent any new days being allocated for private members’ bills, a bid to scupper Cooper’s bill. In the end, the government motion was dropped, meaning there was no vote on Chope’s amendment.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Labour MPs have been told to prepare for Jeremy Corbyn to table a dramatic and immediate vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government as early as Tuesday evening in an attempt to force a general election if – as expected – she suffers a heavy defeat this week on her Brexit deal.
Messages have been sent to Labour MPs, even those who are unwell, to ensure their presence both for the “meaningful vote” on the prime minister’s Brexit blueprint on Tuesday and the following day. Labour whips have told MPs the no-confidence vote is likely to be tabled within hours of a government loss, with the actual vote taking place on Wednesday.
The news comes before what promises to be one of the most tumultuous 24 hours in recent parliamentary history in which, barring another delay, May will put her Brexit deal to parliament despite deep and widespread opposition across the Commons, including from many MPs inside her own party.
A senior shadow cabinet member said: “There is now recognition that we cannot wait any longer. If May goes down to defeat and she does not resign and call an election, this is the moment we have to act.”
Senior Tories said on Saturday that they could not see how the prime minister could win the meaningful vote “in any circumstances” and that a defeat by less than 100 would now be regarded as the best she could hope for.
But even if she suffered a loss of closer to 200, which many Tories fear could be the case, Conservative MPs and ministers still expect her to stagger on and seek to bring an improved offer back to the Commons for a further vote within weeks.
Although senior Labour figures accept they are unlikely to win a no-confidence vote, as the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs have said they will back the government, the move will highlight the fragility of May’s hold on power as the Brexit crisis deepens.
Yet should Corbyn fail to force an election, it will place the Labour leader under greater pressure from many of his own MPs, as well as party members and supporters, to throw his weight behind a second referendum as the way to break the Brexit impasse.
Labour’s current policy is to seek to force an election, and if it wins, to renegotiate a new Brexit deal. Senior shadow cabinet figures said any further delay in tabling a no-confidence motion will make that position untenable, as there will be insufficient time before Britain’s exit from the EU on 29 March to hold an election.
The Observer understands that if Corbyn were to delay tabling a vote of no confidence, senior Labour MPs would table one themselves in the hope of forcing the leadership to back a second referendum. Angela Smith, Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said: “The time for prevarication is over. If May’s deal fails we have to test the will of the house and if we fail, we must consider all options including campaigning for a second referendum as this is party policy.”
A Labour spokesman, while not confirming a vote on Tuesday, said that while the timing of a no-confidence vote had not been fixed, MPs had been told to be ready. Barry Gardiner, the shadow trade minister, said last week that a vote of no confidence would “obviously” have to follow immediately after a defeat for May’s deal.
A Momentum activist, Michael Chessum, spokesman for the leftwing anti-Brexit campaign Another Europe is Possible, said that if Labour won the confidence vote, it would be time for Corbyn to back a second referendum as part of the Labour manifesto. If it lost, it should campaign for one as the official opposition.
He said: “Proposing a no-confidence motion is the first step for either scenario, and we need to get on with it.” Labour campaigners for a second referendum claim that the party’s policy forum has received more than 13,000 emails and letters urging Corbyn to oppose Brexit.
Writing in the Observer, London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan said that he will step up his campaign for another referendum if an election is not called immediately: “A public vote would not only allow us to move beyond the current stalemate but would actually start the desperately needed process of healing the deep divisions that have opened within our society.”
Roy Hattersley, the veteran Labour politician, also threw his weight behind a second referendum on Saturday, saying the British people had “a right to cast a vote on the merits” of May’s deal.
Meanwhile, pro-remain cabinet ministers are preparing to push for a softer Brexit this week. In the event of a defeat for May, they are poised to back a plan B that would prevent Britain from signing its own trade deals.
It is understood some believe that joining a permanent customs union with the EU could be enough to secure a Commons majority for May’s deal. This could be one option put forward in a series of indicative votes to test the views of MPs on alternatives if her plan is thrown out. Such a move would potentially attract a bloc of Labour MPs.
With a critical week ahead, Tory rebels are already plotting a series of measures designed to hand more power to parliament over Brexit. One senior figure said that a “legally copper-bottomed” plan had already been drawn up to “give parliament control of the Brexit negotiation and stop a no-deal Brexit” should May’s deal be voted down.
A vote to show there is a Commons majority in favour of delaying Brexit is also being plotted by a cross-party group of MPs. “If we are not crashing out and we are not going for the PM’s deal, I cannot believe that article 50 does not have to be extended,” said one of those involved.
The business secretary, Greg Clark, also writing in the Observer, has appealed to pro-Brexit Labour MPs to back May’s deal, insisting that the government would protect workers’ rights when the UK is outside the EU. He pledged to back an amendment proposed by Labour MPs on the issue.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Labour’s campaigns chief has rejected the idea that disappointing local election results last week showed his party must embrace what he called “‘stop Brexit’ simplicity”.
As senior Labour figures prepare to resume Brexit talks with Conservative ministers on Tuesday, Andrew Gwynne warned against a further shift towards remain.
“On Brexit, what Labour is trying to achieve is much harder and more complex than those who say we need to simply swing behind remain admit,” he wrote in the Guardian.
“It would be the easiest option and perhaps superficially give us a short-term boost, but we are a national party seeking support from people all over the county, unlike the ‘leave means leave’ charade of the Tories and Nigel Farage, or the ‘stop Brexit’ simplicity of the smaller parties.”
He pointed out that all of the 21 councils in which Labour lost five or more seats were in heavily leave-voting areas. “The talk about another referendum was a difficult message to explain to many of our traditional voters.”
Theresa May’s negotiating team, led by David Lidington, is widely expected to make a compromise offer to Labour when talks resume on Tuesday afternoon, after government sources said Downing Street had set a deadline of the middle of this week to make progress.
Ministers are keen to introduce the withdrawal act implementation bill in the coming days so that it stands a chance of becoming law in time for Britain to leave the EU by the end of June.
That would mean MEPs elected in what is expected to be a bruising European parliamentary campaign never have to take up their seats.
The prime minister used an editorial in the Mail on Sunday to send a direct message to Jeremy Corbyn, saying: “Let’s listen to what the voters said in the local elections and put our differences aside for a moment. Let’s do a deal.”
But both party leaders appear tightly boxed in by their backbenchers. Many Labour MPs insist Corbyn must demand a confirmatory referendum be attached to any deal, with perhaps two-thirds of them prepared to vote against it without such a guarantee, while the prime minister has been warned she is at risk of splitting her party if she softens her stance on a customs union.
Labour unexpectedly lost seats in elections for councils in England last week, but fared much better than the Conservatives, which had their worst performance since John Major was in No 10.
Supporters of the People’s Vote campaign pointed to the strong showings by the Liberal Democrats and the Green party as evidence that Labour was being punished for its equivocal stance on Brexit.
A spokesperson for the campaign said: “Many in Labour are beginning to realise they cannot take People’s Vote supporters for granted, and the big swings to the Liberal Democrats and the Greens in northern towns and cities show why they are right to do that. It’s time for the Labour frontbench to offer leadership, not further excuses for inaction and ambiguity.”
Labour’s policy for the upcoming European elections was so contentious that it took a five-hour meeting of the party’s ruling national executive committee last week to sign it off, with Corbyn’s deputy, Tom Watson, calling for an outright commitment to a referendum.
A campaign video released on Sunday included the wording agreed at the meeting, which said if Labour could not secure “changes to the Tories’ disastrous deal” or a general election, the party would “back the option of a public vote”.
However, much of the focus of the message was on domestic policies, including investment in education and policing, which are not within the gift of MEPs. It called on voters to “send the Tories a powerful message”.
Meanwhile, Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, who is also mooted as a potential Tory leadership challenger, said May would be making a “catastrophic mistake” if she compromised by signing up to a customs union.
Brady has urged May to set out a clear timetable for her departure, even if no Brexit deal is passed, and is expected to reinforce that message in a meeting with her on Tuesday.
However, some Tory MPs are quietly urging May to get on and do a deal. “Hard Brexiters, who are mainly ERG members, and the DUP, need to wake up and smell the coffee, frankly. They are blocking Brexit,” said one backbencher representing a constituency where voters swung towards the Lib Dems last week. “This is not a vote for a hard Brexit.”
The MP added: “Graham has a duty to pass on the views of backbenchers, and there are all sorts of views out there.”
Another senior Tory said: “I think those who think it will break the Conservative party fail to see the party is already broken.”
If no agreement emerges from the Brexit talks, May has previously suggested the two sides could agree to be bound by a parliamentary process aimed at identifying a deal that could command a majority.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.44 GMT
Labour is ready to vote for a general election as soon as EU27 leaders have signed off on a Brexit extension, despite the desire of some senior party figures to secure a referendum first, the Guardian understands.
Labour has twice abstained when the prime minister asked for an election under the terms of the fixed-term parliaments act, which requires a two-thirds majority.
But Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly said that once an extension was in place he would support a poll and a Labour spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday night that remained the party’s position. “Extension, then election,” he said.
Boris Johnson has threatened to make a fresh bid to secure a general election if the EU27 leaders hand the UK a three-month Brexit delay, as requested in the letter he reluctantly sent on Saturday.
After the government was defeated on Tuesday in its last-ditch bid to secure Brexit by 31 October, Johnson said he would consult EU leaders about what they planned to do next and report back to parliament.
He could seek a general election immediately or wait to see whether his Brexit bill is amended in some way he is unable to accept, such as by forcing him to seek a customs union.
Following the vote, the Conservatives released social media messages saying Jeremy Corbyn had “humiliated the country again.”
Nineteen Labour MPs, including Gareth Snell, Gloria De Piero and Ruth Smeeth, rebelled against the whip to help the prime minister to a healthy majority of 30 in the second reading of the withdrawal agreement bill.
During the debate, De Piero told Corbyn: “I want to improve the deal so that it reflects the manifesto that I stood on and respects the referendum result, and so that we leave with a deal that protects jobs and trade.”
He replied: “I fully understand both her concerns and their concerns. I commend her for her work in representing that area and the obvious friendship that exists between her and all the people she represents; she is a great MP”.
Seven of the group subsequently published a statement saying that, while they had reservations about the deal, they believed it was right to allow it to continue to be debated, to “give us a proper chance to get a Labour Brexit”.
Only five Labour MPs then supported the government’s programme motion, which would have resulted in the deal being rushed through the House of Commons by the end of Thursday.
Labour frontbenchers discussed the timing of a potential election at a testy shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday, with Corbyn loyalists Laura Pidcock and Dan Carden calling for the party to back an early poll.
Carden told colleagues the “referendum first” approach espoused by some of his colleagues was a fantasy, which wouldn’t win a majority in parliament and which the government would anyway refuse to implement.
The deputy leader, Tom Watson, has argued publicly that it would be better for Labour to settle the issue of Brexit in a referendum and then contest a general election on a wider set of issues.
At the shadow cabinet meeting, the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, clashed with colleagues over Labour’s stance on a second referendum.
According to those present, Corbyn opened the meeting by reminding shadow cabinet members not to stray from Labour’s agreed policies in media appearances.
Starmer then suggested existing Labour policy meant the party must support any amendment to the government’s withdrawal agreement bill calling for a referendum on Johnson’s Brexit deal, and then campaign for remain.
But in a debate that became fractious at times, according to two people present, Starmer faced a backlash from colleagues including Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett.
One witness said Lavery accused Starmer of “ramming this policy down my throat for 18 months”.
In the shadow cabinet discussions about whether Labour would campaign for remain against Johnson’s deal, Lavery and Trickett pointed to the motion passed at last month’s Labour conference in Brighton, which said: “The party shall only decide how to campaign in such a referendum through a one-day special conference, following the election of a Labour government.”
Party members backed the motion after Corbyn made clear he wanted the decision about its referendum stance to be taken after a Labour government came to power.
The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, also expressed concerns about supporting a compromise similar to the Kyle-Wilson amendment.
The Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson previously suggested they could support Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement if it was subjected to a confirmatory referendum. But Corbyn said he would “caution” MPs against being willing to accept that quid pro quo.
Abbott said last month: “I don’t think we should be supporting a bad deal, just because it’s got a referendum attached. That’s why I was against Kyle-Wilson.
“Either it’s a good deal, which says something about the customs union, and alignment with the single market – or it’s not. The referendum is not an end in itself. Kyle-Wilson has resurfaced, and it was a bad idea the first time around, and I don’t support it.”
Starmer, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, have said publicly they would like to campaign for remain.
But Trickett said earlier this month that he did not support the idea of a referendum that would pitch Johnson’s deal against remain.
“A referendum before the election would imply a Tory Brexit against remain. I believe that the majority in the country voted for leave – and I feel that a Labour Brexit can only be delivered by a Labour government.”
Last modified on Sat 25 May 2019 11.17 BST
Labour will try to force a vote of no confidence in the next prime minister as soon as they take office, John McDonnell said, as Conservative candidates throw their hats into the ring to succeed Theresa May.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if Labour would call a no-confidence motion in the next Tory leader, the shadow chancellor said: “Yes, because we believe any incoming prime minister in these circumstance should go to the country anyway and seek a mandate.”
The most recent Opinium poll of general election voting intentions, published almost a fortnight ago, put Labour seven points ahead of the Conservatives, on 29%. In second place was Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party, on 24%.
The Tory leadership hopeful Matt Hancock said on Saturday he would refuse calls for a general election if he succeeded May, saying that to do so would be “a disaster for the country” and would risk “Corbyn by Christmas”.
When May called a general election in 2017 in an attempt to shore up her mandate she lost the Conservative party’s majority in the Commons.
McDonnell insisted that a new Tory leader would face moral pressure to call a general election in order to secure a democratic mandate. “That’s the first thing,” he told ITV News on Friday evening.
“The second thing of course [is that] we always have the opportunity of a no-confidence motion in parliament, and we will explore that. And the way in which the Conservative party remains divided, whoever is elected as their leader, there will be a prospect that some Conservative MPs now will think maybe we should go back to the country.”
“Corbyn by Christmas” was trending on Twitter on Saturday morning.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.44 GMT
Labour faces a hard road back in its former heartlands because the party’s decision to back a second referendum cemented a sense that it had stopped listening, the potential leadership candidate Lisa Nandy has argued.
Nandy, the Wigan MP who served in Jeremy Corbyn’s first shadow cabinet, said that offering a softer Brexit was the “only way that you would have prevented the scale of the collapse” in seats across the north, Midlands and Wales.
Speaking to the Guardian in a pub in Wigan, she said it was easy to blame Corbyn and believe that without him “everything will be resolved”.
But she said the party’s Brexit position was also responsible. “In all honesty, Brexit just played into the sense that we are adrift from communities like these, that we don’t speak for them, we don’t stand for them, we don’t understand them, and worse than that: we’re deeply disrespectful towards them. And that has been building for the last 15 to 20 years,” she said.
“It’s been a long time in the making, I hope it won’t take a long time to resolve. But it’s going to be a hard road back.”
Nandy is expected to enter the race to succeed Corbyn as Labour leader in the new year, with rivals likely to include Rebecca Long-Bailey, Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis.
Starmer, Thornberry and Lewis were all advocates of a second Brexit referendum, and had declared publicly that they would campaign to remain in the EU.
But Nandy insisted the policy was a mistake. “Once we adopted the position of a second referendum, there were a lot of Labour candidates in seats that voted overwhelmingly to leave who knew that they didn’t stand a chance of winning the election,” she said.
“More importantly, [they] knew they didn’t stand the chance of getting a hearing or gaining the trust of the people in their own communities, including lifelong Labour voters who felt voting Labour was very much part of their identity. And the reason for that was because it was about respect.”
In scathing comments about the People’s Vote campaign, Nandy said: “Even the title of it, back home here [in Wigan], said to people that you’re not people – you’re the wrong people – and the wrong people voted, so we need to get the right people to vote.”
She added: “I suppose one of the great lessons there has to be for the Labour leadership, whoever that may be going forward, is that people are not stupid. They are much, much smarter than you think. And they understand what is happening. And if you say to them that this is simply a question of democracy, but the only right option is to remain, they can see right through that.”
Nandy also echoed criticisms made by other leadership hopefuls about Labour’s manifesto, which she said included policies that did not seem relevant to people’s lives. She cited the free broadband policy, which she believes “missed the mark, for people who are struggling with so many other things in their daily lives at the moment”.
“I’ve got a lot of constituents here who have a pound left in their pocket at the end of the week. And actually, free bus travel would go a lot further than free broadband,” she said.
Nandy also said she thought Labour’s re-nationalisation agenda had gone too far. She said she backed the case for nationalising the railways but as a former shadow energy secretary believed there were better ways of improving the energy market than nationalising the gas and power utilities.
“If I’m honest, I think nationalising the energy companies is a waste of money. Disrupting them by setting up municipal energy companies [and] energy co-ops around the country is a much better route,” she said.
Nandy, who is “seriously thinking” about standing for the leadership, is considered to be on the soft left of the party and was cautious about being too critical of Corbyn or his supporters in Momentum.
Like Starmer, she said it was important not to “throw out everything that’s happened” since Corbyn became leader and to keep the “decisive break that we made in 2015, where we said that we will be much less cautious about state intervention, wearing our values on our sleeve and taking on what has long been held to be deeply unpopular issues like compassion towards refugees”.
But she said any new leader would have to confront the “devastating” impact of Labour’s failure to get to grips with the problem of antisemitism within its ranks, which had caused people to lose trust in the party.
Although she resigned from the shadow cabinet in 2016 and supported Owen Smith’s leadership bid against Corbyn, Nandy said she had only done so after going to see the leader with others from her wing of the party to try to find a compromise.
“One side had picked a fight and the other side was absolutely determined to fight it until one or the other and been smashed. And I could see where that was heading. You can’t win elections like that,” she said.
Nandy said that in 2010 she had been considered too leftwing to serve on Ed Miliband’s team but that it was not helpful to think of people as part of one faction or other. She said her own influences as a politician range from her Marxist father to her grandfather who was a Liberal MP, then peer.
Nandy, who wants to move Labour’s headquarters out of central London and its party conference out of cities, said devolving power to communities and local authorities was the only real way that people would feel they had control over their lives again.
“The only answer is to give communities power to make decisions for themselves,” she said, citing Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s free bus pass for older teenagers as a big success.
Nandy said the Vote Leave campaign’s “Take Back Control” slogan had “caught the mood in towns like Wigan, like no other slogan in our lifetimes” and “just really, really resonated with that sense that people had that they couldn’t shape the circumstances of their own lives”.
While the party tries to get back on track, Nandy said the important thing was for every part of Labour to come together and try to unite to thwart a hard Brexit.
“If that’s where we’re heading – and that is clearly where we’re heading – Labour needs to come together now,” she said. “Leave the culture war behind and start pulling together as a team to see if we can do whatever it takes with the cross-party working with the House of Lords making the case that out in the country, and to prevent the hard Brexit … When jobs start to go, people here will not thank us for having been complicit in a hard Brexit. So we’ve got to get out there and be vocal and see what we can do to protect people.”
First published on Sun 2 Jun 2019 11.43 BST
Andrea Leadsom has said she will not attempt to renegotiate the Brexit deal and insisted she would pursue a managed no deal if Conservative MPs and members back her as the next prime minister.
Leadsom said she would pass legislation to protect EU citizens but also attempt to secure side deals based on the withdrawal agreement to keep goods moving, a suggestion the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has explicitly ruled out.
Her announcement came as her leadership rival Sajid Javid said he would seek a renegotiation of the Irish backstop based on alternative technological arrangements for the border, which he pledged the UK would fund in full.
Leadsom, the former leader of the House of Commons, who resigned days before May announced her departure, suggested the withdrawal agreement cannot be reworked and the UK must leave without a deal on 31 October.
She said she believed “the withdrawal agreement is dead, that we can’t reopen the withdrawal agreement bill and the UK parliament won’t vote for it”.
Leadsom, speaking on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show after an interview in the Sun, insisted her plan was not no deal but a “managed exit”.
“Even if, to use the common parlance, we were to leave with no deal, there would be arrangements in place,” she said. “What I’m suggesting is making an offer to the EU for things that were already agreed in the withdrawal agreement, that will enable us to leave with a managed exit.”
Barnier has previously warned there cannot be “mini-deals” if the UK crashes out of the bloc.
Leadsom said she would seek to speak directly to member states about the way forward.
“At the end of the day, European politicians face the ballot box, as do all of us politicians. It is in all of our interests first to move on, they don’t want us hanging around for the next couple of years … at the same time we all want to see the smoothest exit possible,” she said.
Javid, speaking on the same programme, said he would focus on a solution based on the only Brexit deal that has passed parliament, the amendment by Sir Graham Brady to replace the backstop with “alternative arrangements”.
He said more needed to be done to build goodwill with the Irish government. “What I would do is make a grand gesture to Ireland that we would cover all their costs – the upfront costs, the running costs – of a new digitised border,” he said. “I think it could be done in a couple of years but I think we could cover their costs.”
Leadsom dismissed the possibility that parliament could prevent Britain leaving without a deal, saying she believed a prime minister pursuing a “managed exit” and guaranteeing citizens’ rights would not lose a confidence vote.
“Quite honestly, with sensible measures … that parliamentarians would want to see in place … I do honestly believe that it would be workable,” she said.
Javid said he would not want to extend Brexit beyond the end of October, but would not ignore parliament if it forced his hand. “I’m clear that my plan would be to leave on 31 October. I want to leave with a deal but if I have to choose between no deal and no Brexit I would pick no deal,” he said.
Asked if he would contemplate another extension, he said: “That’s not something I would do, but we are a parliamentary democracy and what we’ve seen in the last few months is parliament has taken on some extraordinary powers to initiate its own legislation, so if it’s statute, if it’s the law, I would not break the law if I was prime minister, of course I would observe the law.”
Other Tory leadership hopefuls fleshed out their Brexit proposals across the Sunday newspapers.
Sources close to the environment secretary, Michael Gove, suggested he was prepared to delay Brexit until the end of next year rather than leave without a deal on 31 October.
“Simply trying to go for no deal before the UK is properly prepared will lead to a general election with Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street and risks Brexit being cancelled altogether,” the source told the Sunday Telegraph.
The former health secretary Matt Hancock also wrote to colleagues on Sunday setting out plans to renegotiate the Brexit deal, but warned leaving without a deal on 31 October would be unrealistic because of the likelihood of it being blocked by parliament.
In a letter to MPs, he said “a no-deal Brexit is not a policy choice available to the next prime minister”.
Senior moderate Tories from the One Nation group, which include Amber Rudd and David Gauke, are still considering which candidates to back.
On Sunday, Gauke, the justice secretary, backed Rory Stewart, the outsider candidate and international development secretary, who has ruled out a no-deal exit.
“I’ve seen his ability to be both strategic and on top of the details as a minister,” Gauke said. “He’s an excellent communicator, I think he has got an ability to connect with people, he’s got an ability to bring people together in order to find a way through the Brexit impasse and I think he could win a general election.”
Gauke said he would not be able to serve in a cabinet that actively pursued no deal. “I accept that we should prepare for it but if it is an objective in saying ‘no-deal is the right answer’ I wouldn’t support that policy,” he said, though he ruled out possibly voting against the government in a confidence vote.
The Tory grandee Ken Clarke also backed Stewart on Sunday, while the rest of the 40-strong group of One Nation MPs are likely to choose between Hancock, Stewart and Gove, who has been endorsed by the former education secretary Nicky Morgan.
Rudd, regarded as the leading pro-European voice in the cabinet, wrote in the Observer on Sunday that candidates should concede that Britain will not leave at the end of October and start work on a new deal with Brussels.
The work and pensions secretary, who met Boris Johnson this week to discuss a possible collaboration, is thought to have concluded their positions are irreconcilable.
The former universities minister Sam Gyimah on Sunday became the 13th candidate to enter the race, and is the only one who has pledged to offer a second referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.11 GMT
They spell out that all varieties of Brexit on offer would make Britain poorer, significantly so in the case of anything other than staying very closely linked to the EU through single market membership. While some ministers maintain they can still flout EU wishes and achieve this without full membership, it is telling that this option is not even among those presented to ministers in the “cross-Whitehall exit analysis” obtained by Buzzfeed. The economic modelling used also punctures the still popular claim among Brexiters that new trade deals overseas would more than compensate for lost EU trade.
The leaked documents may attempt to assess the impact of of leaving the EU, but once again the government is trying to play down their damaging impact on its Brexit strategy by denying they meet exacting empirical standards. Last time around, David Davis was forced to backtrack when his bluff was called by parliament. He admitted to MPs that the sector-by-sector preparatory work he had previously boasted of did not contain quantitative forecasts and therefore did not technically qualify as the sort of impact study typically carried out before new legislation is brought in. This time, the new briefing papers prepared for ministers do spell out the likely cost of leaving, though they appear to be less comprehensive than the more anodyne sectoral reports Davis was eventually forced to publish. Put the two bodies of work together, however, and you have a damning assessment of what various Brexit scenarios will do to the economy, whatever you call it.
This latest exit analysis appears to draw heavily on earlier work carried out over a year ago by the Treasury, which first tried to quantify the relative benefits of new overseas trade deals and compared it unfavourably with lost EU access. The overwhelming importance of our near neighbours and relative lack of benefit from incremental new deals with the US and others is said to have been the motivating factor behind the chancellor’s longstanding opposition to hard Brexit. When Philip Hammond mentioned this work in a recent select committee, the Treasury faced calls to release the original study; but instead it seems to have surfaced in a disguised form through the exit analysis prepared by Davis’s department for ministers before a meeting to determine Britain’s phase two demands. Same message, different authors, much wider circulation.
Downing Street has long tried to avoid making the hard choices spelled out in the exit analysis, but if it is to have a meaningful conversation among ministers about where to go next it needed to start bringing the party up to speed. Other leaks of conversations among leading Brexiters such as Nadine Dorries have shown that many still have a very shaky grasp of what is at stake and the limited nature of Britain’s options. The leak may have been intended to support the orthodox Treasury line that a softer Brexit is preferable but it may just as easily have the effect of blowing apart the delicate compromise that May has attempted to maintain just at the moment that she needs to start making strategy clearer in Brussels.
Davis has long argued that economic forecasting is a bogus science, particularly as Treasury estimates of the impact of the Brexit referendum proved, at best, premature, and at worst, wildly over-pessimistic. Iain Duncan Smith took to the airwaves on Tuesday morning to continue in a similar vein, claiming the latest leak was “highly suspicious” and should be “taken with a pinch of salt”. The trouble is that the whole Brexit project is based on an even shakier forecast, which is that the benefits of future trade deals will outweigh any short-term EU impact. Davis even cited forecasts that new trade deals with countries such as the US, could lift trade by 40%, a far cry from the 0.2% benefit to GDP seen now by officials. The difference is that the sceptics have tables, charts and spreadsheets; the Brexiters have only their own faith to propel them forward.
First published on Tue 5 Sep 2017 18.00 BST
Britain will end the free movement of labour immediately after Brexit and introduce restrictions to deter all but highly-skilled EU workers under detailed proposals set out in a Home Office document leaked to the Guardian.
The 82-page paper, marked as extremely sensitive and dated August 2017, sets out for the first time how Britain intends to approach the politically charged issue of immigration, dramatically refocusing policy to put British workers first.
“Put plainly, this means that, to be considered valuable to the country as a whole, immigration should benefit not just the migrants themselves but also make existing residents better off,” the paper says.
It proposes measures to drive down the number of lower-skilled EU migrants – offering them residency for a maximum of only two years, in a document likely to cheer hardliners in the Tory party. Those in “high-skilled occupations” will be granted permits to work for a longer period of three to five years.
The document also describes a phased introduction to a new immigration system that ends the right to settle in Britain for most European migrants – and places tough new restrictions on their rights to bring in family members. Potentially, this could lead to thousands of families being split up.
Showing a passport will be mandatory for all EU nationals wanting to enter Britain – and the paper proposes introducing a system of temporary biometric residence permits for all EU nationals coming into the UK after Brexit for more than a few months.
The determination to end free movement from day one and drive down lower-skilled EU migration, end the role of the European court of justice in family migration and extend elements of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” measures to long-term EU migrants without residence permits is likely to please hard Brexiters.
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The Home Office paper, entitled the Border, Immigration and Citizenship System After the UK Leaves the European Union, makes clear the proposals within it have yet to be endorsed by ministers, and are “subject to negotiations with EU”. But with the help of examples and flowcharts, the document sets out the direction of Home Office thinking in one of the most vexed subjects of the Brexit debate.
It is understood the document, which has been circulated around senior officials and ministers, has already provoked rows between cabinet ministers, who are trying to balance the demands of British businesses wanting to retain free movement, and the views of hardline Brexiters.
It is also likely to enrage many in Europe who will feel the UK is intending to treat EU nationals as second-class citizens and could invite retaliatory action by the 27-country bloc.
The Home Office EU immigration proposals also include:
 Plans to restrict EU immigration by giving “preference in the job market to resident workers”. The government could also restrict EU nationals from seeking work, reduce the opportunities for workers to settle in the UK long-term, and limit the number of EU citizens able to come to the UK to do low-skilled work.
 Proposals for a “stepping stone” temporary implementation period for “at least two years” after Brexit day. That would be followed by the introduction of the full immigration policy for EU nationals.
 Plans to scrap EU rules on the rights of extended family members to reside in the UK. The document says “there is virtually no limit on the distance of the relationship between the EU citizen and the family member” in the current system. “We propose to define family members as direct family members only, plus durable partners,” it adds.
 If an EU national living in the UK wants to bring their spouse from outside the EU here, he or she will have to earn a minimum of £18,600 a year, bringing EU nationals in line with the restriction already imposed on Britons.
 No new border checks for EU nationals entering the country, although they will be required to travel on a passport not a national identity card. Instead all new EU arrivals will have “deemed leave” to enter Britain for an as yet unspecified period likely to between three and six months. After that, to stay longer, they will have to apply for a biometric residence permit, which may include a fingerprint.
 In contrast to the “free movement directive”, residence permits will not be granted to jobseekers. A specific “income threshold” will be introduced for “self-sufficient” migrants.
 Plans to introduce “right to work” checks. These would have to be carried out by employers, with criminal sanctions possible against companies and individuals if illegal working is discovered.
The document has a strong “Britain first” theme throughout. It states: “We are clear that, wherever possible, UK employers should look to meet their labour needs from resident labour. It is now more important than ever that we have the right skills domestically to build a strong and competitive economy.”
The paper says that although long-term net migration from the EU has fallen over the last year to 133,000, it cannot be controlled because free movement gives EU citizens “a right to reside in the UK regardless of the economic needs of the country”.
The proposed package is designed to help cut the current annual flow of 250,000 EU nationals coming to live in Britain to the government’s target of “sustainable levels”: net migration in the tens of thousands.
“It is not a question of stopping EU migration … But there will be a fundamental shift in our policy in that the government will take a view on the economic and social needs of the country as regards migration, rather than leaving this decision entirely to EU citizens and their employers,” says the Home Office document.
Its proposals to end European court of justice protection for the rights of EU nationals to bring non-EU family members to Britain, to end the use of EU national identity cards instead of passports at the UK border, and the extension of Home Office registration powers are all potential major trouble spots in the Brexit negotiations.
Recent Home Office errors, including mistaken deportation letters sent to 100 EU citizens, have undermined confidence in its competence.
 The Home Office says that the new EU immigration system will not necessarily include the same rules as currently applied to non-EU migration. In particular it says it is considering whether the existing system of sponsorship and a £1,000-a-head immigration skills charge will be applied to EU migration.
A government spokesperson said: “We do not comment on leaked draft documents. We will be setting out our initial proposals for a new immigration system which takes back control of the UK’s borders later in the autumn.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Pro-Brexit campaigners have been prosecuted for inconsiderate driving while trying to bring roads to a standstill.
According to organisers, the demonstrations aimed to ensure the UK leaves the EU on 29 March by causing gridlock on motorways and A-roads using a convoy of slow-moving vehicles.
The protesters were aiming to target between 30 and 40 locations over the weekend, including the M25, M6 and M1.
Devon and Cornwall police said the lead drivers of convoys on the A30 and M5 were stopped and prosecuted for careless and inconsiderate driving.
The force said it had spoken to organisers of both protests beforehand and told them they were to ensure other motorists could pass them and not drop down to unsafe speeds.
Inspector Simon Jenkinson said the force was “happy to facilitate” the protests as long as they did not bring roads to a standstill.
But he said campaigners had blocked both lanes of the A30 towards Cornwall and at least two lanes of the M5 northbound while travelling at speeds as low as 20mph on the motorway. “That presents a significant risk on a very busy arterial road.”
Highways England tweeted: “There have been a few issues but nothing of any major impact and at present everything is running as usual.”
The organiser of the protests, Ian Charlesworth, 55, said: “The ultimate aim is to make sure come hell or high water that Britain leaves on March 29.” But he was unsure how effective they would be.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
The Liberal Democrats will try to push MPs to a fresh vote on a second Brexit referendum next week.
The party has tabled an amendment to the Queen’s speech requesting that any deal brought back from Brussels by the prime minister is put to another public vote.
The Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, said: “The Liberal Democrats are the strongest party of remain and have been the leading voice in the People’s Vote campaign.
“Boris Johnson is determined to have a general election, but the best way to resolve the Brexit chaos is to have a people’s vote and give the British people the final say about their future.
“The best deal we have is as members of the European Union and we want to give the people the chance to choose to stop Brexit.”
Johnson’s legislative agenda was set out on Monday during the state opening of parliament. MPs are now in the midst of five days to debate on the Queen’s speech – which contained 26 bills – and will vote on whether to pass it early next week, possibly Tuesday.
With no majority and the expectation that Labour and the SNP will vote it down, the government is likely to struggle to get it through parliament.
The amendment brought by the Lib Dems if selected by the Speaker could be a significant moment in the Commons as it is another chance to show whether there is a majority for a second referendum. Another referendum on Brexit was rejected during indicative votes held in April.
The Lib Dems have said they back another vote on EU membership but, should they win a majority of seats at a general election, they would immediately revoke the government’s decision to trigger article 50 and the UK would remain in the bloc.
They have weathered significant criticism amid claims the party’s position is undemocratic. However, Swinson has stated that revoking article 50 is the right course of action because a no-deal Brexit would be like “burning your house down”.
MPs who support a second Brexit referendum believe they are nearing a majority, but they remain apprehensive as it would involve winning over many of about 40 Labour MPs who either opposed or abstained on the issue at the last parliamentary vote.
Ruth Smeeth was one of four MPs from heavily leave-backing constituencies who defied the Labour whip in order to vote against a second referendum. She quit her frontbench role, working for the deputy Labour leader, Tom Watson, saying that Britain “needed to leave, and leave with a deal”. Smeeth argued that her position was what was best for her constituents in Stoke-on-Trent North.
On the last numbers, around 330 MPs were against a second referendum, with 292 in favour. However, pressure has been put on Labour MPs to change their positions in light of the party’s clear policy in favour of a referendum on a Labour-negotiated deal.
First published on Sat 26 Oct 2019 22.33 BST
Boris Johnson has been offered a route to securing the pre-Christmas election that he has been seeking, through a plan that would only require the support of a simple majority of MPs.
With most Labour MPs still against the idea of a snap election, the prime minister looks set to lose his bid to secure a December poll on Monday in a vote that requires the backing of two-thirds of MPs. Other parties are also opposing an election until the EU has granted a three-month Brexit delay, although the DUP hinted on Saturday it could back the move.
However, in a sign that the coalition opposed to an election is under strain, the Liberal Democrats have drawn up a plan allowing Johnson to secure a December poll with a simple majority of MPs, with the support of Jo Swinson’s party and the SNP.
Under the one-page Lib Dem bill, the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act would be amended to state that the next election would take place on 9 December, three days earlier than under Johnson’s plans. It states that the new election date would be cancelled should the EU fail to grant a three-month Brexit extension.
The party is asking Johnson to adopt the bill and guide it through parliament between Tuesday and Thursday of this week, before dissolving parliament. It believes the timing of its plan means the prime minister would not be able to bring back his Brexit deal to the Commons before the election campaign starts – which he is currently threatening to do.
Swinson said last night: “Boris Johnson has missed his ‘do-or-die’ deadline and is now asking parliament to give him a general election and time for him to ram through his Brexit bill through parliament. That is a bad deal, and Liberal Democrats will not vote for it. We need to get Boris Johnson out of office, unlock the gridlock in parliament and give people the chance to vote to stay in the EU.
“A general election on our proposed timetable would take no-deal off the table, and give the public the chance to elect a Liberal Democrat government who will revoke article 50 or increase the number of MPs who support a People’s Vote.”
Party officials concede that the plan’s success lies in whether Johnson takes up the plan. However, it is a move that sees the Lib Dems shift support more clearly behind agitating for an early election.
Ian Blackford, the SNP’s leader in Westminster, gave his blessing to the plan on Saturday night. “I’m very keen that we work together on a mechanism, whether that be with Jo’s bill that we will support or any other mechanism – such as a vote of no confidence – to bring parliament to a speedy end and have an election as early as is possible,” he said.
The Lib Dems and SNP are also writing to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, calling on Brussels to offer Britain a Brexit extension to the end of January next year.
The news comes with an Opinium poll for the Observer suggesting the Conservatives have a 16-point lead over Labour, which is split over an election.
Jeremy Corbyn said on Saturday that his party would “be very happy to fight an election once all vestiges of a no-deal exit from the EU have been taken off the table”. However, it remains unclear how that can be achieved. Figures on the left of the party are pushing to go to the polls, but Nick Brown, Labour’s chief whip, has warned Corbyn that scores of MPs would disobey any order to vote through an election.
Johnson repeated his demand on Saturday night for Labour to back his Brexit deal and vote for an early election and suggested that Brexit could drag on well into next year. He called on Labour to say how much more time it wanted to scrutinise his Brexit bill.
“Instead of grabbing this great new deal with both hands and helping move our country forward, parliament chose to ask for more tunnel,” said Johnson. “They agreed the deal but then they threw out the timetable. Unbelievably, Jeremy Corbyn then handed over the decision on what happens next to Brussels, so parliament’s delay could take us to 31 January at least.
“My worry is this parliament will just waste the next three months like it’s wasted the last three years.
“Parliament cannot hold the country hostage any longer. Millions of businesses and people cannot plan their futures, this paralysis is causing real damage and the country must move on in 2020.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
The Liberal Democrats are under growing pressure to back Jeremy Corbyn as a caretaker prime minister to stop a no-deal Brexit after leading opposition figures and even one former Conservative minister said they were open to the idea.
With anti-no-deal groups rapidly calibrating their positions in the aftermath of Corbyn’s intervention, a split has opened up among MPs hoping to block Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy. But while the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens said they would engage with Corbyn’s offer, the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, laid out a rival plan for a national unity government led by the Tory veteran Ken Clarke or Labour’s Harriet Harman.
After Swinson initially sounded a hostile note towards Corbyn’s plan, saying it was “nonsense”, the Lib Dems were widely urged to reconsider and found themselves isolated among anti-no-deal groups.
Labour’s Angela Rayner branded the Lib Dem leader “childish”, the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, criticised her position as “daft”, and Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, made a personal appeal for Swinson to rethink her position.
Meanwhile Sarah Wollaston, the newest Lib Dem MP, appeared to go further than Swinson by saying backing Corbyn to avoid a no-deal Brexit would be “the lesser of two evils”.
Swinson later released a more nuanced letter to the Labour leader agreeing to meet him for talks and not ruling out the possibility of backing him as leader of a caretaker government if it would stop a no-deal Brexit.
But she challenged him to find the eight Conservative MPs necessary to make a success of his proposal for a temporary government to delay Brexit and hold a general election.
While Corbyn has seized the initiative on Brexit and forced other anti-no-deal factions to respond, he remains well short of the numbers needed to form a caretaker government, with the Lib Dems non-committal and a number of independent MPs and Tory rebels declining to back him under any circumstances.
However, some of the Labour leader’s political opponents are leaving the door open to supporting him as a last resort to stop no deal. Wollaston, the former Conservative MP who had been sitting as an independent after leaving the newly formed Change UK in June, told the Guardian that while she viewed a Corbyn government as preferable to no-deal, she also viewed it as unlikely.
“Obviously, as the lesser of two evils, I would have to make a judgment and probably say: you know what, I think it would be worse to have no deal,” she said. “But let’s see what happens at that point, and ultimately what I do is beside the point. You need five or six Tories to do it, and I’m sorry but they are just not going to do it.”
Liberal Democrats may end up divided on the issue should Swinson ultimately decide to back Corbyn’s bid. The former Labour MP and strident Corbyn critic Chuka Umunna, who joined the Lib Dems this summer, is likely to oppose any option that would put Corbyn in Downing Street.
Corbyn’s offer was not dismissed out of hand by some Conservative MPs. Guto Bebb, a former Conservative minister who supports a second referendum, said: “I do think that those who have said that they will do anything necessary to stop the long-term damage of a no-deal exit must take seriously this type of offer.”
He added: “So I think that there are other proposals that can be taken in terms of ensuring no deal is taken off the table. But I certainly take the view that a short-term Jeremy Corbyn government is less damaging than the generational damage that would be caused by a no-deal Brexit.”
Three Conservatives – Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Caroline Spelman – plus Nick Boles, a former Tory who is now independent, all agreed to meet Corbyn to discuss possible ways to block no deal. Spelman made clear there were no circumstances in which she would vote to make Corbyn prime minister.
The transport secretary, Grant Shapps, issued a stern rebuke to any Conservative MP thinking of backing the bid for a unity government in order to stop no deal, suggesting they were risking the country’s security and economic stability.
“I think it’s absolutely extraordinary that any Conservative MP considered even for one minute installing Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street,” he said. “I just think that any Conservative should think very, very hard about doing this.”
Among the most positive towards Corbyn’s plan were Lucas and Sturgeon. The latter told an event at the Edinburgh fringe that she had argued for a progressive alternative to a Tory government at the last two elections, and “I would want us to be part of that”.
She said offering SNP support “doesn’t make me a great fan of Jeremy Corbyn … but I would always try to work to put together an alternative to a Tory government.”
Lucas was also supportive but went on to challenge Corbyn to say he would support an alternative leader if his plan failed.
She tweeted: “I welcome Corbyn’s vote of no confidence and will support his temporary government to avoid no deal (though would prefer a people’s vote before a general election). But if he can’t gain confidence of house, will he commit to support an MP from his party or another who can?”
Liz Saville-Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, said her party was open to backing a unity government and it did not matter who led it, but a second referendum should be the priority. “If necessary Mr Corbyn should step aside to ensure a referendum is delivered,” she said.
Setting out her own plan, Swinson said her preferred option was legislation to request an extension of article 50 in order to hold a second referendum, with remain an option.
Her next choice would be a no-confidence vote against Johnson, before “installing an emergency government with an alternative prime minister who has the confidence of the house and will stop a no-deal Brexit”.
She later released her letter to Corbyn saying she “stands ready to work with anyone to stop Boris Johnson and his hardline Brexit government pursuing no deal”, and agreeing to discussions on a “deliverable” plan.
But she said “regardless of how my party were to vote” he would still need at least eight Conservatives MPs to support his bid to take office, because a string of independents were unlikely to back him.
Anna Soubry, the leader of the Independent Group for Change, said none of her MPs would back Corbyn, while the independents Heidi Allen, Ian Austin and Chris Leslie all dismissed the idea.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.43 GMT
Lisa Nandy has castigated Labour under Jeremy Corbyn for falling into the “trap” of allowing Brexit to be framed as a binary culture war, saying the party should have outlined positive, internationalist arguments, including a defence of free movement.
Delivering a speech setting out her approach to international relations if she won the contest to succeed Corbyn, Nandy said Labour also missed chances to try to reunite the country around a softer Brexit following the 2016 referendum.
On other global issues, the Wigan MP condemned Corbyn and his team for limiting their criticism of Russia following the novichok poisoning attack in Salisbury and other issues.
She said: “When we chose to show solidarity with Putin rather than the Russian people we completely and utterly failed to live up to our values, and I never want to see us do that again.”
Setting out the case for Labour to devise an alternative framework for global relationships after Brexit, Nandy argued also for an ethical underpinning, including military intervention when needed, and a focus on the climate emergency.
She said Labour should refuse to agree to any trade deal with a country that has not ratified the Paris agreement. That position would rule out a deal with the US under Donald Trump, who is moving to extract his country from the global climate deal.
Nandy, who is among five candidates to make it to the next round of the Labour leadership contest, having won the support of 31 of the party’s MPs and MEPs, is a backbencher. She left Corbyn’s shadow cabinet after the 2016 referendum, amid a series of resignations. She later played a key role in seeking to persuade Labour MPs to try to back some softer variant of Brexit, and has pitched herself in the leadership contest as the person best able to reconnect the party to its former heartlands.
During an interview with the BBC later in the evening Nandy stressed the need for Labour to reach voters in London and in the rest of the UK.
She told the broadcaster Andrew Neil that many of those who had abandoned the party over Brexit at the last election were not irreconcilable with the principle of freedom of movement. Nandy said those voters were supportive of people moving to the UK to work for the NHS but had grown resentful because they felt routes to similar jobs were being blocked. She cited scrapped bursaries for student nurses as an example.
Nandy also committed to implementing any recommendations from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, following its investigation into antisemitism within the Labour party, telling Neil she would suspend any member accused of such attitudes, before launching an investigation.
She also defended her record on Brexit, saying she had voted against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, but that she would have supported a deal allowing parliament a role in the next stage of negotiations to avoid a no-deal Brexit. Now that Boris Johnson had secured a majority, she said, Labour no longer had the “means to decide”.
In her speech in London earlier in the day, she said the EU remain side, which she supported, had gone into the referendum without “a story about our place in the world”. She added: “Leave campaigners said we were a small nation with a proud history of punching above our weight. Remain campaigners said we’ll cut your mobile phone roaming charges.”
In the years since, she said, Labour had allowed the Conservatives to frame the Brexit debate around “a series of false binaries”. She said: “You can either be for your country or for the world. And senior Labour politicians rushed headlong into it. It was a serious failure of leadership.”
Labour had missed the chance to try to unite voters behind a consensus view of Brexit, one involving a soft departure based on close trade deals and continued free movement of people. she said.
“We should have been bold enough to defend free movement, and the opportunities and benefits that it brings. But this would have required recognising it has flaws, and not dismissing concerns abut the operation of free movements as simply racist anti-immigrant sentiment.
“We should acknowledge that over decades governments have used the steady influx of skilled labour to cover up a lack of investment in skills and training in the UK, and we should address this.”
With internationalism on the retreat, and the right, under people such as Trump, making “a retreat into narrow nationalism”, Nandy said, it was vital for Labour to make the case for creating new ties.
“It is easy to blame Trump as a single destabilising force. But the UK should not rest on this as an excuse for lack of action on a global level.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
The Brexit process has become almost unspeakably awful. Like a foul smell that nobody really wants to deal with, without action it will only get worse. As party unity collapses in parliament, how we find consensus on the greatest issue of our time will determine what the outcome is – whether that turns out to be a second referendum or the next stage of negotiation. We believe the best path to such a consensus involves setting up a citizens’ assembly.
Just like the Labour party, we represent contrasting communities that nevertheless have much in common. Wigan voted 60%-40% to leave the EU, Walthamstow 60%-40% to remain. One is a northern town fighting to regain the good jobs and dignity that were once commonplace. The other is an inner-city area fighting an epidemic of knife crime and the rise of gentrification. Separated by 200 miles, in both places people are angry, deeply affected by poverty and disempowered by a system that does not respond to their needs.
Like our constituents, we hold competing views on how to resolve the Brexit stalemate. But we are united in respecting the causes of that fury, and in our belief that only a Labour government can resolve it.
Without a serious attempt to bring our communities together, we will not address any of these concerns. Yet we have lost the ability to listen to one another, and our political discourse has been poisoned by anger and arrogance. Our constituents are not stupid or racist, any more than they belong to “liberal elites”. But politics has become about the box you put someone in to dismiss them, not the bridges you build to find shared solutions.
This shock-jock culture thrives on extremes. People are encouraged to resign from political parties, to antagonise and abuse opponents for effect, for a YouTube hit while wearing a yellow vest, rather than to take the harder path of building support for a different approach.
Throughout history, politics has had to find a path through huge and fundamental disagreements. As President John F Kennedy wrote in Profiles in Courage, it very rarely happens that “all the truth, and all the right, and all the angels are on one side”. Our refusal to acknowledge this is breaking our democracy. As sitting parliamentarians, we feel the disconnect every day, working in expensive, dilapidated buildings where there is fatuous debate about the bumper-sticker on the Speaker’s car while children go without food to eat and mental healthcare when they are in crisis. This isn’t what either of us signed up for.
This momentous week, and the massive rejection of Theresa May’s Brexit deal by MPs night, will not change this state of affairs.
In the days and weeks ahead, MPs will continue to perform for social media, medicines will be stockpiled, and many more jobs will be tragically lost. There may be a majority to prevent no deal but there is no majority for an outcome – and, crucially, no process that can get us there.
We are nearly three years on from the referendum, and yet we are still arguing about the “will of the people”. Opinion polls and focus groups are conflicted. As has been made abundantly clear, referendums alone, like elections, are blunt instruments that remove complexity in pursuit of simple propositions.
Other countries have seen their democracies strengthened by involving the public alongside parliamentarians in meaningful decision-making. It hasn’t just been in Ireland, where decades of intransigence on abortion and same-sex marriage gave way to a new consensus. It has also happened in Iceland (after the banking crisis), and in Canada and Australia, on issues such as nuclear waste and constitutional reform. President Macron, responding to widespread unrest in France, has recently embraced this approach, understanding its value in reuniting a divided country.
Like a circuit-breaker, citizens’ assemblies can disrupt the bad habits that have come to characterise Brexit: kicking issues into the long grass, placing party interests over the national interest and assuming the public are unable to cope with hard choices. They don’t replace parliaments or offer politicians an escape from difficult decisions. Instead they reject binary choices – remain or leave, no deal or Norway – and allow randomly selected groups of citizens to explore options in an open forum and make recommendations about priorities to elected MPs, who retain the final say. In a deadlocked parliament, this could be the one approach that could retain the trust of us all that the answers were fair, thoughtful and not predetermined. If, for instance, a citizens’ assembly recommended a referendum, it could also consider what the question should be, providing confidence that there was no attempt by politicians to game the system.
None of this need delay progress. Citizens’ assemblies can be completed in seven weeks, in contrast to the three months of Electoral Commission consultation needed to move to a second referendum. Some might sneer that we already have a citizens’ assembly, in the shape of parliament itself, failing to acknowledge the inability to make progress without meaningful public engagement. Critics might reject the idea for fear of the new. Yet anyone looking at politics right now can see new thinking is urgently required.
This will be another week where Westminster repeats the same tired old conversations. No one is winning, but even as the prospect of no deal approaches, few will be honest that we are stuck. As other nations have found, involving citizens in discussions doesn’t diminish politics or politicians – it enhances the value of the conversation for both. With little evidence that more delay will resolve this situation, the public are desperate for us to change our tune. It’s time we let them help choose the music.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
MPs opposed to a no-deal Brexit may try to force a vote on a Northern Ireland bill to stop the next prime minister proroguing parliament in the autumn, Dominic Grieve has confirmed.
Grieve, a former attorney general who has played a leading role in limiting what Brexit policy ministers can implement without parliamentary approval, said the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) bill could be the next opportunity for a Conservative rebellion.
He was speaking as another former minister said there were “30-plus” Conservatives willing to defy the whip to prevent the UK leaving the EU without a deal later this year.
Theresa May ultimately baulked at the prospect of trying to implement no deal, but both her two potential successors, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, have said they would if necessary pursue this option, with Johnson committed to deliver Brexit by 31 October “do or die”.
On Monday, MPs will debate the second reading of the Northern Ireland bill, which will extend until October, and potentially January 2020, the deadline set for the resumption of the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland. All remaining stages of the bill are due to be debated in the Commons on another day.
Speaking on Radio 5 Live, Grieve said: “Northern Ireland and Brexit go rather closely together. The chances are, if Brexit goes through, a nodeal Brexit, it is going to be the end of Northern Ireland’s union with the United Kingdom, with serious political consequences flowing from it.”
Grieve said that was why it was “perfectly legitimate” to use the bill to ensure MPs got the chance to debate the consequences of a no-deal Brexit.
The backbencher did not give details of his proposed amendment, but it is understood it would force the government to make an oral statement to the Commons in October on progress towards restoring the power-sharing executive – a move that would stop the new prime minister proroguing parliament for September and October, to stop MPs blocking a no-deal Brexit. Hunt is opposed to use prorogation for this purpose, but Johnson has not ruled it out.
In a separate interview, Sam Gyimah, another Conservative former minister, said there were about “30-plus” Tories willing to join him in defying the whip to vote against a no-deal Brexit.
Gyimah said he did not intend to vote against his government on a no-confidence motion for this purpose – even though some commentators believe that this could end up being the only option available for Tories determined to scupper a no deal. He added he and his colleagues were considering “a number of legislative mechanisms” that might be available.
David Gauke, the justice secretary and another Tory firmly opposed to a no-deal Brexit, told the BBC that, although the parliamentary options for MPs determined to block this option seemed limited, he thought the Speaker, John Bercow, would be willing to ignore precedent to help them out.
“In a world where we have a Speaker who is perhaps prepared to be innovative, when there is a clear majority in parliament that is against no deal, you have to question whether [the 2016 referendum] provides a mandate for leaving without a deal – so with all those facts, I think parliament will find a way through,” Gauke said.
One option for the rebel MPs might be to use an emergency debate, scheduled under standing order 24, to pass a business motion that would allow backbenchers to take control of the Commons business for a day to allow legislation blocking no deal to be passed. SO24 motions are not meant to be used for this purpose, but earlier this year Bercow hinted that a move of this kind might be allowed.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
It was hard to see what all the fuss had been about. The intellectual legend that is David Davis had always said securing a future trade arrangement with the EU would be the easiest deal in the history of David Davis Land. And in the end he was proved right. It was so easy that the government chose not to do anything about it for the best part of two and a half years and then cobbled something together at the last minute.
A day after her brief trip to Brussels, Theresa May came to the Commons to present the deal that she and Jean-Claude Juncker had scribbled down over 26 pages. What she had wasn’t a deal exactly – more a vague declaration that things might work out OK at some point over the next 15 years or more. Some things would happen if other unspecified things were also to happen. And if those things weren’t to happen, then some other unspecified things would happen as a result.
The prime minister paused, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Willing herself to believe in what she was saying. Willing herself to be somewhere else. She opened her eyes. It was no good. She was still at the despatch box. So she ploughed on, her voice becoming ever more dissociated.
She was immensely grateful to Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson for their fascinating and helpful suggestions on Northern Ireland. There was no need for them to worry about the withdrawal agreement because it probably wouldn’t be needed. But if it was, there would be no hard border because she had arranged for a first world war blimp to be positioned somewhere in Armagh. Along with an armed, quick-response badger taskforce.
The red lines on red mullet would remain in place. We would be protecting British fisheries by getting rid of the Common Fisheries Policy and replacing it with a Policy of Common Fisheries. Britain would be regaining the right to make its own laws providing that was OK with the European court of justice. Then for the coup de grâce. Chequers had been chucked. We wouldn’t be getting a Canada deal or a Norway deal. We wouldn’t be getting something in between. With luck an Iceland deal. But more likely, and to be more geographically accurate, one that was dead in the water.
This was one of Jeremy Corbyn’s easier outings in the Commons. A reply that even he couldn’t screw up. Fighting lack of clarity with lack of clarity was his specialism. All he had to do was not fall over, and criticise some bits for not delivering a hard enough Brexit and other bits for not delivering a soft enough Brexit. A little of something for everyone.
May desperately tried to convince the opposition benches that her deal that wasn’t a deal met Labour’s six tests, which only ended up in a humiliating shout of “Oh, no it isn’t”. Because what the occasion really demanded was for the Commons to degenerate into pantomime.
That, though, was the prime minister’s high point, as thereafter MPs from both sides of the house lined up to trash her draft agreement. IDS and Paterson made it clear she had wasted an hour of her time talking to them at Downing Street earlier in the week and that she would have been better off watching NCIS. Raab tried and failed to sound as if he wasn’t overwhelmed by his own self-importance, while Boris Johnson dismissed her statement for being “full of generalities and self-contradictions”. Perhaps Boris is more self-aware than any of us thought.
It was almost an hour before May got her first expression of support. And that was only from Damian Green, one of the few people who know her well enough to call her by her first name. Otherwise, it was back to the pile-on. Remainers accused her of betrayal and demanded a second referendum. Brexiters accused her of betrayal and demanded she go back and renegotiate the withdrawal agreement, the only thing that was legally binding and the EU was certain not to change.
Before long, the prime minister was in Maybot mode. “The backstop was the backstop because it was the backstop that delivered the backstop.” Complete nonsense. She knew it, everyone knew it, but she just couldn’t help herself. She was delivering on the deal that was delivering on something that was delivering on something else.
Not so much a political declaration as the martyrdom of St Theresa. The only thing she was delivering was her own head on a plate. In a way, the masochism was almost addictive; when Labour’s Helen Goodman inquired if the government was going to follow the procedure committee’s advice on a meaningful vote, May was defiant. Why go quietly? She was certain to lose the main vote, so why not lose another?
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Emmanuel Macron has suggested he is against a further Brexit extension as the EU sought to sell the new deal but private comments from Germany’s chancellor highlighted the likelihood that one would still be offered.
As a two-day leaders’ summit in Brussels finished on Friday, the French president said it was time for the current phase in the Brexit negotiations to end. MPs will convene on Saturday to vote on the revised withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future relationship.
Macron told reporters: “I am not trying to read into the future but I do not think we shall grant any further delay. I think it is time to put an end to these negotiations and move on to the future relationship. And put to an end to what is currently ongoing.
“What matters is to stick to the commitment we made and the deadline we set ourselves. It is up to each and every one to make their own decisions. There shall be no delay unless there are major changes.”
The Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar also sought to scotch talk of an extension, pointing out any decision would have to be approved unanimously by all 27 EU leaders: “I don’t think any MP voting tomorrow should make the assumption that there would be unanimity for an extension.”
Despite the comments, which echoed those of the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Thursday, the privately stated position of Angela Merkel is seen in Brussels as closer to the reality of the leaders’ thinking.
During a discussion on Thursday, the German chancellor told EU leaders that a Brexit extension would be unavoidable if British MPs vote down the new deal.
She advised her fellow heads of state and government they could not pretend an extension would not be offered to the UK if it was requested, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
Merkel framed Brexit as a historic issue weighing on the EU and said leaders had a responsibility not to push the UK out without a deal if there was a request for further delay.
The intervention by Macron and Juncker, who sought to “rule out” an extension as he arrived at the summit on Thursday, expose the desire among the EU27 to move the Brexit talks on after two arduous years of negotiation.
In his press conference on Friday, Macron went on to say that Johnson had started out with unacceptable proposals but had then “got into the complexity” of the issue.
He said: “He is who he is, but I think he is a real leader with real strategic thoughts and those who do not take him seriously are wrong and will continue to be wrong”.
Merkel’s comments were made on Thursday, shortly before EU leaders announced their unanimous backing for the new deal with Johnson.
She told Johnson not to tell the British public that EU leaders had ruled out an extension. While EU leaders are anxious for the Brexit deal to pass, they do not wish to be drawn into the vortex of British politics.
During a 25-minute meeting with EU leaders, Johnson expressed confidence he could get a majority for his Brexit deal in a rare Saturday sitting of the Commons.
Thanking the EU for the deal, the prime minister made a short, upbeat statement in which he referred to his school days in Brussels. Johnson attended the European school in Uccle, which educates the children of EU officials.
Johnson also touched on the UK’s long relationship with Europe, suggesting Britain had never been truly European but always half in, half out. It was a businesslike meeting that made some think of the unemotional signing of divorce papers.
Once he had left the room, EU leaders discussed how to respond to any rejection of the deal by the Commons. Some EU leaders, such as Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel and Malta’s Joseph Muscat, voiced frustration at the idea of another extension.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, agreed with Merkel. He later told journalists he would consult EU leaders if there was a request for an extension. But he did not organise a detailed discussion on extension.
“We have not been focusing on the question today, if or when,” Merkel said. “It’s a free decision to be taken by the British parliament.”
With the vote in the Commons on a knife edge, EU leaders are also thinking about the future relationship with the UK. Merkel said the EU now had a clearer idea of the kind of future relationship the UK was seeking, in contrast to the picture sketched out by Theresa May.
“At the time [under May] it wasn’t clear what the future relationship should look like, whether there would be a membership in the single market or not,” she said.
Merkel, who has recently described the UK as a “potential competitor”, said it was clear the UK would be a “third country”, ie completely outside the EU’s economic system, “and we will quickly begin negotiating a free-trade agreement with that third country, Great Britain”.
First published on Tue 2 Apr 2019 08.30 BST
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has led other EU leaders in warning that Theresa May’s apparent move to take no deal off the table offers no guarantee that Britain will not crash out of the bloc on 12 April.
EU sources said Brussels instead would want to see a “positive majority” in the Commons for a solution before the summit on 10 April, putting the UK at a heightened risk of a no deal.
The EU27 states have repeatedly insisted that they expect the withdrawal agreement to be ratified or a new “credible plan” to emerge for them to agree to another Brexit delay when leaders meet at a crunch summit in eight days’ time.
With the British parliament yet to coalesce around any solution to break the impasse, there is concern in EU capitals that the prime minister, despite her pledge to secure a solution with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, could still arrive at the summit without a clear way forward.
Downing Street’s strategy appears to put the UK on a path to an extension past 12 April, the cliff-edge agreed by the EU’s leaders at the recent summit, up to at least 22 May. This leaves open the risk of a no-deal Brexit right on the eve of European elections.
Denmark’s prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, expressed the bloc’s concerns, tweeting: “Since we could agree to postpone Brexit to right before EP [European Parliament] election given the approval of May’s agreement, we should also be patient IF there suddenly is a cross party way forward in UK. But is it too good to believe?”
Despite the concerns, Donald Tusk, the European council president, tweeted a conciliatory message amid the deepening anxiety. “Even if, after today, we don’t know what the end result will be, let us be patient,” he said.
And the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, tweeted: “Good that PM Theresa May is looking for a cross-party compromise. Better late than never.”
In a statement after a seven-hour cabinet meeting, May said she would be seeking a further short Brexit delay to allow new cross-party talks to come to fruition.
The EU’s leaders, including Macron, reflected their concerns on Tuesday that they were being pushed into agreeing to extend article 50, and potentially even beyond 22 May, without the bloc’s conditions having been met.
The prime minister has previously sought to delay Brexit until 30 June, a demand rejected at the last EU summit. The UK is being seen as playing a blame game, sources said.
Macron, among others, is determined to avoid the UK remaining in the EU beyond 22 May unless British MEPs are elected and there is a clear view of a way out of the Brexit logjam.
“A long extension, implying the UK takes part in European elections and European institutions, has nothing easy or automatic about it,” the president said. “I say that again very strongly. Our priority must be the good functioning of the EU and the single market. The EU can’t be held hostage long-term by the resolution of a political crisis in the UK.
“The three-times rejection of the withdrawal agreement by the House of Commons and the rejection of all alternative plans now puts us on the path of a UK exit without a deal.”
He added: “As the European council decided in March, it’s now up to the UK to present a credible alternative plan backed by a majority before 10 April in order to avoid that. If the UK isn’t capable, almost three years after the referendum, of putting forward a solution that gets a majority, it will have decided itself, de facto, to leave without a deal. And we can’t avoid failure for the UK.”
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who was visiting Macron in Paris, told reporters the EU27 would not accept an extension “as just a recipe for further indecision”.
“There seems to be a sense in Westminster that, because they voted against no deal, no deal’s off the table,” he said. “It’s not off the table. A request for extension requires EU unanimity and that is far from guaranteed.”
Earlier in the day, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, had also attempted to build the narrative that no-deal Brexit was very likely and becoming more likely by the day after the Commons rejected all the alternative solutions to May’s deal.
Those comments were echoed by the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Luxembourg. “We have to take into consideration a no-deal possibility – it’s a probability,” the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, told reporters.
“We are no longer looking for an exit, but rather an emergency exit,” added Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel, who was hosting Rutte for no-deal talks in the duchy.
Mujtaba Rahman, from the Eurasia group consultancy, said: “The EU are being absolutely crystal clear that they will need to see a positive vote on a deal by next Wednesday’s leader’s summit if they are going to agree to an extension until 22 May. Without that the only option they will offer is a long extension with European elections - or no deal.”
Speaking in Brussels earlier in the day, Barnier said it was only a “positive majority” in the Commons in favour of a Brexit plan that could avoid a cliff-edge Brexit on 12 April.
“No deal was never our desired or intended scenario, but the EU27 is now prepared. It becomes, day after day, more likely,” he told an audience at a thinktank event, adding: “This is a serious crisis and no one can be pleased with what is happening in the UK currently.”
Three scenarios were set out by the EU official: agreement this week on May’s deal or a variant of it, no deal, or a long extension to article 50 requiring “a strong justification”.
Barnier said an extension beyond the end of next month, which would require the UK to take part in European parliamentary elections, “would carry significant risks for the EU and therefore strong justification would be needed”.
He said businesses in the EU27 had warned Brussels “against the cost of extending uncertainty”. The UK prolonging its status as a member state while still seeking to leave with a negotiated deal “could pose a risk on our decision-making autonomy”.
“The option of no deal looks very likely,” Barnier later added.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has hinted that the government may be prepared to reach a compromise with Labour on a post-Brexit customs union arrangement with the EU.
He said the local election results on Thursday were a call from voters to “deliver Brexit and then move on”.
The Conservatives lost more than 1,300 seats in Thursday’s elections, their biggest setback since John Major was prime minister. Labour had been expected to make gains, but instead suffered a net loss and also lost control over a string of councils. The remain-supporting Liberal Democrats were the major beneficiaries, taking control of 10 councils.
Hancock said he shared the frustration of voters who were keen for politicians to move on to other pressing issues. “We need to be listening to these results from these local elections which are about ‘deliver Brexit’, not ‘deliver this particular form of Brexit’,” he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
The Conservatives’ poor results have led some MPs to call for a leadership change. The former Brexit secretary David Davis declared his support for Dominic Raab, saying the party needed a leader who could deliver a Brexit “faithful to the demands of the referendum” and present “an optimistic and authentic vision for the future”.
Writing in the Daily Mail, Davis said Raab was “the best-placed Brexit candidate to win the necessary support among MPs and party members and, above all, broaden our appeal to voters”.
He said the European elections on 23 May could be “far worse” for the party than the local elections.
“Delivering on Brexit is a necessary condition for seeing off the threat of a hard-left Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn,” he wrote. “But on its own it won’t be enough. As Conservatives, we must now also offer a more compelling and inspiring vision for addressing the wider challenges the country faces beyond Brexit.”
The justice secretary, David Gauke, described the local election results as punishment for the Conservatives’ handling of Brexit. He told BBC Breakfast: “These are very disappointing election results. What we need to be doing is addressing the big issue in front of us, which is Brexit.”
He said the Tories would have had much better results if they had managed to get Theresa May’s deal through parliament. “I think we can look at those local election results as a punishment for both the Labour party and the Conservative party for failing to find a way through that situation,” he said.
Lisa Nandy, the Labour MP for Wigan, said the poor results for both main parties were a result of “people losing faith with the system as a whole”.
She told Today: “People are really, really frustrated about Brexit, but the major frustration comes from the perceived inability of the two major parties – including Labour – to get our act together and start dealing with the very many and real problems people have got.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
The scale of Tory anger with Theresa May for seeking a delay to Brexit has been laid bare after most of her MPs, including four cabinet ministers, refused to back any request for an extension to article 50.
Almost 100 Tory MPs voted against the prime minister’s decision to ask for a three-month extension to article 50 and another 80 abstained, underlining the loss of control over her party. Andrea Leadsom, Chris Grayling, Geoffrey Cox and Liam Fox all did not vote on the motion to extend article 50 until 30 June.
May only won the vote on the back of support from Labour and other opposition parties, with only 31% of her backing coming from 131 Conservative MPs.
Pro-Brexit MPs suggested this showed she may not have the backing of her party to pursue any soft Brexit deal involving a customs union and ultimately no overall parliamentary majority for that if at least 100 Labour and other opposition MPs insist on a confirmatory referendum.
Marcus Fysh, a Eurosceptic Conservative, said: “Only 133 out of 314 Conservative MPs voted for extension of article 50 this afternoon. The government simply does not have support for its current direction on the main purpose of its existence, inside the parliamentary party, the party in the country, or the wider country.”
May will go ahead anyway with her request for a delay until 30 June at an emergency summit on Wednesday evening, but EU leaders are planning to force her to accept a longer extension to article 50 of up to a year.
Conservative anger at any further delay suggests May will receive a difficult reception when she returns from Brussels to give a statement in the Commons on Thursday.
Brexiter cabinet ministers are not expected to resign at this point, as they fear being replaced by pro-remain ministers at a crucial time. However, some are questioning how long May can realistically continue as prime minister having previously promised not to endure a delay to Brexit longer than 30 June and without the support of most of her party.
One cabinet source said May’s government, now pursuing talks with Labour, was increasingly becoming divorced from the cabinet and the rest of the party, calling the prime minister’s future into question.
A tipping point for cabinet resignations is more likely to be if May were to reach a deal with Labour on a softer Brexit involving a customs union. Fox, the international trade secretary, hinted he could not put up with that outcome in a letter to the 1922 Committee of Tory backbench MPs, describing a customs union as “the worst of all worlds”.
Some Eurosceptics are also warning European leaders that they face non-cooperation from the UK if they proceed with a long delay.
In the Commons, Tim Loughton, a former minister, said: “If the EU elections go ahead, it is highly likely that UK will elect an army of Nigel Farage mini-mes who will frankly wreak havoc with the European parliament and wreck your calculations about the balance of power within the EU.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the European Research Group (ERG) of pro-Brexit MPs, also warned the EU that it could not count on cooperation from any future prime minister. “Parliament cannot bind its successors, the prime minister’s promises have not invariably proved reliable and there has been little sincerity from the EU,” he said.
Anger also bubbled over at a meeting of the Bruges Group thinktank, with audience members shouting “fuck government” and repeatedly yelling “traitor!” at the mention of May.
Mark Francois, the vice-chairman of the ERG, said people in the UK could not be “held captive against their will”.
Francois warned the EU that trying to keep the UK in the bloc for longer would create “perfidious Albion on speed” and a “Trojan horse within the EU, which will utterly derail all your attempts to pursue a more federal project.”
He added: “A new Conservative government led by someone like Boris or Dominic Raab might well vote down your projects, veto your attempts at greater military integration and generally make it impossible for you to bring about the more federal project in which you so desperately believe.”
Another Conservative MP, Andrew Bridgen, said the UK’s EU membership had turned the country from a Michelin-starred restaurant to one reliant on microwave meals.
He said: “We used to create these fantastic dishes from scratch and over the years this has been corrupted and we have been deskilled.
“Now we accept our laws pre-packed from Brussels, ready to go in the microwave. We’ve become a chicken ding parliament with chicken ding politicians.”
As well as dealing with splits over Brexit, the Conservative party is facing a crisis over recruitment, with the average age at which more people support the party than Labour rising from 47 to 51 since the 2017 election.
At an event on Tuesday to launch a thinktank report into the issue, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, warned that voting Tory “used to be something people started to think about doing when they got their first paycheck – now it’s when they get their first winter fuel allowance”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Theresa May is facing intense cabinet pressure to avoid the prospect of a long Brexit delay, amid increasing expectations that last ditch cross-party talks on a compromise departure plan will not produce anything concrete.
Before a crucial EU summit later this week, the prime minister is facing a fast-diminishing range of options that could split the Conservative party and prompt a mass cabinet walkout, or could result in the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal on Friday.
May’s only response on Sunday was a homespun video that called for a compromise solution, but while praised for its conversational style, it lacked any fresh detail on proposals to break the Brexit impasse.
With Labour reiterating it had yet to learn even the basics of concessions May might offer after her dramatic call last week for consensus, the timetable looked tight to agree anything before the European council gathering on Wednesday evening.
Under the terms of the previous brief extension agreed with the EU, if Brussels does not agree another delay, a no-deal Brexit will happen on Friday. May has requested a pause until 30 June, but Brussels is keen on a wait of up to a year, which could be broken earlier if a solution is found.
On Monday, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, will hold talks with the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar. At the weekend, Varadkar said his own preference was for a longer extension than 30 June.
Also on Monday, Jeremy Corbyn is due to hold meetings with Sinn Fein’s leaders in London. The party’s president, Mary Lou McDonald, is expected to tell Corbyn that Irish interests must be protected whatever the outcome of his Brexit negotiations with Theresa May.
On Sunday, a key ally of French president Emmanuel Macron said that such a “flex-tension” plan should be replaced by “a long extension so the UK can really figure out what it wants”.
Alexandre Holroyd, an MP from Macron’s En Marche party whose brief covers Brexit, told the BBC that this should come with conditions, for example, the UK should have no say on the next EU budget.
Pro-Brexit cabinet sources said a long delay, particularly one under such terms, would “cause a tremendous amount of angst”. They said: “A long, non-flexible extension would come with EU elections as well, which is another red line for lots of the Conservative party.
“It all shows the mistake of taking no deal off the table – we’re negotiating with one hand behind our back.”
May was also warned publicly by ministers on Sunday against a long delay. Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House of Commons, told the BBC that the idea of an extension long enough to require the UK to hold European elections was “utterly unacceptable”.
Leadsom indicated that the other option, a no-deal departure, was preferable: “The civil service have done an amazing job of ensuring that we minimise the problems. I’m not an advocate for no deal, but it would not be nearly as bad as many like to think it would be.”
Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, warned against the “purgatory” of a lengthy delay. She told the BBC: “I think the British public are going to be pretty horrified if we go into more limbo than we’ve already had.”
In her video message, shot on a sometimes shaky hand-held camera at her Chequers country retreat, May conceded her own Brexit deal appeared doomed given it had been rejected by MPs three times. “Right now, as things stand, I can’t see them accepting it,” she said.
Given this, May said she was talking to Labour – despite disagreements in many other areas. “Can we find a way through this that ensures that we can get a good deal and a deal agreed through parliament?” she said.
“It’ll mean compromise on both sides but I believe that delivering Brexit is the most important thing for us.”
The talks began last week with Jeremy Corbyn and May meeting with teams of ministers and aides, but by Friday had shrunk to some phone calls and one-to-one talks between officials.
The shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, who was among the Labour delegation, said on Sunday that while the mood of the talks had been positive, there was as yet no sign on where May might budge, particularly Labour’s key demand for a post-Brexit customs union with the EU.
“We are currently waiting for the government to come back to us now to state whether they are prepared to move on any of their red lines,” Long-Bailey told the BBC.
Adding to the sense of drift, Leadsom indicated that it was up to Labour to accept the customs arrangement already in May’s rejected deal, and that she and other Brexiter members of May’s ministerial team could not accept a full customs union.
“There are various different types of arrangements, and those discussions are still ongoing,” Leadsom said, calling May’s existing customs plan “an excellent proposal”.
Asked whether May could agree to a full customs union, Leadsom indicated not. “My expectation – and I’m not party to the discussions – is that the prime minister will only seek to agree those things that still constitute Brexit.”
What does seem clear is that May’s options are closing in, with her deal conceded as lost, and a backbench bill led by the Labour MP Yvette Cooper mandating the PM to avoid a no-deal departure is expected to become law late on Monday, after finishing its progress through the Lords.
Cabinet sources said they were in the dark about what, if any, plan the prime minister was hatching.
“As ever, she’s still saying the same thing with no hint of progression, so we’re in the dark as to what the next steps might be,” one said.
Another source said the plot for the Brussels summit seemed clear: “I expect she’ll have a pretty bruising time and then walk away with a long extension.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
When Theresa May addressed reporters on her RAF Voyager plane en route to the G20, she wore an eye-catching bracelet that appeared to depict the Great Wave off Kanagawa, the famous Japanese painting of a tsunami. Hokusai’s famous painting depicts a huge wave threatening three small boats, whose fishermen look calm and decisive.
It could hardly have been a more appropriate metaphor for May’s approach to this summit, which could be her last as a national leader if her mutinous backbenchers get their way in the Brexit vote next week. The latest analysis suggests more than 100 Tory MPs could vote against her deal.
In public, she has steadfastly maintained to other leaders that her Brexit deal is the blueprint for Britain’s post-Brexit future as an independent trading nation, and to reporters that there is no plan B for losing the vote in parliament.
It is a message devoid of the context that her version of the deal looks likely to be voted down in parliament by more than half of the backbenchers in her own party, many of whom have based their opposition on the belief that the backstop provision threatens the opportunity to forge trade deals. During the summit, yet another minister – Sam Gyimah – resigned, refusing to back the deal.
Yet when pressed on how the government is preparing for plan B, May has stressed that none exists, and that she is focused on winning the vote in parliament on 11 December.
“Everyone said we would not get a deal, and now we’re in the position of having a deal, all you seem to want to be asking about is the next stage,” she told reporters on the plane. “We haven’t had the vote yet. Let’s focus.”
“It’s a long flight,” one journalist quipped as the prime minister finished up her press briefing. “Will you spend any time working up a plan B in case the vote falls?”
“Nice try,” May responded.
Throughout the two-day summit correspondents have repeatedly asked if it might be seen as irresponsible to have no plan in place for a second vote, a renegotiation offensive, for an offer to the Labour party or for a commitment to pursue no deal.
Each time May has deflected. It is a deliberate strategy by No 10 to focus minds on the vote in parliament as the real moment of truth. They believe that without convincing colleagues that beyond defeat lies only chaos, the prime minister loses vital leverage.
During the summit, May met with leaders from countries that Britain hopes to forge not only new trading relations but also security partnerships, including collaboration on a new satellite system to rival the EU’s Galileo project, which the UK has now formally pulled from its defence programme.
Only one bilateral was not focused on trade, according to No 10: May’s meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, where the focus was Yemen and the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.
It was the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, who first raised the elephant in the room – that the deal May was here to promote was no foregone conclusion. He politely described it as dealing in “typical British fashion” with “a very tough set of issues”.
“I think you’ve shown great resilience and great determination on one of the most vexed issues I think there is,” he went on, a diplomatic reference to her domestic struggles, which he called “a very difficult issue for you and your colleagues”.
In her next bilateral with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, one of the world leaders who May had hoped would be most supportive, Abe warned in his opening remarks that the UK must avoid no deal “to ensure transparency, predictability as well as legal stability in the Brexit process”.
When May returns to the UK, Downing Street sources said she would not embark on any major tour of the country to sell her deal. Her focus will be on SW1, where she is expected to speak in the parliamentary debates and ramp up a charm offensive to convince Tory colleagues.
For now, those are the people she really needs to convince, not the national leaders gathered in Buenos Aires.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Theresa May has set a date for Whitehall to trigger a series of no-deal Brexit preparations as her government faces up to the possibility that there will be no agreement with the EU about Britain’s departure.
With less than six months to go before the UK leaves the bloc, the cabinet has agreed that a flurry of activity will be triggered in the second week of November as the government prepares to crash out of the EU, informed sources said.
Civil servants have also accelerated plans to lay down new laws and secondary legislation so that UK businesses and both British and EU citizens can prepare.
The move follows concerns across government that preparations for how the UK might cope with crashing out the EU are still uncertain. The Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, told cabinet colleagues on Tuesday that Whitehall departments needed to step up their efforts next month and move “from warning businesses to telling them to act”.
Whitehall has until now concentrated on the publication of more than 100 technical notices detailing the potential impact on particular industries but not on individual businesses and people.
A source said that there would be an acceleration of preparations after MPs return from a short break on 12 November. “We have to get on with no-deal legislation. At the moment, we’re looking at the same legislation for a deal as no deal. In the case of no deal it would need royal assent before we leave.
“There will be an awful lot to discuss. It will concentrate minds. Obviously we don’t want to upset the negotiations, but the clock is ticking and it will get harder and harder the later we leave it,” the source said.
If May fails to negotiate a deal, the UK would no longer be part of the EU’s regulatory regime, introducing barriers for businesses trading between the UK and EU. It would also create uncertainty about the legal status of EU residents in the UK and Britons living in the other 27 member states.
MPs will return from recess to find that new laws have been drawn up to be laid before parliament to cope with the UK leaving the the EU without a deal, the source said.
According to the Institute for Government, the government will have to pass a citizens’ rights bill to give certainty to EU nationals. There would also have to be a separate migration bill to end free movement among the hundreds of statutory instruments the government would have to pass to ensure continuity after Brexit.
MPs have expressed growing concern at the lack of engagement between Whitehall departments and businesses. Meg Hillier, the chair of the Commons public accounts committee, wrote to Jon Thompson, the head of HM Revenue and Customs, saying she was “concerned and disappointed” that small firms had not been contacted about how to prepare for the possibility of no deal.
Amyas Morse, the head of the National Audit Office, told MPs earlier this month that excessive secrecy across Whitehall meant that civil servants and the public had been kept in the dark about the government’s proposals.The Treasury and HMRC have announced £8m in funding to help customs brokers train new employees to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. Customs intermediaries, which help firms to move their goods through customs checks, will also be able to apply for grants.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said on Wednesday: “I am increasingly concerned, literally with every day that passes right now, that the prospect of a no deal is becoming ever greater."
“As things stand just now I think no deal may actually be the most likely outcome, and that is deeply concerning,” she told Holyrood’s committee conveners.

Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Theresa May will present MPs with new “clearer language” on the nature of the backstop agreement, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has claimed, as the prime minister held telephone talks with the German chancellor and other EU leaders.
Talks with the heads of EU countries and the DUP have been quietly going on during the festive period, Whitehall sources have confirmed, as May prepares to face mutinous MPs when she returns to the Commons having promised legally binding concessions.
A German government source confirmed Angela Merkel had spoken with May on Christmas Eve and again on Wednesday, as part of a series of calls the British prime minister has made to EU leaders over the festive period as she attempts to guide her Brexit deal through the Commons.
Downing Street remained silent on the details of the calls and has not revealed the list of EU leaders, but a No 10 source said May had more calls lined up this week. Berlin said it could not comment on the private conversations.
Cabinet ministers have privately urged the prime minister to prioritise securing an agreement which would bring the DUP, which is propping up her government, back onboard.
The Northern Irish party has vowed to vote down the deal unless legally-binding changes are made. Private talks have been held with DUP MPs since May pulled the parliamentary vote she had intended to hold in December after it became clear she would face a massive defeat.
Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesman, said in a now-deleted tweet that he was in London for a government meeting, believed to include the chief whip. “Off to London for meetings with senior ministers. We aren’t interested in meaningless assurances,” he tweeted. “The legal text is what counts and the prime minister has promised changes. Let’s see!”
MPs are to restart the debate on May’s withdrawal agreement on their return to parliament on Monday.
Ahead of their return, the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, will convene a meeting of junior ministers on Thursday to discuss updates to the preparations for a no-deal exit.
May has said she is seeking further legal reassurances from EU leaders about the permanence of the backstop agreement, which would keep the whole UK in a single customs territory with the EU until both sides agreed on an alternative solution to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
Hunt, who is in Singapore, said May would eventually get her Brexit deal approved. “I think that she will find a way to get this deal through parliament and I know that is what the British people would want,” he told an audience Q&A.
The foreign secretary said a no-deal outcome could cause disruption for a prolonged period, adding: “That is not something any government should wish on its people.”
Speaking later to the BBC, he reiterated May’s desire to find a solution that would have legal force. “She has also been very straightforward about this – the EU has agreed the backstop is temporary and that’s a word they have agreed,” said Hunt.
“So what we’re saying, very simply, is we’re not asking for anything new but we are asking you to define what temporary means so we can have confidence we’re not going to be trapped in the customs union for ever against the wishes of the British people.”
Hunt, who has attempted to burnish his pro-Brexit credentials in recent weeks, said there was a need to unite leavers and remainers but that should not be via a second referendum, adding it would be a “devastating blow to democracy”.
Instead, he said the deal had to be “a friendly separation where we have the closest possible trade relationship, the closest possible diplomatic relationship with our European friends and neighbours, because I think that is the biggest fear of the remainers”.
He added: “We need to find a way of making sure that the Brexit that 48% are afraid of isn’t the Brexit that we end up with and I am confident we can succeed.”
Hunt had initially floated the idea of a second referendum, which he now opposes, days after the 2016 result, saying the deal needed “democratic endorsement in some form”.
The Labour MP Virendra Sharma, a supporter of the pro-remain Best for Britain campaign, said: “While he seems to have decided it’s no longer advantageous for his personal leadership prospects to back a people’s vote, the arguments for putting this decision back in the hands of the people have grown, as the consequences of the political uncertainty come home to roost and our parliament remains in deadlock.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Theresa May is expected to propose a draft bill guaranteeing that UK workers’ rights will keep pace with those in Europe in an attempt to get Labour MPs to back her Brexit deal.
Backbench Labour sources said the bill would probably be proposed before the next meaningful vote and could include strengthened protections for agency workers and a “regression lock” that would ensure workers’ protections never slip below European standards.
MPs who have met May over the past few months have made it clear they need guarantees to be made in primary legislation because they do not trust that she will remain in No 10 for much longer.
Those who are in negotiations with the government have insisted the bill must be tabled and have had at least one day of second reading within the next few months.
The Labour MP John Mann, one of the key figures behind the push for legislation, said: “There needs to be a bill produced soon. We aren’t basing anything on a promise, with all due respect to the prime minister. We are doing it based on statute.”
On Wednesday, the Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who has intimated she could back May’s deal, said the right offer from No 10 could win over up to 60 Labour MPs.
“If she were able to come back and stop this eternal circular conversation within the Tory party and start reaching out to the rest of parliament and the rest of the country and give us those assurances, I think you’d get somewhere between 40 and 60 Labour [MPs] who would be prepared to step forward and say, we’ve got to come together around this, otherwise we leave with no deal,” Nandy told BBC Radio 5 Live.
A Downing Street source suggested it was not in the final stages of drafting the legislation and that May’s agenda for next week was still very much dependent on a number of other factors.
Trade unions are also understood to have been pushing for the legislation to include an easing of restrictions on union activity. Union chiefs had been seeking more concrete proposals for regulation of the labour market after Brexit and the enforcement of existing law.
“Their desire to bring in seasonal agricultural workers from around the globe, as well as barista visas, really does ring alarm bells,” one union source said. “Our fear is that when workers depend on their bosses for their visas, exploitation is sure to follow.”
On Wednesday the general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, told the Guardian he would see what the prime minister had to offer in the coming days before deciding if it was worth supporting. “We’ll have to wait to see, the prime minister presumably was listening,” he said.
“In terms of the TUC’s position I’m in exact alignment with them. And that is, we’d like to see stronger commitment from the prime minister in relation to workers’ rights. But also, from my union’s point of view, we’re extremely keen to get a customs union. And so Unite’s position is very, very closely aligned with the Labour party’s position.”
McCluskey said had no plans to meet the prime minister again after meeting her in Downing Street a fortnight ago on a day when she saw several trade union leaders, and no plans to meet with the business secretary, Greg Clark, either. “I’m not negotiating with anybody,” McCluskey said.
Fifty Unite members signed a letter to the Guardian on Wednesday calling on their union leader to withdraw from any future talks that have been reported.
“As members of Unite, we are deeply concerned by reports that our general secretary, Len McCluskey, is entering into direct negotiations with Theresa May over the Tory Brexit deal,” stated the letter, which was coordinated by the leftwing pro-EU group Another Europe is Possible.
“It appears that McCluskey is engaging in separate talks with the government in which he is putting forward a position which contradicts both the policy of the Labour party and Unite’s own policy. This is absolutely wrong,” the letter said.
“By voting down the deal, MPs can create the conditions to bring down the government and force a general election, giving us the chance to get a government for the many. Backing the Tory deal, or abstaining on it, means keeping the Tories in power with their agenda of cuts, austerity and privatisation.”
A Unite spokesman said the letter was “based on a misconception” and members should not believe everything they had read.
“Len McCluskey is not negotiating a Brexit deal with Theresa May. He has met the prime minister once, as have several other trade union leaders, when he took the opportunity to raise a number of concerns for working people, including the danger of a no-deal Brexit and the evident need for a customs union in order to preserve jobs,” the spokesman said.
“The terms of Brexit can only be determined by MPs, and Unite fully supports Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to secure the best possible arrangements. Mr McCluskey continues to liaise with government ministers to ensure that jobs in manufacturing and elsewhere are safeguarded and makes no apologies for doing so.”
The prime minister met several union leaders since the defeat of her Brexit deal, including McCluskey, as well as the Unison leader, Dave Prentis, and Frances O’Grady, who heads the TUC.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Theresa May is putting together a package of measures aimed at wooing Labour MPs in leave-supporting constituencies, offering greater protection for workers’ rights after Brexit and, it emerged on Wednesday night, cash for former coalfield communities.
The prime minister has asked two cabinet ministers to consult opposition backbenchers over legislation to protect workers’ rights after Brexit, although there is a fierce debate in Labour about how far to engage with the Conservatives.
Downing Street also confirmed that extra cash for deprived post-industrial areas was also under consideration, to allow “Labour MPs representing Brexit communities to say they have extracted something tangible”, according to a government source quoted in the Times.
As part of the charm offensive, Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, and Greg Clark, the business secretary, met Labour MP Melanie Onn on Wednesday to discuss further safeguards on workers’ rights.
The two ministers have also been tasked with drawing up proposals for enhanced environmental protections after Brexit showing how broadly May is willing to act in her efforts to persuade leave-supporting Labour MPs into voting for a revised Brexit deal.
Downing Street advisers pointed to remarks made by the prime minister during Tuesday’s Brexit debate, where she said: “The government will not allow the UK leaving the EU to result in any lowering of standards in relation to employment, ​environmental protection or health and safety.”
May had also told the Commons she wanted parliament to be able to “consider any measure approved by EU institutions that strengthens any of those protections” after Brexit in a calculated bid to win over some Labour MPs.
Downing Street hopes to persuade a handful of pro-Brexit Labour MPs to support any final deal that May brings back to parliament, partly because it needs to offset a group of diehard Conservative MPs that will not support any deal with the EU.
Onn, who described her meeting as positive, was one of 24 Labour MPs who rebelled against the party whip on Tuesday night, either by voting against or abstaining on Yvette Cooper’s amendment aiming to delay article 50 to buy time to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
In 2017, the Great Grimsby MP had proposed a bill that would transpose all workers’ rights protected under EU law into UK law post-Brexit after concerns were raised that some could otherwise be removed by a future government using only a statutory instrument.
This applies in particular to rights stemming from case law coming via the European court of justice, such as those applying to equal pay for part-time workers.
TUC officials are due to meet civil servants who are supporting the Barclay-Clark initiative on Thursday but there also remains considerable scepticism within the union movement about what is on offer.
A TUC spokesperson said: “Working people need a Brexit deal that provides a binding guarantee for existing rights and ensures that UK rights will keep pace with those across Europe into the future.”
The TUC added that the best way to do that would be to stick to “single market and customs union rules” – something that May has repeatedly refused to do.
Fourteen MPs voted against Cooper, including the former minister Caroline Flint and the MP for Crewe and Nantwich, Laura Smith, as well as veteran Eurosceptics Kate Hoey, Graham Stringer and Dennis Skinner.
The 10 MPs who abstained included the junior shadow ministers Gloria De Piero and Melanie Onn, as well as Tracy Brabin, Judith Cummins, Yvonne Fovargue, Mike Kane, Emma Lewell-Buck, Jim McMahon, Ruth Smeeth and John Spellar.
Chuka Umunna, a remain-supporting Labour backbencher, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the defeat of the Cooper amendment, as well as a bid by former attorney general Dominic Grieve to stage a series of votes on alternative Brexit plans.
“A no-deal Brexit would be a disaster for the jobs and livelihoods for people across the UK, and these votes have robbed parliament of the wide canvas needed to prevent that,” MP added.
Anti-Brexit MPs expressed disappointment at the size of the rebellion, saying it had strengthened the prime minister’s hand in showing that there was not a united front opposed to her. “What’s the point of Tories coming across if we can’t keep our side together?” one MP asked.
Labour indicated there would be little meaningful sanction against those who defied the party whip over Cooper’s amendment on Tuesday night. A party spokesman said they would be “spoken to by the whips’ office in the next few days”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
A crucial cabinet meeting to agree the UK’s Brexit negotiating position has been pushed back from Thursday to the weekend or early next week amid a row over whether to provide the full legal advice on the backstop to senior ministers.
Some ministers had believed the cabinet could have met late on Thursday afternoon to sign off Theresa May’s Brexit plan but No 10 indicated that the crunch meeting would not now take place on Thursday or Friday.
Downing Street insisted late on Wednesday that the meeting had not been delayed, although ministers abroad such as Greg Clark, the business secretary who is in Japan, and Sajid Javid, the home secretary who is in Seattle, were ready to fly back at short notice.
Brexiters in the cabinet have been keen to see the entire legal advice, particularly if they were to sign up to a customs backstop to avoid a hard border in Ireland that could only be ended by mutual agreement with the European Union at the crunch meeting.
One cabinet source said the prime minister had indicated at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting that only a summary of the legal advice – underpinning the final backstop proposal – would be made available to its members.
The source said that Michael Gove challenged her and demanded the full legal advice be provided to ministers, prompting concern in Downing Street as to how to respond.
The ministerial code makes clear that where legal advice was attached to cabinet papers “the conclusions may if necessary be summarised but, if this is done, the complete text of the advice should be attached”.
Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, told colleagues at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting that if the UK were to insist on trying to secure a unilateral exit to the customs backstop, it increased the risk of a no-deal Brexit because the EU did not want to agree to it.
His opinion has been deemed crucial if the government was to justify agreeing that the backstop could only be terminated jointly by the UK and EU, because several ministers – including Javid; the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt; and the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab – have argued it should be capable of being terminated only by the UK.
Meanwhile, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and May’s Northern Irish allies in parliament, the Democratic Unionist party, went further and demanded the normal confidential opinion on the backstop be made public.
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said the advice must be released to MPs so they could scrutinise the document. He said any backstop agreement had to be robust, meaning it was “essential MPs are given the opportunity to scrutinise the attorney general’s legal advice before voting on the final deal”.
Labour’s aim would be for the advice to be available to MPs, as happened with the Brexit impact assessments. They were made available after Labour forced their release through a humble address motion.
This, or an amendment to a bill, remain options for extracting the legal advice, but it was understood Labour wanted to first await the government’s response. The party has an opposition day debate on Tuesday that would allow it to lay down a humble address.
Tom Brake, the Lib Dems’ Brexit spokesman, said: “Refusing to publish legal advice on Brexit makes a mockery of the discredited mantra ‘take back control’,” while the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson said:“It’s in the public interest that we understand fully what is happening here.”
Downing Street has said there was a longstanding convention that the government did not discuss legal advice, “or the existence thereof”.
May will travel to Brussels on Thursday night for a dinner with Nato leaders arranged by Jens Stoltenberg, the organisations secretary general. On Friday, she will attend first world war commemorations in Belgium and France, and have a working lunch with the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Cabinet ministers who visited the Cabinet Office were also allowed to see a copy of the withdrawal agreement, which is the draft treaty that sets out the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU.
However, Downing Street said the document only contained the 95% that has already been agreed with the EU and that it did not contain any all-important text relating to the Irish border backstop.
A backstop has been deemed necessary to ensure there was no return to a hard border in Ireland if the UK and the EU were unable to secure a long-term free trade deal after the end of the Brexit transition period in 2020.
Both the UK and EU have indicated that they would accept the whole of the UK temporarily staying in the customs union as part of the backstop – leaving only one outstanding question: the mechanism by which the backstop could be brought to an end. Brexiter Tories fear that without a clear exit, it could be used to keep the UK in a customs union permanently.
Earlier, May spoke to Donald Tusk, the president of the EU council, but neither side would comment on what was discussed. Tusk had tweeted that he had been seeking “to take stock of progress in [the Brexit] talks and discuss way ahead”.
EU sources in Brussels were deeply sceptical to the notion that the negotiations were on the brink of a breakthrough. One senior official said that it would be a mistake to “underestimate the incompatibility of the views” of the two negotiating teams on how an all-UK customs union could work as a backstop solution in the withdrawal agreement.
The EU wants reasonable commitments from the UK over regulation and would seek assurances on the access of European fleet to British seas before it has agreed to any such customs arrangement.
But the major decision in London was whether it could accept what EU officials have said privately would be essentially an open-ended customs union with the bloc, with only a “review not exit” clause in the final treaty.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
It’s Thursday, and so the crisis of the day for Theresa May is a make-or-break meeting with her European Union counterparts in Brussels.
Having achieved what can only be described as a humiliating victory last night – 117 of her own MPs voted to get rid of her – the prime minister now seeks concessions from the EU that she hopes will make her 585-page withdrawal agreement more palatable to hardline Brexiteers and the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs who prop up her government.
Last night, her cabinet supporters – “allies” is too strong a word – expressed a frankly mysterious level of confidence that she will squeeze from Brussels “legally binding reassurances” on the proposed backstop mechanism: the device that would keep the UK in the customs union while the apparently intractable Irish border issue is resolved.
I am sure that the EU will indeed make clear (yet again) that it sees the backstop as an insurance policy rather than an institutional objective; that it has no desire to use the mechanism any longer than is necessary; and that it will do everything that could be reasonably expected to ensure that the arrangement (if it is used at all) is short-lived. What Brussels cannot deliver is precisely what the Brexiters insist upon: a means by which the UK can terminate the backstop unilaterally or impose a clear time limit upon its operation.
So, barring a pretty extraordinary lapin being pulled from the European chapeau tonight, May’s Brexit deal will be no more palatable to the Commons tomorrow than it was on Monday when she postponed the “meaningful vote” that had been scheduled for the following day.
Though the battle ahead has long been framed primarily as a choice between May’s deal and a no deal exit, I think the prime minister now believes otherwise. Having defined her premiership as a mission to implement the 2016 referendum result, the real threat to her legacy is not Britain crashing out without a deal (much less likely since Tory MP Dominic Grieve’s amendment gave the Commons the right to modify government proposals) but, as she increasingly puts it, “no Brexit at all”.
This was the phrase she started using as long ago as her October party conference speech, just as the People’s Vote campaign began to gather pace. “Think for a moment what it would do to faith in our democracy,” she said on that occasion, “if – having asked the people of this country to take this decision – politicians tried to overturn it.” It is another referendum, not a no-deal shambles, that she sees as the clear and present danger.
She is right, too. None of the myriad variants of Brexit – her own deal, Norway-for-now, Canada-plus-plus – would command a Commons majority.
Any dispassionate analysis yields the conclusion that the only sure way to break this horrendous parliamentary impasse is to go back to the electorate for new instructions. And this, for a prime minister who has gone through two and a half years of hell to deliver her unloved deal, is the worst prospect of all – worse, even, than being sacked by her own MPs.
The last referendum destroyed her predecessor, divided the nation and condemned it to the constitutional limbo in which it still languishes. May’s true message to her EU colleagues this evening will be: in the name of all that is holy, please don’t put us through that again.
 Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist
First published on Wed 17 Oct 2018 09.46 BST
Angela Merkel has revealed Germany is making contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit.
The German chancellor said her government had started to make “suitable preparations” for the possibility of Britain and the EU failing to reach a final agreement.
“It is only fitting as a responsible and forward-thinking government leadership that we prepare for every scenario – that includes the possibility of Great Britain leaving the European Union without an agreement,” she told German parliamentarians in a special address dubbed her “big Brexit speech” by the German media, ahead of a European council meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.
Merkel provided a list of her concerns, from citizens’ rights to customs issues, which she said – despite Michel Barnier’s assurance that “90% of the text of the exit agreement has been completed” – remained unresolved.
“This brings with it a whole array of questions, such as: how, the day after Brexit, do we manage the estimated 100,000 British citizens who, in some cases, have been living in Germany for years? How do we deal, for example, with teachers of British citizenship, who are classed as German civil servants, and how should that continue? How do we appropriately prepare our authorities for the added burdens to do with customs issues?” she asked.
The chancellor said her government was equally concerned about the thousands of German citizens living in the UK, as well as German businesses operating there, and how they could be prevented “from facing any disadvantages”.
Merkel said the negotiations with Britain had been intensive and demonstrated goodwill on both sides, despite what she called the “unfortunate” lack of breakthrough over the Irish border question. To applause from MPs, she said she wished Britain, which had “helped shape the EU, politically, economically and culturally”, would continue to be a “close and trustworthy partner”.
But she added that it had to be clear to all sides that, once out of the EU, Britain could not expect to have the same rights as EU members. “There always needs to be, and there will be, a difference between having membership of the European Union and a partnership with the European Union as a third party,” Merkel said.
Her comments will add to fears in Downing Street, which has been banking on Berlin to sweep to the rescue at a crunch time in the negotiations. It has long been thought in Whitehall that Merkel would recognise the overriding need to avoid a no-deal scenario. But one EU diplomat said Germany “was now willing to accept” this.
Earlier, it emerged that Merkel’s fears the British economy could gain a competitive advantage through even a temporary EU-UK customs union after Brexit had become a major obstacle to progress on the Irish border issue.
The chancellor has been a major force behind the scenes in arguing such a deal cannot be nodded through in the withdrawal agreement; rather, there will need to be hard negotiations in the 21-month transition period once the UK has left the EU.
The EU and the UK have found themselves at an impasse over the Irish border. Brussels is insisting the withdrawal agreement contains an “all-weather” solution for avoiding a hard border, in which Northern Ireland alone stays in the single market and customs union.
Theresa May has said no British prime minister could accept such an outcome. The UK government is pushing for the EU’s backstop proposal to be replaced in the agreement by a temporary UK-wide customs union, insisting it cannot allow Northern Ireland to be “carved off”.
Berlin believes the temporary customs arrangement with the UK would look similar to the customs deal with Turkey, and there would need to be strictures to ensure a level playing field, an EU diplomat said.
Germany is not willing to let a major economic power obtain such an agreement too easily, and is preparing to build in stringent rules on competition, state aid and alignment with EU standards.
Last week, Merkel told Germany’s major exporters’ association she wanted a deal with the UK, “but not at any price”.
Merkel told German MPs she remained hopeful a deal could still be achieved. “The chances of reaching a good and viable exit agreement on time still exists. And it’s really in the interests of us and our relationship to Great Britain, in the interests of the economy ... and, of course, in the interests of the people of our countries,” she said.
Last modified on Mon 27 May 2019 20.49 BST
Michael Gove, who once said he was incapable of being Tory leader, has spoken of evolving as a politician and said he had the required “eye for detail” and “conviction” to become prime minister and take Britain out of the EU.
In a wide-ranging BBC interview at Hay festival, Gove spoke not just of his politics, but his upbringing in Aberdeen, the roots of his Euroscepticism, his admiration for Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, and why he once had photographs of Lenin and Malcolm X on his office wall.
Gove was being interviewed by Nick Robinson for the Radio 4 podcast Political Thinking. It had been billed on BBC TV news as the launch of Gove’s campaign to succeed Theresa May. Robinson said it was no such thing – Gove agreed to the interview weeks ago with the intention of then pottering around Hay’s bookshops the following day.
However, he is standing. When Robinson reminded him that he once said he was incapable of being leader, Gove said he had changed his mind: “I think that I’ve evolved as a politician but obviously we’ll see in the next few days and weeks who people think has what it takes in what is a testing time for the country.”
Gove batted away questions over a no-deal Brexit. “One of the things that I’ll be saying more about is how exactly we can make sure that we leave the EU. I don’t deny that it’s a significant challenge after everything that’s happened in the past three years. But throughout my career I have faced significant challenges.”
He talked about his childhood, how he had “been blessed” by being adopted and how much he owed his adoptive parents.
His father owned a fish processing business in Aberdeen that went bust, something the family blamed on the EU. “It was seeing my dad’s dream die,” he said. “The fishing industry has been devastated by the common fisheries policy. That did have an impact on me. It’s definitely a factor because I owe so much to my parents. I feel in politics I have to stay true to my roots and my background.”
Of the pictures once on the wall of his ministerial office – including Lenin, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King – Gove said: “I think that there’s always an element of humour and irony in some of the pictures I had on my wall, as well as a reminder of the importance of making a difference.”
Gove admitted he was a huge fan of Game of Thrones. Asked who his favourite character was, he said, without missing a beat, Tyrion Lannister. “He’s the character that stands back. He’s the character who has an opportunity to reflect on some of the political currents that are moving around.
“But also at critical moments, he is the character that provides an opportunity for forces to be rallied and victory to be secured.”
He also admitted once saying Lannister was someone reviled throughout his life, thought by some to be a toxic figure and who led a small band of loyal followers. “I think that people may draw their own conclusions [on why he liked the character] … I certainly wouldn’t want to lead the witness.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
British companies risk trade barriers to the European Union if a future government seeks to abandon EU standards on workers’ rights and environmental protection, Michel Barnier has signalled.
In an interview with the Guardian and seven other European newspapers, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator said any British government would face a “proportional” response if it sought to roll back core social, environmental and consumer standards.
The EU and UK have agreed to negotiate a free-trade agreement as part of Boris Johnson’s revamped Brexit deal, but Barnier stressed that tariff and quota-free access to the EU were linked to maintaining regulatory standards. “Access to our markets will be proportional to the commitments taken to the common rules,” he said. “The agreement we are ready to discuss is zero tariffs, zero quotas, zero dumping.”
While he did not go into details on the EU’s response to “dumping” – ie products made cheap by unfair competition – he said measures would be “proportional”.
Government ministers have denied reports of any divergence from EU regulation on workers’ rights and the environment, after the Financial Times obtained a leaked document that said the two sides would have “a very different” interpretation of those standards.
Labour is alarmed the government wants to tear up worker and consumer rights, after Boris Johnson abandoned Theresa May’s promise for the UK to match future upgrades to EU standards. The prime minister has promised to abide by existing standards to maintain “the level playing field” the EU requires to negotiate a free-trade agreement.
Barnier said maintaining “fair” competition, rather than “wild” deregulation, was in the interests of the UK, and he warned that the EU-UK free-trade deal could be blocked by any one of three dozen national or regional parliaments. “Don’t underestimate the difficulties of the process of ratification,” he said, referring to the trade deal, but also other agreements the UK must negotiate in the coming years. “If it is not ratified, we return to zero.”
Speaking in his first interview since being appointed one week ago to lead the EU’s taskforce on future relations with the UK, Barnier also said:
Barnier was speaking shortly before parliament debated a snap December election that would deepen the uncertainty over Brexit.
Brexit is scheduled for 31 January at the latest, leaving the UK just 11 months to negotiate a future relationship that covers trade, security, foreign policy and numerous technical topics, including transport and fisheries.
Barnier said the EU would be ready to launch negotiations on the future “the day after” the withdrawal agreement was ratified. His team would prioritise trade and security among other topics, while some subjects would take more time. “We cannot do everything in 11 months, we will need more time,” he said.
In a potentially helpful intervention for Johnson, Barnier said it would be possible to negotiate “the principle elements” of a free-trade agreement to avoid an economic cliff edge before the end of 2020.
That means by January 2021, the UK would have a basic free-trade deal with its biggest market, an outcome estimated by experts at the UK in a Changing Europe programme to reduce GDP per person between 2.3% and 7% within a decade.
Barnier disagreed with suggestions that extending the transition period was inevitable, but said the UK would have to pay a “proportional” contribution to the EU budget to remain in the single market beyond 2020. The withdrawal agreement allows a one-off extension of either one or two years.
Barnier said Brexit talks had taken longer than the EU expected, adding that “due to the British political situation we are obliged to be patient”.
He now has a one-year, renewable mandate to oversee the EU’s future ties with the EU. European leaders were impatient to end “this negative negotiation of separation and divorce and to open a new page on the future relations” he said. “And we are preparing for this. We are ready for this.”
First published on Sat 5 Oct 2019 20.09 BST
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said Boris Johnson’s government will have to bear full responsibility for a no-deal Brexit, as more than three years of talks between the UK and Brussels appeared on the brink of collapse last night.
In what appeared to be the opening shots in a blame game as both sides sense failure, Barnier said he could not see how a deal could be done unless the British side came forward with revised proposals within days.
If it refused to do so – and there was no deal as a result – this would be viewed by the EU as the deliberate choice of Boris Johnson’s government.
“If they do not change, I do not believe, on the basis of the mandate I have been given by the EU27, that we can advance,” Barnier said on Saturday at an event in Paris organised by Le Monde.
If the UK was still serious about a deal it would return with “different proposals” this week and the EU side would be prepared to talk, he said.
But he added: “I want to be extremely clear. No deal will never be Europe’s choice. It would be – and note the conditional tense, because I hope still to find a deal – it would always be the UK’s choice, not ours. We’re ready for it, we’ve taken measures to protect our citizens and our businesses. But we do not want it.” His comments came as Downing St made clear it would not give any substantial ground and that the onus was on the EU to show flexibility.
At a meeting of government advisers on Friday night, Johnson’s closest aide, Dominic Cummings, said if Brussels did not soften its opposition to the UK’s proposals, the UK would be ready to leave with no deal.
The signs of deadlock increased after a week in which the Johnson government tabled new proposals under which Northern Ireland would leave the EU’s customs territory with the rest of the UK on 31 October, but remain in the single market for goods. The Northern Irish assembly would also be given the right to veto the arrangements every four years, even though the power-sharing assembly was dissolved more than two years ago.
However, Barnier said that there were serious problems with the plans which threatened the EU single market and did not answer EU concerns on the need for customs checks: “We are a single market. That’s a complete ecosystem, with common rights, common norms, common standards, common rules, a common legal system. It requires checks at its borders.”
Downing St had suggested before the weekend that the prime minister would be touring EU capitals this week to try to make progress towards a deal.
But in a firm rebuff, the European Commission made clear there was insufficient basis for more negotiation as the gulf between the two sides remained too wide, and it did not want to give the impression that progress could be made when it could not.
Nevertheless, No 10 said that the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, would travel to the Netherlands on Sunday, and that Johnson would continue to “hit the phones over the next couple of days”, and remained open to meeting EU leaders if they wanted to see him.
Writing in the Observer, the culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, a former Remainer, says a deal should be done but that she is now prepared to see a no-deal outcome in order to settle the Brexit issue.
Urging MPs to rally behind the Johnson plans, she writes: “I know that some people may have been surprised when I took a role in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, but what the critics miss is that there is nothing ultimately to be gained for our country or our constituents in any of us remaining stuck in our views from three years ago.
“It has been clear for months that the current Brexit situation simply cannot continue and that an end to this first phase must be found. For that reason, I can support the prime minister’s clear view that we must leave the European Union on 31 October – either with a deal or without one.”
Also in this paper, former prime minister Tony Blair describes Johnson’s proposals as a “hotchpotch” that would “undermine the peace so carefully constructed” in Northern Ireland and maintained for more than two decades.
Johnson could face further difficulties tomorrow when the Court of Session in Edinburgh rules in a case bought by anti-Brexit campaigners who want to ensure he seeks an extension to the UK’s membership if he has not reached a deal with the EU by 19 October.
Rory Stewart, the former Conservative minister and leadership candidate – who announced last week that he was leaving the party and would stand as an independent for the job of mayor of London – said that Johnson risks stoking anger by promising Brexiters a no-deal outcome on 31 October that he cannot deliver as he is bound by the Benn Act to seek an extension to avoid the UK leaving with no agreement.
“Politicians often respond by making extreme and extravagant promises that cannot be delivered (‘I will leave on 31 October – do or die),” he said.
And he added: “They then blame their inevitable failure on some mysterious ‘establishment’, making people even angrier.
“It is this politics that ultimately divides a country – it pits rich against poor, north against south, London against the rest, people against parliament, Brexit against Remain. It seeks to corral voters into hostile tribes.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Cabinet ministers involved in cross-party talks on how to break the Brexit deadlock have given the first indication that they are prepared to examine plans for a potential second referendum on the UK’s departure from the EU, according to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Vince Cable.
The offer to examine a possible timetable for a second vote drawn up by the Lib Dems was made during discussions between senior Liberal Democrats and two cabinet ministers involved in the talks, Michael Gove and David Lidington, in the Cabinet Office on Thursday morning.
While Theresa May’s government remains strongly opposed to the idea of returning the issue of Brexit to the electorate, the revelation by Cable shows that ministers are determined to look at a wide range of ideas being put forward by opposition parties.
The government insists that any referendum that could reverse the 2016 decision to leave the EU would be a betrayal of the will of the people. It has also suggested that a second vote would take up to a year to prepare and conduct. But the Liberal Democrats have produced draft legislation which they say would allow one to be held far sooner: before the next European elections in May.
Cable spoke in the Commons to the prime minister on Wednesday evening, after Labour’s no-confidence motion was defeated and soon after May had said she was ready to open talks on a way forward with opposition MPs, including party leaders. Cable stressed in those talks with May, which were described as “polite and cordial”, that his party’s central demand was for a second referendum.
While May reiterated her opposition to the idea to Cable, senior Lib Dems then repeated the demand at the subsequent meeting with Gove and Lidington on Thursday. The Lib Dems say Gove asked at the second meeting to see the detailed plans, suggesting an active interest.
On Saturday night Cable released to the Observer the text of a letter he has sent to Lidington following the two rounds of discussions. It states: “Further to your meeting with my deputy Jo Swinson, chief whip Alistair Carmichael and Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake, I write – as requested – with further details as to how we consider a referendum could be brought about in May.
“As you will know, we have published on a cross-party basis two bills. The first is a two-clause bill which could be enacted within a week, to enable the Electoral Commission to begin consultation on a referendum question. The second, a substantive referendum bill. Dominic Grieve tabled these in presentation bills in parliament last week.
“With sufficient political will, a referendum bill could be passed in very short order – perhaps within days. However, we estimate that even without complete consensus across the house, legislation could be passed in six weeks and a referendum could be brought about within 16 weeks. This would enable a ten-week total campaign period (to include designation of campaigns). Proceeding with a people’s vote on this basis is now the only remaining lifeline for the negotiated deal between the UK and the EU27, since no parliamentary majority can be assembled for it without a referendum.”
Cable told the Observer: “Where there is a will, there is a way. If the government moves quickly, as we believe it should, it will be possible to conclude the Brexit story one way or another before the scheduled European parliamentary elections. While Liberal Democrats firmly reject her deal, we have no doubt the prime minister would campaign vigorously for public approval of it. We have long believed giving the public the final say on this deal is the only way forward. This timetable paves the way.”
Lord Tyler, the architect of the Lib Dem timetable, said it was wrong to suggest a referendum would take a year. While it could not take place before the scheduled exit date of 29 March, it could be conducted in a far shorter timeframe than 12 months, although this would involve delaying Brexit.
Tyler said: “A referendum can be brought about quickly when parliament determines to make it happen. The process for the 1997 devolution referendums took place in 17 weeks from the bill hitting parliament to people casting their ballots.”
Government sources said that any willingness to examine the plans of opposition parties did not indicate a preparedness to adopt them. Downing Street again ruled out Theresa May ever backing a second referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Almost half of Theresa May’s cabinet have held talks to weigh up the possibility of backing a soft Brexit option as a plan B if parliament rejects the prime minister’s EU withdrawal deal.
Four cabinet ministers have held meetings to discuss the “Norway plus” plan amid concerns at the top of government that May will struggle to muster enough votes to get her proposals through the Commons.
Five other, remain-backing ministers – David Lidington, Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clark – are understood to have agreed to try to get the prime minister to support a softer departure from the EU.
Their favoured option is believed to be staying in a permanent customs union, which is currently Labour policy, increasing the likelihood of the plan making it through the Commons. “We see that as the best way of guaranteeing frictionless trade if the deal falls,” one said.
The group have been meeting weekly for some time, either at the Treasury or in their Commons offices, to discuss the government’s options if the deal is defeated. “They just don’t make as much of a fuss about it as their Brexit-supporting colleagues,” one source said.
Nick Boles, a former minister and a leading advocate of a Norway-style departure from the EU, confirmed that he had spoken to four cabinet ministers, thought to include Michael Gove, a leading Brexiter, about his proposals.
Supporters of the Norway plus campaign, which is pushing for the UK to join the European Free Trade Association (Efta) and have a customs arrangement with the EU, believe Tory MPs and ministers should start to apply pressure on May to swing behind it.
The campaign for Norway plus has gathered momentum since the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, and the DUP’s Arlene Foster – who have both said their parties would not support May’s deal – indicated in recent days they would consider the option.
“Everyone is looking for a plan B. There is gathering momentum for Norway plus. We are seeing the makings of a parliamentary majority,” Boles told the Guardian.
“We have to take on the chin that the EU have said they won’t negotiate the withdrawal agreement. But they might be prepared to renegotiate the political declaration.”
Boles has also held talks with Labour MPs, 75 of whom defied party instructions to abstain from voting for European Economic Area (EEA) membership in June.
He hopes the majority could be persuaded to back his plan, although a number have now come out for a second referendum.
He said: “Labour MPs want to be able to fulfil their obligations to their leadership and party members before being asked to support Norway plus. That’s why it needs to be a fallback plan that comes into play after all the votes have happened and all other avenues have been closed off.”
However, even supporters of the Norway plus plan acknowledge it would present difficulties for the prime minister, whose key Brexit red line is to end freedom of movement. Efta members are obliged to admit workers from elsewhere in the EEA.
Supporters argue, however, that the “emergency brake” that exists for members would allow the UK to cap migration in extreme circumstances, while the government has begun registering all EEA nationals already in the UK, meaning that if they fail to find work within a few months, it will be able to remove them.
May’s official spokesman said: “The prime minister believes the deal that she has delivered is the right one for the country and one of the main reasons for that is that it allows us to take back control on our borders by ending freedom of movement.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Conservative MPs voiced shock and concern at the scale of the defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, as cabinet ministers split over whether the prime minister should prioritise her overtures towards the Democratic Unionist party or Labour MPs.
“I hoped for less than 100,” one minister said. “The numbers really are unbelievable. But it does show that is the absolute limit to the hard Brexiter support.”
Should the prime minister win her no-confidence vote on Wednesday, May said she would seek to find a consensus across the house by speaking to various factions in the Tory party, as well as senior opposition politicians. “We want to leave with a deal and we want to work with others who share that,” May’s spokesman said.
Shell-shocked cabinet ministers were expected to renew a push for May to hold a series of indicative votes on the options before parliament, which one No 10 source said May instinctively opposed. Others would push for her to prioritise getting new and firm commitments from her confidence and supply partners, the DUP.
Other senior Conservative sources voiced strong reservations as to whether May’s red lines, including on a customs union and free movement, would be able to hold in her discussions with opposition MPs.
“We have to go over to Labour on the customs union,” one minister said. “That’s the irony – the result could effectively be a permanent backstop. How can the red lines still stand? She is going to have to choose.”
Opinion among backbenchers was sharply divided in the hours after the vote, with Brexiters arguing that a majority could be found for a free trade agreement without the backstop and others said May would need to soften her deal to bring Labour MPs onboard.
“No one can predict anything, it’s like ‘choose your own adventure’ from now on – ‘oh no, we’ve fallen off a cliff’,” one MP joked.
The Tory MP and former attorney general Dominic Grieve, a supporter of the pro-referendum Best for Britain campaign, said the staggering defeat meant there was no majority anywhere in the House of Commons for any version of Brexit. “Parliament now needs to come together for the sake of the country,” he said. “Crucially we must bring the people back into this discussion, by legislating for a final say, giving the British public the option to stay and lead with our European partners.”
Tory MPs seeking a second referendum have been exploring a number of options for the coming days, but were cautious about moving too quickly before the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had called a no confidence vote in the government.
Pro-European Tory MPs were also hoping that the death of May’s deal could open the door for soft Conservative support for a referendum.
“There will come a time when we need to push it in parliament, but you have to allow Labour to exhaust the option of a general election,” one said. “There are a lot of Conservative MPs who feel duty bound to vote for the deal first time round. In some ways, this makes it easier for them to start to come over to us.”
The former Tory minister Nick Boles, who has gathered some support for his plans for a Norway-style option with a new negotiated customs union, was blunt about his approach to the talks May has offered to seek a compromise.
It must be the prime minister who makes the approach, he told the Guardian. “She serves parliament – does she come to the people in parliament who have ideas and a substantial body of support?” he said.
 Before the vote, May holed up in her Commons office behind the Speaker’s chair to speak to Conservative MPs throughout the day. Sources said she focused on backbenchers and Brexiter “ringleaders”, such as the former Brexit minister Steve Baker.
“The whipping was purely focused on minimising the margin of defeat, trying to get abstentions,” one Brexiter MP said.
One European Research Group (ERG) source said the scale of the defeat had been obvious for months and blamed the whips for their slowness to realise what was coming.
“It might be helpful to remember that when the chief whip came to the weekly ERG meeting the week Chequers was unveiled, he breezily said that if colleagues didn’t like the ‘deal’, they need not vote for it. And here we all are,” the source said.
During the debate the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, hinted he expected May to put a very similar version of the deal to parliament again. “Whatever solution may be fashioned, if this motion were defeated and this deal defeated, this withdrawal agreement will have to return, in much the same form, with much the same content,” he said.
Cox, in an impassioned opening to the debate, said he was deeply disturbed by those MPs who had embraced no deal as the best way forward. “What are you playing at? What are you doing? You are not children in the playground, you are legislators. We are playing with people’s lives,” he said.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the hard Brexiter who chairs the ERG, speaking earlier, suggested the Commons defeat would give May a clear mandate to seek a new deal, rather than insisting on no deal.
He said the prime minister could “go back with a clear mandate to the EU and say: ‘Look, if you want a deal, which is in your interest and for which you get £39bn, let’s do something simpler and easier that means we genuinely leave.’”
Ben Bradley, the Tory MP for Mansfield, who was among the hard-Brexit rebels, said May had the option of reaching out to her own colleagues or to Labour.
“I hope it would be her own colleagues first. When she talks about senior members of the house, she must mean people like Steve Baker and Iain Duncan Smith,” he said.
“There’s a majority in there, for a free trade agreement and no backstop. That would deliver most Tories who rebelled and Labour leavers,” Bradley said. “She has ruled out a referendum, ruled out Norway, ruled out a customs union. So she does not have much room with anyone who wants a softer Brexit.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Cabinet ministers have told Theresa May she must use any delay to Brexit to face down the Eurosceptic wing of the party and forge a consensus in parliament, as the prime minister finally conceded to offer a vote on extending article 50.
May reluctantly promised MPs they would have the chance to reject a no-deal Brexit next month and also offered a vote to extend article 50 in an attempt to stave off the threat of dozens of resignations from her frontbench.
In an earlier stormy cabinet meeting, where May announced her plan, the Guardian understands the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, both said any extension of the Brexit talks must be used “to find a new coalition in parliament”.
The comments, which are likely to further irritate Tory Eurosceptics, strongly suggest an extension is most likely to result in the softening of May’s proposed deal in order to bring Labour MPs on board.
In her statement to the Commons on Tuesday, May said she planned to hold the next meaningful vote on her Brexit deal by 12 March. If it was defeated again, it would be followed by a vote on 13 March on leaving with no deal and, if this was rejected, a vote on 14 March for an extension to article 50.
At the cabinet meeting, Andrea Leadsom, the Commons leader, was among those most angered by the decision to offer a vote on an extension and suggested some cabinet ministers had undermined the prime minister. Treasury secretary Liz Truss called the trio “kamikaze” ministers, according to several sources.
Rudd, along with the justice secretary, David Gauke, the business secretary, Greg Clark, and the Scotland secretary, David Mundell, warned the prime minister in private last week that she must rule out a no-deal Brexit or risk dozens of ministerial resignations.
Clark, Rudd and Gauke then wrote in the Daily Mail that Brexit should be delayed if a deal was not passed by mid-March. While Hammond did not sign up to the public statements from his ministerial colleagues threatening to defy Tory whips and back the Cooper-Letwin amendment, allies insisted the chancellor “does his lobbying inside the tent”.
Even the party’s chair and May loyalist, Brandon Lewis, said ministers should be cautious about the framing of no deal, pointing out the option was supported by many Tory members. Rudd told Lewis, however, that the cabinet “needed to be straight with the British people”.
“This is a bitter pill to swallow,” one cabinet source said. “But ultimately we felt like we had been left with no other option. There has been a private back-and-forth. Should we just let people resign? But that causes its own party problems, too.”
The promise to vote on a Brexit delay is likely to avert a serious ministerial rebellion. Dozens had been privately threatening to back an amendment on Wednesday to the government’s latest Brexit motion, which would have paved the way for legislation to extend article 50 beyond the 29 March deadline.
The amendment had been tabled by the Labour MP Yvette Cooper and the Tories Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin, but the latter pair said they believed their concerns had now been appeased by the prime minister’s pledge to hold the three votes in mid-March.
The cross-party coalition led by Cooper still tabled three amendments to the government’s motion, but was likely to push only one of them to a vote. It sets out the promises made by May on Tuesday in a form that MPs can vote for, giving them added reassurance that neither the prime minister nor other cabinet ministers will go back on those promises.
Cooper said the amendment would “pin down and confirm the commitment made by the prime minister today” to hold the series of votes.
The coalition was awaiting further reassurances from ministers on Wednesday, including from the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay. If it sensed any backsliding, it could still push for a vote on the two other amendments.May’s spokesman said no decisions had been made on whether the government would support an extension and the prime minister would focus instead on securing a deal MPs could support.
Cabinet sources suggested any decision on whipping MPs to vote a certain way would only be made once the meaningful vote had been lost. “Why would we take a decision on whipping before it is absolutely necessary?” one cabinet source said. “You are only going to inflame people on either side.”
Despite the apparent win for the soft Brexiters in cabinet, government officials remain anxious that a no-deal Brexit may simply be delayed by a couple of months, with a second extension highly unlikely. “You can probably only pull that cord once,” a Whitehall source said.
After a meeting of the Brexit hardliner European Research Group, MPs said they still held out hope that the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, could deliver a suitable compromise on the Irish border backstop to allow MPs to back May’s deal.
The group’s chair, Jacob Rees-Mogg, said the vote “doesn’t change anything enormously … it remains the position that we hope that the prime minister will be able to secure changes we will be able to accept”.
He said the group recognised that there was unlikely to be the parliamentary numbers to leave with no deal. “There is no enthusiasm for backing the deal as it is,” he said. “If the Irish backstop could be removed or fundamentally altered, then that would be a different kettle of fish.”
Cox arrived in Brussels on Tuesday for talks with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, where he is expected to pressfor legal guarantees that the backstop remains a last resort and temporary option.
Last modified on Tue 7 Jul 2020 10.56 BST
Theresa May has been dealt a blow in the Brexit negotiations by EU leaders ahead of a crunch week during which the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, had been expected to visit Brussels to unveil the negotiated agreement.
Ambassadors for the EU27, including France and Germany, told the European commission that they would need to scrutinise any deal reached with the British before it was made public.
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has largely been given free rein until now. An “optimistic” timetable would have seen Raab arrive on Tuesday to present the legal text agreed between the commission and the British government.
But during a two-hour meeting with the the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand, the member states’ representatives insisted they would not be steamrollered into accepting the agreement secured between the two negotiating teams.
They told the commission they would need around 72 hours to go through the text should there be an agreement in a sign of the growing nervousness over the prospect of giving away an all-UK customs union in the withdrawal agreement.
The development makes it less likely that a November Brexit summit could be convened. EU officials have privately said that 25 November is the last possible date for a summit, and that it would need to be called early next week to allow preparations in EU capitals. May’s chief Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, is expected to visit Brussels on Sunday given the lack of time to find agreement.
For the withdrawal agreement to be agreed by the EU27, it will need to contain commitments that a hard border on the island of Ireland will never be required. The EU has suggested that Northern Ireland could in effect stay in the single market and customs union. The prime minister has said she could not sign up to such a “dislocation” of the UK and is insisting on the whole of the country staying in a temporary customs union. Brussels is placing a high price on such a concession, including so-called “level playing field” commitments to ensure the British do not gain any unforeseen competitive advantages.
Frustration has been growing at the manner in which the commission has engaged in the talks with the UK. It has taken them into “the tunnel”, a period of private discussions in which consultation with the member states has been limited.
There is particular concern about giving away a customs union to the UK without sufficient commitments that the UK will sign up to EU labour, environmental and social standards, and open up their seas and fishing stocks to European fleets.
A senior EU diplomat said: “The member states insisted that they cannot be in the dark on this, it is just too important.”
One senior diplomat added that “we are far away from a high fives moment”, following the briefing from the commission.
“The UK needs to go back to London, get a clear mandate and start talking again in Brussels”, one EU diplomat said. “There are levels of fluid. Things are fluid between the commission and the UK, and then things are fluid in London.”
The European commission, meanwhile, is expected to ramp up its no-deal plans in the coming days, given the growing volatility in Westminster. It will also publish legislation on exempting UK nationals from its visa requirements as a third country.
First published on Wed 30 Oct 2019 10.16 GMT
The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, and the former home secretary Amber Rudd are among the Conservative moderates who have announced they will not stand in the upcoming election.
Morgan announced the news on Twitter, accompanied by a letter in which she cited “the clear impact on my family and the other sacrifices involved in, and the abuse for, doing the job of a modern MP” as part of the reason for her decision.
Rudd has been embroiled in a highly public spat with Downing Street over her departure, with the party banning her from standing again for the Conservatives and Rudd then responding that Boris Johnson had offered her a safe seat only last week.
She and Morgan are two of a number of senior Tory moderates who are not standing again at the election on 12 December, including Ken Clarke, Alistair Burt, Claire Perry and the prime minister’s brother, Jo Johnson. They were joined on Wednesday by David Lidington, Theresa May’s former de facto deputy.
In a letter to his local newspaper, the Bucks Herald, the Aylesbury MP wrote: “I have come to the conclusion that now is the right time for me to give a higher priority in terms of my time and energy, to … my family.”
Many of the MPs leaving the Conservatives are female. One in six of the women who were elected for the party in 2017 have either quit or stood down.
The row between Rudd and No 10 broke out after the former home secretary said she would be stepping down as an MP at the election and not standing again in her marginal seat of Hastings and Rye, where she has a majority of 346.
Rudd, once tipped as a future Conservative leader, told the Evening Standard: “I’m not finished with politics, I’m just not standing at this election.” She later tweeted: “Moving on. Good luck to colleagues in forthcoming GE.”
Announcing her departure, Rudd said she had hoped to rejoin the party ranks but was rebuffed by Mark Spencer, the chief whip, whose cutting letter to her was made public.
In surrendering the whip, Spencer wrote, Rudd had made it clear she “did not support the approach of the prime minister and did not have confidence in him”.
He added: “You have failed to provide me with assurances that you will not change your mind once more.”
Having the party whip was “an honour, not a right, and as such it cannot be discarded or returned at will if it is to have any meaning”, Spencer said in the letter.
Rudd tweeted in response that Johnson had asked her to stand in the election as a Conservative only last week, potentially in the safe seat of Mid Sussex being vacated by Sir Nicholas Soames.
When she left the cabinet earlier this autumn in solidarity with Tory MPs who had had the whip removed for opposing a hard Brexit, Rudd condemned Johnson’s use of words such as “surrender” and “betrayal” over Brexit, warning it could incite violence against opponents.
Rudd became an MP in 2010 and climbed the junior ministerial ranks before replacing Theresa May as home secretary in 2016, when May entered Downing Street. However, she was forced to resign two years later after failing to properly account for her role in the Windrush scandal about the treatment of Caribbean Britons.
She returned to the cabinet as work and pensions secretary later the same year, but after Johnson replaced May, Rudd appeared increasingly uncomfortable with what she said was his pursuit of a no-deal Brexit.
On Tuesday, 10 of the 21 Conservative MPs who had the whip removed for supporting a backbench-instigated bill seeking to block a no-deal Brexit were readmitted to the party.
But the others remained out in the cold, indicating they would not be able to stand for the party, including the former chancellor Philip Hammond, the former justice secretary David Gauke, Oliver Letwin and the former attorney general Dominic Grieve.
More than 50 MPs have so far announced they will stand down at the election, already well above the 31 who did not stand again in 2017. Those were both two-year parliaments.
They include the Stockport MP, Ann Coffey, who resigned from Labour earlier this year and went on to help form Change UK. She announced her decision in a video to constituents on Twitter.
More MPs have stood down before other elections, with 90 not standing again in 2015 and 149 in 2010.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.48 GMT
Nicky Morgan has said she would vote to remain in the EU if there were to be a second referendum.
The culture secretary, who campaigned for remain in the run-up to the 2016 poll, said on BBC Breakfast she would vote the same way again.
Morgan originally said she did not support holding another poll and believed the original result should be accepted. When asked how she would vote if the public were asked directly again, she said: “I would vote to remain.”
All opposition parties support a second referendum. When pressed to clarify why she was serving in Boris Johnson’s cabinet if this was her view, she said: “It is not a result I was comfortable with but I have accepted it.”
She later told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I feel very firmly that the result of the 2016 referendum needs to be fulfilled and that’s why I’m in the cabinet and that’s why I support Boris Johnson’s determination to make sure that we do leave the EU by 31 October, preferably with a deal.
“My instincts are that I was sorry that the remain campaign didn’t win in 2016 and that really I’m sorry that we’ve seen all the division and uncertainty over the last three-and-a-half years.”
She said her views on the matter had evolved because she could now “see a way for the UK to leave the EU and to do it with a deal and to strike out in different ways in the rest of the world”.
In an interview with the Times, David Cameron accused Johnson and Michael Gove of effectively “trashing” the government during the 2016 campaign and said a second poll could not be ruled out “because we’re stuck”.
Responding to the former prime minister’s comments, Morgan told ITV: “I don’t think it’s actually very helpful to keep rerunning the 2016 campaign and who said what, when. The fact is, we had a result and actually it’s incumbent on those of us who are in government, still MPs, to make sure that result is delivered.”
Morgan said she had been very clear that she would vote to remain but did not support a second referendum.
In response to Morgan’s comments, the Labour MP David Lammy tweeted:
The former Brexit secretary David Davis also suggested on Saturday that the government might have a legal strategy to avoid extending Britain’s EU membership beyond 31 October, despite the so-called Benn Act to avoid no deal.
The legislation, which received royal assent earlier this week, would require the prime minister to seek an extension unless a deal is approved or parliament agrees to leave the EU without a deal by 19 October.
Davis told BBC Radio 4’s The Week In Westminster: “I think there may well be a legal strategy – I’ve no idea what it is – but I think that may well be the way through, to effectively legally kill off the Benn bill [sic] and then find a way of coming back to the negotiations with a real sword of Damocles over them, the Europeans, rather than over us.”
Johnson has repeatedly said he would take Britain out of the EU at the end of next month, and that he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask for an extension.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.49 GMT
Early last week, for the briefest of moments, the tensions swirling around Scotland’s relationship with England and the deepening UK crisis of Brexit were perfectly symbolised by Boris Johnson’s arm.
Amid the angry noise of a crowd of demonstrators, Johnson was on the steps of Bute House (the Edinburgh residence of the Scottish first minister) exchanging the usual opening pleasantries with Nicola Sturgeon for the benefit of photographers and TV crews. Then came the moment when everyone had to go inside – whereupon Johnson rather condescendingly extended one of his upper limbs, with a view to escorting Sturgeon into her own HQ. She appeared to say something, whereupon the arm went down and Johnson awkwardly walked in, a moment that inevitably went viral.
“I don’t think I said: ‘Put your arm down,’” she says. “Those kind of things happen in a flash. But I am aware that he was trying to do something that some people would describe as chivalrous and other people would say was a subconscious powerplay. I was kind of aware of him trying to … usher me in.” She smiles. “And I think, in the instant, I thought: ‘That’s inappropriate – you go in first.’ But these things happen in a nanosecond. It wasn’t at all deliberate on my part.”
One thing, however, was certain: she did not look happy. “Again, you’ve got to remember that these photos are taken in an instant,” she insists. “But, that said, I abhor what he is trying to do to the UK. And I abhor what the implications of that are for Scotland. So I don’t think it will be surprising to anyone to hear me say that I wasn’t absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Boris Johnson as prime minister.”
Before that meeting, they had crossed paths once before – at the VE Day celebrations immediately after the 2015 general election, at which Johnson brusquely asked Sturgeon if granting the Scottish government full control over its tax and spending powers would silence calls for independence. “We walked together through Horse Guards Parade. And I vividly remember, he said something like – and this is not a direct quote – ‘What would buy you off? Would full fiscal autonomy buy you off?’ I said: ‘No, not really.’” She laughs.
Four years on, she conveys a similar sense of Johnson reducing complex questions to breezy inanities. “Talking to him, there’s a sort of surreal element to it,” she says. “He talks about Brexit, and a no-deal Brexit in particular, as if there is nothing to worry about, and anyone who says there is just being pessimistic and downbeat. I was very frank with him that I think it would be catastrophic, if it were allowed to happen. But, you know, then there’s just a waving of the hands, and: ‘No – it’ll all be fine, and anyone who says otherwise is just indulging in doom and gloom.’ I described it after the meeting as dangerous. ’Cos it is dangerous.”
One other aspect of Sturgeon’s discussions with Johnson is fascinating. To quote a profile of her published a few years ago, Sturgeon is “state-educated, working-class, left-leaning and believably human”. Johnson, who, by contrast, swaggered to where he is along a familiar path that passed through Eton and Oxford, has created his borderline absurd persona with the kind of chutzpah that tends to be the preserve of the truly posh. Class, I suggest, must have been a constant subtext in their exchanges.
“I do think there’s an element of …” she pauses. “Well, I said a moment ago that he talks what, in my view, is a load of nonsense, with utter conviction. And I do think there was an element of that sense of entitlement; the idea that you can make anybody believe anything if you say it in a particular way.”
Sturgeon became first minister in late 2014, taking over from Alex Salmond after the referendum on Scottish independence was won by the no campaign, but her party was still in the midst of its imperial phase; it would go on to win 56 out of 59 Scottish seats in the 2015 general election.
She is one of those politicians whose voice and mannerisms seem instantly familiar: the precise, sometimes overlong, distinctly lawyerly sentences; the way that even her most speech-like utterances contain enough everyday humanity to keep you interested. Her humour, when it enters the conversation, gives a subtle sense of someone who appreciates the ridiculousness of politics, particularly at a time like this. But, unlike Johnson, she is also at pains to point out that Brexit is deadly serious, and that Britain faces “the most rightwing government we have had in my lifetime, probably including the Thatcher governments”.
We talk for an hour in one of Bute House’s meeting rooms on the same day that the Bank of England is saying that there is a one in three chance of a Brexit recession, and Sky News has published a wad of civil service documents warning that a no-deal exit could trigger “potential consumer panic and food shortages”, “operational gaps” in policing and national security, and “law and order challenges” in Northern Ireland. Given that the UK was meant to leave the EU on 29 March, Sturgeon says that she and her ministers have been grappling with this kind of stuff for a long time. “A lot of the focus has been on continuity of transport – particularly ferries, and making sure we’ll have supplies of food,” she says. She also mentions “adequate supplies of medicine”, among “many and varied aspects of what this will mean for people’s lives”.
If he were here now, I suggest, Johnson might assure her that whatever the disastrous projections of a no-deal Brexit, and however much time and money has been spent preparing for one, it is a negotiating ploy. She half agrees, but insists that whatever he and his allies say, Johnson’s reckless approach to leaving the EU is pointing to inevitable catastrophe.
“I’m not breaching confidences here because he’s saying this publicly: he’s saying he doesn’t want a no-deal Brexit, and he doesn’t think that’s where we’ll end up. But that’s part of the delusion in his position. He has set a negotiating position that everybody knows is unachievable: getting rid of the backstop in its entirety, getting rid of the withdrawal agreement in its entirety and starting all over again. I don’t think there’s anybody outside his circle and the hangers-on around it who thinks that is remotely achievable. So, if that’s your starting point, where do you go from there, other than over that cliff-edge?”
The prospect of this calamity is a big part of Sturgeon’s other focus of attention: the SNP’s renewed push for a second independence referendum. It’s her second since the Brexit vote: in 2017, she announced her intention to hold another Scottish referendum in 2019, only to retreat. Now, she says, the prospect of the UK finally leaving the EU – and the distinct prospect of us doing so in the most damaging way possible – makes the case for a vote unanswerable, even if senior Tories from the prime minister down have made it clear that they will not grant her government the relevant powers.
She has said she wants a referendum on independence by 2021 and that the second half of next year would be the right time. “That’s what I intend, yeah.”
So what happens when the Westminster government says she can’t have one? “Well, look, if we get to that bridge, I will set out how I intend to cross it … We’ve got legislation going through the Scottish parliament that is necessary for a referendum on that timescale. When we get to the endpoint of that legislation, we’ll then have that discussion with the UK government about the transfer of power.”
Will it be a discussion? Or a historic clash? “Let’s wait and see, OK? And then I’ll set out how we intend to deal with that.”
After her meeting with Johnson, she said he hadn’t been “at his most comfortable” when talking about the case for a second independence vote. What did she mean by that? “He didn’t have much of an answer. He can defend the union and oppose independence: that’s entirely legitimate. He kept trying to get back to the substance of the argument about independence. And the point I made back to him was: ‘Let’s have the debate on the substance, but let’s have it out there and let the public decide.’ I suggested we might do a live TV debate on it, at which point he decided it was time to go,” she says laughing. “Or his advisers decided it was time to go.”
In 2014, political discourse was already smattered with fake news and polarised nastiness, and, although most of the debate around Scottish independence was substantial and serious, the independence referendum campaign and its aftermath were no exception. Before and after, for example, I met lots of people who had read online that the vote was rigged, and seemed to believe it, and occasionally witnessed aggression that could explode in an instant, online and in the real world. Another Scottish referendum, I suggest, could potentially be a horrible, rancorous mess.
“I don’t think it has to be. I don’t think it’s inevitable at all. The kind of tone and tenor of political debate, and I’m not just talking Scotland here, I’m talking globally … of course that concerns me. I think it should concern every right-thinking politician. I think one of the challenges for politicians who don’t want politics to continue in that direction is that we have got to be prepared to stand up for a reasoned, logical and respectful way of political debate.”
But do people even listen? It’s out of her control, surely? “But the alternative is a counsel of despair … that’s not the kind of politician I am. I think there’s a need for politicians who actually value a type of political debate to stand up for that, and defend it, however difficult and, at times, seemingly hopeless that may be.”
A little later, she expands further: “Without saying that anything will ever be perfect, if you contrast the independence referendum with the Brexit referendum, they were worlds apart. You had an electorate in Scotland in 2014 that was highly informed, engaged and knew what they were talking about. That wasn’t the case in 2016, when the equivalent of the 800-page independence prospectus was the lie on the side of the bus.”
There is one aspect of the immediate future that we can only talk about in the most minimal way. At some point next year, Salmond will go on trial on two charges of attempted rape, nine of sexual assault, two of indecent assault and one of breach of the peace – allegations that he continues to strongly deny. Inevitably, the outcome of any Scottish referendum partly hinges on what happens, doesn’t it?
“No, I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does. We’re talking here about the future of a country. But, for reasons you will understand, it’s not something I’m able to talk about in any more depth or at any more length.”
Does she expect to be a participant in the trial? “Look, it’s a criminal process. It would be utterly inappropriate for me to say anything about it.”
Leaving aside another independence referendum, the big event that may well materialise very soon is a UK general election. In 2017, amid talk of public weariness about another independence referendum, the SNP lost 21 Westminster seats. Now, she thinks the prospect of Brexit would make things very different. South of the border, I remind her, there is a lot of talk about looking on the bright side of Labour’s dismal poll numbers: the idea that they could at least win enough seats to strike some kind of deal with the SNP and take power that way.
“I have fought two general elections now as SNP leader, and, in both of them, I have been pretty candid. We would always want to be part of a progressive alternative to a Tory government. That remains the case. That said, I’m no great fan of Jeremy Corbyn. I think his lack of leadership on Brexit in particular … well, if we do crash out without a deal, he will bear almost as much responsibility as Theresa May or Boris Johnson. I can’t see the SNP going into formal coalition with Labour.”
Does she rule it out? “Look, I think in politics you’ve got to be careful. But it would not be my intention, to go into a formal coalition. I said that in 2015 and 2017 – that’s not a new thing. But some kind of progressive alliance that could lock the Tories out of government … it wouldn’t be a blank-cheque type scenario. We would want Jeremy Corbyn to take a very firm anti-Brexit position. We would look to do what was right for Scotland.” (If Brexit were somehow cancelled, Sturgeon has said that the possibility of an independence referendum would remain because “Scotland needs to keep its options as open as possible.”)
Our time is running out: among Sturgeon’s engagements today is a Scottish cabinet meeting, which will spend “a fair chunk of time” talking about no-deal planning. I have only one more question: what would be her advice to someone who lives in England? “Move to Scotland,” she says, with a quiet laugh.
Is she at least half-serious? “More than half-serious. We need more people in Scotland. Absolutely: move to Scotland.”
But if someone can’t, or won’t? “It’s very difficult. And I don’t have an obvious answer to that. I think the abdication of leadership on the part of Jeremy Corbyn right now will be as much of the stuff of the history books as what’s happening in the Tory party. And I think it’s tragic. If you’re in Wales, vote for Plaid Cymru, obviously.”
She pauses, before she issues a few last sentences that come close to sounding like a compact speech. “Throughout my political career, I’ve had – and I don’t mean this pejoratively – people like you almost portraying Scottish independence as some kind of betrayal of the left. I can sort of understand it. But the answer to that can’t be that Scotland just languishes with the rest of the UK and gets taken down the wrong path. I think the best thing Scotland can do for people who want a different path for England is to lead by example. We can show it can be done.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Nigel Farage is being lined up as leader of a new pro-Brexit party if Britain’s departure from the European Union is delayed beyond 29 March.
The former Ukip leader said he had offered his enthusiastic support to the Brexit party after being sounded out as its potential leader.
Catherine Blaiklock, Ukip’s former economics spokeswoman, confirmed she had applied to register the party with the Electoral Commission on 11 January and that it would be ready to fight any snap general election or the local elections across England in May.
She told the Guardian on Sunday: “I think people feel treason has been committed. It’s democracy. It wouldn’t matter whether leave had won by a single vote – it’s a first-past-the-post system.”
Blaiklock said the party was aiming to attract the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU in June 2016 and to win over defectors from the Conservatives, Labour and Ukip.
Ukip has suffered the mass resignation of more than a dozen senior party figures, including Farage, in recent weeks in protest at its anti-Islam focus under its leader, Gerard Batten.
Farage told the Sun on Sunday: “There is huge demand for a party that’s got real clarity on this issue. You can see and hear the frustration welling up out there. It’s clear the political elite want to stop Brexit in its tracks and the prime minister doesn’t have the strength or inclination to see this through.
“I’ve been watching events with growing dismay – I’m not the only one. Now we are putting them on notice that if Brexit doesn’t happen on 29 March we are not prepared to stand by and do nothing.”
Farage added: “If the government goes back on its word and betrays the millions of people who voted for Brexit then we need a party prepared to stand up and fight for it. I’m fully prepared for article 50 to be extended or revoked and if that happens, I will re-enter the fray.”
Blaiklock, who quit Ukip a week after Farage in December, declined to say whether the fledgling Brexit party had approached other senior Ukip figures about defecting – or whether it had lined up any wealthy donors.
Arron Banks, the businessman being investigated by the National Crime Agency over his role in the Brexit referendum, has repeatedly expressed support for a “Ukip 2.0” with Farage as its leader.
The Electoral Commission confirmed the Brexit party had applied to be registered. Its website said it would aim to decide on new political party registrations by 1 April – weeks before the local elections in England and Northern Ireland.
Blaiklock, an Oxford University-educated businesswoman, described Farage as “an international superstar” and said that, pending approval by the commission, the new party would be ready to fight elections or a second referendum should article 50 be extended beyond 29 March.
“A million more people voted for leave than remain,” she said. “What you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter what the majority is, democracy doesn’t count. You’re destroying the system. Never in a general election has anybody ever had a revote. If you take London out, leave won by 11% – not just a few per cent”.
First published on Fri 9 Aug 2019 11.58 BST
Boris Johnson’s chief of staff cancelled all leave for government advisers until 31 October in a missive on Thursday night, raising further speculation the government is planning for a forced snap election in the aftermath of the UK leaving the EU with no deal.
Special advisers were emailed by Johnson’s senior adviser Edward Lister on Thursday night, saying there was “some confusion about taking holiday”. They were told none should be booked until 31 October, with compensation considered “on a case by case basis” for those who had already booked leave, though the email said advisers were free to spend their weekends “as you wish”.
“There is serious work to be done between now and October 31st and we should be focused on the job,” the email said. The directive angered many recipients, who say staff are exhausted and are facing an unprecedented workload in September and October.
One recipient described the email as “posturing” and said special advisers, known as “spads”, are being used as part of the PR war to convince the public the government is serious about no deal.
Johnson himself also wrote to all members of the civil service telling them the government’s main focus was now to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. In the letter, Johnson said he wanted to underline that the UK would be leaving on 31 October “whatever the circumstances” and that the civil service must prepare “urgently and rapidly” as its top priority.
“I know many of you have already done a great deal of hard work in mobilising to prepare for a no deal scenario, so that we can leave on 31 October come what may,” the letter said.
“Between now and then we must engage and communicate clearly with the British people about what our plans for taking back control mean, what people and businesses need to do, and the support we will provide.”
Downing Street refused to deny on Thursday that a snap election would need to take place in the first few days of November if MPs forced a vote of no confidence in Johnson in early September, but said the prime minister would ensure the UK had left the EU on 31 October.
It remains unclear if anti-Brexit MPs in parliament would be able to swerve a general election, as senior Labour and Liberal Democrat figures clashed on Friday over their parties’ apparent willingness to place conditions on any unity government or coalition prepared to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, has said Labour would attempt to form a government in the 14 days following a confidence vote, to try to avoid a snap election, but ruled out Labour backing for any unity government candidate, such as a Tory veteran like Ken Clarke or Dominic Grieve.
Labour has said any MP wishing to stop no deal should give their backing to Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to form a government. However, on Friday the Lib Dem Chuka Umunna, a former Labour MP, claimed a “substantial minority” of his former colleagues would not support Corbyn being prime minister.
“The problem there is with the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn taking up the role of leading an emergency government is he cannot command a majority among his own MPs, never mind others like Conservative rebels who would refuse to give him confidence,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I know, because I have spoken to them. There is a substantial minority of Labour MPs at the very least who simply would not countenance Jeremy Corbyn being the prime minister of this country. So the question is, is there a figure who, as an alternative, could command a majority?”
McDonnell tweeted after Umunna’s comments that the Lib Dems appeared willing to risk no deal rather than back Labour.
“Umunna [is] making it clear that he’s putting his personal animosity towards Jeremy Corbyn and Labour before the interests of the country,” he tweeted. “The Lib Dems are clearly willing to watch the economy crash before they will put their party interests to one side.”
Corbyn wrote to Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, on Thursday accusing the prime minister of plotting an “unprecedented, unconstitutional and anti-democratic abuse of power” if No 10 delayed an election until immediately after 31 October if Johnson lost a no-confidence vote among MPs.
In his letter, Corbyn demanded urgent clarification of the purdah rules, which are meant to prevent the government taking major policy decisions during an election campaign.
He asked Sedwill to confirm that if the UK is due to leave the EU without a deal during an election campaign, then the government must seek an extension to article 50 and allow an incoming administration to take a decision about Brexit on the basis of the result.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Theresa May will summon EU27 ambassadors to No 10 this week as she continues to seek reassurances over the Irish backstop, with Downing Street vehemently denying drawing up contingency plans for a second referendum.
The education secretary, Damian Hinds, said on Sunday: “Government policy couldn’t be clearer. We are here to act on the will of the people clearly expressed in the referendum.”
He added: “A second referendum would be divisive. We had the people’s vote, we had the referendum, and now we’ve got to get on with implementing it. Any idea that having a second referendum now would break through an impasse is wrong. It might postpone the impasse, but then it would extend it.”
May attacked the former Labour prime minister Tony Blair this weekend for advocating a second vote, saying: “There are too many people who want to subvert the process for their own political interests rather than acting in the national interest.
“For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office he once held and the people he once served.”
The prime minister appears determined to pursue her strategy of seeking legal guarantees on the backstop and then putting her deal to MPs after Christmas. She is sending the government’s most senior legal officer, Jonathan Jones, to Brussels this week.
The prime minister told Tory MPs at a meeting of the 1922 Committee on Wednesday, shortly before they voted in the no-confidence ballot that failed to unseat her, that she would secure legally binding assurances and was battling to win over the DUP.
But cabinet ministers are lining up behind alternative plans, with the international development secretary, Penny Mordaunt, expected to launch proposals for a “managed no deal”, also favoured by the leader of the Commons, Andrea Leadsom, later this week.
The work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, broke cover in the Daily Mail on Saturday, calling for her colleagues to reach out to MPs in other parties to avoid Brexit “getting stuck”.
“We need to try something different. Something that people do in the real world all the time, but which seems so alien in our political culture: to engage with others and be willing to forge a consensus,” she said, in an article widely regarded as a coded plea to shift to a softer Brexit.
Hinds told Sophy Ridge on Sky News that different groups of MPs were advocating a series of different options, but should go home from Westminster for Christmas and reflect on how they would deliver the result of the 2016 referendum.
“There are about half a dozen different options going around, and all of them has their strong supporters, but none of them has a majority in favour, whether you’re talking about Norway or Canada or second referendum, leaving without a deal or whatever it may be. What we need is a balanced deal.”
Asked whether a second referendum had been discussed in cabinet, he said no.
May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, sent a series of tweets on Sunday morning denying reports in two Sunday papers that he had told colleagues a fresh referendum was the only way through the Brexit crisis.
In response to the Harlow MP, Robert Halfon, who said calling another referendum would be a “complete betrayal” of the prime minister’s promise to respect the 2016 vote, Barwell agreed, adding that it would “further divide the country when we should be trying to bring people back together”.
Sources close to David Lidington, May’s de facto deputy, also strongly denied that he had signalled in a meeting with Labour MPs last week that Downing Street was interested in the option of a referendum, insisting he had been in “listening mode”.
The idea of a referendum as a way out of the parliamentary impasse has been creeping up the agenda at Westminster for months, pushed by a cross-party alliance of pro-remain MPs.
But it appeared significantly more likely last week after the prime minister pulled a vote on her deal, fearing a crushing defeat, and then returned from Brussels on Friday without the legally binding assurances on the backstop she had hoped to secure.
First published on Wed 16 Jan 2019 18.57 GMT
Downing Street has ruled out any movement on customs union membership after Brexit-supporting Conservatives told Theresa May that a change of course to gain support for her deal would risk a serious party split, and possible breakaway.
The government set out its position on Wednesday night before the prime minister began Brexit talks with party leaders.
May responded to the historic defeat of her Brexit bill on Tuesday by pledging to speak to “senior parliamentarians” to identify a deal that could secure a majority vote.
However, after one leave-supporting backbencher said that if she made any concessions on the customs union “there’s a real risk to the party staying together”, No 10 stressed its commitment to the principle of an “independent trade deal”, which May does not believe is compatible with a customs union.
Those who support a permanent customs union include the Labour frontbench under Jeremy Corbyn and Tory backers of a Norway-style deal. It is unlikely talks with either group will get off the ground if May maintains her red lines, although Labour, the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats have insisted May must keep all options on the table before talks can begin.
Corbyn has said he will not speak to May until she rules out a no-deal Brexit.
Privately, some ministers and MPs believe the prime minister can only achieve some form of cross-party consensus by pledging permanent customs union membership. “There is no other way,” one frontbencher said. “At some point, that penny will drop.”
No 10 has not yet spelled out how May intends to identify the kind of deal that would have a chance of winning over enough of the 128 Conservative and Democratic Unionist MPs who voted against her on Tuesday night.
The prime minister is expected to approach senior members of the European Research Group, the hard Brexit group chaired by Jacob Rees-Mogg which includes Steve Baker and Iain Duncan Smith. MPs in the hard Brexit faction suggested the deal could still be salvaged by agreeing on a hard end-date for the Irish border backstop.
Several Eurosceptic rebels warned the prime minister against any efforts to pursue a softer Brexit.
Simon Clarke, the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, a marginal leave seat, said he feared a split if an eventual May deal was carried by Labour votes. “The PM is within her rights to try to find a sensible way forward, but there must be red lines,” he said. “Were we to adopt the terrible Labour idea of being non-voting members of the customs union, for example, I fear there’s a real risk to the party staying together.”
Ben Bradley, who resigned his post as Tory vice-chair to vote against the deal, said May could still win if she pivoted towards the Brexiters.
“Only one single thing needs to change,” he said. “An alternative to, or exit mechanism from, the backstop would in my view get a majority in the Commons, and the longer-term discussion about customs unions or free trade agreements then becomes a matter for future negotiations.
“The DUP have consistently said that’s what they need, and I think most Brexiteer colleagues would support [that] along with leave-minded Labour MPs. The alternative – reaching out to Corbyn on a customs union deal – would split the government benches in half and make an election far more likely.”
May is expected to extend her invitation for talks to Labour and other opposition backbenchers, as well as Tory Eurosceptics.
One cabinet source expressed pessimism that trying to achieve a softer Brexit would be effective. “Getting a customs union would be extremely difficult. It would only work if the calculation was that Labour votes were absolutely the only way of preventing no deal,” he said.
The justice secretary, David Gauke, said the government needed to show some flexibility but there were disadvantages to remaining in a customs union.
Gauke told the BBC: “I don’t think we can today be boxing ourselves in. What we need to be doing is engaging across parliament, seeing what ideas emerge, where the support is for those particular ideas, and at that point we need to make an assessment: is this something negotiable with the European Union and something with majority support in the House of Commons?
“I think the right answer would be to leave the customs union, but given where we are we have to be open to proposals that are put forward and make an assessment on the way forward.”
Gauke did not rule out holding talks with Corbyn but suggested they would be futile. “I think there may be others who might be easier to work with.”
May said in the Commons that the exercise of reaching out was about “wanting to understand the views of parliamentarians so that we can identify what could command the support of this House”.
She said engagement had to align with what she defined as respecting the vote to leave, citing “ending free movement, a fairer deal for farmers and fishermen, opening up new opportunities to trade with the rest of the world and keeping good ties with our neighbours in Europe”.
Ken Clarke, the pro-remain Tory MP, urged May to consider a customs union. “I have had to accept the majority in the House is committed to the UK leaving the European Union. She must also accept that she must now modify her red lines that she set for herself at Lancaster House and find a cross-party majority which will be along the lines I have indicated,” he said.
First published on Sun 27 Oct 2019 13.04 GMT
Britain could be edging closer to a December election after the Liberal Democrats abandoned their focus on a second referendum to push for an election plan that could circumvent Labour’s opposition, bringing tentative support from Downing Street.
A formal proposal by the Lib Dems and Scottish National party to seek an election on 9 December by amending the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (FTPA) was dismissed by the Tory party chair, James Cleverly, as a “gimmick”.
However, No 10 sources subsequently said that if MPs rejected a government motion to seek an election under the FTPA for a third time on Monday, Boris Johnson could eventually be forced to explore a similar route to the Lib Dem plan.
FTPA election motions require at least two-thirds of MPs to support them, giving Labour an effective veto on the process. In contrast, calling an election via an amendment to the FTPA, or a separate one-line act, would only need a straightforward majority in the Commons.
The Downing Street source said: “If Labour oppose being held to account by the people yet again then we will look at all options to get Brexit done, including ideas similar to that proposed by other opposition parties.”
The route is nonetheless by no means clear. The Lib Dem-led plan, set out by party leader Jo Swinson on Sunday, would involve Johnson ditching any attempts to push his withdrawal agreement bill through parliament before an election, something the government has rejected.
If it later became clear that the bill had stalled, Downing Street could agree an election without it, which could win the backing of enough opposition MPs to pass.
The timetable would be extremely tight. Given the legally mandated five-week delay between the dissolution of parliament and an election, a plan would need to be in place in little more than a week to hold a poll on 12 December, the government’s preferred choice.
There could also be some jitters within the Lib Dems about giving up on a second referendum. Chuka Umunna, the former Labour MP who is now the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesman, said this now did not seem possible without an election.
“It’s quite clear now that it’s highly unlikely that in this current parliament we’re going to be able to achieve that,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show. “It looks more likely that you would be able to do that in a new parliament.”
The change of stance has prompted agitation in the People’s Vote campaign, to which several Lib Dem MPs are allied, with some understood to be not entirely happy at the move.
But one senior Lib Dem said there seemed to be no option: “We would prefer a people’s vote but Labour have consistently failed to deliver enough troops to win that fight and, with 19 Labour MPs voting for Johnson’s Brexit bill, we can’t wait around till Labour get their act together, if they ever will.”
The government has so far avoided seeking an election via a bill because these can be amended, with MPs potentially imposing conditions such as votes for 16- or 17-year-olds, or allowing EU nationals to vote in general elections.
The Downing Street hope would be that if Johnson gave categoric assurances about a fixed election date, thus ruling out the possibility of a drift into a no-deal Brexit, the opposition parties would pledge not to table any amendments.
However, the near-complete lack of trust between the factions in the Commons could still scupper such a plan.
The immediate focus will be in the Commons on Monday afternoon, where Johnson will challenge Labour to support an election via the FTPA motion.
The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, said only a promise from Johnson to MPs would suffice.
“He could come to parliament and categorically give parliament an undertaking that he’s not going to come out without a deal,” she told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show.
While Abbott said she would welcome a campaign – “We have over half a million members and they want an election” – the sentiment is not unanimous in the party, with many MPs and a number of shadow ministers wary about agreeing to an election, given recent polls showing the Conservatives taking a lead of up to 16%.
One senior MP said Labour’s coherence on the issue could be tested if the EU agreed to a 31 January extension: “I get the impression we have quite a unified position as things stand. If the EU granted a long extension, that may change,” the MP said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
The head of the German federation of industries has claimed the British are “lost” and has thrown doubt on Berlin’s backing for a short Brexit extension, claiming an “economy can live better with bad conditions than with uncertainty”.
Dieter Kempf, the chairman of the Bundesverbandes der Deutschen Industrie, said the 100,000 companies he represents and their 8 million employees have prepared for a no-deal scenario in March, not in May.
Speaking in the wake of the British prime minister’s suggestion that the UK could request a two-month Brexit delay, Kempf told the Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad that he felt no relief at the apparent U-turn by Theresa May.
He said: “Everything is better than a chaotic Brexit. But is procrastination good? No. Uncertainty is bad for the economy. If we talk about a period of two and a half weeks, it is good if we avoid a hard Brexit.
“But what will change in three to four weeks? The British House of Commons knows very well what it does not want, but not what it wants. It cannot decide. The British are lost, they can’t find the way to the exit. That makes it difficult for a negotiating partner.”
German companies had been working on a spring deadline for their no-deal plans, Kemp said. “They have increased their storage capacity. They have planned a transition period for the reorganisation of logistics processes without loss of production. Now there would be a delay until May. What do they do then? My experience is that the economy can live better with bad conditions than with uncertainty.”
May has said that she will allow a possible extension of article 50 to be put before parliament should her deal be voted down again on 12 March.
EU leaders, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, have insisted they will not grant a delay unless there is a clear purpose to it. Any request would require the unanimous agreement of the EU’s 27 heads of state and government.
Kempf said a no-deal Brexit would “probably cost Germany a further 0.4 or 0.5 percentage points of growth”.
But he said the deal already negotiated by the EU and the British government was “the best possible agreement for everyone involved”, adding that he had been encouraged by Jeremy Corbyn’s tentative support for a second referendum.
“Last week there was a bright spot,” he said. “The chance of a new referendum. I do not want to hide the fact that I sighed with relief when the opposition brought forward this option. This idea must come from the UK itself, not from the continent and certainly not from the Germans. That would be counterproductive.”
The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, and the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, are expected in Brussels on Tuesday.
They will continue their negotiations over a legal add-on to the withdrawal agreement, known as a “joint interpretative instrument”, putting previous written assurances over the temporary nature of the Irish backstop into legally binding language.
But the document will not satisfy the prime minister’s demands for a time-limit or unilateral exit mechanism from the customs union envisaged by the arrangement.
First published on Thu 4 Jul 2019 19.38 BST
Theresa May has said leaving the EU without a deal would have “undoubted consequences” for the future of the UK, amid deepening concerns within her own party over how a no-deal Brexit could boost support for Scottish independence.
May warned Scottish Conservative supporters in Stirling that “a lot of people have taken the union for granted over the years”. She continued: “It’s not a case of either you can deliver Brexit or you can ensure that you maintain the union. You need to do both.”
While insisting she would not offer any advice to her successor on resolving the seemingly intractable problem of the Irish backstop, she emphasised: “There can and must be no false choice between honouring the solemn commitments of the [Good Friday] agreement and delivering on the decision of the British people in the EU referendum.”
May, whose relationship with Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has been increasingly strained, also hit out at the Scottish government, saying: “Over the last three years I have learned that while other parties can be relied on to work with the UK government in good faith to make devolution a success, an SNP Scottish government will only ever seek to further the agenda of separation.”
Sturgeon had shown her “true colours” by commenting on her speech before it had taken place, May said.
Earlier on Thursday, the SNP leader told STV news that May’s conduct as prime minister had led directly to an increase in support for independence.
Sturgeon said: “She’s conducted herself as prime minister in a high-handed arrogant way that is completely dismissive of Scotland. As people have experienced that over the past three years, many people, including some who voted no to independence in 2014, have reconsidered that view and that’s why we see support for independence rising.”
May said she was confident her successor would make the union a priority, adding: “One of the lessons of the independence referendum in 2014 was that those of us who believe in our United Kingdom need to do much more to make and demonstrate the emotional case for it – and to strengthen the ties that bind it together.”
She also insisted that the election of 13 Scottish Conservative MPs in the last general election “was a very clear message that the people of Scotland gave that they want Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom”.
Referring to the breakdown of power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland, as well as the electoral successes of nationalists in Wales and Scotland, May quoted the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, who warned recently that the union was “more imperilled now than it has ever been”.
David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister and Theresa May’s de facto deputy, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One earlier on Thursday that the union was under threat, not only from Scottish nationalism or pressure for Irish unification, but from English “indifference”. He said a no-deal Brexit would make the breakup of the UK more likely.
Senior Scottish Conservative critics of Boris Johnson have privately expressed their despair at his likely succession to the Tory leadership, fearing it could be a “catastrophe” for the UK and immediately boost support for a second independence referendum if he pressed ahead with a no-deal Brexit.
A recent Panelbase poll in the Sunday Times Scotland found support for independence would jump to 53% if Johnson became prime minister. It found he had a popularity rating among Scottish voters of -37, a worse rating than Nigel Farage.
May also used the event, at a technology startup hub near Stirling castle, to unveil plans for a review of the role of Whitehall departments in the devolved nations, chaired by the former Scotland Office minister Andrew Dunlop, adding she was “delighted” both Johnson and Jeremy Hunt were supportive of the review.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
Eurosceptic Conservatives have insisted they could still force a no-deal Brexit even if the House of Commons votes on Wednesday against crashing out of the EU without a deal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, chair of the European Research Group (ERG), said it was a “serious point” that the risk of a softer Brexit or a second referendum may have increased after the deal’s defeat, but he believed most MPs considered a no-deal exit more likely.
He said the European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker “has said there will be no more negotiations so I think our expectations are that we will leave without a deal”.
Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister who is the ERG’s chief organiser, announced late on Tuesday that he and others would attempt to force a so-called “managed no deal” in the Commons on Wednesday, when MPs will have a free vote on whether the UK should leave with no agreement.
In a late-night amendment signed by the former remainers Nicky Morgan and Damian Green, Baker proposed a 21-month transition to no deal, an idea that the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has explicitly rejected.
Baker said he and others would not be “bullied” by the threat of no Brexit or a softer deal. “It is the worst conceivable reason to vote for a terrible deal to say that if we don’t vote for this deal, which betrays the public vote, then parliament will betray the public vote to a worse degree,” he said. “This is a mad argument. I am not going to allow my conduct to be determined by fear.”
The majority of the ERG held the line which was agreed at their meeting on Tuesday afternoon and voted against May’s deal, on the advice of their “star chamber” of eight lawyers who examined the legal advice of the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox.
However, more than 30 Brexiters broke with the main Eurosceptic faction on Tuesday night to back Theresa May’s deal. The former Brexit secretary David Davis was the most high-profile name to splinter from the disciplined group, along with several vocal backbench Brexiters including Nadine Dorries and Philip Davies.
In total, 39 Conservative MPs switched their votes to back the prime minister after voting against the deal on 15 January, though some of that number were former remainers.
The mood among Eurosceptics had been more open-minded in the early morning on Tuesday but when May addressed Tory MPs in a private meeting on Tuesday morning after Cox’s legal advice had been published, the atmosphere darkened. The ERG vice-chair, Mark Francois, said MPs had asked the prime minister “question after question after question” on Cox’s advice that the legal risk remained unchanged.
Many of those who had previously suggested they were open to giving the deal a second chance felt that Cox’s advice had sunk its chances. “The attorney general’s advice is clear there is nothing allowing us to exit the backstop if both sides cannot agree the future relationship in good faith,” MP Simon Clarke said.
“Given that is arguably precisely the situation we find ourselves in now re the withdrawal agreement, how is that risk ‘highly unlikely’?”
By early afternoon, the ERG’s appointed group of eight lawyers, seven of them MPs, recommended that MPs reject the deal. The group included the DUP’s Nigel Dodds as well as the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, and was chaired by the veteran Brexiter Bill Cash.
Publishing their reasoning, the group said the reassurances “fail to fulfil the commitment made by government … to obtain legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement.”.
May won over a number of MPs by arguing the choice was now political rather than based on legal text. Ben Bradley, the MP for Mansfield who resigned as Tory vice-chair in protest at the deal and who submitted a letter of no confidence in the prime minister, said he had grudgingly decided to back it.
Bradley said he believed colleagues should “hold their noses, to get Brexit signed and sealed” without risking further delay.
“To those saying no deal would be preferable, I am tempted to agree, but we know and the evidence shows that parliament will not let that happen. If we are to deliver Brexit on time as promised, this is the route to doing it, and the alternative is delay at best.”
Other former rebels who declared support before the vote included the backbenchers Johnny Mercer, Nigel Evans and Zac Goldsmith, as well as the chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon, and the former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell.
The former international trade minister Greg Hands, who voted against the deal in January, gave an impassioned speech to the meeting of the ERG, urging his colleagues to back the deal.
He said there remained very few people in parliament, including the Speaker, who were prepared to see no deal, “apart from the people in this room” and urged MPs to be realistic.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
The UK would have to follow European Union rules more strictly than Norway, if MPs choose the Nordic model as a route out of Brexit deadlock, sources have said.
Before next week’s crucial vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, MPs are being urged to consider an alternative that would keep the UK in the EU single market, through membership of the European Economic Area, the 31-country zone that covers EU member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
Promoted by the Conservative former minister Nick Boles, the Norway-plus option also means joining the European Free Trade Area, which also includes Switzerland.
The plan would help the UK minimise the economic impact of Brexit, but would also mean accepting EU rules on goods, services, people and capital, as well as competition and state aid.
Senior officials say the UK would have to follow the relevant parts of the EU rulebook in full and would not be allowed to delay the adoption of laws, a cause of perennial tension between Brussels and EFTA countries. Given the size and proximity of the British economy, EU member states would regard the competition risks too great, according to one EU senior source, who added: “With the UK we cannot accept such a slippage.”
The EEA agreement consists of 6,000 EU legal acts, up from 1,875 when the treaty came into force in 1994. About 500 EU laws are yet to be adopted by the four EFTA countries, including scores of banking regulations that the EU passed after the financial crisis. (Non-EEA Switzerland participates in the single market and has been accused of similar delays).
Member states have always been observant to anything that tilts the playing field against their companies, said Lotta Nymann-Lindegren, a former EU diplomat specialised in Brexit. “There is a large grey zone, where even with minor issues you can all of a sudden create a competitive advantage, so I think the balance of rights and obligations would be a very important thing.”
Setting on the path towards a Norwegian-style status does not require any change in the Brexit 585-page withdrawal treaty or the non-binding political declaration, which leaves Briain’s options open. The EU would be ready to craft new language on EEA-EFTA membership to help the UK government, if necessary.
Yet EU officials have long been sceptical about the UK choosing the Norway option, which curbs sovereignty. “Norway is the worst of all outcomes for the UK because that is Brexit in name only,” said the senior EU source.
Norway also pays more per capita into the EU budget than the UK, raising questions about “substantially smaller” contributions promised. While the EEA does not cover agriculture or fisheries, existing EU red lines are unchanged, meaning if the UK wants tariff-free access for goods it will face demands that existing rights for EU fishing fleets are maintained.
Joining the EEA also means accepting the free movement of people, the reddest of May’s red lines. Norway-plus advocates have seized on the “emergency brake“ in the EEA agreement, which allows a country to take unilateral measures in the event of “serious, economic or societal difficulty”.
Many in the EU think British MPs have misunderstood the working of the brake, which is subject to consultation with other EEA countries and could lead to fines for misuse.
“I’ve been a bit worried when I read about the marketing of this idea,” said Nymann-Lindegren, who used to participate in EU-EEA weekly meetings. While in theory the UK may be able to negotiate a new system, the current arrangement had limits, she said. “It is not designed for migration management on a regular basis, it is designed for extreme situations.”
First published on Fri 7 Dec 2018 07.33 GMT
Senior Norwegian politicians and business figures have rejected Norway-plus, the increasingly touted British cross-party plan for the UK to leave the EU but join Norway in a free trade trade area inside the EU single market.
They attacked the idea as “neither in Norway nor the UK’s interest”. The UK would need Norway’s permission to join its Efta club.
The rejection is a blow to an influential cross-party group led by the Tory MP Nick Boles, with private cabinet support, that is looking for a plan B if, as expected, MPs reject Theresa May’s deal next Tuesday.
The former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband and the Tory former universities minister Jo Johnson also condemned Norway-plus as throwing away a key advantage of current membership “in the form of our vote, voice and veto around the table”.
The former ministers’ joint assault on Norway-plus, in a pamphlet written by the People’s Vote campaign, is in some senses confirmation that the Boles plan could become a credible rival to a second referendum as a MPs search for a way out of a potential Commons deadlock.
The two men insist Norway-plus “would not be easy to negotiate, would not mean reduced payments to the EU and would not allow the UK to end freedom of movement for migrants from the EU”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Johnson said: “Norway-plus does not deliver on the referendum since it would reduce the UK to a nation of lobbyists camped outside the European parliament in Brussels.” Describing such an outcome as undignified and the worst of all worlds, he said it would only add to a sense of deceit for voters who had backed Brexit.
People’s Vote claims that at a time when trust in politics is at low point, it is better to confront voters with the true choices on offer, rather than “repeating the deeply misleading promises made for Brexit two years ago”, Johnson said.
But Stephen Kinnock, one of the Labour advocates for Norway-plus, said the Efta court could diverge from the European court of justice, and that the Efta treaty allowed for an emergency brake on migration in exceptional circumstances. He claimed as many as 10 cabinet ministers backed a pivot to Norway-plus after the expected Commons defeat next week, and urged May to take up this option.
Any attempt to push through May’s deal or a second referendum was deeply risky, he said.
Norway-plus, the softest form of Brexit, requires the UK to seek to apply to join the European Free Trade Area grouping, consisting of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The scheme, as revised by Boles, would require the UK also to remain in the EU customs union indefinitely, or at least until a solution to the border in Ireland could be found.
But the plan was rejected by Heidi Nordby Lunde, an MP in Norway’s governing Conservative party, and leader of Norway’s European movement. She said her views reflected those of the governing party even though the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, has been more diplomatic by saying Norway would examine a UK application.
Lunde told the Guardian: “Really, the Norwegian option is not an option. We have been telling you this for one and a half years since the referendum and how this works, so I am surprised that after all these years it is still part of the grown-up debate in the UK. You just expect us to give you an invitation rather than consider whether Norway would want to give you such an invitation. It might be in your interest to use our agreement, but it would not be in our interest.”
Explaining Norway’s fear of the UK joining the Efta club, she said: “The three countries in Efta have to agree on all the regulations coming from the EU, so if one country vetoes something we all have to veto, which means that if the UK enters the Efta platform and starts to veto regulations that we want, this will affect not just the UK but also us as well. Part of the success we have had with this EEA agreement is for the last 25 years is that we do accept the rules and regulations that do come out of the EU, mostly because it is in our interest.
“If, as I understand, UK politicians do not want to be ruled by regulations coming from other countries, why would they accept a country with 38,000 citizens like Liechtenstein being able to veto regulations that the UK wants. That would be the reality.”
A member of the parliament’s economic affairs committee, she said “it is not in my country’s interests to have the UK aboard, and I cannot see how possibly an EEA/Efta agreement could be in the interests of the UK”.
“As part of the agreement with the EU we accept migration and free movement, we have our own body of justice, but it is compliant with the European court of justice. We accept the rules and regulations of the single market.”
She added: “It is not an option for the UK to stay inside the customs union, as the UK proposes to solve the Northern Ireland border issue, if you are part of the Efta platform, since Efta is its own free trade bloc. We have 29 trade agreements with 39 countries outside the EU that the UK would need to be able to accept. I do not understand why it would be in the UK interests to enter into trade agreements on the basis of agreements that have been negotiated in our interests and not the UK’s.”
She said the only politicians in Norway who wanted the UK to join Efta were the Eurosceptic party that wanted to destroy Norway’s relationship with the EU.
Her fears have been echoed by Ole Erik Almlid, of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise business association, who has also questioned whether the UK would be willing to go from rule maker to rule taker. He said Norway would suffer and parts of the Efta agreement with the EU would have to be suspended if an Efta member such as the UK refused to abide by the obligations in the agreement.
 This article was amended on 12 December 2018 to include reference to Switzerland, the fourth member of EFTA.

Last modified on Tue 4 Feb 2020 17.07 GMT
A trade union affiliated with the Labour party has claimed that Jeremy Corbyn’s party could lose an additional 45 seats in a snap election if it fails to take an anti-Brexit position, in a leaked report.
The report, drawn up by the transport union TSSA and including extensive polling, was sent to the leftwing pressure group Momentum. It appears to be an attempt to pile pressure on the Labour leader over Brexit.
It claims that “Brexit energises Labour remain voters” disproportionately, and warns: “There is no middle way policy which gets support from both sides of the debate.”The Guardian understands that while the report was sent to Momentum, it was not commissioned or requested by the group.
Sources inside the party stressed that there were risks from turning either way on Brexit – and other polls showed a different picture.
The document – marked strictly confidential – says: “There can be no disguising the sense of disappointment and disillusionment with Labour if it fails to oppose Brexit and there is every indication that it will be far more damaging to the party’s electoral fortunes than the Iraq war.
“Labour would especially lose the support of people below the age of 35, which could make this issue comparable to the impact the tuition fees and involvement in the coalition had on Lib Dem support.”
The document starts by pointing out that the TSSA has “supported Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from the very beginning”.
It says that the party’s supporters view Brexit as a “Tory project”. It adds that four-fifths of them believe the current deal will hurt the British economy and 91.4% of Labour voters do not trust the government to deliver a good Brexit for people such as them.
The report concludes: “If there is an election in 2019, Labour will get a lower share of the vote in every seat in the country if it has a pro-Brexit policy than if it has an anti-Brexit position.”
The paper was widely distributed to senior figures linked to Momentum and to several members of the shadow cabinet, including the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, and the Labour party in Scotland. It was not intended for publication.
It claims that three-quarters of Labour voters would back remain in a second referendum. It acknowledges that according to the current polls Labour would lose seats in an election, and shows that Labour faces risks whichever way it turns.
But it says that there would be much heavier electoral losses if Labour entered a snap election promising to implement Brexit.It finds:
The briefing says its findings are based on “in-depth polling and focus group work” carried out to prepare for a snap election.
The TSSA has been publicly anti-Brexit. It asked 5,125 voters in January what positions would make them see Labour more positively or negatively. The most popular option was for Labour to oppose Brexit, the second preferred choice was for Labour to honour Brexit but renegotiate a better deal, and the third choice was to support May’s deal.
It warns there is a real risk with a centrist party because of polling suggesting that 17% of Labour’s 2017 voters would be very likely to support a new party to oppose Brexit, while 27% would be fairly likely to.
“Even if we accept that most Labour voters would not desert the party for a new centrist party, anger at Brexit means that some will,” it says, warning this could spell trouble in marginal seats.
A Labour council leader from a strongly remain-voting part of London said they were extremely concerned about the findings and had pressed senior party leadership to take a much more robust and unambiguous stance opposing Brexit.
One Scottish trade union source warned that Labour could be playing into the hands of the pro-independence SNP.
“On the basis of this alarming evidence,” they said, “it is clear that trying to appease Brexit voters in northern England will not just cost us the chance to put Jeremy Corbyn in No 10. Scottish Labour has been rebuilding, but this blinkered Brexit strategy will cut us off at the knees.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
It’s now all or nothing. Theresa May has gone, most likely taking with her the possibility of a negotiated exit from the European Union. It means that the choice that will soon face the country is starker than before: a no-deal Brexit – or no Brexit at all.
In her parting address outside Downing Street, May made a better case for compromise between those two positions than she ever had before. “Life depends on compromise,” she said, quoting the Kindertransport rescuer and hero, Nicholas Winton. It sounded hollow coming from her, given that her brittle personal style, incapable of emollience, and her inept grasp of political tactics had together made her a byword for inflexibility (right until the moment, which came often, when she would cave entirely). Her epitaph will be the inadvertent slogan of her calamitous 2017 election campaign: “Nothing has changed.”
And yet all that concealed the fact that May’s eventual Brexit strategy – arrived at only after she had legitimised, with fateful consequences, the notion that “no deal was better than a bad deal” – was the pursuit of a compromise between no deal and no Brexit, in the form of a withdrawal agreement.
The result is that those who fear the chaos that would be unleashed by a no-deal crash out of the EU might come to feel an unexpected nostalgia for May and her hapless but dogged efforts. Given what, and who, are likely to follow, we might look back wistfully at a prime minister who at least sought to smooth our departure from the bloc of our closest trading partners and neighbours. To picture Boris Johnson in No 10 is to realise: we may miss her when she’s gone.
For the prospect now is that May’s abject failure to pass her withdrawal deal has discredited the very idea of such an agreement. That effect is due to be cemented when the results of the European elections are tallied this weekend. Even if Nigel Farage’s Brexit party doesn’t match its sky-high expectations – and turnout figures do look healthier in remain areas – Farage’s expected trouncing of the Tories among leave voters has already persuaded, or panicked, plenty of Conservative MPs towards the view that the only Brexit that will fly electorally is one of the “clean break” variety. Hence the stampede to Johnson, in the hope that he can match Farage in championing a populist, pure brand of Brexit.
Which is not to say that Johnson, or any other leader, might not try to succeed where May failed, by attempting to negotiate a new agreement with Brussels that will somehow command a majority in the House of Commons. But such a quest implies that a better deal was – and still is – there to be had from the EU, if only May had been a better poker player. Those who know the EU well insist that’s a delusion, that not only will the EU27 not reopen the treaty they agreed with a departing UK – a stance reiterated by an EU spokesman today – but they cannot reopen it. They’ll insist the agreement represents the only possible arrangement consistent with the red lines May painted from the start. It’s a matter of fundamental political geometry; there is no other shape available. Unless a new prime minister were to give way on, say, free movement, or the UK’s ability to make its own trade deals, May’s deal is all there is. It’s the last word.
That, surely, is especially true of Johnson. “He’s the last person to get anything out of Brussels,” one minister tells me, reflecting on the former foreign secretary’s standing in European capitals. There is a rare consensus among the continent’s leaders on this point: they regard Johnson as a loathsome charlatan, a Trumpian peddler of EU myths with a record of mendacity that stretches back to his 1990s spell as a Telegraph correspondent. Even if they could bend on, for instance, the Northern Ireland backstop, the EU27 would be deeply reluctant to do so, knowing they’d be turning Johnson into a hero.
So the question is, how will May’s successor respond to the stubborn fact that there is no better deal, that there are no “alternative arrangements”? Some Tory remainers hope for an outbreak of honesty, as the new prime minister tells their party that the Brexit of their dreams cannot, after all, be done. This is what explains the modest, remainers-for-Boris grouping typified by the columnist Matthew Parris, most of them relying on the Nixon-to-China precedent. If it took a seasoned anti-communist like US president Richard Nixon to sit down with Chairman Mao, then perhaps it will take an arch-leaver like Johnson to break Brexiter hearts and tell them the dream is over.
That could take the form of re-offering May’s thrice-rejected deal. But, given the arithmetic of the Commons and the impossibility of crafting a Brexit acceptable even to all Brexiters, that hardly looks promising. You can see why May’s successor might instead be tempted by the no-deal option. It would shut Farage up; and it would delight the noisy, troublesome faction that has made life hell for successive Tory leaders for four decades, with May only the latest to be devoured. What’s more, a research paper from the Institute of Government is doing the rounds, arguing that MPs no longer have any clear mechanism to stop a no-deal exit; the devices they had before have fallen away. If a prime minister wants to crash out, perhaps by simply running out the clock and waiting for the EU extension to expire on 31 October, it would be a “near-impossible task” for MPs to stop them. And that’s especially true if the resolve of some Tory MPs, previously hostile to no deal, weakens, thanks to fear of Farage and the dynamic of a new leader. One remainer minister fears that such an erosion of opposition to no deal is “perfectly logical and plausible”.
The battlefield is shifting, towards a starker, binary clash of no deal versus remain. That means pro-Europeans will have their work cut out. First, they will need to argue that these latest changes in the landscape in no way represent a mandate for a no-deal Brexit. Farage might top the Euro election poll, but winning one-third of the vote on, say, a one-third turnout is not a national mandate. That will be truer still of a new prime minister installed on the votes of 300-odd MPs and the tiny, ageing sect that is the Conservative party membership, a group wholly unrepresentative of the nation as a whole. A no-deal Brexiter may well win the Tory contest; it does not mean they will have a mandate to crash this country into economic and diplomatic disaster.
Opponents of the nightmare scenario must not succumb to defeatism. Sure, the procedural task in the Commons might be more complicated now. But that does not make it impossible. If there’s the political will in the chamber and the country to prevent no deal, there will be a procedural way. Tory remainers will still hold a powerful weapon: they can threaten, as Dominic Grieve did on Thursday, to join the opposition parties in backing a no-confidence vote and bringing down the government, if that’s what it takes to stop a Brexit catastrophe.
This is the argument to press: that there is no mandate for a no-deal Brexit, a scenario that was not even countenanced, let alone approved, in the 2016 referendum. If a new Tory prime minister wants to exit that way, he or she will need fresh public consent. That could be a new public vote or a general election, although it’s hard to imagine the Tory leader eager to face the country with Brexit still undone. Which is why campaigners for a second referendum believe that all roads still lead back to them: even Brexiters, they say, will eventually conclude that a public vote is the only way to break the impasse.
Perhaps this will be the endgame, a referendum offering two final options: no deal or no Brexit. With no withdrawal deal to approve or reject, there will be no other question to ask. Both remainers and hardcore Brexiters should feel their palms grow clammy at that prospect. By holding out and refusing to back May’s deal, they may well have seen off the possibility of a phased exit. The result will be that we either stay in the EU – or crash out altogether. May has gone, and suddenly the stakes have got much higher.
Last modified on Wed 1 Jul 2020 17.25 BST
The single biggest known British political advertiser on Facebook is a mysterious pro-Brexit campaign group pushing for a no-deal exit from the EU. The revelation about Britain’s Future, which has never disclosed the source of its funding or organisational structure, has raised concerns about the influence of “dark money” in British politics.
The little-known campaign group has spent more than £340,000 on Facebook adverts backing a hard Brexit since the social network began publishing lists of political advertisers last October, making it a bigger spender than every UK political party and the government combined.
However, there is no information available about who is ultimately paying for the adverts, highlighting a key flaw in Facebook’s new political transparency tools.
The sophisticated campaign includes thousands of individual pro-Brexit adverts, targeted at voters in the constituencies of selected MPs. The adverts urge voters to email their local representative and create the impression of a grassroots uprising for a no-deal Brexit. The MPs then receive emails, signed by a “concerned constituent”, demanding a hard Brexit. The emails do not mention the involvement of an organised campaign group.
Britain’s Future’s public presence contains links to just two individuals: an ex-BBC Three sitcom writer turned journalist, and, indirectly, a former BNP candidate who lives on a farm called Rorke’s Drift in the Yorkshire dales.
The site’s public face is Tim Dawson, who created the sitcom Coming of Age while still in his teens before going on to contribute to Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. In recent years he has stood for election to Manchester city council as a Conservative candidate before last year taking control of Britain’s Future.
Dawson’s pro-Brexit campaign group has spent more than a third of a million pounds on targeted Facebook and Instagram adverts in just a few months, including more than £50,000 last week alone, urging voters to email their local MP and tell them to get Britain out of the EU. An further unknown sum has also been spent buying up adverts alongside Google search results related to Brexit, suggesting that the total amount spent by his organisation on online campaigning could be much higher.
Throughout all this, Dawson, who these days makes a living from writing occasional pieces for the Daily Telegraph and the Spiked website, has declined to comment on the source of his funds, other than to tell the BBC that he was “raising small donations from friends and fellow Brexiteers”. There was no answer at his flat in Manchester and he has repeatedly declined to answer questions on how he has access to levels of funding that dwarf many high-profile campaigns.
According to its Facebook page, there are at least five individuals involved in the administration of Britain’s Future, although there are few clues as to who they are. Its “About Us” page contains a map centred on a remote building in the Yorkshire Dales north of Harrogate. This is Rorke’s Drift farm, named after the 1879 battle in South Africa where a small group of British soldiers made a successful last stand against thousands of Zulu warriors, an incident later depicted in the Michael Caine film Zulu.
The farm is home to Colin Banner, a former British National Party candidate. When contacted by the Guardian, he insisted that he had no knowledge of Dawson, was not aware of Britain’s Future, and was not involved in placing the adverts.
In a rare statement, Dawson declined to answer questions on funding or who was behind Britain’s Future. He said it was pure coincidence that his website was pointing to the remote home of a one-time BNP candidate and thanked the Guardian for bringing it to his attention.
“Britain’s Future has never associated with, nor would it ever associate with Colin Banner, or any BNP member. I have never met with, spoken to, or associated with Colin Banner, or any BNP member, nor would I want to. To state otherwise would be untrue.
“Designing the website required selecting a point on the map of the UK. The coordinates were randomly selected so the map of the UK would display centrally on the webpage. It was solely a design decision.
“The purpose of Britain’s Future is to represent the views of 17.4 million people who voted to leave the European Union – regardless of background. This is about delivering on the result of the referendum.”
No law is being broken by Britain’s Future’s campaigning. Outside of an election period, it is legal for any individual or campaign group to pay to promote political material without declaring where the funds come from. Britain’s Future is not a political party and does not appear to have any intention of putting forward candidates in elections, so is not regulated by laws requiring large political donations to be publicly declared.
Even the anti-Brexit People’s Vote campaign for a second referendum, backed with financing from the billionaire George Soros, has spent less on Facebook than Britain’s Future. Its website is essentially a personal blog on arguments for Brexit, with a discreet PayPal button soliciting donations.
Under Facebook’s transparency rules, a representative of Britain’s Future would have been required to provide a valid UK postal address before placing political adverts, but this information was not made public. There are no checks on the ultimate source of any funds.
Facebook said it was only thanks to its new political ad transparency tools, introduced after the EU referendum and soon to be rolled out across the UK, that it was possible to see the extent of political advertising placed by Britain’s Future. There is no equivalent database for Google, Twitter or other online advertisers.
Dawson previously stood as the Conservative council candidate in Manchester’s Hulme ward last year and finished a distant sixth. He gave an interview to Country Squire Magazine, explaining that he had recently embraced politics after becoming exasperated with the leftwing bias of the BBC: “There are lots and lots of Conservatives in this country and they deserve to be represented in our cultural landscape.”
Last month, a report from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport warned that electoral law was out of date and vulnerable to manipulation by hostile forces, and that the need to update it was urgent.
Additional reporting by Poppy Noor.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Government officials are preparing to deal with “putrefying stockpiles” of rubbish in the event of a no-deal Brexit, according to documents leaked to the Guardian.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on 29 March, export licences for millions of tonnes of waste will become invalid overnight. Environment Agency (EA) officials said leaking stockpiles could cause pollution.
The EA is also concerned that if farmers cannot export beef and lamb, a backlog of livestock on farms could cause liquid manure stores to overflow. A senior MP said the problems could cause a public health and environmental pollution emergency. An EA source said: “It could all get very ugly, very quickly.”
The emails leaked to the Guardian were sent to EA staff, asking for 42 volunteers to staff crisis management centres that would deal with incidents. On Tuesday the chief executive of the civil service revealed plans to move up to 5,000 staff into an emergency command and control centre in the event of no deal.
An EA email sent on Thursday, labelled “importance: high”, said crisis centres could go live on 18 February and run from 7am to 8pm seven days a week, with plans to operate 24/7 if needed. To explain the potential tasks, the email gave two examples.
“If there is a no-deal scenario, the current export of waste may cease for a period. This could result in stockpiled waste which causes licence breaches,” the email said. “Odours will obviously be an issue as the stockpiled waste putrefies and there may be runoff of leachates, causing secondary pollution.”
The email said the waste could become a high-profile issue. “It will quickly escalate into a political one because the operators will state that they have no means to move the waste.”
The second example related to animal slurry. “Problems may arise in exporting livestock to the EU. In that situation, farmers may be overstocked and unable to export lamb/beef etc. That means that they may have problems with slurry storage capacity and insufficient land spreading capability.”
The EA source said: “The examples seem like real possibilities. There’s a serious amount of panic going on.”
One of the emails told EA staff: “We are interested in any volunteers across [the environment and business division] no matter what their level of experience is, their grade, location or incident knowledge.”
Mary Creagh, the chair of parliament’s environmental audit committee, said: “The UK’s waste and recycling system is already fragile but these shocking emails show it will grind to a halt if customs checks and WTO tariffs prevent the export of millions of tonnes of waste.”
“No deal would be a green light to criminal fraudsters and create a public health and environmental pollution emergency. EA officials should not carry the can for the failings of government to get a deal through and this shows how hollow the prime minister’s promises were about protecting the environment if we leave the EU.”
An EA spokesman said: “As with the whole of government and the rest of the public sector, we are preparing responsibly for all scenarios as we exit the EU.”
As well as recycling waste, the UK ships about 3m tonnes of rubbish a year to the EU to be burned in incinerators that generate electricity. Most of this is household rubbish, which is sometimes shredded and has metal removed before being sent abroad.
If waste has to be stockpiled after a no-deal Brexit, industry experts say the populous south-east of England would be worst affected. The UK’s lack of incinerator capacity and shrinking number of landfill sites drives the exports.
The government issued a technical notice in December stating that “if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, import/export licences issued by the UK would no longer be valid for shipments of waste to the 27 remaining EU countries from the day the UK leaves.”
The notice added: “There is currently no process set out in the EU waste shipment regulations on how notified shipments should be re-approved. Defra is contacting other EU countries to discuss arrangements.”
Stuart Hayward-Higham, who leads Brexit planning for Suez, one of the UK’s largest waste management firms, said the EA’s planning was sensible: “It is them just putting things in place in case they need them.”
He said he hoped waste exports would not be disrupted too much. “We start from a common point – they [in the EU] would like our material and we would like to send them our material. We are looking at more difficult management, rather than catastrophe.” But he added: “Obviously, port congestion will be an issue depending on the version of Brexit.”
In September the National Audit Office warned ministers that plans for the continued export of animal products such as beef were far behind the needed schedule. After 29 March in a no-deal scenario, such products will require export health certificates (EHCs), which need to be signed by an official veterinarian after an inspection.
Potential delays in issuing EHCs could leave farmers with more livestock than expected and more manure than they can deal with. Last month a government air pollution strategy proposed in effect a ban on muck-spreading, where fields are sprayed with liquid manure.
First published on Sat 10 Nov 2018 21.00 GMT
Orpington is half an hour’s train ride from London and has all the characteristics of a suburban market town: independent shops, traditional English cafes and pubs. A little way down the road from its train station, a half-timbered house hosts the local Conservative Association. An enormous Jo Johnson banner is hoisted on the lawn outside, and his face stares down at drivers heading further south into Kent. Despite that, and the fact that it is less than 24 hours since this particular Johnson quit the government and worsened the Brexit crisis engulfing Theresa May, many of his constituents on the tree-lined high street don’t recognise his name.
At Reku Zen, an Asian restaurant, Denislav Ivanov, 24, is mopping floors. He’s only heard of the other Tory MP called Johnson. “The guy with the hair has a brother and he’s anti-Brexit?” asks Ivanov, incredulous. He thinks Brexit will be bad for our economy, but having moved around Europe since he left Poland, he isn’t worried about his own status. “I speak Spanish, I’m young – I’ll move to Spain,” he says.
Some of those who did know their MP by name had also clocked his resignation on Friday. “I heard him warning that Brexit will make the traffic in Dover get a lot worse, because of customs checks,” says Frieda McClorey, 85, as she waits for her bus. “I think he did the right thing in resigning. I voted to remain, even though many of my friends voted to leave. I’m hoping there will be another referendum,” she says.
Across the street, Charlotte Drake, 29, is taking a break from work as a mentor for the National Citizenship Project. She, like a majority of people in Orpington, voted Leave. She was and remains concerned about immigration. But Drake now thinks the Leave campaign made a lot of false promises. “A lot of people are changing their minds,” she says – but stops short of revealing her own hand.
If Jo Johnson’s resignation has the effect intended then it will accelerate the switch of views that Drake has noticed in this corner of Kent. Despite all the deep and bitter divisions at Westminster and across the country, and successive resignations from her government (Jo Johnson was the sixth minister to quit specifically over Brexit), Theresa May has always hung on in the belief that, when it came to the crunch moment, when a deal was on offer that would take the UK out of the EU on 29 March next year, her party and the country would unite sufficiently behind her to allow a withdrawal agreement to pass through parliament. The country would rally behind her vision of Brexit.
But instead, as people become more aware of what leaving the EU entails, many MPs believe the reverse may be happening. This weekend, with time running out, Tory Remainers and Brexiters are increasingly uniting – but in the opposite way to what the prime minister had hoped. More and more are speaking out against what is on offer – from their different sides of the Brexit ideological divide. The Johnson family is split between Brexiter Boris and the Remainers in the tribe, his brother Jo, sister Rachel, and father Stanley. But they agree on one thing: that May’s deal would be an appalling one for the country, leaving the UK with a far worse arrangement than if it remained in the EU.
With Labour committed to voting against any deal that does not meet its six tests, and Tory hard Brexiters led by Jacob Rees-Mogg threatening to vote her deal down, May’s hopes of winning an “approval motion” in parliament would appear to be fading fast. Ominously, too, the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs who prop up May’s administration are saying they will reject anything that might create a hard border in the Irish Sea.
Yesterday, Jo Johnson encouraged other Tory ministers to follow him out of the government if they feel as he does. “I think this is so important that it’s up to MPs to take a stand. I’ve done so; if others feel that it’s right for them to do so, good on them,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “This is one of the most momentous questions we will ever face in our political careers. And everybody is thinking very hard about it.”
He acted, he said, because he felt a duty to his constituents in Orpington. The motorways through Kent would become a giant lorry park and the economic damage would be felt by everyone. “My priority is really just to do my bit as a now backbench MP to try and encourage the country to pause and reflect before we do something that is irrevocably stupid.” Calling for a new referendum, the former transport minister added: “My view is that this is so different from what was billed that it would be an absolute travesty if we do not go back to the people and ask them if they actually do want to exit the EU on this extraordinarily hopeless basis.”
Yesterday, the former education secretary, Justine Greening, added to the sense of a Tory party at war, tearing into May’s proposed deal and saying it would achieve the precise opposite to what Eurosceptics had always wanted – a return of sovereignty to the UK from the EU. “The parliamentary deadlock has been clear for some time,” Greening said. “It’s crucial now for parliament to vote down this plan, because it is the biggest giveaway of sovereignty in modern times. Instead, the government and parliament must recognise we should give people a final say on Brexit. Only they can break the deadlock and choose from the practical options for Britain’s future now on the table.”
The Tory MP and arch-Remainer Anna Soubry spent much of yesterday talking to people in her constituency of Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire, including some previous hardline Brexiters, and said she had noted a swing in opinion. “There are people who were unflinching Brexiters, the true believers, who are now saying that rather than have this ghastly agreement, which is neither fish nor fowl, and with all the economic damage that would follow, we should think again and give people a chance to reject it. What Jo Johnson has articulated is what more and more people have been beginning to feel – that we cannot go ahead with this as it not what anyone, whatever their original views were, wants.”
With more Tory Remainers and Leavers now opposing her, May’s task is daunting. Downing Street’s immediate task is to get her deeply split cabinet to unite around the final unresolved element of a potential deal with the EU: the legally complex issue of how to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic after Brexit. Downing Street knows it is in a race against time. May is desperate to put a motion before the House of Commons before Christmas, in the hope that, somehow, it will pass. No 10 has pencilled in a cabinet meeting for early this week, probably on Tuesday. But disagreements remain among her most senior ministers over how the UK would exit from the so-called “backstop” agreement, under which the whole of the UK would remain in the EU customs union until a final UK-EU trade deal is struck. Several cabinet ministers are unhappy with what they fear will be fudged wording in the withdrawal agreement that fails to chart a clear path to exit the backstop. They want to see the full legal advice and want guarantees that the EU will not be able to prevent the UK breaking free from its system once and for all, so that it can strike its own trade deals.
Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt have concerns and others, like Penny Mordaunt, Esther McVey and Andrea Leadsom, have been considering their positions.
Downing Street is concerned not only about more ministerial and cabinet resignations, but also that if a deal is not done within the next fortnight, the whole timetable for pushing reams of withdrawal legislation through parliament before 29 March next year, will become too tight to manage.
The deal also has to satisfy the DUP’s 10 MPs. The unionists are deeply suspicious that what is being cooked up would create the hard border in the Irish Sea that they were promised would never be established as a result of Brexit and which they cannot accept, as it would separate Northern Ireland in a fundamental way from the rest of the UK.
The Tory whips know that any parliamentary vote on a Brexit deal will be too close to call. As result, they have been courting the support of Labour MPs in Leave constituencies who they think might back a half-decent deal, not least because their constituents are utterly fed up with waiting for the Brexit they voted for more than two years ago.
Brexit splits Labour, arguably, as deeply as the Tories. In addition to a handful of ardent Labour Brexiters such as Kate Hoey and Graham Stringer, who look certain to back May’s deal to get the UK out because that is what they have long wanted, there are a dozen or so others who may well be tempted to defy their own party whip and support the prime minister.
One is Gareth Snell, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, which voted 70:30 to leave. On Friday, in the centre of his constituency, the predominant view of voters was that MPs should hurry up with Brexit.
Sitting in the Potteries Pantry in the centre of Stoke on Friday, Paul Walker, a cleaner, said he was fed up with talk of delays and second referendums, because the country had huge problems with immigration that Brexit would help to sort out. “Just get on with it,” he said. “If we have another vote, there will be riots. Of all the promises they break, this would be the biggest of all.”
Snell will wait to see the deal on offer but says it is not out of the question that he could vote for what is put forward. “If the PM comes back with a customs deal that protects manufacturing and puts us on course for a proper trade deal, I think we should look at that because I am not sure we can get a better deal by 29 March next year.”
In another sign of Labour divisions, Jeremy Corbyn, himself a long-time critic of the EU, was coming under heavy criticism from Remainers in his own party after appearing to close off the option of a second referendum that might keep the UK in the EU.
Asked yesterday if he could agree with Johnson’s call for a new referendum, backed by many of his own Remain MPs, Corbyn said: “Not really, no. The referendum took place. The issue now has to be how we bring people together, bring people together around the principles of our economy, our rights and that we don’t turn this country into some kind of offshore tax haven on the lines that Donald Trump might want us to.”
As more than two years of Brexit negotiations near an end, Tories, Labour and the country seem more hopelessly divided, and in many cases, more unsure than ever.
Back in Orpington, Jo Johnson’s constituents have taken note and are thinking hard about the stand their MP has taken. Frances, 72, says: “I don’t know what I think any more. My husband and I both voted to leave because we don’t want to be ruled by Brussels. And I’m strongly against a European army. But I heard Jo Johnson resigned over Brexit, and it seems to me that it might come to another referendum because there’s no other way to resolve things. Theresa May is resolutely pushing on with whatever she wants to do regardless.
“If we do have another referendum, I’m not sure what I would vote for this time. The situation is so unstable, and I just want my children and grandchildren to have what is best for them.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Boris Johnson and the Conservatives are threatening to drive our country over a no-deal cliff edge in six weeks’ time. He has no mandate for that and is opposed by a majority of the public. Since he became prime minister in July, Johnson has been defeated on every vote he has put to parliament. Now his undemocratic manoeuvrings and his decision to close down parliament and avoid accountability are being challenged in the supreme court. Johnson’s visit to Luxembourg on Monday was a further humiliation. The prime minister went to Europe with no plan and no proposals, and did his best to hide from scrutiny while he was there.
Three years ago Johnson backed Brexit because he thought it would boost his political career – writing one article in favour of remain and another backing leave. Now he’s backing no deal because he thinks it’s politically expedient – to win back votes from the Brexit party and keep his Tory Brexit ultras on board. At the same time he needs to look like he’s trying for a deal to hold his cabinet and parliamentary party together.
There is nothing new in Johnson’s shenanigans. Theresa May signed up to contradictory red lines on Brexit to keep the Conservatives from falling apart, and David Cameron called the referendum in the first place to see off the threat from Ukip.
The Brexit saga of the past few years has been a litany of Tory failures, as one Conservative prime minister after another has put their own and their party’s interests before the interests of the people and our country. Now we face crashing out of the EU next month without a deal, just to save Johnson’s job. We know from Amber Rudd, who resigned from his cabinet this month, that there is little effort going into securing a deal with the EU – in fact it is hard to see any sign of real effort at all. That came after leaked reports that the prime minister’s negotiations are a “sham” and no deal is the real goal.
In the teeth of No 10 resistance, parliament secured the release of the confidential Yellowhammer papers, setting out the government’s preparations for no deal. The government’s own analysis found the UK would be at risk of food and medicine shortages, and face chaos at key ports. It also exposed that ministers had deliberately misled the public. They told us there would be no food or medicine shortages, when their own internal reports showed that there would be.
Yellowhammer has raised the stakes even higher. Johnson’s reckless no-deal Brexit would threaten jobs and living standards and increase food prices. And it would pave the way for a one-sided trade deal with Donald Trump that could only be negotiated from a position of weakness.
It would not be a no-deal Brexit, but a Trump-deal Brexit, with a race to the bottom in our rights and protections sold to US corporations.
Nor would no deal be a “clean break”, as some imagine. It would not mean we could “just get on with it”. In reality it would be the start of a whole new period of confusion and delay, as a string of new agreements would have to be hammered out with the EU – but this time against a backdrop of rising unemployment, deepening poverty, and entire industries moving offshore.
Labour will do everything necessary to stop a disastrous no deal, with all the chaos, disruption and job losses it would lead to – and the serious threat it would pose to the Northern Ireland peace process. That’s why we worked with other parties across parliament to pass a law to stop us crashing out at the end of next month.
But as soon as no deal is off the table, and the prime minister has complied with the law, we need a general election to get rid of Johnson’s Tory government. That election will be about much more than Brexit. It will be a choice between a Labour government that will put wealth and power in the hands of the many, and Johnson’s born-to-rule Conservatives who will look after the privileged few. It will be about who will truly end austerity and deliver the change Britain needs, invest in every region and nation of our country, and rebuild our public services, communities and industry.
The people of Britain deserve to have their say in a general election. Only a Labour government would end the Brexit crisis by taking the decision back to the people. We will give the people the final say on Brexit, with the choice of a credible leave offer and remain.
A Labour government would secure a sensible deal based on the terms we have long advocated, including a new customs union with the EU; a close single market relationship; and guarantees of workers’ rights and environmental protections. We would then put that to a public vote alongside remain. I will pledge to carry out whatever the people decide, as a Labour prime minister.
We are the only UK-wide party ready to put our trust in the people of Britain to make the decision. Johnson wants to crash out with no deal. That is something opposed by business, industry, the trade unions and most of the public – and even by the Vote Leave campaign’s co-convener Michael Gove, who said earlier this year: “We didn’t vote to leave without a deal.”
And now the Liberal Democrats want MPs to overturn the referendum result by revoking article 50 in a parliamentary stitch-up. It is simply undemocratic to override the decision of a majority of the voters without going back to the people.
Labour is the only party determined to bring people together, and give the people the final say. Only a vote for Labour will deliver a public vote on Brexit. Only a Labour government will put the power back into the hands of the people. Let’s stop a no-deal Brexit – and let the people decide.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
Opposition MPs are planning to seize control of parliament next week potentially forcing the disclosure of more government documents, bringing a motion to censure Boris Johnson and strengthening legislation against a no-deal Brexit.
A cross-party group of MPs met at Jeremy Corbyn’s office in Westminster to plan how to continue efforts to prevent a no deal Brexit, with discussions centred around how to use the time from Monday to Wednesday next week while Conservative MPs are in Manchester for their annual conference.
The group, which also included the Scottish National party’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, discussed whether to bring legislation to force Johnson to seek an extension to article 50 sooner than 19 October in order to rule out a no-deal Brexit immediately.
However, a decision was put off until a further meeting next Monday, amid concerns that 21 former Conservatives would not back it until Johnson had been given a chance to strike a deal with the EU at the 17 October summit.
Other ideas included a proposal by Plaid Cymru to bring a censure motion against Johnson. But the most likely option appeared to be a plan to take control of the order paper for SO24 emergency debates or more humble addresses in order to force the government to publish more documents, such as more Yellowhammer no-deal planning papers and the government’s legal advice on prorogation. These have the potential to embarrass Johnson ahead of an election.
 Corbyn committed to whipping Labour MPs to vote for a general election as soon as a Brexit extension was secured. “Once we have agreed on the extension and carrying out the law of this country, at that point, and I made that very clear in my conference speech, we will support a general election,” he said.
Government ministers have been instructed to go to Manchester for the party’s conference as usual, despite parliament having voted to continue sitting. The event, due to start on Sunday and continue until Wednesday, comes the weekend after Labour’s party conference in Brighton and two weeks after the Liberal Democrats held theirs in Bournemouth.
A government business motion for parliament to be adjourned at the end of the day on Thursday and resumed next Thursday was rejected by 306 to 289, a majority of 17. The prime minister said he was disappointed by the decision.
“For many years it has been the case that parliament has been in recess so that parties can hold their party conference,” Johnson’s spokesman said. “As the prime minister has made clear the Conservative party conference will go ahead as planned.”
The SNP’s Joanna Cherry said that “parliamentary democracy and scrutiny during the current constitutional crisis” should take precedence over the governing party’s conference. She echoed comments made by Corbyn on Wednesday, who said the prime minister must not be able to “run away from accountability yet again”.
A senior government source said there were no plans to change the date of the Johnson’s conference speech, which is scheduled for Wednesday, when prime minister’s questions are usually held. Another member of the government could therefore stand in for the prime minister in parliament.Seven of the 21 Tories who had the whip withdrawn over Brexit this month voted with the opposition to stop parliament being adjourned for the conference. Among them were the former cabinet ministers Ken Clarke, David Gauke, Justine Greening and Dominic Grieve. Amber Rudd, who resigned from her position as work and pensions secretary in solidarity with the 21, also voted against.
The meeting of opposition parties on Thursday took place the day after parliament was hastily reconvened following a decision by the supreme court that the advice the prime minister gave to the Queen on the prorogation of parliament was unlawful.
Speaking following the meeting, Corbyn expressed concern that Johnson had not given an explicit undertaking that he would abide by the so-called Benn Act, which is designed to force the prime minister to ask for an extension of article 50 if parliament does not pass a deal with the EU by 19 October.
He said the law was “not a matter of choice” for Johnson. “It’s an act of parliament that was passed,” said Corbyn. “We will be taking parliamentary action on this again next week to ensure that the prime minister does not crash us out of the EU on 31 October without a deal.”
Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader in the Commons, said Boris Johnson could not be allowed to “simply brush off breaking the law”. “Plaid Cymru will work with other opposition parties to hold him to account and are actively considering means in parliament that would see the prime minister censured,” she said.
The Green party MP Caroline Lucas tweeted an image of herself with other opposition politicians. “Away from the bombast and bullying of the prime minister, the real work goes on. MPs from across the house continue to meet to stop his disastrous crash-out Brexit,” she wrote. “This is what our politics should look like.”
A Plaid Cymru source said opposition MPs were getting on better than expected. “It surprises all of us how easy these meetings are,” they said.
First published on Fri 23 Mar 2018 06.00 GMT
Owen Smith has broken ranks with Jeremy Corbyn to reopen the question of whether Brexit is “the right choice for the country”, and urge Labour to offer the public a referendum on the final deal.
The shadow Northern Ireland secretary, who challenged Corbyn for his party’s leadership in 2016, was brought on to the Labour frontbench after last year’s general election.
He has argued strongly for Labour to back a customs union with the EU27, something that has now become party policy, but in an article for the Guardian, Smith says his party can only “serve democracy”, by recommending a poll on the Brexit deal.
“Labour needs to do more than just back a soft Brexit or guarantee a soft border in Ireland,” he argues.
“Given that it is increasingly obvious that the promises which the Brexiters made to the voters, especially, not only their pledge of an additional £350m a week for the NHS, are never going to be honoured, we have the right to ask if Brexit remains the right choice for the country. And to ask, too, that the country has a vote on whether to accept the terms and true costs of that choice once they are clear,” he says.
His intervention will reopen the split in Labour ranks, which has seen a series of rebellions in parliament since the referendum, including over customs union membership and the decision to trigger article 50, the formal process for leaving the European Union.
It is understood that Smith will probably be called in by Corbyn’s team and reminded of his responsibilities as a shadow cabinet member.
Similarly remain-minded Labour MPs were quick to praise Smith, with Chuka Umunna calling his argument “excellent”. Peter Kyle, the Hove MP, tweeted: “It’s a brave piece by a frontbencher, but this is exactly the time for bravery.”
After a fraught internal discussion, Corbyn recently announced that the frontbench had agreed on a carefully worded compromise drawn up by the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, which would see Britain remain in “a customs union” with the EU, and demand to be consulted on future trade deals with third countries.
Demanding a second referendum was the most distinctive policy position on which Smith fought his leadership bid.
He was convincingly defeated by Corbyn, but his views may chime with the party’s pro-remain base. When polled, members are strongly in favour of remaining in the single market and the customs union – and many would like to see Brexit stopped.
Corbyn has repeatedly insisted it is not Labour’s policy to offer voters a chance to consider the final Brexit deal at the ballot box – though he argues that if Theresa May loses the key vote in parliament on the agreement she would have little choice but to call a general election.
Smith says remaining in both the customs union and the single market are the only way of preventing what he warns would be the “hardest ever” border in Ireland.
“The damage a disorderly and ill-thought-out Brexit could do in Ireland is enormous. We are often told Brexit threatens to ‘reimpose’ a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland, but that understates the problem. Because the economic border that a hard Brexit would create on Ireland would be the hardest ever,” he says.
“If we insist on leaving the EU then there is realistically only one way to honour our obligations under the Good Friday agreement and that is to remain members of both the customs union and the single market. I’m pleased my party has taken a big step in this direction by backing continued customs union membership, but we need to go further.”
His remarks are likely to embolden members of the vociferous backbench campaign for Labour to support single market membership, chaired by MPs Heidi Alexander and Alison McGovern.
The policy of offering voters a say on the final Brexit deal has been championed by the Liberal Democrats. But at last year’s general election it appeared to have little traction with the public. The party, led at the time by Tim Farron, did increase its showing in parliament, from nine to 12 seats, but failed to make the gains it had anticipated by taking a vocal anti-Brexit stance.
First published on Wed 16 Oct 2019 16.01 BST
Boris Johnson is yet to win over some of those he expelled from the Conservative party to vote for his EU exit deal, including the former chancellor Philip Hammond, who fears doing so could lead to a much harder Brexit than expected.
Johnson will need the backing almost all of the 21 who had the whip removed, plus Eurosceptics and either the Democratic Unionist party or a bloc of Labour MPs, if he is to have a chance of passing any Brexit deal he achieves.
However, No 10 has yet to secure promises from many of the anti-no deal rebels that they will vote for an agreement. Senior government figures have been asking the former Tories what they would need to vote for a deal and prevent an extension, but many have worries about being pressed into voting for an agreement with insufficient scrutiny.
A source involved in the group led by the former chancellor Philip Hammond said: “There are versions of it that are pretty suboptimal. Philip, [David] Gauke, Amber [Rudd] and the others have said a few times this needs to be something that works for the whole of the UK, and if this breaches the union there will be some concerns about that.
“On some things there will be a strange sort of common concern that draws from the ERG to DUP to former Tory rebels along the lines of the union, perhaps for different reasons.
“I don’t think it’s a dead cert for any of them that they will vote for it … I will be very much studying the substance but there are concerns about the shape [of] what has been submitted so far. It is also that Theresa May made a commitment to parliament over its role on the future relationship and the big question will be: what shape does the political declaration take?
“They are only going on what they’ve read in the media, but none of them are people who will just vote for any deal. There are obviously different concerns within the group about what they want to see but it’s broadly along the lines of something that has to work for the whole of the UK.”
Hammond later told the BBC’s Andrew Neil he may not support Johnson’s deal. He said his mind was “certainly not closed to supporting a deal the PM brings back”, but he was worried about proposed changes to the political declaration that could lead to a more distant trading relationship with the EU in future.
“What I am hearing from Brussels is that the government is seeking to take out things from the future relationship,” he said. “I don’t think we can judge any package until we see the full package. We can’t even know what it will mean for Northern Ireland.
“If GB has tariff-free trade with the EU then goods from GB to Northern Ireland will flow freely, but if it doesn’t have tariff-free trade then there will be a hard border in the Irish Sea and that will be problematic.”
So far, only a handful of MPs, including Anne Milton and Caroline Nokes, have been invited into Downing Street for private talks on what they could accept. Others, such as Hammond and Gauke, have not yet been summoned.
Another source close to the 21 former Tory MPs said: “A deal for Northern Ireland and a very hard Brexit for the rest of the UK is much worse than what Theresa May got.”
Despite reservations, Margot James, a member of the group, said she would probably vote for the deal even though she has concerns about what is being proposed.
“I’m very keen to avoid leaving without a deal and therefore I will certainly give whatever proposals can be agreed with the European Union a very favourable look, no matter how many reservations I have about what I’m hearing,” the former business minister told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One.
“All I can say at the moment is I would give it the benefit of the doubt. I don’t want to vote against it, but yes I am very concerned.”
Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening and Guto Bebb are likely to vote against a Brexit deal unless it has a second referendum attached.
Grieve said on Wednesday that he would push for an extension to article 50 to go ahead regardless of whether the prime minister brings back the outline of a deal from the European summit this week.
“It’s clear that a final Brexit deal will not be agreed this week … That means the Benn act comes into play, and an extension to the article 50 deadline must be requested by law,” he said after meetings in Brussels.
There have been suggestions that the former Conservatives could have the whip restored if they vote for a deal, although Sam Gyimah has defected to the Liberal Democrats and is committed to a second referendum, while Rory Stewart is running as an independent to be mayor of London.
At the same time, Tory sources have suggested Eurosceptics who refuse to back any deal proposed by the prime minister could also have the whip removed.
James said it would be “good for them not to operate a system of double standards” and for No 10 to sack any Tories who do not back Johnson’s withdrawal agreement.
“I think that’s the thinking behind why the whip has not been offered back to us,” the independent MP said. “The government wants to make clear this is a highly disciplined environment and all members of parliament on the Conservative side should follow the Conservative whip in a vote as important as this one.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Parliamentary turmoil over Brexit has lasted almost 1,000 days and still the arguments rage. Last week saw a glimmer of a solution.
Strip away the theatrics and the parliamentary proceduralism and it became pretty clear what parliament voted for.
The Commons collective voice said no to leaving with no deal (backing the Spelman/Dromey amendment); no to delaying Brexit by nine months (rejecting Yvette Cooper’s); or two years (as put forward by Rachel Reeves). And it voted yes to renegotiating the backstop (the Graham Brady amendment). Though it was easy to miss, parliament approved the government proceeding on that basis. Notably, Labour’s front bench did not press the government’s motion to a division.
In summary, parliament voted to get a deal done, and done now.
You could be forgiven for not seeing that clearly, as some (including Guardian columnists) prefer to exaggerate the drama, presenting it as a battle between the delusional and the realists; demons versus angels; architects of disaster versus saviours.
Those are not the only distorting stereotypes: there’s also “we who know best” versus the poor working-class voters who do not know what is good for them; Hampstead versus Hartlepool; the liberal elite versus the common folk.
We are told history will damn the architects of Brexit. Does that include those who allowed a liberal free movement policy to be enacted, assuming a net benefit for UK plc but ignoring the growing concerns of the many? Why else was immigration among people’s top concerns by 2010? Why else did Ukip win the 2014 European elections? Why else did working-class people vote overwhelmingly for Brexit, including in those class-conscious mining communities?
Labour lost in 2015 and Harriet Harman was handed the leadership less than 24 hours later. Was she meant to reject David Cameron’s election pledge of a referendum? Does that make her an architect or just a realist?
In 2017, Labour’s first leaflet in the general election stated: “Theresa May wants to make this election a rerun of the EU referendum. But the decision to leave has already been settled by the British people.” Did Labour’s pledge to accept the referendum outcome make Jeremy Corbyn an architect of Brexit or a realist?
Too many people paint Brexit as a national disaster, a calamity, the end of all that is good. Others paint life after Brexit as nirvana; Britain great again; nothing but good times; the world to gain.
Both are delusional positions.
The public will make their own judgment on the political class. In 2017, I promised my voters that I would accept the referendum; I promised to work for the best deal for jobs for Doncaster and pledged to oppose a second referendum.
My Commons votes reflect this. Does that make me “fearful for my seat” or rather an MP with integrity upholding my own, and Labour’s, pledges?
I push back against those who want to leave with no deal, and against those who want a second referendum. Perhaps I will please no one in the end.
Would I be more honourable if I used parliamentary guile to frustrate Brexit? If I tabled motions to delay Brexit without any discussion with my Labour colleagues? If I courted the support of those I knew will never accept any deal in the hope of defeating Brexit?
Or is it more honourable to seek to drive Labour towards a second referendum while planning your departure to form a new party, post-Brexit?
And what of those of us who lobbied the government to secure guarantees on workers’ rights to improve a deal. Are we less honourable? Really?
Many Labour MPs are tired of the overbearing voice of some so-called people’s vote supporters on Labour’s benches who act like they have a monopoly on what is best for their constituents (and mine).
They view the Nissan decision not to build its X-Trail model in the UK as evidence of how stupid leave voters were. But what of the Financial Times’ headline from April 2018: “Total investment spending in the UK grew faster than in any of the other G7 large rich countries last year”? Or the dozens of major firms that have announced investments? None of these decisions are necessarily to do with Brexit.
A free vote on an improved deal would reveal a growing number of Labour MPs who want a deal. Who feel enough is enough. We’re tired of parliamentary games. Tired of being lectured. And tired of being accused of being “bribed” because we want the UK’s small towns to get a new deal after Brexit.
My vote is not for sale. It never was. But Doncaster’s firms need certainty; they need the transition to avoid a cliff edge; European citizens need assurance; and I want guarantees that workers’ rights and environmental standards are protected. All could be secured as part of, or alongside, a deal.
Those of us who wanted May to talk to Corbyn, to listen to Labour MPs, to ignore the extremes and to improve the deal are the majority in parliament.
And that majority will see the will of the people done.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
Senior figures in Change UK have expressed concern that the People’s Vote campaign may fall foul of electoral law, accusing key staff at the non-partisan campaign of taking orders from Labour.
Among those who have made complaints are the Change UK MPs Chuka Umunna, formerly of Labour, and Anna Soubry, a former Tory, both founding members of the campaign.
The Guardian understands that other parties, including the Lib Dems, have also expressed concerns about how the campaign has portrayed Labour’s position on a second referendum.
Senior figures in the People’s Vote campaign include Alastair Campbell and Tom Baldwin, Ed Miliband’s former spokesman.
The allegation has been fiercely disputed by the People’s Vote campaign, which said it had repeatedly criticised Labour’s position on Brexit for being too weak. It denied that the party had had undue influence in its campaign.
The row spilled into the open last week after senior People’s Vote staffers were accused of persuading a pro-remain activist, Femi Oluwole, to drop his independent candidacy in the Peterborough byelection, where he would have been backed by Change UK, the Lib Dems and the Green party. A Change UK source said the candidate was “subject to the most extreme pressure by Labour figures in the People’s Vote campaign”.
“The members of staff of the PV campaign are supposed to be independent, non-partisan and cross-party,” the source said. There’s a legal obligation on them to be so because otherwise under electoral law their spending could be deemed to be part of the Labour party’s spending.”
Senior sources close to the discussions alleged that People’s Vote staffers threatened to expel Oluwole’s grassroots campaign Our Future, Our Choice (OFOC) from the People’s Vote coalition of organisations.
That allegation was robustly denied by sources in the People’s Vote campaign, who claimed Oluwole was merely warned that OFOC would not be able to be part of a non-partisan campaign if he stood for election and that it could fall foul of data protection rules if he attempted to use supporters’ data for his election.
Change UK sources said a number of complaints had been made about the perceived reluctance of the People’s Vote campaign to criticise Labour’s position on Brexit. “There are big questions over its impartiality,” one Change UK source said. “A number of parties now have complained about the extent of that Labour influence.”
Another issue that has raised the hackles of pro-remain parties including Change UK and the Lib Dems is the “People’s Vote test” on the campaign’s website, which gives Labour a tick for supporting a referendum.
“Who in all seriousness would do that, given what their manifesto says?” the Change UK source said. “In all credibility, you could not describe the Labour party as a People’s Vote party … but the People’s Vote campaign persist in doing this – at the behest of the Labour-orientated people running the organisation. It’s becoming a real problem.”
Oluwole has said it was his decision alone not to stand in Peterborough. “There was a very real possibility that my taking part in that byelection would take votes from Labour and help Nigel Farage, via his Brexit party candidate,” he said. “Second, my gut was screaming: Femi, you’re not from Peterborough. The people of Peterborough deserve an MP who knows them and their city.”
A People’s Vote spokesperson said: “The People’s Vote campaign is not and never will be a political party. We are navigating the European parliamentary election as a cross-party campaign and, of course, we won’t always do everything in a way that pleases everyone.”
The spokesman said the website, campaign literature and press releases described Labour’s policy as “mealy-mouthed” and “lukewarm”, but the party had “done the bare minimum needed to scrape a pass on a People’s Vote test because it backs giving the public the final say on the government’s Brexit deal – which is the only one currently on the table.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.44 GMT
The troubled People’s Vote campaign is to begin spending a £1m election war chest this week despite a continuing internal feud in part about whether it should back more Labour candidates.
More than half of the anti-Brexit campaign’s staff are still on strike after the its chairman, Roland Rudd, sacked its chief executive, James McGrory, and its director of communications, Tom Baldwin, over strategy.
The campaign is, however, ploughing on with its attempt to influence the election by backing dozens of pro-EU MPs with thousand of pounds worth of funding. Despite its well-publicised infighting, the campaign says it has received £200,000 in donations in the last two days.
The first recipient is set to be the former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, who is standing as an independent in his Beaconsfield constituency following his expulsion from the Conservative party over Brexit.
Others receiving cash will be candidates on the People’s Vote list of 100 marginal seats where it plans to tell remain supporters to vote tactically. Opponents of the strategy say that in some of these seats the campaign has shifted away from backing Labour candidates based on polling from the Best for Britain campaign rather its own research.
The campaign’s official tactical voting recommendations are also due to be published this week.
Patrick Heneghan, the new chief executive of the People’s Vote, said the campaign would “strain every sinew to stop Boris Johnson getting a majority”.
“We will be encouraging voters to get out in record numbers and back the candidate in each constituency with the best chance of defeating the Conservatives provided, at minimum, they support a People’s Vote.”
The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, who backs a second referendum, urged the campaign to act on its own data. She told the Observer: “This election, there will be a big tactical vote for Labour by those who want to stop Boris Johnson forcing his hard Brexit and a new era of austerity on our country. Liberal Democrat boasts that they can win hundreds of seats are not supported by the independent analysis done by the People’s Vote campaign.”
The Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, suggested talks over a “remain alliance” are continuing, after a report in the Sunday Times said a pact could be formed in up to 60 constituencies
Swinson said the numbers were not accurate, but the concept of an alliance still stands among parties who want to prevent Brexit.
In the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection in Wales the Greens and Plaid Cymru stood down for the Lib Dem candidate, Jane Dodds, who went on to win. The area voted almost exactly 52% leave to 48% remain.
The Lib Dems have already been announced that they will not field a candidate against Grieve in Beaconsfield.
The party has also called for the rules on leaders’ debates in elections to be written into law. This follows comments from Swinson that her exclusion from debate slots on prime time television was sexist.
In an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News, she said: “If you look at the 2010 election and the run-up to that election, the Liberal Democrats were polling a similar amount as we are now, actually we are now much closer to the other parties in terms of the poll rating and in that election we had Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Spot the difference.”
Ed Davey, the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, said: “It should not be in the gift of any political party to decide whether the public deserve the opportunity to scrutinise those who seek to lead this country. That is why TV debates should be mandatory, and the format should be decided by an independent commission.
“The current situation in which the Labour and Conservative parties stitch up how debates work is utterly intolerable.”
Davey’s comments come after ITV’s decision that its leaders debate would be a head-to-head involving Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson.
The Lib Dems have 19 seats in the current parliament. Swinson said: “I think it’s fair to say that in the vast majority of constituencies the party of remain that is going to be best placed to win that seat would be the Liberal Democrats but it is not universally the case.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Philip Hammond has said the government will have to abandon the economic plans he will lay out in Monday’s budget, supposedly marking the end of austerity, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
In an interview with Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, the chancellor said the proposals being announced on Monday afternoon were based on the assumption that there would be a Brexit deal and that, if that turns out to be wrong, there would have to be a new, emergency budget.
In a strong hint that this would involve significant tax cuts, pushing the UK toward a so-called Singapore-style economic model, Hammond said the government would need a “different strategy for the future”.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said he was shocked by the remarks, which he said showed Hammond was reverting to a plan first floated in January 2017 to turn the UK into a corporate tax haven in the event of the EU refusing to cooperate on a trade deal.
Hammond said in his interview that he was very confident the UK would negotiate a deal with the EU including “frictionless access to European markets on a reciprocal basis”.
When asked what would happen if there was no deal, he replied: “If we don’t get a deal, if we were to leave the European Union without any deal – and I think that’s an extremely unlikely situation but of course we have to prepare and plan for all eventualities as any prudent government would – if we were to find ourselves in that situation then we would need to take a different approach to the future of Britain’s economy.
“Frankly we’d need to have a new budget that set out a different strategy for the future.”
Asked if there would be less money available for government departments, he replied: “We would have to wait and see what the situation was. If we left the European Union without a deal we would want to see how markets and businesses and consumers responded to that.
“And then, as any responsible government would, we would take appropriate fiscal measures to protect the economy, to prepare us for the future and to strike out in a new direction that would ensure that Britain was able to succeed whatever the circumstances we found ourselves in.”
Hammond did not elaborate on the fiscal measures he might introduce, but economists expect he would introduce substantial tax cuts, funded by borrowing, to minimise the risks of recession, as the Labour government did in 2008 when it slashed VAT.
Nor did the chancellor spell out on Sky what he meant by a different economic strategy in the event of a no-deal Brexit, but he seemed to be referring to a move towards a low-tax, low-spending, low-regulation economic model of the kind favoured by some Brexiters on the Conservative right.
He floated the option last year, but ministers have played it down more recently, stressing their commitment to maintaining workers’ rights and the welfare state.
Asked later in a BBC interview if his alternative strategy would involve a Singapore approach, Hammond said: “What I was saying [in January 2017] was nothing other than a statement of the blindingly obvious. If our businesses are no longer able to trade with European Union neighbours, if their supply chains are cut off, they will have to find different markets and different ways of doing business.
“And of course the government, any government, would want to support them in doing that and ensure that we do everything we can to facilitate what will be a very big transition in the way the UK economy works.”
Hammond also declined to reject outright a suggestion that, even if there is a deal, the UK would be worse off after Brexit. When it was put to him that this would be the case even under the government’s Chequers plan, he said having a deal with low friction at and behind borders would “minimise any negative effect on the UK”.
McDonnell said Hammond “seems to have accepted a no-deal Brexit, and he does want us to be like Singapore, a tax haven, which will undermine our manufacturing and I think put people’s living standards at risk”.
First published on Sat 24 Nov 2018 07.00 GMT
The man relied on by Brexit supporters to underpin the economic arguments for leaving the EU has said the UK would be better off staying in the club rather than accepting the prime minister’s Brexit plan.
Shanker Singham admitted “there’s no point leaving the EU” because the opportunities he had envisaged will have been lost. “The upside and the opportunity … disappears, and you’re left only with a damage limitation exercise,” he said.
His remarks, made in an interview before the prime minister announced her proposed EU deal, echo those made by the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, who on Friday told the BBC’s Today programme that May’s proposal was inferior to EU membership. They follow statements from other senior Brexit-supporting MPs including Iain Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson conceding the same point.
“I’m not going to advocate staying in the EU but if you just presented me terms, this deal or EU membership – we’d effectively be bound by the same rules without a control or voice over them – yes, I think this would be even worse than that,” Raab said.
Singham repeated his concerns in an email on Friday. “From a trade policy perspective this is a worse situation than being in the EU,” he wrote.
Singham is a former Washington trade lawyer and lobbyist who was described by Michael Gove as the UK’s “leading expert on trade deals.” Gove has cited his work in parliament as evidence that Brexit could benefit the entire world and Singham’s proposals for a hard Brexit were applauded by Johnson in a speech to Conservative party conference.
Singham was also invited to a committee of experts on trade by international trade secretary Liam Fox — he later resigned to join the lobbying firm Grayling - and controversially held multiple unminuted meetings with former DExEU minister and anti-EU campaigner Steve Baker.
However, his views have been rubbished by other experts and his credentials have been under scrutiny. Singham agreed to be interviewed after the Guardian challenged him over what appeared to be exaggerated descriptions of his academic and professional record.
He has been widely described as an economist though he does not have an academic degree in the subject. A Facebook profile says he studied law and economics at Oxford. However, his degree there was in chemistry and he completed postgraduate law courses at other institutions. Singham said he did create the profile but had not used it for many years.
A biography of Singham distributed by a former employer in the US described his work as “assisting governments in the early privatisations during the Thatcher administration …” and Singham has mentioned his work on privatisations in the 1980s in a public speech.
However, Singham’s career did not begin until 1992, two years after Thatcher left power. Singham denied that this could be misinterpreted and said the privatisation was ongoing in nature. He added that he worked on UK privatisation issues, including relating to water and gas, from 1993 to 1995. He said he had not signed off the former employer’s biography.
“I have worked hard over the last 25 years to build up a career in trade and competition policy that is second to none,” he said.
He said he was “deeply frustrated” by the prime minister’s decision to effectively ignore his proposals. “I see there are huge opportunities and I also see them just disappearing,” he said.
He argued that failure to pursue an independent trade policy for the UK defeated the purpose of leaving the EU. “I think the prime minister genuinely believes that her proposals preserve an independent trade and regulatory policy, and I think she’s wrong,” he said.
“If the UK is simply a mini version of the EU, then it will be irrelevant to all of these discussions [about trade]. The upside and the opportunity disappears and you’re left only with a damage limitation exercise. As we’ve said repeatedly in the last few months to the government, if this is what you’re going to do, there’s no point leaving the EU. You may as well stay in the EU.”
Singham also criticised the government for suggesting Brexit would be painless and without disruption to the UK’s existing relationships. Similar suggestions have been made by pro-Brexit campaigners.
The government is “constantly suggesting it can be completely frictionless, [that] there can be no costs of disruption, and that’s just not true,” he said. “There will be costs and disruption, but my point is if you do this right, the benefits of an independent trade and domestic regulatory policy will far outweigh any of those costs of disruption.”
Singham is currently director of international trade and competition policy at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market thinktank that has attracted controversy for refusing to identify its financial backers.
Earlier this year, Unearthed, an investigations unit set up by Greenpeace, covertly recorded footage which appeared to show the IEA’s chief executive Mark Littlewood offering to arrange meetings with cabinet ministers to potential US donors.
According to the footage, Singham arranged for a businessman and a lobbyist to meet Baker when he was Brexit minister at the IEA’s offices. They also met Jacob Rees-Mogg with Singham at a meeting in parliament of the European Research Group of anti-EU MPs. The IEA says it observes all fundraising rules for charities and has denied any wrongdoing.
Before joining the IEA, Singham worked at another thinktank, the Legatum Institute. He departed after the charity commission required the institute to take down one of his reports on Brexit, which it deemed to have crossed a line into political campaigning.
Singham and the IEA both fiercely deny that their work constitutes lobbying. “If I wanted to just lobby for client interests, then I would have stayed being a partner in a law firm,” Singham said.
While he has many supporters, Singham has critics who say he does not grasp how tough trade negotiations really are. David Henig, a civil servant who worked for seven years until recently as a trade expert for the British government and as an intermediary between the EU and the US, said he thought Singham’s proposals contained “a bit of knowledge and an awful lot of bluster, lots of technical language that doesn’t add up to anything particularly”.
Singham reluctantly voted remain because he thought the disruption caused by departure would be too great. The result of the referendum was, however, “a massive global event”, providing an opportunity to kickstart stalled global free trade talks.
Privately educated at St Paul’s School in London before studying at Balliol College in Oxford, Singham left university with a third class degree in chemistry. His true passion was athletics. “That literally was all I cared about,” he says. “I think if I’d done any subject it would have been the same.” After rupturing both achilles tendons (“my body was not designed to run as fast as I was trying to make it run”) he was forced to rethink his future and alighted on a career in the law.
His main preoccupation is removing regulations that he says are used as barriers to trade, such as some of the EU rules on food safety, chemicals and pharmaceuticals licensing, and caps on financial services. Trade justice campaigners such as Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, have described his proposals as “pure shock doctrine”, outlining a neoliberal agenda to break rules designed to protect the public, privatise welfare services including the NHS and remove post-crash curbs on finance.
Singham sees it differently, arguing that liberalised markets create opportunity and that free trade can restore faith in liberal democracy. “If we can’t say to people ‘we can protect you from competition that is unfair’,” he says, “they will choose a protectionist, populist leader to protect them from everything. That is why they elected Donald Trump, I think. That is why populism in Europe is so strong. And arguably you could say that is part of the reason for the Brexit vote.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Pro-Remain MPs are drawing up plans for a vote on revoking article 50 as an emergency measure to stop Britain crashing out of the EU, after an online petition to cancel Brexit became the most popular ever.
By Saturday night more than 4.6 million people had signed the petition on the parliament website, which states: “A People’s Vote may not happen – so vote now”.
Public discussion about halting Brexit was considered politically toxic until just days ago. But that shifted last week as the prospect of crashing out drew closer and the number of petition signatures rose dramatically.
A cross-party group of parliamentarians is now examining the possibility of cancelling the Brexit process, following concerns that Theresa May could end up backing Tory MPs who favour a no-deal departure if her own withdrawal agreement is rejected again. They are planning to table an amendment to Brexit legislation closer to the day of Britain’s scheduled departure from the EU.
The European court of justice ruled late last year that Britain could unilaterally revoke article 50, although not just to buy time. Writing on theguardian.com, the Tory MP Phillip Lee said that the people had to be given an opportunity to reconsider Brexit and that one way of allowing this to happen would be to revoke article 50. “Mrs May should ensure that the UK has the time and the space to do this in a properly considered way – either by seeking a long extension of article 50, or by taking back control and revoking it altogether.”
The petition to revoke is now both the most popular since parliament set up the online site, and has also been signed at the fastest rate. Parliament is now obliged to consider it for debate, but MPs see the timing of announcing any bid to revoke article 50 as crucial.
The petition was boosted by celebrities including Hugh Grant, Jennifer Saunders and Brian Cox. The woman who created it said on Saturday that she had faced a huge volume of online abuse, three death threats by phone, and would be closing her Facebook account after it was hacked.
Margaret Georgiadou, 77, was “shaking like a leaf” after the phone threats, she told the BBC. She also said she had no memory of old posts she allegedly made on social media, using threatening language about the prime minister. “It must have been a cut and paste job,” she said. “The dates were all wrong.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Pro-remain MPs are planning a crunch vote on a second referendum during the “super Saturday” sitting of parliament, as Jeremy Corbyn comes under intense pressure from senior allies to back another Brexit vote before an election.
Several MPs involved in the People’s Vote campaign said the special parliamentary session on 19 October could be the key moment when the House of Commons will test whether there is support for a second referendum.
Speaking in Northampton, Corbyn brushed off a suggestion that Labour should be pushing for a second referendum before an election. Asked whether another referendum should come first, he said: “A second referendum is what we propose under a Labour government, which would be, as I have said, not a choice between a no-deal cliff edge but between an intelligent arrangement with the European Union and remain.”
There are several stages yet to conclude before the circumstances of the Saturday sitting become clear, chiefly whether Boris Johnson manages to get a deal from the EU summit on 17 and 18 October. Pro-remain MPs could try to attach a confirmatory referendum on to any deal he secures. If no deal is agreed, the rebels have the option of trying to table Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement bill from the backbenches with a second referendum promised on the face of the legislation.
One source with knowledge of cross-party talks said there were “four or five plans floating around” but there was a possible alliance for a confirmatory vote emerging between supporters of a second referendum, pro-deal Labour MPs and Tories or former Tories nervous about the prime minister winning an election on a no-deal Brexit platform.
Peter Kyle, one of the Labour MPs behind the Kyle-Wilson amendment seeking a confirmatory referendum on a deal, said: “We are very clearly in the end game. We are prepared for any eventuality – a motion, an amendment or a more novel move. Saturday 19 will be a key moment because it is after the EU summit. In the absence of Boris Johnson being capable of delivering the deal he promised, it’s blindingly obvious that the next best option is the one that already exists or a similar version of it.
“Parliament might well want to re-examine that. If Boris Johnson comes back empty-handed, then parliament will be forced to be the grown-up in the room and find a workable proposition.”
He said it would be “irresponsible” for Labour to agree to an election before a second referendum on a deal has resolved the Brexit issue.
Hilary Benn, the Labour MP and chair of the Brexit committee, also said the 19 October sitting would provide an opportunity for those pushing for a second referendum.
He told the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “If parliament is going to be meeting we have shown our capacity as parliamentarians to take control of the order paper, so we won’t be meeting just to sit and see what the prime minister has in store for us, this is an opportunity – if we can get a majority, and that is a big if – for parliament to say we can find a way forward, a confirmatory referendum is the way to do it, let’s go and ask the British people finally to take the decision.”
Labour would be crucial in this plan, with Corbyn already coming under huge pressure from senior shadow cabinet ministers to back a second referendum before agreeing to an election, especially when the party is not performing well in the polls.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, went public with her concerns in an interview on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show on Thursday.
“My concern about if we had a general election, is it would be a kind of quasi-referendum, that it would be all about in or out, what kind of deal, and so to a certain extent I can see the sense in trying to have a referendum first. But it’s really just a question of how can we do that in practice,” she said.
Corbyn had flatly rejected the idea when it was proposed last month by his deputy, Tom Watson. But since then, members of his shadow cabinet have raised concerns that an early election could be a “trap” that lets Johnson dominate on the issue of Brexit.
The shadow cabinet is due to tackle the timing of a general election again next week, after an inconclusive discussion this week.
Corbyn himself appeared “gung ho” about an election, according to one close ally. But several other shadow ministers, including Keir Starmer and John McDonnell, have struck a more cautious note.
There was also a “strong hint” that those who favour a referendum before a general election plan to press for it in parliament, according to one person present at the meeting.
Labour insiders say the push for a second referendum before an election has been made easier by the moving of Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s chief of staff, out of the leader’s office and into an election role at party HQ. She was among those who were keen to see an early general election, as well as being sceptical about the party adopting a remain stance. One described it as a “game-changer” for those trying to shift Corbyn towards a more unequivocally pro-remain position.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
The Conservatives’ chances of retaining the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency in a byelection at the start of next month have slimmed after other pro-remain parties opted to stand aside to give the Liberal Democrat challenger a free run.
The Green party and Plaid Cymru said they had decided to not stand candidates in the Welsh seat on 1 August in the hope of maximising the vote for Jane Dodds, the Lib Dem hopeful.
The byelection was called after voters signed a recall petition against the incumbent Conservative MP, Chris Davies, who was convicted of submitting fake expenses documents. The petition was signed by 10,005 people, 19% of registered voters, well above the 10% threshold needed for a recall.
The Conservatives have since announced that Davies will stand again, while the Brexit party is also putting up a candidate, further boosting the chances of the Lib Dems regaining a seat they held from 1997 to 2015.
The Lib Dems are privately hopeful about winning the seat, which would instantly cut the effective working majority of the new Conservative prime minister to just three.
Jo Swinson, the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, who is standing as a candidate to replace Vince Cable as leader, tweeted her thanks to Plaid Cymru and the Greens, saying: “Putting the needs of the country above party politics takes courage.”
Adam Price, the leader of Plaid Cymru, told the BBC the decision was not easy, but had been “the right thing to do”.
He said: “We are facing one of the most significant decisions, as to whether we are going to be seemingly yanked out of the European Union even without a deal. Under those circumstances it is in Wales’s interest and our common interest to work together and coalesce the support for the remain side in Wales.”
Both Price and Cable said similar pacts were likely in future. “There is no doubt that the co-operation that this is generating could well lead to wider measures,” Cable told the BBC.
Davies secured a majority of just over 8,000 in the 2017 general election, with the Lib Dems in second, Labour third and Plaid Cymru fourth. In the byelection, the Brexit party is putting up a candidate who would be expected to take some Conservative votes.
The idea of left-leaning or anti-Brexit parties standing aside for each other to avoid splitting the vote under the UK’s first-past-the-post parliamentary election system – known as a progressive alliance – was mooted before the 2017 election.
While a handful of candidates did step aside, the idea proved difficult to implement more widely, with parties often loth to order long-established activists to give up their hope of fighting the election.
First published on Mon 2 Sep 2019 20.55 BST
Rebel Conservatives were defiant on Monday night about Boris Johnson’s threats of deselection and an early general election, with at least 17 Conservative MPs saying privately or publicly that they have not been deterred from voting to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, voiced unease at the persuasion tactics being used to deter votes on a proposed bill to stop no deal. She said removing the whip was a “drastic step” and she had made clear to Johnson that she did not agree with threats. She added that sanctions should also apply to Brexiter MPs if they voted against a future deal.
“We should not be a party that is trying to remove from our party two former chancellors, a number of ex-cabinet ministers … the way to hold our party together and to get a deal is to bring them onside and explain to them what we’re trying to do and why,” she said.
“I don’t think it’s fair either to consider removing the whip from a group of people who oppose no deal – which is not the government position – but is a legitimate Conservative position and not to remove the whip from people who have consistently voted against the withdrawal agreement and may yet vote against the agreement that Boris Johnson brings back before 31 October.”
The former chancellor Philip Hammond wrote to Johnson on Monday saying the rebel group regretted they had not been able to discuss any progress towards a Brexit deal with him – after a planned meeting with the prime minister was abruptly cancelled on Sunday night.
Johnson has said that MPs are fundamentally undermining the government’s negotiating position with a bid to stop no deal, stressing that talks are progressing.
But Hammond said Johnson must set out the steps taken since his visit to Berlin last month to draw up alternative arrangements to the Northern Ireland backstop and publish the UK’s proposals for revisions to the withdrawal agreement.
Hammond, whose name is on the anti-no-deal bill set to be presented to parliament this week, said the prime minister must confirm those proposals had been communicated to the EU and commit to publishing the response, as well as setting out the “specific progress” in talks with the EU.
MPs who have said they are undeterred by the threats from the government include Hammond, the former justice secretary David Gauke and the former ministers Alistair Burt, Stephen Hammond, Richard Harrington and Guto Bebb.
Some Tory MPs met on Monday afternoon in a Portcullis House office in Westminster to discuss Tuesday’s vote, with at least one deciding not to attend Johnson’s No 10 garden party for MPs which was held at the same time. “Who wants to stand around surrounded by a gang of English nationalists?” the MP said.
None of the expected rebels had been approached by the whips by Monday afternoon. One said he had learned of the government’s plan to sack MPs who failed to vote with Johnson by reading a news website.
“No 10 has left many of us with little choice but to go into the chamber prepared to vote against the deal. But there is an expectation that the whips will try to win over some individuals … with the usual mix of threats and promises,” an MP said.
Another said Johnson could face a backlash from some remain constituency parties if they try to impose a pro-no-deal MP during an election.
One source close to the rebel group said the mood had hardened, especially since briefing began that Johnson was planning a snap election after MPs were deselected. “This is a pathetic attempt to find an excuse for a general election,” one former cabinet minister said. “Ironically this is doing what Corbyn wants – is Dominic Cummings a sleeper agent?”
Others said they had been explicitly turned against the government because of the shock cancellation of the meeting with Johnson. “The only thing that would change my mind is if I was shown detail of a deal that is being brokered,” one former minister said. “But it is like the emperor’s new clothes.”
However, several Tory MPs who have been vocally against no deal are not prepared to vote to give the rebels control of the order paper, especially given the briefing from No 10 that this move would be seen as a confidence vote against Johnson.
The Guardian understands this group includes MPs such as Dame Caroline Spelman, one of the sponsors of a motion against no deal earlier this year, and the former foreign office minister Alan Duncan.
Tory whips are attempting to draw a distinction between MPs who are voting with their conscience to stop no deal and those who will vote to hand control of the order paper to rebel and opposition MPs in order for a bill to pass.
It is the latter group that No 10 says it believes are in effect voting against the government in a confidence vote – by taking the power to control parliamentary business away from a Conservative administration – and it is those MPs who will lose the whip.
Senior Tory sources said they believed it was possible to significantly reduce the number of rebels with the threats of an election and a confidence vote – and that there could be enough Labour Brexiteers to deliver a victory for the government.
However, it is understood a number of Labour MPs who have in the past voted against moves to derail Brexit, including Gareth Snell, Melanie Onn and Yvonne Fovargue, are not planning to defy the Labour whip.
“I think there are a number of us who will back another delay with gritted teeth and with no optimism but watching how this government is behaving, it is extremely hard to believe they are pursuing any meaningful Brexit deal,” one Labour MP said.
“Many more of us could possibly vote for a Brexit deal now if one was on the table but we see no evidence that is realistic and we believe no deal would be deeply damaging.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.56 GMT
The EU is war-gaming for the fall of Theresa May amid a complete collapse in confidence in the prime minister after a week of chaos over Brexit, a leaked document seen by the Observer reveals.
In the run-up to a crucial summit of EU leaders where May will ask for a delay to Brexit, Brussels fears there is little hope that she will succeed in passing her deal this week and is preparing itself for a change of the guard in Downing Street.
A diplomatic note of a meeting of EU ambassadors and senior officials reveals an attempt to ensure that any new prime minister cannot immediately unpick the withdrawal agreement should May be replaced in the months ahead. Some hardline Brexiters want to replace her with a leader who will back a harder split with Brussels.
According to the minutes, the European commission’s secretary general, Martin Selmayr, who is known as a master of strategy, asked: “Imagine that they have a new Brexit secretary or prime minister – what then? Article 50 has been agreed and the process has ended. It must be clear that the starting point is not a renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement.”
The moves in Brussels come before another critical and highly unpredictable week in the Brexit process in which May is expected to launch her third attempt to secure support for her beleaguered deal. The Observer understands that Labour will use the opportunity to offer its most strident support yet for a second referendum, by voting for a plan drawn up by two Labour backbenchers to put May’s deal to a public vote.
Cabinet ministers remained locked in talks this weekend with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist party, who are seen as vital in building a narrow majority for May’s deal and who said on Saturday that there were “still issues to be addressed”. And more Tory MPs currently opposing May’s Brexit deal have told party whips they would back it if the prime minister announced she would quit this summer.
The ebbing trust within her own party is matched by the mood in Brussels, where, according to the leaked notes, one diplomat said at the Friday meeting: “The clear feeling is that there is a complete lack of confidence in the British prime minister to deliver on this deal.”
The document indicates Selmayr argued for a shorter Brexit delay than the three-month period currently being suggested. He warned that it risked leaving the EU paralysed if British MEPs were not elected in May’s European parliament elections, but a new prime minister then revoked article 50 before July – when the European parliament first sits. “We should not run that risk,” he told the EU’s member states on Friday evening.
Selmayr further suggested that May would be asked to write into her letter of request for a delay that the UK would not interfere in long-term EU planning, such as the bloc’s budget, during the extra period of membership – and that this should apply to her “successors” in Downing Street.
There were glimmers of hope for May yesterday as some Tory rebels, including Daniel Kawczynski, a member of the European Research Group of hardline Brexiters, revealed they were preparing to back the deal. Senior government sources said it was possible that May would refuse to hold a further meaningful vote on her deal should there be no chance of success. However, she is likely to hold it on Tuesday.
DUP MPs and Tory Brexiters are being warned by whips that rejecting May’s deal a third time will lead to a big delay and a softer Brexit, almost certainly including a permanent customs union with the EU. The prime minister warned on Saturday night that a lengthy delay requiring Britain to field candidates in May’s EU parliament elections would be a “potent symbol of parliament’s collective political failure”.
Legal advice circulated at an EU meeting on Friday had seemingly opened the door to a Brexit delay until 1 July, when the new European parliament will sit for the first time. This would avoid the need for British MEPs to be elected in May.
However, it has now emerged that Selmayr advised the ambassadors that in such a scenario a new incumbent in Downing Street could revoke article 50 in the period between May and July, leaving the UK as a member state but without MEPs. This would leave the EU “paralysed” as its institution’s decision-making would be liable to legal challenge, the bloc’s legal experts warned.
The meeting also heard concerns that the prime minister would be unable to offer a clear reason for an extension after what they regard as a likely defeat in the third meaningful vote.
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said he “doubted” that the prime minister would be able to offer such clarity in time for a summit in Brussels on Thursday, where the bloc’s heads of state and government will discuss their reaction. An extension of article 50 will require unanimous support from the 27 leaders.
Selmayr also raised his doubts that May would be precise in her request, adding “she never has been before”. He warned that “meaningful vote three could become meaningful vote four” and go on indefinitely, but that repeated extensions were undesirable given the growing costs to businesses “either side of the channel”.
The French ambassador raised his concerns about the UK’s role in the EU during the extension, and explicitly voiced Paris’s doubts about the realism of a 21-month extension given that problem. Berlin said the EU should be as “flexible” as possible within the EU’s red lines.
This Saturday – with less than a week to go before the UK is due to leave the EU – hundreds of thousands of people are expected to join a march in favour of another public vote on Brexit. Michael Chessum, from the leftwing anti-Brexit movement Another Europe is Possible, said: “The protest next weekend could be the biggest in British history. It will change the whole atmosphere around the Brexit debate, and bring huge pressure to bear on parliament. The Labour movement and the left are mobilising in a way they haven’t before.” On Saturday a rival “March to Leave”, which will arrive in London on 29 March set off from Sunderland.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
Rory Stewart, the surprise star of the Tory leadership election, has said he would help organise an “alternative parliament” in order to stop a no-deal Brexit if the new prime minister tried to prorogue parliament in order to bypass MPs’ wishes.
The MP for Penrith and the Border, whose campaign featured a series of walkabouts around the country to gauge public opinion on Brexit, also accused fellow no-deal opponents who are now supporting Boris Johnson of a destructive pessimism about their ability to change the Conservative party, or even win the next election.
Stewart said a former Speaker, such as Betty Boothroyd, could be enlisted to oversee a parliament continuing to sit in defiance of Boris Johnson if he presses ahead with a no-deal Brexit by seeking to prorogue the Commons, or to use some other “constitutional manoeuvre which means whatever legislation parliament tries to pass does not bind his hands”. He said any plan to prorogue parliament, an option still entertained by Johnson, would be a constitutional outrage.
“I think it does not work. I would simply work with colleagues simply to organise another parliament across the road. That sounds quite Civil War-ist, but that is what happened in 2002 when Blair tried not to have a vote on the Iraq war. MPs were invited to Church House, and Blair backed down. I got into a lot of trouble when I first proposed this, though it’s just a fact that parliament is not about [the] building. We can certainly find a retired Speaker to chair this.”
Discussing his plans to fight no deal, he said there is no majority in parliament for an option which he said would knock back economic growth over the next years.
“So I, David Gauke, Ken Clarke and, I guess, most of the people that supported me for the leadership will vote against a no-deal Brexit, and Johnson has only got a majority of two.”
Stewart, a foreign office minister during Johnson’s foreign secretaryship, also had a scathing assessment of his former boss’s leadership skills, saying: “He likes to be popular. I remember I had been pushing our ambassadors to be much more brutally honest about failure and the the weakness of British positions in their countries and he said: ‘Rory, I used to captain rugby teams and that is not how you do it. You say to them: “It is great, we can do this. We are great.”’ It’s the only time he told me off.”
Stewart continued: “I had said I did not want to receive any more telegrams saying ‘Another win for global Britain’ and he told me off: ‘No, you have got to build their morale and make them feel pumped up and feeling it’s going to be great. The more they say it is going to be great, the greater it is going to be.’”
Stewart commented: “My disagreement would be that international trade negotiations are not like a rugby match. It might work in 80 minutes and pump people up, but you cannot do tariff schedules on the basis of a rugby match.” Trade negotiations cannot be won on the playing fields of Eton, he said.
Admitting he is just starting to think through the idea of a centre movement led from within the Conservative party but open to others, he says: “There is a huge gaping hole in British politics. People are yearning for a centre ground somewhere between Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn.
“That is, for me, a lot of Labour and Lib Dem voters prepared to listen. My polling is strong among under-45s, in London and in Scotland. It is difficult to put a number on it, but I think there are tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands, who would have an appetite for that kind of movement or party.
“The centre has been allowed to be seen as a weak opt-out, a grey fudge, an averaging-out, rather than an independent place which has its own energy.”
He rejects the decision of some modernisers, such as the health secretary Matt Hancock and former chancellor George Osborne, to support Johnson, describing them as oddly pessimistic.
“What he and George Osborne [have] also done is rather extraordinary. Osborne is also theoretically a rampant remainer, but has just backed a no-deal Brexiter. I guess what they have all decided is that what matters is to be inside the tent peeing out, rather than being out of the tent peeing in, and someone like me is vaunting my principles but effectively surrendering any ability to change the world, and I am going to end up an an impotent backbencher.”
He continues: “I feel quite sad about people who are oddly pessimistic about their ability to change the world or to stop Boris winning, because of their inability to change the minds of Conservative association members. They are even pessimistic about winning another election. There is a fin de siècle feeling to the whole thing.”
He contrasts their actions with figures like David Gauke, the justice secretary, who has also rejected Johnson’s populism. “People like David, they have completely refused to make compromises. He is a real example of someone deeply, deeply loyal, a very practical politician, and he had reached the state where he decided: ‘I am not going to put up with this any more and I am going to speak the truth.’ He has thrown himself into the project of just telling the truth, and feels he is taking on populism.”
Stewart challenges the theory that politics has become so polarised by Brexit that his politics will gain no traction. He says: “The pollster John Curtice says that this this not just a issue of party members. It is question of the whole of British politics – that what was once a bell shape has turned into a U shape in which the extremes are popular.”
“Curtice would essentially say that I am fishing in a very shallow pool. I am not sure that is true or how permanent this state is.”
He insists he will resign as international development secretary if Johnson wins. “Unfortunately, the first thing that happens if Johnson wins is that I will lose my job, even though my last nine years had been spent building up to this.”
Instead, he says he will restart his “Rory walks” tours around the country, retelling conversation into an iPhone in social media messages that sometimes reach hundreds of thousands of people. He admits, with his trademark candour: “I am still thinking this through.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
The Conservative leadership outsider Rory Stewart, who has been unexpectedly catapulted into the next round of the contest, vowed that he would set up “an alternative parliament” if the frontrunner, Boris Johnson, suspends parliament to pursue a no-deal Brexit.
Stewart, who is understood to have drafted a concession speech before unexpectedly scraping through the first round on Thursday, earned one vote fewer than Matt Hancock and four less than Sajid Javid.
His campaign said it showed momentum was behind him due to his public appeal, despite being the lowest-scoring of the seven candidates to go through to the second round.
In a plea to supporters of Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove, Stewart’s backer, the justice secretary, David Gauke, suggested they would not have a chance of beating Johnson in the final round. “A safe pair of hands is not going to beat Boris Johnson,” he said.
Stewart said he was “absolutely over the moon” to have secured enough votes to go through and said he would be reaching out to “every single colleague” to persuade them to back him.
He said if Johnson attempted to prorogue parliament, he and other MPs would be prepared to “bring him down”. “If he were to try, I and every other member of parliament, will sit across the road in Methodist Central Hall and we will hold our own session of parliament,” he said.
Campaign sources for Hunt, Gove and Javid conceded there was now a race for second place behind Johnson, who won 114 votes, well ahead of his rivals. However, in the immediate aftermath, no campaign appeared willing to try to thrash out a consensus behind one candidate.
Gauke said colleagues who wanted to properly challenge Johnson should back Stewart because of his engagement with the public, demonstrated in a campaign that has been dominated by shaky handheld videos of Stewart meeting members of the public in different cities.
“Here, there is a comparison to be made with Boris – Rory has that ability to connect with the public, he has got that authenticity that the public respond to really well, and he is the one capable of causing surprises,” said Gauke.
“It’s very clearly going to be Boris versus someone else. Boris is the overwhelming favourite. Rory is an unconventional candidate and he is the only one who could pull off a surprise. He is the only other candidate that people are talking about in the supermarket queues.”
Gauke said he believed there was still “quite a lot of hidden support there for Rory”, who won votes from 19 Tory MPs – 12 more than had publicly declared support for him.
Stewart’s camp has also been buoyed by a poll of party members from ConservativeHome that put him as second favourite, albeit more than 40 points behind Johnson.
However, party critics have pointed out he has failed to gain any momentum from the bloc of party moderates, with most of his backing coming from personal friendships such as those with Gauke and the Tory grandee Nicholas Soames, as well as the handful of Tory MPs who have consistently opposed a hard Brexit.
“He may be hoping to pick up Matt [Hancock’s] support if he drops out of the race, but the reality is it would be humiliating to back the only candidate who got fewer votes than you,” one MP said.
“He is getting better polling because people are starting to know who he is. That does not mean MPs think he has any chance at all. And most MPs will not be around until the next round of voting, most will be trying to switch off their phones over the weekend and get away from all the horse trading.”
But Stewart’s backers believe he can capitalise on the planned TV debates, one of which is being hosted by Channel 4 on Sunday. Johnson’s team has not confirmed whether he will take part, though the pressure on him from his rivals is mounting.
Amber Rudd, Hunt’s most high-profile backer, said it was essential that candidates committed to taking part in public debate. “I want them all to do the TV debates. Jeremy has said he wants to participate, he’s still in negotiations, but the key thing is that all the candidates get out to TV debates,” she said.
“I keep on saying the fact is, the Conservative party needs to remember that we’re not just choosing a leader, we’re choosing a prime minister, and the public need to see them. I think they’ve got a duty to do it – to be publicly interrogated.”
It is unclear, however, whether Hunt will take part in a debate if Johnson does not attend. Sources close to the foreign secretary have said he believes all candidates should take part – but would not commit to participating if his closest rival is empty-chaired.
In a video thanking supporters, Gove said there should be a “proper debate about ideas” in the party, suggesting he too would be piling pressure on Johnson to take part in the debates.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
Russia is among 20 countries that are looking to squeeze a commercial advantage from Brexit after blocking an attempt by the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, to fast-track a World Trade Organization deal on the UK’s terms of trade with the world.
Whitehall is now facing “up to two dozen” different negotiations with countries over how much meat and dairy produce will be permitted into the British market and what tariffs the UK will set on imports.
The development will pile pressure on the UK’s already strained resources. The Department for International Trade spent more than £1m on recruitment consultants alone in its first year trying to take on experienced trade negotiators, an area that had previously been left entirely to the EU.
The UK is a full member of the WTO, but as an EU member state it currently shares a set of so-called schedules with the other 27 countries that make up the bloc. Fox, a passionate believer in Brexit, had sought to rush through a set of the UK’s independent schedules on the tariffs and quotas that would be imposed on goods from the world’s major agricultural exporters.
The plan had been for the UK and EU, as independent WTO members, to divide the current quotas between the two according to the historical flows of trade in each product, in what was described as a “technical rectification”.
A large number of countries opposed the plan, however, claiming that they would lose out from the arrangement. The UK will now have to open talks with all those who have opposed the proposals or face trade disputes that could stymie future bilateral trade deals.
David Henig, UK director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, said: “This is ‘Brexit meets reality’, more than a huge problem. It is not a terrific surprise that this has happened. We expected almost all the big agricultural economies – the US, New Zealand – to do this. But in terms of the bilateral free trade deals that we hope to get with Australia, New Zealand and the US, these could be delayed while we haggle over the numbers.
“It’s a complicated discussion and it could easily take a couple of years to sort out and that means it would be three or four years before we could implement bilaterals, so it is likely to introduce delays.”
Despite the setback, the UK will be able to trade on the provisional set of schedules it has tabled while it negotiates with those who withheld support. The tabling of the disputed schedules will also allow the UK government to liberalise their tariffs and quotes on some products to allow non-EU importers to compete with European importers to the benefit of British consumers in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The UK lodged a 719-page draft of the terms of post-Brexit trade with the WTO earlier this summer, with formal “reservations” raised during a three-month consultation period that has just ended.
Fox told the Commons in a written statement on Thursday: “As expected, some trading partners have expressed reservations about our proposed treatment of tariff rate quotas.”
The Department for International Trade said: “The large majority of our trading partners do not have any objections to our proposed goods schedule. A small number have submitted their concerns and would like to discuss further.
“This was expected and does not impact our ability to trade independently. The terms we have set out will form the basis of our trade policy while we engage with our WTO partners to address their concerns.”
First published on Sat 6 Jul 2019 20.30 BST
Boris Johnson is being warned that embracing a disruptive no-deal Brexit would fuel nationalism in Scotland and risk the future of the union, as both opponents and supporters predict that he will now claim a decisive victory in the Tory leadership election.
With Johnson seemingly weeks away from entering Downing Street, the Scottish secretary, David Mundell, issues a thinly veiled warning to him that Nicola Sturgeon would welcome a no-deal Brexit with “unseemly glee”.
Both Jeremy Hunt and Johnson have suggested they would be willing to back a no-deal Brexit if necessary. Yet, with signs that Johnson has retained a clear lead over Hunt, Mundell’s words appear squarely aimed at the former foreign secretary over his threat to leave the EU – with or without a deal – at the end of October. “Scotland has a first minister whose only true priority is the pursuit of independence,” he writes in an article for the Observer. “She poses as a defender of devolution while seeking to destroy it. She seizes on the problems of leaving the EU with unseemly glee. But it is easy to see why.
“A difficult no-deal Brexit would not only damage our economy, it would fuel nationalist claims of a UK that is insensitive to Scotland’s needs. The new prime minister faces considerable challenges, and the future of the UK is high on the list.”
Concerned figures across the party have already shifted from trying to stop Johnson’s ascent to Downing Street to restraining him once in office. An attempt to prevent him from suspending parliament in October, effectively stopping it from standing in the way of a no-deal Brexit, could be staged this week.
A group of Tories are preparing a bid to ensure they cannot be “locked out” of parliament, whoever wins the leadership, the Observer understands. They could attempt to launch the plan by amending a bill covering Northern Ireland this week. Johnson has refused to rule out suspending parliament but has said he is not attracted to the idea and does not believe it would be necessary.
The move comes with MPs critical of Johnson reporting that a “radicalised” party membership has decisively opted to embrace his commitment to leave at the end of October. “The mood in the associations has hardened; it’s in the land of make believe,” said one influential MP. “Two-thirds of members seem to welcome no deal, and two-thirds of the country is opposed to it. Our members need to realise it is the country that will return the Conservatives to government, or Jeremy Corbyn. The extremes seem to be holding all the levers. That’s a big concern.”
As his leadership bid appeared increasingly unstoppable, many of Johnson’s highest-profile supporters were touring the country on Saturday urging members to cast their votes immediately for Johnson. The former Brexit secretary David Davis, who threw his support behind Johnson when Dominic Raab was eliminated in the early stages, said it was now clear that party members were rallying behind him as the man to deliver Brexit and see off Labour.
“The party is very clear. It is determined not to give the next election to Corbyn, and the best way to do that is to leave the EU before an election takes place. They have decided Boris is most likely to do that, and they are uniting behind him,” he said. Another Johnson supporter, the former cabinet minister Andrew Mitchell, said that if there were no upsets in the next few days, he should be home and dry, as by then most members would have returned their ballot papers. “It is not in the bag but it is his to lose. It is a case of getting through the next few days and then that will be that.” Mitchell told a “Back Boris” rally in the West Midlands that Johnson was a one-nation Tory with sound Conservative instincts on law and order, and tax, who would not only deliver on Brexit, and who would also “cheer us up”.
Another former minister, Crispin Blunt, said Johnson was heading for No 10. “While Jeremy Hunt has run a decent campaign it is not enough to overtake Boris, given the existing affection there is for him, and the sense that, given the challenges we face, we need someone exceptional.”
At a hustings in Nottingham on Saturday, Johnson won a standing ovation as he batted off accusations of bigotry and racism and presented himself as having a “deeply progressive” agenda. Asked by Amar Bhandal, 15, a Tory member, if he was “a fitting prime minister for everyone, including minority groups” after “derogatory and arguably racist comments in the past, for example about women wearing the burqa”, Johnson said the newspaper column in question was “a strong, liberal defence of the right of women to wear the burqa”.
Bhandal said: “I thought the response was a bit insufficient. He was trying to defend the comments he made by trying to argue that he was saying women should choose whether they wear the burqa, even though it was obvious from what he wrote that he wasn’t doing that.”
More evidence the Tories could receive a lift under a prime minister committed to an October Brexit comes in an Opinium poll for the Observer today. It shows a 5% swing in votes among Leavers from the Brexit party to the Conservatives, compared with a month ago. While languishing on only 23%, two points behind Labour which is on 25%, the Tories are up three points on last month’s tally.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
A row has broken out among campaigners for a second referendum about when to push the issue to a vote in parliament, with the Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston resisting pressure not to table her amendment demanding a “people’s vote”.
With the Labour leadership withholding its support, some campaigners fear forcing the issue to a vote on 11 December would undermine their cause.
They believe once it has been shown that there is no majority for a second referendum – and achieving one is likely to be impossible without Labour backing – it will be difficult to return to the question again if May’s deal is rejected.
Wollaston said she remained a “passionate supporter” of a people’s vote, but would wait until after the weekend before deciding whether she would table her “doctors’ amendment”.
“We are listening to concerns that are being put to us, that it would fail badly, and that might be used as an excuse,” she said. Some MPs fear the government could then say parliament had definitively rejected a second referendum.
“The reality is that it can’t succeed unless the Labour frontbench support it. Genuinely there are two schools of support here about whether it’s a good thing to keep the pressure on,” she said, adding: “It’s a strategy question.”
However, one senior member of the People’s Vote campaign claimed Wollaston was being “sat on”, and there had been a bitter row about the best way to proceed. “It’s like world war three,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are drafting their own amendment on a people’s vote, as an “insurance”, in case Wollaston decides to hold back.
The government’s announcement that it will accept amendments to the motion approving May’s Brexit deal – with up to six to be voted on, before the deal itself – has sparked a scramble to decide which questions to press.
The Brexit select committee chair, Hilary Benn, laid down his own cross-party amendment on Thursday, signed by other chairs including Rachel Reeves and Dominic Grieve. It aims to show that the House of Commons rejects the idea of a no-deal Brexit – and allow MPs to take control of the next steps if the deal falls.
Labour is likely to back the amendment, with the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, repeatedly insisting he wants to take a no-deal outcome off the table.
Meanwhile, the Conservative former minister Jo Johnson warned on Thursday that May’s Brexit deal could lead to electoral Armageddon for his party.
In his first major speech since resigning as a transport minister earlier this month, Johnson joined David Willetts and Justine Greening to sketch out a future in which the party faced an existential crisis and would have its brand thrashed by the economic fallout from Brexit.
Johnson described the package their party leader had agreed with the EU as a “botched deal” that would put British firms at a competitive disadvantage and fail the services sector, which he said had been “scandalously” neglected during negotiations on Brexit.
He added: “Brexit is seen as a project driven by the Conservative party, and this half-baked, worst of all worlds Brexit could trigger an electoral defeat on the scale of 1997, or worse, with this ‘Tory Brexit’ label an albatross around our necks for years to come.”
Such an outcome would “roll out the red carpet for Jeremy Corbyn” and lead to “communist ideologues” coming to power in Britain.
Sketching out a plan for another referendum that would take place by the end of May 2019, Greening said article 50 could be extended by another four months.
The former education secretary said she was backing a second referendum because the country was tired of what she described as “backroom deals”. She said it was incredible to see May “touring the country and talking to people who she did not want to give a vote to”.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
After two years of negotiating, infighting and intrigue, it is now only a week until Theresa May intends to head to Brussels to finalise her much-maligned Brexit deal. Unfortunately for the prime minister, however, her own team will be fighting her every inch of the way. “I’m going to the wire to get Brexit,” said one senior minister. “Proper Brexit.”
Whatever she signs off with EU officials next weekend, May’s turbulent week has led a growing number of her frontbench to conclude her Brexit plan faces almost certain defeat in the Commons. The ferocity of feeling it has unleashed also has many concerned that the party will be forced into a historic split over the issue. One major donor even suggests a new party may be required to represent disenchanted Brexiters.
“This deal is horrible. Complete capitulation – worse than capitulation in a way. She has managed to unite the Remainers and the Brexiters,” said Crispin Odey, the hedge fund manager whose most recent donation to the Conservative party was a £50,000 gift before last year’s general election. “She has provided an O-level answer to an A-level question.
“She will split the party [if she secures her deal based on Labour support]. She is not Conservative in any way. There’s no principle she has to blow up to get Labour on her side. I will never forgive her for this, as we will never be allowed to leave.”
Ministers who previously believed May’s deal had a chance of winning Commons support were left dismayed by Thursday’s parliamentary debate, in which the deal was widely attacked for giving up too much sovereignty and potentially binding the UK into a customs union with the EU.
Hopes of Labour MPs opting to save May’s deal have all but vanished. Some of the small group of Labour MPs earmarked as possible supporters spoke out against it last week.
Despite claims from May and her chief whip Julian Smith that enough support can be rallied for her deal, some of her allies admit there is currently no majority for any Brexit outcome – including her plan. It means attention is already turning to whether May’s deal could be voted through at the second time of asking, when a looming no-deal outcome could force MPs to think again.
The grim parliamentary mood has emboldened cabinet ministers concerned about the deal to demand changes, with a list of specific demands set to be drawn up this week and put to No 10. However, Downing Street is insisting the prime minister will sign her deal, together with a wider agreement on Britain’s future EU relationship, at a summit next Sunday.
Hopes were growing in Downing Street over the weekend that an attempt by hardline Brexiters to topple May as party leader had misfired. A confidence vote in May’s leadership is triggered when 48 Tory MPs write letters demanding a contest. Whips have worked since Friday to head off a contest.
The European Research Group, headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg and co-ordinated by the former Brexit minister Steve Baker, was still working over the weekend to reach the threshold. Yesterday, Downing St sources insisted that they had not been notified that the number had been reached.
However, even if May avoids a confidence vote in her leadership, the 23 MPs who have so far asked for a contest will combine with many more colleagues to vote against her Brexit deal. Hugo Swire, a former Foreign Office minister, said the issue of party management had become “very delicate”.
“If a significant number of Tory MPs vote against the deal and it is carried through on the backs of the Labour party, those same Tory MPs are going to feel alienated,” he warned. “We have seen what has happened in the past when the party is divided on major issues.
“Additionally, there must be a very real possibility that in the event of a deal that is not seen to honour the commitment to leave the EU and leave it properly, Ukip will re-emerge as a significant political force. In either event the threat to our party at the present time should not be underestimated.”
George Bridges, a former Brexit minister, warned of a looming constitutional crisis. He told the Observer that May’s deal “could mean the UK being locked into a customs union for a very long time. We have to decide whether or not that is a palatable outcome”.
“Unless the EU moves, I can see the chances of us leaving without a deal are rising fast,” he warned. “That would plunge us into a constitutional crisis.
“MPs will no doubt sense the impending chaos and confusion, [and] many may say to themselves: ‘We’d better just forget our concerns and vote for this’. As the days pass, some may decide this deal is the best of the bad options. The obvious question is, how many will hold their noses and vote for it?”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.45 GMT
People’s Vote staff are writing to clients of the public relations company run by its chairman, Roland Rudd, to ask if they are comfortable with his involvement in an extraordinary row that has brought the campaign group to a grinding halt.
The angry staff members, who are refusing to work under a new chief executive summarily appointed by Rudd, ask whether he has “demonstrated good PR skills” in a vicious conflict that has coincided with the start of the general election campaign.
Finsbury, the leading public relations firm run by the multi-millionaire, specialises in advising FTSE 100 companies and the letter is part of an attempt by the estranged People’s Vote staff to “hit him in the wallet” in the escalating dispute.
Last weekend Rudd fired the People’s Vote’s chief executive, James McGrory, a former adviser to Nick Clegg, and its director of communications, Tom Baldwin, who used to work with Ed Miliband, prompting a mass walkout by colleagues.
People’s Vote has a database of 500,000 emails and 600,000 Facebook contacts and insiders said that it has accumulated a six-figure war chest to be used during the election campaign to continue to call for a second referendum.
Insiders complain that the campaign plan has been totally disrupted by the row, to the delight of some Conservatives. One said they had met a former Tory cabinet minister in a Westminster pub this week who said, “congratulate Roland Rudd for me”.
The campaign had planned this week to deliver a mass signature letter to Downing Street and the European parliament, and unveil a tactical voting website advising voters which candidate to support to achieve a second referendum.
Rudd’s supporters, however, say that he wants to professionalise the campaign organisation and accuse McGrory and Baldwin of leading “a cult-like walk out.” Some of the estranged staff have begun to return, they said.
Some politicians and public figures associated with People’s Vote, which had been behind a string of successful mass rallies in London and around the country, have expressed their dismay as the row has unfolded.
Earlier this week, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor and an ally of Baldwin’s, said: “While the staff have been busy fighting for a People’s Vote … Rudd has been engaged close to full time in boardroom politics, a board which with few exceptions has done little for the campaign.”
A dossier on Rudd compiled by rebel staff says that he earned £5.9m from Finsbury, as the highest paid director in its company accounts, lives in a £20m Kensington townhouse and has a Georgian mansion in Somerset. It even references using publicly available data an application for planning permission to install a spiral staircase to a wine cellar in his London home.
Behind the row is a dispute over the long-term future direction of the campaign, prompting some Labour supporting staff in the group to accuse Rudd of wanting to push the group closer to the Liberal Democrats.
They say that Rudd wants to abandon campaigning for a second referendum and instead turn People’s Vote into a pro-remain organisation campaigning for a return to the EU post-Brexit, while they believe the second referendum idea could come back on to the agenda if Labour wins the election or the result is indecisive.
But allies of Rudd say that he has no political ambitions and accused Labour figures of wrongly suggesting he wants to push the organisation towards the Lib Dems. “Rudd met with key campaign MPs, such as Caroline Lucas, Dominic Grieve and Sam Gyimah this week and they were happy,” a source close to Rudd said.
Lucas, however, said that she was very unhappy with Rudd’s manoeuvre and several other MPs who had supported the organisation have raised concerns. Gyimah added subsequently that he was “listening” to the debate but was otherwise uninvolved.
The coup was able to take place because Rudd had quietly taken control of Open Britain, the largest of the constituent organisations in the People’s Vote umbrella, using another company called Baybridge – before moving to fire its two leading employees.
They were replaced by Patrick Heneghan, a former head of campaigns for the Labour party, who has been running the organisation with a handful of staff, most of whom are understood to be new recruits.
The bulk of the 60 staff in the People’s Vote organisation were employed by Open Britain and hence Baybridge, but they have refused to return to work. “Rudd has used the tactics of city boardrooms to take control of the campaign, which means we have to respond in kind,” the staffer added.
Staffers are also preparing to send a second letter to the board members of WPP, the advertising and marketing giant that owns Finsbury, asking them whether they feel comfortable with Rudd engaging “in a matter of of great political controversy”, in the hope of further ratcheting up the pressure.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Common sense has at last prevailed. The UK parliament has rejected the prospect of a no-deal Brexit and stepped back from the cliff edge. But while the limited extension of the article 50 timetable postpones the threat of no deal until the end of October, it does not remove it. Unless parliament can reach agreement about how to break the impasse, the new cliff edge will soon come into view. It is vital that this does not happen. A way forward must be found.
It is therefore significant that Labour is holding discussions with the government. Perhaps these talks can eventually lead to a compromise and a change to the political declaration. If they do, it is important that any new proposal is properly scrutinised. It would be a mistake to sign up to something that cannot carry popular consent, or is not sustainable in the long term.
At the heart of the Labour proposal is to stay in a customs union and continue to have a say over EU trade policy. Some have called this a “soft Brexit” but, as with everything in this debate, on closer inspection it is not quite so simple.
We should all remember that from 1957 to 1993, the European Economic Community was a customs union with internal borders. They were removed only when enough evidence of harmonisation or mutual recognition of regulations was there. The single market without borders is about regulatory homogeneity. Leaving the single market reintroduces a border – the thickness of which depends on the degree of regulatory divergence. The customs union is about the common external tariff. The single market is about common regulations.
Clearly, staying only in a customs union would not be enough to solve the Irish border question. To take just one commonly cited example: if the UK remains in the customs union with the same common external tariff but imports chlorinated poultry from the US, there has to be a border, because the EU does not accept the marketing of chlorinated poultry. This is a rule of the single market.
The EU is unlikely to accept a request from the UK that it should have a say over the EU’s trade agreements. Article 207 of the Lisbon treaty makes clear that the common commercial policy is exclusive to the EU’s direction. Turkey, which is in a partial customs union with the EU, has to follow EU trade agreements with third countries but has no say on them. The reality is that in a customs union all the power would rest with the EU, with the UK as a follower.
The EU is the world’s largest trading bloc. It has successfully negotiated with more than 70 countries around the world. It is understandable that the UK does not wish to say goodbye to the influence and clout that being part of this bloc provides. But there is little point pretending that there is a simple or cost-free way of retaining the benefits of this while leaving the EU.
Being in a customs union might be better than not being in a customs union, but it would come with very real downsides too. It is important that these are also considered.
The UK now has limited time to make a more informed judgment about what happens next. Whatever it decides, it should do so with its eyes wide open. Otherwise, we could all soon find ourselves back on the cliff edge.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.03 GMT
I campaigned for remain in 2016 and served as trade minister two years, and I believe we can still get a good, compromise deal with the EU on Brexit.
At such a critical juncture in the negotiations, it is normal to search for compromises. However, many of those being discussed are poor choices. That is why it is such a dangerous time. We must remember that the arrangements we set in place now may last for generations and it may be difficult to change them once this window closes.
Let us look at the issue of a customs union, which is being much discussed at the moment. It recently became the official Labour party position. Its attractiveness is in seeming to offer a solution for the issue of just-in-time supply chains and the Irish border.
But the customs union has many downsides that have not attracted much media coverage. While the loss of independent trade and regulatory policy have been discussed – and these are important – I will focus on some areas that have been less in the public domain.
First, almost nobody – not even Norway or Switzerland – is in a customs union with the EU. Turkey is, but its situation is so skewed against it that the country is seeking to renegotiate. Turkey, of course, entered its customs arrangement as a stepping stone to full membership. We are heading in the opposite direction. Tariffs, quotas, trade agreements – these are all important parts of our economic policy that would no longer be decided by those we elect in this country.
Second, the application of the common external tariff means that the UK’s trade remedies (policies that allow governments to take action against imports harming a domestic industry) would be administered by Brussels, with no input from the UK. Take, for example, steel and ceramics. I know from my time as trade minister that these are controversial areas in which UK producers are rightly looking for protection against Chinese dumping and subsidies. But in a customs union, it is Brussels that would make the decisions (as it does now), but we would have no seat at the table. If we manufactured something that was competing with subsidised Chinese products, for example, and the EU did not produce these products, or even manufactured products that were competitive with them, Brussels might choose not to grant trade remedy relief for them, thus damaging UK producers.
Perhaps even more worryingly, the EU might seek to protect its own manufacturing industries, increasing costs and prices for UK consumers, where our interests might be diametrically opposed. British consumers will end up paying for the protection of Europe’s industries through the application of EU trade remedy laws, which would apply to the whole customs territory. That this might happen without any UK input into Brussels’ decision-making could be damaging for our economy.
Third, there is an important development dimension that has been overlooked. Through the EU, we offer favourable trade access to dozens of countries, split into three groups: “Everything but arms” for the poorest, and GSP (generalised system of preferences) and GSP+ schemes for lower-middle income countries. The UK is influential in determining which of these groups countries fall into. On leaving the EU but still being in a customs union, if Brussels decided to grant less access, we would have to follow suit. There would be an uproar among NGOs and our constituents in the UK if trade preferences for, say, Pakistan, India or Sri Lanka were no longer something Britain had any say over. Indeed, this is likely to happen. Producer interests in the garment industry in southern Europe are already lobbying Brussels to remove preferences for south Asia. Diaspora communities in the UK would be enraged.
Being in a customs union with the EU, but outside its decision-making structures, is a bad policy choice for this country. A wide range of key British interests – from Welsh and Teesside steel workers, the Stoke ceramics industry and Asian diaspora communities, to mainstream importers and exporters – could lose out. All this illustrates the hazards of being the world’s fifth-largest economy, with a large part of our economic policy contracted out to others. We shouldn’t let it happen.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
A prominent Labour MP today calls on Jeremy Corbyn to order his MPs to back the legislation required to implement Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement on Brexit – in order to avoid a “catastrophic” no-deal departure from the European Union.
In a move that further exposes bitter divisions between Labour MPs over Brexit, Stephen Kinnock says supporting the withdrawal agreement bill (WAB) is now the only realistic way out of the impasse for those who want to leave with a deal, while offering hope to those supporting another referendum.
His comments on guardian.co.uk prompted an angry reaction last night from pro-Remain Labour colleagues, who said that supporting the May plan, or anything close to it under a new Tory prime minister, would be political suicide for their party, and betray the majority of Labour supporters and party members who support staying in the EU.
Kinnock, the MP for Aberavon, says that with a Boris Johnson premiership looking increasingly likely, the country is “staring down the barrel” of a no-deal exit, which would harm fragile communities, compromise national security and endanger the Irish peace process.
He argues that because MPs have effectively run out of parliamentary options to prevent no deal, it is time for Labour to face reality and for Corbyn to order his MPs to get an admittedly imperfect but far from disastrous Brexit agreement through, in the national interest. The alternative, he warns, could be a general election before Brexit has been delivered that would be just as damaging to Labour as it would be to the Tories, and a gift to “single issue” parties including Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
“The WAB is far from ideal. Yet because of concessions to demands made by Labour during cross-party talks it does provide the only feasible means of preventing no deal,” Kinnock says.
“There’s a draft statutory commitment to a customs union until the next general election, to workers’ rights, to environmental standards, and even provision for a binding vote on whether the deal should be put to a confirmatory public vote. I have profound reservations about a second referendum, but in order to break the deadlock and avoid the chaos of no deal I would consider compromising. The WAB is the only pathway to another referendum, and I simply do not understand why advocates of another public vote cannot see this reality.
“So, regardless of whether your priority is to prevent no deal, to seek a deal-based Brexit or to secure a second referendum, the WAB is now the only game in town. All else is just unicorn-hunting and virtue-signalling. Labour’s Leadership should therefore declare now that if the new prime minister were to table the WAB then Labour MPs would be whipped to support it.”
Kinnock says that Brexit is tipping the country into a “culture war” and that it is vital that politicians re-focus on issues of justice, opportunity, security and prosperity. “The Withdrawal Agreement Bill is a lifeline that Labour should grasp with both hands,” he says.
The intervention follows a letter he and another 25 Labour MPs representing Brexit-supporting areas sent to Corbyn last month arguing that a second referendum would be “toxic to our bedrock voters”. One of the signatories, the former cabinet minister Caroline Flint, called on the next Tory prime minister to reach out to Labour MPs to make Brexit happen.
Last night Remainers, who are pressing Jeremy Corbyn to back a second public vote in which Labour would campaign to stay in the EU, lined up to criticise colleagues who want the party to back a Tory Brexit plan.
Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove, who strongly supports a second referendum, said: “To advocate a policy that brought down Theresa May is to encourage Labour to embark on a suicide mission. To do an about-turn now would split the party, alienate millions of Remainers and plunge Labour into obscurity and irrelevance.”
Anna Turley, the Labour MP for Redcar, a Leave supporting seat, said any form of Brexit would harm the local steel industry in her and Kinnock’s constituencies: “It is quite right to say no deal will deal will be disastrous for the steel industry, which will be a driving factor in Stephen’s thinking. We are all clear that the resulting 25% tariffs mean that no deal will mean no steel industry left in this country. But the reality is that the industry itself has been very clear with us that there is no Brexit scenario that would bring benefits to the industry. The best way forward would be to keep the deal we have as members of the EU.”
First published on Tue 18 Jun 2019 18.13 BST
Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary who positioned himself as the hardest Eurosceptic candidate, was dumped out of the Tory leadership race on Tuesday, as his camp blamed Brexiters for flocking en masse to Boris Johnson.
Raab had assembled an impressive team of former Vote Leave operatives to run his campaign but failed to gain the 33 votes needed from his party colleagues to progress to the third stage of the vote on Wednesday.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, scraped past Raab to just meet the 33-vote threshold, but both were leapfrogged by Rory Stewart, who has run an insurgent campaign on social media.
Even minutes before the vote, teams backing Raab, Javid and Stewart all seemed uncertain they would progress. Stewart said he was “delighted” at the result but added: “There’s a long way to go. I’m still very much the underdog in this race.”
MPs cited three issues for Raab. They blamed a failure to win over a solid bloc of votes from the hard Brexit European Research Group, who have backed Johnson, as well as a “Stop Raab” operation by moderate Tories who saw him as the most extreme candidate and his refusal to rule out proroguing parliament, which rival candidates openly attacked him for.
Raab had recruited Vote Leave’s head of communications, Paul Stephenson, to run his campaign as well as other former senior staff from the leave campaign team and won earlier endorsements from former cabinet ministers Maria Miller and David Davis, as well as the children’s minister, Nadhim Zahawi, who had backed Johnson in 2016.
Sources in the Raab campaign said they believed he had lost out on ERG votes because he had not been prepared to say he would tear up the EU withdrawal agreement in its entirety – which they said Johnson had promised supporters he would do.
“It just wasn’t realistic, but perhaps we were naive about what other campaigns would promise,” one Raab-backing MP said.
His team had been making the case over the past 24 hours that there should be two Brexiters who believed in no deal put through to the next round, because of the risk of Johnson imploding.
However, he failed to win the endorsements from either of the Eurosceptics knocked out of the race, Andrea Leadsom and Esther McVey, who both backed Johnson.
Mark Francois, the strongly pro-Brexit MP who supports Johnson, said Raab’s elimination was sad. “Whoever wins, and I hope it’s Boris, I hope they find a good place for Dom in their cabinet, because I think he deserves it.”
Javid was the first of the leadership candidates to offer an olive branch to his defeated rival. In a tweet, he praised his “professionalism, drive & fresh ideas” and said Raab had “a major role to play with any new PM helping Britain’s young people get a fair shot”.
Raab’s backers are more likely to go to Johnson, though some are thought to be more inclined to back Michael Gove, meaning the environment secretary has a chance of overtaking Jeremy Hunt.
Javid’s backers insisted he was staying the race until the next ballot and sources around both Javid and Stewart pointed to the stalling momentum of Hunt, Gove and even Johnson, who put on just 12 votes despite also winning the endorsement of the former leadership candidate Matt Hancock.
MP Simon Hoare, one of Javid’s key backers, said there was still time for the home secretary to pick up momentum in the next 24 hours, at the expense of Hunt and Gove.
“There is still time for us to speak to colleagues about how we frame the next stage of this contest,” Hoare said. “There will be some disappointment in Boris’s team tonight because it’s a lower than they thought they’d gain. But he is clearly in the final two.
“And so the other candidate must be someone for whom life-changing, meritocratic Conservative values is not gleaned from a dusty textbook, it’s life experience.”
Sources around Javid’s campaign said the 10-vote gain he made on the previous round had been more than they expected at the beginning of the day and aides hurried to prepare the home secretary for the BBC debate shortly after the result, one they had not been certain he would be able to participate in.
Hunt remained in second place but Stewart’s backers said they believed they could win over supporters from the foreign secretary as his momentum stalled. He added just three votes to his first-round total.
Gillian Keegan, the Chichester MP and supporter of Stewart, said the momentum was with the international development secretary. “They’re very close now. There’s a clear winner, and between the others there’s not many votes,” she said.
“It’s very rewarding. Rory’s campaign is basically honest about where we are as a country. He’s basically telling people the uncomfortable truth in some cases, but he’s being honest. And who knew there was a market for honesty in politics? I’d always hoped that there was.”
MPs will vote again on Wednesday, and if necessary on Thursday, until the field is narrowed down to just two names, which will then be offered to Conservative members in a postal ballot. The result will be announced in the week beginning 22 July.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.08 GMT
Theresa May is facing another major rebellion over Brexit amid a cross-party move to kill off any attempt to crash out of the EU without a deal.
A group of MPs and peers has been carefully crafting new laws that will hand parliament guaranteed powers to soften any deal and send the government back to the negotiating table.
Tory sources already think there is enough support in the Commons for the plan, which they believe would end the threat of a “no deal” outcome. The move is being described by senior figures as one of the most significant amendments of the Brexit process.
Ministers have previously warned that should the deal negotiated with the EU be voted down by parliament, Britain could simply leave the bloc with no agreement. However, the cross-party group’s proposal ensures that if the agreement were voted down, parliament could alter it and ask the government to reopen EU talks.
The measure is expected to win a three-figure majority in the Lords on Monday and Tory Remainers are confident it will not be overturned in the Commons next month. The government is already being urged simply to accept the measure.
It could open the way for parliament to back staying in the EU’s customs union and single market –something currently ruled out by the prime minister.
It comes with rebel Tory MPs beginning to believe that there could now be a Commons majority for staying in the customs union and its single market, through membership of the European Free Trade Association.
One well-placed Tory said there were “a few in cabinet who now see it as a possible solution”. However, the cabinet’s Brexiters are preparing a big push this week against any suggestion Britain should remain inside the customs union, which would make it impossible for the UK to negotiate its own trade deals.
While Brexit minister David Davis indicated last week that parliament would have a real “meaningful vote” over the Brexit deal on offer, both peers and Remain MPs want to enshrine the guarantees in law. Labour regards the proposal as extremely significant because it would allow its MPs and Tory rebels to vote against the agreement on offer without the fear of triggering a disastrous “no deal” outcome. Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, told the Observer: “This is one of the most important amendments of the entire Brexit process – and indeed of the parliament. We have always been clear that the vote must be truly meaningful. It cannot simply be a take-it-or-leave-it choice as the prime minister has suggested.
“This amendment, which has cross-party support, would provide a safety net in the Brexit process. It would remove the possibility of a No vote leading to a no-deal. It would bring back control to parliament.”
The measure is being presented in the Lords by a group of peers led by former Tory minister Lord Hailsham.
However, the government describes the measure as a meaningless attempt to frustrate Brexit.
Lord Callanan, the Brexit minister in the Lords, said: “Labour’s flawed amendment seeks to tie our hands by inserting false deadlines and shifting the power to negotiate from government to parliament. It asks for meaningless votes on the deal before the deal is done. Those who want to overturn the referendum call this the ‘no Brexit’ amendment.
“The Conservatives are taking the scrutinising role of parliament seriously, to improve an essential piece of legislation. Labour are using it to frustrate Brexit.”
Senior Labour MPs, meanwhile, are directly appealing to their counterparts in the Lords to back attempts to keep Britain in the customs union and single market. Chuka Umunna, Heidi Alexander, Alison McGovern and Chris Leslie have written to Labour peers urging for their help.
“We are writing to ask for your support for an amendment which requires the government to make the UK’s continued participation in the European Economic Area (EEA) an objective in the Brexit negotiations,” they write. “The EEA provides a platform on which we can continue to be part of the EU single market if Brexit occurs, with the protection for workers, consumers and our environment that our party believes in.”
Another Labour MP, meanwhile, is attempting to engineer the first Commons vote on whether or not the final Brexit deal should be put to a second referendum. Gareth Thomas, the former trade minister, will introduce a backbench bill next month, which will trigger a non-binding vote on the issue.
“A people’s vote would give the British people the chance to take back control over Brexit from a small cabal of Leave ideologues and instead, on the biggest question facing our country, determine together our country’s economic, social and cultural future,” he said.
First published on Tue 24 Sep 2019 13.25 BST
The UK supreme court ruling against Boris Johnson was celebrated in EU capitals and has left Brussels convinced that the prime minister has lost control of events and will not be able to crash Britain out on 31 October.
As Lady Hale, the president of the UK’s highest court, read out its unanimous judgment, politicians, officials and diplomats involved in the Brexit talks spoke of their reassurance about the state of the rule of law in the UK.
The decision to prorogue parliament for five weeks in order to avoid parliamentary scrutiny had already provoked criticism by senior politicians in the European parliament, and the court’s confirmation on Tuesday that Johnson’s move was unlawful was welcomed.
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU parliament’s Brexit coordinator, tweeted: “At least one big relief in the Brexit saga: the rule of law in the UK is alive & kicking.
“Parliaments should never be silenced in a real democracy. I never want to hear Boris Johnson or any other Brexiteer say again that the European Union is undemocratic.”
The European parliament’s speaker, David Sassoli, said: “Important decision from UK supreme court to rule prorogation of parliament as unlawful.
“Any Brexit agreement needs to be approved by both UK and EU parliament, so proper democratic scrutiny on both sides of the Channel is essential.”
The chair of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee, Norbert Röttgen, who is a senior member of Angela Merkel’s CDU party, expressed his satisfaction at the judgment.
He said: “It is not my place to comment on judicial proceedings in Britain. But as a fellow MP I do feel the need to express my joy and solidarity with British parliamentarians.”
A former head of the EU council’s legal service, Jean-Claude Piris, tweeted: “It gives me good and emotional feelings too.
“It was so sad to see this great country at the risk of being led to no longer respect the principles and values upon which its democratic institutions have been built over centuries.”
But sources said it was also clear now that Johnson had little hope of presenting MPs with the choice of leaving, “do or die”, with or without a deal on 31 October.
The prime minister is seemingly constrained by the Benn Act, which would instruct him to seek an extension if a deal is not agreed with the EU and backed by the Commons, but Johnson had suggested he would find a way around the law.
The ruling has confirmed to Brussels that parliament is in the driving seat and able to instruct the prime minister as it wishes over the coming weeks, with an increased chance of a general election next month, and a reduced possibility of a deal being agreed and passed by the Commons next month.
One EU diplomat said: “Another domestic in this long Brexit saga. Parliament hasn’t been able to formulate a position in the last three years so why would they suddenly now?
“Without decisive action their government is driving this process off the cliff. But seeing as Brexit was about the sovereignty of parliament it was bewildering that government moved to suspend it. So much about this process is contradictory and utterly mind-blowing.”
EU officials think the court ruling has increased the chances of an extension request from the UK. “Are the chances of an extension request probably very high? Yes,” said one source. “And has the court’s judgment made the chances higher? Cautiously yes. And is the EU banging its head against a brick wall saying: ‘When is this going to stop?’ Absolutely.”
Fabian Zuleeg, the chief executive of the European Policy Centre thinktank, tweeted: “Conclusions? 31 October no deal unlikely unless Boris Johnson is willing to break law and won’t be stopped.
“So Boris Johnson only has two real options: resign and fight election on clear no-deal stance or make deal, capitulating in negotiations. Former looks more likely but unlikely to bring resolution.”
The Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said the issue was an “internal matter” for the UK. “Whoever is prime minister of the United Kingdom is somebody we’re going to work with,” he said. “It’s not for us to decide who the prime minister of the UK is.”
Asked whether the ruling would impact on the EU’s trust in Johnson, a European commission spokeswoman said: “We have all seen the news but it is not for us to comment on the internal constitutional matters of the United Kingdom. Our interlocutor is the United Kingdom government and that remains the case. All other judgments I leave to you.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.52 GMT
The European elections were meaningless. They can be read any way we want. Brexit won, but with a third of the vote, against anti-Brexit parties with much the same. Stir in a third of “others”, including Tories, Labour and nationalists, and soon all we get is noise. Britain still has a Tory government and a Labour opposition, both broken-backed. The vote was not for any ruling party. Just forget it.
Meanwhile, still lying steaming on the Commons floor are three monster turds, all with a 31 October sell-by date. One is a Brexit crash-out no deal. Another is a second referendum, possibly revoking Brexit. A third, stinking to high heaven, is Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement.
In the absence of any action, crashing out is now the legal default position. Even as a life-long Eurosceptic, I have seen nothing suggesting this would be remotely in the nation’s interest. The idea that crashing out “on WTO terms” will somehow win centrists or moderate Tories back to the fold is absurd. It would split the party in parliament and alienate a centre ground already toxic for Tories. Renegotiation is impossible, as there is no Brussels to negotiate with until the autumn, let alone one with the will to budge.
On the other hand a revocation referendum would be near impossible to get through parliament against a Tory government veto – short of some sort of Commons putsch. It would probably require a no-confidence vote and an election, which was hardly takes matters forward. A referendum, to be of any value, would be after, not before, a deal. This leaves May’s agreement. It is still on the table. It was never a final, only a transitional deal, but it was composed from the most rare and febrile Westminster substance, cross-party compromise. Remainers hated it as against their faith. Some Tories hated it because they were flat-earthers, others because they loathed May and wanted her job.
What has changed is the certainty of a new Tory prime minister. May’s sole legacy to them was her deal. It offered the country a perfectly honourable way forward out of the EU and into a new relationship with Europe. Any fool could pick holes in it, but it was a compromise agreed by Brussels, and would see us out before the 31 October deadline.
A new Tory leader can only start from there. Towering ahead is one of the greatest peacetime tasks to face any British leader, to pull a shattered parliament back from the brink. It means swallowing all bombast and pride and taking forward a compromise based on May’s deal. There is no alternative.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Europe is sleepwalking into oblivion and its people need to wake up before it is too late. If they don’t, the European Union will go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991. Neither our leaders nor ordinary citizens seem to understand that we are experiencing a revolutionary moment, that the range of possibilities is very broad, and that the eventual outcome is thus highly uncertain.
Most of us assume the future will more or less resemble the present, but this is not necessarily so. In a long and eventful life, I have witnessed many periods of what I call radical disequilibrium. We are living in such a period today.
The next inflection point will be the elections for the European parliament, in May 2019. Unfortunately, anti-EU forces will enjoy a competitive advantage. There are several reasons for this, including the outdated party system in most European countries, the practical impossibility of treaty change and the lack of legal tools for disciplining member states that violate the principles on which the EU was founded. The EU can impose its laws on applicant countries but it lacks sufficient capacity to enforce member states’ compliance.
The antiquated party system hampers those who want to preserve the values on which the EU was founded, but it helps those who want to replace those values with something radically different. This is true in individual countries and even more so in trans-European alliances. The party system of individual states reflects the divisions that mattered in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the conflict between capital and labour. But the cleavage that matters most today is between pro- and anti-European forces.
The EU’s dominant country is Germany, whose dominant political alliance – between the Christian Democratic Union and the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union – has become unsustainable. The alliance worked as long as there was no significant party in Bavaria to the right of the CSU. That changed with the rise of the extremist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In last September’s länder elections, the CSU’s result was its worst in more than six decades, and the AfD entered the Bavarian parliament for the first time.
The AfD’s rise removed the raison d’etre of the CDU-CSU alliance. But that alliance cannot be broken up without triggering new elections that neither Germany nor Europe can afford. And the ruling coalition cannot be robustly pro-European while facing the AfD threat.
The situation is far from hopeless. The German Greens have emerged as the only consistently pro-European party in the country, and they continue to rise in opinion polls, whereas the AfD seems to have reached its high point (except in the former East Germany). But now CDU/CSU voters are represented by a party whose commitment to European values is ambivalent.
In the United Kingdom too an antiquated party structure prevents the popular will from finding proper expression. Both Labour and the Conservatives are internally divided, but their leaders, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, respectively, are determined to deliver Brexit. The situation is so complicated that most Britons just want to get it over with, although it will be the defining event for the country for decades to come.
Collusion between Corbyn and May has aroused opposition in both parties, which in the case of Labour is bordering on rebellion. May has announced a programme to aid impoverished pro-Brexit Labour constituencies in the north of England. And Corbyn is accused of betraying the pledge he made at Labour’s last party conference to back a second Brexit referendum if he can’t trigger a general election.
The chances that May’s deal will again be rejected by MPs are growing by the day. That could set in motion a groundswell of support for a referendum – or, even better, for revoking Britain’s article 50 notification.
Italy finds itself in a similar predicament. The EU made a fatal mistake in 2017 by strictly enforcing the Dublin agreement, which unfairly burdens countries, such as Italy, where migrants first enter the EU. This drove its predominantly pro-European and pro-immigration electorate into the arms of the anti-European League party and Five Star Movement in last year’s election. The previously dominant Democratic party is in disarray. As a result, the many voters who remain pro-European have no party to vote for. There is, however, an attempt to organise a united pro-European list. A similar reordering of party systems is happening in France, Poland and Sweden.
When it comes to trans-European alliances, the situation is even worse. National parties at least have some roots in the past, but these alliances are entirely dictated by party leaders’ self-interest. The European People’s party (EPP) alliance is the worst offender – almost entirely devoid of principles, as demonstrated by its willingness to embrace Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in order to preserve its majority and control the allocation of top EU jobs. Anti-European forces may look good in comparison: at least they have some principles, even if they are odious.
It is difficult to see how the pro-EU parties can emerge victorious from the May elections unless they put Europe’s interests ahead of their own. One can still make a case for preserving the EU in order radically to reinvent it. But that would require a change of heart within the EU. The current leadership is reminiscent of the politburo when the Soviet Union collapsed – continuing to issue edicts as if they were still relevant.
The first step to defending Europe from its enemies, both internal and external, is to recognise the magnitude of the threat they present. The second is to awaken the sleeping pro-European majority and mobilise it to defend the values on which the EU was founded. Otherwise, the dream of a united Europe could become a 21st-century nightmare.
 George Soros is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Foundations
A version of this article has also appeared on Project Syndicate
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.47 GMT
The best way to rouse drowsy delegates at the Tory conference is to declare, “Get Brexit done”. It is this year’s guaranteed applause line. No matter how clunking the speech or how flat the joke, uttering it gets the members clapping. In the bars and the receptions, it’s the same story – the phrase has people raising their glasses and cheering approval.
The message is simple and repetitive: back Boris Johnson to get Brexit done and allow the country to move on and talk about something else. Normally a party comes up with a slogan for its conference and then focus-groups it. But there was no need with this slogan: it came out of the focus groups. No 10 and CCHQ were struck by how often voters said it in these groups, which Dominic Cummings sets such store by, and so decided to adopt it as their own.
Only no one seems quite sure how or when they are going to get Brexit done. Johnson has promised to take the UK out of the EU by 31 October “do or die” – he has repeatedly said “extension means extinction” for the Tories. But with parliament passing legislation to try to force him to seek an extension, and opposition MPs refusing him an election until that extension is secured, senior Conservatives are starting to contemplate a world in which Brexit isn’t done at the end of October.
And so talk at conference has turned to how the party could wear an extension in a general election – and who could be made to carry the blame.
Some had hoped that this predicament wouldn’t arise because there would be a deal with the European Union. However, ministers and MPs now see agreeing a deal with the EU in the next week as unlikely. “I give it a one in three chance,” says a government minister keen for a Brexit deal. Even Johnson, normally the biggest optimist in the room, is viewed to be relatively downbeat about the chances by members of his cabinet – with the prime minister playing down the chances of a deal during a cabinet conference call last week.
Not all Tory MPs want a deal right now, though. A number of Conservative MPs who represent Brexit-backing seats that they won from Labour in 2017 worry that an attempt to pass a Brexit deal in the next few weeks could backfire on them at the ballot box. Tory MPs believe that recent rhetoric from No 10 about the Benn bill being the “surrender bill” has cut through with leave voters and the threat of the Brexit party appears to be decreasing as voters increasingly identify Johnson as the champion of leave.
Why risk that with a Brexit compromise? If Johnson won a time limit on the backstop, it would be a tough sell to get it through parliament. Recent incidents in the chamber – namely Johnson replying “humbug” to Paula Sherriff’s call for calmer language out of respect to the memory of Jo Cox – mean that there’s little goodwill between the Tories and Labour MPs, who will find it hard to help Johnson out, even if they wanted Brexit done for their own constituents.
The Tory worry is that Johnson will go all out to sell a small change to the withdrawal agreement as a big win and then fail to get it through parliament. “We’d go into the election with Nigel Farage able to say we were no better than Theresa May and her withdrawal agreement,” one MP in a leave seat says. “He could cry Brexit betrayal.” Meanwhile with Brexit “done”, Labour leavers would have little reason to vote for the Tories. If Brexit had already happened, there would be no need to vote Tory to make it happen.
Many MPs hope Johnson’s manoeuvring will be enough to simply ensure the UK leaves on the 31 October – deal or no deal. At that point, MPs would likely bring the government down and an election would follow in which Johnson had made good on his promise.
Despite this prevailing mood, some senior government figures urge caution. While a handful of No 10 aides – headed by Dominic Cummings – have suggested they have a way around the bill, which would means Johnson would be able to refuse to request an article 50 extension and not be in breach of the law. The apparent loophole is reportedly known only to Johnson’s inner circle. However, few believe that it is a 100% reliable route. Instead, it’s about the narrative and the fight.
Cummings has told colleagues that he expects the last two weeks of October to be spent in the courts. Whatever trick Johnson’s senior aides have up their sleeve, expect it to be contested – and Johnson to potentially be defeated in court again.
“It’s about showing that we have done everything possible to try to meet that deadline,” says one government aide. “Hopefully it will work but if it doesn’t the public will know it was the Tories who were the ones trying to make it happen.”
Were the courts to legally force Johnson to request an extension, he would be faced with a choice: request or resign. Within No 10 there is mixed opinion on the pros and cons of resigning – Johnson is personally against the idea. What they agree on is that however they play it, any extension will not be their fault.
If it’s ordered by the courts, blame could be pointed at judges rather than ministers. One source of encouragement is recent focus groups where attendees spoke about the courts getting involved with politics. Attendees saw judges as part of a more general theme of everyone trying to stop Brexit – and identified Johnson as the person trying to deliver it.
Another source of hope has been found in a Nigel Farage tweet. When the supreme court ruling came through and found Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament unlawful, Farage took to social media to call on Johnson to resign “as a matter of honour”. The bulk of replies from Brexit supporters said that they usually agreed with Farage but on this he was wrong – Johnson ought not to resign as it would play into the hands of remainers. This is taken as a sign that Johnson’s positioning as the ultimate Brexiteer is landing.
An election after an extension has been agreed would no doubt be difficult for the Tories. It would risk disillusioned Brexit voters moving to Farage’s party – and leave voters concluding that Johnson was ineffective. But increasingly, Tories believe that if push comes to shove, they could wear it if they had to.
 Katy Balls is the Spectator’s deputy political editor
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Ever since the Brexit vote in June 2016, many of us pro-Europeans have had to live with a dilemma. On the one hand, we regarded the vote to leave the European Union as a disaster for our country. On the other, we accepted the galling reality that it was the democratically expressed view of the majority. Three years on, I still think we were right about Brexit. But we still lost the vote.
The inescapable tension between these two conclusions has never gone away. But it has certainly evolved. The passage of time and Theresa May’s rigid and error-strewn handling of the Brexit process have reset the options more than once. Until recently, my view could have been summarised as follows: Brexit remains a lamentable event I will always oppose; but, in the absence of public permission to overturn it, a softer version would be less bad than a hard one, and could provide the fragile basis for an eventual form of reintegration with Europe down the line.
At times in the past five months, ever since the UK and the EU struck the withdrawal agreement, a pragmatic compromise of this kind has seemed tantalisingly viable. Desperately though they tried through the winter, the hard Brexiteers failed to harden the original deal or take down May in the way they wanted. That left a space in the political centre. So, when May finally made an opening to Labour in early April, there was a possibility that a Brexit compromise was on the cards – even at the eleventh hour and in spite of the immense party political difficulties it might entail for both.
But it hasn’t happened. The talks between the government and Labour continue. But they are not going anywhere. This week both May and Jeremy Corbyn accused the other of dragging their feet. That could be a cunning joint deception, preparing their respective parties for a surprise deal. But it isn’t the case – believe me. There is an increasing air of unreality about the whole thing. On both sides of the table, the participants are looking over their shoulders at their own colleagues, not negotiating in earnest.
There are three big issues on the table in these talks. But there is no agreement on any of them. The first is over the terms of a future customs union and on single market alignment. The second, on which the two sides have had the biggest arguments, is on “future-proofing” any agreement against the next Conservative leader. The third is over the role, if any, of a confirmatory second vote. On each of these, May is unwilling to make concessions – or even to put options on the table – that would further divide the Tories, while Corbyn remains deeply reluctant to become co-owner of a joint agreement that might end in the overturning of Brexit.
It is now increasingly obvious that the two parties are going through the motions, and that the talks are doomed. Labour has more time on its side than the Tories, because Corbyn is happy to see the Tories humiliated in the EU elections at the end of May. Neither of them wants to be blamed for failed talks, but nor is either of them strong or determined enough to suggest the kind of grand bargain – parliamentary support for soft Brexit in return for a confirmatory referendum, for instance – for which the circumstances cry out.
This means two things. Both must now be faced. The first is that, as things stand, parliament’s efforts to take control of Brexit from the government have failed. In March, this sovereign parliament route seemed to offer a way forward. May’s deal was dead. Backbenchers came up with other cross-party ideas. The Speaker facilitated the process. Marches and petitions gave a feeling of momentum. When it came to the crunch, however, MPs knew what they did not want – no deal – but not what they did want. This parliament turns out to be no more able to pass a soft Brexit than to pass a harder one, like May’s.
The second conclusion is therefore that soft Brexit itself has also failed. Soft Brexit was the least worst Brexit option. To have succeeded, however, May needed to reach out much earlier, probably in 2016, and certainly after the 2017 election. It never happened. Now, last-minute backbench attempts to craft a soft Brexit, led by Nick Boles and Stephen Kinnock, have failed. Cabinet efforts have failed too. Finally the inter-party attempt has ploughed into the sand as well. So soft Brexit must now be added to no-deal Brexit and May’s Brexit on the political scrapheap of the past three years.
When that happened, the dilemma facing us pro-Europeans changed too. With no viable soft Brexit option on offer any longer, it has become meaningless to stand for a compromise that rested on the possibility that MPs and parties would strike a deal. The attempt to reconcile Britain’s place in Europe with the leave victory of 2016 within the Brexit process is therefore dead. It was killed by the hardline Brexiteers and by May’s rigidity. We pragmatic pro-Europeans are therefore discharged from our dilemma. The times have changed.
Labour is now crucial to the outcome of the new Brexit crisis, even if it doesn’t want to be. The outcome of the increasingly likely general election, and thus the outcome of Brexit, will depend on Labour’s election manifesto pledge on Brexit – not just on whether it promises a referendum at all, but whether the vote would precede fresh EU negotiations, or come afterwards. That internal argument is already under way. It is massively important.
The larger Brexit choices of 2019 are starker, too. With the centre option on Brexit collapsing, the decision lies between extremes. We are back to remain or leave, but now in their 2019 versions. The times will inevitably be very divided again. The effective Brexit choice will lie between no deal, promoted by May’s successor and much of the Tory party, and a second vote, hopefully but by no means certainly promoted by Corbyn, and by other parties too. But the choice for pro-Europeans has now been clarified, and no pro-European can doubt where they must stand.
First published on Mon 4 Mar 2019 18.31 GMT
Theresa May is considering demands from Labour MPs for a parliamentary vote on the UK’s future relationship with the EU as the price for backing her Brexit deal, as she faces an uphill battle to win over Conservative Eurosceptics.
The prime minister has been told by Labour MPs that a package of greater guarantees for workers after Brexit, due to be unveiled on Wednesday, is only enough to convince perhaps three or four more to vote for her withdrawal bill.
She was also warned that her offer of £1.6bn to towns could have been counterproductive as Labour MPs considering backing her deal would now be open to accusations that they had been bribed by No 10.
However, one Labour MP involved in discussions said the key to winning the backing of dozens more MPs representing leave-voting areas was the promise of a parliamentary vote on the future relationship with the EU.
A Downing Street source said May had promised an increased role for parliament on the political declaration but had not yet set out what this would involve.
May is facing a huge challenge to win enough support for her Brexit deal next week, as some hardline Conservative Eurosceptics indicated on Monday they may prefer a delay to leaving the EU than supporting a withdrawal deal that fails to solve the Irish backstop issue.
A source close to one cabinet minister told the Guardian there seemed to “no chance” that the deal would pass next week but No 10 had a “bunker mentality” and was still focused on trying to pick off individual MPs to back the deal.
Several prominent members of the European Research Group of MPs, including Steve Baker and Owen Paterson, approvingly quoted an article by pro-Brexit lawyer, Martin Howe, which set out the case for Eurosceptics to hold their nerve if they are not satisfied with concessions from the EU.
“If the deal is bad and stays bad, there is no reason for MPs who oppose it to panic and change their position, and every reason why they should stand firm in the face of these article 50 threats,” Howe wrote.
The prime minister needs about another 110 votes to get her deal through the House of Commons, which will have to come from a pool of around 115 Conservative and Democratic Unionist party Eurosceptics and about 40 Labour MPs representing leave-voting areas.
There are another seven Conservative MPs who are in favour of a second referendum and did not back the deal first time around, several of whom told the Guardian they had no intention of voting for May’s deal without a guarantee of a second referendum. The 11 members of the new Independent Group have said they will not back May’s deal without the promise of another referendum.
Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, is continuing talks with the EU on how to secure an assurance that the Irish backstop will not be indefinite, so he can convince the Conservative and DUP Eurosceptics the UK cannot be bound into a permanent customs union.
However, he is no longer likely to meet the Eurosceptics’ demands of a time limit to the backstop or a unilateral exit mechanism. Cox dismissed a Telegraph report claiming those options had been ruled out as full of “misunderstood fag ends dressed up as facts” but did not specifically deny that was the case.
Several prominent leave supporters, including Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, and Nigel Evans, a former deputy Speaker, swung behind May’s deal, saying it was time to back her to avoid a delay to Brexit. But many of the ERG Conservatives are likely to base their decision on their so-called “star chamber” of eight pro-Brexit lawyers, who will meet to give their legal opinion on whether Cox has met their demands.
Amid the uncertainty, Downing Street has continued meetings with Labour MPs and supporters of the People’s Vote campaign in case May needs to appeal more widely.
No 10 is poised to offer a package on workers’ rights, which would give parliament votes on whether to adopt EU protections in future, meaning MPs could potentially force the government to accept new rules.
However, several MPs are demanding more, including the promise of a parliamentary vote on a future relationship to ensure whoever is prime minister at the time gains approval across the Commons for any political deal with the EU.
Labour MPs including Lisa Nandy, Gareth Snell and Ruth Smeeth said the offer of money for their areas was not enough to persuade them to back May’s deal and stressed that their votes could not be bought.
One Labour MP said of the £1.6bn fund: “It actually makes it more difficult for me to vote for her deal. I think it has lost her votes rather than the other way around.”
Meanwhile, the Confederation of British Industry has urged MPs to unite behind May’s Brexit deal and spare the country yet more destabilising uncertainty.
John Allan, the CBI president, told the organisation’s annual leaders’ dinner on Monday that MPs face two choices - “the prime minister’s path” or “more delay, more circling” and “perhaps being flung off a steeper cliff in the summer” if there was still no agreement after a potential extension to article 50.
He added: “Our message to politicians is clear: unite around the prime minister’s deal. Or unite around something else, urgently.”
First published on Mon 15 Oct 2018 20.42 BST
Theresa May faces a frantic 48 hours to try to save her Brexit negotiating strategy after she admitted talks had ground to a halt because of the EU’s insistence upon a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
The prime minister is expected to plead with EU leaders to drop their Irish backstop proposal at a make-or-break summit dinner on Wednesday night after seeking the support of members of her cabinet on Tuesday morning.
With time running out before Wednesday’s meeting, May used an emergency Commons statement to say the EU’s plan “threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom” because it could lead to the creation of a customs border in the Irish Sea.
She told an audience of largely sceptical MPs that the EU had stuck to its backstop proposal because Michel Barnier’s negotiating team had told her there was not time to evaluate a British UK-wide counter-proposal “in the next few weeks”.
The prime minister was due to speak to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Monday night as she tries to lobby EU leaders to change their minds. May has already also spoken to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, in recent days, according to No 10.
A group of eight Brexiter ministers met on Monday night at a meeting dubbed the “pizza summit”, organised by Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the house, to discuss May’s strategy before Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, amid separate concerns from the Tory right that May’s all-UK backstop plan needed to be clearly time limited.
The strength of the turnout – including the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the environment secretary, Michael Gove – is likely to concern Downing Street. They are understood to have aired concerns about May’s negotiating strategy, although one of those present said no strategy for the cabinet meeting was agreed.
Friends of another one of those attending, Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, said she was remaining loyal to the prime minister for now. Others present included the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, and the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss.
EU leaders acknowledged that the Brexit talks had hit a roadblock, although some insisted the problems could still be overcome. Donald Tusk, the EU council president, said a no-deal scenario was “more likely than ever before”.
Merkel said: “We were actually pretty hopeful that we would manage to seal an exit agreement … at the moment, it looks a bit more difficult again”. Speaking to the German Foreign Trade Federation, she said a breakthrough was still possible but would need “quite a bit of finesse and if we aren’t successful this week, we’ll just have to keep negotiating”.
The cautiously optimistic tone was further echoed by Macron, who had demanded “maximum progress” by the time of this week’s leaders’ summit to allow an extraordinary Brexit summit to be called in mid-November. “I believe in our collective intelligence, so I think we can make progress,” he said.
A backstop is required to ensure that there is no hard border in Ireland if a comprehensive free trade deal cannot be signed before the end of 2020. The EU plan would mean that Northern Ireland would remain in the single market and the customs union, prompting fierce objections from Tory hard Brexiters and the Democratic Unionist party, which props up her government.
That prompted May to propose a country-wide alternative in which the whole UK would remain in the parts of the customs union after Brexit, but she admitted in the Commons that, despite months of talks, her counter-proposal had not been accepted.
“The EU still requires a ‘backstop to the backstop’ – effectively an insurance policy for the insurance policy. And they want this to be the Northern Ireland-only solution that they had previously proposed,” May told MPs on Monday.
Raising the stakes, the prime minister insisted that the EU’s insistence amounted to a threat to the constitution of the UK: “We have been clear that we cannot agree to anything that threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom,” she added.
The prime minister insisted that she was demanding of the EU that the UK backstop was time limited: “I need to be able to look the British people in the eye and say this backstop is a temporary solution.”
May had gone to the Commons to clarify the status of the Brexit negotiations a day after a deal had been thought to be close. The Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, was dispatched to Brussels on Sunday afternoon, only to return empty-handed with No 10 warning that the talks had reached an impasse.
Few MPs in the Commons spoke in support of May. Tory Brexiters, led by former cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith, repeatedly pressed her to confirm there would be a specific end date for the temporary backstop plans.
The prime minister avoided answering the question, telling MPs: “I continue to believe that we should be working to ensure that the backstop never does come into place.”
Simon Clarke, the Conservative Brexiter MP for Middlesbrough South, told her she had “failed to reassure the house”.
The prime minister also came under pressure from the remain wing of her party. The former home secretary Amber Rudd urged her to deliver a Brexit that also worked for the 48% who voted to remain and the former education secretary Nicky Morgan warned may there was no majority for no deal in the Commons and that MPs would have to “step in” if she failed to get one.
May highlighted a concession she had already made on the EU withdrawal bill, telling MPs: “If it were the case that at the end of the negotiation process actually it as a no deal … then that would come back to this house and then we would see what position this house would take in the circumstances”.
About 15 MPs, including four Conservatives, used the debate to urge May to reconsider holding a second referendum. Former cabinet minister Dominic Grieve, who has led previous rebellions against the prime minister’s plans, said he would not back the transition period, which he described as a “condition of vassalage”, unless there was another vote.
Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s Westminster leader, pressed May to reiterate the UK would leave the EU “together with no part hived off either in the single market or customs union differences”.
Dodds was visibly unhappy with May’s answer, shaking his head when she replied in general terms: “We will be leaving the European Union together.”
Jeremy Corbyn urged May to “put the country before her party” and stand up to the “reckless voices” on the Tory benches. “It is clear that the prime minister’s failure to stand up to the warring factions of her own side have led to this impasse.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.57 GMT
Theresa May is facing the most serious cabinet revolt of her premiership next week, with as many as 25 members of the government ready to vote for a Brexit delay unless she rules out “no deal” – in a move that will challenge her to sack them.
Rebel Conservatives believe there are now enough MPs across the House of Commons to pass an amendment that would require May to extend article 50 rather than allow the UK to leave without a deal.
At least four cabinet ministers, almost a dozen junior ministers and many others on the government payroll are understood to be prepared to back the motion proposed by the Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin and Labour’s Yvette Cooper, due to be debated on Wednesday. A senior source close to those plotting the rebellion said there was no way the members of the government would resign voluntarily and May would have to sack them.
The move comes with moderates emboldened by the formation of the Independent Group, which some see as providing leverage to push back against the influence of the European Research Group of hardline Brexiters.
The cabinet ministers David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Mundell told the prime minister in a private meeting earlier this week that she would have to delay Brexit if there was no Commons majority for her deal by 27 February.
Speaking in Edinburgh on Thursday, Mundell told an audience he would do “everything I can and whatever I deem necessary to prevent a no-deal Brexit”, and refused repeatedly to rule out resigning from the cabinet if necessary.
May has already survived two rounds of resignations by the Brexit-supporting cabinet ministers David Davis, Boris Johnson, Esther McVey and Dominic Raab, but a wave of sackings would plunge the government into crisis at a crucial time for the Brexit talks.
Pro-Brexit MPs said the outcome of next week was unpredictable but, if it came to the vote, May would have to get rid of the rebellious ministers.
One cabinet source said: “It would be a huge mistake not to sack them. It would be effectively conceding we had lost control of the party.”
To avert a crisis, No 10 is racing to secure changes to May’s withdrawal deal with the EU that will satisfy hardline Eurosceptics and the Democratic Unionist party, enabling parliament to approve it. Their central demand is the removal of the Irish backstop from the text of the agreement because it could indefinitely bind the UK into a customs union.
Downing Street sources said the prime minister ideally wanted to hold a parliamentary vote and win approval for her deal early next week, but sources conceded time was running out to pull off such a move.
She is heading to a meeting of world leaders, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh at the weekend in a last-minute effort to break the deadlock. The key to the talks is whether they can find a solution to allow Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, to change his legal advice that the backstop is indefinite. However, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, told reporters in Brussels he was “not very optimistic” about the progress of talks so far.
“If a no-deal would happen – and I can’t exclude this – this would have terrible economic and social consequences, both in Britain and on the continent, and so my efforts orient in a way that the worst can be avoided,” he said.
If May does not manage a breakthrough by Wednesday, several senior cabinet ministers are pushing her to give assurances from the dispatch box that she is so close to a withdrawal deal that there is no need to consider the possibility of Brexit without one any more. “If you think you can get a deal with the EU by early April, what’s the point of crashing out on 29 March?” said one source close to the rebels.
However, that strategy risks infuriating the DUP and hardline Eurosceptics, many of whom favour a no-deal Brexit and would want to see the text of an agreement with the EU before removing that possibility.
One option for May is to call a free vote, which is the solution favoured by the “Brexit delivery group” of 100 MPs from both the remain and leave wings of the party. They have warned her that many of their number are prepared to rebel unless she allows MPs to vote with their consciences.
Three MPs in the ERG – Priti Patel, Maria Caulfield and Anne-Marie Trevelyan – wrote a joint article for the ConservativeHome website on Thursday, saying: “Nothing changes the fact that, as the prime minister herself has said, we need to see meaningful, legally-binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, removing the backstop.
“We remain open-minded as to how this is achieved, but it must be a treaty-level clause that brings about substantive legal changes. It cannot simply re-emphasise the temporary nature of the backstop, because the attorney general has already said that it could ‘endure indefinitely’.”
One source close to a soft-Brexit minister said there would be “fireworks” either way as next week is the point at which May will have to throw her lot in with either them or the ERG.
The soft-Brexit rebels are particularly buoyed by the idea that the power of the ERG was waning because they would no longer win a no-confidence motion against the prime minister, given that the new Independent Group MPs would be likely to abstain to avoid an election – and their price would be a second referendum.
At the same time as ministers are threatening to resign, May is also facing the possibility of more MPs quitting the party, after Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen joined the Independent Group citing her Brexit policy and the destruction of the modernising wing of the party. With her working majority down to just eight, May called in two potential defectors – Phillip Lee, a former justice minister, and Justine Greening, the former education secretary – to Downing Street in a bid to persuade them to stay.
The prime minister also wrote back to the defectors saying she “did not accept the picture you paint of our party”, arguing it was still a “moderate, open-hearted Conservative party in the one nation tradition”.
Greening said earlier that she would stay in the party “for the moment”, while Tobias Ellwood, a defence minister, also gave a sympathetic statement about the three defecting Conservatives. “Losing three colleagues raises serious questions about our brand, our core mission and ownership of the very soul of our party which we must address,” he said. “If we have any ambitions of winning support beyond our base we must remain a centre right, inclusive, vibrant and progressive party.”
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, is unlikely to quit, but said he would have to leave the party if the government implemented a no-deal Brexit. He told the Guardian “the numbers are there” for May to be defeated on the Cooper-Letwin amendment unless she rules out a no-deal Brexit.
On Wednesday, Philip Hammond repeatedly refused to say whether or not he would resign as chancellor if May decided to pursue a no-deal Brexit.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.01 GMT
Theresa May has ruled out any plan B involving a Norway-style compromise deal with the Labour party in order to deliver a parliamentary consensus on Brexit, saying the opposition party’s refusal to accept the backstop arrangement put the UK on a course for no deal.
Influential backbenchers, including former Tory minister Nick Boles and Labour’s Stephen Kinnock, have been developing a compromise proposal based on membership of the European Economic Area plus a negotiated customs union, believing it is the only version of Brexit that could attract enough Labour and Tory votes to deliver a parliamentary majority.
Some cabinet ministers are understood to be attracted to the plans as an alternative if May’s negotiated deal fails to pass the House of Commons.
However, on Thursday May repeated her rejection of the “Norway plus” model and suggested she would not be prepared to offer it as a compromise arrangement because it would mean the continuation of freedom of movement. That is regarded in Downing Street as the hardest of the prime minister’s red lines.
Speaking to reporters en route to the G20 summit in Argentina, the prime minister remained defiant that her version of a Brexit deal could win the vote in less than a fortnight’s time. More than 90 Conservatives and the overwhelming majority of the Labour MPs have publicly confirmed they will not back it.
“I’ve been very clear about my position, we won’t be in the customs union,” she said, onboard her RAF Voyager plane to the two-day summit in Buenos Aires.
“What you see in the political declaration is what would be a deal for the United Kingdom that is not Norway, it is not Canada, it is a more ambitious free trade agreement than Canada, and it ends free movement – which Norway doesn’t do.”
Asked whether the model would be the only way to win Labour votes, the prime minister suggested the end result of the strategy put forward by shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer would be the UK leaving with no deal.
“You talk about if a Norway-style strategy would bring Labour along with it – if you look at the Labour party amendment that they’ve put down to the motion on the 11th of December, actually what they are doing is advocating rejecting the deal we’ve negotiated with the European Union without having any proper alternative to it,” she said.
“They say they don’t want no deal, but by appearing to reject a temporary backstop, they are effectively advocating no deal. Without a backstop, there is no deal.”
May suggested she believed there was no compromise that could involve Labour. “What they actually want to see is another general election,” she said. “And that means they are not acting in the national interest, they are putting their narrow party interest first.”
The prime minister insisted the result of a vote was not a foregone conclusion despite her mutinous backbenchers’ stated intentions. “Everyone said we would not get a deal, and now we’re in the position of having a deal, all you seem to want to be asking about is the next stage,” she told reporters. “We haven’t had the vote yet. Let’s focus.”
May suggested those MPs who had sworn to vote down her deal were going against the interests of their constituents. “I ask every member of parliament to think about delivering on the Brexit vote and doing it in a way that is in the interests of their constituents – because it protects the jobs and livelihoods of their constituents.
“If the vote is not supported then we will see more division and more uncertainty. A divided country is not a country that prospers.”
Speaking at the liaison committee of MPs before she set off for Buenos Aires, May was pressed on whether she had a plan B for avoiding a no-deal scenario and the dire economic consequences the Bank of England has predicted.
May suggested the result of rejection would be a ramping up of preparations for no deal. She later told reporters that loss of the government in parliament would set in motion “practical preparations that they would need to make for a no deal” to mitigate the worst-case scenario.
“The point of the preparations ... is to ensure that we can take action to mitigate the impact of no deal,” she said. “We are doing what every sensible government would do.”
Speaking about the upcoming TV debate, May said she would debate only Jeremy Corbyn and not any hard Brexiter such as Boris Johnson, or any campaigner for a second referendum.
She said the country had moved on from the leave-versus-remain argument and the debate was “looking ahead to the vote”. She said it would be a chance to present her deal to the British people and draw comparisons with Labour’s position.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Theresa May is expected to write to Jeremy Corbyn to set out the government’s offer on Brexit, with negotiations due to resume in Downing Street on Friday.
With just five days to go before the prime minister must travel to Brussels to request a further Brexit delay from EU leaders, little progress appears to have been made on finding a compromise deal both Labour and the Conservatives can back.
But after the government delegation reported back to May on Thursday, officials began drafting a letter setting out a way forward.
One government source suggested that, in accordance with Labour’s demands, it would include the proposal that a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal be offered to MPs as an option in any vote next week.
After Thursday’s discussions in Downing Street, Corbyn sent a note to Labour MPs, saying: “Agenda items were customs arrangements, single market alignment including rights and protections, agencies and programmes, internal security, legal underpinning to any agreements and confirmatory vote.”
Technical talks lasted four and a half hours, but both sides emerged cautious about how much progress had been made.
The Guardian understands the Downing Street team of David Lidington, Steve Barclay, Julian Smith, Greg Clark and Gavin Barwell spent much of their time explaining the details of the withdrawal agreement, rather than proposing movement on any of May’s red lines.
Labour’s delegation included Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey. The prime minister’s chief Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, was also present.
Earlier in the week, May had hinted she was open to compromise on issues such as the customs union, with her attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, later saying it was something he could live with.
A deal including a customs union would be explosive in the Conservative party as the majority of Tory MPs oppose such a move.
Hardline Eurosceptic MPs are still furious, with many plotting moves against the prime minister, despite there being no formal Conservative party mechanism to move a motion of no confidence in her until December.
One Brexiter MP said there were moves afoot to destabilise the prime minister including many more letters going to Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee, and an orchestrated campaign of letter-writing by Conservative association chairmen.
Another Conservative MP said there could come a point where the feeling against May was so strong that it would end in MPs effectively “storming into Downing Street and hauling her out of it”.
A third Tory MP, Andrew Bridgen, who is holding out against May’s deal, said: “For the sake of the country and democracy and the party we have got to find a way to get rid of her. You’ve either got an international trade policy and a seat at the table or, if you’ve got a customs union, you are on the menu.”
A cabinet source insisted May’s intention in holding the talks with Labour was genuine, but acknowledged they would probably end in another series of parliamentary votes on the options.
An alternative could be for May to extend an offer of formal talks to Labour MPs who want a Brexit deal. Around 25 Labour MPs wrote to Corbyn on Thursday urging him to “go the extra step” to secure a better Brexit deal with the prime minister without the need for a referendum.
The MPs who have signed the letter, many of them from leave-voting seats, include the former minister Caroline Flint, backbenchers Sarah Champion and Gareth Snell, and leftwing Eurosceptics such as Dennis Skinner, Ronnie Campbell and Kevin Barron.
“A second referendum would be exploited by the far right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our chances of winning a general election,” they said in the letter.
The MPs said Corbyn could achieve many of Labour’s objectives in the talks, referring to his party conference speech where he said Labour could support a “sensible deal” with a customs union, no hard border in Northern Ireland and one that protected jobs, workers’ rights and environmental standards.
“We believe you are close to achieving that in the coming days,” the MPs said. “At the general election we were clear about respecting the 2016 vote and about securing those Labour goals. Therefore we feel if compromise is necessary to achieve this deal and avoid fighting the European elections, we should go the extra step to secure this.”
The group said that the party’s conference policy “does not require a confirmatory ballot on any deal that meets those conditions”.
However, the Labour leader received an opposing missive from 12 MPs including Corbyn allies and shadow ministers Clive Lewis and Marsha de Cordova, as well as the former shadow cabinet minister Kate Osamor, which urged him not to sign up to a deal unless it was subject to a public vote.
The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, also wrote to frontbench colleagues insisting that a deal not subject to a referendum would breach Labour’s conference policy and would need to be put to a shadow cabinet vote.
First published on Thu 15 Nov 2018 13.48 GMT
EU officials have warned those calling for Theresa May to go back to Brussels that the negotiators have “exhausted the margin of manoeuvre” in the talks and the draft deal is “the best we can do”.
As members of the cabinet and other ministers were handing in their resignation letters to the prime minister, the EU was trying to sell the deal to critics in London and member states who have expressed concerns.
One official said the negotiators had nowhere else to go, adding that the political masters on both sides should reflect on the impact of having more talks and what it would do to the process with so little time before the UK leaves the bloc.
“[As] negotiators, we are happy to stand over the agreement, and we think it is the best we can do collectively with the constraints that we have on both sides,” the official said.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, was said by the head of the Greens in the European parliament, Philippe Lambert, to have told all the party leaders in Strasbourg on Thursday the deal was the best available given the UK’s demands and Brussels’ red-lines.
Beyond the chaos in Westminster, France, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands are all understood to have serious concerns that a customs union has been handed to the UK without sufficient safeguards to ensure British companies cannot undercut European industry. They are likely to make their voices heard at a meeting of EU affairs ministers on Monday.
The EU official would not comment on whether Dominic Raab, who resigned as Brexit secretary on Thursday, had expressed his doubts about the outcome of the talks before this week.
The official said: “I am not going to speculate about a scenario where those who have the mandate are not happy with the outcome. We will see … Every party in a [negotiation] has to take their responsibility and we will have to see.”
Earlier in the day, the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, had told the BBC: “There is not a lot of room for manoeuvre to say, ‘OK, let’s start again’.”
The terms of the agreement as spelled out by the EU on Thursday are likely to heighten the political temperature in the UK.
The British government will not be able to leave the UK-wide customs union, included as a backstop to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, unless by common agreement with Brussels.
“There would be a possibility to terminate the application of the backstop, of the protocol, by common agreement,” the EU official said. “It has to be a joint decision.”
The customs union, and the level playing field demands, described as “fairly voluminous”, under which the UK would put EU directives into law and commit not to lower environmental, social and labour standards, were said to be the starting point and a basis for the future trade deal.
Under the terms of the backstop, which will come into force if a wider trade deal cannot do the job by the end of the 21-month transition period – even after a possible extension – the UK would also not be able to pursue its own free trade deals in goods.
The length of the transition extension, and the cost to the British taxpayer, is also yet to be negotiated – raising speculation that it could be longer than a year. Under the terms of the transition period, the UK will in effect stay in the EU but without any representation in its rule-making institutions.
“We still have some work to do and fill that out,” the official said, of the length of the transition, adding that this would be done by the proposed summit on 25 November.
On Thursday morning, Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, said he would gather leaders for a Brexit meeting “unless something extraordinary happens”.
When asked about the resignations in London, Tusk said: “It is not for me to comment on the latest developments in London ... the EU is prepared for a final deal with the United Kingdom. We are also prepared for a no-deal scenario – but of course we are best prepared for a no-Brexit scenario.”
Under the backstop, Northern Ireland would be in the same customs territory as the rest of the UK, but would also have to apply the full customs code and stay in the single market, unlike Great Britain, to ensure there are no border checks needed on the island of Ireland.
UK authorities, not EU officials, will be responsible for implementing and applying the backstop arrangements, which will include limited checks in British ports, factory and farm premises on both sides of the Irish Sea.
During a backstop arrangement EU representatives “shall have the right to be present, during and receive, upon request, all relevant information” relating to these checks, a second EU source said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Theresa May has written to civil servants saying no-deal preparations must carry on despite a new October deadline for the UK’s exit from the European Union.
An email seen by the Guardian shows that the prime minister has told government staff that plans for crashing out of the EU are necessary and will continue to be signed off by permanent secretaries.
It follows criticism of May’s government for wasting money after it emerged in a leaked email to Sky News that no-deal plans were being “wound down”.
In an email sent to the civil service on Monday, May clarified this point, writing that some no-deal planning would continue. Senior civil servants including the cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwill, would decide which plans could be shelved, the prime minister said.
“On preparations specifically for leaving the EU without a deal, you will rightly be guided by the cabinet secretary and by your own permanent secretaries about continued planning. Necessary preparations for a no-deal outcome must continue, though with sensibly adjusted timescales given the extension we have agreed,” May wrote.
On Friday, it emerged that the government stood down Operation Yellowhammer, its contingency planning operation for dealing with the worst-case scenarios resulting from a no-deal Brexit, after the postponement of the UK’s exit from the EU.
About 6,000 civil servants have been preparing for a no-deal Brexit, at an estimated cost of £1.5bn.
The decision followed an agreement between the EU council and the UK to push back the Brexit deadline to 31 October. However, there were conflicting reports about the extent to which no-deal planning would continue.
Staff who had been seconded from elsewhere will now return to their normal duties, but there is no clear role for an estimated 4,500 new recruits. About 16,000 civil servants have been redeployed or recruited to fill Brexit-related posts.
In the email, which was first disclosed by PoliticsHome, May also praised the civil service for its work on Brexit preparations. “I hope you are able to take advantage of a well-deserved break over the Easter Holiday,” she said.
May’s letter has been welcomed by the FDA union, that represents senior civil servants. Dave Penman, the head of the FDA, said: “Too often, she and her ministers have been silent as those within her own party have sought to undermine the impartiality and integrity of the civil service.
“I hope this marks a change of approach from the prime minister and that the civil servants she has heaped praise on today can rely on her to defend them in the future,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
The prime minister always told us that no deal is better than a bad deal. She has tried her best to negotiate a good deal, but has ended up with a very bad deal. What is on offer entails the United Kingdom agreeing to pay the European Union another £39bn, in return for 21 months or more of additional talks to see if a new partnership can be arranged. Why would the EU be more willing to offer preferential trade terms and other benefits once we have agreed to pay it a large sum of money, when over the past two years and four months it has not been prepared to do so?
The EU has made it crystal clear that, if a country wants to stay in the customs union and single market, it has to obey all the rules and laws of the EU and cannot enter into new free trade deals with other countries on its own initiative. The EU thinks that if you belong to the single market you have to make budget contributions and accept freedom of movement.
The 17.4 million leave voters fully understood that Brexit meant leaving the single market and customs union as well as the EU: both remain and leave campaigns told them that was so, and the EU agreed; the government also said we would have to leave the single market and customs union. The deal on offer does not respect this, keeping the UK in both the single market and customs union for another 21 months, with further commitments thereafter if a full partnership agreement has not been reached in the meantime.
Why would the EU hasten to agree a new partnership when it would, under this deal, have the UK locked in as a member of the customs union with no unilateral right to leave? Under this deal, the UK would renounce the EU treaty it can get out of and substitute it with another treaty that has no clear exit. It would also mean no vote and voice over the laws and rules that would apply to us – a worsening of the position of being a member, where we had some influence despite often being outvoted.
The prime minister is unlikely to be able to get the complex legislation through the Commons given the large number of opponents on the Conservative and DUP benches. Labour has made clear its opposition to this measure as well. Strong Conservative remain supporters are as opposed to it as pro-Brexit MPs.
The bill to authorise this treaty will be complex because the draft treaty is complex. It would also be a case of take it all or leave it, as the government will have no independent ability to compromise or flex given it is an agreement with the 27 other member states.
So what should the government do? It should return to the EU and explain that the draft treaty is unacceptable to the UK parliament, whose authority is needed to sign it. The government should accept the EU’s position that we cannot be half in and half out of the single market and customs union. It should table a free trade agreement between an independent UK and the EU to start next March.
The EU has offered this for Great Britain but not for the whole of the UK. The government, therefore, has to revisit all the work done on the Irish border issue, and show that the UK need not introduce new fences, control posts and barriers. The border is already a VAT, excise and currency border, and can handle customs dues as well without big delays and difficult intrusions.
Meanwhile, it needs to complete its preparations for leaving next March without signing a withdrawal agreement, given the likelihood that parliament won’t approve this one.
This agreement suits neither side, so it is time to negotiate a better one.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has said he believes his party would be “leaving me” if it cannot fully endorse a second referendum, hours after giving a speech in which he said it should be the party of remain.
Watson told the BBC that Labour “certainly might lose some votes” for backing a referendum, but would pay “a very high electoral price” for not taking a clear position on Brexit.
Asked if he might be prepared to leave the party without a clear change of direction, he said, “I’m never going to leave the Labour party,” but then added: “Sometimes I wonder whether the Labour party is leaving me.”
Watson said he had “no doubt” Labour’s position would change at the party’s annual conference in September, but said he feared “by then it will be too late”.
The deputy leader’s interview followed a speech he gave at a pro-EU thinktank arguing that Labour needed to make a better case for continued EU membership – even at this late hour.
Watson’s intervention was immediately criticised by the party chair Ian Lavery, a vociferous opponent of a second referendum. “Brexit has turned this country into a toxic nation. However, ignoring the 17.4 million leave voters isn’t politically smart nor indeed particularly democratic. Is it?” Lavery tweeted after Watson’s speech.
Watson said that no one should question his motivation in pushing for the change.
“You may disagree with me fundamentally, and I respect that,” he said. “I think for the Labour party, having knocked on doors up and down the country in the local and European elections, having spoken to many thousands of Labour voters, many of whom are lifelong Labour party members who told me they were voting for the parties at the election because of the lack of clarity on our position.”In his speech at the Centre for European Reform, Watson also took a veiled swipe at some Labour MPs and union officials, including Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, who have cautioned against a referendum, suggesting they had not made the case for how the EU had helped their towns and workers.
“For those on the left to fail to acknowledge that is to rewrite history,” he said.“It is no ‘boss’s club’, it is both an engine of progress and a backstop against regressive and repressive governments.”
He said his party needed to become the home for remainers after European election results that had seen the party squeezed by the Liberal Democrats and the Greens.
“European is who we are and who we have always been,” he said. “Our members are remain. Our values are remain. Our hearts are remain. We need our Labour party to be true to who we are and be loud and proud in support of Europe.”
Watson said that a new public vote was the only option now that parliament and the government had failed to break the impasse. “We put the question back to the people because parliament and government – as we reach the three-year mark – have proved utterly incapable of implementing Brexit, and shows no more sign of doing so now than ever,” he said.
“The notion that it’s in some way undemocratic to let the people put an end to this crisis because, after three years, parliament and government cannot, is absurd. And if you want Brexit, and you believe there is still a majority for it in the UK, then a public vote will break the deadlock and deliver the Brexit you want.”
Watson suggested the party needed to step up its campaigning for a public vote. “Now is the time to speak out more loudly than ever, before any further irreparable damage is done,” he said.
At a fractious meeting of Labour MPs last Monday, Jeremy Corbyn was urged to move faster to change the party’s policy. However, a special meeting of Labour’s shadow cabinet due to take place to discuss Brexit policy on Monday was cancelled because “a number of colleagues [were] unable to attend”.
First published on Thu 4 Jul 2019 17.52 BST
Tom Watson is urging grassroots members to sign up to a public declaration calling for Labour to be “the party of remain”, as pressure mounts on Jeremy Corbyn to embrace an anti-Brexit position.
In a move likely to be regarded as provocative by Corbyn’s team, Watson is publishing a statement online, and inviting signatures, to underline the breadth of concern about Labour’s stance.
“As the party of remain, we will not take every voter with us, but it’s the only way that Labour can win, and the only way to keep our country together,” the statement says.
Since the party’s disastrous performance at the European elections in May, winning just 14% of the vote, Labour’s position has already evolved.
Corbyn has repeatedly said, including in the House of Commons, that any Brexit deal – or a no-deal Brexit – should be put to a public vote.
He told Theresa May last week: “Whoever the next prime minister is, they will barely hold the support of this house, so they certainly have no mandate to force a disastrous hard-right Brexit on this country. Whatever Brexit plan the new Tory leader comes up with, after three long years of failure they should have the confidence to go back to the people on a deal agreed by parliament.”
But Watson is among those members of the shadow cabinet who would now like to see Corbyn go further, and commit his party to campaigning for remain in a second referendum.
Some of Corbyn’s closest allies, including Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, have also said they want to see a shift, with the issue cutting across the traditional left-right divide within the party.
Corbyn has insisted that he is still consulting on the issue; and has privately pointed to the historical lessons of the Harold Wilson government.
Wilson formally backed continued membership of the European Community in the 1975 referendum; but took a back seat during the campaign, and allowed his cabinet to campaign on opposing sides. One of those then urging a leave vote was Corbyn’s lifelong political hero, Tony Benn.
Corbyn’s spokesman has said a firm position is likely to be reached before MPs leave Westminster for the summer recess later this month.
If the new stance is not resolutely anti-Brexit, Labour campaign groups including Love Socialism Hate Brexit are readying themselves for a summer of action before the party’s conference in September.
It was last year’s conference in Liverpool where the “composite motion”, which first put the option of a referendum “on the table” as part of Labour policy, was hammered out.
But a number of MPs and members of the shadow cabinet, including Jon Trickett and Ian Lavery, continue to have profound concerns about the party embracing a remain position.
They point out that the Brexit party represents a threat to Labour, as well as the anti-Brexit Lib Dems. A YouGov poll for the Times this week put Labour in fourth place behind both those parties, and the bitterly-divided Conservatives, on 18% of the vote.
Watson’s statement says: “Labour’s democratic tradition confers on us an obligation to win elections. Without power we can achieve nothing. As a party of Brexit we will never win again, and that is an abrogation too far.
“Because we love Britain, and because we believe in Labour, we will fight, fight and fight again to keep Britain in the EU. The next step, which only Labour can deliver, needs to be a public vote on the Brexit fiasco, with Labour leading the way for remain.”
It goes on to say “a democratic socialist Labour government – equality, social justice, opportunity and prosperity for all of Britain – will follow swiftly when we regain the people’s trust.”
First published on Tue 13 Aug 2019 18.00 BST
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has urged his party to work with the Liberal Democrats in order to stop a no-deal Brexit, as the new Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson made clear she would work with Watson, despite having ruled out an alliance with Jeremy Corbyn.
The remarks by the two senior politicians at a round table on Wednesday are likely to spark anger from the Labour leadership. Swinson has previously ruled out working with the Labour leader, branding him a Brexiter who could not be trusted to fight for a second referendum to keep the UK in the EU.
Senior Labour figures have made clear they would not countenance backing any unity government or coalition to stop no deal unless it was led by Corbyn, whom they argue is best placed to command an anti-no deal majority.
Watson, speaking at an event hosted by For our Future’s Sake and Our Future Our Choice – the two youth movements campaigning for a second referendum – said party lines should be irrelevant when it came to fighting to stop Boris Johnson forcing through no deal.
“Everyone who cares about democracy, our country and our future must work together because there are enough of us – from all parties in parliament – to stop him,” he said.
“First, that means working together to stop no deal for which there is no majority in either parliament or the country. Second, it means working together to make sure – whether it’s before an election or afterwards – we solve this Brexit crisis with more democracy, not less democracy by having a final say referendum so that all the people have their voice heard.
“Whether you’re Liberal Democrats, social democrats or democratic socialists, we are all democrats. And democrats have got to realise in this crisis that we’re stronger together if we work together.”
Watson’s remarks could be incendiary in Labour circles as they appear to undermine the tough stance taken by Corbyn and his allies who have insisted they would not back a unity government alternative to a general election, even if it had the sole aim of stopping no deal.Swinson said she was committed to “working with others across party lines in parliament to stop no-deal Brexit” and said there was “no time for tribalism” – a coded warning to senior Labour figures such as John McDonnell or Rebecca Long-Bailey who have said Labour could not back moves led by those who would keep Corbyn out of No 10 if given the opportunity.
“That is why I am pleased to be here today with Tom to show there is a desire across the political spectrum to stop Boris Johnson’s reckless no-deal Brexit plan and instead deliver a brighter future inside the EU,” she said.“Ultimately we need to secure a people’s vote, stop Brexit and ensure that the rights and opportunities that the last generation have enjoyed are protected for the next.”
McDonnell has said he expects Labour to win any confidence vote against Johnson, though it is unclear when the party will attempt a vote when parliament returns from summer recess. He said Labour would try to force Johnson out by attempting to form a caretaker government with the support of other opposition parties and rebel Conservative MPs.
Ruling out any deals with the Liberal Democrats or the Scottish National party, McDonnell said the only guarantee to other opposition parties would be to block a no-deal Brexit and organise a fresh EU referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
More voters now say they would back the Brexit party at the next general election than the Conservatives, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
Nigel Farage’s party increased its support by three points to 24% of the vote, leapfrogging the Tories and trailing Labour by just five points. The Conservatives claimed 22% of the vote, the same figure they recorded in last week’s poll.
The Brexit party also maintained its 14-point lead when voters were asked who they would back in next week’s European elections, maintaining 34% of the vote. Labour secured 20%, with the Liberal Democrats up to 15% support. The Tories were on 12%, up one point on a week ago.
While the Remain vote remains split between several parties, the Lib Dems have become the top choice for Remain voters. The party increased its share of Remain voters to 29%, up seven points. Labour’s share of Remain voters was down three points on 28%.
The poll found that if Labour were to switch and clearly back a second referendum with an option to remain in the EU, the party could win back a large number of Remain votes in Thursday’s vote. In such a scenario, Labour’s vote share increased to 30%, a 10-point increase on its current position.
Support for Theresa May is ebbing away, even among Tory voters. Two in five (38%) 2017 Conservative voters think the prime minister should resign immediately. It has increased from a third (32%) since before the local elections in April.
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are now tied over who would make the better prime minister, though both have low ratings. Each has only 19%, with 55% saying that neither would be the best person for the job.
Support for May’s deal appears to have hit a ceiling. For the first time since the indicative votes in the House of Commons took place, more of the public think that MPs should vote the deal down (39%) than vote for it (36%).
Adam Drummond, head of political polling at Opinium, said: “While the home for dissatisfied Leave voters was established quite early on as Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, until recently Remainers dissatisfied with the major parties have struggled to unite around a single pro-Remain party. However, with less than a week to go there are signs that the Liberal Democrats are emerging to fill this slot. Although their share of the Remainer vote (29%) is nowhere near the 63% share the Brexit party has among Leavers, they have overtaken Labour (28%). The question is whether that trend continues in the few days of campaigning left.
“Labour’s difficulties on Brexit are further highlighted by what happens when we test some scenarios. When we ask what voters would do if the Tories were able to pass Theresa May’s deal and that MEPs elected next week would never take their seats, there is almost no change in the Conservative vote share. In contrast, when we present the scenario of Labour unambiguously committing to a second referendum with Remain being on the ballot, Labour pulls back 10 points to be level with the Brexit Party on 30%.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
Ministers have praised the Queen after she spoke about seeking “common ground” and “never losing sight of the bigger picture”, remarks widely interpreted as a veiled reference to the toxic debate around Brexit.
In a speech to mark the centenary of the Sandringham Women’s Institute (WI), the Queen spoke of the virtues of respecting other people’s points of view.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, told the BBC’s Today programme there was “huge wisdom” in her words.
“I don’t think anybody will be at all surprised to hear the Queen advocating the view that in all things controversial, we should seek compromise, we should seek common ground and we should seek a way forward,” he said.
“That is actually what we do in this country, that is how we solve problems, by compromise and pragmatism. It’s been our enormous strength over centuries that we have been able to find compromises that bring the nation together.”
Theresa May’s official spokesman declined to comment directly on the Queen’s remarks, but told reporters: “The prime minister’s own view is that we should always show great respect for the point of view of others.”
As head of state, the Queen remains politically neutral in public and does not express her own views, but many commentators have seen her words as referring to the divisive nature of conversations around Britain’s EU departure.
Conservative MPs and ministers used Twitter to express their support for the Queen’s words, with the health secretary, Matt Hancock, tweeting: “I agree with the Queen.”
Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, said “wise words from the Queen”, while Bim Afolami, the MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, wrote: “The Queen is right.”
The Queen attends a meeting of the her local WI once a year at West Newton village hall as part of her winter stay on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
During the speech, she said: “As we look for new answers in the modern age, I for one prefer the tried and tested recipes, like speaking well of each other and respecting different points of view, coming together to seek out the common ground and never losing sight of the bigger picture.
“To me, these approaches are timeless, and I commend them to everyone.”
It echoed her Christmas address, when she touched on the same theme, telling the nation: “Even with the most deeply held differences, treating the other person with respect and as a fellow human being is always a good first step towards greater understanding.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Conservatives stepped up warnings on Monday that a Boris Johnson premiership could lead to the collapse of the government if the leadership frontrunner attempts to pursue no deal.
One former Tory minister said he believed there were many more Tory MPs who would be prepared to take that step than those who would publicly admit it. “I do think at least 10 would vote to bring down the government if the government was taking us into no deal,” the MP said.
“Politicians don’t like to admit that they take this view in public, they like to hedge their bets a bit, but that has been my view for a long time.”
Tobias Ellwood, the defence minister, said he believed at least a dozen Conservative MPs could be forced into voting against the government.
Asked if the Conservatives who felt so strongly against no deal had the numbers, Ellwood told the BBC: “I believe that absolutely is the case. I think a dozen or so members of parliament would be on our side, would be voting against supporting a no deal and that would include ministers as well as backbenchers.”
Ellwood later denied he would be among those MPs prepared to vote against the government in a confidence vote.
“I simply state the huge long-term dangers of no deal to our economy, security, reputation, the Union and our Party,” he tweeted. “I simply forecast there are some who will do all to stop this. Let’s avoid this scenario: leave with a workable deal.”
His statement was retweeted by the Conservative MP Antoinette Sandbach, who is among those who has rebelled over giving parliament a meaningful vote on the deal, as well as efforts to halt no deal.
The Tory MP Guto Bebb, a backer of the pro-referendum People’s Vote campaign, also said he believed there were enough Conservative MPs prepared to stop no deal.
“If a Conservative leader seriously tried to carry out such a policy, they would face almost certain humiliation in parliament, deepen the sense of crisis and paralysis in the country and widen the divisions inside our party,” he said.
“Enough Conservative MPs will put country ahead of party to stop no deal. When that happens we may end up facing an election which no serious Conservative wants.”
The former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke, who along with Dominic Grieve has publicly said he would vote against a Conservative government to stop no deal, said: “If it is heading for a no deal simply because the government has not got around to doing anything then yes I think I would.
“I’m a lifelong Conservative, that means I’m pro-business, I’m in favour of free markets, I’m in favour of free trade and I think all those should be combined with a strong social conscience because I’m a one nation Conservative. It might trigger an election, it might trigger a change of government without an election under the law we now have.”
Johnson’s opponent, Jeremy Hunt, said the warnings were another reason why he needed to stand up and face scrutiny over how he would avoid such a scenario.
“In that situation, is he [Johnson] going to have an election in order to get a majority in parliament for a no-deal Brexit?” he said. “I think Conservative party members need to know the answer to those questions.”
MPs are also understood to be concerned that new recess dates, set to be confirmed on Monday for the week that the new prime minister takes office, would mean no party or coalition would have a chance to form a government if a confidence vote were lost.
Under the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, parties have up to 14 days to prove they can form an alternative government to command the confidence of the House of Commons. The new prime minister is set to take office either on 22 or 23 July, with parliament set to rise for recess on 24 July.
“In the middle of what might be a major crisis, parliament could be absent because it has agreed to be adjourned,” one MP said. “I don’t feel comfortable with that at all.”
Pro-second referendum candidates have previously floated the possibility of forming a “unity government” within the 14-day period if a Tory administration lost a confidence vote.
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leadership candidate, has said his party would support such an endeavour to form a government with the sole purpose of delivering a new referendum. “Liberal Democrats will do all we can to save the country from a Johnson premiership and to stop Brexit,” he said.
“Johnson could very soon find himself without a majority, and I’m working night and day to secure an emergency national government to deliver a people’s vote.”
First published on Sat 29 Jun 2019 19.00 BST
A prominent pro-Remain MP has called for urgent talks about an anti-Brexit alliance, signalling she is prepared to stand down if necessary to help it happen.
Sarah Wollaston, who resigned from the Conservative party over its Brexit stance, said the threat of a “populist” autumn election meant there was now a sense of urgency for Remain parties to come together to fight the danger of a hard Brexit.
“We do not have the luxury of time,” she told the Observer. “An election could easily happen in the autumn and we have to be prepared for that, rather than trying to put something together in a hurry and find it’s too late. There should be a sense of urgency.
“At both local and national level, the pro-Remain parties need to be talking about how a Remain alliance could work in practice, looking at all the available data on how it could be done, and which party is best placed in each seat. It won’t work everywhere, nor will the model necessarily be the same in every seat, but I think Remain voters want to see a progressive, Remain alliance across the country.”
Her comments come amid predictions that a Boris Johnson victory in the Tory leadership contest would precipitate an autumn election, as a result of his vow to leave the EU at the end of October, even without a deal.
An attempt to forge a Remain alliance during the Peterborough byelection last month broke down, despite talks between the Lib Dems, Greens and Change UK. However, Jo Swinson, one of two candidates to become the next leader of the Lib Dems, has said she wants to work with other groups and alliances to stop the UK leaving the EU through a second referendum.
Asked about her future in her Totnes constituency, Wollaston said she would “welcome the opportunity” to run again if local parties thought she was the best unity candidate.
However, she added: “I would not want to obstruct them or get in the way, either. I would not run against a Remain-alliance candidate. I would stand aside in those circumstances, but I would love to carry on my work representing the Totnes constituency and fighting against a disastrous no-deal Brexit.
“It looks like [we] could be heading for a populist election campaign and we need to be in as strong a position as possible should that happen.”
Wollaston is one of six MPs who defected to join pro-Remain Change UK, and then left the group to sit as an independent. One of the others, Chuka Umunna, has since joined the Lib Dems, who were the strongest pro-Remain party at last month’s European elections.
Wollaston, chair of the Commons health select committee, said she would wait to see who the Lib Dems appointed as their next leader before deciding whether to consider joining the party. “I am currently sitting as an independent and that fits well with my work as a select committee chair,” she said. “I am waiting to see how the party’s leadership election plays out before making any decisions.
“Jo Swinson seems to have indicated she is more open to alliances.”
She said she had been alarmed by the number of Tory MPs who were against a no-deal Brexit, but had been unwilling to break party unity to stop it happening. “It has amazed me that so many MPs seem to have put the future of the Conservative party above everything else and that they would rather a no-deal Brexit over a Jeremy Corbyn government,” she said. “But their actions mean we could end up getting both – if we crash out, with all the real-world consequences and the Conservatives losing all credibility on the economy, then have an election in which Labour wins and it gets even worse.”
She urged Corbyn to change Labour’s stance to become a clearly anti-Brexit party. However, she questioned whether voters would trust the party should it change course now.
“I would love to see Labour change its position and say unequivocally that it backs a second referendum and would campaign as a pro-Remain party,” she said. “But even now Jeremy Corbyn is still resisting that, supported by a small number of people around him. The question is, even if the party did change its position now, how credible would that be? Locally, Labour candidates may back Remain, but it is a problem if that is not the party’s clear official position.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Eurosceptic Conservative MPs will still vote down the government’s Brexit deal even if Theresa May negotiates an exit clause from the Irish backstop, the former minister Steve Baker has insisted.
May’s cabinet has been locked in a bitter internal wrangle about whether, and how, the government could extricate itself from the backstop, with some ministers concerned her plans could leave the UK in a permanent limbo.
The prime minister hopes to win the backing of her ministers for a draft withdrawal agreement at a special cabinet meeting likely to take place early next week.
But Baker, a leading figure in the backbench European Research Group (ERG), said Conservative MPs would be closely scrutinising the accompanying political declaration setting out the framework for the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU27.
“In the end, it’s not really about the backstop,” he said. “The tearing frustration is that the UK has been negotiating with itself.
“Many of us have long believed that the row over the backstop is at least partly confected in order to have an orchestrated breakthrough”.
The DUP also underlined their objections to May’s approach, casting fresh doubt on her ability to get a deal through parliament. In a letter to the DUP leader Arlene Foster, which was leaked to the Times, May said that the EU is still pushing for a so-called “backstop to the backstop”, which would keep the province in regulatory alignment with the Republic of Ireland to avoid a hard border.
In the letter May said she would never allow a divide between the province and Britain “to come into force”. The Times said this had been interpreted by the DUP as a sign that the clause will be inserted into the legally binding agreement.
May relies on the support of the DUP’s 10 MPs for her Commons majority, votes that may become crucial as she attempts to get a deal through parliament. However, Foster told the Times that May’s letter “raises alarm bells for those who value the integrity of our precious union and for those who want a proper Brexit for the whole of the UK”.
Baker said that he and his pro-leave colleagues would focus their attention on the declaration. “Conservative MPs expect to get some commitment for the money. The overwhelming attitude of Conservative MPs is that paying £39bn for nothing is totally unacceptable,” he said.
The government hopes it can win over Tory sceptics and some Labour MPs with firm reassurances that the Irish backstop will not be indefinite.
But Baker said few would be convinced. If the deal is voted down, he predicted there would be a moment of “profound political crisis”, during which Eurosceptic Tory MPs would be able to shift the government’s negotiating stance towards a looser future relationship with the EU.
Meanwhile, anti-Brexit MPs believe if the deal is voted down, the crucial days afterwards could be when parliament seizes control of the process and insists on a second referendum or at least a closer future relationship with the EU.
The UK believes it made a breakthrough in persuading the EU’s Brexit negotiators to consider including a UK-wide backstop – in effect a temporary customs union – in the withdrawal agreement, avoiding the threat of a customs border in the Irish Sea.
However, this appears to have failed to convince the DUP and, as a quid pro quo, the EU is insisting on stringent “level playing field” conditions that would tie the UK to EU regulations in a series of key areas, including state aid and workers’ rights.
The taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, underlined that view on Thursday. “We want the future relationship between the EU and UK to be as close as possible, but it must provide a level playing field and the integrity of our single market must be upheld,” the Irish prime minister said.
“The ball is very much in London’s court. Internal British politics is really a matter for them. I just hope Prime Minister May is in a position to get any potential agreement through her cabinet and through her parliament.”
The backstop was included in the December agreement with the EU27 as an attempt to avoid a hard border in Ireland, and has since gone on to shape the negotiations.
Baker claimed signing up to it – a decision that took place when he was a minister in the Department for Exiting the EU – had been used by Downing Street as a ploy to secure a softer Brexit.
“If you look at the evolution of the discussion on the Irish backstop, it became a very good excuse to say we have to have a high alignment Brexit,” he said – meaning a relationship in which the UK obeys EU rules.
Cabinet ministers are expected to be asked to sign up to some form of review mechanism, which would see the UK and the EU27 consider jointly whether conditions had been met for the Irish backstop to come to an end.
However, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, cast doubt on whether that would be acceptable on Thursday. Asked by the BBC about how the UK could extricate itself from the backstop, he said: “That has to be a mechanism where ultimately that decision has to lie with the sovereign British government.”
Fox was entering the Cabinet Office, where senior ministers have been invited to read the draft withdrawal agreement. One source has suggested it runs to 300 pages.
A Whitehall source suggested the agreement could be published as soon as next Wednesday, and the UK hopes EU ministers will respond by giving the go-ahead for an EU Brexit summit at the end of this month.
In Brussels, a senior EU diplomat said he was “fairly certain” that an agreement between the negotiators was within reach but that member states would then need a few days to examine any deal before a November Brexit summit, possibly to take place sometime between 22 and 25 November, could be convened.
Ambassadors for the 27 other EU member states are meeting on Friday to be briefed by Michel Barnier, the bloc’s chief negotiator, after a Wednesday update was cancelled to allow the talks more time.
“In next few days, we will have to see,” the diplomat said. He ruled out a weekend of drama given the armistice commemorations around EU capitals.
Downing Street refuses to be drawn on any specific timetable, but both sides appear poised for a breakthrough:
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
The hardest Eurosceptics in the Conservative party are largely rallying round Boris Johnson after he promised them that the UK would leave the customs union and secure a quick free-trade deal with the EU.
However, they cautioned that the DUP would probably need to be on board for them to support any agreement and promised to examine every “tedious detail” of the legal texts to ensure the prime minister was keeping to his word on leaving the customs union.
Leaders of the European Research Group of MPs – Steve Baker, Mark Francois, Iain Duncan Smith and Bill Cash – were due at No 10 again on Wednesday night to discuss progress on the deal, which the DUP has not yet approved.
Baker, a leader of the 28 Tory “Spartans” who voted down Theresa May’s Brexit deal, said Johnson had given a “brilliant speech” to the 1922 Committee, another Conservative grouping, and an agreement “sounds like it could well be tolerable”.
Baker said: “The DUP’s red lines are that the whole UK needs to leave the customs union, and the prime minister has told us that’s what he’s going to do. Their other red line is consent in relation to regulatory alignment and I understand that will also be carried through.
“The PM has made it clear. It should be obvious to anyone now that we are very much hoping the PM succeeds in presenting us with a withdrawal agreement and political declaration that we will be able to vote for. I would not accept any allegation of a sellout on the union.”
Francois said: “It was very good. It was vintage Boris Johnson. It was enthusiastic. It was uplifting, it was positive. He said we are not quite at the summit. We are at the Hillary Step – the summit is not far, but at the moment there is still cloud around the summit.
“He didn’t mention the DUP at all. It was optimistic and upbeat. The other thing he said, though, was that if we cannot achieve a deal despite the best efforts of the United Kingdom, we will still leave the European Union at Halloween. He was absolutely crystal clear about that.”
Asked whether he could support a deal without DUP backing, Francois said: “We still don’t know the details. What we have said consistently is the ERG and DUP have always been strong allies. We’ve been friends throughout this process. We talk to each other all the time. It is not axiomatic we would follow whatever the DUP do, but particularly on anything that relates to Northern Ireland we would take their views very strongly into account.”
Another senior Tory Eurosceptic said: “He [Johnson] said there’s a good chance [we will get a deal] but we’ve still got a lot of work to do. I kind of neither felt positive or negative. I’ve reached a stage where for so long on these things I just watch and say, ‘We’ll see what we see.’ My view is, there’s some things they’ve got to do and go back in to discuss these things now.
“He clearly has to get the DUP on side. The feeling is upbeat. The vast majority want him to succeed. That’s the difference in a sense: there’s kind of a lot of goodwill for Boris in the party. The party is pretty much on board. We are on board until we know it’s time to climb off the board.”
Asked if he needed to see legal text before giving his backing, the source said: “You need legal text to get it through.”
Sir Bernard Jenkin, another Eurosceptic, said the fact that the EU had reopened the withdrawal agreement suggested that the refusal to support May’s deal had been vindicated, and he suggested he would be more likely to vote for an agreement this time. “There is very strong support for Boris in the parliamentary party,” he said.
Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader and a leading Eurosceptic, said he wished the prime minister good luck, adding: “We’ll see where we get to.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.59 GMT
Soft Brexit cabinet ministers are quietly backing a parliamentary bid to make it legally impossible for the UK to leave the EU without a deal on 29 March, the Conservative MP behind the bid has claimed.
The bill tabled by the former minister Nick Boles would force the government to delay the UK departure from the EU unless a consensus could be found by early March. That would in effect make it impossible for the government to legally leave the EU without a deal on 29 March.
“This bill is about creating the space for a compromise by ruling out a no-deal Brexit,” Boles told the BBC. “We have had indications that many ministers, including cabinet ministers, are very, very keen to see it pass and are telling the prime minister that they will not vote against it.”
However, to force the government to grant time for the bill, Boles is set to table an amendment to the government’s Brexit motion that MPs will vote on on 29 January. The amendment would give parliamentary time for Boles’ bill, taking precedence over government business.
If the amendment does not pass, the government would otherwise be unlikely to allow time for Boles’ bill. Using that new power, Boles and his allies hope to then give MPs a vote on his European Union withdrawal number 2 bill.
The plan has attracted the backing of a cross-party coalition of MPs, including Labour’s Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Hilary Benn, the Conservative Sir Oliver Letwin and the Lib Dem Norman Lamb.
Lamb said the MPs had been forced to consider radical action. “We’re in unprecedented circumstances now, highly dangerous times for the country,” he said.
“It’s critically important that parliament is able to decide if we drift into a no-deal situation. There’s no indication from the prime minister she recognises that immense risk. But there are many in the cabinet who do understand that massive risk.”
MPs believe the plan would carry far more weight that amendments to a government motion, which would be politically but not legally binding. In contrast, Boles’ amendment would make it legally binding for the government to avoid a cliff-edge Brexit by mandating an extension of article 50 if parliament cannot agree a way forward.
Its supporters hope it will attract support from a wide range of factions, including Tories who would like to see a looser free trade deal as well as MPs who back a second referendum because it would give adequate time for a new direction to be forged.
It remains uncertain, however, if the EU27 would permit an extension unless there were a concrete reason such as formal ratification of the deal, a second referendum or an election, rather than just extra negotiating time.
Boles said there was now “a bandwagon rolling” behind the plan. “I very much hope that any MP who shares my view that a no-deal Brexit would be a disaster will jump on board,” he said. “I have been told directly by ministers not in the cabinet that they have said that they would resign if they are whipped to vote against it.”
Cabinet ministers have remained publicly mute on the subject. However, speaking on a conference call with business leaders alongside the business secretary, Greg Clark, and the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, admitted that the government was “not in control” of the process and suggested Boles’ amendment could lead to article 50 being “rescinded”, according to a transcript obtained by the Daily Telegraph.
Boles said the transcript of the call “made quite plain that [Hammond] thought this was fantastic”.
Boles had originally intended for parliament’s liaison committee of select committee chairs, headed by the Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, to take submissions from MPs on the future of the Brexit process, but that aspect has now been shelved because of objections from the committee.
The MP tweeted on Thursday that the liaison committee was “not keen to take the role that is proposed for it”. Boles said that part had been an “optional extra” and the focus was taking no deal off the table.
First published on Thu 17 Jan 2019 11.53 GMT
MPs are expected to have the opportunity on 29 January to vote on whether to hold a second referendum, after a Conservative backbencher pledged to put down an amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit plan.
Sarah Wollaston had previously withheld her amendment because Jeremy Corbyn would not support it, but she said it was time to put it to a vote of MPs when Brexit was next debated in the Commons, and called on the Labour leader to back her.
Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House of Commons, announced on Thursday that MPs would again debate Brexit for a full day on 29 January – eight days after the prime minister is due to spell out her next steps in a statement.
MPs will be free to lay a string of amendments to May’s statement, in a debate that is likely to see a range of options put before the Commons for the first time, including Labour’s alternative plan and, almost certainly, an amendment opposing a no-deal Brexit.
Any no-deal amendment would be expected to carry a majority in the Commons, after an amendment submitted by Yvette Cooper to the finance bill earlier this month was carried despite government opposition.
Wollaston’s second referendum amendment, which could attract the support of a dozen rebel Tories, will not be able to pass the Commons unless the Labour leadership backs it.
She said: “I think it’s really important that now we start to test this, and if we’re not successful the first time we could bring it back at a later stage.” The Tory MP indicated she was not certain of success at the first time of asking.
Wollaston added: “I very much hope Labour will finish going through their process and Jeremy Corbyn will come out and stick to their commitment that he will back a second vote, which is what a majority of his members want.”
The Labour leader is showing no immediate signs of backing a second referendum, and on Thursday, Corbyn said his party would submit its own Brexit amendment, calling for a customs union, a close relationship with the single market and enhanced protection for workers and consumer rights after leaving the EU.
Wollaston was speaking at the launch of Right to Vote, a campaign group made up of Conservatives supporting a second referendum, which was attended by half a dozen MPs including Philip Lee, Heidi Allen and Sam Gyimah.
Lee said he believed the second referendum faction in the Conservative party would gradually grow in strength, once other options have been exhausted. “We know cabinet ministers, junior ministers, backbenchers whose head and heart are over here,” the former minister said.
The MP added that May had little room for manoeuvre in the latest round of cross-party talks, because the Tories could split if she moved too far towards a centrist position.
“The idea that we could enter the customs union and the ERG [European Research Group] won’t explode? I don’t see it myself. The Norway model has the potential to split the party much more than a second referendum,” Lee said, although he accepted “we may have to go through that process” of considering each in turn.
The MP also complained that some backbenchers were refusing to come out in support of a second referendum because of fears of violence. “I know of one backbencher who would be here if he had not received a credible death threat,” he said, adding that a large number of colleagues had received similar threats.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.45 GMT
Soft-Brexit Tory MPs and independents are resisting the idea of attaching a customs union to Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement bill, meaning it would likely need an alliance of all opposition parties to pass.
Conservative MPs and former Tories, who previously backed the idea of a customs union, suggested on Tuesday they would prefer not to reopen the issue and wanted to support Johnson’s deal.
Damian Green, the leader of the One Nation caucus, and Oliver Letwin, who has is heavily involved in the parliamentary fight against a no-deal Brexit, both indicated they would back Johnson’s deal without a customs union appended.
However, Johnson is still facing the prospect that Labour could ally with enough opposition and independent MPs to amend his bill in favour of a softer Brexit.
Labour said on Sunday it would try to win support from the Democratic Unionist party and other opposition MPs for attaching a customs union to Johnson’s Brexit legislation. The DUP has not ruled out backing such an arrangement, although one of its 10 MPs, Jim Shannon, said it would not look favourably on a custom union.
The Lib Dems, who want to revoke article 50, and the SNP, who are pushing for an election, will also not say publicly how they would vote on trying to soften Johnson’s Brexit.
To pass, a customs union amendment would also need support from pro-deal Labour MPs. Gloria De Piero, a Labour backbencher who signed a letter to the EU urging it to work day and night to reach a deal, said she would work towards such an outcome.
Another pro-deal Labour MP told the Guardian he would back a customs union regardless of whether the amendment could halt the legislation in its tracks.
However, the government is likely to frame any vote on a customs union as a matter of confidence in Johnson’s Brexit bill. If such an amendment passed, the government would be likely to cancel the legislation and the prime minister could try again to force an election.
No 10 refused to comment on whether Johnson would pull the whole bill if a customs union were attached. But the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “Essentially if the legislation in the House of Commons steps too far away from what was agreed in the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration that does bring into question ratification.”
Labour is likely to seize on comments by Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, in making its argument for a UK-wide customs union, after he was forced to admit the current deal would require businesses to complete export declarations for goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK.
Barclay originally told a Lords EU committee that it would not be necessary for businesses to make declarations. But five minutes later, he had to admit: “Exit summary declarations will be required in terms of NI to GB.”
Soft-Brexit Tories are understood to be more open to amending the withdrawal agreement bill to make sure parliament would have the power to stop a crash-out on World Trade Organization terms at the end of 2020. The UK would have to have struck a trade deal by this point or agreed an extension to the transitional period in order to avoid that.
Asked if no deal was still a possible scenario at the end of the transition period, Barclay said it was “not a credible scenario, because firstly we have just seen the prime minister deliver a deal when he was accused of having a sham negotiation and going for no deal.
“Secondly, both sides have agreed a framework for the negotiations and legal commitments to expedite those discussions and to act in good faith,” he said.
Soft-Brexit Tories and pro-deal Labour MPs are also keen to have parliamentary approval for the terms of the UK’s trading relationship with the EU, so one option for Johnson is to offer a vote on this in future.
The withdrawal agreement bill is expected to be published on Monday. MPs will then get a second reading vote on Tuesday about whether it should pass to its next stage in the Commons. Labour, the SNP, Lib Dems, DUP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens are all planning to vote against the bill, but there will be some Labour rebels and independents backing the Conservatives.
At that point, MPs will also have to vote on whether to accept the government’s accelerated timetable for the bill, allowing less than a week for its scrutiny. There is more chance that the government could be defeated on this point, forcing Johnson to take longer to pass the legislation and forcing an extension to article 50 beyond 31 October.
Johnson is expected to have enough support for the bill to pass its second reading but the tricky point for the prime minister is when the legislation reaches its committee stage, when MPs can table and vote on amendments.
If the bill gets through this phase unamended or with amendments acceptable to the government, it would then have to pass a final third reading of the bill – the crucial moment that will determine whether the Commons agrees to the overall terms of the legislation.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Conservative MPs implacably opposed to a no-deal Brexit will try to amend government legislation as early as next week as a way of binding the hands of Boris Johnson.
A cross-party group is planning another attempt to stop a no-deal Brexit after becoming increasingly alarmed at the tone of Johnson’s pledges to take Britain out of the European Union on 31 October, “do or die”.
They are planning with Labour and other opposition parties to pass an amendment that would rule out leaving without a deal – or at least offer MPs the opportunity of a vote before that happened.
Under one plan, they will try to change the parliamentary estimates bill that comes before the House of Commons as early as next Tuesday, with an amendment to prevent a no-deal Brexit put down in the names of Tory MP Dominic Grieve and Labour MP Margaret Beckett. It would stop the government being able to consume resources and spend cash if it pursued a no-deal Brexit policy.
Another is the possibility of amending some likely emergency government legislation on Northern Ireland power-sharing, which may appear on Wednesday.
The Guardian understands the government is considering introducing an emergency bill next week, to extend the powers civil servants have effectively to govern in Northern Ireland, while the power-sharing assembly continues to be suspended.
Parliamentarians who have discussed the plan are concerned about whether an anti no-deal amendment would be ruled outside the scope of the legislation – but hope they will be aided by the willingness of the Speaker, John Bercow, to bend the rules. However, it is not yet certain to be brought forward.
Bercow said in a speech in Washington last month: “The idea that parliament is going to … be evacuated from the centre-stage of the debate on Brexit is unimaginable. It is simply unimaginable.”
Labour narrowly failed in a recent bid to commandeer the parliamentary timetable for a day, to pave the way for a bid to stop a no-deal Brexit. But a plan led by Conservative backbenchers might have more hope of securing the support of Tory rebels, than one initiated by Jeremy Corbyn and the other opposition leaders.
Passing an amendment would also be a less drastic option than voting to bring down the government.
Several Conservative MPs, including Ken Clarke and Grieve, have said publicly in recent days that they would consider supporting Labour in a motion of no confidence against the government, if they believed a no-deal Brexit was imminent.
Their fears have been raised by increasingly hard Brexit rhetoric from Johnson, who has the backing of key figures in the European Research Group (ERG), which is urging him to deliver Brexit by Halloween, even if that means leaving without a deal.
Corbyn has not ruled out tabling a no-confidence vote in the narrow window between the new prime minister being appointed, on Wednesday 24 July, and the House of Commons rising for its summer recess the next day.
The Labour leader’s spokesman said on Wednesday they would table such a motion when they believe it has the most chance of success.
Supporting Labour in bringing down the government would be a dramatic decision for Conservative MPs, however, who would thereby effectively be resigning from their party.
Under the Fixed-Term Parliament Act, if the government loses a formal motion of no confidence, there is then a fortnight-long period in which alternative candidates can try to assemble a governing majority.
If they fail to do so, a general election is triggered. Liberal Democrat leadership candidate Ed Davey has suggested a government of national unity could emerge in those 14 days, perhaps led by a Labour backbencher such as Yvette Cooper or Hilary Benn.
Philip Lee, a backbench Conservative MP, told the BBC’s World at One that pro-European Conservatives like himself had to be as “ruthless” as the ERG as they seek to stop a no-deal Brexit, which was why they had to keep open the option of voting against the government on a no confidence motion to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
“Nobody wants to vote no confidence in the government, nobody seeks to do that … but ultimately if we believe truly that no-deal is unacceptable without the explicit consent of the public, then we have to leave everything on the table,” he said.
“I’ve watched as the ERG have essentially won through here, and have dictated terms, and they have done this, successfully I might add, by being ruthless and having a clear strategy throughout.
“And it’s about time those of us who hold the belief that a no-deal on these terms is an unacceptable thing to be contemplating that we also adopt exactly the same approach that the ERG have successfully undertaken in the last 12 months.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.54 GMT
Jeremy Corbyn has said Brexit talks with the government are stalling because of a Tory desire for post-withdrawal deregulation, including as part of a US trade deal.
Corbyn said Labour had been putting forward a robust case for a customs union during the talks over the past week but suggested he feared the two sides would not find common ground.
“There has to be access to European markets and above all there has to be a dynamic relationship to protect the conditions and rights that we’ve got for environment and consumer workplace rights,” he said. “We’ve put those cases very robustly to the government and there’s no agreement as yet.”
Meetings are scheduled this week between ministers and shadow ministers on environmental protections, security and workers’ rights, which Corbyn described as “quite interesting, quite long technical discussions, particularly on environment regulations”.
However, there will be no discussion before Easter on the big issues of a customs union or a confirmatory referendum.
Corbyn underlined again that an agreement could only be reached if Theresa May was prepared to accept Labour’s central demand for a common external tariff policy with the EU.
“The government doesn’t appear to be shifting the red lines because they’ve got a big pressure in the Tory party that actually wants to turn this country into a deregulated, low-tax society which will do a deal with Trump. I don’t want to do that,” he said.
Corbyn said the UK had “lost a lot of time by the dithering of the government on bringing issues to parliament,” suggesting he believed the route out of the impasse would be moving on to binding indicative votes in parliament rather than pursuing a compromise deal between the two frontbenches.
Labour has less incentive than the Conservatives to avoid EU elections at the end of May, in which the Tories expect heavy losses. Labour’s national executive committee is conducting final candidate interviews for potential MEPs on Tuesday.
Corbyn said Labour would “fight the elections as a party that is committed to that relationship with Europe, but above all it’s about uniting people. However they voted in 2016, they’re suffering from austerity.”
He said he did not see much electoral threat from the Brexit party, which launched last week and is led by Nigel Farage.
“We have to have a relationship with Europe, in or out of the EU. We have a major trading partnership with Europe and all Farage is offering is some kind of never-never-land, saying we’ll walk away from everything,” he said.
“Well, he should say that to those people whose jobs would be at risk in manufacturing industries and food processing industries. He should say that to those people who are really going to suffer as a result of this.
“We’re serious about having a trading relationship with Europe. We’re serious about our relationship with the rest of the world. I’m not sure he is.”
Last modified on Wed 10 Jul 2019 10.36 BST
Tory leadership candidates have insisted there must be no unchallenged “coronation” for frontrunner Boris Johnson at the latest round of hustings.
Senior cabinet ministers were reported to have hatched plans to force other candidates to withdraw from the race after Johnson comfortably topped the poll in the first ballot of MPs this week.
Among the rivals condemning the revelation were the home secretary, Sajid Javid, and Rory Stewart, who both insisted there must be a proper contest.
As he arrived at leadership hustings for the party grassroots organised by the National Conservative Convention on Saturday, Javid said senior figures should learn from the mistakes of the last leadership contest in which Theresa May went through without opposition after Andrea Leadsom dropped out.
“The party and the country deserve a good choice,” he told reporters outside the event. “I don’t want to see a coronation. There needs to be a proper process that’s followed through.
“We had a coronation the last time. That didn’t work out well so let’s not make the same mistake again.”
Stewart, the international development secretary, said: “The members of the Conservative party, who are wise, sensible, experienced people, deserve to have a choice.
“We should have learned from the last time round coronations are not the way to do democratic politics.”
Johnson, who has been criticised by his fellow candidates for his reluctance to appear on television debates and submit to greater public scrutiny, avoided reporters after his Range Rover parked at a side door at a London hotel where the event was held.
Stewart, something of an outsider in the contest and among the keenest critics of Johnson, accused the frontrunner of adopting a presidential approach.
“The whole genius of British politics is that we don’t behave like American presidents sweeping up in a motorcade. We’re all about talking to people,” he said.
On Sunday, Channel 4 will represent the former foreign secretary and London mayor with an empty podium after he declined an invitation to participate in a television debate with his five remaining rivals.
Earlier, the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab lashed out at Johnson, claiming that party members would reject a leader who could be viewed as part of the “privileged elite” and questioning his “mettle” to be prime minister.
Asked how he would stop Johnson from winning as he left he hustings, Raab said: “We should have proper scrutiny of everyone. The longer this goes on, the more the underdog gets their shot.”
The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, took a less critical approach, refusing to say whether Johnson should take the blame for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detention in Iran.
On her latest decision to go on hunger strike – which her husband will also take part in from London – he added: “Our message to Iran is whatever the disagreements you may have with the United Kingdom, there is an innocent woman at the heart of this.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.44 GMT
The government said it is committed to maintaining the UK’s membership of the Erasmus+ programme, which funds opportunities for young people to train and study across Europe, despite shooting down an attempt to make its membership a priority in EU withdrawal negotiations.
A Liberal Democrat-backed amendment to the withdrawal agreement bill, requiring the government to seek continued participation in Erasmus+, was defeated by Conservative MPs, raising fears that the UK could abruptly withdraw from the programme.
Supporters of the Erasmus exchange, which each year involves around 16,000 British students travelling to more than 30 countries, including non-EU members such as Norway and Serbia, defended it on social media.
Tanja Bueltmann, a professor of migration and diaspora history, tweeted: “Erasmus made me who I am. It allowed me, a working class student with no other means to enable a year abroad, to study at the Univ of Edinburgh. It’s where I got interested in Scottish history and migration. Without Erasmus, I’d not be doing what I do today. This breaks my heart.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “The government is committed to continuing the academic relationship between the UK and the EU, including through the next Erasmus+ programme if it is in our interests to do so. The vote last night does not change that.
“As we enter negotiations with the EU, we want to ensure that UK and European students can continue to benefit from each other’s world-leading education systems.”
Chris Skidmore, the minister for higher education in England, took to Twitter to damp down speculation about the government’s position:
“Erasmus+ participation is protected under the withdrawal agreement and we are open to participation in the new Erasmus successor programme from 2021 – this will be part of future relationship negotiations with the EU once the scheme has been finalised,” Skidmore added.
The Liberal Democrat amendment would have inserted a clause in the withdrawal agreement bill requiring the government to seek continued participation in Erasmus+ on existing terms after Brexit, and to report on the progress of negotiations to parliament. But on Wednesday MPs voted down a second reading of the amendment, by 344 to 254.
The Erasmus result followed a similar defeat for an amendment that sought to keep protections for unaccompanied child refugees in the withdrawal agreement by guaranteeing their right to be reunited with family members in the UK after Brexit.
DfE officials have been asked by Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, to consider plans for a replacement exchange programme in the event of the UK failing to remain in Erasmus+.
In a speech to vice-chancellors in September, Williamson said: “I want to reassure you that my department is open to continuing to be part of schemes like Erasmus+. But we have to prepare for every eventuality and it is sensible to consider all options. As such I have asked my officials to provide a truly ambitious scheme if necessary.”
As well as facilitating student exchanges since it began in 1987, the revamped Erasmus+ scheme also funds schools and colleges for work placements, staff development and collaboration with international partners.
The Association of Colleges, representing further education and sixth-form colleges, estimates that 100 colleges have been awarded about €77m (£66m) to fund more than 30,000 placements between 2014 and 2020.
The AoC said the government “should pursue every avenue to stay in the Erasmus+ programme” or risk losing vital training and placement opportunities.
First published on Mon 25 Feb 2019 14.18 GMT
Theresa May will not get her Brexit deal through the Commons, Donald Tusk has warned, leaving the UK with the option of “a chaotic Brexit” or an extension of its membership of the EU beyond 29 March.
The European council president, to quell “speculation”, disclosed that, during private talks with the prime minister at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, he had walked through the legal process that would need to be followed to delay Brexit.
Tusk said it was not the EU’s “plan” to extend the two-year negotiation but that it was now evident to him that it was the “rational solution” in light of the prime minister’s failure to corral a majority behind the deal.
Shortly after Tusk spoke at a press conference together with the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, at the end of the first EU-League of Arab states summit, May said they had had a good meeting but insisted that she remained opposed to any delay.
“An extension to article 50, a delay in this process, doesn’t deliver a decision in parliament, it doesn’t deliver a deal,” she said at a separate press conference. “All it does is precisely what the word ‘delay’ says. Any extension of article 50 isn’t addressing the issues.
“We have it within our grasp. I’ve had a real sense from the meetings I’ve had here and the conversations I’ve had in recent days that we can achieve that deal.
“It’s within our grasp to leave with a deal on 29 March and that’s where all of my energies are going to be focused.”
May refused to say she would sack ministers if they vote on Wednesday for an amendment tabled by former Labour and Conservative cabinet ministers Yvette Cooper and Oliver Letwin, which would instruct May to seek an extension of article 50 if she does not have a deal ratified by 13 March.
“No one knows what [the motion] will say yet,” she said when asked directly if ministers could lose their jobs.
She signalled that it would be possible for MPs to vote on a withdrawal deal before it has been formally approved on 22 March by the EU.
“It would be possible to do it either way and I would hope that we have that meaningful vote by the 12th,” she said.
Earlier, Juncker spoke of “good progress” in drafting additional legal assurances about the temporary nature of the Irish backstop, following his meeting with May at the summit in Egypt.
But Tusk offered a far more sombre analysis of the domestic political position facing May, given the EU’s refusal to reopen the withdrawal agreement, or to set a time-limit or unilateral exit mechanism on the Irish backstop.
“I can say first of all that Prime Minster May and I discussed yesterday a lot of issues, including the legal and procedural context of a potential extension,” Tusk told reporters. “For me, it’s absolutely clear that there is no majority in the House of Commons to approve a deal.
“We will face an alternative: a chaotic Brexit or extension. The less time there is until 29 March, the greater the likelihood of an extension. And this is an objective fact, not our intention, not our plan – but an objective fact. I believe [that] in the situation we are in, an extension would be a rational solution.”
Tusk went on: “But Prime Minister May still believes that she is able to avoid this scenario. And I can assure you, and I did it yesterday in my meeting with Prime Minister May, that no matter in which scenario we will be, all the 27 will show maximum understanding and goodwill.”
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, is due to re-engage with the British team, including Downing Street’s senior Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, and the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, in Brussels on Tuesday.
The two sides are drafting text that puts previous assurances of the temporary nature of the backstop, contained in letters from Tusk and Juncker late last year, into a legally-binding form.
The political declaration is being upgraded potentially to include further UK commitments on workers’ rights, and a document detailing the context in which a technological fix for the Irish border could supercede the all-UK customs union envisaged in the backstop is being worked upon.
“The president and the prime minister agreed on the need to conclude this work in time before the European council on 21 March,” an official said after Juncker’s meeting with May.
After delaying the meaningful vote on the deal, scheduled for this week, May has said she will return to the Commons on 12 March to put it to MPs. Tusk, however, expressed the doubts widely felt in EU capitals about the chances of the package winning over rebellious MPs in the Conservative party, and the Democratic Unionist party.
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, who also met May for talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, said he feared that the UK was “sleepwalking” to a no-deal Brexit. He warned May that the EU was determined to avoid granting a short extension only to have to repeatedly revisit the issue due to a lack of direction in London.
Asked about the length of a potential extension, the prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, said: “I read two months, two years. Inshallah, how do you say here.”
First published on Thu 20 Jun 2019 09.59 BST
Britain will crash out of the EU on 31 October unless Theresa May’s Brexit deal is ratified or a new prime minister calls a second referendum or general election this summer, the bloc’s leaders have concluded.
The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, speaking at a summit in Brussels, said that there was now “enormous hostility” among the EU27’s heads of state and government to any further delay to Brexit.
He said that while Ireland had “endless patience” it had become the firm position of a number of EU governments that the indecision in London needed to come to an end.
An extension of the UK’s membership requires the unanimous support of the 27 member states. The European council president, Donald Tusk, had warned the UK not to waste the seven-month extension granted in April.
“There’s very much a strong view across the EU that there shouldn’t be any more extensions,” Varadkar said on Thursday. “While I have endless patience, some of my colleagues have lost patience, quite frankly, with the UK and there’s enormous hostility to any further extension.
“So I think an extension could really only happen if it were to facilitate something like a general election in the UK or perhaps even something like a second referendum if they decided to have one,” the Irish premier continued. “What won’t be entertained is an extension for further negotiations or further indicative votes. The time for that has long since passed.”
The comments appear to close off any chance of the significant renegotiation proposed during the Conservative leadership campaign by Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove.
Talks with the EU, or attempts to find a majority in the Commons for a deal, would have to be concluded in a small window after the return of parliament from its summer break on 2 September.
Varadkar went on to dismiss claims from Boris Johnson, the clear frontrunner in the race to No 10 Downing Street, that the UK could ditch the Irish backstop and find a solution that would avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland during a “standstill” transition period after Brexit.
“I look forward to meeting him, look forward to hearing what he has to say,” Varadkar said of the new prime minister being chosen by the Conservative party. “But there are a number of things which we’ve very much agreed.
“First of all there will be European unity, that negotiations can only happen between the UK and the EU. We’re not going to allow negotiations to be moved to an inter-governmental level in any way.”
The EU was agreed that “the withdrawal agreement is not going to be reopened but we are willing to consider amendments to the joint political declaration, and if there is no withdrawal agreement then there is no transition period for the UK”.
“There’s no withdrawal agreement without a backstop and there’s no implementation period without a withdrawal agreement,” he added.
Varadkar’s comments echoed those of the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, earlier in the day.
Rutte said an incoming prime minister needed to be flexible, and that he hoped that the rhetoric of the Tory leadership campaign would be dropped once a new leader was confronted with the reality of the UK’s position.
“I hope that campaign is done in poetry, and governing is in prose, as I think Churchill said once,” Rutte said. “That when they read all the briefs and get the details of where we are at the moment in the Brexit negotiations that the person in the prime ministership will realise that something has to be changed.”
Rutte added that there was no chance of a renegotiation and dismissed a time limit on the backstop.
“You would have a time limit that ends in four, five, six years time? If there is no other solution for the border issue, and I don’t think we will have anything in place in four or five or six years, purely technically. Given the present position of the British government it will be a hard border. Would we want that? I don’t think so. That would be the end of the Good Friday agreement.”
Asked about the possibility of a further extension of the UK’s membership past 31 October, when the country is currently set to leave with or without a deal, Rutte said he could see little point unless a new prime minister rethought Theresa May’s decision to leave the single market and customs union.
Rutte, who described himself as a “certified Anglophile”, said: “If nothing is happening? If it would mean after 31 October again going through the rounds and these traditional talks – ‘Can we make changes?’ ‘No we can’t, because you have to change your red lines,’ – [then] there is no point in having an extension.
“When a new prime minister comes in and asks for an extension we have to learn what his plan will be in terms of new elections, new referendum, making changes to the red lines the UK is currently holding … If there is no change on all those positions I cannot see why it makes any sense to negotiate longer.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.50 GMT
The UK is currently less able to cope with a hard Brexit than it was in the spring, with the real risk of panic-buying in the run-up to Christmas and civil disorder if the country leaves the EU without a deal on 31 October, an official document reveals.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has made Michael Gove responsible for “turbo-charging” Brexit planning, and on Thursday the new chancellor, Sajid Javid, announced an extra £2.1bn of funding to prepare for a no-deal exit.
But with less than 100 days to go before the autumn deadline, the Cabinet Office’s own internal analysis includes stark assessments of the potential problems ahead.
A document circulating Whitehall shows some of the government’s “reasonable worst-case scenarios” (RCWS) have changed over the summer, including those related to the supply of food and medicines.
In a stiffening of language, papers seen by the Guardian say:
 A reasonable worst-case scenario is that the supply of medicines and medical supplies “will be impacted by reduced flow rates across the Dover Straits”.
 While officials are not anticipating an overall shortage of food, they believe there will be disruption to the food supply chain. This “will lead” to increases in prices of certain fresh produce, “which could impact on vulnerable groups”.
 There is also a risk that “panic buying will cause or exacerbate food supply disruption”. The document states: “The UK growing season will have come to an end and the Agri-food supply chain will be under increased pressure at this time of year due to preparations for Christmas, which is the busiest time of year for food retailers.”
 Stockpiling of medicines for vets “will not be able to match the 4-12 weeks worth ... which took place in March, 2019”. The document says the options for diminishing these risks are not financially viable, and that any disruption in the supply of medicines “would impact the UK’s ability to prevent and control disease outbreaks”.
The document also echoes specific warnings made to government earlier this year, including that “demonstrations are likely to take place across the UK and may absorb significant amounts of police resource. There may also be a rise in public disorder and community tensions.”
It reiterates the likelihood that “low income groups may be disproportionately affected by price rises in utilities and services” and by “price rises...including food and fuel”.
There is also concern that food banks may struggle for funding – a record 1.6m emergency food parcels were given out by the Trussell Trust food bank network last year – more than 500,000 of them to children.
Though ministers insist “worst-case scenarios” are not predictions, they are used by officials for planning purposes to help highlight and address problems.
The money announced on Thursday includes sums to pay for stockpiling medicines, though hospital heads have previously warned this might not be enough to stave off shortages.
In a further blow to government attempts to downplay the possible risks of a no-deal Brexit, Sky News reported that it had obtained an official document setting out the threats to borders, the economy, security, data, Northern Ireland and individuals in the month after crashing out.
It said the slide – which covers the risks on the first day, first fortnight and first month of no deal – was prepared in the final weeks of Theresa May’s government and appeared to be the first time all the worst-case scenarios had been set out in a single document.
Among the problems warned about are “consumer panic and food shortages”, “law and order challenges” in Northern Ireland, operational gaps in security, market volatility and Britons in difficulty abroad returning to the UK.
Earlier this week, Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, was asked about the possibility of shortages of medicines. He said this could be avoided “if everybody does what they are being asked to do, particularly around the transport and logistics infrastructure”.
Gove is now said to be chairing a daily meeting of senior ministers and advisers to try to mitigate the worst affects of a hard Brexit.
Both he and Javid have talked about ramping up no-deal preparations, which includes the extra money from the Treasury, and a nationwide information campaign to help businesses and individuals get ready.
The money will also pay for additional Border Force officers and support for infrastructure around the country’s ports to help minimise congestion and ensure goods can flow.
In an article earlier this week, Gove admitted “no deal is now a very real prospect”.
“We must make sure that we are ready. A lot has already been done. Thanks to hard work by ministers past and present, and outstanding efforts by the civil service, we have made significant progress.”
He added: “There still remains much more to do. Planning for no deal is now this government’s No 1 priority – and that is why we have, since Wednesday, been accelerating preparations.”
On Wednesday, a government spokesman reiterated that the UK “is leaving the EU on 31 October whatever the circumstances”.
“We will work energetically for a deal but the backstop must be abolished. If we are not able to reach an agreement then we will of course have to leave the EU without a deal.”
Concern about a lack of focus on preparations for a no-deal scenario emerged in early June weeks after the Whitehall teams who were engaged in the planning were disbanded.
Cabinet ministers are said to have rowed about the issue, with Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, criticising the Treasury for allowing things to “drift”.
The Cabinet Office declined to comment, saying it would not comment on leaked documents.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.00 GMT
Jean-Claude Juncker has told the UK to “get its act together” in the run-up to the delayed House of Commons vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
The European commission president said the EU could not be expected to resolve the problems that continue to make it likely the British government will suffer a heavy defeat.
“I find it entirely unreasonable for parts of the British public to believe that it is for the EU alone to propose a solution for all future British problems,” Juncker said in a wide-ranging interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “My appeal is this. Get your act together and then tell us what it is you want. Our proposed solutions have been on the table for months.”
May is set to put her deal, including the contentious Irish backstop, to MPs in the week beginning 14 January, following a week of debate in the Commons.
The prime minister pulled a planned vote earlier this month when it became clear the government was likely to suffer a heavy defeat.
She then promised to secure “legal and political” assurances that the backstop – which would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU to avoid a hard Irish border – would only be temporary, should it need to be triggered.
The backstop would come into force at the end of the transition period, during which the UK effectively remains a member state but without a decision-making role, unless an alternative arrangement has been agreed.
The EU’s 27 leaders, however, offered May little hope of any significant sweetener to the deal at a summit earlier this month. Juncker’s comments will be a fresh blow to Downing Street’s hopes of a game-changing last-minute concession.
Asked whether he would recommend a second referendum to get past the logjam in parliament, Juncker said it was up to the British people to decide. “If the House of Commons backs the withdrawal agreement in mid-January, then we should begin preparations for the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union the very next day and not wait until after the official withdrawal date of 29 March.
“I have the impression that the majority of British MPs deeply distrust both the EU and Mrs May. It is being insinuated that our aim is to keep the United Kingdom in the EU by all possible means. That is not our intention. All we want is clarity about our future relations. And we respect the result of the referendum.
“I am working on the assumption that it will leave, because that is what the people of the United Kingdom have decided.”
The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, an ardent Brexiter in the cabinet, said on Sunday that there was a 50/50 chance the UK would not leave the EU on 29 March if MPs rejected May’s Brexit deal next month.Fox told the Sunday Times it would only be “100% certain” if MPs back the deal, and a second referendum “would shatter the bond of trust between the electorate and parliament”.
The EU 27 would be prepared to offer an extension to the two-year negotiating period allowed under article 50 of the EU’s treaties to allow for a second referendum, but there is a growing frustration in Brussels over the UK’s tortured exit.
The focus in Brussels is instead on the existential threat posed by the rise of populist governments elsewhere in Europe. With May’s elections to the European parliament in mind, Juncker used his new year interview to appeal to the EU’s established political parties not to pander to anti-immigrant populists, and instead support the commission’s proposals on dealing with future migration.
“Those who run after the populists will only be seen from behind”, he said. “We must not imply that the populists are right. We have to show them up for what they are by making it abundantly clear that they are just loud and do not have any specific proposals to offer on solving the challenges of our time.”
First published on Tue 20 Aug 2019 15.39 BST
British officials will stop attending most EU meetings from September, the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, has said, suggesting his department will slash attendance by more than half to “unshackle” officials and ministers.
The government will only send officials to EU meetings at which the UK has “a significant national interest in the outcome of discussions, such as on security” and will instead focus on countries outside the bloc.
Barclay said the numbers of meetings attended would be cut by more than half, dramatically reducing workload and preparation time.
“An incredible amount of time and effort goes into EU meetings, with attendance just the tip of the iceberg. Our diligent, world-class officials also spend many hours preparing for them whether in reading the necessary papers or working on briefings,” he said.
“From now on we will only go to the meetings that really matter, reducing attendance by over half and saving hundreds of hours. This will free up time for ministers and their officials to get on with preparing for our departure on 31 October and seizing the opportunities that lie ahead.”
The move is likely to prompt concerns that British officials will be left in the dark about EU strategy. The Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) claimed most discussions at the meetings that Britain would no longer attend would be irrelevant because they would be focused on the future of the EU after the UK left.
One EU diplomat described the decision as “stupid”, and said: “There are rules that you could influence that will always have an impact on you whatever happens. I would participate in those meetings.”
But a British government spokesman said: “As a departing member state it makes sense to ‘unshackle’ officials from these EU meetings to enable them to better focus their talents on our immediate national priorities.”
Officials would be told to refocus on preparations for leaving the EU and on trade deals with other countries.
DExEU said decisions would be made on a case-by-case base depending on the agendas of the meetings to give “the right amount of flexibility”. Areas the UK is to prioritise include meetings on Brexit, sovereignty, international relations, security and finance.
The decision to withdraw from most EU business is an abrupt change in policy. Under Theresa May, the government continued to attend EU meetings, although often stepped back from being an active participant, especially on policies deemed unlikely to affect the UK following Brexit, such as the EU’s future budget.
EU officials were bemused by the government’s plan when it emerged last week, with many viewing it as a move for domestic consumption. There is also uncertainty about what it means for their British colleagues, who are expected to be lobbying EU diplomats for information before or after meetings. “It just seems like a little bit of an own goal, but this is a taster of what life will be like outside,” one EU official said.
About 150 Foreign Office officials are based in Brussels, including at the UK’s permanent representation to the EU (Ukrep), where they work on EU laws and foreign policy decisions. The UK has steadily increased its presence in Brussels over the last few years before 2016 there were only 100 Foreign Office officials working at Ukrep, Nato and elsewhere in Brussels.
In a letter to EU diplomats from Boris Johnson’s EU envoy, David Frost, the government reveals that it will cede its vote to Finland, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency.
“The UK government remains committed to the duty of sincere cooperation and will not stand in the way of the conduct of EU business during this time,” states the letter, seen by the Guardian. “We are very grateful to you as presidency for agreeing to exercise our vote, if necessary, at meetings which we do not attend.”
As a large country, British abstention could inadvertently block laws, either made by unanimity or qualified majority votes when opinion is split.
The Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder criticised the move as a “pointless gesture” that showed “nothing but contempt” for British influence in Brussels and for UK allies. “How do you know if important things are discussed if you are not there? Whilst we are still full members all decisions will affect us, from fishing quotas to digital markets,” she said.
UK MPs criticised the language used in the missive from Barclay. Tom Brake, the Lib Dem Brexit spokesman, called it a “petulant move”.
“The inflammatory language used to describe it demonstrates that this Conservative government is not serious about constructively engaging with our EU partners,” said Brake.
The Labour MP Martin Whitfield, a supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, called the move “the great flounce” and said it was “a pitiful retreat from our position at the heart of European decision-making”.
 Johnson is still expected to attend a European council meeting a week before the UK is due to leave.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.46 GMT
Michael Gove, the minister tasked with no-deal Brexit planning, has said the government is ready to take the UK out of the EU without an agreement, hours after a bitter war of words broke out over the state of Brexit talks.
Gove said in a statement to the Commons that he was impressed by the steps manufacturers and supermarkets had taken to prepare for no deal, and by measures put in place by the ports of Dover and Calais and the automotive sector.
However, he said risks remained, some challenges for businesses could not be avoided, and sheep farmers and Northern Irish dairy farmers were likely to be adversely affected by tariffs.
“Of course risks remain and challenges for some businesses cannot be entirely mitigated, even with every possible preparation in place. But the UK economy is in a much better position to meet those risks and challenges thanks to the efforts of these sectors and companies and the chancellor,” he said.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, has set up a “trade and readiness support unit” to ensure the supply of medical products, and HMRC will write to 180,000 businesses setting out how to import and export from and to the EU after Brexit.
The government will introduce lower tariffs on HGVs entering the UK. There will be adjustments to the duty paid on bioethanol to support UK producers, and some clothing will face tariffs to make sure there is still preferential access to the UK market for developing countries.
Beyond trade, Gove touched pointedly on citizens’ rights, challenging the EU to match the UK’s “generosity” and “flexibility”. “So far very few EU member states have made as generous an offer to UK nationals as the UK has made to EU citizens,” he said.
“We don’t believe citizens rights should be used as a bargaining chip in any scenario. EU citizens in the UK are our friends and family. We want them to stay. We now hope that the EU extends the same hand of friendship towards UK nationals as we have to EU nationals.”
The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said Gove’s statement resembled a “reassuring bedtime story” about no deal, which he said would be a disaster for the UK economy. He said some of the sectors and businesses that Gove had said were ready had given warnings that they were not.
On the souring relations with the EU, Starmer said: “Talks with the EU are collapsing as we speak. The proposals the government put forward last week were never going to work. Instead of reacting to the challenge by adapting the proposals, the government is intent on collapsing the talks and engaging in a reckless blame game, and it will be working people who pay the price.”
Stephen Phipson, the chief executive of Make UK, the manufacturers’ organisation, said he was concerned that some sectors of the economy would be affected despite the preparations.
“Some sectors will be dealt an especially hard blow at a time when others are imposing tariffs on us but we are dropping ours,” he said. “In particular, the automotive sector, which is one of the jewels in the crown of high-value manufacturing, faces being severely impacted by these plans. This will prove devastating for jobs and growth in the companies and regions who depend on its success.”
Adam Marshall, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said it was good that government had got its “shoulder to the wheel” but businesses still had many detailed and complex questions about how they would trade successfully in the event of no deal.
He said: “Business concern about an unwanted no-deal exit is rising, particularly given developments over recent days. Both sides need to redouble their commitment and do everything in their power to avoid this in the short time we have left.”
On trade, Marshall added: “The latest temporary tariff regime only contains three changes, so businesses will be frustrated that it took government so long to publish the updates – needlessly extending uncertainty around the entire future tariff schedule. The delay has real-world impacts for businesses trying to plan for the unwanted prospect of a no-deal in a matter of weeks.”
Scotland’s deputy first minister, John Swinney, accused the UK government of making planning for no deal “unnecessarily difficult”.
Announcing the establishment of a Scottish medicines shortage response group and a £7m rapid poverty mitigation fund, Swinney told MSPs at Holyrood that the UK government’s approach had been “to actively limit the analysis shared with us, to exclude the Scottish government from decision-making, and to fail to share with us its own plans for actions to mitigate no deal”.
Swinney also announced plans to use the old port in Stranraer, on the key Northern Irish ferry route, to hold up to 300 HGVs should traffic flows between Northern Ireland and Scotland increase to that extent, and said farmers and crofters were receiving 95% of their common agricultural policy payments early to shield them from the immediate effects of crashing out of the EU without a deal at the end of the month.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.02 GMT
Britain is running out of food warehousing space as retailers and manufacturers rush to stockpile amid growing fears of a no-deal Brexit, it has emerged.
Frozen and chilled food warehouses, storing everything from garden peas to half-cooked supermarket bread and cold-store potatoes, are fully booked for the next six months, with customers being turned away, industry representatives said.
“I started getting inquiries two to three months ago, but they reached fever pitch in the last 48 hours,” Malcolm Johnstone, owner of Associated Cold Stores & Transport (ACST) said after the chaos in Westminster last week. “There has been a sea change since Wednesday.”
He has capacity for 80,000 pallets in cold storage up and down the country and says food manufacturers and suppliers are desperate to get their stockpiling plans secured.
The bookings are not just for frozen foods such as peas and pizzas but food manufacturers such as crisp-makers who need a guaranteed supply of potatoes, normally put in cold storage.
Overseas suppliers are also rushing for stores in the UK.
“I had a call the other week from a man from a Danish butter company who wanted to store 11,000 pallets of butter in the UK. We had to turn him away,” said Johnstone.
“Normally butter would dribble into the UK food chain to meet demand, but these people are worried the supply chain will be interrupted and want stocks in the market before 29 March,” he said.
Ian Wright, the chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation, said retailers were pressing ahead with contingency planning because it was prudent to do so.
“All the arithmetic seems to suggest that it will be impossible for the prime minister to get her deal through, so retailers and food manufacturers are continuing with contingency plans,” he said.
Normally temperature-controlled warehouses are at their quietest in the months between Christmas and Easter but the fear of no-deal Brexit means they are now fully reserved in advance from January to April and beyond, explains the Food Storage and Distribution Federation (FSDF), which represents 350 warehouse owners and 75% of all commercially available frozen and chilled food warehouses in the country.
“It’s a problem, because food is manufactured or stored on a just-in-time basis, and the system isn’t built for stockpiling.
“But because of Brexit, every business that wants to guarantee its supply into UK shelves is looking for additional warehouse space right now,” said Shane Brennan, the chief executive of the FSDF.
“Our members are operating at full capacity for the period January to April and beyond. It would normally be the quietest time of the year. They are effectively full now. They are turning customers away,” said Brennan.
The Brexit warehouse shortage emerged as companies such as Premier Foods, which owns Bisto, Oxo and Mr Kipling and Ornua, the Irish company behind Kerrygold and many cheddar cheese brands, have announced plans for stockpiling.
Premier Foods said it expected to spend up to £10m on the preparations.
Wright said food manufacturing operations were also finding themselves having to get in on Brexit stockpiling.
“If you are making crisps, you need to make sure you have a supply of potatoes. You might normally be buying in ingredients on the futures market particularly if they are from outside the UK.
“If you think your major supply route will be blocked for long periods of time, you will re-engineer your supply chains and people are scrambling round for warehousing now to get their ducks in a row,” he said.
Wright said the price of the chaos in Westminster was high for many in the British food business because if there was a deal companies would not get their contingency spending back.
There have been reports of the government planning to commandeer shipping supplies in the event of no deal, but Brennan says the shortage of warehousing space is not a problem it can solve, as the business is high-cost.
“When it comes to storage, there is a finite number of warehouses and that is a problem that cannot be solved this side of Brexit,” he said.
“A large warehouse that can take 100,000 pallets costs tens of millions in investment and takes three years to build.
“Even smaller ones, with say capacity for 3,000 to 4,000 units take £2-3m investment. Even if we had the money you couldn’t build them in time.”
Last modified on Thu 13 Feb 2020 10.21 GMT
Karen Bradley, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, has given assurances that the British government will not renege on the “backstop” commitment over the Irish border issue in Brexit negotiations.
She said the government was fully committed to the agreement it had struck with the EU last December when Theresa May and the European commission president, Jean Claude Juncker, signed the “joint report” ending the first phase of Brexit negotiations covering EU citizens, the divorce bill and the Irish border.
“We are committed to everything we have agreed to in the joint report and we will ensure there is no border on the island of Ireland,” she told the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in London on Monday.
At the weekend the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, suggested the EU and Britain would need to choose between extending the Brexit transition period and a time-limited backstop to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
Bradley was told by a series of Irish politicians present at the meeting that people in Ireland were becoming increasingly anxious about Brexit and suggestions over the weekend that the December joint report was irrelevant.
“I am very, very concerned at the mood in the last few days,” said Frank Feighan, of the ruling Fine Gael party. “Could the UK ever be trusted again if it were to renege on a written deal?”
Ireland’s ambassador to the UK, Adrian O’Neill, said the prospect of a hard Brexit was causing “genuine anxiety” in Northern Ireland and Irish border counties.
He said time-limiting the backstop would make it redundant. “Neither in December or March texts are there references to time-limited backstops. Since the backstop is designed to operate in all circumstances, the proscribed time limit would rather defeat the stated purpose.”
There have been suggestions from Brexiters that the Irish backstop has been exaggerated or weaponised by the EU in negotiations.
Last week the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith described the impasse over the backstop as “absurd” and urged the prime minister to tell the EU “to stop putting up ridiculous problems like the backstop” to prevent a deal being done.
Helen McEntee, Ireland’s minister for European affairs, told the Irish Times that if London reneged on the backstop then agreements already reached on citizens’ rights and the so-called divorce bill could be reopened.
“I don’t think in terms of the negotiation that you can go back and undo something that has been agreed on both sides and sets a new red line on something that has been already agreed in negotiations. I don’t think anyone can or should be able to do that,” she said.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.04 GMT
The British government will have to experience its “darkest hour” and stare into the abyss of a no-deal Brexit before it will cave in to Brussels demands, senior EU diplomats have predicted.
Ahead of a summit of EU leaders in Salzburg, diplomats in Brussels privately warned that Theresa May still needed to make a significant shift on her red lines for a deal to be possible, with the Irish border issue remaining a major hurdle in the talks.
The stark prediction came as a French government official said that the president, Emmanuel Macron, wanted to nail down the key terms of the future deal now, rather than allow any ambiguous drift on the major issues after 29 March 2019.
That was at odds with the UK environment secretary, Michael Gove, who had claimed over the weekend that any deal with the EU on the political declaration could be undone by MPs after Brexit, as he urged his Tory colleagues to support the Chequers proposals “for now”. Brussels wants credible assurances from May that any deal will not be unpicked by her successor.
The prime minister was only to be given “a few minutes” to talk to leaders at a dinner on Wednesday night in Salzburg before the 27 talk among themselves the following day, in a sign of the low expectation that she will have anything significant to say until after the Conservative party conference.
EU diplomats said they feared that the UK government would have to be pushed to the brink of the economic disaster before it does move on the most contentious issues.
Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, warned on Monday that a no-deal Brexit would deliver “reduced growth, an increase in the [budget] deficit and a depreciation of the currency”.
“A lot of movement is needed by the UK side before we can actually reach agreement”, said one senior diplomat. “We need a substantial change in the UK red lines still.”
A second EU diplomat added: “It seems that the UK needs to have a ‘darkest hour’ moment before they will shift position. But they will have to shift their position.”
The EU is insistent that it would not soften its stance that the UK needs to sign up to a Northern Ireland specific “backstop” solution, ensuring there was no hard border on the island of Ireland after Brexit in any circumstances.
The principle that Northern Ireland should in effect stay in the customs union and single market to avoid a hard border, should no other solution be available, has not been rethought.
The Irish cabinet was expected to discuss contingency planning for border controls between Britain and Ireland in the event of there being no deal, at a meeting on Tuesday. The Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, was meeting Michel Barnier to confirm their solidarity.
Just hours before flying to Brussels, Coveney issued a statement urging the UK to change its tack in talks and warning time was running out.
He said it was vital that UK negotiators started engaging on the issue of the “backstop”, which would operate as a guarantee of no hard border in the event talks collapse or if another government not opposed to a hard border in Northern Ireland was elected.
“I will be making very clear our continued strong support for Michel Barnier, welcoming his approach on efforts to de-dramatise the backstop aimed at agreeing the text of the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland,” he said.
“Time is short and it is important that the UK delivers on its commitments and engages constructively with the EU’s proposed backstop. The EU has been clear that without an agreement on a backstop, there cannot be an agreement on the withdrawal agreement”.
Brussels was also adamant that the Chequers proposals on a common rule book and customs arrangement do not go far enough in respecting the integrity of the EU.
EU diplomats said that ambiguous “language” in the political declaration on the future deal could be found to paper over some of the differences between the EU and UK, to allow them to be dealt with after Brexit.
But they have warned that the chasm between the two sides as yet remains too large in key areas for any such compromise vision to be realised.
The French official insisted, however, that while the political declaration was not legally binding, its terms should be clear and that they would be held to by the EU during the trade deal negotiations in the possible 21-month transition period after Brexit.
“The length [of the political declaration] is not important, we think its main point is that it must be clear”, the official said.
The sources added, of the Irish backstop, that it was “something of a life insurance for the Irish border … If there is no backstop accord for the Irish border, there is no Brexit accord”.
A diplomat from another member state said: “If you look at the Chequers proposals which have some elements in it that we support – external security, internal security – these are fine.
“Chequers had some other aspects that are more difficult. So the technical customs arrangement they proposed I think is too difficult to put into practice.
“There is work necessary to find language to express in this political agreement on the future relationship which meets up the four freedoms of the internal market and at same time satisfies the position of the UK, and that of course plays into the backstop discussion on Northern Ireland.”
The source added: “We don’t quite see the [point in] the red line in having their own trade agreements that is different to what we have in place.”
First published on Thu 19 Dec 2019 13.36 GMT
The Department for Exiting the European Union is to be wound up once the UK leaves the bloc at the end of January.
A government spokesperson said staff in the department, created by Theresa May following the referendum result in 2016, had been informed. “We are very grateful for all their work and we will help everyone to find new roles,” the spokesperson said.
The news comes amid reports of the government’s intention to change the language used to describe the UK’s exit from the EU in order to reinforce the idea that “Brexit is done”.
According to the Huffington Post, the prime minister has ordered officials to drop the term “Brexit” once the withdrawal agreement is passed and the UK leaves the EU on 31 January as planned. The website reports that No 10’s Brexit press team will be renamed after that, with “Europe and economy” one new name being floated by officials.
Asked about the reports, a government spokesperson said: “I think the PM is very clear that on 31 January we will have got Brexit done and then the focus will be on the future relationship with the European Union.” Asked if the prime minister’s spokespeople would use the word after that point, one said: “I think it’s a word that will be with us for a long time to come.”
MPs are expected to vote on Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement bill on Friday, with the Conservative party’s 80-seat majority allowing for its swift passage through parliament. The bill could pass through the Commons by 10 January and through the Lords one or two weeks later.
The UK will then enter the so-called implementation period, during which it will be closely aligned to EU rules, until 31 December 2020. Johnson has insisted that he can secure a trade deal by then, despite criticism that 11 months is an unprecedentedly short time for such a complex negotiation.
The Department for Exiting the European Union, also known as DExEU, was established in July 2016 to “oversee negotiations to leave the EU and establish the future relationship between the UK and EU”.
The department was formed by combining staff from the Cabinet Office’s Europe unit, the Europe directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the UK’s permanent representation to the EU.
DExEU has been headed by three Brexit secretaries: David Davis; Dominic Raab, now the foreign secretary; and most recently by Stephen Barclay.
First published on Mon 8 Apr 2019 12.25 BST
Britain’s new exit date from the EU, and the conditions attached to a Brexit delay, will likely be fixed in the gilded rooms of the Belgian prime minister’s 16th century Egmont Palace hours before Theresa May addresses the leaders.
Under emerging plans, a small group of EU leaders whose countries will be most affected by the UK’s departure will be hosted by the Belgian PM, Charles Michel, on Wednesday afternoon. The guest list is likely to include the leaders of France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland.
The purpose of the proposed coordinating meeting, three hours before May was set to address the full complement of 27 heads of state and government, would be to try to shepherd the debate that would be held later on, and avoid potentially catastrophic errors, the Guardian has learned.
The bombastic positions emerging from Paris over any sort of extension without a clear purpose – beyond a two-week buffer after 12 April to prepare the markets for no deal, along with the warning from Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, that a member state that vetoed one would “never be forgiven” – have injected peril into the process, sources said.
The Finnish foreign minister, Timo Soini, told reporters in the margins of a meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg that without a significant sign of progress in the cross-party talks embarked upon by May “it may be that an extension is not so easily to be achieved”.
Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, said: “The British have turned a deal into a no-deal. And now they want to turn the no-deal into a deal.”
Senior EU diplomats insisted, however, that it was inconceivable now that Britain would leave without a deal this Friday, or within the next couple of weeks. One diplomat said “France’s position is moving”.
The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has pledged support for the Irish border backstop regardless of what happens in the Brexit negotiations.
“The EU will stand fully behind Ireland,” Barnier said on Monday at a joint press conference with Varadkar in Dublin.
May has been seeking an extension up until 30 June to get her deal passed, while accepting she would need to hold European elections on 23 May if the UK was still a member state.
The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, laid out the reasoning behind that position during his bilateral talks in Luxembourg on Monday with his Polish, Hungarian, Dutch and Portuguese counterparts.
The British prime minister was “leaving no stone unturned” in her cross-party talks with Jeremy Corbyn, Hunt insisted, 48 hours before a summit where the government was expected to show there was a purpose to such an extension.
The advantage in an extension to 30 June would lie in creating yet another cliff-edge moment to keep the pressure on MPs, although there was little doubt that if nothing was resolved by that point the EU would extend again.
The suggestion by Donald Tusk, the European council president, of a long extension of a year with the option for the UK to leave when the 585-page withdrawal agreement and 26-page political declaration was finally ratified has gained support among some member states.
That would have the advantage of the UK owning its fate, and the EU’s leaders avoiding having to repeatedly get involved in British politics when the extension renewal comes up, sources said.
Those advocating for such an extension have suggested it would show a contemptuous attitude to European elections for the UK to have MEPs who “as a baseline” would be out of a job within two months of being elected. But the difference between the positions of an extension until 30 June, that could be repeated, or a longer delay, that could be shortened, was small, sources said.
The focus of attention for a number of EU states was to ensure the British government signed up to conditions that would bring “sincere cooperation” from the UK during its extended membership, including restraining from involvement in budget discussions or agreeing to go without a European commissioner.
The Spanish government was understood to have drafted a list of possible measures the UK would need to agree for Madrid to be convinced that an extension would not allow a future Brexiter prime minister to damage EU interests.
Additional reporting by Rory Carroll in Dublin
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.53 GMT
A Polish chef who has worked with Mary Berry and Jamie Oliver is leading a revolt by UK-based Poles against the Home Office’s requirement that EU citizens apply for settled status as part of Brexit.
More than 7,000 people have signed a petition launched this week by Damian Wawrzyniak on the UK government and parliament website to change the wording of the settlement status process from “application” to “registration”. At 10,000 signatures, the government must respond.
Wawrzyniak, a former chef at Noma in Copenhagen who has worked in Britain for 15 years and established his own UK restaurants, originally backed Brexit on the basis that it would make it easier for restaurants to select British produce. But he has changed his mind and says he will ultimately refuse to apply to live in the country he now calls home.
Backing has already come from the food writer Nigel Slater and the MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, who tweeted that “future generations will be appalled that to appease the hard right we made EU citizens apply to stay in their own homes”.
“When the scheme went live, I said to myself: ‘I’ve been here for 15 years, working, running businesses and employing people, so why should I have to apply to stay in my own home?’” said the chef, who owns a restaurant called House of Feasts on the outskirts of Peterborough and also runs a consultancy business.
“I’m just not going to apply as the scheme stands, and from conversations with friends and others from the Polish community here, I get the sense that a lot of people feel the same way.”
Wawrzyniak had originally supported Brexit “from a chef’s perspective” in the belief that those in the catering sector could more easily order produce almost entirely from UK sources.
“Now, I don’t think it’s worth it. If it does happen on a no-deal basis and I didn’t apply for settled status then I would become an illegal person here and would be stripped of my rights to bank accounts or residential status.”
Wawrzyniak, who first rose to prominence on the BBC showing Berry how to make his signature babka cake and has cooked for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on a royal visit to Poland, also spoke of the impact on UK-born children.
“Mine were born in the UK and go to British schools but they also have to apply. As well, we had a Polish woman in our restaurant who had come here after the war. Her daughter was born here and has lived here for 30 years but she has to apply as well.”
More than 600,000 EU citizens have already applied to stay in the UK post-Brexit, Home Office figures revealed earlier this month. However, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has said more attention is needed for vulnerable applicants and those who want to challenge a decision.
The deadline for applying will be 30 June 2021, or 31 December 2020 in the event of no deal.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The EU settlement scheme is designed to make it easy for EU citizens and their family members who want to stay in the UK to apply for the UK immigration status they need to remain in the UK. They only need to complete three key steps: prove their identity, show that they live in the UK, and declare any criminal convictions.
“Our starting position is that we are looking for reasons to grant people status through the scheme because we want everyone to receive the status they are eligible for.”
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Kent county council has activated no-deal plans to keep its roads, hospitals and schools open, as the government considers pulling the trigger on national contingency measures involving 30 central departments and 5,000 staff.
With the country placed on a knife-edge by Theresa May’s latest Brexit crisis, the government is preparing for “any outcome” with a decision on Monday on whether to roll out the national Operation Yellowhammer contingencies for food, medicine and banking.
Some measures have already swung into place, including Operation Fennel’s traffic management in Kent.
The Europe minister, Alan Duncan, has also said the Foreign Office staff deployed to its Brexit “nerve centre” are working to help UK citizens in the EU in the event they get caught up in a Brexit mess.
The Department of Health was due to activate emergency supply chain operations, with instructions to medicines suppliers to book space on ferries to ensure they are not caught up in queues from next weekend in the event of no-deal.
They are just two of the 12 Operation Yellowhammer areas of risk the government has planned for in the event of a crash-out, according to a National Audit Office report [pdf]. It will decide next Monday if they should all become operational, enacting no-deal plans in 30 central government departments and 42 local councils, two devolved governments and in Northern Ireland.
About £1.5bn has been allocated to Brexit planning, with three departments getting an extra £25m for Operational Yellowhammer.
It emerged on Wednesday that ministers had banned NHS hospitals from publishing risk assessments about how Brexit might affect them, allegedly because doing so could “put public wellbeing at risk”.
The Department of Health and Social Care has written to NHS trusts in England telling them not to put into the public domain their own analyses of the pitfalls facing them.
The department’s “advice” stops trusts from outlining how Britain’s departure from the EU might affect their non-clinical goods and services and staff from EU nations.
The move appears to be an attempt to thwart an attempt by the Health Service Journal website to obtain details of these possible impacts.
The HSJ disclosed on Wednesday that the DHSC has circulated guidance to trusts about how to respond to any request from it under freedom of information laws for sight of their risk assessment documents, telling them they must “not share this information”.
Meanwhile, Kent is going full steam ahead with its contingency plans to prevent gridlock on its roads in the event of congestion in Dover or Calais.
Concrete barriers have already been erected on the main port artery in Kent, with a section of the London-bound M20 between junction 8 and junction 9 now operating as a 50mph contraflow for normal traffic. Work on signage will be completed over the weekend.
The coastbound section will be closed off to all but lorry traffic from next week to allow Highways England to carry out a live daily trial to cope with possible chaos after 11pm on 29 March.
A full meeting of Kent county council will be held at 10am on Thursday to discuss Brexit preparedness, including a checklist received from the local government secretary, James Brokenshire, of issues relating to transport, supply chains, statutory services and regulatory services.
Last year the council warned it might have to deal with 10,000 lorries parked or queuing on its roads with a knock-on impact on schools, hospitals, rubbish collections and morgues.
The council has already conducted three live tests for its contingency, code-named Exercise Pale Fox, with Operation Fennel for traffic management going into action based on assumptions of six months of disruption, according to an agenda for the council meeting.
Manston airport near Ramsgate is in the final stages of preparation for use as a lorry park for up to 6,000 heavy goods vehicles in the event of gridlock.
Councillors will also hear from adult social care and health officers who have plans to minimise the risk of disruption to admissions of patients to hospitals, residential care homes and the supply of fuel, medication, cleaning and sanitation products.
Schools have also been issued with Brexit guidelines warning them to think twice before closing down in the event that staff cannot make it through the gridlock.
Extra trading standards officials have been hired for a new ports team in Dover “as a result of the predicted increase in referrals” once EU standards are no longer guaranteed in imports.
The council is also on standby in the event that “high-risk animal feed is landed” from outside the EU but transported through the bloc to Dover.
According to reports, the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, told cabinet ministers in a letter: “Operation Yellowhammer command and control structures will be enacted fully on 25 March unless a new exit date has been agreed between the UK and the EU.”
Earlier this year, the chief executive of the civil service said the government would never be fully prepared for Brexit as he revealed plans to move up to 5,000 staff into an emergency command and control centre in the event of no deal.
A government spokesperson said: “As a responsible government we have been planning and continue to prepare for all eventualities and that includes managing the impacts of a no deal Brexit as they arise.”
First published on Mon 8 Jul 2019 19.18 BST
Labour is poised to declare it will campaign for remain in a second referendum on any deal put to parliament by a Conservative prime minister, after trade union leaders including Unite’s Len McCluskey backed a change of policy.
The joint position agreed by the unions on Monday would not commit Labour to an explicitly pro-remain position in all circumstances: unions also agreed Labour should seek to deliver a Brexit deal if the party won an election before the UK left the EU.
That Labour deal would also be put to a public vote, but the party would not commit to campaigning for remain against its own Brexit deal, throwing into doubt what Labour would offer in any snap election manifesto.
One senior shadow cabinet source described it as a significant win for remain campaigners, despite the potential lack of clarity.
“Unions have backed a referendum on any deal this parliament and Labour campaigning for remain – that’s a big victory. What’s in a manifesto is a debate for another day,” the source said.
Barring any major intervention, the surprise consensus among trade unions including Unite, GMB, Unison, Aslef and Usdaw is likely to force any remaining sceptics to agree to the new position when the shadow cabinet meets on Tuesday.
Several shadow cabinet sources said the policy had the hallmarks of being approved by the Labour leader’s office and said it “would not be watered down” – though some shadow ministers are likely to push for an even stronger position.
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, who has regularly clashed with Jeremy Corbyn over the party’s Brexit position, tweeted: “Remain is who we are. Our values are remain, our hearts are remain. Today is a step in the right direction but members and supporters are clear that any kind of Brexit gives us less than we have now and Labour should not support it.”
Union leaders had met on Monday to agree a common position on Labour’s Brexit policy, in a meeting one source described as fractious but ultimately consensual.
The proposed policy, which will be offered to the Labour leadership as the unanimous view of the unions, will say:
A senior Labour source said Corbyn had not been present at the meeting but suggested it was a helpful outcome. “Jeremy has been working to unite the party and the wider Labour movement around a common position,” the source said.
Union sources close to the talks said they did not want the position to be presented as an out-and-out victory for remain campaigners, saying the party would still have a chance to tell leave voters it would honour the result of the 2016 referendum by negotiating a Brexit deal if in government.
“Ultimately everybody just wants this to end,” one union source said. “It would be an error to let this drag on until conference and have the battle on the conference floor. But it is right to reserve the position on a Labour-negotiated Brexit deal which could deliver the result of the 2016 referendum. It would be mad to say we would negotiate a deal and then campaign against it.”
One union source said the meeting had been lengthy but amicable and its purpose had been to find a consensus. “We are pleased and confident that everything is on the right road,” the source said.
A briefing war has erupted over the past few weeks as some shadow cabinet ministers suggested senior Corbyn aides and union figures such as McCluskey were preventing the party moving to an explicitly pro-remain position or championing the change in party policy.
On Sunday, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, denied claims he had been urging Corbyn to sack his two most senior aides, Karie Murphy and Seumas Milne, because they were opposed to Labour committing to backing remain in a second referendum.
Labour had already shifted its Brexit stance to propose that any Brexit deal passed by parliament should be put to the people in a second referendum, after the party suffered heavy losses to the pro-remain Liberal Democrats at the local and European elections.
Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, had previously said publicly she was “beginning to worry” about party policy not being sufficiently pro-remain.
Labour MPs at a private meeting of parliamentarians on Monday night expressed some caution about the new policy.
“It is not exactly the absolute clarity we were hoping for,” one MP said. “It sounds like we are reserving the right to campaign for remain against our own Brexit deal – that will just sound ludicrous to voters.”
The party came under attack for the policy from both sides of the Brexit divide as the trade union agreement emerged. The Conservatives called it “an attempt to frustrate Brexit and ignore the democratic mandate to deliver it”.
The Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman, Tom Brake, said: “Even now, after millions of remainers have deserted them, Labour manage only a fudge.”
Last modified on Tue 16 Jul 2019 21.10 BST
Ursula von der Leyen has been confirmed as the European commission’s first female president and the first German in the job for more than 50 years.
In a secret ballot, MEPs voted narrowly to support the German defence minister as a replacement for Jean-Claude Juncker when he steps down on 31 October.
She won the support of 383 MEPs, nine votes more than required to secure an absolute majority but below the 400 threshold that would have given her a stable majority to get her policies through parliament over the next five years.
She will take over from Juncker on the day that Boris Johnson, who is likely to be the next British prime minister, has said he will take the UK out of the EU with or without a deal.
Von der Leyen said she would be open to Brexit being delayed further “for a good reason” although she insisted the withdrawal agreement would not be renegotiated.
After the announcement of the result, she said: “The trust you place in me is confidence you place in Europe. Confidence in a united and strong Europe, from east to west, from south to north. The confidence in a Europe that is ready to fight for the future rather than fight against each other.”
Asked whether she would prefer Johnson or Jeremy Hunt to become the next British prime minister, she told reporters: “I do not know [either] of them personally and there is a golden rule which I respect that I will work in a very constructive way with every head of state and government.”
Von der Leyen’s emergence as EU leaders’ choice for the post two weeks ago had come as an unwelcome surprise to the Socialists and Democrats group, and even to some in the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) of which she is a member.
She had been nominated by the leaders after 50 hours of arduous negotiations despite not being one of the spitzenkandidats, or lead candidates, who campaigned before May’s European elections to head the EU’s executive branch.
Juncker’s appointment to the job in 2014, as the first spitzenkandidat, whose position relied on a the EPP’s emergence in the elections as the biggest group, had been seen as an important transfer of power away from EU capitals to the European parliament.
But opposition to Von der Leyen’s candidacy appeared to melt away after a 30-minute speech on Tuesday morning in which she made a series of left-leaning pledges to win over the socialists and stressed the importance of her being the first woman to be nominated by the heads of state and government.
“Exactly 40 years ago, the first president of the European parliament, Simone Veil, was elected and presented her vision of a united Europe,” Von der Leyen said. “It is thanks to you, and to all the other European icons, that I present to you today my vision of Europe. And 40 years later, it is with great pride that it is finally a woman who is the presidential candidate of the European commission.”
Veil, a survivor of the Holocaust who became only the fourth woman to be buried in the Panthéon in Paris after her death last year, was one of France’s most revered politicians, known for her battle as health minister to legalise contraception and abortion.
Von der Leyen committed in her speech to ensuring full gender equality among the 28 commissioners that she would lead in Brussels.
“If member states do not propose enough female commissioners, I will not hesitate to ask for new names,” she said. “Since 1958 there have been 183 commissioners. Only 35 were women. That is less than 20%.”
She went on to commit to establishing a pan-EU guarantee of free healthcare and education for every child. “I know as a mother of seven that it makes a difference for their entire life if children have access to education, sports, music, healthy food and to a loving environment”, she said.
In policies designed to win over the socialists, she pledged to establish an EU-wide minimum wage, a fund to prop up national welfare systems in the case of an economic crisis and to ensure flexibility in the tax and spend restraints on eurozone countries.
She also committed to a far-reaching environmental programme, including a “green deal”, offering billions of euros in investment and a new EU carbon border tax, with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality on the continent by 2050.
In her biggest cross-party promise to MEPs, she said she would allow the parliament the right to propose legislation.
“Anyone who wishes to help Europe will find in me a passionate fighter by their side,” she said. “Anyone seeking to split and destroy our values will find a fierce opponent.”
Iratxe García, the Spanish leader of the Socialists and Democrats group, said: “We were very sceptical when the candidate came to our group last week, but over the past days we have to admit that she embraced our group’s core demands, with specific proposals for legislation.”
The leader of the liberal Renew Europe group, Dacian Cioloș, said he expected that fewer than five of his 108 MEPs had voted against Von der Leyen, who spoke in fluent English, French and German during the debate in parliament.
Cioloș said he had also received assurances that his fellow liberal Margrethe Vestager, a former Danish finance minister who is currently the commissioner for competition, would be appointed as an executive vice-president on an equal footing with the socialist group’s Frans Timmermans.
Representatives from the governing parties in Hungary and Poland criticised Von der Leyen’s pledge to continue with the commission’s attempt to block or reverse judicial changes in their countries.
“Lady Justice is blind – she will defend the rule of law wherever it is attacked,” Von der Leyen had told the parliament.
Green MEPs were among the 327 MEPs who voted against her candidacy. Their co-chairman Ska Keller said there had not been enough “green content” to her proposed green deal.
Von der Leyen, a close ally of Angela Merkel, becomes the first German commission president since Walter Hallstein served from 1958 to 1967.
Martin Selmayr, the commission’s German secretary general, has said he will leave his post next week. The convention is that the two top posts in the EU executive are not held by nationals of the same member state.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.51 GMT
Ursula von der Leyen, the nominee to lead the European commission, has signalled she will not reopen Brexit talks with the next British prime minister and stressed the “precious” Irish backstop must be defended.
She said she still hoped the UK would remain in the European Union, while indicating she had no intention to renegotiate the withdrawal deal agreed by Theresa May and EU leaders.
“I think it’s a good deal, but it is your responsibility and your noble task to sort this out,” she told a British Liberal Democrat MEP in the European parliament, in her first public comments on Brexit.
In a thinly veiled message to the Tory leadership candidates Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, Von der Leyen said the tone and attitude with which Brexit happens were crucial, adding: “Brexit is not the end of something, Brexit is the beginning of future relations and it’s of absolute importance that we have good cooperation.”
She also made it clear she opposed attempts by both men to reopen discussions on the backstop, the fallback plan to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
“I think the backstop is of utmost importance and we absolutely know how crucial this nonexistent border is for you,” she said in response to an Irish MEP. “Having the backstop in the Brexit deal is precious, important and has to be defended.”
Von der Leyen was addressing the European parliament’s liberal group as part of a round of meetings with large political groups to rally support ahead of a vote on her appointment next week. After being backed by EU leaders Von der Leyen needs at least 376 MEPs to elect her as commission president.
The current German defence minister is a member of the centre-right European People’s party (EPP), so needs to win over some combination of socialists, liberals, greens or Eurosceptics.
Von der Leyen, who would be the first woman to lead the EU executive, said she wanted an equal share of men and women as European commissioners. However, this depends on the EU’s member states appointing women to be their commissioners – an appeal many ignored in 2014.
Brexit is scheduled for 31 October, the day before the new European commission takes office.
Making her pitch to MEPs, Von der Leyen emphasised her green credentials while also arguing that the EU needed to be more assertive in the world – a traditional preoccupation of the centrist group. Her earlier meetings with the EPP, Eurosceptic group and socialists were not broadcast online.
She pledged her full commitment to making the bloc climate neutral by 2050, saying this required tougher targets for 2030 as well as EU funds for countries that would otherwise struggle to make the green transition.
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary recently blocked an EU declaration for a net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050, and are angling for more money before signing up to any pledge.
Speaking in a mix of English, French and German, Von der Leyen emphasised her European outlook, reminding MEPs she was born in Brussels and attended the city’s European school with Dutch, German and French classmates. “That was my first impression of Europe,” she said.
She clarified her views on European defence, restating that national parliaments should continue to have the final say on sending men and women into dangerous situations. “I prefer to speak about the army of the Europeans, not the European army,” she said, citing as a model the existing cooperation between Dutch and German forces.
Although it is expected Von der Leyen will be approved by the European parliament, she still faced sniping over the process of her appointment whereby she leapfrogged politicians who had declared bids to lead the commission before European elections.
The Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld asked whether she would be tougher in acting against violations of the rule of law and democracy than the outgoing commission, adding it was “remarkable” that Poland and Hungary had supported Von der Leyen’s nomination.
Von der Leyen answered “yes” and pointed out her appointment was backed by all countries, although Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, did not vote for her because of divisions in Germany’s ruling coalition.
In her opening remarks Von der Leyen said the rule of law was “the jewel in the crown of our work” and that the EU needed a mechanism for upholding it in member states.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.44 GMT
Conservative MPs are privately concerned that Boris Johnson’s call for a general election is a gamble that could easily backfire.
Following Theresa May’s failed bid to win a majority in the 2017 general election, there are nerves about advocating another national vote upon a fatigued electorate near to Christmas.
One MP said the move, if successfully portrayed by Labour as a political stunt, could reinforce an image of Johnson as sneaky and untrustworthy.
Under the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act, Johnson needs 434 MPs to vote for a general election – two thirds of sitting MPs. He will be relying upon a majority of Conservative MPs to vote in favour of an election if he is to win on Monday.
An MP from the centre of the parliamentary party said the move was a “smoke and mirrors” trap that was meant to fail and anticipated that Labour would reject an election. However, it could easily backfire with some liberal voters, the MP said.
“This latest move is not intended to be a successful bid for an election. If it was going to be successful, at least 30 of my colleagues would vote against it,” the MP added. “I worry that the public will look at the government and say, ‘Why on earth are they farting about and trying to ruin my Christmas with an election when they have just won a vote on the Brexit bill? Where have they found these six weeks for an election when they don’t have time to discuss Brexit legislation?’
“The miscalculation here is that the PM might be popular, but he is not trusted. And this manoeuvre, if the public don’t buy it as genuine, might reinforce the impression that he is sneaky, untrustworthy and too clever by half.”
Another MP said his parliamentary colleagues were in “two minds” as to whether the move was a good idea, but added that most hoped Jeremy Corbyn would back down from whipping Labour MPs.
“The 2017 experience has scarred the party. We had a big lead and look what happened. Corbyn has shown that he can do it on the stump, even if we take into account that his brand has tanked somewhat.”
Two former Conservative MPs who were removed from the party for voting against a no-deal Brexit have confirmed they will not vote for a general election.
Several Scottish Tory MPs have also voiced fears about calling for a winter vote before Brexit has been delivered.
One Scottish party source said: “This would not wash with our voters. I hope my colleagues are right when they say that we won’t get an election. We go for a vote in the spring, when a deal has been done.”
Some senior Tories are concerned that Johnson will struggle to portray an election as a fight for Brexit, given that the withdrawal agreement bill was passed by MPs this week at its second reading.
Paul Goodman, the editor of the influential website ConservativeHome, wrote on Thursday that going for an election was a high-risk strategy for Johnson.
“ConservativeHome is very cautious about making a dash for the line now, especially on the basis of a claim about the bill that doesn’t necessarily stand up.
“To win, the party probably has to win a mass of northern and Midlands seats to make up for losses in London and the south. Is it really likely that the Tory campaign can, say, decapitate Tom Watson in West Bromwich, as the party aims to do, without Brexit having been delivered?” he said.
Goodman, a former MP and party adviser, wrote that the Brexit party could gain seats from the Conservatives if an election was called before the bill had passed in to law.
“To our mind, Nigel Farage complaining that the Conservatives have yet again failed to achieve Brexit sounds more persuasive than him complaining that it has achieved a version he doesn’t like. And the Brexit party factor will matter in a campaign: after all, its rise coincided with the fall of Theresa May,” he said.
If Labour reject Johnson’s offer of a general election and his motion fails to pass, the government looks set to go on strike.
The prime minister’s spokesman said: “Nothing will come before parliament but the bare minimum. We will pursue a general election every day from then onwards, and do everything we can to get it.
“The prime minister wants to get his deal done by 31 October. If this parliament is unwilling to vote for a deal, then we will have to go for a general election. If there were a general election called, we would campaign on the fact that we’ve got a great deal that will get Brexit done.”
Last modified on Thu 13 Jun 2019 19.25 BST
This week’s eruption of the new Independent Group in parliament has been caused in part by the toxic culture that has taken hold within each of the established parties. Bullying, intimidation and racism – covert and overt – have already persuaded 11 MPs to jump ship, probably to be followed by more in due course. But if they are to gain a permanent foothold in British politics, they will need to morph into a more normal party, and establish policies that distinguish them from Labour and the Conservatives. What policies might appeal to both social democrats and liberal conservatives alike?
Start with this: the stale brand of politics practised on both frontbenches is inherently conservative. It looks back to a mythic past that never was and never could have been. Tories increasingly look askance at the liberal, open and cosmopolitan Britain that is emerging: many of them want to shut off the world, raise our borders, reduce immigration, insist on social modes and mores that went out of fashion decades ago. Labour now seems like something of a 1970s tribute band, champing at the bit to nationalise the public utilities, re-establish a ministry of labour, bring back sectoral wage bargaining and repeal most of the Trade Union Acts. Each of these pasts is a deeply nostalgic vision of a Britain that is not coming back, however much governments huff and puff.
The implication for any new party is that it must seek to give people a sense of hope, a sense of a future, without relying on big-picture statist solutions that will quickly wear out after they have won a few headlines. Yes, a majority of the public want rail and water nationalisation – and those policies may well be sensible in themselves. But when you probe further, people are nowhere near so sold on the deeper and wider economic controls that a big Labour majority or an economic crisis would involve – effectively nationalising some share options, for instance, or exchange controls to deal with a run on the pound.
One thing a new party can agree on is a close relationship with the European Union – if Britain has already left, perhaps membership of the European Economic Area via a European Free Trade Association-style route. Although this means accepting freedom of movement (hedged around with some qualifications about coming to Britain to work), complete alignment with the single market avoids the fantasies conjured up by Tories and Labour, and would allow the UK one day to rejoin the EU if voters wished. That overarching commitment to the single market will also presumably be something that social democrats and liberal conservatives can agree on – vital in the weeks to come, which will inevitably be full of stories about policy differences.
The next thing the new party can do is to exchange the language of “fairness” for concrete examples of more flexible, meaningful and workable ideas. No one believes a word of the Conservatives’ or Labour’s public spending figures any more: a realistic approach to necessary reforms would speak to the public as if they are adults, and here some elements of the Conservatives’ and Liberal Democrats’ approach could be adopted. Take my own patch in English higher education. Abolishing fees altogether would be expensive, and likely to become more so over the next parliament as the numbers of 18-year-olds grow, and unlikely (as in the Scottish experience) to do much to widen access. Bringing back full living grants would be much cheaper, and would do much more to persuade young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to do a degree by dealing with their major problem: upfront costs.
At the same time, the very painful cuts that have been borne by local government should be eased immediately. If the funding for that change has to come from the budgets of core services, or rather more borrowing, then so be it. The ramshackle state of many local public services, whether it be libraries, social care, roads or even public toilets – the real stuff of life – could be reversed or at least ameliorated for much less than it would cost to abolish university tuition fees.
There is nowhere near enough focus in our political system on the havoc these cuts are wreaking on everyday lives. Instead, politicians focus on schools and hospitals – an easy appeal, but a snare when their admittedly tight funding settlements have been nowhere near as savage as those faced by services that should wrap around and protect them: elderly care and youth services being two prime examples.
Elsewhere, a new party can take a page out of Labour’s book, and think about co-operatising and democratising local government and public utilities – as indeed some of the best of Labour’s new economics has hinted at. Instead of nationalising train companies per se, central government should take public interest shares in them to gain the benefits of forward planning without the day-to-day business of management. Local and regional government should at last be freed to borrow and invest in both these businesses and their own metro lines and fast bus services.
Britain’s productivity is lagging. Its image is poor. Its politics is in disarray. It needs solutions that are neither Little England nor Big Government. If it combines a sensible approach to public spending priorities, an understanding of the local and the concrete, and allows cities rather than the central state to spend, it can start to recover. There is no time like the present.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
It is time to draw the first phase of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU to a close, and in order to do that we have to agree a deal with the EU that gets us on to negotiating our future trading relationship.
The country also now desperately needs its MPs to think about something other than Brexit, and its government to focus on the many other pressing issues facing us.
It is undoubtedly true that the best way to stop a no-deal outcome to Brexit in March is for MPs to agree a negotiated withdrawal agreement with the EU. But that has to be an agreement that gains the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons. Tuesday night’s votes showed that a majority of MPs can be assembled if the concerns about the Northern Ireland backstop in the draft withdrawal agreement are addressed.
Until last week I didn’t think that such a majority could be found. But, as with any difficult talks, if a few key people from either side of the debate can be encouraged to move from their entrenched positions and discuss the issues properly then a common understanding can be reached. And on the thorny topic of Brexit, so it has proved in the Conservative party this week.
The prime minister needs a plan to put back to the EU, supported by Tuesday’s vote. And that is the plan drafted by a group of Conservative MPs with very different views on Brexit. Our plan, now referred to as Plan C or the “Malthouse compromise”, involves a new backstop that is acceptable indefinitely, but which incentivises us all to reach a new future relationship and ensures there is no need for a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The implementation phase would be extended until no later than December 2021. And it allows the UK to negotiate a new future relationship with our partners and allies in the EU without prejudice to the particular form of trading relationship.
In the event that cannot be agreed then there would be a “triple safety net”, including continuing to make the offer set out above, along with bilateral cooperation on security, and offering to pay our annual net contributions and secure a standstill period until no later than the end of December 2021, with a WTO-compliant trading relationship from the end of the initial implementation period if the future relationship has not been agreed. In all cases, the rights of EU citizens would be unilaterally guaranteed.
There are parts of this I don’t like and parts that my most pro-Brexit colleagues don’t like. But we can agree on it as a whole plan. And that is the point. Any negotiation involves compromise and no one will get everything they want. For too long it has been too easy to say what we don’t like and to expect the other side to accede to everything we want. That isn’t sustainable and if we carry on like this in the House of Commons then any last remaining patience that the UK electorate has for its MPs will disappear. It shouldn’t be rocket science that we need to achieve a government majority so that the government can get its major policy through parliament and get on with running the country on the other side.
With a clear British ask on the backstop, the EU can be in no doubt about what the UK government needs from it in order to get an agreement over the line. It is time for hatchets to be buried, so we can move on from 23 June 2016.
 Nicky Morgan is the Conservative MP for Loughborough
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.58 GMT
A backbench plan to ward off a no-deal Brexit by extending article 50 is in the balance amid concerns from Labour MPs in leave-voting seats, who fear it could be seen as an attempt to frustrate Britain’s departure from the EU.
It appears likely that the Labour front bench will support the amendment to the government’s Brexit deal tabled by Yvette Cooper. Cooper’s amendment has already won the backing of more than 70 cross-party MPs, among them a number of Conservatives.
This month an earlier Cooper amendment to restrict the chances of no deal was passed with the support of 20 Conservatives, However, while just three Labour MPs went against the party line in that vote, there is speculation that more could rebel on Tuesday.
The new amendment, which seems likely to be among those selected for a vote, would guarantee parliamentary time for a private members’ bill drafted by Cooper that would extend article 50 to the end of 2019 if Theresa May failed to secure a deal by late February.
Some Labour MPs representing seats that voted leave in the 2016 referendum have warned that the plan could appear to be endlessly extending the Brexit process for no reason.
Labour sources said some MPs – over and above the half a dozen or so who have voted with the government on May’s Brexit plan – had come to the whips’ office to express reservations about the Cooper amendment.
Some are concerned that it could be used to pave the way for a second referendum, and they are expected to study the amendment over the weekend before coming to a final position.
Lisa Nandy, who represents Wigan, where 64% voted leave in 2016, said she would back an extension of article 50 if there was a clear justification, such as the idea of a citizens’ assembly, which she supports, but was otherwise wary.
Nandy said: “Without a clear reason, people will understandably think we’re just kicking this into the long grass and the ongoing chaos is making it impossible for local businesses.”
Another obstacle would be what to do with European elections due to take place in late May if Brexit were delayed beyond then, Nandy said.
“I haven’t yet heard any convincing explanation that would avoid us then having to campaign to re-elect MEPs to a parliament we were supposed to have left months earlier. That just strikes me as completely unsustainable,” she said. “So I haven’t dismissed the amendment out of hand, as avoiding no deal is clearly important, but there are serious problems with it as it currently stands.”
On Friday, Andrea Leadsom became the first leave-backing cabinet minister to acknowledge that the Brexit deadline could be extended beyond 29 March, though only briefly.
The leader of the Commons, who is in charge of guiding Brexit legislation through parliament, told BBC’s Newsnight that a short extension was feasible: “I am absolutely certain that if we needed a couple of extra weeks or something, then that would be feasible.”
The parallel issue of a possible second Brexit referendum remains the subject intense debate within Labour, with a senior ally of Jeremy Corbyn warning that it could badly affect the relationship between politicians and the public.
Ian Lavery, the MP for Wansbeck and Labour’s national campaigns coordinator, said that while the idea was still possible under party policy as a way to end an otherwise intractable Brexit impasse, he was worried about the consequences.
“We should be in no doubt that asking the voters to vote again on an issue they have already given an answer, until they come up with the right answer, risks serious damage to the relationship between many citizens and politicians at Westminster,” he wrote in an article for the Guardian.
Earlier in the week, a planned cross-party amendment for a “people’s vote” was dropped by its organisers, who said the lack of explicit Labour front-bench backing meant it was unlikely to pass.
However, the Commons order paper for Tuesday’s crucial series of votes on the next stages for Brexit now features three new amendments tabled by Labour MPs seeking the same.
On Saturday, campaigners from the People’s Vote campaign were promising to hold events in about 100 places across the UK to maintain the pressure for a second referendum.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 11.55 GMT
Dozens of moderate Tories, including senior cabinet ministers, have signed up to a powerful new party group in an attempt to stop the Conservatives lurching further to the right during the race to replace Theresa May.
Work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd, already a key figure in the search for May’s successor, is one of the leaders of the newly formed One Nation Group, said to comprise 40 MPs desperate to find a candidate committed to blocking a no-deal Brexit.
The move comes as MPs, including some in government, warn that they believe entryism by pro-Brexit supporters at local Conservative associations risks delivering a leader willing to back a hard break with the EU.
And it follows an outcry after Dominic Grieve, the pro-Remain former attorney general, lost a confidence vote held by his local party.
Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Michael Gove – who all campaigned to leave the EU – are among the four frontrunners. The fourth is foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, who campaigned for Remain in the referendum but has since backed taking a hard line in EU negotiations.
“We’re trying to learn the lessons of last time, where our wing was not organised and did not have enough say,” said one insider. “This time we want to have influence to ensure we act as a caucus that can back someone who supports our kind of agenda.”
Alongside Rudd, fellow cabinet ministers Greg Clark, David Gauke and David Mundell are understood to be backing the group. Also involved are energy minister Claire Perry, health minister Stephen Hammond and rising stars Rory Stewart and Bim Afolami. Rudd will sit on the group’s board, alongside former ministers Damian Green, Nicky Morgan and veteran MP Nicholas Soames.
The group was formed after a series of secret meetings and dinners held by MPs worried that the party was losing its sense of “compassionate Conservatism”. The One Nation Group is aiming to host hustings in a leadership contest. Candidates looking for their support will need to have been clearly against a no-deal Brexit.
Several Tory MPs are comparing the leadership race to the Grand National, as so many names are being discussed. The comparison is not meant to be favourable. “The problem with the Grand National is that there’s a real danger the 80-1 knacker comes home,” said one. Another MP observed: “Quality horses go to Cheltenham. The nags go to Aintree.”
The setting up of the One Nation Group confirms Rudd’s status as a key power broker in the leadership race, but she has not ruled out running herself. Other MPs on the party’s modernising wing want the group to throw its weight behind health secretary Matt Hancock, a close ally of George Osborne who has managed to steer clear of the Brexit debate. He is being touted as the “fresh start” candidate. Some long-term Tory donors, put off by pro-Brexit candidates, are keen to see Hancock in the race.
Raab, who resigned as Brexit secretary at the end of last year, is also regarded as a “change candidate” for MPs alienated by Johnson. Gove is being touted as the best person to hammer out a trade deal with the EU and has earned respect among some MPs for sticking by May. However, he is now disliked by hardline Brexiters furious that he backed May’s deal.
Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary and former chief whip, has emerged as the other key power broker. “Getting Gavin is a big deal,” said one source close to a leadership contender. “He’s the whip. Whoever secures him will have a big chance.” However, Williamson has not ruled out a leadership bid himself.
Justine Greening, the former education secretary, who backs a second referendum, is also considering a bid, and a number of young MPs are weighing up their chances.
Under party rules, MPs will whittle the number of candidates down to two, and party members will then choose between them. There is now a real concern among mainstream MPs that a radicalised membership will simply select the most hardline candidate. “The party will deny that our membership has become more extreme, but it has – I’ve seen it,” said one member of the government. “The danger is if we put up Hunt against Johnson or Raab, they will go for Johnson or Raab.”
These concerns were heightened by the confidence vote against Grieve last Friday evening, at a meeting that saw him subjected to boos and jeers. Yesterday Grieve blamed a former Ukip opponent for orchestrating the vote against him.
In his well-to-do Buckinghamshire constituency of Beaconsfield, residents were split on his future. Tom, a Tory member in his 70s who was at Friday’s party meeting, said there had been a group of “loudmouthed yobs” present. He said he had joined the Conservatives six months ago “because I could see the danger that the lunatic fringe would displace Dominic Grieve, and it looks as though that could happen”.
He said Grieve was an “extraordinary MP” and it was very sad that “a man like that should potentially be lost to the government or parliament because of blind prejudice by obsessive Brexiteers”.
Alina, 42 and not a Tory supporter, added: “I appreciated the fact that he had a spine and was one of the very few people in parliament who understood how it worked, and he has integrity.” She said he knew the consequences of what he was going to do, “but still did it”.
“I’m not sure I’d vote for him as a Tory, but if he ran as an independent that would be a different story,” she said.
Steve, shopping at Waitrose, called the vote against Grieve “fucking brilliant”. The 67-year-old said he had always voted for Grieve. “But the major parties stood on manifestos that promised to abide by the [EU referendum] result, and he has continued to defy it. He’s not fit for office. I am happy to see the back of him. I went to the Conservative office myself to see if there was anything I could do to make that happen.”
First published on Sat 13 Apr 2019 06.00 BST
Pro-EU parties, including the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and the Independent Group, will not form pacts or alliances at the forthcoming EU elections, hoping to use the poll as a “soft referendum” to show a surge in support for remain.
If no Brexit deal is passed by parliament, the UK will be required to hold the poll on 23 May. The Lib Dems, the mainstream party hoping to capitalise most on anti-Brexit discontent, has almost finalised its manifesto and plans a huge operation of ground campaigning targeting remain voters.
“We want to use the momentum from the locals, which very few other parties will have, as a springboard for European elections,” a party source said. “Voters across all of Great Britain want to vote for a pro-remain party. We’re going to give them all the chance to vote Lib Dem.”
The TIG MP Chuka Umunna claimed his new party – Change UK – would be “the leading option on the ballot paper” arguing for a second referendum.
The breakaway group of former Labour and Tory MPs has invited its network of supporters to apply to be MEP candidates “to give the British people a real choice”.
The timeframe for potential candidates will require final applications to be submitted by Monday morning and interviews later next week. In its email to supporters, the group said it was expecting a high number of applications and potential candidates should be prepared for a significant commitment.
The party intends to carry out “background verification checks” on candidates, who must provide all their social media handles, in the hope of avoiding the embarrassments that have plagued many start-up parties.
Candidates will also be asked to “outline your perspective on why politics is broken and how it needs to change”, as well as setting out their commitments to the Nolan principles of public life – selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
The group’s interim leader, Heidi Allen, a former Tory MP, said they would encourage “anyone who wants to see a people’s vote on Brexit, who wants to remain a full member of the European Union, and who wants to shake up and change our broken politics”.
The Green party is also hoping to capitalise on running with an explicitly pro-remain stance. Party co-leader Siân Berry said the Greens would “mobilise one of the strongest pro-EU movements anywhere” and would stress the importance of the elections to send a message.
“We will not let the government downplay how important these elections are. This isn’t just about the European Union – it’s about the country we live in,” she said.
“One thing we can agree on is that our politics is broken, and has failed to fix the intolerable inequality and insecurity which caused the Brexit vote. A vote for the Greens is a vote against this chaos, a vote for change, a vote to remain and a vote for an open and confident Britain.”
Renew, another emerging new party that has fought local elections, will also run pro-EU candidates in the EU elections. The party leader, Annabel Mullin, said the elections would be “seen by many as a soft referendum on EU membership”.
The two major parties are also likely to see applicants hoping to run on a remain platform. Stanley Johnson, the father of Boris Johnson and a former Tory MEP, has announced his wish to stand again for the party to make a pro-European case.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.28 GMT
Another week in Brexit, another seven days in which the tickers along the bottom of the news channel screens may as well have been changed to a continuous loop of the inquiry: WHAT JUST HAPPENED?????
Matters that would have added to the gaiety of the nation for days are relegated to news-in-brief items that really are far too brief. Gay-cure-linked biblical moraliser Stephen Crabb has left the government “in the best interests of my family”. Iain Duncan Smith must be sanctioned for failing to get back into work again. Michael Gove’s analogy in which he was well placed to save a child from a collapsing building has ended with the child taking out a restraining order against him.
But it is the news of appointments actually made that has felt more malarial, with Theresa May’s reshuffle of government widely described as “root and branch”. Think of the new PM as hacking down a dense forest of cluelessness, in the hope that it might liberate the princess of a plan slumbering somewhere therein.
Typically in the UK, jobs that are utterly thankless and unworkably exhausting are left to migrants. For whatever reason, Theresa May didn’t feel she had that option when she had to appoint her troika of senior ministers to handle the UK’s graceless exit from the EU. So it is that Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox will be clambering inside the Jean-Paul Sartre simulator and testing the theory that hell is other fatally flawed Tories. A bold branding initiative is trying to cast them as the Three Brexiteers , but you’ll probably be less disappointed if you see them as Aramis, Werritys and Takethepiss.
Nobody knows anything, runs William Goldman’s famous verdict on Hollywood, and that motto is being metaphorically chiselled into the stone lintel above Whitehall’s newest department. Take our new secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis. It has emerged that as recently as May, Davis had believed it would be possible for Britain to negotiate trade deals directly with each EU member state, as opposed to the reality, which is that the member states are only permitted to negotiate as a bloc.
Frankly, there hasn’t been as massive a misreading of a trade situation since the Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn judged: “These federation types are cowards. The negotiations will be short.” See ya 37 hours of tedious CGI politicking later, buddy! Or as Philip Hammond, the incoming chancellor of the exchequer, observed earlier in the week, extracting ourselves from the European Union could take six years, reminding dreamers that Brexit will be like living in an even crappier version of the Phantom Menace for more than half a decade.
That David Davis was last seen suing Theresa May’s Home Office over surveillance, in the European Court of Justice, is just another of those boggling quirks of the new order, which are – like the deaths of Spinal Tap drummers – best left uninvestigated. The judgment is pending, so let’s hope both parties are shameless enough to claim it as a win for the ministerial top table whichever way it goes.
Perhaps the best that can be said for Davis thus far is that his boss has yet to undermine his negotiating skills publicly. As we know from her 30-minute Tory leadership campaign, Theresa May has a benchmark for buffoonish negotiation, and it’s that loser who went to Europe to do a deal and “came back with three nearly new water cannon”. Which she wouldn’t let him use.
Anyhow, that loser is now the foreign secretary. Sham marriages have longer honeymoon periods than Theresa May, who enjoyed a couple of hours after her nice speech in Downing Street before handing Boris Johnson the Foreign Office. Much of the reaction to the news was probably best summarised by the member of the public who hung a sign on the railings outside Boris’s London home reading simply: SORRY WORLD.
There has been a welter of speculation on the thinking behind the decision. Maybe Theresa May was worried that foreigners were too stupid to read the message of Brexit, and consequently made the appointment to underscore the point. After all, having the insult-happy Johnson as our outward face to the world sends the clearest message possible, short of spraying BOTHERD WHAT YOU LOT THINK in 50-metre letters on the white cliffs of Dover.
As for the third of our ministerial band of brothers, it is a pleasure to welcome back former disgraced former minister Liam Fox, now secretary of state for international trade. Liam is a guy I always feel like I go back years with, on account of the fact that in the very first week of my employment at the Guardian, he was the star of the best item in the Diary column on which I worked. Certainly the only thing approaching a story. Liam had attended a reception in Westminster, where he had enchanted fellow guests with a brilliant joke. Question: “What do you call three dogs and a blackbird?” Answer: “The Spice Girls.”
Yup, that guy’s now secretary of state for international trade. The Spice Girls are currently trading with just Mel B, Geri, and Emma involved, so Liam might want to adjust his numbers when wheeling out the old gag as an icebreaker with the Canadians. Always start with a joke, secretary of state. Heaven knows your boss did.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
Britain’s exit from the European Union will be like many divorces: there will be a bitter argument about money. According to the Financial Times, Britain will have to pay €20bn (£18bn) to leave the EU, taking into account the UK’s share of the EU’s unpaid bills and pension liabilities. The German magazine Wirtschaftswoche suggested in August that the Brexit bill could be as high as €25bn.
Some officials in Brussels think both these estimates are on the low side, although they do not offer alternative figures. The budget is one of the main areas Michel Barnier, the European commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, is focusing on, in addition to trade and the single market. But his team have yet to produce their own estimate of how much Britain should pay.
Negotiations on the budget will not begin until Theresa May invokes article 50, the EU exit clause. The prime minister has promised to notify the EU of Britain’s intention to leave by the end of March 2017. Her announcement will start the clock on two years of negotiations. As money is so fundamental, it is likely the final bill will not be settled until the end.
The article 50 talks will be about unwinding EU membership: the EU will press Britain to pay its share of unpaid bills and liabilities; the UK is expected to seek a share of EU assets.
The EU’s unpaid bills totalled €218bn in 2015. These are IOUs that have paid for motorways, bridges and other economic development projects in poorer regions of Europe. Unpaid bills have mounted up over the last 15 years, as the EU has gone on a spending spree, following the enlargement to central and eastern Europe.
Another problem will be agreeing the UK’s share of the EU’s €59bn pension liability, which guarantees income for 1,730 retired British officials. EU sources say the UK will be on the hook for its share of all pension liabilities, not only those of British officials.
In theory the UK could be required to pay into the EU budget until 2022 or 2023, because of the time lag between authorising payments and paying the bill.
But sorting out the divorce is only part of the Brexit negotiations. Britain will have to pay into the EU budget if it wants good access to the single market.
Reimer Böge, a German Christian Democrat MEP who used to chair the European parliament’s budgets committee, said countries wishing to participate in the single market would need to pay into the common pot. Without such payments, British students and British universities would be barred from EU programmes and funding.
“Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and other net payers can never accept that they pay the bill for the internal market and Great Britain has access to the market without paying anything,” he told the Guardian. “There will be an ongoing bill, year by year, to be a member of the internal market.”
He thought it was “a bit premature” to be talking about numbers, because “the story is very complicated”.
Although the final bill is not known, one thing is clear: EU leaders will want to show there is a price for leaving the EU, while the UK will try its hardest to minimise it. With such large sums at stake, there is plenty of negotiating to do.
Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.25 GMT
People in the town where Marmite is made have accused the product’s multinational owner company of “bully boy tactics” and using the weak pound as a smokescreen to raise prices on the English-produced spread.
At the local Tesco store, just under a mile from the Marmite factory at Burton upon Trent, there was even talk of a full boycott of Unilever’s products as shoppers described the move as scandalous. At the St Peter’s bridge store there were still around 30 jars of the spread on the shelves and there were no signs of panic-buying.
Pensioners Elspeth and Dennis Dickinson said they were planning to join the boycott, adding that the Staffordshire town was suffering from “Unilever fatigue” with the company repeatedly holding workers and local businesses to ransom.
Dennis, 70, said: “Everything about Marmite is local – the workers, the ingredients – so ultimately I do not understand their argument and it is just downright profiteering. We do like our Marmite as a family, especially our daughter, but we’re now going to boycott their products as we’ve had enough of Unilever holding local businesses and their own workers to ransom.”
Meanwhile, Andrew Bradbury, 65, said many of his friends had been made redundant since the firm took over the plant a decade and a half ago and described the price hike as yet another disgraceful move.
Bradbury, who voted to remain in the EU, said many people in the town were already regretting voting to leave and claimed there was a feeling of foreboding as increasing numbers of businesses used similar tactics to hike up prices. Unilever is trying to increase the prices it charges Tesco by about 10%, citing the fall in sterling as the reason for the change.
He said: “I voted to remain for my grandchildren. I wanted to secure the future for them. I had a feeling businesses would do this but I still feel it is absolutely scandalous. Tesco are quite right to stand their ground. Saying that it is because of Brexit is just a convenient excuse.
“Since Unilever took over the factory there have always been issues but I don’t think it is going to end here and we will get penalised for Brexit for a very long time. They are holding local and national businesses to ransom and we need to take a stand against them.”
The Unilever factory, which sits in an industrial estate on the outskirts of the town, produces more than 6,000 tonnes of Marmite, around 50m jars, a year. Just 15% of the yeast extract is sent overseas and the rest is eaten in Britain, with 27 jars sold every minute.
The town’s beer heritage is an important factor: the basic ingredient of the spread is yeast sludge, a waste product left over from brewing beer, and there were once 30 breweries in the surrounding area. Now the raw materials come from across the UK .
Marmite fan Sean Savage said it was something people would have to accept as a consequence of Brexit. The 27-year-old carer said: “It is understandable that prices are going up and Tesco will just have to take on the price hike. I am a fan of Marmite and would be sad to see it go, so this is something that we will just have to accept.”
Meanwhile, retired postman Chris Hewitt. 63, stood firmly in Tesco’s camp, saying that Unilever’s argument was nonsensical as all the ingredients were sourced in Britain. He said: “What they are saying is just not true. All of the ingredients are locally sourced and this is just a way of making more profit for the shareholders. I can’t imagine it will filter down to the workers in the form of a pay rise.
“It is just extreme capitalism and they are behaving like bullies. This has got nothing to do with Brexit – it has got everything to do with making millions more in profit.”
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 13.12 GMT
Foreign students are not viewed as immigrants by the majority of the British public, according to a survey.
The poll conducted for Universities UK found that less than a quarter of adults think of international students (24%) or EU students (23%) coming to study in this country as immigrants.
It emerged last week that universities could face new restrictions on recruiting overseas students.
The question of whether those arriving in Britain to study should be removed from the official net migration figures has repeatedly come under scrutiny.
The survey of 2,018 British adults found that 18% of respondents would like to see the number of international students in the UK increase, 44% said it should stay the same, while 21% supported a reduction.
Two-thirds said that international students have a positive impact on the local economies of the towns and cities that they study in, and three in five (59%) agreed that their economic contribution helps create jobs.
The poll also indicated that seven in ten adults believe it is better if international students use their skills here and work in the UK for a period of time in order to contribute to the economy rather than returning immediately to their home country after completing their study.
Almost half (47%) of those polled believed there should be no limit on how long international students should be able to stay and work in the UK after they have completed their study, providing they are employed and contributing to the economy.
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, said: “These findings are a clear indication that any new policies aimed at lowering net migration figures by reducing the number of overseas students will not address public concerns over immigration.
“International students come to the UK, are welcomed by British people, study for a period, and then the overwhelming majority go home after their studies.”
Universities UK is the representative organisation for the country’s universities. The body says international students are currently worth over £10.7bn to the economy.
Last month immigration minister Robert Goodwill said any attempt to “fiddle” immigration figures by taking students out of them would be a “let down” to the British public.
Long-term immigration to the UK for study was estimated to be 164,000 in total in the year to the end of March, the lowest level since 2007.
Last modified on Tue 28 Nov 2017 14.39 GMT
The new Ukip leader had revealed that she counts Vladimir Putin, Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill as her political heroes.
Diane James, who was elected to replace Nigel Farage last week, was asked on BBC1’s Sunday Politics who “other than Vladimir Putin” were her political heroes.
After naming Thatcher and Churchill, James was asked to confirm that she also considered the Russian president among her top three, and she responded that she did.
The line of questioning followed comments she made in a 2015 radio interview when she was Ukip’s foreign affairs spokesperson.
During the LBC interview, she described Putin as a strong leader who stands up for Russia. “I admire him from the point of view that he’s standing up for his country. He is very nationalist,” she said.
Labour’s Harriet Harman, who was also in the radio studio, interjected: “You could say that about Idi Amin.”
“He is a very strong leader,” James continued. “He is putting Russia first, and he has issues with the way the EU encouraged a change of government in the Ukraine which he felt put at risk a Russian population in that country.”
Putin has attracted international criticism for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its involvement in Ukraine, its support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and alleged cyber-attacks on the other governments and the crushing of opposition at home.
Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed appreciation of Putin during the US election campaign, calling him a better leader than Obama and citing his 82% approval rating as a sign of his success.
Asked during an NBC News interview whether Trump “wanted to be complimented by that former KGB officer”, the Republican candidate replied: “I think when he calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment. OK? If he says great things about me, I’m gonna say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader.
“The man has very strong control over a country. Now it’s a different system and I don’t happen to like the system, but certainly in that system he’s been a leader far more than our president has been a leader.”
Other Republicans have been forced to distance themselves from Trump’s views on Putin. “Look, I have tremendous policy disagreements with President Obama, but Vladimir Putin is an authoritarian thug who is accountable to no one,” said Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida who ran against Trump in the Republican primaries.
“I don’t think what Vladimir Putin exhibits is leadership. I think what he exhibits is thuggery … and we should be clear-eyed about that,” he said.
Last modified on Mon 7 Oct 2019 04.38 BST
There are expert government reports that quickly gather dust. There are reports that seem as if they will make a difference but are quietly forgotten about. There are reports that actually matter. And then there’s Beeching.
Even now, 56 years after its release, you don’t need to be a transport buff to know about the Beeching report. Following its publication in March 1963, hundreds of stations and thousands of miles of track were axed. The rail network was slimmed down on the grounds that many lines were underused and uneconomic.
Beeching came out in the year Harold Wilson made his “white heat of technology” speech. Its premise was that the car was the future and rail the past.
Cuts had been under way during the 1950s, and the feeling – exemplified by the Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt – was that railways were a legacy of the 19th century, of a pre-modern age.
When Wilson became prime minister a year later, there was no attempt to halt the closure programme.
Yet the history of the past half century shows that Beeching was a colossal mistake. Passenger numbers on trains are now higher than they were pre-1963 even though back then car usage was a lot lower. Beeching, in the words of his report, sought the “selective development and intensive utilisation of a more limited trunk route system” and that is broadly what Britain ended up with.
But the result has been a network where it is quick and easy to get by rail from Reading to London, and from Watford to London, but time-consuming to get from Reading to Watford. The motorway network reflects the fact that people often live in one town and work in another; the rail network does not.
But perhaps the most baleful legacy of Beeching has been the way in which it has led to towns and villages – often in the most economically challenged parts of the country – becoming isolated. Beeching contributed to the UK’s geographical divide between thriving big cities and struggling smaller towns. Without Beeching there might not have been a vote for Brexit.
Research by economists at the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE shows why. The 20% of places most exposed to rail cuts between 1950 and 1980s (some of which occurred before the Beeching report) have seen 24 percentage points less population growth than the 20% least exposed. There has also been a brain drain of young and skilled workers, and an ageing of the population.
What’s more, there was a double whammy because those parts of the country where the Beeching axe fell most heavily did least well out of the motorway expansion programme that was happening simultaneously. One sub-theme of the report was that buses could be expected to fill the gap left when the rail service ended, but this never really happened. Instead, the new roads went to the towns and cities that retained their rail connectivity.
The CEP research also noted that one byproduct of Beeching was that it became harder to make cross-country journeys without travelling into London. Generally, Beeching favoured lines running north-south over those running east-west, especially in the Midlands and the north of England. No question, his report contributed to the London-centric nature of the economy. And as the capital has got bigger so it has tended to grab a bigger share of what has been available for transport infrastructure spending. The them-and-us process has become self-reinforcing.
The cut-off state of once thriving industrial towns was well described by Andy Haldane, the chief economist of the Bank of England, in his capacity as chairman of the government’s Industrial Strategy Council, in a recent speech in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Haldane described how he arrived in the former mining community of Ashington, 15 miles north of the city. “When I visited Ashington, I arrived from Morpeth by taxi fairly late at night. This was the only way to get to the town. It was too late for the buses. And I had narrowly missed the last train from Newcastle by around 55 years, courtesy of Dr Beeching. He has been neither forgotten nor forgiven.”
The polarised state of British politics means there is precious little that unites remainers and leavers, but one thing on which there seems to be agreement is the need for investment to reverse the Beeching cuts for Ashington and many other places like it. Boris Johnson has pledged money for a faster line between Manchester and Leeds, while the former Labour transport minister and prominent remain supporter Andrew Adonis has said there is an overwhelming case for a systematic policy of reversing the worst mistakes of Beeching.
In some parts of the country that would be costly since the track has been pulled up and bridges dismantled. That objection does not apply everywhere, though. In Ashington, for example, there is a local campaign to restore passenger services to the freight-only line.
Adonis says a reverse Beeching programme could be kicked off with £5bn raised from the money saved from cancelling the M4 relief road, scrapping the £2.3bn plan to build an A303 tunnel under Stonehenge, and canning other pork barrel road schemes approved purely to win votes.
At present, money is no object for a government that has turned the spending taps full on, and there is hope for all rail restoration campaign groups. Eventually, though, the Treasury will start to count the pennies and ask whether it can afford to bring rail back to places that have not seen a passenger train in half a century. When it does, a simple question should be asked. Were the savings made by Beeching worth the social and economic costs? The answer is obvious.
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Philip Hammond's speech to British business leaders at the CBI's lunch in Davos.
Let me start by passing on the PM’s apologies – I know she wanted to be here to address you this afternoon, but events have dictated otherwise.
But I am delighted to be back here in Davos…
…and to have the opportunity to address you once again.
Professor Schwab first invited political leaders to what would become the World Economic Forum in January of 1974.
It was a more leisurely affair in those days…
In between skiing, the group of leaders who gathered here in 1974 were grappling with profound economic and political uncertainties:
…the energy crisis…
…sky-high inflation…
…the collapse of the Bretton-Woods consensus.
And here we are, 45 years later…
…grappling with profound economic and political uncertainties!
Plus Ça change!
Closest to home, the terms of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union remain unresolved, as the deadline looms ever larger.
More broadly, the global economy is slowing…
…and the threat of rising protectionism is increasingly affecting patterns of trade.
And the impact of the coming wave of technological change on our societies and our economies is becoming ever more apparent…
…bringing with it both challenges and opportunities.
But I want to argue today that even against this rather inauspicious backdrop, Britain can – and will – prosper in the years ahead.
The fundamentals of our economy are strong.
Its resilience through the turbulence of the Brexit process has been particularly noteworthy…
…and its growth prospects, according to the latest IMF forecast – providing we approve a deal with the EU – look perfectly respectable alongside our G7 peers.
Our commitment to free and open markets is deep and enduring.
And we are at the front of the pack in preparing our economy for the technology change.
So my message today is this: Britain is a great place to do business.
And we are determined, as we leave the European Union, to make sure that it remains that way.
Let me begin with the subject that is uppermost in everybody’s mind – Brexit.
It’s clear from our soundings last week that while Parliament has voted against the PM’s deal…
…it has not yet formed a clear view of what it is in favour of.
Next week, we will see various interventions by backbenchers.
Some of which will attempt to create a mechanism for Parliament to express its view of the way forward.
And in the meantime the government will continue to pursue a negotiated settlement that is likely to be acceptable to Parliament.
And believe me, I understand the perplexity with which many of you, as business leaders, view the politics of Brexit.
And I feel your frustration at the process  and I have to say I share much of it!
But politics doesn’t work like business.
And while I am pretty clear what all my business interlocutors are seeking is an economic fix…
…I want to explain to you this afternoon why we need to get the politics, as well as the economics, of this process right.
Because even from the narrowest interpretation of business interest, it would be a Pyrrhic victory indeed to deliver a Brexit that appeared to meet the needs of the economy…
…but which shattered the broad consensus behind our country’s political and economic system.
In the 2016 referendum a promise was made to the majority who voted for Brexit – that they were voting for a more prosperous future.
Not leaving would be seen as a betrayal of that referendum decision.
But leaving without a deal would undermine our future prosperity, and would equally represent a betrayal of the promises that were made.
And that is why I, having campaigned vigorously to remain, in the referendum have come to believe that the only credible and sustainable solution is for us to leave the European Union.
To honour the referendum decision but to do so in a way that protects our economy in order to allow us to deliver that future prosperity that those voters were promised when they voted to leave the EU.
The only sustainable solution is a negotiated settlement with the EU:
A deal that supports the economy, protects jobs and allows us to continue a close trading partnership with our European neighbours.
Now to do that right now, we need to find a way around the impasse over the backstop.
And if we are to do so, it will take ingenuity and flexibility on the part of the EU.
As well as a spirit of compromise on the part of some of my colleagues.
It is surely in our national interest, all of us, to preserve faith in the political system and the democratic process…
…as well as protecting our economy as we leave this process…
…Surely in our interest to move forward to agree a negotiated Brexit that is a compromise that can begin to heal the nation and heal both political parties.
Failure to do so could lead to instability, populism (political content removed).
I know that for many business leaders…
…right up there alongside the question of access to European markets…
…is the question of access to labour.
Openness to global talent is a fundamental feature of the UK economy.
Migrants have made a huge contribution to our country over our history – and they will continue to do so in the future.
But at the same time, one of the messages that almost all politicians divine from the Referendum result…
…is a concern about our ability to control European Union migration: less, I personally think, about absolute numbers and more about a sense we have lost control of our own borders.
And so we have to be clear that as we leave the European Union, free movement will end…
…although I can assure you that short-term mobility for both business and leisure will continue.
And the immigration white paper, published in December, offers a pragmatic way forward.
First, while it constructs a universal framework for future migration control, it does not rule out the possibility that future trade deals – including with the EU – might make provision in this area.
Second, it proposes a skills-based immigration system – where it is workers’ skills that matter, not which country they come from.
And third, we have announced an extensive consultation into where the threshold for the highly skilled tier should
be set…
…and how we should deal with the challenge presented by the economies need for intermediate-skilled workers:
The technicians; the carers; the chefs, the construction workers and the myriad others whose skills we badly need – but who often earn less than £30,000.
Business should be hugely reassured by this commitment to engagement.
And particularly to a twelve-month consultation period.
So, while free movement is ending, the detail of what will replace it remains to be decided.
And business has a real opportunity to help shape the policy.
But if I may say so, it will only do so if it engages effectively and presents a clear consensus from the business community.
So I urge you, collectively, to seize the opportunity to engage with this consultation…
…and to bring forward constructive, consistent and evidence-based proposals.
Let’s work together to design a system that responds to public concerns about immigration…
…but also protects our economy and our businesses…
…and becomes a part of the UK’s competitive advantage for the future.
While negotiating Brexit it must of course be the immediate priority, we must also deliver a message to the British people and to our trading and investment partners, about Britain’s future, beyond Brexit.
And it is a future based on a fundamentally strong economy.
One that has grown continuously for the past eight years…
…with employment breaking records again just this week…
…and wages now thankfully rising significantly faster than inflation.
The world’s fifth largest economy, ranked the 8th most competitive by the WEF…
…which between 2015 and 2018, attracted more Foreign Direct Investment than any other EU nation, and more than France and Germany combined.
These achievements are not an accident.
They are the result of a deliberate economic strategy by this government:
…to deal with the deficit so that debt is now falling…
…to cut taxes on the wages people earn…
…and on the businesses that employ them…
…and deliver an Industrial Strategy, that is tackling the productivity challenge head on to sustainably improve our competitiveness, and hence the living standards of our people.
We are driving investment through initiatives like the National Productivity Investment Fund…
…the biggest sustained programme of public sector investment since the 1970s…
…and our commitment to 2.4% of GDP as R&D spending.
I am not, for one moment, complacent about our economic performance…
…especially as we see increased risks in the global economy, and lower forecasts for global growth…
…and I certainly recognise that continued Brexit uncertainty is taking a toll.
But that should not obscure the strong foundations we have built for the future…
…foundations that will ensure our economy grows and prospers, whatever the future has in store for us.
That prosperity will be sustained by a deep and enduring commitment to free and open markets, to intelligent and appropriate regulation, and to a globally competitive tax system.
We know that the free market is the only way to deliver the high-wage, high-skill economy of the future.
And that Free Trade is the way to spread prosperity globally.
(And by the way, the quickest way to boost global growth right now would be to liberalise trade in services).
But we also know that to maintain public trust in the free market, we must make sure that the rules of the game evolve to keep pace with the changing nature of the economy…
…especially when there are populists waiting in the wings to propose radical – and dangerous – so called “solutions” in response to every perceived failure.
For example, it is clearly not sustainable or fair that global digital platform companies can generate substantial value in the UK, without paying UK tax on their earnings.
That’s why the UK has been leading attempts to deliver international corporate tax reform for the digital age.
But pending that global agreement, we have introduced a UK Digital Services Tax…
…to make sure that global tech giants, with profitable businesses in the UK, pay their fair share towards supporting our public services.
And now the French have followed us – with a tax broader in scope and with higher rates.
We are also conducting an external Review of competition policy in the digital economy…
…to examine the impacts of the emergence of a small number of dominant players in digital markets…
…and how we can ensure that competition plays its proper role in driving business innovation and expanding consumer choice…
…so that the economy as a whole benefits from new technologies.
These initiatives show our determination to remain at the cutting-edge of these policy debates – and of regulatory solutions.
Demonstrating in deeds, not just words, our commitment to build a digital economy that works for everyone.
I spoke to you last year about the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution:
About how technological advances will lead to a revolution in the way we live and work…
…with Artificial Intelligence transforming everything from factories to hospitals…
…and in turn boosting our productivity and our living standards.
But I also spoke about the challenges that this revolution represents…
…and how they link to some of the concerns that drove the Brexit vote.
About the need to address fears that automation and new technology may bring, not higher wages, but mass unemployment…
…and that as new technology drives greater productivity improvements, the returns may flow to capital, rather than labour.
In Britain, we are taking these concerns seriously.
We are providing investment of course to build on the UK’s position as a world-leader in innovation and new technology:
We have announced £1.6 billion funding in science and innovation and £950 million in our Artificial Intelligence sector deal…
…and £50 million for the new Turing Artificial Intelligence Fellowships, which will attract and retain the best researchers from around the world.
But we can and must go further.
Artificial intelligence could add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
But only countries with the most advanced digital skills will fully realise these benefits. And we intend that Britain will be at the front of that cohort.
So I can announce today that in addition to the Turing AI fellowships…
…we will commit £100 million to establish 1,000 new PhD places in centres across the UK…
…to create the next generation of AI innovators and build on the established research excellence of Britain’s universities.
The potential prizes of the 4th industrial revolution are great, but we can only seize them if we can take our public with us.
So we are also taking action to manage the impact of technological change on Britain’s society and economy…
…by investing in programmes like the National Retraining Scheme – which we are delivering in partnership with the CBI and the TUC – to provide employers with the skills they need as the economy evolves…
…and to reassure workers that they won’t be abandoned when the technological revolution reaches their job.
And the new ‘T Levels’, which will also – admittedly decades too late – import into the UK’s technical education system important lessons from Germany, Scandinavia and the US.
And Britain is also leading the debate on the ethical challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
With the establishment of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation…
…and through the Regulators’ Pioneer Fund, we are leveraging Britain’s track record of regulatory innovation to deliver a competitive advantage for our future economy.
So in conclusion the future of Britain’s economy clearly depends on making a success of Brexit.
But that is a necessary, not a sufficient condition for a prosperous future.
If we look up for a moment from the immediate challenge of Brexit, we can see profound change ahead – and enormous opportunity.
And Britain is leading the way into this future.
Investing in new technologies…
…promoting, not abandoning our commitment to free and open markets…
…taking action to manage the impact of profound technological change…
… building on our strong economic foundations.
And, when the economic history of the first half of the 21st century comes to be written, it will not be about Brexit.
It will be about a technological revolution of a speed and impact the like of which the world had never seen before…
…a revolution that touched every aspect of our society, our economy, and our politics…
…and if we get it right, it will be the story of how we in the UK leveraged our historic strengths to manage this change…
…and to place Britain at the forefront of it…
…as a nation ready for the future…
… a great place to do business.
Thank you.
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Theresa May is likely to opt for a ‘hard Brexit’ with curbs on migrant numbers and withdrawal from both the EU single market and customs union, according to a new study by a leading think tank.
The in-depth analysis by King’s College London’s ‘UK In A Changing Europe’ group, in collaboration with the Political Studies Association, concludes that the EU’s 27 other leaders are not expected to compromise on freedom of movement or tariff-free trade.
The report, “Brexit: Six Months On”, gathers all the statements, hints and clues given by the Prime Minister and her ministers since the referendum on what Britain may look like once it has quit the EU in 2019.
The study, released on Friday, looks at the key political, economic, legal, social and security changes that have occurred since 23 June as well as at how other EU countries currently view Brexit.
Its lead author Anand Menon says “the logic of post-referendum politics is ...for a ‘hard Brexit’. “It has been striking to see how former Remainers among Conservative MPs have swung behind the prospect of even a ‘hard’ Brexit,” he says.
Compiled by leading academics in their fields ranging from trade to migration, the report concludes that:
* immigration will be fully under UK Government control, with restrictions resulting in a large fall in EU migration and pressure to cut non-EU migration
* some industrial sectors will get special deals for EU migrants
* the UK will no longer be a member of the single market and probably not the customs union
* trade in goods will be covered by a Norway-style Free Trade Agreement or a low tariff schedule
* Britain can sweeten its deal with continuing payments to the EU budget and preferential access for EU workers
* EU states are unlikely to offer any major concessions to London and Britain is in a ‘weak position’ to negotiate
* “support for the British has declined significantly even amongst London’s erstwhile friends” and there’s “little or no evidence” the EU 27 will allow Britain to “have its cake and eat it”
* Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office has been “marginalised” amid fears officials had “gone native’ in Brussels
* the law on the ‘Article 50’ process for Brexit will allow May to negotiate ‘divorce’ proceedings and a future new deal in parallel, with a transitional deal most likely.
Blogging for HuffPost, UK in a Changing Europe director Anand Menon said that while there had so far been “no economic apocalypse” that some had predicted after the EU referendum result, Britain  in the medium term was set for hit to its growth.
“It seems likely that the country will not be in either the single market or the customs union, in which case it is probable the economy’s current performance will not be sustainable,” he said.
“The manner in which we do leave will thus impact hugely on the cost-benefit implications of the exercise.”

In a chapter on immigration, former Government economist Jonathan Portes writes that statements and speeches by May, Brexit Secretary David Davis and other ministers point to a radical change.
“[Their statements] indicate that the Government intends the new system to be fully under UK Government control..there will not even be a modified version of free movement if it requires the UK to sign up ex-ante to a set of obligations as part of a deal,” he says.
The new immigration controls will be “relatively restrictive, resulting in a large fall in EU migration as well as continued downward pressure on non-EU migration”.
Portes suggests that the May government will “probably retain some degree of preference for EU nationals compared to non-EU nationals - and possibly include at least some sector-specific schemes” such as for financial services, agriculture and others.
But he says that there is considerable uncertainty about the precise nature of the migration policy, such as whether there will be “hard numerical caps for EU migrants, either overall or for specific subgroups”.
Portes predicts that “[migration] control will in practice take place primarily at the workplace, not the border”, putting new pressures on employers.

Dr Angus Armstrong concludes that the UK “will no longer be a member of the single market and (probably) not the customs union”.
The academic, from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, warns that there is “little or no evidence” that EU member states are prepared to allow the UK to “have its cake and eat it”.
He also predicts that goods will be covered by a Free Trade Agreement or a low tariff schedule, while the UK will push for as broad an agreement on services as possible.
The UK will also seek to continue to participate in a number of EU programmes, for which EU membership is not required, like Horizon 2020 or Erasmus, he says.
Armstrong writes that: “Despite the fixation of the UK press on the triggering of Article 50, the key moment in the next six months will not be this but the EU response to it.
“The likely scenario is one of familiar EU negotiating territory: long interludes of tedium and small print, interspersed with episodes of late-night brinkmanship, leading eventually to a compromise that satisfies no-one but with which everyone can live.
“However, if the continental consensus is that the UK is still living on Fantasy Island, we could be heading for a showdown sooner than anyone expects.”

London School of Economics assistant professor Sara Hagemann says that Brexit has “united the EU27 to a degree rarely seen before”.
EU member states believe the British Government is working opportunistically with only UK interests in mind and little consideration for wider European issues and priorities.
Although at first some countries wanted to “keep London ‘closely involved in EU affairs’, attitudes are now quite different”.
“The UK Government is seen as working opportunistically with only UK interests in mind and little consideration for wider European issues and priorities. Therefore, support for the British has declined significantly even amongst London’s erstwhile friends.”
Even Denmark, described in the report as the UK’s ‘little brother’, which usually follows in its footsteps, has made clear that any concessions that do not benefit Copenhagen will be rejected.
Hagemann concludes: “The UK Government can take the tone and position of this small and likeminded ally as a signal of what is ahead when actual negotiations begin during 2017.
“As it stands, the remaining EU member countries are attempting to maintain a common stance, and the UK government is in a weak position vis-à-vis its European partners.”

Iain Begg and Jonathan Portes forecast that growth will slow, although the probability of a recession in the short term remains low.
They say that dire predictions of an ‘economic apocalypse’ - as promoted by former Chancellor George Osborne during the referendum -  have been disproved by the continuing robustness of UK growth and consumer spending.
But they warn that 2017 and 2018 are likely to get worse. “Unemployment may rise, although not rapidly. It would thus be bold to claim that the economy has already shrugged off the referendum.
“It may have but the alternative image that comes to mind is of Wile E Coyote, legs spinning furiously as he speeds off the cliff, before realising that there is nothing but air beneath him.”

Professor Matthew Goodwin says that Brexit has exposed a deep and widening divide in the Labour Party.
It faces tensions between its working-class, struggling, northern, eurosceptic and anti-immigration seats - where 70% of Labour seats voted Brexit - and its more middle class, financially secure, southern, pro-EU and cosmopolitan constituencies.
Goodwin also sets out the huge risks to Labour, pointing out that unless it dramatically reversed its situation in Scotland, to stand any chance of winning a majority at the next General Election it would need a poll lead of at least 12.5 percentage points.
“To put this challenge in perspective, in late 2016 Labour is typically 12-16 points behind the incumbent Conservative Party, which since the referendum has enjoyed strong poll leads. The prospect of a Labour majority at the next election is therefore very slim. Additional pressures have also started to bear down on the Labour Party - far more than at any other time in its history.
“Were a General Election held tomorrow, forecasts suggest that Theresa May would be handed a much larger parliamentary majority, perhaps of more than 100. Labour, meanwhile, could be reduced to its lowest number of seats since the 1930s.”

Cambridge University EU expert Professor Catherine Barnard says that despite Brussels’ insistence that no talks about a future deal with Britain can take place until after the “divorce” is sorted, Theresa May has the law on her side to run both issues in parallel.
“Article 50 does make clear that the divorce negotiations must take ‘account of the framework for [the UK’s] future relationship with the Union’. This would indicate that there should be some agreement on the direction of travel for the UK, and probably some transitional arrangements.”
Barnard warns of the huge task for Whitehall, and suggests it will struggle to cope.
“The Great Repeal Bill will in fact expand the volume of legislation on the statute books, since it will provide a UK footing for all EU legislation in the name of legal certainty. But that legal certainty
is undermined by the huge uncertainty generated by having to replace with British equivalents more than a hundred EU agencies which currently service, for example, the EU financial services regulation. At its smallest since the Second World War, the civil service is going to have its work cut out.”

Simon Usherwood says that the May government has failed to move decisively since June 23.
“The hiatus looks less like calmness and more like transfixion in the Article 50 headlights.
May has staked her credibility on getting to the Article 50 notification without undue delay, locking in the end of March 2017 as her deadline. However, the articulation of little more than a series of unrelated and mutually conflicting aspirations cannot hide the absence of a game-plan.”
He adds that “May has been unwilling to let other Ministers take control of parts of the Brexit brief, while DExEU and the new Department for International Trade remain in their start-up phase.
“The traditional sources of expertise – such as the Foreign Office – have been marginalised, both intentionally (to avoid using a part of government seen by many as having ‘gone native’) and accidentally (as EU specialists try to get away from undoing their life’s work).
“If May feels constrained by a press that appears deeply unwilling to let slide any aspect of the claimed ‘Leave’ mandate, she may find she has little option but to head for the harder end of the Brexit spectrum”
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Boris Johnson has claimed Theresa May is on the brink of “total surrender” to the EU over Brexit as he urged the Cabinet to mutiny against the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agenda.
The former foreign secretary suggested that if May’s plans for a backstop customs deal with the EU, aimed at preventing a hard border in Northern Ireland, went through the UK could be reduced to the status of a colony.
In a stinging attack on the PM’s proposals ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Johnson said May’s agenda would see the UK “remain in captivity”.
Johnson said plans for a backstop, which would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU if a solution to the Irish border issue could not be found, would be worse than remaining in the EU.
May is under fire from both wings of the Tory party after the shock resignation from the Government of Johnson’s pro-European brother Jo, who also delivered a withering attack on the PM’s stance.
That move fired speculation that more ministers who backed Remain in the referendum campaign could also quit.
Pro-Brexit Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom added to Tory tensions by insisting the UK could not be “trapped” in a backstop agreement without the ability to leave at a time of its choosing.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson said: “I want you to savour the full horror of this capitulation.
“Under Article 50, the UK is at least able in theory to leave the EU. We do not have to consult any other authority.
“But under these proposals we are agreeing that the EU would have a say on whether this country is capable of making that final exit from the EU’s essential institution, the customs union.
“In other words, we are on the verge of signing up for something even worse than the current constitutional  position.
“These are terms that might be enforced on a colony.”
Johnson added that even if the Government got the EU to agree to giving London a unilateral exit option from the backstop it would be meaningless.
“The awful truth is that even if the Cabinet mutinies – as they ought – it will make little difference.
“Even if we agree with the EU that the UK must have a unilateral break clause, so that we can go our own sweet way at a time of our own choosing, it is irrelevant because the programme and ambition of the Government is to remain in captivity, to stay in our cell, even if we are given the theoretical key to escape.”
Johnson said the PM would try to “bludgeon MPs into voting for surrender” by framing the argument as accepting her proposals or the “chaos of no deal”.
Hope of getting the Cabinet to sign off on Brexit proposals on Tuesday appeared to be rapidly receding, as it was reported the EU had rejected London’s plans for an independent arbitration clause that could allow the UK to quit a backstop deal on the Northern Ireland border.
The apparent impasse makes it much harder for the PM to secure a special EU conference in November to settle Brexit terms.
But in a sign of Downing Street attempting to push the process forward, May’s key Brexit adviser Olly Robbins held talks in Brussels on Sunday.
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Brexit talks between the government and Labour will “peter out” within days, the chairman of the influential 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers has claimed.
Sir Graham Brady has said he also expects Prime Minister Theresa May to set out her timetable for departure at a meeting with him on Wednesday.
Speaking to the BBC’s Week In Westminster programme, Sir Graham, the Tory MP for Altrincham, said he would be bringing forward his own amendment on the Irish backstop to try and get a deal past MPs.
This is, in part, because he believes last-ditch talks between the government and Labour to try and save May’s Brexit deal are about to break down, the Press Association reports.
“I find it very hard to see how that route can lead to any sensible resolution,” Sir Graham said.
“If the customs union is agreed without a second referendum then half the Labour Party won’t vote for whatever comes through regardless, and if a customs union is agreed then most of the Conservative Party isn’t going to support it.
“So, I can’t see that is a very productive route to follow, and I may be wrong, but I suspect it will peter out in the next few days without having come to any significant conclusion.”
Having ruled out cross-party talks as a potential solution to the deadlock, Sir Graham also suggested May’s deal will be “defeated by a large margin again” if she brings it back unamended, which is why he is lobbying for changes on the Irish backstop as a plan C.
He intends to bring forward an amendment stating the backstop would “stay in the text” but “obviously could never be used” – despite previous EU objections to anything that would destroy what negotiators term an “insurance policy”.
With Brexit options being rapidly whittled down, Theresa May had already offered up her premiership as the price for MPs backing her deal.
But even this has not been enough, and the clamour for her to go sooner reached fever pitch after calamitous council election results where the Tories lost nearly 1,300 councillors.
Earlier this week, May rebuffed demands to set out a timetable for her departure from Number 10 amid growing pressure from Tory MPs to make way for a new leader.
She was given another grace period by Sir Graham, who said he understood May’s “reticence” around setting out specifics on when she would go because it could scupper the chances for her deal.
However, the 1922 Committee chairman appears to have set his own deadline for a response.
He said: “I think that’s a natural concern and one can understand it, but it’s also the case the 1922 executive has asked her to give that clarity. She has offered to come and meet the executive, which we’ve accepted.
“It would be strange for that not to result in a clear understanding at the end of the meeting.
“We have asked the question and she is coming, I assume, to answer it.”
Sir Graham also did not rule himself out of what is becoming a crowded leadership race to replace May, but said “it would take an awful lot of people to persuade me”.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Brexit-backing Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns told May she had “failed” in EU withdrawal negotiations and forfeited the trust of the public.
“The public no longer trust her to run Brexit negotiations,” she said.
“Isn’t it time to step aside and let someone else lead our country, our party and the Brexit negotiations?”
May retorted: “This is not an issue about me and it’s not an issue about her.
“If it were an issue about me and the way I vote, we would already have left the European Union.”
Downing Street made clear the prime minister was not ready to go beyond her earlier promise to the 1922 Committee to quit as Tory leader when the first phase of Brexit negotiations – dealing with the divorce terms – is complete.
“The PM made a very generous and bold offer to the 1922 Committee a few weeks ago that she would see through phase one of the Brexit process and she would leave and open up for new leadership for phase two,” a Downing Street source said.
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A cross-party attempt to take control of Brexit and rule out no deal is a “Trojan horse” for stopping Britain’s exit from the EU, a senior Labour MP has said.
Caroline Flint said the Yvette Cooper-led move could open the door to “game playing” by politicians who want to overturn the 2016 referendum result, and criticised shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer’s “high handed” decision to back it in the February 27 ‘high noon’ Brexit votes without consulting MPs.
Appearing on HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast, Flint said the so-called “Cooper 2” amendment was “even worse” than her party colleague’s first attempt, which was rejected by a majority of 23 last month after a Labour rebellion led by the Don Valley MP.
Flint, who backed Remain but has been holding talks with government ministers about supporting the Brexit deal, also urged Jeremy Corbyn to give Labour a free vote on EU withdrawal to keep hold of MPs who are “hellbent” on leaving the party.
She estimated around seven MPs could quit over Corbyn’s refusal to back a second referendum, but warned that they will be “responsible for ensuring Tory governments” by splitting Labour’s vote and losing their seats to May’s party.
A free vote however could see around 40-60 Labour MPs backing the prime minister’s deal if the only other option is no deal, Flint said.
Second referendum supporters would also be free to “vote with their conscience”.
The prime minister has been accused of attempting to run down the clock towards exit day on March 29 but the ‘Cooper 2’ amendment aims to upend her strategy by forcing the government to seek MPs’ approval for a no-deal Brexit if it has not passed the withdrawal agreement by mid-March.
If the Commons rejected no-deal, May would then have to extend Article 50 and keep Britain in the EU for longer.
Flint however warned there are too many opportunities in the process set out by Cooper for further amendments to be passed which could reverse Brexit or force a second referendum.
The former Europe minister told Commons People: “At its most benign I think it’s a clever way to sit on the fence.
“It doesn’t have anything in it about what a deal should look like, it doesn’t have anything in it in terms of being against a second referendum, it’s all process.
“At its most worrying I think it is a Trojan horse.
“I think the mechanisms that she is putting into this allows those people who already aren’t interested in any deal and want a second referendum, to further frustrate and add in amendments and add in times.”
She added: “That’s where the danger of the game playing coming into that all over again for all different reasons.”
Flint was speaking as Chris Leslie, seen as a potential Labour splitter, attacked his frontbench’s position on Brexit.
Leslie told the Commons “we are being played for fools by the leadership of the Labour Party”, because Corbyn is refusing to back a second referendum.
“The idea that the Labour Party is not together and arguing against this tragedy, against this disaster is for me entirely heartbreaking,” he said.
Flint said she would be “sad” to see pro-EU MPs break away, but warned that they would lose their seats.
She said: “I don’t think that will work, I don’t think that will be successful, and it will cause clearly disruption and anguish within our ranks because we’ll be losing people who I’d hope would stay.
“But they will be a minority and the truth is where are they going to stand? Because the likelihood is if they stand against Labour in our areas they will let a Tory in.
“So they won’t win, but they’ll be responsible for ensuring Tory governments.”
Flint also suggested shadow chancellor John McDonnell should not have called wartime leader Winston Churchill a “villain” in an interview with Politico’s London Playbook on Wednesday night.
She said: “I didn’t understand why he got into that, Churchill to my mind had faults and weaknesses.”
She went on: “But undoubtedly he was a massively important iconic figure and leader during our darkest time during World War Two and we should never forget.
“It’s the sum of all someone’s parts rather than the mistakes they make that we need to look at.”
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Chancellor Philip Hammond is to warn that a Boris Johnson-led Tory party would “hijack” Britain with a damaging no-deal Brexit.
In his most outspoken attack yet on hardline Eurosceptics, Hammond will use a City speech to let rip at all politicians who want the UK to quit the EU without an agreement with Brussels.
As the Cabinet prepares for a crunch meeting on Theresa May’s fourth attempt to sell her Brexit deal to MPs, the chancellor also appeared on collision course with ministers who want to spend more money on preparations for no-deal.
The warning by Hammond, who will spell out his views to the CBI annual dinner on Tuesday night, emerged as a new ‘One Nation’ group of Tory ministers and MPs suggested that any candidate to replace May in No.10 would have to pass the “litmus test” of opposing no-deal.
“On the populist right, there are those who now claim that the only outcome that counts as a truly legitimate Brexit is to leave with no deal. Let me remind them: the 2016 Leave campaign was clear that we would leave with a deal,” he will say.
“To advocate for no deal is to hijack the result of the referendum, and in doing so, knowingly to inflict damage on our economy and our living standards. Because all the preparation in the world will not avoid the consequences of no deal.”
Hammond will not name Johnson directly but Tory MPs are sure to interpret it as a reference to the former foreign secretary.
Johnson has emerged as Tory activists’ favoured choice as the next Conservative leader and prime minister, with polls putting him way ahead of his rivals as the man to see off the threat posed by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
When foreign secretary last year, he famously declared “fuck business” at a diplomatic event when told that most firms were worried about the UK leaving without a deal.
But his hard line, while popular with some voters, has alarmed several ministers and pre-released extracts of Hammond’s remarks laid bare his anger at the prospect.
One ally of Johnson said he has always been very clear that the UK can and will get a deal - but no-deal shouldn’t be taken off the table in negotiations with Brussels
“We need to be clear, that if we do not resolve this issue in the next few weeks, there is a real risk of a new Prime Minister abandoning the search for a deal, and shifting towards seeking a damaging no-deal exit as a matter of policy……in order to protect an ideological position which ignores the reality of Britain’s economic interests and the value of our Union,” he will add.
“I will continue to fight, in the face of this polarisation, for a negotiated Brexit; an outcome that respects the British people’s decision to leave, while recognising that there is no mandate for a no-deal exit; and that we have an absolute obligation to protect Britain’s jobs, businesses and future prosperity.”
Hammond, who has been attacked by Brexiteer backbenchers as ‘Remainer-in-chief’, has repeatedly argued that no Leave supporter voted in the 2016 referendum to be worse off economically.
However, while authorising more than £3bn to be spent on no deal contingency plans, he has until now held back from making such a withering intervention in the Tory leadership race.
His words will also be seen as a warning to both Labour and Tory MPs that failing to back May’s compromise deal risks ushering in a new PM who will take a more hardline stance with Brussels.
Hammond’s extra warning of the risk of the break-up of the UK follows similar pressure put on MPs by May’s chief of staff Gavin Barwell, who last week suggested an independent Scotland and even a ‘border poll’ on the reunification of Ireland could be triggered by a no-deal outcome.
At their meeting on Tuesday, the Cabinet will be asked to sign off on May’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which is expected to be published early next month in a final attempt to get her deal through parliament.
Ministers will discuss whether to include a so-called series of ‘definitive’ votes within the legislation to allow alternatives such as a public vote. Some expect that the bill could contain language on customs, as well as workers’ rights, that could appeal to Labour MPs.
In their meeting in the Commons, the newly launched One Nation Caucus of 60 MPs set out their mini-manifesto to pitch to moderate voters on issues beyond Brexit such as education, inequality and climate change.
Asked if the group could back a Tory leadership contender who advocated a no-deal Brexit, digital minister Margot James said: “I think it would be difficult for a candidate who would let the country leave without a deal to subscribe to quite a lot of those values and the policies that flow from them.”
“I don’t think many candidates are going to stand up and say ‘I think the country should leave without a deal’. No.
“But there are candidates who will go out of their way to make sure the country doesn’t leave without a deal and that is what we need to ensure we get out of this leadership contest.”
Prisons minister Robert Buckland said: “This will be a litmus test for candidates to mark themselves against, that is the whole point. We want to bring it back to policy.”
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said that moderate Conservatives had a long tradition in the party.
“Sometimes our voices aren’t heard quite as vocally as they should be...And we believe that this time, more than ever, we need to shape the changing Conservative Party.”
Senior backbencher Sir Nicholas Soames said that the debate in the party “has been drowned out by the very aggressive and intolerant tone of the ERG”.
″What we are relaunching here today is that long Tory tradition of tolerance, pragmatism, of not being ideological but an absolute determination to get these values back front and centre of the Tory party for the future.
“I’ve had an absolute flood of emails of people saying thank God someone is at last talking about the Tory party I used to know.”
Late on Monday, Johnson tweeted his support for the One Nation group’s manifesto.
Agree with all of this. One Nation values have never been more important https://t.co/NypzA5L5mw
But former minister former minister Richard Benyon told HuffPost: “I bet every leadership candidate from whatever part of the Conservative spectrum will espouse the words ‘One Nation’. Our job is to make sure they mean it.”
Earlier Home Secretary Sajid Javid refused to be drawn on the Tory leadership battle or its contenders.
“Whether I will be one of those, you’ll just have to wait and see.”
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Ken Loach has encouraged Jeremy Corbyn supporters to call the BBC to complain about what he said was the broadcaster’s bias against the Labour leader.
The leftwing activist and film director said the BBC had the “pretense of objectivity” but was in fact a “propaganda” arm of the state. “The BBC is not some objective chronicler of our time – it is an arm of the state,” he said.
Loach was speaking on Thursday evening at a meeting at University College London organised to criticise the media for being biased against Corbyn. He encouraged the audience to phone a BBC complaint number. “It’s worth it. it makes you feel better. Give it a whirl,” he said.
He said there needed to be a plan to “democratise” the press. The director said in order to have a “license” to own a newspaper they would have run by a “collective of journalists”.
He added: “The BBC is absolutely vital, but don’t link it to the way the BBC is now.”
Loack also said Labour MPs who are opposed to Corbyn’s leadership should accept they may be deselected as candidates for the next election, director and leftwing activist Ken Loach has said.
Loach founded Left Unity, a party which stood against Labour in 2015, but now is a supporter of Corbyn.
“The deselection of MPs is presented as a threat,” he said. “It is not a job for life.”
He added: “Labour Party members have the right to be repented by someone they choose.”
Labour MP Anna Turley told The Huffington Post that MPs “are the last people to think it’s a job for life. That’s why we are determined to be electable”.
The film director also attacked Labour HQ for the manner in which it was preventing people it felt did not share the party’s values from voting in the Labour leadership contest.
“The purge has been extraordinary. People are being purged all over the place. People are being purged for retweeting something Caroline Lucas said. People are being purged for ridiculous reasons,” he said.
Labour MPs opposed to Corbyn’s leadership have complained allies of the leader are using the threat of reselection to try and silence criticism. On member of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) said the changes were an opportunity for party members to deselect MPs who had shown “disloyalty” to Corbyn and replace them with more loyal candidates.
Owen Smith today accused Momentum, the pro-Corbyn campaign group, of “trying to get rid of good Labour MPs through deselection”.
Loach is due to speak at the pro-Corbyn Momentum conference in Liverpool next weekend - being held alongside the Labour Party’s annual gathering. On September 24 the result of the leadership contest between Corbyn and Smith will be announced.
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Tory leadership contender Matt Hancock has promised to hold a vote on his Brexit deal before the end of July.
The health secretary said on Tuesday he would ask MPs to back his plan “immediately” after becoming prime minister.
Theresa May’s successor is due to be announced on Monday July 22 and be in place before the Commons rises for its summer recess.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Hancock said a positive vote would “show the European Union that this plan is deliverable through the House of Commons”
Hancock has claimed he will be able to persuade the EU to put a time limit on the Northern Ireland backstop - despite Brussels having rejected this idea in the past.
“They nearly proposed a time limit on the backstop before,” Hancock said, “but they didn’t think that the prime minister, Theresa May, would be able to get it through the House of Commons.”
In a message that will be interpreted as a challenge to frontrunner Boris Johnson, Hancock also said all the challengers for No.10 should “be open to scrutiny”.
Johnson has studiously avoided TV and radio interviews since announcing he would run for the leadership.


“I think everybody should participate in the proposed TV debates and I think we have got to ask the question ‘Why not?’” Hancock said.
He added the candidates should “come and be scrutinised because that is the best way to ensure that we get the best next prime minister”.
Ten candidates will go into the first round of voting on Thursday. Andrea Leadsom, Mark Harper and Rory Stewart will all formally launch their campaigns on Tuesday.
Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab, Esther McVey and Hancock launched their campaigns on Monday. Johnson, Sajid Javid are due to follow this week.
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Theresa May’s hopes of securing a Brexit deal have suffered a major setback after the EU signalled it could not accept a key plank of the UK’s plans, HuffPost has been told.
The EU27 have rejected Britain’s proposed model for independent arbitration of a temporary customs partnership with the bloc, senior Whitehall sources have revealed.
The fresh diplomatic roadblock emerged as rumours swirled that at least one Cabinet minister was on the edge of quitting in the wake of the resignation of transport minister Jo Johnson.
The arbitration mechanism was seen by several members of the Cabinet -including Attorney General Geoffrey Cox - as crucial to the UK retaining its right to control any future links to the EU.
But figures in Brussels have made clear in recent days they cannot accept the plan, creating an impasse that could spark fresh fears of a collapse in the talks and a ‘no deal’ Brexit.
“They think they’ve got us on the run,” one senior figure told HuffPost. “But they haven’t. We’ve drawn a line in the sand.”
British officials have put intense effort into a complex compromise plan to ensure that the EU did not have a veto over the mechanism of the UK-wide temporary customs arrangement.
The plan was seen by both Brexiteers and Remainers in the Cabinet as the best way of avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and of avoiding a new border in the Irish sea between the province and mainland Britain.
However, it is understood that arbitration by an independent body is now no longer being discussed by the two sides after the EU made clear that it would be legally impossible to subject EU laws to anything other than the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
May has repeatedly insisted that the ECJ cannot have any direct role in the UK’s exit and Cabinet Brexiteers have made the issue a red line in the talks.
The idea of a ‘review procedure’ is still being worked on, but Brussels is adamant that fundamental decisions about customs are not for ‘arbiters’ to make.
Meanwhile, amid fears of a fresh resignation, allies of Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab made clear that he was not intending to walk out of the Government. He believes instead that his main job is to help the PM ‘do the right thing’.
Johnson resigned with a call for the PM to hold a second referendum on Brexit to give the public a verdict on her deal, no deal or remaining in the EU.
Other senior Government sources stressed that there was still a lot of work to be done in the negotiations, but both sides had a strong interest in getting a deal. “It’s not a case of x rejects y,” one said.
No.10 had been buoyed by the Attorney General’s words in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, when he suggested he favoured a form of arbitration rather than a system that would allow the UK to unilaterally pull out of the customs arrangement.
But the pushback from Brussels may now tip Cox into advising ministers that the hoped-for compromise plan is no longer viable. “The EU’s stance makes his job a lot easier,” one source said.
May had hoped to convene a special Cabinet meeting for either Monday or Tuesday, but the continuing diplomatic difficulties could delay it once more.
The UK is set to formally leave the EU on March 29, 2019.
The DUP, which is helping prop up May’s government, has stepped up the pressure on the PM in recent days with a fresh warning that it will not tolerate any regulatory difference between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
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The Queen has a “duty” to offer Jeremy Corbyn the chance to become prime minister if Theresa May’s Brexit deal is voted down, John McDonnell has said.
The shadow chancellor said Labour should be given the opportunity to form a minority government without a general election.
“The process around offering the Opposition party usually comes as result of the minority government losing votes within the House. That’s already begun to happen on the Finance Bill,” he said.
McDonnell said while the Finance Bill – which implements the government’s Budget – was usually the most significant piece of legislation, in the current parliament it was the Brexit deal that mattered most.
“The test is whether or not government is losing consistent votes on the issue of the deal itself,” he said.
“If it is, it is demonstrating as a minority government it hasn’t got the will of House – a majority in the House.
“The normal process is the Opposition party should be offered the opportunity to see if it can form a government.
“It will be a minority government, but then secure a majority in the House. That’s the process we should go through.”
McDonnell added: “It is constitutional, our custom and practice, if it’s minority government and they can’t attain a majority in parliament, usually it is the duty of the Monarch to make the offer to the Opposition the opportunity to form a government.”
May’s Brexit deal has angered the DUP and jeopardised the confidence and supply deal which props up her minority government.
The PM’s grip on power appeared to slip this week after her government caved in to a series of opposition amendments to the Finance Bill in the latest sign that the DUP’s MPs would not support May’s minority administration.
McDonnell said only if a minority Labour government could not secure a majority for its programme should there then be an election, or failing that, a second Brexit referendum.
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Secret legal advice on Brexit will be published by the government after Theresa May suffered a shattering Commons defeat at the hands of MPs.
Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom announced the move after the Commons voted 311 votes to 293 to find ministers guilty of “contempt of parliament” for refusing to reveal the confidential advice.
Just one week before the big vote on the PM’s Brexit deal, the margin of victory suggests that May will fail to win a majority for her plans to quit the EU.
Labour, the Northern Irish DUP, SNP and Lib Dems, the Greens and Plaid Cymru had triggered the “contempt” action after Attorney General Geoffrey Cox failed to comply with MPs’ demands.
Their victory means that for the first time in history government ministers have been found guilty of the ancient offence, which involves any attempt to obstruct the working of parliament.
Leadsom swiftly responded to the defeat by promising to publish the legal advice “in full” on Wednesday.
Never before has the full legal advice of any attorney general been published in its entirety. In 2003, Tony Blair refused publication of advice on the legality of the Iraq war, and only a one page summary was eventually released years later.
Attorney General Cox sparked anger on Monday when he published only a position statement, rather than the “full legal advice” insisted on by the Commons last month.
Cox, who is the most senior legal officer in the cabinet and government, had faced the humiliation of being suspended or even expelled by from the Commons.
Earlier, Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer told MPs the government had been “wilfully refusing to comply” with the express will of parliament.
But Commons Leader Leadsom argued ministers had treated MPs “with the greatest of respect”, adding that Cox had gone out of his way to satisfy parliament’s wishes.
“There can be no question that he or the government has acted in a manner which is contemptuous of this house,” she said.
She proposed an alternative amendment that the whole matter be put to the Commons privileges committee to decide if any contempt had been committed. The amendment was defeated by 311 votes to 307.
On Tuesday morning, Theresa May told the cabinet that at stake was a “fundamental principle” that “candid” legal advice given to ministers should remain confidential.
The prime minister told cabinet it was a “long-standing convention” that “neither the fact nor the content of law officers’ advice is shared outside government without their consent”.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt also said the publication of the full Brexit legal advice would make the “practice of government totally and utterly impossible”.
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Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Romilly Weeks
Brussels has given Boris Johnson's new plan to resolve the Northern Ireland backstop conundrum a cool response.
While European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker welcomed the proposals, he said there were "problematic points" particularly relating to the "governance of the backstop".
The prime minister's potential solution would see Northern Ireland effectively remain tied to EU single market rules for goods but leave the customs union.
Under his proposal, the arrangements would have to be approved by the currently suspended Assembly, which would then vote every four years on whether to keep them.
Mr Johnson wrote to Mr Juncker to say that it would be a “failure of statecraft for which we would all be responsible” if the two sides could not strike a deal before the October 17 European Council.
Michael Gove, the minister in charge of no-deal preparations, insisted there would be no physical checks at the Irish border.
He added: "If the EU reject these proposals out of hand then, in a way, they're saying they would prefer no deal to a new deal and no deal would certainly mean disruption to life and commerce to the island of Ireland, which is in no one's interests."
Boris Johnson's Brexit plan is not dead, but will be soon, writes Robert Peston
Johnson calls for EU compromise on Brexit ahead of presenting 'reasonable' offer
President Juncker spoke to Mr Johnson over the phone and confirmed to him that the Commission will now examine the legal text objectively.
The European Commission said meetings between the EU and UK negotiation teams will take place in Brussels over the coming days.
ITV News Political Correspondent Romilly Weeks explains how the PM's backstop plan would work
Its chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his team will update the European Parliament and the Council on Wednesday evening.​
President Juncker will also speak to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and "will listen carefully to his views", the Commission said.
Mr Barnier told reporters that while there had been progress, "to be frank, a lot of work still needs to be done to fulfil the three objectives of the backstop" - namely, no border, an all-Ireland economy, and protecting the single market.
"We will continue to work to reach a deal - the no deal will never be the choice of the EU. Never," he said.
"So we will continue to work with the UK team for a deal that respects and fulfils the three commitments of the backstop."
Mr Johnson had earlier acknowledged there was “very little time” but said “both sides now need to consider whether there is sufficient willingness to compromise and move beyond existing positions” to reach an agreement.
ITV News Europe Editor James Mates says Europe has been "careful not to be too negative" about the plan
Guy Verhofstadt, who chairs the European Parliament's Brexit steering group, said they were "absolutely not positive" about Mr Johnson's plan.
"It doesn't provide the necessary safeguards for Ireland," he said.
The view appeared to be echoed by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who said the proposals did not fully meet the agreed objectives of the backstop.
Mr Varadkar and Mr Johnson discussed the proposed plans in a phone call on Wednesday evening.
Afterwards, a statement from the Irish Government said the Taoiseach would study the proposals further and consult with other EU leaders.
Jeremy Corbyn said the PM's proposal is "worse than Theresa May's deal" and added he "can't see it getting support".
Despite the prime minister urging compromise, Labour leader Corbyn said "everything to do with his behaviour and his language over the past few weeks has been about getting a no-deal Brexit".
And Leader of the Brexit Party Nigel Farage criticised Mr Johnson's Brexit proposals, saying the deal would be "like putting your head in a crocodile's mouth and hoping for the best."
He tweeted: "Boris only wants to change one part of the Withdrawal Agreement. Despite his words there is no guarantee that we will leave the customs union, and any future trade deal needs good faith from the EU side."
The DUP - the party Mr Johnson relies on to prop up his government in the Commons - is on board with the prime minister's plan.
It said further work was needed but urged all parties to approach discussions with a "positive mindset within a spirit" of wanting a new deal.
If talks with Mr Juncker breakdown, then, as ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston understands, Mr Johnson "won't bother going to the EU summit on October 17".
The Liberal Democrats Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake said the offer is "nothing short of derisory".
He wrote on Twitter: "Based on principles long deemed unworkable by NI and ROI businesses, and delivering nothing more than confusion at vast cost, either he has learned nothing, or he wants them to be rejected."
PM insists there will be no new physical infrastructure on the island of Ireland after Brexit
And the SNP, which wants the UK to remain in the EU, said it is now determined to "bring this dangerous government down."
Its Westminster leader Ian Blackford claimed the proposals had been offered so that the government would be "seen to be doing something".
He said: "At the end of the day what I expect Boris Johnson to try to do is to get us to leave the European Union on a no deal basis at the end of October, despite the fact there's an act of Parliament that actively forbids that."
An SNP source said: "The Lib Dems are acting as a roadblock and no credible alternative has been presented.
"What started as a constructive process that achieved results is going nowhere."
DUP leader Arlene Forster says her party is behind the PM:
In his letter, Mr Johnson said the backstop – the contingency plan agreed by the EU and Theresa May to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland – must be removed.
Unlike Mrs May’s plans for a UK-EU relationship with a closely integrated customs arrangement, Mr Johnson favoured a looser free trade deal and “in these circumstances the proposed ‘backstop’ is a bridge to nowhere”.
Mr Johnson said the plan had five elements:
A commitment to a solution compatible with the Good Friday Agreement
Confirmation of support for long-standing areas of UK-Ireland collaboration including the Common Travel Area and north-south co-operation
The potential creation of an all-Ireland regulatory zone covering all goods including agri-food
The consent of those affected by that all-Ireland zone with the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly given the chance to endorse the plan before it comes into effect and then every four years
Northern Ireland will be fully part of the UK customs territory and outside the EU’s customs union.
Mr Johnson claimed the plan was “entirely compatible with maintaining an open border in Northern Ireland”.
He told Mr Juncker that because the goods trade between Northern Ireland and Ireland made up "a little over 1% of UK-EU total trade in goods" it was "entirely reasonable to manage this border in a different way.
Any risks arising from the proposals would be "manageable", particularly as imports from third countries would be controlled by EU and UK customs authorities.​
Under the plan there would be "decentralised" customs regimes, with paperwork conducted electronically as goods move between the two countries.​
But Mr Johnson acknowledged there would need to be a "very small number of physical checks", which he claimed could be conducted at traders' premises or other points in the supply chain - rather than at the border.​
He called for the two sides to work together to find "flexible and creative solutions", coupled with a joint commitment "never to conduct checks at the border in future".​
ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen reports from the border area in Ireland
Countdown to Brexit
October 17-18: EU council meeting where Mr Johnson will outline his plans to leaders of the 27 European states.
October 19: If there is no deal agreed at the council, then the PM must ask for a delay, if he abides by the Benn Act - or "Surrender Act" as Mr Johnson describes it.
October 31: If there's no deal and no delay, then the UK leaves the European Union, come what may.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The publication by the Treasury of its forecasts of the economic impact of Theresa May's Brexit deal, versus no-deal and staying in the EU, has been keenly awaited.
But it turns out that what we will read, probably on Wednesday, will be almost irrelevant.
Because what the Treasury has modelled is not the deal actually struck on Sunday by Theresa May, but her Chequers plan.
And, as you will be keenly aware, the rest of the EU has rejected her Chequers combination of the UK staying in the single market for goods and the dual-tariff customs territory the Facilitated Customs Arrangement.
What lies ahead for Theresa May and her Brexit deal?
Will Sunday's Brexit history end up in the dustbin?
In other words, we will be asked by the Treasury to compare two scenarios that the PM herself admits could yet happen - particularly no Brexit and a non-deal Brexit - with one scenario, Chequers, that cannot possibly happen.
In fairness to the Treasury, it was impossible for it to model the deal that was actually done at the weekend because in respect of the UK's future trading relationship with the EU, Theresa May's Brexit is myopic to the point of being semi-blind.
The Political Declaration on the outline of the Future Relationship with the EU, signed by May and the other EU 27 leaders, allows for a range of future trading option, from an almost conventional Free Trade Agreement close to Canada's with the EU to something that is nearly but not quite as ambitious as Chequers.
So if you want to actually know the economic cost of the deal, Theresa May will attempt to sell to MPs on December 12 start with what the Treasury projects as the economic cost of Chequers compared with staying in the EU and then knock off a bit more income.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The prime minister’s frantic last attempt to persuade Northern Ireland’s DUP to back her third meaningful vote on Tuesday involves a promise that if the controversial backstop is ever triggered, Great Britain would adopt any new food and business rules that could be forced by the EU on Northern Ireland.
This is a high risk offer by Theresa May to NI’s unionist party - which has huge clout with her because without its votes in parliament her government would collapse.
As a minister told me, for the DUP to accept the offer it would have to trust that a future prime minister and government would honour the pledge - which cannot be guaranteed even if May legislates for such alignment (because any law can always be repealed).
May’s offer falls far short of the DUP’s demand that the EU must change the so-called Withdrawal Agreement, to remove the potential for business and food regulations between Great Britain and NI to diverge - and thereby, according to the DUP, create a new kind of legal border between NI and the mainland.
It also risks alienating some Brexiteer purists because it would keep the whole of the UK tied to the EU’s single market and undermine further the ability of Westminster to - in their words - “take back control”.
What is perhaps worse and would rub salt into Brexiteer wounds, this unilateral British acceptance of alignment with EU rules, for as long as the backstop is in force, would not remove the responsibility of EU institutions to routinely interfere in UK affairs, to check that goods and food flowing from GB to NI meet EU standards.
So logically the regulatory alignment offer should not pacify and win over the DUP.
But sources close to the DUP tell me that - to their surprise - it may have done.
If so they would announce this entente as soon as tomorrow.
And as I said yesterday, the PM will not risk trying to win support from MPs for her Brexit plan with an unprecedented third meaningful vote unless and until the DUP publicly commit to back the deal.
Video report by Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen
There will be "consequences" if Article 50 is prolonged, the EU has said as Theresa May prepares to ask for an extension.
The comments from the European Union come just hours after Downing Street admitted the UK is "in crisis" over Brexit.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier also said that any extension to Britain's membership had to be "useful" and warned it would bring "uncertainty".
Commenting on the length of any potential extension, Mr Barnier said a longer delay would only be granted if it is "linked to something new, a new event, a new political process".
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston assessed that Mr Barnier's comments imply a general election or referendum would be required in the UK before the EU commits to a longer extension.
In a live broadcast from Parliament, Robert Peston said Downing Street's description that the UK is in "crisis" over Brexit "might be an understatement".
He added: "This is the greatest failure of our Parliamentary and Government system that any of us alive have witnessed."
Watch Robert Peston's most recent Brexit assessment here:
Mr Barnier's announcement comes after the Prime Minister was dealt a massive blow by Speaker John Bercow after he ruled that she would not be able to bring a Withdrawal Agreement before MPs unless it is "significantly different".
Mrs May is now set to write to the European Council asking for an extension of Article 50 ahead of the summit in Brussels on Thursday.
A spokesperson for Mrs May said: "In the PM’s speech before [the second meaningful vote] she said if MPs don’t support the deal 'we would be in a crisis' and yesterday’s events show that has come to pass.”
Ahead of an expected extension appeal from Mrs May, Mr Barnier said: "The EU authorities want to know what the underlying political process which would be the grounds for that extension would be - political process within the House of Commons or in the general political debate in the UK.
"It is our duty to ask whether this extension would be useful because an extension will be something which would extend uncertainty and uncertainty costs."
He added: "What would be the purpose and the outcome of an extension and how could we be sure that at the end of a possible extension we are not back in the same situation as today?"
Prime Minister 'set to ask EU for a short and long delay'
Meanwhile, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay indicated ministers will continue to press on with Theresa May's Brexit deal despite Speaker John Bercow's Commons ruling.
Mr Barclay said Cabinet would give "serious consideration" to Mr Bercow's decision that the Government cannot bring the deal back for a third "meaningful vote" without substantial changes.
However he said the Speaker had made clear in earlier rulings that the Commons should not necessarily be bound by precedent.
The Speaker’s ruling, announced in an unexpected statement to the Commons, throws a further obstacle in the way of the Prime Minister’s scramble to get a deal agreed by the scheduled date of Brexit of March 29.
John Bercow sidestepped questions about his ruling as he bought a coffee on the way to Westminster on Tuesday morning
A Government source said it seems “clear that the Speaker’s motive here is to rule out an MV (meaningful vote) this week which also stands in the way of a securing a shorter extension”.
“[This] leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit.
“But anyone who thinks that this makes no-deal more likely is mistaken - the Speaker wouldn’t have done it if it did.”
Solicitor General Robert Buckland - one of the Government's legal advisers - said the Government was facing a “major constitutional crisis” and Mr Bercow’s intervention would have “huge reverberations” for the Brexit process.
Boris Johnson refused to answer questions following a meeting with the Prime Minister
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said an extension to Article 50 until the end of June at least "gives time for a discussion" and added that he has already spoken to the EU about his proposals, which they said could form a basis for negotiations.
He claimed the Government is in "chaos" and said if it "can't get a majority for its way on Monday" then "surely that is the time to step aside and let the people decide on a People's Vote and it's called a general election".
He earlier met with members of the “Norway Plus” group of MPs on Tuesday in which they affirmed they were all opposed to Mrs May's deal, or a no-deal Brexit, and would push for a second referendum is the Prime Minister forced her deal through Parliament with "threats and phoney bribes".
Mr Corbyn met with SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable, Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas to hold talks breaking the current Brexit deadlock.
A spokesperson for the Labour Party said the leaders all "affirmed their common opposition to the government's botched deal or a no deal outcome.
"Should there not be a majority in Parliament for May's deal or a public vote, Corbyn called on the other parties to engage constructively to find a Parliamentary majority for a close economic relationship with the EU that can work for the whole country.
"The party leaders discussed efforts to ensure May's deal would be put to a public vote if she is able to force it through parliament with threats and phoney bribes."
Meanwhile in Dublin, European Council President Donald Tusk held talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar to discuss the backstop arrangement which both the EU and Ireland insist is necessary to keep the border open.
In a joint statement, they said Mr Tusk had expressed "strong and ongoing solidarity" with Ireland and they had agreed they needed to see what proposals would now emerge from London.
Video report by ITV News Europe Editor James Mates
There is "no room whatsoever for renegotiation" of the UK's Brexit deal, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said as Theresa May holds emergency talks with EU leaders.
Mr Juncker said there could be further "clarifications and interpretations" but the Withdrawal Agreement "will not be reopened".
Mrs May held talks with her Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte before meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and will later head to Brussels after her decision to cancel a vote in the House of Commons on her Brexit deal left Westminster in turmoil.
The prime minister is trying to obtain reassurances about the UK's exit deal, in particular the Irish border backstop, after admitting she faced a "significant" Commons defeat on it in its current state.
Her spokesman said Mrs May will bring the deal back to the Commons "before January 21".
Tory Brexiters and the DUP, who prop up Mrs May's Government, are fiercely opposed to the backstop, which would see the UK obey EU customs rules after a transition period if a wider trade deal has not been agreed by then.
But European Council president Donald Tusk has already insisted there was no question of reopening negotiations, including on the backstop, and Mr Juncker backed up that statement on Tuesday morning.
How do you renegotiate with a side that won't talk?
Mr Juncker said the Withdrawal Agreement is the "only deal possible".
MEPs applauded as he said: "There is no room whatsoever for renegotiation, but of course there is room if used intelligently, there is room enough to give further clarifications and further interpretations without opening the Withdrawal Agreement.
"This will not happen: everyone has to note that the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened."
Mr Juncker said the Irish backstop was the "big problem", explaining: "We have a common determination to do everything to be not in the situation one day to use that backstop.
"But we have to prepare: it's necessary for the entire coherence of what we have agreed with Britain and it is necessary for Ireland. Ireland will never be left alone."
ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker in Brussels
EU leaders will meet for a summit on Thursday where Brexit will again be on the agenda after the latest developments.
However Mr Tusk tweeted they "will not renegotiate the deal, including the backstop".
"But we are ready to discuss how to facilitate UK ratification," he said. "As time is running out, we will also discuss our preparedness for a no-deal scenario."
On Wednesday, Mrs May will travel to Dublin to meet with Taioseach Leo Varadkar, likely for discussions over the backstop and the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Following this engagement, Mrs May will then fly on to Brussels ahead of the European Council meeting on Thursday, but no further meetings in the Belgian capital have yet been announced.
The Prime Minister is also planning to speak by phone with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on Tuesday afternoon while she is in Brussels for meetings with Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker.
Will Brussels back down on the backstop? Don't hold your breath
Can Theresa May survive the failure of her Brexit plan?
As Mrs May travelled to Europe, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom suggested that the prime minister was seeking changes that would give Parliament an additional "democratic ability to decide".
She told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "That might include an addendum to the Withdrawal Agreement that sets out that Parliament will vote prior to going into a backstop, should that prove necessary, and potentially that the EU parliament and UK parliament must vote every year thereafter to provide that legitimacy for the UK to stay in the backstop, should that prove necessary.
"So there are plenty of options for the PM to talk to the EU about that don't involve reopening the Withdrawal Agreement, but that would provide the legal text as a part of the Withdrawal Agreement, through perhaps an addendum."
MPs have secured an emergency debate on Mrs May's decision to pull the Commons vote and opposition leaders have used a joint letter to accuse her of showing contempt for Parliament.
But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is yet to bow to pressure to call a vote of no confidence in the Government.
More than 30 MPs, 15 peers and five MEPs have signed a letter urging the Labour leader to table a vote this week.
Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey suggested Labour would not table a no-confidence motion until Mrs May returns from her talks with Brussels.
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Damon Green
She may have lost the confidence of her party but in the eyes of some members of the public, Theresa May did not fail the country.
Residents in North Yorkshire believe Mrs May was let down by her cabinet and Tory MPs who seemed intent on ousting her but she did not help herself by failing to deliver on Brexit.
The Prime Minister made an emotional resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street on Friday morning and became visibly upset and tearful as her words came to an end.
She said it had been ''the honour'' of her life to serve ''the country that I love'' as she revealed her departure date of June 7.
In Skipton, North Yorkshire, a traditional Tory voting heartland, there was some sympathy for Mrs May but also little surprise at her decision to go.
Tearful Theresa May to resign as Conservative leader on June 7
'A woman of courage': Juncker leads reaction from EU leaders following Theresa May's resignation
Theresa May’s legacy will be defined by Brexit chaos
One member of the public told ITV News: ''I think she should have been stronger but to us as laymen, she's not had the backing of the government.
''They've fought her at every single point.''
Many Conservative supporters voted for Brexit and many believe this was Mrs May's undoing.
Another member of the public said: ''You do feel for her but she put herself in that position to me.''
While another added: ''She's broken all her promises. I think she has to go. Maybe get Boris in.''
It has been more than 100 years since the residents of leafy, affluent Skipton voted anything other than Conservative.
But at the recent town council elections, seven of its Tory councillors lost their seats - and they blame Mrs May and the shenanigans in Westminster.
James Stafford, local Conservative member, said: ''We've basically taken the flack - this has been seen across the country. The flack for what's going on in Westminster.''
Referring to the potential runners and riders in the race to be elected Prime Minister, he added: ''It's not just about saying what they can offer the Conservative party, it's about what can they offer the entire nation. What can they also offer to the people who aren't even natural Tory voters?''
Elsewhere out in the country that Mrs May was - or is - so proud to serve, public reaction has been as divided over her as it has been over Brexit.
Video report by ITV News National Editor Allegra Stratton
Leadership race: Who are the runners and riders?
Among the grassroots of Gloucester, a leave-voting town with a Remain-supporting MP, the views our National Editor heard on Friday ranged from acknowledging her bad luck to good riddance.
Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said if the EU does not compromise on the backstop, the UK will be leaving the EU without a deal on October 31.
Speaking on ITV’s Peston show, the Conservative MP said there will be no backstop, even a time-limited one, in any Brexit deal.
It follows on from Angela Merkel’s conversation with Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday in which she is reported to have said there will be no Brexit deal with the UK unless Northern Ireland is in the customs union "forever".
“What they are seeking to avoid in Northern Ireland becomes much more challenging,” Ms Leadsom said.
“We have put through a really well-through compromised offer, which let’s be clear Parliament could get behind.
“There were a number of Parliament who have previously been very strongly against Theresa May’s, who are saying they could support this deal.
“Boris Johnson has put together this deal, it’s for the EU to come together to find a way forward with us.”
Mr Johnson's hopes of securing a deal in time for the summit on October 17 and 18 could now rest on a crunch meeting with Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar.
But the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said Brussels had yet to see any "operational, legally binding solution" to the issue of the Northern Ireland backstop.
The Business Secretary said the Government “will abide by the law” when it comes to the Benn Act, which requires Mr Johnson to seek a delay to Brexit if no-deal has been reached.
She added: “We are determined on Friday 31 October regardless of whether there is a deal or isn’t a deal, but our absolute priority is to ensure there is a deal.”
The prime minister has told the Scottish courts he will write a letter to Brussels, seeking a delay, but reportedly will write a second letter, saying he personally does not want a delay.
Ms Leadsom responded whether it was an appropriate response: “It’s quite clear, the Government’s policy that we not want a delay.
“It’s perfectly reasonable to make that point very clearly…to the EU.
“Boris Johnson is determined to get Brexit done by 31 October.”
While former Conservative MP and London Mayoral candidate Rory Stewart was asked whether Mr Johnson was a good Mayor or a bad Mayor, Rory Stewart said: "He was a big personality."
He added: "To be honest the best Mayor we had in London was from 2000 to 2004, an Independent Mayor of London, he was the one who got stuff done, he was the guy who sorted out the Olympics, sorted out the Oyster Cards."
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
With just a week to go before the result is announced of the election to choose the new Tory leader - and our new PM - Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are shape-shifting into each other.
On Brexit Hunt is adopting more and more of Johnson's rhetoric about the need to keep open the option of a no-deal Brexit.
And in Monday night's Sun debate, both of them made a new commitment that makes no deal the most likely outcome - they both said they wanted to scrap the so-called backstop, the mechanism for keeping open the border on the island of Ireland.
Johnson said that putting a time limit on the backstop, or acquiring a unilateral right for the UK to withdraw from the backstop, would no longer be an acceptable reform.
The backstop had to go altogether.
Key moments from Johnson and Hunt's final clash:
Hunt concurred.
Most EU leaders will see that shift as the official moment the Tory party became the no-deal party - because EU leaders have consistently said the backstop cannot and will not be dumped.
What was also striking was that Johnson abandoned his vow never to criticise the president of the US.
He resisted the invitation from the Sun's political editor Tom Newton-Dunn to call Trump a racist but did say it was "totally unacceptable in a modern multinational country" for Trump to call on four women Democrats - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar - to "go back" to their "countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe".
Trump claims his fans 'love' his comments branded 'racist'
Johnson and Hunt criticise Trump but don't label him racist
Hunt had attacked Trump in more-or-less the same way, for what has been widely seen as a deliberately inflammatory paraphrase of the "immigrants go home" slur.
And unlike when Hunt laid into Trump in ITV's debate last week - over the American president's personal attack on Theresa May - this time Johnson was shoulder to shoulder with him.
As I understand it, some of Johnson's closest advisers fear he had been damaged by being seen to kowtow to Trump - though not so damaged as to cost him the leadership election.
There are two consequences of this convergence between the two, on Brexit and Trump.
First any Tory member who hasn't yet voted - and most have - has to make the choice largely on character and personality, rather than policy substance.
Second, this convergence makes it almost impossible for either of them not to give the other a job in one of the big cabinet offices of state, that is foreign secretary, home secretary or chancellor.
And although there has been lots of muttering in the Johnson camp that Hunt's earlier attacks on Trump made it impossible for Hunt to remain foreign secretary, that fox has been shot by Johnson today joining the chorus of thin-skinned Mr Trump's critics.
Boris Johnson has written to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to demand he "come clean" over what his position is on Brexit.
The prime minister said voters "deserve to have a clear picture of what each potential leader will do when it comes to Brexit".
Ahead of the first TV debates - being staged by ITV - Mr Johnson warned any further delay, or possibly another referendum, risked destroying "all faith in our democratic process".
Johnson v Corbyn - The ITV Debate: Ask your question in the first election head-to-head between the two leaders
Get the latest General Election 2019 stories here
In his letter, Mr Johnson says: "Your current position seems to be that you want to go back to square one.
"You want to throw out the great new deal we have reached with our European friends, and instead negotiate a whole new treaty from scratch.
"Even assuming the EU agrees to go back to the very beginning, this will take months and possibly years to do - under your proposals, 2020 will be lost to more dither and delay over Brexit.
"Voters also have the right to know: what would your supposed Brexit ‘deal’ actually back control of?
"For months you have refused to say what sort of ‘deal’ you want with the EU. Now the time has come for you to come clean, and explain what your plan really is."
Mr Corbyn was adamant in the run up to the general election that he would only agree to one once a no-deal Brexit had been taken off the table.
With the EU granting another extension to the end of January 2020, he finally said Labour was in a position to go to the country.
But, the party's position on Brexit is still confused. It will go into this election with a strategy that promises a second referendum but doesn’t say which side the party would support.
The prime minister poses a number of questions of his rival:
Do you believe the result of the 2016 referendum should be respected and the UK should leave the EU?
Is the Labour Party’s policy to keep the UK in the customs union and would it end free movement in any deal it negotiates?
Would you commit to campaigning on your ‘deal‘ in a second referendum?
What is your supposed timetable to renegotiate a new deal and then hold a second referendum. How much taxpayers’ money will you spend on holding this unwanted second referendum in 2020 and would this comply with Electoral Commission guidance on holding referendums?
You rightly claim (for now at least) that the Liberal Democrat and SNP plan to revoke Article 50 is extreme - but if there is a hung Parliament you will depend on their votes. Will you confirm that, if there is a hung Parliament, you would never be willing to revoke Article 50?
A Labour Party spokesperson said: "Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly laid out Labour’s clear and straightforward policy of getting Brexit sorted by giving the people the final say within six months and will do so again tomorrow in a major speech."
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was heckled over his decision to suspend Parliament as he gave a speech on handing power to northern leaders in Rotherham.
As he laid out his commitment to the Northern Powerhouse, a member of the audience shouted: "Why are you not with them in parliament sorting out the mess you have created?"
As some in the crowd booed the heckler, Mr Johnson attempted to carry on with his speech, but was repeatedly interrupted before the man shouting was removed from the room.
The PM went on to say mayors in the north of England should have more powers, including over railways.
"This is not about central government abdicating responsibility, but local leaders have a real power to change local issues," he said as he promised to "do devolution properly".
Asked if he is worried about what David Cameron may write about him in his upcoming memoir, after he called the former PM "a girly swot", he told ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand: "Absolutely nothing that David Cameron says in his memoirs will diminish the affection and respect in which I hold him."
Prime Minister to have first sit-down with European Commission President
The speech comes as Downing Street said Mr Johnson will meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday, their first meeting since he became Prime Minister.
Mr Johnson will travel to Luxembourg for what has been described as a "working lunch".
A spokesperson for the European Commission said she "was not going to speculate" what Mr Juncker plans to achieve in the talks.
Downing Street also played down the prospect of an imminent breakthrough, insisting there was still "a long way to go".
The announcement of the meeting came as Ireland's leader said the "gap is very wide" between the United Kingdom and the EU in reaching a Brexit deal.
Speaking on Friday morning, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: "We have always said we would be willing to look at alternative arrangements but what we're seeing falls far short.
"We are exploring what is possible. The gap is very wide but we will fight for and work for a deal until the last moment, but not at any cost."
Mr Varadkar added that he felt Prime Minister Boris Johnson is acting in good faith in the Brexit negotiations.
During an earlier trip to Doncaster market, Mr Johnson purchased a cob loaf, some scones and English plums, joking with a lobster-seller: "We've got to take a few claws out of that Withdrawal Agreement."
Mr Johnson also told one shoe-seller: "We're going to get a deal. That's the plan, anyway. And if we don't, we're coming out on October 31.
"That's what we're going to do. Here we go, that's democracy."
The Prime Minister did not react as one man was heard telling him: "Find a deal here - this is Doncaster, not Europe."
As one local told Mr Johnson "don't let us down", he responded: "We'll get you out, we'll get us out."
PM promises regional devolvement of transport issues
During his Rotherham speech, Mr Johnson said his experience of running London Underground as mayor of the capital showed services run by local politicians run better than from Whitehall.
He said: "So today I'm announcing my intention to give the railways of the North back to the people of the North, back to the places where they were born - back to Stockton and to Darlington, back to Liverpool and Manchester.
"It is local leadership. Trusting people to take back control and run things in the way they want to.
"Only local champions can really make the difference for their towns and their communities.
"It's time for the North to run its own trains."
DUP dismisses speculation over Northern Ireland only backstop
The comments come as the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party dismissed reports it will offer Prime Minister Boris Johnson the keys to a Brexit deal.
It had been claimed the party, which supports the government with a supply and confidence relationship, was willing to move its red lines on Brexit to back a Northern Ireland only trade deal.
But party leader Arlene Foster said any moves which did make Northern Ireland different from the rest of the UK would be unacceptable to the party.
She insisted the United Kingdom "must leave as one nation".
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
After days of silence, Boris Johnson has launched his bid for the Tory crown with a warning to MPs they will "reap the whirlwind" if they try to thwart Brexit.
The main headline from his campaign launch speech was Brexit - telling Conservatives they faced "mortal retribution" from voters unless Britain leaves the EU on October the 31st.
Otherwise, there were plenty of earnest pledges to unify the country - but few jokes, little policy, and no answers to allegations about past drug use.
Later, there was a sharp aside from Sajid Javid at his campaign launch, telling those assembled that Mr Johnson is "yesterday's news."
Launching his leadership bid, Mr Johnson said he believed "maturity and a sense of duty will prevail" over Brexit.
"I think it will be very difficult for friends in Parliament to obstruct the will of the people and simply to block Brexit.
"I think if we now block it, collectively as parliamentarians we will reap the whirlwind and we will face mortal retribution from the electorate."
Boris Johnson's speech in full:
Meanwhile Labour said it would continue to fight to prevent a no-deal Brexit after the latest cross-party attempt by MPs to take control of Commons business was narrowly voted down.
In the Commons, the cross-party motion which would have enabled MPs to take control of the business of the House on June 25 was defeated by 309 to 298 - a majority of 11.
Ten Tories, including Ken Clarke, Sir Oliver Letwin, Justine Greening and Dominic Grieve, supported the motion but eight Labour MPs voted against.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said it would haveacted as a "safety valve" enabling Parliament to pass legislation preventing the next prime minister from taking Britain out of the EU without a deal.
He said Labour would continue to work to find parliamentary mechanisms to ensure whoever succeeds Theresa May could not simply leave with no-deal in the autumn.
"This is a disappointing, narrow defeat. But this is just the start, not the end of our efforts to block no deal," he said.
"Any Tory leadership candidates should know that Parliament will continue to fight against no deal."
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Mr Johnson, seen as the clear front runner in the contest, said it was essential that Britain was out of the EU by the end of October.
He insisted he was not aiming for no-deal, but said the Government had to show it was serious about leaving if it was to stand any chance of securing concessions from the EU.
"It is only if we have the guts and the courage to get ready for it (no-deal) that we will carry any conviction in Brussels to get the deal that we need," he said.
His comments prompted a warning from Chancellor Philip Hammond that it would be "impossible" to leave by October 31 as the EU would not re-negotiate and Parliament would not allow it.
"I don't think it's sensible for candidates to box themselves into a corner on this," he said. "I don't think it will be in our national interest that we drive towards this cliff-edge at speed."
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston says that Boris Johnson remains the frontrunner in the race to become the next prime minister
Sajid Javid, the last of the 10 candidates to launch his campaign ahead of Thursday's first round of voting, dismissed Mr Johnson as "yesterday's news", saying the party needed to show it had changed.
His launch event, which began with a speech from Scottish Conservative Ruth Davidson, was pushed back significantly due to an unsuccessful Labour-led motion aimed at blocking no Brexit.
Mr Javid acknowledged the delay, claiming it was a Labour attempt to sabotage his bid to become PM.
He said: "When Labour tried to kybosh this launch of my leadership campaign, because the leadership campaign they fear the most, they failed and here we are."
During his speech, Mr Javid presented himself as a fresh candidate, someone unlike the others.
"If we're trying to connect with the next generation and move forward as a country then I think it's time for the next generation with a bold new agenda," the Home Secretary said launching his bid.
"That means understanding that we cannot call ourselves a 'one nation' party, if there are whole swathes of this country that don't think that we share their values and their needs."
Sajid Javid's speech in full:
At his launch event, Mr Johnson had to fend off a series of reporters' questions about his past character and record in office.
After Michael Gove's admission that he had taken cocaine in the past, Mr Johnson sidestepped a question as to whether he had also used the drug.
He acknowledged that his use of language - such as his description of Muslim women who wore the burka as letter boxes - sometimes resulted in "some plaster coming off the ceiling".
However, he rejected past charges of untrustworthiness levelled at him by colleagues and rivals.
Referring to his record as mayor of London, he said: "I do what I promise to do as a politician."
"We can't risk going with someone who feels like the short-term, comfort zone choice."
Meanwhile Mr Johnson officially launched his leadership campaign after days of staying silent, setting out his vision for a swift exit from the European Union, with a promise to end the "morass" over Brexit.
At his event launch, which began with a promotional video and a speech from Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, Mr Johnson said he doesn't "want a no deal outcome" but thinks it is right to "prepare for that outcome".
The former foreign secretary insisted that it is essential that Britain finally leaves the EU at the end of October to prevent the mood of "disillusion, even despair" in the country from spreading.
Shortly after Mr Johnson began speaking, heckling from the street outside the venue was audible in the room, with cries of "B******* to Boris" and "No to Brexit" echoing in the room.
Inside however was a different story, with several big name Tories, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Liz Truss, turning out to support the former London mayor.
Other Tories who backed Mr Johnson by attending his event were Nadine Dorries, Priti Patel, and Chris Grayling, along with his brother Jo and father Stanley.
In his speech Mr Johnson warned failure that to honour the referendum vote risked handing power to Jeremy Corbyn and Labour at the next general election.
"After three years and two missed deadlines, we must leave the EU on October 31," he said.
"Delay means defeat. Delay means Corbyn. Kick the can and we kick the bucket."
He added: "The best way to avoid a no deal outcome, the best way to avoid a disorderly Brexit of any kind is to make the preparations now that enable us to leave in a managed way.
"But above all, if we make preparations now we will carry the conviction, with our friends and partners, that we are indeed able to make such an exit if we really have to."
Ending his speech, Mr Johnson said: "To sum up my mission in a sentence: what I want to do now, with your help, is to do for the whole country what we did in London - releasing the creative energies of our country and its people and healing its divisions."
Attendees at the launch were offered "Boris bacon butties" and "Boris eggs Benedict" inside the venue, they were also invited to wear "Back Boris" badges.
Interview by ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston
Boris Johnson has said his first task as prime minister will be to warn people about the risks of leaving the EU without a deal, should he win the Tory leadership contest.
The man who is expected to be named PM on Tuesday told ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston that the first job he'll carry out in his new role will be to highlight to the public "all the possible risks" of no deal Brexit.
Speaking on ITV's Peston programme, he said: "We make sure everybody understands all the possible risks and eventualities.
"It's by doing that in a really wholehearted and systematic and confident way, that you of course minimise any disruption that might take place in the unlikely eventuality of actually having to come out on WTO terms."
He added: "What we will do, is we will encourage people in a very positive way. From the get-go, we start saying, ‘Look, what do you need, what help do you need, what reassurances do you need?'"
Race to be PM enters last stretch with final hustings
The prospective prime minister, who is one of Brexit's most fervent backers, was quizzed on what his maximum transition period would be for leaving the EU.
The MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, who is adamant the UK will leave by the October 31 deadline, claimed that under his premiership the transition period would be over "well before the next election".
He said: "I wouldn’t want to go any longer than necessary and I certainly think it would be crazy - we’ve got to get out well before the next election, put it that way."
Labour Lords declare semi-independence over anti-Semitism, writes Robert Peston
Asked by Peston if it could run up until 2022, he said: "I wouldn’t want it to go as long as that. We should come out, I see no reason to come out, delay, until the next election, we should come out well before the next election."
Mr Johnson claimed "a lot of work is already in place" to reduce any negative ramifications of leaving the EU by the October deadline.
He went on: "A couple of areas I would single out that have needed special attention are the chains of administrative command in Northern Ireland.
"That’s really got to be properly fixed. Ideally you want Stormont up and running again (by the time of Brexit)."
Mr Johnson continued: “It’s not the end of the world if it isn’t but I would like it to be, everybody wants it to be, and it should be."
Proroguing Parliament: What does it mean?
Anna Soubry opens up on pain of Umunna split and why Boris 'isn't fit to clean loos'
Mr Johnson refused to repeat pledges to give one of the top Cabinet jobs to a woman if he were to become prime minister - a promise he made during a debate on Monday.
Speaking to Mr Peston, he declined to elaborate on which of the three great offices of state could go to a female MP, or who he might choose.
"If I've already made that commitment, I'm certainly not going to resile from it now," he said.
Mr Johnson said that while mayor of London, half of his top team had been women, adding: "As prime minister I will continue to do absolutely everything to promote women in politics."
On the subject of him potentially being the 20th Old Etonian to become prime minister, he said  he would "level up" education across the country.
Mr Johnson said: "What I want to do is level up opportunity around the country and if you look at this city, I can tell you this area was one of the poorest in the whole of the UK."
One of Mr Johnson's more prominent female supporters, Nadine Dorries MP, joined Peston in the studio and claimed the next government would have more women in top jobs, with Amber Rudd taking one of them.
She said: "I definitely want to see Amber stay in the Cabinet and I'd like to see Amber in one of the top three jobs.
"I think she might go to Foreign Office, or if she went back to the Home Office it would be nice to see that circle finished."
Also joining Peston on his programme was former Tory leadership hopeful Sam Gyimah, who dropped out of the race before its first round.
He told Peston he would be voting against the government on votes aimed at securing a no deal Brexit.
He was also asked about the possibility of Mr Johnson proroguing Parliament to get no deal through.
He said: "When you get to the point, as a new prime minister who has never faced a general election, having to shut the doors of Parliament in order to get your principle policy through, then something has seriously gone wrong."
Video report by ITV Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set up a network of top level committees to try and ensure that Brexit happens by the deadline of October 31.
Mr Johnson spoke with the Cabinet by telephone on Sunday lunchtime to outline the new structure.
Sources said the prime minister wanted to improve on the way previous committees operated as he believed they did not move fast enough and were often undermined by parallel structures.
Cabinet agreed that this approach would send a clear message about the Government’s plans to deliver Brexit by the end of October, according to Downing Street.
Government ‘operating on assumption’ of no-deal Brexit, says Michael Gove
The Daily Operations Committee, chaired by Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, will meet every weekday in the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR) and will be responsible for overseeing all of the Government’s preparation for leaving, and a possible no-deal exit.
A source said: “Live actions, deadlines and accountability to be on the screens of COBR at every meeting and minutes will be circulated immediately after.”
Mr Gove told the rest of the Cabinet that the committee, known as XO, will “agree actions, make decisions and solve problems, and all with specific deadlines”.
The committee will meet for the first time on Tuesday and a Downing Street source said it was being structured in such a way so that the Treasury would be “a motor for delivering Brexit, not the anchor.”
The Exit, Economy and Trade Committee (ETC) will be chaired by the prime minister and meet regularly.
It will “have a broad remit and will handle write rounds”, particularly focused on Britain’s future relationships around the world.
The Exit Strategy committee, known as XS, will meet twice a week and be chaired by the PM.
The XS committee will meet for the first time on Monday, when it will be chaired by Mr Gove in the absence of the prime minister.
Mr Johnson will be in Scotland, where he will announce a £300 million funding pot for communities in the devolved nations.
He is making his first official visit north of the border since becoming prime minister to announce the expansion of regional Growth Deals in parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Conservative leader said he wants to ensure that no corner of the UK is left behind.
Mr Johnson will chair the following meeting of the committee on Thursday, Downing Street said.
Boris Johnson refused to rule out challenging Theresa May for the Tory leadership as he warned her Brexit deal left the UK open to “blackmail” by Brussels.
The former foreign secretary said it was “nonsense” to suggest he had already begun offering jobs in a future Johnson administration to fellow Tories, but sidestepped the opportunity to promise not to stand against the Prime Minister.
He said her Brexit deal could get through the Commons if it was stripped of the backstop measure – an insurance policy to prevent a hard border with Ireland – insisting that would be “relatively simple” to achieve.
Peston: If Theresa May delays the Brexit vote, what then?
Another Brexiteer ex-Cabinet minister, Esther McVey, said she would give “serious concern” to standing for the leadership.
Mr Johnson, one of the leading players in the Leave campaign in the referendum, said people should not “underestimate the deep sense of  personal responsibility I feel for Brexit”.
Mrs May’s future hangs in the balance, with a heavy defeat in Tuesday’s Commons showdown likely to lead to fresh pressure on her leadership.
Asked to give an “absolute, categorical promise” that he would not stand against the Prime Minister, Mr Johnson said: “I will give you an absolute, categorical promise that I will continue to advocate what I think is the most sensible plan.”
'Grave uncertainty' for UK if MPs vote down deal warns May
Challenged on whether he had already begun speaking to colleagues to offer them roles in his future government, Mr Johnson told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “I can tell you that’s nonsense.”
Setting out his Brexit plan, Mr Johnson said resolving the Irish border issue should be postponed so it forms part of the talks on a future trade deal and the UK should withhold a “substantial chunk” of the £39 billion divorce bill until that deal is done.
Preparations should also be stepped up for a no-deal Brexit, he said.
He admitted he would feel personally responsible if people lost their jobs in a no-deal departure from the EU.
“Of course I will,” he said. “Do not underestimate the deep sense of personal responsibility I feel for Brexit and for everything that has happened.
“Do not underestimate how much I care about this because this is fundamental to our country and it absolutely breaks my heart to think that -after all that we fought for, all that we campaigned for, all that  (Brexit Secretary) Steve Barclay campaigned for, everybody believes in – we should consign ourselves to a future in which the EU effectively rules us in many respects and yet we have no say round the table in Brussels.
“That is an absurdity. We cannot go down that route.”
Asked about her leadership ambitions, Ms McVey told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “I’ve seen the array of people who have come forward at the moment and I think if we can all get behind one – for me the most important thing is not the personalities, it is the deal for our country needs to be better.”
She added: “If people asked me, then of course you’d give it serious concern and do it if people asked me but at the moment I’m looking at who’s in the papers, who we can get behind but it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about the country and this deal.”
Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab refused to rule out a leadership bid, telling Sky News he would not “get sucked into that debate”.
Boris Johnson's new Brexit plan to resolve the Northern Ireland backstop conundrum "has a very good chance of getting through" Parliament, Cabinet minister Michael Gove has said.
The Prime Minister's potential solution would see Northern Ireland effectively remain tied to EU single market rules for goods but leave the customs union.
Under his proposal, the arrangements would have to be approved by the currently suspended Assembly, which would then vote every four years on whether to keep them.
Appearing on ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston's show, Mr Gove, the minister in charge of no-deal planning, said there was a "pretty solid majority" in the Commons for Mr Johnson's plan.
The DUP have said they will back the Brexit blueprint and "they didn’t support any of the previous three attempts to get a deal.
"I know that some Conservative MPs who were unhappy with the withdrawal agreement that Theresa negotiated, have said that they’re supportive of this deal; so we have the DUP, Conservatives who were previously opposed, and some broad-minded and constructive Labour MPs.
"That seems to me to be a pretty solid majority.”
Also on ITV's Peston was Labour MP Melanie Onn who confirmed that she would back the Prime Minister's plan, if it would avoid a no-deal Brexit.
ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand pointed out that if Ms Onn was backing the proposals, then other Labour MPs likely would too.
ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt added there could potentially be a "real chance" of Parliament backing the blueprints, as they would also be supported by the DUP and many of the hardline-Brexit ERG group.
However, for the proposals to even enter Parliament, they would have to be backed by the EU, something Peston believes is highly unlikely to happen.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has already given the plans cool response, saying there were "problematic points" in them, particularly relating to the "governance of the backstop".
However, Mr Gove remained positive saying there had been a "cautiously optimistic" response from the EU to the proposals, and that the plans were a "serious attempt to ensure that we can meet the EU where we need to, and there are some big concessions in it.
"We are excepting that in Northern Ireland - provided there's democratic consent that there will be European rules on food and manufacturing goods, you know that is quite a big concession, and I think there are a serious bunch of people in the EU who recognise that is a concession and is something they can get their teeth in to."
The 52-year-old added that the EU want a deal, as a no-deal exit from the bloc would create a "great deal of uncertainty".
He continued: "I don't think there's anyone in the EU that wants a no-deal outcome.
"I don't want a no-deal outcome.
"The Prime Minister doesn't want a no-deal outcome."
However, Mr Gove said that if the EU did not agree to the deal, the UK would still leave the bloc on October 31 without one, despite MPs passing the Benn Bill to stop a no-deal Brexit.
However, the Surrey Heath MP was unable to say how this law would be circumnavigated, insisting that it would be a "bridge" that "we deal with when we come to it".
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt
Boris Johnson said "getting Brexit done" will help "reduce the heat" on MPs, after several politicians called for the prime minister's language to be dialled down.
Labour MPs urged Mr Johnson to apologise for remarks where he described a parliamentary bill which forces the government to ask for an extension to Brexit talks as the "Surrender Act".
A number of MPs - including both Leave and Remain, Labour and Conservative - revealed they have received death threats, with some highlighting language used by the prime minister.
PM's adviser Dominic Cummings says 'respecting Brexit referendum will end threats to MPs'
Johnson calls for tempers to cool after MPs slam his 'inflammatory' Brexit language
Mr Johnson said while he deplored threats made to MPs, he added it was important not to "impoverish political debate" by refusing to use certain phrases.
Speaking on a visit to Harlow, Essex, Mr Johnson said: "I think the threats against MPs and particularly female MPs are absolutely appalling and we're doing a lot of work to give MPs the security that they need.
"But then there's another question which is - can you use words like 'surrender' to describe a certain act or a certain bill?
"And, quite frankly, I think that you can and if you say that you can't then you're kind of impoverishing the language and impoverishing political debate because, after all, the use of that kind of metaphor has been going on for hundreds of years."
However, some members of the Brexit Party agree with the PM's rhetoric that has been seen as 'inflammatory' by some MPs in the Commons.
At a Brexit Party rally on Friday, one woman told told ITV News: "'Surrender' is harmless language, and 'bollocks to Brexit' is a bit over the top, but of course they get away with that.
"They get away with calling us 'racist', 'bigots', 'stupid', 'selfish'... We get it all."
Another supporter said: "I just think they're overreacting. They need to stop being babies, grow up!"
"They're words at the end of the day. It's more about the action that they actually take.
"Stop babbling on and actually do something."
The prime minister also reaffirmed the government's intension that the UK will leave the EU by October 31 - despite the Benn Law which requires the government to ask for an extension if a Brexit deal is not agreed.
Asked if he was looking to get around the Benn Law, Mr Johnson said: "No, I must say that we will obey the law but we're confident that we can come out on October 31 and the best way to do that is to get a deal.
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker
"And so that's why the surrender act is so damaging.
"I won't hide it from you, it has had the effect with our European friends of making them think 'hmm, maybe parliament can block this thing, maybe they will be forced to extend'.
"If you're in a negotiation, that obviously makes it more difficult but we are still cautiously optimistic that we can do it."
Mr Johnson's chief of staff Dominic Cummings last night admitted there were loopholes in the legislation.
He said: "There are obviously loopholes in it because the Remain lawyers are babbling about on Twitter... They themselves have said there are loopholes."
When asked if it would be something the government could look to exploit, he said: "I didn't say that, did I?"
Mr Cummings was confronted by Karl Turner MP on Thursday evening, with the Labour politician telling Mr Cummings he had received death threats, to which Mr Cummings replied: "Get Brexit done."
On Wednesday, Mr Johnson dismissed a Labour MP’s complaint that his “inflammatory” language risked provoking attacks as “humbug”.
He was facing calls to apologise for language that pits politicians against voters and was even criticised by his sister Rachel Johnson for using “strongman” tactics.
Daniel Hewitt
Political Correspondent
With Theresa May’s Brexit deal on life support, widely expected to be voted down in the New Year, and Parliament in deadlock, here are some of the options being discussed in Westminster on what could happen next.
Second referendum
Support for a second vote has undoubtedly gained more attention in recent weeks, with ministers Jo Johnson and Sam Gyimah quitting the Government to join an already sizable rump of Labour backbench MPs endorsing a so-called People’s Vote.
Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure to join them and make a second vote official Labour policy.
The Labour leader prefers a General Election, but has publicly stated his party would back another referendum if that is rejected.
Three former prime ministers - John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - say a second public ballot is the only way to break the impasse.
But Theresa May is strongly against the idea, and her de-facto deputy David Lidington and chief of staff Gavin Barwell have distanced themselves from reports they have been sounding out MPs about the prospect of putting the EU question back to the people if the PM's deal fails.
Campaigners for a second vote are not yet agreed on what the question would be - a straightforward Remain versus Leave?
A three-way fight between Remain, no deal and Mrs May’s deal?
The Prime Minister's deal versus Remain?
Either way, without Labour frontbench support it's unlikely a second referendum has enough support in Parliament.
Indicative votes
This is the “flushing out” method some in the Cabinet, including Education Secretary Damian Hinds, are advocating as a way of getting Theresa May’s deal through.
The logic: let Parliament vote on the alternative Brexit options being proposed by some MPs, with the aim of showing there isn’t a majority for any of them, thus galvanizing support for Mrs May’s deal as the only deal left on the table.
These other options include a Norway-style model, arguably the softest form of Brexit, which would see the UK trade in the European Economic Area (EEA), allowing new trade deals to be sought outside the EU.
However, under such a deal, Britain would almost certainly have to keep freedom of movement, which was a major pillar of the Leave campaign.
Then there’s a Canada-style model, advocated by Boris Johnson and David Davis, which envisages a wide-ranging free trade deal with the EU without signing up to wide-ranging EU rules and regulations.
Number 10 argues this deal would not deliver frictionless trade and would not solve the problem of Irish backstop.
Those that support the idea of a series of "indicative votes" believe there is not a majority in Parliament for either Norway or Canada, nor in fact a second referendum.
So before the Christmas break, they want MPs to vote on the alternatives as a process of elimination - leaving Theresa May’s deal, and no deal, as the only options left.
And if there’s a majority in Parliament for one thing, it’s to avoid no deal.
Managed no deal
This is favoured by a number of Tory Brexiters including European Research Group (ERG) chair Jacob Rees-Mogg.
It's also said to have Cabinet sympathisers in the form of Andrea Leadsom, and Jeremy Hunt has also hinted he could back it.
So what is it?
A middle-ground between Mrs May’s deal and no deal, a so-called "managed no-deal" suggests the UK pays the EU some of the £39 billion divorce bill, perhaps half.
It also suggests that Britain leaves the EU on March 29 without a wide-ranging withdrawal agreement under World Trade Organisation terms, instead with a series of smaller, industry-specific deals, for example to ensure planes still take off and land, and medicines can be imported.
Downing Street though has dismissed this option, arguing the EU has made it clear that it will not discuss no-deal deals until the UK has actually left the EU.
In other words, no deal is exactly what it says on the tin, and it cannot be "managed".
Free vote
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has suggested allowing MPs a free vote on Mrs May’s deal, an idea suggested a few weeks ago by International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
The logic here is it could encourage enough Labour MPs - unshackled from their own party whip - to back the deal to get it over the line.
But this would require the Labour leadership to agree to a free vote, and while there are a fair number of Labour MPs representing Leave-voting constituencies who want to see Brexit delivered, there’s currently nowhere near enough of them supportive of the Prime Minister’s proposals, and a free vote is unlikely to change that.
A Government of national unity
Conservative backbenchers Nicholas Soames, Nicky Morgan and Nick Boles have all floated the idea of a cross-party approach in order to build consensus around a deal that would be voted through Parliament.
With Theresa May currently unable to win support from the DUP and her Brexit-backing backbenchers, Boles et al would like to see her reach out to opposition leaders to find the best way forward.
If Jeremy Corbyn refuses to play ball, Boles believes the PM should seek out moderate Labour back-benchers to build a deal they can back in the national interest.
This could be popular outside of Westminster, where politicians pulling together for the greater good is undoubtedly more attractive that party point-scoring as the country grapples with the greatest political challenge of our time.
But in practice, it's hard to see Labour MPs helping Mrs May out of the hole she has found/got herself in, and Number 10 has shown little sign in the past two years of reaching across the divide to secure Brexit agreement.
Boris Johnson has been warned by senior figures in Brussels that failing to pay the £39 billion divorce bill would damage relations between the UK and the European Union and jeopardise future trade talks.
The Prime Minister has said that if there is a no-deal Brexit “the £39 billion is no longer legally pledged” to the EU.
But officials in Brussels said the UK must honour commitments made during its EU membership and pointedly said that “settling accounts is essential to starting off a new relationship on the right foot”.
On Sunday, Mr Johnson told ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston if the UK left without a deal then the £39 billion "is no longer strictly speaking owed".
He said: "I'm not going to get into the figures, but there will very substantial sums available to our country to spend on our priorities, to spend on getting on getting our businesses ready.
"It's not a threat, it's a simple statement of reality, that's the way things are."
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But, just 24 hours later, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, warned Mr Johnson there would be trouble ahead if that account was not settled.
He said: “If the UK doesn’t pay what is due, the EU will not negotiate a trade deal.
“After a ‘no deal’, this will be a first condition of any talks. Britain is better than this.”
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European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said: “All commitments that were taken by the 28 member states should be honoured and this is also and especially true in a no-deal scenario where the UK would be expected to continue to honour all commitments made during EU membership.
“Rather than going now into a judicial action threat, I think it is important to make clear that settling accounts is essential to starting off a new relationship on the right foot based on mutual trust.
“I would also say that as far as I understand this issue has not been raised with the EU side, for the time being, officially.”
Mr Johnson said on Sunday that there would be “very substantial sums” available from the £39 billion to spend on domestic priorities if there was a no-deal Brexit.
Six MPs have quit the Change UK party, with high-profile figures including Chuka Umunna and Heidi Allen walking out of the newly formed party.
Anna Soubry has become leader and criticised her fellow MPs, telling them "now is not the time to walk away."
The split comes after the party, originally called the Independent Group, performed badly in the European Parliament elections, securing just 3.4% of the vote.
The party was formed in February by MPs who rejected the main political parties' stance on Brexit and other issues and defected from the Labour and Conservative party.
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Ms Allen had been the party's leader and My Umunna was spokesman, but they left the party on Tuesday, along with Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith,  and Sarah Wollaston.
Along with former Tory minister Ms Soubry, the remaining Change UK MPs are Chris Leslie, Joan Ryan, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey.
Ms Soubry said: "I'm deeply disappointed that at such a crucial time in British politics our former colleagues have made this decision.
"Now is not the time to walk away, but instead to roll up our sleeves and stand up for the sensible mainstream centre ground which is unrepresented in British politics today."
She said Change UK MPs are "determined to fix Britain's broken politics" and admitted challenging the main poltical parties "was never going to be easy."
"We registered as a political party to stand in the European elections but it was never our sole purpose," Ms Soubry said.
"It is vital we continue leading the fight against a damaging Brexit, pressing for a People's Vote and being prepared to revoke Article 50 in the face of a no-deal Brexit."
A joint statement issued by the outgoing Change UK MPs said: "We are very grateful to everyone who has supported us over the past four months since we left our respective political parties.
"Heidi Allen, Luciana Berger, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith, Chuka Umunna and Sarah Wollaston have made the decision to leave Change UK, returning to supporting each other as an independent grouping of MPs.
"We believe that our priority right now must be to provide collegiate leadership to bring people together in the national interest.
"We know the landscape will continue to shift within the political environment and have concluded that by returning to sit as independents, we will be best placed to work cross party and respond flexibly."
Chief negotiator Olly Robbins will quit his Brexit role this summer.
Mr Robbins has committed to a brief handover before he moves on, with reports he may take up a job in the City.
Mr Robbins’ departure is the latest in a wave of top civil servants dealing with Brexit who have announced they will resign rather than take on the challenge of delivering Brexit within 100 days under the new leader.
Tom Shinner, director of policy and delivery coordination at the Department for Exiting the EU, and Karen Wheeler, director general of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs Brexit border delivery group, have both announced they will quit.
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Tory leadership contender Jeremy Hunt was quizzed about the report at a hustings in Manchester and said it is “a good moment to change our approach” to cheers from Tory members.
Mr Hunt said: “I didn’t agree with the approach that we took in a number of areas of the Brexit negotiations.
“I was a loyal Cabinet minister – I think it’s very important the Prime Minister has a loyal Foreign Secretary – but I wasn’t a believer in the backstop and I didn’t believe it would get through Parliament, so I think this is a good moment to change our approach.
“I’m not going to say something about a civil servant who I know works incredibly hard, even though there are issues I disagree with him on.
“But I do think now is a moment that we have to get this right, deliver a different deal and one that can actually get through Parliament.”
Both candidates are expected to unveil new Brexit negotiating teams shortly, with Mr Hunt recruiting two Canadians with the aim of securing a Candian-style free trade deal, and Mr Johnson drafting in Brexiteers including Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he could launch a fresh bid to oust Theresa May if her Brexit deal is rejected by MPs for a third time.
The Labour leader said it would be “appropriate” to table another confidence motion in the Government at that point.
Mr Corbyn also indicated that his party could back an amendment calling for a referendum on a Brexit deal, although he would not set out which side he would be on in another public vote.
Appearing on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday, he said: “The Government is apparently going to bring its proposals once again to Parliament this week. I suspect they will be defeated again.
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"The whole process they are doing is running down the clock.
“I think at that point a confidence motion will be appropriate. At that point we should say there has to be a general election so the people of this country can decide ‘do they want a Labour government investing in people’s communities, dealing with inequality, injustice and having a relationship with Europe that protects jobs and guarantees our trade for the future?'”
Pressed on whether a defeat on the third meaningful vote would be the trigger to launch a motion he said: “We will obviously decide the exact moment.”
Mr Corbyn stressed that Labour was “not supporting Theresa May’s deal at all because we think it’s a blindfold Brexit which will actually do enormous damage to our economy”.
But he indicated that the party could officially back an amendment tabled by backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson who have put forward a plan to support the deal on the condition it is put to a referendum.
“We have obviously got to see the wording of it,” Mr Corbyn said.
Asked if he was “enthusiastic” about a referendum, Mr Corbyn said: “I’m enthusiastic about getting a deal with Europe which guarantees our future trading relationship and protects job and industries in this country.
“I do think people should have a choice on that.”
Challenged on whether he would vote Remain in a referendum , Mr Corbyn said: “It depends what the choice is in front of us.
“If we have got a good deal in which we can have a dynamic relationship with Europe, which is all the trading relationship and so on, then that might be a good way forward that unites the country."
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Repeatedly challenged on whether he wanted to leave the EU Mr Corbyn said: “We want to have a relationship with the EU of the type I set out and people will have a choice on that.
“But there will be a credible choice in any referendum that Labour proposes.”
Mr Corbyn has written to MPs backing soft Brexit plans as well as supporters of a second referendum, inviting them for talks to find a cross-party compromise.
The Labour leader called for urgent meetings to find a “solution that ends the needless uncertainty and worry” caused by Mrs May’s “failed” Brexit negotiations.
He said Labour’s “credible” plans would form the starting point for any discussions, but he was keen to find “common ground” with supporters of other plans.
The offer has been extended to SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, Plaid’s Liz Saville Roberts and Green MP Caroline Lucas as well as backbenchers with Brexit plans.
Mr Corbyn said: “Labour has set out credible options as to how we propose to break the deadlock and avoid a disastrous no-deal.
“This includes putting forward an alternative Brexit plan with a permanent customs union, single market deal and dynamic alignment on rights and protections.
“We have also said that we would support a public vote to prevent damaging Brexit proposals being forced on the country.
“We would obviously use that position as a starting point for any discussions, but we would like to hear about the plans you are advocating, and we are keen to see if there is scope to find common ground between our respective proposals and to work together to break the impasse.”
Cross-party Brexit talks are set to continue this week as ministers urged Jeremy Corbyn to do a deal with the Government to break the deadlock.
Negotiations between Labour and the Conservatives will resume on Tuesday, with reports over the weekend suggesting Theresa May is poised to propose a temporary customs arrangement with the EU.
But shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused the Prime Minister of jeopardising the talks, claiming she had “blown the confidentiality” of the discussions.
He said he no longer trusts Mrs May, following reports in the Sunday Times that she was prepared to give ground in three areas: customs, goods alignment and workers’ rights.
Meanwhile Rory Stewart, the newly appointed International Development Secretary, warned that the Tories could lose four million voters if the party takes a harder line on Brexit and tries to “outdo” Nigel Farage.
He said Labour and the Conservatives’ positions were a “quarter of an inch apart”, telling Sky News’ Sophy Ridge of Sunday: “I think a deal can be done, a lot of this rests on… whether Jeremy Corbyn really wants to deliver a Brexit deal.
“But I think if he wants to do it, it will be actually surprisingly easy to do because our positions are very, very close.”
And Mrs May wrote in the Mail on Sunday: “To the leader of the opposition, I say this: let’s listen to what the voters said in the elections and put our differences aside for a moment. Let’s do a deal.”
Elsewhere, a poll by political blog Conservative Home found that 82% of its party member panel respondents want Mrs May to stand down as party leader and to call a leadership election.
Mr Stewart, who also confirmed that he would run to be the next prime minister when Mrs May stands down, said: “Most Brexit voters voted for the Conservative Party but four million Remain voters voted for the Conservative Party.
“If the Conservative Party were to make the mistake of trying to outdo Nigel Farage, which I’m sure we won’t but it is something that a few of my colleagues are talking about, then we would lose those four million voters.
“We’d lose young people, we’d lose Scotland, we’d lose London and we’d lose a lot of the most energetic parts of this country.
“We’ve got to be a broad party. We’ve got to be able to stretch all the way from Ken Clarke right the way through to Jacob Rees-Mogg.”
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener
Nigel Farage has said his Brexit Party is already focusing on fighting a general election after the Conservatives and Labour saw dramatic losses in the European elections.
The Tories dropped to just 9% share of the vote in, suffering their worst ever performance at the ballot box.
Labour picked up just 14.1% of votes, voters favoured alternatives offered by Mr Farage and the pro-EU Liberal Democrats.
The Brexit Party, on the other hand, won just under 32% of the vote, giving it 29 seats in Brussels after forming only six weeks ago.
Mr Farage predicted his newly-formed party would do well at the ballot box for the nation's leadership, should politicians fail to deliver Brexit.
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Even as ballot papers were still being counted, the former UKIP leader jubilantly told ITV News his party is "getting ready for a general election".
He added he'll be "pushing very hard" for it to take a seat at the table for future rounds of Brexit negotiations - but stated he wouldn't trust any of the candidates running for Conservative Party leadership.
"Which of the Tory candidates would I trust and believe? None of them."
He said: "Whatever any Conservative leader says well why would I believe them because we're heard it all before.
"Theresa May telling us 108 times we would leave on March 29 and we didn't."
He continued: "I do not believe the Conservative Party is even capable of producing a leader through this contest with that kind of clear message, I just don't think it's going to happen."
"Disappointing night" for Conservatives, says May
The scale of the Tory disaster was underlined by its single-digit vote share - in fifth place behind the Brexit Party, Lib Dems, Labour and the Greens.
Just four Conservatives were elected. The party suffered signifcant loses to the Brexit Party, which took 29 seats - an increase from the 24 MEPs sent by Nigel Farage's UKIP to Brussels in 2014.
In her first tweet since announcing her resignation as party leader, Theresa May said the party had suffered a "disappointing night" - but stood by her stance of the UK only leaving the EU with a deal stating: "It shows the importance of finding a Brexit deal, and I sincerely hope these results focus minds in Parliament."
Meanwhile, foreign secretary and Tory leadership hopeful Jeremy Hunt said the dire results for the Conservatives meant the party faced an “existential risk” unless it delivered Brexit.
Michael Gove said the results show "it is clear" that the result of the 2016 referendum must be honoured.
He warned failure to do so before the next General Election could lead to Jeremy Corbyn in power "propped up" by the SNP.
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Labour moves closer toward backing second referendum
Following his party's poor performance, with 14.1% of the vote, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a statement Brexit "will have to go back to the people," either through a general election or a second referendum.
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said he would support "going back to the people in another referendum," if a general election is not possible.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott tweeted: "We have to take the time to analyse the EU vote. But, when we come in third after the Brexit party, that is a clue something is wrong with our strategy.
"We need to listen to our members and take a clearer line on a public vote."
Two of Labour’s most senior figures – Emily Thornberry and Tom Watson – tore into the campaign fought by Jeremy Corbyn, claiming the party had lacked a clear message and should have backed another referendum.
In a sign that he could consider a shift in position, Mr Corbyn added: “Over the coming days we will have conversations across our party and movement, and reflect on these results on both sides of the Brexit divide.”
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Speaking opposite the Houses of Parliament on Monday afternoon, Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said his party's success at the ballot box shows it there is a clear national interest in stopping Brexit.
After a tough few years for the party, which saw it lose the majority of its MPs, Mr Cable said the result of the European elections shows the Lib Dems are once again a "major national force".
His party picked up 20.3% of the vote, finishing with 16 seats - 15 more than they ended up with in 2014.
The winners and losers around the country
SNP dominated Scotland with nearly 40% of the vote and three seats, while the Liberal Democrats, Tories and the Brexit Party finished with one each.
Labour won no seats in Scotland for the first time.
The Brexit Party also dominated Wales, with Plaid Cymru finishing second.
In Northern Ireland, the last of the 12 regions to declare results, Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson won a seat along with Alliance Party leader Naomi Long and the DUP’s Diane Dodds.
Frictionless trade after Brexit will be impossible, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier made the comments to an audience at Queen’s University in Belfast just days before the UK is set to leave the EU.
"The UK has chosen to become a third country; to leave the single market and the customs union; to leave behind the EU’s framework of common rules, common supervision and common Court of Justice," Mr Barnier said.
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He adds: "It has chosen to create two regulatory spaces. This makes frictionless trade impossible. It makes checks indispensable."
Speaking to politicians including former Irish premier Bertie Ahern as well as business and community leaders, Mr Barnier confirmed checks will take place.
Under the Brexit deal, the UK will leave the EU’s customs union but Northern Ireland will continue to enforce the EU’s customs code at its ports.
Unionists have spoken against checks taking place between goods travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, while there has also been widespread opposition to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
Mr Barnier said the EU "must be able to assess risks on any product coming into its market".
"We will need sanitary and phytosanitary checks on food products and live animals," he said.
"The EU must be able to assess risks on any product coming into its market and, if necessary, activate physical controls.
"These checks must take place somewhere.
"And as the whole point of the protocol is to avoid a hard border and protect the all-island economy, it was clear that they could not take place at the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland."
"The only real option was to use Northern Ireland’s other entry points.
"This is also where such checks are the easiest to implement. And controls will also take place in Dublin and other EU entry points."
Mr Barnier earlier met with Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill and the region’s economy minister Diane Dodds.
He also visited Belfast City Hall, where he signed a book of condolence for former deputy first minister Seamus Mallon.
Speaking at Queen’s later, he welcomed the resumption of powersharing government in Northern Ireland following a three-year collapse.
He said Stormont’s voice “had been missed during the negotiations on Brexit and Northern Ireland”.
As Brexit approaches, Mr Barnier said it is now the “EU and the UK’s joint responsibility to make this agreement work on the ground”.
He said: "The EU takes this responsibility very seriously. And let’s be clear: We have been creative and flexible in finding a workable solution. But this is a detailed legal text. Now is the time to implement it precisely."
Mr Barnier continued: "The Withdrawal Agreement must be applied with rigour and discipline by all sides.
"It cannot be reopened under the guise of implementation.
"We will be monitoring its correct application very carefully."
The EU negotiator concluded by saying he continues to have a "profound respect for the UK".
"That is why at the beginning of this new chapter of European history, I would really like to wish the UK well - speaking here in Northern Ireland - as it embarks on this journey," he said.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Now that I've had the opportunity to review the extraordinary and historic events that took place here in Brussels, and talk to people involved in the talks, I have a new take on what happened and why.
The big drivers for why the EU's 27 leaders came up with their new formula for determining when and whether we Brexit are:
EU leaders had - and have - zero confidence that the Prime Minister will win her meaningful vote next week, and they quite rationally decided it was unreasonable for them to determine in conditions of extreme pressure in seven days whether we we are falling out at 11pm on the Friday.
Many EU leaders are utterly fed up with how our Brexit mess is infecting their domestic political debates and derailing their attempts to forge an agenda to address the huge challenges faced by the EU. "They increasingly see Brexit as poisoning the EU and European nations" said a participant in the talks. "They want rid of it".
They did not dare set 22 May as the new default Brexit day, for fear that if the UK exited with no deal as late at that, elections for the European Parliament which begin the following day would be utterly overshadowed and skewed by the anticipated first-day no-deal chaos.
Significant numbers of EU leaders are admitting privately that the time has come to "cut the UK loose", that the prolonged Brexit uncertainty is damaging both their nations and the EU, and that therefore a no-deal Brexit on 12 April may be the best of assorted bad options.
To be clear, some EU leaders - like President Macron of France - want Brexit settled one way or another soon so that they (or rather, he) can get back to pursuing the agenda of deepening and strengthening the institutions of the EU.
Others just want to make a lesson of the UK so that the eurosceptic parties in their own countries are shown the harsh reality of exiting the EU.
But the important point for MPs, as they ponder how to use the three weeks remaining to the new Brexit day of 12 April, is that there is no appetite for more dithering, obfuscation and delay from the UK.
So MPs have to make up their minds NOW on which of the available options to pursue, and to be flexible fast if their first choice disappears.
The options are:
To back the PM's deal when it returns for a third meaningful vote, probably on Tuesday. Truthfully, as EU leaders believe, this option looks lost already.
Use the novel procedure of "indicative votes" to coalesce around a softer Brexit, like Common Market 2.0, with a view to getting a statement from EU leaders that such a softer Brexit is consistent with the Political Declaration on the future UK/EU relationship they've already signed. And also incorporate into UK law, via the Withdrawal and Implementation Bill, that a UK government of any persuasion is obliged to make a reality of that softer Brexit in the subsequent two to four years of talks.
Use the novel procedure of indicative votes to coalesce around a referendum.
Decide that a no-deal Brexit on 12 April is the best we'll realistically get. Go for that in a spirit of hope rather than anger. And after the initial economic shock, get back to negotiating a sensible long term commercial and security relationship with the EU.
Here are two other important considerations. The second option, of moving to some form of soft, single-market based Brexit, could be expedited to get us out of the EU by 22 May - that is without the requirement for the UK to participate in the EU parliamentary elections.
However the fourth option, a referendum, would require us to field candidates in that election - which would be weird in the extreme, as a country which has very publicly said it wants to leave the EU.
Be in no doubt that every EU 27 leader dreads UK participation in those elections; they fear our involvement will corrupt the process, and taint the institution. The notion of Nigel Farage leading a new bloc of EurExiters does not warm their cockles.
And if proof you need, the decision to choose 12 April as the new Brexit cliff-edge date was made precisely because that is the last possible moment when, under EU rules, it is possible to be an EU member and not field candidates in the election. If we're members on 13 April, Farage - and anyone else who fancies - can put themselves up for election to the EU parliament.
To be clear, though, the EU's leaders can't and won't say no if we insist on fighting them. But they would hate it and would say yes with the heaviest of hearts.
What matters more than anything therefore is that in the three weeks of breathing space EU leaders have given us - JUST THREE WEEKS - UK party leaders, ministers, senior politicians, MPs have to do what they have singularly failed to in the more than 1000 days since Brexit, which is to co-operate as far as they can to find an outcome that is in the national interest, take proper responsibility for it, and lay to one side narrow party considerations.
If they don't, won't or can't, we will be leaving without a deal on 12 April. And truthfully, based on what you might call behavioural evidence on the current generation of MPs, I am retaining my prediction that we will be leaving without a deal, probably in 21 days.
Video report by ITV News Anchor Tom Bradby
Boris Johnson has been accused of spreading fake news after claiming “Brussels bureaucrats” were behind rules about sending Isle of Man kippers by post.
Officials in Brussels pointed out that the rules were set in the UK and EU food safety commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis reminded Mr Johnson, a former Brussels correspondent, that the Isle of Man is not in the European Union.
Mr Andriukaitis tweeted: “Boris, the Isle of Man is not bound to the EU ‘pointless and damaging’ red tape in food safety that we are proud of because it protects consumers.
“You omitted to say that the Isle of Man is not in the EU. This packaging –  UK competence. Yet another smoke. #fakenews.”
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Mr Johnson used his final hustings of the leadership campaign on Wednesday to deride the EU’s “pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging health and safety” with the use of a kipper and a plastic ice pillow.
The frontrunner for the Tory leadership held up the plastic-wrapped fish and told the audience: “I want you to consider this kipper.”
Addressing the crowd in east London, Mr Johnson went on: “This kipper, which has been presented to me just now by the editor of a national newspaper, who received it from a kipper smoker in the Isle of Man, who is utterly furious, because after decades of sending kippers like this through the post he has had his costs massively increased by Brussels bureaucrats, who have insisted that each kipper must be accompanied by this – a plastic ice pillow.
“Pointless, pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging health and safety, ladies and gentlemen.”
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However, responding to Mr Johnson’s claims today, an EU spokeswoman said: “Our priority in the EU is the health of our citizens as well as safeguarding our standards in terms of public health and food safety – the highest in the world.
“While the food business operator has an obligation to meet the microbiological requirements to ensure the safety of its food, however the sale of products from the food business operator to the final consumer is not covered by EU legislation on food hygiene.
“The case described by Mr Johnson falls thus purely under UK national competence.”
Providing further detail, she said the sale of smoked fish to the final consumer is “excluded from the scope of the EU Regulation on food hygiene”, adding that temperature requirements for the sale “are thus a national competence”.
The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) advises retailers who sell food online that their products “must be delivered to consumers in a way that ensures that they do not become unsafe or unfit to eat”.
Specifically, it says: “Foods that need refrigerating must be kept cool while they are being transported. This may need to be packed in an insulated box with a coolant gel or in a cool bag.”
Neil Robson, managing director of the fourth generation family business L Robson & Sons situated in Craster on the Northumberland coast, said he was unaware of any changes to rules governing the sending of his products.
“We use a coolant when it’s warm – it’s a paper product that we soak in water and freeze because we’re trying to do away with plastic – but not in the middle of winter. It’s good practice.”
Kippers are produced from herrings, which are split and placed in a brine solution of plain salt and water before they are hung and smoked for up to 16 hours to preserve them.
L Robson & Sons then send the finished vacuum packed product to online customers in the UK by Royal Mail first class post.
It also supplies supermarkets using refrigerated transport, as well as markets, smaller farm shops, delicatessens and fishmongers.
The Government is standing down emergency preparations for a no-deal Brexit following the latest delay to Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, it has been reported.
The decision to halt no-deal operational planning by officials was taken at a meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, according to a leaked email seen by Sky News.
The email, which was said to have been sent to all civil servants in an unnamed “front line Brexit department”, says the suspension was taking place with “immediate effect”.
Downing Street said departments were taking “sensible decisions” about the timing of their no-deal preparations following the agreement by EU leaders to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process to October 31.
However the move is likely to infuriate Tory Brexiters already angry at the latest delay to Britain’s departure from the EU.
The Government has committed £4 billion to no-deal preparations, but some MPs believe the six-month extension shows Theresa May was never prepared to countenance leaving without a deal.
Anger grows in Brexit heartland as leave date postponed again
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker, who is now deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, accused the Government of acting out of “sheer spite”.
“Officials have worked exceptionally hard to deliver our preparedness and deserve better,” he tweeted.
According to Sky, the email said: “In common with the rest of government, we have stood down our no-deal operational planning with immediate effect.
“This morning, at a meeting chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, we agreed that the objective is to ensure we wind down our no-deal planning in a careful, considered and orderly way.”
A Downing Street spokesman said: “As a responsible Government, we’ve been preparing for over two years to minimise any disruption in the event of no deal.
“In light of this week’s developments, departments will make sensible decisions about the timing and pace at which some of this work is progressing given that the date we leave the EU has changed, but we will absolutely continue to make all necessary preparations.”
Conservative leadership hopeful said he does not believe the "scare stories" about the impact a no-deal Brexit - despite warnings from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) it would be bad for business.
In a wide-ranging interview with ITV Political Correspondent Paul Brand, the former Tory chief whip outlined his Brexit plans and hopes for the country after he became the twelfth MP to put themselves forward to replace Theresa May.
Conservative leadership race: Who are the runners and riders?
Theresa May’s legacy will be defined by Brexit chaos
While he said he wanted to strike a deal with Brussels, Mr Harper warned it was necessary to deliver on the 2016 referendum to restore faith with voters - with or without a Brexit deal.
He told ITV News: "I don't pretend there wouldn't be any issues to deal with, clearly there would be.
"But I don't agree with some of the scare stories that we've read. I think there would be some issues and that we'd have to work through them."
The Forest of Dean MP took aim at the CBI previous warnings to previous governments, including its recommendation for the UK to join the Eurozone.
"I do reflect with the CBI that this was the organisation that said if we didn't join the European single currency, the economy would be doomed and that businesses would leave and there would be massive unemployment," Mr Harper said.
"And actually, things worked out pretty well. I think most people in Britain would consider its a massive benefit that we didn't join the single currency, so I don't think they've always been right."
'We have to deliver Brexit'
Mr Harper's entry into the Conservative leadership race has swelled the number of hopefuls in the race to replace Mrs May to twelve, which has drawn criticism from stalwarts in the party like Iain Duncan Smith.
He justified his entry into the leadership race by saying the new Prime Minister needed to have a "fresh" approach to Brexit talks, and someone who was not associated with Mrs May's Cabinet, who he said failed to deliver on Brexit.
"We've got a very important task to get done", Mr Harper said.
"We have got to deliver Brexit. We got a real kicking at the European elections last week because voters don't think we kept our promises.
"I've got a lot of ministerial experience and cabinet experience which I think gives me some skills to get this job done.
"But I haven't been round the table in the last three years with Theresa May's government, and I think therefore I can bring a fresh approach to those who have been round the table and are responsible for the position we are in can't bring to the table and I think that's what I'm offering to my colleagues."
Mr Harper also said he consider extending the Brexit deadline past the current October 31 deadline if it meant he could secure a deal - something his other rivals have ruled out.
'I'm a feminist'
Answering questions which deviated away from policy and Brexit, Mr Harper admitted that [unlike fellow leadership hopeful Dominic Raab, he identified as a feminist](http://Dominic Raab on Brexit, Boris Johnson, feminism, and changing gender).
The Oxford University educated MP said: "If you mean do I believe that men and women should have a fair crack and an equal chance, then yes I would.
"I am co-chairmen of women to win, an organisation within the Conservative party which is about getting more women into parliament.
"Currently we've got four-fifths of Conservative MPs are men, and you can have a debate about exact percentages, but I don't think that reflects the distribution of talent within the population.
"So if that's your definition of being a feminist, then yes I would say I was one."
Harper on LGBT education for children
Mr Harper also waded into the debate over whether parents should be able to withdraw their primary-aged children from lessons on same-sex relationships.
On Thursday, Esther McVey told Sky News she believed "parents know best for their children" - sparking anger from fellow Conservative MP Justine Greening, who told her "you can't pick and choose and human rights and equality".
However he struck a conciliatory tone on Friday, saying he believed the Government's current position on the issue was the one he supported.
He said: "The argument as I understand it... it's not about sex education, it's about relationships.
"I think teaching children about the world as it is helps them be more tolerant, it helps them grow up in a more rounded way, and I think those sorts of lessons are very valuable."
Mr Harper - a former immigration minister under David Cameron's government - resigned from his post in 2014 after it emerged his cleaner did not have permission to work in the UK.
He told Paul Brand that he still employs a cleaner but now does so through an agency.
"We hire her through a company so they take care of all the legal requirements. I don't hire one directly... I changed those arrangements to make sure I don't fall into the same difficulties I had before."
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The Scottish National Party has come round to the idea that Jeremy Corbyn may shortly have to become temporary caretaker prime minister, in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit on 31 October and immediately afterwards hold a general election.
A source close to the SNP leadership tells me that Ian Blackford, leader of the SNP in Westminster, and Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, are deeply concerned that it may now be impossible to prevent a no deal Brexit unless Boris Johnson is removed from office.
One said: "It is increasingly clear that we will have to install a new prime minister via a vote of no confidence, so that we can request a delay to Brexit and hold an election. The convention is absolutely clear that it is the leader of the opposition - in this case Jeremy Corbyn - who should become prime minister in those circumstances.
"Trying to find a compromise candidate, a national unity candidate, is too complicated, especially in the time we have. Whether people like it or not, the temporary prime minister has to be Corbyn."
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The source added that the other opposition parties, and the 34 independent MPs, would have to come round to backing Corbyn, if they want to be certain of avoiding a no deal Brexit.
For the Lib Dems, led by Jo Swinson, seeing Corbyn as PM even for a short period may be too much to swallow. The 21 former Tory MPs expelled by Johnson for backing the Brexit-delaying Benn Act, and the former minister Amber Rudd who resigned from the Cabinet in solidarity with them, are also deeply hostile to the idea of Corbyn becoming PM, even for a few weeks.
But according to a senior SNP member, the threats from Johnson and his senior aide Dominic Cummings that the Benn Act will prove ineffectual in blocking a no deal Brexit have to be taken "extremely seriously".
One senior SNP MP told me that the party agrees with Sir John Major, the former Tory minister, who warned tonight that Boris Johnson may use an order of council to delay the implementation of the Benn Act, the legislation forced on the PM by MPs whose purpose is to compel Johnson to request a Brexit postponement if he has not secured a new Brexit deal by 19 October.
In a speech at residence of the Spanish ambassador, Major said:
"It is important to note that an Order of Council can be passed by Privy Councillors – that is Government Ministers – without involving HM The Queen. I should warn the Prime Minister that – if this route is taken – it will be in flagrant defiance of Parliament and utterly disrespectful to the Supreme Court. It would be a piece of political chicanery that no-one should ever forgive or forget."
The combined forces of Labour and the SNP alone are not sufficient to bring down Johnson. And the motives of the SNP in swinging towards support for a temporary Corbyn premiership will be mistrusted by other opposition MPs, because opinion polls show that the SNP would win by a landslide in Scotland in any imminent general election.
But opposition MPs are increasingly united in their unease at the way that Johnson is using emotional and provocative language - such as describing the Benn Act as the "Surrender" Act - to generate hostility against parliament among those who backed Brexit in the referendum.
Every opposition leader has described Johnson as "unfit to govern" since the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that his five-week prorogation or suspension of parliament was unlawful.
Angus Walker
Former ITV News Correspondent
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker
Last night, I’d been reporting on the meeting at the UK Ambassador’s Residence in Brussels between Michel Barnier and Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay.
They’d been joined for their dinner by their respective teams, including Olly Robbins, the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator.
I saw Olly Robbins leave the dinner and walk to his taxi as my cameraman and I were preparing to report live outside for ITV News.
Once we’d finished we returned to our hotel and decided to have a quick nightcap in the bar.
It was then, when we walked into the bar, we realised Olly Robbins was also in the same hotel. He too was having a drink.
He was with two colleagues in the bar and could be clearly overheard by other guests as he gossiped about Brexit, the cabinet and MPs.
He was speaking in such a manner that you didn’t have to listen hard to hear him. But to be clear, I was hearing chunks of their conversation and not every single word.
Who is Olly Robbins, possibly the most powerful man in Westminster you’ve never heard of?
But during that conversation Olly Robbins said that, in his view, he expects the choice for MPs to be either backing May’s deal or extending talks with the EU.
He expects MPs in March to be presented with backing a reworked Brexit deal or a potentially significant delay to Brexit, he told colleagues last night.
“The issue is whether Brussels is clear on the terms of extension,” he was overheard saying. “In the end they will probably just give us an extension.”
ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker reports on Olly Robbins' "extraordinary" comments which he overheard
This is significant. The prime minister has consistently said that we are leaving the EU on March 29th and that she will not engage with discussion about delaying our departure.
We now know her chief negotiator – who works directly for her – appears to be expecting a delay. A delay which she has always said was an option that was not on the table.
Robbins added that he thought the fear of a long extension to Article 50 might focus MPs' minds.
He suggested: “... Got to make them believe that the week beginning end of March... Extension is possible but if they don’t vote for the deal then the extension is a long one...”
On the backstop, Robbins outlined a strategy to satisfy Theresa May's backbenchers, saying the European Commission would need to agree that the word “necessary” in the Northern Ireland protocol is defined as “necessary subject to the future trade deal”.
At the moment the text of the document says the backstop must “maintain the necessary conditions” for North-South cooperation under the Good Friday Agreement.
It appears that Robbins and the prime minister want the Withdrawal Agreement amended so that the Good Friday Agreement would be less of an obstacle to the backstop being superseded by a new long-term trading relationship between the UK and EU.
What is also striking is how Robbins confirmed that the original plan was for the backstop, which would keep the UK in the customs union, was designed not as a "safety net" for the island of Ireland but as "a bridge" to the long-term trading relationship - which is something the prime minister has always denied.
“The big clash all along is the ‘safety net’,” Robbins said. “We agreed a bridge but it came out as a ‘safety net’.”
These remarks by Robbins are explosive, because they will confirm the fears of Tory Brexiters that he and May always saw some form of customs union membership as the long term ambition for the UK's trading relationship with the EU.
Had it stayed as a ‘bridge’ into a customs union that might have lessened Labour opposition to the deal.
He explained that the current talks in Brussels need to find a ‘way out’ for those who see the backstop as a “trap”.
The talks go on.
A government spokesperson said: “We don’t propose to comment on alleged remarks from a private conversation. The government’s focus is on securing the improvements Parliament needs to pass a deal so we leave the EU on 29th March.”
Boris Johnson has claimed he feels "deep regret" over the failure to implement his promise of Brexit by Halloween.
The Prime Minister replied "of course, of course" when asked if he will apologise to those Conservative Party members who voted for him as they believed he would deliver the UK’s exit from the EU by October 31.
He also said he can see "no reason whatsoever" about why the UK should extend the Brexit transition period beyond December 2020, adding: "If you get the right Parliament anything’s possible.
"But what you can do from the beginning is, of course, you can begin negotiating, not just with the EU but with countries around the world, and that’s one of the great opportunities that we have next year."
The election depends on LibDem and SNP unity of purpose, writes Robert Peston
Flextension, Yellowhammer and the tunnel: Key Brexit terms explained
The PM earlier said the UK has secured a "great new deal", telling Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News: "We got Parliament to say it was a good deal, but then they refused to implement it.
"Actually, there was bags of time between that vote to, when they first said it was a good deal and when they could have got us out on October 31."
Told he needed to take responsibility and could not just blame other people, Mr Johnson said: "Well, I do. I do and I’m deeply, deeply disappointed."
Asked if he was sorry, the PM said: "Yes, absolutely."
Pushed on whether he would apologise to Tory members who supported him, Mr Johnson replied: "Of course, of course.
"It’s a matter of … it’s a matter of deep regret.
"What we need to do now is get on and do it and the difference between this Government and any other party is that only this Government offers a deal that is ready to go and a way of delivering it immediately in the middle of December, if we’re lucky enough to get a majority, and, of course, it’s a big if and we’ll be working very hard.
"The reason why it’s necessary to have an election is because I’m afraid, otherwise, what was going to happen was Parliament was going to rope-a-dope us.
"They were going to say, 'OK, you know, we’ll agree this, we’ll agree that', but they weren’t actually going to give final approval, not to, by new year, not by January 31, and then we would have had to go for another extension, and the reason why … it’s so painful to have these extensions, it’s not 'cause of, you know, my promises or my ego or whatever, it’s because the uncertainty that it means for the whole country.
"Businesses can’t plan, families can’t plan, people just don’t know when Brexit is going to be done and that’s why I think that the offer from the Labour Party is so crazy and so debilitating because what they’re saying is have another referendum and keep the whole thing going."
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
One of the big reasons Brexiter Tories don't want the UK in the Northern Ireland backstop is that they fear the UK out of the EU but in the backstop would continue to be a rule taker from Brussels till we all die.
And one of the reasons Labour Brexiters have struggled to support the Prime Minister's version of Brexit is that they are not confident a future British government would continue to adopt the high employment and environmental protections that the EU has championed.
To use the emotive language of Boris Johnson, Tory Brexiters want no Brussels vassalage (or the absolute bare minimum) and Labour Brexiters want some vassalage.
May will 'give everything she's got' to get Brexit plan through, says Leadsom
MPs vote to further bind Theresa May's hands on Brexit
So perhaps the best measure of the PM's desperation to win the vote on her deal is that she is trying to appease both sides: she is supporting the Swire amendment to her "meaningful vote" motion on her Brexit plan which would supposedly help to get the UK out of the backstop after a year, and considering support for the Mann amendment that would see the UK following EU employment and environmental standards in perpetuity (and even adopting revised EU standards after Brexit).
For the prime minister, this would be just a sensible compromise to avoid what she sees as a damaging no-deal Brexit - what Tony Blair used to call a "third way".
For her critics it would represent the unsustainable, irreconcilable contradictions in her Brexit proposal, and is proof why a majority of MPs will never support it.
Apart from anything else, neither amendment - even if passed - would have legally binding force, for the simple reason the backstop is part of an international treaty that a parliamentary vote cannot over-ride whereas the future of our labour and environmental standards would be set by negotiations with the EU that cannot happen till after Brexit.
All of this is a piece with the prime minister's blancmange of a Brexit, which has wobbled, changed shape and been squished by the varying political pressures in Westminster and Brussels.
But if she does lose the vote on Tuesday, as widely expected, that would be the moment Brexit can no longer be quite so gelatinous and malleable.
At that juncture she would have to decide whose side she is on, the Brexiter ultras or those in both her party and Labour who actively seek a bit of long-term vassalage.
But either choice risks the break up of her party.
That is why, perhaps, she may ultimately conclude the only way through is to announce a formal surrender and turn the decision of what kind of Brexit or no Brexit the UK ultimately adopts over to MPs (who could also decide that it's all too hard, and would then throw the decision back at us, in a referendum - gawd help us).
Any future attempt by a Boris Johnson-led Government to “bypass” Parliament to pursue a no-deal Brexit “would be beyond a prime minister’s powers”, campaigner Gina Miller has said.
Businesswoman Ms Miller announced she and her legal team had written to Mr Johnson arguing any move to prorogue Parliament “would be an abuse of his powers” and would result in legal action.
Ms Miller previously went to court and won the right for Parliament to give its consent ahead of Government triggering Article 50 to begin the Brexit process.
No-deal Brexit will leave UK ‘at mercy of French’ warns Hammond
Proroguing Parliament: What does it mean?
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She revealed that a letter from her legal team that went to Tory leadership contender Mr Johnson on Thursday “was to say that if he became prime minister that we believe that that would be beyond his powers, and also relying on the judgment in my case in 2017 where the Supreme Court expressly said that Parliament could not be bypassed”.
Speaking about the prospect of prorogation of Parliament on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday, hosted by Niall Paterson, she said: “We think that it’s beyond the Prime Minister’s powers because parliamentary sovereignty is actually the jewel in the constitutional crown and to bypass and to close the doors of Parliament, we feel from the advice and the… case law we’ve looked at, that that would be beyond a prime minister’s powers, it would be an abuse of his powers to close Parliament, to get through or to not get through, to limit the voice of the representatives that we all elect.”
Tory former international development secretary Priti Patel, who is backing Mr Johnson said she was “not at all surprised” by possible legal action, as she hit out at the “absolutely relentless movement to delay Brexit”.
She told Sky News: “It’s now down to MPs and a new government to actually take action, not for third parties by going through the courts.
“I think that’s exactly how it should have been previously as well, after 2016. After the referendum the Government was very clear back then that Brexit meant Brexit and that we were going to leave the EU.
“Instead we had a range of third-party anti-Brexit organisations and positions that chose to go to the court to derail basically the whole Brexit delivery and also to tie the hands of politicians, the Government and Parliament.
“That is simply not acceptable and quite frankly the British public are sick to death of this, they want to see a government now, with renewed conviction, get out there and do exactly what it said it will do, which is now to deliver Brexit.
“This should not be about the semantics of Parliament or just votes in Parliament or proroguing Parliament. We now have to get behind a new government.”
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
The Government has rejected a request by Labour to allow time for a debate and vote on Jeremy Corbyn's no-confidence motion against the prime minister, a Downing Street source said.
The source said: "We won't allow time for what is a stunt. The FTPA (Fixed Term Parliament Act) applies if Labour wants to put down a motion under the terms of that."
Mr Corbyn filed the motion in response to a Commons speech by Theresa May, in which she set a date for a debate on her Brexit deal, which she said would continue on the week commencing January 7 and the "meaningful vote" will take place the following week.
Mr Corbyn claimed it "unacceptable that we should be waiting almost a month" for the vote and told the House of Commons the only way he of "ensuring a vote takes place this week" is to table the motion of no-confidence.
He said: "The Prime Minister has obdurately refused to ensure a vote took place on the date she agreed, she refuses to allow a vote to take place this week and is now, I assume, thinking the vote will be on January 14 - almost a month away. This is unacceptable in any way whatsoever."
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston explains Corbyn's motion of no-confidence
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston says the Government decision to deny Parliament time to debate the motion means it "now seems dead".
The motion was largely symbolic and non-binding, however Labour must now decide whether to table a motion of no-confidence in the Government - rather than in the prime minister - under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, a move in which Theresa May could not intervene.
Opposition parties tabled an amendment to Mr Corbyn's no-confidence vote in Mrs May saying they would beef it up into a full-confidence vote in the Government.
The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party have backed the change, laid down on Monday night to trigger the legally binding FTPA provisions.
The SNP's Ian Blackford MP, who signed the amendment, said: "It is clear the Prime Minister's tactic has been to run down the clock and deprive Parliament of any alternative to her deal.
He added: "If Labour are serious about wanting a general election, they must accept our amendment."
Robert Peston explains why has Labour backed away from no-confidence vote in Government
She said: "I can confirm today that we intend to return to the meaningful vote debate in the week commencing January 7 and hold the vote the following week."
The Prime Minister was heckled throughout her speech as she told Parliament another vote would cause "irreparable damage" to the integrity of British politics.
She commented on the popularity of her proposed deal, admitting it was a compromise, but told the Commons "if we let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we risk leaving the EU with no deal."
Mrs May stressed that the Government had prepared for a no-deal Brexit and "tomorrow the Cabinet will be discussing the next phase in ensuring we are ready for that scenario".
Mr Corbyn hit back at the PM, saying she had led the country "into a national crisis," adding that the "grave situation" was demonstrated at last week's EU summit.
He said the "cold reality" was Mrs May achieved "nothing" after returning to Brussels to seek further assurances over the Irish border backstop.
Despite apparently failing to achieve new assurances on the backstop, Mrs May stood defiant against calls from Tony Blair and Tory MPs who are urging another referendum.
She said: "Let us not break faith with the British people by trying to stage another referendum.
"Another vote which would do irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics, because it would say to millions who trusted in democracy, that our democracy does not deliver.
"Another vote which would likely leave us no further forward than the last.
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"And another vote which would further divide our country at the very moment we should be working to unite it."
Responding to Mrs Mays speech the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford later quipped "we thought the Prime Minister had reached rock bottom, but she's still digging".
He said: "After two years of negotiation the Prime Minister has designed a deal that she knows that she cannot deliver, it doesn't have the support of this House.
"It is time to call time on this Government, it is a laughing stock."
Mrs May's Commons address follows comments from her de facto deputy, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington, and the PM's chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, both dismissing reports they are planning for a new referendum.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, a prominent Brexiteer, told ITV News that compared to the alternatives, "Mrs May's deal looks stronger in comparison to any of those options".
And Business Secretary Greg Clark said supporting Mrs May's deal would help end uncertainty, but if Parliament rejected it then MPs should "consider each of the alternatives and set out what kind of deal Parliament is willing to pass".
He said a second referendum would not end the uncertainty but "continue it".
Gove and Clark say PM's deal is the best option available:
Mr Clark told ITV News: "If it were the case that Parliament didn't support it, then I would say to colleagues in Parliament there's no use just being critics. It's easy to find things you don't like about a deal, any deal, but we are elected to take responsibility.
"Almost no one in Parliament wants to see the consequences of crashing out without a deal."
He added that if MPs looked at what the alternatives are, "they could see that the deal has more to commend it than they've seen so far".
Mrs May's official spokesman told a Westminster media briefing that there were "no plans" to stage an indicative vote on a range of Brexit options, but did not definitively rule the option out.
He said that all Cabinet ministers who have spoken publicly on Brexit in recent days had made clear their commitment to getting the Prime Minister's deal through Parliament, which remains the Government's priority.
Talks by officials were continuing "at all levels" to seek further clarification and assurances on the terms of the existing deal - and particularly the nature of the proposed backstop - as agreed at the European Council last week, he said.
The spokesman added: "The Prime Minister is very clear that we will not be holding a second referendum."
Mrs May faces a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday following a frantic few days when key ministers have jockeyed for attention and staked  out strong Brexit positions.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Britain would "prosper" even if it quit the EU with no deal, while Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd argued firmly against  leaving the bloc without an agreement.
And International Trade Secretary Liam Fox indicated he could support MPs being given a free vote on Brexit options.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson railed against the idea of a second referendum, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Monday: "A second referendum would provoke instant, deep and ineradicable feelings of betrayal."
Mr Johnson said the idea that the Government would hold a fresh Brexit poll was "sickening".
Labour is insisting that Mrs May puts her Brexit deal to a vote in the Commons before Parliament rises for Christmas on Thursday.
However, the party has made it clear it will not table a motion of no-confidence in the Government until such a vote has been held.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt
A leaked Government report which suggests the effects of leaving the EU without a deal would be a three-month "meltdown" of delays at UK's ports and food and medicine shortages, outlines the "absolute worst case scenario", Michael Gove has said.
Leaked Operation Yellowhammer documents published in the Sunday Times suggest the UK will face shortages of fuel, food and medicine if it leaves the European Union without a transition deal, jamming ports and requiring a hard border in Ireland.
Operation Yellowhammer is the Government's code name for its over-arching no-deal Brexit contingency plan.
Mr Gove, the Cabinet minister in charge of no-deal planning, said the report was old and since its publication the Government has taken "significant additional steps to ensure that we are prepared to leave on October 31 deal or no-deal."
"Any prudent Government will always plan for absolutely the worst case," the former Tory leadership candidate continued.
"In the last three weeks there has been a significant acceleration in what we've been doing.
"Yes, of course there are challenges in leaving without a deal, but there are also opportunities after October 31 if we have left with a clean break."
The Sunday Times reported the Government also believes a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic will be likely, as current plans to avoid widespread checks will prove unsustainable, speculation that Mr Gove dismissed.
"The Government will not put up any infrastructure at the border.
"There's no return to a hard border we will have a system of very, very limited checks, simply where international law requires it," the 51-year-old said, but was unable to promise that the EU would reciprocate.
ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt says there is "virtually no hope" of the EU and the UK reaching a new Brexit deal, since the two sides are locked in a "Mexican standoff". He adds that the EU is relying on Parliament to stop no-deal from happening, meaning it remains the default option.
The publication of the report comes as it was revealed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will meet the leaders of France and Germany later this week to ask for a new Brexit deal, but stresses the UK is prepared to leave the EU without one.
Mr Gove added the Government believes it is "entirely possible" to secure such an agreement with the EU before Halloween.
He also hit out at MPs who are trying to block a no-deal departure, accusing them of "trying to frustrate the Government's plans for departure.
"The sooner that everyone recognises that we are leaving on that day [October 31], the quicker we can move to a deal which not only safeguards an open border in Northern Ireland, but also safeguards the UK's economy and security and in particular the EU's economy and security."
He added those working to block no-deal were "giving heart" to EU leaders that the UK will not leave the bloc on October 31, and therefore undermining efforts to secure a new deal.
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The Sunday Times said up to 85% of lorries using the main channel crossings “may not be ready” for French customs, meaning disruption at ports would potentially last up to three months before the flow of traffic improves.
“Compiled this month by the Cabinet Office under the codename Operation Yellowhammer, the dossier offers a rare glimpse into the covert planning being carried out by the government to avert a catastrophic collapse in the nation’s infrastructure,” the newspaper reported.
“The file, marked 'official-sensitive' — requiring security clearance on a 'need to know' basis — is remarkable because it gives the most comprehensive assessment of the UK’s readiness for a no-deal Brexit.”
Asked about the Yellowhammer documents, energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News: “I think there’s a lot of scaremongering around, and a lot of people are playing into ‘Project Fear’...
"We’ve got to prepare for no-deal.”
“We will be fully prepared to leave without a deal on October 31.”
Former attorney general and vocal anti-no-deal Brexit campaigner Dominic Grieve said he was "not at all surprised" to learn about the details in the Operation Yellowhammer report, as it had been "quite apparent for months that if we leave with no-deal, there will be chaos".
He continued leaving with no-deal would "disrupt society in a massive way" and that it could take up to nine months for life in the UK to return to "an even keel".
"It's an extraordinary thing for a Government to do to its own people in peacetime," the Tory MP said.
"It's utterly unprecedented.
"I can't think of another example of a Government doing this to its own population, and yet that is what he [Boris Johnson] appears prepared to consider.
"That's the extent of his recklessness, and if I may say so, the extent of his unsuitability to hold high office."
Mr Johnson made it his mandate when he became Tory leader he would ensure the UK leaves the EU on October 31 "come what may" and "do or die".
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said the UK will leave the bloc with or without a deal by Halloween.
While Mr Johnson will this week ask the EU for a new Brexit deal, European leaders have repeatedly refused to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement which includes an Irish border insurance policy that Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, agreed in November.
On Sunday, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay tweeted he had signed a piece of legislation which set in stone the repeal of the 1972 European Communities act - the laws which made Britain a member of the organisation now known as the EU.
Though the move is largely procedural, in line with previously approved laws, Mr Barclay said in a statement it was "a clear signal to the people of this country that there is no turning back (from Brexit)".
Late on Saturday, more than 100 MPs revealed they had written to Mr Johnson calling for an emergency recall of Parliament to discuss the Brexit situation.
Parliament is currently on its summer recess and will not sit until the beginning of September.
“We face a national emergency, and parliament must now be recalled in August and sit permanently until October 31 so that the voices of the people can be heard, and that there can be proper scrutiny of your government,” the letter said.
The Prime Minister is coming under pressure from politicians across the political spectrum to prevent a disorderly departure, with opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn vowing this week to bring down Mr Johnson’s Government in early September to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
The Labour leader has insisted he should be installed as a caretaker prime minister to stop a no-deal Brexit, if a no-confidence motion in Mr Johnson's administration succeeds, despite his plan receiving repeated blows.
Boris Johnson should have stood up for the former UK ambassador during an ITV debate, Chancellor Philip Hammond has hinted.
Speaking on ITV's Peston programme, Mr Hammond said: "As a former foreign secretary, I would have felt the obligation to stand up for a first class civil servant who has done nothing wrong."
He added Sir Kim Darroch did a "good job" as the UK's man in Washington.
Mr Hammond reiterated the points put forward by the Government that the memos should not have been leaked, and that Sir Kim was expected to give an honest assessment of the country he was in.
"It is absolutely essential that these [diplomatic memos] are kept confidential," the 63-year-old said.
"But it's very important that governments are informed about what's going on in the capitals of their allies and partners.
"Many of us would be in a position, if things we have written in confidence, were to be published, that would put us in a very difficult position."
Mr Hammond was agreed with by the Tory MP, Sir Nicholas Soames.
Sir Nicholas told ITV News' Political Editor: "I have to say I didn't think that Boris behaved in the way a former foreign secretary, who understands the importance of relationships with ambassadors and the importance of ambassadors telling the truth about what they see and find.
"I thought he hung Kim Darroch out to dry last night."
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Mr Hammond also said that he does not expect to serve in the Cabinet if Mr Johnson becomes prime minister, and signalled that he would become a "nightmare" to the front runner in the Tory leadership race over a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Hammond insisted he would use the Commons backbenches to "vigorously" battle any attempt at withdrawing from the EU without a deal.
Asked if he would jump before he was pushed if Mr Johnson takes the Tory crown in two weeks' time, Mr Hammond told Peston: "My expectation is that I will not be serving in the next administration.
"But, I want to say this because I read some stuff in the papers earlier this week about how I would be a nightmare on the backbenches.
"I will continue to argue vigorously against a no-deal Brexit.
"And I will certainly do everything I can to prevent a no-deal Brexit without parliamentary approval."
The pointed comments came after Mr Johnson was put on notice to expect a legal battle with former prime minister Sir John Major if he tries to suspend Parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit.
Former Conservative leader Sir John said it would be "utterly and totally unacceptable" for any British premier to shut down Parliament, and he would seek a judicial review if it happened.
Mr Johnson dismissed Sir John's "very odd" threat of being dragged through the courts, insisting that Parliament should accept its responsibility to deliver Brexit.
But he has refused to rule out proroguing Parliament to prevent MPs blocking a no-deal exit from the European Union on October 31.
The Tory leadership campaign frontrunner said: "What we are going to do is deliver Brexit on October 31, which is what I think the people of this country want us to get on and do.
"I think everybody is fed up with delay and I think the idea of now consecrating this decision to the judiciary is really very, very odd indeed.
"What we want is for Parliament to take their responsibilities, get it done as they promised that they would.
"They asked the British people whether they wanted to leave in 2016, the British people returned a very clear verdict, so let's get it done."
In order to prorogue Parliament, shutting it down until the next state opening, a prime minister would have to ask the Queen to formally allow it.
Although the Queen's decision could not be challenged, Sir John said the advice of the prime minister could be.
The monarch would be "in the midst of a constitutional controversy that no serious politician should put the Queen in the middle of", Sir John said.
"I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review to prevent Parliament being bypassed," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.
Peers have been told to listen to the will of the country and back legislation paving the way for the UK to leave the European Union on January 31.
Boris Johnson’s European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill is expected to clear the Commons on Thursday after the Tory general election victory gave the Prime Minister the comfortable majority he desired.
But the legislation will then head to the upper chamber, where there is no Government majority and where peers repeatedly dealt blows to Theresa May’s administration.
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Downing Street urged the unelected House to take heed of the December general election result which delivered Mr Johnson’s 80-seat Commons majority.
“The country did deliver a very clear message that they want Brexit to be resolved,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.
With peers expected to begin work on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (Wab) next week, the Government wants the legislation “to complete its passage through both houses as smoothly as possible”.
The spokesman said the legislation clearing the Commons on Thursday would be a “significant positive step” towards the Prime Minister’s target to “get Brexit done”.
It follows the torment endured by Mrs May as she repeatedly tried and failed to get a Brexit deal through the Commons.
Downing Street stressed it was ready to begin the next stage of the Brexit process – negotiating a trade deal by the end of the year – on February 1.
But Brussels’ chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier warned the UK’s market access to the EU could be limited unless it agreed to conditions on state subsidies.
“If the UK wants an open link with us for the products – zero tariffs, zero quotas – we need to be careful about zero dumping at the same time,” Mr Barnier told a conference in Stockholm.
“I hope that this point is and will be correctly understood by everybody. We will ask necessarily certain conditions on state aid policy in the UK.”
He also insisted that Britain’s goal to have a full free trade deal by the end of the year was unrealistic.
“We cannot expect to agree on every aspect of this new partnership,” Mr Barnier said, adding “we are ready to do our best in the 11 months”.
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Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
In the end, Boris Johnson has proved to be Theresa May's unassailable nemesis (if that's not a tautology); he is the agent of her downfall.
Which is not to say he will succeed her as Tory leader and prime minister.
He may be the favourite to do so, but - as Sunder Katwala has pointed out - only once in the past half century has the initial frontrunner actually seized the Tory crown. Boris could yet blow it.
But his manoeuvres with his backbench colleagues have made it impossible for the PM to have her Brexit plan approved - were she to put her Withdrawal Agreement Bill to a vote, as she still promises to do - because he has persuaded them there is an escape from the Brexit deadlock that is destroying their party but not while she is in 10 Downing Street.
This view that Boris Johnson has done for Theresa May is not confined to the Brexiter ultras of the ERG.
It has been put to me as uncontroversial and incontrovertible truth by senior members of the Cabinet whose Brexit credentials are at best moot.
"What Boris did was convince my colleagues that if he were PM, he could persuade Brussels to ditch the hated backstop," said one.
"Or rather that it is worth a go. And if he fails then it is full steam ahead to a no-deal Brexit, though with proper preparation".
On this narrative, May's fate was sealed on Tuesday when in her last big Brexit speech she refused to countenance any renegotiation of the backstop, the default mechanism for keeping open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic that is hated by Northern Ireland's DUP and Brexiters and is written into the Withdrawal Agreement.
It is irrelevant whether May is right or wrong that trying to change the Withdrawal Agreement would be a fool's errand.
Johnson has persuaded enough Tory MPs she is unreasonably defeatist and they have given up on her.
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The way she refused to budge when MP after MP pressed her yesterday to end the investigation and prosecution of Northern Ireland army veterans also reinforced their view that she is permanently estranged from their values - even while the former attorney general, Dominic Grieve, said on my show last night that she is right and they are wrong, that it would be impossible to introduce a statute of limitations for soldiers that would not equally apply to terrorists.
It is no coincidence that Jonny Mercer, the Tory MP who has led the campaign on behalf of the retired soldiers, outed himself (again on my show) as an enthusiastic and important player in Team Boris.
His mission, he told me, is to persuade party and country that Johnson is the only leader for these critical times, that he is a One Nation unifier rather than the Trumpian sower of discord and mayhem many perceive him to be.
Hmmm.
Grieve for one was wholly unconvinced, and signalled he could well vote to bring down a Johnson-led government, if that government were hellbent on a no-deal Brexit that Grieve sees as catastrophic.
By pure coincidence I also interviewed another Johnson acolyte on the programme, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
And what stuck me when talking with both Mogg and Mercer is quite how much preparatory work has been done to convert Johnson's legendary ambition into a key to the door of 10 Downing Street.
Their big and simple message is that the existential threat posed to the Tory Party by Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party is that the Tory Party itself has to reinvent itself as the true party of Brexit - and that would only be possible if they are led by their own populist demagogue for the social-media age, namely Johnson.
Which, as I said, is not to say that Johnson is a shoo-in as next Tory leader.
Politics is far too volatile and unpredictable for that kind of idiot's forecasts.
But just a glimpse at a way for Tories other than the May way is why minister after minister assured me yesterday that Theresa May would be gone soon (as I mentioned yesterday, they all think they know that she'll announce her departure timetable tomorrow - but when ministers speak to me about her, the sound is of whistling in the impenetrable dark).
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
As I said yesterday, Tory MPs and ministers have consistently under-estimated their leader.
What Theresa May achieved at Chequers yesterday was extraordinary.
She persuaded her cabinet to sign up for a Brexit plan that drives a coach and horses through what the Brexiters in her team - especially Johnson and Gove - said Brexit was all about, during that historic referendum campaign.
What is more, at Chequers yesterday, Gove was a cheerleader for a plan that would enshrine in treaty what is supposedly anathema to his Brexit cause - that the UK now and forever would be subject to European Union rules and regulations governing the quality and safety of the goods we make and buy and also the food we produce and consume.
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As for Johnson, he harrumphed for six minutes but did not dissent from the clear consensus that there was no superior alternative to what the PM wants.
Even Andrea Leadsom, who was expected to be the most truculent, expressed some disappointment in her opening remarks but then showed she was on board.
As for the reluctant Remainer turned ardent Brexiter, Sajid Javid, he concentrated on obtaining a guarantee from the PM that she would not be offering preferential rights to live and work here to EU citizens.
To the disappointment, of Philip Hammond and Greg Clarke, he thinks he got that.
We’ll see.
If he’s right, then access to the EU for the service companies that dominate our economy will inevitably be more circumscribed than those companies would like.
Why aren’t Brexiter ministers going nuts over Theresa May’s Brexit plans?
So why did Johnson, Leadsom, Gove and the rest capitulate?
It is largely due to the analysis they were given right at the start of the meeting - about the realistic alternatives to May’s plan.
There were three.
One is the preferred option of the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, which is an enhanced version of Canada’s trade deal with the EU, a so-called “CETA plus” deal.
This was ruled out because it would not solve the make-or-break problem of how to keep open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Another is staying in the European Single Market via membership for the European Economic Area, the “Norway option” - favoured by many Labour and Tory MPs. This was rejected because it was seen as too blatant a repudiation of why British people voted for Brexit, in that it would carry with it a continued obligation to allow EU citizens to settle here.
The final option was a no-deal withdrawal from the EU, which some members of the Cabinet, privately, would quite like - but which all acknowledge would bring substantial risks to the UK’s prosperity.
In other words the Cabinet was presented with nowhere to go but the May plan, and had no credible alternative.
She won; Johnson, Gove and the Brexiters were humiliated.
The minister who may feel most bruised however is Davis, in that he has long championed Ceta Plus, and he is - after all - supposed to be in charge of Brexit.
He faces a genuinely difficult personal dilemma: quit on principle, or stay in post to help deliver his life’s ambition of steering us out of the EU (even if that exit must feel to him now more cosmetic than fundamental)?
Davis will query - as does the whole Cabinet - whether she can now sell to the EU a plan that also drives a coach and horses through their articles of faith, most importantly that no country can in effect be part of the single market for goods and food, without also allowing freedom of movement for services, capital and people, and without paying real cash to the EU for that access.
May told the Cabinet that she will go above the head of the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, direct to Merkel, Macron and the EU’s government heads to secure what she wants. And she believes, on the basis of her preliminary talks with them that they’ll ultimately give her what she wants.
The Chequers talks in pictures
The Cabinet gave her the benefit of the doubt. But ministers have also taken out an insurance policy, just in case she is over-reaching.
They received a commitment that they would meet weekly to receive updates on contingency planning for a no-dealBrexit.
And if Jacob Rees-Mogg and the ardent Brexiter MPs don’t this week round on May, accuse her of betraying Britain and launch a coup, it is partly because - paradoxically - they are counting on Macron and Merkel to deliver the abrupt rupture between EU and UK they so urgently desire (though depending on where Labour lands on all this in coming weeks, they also see the danger for them that the rest of the EU may try to turn the UK Norwegian, metaphorically speaking).
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The negotiating mandate for the EU’s Brussels team, which is up against the UK's Attorney General Geoffrey Cox - who is leading for the PM in trying to make the Northern Ireland backstop more palatable to DUP and Tory Brexiter MPs - has NOT changed in any fundamental way.
I've checked, and it remains the case EU leaders have not and will not sanction putting an end date on the backstop. Nor will they provide the UK with a unilateral route out of the backstop. Terminating the backstop will - the EU continues to insist - always be a joint EU/UK decision.
So the life-or-death question for Theresa May's Brexit deal is whether the DUP and the ERG Brexiters will move from their current position of contemplating a decent and honourable surrender, in which they retain a fig leaf of hope one day they’ll enjoy an approximation of the one-true Brexit, or whether they will seamlessly glide to writhing craven capitulation.
For the avoidance of doubt, many of them have already abandoned some of their reddest lines.
They'd originally wanted the treaty that is the Withdrawal Agreement explicitly opened up and reworded.
That ain’t happening.
The best they can expect is the legal consequences of the Withdrawal Agreement will be made more palatable by a so-called codicil or interpretive legal document.
They’ve also abandoned any hope that the current customs-union based backstop, with what they see as toxic regulatory differentiation between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, would be replaced by their adored “alternative arrangements” of bog-standard free trade deal and tech-based invisible border checks.
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But some of them retain residual hope that the legal panjandrum Cox will credibly be able to describe his codicil as proving beyond reasonable doubt the backstop cannot be an eternal trap.
Well if he were to advance that argument, it could surely only be as an argument based on the overwhelming balance of probabilities - but not as legally certain and binding FACT.
To be clear, his codicil will describe a probable process through the backstop to a long-term relationship with the EU that Brexiters can tolerate. But it seems inconceivable that he will be able to prove that such escape from the backstop is a cast-iron certainty.
Now, because the ERG no longer see Cox as their cabinet champion, but as the dodgy silk defending a prime minister they see as stealing and corrupting their beloved Brexit, they have deployed their finest legal brains, under Bill Cash and Martin Howe, to provide their own interpretation of Cox’s interpretation.
I assume it will take them the best part of a minute to rule that they’ve been had.
So does that mean yet again Theresa May’s meaningful vote on her reworked Brexit is lost before it even takes place?
Well that all depends on whether enough Labour MPs are so irked by Corbyn’s belated if tepid conversion to the referendum cause that they defy him and vote in sufficient numbers to offset the 40 odd ERG Tories who will never swallow Cox’s codicil.
As I said a couple of days ago, the Labour-for-ERG trade delivers “dare-to-dream” odds for May. But a nightmare ending for her is still more likely (as her cabinet ministers admit in private, if never in public).
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned that if the Conservative Party was to face a general election in the next six months then "we would be wiped out as a party".
Speaking on ITV's Peston, Mr Hunt also refused to rule out a further delay to Brexit beyond October 31, and insisted that a new deal that would be passed by Parliament could be negotiated with the EU before Halloween.
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The former health secretary said the major sticking point over the current deal was the issue to the Northern Ireland backstop, and a deal to change or remove this could be negotiated with Brussels, even though the terms of the October 31 Brexit extension rule out changing the Withdrawal Agreement.
"A deal is a deal unless both sides decide to do it differently," Mr Hunt told ITV News' Political Editor Robert Peston.
"In this situation, you have to ask yourself - with a new prime minister, with a fresh mandate - whether, ultimately there is a deal there."
Following Prime Minister Theresa May's announcement that she will stand down on June 7 and a Tory leadership race will ensue, Mr Hunt is one of 11 candidates who have said they would like to be the Party's next leader.
While Mr Hunt praised Mrs May for "working incredibly hard" to get her Brexit deal, he said a new prime minister might be able to negotiate a new one.
Mr Hunt said that as prime minister he would seek a new deal with the European Union, and "the reason I think there is a deal there is because it's in both sides' interests to solve this: I think the EU don't want the shadow of Brexit hanging over them, they want this issue solved."
He said that "one of the reasons that we didn't get the flexibility we wanted from the EU was because they lost faith that the British government would be able to deliver the British Parliament" so the negotiating team should have representatives from the DUP and Tories from the European Research Group.
"I don't pretend it's going to be easy," he acknowledged.
While Mr Hunt said no-deal was preferable to no Brexit, he refused to rule out a further delay to Brexit beyond October 31.
"I believe it can be done (by October 31)," he told ITV's Peston, but warned that no-deal could result in a general election, something he did not believe the Tories would be able to weather.
"What I would say to the other candidates is 'if you are saying you will leave on October 31, deal or no deal, then are you - if Parliament stops you - prepared to have a general election to change Parliament?
"My commitment is that I would not, and I would challenge all of the candidates to say exactly where they stand on that because I think people need to know whether there is a risk of a general election in the next six months and ... I think that would be very, very devastating."
He added: "I think what most people will be thinking is 'who is most likely to deliver Brexit and deliver it quickly'.
"If we get the approach wrong, if you send an ultra hardliner to Brussels you will get an ultra hardline response. And then we will be faced with those very difficult choices."
Also on Peston was fellow leadership hopeful James Cleverly, who unlike Mr Hunt advocated more freely for no-deal, saying it was better than the "indecision" the country currently faces.
"We have got to deliver Brexit," Mr Cleverly told Peston.
"Delay is the worst thing... delay brings indecision... we've got to get real and make the tough decisions," he said.
The Braintree MP continued that delay over Brexit and indecision over a deal is "killing" businesses, and said that even business owners who voted remain would rather leave the EU with no-deal as it is preferable to delay.
While Mr Hunt portrayed himself as a prime minister who would "negotiate" with the EU, pointing to his past in business and many years spent in the Cabinet, Mr Cleverly painted himself as a political relative outsider, having only become an MP in 2015.
"If you look at global politics, there is a pattern emerging," the 49-year-old said.
He continued that voters are rejecting politicians who have been around for "years and years and years" and who are "stale" and are instead voting for those who "look and sound different" and offer a new approach.
Should he become prime minister Mr Cleverly said he would "get Brexit off the table" before focusing on anything else.
While both Mr Cleverly and Mr Hunt said they would be prepared (to varying degrees) to back no-deal, Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said the idea that Parliament would allow this to happen was "for the birds", and it would find a way to "frustrate" this, since the current majority backs leaving with a deal.
Meanwhile on the BBC, leadership hopeful Matt Hancock distanced himself from Mrs May's "no-deal is better than a bad deal" mantra and insisted he would be "brutally honest" about the difficulties of the process.
Mr Hancock said he is "not against" a no-deal Brexit but added: "It won't happen because Parliament won't allow it", echoing Mr Bradshaw's comments to Robert Peston.
The "best option" was to secure a deal and he told Newsnight that would require the backstop - measures which keep the UK closely bound to EU trade rules to avoid a hard border with Ireland - to be replaced, comments similar to those made by Mr Hunt.
Asked what he could do differently to Mrs May, he said: "I'm being completely straightforward about the real trade-offs that exist.
"I haven't started in this saying that 'no deal is better than a bad deal'. I haven't started from the point of view of saying that.
"I've started from the point of view of saying we've got to be brutally honest about the real constraints that will face the next prime minister, whoever they are."
He said he would put "alternative arrangements" at the centre of his plan.
"The difference is that the alternative arrangements have not been at the forefront of the policy that was part of the deal put forward before.
"Instead the proposed future arrangements were to build on the backstop and that is materially different."
Labour LeaderJeremy Corbyn has called on the Cabinet Secretary to rule that Boris Johnson cannot force through a no-deal Brexit in the middle of a general election campaign.
Mr Corbyn has written to Sir Mark Sedwill warning it would be an “anti-democratic abuse of power” if the Prime Minister was to deny voters a choice on Britain’s EU future in an election campaign.
The move comes amid reports Mr Johnson could seek to hang on long enough to ensure Britain is out of the EU before going to the polls if he is defeated in a vote of confidence when MPs return in September.
As it stands – under the latest extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process by the EU – Britain is due to leave on October 31.
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But with a wafer-thin Commons majority of just one, Mr Johnson is vulnerable to defeat if, as expected, Labour table a no-confidence motion early next month.
If that happened, under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, he would have 14 days to win another vote of confidence or, if no other government could be formed, face a general election.
His top adviser Dominic Cummings is said to have argued that would still allow him to set an election date after October 31, by which time the UK would be out of the EU with nothing a new government could do to stop it.
In his letter to Sir Mark, Mr Corbyn said such a course of action would be “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional”.
He said the Cabinet Office’s election “purdah” rules make it clear that policy decisions on which a new government “might be expected to want to take a different view” should be postponed until after polling day.
He asked Sir Mark to confirm that if the UK is due to leave the EU without a deal while an election is under way, the Government should seek another time-limited extension to Article 50 to allow the voters to decide.
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“Forcing through no-deal against a decision of Parliament, and denying the choice to the voters in a general election already under way, would be an unprecedented, unconstitutional and anti-democratic abuse of power by a Prime Minister elected not by the public but by a small number of unrepresentative Conservative Party members,” he wrote.
“A Labour government will never support a no-deal exit, so would of course ‘want the opportunity to take a different view’.”
Labour's shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald echoed comments from his boss, telling ITV News "it would be totally and utterly unconstitutional - it'd be an unprecedented move and entirely undemocratic for one government to bind another once a general election is called".
Mr McDonald added: "That's why Jeremy Corbyn's written to Mark Sedwill - the head of the civil service to say this is totally wrong and he's the custodian of the rules, and asking him to intervene to make sure that doesn't happen."
But Brexiteers argue Parliament has already voted to leave the EU, voting to trigger the Article 50 process and passing legislation setting Britain’s withdrawal date for October 31.
Officials said that Sir Mark would be replying to Mr Corbyn, but senior Tories dismissed the Labour leader’s letter as a “political stunt”.
A senior Conservative source said: “Jeremy Corbyn will do anything to get his hand on the keys to number 10. No amount of letter-writing political stunts will change the fact that politicians don’t get to choose which public votes they respect.”
On the possibility of forming a coalition government in the event of a no-confidence vote, Mr McDonald said: "We'll put a plan together and it's up to them (SNP and LibDems) whether they want to support us."
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
Jeremy Corbyn says Labour will back another EU referendum after his alternative Brexit plan was again defeated in the Commons.
The House of Commons emphatically rejected Mr Corbyn’s Brexit vision by a margin of 240 votes to 323.
Despite the 83-vote defeat, Mr Corbyn said he would continue to push for a version of his Brexit plan, but also confirmed Labour would now back a referendum if faced with a "damaging Tory Brexit" or a "disastrous" no-deal departure from the European Union.
The 69-year-old also insisted Labour would continue to push for "other available options", including a general election, to prevent either Theresa May's deal or the UK crashing out without an agreement.
“We will back a public vote in order to prevent a damaging Tory Brexit or a disastrous no deal outcome,"  Mr Corbyn said after the vote.
Speaking on ITV's Peston, shadow chancellor John McDonnell said Labour could push for a referendum as soon as Mrs May's deal comes back to Parliament.
But he added: "We are still going to argue that we want a general election, we are still going to argue we think our deal that we have put up was the best option.
"But we realise... we have got to break this deadlock."
He suggested "either a deal will go through which will protect jobs and the economy or, to get some deal through, it will be conditional on going back to the people".
ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand reports on a "chaotic night" in the Commons which allegedly saw some Conservatives, including it is claimed, the Prime Minister, unsure on which way they were meant to be voting.
The defeat of Mr Corbyn's Brexit plan was the most significant outcome of Wednesday's Brexit votes in the Commons which had been expected to see a number of ministerial resignations if MPs had voted on Mrs May's deal.
However, the Prime Minister's dramatic announcement on Tuesday that she would allow MPs to vote on delaying the UK’s EU withdrawal beyond March 29 and subsequent pushing back of the vote on her Brexit deal until March 12, meant that only amendments were voted on.
The result is that any Conservative bust-ups have now been delayed for up to two weeks, as Mrs May prepares to bring her Withdrawal Agreement back to the Commons for a “meaningful vote” on March 12.
What were the amendments?
If she fails to overturn the 230-vote mauling the Agreement received in January, votes will be held on the following days on blocking a no-deal Brexit on March 29 and extending the two-year Article 50 negotiation process.
Mrs May’s U-turn threw a spotlight on the Labour leader, whose “constructive ambiguity” on Brexit has long frustrated those in his party who back a so-called People’s Vote and played a part in the defection of eight MPs to the new Independent Group last week.
Labour’s annual conference voted to keep a second referendum on the table, but made clear that the party’s priority was an early election to allow it to implement its Brexit plan for a customs union with a UK say, close ties with the single market and dynamic alignment with EU workplace and environmental regulations.
A briefing note to Labour MPs made clear the party would back the inclusion of Remaining in the EU on the ballot paper, as an alternative to a “credible Leave option”, but would not back no-deal being a choice on offer.
In Wednesday's votes, MPs also rejected an SNP amendment which required the Government to rule out a no-deal Brexit "under any circumstances" by 324 votes to 288 - majority 36.
Labour former minister Yvette Cooper's bid to pin Mrs May to commitments made to the Commons on the Brexit process - including allowing MPs to delay Brexit if her deal is rejected again next month - was approved by 502 votes to 20, majority 482.
The vote was forced by Tory Brexiteers voicing their opposition to the proposal.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
Conservative leadership candidate Jeremy Hunt has said that unlike his rival, Boris Johnson, he would not force a general election, should Parliament take the option of no-deal off the table.
The Foreign Secretary made the comments on ITV's Peston show, clearly demarcating the differing standpoints of the two in the race for the Tory crown.
Mr Johnson, who is seen as the front runner, has previously said he would call a general election should MPs pass a bill to take away the option of no-deal.
Both candidates have promised they would take the United Kingdom out of the European Union by October 31, regardless of a deal or no-deal scenario.
However, while Mr Hunt has ruled out suspending Parliament, Mr Johnson has refused to rule this out, meaning even if MPs opposed it, no-deal would still be forced through.
Watch ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand provide an analysis of the latest developments
Peston reveals Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans A, B and C
Speaking to ITV News' Political Editor, Mr Hunt said: "I have said that I will not take us into a general election, I will not provoke a general election if Parliament takes no-deal off the table.
"My point is we should not go back to the British people for another mandate until we've delivered the mandate we got last time, which was to leave the European Union.
"I presume from what Boris is saying that he would, but all I would say is all the Conservative Party members that I talk to say it would be absolutely fatal - whoever was leader - to take us into a General Election before we've left the European Union.
Referencing the Peterborough by-election which saw Labour retain its seat despite the former MP being jailed over lying about a speeding ticket, Mr Hunt said: "We were squeezed by the Brexit Party on the right, the Lib Dems on the left and Labour came through the middle."
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Also on Wednesday evening, both Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt were taking part in Conservative Party hustings which was dominated by Brexit.
Mr Hunt again reiterated that it was essential the Conservatives had delivered Brexit before they went to the country in the next general election.
"If we have an election before we have left the European Union, it doesn't matter how charismatic a leader you are, we will be thrashed and we will put Corbyn in Downing Street," he said.
He added: "The only way to win back voters who have gone to the Brexit Party is to Brexit."
While Mr Hunt ruled out a general election if Parliament insisted on no-deal, Mr Johnson has not ruled one out, nor has he declined to rule out the option of suspending Parliament it in order to force through a no-deal Brexit.
The former mayor of London's stance means should he become prime minister, he has said nothing can be done to stop the UK leaving the EU on October 31.
His stance contrasts to Mr Hunt's, who even though he has said he would leave the bloc on Halloween without a deal, he would not force it through if Parliament ruled it out.
The Tory leadership front runner insisted he was "not attracted" to the idea of "proroguing" Parliament, saying he wanted deliver Brexit as a "proud representative democracy".
But he warned that it was essential that MPs finally acted on the 2016 referendum result and took Britain out of the EU.
"I think our colleagues really are starting to come together," he said.
"They are thinking about this in a very mature and sober way.
"I am not attracted to archaic devices like proroguing.
"Let's get this thing done as a proud representative democracy that asked the people of this country a question, that received a very clear answer, that promised faithfully to put that answer into effect and now we have got to do it."
At the same time Mr Johnson rejected the idea he could cancel MPs' summer break so they could sit throughout August to try to resolve the  deadlock, suggesting the solution did not lie at Westminster.
"I am not necessarily convinced that Parliament can sort out the problem that Parliament has helped to create," he said.
"Perhaps more sittings of Parliament is not what we want."
Meanwhile, Pro-Brexit MP Mark Francois said Mr Johnson is being driven forward as the front runner for the party leadership because Tory party members "desperately" want the UK to leave the EU.
He added Hunt's stance supporting Remain over Leave in the 2016 referendum campaign means he lacks the support of many party voters.
Previously polling shows voters lack faith in Hunt to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union on the 31 October. But he responded saying voters have told him how they can see he is "passionate" to deliver Brexit.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer has said a public vote "has to be an option" days after the Labour leadership said a second referendum was "not the default" course of action.
Following a tumultuous week in Parliament, which saw Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement defeated by a record majority, Sir Keir said the Prime Minister had been "reckless" in her approach to the Brexit process.
In a speech to the Fabian Society new year conference in London on Saturday, Sir Keir said Labour stood by the commitment made at the party conference last year in Liverpool, that if it was unable to force a general election all options must remain on the table - including another referendum.
Sir Keir again made clear that he believed that in the event of a second referendum, the option of remaining in the EU must be on the ballot paper."I don't think it is any secret I firmly believe there should be a Remain option - and there has to be a genuine Leave option," he said.
He said: "If we cannot get a general election, Labour must support all options available on the able, including campaigning for a public vote. That was our commitment."
"That is a very important commitment. It's a commitment to you, our members and our movement. And it is one we will keep.
"As I set out in Liverpool, a public vote has to be an option for Labour, after all, deeply embedded in our values are internationalism, collaboration and cooperation with our European partners." he continued.
Sir Keir stressed that “there are no easy routes out of this mess" accusing those who say otherwise of "not being honest".
“Difficult decisions are going to have to be made but now is the time for an honest debate and for credible solutions to emerge,” he said.
The MP for Holborn and St Pancras said it seemed "inevitable" that the government will have to apply for an extension of Article 50.
Sir Keir Starmer told ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand that he didn't "know when the crunch moment will come” but hinted that Labour would campaign for a second referendum if and when the Prime Minister fails to reach a consensus on a new deal on January 29th.
He told ITV News: "If the Prime Minister goes through this exercise and then in a week or two because she hasn't been flexible on the red lines, comes back and re-presents her deal, that's just been rejected, I think the frustration in Parliament will be profound.
"I think that will provoke Parliament to a point where attempts are made to actually decide for ourselves what the options are.
"We're going to have to watch this space very carefully. I don't know when the crunch moment comes. I do know it's only 69 days to the 29 March."
Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson also pointed the way to a second referendum as the only way to break the deadlock in Parliament.
During a question and answer session Mr Watson said that while Labour had to respect the result of the 2016 referendum, it was not offering a "blank cheque".
He also said Labour was "obligated" to talk to Mrs May about Brexit if she is offering to do so, despite Jeremy Corbyn refusing to do so unless the Prime MInister rules out a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Watson said:  "We are obligated I think through our sense of patriotism and respect for democracy to have an intelligent conversation on Brexit with Theresa May if she is offering it. But there is no bargain basement Brexit on our agenda."
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker
Theresa May has shelved plans to introduce key Brexit legislation to implement the Withdrawal Agreement in the first week of June following a major backlash from MPs.
The Withdrawal Agreement Bill had been expected to be published on Friday and be debated by MPs in the week beginning June 3, when they return after the Whitsun recess.
But Government whip Mark Spencer, announcing forthcoming business in the Commons, said: “We will update the House on the publication and introduction of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill on our return from the Whitsun recess.”
In the Brexit bill's place, the Commons will instead focus on the remaining stages of the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill on Tuesday June 4. The rest of the week filled up with backbench matters, including debates on the Grenfell Tower fire, and "mortgage prisoners and vulture funds".
Last days of May? PM clinging on as pressure to quit grows
The Prime Minister met with Cabinet ministers on Thursday to discuss next steps for her Withdrawal Agreement.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt is understood to have told the Prime Minister to pull her Withdrawal Agreement Bill, saying it was clear it would not pass.
It was a "step too far" to ask Tory MPs to vote for it under those circumstances, he told Theresa May
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he had a "frank discussion" with the Mrs May about her Brexit plan.
He is understood to have made clear that he does not believe the Government should be "paving the way" for a second referendum
A Downing Street spokesperson could not say when the Bill would be published and refused to be drawn on speculation about the PM's future in office. The spokesman also confirmed that US president Donald Trump's state visit will still go ahead in June.
Earlier on Thursday, Andrea Leadsom stood by her decision to resign from Government and insisted Theresa May must make her own call on what steps to take next with her premiership and Brexit deal.
Mr Spencer was deputising at business questions following the resignation of Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom, who left the Government in protest at Mrs May’s plans for the Brexit legislation.
Mrs Leadsom is the 36th minister to quit during Mrs May's time in Downing Street.
She is replaced by Treasury minister Mel Stride, Downing Street  announced on Thursday afternoon.
Speaking following her resignation Mrs Leadsom told reporters she quit because she couldn't, as leader of the Commons, "announce a bill that I just think has elements I cannot support that aren't Brexit".
She also cited a breakdown of collective responsibility as another of her reasons for stepping down.
Labour's Brexit negotiations with the government appear to be failing, it has been hinted, after the government conceded that the UK will take part in EU elections, despite comments to the contrary.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, shadow secretary for business and one of Labour's Brexit negotiators, gave an update on cross-party talks.
She said: "Without a government that's willing to compromise it's difficult to see how any agreement can be reached."
When quizzed on whether there's any point in continuing with negotiations, Ms Long-Bailey defiantly said "of course there's a point" before admitting there has been no movement or agreement.
It came after Theresa May's effective deputy David Lidington confirmed the EU elections will go ahead on May 23 as MPs have still not agreed a Brexit deal.
Speaking ahead of cross-party talks he said "regrettably" the UK had run out of time and it is "not going to be possible to finish that process" before the date Britain has to legally take part in the elections.
However he added the Government was "redoubling our efforts" to get an EU deal ratified by the start of July so the MEPs elected this month never have to take their seats.
Mr Lidington was speaking shortly before the cross-party Brexit talks with Labour in Whitehall.
He added: "We very much hoped that we would be able to get our exit sorted and have the treaty concluded so that those elections did not have to take place. But legally, they do have to take place - unless our withdrawal has been given legal effect - so those will now go ahead."
Ms Long-Bailey appeared to blame the prime minister for UK having to take part, saying it was "sad that the prime minister procrastinated, shall we say, in order for us to reach this point".
It came amid a meeting between the PM and the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs, Sir Graham Brady, in which a timetable for her departure was expected to be discussed.
A Downing Street source would not comment further on the meeting.
Pressure on both sides to make progress was heightened by their poor performance in last week’s local elections, which both Conservative and Labour leaderships interpreted as a message from voters to get on with delivering Brexit.
Arriving at the talks, Brexit secretary  Sir Keir Starmer said talks had reached "crunch point".
He added: "I think the time has now come to a crunch time where the Government has to decide whether it's serious about significant changes capable of actually carrying a majority in the House of Commons."
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Mrs May had been hoping the talks would deliver a compromise deal in time to allow her to call off the European Parliament elections.
But, more than a month after the talks began, Mr Lidington acknowledged time is now too tight to get a Withdrawal Agreement Bill through both Houses of Parliament by the date of the poll.
Speaking at the Cabinet Office in Whitehall, he said that after its Withdrawal Agreement was rejected three times by MPs, the Government was trying to find “a way forward that has maximum possible support amongst politicians of all political parties”.
“What this now means, given how little time there is, is that it is regrettably not going to be possible to finish that process before the date that is legally due for European parliamentary elections,” he said.
“But we will be redoubling our efforts and talks with MPs of all parties to try to make sure that the delay after that is as short as possible.
“Ideally we’d like to be in a situation where those MEPs never actually have to take their seat at European Parliament – certainly, to get this done and dusted by the summer recess.”
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
A concerted attempt by Labour MPs and MEPs to engineer that their party would campaign unambiguously for a “confirmatory” Brexit referendum in the EU elections looks set to flop.
Instead Jeremy Corbyn’s preferred position of characterising a new public vote only as an option is likely to prevail, because he seems to have retained the backing of most of the leaders of the big trade unions.
The decision on how strongly to push for a referendum, and how Labour’s position on it should be worded in its manifesto, will be taken at a crunch emergency meeting of the party’s ruling NEC on Tuesday.
I am told by senior party sources that in talks last Tuesday with the leaders of the so-called five big trade unions - Unison, Unite, the GMB, Usdaw and the CWU - only the GMB signalled a strong preference for a confirmatory referendum to be upgraded from an option to a clear policy preference.
Unison and Usdaw are in theory aligned with the GMB on this, but sources close to Corbyn do not believe they will vote against the Labour leader’s preferred and more ambiguous referendum formulation in a couple of days.
As evidence, one source told me that Dave Prentis, General Secretary of the largest union, Unison, told Labour’s leader: “Jeremy, if you can get a deal with the Government then take it."
Although no one close to Corbyn thinks there is the remotest chance of negotiations between Labour and the Government on a Brexit pact reaching a successful conclusion, Prentis’s comments were interpreted as showing support for the Labour leadership’s equivocal position on a public vote.
“We think we have three-quarters of the votes on the NEC,” said an official close to the Labour leader’s office.
If this turns out to be so, it would be a blow to a majority of Labour members and probably a majority of its MPs too - who want a confirmatory referendum and who also believe that the party would win the largest share of votes in the EU elections if it in effect became the referendum party.
There will be a big final push by the party’s deputy leader Tom Watson and its Brexit spokesperson Keir Starmer (who is not on the NEC) to change Corbyn’s preferred manifesto wording so that it would simply call for a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal approved by Parliament.
Whether they can win the argument at the NEC will hinge to a large extent on how nine representatives of constituency Labour parties - essentially the representatives of members - choose to vote.
They know most Labour members want a referendum, including most members of its influential Momentum movement.
But some are reluctant to be disloyal to Corbyn by challenging his softer referendum position, and others are hard-left critics of the EU.
Possibly the most important protagonist at the meeting will be Momentum’s founder Jon Lansman, who is widely believed to be moving closer to Starmer’s and Watson’s position because he is aware that is what Momentum members prefer.
But a source close to Corbyn thinks Lansman does not see Corbyn’s referendum wording as “far” from a formulation he could support.
UPDATE
So I now hear Dave Prentis and the giant Unison union are in fact closer to Tom Watson than Corbyn on how Labour’s approach to a referendum should be characterised in its EU election manifesto.
In other words, at the emergency NEC meeting on Tuesday, Unison will back a form of words that makes it clear that a confirmatory referendum would be necessary in almost any practical circumstances of a Brexit deal being approved by MPs.
In fact, Prentis fears Corbyn misunderstood his position when he expressed it at that meeting with him last Tuesday. So just maybe Corbyn has not yet stitched up a victory for the more equivocal position on a referendum he prefers.
Nigel Farage says his Brexit Party will take Labour’s traditional northern seats due to Jeremy Corbyn’s support for a second Brexit referendum.
Mr Farage said the Labour leader’s decision to back another poll had given the Brexit Party a “golden opportunity” to claim the opposition’s heartland electorates.
“Now the Brexit Party is the true party of the people,” Mr Farage told the Sunday Express.
“We are the only party committed to giving 17.4 million Leave voters what they voted for more than three years ago – a clean-break Brexit.”
Labour last week said it would press the next Tory leader to hold a second referendum before taking Britain out of the EU – and committed to campaigning for Remain.
The decision by the shadow cabinet was broadly welcomed by pro-Remain MPs, who have been pressing the party to fully embrace a second referendum.
The move follows weeks of wrangling within the party over its position on Brexit – backing a second referendum only in certain specific circumstances – which was widely blamed for its dismal showing in the European elections.
Announcing the move in a letter to party members, Jeremy Corbyn said: “Whoever becomes the new prime minister should have the confidence to put their deal, or no-deal, back to the people in a public vote.
“In those circumstances, I want to make it clear that Labour would campaign for Remain against either no-deal or a Tory deal that does not protect the economy and jobs.”
But Mr Farage said that Labour’s position meant its supporters would abandon the party for an alternative.
“Labour has turned its back on millions of working-class Leave voters for good. Those Labour MP ‘donkeys’ are about to become an endangered species,” the Brexit Party leader said.
Video report by ITV News Europe Correspondent James Mates
Luxembourg's prime minister has attacked Boris Johnson for the Brexit "nightmare" after his UK counterpart skipped a joint press conference amid noisy protesters waiting close-by.
Despite Mr Johnson avoiding the press conference, Xavier Bettel went ahead with it and took the chance to lay into the British PM, saying the Brexit impasse was a "home-made" problem.
But Mr Johnson, who decided to only give a statement to a small group of journalists assembled at the nearby residence of the British ambassador, insisted "we've got a good chance of a deal".
Explaining his absence, Mr Johnson said the press conference was cancelled over fears they would have been "drowned out" by pro-EU protesters.
"I don't think it would've been fair to the Prime Minister of Luxembourg," he said, "I think there was clearly going to be a lot of noise and I think our points might've been drowned out."
As Mr Johnson emerged from the ministry of state with Mr Bettel in Luxembourg City, protesters could be heard shouting "stop Brexit".
The PM's team did ask for the press conference to be moved inside so both leaders could be heard over protests, but Luxembourg rejected the idea.
The press conference came following a meeting between Mr Johnson's first meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Following the meeting Mr Juncker said proposals to replace the Irish backstop "have not yet been made" by Mr Johnson.
The pair agreed Brexit talks "needed to intensify", but the PM also "reiterated that he would not request an extension" and would take the UK out of the EU on October 31, Downing Street said.
Luxembourg's PM went further, warning that EU citizens were facing mounting uncertainty due to Brexit while standing next to an empty podium after Mr Johnson pulled out of a joint appearance.
"You can't hold their future hostage for party political gains," Mr Bettel said.
He added: "I know that the UK Government is unhappy with the Withdrawal Agreement as it stands.
"That's why I thought it was important to speak to Prime Minister Johnson to get proposals.
"We need more than just words."
Gesturing to the empty podium where Mr Johnson should have been, Mr Bettel said: "Now it's on Mr Johnson - he holds the future of all UK citizens and every EU citizen living in the UK in his hands.
"It's his responsibility. Your people, our people, count on you - but the clock is ticking, use your time wisely."
The commission said the Government had still not made "legally operational solutions" to replace the controversial Irish backstop element of the Brexit divorce deal, which keeps the UK closely tied to EU rules in order to avoid a hard border.
Brexit A to Z: Key terms relating to Britain’s departure explained
In a statement, his spokesperson said: “President Juncker recalled that it is the UK's responsibility to come forward with legally operational solutions that are compatible with the Withdrawal Agreement.
“President Juncker underlined the Commission's continued willingness and openness to examine whether such proposals meet the objectives of the backstop. Such proposals have not yet been made.
“The Commission will remain available to work 24/7. The October European Council will be an important milestone in the process. The EU27 remain united.”
President Juncker will travel to Strasbourg later today and will address the Plenary session of the European Parliament on Wednesday morning.
Mr Johnson told Mr Juncker he would not request an extension to Article 50 – the process of leaving the EU – and would take the UK out of the European Union on October 31.
He also “reconfirmed” his commitment to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and his determination to reach a deal with the backstop removed.
“The leaders agreed that the discussions needed to intensify and that meetings would soon take place on a daily basis,” Downing Street added.
“It was agreed that talks should also take place at a political level between Michel Barnier and the Brexit Secretary, and conversations would also continue between President Juncker and the Prime Minister.”
Both Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay and the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier were at the lunchtime meeting with the Prime Minister and Commission president.
Video report by ITV News Europe Editor James Mates
A leading group of MEPs responsible for UK-EU negotiations have "grave concerns" about Boris Johnson's new Brexit proposals.
The European parliament's Brexit Steering Group (BSG), which includes prominent MEPs involved in Brexit talks, such as Guy Verhofstadt, said Mr Johnson's plan cannot be backed "in their current form".This scepticism was also shared by European Council president Donald Tusk, who said the EU was "open but unconvinced".
Mr Johnson's new plan had altered Mrs May's withdrawal agreement deal with the EU, promising a new solution to the Irish backstop and border.
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Johnson says no to customs union and yes to single market for NI, writes Peston
However, the BSG statement said the proposals do not address "the real issues" around customs and border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
It added: "The proposals do not address the real issues that need to be resolved if the backstop were to be removed, namely the all-island economy, the full respect of the Good Friday Agreement and the integrity of the single market.
ITV News Political Correspondent Angus Walker reports on the PM's efforts to bring MPs round to his new plan
"While we remain open to workable, legally operable and serious solutions, the UK's proposals fall short and represent a significant movement away from joint commitments and objectives."
It added: "In summary, the BSG has grave concerns about the UK proposal, as tabled. Safeguarding peace and stability on the island of Ireland, protection of citizens and EU's legal order has to be the main focus of any deal.
"The UK proposals do not match even remotely what was agreed as a sufficient compromise in the backstop."
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Leo Varadkar about the latest Brexit proposals on Thursday during which he "reaffirmed his unwavering support for Ireland".
A Commission statement said that while President Juncker confirmed the UK has made some progress, a number of problematic points remain in the proposal, on which further work is needed.
"President Juncker emphasised that the governance of the backstop should be stable and predictable," added the statement.
"He reiterated that the Withdrawal Agreement must have a legally operational solution now, and cannot be based on untried arrangements that would be left to negotiation during the transition period."
The statement will come as a blow to the prime minister, who is hoping to secure a deal with the EU by October 17, in order for the UK to leave by October 31.
ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen reports on what people in the border town of Newry make of the new Brexit plans
Speaking in the House of Commons on Thursday, Mr Johnson said his new Brexit proposals are a "genuine attempt" to break the impasse and secure a deal with the EU.
He defended his new Brexit plan which has devised alternative arrangements over the Irish backstops and customs checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Speaking in the Commons, Mr Johnson said: "This Government's objective has always been to leave with a deal and these constructive and reasonable proposals show our seriousness of purpose.
"They do not deliver everything that we would've wished, they do represent a compromise, but to remain a prisoner of existing positions is to become a cause of deadlock rather than breakthrough.
"So we have made a genuine attempt to bridge the chasm, to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable and to go the extra mile as time runs short."
The prime minister has previously said he wants to secure a deal before the EU summit on October 17, so the UK can leave by October 31.
But Irish premier Leo Varadkar said Mr Johnson's Brexit plans "fall short in a number of aspects".
Mr Varadkar said he welcomed the written proposals but in regards to the Irish border, particularly custom checks, it would have to be "reflective of the views of the whole of the population of Northern Ireland".
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He continued: "We need to explore in much more details the customs proposals being put forward as it's very much the view of the Irish government and people of Ireland, north and south, that there shouldn't be a customs check points or tariffs between north and south."
ITV News Political Correspondent Angus Walker assesses another big day in the battle to achieve Brexit - deal or no deal
What have MPs said about Mr Johnson's Brexit plan?
However Mr Johnson's opponents in the Commons were unmoved by his new Brexit proposals, with Jeremy Corbyn, Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson and the SNP's Ian Blackford all rubbishing the new proposals.
Mr Corbyn labelled the new proposals as a "Trump-deal Brexit" which threatens workers rights and regulations.
He said: "These proposals would lead to an even worse deal than that agreed by the former prime minister."
"No Labour MP could support such a reckless deal that will be used as a springboard to attack rights and standards in this country."
Ms Swinson urged Mr Johnson to visit the Northern Ireland border and listen to those in the community.
Mr Blackford said the deal was unworkable for Scotland, and again called on Mr Johnson to resign.
He said: "The SNP will do everything possible to secure an extension and to stop a no-deal Brexit, so I say to the Prime Minister, be warned, secure an extension or resign, if not the SNP stand ready to bring this Government down."
There has been support on the backbenchers for Mr Johnson's plans, including from notable Brexiteers such as Mark Francois and Sir Bill Cash.
Mr Francois, the deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, said: "May I commend the Prime Minister's emphasis on a future free trade as his desired end state which is what many of us have wanted all along."
However former prime minister Theresa May looked on at Mr Johnson inquisitively during the Commons sitting, suggesting some MPs still need convincing when it comes to backing this new Brexit proposal.
Under Mr Johnson's proposals, Northern Ireland would remain in the EU single market rules for trade in goods, but leave the customs union with the rest of the UK as a "fair and reasonable compromise".
The Irish Taoiseach said the proposals "do not fully meet the agreed objectives" of the backstop, while Mr Juncker said there were "problematic points".
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay sought to defend the proposals in a round of interviews on Thursday morning.
“We’re being very clear that we stand by our commitments to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“There will be no infrastructure on the border.”
As to the necessity of checks, he argued that “most smuggling operations aren’t actually addressed at a border”, with a heavy reliance instead on intelligence-sharing.
What needs to happen for Mr Johnson's Brexit proposals to become a reality?
Even if the Mr Johnson gets the support of EU leaders for a deal, he must get it through a Parliament that has so far been hostile to Brexit proposals.
Nationalists in Northern Ireland also expressed anger over a proposal requiring the suspended Stormont Assembly to approve the new arrangements, with a vote every four years.
Sinn Fein argued that it would effectively hand a veto to Mr Johnson’s allies, the DUP, who have a majority in the assembly.
Under the plan, the arrangements would start in 2021 at the end of the proposed transition period if there was no long-term trade agreement at that point and would continue until one was in place.
In full: Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals presented to Parliament
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Boris Johnson is being widely accused of subverting the British version of democracy with his plan to suspend or prorogue parliament for an four weeks - unprecedented in modern times.
His apparent aim is to make it much harder for MPs to take control of the process of when and whether the UK leaves the EU.
But in behaving more like a Trumpian president than a British prime minister, he is simply following the logic of the massive constitutional changes that the 2010 and 2015 parliaments perhaps recklessly and thoughtlessly pushed through, at the urging of the then prime minister David Cameron, namely the Fixed Term Parliament Act and the referendum on whether to leave the EU.
Johnson himself is clear he is only following through on what parliament set in train - his consistent justification for his actions is he is determined to put into force the votes of more than 17 million people who voted for Brexit in 2016.
Francois: ERG will reject Johnson's backstop-less Brexit deal
He sets himself up as the voice of a country that expects MPs to "do the right thing and honour the pledge they made to the people [to Brexit]".
As the leader of the Vote Leave campaign that triumphed in the referendum, he is in a sense arguing he has a personal and direct mandate for Brexit.
He is equating the 2016 referendum with a presidential election.
And for the avoidance of doubt, it is not as outrageous as some argue that he is doing this.
Court motion filed by MPs and peers in bid to prevent suspension of Parliament
What was always outrageous, a constitutional horror, was that Cameron should have so recklessly grafted on to the UK's parliamentary traditions the idea that on the biggest and most complicated decisions - whether we stay or leave the EU, what's the fairest system for electing MPs, whether Scotland should be an independent nation - direct democracy trumps centuries of parliamentary democracy.
If MPs now regret that Johnson is claiming a direct mandate from the people, and their role as our representatives has been degraded, they only have themselves to blame.
Johnson's ability to act more like a president than simply the servant of parliament has also been reinforced by Cameron's Fixed Term Parliament Act, which makes it so hard for MPs to throw him out.
As Johnson's close advisers tell me, even if he were to lose a vote of no confidence he would simply refuse to budge from Downing Street.
If MPs could somehow demonstrate to Her Majesty that an overwhelming majority of them had confidence in some other MP to lead a temporary government of national unity, maybe they could send the bailiffs in and evict him.
But right now the prospect of MPs being able to coalesce around such a putative father or mother of the nation seems remote.
Key dates in the countdown to Britain leaving the EU
Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, that means Johnson would simply use the vote of no confidence as an instruction for him to call a general election at a time of his own choosing - and his aides tell me he would set the polling date just a day or so after Brexit day on 31 October, such that the very act of calling a general election would see the UK out of the EU, without a deal, by default.
MPs can rail, predictably and with some justification, that Johnson would be acting like some tinpot demagogue.
But it was they who carelessly recalibrated the checks and balances of constitutional law and convention; they created him.
Boris Johnson allows MPs just days to block no-deal Brexit, Peston writes
In other words, a Brexit that was sold to all of us - by Johnson and his allies at Vote Leave - as restoring the lustre of parliament looks instead to be part of a constitutional revolution that is permanently shifting the balance of power away from the Commons and Lords and towards 10 Downing Street.
This agonising and bloody battle by MPs to force Johnson to take a no-deal Brexit off the table is also a battle to salvage the authority of parliament: it is, paradoxically, a battle over how we govern ourselves, in or out of the EU.
Queen approves request to suspend Parliament just weeks before Brexit deadline
And if you doubt me, I point you towards the most important statement made to me in recent weeks by one of Johnson's closes allies: "My sense is that we will navigate the stormy waters better than the Remainers and somehow prevail in the mayhem, partly because we're used to navigating mayhem and because we're not incentivised in conventional ways.".
MPs are still playing by the old rules - almost as if they hadn't noticed that it was those same MPs who changed all the rules. They are reaping precisely what they sowed, namely their own possible irrelevance.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen
Cross-party MPs have staged a protest in Parliament after it was ruled Boris Johnson's decision to prorogue was "unlawful" and "improper".
The three senior judges who made the ruling at Scotland's   highest civil court said the suspension of Parliament was therefore "null and of no effect".
A group of MPs who previously signed the Church House Declaration - a plan to sit elsewhere should Parliament be shut down - gathered outside the Palace of Westminster to show their support for the court ruling.
After telling reporters outside Parliament they would find ways to hold the government to account, the group, which included Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, returned to the Commons chamber to continue the protest.
The government said it is "disappointed" by the court ruling and will appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court, adding proroguing Parliament was "legal and necessary".
No formal order will come before Tuesday, when the Supreme Court will hear the case.
The ruling comes a day after the prorogation took place in the early hours of Tuesday, with Parliament now suspended for five weeks.
Proroguing Parliament: What does it mean?
'What a load of nonsense': Johnson rubbishes claims prorogation is undemocratic
From outside Parliament, Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson told ITV News: "(The government) cannot evade scrutiny, we are already working cross-party, we have done that effectively to plan our next steps."
She added: "The display that we've had today shows how willing people are to do that, so this won't be the last that you hear from how MPs are going to hold the prime minister to account."
Once inside the Commons chamber, protesting Labour MP Jonathan Reynolds tweeted an image of himself on the green benches, adding: "Reporting for duty."
Earlier, party colleague Luke Pollard also shared a picture of himself in the Lobby, adding: "Quietly and peacefully I have gone back to sit in my usual spot in the House of Commons.
"No shouting or scuffles - just a quiet statement about our democracy. Boris Johnson's prorogation of Parliament is unlawful. MPs should be here debating the national crisis. #recallparliament"
The legal bid to challenge the suspension of Parliament by a cross-party group of 70 parliamentarians was initially rejected at the Court of Session, but the appeal was successful.
A summary of the court opinion, published by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, said Mr Johnson's decision to prorogue Parliament was "motivated by the improper purpose of stymying Parliament".
It went on: "The Court will accordingly make an Order declaring that the Prime Minister's advice to HM the Queen and the prorogation which followed thereon was unlawful and is thus null and of no effect."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was "a landmark ruling" when a court rules "it is unlawful to prorogue Parliament".
He added: "These are interesting times, when courts rule in favour of democracy, against a Prime Minister who wants to shut down our democracy."
On the supreme court ruling he said "whatever happens next week, we will continue to press for parliament to be recalled".
At the appeal hearing on Friday David Johnston QC, representing the UK government, had argued it was not for the courts to get involved in what was a political decision.
Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, told ITV News that he "simply can't believe" the decision.
He said: "This is absolutely ridiculous. How can it be unlawful to present a Queen's Speech?
"It's a new prime minister, it's a new cabinet, we've had one of the longest-running sessions of parliament in centuries, how can it be unlawful for the Queen to go into Parliament next month to lay out the government's programme - including its policy on Brexit?" he said.
His comments came as he again offered Boris Johnson the chance of an election "non-aggression pact" where the Brexit Party would not field candidates in seats where the Tories had the best chance of defeating Labour or the Lib Dems."
"Between us, Boris would win a big parliamentary majority. Between us, we'd be unstoppable," he added.
However, Number 10 said the Prime Minister would not do a deal with the Brexit Party leader.
Cross-party MPs plot to secure Brexit deal by Halloween deadline
Sir Keir Starmer: Labour is united, we want a referendum
Peston: Why Cummings and Johnson live or die together
A senior Conservative source described Mr Farage and Brexit-campaigning ally Aaron Banks as not being "fit and proper", and said they should never be "allowed anywhere near" government.
Labour's shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti said the ruling shows that Prime Minister Johnson "is not above the law".
She added: "Labour will not allow his elitist shutdown of Parliament to enable him to dodge scrutiny and force through a disastrous no-deal Brexit."
Judge Lord Doherty, who originally dismissed a challenge against the suspension at the Court of Session last Wednesday, said it is for politicians and not the courts to decide.
But three judges of the Inner House, the supreme civil court in Scotland, disagreed with Lord Doherty's ruling.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen
MPs have voted through Boris Johnson's Brexit bill on its second reading by 358 to 234, a majority of 124.
MPs also backed the Government's three-day timetable for the remaining stages of the bill in the Commons next month.
They approved the programme motion by 353 votes to 243, majority 110.
It was the first chance MPs had to vote on the Prime Minister's plan for the UK to leave the EU since last week's General Election which handed the Conservatives a commanding Commons majority.
The backing of the bill by MPs lays the ground for the UK to leave the EU on January 31.
Following the vote, the Prime Minister tweeted: "The second reading of the Withdrawal Agreement bill has passed - which means we are one step closer to getting Brexit done."
He was seen signing backbenchers' copies of their order pages of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) bill as he awaited the result of the votes.
In the debate leading up to the vote on the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) bill, the Prime Minister called for the nation to come together, insisting  Leave and Remain labels were now defunct.
His conciliatory words came as he faced accusations that he had “binned” his withdrawal deal compromises in favour of a hard Brexit.
But Downing Street defended this apparent hardening of his Brexit bill by saying it had the overwhelming backing of the public.
Brexit A to Z: Key terms relating to Britain’s departure explained
Boris Johnson to legislate to rule out extension of EU 'transition', reveals Robert Peston
The Conservative Party leader said his Brexit bill, along with his plans for Government, announced in the Queen’s Speech on Thursday, would bring about a “new dawn” for Britain.
Mr Johnson said: "Today we will deliver on the promise we made to the people and get the Brexit vote wrapped up for Christmas."
What happens if Johnson's Brexit bill passes its second reading on Friday?
January 31: Brexit DayThe UK leaves the EU and trade talks with Brussels can begin.
30 June 2020Deadline for extending the transition period passes.
31 December 2020: Exit transition dateIf trade deal with EU not agreed and ratified, then the UK will leave without a deal.
“Now MPs will start the process of passing the bill. Then, at the beginning of the new decade, at the beginning of a new dawn for our country, our parliamentarians will return to Westminster to immediately finish the job, take us out of the EU on January 31 and move this country forward.
“After years of delay and rancour in Parliament, we will deliver certainty and hard-working businesses and people across this country will have a firm foundation on which to plan for the future.”
But critics on the opposition benches said Mr Johnson had “binned” his pre-election compromises on protections for workers and child refugees now that he had been “unbridled” by his crushing win at the polls.
The Government, as part of a re-drafted Brexit bill, looked to have rowed back on an original commitment to strike a deal with the EU so child refugees in Europe can continue to be reunited with their families in the UK, even after free movement ends.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said it was "one of the most appalling sections" of the legislation and told MPs: "Coming to up to Christmas, shame on this Government for abandoning children in this way."
On Friday morning it was the subject of a firey exchange between the prime minister and Labour's Lisa Nandy.
Clause 37 of the bill replaces the pledge with a watered-down vow for ministers to “make a statement” on the progress of the talks once the divorce with Brussels is complete.
Winding up the debate for the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer said Labour may have lost the election, but they have "not lost our values and our beliefs".
He said Labour would not be voting for the bill which is "even worse" than it was when it was passed its first reading in October, describing the removal of the Dubs amendment for child refugees as a "moral disgrace".
Sir Keir reiterated Mr Johnson's call for a truce along Remain and Leave battle lines.
"We will have left the EU within the next six months," he said.
"Whatever side we were on, or no side at all, the Leave/Remain argument goes with it."
Acting Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey, added: “Barely days away from the election and this Withdrawal Agreement reveals exactly what an unbridled Boris Johnson will do with the country.
“Every compromise made before the election, from workers’ rights to protections for unaccompanied refugee children, have been binned just as we warned they would.”
Downing Street said forthcoming legislation would show the Government’s commitment to upholding rights and protections after exit day.
A host of other changes were made to the Brexit ill since it was last before the Commons in October.
Mr Johnson has inserted a clause that will legally prohibit his Government from extending the transition period – the 11-month buffer during which his team will look to negotiate a trade deal with Brussels – beyond 2020.
The legal text will also boost the power of UK courts, giving judges the ability to overrule judgments made by the European Court of Justice.
If passed by MPs, the Brexit bill will return for its final stages in both the Commons and the House of Lords in the New Year before achieving Royal Assent.
The timetable paves the way for the UK to leave the EU by the January 31 deadline and for trade talks to commence.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener
Emmanuel Macron has told Boris Johnson that a new Withdrawal Agreement will not be found within 30 days but said a smart solution to the backstop could be found if "there is goodwill on both sides".
In a press conference in Paris, both leaders expressed a willingness for the UK to leave the EU with a deal, and Mr Macron backed Angela Merkel's call for the UK to come forward with proposals within 30 days.
"What Angela Merkel said yesterday and which is very much in line with the discussions we have had since the very beginning is that we need visibility in 30 days," he said.
He said the EU's negotiator Michel Barnier could be involved in finding an answer "without totally reshuffling the Withdrawal Agreement".
"We should all together be able to find something smart within 30 days if there is goodwill on both sides."
However on Thursday Mrs Merkel sought to play down the importance of the 30-day period she had floated on Wednesday, saying it was merely "an allegory for being able to do it in a short period of time".
Speaking to reporters in the Netherlands she said that "it would be better to say one can achieve that by October 31".
ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker says there is a "sense of optimism" from Downing Street following the two meetings, but the "fundamental positions" of France and Germany have not changed and there is "little room for manoeuvre" for Boris Johnson.
After meeting Mr Macron, Mr Johnson tweeted: "Today I met President @EmmanuelMacron in Paris. Let's get Brexit done, sensibly and pragmatically and in the interests of both sides. Let's get on with deepening and intensifying the friendship and the partnership between our nations."
And Mr Macron tweeted: "The relationship between the United Kingdom and France is, in my eyes, essential and unalterable. @BorisJohnson, I see in your choice to come to Paris the need to maintain this privileged relationship. Let's work together!"
Why Johnson should not expect an 'entente cordiale' in Paris
Peston: Why there may be only nine days in September to deliver or block Brexit
Mr Johnson said while he wants a deal, the UK "must come out of the EU on October 31 - deal or no-deal".
The prime minister believes the only way a deal with the EU would be approved by Parliament, is if he can remove the backstop - the contingency plan to remove any need for a border in Ireland.
He insisted alternatives to the backstop could be found as "where there's a will, there's a way".
However the French president told Mr Johnson the Withdrawal Agreement and Irish backstop are "not just technical constraints or legal quibbling" but are "genuine, indispensable guarantees" to preserve stability in Ireland the integrity of the single market.
But he said the EU had "always said that it was available to discuss, depending on the wishes of the UK, our future relationship".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn echoed Mr Macron's comments on stability in Ireland.
He said: "The question of the Irish border is fundamental to a lot of things. The Irish peace process was an enormous step forward. It's an international treaty, it's an international agreement.
"It cannot be negotiated away by Boris Johnson or anybody else so I think President Macron is quite right to say they're not going to allow a hard border to return in Ireland and I'm absolutely with him on that."
Mr Johnson was asked by ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener on what leaving without a deal actually means.
He said: "A great deal of work has already been done to ensure that the transition on October 31st is as smooth as it possibly can be and so there are already agreements on aviation, on many other sectors."
He added: "What we want to do now in the next 71 days or whatever is remaining, we want to make sure that we do all the necessary work on both sides of the Channel to make sure that whether we get an agreement or not, our exit is as smooth and as pain free as possible."
Following the meeting the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, ahead of a meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk, said "no-deal (Brexit) will never be the choice of the EU".
He said: "I am now meeting now meeting President Tusk as we do regularly. I always say that the EU prefers an orderly withdrawal of the UK respecting the single market, the integrity of the single market, and obviously the peace and stability in Ireland. I just want to add that the no-deal (Brexit) will never be the choice of the EU, never."
It comes after Mr Johnson met German leader Angela Merkel in Berlin for Brexit discussions.
Mrs Merkel, in a joint press conference with Mr Johnson, hinted it was possible within 30 days, despite skepticism that a deal can be achieved and approved by Parliament within the timetable.
She said: "If one is able to solve this conundrum, if one finds this solution, we said we would probably find it in the next two years to come but we can also maybe find it in the next 30 days to come."
Can an alternative to the Brexit backstop be found in 30 days?
Mr Johnson welcomed her “blistering” suggestion, claimed there are "abundant solutions" to the backstop, and said the "onus is on us" to find them - but did not mention any specifically.
He said: "I think what we need to do is remove it whole and entire - the backstop - and then work, as Chancellor Merkel says, on the alternative arrangements."
Mr Johnson is expected to meet US President Mr Trump at the G7 summit in Biarritz which starts on Saturday, but Mr Macron warned that the UK would be a "junior partner" in its relationship with Washington after a hard Brexit.
Following their press conference, Mr Johnson and Mr Macron had lunch in the Elysee Palace before going for a walk through the gardens together, accompanied only by an official photographer.
The leaders then enjoyed coffee in the palace where there was some small talk between then, although the conversation was inaudible to the travelling press pack.
Mr Johnson left the palace following the coffee and is due to fly back to the UK before conducting domestic visits on Friday.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
At the hacks’ hustings for the Tory leadership candidates, I asked the five who could be bothered to be held to account by your inky fingered servants a really boring question.
Would they accept the definition of a "hard border" on the island of Ireland written into the December joint agreement between the UK and the EU, which underpins the backstop plan in the Withdrawal Agreement?
The reason this matters is that the joint agreement says there is a commitment to avoid "a hard border including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls", and the Withdrawal Agreement says "any future arrangements [for Ireland] must be compatible with these overarching requirements".
If you are still awake, the reason I asked this seemingly dull technical question is it is this definition of a hard border that sunk Theresa May’s stoic attempts to have her deal ratified by MPs and ultimately sunk her.
To be clear, it was completely understandable she agreed there should be no hard border - because prior to the Good Friday Agreement the previous hard border was associated with terrorism, crime, life-wrecking atrocities.
So of course neither May nor the EU could countenance a return to a hard border.
The question is what a hard border actually means. And the framing of "hard" as meaning "any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls" necessarily compelled May to accept that all of the UK would remain in the customs union for as long as it takes to find alternative arrangements to obviate the need for customs checks and that much of Northern Ireland would be subject to EU rules to avoid the need for product and food quality checks.
In other words this framing of "hard" led directly to the refusal of many Tory Brexiters and the DUP to back her deal - because for the DUP it drives a wedge between NI and GB, and for Brexiters it keeps Brussels in charge of much of the UK economy.
And although the backstop to keep this border open is to be "temporary", how could it ever melt away if physical infrastructure and associated controls are explicitly and permanently prohibited.
If any kind of technological solution is banned - as it appears to be - only the Brexit fairy can get rid of the backstop.
Which is why I asked the five available candidates whether they would try to change the definition of a hard border.
And the answers were:
Gove - no
Hunt - “broadly” no
Stewart - no
Javid - not sure
Raab - probably, but thinks the definition is more ambiguous than I say.
For what it is worth, I assume Johnson - if he had deigned to turn up - would have agreed with Raab.
What flows from all this?
That in substance Gove, Hunt and Stewart would struggle to get Brexit approved by MPs, because the DUP and ERG Brexiters will struggle to understand why the backstop isn’t as toxic as it ever was.
And Johnson and Raab would probably be told by Whitehall if they want to change the hard border definition they can whistle for it - and that what they really want is a no-deal Brexit.
And Javid is yet to make this ultimate Hobson’s Choice.
Oh the toxic legacy bequeathed by May to her successor, party and country.
Nicola Sturgeon has backed the idea of Jeremy Corbyn becoming a caretaker prime minister, in a bid to secure an extension to the Brexit deadline.
The Scottish First Minister tweeted on Friday she agrees with the idea of installing the Labour leader as PM through a vote of no confidence in the Conservative administration so he can secure a Brexit extension, before then calling an immediate general election.
In response to a tweet making the suggestion, Ms Sturgeon said: “Agree with this. VONC [vote of no confidence], opposition unites around someone for sole purpose of securing an extension, and then immediate General Election.
“Nothing is risk free but leaving Johnson in post to force through no deal – or even a bad deal – seems like a terrible idea to me.”
The confirmation comes after ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston predicted the alliance this morning.
SNP set to back Corbyn as caretaker Prime Minister, writes Robert Peston
Mr Johnson has maintained Britain will leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal.
The Benn Act, passed in Westminster earlier this month, instructs the PM to request an extension to the deadline until the end of January if no deal is agreed, but that is something Mr Johnson has repeatedly said he will not do.
Despite support from the SNP, a vote of no confidence in the UK Government would still need to win over the other opposition parties, and the 23 MPs expelled by the Tories.
A spokesman for the SNP said: “The SNP has led the way in ensuring Brexit can be stopped and in bringing Parliament back into action after the Tories sought to shut down UK democracy, and we will continue to work with all opposition MPs to stop a no-deal Brexit and call a general election to remove this dangerous and undemocratic Prime Minister as soon as possible.
“It is now possible – if the political will is there – that parties could come together to ensure that the letter to secure an extension is not left in the hands of Boris Johnson and his cronies, who are determined to find a way to get around the Benn Act, but is instead sent by a temporary caretaker prime minister, who would be in office only as long as is necessary to send the letter, with an election held immediately afterwards.
“We remain open to all options to achieve the aim of stopping a no-deal Brexit and getting rid of Boris Johnson.”
Kirstene Hair, Conservative MP for Angus, said: “This confirms what many have long suspected – SNP MPs will happily prop up Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10.
“There is no doubt that Corbyn’s weak stance on indyref2 is a deciding factor for the nationalists.
“He has already left the door open for a re-run of the 2014 referendum if he becomes prime minister.
“Only a Conservative Government will stand up for those who voted No in what was meant to be a once-in-a-generation event.”
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds has indicated that his party would bring Theresa May's government down if the Prime Minister got her Brexit deal through the House of Commons.
DUP support for Mrs May’s administration in any confidence motion would depend on the deal being defeated or ditched by the Prime Minister.
Mr Dodds told ITV's Peston the DUP would not be voting for Mrs May's Withdrawal Agreement "as things stand", adding he could not see "much being changed that will be effective" before the meaningful vote on December 11.
The Prime Minister's deal was "bad for the United Kingdom, certainly bad for Northern Ireland given the legal advice that we have forced out of the government today," Mr Dodds told Robert Peston.
"The deal that the Prime Minister has put forward is not one that honours the spirit of the confidence and supply agreement and certainly not one we can support," he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Dodds met with European Research Group (ERG) Chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg and Deputy Chairman Steve Baker and told the Brexit-backing Tories that the DUP's support for Mrs May could be conditional on the deal being defeated.
When questioned on it, Mr Dodds said it would be "somewhat illogical" if the DUP wanted to vote the Government out after forcing Mrs May's hand should the vote go against her on December 11.
"I think then we start on a process to try to get a better deal," he added.
He added opposition to the Withdrawal Agreement have been "galvanised" by the publication of the "devastating" legal advice.
When asked if he felt betrayed when the Attorney General report said  Britain would be treated as a ‘third country’ for goods when it came to Northern Ireland, he said: “I think that that has really cut home to a lot of people. It is a devastating, I’d describe this as devastating, because it shows in terms that we’re in actually the EU customs union, GB treat Northern Ireland as a third country, we’re tied into it despite talk of it not being permanent, that it’s indefinitely and at the behest of the EU whether they ever let us out of it if we go into it. Yes, this is very, very wounding."
The Attorney General's Brexit legal advice was published in full on Wednesday following the Government's defeat in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
It warned the United Kingdom could be left in “protracted and repeated rounds of negotiations” over the Irish backstop.
In an attempt to win over MPs to vote in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement, Mrs May mooted the idea of a “Parliamentary lock” - giving MPs a vote before the backstop - could be implemented.
But Mr Dodds dismissed the idea that a "Parliamentary lock" could be offered by the Government, giving MPs a vote before the backstop is implemented.
"I don't see what that really accomplishes, it doesn't change anything, it doesn't change the withdrawal treaty, it doesn't have any effect on that whatsoever," he said.
He said it was "highly unlikely" that Mrs May would win the December 11 vote, but if the deal passed it would have "implications", warning the next steps would be even harder.
"But even before we get to the point of calling a general election, what I would say to the government and any Conservative MPs who may be thinking of voting for this - even if this vote squeaks through, how do they get the Withdrawal Bill through after that?
"How do they get all the other legislation that needs to get through the House of Commons?
"You don't actually have to call a general election without realising how difficult this would put the government's position in."
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
The Queen has approved a request by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to suspend Parliament just weeks before the Brexit deadline on October 31.
The extended suspension comes just a week after MPs return from their summer recess and is intended for the Government to hold a Queen's Speech - laying out their plans - on October 14.
This means Parliament will not sit for the majority of September and the first two weeks of October, returning after the Queen's Speech.
MPs are unlikely to have time to pass any laws that could stop the Prime Minister taking the UK out of the EU without a deal on October 31.
ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt explains what happens next after Mr Johnson has decided to prorogue Parliament.
Proroguing Parliament: What does it mean?
Key dates in the Brexit countdown as Boris Johnson asks Queen to suspend Parliament
Ruth Davidson 'on verge of quitting' as Scottish Conservative leader
The announcement has already angered MPs, including House of Commons Speaker John Bercow, who described it as a "constitutional outrage".
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to the Queen to express concerns and request a meeting with her and other privy counsellors, it is understood.
Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson is reported to be on the verge of resigning as leader.
Confirming the Government's plans on Wednesday morning, Mr Johnson said: “We need new legislation, we’ve got to be bringing forward new and important bills and that’s why we are going to have a Queen’s Speech and we are going to do it on October 14 and we have got to move ahead now with a new legislative programme.”
European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt has said Government plans to suspend Parliament are "unlikely to help deliver a stable future EU - UK relationship".
"'Taking back control' has never looked so sinister," he tweeted. "As a fellow parliamentarian, my solidarity with those fighting for their voices to be heard.
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston said a Government source claims any vote of no confidence passed by MPs will result in Parliament being dissolved and a general election at the start of November.
Boris Johnson allows MPs just days to block no-deal Brexit, Robert Peston writes
Mr Johnson said that it is "completely untrue" he will be holding a Queen's Speech on October 14 because of Brexit, insisting that he had a new government with an "exciting agenda" that requires new legislation.
Responding to criticism, Mr Johnson said: “If you look at what we are doing, we are bringing forward a new legislative programme on crime, on hospitals, making sure that we have the education funding that we need and there will be ample time on both sides of that crucial October 17 summit.
“Ample time in Parliament for MPs to debate the EU to debate Brexit and all the other issues. Ample time.”
The move comes a day after around 160 MPs joined a cross-party plan to stop a no-deal Brexit by “using whatever mechanism possible”.
The plan against a no-deal exit aims to stop Mr Johnson forcing through no deal by shutting down Parliament and will see MPs "do whatever is necessary" to stop that happening.
In a letter to MPs outlining his Government's plans, Mr Johnson said he was bringing forward a "bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda" which MPs would be able to vote on in October.
He said: "A central feature of the legislative programme will be the Government's number one legislative priority, if a new deal is forthcoming at EU Council, to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill and move at pace to secure its passage before 31 October."
Parliament will have the opportunity to debate the Government's approach to Brexit and then vote on October 21 and 22, he added.
Mr Johnson may yet face resistance from his own MPs once it's time for a vote, with the European Research Group's de facto whip Mark Francois telling ITV News removing the backstop from the Withdrawal Agreement is not enough.
How have MPs reacted?
House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said: "I have had no contact from the Government, but if the reports that it is seeking to prorogue Parliament are confirmed, this move represents a constitutional outrage.
"However it is dressed up, it is blindingly obvious that the purpose of prorogation now would be to stop Parliament debating Brexit and performing its duty in shaping a course for the country.
"At this time, one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history, it is vital that our elected Parliament has its say. After all, we live in a parliamentary democracy."
Mr Corbyn said this is an attempt to "ride roughshod" over Parliament and prevent any legislation or debate that would stop a no-deal Brexit.
He said: "He seems to want to run headlong into the arms of Donald Trump with more determination than I've ever seen in anyone else before.
"This is extraordinary. He needs to be held to account by Parliament, not by shutting down Parliament, but by attending Parliament and answering the questions."
SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon described the move as "completely outrageous.
She said: "This is about trying to stop a majority in Parliament coming together to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
"Now that's the kind of behaviour you expect to see in countries that are not democratic, that are ruled by dictators.
"And that's happening here in the UK. Boris Johnson, let's not forget, is not elected by anyone other than the Conservative party and here he is trying to shut down Parliament."
Former Chancellor Philip Hammond agreed the move represents a "constitutional outrage" at a time of "national crisis".
He criticised the decision as "profoundly undemocratic".
Labour MP Jess Phillips has responded to Boris Johnson's letter to MPs about Government plans to prorogue Parliament, telling him "this is not the actions of a credible Prime Minister".
"You're gambling that the trappings of office will give you an advantage in this game of chance," she wrote in a letter addressed to Mr Johnson.
"It is a mighty gamble. And for the people I represent, it is not a game."
Ms Phillips condemned the Prime Minister for treating her constituents' jobs, businesses and safety as "casino chips", and that "every right-minded member in Parliament" will fight his plan "every step of the way".
Asked to respond to people who argue the Government's decision is undemocratic, the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg said: "They wouldn't know what they were talking about, it's a normal function of our constitution."
On fears over a no-deal Brexit, he added: "The government is working very had to get a deal as the prime minister has said."
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said a confidence motion is "now certain" and the announcement is seen as "a positive move by Brexiteers".
He also tweeted: "The unanswered question is whether Boris Johnson intends to pursue the Withdrawal Agreement."
DUP Leader Arlene Foster has welcomed the decision and said her party will continue to work with the prime minister to "strengthen the Union" and deliver a "sensible deal".
US President Donald Trump added his voice to the issue, claiming it would be "very hard" for Mr Corbyn to successfully table a no-confidence vote against the prime minister.
He tweeted Mr Johnson is "exactly what the UK has been looking for".
A petition demanding that moves to suspend Parliament are halted has smashed the 100,000 threshold and will be debated by MPs.
The petition on Parliament's website amassed the number required less than three hours after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced he planned to prorogue Parliament in order to push through his new domestic agenda.
Any petition that secures 10,000 signatures is guaranteed a government response and 100,000 names forces a debate in Parliament.
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Angus Walker
Brexiteers Dominic Raab and Andrea Leadsom have formally launched their bids to take over from Theresa May as the next Conservative leader, as the war of words between candidates turns sour.
Former Brexit Secretary Raab, who resigned over Mrs May's Withdrawal Agreement, said he planned to "fight for a fairer deal on Brexit, a fairer deal for British workers and a fairer society where every child can fulfil their potential".
Writing in The Mail On Sunday, Mr Raab said he would prefer to leave with a deal but that the UK must "calmly demonstrate unflinching resolve to leave in October - at the latest".
He added: "The country now feels stuck in the mud, humiliated by Brussels and incapable of finding a way forward.
"The Prime Minister has announced her resignation. It's time for a new direction."
Meanwhile Ms Leadsom, writing in the Sunday Times, said she would be willing to walk away from the EU in October without a deal, stating: "To succeed in a negotiation you have to be prepared to walk away."
Ms Leadsom added that she would introduce a citizens' rights bill to resolve uncertainty facing EU nationals, then seek agreement in other areas where consensus already exists, such as on reciprocal healthcare and Gibraltar.
Theresa May abandons her attempt to 'serve the country she loves', writes Robert Peston
'She really tried': Public defend Theresa May who 'was let down by her party'
Raab and Leadsom's foray into the leadership battle comes as Jeremy Hunt put forward his own case to become the next leader in an article for the Sunday Times.
The Foreign Secretary said his business background would help him resolve the Brexit impasse.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Hunt said: "If I was prime minister, I'd be the first prime minister in living memory who has been an entrepreneur by background.
"Doing deals is my bread and butter as someone who has set up their own business."
Mr Hunt, who is expected for formally launch his campaign on Sunday, added: "The first three businesses I set up failed so I know what it's like to have a business that isn't working out, not to be able to pay your employees their salary at the end of the month, to realise that your products aren't selling.
"I've had all those experiences but what do you learn? You learn to keep going."
"We can never take no-deal off the table but the best way of avoiding it is to make sure you have someone who is capable of negotiating a deal."
Later on Sunday, Michael Gove is expected to enter the race to become Prime Minister on Sunday, where his supporters expect him to declare his candidacy at an event at the Hay Festival.
According to the Telegraph, the Environment Secretary is telling MPs he is the "unity" candidate that can bring the party together on Brexit and stop their decline in the polls.
His candidacy would make him the sixth Cabinet or former Cabinet minister to enter the race, with more expected to announce their entry into the already crowded field.
War of words between leadership hopefuls turns sour
As the battle heated up, International Development Secretary Mr Stewart said he could not serve in a government led by Boris Johnson because of his stance on a possible no-deal exit from the EU.
He told ITV News: "Boris has many, many skills but one thing I would not call him at the moment is a unifying figure.
"His policies are for a no-deal Brexit, which is going with the (Nigel) Farage wing of our party."
The comments came as Labour insisted it would force a Commons vote of no confidence in the new prime minister as soon as possible.
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Mr Stewart had earlier told BBC Radio: "I spoke to Boris, I suppose, about two weeks ago about this and I thought at the time he had assured me that he wouldn't push for a no-deal Brexit.
"So, we had a conversation about 20, 25 minutes and I left the room reassured by him that he wouldn't do this.
"But, it now seems that he is coming out for a no-deal Brexit."
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd ruled herself out of the contest, but Matt Hancock announced on Saturday that he was in the running.
Mr Hancock said he would take a different approach to try to get Commons support for a Brexit deal rather than the tactics Mrs May used.
He told ITV News: "Bringing the country together is absolutely critical for the next leader, and, of course, the party.
"And to do that, we need to deliver Brexit but not be defined by Brexit."
He said Brexit needed to happen before any general election, which would be a "huge risk" for the Conservative party.
Mr Hancock said he was the man to "unite the country and the party by being completely straightforward" with what needed to be done and the trade-offs.
More than a dozen Tories are understood to be considering a bid.
The new Tory leader looks set to take over as prime minister at the end of July after a tearful Theresa May finally laid out a timetable for her exit from Downing Street on Friday.
Justine Greening: I’d run for Tory leader to make sure there’s a centrist candidate
Former foreign secretary Mr Johnson, who has emerged as the bookies’ favourite, stressed he would be prepared to back a no-deal departure to ensure the UK leaves the EU on October 31.
The timetable for the contest will see nominations close in the week of June 10, with MPs involved in a series of votes to whittle down what is set to be a crowded field to a final two contenders.
Tory party members will then decide who wins the run-off.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
I've been passed a document headed: "Indicative votes before second reading of the WAB" (Withdrawal Agreement Bill).
It is an official summary of what the government had hoped to agree with Labour by way of a Brexit compromise, and how to test the will of the House of Commons on what kind of customs union or arrangement would be appropriate for the UK.
Strikingly it shows Theresa May and her cabinet trying to achieve two other things: they want to use so-called indicative votes by MPs in just the next few days to prove MPs do not want a confirmatory referendum, and that they do want to leave the EU on 31 July.
If Jeremy Corbyn were to agree to this, he would split the Labour Party. But there are other elements of the proposed cross-party compromise, namely on customs and a proposed "package agreed with Labour", which would tear the Tory Party apart.
The document shows the government wants to hold these indicative votes next week, before the EU parliamentary elections and the short recess.
"We would make an emergency business statement on Monday; votes would take place on Wednesday," the paper says.
It adds: "Whilst neither the Government nor the Opposition can commit to be bound by all of these votes, the purpose of holding them is to test the will of the House and, as far as possible, reflect that in the WAB to maximise the chances of it securing Royal Assent. To that end, the Government and the Opposition will consider not just the result of each vote but the level of support for it".
In other words, the cabinet wants to bind Labour's leadership into a rolling process of assessing what compromises are necessary to secure passage of its Brexit legislation.
If these votes were to take place next week, there would be a dizzying five categories of them, and I reproduce them below.
The section that may confuse you is 3), because this contains four different customs options. The paper says that MPs would be "able to vote for as many [customs] options as they want and the option with the fewest votes [would be] eliminated in each round".
Importantly, this vote on customs would be a free vote. And it will be seen as an attempt to enlist the support of Labour MPs for a customs union or customs arrangements with the EU that a probable majority of Tory MPs loathe and see as a travesty of a "true" Brexit.
As for voting arrangements on the other proposed motions, the paper wants both government and Labour to whip in favour of leaving the EU with a deal, and getting all relevant legislation passed by the time of summer recess so the UK can be out of the EU on 31 July, and on a "package we've agreed with Labour".
However - and this will outrage many Labour MPs - the paper proposes a free vote on a clause that "the deal should not be subject to a second referendum". This will be seen by MPs who want a confirmatory referendum as an attempt to pre-emptively close down this route.
Here are the five different motions proposed for these indicative votes:
1. A Brexit deal
"The UK should leave the European Union with a deal."
2. Before summer recess
"The WAB [or Withdrawal Agreement Bill] should receive Royal Assent by the summer recess in order that the UK leaves the EU on 31st July 2019."
3. Customs
"A customs arrangement that combines the benefits of a customs union - no tariffs, fees, charges or quantitative restrictions - plus no checks on rules of origin when goods move between the UK and the EU with the ability for the UK to determine its own external trade policy and international development policy.
"A comprehensive customs union covering both goods and services, including a UK say in EU trade policy, at least until alternative arrangements that maintain as close to frictionless trade as possible with the EU and no hard border on the island of Ireland have been agreed.
"A customs union covering goods, including a say in relevant EU trade policy, at least until the next election.
"A comprehensive customs union covering both goods and services including a UK say in EU trade policy."
4. No people's vote
"The deal should not be subject to a second referendum."
5. The package agreed with Labour
"Parliament must approve the UK's objectives for the negotiations on our future relationship with the EU and approve the treaty governing that relationship before the Government signs it.
"The UK should seek as close to frictionless trade in goods with the EU as possible, subject to the UK being outside the Single Market and ending free movement, to protect jobs in just-in-time supply chains.
"In order to deliver as close to frictionless trade in goods as possible, the UK should dynamically align with those EU rules for goods and agri-food products that are relevant to checks at the border.
"The UK should seek the fullest possible participation in EU tools and measures that protect citizens' security.
"The UK should seek the fullest possible participation in key EU agencies, including the European Medicines Agency, the European Aviation Safety Agency and the European Chemicals Agency in relation to the economic partnership and Europol and Eurojust in relation to the security partnership.
"Workers' rights in the UK should be no less favourable than rights in the EU.
"The UK's withdrawal from the UK should not affect the level of environmental protection in the UK."
The end of Theresa May, writes Robert Peston
Now what I find intriguing is that the "package we've agreed with Labour" reads very much like a summary of the PM's Chequers proposal for the future relationship with the EU - which prompted the resignations from the Cabinet of the Brexiters David Davis and Boris Johnson - as much as Labour's blueprint for the future relationship with the EU.
There will be plenty of Brexiter Tory MPs who will hate everything in the document, especially the Labour "package", and many Labour MPs who will argue that it's only acceptable if subject to a confirmatory referendum.
But there are Labour MPs like Lisa Nandy and Caroline Flint - and frontbenchers such as Ian Lavery - who have been urging Corbyn to find a Brexit compromise with the government.
For what it's worth I cannot see Labour signing up to the contents of the document. Although Corbyn has been resisting giving an unambiguous commitment to a referendum, he is acutely aware that maybe half his MPs now want one - including his Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer - and that they will be enraged if he endorses a document whose purpose seems to be to shut down the referendum route.
I asked the government for an official reaction. To date they have failed to provide one.
The Labour MP Alex Sobel said: "Labour can now take a stand: end the cross-party talks immediately and make it clear there is no prospect of Labour ever agreeing to any Brexit deal that is not handed back to the people for the final say."
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
I pass on, with little confidence or real understanding, that Boris Johnson seems to believe that Leo Varadkar and Dublin have lessened their objections of principle to his Brexit offer.
Maybe both sides are moving in a significant way. We'll see.
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What I should point out however is that if the negotiations were to collapse this weekend, that would be the worst timing for Johnson, because it would spur rebel Tory MPs to use SO24 next week to take control of Commons business - and they would try to get a motion passed in favour of a referendum on May's gone-but-not-forgotten Brexit deal.
When that flopped (as it probably would), the rebels would go for a vote of no confidence, to engineer Johnson's removal.
Explained: The SO24 process of emergency debates
As I understand it, this has been their plan.
However if Dublin and [on Friday] Brussels signal a deal is a genuine possibility, even the ultras among Tory rebels will feel obliged to give Johnson and his negotiators the time and space to try and conclude that deal.
In other words, Johnson's optimism and apparent readiness to adapt his offer may be real or may be a ruse.
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Either way, the hint of an entente is perfectly timed, to limit the risk that backbench MPs take Johnson hostage before next Thursday's EU council meeting, when EU leaders face their darkest Brexit hour and hardest Brexit decision - namely whether to close the door on a Brexit offer from Johnson they hate, and trust that backbench MPs will usurp him, rescue them and prevent a no-deal Brexit.
In keeping the talks going, Johnson is massively increasing the jeopardy for EU leaders.
The new  Secretary of State for International Development has said cross-party Brexit talks were the "smart thing to do" and suggested he would support the Prime Minister if she promised Labour a customs deal or a second referendum.
Rory Stewart, who was given his new role earlier this evening following Gavin Williamson's sacking as Defence Secretary on Wednesday, told ITV's Peston show that in the circumstances Brexit cross-party talks were the best way to ensure the UK left the EU "responsibly" and "pragmatically".
On Tuesday, the Tory chief whip Julian Smith told the Cabinet a sustainable majority for a Brexit deal would most likely see the government having to commit to a customs union or a confirmatory referendum.
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With many Conservative MPs opposed to these options, any Brexit deal based on these outcomes would go through with majority support from Labour, and minority support from the Tories a situation that could risk Theresa May splitting her party.
Mr Stewart told Robert Peston that Mrs May should take that risk if "she was forced to".
"She would like to get this through with Conservative votes. But very sadly, there are 30/40 Conservative colleagues who have steadfastly refused to vote for a Brexit deal," he said.
"She must deliver a Brexit deal. We've got to do it responsibly and if that means working cross-party on this issue, not in general, we don't agree with Jeremy Corbyn on 99% of things, but on Brexit, there's a reason to do that.
"This isn't a settlement for this week, it's something that's got to last for 30 or 40 years, it's got to last through changes of government, changes of parties."
Responding to some Conservative backbenchers threats to leave the party if they were forced to back such a deal, Mr Stewart said that it was "a risk" but he would "rather Steve Baker and others voted for the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement."
He continued: "But if they won’t, if they are insisting on a no-deal Brexit, which is not something the majority of the country want and is not something the majority of Parliament wants, then there is no alternative in delivering Brexit other than to have to reach across the aisle.”
"The solution is going to have to be a deal. In the end that's the logic. People voted to leave the European Union. We need to deliver Brexit and we need to do it responsible and pragmatically and that means a Brexit deal.
Barry Gardiner, Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, told Robert Peston he was happy Mr Stewart was in the Cabinet and hoped the two parties could reach a Brexit compromise.
"We are trying to reach a compromise that the British people can look at and say 'you know what, that's good enough for me. I understand that half of my fellow citizens disagree with me, and therefore I can't have everything that I want.'
"But going for that middle ground, going for the compromise and seeing Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May in negotiations, trying to work this through, is a sensible place for British politicians to be."
On Tuesday, Jeremy Corbyn saw off an attempt to commit Labour to a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal when the proposal was defeated in a marathon meeting of the party's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) to finalise the Labour platform for next month's European elections.
The manifesto agreed upon will back a second referendum only if a general election and a Labour deal cannot be delivered.
In response to this, Mr Gardiner said: “Can I say, it is an unambiguous commitment but it is a conditional commitment, and I think that's what we need to understand.
"So when you say if only we'd given an unambiguous one, it was unambiguous, it said very clearly if we cannot negotiate the deal that we'retrying to negotiate at the moment.
"We said if it's going to be the bad deal Theresa May has already concluded with the European Union or a no deal, then there's an unambiguous commitment there to opt for, to back the option of a second public vote.”
Asked about Gavin Williamson's sacking on Wednesday, Mr Stewart said: “It’s a difficult thing to judge. I would say though that Mark Sedwill, who’s the current cabinet secretary who made the decision with the Prime Minister, those are people whose judgement I absolutely trust and I am sure they followed the right process.”
Tory leadership hopeful Sajid Javid has refused to rule out extending Britain’s departure from the European Union beyond the end of October.
The Home Secretary, who is among 13 candidates vying to replace Theresa May, said he did not want to delay Brexit but would not ignore Parliament if it forced his hand.
It follows reports that Environment Secretary Michael Gove told colleagues he is prepared to delay Brexit until the end of next year rather than leave without a deal on October 31.
“I’m clear that my plan would be to leave on October 31. I want to leave with a deal but if I have to choose between no deal and no Brexit I would pick no deal,” Mr Javid told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show.
If we cannot get a Brexit deal, we should leave EU without one, says PM hopeful Javid
Pressed on the matter, he said: “That’s not something I would do, but we are a parliamentary democracy and what we’ve seen in the last few months is Parliament has taken on some extraordinary powers to initiate its own legislation so if it’s statute, if it’s the law, I would not break the law if I was prime minister, of course I would observe the law.”
The Cabinet minister also said he had been working with the Border Force to find an alternative arrangement to the controversial Irish backstop to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
He explained: “In my department at the moment I’ve got Border Force and we’ve done work for months on what an alternative to that arrangement could look like and what’s missing is that good will.
“What I would do is make a grand gesture to Ireland that we would cover all their costs – the upfront costs, the running costs – of a new digitised border.
“I think it could be done in a couple of years but I think we could cover their costs.”
Mr Javid’s comments came as Andrea Leadsom, whose resignation as Commons leader triggered the PM’s departure, said she would not seek to renegotiate Mrs May’s deal and vowed to leave the EU by the end of October in a “managed exit”.
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She said she would not take Britain out of the EU without a deal, instead insisting she would follow her “three-step plan for a managed exit”.
“I think it’s based on the premise that, number one, we have to leave the EU at the end of October, and, number two, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is dead – the EU won’t reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and the UK Parliament won’t vote for it,” she told Marr.
Mrs Leadsom also ruled out holding a general election this year and said she would not support a second referendum or an alliance with the Brexit Party.
Meanwhile, Justice Secretary David Gauke said he would support International Development Secretary Rory Stewart in the race to replace Mrs May, saying he had “real strengths” in being an unconventional candidate.
Mr Gauke also said he would not be able to serve in a cabinet which pursued leaving without a deal as its “objective”.
But he said: “I don’t think you can completely take it off the table because the European Union might refuse any kind of extension and we might find ourselves in that situation.
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“So I accept that we should prepare for it but if it is an objective in saying ‘no-deal is the right answer’ I wouldn’t support that policy, I wouldn’t be able to serve in a cabinet that pursued that policy.”
Mr Stewart also won support from Tory former chancellor Ken Clarke, while former Cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said she would back Mr Gove.
Former universities minister Sam Gyimah became the latest Tory MP to announce his intention to replace Mrs May, saying he would broaden the race.
Brexit Party MEP Ann Widdecombe said the Tories, her former party, had “gone mad” in fielding so many candidates.
Elsewhere, Health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote to MPs setting out his “Brexit Delivery Plan”, saying a no-deal exit was “not an available choice” to the next PM.
He said he would seek a time limit to the Irish backstop, set up an Irish Border Council, and propose a “Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement” as the basis of the UK’s long-term relationship with the EU.
Conservative MP David Lidington has confirmed that the prospect of a confirmatory referendum has been discussed as part of the cross-party Brexit talks.
Labour policy is to have a second referendum on any agreed Brexit deal but Mr Lidington is cool on the idea.
"We've always known this is part of Labour's policy platform, so it's something I would have expected them to raise at these meetings and they have," Mr Lidington said when asked about a second referendum after Monday's talks.
"Equally, they know this is not something that is government policy and the last couple of time it has come before the House of Commons, it has been defeated."
Labour's team are looking to progress talks with the Conservative as they enter their fourth week but a so-called people's vote, would seem to be a sticking point.
"A public vote is on the agenda every time we meet and it will continue to do so and we're exploring ways in which we can work with the government on this," Sue Hayman MP explained.
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The decision to slash tariffs on a range of imports from outside the European Union if MPs vote on Wednesday to leave without a deal would "take a wrecking ball" to the economy.
The national secretary of the GMB union, Jude Brimble said trade secretary Liam Fox's plan to cut tariffs was "grossly irresponsible" and would put tens of thousands of jobs at risk.
Despite the pledge to slash tariffs, the new trade deal would see some products coming from the remaining 27 EU member states, which are currently imported free of tariffs, facing levies for the first time.
Ministers said that, overall, the changes would represent a “modest liberalisation” of the UK’s tariff regime.
Under a unilateral temporary scheme announced by the Government, 87% of all imports to the UK by value would be eligible for zero-tariff access – up from 80% at present – while many other goods will be subject to a lower rate than currently applied under EU rules.
Imports to the UK by value which would be eligible for zero-tariff access under new rules.
Imports to the UK by value which are currently eligible for zero-tariff access.
In special arrangements for Northern Ireland, the UK’s temporary import tariffs will not apply to EU goods crossing the border from the Republic.
Among the 13% of imports by value which will be subject to tariffs will be:
Beef, lamb, pork and poultry and some dairy products, in order to protect UK farmers and producers from cheap imports;
A number of tariffs on finished vehicles to support the automotive sector, which will not apply to car parts imported from the EU to prevent disruption to supply chains;
Products including certain ceramics, fertiliser and fuel, where tariffs protect UK producers against unfair practices like dumping and state subsidies;
Goods including bananas, raw cane sugar and certain kinds of fish, where tariffs are used to permit preferential access to the UK market for developing countries.
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal on March 29, the temporary schedules will apply for up to 12 months while a full consultation and review of a permanent approach is undertaken.
Proposed tariff rates on a range of food products were announced as a proportion of the so-called “most favoured nation” (MFN) currently imposed by the EU on imports from countries which do not have a free trade agreement.
Rates include beef (53% of MFN), poultry meat (60%), sheep meat (100%), pig meat (13%), butter (32%), Cheddar-like cheese (13%), protected fish and seafood products (100%) and milled and semi-milled products (83%).
Tariffs on finished cars and trucks will be set at 10.6%, down from the EU MFN rate of 11.3%, while for finished buses the rate will remain unchanged at 12.6%.
Other rates include 0.2% on mineral products, 0.1% on chemical products, 2.1 on fertilisers, 0.1% on plastics and rubber, 0.2% on leather and hides, 0.9% on textiles and textile products, 0.3% on stone and cement, 1.2% on ceramics, 0.2% on glass and 2.9% on transport equipment.
Trade Policy Minister George Hollingbery said: “Our priority is securing a deal with the EU as this will avoid disruption to our global trading relationships. However we must prepare for all eventualities.
“If we leave without a deal, we will set the majority of our import tariffs to zero, whilst maintaining tariffs for the most sensitive industries.
“This balanced approach will help to support British jobs and avoid potential price spikes that would hit the poorest households the hardest.
“It represents a modest liberalisation of tariffs and we will be monitoring the economy closely as well as consulting with businesses to decide what our tariffs should be after this transitional period.”
But there was criticism from Trade Unions over the government's announcement of a no-deal tariff scheme.
Ms Brimble from the GMB union said: "Liam Fox's plan to crush tariffs takes a wrecking ball to our economy. It would risk tens of thousands of jobs in our proud ceramics industry alone.
"The Government has failed to publish any impact assessments for this disastrous scheme and has not consulted with unions and businesses affected. Their claims to be working in the national interest are today in tatters.
"This grossly irresponsible plan shows their true agenda, where jobs and communities are crushed under the heel of an extreme ideological agenda. If allowed it would inevitably lead to retribution from other countries and turn the UK into a Wild West economy.
"That ministers think they can get away with this grossly irresponsible plan shows why MPs of all parties must put the national interest first in preventing the UK leaving with no deal - and why we need much stronger democratic safeguards in all trade negotiations to prevent ministers from running riot with jobs and communities."
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "Ending tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit would be a hammer blow to our manufacturing industries and the communities they support.
"The Government is flying blind, having introduced these plans without any consultation with the workers they will affect. We need a full and proper impact assessment."
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
There is a huge Tory revolt under way to stop Theresa May asking the EU for a Brexit delay of nine months or more.
She has been requested to address the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs at 5pm on Wednesday where she will be told in no uncertain terms that the delay must not be longer than the end of June.
Meanwhile, many MPs have told me that Brexiter members of Cabinet, led by Andrea Leadsom and Penny Mordaunt, have also sought a meeting with PM on Wednesday morning to express the same concern. Neither minister has responded to my enquiry.
Also, several MPs have said there is a growing movement for the PM to announce her resignation date imminently. “The plates are shifting”, said one. Wednesday will be (ANOTHER) big day, for the PM and the nation.
PS I have learned this morning that the foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt is one of the recalcitrant Cabinet ministers who has requested meeting with PM this morning to urge her to rule our long Brexit delay.
PPS It sounds as though the PM has already  capitulated to pressure from Brexiter ministers and MPs, and will no longer float option with EU of longer Brexit delay. But if she does that, the no-deal cliff edge simply moves from end March to May/June.
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Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
On my show last night, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid captured why nine of his ministerial colleagues have told the Prime Minister they may have to resign next week (though he won't be joining them).
Mr Javid said a no-deal Brexit would be damaging for the UK, he didn't want it, and the risk of it had increased but there was no way to stop it.
Well four cabinet ministers and five junior ministers agree on everything but that last point.
In two separate meetings with the PM on Monday, they told her that either she has to agree to ask the EU to delay Brexit, if it looks impossible to get a deal through parliament by Brexit day on March 29, 2019 - or they'll resign to vote for the Cooper Letwin amendment next week which would force her ask for a delay in those circumstances.
As Tom Newton Dunn wrote in Thursday morning's Sun newspaper, the four Cabinet ministers urging the PM to effectively rule out no deal were the justice secretary David Gauke, the Business Secretary Greg Clark, the Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and the Scottish Secretary David Mundell.
In a separate meeting, five junior ministers - the defence minister Tobias Ellwood, the health minister Steve Brine, the solicitor general Robert Buckland, the business minister Richard Harrington and the work and pensions minister (who serves under Rudd) Sarah Newton - delivered the same message.
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As I understand it those junior ministers also effectively held chits from four other junior ministers, who happened to be away, saying they too were likely to quit if no deal stays on the table.
Also, an undisclosed number of parliamentary private secretaries - the most junior members of the government - were scheduled to have a meeting of their own with the PM to signal they too want no deal squished, as far as the PM is able to do this (remember she has to ask the EU to delay Brexit, she has no unilateral power to do so).
So faced with the possibility that she could see more voluntary ministerial and government resignations than at any point in modern recorded political history - a minimum of nine but perhaps 20-ish - what will the PM do?
"Truthfully we have no idea" said one of the anxious ministers. "And what is extraordinary is that no one around her has any idea".
Another said: "I think it is possibly she'll call our bluff and we will have to resign. I know that sounds mad, but it is definitely a risk".
What's her way out?
"I would like her to permit a free vote on Cooper Letwin, so that we could vote with our consciences and not resign," said one minister.
In those circumstances Cooper Letwin would probably be passed, but it's not 100 per cent guaranteed.
The mystery for the nine ministers on the verge of quitting is why the de facto deputy prime minister David Lidington isn't one of them, since - in the words of a minister - "there isn't a scintilla of difference between our view that no deal is a catastrophe and his".
Another minister who see no deal as poo on stilts is the chancellor, Philip Hammond.
As I have said before, he would quit if the PM adopted no-deal as the policy objective - but in the meantime he is focusing exclusively on trying to take it off the table by securing a deal.
But Hammond is anything but naive and he'll be aware the moment may come when he has to resign (he won't threaten it, he'll just do it).
That said he's conflicted. The mutual antipathy between him and the Brexiters of the ERG is the stuff of legends.
They'd love him to go so he'll be reluctant to give them that satisfaction.
And then there were eight.
A minister who was at one of the two meetings with the PM urging her to rule out no deal has told me he won’t resign next week but will stand his ground and fight.
Which might be Rorke’s Drift. Or possibly the Alamo.
On verra, as they say in Brussels.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Theresa May is behaving like a prime minister who has worked out that taking cautious steps to cling on to power is a bankrupt strategy.
The ruthlessness with which she dispatched her defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, who was till recently her closest ally is one piece of supporting evidence.
The point is that when he allegedly told senior armed forces personnel that "I made her and I can break her", it was not just bluster. As behind-the-scenes organiser of her campaign to become leader (dispatched to do that job by Cameron and Osborne - who wanted to stop Boris) and as her ruthlessly effective chief whip, he was an invaluable supporter.
From which it follows that if Williamson now chooses to become her enemy, he would be formidable.
But she doesn't care.
Why not?
Well on her brief walking holiday, it may well have sunk home that she now has more enemies than friends on her own benches. And she may well have calculated that her only hope of earning an honourable place in history is to put what she sees as principle ahead of trying to placate colleagues who will never be placated.
Again there was more evidence of her liberation from the shackles of party fealty yesterday.
When she was interviewed in the afternoon by senior MPs - those who chair select committees - she treated Labour ones with courtesy while showing near contempt for those Tory Brexiters who have blocked her attempt to secure her own version of Brexit (compare how she answered questions posed by Labour's Hilary Benn with her response to the Conservative Sir Bernard Jenkin).
But perhaps most important is her replacement of Williamson with Rory Stewart - because Stewart will change the balance of opinion on Brexit in her cabinet in an important way.
Williamson became a born-again Brexiter over the past year or so, and argued the case for a no-deal Brexit with near religious fervour - and it matters not whether this was sincere or as positioning ahead of a looming leadership election.
By contrast, Stewart - as he said very powerfully on my show last night - believes with a passion that both no-Brexit and a no-deal Brexit are toxic and unacceptable; he would accept any form of managed, agreed Brexit that (to the greatest extent possible) puts the issue behind the government and all of us.
I was gobsmacked (really) when he did not demur in the slightest when I put to him that the chief whip had told cabinet on Tuesday the only way to get a deal through the house of commons would be for the PM to agree either to Labour's demand for a customs union or to tag a referendum on to any deal as a confirmatory mechanism.
In fact, he said he enthusiastically supported "reaching out across the aisle" in that way. And if a pact with Labour that breached the PM's erstwhile red lines were to secure a stable majority to pass all the necessary Brexit legislation over the coming weeks, he would be prepared to pay the price of seeing some of his ERG Brexit colleagues quit his party in disgust.
"That is a risk" he said. But "doing Brexit cross-party could turn out to be a smart thing to do, to reassure investors for example that this thing will last".
So the prime minister now has around her a powerful caucus of ministers - Hammond, Rudd, Gauke, Lidington, Rudd, Clark, Mundell, Gove, Stewart - who are urging her to put country before party, and agree a deal with Jeremy Corbyn that perhaps a majority of her own MPs would hate.
What's the worst that could happen?
Well there are three failure scenarios, all of which could almost simultaneously happen.
1) She could call Corbyn's bluff and in the end find out that he has been negotiating in bad faith; it may turn out that he simply could not bring himself to do a deal with any Tory prime minister. But that would probably reflect worse on him than her.
2) She could so enrage her party that they find a way to throw her out double quick. But she knows that's going to happen in pretty short order any way. So in that sense she has literally nothing to lose from doing what she thinks is the right thing by the country.
3) She could so alienate her Brexiter MPs and Northern Ireland's DUP, whose support is vital to the Tories remaining in office, that they would join forces with Labour to force a general election. But May knows that the parliamentary arithmetic may make it impossible to secure any kind of Brexit ahead of an election in any case. So again she would have lost nothing if an election was precipitated.
Or to put it another way, even though the prospect of Theresa May securing a pact with Labour for a managed departure from the EU is a remote one, trying and failing is not such a terrible thing for her - because she knows that whatever happens, her time in 10 Downing Street is almost up.
Her destiny is sealed. Her time as prime minister is drawing to a close. So why wouldn't she boldly go where she has never gone before, and seek a genuine Brexit alliance with her implacable opponent, Jeremy Corbyn?
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener
Pressure is building on Theresa May to resign as prime minister as she prepares to meet - for what could be the final time - with the chair of the 1922 Committee.
The resignation of one-time-ally Andrea Leadsom as leader of the Commons seems to have been the final blow but other Tories have been lining up to criticise her.
When asked if she should resign, Conservative former deputy prime minister Lord Michael Heseltine responded: "Well, she's gone.
"I mean have no illusions, she's sitting in Number 10 with no Cabinet, no friends, no party, no majority and no time."
Tory leadership contest to start 10 June, I am told, writes Robert Peston
Key Brexit legislation pushed back following backlash from MPs
It was amending her Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) to include an option of a second referendum which appears to have spelled the end for Mrs May and the chances of it passing are possibly as doomed as her premiership.
Asked whether she intended to push ahead with it her spokesman would merely said that she hoped Parliament would find a way to deliver Brexit.
When she meets with 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady on Friday he is expected to present her with an ultimatum from her MPs.
Their demands will include that she drops her WAB completely and that she resigns as party leader by the end June in order to spark a leadership election, It has been reported.
The WAB, which was due to be presented to the House of Commons on Thursday, [**was postponed by a government whip**](http://Lord Michael Heseltine is asked if Theresa May should resign) standing in for Mrs Leadsom who resigned on Wednesday evening.
Rees-Mogg: 'PM's Brexit deal will suffer another record-breaking defeat'
How Boris Johnson sealed Theresa May's doom, writes Robert Peston
ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener says "whether Mrs May's WAB will ever see the light of day is the subject of intense speculation".
She added: "The fact that the government pulled it widely seen as a signal that Mrs May herself is now on the way out."
Mrs Leadsom said she has no doubts resigning over the WAB was the right decision for her but added "of course it's for the prime minister to decide what's right for her and for the country".
But Conservative MP John Whittingdale, who backed Mrs May in March, said now is the right time for her to go.
He said: "It is a feeling of frustration and in a sense just disbelief that she seems not to have got the message that actually we have to make a new start."
Video report by ITV News political correspondent Romilly Weeks
Theresa May has won a no confidence vote and will remain as Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister.
Speaking minutes after the result was announced, Mrs May said she was "grateful" to the MPs who had voted for her, but noted that a "significant" number of Tories had voted against her.
Of the 317 Tory MPs, 200 or 63%, voted in favour of the Prime Minister, while 117 or 37%, voted against her, giving her a majority of 83.
However, Mrs May sowed the seeds for her eventual departure by telling Tory MPs that she would not lead the party into the next general election, instead presenting herself as the person to see Brexit through, in a bid to win support in Wednesday's vote.
Currently the next general election is expected in 2022.
The result was announced by chair of the influential backbenchers 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady.
May's triumph in confidence vote is 'worst possible outcome' and leaves Tories 'grinding miserably forward', MP says
Mrs May's success means that her leadership cannot be challenged again for a year.
Speaking outside Downing Street following the results, Mrs May said she now had a "renewed mission - delivering the Brexit people voted for, bringing the country back together and building a country that really works for everyone".
Following the disunity in her party, the Prime Minister called for "politicians on all sides to come together and act in the national interest", and deal with the "issues that we came into politics to deal with", such as improving the economy and creating more jobs.
Mrs May added she would travel as planned to address EU leaders at the two-day European Council on Thursday in her quest to improve the Withdrawal Agreement.
After a day of drama in Westminster, Mrs May will travel to the Belgian capital still faced with the same dilemma she faced before it all took place: how to convince the EU to tweak the Withdrawal Agreement so that it will be passed by Parliament.
Speaking outside Downing Street on Wednesday, Mrs May said: "For my part I have heard what the House of Commons said about the Northern Ireland backstop.
"I go to the European Council tomorrow.
"I will be seeking legal and political assurances that will assuage the concerns that Members of Parliament have on that issue."
The Prime Minister had to secure the votes of 159 MPs - half the parliamentary party plus one - to remain as Conservative leader.
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston said the outcome of the vote was "not a great result for the Prime Minister", since "over half of independent Tory MPs voted against her - and even then she had to concede she would not lead the party into the next election".
Robert Peston added that Wednesday's vote suggests that Mrs May will fail to get her Brexit deal through Parliament, since many of the MPs who did not back her, did so because they are opposed to her Brexit deal.
He continued that Mrs May could lose such a vote by a large margin, since the EU is unlikely to change the Withdrawal Agreement over the backstop arrangement, a sticking point for many MPs.
Robert Peston added that if no Brexit deal is agreed on by the deadline of January 21, then Parliament could take control, potentially resulting in the UK staying in the EU due to a large number of Remain-backing MPs.
Why was a no confidence vote triggered?
The ballot was triggered after Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the influential backbench 1922 Committee, received the threshold of 48 letters - 15% of the parliamentary party - needed to trigger a vote.
While confidence in Mrs May had been diminishing in recent weeks, with letters sent to Sir Graham reflecting this, it was the Prime Minister's decision to pull Tuesday's Brexit vote which prompted more letters to be sent and the threshold reached.
The vote was delayed as it looked highly unlikely that it would pass through the Commons, largely due to concerns with the Withdrawal Agreements backstop arrangements for the Irish border.
What is a no confidence vote and how many MPs' support does Theresa May need to win?
How have MPs reacted to the vote result?
Despite the Parliamentary Conservative Party backing Mrs May, she has still faced calls to resign.
Prominent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg - who openly stated he had submitted a letter of no confidence over Theresa May - said the result of the vote was "terrible" for Mrs May and she should resign.
Speaking to ITV News, Mr Rees-Mogg said the "payroll vote" of ministers, parliamentary aides and trade envoys all likely to have backed Mrs May meant that a majority of the remaining 160-170 backbenchers voted no confidence in her".
The chair of the European Research Group (ERG) (Tory MPs who are seeking a hard Brexit), added that Mrs May's Brexit deal was "a very bad deal" and Wednesday's vote reflected this.
Mr Rees-Mogg said Mrs May would not be able to get her Brexit deal through the House of Commons, meaning she had "lost the confidence of the Commons as a whole" and "ought to go to see the Queen urgently and resign".
A statement from the ERG predicted that if Mrs May's Brexit deal was voted on in the House of Commons, it would fail, the end result being a general election which Mrs May would lose.
However, many other MPs backed the Prime Minister.
Chancellor Philip Hammond tweeted that the "right" result came out of the vote and that now the Prime Minister can "focus on the future" and carry on with Brexit.
Work and Pesions Secretary Amber Rudd hailed Mrs May's win as "strong" and said the Government could "get on with the important work ahead".
While Home Secretary Sajid Javid called for MPs to "come together" and "deliver" on Brexit.
Where does Theresa May go from here?
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen
Part of the Government's emergency contingency plans will see 3,500 troops made available in case of disruption caused by a potential no-deal outcome.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson told MPs that regulars and reservists will be "held at readiness" in order to support any department which requires their assistance with contingency plans.
The announcement comes as Theresa May ramps up planning for a no-deal Brexit after Cabinet ministers agreed to make it an “operational priority” for the Government.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Paul Brand
The Prime Minister’s Brexit deal remains the preferred outcome for the Government but with 101 days until the UK’s departure from the bloc, the intensity of preparations for crashing out in March 2019 will increase.
"We've as yet not had any formal request from any Government department but what we are doing is putting contingency plans in place, and what we will do is have 3,500 service personnel held at readiness - including regulars and reserves - in order to support any Government department on any contingencies they may need," Mr Williamson said.
Labour MP Ian Murray, a supporter of the pro-EU Best for Britain campaign, said in a statement outside the Commons: "This is the reality of a no-deal Brexit: soldiers on the streets, medicines being stockpiled in the NHS, and airports and ferry terminals grinding to a halt.
"This is scary tactics, pure and simple."
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay stressed that unless MPs back Mrs May’s deal when it returns to the Commons in January the default option is for the UK to leave without any exit arrangement in place.
The Cabinet has urged businesses to consider implementing their own contingency plans and said households should also make preparations in case such a outcome should occur.
Downing Street stressed that it remains the Government's "top priority" to deliver Brexit under the terms of the deal struck by Mrs May with Brussels, and the Prime Minister's official spokesman insisted that this remains "the most likely scenario".
Speaking after the Cabinet agreed to step up no-deal preparation, Mr Barclay said: “Parliament needs to back the deal because the consequence of not doing so is we risk the default of no-deal and a responsible government must prepare for that eventuality.
“That is what we agreed at Cabinet. That is what we are going to do.”
He dismissed alternative plans being pushed by ministers – including a second referendum or a “managed” no-deal under which arrangements are made with Brussels to limit any negative impacts of severing ties with the EU.
“There are a number of scenarios being floated in government without, I think, people really engaging on the consequences of that – either the consequence to our democracy of not delivering on the referendum, not having Brexit – or the idea that we can cherry-pick and have some managed no-deal where the EU will suspend its own red lines, which I don’t think is feasible.”
In a direct plea to the UK’s business community, Mr Barclay urged company bosses to make sure they were ready for a no-deal Brexit, telling them it needs to be “much more of a priority for businesses up and down the country”.
Around £2 billion has already been allocated for spending by Whitehall departments for Brexit preparations, and Chancellor Philip Hammond announced on Tuesday evening how a further £2 billion will be shared out.
The extra funding for 2019/20 will be focused on priority areas including borders, trade and security.
Twenty-five Government departments will receive additional money, with the Home Office set to receive almost one quarter of the sum - £480 million - to increase Border Force capability with "hundreds of new officers", and to help it prepare the EU Settlement Scheme.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will be given £410 million, HM Revenue and Customs £375 million, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) £190 million and the Department for International Trade £128 million.
In the coming days, companies across the country will be provided with a 100-plus page online pack to help them prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
E-mails to 80,000 of those most likely to be affected will be sent over the next few days.
Some of the funding will be put towards public service announcement telling people how to cope.
However, ITV News Political Correspondent Carl Dinnen reported that not all Cabinet members were happy with the £2 billion worth of spending plans agreed for a no-deal Brexit.
During Tuesday's meeting, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd encouraged those attending to back the need to plan for a no-deal Brexit.
Ms Rudd said that ramping up the preparations did not mean a no-deal outcome, telling colleagues: "Just because you put a seatbelt on doesn't mean that you should crash the car."
The MP - who campaigned for Remain in the referendum - urged other ministers to consider job losses in their constituencies in the case of no-deal.
There is some concern about whether people should plan travel to Europe over the Easter holidays, but the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "I'm not aware of any reason they shouldn't do that."
Labour has hit out at the plans calling them a "testament to the Prime Minister's failure in these negotiations that the Government is now spending billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to prepare for a no-deal Brexit that is rejected by Parliament and many of those sat around the Cabinet table.
"A no-deal Brexit would be a disaster for jobs, the economy and the border in Northern Ireland.
"It is simply not a viable option.
"Labour will work across Parliament to prevent no-deal and ensure the public don't pay the price for this Government's failure."
Meanwhile Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable called the plans "psychological warfare.
"The Conservative Government are attempting to scare MPs, businesses and the public with the threat of a no-deal.
"Theresa May is irresponsibly trying to run down the clock so that the only option is to support her discredited deal.
"It is time to stop playing political games with our future and take the issues at hand seriously.
"The only real way out of this deadlock is to hold a People's Vote, with the option to remain in the EU."
Tom Watson has claimed that on any Brexit deal "there will be a referendum" and says the Labour Party must campaign to remain or else it will be "electoral history".
The deputy Labour leader confirmed to ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston that Jeremy Corbyn was moving toward backing a "referendum in all circumstances" but said the party had not decided which way it would campaign.
His comments came after a shadow cabinet meeting which failed to go as far in shifting the party’s position as pro-EU campaigners in the Labour ranks had hoped.
Deliberations will continue until Tuesday as Mr Corbyn consults union chiefs and Labour’s National Executive Committee, Mr Watson said.
Mr Watson told Peston's Wednesday evening ITV programme: "If we do end up deciding we are going to campaign to remain in the EU it’s history making.
Analysis: Questions over how Labour's 'referendum in all circumstances' policy will work
Tory leadership battle down to four after Rory Stewart eliminated
“I think that’s quite important because we could be electoral history if we don’t make a clear statement of intent.”
He added: “I think it is in the national interest that we become a pro-remain, pro-reform party and we let the people have a final look at what any deal looks like.”
When pressed on whether Labour would push to remain in the EU Mr Watson said "it would be impossible for us not to".
He did suggest party leader Corbyn, who was a long time Eurosceptic before the EU referendum in 2016, may play a background role in campaigning.
Corbyn: Second referendum must have real choices for Leave and Remain voters
He said it "wouldn't be unreasonable" to assume Mr Corbyn would allow his MPs to campaign whichever way they wanted.
Despite that he did say he believed "the party should have a strong position so we can be clear with the country."
He added: "We were right in the early days to reserve judgement to see how the negotiations went, to see what the priorities would be but now (voters) expect us to give an honest account of ourselves."
Also appearing on the programme was the latest casualty of the Tory leadership race, Rory Stewart, who was eliminated in the contest's third ballot.
Peston suggested it was his decision to position himself as an alternative to the other four during Tuesday evening's TV debate that made him appear too divisive for Tory MPs to back him.
Mr Stewart admitted he was worried about being too divisive and said that as a result he was "slightly pulling my punches".
He added: "I kept being tempted to keep returning and saying, to Boris (Johnson), for example, 'how are you going to do this, how are you going to do that?'.
Which Tory will face Johnson in the members’ ballot? asks Robert Peston
Tory leadership hopefuls clash over Brexit escape route during TV debate
"In the end I became a slightly odd combination of slightly polite and slightly distanced from the debate."
He claimed most of his lost votes "will have gone to Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and some of them to Sajid" and denied he had been the victim of any Boris Johnson voting strategies.
Peston asked whether the moment he put his head in his hands around two thirds of the way through the debate was the moment he felt the contest slipping away.
Mr Stewart responded: "Yes, I probably felt that I wasn't managing to communicate truth properly."
BBC defends Tory leadership debate vetting process after imam's tweets
Rory Stewart eliminated from Tory leadership contest in third ballot
He added: "Although all the polling from YouGov suggested the audience broadly agreed with me, four out of the five people on stage disagreed with almost every word that I was saying."
He refused to confirm who, if anyone, he would be backing in Thursday's ballots, but said the way to beat frontrunner Johnson is "by asking questions".
He said the question that Mr Johnson needs to be asked is which side of the Conservative party he would be prepared to let down - suggesting the former foreign secretary had made different Brexit pledges to both.
He said: "If someone's able to ask him that question something quite interesting might happen and probably it was a mistake of me to be too polite to ask that question."
Tory leadership contender Dominic Raab has warned the party will be “toast” unless it takes Britain out of the EU by the  October 31 deadline.
Ahead of the second round of voting on Tuesday, Mr Raab hit out at those in Parliament who he accused of trying to “steal” Brexit from the voters.
He defended his controversial refusal to rule out suspending Parliament to prevent it blocking a no-deal saying he did not want to weaken his negotiating position with the EU.
Raab attacks ‘privileged’ Johnson as race for the Tory crown turns brutal
Raab on why he is not a feminist and how he was 'undermined' as Brexit secretary
However, fellow leadership contender International Development Secretary Rory Stewart accused rivals pledging to leave by October 31 of making promises they could not deliver on.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that committing to a “hard stop” at the end of October would be to  ensure a no-deal Brexit.
He said he believed he could negotiate a new deal with the EU which would avoid the need for the Northern Ireland backstop, which led to Theresa May’s deal being defeated three time in the Commons.
Mr Raab, who, like Boris Johnson, is committed to leaving by October 31 with or without a deal, insisted there could be no more delay to Brexit.
“The Tory Party will be toast unless we are out by the end of October. The Conservatives cannot win an election unless we have delivered Brexit,” the  former Brexit secretary told Sky News’s Ridge On Sunday programme.
He again refused to rule out proroguing Parliament if it was necessary to ensure that MPs could not “sabotage” the will of the people.
“The big mistake we made in these negotiations was taking no-deal off the table. When we start ruling things out we only weaken our chances of getting a deal,” he said.
Conservative leadership race: Who are the runners and riders and where do they stand on Brexit?
“All those candidates that are going weak at the knees and saying ‘I’m not sure about this and that’, they are sending a message to the EU that they can take us for a ride.
“We gave people a decision. Now Parliament is trying to steal it back away from them. When people voted, they voted to leave.”
Mr Stewart launched a fresh attack on Mr Johnson, who has come under fire for avoiding media scrutiny, warning his plans would “come off the rails” once they were subjected to detailed examination.
“How is Boris going to deliver Brexit? He keeps saying ‘I am going to deliver it’. I don’t even know what he believes. He won’t talk to me. He won’t talk to you. He won’t talk to the public,” he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.
“We live in parliamentary democracy. I am campaigning against candidates who are pretending we are living in the United States and we are going for presidential politics where some big man just says ‘This is going to happen’.
“We are a moderate country, we are not a Trumpian country.”
Mr Stewart said that ultimately the best way to deliver Brexit was to return to Mrs May’s deal.
“It know that this feels terrible to people because they have seen that defeated again and again. But it is the quickest, the most constitutional, the most legitimate way of getting it done,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Hunt said it would “difficult but not impossible” to negotiate a new deal with Brussels which could get through Parliament.
“When you talk to European leaders as I do, they want to solve this problem,” he told The Andrew Marr Show.
“They say that if they were approached by a British prime minister, someone they were willing to deal with, who had ideas how to solve the Northern Irish border, they would be willing to re-negotiate the package.”
Mr Hunt said it could even be done by the deadline of October 31, but added that it would be a mistake to commit to leaving the EU by that date.
“If you do make that guarantee and you go with the wrong approach, then you are committing us to nothing other than a hard Brexit, a no-deal Brexit,” he said.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The world has become a very strange and unsettling place.
Exhibit one is that a senior Tory Brexiter just now pulled out of being on my show tonight, because we didn’t have enough proper Leave-voting Brexiters on the programme.
"The programme was startlingly unbalanced! Every guest but me having voted or campaigned for Remain," the Brexiter said.
"I hope you can understand my concern at the lack of balance for one of the country’s top political programmes."
Well actually I could not. Because this senior politician would have been interviewed at the start of the programme, in an impartial way, and with the space to express important arguments.
And actually the other booked guests are various shades of Brexiter, even if I can’t be certain how many of them actually voted for Leave in the first instance.
This decision to boycott Peston smacks of Eurosceptic McCarthyism, or the mistrust between Protestants and Catholics in Reformation England.
The Brexit wars have come to this.
It is also shooting-in-footism! Because in choosing not to appear on the show, by definition there is a risk the Brexiter voice will now be less well represented. Bonkers!
Walker: UK chief Brexit negotiator warns MPs choice is May’s deal or extension
Who is Olly Robbins?
Has Olly Robbins revealed Theresa May’s secret Brexit plan?
Exhibit two, which presumably explains the paranoia of the Brexiters, is the way parliament is taking control of the process to leave the EU, and attempting to neuter the Prime Minister, in order to take the prospect of a no-deal Brexit off the table.
There is collaboration between senior Tory backbenchers (the Letwins, Boleses and Soameses) and the more Remainy members of the government (the Rudds, Gaukes, Clarkes and Hamondses) to ensure that on February 27, MPs would vote to start a process that would force the Prime Minister to ask for a delay to Brexit and simultaneously negotiate a framework for the future relationship between the UK and EU that most MPs could support.
The aim would be to narrow the scope of the so-called Political Declaration on the permanent trading and security links between the UK and EU so that it probably ends up looking much more like the kind of supersoft Brexit that some have styled Common Market 2.0 and is not a million miles from Labour’s Brexit vision.
And the idea would be to wrap all this up before the European Parliament is dissolved on April 18, so that the UK could actually Brexit shortly after.
This is not the only possible outcome of delaying Brexit, but it is the most likely one now.
Delay of course could lead to a much more lengthy renegotiation with the EU, leading to an eventual referendum.
But the problem for the pure or ultra Brexiters, like my estranged guest, is that the cunning plan to delay Brexit would almost certainly deliver what they would see as Brexit in Name Only, and possibly no Brexit at all.
It would be a betrayal, for them, of the referendum result to which they dedicated their entire souls.
And for them the evidence of cancerous conspiracy against the One True Brexit goes wider still, in that ITV News' scoop of last night that the PM’s chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins expects MPs to be offered a choice in March of a reworked Brexit or a potentially long delay to leaving the EU proves to them (if proof were needed) that Whitehall is in on it too.
What is striking of course is that there is an assumption among both proper Brexiters, soft Brexiters and Remainers that the PM is something of a bystander, that the UK’s Brexit fate is no longer in her hands.
Here is the measure of her powerlessness.
One senior Tory, who with other Conservative rebels wants to prevent a no-deal Brexit, said to me the PM should really thank them.
"If parliament passes a law saying she has to ask for a Brexit delay, she is a law-abiding person and she will follow that law," said the MP.
"And perhaps we are doing her a favour, because when she is following a law there is no choice for her."
What the MP means is that in her duty to enact the will of parliament there would no longer be a conflict of loyalty for her, no more dilemma about whether to back soft-Brexit Tories or the Brexiter ultras of the European Research Group.
In other words, she would not herself have to make the kind of Brexit decision that could split the Tory party.
Of course the Conservative Party could just decide to break itself up of its own accord.
And on the evidence before me, that looks increasingly likely.
Video report by ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Weiner
Tory grandee Ken Clarke has said he is willing to lead a government of national unity to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
The former chancellor gave his support to a proposal by Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson for an emergency government led by him or Labour's Harriet Harman.
Mr Clarke said it was "not inconceivable" that a government of national unity may be needed to resolve the impasse, suggesting politics was in a similar situation to 1931 and the two world wars.
He told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "If it was the only way in which the plain majority in the House of Commons that is opposed to a no-deal exit could find a way forward... I wouldn't object to it, if that was the judgment of people, the only way forward.
"But there's an awful lot to be gone through before then and I haven't been taking part in any talks with anybody for the last fortnight.
"I've been on the phone to one or two people in the last couple of days just to find out what the devil's going on."
Earlier,Jeremy Corbyn struck out at Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson after she rejected his plan to lead an emergency government to thwart a no-deal Brexit.
The Labour leader said "it’s not up to Jo Swinson to decide who the next prime minister is going to be" after she swiftly dismissed his proposal to force a general election as "nonsense".
Ms Swinson is coming under increasing pressure to back Mr Corbyn’s suggestion, which includes forcing out Boris Johnson in a vote of no confidence and securing an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond October 31.
The unity government may be struggling to get off the ground but Boris Johnson will not have things his own way, explains ITV News Political Correspondent Libby Wiener
But she has maintained her stance that he is not the right politician for the job, despite agreeing to meet with him to discuss a no-deal prevention plan.
On Friday, Mr Corbyn rejected her suggestion Tory grandee Ken Clarke or senior Labour MP Harriet Harman could lead the emergency government.
Clarke and Harman open to being emergency PM after Swinson rejects Corbyn's bid for title
Who is the Liberal Democrats' new leader Jo Swinson?
"Surely she must recognise she is a leader of one of the opposition parties who are apparently opposed to this Government, and apparently prepared to support a motion of no confidence."
Mr Corbyn said Ms Swinson should respect the "normal precedent" to allow the leader of the Opposition to form an administration after a successful vote of no confidence in the Government.
He also told politicians who were "making noise in the media" to consider supporting him in order to prevent a "damaging" no-deal Brexit.
Ms Swinson said she has spoken to her favoured candidates - the Father and Mother of the House - and won their assurances that they are ready to “put public duty first” to “stop us driving off that cliff”.
However, Mr Corbyn’s plan has won the potential backing of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Tory MP Guto Bebb.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon was among those applying pressure to Ms Swinson to re-think her position.
Mr Corbyn announced his plan in a letter on Wednesday to opposition leaders and Tory MPs Dominic Grieve, Sir Oliver Letwin and Dame Caroline.
Remain-backing Tory MP Dominic Grieve appeared to agree with Lib Dem leader Swinson, saying "a government of national unity doesn't have to have a leader of any political party as its head".
However the former attorney general did say he and colleagues were "entirely serious" about talking to Mr Corbyn.
He told ITV News: "If we wants to talk to us about stopping a no-deal Brexit, I'm perfectly prepared to speak to him, as are my colleagues."
Although he added: "Putting in a caretaker prime minister must be for some useful purpose. My impression from the letter he's written to me is that he wishes to be a caretaker prime minister to trigger an election."
However, Nigel Evans, a member of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbench MPs, told the BBC Radio: "We've filled the vacancy with Boris Johnson and so I really don't know what Ken is talking about."
Mr Evans added: "It does seem to be Westminster meets La La Land because it's not as if these ideas are half-baked, I really don't think they've been anywhere near an oven."
Prime Minister Theresa May has been pressed by union leaders to guarantee jobs and workers' rights after Brexit during a series of face-to-face meetings in Downing Street.
Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, stressed a no-deal Brexit would be "disastrous".
He hoped his first ever meeting with Theresa May was not a "PR stunt".
Mr McCluskey said Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was right to refuse to meet the Prime Minister unless she ruled out a no-deal Brexit but urged Mrs May to extend Article 50 beyond March 29 for three months.
"I think the (Labour) amendment talks about nine months, I think that's way way too long, I'd like to see an amendment of about three months if proper negotiations are going to take place," he added.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady, Dave Prentis of Unison and Tim Roache of the GMB, also held separate meetings with ministers.
Ms O’Grady said she did not receive the guarantees she was seeking.
Workers are worried about their jobs and need reassurance about their future after the UK leaves the EU, she said.
"The Prime Minister should do the right thing and take a no-deal off the table so that genuine dialogue can take place.
"I was looking for guarantees on workers’ rights now and into the future," Ms O'Grady added.
The discussions are part of Mrs May’s bid to try and get widespread political backing in finding a Brexit agenda that would command a majority in the Commons after her plans were heavily rejected by MPs.
The Government move comes as there appeared to be growing support in Labour ranks for a parliamentary bid by former minister Yvette Cooper to extend Article 50, which would keep the UK in the EU longer, unless a deal is reached by the end of February.
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Leading Brexiteers have attacked such initiatives, saying they would take control of events from the Government.
Despite Jeremy Corbyn branding the PM’s talks initiative a "stunt", a senior spokesman said the Labour leader’s request for the party’s MPs to boycott discussions with Mrs May did not extend to union leaders.
The Labour spokesman said: "As Jeremy set out last week, he is more than ready to engage in talks with the Prime Minister on the basis that no-deal is taken off the table.
"Unless she makes clear that she is prepared to move and compromise and accept the reality of the position, then she is simply continuing to try to run down the clock and prevent any solution to this crisis."
On the issue of a new national poll on EU withdrawal, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said any referendum should have just two options.
Mr Starmer told ITV’s Peston: "I think there should definitely be Remain.
"And there should be a genuine Leave option.
"I think it would be better if it was a binary choice."
Meanwhile, the former Ukip leader, Nigel Farage insisted Mrs May’s withdrawal plans should be opposed, even if that risked a new referendum.
Mr Farage told ITV’s Peston: "Personally my view at the moment is better to vote down this dreadful deal and take the risk of a second referendum."
Ms Cooper’s Article 50 bid, which has cross-party backing including from Conservative Nick Boles, is one of a number of amendments that could be voted on next Tuesday if selected by Commons Speaker John Bercow.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister has said that this is a process of engagement across the House of Commons but also with other interested sectors.
"She has spoken to business leaders and she will be talking with union leaders.
"Issues I expect to be discussed will be around employment rights, environmental standards and those sorts of things."
Unions have been warning of the impact on jobs of a no-deal Brexit and have been pressing for assurances about employment rights after the UK leaves the EU.
Some have also argued in favour of a second referendum.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The flurry of overnight speculation that a deal had been done to guarantee post-Brexit access for the City to the EU was all a bit odd.
It's true that a few weeks ago, the Treasury over the course of a couple of days successfully negotiated some "high level principles" for what the future access relationship might be for UK-based banks and other financial institutions to the EU's single market.
But this is a million miles from a deal - which would not and could not be negotiated in its practical detail for months and even possibly years.
What was broadly agreed - and as I say by the Treasury, not the Department for Exiting the European Union (DEXEU) - was a possible framework to be included in the political declaration that would accompany the Withdrawal Agreement, on the assumption that the problem of keeping open Northern Ireland's border can be overcome and there is any kind of formal Brexit deal at all.
To repeat, this was done weeks ago.
As far as I can tell, there has been no momentum on any of it for some time.
But there is something important here.
What matters is that the UK has conceded in the framework or high-level principles for a future financial services deal that power over City firms would rest with Brussels and the EU 27, unless that is, the UK made a political choice that it wanted to do much less financial business with the EU's single market.
An eventual deal would be what's known as an "equivalence" arrangement, where the rules for selling to the EU would be set by the EU - and disputes would ultimately be settled by the European Court of Justice.
The City of London - responsible for around one tenth of national income, about the same importance to the UK as manufacturing - would be a pure rule taker.
Now as it happens, the City was braced for this.
What City firms wanted was reassurance on a number of points:
That because we are still members of the EU and have been following EU directives, the UK's rules would be deemed at the outset to be equivalent to the EU's, and there would be continued full access, unless and until our rules diverge from theirs.
The EU could not and would not instantaneously bar UK firms from access to the EU, as and when it arbitrarily decided to do so.
There would be a codified, transparent process, with a set timetable, for assessing whether UK financial rules were diverging from the EU's or vice-versa - so that UK firms had time to take evasive action if market access were reduced.
I understand all this has been agreed by the EU.
But that is not much of a surprise, because it is in keeping with the EU's law and lore, and because the UK has also conceded that the ultimate decision on whether market access for the UK should be reduced will rest with the European Court of Justice (apparently most banks in London think that's fine, because they understand how the ECJ works).
But in agreeing to such an "equivalence" regime, the Prime Minister and Chancellor have thrown yet another gauntlet down to the Brexiters of the European Research Group.
Is this in any sense "taking back control"?
Or is this another manifestation of Brexit in Name Only?
I think you know the answer.
There is growing confidence in the Cabinet that Parliament will ultimately vote for whatever Brexit deal Theresa May ultimately negotiates.
But with every further revelation of the broad terms of the only deal she deems possible, she rubs more salt into the open wounds of the True Brexiters.
There will be tears for someone before bedtime.
Ps. You'll remember I pointed out that the last Budget before Brexit contains next-to-no plan for how the UK will prosper outside the EU.
But I've learned this was not for want of trying: the Treasury made discreet calls to the City for suggestions on how leaving the EU could yield a Brexit dividend for financial services.
The replies were, I am told, an embarrassed and collective scratching of heads.
The number of serious ideas conveyed by banks to the Chancellor were of an order of magnitude so close to zero as to make little difference.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
This morning when Angela Merkel told Boris Johnson his Brexit offer did not provide the requisite confidence that the border on the island of Ireland would be kept open while preserving the integrity of the EU’s single market, it looked as though any Brexit deal was dead - and that the prime minister would therefore now focus all his efforts on achieving a no-deal Brexit, while MPs would focus all theirs on forcing him to ask for a Brexit delay.
Tonight the president of the European Parliament, David Maria Sassoli, met Johnson and reinforced Merkel’s message that the British offer falls well short.
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So a Brexit deal is all over bar the shouting? Not quite, but almost.
Technical talks between the Article 50 Taskforce and the UK’s negotiator rumble on.
And the Irish PM Leo Varadkar tried to be more emollient in his chat with Johnson this afternoon. He said that the backstop and membership of the customs union, so hated by Northern Ireland’s DUP - Johnson’s unionist allies - would only be temporary, seemingly contradicting what Merkel said (though my German sources insist Johnson over-reacted to Merkel simply saying that the original backstop, which would potentially have kept the UK or NI in the customs union forever, is the sole idea that so far solves the so-called Ireland problem).
All of which suggests that towards the end of this week the EU will moot a possible deal-saving compromise, namely keeping Northern Ireland in the backstop for a specified and limited number of years.
A Brexit agreement snatched from the jaws of mutual intergovernmental abuse? Very doubtful.
“We will say no [to a time-limited backstop]” said a Downing Street official.
Which may prompt a bit of argy bargy in cabinet. However only four ministers - Morgan, Smith, Buckland and Hancock - might put their jobs on the line to prevent rejection of a temporary NI-only backstop in preference to no deal.
So within a few days we will be back where we were, namely in the titanic struggle between MPs and PM, as they try to stymie his no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
The really important battle will come on 19 October, when I am told Johnson will endeavour to sow maximum confusion at home and in the EU, by allowing a letter to be sent to EU leaders requesting a Brexit delay - signed either by him or a proxy - and then sending a second letter in effect saying he is a prisoner of MPs and he does not personally want a Brexit postponement.
Downing Street tells me yesterday’s Scottish court judgement does not prevent Johnson putting EU leaders in this hideous position of having to decide whether the British PM does or does not speak for the UK.
The stakes could hardly be higher for the UK and EU. And if you thought that Johnson and his chief aide Dominic Cummings are set at the last to adopt a more consensual approach, they beg to differ.
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Here is how a Downing Street official characterises their position: “It ought to be obvious that if EU countries are seen to work with parliament and the courts to keep us in [the EU] when most want this resolved on 31/10, then it will cause significant damage to relations and inevitably will affect cooperation on all levels.
“This isn’t a crude threat of sabotage. It is a statement of fact.
“But the European debate is conducted in a parallel world: Westminster does not understand the country, and Brussels does not understand Westminster. We continue to try to strip away illusions but it is an uphill struggle... But I think warning people is the only responsible course of action”.
You may disagree with Johnson’s and Cummings’s assumptions and premises, in particular that they are merely the servants of a British populous whose only wish is any kind of Brexit in 23 days.
But there is no credible scenario where they escape oblivion if they give any hint that they would collaborate in a Brexit delay.
If they willingly sacrifice 31 October they will be in the dustbin of history. Cummings and Johnson will not be budged either from Brexit on that due date, or - if the postponement is forced on them - a general election to secure their no-deal Brexit as soon as humanly possible thereafter.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
I am told Jean-Claude Juncker learned just one thing from Boris Johnson on Monday in Luxembourg.
In the words of one of his colleagues there was "confirmation that the UK (under Johnson) wants more of a border on the island of Ireland than the previous government".
Which is the nutshell of the whole of what the PM seeks qua new deal and what the EU’s 27 leaders need to evaluate either as deft compromise or as brutal betrayal of Dublin and the Good Friday Agreement.
This dispute harks back to the December 2017 joint agreement between the UK and EU which pledges to prevent the creation of "a hard border including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls".
This matters because Theresa May’s Brexit - the Withdrawal Agreement - says "any future arrangements [for Ireland] must be compatible with these overarching requirements".
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And that would render illegal pretty much any method of keeping open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, other than membership of the customs union for Northern Ireland or the whole UK, combined with significant regulatory alignment with the EU for NI or the whole UK.
For Johnson and his top aide Dominic Cummings, unless the EU 27 allows some new infrastructure and associated checks and controls somewhere in NI, there would be no escape from what they see as the serfdom of either NI or the whole UK being bossed to some extent by Brussels, perhaps forever.
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And although when push comes to the shove of an imminent no-deal Brexit, Johnson may be less anxious than May was about putting a regulatory border in the Irish Sea.
At this juncture he desperately needs to assess whether the EU can be just a bit more flexible about the use of supposedly unobtrusive technology to keep rogue goods and food out of the EU single market.
I doubt the EU will budge, but Johnson has to ask.
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Boris Johnson has made his first overseas trips as Prime Minister, meeting Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron in a bid to secure a Brexit breakthrough.
Here’s what we have learned from the visits to Berlin and Paris:
A “blistering” new Brexit timetable – or is it?
German Chancellor Mrs Merkel appeared to suggest a 30-day period for the Prime Minister to come up with answers to the problem of the Irish backstop, telling Mr Johnson “we said we would probably find it in the next two years to come but we can also maybe find it in the next 30 days to come”.
Macron warns Johnson: No new Withdrawal deal within 30 days
Mr Johnson said it was a “very blistering timetable” but he was “more than happy” with that idea.
But Mrs Merkel later clarified it was merely “an allegory for being able to do it in a short period of time” rather than a strict deadline.
French President Mr Macron warned the Prime Minister that any deal on the table at the end of that period would not be very different from the existing Withdrawal Agreement.
Despite the meetings, there was little sign of a breakthrough
The fundamental differences over the backstop – the fallback plan to avoid a hard border between the UK and Ireland – still remain.
For Mr Johnson, it has to be removed entirely from the Withdrawal Agreement.
But for Mr Macron its provisions are “not just technical constraints or legal quibbling” but “genuine, indispensable guarantees” to preserve stability in Ireland and the integrity of the single market.
Mr Macron insists he is a realist rather than the EU’s Brexit “hard boy”
The Prime Minister will have been braced for the good cop, bad cop double act of the pragmatic Mrs Merkel and the more inflexible French leader.
But Mr Macron said: “I’ve always been presented as the hard boy in the group but it’s just that I have always been clear: a choice was made and we cannot just ignore it.
“We have to implement a decision taken by the British people.”
The blame game is already well under way ahead of October 31
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French officials believe a no-deal Brexit is now the most likely outcome, but Mr Macron was keen to stress that it would not be the fault of the EU.
If a deal was not accepted it would be “a political decision to be taken by the Prime Minister, it’s not our decision”, he said.
Mr Johnson was keen to stress that there was “ample scope” for a deal and “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, implying that any breakdown would be due to a lack of will from Brussels.
Paris has concerns about Mr Johnson allying with US President Donald Trump after Brexit
Ahead of Mr Johnson’s visits, the US President again praised the Prime Minister and claimed the EU “have not treated the UK very well” and were driving a “tough bargain”.
The Prime Minister will meet the president for the first time since entering Number 10 when he attends the G7 summit in Biarritz on Saturday, with the pair likely to discuss a post-Brexit trade deal.
But on the eve of Mr Johnson’s visit to Paris, Mr Macron warned that the UK would be the “junior partner” in any transatlantic deal, leaving Britain in a position of “historic vassalisation”.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
I am regularly asked whether MPs can block a no-deal Brexit, whether they will block a no-deal Brexit and whether there will be a referendum.
The short answers are:
1. MPs have the power to block a no-deal Brexit
2. The likelihood of them permanently and definitively blocking a no-deal Brexit is slim-to-none
3. There is likely to be a general election to decide whether the UK stays in or quits the EU, and the prospect of a referendum or People's Vote is now vanishingly small.
Here is why, if you can be bothered to read on.
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First of all, MPs have already demonstrated that they have the power to take control of the Commons order paper, and then legislate to mandate the PM to sue the EU for a further Brexit delay or to remove a no-deal Brexit as the legislated default position in the event that a negotiated Brexit cannot be achieved.
Second, they have the power to bring down the Government by a vote of no confidence, install a temporary government of national unity and then sue the EU to postpone the date we leave the EU.
So yes, MPs have the power to block a no-deal Brexit.
But the reason they won't is that - under the British Parliamentary system - the opposition is (almost by definition) a disorganised rabble.
When I talk with those at the top of the opposition parties, I hear contradictory and confusing views - a cacophony of madness - on whether to try to legislate to force Johnson to take no-deal off the table or to vote to replace him with a unifying, anti-no-deal PM.
Unless MPs can coalesce around a simple single strategy, Johnson and his most important aide Dominic Cummings win: the UK will be out, sans EU settlement, on October 31.
But Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems all have their own ideas about how to stymie Johnson. And they will not and probably cannot hunt in a pack.
In that context, the most important statement by John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, on my show on the day that Johnson was crowned as PM - which weirdly feels a lifetime away but is actually less than a fortnight ago - was that Labour had absolutely zero interest in participating in a government of national unity.
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There were no ifs or buts. He was categoric.
Labour would form its own government under Jeremy Corbyn or Johnson would stay, he implied. And it is almost inconceivable that Corbyn can win enough backing from rebel Tories, as well as the other opposition parties, to command the confidence of the Commons.
There is only the remotest chance of Labour rallying round Ken Clarke or Jo Swinson as possible anti-no-deal PMs for however long or short would be needed to persuade the EU to provide a further extension of our membership of the EU.
And as for MPs seizing control of the order paper, if that prospect were to loom Johnson would call Labour's bluff, say he wants a general election and dare Labour and other opposition parties to refuse his request - which I cannot conceive they would ever do.
Most paths seem to lead ineluctably to the people having the final say on whether the UK leaves the EU without a deal or whether it remains in the EU - but a final say through a general election rather than in a referendum.
And again, if you share my logic, Johnson probably wins - either because he succeeds in rigging the election timetable such that the new government cannot be formed till after the UK has left the EU on October 31, which is a prospect I regard as unlikely, or more likely because there is absolutely zero sign of Corbyn offering voters the necessary simple choice between a Tory party that would remove the UK from the EU, no ifs or buts, and a Labour party that would keep the UK in the EU.
Instead, and according to senior Labour forces, Corbyn seems wedded to the latest iteration of its complicated policy, which is to promise a further Brexit referendum.
And if voters were presented with a clear Tory policy to take the UK out of the EU without a deal, but an opposition divided between Labour hinting there could be a form of Brexit it might support and that in any event there must be a referendum, while other opposition parties were saying they would prefer simply to stay in the EU, then left-of-centre voters would understandably be muddled and anxious about who to support.
And if left-of-centre voters are disunited and unsure whether to vote for Labour, or Lib Dem or Green or Plaid or SNP, Johnson scoops the prize.
By the way, Johnson and Cummings are acutely aware that a referendum is much more dangerous for them than a general election.
Because in a referendum, the Remain side would be united and coherent - whereas in a general election the anti-no-deal opposition would be engaged in internecine warfare that would consume them and turbocharge Johnson back into 10 Downing Street.
So I am not surprised that Johnson and his colleagues seem as confident as they do.
And I am mildly surprised that the People's Vote campaign has not reinvented itself as an umbrella organisation to coordinate anti-no-deal voting in the seemingly imminent general election, rather than as cheerleader for a plebiscite that has vanished beyond the horizon.
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Here is the fundamental reason why a no-deal Brexit is now overwhelmingly likely: senior officials in Brussels and in European capitals tell me that there is no basis for negotiating a new Brexit settlement with Johnson - which is almost a truism - and that broadly the choices are between a near facsimile of May's settlement, remaining in the EU or a no-deal Brexit.
They then add, which they see as a total truism, that at this juncture only the Commons can block a no-deal Brexit by usurping Johnson.
Do they have faith MPs will block no deal?
"The case is hopeless," said one - whose corollary, for better or worse, is that Boris Johnson's no-ifs-or-buts, do-or-die Brexit may be a locomotive on which the brakes have been removed.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
There is a single important question for tomorrow's Cabinet:
Is anything the prime minister could offer the Labour Party by way of a concession that could persuade the opposition to abstain rather than vote down her Brexit plan at the fourth time it's presented to MPs (probably on Friday June 7, according to ministers).
The point is that Theresa May has given up on persuading her own rebel Brexiter MPs to come round and support her Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB).
In fact, those voting against it are likely to be swelled by at least two - namely Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, who want to prove their "true" Brexiter credentials ahead of the looming election for Tory leader.
So although there are Tory MPs who naively believe she could yet amend Brexit legislation to placate Northern Ireland's DUP and her own ERG Brexiter MPs by unilaterally removing the Northern Ireland backstop, and in effect mooning the EU, I am reliably informed by her close colleagues this is NEVER going to happen.
"The prime minister is absolutely clear that the backstop cannot and will not be removed or amended by the EU," said a senior minister.
"And she won't be going back to Brussels to ask for that, ever."
So the only game in town for her is to soften the opposition of the whole of the Labour Party or a significant number of Labour MPs to her Brexit legislation, the WAB.
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And as usual the Cabinet is split right down the middle on how far to compromise and how much to abandon traditional party loyalties.
On one side are Hammond, Gauke, Clark, Rudd and Mundell, inter alia, who would have no problem with the PM making a public pledge that if Parliament were to amend her bill so that it fully endorsed a permanent customs union, and even (possibly) a confirmatory referendum, she would not attempt to kill the legislation at the last.
I would expect the chancellor to say as much when he addresses the business lobby group the CBI tomorrow.
But there are still Brexiter members of the Cabinet - Grayling, Mordaunt, Leadsom, Fox - for whom such tolerance of such soft-Brexit or no-Brexit ideas is impossible heterodoxy.
And you never know, their patience may be tested beyond endurance, even as the PM orders in the packing cases, and they may belatedly curry favour with Brexiter MPs and members by quitting.
I am told Downing Street is braced for such unfashionably late - some would say absurdly late - virtue signalling.
But however much the PM scorns her own Brexit wing, there is a good reason why Labour will not and cannot ever support her bill or even abstain on it.
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And that is because its primary aim - which you cannot fail to have missed - is to trigger a general election.
The point is that if the PM were to lose the vote on the second reading of the WAB in early June, that would accelerate her departure.
Which in turn would accelerate the likely election as Tory leader - and new PM - of either Boris Johnson (the clear favourite) or Dominic Raab.
(Tory members will never elect any candidate they perceive to have colluded in May's hated version of Brexit).
As I've said, Johnson and Raab would pledge to take the UK out of the EU without a deal, if the EU were not to bin the backstop - which in practice is an unconditional commitment to a no-deal Brexit, in that the EU will not bin the backstop.
Now although a no-deal Brexit is anathema to Labour, they do not believe Johnson or Raab could in practice deliver it.
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Although leaving the EU without a deal would warm the cockles of a majority of Tory members and maybe half of all Tory MPs, there are some Tory MPs who would rather bring down the government than collude in such an abrupt rupture.
Or to put it another way, neither Johnson or Raab can be confident of remaining PM for more than a few short minutes - since at the moment they enter 10 Downing Street, Labour would inevitably test whether they can in practice govern by triggering a no-confidence vote under the Fixed Term Parliament Act.
I imagine both have cunning plans to survive against those tricky odds.
Their conspiratorial Cabinet confreres think Raab could prorogue Parliament untill after a no-deal Brexit became a reality on October 31 and Johnson would be converted at the last to the putative merits of a confirmatory referendum.
Which would be politics as thriller or high farce.
The important point, for the opposition, is that killing the WAB would bring the kind of chaos that could see them catapulted into office, whereas supporting it would bring the kind of stability that would allow the Tory Party to regroup and rebuild.
So if you look at the UK's hundreds of years of adversarial politics, what would you expect Jeremy Corbyn and Labour to do?
There is nothing the PM can realistically offer him that could rescue her deal or her place in history.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Brexit negotiations failed to reach an agreement at the weekend because the EU is seeking a "backstop to the backstop", according to a Government source.
Such an outcome would keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and single market but the rest of the UK would not be, introducing a border between the two, something Theresa May would have to reject.
This may seem surreal, but the EU is not persuaded that the UK's backstop plan - which puts the UK three-quarters inside the customs union, unable to set tariffs but able to negotiate trade deals - will actually work, leading to calls for Northern Ireland to be included in the "backstop to the backstop".
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab was dispatched to Brussels on Sunday to reject this.
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That said, in other respects, a source on the UK's side says there has been good progress on the Withdrawal Agreement and a political declaration on the future relationship between the UK and EU.
Even so, and as I have been saying for days, there is still a gulf between the UK and the EU on how to provide confidence that the backstop itself (not the backstop to the backstop) is temporary.
For what it's worth, the UK thinks the EU has an incentive to show that the backstop would be temporary, because the fact that the UK would be only three-quarters inside a customs union, ie. able to negotiate trade deals (though not trade deals where the UK could negotiate tariffs, only non-tariff barriers - and also not those relating to goods) makes the backstop an uncomfortable precedent for the EU.
Most Brexiters will see the Prime Minister as disingenuous in arguing that the EU would not want to keep us in a backstop, so all is still very messy.
Even so, the UK Government thinks it is possible there will be significant progress towards a deal at this week's EU council, and May is nowhere near writing off Brexit talks and is a long way from planning for a no-deal Brexit as the most likely outcome.
What I think this impasse shows, perhaps more than anything else, is how little trust there is between the UK and EU in these talks - first, because the EU thinks there needs to be a "backstop to the backstop", showing it has little confidence in our ability to implement the actual backstop, and second because the UK fears that the EU isn't negotiating a backstop in good faith, and is simply trying to leapfrog us to the "backstop to the backstop".
When I said this was "surreal" I think I was understating the madness.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Most MPs tell me they believe a no-deal Brexit is a remote prospect.
They are wrong.
I would argue it is the most likely outcome - unless evasive action is taken much sooner than anyone expects.
Here is why.
1) The probability is low of the PM securing substantial enough changes to the widely loathed backstop to win a vote for her deal exclusively from Tory MPs, the DUP and a modest number of leave-supporting Labour MPs.
2) The probability is also low of the PM risking the break up of her party by pursuing all the way to a formal agreement. The negotiations just started with Corbyn and Labour on a Brexit deal - built on Labour's core condition that the UK must remain in the Customs Union.
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3) The probability is better than evens that MPs will on 27 February vote to put a bill before parliament that would - if passed - force the PM to request a delay to the date the UK leaves the EU.
4) The probability is better than evens that MP and Lords subsequently pass that legislation which would force the PM to ask EU leaders to delay Brexit.
5) The probability is impossible to assess that every one of the EU 27's governments will give their assent to a request from the UK PM for a Brexit delay - and Brexit can only be delayed if there is unanimity.
6) If Brexit is delayed, it would probably not be for any longer than two or three months - or the maximum possible time that would not trigger an obligation on the UK to participate in elections for the European Parliament. A delay of two or three months would be highly unlikely to be long enough for MPs to work out what kind of Brexit deal, if any, they would support, and then to secure the assent for that from the EU's 27 leaders.
7) The leaders of the EU's 27 nations would take the view there is very little point in delaying Brexit at all unless it is clear what kind of Brexit deal would win a majority in the House of Commons.
8) There is no mechanism at present for assessing what kind of Brexit deal would win the support of MPs.
9) All the focus on the backstop, and the insurance policy for keeping open the border on the island of Ireland, has distracted from what is actually the biggest obstacle to a Brexit deal - which is that there is no consensus in parliament on what the UK's future long-term relationship with the EU should be.
9) If on 27 February MPs pass a motion that would then lead to votes in the Commons on what kind of Brexit or - or even no-Brexit via a referendum - would command a majority, there is no certainty that any option would win a consensus.
10) It is highly probable that it would take the UK at least another year to establish what kind of future relationship it wants with the EU - and probably longer to negotiate that relationship.
May and Corbyn are probably more aligned on Brexit than any other issue (but that doesn’t mean a deal can be done)
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11) The probability of the EU giving the UK as long as it realistically needs to recover from its Brexit nervous breakdown and say with clarity what kind of future relationship it wants with the EU is infinitesimally tiny.
12) The history of the EU blinking at the last moment when the going gets tough is irrelevant here - because there are too many moving parts, and it is not at all clear what "blinking" would actually mean.
So just to personalise this for a moment, on Friday 12 September 2008 it was obvious to me that without a bailout, the investment bank Lehman would be dead on Monday morning, but that the consequences to all our prosperity of Lehman going down would be so momentous that the US authorities and government would find a route to save it. Come Sunday 14 September, I was reporting that Lehman would collapse and be taken into bankruptcy protection the following morning.
The rest is the painful history of the worst recession and blow to our living standards since the 1930s - which would not have been as acute if Lehman had not gone down.
Brexit feels eerily like Lehman 2.0, if in slightly slower motion and on the scale of a nation and continent.
Disclaimer: I make the Lehman analogy because both the government and EU leaders are explicit that a no-deal Brexit would have serious economic and security costs, just as the US (and UK) government, central bank and regulators knew that the collapse of Lehman would be an event that would impoverish us all. And yet they let it happen.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
The Brexit postponement plan being discussed in Brussels - for hours longer than expected - has the potential to tear apart the Government, the Tory party, and Labour too.
The reason being that its explicit proviso that the UK has to decide by April 11 whether to participate in May’s elections to the European Parliament, or else leave the EU on May 7, WITH OR WITHOUT A DEAL, sets up the debate in the UK Parliament which Theresa May was desperate to avoid.
It tells MPs of all parties they have 20 days to decide whether to opt for a long Brexit delay, a delay that could see the UK in the EU till at least the end of the year, or opt for the Prime Minister's deal in short order, or leave in seven weeks without a deal.
With the EU explicitly raising the possibility of a longer delay, there will be MPs in all parties, including ministers and Labour frontbenchers who view that prospect as trumping party loyalty.
Civil war could break out in both the Labour and Tory parties.
And remember, Mrs May has said a long delay would be over her political dead body.
So if the EU finally announces this complicated formula for a short or long Brexit delay, and a negotiated or no-deal Brexit, MPs and ministers would have just under three weeks to decide what kind of Brexit (if any) they want, when they would want it and whether Theresa May should be evicted from 10 Downing Street before all the daffodils have gone.
This is a Brussels recipe for Westminster mayhem.
We’ll see if it survives the night.
EU leaders locked in discussions over possible Brexit extension after rejecting May's original request
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
A conspicuously rattled and tired Boris Johnson - flanked surrealy by the police in Wakefield - just said he would "rather be dead in a ditch" than obey the expected new law that would force him to ask the EU for a Brexit delay.
Which carries only two implications.
Johnson could quit as Prime Minister before the EU summit on October 17 and bequeath to some other temporary prime minister the gift of suing the EU for a Brexit delay.
That could happen, but honestly I don't believe Johnson will ever voluntarily quit Downing Street.
He’s waited for this moment too long.
Apart from anything else, any new PM - presumably temporary leader of a government of national unity - might well offer the EU the promise of a Brexit referendum in order to secure a Brexit postponement, and Johnson would also presumably die in a ditch to prevent that.
So more likely - and some of his Brexiter supporters are urging him to do it - he could break the new law, refuse to sign the letter requesting a Brexit delay and dare Parliament to impeach him, under ancient and rarely used rules.
Will Boris Johnson goad MPs to impeach him by refusing to ask EU for Brexit delay?
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It seems extraordinary that senior Tory MPs tell me that a serving prime minister should break the law, rather than break a promise that under no circumstances would he fail to take the UK out of the EU by October 31.
The choice is between keeping his word or disobeying the law of the land.
"He can't sign the letter" said a Tory grandee and former Cabinet minister.
"He has to precipitate a very real constitutional crisis".
It has come to this!
The party of law and order, the party set up to conserve property rights and ancient traditions, is giving serious consideration to flouting the law to execute what it perceives as the instruction of the British people in that referendum.
This row over how and whether we Brexit is shaking institutions big and small, including Boris Johnson’s own nuclear family - as his brother Jo decides he can no longer serve as a minister or MP for a PM whose determination to keep alive the probability of a no-deal Brexit is anathema to him.
An ally of the PM blamed “parliament’s disastrous conduct for years” which means “the system is necessarily adapting to basics”.
He added: “MPs want to stop Brexit and the public wants this resolved. So stuff will break”.
And how.
UPDATE Friday at 10:22am
A former senior Tory minister writes to me: "Robert, I doubt impeachment is necessary.
"Surely a court order would suffice, with contempt of court sanctions available if defied.
"Also, Civil Service code, with obligation to comply with law, is statutory (unlike ministerial code). So no official could lawfully act to support Johnson in disobeying the law."
In other words if Johnson were to disobey the new law - which senior colleagues are urging him to do - the entire government system would be paralysed, though maybe that would be trivial collateral damage compared with the constitutional earthquake of a PM being found in contempt of court.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
I asked important EU and UK people involved in Brexit talks what they made of Boris Johnson's claim on BBC that:
1: the EU would be prepared to cancel Northern Ireland backstop.
2: continue free and frictionless trade with UK for an "implementation period" after Brexit on 31 October.
3: negotiate a new package of measures to keep open border on island of Ireland during the implementation period, and
4: would break all their own red lines because they won't like Nigel Farage's 29 MEP's turning up at the European Parliament and will panic when Johnson says he won't necessarily pay all the £39bn Theresa May agreed UK owes EU in full or on time.
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This is what one influential EU figure said: "I hear a herd of unicorns trampling around."
And another said "preposterous rubbish".
I can already hear Johnson saying: "They would say that, wouldn't they?"
But if he becomes PM he will need all his persuasive charm to avert a no-deal Brexit.
And to be clear, EU leaders won't be terrified of that outcome, because they understand parliamentary arithmetic as well as you and me, and they will assume MPs would trigger a general election rather than roll over and allow the UK to leave the EU without an agreement.
Tory members who will decide the outcome of the leadership contest cannot be confident that Johnson can break the Brexit deadlock.
If they back Johnson, they are voting to be cheered up by an optimist.
And that may be understandable, even rational in these dark times.
But in the wee hours of the morning, some of them may fear he's the cabaret act on the Titanic.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Which of the Conservative and Labour parties is most likely to split over Brexit? Or perhaps it is more apposite to say which party will break up first, since the gravitational force of competing visions of the UK's future relationship with the EU are threatening to fracture each of them.
On my show last night the divisions in the Tory Party were on full display – with the chief secretary Liz Truss implying that the prime minister is wasting her time wooing party leaders to find a Brexit compromise, and should concentrate instead on reaching out to the 118 Tory MPs and the DUP’s 10 who voted against her.
What Truss appears to believe is that if the EU can be persuaded to either remove the backstop or put a time limit on it, the PM’s deal would pass through the Commons.
Which, for what it’s worth, is not what Theresa May thinks, according to those close to her: she has been persuaded, I understand, both that the EU won’t move enough on the backstop, and that even if it did she would not win a majority.
So she has to explore whether if she softened or gave up some of her Brexit red lines, such as that a post-Brexit UK would not have the power to negotiate independent trade deals by being in the customs union forever, a cross-party alliance would carry the day for her.
But both Liz Truss and the senior Tory Brexiter MP John Whittingdale made clear on the Peston show they would implacably oppose such a compromise.
It would only work if May is content to see cabinet resignations and even MPs resigning from the party. That is why most Tories think the idea of a customs-union fudge has been allowed to become a talking point only to distract from the absence of a strategy that might actually work.
As for Labour, it is either liberated or imprisoned by the Brexit process enshrined in that notorious motion passed at its last conference.
What was striking, again on the show, was the relative degree of unity shown by John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, Lisa Nandy – whose instincts are to deliver some kind of Brexit, and who has adopted Gordon Brown’s idea of citizens’ juries delivering a unifying plan – and Ben Bradshaw, who wants a referendum.
This is the calm before the earthquake. But the moment of truth, which is Labour having to choose whether or not to back a referendum, cannot be many days away.
A so-called People’s Vote is seen by the likes of Bradshaw as the inevitable and obvious destination, but by others such as Corbyn’s all-powerful aides Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy as a toxic chimera.
McDonnell told me that on Monday Labour will amend the motion laid by the PM that is supposed to outline her plan to secure Brexit – and it will call for Labour’s vision of Brexit, namely customs union and semi-membership of the single market forever.
This will presumably be the moment when the conceit that Theresa May has repositioned herself as the leader of a cross-party national government is exploded, as will the hopes of the Gaukes, Hammonds and Rudds in the cabinet that customs-union membership is the silver bullet. Because May will presumably instruct her MPs to vote against Labour’s motion, and it will fail.
What then?
It will be the fight to the death in the shadow cabinet, between the shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, who wants Labour to back a referendum, and the party’s chairman Ian Lavery, who backs Brexit – with Corbyn himself an instinctive supporter of Lavery’s position.
In terms of background pressures, much of the Momentum Corbyn-supporting movement wants a referendum and trade unions are divided – although the most powerful trade union leader Len McCluskey remains implacably opposed to a People’s Vote, I am told.
Where will it end? One senior Labour source tells me: “If Keir keeps pushing, he’ll win. Lavery is the one who has threatened to resign. He won’t though”.
There is symmetry here, because another influential Labour figure tells me Starmer will quit if he loses.
McDonnell himself may be the decisive influence.
I pressed him last night on whether those who say he is ideologically opposed to a referendum were correct – and he was very clear he is not.
He chose his words carefully.
But those close to him say his over-riding priority is to move from opposition into government, and that in the end he will take the position that yields the greatest electoral advantage, or wreaks the least harm, to his party.
With a clear majority of Labour members and supporters backing a referendum and an even greater majority opposing a hard Brexit, that leads most of those close to McDonnell to conclude he’ll ultimately side with Starmer.
He will also be acutely aware that if he doesn’t, and Labour is seen to have failed to act decisively to prevent an abrupt and chaotic rupture with the EU, the long-mooted day when centre-ground Labour MPs pack their bags and quit Corbyn’s Labour Party will be hastened.
Robert Peston
Peston's Politics
Sources close to the Labour leader believe the emergency NEC meeting on Tuesday, which determines the Labour manifesto for the EU elections, will agree a formula that is "a restatement" of the party's equivocal and prolix party conference resolution of last September.
But a senior trade union source tells me that if Unison, GMB and Usdaw are bulldozed on Tuesday, if their demand for Labour to commit to a "confirmatory" referendum on any Brexit deal is simply ignored, Corbyn and his colleagues are "being delusional about the likely consequences".
The well-placed trade unionist added: "They have no idea what's going to hit them and the scale of the backlash they will face" - which captures for you how emotions are running very high.
And given that Unison, the GMB and Usdaw are respectively the first, third and fourth biggest trade unions in the UK, they can certainly cause trouble for Corbyn, if so minded.
So is there a compromise that would allow honour to be satisfied on both sides?
Well one idea being touted is that Labour could put in its manifesto that there should be a referendum on any Brexit deal proposed by the government this side of a general election, or a confirmatory public vote on what would be characterised as a "Tory" Brexit deal.
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As the founder of Momentum Jon Lansman implied on Sunday, that would be consistent with part of the epic conference resolution, since it included the phrase that "if the government is confident in negotiating a deal that working people, our economy and communities will benefit from they should not be afraid to put that deal to the public".
It also said: "When trade unions have a mandate to negotiate a deal for their members, the final deal is accepted or rejected by the membership" - which again implies that Labour's preference is for a confirmatory ballot.
The big point is that a Labour pledge to campaign for a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit shaped by Theresa May or her successor, this side of the next general election, would be consistent with existing Labour policy, even if it would be considerably clearer and less ambiguous than the current position.
It would allow Labour candidates for the EU parliament to say, without keeping their fingers crossed behind their back, that they and their party are in favour of a referendum, which most of them say is precisely what they need and want.
Video report by ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston
The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told ITV News there will be "substantial sums" for the UK to spend on "our priorities" in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Speaking at the G7 summit - an informal club of rich nations that meets annually to discuss major issues - Mr Johnson said the £39 billion divorce bill would "strictly speaking" no longer be due to the EU.
He refused to be drawn on the exact figures available should the country crash out without a deal, but insisted it would be to the UK's benefit.
"If we come out without an agreement it is certainly true that the £39 billion is no longer strictly speaking owed," he said.
"I'm not going to get into the figures, but there will very substantial sums available to our country to spend on our priorities, to spend on getting on getting our businesses ready.
"It's not a threat, it's a simple statement of reality, that's the way things are."
Mr Johnson has been using the summit in Biarritz to hold talks with European Council President Donald Tusk, who earlier warned him not to go down in history as "Mr No Deal".
ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston reports from Biarritz where he says that a no-deal Brexit is looking more likely than ever, with only British MPs standing in the way of this. He predicts the "mother of all Parliamentary crises" when politicians return from their summer recess in September.
Mr Johnson also claimed the EU had accepted the UK's stance on removing the Irish backstop from the Withdrawal Agreement and were willing to reopen negotiations.
Since Mr Johnson's appointment as Conservative Party leader in July, there has been a stand-off between No 10 and the EU, with both sides seemingly unwilling to try and reach a new compromise, making the prospect of a no-deal Brexit increasingly likely.
But on Sunday, Mr Johnson told ITV News' Political Editor Robert Peston in Biarritz that there was a more conciliatory spirit from the bloc.
"I hope you'll agree that in the last few days there has been change in mood I think, in the EU," he said.
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"They recognise that we're willing to talk about progress that can be made. Of course, they say it's impossible, they say that they can't get rid of the backstop.
"The point that we're making to them is that unless they get rid of that system that keeps the UK locked in to the regulatory orbit, the trading system of the EU with no say in those things for the UK. Unless they get rid of that there's no way, we can do a deal. And I think that point has landed."
After speaking to Robert Peston, Mr Johnson met with Mr Tusk and said the pair discussed Brexit and foreign policy issues.
Downing Street added that the Prime Minister had told the European Council President: "We will work in an energetic and determined way to get a better deal and we are very willing to sit down to talk with the EU and member states about what needs to be done to achieve that".
But an EU official said the meeting had mainly restated known positions and Brussels had been hoping for "new elements to unblock the situation".
Speaking to Robert Peston ahead of the meeting, Mr Johnson had said it "would be sensible" for negotiations with the EU to "get going now" and used his morning swim in the Atlantic as an example of how things could be done.
"Let me give you a metaphor. I swam round that rock this morning. Now, from here you cannot tell that there is a gigantic hole in that rock, there is a way through. My point to the EU, there's a way through but you can't find the way through if you just sit on the beach. That would be my message. So, let's get going'."
After his morning dip, Mr Johnson had also met with US President Donald Trump for a breakfast meeting where a post-Brexit trade deal was among the topics discussed.
Mr Johnson reiterated his point that a trade deal with the US would not be "plain sailing" but said there was an "opportunity to do a great free trade deal with the United States" something he said President Trump was "very gung-ho about".
He also stressed "NHS in no way can be part of the negotiations".
"There are real issues for UK business and manufactures of all kinds because of the barriers they face in the US. I don't think people realise quite how protectionist sometimes the US market can be.
"So, what I'm saying to Donald, to President Trump, this is a big opportunity for both of us,but we need to see some movement and we need to see movement from the US side as well."
As the October 31 deadline looms ever nearer with no new negotiations officially scheduled, preparations for a no-deal Brexit have been ramped up, but Mr Johnson insisted the country would be ready if the UK left the EU without a deal.
"Of course, on no-deal you're right that we have to prepare for it, and we have to work very hard, as we are, to minimise any possible economic consequences and as I said on the steps of Downing Street there will be bumps on the road.
"With every day that goes by, with all the preparation that we're making, we think that we're minimising those risks."
As well as the G7 members of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US, and the leaders of the EU, France, as the host, invited India, Chile, South Africa and Australia as important regional democracies, plus four African nations: Burkina Faso, Egypt, Senegal, and Rwanda.
On Sunday, a senior French official said the country's President Emmanuel Macron had also invited Iran's foreign minister in a bid to ease tensions over its nuclear program.
The official said the decision to invite Jawad Zarif came after the G7 leaders gathered for dinner Saturday night.
Asked whether the White House was aware of the visit, the French official said "we operate on our own terms" but noted that Mr Macron and Mr Trump met for two hours on Saturday and discussed Iran at length, as well as at the group dinner.
They continued that the Americans in Biarritz will not meet with Mr Zarif, and that France "is working in full transparency with the US and in full transparency with European partners".
Away from the topic of the G7, Mr Johnson would not be drawn by Peston on whether he had confidence in Prince Andrew following media reports about his friendship with the US financier Jeffrey Epstein who killed himself in prison two weeks ago, but commended the Duke of York's "hard" work "selling the UK overseas".
"Let me tell you something, I've worked with Prince Andrew, I've seen the good he's been able to do for UK business overseas. And other than that I have absolutely no knowledge of these matters and no comment to make," Mr Johnson said.
Watch the full interview:
The Prime Minister's comments came as he faced a backlash over reports he had sought legal advice from Attorney General Geoffrey Cox about temporarily shutting down Parliament - known as prorogation - for five weeks from September 9.
The Observer reported that the move would allow for a Queen's Speech, starting a new parliamentary session, on October 14.
Such a move would keep MPs away from the Commons until shortly before the European Council summit of EU leaders on October 17, potentially preventing moves to block a no-deal Brexit.
A Government source said the claim was "entirely false".
Joel Hills
Business and Economics Editor
The Confederation of British Industry claims to be the 'Voice of Business'.Before the EU referendum, the vast majority of the 190,000 companies who are its members wanted Britain to remain in the EU.
But on Monday the CBI gave a warm welcome to the prime minister who plans to lead Britain out - and the draft deal she has negotiated.
The Director-General Carolyn Fairbairn said: “It's not perfect, it's a compromise, but it's progress. It takes us back from the cliff edge, avoids no deal, charts potential path to future frictionless trade deal. That is progress, we should not go backwards."
Today the government and the EU updated their vision of their future relationship.
The political declaration is aspirational, lacks detail and isn't legally binding.The CBI issued a statement, welcoming it.
Josh Hardie, the CBI's Deputy Director General said "It appears that we're on the cusp on a much-needed agreement.
“This shows that a deal can be done and businesses across the continent will be watching this weekend's EU Summit closely.”
It added that “the progress made is a credit to both sets of negotiators. But hard work lies ahead“.
But the CBI also inadvertently sent ITV News internal emails which highlight a difference between the confederation's public views about the political declaration and those held inside the organisation.
The CBI's Head of EU Negotiations, Nicole Sykes, argued there was ”no need to give credit to negotiators I think, because it’s not a good deal."
The CBI's Head of News, Chris Grummett responded "Have left the credit in given we “want” this to go through“.
The quotations marks around the word 'want' suggest doubts.
In a statement the CBI says: “It’s absurd ITN has reproduced a private debate in the full knowledge that it is not the CBI’s position.
"Responding to significant announcements inevitably involves a step-by-step process, testing different viewpoints before arriving at a final, public statement.
“The CBI and our members have been clear. The deal’s not perfect, it involves compromise, hard work lies ahead but right now it is the best chance of protecting jobs and growth.”
In a sense it should not come as any great surprise that senior staff within the CBI have misgivings about supporting the political declaration.
It contains no commitment to frictionless trade. The draft agreement removes the uncertainty that businesses hate - but only until the end of 2020.
Thereafter, the UK's trading relationship - which will help shape our future prosperity - could end up being very close but may end up being very distant.
The CBI would prefer Britain to stay in the Single Market and the Customs Union - we are leaving both.
The organisation is backing Theresa May’s deal even if it considers it to be a bad deal - because it is better than no deal - which the CBI believes would be disastrous.
Brexit negotiations between the government and Labour will resume on Tuesday as Theresa May launches a fresh bid to break the deadlock in parliament and quash new attempts to oust her from office.
The prime minister’s deputy, David Lidington, and the Brexit secretary, Steve Barclay, will lead talks with Labour shadow ministers, including shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, in a new effort to find a cross-party solution to the current crisis.
They will be joined by government chief whip Julian Smith and Ms May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell.
The two negotiating teams have also set up working groups to consider the different elements of the relationship between the EU and UK after Brexit. Mr Barclay and Sir Keir will take part in a meeting of the security working group on Tuesday.
The talks have so far failed to end the impasse, with a major sticking point being the government’s refusal to agree to Labour’s demand for a permanent customs union with the EU.
Last week, Jeremy Corbyn‘s spokesman admitted there remained “substantial differences” and that the two sides were still “a long way” apart.
Ms May has said that if the two parties cannot agree on a way forward, they will instead propose a series of options for MPs to vote on. She has insisted that the government “stands ready to abide by” whatever the Commons decides, providing Labour does that same.
The talks will resume as the prime minister faces fresh pressure to step down after being forced to request a further delay to Brexit.
The 1922 Committee that represents backbench Conservative MPs will meet on Tuesday to discuss calls for party rules to be changed to allow another vote of no confidence in her leadership. Under the current rules, such a vote can only take place once a year. Ms May saw off an attempt to topple her last December, meaning another vote cannot currently be held until the end of the year.
The prime minister is also facing pressure from the party grassroots, with reports suggesting that 70 local Conservative association leaders have signed a petition calling for an extraordinary general meeting of the National Conservative Convention to discuss the her leadership of the party. Under party rules, only 65 signatures are needed to trigger an emergency meeting.
While a vote at the meeting would not be binding, an expression of no confidence in Ms May would pile pressure on the 1922 Committee to find a way to oust her.
Dinah Glover, the chair of London East Area Conservatives, who has organised the petition, told The Telegraph: “I am extremely sad that we have had to organise this petition to ask Mrs May to consider her position but it has become increasingly obvious over the last year that she has become the block to Brexit rather the solution.
“Chairmen have signed the petition because they fear Brexit will not be delivered under her leadership.
She added: “We need a prime minister who believes in the benefits that Brexit can bring to our country to lead us in the negotiations and out of the EU.
“That is the only solution which can satisfy our party and the British people. Enough is enough.”
The race to succeed Ms May is already well underway as prospective candidates vie for position and seek to bolster their campaigns.
A new survey of Tory members by the ConservativeHome website suggested Boris Johnson is currently in pole position among the party membership.
The former foreign secretary is backed by 32.4 per cent of members, giving him a commanding leave over fellow Eurosceptic Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, who is in second place with 14.7 per cent of support.
Michael Gove, the environment secretary, came third, ahead of Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, and Sajid Javid, the home secretary.


Downing Street has rejected suggestions that Britain will face a £50 billion “divorce” bill from the European Union – arguing that the figure has not yet been decided.
Theresa May’s official spokesperson said negotiations had not yet begun and that a figure on what the UK might pay as part of any settlement “does not actually exist”.
It was widely reported this week that Britain could face a hefty one-off bill for Brexit – a payment that could eat into the supposed budget savings promised by Leave campaigners.
European Commission chief negotiator Michel Barnier and other EU diplomats are reported to have mentioned the figure to EU leaders during a tour of EU capitals.
The ballpark number is understood to represent outstanding liabilities from the UK to the EU that will need to be cleared up after Britain leaves the bloc.
The sum is believed to include the obligation for the UK to pay into the EU Budget until the end of 2020, as well as pensions liabilities and payments linked to loan guarantees.
Separately, Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson have also both acknowledged that the UK could make payments to Brussels for “access” to Europe’s markets.
Jason Hawkes
Rex
“Negotiations have not begun and so that figure does not actually exist,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said at a briefing on Friday.
“As was set out last night by my colleagues in Brussels, that is one of a range of issues that will have to be dealt with. The outcome of those negotiations will be something for the future.”
Downing Street had previously only said that liabilities would be “one of the issues that will be for discussion” in Brexit talks.
Ms May cancelled her planned Brussels press conference late on Thursday night after talks with other EU leaders ran later than expected.


The President of the EU’s ruling Council has intervened to calm Brexit tensions 24 hours after Theresa May launched a vicious attack on “Brussels bureaucrats” on the steps of No 10.
Donald Tusk warned that talks would become “impossible” if emotions got out of hand between the UK and EU and called for “mutual respect” between the negotiating parties.
The call for calm comes after Theresa May accused the EU’s bureaucracy of trying to influence the result of Britian’s general election by maliciously leaking the content of discussions to the media. In an aggressive speech on Wenesday she tore into officials, warning that her government would not let “the bureaucrats of Brussels run over us”.
The European Commission this morning reacted indignantly to Ms May’s conspiracy theory, with a spokesperson telling reporters that the organisation was “rather busy” and preoccupied with more important matters than trying to fix the poll.
But Mr Tusk, a Polish national who represents the EU states’ heads of government in Brussels, said on Thursday afternoon: “Brexit talks [are] difficult enough. If emotions get out of hand, they'll become impossible. Discretion, moderation and mutual respect needed.
“At stake are the daily lives and interests of millions of people on both sides of the Channel.”
The call for calm contrasts with that of a Commission spokesperson earlier today, who said: “We are not naive, we know that there is an election taking place in the United Kingdom. People get excited whenever we have elections.
“This election in the United Kingdom is mainly about Brexit. But we here in Brussels, we are very busy, rather busy, with our policy work.
“We have too much to do on our plate. So, in a nutshell, we are very busy. And we will not Brexitise our work.
“To put it in the words of an EU diplomat, the 30-minute slot that we are going to devote to Brexit per week, for this week it's up.”
Ms May’s intervention was prompted by the leaking of the discussions with Jean Claude Juncker, the Commission’s President. The leaks, to the German-language press, characterised her as having a weak grasp on Brexit negotiations.
In apparent response Ms May gave a speech in which she claimed that Britain’s negotiating position in Europe had “been misrepresented in the continental press”.
She continued: "Threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials. All of these acts have been deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election that will take place on 8 June."
“The events of the last few days have shown that whatever our wishes and however reasonable the positions of Europe's other leaders, there are some in Brussels who do not want these talks to succeed, who do not want Britain to prosper."
@diamondgeezer
Courtesy of Eoin Palmer
Courtesy of Eoin Palmer
Courtesy of Bernadette Russell
The Prime Minister took no questions after her speech to clarify her comments, which were widely through to relate to the Commission.
The comments are expected to play well with Ukip voters, who have flocked to the Tories since Ms May called a general election and demanded national “unity”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the Prime Minister of “playing party games with Brexit in the hope of winning advantage for the Tories”, while Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon accused Ms May of seeking to "poison the atmosphere for partisan reasons" and described the attack as "deeply irresponsible".


The UK appears set to crash out of the European Union without a Brexit deal due to the "intransigence" of the Brussels machine, Liam Fox has claimed.
The International Trade Secretary put the chances of a no-deal Brexit at "60-40" despite both sides saying they want to reach an agreement on the terms of the UK's departure from the bloc in March 2019.
The prominent Brexiteer said he believed the risk of a no-deal scenario had increased, pinning the blame on the European Commission and Brussels' chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
"I think the intransigence of the commission is pushing us towards no deal," he told The Sunday Times. "We have set out the basis in which a deal can happen but if the EU decides that the theological obsession of the unelected is to take priority over the economic wellbeing of the people of Europe then it's a bureaucrats' Brexit - not a people's Brexit - then there is only going to be one outcome."
He said Mr Barnier had dismissed the UK's proposals in the Chequers plan thrashed out by Theresa May and the Cabinet simply because "we have never done it before".
The Government has admitted its proposals are unprecedented, but Dr Fox said Mr Barnier's response "makes the chance of no deal greater".
The Prime Minister held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, cutting short her holiday to visit his summer retreat.
And ministers including Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab have also engaged in diplomatic activity in Europe in recent days as the Government seeks to deal directly with individual governments in an effort to keep the Chequers plan alive.
In a sign that member states are being warned of the consequences of the failure to find a deal, Dr Fox said: "It's up to the EU27 to determine whether they want the EU Commission's ideological purity to be maintained at the expense of their real economies."
Meanwhile, former cabinet minister Priti Patel said Mrs May must ditch the Chequers plan, which would see a "common rulebook" for goods with the EU - effectively tying the UK to terms set by Brussels.
Writing for The Telegraph she said it did not meet the result of the referendum and "will leave us half-in and half-out, still bound to EU regulations and constraints".
Calling for a looser free trade deal with the EU she said the change would take "political courage, the kind of courage that appears to have been lacking over the past two years".
Labour former cabinet minister Lord Blunkett used a Sunday Telegraph article to reject claims that people who voted to Leave over immigration concerns were "racist" and said the result would be the same if there was another referendum.
He argued that "people believed our democracy and political system did not reflect their concerns and their cry for help" following the impact of the financial crash and austerity, in many places hitting communities still coping with the aftermath of deindustrialisation.
"To understand this, and why, if there were to be a second referendum now, I believe that the majority would still vote to leave, is critical if we are to get our democratic system back on track," he said.
Press Association


David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, has claimed the EU will be making a "massive miscalculation" if it thinks the UK is not ready to walk away from the negotiations in Brussels without a deal.
The remarks from Mr Davis followed Liam Fox's assessment that the probability of a no-deal outcome was "60-40", as he claimed the "intransigence" of the European Commission was pushing the UK towards a no deal.
Mr Davis - who spent months negotiating with Michel Barnier before quitting over Theresa May's Chequers plan - insisted that EU member states had more to lose from a failure to reach an agreement than the UK.
"This has great scope for being a massive miscalculation on the part of the EU that could end up with no deal by accident," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It's certainly not the intention of the EU to have a no-deal Brexit but they are misjudging us at the moment. The UK Parliament does not want no deal but it's certainly not going to be pushed around by the European Parliament.
"I've always thought that no deal is better than a bad deal and while there will be border issues and so on... it would give us more freedom. I'm still of the view that we have got two things on our side - we have got our own currency and we are masters of our own destiny in a way that EU member countries are not.
He added: "This is a negotiation and it will go to the edge, but we must not panic about this. They have got lots to lose too, and specific countries and specific sectors have got large amounts to lose. As we get closer to the brink, there will be internal pressure within the EU."
His comments came after the prime minister met French president Emmanuel Macron for face-to-face talks at his summer retreat last week and ministers have been dispatched across the continent to deal directly with their counterparts in what has been seen as an attempt to cut out Mr Barnier and the European Commission's bureaucrats.
Robert Buckland, the solicitor general, indicated that the Government believes the leaders of the 27 EU states will come to play a more significant role as the deadline for a deal approaches in the autumn.
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"The Government's policy is to get a deal and that chimes entirely with what I think is in the best interests of our country," he told BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour. "The reality is that as we get close to the wire, the views of the member states will become more important."
The UK and EU hope to reach a deal by October, in order to give MPs and MEPs chance to scrutinise it.
But Mr Buckland said that if that date slipped to November, there would still be time - although he hinted the Commons' Christmas break could be cut short.
"The clock is ticking, parliamentary time will be very tight," he said. "I don't think that needs to be emergency legislation, I think it can be done on the floor of both Houses, but we are going to have to perhaps look at a few recesses and actually the time that we use in Parliament in order to make sure that everything is thoroughly debated."
Labour warned that a no-deal scenario would be a "catastrophic failure of government" in response to Dr Fox's assessment.
But shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Theresa May "reckless red lines" had contributed to the difficulties, along with splits in the Tory ranks and "fantasy Brexiteer promises".
He indicated that Parliament should prevent the UK crashing out without a deal.



Thousands of activists will take to the streets on Saturday as part of a national day of action to demonstrate public support for a vote on the final Brexit deal.
Several pro-EU organisations have joined forces to mount an attack on the government’s Brexit plans with more than 350 events across the country, ahead of the launch of a £1m campaign demanding the opportunity to stay in the EU if the people want to.
Remain-backing groups have been emboldened by a recent shift in public support towards staying in the EU, and a number of high-profile figures have come out in favour of a second referendum, including former prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair.
A recent poll for the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain found that 44 per cent of people want a vote on the exit terms secured by Theresa May, while 36 per cent were against the idea of a further referendum. However, other polls offer mixed messages on the public’s views on reversing Brexit.
MPs have been promised a “meaningful vote” on the final deal after inflicted a humiliating parliamentary defeat on the government.
But Ms May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have both ruled out the prospect of allowing a public vote on the terms.
As well as flagship events in 12 cities, ranging from Weston-super-Mare to Edinburgh, there will also be thousands of supporters setting up stalls and leafleting in both Remain and Leave areas.
Cross-party MPs including Tory Anna Soubry and Labour’s Chuka Umunna are expected to speak at the launch of the People’s Vote on Sunday, led by the pro-EU campaign group Open Britain and the European Movement, which is chaired by former Conservative health secretary Stephen Dorrell.
James McGrory, executive director of Open Britain, said: “Our largest ever national day of action is all about bringing together the various pro-European groups so that we can speak with one, unified voice, because we know that together we are stronger.”
It comes as MPs prepare to return to parliament after recess next week, where Ms May faces a number of challenges securing the safe passage of her key Brexit bill through the House of Lords.
Labour’s leader in the upper chamber warned the prime minister the EU Withdrawal Bill will face a “rocky road” unless ministers bring forward acceptable amendments to the legislation.
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Angela Smith, writing exclusively in The Independent, said the government could face defeat on the bill at the hands of a coalition of Labour, Tory and other peers, potentially delaying the vital legislation by sending it back to the House of Commons.


Angela Merkel’s political turmoil is “bad news for Britain” as the Brexit negotiations reach a crunch point, a former German ambassador to the UK has warned.
Thomas Matussek said Germany was “looking inward and is self-absorbed”, making it harder for the country to lead the EU in striking a deal to end the deadlock in the talks.
Some hard Brexit-backing Tory MPs are urging Theresa May to exploit the Chancellor’s weakness to Britain’s advantage – after coalition talks collapsed, threatening fresh elections in Berlin. The Prime Minister should suspend plans to offer up to €20bn more to the EU to speed up future trade talks, agreed by the inner Cabinet last night, they say.
But Mr Matussek said “I think the German instability is bad news for Britain, it’s bad news for Europe but, most of all it is bad news for the Germans ... You have a normally loud and constructive voice which has been silenced. You have a country that is looking inward and is self-absorbed.”
The crisis in Berlin would make “no operational difference” to the stance the EU would take on Brexit at next month’s EU summit, the former ambassador argued. But he warned: “In the medium and long term, of course it would be very, very bad if the German input is missing.”
Christian Schmidt, Germany’s food and agriculture minister, dismissed suggestions that Ms Merkel’s precarious position left her more in need of a Brexit deal – to avoid damage from a no-deal Brexit.
“My suggestion is just to think which kind of disaster this [a no-deal Brexit] would be for the United Kingdom’s economy,” he said. “This is not a game, winner and loser. This is a responsibility.”
The comments come after Brexiteer Tories called for defiance following cabinet agreement for Britain to up its divorce bill offer before the European Council next month.
Former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith told The Times: “When you look at what is going on in Europe, the idea that out of that chaotic situation can come any sort of understanding is clearly not right, so we will have to sit tight.”
And Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “Approving a higher divorce bill at this stage would be foolish. As for Germany, its domestic political concerns make it less likely that it would want to risk the damage that could be done to its industry from the UK imposing tariffs on its exports.”
Germany was plunged into political instability at the weekend, after many weeks of talks to form a coalition collapsed. Ms Merkel has rejected leading a minority government and says she said that she was ready for a rerun of the September election – but could yet be forced out by her own party.
Meanwhile, in a boost for Ms May, she secured agreement from Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and other Leave-supporting cabinet heavyweights to up her financial offer to the EU. It is expected to double, to about €40bn, although No 10 refused to put a figure on it – and Ms May is not expected to do so when she meets Donald Tusk, the European Council president, on Friday.
The Government will continue to insist that the EU gives way on moving onto talks about future trade and a transitional period, in return for more money.


Dozens of predominately Conservative MPs have signed a letter to the BBC's director general accusing the public broadcaster of bias in its Brexit coverage.
It is understood 70 MPs wrote to Lord Hall, the BBC’s chief, deriding the organisations inability to break out of “pre-referendum pessimism” to “accept new facts” was skewing its coverage.
According to reports the signatories included former Cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa Villers, alongside dozens of their colleagues, DUP MP’s and three Labour MPs – Kate Hoey, Kelvin Hopkins and Graham Stringer.
It comes after Theresa May announced she would start divorce proceedings with the European Union next week on Wednesday by serving notice of her invocation of Article 50 to Brussels.
The letter, which was put together by the Conservative MP Julian Knight, who campaigned to stay in the EU, added that the BBC had suffered a “collective nervous breakdown” over the referendum result.
“One example is the prominent coverage given to so-called “regretful Leave voters” in the aftermath of the vote, even though all available polling suggests no shift in public opinion towards the EU since the vote,” Mr Knight added in his blog.
The letter adds: “It particularly pains us to see how so much of the economic good news we’ve had since June has been skewed by BBC coverage which seems unable to break out of pre-referendum pessimism and accept new facts.
“Some of the signatories of this letter shared many of the concerns about the economic impact of Brexit, but all are delighted to find forecasts of immediate economic harm were at best misplaced. So-called ‘despite Brexit’ reporting may be expected of a partisan press, but licence fee-payers have the right to expect better.”
The letter says that “BBC bias can have a substantial effect on national debate. We fear that, by misrepresenting our country either as xenophobic or regretful of the Leave vote, the BBC will undermine our efforts to carve out a new, global role for this country."
But in a response the BBC said: “While we are always live to our critics and understand that passions are running high on all sides of the debate, it is the job of the BBC to scrutinise and analyse the issues on behalf of the public and to hold politicians to account across the political spectrum.
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"That is what the BBC has been doing. It is what the BBC will continue to do. It is precisely because of this that the public trusts the BBC."
Writing about the letter in a blog for the Conservative Home website Mr Knight, also a former BBC journalist, said the organisation must be careful not to lose the trust of those who voted for Brexit “as well as those Remainers like myself who respect the will of the people”.
He added: “In fact, I think the corporation could do with dwelling a bit more on its full title. I don’t want to see it drenched in the Union Jack like the propaganda station of a tin-pot dictatorship, but I do think that it would do well to keep in mind its status as a national institution.”


A no-deal Brexit is "more likely than ever before", the president of the European Council has warned, ahead of a make-or-break summit of EU leaders in Brussels.
Donald Tusk, who has described this week's top-level meeting as "the moment of truth", said Brexit had "proven to be more complicated than some may have expected".
But he said that "that we are preparing for a no-deal scenario must not, under any circumstances, lead us away from making every effort to reach the best agreement possible".
Mr Tusk's warning, made in a letter to EU leaders formally inviting them to the summit, comes a day after negotiations between the European Commission and UK Government hit a a wall over the question of how to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland.
Over dinner on Wednesday night the heads of state or government of the 27 remaining EU member states will decide whether there is any pointing holding a special Brexit summit in November – or whether the horse has already bolted.
It is now confirmed that Theresa May will address the 27 leaders before the dinner in a last-ditch bid to win them over; though she will not be allowed into the main discussion itself.
Despite apparent technical agreement between officials on both sides after intensive work at the weekend, Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab rejected the compromise plan after travelling to Brussels for a meeting with Michel Barnier that had been expected by some to seal the deal.
We must prepare the EU for a no-deal scenario, which is more likely than ever before
The sticking point is still over whether Northern Ireland would be treated differently to the UK in customs and regulatory terms, in order to prevent it having a border with the Republic.
“[In Salzburg] leaders said that they will have an additional European Council in November if there has been progress. This needs to be decided on Wednesday, if there is enough progress,” one senior EU diplomat speaking in Brussels on Monday said.
Member states have been kept somewhat in the dark during the latest round of talks, during which Britain and the EU have gone into a communications blackout “tunnel” so that they can focus on solving problems.
“The Commission said they would descend together with the British into the tunnel. That’s what they did. You hear more from the tunnel than we did,” the senior diplomat said.
“We don’t really know yet what really happened and what the real problem was,” the diplomat confessed, adding that they expected “transparency” and updates at a meeting between the 27 countries’ Europe ministers and Michel Barnier in Brussels on Tuesday.
But the diplomat expressed doubts about whether it was even legally possible to negotiate the UK-wide customs arrangement sought by the British government under the terms of Article 50.
“Article 50 is the legal basis for solving the withdrawal issues, but Article 50 is not the legal basis for solving the future relationship on a permanent basis between the UK and EU,” they warned.
In his letter to the leaders, Mr Tusk said: "As you remember from Salzburg, we wished for maximum progress and results that would lead to a deal in October. As things stand today, it has proven to be more complicated than some may have expected. We should nevertheless remain hopeful and determined, as there is good will to continue these talks on both sides.
"But at the same time, responsible as we are, we must prepare the EU for a no-deal scenario, which is more likely than ever before. Like the UK, the Commission has started such preparations, and will give us an update during the meeting.

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"But let me be absolutely clear. The fact that we are preparing for a no-deal scenario must not, under any circumstances, lead us away from making every effort to reach the best agreement possible, for all sides. This is what our state of mind should be at this stage. As someone rightly said: 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' Let us not give up."
Ms May said in a statement in the House of Commons on Monday that a Brexit deal was this "achievable" despite differences between the two sides. Asked what would happen if no deal was struck, the PM said she would consult with MPs on the way forward.
"If it doesn't work out this week, we must continue negotiating, that is clear - but time is pressing," she told the Commons.


While the warning about a post-Brexit loss of investment and jobs at Airbus in the UK is serious enough in itself – 100,000 jobs depend on the firm when you take into account the full supply chain – the fact that the company has chosen to make its fears public raises additional concerns. After all, what it indicates is that industrial leaders are starting to prepare for the worst (with good cause) and feel that they have no option but to warn about the dangers. The drama is real.
Apart from the political chaos and indecision it has induced, one of the most striking aspects of Brexit so far – two years on from the referendum – has been the shyness of major industrial and engineering companies to speak out. This is partly due to a general and traditional reluctance on the part of companies to “interfere” in politics; but it has been compounded in some cases with a wish to remain on good terms with the UK government as a major customer.
Many foreign direct investors into the UK, for example in the motor industry, are especially sensitive to the charge that they would be telling another country’s people what to do. To have German, French, Indian or Japanese-based firms talking publicly about running down UK plants and sacking British workers might be counterproductive, so they often thought. Therefore they have mostly kept quiet – until now.
Yet with an industrial catastrophe around the corner, they have finally come to a point where they feel they have little left to lose. The lack of progress on a post-Brexit trade deal, or even a workable transitional period, have forced industrialists to activate “no deal” contingency plans, and to speak plainly about the dangers ahead.
Airbus has been especially blunt. By the standards of such statements, to say that the company would “carefully monitor any new investments in the UK and refrain from extending the UK suppliers/partners base” is tantamount to a direct threat to pull out of Britain within a fairly short space of time. It requires little decoding.
The warning is to be welcomed. Economic statistics suggesting a period of calm, albeit already with slower growth, are misleading – for the UK is still in the EU single market, customs union and all the other complex regulatory bodies that make this, the largest economic bloc in the world, work so efficiently. That will soon end – with, at best, a limited deal; and, at worst, a collapse onto WTO trade terms. In such circumstances the UK will suffer much more than the EU.
Even if tariffs and quotas were to be avoided, what industry has been trying to tell government for months remains the truth: that any form of customs checks and controls will cost businesses too much time and money. This is because components cross borders many times in integrated manufacturing operations, and firms run “just in time” manufacturing techniques. Even modest delays can destroy the flow of production at vast coat. The airy talk about technological solutions or a “trade partnership” have convinced few.
If there is an opportunity to move plant and jobs to Europe, with low-cost eastern European locations looking especially tempting, then many companies will take it, rather than face trying to work outside the EU. The cost of Brexit will not only be factories and offices closing in the UK – but also the “invisible” loss of factories and offices and jobs that would have been created in the UK had the nation decided to stay in the EU, or at least the EU customs union and single market.
The claim is made, predictably, that the French, German and Spanish governments have stakes in Airbus, and that therefore the Airbus contingency plan is all part of some anti-British conspiracy. Yet none of this would ever have been dreamt of if the UK wasn’t leaving the EU – and if it hadn’t also set down so many red lines about future trading and settled for a short transition period.
If the French, German and Spanish governments were somehow working to push the British to remain in the EU customs union and single market, and to retain Airbus’s British operations, then it is an odd sort of blackmail that works in the interests of the country being blackmailed, protecting British jobs and investment.
Only around 10 per cent of the British economy is now accounted for by manufacturing. Yet it sustains may highly paid and skilled jobs, and provides the exports to help the country pay its way in the world. So it matters. In any case, many of the problems created by Brexit also apply to the City of London, the energy sector, pharmaceuticals, air travel, software, new technologies, agriculture and a wide range of professional services.
What will happen at Airbus will happen across the economy, because the same basic forces will be at work. Loss of markets; additional bureaucracy and cost; difficulty bringing in staff from the EU; rejection of British goods and services because they do not meet single market standards – these factors are common across companies and sectors.
By contrast, we hear precious little about any companies, foreign or domestic, boosting investment and creating jobs specifically because of the “exciting opportunities” Leavers say will be offered by Brexit. Nothing, in fact.
Many will have sympathy with those marching and protesting this weekend for a People’s Vote; in other words, a “final” referendum when the terms of the Brexit deal, if any, are known. Parliament too, though sometimes hesitantly, has laid out its claim for a say on approving the final Brexit agreement with a “meaningful vote”.
Either or both of those will help the British find a way to be at ease with the huge decisions now being taken. For industry, though, the lack of progress speaks far more loudly, and they cannot afford to wait for a last-minute deal. Hence the increasingly panicky noises emanating from usually clam and taciturn businesspeople.


Dear Jeremy,
In a desperate move by a Prime Minister who has run out of options, the Labour Party has been invited to enter negotiations with Theresa May about reaching cross-party agreement on a Brexit deal. With no support in parliament or in her own party, the Prime Minister has turned to Labour to bail her out.
But Theresa May has been clear that the legally binding part of the Brexit deal, the withdrawal agreement, cannot be renegotiated. This means that the only concessions Labour could obtain will be non-binding assurances about the future relationship. Any future Tory prime minister could simply rip up these “guarantees” after Theresa May leaves office, and it is the stated aim of the vast majority of Tory MPs to do precisely this.
The only way to guarantee jobs, rights and protections - and Labour’s reputation with its membership and the electorate - is to support a confirmatory public vote on any option which is agreed by parliament, which will put additional pressure on the government to hold the early general election the country needs.
Under the current leadership, Labour is offering a vision of hope which has inspired millions of people. Tory Brexit threatens this, and so does any perceived participation in delivering it. Any compromise deal which is now agreed by parliament will have no legitimacy if it is not confirmed by the public.
The views of members are clear. Labour’s democratically established policy, passed at party conference in September 2018, is to oppose a Brexit deal which does not meet Labour’s six tests and put any deal that does to a public vote. It would be untenable for Labour not to insist on a public vote on a deal which did not meet these tests.
It is not Labour’s job to rescue Theresa May and usher in her successor. We need a general election to kick out the Tories. It is our job to find a find a way to break the deadlock. In our view, the only way to do that is with a public vote.
We - your supporters - urge you to make a confirmatory public vote your bottom line in negotiations with Theresa May and to fight to bring this government down.
Yours,
Clive Lewis MP
Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP
Kate Osamor MP
Alex Sobel MP
Marsha de Cordova MP
Anneliese Dodds MP
Rosie Duffield MP
Anna McMorrin MP
Luke Pollard MP
Rachael Maskell MP
Ged Killen MP
Ruth George MP


Never again let it be said that the House of Commons is out of touch with the British people. That it’s a cosseted elite. That it doesn’t know how the ordinary people feel.
At the end of a historic day in which, actually, nothing has changed, at least that little myth was put to rest.
For eight hours inside the House of Commons, MPs rose to attack one another, to tear one another’s positions to shreds but shed no light on what to do next.
In the streets outside the House of Commons, the nation simmered gently towards civil war. The People’s Vote campaign held a rally on Parliament Square. Men, and it must be said, one or two women, moved amongst it in hi viz yellow vests, chanting “bollocks to the EU”. When Caroline Lucas appeared on the big screens to address the crowds, one of these men screamed at the top of his voice, “Commie Slag!”
Another chap, waving a flag reading “Remainers Are Traitors”, strolled through the Remain rally, shouting, “Remainers Are Traitors”. When an elderly man took issue with the notion of his own supposed treachery, the flagman told a nearby police officer he was “stirring up trouble”.
But, inside, after the sound and the fury, they opened up the voting lobbies and they all walked through them together. 202 of them were in favour of Theresa May’s deal. 432 against. If they’d swung open the doors of the House of Commons and let the massed mad ranks of the Brexit radicalised vote with them, they’d have all gone through the same door as well.
If Theresa May is searching for the positives, after the sole purpose of her existence for the last two and a half years was killed off in scenes every bit as brutal as the rumours that sometimes slip out of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, she might reflect that she has brought people together.
In the introduction to The Audacity of Hope, a then young senator and writer by the name of Barack Obama reflected that the art of politics was that, no matter how divided people are, no matter how irreconcilable their positions, there would always be something that could unite them, if you could only find it.
And to that end, this universal loathing of Theresa May’s deal, in the House of Commons, and seemingly in the public at large (at least if the kind of people that can spare a Tuesday afternoon to dress up like a volunteer car park attendant and shout obscenities at perfect strangers can be taken as a representative sample), could yet be the touchstone that drives us to a better future.
Because, let’s be clear, on this day of history, nothing else historic happened. The study of history cannot be done in advance. History can only be conferred upon events once the thread of time has passed through them and patterns are seen to emerge.
No one said anything that will be remembered. No one did anything that will bend the nation’s future away from the path it was already self-evidently set upon.
At 6pm, the MPs crowded into the chamber, packed toe on toe at the bar of the house, and crammed in behind the speaker’s chair. The air was hot. The great iron chandeliers glowed with their soft light, turning the wood panelled room soft brown to bright orange. All the trappings of history had been conferred upon it, but it only served to confirm the obvious. That both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are by several orders of magnitude not up to the job. Even at this grave hour, neither are capable of uttering a word that is worth listening to.
High in the peers’ gallery, where guests of MPs come to watch proceedings, a young woman in dark glasses was asleep to the point of sedation. Her concealed eyes gazed heavenward. Her open mouth formed a scalene triangle. In its least acute corner, dribble visibly gathered.
Mr Corbyn could only ramble about Theresa May’s “botched” and “damaging” deal. Abstract nouns are always the friend of the politician with nothing to say. On Mrs May’s part, she did at least patiently point out, yet again, that no alternatives are yet forthcoming. As Mr Corbyn made his predictable demands for a general election, she had the courage to point out that, “At the end of a general election the choices facing the country would be the same.” Which is to say, she admits quite openly there is every chance neither she nor her party would emerge from it with anything like a majority.
As the division was called, and MPs filed towards the lobbies, Tulip Siddiq was brought to the floor of the house in a wheelchair. She had been due to give birth today by Caesarian section. She was there to vote, she said, because last year, in a crucial vote, the Tory whips had “stolen a vote from a young mother”.
They would be casting, at least as far as Theresa May was concerned, “the most important vote of any of our careers.” On this historic day, Ed Vaizey MP had evidently left his security pass at home. The hand of history on his shoulder would only have had to have crept forward slightly to touch the temporary paper visitor’s badge clipped to his breast pocket.
When the numbers, eventually, were read out, the air left the room for a moment then crept back in. “The ayes to the right, 202.” It was a massacre. But if anything, a prime minister who has never been a stranger to the hopeless flail, found a register of composure that has not been seen before. She would have to wait and see if the house had confidence in her government.
She would be told, within seconds, that it did not. Jeremy Corbyn greeted the defeat with the observation that it had been “the biggest defeat inflicted on a government since 1924”.
He was wrong about this. Back then, Ramsay MacDonald only lost by 166 votes, not 230, but when it comes to deviating from the script put in front of him, Jeremy Corbyn makes Ron Burgundy look like an award winning improv act.
It was his squeaky little peroration at the end that revealed the degree to which the man is out of his depth. The jabbing of his indignant little head, like a small sparrow trying to get to grips with a discarded chicken nugget. “I have now tabled. A motion. Of No Confidence. In this government,” he announced.
That motion will be voted on tomorrow, and Theresa May, barring a miracle will win it. She can lose a vote by 230, and still, apparently, command the confidence of the House of Commons.
They filed out at the end, into their waiting cars, and on to the streets of a country none the wiser. Where next? The four options are the same as before. There is Theresa May’s deal, but the Commons has just killed that stone dead. There is no deal, but the Commons will not permit the economic shock involved. There is some kind of single market, customs union, Norway plus type affair, but the Commons will not permit free movement of people. And there is remaining in the European Union via a second referendum, but the Commons will not permit the betrayal of democracy.
The destination of Brexit will be the path of least resistance through that impenetrable forest. Nobody knows what it is, and there are none that will not turn up the burners on a nation ready to break.
Almost nothing has changed.


Brexit has been compared to the appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s by a leading supporter of the Remain campaign.
Lord Malloch-Brown, the former foreign office minister who heads the Best for Britain group, made the comments after billionaire George Soros announced a campaign for a second Brexit referendum.
Mr Soros, who is reported to have given about £500,000 to the group set up by anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller last year, said action was needed as withdrawal from the European Union was “immensely damaging” for the UK.
Lord Malloch-Brown said Britain needed to stay close to the EU because appeasement, which was a 1930s government policy of pursuing agreement with Nazi Germany in the hope of avoiding war, showed how badly things could go wrong when the UK tried to isolate itself from the continent.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Britain’s history as an island nation adjacent to mainland Europe is when we try to, sort of, pull away from Europe’s problems and close ourselves off to them; they have a horrible habit of infecting us anyway.
“Appeasement in the 1930s, you name it. For centuries Britain has ignored events on continental Europe at its peril.”
He said Mr Soros’s reputation as the “man who broke the Bank of England” in 1992, when the financier bet against sterling on the money markets, was an “unrelated issue” to the anti-Brexit campaign.
“He broke the Bank of England as a financier because the British pound was overextended. It wasn’t credible. He broke the pound, not the Bank of England, I should say.
“He is someone who has devoted decades to an extraordinary global philanthropy which has fought for democracy and open values.”
Best for Britain, which campaigns to keep the UK open to EU membership, is expected to publish its manifesto calling for a second referendum on 8 June.
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Announcing the campaign in Paris, Mr Soros, 87, said: “Brexit is an immensely damaging process, harmful to both sides.
“Divorce will be a long process, probably taking more than five years. Five years is an eternity in politics, especially in revolutionary times like the present.
“Ultimately, it’s up to the British people to decide what they want to do. It would be better, however, if they came to a decision sooner rather than later. That’s the goal of an initiative called the Best for Britain, which I support.
“Best for Britain fought for, and helped to win, a meaningful parliamentary vote which includes the option of not leaving at all. This would be good for Britain but would also render Europe a great service by rescinding Brexit and not creating a hard-to-fill hole in the European budget.
“But the British public must express its support by a convincing margin in order to be taken seriously by Europe. That’s what Best for Britain is aiming for by engaging the electorate. It will publish its manifesto in the next few days.”
He said he feared the EU could be heading towards another major financial crisis triggered by austerity and populist political parties intent on tearing the bloc apart.
“The EU is in an existential crisis. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” he said.
However, Mr Soros said he was convinced it was the ideal time for the EU to reform itself and prepare the ground for the UK staying inside the bloc.
“The economic case for remaining a member of the EU is strong, but it will take time for it to sink in,” he added.
“During that time the EU needs to transform itself into an association that countries like Britain would want to join, in order to strengthen the political case.
“Such a Europe would differ from the current arrangements in two key respects. First, it would clearly distinguish between the European Union and the eurozone.
“Second, it would recognise that the euro has many unresolved problems and they must not be allowed to destroy the European Union.”
Theresa May is committed to leaving the EU’s single market and customs union after Brexit, which will officially take place on 29 March next year.
However, a transition period is currently set to last until 31 December 2020.
Additional reporting by Press Association


The Brexit ship is now moving down the slipway. After three and a half years of wrangling in the House of Commons about leaving the EU, MPs have finally finished voting for the withdrawal legislation.
The bill will go to the House of Lords next week, and, while there may be a token last stand by Remainers in the upper house, it will pass. Peers will not stand against the will of the Commons, and especially not so soon after an election fought on the slogan, “Get Brexit done”. As Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, said, the upper house “is capable of acting with remarkable speed when it considers it is in the interests of democracy”.
So that, finally, is that. If Conservative Eurosceptics get their way and Big Ben is sounded on 31 January, just 22 days away, then on the first bong at 11pm the UK will cease to be an EU member state. Nothing else will change, in practical terms: we will enter a transition period in which we will be treated as a member state until the end of the year. People who come to the UK from other EU countries in the next 11 months will have exactly the same rights as those already here.
The big change will be psychological. Everything in politics will look different from the other side of the exit door. The word “Brexit” will be used less and less. The Brexit department will be abolished. The Liberal Democrats may have an agonised debate about whether to advocate rejoining, but no one else will care.
Already politics is filling up with the sort of thing we used to know before the Brexit debate blotted out everything: tension in the Middle East; underperforming railways; long NHS waits; the royal family.
Yes, there will be news stories about EU negotiations and 27-part Twitter threads from experts about what a “bare bones” free trade agreement might look like. But they will not dominate politics in the way they did.
The trade deal or deals that the UK negotiates with the EU are hugely important, and there is still the potential for high-stakes drama over the possible cliff edge of what would in effect be a no-deal Brexit on 31 December.
Boris Johnson seems blithely optimistic about the challenges of getting a trade deal done in such a short space of time. James Forsyth of The Spectator is already reporting that ministers say the UK will “walk away” from talks if the EU insists on negotiating things in the order it wants to negotiate them.
We will see about that. It is true that Johnson has the power to take the UK out of the transition period without a deal, and impose a tariff barrier between us and the EU, because he has a big majority in parliament. But that majority doesn’t make it a good idea, and it doesn’t give him leverage in negotiations apart from the threat to damage both sides, and the UK more than the EU.
However, public opinion and media organisations will be unable to keep up the levels of crisis-reporting they sustained more or less continuously since 23 June 2016.
There will be short periods of crisis, for example towards the end of June, which is the deadline set in the withdrawal agreement for the UK government to ask for an extension of the transition period. But these crises will not be fought out line by line and vote by vote in parliament.
We are back to an older style of politics, in which disagreements are resolved, mainly behind closed doors, within a government that commands a secure majority in the Commons. The rolling constitutional crisis of 2016-19, testing the limits of convention, is over.


Boris Johnson is threatening to sabotage the EU to make it cave in on a Brexit deal – or reject MPs’ plan to stop the UK crashing out of the bloc.
In a dramatic escalation of its battle with Brussels, Downing Street believes it has devised a way out of the crisis to make the EU no longer “legally constituted”, paralysing its decision-making.
The extraordinary plan would see the UK refuse to appoint a commissioner, putting the EU in breach of its own legal duty for all 28 member states to be represented on its executive branch.
No 10 believes the UK would be “disrupting” Brussels life to such a degree that member states will then make it clear they will refuse to grant an Article 50 extension – even if asked for.
A source said: “We will turn the pressure onto the EU to show how difficult it will be for them if the UK is still hanging around.”
The aim is to force an acceptable Brexit deal, but the source added: “If they won’t negotiate a deal, it would be ideal if they would kick us out.”
The threat to bring the EU to a standstill is a hugely controversial attempt to break free of the ambush which saw MPs move to block a no-deal – while also denying Mr Johnson the general election he craves.
The prime minister is under pressure to come up with a “plan B”, to avoid the unenviable choice of breaking the law by refusing to seek an extension, or quitting No 10 after six weeks in office.
The prospect of him ignoring the law instructing a Brexit delay triggered furious criticism yesterday, after Mr Johnson said he would only apply “in theory”.
David Lidington, Theresa May’s de-facto deputy, sacked by her successor, warned of a “really dangerous precedent” that would bolster the rise of authoritarian leaders across the globe.
“It is very important, at a time when, around the world, we are seeing people in other countries holding up alternatives to rule of law and democratic government, that British governments do always demonstrate that they comply with the law,” he said.
Michael Heseltine, the Tory grandee and supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, told The Independent: “It is absolutely extraordinary that a Conservative prime minister needs to be reminded by a colleague that the British government should follow the rule of law and not act in a way which emboldens dictators and strong-arm populist leaders to undermine democracy.”
Jeremy Corbyn said: “It’s a chilling message for people in our country and a dangerous example to would-be autocrats and hard-right leaders across the world.”
And Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “Boris Johnson’s actions show a fundamental disregard for democracy. He is simultaneously horrifying our allies and delighting right-wing populist leaders around the world.”
However, No 10 rejects the “false choice” between resigning or law-breaking, placing its faith in the new aggressive stance with Brussels to allow him to escape either fate.
Article 17 of the Treaty on European Union means the EU will “not be legally constituted on 1 November” – the date the new European Commission takes office – without a UK commissioner, it says.
Brussels could try to reduce the number of commissioners from 28, one for each state, but the UK would have a veto which it would use unless the EU bent to its will.
No 10 accepts Mr Johnson would be breaking the law if he refused to seek the extension parliament will demand – but believes events will not reach that stage, because the EU would be forced to back down first.
The move is being revealed after a day which saw:
* A former director of public prosecutions warn Mr Johnson is heading for prison if he breaks the law and defies parliament by still pursuing a no-deal Brexit
* Groups of pro and anti-Brexit protesters clash violently on Parliament Square, forcing the police to intervene
* The head of the Conservatives for a People’s Vote group cut up his Tory membership card, declaring the party under Mr Johnson is “no longer for me”
* Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, expelled from the party for his Brexit revolt last week, reveal he is taking legal advice over his ejection
* No 10 begin negotiations with TV bosses for live TV election debates, believing Mr Corbyn will “run scared”
The no-deal blocking bill – to become law on Monday – will give the prime minister only until 19 October to pass a deal before he must seek an extension to at least 31 January.
One possibility being floated is for him to refuse to send the legislation to Buckingham Palace for royal assent, to dare the Commons to bring him down.
Alistair Burt, another of the 21 expelled rebels, told The Independent that No 10 had “lost their minds” and called for Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s controversial chief aide, to be sacked.
“We are losing grip completely. This week has been the most disastrous I have experienced in 32 years in parliament. They are not behaving rationally,” Mr Burt said.


EU leaders have unanimously approved the new Brexit deal struck by Boris Johnson after discussing it at a summit in Brussels.
European Commission and UK negotiators struck the accord, which replaces the EU's "backstop" with new arrangements for the Irish border, earlier in the day.
"The European Council endorses the Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community," the European Council conclusions read.
"On this basis, the European Council invites the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council to take the necessary steps to ensure that the agreement can enter into force on 1st November 2019, so as to provide for an orderly withdrawal."
Speaking at a press conference after the meeting of leaders, EU chiefs expressed regret at Britain's departure, but relief that the deal had been struck.
"It's a little bit like an old friend that's going on a journey or adventure without us, and we really hope it works out for them, but I think there will always be a place at the table for them if they ever choose to come back," Ireland's Leo Varadkar said.
Chief negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters: "I too very much regret Brexit. I deeply regret it. However, we respect it, it was a sovereign choice of a majority in the UK. I have a sort of Gaullist tendency myself, but I have a great deal of admiration for the UK... We will never forget the solidarity shown by the British in our darkest hour."
Asked what his message was to the 48 per cent of British voters who supported remain, European Council president Donald Tusk said: "I regret that it was only 48 not 52."
His colleague, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker however added: "I would like to say to the 48 that they were right."
Mr Barnier added: "I want to underline one point: while the subject matter in the negotiating room may very often have been technical, about customs, goods, borders, what has mattered above all has been for me and my team been people in Ireland and Northern Ireland. For me what really matters are the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland and peace on the island of Ireland."


Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has cleared its first hurdle in the European parliament after it was approved by a key committee of MEPs.
The withdrawal agreement was overwhelmingly backed on the parliament’s Constitutional Affairs committee by 23 votes in favour to three against.
It means the treaty will head to a vote for all MEPs next Wednesday, just two days before the UK is set to leave the EU.
MEPs will meet in Brussels for an extraordinary plenary session where they are expected to also give their blessing to the plan.
“It is a historical moment albeit a sombre moment for us,” said committee chair Antonio Tajani.
“A member state is leaving the EU. It’s not a moment for celebration. Although we firmly respect the sovereign decision of the British people, we deeply reject this outcome.”
Mr Tajani read out the names of British MEPs who had served on the committee and told them: “You will be missed”, receiving a standing ovation from other MEPs.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, said of departing British MEPs after the vote: “We will miss their knowledge, their energy and their wit. Our doors will always be open for them.”
Brexit Party MEP Rupert Lowe, who sits on the committee, meanwhile described himself as “the first turkey to vote for Christmas”.
He added: “The deal stinks, but with no transition extension and a commitment to non-alignment, it can work.”
After Brexit the UK will lose all its MEPs, its commissioner, and seat on the EU’s council – though it will be bound by EU rules for at least the length of the transition period.
The withdrawal bill completed a parallel process in Westminster earlier this week, where it was finally approved by MPs after months of renegotiations and parliamentary shenanigans.
After the UK leaves at the end of this month it will be in a transition period until the next of 2021 under which free movement continues, alongside all EU rules. Negotiators will try and use this time to draw up a new trade relationship with the EU.
Boris Johnson has set himself the artificial deadline of the end of this year in order to negotiate a free trade agreement.



The EU has shot down Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan within moments of his appointment as Tory leader, in the latest sign that the bloc has no plans to make concessions.
In an intervention timed to coincide with Mr Johnson’s election announcement, Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s first vice president, told reporters in Brussels that the EU would not renegotiate the deal reached with Theresa May.
Another EU commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, also warned that politicians like Mr Johnson were undermining democracy with “cheap promises, simplified visions, blatantly evident incorrect statements”.
Mr Timmermans said: “He [Boris Johnson] took a long time deciding whether he was for or against Brexit and now his position is clear.
“I think the position of the EU is also clear: the United Kingdom reached an agreement with the European Union and the European Union will stick with that agreement. We will hear what the new prime minister has to say when he comes to Brussels.”
The bloc has said since last year it would not re-open talks on the withdrawal agreement struck by Ms May, which was rejected by MPs three times.
Mr Johnson has said he would try to use the withholding of payments owed to the EU as leverage to force it back to the negotiating table.
Mr Timmermans had previously suggested that Mr Johnson might not be sincere in his support for leaving the European Union, and could be “playing games”.
Asked about the comments on Tuesday, he said: “I would just suggest that you look at what he’s been writing over the years.
“I don’t think I’m telling any secrets when I say that Boris Johnson took a long time to decide which side of the argument he was on. He did that publicly and in letters he’s written.”
Mr Timmermans, who is expected to stay in post after October and provide continuity between the current EU Commission and the next, added that the commission had “negotiated in good faith”, telling reporters: “I think if you have an agreement between a country and an organisation like the EU it’s the responsibility of all to stick to that agreement and make it work.”
He also suggested there was no mandate for a no-deal Brexit, adding: “I think if we look back at the last years I don’t think there were many people in the UK who, when they voted for Brexit, that intentionally voted for a no-deal Brexit. I don’t think that happened.”
In a separate blog post published on Tuesday, Mr Andriukaitis, Lithuania’s EU commissioner, also took aim at Mr Johnson and his “cheap promises”.
He wrote: “A functioning democracy demands discussion of us. Using WHATEVER means to win political battles just does not fit the bill. Boris Johnson ‘virtuoso’ in democracy is the example of this in action – where priority is given to the objective alone and not the means of obtaining it.
“On this shaky path almost anything is allowed: cheap promises, simplified visions, blatantly evident incorrect statements on ‘EU imposed’ food safety standards. Can democracy survive this type of politics? My take is that democracy chooses only those principles that derive from it, defend it and legitimize it. The ones that stem from ‘fake’ facts are killing it.
“Almost ironically, without comparing the UK itself with the USSR because it is not comparable, I can’t think of a better golden standard than the USSR in terms of fact distortion, reality falsification and blunt oblivions of reality.”
Mr Andriukatis added: “I can only wish him luck in ‘taking back control’, spending more money on the NHS, swiftly concluding new trade agreements.”
The commissioner also revealed that Jeremy Hunt, Mr Johnson’s opponent in the Tory leadership battle, had never responded to an invitation to discuss the differences between the EU and USSR. Mr Hunt had previously compared the two states, causing outrage in eastern Europe and elsewhere.
“Having spent some time of my life in the Soviet exile, I couldn’t help but offer to discuss the differences with him. Unfortunately, Jeremy Hunt did not reply to my call for lack of interest or otherwise,” he wrote.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier struck a more businesslike tone in welcoming Mr Johnson to office, however.
“We look forward to working constructively with prime minister Boris Johnson when he takes office, to facilitate the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement and achieve an orderly Brexit,” he said.
“We are ready also to rework the agreed declaration on a new partnership in line with European Council guidelines.”
Incoming European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also congratulated Mr Johnson.
"We have the duty to deliver something which is good for the people of Europe and the United Kingdom," she told reporters on a visit to France.


A Brexit deal now looks unlikely until just before Christmas after Theresa May admitted “weeks” may be needed to break the deadlock in talks with Brussels.
The delay was also signalled by Ireland’s prime minister who warned of log-jammed negotiations dragging into December, increasing concern that stalled talks could simply collapse into a “disaster” no-deal situation.
In a veiled swipe at Brexiteers, European Council President Donald Tusk said solving the vexed issue of the Irish border had proved “more complicated than some may have expected” and said no deal is now “more likely than ever”.
A further sign of slippage came when the EU confirmed it would take a decision this week on whether a special summit once proposed for November to publicly seal a Brexit deal, will be needed given the state of talks.
But despite the deadlock, Ms May again came under intense pressure from Conservative Eurosceptics to refuse anything resembling the EU’s proposals, amid signs she is diluting her stance to secure a deal.
The October summit was once supposed to be the moment a withdrawal deal was locked in, with expectations already having slipped to a potential specially arranged meeting in November – even under those circumstances the outline would have had to have been agreed at this week’s meeting.
But after emergency talks last weekend failed to break the impasse ahead of the meeting in Brussels starting on Thursday, Ms May admitted to MPs that difficult problems remain.
In particular she said: “The EU says there is not time to work out the detail of [the UK’s proposed solution to the Irish border problem] in the next few weeks.”
At the heart of the problem is the gap between the two sides on what happens if, after the Brexit transition period ends in December 2020, no trade deal has been agreed setting out what new customs arrangements should be implemented.
Under these circumstances the EU’s position is that Northern Ireland at least should remain in the EU’s customs union until a trade deal is set in stone, in order to keep the border with the Republic open, but Ms May says she wants a solution where the whole UK remains in a “temporary customs arrangement” – essentially Britain staying in the EU’s customs union on a more strictly “time limited” basis.
The possibility remains open to having an emergency summit in November if we can get to a deal. But if we don’t have an emergency summit in November, well then it will be the regular summit in December
The failure to come to a joint position left Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, admitting that he always believed a deal this month was unlikely.
He said: “The initial target if you like was October. That’s now slipped to November. I don’t want to create the wrong impression by suggesting that it’s now December, that’s not what I’m saying.
“The possibility remains open to having an emergency summit in November if we can get to a deal. But if we don’t have an emergency summit in November, well then it will be the regular summit in December.”
He argued that the consequences of a no-deal cliff-edge Brexit would be “really bad for Ireland, relatively bad for the EU, but quite a disaster for the UK.”
At the summit in Brussels starting on Wednesday night, EU leaders will confirm whether the special November meeting to seal a deal is necessary with the deadlock over the Irish border still blocking progress.
Theresa May will have the chance to address EU leaders ahead of a discussion on Brexit that the UK will be excluded from. But Mr Tusk’s letter to leaders marking the start of the summit sought to manage expectations.
It said: “As you remember from [the September meeting in] Salzburg, we wished for maximum progress and results that would lead to a deal in October.
“As things stand today, it has proven to be more complicated than some may have expected. We should nevertheless remain hopeful and determined, as there is good will to continue these talks on both sides.
“But at the same time, responsible as we are, we must prepare the EU for a no-deal scenario, which is more likely than ever before.”
There are indications that Ms May could try and seek a compromise that would see her alter the UK’s proposals for the so-called “backstop” option – a time-limited customs arrangement.

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Instead of demanding a date that the arrangement would end, something which the EU has rejected, she would find other ways of making the arrangement temporary – by saying for example that it would expire under certain conditions.
The prime minister was asked by a string of MPs in the commons whether she would seek an “end date” to her proposals but repeatedly refused to say, indicated she may compromise on the issue.
Simon Clarke, the Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, said: “So far today [the prime minister] has failed to reassure the house that we will definitely be able to leave the backstop by 31 December, 2020.”
Ms May replied: “I have been clear that one of the areas where we are continuing to discuss with the European Union ... is this issue of the temporary nature of the backstop and ensuring that we have the means to ensure that backstop is temporary were it ever to come in place.”
Earlier, Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, also urged the prime minister to put a deadline on the backstop, but Ms May refused to commit to a deadline, saying only that she “expects” December 2020 to be the end date.
Brexit will be discussed at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, though fears of a walkout of top ministers have apparently been averted with the failure to reach any kind of deal over which ministers might resign.


The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator has ruled out ever accepting Theresa May’s Brexit plan B, in a major blow to the prime minister’s bid to get MPs to back her plan.
Michel Barnier said repeated requests for a time limit on the controversial backstop had already been discussed and rejected twice by EU leaders.
But he also signalled there could be a way to avoid a hard border in Ireland in the event of a no deal, telling an EU committee on Wednesday: “We will have to find an operational way of carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border.”
In a separate joint interview with continental newspapers Mr Barnier said “we cannot tie the backstop to a time limit” as suggested by the prime minister.
He said the withdrawal agreement on the table was “the only possible option” for Britain and also ruled out the possibility of a so-called “managed no deal” as advocated by some Tory Brexiteers.
“In the case of no deal, action will of course be taken to ensure that planes can land but … the ‘no deal’ cannot be a sum of mini-deals and be a situation of ‘business as usual’,” he told Le Monde, Rzeczpospolita and Luxemburger Wort.
“Even an agreement for an ordered Brexit will cause disruptions and have serious consequences. The ‘no deal’ even more so.”
At the committee the chief negotiator elaborated, warning that the only way to avoid the UK crashing was to endorse another option on the table.
“There appears to be a majority in the Commons to oppose a no deal but opposing a no deal will not stop a no deal from happening at the end of March”, he told the committee. “To stop no deal, a positive majority for another solution will need to emerge.”
Following the defeat of her withdrawal agreement by the largest margin in the history of parliament, Ms May said she would try and secure a time limit on the controversial backstop policy.
But Mr Barnier said: “The question of limiting the backstop in time has already been discussed twice by the European leaders, in November and in December 2018.
“This backstop is the only one possible because an assurance is no longer operational if it is for a limited time. Imagine if it were to be limited in time and the problem arose after expiry: it is useless!”
He was backed up later on Wednesday by Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the European Commission.
“We will support Ireland … the backstop is a red line we cannot negotiate with the British government,” Mr Timmermans told an event in Krakow, Poland.
In the weeks since the defeat of the withdrawal agreement the EU has focused on encouraging the PM to revisit her red lines, and signalled its willingness to re-work the so-called “political declaration” that lays out the future trading relationship.
Labour and other opposition parties back a much closer economic relationship with the EU, floating possibilities like common single market standards and a customs union.
Mr Barnier suggested the question of the backstop would “become relative” if the future relationship was revisited – signalling that it might be a way out of the current impasse.
“If the British government wishes to revisit the future relationship and be more ambitious, then it would be possible to agree on the global package and the question of the ‘backstop’ would become relative,” he said.
“If I understand the British debates right; there is a desire to find a way. But if the government and the MPs don’t move their lines, we are going inevitably into ‘no deal’.”
The prime minister has repeatedly ruled out shifting her red lines on issues like a customs union and free movement.
The political backdrop to Mr Barnier’s comments is increasingly complicated. The Commons is considering a new amendment to rule out a no-deal Brexit – forcing the government to seek an extension or revocation of Article 50 if the UK gets too close to the deadline without an agreement.
But in Ireland, the government is facing a political backlash over suggestions a hard border would return if Britain crashes out. Leo Varadkar’s cabinet was put in a tight spot earlier in the week after a Commission spokesperson said there would “obviously” be new infrastructure in the event the withdrawal agreement was not signed. Though Mr Barnier appeared to endorse this suggestion in ensuing interviews, by Wednesday afternoon he had apparently softened his tone by suggesting there could be another way around the problem.
That concession itself, however, is likely to fuel opposition to the withdrawal agreement in Westminster – where Eurosceptic MPs are likely to interepret Mr Barnier’s latest comments as an admission that the backstop, which they fiercely oppose, is not necessary. They may also be emboldened by a suggestion by the Polish foreign minister earlier in the week that the EU should accept a time limit on the backstop, as the MPs demand.
As a result, the chances of the Commons coming around to passing the withdrawal agreement look slimmer than ever.


The outline of a potential compromise deal on Brexit has begun to emerge in Brussels with both sides now working towards a new route out of the deadlock.
EU diplomats confirmed they were looking at a new kind of legal instrument to sit alongside the existing withdrawal agreement, giving clarity over the temporary nature of the Irish backstop so hated by Tory backbenchers.
They were in meetings with the UK’s attorney general Geoffrey Cox, who has already done groundwork on similar instruments before heading to Brussels for meetings alongside Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay.
Brussels officials also signalled they were ready to redraft the language in the political declaration on future relations – the other half of the Brexit deal – with Mr Barclay having indicated earlier this week that Tory backbench proposals might be fed into it.
But the difficulty of reaching a final deal still weighed heavily on talks on Thursday, with EU officials said to be holding firm against Mr Cox’s ongoing drive for a specific end date to the backstop.
EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker also poured cold water on hopes of strong progress when he said he was “not very optimistic” that a no-deal Brexit can be avoided.
The sticking point to Ms May winning full support from her party for her deal has always been the backstop, an arrangement to ensure the Irish border remains open after Brexit, but one that would see the UK potentially locked into an indefinite customs arrangement at the end of 2020 if no new trade deal is signed.
The Independent reported earlier this week that Mr Cox had prepared draft proposals for a legally binding “codicil”, which would be attached to the existing withdrawal agreement, offering additional clarity as to the temporary nature of the backstop.
EU diplomats confirmed on Thursday that both sides were now moving towards some kind legal instrument separate to the main agreement.
They spoke of a “parallel declaration” or “interpretative instrument”, though it was unclear at this point exactly what it would say and if it could ever be enough to satisfy Tory eurosceptics and Ms May’s DUP allies, who want the backstop removed from the main agreement altogether.
One EU official told The Independent that Mr Cox is still pushing for an end date on the backstop as part of his proposals, but the commission is understood to be “holding firm” against the demand, “but open to some clarificatory language”.
The government may be hoping it can allay some anger from members of the Brexiteer European Research Group of backbench Conservative MPs by building some of its favoured proposals into the future trading framework.
One EU diplomat who deals with Brexit said: “We are also looking at updating the declaration on future EU-UK ties after Brexit to give more prominence to the ‘alternative arrangements’ sought by Britain.”
But the diplomat stressed that it was unlikely any of the changes would be finalised by next week, dashing any hope that Ms May could put a new deal to the Commons before the end of the month.
Instead she will face another round of attempts by backbenchers to put forward alternative plans to be voted on on 27 February.
If, as last time, there is a motion placed that would allow MPs to seize control of the parliamentary agenda and seek to delay Brexit, she could face resignations form the ministerial ranks if she stops frontbenchers backing it.
The prime minister’s aides hope that enough progress can be secured in the coming days to allow them to put a motion down on 27 February backing her strategy instead, in a bid to cement support behind it and avoid cross-party groups of MPs seizing control.
Ms May will head to Sharm el-Sheikh for a two-day EU-League of Arab States summit, where she is expected to hold a series of one-to-one meetings on the margins of the main event with EU leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish premier Leo Varadkar.


France would block a delay to Brexit unless it had a “clear objective” based on a “new choice” by the British, Emmanuel Macron has said.
Speaking at a joint press conference with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris, the French president gave the clearest signal from an EU leader so far that there would be conditions on an extension to the Article 50 negotiating period.
“We would support an extension request only if it was justified by a new choice of the British,” he told reporters.
“But we would in no way accept an extension without a clear objective.”
The president added: “As [chief negotiator] Michel Barnier said, we don’t need time – we need decisions.”
France has a veto on an Article 50 extension because all EU countries must unanimously agree to an extension for one to happen.
Speaking at roughly the same time in Madrid, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez warned that Theresa May would merely be “prolonging uncertainty” by requesting a short Brexit delay without a realistic plan.
“Although Spain is not going to oppose the concession of an eventual extension, it must have a certain perspective of resolution,” he said.
“Prolonging uncertainty by postponing deadlines is not a reasonable nor desirable alternative.”

Ms Merkel struck a softer tone in the French capital, telling reporters: “If the UK needs a bit more time, we won’t say no. But we want an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU. We regret this decision but that’s the reality.”
Theresa May offered the option of an extension to MPs on Tuesday in a bid to head off another Commons defeat.
Under the prime minister’s plan, MPs will be asked to vote again on her deal on 12 March. Should it be rejected, they will be asked to vote on 13 March on whether the UK should leave without a deal.
If both of those are rejected, there will be another vote on 14 March on an extension to Article 50, which would delay Brexit.
But Mr Macron’s suggestion that the UK would need to make a “new choice” for an extension to be granted throws a spanner in the works of Downing Street’s timeline.
Though the French president did not elaborate on what such a choice might entail, the EU has been pushing the UK to soften the terms of Brexit. Mr Macron’s statement also suggests time might be granted were the UK to decide to hold a second referendum, which Labour said it would back earlier this week.
Last week European Council president Donald Tusk said he believed an extension to Article 50 was a “rational” course of action for the UK to take, following a meeting with Theresa May. He added, however, that the prime minister still believed she could avoid an extension.


The no-deal Brexit ferries fiasco will cost taxpayers an extra £50m after transport secretary Chris Grayling axed all the controversial contracts.
The Department for Transport (DfT) will be forced to accept termination clauses agreed with the companies, which included a firm which had no ferries.
The settlement comes on top of a £33m payment to Eurotunnel, earlier this year, to settle its legal case over the cross-Channel contracts.
And it piles further embarrassment on the beleaguered Mr Grayling, who has endured repeated calls for him to resign over his mishandling of the issue.
The transport secretary, who has enjoyed Theresa May’s strong backing as an arch-Brexiteer, personally signed the pre-Christmas contracts, including one with “startup firm” Seaborne Freight, which had no ships.
He was forced to scrap that £13.8m contract with Seaborne in February, after its main backer withdrew support – then hand the £33m to Eurotunnel a month later.
The axing of the contracts was revealed by Sky News, following the government agreeing a delay to Brexit instead of pursuing a crash-out departure at the end of March.
Mr Grayling awarded contracts worth a total of more than £100m to three firms to prepare to run extra services from Plymouth, Poole and Portsmouth to ease pressure on the main Dover-Calais route.
After the expected 29 March date of EU withdrawal was delayed, first to 12 April and now to 31 October, the extra services were not required.
The National Audit Office estimated the compensation owed to ferry operators if contracts were terminated at £56.6m, but a Whitehall source said the payout was expected to be around 10 per cent lower.
The DfT told Sky News: “We are reviewing contingency plans to ensure costs to the taxpayer are minimised and are already selling additional ferry capacity back to the market.”
One ferry company told the broadcaster: “Since December, we have changed our schedules, added 20 weekly sailings, disrupted 30k passengers and hired more staff, all to be ready for what is now not needed.”
Labour said the new £50m bill meant the ferry contracts fiasco would “for evermore be a case study in ministerial incompetence”.
“Chris Grayling’s approach to procurement and planning has cost taxpayers tens, if not, hundreds of millions of pounds,” said Andy McDonald MP, the shadow transport secretary.
“His career as a minister has left a trail of scorched earth and billions of pounds of public money wasted.”
The latest payout comes after it emerged that the department was facing a second legal claim over the award of the ferry contracts.
P&O said it was taking action against the government on the grounds that the Eurotunnel payout would put it at a competitive disadvantage.


Theresa May’s Brexit plan was dealt another major blow at a meeting with EU leaders on Thursday night in a disastrous turn of events that resulted in them scrapping written commitments to help her pass her deal through parliament.
After arriving in Brussels with promises to help the prime minister, European leaders were left amazed when she turned up without any developed requests or ideas.
The 27 heads of state and government subsequently decided to delete lines from their council conclusions saying the EU “stands ready to examine whether any further assurance can be provided” and that “the backstop does not represent a desirable outcome for the union”.
The key paragraphs appeared in leaked earlier drafts on the conclusions and their absence leaves a barebones statement that does the bare minimum to help the prime minister. The limited assurances provided in the statement are extremely unlikely to placate Ms May’s MPs, who have said they want major changes to the agreement.
Accounts of the meeting suggest the prime minister’s speech, in which she called for help to get the agreement “over the line”, was repeatedly interrupted by Angela Merkel asking her what she actually wanted from them.
Senior UK government officials admitted that the prime minister did not bring any documented proposals with her to the meeting.
The approach puzzled EU diplomats, who for days before the conference had said they needed to see what proposals Ms May had come up with before they could respond to her request for aid.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said at a midnight press conference after the discussion: “I do find it uncomfortable that there’s an impression perhaps in the UK that it is for the EU to propose solutions.
“It is for the UK leaving the EU and I would have thought that it was rather more for the British government.”
In the margins of the summit the meeting is already being called “Salzburg 2.0” – a reference to a previous summit in September where the prime minister’s dinner speech also ended up accidentally hardening the EU position.
The statement issued by leaders warns that the withdrawal agreement “is not open for renegotiation”, but clarifying that the controversial backstop will “apply temporarily, unless and until it is superseded by a subsequent agreement” and that the EU will “use its best endeavours” to get it replaced quickly “so that the backstop would only be in place for as long as strictly necessary”.
They assured the UK it was EU’s “firm determination to work speedily” to replace it with a trade agreement.
The statement will be of little help to the prime minister, who is struggling to get her deal through parliament after a bruising confidence vote on Wednesday where over 100 of her own MPs said she should quit.
The prime minister had told EU leaders: “There is a majority in my parliament who want to leave with a deal, so with the right assurances this deal can be passed.
“Indeed it is the only deal capable of getting through my parliament.”
She called on them to give her something that would “change the dynamic” in Westminster, adding: “We have to change the perception that the backstop could be a trap from which the UK could not escape. Until we do, the deal – our deal – is at risk.”
Ms May is said to have asked for a legally binding 2021 deadline to end the backstop, but it was pointed out by leaders that this would contradict the fundamental principles of the agreement. When asked if the UK could propose a way around this, the prime minister was said to have no answer.
Arriving at the meeting the prime minister had downplayed hopes of an “immediate breakthrough”. But the performance on Thursday evening appears to have derailed the possibility of any further help down the road in the new year, which the EU seemed receptive to before the session got underway. Such plans could have taken the form of protocols or side-declarations to the treaty.
Earlier in the day German chancellor Angela Merkel had said: “I do not see that this withdrawal agreement can be changed.
“We can discuss whether there should be additional assurances, but here the 27 member states will act very much in common and make their interests very clear.”
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who is currently chairing the European Council, struck a more conciliatory tone, telling reporters: “We are ready to accommodate Theresa May. It’s not about pushing through maximum positions but to find a provision that is the best possible for both sides.”
Juha Sipila, the Finnish prime minister, told reporters that it would be “a little bit difficult” to give the PM legally binding assurances but that leaders wanted to try and help anyway.
In one positive for the prime minister Mr Juncker, the commission president, said he wanted talks on the future relationship to begin as soon as the House of Commons had approved the agreement – as a sign that the EU was serious about replacing the backstop. But the token gesture alone is unlikely to persuade Brexiteers.


Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has departed from Labour policy by saying the party should campaign for Remain in any referendum on a Brexit deal “regardless of which party has negotiated it”.
Her comments came at a People’s Vote rally in Boris Johnson’s constituency of Uxbridge and Ruislip South where she denounced the probable next prime minister as a "lazy, incompetent (and) dangerous" figure who wants to deliver the UK into the hands of the "racist, sexist, bullying monstrosity" Donald Trump.
Ms Thornberry's appearance on the People's Vote platform made her the first senior Labour figure to take advantage of this week’s policy shift - unveiled by Jeremy Corbyn after months of wrangling within the shadow cabinet and trade unions - which commits the party to campaigning for a Final Say referendum and Remain vote on any Brexit outcome produced by the Tory government.
But her rejection of a Brexit deal negotiated by any party puts her at odds with Mr Corbyn, who is yet to say what Labour’s platform will be at the next election, and the unions, who agreed last week that the manifesto should offer a softer “jobs-first” Brexit to be negotiated by the party if it wins.
Ms Thornberry was one of the voices within Labour’s high command arguing increasingly strongly over the past few months for a clearer Brexit policy, against apparent resistance from figures like Unite’s Len McCluskey, party chair Ian Lavery and officials around Mr Corbyn.
She is expected to join fellow shadow cabinet supporters of an unequivocal Remain position, including shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor John McDonnell at a Love Socialism Hate Brexit event in parliament on Monday to pile on further pressure for a manifesto promise of a referendum.
The meeting comes as momentum appears once more to be swinging behind a Final Say vote, with Theresa May's former chief of staff Nick Timothy suggesting it might be the only way to "cut through the logjam" in parliament.
Ms Thornberry told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show that she could not say what would be in the manifesto for an election, which could come as early as the autumn, but could “see the logic” of it offering a Final Say referendum in which Labour would campaign for Remain.
“I’m not allowed to write the manifesto,” she said. “I can tell you what I would argue for and what I think is likely to be in the manifesto, but I can’t tell you what will be in the manifesto because it hasn’t been written yet.”

But speaking to second referendum supporters later in a school in Johnson’s north-west London constituency, she said that Labour “must and will campaign unequivocally to have that People’s Vote, and campaign unequivocally to Remain”.
She added: “If Labour’s position since 2016 has been to argue for an outcome to this process which does the least harm to jobs and the economy, then no matter what deal is on the table, and regardless of which party has negotiated it, our position when it comes to a new referendum must be to remain in the European Union, because that is logically the way to do the least harm to our jobs and the economy.
 “I want the British public to have the final say on Brexit. I want a new People’s Vote. I will demand a new People’s Vote. And I will campaign unequivocally to Remain.”
Acknowledging that Labour had initially promised to respect the result of the 2016 vote, Ms Thornberry said that people’s understanding of the impact of Brexit had changed significantly since then.
“If Labour’s original responsibility as democrats was to respect the result of the referendum, then our responsibility today as democrats is to demand that we go back to the British people and ask: ‘Is this the change you voted for? Is this the Brexit you wanted? Or shall we avoid all that damage and Remain?’” she said.

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The Independent
The Independent
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Ms Thornberry denounced the “gentlemanly coup” which looks set to deliver Mr Johnson to 10 Downing Street on a ballot of around 160,000 Conservative members - little more than 0.3 per cent of registered voters.
“We’ve all heard Boris Johnson say that ‘do or die’, the UK will leave the EU by Halloween,” she said.
“Well I’m sorry Mr Johnson, but if you’re discussing options where our country will die, then that should not just be a decision for you. That should not just be a decision for those 160,000 Tory members living on fat retirement pensions in the Home Counties. That must be a decision for all of the British people in a second referendum, and that’s what we’ll demand.”
 Ms Thornberry said that despite his image as a “bumbling fool”, Mr Johnson - like US President Donald Trump - represented a “serious danger”.
“Boris Johnson was the worst, the laziest, the most incompetent minister I have ever had to shadow during my time in Parliament, but also the most dangerous,” she said.
“And if his ‘do or die’ words on Brexit this week weren’t enough of a warning about the danger he poses to our country, then this week we got the biggest warning yet with his treatment of (UK ambassador to Washington) Sir Kim Darroch - a man who has been forced to resign from his job, simply for doing his job. Thrown under the bus by Boris Johnson in the most shameless, craven and cowardly act of servitude I have ever seen in politics.
 “And why? Because Boris Johnson has decided that when he marches us off a cliff in October, what will save us will be the warm and welcoming hands of President Donald Trump.
“Well I don’t know about you, friends, but I don’t want Donald Trump’s hands anywhere near me. And I don’t want our country’s fate to be in the hands of that racist, sexist, bullying monstrosity of a President. I don’t want a trade deal with America which means chlorinated chicken, and US health insurance companies invading our NHS, and raiding our personal medical health data.”


Theresa May will have to delay Brexit even if she gets her exit plan through parliament this month, Michel Barnier has said.
The EU’s chief negotiator said there was now not enough time for the European Union to ratify the withdrawal agreement, even if MPs back the plan in a vote expected to be held on 12 March.
In a joint interview with several European newspapers, Mr Barnier also said the EU was willing to provide further assurances that the backstop will be temporary.
Ms May has promised that MPs will be allowed to vote on extending Article 50 if they decide to reject her deal a second time, but Mr Barnier said an extension would be needed even if the agreement gains parliament’s approval.
His comments will come as a blow to the prime minister, who has insisted Britain will be able to leave as planned on 29 March if MPs back her deal.
On whether it would be possible for the EU to ratify the agreement if the UK parliament signs it off on 12 March, Mr Barnier told papers including Germany’s Die Welt and Spain’s El Mundo: “No, no. There would have to be an extension that would be called ‘motivated’ or ‘technical’.
“But you have to ask the UK. If there is a vote on 12 [March] and it takes two months for the procedure, it would be justified.”
Asked if an extension to Article 50 was the only option if a Brexit deal is to be finalised, he answered: “Yes, you could say that.”
Mr Barnier said the EU would most likely agree to such an extension, but that member states would need to be convinced there was a good reason for it.
He said: “The hypothetical duration would depend on what they want it for. I know there is the idea of ​​an extension without conditions, but you have to know that an extension would serve to fix a problem, not to delay the solution.
“In my opinion, do not postpone the problem for three or six months, do not risk prolonging the general uncertainty of Europe beyond the elections, but it will be for the heads of state to respond.”
Ms May’s hopes of securing the Commons’ backing for her deal rest on obtaining fresh concessions from the EU on the backstop – the main source of opposition from Tory Brexiteers.
Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, and Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, have been locked in talks with Brussels in a bid to secure legally binding guarantees that the backstop, which would see the UK enter into a customs union with the EU if a trade deal cannot be agreed, would be temporary.
Mr Barnier said Brussels was open to giving further assurances that this is the case.
He said: “We know that there are misgivings in Britain that the backstop could keep Britain forever connected to the EU.
“This is not the case. And we are ready to give further guarantees, assurances and clarifications that the backstop should only be temporary.”
He announced that the EU is considering providing the new guarantees in a joint interpretative document – an add-on to the withdrawal agreement – saying this could enshrine assurances made in a letter from Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, in January.
Mr Barnier said: “Guarantees, assurances, can be given in a document, perhaps next to the treaty, not in the political declaration.
“We can imagine an interpretative document, where there are elements such as those already in the letter from Tusk and Juncker. That was a letter from two presidents of two institutions. If the document is agreed with the United Kingdom, it would be much stronger.”
However, he insisted that any new concessions will not include either a time limit on the backstop or a unilateral exit mechanism for the UK – a key demand of many Tory Eurosceptics.
He said: “There cannot be a temporality clause, as it is impossible for there to be a unilateral withdrawal from it. The backstop must be and remain credible.”


The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator has attacked Theresa May’s apparent threat to weaken security commitments to the EU if Britain is denied a trade deal.
Guy Verhofstadt reacted angrily to the text of the Article 50 letter, which mentions “security” no fewer than 11 times – including the need for a partnership on “both economic and security matters”.
It prompted speculation that Britain might refuse to co-operate in European arrest warrants, or to share DNA files for example, if it failed to get its way – something No.10 insisted was not the case.
But Mr Verhofstadt, speaking on behalf of MEPs, said: “What we shall never accept is that there is a trade off between the one and other.
“Saying, oh, we can do a good deal on security – internal and external – but there is also a deal that we want on trade and economics.
“I think the security of our citizens is far too important to start a trade off from one to the other. From our point of view both are absolutely necessary.”
In the letter, the Prime Minister wrote: “In security terms, a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.”
And it added: “Europe’s security is more fragile today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Weakening our cooperation for the prosperity and protection of our citizens would be a costly mistake.”
The stance was also condemned as “utterly scandalous” by Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, who tweeted: “This letter is a blatant threat - security co-operation has been lumped together with trade.”
And Yvette Cooper, the Labour chairwoman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, condemned the approach as “not only wrong but dangerous”.
“She should not be trying to use this as a bargaining chip in the negotiations,” Ms Cooper said.
“This is not a threat to the rest of Europe, it would be a serious act of self-harm. She should rule out now walking away with no security deal as our national security and public safety depend on it.”
In a leaked resolution, the European Parliament also vowed that Britain will not be given a free trade deal by the EU in the next two years – after Philip Hammond insisted he was “very optimistic”.
Instead, MEPs will insist upon a form of associate membership, likely to be based on an agreement already reached with Ukraine.
And they warned that, if Britain seeks a transition deal, to cushion the economic blow from Brexit, it can only run for three years and must be “limited in scope”.
There will be no special deal for the City of London giving “preferential access to the single market and, or the customs union”, the Parliament will also stipulate.


Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure over an explosive claim that he broke a pledge to support a new Brexit referendum if Theresa May rejected his compromise plan.
A letter from the Labour leader to the prime minister – setting out five legally binding demands as his price for backing a deal – angered many Labour MPs by making no mention of a fresh public vote.
Now it has been alleged that Mr Corbyn’s office agreed the letter should set out clear support for the referendum, if Ms May turned down his offer, only to omit the sentence at the last minute.
Mr Corbyn’s office declined to comment on the claim, although a Labour source told The Independent the allegation was “false”.
Labour MPs backing a Final Say people’s vote urged Mr Corbyn to come clean about what commitments were given about the contents, before it was sent last Wednesday.
“Time after time, Labour members and supporters demand a people’s vote. Yet time after time, this is thwarted from the top,” said Chris Leslie, Labour MP for Nottingham East.
And Ben Bradshaw, MP for Exeter, said: “If true, any attempt by the leadership, or figures in the leader’s office, to subvert or renege on Labour’s unanimously agreed policy would provoke uproar among our members, voters and MPs.”
The claim has been made by Robert Peston, ITV’s political editor, who said “multiple sources” told him the Labour leader’s office went back on the commitment given to Keir Starmer, the party’s Brexit spokesperson.
Sir Keir had “agreed that the final part of Corbyn’s letter to May would say ‘if you do not accept this [Brexit offer] there will be a people’s vote’,” Mr Peston claimed.
“LOTO [the leader of the opposition] agreed to this. But then Keir discovered after the letter had been sent and published that the people’s vote paragraph had gone.”
Both Sir Keir and Mr Corbyn’s spokesperson declined to comment on the claim concerning the pair’s private discussions.
Mr Corbyn was forced onto the back foot after the letter, and quickly assured Labour MPs and members he was not ruling out a further referendum.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, went further – saying Labour wanted a compromise “in the national interest”. He added: “If we can’t do that, well yes, we have to go back to the people.”
Crucially, Downing Street has now firmly rejected the central plank of Mr Corbyn’s compromise plan, namely the UK being part of a permanent customs union.
The prime minister’s spokesperson said: “We are absolutely clear on this – we’re not considering Jeremy Corbyn’s customs proposals.
“We’re not considering any proposals to remain in the customs union. We must have our own independent trade policy.”
David Lammy, another Labour MP supporting a fresh referendum, said the letter showed Labour must now start “campaigning for a people’s vote”.
“We have now entered the emergency zone of these negotiations, and the prime minister has swept Labour’s only other option off the table.”


Theresa May has faced fury from Tory MPs after she opened the door to extending the Brexit transition period by a year, keeping Britain tied to the EU up to the end of 2021.
Former minister Nick Boles, who voted Remain, said the plan was a "desperate last move" and the prime minister was losing the confidence of colleagues from all sides.
The backlash came as Ms May and European leaders gave press conferences, after a key EU summit broke up without a Brexit deal.
If you want to follow the events as they happened, see our live coverage below
Welcome to The Independent's politics liveblog, where we will be bringing you all the latest updates throughout the day.
Breaking: Theresa May has told journalists she is considering asking for a longer transition period in a bid to break the deadlock in the Brexit talks.
My colleague Jon Stone is at the European Council summit in Brussels and has filed this report, where the PM confirmed the big overnight story about an extension to the transition up to the end of 2021.
Tory former minister Nick Boles said any attempt to extend the transition period was a "desperate last move" and warned Theresa May she was losing the confidence of her colleagues.
"It's a classic of negotiations that she keeps on thinking that one more concession is going to somehow, with one bound and she's free and she's not going to be free, she's getting ever more trapped," he told the Today programme.
"I'm afraid she is losing the confidence now of colleagues of all shades of opinion, people who have been supportive of her throughout this process.
"They are close to despair at the state of this negotiation because there is a fear that both the government and the European Union are trying to run out the clock, that they are trying to leave this so late that they can credibly say there is no alternative but a no-deal Brexit and most people agree that would be chaos.
"That is not an acceptable way for a leader of a government to behave."
Great pictures from last night at the European Council summit, where German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Emmanuel Macron, Belgian prime minister Charles Michel and Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel were spotted having a drink.
Angry senior Tories have accused Theresa May of going back on her pledge to allow a proper “meaningful vote” on any Brexit deal and vowed to fight the move.
Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve spoke out after the government said MPs should only be allowed to accept or reject the agreement – with no amendments allowed.
More here:
David Lidington, the de-facto deputy PM, said how much it would cost to extend the transition period was something that would have to be "teased out" during the negotiations.
Asked if it would only be for a few months, he told Today: "Yes, that is certainly the intention. That is how we see it. That is something that is now in the mix with the negotiators."
Mr Lidington dismissed claims by some former Cabinet ministers that the details of the Irish backstop had not been clear when it was signed off in principle last year.
He said: "Cabinet ministers are sensible and responsible, intelligent people who look at the documents before they endorse them."
Richard Tice, who co-chairs the Leave Means Leave campaign group, said the transition was "an unnecessary trap created by our weak civil servants" who are trying to thwart Brexit.
He said: "It should be cancelled, not extended. It is increasingly clear the PM doesn't want to leave either.
"Any transition period gives the EU zero incentive to negotiate anything and gives Brussels the power to force whatever they want on to the UK without us being able to do anything about it. It's downright dangerous."
European Parliament president Antonio Tajani has said he may visit Ireland to outline their support in protecting the Irish border.
He met with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Thursday morning, when he confirmed parliament's commitment to the backstop which he described as a "key element".
"Without it we cannot vote in favour of the agreement," he said in a press conference.
"I may visit Ireland to explain Parliament's position which is in full support of the Republic of Ireland."
He told Mr Varadkar that he repeated their position on the border which he said needs to be flexible to protect peace and the Good Friday Agreement.
Voters will not forgive Theresa May if she surrenders to Brussels in the Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson and David Davis have warned.
In an open letter to the PM, published in the Telegraph, they claimed her plans for future relations with Brussels were less popular than the poll tax and called on her to "deliver the Brexit which people voted for".
It was signed by former cabinet ministers Mr Davis, Mr Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Priti Patel, as well as Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the Conservative European Research Group of Brexiteer Tories.
It said: "We urge you to make clear that you will not bind the UK into the purgatory of perpetual membership of the EU's customs union, whether by a backstop or any other route."
It adds: "Talk of either a UK or a Northern Irish backstop is inimical to our status as a sovereign nation state. Both are unnecessary: indeed they are a trap being set by the EU which it is vital we do not fall into."
The group called on Mrs May to "reset" the negotiations and ditch her Chequers Brexit blueprint.
"We urge you not to engage in a show of resistance and a choreographed argument followed by surrender and collapse into some version of the backstop and Chequers," they wrote.
"Instead we urge you to say to the EU at the summit: 'Let us agree that we need to reset our negotiations. Our objective is a free trade agreement that benefits the UK and EU and millions of our citizens.'
"This would command a majority in Parliament, unlike the unpopular Chequers plan. Let us seize the opportunity and create a better future for the UK."


One of Liam Fox’s trade envoys has quit in protest that the government’s no-deal Brexit policy threatens the demise of an existing trade deal with Canada worth £800m.
Andrew Percy attacked the “cack-handed” move to scrap or slash tariffs on almost all imports if the UK crashes out of the EU – blaming it for Ottawa’s refusal to “roll over” its existing deal with the EU.
The Conservative MP felt “patronised” by the international trade secretary when he warned him the announcement would backfire, The Independent understands, walking away after almost two years in the Canada role.
The resignation is major embarrassment for Mr Fox, who has pledged to “replicate” all 40 trade agreements the UK enjoys as an EU member, to avoid any “disruption of trade” if Brexit goes ahead.
The controversy will also dog Boris Johnson if he wins the Tory leadership race and carries out his threat of a no-deal Brexit.
An ally of Mr Percy told The Independent: “Andrew warned them back in March, as soon as the UK’s no-deal tariffs were published, that it would mean the Canadians would not go for rolling over the Ceta [Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement] deal.
“He could see they were getting 95 per cent of what they wanted if a no-deal happened, that the tariffs were better than what is in Ceta – so why would they rush to sign up to what the UK wanted?
“He said it was such a cack-handed approach, but he was patronised by a couple of ministers – including Liam Fox – and told that everything was going to be fine.”
It was revealed at the start of July that Canada was resisting the UK’s pressure to carry over the Ceta, one of the biggest of the 40 deals.
It was immediately seen as a major blow to Britain’s hopes of avoiding damage to trade with the key market if – as Mr Johnson has threatened – there is a crash-out Brexit on 31 October.
A study for the government found that losing the Ceta deal would deliver an £800m blow to GDP by 2030, both from direct trade lost and from “diversion” to the EU – which would still have the agreement.
Canada made clear its resistance to a rollover after the UK announced, in March, that tariffs would be axed “temporarily” on 87 per cent of imports, after a no-deal Brexit.
The move was designed to stop shoppers being hit by soaraway prices, but the threat to UK jobs from undercutting was branded “a sledgehammer for our economy” by the CBI.
Canada’s government noted the proposal would “provide all WTO [World Trade Organisation] partners, including Canada, with duty-free access for 95 per cent of tariff lines”.
And a spokesperson warned: “Post-Brexit, any future trade arrangement between Canada and the UK would be influenced by the terms of the withdrawal agreed between the UK and the EU, as well as any unilateral UK approaches.”
Barry Gardiner, Labour’s shadow trade secretary, warned the episode exposed the “ideological bluster” behind Mr Fox’s approach to trade policy.
“He has now been proven to have less understanding of how international trade works than one of his own backbenchers,” Mr Gardiner said.
“Andrew Percy’s resignation, claiming he was patronised and ignored when he was clearly ‘telling it like it is’, is sadly typical of the arrogance Liam Fox displays to everyone who disagrees with him.”
Mr Percy declined to go into detail about the reasons for his resignation, but said he had concluded there was no longer “any value” in carrying on.
He was appointed as Theresa May opened Ceta talks with Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, on a visit in 2017, having lived and taught in the country.
The MP for Brigg and Goole, in Yorkshire, said: “I really enjoyed the role, but I don’t believe a new prime minister should inherit people in a role like that – it should be for them to decide if they want people to continue.
“Secondly, for various reasons, I don’t think I was adding any value over the last six or nine months, so I didn’t see any point in keeping the post for the sake of it.”
The friend of the ex-envoy said, of his warnings to Mr Fox: “He was told ‘we know how to do trade deals’, but how do we know when the UK hasn’t done one for 40 years?
“In contrast, Canada has negotiated a trade deal with the EU and the US. These are the people who know how to do trade negotiations.”
Mr Fox has hailed the importance of the 27 envoys, appointing two more in recent days to “support the UK’s ambitious trade and investment agenda in global markets”.
A Department for International Trade spokesperson declined to comment on a “political resignation”, but said: “The UK and Canadian prime ministers agreed to ensure a seamless transition of Ceta and we remain committed to doing so.
“We are continuing to work on securing continuity with other countries. Last month, we agreed in principle to transition our agreement with Korea and a continuity trade agreement was signed with six Central American countries.
“Once the Korea agreement is signed, we will have agreements with countries covering 64 per cent of our trade for which we are seeking continuity.”


Business leaders reacted with frustration to the continued uncertainty caused by MPs rejecting the Brexit deal.
The Commons defeated Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement by a majority of 149, with further votes expected this week on whether to back a no-deal Brexit or delay the UK's departure beyond 29 March.
Industry leaders urged the Commons to reject the possibility of a no-deal Brexit this month, but stressed the need to find a way out of the impasse.
Confederation of British Industry director general Carolyn Fairbairn called on MPs to "stop this circus" and said people's jobs depended on a new approach.
"Enough is enough. This must be the last day of failed politics," she said. "A new approach is needed by all parties. Jobs and livelihoods depend on it. Extending Article 50 to close the door on a March no-deal is now urgent. It should be as short as realistically possible and backed by a clear plan.
"Conservatives must consign their red lines to history, while Labour must come to the table with a genuine commitment to solutions. It's time for Parliament to stop this circus."
Adam Marshall, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "It is profoundly obvious that neither Government nor many businesses are ready for a disorderly exit - and this must not be allowed to happen on 29 March, whether by default or by design. Businesses have been failed over and over again by Westminster in recent months, but allowing a messy and disorderly exit on March 29 would take political negligence to new extremes."
Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said: "Today's vote leaves us perilously close to the cliff edge. No-deal would be catastrophic for the automotive industry. It would end frictionless trade, add billions to the cost of manufacturing and cost jobs. UK automotive businesses will be put at immediate risk.
"Parliament must reject no-deal and take it permanently off the table."
Edwin Morgan, interim director general of the Institute of Directors, said: "Our politicians have yet again failed to find a way to break the impasse. They are becoming adept at saying what they don't want, but it's still hard to see where the desire for compromise lies."
Trade union leaders also raised concerns about the continued uncertainty.
GMB leader Tim Roache said: "The Government can continue to flog a dead horse, or finally choose to be honest with the public about what can realistically be achieved."
He added that the only way to "break the logjam" is a second referendum.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: "Two months may have passed since the last vote, but the PM's bad deal remains the same. Her failure to negotiate a better deal risks a catastrophic no-deal Brexit that would crash the economy and harm public services. Thanks to her Government's negligence, working people are still no closer to knowing what Brexit means for them, their families, their jobs or the public services many help provide."
Press Association


Brexit talks are at risk of collapse as a planned EU compromise on the critical question of the Irish border has been branded “unacceptable” by British cabinet ministers.
The Independent has learnt that EU officials believe they have struck upon “the only way” to bring the two sides together on the Irish border in a bid to secure a withdrawal agreement later this year.
But their proposal has already been outright rejected by at least two cabinet ministers, with one going further and branding the EU’s suggestion “bollocks”.
The impasse over the Irish border threatens to bring the talks crashing down with Theresa May’s beleaguered Chequers proposal already lacking support both in Europe and among her own MPs in Westminster.
The Independent now understands that the EU will try to break the deadlock in negotiations by offering the UK a vague political declaration on the future UK-EU relationship in return for a deal on the Irish border.
A well-placed Brussels source said: “This may well prove the only way to respect the EU’s red lines and allow Theresa May to win approval for a deal in the UK parliament.
“The political declaration holds the key to reaching a deal.”
Since the start of Brexit talks Brussels has insisted the UK sign up to a legally binding “backstop”, which would come into play if no arrangement to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland is found before Brexit day.
It would see Northern Ireland effectively remain in the EU’s customs union and single market, creating a customs border down the Irish sea – something both Ms May and her DUP partners say is unacceptable.
Under the new proposal, while the EU is still insisting the backstop must be in the legal text of the withdrawal agreement and must see Northern Ireland remaining under customs union and single market rules, they are now indicating there could be “new language” to make it more palatable to Ms May.
Critically, EU officials are suggesting the withdrawal agreement could be accompanied by a non-binding political statement to be agreed with London, that would say the backstop would never be needed because it would be superseded by an eventual trade deal.
As an example of how the statement might be worded, Brussels officials point to a similar one issued by the UK after the cabinet’s Chequers summit in July, which committed the government to accepting a backstop, but ensuring it “would not need to be brought into effect”.
The declaration would then be suitably vague on the broader future relationship to give the prime minister more flexibility over how a future trade deal would evolve during the transition period.
The briefing appears to corroborate comments made by senior MEP Danuta Hubner, who spoke at an event in Dublin on Thursday saying “political commitments” could be key to breaking the deadlock over Ireland.
But the approach has not gone down well in London, with one cabinet minister who heard about the proposal telling The Independent: “It’s unacceptable. In fact, it’s bollocks.”
A second cabinet minister agreed that the proposal was “simply not going to work”.
A Conservative source told The Independent: “Chequers is in enough difficulty as it is. I can’t see how anything including a vague declaration not to impose the backstop is going to get through parliament.
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“It puts you at the complete mercy of the European Union on whether it would be implemented or not.”
The strength of opposition indicates Ms May could face a further round of cabinet resignations if she were to consider agreeing to such a proposal, with Boris Johnson and David Davis having already quit earlier this year.
A government spokesman said: “We don’t comment on speculation. The proposals we have put forward for our future relationship would allow both sides to meet our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland in full and we are working hard to get a deal on that basis.
“But we are clear the EU backstop proposals are unacceptable.”
In a sign of how little support Ms May’s current Brexit proposals have, Tory Eurosceptics are this week expected to bring forward their own proposals of how the Irish border issue could be solved.
Others in the party are suggesting that the UK should join EFTA, effectively remaining in the single market on a temporary basis, until a longer term trade deal can be struck, while others in the party are pushing for a new referendum.
If talks do collapse, or Ms May’s proposals are rejected by her party, it is possible that she could be challenged for the leadership even before Christmas.


Contenders to replace Theresa May as prime minister have been dealt a double blow to their hopes of persuading voters that they can deliver a better Brexit.
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker flatly rejected any renegotiation of the withdrawal agreement struck with Ms May last November.
And House of Commons speaker John Bercow set up a constitutional clash with potential future prime ministers like Boris Johnson by insisting that MPs will have an opportunity to block a no-deal Brexit.
Leadership front-runners including Mr Johnson and Dominic Raab have made clear that they want to renegotiate Ms May’s deal, but are ready to leave without agreement on the Brexit deadline of 31 October if necessary.
Mr Johnson has vowed that the UK will leave on Halloween “deal or no deal”. And Mr Raab has said that there is still time to change the controversial backstop arrangements for the Irish border and negotiate a legally binding route for the UK to leave unilaterally.
Meanwhile, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said he was ready to form a new negotiation team taking in figures like the DUP’s Arlene Foster and European Research Group chair Jacob Rees-Mogg to persuade Brussels that an amended deal could get through parliament.
But an exasperated Mr Juncker gave short shrift to such plans, telling reporters at a Brussels summit: “I was crystal clear. There will be no renegotiation.”
The agreement between the EU and Ms May to delay Brexit until Halloween included a commitment not to seek a renegotiation of the deal. And there is no appetite for further talks from a team of EU officials whose term in office comes to an end in November, when chief negotiator Michel Barnier is slated as a potential replacement for Mr Juncker as commission president.
Meanwhile, Mr Bercow said that any suggestion a no-deal Brexit could be engineered by simply running down the clock to the end of October was “for the birds”.
Liberal Democrats have warned that a no-deal Brexiteer in Downing Street could even suspend Commons sittings for the vital period this autumn to prevent MPs from finding a way to stop the UK crashing out.
And the Institute for Government has warned that, with the death of Ms May’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill – which Downing Street has now accepted will not be tabled in parliament – MPs may have no procedural path to stand in the way of no deal.
But the speaker told a US think tank: “The idea that parliament is going to be evacuated from the centre stage of debate on Brexit is unimaginable.”
He agreed leaving without a deal was the default position, but added: “There is a difference between a legal default position and what the interplay of different political forces in parliament will facilitate.”
As the crowded field of would-be leaders swelled to 10 with the announcement by housing minister Kit Malthouse that he will run, Ms May warned her eventual successor not to leave the EU without a deal.
Arriving at the Brussels summit, the prime minister said she was “not going to comment on the views of individual candidates”, but added: “I continue to have the view that it’s best for the UK to leave with a deal.”
Mr Bercow, who is suspected by Brexiteers of favouring a Final Say referendum, risked stepping into the leadership contest by praising both Mr Hunt and environment secretary Michael Gove as “extremely capable ministers” with “intellectual self-confidence (and) communication skill”, as well as hailing their “pursuit of consensus”.
Mr Hunt warned that the Conservatives were facing “destruction” as a party if a new leader forces a general election before delivering Brexit.
His comment was widely seen as a warning against the election of a no-deal Brexiteer, who could be immediately ousted in a no-confidence vote backed by Remain-supporting Tories, triggering a general election.
Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We must not go back to the electorate asking for their mandate until we’ve delivered what we promised we would do last time, which is to deliver Brexit. It would be absolutely catastrophic for us as a party.”
But rival candidate Esther McVey, who favours no deal, retorted: “Political suicide actually lies in not having a clean break from the EU and not leaving on 31 October.”
The BBC announced it will host a live TV hustings in the middle of June, inviting all contenders still in the race to take part. Mr Raab and health secretary Matt Hancock have already challenged their rivals to a televised debate, amid speculation that Mr Johnson may shy away from the showdown.
Mr Hancock said: “I’m delighted that broadcasters have agreed to hold TV debates – this is a contest that affects the whole country, so we should engage the whole country in this process.”
The chair of the National Conservative Convention, Andrew Sharpe, has invited all candidates to a hustings on 15 June, when the group had been planning an emergency meeting to hold a vote of no-confidence in Ms May.


Commons speaker John Bercow has indicated he will rule on whether Theresa May is allowed to repeatedly make MPs vote on her Brexit deal after it was twice defeated.
On Wednesday Mr Bercow said “a ruling would be made” on the matter with parliamentary convention barring a government from bringing the same motion back to the house over and again.
His comments set him on course for another clash with Ms May’s administration, with government advisors believing they could “disapply” any ruling he makes if they win a commons vote on it.
It comes after cabinet ministers and Ms May’s aides suggested she will bring the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with Brussels back to the house for a third time after it was defeated by 149 votes on Tuesday.
Mr Bercow made his comments after he was questioned about the matter by Labour MP Angela Eagle, who said it would be “out of order” for the government to bring the deal back for a third vote.
The Speaker said: “There are historical precedents for the way such matters are regarded. I don’t need to treat of them now and no ruling is required now.
“There may be people who have an opinion about it, I’m not really preoccupied with that, but a ruling would be made at the appropriate time, and I’m grateful for [Ms Eagle] for reminding me that such a ruling might at some point in the future be required.”
Mr Bercow has sought to build a reputation as a champion of backbenchers against the government and has sided with the commons in most disputes.
In the past, he has even gone against the advice of expert commons clerks, using his authority to overrule them and allow a government motion to be amended by backbenchers – something which ultimately gave MPs more control of the Brexit process.
On repeat votes, the handbook for parliamentary procedure Erskine May says: “A motion or an amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during a session may not be brought forward again during that same session.”
It says a decision on whether “verbal alterations” amount to real changes are “a matter for the judgment of the chair [in this case Mr Bercow]”.
Government ministers are aware of the potential stumbling block to Ms May staging a third vote on her deal, but believe they have a right to try and “disapply” any disadvantageous ruling – though it would require them to win a vote on it in the commons.
Ms May lost the first meaningful vote on her Brexit deal by 230 votes, and then again by a smaller but nonetheless historically large margin on Tuesday night.
Asked after the most recent defeat whether the government would consider bringing back Ms May’s deal for a further vote, the prime minister’s spokesman indicated it was possible.
Cabinet minister Alun Cairns went further saying that the second defeat for Ms May’s negotiated settlement was not “the end of the deal” and that there was still “everything to play for”.
He said: “I also think that as those votes [on removing no-deal and delaying Brexit] go through, if no deal is taken off the table, I suspect that there’ll be a lot of ERG colleagues who might then think now this is the time to support a deal.”


A total of 151 Brexit-related motions have been submitted by local Labour parties, with dozens asking the party’s annual conference to back either a general election or a fresh public vote on the final Brexit deal.
It comes after one of Labour’s most powerful figures, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, called for another vote on Brexit, insisting there are now just two possible outcomes for the UK in the negotiations – either a bad deal, or a no-deal.
It is likely to pile pressure on Jeremy Corbyn, who has refused to rule out the idea, but has consistently said that it is not Labour policy to support a fresh referendum.
The document of 272 motions, seen by The Independent, shows that 55 per cent of them relate to Labour’s position on Brexit, with other issues including the party’s stance on antisemitism, welfare, government contracts and schools.
On Monday, the party’s conference arrangement committee will sift through the raw motions and decide which ones to put forward to Labour’s conference in Liverpool next week.
Each Constituency Labour Party (CLP) has the opportunity to propose a “contemporary motion” for discussion at conference and campaigners for a new public vote claim the number of motions supporting the idea will dominate.
One motion from Camberwell and Peckham, the constituency of the party’s former deputy leader, Harriet Harman, notes the “Chequers deal is dead” and calls for a meaningful vote in Parliament, a UK-wide referendum on the final terms of Brexit or a general election.
A substantial amount of the motions, however, are based on the left-wing statement backed by Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a People’s Vote.
As well as calling for a fresh vote, it also says Labour should “form a radical government – taxing the rich to fund better public services, expanding common ownership, abolishing anti-union laws and engaging in massive public investment”.
One of the national organisers at Another Europe is Possible, Michael Chessum, said: “If we don’t have a manifesto commitment for a fresh referendum, we will end up going into an autumn election either promising a ‘bespoke Labour Brexit’ which we have no time to negotiate, or offering a Norway-style deal which is straightforwardly worse than EU membership and will leave Corbyn with no seat at the European table.
“Of the options, soft Brexit is the least popular with the electorate,” he added.
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Activist Alena Ivanova, who started an anti-Brexit petition of Momentum members that attracted 6,000 signatures, added there has been a “false idea” of division between those advocating a new referendum and those who want a general election.
She said: “That’s completely wrong, because the push for a referendum is clearly being led by left-wing activists, who want to see Corbyn walk into No 10 and have fought for it. We all want a general election, but the issue is what will go in our manifesto about Brexit?”
But on Sunday, shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner reiterated his opposition to the idea, suggesting it would hand Theresa May a “lifeline”.
He said the first referendum had caused “real divisions” in the country, adding: “I think the challenge now is to try to heal society.
“The reason we haven’t ruled anything out is because nobody knows what’s going to happen over the next few weeks.”


Theresa May has been warned that up to 40 government ministers could resign if she refuses to allow them to vote for a plan that would block a no-deal Brexit in March.
Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, has told No10 it faces an exodus of members of the government unless ministers are allowed to support a backbench amendment that would extend Article 50 if a Brexit deal is not in place within weeks.
The amendment, tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and former Tory ministers Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles, will be debated and voted on by the Commons on 29 January.
Ms Rudd is urging Ms May to give Tory MPs a free vote on the motion in order to avoid a mass ministerial walkout.
One Conservative MP told The Times: “Amber is telling Downing Street to make it a free vote on behalf of lots of people.”
Ms Rudd's spokesman declined to comment.
Ms May's cabinet is heavily split on Brexit, with pro-Europe ministers including Ms Rudd, chancellor Philip Hammond and business secretary Greg Clark urging her to rule out a no-deal withdrawal and pursue a softer exit strategy.
The prime minister has repeatedly refused to rule out no deal, saying doing so is "impossible".
The amendment tabled by Ms Cooper would force the government to ask the EU to delay Brexit until the end of the year if no deal is in place by the end of February.
It is the latest version of a plan devised by a cross-party group of senior backbenchers who want to block a no-deal Brexit.
An earlier proposal would have seen control of Brexit handed to the powerful Commons Liaison Committee if the government was unable to secure parliamentary support for its deal, but that idea was dropped after members of the committee, which is made up of the heads of all the other Commons committees, voiced concerns.
Labour has hinted it will back the latest plan, along with enough Tory rebels to allow it to pass.
Asked about the proposal while answering questions from MPs in the Commons, Ms May insisted the only way to guarantee there is not a no-deal Brexit is to revoke Article 50 entirely - a move she said "would go against the referendum result".
She said: “There is widespread concern about the possibility of the UK leaving without a deal. And there are those on both sides of the House who want the government to rule this out.
“But we need to be honest with the British people about what that means. The right way to rule out no deal is for this House to approve a deal with the European Union. That is what this government is seeking to achieve.”
She continued: “The only other guaranteed way to avoid a no-deal Brexit is to revoke Article 50, which would mean staying in the EU.
“There are others who think that what we need is more time, so they say we should extend Article 50 to give longer for parliament to debate how we should leave and what a deal should look like. This is not ruling out no deal, but simply deferring the point of decision. And the EU are very unlikely simply to agree to extend Article 50 without a plan for how we are going approve a deal.
“So when people say ‘rule out no deal’ the consequences of what they are actually saying are that if we in parliament can’t approve a deal we should revoke Article 50. I believe this would go against the referendum result and I do not believe that is a course of action that we should take, or which this House should support.”


Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of a “stitch-up” to avoid a conference defeat that would force him to support Remain in a fresh Brexit referendum.
A new policy statement, likely to be agreed on Sunday, would push back a decision on Labour’s stance to next year.
The party would wait until a “sensible” withdrawal deal had been negotiated within three months of winning a general election.
Only then would Labour decide its stance at a second referendum to be held within a further three months – possibly next May, if Boris Johnson holds a snap election in November.
As the party’s conference begins in Brighton, pro-EU MPs and activists protested that the delay was a clear attempt to stop them forcing Mr Corbyn to abandon his plans to 'stay neutral' in another referendum.
They had vowed to force an immediate showdown, armed with the 90 per cent of local party motions in favour of Remain.
Critically, because the policy statement comes from the ruling national executive committee (NEC), it will – if passed – strike out those other 81 activist options.
Clive Lewis, a Labour Treasury spokesperson, said: “This move is just plain wrong. How can this be defended?
“Here we are, with a leadership apparently determined to shut down democratic debate on the crucial issue of the day, probably relying on union bloc votes to outvote the members.”
And Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a pro-EU backbencher, said: “This conference is our one chance before an election to get out of the fudge – we cannot allow that to be taken away from us in some procedural stitch-up.”
Two senior shadow cabinet members piled further pressure on their leader with strong pro-Remain speeches to a 5,000-strong People's Vote rally to mark the start of the conference.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary – sporting an EU flag – insisted “members must have their voice and the members must be heard, because this is what democracy looks like”.
“Whatever terms are agreed by which we leave the European Union, by whatever government, no matter what it says, we must make sure that there's a second referendum, we must make sure that Remain is on the ballot paper, we must make sure that Labour campaigns for Remain – and not just that, but that that we lead the campaign to Remain,” she urged Mr Corbyn.
To huge cheers, Ms Thornberry asked the rally: “If we believe in internationalism and socialism, why on earth would we back Brexit?”
Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, told the crowd: “A year or so ago I wasn't sure that a referendum was the right way out, but now I'm utterly convinced it's the only way out.
“When that time comes, I will campaign for Remain alongside millions of other people in this country because it's not just a technical question of whether you want to be in or out of the EU, it's about what sort of country you want to be.”
The fresh controversy blew up within minutes of the bitter row over the attempt to topple Tom Watson being settled with a victory for the deputy leader and Corbyn critic.
The new clash sets the scene for a repeat of the marathon five-hour “compositing” meeting at last year’s Labour conference, which ended in Brexit policy being fudged.
However, the NEC statement will trump whatever that composite meeting decides – unless it is defeated later in the week on the conference floor.
Mr Lewis called for that to happen if necessary, adding: “If it passes, delegates should mobilise to vote against the NEC statement so the Brexit motions can be heard and democratically debated.”
Earlier, Ms Thornberry split with Mr Corbyn by calling for Labour to allow a Johnson-secured Brexit deal to pass – provided the public has the Final Say in a referendum.
The shadow foreign secretary became the highest-profile supporter of the so-called Kyle-Wilson plan, put forward by two Labour backbenchers.
“I think it’s something we would have to consider. We would have to consider it seriously,” Ms Thornberry said.
She also criticised Mr Corbyn’s intention to stay neutral in a fresh referendum, saying: “I think it wouldn’t be right for Labour to have no opinion on such a big decision.”
The leadership’s blueprint would see a one-day special conference decide – eventually – Labour’s campaigning position, putting it in the hands of the unions and grassroots.
If it wins an election, the party would seek a deal including a customs union, a “close relationship with the single market”, guarantees of workers’ rights and environmental protections, and membership of joint bodies on climate change, counterterrorism and medicines.


Boris Johnson has backtracked on his much-ridiculed plan for avoiding punishing tariffs after a no-deal Brexit, admitting he would be unable to do it “unilaterally”.
In a difficult interview, the frontrunner for No 10 acknowledged the Bank of England governor was “right” to criticise his plan to use a trade law known as “Gatt 24” to avoid border duties.
“Where Mark [Carney] is right is in saying that implies mutuality – that has to be an agreement on both sides,” Mr Johnson agreed.
He added: “What you can’t do is unilaterally use a Gatt 24 solution, but what you could do is agree with our EU friends and partners is to go forwards together on that basis.”
In last week’s TV debate, when he floated the plan as the solution to avoiding Irish border checks after a crash-out Brexit, Mr Johnson made no mention of requiring Brussels’ agreement.
It prompted fierce criticism from Mr Carney, who pointed out Gatt 24 could only be invoked if there was an outline trade agreement in place – and the central point of a no-deal Brexit was the absence of a deal.

“We should be clear that not having an agreement with the European Union would mean that there are tariffs, automatically – because the Europeans have to apply the same rules to us as they apply to everyone else,” he warned.
The answer suggested such an agreement would not be possible under World Trade Organisation rules, regardless of whether the EU co-operated.
However, Mr Johnson, speaking on LBC radio, being “more positive” and an appeal to the EU to recognise its own self-interest could succeed.
“We haven’t had an interruption to trade between the UK and the continent for years and years,” he argued.
“It would be very bizarre if the EU should decide on their own – we wouldn’t put up tariffs – to impose tariffs on goods coming from the UK.”
Arguing it would be a return to terms-of-trade not seen since “Napoleon’s continental system”, Mr Johnson added: “It would not be in the interests of their businesses, let alone their consumers
“Let’s be more positive about this. It is time this country stopped being so down about its ability to get this thing done.”
Last week, Mr Johnson was challenged by Rory Stewart on the import taxes – and therefore border controls – that would be required on agricultural goods crossing to and from the Republic.
He replied: “There will be no tariffs, there will be no quotas, because what we want to do is get a standstill in our current arrangements under Gatt 24 – or whatever it happens to be – until such time that we have negotiated an FTA [Free Trade Agreement].”
The government has already accepted there would be some tariffs, after a no-deal Brexit, on beef, lamb, pork and poultry some dairy products, finished vehicles and ceramics.
Furthermore, even the absence of tariffs would not avoid the need for controls at the Irish border, because physical checks on standards of goods would be required if the UK leaves the EU single market.


Boris Johnson has claimed there is "bags of time" for the EU to compromise on a Brexit deal ahead of the Halloween deadline.
With just 84 days until exit day, the prime minister said he was confident that Brussels would show "common sense" and agree to strip the controversial Irish backstop from the withdrawal agreement.
The EU has repeatedly said it will not reopen the Brexit deal negotiated by Theresa May, which has been overwhelmingly rejected by parliament several times.
Brexit talks ground to a complete halt, after Mr Johnson refused to go to Brussels until the EU was ready to discuss removing the backstop, which acts an insurance against a hard border on the island of Ireland.
He told the BBC: "I very much hope that our friends and partners will show common sense and that they will compromise...I’m sure there is compromise to be found and as we’ve made clear, the backstop just doesn’t work for a proud democracy like the UK.
"We don’t want to go down that route.
"But there’s every possibility for the EU to show flexibility. There’s bags of time for them to do it and I’m confident they will."
Mr Johnson said the backstop would turn the UK into a "satellite state" but insisted a good deal could be done once it was removed.
The government has been accused of playing a "blame game" with Brussels after Michael Gove claimed the EU that was refusing to negotiate with Britain.
The cabinet office minister, who is heading up no-deal preparations, said it was “wrong and sad” that the EU did not want to talk.
But his comments came after the European Commission confirmed that Jean-Claude Juncker had made overtures to London, saying his team are available for talks by phone or in person to discuss the UK position.
Downing Street has made it clear that Mr Johnson wants to leave the UK on 31 October by whatever means necessary, prompting alarm amongst moderate MPs.
His top aide, Dominic Cummings, reportedly told colleagues that Mr Johnson would not need to resign if he lost a confidence vote, most likely tabled by Labour when parliament returns from recess in September.
Downing Street aides have suggested the poll could take place days after Brexit, if Mr Johnson is forced to go to the country by a no-confidence vote. This would mean the UK would crash out of the EU during the election campaign.
Asked if there were any circumstances in which he would hold a general election before 31 October, Mr Johnson said: "What they want to see now is the politicians they returned to Westminster - virtually all of whom promised to uphold that mandate to come out of the EU - what they want to do is see them do exactly that and leave the EU on 31 October."


Boris Johnson has been told to ‘obey the law’ over Brexit in an extraordinary warning issued by his own justice secretary.
Robert Buckland scotched speculation that he would follow Amber Rudd by resigning, despite ministers preparing to legally challenge parliament’s instruction to stop a crash-out from the EU.
But he also revealed his concerns about the prime minister, by tweeting: “We have spoken over the past 24 hours regarding the importance of the Rule of Law, which I as Lord Chancellor have taken an oath to uphold.”
The pro-EU justice secretary is one of four cabinet ministers on ‘resignation watch’, as No 10 ratchets up the rhetoric in a Brexit showdown heading for the courts.
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, revealed the government hopes to win a legal fight to defeat the legislation requiring it to seek an Article 50 extension, designed to avoid a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
Vowing to “test to the limit” what the new law demands, Mr Raab said: “We will look very carefully, legally at what it requires and what it doesn’t require.”
And, pointing to the failed legal actions to stop parliament being suspended, he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge programme: “We had two legal challenges last week and we won both of those.”
Nicky Morgan, the culture secretary, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, and Julian Smith, the Northern Ireland secretary, are the other three cabinet ministers most likely to follow Ms Rudd out of the door.
But all three, like Mr Buckland, made clear they are staying put for now, despite Ms Rudd accusing Mr Johnson of misleading the country by not really seeking a fresh Brexit deal.
In his tweet, Mr Buckland wrote: “Speculation about my future is wide of the mark. I fully support the prime minister and will continue to serve in his cabinet.”
It now appears clear that Mr Johnson’s ‘plan B’ is not to break the law – to be given royal assent on Monday – but not to comply either.
Instead, the prime minister will defy the order to delay Brexit to manufacture a case before the Supreme Court – with the Halloween deadline for crashing out just days away.
Mr Raab has dismissed a warning by a former director of public prosecutions that the prime minister is heading for jail if he flouts the law as “ridiculous”.
But Shami Chakrabarti, Labour’s shadow attorney general, has condemned the strategy, saying: “Is that what we say to our kids? Is that what we say to vulnerable kids? It's irresponsible and elitist.”
The foreign secretary also claimed the government had failed to put forward new proposals to secure a Brexit deal for fear the EU would leak them.
“What we are slightly reticent about doing, given past experience, is putting pieces of paper that will get leaked and rubbished by other side,” he said.


Boris Johnson has insisted Donald Trump was “patently in error” for claiming the current Brexit deal will hinder the UK’s ability to strike a free trade deal with America.
In an unprecedented intervention – just 48 hours into the election campaign – the US president cast doubt on a future trading pact, claiming his country “can’t make a deal” under the terms of the withdrawal agreement.
Post-Brexit trade with the US is prized by Brexiteers as a major benefit of severing ties with the EU, despite concerns in some quarters that the UK would be forced to deregulate food standards.
“We want to do trade with the UK, and they want to do trade with us,” Mr Trump told the Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage during a radio interview on Thursday.
But he added: “To be honest with you, this deal, under certain aspects of the deal – and you can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t trade. We can’t make a trade deal with the UK.”
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Pressed on his remarks on Sky New’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, the prime minister said: “I don’t wish to cast any aspersions on the president of the United States, but in that respect he is patently in error.”
“Anybody who looks at our deal can see it is a great deal and what it does, is it allow us to take back control of our money, our border and our laws. But also, it allows us to have full unfettered control of our tariff schedules,” he added.
Mr Johnson also said he will apologise for breaking his pledge to deliver Brexit by 31 October, as he described the election as “essential” and the “only way out of the trap parliament had constructed”.
He insisted he was “absolutely” sorry for failing to deliver Brexit by the Halloween deadline and when asked whether he will apologise to Conservative members, who had voted for him on the basis of the pledge, he said: “Of course, of course. It’s a matter of deep regret”.
Pressed on the post-Brexit transition period, the prime minister also claimed he could see “no reason whatsoever” why the government should be forced to extend it beyond December 2020, adding: “If you get the right parliament anything’s possible.
“But what you can do from the beginning is, of course, you can begin negotiating, not just with the EU but with countries around the world, and that’s one of the great opportunities that we have next year.”


Boris Johnson's humiliation at the hands of Luxembourg will make a Brexit deal harder to reach and could make a no-deal more likely, some on the EU side believe.
Norbert Röttgen, chair of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee and a senior MP from Angela Merkel's party, was among those to publicly criticise the Luxembourg prime minister Xavier Bettel on Tuesday.
Mr Bettel had strongly criticised Mr Johnson and the UK government and empty-chaired the British prime minister after he refused to take part in a planned press conference in Luxembourg on Monday.
"Xavier Bettel’s speech yesterday did not serve the European cause," Mr Röttgen, a former minister in Ms Merkel's government warned.
"His public venting ignored that a deal is still in everyone’s interest. Even without a deal there will be a post-Brexit life, which means that right now everyone needs to behave in a way that avoids animosity."
One EU diplomat in Brussels suggested that Mr Bettel had gone too far and "reinforced the us versus them narrative" in the UK.
Another accused Luxembourg's leader of playing into the hands of hard Brexiteers back in the UK who wanted a no-deal.
Mr Johnson's reception in Luxembourg was at odds with the diplomatic approach taken by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to the new prime minister in recent visit to Berlin and Paris.
Then, rhetoric was kept on a leash and both leaders had stressed that they were open to looking at any concrete solution that the UK could produce to replace the backstop.
However, with no proposals from the UK forthcoming after nearly a month since Boris Johnson set himself a 30-day deadline, patiences are fraying across the continent.
During Monday's visit Mr Bettel warned an absent Mr Johnson that that the “clock is ticking”, adding on Monday: “Stop speaking and act.”
But the comments enraged Conservatives back in Westminster. Even pro-EU figures such as Sir Nicholas Somes, who has lost the Tory whip, criticised what he called the "very poor behaviour" of the Luxembourg government.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith dredged up memories of the Second World War, saying: “The irony is that Luxembourg was saved by Britain. National leaders should always treat one another with courtesy and civility. Good ones do.”
And Nigel Evans, the joint secretary of the backbench 1922 committee, said Mr Bettel’s stunt was “another reason why the British people voted the way we did”.


Britain should have “a say” in any future customs union it joined with the European Union after Brexit, Ireland’s prime minister has said.
Leo Varadkar’s intervention comes amid talks between Labour and the government over whether the UK should have such a trade arrangement after Brexit.
Mr Varadkar said the UK would not be a “silent partner” in a customs union and that it was in the interests of both the EU and UK to sign a deal.
“I know one thing that I would like to be considered, and I know it is under consideration, is the possibly of a customs union being formed between the UK and the EU,” he told reporters on the doorstep of a summit in Brussels.
“Ultimately ... in a world of big blocs it’s in the interests of the UK to be part of one of those blocs. It’s also in our interest to have the UK in our bloc.
“I think we’d be generous in negotiating that, understanding that the UK couldn’t be a silent partner in such an arrangement, it would have to have a say in decisions being made.”
Labour has said it wants to join a customs union with the EU to soften the impact of Brexit, but that the UK should have a say in any trade deals.
Many Tory cabinet ministers are against a customs union, however, and see it as undermining Brexit. International trade secretary Liam Fox said it would be “the worst of both worlds”. It remains to be seen whether the government will agree to one as part of compromise talks taking place in Westminster.
A customs union would mean the UK had a common external tariff with the EU and that there would be fewer border checks between the UK and EU for goods. But without alignment on single market rules – which Labour also supports – there would have to be regulatory checks at the border even with a customs union.
EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier has said a customs union would go some way to solving the problem at the Northern Irish border. The backstop negotiated by Theresa May has some of the characteristics of a customs union.
Ireland is the first EU country to say the UK should have a say in such trade agreements; others, such as France, are known to be resistant to giving any ground to Britain.


A long delay to Brexit would be unacceptable to a majority of the British public, according to an exclusive poll days before critical votes in the House of Commons.
Some 52 per cent of people do not want a delay to last more than six months, the survey by BMG Research for The Independent indicated.
The data flies in the face of extensions advocated in Brussels, by Remainers and even some Brexiteers. They have talked about pushing back the date of the UK’s departure for a year or more – something supported by fewer than one in five, according to the survey.
The poll also showed that just 17 per cent actually want any extension if Theresa May’s Brexit plan is again rejected as expected this week, with the two most popular alternatives a quick new in or out referendum, or simply leaving with no deal.
British and European officials have been desperately trying to find a compromise acceptable to both sides in negotiations in Brussels, but a breakthrough looks unlikely with little ground being given.
The impasse has made an extension look all the more likely – but the latest poll data, recorded between 4 and 8 March, points to a public deeply fed up with Brexit.
When asked: “If the UK were to seek an extension of Article 50, delaying Brexit, how long do you think that extension should be?”, respondents veered away from a long delay.
Some 17 per cent said less than a month, a further 16 per cent said between one and two months, the next 19 per cent said between three and six months – meaning a majority want no delay to last more than half a year.
Only 9 per cent wanted a delay between seven and nine months and 18 per cent said more than a year would be tolerable. A fifth said they did not know.
Whatever happens in negotiations this weekend, Ms May must on Tuesday put her deal to MPs again, with all signs pointing towards a second defeat – the last one in January saw the agreement beaten by a historic 230 votes.
If MPs reject her deal for a second time and also rule out a no-deal departure as expected, they will then vote on whether to extend the Article 50 negotiating period.
Ms May wants a short extension that would not see the UK taking part in European elections this summer, but a cross-party group of rebels in the Commons had proposed delays of between nine months to a year.
Some Brexiteers have even talked about a long delay of up to a year to give more time to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, and EU leaders have mentioned extending negotiations for two years.
But as well as showing that the public do not want a long delay, the BMG poll shows that any extension to the Brexit saga is unpopular – with just 17 per cent wanting the process to drag on if Ms May’s deal is defeated.
Some 29 per cent of people said they would rather have a second referendum, with the options to remain or leave without a deal, than extend the Article 50 period.
Almost as many, 27 per cent, said they would rather simply leave the EU without any deal in place.
There was at least one bright spot for the prime minister in the broad voting intention figures. Despite the uncertainty and apparent chaos around her administration, the Conservatives pulled into the lead over Labour.
Some 31 per cent backed Ms May’s party, compared to 27 per cent supporting Labour and 8 per cent for the Liberal Democrats, with 22 per cent saying they did not know or would prefer not to say.
When people were pushed for an answer and don’t knows excluded, the Tories extended their lead to five points.


Britain is set to make an offer to the EU on future immigration which would see arrangements “very similar” to current free movement rules put in place after Brexit, The Independent has learned.
UK negotiators would like to put the proposal forward to coincide with a European Council summit in June, in a bid to break a deadlock in Brexit talks.
The plan would see a high level of access to the UK for EU citizens in the future, but would leave the British government power to halt it in certain circumstances.
But it is likely to enrage hardliners who would see anything even mildly like free movement as a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result – on Saturday cabinet minister David Davis, who has fought for a harder Brexit, was reported to be on the brink of resigning over the UK’s apparently softening position on EU withdrawal.
It comes as a leaked legal experts’ report commissioned by politicians in Belfast concluded it will be impossible to stop people coming into the UK at will anyway, if Theresa May stays true to her commitment to avoid a hard border with Ireland.
The last week has also seen the government under heavy pressure to accept staying in an EU customs union – an arrangement which would align with the new offer on immigration rights.
News of the offer planned by British officials has been corroborated by sources in Whitehall and Brussels and would form a key part of the prime minister’s efforts to lock the EU into a deal on future relations.
A British government insider said: “Civil servants have been looking at how to give talks some momentum and dealing with this issue is a way to do it.”
The Independent understands that the offer would mean European citizens coming into the UK after Brexit would benefit from visa-free travel.
They would then be able to gain the right to work in the UK under a new status that would be distinct for people arriving from the EU.
These key elements would bring the new arrangements close to those enjoyed by EU citizens under current free movement rules, which Ms May has pledged to end.
But under the proposed system, the British government would retain the right to impose an emergency brake or enact restrictions on migration when it felt a need to in the national interest.
A source in Brussels said: “The British have said that this idea could get things moving again, and that it looks very similar to free movement. We will see.”
Earlier this week a cache of documents from the Northern Irish government were leaked, including a report on the Brexit negotiations written by two experts from Queen’s University Belfast.
It asked whether avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland – which the UK has committed to – would mean “backdoor access” for people into Britain.
The experts concluded that keeping the border open would indeed mean “backdoor access … is inevitable”, a reality which may be pushing UK negotiators to build better access for EU citizens into their offer anyway.
Avoiding a hard border in Ireland also has implications for customs arrangements between the EU and UK in the future, with Brussels adamant it must mean Northern Ireland, and possibly the whole UK, remaining in a customs union.
Ms May’s publicly stated position, that she will take the UK out of any customs union, has been thrown into doubt after home secretary Amber Rudd said on Thursday that the cabinet was still deciding on the matter.
Ahead of a meeting at which key ministers will discuss it this Wednesday, cabinet office minister David Lidington said: “We’re very clear that when we leave the European Union we leave the single market and the customs union, but the prime minister has also said that she wants a customs agreement with the European Union.”
Ten days ago the government failed to prevent the House of Lords passing a motion that seeks to keep the UK in a customs union, while on Thursday the Commons approved a similar motion without a vote.
During the debate, enough Conservative MPs backed the idea of a customs union to potentially defeat the government in a binding vote on the issue expected in coming weeks.
But while the new offer on immigration would correlate with the more open Irish border the UK is committed to, and the implicated customs arrangements, it is yet to be approved by the cabinet.
A Government spokesperson said news of the offer “isn’t true”, and went on to say: “People voted in the referendum to retake control of our borders, and that is the basis we are negotiating on.

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“After we leave the EU, freedom of movement will end and we will be creating an immigration system that delivers control over who comes to the UK, but that welcomes the brightest and best who want to work hard and contribute.”
Anything which allows a high level of access or preferential treatment for EU citizens is likely to be viewed dimly by Brexiteer ministers like Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, who are seeking a cleaner break from Brussels.
One source close to a cabinet minister told The Independent: “This is the kind of thing that Olly Robbins [Ms May’s chief Brexit negotiator] and the civil servants will beaver away on before putting it to the cabinet.
“When and if it is put, it looks like it will be very unpopular with some people.”
Tory backbench Brexiteers already suspect Ms May’s enthusiasm for a clean-break Brexit is waning, but have yet to explicitly threaten her leadership.
Brexit secretary David Davis was said to be on the verge of quitting this weekend because of frustration over the prime minister’s plans to strike a deal with the EU on a customs partnership.
According to reports the minister has felt cut out of the negotiations process since late last year and effectively replaced by Mr Robbins, who is based in Downing Street.


The City of Brussels has laid on a festival of Britishness to say goodbye to the UK, ahead of Brexit.
The Belgian capital’s beautiful central square, the Grand Place, was lit up in Union Jack colours while bands played British music.
City authorities rented a real-life black London taxi, and also dressed two city employees up as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson to pose for selfies with visitors.
Busby-hatted redcoats were posted by the entrance of the city hall, while revellers posed for photographs with a replica red telephone box.
Banners around the square proclaimed: “Brussels Calling: Come together, right now.”
When The Independent approached the Sherlock Holmes lookalike and asked what he was doing in the city, the fictional detective said: “We’re doing a really important investigation... looking for the best French fries in Brussels.” The question of which friterie serves the best chips in the city is a running joke in Brussels.
Just around the corner from the Grand Place, which the city reasonably describes as “the most beautiful square in the world,” an unusual tourist attraction was also getting into the spirit of things.
The Manneken Pis, a small statue of a young boy urinating into a fountain which serves as an emblem of the city’s old centre, was dressed up in a costume of John Bull.
The costume is of historic significance as it was gifted to the city in 1972, ahead of the UK’s entry into the common market. John Bull is an old personification of Britain wearing a top hat and a waistcoat.
“At this historic moment for the United Kingdom, the City of Brussels recalls the long friendship between the people of Brussels and the British,” the city government said in a statement.
Brussels’ mayor Philippe Close jauntily urged Brits to “keep calm and stay welcome” in his city.
"Whatever happens, the thousands of Britons who live in Bruxelles remain Brussels residents!" he said.
Britain’s ambassador to Belgium, Martin Shearman, who met with the mayor at the city hall, said: “After many conversations with Brits in Belgium, I know how much they feel at home here.
“In their name, I would like to thank you Phillipe Close, and thank the City of Brussels for the warm welcome, not just tonight but every day.”
The city's public transport authority also got in on the action. STIB/MIVB posted a video to social media lighting the stations and stops on the city's metro and tram network named after British places and people.
Places celebrated included a tram interchange named after Winston Churchill, the metro station named after General Montgomery, and a tram stop named for Charles Darwin.
Other stops on the network with British links incude Liverpool, Lancaster, and Engeland – which is Dutch for England.
"Mind the gap when leaving," the authority said.
After the end of the Brexit transition period British people will lose the automatic right to live in Belgium and will have to apply for work visas, because Britain has chosen to end the free movement system.
British people already living in Belgium at the point of exit will be able to continue working there, while holidaymakers may have to fill in extra paperwork from 2021 onwards.


Jon Stone for The Independent
Jon Stone for The Independent
Jon Stone for The Independent
Britain would keep paying into the EU budget for years after a no-deal Brexit under contingency plans drawn up by the European Commission.
In a move likely to enrage Brexiteers and cause yet another political row in Westminster, on Wednesday Brussels unveiled proposals for the UK to keep up its payments for the 2019 EU budget and beyond.
The UK would have to consent to the plan, with a deadline to agree set for 18 April – deliberately placed after the effects of a no-deal would have become apparent.
“What we were thinking is we need to give a period which would allow some time for reflection,” one EU official said of the chosen cut-off date.
The EU says keeping up payments would help soften the impact of the no-deal cliff edge in areas such as agriculture and research funding that rely on EU payments.
The commitment would cover any EU contracts in effect on 30 March 2019 when the UK is due to crash out. Some of the contracts last two or three years, meaning payments could continue for some time.
“As highlighted on many occasions, all commitments taken by the 28 Member States should be honoured by the 28 Member States,” A statement released by the European Commission said.
“This is also true in a ‘no-deal’ scenario, where the UK would be expected to continue to honour all commitments made during EU membership.”
The statement continues: “Today’s proposal enables the EU to be in a position, in a ‘no-deal’ scenario, to honour its commitments and to continue making payments in 2019 to UK beneficiaries for contracts signed and decisions made before 30 March 2019, on condition that the UK honours its obligations under the 2019 budget and that it accepts the necessary audit checks and controls.
“This would help mitigate the significant impact of a “no-deal” scenario for a wide range of areas that receive EU funding, such as research, innovation or agriculture.
“This issue is separate from and without prejudice to the financial settlement between the EU and the United Kingdom in a no-deal scenario.”
Officials admit they cannot force the UK to make any payments once it has left the bloc, though they hope Britain will take up the offer.
Though the EU has ruled out doing ‘side deals’ with the UK to soften a no-deal Brexit, the move on the budget contributions suggests the commitment is open to interpretation.
The Commission says its no-deal planning “cannot replicate the withdrawal agreement”, is “unilateral” and is aimed at mitigating the “most disruptive effect on EU27 stakeholders”. It has stepped up preparations in recent weeks and months, with 88 stakeholder notices and 18 legislative proposals.
On Wednesday it also unveiled measures to protect the Erasmus international study programme, confirming that it would honour the overseas placements of UK and EU27 students who were abroad at the time of a no-deal. This commitment affects around 7,000 UK nationals on the continent and 14,000 EU nationals in the UK.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said last year that “the Government would not pay the terms of the financial settlement, as agreed with the EU as part of the withdrawal agreement” in the event of a no-deal, because ”there’s no deal without the whole deal”. It is not clear whether the Government’s policy has shifted since Mr Raab’s departure, however, with the issue of the divorce bill falling off the agenda and the focus moving to Northern Ireland.
In September Theresa May said “the position changes” on the issue of the payments if the UK left without a deal: leaving herself room for manoeuvre.


Philip Hammond has said there is a “perfectly credible” case for giving the British people a Final Say on Brexit.
The chancellor suggested although he was unsure there was currently a majority in parliament to allow for a second public vote to be facilitated, it “deserved to be tested”.
Asked on ITV’s Peston programme about negotiations between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn aimed at breaking the Brexit deadlock in Parliament, Mr Hammond refused to be drawn on details of the talks.
However, he said it was common knowledge a fresh referendum had been “one of the issues that has been debated.”
He added: “It’s a perfectly credible proposition, some ideas have been put forward that are not deliverable, they’re not negotiable. But the confirmatory referendum idea, a lot of people will disagree with it, I’m not sure there’s a majority in parliament for it, but it’s a perfectly credible proposition and it deserves to be tested in parliament.”












It is not the first time the chancellor has hinted that he believes there is a case for a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU).
During an interview with Sky News in March, he described a Final Say vote as an idea that “deserves to be considered”.
The prime minister and Mr Corbyn took part in talks on Wednesday aimed at trying to find a deal that can win the support of a majority of MPs in the Commons.
However, Ms May has come under fire from her own party for engaging with the Labour leader, a man branded a “Marxist antisemite” by one of her backbenchers.
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn has said the meeting did not yield “as much change as [he] had expected”.
The chancellor also indicated that compromising on the issue of a customs union could be a price worth paying for a deal.
“If that's what we have to do then let’s look at that,” he said.
Mr Hammond said that “some kind of customs arrangement is clearly going to be part of the future structure”.
He added: “When you enter into a negotiation like this to find a compromise way forward, both parties have to give something up. There is going to be pain on both sides.”
The chancellor also conceded Tory manifesto promises, which included leaving the customs union and single market, would not all be able to be delivered because the Conservatives did not win a majority.
The promise to leave the EU was the “central commitment that we have made and we have to deliver and the rest of it is somewhat secondary”, he said.


British negotiators have openly admitted in Brussels that Theresa May’s Chequers deal will not deliver any competitive advantage to the UK over Europe after Brexit.
UK officials are making the claim to their EU counterparts in a bid to sell the under-fire plan to Brussels – but news of the admission has enraged Tory Brexiteers who already view Chequers as a sell-out.
Anti-Brexit campaigners also seized on the news – saying it raised questions about “what on Earth” the point of leaving the EU actually was.
It comes as chancellor Philip Hammond admitted that there may be further austerity cuts if the UK crashes out of the EU with no deal.
British negotiators are arguing that a mix of UK commitments to include “non-regression” clauses on EU standards and a commitment to sign up to state aid “level playing field” rules will mean British businesses cannot unfairly undercut EU firms on services.
The UK wants to sign up to a common rulebook of EU regulations for goods – which would tie it into European standards for physical exports – but exit the rest of the single market for services.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has rejected the Chequers plan – partly on the basis that he believes the UK proposal to sign up to only some single market rules would give it a competitive advantage. But counter-intuitively, the UK is arguing that this would not be the case.
UK officials familiar with the British negotiating position say there is already huge flexibility within the EU on service regulations and that the UK will not get an unfair advantage compared to European firms.
This is an admission of what those of us who are against Chequers already know – it’s a bad deal for the UK.
They are also arguing that because UK businesses selling services into the EU will have to follow the regulations of that country anyway there would be no way to undercut European businesses trading there.
Officials have also admitted that where services are covered by single market rules, firms actually tend to gain an advantage from being part of those rules because it allows them to sell into other countries – meaning the UK might actually lose out from not being in the single market.
Remainers and Brexiteers alike said the news showed Chequers would be a failure – though they suggested different resolutions.
Eurosceptic Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: “This is an admission of what those of us who are against Chequers already know – it’s a bad deal for the UK.
“It shackles us to the EU as a captive market, a vassal state.
“It serves a key purpose for the EU – other countries will look at this and say well if the UK, with the size of its economy, can’t get any sort of advantage from leaving the EU then no one can.”
Labour MP Owen Smith, a supporter of the anti-Brexit Best for Britain campaign, said: “If the Chequers Deal offers no advantages for Britain, what on Earth is the point of pursuing it?
“This is just the latest revelation that even those negotiating the Brexit deal know that a soft Brexit offers no upsides, while a hard Brexit is a pure disaster.”
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab travelled to Brussels on Thursday to meet with his counterpart Mr Barnier, though the pair made no public appearances or statements.

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Ministers have said in recent weeks that the choice is now between accepting Chequers and a no-deal.
The deadline for Brexit talks is looming, with agreement on issues like Northern Ireland required by October for the withdrawal agreement. The UK has also said it wants the future relationship to be agreed in principle before the deadline – though the chance of a detailed agreement seems increasingly slim.
The UK is due to leave the EU on 29 March 2019 whether or not it has managed to negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the EU. Ministers have said they would not revoke or extend Article 50 to prevent a no-deal, and that they are making preparations for every possible eventuality.
The chancellor confirmed today that a no-deal Brexit would likely see spending “refocused” and lead to further austerity cuts to priority areas. The admission came after a Treasury minister was photographed going into Downing Street carrying documents revealing the secret codename for the no-deal Brexit preparations: Operation Yellowhammer.


Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has signalled he will resist pressure to commit his party to backing Remain in any future Brexit referendum.
And he suggested that Labour’s MPs could even back a Brexit deal negotiated by prime minister Boris Johnson with Brussels.
Dozens of motions tabled by constituency parties at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton call for the party to commit to Remain – a position backed by senior shadow cabinet ministers Emily Thornberry and Sir Keir Starmer at a rally on Saturday. In an open challenge to the leader's stance, Ms Thrornberry asked: "It we believe in internationalism and socialism - why on earth would we back Brexit?"
But Mr Corbyn tabled a rival statement to the party’s ruling National Executive Committee saying that, while the party backed a public vote and would offer the options of a credible Brexit deal or Remain to voters, a decision on how it would campaign would be made at a special conference after the election.
On BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, he made clear that he does not want the party to decide whether it would campaign for or against the deal which it would itself negotiate with Brussels until after negotiations are complete.
“Let’s see what we get,” he said. “And we’ll put that final decision to British people and make that decision at that time.”
Asked whether he personally thought the UK would be better off inside or outside the EU, the Labour leader said: “It depends on the agreement you have with the European Union.”
He added: “We have consistently put forward what I believe to be a credible option, which is what we call the five pillars – the Customs Union, the trade relationship, protection of consumer, environmental and workers’ rights, and of course, the Good Friday Agreement and the peace process.
“We have discussed those several times with (EU Brexit negotiator) Michel Barnier and others in the European Union and through the Socialist bloc in the European Union and heads of other governments as well.
“I recognise the majority of Labour Party supporters and members support Remain and supported Remain but a significant minority voted the other way…
“We will put both views to the British people and say ‘This is the best deal we could get, this is the Remain – and hopefully Reform – option. These are the choices before you.’ That is what we will put forward.”
Mr Corbyn was also challenged over whether Labour MPs could back a deal secured by Mr Johnson ahead of the 31 October deadline for Brexit.
He replied: “It absolutely depends what the deal is. I’ve no idea what deal he wants to bring back.
“But all my instincts are that Boris Johnson actually wants a no-deal exit from the European Union, which is why has refused consistently to confirm that he will abide by what’s called the EU (Number 6) Act, which requires him to apply for an extension in the event of a no-deal looming up at the end of October.”
With around 30 Labour MPs said to be considering backing a Johnson deal in order to bring the Brexit uncertainty to an end, Mr Corbyn indicated he would not offer his MPs a free vote on the issue.
“I would hope we could vote together as a party on this,” he said.
Speaking with an EU flag draped around her shoulders at Saturday's rally, Ms Thornberry said: "Whatever terms are agreed by which we leave the European Union, by whatever government, no matter what it says, we must make sure that there's a second referendum, we must make sure that Remain is on the ballot paper, we must make sure that Labour campaigns for Remain - and not just that, but that we lead the campaign to Remain.

"We believe in internationalism. We believe in socialism. And if we believe in internationalism and socialism - why on earth would we back Brexit?...We all say no, no, no to Brexit."
Sir Keir also argued that Labour had "got to listen" to pro-EU party members and confirmed that he would campaign for Remain in any referendum.
Speaking at his first People's Vote rally, the influential shadow Brexit secretary said he was now "utterly convinced" that a referendum was the only solution to the Brexit crisis.
"When that time comes, I will campaign for Remain alongside millions of other people in this country, because it's not just a technical question of whether you want to be in or out of the EU, it's about what sort of country we want to be," Sir Keir told a crowd of an estimated 5,000 people.



Jeremy Corbyn is coming under intense pressure to make a Final Say referendum a condition of Labour support for any Brexit deal, after an exodus of Remain voters consigned the party to its worst national election result since 1910.
The Labour leader is increasingly isolated at the top of the party on Brexit, with senior figures including shadow chancellor John McDonnell, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and deputy leader Tom Watson calling for a public vote.
Mr McDonnell appeared to accept that the strategy of attempting to straddle Labour’s Remain and Leave-voting constituencies had reached the end of the road.

“Can’t hide from hit we took last night,” he tweeted. “Bringing people together when there’s such a divide was never going to be easy. Now we face prospect of Brexiteer extremist as Tory leader and threat of no deal, we must unite our party and country by taking issue back to people in a public vote.”
He added: “Of course I want a general election. But I realise how difficult this is to secure. I will do anything I can to block no-deal Brexit. So yes if, as likely, general election not possible, then I support going back to the people in another referendum.”
In a message to the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday, Mr Corbyn sought to reach out to Remainers, stating: “We are ready to support a public vote on any deal.”
But it is understood that the shift of tone and emphasis does not amount to a change in policy to make support for any deal conditional on a second referendum. Mr Corbyn said any policy change would be for Labour’s annual conference in September to determine.
The move did not go far enough for Labour MPs reeling from the party’s collapse to 14 per cent in the European elections, which saw them lose 10 MEPs as voters frustrated with Mr Corbyn’s ambiguous stance on Brexit flooded to Liberal Democrats and Greens.
One Remain-backing shadow cabinet source said that Labour members and supporters demand a commitment to require a public vote on any deal, adding: “Waiting until September won’t satisfy anyone.”
And backbencher Ian Murray, a supporter of the People’s Vote campaign for a second referendum, said: “This is a step forward, but the policy needs to be made very clear and the campaign for a people’s vote needs to start now, not be delayed for any reason. The idea that we should wait until September is ludicrous.
“The one thing the results have shown us is that if you stand in the middle of the road you get hit by both sides. That means those members of the Labour front bench opposing a people’s vote need to recognise that now they need to either get on board or consider their positions. The era of playing both ends against the middle is over.”









As the disastrous results rolled in on Sunday night, Mr Corbyn appeared to signal a change in strategy, in a statement which said that the Brexit issue “will have to go back to the people, whether through a general election or a public vote”. He said that Labour would “reflect … over the coming days” on the outcome of the European vote.
But in a TV appearance in the morning, he made clear his preferred outcome remains a general election.
“The priority at the moment, I think, is for this government to call for a general election and actually have a general election so we can decide the future,” he said.
Asked whether he would support an internal ballot on the direction of policy, the Labour leader replied: “What we’ll do is consult members through the constituency parties and affiliated trade unions and bring the issue back to conference in September.”
Ms Thornberry said the election results showed Labour was “not clear enough” about its position on Brexit.
“We should have said quite simply that any deal that comes out of this government should be put to a confirmatory referendum, and that Remain should be on the ballot paper, and that Labour would campaign to Remain,” she said.
Meanwhile, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said Labour must “listen to our members”, who polls suggest back a Final Say vote by a large majority.
“When we come in third after the Brexit Party, that is a clue something is wrong with our strategy,” said the loyal Corbyn ally. “We need to listen to our members and take a clearer line on a public vote.”
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: “It’s no use trying to hide from these very disappointing results. We need to reflect hard and listen to our members, supporters and voters. The only way to break the Brexit impasse is to go back to the public with a choice between a credible Leave option and Remain.”
However, there were indications that some MPs in Leave-backing constituencies will resist any move to position Labour as an anti-Brexit party.
Makerfield MP Yvonne Fovargue tweeted: “We need to respect the result and leave the EU with a pragmatic deal.”


Jeremy Corbyn will plunge his own position into jeopardy if he “betrays” Labour supporters by refusing to push for a further Brexit referendum, a shadow minister has said, in an outspoken interview.
Clive Lewis warned Mr Corbyn’s leadership would be “in peril” if he failed to fully support a Final Say public vote because the activists who “put you in that position” could turn against him.
“You can only drive a wedge so far between yourself and the people who put you in that position before your opponents start looking at their options,” the shadow Treasury minister told The Independent.
Mr Lewis warned Labour was “haemorrhaging” support from Remain voters and attacked senior party figures happy to finish second in next week’s European elections “as long as we beat the Tories”
The strategy would “open the door to pseudo-fascists in the form of Nigel Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon [known as Tommy Robinson]”, he said.
“There are those who think Labour coming second is an acceptable position, as long as we beat the Tories, but that will open the door to them [the hard right] – an appalling situation.
“Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will vote for these parties for the first time and, once they have broken that seal of always voting Labour, then doing so in subsequent elections becomes easier.”
Mr Lewis, a leftwinger, is a long-time supporter of a frsh referendum, quitting his frontbench position when he refused to vote to trigger Article 50 two years ago, before regaining it.
He was among more than 100 MPs who signed a letter demanding Mr Corbyn endorse a public vote in the European elections manifesto, under the ‘Love Socialism, Hate Brexit’ banner.
Mr Lewis predicted frontbench resignations had Mr Corbyn ordered his MPs to abstain on the withdrawal agreement bill – a possibility, before the cross-party talks collapsed on Friday.
“It would be a betrayal of our conference position and the vast bulk of our members and voters,” he said.
“The leadership would have had a real struggle enforcing that with the vast majority of the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] – I for one will not be abstaining on Theresa May’s deal.”
The Norwich South said it would be “very silly to speculate about leadership challenges”, given Mr Corbyn had won two contests, but insisted: “It would put in peril the political project so many of us want to see enacted.”
“I don’t want to see our party driven dragged back to the centre-ground of British politics, which has few answers to the radical challenges that face our society.”
In recent weeks, the Labour leadership has unveiled a blitz of domestic policies on housing, the wages of young people and green energy, among other key issues.
But Mr Lewis suggested the attempt to win a hearing until Mr Corbyn was willing to nail his colours to the mast on Brexit.
“Many Labour voters are among those most affected by austerity and have real fears about special needs education, the NHS, social care and children’s centres,” he said.
“But, on the Remain side, we can’t get to talk about these things because they feel so passionate about a confirmatory vote. It’s in effect become an identity issue.”


Delaying Brexit by a year is preferable to Theresa May’s “toxic” withdrawal agreement, according to a senior figure in the Democratic Unionist Party.
Referring to the twice-rejected UK-EU agreement as a “prison” for the UK, Sammy Wilson, the DUP’s Brexit spokesperson, reiterated that his party will not vote for an “unamended, or unchanged version”.
It is another blow for the prime minister, who this week is considering whether to bring her deal to MPs for a third time.
Earlier on Tuesday, the leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg indicated he may reluctantly support Ms May’s deal, as it was “better than not leaving at all”.
But in a warning to Brexiteers, Mr Wilson said that if the deal goes through, the UK will have lost its right to leave the EU. “That is not Brexit,” he wrote in The Daily Telegraph​.
He continued: “Even if we are forced into a one-year extension, we at least would have a say on the things which affect us during that time and would have the right to unilaterally decide to leave at the end of that one-year period through the simple decision of not applying for a further extension.
“Surely this is a better strategy than volunteering to be locked into the prison of the withdrawal deal with the cell door key in the pocket of Michel Barnier?”
The remarks from Mr Wilson also come as Ms May prepares to address the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs on Wednesday, as she battles to save her deal.
Speaking about the deal on his ConservativeHome podcast, Mr Rees-Mogg, the chair of the European Research Group of hardline Brexiteers, said: “The prime minister will not deliver a no-deal Brexit.
Asked if that meant the options were now Ms May’s deal or potentially no Brexit, he said: “That I think, becomes the choice eventually.
“Whether we are there yet is another matter, but I have always thought that no deal is better than Ms May’s deal, but Ms May’s deal is better than not leaving at all.”
Echoing his comments, the Tory MP Michael Fabricant added: “This is the dreadful conclusion I have come to too – and said so at the ERG. A new PM can then negotiate a better and more distanced relationship with the EU after Brexit.”


Boris Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings has accused Philip Hammond of trying to block preparations for a no-deal Brexit as chancellor.
The former Vote Leave supremo is understood to have told a meeting of Downing Street advisers that Mr Hammond and former business secretary Greg Clark had “actively frustrated” work to get the UK ready for no-deal.
But an ally of the former chancellor dismissed the claim as “simply untrue”.
Sources who witnessed Mr Cummings’ attack said: “Dom said that Philip and Greg had actively frustrated no-deal preparations. He made the point twice, and said that would not be accepted anymore.”
But an ally of the former chancellor said: “This is simply untrue.

“The bigger question is why is Dominic Cummings, the de facto deputy prime minister, so keen to spend yet more taxpayers’ money on something that his boss insists has only a ‘one in a million chance’ of happening?”
Mr Hammond and Mr Clark walked out of the government after Theresa May’s resignation rather than waiting to be sacked by her successor Boris Johnson.

The former chancellor is reported to have held talks with Labour Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer on how to use parliamentary mechanisms to frustrate efforts to take the UK out of the EU without a deal.
Mr Hammond has long been a target of criticism from fervent eurosceptics, who accuse him of failing to release sufficient funds to prepare for no-deal.
The former chancellor allocated some £4.2 billion for no-deal preparations, but within days of taking office Mr Johnson had increased this sum by a further £2.1 billion to “turbo-charge” the process.


Donald Tusk has warned that the British Government must settle the issues of “people, money and Ireland” before negotiating its future relationship with the EU.
The European Council President said the UK must honour its financial obligations to the union, including a “divorce bill” of up to €60bn (£50bn), before talks over trade agreements.
Negotiations about future relations can only start once “we have achieved sufficient progress” on key exit issues, Mr Tusk said, adding: “In other words, before discussing our future, we must first sort out our past.”
The warning came before leaders of the remaining 27 EU nations meet on Saturday to agree their negotiating strategy for Brexit.
Mr Tusk was referring to issues of free movement and residency rights for EU citizens, as well as discussions over the strength of the border between Northern Ireland and the European Republic.
He said his approach was “not only a matter of tactics, but – given the limited time-frame we have to conclude the talks – it is the only possible approach”.
In a letter to EU leaders, Mr Tusk wrote: “Only once we collectively determine in the European Council that sufficient progress has been made on all these issues, will we be in a position to hold preparatory talks on the future relationship with the UK.
“I would like us to unite around this key principle during the upcoming summit, so that it is clear that progress on people, money and Ireland must come first.
“And we have to be ready to defend this logic during the upcoming negotiations.”
Angela Merkel also insisted the issues of residency, the “divorce bill” and the Irish border must be dealt with before a future relationship can even be discussed.
“Without progress on the many open questions of the exit, including the financial questions, it makes no sense to have parallel negotiations,” the German Chancellor said on Thursday.
She accused the British Government of “working under illusions” over the UK’s future status, adding: “A third-party state, and that’s what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal the same rights, or be in a better position than members of the European Union.”
Theresa May has called for talks on a future trade deal with the EU to take place at the same time as divorce negotiations on Brexit, but her plans have been dashed by European leaders.
The European Parliament has also poured cold water on the Government’s claims the UK can remain in the single market and customs union.
In the letter that officially triggered Article 50, the Prime Minister said the UK wants to agree a “deep and special partnership” with remaining members of the EU to ensure economic and security cooperation.
Discussions over the future border in Ireland, which includes the possibility of a “hard” barrier with checkpoints and customs posts, have coincided with the collapse of a power-sharing agreement in Belfast.
Despite fresh regional elections in March, Irish nationalists and unionists have failed to agree a deal to form a new executive ahead of a new deadline on 29 June.
Additional reporting by agencies


The European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator has denied holding parallel private negotiations with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn behind the back of the UK government.
Michel Barnier said he had only repeatedly met with Mr Corbyn as part of his “open door” policy with interested senior figures, pointing out that he had also met with Nigel Farage and other leading eurosceptics.
The top Commission official said he that the “only person” he was negotiating with was Theresa May and that he had made this clear to the Labour leader “every time I’ve met him”.
“On Jeremy Corbyn, my door is open, it’s open to everybody,” he told reporters at a press conference in Brussels.
“I even met Mr Farage the other day, which was a very stimulating discussion. Mr Corbyn is an important figure in British political debate and he asked to meet me and I had no reason not to meet him. I can tell him where we stand.
“But I’m not negotiating with Jeremy Corbyn. The only person we’re negotiating with is Theresa May, and Davis Davis, and the British government. I made this very clear to Jeremy Corbyn at the beginning and I’ve said that to him every time I’ve met him.
“I want to listen to everybody to fully understand what’s happening in the UK, I want to take the time necessary to understand and respect the British political debate.”
Mr Barnier was questioned about his meetings with the Labour leader after a report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, based on leaked minutes of one of the meetings, that Mr Corbyn had said he was open to the UK staying in the customs union.

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Commenting on the memo, Mr Corbyn’s office said: “Jeremy did not say he was open to staying in the customs union. He said that a customs union was a viable end point.
“We have been clear all the way through that you can't be in the customs union if you are not in the EU.”



Theresa May was left waiting while European leaders decided the future of Brexit behind closed doors.
The prime minister had hoped to be handed an extension of the Article 50 period until 30 June before making a statement from Brussels in the early evening.
Instead, the 27 presidents and prime ministers were locked in talks long into the night after they tore up draft proposals and produced a complicated conditional plan.
Diplomats in the room painted a disorientating picture of discussions, with proposals for shorter and longer deadlines made by different countries.
EU leaders ultimately agreed that the UK could have an unconditional extension until 12 April, and a further extension until 22 May if MPs approved the withdrawal agreement next week.
The so-called “flextension” would also give the UK the option of a longer delay if needed, but only on the condition of deciding to join in European Parliament elections before April 12.
One EU official said: "March 29th is over. As of tonight, April 12th is the new March 29th."
Speaking after the agreement was struck, European Council president Donald Tusk said Ms May “accepts the extension scenarios”.
He added: “Frankly speaking I was really sad before our meeting – now I am much more optimistic.”
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker added: “This closes and completes the full package. There’s no more we can give. We’re hopeful that the agreement will be adopted by the House of Commons.”
"I hope we can all agree that we are at the moment of decision," Theresa May said at a press conference in the early hours of the morning.
"It gives us the opportunity, MPs next week, to look at the choices that clearly face them: we can leave with a deal, in an orderly manner, have that extension until 22 May - or, if we don't get that deal through, if we don't get that vote through then before 12 April we have to come forward with another plan, and if that plan means a further extension it means standing in those European Parliamentary elections."
At the start of the mammoth Brussels drafting session Theresa May took questions from EU leaders about her Brexit strategy, with diplomats privy to discussions describing her responses as unconvincing and wooden.
According to several accounts, the prime minister was unable to answer what would happen if she could not pass the vote in parliament and had no apparent plan B, spooking her fellow leaders.
After Ms May was sent out of the room, the 27 leaders discussed options for an extension that included dates in April, May, and delays until the end of the year. Both conditional and unconditional extensions were considered by EU leaders.
Discussions and drafting of the new plans spilled over into a late night dinner, with a planned meeting about China-EU relations pushed back until Friday. Planned press conferences by Theresa May, Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker were postponed until just before midnight.
Leaders ultimately agreed a text which read: “The European Council agrees to extension until 22 May, provided the withdrawal agreement is approved by the House of Commons next week. If the withdrawal agreement is not approved by the House of Commons next week, the European Council agrees to an extension until 12 April and expects UK to indicate a way forward before this date for consideration by EUCO.”
Arriving at the summit in the afternoon Theresa May said the prospect of a delay was “a matter of regret” for her. She also confirmed she would seek an extension until 30 June.
On the way into the meeting Emmanuel Macron had perhaps the starkest warning of Ms May’s European counterparts, telling reporters: “We have to be clear: we can discuss and agree an extension if it is a technical extension in the case of a ‘yes’ vote. In the case of a ‘no’ vote, it will guide everybody to a no deal, for sure.”
The French president said that a longer delay would require “a deep political change” in the UK, adding: “We cannot have a long-lasting situation where there is no visibility, no purpose, no political majority.”
Meanwhile Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar described the situation in London as “somewhat chaotic” and said a no-deal Brexit would be a decision by the UK because it had the power to revoke Article 50.


EU leaders have “lost patience” with Britain and do not want to grant another Brexit extension when time runs out in October, Ireland’s prime minister has said.
Arriving at a meeting with his 27 counterparts, where leaders will check in on the Brexit process, Leo Varadkar said there was “enormous hostility” to another delay in EU capitals.
He said his feeling was that an extension would be granted only to allow for a general election or second referendum.
The current extension secured by Theresa May is set to expire on 31 October, when the UK will crash out with no deal if it does not ratify the withdrawal agreement or decide to remain instead.
“There’s very much a strong view across the European Union that there shouldn’t be any more extensions. While I have endless patience, some of my colleagues, quite frankly, have lost patience with the UK – and there’s enormous hostility to any further extension,” Mr Varadkar told reporters on the doorstep of the meeting.
“So I think an extension could really only happen if it were to facilitate something like a general election in the UK, or even something like a second referendum, if they decided to have one. What won’t be entertained is an extension for further negotiations or further indicative votes. The time for that has long since passed.”
Other EU leaders arriving at the same meeting also took the opportunity to warn that the withdrawal agreement struck by Theresa May would not be renegotiated.
Asked about the ongoing Tory leadership race, Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel said: “It’s the choice of the Tories, it’s not my choice. Brexit was neither my choice. If they choose Boris Johnson, he will have to deal with us on the agreement we have done with Theresa May.”
Arturs Krisjanis, Latvia’s prime minister, laughed when asked whether he could work with Boris Johnson. He replied: “Every country has their internal processes, how they choose their leaders. Great Britain has going through one of these processes. I’m very much looking forward to continuing good cooperation with Great Britain.”
The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, was scathing when asked about the leadership candidates’ Brexit positions, telling reporters: “During the election campaign for the new leadership of the Tory party it seems their positions have shifted so much so it is difficult for me to assess exactly.” He added: “I’m not going to comment on the leadership candidates.”
The 28 EU leaders will briefly discuss Brexit on Friday, the second day of the summit. Britain’s departure is taking a back seat for once at this meeting, with the main focus being filling the EU’s top jobs and a debate over bloc-wide climate change policy.
Arriving at the summit – which is her last scheduled as prime minister – Theresa May told reporters: “We will be looking for the UK to do what we have always said we would do, which is to make a constructive contribution as we remain a member of the European Union [and] for that period of time we will continue to meet our rights and obligations.
“But of course we will be leaving the EU and we look forward to developing a close partnership with the EU when we’ve left.”
But the prime minister twice sidestepped questions about whether she would miss attending the Brussels gatherings.
“I will continue to do what we have always done as a UK, which is to play a constructive role within the European Union while we are part of the discussions around the table,” she said.


The president of the European Commission has said he would vote in favour of Theresa May’s Brexit deal if he had a vote in the UK parliament.
Jean-Claude Juncker said the agreement was “the best deal possible” and that the EU would not change its “fundamental position”.
It comes as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier insists he has always “negotiated with the UK, never against” it.
The president’s comments are part of an EU-wide push to convince British MPs that the plan is worth backing. The arithmetic in the House of Commons currently suggests it will be rejected by a wide margin if nothing changes.
Mr Juncker described Britain’s departure as a “tragic moment”.
“I would vote in favour of this deal because this is the best deal possible for Britain,” he told reporters on the doorstep of a Brussels summit to sign off the deal.
“This is the deal. It's the best deal possible and the EU will not change its fundamental position when it comes to these issues.”
He added: “The UK leaving the EU is a tragic moment. Not a moment to celebrate.”
But arriving at the same meeting, French president Emmanuel Macron said: “It's not a day when we should celebrate, nor a day of mourning. It is the choice of a sovereign people.”
He added that Britain’s departure showed the EU had a “fragile” side and was in need of reform. He also pledged that the deal would protect the access of French fishermen to British waters.
Mr Barnier, who is also attending the meeting, said: “All along this extraordinary negotiation, very difficult we have worked to reach a deal. That means to organise in an orderly fashion the withdrawal decided by the UK.
“We have negotiated with the UK, never against the UK. Now it is time for everybody to take their responsibility, everybody.
“This deal is a necessary step to build trust between the UK and the EU, we need build in the next phase of this unprecedented and ambitious partnership. We will remain allies, partners and friends.”
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said there were “no political winners or victories” in the Brexit process.
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He added: ”I don't expect a no vote. I expect a yes vote and this is the deal on the table. I don't think there's anything more."
Leaders are gathering in Brussels to sign off the deal after a last-minute climbdown by the UK over the issue of Gibraltar. British officials conceded in writing that any future trade deal between the UK and EU would only apply to Gibraltar with the consent of Madrid.
Thersa May had told MPs last week that any deal would have to apply to Gibraltar. Spain has always had a veto of the future trade deal, however, as does every other EU member state.


Brussels has accused Boris Johnson of starting a “stupid blame game” over Brexit, as talks to avert a no-deal teeter on the brink.
A series of hostile briefings from Downing Street in the last 48 hours raised tempers in the EU capital by portraying officials as intransigent and suggesting that talks were dead in the water.
The claims that the EU had hardened its position provoked a weary response from European Council president Donald Tusk, who accused Mr Johnson of not really wanting a deal.
One unnamed No 10 official also briefed out a heated and contested account of a conversation between Angela Merkel and Mr Johnson, which the German chancellor’s office declined to endorse.
The Downing Street source had claimed a deal was now “essentially impossible” and that talks were now “close to breaking down”. It came after a series of British government threats to EU countries about the effects of a no-deal Brexit, which also raised eyebrows in European capitals.
“Boris Johnson, what’s at stake is not winning some stupid blame game,” Mr Tusk said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon as he met with Ms Merkel.
“At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. You don’t want a deal, you don’t want an extension, you don’t want to revoke, quo vadis?”
The episode appeared to prompt the prime minister to hold emergency talks with Irish leader Leo Varadkar on Tuesday evening.
The phone call between the two leaders appeared to temporarily calm the situation, with a Downing Street spokesperson telling reporters afterwards: “The prime minister spoke to the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, tonight. Both sides strongly reiterated their desire to reach a Brexit deal. They hope to meet in person later this week.”
UK and EU officials back in Brussels also reported that talks continued as normal throughout the spat, with a British government spokesperson stating calmly that “talks on the UK proposals continued today as planned” and were even reaching “a critical point” – a far cry from the picture painted by the Downing Street source earlier in the day.
But after meeting with Mr Johnson at Downing Street on Tuesday evening, David Sassoli, the European parliament president, warned: “I came here in the confident hope of hearing proposals which could take negotiations forward. However, I must note that there has been no progress.”
Downing Street denied the accusations that it was starting a blame game. Asked about Mr Tusk’s claim, a spokesperson said: “Absolutely not. It’s not us talking in that language. It’s not the UK which is talking about blame games.”
The German chancellery confirmed that Mr Johnson and Ms Merkel spoke on Tuesday morning but declined to confirm the substance of discussions, stating: “As usual we do not give an account of these confidential conversations.” A European Commission spokesperson also urged caution.
But the chair of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, who is from Ms Merkel’s party, said Mr Johnson had used the phone call “for his blame game”.
Outspoken senior MP Norbert Roettgen told German outlet Welt that the UK prime minister was “stuck in Brexit hardliners’ trap with no room for manoeuvre”.
He added: “There is no new German position on Brexit. Frankly a deal on the basis of Johnson’s proposals ... has been unrealistic from the beginning and yet the EU has been willing to engage. Blaming others for the current situation is not fair play.”
On the record, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “The purpose of the call was to discuss the progress that has been made in the talks so far. I would describe it as a frank exchange. The prime minister set out that the UK had made what we believe to be a significant offer, but if we are to make further progress then the EU will need to compromise.”
Asked whether Mr Johnson viewed a deal as less likely following the call, the spokesperson said: “We do still want a deal and that work is ongoing but we do need to see compromise from the EU side.”
Speaking in the House of Commons, Michael Gove, the minister tasked with no-deal planning, raised the stakes by saying the UK was now prepared to leave without a deal. He however added that “risks remain and challenges for some businesses cannot be entirely mitigated”.
EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday next week, where Brexit will be discussed. Both sides say they want a deal before the meeting. The European Council summit will also decide whether to extend Article 50, which would prevent the UK from crashing out on 31 October without a deal.
Mr Johnson has publicly said he will not seek an extension to the Brexit deadline, though court documents suggest he has privately promised to do so to comply with a law laid down by parliament. The UK is set to leave the EU with or without a deal at the end of October if no extension is secured, or the UK does not revoke Article 50 to cancel Brexit.
Under the British plan to replace the border backstop agreed by Theresa May but rejected by Mr Johnson, Northern Ireland would stay aligned with the EU single market regulations for goods, but stay in the UK customs zone.
The result would be customs checks on products moving between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and regulatory checks on products moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The UK government says the checks could be done away from the border, but it has provided little detail on how – with critics warning the sites would be customs centres in all but name.
The Northern Ireland assembly and executive would also have to vote to keep the plan going every four years, effectively constituting a veto.
Critics of the UK government proposals, including most business groups and parties in Northern Ireland itself, are concerned that the reintroduction of a hard border would make infrastructure a target for dissident Republicans and disrupt the all-Ireland economy.


The EU Commission has confirmed that it will be making no changes to the Brexit withdrawal agreement following a claim by Theresa May that MPs would be voting on a new, better deal.
A spokesperson told reporters in Brussels that collapsed talks between the government and Labour were “a Westminster process” and that there was “nothing that we can do at this stage”.
“I think it’s clear that we’re in a situation where London talks to London, so there is nothing that we can do at this stage, as we think we said on many occasions in the past,” the spokesperson said.
“When this process in London is over, then of course we are here, within the caveats that you all know, ready to engage, and of course, keeping always the 31 October deadline very present in the picture.”
Over the weekend the prime minister claimed she would bring forward a “bold” offer and “new and improved” deal for MPs, who will be voting on the deal for a fourth time in early June. Nobody in Westminster expects the deal to pass.
On Monday, a Downing Street spokesperson would not elaborate on what significant changes would be made to the withdrawal agreement, but if there actually are any they are likely to be cosmetic and non-binding.
Brussels has long washed its hands of the negotiation process and for months said it will not renegotiate the deal. There have been no further talks between the UK and EU this year.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, also on Monday reiterated the bloc’s position that “the EU is ready to be more ambitious in the political declaration if UK so wishes”. The prime minister has however refused to countenance such changes in talks with Labour – which would need to include a customs union and single market access to bring the opposition party on side.
Any move to do so would be hugely unpopular with Tory MPs who do not want a close economic relationship with the EU, and would not address their existing concerns – which mostly relate to the controversial Northern Ireland backstop arrangement.
The commission spokesperson also confirmed that “for as long as the United Kingdom stays in the European Union the United Kingdom will have the full rights and obligations of all participating member states” – including the right to nominate a commissioner after this week’s European parliament elections.
MPs’ next vote on the withdrawal agreement is scheduled for the first full week of June, though a specific day has yet to be publicly chosen. British voters will participate in European parliament elections on Thursday and elect MPs to the bloc’s parliament, after the prime minister again failed in her pledge that Britian would leave before the contest.


Boris Johnson has warned the EU that his plans are the final opportunity to avert no deal as his hopes of securing a Brexit agreement stood on a knife edge.
Ahead of a critical week, the prime minister issued an ultimatum to the French president Emmanuel Macron and said Brussels must not be lured into the mistaken belief that Brexit will be delayed beyond 31 October.
A senior No 10 source said it would be a ”historic misunderstanding” for the EU to place its faith in the Benn Act – a backbench law designed to force Mr Johnson to delay Brexit if he has not struck a deal by 19 October.
The prime minister spent the weekend talking to European leaders as negotiations stood on the brink, after his new Brexit blueprint received a lukewarm response in Brussels.
European leaders have been careful not to publicly dismiss the plans but both Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, and Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, said important questions remain unanswered.
In a telephone call with the French premier on Sunday, Mr Johnson was said to have made clear it was the final opportunity to agree a deal and insisted the EU must compromise, as he claimed the UK had done.
A No 10 source said: “This is the chance to get a deal done: a deal that is backed by parliamentarians and a deal which involves compromise on all sides.
“The UK has made a big, important offer but it’s time for the commission to show a willingness to compromise too. If not the UK will leave with no deal.
“The surrender act and its authors are undermining negotiations, but if EU leaders are betting that it will prevent no deal, that would be a historic misunderstanding.”
David Frost, the PM’s chief EU negotiator, will travel to Brussels on Monday, while Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, will visit a number of European capitals, ahead of the crucial EU summit on 17-18 October.
The prime minister had been expected to travel to Europe himself but plans for a whistle-stop diplomatic tour appear to have been put on ice.
It comes as:
Mr Johnson’s bullish stance will ramp up pressure on opposition leaders, as squabbling parties meet to try to unite around a strategy to stop Mr Johnson from defying the law.
Cross-party talks stalled last week amid disagreements over who should lead an interim government if the prime minister is toppled in a no-confidence vote.
Speaking ahead of the meeting on Monday, Jeremy Corbyn said: “The cross-party meeting will decide what next steps we can take together to hold the government to account, and to ensure the prime minister adheres to the law in seeking an extension if no deal is reached by 19 October.”
Meanwhile, Labour will try to force a parliamentary vote to demand the full legal text of the prime minister’s Brexit plan.
Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said: “The legal text is important because we suspect it will confirm that the government’s proposals unavoidably mean the introduction of infrastructure in Northern Ireland, and that this will contradict the assurances Johnson gave in the House on Thursday.
“We also think the text will show how the government plans to replace the current commitments to protect workers’ rights.”
It is understood that Downing Street is determined to only make the document public if it helps the negotiations.
Elsewhere, Scotland’s highest civil court is expected to deliver a verdict on whether the PM could be fined or even put in prison if he refuses to seek an extension from the EU.


The chances of a second referendum to stop Brexit are non-existent, the EU’s deputy chief negotiator has said.
Sabine Weyand, the brains behind the withdrawal agreement who deputises for Michel Barnier, told an audience in Berlin that an orderly withdrawal was the best Britain could hope for.
“I see no majority for a referendum in the House of Commons,” she confirmed after the event.
Ms Weyand reportedly accused some Remainers of “Cakeism" – a popular expression in Brussels referring to magical thinking whose usage was triggered by Boris Johnson claiming Britain could "have its cake and eat it" after Brexit.
She however clarified that she was not talking about the level of support in the country for another vote, but instead the mathematics in the Commons and political leadership for one.
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The intervention, at a security conference, comes days after European Council president Donald Tusk said there was “no political force and no effective leadership” for another vote with the two main opposition parties committed to respecting the result of the 2016 referendum.
“I have always been with you, with all my heart,” he said, but added: “The facts are unmistakable”.
Mr Tusk as well as European Parliament Brexit coordinator have called on Theresa May to try and reach a cross party consensus to get backing for her deal – welcoming a Labour plan for changes to future relationship.
Speaking in Berlin Ms Weyand said the current political declaration was vague because the UK had not yet decided what kind of future relationship it wanted from with the bloc.
She added that Jeremy Corbyn's offer to Theresa May had triggered and interesting debate and this his proposals deserve to be discussed – the first public statement by the European Commission branch of the EU in the opposition’s proposals.
Despite the pessimism emanating from Brussels over the issue, Labour has however said it would support another public vote if the prime minister refuses to accept their demands for a customs union and close alignment with the single market.
The prime minister’s hands are somewhat tied in how far she can go to embrace Labour’s offer because a softer Brexit is likely to get an extremely hostile reception from her own party. Former party chair Grant Shapps, a critic of the prime minister from the party’s liberal wing, said on Monday that there was “no point winning Labour MPs, by losing Tories”.
But a second referendum would still not be certain with support from the Labour leadership – as a number of Labour MPs have said they would not vote for one in any circumstances, and only around a dozen Tory MPs have said they would support one.


European Parliament chiefs have warned that the backstop in Theresa May’s Brexit deal cannot be renegotiated and urged the EU to intensify planning for a no-deal.
The conference of presidents, the leaders of the parliament’s main groups, said in a resolution adopted behind closed doors on Wednesday afternoon that MEPs would veto any deal without a backstop.
The Parliament is the latest part of the EU to rule out changing the deal struck with the UK in March, following similar statements by the Commission, Council, and a slew of key member states.
The group leaders agreed that “the withdrawal agreement and political declaration are fair and balance and represent, given EU principles, current UK red lines, and the commitments set out in the Good Friday Agreement, the only deal possible to secure an orderly withdrawal from the European Union”.
They also “stressed that renegotiating the backstop was not possible since it is the guarantee that in whatever circumstances there could be no hardening of the border on the island of Ireland.
The Conference reiterated that without a backstop “Parliament would not give its consent to the withdrawal agreement.”
Theresa May is set to come to Brussels on Thursday to discuss further concessions on the agreement with EU leaders.
The level of concessions demanded by Tory eurosceptics appears to be wildly out of line with what the EU is prepared to give, however.
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Rebellious MPs have demanded that Britain essentially have the power to pull out of the backstop, or that it be given a time-limit – two major EU red lines.
The policy is controversial because it will keep the UK tied to the EU customs area even after it leaves in order to prevent a hard border in Northern Ireland.


Brexiteer Kate Hoey has become the first Labour MP who campaigned to leave the EU to suggest she will vote against the deal Theresa May returns from Brussels with.
The remarks from Labour's Vauxhall MP, who campaigned alongside Nigel Farage in the referendum, follow the prime minister's claim that the Brexit negotiations are now in the "endgame".
But Ms Hoey's comments will come as unwelcome news in Downing Street - given Ms May has often relied on Labour Brexiteers to back the government in significant votes related to Britain's exit from the EU.
In a scathing article for the Labour List website, Ms Hoey said the Irish government is "in cahoots with the EU has deliberately made the border an issue and unfortunately our prime minister" and that Ms May's officials had "fallen for it completely".
Taking aim at Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, she said he "has behaved rather shamefully with some of his rhetoric and is clearly intent on becoming a future EU commissioner".
The Labour MP continued: "The EU wants to keep us locked in to their regulations and rules: the Irish government is playing hardball even though it would suffer most if the UK were to leave on WTO rules.
"When will the prime minister speak out and condemn this behaviour? When will she start speaking out in support of British citizens rather than seeming to care more about Irish views? It is this hypocrisy from Dublin that makes it certain that I and many other MPs will not support an agreement with the EU that panders to this kind of behaviour."
Last month the MP Frank Field, another prominent Brexiteer, who resigned Labour whip earlier this year, also recently expressed concern over a deal the prime minister could return with and suggested the UK should join the European Economic Area (EEA) while negotiating a free trade agreement.
In an article for the Guardian, he wrote: "An immediate aim is to unite MPs with a broad range of opinion as possible around this insurance policy. If we can succeed on this front, the Commons could help similarly to unite the country."
Speaking on Tuesday - ahead of a cabinet meeting - the prime minister's effective deputy, David Lidington, claimed the UK and the EU were "almost within touching distance" of a deal, but acknowledged the remaining difference were the "most difficult ones to resolve".


Senior former Conservative cabinet ministers have hinted they will reject the UK’s new Brexit plan in a fresh headache for Boris Johnson, one warning it will “hit manufacturing”.
The proposals – even if they are turned into a deal with the EU – are unlikely to pass in the Commons without the backing of Tories who backed Theresa May’s doomed deal.
But David Gauke, the former justice secretary, attacked the drift to a harder Brexit, with Mr Johnson now aiming for a Canada-style trade agreement instead of aligning with EU rules.
“Parliament will need to be reassured that it is not being asked to nod through a Brexit that comes at an unnecessarily high economic price,” he said.
And Amber Rudd, the former home secretary, went further, saying the new blueprint failed to “support the economy and business” to the extent of Ms May’s rejected agreement.
“My concern with the proposal – let’s not call it a deal yet – the proposal that we have at the moment, is that there is no sign of a level playing field, of regulatory alignment for rest of the country outside of Northern Ireland,” she said.
“That will hit manufacturing, so I’m concerned about that element of it.”
Ms Rudd said she would wait to see the details of the ‘political declaration’ – the non-binding aims for a future trade deal with the EU that will sit alongside any exit agreement – adding: “I’m not giving unconditional support.”
No 10 has refused to set out the text of the declaration, but has signalled it wants to abandon Ms May’s so-called ‘level playing field’ pledges not to water down workers’ rights, or environmental and safety standards.
Academics warned at the weekend that it amounted to a hard Brexit that would knock up to £50bn off the economy and leave everyone in the UK £2,000 worse off.
Both Mr Gauke and Ms Rudd now sit as independents, the former having been sacked for helping to block a no-deal Brexit while Ms Rudd quit the parliamentary party soon afterwards.
Although the focus is on whether Mr Johnson can retain the support of the Democratic Unionist Party and the hardline European Research Group, the votes of the 21 exiled former Tories will also be crucial.
The 19 Labour MPs who have said they will vote for a deal will also drift away if the prime minister refuses to offer protections for the economy and for workers.
The aims of the political declaration also have consequences for the chances of reaching an agreement in Brussels, because the EU is seeking guarantees on the likely need for an Irish backstop.
Michel Barnier, the chief negotiator, told EU ministers that it could offer only an inferior trade agreement to Canada’s unless the UK accepted close alignment to its rules, because of its size and proximity.
The issue will come to a head by Saturday if Mr Johnson presses ahead with weekend vote on his proposals, even in the absence of a legal text agreed with the EU.
No 10 suggested the vote would be on both the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration – with the clock ticking down to the 31 October scheduled exit date.
Ms Rudd also condemned “a whiff of sexism” behind the likely backing of the ERG for Mr Johnson’s Brexit proposals – despite it opposing Ms May’s deal, which had been very similar.
She acknowledged it was difficult to separate out how much the Brexiteers trusted Mr Johnson, as one of their own, in way they never had faith in the former prime minister.
But she said: “I do feel, as a woman who's active in politics myself, that there is a whiff of sexism.”


Far-right groups are threatening to riot over Brexit amid warnings that some of Boris Johnson’s language is “calling to” nationalists.
The Metropolitan Police said it was “ready to share resources across the country” if disorder breaks out at protests planned for Saturday.
A demonstration called by the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) is expected to draw the largest numbers in Westminster, as Brexiteers take to the streets in Manchester, Birmingham and other cities.
The protests were organised amid a surge in anger over parliament’s moves to prevent a no-deal Brexit with a bill that was approved by the House of Lords on Friday.
Extremists using numerous far-right channels on the encrypted Telegram messaging app calling MPs who backed the bill “traitors” and “scum” while planning rallies.
One member of a chat group purporting to contain supporters of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party threatened “Brexit or we burn the country” after a fellow user called for unrest like that seen in Hong Kong.
A member of another group used by Britain First supporters wrote: “I predict a riot, then serious civil unrest until the 31st. Protect your loved ones and property, Britain is about to go in to biblical battle.”
“It’s time to f*** s*** up,” another post read. “Let’s f***ing smash um! Britain take to the streets!”
Another person wrote: “It needs to kick of Saturday big time.”
In the same chat, which includes racist and Islamophobic memes, a user called for “some good old civil unrest”.
In a different group for “patriots”, people were sharing photos of smoke grenades they had bought online to take to the protests.
The Metropolitan Police said it was prepared for the demonstrations and the possibility of further protests in the run-up to Brexit.
“To date, protests have been largely peaceful and we have no intelligence at this time to suggest that will change,” a spokesperson added.
“Our officers are well trained to maintain public order and stand ready to share resources across the country if any disorder breaks out. We will not hesitate to take necessary action against anyone who deliberately chooses to act outside the law.”
Senior police officers have been calling for politicians and other political figures to avoid worsening tensions with inflammatory language.
Martin Hewitt, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, issued a warning over the “incredibly febrile atmosphere”.
“If you’re in a position where you know you’re going to be listened to, you need to be very careful about the language you are using so it doesn’t end up with consequences that weren’t intended,” he urged.
Last month, the head of UK counterterror policing said all public figures should be “bringing society together” as Brexit worsens polarisation.
“We should be really careful about what we say, we should be balanced, because there is no doubt in my mind that it has an effect,” assistant commissioner Neil Basu previously told The Independent.
The prime minister has been forced to defend remarks where he compared Muslim women to “letterboxes” last year after research suggested they caused a 375 per cent rise in Islamophobic hate crimes.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Mr Johnson said the comments had been part of a “strong liberal defence of everybody’s right to wear whatever they want in this country”, and refused to apologise.
In the same session, he characterised a bill proposed by opposition parties to prevent a no-deal Brexit as a move against the “democratic will of the people of the UK”.
Mr Johnson described the proposed law as a “surrender bill” eight times during the session, and the term was then repeated by extremists.
Experts said the prime minister and some other pro-Brexit politicians were “using the language of the far right” and playing into extremist narratives.
Chloe Colliver, who leads the digital research unit at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think-tank, said that by using the phrase “surrender bill” and positioning himself as enacting the “will of the people”, Mr Johnson was “calling successfully to a nationalist interpretation of the Brexit debate”.
“It seems very purposeful to me and it really harks back to the Second World War nostalgia in this debate, which plays powerfully to the far right and nationalist groups,” she told The Independent.
“They don’t understand the mechanisms and decisions being made on their behalf, and that’s a ripe opportunity for these groups to step in with a simple narrative that pits them against everyone else.”
Mr Johnson is currently receiving substantial support from key far-right figures, including former Britain First leader Jayda Fransen, who praised him for “purging the traitors” in his party and called on others to fall behind him.
The operators of Tommy Robinson’s official Telegram channel called on people to “back Boris”, while supporters shared memes depicting him as Winston Churchill.
Ms Colliver warned that if the far right feel Mr Johnson is “in their corner”, it may reduce unrest in the short term but make them feel that their ideals have mainstream support.
She said the political stalemate over Brexit was undermining faith in democratic processes, and being “used to channel violent undemocratic objectives to a newly broad and receptive audience in the UK.”
Dr Joe Mulhall, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, said far-right groups had seized upon Brexit as a nationalist cause and used it to gain mainstream support.
He said the global extreme right-wing had celebrated the result of the 2016 referendum, but then worked the following delays into a “narrative of betrayal” by “elites”.
“Their sense of betrayal could well spill out into anger and violence,” Dr Mulhall said. “They want no deal but if things go terribly it will be blamed on politicians, or the corrupt elite or global powers. Whatever the outcome is, they will be outraged.”


Theresa May’s latest Brexit plans have been thrown into fresh chaos amid claims they will make it all but impossible for the UK to negotiate a trade deal with the US.
Documents circulated to cabinet ministers ahead of a crunch meeting at Chequers reportedly admit that Downing Street's new proposals would “not allow the UK to accommodate” a likely US prerequisite for a deal.
The prime minister hopes to use the cabinet meeting at her countryside retreat on Friday to persuade warring ministers to unite behind her latest plan, but the latest revelations are likely to provoke anger from Brexiteers.
Downing Street played down the row, saying it was “categorically untrue” to suggest the plan would make a trade deal with the US impossible.
However, a spokesperson refused to be drawn on whether it would make such an agreement less likely.
Under the plan drawn up by senior No 10 officials, the UK would effectively remain in the single market for goods by maintaining the same standards as the EU.
Together with an agreement on customs, officials hope this would remove the need for a hard border in Northern Ireland, as goods would not need to be checked.
However, details of the proposals sent to cabinet ministers ahead of the Chequers meeting reportedly admit that maintaining the EU's standards on goods “would not allow the UK to accommodate a likely ask from the US in a future trade deal”, which is that US’s ‘array of standards’ be accepted by Britain.
The admission is likely to prompt major concerns among Brexiteers, who have insisted that any agreement with the EU must not prevent Britain forging new trade deals with other countries.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs, said: "If this correct this is not Brexit. This common rulebook means that we are essentially a vassal state. This would be directly contrary to the prime minister's own assurances. The prime minister should imitate Mr Gove and tear up this paper."
Alamy
A Downing Street spokesperson said it was “categorically untrue” to suggest the proposals would make a trade deal with the US impossible.
They said: “The prime minister has always been clear that we will seek a comprehensive and ambitious trade deal with the US that reflects the strengths of our trading and investment relationship.
"The president himself has always made it clear that he is keen to sit down and talk with the UK about that. The president and prime minister will have an opportunity to talk about it next week.
"It is categorically untrue to suggest that we will not be able to strike a trade deal with the US."
According to The Spectator, the Downing Street plan would see the UK “maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food’.
This would involve Britain making ‘an upfront choice to commit by treaty to ongoing harmonisation with EU rules on goods’.
On services, however, the UK would be free to diverge from EU standards.
The EU has repeatedly said that remaining in part of the single market is not an option, raising fears that Brussels will swiftly dismiss the UK’s latest proposals.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is also said to have told the prime minister the plan is unworkable.
Theresa May travelled to Berlin on Thursday in a bid to convince Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to support behind the plan. A No 10 spokesperson refused to be drawn on the nature of the discussions.


Germany has lined up behind other EU states to warn that a new UK prime minister will not be able to renegotiate the Brexit withdrawal agreement they struck with Theresa May.
Michael Roth, the country's EU affairs minister, warned that there was simply no appetite in the EU to re-open talks on the deal.
His warning – a reiteration of previous EU statements on the matter – comes as Tory leadership contenders line up to pledge changes to Brexit and further talks in Brussels.
"I don't see any chances to renegotiate the package, the withdrawal agreement is the withdrawal agreement, and I don't see any appetite to start new negotiations within the European Union," Mr Roth said on arrival for a regular meeting with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg.
Asked whether he thought the UK was "deluded" on the issue, he said: "I don't want to speculate. But the message of the European Union is crystal clear on this issue."
Other EU ministers had a similar message. Sweden's EU affairs minister Hans Dahlgren said he had been watching the Tory leadership race, telling reporters: "I think our position is clear. This withdrawal agreement is a firm agreement that we stick to. When it comes to the future, the political declaration, we can always accommodate, have a discussion. But on the terms of the withdrawal agreement, that's where we stand."
Asked whether he thought Boris Johnson would make a good prime minister, he replied: "That is not for me to comment."
Arriving at the same meeting, Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay was silent on the matter of further talks, instead reiterating that the UK would continue to cooperate with its neighbours both inside and outside the bloc.
But back in Westminster, the debate is markedly different to the one in Brussels: Mr Johnson, the frontrunner for the Tory leadership, has said he would withhold payment of the £39bn financial settlement in order to force the bloc to the table.
EU leaders will briefly discuss Brexit at a meeting on Thursday and Friday this week, though they are not expected to reach any formal conclusions or release an official statement.
European Council president and European Commission presidents Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker are however expected to publicly comment on the latest developments in Britain. The EU regards the issue as now being one for the UK.


The government will be forced to publish secret legal advice around its Brexit blueprint after cross-party MPs inflicted a humiliating defeat on the prime minister.
MPs backed a binding motion that obliges the government to share attorney general Geoffrey Cox’s guidance on the draft withdrawal agreement with Brussels, including the backstop plan to prevent a hard border in Ireland.
Ministers had hoped to keep the details under wraps, offering MPs only a summary of the opinion from its lawyers, but Labour argued that parliament must have all the facts before it can endorse Theresa May’s plan.
It comes as Downing Street confirmed a draft agreement had been reached with Brussels, which will be discussed at an emergency cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
David Lidington, the prime minister’s de facto deputy, tried to stave off a defeat by saying the government would lay out its position before MPs vote on the final deal.
But Conservative MPs were then forced to abstain on the motion rather than risk defeat from an unlikely alliance of Labour, Tory Brexiteers and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) – which props up Ms May’s government.
DUP Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said his party would have voted with Labour, adding: “If we’re going to make a decision on this it’s a most important decision, then we should know the full implications.
“It should be spelt out to the public – the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the UK should know, is the government binding you to an arrangement which will be impossible to get out of collectively or just for the people of Northern Ireland?”
Labour sought to use an arcane parliamentary device called a “humble address” to access the advice, which it previously used to uncover a string of damaging Brexit impact assessments.
Shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: “At this critical stage, MPs can’t be kept in the dark nor can we risk parliament being bounced into a decision without having all of the facts available.
“Ministers should accept this motion and allow MPs to have an informed debate about the UK’s future relationship with the EU after Brexit.”
Tory Brexiteers from the 60-strong European Research Group (ERG) also launched its own motion to secure the advice, as many Eurosceptic MPs fear being bounced into a deal that maintains close ties with Brussels.
The rival bid was not selected so the ERG MPs vowed to abstain on Labour’s motion – significantly bolstering their cause.
Mr Lidington conceded to “make available to all members of the house, following the conclusion of negotiations and ahead of the meaningful vote, a full, reasoned position statement laying out the government’s both political and also legal position on the proposed withdrawal agreement, and that includes any protocols that might be attached to it”.
He added: “In addition, the attorney general has authorised me to confirm to the house this afternoon that he is ready to assist further by making an oral statement to the house and to take questions from members of the house in the normal way.”
Tory MP Anna Soubry said she had been told to abstain on the vote, and accused the government of allowing Brexiteers to run the country.
Conservative former attorney general Dominic Grieve said publishing the legal advice would be a mistake but said ministers appeared to be setting a “quite disgraceful timetable” to “bulldoze” MPs into supporting the deal without enough information.


Theresa May’s pledge to reach a cross-party consensus to solve the Brexit crisis appears to have fizzled out with no further talks planned.
Downing Street said the prime minister would instead be meeting with “a large number” of her cabinet, both in small groups and in one-to-one conversations.
There are also “no plans” for cabinet members Michael Gove and David Lidington – who have met senior backbenchers from other parties – to hold further talks, a spokesperson said.
Asked about the prime minister’s focus, she added: “Today is about discussing this week with her cabinet colleagues.”
The impasse comes after opposition MPs who emerged from the earlier talks suggested ministers had shown no willingness to compromise on the Brexit red lines.
And it increases the odds that when Ms May presents her plan B to the Commons on Monday, it will simply be a holding statement – rather than including any proposed changes to her deal.
Crucially, the statement can then be amended by supporters of a Final Say referendum, or those who prefer a softer Norway-plus exit, or to try to block the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
The prime minister has spoken with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, despite no date for her to reopen negotiations officially with the European Union.
No 10’s spokeswoman said: “That is just part of her ongoing engagement with the European leaders and you can expect her to continue that type of engagement through the course of the weekend.”

And, asked if Ms May was ruling out a snap general election, after a report that civil servants had been asked to draw up contingency plans, she replied: “Yes.”
In the talks held so far, pro-Brexit Tories have come out the happier, convinced the prime minister will stick to ruling out a customs union, an Article 50 extension or a fresh referendum.
The cabinet talks are likely to confirm it is deeply split between some members urging compromise, while others tell Ms May she must fight on to pass her deal on a second vote.
Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, heightened the pressure by calling for a tougher commitment to crashing out of the EU without an agreement if necessary.
“It’s only when #nodealisbetter than a bad deal” is believed by the EU that we’ll maximise our chance of a deal, she tweeted.
And Arlene Foster, the Democratic Unionist Party leader, dismissed a claim that the DUP were willing to embrace a softer Brexit, provided Northern Ireland will not be treated differently.
“The prime minister is very clear on our position. We have been consistent that for us it is the backstop which needs to be dealt with,” she said.
Although Ms May’s motion can be amended, that cannot happen until a debate on 29 January – and could reveal there is no majority for any alternative course of action.


Boris Johnson’s government is facing further accusations of undermining parliament and the prospect of a fresh legal battle after ignoring a House of Commons motion calling for key Brexit documents to be made public.
Ministers rejected MPs’ demand that they release in full a series of no-deal Brexit impact assessments, along with details of internal discussions about Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue parliament.
Both were included in a motion passed by the House of Commons on Monday in the form of a “humble address” to the Queen, which asked the monarch to order to government to release the files by 11pm on Wednesday.
Instead, the government published only a six-page summary of a “Operation Yellowhammer“ assessment of the risks posed by a no-deal Brexit and refused to release any emails or messages between senior government advisers relating to the suspension of parliament.
Michael Gove, the cabinet office minister, claimed that doing would be illegal and against the “basic principles of fairness”.
The refusal means ministers have flouted the motion passed by the Commons, which requested the release of ”all correspondence and other communications” between nine named government advisers, including Boris Johnson’s top aide, Dominic Cummings, on the subject of proroguing parliament.
It also said ministers must publish “all the documents prepared within Her Majesty’s government since 23 July 2019 relating to Operation Yellowhammer and submitted to the cabinet or a cabinet committee”.
In a letter to former Tory attorney Dominic Grieve, who tabled the motion calling for the documents to be released, Mr Gove said releasing details of private messages risked breaking laws relating to human rights and data protection and criticised the use of the humble address to try to force the release of the correspondence.
He wrote: ”This is an unprecedented, inappropriate, and disproportionate use of this procedure. To name individuals without any regard for their rights or the consequences of doing so goes far beyond any reasonable right of parliament under this procedure.
“These individuals have no right of reply, and the procedure used fails to afford them any of the protections that would properly be in place. It offends against basic principles of fairness and the civil service duty of care towards its employees.”
He added: “Moreover, the motion appears to direct the government to carry out searches that could only be discharged by breaching the legal framework set by parliament itself, whether the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, the Human Rights Act 1998 implementing the European Convention on Human rights, or the Data Protection Act 2018.”
The summary of the Operation Yellowhammer assessments warned that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit:
The failure to abide by the Commons motion is likely to result in another legal battle. The government faces being found to have acted in contempt of parliament when MPs and peers return from the enforced suspension in early October.
On Monday, John Bercow, the Commons speaker, said ministers must comply with the request.
In response to a point of order from Labour MP Stephen Doughty, he told MPs: “[He] has raised a legitimate matter. The simple answer is that the government must comply with the humble address passed by the House.
“That is the reality of the matter. A debate has happened, a decision has been made, and it is incumbent on the government to comply manifestly with what has been decided, the spirit, purpose and content of which are entirely clear.”
Commenting on the government’s response, Mr Doughty told The Independent: “These documents show the shocking impact of a no-deal Brexit on fuel, food prices, medicines and a whole series of other critical parts of national life.
“However, the question must now be asked: where are the rest of the documents? Either the cabinet was taking extraordinarily reckless decisions based on six pages of information, or the government has not provided all the documents on Yellowhammer as specifically required by parliament’s vote on Monday.
On the refusal to release advisers’ correspondence relating to the suspension of parliament, he said: “The excuses given by ministers for not releasing this will not suffice. Understandably they do not want more controversial information coming out before the Supreme Court case on Tuesday. but I am sure that other information will come into the public domain and they will seriously regret this decision.
“Ministers have not complied with the terms of the motion and they could face contempt proceedings whenever parliament next sits – which may be sooner than the government thinks.”
Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrats' Brexit spokesperson, said: “The Tories are as transparent as mud. Refusing to publish communications that will reveal the full extent of the government’s duplicity over the shutting down of parliament, as demanded by MPs, is a slap to the face of our democracy. What are the Tories hiding?"


The European parliament has vowed to block Boris Johnson’s plan to ditch the Irish backstop from the Brexit withdrawal agreement – warning that it is not up for negotiation.
Guy Verhofstadt, chair of the parliament’s Brexit steering group, blasted the new prime minister’s “irresponsible” claims during the Tory leadership contest which he argued had increased the risk of no deal.
After a meeting of the legislature’s steering group, MEPs said in a statement that an orderly exit was “only possible if citizens’ rights, the financial settlement and the backstop, that in all circumstances ensures no hardening of the border on the island of Ireland, safeguards the Good Friday Agreement and protects the integrity of the single market, are guaranteed”.
It noted that any withdrawal agreement would “require the European parliament’s consent”.
Mr Johnson has vowed to ditch the backstop, which Theresa May negotiated as a way of preventing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. He has threatened to withhold payments owed by the UK to the EU to bring the bloc back to the table – but EU leaders have repeatedly said since last year that they will not change the agreement.
Commenting after the meeting, Mr Verhofstadt, who represents the parliament in Brexit discussions, turned his fire on Mr Johnson and the Tory leadership contest.
“Politicised language from the Conservative leadership raising the spectre of a no-deal Brexit is unhelpful, irresponsible and only increases the risks of a catastrophic severance, which could destabilise the global economy,” he said.
Recalling comments the new prime minister had made, he said: “Boris Johnson will find the European parliament an open and constructive partner. I look forward to alleviating Mr Johnson’s concerns regarding the imminent accession of Turkey to the EU, following the claims of the Leave campaign, whilst explaining the EU has no rules on the packaging of kippers in the UK.”
Mr Verhofstadt said the withdrawal agreement was “not up for renegotiation” but repeated the longstanding EU position that a separate accord spelling out plans for the future relationship could be added to soften Brexit – with something like a customs union or single market membership.
Also speaking after the steering group meeting European Commission chief negotiator Michel Barnier said the EU would be ready for no deal.

“It’s a very important moment for Brexit,” he said. “We look forward to hearing what the new prime minister Boris Johnson wants, what are the choices of the UK.
“Is it an orderly Brexit? This is the choice, the preference of the EU and we have worked for an orderly Brexit all along the last three years. Is it a no-deal Brexit? A no-deal Brexit will never be, never, the choice of the EU. But we are prepared.
“And for an orderly Brexit we will work along the next few weeks and months with the new UK government in the best possible way in a very constructive spirit to facilitate the ratification of the withdrawal agreement.”
The European Commission reiterated its longstanding position on Tuesday after Mr Johnson’s election as Tory leader, saying the EU would stand by the withdrawal agreement and that its view was “clear”. One EU commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, also published a blog post criticising politicians like Mr Johnson for “cheap promises, simplified visions, blatantly evident incorrect statements”.


The European parliament’s outspoken Brexit chief is coming to Britain next week to knock on doors in the European elections on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.
Guy Verhofstadt, who is himself seeking re-election as a Belgian liberal MEP, will hop on the Eurostar from Brussels to join Lib Dem canvassers on the doorstep on Friday.
While Mr Verhofstadt is best known in Britain for being the parliament’s voice in Brexit talks, the former Belgian prime minister is also leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe​ group in the European parliament, in which the Lib Dems sit.
His visit to the UK is a potential boost for the party, who are locked in competition with the Green Party and Change UK for the hardcore Remainer vote. All three parties have argued that people who want a final say referendum should vote for them – but the vote is in danger of being split.
Mr Verhofstadt, who recently warned that a “Brexit revolt” was underway in Britain, is also expected to meet the colourful Remain campaigners who have been more or less permanently camped outside the Houses of Parliament for months.
A source close to the EU liberal leader said he would use the seat of Britain’s parliament as a backdrop to launch a 10-point plan for the future of Europe.
He made headlines recently after he accused the Conservatives and Labour of putting politics ahead of the interests of the UK. He also caused a stir after accusing Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage of being a “fifth columnist” fan of Vladimir Putin.
But despite Mr Verhofstadt’s closeness to the Lib Dems, there could be some awkward moments on the visit. He has emphatically backed Theresa May’s Brexit deal – which the Lib Dems are against – and opposed the extension of Article 50 which allowed the UK to take part in the elections in the first place.
Last month during a debate in the European parliament he also raised eyebrows and irked some British Remain campaigners by warning that “only Nigel Farage can save us” – arguing that the UK should not be allowed a further Brexit delay.
But with British voters now almost certain to be asked to cast votes in the continent-wide contest, he appears to be making the best of the situation and campaigning for the UK’s liberal party to win as many votes as possible.
As leader of the liberal group ALDE, Mr Verhofstadt is responsible for negotiations with Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! party, whose MEPs he is trying to convince to join after the elections.
He is also expected to hold talks at some stage, though not necessarily during his visit to the UK, with representatives from British new centrist party Change UK in a bid to get them to join ALDE – or whatever the group becomes after the elections. The party has not said which group it will sit in after the elections, with the centre-right European People’s Party also seen in Brussels as a possible natural destination for them.
Membership of ALDE for Change UK could be made harder by the fact the Lib Dems are already members – given the lack of cooperation and rivalry between the two groups.
Friends of Mr Verhofstadt says he has his eye on becoming president of the European parliament after the contest – meaning the leadership of the group could pass on to someone else, possibly from the French delegation of Emmanuel Macron’s party.
One Lib Dem source told The Independent: “We’re looking forward to Guy and other Lib Dems from across Europe joining us to campaign for the EU elections. Our message is clear: a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to stop Brexit.”


Jeremy Corbyn faces a revolt from Labour MPs backing a new Brexit referendum, who will launch a drive to rewrite his proposals for the next phase of withdrawal.
The move from three MPs to redraft his strategy, so it ties Labour unambiguously to giving Britain a Final Say referendum, once again thrusts the party’s deep Brexit divisions into the spotlight.
Hours earlier four other Labour MPs had joined Tory counterparts at a press conference, with one accusing Mr Corbyn of “standing in the way” of a people’s vote.
While Mr Corbyn’s office declined to comment on Thursday, the leader’s social media outriders launched a counter-attack on the Labour rebels whom they accused of dishonesty.
Meanwhile doubt has emerged over the viability of a cross-party push by MPs to delay the UK’s withdrawal in order to avoid leaving the EU without a deal on 29 March.
And in Davos, chancellor Philip Hammond warned that a no-deal Brexit – something Theresa May has refused to rule out – would be a “betrayal” of the 2016 referendum result, underlining the split at the heart of the Conservative cabinet.
On Tuesday Ms May will give a statement and table a motion setting out the next steps of her Brexit plan, but because of previous measures approved in the Commons, all MPs will also be able to table amendments containing proposals for what they think the government should do next.
Mr Corbyn has already submitted the Labour Party’s amendment, but it disappointed many backers of the People’s Vote campaign for a fresh referendum because it failed to fully commit the party to backing one.
It would require ministers to find time for MPs only to “consider and vote on options” including renegotiating the withdrawal agreement and also then “legislating to hold a public vote” on any deal that successfully passes through the Commons.
But The Independent understands three Labour MPs – Ian Murray, Angela Smith and Mike Gapes – have now taken the unusual step of tabling amendments to their own party leader’s amendment, in a bid to remould Mr Corbyn’s approach so it backs a new vote immediately.
Mr Murray’s would commit the government to holding a referendum offering a choice between a Brexit deal that guarantees “full participation in the single market”, as previously promised by Labour, and remaining in the EU.
The amendment submitted by Mr Gapes would “allow the British public an opportunity to have a final say” on leaving the EU, while Ms Smith’s would see ministers legislate for a vote on “whether or not the UK should leave”.
The Independent has run its own Final Say campaign to try and secure a new referendum, with more than 1.1 million people having signed the petition.
While neither Mr Corbyn’s amendment, nor the three amendments to it, stand much chance of being passed in the Commons, the joint push from Labour MPs speaks to a growing frustration on the party’s backbenchers over the ambiguity of the leader’s position as the Brexit clock ticks down to 29 March.
At an event on the steps of parliament earlier in the day Labour and Tory MPs announced they would not table a cross-party amendment for a second referendum because it stood no chance of passing the Commons without Mr Corbyn’s support.
Luciana Berger said: “Regrettably the Labour leadership won’t commit to an achievable policy and yet we know that the majority of Labour voters, supporters and members want a final say on any Brexit deal.
“Yet at a time when Labour should be championing a people’s vote, the leadership avoids answering that call.”
She added: “There are millions of young people in our country that supported the Labour Party at the last general election. Over two million of them were under the age of 18 in 2016. They would today now have a vote. And so many whom I speak to cannot understand why Labour is standing in the way of the younger generation having a say on this.”
Chuka Umunna, who was also at the event, argued that party politics should take a back seat, saying: “The choice is stark and there is no way of escaping from it or postponing making a decision because we are out of time – do you want to facilitate some form of Brexit or give people the power to stop it?”
Meanwhile, Chris Leslie told The Independent: “There really isn’t any excuse now for Labour not fulfilling the conference promise for a people’s vote. An election hasn’t been triggered, so we should be at that stage now.”
Polling indicates Labour voters and members are in favour of a new vote, but the leadership has had to walk a fine line with many constituencies in heartland areas having heavily backed Brexit.
A separate group of Labour MPs strongly oppose a new referendum, including frontbencher Melanie Onn, who wrote to her constituents saying she would quit her role in Mr Corbyn’s top team if the leadership did back a new vote.
Following the event in the morning Corbyn-backing commentator Paul Mason said the intervention was “daft”, and accused the Labour rebels of “preparing a doomed centrist party”.
Columnist Owen Jones argued that a second referendum amendment would not get through because Labour MPs in Leave seats and Tory MPs would oppose it.
He added, addressing Mr Umunna on Twitter: “You either don’t know the facts or you’re being dishonest. Which is it?”
The amendment that seems most likely to get thorough the Commons on Tuesday is that written by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, with cross-party backing, that seeks to extend Article 50, delaying Brexit to avoid a no-deal scenario.
But concerns have emerged that legislation it requires to enact its aim could get bogged down and even blocked outright in the House of Lords.


Jeremy Corbyn has claimed the free movement of people would be "open for negotiation" if a Labour government was negotiating Brexit with Brussels.
The Labour leader dismissed suggestions he was "staunchly against" one of the key principles of the European Union – the ability to live and work freely in the 28 member states.
At the 2017 snap election, Labour's manifesto said "freedom of movement will end" when Britain exits the bloc, but today Mr Corbyn appeared to soften this stance.
In an interview, Mr Corbyn also said his party does not currently support Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement Bill without any fundamental changes as the prime minister braces for yet another defeat in the Commons.
And he appeared to give a warmer endorsement of a Final Say referendum, but Labour sources played down Mr Corbyn's comments claiming there was no shift in policy.
Pressed on the issue of free movement, Mr Corbyn the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I'm not staunchly against freedom of movement. Our manifesto said the European system would not apply if you're not in the European Union – but I quite clearly recognise there has to be a lot of movement of workers.
"Ask any company in manufacturing or any other sector how much they need and rely on workers from Europe and indeed the other way around."
Told there are countries outside the EU that have chosen to retain free movement, Mr Corbyn said: "That would be part of our negotiations with the EU."
He added: "Part of our negotiations, the extent to which workers would transfer from one country to the other and what the needs for it would be."
Asked if Labour would keep free movement as a non-member of the EU, Mr Corbyn replied: "It would be open for negotiation the level of movement of people between Europe and this country if we're a non-member of the EU."
He was also repeatedly pressed for clarity on Labour's Brexit stance ahead of the European elections this week – and interviewer Andrew Marr presented Mr Cobryn with a series of conflicting views from members of the shadow cabinet.
Asked if the Labour election slogan was "Vote Labour, get Brexit", Mr Corbyn said: "I think what would be a fair assessment would be to say Vote Labour, challenge austerity and guarantee living standards for the future, not a no-deal exit from the European Union which is all that's being offered by the Tory right and, in a sense, by the Tory party."
Mr Corbyn reiterated a second referendum should be an option on the table to respond to what emerges from parliament, although added MPs have yet to reach agreement.
He was also pushed on what he meant when saying "option", to which he replied: "We would want a vote in order to decide what the future would be, so yes."
Asked if a second referendum would be disastrous, Mr Corbyn replied: "No, I don't think anything like that is disastrous but I think it has to be an opportunity for public debate and public discussion, but it has to be about something and that's why I have made the point clear about a customs union and trade and rights protection."


Jeremy Hunt has vowed to “cease all discussions” with Brussels at the end of September if it has failed to budge on Brexit and let the UK crash out of the EU a month later.
In a dramatic ramping up of his Brexit threats, the foreign secretary pledged a comprehensive no-deal plan by the end of August, with all civil service leave cancelled.
And he said, of the new 30 September deadline: “If my judgement is that there is no deal to be done, I will immediately cease all discussions with the European Union and focus the whole country’s attention on no deal preparations.”
The move is a clear attempt to outflank Boris Johnson, who remains the clear favourite to win the Tory leadership race after his vow to leave the EU on Halloween “deal or no deal”.
Mr Hunt said he would allow only three weeks for fresh talks with the European Commission after his no-deal Brexit plan was published at the end of August.
And he said: “If there is no engagement on this deal, if it is apparent that the Commission is simply not interested in negotiating, if there is no willingness to tackle the shortcomings of backstop then there will be no kicking the can down the road and we will intensify and finalise our preparations to leave without a deal.
“So from the start of my premiership, I will work on the basis we are leaving on 31 October without a deal unless the Commission changes its position.”
Giving a speech in London, Mr Hunt denied his new strategy was a “take it or leave it” threat to the EU, insisting talks could take place during late July and August.
However, there will be no new Commission in place until the autumn – and the EU has repeatedly insisted the divorce deal, including the flashpoint Irish backstop issue, cannot be renegotiated.
There is not even a European Council planned until the middle of October, at which EU leaders would be able to sign off on any changes, even if they did back down.
Mr Hunt said he would also order the Treasury to have a “no-deal Brexit Budget” ready for delivery in the first week of September – something Mr Johnson is also planning.
He confirmed a no-deal spending splurge worth almost £20bn, including compensating fishermen and farmers for having to pay new tariffs at a cost of £6bn.
Corporation tax would be slashed to just 12.5 per cent, at an estimated cost of £13 billion a year, regardless of whether the UK leaves the EU without an agreement.
Fresh criticism came from Philip Hammond, a chancellor certain to be sacked when Theresa May leaves on 24 July, who pointed out his “war chest” would be needed to mitigate a crash-out Brexit.
“The “fiscal firepower” we have built up in case of a no-deal Brexit will only be available for extra spending if we leave with an orderly transition,” Mr Hammond tweeted.
 “If not, it will all be needed to plug the hole a no-deal Brexit will make in the public finances.”


Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson has urged the so-called “Gaukeward squad” of pro-European Tory former ministers to “stand up and be counted” on Brexit – because she fears not enough of them will try to stop Boris Johnson crashing the UK out of the EU without a deal.
Ms Swinson said the coming weeks represent a “big test” for Conservative MPs who recognise the risk of no deal but have so far held back from rebellion.
Without naming names, she made clear that the group included not only those walked out of the cabinet rather than serve under Mr Johnson (Philip Hammond, David Gauke and Rory Stewart) but also others who took ministerial posts despite previous misgivings about EU withdrawal (Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan).
Speaking to The Independent less than two weeks after being elected Sir Vince Cable’s successor, she confirmed that she has been in contact with Tory former ministers who quit on Mr Johnson’s election. She has also held discussions with potential defectors who could eliminate his single-seat working majority at a stroke by crossing the floor in the run-up to the scheduled date of Brexit on 31 October.
With pro-EU Tories such as Phillip Lee and Margot James openly mulling quitting the party over Mr Johnson’s leadership, many in Westminster expect defections timed for maximum impact during conference season.
Ms Swinson confirmed she has been in discussion with “people who share our values”, though she dismissed suggestions that she was holding out the offer of a peerage as a lure to potential switchers.
Asked whether she was planning to unveil defectors in an “autumn surprise” bombshell at September’s Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth, she would say only: “I’m hopeful to grow the parliamentary party further.”
Meanwhile, anti-Brexit MPs from all parties are continuing to hold talks about possible parliamentary mechanisms to stop the new prime minister forcing no-deal through on Halloween. They also want to establish the option of a Final Say referendum.
A series of crunch divisions – including a possible no-confidence vote to bring down the government – is expected when the Commons returns from its summer break in September.
And with Mr Johnson’s working majority reduced to just one by Lib Dem victory in Thursday’s Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, the result of the votes on which the country’s future hangs will rest on the decisions of a few wavering MPs.
Ms Swinson said: “I think it’s incumbent on people who in good faith have tried to get a deal through to recognise now that that is not where the current prime minister is heading. They are now faced with the prospect of having to push through a no-deal Brexit which they know will be a disaster and they need to put the national interest ahead of their personal and party interest.
“I’m confident that some will stand up and be counted, but I don’t think there is any guarantee that enough will. So it is important that every MP realises the power of the vote that they have.
“A lot of Tory MPs have to be critically examining their consciences, particularly some who have been very critical about no-deal and have now accepted ministerial roles. I think they have to think long and hard about what path they are trying to set this country on.
Speculation is rife that Mr Johnson, buoyed by a “Boris bounce” for Tories in the polls, may call an early election to secure the majority he needs to get his Brexit plans through parliament.
But Ms Swinson said she had no fear of a snap poll, in which she said her party could potentially win “hundreds” of seats and become the largest group in the Commons on a Stop Brexit platform.
She has already ruled out a coalition with Mr Johnson or Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn in such circumstances, but said she was ready to explore options for a government of national unity with centrist pro-European MPs from all sides of the House.
“Absolutely there are other people in other parties who we have already worked with on the issue of Brexit, where it might be possible to work on a broader coalition across different parties or a government of national unity-type scenario,” she said.
“There are like-minded people who share our values who we could be working with, but a strong Liberal Democrat party needs to be at the heart of that.”
Having gained her first by-election scalp less than a fortnight after becoming leader, Ms Swinson was bullish about Lib Dem prospects, telling The Independent: “There’s no limit to my ambitions. The message from the polling we have is that hundreds of seats are in play for the Liberal Democrats now.”
Ms Swinson said Brecon – where Lib Dems unseated the Tories thanks in part to Greens and Plaid Cymru standing aside in a “Remain Alliance” – had “stopped the ‘Boris bounce’ within days of him taking over”.
She said she was open to future co-operation with other Remain parties, but insisted this would be on a “bespoke” basis, depending on circumstances in individual seats, rather than in a formal pact. And she noted that in “the vast majority” of cases, the Remain candidate best placed to win would be a Lib Dem.
Despite Mr Corbyn’s recent move towards a clearer pro-referendum stance, Ms Swinson held out no prospect of Lib Dems standing aside to help Labour beat Tories in seats such as Dover – where MP Charlie Elphicke faces sexual assault charges, which he denies – or Uxbridge, where there have been calls for a Remain alliance to kick Mr Johnson out of the Commons.
“If you want to be able to have an election where voters have a chance to back someone who will try to stop Brexit, clearly the Liberal Democrat candidate will fit that bill,” she said. “It’s not at all clear that a Labour candidate will.”
While polling suggests Mr Johnson is winning supporters back from Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, Ms Swinson said the shift to the right he has executed to do so is driving “One Nation, small-l liberal Conservatives” towards her party.
“The old rules of politics are being rewritten,” she said. “They are changing. I am a candidate to be the next prime minister and I look at Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn and I am determined that our country has a better alternative. I could do a better job than either of them.”
Accusing the prime minister of “reckless irresponsibility” over the potential damage no-deal Brexit could do to the economy, public services and the NHS, she said: “He doesn’t really care, Boris.
“His whole approach is characterised by what is in the interests of Boris Johnson. If it gets him elected leader of the Conservative party, it’s fine by him. People are going to think twice.”
Liberal Democrats are on an election footing, raising funds and ramping up campaigning in expectation of an early poll, she said.
“We want to make the most of the opportunity we have to win potentially hundreds of seats,” she said. “If it comes to an election up against Boris Johnson, I say ‘Bring it on’.”


Parliament Live
Theresa May’s team are in behind-closed-door talks in a bid to secure the support of up to 20 Labour MPs for the prime minister’s troubled Brexit deal.
Ministers are said to be negotiating with the MPs from Leave-backing seats, as pressure intensifies on Ms May to secure backing for her twice-defeated plan.
With just four days to go until the vote, the Labour Brexiteers have demanded that parliament’s right to shape Britain’s future relations with the EU be cemented into law.
Attempts to woo the support of Jeremy Corbyn’s MPs have so far largely failed, but if efforts succeed then the Labour backing could neutralise an expected rebellion of hardcore Tory Eurosceptic MPs.
It comes as senior ministers also held “significant” talks with the Northern Irish DUP in a bid to lock in their support for the big vote on Tuesday, while more Tory MPs came out in support of Ms May’s deal as the clock ticks down to Brexit day on 29 March.










Up to now Ms May’s efforts to win over Labour Brexiteers to her deal have fallen short, as her £1.6m fund for Leave-voting towns in England was met with mockery, while a separate package to protect workers’ rights persuaded neither MPs nor trade unions.
A handful of Labour MPs are thought to want to be more certain that the deal will pass before publicly backing it, but a second key problem is trust, with others unwilling to accept assurances that a new Tory PM will not ditch promises over employment rights a few months down the line.
One Labour MP involved told The Independent: “If we get the assurances we want, then up to 20 Labour MPs could back her when the vote comes back.
“And it means that even if she is ousted by her own MPs, then we have those assurances laid down in law.”
Labour Leavers want ministers to give legal force to commitments on employment rights and standards that currently sitting in the Brexit political declaration, and also to provide fixed dates on which parliament will be consulted on them.
Another Labour MP said: “Parliament should have an opportunity to be able to express views on all of the different aspects – that was said, it should not be a problem – but it never materialised in writing.
“What colleagues were looking for was something much more definitive from the prime minister.”
The MP added: “It could be along those lines because that was one aspect that was supposed to be attractive to a number of colleagues.”
MPs have overwhelmingly rejected the prime minister’s deal twice – first by 230 votes and then again by 149 on Tuesday – but the PM is hoping one more push could take it over the line.
Ms May had called Labour MPs personally ahead of the second vote on her deal on Tuesday, but still suffered a historic defeat, with only three backing the deal.
But the potential to win Labour support is clear. For example, 18 of Mr Corbyn’s MPs defied his will to ensure a second referendum was not backed by parliament this week, five of whom were frontbenchers who later resigned.
Mr Corbyn had ordered his MPs to abstain but shadow ministers Yvonne Fovargue, Emma Lewell-Buck and Justin Madders, plus party whip Stephanie Peacock, all voted against the motion and then quit.
Stoke-on-Trent North MP Ruth Smeeth, a parliamentary aide to deputy leader Tom Watson, also resigned.
Ms Lewell-Buck told her local paper: “If it comes down to either voting for Theresa May’s deal, having no deal or not leaving then I’ll end up voting for her deal, because I’ll be backed into a corner.”
Six Labour MPs also helped Ms May block a bid from a cross-party group to strip the government of control of the Brexit process, something which had been expected to pass.
On Friday, it emerged that chancellor Philip Hammond is leading government talks with the DUP in a bid to win their support for the deal, prompting speculation there could be financial incentives for the party to back the plan.
When the DUP agreed to prop up Ms May’s administration in the Commons after the 2017 election, the party negotiated more than £1.5bn in extra spending for Northern Ireland over 2018-19.
Money in the agreement, and potentially the support of the party’s 10 MPs for Ms May, is set to end in June, creating the opportunity for its leader Arlene Foster to negotiate new terms, with the government’s main ask likely to be safe passage of her Brexit deal.
Following top level discussions on Friday, which also involved Cabinet Office minister David Lidington, environment secretary Michael Gove and chief whip Julian Smith, DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said there had been “a constructive dialogue”.
Asked if extra cash for Northern Ireland had been discussed with Philip Hammond, Mr Dodds said: “The chancellor of the exchequer is obviously a key member of the government, but he is also responsible for HMRC and the whole issue of their involvement in customs and other regulatory issues is a key concern for us.”
He added: “We are not discussing cash in these discussions.”
In a further sign of the weakening opposition from Eurosceptic Tories, Esther McVey, who quit the cabinet over Ms May’s deal, indicated she would now back it.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast: “The element now is that people will have to take a bad deal rather than no deal.”


Labour MPs are blitzing Jeremy Corbyn with demands for a U-turn that would see him throw his weight behind a fresh Brexit referendum before a general election.
The whips’ office is receiving “dozens of phone calls”, The Independent understands – reflecting the “almost unanimous” support amongst rank-and-file MPs for a Final Say vote to come first.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, became the latest big-hitter to argue for a referendum, joining Tom Watson, the deputy leader and – privately – shadow chancellor John McDonnell and Keir Starmer, the Brexit spokesman.
However, Mr Corbyn is standing firm, using a major speech to claim he is “champing at the bit” for an election – as soon as the threat of a no-deal Brexit has been lifted.
The issue will come to a head within weeks, if Boris Johnson is forced to secure an extension to the Article 50 process as soon as the 19 October deadline set by the Benn Act is passed.

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Speaking on the BBC, Ms Thornberry said: “My concern about if we had a general election is it would be a kind of quasi-referendum, that it would be all about in or out, what kind of deal.
“So to a certain extent I can see the sense in trying to have a referendum first. But it’s really just a question of how can we do that in practice.”
Owen Smith, the former Labour leadership contender, went further, telling The Independent: “It would be the height of folly for Labour to agree to an election before Brexit is resolved
“It would let Boris Johnson off the hook he has hung himself on and allow him to play the martyr in a contest that would only really focus on Brexit.
“All the polling suggests Labour would lose badly in such election, so why on earth would we dance to Johnson’s tune and risk letting down the people who need to a progressive government in Westminster?”
Another Labour MP said: “Dozens of Labour MPs are phoning the whips to say they believe a second referendum should be held first. It is the almost unanimous view.
“I assume that is the message being passed onto the leadership and, of course, Keir Starmer and John McDonnell – someone who is close to Jeremy – think the same way.
“At the very least, Jeremy has got to take that into consideration before he forces us into a vote for an election that will split the party.”
However, it is still unclear how a Final Say referendum could be delivered, even if Labour explicitly backs it.
It would require Mr Johnson to be toppled in a vote of no confidence and replaced by a so-called “government of national unity” to pass the necessary legislation.
However, those cross-party talks collapsed over the failure to identify a caretaker prime minister – with Labour insisting it must be Mr Corbyn, while the Liberal Democrats and sacked former Tories say he is unacceptable.
Speaking in Northampton, the Labour leader told the prime minister: “Take no deal off the table and then let’s have the election,” promising a referendum would follow if Labour won.


Labour has demanded that Theresa May publishes the full legal advice on her Brexit deal and Irish backstop proposal, as concerns mount the government will publish only a summary.
Writing to the Cabinet Office minister David Lidington, the party’s shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer is now seeking an “urgent assurance” that all advice handed to ministers will be made available to MPs in the next couple of days.
Sir Keir made clear the Commons “will accept nothing short” of the legal advice already presented to cabinet, adding: “A legal summary is clearly not sufficient and will not comply with the unanimous decision made by the House of Commons.”
It comes after Labour’s successful motion earlier this month in the Commons which required the government to publish its full confidential legal advice on the withdrawal agreement – agreed by the EU27 on Sunday.
In his letter, Sir Keir wrote: “During the debate it was made clear that the government accepted this limited and reasonable request. The speaker also confirmed the decision taken by the House was binding.”
He continued: “I’m writing to seek your urgent assurance that the government will comply with the motion in full and within the next couple of days.
“At this crucial stage parliament must be given the necessary information to know precisely what has been agreed to and what is being asked for a vote on.”
Sir Keir’s concerns were raised after the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – in response to a question in the Lords – appeared to confirm that the government intended to publish only a legal summary, rather than the full advice given to ministers by the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox.
Speaking in the upper chamber, Lord Keen, an MoJ spokesperson, said: ”The government recognises the legitimate desire in parliament, from members on all sides and both Houses, to understand the legal implications of the final withdrawal agreement.
“The government will therefore make available to all members of parliament a full, reasoned position statement, setting out the government’s agreed legal position on the agreement, including the Irish backstop proposals.”
The call from Labour follows the prime minister’s announcement on Monday that the “meaningful vote” will take place on Tuesday 11 December, at the close of five days of debates.


Boris Johnson could bypass a law stopping him from delivering a no-deal Brexit by exploiting a major loophole in the legislation, a legal expert has claimed.
Jolyon Maugham, a barrister and anti-Brexit campaigner, said there was "a flaw" in the so-called Benn Act, passed by parliament earlier this month, that could force MPs opposed to no-deal to take "counter-measures".
The loophole means that the prime minister would be able to lawfully take Britain out of the EU without a deal even if MPs had voted for an agreement, Mr Maugham said.
Under the terms of the Benn Act, Mr Johnson must ask the EU for a further delay to Brexit if MPs have not approved an exit deal by 19 October. If a deal is approved, the duty to request an extension would be overridden.
However, there is no legal obligation on the government to actually implement the terms of the deal, even if MPs have approved it. Mr Maugham suggested that Mr Johnson could therefore simply refuse to bring forward the Withdrawal Bill, which is needed to implement the deal in law.
In that situation, MPs would have approved a deal but it would not have been formally ratified in law, meaning the UK would leave the EU on 31 October without a deal in place.
The suggestion prompted speculation that Mr Johnson could tell Eurosceptic Tory MPs in the European Research Group (ERG) to vote for a deal while privately promising that he would not implement it. The prime minister hosted a dozen Tory MPs at Chequers on Friday.
Mr Maugham said the 2018 EU Withdrawal Act lays out "further obligations" that the government must meet before a deal can be fully ratified, including a new law implementing the agreement.
He wrote: "Summing up, if the Commons approves the withdrawal agreement but these further obligations are not satisfied before 31 October 2019, then two consequences follow. First, the Benn Act will not apply to require the PM to request an extension from the EU. And, second, we will leave with No Deal.
"So, imagine the PM says privately to the ERG ‘support my withdrawal agreement and I will deliver no-deal.’ In those circumstances, with the help of some Labour MPs, the Commons might approve even Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement
"The PM would thus have escaped the obligation in the Benn Act to request an extension and could deliver no-deal."
It follows reports that Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson's top adviser, has told government aides that ministers could suspend parliament again in October if the Supreme Court, which will hear an appeal this week, rules that the original suspension was unlawful. No10 sources insisted the comment was "quite clearly a joke".
Mr Maugham speculated that Mr Johnson could suspended parliament again once MPs had voted in favour of a Brexit deal, thereby bypassing the Benn Act but denying his opponents the opportunity to pass further legislation blocking no-deal.
The barrister said he had discussed the loophole with MPs and urged them to take "counter-measures". This should include refusing to vote for any Brexit deal before 19 October, he said, adding: "Those who want the Withdrawal Agreement should refuse on the basis that, by voting for it, they may well be delivering No Deal."
He said Mr Johnson would then be forced to request a Brexit extension until 31 January, leaving plenty of time for the withdrawal agreement to be approved and fully ratified, if MPs agreed to it.


MPs are far more likely to reject any Brexit deal if they are denied the chance to amend it in a proper “meaningful vote”, Theresa May has been warned.
A controversial move to only allow the Commons to accept or reject an agreement with the EU – preventing any amendments – will backfire by increasing opposition, Tory rebel Dominic Grieve predicted.
“If the government tries to pursue the route they are opting for, it is far more likely that the deal is likely to be rejected,” the former attorney general told an inquiry by MPs.
“You are confronted with an all-or-nothing choice – and you will not be able to go on and talk about anything else until you have rejected the deal.”
Mr Grieve – whose revolt, last December, won the “meaningful vote” – called for the debate to last 4 or 5 days, to let every MP “have their say”.
And he warned they would be “much more hostile” if they were denied the chance to make amendments until after “the guillotine has fallen” and the deal approved.
“To go back on this, or to try to avoid it, would be wrong – and it would be a big mistake,” he said.
The comments come after Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, was accused of breaking an earlier pledge, in a letter sent to the Commons procedure committee last week.
MPs had been told they would be able to bring forward an amendment requiring a Final Say referendum on the outcome of the talks, or perhaps to keep the UK in the EU single market or customs union.
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But, in the letter, Mr Raab warned amendments would only be taken after a decisive vote on the main motion and, if the motion was defeated, might only be considered “points of view”.
The letter said: “Amendments – even those which may not intend to affect approval – may actually result in the government being unable to ratify the withdrawal agreement.
“It is important, however, to recognise the need ultimately for the House to consider the question that is in reality before the UK – whether or not to accept the deal that the government has negotiated with the EU.”
The prime minister already faces a daunting task to win parliamentary approval for her deal – even if she can unlock the talks, which remain deadlocked over the Irish border “backstop”.
Labour has vowed to vote against, unless six strict tests are met, and her strategy has triggered Tory protests over both the backstop and the Chequers plan for future trading rules with the EU.
Fifty Conservative MPs have joined the “StandUp4Brexit” campaign, demanding the hard Brexit first promised by Ms May, instead of her attempt to abide by the EU “rule book” on goods.
The procedure committee has launched an inquiry into the arrangements for the vote, which is unlikely to take place until nearly Christmas – or even next year.
Mr Grieve suggested, as a compromise, that MPs could vote on motions to make clear the Commons’ view on aspects of Brexit, without those being binding on the main motion.


Theresa May faced protests from MPs of all parties and from business leaders after unveiling a “plan B” Brexit plan virtually identical to the one that crashed to a record defeat last week.
The prime minister was accused of refusing to accept the reality of the crushing rejection of her plan, after vowing to again seek changes to the Irish border backstop – despite the EU repeatedly insisting it will not budge.
Business leaders also warned the statement was “another bleak day”, as it took the UK one step closer to the disaster of crashing out of the EU with no agreement on 29 March.
In the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn attacked “groundhog day”, while senior Tories warned it was “like last week’s vote never happened” and that the UK was being turned “into a laughing stock”.
The prime minister immediately faced a fresh threat with a demand she grants her ministers a free vote on a backbench move to thwart a no-deal Brexit, or face dozens of ministerial resignations.
The Independent was told that Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, has made the call over parliament’s attempt, next week, to force the government to seek an extension to the Article 50 process.
Put forward by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, with support from ex-Tory ministers, it would give parliament the power to put forward its own bill, ordering the extension until the end of 2019, unless a deal is passed by the end of February.
The Tories have yet to announce whether they will whip their MPs against the Cooper plan – which is thought to be supported by large numbers of ministers determined to block a no-deal.
Labour also tabled its own amendment, confirming what Keir Starmer announced at the weekend – that its own Brexit plan and support for a Final Say referendum are the only remaining options.
In the chamber, Ms May claimed “three key changes” to her rejected deal – offering a greater say for parliament over future trade talks, stronger protections on workers’ rights and the environment, and movement on the backstop.
However, the first two were promised last week and, on the vexed issue of the backstop, she offered no new thinking on how to break the deadlock.
Her spokesman said afterwards that she would seek further changes on fears about its “permanence”, but did not pretend that the EU is about to be presented with fresh ideas.
Many think the prime minister’s plan is a vote, next week, allowing MPs to lay down their detailed objections to the backstop – which can then be presented to the EU as an ultimatum.
Instead, Ms May won some plaudits by announcing she was finally bowing to pressure to waive the £65 fee for EU citizens to apply to stay in the UK after Brexit. Those who have already applied will be reimbursed.
The prime minister also raised eyebrows with her strongest attack yet on those calling for a fresh Brexit referendum, warning it would “damage social cohesion”.
Her aides denied she was suggesting there would be violence if it went ahead, arguing she feared the “bond of trust”, or the “covenant” between politicians and voters would be broken.
On the backstop, Ms May said: “Despite the changes we have previously agreed, there remain two core issues: the fear that we could be trapped in it permanently; and concerns over its potential impact on our Union if Northern Ireland is treated differently from the rest of the UK.”
She would hold further talks with MPs – “including in the DUP” – on possible changes, adding: “I will then take the conclusions of those discussions back to the EU.”
Mr Corbyn protested that her pledge to seek a cross-party consensus had been “exposed as a PR sham”, telling her: “There was no flexibility; there were no negotiations; nothing had changed.”
“What makes her think that what she tried to renegotiate in December will succeed in January? This really does feel like Groundhog Day.”
Anna Soubry, a pro-EU Tory said: “I’m sorry but this just isn’t good enough... this whole process is now turning our country into a laughing stock.”
Her ally, Justine Greening, said the impasse strengthened the case for a Final Say referendum, saying: “We could debate for another two-and-a-half years and we still wouldn’t reach a resolution on Brexit.”
And Sarah Wollaston, a third Tory referendum supporter, said: “It’s like last week’s vote never happened. Plan B is Plan A.”
Business chiefs echoed the criticism, Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, warning: “Parliament remains in deadlock while the slope to a cliff edge steepens.
“The government should accept that no-deal in March 2019 must be off the table. Politicians on both sides of the Commons need to step back from their increasingly entrenched positions.”
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said: “We appear to be little closer to a solution, ready to be implemented before March 30, that ensures frictionless, tariff-free trade with the EU.”
Meanwhile, as The Independent reported was on the cards, the flagship trade bill suffered a House of Lords ambush that will shelve the legislation until ministers answer questions on food safety and public services.
Nick Dearden, from the campaign group Global Justice Now, said it was “absolutely delighted”, warning the bill “failed to give proper powers to parliament to scrutinise, debate and discuss Britain’s post-Brexit trade deals”.


Rebel MPs are plotting to rewrite the Commons rulebook to prevent Boris Johnson from forcing through a no-deal Brexit, The Independent has learnt.
Secret talks are being held by cross-party MPs on a plan to rip up parliament’s standing orders to give the Commons powers to stop the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal.
Senior figures involved in the conversations believe the most likely chance of success would be a bill compelling the prime minister to seek an extension from the EU if there is no deal in place by Halloween.
MPs used a similar process earlier this year, seizing control of the Commons order paper to table an anti-no-deal bill by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin, which squeaked through by a single vote.
It comes as Westminster is gearing up for a series of fraught Brexit battles ahead of the 31 October deadline, amid mounting alarm that the new prime minister is prepared to defy parliament to ensure the UK leaves the EU on time.
Mr Johnson’s most senior aide, Dominic Cummings, reportedly told colleagues that the prime minister could refuse to resign if he loses a confidence vote tabled by Jeremy Corbyn.
Downing Street has also refused to rule out scheduling an early election in the days after the 31 October, meaning the UK could crash out of the EU without a deal during the election campaign.
The Institute for Government delivered a warning to MPs, claiming they now have limited opportunities to stop a no-deal Brexit when parliament returns from the summer recess
But Labour MP Peter Kyle told The Independent: “MPs can change the standing orders of the Commons. It takes a simple majority.
“We can change the standing orders at any time. We govern ourselves.
“We stick to convention because convention delivers the stability our country needs.
“But if we have a populist in government who is flouting convention and acting in a way that bypasses the sovereignty of parliament, parliament will respond accordingly.”
Mr Kyle said the speaker had “extraordinary powers” to protect the powers of parliament and warned that “populists and mavericks” such as Nigel Farage would take control if the Commons failed to do its job.
The Hove MP also tore into Mr Cummings, whom he said had less legitimacy than a parish councillor to speak for the people.
Mr Kyle said: “The idea that the House of Commons is going to go weak at the knees because Dominic Cummings has started spouting populist claptrap and conspiracy theories is ridiculous.”
Another MP involved in the talks told The Independent: “The government will lean over backwards to do everything they can to avoid opportunities for hostile amendments, which is why there has been a focus for some time on thinking, if they do not present the opportunity, how do we carve out the opportunity?
“That takes you into the creative territory, including the control of the business of the house.”
The MP added: “We face considerable obstacles but the general view is where there is a will there is a way, and a quiet confidence that a way through will be found.”
Another method under consideration involved forcing the Commons to sit through the autumn recess, when parliament traditionally rises to allow MPs to attend party conferences.
Under the plans reported by The Guardian, MPs would amend the motion needed for parliament to break for recess in mid-September, clawing back three weeks of sitting time to launch bids to stop a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Johnson has claimed there is “bags of time” for the EU to compromise on a Brexit deal ahead of the 31 October deadline.
Despite repeated refusals by the EU to reopen Theresa May’s deal, the prime minister said he was confident that Brussels would show “common sense” and agree to strip the controversial Irish backstop from the withdrawal agreement.
Mr Johnson said: “I very much hope that our friends and partners will show common sense and that they will compromise ... I’m sure there is compromise to be found and, as we’ve made clear, the backstop just doesn’t work for a proud democracy like the UK.
“We don’t want to go down that route. But there’s every possibility for the EU to show flexibility.
“There’s bags of time for them to do it and I’m confident they will.”


A majority of the country now think Britain should remain inside the European Union, according to a new poll released days before the critical Brexit vote in parliament.
The exclusive research for The Independent shows that, as of this month, 52 per cent favour staying in the trading bloc.
The data from pollsters BMG Research reveals support for remaining has grown month by month since the summer, and broke past 50 per cent in December as the complex realities of Brexit were brought home to the country.
The poll also revealed that almost half of people think the withdrawal agreement settled by Theresa May is a “bad deal” for Britain, with around as many saying MPs should reject the deal outright when they take the critical decision on Tuesday.
The BMG Research study lays waste to any hope that a concerted publicity drive, which has seen Ms May and her ministers tour the country to persuade people of its merits, has been a success.
Instead it shines a light on the deep divisions that still exist, with none of the immediate alternative paths beyond Ms May’s plan – a second referendum, a Norway-style relationship or no deal – enjoying majority support.
It came as close May ally Amber Rudd publicly backed the Norway option as her preferred route, should Ms May’s strategy come to naught.
In a further development ex-European Commission president Romano Prodi said Brussels could renegotiate the deal if MPs vote against it, creating the opportunity for Ms May to seek further concessions.
When BMG asked some 1,500 respondents, “should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union”, 52 per cent said “remain”, 40 per cent said “leave”, six per cent said they did not know and one per cent refused to say.
The remain option has been in the high 40s most of this year, but from September to October it rose one point and then another point to 49 per cent in November, meaning it rose three points in December to its current level.
When respondents were asked whether they believed the withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future relations secured by Ms May are a “good deal” or a “bad deal”, 49 per cent chose the latter.
Just over one in ten, 13 per cent, said it was a good deal, while 23 per cent said it was “neither good nor bad” and 15 per cent said they did not know.
When asked whether MPs should back or oppose the deal, 43 per cent said it should be rejected by parliament, 26 per cent said it should be accepted and 31 per cent said they did not know.
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Similar ratios appeared when people were asked if the PM could have done better, with 44 per cent saying she could have, 27 per cent saying she could not and 28 per cent saying they did not know.
Some 43 per cent also said Ms May should resign if her strategy fails, though 36 per cent said she should not, and 22 per cent said they did not know.
With the vote widely expected to go against Ms May on Tuesday, speculation has moved on to what alternative options may emerge, with the most talked about being a new referendum, a no-deal Brexit or the UK moving into a Norway-style relationship – a path favoured by some cabinet ministers.
But the country was split on all three routes. People were against no deal by 44 per cent to 37 per cent, for a new referendum by 46 per cent to 30 per cent and for Norway by 41 per cent to 39 per cent.
A sign of just how difficult it will be to secure any deal that enjoys broad support came from another question, which asked respondents to say what it is that is most important for a Brexit deal to secure.
The equal top answers were “controlling immigration” and “maintaining smooth trading links with the EU” – two things which, to an extent, are mutually exclusive because of the red lines set out by the EU and UK in negotiations.
Ensuring that there is no border erected between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – the matter at the heart of opposition to Ms May’s plan – was rated as the key issue by just six per cent of people.
Ms May is likely to play for time if the vote does go against her next week, and travel to Brussels for a summit of the European Council where she may ask for further concessions to try and make her deal more palatable to MPs.
Despite a string of European figures saying there could be no further talks, ex-commission president Mr Prodi appeared to throw Ms May a lifeline on Saturday. Asked how he expected the commission to respond after the vote, he said: “Negotiate. We must keep free trade between us because it is in the British interests and European interest.”
On Saturday, Ms Rudd hit out at Brexiteers who she said “flounce out quite a lot” instead of trying to get things done, an attack coming after Boris Johnson and David Davis quit the cabinet over Ms May’s deal.
All have leadership ambitions and have been jockeying for position ahead of a potential future contest in the coming weeks.
In an interview, Ms Rudd also took the unusual step of revealing details of a private conversation with the prime minister, even critiquing her leadership style by saying “she is not always forthcoming” about what she wants.
Ms Rudd is seen as a leading candidate from the moderate wing of the party and even said in her interview that she hoped it chooses a “centrist” figure for its next leader, though she said a contest at this point would be “too indulgent”.
Source Note: BMG Research interviewed a representative sample of 1,508 GB adults online between 4 and 7 December. Data are weighted. BMG are members of the British Polling Council and abide by their rules


Michael Gove has been left red-faced after the Treasury watchdog dismissed his claim that its gloomy economic forecast missed a £200m-a-week "Brexit dividend".
The former Justice Secretary hailed the small print of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) document, arguing it confirmed a huge potential spending boost from Brexit.
An open letter, signed by two other Tory former cabinet ministers, said: “The OBR has revealed that the British people will get back over £10bn net a year once we leave the EU.
“We believe that this Brexit dividend should be spent on our priorities - the most important of which is our NHS.”
But OBR chairman Robert Chote immediately dismissed the claim, pointing out the watchdog had included the money in its calculations – and had already assumed the money would be spent.
Therefore, Mr Gove and the other signatories were wrong to say the refund – even if Britain achieves it in full, in the Brexit negotiations – would temper the OBR’s stark warnings.
After the Autumn Statement, its report said Britain will have borrow an extra £122bn by 2022 – of which almost £58.7bn is a ‘black hole’ opened up because of the uncertainty created by EU withdrawal.
The annual budget deficit is forecast to be £30bn in 2019-20, instead of the £10bn projected in March, a staggering £40 billion swing into the red.
And Chancellor Philip Hammond will even struggle with his fresh target to wipe out the Budget deficit in the next Parliament - which could mean as late as 2025.

Mr Chote told the BBC: “We assumed that any money that is saved from the net expenditure transfers we currently make to the European Union will be spent on something else.
“That’s why the public finances don’t improve to the degree that they would if we saved that money altogether.
“If you do spend all of it, then obviously the public finances are affected by that.”
The position is confirmed by page 158 of the OBR report, which reads: “For this forecast, we have made the fiscally neutral assumption that any reduction in these transfers to the EU would be recycled fully into extra domestic spending.”
The Labour MP Chuka Umunna said: “It's hard to believe someone with such a dodgy grasp of basic maths ever managed to become Education Secretary.
“We know what Michael Gove needs for Christmas - a calculator. And he ought to apologise for still peddling misleading figures and trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the British people.”
The letter was also signed by former ministers John Redwood and Peter Lilley, along with leading Leave-supporting Labour MP Gisela Stuart.
Even the claim of a £200m-a-week payback from Brussels is little more than half the £350m-a-week which the Leave campaign claimed during the referendum campaign – emblazoning it, notoriously, on the side of a red bus.
Mr Gove’s letter formed part of a furious onslaught launched by pro-Brexit Conservative MPs and newspapers against the OBR’s forecasts.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Cabinet minister accused the watchdog of putting out “another utter doom and gloom scenario”, on the back of past failures.


More than 200 MPs from across the Commons have signed a letter to the prime minister urging her to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
The letter, which has been signed by both Leave and Remain supporters, was organised by the former Conservative cabinet minister Dame Caroline Spelman and Labour’s Jack Dromey.
Dame Caroline told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour: “Crashing out of the EU without a deal will cause job losses and bring to an end the renaissance of manufacturing that we’ve seen in regions like mine in the West Midlands, and both Jack Dromey and I know the human interest and impact of this.”
All signatories to the letter have been invited to meet Theresa May in Downing Street on Tuesday. The prime minister is also hosting drinks receptions for Tory MPs on Monday and Wednesday as part of a charm offensive to win support for the Brexit deal.
While the letter does not bind the signatories to supporting the prime minister’s deal, Dame Caroline said it offers a “platform” which would stabilise the economy and offer reassurance to businesses.
“We are united on one thing – we want to protect jobs and livelihoods by making sure we don’t crash out without a deal,” she said.
“If parliament gives expression to not wanting to crash out without a deal, it means effort has got to be renewed to find an agreement which is acceptable to a majority of parliamentarians.
“Taking a step back and at least agreeing we’re not going to crash out without a deal means that on 29 March we’re not just going to fall over the cliff edge.”
Ms May has warned that the UK will be in “uncharted territory” if the deal is rejected in the vote, expected on 15 January.
However, the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has dismissed warnings against a no-deal Brexit, branding them “downright apocalyptic” while claiming leaving the EU without an agreement in place is an outcome “that is by some margin preferred by the British public”.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Johnson said: ”We must hope that Theresa May really does remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement, in such a way as to give real legal protection to the UK.
“Failing that, we should approach the challenge of leaving on WTO terms in a way that is realistic and sensible, but also with the optimism and self-confidence displayed by the majority of the British public.”
He said the UK “didn’t vote for anything like Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement”, adding: ”It is no deal or WTO terms that actually corresponds to their idea of coming out, and they view that option with a confidence that is now directly proportional to the growing strength of the government’s warnings against it.”
The prime minister’s hopes of getting her deal through parliament were dealt another blow on Sunday as it emerged parliamentary rules will prevent her bulldozing her Brexit deal through by staging multiple repeat votes until the Commons surrenders.
The tactic – increasingly seen as the prime minister’s only hope of rescuing her unpopular agreement – is explicitly barred by procedures to stop the government bullying the legislature, they say.
Additional reporting by agencies


Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has said his party will next week make a fresh drive to give MPs the chance to back a second Brexit referendum.
Sir Vince asked members of the new Independent Group for support as he sought backing for a motion aiming to lock a new public vote into law.
As it stands it is unclear whether any other group will try to bring forward or support a bid for a fresh referendum this Wednesday, when MPs will have another opportunity to table alternative proposals for the next steps in the Brexit process.
Some senior Labour figures have signalled their party might support a plan that would mean backing the prime minister’s Brexit deal in return for it being put to a referendum, but the idea may not be put to a vote in the Commons till further down the line.
Talking ahead of his speech to his party’s Scottish conference, the Lib Dem leader said: “For the good of our country, we will cooperate on areas of shared values, not least stopping Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn’s chaotic and damaging Brexit.
“That is why I can announce Liberal Democrats will once again this week seek to secure cross-party support for an amendment in the House of Commons calling for a people’s vote, with the option to stay in the EU.
“We cannot let Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn conspire to run down the clock. Liberal Democrats have led the campaign for a people’s vote. We have campaigned for it, we have marched for it and we will vote for it.”
With dissatisfaction over Brexit having sparked several Tory and Labour MPs to quit their party and form the Independent Group, Sir Vince said he has been speaking to “many of these now independent MPs” and that they have “much in common” with his party.
The new group is set to meet on Monday to begin forming a policy platform, but despite many of its members having vocally backed a referendum, it is unclear whether they will back pushing for the Commons to vote in support of one at this point.
Some Labour MPs who had previously given support to the People’s Vote campaign are now filing in behind a proposal put forward by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson – which could see them again pass on the opportunity to force a new referendum next week, and instead vote for Ms May’s withdrawal agreement later down the line as long as she agrees to put it to a public vote.
The Independent has campaigned for a new public vote through its Final Say campaign, with its petition gaining more than 1.1 million signatures.
There is also a new People’s Vote demonstration being planned for 23 March, with tens of thousands of individuals having already signed up to attend.


Donald Trump's British envoy has sparked fury with claims that access to the NHS would be "on the table" in a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.
Woody Johnson, the US ambassador to the UK, said the "entire economy" would be included in transatlantic negotiations, which could include allowing American private firms to bid for NHS contracts.
In an interview ahead of Mr Trump's state visit, Mr Johnson said the US was already "looking at all the components of the deal and trying to get everything lined up so when the time comes we’re ready to go".
Asked if healthcare would be part of the deal, he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I think probably the entire economy, in a trade deal all things that are traded will be on the table."
Mr Johnson also said chlorinated chicken - which is permitted under American regulations but banned in the EU - was "completely safe".
He added: "Once again, you can have a choice. We have five million Brits, British people, coming over to the US every year and I’ve never heard a complaint, one complaint about anything to do with chicken."
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, waded into the row to insist the NHS would not be flooded with private bidding from US pharmaceutical giants and healthcare firms.
He said: "My American friends, know this: The NHS is not for sale.
"Yes we’d love to make it cheaper to buy your life-saving pharmaceuticals - but the NHS will not be on the table in any future trade talks."
But Labour seized on the comments as a sign that the NHS was "up for sale" under a new Conservative leader, as Theresa May's tenure comes to an end on Friday.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: “The ambassador’s comments are terrifying, and show that a real consequence of a no deal Brexit, followed by a trade deal with Trump, will be our NHS up for sale.
"This absolutely should not be on the table. Nigel Farage and the Tories want to rip apart our publicly funded and provided NHS.”
Environment committee chairwoman Mary Creagh said: "Brexit has always been a recipe for the destruction of our NHS.
"What Cameron started, Trump will finish..."
Liberal Democrat leadership contender Sir Ed Davey said the "cat was out of the bag" over future US trade deals.
He said: "I worry that the government is desperate to sign pretty much anything. We must ensure that access to the NHS is not up for grabs in return for a trade deal.
"A Brexit Britain standing on our own will be in a far weaker negotiating position against Trump and his America First agenda."
Trade is likely to be a key part of discussions during Mr Trump's three-day state visit, which begins on Monday.


A new Task Force Europe, reporting direct to Boris Johnson, is to take over responsibility for negotiations with the EU after Brexit day on Friday, Downing Street has announced.
The 40-strong unit will be led by Mr Johnson’s chief negotiator David Frost, with staff drawn from across Whitehall, including deputies from the Treasury and Foreign Office.
The Department for Exiting the EU (Dexeu) – established by Theresa May in 2016 to conduct negotiations on the UK’s withdrawal from the EU – will cease to exist at 11pm on Friday, when the UK formally leaves the bloc.
And the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, and his ministers James Duddridge and Lord Callanan will lose their ministerial jobs as the clock strikes 11.
Mr Barclay will be hoping to be restored to the cabinet in a new role when Mr Johnson conducts the reshuffle of his top ministerial team expected in February.
No ministerial changes are understood to be planned over the weekend, but Downing Street sources declined to say whether the reshuffle could come in time for Mr Barclay to attend the first scheduled cabinet meeting after Brexit on Tuesday next week.
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Downing Street said that arrangements had been made for all Dexeu staff who wish to remain within government to move to other departments.
Some will join the new Task Force Europe within No 10, which was characterised by the PM’s spokesperson as a “small and agile unit”, responsible for negotiating the future relationship with the EU and working with departments from across Whitehall.
Responsibility for diplomatic engagement with the EU returns to the Foreign Office, while the implementation of the withdrawal agreement and preparations for the UK’s new status will be overseen by Michael Gove in the Cabinet Office.
The UK’s Representation to the EU (known as UKRep) will be renamed the UK Mission in Brussels, and permanent representative Sir Tim Barrow will become the UK’s ambassador to the EU.
During the 11-month transition period lasting until the end of 2020, the EU will engage with the EU and its member states as it would with any other international partner, said Mr Johnson’s spokesperson. At international organisations, Britain will cease to be represented by the EU and will sit as an independent country speaking on its own behalf.
“The UK will seek to deepen our relationships across the world with future partners and to do this, you can expect ministers to undertake travel to support this ambition by visiting countries around the world,” said the PM’s spokesperson.


Labour’s Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer has said his party's new approach to a fresh referendum does not rule out an option to stay in the EU.
Sir Keir told The Independent the motion agreed with delegates that will be voted on Tuesday, could allow a new referendum with ‘Remain’ on the ballot paper.
The comments fly in the face of others made by shadow chancellor John McDonnell and Unite leader Len McCluskey who had said they believed the best approach to any new referendum would exclude an option to remain in the bloc.
The Independent has launched the Final Say campaign to secure a People’s Vote referendum on whatever the outcome of Brexit might be, with more than 820,000 having signed the petition so far.
Sir Keir’s words will be a boost to Remainers in his party who had complained after Mr McDonnell set out his views ahead of his big speech at the conference in Liverpool.
On Sunday Labour delegates agreed a motion that, if passed by the conference, would mean that Labour “must support all options remaining on the table including campaigning for a public vote”.
Sir Keir told The Independent: “The idea is to retain flexibility, the motion doesn’t rule out remain, it doesn’t tie us to any position on what should be in any future vote.”
The shadow cabinet minister, apparently reacting to anger in the wake of Mr McDonnell’s words, made similar comments to delegates at a fringe meeting on Monday.
People’s Vote supporters had condemned Mr McDonnell’s suggestion that a new referendum should exclude a Remain option as “farcical”.
David Lammy, a supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said: “Labour members support a People’s Vote by almost nine to one – 90 per cent of Labour members want to stay in the EU
“They did not do this to be offered a farcical referendum on no deal or a bad deal. It absolutely must include the right to stay in the EU.”
Chris Leslie, another leading pro-EU Labour figure, told The Independent: “Denying the public the right to stay in the EU – if the face of recent evidence of Brexit job losses and falling living standards – would make a mockery of the wishes of 90 per cent of Labour supporters. This nonsense is unsustainable.”
A third, Mike Gapes, tweeted: “McDonnell does not speak for me” – insisting they had to be “a meaningful people’s vote with the choice between the deal, or no deal and to remain in the EU”.
In an interview on Monday morning, Mr McDonnell said Labour would “go for a People’s Vote” on leaving the EU if it cannot push the government into calling a general election, but any vote would only be on the terms of the deal.
His words echoed others from Mr McCluskey the day before, who said: ““The referendum shouldn’t be on, ‘Do you want to go back in the European Union’.
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“The people have already decided on that. We very rarely have referendums in this country, the people have decided against my wishes and my union’s wishes, but they have decided.
“So if the parliamentarians, if spineless Tory MPs, lose the courage of their convictions and won’t vote against whatever deal comes back, then my union and Labour’s policy at the moment is to say, ‘Well, if you are incapable of carrying out your functions in parliament, we should take the deal back to the people.”
Rows over Brexit have dominated the start of Labour’s annual conference where more than 100 constituency parties submitted motions demanding a second referendum and thousands of people joined a march demanding a people’s vote on the final deal.


The leader of the union that is Labour’s biggest financial backer has said remaining in the EU must not be an option in any new referendum on Brexit.
Len McCluskey said it would be “wrong” and would risk pushing Labour voters who had backed Leave in the 2016 referendum to support the Conservatives.
Instead he said any referendum must be on whether to approve the deal Theresa May agrees with Brussels – if it is rejected there should be an election, which if won by Labour would mean Jeremy Corbyn still taking the UK out of the EU albeit on different terms.
It comes after Labour members, who overwhelmingly want a new vote and form Mr Corbyn’s power base, were buoyed when the leader said he would “act accordingly” if conference called for a fresh referendum.
But with the motion to be voted on being drawn up on Sunday, concerns among supporters of a new vote emerged that it might be too vaguely worded to be effective.
The Independent has launched its Final Say campaign for a People’s Vote on the outcome of Brexit, with more than 820,000 people having signed its petition so far.
But speaking to the Pienaar’s Politics show on BBC Radio 5Live, Unite general secretary Mr McCluskey said: “The referendum shouldn’t be on, ‘Do you want to go back in the European Union’.
“The people have already decided on that. We very rarely have referendums in this country, the people have decided against my wishes and my union’s wishes, but they have decided.
“So if the parliamentarians, if spineless Tory MPs, lose the courage of their convictions and won’t vote against whatever deal comes back, then my union and Labour’s policy at the moment is to say, ‘Well, if you are incapable of carrying out your functions in parliament, we should take the deal back to the people.”
For us now to enter into some kind of campaign that opens up that issue again, I think would be wrong
A YouGov poll commissioned by the People’s Vote campaign showed nearly 90 per cent of Labour Party members want another referendum, three-quarters would like to see a commitment in Labour’s manifesto – but critically, it shows that 93 per cent would vote to stay in the EU if they were given a chance.
But Mr McCluskey said: “There are significant numbers of traditional Labour supporters who are saying, ‘We’re going to vote Conservative because we don’t trust Labour to take us out of the European Union’, despite the fact that Jeremy has said repeatedly ‘of course, we recognise the result, of course we respect the result, we are coming out of the European Union’.
“For us now to enter into some kind of campaign that opens up that issue again, I think would be wrong.”
Spelling out how he sees a new referendum playing out, he said the question must be narrowly confined to approval of any deal Ms May brings back from Brussels.
He went on: “If the people vote against the deal then we are back to the other scenario. She has to resign, there has to be general election so that we have a new government.
“And if that government is a Corbyn government, not only will we come out of the European Union but we will come out of it with a deal that will unite the whole nation.”
Mr Corbyn said over the weekend that he would try to use Tory Brexit rebels to force the prime minister into an early election, possibly by November.
To do this Mr Corbyn’s MPs and Tories from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group of Brexiteers would vote together against Ms May’s Chequers plan.
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Mr Corbyn said: “That could trigger a general election and we’re ready for it.”
Labour is set to actually go one step further and launch a plan to force an election by seeking a motion of no confidence in the government within days of Ms May’s proposals collapsing, sources have said.
A motion of no confidence would also need some support from Conservative MPs to pass, but either way would act to severely destabilise the prime minister as internal pressure for her to quit peaked.
A senior Labour source told The Independent: “If Theresa May’s deal is voted down in parliament, then expect to see Labour come forward with a vote of no confidence within days.
“The party has always been clear that an election is needed, and we would push for that hard and immediately.”


Parliamentary rules will prevent Theresa May bulldozing her Brexit deal through by staging multiple repeat votes until the Commons surrenders, MPs believe.
The tactic – increasingly seen as the prime minister’s only hope of rescuing her unpopular agreement – is explicitly barred by procedures to stop the government bullying the legislature, they say.
Even if Ms May tries to evade the rules by changing a few words of the motion put before MPs, it would be ruled out of order if it is “the same, in substance, as a question that has been decided”, the rules say.
The crucial hurdle emerged after the prime minister refused several times to rule out bringing back the vote “again and again and again” if, as expected, she loses heavily next week.
With the Commons deadlocked on what should happen next, she is expected to use the looming threat of a no-deal Brexit, now just 81 days away, to pile pressure on MPs to back down.
Asked, by the BBC’s Andrew Marr, if she would “bring it back” after a defeat for her deal, Ms May said only: “I am working on getting this vote through parliament.
“It is for those who oppose the deal to say what the alternative is and, so far, nobody has put forward an alternative that delivers on all those issues and, crucially, delivers on the referendum result.”
But Chuka Umunna, a Labour MP campaigning for a Final Say referendum on the Brexit outcome, said the words of Erskine May, the parliamentary “bible”, were crystal clear.
“I’ve consulted with the clerks of the House of Commons on this,” he told Sky News. “You cannot simply bring the same motion again and again and again – you cannot do that.
“And – even if you sought to bring a different motion through changing one word – if, in substance, it’s the same thing, under the rules of the House of Commons you can’t keep bringing it.”
A second Labour MP, Chris Bryant, echoed the view, saying: “It has been convention for centuries that the House can only resolve a matter once in any session.











“It’s an important means of preventing government from bullying the Commons. So an identical, or near identical, motion should be out of order.”
The warning came as the prime minister dismissed speculation that she will pull the “meaningful vote” for a second time, because of the scale of the opposition, saying: “We will be holding the vote.”
MPs will resume debating the withdrawal agreement on Wednesday, with the vote expected on 15 or 16 January. Ms May said it would be “that sort of timing”.
Strikingly, during the interview, Ms May appeared unable to point to any progress in persuading the EU to give ground on the Irish border backstop – still the key controversy.
She said she was still seeking “further assurances from the EU”, but made no mention of securing a “legally binding” power for the UK to break free of the backstop, as she promised Tory MPs last month.
The continued impasse points to a big defeat next week, which would plunge the UK into “uncharted territory”, the prime minister conceded.
Both Labour and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) seized on the apparent failure to achieve a breakthrough since the vote was pulled three weeks ago.
Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s deputy leader, said: “A number of commitments and promises were made when the meaningful vote was pulled. So far, the fundamental problems that make this a bad deal appear not to have changed.”
And Jon Trickett, Labour’s cabinet office spokesman, said: “Essentially, nothing has changed. The prime minister’s promise to go back to Brussels to renegotiate was a cynical attempt to further delay the vote on her botched deal.”
On repeat votes, Erskine May says: “A motion or an amendment which is the same, in substance, as a question which has been decided during a session may not be brought forward again during that same session.”
It says a decision on whether “verbal alterations” amount to real changes are “a matter for the judgment of the chair [the Speaker, John Bercow]”.
Crucially, Mr Bercow has sought to build a reputation as a champion of backbenchers against over-mighty ministers and has sided with the Commons in most disputes.
If the deal is thrown out, Labour will push for a no-confidence vote, to force a general election – but this is also expected to fail, with no sign of Tory or DUP support.
Large numbers of Labour MPs, and the other opposition parties, will then push for a Final Say referendum on whether to halt Brexit, but Jeremy Corbyn is opposed.
In that vacuum, with parliament unable to agree on any outcome, Ms May will hope the ticking clock counting down to a no-deal Brexit, on March 29, will force MPs to back her deal eventually.
Before that, on Tuesday, Tory and Labour MPs will join forces to block the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal, in the first of many ambushes to put parliament in control.
They have tabled an amendment to the Finance Bill, which would prevent any new taxes earmarked for no-deal preparations without the consent of the Commons.


Jeremy Corbyn is coming under pressure to rule out Labour MPs abstaining in a crunch Brexit vote, after the minister in charge of EU withdrawal said defeat could kill off Theresa May’s plan altogether.
Supporters of a Final Say referendum have accused the Labour leader of offering a lifeline to the prime minister as she prepares her fourth attempt to force the plan through parliament.
Meanwhile, Ms May is expected to resist demands to set out a timetable for her departure as PM as she meets Tory grandees who have called for “clarity” on her intentions.
The PM will meet the executive of the backbench 1922 Committee on Thursday amid speculation that failure to name a date could prompt a rethink of their decision to block an early confidence vote among MPs.
Ms May has launched a last-ditch effort to ratify Brexit before the summer by bringing her Withdrawal Agreement Bill before parliament in the week beginning 3 June, whether or not she has secured the agreement with Labour that she needs to guarantee its safe passage.
After face-to-face talks between Mr Corbyn and Ms May, Labour said it would not support the bill without a compromise agreement complete with safeguards to avoid it being unpicked by a future Tory leader. “We are not in the business of getting into a car when we don’t know where it’s going,” said one source.
But senior Labour sources refused to rule out the party’s MPs being whipped to abstain in the crucial second reading vote, potentially saving the PM from defeat at the hands of Leave-backing Tory rebels and the DUP.
The move sparked a hostile response from backers of a second referendum, including one senior shadow cabinet minister who said he would ignore any instruction to abstain.
Edinburgh South MP Ian Murray said: “Labour must not issue a blank cheque to Theresa May over Brexit.
“Abstaining would be allowing a Tory Brexit to go ahead without even pressing for a People’s Vote and that would be totally unacceptable, so I hope the party leadership will make it clear that it’s just not on.”
Former Labour MP Chuka Umunna, chief spokesperson for Change UK, said: “By refusing to rule out abstaining on the second reading of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the Labour Party is offering Theresa May and her Brexit plan a lifeline. This is the clearest indication yet that the Labour leadership is working with the Tory government to deliver Brexit.”
Supporters of EU membership had been buoyed by Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay’s admission that defeat for the WAB would be the final death knell for the deal laboriously negotiated over two years and agreed with the EU in November.
Mr Barclay told a parliamentary committee that if the bill falls “then the Barnier deal is dead in that form and I think the House will have to then address a much more fundamental question between whether it will pursue ... a no-deal option or whether it will revoke”.
Downing Street indicated that discussions will take place in the coming weeks not only with Mr Corbyn’s party but also with Tory backbenchers and the DUP, aiming to win “the broadest possible support” for the bill’s passage through the Commons. Asked whether Ms May would go ahead even if no such coalition can be assembled, a source said: “We are going to bring the bill forward in that week.”
Cross-party talks with Labour are continuing at official level, but no “plenary” meetings between ministers and their counterparts have been announced.
Ms May faces a tough challenge fitting an expected two-day second reading vote into a week when she will be busy with the three-day state visit of the US president, Donald Trump, and D-Day commemorations in Portsmouth and Normandy. Time is even tighter because parliament is not currently scheduled to sit on the Monday or Friday.
Aides shrugged off the timing issue, saying Number 10 was “fully aware” of the busy schedule. They declined to say whether the WAB would be published ahead of the Whitsun recess, beginning on 23 May, to give MPs time to digest the long and complex constitutional legislation.
At Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, Ms May faced another call for her resignation from one of her own backbenchers.
Peter Bone told her that “loyal and dedicated” activists in his Wellingborough constituency had given him a clear message to deliver to her.
“They say that her deal is worse than staying in the EU, that they want us to come out now on a no-deal basis, and third, more importantly, they’ve lost confidence in the prime minister and wish her to resign before the European elections,” he said.
In a swipe at her backbench critics, the PM retorted: “If everybody in the House of Commons had voted along with the government and the majority of Conservative members of parliament we would already have left the European Union.”


Boris Johnson would be forced to delay Brexit if he has failed to strike a fresh deal by 19 October, under a rebel Bill aimed at blocking a crash-out from the EU.
The legislation – expected to be rushed through the Commons in a single day on Wednesday – would then require the prime minister to ask the EU for a three-month extension to Article 50, until 31 January.
If passed, it would kick in the day after a crucial EU summit on 17-18 October – earlier than expected, but the event which Mr Johnson himself as earmarked as the last hope for a deal.
It was published as No 10 stoked growing expectation of an October general election if MPs succeed in seizing control of Commons business, in a vote on Tuesday – in order to pass the Bill a day later.
Heavyweight Tories, including Philip Hammond, the sacked former chancellor, and David Gauke, the ex-justice secretary, are among the Bill’s backers.
Up to 20 Conservative MPs are expected to join the revolt – sufficient to deliver victory – defying Mr Johnson’s threat to expel them from the party if they do.
Significantly, if the EU proposed an extension to a date different to 31 January, the prime minister would be forced to accept that extension within two days, unless the House of Commons rejected it.
Supporters of the Bill argued it still provided the government with “sufficient time to carry out a genuine and sincere negotiation”.
It would also, before the current 31 October deadline, “provide time during which parliament must seek to build a consensus on the way forward”, they said.
Keir Starmer, Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, said: “This Bill will stop Boris Johnson forcing through a reckless and damaging no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
"This week could be parliament’s last chance to stop a no-deal Brexit. MPs must act in the national interest and support this Bill.”
Moments later, Mr Johnson gave his response in Downing Street, claiming it would “chop the legs” out from under the UK's position in trying to negotiate a fresh deal with the EU.
He said: “I say, to show our friends in Brussels that we are united in our purpose, MPs should vote with the Government against Corbyn's pointless delay.
“I want everybody to know there are no circumstances in which I will ask Brussels to delay. We are leaving on 31 October, no ifs or buts.”
The so-called rebel alliance will aim to take control of the Commons order paper from 3pm on Wednesday, to pass a Bill just 2 pages long, with 5 clauses, and 1 schedule.
If it can clear all its Commons stages on Wednesday, it will leave Thursday – and possibly Friday and through the weekend – for a rockier path through the Lords.
The aim is for the bill to have gained royal assent by Sunday night to be assured the law is in place before Mr Johnson prorogues parliament as early as Monday.
Mr Johnson can also avoid the Bill’s requirements in the highly-unlikely event that MPs vote for a crash-out Brexit in October.



Rebel Tory MPs believe they now have sufficient support to force Theresa May into effectively keeping the UK in the single market.
Conservatives have told The Independent there would be enough of their party’s MPs to lock in full single market access after Brexit, as long as Labour also backs it.
But in a move set to enrage Labour politicians, Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench will on Tuesday refuse support for just such a proposal in the Lords – preventing it from being voted on in the Commons.
Mr Corbyn is now being warned he risks a major internal row and must explain to pro-EU party members why he is “throwing away a clear opportunity” to defeat Ms May’s plans to abandon the single market.
It follows reports that Tory chief whip Julian Smith has already told the prime minister she lacks numbers in the Commons to defeat rebel amendments aimed at keeping the UK in an EU customs union.
Tory rebels, who joined forces with Labour to shift the government towards closer customs relations with Europe, will now push Ms May towards remaining inside the European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – which would deliver full single market access.
They say up to 15 Conservative backbenchers are now certain it is the best way to ensure the UK’s economic strength, while also staying true to the 2016 referendum result.
One senior Conservative backbencher told The Independent: “Yes, we have the numbers now, but it will depend on exactly how any particular amendment is phrased.
“It’s more difficult than passing a customs union amendment, because the [Conservative] manifesto was clear about leaving the single market.
“But undoubtedly there are a group of Conservative MPs, now larger than the one who voted for similar amendments in the past, who have concluded maybe it is a way for us to go.”
A vote designed to commit the government to the EEA/EFTA path was lost in December in the Commons, but MPs say things have now changed.
Another Conservative rebel told The Independent: “We have more numbers for this than we had at the defeat in December.
“There are a gang of people who have started saying they are keen on it, a group, up to 15 of us, who think this may well be a good way out.”
Former chancellor Ken Clarke backed the single market in the December vote along with Anna Soubry MP, while other known rebels such as Nicky Morgan, Antoinette Sandbach, Jeremy Lefroy, Paul Masterton and Dominic Grieve have all spoken in debates in favour of the EEA/EFTA route since.
Others who have made supportive comments for the option include Caroline Spelman, Heidi Allen, James Cartlidge, Kevin Hollinrake and John Stevenson. Rebels also say two cabinet members are sympathetic to the idea.
The EEA/EFTA route would also allow the government to escape the European Court’s jurisdiction, but would mean the UK having, to a large extent, to accept the EU’s “four freedoms”.
But Tory rebels argue Britain would have more power than it currently does to impose restrictions on immigration – a driving motivation behind the Leave vote.
Former Conservative minister Stephen Hammond told The Independent: “It allows you to have some conversations over new regulation, in that you are consulted and are part of the process before it comes in, though it’s still not co-determination, of course.
“But the other reason I think it’s a good idea, is that if you look at the EEA terms of reference, it is clear there is more leeway to impose restrictions on freedom of movement.”
They want him to put forward the case for remaining in a strong relationship with Europe. He has got to stand up and represent them
The next opportunity to push the government down the EEA/EFTA route comes on Tuesday, when there will be a vote on an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill tabled in the Lords by Labour peer Waheed Alli.
Remain-backing Labour MPs want the amendment passed in the Lords, so they can then team up with Tory rebel MPs in the Commons and prevent the government overturning it – in the same way they look set to with other Brexit amendments.
But a Labour front bench source in the Lords confirmed the Alli amendment would not have the party’s official support, saying: “It’s not going to go through. It’s not going to the Commons.”

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Parliament Live
A Commons frontbench Labour source added: “We don’t believe the EEA/EFTA model is the right one to pursue.
“It was right 25 years ago, it’s right for Norway, but the UK is a different country, a different economy and we’ve never been satisfied that’s the right approach.”
But entrepreneur Lord Alli said that the Labour front bench’s approach “doesn’t make sense”, arguing it is essential for a UK economy heavily reliant on services to be in the EEA, as well as a customs union for goods.
He pointed out that his proposals are backed by founder of Cobra Beer Lord Bilimoria, a crossbench peer, and Tory peers Baroness Verma and Baroness McGregor-Smith, ex-CEO of Mitie Group, adding: “We come from a business background.”
The peer went on: “The front bench of both the Labour and Tory parties are united by the fact that they can’t make clear decisions on the EU, because they don’t want to upset the political balance of their rank and file.
“But Jeremy Corbyn needs to take a decision about our position on Europe. The people that support Labour are pro-European and, make no mistake, when you throw light on his position people are going to see that he still needs to come to the right place.
“They want him to put forward the case for remaining in a strong relationship with Europe. He has got to stand up and represent them.”
One Labour MP who also wants the party’s leadership to back Alli’s proposals, said: “If they don’t there will be a big row. Labour peers will be under heavy pressure to rebel.
“The leadership needs to be honest with members that it is throwing away a clear opportunity to defeat the government’s Brexit plans and ensure full benefits of the single market.”
Alamy
If Lord Alli’s amendments are defeated on Tuesday and never make it to the Commons, then Tory rebels say they are preparing their own amendments to table to other pieces of legislation at a later stage.
A government spokesperson said: “The referendum was a vote to take control of our borders, laws and money. Ongoing participation in the EEA would mean having to implement new EU legislation automatically and in its entirety without having a say on how it is formulated – and it would also mean continued free movement.
“As the prime minister has repeatedly made clear, we are pursuing a bespoke deal for the UK, which respects the outcome of the referendum. We are negotiating to deliver a bold and comprehensive future economic partnership – with the greatest possible tariff- and barrier-free trade with our European neighbours.”


Chuka Umunna has called for Article 50 to be revoked, as he claimed there was insufficient time for a second referendum before the Brexit deadline in October.
The change in strategy from Change UK‘s spokesperson comes after multiple polls showed the newly formed party struggling to gain ground in the polls ahead of this week’s European elections.
In what appeared to be an attempt to distinguish the party from other pro-European groups, the ex-Labour MP said: “I have come to the view that we are now at the point where we are going to need to revoke Article 50.”
Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Mr Umunna continued: “The way to resolve this impasse is to refer it back to the people. The simple fact right now is we do not have time do a People’s Vote before 31 October.
“What would be undemocratic is to impose a no-deal Brexit on this country which there is not a mandate for. All the polls show the majority of people want to remain in the European Union.
“We are faced with a national emergency. No deal is facing us in the face and we have got to deal with it,” he said.
According to two separate polls published on Saturday ahead of the Euro elections on Thursday, Change UK received just four and three per cent of the vote share, while Vince Cable‘s Liberal Democrats surged ahead on 15 per cent and the Greens had the backing of 11 per cent of those polled.
Asked whether he believed his party had been competent since its creation, Mr Umunna continued: “I do, but look we’re a four-week-old party. We only left the Labour Party three months ago. It’s a complete start-up – we’re the youngest kid on the block in this election.”
The remarks came after Rachel Johnson – a candidate for Change UK in the European elections – criticised her party in an interview with The Times.
Ms Johnson, the sister of the ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson, said the party’s name was “terrible”, adding: “They want to focus-group everything and they have a leadership team of about 11 people.
“If I were running it we would have one leader and a different name and we would have done a deal with all the other Remain parties. Then we would be able to give the Brexit Party a fight.”
But Mr Umunna insisted it was a “joke”, adding: “It was taken out of context.”


Conservative MPs are reportedly preparing to block any attempt by Theresa May to call a general election in a bid to resolve the Brexit crisis.
The prime minister and some of her closest advisers are believed to be considering a snap poll if her withdrawal agreement is put forward and voted down for a fourth time this week.
Yet senior Conservatives have said that an election would be a disaster, fearing their bitterly divided party would be wiped out at the ballot box.
Some are adamant Ms May should not lead the Tories in any election in the months ahead, with one telling The Sunday Telegraph the party would be “annihilated”.
“Theresa May cannot call an election, she cannot be the leader who would lead us into it. The party would not tolerate it,” Nigel Evans, executive secretary of the 1922 committee, told The Observer.
One cabinet minister told the same newspaper that Tory MPs would vote down any effort to call a general election, since Ms May would need a two-thirds majority in the Commons to secure it.
“If we have a general election before Brexit is resolved, it will only make things worse,” said Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan.
“There is no one in the cabinet who thinks she should lead us into a general election,” one cabinet member said.
Reports suggest the cabinet is at risk of imminent collapse, with Ms May facing resignations from senior ministers on both sides of the Brexit divide depending on what course she takes next.
At least six members of her cabinet will resign if she heads for a no-deal Brexit, according to The Sunday Times, yet Brexiteer members have apparently made clear they would resign if she backed a customs union or sought another delay.
The newspaper said a possible “run-off” vote could take place in parliament on Tuesday between Ms May’s deal and whatever alternative emerges as the most popular from indicative voting by MPs on Monday.
It means, in theory, an attempt to call a general election could be made as early as Wednesday.
Tory MPs are worried about a shift towards Labour in the poll. A new Deltapoll survey for The Mail on Sunday shows Labour on 41 points, five points ahead of the Tories on 36. Only last month Deltapoll gave the Tories a seven point lead.
A fresh Opinium poll for The Observer, meanwhile, shows Ms May’s lead over Jeremy Corbyn on who would make the best prime minister has fallen from 15 points to 7 points in the past month.
The poll also reveals Boris Johnson as the only Tory with a lead over the Labour leader.
On Saturday Nicky Morgan suggested a national unity government may soon be required to end the Brexit crisis.
“If the government refused and Theresa May felt she could not implement what parliament had identified as a way of leaving the EU, then I think we would have to think very hard about whether a cross-party coalition ... Could do that in order to make sure that the UK does leave the EU in an orderly fashion,” the former education secretary told BBC News.


Leading supporters of a fresh Brexit referendum are calling for a delay to a Commons vote until it has the “greatest chance of success”.
MPs of all parties fear an expected push for a showdown next Tuesday would backfire because there is currently no majority in favour, while the Labour leadership refuses to commit.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative Final Say supporter, and other “doctors in the house” are considering an amendment to trigger a vote next week, alongside moves for the Commons to “take control”.
But, at a People’s Vote event, Labour MPs, a Liberal Democrat and Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, all urged patience and suggested the clash would come too soon.
They want other options, such as a Norway-plus soft Brexit, to be rejected first – while one said the Commons should first grab more power to dictate the timing and impact of such a vote.
Bridget Phillipson, a Labour MP, said: “There is feeling in parliament that we do need to move through all the options that are available before we reach that stage.
“I want to make sure that, when we get to the point of having vote on securing a referendum, it is at the point when we have the greatest prospect of success.”
Ms Lucas said: “Our best chance of getting it through is when the debates and votes on other options have been addressed and, in my view, defeated and exhausted.”
And Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem deputy leader, suggested delay would reap rewards, saying: “Some of the amendments down next week would hand parliament more control of the agenda.”
The Independent understands that Dr Wollaston, Labour’s Paul Williams and Philippa Whitford, a Scottish Nationalist MP and doctor, are still deciding whether to move quickly.
Currently, only about 150 MPs have come out for a Final Say referendum – and Jeremy Corbyn is only seeking Commons time for a vote on the issue, while not saying if Labour would back it.
The focus is next week will be on the cross-party attempt to give parliament the power to order Theresa May to seek a delay to Brexit, until the end of 2019, if she has failed to pass her deal by the end of February.
The Conservatives have yet to say whether they will whip their MPs against the plan – after Amber Rudd, the work and pensions secretary, called for a free vote and warned of mass ministerial resignations otherwise.
Nevertheless, both Ms Phillipson and David Lammy, a former Labour minister, welcomed Mr Corbyn’s amendment wanting time for a Commons vote on a fresh referendum
Mr Lammy said: “Ultimately, I think that we have to end up in a place where we put this to a public vote. That is the nature of the amendment Labour has put down.”
And Ms Phillipson said: “I think Jeremy understands that a majority of Labour voters, and a vast majority of Labour members, want us to campaign for a referendum. I think he is a democrat and he will ultimately respond to that.”


Theresa May has reportedly secured concessions from Brussels to keep the whole of the UK in a customs union in the wake of Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union.
Reaching an agreement would prevent the need for Northern Ireland to be treated differently from the rest of the UK, a main stumbling block during Brexit negotiations.
The “secret” deal would avoid the need for an Irish backstop and would be written into the legally binding deal, according to The Sunday Times.
However, Downing Street has poured cold water on the report, calling it speculation.
The EU has reportedly suggested a backstop post-Brexit customs arrangement covering all of the UK could give mainland Britain some scope to set trade rules.
Preparations for a final deal were far more advanced than previously disclosed, the report said, and would lead to a document of 50 pages or more being published.
The agreement would include an “exit clause” designed to convince Brexit-supporting MPs that remaining in the customs union was only temporary, The Sunday Times said.
Ms May’s cabinet will meet on Tuesday to discuss her plan, and she hopes there will be enough progress by Friday for the EU to announce a special summit, the newspaper reported.
The prime minister’s office described the report as speculation but claimed most of a deal on Britain’s exit from the bloc in March 2019 had been agreed.
“This is all speculation,” a spokesman for Ms May said. “The prime minister has been clear that we are making good progress on the future relationship, and 95 per cent of the withdrawal agreement is now settled and negotiations are ongoing.”
Meanwhile, more than 70 business figures are calling for a public vote on the final terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union, warning that the country faces “either a blindfold or a destructive hard Brexit”, the newspaper also reported.
Companies are increasingly concerned about the prospect of Britain crashing out of the EU without an agreement, or fear that politicians will sign up to a deal that limits companies’ access to the continent’s markets.
A new group called Business for a People’s Vote, which includes Justin King, former boss Sainsbury’s, and John Neill, head of the car parts supplier Unipart, is to be launched as campaigners raise the pressure on politicians.
“We are now facing either a blindfold or a destructive hard Brexit. Both these options will further depress investment,” the group said in a letter.
“They will be bad for business and bad for working people. Given that neither was on the ballot in 2016, we believe the ultimate choice should be handed back to the public with a People’s Vote.”
The government’s Brexit department said it was confident of securing a deal that works for businesses, and reiterated its opposition to a second referendum.
“The people of the United Kingdom have already had their say in one of the biggest democratic exercises this country has ever seen, and the prime minister has made it clear that there is not going to be a second referendum,” a spokesman said.


Theresa May is aiming to give MPs a vote on both a Brexit withdrawal agreement and outline future trading relations with the EU before Christmas.
But in a bid to reassure Brexiteers that she will not make too many concessions to get a quick deal with Brussels, she told ministers at cabinet that she would not agree terms “at any costs”.
The prime minister discussed the timetable around Brexit negotiations and options relating to the vexed issue of what happens to the Irish border with her team of top ministers on Tuesday.
But it came as hopes of getting the withdrawal agreement signed off with European leaders at a special summit in November appeared to be receding, with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier saying an agreement on the Irish border was still “not close”.
After the cabinet, Ms May’s spokesman said: “The prime minister said she was confident of reaching a deal. She said that, while the UK should aim to secure a withdrawal agreement as soon as possible, this would not be done at any cost.
“The prime minister said that, once agreement was reached on a withdrawal agreement, it remains the case that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and it will be subject to securing an acceptable full future framework.”
The Independent understands that Downing Street believes a withdrawal agreement could be agreed with Mr Barnier, and then in a period before an EU summit is held to sign it off, the outstanding parts of the outline future trading relationship could also be fleshed out.
The goal would then be for a European Council summit to approve the lot, passing the baton to MPs in the UK to vote on it in parliament before Christmas.
Rex
The Independent
The Independent
Rex
Ms May could be hoping that a positive outlook for future trade set out by the two sides, would persuade Bexiteers to accept a certain amount of compromise over the issue of the Irish border in the withdrawal agreement allowing it to pass through the Commons.
But the turnaround would require the EU and UK to reach an agreement on how to deal with what happens to the Irish border, in the event that a full trading relationship had not yet been set out by the end of the transition period in December 2020.
Under these circumstances the EU’s position is that Northern Ireland at least should remain in the EU’s customs union until a trade deal is set in stone, in order to keep the border with the Republic open, but Ms May says she wants a solution where the whole UK remains in a “temporary customs arrangement” – essentially Britain staying in the EU’s customs union on a more strictly “time limited” basis.
At the cabinet, attorney general Geoffrey Cox is said to have set out a range of proposals for a “review mechanism” that would ensure the UK is not stuck indefinitely in the backstop arrangement, but finding something that satisfies Brexiteers – would want the UK to have the power to pull out unilaterally is going to be difficult.
Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the prime minister on Monday that he was ready to consider a review mechanism as part of a “backstop” arrangement to keep the border with Northern Ireland open after Brexit.
But he made clear that he would not accept an arrangement which gave the UK unilateral powers to ditch the customs union without the agreement of Brussels.
Mr Barnier told Belgian broadcaster RTBF on Tuesday: “For now, we are still negotiating and I am not, as I am speaking to you this morning, able to tell you that we are close to reaching an agreement, since there is still a real point of divergence on the way of guaranteeing peace in Ireland, that there are no borders in Ireland, while protecting the integrity of the single market.”


Theresa May hopes to win “significant progress” towards a new Brexit deal in the coming days, allowing her to ask the commons to show backing for her strategy early next week.
Over the next four days she aims to make headway with EU negotiators on a new approach, before attempting to win support from key European leaders at a summit on Sunday.
Claims that the prime minister may put a full new deal to parliament early next week were downplayed by government insiders, but it is likely that Ms May will table a motion asking MPs to back her approach as she takes it forward – something that would show Brussels she has the support of a working majority in the commons.
The prime minister met EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday night to begin the new push for progress in the UK’s Brexit negotiations.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “Subsequent to that you can expect the [Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay] and the attorney general [Geoffrey Cox] to be having a detailed discussions with Michel Barnier in coming days.
“What we need to achieve is legally binding changes which satisfy parliament that we will not be stuck in the backstop indefinitely and you can expect for them to be wishing to have detailed discussions about that.”
The Independent understands that Mr Cox has now prepared draft proposals for a legally binding “codicil”, which would be attached to the existing withdrawal agreement, offering additional clarity as to the temporary nature of the “Irish backstop”.
The sticking point to Ms May winning full support from her party for her deal has always been the backstop, an arrangement to ensure the Irish border remains open after Brexit, but one that would see the UK potentially locked into an indefinite customs arrangement at the end of 2020 if no new trade deal is signed.
The backstop was sealed in the withdrawal agreement signed off by EU leaders in 2018 and which they have refused to reopen. The potential advantage of the codicil is that it could provide legally-binding additional words to the agreement without needing to reopen it.
In one sign that progress is not going as quickly as Number 10 would like, a speech from Mr Cox, in which he was expected to sell his new idea to MPs, will likely not take place this week.
But senior officials said the prime minister will be attending a two-day EU-League of Arab States summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh starting on Sunday.
Around 20 EU leaders are expected to take part, including German chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish premier Leo Varadkar, and Ms May is expected to hold a series of one-to-one meetings on the margins of the main summit.
But it is more about garnering support than reaching a deal, with a government official saying: “This isn’t a European Council meeting and this isn’t somewhere that European Council decisions are going to be made.”
It means that it is unlikely that the prime minister will be able to put a new deal to a “meaningful vote” of parliament next week and instead she will face another round of attempts by backbenchers to put forward alternative plans to be voted on 27 February.
If, as last time, there is a motion placed that would allow MPs to seize control of the parliamentary agenda and seek to delay Brexit, she could face resignations form the ministerial ranks if she stops frontbenchers backing it.
The prime minister’s aides hope that enough progress can be secured in the coming days to allow them to put a motion down on 27 February backing her strategy instead, in a bid to cement support behind it and avoid cross-party groups of MPs seizing control.


Theresa May has stood firm and ruled out giving the British people a final say on her Brexit deal, despite a groundswell of support for a second vote.
700,000 people took to the streets of central London last weekend to demand a referendum, while over a million people have now signed The Independent’s petition, as polls show a trend in favour of a plebiscite.
But speaking during a summit in the Norwegian capital of Oslo the prime minister once again ruled out changing her mind, stating: “There will be no second referendum on Brexit.”
The PM also effectively ruled out any further public input on her negotiations, warning against a general election.
“No. We are not preparing for another general election. That would not be in the national interest,” she said.
It comes as Norweigian prime minister Erna Solberg poured cold water on suggestions the UK could temporarily stay in the European Economic Area (EEA) after Brexit, stating it would be “a little bit difficult” for some of its members to accept.
The idea had been suggested by some Conservative MPs as an extra transition period. Ms Solberg however restated that Norway was open to the UK becoming a permanent EEA state.
It was announced at the summit that the UK and Norway had reached an agreement that will guarantee the rights of each others’ citizens after Brexit, even in the event of a no-deal.
The accord follows Ms May saying she would unilaterally guarantee EU citizens’ rights in the event of a no-deal.
The question of another general election has been raised in recent weeks as it becomes clear that it will be very difficult for the prime minister to pass any Brexit deal through the House of Commons.
Some observers believe that the Budget announced by Philip Hammond on Monday resembled a pre-election budget, with accelerated income tax cuts and some other popular measures.
Fresh elections could be tempting because the prime minister lacks a majority in the House of Commons, meaning there is a good chance any Brexit deal she negotiates could be voted down.
Though she secured the support of the right-wing DUP with an extra £1bn for Northern Ireland after the 2017 election, the party has since said it would not vote for an emerging deal that treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK.
But with the Conservatives yet to open up a substantial lead in the polls – and memories of last year’s shock result still fresh – the PM appears yet to be tempted.
In a speech at the Oslo summit, which was about Nordic and Baltic cooperation, the PM tried to reassure her counterparts that the UK was not drifting into isolationism with Brexit, stating that the UK would “remain active members of the UN. Of Nato. Of the Northern Future Forum, the Nordic Plus group of development ministers and the Northern Group of defence ministers.”
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She added: “We will continue to act as observers on the Arctic Council, further strengthen our relations with the Nordic Council, and embrace the possibilities of closer bilateral engagement.
“And, of course, we will build a new partnership with the EU and with the EEA and EFTA countries.
“One that will deliver on the democratic wishes of the British people while maintaining our commitment to international cooperation in pursuit of our shared values.
“I would ask all of you here today to work with us to build that partnership – just as we have worked together for many years to build the partnership the UK and Nordic nations now enjoy.”


Theresa May has warned her DUP allies that a customs border in the Irish sea may be written into the UK’s Brexit divorce deal, according to reports.
In a leaked letter, the prime minister tells unionist leader Arlene Foster that Brussels is pushing for the measure as a so-called “backstop to the backstop” on Northern Ireland’s customs status in case negotiations break down.
Ms May wants a deal containing a backstop measure creating a temporary “joint customs territory” with the EU for the whole of the UK.
But the bloc appears to be insisting on a fallback proposal aimed at avoiding a hard border between Ireland and the UK. This would effectively keep Northern Ireland aligned with Brussels’ customs union and single market, the letter is said to suggest.
In the letter, seen by The Times, Ms May reportedly says: “I am clear that I could not accept there being any circumstances or conditions in which that ‘backstop to the backstop’, which would break up the UK customs territory, could come in to force.”
Yet the DUP has interpreted the wording to mean that the sea border clause would still be written into the divorce agreement, the paper reported.
Ms Foster said in a statement: “The prime minister’s letter raises alarm bells for those who value the integrity of our precious union and for those who want a proper Brexit for the whole of the UK.
“It appears the prime minister is wedded to the idea of a border down the Irish sea with Northern Ireland in the EU single market regulatory regime.”
Ms May has been battling to agree a divorce deal with the EU that can satisfy Brussels, her own party and the DUP, whose 10 votes she will likely need to get the agreement through the House of Commons.
Asked by The Independent whether the letter explicitly said the “backstop to the backstop” would be included in any Brexit agreement, a Downing Street spokesperson declined to comment.
Number 10 said in a statement: “The prime minister’s letter sets out her commitment, which she has been absolutely clear about on any number of occasions, to never accepting any circumstances in which the UK is divided into two customs territories.
“The government will not agree anything that brings about a hard border on the island of Ireland.”
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The Irish backstop, a plan to keep the UK in regulatory alignment with the EU, was devised as a method to maintain the soft border if Britain leaves the bloc without a wider deal.
However, the “backstop to the backstop” has been proposed as something of an insurance policy for Brussels, creating a customs border in the Irish Sea and maintaining regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU if the rest of the UK leaves the single market.
Sam Lowe, from think tank the Centre for European Reform, said supporters of a “hard” Brexit may find some form of regulatory barrier between Northern Ireland and the British mainland an acceptable trade-off.
“My feeling is that, at some point, the hard Brexiters (who we already know prioritise Brexit over NI, because they voted for Brexit), will decide that NI having a distinct relationship with the EU is a price worth paying,” he tweeted.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Mrs May’s effective deputy prime minister David Lidington and Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley will attend a summit on the Isle of Man on Friday.
Brexit is expected to dominate the agenda of the British Irish Council, which also involves the first ministers of Scotland and Wales, Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones.
Downing Street has played down suggestions that a Brexit deal is imminent, after European Council president Donald Tusk appeared to indicate a breakthrough could come within the next week.
A senior UK government source said that reports in the European media that a deal could come in the next few days should be taken “with a very large pinch of salt”.
A potential sticking point could be demands for EU fishing fleets to be given continued access to British coastal waters as the price for agreeing to Mrs May’s UK-wide backstop, The Telegraph reported.
A UK-wide customs deal would maintain quota-free and tariff-free access to European markets for the British fishing industry and in return the EU wants to keep access to UK waters for its trawlers, the newspaper said.


Theresa May’s new plan for future relations with the EU will be “dead on arrival”, senior figures in Brussels have told The Independent.
EU officials said any hint that the UK wants to be part of the single market on goods, but not services will be rejected.
It is a blow for the prime minister who has spent the last week in meetings with EU leaders, including Angela Merkel, in a bid to prevent Europe dismissing her plans out of hand when they are published next week.
Ms May is expected to push her cabinet to agree to a plan at Chequers on Friday, which would see Britain remaining in full regulatory alignment with the EU on goods, but not on services.
The meeting has also been preceded by threats and warnings from the Brexiteer wing of the Conservatives that the proposals mooted by the prime minister will not be accepted by them in the UK because they keep Britain too closely tied to the EU’s rules and regulations.
But before her ministers have even agreed to the deal, EU officials told The Independent the white paper would be “dead on arrival” in Brussels if, as expected, it proposes that the UK remain in the EU’s single market for goods, but not services.
They claimed they had repeatedly warned UK negotiators that this option would not work. They said it had been widely discussed among EU ministers and rejected – including, crucially, by the EU’s two most powerful players, France and Germany.
One Brussels source said: “We have been telling the UK for two years that we would not accept a single market a la carte.
“What do they come with? – A single market a la carte.”
We have been telling the UK for two years that we would not accept a single market a la carte
Downing Street has tried to argue that Ms May’s plan is a “best of both worlds” blend of the customs partnership and “max fac” options, that she had previously proposed.
It would see most importers pay UK tariffs on imported goods, but about 4 per cent would pay EU tariffs if the finished goods were then re-exported on to the continent. Technology would be used to track goods to see which stayed and which travelled on, leading to claims of complexity and a risk of smuggling.
Britain would maintain “full regulatory alignment” on goods to reduce border checks and solve the Irish problem, but divergence would be allowed on the bigger services sector.
No 10 claimed this would allow the UK to strike deals with other countries in which it lowered tariffs on goods to gain access for its service sector, but Brexiteers have already argued that being able to set rules is critical to the UK’s future.
Brexit secretary David Davis is said to have written to Ms May, arguing that her new plan to reconcile warring factions over customs arrangements would be rejected out of hand by the EU.
Meanwhile, 46 Conservative MPs, including a string of former cabinet ministers, signed a letter yesterday urging the prime minister to keep business concerns in her mind over the next few days – with the private sector warning against anything that obstructs trade with Europe.
Guy Verhofstadt, European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator, said it was time for the PM to “put her country before domestic party political infighting – the time for fudges, fantasies and attempted renegotiations is over”.
European Council president Donald Tusk has said the promised white paper on customs must bring “clarity, realism and impetus to these negotiations”.
Ex-Treasury permanent secretary Lord Macpherson said: “If a ‘facilitated customs arrangement’ is the best HMG can do after two years, I begin to wonder whether a deal can be done.”


A Conservative MP has broken ranks to support making Jeremy Corbyn a caretaker prime minister to avert the “generational damage” from a no-deal Brexit.
Guto Bebb criticised other parties and MPs who have rejected the Labour leader’s offer, after the Liberal Democrats branded it “nonsense”.
“Those who have said they will do anything necessary to stop the long-term damage of a no-deal exit must take seriously this type of offer,” Mr Bebb said.
“I certainly take the view that a short-term Jeremy Corbyn government is less damaging than the generational damage that would be caused by a no-deal Brexit.”
Mr Corbyn has called for Boris Johnson to be toppled – when MPs return to Westminster next month – with himself installed as a stopgap premier to block a no-deal exit on 31 October.
He has promised to call a general election, once an extension to the Article 50 process has been agreed, with a Final Say referendum on Brexit to follow if Labour wins.
Mr Bebb – who is standing down at the next election – added to growing pressure on Jo Swinson, the new Lib Dem leader, to rethink her outright opposition to Mr Corbyn’s audacious bid.
Ms Swinson accused Mr Corbyn of “demanding the keys to No 10 as a precondition for a vote of no confidence”, which Labour signalled would come within “days” of the Commons sitting on 3 September.
“What we need in a leader of an emergency government is a long-serving member of parliament who is respected on both sides of the house,” she said.
“Someone like Ken Clarke or Harriet Harman – the father and mother of the house. They are hugely experienced and, unlike Jeremy Corbyn, or indeed myself, they are not seeking to lead a government in the long term.”
But Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, issued a video message urging Ms Swinson to rethink, saying: “Jo, please change your mind. Jeremy Corbyn has done the right thing.”
Urging the Lib Dem leader to join talks, Ms Lucas added: “Let’s have that negotiation with him and not reject this offer out of hand.”
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish National Party leader, echoed the call, saying: “Jeremy Corbyn’s suggestion is not the only possible option – but given the circumstances, nothing should be ruled out at this stage.
“It’s no secret, I’m not the greatest fan of Jeremy Corbyn, but we won’t rule out any option if it helps avert what is a looming catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit.”
Senior Tories Dominic Grieve, Caroline Spelman and Sir Oliver Letwin issued a joint letter, with former Conservative Nick Boles, welcoming talks, but did not endorse the Labour leader as a stopgap in No 10.
But Anna Soubry, the leader of the Independent Group for Change, said: “I would not support a government of national unity that is led by Jeremy Corbyn for all manner of reasons.”
Mr Bebb’s endorsement of a Labour prime minister – even a temporary one – is certain to trigger calls for him to be stripped of the Conservative whip.
The StandUp4Brexit campaign of grassroots Tories was furious, saying: “Are MPs like Guto collaborating with the EU in a vain attempt to overturn Brexit, and to hell with the consequences for British democracy?”


The bill Britain must pay for moving the European Medicines Agency (EMA) from London after Brexit has soared to a staggering £520m, it has emerged.
The Liberal Democrats said the huge sum for relocating the agency – considered a jewel in the EU‘s crown, because it attracts businesses and experts – was among the most “crazy” aspects of withdrawal.
“One of the ludicrous ironies of Brexit is we could end up having to pay large amounts of money to lose highly skilled jobs and research capacity from the UK,” said Brexit spokesman Tom Brake.
“It really is that crazy. Rather than £350m a week extra for the NHS as the Brexiteers promised, Brexit is making us poorer every day.”
The EU insisted earlier this year that Britain must foot the bill for moving the EMA, because it is a direct consequence of the decision to leave the union.
Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dublin, Lille, Porto, Stockholm and Bratislava are among 19 cities eager to compete for the prize of hosting the agency.
Now Brussels has put the cost of relocation at €582.5m (£520m), with 60 per cent of the costs the result of a botched rental contract for the EMA’s Canary Wharf offices.
The agency failed to negotiate a “break clause”, which means EU taxpayers are locked into a rent contract for its offices until June 30, 2039.
Making Britain pay up should be part of “the negotiations on the withdrawal agreement”, which will restart at the end of the month, the EU has said.
Mr Brake added: “There are around 40 EU agencies of which Britain may no longer be a part, but the government has absolutely no plan and no clue for what arrangements we will have in all these different areas post their extreme Brexit.
And Chris Leslie MP, a pro-EU Labour MP and supporter of the Open Britain campaign, said: “This is yet another price to be paid for the Government’s aim of a hard, destructive Brexit.
“Not only are hundreds of good jobs being shipped out of London thanks to the decision to leave the single market, but UK taxpayers are going to be left on the hook for the relocation costs too.
Meanwhile, Conservative MPs are calling on British businesses and the Government to poach the EMA’s scientists and experts for the UK’s own regulatory agency after Brexit.
The EMA has warned that up 667 of its 890 staff did not want to leave London, potentially “devastating” the agency’s work, the European Parliament’s budget committee has been told.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Tory backbencher, called for the EMA’s scientists and experts to be offered sweeteners to stay and prepare Britain’s pharmaceutical industry for Brexit.
“A lot of those people were involved in shaping the European legislation and I imagine our legislation will have to be very similar to the Europeans’,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
The EMA is responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of all medicines marketed in the EU’s single market.
It also plays host to tens of thousands of national regulators and scientists each year from across the continent, who come to London each year as part of the approval process.


Britain got its first foretaste of life after Brexit on Monday, after the UK government went unrepresented at an EU summit that draws up rules on fishing quotas and farming regulations.
No British ministers or officials attended the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Brussels – where key decisions including fishing quota allocations are made.
While today's meeting was technically the final one the UK was allowed to attend, officials and ministers are already standing down early ahead of Brexit on Friday – when Britain will lose all rights to representation.
The UK will still be fully bound by EU rules during the Brexit transition period until 2021, and is also expected to be effectively permanently tied to many once it has signed its future trade deal.
But it will no longer have a say in drawing up EU rules, losing its seats on the EU council, MEPs in the European Parliament, and its ability to appoint a Commissioner.
A UK official confirmed that there was "no UK attendance at ministerial or official level" at the Monday meeting, which happens each month.
Last week a Brexit Party MEP voiced concern about the UK going unrepresented at such policy-setting events, provoking derision and accusations that she did not understand the downsides of Brexit.
The so-called "Agrifish" council meets once a month. Annually, it sets the Total Allowable Catches (TACs) and quotas for each species of fish, and decides on the allocation of fishing opportunities between fleets. Quotas for 2020 were set in October 2019.
It also has to give the say to new EU legislation on food production, rural development, and fisheries management.
There are other council configurations for the other policy areas covered by EU law - such as consumer regulations, justice, foreign affairs, and transport.
Rules made at all these bodies and more will apply to Britain. New rules made during the transition will also apply to the UK under the agreement signed by Boris Johnson.
The UK's absence comes amid debate over how the future trade deal between the UK and EU will handle fishing and the extent to which EU fleets will still have access to British waters after Brexit.
Asked whether the UK accepted it will have to trade access to its fishing waters for the opening of EU markets to British financial services companies, Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said: “Our position on fishing is not going to change We are going to be taking back control of our own fishing waters.
“We have been clear on that both in the manifesto and when the PM spoke to the Commission president. The EU should be in no doubt about our determination on that issue.
“It will be for the UK to determine, in the best interests of the UK, who fishes in its waters.”
Asked whether the PM remained committed to the goal set out in the Political Declaration of resolving the issues of fisheries and financial services by July, the spokesman said: “We will be ready to start having this conversation about the future partnership in February. The EU have said that they are not ready to do that, so the discussions will begin in March.
“It’s in both sides’ interests to make progress as quickly as possible, but in terms of the timetable and the scheduling for the negotiations, that’s not been set out yet and will need to be worked upon.”
But Irish leader Leo Varadkar echoed the EU line on the issue on Monday, telling the BBC: "You may have to make concessions in areas like fishing in order to get concessions from us in areas like financial services."


The UK’s access to the single market will be weakened if it does not continue to sign up to EU rules after Brexit, Ursula von der Leyen has said.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the European Commission’s president warned of “more distance” between the UK and EU if such a state of affairs came about.
She also insisted that trade talks would begin in February, following speculation that there could be a further delay until March.
Her comments came as the chancellor, Sajid Javid, said there was “no point” in leaving the EU unless the UK was going to ditch the Brussels rule book.
Ms Von der Leyen’s said that the “next negotiations will start in February with our British friends” and said officials would “work day and night” to reach a deal.
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, has set himself a deadline of reaching a trade deal by the end of the transition period in December. If one is not secured by that point, UK firms will face tariffs and quotas that could wreck their businesses.
“The closer the UK is to the European Union, the better the access to the single market,” Ms Von der Leyen told the conference.
“If it is the UK’s choice not to do so, to be more distant to the European Union, well, then there will be more distance to the single market where the level playing field is concerned and where free movement of goods, capital and services is concerned.”
Mr Javid, who was also speaking at the conference, said a deal could “absolutely” be agreed by 31 December.
“There is a strong belief on both sides it can be done,” he said.
“Both sides recognise, of course, that it’s a tight timetable, a lot needs to be put together in the time that we have, but it can be done and it can be done for both goods – where we want to see free trade, zero tariffs, zero quotas – but also on services.”
The UK is set to leave the EU at the end of the month once the withdrawal agreement has been ratified.


Three of the UK’s most prominent former cabinet ministers from across the political spectrum have urged Theresa May to drop her threat to leave the EU with no deal or risk a catastrophe for British business.
As the Prime Minister prepares to trigger Article 50 on Wednesday, ex-business secretaries Michael Heseltine, Peter Mandelson, and Vince Cable told The Independent leaving with no arrangement in place would be disastrous for British firms and jobs.
Tory Lord Heseltine branded the move “the nightmare which every Conservative prime minister for whom I have worked sought to avoid”, Labour’s Lord Mandelson compared it to “shooting ourselves in both feet” and Liberal Democrat Sir Vince Cable warned disruption could be “as serious as the credit crunch”.
Organisations representing more than 200,000 manufacturers across the UK and Europe also warned that quitting with no deal would be “highly damaging”, while the flourishing UK tech sector said it would be “chaotic”.
Their comments come as Ms May prepares to deliver a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels to officially launch Brexit talks.
Speaking in the Commons, Ms May is expected to emphasise her “fierce determination to get the right deal for every single person in this country” and call for people to unite after the divisive referendum.
But the pressure on her administration to deliver will only intensify after the letter is handed over by the UK’s ambassador to the EU Sir Tim Barrow, sparking a two-year countdown before which a withdrawal deal must be struck.
If none is, the UK will drop out of the EU with no trading arrangements, potentially devastating manufacturers and their supply chains and hitting importers and exporters with major delays and extra costs. Yet Ms May has threatened to voluntarily quit without a deal, if terms offered do not meet her demands.
The three business secretaries with years of experience marshalling Britain’s trade policy urged her to rethink.
Lord Heseltine told The Independent: “No sailor leaves port in the teeth of the storm. To leave Europe with no deal with our largest market would be just such a folly.
“The supply lines for our manufacturing industry in chaos. The financial supremacy of London seeping away as companies sought protection within the European market. Twenty-seven leaders sitting in the Council of Europe, without even an empty chair to remind them of Britain's national self-interest.
“It is the nightmare which every Conservative prime minister for whom I have worked sought to avoid.”
In her Lancaster House speech setting out her approach to Brexit, Ms May sought to play hardball with European leaders by warning she would not be afraid of quitting talks and leaving the EU with no arrangement, saying “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain”.
Despite former Conservative Prime Minister John Major branding the ‘no deal’ scenario the “worst possible outcome” and reports that British officials were playing-down the threat to European diplomats, Downing Street has confirmed there is no change of position.
Lord Mandelson, leading supporter of the Open Britain campaign, said: “No deal means walking away from the negotiations while shooting ourselves in both feet.
“The results would be catastrophic for British businesses, particularly manufacturers and for our economy as a whole.
“Trade negotiations of this complexity are better conducted in the spirit of cooperation and common goals, rather than threats and points scoring.”
Sir Vince said that European negotiators had been misrepresented in the UK as being “bloody minded and wanting to punish us”, but instead he argued that they would actually be boxed in by their own mandate, with British officials finding it difficult to move them to any other position.
He added: “The dangers of the ‘no deal’ scenario are very real. The threat is damaging and disruptive and playing hard to get may not be strategically wise.”
He told The Independent it is a “nuclear option”, more damaging to the UK than the EU, and said it would have particular implications for firms needing the fluid movement of goods in the manufacturing sector.
Sir Vince added: “It’s important that the system be free of tariffs, but they have to be free of interruption and delay – once you introduce that the system breaks down.
“You had a taste of that in 2008 with the credit crunch, this could potentially be as serious as the credit crunch.”
Groups representing 200,000 manufacturers across Europe and the UK added their voice to calls for a ‘no deal’ scenario to be avoided.
Brussels-based group, Ceemet, which includes the UK’s EEF along with French, German and Italian manufacturing organisations said it is not anybody’s interests to lead industries to “cliff-edge decisions” that could occur if Britain falls out of the EU with no deal.
Ceemet director general Uwe Combüchen said: “Simply put, a negotiation which produces no deal would be highly damaging for industry in the EU as well as the UK.”
Digital is one of the fastest growing UK sectors, accounting for 16 per cent of GVA, 24 per cent of total exports and three million jobs – but is particularly at risk from a bad result.
Julian David, CEO at techUK, which represents 900 British companies, collectively employing more than 800,000 people, said: “A chaotic Brexit that results in the UK falling back on WTO rules will benefit no one.”
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Ms May will tell MPs that her Government does have a “Plan for Britain” which will unite people, “so that we are no longer defined by the vote we cast, but by our determination to make a success of the result”.
She will add: “When I sit around the negotiating table in the months ahead, I will represent every person in the whole United Kingdom – young and old, rich and poor, city, town, country and all the villages and hamlets in between.
“And yes, those EU nationals who have made this country their home. It is my fierce determination to get the right deal for every single person in this country.”



A definitive shift in Labour’s Brexit policy has been put on hold after the Unite union dug its heels in against moves to throw the party’s full weight behind a second referendum and a Remain vote.
Hopes that a change in position would be agreed on Tuesday at a crunch shadow cabinet meeting were dashed after the union’s intervention in talks with Jeremy Corbyn.
Senior shadow cabinet ministers including Tom Watson, the deputy leader and Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, will continue to press for full-throated support for a Final Say vote, but now believe they will have to wait longer for a breakthrough.
Labour supporters of a second referendum were encouraged by Mr Corbyn’s most forthright public support yet for a public vote on any Brexit deal.
Speaking in the House of Commons, the Labour leader said that Tory leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt have no “credible” plan for Brexit and “no mandate to force a disastrous hard-right Brexit on this country”.
He told MPs: “Whatever Brexit plan the new Tory leader comes up with, after three long years of failure, they should have the confidence to go back to the people and let them decide the future of this country.”
One shadow cabinet source noted that Mr Corbyn had brought up the referendum issue unprompted in the chamber, in response to a Theresa May statement on a different subject. “He didn’t have to say it,” said the source. “We are now firmly in the position of a referendum on any deal with Jeremy advocating it.”
Mr Corbyn has been inching towards full support for a Final Say referendum since the disastrous European elections last month, in which Labour was beaten into third place behind the Brexit Party and Liberal Democrats on just 14 per cent.
He has told his MPs the party is “ready to support a public vote on any deal”, either in the form of a general election or referendum, and ordered a consultation on the policy. He last week indicated he is planning a speech on the issue, which People’s Vote supporters hope will confirm a move beyond the stance agreed at last year’s conference, which prioritises an election over a referendum.
It had been hoped that consensus on a clearer Brexit policy could be reached in talks with Labour’s union backers on Monday, for final approval at Tuesday’s shadow cabinet meeting.
But while unions including the GMB, Unison and Usdaw were in broad agreement on the need for Labour to be supportive of a referendum, Unite is understood to have set its face against a change in position.
Labour MPs said further delay in the party’s shift towards backing another referendum was an “abrogation of responsibility”.
Siobhain McDonagh, the MP for Mitcham and Morden, told The Independent: “We’re facing one of the biggest crises in our country’s history. We’re facing a no-deal Brexit that would lead not only to devastating consequences for our economy but also probably break-up of the United Kingdom, and we can’t make a decision.
“It’s been this tug of war that we’ve seen for the last six months. We get promised change and leadership but what we get is more delay and an abrogation of responsibility.”
Ilford North MP Wes Streeting said: “The arguments about our Brexit position are well-rehearsed and the position of the majority of Labour members, Labour voters and trade union members is clear: they voted Remain last time and want people to have the final say in a fresh referendum. We now need leadership. It’s the lack of clarity that is killing us.
Ahead of the union meeting, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said he expected “white smoke” at Tuesday’s shadow cabinet meeting – in a reference to the Vatican signal that a new Pope has been chosen.
Speaking at an event in the City, Mr McDonnell repeated his view that it was now the “right time to go back to the people” – and he confirmed that he would campaign for Remain in another referendum.
And he said: ”Out of shadow cabinet tomorrow I’m hoping that a more definitive position will emerge.”
Mr McDonnell warned last week that Labour’s current policy looked “indecisive” and said the party needed to “make our position clear”, while Mr Watson said change was needed “swiftly, decisively and with humility”.


Trade unionists overwhelmingly back a fresh Brexit referendum, a survey has found, as Jeremy Corbyn consults them ahead of a possible shift in Labour policy.
Almost two-thirds of union members support a Final Say public vote, it showed – rising to more than three-quarters of those who backed Labour at the last general election.
They also want Labour to campaign for the UK to stay in the EU by a three-to-one margin and are three times more likely to vote for a Labour Party fully backing a referendum than deterred from doing so.
The results come at a crucial time, ahead of another crunch shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday when Mr Corbyn will again come under huge pressure to come off the fence.
Delaying a decision last week, he said: “I will be hearing trade union views and then I want to set out our views to the public” – hinting at a major speech.
Jo Stevens, the secretary of the trade union group of Labour MPs and a supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, urged Mr Corbyn to listen to “the strong message”.
“Labour’s official position is still too far behind that of our party members and voters, not to mention grassroots trade unionists who are the bedrock of our movement, she said.
The results showed “working people, trade union members” wanted a Final Say vote “just like his constituents do in Islington”, Ms Stevens added.
Peter Kellner, the former president of YouGov, which carried out the poll of 1,813 people, said members in all of the big three unions, Unison, Unite and GMB, were speaking with one voice.
“Although views vary slightly, clear majorities in all three unions back a new public vote and a Remain outcome,” he concluded.
The hopes of many Labour MPs of a fundamental shift to outright support for a second referendum came to nothing last week, when the shadow cabinet meeting broke up without agreement.
Mr Corbyn alarmed those pressing for a commitment to campaign for Remain by saying any referendum ballot paper should contain “real choices for both Leave and Remain voters”.
Tom Watson has now accused Labour bosses of rigging an analysis of the party’s European elections disaster to block a shift to fully backing a second referendum.
Ahead of Mr Corbyn meeting trade union general secretaries, the poll found rank and file members:
* Back a People’s Vote by 64 to 33 per cent – and support staying in the EU by a margin of 71 to 29 per cent if it is staged;
* Want Labour to campaign for the UK to stay in the EU by 60 to 21 per cent – rising to 74 to 10 per cent among the party’s 2017 voters;
* Think Labour’s current position on Brexit is confusing or unclear by a margin of 81 to 16 per cent;
* Believe it is more important to have free trade than to control immigration by a margin 73 to 20 per cent; and
* Are drifting to other parties – with just 39 per cent of trade currently intending to vote Labour.


Whitehall officials have begun “serious work” on the UK staying in a permanent EU customs union as a route to rescuing the Brexit deal, despite Theresa May ruling out the move, The Independent can reveal.
Preparations are underway at a high level, amid a belief the beleaguered prime minister will be forced to offer the potentially crucial compromise to Labour.
Ms May has repeatedly rejected a customs union – fearing a further revolt by anti-EU Tories – but some cabinet ministers are pushing her to accept that the red line will have to be dropped if her deal is to be rescued.
They believe it could tempt scores of Labour MPs to back the deal when it returns to the Commons, even if Jeremy Corbyn himself still refuses to drop his opposition.
Now a well-placed Whitehall source has told The Independent: “There is serious work going on about a customs union. We need to be prepared, so we are ready if the politics moves in that direction.”
Although the prime minister has not yet been won over, she will come under fierce pressure if, as expected, the EU rejects her plea to replace the backstop – before fresh Commons votes in just 12 days’ time.
The concession of a customs union is unlikely to be enough to persuade Mr Corbyn to throw his weight what he is determined to brand “a Tory Brexit”, but many Labour MPs are expected to switch sides.
Furthermore, despite inevitable Tory outrage, some Conservative MPs could be persuaded that a customs union would make it less likely the Irish backstop they oppose – designed to guarantee an open border – will ever be needed.
Crucially, it could also see EU leaders agree to offer concessions on the backstop, as Brussels has repeatedly said it would be more flexible if the UK’s red lines changed.
Jack Dromey, a Labour MP whose Birmingham Erdington constituency includes the Jaguar car plant, said a customs union could be a game-changer that all parties had a duty to pursue.
“Everyone now has responsibility to respond fiercely on reaching a deal in the national interest,” he told The Independent, ”and at the heart of the deal must be progress on a customs union.
“That will inevitably mean a degree of compromise, but it’s essential that everyone is serious about the most serious negotiations in a generation.”
Another Labour MP, Jim Fitzpatrick, said his party should seize on what would be only the latest example of Downing Street edging towards Labour’s Brexit priorities.
“The fact is that Jeremy is now talking to the prime minister and the unions have been to see her, following her clear indications about securing guarantees on workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer rights,” he said.
“There are clear moves towards Labour’s position on what the deal should look like, so I hope that Jeremy would be able to respond positively.”
However, Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, signalled the risk of Ms May igniting a fresh Tory civil war when he said a customs union would be a “flagrant breach” of a manifesto commitment.
Hardline Tories oppose it because the UK would lose the right to sign independent trade deals with the likes of the US, China and India – which they view as a key prize of leaving the EU.
Mr Raab told The House magazine: “We would suffocate all the opportunities of Brexit if we were inside the customs union, if we don’t have control over our trade policy.
“From a public trust point of view, a customs union is a direct and flagrant breach of the manifesto commitment. I don’t see how we can countenance that and the prime minister has been right to rule that out so far.”
Even with significant Labour support, it would still require a big climbdown by Tory MPs for the deal to pass – given it suffered a crushing defeat by a record 230 majority last month.
Despite promising to return to Brussels to fight for “alternative arrangements” to the backstop, the prime minister has yet to say when she will go – or what that alternative will be.
Three possible options have been suggested – a time limit, an exit clause or the use of unproven technology – but all three have been rejected by the EU.
The EU has ruled out reopening the withdrawal agreement, one senior MEP suggesting it would prefer to accept a no-deal Brexit than abandon the Irish border guarantee.
Meanwhile, MPs can again seek to amend the deal on 13 February, a clash Ms May was forced to concede to stop many ministers resigning to block the UK crashing out on 29 March.
Greg Clark, the business secretary, this week came close to backing a customs union as a way of trying to “bring the country together”.
Asked if the idea had his support, Mr Clark said: “I would want to see what proposals were there – you’re talking about a proposal that hasn’t even been made, let alone proposed for agreement.”


The European Parliament's Brexit chief has branded Brexiteers "the real traitors", in a significant escalation of rhetoric from Brussels.
Speaking in a debate in the EU's legislature Guy Verhofstadt accused Boris Johnson of blaming everyone but himself for the situation the UK found itself in.
"The real reason why this is happening is very simply: it's a blame game against everybody. A blame game against the European Union, against Ireland, against Mrs Merkel, against the British judicial system, against Labour, against the Lib Dems, even against Mrs May," he said.
"The only one who is not to be blamed is Mr Johnson himself, apparently. But all the rest are the source of our problems. That is what is happening today. All those who are not playing his game are 'traitors' or a 'collaborator', or 'surrenderers'.
"Well in my opinion, dear colleagues the real traitor is he or she who risks bringing disaster upon his country, its economy, and its citizens, by pushing Britain out of the European Union. That is in my opinion, a traitor."
Mr Verhofstadt's incendiary remarks come after Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers were criticised for adopting hardline rhetoric themselves, branding a bill to prevent no-deal the "Surrender Act" and calling for "Britain first" policies.
In the same debate Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney hit back at Mr Verhofstadt's speech, telling him: "You don't respect democracy ... you've lost, my friend, goodbye."
Mr Verhofstadt also criticised Leave-leaning Labour MPs who had said they would vote for Mr Johnson's proposal. He noted that the plan removed protections for environmental, social and labour standard protections that Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement included.
"That should be contrary to all the things Labour has defended in the past," he said.
Speaking in the same debate Mr Verhofstadt dismissed Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals, telling MEPs: "I will be less diplomatic than Michel Barnier. I think the proposal that Boris Johnson put forward exactly one week ago was not serious at all, dear colleagues.
"Not serious at all, because it was in fact – I call it a virtual proposal - not a real proposal. It gives a veto to the DUP, it puts customs facilities not on the border but in all the other parts of the islands of Ireland."


Hopes of a fundamental Labour shift to full-throated support for a second Brexit referendum came to nothing today as a crunch shadow cabinet meeting broke up without agreement on a new policy.
Supporters of a Final Say referendum voiced hopes that leader Jeremy Corbyn may be moving towards out-and-out backing for a People's Vote, after he signalled an imminent speech on his position on Europe.
But his current position was condemned as a "fudge" by campaigners who have been demanding clarity from the party leadership, while a former minister who defected to Change UK accused him of "taking Labour voters for fools"
The meeting came as 26 Labour MPs urged Mr Corbyn to back a deal which would take the UK out of the EU by 31 October, warning that a shift to a pro-Remain stance would be "toxic to bedrock Labour voters". And a discussion paper produced by the leader's office warned that “There is an evident risk that shifting to a more explicitly pro-Remain position would leave us vulnerable in seats we need to hold or win without enough potential seat gains in winnable Remain majority areas.”
Speaking to shadow cabinet, Mr Corbyn restated his existing position that "it is now right to demand that any deal is put to a public vote", which could be a general election or second referendum. And he said that any referendum ballot paper should contain "real choices for both Leave and Remain voters".
Mr Corbyn held out the prospect of an imminent speech to set out the party's position on Brexit, saying he wanted to "set out our views to the public" after consulting with trade unions next week.
But he stopped well short of agreeing to deputy leader Tom Watson's call for Labour to lead a full-scale summer campaign for a Final Say referendum and support for Remain.
Responding to Mr Corbyn's comments, Labour frontbencher Rachael Maskell, of the pro-Remain Love Socialism Hate Brexit group, said the party must adopt a "crystal-clear" position of keeping the UK in Europe before Boris Johnson takes the reins of power next month.
Today's shadow cabinet meeting was part of a consulation launched by Mr Corbyn in the wake of Labour's woeful performance in last month's European elections, in which the party slumped into third place on just 14 per cent behind NIgel Farage's Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats.
He took a step towards a second referendum at that point, saying that Labour was "ready to support a public vote on any deal". But anti-Brexit campaigners said that the party must go further, with the expected imminent arrival of Mr Johnson in Downing Street making a no-deal withdrawal a very real prospect.
Mr Watson wants an emergency vote or special conference to authorize a change in policy before the summer, warning that it will be “too late” to stop a no-deal Brexit on 31 October if Labour waits until its annual conference in Brighton in September.
But he is facing stiff resistance from figures including chairman Ian Lavery and shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett, who fear an exodus of voters in Leave-voting constituencies in the Midlands and the North of England.
The open letter signed by frontbencher Gloria de Piero and MPs including Stephen Kinnock, Caroline Flint and Lisa Nandy, said that the near-defeat by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in the Peterborough by-election was a “stark warning” of the potential risk to the party in Leave-majority seats.
“The strength of the Brexit Party in Labour heartland areas in the European elections revealed a much more potent threat than either the Liberals or Greens present,” they said.
Mr Corbyn told shadow cabinet that he had “stuck faithfully” to Labour’s policy agreed at last year’s conference, which makes a second referendum an option if the party is unable to secure its preferred “jobs-first Brexit” or a general election.
He said: “I have already made the case, on the media and in Dublin, that it is now right to demand that any deal is put to a public vote. That is in line with our conference policy which agreed a public vote would be an option.
“A ballot paper would need to contain real choices for both leave and remain voters. This will of course depend on Parliament.
“I want to hear your views, I will be hearing trade union views next week, and then I want to set out our views to the public.”
Ms Maskell said the need for a “clear alternative” to the new Tory PM’s version of Brexit was urgent.
“By late July, we will have an extreme right-wing Tory prime minister pursuing a hard Brexit that will wreck our communities and undermine our rights,” she said.
“As a party, we need to present a clear alternative to transform Britain and Europe, and we need to be energetic and enthusiastic about promoting it.
“Only a radical Labour message can keep us in Europe, and only by opposing Brexit can we be true to our values and set out a radical vision to transform the country. Our position must be crystal clear before Boris Johnson walks into Number 10.”
Momentum activist Alena Ivanova, of the pro-Remain Another Europe is Possible movement, said: “Labour is a mass movement, and many of the activists recruited to the party by the hope and radicalism of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership are watching on in disbelief as, once again, we are treated to more fudge and consultation, and no clear movement towards Remain.
“We need to move our position before the summer break - both to save our electoral prospects and simply to do the right thing. Labour and the anti-Brexit movement need each other, urgently.”
A message from Mr Lavery’s Twitter account appeared to suggest that the ultimate aim of those pressing for change was to block Brexit by revoking the UK’s Article 50 process.
Responding to reports of pressure on Mr Corbyn to shift his stance, the message stated: “Please understand there (sic) position really is to head for to (sic) revoking A50.”
But Mr Lavery later said that the swiftly-deleted post was “not authorized by myself or anyone on my team”. And he posted an email which he had received from Twitter around an hour after the original post, alerting him to the fact that his account had been accessed from an unknown smartphone.
Change UK MP Chris Leslie, who quit Labour in February over Brexit, said: "Labour's reluctance to argue for remaining in the EU is a historic betrayal and Jeremy Corbyn has now run down the clock with his continued contortions."Revoking Article 50 is now the only practical route that allows the British people the time and space to have a genuine final say.
"This further round of consultations is nothing more than Jeremy Corbyn playing Labour members for fools."
And the Best for Britain campaign for a second referendum warned Mr Corbyn not to “row back” from his apparent movement towards a Final Say vote.
"Corbyn's statement may appear significant but it would be unwise of him to offer the prospect of real choice to Remain voters and then row back,” said Best for Britain’s Naomi Smith.
"That would be dangerous for Labour and dangerous for the country as well."


John McDonnell has threatened to send Jeremy Corbyn to Buckingham Palace in a taxi to tell the Queen Labour is “taking over” if Boris Johnson loses a no-confidence vote.
The shadow chancellor’s comments at Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Wednesday suggested that MPs attempting to block a no-deal Brexit would involve the monarch if they ran out of options.
Mr McDonnell said Labour would ask the Queen to appoint party leader Mr Corbyn as prime minister if Mr Johnson refused to step down.
He said he did not want to “drag the Queen into this” but would “send Jeremy Corbyn in a cab to Buckingham Palace to say we’re taking over”.
Prominent pro-EU Tory MP Dominic Grieve previously warned the prime minister that he could not ignore constitutional convention, adding that the Queen “is not a decorative extra” and may be forced to “dispense with his services herself”.
It is expected Mr Corbyn will table a motion of no confidence in the autumn to prevent a no-deal Brexit, and some senior Tory MPs have suggested they could vote against Mr Johnson’s new government as a last resort.
In a letter to The Times, former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind said Mr Johnson could spark “the gravest constitutional crisis since the actions of Charles I led to the Civil War” if he “refused to respect the normal consequence of losing a confidence vote” and “sought to prevent both parliament and the electorate having a final say on no deal”.
Mr McDonnell’s comments came after it was revealed Mr Johnson could refuse to resign and wait a fortnight for a general election to be triggered.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, MPs have 14 days to form an alternative government and win a fresh vote before a general election must be called.
A cross-party group of rebel MPs are reportedly looking into how they can prevent Mr Johnson pushing through a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, according to The Guardian.
The newspaper reports that their plan involves forcing parliament to sit through the autumn recess.


Unionists have vowed to kill off any Brexit deal which keeps Northern Ireland in the EU’s customs union, amid fears that Boris Johnson is ready to make the province a “sacrificial lamb” to secure an agreement with Brussels.
The prime minister refused to confirm that Northern Ireland would be leaving the customs union, in his first public comments after the EU agreed to intensify talks ahead of next week’s make-or-break summit.
Mr Johnson didn’t comment on what compromises he had made to coax the EU into deepening talks over the coming weekend, stating only that “nothing that will damage the ability of the whole of the UK to take full advantage of Brexit”.
Northern Irish unionists immediately pledged to kill any agreement that kept the territory in the EU’s customs union, with former Ulster Unionist Party MP Jim Nicholson warning that “Northern Ireland is being offered up by Boris Johnson as the sacrificial lamb to save Brexit”.
In a statement issued late on Friday, DUP leader Arlene Foster stressed that “the United Kingdom must leave the EU as one nation and in so doing that no barriers to trade are erected within the UK”.
“We have been consistent in our opposition to the backstop, whether UK or NI only, and anything that traps Northern Ireland in the European Union, whether single market or customs union, as the rest of the United Kingdom leaves will not have our support,” she said, adding that her party “will judge any outcome reached by the prime minister against the criteria above”.
The DUP’s reaction to any agreement is likely to be crucial because it cannot be passed without their MPs’ votes, and because many Tory Brexiteers have in the past taken their lead from the Northern Irish party.
The next 48 hours is expected to be a crucial period for decisions on any deal, with a planned meeting of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel in Paris and the preparations for next week’s summit entering their final stage. EU diplomats are treating the talks with caution, but were willing to move them to the next stage because of movement on the UK side.
Announcing the step-up in negotiations over the weekend, a spokesperson for the European Commission said “the EU’s position remains the same” and listed the EU’s red line – prompting questions about what exactly the prime minister had promised.
The agreement on Friday afternoon to intensify talks is a major boost for the prime minister’s hopes of getting a deal. EU officials confirmed at lunchtime that negotiations would be entering a “tunnel” – Brussels jargon for intense private negotiations where leaks are kept to a minimum.
The move followed a breakfast meeting between Brexit secretary Steve Barclay and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier in the EU capital, which both sides described as “constructive”.
Despite the news, Donald Tusk, the European Council president, warned on Friday that current UK proposals were neither “workable” nor “realistic”.
The decision to enter a tunnel came after Mr Barnier briefed EU27 ambassadors on the results of morning’s talks. The diplomats, representing EU member states, agreed that signs of movement were promising enough to warrant the “tunnel”.
Taking stock around lunchtime, Michel Barnier told reporters: “Brexit is like climbing a mountain. We need vigilance, determination and patience.”
A European Commission spokesperson said: “The EU and UK have agreed to intensify discussions over the coming days. The EU’s position remains the same: there must be a legally operative solution in the withdrawal agreement that avoids a hard border on the island of Ireland, protects the all-island economy and the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement in all its dimensions, and safeguards the integrity of the single market.”
The spokesperson added that Mr Barnier would check back in with member states and MEPs to update them on progress on Monday.
Speaking to broadcasters, Mr Johnson said “it would be wrong of me to give a running commentary on the negotiations”, adding: “Let negotiators get on with the job.”
“I had a good conversation with the Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday and I think both of us can see a pathway to a deal, but that doesn’t mean it’s a done deal.”
The mood of talks swung towards last-minute optimism on Thursday after a meeting between Boris Johnson and Irish PM Leo Varadkar on Merseyside, where both sides spoke of a “pathway to a deal”.
Officials are being tight-lipped about the content of discussions and is not clear what it was that Mr Johnson and Mr Varadkar discussed that has raised hopes of a solution.
Only the day before the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier had savaged UK plans in a public point-by-point deconstruction.
Mr Barnier said the EU had three concerns with UK proposals: that they did not prevent a customs border on the island of Ireland, that they included a veto for the Northern Ireland Assembly, and that they were not actually legally operable or ready to go.
Speaking in Cyprus on Friday, European Council president Donald Tusk said: “Unfortunately, we are still in a situation in which the UK has not come forward with a workable, realistic proposal.
“A week ago I told PM Johnson that if there was no such proposal by today, I would announce publicly that there are no more chances – because of objective reasons – for a deal during the incoming European Council.
“However, yesterday when the Irish taoiseach and the UK prime minister met they both saw – for the first time – a pathway to a deal. I have received promising signals from the taoiseach that a deal is still possible.”
He added that “technical talks” were still taking place in Brussels but that there was “no guarantee of success and the time is practically up”.
The 28 EU leaders will meet in Brussels next Thursday and Friday for their regular European Council summit, where Brexit is expected to be discussed – including the possibility of any extension. Both sides are aiming to have a deal done by the meeting.

Dan O'Brien Twitter
December 13 2018 02:30 AM
How hard you push those you bargain with is central to the art of persuasion and negotiation. Twenty-five years ago this week one of the most important bargains in the history of this island was reached. The Downing Street Declaration cleared a pathway towards politics for those who had sought to get their way by violence and intimidation.
That declaration insisted that those who used violence would have to stop killing if they were to be included in the political process. But it did not demand that they surrender all their weapons in advance as a condition. Such a condition would have been just and fair - allowing killers to hold onto their guns gave them the power to threaten to walk away from the table if they didn't get what they want and go back to violence.
But neither the Irish nor British government put this demand on the table. They did not seek it because they knew the IRA and Sinn Féin would never accept those terms. At the very least, the provisional movement would have split. At worst, the violence could still be going on today.
Most of us are familiar with negotiating in much less dramatic contexts, whether it is haggling for a trinket in a foreign bazaar or buying a house. Experience tells us that if you insist on a price you know the other side will not accept the chances are that you will end up with no deal.
Thirteen months ago the Irish and EU side in the Brexit negotiations placed a new demand on the table. What has become known as the "backstop" was designed to ensure that the Border on this island would undergo absolutely no change under any circumstances in the future. This would involve, if the backstop as it now stands was ever used, Northern Ireland leaving the UK's single market and staying in the EU's single market.
Despite claims to the contrary, this has constitutional implications. The regulation and adjudication of markets are at the core of the infrastructure of state. It is for this reason that Ireland had a constitutional referendum to join the common market in the 1970s and another constitutional referendum to join the single  market in the 1980s.
For Northern Ireland to exit the UK's single market would amount to a constitutional change. Among other things it would leave the citizens of Northern Ireland disenfranchised - they would be subject to laws made at the EU level but without a vote in European Parliament elections and without representation in other EU institutions.
Because of the constitutional implications for the UK, it was inevitable that there would be strong opposition from across the spectrum of British politics to the backstop. The scale of the opposition was to be seen this week when Theresa May U-turned spectacularly on putting the EU withdrawal deal to a vote in the House of Commons. And it was not just many Conservatives who oppose the backstop. The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said this week that if he were in charge "there certainly wouldn't be a 'backstop' from which you can't escape".
There was always a risk the backstop would bring about a no-deal Brexit. A no-deal outcome would be a disaster for Ireland on multiple levels. It would place Ireland in a position of policing the Republic's side of what will be an external frontier of the EU, or not policing it and ending up having French, Belgium and Dutch customs officials treating Ireland like a non-EU country.
A hard deal would also inflict maximum economic disruption to east-west trade. That includes the imports which keep production lines in Irish factories rolling.
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It also includes the food on supermarket shelves. Ireland may be a net exporter of food, as the Taoiseach stressed on last Friday's 'The Late Late Show', but the headline figures mask a more vulnerable position.
Irish farmers specialise in beef and dairy. Exports of these products massively exceed imports. But the opposite is true for many important foodstuffs. Among these are cereals, such as flour, and vegetables, including potatoes (last year the value of potato imports was 20 times greater than exports, according to the CSO). Much of the food that is imported either originates in Britain or travels through it from the continent.
Shortages of some foods are a future risk. Some of these negative outcomes of the backstop have already materialised. Political unionism - both the anti-Brexit Ulster Unionist Party, as well as the DUP - is opposed to the backstop. Putting it on the table has increased suspicions among some unionists that the Irish Government is attempting to "annex" the North. A LucidTalk poll from earlier in the month showed 69pc of unionists opposed the backstop proposal.
The backstop has also increased hostility towards Ireland in Britain. In recent days resentment in Westminster has become more public. If the pro-Brexit wing of the Conservative Party ever takes power there will be people looking to settle scores with Ireland. And even though Theresa May survived her leadership challenge last evening, almost all current leadership candidates waiting in the wings are Brexiteers. One of them could well be in Downing Street before too long.
Those who came up with the backstop misread British politics and the British, placing a demand on the table that could end up bringing about that which it was designed to prevent.
If there has been light from the chaos of the past few days it came from lawyers in Luxembourg. Last Monday morning's confirmation by the EU's de facto supreme court that Britain can take back its notice to leave the bloc at any time before March 29, and do so without consulting other member countries, offers a possible route back to some sort of stability. Something resembling a consensus may emerge around exercising that option. Let's hope that happens because the alternatives are looking either unlikely or appalling.


As she falteringly tried to roll that boulder of an unloved Brexit deal uphill, Theresa May's recurring catchphrase amid the chaos was: "The British people just want us to get on with it."
Brexit
EU leaders will today consider how they can help get the UK Brexit deal - which still faces a wall of opposition in the London parliament - ratified by UK MPs.


More than 100 documents have been published by the British government on how its citizens can prepare in the event of a crash-out, no-deal Brexit. It includes guidance on everything from the effect on flights and mobile phone-roaming to taking pets abroad and the impact of a no-deal scenario on the UK's space programmes.
Brexit
DUP leader Arlene Foster has teamed up with two former Brexit secretaries to call for an overhaul of the Irish backstop.
Brexit
A 'lockdown of thumbs' was ordered by senior Government figures in Dublin yesterday as Conservative MPs attempted to oust Theresa May.
Brexit
Tanáiste Simon Coveney said the Government made a "judgment call" in relation to discussing contingency plans for a no-deal Brexit, and pledged there will be a "lot more" information in the coming weeks.
Brexit
The pound rose against both the euro and the dollar yesterday as early reports suggested that British Prime Minister Theresa May would easily defeat a move to depose her.
Britain
Theresa May promised Conservative party MPs to secure more than just "a few warm words" on the Irish backstop as she pleaded for her job.


A Mediahuis  Website
David Cameron has been accused of taking “cronyism” to new heights after he showered 46 of his former aides, advisers and ministers with honours in his resignation list.
Mr Cameron nominated another 13 political allies, including Tory fundraisers, for peerages.
Although a leaked version of his list provoked a storm of controversy, most of the names he put forward have been approved by Buckingham Palace. Many of those rewarded played a key role in the Remain campaign, which was on the losing side in June’s EU referendum. These awards have already been attacked as “rewards for failure.”
George Osborne, the former Chancellor who was sacked by Theresa May when she succeeded Mr Cameron as a Prime Minister, was handed the rarely-awarded Companion of Honour for outstanding public service.
Andrew Cook, a former Tory treasurer who has given more than £1m to the party and gave £350,000 to the Remain campaign, was awarded a knighthood “for political service.” He is the chairman of William Cook Holdings. Another businessman and Tory donor on Mr Cameron’s draft list, Vitoil Oil chief Ian Taylor, withdrew his name after it was leaked. There was no place on the final list for Michael Spencer, the former Tory treasurer and founder of Icap, which became embroiled in the Libor fixing scandal. It is believed that Mr Cameron nominated him for a peerage on three occasions and that his name was not approved by the honours scrutiny committee. There is no suggestion that Mr Spencer was personally implicated in the Libor affair.
The valedictory list will be remembered for the awards handed to Mr Cameron's inner circle and backroom advisers, who included some of his long-standing personal friends and were dubbed the “chumocracy.” Critics argue that they should not have been rewarded for merely doing their jobs. Isabel Spearman, who was Samantha Cameron’s stylist, was made an OBE, as was Thea Rogers, who gave Mr Osborne an image makeover as his chief of staff. Two of Mr Cameron’s government drivers, Sean Storey and Martha Gutierrez Velez, also received honours.
There were peerages for Ed Llewellyn, who was Mr Cameron’s chief of staff since he became Tory leader in 2005; Gabby Bertin, his former press secretary; Andrew Fraser, the Tory treasurer; Olivia Bloomfield, a former governor of Cheltenham Ladies’ College who raised millions for the Tories; Camilla Cavendish, who headed the Downing Street Policy Unit and Liz Sugg, who was Number 10’s head of operations.
Craig Oliver, who was Downing Street's director of communications, was given a knighthood. Other spin doctors on the list included Graeme Wilson, Helen Bower-Easton, Ramsay Jones, Alan Sendorek, Giles Kenningham and Caroline Preston. Several policy advisers also received honours.
Unusually, two members of Ms May’s Cabinet received knighthoods – Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary and Patrick McLoughlin, the Tory chairman. David Lidington, the Commons Leader who was Mr Cameron’s Minister for Europe, was made a CBE. Oliver Letwin, the Government’s former policy chief who was sacked by Ms May, was knighted. So was Hugo Swire, a former Foreign Office Minister.
Gavin Williamson, who was Mr Cameron’s parliamentary aide and is now Government Chief Whip, received a CBE. Two new dames were created – Caroline Spelman, the former Environment Secretary, and Arabella Warburton, who is chief of staff to the former Prime Minister Sir John Major.
The pro-EU campaigners on the list included Labour’s Will Straw, executive director of the Remain campaign, who was made a CBE. He is the son of the former Cabinet minister Jack Straw. Nick Herbert, a Eurosceptic Tory MP who urged an In vote in the referendum, received the same honour. Charlotte Vere, executive director of Conservatives In, was made a peer.
 For a prime minister who promised to cut the cost of politics, David Cameron is leaving a big bill for the taxpayer as he leaves office
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “David Cameron’s resignation honours list is so full of cronies it would embarrass a medieval court. He is not the first Prime Minister to leave office having rewarded quite so many friends, but he should be the last. For the reputation of future leaders, such appointments should be handed over to an independent panel.“
Tommy Sheppard, the SNP's Cabinet Office spokesman, said: “This list confirms what we already knew - the Westminster honours system is rotten to the core.The former Prime Minister has well and truly overstepped the mark of acceptability with these awards by choosing to use his resignation to hand out knighthoods and honours as a form of personal patronage.”
Katie Ghose, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said: “For a prime minister who promised to cut the cost of politics, David Cameron is leaving a big bill for the taxpayer as he leaves office. His parting gift of 16 Lords is a sorry legacy, both in terms of cost to the taxpayer and the quality of our democracy. Mr Cameron’s Lords legacy could have been about real, democratic reform. Instead, he has unfortunately chosen to follow the well-trodden route of every other PM and packed the second chamber with former politicians, donors and party hacks. These unelected peers will cost the taxpayer millions over the long term – hardly a fitting goodbye.”
Peerages also went to Shami Chakrabarti, former director of the Liberty human rights group, who was nominated by Jeremy Corbyn even though his deputy Tom Watson urged Labour to boycott the honours system after the row over Mr Cameron's farewell list.
There are two new crossbench peers – Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the former Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, and Sir Peter Ricketts, the former National Security Adviser.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: “Shami Chakrabarti shares Jeremy’s ambition for reform of the House of Lords. Her career has been one of public service and human rights advocacy. Her legal and campaigning skills, and the trust that she has gained from many ordinary Britons, will be a considerable asset to the House of Lords.”
Ms Chakrabarti said: “I am honoured to accept Jeremy Corbyn’s challenge and opportunity to help hold the Government to account. This is a dangerous moment for our country and we share vital human rights values that need defending more than ever before in my lifetime.”
An outgoing prime minister has the right to propose a resignation honours list to Buckingham Palace. Although Ms May has drawn a line under the “chumocracy” of the Cameron era, she refused to intervene to block any of his proposed honours, arguing that this would set a bad precedent. However, she may seek to reform the system.


David Miliband has issued a call for politicians on all sides to fight back against the “worst consequences” of last year’s vote for Britain to leave the EU.
The former Labour Foreign Secretary described the outcome of the 2016 referendum as an “unparalleled act of economic self-harm”.
Writing in The Observer, he said the country should have the chance to vote on any Brexit deal in a second referendum, with a straight choice between remaining in the EU and the negotiated alternative.
“People say we must respect the referendum. We should. But democracy did not end on 23 June, 2016. The referendum will be no excuse if the country is driven off a cliff,” he wrote.
“MPs are there to exercise judgement. Delegating to Theresa May and David Davis, never mind Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, the settlement of a workable alternative to EU membership is a delusion, not just an abdication.”
His intervention came as Chancellor Philip Hammond and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox came together to declare that a post-Brexit transition would not be a “back door” to Britain remaining in the EU.
After a summer of cabinet feuding, Mr Hammond, who favours a “softer” pro-business Brexit, and Mr Fox, a hardline Brexiteer, said that they agreed there should not be “cliff-edge” break when Britain leaves the EU in March 2019.
In a joint article for The Sunday Telegraph, they said any transition would be “time limited” and that Brexit would mean the UK pulling out of both the EU single market and the customs union.
“We want our economy to remain strong and vibrant through this period of change. That means businesses need to have confidence that there will not be a cliff-edge when we leave the EU in just over 20 months’ time,” they wrote.
“That is why we believe a time-limited interim period will be important to further our national interest and give business greater certainty – but it cannot be indefinite; it cannot be a back door to staying in the EU.
“We are both clear that during this period the UK will be outside the customs union and will be a ‘third country’, not a party to EU treaties.”
Prime Minister Theresa May will hope the intervention of the two ministers will cool temperatures in the Tory ranks amid divisions over Brexit and speculation of a possible leadership challenge when MPs return to Westminster in September.
However, the leading Conservative Remainer Anna Soubry warned the Prime Minister that she needed to face down the “hard Brexiteers” in the Conservative ranks if she wanted to hold on to her position in No 10.
“Mrs May is making a great mistake if she allows her policy to be dictated by the Brexit ideologues. They effectively brought down John Major, David Cameron and, arguably, Margaret Thatcher – and will not hesitate to do the same to her,” she said in an article for The Mail on Sunday.
The former business minister also indicated that she could be prepared to join with politicians from other parties to stop the country “staggering recklessly” towards a hard break with Brussels.
“Could I ever see myself joining with like-minded people who want to save our country from such an appalling fate? And has that moment arrived yet?” she wrote.
“The answer to the first question is ‘it is not impossible’; the answer to the second is ‘no’. But I would be betraying my principles if I did not make it clear that country must always come before party.”
In his article, Mr Miliband stopped short of following the former Conservative aide James Chapman in calling for pro-Remain MPs to come together in a new party.
He did, however, back cross-party calls – supported by Conservative Lord William Hague and Labour's Heidi Alexander and Stephen Kinnock – for Britain to remain in the European Economic Area free trade zone along with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein as well as the EU member states.
“In Britain, the implementation of the EU referendum decision has been rash and chaotic. The timing and content has been governed by factions in the Tory party. Our negotiating position is a mystery – even on immigration,” he wrote.
“So the fightback against the worst consequences of the referendum has the opportunity and responsibility to get its bearings fast.”
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Today, in “Constitutional Innovations Induced by Brexit”, we have the concept of optional collective responsibility. Three cabinet ministers, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke, have written an article explaining why the government’s policy is wrong.
Last year Rudd resigned because she told a select committee what her civil servant told her to say, but this time she has merely contradicted the prime minister on the central question facing the nation and undermined the government’s negotiating position in Brussels.
Paradoxically, however, the chances of Theresa May getting her Brexit deal through parliament are rising. I think it is now the most likely outcome, with the UK leaving the EU on 29 March or a few weeks later.
Partly, this is because it is finally sinking in that the chances of a no-deal Brexit are small. Today’s cabinet revolt reinforces the solid majority in the House of Commons against it happening. If the prime minister fails to win parliament’s approval of her deal, the alternative is likely to be that Brexit will be postponed, possibly for ever.
The prospect of Britain leaving without an agreement still scares people because May refuses to rule it out. But she has to do that because it is the only remnant of negotiating leverage she has in Brussels. However much Rudd, Clark and Gauke weaken her hand, the EU side can never be completely sure that the prime minister won’t reveal herself as Theresa “Mad Dog” May at the last moment, determined to tear the house down if she can’t get her own way.
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Thus she and Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, are making progress towards a legally binding appendix to the deal – which is the second reason for thinking that a deal might finally win through.
The EU negotiators can be forgiven for having their doubts about the other constitutional innovation induced by Brexit, namely the assertion of the right of the House of Commons to legislate against the wishes of the government.
They cannot be sure, just because some journalists said it, that, if May didn’t rule out a no-deal Brexit, the House of Commons would. After all, Yvette Cooper and her cross-party coalition of backbenchers failed in their attempt last month to legislate against “no deal”.
However, Cooper lost that vote by only 23, and only because Rudd and her supporters were willing to give the prime minister a few more weeks to negotiate. That time has now expired, and this coming week the House of Commons is finally going to have to make some decisions rather than express pious hopes.
The Cooper plan looks certain to win the vote on Wednesday. We have yet to see if Rudd and colleagues will resign from the government to vote for it – or if the doctrine of cabinet government will be further revised to allow them to stay in post and vote against their own policy. But in any case there will be enough Ruddite Tories on the backbenches to reverse the result from last time.
The only thing that could stop the Cooper plan would be if May were to put a revised deal to the Commons first and win the vote on that. The indications are, however, that Cox’s legal drafting will not be ready in time.
So May continues on her twin tracks towards achieving the impossible. Once Cooper closes off the option of a no-deal Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg and his cohorts have to choose between the prime minister’s deal and delaying Brexit. At the same time, Cox’s codicil could give them the excuse they need to decide that the deal is bearable after all.
The critical question is whether Cox can do enough to satisfy the DUP that the withdrawal agreement will avoid a regulatory border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. With the DUP on board, the deal is done. Theresa May can still get it through without them – and the creation of the Independent Group means the DUP can no longer bring her government down – but she would need 83 of the 107 no-deal Tory MPs plus 35 Labour MPs to support it.
If she can’t get it through, the alternative is not a no-deal Brexit on 29 March, but delay and more uncertainty. It is only then that the attitude of Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the official opposition, has any bearing on the issue. This week John McDonnell responded to the threat of further Labour defections by tiptoeing towards a second referendum.
If Theresa May secures her Brexit deal it will be because enough Tory and Labour MPs who think her deal is bad decide that another referendum is even worse.


“Love Corbyn. Hate Brexit,” said a banner at a recent left-wing anti-Brexit rally. But Labour members are finding it increasingly hard to do both, because Jeremy Corbyn is backing Brexit.
Team Corbyn calculated that his delicate balancing act – honouring the 2016 referendum while calling for a soft Brexit – would not prevent Remainers voting Labour. They certainly did so at last year’s election. Since then, the Labour leader has resisted calls for him to oppose Theresa May’s Brexit more vigorously, in part to avoid alienating those Leave voters in the North and Midlands who are natural Labour supporters.
But opinion is now shifting inside the party, amid the real prospect of either a bad Brexit deal or a chaotic no-deal departure.
Labour members, including many of Corbyn’s cheerleaders in Momentum, trade unions, backbench MPs and frontbenchers, are pressing him to stop colluding with May on Brexit. This pressure, rather than the party’s debilitating row over antisemitism, could be the main event at next month’s Labour conference in Liverpool, which is likely to keep open the option of backing a Final Say referendum.
Corbyn is not yet convinced; he will continue to do everything to trigger the general election he understandably craves. But there is a growing recognition among his allies that he is unlikely to get an election, since Tory turkeys on either side of their party’s Brexit divide will never vote for Christmas.
Opinion polls suggest growing support for a referendum, as well as doubts about Brexit among 2016 Leave voters. While some Labour MPs representing Leave areas fear a backlash if the party calls for a Final Say, the Labour Leave vote looks softer than it did in 2016.
So Labour’s wheels turn, albeit slowly, towards a referendum.
Several shadow cabinet members believe the party will back one if, as looks increasingly likely, parliament rejects May’s deal and blocks a no-deal exit next March. One told me: “A referendum may be the only way out of this mess.”
Labour MPs who support another public vote will change tactics as they try to push open a door that Corbyn has just about left ajar. They will make clear their campaign is not an attempt to destabilise him, or call for a change of leader or direction – an attempt to head off Corbynista claims that they are “bitter Blairites” plotting a breakaway centre party. The pro-Europeans will argue that Labour must oppose Brexit because the economic hit would hobble a Corbyn government, leaving it to preside over more austerity and powerless to revive public services and tackle inequality. That would wipe out any Brexit benefit Corbyn sees, such as state aid for industry.
There is another reason why Corbyn should come off the fence on Brexit. This week Nigel Farage has returned to the political front line, by becoming vice chair of the Leave Means Leave group.
I must admit I hadn’t noticed that the former Ukip leader had gone away, but never mind.
Ever since the 2016 vote, Farage has smelt a Brexit betrayal and said he would “reluctantly” be dragged back to the fray if the Tories did not honour the verdict. May’s Chequers plan for a softer Brexit gave him the opening he was always going to find at some point, whatever she did.
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Farage is getting back on his battlebus, though Boris Johnson has more sense: if he followed suit, it would only remind voters of the non-existent £350m-a-week boost for the NHS he promised two years ago. Johnson at least acknowledges he must now answer the charge that hardline Brexiteers have no alternative to May’s blueprint, and is working on one. Farage has never been a details man; that’s for others. Announcing that “I’m back”, he attacked “Theresa the Appeaser” and declared that “now is the time for action”. A plan, however, there was not.
That hardliners feel the need to relaunch their 2016 campaign, and worry they might yet lose the war, should give Corbyn pause for thought. As the grim reality of Brexit dawns, the game is still open. Corbyn will not only have to answer what one Labour former cabinet minister described as the “what did you do to stop Brexit?” question if it goes pear-shaped. There is also the “whose side are you on?” question.
Does the Labour leader really want to line up with Farage and give succour to the populists, including the former Ukip leader’s sleazy pal Donald Trump? Does Corbyn really want to allow Farage to push the Tories into a hard Brexit or no-deal disaster? Or is Labour prepared to join forces with sensible pro-European Tories calling for parliament’s looming deadlock to be broken by referring the issue back to the people?
Finally, who does Corbyn want the history books to mark out as the decisive player in the closing act of the Brexit drama? Farage? Or himself?


In 2009, James Delingpole – a right-wing scribbler known for his hatred of the EU and total dismissal of climate change – wrote a book aimed at an American audience called ‘Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn’t Work’. You could be forgiven for missing it, but it argued that Barack Obama would seek to turn the United States into a socialist state like Britain, based particularly on the delivery of universal healthcare. All nonsense, of course, but it got me thinking at the parallels between right wing politicians and campaigners here – and their overblown claims – and the politics of Donald Trump over there, not least given Nigel Farage has appeared at a Trump rally and reportedly helped prepare him for Trump’s disastrous debate performances.
Both Donald Trump and the Vote Leave campaign epitomised ‘post-truth politics’. In Britain, we have seen what happens when such people end up in power. Their most graphic claim took the form of the massive red battle bus carrying a slogan that was repeated in nearly every press release and leaflet they produced – “We send the EU £350 million a week let’s fund our NHS instead.” Despite thousands of people signing a petition calling on them to keep their promise, there has been much backtracking since. Other Vote Leave promises, such as cutting VAT and introducing a points-based immigration system, have similarly sunk without trace.
Donald Trump has carved out a similar line in simple untruths. A fact-checking service has found that the Republican nominee told 40 lies in one day on Saturday – breaking his previous record of 37. These ranged from exaggerating the number of people attending his rallies to claiming that Hillary Clinton is responsible for the creation of so-called Islamic State.
Worryingly, both the victorious Brexit campaigners and the Republican candidate Trump have indulged in angry rhetoric against some of the framework of constitutional democracy itself. Trump has achieved notoriety for claiming that the US election is being rigged (without a shred of evidence), and raising the possibility that he would simply refuse to accept the result if he lost. Meanwhile, in Britain, judges who upheld the right of the people’s representatives in parliament to decide the timing (not the fact) of British exit from the EU have been excoriated as ‘enemies of the people.’ Brexiteers have also called on the independent Governor of the Bank of England to resign. Whether on the Left or the Right, almost all politicians accept certain rules of the game and the rule of law – such as the independence of the judiciary and the inviolability of election results – but not so Trump and his Brexiteer friends in the UK.
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This anger and rejection of moderate, fact-based argument has already had serious consequences. In Britain, the level of hate crimes committed rose 49 per cent higher than normal levels in the weeks after the referendum vote. The Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police himself said there was a “spike” in such crimes after the vote. The rise of Trumpism has likewise been accompanied by acts that one would have hoped would have passed into the history books, such as the burning of a black church in Mississippi last week. When passions are whipped up against foreigners, against so-called elites, when the legitimacy of the political process is called into question – these actions have consequences.
Whatever the result of the presidential election today, those of us on the Centre and Left of politics, in Britain and in the United States, must work out how we respond to the new establishment which is what populists like Trump become, and how we build a new coalition for a politics that unites and does not divide our nations. For even if Trump loses, he will have been shockingly successful – capturing the nomination of the Republican Party in the first instance was after all no mean feat.
We must fight hard for the values we believe in – respect, openness, and a solidarity that cuts across races, religions and classes to bring people together. To prove that by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone. But we also must seek to address and understand the forces that lead to a rise in support for the demagogues, by giving all people a share in the proceeds of growth, and addressing legitimate concerns about the pace and scale of change driven by immigration in some communities. As progressives, it is up to us to prove that we should be seeking to make our countries greater still, not ‘great again’.


Downing Street has admitted that a future parliament could be free to unpick Theresa May’s Brexit deal after Britain has left the European Union.
Her spokesman responded to comments from prominent Brexiteer Michael Gove, who said a future prime minister could still alter Britain’s relationship with the EU after Brexit.
The prime minister is facing intense pressure to ditch her Chequers blueprint, which former foreign secretary Boris Johnson compared to a “spectacular political car crash”, as part of a concerted push by hardline Brexiteers to persuade Ms May to change course.
Mr Gove, the environment secretary, offered muted support for the plan on Sunday, saying it is “the right one for now” but it could be altered by a future prime minister.
Asked about his comments, Ms May’s official spokesman told a Westminster briefing: “The secretary of state was simply setting out a matter of fact, which is that no parliament can bind the hands of its successors.
“The deal we are pursuing is a deal that we believe is in the best interests of the UK and of the European Union.”
Pressed on whether it was a “permanent deal”, the spokesman said: “As I said, one parliament cannot bind the hands of a successor.”
Mr Gove, a key player in the Leave campaign, admitted that he had “compromised” on some beliefs to accept the Chequers plan during an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
Asked if the plan for Brexit was a “temporary” or “permanent” solution, Mr Gove replied: “I think it’s the right solution for our country to leave the European Union on the basis of what we’ve negotiated, and I think it’s absolutely right because we would be outside the single market, we would be outside the customs union.
Pressed again, he added: “No, I think it’s the right answer. But, there’s one critical thing, a future prime minister could always choose to alter the relationship between Britain and the European Union, but the Chequers approach is the right one for now as we’ve got to make sure we respect that vote and take advantage of the opportunities of being outside the EU.”
The prime minister has stepped up her efforts to sell the Chequers plan to her mutinous backbenchers, saying that MPs will have to choose between her plan or a chaotic no-deal exit from the bloc.
In an interview to mark the six-month countdown to Brexit, Ms May told the BBC: “I believe we’ll get a good deal, we’ll bring that back from the EU negotiations, put that to parliament.
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“I think the alternative to that will be not having a deal because a) I don’t think the negotiations will have that deal, and b) we’re leaving on 29 March 2019.”
She still faces plenty of opposition over her strategy from senior Tories, including ex-Brexit secretary David Davis, who is expected to join Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg at a series of rallies organised by the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave.


Theresa May’s post-Brexit plan to slash immigration will have a devastating “double whammy” impact on the British economy, according to the most detailed study of EU nationals to date.
The new report seen by The Independent reveals how the Prime Minister’s stubborn refusal to dump her “tens of thousands” cap on net migration would not only cut off a vital supply of labour, but deepen existing shortages in key sectors.
The impartial consultancy behind the study is urging the Government to base future immigration policy on “economic need” instead of an arbitrary numerical target like that maintained by Ms May.
It comes amid deep cabinet divisions over how to approach immigration during Brexit talks, with the Government’s position still in question despite the start of negotiations on Monday.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is using his new clout to push the Prime Minister to adopt an economically minded “jobs first” approach, but Brexiteer ministers are demanding she maintain her tough stance on immigration.
The Independent launched its Drop the Target campaign with Open Britain, earlier this year in a bid to push the Government to dump the discredited “tens of thousands” cap.
But the research from independent consultancy RepGraph brings new urgency to the matter, with Brexit Secretary David Davis about to start negotiating on the issue with the European Union.
RepGraph concluded that a “blanket approach to reducing migration” focusing on low-skilled workers could have “a doubly negative impact” by both withdrawing a critical labour supply and compounding existing skills shortages.
Laying waste to arguments for a system that only allows highly qualified individuals in, the report instead underlines the desperate need the UK economy has for low-skilled employees.
“Low-skilled migrants are filling gaps in the workforce where the need is greatest,” the report concludes.
It sets out that industries employing the largest number and proportion of low-skilled EU workers are those already suffering the most acute labour shortages, while there are far fewer EU citizens taking high-skilled jobs in sectors that tend to have low labour shortages.
In particular, the study concluded that the Government’s target to cut annual net migration to under 100,000 would disproportionately hit sectors with existing shortages – including accommodation and food, administration and support, wholesale, retail and vehicle repair, manufacturing and construction.
RepGraph, which analysed Office for National Statistics data, found that the 2.1 million EU citizens make up a small proportion of the UK workforce, some 7 per cent, but only a fifth are in highly skilled jobs – with most employed in London and the South-east, and fewest in the North-east and Wales.
Of the 10 sectors with the most acute shortages, seven have above average EU migrant employment – at around 16 per cent on average, compared with 7 per cent in the economy as a whole.
The report said: “This demonstrates the range of skills EU nationals bring to the UK economy.
“EU immigrants are most often employed in the lowest skills jobs, facing the greatest labour shortages.”
EU workers are almost four times as likely to be found in a low-skilled job in industry with acute shortages than in a high-skilled post without such problems.
In wholesale, retail and vehicle repair, the proportion of EU workers in the lowest skilled posts is five times higher than in the high-skilled positions. In transport and storage, it is more than eight times higher and in manufacturing almost seven times greater.
Education, health and social work, science and communications have the most EU nationals employed at the highest skill levels.
The study concluded: “Any decrease in EU immigrants is therefore more likely to affect the ability to employ people in jobs requiring the lowest level of skill and less likely to affect the jobs requiring the highest level of skill, and could exacerbate skills shortages where they are already most acutely felt.”
The report, commissioned by the Business With Europe group, was seized on by the campaigning organisation Open Britain, which said it showed hitting the Government’s arbitrary target would have a crippling impact on the economy.
Former shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, a leading supporter of Open Britain, said: “It’s a depressing fact that this needs saying in 21st century Britain, but this report proves that EU nationals make an enormous contribution to our economy and our country.
“EU workers are plugging vital gaps in the sectors of our economy that need them the most.”
He added: “Theresa May’s ill-advised recommitment to reducing net migration to the tens of thousands will exacerbate already existing skills shortages and British businesses and our whole economy will pay the price.”
During the election, Ms May and her ministers have dodged media questions about their policy on EU migration after Brexit. While pledging to control immigration, they have promised a flexible approach after fierce lobbying by business leaders, who are deeply worried about skill shortages.
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, is likely to have been given similar findings to the RepGraph study by his civil servants. He has signalled that immigration levels would rise “from time to time” depending on economic need.
Several cabinet ministers have acknowledged the vital role played by migrants in the areas for which they have responsibility, begging the question of how the “tens of thousands” target would be met. Latest figures show it was 248,000 in 2016, a drop of 84,000 on the previous year.
The Tory manifesto still stuck to the tens of thousands target promising to double to £2,000 a year, the levy on companies employing migrant workers, with the revenue spent on higher level skills training for UK workers.
But after Ms May failed to win a majority the dynamic of her Government has fundamentally changed – with her previous immigration-focussed approach to Brexit effectively rejected by voters.
As the price of his support for her premiership, it has been reported that Mr Hammond demanded she change tack and adopt an approach that puts preserving growth first. He is also supported by the newly empower Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson.
But the issue is set to be a Tory battleground, with reports that Brexit-backing ministers including International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will quit if Ms May shifts her approach.
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Brussels is considering designating a no-deal Brexit as a disaster comparable to an earthquake or heavy flooding for the purposes of allocating emergency aid.
The proposal would see cash from the bloc's Solidarity Fund handed to heavily-hit countries like Ireland to deal with the fallout of UK policy.
Officials behind the scenes are working on the plan, which would require the approval of the European Parliament and member states.
The cash would help any affected member states deal with the significant disruption the bloc is supposed to cause.
The UK government has claimed that the EU, particularly Ireland, would be hit hard by the UK crashing out - though virtually all economists believe the economic impact would but significantly greater on the UK than the EU as a whole.
Boris Johnson has said his government will leave without a deal on 31 October "do or die". It says it would prefer to leave with a deal, but leaks from Downing Street revealed on Tuesday suggest the government views talks as "a sham", while others suggest no serious proposals have been drawn up.
Earlier this summer Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay suggested Ireland would be hit even harder than Britain because the UK's neighbour relies on trade route through Dover for most of its trade.
“For example 40 per cent of their exports go through Dover – so when I read accounts saying that there'll be queues at Dover, they will not just be queues with UK goods in, they'll also be queues with 40 per cent of Irish exports in," he told reporters in Brussels.
Speaking at an EU summit in Helsinki earlier this week Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish foreign minister warned of a no-deal: “It will look like a kind of nightmare, the day after. We don’t know what will happen with people, with trade, with traffic, it will not be good."
The solidarity fund was first set up in 2002 after major flooding in central Europe. Since then it has been used for 80 disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes, storms and drought, with 24 different European countries supported to the tune of €5 billion.
The United Kingdom itself has been a beneficiary of the fund twice, on both occasions to help with flooding, in 2007 and 2015, with a total of €222.6 in aid.


Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiators received a sceptical welcome in Brussels on Wednesday during their latest trip to the EU capital to try to rewrite the Irish backstop.
There is growing frustration in the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters over a lack of concrete proposals coming from London, despite claims from the UK government that talks have been “intensified”.
EU officials are alert to the possibility that they may be, in the words of one, being “led up the garden path” by Mr Johnson’s team for the sake of giving the Tory leader an advantage in a coming election.
One theory getting a hearing in the Berlaymont is that Mr Johnson wants to keep talks frozen, with the possibility of both a deal and no deal open, because the ambiguity would suit him during an election campaign.
Officials have suggested that they will toughen up their rhetoric in the coming weeks if there is still nothing concrete from the UK – and do more to publicly call out the limited nature of discussions. Depending on when an election is called, such an intervention from Brussels could, significantly, land just in time for the campaign period.
Since the summer EU spokespeople and some member states have softened their rhetorical approach to the UK and stressed their willingness to engage with the new administration in Downing Street. But with the clock ticking down to a no-deal Brexit, patience is wearing thin.
When approached by reporters at Brussels’ main railway station, UK chief negotiator David Frost refused to answer questions about the nature of negotiations or give a statement. He is not expected to speak to the media during his trip.
An EU source with knowledge of the talks said Mr Frost’s team had last week come with “nothing, nada” in terms of concrete proposals to replace the backstop. UK negotiators apparently brought with them plans for how the Northern Ireland assembly could have a say on regulatory alignment for agricultural products between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – but not plans for the actual alignment itself.
However, Ireland’s EU commissioner Phil Hogan made positive noises about discussions earlier this week, suggesting that he remained hopeful that “the penny is finally dropping in London”. But one EU official close to negotiations suggested that the commissioner was being “a bit optimistic”.
In a live appearance on his Facebook page, Mr Johnson himself claimed he was "making great progress", adding: "I had some very good talks with Leo Varadkar in Dublin a couple of days ago, I've talked to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel and the mood is changing, the ice-floes are cracking, there is movement under the keel of these talks and we can do this thing, absolutely.
"What we cannot do is fail to honour the commitment that all parliamentarians - or the vast majority of parliamentarians - made to the British people, and that is to come out of the EU on 31 October and not to extend Article 50."
A move by the UK government towards accepting agricultural alignment on the island of Ireland has raised some hopes that the UK position might be slowly moving back towards the Northern Ireland-only backstop proposed by the EU and rejected by Theresa May back in early 2018.
But this is denied by the UK side, while EU sources are keen to stress that agricultural products are only one of many categories of goods needed to be covered by a backstop replacement, and that Britain would need to go much further.
Mr Johnson said: 'The backstop is going to be removed, I very much hope - or I insist - because that's the only way to get a deal. The UK parliament is not going to accept the current withdrawal agreement, there's no way that's going through.
"But the crucial thing to understand is that ... we will not accept a Northern Ireland-only backstop. That simply doesn't work for the UK. We've got to come out whole and entire and solve the problems of the Northern Irish border, and I'm absolutely certain we can do that."
Since Mr Johnson has come to office the UK has also moved to remove commitments to a “level playing field” from the political declaration on the future relationship – giving the UK government the option of running down environmental and social standards after Brexit.
"The UK is seeking to agree a free trade agreement. The EU have always said this is available. Any level playingfield provisions will need to reflect this end-state," one UK official said of the move.
Some EU officials suspect the hand of the United States in the policy change, given the requirements for a US-UK free trade agreement. They are also clear that without the level playing field, a UK-EU free trade agreement would be virtually impossible, because many member states would reject it.
“The UK may not quite realise what they’ve asked for,” one official said.


Boris Johnson will fly to the continent tomorrow and is set on a collision course with EU leaders after they rejected his demand to scrap the Irish backstop.
Brussels issued a damning dismissal of Mr Johnson’s call to scrap the policy, while Angela Merkel said a “practical solution” would have to be found without reopening the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May.
Mr Johnson had sent a letter to EU officials calling for the Irish border backstop to be removed from the Brexit withdrawal agreement but presented no alternative to the policy.
Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, effectively accused the prime minister of wanting to wind the clock back on the Northern Ireland peace process, as well as deception.
“The backstop is an insurance to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland unless and until an alternative is found,” Mr Tusk said on Tuesday. “Those against the backstop and not proposing realistic alternatives in fact support reestablishing a border. Even if they do not admit it.”
A spokesperson for the European Commission told reporters in Brussels that the executive body was in full agreement with Mr Tusk’s comments.
“You will also have seen that President Tusk has just tweeted his initial reaction to this letter, a reaction that we share,” the spokesperson said.
“From the commission side we welcome the UK government’s engagement and a continued commitment to an orderly withdrawal. We firmly believe that this is in the best interests of the EU and the UK.
“However, we also note that the letter does not provide a legal operational solution to prevent the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland, it does not set out what any alternative arrangements could be, and in fact it recognises that there is no guarantee that such arrangements will be in place by the end of the transitional period.”
Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s chief Brexit representative, also joined in the coordinated response from EU institutions, warning: “I don’t see any majority in the European parliament to remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement. It is a vital insurance policy, negotiated in good faith and supported by the people of the island of Ireland. The time for bluster and political blame games is fast running out.”
“It is a question of the declaration on future ties,” German chancellor Ms Merkel said during a visit to Iceland ahead of her meeting with Mr Johnson in Berlin. “And I think we will act in a very unified way.”

Mr Johnson will make his debut on the world stage as prime minister this week. He is heading to Berlin on Wednesday and Paris on Thursday to meet with Ms Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron separately. The prime minister is expected to try to make the case for dropping the backstop, which is hated by Tory MPs and the Northern Irish unionists who prop up his minority government.
The prime minister has said he is “confident” that the EU will change its stance on the backstop. The EU has repeatedly said that the withdrawal agreement cannot be reopened.
Responding to Mr Tusk’s comments, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “We are deeply invested in the peace, prosperity and security of Northern Ireland and always will be and we have been clear that we will never place infrastructure, checks, or controls at the border.
“But it is clear that unless the withdrawal agreement is reopened and the backstop abolished there is no prospect of a deal. It has already been rejected three times by MPs and is simply unviable as a solution, as the PM’s letter makes clear.
“We are ready to negotiate, in good faith, an alternative to the backstop, with provisions to ensure that the Irish border issues are dealt with where they should always have been: in the negotiations on the future agreement between the UK and the EU.”
Steve Barclay, the Brexit secretary, spoke with Michel Barnier and senior Irish politicians on Tuesday.

“I reconfirmed we’re unequivocally committed to the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement and that we want a deal, but parliament has been clear it won’t accept the backstop,” he said following the discussion.
“As the PM Boris Johnson explained to the European Council president Donald Tusk in this letter, that means the backstop must go. There’s a strong shared desire for a deal in London, Belfast, and Dublin.”
The minister added that he wanted to work “constructively on alternative arrangements” for the Northern Irish border but restated the prime minister’s pledge that “we’re leaving the EU on 31 October come what may”.
Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Fein’s leader in the Northern Irish assembly, who also spoke to Mr Barclay said: “I told him they are playing fast and loose with our livelihoods.
“The best way to protect our economy, people, and peace is to adhere to the withdrawal agreement and backstop. The British government’s words ring hollow when it comes to the north.”


EU leaders are watching on in horror at the Tory “catfight” unfolding in Westminster – but will still not make the concessions Theresa May needs to unite the Conservatives when she arrives in Brussels on Thursday.
The prime minister will have a rare two-way discussion with her EU counterparts at the European Council summit on Thursday afternoon, fresh off the plane from surviving a bruising confidence vote in Westminster.
But despite a generally positive tone in Brussels, with officials and diplomats alike suggesting they want to help the prime minister, serious changes to the agreement that would actually win around her MPs will remain effectively off the table.
The prime minister is hoping national leaders will give her breathing space and something to take back to the UK that will ease the ire in Westminster – with a late night meeting to draw up “reassurances” planned.
But EU officials sought to manage expectations ahead of the meeting, with one warning: “What is impossible is to renegotiate the deal from the 25 November. That’s impossible. The rest can be discussed.”
They added: “Renegotiation of the deal that was reached is not on the table and whatever assurances are given cannot contradict the deal that was made on 25 November.”
Brussels essentially gave its backing to the prime minister ahead of the no confidence vote, with a spokesperson for the European Commission stating that Ms May had done a good job of “managing a very difficult process”.
But Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s outspoken Brexit coordinator, voiced the behind-the-scenes exasperation of many in the EU capital.
“Once again, the fate of EU-UK relations, the prosperity of businesses and citizens’ rights are consumed by an internal Conservative party catfight over Europe,” he said.
“I hope that, whatever happens, at least the vote will make clear that a disastrous no-deal is off the table.”
The leaders of the European parliament’s political groups were the latest force to line up behind the EU’s united line of “no renegotiation” on Wednesday as they warned they would use their veto to block any withdrawal agreement that watered down the controversial “backstop”.
The shape and scope of the “reassurances” EU leaders will cook up still looks uncertain. Ahead of the meeting, EU diplomats said they would be decided on the day and would depend on what Ms May asked them for.
One senior official said there was “a wide range of legal forms to offer assurances or clarification”, and did not rule out the possibility of pseudo-legal “protocols” tacked into the treaty. Such protocols would be lodged at the UN with the withdrawal agreement and would provide legal reference – but not change the agreement.
All EU diplomats who spoke to The Independent were adamant that they could not contradict the agreement.
One said: “We believe that when it comes to the backstop, the text of the withdrawal agreement and the text of the political declaration are clear. It is clear and it will be legally binding. If there is something unclear then we need to listen to the prime minister about what is unclear.”
Unless leaders pull a rabbit out of a hat, signals out of Brussels and other EU capitals so far suggest they will not meet the demands of the Brexiteers – who want the backstop either removed entirely, given a time-limit, or some kind of new exit clause not dependent on EU consent.
Brexit will be far from the only issue discussed at the meeting, which will also begin the heavy-lifting of hashing out the EU’s multi-year budget. The prime minister will share her concerns with leaders in the afternoon, and they will, unusually, be allowed to ask her questions and respond.
The EU has so far tried to keep direct discussion between leaders about Brexit to a minimum – preferring instead that all negotiations go through its adept chief negotiator Michel Barnier and his team.
After a meeting on foreign policy over dinner, which Ms May will attend, the prime minister will leave the 27 leaders to discuss her concerns without her. They are expected to issue a late-night written statement spelling out the steps they are prepared to make to ease the passage of the deal through parliament.
The European parliament’s conference of presidents, which represents the leaders of its political groups, said in a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon that “the withdrawal agreement and political declaration are fair and balanced and represent, given EU principles, current UK red lines, and the commitments set out in the Good Friday Agreement, the only deal possible to secure an orderly withdrawal from the European Union”.
The group chiefs also “stressed that renegotiating the backstop was not possible” and that without it “parliament would not give its consent to the withdrawal agreement”.
Speaking at lunchtime, Margaritis Schinas, the European Commission’s chief spokesperson, told reporters: “The Commission will not comment on the internal politics of the United Kingdom and not least the Conservative Party, but President Juncker has on many occasions expressed his support for Prime Minister May and her role in managing a very difficult process.”
UK officials have kept a low profile in Brussels ahead of the summit.


Reassurances by the EU to help Theresa May get her Brexit deal through parliament could be limited to a non-binding exchange of letters, under plans being considered by the European Commission.
Such a limited move – which would not include any actual changes to the agreement – would be highly unlikely to convince Tory MPs to back the plan, which looks set to be rejected by a large margin when it comes before the Commons next week.
Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker are expected to speak on the phone this week to discuss the state of play, as the formal Commons debate kicks off ahead of the vote next week.
But the EU has once again ruled out even meeting with UK negotiators to discuss any actual changes to the agreement, with a spokesperson telling reporters in Brussels on Monday: “There won’t be any meeting as such, because negotiations have been completed.”
The spokesperson added that Brussels would “follow closely the ratification process in the UK”.
The Independent reported at the weekend that any further reassurances are not expected to go as far as the full legally binding commitment as demanded by Tory MPs.
Such a text with legal status would require yet another summit – which EU leaders are not prepared to hold after having already been dragged back to Brussels in November for an extra meeting.
Downing Street confirmed they were seeking written reassurances in the coming days but said that what form they might take was subject to discussion.
The Guardian reports that officials are considering an exchange of letters containing a written but non-binding pledge to try and secure a trade deal by 2021 – the end of the transition period.
This date is important because it would be the point the controversial “backstop” kicks in if no trade deal is negotiated by – under which Northern Ireland and Great Britain would be placed under different regulatory regimes.
Unionists are opposed to such a state of affairs because they see it as a breach of the UK’s sovereignty.
The content of the letter would be a political commitment and not legally enforceable – and is unlikely to be enough to assuage rebellious Tory MPs.
“They cannot expect a legal commitment to land complicated negotiations by December 2021,” one EU official told the newspaper.
“We do not want to make ourselves legally culpable for a situation that we can’t control.”
At the December meeting of the European Council in Brussels EU leaders already confirmed that it was the bloc’s “firm determination to work speedily on a subsequent agreement that establishes by 31 December 2020 alternative arrangements, so that the backstop will not need to be triggered”.
One official described any further letter as a “copy and pasting exercise” based on material that was already present – such as the withdrawal agreement and the statement issued in December.
A previous phone conversation between Mr Juncker and Ms May on Friday was described by a Commission spokesperson as “friendly”, though no details were provided about what was discussed.
“They spoke to each other, by telephone, it was a friendly conversation, they’ll be talking again this week. There is no negotiation because everything on the table has been established as approved, achieved. The priority now is to await events, monitor what is happening, the ratification procedure on the UK side,” the spokesperson said


Any British trade deal with the EU after Brexit should include powers to fine the UK if it breaks European rules, Brussels has said.
Commission officials told member state diplomats that breaches of the agreement would be punishable with a "lump sum" or "penalty payment", payable to Brussels within one month.
The plan is the latest to come out of a series of meetings in the EU capital aimed at getting member states and the Commission on the same page before talks start next month. The EU is planning to officially draw up its negotiating terms over the next few weeks.
In a further stipulation likely to enrage Brexiteers, the EU also wants its own European Court of Justice (ECJ) to have a starring role in arbitrating the deal. Brexiteers view the ECJ as a "foreign court" and many hard-liners believe Britain should not be under its jurisdiction after it leaves.
The ECJ would be joined by arbitration panels and a so-called joint committee to help judge whether either side had broken the rules.
If rules are ruled to be broken the deal would also give either party the right to suspend the trade agreement, under the EU plans.
Free trade agreements generally include some kind of agreed dispute resolution mechanism that parties can turn to if they feel the other side is not holding up their end of the bargain.
The issue is however likely to be particularly fraught in any UK-EU deal because of Brexiteers' aversion to the ECJ, as well as concerns on the EU side about the UK backsliding on aspects of EU regulations it signs up to under a "level playing field".
The news is the latest hint that negotiations may not be straightforward, with Boris Johnson's self-imposed deadline of 2021 to get a deal signed looking difficult to meet.
Asked about EU demands for powers to fine the UK, the prime minister's spokesperson said: “We have not even started negotiations with the EU on our future partnership yet, but we are clear that we want a Canada-style free trade agreement. The prime minister has set out that our future UK and EU relationship should be based on friendly co-operation.”


European courts will continue to "dish out judgments" to the UK if it opts for a transitional deal after Brexit, an influential EU leader has warned.
The comments from Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whose government holds the rotating presidency of the EU for the first half of this year, come after Theresa May pledged to take the UK out of the jurisdiction of the European Court.
It comes after The Independent revealed in December that ministers are resigned to European judges taking decisions in British cases for years to come.
The Maltese premier made clear that any transition trade arrangements, which could last well into the 2020s, would see European institutions retain the upper hand.
"An essential part of those transitional arrangements will be the governing institutions of that period," he said, according to The Times.
"It is pretty clear to me that the institutions should be the European institutions.
"So it is not a transition period where British institutions take over, but it is a transition period where the European Court of Justice is still in charge of dishing out judgments."
Malta's finance minister Edward Scicluna said he believed the Prime Minister would "blink first" as pressure grew during exit negotiations.
Ms May, who will deliver a key-note Brexit address on Tuesday, told last autumn's Tory conference: "We are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice."
The Prime Minister will be under pressure to use next week's speech to spell out a broader strategy ahead of triggering formal divorce negotiations, which she has promised by April.
Reports have suggested Ms May will commit to pulling out of the single market if the European Union fails to make concessions on the free movement of its citizens, although they have been dismissed as speculation.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis are contributing to the content of the address, which opposition parties hope will end months of secrecy over the Government's exit plans.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on whether Ms May has the authority to invoke Article 50 without the prior consent of Parliament.
If the court rules against the Government, ministers will have to prepare legislation and pass it through the Commons and the Lords before the end of March to stick to Ms May's Brexit timetable.
Ms May's official spokeswoman said: "She will be making a speech on Tuesday, setting out more on our approach to Brexit, as part of preparing for the negotiations and in line with our approach for global Britain and continuing to be an outward-looking nation."


A former cabinet minister has said Theresa May is heading for a "dead end" in the Brexit talks, which can only be solved by a fresh referendum.
Dominic Grieve, an ex-attorney general, said the prime minister's deal "looks pretty second rate" and the Brexit being delivered is something "very few people want".
The influential Tory MP will be among thousands of protestors descending on London on Saturday for what is being billed a the largest anti-Brexit demonstration to date, with more than 100,000 activists expected.
It comes as Ms May appealed to business leaders to help her secure a deal by spelling out the impact of a no-deal Brexit, after a difficult week where a key EU summit broke up without an agreement.
The Independent has learned that the prime minister used a conference call with 130 company bosses on Friday to offer a contrast between her plan and a chaotic exit from the EU - something that has been branded a "false choice" by critics as it removes the option of a fresh referendum.
Mr Grieve told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If we don’t do this now then we will lose the opportunity and once we are out of the EU on March 29, going back in is a completely different thing to deciding to stay in.
“My view has grown over the last few months that in fact we are reaching a dead end and that there may be some sort of deal on offer but one that i have to say looks to me pretty second rate.
“When you get this sort of problem, in view of the first referendum, the only solution is to go back to the public and say is this what you really want. And if they do want it, so be it.”
He said the previous referendum was based on an “abstract discussion”, adding: "I think this is the end. If people find that what they are about to get is what they want then I as a democrat would accept it.
"But what worries me is I think we are about to deliver a Brexit that I think, in fact, very few people want."
Ms May faced a major Tory backlash after she signalled that she would consider extending the transition to allow more time for UK and EU negotiators to hammer out problems around the future relationship, including the vexed issue of the Irish border.
Mr Grieve, who leads a band of pro-EU Tory rebels, said it was likely that the transition period would be “extended well beyond three years as we try to thrash out the continuing relationship”.
He added: "That highlights for me why in fact we are embarked on the project which is totally different from what people might have had any reason to expect in 2016.
"We are in the most extraordinary situation where we remain tied to all of the rules of the EU without any ability to influence the input.”
Mr Grieve also condemned Ms May for appearing to go back on her pledge to offer MPs a meaningful vote on any Brexit deal, saying their plans were “utterly flawed”.
His intervention came after the prime minister told businesses that time is running out to reach a Brexit deal, but she was confident it can be done.
Downing Street said Ms May told the business leaders that "significant progress" has been made in the talks.
"She acknowledged that there were a few significant issues that were still outstanding, but said that the very real sense she had from leaders around the table at the council was that they wanted to reach a deal as soon as possible this autumn," a No 10 spokesman said.
More than 100,000 people are expected to join the People's Vote demonstration in London, organised with The Independent, which will see politicians, activists and celebrities march from Park Lane to Parliament Square from midday.


Nigel Farage, predictably enough, has shown his usual knack for grabbing the headlines. A professional politician and former City boy – you might say a member of the elite – Mr Farage is experienced and cunning enough to know exactly what to do when in a tight corner in a BBC interview: attack the BBC and play victim. It didn’t work with Andrew Marr, who retained his cool and pressed Mr Farage on some of his more eccentric pronouncements.
It will make little difference to the Marmite-esque Farage. The nation has long since divided itself into those who love him and those who despise him. Mr Farage’s demand to have Brexit Party MEPs in on the negotiations in Brussels is the usual kind of ludicrous stunt.
Whatever Mr Farage says or does, in other words, won’t make much difference to the showing of his Brexit Party. But then, in fact, nor will his party’s probably respectable performance in the European elections make much difference to Brexit.
It merely confirms what has long been clear, which is that there is a sizeable chunk of British public opinion virulently opposed to membership of the EU. The opinion polls tell us that every week. It does not alter the fact that another growing and probably larger body of opinion now favours Remain, while support for a referendum to put any new Brexit project or deal back the people is also winning the argument as the only way out of the morass.
The other notable Brexit voice over the weekend was that of ex-defence secretary Gavin Williamson, the most embittered sacked minister since John Major had to let Norman Lamont go a quarter of a century ago. Williamson has it in for Theresa May, but he is also her former leadership campaigner manager and chief whip. Even allowing for rancour, his confident belief that the Lab-Con Brexit talks will end in imminent failure seems well founded. Each side seems determined only to make sure the other lot gets the blame.
So it goes then, with our MPs off on another break, and Brexit in exactly the same limbo it was left in when the EU grumpily allowed the extension to Halloween for the British to decide what they want to do.
The brutal truth is that Brexit remains straining under the weight of its own inherent contradictions – that the UK cannot have its cake and eat it.
Even if Mr Farage won every single vote, he could not alter that fact, he could not guarantee frictionless trade, he could not prevent a post-Brexit recession, and he could not solve the Irish border riddle.
If Boris Johnson or Esther McVey or Amber Rudd or Jeremy Hunt or even Pep Guardiola became prime minister, they could not solve the conundrums. Jeremy Corbyn would have no more chance of securing the mythical close UK-EU customs arrangement than Ms May and her team did last autumn. He too would have to concede on free movement if Labour wishes for a closer economic relationship with the EU.
Brexit is what it is – a mess. The time has come for the people to return their verdict. They should do so in a properly constituted referendum rather than elections to local councils, the European parliament or for a new MP for Peterborough. MPs should be at work now drawing up the legislation for the 2019 EU referendum. Where are they?


The French government has confirmed that British citizens would need visas to visit the country under a no-deal Brexit without emergency legislation or special agreements.
A draft law put before the country’s senate seeks to give the country’s government sweeping powers of decree to address problems that would be caused by a no-deal Brexit.
It states that if no further action is taken “British nationals who enjoy the right of free movement and free establishment throughout the European Union” would face a “requirement to present a visa to enter the French territory and to justify a residence permit to stay there”.
It also says French law would mean British nationals “may be required to obtain a permit equivalent to a work permit in France”, could not have their professional qualifications recognised, and might lose access to social benefits.
There would also be controls on goods and people, while licences for truckers would not automatically be valid.
The new law, currently being considered by the country’s upper house, would give the French Government sweeping powers of decree for 12 months in order to address the problems caused by a no-deal.
Many of the issues that need to be resolved are however not decided at a national level within the competence of the French government, and are instead EU-wide policies.
The issuing of visas is one of these areas; Britain would have to negotiate an emergency visa exemption with the EU Schengen countries were a no-deal to occur.
The EU is generally generous with visa exemptions: granting them to countries ranging from Venezuela, through the United Arab Emirates, to Ukraine. It is however not clear whether there would be scope or political will to grant one to the UK in the limited time before the no-deal situation leading up to March 2019.

EbS
Parliament Live
Even if the UK did obtain a visa exemption travellers would ultimately have to apply through the forthcoming ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorisation System) system – where they would have to apply in advance and pay a fee to have their journey authorised.
The ETIAS system would likely ultimately apply to the UK even in the case of a no-deal, if free movement were ended, as the Government intends it to be.
France has taken one of the hardest lines in Brexit talks of all the EU member states, with its Europe minister warning earlier this month that a no-deal would be better than Theresa May's Chequers planned, which it has rejected.


Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller has raised more than £150,000 for her campaign to launch the “biggest tactical voting drive ever and stop extreme Brexit”.
Ms Miller, who took the Government to court to force it to seek the approval of MPs before triggering Article 50, said the money would be used to fund candidates from all parties standing in the 8 June election who “campaign for a final vote on Brexit, including rejecting any deal that leaves Britain worse off”.
Donations totaling more than £152,000 had been pledged by more than 5,400 people on Thursday afternoon - just a day after the appeal was launched.
Individual pledges ranged from £5 to £200. One donor who offered £100 to Ms Miller’s campaign said the movement was a “ray of hope and possibility in a grim political landscape”.
Another wrote alongside a £20 donation: “Make June the end of May!”
Ms Miller said her movement would tour marginal seats before the general election to “make sure the next Government has no mandate to destroy our rights and our relationship with Europe”.
“Together we can help deliver the most significant tactical vote this country has ever seen,” Ms Miller wrote on her crowdfunding page.
Best for Britain, which will formally launch next Wednesday at an event in London, has also secured large donations from other individuals opposed to a hard Brexit.
Ms Miller said there hadn’t been time to organise “a formal progressive alliance”, so “we have to do what we can in the time available. We need to re-energise people about the importance of voting tactically.”
After defeating the government at the Supreme Court Ms Miller was subjected to barrage of abuse, along with her fellow claimants.
She said she was “shocked” at the level of personal abuse she had received and called for those in “positions of power” to do more.


Businesswoman Gina Miller has been subjected to racist online abuse after her lawsuit forced the Government to put its plans to leave the European Union to a Parliamentary vote.
Ms Miller, a philanthropist and investment banker, was targeted by Brexit supporters on social media after the High Court verdict was announced.
Many of her detractors made overt reference to her Guyanese heritage, and several said she should leave the UK.
One Twitter user addressed the referendum result: "If Gina Miller really doesn't like what the majority voted for on 23rd June then why doesn't she f*** off back where she came from."
Ms Miller also received a lot of support from Remain supporters.
Ms Miller's lawsuit challenged Theresa May's plan to trigger Article 50 using Royal Prerogative which would have meant it would not require a Parliamentary vote.
Lord Chief Justice Thomas and two other senior judges agreed with Ms Miller and said in a statement: "The court is not concerned with, and does not express any view about the merits of leaving the European Union: that is a political issue."
Following the High Court ruling, the businesswoman said: "It's about our United Kingdom and all our futures. It's not about how anyone voted.
@diamondgeezer
Courtesy of Eoin Palmer
Courtesy of Eoin Palmer
Courtesy of Bernadette Russell
"Every one of us voted for the best country and the best future.
"The judgment, I hope – when it's read by the Government and they contemplate the full judgment – that they will make the wise decision of not appealing but pressing forward and having a proper debate in our sovereign parliament, our mother of parliaments that we are so admired for all over the world."


Former prime minister Gordon Brown says Brexit should be delayed for a year to “consult” voters and prevent an “impending national disaster”.
The ex-Labour leader said the Article 50 negotiating period should be extended to allow MPs to listen to the public’s views on the current Brexit proposals through a “citizen’s consultation”.
Speaking just 22 days before Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union, he said: “The logic of extending Article 50 is now inescapable to avoid chaos on 29 March and prevent an impending national political disaster.”
Mr Brown claimed the “ill-thought-out” approach to Brexit had left the economy “drastically ill-prepared”.
He added: “Decades from now a new generation will look back with stunned disbelief at the way the Brexit debate has been conducted so far.”

Mr Brown’s call for a delay is part of a concerted effort involving business leaders, union chiefs, community representatives and senior politicians.
Prime minister Theresa May has promised MPs a vote on calling for an extension to Article 50 if they reject her withdrawal agreement and a no-deal Brexit in crunch votes next week.
But she has suggested that any extension must be short, in part to avoid the UK taking part in European elections which will see newly-elected MEPs take their seats in July.
Mr Brown said it was “near impossible” to pass the legislation required for Brexit by 29 March, and that a short extension would not allow enough time for a considered assessment of the options available to the UK.
He also claimed there was support in Europe for an extension.
He said: “Leaders agree with their chief negotiator Michel Barnier that an extension has ‘become almost inevitable’ and that they have to try to overcome the technical difficulties of British participation in the European elections and ensure an extension substantially longer than three months.
“It is now clear that Article 50 should be extended, perhaps for a year, not as a delaying tactic or just for MPs to rerun the old arguments in the Westminster bubble, but for a positive purpose – to allow Parliament to reflect – and to begin to bring the country together again.”
Mr Brown said the citizens’ consultation should cover issues including immigration and sovereignty and the “options available across Europe and for us of addressing these”.
He added: “Brexit must be delayed long enough for us to reach proper decisions and restore the nation’s hope and its pride.”


A government minister has admitted that she “does not know" how Boris Johnson will deliver Brexit by 31 October but hinted that the prime minister has a plan to bypass a law blocking no-deal.
Esther McVey, the housing minister, who attends cabinet, suggested that she was not aware of No10's plan for bypassing the so-called Benn Act, which is designed to stop the UK leaving the EU without a deal on Halloween, but hinted that the prime minister had something in his "back pocket for when you need to pull it out".
The Brexiteer became the second minister of the day to suggest that No10 had a secret strategy for getting around the law, after Sajid Javid, the chancellor said he believed he knew what the plan was.
Ms McVey's comments will fuel reports that cabinet ministers have not been briefed on how No10 plans to deliver Brexit on time if Mr Johnson fails to secure an exit deal. The prime minister has repeatedly said he will take the UK out of the EU on 31 October whatever the circumstances, while also abiding by the law - prompting speculation that his senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, believes there is a loophole in the law.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservatives' annual conference in Manchester, Ms McVey, who initially stood against Mr Johnson for the party leadership, said: “What we know is that Boris Johnson is working incredibly hard to get the best deal he possibly can.
“I don’t know what is going on necessarily in Boris’s head and where he’s thinking of going. He is in all those meetings with the rest of the team - I’ve got a domestic brief.”
She added: “I can only go on what Boris is saying, that we are definitely coming out on that date – that’s what he’s saying. There are various things coming into play and I’m not going to explain them here because obviously sometimes you need something in your back pocket for when you need to pull it out.
“But for me democracy is key and we need to leave and do a Brexit that people recognise as Brexit.”
Her suggestion that the government has a plan to bypass the Benn Act, which says that Mr Johnson must seek a further Brexit extension if no deal is in place by 19 October, came hours after Mr Javid hinted that he had been informed of a possible escape route.
Asked whether he knew how the government would get around the law, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "I think I do.
"The intention of the law is clear and I do think it has absolutely made it harder for the government to get the deal that we all want to see. That said, it can still be done.
"It's not about getting around the law... I don't really want to discuss the detail of this law, it's a pretty fresh new law, but we are also clear at all times we, of course, like any government, we will absolutely observe the law."
He added: "Of course, every government should observe all laws at all times.
"We're taking a careful look at that law."


The government spent nearly £100,000 on Facebook adverts to sell Theresa May's Brexit deal to the public - only for the key vote to be delayed over fears of a crushing defeat.
Official figures from the social media firm show that ministers shelled out £96,684 on 11 promotions between December 2 and December 8, ahead of the much-anticipated Commons showdown on Tuesday.
In chaotic scenes, it emerged on Monday that the prime minister had shelved plans for a "meaningful vote" on her Brexit deal in the face of a catastrophic defeat.
Facebook's records show most of the cash was spent on videos explaining "what the Brexit deal means for you - explained in 60 seconds" on areas such as immigration and jobs.
Three videos explaining how the deal affected free trade, the economy and controlling the UK's borders cost between £10,000 and £50,000 each to promote, reaching between 500,000 and a million Facebook users each.
The new advert transparency reporting comes after fierce criticism of Facebook over data harvesting, fake news and privacy. It also comes after the Vote Leave campaign group was sanctioned over advertising spending on Facebook during the Brexit referendum.
There are also six active adverts on the official Downing Street Twitter account promoting the same videos, although no information on the amount spent is currently available.
Shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett said it was "a completely inappropriate use of public money", which was "entirely wasted".
He said: "This reveals a government deeply paranoid and insecure about the botched deal they have been trying to sell to the British public, but which they now appear to have abandoned.
"Not only is this a completely inappropriate use of public money, but it turns out to have been entirely wasted.
"When official resources are used for the prime minister's personal purposes it threatens our democracy."
A government spokeswoman said: "Communicating government policy effectively to the public is a core function of the civil service.
"We have reached a deal that is good for the UK, good for its citizens, and good for business and we will be communicating that to the country.
"We will publish all costs associated with this in the usual way."
It comes as Ms May accepted that there was "widespread and deep concern" over the backstop arrangement, designed to keep the Irish border open if the EU and UK fail to strike a wider trade deal.
If the vote had gone ahead as planned, the government would have been defeated by a "significant margin", she told MPs.
"We will therefore defer the vote scheduled for tomorrow and not proceed to divide the House at this time."


Chris Grayling’s at times shambolic handling of the risks posed by Brexit to Britain’s crucial transport infrastructure faced renewed scrutiny on Wednesday as MPs grilled the prime minister about a no-deal ferry contract signed and then cancelled by the Department for Transport (DfT).
The most senior member of Grayling's department also answered tough questions from the Public Accounts Committee about rushed procurement, wasted money and a worrying lack of preparedness for a no-deal Brexit at UK borders.
With just six weeks to go, how did we end up at this point?


Our country is heading into a crisis this autumn, with Boris Johnson’s Tories driving us towards a no-deal cliff edge. No deal would destroy people’s jobs, push up food prices in the shops and open our NHS to takeover by US private corporations.
We will do everything necessary to stop a disastrous no deal for which this government has no mandate. That’s why on Tuesday I am hosting a meeting of opposition parties to discuss how we can stop Johnson’s reckless rush for a no-deal Brexit. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
There were reports over the long weekend that the Tories are going out with their begging bowl to billionaire hedge funders to raise cash for an autumn general election. Let no one be in any doubt what these super-rich donors will be paying for: the chaos and uncertainty caused by a no-deal Brexit is a potential goldmine for speculators betting against the pound.
But the payout for those elements of the super-rich that support no deal won’t just stop there. If we leave without a deal on 31 October, they will use the crisis to push through policies that benefit them and hurt everyone else – as they have since 2010. They will aim to reduce the power of workers; protections for consumers; the tax bills of bankers and the richest and big corporations; as well as the regulations that are supposed to stop them abusing their power.
Boris Johnson has spent his first month pursuing a “Trump first” policy. The Trump-Johnson tie-up is a huge danger to our planet. With so little time to act to prevent a climate catastrophe, as the fires in the Amazon make so painfully clear, an alliance is developing between Trump, Johnson and Brazil’s Bolsonaro – three men who have all denied or belittled the climate emergency. And our prime minister is cosying up to Trump because a no-deal Brexit is really a Trump-deal Brexit. It won’t return sovereignty; it will put us at the mercy of Trump and the big US corporations dying to get their teeth into our NHS, sound the death knell for our steel industry, and strip back our food standards and animal welfare protections.
A Trump deal would work for Johnson’s donors, and against the rest of us.
People voted to leave the EU to gain control over their lives and communities after decades of being shut out of an economy run for the richest. Yet what is being planned would only increase the massive inequality and insecurity in our society, not reduce it. Labour, by contrast, would invest in every region and nation of the UK with a massive £250bn infrastructure programme and a new network of regional development banks to bring jobs and prosperity to every town.
A no-deal bankers’ Brexit will make a bad situation worse for those communities that have been most economically damaged. Johnson and those around him see opportunities in disaster capitalism. They’ve written about it, they’ve spoken about it, and now they think they’ll be able to impose it on all of us. In a very direct way, they represent the interests of the super-rich and are a threat to the interests of the working class.
The battle to stop no-deal Brexit isn’t a struggle between those who want to leave the EU and those who want continued membership. It’s a battle of the many against the few who are hijacking the referendum result to shift even more power and wealth towards those at the top.
That’s why the Labour Party will do everything necessary to stop a no-deal bankers’ Brexit. We want an injection of democracy so the people can decide our country’s future. That could come either by Johnson having the courage of his convictions to test his no-deal plans in a Final Say referendum or through a general election. In that election, Labour would offer a referendum, with a credible Leave option as well as the option to Remain. Labour believes the decision on how to resolve the Brexit crisis must now go back to the people to have legitimacy.
But we won’t rule out other options, such as passing legislation, that could stop this no-deal disaster in its tracks. I’ll discuss all these options with the leaders of other opposition parties on Tuesday. I hope we can come to a good working arrangement and bring on board others across parliament who see the danger of a no-deal crash out.
Boris Johnson’s mandate of fewer than 100,000 Conservative Party members does not give him the right to shift more power and wealth to the richest with a bankers’ Brexit.
Johnson’s power comes from his super-rich donors and backers but the real power in our country lies with the people. That’s why I believe that we can come together in all our diversity, defeat no-deal and then transform our politics, our economy and our society so it is run for the real wealth creators not a tiny elite at the top.
Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party


This is to clarify my views and is only for circulation in the leader of the opposition’s office. Please treat it as securely as a diplomatic cable. No leaks!
The problem with the EU is that it isn’t a Latin American liberation movement. It’s so boring and capitalist! All that trade. All those suits and tedious negotiations. Endless council meetings in that Brussels building, as revolutionary as Buckingham Palace.
How can I be England’s Che, or even Aneurin Bevan, hemmed in like that? The social democrats are the worst, though I quite like that new Spanish socialist, Sánchez, who campaigned across Spain in a battered old car against Franco’s heirs. I could do the same in Croydon!
The EU is never going to become a hammer and sickle. But there is one truly revolutionary thing happening out there: Brexit itself. Amazingly, the Tories have become “freedom fighters” in their assault on Europe, egged on by Farage and their Faragised petty-bourgeois grass roots who wouldn’t let Theresa May – and won’t let Boris Johnson – steer the country away from the most extreme Brexit possible after the 2016 referendum.

Our strategy so far has been to wait for the implosion of their minority government propped up by the DUP ultras. Then we win the inevitable snap election. Preferably this is after Brexit has gone through, so the crisis is so bad that we are bound to win, provided we can get to that point without dipping our hands in the blood.
It hasn’t worked yet. But Johnson is the last throw of the Brexit dice. We don’t want Brexit to collapse before it brings him down.
There is, of course, the problem of what to do on Europe once the Bastille has fallen. Keir can sort all that out, either in or out of the EU, while I get on with the exciting stuff on nationalisation and Palestine. I like the sound of “Common Market 2.0”. It sort of rhymes with “Great Britain 2.0” which comes when the new dawn breaks ... sorry, forget that, it was Blair’s line in 1997 when neoliberalism is all that dawned.
Well, it hasn’t worked so far! The only thing that keeps falling off the fence is me. And though I keep getting back on, as someone – Churchill? – said of someone else, “he has sat on the fence so long, the iron has entered his soul”.
We are losing everyone. It was always bizarre for Caroline Flint and her crew to think that ardent Brexiteers would vote for us just because we said we “respected the referendum result” and waffled about a “Better Brexit”. If people really want Brexit, they will vote for the real thing, Tory or Farage, while Remainers are going Green and Lib Dem.
Anyway, it is a mistake to think that most of the Brexit vote was about Brexit. It was far more about austerity and “shit life syndrome”, and the only solution to that is a Labour government which isn’t bankrupt because of Brexit.
There’s also the problem of the Labour Party itself. It really hates Brexit! And it really likes Europe and the EU! It likes all that internationalism and trade and prosperity and peace. I can’t even stop half of Momentum saying they don’t want to go back to the 30s and we need a people’s vote! They keep telling me I said I would listen to the members, and isn’t it about time I actually did so rather than just fixing the NEC with Len?
The young are especially pro-European. As a student put it to me: “Jeremy, we don’t want to be shut up on a small island with Farage, Johnson and Rees-Mogg – or even you, to be frank.”
I also need to tell make a confession, Seumas. I know I used to trot out all that anti-Brussels stuff – “club of capitalists” etc. But I’ve come to think that the EU isn’t just the best of a bad job; it has positive virtue.
It’s what Sánchez told me. Europe has done a better job of standing up to Thatcherism at home and Trump abroad than anything outside Highgate cemetery. It is the ally, not the enemy, of the left. I know you think Merkel and Macron are Marks and Spencer, but they’re better than anyone you meet at a summit these days. And if it’s a bit anti-Russian, well, Putin has gone the way of Beria, not Trotsky.
I’m struck by that remark of Nigel Lawson, the godfather of Thatcherism, that “Brexit gives us the chance to complete the Thatcher revolution”. That’s what Brexit is fundamentally about. We need to kill it before it kills us. That’s why I’m going to make a statement saying that, after all, we stand for referendum and Remain. Well, almost.
Lord Adonis is a Labour peer. A version of this article originally appeared in the New European​


Labour’s, or more specifically Emily Thornberry’s, call for an early general election as a result of the Conservative Party’s suppurating internal divisions over Brexit is not new.
At the Glastonbury Festival in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn said he expected to be in Downing Street by Christmas last year.
When December came around he said there would be an election in 2018 which would propel him to power. He has three months left. While the parliamentary numbers on Brexit are not good for any solution, it does not follow that Tory MPs will be turkeys voting for Christmas and produce a majority for an election.
If Thornberry and Corbyn tried to whip all Labour MPs to vote with Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg for a full amputation Brexit to defeat Theresa May, many Labour MPs would refuse to obey the whip. After all, Jeremy Corbyn voted 500 times against the official Labour vote so he cannot demand loyalty for an opportunistic vote to defeat May.
Rex
Rex
Even if she did lose such a Brexit vote there is no certainty she would go. A subsequent confidence vote would see most Tory MPs, plus the DUP, providing a majority. In fact, there is no surer way of sending Tory MPs back into the Conservative fold than a grandstanding Labour announcement that they will vote against any deal the government cobbles together on Brexit in order to try and get an early election.
So Thornberry’s call for a Brexit general election may have the paradoxical effect of increasing support for the prime minister from Tory MPs and party activists in order precisely to avoid any risk of what the chancellor Philip Hammond called at the weekend the “Marxist” programme of Labour’s current anti-Blairite leadership.
And it is hardly a secret that Labour itself is as divided on Brexit as the Tories. Many Labour candidates in London, for example, can’t support the shadow cabinet’s supine acceptance that the UK must leave the single market and lose rights to live and work in Europe, given most of their voters oppose Brexit.
There is an alternative to a general election. And that would be for Thornberry to support – as the majority of Labour Party members now do – a people’s vote, given all the information we now have and the great fears for jobs, wages and investment in the event of any kind of Brexit.
Repeating the shop-worn demands for an election doesn’t change the political weather. If Corbyn or Thornberry were to call for a serious examination of a people’s vote, either or both would be showing the kind of leadership that alters the terms of debate and puts Labour alongside progressive forces, as well as the growing voices in the UK economy and civil society who are now seriously worried about Brexit.
And if Labour were to be seen as the architect of a people’s vote to stop Brexit, the party would then be in a powerful position to demand an election to remove an administration which has refused ever to question or challenge Brexit since June 2016.
Denis MacShane is the former minister of state for Europe. His latest book is Brexit, No Exit. Why (in the End) Britain Won’t Leave Europe (IB Tauris)


The Bank of England’s prediction that civilisation will end with Brexit is merely an effort to outdo in shrillness similar analyses by the Treasury and the IMF.
All official agencies, trapped in an echo chamber, are competing to paint the grimmest picture of economic consequences of a British exit from the European Union. They are straining so hard because their projected costs of exit have no basis in economic theory or empirical findings.
“I don’t understand how you can get that kind of cost without making some big ad hoc assumptions,” tweeted Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.
When he uses the expression “big ad hoc assumptions”, he is saying the Bank is making up the numbers.
Mervyn King, who headed the Bank between 2003 and 2013, says he sadly “concurs” with Krugman’s assessment.
Krugman goes a step further: “I have worried in all this about motivated reasoning on the part of people who oppose Brexit for the best of reasons.”
Translation of “motivated reasoning”: officials are making up the menacing numbers because they believe that the UK should remain in the EU for non-economic reasons, which they cannot or are unwilling to defend.
The economics is straightforward. When trade barriers between the UK and the EU go up, British producers will sell less to the EU and will sell more within the UK and to the rest of the world.
No trade economist believes that the long-term cost of this shift in sales patterns is any more than 0.5 per cent of GDP. Throw in 2 to 3 per cent of GDP as temporary disruption costs. Estimates higher than that are ad hoc.
And ad hoc estimates can go either way. Britain’s trade with the EU is down to about 45 per cent from 60 per cent in 2000. Brexit will speed up that already rapid shift.
Scholars associated with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, uncontaminated by motivated reasoning, conclude that stepped-up trade and investment with more dynamic economies outside the EU will give British producers greater access to cutting-edge technology and force them to become more productive. Such gains, in their view, will likely offset the costs of lost trade with the EU.
Thus, on balance, the net gains or losses from Brexit should be modest. The UK’s lacklustre growth since the Brexit vote is almost entirely due to the government’s gratuitous austerity.
It is important, therefore, to ask what Europe’s real purpose is. The EU’s beginnings can be attributed to a speech in 9 May 1950 delivered by French foreign minister Robert Schuman.
The goal, Schuman said, was to create “common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe”. Hopes of a federation quickly evaporated, and Schuman’s political vision fizzled into empty words such as “ever-closer union,” “unity in diversity”, and Emmanuel Macron’s obscure “European sovereignty”.
However, the idea of a “common foundation for economic development” proved more durable. The Treaty of Rome concluded in 1957 provided shared economic benefits that lasted nearly a quarter of a century. Then even that momentum ran out as more integration provided limited benefits.
The most grievous effort to overdo economic integration was the establishment of a single currency. The repeated warnings that this project could go badly wrong were heard in Britain, and John Major negotiated an “opt-out” at Maastricht in 1991 when the treaty agreeing to the single currency was negotiated.
Oddly, Tony Blair’s government flirted with the idea of the euro. Economists fell in with the new political mood. In 1999, Britain’s “top academic economists” polled heavily in favour of the UK joining the eurozone.
At the University of California, Berkeley, economist Andy Rose published an article claiming countries that adopted the euro would exponentially increase their trade with each other, which would make them all more prosperous.
Adair Turner, then director general of the Confederation of British Industry, urged British business to embrace the single currency and lobbied in favour of it. Some years later, the Treasury, under Gordon Brown as chancellor, conducted a series of studies, which found that the euro was a bad idea.
But Brown left the door open – merely concluding that the euro was not right for the UK at the time. It was only after Swedish citizens decisively rejected the euro in a September 2003 referendum that Blair gave up. He recognised that a UK referendum, which he had promised, would lead to his political humiliation.
In 2015, after an important study had established that the euro produced no trade gains, Andy Rose published a mea culpa. He acknowledged that his earlier analysis improperly extrapolated from the experience of smaller monetary unions of mainly poorer countries, and did not apply to the eurozone. By then, the grim costs of the extended eurozone crisis were evident. The euro created no obvious benefits but carried all-too-real risks.
True, unlike the euro, open borders generate recognisable trade benefits. But the benefits are overstated, and the adverse distributional consequences are too often swept under the rug.
By much the same logic as Krugman used in his recent tweets, the Harvard economist Dani Rodrik explains that economic welfare changes only modestly when countries with extensive trade relationships increase or decrease the extent of their international trade.
Rodrik, therefore, tenaciously highlights the troubling fact that contemporary trade agreements disproportionately help the most successful.
“Trade agreements,” he writes, “are driven overwhelmingly by a business-led agenda. The implicit economic model is one of trickle-down: make investors happy and the benefits will eventually flow down to the rest of society. The interests of labor—good pay, high labor standards, employment security, voice in the workplace, bargaining rights—get little lip service.”
The EU is the world’s most advanced form of “trade agreement” and, hence, comes with all the ills that Rodrik underscores. Well-heeled lobbyists representing business interests influence nearly 75 per cent of EU laws.
No, that does not mean that we need to roll back international trade. It does mean that although the transition costs are real, staying in the EU does not create obvious long-term economic and social gains.
It is possible, of course, that some economists and officials in the UK and the EU use the cover of an economic calculus but they truly wish to promote the deeper message of Schuman’s May 1950 declaration: “An organised and living Europe is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations.”
Perhaps, the real intent of the scary estimates of the economic costs of Brexit is to emphasise that only the EU can credibly support global peace, promote democracy, and champion human rights – that these values and goals override claims to national sovereignty. If that is the motivation, now is the time to make that case transparently.
Sticking to unfounded economic numbers creates the suspicion of another troubling possibility. Travelling in rarified circles, political leaders, business people, and academics merely tell one another farfetched stories, which live in their minds and shape their analyses.
As Krugman wrote in a brilliant 1995 essay, “People believe certain stories because everyone important tells them, and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them. Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, one’s agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of one’s suitability to be taken seriously.”
British leaders must pull themselves out from the spell of storytelling and focus on their urgent responsibilities. At home, they must heed the real message of the Brexit vote: citizens being left behind by globalisation are clamouring for more protection. Prime minister Theresa May seemed briefly to recognise the primacy of that task. But she was sucked quickly into the Brexit negotiations vortex.
On Brexit, British citizens and their leaders must decide what kind of nation they want to live in. The debate must pit the value of sovereignty against the risks to global peace. Such a debate is of the utmost importance for Europe, with its history of horrific wars, especially now when ugly forms of nationalism are gaining alarming numbers of adherents. Unfortunately, instead of dealing head-on with this monumentally important challenge, which must guide the Brexit decision, global leaders are peddling frightening economic scenarios.
The Remain or Leave decision is an opportunity for Britain’s citizens to express and reaffirm their true values. Failure to protect the most vulnerable at home and redirect the Brexit debate to a higher purpose will leave underlying tensions simmering.
Ashoka Mody is visiting professor of international economic policy at Princeton University and former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund’s European and Research Departments. His new book is Eurotragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts


Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar has said no to any renegotiation with the British government over the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
His remarks come as Theresa May faces pressure to head back to the negotiating table in Brussels from MPs across the political spectrum, including Jeremy Corbyn, who insists there is still time to renegotiate rapidly.
Ministers in her own cabinet are also lobbying the prime minister to change course and seek further concessions from the EU or risk the deal falling in Parliament when Ms May asks MPs to vote on her plans next month.
Speaking on Sunday to RTE, Mr Varadkar said "we've always had an open ear, open door" to requests from the UK government, and said he would keep an open mind towards any proposals made in regard to the future political relationship declaration.
But pressed on the 585-page withdrawal agreement, which outlines the terms of Britain's divorce from the EU, he said: "No. That's been agreed already by the UK government and by negotiators."
Mr Varadkar's comments echo those of the German chancellor Angela Merkel, who said on Friday: "We have a document on the table that Britain and the EU 27 have agreed to, so for me there is no question at the moment we negotiate further."
The Independent also reported last week that EU officials believe the withdrawal deal struck by Ms May "is the best we can do collectively", given the government's red lines during the negotiations in Brussels.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister, has also called on the prime minister to change course as she too confirmed her party would vote against the deal in its current state.
Speaking after Ms May published the withdrawal agreement, Ms Sturgeon said it was difficult to see how the prime minister could get the necessary votes to push her proposals through the Commons.
"People will say the EU is not going to negotiate any other deal, well I don't suspect they will want to go back to the drawing board," she said.
"But if the UK was to come forward with what I think is the sensible option, what we in the Scottish government have argued all along, that the UK is leaving the EU but is going to stay in the single market, all of it, and the customs union, I think there would be a willingness to negotiate that on the part of the EU."


At a Christmas party, my host rose to toast the coming year, 2019, and the Remain future... after a “people’s vote”. Nonplussed, glass raised, my mind raced. Should I join the toast, or should I “come out”? In my mind’s eye I saw myself, potentially as a hypocrite, so, I stuck up my hand and said, “I have something to confess... I’m a Lexiteer!” After an awkward pause the party commenced.
The party guests were a typical middle-aged bunch of decent, professional, lefty Londoners. The wine flowed and as the evening progressed several guests sidled up to me with friendly yet puzzled expressions to find out why I’d joined the Brexiteers. At the party – and henceforth whenever the chance arises – my opening gambit is along the lines of, “Well, haven’t you read the Lisbon Treaty, the EU rule book, said to be impossible to understand but designed to alter the way EU members govern themselves?”
And I’d ask, “Did you take note how it created an EU president AND a powerful foreign policy chief, yet regardless of the Treaty’s creation of those two powerful positions – that transferred power away from EU countries – the Treaty was signed off in Lisbon in 2009 by the (then) 26?” Memorably, our prime minister, Gordon Brown did not attend. He, allegedly, had a “diary clash”? The then shadow foreign secretary William Hague told BBC News 24: “If he believes this [Lisbon] treaty is the right thing for the country then he ought to have the guts to go to the actual signing ceremony.”
Voting Remain to becoming a Leaver was quite a journey. We hear Remain vs Brexit arguments are causing family rifts and married couples to divorce. However, in my case, mostly on Facebook, I’ve just been passing on what I’ve been learning while staying polite and avoiding angry exchanges. Closer to home, two of my five grown up children have kept me in check while the others humour me.
One told me, tongue in cheek of course, “wind your neck in, Mum”. The other shows interest but is mildly annoyed that, while I’m not exactly persona non grata, I am no longer totally on the right social bandwagon. I’m allowed to natter on by way of working out my thoughts, but soon enough my spawn will don sound cancelling headphones – the signal for me to shut up.
So, what have I learned so far on my journey to Leave? Take the Remain dogma that exaggerates its case by saying that the big red Boris bus claim was “a pack of lies”, and it was the (only) reason Leave won (with some help from the Russians)... Well, it’s true it seems that the Leavers “bent the truth” by quoting a gross figure, given the net figure is £170m after a rebate. But the principle of the message made sense: “Let’s fund our NHS instead. Vote Leave. Let’s take back control.” I’m no fan of Boris, having seen through his Jack-the-lad nonsense, nevertheless the bus suggestion offers a reasonable option. There could be billions of pounds available to spend on our poor infrastructure – including the NHS.
What else have I learned? That Remainers say half of the “club fee” is returned to us. (But where does it end up?) That the landed aristocracy benefits massively from the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). For example: the likes of the dukes of Westminster, Northumberland and Marlborough, and Lord Rothschild, receive around £1m each per year. A colossal sum when multiplied across the years.
That Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party MEP upsets me, a Green, because her tweets infer that Lexiteers and Brexiteers are “hard-right fascists”. How very Stalinist of her! That Jeremy Corbyn is quiet because he knows that the EU TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) will scupper Labour’s plan to renationalise the railways and public services – if we remain inside the EU!
That, as Labour MP Kate Hoey points out, in the EU the NHS must become “open to the markets” too.” That the Greens, paradoxically, after years of campaigning otherwise, appear now to support the “just-in-time” trucking of goods that precludes local production, and seem concerned that Leave may cause our GDP score to slip!
That many Remainers think the EU Commission is socialist, while conversely, Hoey writes: “How can we preserve our public services when the EU Services Directive helped force the privatisation of the Royal Mail and EU rules against state aid will make it almost impossible to renationalise the railways? TTIP is a gift to the multinational corporations. I certainly don’t trust it to be on the side of small businesses or trade unions.”
And for me? It is the bloc’s unfair punishment of the ordinary people of Greece, TTIP, and nothing effective in the CAP for organic farming that led me to agree that the EU is a neoliberal, pro global-capitalism project first and foremost. And as for the Remainers’ campaign for a “people’s vote”, as professor of economics Yanis Varoufakis points out, “it seems a direct insult to Leavers to imply their winning vote wasn’t made by the [right] ‘people’”. I have since joined Varoufakis’s Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DieM25) which appears to be a sustainable way of becoming truly European. Simply staying inside the EU won’t cut it.


Jacob Rees-Mogg has urged Theresa May to quit to end the “complete vacuum of leadership” as he claimed the majority of Tory members he meets say they would vote for the Brexit Party.
The staunch Brexiteer said he did not “see how a leader can go on” with so little support from party faithful, saying Ms May had lost the backing of Conservative associations across the country.
As a remarkable new poll put the Conservatives in fifth place in the upcoming European elections, Mr Rees-Mogg said the activists he was meeting were saying they would vote for Nigel Farage’s insurgent outfit.
The YouGov survey ahead of next week’s contest place the Tories on just 10 per cent, some 24 points behind the Brexit Party, and trailing Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.
Mr Rees-Mogg, chairman of the European Research Group of backbench Brexiteers, told LBC: “I’ve never known the Tory Party in this position.
“Normally when you go and speak to Conservative associations and you’re not fully supportive of the leader of the party, whoever that leader happens to be, you’re not the most popular person in the room.
“At the moment, nobody is saying anything supportive of the leader or of the leader’s policy.
“The majority of the people at associations I’m addressing – and these are members of the party – tell me they’re voting for the Brexit Party.
“I don’t see how a leader can go on so removed from the support base of the party membership.”
Mr Rees-Mogg admitted the upcoming polls would be “difficult” for the party and appealed to voters to keep the faith.
In a message to Tories, he said: “I would appeal to their loyalty, to their tradition, and to say that the Conservative Party will get a new leader at some point.”
He added: “We want that new leader to have a base on which he or she can build and if we find that we are getting under 15 per cent of the vote, if we are coming fifth behind the Greens, then it will be harder for that figure to rebuild.”
His comments came as fellow Conservative Huw Merriman warned his party was in for “an absolute mauling” in the elections after the deadline for Britain’s exit from the EU was delayed to October.
Mr Merriman, a parliamentary aide to chancellor Philip Hammond, told BBC Radio 4’s Westminister Hour: “The public will blame the Conservative government because we were the party that brought forward the referendum.
“So for those that didn’t want it and wanted to remain, they will blame us for having tried to take us out and those who voted to leave, they will blame us for having not got the country out of the EU.
“So we are at the perfect storm. Yes, I think we will get an absolute mauling.”
Nigel Evans, an executive member of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, also warned his party was “going to get an absolute hammering” in the elections.
“Even the opinion polls for the next general election are woeful for the Conservative Party,” he told The Emma Barnett Show on BBC Radio 5 Live.
“They’re the worst I’ve seen in my political history and I’ve been a member of the party for 44 years.”
The prime minister is due to meet Mr Evans and other Tory backbench leaders on Thursday, where she is expected to set out the roadmap for her departure from Downing Street.
Ms May promised her angry party in March that she would resign once the first phase of Brexit was delivered, a pledge her advisers say she is committed to honouring.
But cross-party talks with Labour have entered their seventh week without progress amid calls from both sides on their leaders to walk away from the negotiations.


The president of the EU Commission has said he regrets not intervening in the UK’s Brexit referendum to correct “lies” about the bloc during the campaign.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Jean-Claude Juncker said it was a “big mistake” to listen to David Cameron, who he said had asked Brussels to “stay silent”.
“The mistake I made was to listen too carefully to the British government – Cameron, because the then prime minister asked me not to interfere, not to intervene in the referendum campaign.
“It was a mistake not to intervene and not to interfere because we would have been the only ones to destroy the lies which were circulated around. I was wrong to be silent at an important moment.”
But the commission president, who is nearing the end of his mandate and will be replaced in October, struck a more ambivalent tone on Brexit as it stood today.
“I don’t have fears, I don’t have hopes,” he told reporters.
“I was saying the other day that by comparison to the British parliament the Egyptian sphinx are open books. Either they stay or they will leave. If they stay, they stay. If they leave, they leave.”
During the Brexit referendum campaign, the UK Statistics Authority wrote to Vote Leave, criticising it for using a false figure claiming that the UK pays the EU £350m a week.
The campaign plastered the figure on the side of a bus and put out advertisements featuring the claim.
Meanwhile on the remain side, predictions about the economic impact of a Leave vote have been criticised as being wide of the mark.
A Treasury analysis published a month before the referendum claimed that “a vote to Leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to our economy”. This effect has yet to materialise over two years since the vote.
David Cameron’s request to Mr Juncker may have been based on the fear that any intervention from Brussels could provoke an adverse reaction. Brexiteers tried to stir up a backlash after Barack Obama, then US president, warned that Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal.
Mr Juncker was speaking ahead of a key meeting in the Romanian city of Sibiu on Thursday, where the 27 EU leaders will meet to discuss the future of the bloc. Theresa May has declined to attend the summit, which was originally scheduled to take place following the UK’s departure.


Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of betraying the party’s Brexit policy by the delegates who wrote it, as they demand he finally backs a Final Say referendum on Brexit.
The delegates from around the country have sent a letter to the Labour leader, directly charging him with failing to implement the plan carefully formed and approved by conference last year.
In a stinging rebuke they remind him that he promised “policy will be made by Labour members, not the leader”, but then go on to say, “the complete opposite now appears to be happening”.
A series of recent incidents have pushed Labour unity over Brexit to its limits, with the leader’s office and Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer at loggerheads, prominent backbenchers warning over a collapse in support and rumours of some MPs forming a breakaway group.
The letter seen by The Independent was written by 23 constituency Labour party delegates who took part in a six-hour compositing meeting in September last year which set Brexit policy.



That policy included a commitment to Sir Keir’s “six tests” for a Brexit deal and also the line: “If we cannot get a general election Labour must support all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote.”
But the letter to Mr Corbyn explains that the delegates are writing because of “the failure of some of the party leadership team, including you, to adhere to all elements of this policy”.
The delegates point out that a list of demands Mr Corbyn recently made to Theresa May, which if met could secure his cooperation on a Brexit deal, excluded the most critical of Sir Keir’s six tests – that any deal the party signs up to delivers the “exact same benefits” as membership of the single market.
They go on to say: “You were elected leader of our party on a platform of transforming Labour into a member led movement. You said that ‘policy will be made by Labour members, not the leader, shadow cabinet or parliamentary party’.
You said that ‘policy will be made by Labour members, not the leader, shadow cabinet or parliamentary party’. Yet the complete opposite now appears to be happening
“Yet the complete opposite now appears to be happening. I am sure you can appreciate our confusion and dissatisfaction with the current situation.
“Based on the content of your letter to the prime minister, not only is the policy not now being followed, it has clearly been changed – but without any mandate from the party membership to do so. How is this ‘Straight Talking, Honest Politics’?”
The delegates say they are a group made up of both long-standing members and others who were inspired to join the party by Mr Corbyn himself.
But with 29 March fast approaching, they warn that time is running out and emphasise that Labour’s efforts to secure an election have not been successful, and that the only remaining option is a new referendum.
They add: “The vast majority of the membership want a referendum on the deal. If we are truly a member led party, then all elements of the Brexit policy must be adhered to.
“There are no more options on the table other than calling for a referendum on the PM’s deal.”
A spokesman at party headquarters said: “The Labour Party is faithfully following our policy on Brexit."
A source in the leaders office argued that Mr Corbyn's five demands to Theresa May were consistent with Labour's conference policy, a Labour amendment put down in the commons on 29 January and Sir Keir's six tests.
He added: "While [Mr Corbyn's letter of demands to Theresa May] did set out more detail of a Brexit deal Labour could support it did not rule out the option of Labour campaigning for a public vote."
On Thursday, shadow treasury spokesman Clive Lewis MP, on the party’s left wing, broke ranks to criticise the Labour leadership for its “dangerous” failure to oppose Ms May’s exit plan full-on – warning it would keep the party out of power.
“My fear is that what we are now doing is that we are helping to facilitate a Tory Brexit,” he told a meeting of Labour supporters in Westminster.
Inside the commons chamber shortly after, pro-EU MP Chris Leslie, from the party’s right wing, gave a heavily critical speech on the leader’s position.
He pointed out that the words giving the commitment to an “option of a public vote” were absent from Mr Corbyn’s proposed amendment in parliament, adding: “I ask myself why are we regressing when it comes to our party’s policy, as passed at the September conference.”
Mr Leslie said he found it “heartbreaking” that the party was not fully opposing the Conservative plans for Brexit, and that frontbenchers were abstaining in key votes.
He went on: “On this particular issue, we are being played for fools by the leadership of the Labour party.
“By now, we should have reached the stage of a public vote on the option of remaining in the European Union.”
On the same day rumours swirled that some Labour MPs were about to announce that they would break from the opposition whip and form a new party.
Though it was denied and a break is yet to have materialised, the rumour persists and many expect it to happen at some point in the near future.
On Wednesday Neil Coyle MP claimed the party was losing members and councillors, and could yet lose MPs over its Brexit policy, while Wavertree MP Luciana Berger has said young voters would see the party as “standing in the way” of them having a say unless it backed a new referendum.
Earlier in the week, there were further signs of division at the top of the party when the leader’s spokesman was forced to reiterate that pushing for a new election is the Labour’s preference after Sir Keir indicated that a compromise deal or a new referendum were the “only credible options now left”.
The Independent has campaigned for a fresh public vote through its Final Say campaign, with more than 1.1 million people having signed the petition.


So are we poised to hold a new referendum? The jubilation in the camp of those campaigning to reverse Brexit should be put on hold until we see evidence that there is firstly a broad-based, united campaign by the Labour leadership and secondly, that most Labour MPs make a new vote the centrepiece of their approach to Brexit.
In the absence of those things, we move quickly back to the old dreary territory of Labour insisting on the BBC this morning that the Commons should vote for Labour’s version of its cake-and-eat-it Brexit based on a surreal customs union arrangement which would allow a Labour Britain to be in “a”, but not “the” Customs Union with a right to have a say on overall EU trade policy.
That does not exist today and is incompatible with WTO rules. You are either in a customs union or not.
Labour also wants its fantasy “close alignment” with the single market while still being able to pick and chose the bits of the EU single market it does not like. All EU 27 members would prefer that version of the single market but it is not on offer.
If Labour put their unicorn version of Brexit to the Commons it will be rejected. Thereafter Labour says it will call for a new referendum to reject Theresa May’s deeply flawed deal. Her deal means the UK leaves the EU Treaty on 29 March but stays in the EU in economic and trade terms, including freedom of movement, while Brussels and London negotiate the terms of a future relationship based on the framework set out over the 147 paragraphs of the political declaration.

These are full of contradictory assertions. They do not cover the service sector – 80 per cent of the UK economy – and by the standards of most EU agreements with third countries (which is what the UK will become) will take 5-10 years to complete. In that period there will be no certainty for business, above all foreign investors like Japanese car-makers or Airbus.
Labour quite rightly says this deal is very bad for Britain. Yet those arguing for the people to be given a chance to cast their verdict on this future disaster have been treated with indifference bordering on hostility by endless shadow cabinet ministers in the last 18 months.
Pro-European Labour MPs like Lucy Powell or Stephen Kinnock or Labour grandees like Lord Charlie Falconer have all opposed a Final Say. They have joined the more predictable anti-European, rent-a-quote Labour MPs who get more headlines than their colleagues with strident opposition for the right of the people to be consulted.
Up to a few days ago this line against a new referendum seemed to find favour in the inner circles of the Labour leadership. The trade union leader closest to Corbyn is Unite’s general secretary, Len McLuskey. He has never made a secret of his contemptuous hostility towards the idea.
So what has happened to produce this U-turn in favour of a referendum? Step forward the nine Labour MPs who resigned from the Labour Party to form The Independent Group (TIG). There is a 10th, Ian Austin, who is anti-Corbyn as a future prime minister but who supports Brexit and May’s Deal.
The shockwaves in Labour as every MP looked at friends and colleagues and asked “who’s next?” should not be underestimated. Equally significant was an opinion poll this week which showed Labour’s vote slumping to just 23 per cent. Another poll showed that 84 per cent of voters who had reached voting age since 2016 wanted to stay in Europe and 87 per cent said they would oppose May’s deal in a referendum.
It was simply no longer tenable to stay in the same trench of relegating a fresh vote to some far-off horizon – the trench in which Corbyn and his shadow ministers have been crouching since Labour activists voted for a new referendum at the party conference last September.
So Corbyn moved up and out into the open with yesterday’s announcement to the weekly meeting of Labour MPs in the Commons. It won the desired headlines and left the defecting MPs munching their Nando’s chicken looking rather lonely as their main reason for leaving Labour – Corbyn’s refusal to support a new vote – had now disappeared.
But the wheels quickly started wobbling off the new Corbyn referendum soap cart. When his foreign affairs spokesperson, Emily Thornberry, said Labour would campaign to stay in the EU in a referendum, a senior Corbyn aide, said Labour would not. A significant number of Labour MPs said they would oppose the call for a new public vote.
Unless, it has the support for a good number of Tory MPs, Labour’s new referendum proposal will fail to win support in the Commons. This will allow Corbyn to wash his hands of responsibility by saying: “I tried to win support for a new referendum but the Commons rejected it.”
Let us see if all of Labour’s shadow cabinet, as they fan out to do media interviews and address party meetings, show enthusiasm and energy in denouncing Brexit, and the flawed corrupted plebiscite of lies of June 2016.
Corbyn’s announcement is a potential game-changer but only if he and Labour play a new game of support for Britain in Europe – something Corbyn has opposed since he joined the Labour party half a century ago.


Jeremy Hunt has signalled he is willing to delay Brexit as he refused to commit to leaving the EU "at any cost" by the end of October if wins the contest to succeed Theresa May.
The foreign secretary also made the claim he could negotiate a new deal with the bloc that would do away with the need for the Irish backstop - despite such a route already being repeatedly dismissed by the EU.
Mr Hunt came second in the first round of voting among Tory MPs in the party's leadership contest, achieving 43 backers, but still considerably behind Boris Johnson, who received 114 votes.
In an attempt to pitch himself as the alternative to the his predecessor at the Foreign Office, Mr Hunt said he was not willing to pledge a "hard stop, any cost" exit from the EU on 31 October - the current deadline for Brexit.
He told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme this would effectively mean committing the country to a no-deal scenario, "or an election if parliament chooses to stop that".
Asked directly what the "final date" would be of Britain leaving the EU, Mr Hunt replied: "I'm not committed to a 31 October, hard stop at any cost because I don't think we can make that guarantee.
"If we do make that guarantee, if we go with the wrong approach then you are committing us to nothing other than a no deal Brexit.
Pressed on whether the UK would "definitely" be out of the bloc by the end of the year, he replied: "A wise prime minister makes choices on the basis of the choices that are actually in front of them.
"By the time you get to the 31 October we may have parliament having changed the law in particular ways, we may have a new European Commission, we may have made very good progress in the negotiations.
"I've been very clear, if there is no prospect of getting a deal that can get through parliament on 31 October, then I will be prepared to leave without a deal."
He added: "If there's no prospect of a deal, then I'm out. If there is a prospect of a deal – what I'm saying is the difference between me and Boris is that I'm saying I would try for a deal.
"I'm not going to create a set of circumstances that makes it all but impossible to get a deal because I think we should be offering the country some better choices."
His comments will likely infuriate the most hardline Brexiteers in the Conservative Party - just moments before Dominic Raab, who is also running for the leadership, warned the party would be "toast" if it fails to exit the EU by 31 October.


A split has emerged at the top of the Liberal Democrats over Brexit, as senior MP Sir Norman Lamb warned that the new policy of cancelling EU withdrawal was “playing with fire”.
Activists voted overwhelmingly at the party’s annual conference in Bournemouth on Sunday to back leader Jo Swinson’s proposal to revoke the UK’s Article 50 letter informing Brussels of its intention to quit the EU.
But Lamb warned that there was a “real danger” of breaking the nation’s social contract if Leave-voters felt that their referendum victory in 2016 was simply being cast aside.
The former health minister, who is a member of the MPs For A Deal group calling for a new vote on the last version of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, warned his party that a failure to compromise was fuelling the rise of populist figures like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
“I don’t feel personally that there are enough people out there trying to find ways to re-unite our country,” Sir Norman told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I think that the polarisation that we are seeing is incredibly dangerous. I think we are playing with fire in many ways.”

Lamb – who has said he will stand down as MP for Norfolk North at the next election – voted earlier this year for versions of Brexit which would have seen the UK leave the EU but remain within a customs union or in a Norway-style “common market 2.0” arrangement involving close trade links with the continent.
He said the refusal of other Remain-backing MPs to compromise at that point “opened the door to Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson to prosper”.
And he warned: “We have got to be very careful what we wish for. If we take this to the very limit in a situation where one side or the other is vanquished entirely, I think there is a real danger that we break the social contract inner country and I think we all have a responsibility to find ways to reunite the country in a common endeavour.”
The Lib Dems’ new policy will see the party seek a Final Say referendum on whether the UK should accept any Brexit outcome. But if an election comes before any referendum – as now seems likely – they will campaign on a platform of withdrawing the UK’s Article 50 letter if they win power.
In a testy exchange with presenter Piers Morgan on ITV1’s Good Morning Britain, Ms Swinson rejected accusations that the policy was undemocratic.
She was confronted with video footage of former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown shortly before the 2016 result was announced, when he was apparently expecting a Remain victory, in which he said: “I will forgive no-one who does not accept the sovereign voice of the British people once it has spoken, whether it is by one per cent or by 25 per cent.”
Ms Swinson responded: “We had that referendum three and a half years ago and the government has gone away and taken the result of that referendum and negotiated what that will mean for the British public.

“What is on offer today bears no resemblance to what was said in the 2016 referendum campaign.
“We are still campaigning for a People’s Vote. We believe a referendum is the best way to get clarity, to get resolution of this current gridlock and Brexit impasse.
“But it does look like it may be that a general election will be upon us an in that general election – that democratic process – the Liberal Democrats will campaign to stop Brexit.”
Ms Swinson did not rule out campaigning to take the UK back into the EU if Brexit goes ahead, telling Today: “I’m not going to get into the hypothetical because I am absolutely focused and determined on stopping Brexit. That fight has not been lost.
“It is September, we are still members of the European Union. It is a membership that brings huge benefits for our economy, for the way in which we have improved workers’ rights, environmental protections, the way in which we engage around the world. I’m not going to throw that away. I’m not going to accept defeat on that. We are going to fight to stay in the EU.”



The mark in history left by John Bercow was always going to be a controversial one. The news that Lord Lisvane, clerk of the House of Commons for the early part of Bercow’s speakership, has filed a complaint about bullying complicates matters further.
Previous allegations against Bercow were never conclusively investigated but this one could be pursued by the House of Lords Appointments Commission if Bercow is nominated for a peerage by Jeremy Corbyn, as reported by The Sunday Times.
Whatever happens, it seems that Bercow, who was at the centre of the constitutional struggle over Brexit, is going to continue to be a symbol of division for years to come.
A fair-minded view of his role ought to record that all he ever did was to allow the majority in the House of Commons to express itself. By allowing the innovation of legislation against the government from the back benches, he gave the sovereign Commons the power to block a no-deal exit from the EU.
He infuriated Brexiteers by breaking with precedent, saying: “If we were guided only by precedent, manifestly nothing in our procedures would ever change.” But there were also occasions when he refused to allow amendments proposed by Remainers to be debated.
In a way, Leavers ought to be grateful to him because he gave the Remainers in the Commons full scope to try to frustrate Brexit – and they nearly succeeded. But if the speaker had allowed the government to block the majority in the Commons, there might have been a lingering bitterness that democracy had been denied. As it is, Boris Johnson was able to appeal to the higher authority of the voters to overcome their opposition.
Unfortunately for Bercow, he was not particularly good at maintaining the appearance of impartiality. He was put in his place largely by the votes of Labour MPs and was increasingly seen by the Conservative side as working for the opposition. David Cameron couldn’t stand him; Theresa May regarded him with glowering resentment; Boris Johnson made no pretence about being glad to see the back of him.
Being seen as pro-Labour and pro-Remain was terrible for the authority of the speaker. No matter how defensible each of his rulings on procedure was, they were undermined by the perception of his biases.
That said, he was undoubtedly a reforming speaker, who opened up some of the secretive gentlemen’s club that used to run parliament, and he took seriously his role in allowing the whole House to hold the government to account, forcing ministers to come to the dispatch box to answer more UQs – urgent questions – than ever before. Indeed, he took backbenchers’ rights too far even for most backbenchers. The majority of MPs are thoroughly relieved that Prime Minister’s Questions has now reverted to half an hour instead of the 50 minutes that had become the norm.
Whatever happens to the bullying allegations, which he denies, his record will always be tarnished by the perception of bias. Of course it was petty of Johnson to refuse to elevate him to the peerage (an honour conferred on all recent speakers) but it would be worse to be nominated by the leader of the opposition on a post-election list usually reserved for Labour Party worthies.
Why a modernising speaker should want to be in an unelected house of cronies anyway is perhaps the greatest mystery of all.


Almost 20 years since Gordon Brown revealed with much fanfare his "five economic tests" for joining the euro, Labour’s Keir Starmer has announced the party’s "six tests" for Brexit.
Brown’s tests set the political agenda for years. Starmer’s, it is not too uncharitable to assume, will not. There is a fairly significant reason for this: Gordon Brown was in government, and at that time faced no realistic prospect of ever being out of government. Commentators opined on the end of the Conservative Party. Now, Labour is out of government, and faces no realistic prospect of ever being in government again.
In any event, the "six tests" can be boiled down to one point: that unless Britain leaves the European Union and continues to enjoy the "exact same benefits" it does now, Labour will vote against the deal.
This latest attempt from the shadow Brexit Secretary to resolve his party’s irresolvable position on Brexit is almost as heartbreaking as the last. It simply cannot be done.
He has warned the Prime Minister that he will not allow her to deliver a "Brexiteer’s Brexit" – that Labour will not allow the country to, for example, crash out of the EU without a trade agreement in place, to fall back on WTO terms and allow Tory hardliners to strip away workers' rights. But to back this up, he has threatened to give them the very thing they want. To vote against the deal, to crash out of the EU without a trade agreement in place, to fall back on WTO terms and allow Tory hardliners to strip away workers rights.
I was, and am, a hardline Remainer. Whatever the consequences, even if they are economically favourable (which they will not be), I will always be of the view that leaving the EU is a terrible course of action. The idea that Britain can be Australia, or Canada, or Singapore, or anywhere else, is bogus. Britain will be the country that walked out on its continent rather than led it, in an act of international self-humiliation from which its reputation will never recover, not least as it is a decision that has been secured by utterly baseless lies.
But a Brexiteer’s Brexit doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. What is the alternative? A Remainer’s Brexit? Brexit for everyone? The People’s Brexit? No.
David Cameron left office because he knew a Brexiteer’s Brexit was necessary and having led the Remain campaign, he couldn’t deliver one. Even Lord Heseltine has made clear the Brexiteers should be in charge.
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Arguably, if they were, a less hardline option might be being pursued. Maybe a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who campaigned for Remain might feel they have more to do to show those calling the tune that they really mean it.
Starmer has borrowed that "exact same benefits" phrase from David Davis, who used it himself.
“Does [a new deal] deliver the 'exact same benefits' as we currently have as members of the single market and customs union?” asked Starmer. “For this is the standard David Davis has set for the Government and it is one I will hold them to.”
But what Angela Merkel made clear around a year ago, while the UK chose to listen instead to Steve Hilton settling scores and selling a re-released self-help book, the exact same benefits cannot be enjoyed. There is no one in Brussels or its member governments, not one lone voice, who thinks Britain can enjoy the "exact same benefits" it has now, while rejecting all the costs.
If Starmer’s latest strategy to somehow keep hold of a voting base utterly bisected on this fundamental question, is to seek to hold the Government to a promise it cannot possibly keep, or else hand it the very thing it suggests it really wants, there may yet be another wrenching chapter in this slow motion hari-kari.


Jeremy Corbyn is under pressure to back cancelling Brexit altogether if it is the only way to stop the UK crashing out of the EU, as another battle with Labour activists looms.
Almost 30 local parties are demanding Labour “support revoking Article 50 if necessary to prevent no deal”, in motions being submitted to its conference in September.
The move threatens to shatter the fragile peace over Brexit policy since the shadow cabinet agreed Labour would campaign for Remain in any fresh referendum held while the Conservatives are in power.
The policy was attacked as a fudge – after Mr Corbyn admitted Labour could yet fight a general election as a pro-Brexit party – and says nothing about wider strategy to stop the no deal Boris Johnson is threatening.
Meanwhile, the issue of withdrawing the Article 50 notice that started the withdrawal process could yet take centre stage in the parliamentary fight to stop no deal in autumn.
A cross-party attempt to pass legislation to force Mr Johnson to seek an extension of Article 50 is highly likely, but many MPs opposed to no deal believe any effort must go further to thwart the PM.
They fear Mr Johnson could simply refuse to cooperate with EU leaders – keeping a 31 October crash-out as the legal default – and want that default changed to require Article 50 to be revoked if no extension has been granted.
Now the local Labour parties have signed up to a campaign to maximise pressure in Brighton in September, launched by the grassroots groups Another Europe is Possible, Labour for a Socialist Europe and Open Labour.
The motion “notes the vast majority of Labour members and voters oppose Brexit” and says the party still needs “a clear Brexit policy”.
It then states: “Labour will campaign energetically for a public vote and to Remain. We support revoking Article 50 if necessary to prevent no deal.”
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a Labour MP backing the campaign, said: “No deal would be a catastrophic moment for the Labour Party and the people we represent. It would mean a huge economic crisis which the right wing of the Tory party would use to drive an agenda of deregulation.
“We must be willing to do absolutely anything to stop it – and of course that would mean, if we had to, whipping to revoke Article 50.”
And Michael Chessum, national organiser for Another Europe is Possible, said: “It’s not the tool we would choose, but if revoking is the only option left on the table to stop the disaster capitalists, Labour has to be willing to use it. There can’t be any fudge or ambiguity on that.”
An online petition calling on the government to revoke Article 50 was signed by more than 6 million people earlier this year, making it the most popular petition ever submitted to the parliament’s website.
The idea has also been backed as an escape route by senior Tories John Major and Ken Clarke and by the Scottish Nationalist Party – but not by Mr Corbyn.
Last month he suggested Labour would fight the next election seeking to negotiate a better Brexit deal – if the UK is still an EU member – and said: “We’ll decide our policy when the election comes.”
The motions set the scene for a repeat of last year’s bitter tussle about Brexit policy, waged over a five-hour meeting to hammer out a compromise “composite” motion.
This year, anti-Brexit activists are likely to make a commitment to revoking Article 50, if necessary, a “red line” in the marathon Sunday evening get-together of constituency parties, trade unions and affiliated groups.
The conference will be staged just a month before the 31 October deadline for leaving the EU – with no sign of a new agreement with Brussels to avert a crash-out departure and the widespread damage predicted.
The activists also fear that if a snap election is called then conference could be cancelled, leaving Labour’s policy to be decided by a joint meeting of the shadow cabinet and the national executive committee.
They are urging the near-200 local parties to submit a motion to join the campaign to “shift the party’s position regardless of whether a formal conference vote takes place”.
In total, 50 constituencies have already voted to submit anti-Brexit motions to the Brighton conference, of which at least 29 explicitly call for the Article 50 notice to be withdrawn.


Labour leadership contender Clive Lewis has said that the Brexit campaign had “racism at its heart” and that many black people woke up with “a sense of dread” following the referendum result.
Mr Lewis also said “structural racism” within UK society was partly to blame for the fact that Labour has never had an ethnic minority leader – and for the treatment of Meghan Markle by the media.
The mixed-race MP insisted he was not claiming that his skin colour has played a part in his failure so far to secure the 22 MPs’ and MEPs’ nominations he needs to remain in the race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.
In an interview on Sky New’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Mr Lewis also declared himself a republican, days after floating the idea of a referendum on the future of the royal family as part of a constitutional convention to look at the UK’s national institutions.
He insisted he would not attempt to dictate the outcome of any debate on the future of the royals, but indicated that he might personally vote against them, saying “I’m a republican. I want to be a citizen, not a subject.”
And he told Ridge that he would abolish private schools if he came to power.
Asked if Brexit was a racist endeavour, Mr Lewis told Ridge: “I think part of the Brexit campaign, and part of the undertone of Brexit from some politicians – Nigel Farage and others – had racism at its core, at its heart.
“They used it as a mechanism to divide our communities and divide our country.
“How many people of colour, how many black people, on the day after the referendum woke up with a sense of dread because of what had happened?
“Ultimately, our country had chosen to listen to Boris Johnson, someone who has a track record of racist commentary, of giving credence to racism, to Nigel Farage, someone who stood in front of a poster which was overtly racist.
“This was a government that had the Windrush scandal, that had had ‘go home’ vans.
“For anyone to say that there was not an element of racism in the Brexit project as an endeavour – you’re basically wrong. Ask the millions of black people in this country who understood what much of the dog-whistle politics and tone was on this issue.
“That doesn’t mean that every single person that voted for Brexit is a racist – some of my family voted for Brexit. But I think there were drivers within that campaign, which certainly were very unsavoury and which I would call racist.”
Mr Lewis has so far obtained only four nominations from MPs – including himself – to become leader.
When Ridge asked him if he thought racism was part of the reason for his faltering campaign, he replied: “Structural sexism, structural racism exists within our society and the PLP (parliamentary Labour Party) is part of that society and it is for us to challenge that and make sure that we do better.
“I have never said that it is because of my colour that I am not being nominated by my parliamentary colleagues.
“But if you want to understand why we haven’t had a woman, why we haven’t had a person of colour as leader of the Labour party then we have to look at the entirety of the issue, which is that those structural issues do exist.”
The treatment of the Duchess of Sussex was an indication of the structural racism in UK society, he said.
Mr Lewis said he was not personally calling for a referendum on the future size and function of the royal family, but said the issue could be addressed by the constitutional convention which he proposes.
“We’ve seen this week there is a great love for the royal family in this country but there are also, I think, some concerns about how it will go forward into the future,” he said.
“If people wanted to have that referendum then that would be up to them.”
Asked which way he would vote in a referendum on scrapping the monarchy, he replied: “I’m a republican. I actually want to be a citizen in this country not a subject.
“I want my community to have real say and real power over its lives. I think that is entirely acceptable… There are democracies all over the world where they do not have a royal family.
“But that shouldn’t be for me as leader, or as prime minister one day, to dictate what happen. That should be for the people of this country to have a say.”
Mr Lewis said that a successful motion at last year’s Labour conference to abolish private schools should become party policy.
“Private schools are an engine of inequality,” he said.
“I understand that lots of people out there send their children to private school for a variety of reasons and there are private schools in my own constituency where I go and talk to the students and those schools are fantastic but I would like that standard for every child in this country.
“It shouldn’t just be determined by the fact that you have the money to be able to pay for your child to have that quality of education, it should be available to everyone.
“I think that division in our society set at an early age has consequences for the inequality that we have, not just in terms of wealth but of power as well and I think that’s a very good policy. I think it’s one that could be communicated perhaps in a better way but ultimately, yes, I do support it.”


Labour will vote down any Brexit deal that does not contain details about what kind of trade deal Britain will have with the EU, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
The party’s shadow Brexit secretary is travelling to Brussels on Wednesday for meetings with senior EU officials where he is expected to make clear that the opposition party is opposed to a so-called “blind Brexit”.
Any Brexit deal will include two elements. Firstly, a withdrawal agreement – solving separation issues like Ireland, the divorce bill and citizens rights. But Theresa May has also promised a separate “political declaration” – a detailed outline of what Britain’s future trade relationship with the EU will look like, mostly on trade.
It is this latter agreement that outlines whether Britain intends to join a customs union, follow single market rules, or sign a free trade agreement – and whether to adopt models like Norway or Canada.
Delays and missed deadlines in negotiating the withdrawal agreement, particularly on the Irish border issue, however means that negotiations about the nature of the future relationship have effectively not even started.
To make matters worse, Theresa May’s opening Chequers proposal was rejected as unworkable by the EU’s 27 remaining countries, and the prime minister has said she will not accept any other offer on the table.
Given the deadline to have everything agreed was October, it is becoming increasingly difficult to see how a substantial future relationship could be negotiated in time for the parliamentary vote.
Under laws passed by MPs earlier in the Brexit process, both the withdrawal agreement and political declaration must be presented to MPs before any vote can take place.
Ahead of his meetings in Brussels, Sir Keir said: “This is crunch time in the Brexit negotiations. Yet government divisions and delays mean that little time has been spent debating what our future trading and security relationship will be after Brexit.
“Months of deadlock in Theresa May’s government mean we’re facing continued uncertainty and the prospect of years of further negotiations over our future relationship with the EU.
“A blind Brexit could prolong business uncertainty and provide insufficient guarantees to protect jobs, the economy and rights. Whether you voted Leave or Remain, nobody voted for the purgatory of permanent negotiations.
“Theresa May and Dominic Raab promised that the Brexit deal put before parliament will be ‘detailed, precise and substantive’. That is exactly what Labour expects and what I will be discussing in Brussels. If the final deal it is anything less than the government has promised, Labour will not support it.”
Theresa May has said it would be difficult to pass any withdrawal agreement without a detailed outline of the future relationship. Whips are said to be particularly worried that MPs would balk at voting for a multibillion-pound divorce bill without any guarantees of a trade deal. The actual free trade agreement with the EU would be negotiated after Britain leaves, likely in the transition period.
Sir Keir is expected to meet EU officials including Frans Timmermans, the deputy head of the European Commission; Markus Winkler, a senior EU parliament official; and Roberto Gualtieri, a socialist member of the EU parliament’s Brexit steering group.
The shadow Brexit secretary met with Michel Barnier most recently in late September, alongside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator will be out of town for this visit, attending a party conference in Finland.


One of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow ministers has admitted to organising a campaign to stop a fresh Brexit referendum, despite Labour’s backing for the policy.
Gloria De Piero refused to answer questions about how her campaigning could be squared with her frontbench role as a spokeswoman for justice issues.
Critics said Mr Corbyn’s “complete lack of leadership” on Brexit would be underlined if he allowed shadow ministers to openly oppose party policy to push for a second public vote.
Ms De Piero’s actions were revealed when she joined other Labour referendum opponents in urging fellow MPs to join their cause at a meeting staged in Westminster.
An email sent by the group, seen by The Independent, is entitled “Respect the Result: No Second Referendum” and encourages MPs unable to attend to register their opposition in order to stay “in touch”.
It reads: “We are writing to you as someone who has expressed concerns at the possibility of a second referendum.
“Labour MPs who are concerned at the implications of Labour, and parliament, voting for a second referendum, are holding a meeting.”
It adds: “If you can attend this meeting, please click YES on the voting button at the top of this email. If you cannot attend, but would like to be kept in touch, please click NO, but keep me in touch.”
The meeting was staged just days before a likely Labour amendment to Theresa May’s second “meaningful vote” on her stalled deal in order to force a referendum, after Mr Corbyn’s U-turn.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said the party’s MPs would be ordered to back a bid to allow the prime minister’s agreement to pass – but subject to a public vote confirming it.
Several dozen Labour MPs oppose a second referendum, but supporters hope to significantly shrink that number if the vote is whipped.
The Independent is campaigning for a fresh public vote through its Final Say campaign, with more than 1.1 million people having signed our petition.
Chris Leslie, The Independent Group MP who defected from Labour, said: “Those in the Labour party who believe the public should give their consent for this Brexit must ensure Labour’s leadership do everything necessary to deliver that outcome.”
And Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “There has been a complete lack of leadership from Jeremy Corbyn on this issue.”
The Independent has asked the Labour leader’s office if any action will be taken against Ms De Piero, the MP for Ashfield, in Nottinghamshire, for defying party policy.
The MP declined to discuss her frontbench responsibilities, but told The Independent: “My views on the subject are well known and I talk to colleagues all the time.”
The controversy came as nine Labour MPs used an article in The Independent to urge colleagues to unite around Mr Corbyn’s commitment to another referendum.
The meeting’s other organisers were the backbenchers Caroline Flint, Lisa Nandy and Gareth Snell.


Labour Brexit divisions have spilled over once more after Diane Abbott became the third shadow cabinet member to declare she would campaign to stay in the EU over a deal negotiated by her own party.
In a move that heaps fresh pressure on Jeremy Corbyn, the shadow home secretary said she was determined to personally support Remain as it was the “best option for the country and my constituents”.
Her comments come after John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, and Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, both declared they would campaign for Remain against a Labour Brexit deal.
Labour has vowed to hold a fresh referendum if Mr Corbyn is elected, with the option to remain in the EU on the ballot paper against a Brexit deal.
But the public support for staying in the EU from senior shadow cabinet figures goes further than the party’s official policy.
Ms Abbott told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The party is committed to a referendum now and Jeremy has made that clear.
“If there is a referendum and if Remain is on the ballot paper – and there is every expectation there will be – I, like John McDonnell, personally will be campaigning for Remain.”
Asked if she would still back Remain against a Labour deal, Ms Abbott said: “I will be campaigning for Remain. I think Remain is the best option for the country and for my constituents.”
She denied Labour’s position was chaotic, saying Mr Corbyn would be guided by the party membership and the shadow cabinet over how to act.
Ms Abbott added: “I believe Jeremy will do what he has always done, which is do what he thinks is best for the country and the Labour movement.”
On Monday, Mr McDonnell said he believed that staying in the EU would be the “best choice”. Ms Thornberry said last month that Labour would be “off our bloody rockers” not to back Remain.
Meanwhile, the Labour leader has demanded the full publication of no-deal contingency plans after a leaked Whitehall dossier warned of months of shortages, chaos at borders and a possible recession.
Speaking as he prepared to meet business leaders to discuss the potential impact of no deal, Mr Corbyn said: “The government’s own Operation Yellowhammer dossier makes the chaos and damage that will be caused by Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit crystal clear.
“If the government wants to be believed that it doesn’t represent the real impact, it must publish its most recent assessments today in full. Boris Johnson’s denials can’t be trusted, and will do nothing to give businesses or consumers any confidence that the dire state of affairs described in these documents aren’t right around the corner.
“What we know for sure is that this government is wilfully committed to a policy that the prime minister and the cabinet know will destroy jobs, push up food prices in the shops and open up our NHS to a takeover by US private companies.”
Elsewhere, Boris Johnson accused Mr Corbyn of wanting to “argue about Brexit for years”.
The prime minister wrote on Twitter: “I am committed to leading our country forward and getting Britain out of the EU by October 31st.
“We are ready to work with our friends and partners to get a deal. But if you want a good deal for the UK, you must simultaneously get ready to come out without one.”



Labour will order its MPs to vote for a backbench motion that would trigger a fresh Brexit referendum, John McDonnell has said.
The shadow chancellor said the party would back an amendment being tabled by Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson after it dramatically shifted its policy last week to support a fresh public poll.
The Labour leadership had asked for the original Kyle-Wilson amendment to be redrafted to allow the party's MPs to support another referendum without approving Theresa May’s Brexit deal. The initial text had pledged back for the prime minister's exit plan providing she put it to a public vote.
Speaking at a briefing for Westminster journalists, Mr McDonnell said he hadn’t seen the final text but added: ”We’re trying to ensure our members don’t have to vote for Theresa May’s deal to get to the stage.
“There doesn’t necessarily have to be a reference to Theresa May’s deal...We don’t want an explicit reference to Theresa May’s deal.”
Asked if Labour would order MPs to vote for the amendment, he said: “Yes. That’s the discussion that’s going on.”
The decision promoted fury from some of Labour MPs in Leave-voting areas, with dozens reported to be considering voting against any proposal to give the public a Final Say vote.
Some have demanded a free vote on the issue so they do not have to defy party orders or resign from frontbench jobs, but Mr McDonnell said he expected the vote to be whipped in the usual way.
However, he played down speculation of a sizeable rebellion, saying there was ”a minor difference of view” and that party leaders would "respect" MPs who took a different stance.
The shadow chancellor has previously suggested that Labour could put forward its own amendment on another referendum but said this was now unlikely.
He said: “We’re considering whether we put one down ourselves but it’s more likely and better for us to back a backbench amendment because then it doesn’t alienate some others coming across [from other parties].”
Mr Kyle and Mr Wilson are expected to table their amendment when Ms May brings her revised Brexit deal back before the Commons, which she had promised to do before 12 March.
The government is hoping to win Labour MPs' backing for the deal, and earlier this week announced a £1.6bn fund to help 'left behind' towns.
Some MPs had demanded investment in deprived areas and guarantees on workers' rights and environmental protections in return for supporting the deal, but many MPs who had contemplated backing Ms May said the new funding announcement did not go far enough.
Mr McDonnell said: "This government are so incompetent they can even bungle a bribe. It’s gone down like an absolute lead balloon, even with some of those MPs who were lobbying for it."
He also said “nobody is satisfied” with the government's expected guarantee on workers' rights, adding: “All the manoeuvres to try to get Labour MPs onside with the various bribes that have taken place have just been completely counterproductive.”
Labour's shift to support a fresh Brexit referendum was seen in part as a bid to stop further MPs defecting to The Independent Group (TIG).
Eight Labour MPs and three Conservatives have already joined the new grouping and other Labour MPs have admitted they are considering their position in their party.
TIG took its first step towards becoming a full political party on Tuesday when some of its MPs held talks with the Electoral Commission.
Speaking after the meeting, Group spokesman Chuka Umunna said there was "no specific timeframe" for registering as a party but that the group wanted to field candidates at the next election.
He said: "We aren't a political party but quite clearly there is an appetite for a new one, so we are here to discuss with them what that involves."
He was joined by former Labour MPs Gavin Shuker, Ann Coffey and Chris Leslie and former Conservative Heidi Allen.
Mr Umunna said TIG was unlikely to field candidates in May's local elections, saying: "In terms of decisions on local elections or any other elections in the immediate next few months we will make decisions about that.
"But we are clear that when a general election comes, people want an alternative.
"We have been advised that the only way that you can actually deliver that is by being a registered political party so you can be on the ballot paper. That is our goal."
He added: "In the coming weeks and months we want to ensure that we properly involve everyone in the country who wants to see that alternative come into being.
"We will be launching a 'change politics project' which we will be taking all over the country to include people in the process."


Prominent Labour figures have warned the Corbyn project faces ruin if the party leader does not shift his position on Brexit.
With Labour slumping into third place in the European elections and falling behind the pro-EU Liberal Democrats in a Westminster poll, one MP said the party would pay “a heavy price” for its equivocal position on EU withdrawal, while another warned of a “clear and present danger” to its future.
Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell said Labour would be “complicit” in ushering Boris Johnson into Downing Street and paving the way for a no-deal Brexit unless it backs a Final Say vote.
And the head of a left-wing pro-Remain campaign group said the “shocking” poll figures showed that the leadership’s policy of constructive ambiguity had now “run its course” and risked leaving the Corbyn project in ruins.
Labour supporters of a second referendum had hoped Mr Corbyn was moving towards explicitly backing a Final Say after he signalled increased readiness to support a public vote in the wake of the party’s 14 per cent showing in the EU elections.
But the Labour leader resisted pressure from shadow cabinet colleagues to campaign for a new referendum, saying he would try to renegotiate a deal with Brussels.
In a sign of the deep tensions within the party, Unite leader Len McCluskey warned that supporting another referendum would be “electorally suicidal”.
Now a YouGov poll putting Labour equal with Tories on 19 per cent in general election voting intentions, behind the Lib Dems on 24 and the Brexit Party on 22, has sparked fresh fears that the European results may reflect more than just a protest vote.
Mr Campbell, who was expelled from Labour for voting Lib Dem in an act of anti-Brexit protest, said the party had been “virtually annihilated” in last week’s election.
“The Labour party has not had a clear, coherent, credible position on Brexit and until it gets that, it is not going to win back the support of many, many people that it has lost,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Stephen Doughty, a pro-Remain Labour MP, said: “These polls show exactly why the time for equivocation and triangulation is long past. It is crucial Labour now takes a definitive position to support putting any Brexit deal to the people for their final say, with an option to remain.
“It’s what our voters and our members want. Labour must lead the fight against this disastrous Brexit that the Tories have led us to, and stand resolute in the face of the populist right. To fail to do so would be a mistake of historic proportions for the country and our party will pay a heavy price.”
Mary Creagh, a former shadow cabinet minister, said it was “very worrying” to see that just 47 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2017 told pollsters they would do so again.
There was a “clear and present danger” that the party may not be able to woo back switchers, she said.
“It shows the futility of trying to please both sides on Brexit,” the Wakefield MP told The Independent. “We were punished in the local and European elections as our voters and members deserted us to back the Lib Dems and Greens, even in northern areas that voted Leave, such as Wakefield where the Lib Dem vote trebled.”
Mr Corbyn has suggested that the party’s policy on Brexit could be reviewed at the next annual conference in September – just a month ahead of the 31 October deadline for leaving the EU with or without a deal.
But the national organiser of the Another Europe is Possible group, Michael Chessum, said this would be too late.
“These polling figures are shocking and ought to scare the whole of the left,” he said. “Labour’s electoral base is being eaten by a centrist party. It's the opposite of the leftward turn that Corbyn's leadership is trying to achieve.
“Constructive ambiguity has run its course. Leading left figures – John McDonnell and Diane Abbott – are following the members towards a clear anti-Brexit position. The small number of people in the Labour machine still fighting to deliver Brexit are isolated, but their strategy is still dangerous. If they win out, the Corbyn project faces ruin.”
Frontbencher Clive Lewis – who quit the shadow cabinet in 2017 to vote against triggering the Article 50 process – said Labour was in an “unacceptable situation”.
Voters have not “bought into” Mr Corbyn’s position, he said. “People now want clarity from the Labour Party. It is painful to watch. Many of these are voters who have voted for a party other than Labour for the first time and their support for that other party will solidify over the coming days and months unless we act.”
And one of Labour’s most forthright supporters of leaving with a deal, Stephen Kinnock, said Labour was suffering from a lack of clarity on the single issue dominating British politics.
“One way or the other, we have got to deal with Brexit,” he said. “We should either have given whole-hearted full-throated support for a referendum or stuck to our original position. By trying to face both ways we just lose people’s support and we lose their respect.”
A Labour spokesperson declined to comment, saying that the party does not respond to polls.


There are, potentially, reasons that Leon Trotsky came up with a thing called “entryism”, and chose to leave “exitism” uninvented, at least until now.
Entryism is the kind of thing that can allow a curious cabal of hard-left weirdos to transform one of Britain’s two major political parties into a Jew-hating troll farm with personality cult attached, and still look like winning the next general election.
Exitism, on the other hand, would appear to be the kind of thing that can lead a curious cabal of ex Tory and ex Labour MPs, and a handful of medium fish from the small Remain Twitter pond to set up an explicitly pro-Remain political party with two names and a redacted zebra crossing for a logo, and still somehow end up less popular in pro-Remain London than Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
That is the current fortune of Change UK – The Independent Group, whose unlikely black branding, and all it’s unfortunate associations with the far right, can now be found on the far right of all sorts of polling charts, far to the far right not just of the Brexit Party but absolutely everyone bar the Lib Dems.
Yes the early signs are that Change UK – The Independent Group’s various dramatic exits from their various political parties appear to have more than a touch of the Jerry Maguires about them. Who’s with them? Well, no one, really. But that’s surely nothing that a decent rally can’t sort out, and that is what drew upwards of eighty people to a small pre-booked hotel conference suite in central London.
As rallies go, this was only marginally less aggressive than anything contested between the late Sir John Betjeman and Miss Joan Hunter Dunn. Former BBC man turned Change UK – The Independent Group’s Gavin Esler was there to inform his audience that he has named his dog Nigel Farage, because it “doesn’t go out in the rain”, and “expects someone else to clear up its mess”. All very well, but stolen, clearly, from the French Ambassador to the EU, who recently claimed to have called her cat “Brexit”, because it howls to be let out, and then when she opens the door it won’t leave. Which does rather beg the question – has Gavin acquired this dog in the last few weeks, solely for this rather lame gag? A dog is for life, Gavin, not just the European Parliamentary elections.
Still, what Change UK – The Independent Group really needs, apart from a name that doesn’t already take up half of the vanishingly small amount of air time that might be assigned to it – is for Remainers finally to work out that the Labour Party isn’t on their side.
And the Labour Party is, to their credit, doing their level best to make sure that doesn’t happen. Jeremy Corbyn and co like to credit their success in not losing the 2017 election by anywhere near as much as everybody predicted to having an extremely popular manifesto. But it’s 2019 now, and they’ve worked out the secret to success in the upcoming European Parliamentary elections is to have a manifesto that no one can possibly understand.
At the end of an all day meeting of their National Executive Committee which is best understood as a kind of six hour Brexit Mornington Crescent spectacular, they are, don’t panic, still backing a second referendum. But only if they can’t have a general election or a customs union, and if there isn’t a R in the month or the day ends in a Y.
Still, voters aren’t stupid. They’ll work out this a load of rubbish soon enough. The question then is whether they’re then smart enough to work out who on earth Change UK – The Independent Group actually are and not just decide to sod it and vote for The Brexit Party instead. At least they know what that actually is. The early signs are not encouraging.


Eighteen per cent. Fourth place. There is no positive way to spin Labour’s result in the most recent YouGov poll. The only time our party’s support has ever sunk this low in modern polling was in 2009, just after the economy entered recession at the end of Gordon Brown’s ill-fated government. While it is usually unwise to read too much into one individual poll, other surveys confirm the wider trend.
So did, unfortunately, the results of the European elections just over a month ago with Labour voters switching to Remain parties en masse. The era of two-party politics is over with the vote now evenly split four ways in England alone.
It is no secret that Brexit is the key issue that has shaken our politics up so thoroughly. Three years since the referendum and with consensus far from being reached, the country is more divided now than ever. On the one hand, we have record-breaking marches of millions demanding a final say on Brexit and a chance to end this mess.
On the other, there are hardline Brexiteers – including the majority of the Tory membership – who won’t be satisfied with anything other than a crash-out no deal, even if it tanks the economy and splits up the UK. In this polarised political landscape, those who stand in the middle of the road are being mown down by forces from both sides.
For those of us who wish to remain in the European Union, Labour’s catastrophic polling is nothing to celebrate. Only Labour can get in the way of an unelected prime minister driving the country off a cliff. It’s also desperately bad news for all those who need a socialist Labour government to transform the economy and end the surge of the racist right.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The 2017 general election showed how quickly support can skyrocket. With a strong narrative, inspiring policies and an energised grassroots that was mobilised to deliver the biggest ground operation in decades, we went from staring down the barrel of a historic defeat to securing the biggest increase in Labour’s share of the vote since 1945, depriving the Tories of their majority.
Those who were eager to announce the death of the Corbyn project were proven wrong. They can be proven wrong again, and we can get that transformative Labour government that attacks inequality and builds a society for the many – but only if we act now and change course on the biggest issue of the day.
Jeremy Corbyn has now come out for a fresh referendum on any deal – however, the message is not cutting through, hidden in small print and delivered almost apologetically, and without a clear commitment to campaign against Brexit. For many passionate Remainers, this is simply too little, too late.
With evidence suggesting a boost for Labour if it swings against Brexit, many of my colleagues in the PLP and comrades in the country have come around to the idea of a public vote and campaigning to Remain. If we get it, we could use the opportunity of a Final Say referendum as a springboard for our resurgence.
In such a campaign, we could articulate what we want to do in government – transforming the economy so it serves working-class people and communities, linking up with our European partners to lead a radical “green new deal” that provides hundreds of thousands of secure, unionised, green new jobs, renewing the social contract, and lifting up those communities in both Leave and Remain voting areas that have been left behind for decades by neoliberalism.
For me, it is a no-brainer. Labour needs to lead – lead on Brexit, lead in Europe, lead for the people.
Clive Lewis is the shadow Treasury minister for sustainable economics and the Labour MP for Norwich South


MPs will find a way to stop a no-deal Brexit if the next prime minister tries to force one through, a senior cabinet minister has said.
David Gauke, the justice secretary, predicted that “a way will be found” to stop Britain leaving the EU without a deal, given a majority of MPs are opposed to such an outcome.
It is unclear whether the House of Commons has the power to force the government to avoid no deal, but Mr Gauke said he thought MPs would find “other mechanisms” to stop it from happening.
He also criticised Boris Johnson’s Brexit policy and called on the former foreign secretary to rule out suspending parliament, saying such a move would be a “constitutional outrage”.
Mr Gauke is a vocal opponent of a no-deal Brexit and is likely to be moved out of the cabinet if Mr Johnson is elected as prime minister. The current Tory leadership frontrunner has said he only wants cabinet ministers who would be willing to deliver no deal.
On whether MPs would be able to stop Britain crashing out of the EU, Mr Gauke told The House magazine: “If I was to speculate on it, given that we have an activist speaker, given that there is a parliamentary majority against no deal, a way will be found.
“Then that leaves the question of well, what would the new prime minister do in those circumstances. Would he try to resolve this by changing parliament? In other words, by having a general election. But the idea of a general election before we have resolved Brexit is extremely risky for the Conservative Party.
“That is a very difficult choice, particularly if your language has been so strong about we will definitely do or die have left the European Union on 31 October.”
A number of current ministers are expected to return to the backbenches once the new leader takes over and are likely to vote against any plan to take Britain out of the EU without a deal, if parliament is given the opportunity to do so.
Mr Gauke said “quite a lot of ministers” shared his view that no deal would “inflict very considerable pain on a lot of our fellow citizens” and would “completely destroy the economic credibility of the Conservative Party”.
Some Tory MPs are so opposed to no deal that they are thought to be prepared to vote against a Conservative government in a no-confidence vote to stop it, but Mr Gauke said he would not be among them.
He said: “I think the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister is one that chills me even more than a no-deal Brexit. It seems to me supporting a no-confidence motion leads to a Corbyn government. But I do think that parliament will find other mechanisms to try to stop this from happening.”
The justice secretary said it would be “practically impossible” for Mr Johnson to renegotiate a Brexit deal by 31 October and criticised the former foreign secretary’s “do or die” promise to deliver Brexit by that date.
He said: “If we get ourselves trapped into the position that it’s ‘do or die’ or ‘come hell or high water’ on 31 October, I worry that there is little scope for renegotiating between now and the end of October. If there is scope for renegotiating, there is no real scope for legislating subsequently in that timeframe.
“I see it as being very hard to find a way in which we can deliver a deal that has been agreed and legislated upon by 31 October. When I say very hard, I mean practically impossible, so I worry about that. I’ve certainly not heard a clear explanation of how that can be done or indeed how that can be done when parliament will be determined to try to stop it.”
Mr Johnson has repeatedly refused to rule out suspending parliament if MPs attempt to block a no-deal Brexit, although he has said he would not want to resort to such a dramatic move.
Mr Gauke called on the frontrunner to succeed Theresa May to “provide some clarity” on whether he would ever prorogue parliament.
He said: “The idea of suspending parliament because parliament opposes a particular policy, and that the only way of delivering massively important, controversial policy is by ensuring that parliament doesn’t get to have a vote on it, would be a constitutional outrage. Clearly, it would be completely unacceptable for a government to behave in that way.
“In what would be most extraordinary circumstances, I think you would find you’d get most extraordinary responses. You would have the executive up against parliament, and I think a clear majority of parliament. There would be a large number of Conservative MPs who would consider that behaviour to be beyond the pale.
“I don’t for a moment believe that Boris Johnson would prorogue parliament, but I do think he ought to make that clear. He should provide some clarity on that.”


Theresa May has insisted a cross-party compromise is now the only way to deliver Brexit, despite talks between the Conservatives and Labour having so far failed to find a solution.
In a statement on Saturday night, the prime minister said the longer it took to reach an agreement, the greater the risk of Brexit being cancelled altogether.
She said: “It would mean letting the Brexit the British people voted for slip through our fingers.
“I will not stand for that. It is essential we deliver what people voted for and to do that we need to get a deal over the line.”
Ms May said there were areas the two main parties agreed on when it came to Brexit, including to end free movement, to leave with a good deal, and to protect jobs.
“That is the basis for a compromise that can win a majority in Parliament and winning that majority is the only way to deliver Brexit,” she said.
The comments will likely be seen as an attempt to put pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to agree to a cross-party compromise.
The prime minister’s comments came just a day after Labour accused her of failing to offer compromise or change after three days of talks between the two parties.
The opposition claimed Ms May was refusing to come forward with anything new – which came as a blow to the prime minister, who had hoped to put a joint proposal to parliament next week before asking for a further Brexit delay at Wednesday’s EU summit.
Meanwhile, Ms May sparked anger on her backbenches by opening talks with Mr Corbyn in a bid to find a Brexit consensus.
The Labour leader said the prime minister had yet to move the “red lines” that had blocked a deal for Britain to leave the EU.
“I’m waiting to see the red lines move,” he told the BBC on Saturday. “I hope we can reach a decision in parliament this week which will prevent a crashing out.”
However, chancellor Philip Hammond said he was optimistic about reaching some form of agreement with Labour – and that the government had no red lines in the talks.
And House of Commons leader Andrea Leadsom has claimed a second public vote on Britain’s membership of the EU would be the ultimate betrayal.
In tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph, the Brexiteer writes: “It would require lengthy delay, it would reignite the divisive debate, and since parliament has so far failed to follow the first result, there is no reason to believe it would honour a second referendum either.
“The vision we had of Brexit is fading away and and we are running out of time to save it.”
Ms May appeared to rule out another vote on her Brexit deal, saying there was no sign it could be passed in the near future.
She said she would seek a short extension to Article 50 in Brussels next week.
“My intention is to reach an agreement with my fellow EU leaders that will mean if we can agree a deal here at home we can leave the EU in just six weeks,” the prime minister said..
“We can then get on with building a new relationship with our nearest neighbours that will unlock the full potential of Brexit and deliver the brighter future that the British people voted for.”


Conservative leadership hopeful Michael Gove is reportedly prepared to delay Brexit until the end of 2020 rather than crash out of the European Union without a deal.
The environment secretary is said to have told colleagues pursuing a no-deal exit risked triggering a general election or seeing Brexit cancelled altogether.
“Simply trying to go for no deal before the UK is properly prepared will lead to a general election with Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street and risks Brexit being cancelled altogether,” a source close to Mr Gove told The Telegraph.
The stance puts Mr Gove at odds with many of his rivals in the race to replace the outgoing Theresa May, who have claimed they are prepared to leave the EU without an agreement if necessary.
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, another Tory leadership candidate, said on Saturday he would step up planning for a no-deal Brexit if he becomes the next prime minister, but said Parliament would do everything to try and stop no deal as an outcome.
arliament would do everything to try and stop no deal as an outcome.
He said his “absolute focus” would be on getting a deal, but added he would focus on mitigating the effect of no deal on the economy if he was unable to reach an agreement with the EU.
“I would prepare for a no-deal budget, which would include a significant amount of economic stimulus,” he said.
“That would include significant tax cuts for business, for personal income, it would include stepped up infrastructure investment.”
Meanwhile, Mr Javid has also said he would consider scrapping the top rate of income tax in a bid to boost the economy.
He pointed to George Osborne’s move to cut the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p, which saw tax revenues increase.
“If it can be demonstrated that a further cut in the additional rate can raise more taxable revenues that should be looked at,” he said.
Others in the leadership race promising tax cuts to boost their appeal include Dominic Raab and Jeremy Hunt.
Mr Raab has pledged to cut income tax by a penny a year - 5p over the course of a Parliament to just 15p in the pound for the basic rate - which critics have claimed would cost £25 billion.
Mr Hunt, on the other hand, is using tax cuts to woo businesses, suggesting slashing corporation tax to Irish levels of 12.5 per cent from the 19 per cent it sits at currently.
Chancellor Philip Hammond this week expressed his concern over too many “populist” pledges by his colleagues to cut taxes.


Michel Barnier has been put in charge of future negotiations with the UK after Brexit, Brussels has announced.
The EU's chief negotiator will head up a new "Task Force for Relations with the UK" that will be responsible for talks on the future relationship.
His team will also oversee the finishing the Article 50 process, and any required 'no-deal' preparation, a spokesperson for the European Commission said on Tuesday.
Mr Barnier is widely seen in Brussels as having run a successful negotiation with the UK. As chief negotiator he kept member states on board with the EU's strategy, despite British attempts to sow division, by consulting widely and regularly.
Other members from the team that drew up the withdrawal agreement will also be involved in talks with the UK in the future. Sabine Weyand, Mr Barnier's deputy during Article 50 talks and the brains behind the Brexit deal, is now the official in charge of the Commission's trade department.
The Directorate-General for trade will be led by Phil Hogan, Ireland's EU commissioner who served as a political "attack dog" during Brexit negotiations.
Mr Barnier said on Tuesday that the new deal struck with Boris Johnson was "the only possible agreement" – though he had also said this about the previous treaty struck with Theresa May.
"The College of Commissioners has today decided to set up a ‘Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom' (UKTF) as part of the Commission's Secretariat-General," the Commission said in a statement.
"Michel Barnier has been appointed as Head of the Task Force. The UKTF will include the current TF50 ('Task Force for the Preparation and the Conduct of the Negotiations with the United Kingdom under Article 50 TEU') and the Secretariat-General's ‘Brexit Preparedness' unit.
"The Task Force, just like TF50, will coordinate all the Commission's work on all strategic, operational, legal and financial issues related to Brexit. It will be in charge of the finalisation of the Article 50 negotiations, as well as the Commission's ‘no-deal' preparedness work and the future relationship negotiations with the UK."
The statement said the new grouping would operate under the direct authority of the President of the European Commission – currently Jean-Claude Juncker but soon to be Ursula von der Leyen.
"Once the Withdrawal Agreement is ratified by the UK Parliament, and the European Parliament has given its consent, the EU is ready to immediately kick off work leading to negotiations on our future relationship with the UK, in full respect of European Council guidelines," the statement continued.
"Michel Barnier will be supported by a Deputy Head of the Task Force, at Deputy Director-General level. Today's decision takes effect on 16 November 2019 – regardless of developments in the UK – and has been agreed in close coordination between President Juncker and President-elect Ursula von der Leyen."
Mr Barnier was himself seen as a potential candidate for European Commission president, but ultimately failed to get backing for the post.


Michel Barnier has reportedly said he is open to extending the Brexit transition period by a year.
The European Union's Brexit negotiator could offer the extension in return for Theresa May accepting a “two-tier” backstop to avoid a border with Northern Ireland, EU diplomats told the Financial Times.
The plan was informally proposed to the UK during talks last week, the newspaper said.
It would allow Britain to remain in the customs union and single market beyond the scheduled end of the 21-month transition period in December 2020. Freedom of movement would also be extended until the end of 2021.
Mr Barnier is said to have outlined the proposal during a meeting of ministers from EU member states in Luxembourg on the eve of Wednesday’s Brexit summit.
“The extension is an example of how we could be flexible to help the British side if they want it,” one diplomat told the Financial Times.
German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also reported the European Commission had “raised the possibility of extending the transitional period” as “a goodwill gesture to Britain”.
Britain is said to have objected to significant elements of the Northern Ireland proposal, effectively postponing talks on the plan until after this week’s negotiations.
However, UK diplomats are reported to be open to the idea of an extension, although no agreement has been made and it would be politically sensitive.
Downing Street has declined to rule out prolonging the transition period as part of negotiations.
Such a move would go down badly with Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, who already resent that Britain will be bound by EU rules for nearly two years after leaving the union.
Donald Tusk has warned Britain needed to put forward “concrete proposals” to avoid crashing out of the EU with no deal.
The European Council president said there were “no grounds for optimism” after it emerged that leaders would not even consider plans for a trade deal with the UK because of the impasse.


When Michel Barnier visited Britain during his spell as a European Commissioner, he would say with a smile that he was an Anglophile and most definitely not “the most dangerous man in Europe” as our Eurosceptic tabloids labelled him.
The former French foreign minister’s brief as Internal Market Commissioner covered the City of London, which led to a series of clashes with George Osborne, who tried to defend Britain’s financial services industry from a blizzard of EU regulation introduced by Mr Barnier.
So the Treasury and the City will be worried to discover that they have not seen the back of the 65-year-old Mr Barnier, whose term in Brussels ended in 2014.
He has been unexpectedly recalled to be the commission’s chief negotiator in talks with the UK over its exit from the EU. The future of the City will be a critical issue when access to the single market is discussed.
“He is no friend of the City of London,” said Nick Clegg, the former Deputy Prime Minister and commission official, who knows Mr Barnier.
“I think he is going to drive a very hard bargain indeed. I wouldn’t be surprised if alarm bells are ringing across the City.”
Mr Barnier’s appointment as head of the commission’s taskforce on Brexit looks like a provocative act by Jean Claude-Juncker, the commission president.
Mr Juncker, who wanted Theresa May to start formal exit negotiations immediately, has reluctantly agreed that she needs more time to prepare – a recognition that Brussels could not force the UK to trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty.
Once the process has started – probably early next year – the EU, rather than the UK, will be in the driving seat.
Ms May, who is on a charm offensive with other EU leaders as she tours European capitals, will try to cut deals with them, but the commission – and Mr Barnier – will have a pivotal role when the fine print is negotiated.
Mr Barnier is also no friend of the Tory Eurosceptics, who he will probably assume now call the shots inside the British Government.
In 2013 on a visit to London, he accused them of having a “pick and mix” approach towards EU financial rules. He issued a warning which now sounds ominous: “Repatriating powers [from Brussels to the UK] over financial services would mean leaving the single market and de facto the EU. I believe the UK would lose out on many of its own interests."
In his previous role in Brussels, he introduced more than 40 laws to toughen the regulation of banks, markets and insurance.
No fan of “Anglo-Saxon capitalism”, his plans to cap bankers’ bonuses led to a major dispute with the then-Chancellor George Osborne. But there was a reason for his interventionist approach: he believed the 2008 financial crisis was made in Wall Street and was determined that London and the rest of Europe would not repeat the same mistakes.
A centre-right politician, Mr Barnier had hoped to land the commission’s top job in 2014 but was beaten to the European People’s Party nomination by Mr Juncker, the former Luxembourg Prime Minister.
Mr Barnier has a vast network of contacts throughout Europe, after serving as France’s agriculture minister and foreign affairs minister.
In France he was seen as a technocrat with a populist touch and an eye for a TV camera, rather than an intellectual. He was sometimes a victim of snobbery from France’s elite because he was not educated at the prestigious École Nationale d'Administration.
He was cruelly dubbed "le crétin des alpes" -- a dig at his origin in the mountains of Savoy that references the Alpine valley dwellers who suffered brain damage caused by iodine deficiency in the 18th century.
@diamondgeezer
Courtesy of Eoin Palmer
Courtesy of Eoin Palmer
Courtesy of Bernadette Russell
Mr Barnier served two terms at the commission, holding the regional affairs brief before moving up to the plum internal market job. He is a former member of the European Parliament, where his former colleagues will lobby him not to give Britain any special favours. He is unlikely to need such encouragement.
However, Mr Barnier may prove not to be the ogre depicted by the tabloids. He worked hard at winning over the City and frequently pressed the flesh in London rather than rained down directives from the safety of his Brussels base.
He won some plaudits after the initial hostility to his stream of regulations, and his relationship with Mr Osborne improved too.
“My line has been the middle line,” he told the Financial Times. “My first wish was to build a compromise. It was never easy, it was sometimes impossible. For the rest we reached agreement and it was never by chance.”
Syed Kamall, leader of the Conservative MEPs, described Mr Barnier as “first and foremost a very pragmatic politician, a dealmaker”.
And there will be an awful lot of deals to be done over the next two and a half years.


Moderate Conservatives have warned they will push Britain towards tighter relations with the EU or even turn against Brexit altogether if “purists” in their party tear down Theresa May’s draft withdrawal deal.
A string of Tory MPs told The Independent that Eurosceptic colleagues who have begun a sustained push to bring down both Ms May and her Brexit plans, should not be mistaken that a no-deal exit risking the livelihoods of British people is obtainable.
The moderates say the only remaining option if Brexiteers block Ms May’s approach will mean being more closely bound to the single market or even revisiting the 2016 referendum result.
Their warning comes as the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservatives launched a coordinated campaign against the draft deal to be signed off at an EU summit next weekend, and pushed for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister.
Ms May is set to continue her media offensive defending the deal on Sunday with a live interview in the morning, but Eurosceptics have also been in force attacking it.
The pushback from Tory moderates began with pointed words from serving frontbencher Alistair Burt, who indicated that if Ms May’s plans fell, Brexiteers could not expect Remain-voting MPs to continue to go along with the result of the 2016 referendum regardless of the consequences.
He wrote on Twitter: “Be very clear. If an agreed deal on leaving between the Govt and the EU is voted down by purist Brexiteers, do not be surprised if consensus on accepting the result of the referendum by Remain-voting MPs breaks down.
“Parliament will not support no deal.”
Another Conservative MP, who did not wish to be named, confirmed the view that support for Brexit on the Tory benches would weaken if Ms May’s deal falls in the Commons.
“Certainly many of us think that no Brexit, is better than no deal,” said the MP.
Ex-cabinet minister Nicky Morgan was among those who sent a direct message to Eurosceptic colleagues, telling The Independent: “If they tear down the agreement, a number of us will revisit having closer access to the single market and long-term membership of the customs union – that is where we might head, to the Norway option.
“Remain-voting MPs have gone along with a lot in the last two years. If this agreement goes down, it is not going to go the way of the hard Brexiteers.”
A senior Tory frontbencher who agrees with Mr Burt told The Independent that the European Research Group – leading Eurosceptic opposition to Ms May – should “better understand” the dynamic of parliament, that there is not a majority for a no-deal Brexit.
“They’re trying so hard to bring the deal down without thinking about what happens if they’re successful,” the individual said.
The idea that if the deal dies everyone is just going to say, ‘OK we give up let’s just go without a deal now and agree Canada later’, is pure fantasy
“The idea that if the deal dies everyone is just going to say, ‘OK we give up let’s just go without a deal now and agree Canada later’, is pure fantasy.”
The moderates’ analysis is shared, in part at least, by No 10. In her statement on the steps of Downing Street, Ms May said that if her deal is not chosen it is possible there would be no Brexit.
One government insider told The Independent: “There is an irony that if the deal fails it could be through the actions of the ultras that we are delivered in to an even tighter relation to the customs union to the Norway option or whatever.
“In truth what we think is that there is no majority for anything in the commons at the moment – not for no deal, for EEA, or anything.
“So what we have to do between now and the meaningful vote is get enough people on side with the deal, we have to make sure that becomes a majority option.”





On Saturday, Tory Eurosceptics again took to the airwaves to attack the prime minister’s plan and predicted that there would soon be enough letters calling for her to resign to trigger a vote of no confidence, with party chairman Brandon Lewis saying the PM is “prepared for anything”.
Ms May will look to set out the next steps of the Brexit process in an interview with Sky’s Sophy Ridge, with other ministers scheduled to go on TV and radio backing her position.
But the ERG, choreographed by leading Brexiteer Steve Baker MP, has also launched a well-organised drive to shape public opinion about the deal, using WhatsApp and other means to stay in regular contact with journalists and ensure their message features prominently on news coverage.

Moderate Tory MPs will help Labour bring down an “extremist” new prime minister pursuing a no-deal Brexit, John McDonnell has predicted.
The shadow chancellor – as he announced Theresa May’s successor would face an immediate vote-of-no-confidence – said there could be a “majority” in the Commons for a general election, or a Final Say referendum, in those circumstances.
“We will be talking to the other political parties,” Mr McDonnell said. Asked if that included Conservative backbenchers, he replied: “Yes.”
“This isn’t a matter of asking people to be disloyal to their beliefs or their party,” he told the BBC.
“We’re now possibly faced with an extremist leader of the Conservative Party coming in, willing to take us over the edge of a no deal.”
Mr McDonnell said: “Faced with that situation, I think there may well be a majority in the House of Commons to bring about some form of public vote – and that could include a general election.”
The comments came after Rory Stewart became the first senior Tory to rule out serving under Boris Johnson, describing the no-deal Brexit he is willing to pursue as “damaging and dishonest”.
Within hours of the prime minister’s resignation, the leadership favourite ruled out a further Article 50 extension, telling an audience: “We will leave the EU on 31 October, deal or no deal.”
Leading pro-EU Tories, including Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, have hinted at a willingness to use any means to prevent a crash-out Brexit.
In the interview, Mr McDonnell also said Labour should move quickly to agree a new Brexit policy, after widespread criticism that the party’s existing stance is muddled, saying: “The world has changed.”
On the no-deal threat, he added: “Most of the analysis means that will lose people their jobs, undermine their livelihoods.
“We can’t stand by and let an extremist Conservative leader take their country down with them.”
The timing of the Tory leadership election, to conclude only days before Westminster’s summer break in late July, risks a constitutional crisis, some experts believe.
The new prime minister – particularly one chosen on a no-deal ticket – is likely to be challenged to prove that they have a Commons majority within days of taking office.
As well as opposition from anti-no-deal Tories, he or she must also retain the support of the Democratic Unionist Party that has propped up the May administration.
Following the defection of three Tories to The Independent Group, now Change UK, the working majority of the Conservative-DUP alliance is just six – meaning only four Tories would need to switch sides for a no-confidence vote to succeed.
If the new leader failed at the hurdle, and no alternative government is confirmed by the Commons within 14 days, there will be a general election.


The High Court has blocked a fresh attempt to challenge Brexit through the legal system.
Campaigners had argued that Parliament needed to separately give consent to take Britain out of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Although the single market was not mentioned in June’s referendum question, Theresa May says she will be taking the UK out of it on the back of the vote’s result. A number of countries sit outside the European Union but retain access to the EEA, most notably Norway.
Parliament is in the process of giving consent to the Government to trigger Article 50 and begin Brexit negotiations. The High Court previously ruled that MPs had to be given a vote on the process to delegate the power to the Government.
However, the new challenge, brought by Adrian Yalland and Peter Wilding, who runs pro-single market organisation British Influence, argues that the EEA is a separate organisation and should require separate consent. Other plaintiffs have also joined the challenge but asked not to be identified for fear of media backlash.
Judges have now refused consent for the challenge to go ahead and said they will give their reasons later.
Mr Yalland said: “I have campaigned for parliamentary sovereignty and accountable government for 20 years and now I want parliament to exercise its sovereignty by deciding if the UK should withdraw from the single market treaty.
“Parliament, not Government, took us into the treaty and so Parliament, not Government, must decide if and when we leave. I voted to leave the EU but Parliament did not intend the referendum to cover the issue of membership of the EEA. The Government should stop seeking to stretch the mandate to leave the EU to cover things Parliament did not intend the referendum to cover.
“The referendum was on membership of the EU, not the EEA, nor of [the European Court of Human Rights]. It was not an opinion poll on immigration. I want nothing less than Brexit. But anything more than Brexit is for Parliament to permit. The Government has a mandate, not a blank cheque. We are a parliamentary democracy, not an elected dictatorship.”
A survey of MPs by Ipsos MORI released this week found that just 26 per cent of MPs thought the UK had to leave the single market to honour the referendum result. The vast majority did not hold this view.
A Government spokesperson said: “We are glad this attempt to seek a judicial review has been dismissed. As the Prime Minister has said, we will not be a member of the Single Market and we will be seeking a broad new partnership with the EU including a bold and ambitious free trade agreement."


The Conservatives are under fire for a shock plan that would allow the new prime minister to “chicken out” of putting their Brexit plan to the House of Commons until the autumn.
Opposition MPs spoke out after aides to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt were told the winner of the Tory leadership race would not move into No 10 on Tuesday 23 July, as widely expected.
Instead, Theresa May proposes to make a final appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions the following day before resigning – just one day before MPs depart for their long summer recess on 25 July, they were reportedly told.
Labour has vowed to table a vote of no confidence, which could be staged on that Thursday, but, otherwise, there would no reason for the new prime minister to appear before MPs.
Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat leadership contender, told The Independent: “It would be outrageous if the new prime minister chickened out of facing the Commons before the summer recess.
“Three years on from the referendum, a new prime minister can’t just slink off to the beach. We need to know the plan on Brexit.”
And Chris Bryant, a senior Labour MP, said: “Neville Chamberlain tried that trick of sidelining parliament with a long summer recess in 1939 and it didn't end well.
“It would be a disgraceful dereliction of duty to send parliament off the moment there’s a new prime minister and I confidently predict the House would vote against the summer recess motion if they tried that trick.”
The Conservative Party has refused to answer enquiries from The Independent about Ms May’s departure plans, beyond saying it would be “in the week beginning” 22 July.
However, Brandon Lewis, the party chairman, said the resignation could be at “the end” of that week – while Mel Stride, the Commons leader, refused to guarantee the new leader would be in place before the recess.
Parliament is not due to return until 3 September, for under two weeks, before another three-week break for the party conference season.
If, as in previous years, the Commons does not sit again until around 8 October, there will be little more than three weeks until the current Brexit deadline of Halloween.
Both Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt have threatened to let the UK crash out of the EU on that date, if they have failed to strike an improved deal – while EU leaders have insisted there will be no renegotiation.
Both David Cameron and Tony Blair enjoyed a swansong prime minister’s questions, at which MPs paid tributes – and, in the Labour leader’s case, applauded.
Ms May is known to be keen to point to a “legacy” beyond her Brexit failure, even to the point of a bust-up with her chancellor over her attempt to spend billions in her final days.
Labour could yet back away from a no-confidence vote in July, given it is unlikely to succeed while Mr Johnson – if he wins – is arguing he will seek a deal to avoid a crash out.
It could also backfire by giving the incomer a boost, while rebel Tories are more likely to join a no-confidence vote in the autumn, if a no-deal Brexit is fast approaching.


Nigel Farage has branded prorogation the "worst political decision ever" and called for Boris Johnson's top aide to quit after the Supreme Court ruled the move unlawful.
The Brexit Party leader erupted in fury at the government in the wake of the shock ruling, where a panel of 11 justices unanimously found the decision to send MPs home for five weeks was illegal.
He called for the prime minister's chief adviser Dominic Cummings to go, who is widely regarded as the brains behind the decision to prorogue parliament earlier this month.
Mr Farage said: "The calling of a Queen's Speech and prorogation is the worst political decision ever. Dominic Cummings must go."
His anger was shared by ex-Tory cabinet minister David Gauke, who said: "Strange times. I agree with Nigel."
And former cabinet minister Amber Rudd said Johnson should consider sacking Cummings, telling Sky News: “He is clearly not getting good advice. He will have to draw his own conclusions, but if I had been getting the kind of advice he has been getting, I would certainly be considering some people’s positions.”
In extraordinary scenes, the court ruled that the prime minister's advice to the Queen to suspend parliament until 14 October was unlawful as it had frustrated parliament.
It found the prorogation itself was "void and of no effect" and ruled therefore that parliament has not been suspended.
Announcing the decision, the court's president Lady Hale said: "It is for parliament, and particularly the Speaker and the Lord Speaker, to decide what to do next.
"Unless there is some parliamentary rule of which we are unaware, they can take immediate steps to enable each House to meet as soon as possible.
"It is not clear to us that any step is needed from the prime minister, but if it is, the court is pleased that his counsel have told the court that he will take all necessary steps to comply with the terms of any declaration made by this court."
Mr Johnson advised the Queen on August 28 to prorogue parliament for five weeks and it was suspended on 9 September.
He claimed the five-week suspension was to prepare for a Queen's Speech but critics who brought the legal challenge argued it was to prevent MPs from scrutinising his Brexit plans.


Nigel Farage has threatened to boycott a second referendum, saying he would "rather go on holiday" than vote if the choice was between Theresa May’s deal and remaining in the EU.
The former Ukip leader argued there would be a “bigger Leave vote” in a new referendum than in 2016 and condemned the idea of a fresh poll with the prime minister's blueprint and Remain on the ballot paper.
His comments came after Jeremy Corbyn offered a major boost to campaigners for a Final Say by announcing Labour would back another public vote if its softer Brexit plan is defeated this week.
Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry then went further, saying the ballot paper must offer a choice between the prime minister's deal and remain - rather than a no-deal option.
Mr Farage famously said in 2016 that he would back a second referendum if Remain won by a narrow margin as he claimed a 48-52 result would be seen as "unfinished business" by his side.
The leading Brexiteer told Sky News: “I think we would win it but I tell you what I do resist is the very idea that it appears Emily Thornberry is putting forward - that the referendum would be between Remain and Ms May’s deal, which is ‘Brexit in name only’.
“I have to tell you in those circumstances I wouldn’t campaign and I wouldn’t vote, because it wouldn’t offer me Brexit.”
Asked if he would abstain, he said: “I would go on holiday. It would be an outrage. Remain shouldn’t even be on the ballot paper.
“But if we are forced into this, it would have to be Remain or a clean Leave."
It comes after Mr Corbyn sought to head off further defections to the breakaway Independent Group by announcing Labour would back another public vote if its own Brexit plan is defeated this week.
But splits emerged within hours of his announcement, with anonymous sources briefing Ms Thornberry "misspoke" when she said the referendum was likely to be Ms May’s deal vs Remain.
Ms Thornberry posted on Twitter: "I've seen some nonsense that I 'misspoke' earlier on a public vote.
"Pretty hard to misspeak identically in 10 interviews, but for clarity: if Theresa May won't accept our deal, then the public must decide: do we accept whatever deal she gets through, or do we Remain? Got it?"


Philip Hammond has told business leaders that a no-deal Brexit could be "taken off the table" in a conference call where he raised the possibility of delaying Britain's exit from the EU.
Hours after Theresa May suffered a historic Commons defeat over Brexit deal, Mr Hammond sought to reassure bosses of top firms that a disorderly exit from the bloc would be avoided.
In comments that will enrage Brexiteers, the chancellor raised the prospect that article 50 be revoked and the government was looking at "whether we can somehow take the option of no deal off the table", according to a leaked transcript of the conference call.
He told the 11 business leaders that the EU would not consider extending article 50 "unless or until we have a clear plan to go forward" and the "large majority" in the commons are opposed to a no-deal "in any circumstances".
Mr Hammond also pointed to controversial backbench bid led by Tory MP Nick Boles, which aims to force the government to extend Article 50 if a Brexit deal cannot be reached, according to The Telegraph.
"What this group of backbenchers has been doing is seeking to find a mechanism by which the House of Commons can express that view in a way which is binding and effective," he said.
His comments put him at odds with Brexiteers in the party, who already view the chancellor with suspicion, as they believe he supports a softer exit from the EU.
Asked about the comments, Tory chairman Brandon Lewis failed to deny the conversation had taken place, telling the Today programme: “I don’t quite take that view.
"What I’m saying is parliament has the ability to do a range of things. What I am saying is the best way to avoid no deal is to agree a deal.”
The business leaders sought assurances from Mr Hammond, Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay and business secretary Greg Clark, who were also on the call, that a no-deal could be ruled out.
Doug Gurr, head of Amazon UK, reportedly said ruling out a no deal would give "comfort" to global boards.
But Mr Hammond said it would not be until next week that things became clearer. MPs will vote on an amendment that will "pave the way for the Bill" on Monday, the paper reported.
John Allan, chairman of Tesco and president of the CBI, asked if taking a no-deal Brexit off the table reduced the UK's negotiating power with the EU.
Mr Hammond said removing options had consequences, adding: "The government is not in control of this. I am only telling you what information I have been able to glean.
"My understanding is that because the bill being brought forward will simply and solely rescind the Article 50 notice, the legal opinion that they have is that that will meet the test that the European Court of Justice has laid down for unilateral recision of an article 50 notice.
"It is not within their power to mandate any future course of action, that would be for a government to do."
A Treasury spokesman confirmed the phone call took place shortly after the vote on Tuesday, but would not confirm any details.
It comes as the prime minister appealed to opposition leaders to break the Brexit impasse, after she survived a confidence vote in her government on Wednesday night.
But Ms May faces an uphill struggle to win them over, as Jeremy Corbyn refused to even meet her, while other party leaders demanded scrapping the possibility of no-deal as a condition of progress.


A no-deal Brexit is not yet off the table and there is still a risk of the UK crashing out of the EU, Michel Barnier has said.
Speaking on Wednesday with the UK heading for a general election, the EU’s chief negotiator also warned that future trade talks would be “difficult and demanding”.
“The risk of Brexit happening without a ratified deal still exists. We still need to prepare,” Mr Barnier said during a speech in Brussels.
He warned that there was a “big difference” in no-deal preparedness “in all member states”, particularly between larger companies and smaller companies – who he said could be vulnerable.
“It’s not time to become complacent. Work with SMEs in particular needs to continue,” he added.
Mr Barnier said a no-deal exit could happen at the end of January, if the newly elected UK parliament failed to ratify Mr Johnson’s deal and there was no further call for an Article 50 extension.
He also highlighted that a no-deal could happen at the end of 2020 if the UK government did not agree to extend the transition period and no free trade agreement (FTA) had been struck by then.
Most trade observers believe the idea, endorsed by Downing Street, that an FTA could be negotiated in such a short space of time is wildly optimistic and close to impossible.
“It will be a difficult and demanding set of negotiations,” he said. “The time we have at hand to conclude this negotiation will be extremely short, 11 months.
“Because of our geographic closeness and our economic independence... we want to have solid guarantees on the level-playing field aspects.”
Led By Donkeys
Tom Richell
Tom Richell
He warned that the bloc would be “extremely vigilant on ... social rights, environmental protection, state aid and obviously on issues of taxation” – stipulations Mr Johnson has been less willing to accept than his predecessor Theresa May.
He concluded: “Brexit is not a destination. It’s not an end in itself, at least not for us. It’s a staging post, it’s difficult juncture. But after Brexit... we will need to reestablish all sorts of things.”


Boris Johnson will plunge the Tory party into opposition for “an awfully long time” if he carries out a no-deal Brexit, a government minister says.
Tobias Ellwood also warned the near-certain next prime minister he would be “crawling back to the table”, begging the EU for an agreement, if he crashed the UK out of the EU in October.
The comments appear to ensure the defence minister will follow chancellor Philip Hammond out of the government if Mr Johnson wins the Tory leadership race on Tuesday.
Mr Ellwood ducked repeated questions about his future, but attacked the claims that the UK could prosper if it tried to “run away from the EU”.
Speaking on Sky News, he ridiculed the idea that “we are able to land man on the moon 50 years ago but we can’t sort out the Northern Ireland backstop”, insisting: “We can.”
Mr Ellwood added: “If we don’t do that than the Conservative party could be destined to be in opposition for an awfully long time.
“And that is the danger that I hope every one of my colleagues will wake up to – and of course the next prime minister too.”
The attack came as Mr Hammond revealed he would walk out even before Mr Johnson reaches No 10, saying: “I intend to resign after prime minister's questions, before the prime minister goes to the Palace.”
David Gauke, the justice Secretary – another no-deal opponent – revealed he would also quit on Wednesday if Mr Johnson is the winner of the contest.
Other pro-EU cabinet ministers – such as de-facto deputy prime minister David Lidington and Greg Clark, the business secretary – are also expected to be sacked, or to quit.
Keir Starmer said Labour would seek immediate talks with the departed ministers in the hope of building a cross-party alliance to thwart a no-deal Brexit.
Speaking to the Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, Mr Ellwood said: “I want us to move away from discussion about no-deal at all.
“I believe a deal is absolutely possible. The fact that we keep talking about no-deal fuels the small caucus of people that see that as their destination.”
And, warning Mr Johnson would have to turn to the EU for help, he added: “You will still have to crawl back, literally moments later, to say ‘how are our financial services going to operate, how are our operations with the police going to work’.”
Sir Keir said: “On Tuesday morning some ministers will sit around the cabinet table for the last time.
“They know very well the dangers of no deal. They will have been briefed about what it would mean for jobs, the economy, our public services and the union. They will have seen the advice and read the evidence.
“After they have resigned this week, I will want to work with all those former ministers who, like me, want to ensure parliament can stop a disastrous and chaotic exit from the EU.”


Jean-Claude Juncker has warned there will have to be controls at the border in Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
In an outspoken interview, the European Commission president said the UK would be to blame for any fallout for a chaotic exit for the bloc – as the EU “did not invent the Brexit”.
Mr Juncker said he wanted to reach an agreement with the UK but the EU had to protect the safety of its citizens.
The Irish border issue has been a major stumbling block in the Brexit negotiations, as Boris Johnson has demanded that the backstop – a contingency plan to prevent a hard border by keeping the UK aligned with many of Brussels’ rules – should be scrapped.
He told Sky News’s Ridge on Sunday: “We have to make sure that the interests of the European Union and of the internal market will be preserved.
“An animal entering Northern Ireland without border control can enter without any kind of control the European Union via the southern part of the Irish island.
“This will not happen. We have to preserve the health and the safety of our citizens.”
Meanwhile, foreign secretary Dominic Raab rejected any suggestion that Northern Ireland could have different customs and regulatory arrangements from the rest of the UK, telling BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “As a general overarching [arrangement] across all of the rules, no, of course that would be wrong.”
He added: “There couldn’t be a Northern Ireland-only backstop in its entirety in the way it was proposed previously. But on agri-food, and the question of the way the island of Ireland is already managed, that is something in a very discrete area where we can continue talking. But it must have the consent of the parties in Northern Ireland.”
Mr Raab said he was “confident there’s a deal to be done” and insisted the UK was making “good progress” in talks.
“I think what’s necessary now is for the EU to match some of the words that we heard from Jean-Claude Juncker with the detailed negotiations to remove the undemocratic backstop, to be clear we can transition to a best-in-class free trade agreement,” he said. “I think that would be good for the UK but also for the EU.”
Mr Juncker accused some unnamed MPs of “forgetting about the history” of the border in Ireland and fired off a warning that a no deal could see a return to the violence of the past.
The commission president said: “I don’t like a border because after the Good Friday Agreement, and this Good Friday Agreement has to be respected in all its parts, the situation in Ireland has improved.
“We should not play with this ... Sometimes I have to question that some people are forgetting about the history.”
The senior Brussels official also sought to blame the UK for any fallout caused by a no-deal Brexit, amid frustration in EU circles over perceived attempts from the UK government to shift responsibility away from London.
He said: “The EU is in no way responsible for any kind of consequences entailed by the Brexit.
“That’s a British decision, a sovereign decision that we are respecting but don’t try... not you but to charge the European Union with the responsibility.
“The European Union is not leaving the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union.”
Asked who is responsible, he said: “The United Kingdom. Because we did not invent the Brexit.
“We were never pleading in favour of any kind of Brexit. That’s a British decision and so it has to be dealt with in that way.”
His comments came after a meeting with Mr Johnson in Luxembourg last week, when the country’s prime minister Xavier Bettel left an empty podium for his UK counterpart at a press conference.
Mr Juncker said: “I don’t know if this is helpful. I rather consider that this was not very helpful but it’s his decision.”


Where did it all go wrong for Theresa May? Yes, she was left an almighty mess by her predecessor. Yes, the country is more divided than it has been in a generation. And yes, her party is split and so is parliament. However, she started her premiership by ignoring these facts and dancing to the tune of Jacob Rees-Mogg and the hard-right of her party – an extreme minority in parliament and the country – instead of trying to pull us all together.
Despite the multifaceted nature of the 2016 result and the fact it was evenly balanced, those who voted Remain were treated like a fringe group. In her 2016 Conservative Party conference speech, she said a quiet revolution had taken place and juxtaposed the 17 million who voted to leave – saying they stood up and were not prepared to be ignored – with what her team spun as the liberal elite who wanted to Remain. In doing so, she dismissed 16 million citizens, including my constituents, who voted to retain the deal we have now as a member of the EU.
She said the 2016 vote signalled a deep sense of profound unease and a sense that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them. Well, guess what? My constituency may have voted Remain in large numbers but our borough is the eighth most deprived local authority area in England and a third of our children live in poverty. We have higher rates of unemployment and we have more acute social problems than many Leave-voting areas. So my constituents have the same concerns – no one side of this debate has a monopoly on grievance. The only difference was that in Lambeth, we did not believe leaving the EU would do anything to help us address those problems – in fact, we know it will do the opposite.
May ignored all of this and, at the start of her time as No 10, mimicked the language, overblown promises and fantasy claims of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and all the original Brexiteers whom she appointed to senior roles in her government. This was always going to have consequences.
I have little sympathy for the PM now that she faces total chaos within her own party. She had the opportunity to unite our nation and parliament when she took office in 2016 and she has failed miserably to do so. She deserves a large share of the blame for the predicament she found herself in early this morning, facing a heavy and embarrassing defeat. No MP I spoke to earlier thought she had a hope in hell of getting her plan through the House of Commons tomorrow.
So what next? She has just announced to the Commons that she is pulling the “meaningful vote” – given the inevitably of a heavy defeat, this is unsurprising, as it could precipitate a series of events leading quickly to her resignation. She is now expected to seek concessions from the EU at the EU Council meeting on Thursday and Friday, then return to the Commons for a second attempt next week.
The well-respected GP and Conservative chair of the Health Select Committee, Sarah Wollaston, will table an amendment at the first opportunity to provide for this issue to be referred back to the electorate in a People’s Vote. Sarah is very well respected and liked across all sides of the House, and has been quietly working cross-party to build support for such a move from the backbenches. This is important because no Tory MP, mainly for tribal reasons, would support such an initiative if it came from the Labour frontbench – though, for her amendment to pass, one of the main parties’ frontbenches will need to whip their MPs to support it.
It is striking that most of the initiatives fighting Brexit have come from the backbenches ever since the whole Brexit process started. There would be no meaningful vote on the PM’s withdrawal agreement if a cross-party backbench coalition led by former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve had not forced the government to provide for one in the EU Withdrawal Act last December (which provoked the first defeat of Theresa May’s administration on Brexit legislation).
The former Conservative business minister Anna Soubry and I tabled an amendment to the Finance Bill last month which forced the government to publish economic impact assessments of various proposed Brexit scenarios compared with the UK’s current deal as an EU member.
The latest win for anti-Brexiters came this morning when the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 (without the consent of the 27 other member states) and stay inside the EU if we want to. That means that if there was a Final Say vote and the public chose to stay in after the new information that has come to light over the last two years, we can stay in on our current terms. The case was brought by my Labour colleague, the former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, the Liberal Democrat’s Brexit spokesperson Tom Brake, the SNP’s Joanna Cherry and others – all of whom took on considerable financial risk on the legal costs if the case was unsuccessful.
As for my party’s frontbench, the expectation of our voters, supporters and members is that the Labour leadership will immediately table a vote of no confidence in the government and seek a snap general election. That is what the motion passed at the party conference back in September said we would do. But how realistic is the prospect of an election happening soon?
According to the House of Commons library, on just two occasions since 1895 has the loss of a motion of confidence prompted the prime minister to call an immediate general election. Under the 2011 Act, two-thirds of the Commons would have to vote for an early election. If such a vote does carry, an overwhelming majority in the Labour family will expect a People’s Vote with Remain on the ballot to feature in the manifesto, with a commitment that we will campaign to stay in the EU and transform our country within that club of nations.
There is not a two-thirds majority for an early election and so the hope is that Labour MPs will be whipped to support the Wollaston amendment if it comes next week.
As Sarah has said, “If you were about to undergo surgery, you would expect to know what the operation involved and to be informed about all the risks and benefits. It's called informed consent and no decent surgeon would go ahead without it.” Her argument to parliamentary colleagues of all parties is this: “Brexit certainly is major surgery with far-reaching consequences. The surgery looks set to be far more radical than anything set out in the referendum and the side effects and complications are very different from what was promised. We have to make it clear to the government that it should not embark on potentially ruinous surgery without the informed consent of the British people.”
I would follow the advice of this doctor – the right diagnosis and the right prescription to fix this parliamentary mess.
The Umunnas cannot get enough of Jorja Smith’s soulful, jazzy and silky vocals which are all across her album, Lost And Found – it’s on constant playback on Spotify in the car and in the kitchen right now.
This hugely talented artist from Walsall is only 21 and she has already collaborated with and performed alongside Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars and Stormzy. I love seeing UK soul artists crack and break America and become truly global, which is precisely what Smith, who is currently touring the States, is doing. In my opinion, she is going to go very, very far indeed!


Plans for a parliamentary ambush to stop Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans risk running into the sand, after deep tactical differences emerged among the anti-no-deal parties ahead of a crunch meeting.
Opposition parties are hoping to take advantage of the Conservatives’ absence from Westminster for their annual conference in Manchester by seizing control of events in the Commons.
But as leaders of the so-called “rebel alliance” prepared to meet on Monday to discuss tactics, there was little consensus on the way forward.
Jeremy Corbyn will come under intense pressure at the meeting in Westminster to accept that he cannot lead a government of national unity to prevent no deal.
The Labour leader’s position was emerging as a key “roadblock”, with only the Scottish National Party apparently ready to consider him as the head of a caretaker administration to if Mr Johnson resigns or is ousted by a vote of no confidence.
Meanwhile, the SNP’s own plan for a swift move to a confidence vote has gained scant support from the other parties, who fear that it would be playing into Mr Johnson’s hands by allowing him an early election before no deal has been definitively taken off the table.
There was even doubt over whether Tories would vote against a no-confidence motion. The BBC’s Andrew Marr noted after an interview with the prime minister in Manchester that he “grinned” when asked if he wanted to lose the vote.
With this nuclear option likely to be ruled out at Monday’s meeting, attention was focusing on a series of emergency motions to demand secret papers from the government, including attorney general Geoffrey Cox’s legal advice on the abortive prorogation of parliament and the full documentation on the Operation Yellowhammer no-deal contingency plans.
Mr Corbyn last week promised “parliamentary action” this week to ensure that the UK does not crash out of the EU without deal on 31 October.
But there was no clarity over what Labour is planning, and Mr Corbyn insists he will not support a general election while no-deal remains a threat.
Former minister Alistair Burt told a fringe meeting at the Conservative conference that neither he nor the bulk of anti-no-deal Tories expelled for rebelling over Brexit would accept Mr Corbyn as the head of a government of national unity, which could take over on a temporary basis to negotiate an extension to Brexit talks and call an election.
Chuka Umunna said Liberal Democrats would back a “neutral” figure who does not aspire to be PM for the long term, like Kenneth Clarke or Harriet Harman, to lead a caretaker administration.
And he issued a direct challenge to Mr Corbyn: “If the leader of the opposition will not accept either of those suggestions, it would be helpful and constructive for him to propose an alternative suggestion.
“Whether this route is workable depends on his willingness to compromise for the sake of our country.”
Change UK leader Anna Soubry said that if Mr Corbyn insisted on being its head, a temporary government “is not going to happen”. She told The Independent that any such government would need an entire cabinet of elder statesmen and women with no further political ambitions and would need to last six months to give it time to arrange a second EU referendum
Liberal Democrat proposals to use the coming days to bring forward the 19 October deadline for Mr Johnson to seek a Brexit extension have gained a lukewarm reception from other opposition parties, who regard them as an unnecessary complication of the measures in this month’s Benn Act.
Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru are pushing for anti-Johnson forces to seize control of the Commons agenda this week to force through punitive measures against the PM for his unlawful suspension of parliament and his refusal to commit himself to respecting the legal requirements on extension.
The party’s Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts said: “Motions are being discussed between opposition parties and House of Commons officials that would see a salary cut, bans from Parliament and other disciplinary measures, alongside a motion to explore impeachment.”
In Manchester, arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg denounced any effort to block a Halloween withdrawal and create a unity government as a “Remoaner coup”.
But Theresa May’s former chief of staff Gavin Barwell hit out at the use of the term, tweeting: “Such a government would come to power lawfully not via a coup and it would not be wholly composed of Remainers. It would be a stop no-deal coalition.”


The Independent
There they were, all gathered in one place. Not quite midnight’s children but 11 o’clock’s toddlers. Here, at the long-awaited end of dry January, was a once-proud nation coming together to wet its little trousers.
Do the ghosts of revolutions past haunt the hallowed days of now? Could you hear the hooves of Simon Bolivar’s horse galloping up Whitehall?
Was that the sound of the workers singing the “Marseillaise” as Lenin’s sealed train rolled into the District and Circle line platform at Westminster station? Could that have been Haile Selassie, raising the standard of the Lion of Judah over the exit door of Caffe Nero?
Were they here, bright eyes fixed on the horizon of history, listening to the same old wearied drivel from the Wetherspoons guy? Did they actually turn up to this, the Night of a Thousand Swans and Angels? Did they see The Dawn of the Moon Under Water? (Historians take note: other potential sobriquets can be found on the “Pub Locator” tab of jdwetherspoon.com.)
Mahatma Gandhi really was here, as was Nelson Mandela, albeit both cast in bronze and standing as ever on the perimeter of Parliament Square.
One man – topless of course – even injured his elbow on Madiba’s outstretched hand as he rose with carefree haste to exalt the soaring oratory of The Apprentice’s Michelle Dewberry. About the builder of the rainbow nation’s feet were three discarded cans of Strongbow Dark Fruit. No long walk to freedom is complete without a quick dash to Tesco Metro.
What on earth would those men have made of the occasion? Actual Great Britain, the cradle of empire once, roaring its pissy breath into the night air in phoney celebration of regaining an independence it had never lost?
Of course, now is the time that we must come together as a nation. We must start the healing. The grievances of yesteryear must be set aside. But there is also, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, some half-remembered obligation for a writer to have the courage to tell the truth. So it is with a genuine sense of sorrow that I must report that on Friday 31 January, between the hours of 9pm and 11pm, Westminster’s Parliament Square played host to a static, knuckle dragging carnival of the irredeemably stupid.
Shirtless men clambered over the statue of Churchill. For some bizarre reason, part of the warm-up act involved playing parts of an old Michael Cockerell documentary on Britain’s history with the EU. “F*** off John Major, you c***!” shouted one man when the former prime minister appeared on screen. “He should be hanging by his f****** neck!” the same man shouted at Tony Blair.
(Later, they cheered arch Leave campaigner Tony Benn, then booed Jeremy Corbyn. That will have cut Magic Grandpa to the bone.)
They absolutely revelled in it. It wasn’t merely that a singalong to “Rule Britannia”, with the words appearing on a giant screen, was infinitely beyond them. (“The azure what? Az-u main? What’s this? I don’t know thi – RULE BRITANNIA! BRITANNIA RULES THE WAVES!” Entirely verbatim quote, that one).
At one point, when they tried to get the crowd to join in with “Land of Hope and Glory”, the three on-stage singers were so poor that the crowd refused to join in in protest.
Nigel Farage was there, obviously, calling it “the greatest moment in our nation’s modern history.”
Well if it was the greatest moment in our nation’s modern history, it is a matter of public record that the best Farage could find to help him usher it in was a very strange man called Dominic Frisby, singing a very strange song called “17 Million F*** Offs.”
The list of people “the British told to f*** off” was long indeed.
“The IMF, the treasury, Tony Blair, John Major, Femi Weirdo, Jess Philips, George Osborne.” It went on and on and on. By the time it got to the end, the 17 million f*** offs may even have found themselves outnumbered. Whether, in fact the IMF, the Treasury, Tony Blair and absolutely everybody else will, in the end, turn out to have been right, and this lot wrong, is as close to a certainty as anything in politics can possibly be.
But for now, we must go through the motions. Dance the dance. By the time the final countdown came you could scarcely get on to Whitehall. There were thousands there. Not many thousands, but thousands certainly.
I’ve listened back now to the sound on my dictaphone that records Britain’s moment of liberation and it goes exactly like this: “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! FREEDOM!!!! YEAAAASSSS!!!! F****** FREEDOM!!!! WE F****** DID IT!!! F****** FREEDOM!!! F****** DO ONE!! F****** DO ONE!!!!”
It seems as worthy a catch phrase of the moment as anything else. F****** do one! Who exactly? Absolutely everyone. It doesn’t matter. Just f****** do one. Put that, as they say, on the side of the bus.
Of course, what makes Britain’s independence day different from most, though not all, that have gone before it is that its prize is a freedom nobody else wants. When a Tunisian fruit and vegetable stallholder set himself on fire in December 2010, he lit a blaze of hope that ripped through the Middle East and north Africa.
When Britain set itself on fire three and a half years ago, the very best that can be hoped for is that someone, somewhere made £250 sending the footage to You’ve Been Framed.
We have become the first country to throw off the yoke of an oppressor whom nobody else considers themselves oppressed by. We have won our freedom from our own imagined nightmares. We have liberated ourselves from the terrors of the monster under the bed that was never there. We are the children that never grew up.
It is a great pity that of the many thousands of bells that were present, only one should have had its noise-making capacity removed. Between them, Brexiteers raised more than £100,000 in a fruitless quest to have Big Ben’s clapper temporarily restored to bong us out into the cold. How much might remainers have paid to silence Farage for the night, if not for all eternity?
Too late now. His supporters went wild for him, naturally. “Nigel! Nigel! Nigel! Nigel!” It’s an unlikely name for a hero.
Before him there’d been Ann Widdecombe, fresh from marching out of the EU parliament two nights ago, saying it was “like storming up the beaches again”. She’s never stormed up any beaches. She’s only 72. Which is young enough, it turns out, to stand on a stage in Parliament Square and ululate away about “the glorious future that awaits us” – the one she has forced on the nation’s young entirely against their wishes.
There was Tim Martin of Wetherspoons, saying in all seriousness that “our victory is not a victory against the people of Europe. They are our friends. It is a victory over the institutions of the European Union”. Tim Martin, for the record, banned all European-produced drinks from his pubs. So there’s that.
“At 11pm tonight, there is no such thing as leavers and remainers,” Dewberry told the crowd. “We are all leavers now.” I think the reply to that one comes in the form of a song you might call "16.8 Million F*** Offs."
What next then? Come together? Move on. You can close your eyes and hope for it, but you’ll not find any evidence that it can actually be done.
Brexit’s ultimate tragedy is that it has broken the very thing it imagines itself to have restored: national identity, national cohesion. There is none at all. There are just two huge tribes set against each other, and the mutual loathing is as fierce as ever.
There simply isn’t any middle ground. The gulf is as wide as it has ever been: one side revels in regaining its imagined independence, while the other mourns the terrible loss of having been part of something big, something ambitious, with its eyes fixed on the future and not drunk on the imagined glories of the past.
We simply do not have more in common than that which divides us. It is an irreconcilable, fundamental rift that goes to the core of everything everyone on either side believes. There will be no moving on. For 10 years or more, all the nation’s fortunes will be tied back to this event.
What happens, say, when another huge financial crisis hits, lives and livelihoods damaged? Half the country will blame the other half for the vast economic growth squandered to Brexit. We won’t move on. We can’t.
The prime minister urges healing – but he is the disease, not the cure. What do we do next? Are we to accept defeat, make peace, all the while knowing that, were the shoe on the other foot, Farage and company would be doing absolutely nothing of the sort?
Are we really expected to get on board with this farce? To look upon this absurd, imagined liberation and try to see the good in it when there is simply nothing good there?
With his final words, as well, Farage hinted at the next chapter of the story. Urging other countries to follow Britain’s example, to leave the EU, to become “free nation states, trading, co-operating”. Go back to the old days, in other words, and try to ignore that the old days are absolutely drenched in blood. That preventing the old days ever coming back is the precise reason the EU came into being.
These people really do think it’s 1989, or the Arab Spring, that Frisby is their Vaclav Havel. They think the blue touchpaper has been lit, except for the fact that our neighbours are not rising up but glancing up to look upon us with embarrassed pity at our own crushing stupidity.
There is simply no way anyone of good conscience can make peace with being so very clearly on the wrong side of history.
Come together? Sorry, but no thanks. The long walk back to sanity starts now. Who knows, it might even be a surprisingly short one.


A secret Treasury document has raised questions about “rail access to the EU” after a no-deal Brexit.
The document – snapped as it was carried into a Whitehall meeting – also reveals that Philip Hammond’s department has codenamed its contingency planning “Operation Yellowhammer”.
It warns that government departments will have to make cuts to prepare for crashing out of the EU, saying: “Their first call should be internal reprioritisation.”
And it acknowledges the need to “maintain confidence in the event of contingency plans being triggered – particularly important for financial services”.
Operation Yellowhammer is being overseen by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which is usually responsible for coping with emergencies such as floods and disease outbreaks.
The document was photographed just hours after the health secretary admitted that taxpayers would have to foot the bill for stockpiling NHS medicines in a no-deal Brexit.
A Treasury spokesman refused to be drawn on the paper, saying: “We don't comment on leaked documents.”
The yellowhammer is a bird with a bright yellow head, a brown back streaked with black and chestnut rump, often seen perched on top of a hedge or bush, singing.
Intriguingly for critics of a no-deal Brexit, its song is said to have a rhythm like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”.
Rex
Rex
There were suggestions that John Glen – a Treasury minister – rather than a civil servant, had been carrying the document when it was snapped.
Only half of one page has been photographed and only some of the words can be made out.
It states that the Civil Contingencies Secretariat “held a two-day workshop last week to review departments’ plan, assumptions, interdependencies and next steps”
The Treasury’s “objectives” are listed as effective “communications architecture” to ensure confidence is maintained if Britain crashes out of the EU.
There will be a need to “explain that departments should be raising Yellowhammer costs through the normal channels – through their spending terms for in-year pressures, and in their bids for 19/20 Brexit allocations for spending in that year”, adding: “Their first call should be internal reprioritisation”.
It then refers to “the need for consistent planning assumptions” in a sentence that moves on to “rail access to the EU”.
The Treasury will also “remind departments of the need to consider the financial.....commercial firms that play a role in their contingency plans”.
Owen Smith, a Labour supporter of the anti-Brexit Best for Britain campaign, said: “Operation Yellowhammer is the latest proof that Brexit will be a colossal act of economic self harm for the country. It's the political equivalent of dismembering yourself.”
And Ben Bradshaw, who backs the People’s Vote campaign, said: “We now know the government is preparing for Brexit in the same way they’d approach catastrophes like flooding, a disease outbreak or a terrorist attack. This is not what anyone voted for in 2016.”


A Treasury minister has admitted that Theresa May could be forced to bow to mounting pressure for a fresh Brexit referendum if her plan is rejected – with the option to halt EU withdrawal “altogether”.
Mel Stride delivered a huge boost to the campaign for a “People’s Vote” when he acknowledged: “There is a danger of that happening if Chequers doesn’t prevail”.
The minister also said “we could end up not leaving the EU altogether” – suggesting the ballot paper for any further referendum would have to give voters the option to remain in the EU.
Supporters leapt on the comments, claiming Mr Stride had “let the cat out of the bag” by admitting what the prime minister has repeatedly denied.
“This is one small step for the minister but a giant stride for our campaign to deliver a people's vote,” said Tulip Siddiq MP, a Labour supporter of the anti-Brexit Best for Britain group.
And Alison McGovern MP, for the People’s Vote campaign, said: “This has changed everything. A minister has had the courage to tell the truth about the mess the government are in over Brexit and let the cat out of the bag.”
The gaffe came as the EU, as leaders gathered in Salzburg, delivered a blow to the prime minister’s hopes for her Chequers proposals when it warned they needed to be “reworked”.
Donald Tusk, the European Council president, said major stumbling blocks remained, including avoiding a hard border in Ireland and the future trading relationship between with the EU.
Rex
“Today there is perhaps more hope, but there is surely less and less time,” he warned, as he confirmed he would propose a mid-November summit to try to break the deadlock.
Earlier, in a hardline stance ahead of arriving in Austria, Ms May laid bare the gulf between the two sides when she said EU plans for the Irish border after Brexit remained “totally unacceptable”.
The prime minister has tried to stamp on the People’s Vote campaign by insisting “it’s my deal or no deal” – but Mr Stride’s comments blew that strategy out of the water.
He told Sky News: “I suspect those to the right of the party, the pro Brexit wing, will be very concerned that - if that deal doesn’t prevail - they’ll end up in a situation where we could have a second referendum and we could end up not leaving the EU altogether.
“There is a danger of that happening if Chequers doesn’t prevail”.
The comments made Mr Stride the first government minister to admit that a fresh Brexit referendum is on the cards, if the prime minister’s deal is thrown out.
They appeared to be an attempt to put pressure on pro-Brexit Tories to accept the Chequers proposals – or risk seeing their dream of leaving the EU disappear completely.
However, the comments are a gift to MPs and campaigners who have insisted it is false to claim the UK faces a “binary” choice of Ms May’s deal or the damage from crashing out with no agreement at all.
Furthermore, they were a huge embarrassment to Ms May ahead of her landing in Salzburg and her attempt to ram home the message that the EU must compromise to avoid a no-deal.
Just hours earlier, in a newspaper article, the prime minister again tried to kill the People’s Vote campaign, insisting it would “destroy trust in politicians” to stage another referendum.
The Independent has launched its Final Say campaign, to give the British people the crucial decision on any Brexit deal, which is supported by more than 810,000 people who have signed our petition.
Mr Stride’s intervention was seen as undermining Ms May’s efforts to convince the EU that her no-deal threat is real, when most have already dismissed it as a bluff.
Most diplomats and officials are convinced it would “be bad for everyone, but it would be so much worse for Britain,” as one put it this week.
Ms McGovern added: “The Brexit elite are desperate to deny the people a voice on Brexit but there is no stopping an idea whose time has come.”
The government’s strategy, usually kept for private conversations, is to twist the arms of Brexiteers with the risk of Brexit being stopped – and the arms of pro-EU Tories with the threat of a no-deal.
It was let slip by Mr Stride who also referred to MPs on the “other end of the spectrum”, warning Britain “could end up in a no-deal situation”.
Meanwhile, Wales's first minister said a general election should be called if the government’s deal was rejected by either the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly.
Wales voted to leave the EU by a margin of 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent in the 2016 referendum, but recent polls have suggested it has “flipped” to Remain.


Sadiq Khan has urged Labour members not to accept any “compromise” on Brexit amid a major row at the party’s annual conference over its stance in a second referendum.
In an attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to delay making a decision on whether Labour would campaign against Brexit, the London mayor told members: “Do not accept a fudge.”
Mr Khan became the latest senior Labour figure at the gathering in Brighton to insist that the party must commit to keeping the UK in the EU.
He said Labour MPs must be whipped to oppose Brexit and, attacking suggestions that Mr Corbyn could decline to endorse any outcome in a future referendum, claimed that staying neutral was “not an option”.
The Labour leadership is facing an angry backlash over the issue after grassroots activists and MPs, including senior shadow cabinet ministers, demanded that Mr Corbyn come out firmly for Remain.
The Labour leader is instead proposing that the party should not decide its position until after a general election.
In a “direct appeal” to delegates at the conference, Mr Khan said members should reject any delay in deciding what Labour’s stance in a future referendum would be.
In a statement released to The Independent and later posted on Facebook, he said: “Labour has come to a vital crossroads. At conference this week, we have the opportunity to come together to define how we seek to deal with the biggest challenge facing our country – Brexit.
“Labour’s values of solidarity, social justice and internationalism are clearly best served by remaining in the European Union.
“So I’m making a direct appeal to delegates at Labour conference: do not accept any ‘compromise’ on Brexit, do not accept a fudge, do not delay us setting out what our stance would be in any future referendum.
He added: “Labour is a Remain party and we need to make this official by making it our policy to campaign to stay in the European Union under all circumstances – and to whip all our MPs to back that position.
”Staying neutral in the face of the biggest economic and social threat to our country for decades is simply not an option.”
“It’s time for Labour to commit to stopping Brexit – not only by promising to give the British public the final say, but by pledging to throw all our energy behind the campaign to stay in the European Union.”
The Brexit plan put forward by Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) say the party supports another referendum but would ”only decide how to campaign in such a referendum – through a one-day special conference, following the election of a Labour government”.
But activists are hoping to force through an alternative motion that commits the party to backing Remain.
On Saturday, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry became the latest MP to dissent from the official line by arguing that the party should “lead the campaign to Remain.”
And speaking at a fringe event on Sunday, she dismissed the proposal for a delay in deciding Labour’s position in another referendum, saying: “I can’t see why we can’t make a decision now.”


The defection of three Conservative MPs is prompted by the imminent crunch of leaving the EU, but it seems unlikely to affect the course of Brexit. The main effect is to strengthen the claim of the proto-party of the Independent Group to represent a broad swathe of opinion across the spectrum.
Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston were already strongly opposed to Brexit and want a second referendum to try to stay in the EU, as are all the ex-Labour members of the 11-strong Independent Group. From the joint letter of resignation by the three Tories, it seems that the threat of a no-deal Brexit was what finally tipped them over the brink.
But they were already winning that battle. There are many ministers, including several cabinet ministers, who are already threatening to resign – from the government rather than from the party – if Theresa May tries to go ahead with leaving the EU without a deal. So what happens if we leave the EU with a deal, or if Brexit is postponed thanks to the cross-party effort led by Yvette Cooper?
Then we have to read further down the resignation letter to establish that the three have a bigger problem with “a shift to the right of British politics”. They say they cannot remain in a party “so firmly in the grip of the ERG and DUP”. But this seems only to restate their objection to Brexit in a different way. No one suggests the Tory government has been influenced by the DUP’s attitudes on gay rights or abortion, so it can only be the Northern Ireland party’s opposition to the prime minister’s Brexit deal that the defectors don’t like.
As for the ERG – the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs – they have been operating as a party within a party for some time. Hence the Tory breakaway is remarkably similar to the Labour one in that its cause is something that happened some time ago – in the Labour case it was the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader three and a half years ago.
But neither set of defections changes the balance of forces in the House of Commons on the question of Brexit. The supporters of a new referendum remain in a minority, and with no prospect of winning a majority unless Corbyn himself whips Labour MPs for it.
Yet the Labour breakaway may well have made it less likely that the Labour leader will back a referendum. He made a small gesture in that direction in his email to members after the launch of the Independent Group, by graciously mentioning the Labour policy of keeping “a public vote” on the table, and he may continue to sound warmer about a referendum in an attempt to discourage other MPs from defecting. But he always seems to find it hard to suppress his real view, which seems to be that he wants to leave the EU as long as no one can blame him for it.
So what will happen after Britain has either left the EU or its departure has been postponed for a few months? Then the true significance of today’s defections is that it makes the Labour defectors stronger. Or, at least, it might strengthen them in the eyes of the general public. It makes their embryo party more attractive to swing voters whose party loyalties are weak. But it weakens their appeal to many mainstream Labour supporters. Many of them may have their differences with Corbyn, but would hesitate to join something that substantiates the Corbynite attack on them as closet Tories.
Today’s defections will put to the test the conventional wisdom of the Blair era that elections are won and lost in the centre ground. Everyone knows that the Social Democratic Party crashed and burned electorally, but it is less often remarked that the shock the SDP administered to the system forced the Labour Party especially to change, although it took a long time for that change to work through.


Outside the Supreme Court yesterday, in Remainer heartlands and, simultaneously, on the south coast in Brighton at Labour Conference, delight at the prime minister’s defeat over his attempt to prorogue parliament could barely be contained. The conference floor erupted in cheers as a grinning Jeremy Corbyn called on Boris Johnson to “consider his position”, sentiments echoed by Remainers, many of whom also demanded a vote of no confidence in the government.
But this victory, no matter how convincing, should be dashed with a sense of realism. Those who fought so hard for it need to understand that the public may have a very different perception of yesterday's events – one that, inadvertently, may strengthen the government’s hand.
Parliament will now return to the gridlock it left – a stalemate that has not played well with the public. Overwhelmingly, even among Remain voters, the sentiment for much of the past three years has been “just get on with it”. They became fed up at a perceived lack of drive, lack of desire even, from the May administration to see through the referendum’s demand to leave, and part of Johnson’s “bounce” in popularity came from the fact that he seemed to be making more progress than his predecessor.
Parliament, by hamstringing him as it had done Theresa May, is now seen as the obstacle, not for performing the very important duty of scrutinising the government, but for refusing every deal or possibility that is put before it. Having rejected May’s deals repeatedly, it has now rejected the idea of a “no deal” scenario – which, in the eyes of the public, looks less like scrutinising, and more like frustration. For, if the only deal the EU will agree to is rejected, and no deal too is shunned, what is left other than Remain? What’s more, parliament has also rejected the built-in mechanism for removing a dysfunctional government from office – a general election – robbing the public of their chance to give their opinion, and move the process along.
To that end, many will see Johnson’s attempts at prorogation not through the legal lense of lawfulness, but through the prism of persistence. Where May was ground down and gave up, Johnson is trying to be creative to break the deadlock. The public won’t mind this – if anything, they will approve of efforts to get the country out of the predicament it finds itself in, and blame Remainers for dragging it back to a position where nobody can do anything. It’s that craftiness, that “can-do spirit,” which for all it is readily derided by Remainer bubbles, most people expected Johnson to bring to No 10. He failed this time, but at least he tried.
Now, many people will baulk at this idea that misleading the Queen to unlawfully prorogue parliament might be described as “creative”. Breaking the law, for whatever purpose, is still breaking the law, after all. The problem with this is that many people disagree with the law in its current form – they disagree with the manner in which the whole political system is currently run. Were it a minority, one could perhaps dismiss this. But it isn’t a minority. The vote to leave the EU was the single largest democratic case to rip up and reform legal structures in living memory, and it won. If enough people disagree with the law, then at some point, one has to consider why it is the law at all, especially if there are concerted campaigns to change it. A great many people want it changed.
If Johnson had assaulted someone, say, or stolen a car, people of all stripes would condemn him, and call for his resignation at the very least. But don’t think for one second Leavers will abandon the prime minister for going against a system many of them feel there is already a democratic mandate for going against.


The House of Commons has not broken its habit of voting against things, then. But, rather late in the day, the range of options facing MPs is narrowing. The scale of the defeat makes it hard for the prime minister to try to get her deal through a third time. She persuaded only 41 MPs to change their vote from the even bigger defeat in January, but she still needs 75 more MPs to change sides to get her deal through.
That means parliament is heading towards asking the EU to delay Brexit, which is, in effect, another way of not deciding, as the prime minister said rather pointedly after the vote.
She promised that there would be a vote tomorrow on whether to leave the EU without a deal. She doesn’t want that, but she is quite safe in holding that vote, as that is another option the Commons will vote against. She confirmed that she will allow her MPs a free vote, but didn’t say how she would vote. I imagine she will abstain, knowing that a no-deal Brexit will be defeated by a huge margin. Fewer than 100 of the 600 MPs in the Commons support it.
More importantly, she repeated her promise of a vote on Thursday on whether to seek an extension to the Article 50 timetable.
Before the Commons votes to delay Brexit, however, there may be final attempts to secure support for a different deal.

The only substantial change to the deal that might be possible would be if the government accepted a permanent customs union. That could easily be written into the non-binding political declaration in the Brexit deal, because the details are something that would have to be negotiated after we leave the EU.
May might be tempted to accept a customs union in desperation if it were the only way out, but I cannot see how Jeremy Corbyn would ever support a Conservative prime minister, even if it meant supporting his own policy.
There is not enough support, and no time anyway, for other options such as a general election or a new prime minister.
The only way to avoid delaying Brexit would be for the Commons to pass another version of the prime minister’s deal on a third, or possibly even a fourth attempt. It may be that the imminence of the Brexit date could force 75 MPs to reconsider. But that does not seem likely. The EU27 are even less likely to offer last-minute concessions once a no-deal Brexit has been ruled out: we may be testing their patience, but they are not scared of a Brexit delay.
So the most likely option is that the Commons will decide on Thursday to ask for an extension to the timetable. If it votes against that too, then it will have to vote repeatedly on the deal or on delay until one wins a majority – and if MPs are still unable to decide, a no-deal Brexit remains the legal default. The Commons can vote against a no-deal Brexit all it likes, but that is just an expression of opinion until it votes for something else.
The prime minister accepted in her historic statement on 26 February that the House of Commons would decide the next stages of Brexit, even if she disagreed with it. It is unusual for a prime minister to undertake to pass laws that are contrary to her government’s policy.
But that is what she said.
She promised to bring in the “necessary legislation” to change the exit date in law. Her next step is to negotiate with the EU the length and terms of the extension. Jean-Claude Juncker implied yesterday that a short extension could not run beyond 23 May, when the European parliament elections are held. A longer extension would require the UK to take part in those elections, which would be embarrassing but possible.
Against all the abuse heaped in her direction today, Theresa May said something true in a small, croaky voice when she opened the debate this afternoon. On all sides MPs complained that she had handled Brexit very badly and set out how it should have been done, namely about a dozen different and mutually incompatible proposals.
She said: “Responsibility lies with this house.” She is right. The failure of the Commons to make a positive decision means that it is drifting towards a non-decision. The Commons is against leaving the EU with the prime minister’s deal, and tomorrow it will confirm that it is against leaving the EU without a deal. That means either that the Commons wants to leave with a different deal – or that it doesn’t want to leave at all.
The scale of tonight’s vote tilts the country towards not leaving at all and yet, as the prime minister implied, many MPs refuse to take responsibility for what was, in effect, a decision by default.


“And don’t forget,” the prime minister said, lowering her head but angling up her eyes to meet the barrel of the camera. “I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to smash up his party, so I don’t have to smash up mine.”
Well, they weren’t the exact words but 1,015 miserable days and seven more miserable hours later, this is what it came down to. This was Theresa: The Unstoppable Woman’s latest way out. Sorry Jezza. I can’t deliver Brexit and keep my party together, so you’ll have to deliver it for me. And if it breaks your party instead, well, what can I say? Sorry. I’m a Tory. That’s what we do.
The pundits have been braced for the prime minister putting party before country for some time. That was always going to happen, but not like this. This was party before party and one of them wasn’t even hers.
She’d started the day by locking the cabinet in the cabinet room and keeping them there all morning, all afternoon and into the evening. At 2pm, we are told, they were led like restless whippets out into the Downing Street garden for a walkabout. When they’d finally agreed to the Dial J for Jeremy plan, they were again detained, kept away from their phones and provided with alcohol while Theresa May and her team came up with a way of selling this latest insanity to the nation.
And, this the Notting Hill style ending, is what they came up with, with the obvious caveat that it’s clearly not going to end the way they hope.

The Tories were true to their Peter Pan spirit. The Party That Never Grows Up could not find its way to a compromise, because that would involve some of them having to admit that the fantasy they had sold to the nation three years ago could never be delivered.
So she took the only option available to her. “No deal” was rejected, yet again, though only in words. In reality, it remains right there, the high-speed steam train expanding on the horizon.
But she’d be asking the EU for a long extension that she hoped was a short one and which they may or may not accept, and then inviting Jeremy Corbyn to help her find a way to get Brexit over the line.
Come on Jezza. Can’t do it without you. If it had a hint of deja vu about it, that’s because it always does. There are no scenes left in Brexit: The Neverending Story that haven’t come round three times or more.
It’s barely two months since she last asked for Jeremy Corbyn’s help to get Brexit over the line. On that day she also had the small matter of a no confidence motion against her, and so she had leaned over the despatch box and called him “a national tragedy”. She’d also told some fun anecdotes about various terrorists he had invited into the House of Commons over the years. Unsurprisingly, their cross party meetings turned out to be a waste of time.
Many unanswered questions spring to mind. She knows as well as he knows that Labour’s Brexit plan won’t survive a second in contact with actual daylight. “Permanent customs union”...“strong single market deal”... these were never actual proposals, just positions to hold David Davis to account for his constant lies. And what do you know, now Theresa May is latching on to them as actual government policy. But they were never real.
She knows this, surely. Is it too cynical to say it was just an attempt to position Labour to take the blame for the hell of no deal when this Potemkin Brexit plan falls apart? We reached out to them but they would not help. With anyone but Theresa May, it would be.
Where we go from here, who knows. Pretend politics, pretend policies, and pretend time to do it all in.
Theresa May might – just – have done her bit to stop her party breaking. And on the evidence of the last few months, Corbyn and his team are far too canny to allow Brexit to break theirs either.
Something has to give, to get us through, something has to break. The most likely candidate, as of now, is the country. And that suits both of them just fine.


Brexit is not a done deal. And it won’t be until 29 March next year. At any point up to then, we can change our minds and stay in the EU.
The most realistic path to stop Brexit is to get a “people’s vote” on the deal that Theresa May negotiates – and then win that vote.
Saturday’s People’s Vote march, to mark the second anniversary of the referendum, is a key milestone on the journey. Tens of thousands of people are descending on central London to demand the final say on the Brexit deal – and the right to stay in the EU if it isn’t good enough.
Of course, just because people go on a march doesn’t mean we will get what we want. We are the underdogs in this fight.
Most politicians are toeing the line that Brexit is inevitable. That’s the official policy of both the Tory government and the Labour opposition. It also appears to be the view of the BBC which, as a result, doesn’t give much air time to the possibility that we can stop Brexit.
Despite having the dice loaded against us, the chances of getting a people’s vote and then winning it are going up.
The compromise agreed this week over a “meaningful vote” for MPs at the end of the Brexit talks isn’t perfect. But it will still give us the basis to get a people’s vote if Theresa May comes back with a miserable deal towards the end of the year, as seems only too likely.
After all, the waters of the cabinet are close to boiling point. Two years after the referendum, it still can’t agree what it wants from Brexit. It is searching for a “good Brexit” – and, like unicorns, a good Brexit doesn’t exist. So the prime minister keeps kicking the can down the road.
Such dithering is creating uncertainty for business and stifling investment. It is also undermining our negotiating position with the EU.
Alamy
We need Europe more than it needs us because its economy is five times as big as ours. So we were always going to be in a weak position. But May has played a bad hand awfully. She threw away her best card – the decision of when to start the two-year negotiating clock ticking – without securing anything in return. This was despite our then ambassador to the EU warning that we would get “screwed”.
The prime minister has been forced to make one capitulation after another. She agreed to pay £39bn in a divorce payment. She pleaded for a transition period to cushion the blow of Brexit after we leave – and in return agreed we would follow all the EU’s rules without a vote on them. How’s that taking back control?
Meanwhile, the public are sick and tired of the whole goddamn business. They want to get on with their lives, spend time with their families and watch the World Cup.
But they know Brexit is going badly – by 66 per cent to 21 per cent. Record numbers of voters think Brexit was a bad idea: 47 per cent to 40 cent. They also back the idea of a people’s vote by 53 per cent to 31 per cent.
The government is so weak and divided that anything is possible. Hardline Brexiteers could kick the prime minister out. There could be yet another general election. The Brexit talks could break down and the government could try to take us out of the EU with no deal – something its own leaked analysis describes as “Armageddon”.
But the most likely scenario is that the prime minister will limp on and produce a miserable deal that nobody likes – neither Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson, nor patriotic pro-Europeans like those marching on Saturday.
This is because to get a deal, May will have to capitulate even further on her “red lines”. Expect her to agree to keep paying money into the EU budget for years to come. Her talk about a Brexit dividend for the NHS is a lie, by the way. In repeating it, the prime minister has gone full Boris.
Expect her also to agree that we will follow most of the EU’s rules without a vote – not just for the transition period but for as far as the eye can see.
We are a proud nation. We have virtually written the rules of Europe’s single market. We’ll be turned into what Johnson likes to call a “vassal state”. All those dreams of striding the world, cutting buccaneering deals in foreign lands, will go up in smoke.
It’s not even as if the prime minister will protect the economy if she agrees all this. The best we will end up with is probably free movement in “goods”. Given that four-fifths of our economy is “services”, that’s bad.
Brexit will also blow a £15bn annual hole in the public finances, according to official forecasts. That means less money for public services such as the NHS, not more.
A deal that keeps us in the EU’s customs union and follows most of its rules is, in the jargon, known as a Customs and Regulatory Alignment Period (CRAP). When the prime minister brings back CRAP, MPs must give the public a vote.
The democratic case for a people’s vote is compelling. Think of it like buying a house. It looks wonderful, so you make an offer. Then you get the survey. The house has dry rot, the roof is falling in, there’s subsidence and a developer is building a six-storey office that will block your view and the light.
If you still want to buy the house, go ahead. But you don’t have to, because new facts have emerged.
The same goes for Brexit. Lots of new facts have emerged since the referendum.
We’ve gone from the fastest to the slowest growing advanced large economy in the world – and that’s before Brexit has even happened.
The two main Leave campaigns – those fronted by Johnson and Nigel Farage – seem effectively to have cheated in the referendum.
Meantime, Donald Trump is in the White House – putting children in cages, launching trade wars, threatening to tear up the climate change pact and questioning Nato’s validity. Is now really a good time to burn our bridges with Europe and suck up to America?
We knew none of this two years ago.
The biggest new fact will be the deal that we get – and that’s what the people should get a vote on.
This would not be a rerun of the referendum. Last time, we had a choice between the imperfect reality of staying in the EU and the fantasy of Brexit. All those sunlit uplands, land flowing with milk and honey; Johnson’s having our cake and eating it.
Once we have a deal to look at, people can compare the reality of “In” with the misery of “Out”.










But we mustn’t just point out the dangers of Brexit – real though those are. Project Fear 2.0 on its own may not win a people’s vote – or not do so convincingly.
Many voters are not susceptible to negative campaigning. They have put up with years of austerity. Their communities have been neglected. Automation and globalisation are threatening their jobs. They struggle to get good quality, affordable homes. They are fed up with dishonest politicians.
Such people don’t like the status quo. They want change – and they are right to want change.
We therefore need to articulate a positive vision for a better Britain. One that is fairer, which offers the hope for a better tomorrow and where people are more in control of their lives.
We need to show we understand the problems people are struggling with – but explain that Brexit is not the solution. We can, instead, best tackle the threats of the 21st century and grasp its opportunities by being a leading player in Europe.
To get a people’s vote, we will need the support of the Labour Party, the rest of the opposition plus at least 10 Tory “rebels”.
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t there yet. He has never been keen on the EU. He damned it with faint praise during the referendum.
But many of the Labour leader’s backers are strongly pro-European.
Trade unions are worried that quitting the EU will be bad for workers – exposing them to the worst ravages of globalisation and undermining their rights.
Young people fear Brexit will rob them of their future – including their ability to work, live and love across 31 other countries. They back a people’s vote by 65 per cent to 22.
And ordinary Labour supporters are worried that Brexit will mean endless austerity. They back a people’s vote by 69 per cent to 18.
There are, of course, important exceptions. Some Labour voters and MPs don’t want to stay in the EU because they don’t like the free movement of people.
We therefore have to show how we can manage migration without quitting the EU. Gordon Brown this month produced a six-point plan – including registering EU citizens who want to live here. The EU itself has just tightened the rules so it is harder for cheap foreign labour to undercut local workers.
Of course, Corbyn wants to nationalise and subsidise industries – and might still believe he will have more freedom to pursue such an agenda if we quit the EU.
The message, though, may be getting through that this isn’t so. There was nothing in last year’s Labour manifesto that would have contravened EU law. What’s more, any deal we do with the EU post-Brexit would limit our ability to throw money at loss-making companies.
For all these reasons, Corbyn has been taking baby steps towards a more pro-European policy. Labour says it will vote against the government’s Brexit deal unless it gives us the “exact same benefits” that we currently get from membership of the EU’s single market and customs union. There’s no way May can deliver such a deal. So, if Labour sticks to its word, it will vote against the deal.
Alamy
But if May does lose a vote in parliament over the deal then what comes next?
Corbyn will want a general election. But he’s unlikely to get his wish. If the government’s deal is voted down, the Tories won’t be gagging to call an election. That would be like committing harakiri.
Labour might tell the government to go back to Brussels and negotiate a different deal. But there wouldn’t be much time as the Brexit deadline would by then be upon us – and Labour wouldn’t want us to crash out of the EU with no deal at all.
So by a process of elimination, the party could end up backing a people’s vote. Indeed, Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said this month that Labour is keeping its options open on the issue. For the “people’s party” to back a people’s vote could ultimately be in both its own interests and those of the country.
The opposition’s support however won’t count for a row of beans unless at least 10 Tory MPs also decide to give voters the final say.
So far only a handful, notably Anna Soubry, have spoken out in favour. They need real courage to do so. Not only do they have to face the wrath of the whips. They have to put up with bullying by the Brexit press as well as death threats and abuse from some fanatical members of the public.
On the other hand, Conservatives think of themselves as pro-business and defenders of what the prime minister calls “our precious union”.
So there are two hot-button issues that could swing a few MPs when the crunch vote comes. Botching Brexit could destroy the Tories’ reputation for economic competence – and keep them out of power for a generation. It could also break up the United Kingdom, destabilising Northern Ireland and potentially giving Scotland another excuse to shoot for independence.
Ordinary voters who care about Brexit don’t have to wait passively for the political drama to unfold.
The People’s Vote campaign, launched two months ago, is an active player in the story. It is an umbrella campaign bringing together nine pro-European groups. It has been endorsed by a growing list of supporters: nurses, midwives, students and some trade unions.
Over the coming months, we will be working to get wave after wave of civil society groups to back our campaign. We will be pushing to shift public opinion further in our favour by grassroots campaigning across the country – and via the media.
Most MPs know in their hearts that Brexit is bad for Britain. But they are too scared to speak up because they are terrorised by the so-called will of the people. But if the people’s will changes – and the public demand a people’s vote – politicians will follow.
This is why Saturday’s march is so important. It will show MPs that we still care.
But going on demonstrations isn’t the only thing ordinary people can do to make a difference. They can contact their MPs. They can engage in civilised debates with friends, family and colleagues. They can get active online. And they can volunteer for the People’s Vote campaign.
We do not have to be passive observers of a train wreck. This is our country. This is our life. We can get involved. We can make a difference. Yes, we can.
Hugo Dixon is chair of InFacts and a founding member of the People’s Vote campaign


Theresa May has told Labour MPs they should put the “national interest” ahead of loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn when it comes to a decision over whether to back her government’s Brexit plans.
The prime minister also appeared to be aiming her comments at members of her own party considering voting down the Brexit deal that she hopes to agree with the European Union.
It comes amid reports that up to 30 Brexit-backing Labour MPs might support Ms May’s deal, while Tory Eurosceptics say they have 40 ready to vote against it.
Labour dismissed claims that any significant number of the party’s MPs were prepared to back Ms May, with Mr Corbyn’s spokesman saying there was no evidence of it.
Speaking to the House of Commons as fraught Brexit negotiations continue in Brussels and ahead of a critical summit next week, Ms May said: “I would hope that everybody across this whole House will put the national interest first.”
Her spokesman was later asked if the point was that Labour MPs should put the national interest ahead of loyalty to the leader, to which he responded: “Yes.”
Mr Corbyn is all but certain to tell his MPs to vote against the deal that Ms May brings back from Brussels, firstly because it is likely to fail the strict tests set out by the party’s Brexit spokesman Sir Keir Starmer.
But the failure of Ms May to secure parliamentary backing for her deal would also bring closer the prospect of an election at which Labour would have a chance of seizing power.
The Labour leader’s spokesman said: “You can see from what MPs have been saying over the last few days that there is very little confidence in the parliamentary Labour party in the kind of package that the government and Theresa May appear to be negotiating.”
He added: “It’s quite clear that the prime minister is in a very difficult position, she spent most of the last two years negotiating with her own party and not the European Union and the prospects of a significant rebellion among her own MPs is pretty clear.
“So it’s not surprising that she is trying to find support elsewhere, we’ve made very clear what kind of package we would support and what we won’t.”
It was Ms May’s first appearance in the Commons since last month’s Salzburg summit, when EU leaders told her that her Chequers blueprint for Brexit would not work.
She has come under growing pressure from Brexit-backing Tories to drop the plan agreed by the cabinet at her country residence in July and instead seek a Canada-style free trade deal.
Eurosceptic Tories claim dozens of Conservatives are prepared to vote against Chequers, but veteran pro-EU Tory Ken Clarke urged her to ignore hardline Brexiteers and bring forward a deal acceptable to MPs on both sides of the Commons.


Theresa May has been accused of formulating "reckless" plans that will push the UK towards a disastrous Brexit.
Opposition MPs were less than impressed with what they saw as the lack of “anything new” from Ms May's highly anticipated New Year TV interview.
Labour’s shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer criticised the apparent lack of detail and reliance on sound bites from Ms May on the Government's plans for the UK's exit from the European Union.
He told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "I don't think the Prime Minister really gave us anything new and this is deeply concerning.
"We are now 10 to 11 weeks away from the triggering of Article 50 and we need clear negotiating objectives and we need a top negotiating team.
"What we got today were bits of half sentences that the Prime Minister has been using for the last six months."
In her first TV interview of the new year, Ms May denied there was any “muddled thinking” from the Government on Brexit and confirmed she intends to trigger Article 50 by the end of March.
Mr Starmer, who campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU, said the aim of negotiations with Brussels should be to secure the "fullest possible access" for the UK to the single market.
He said: "Of course there has to be change to the rules of freedom of movement. That was one of the main issues in the referendum.
"But the question for the Prime Minister is: are you putting such a priority on immigration that you are prepared to do real damage to your economy?”
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron called Ms May’s plans “reckless” following this morning’s interview on Sky TV with Sophy Ridge.
He said: “Theresa May has confirmed she is taking us towards a disastrous hard Brexit that will leave our country poorer and more divided.
“Reckless plans to leave the single market would deal a huge blow to jobs, investment and the public finances, meaning less funding for services like the overstretched NHS.”
Tory MPs who campaigned to remain have also called for more detail to be given as a matter of urgency as the suggested date for triggering article 50 looms ever closer.
Anna Soubry, a pro-remain Conservative MP and supporter of the Open Britain campaign group, agrees with Mr Starmer and Mr Farron that the UK should remain in the single market.
She said: "The single market is the world's largest free trade area with one rule book, no tariffs and maximum freedom for our vital service sectors. There is no comparable alternative.
"No-one voted to be poorer, which would be the inevitable consequence if we were to leave the single market.
"The Government needs to set out more detail on how we will leave the EU and what our long-term relationship will be. For the sake of jobs, growth and UK prosperity, that must mean being within the single market."
But pro-Brexit MPs seemed happier with the Prime Minister’s performance, seeing it as confirmation that the UK will be opting for a clean break from the EU.
Brexiteer Tory MP Steve Baker said: "This is welcome clarification of a sensible position by the PM. We won't be clinging on to bits of EU membership. The best outcome for the UK is an ambitious trade deal plus control over our laws, trade policy and borders. The PM's interview is great news for the UK.''
The Prime Minister used her first broadcast of the New Year to reiterate her belief that the trade versus immigration control issue is not a "binary" choice.
Ms May said: "Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the EU but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership of the EU.
"We are leaving. We are coming out. We are not going to be a member of the EU any longer.
"So the question is, what is the right relationship for the UK to have with the European Union when we are outside?”
And she insisted: "We will be able to have control of our borders, control of our laws.”
Ms May said she was concentrating on "not the means to the end but what the outcome is" as she looks ahead to negotiating the UK's divorce from Brussels.
She said: “Actually there will be a variety of ways in which we get there but people who simply talk about issues around membership of the single market, access to the single market, are looking at the means.
"I'm looking at the outcome."
Pressed for detail, the Prime Minister would only say she was aiming to deliver a "really good, ambitious trade deal" that allows UK companies to "trade in and operate in the European single market".
Ms May's latest comments on the Brexit negotiations come after reports that Sir Ivan Rogers criticised the Prime Minister's approach to Brexit with her predecessor weeks before he quit.
The diplomat, who unexpectedly resigned as the UK’s permanent representative in the EU in the new year, held talks with David Cameron before Christmas where he expressed concerns that the Prime Minister risked heading for a "disorderly" exit from the EU.
In a fiery message to staff announcing his resignation from the Brussels post, Sir Ivan hit out at the "ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking" of politicians and said civil servants still did not know the Government's plans for Brexit.


Theresa May is “bluffing” about leaving the EU without a deal and would not take Britain over the cliff edge if her agreement with Brussels was rejected by MPs, Labour’s Brexit chief has said.
Speaking to The Independent on a visit to Brussels Keir Starmer said no deal was simply not a “viable” option for any British prime minister and that he simply did not believe Ms May would lead the UK into such a catastrophe.
“I have never accepted that no deal is a viable option. The consequences of no deal would be catastrophic for jobs, the economy and for the border in Northern Ireland,” he said while visiting EU officials in the Belgian capital.
“I honestly don’t believe any prime minister would seriously consider taking the decision to crash the UK out of the EU without an agreement. The no-deal rhetoric from the government is a bluff and we shouldn’t fall for it.”
Under the Withdrawal Act the prime minister will have to face a vote in parliament about what to do if her deal is rejected; Labour sources indicated that they are confident there would be no majority in the Commons for a no deal.
They added that there would simply not be enough parliamentary time to pass any of the preparatory legislation that would have to be put in place by the government to prepare for such an outcome.
Previous investigations by The Independent have also found that physical building work at ports and airports that would be required to deal with new customs procedures is also certain not to be ready in time.
Ms May has repeatedly claimed that “no deal is better than a bad deal” and said she is prepared to take Britain out without an agreement. The government has said there will be no extension of revocation of Article 50 and no second referendum and that the UK will be leaving no matter what on 29 March 2019.
The prime minister lacks a majority in parliament and is likely to need some Labour backbenchers to vote for her agreement to get it through. Some Labour MPs have already broken cover and told The Independent that they expect to vote with the government in order to avoid a no deal, which they believe the prime minister would go through with.
But Labour’s leadership has said it will vote down any deal that does not meet its six tests of preserving jobs, workers’ rights, and environmental standards, and that does not include a customs union with the EU. The party also says it will vote down a “blind Brexit” that does not give sufficient detail about the future relationship.

EbS
Parliament Live
The European Court of Justice is set to rule on whether Britain can unilaterally revoke Article 50 and cease the process, with the manoeuvre currently the subject of legal dispute.
A consultation of members of the campaign group Momentum, which is supportive of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, found that 92 per cent want Labour MPs to vote against Ms May’s deal and that 89 per cent believe no deal is not a viable option.
Sir Keir was in Brussels on Wednesday meeting with EU officials including Frans Timmermans, the deputy head of the European Commission; Markus Winkler, a senior European parliament official; and Roberto Gualtieri, a socialist member of the EU parliament’s Brexit Steering Group. He was also received by European Council officials.


Since the most recent of the many deaths of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, the five stages of grief have been clear to see: denial, denial, denial, denial and denial. At the despatch box of the House of Commons on Monday afternoon, it was clear to see the prime minister was finally advancing from stage one to two.
In case you’ve forgotten, her withdrawal agreement first died the moment the details of it were made public, in November, and the DUP and various Brexiteers said they couldn’t possibly support it. Then it died again when several members of the cabinet resigned over it. It died again shortly after that because she had to cancel the “meaningful vote” on it in the House of Commons. When she did that, she said she’d go to Brussels and get some concessions on the backstop. It died the day after that when her own MPs tried to topple her.
The next day it died again when not only did she not get any concessions from Brussels, the meaningless ones they had tentatively agreed to give her in advance of the summit, they actually removed them from the resolutions at the end.
It died again last week when she finally had to put it before the House of Commons to be voted on, despite it being identical to the version she had withdrawn because she knew she would lose.
Then, when it was actually voted on, it died again, and this was the most severe death of them all – when it was rejected by 432 votes to 202.
That death was meant to be its last death. But it appears Ms May thinks it is still alive. When she appeared in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon, to set out her plan B, now that plan A had died a 14th time, it was clear plan B would involve carrying on with plan A as if absolutely nothing had happened.
“Following last week’s vote, it is clear that the government’s approach had to change,” she breezily informed parliament. Over the next 20 minutes or so, it would become clear that nothing, in fact, has changed. Indeed, the most certain way of knowing that nothing had changed was Theresa May claiming something had. Traditionally, everything changes and Theresa May says nothing has. So when she says it is clear that something has to change, you can be certain that nothing has.
She would, she said, “talk to the DUP” to find ways of tweaking the Irish backstop arrangements. At all of her deal’s various deaths over the last two months, she has made abundantly clear that her deal “is the only deal” and that “there is no deal without a backstop”. The EU, meanwhile, could not have been clearer that the deal cannot be renegotiated.
If the backstop could be renegotiated, one has to imagine Theresa May would have attempted to have done so to prevent any or indeed all of the deaths of her deal that had occurred before now.
She had, she said, held cross-party talks with various colleagues, and was disappointed that the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had declined her invitation. But everyone who has taken the trouble to meet with her has found that her red lines, on leaving the customs union, on not extending Article 50, on no second referendum, remain as red and as rigid as ever. So the point of going to meet her is not clear to see. She wants only to spread the stench of death around her deal on to the other parties. To establish a phony cross-party consensus to share the load for her own failings.
She explained, yet again, how none of the alternative options were, in her opinion, acceptable. A second referendum could “damage social cohesion by undermining our faith in democracy”, she said, and in so doing copied the denuded cowardice of Chris Grayling, which is to obliquely stoke fear of what the far right might do if they don’t get the damaging outcomes they seek, now that we have pandered to them for so long.
Jeremy Corbyn rose to tell her “it is becoming like Groundhog Day”, before demanding that she “take no deal off the table” for what feels like the 10,000th day in a row, all the while reading from a script that took into account not a whisper of anything the prime minister had just been saying.
Rarely can the House of Commons have felt more like a vacuum of ideas and a vacuum of leadership. Of the various ways out of the mess, a general election is becoming to feel the most likely. But neither May nor Corbyn are offering anything on Brexit that waves a bat anywhere in the direction of reality. Who or what they would expect the public to bother getting out of the house to vote for is a mystery. All that can be known for certain is that Theresa May’s deal will die again in the very near future. Who knows, maybe then she’ll finally make it all the way to denial.


Theresa May has opened the door to an even longer Brexit transition period, setting herself on yet another collision course with Tory Eurosceptics and potentially growing the EU divorce bill by billions.
The prime minister brought up the possibility of an extension during meetings with EU leaders in Brussels on Wednesday as she sought to find a way to break the deadlock in negotiations.
The period – during which the UK would stay completely tied to EU rules without any say on them – is hugely unpopular with Brexiteers, who believe it would make Britain a “vassal state” of the bloc.
European Parliament president Antonio Tajani, who was in the room while Ms May spoke with leaders, said the prime minister had listed a longer transition as a possible solution to the current impasse.
“It was mentioned – both sides mentioned the idea of an extension of a transition period as one possibility that is on the table and would be looked into,” Mr Tajani told reporters after Ms May’s address.
“Theresa May during her speech said it’s possible to achieve an agreement also on a transition period, but not with a clear position on the timing.”
With a smile, he added: “This Council is the transition Council.”
Both sides mentioned the idea of an extension of a transition period as one possibility that is one the table and would be looked into
The prime minister is also understood to have brought up an extension to the period in a private bilateral meeting with Council president Donald Tusk earlier in the afternoon.
One Brussels official told The Independent that the UK’s negotiators had been sounding out a possible extension to the transition “for months” in talks.
The prime minister herself had hours earlier failed to rule out a longer transition when asked about it by reporters as she arrived at the summit – avoiding touching on the issue entirely in her answer.
The Independent understands that the UK has previously been reticent to sign up to a longer transition because of the extra costs that would be involved. The EU has said the UK would have to keep paying into the bloc’s budget during any extension – reopening discussions about the “divorce bill”.
It would also complicate talks because the UK would have to participate in the EU’s next budget cycle, which begins the day after the existing 21-month transition is set to end.
An EU source told The Independent that the UK’s response to the offer of a longer period, made during last week’s aborted talks, was that the “financial implications would be complicated”.
Trade experts and many in Brussels have longed believed that the existing 21 months would be nowhere near enough to negotiate a trade deal, and that an extension is inevitable.
Senior UK government officials travelling with the PM to the summit also dodged the question when asked if they were set against a longer transition.
“Our position is as it was, which is that the implementation period has an end date and we are not proposing to change that,” one senior British official said. They later added that the government was not ruling an extension out, however.
Speaking at a press conference, Parliament president Mr Tajani recounting his meeting with Ms May, said: “I underlined that for the European Parliament, to have three years is a good solution.

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Parliament Live
“May, speaking [listing] different solutions, said also that there are proposals on the transition period. Not against, but more or less neutral.”
Speaking to EU leaders behind closed doors, the prime minister is understood to have said: “We’ve shown we can do difficult deals together constructively. I remain confident of a good outcome. The last stage will need courage, trust and leadership on both sides.”
The PM addressed EU leaders before they departed to have dinner, in a separate room to her. She then retired to the British Residence in Brussels for a dinner with her team while the 27 leaders ate together and heard from chief negotiator Michel Barnier about talks.
The leaders are expected to confirm on Thursday whether or not they will hold a special summit in November to finalise a Brexit deal, or whether there is no point. Arriving at the summit on Wednesday Mr Barnier said he needed “much more time” to conclude an agreement.


Theresa May has risked another bitter clash with anti-EU Tories by saying she is “not proposing” to replace the Irish backstop in her Brexit deal.
The prime minister appeared to go back on last week’s Commons vote – to replace the backstop “with alternative arrangements” – by saying she was only seeking “changes”.
Brexiteer Tories have already warned such a compromise would be unacceptable – ruling out either a unilateral withdrawal clause or an end date to the backstop.
Instead, they insist the prime minister must demand that Brussels scrap it altogether and replace it with new – unproven – technology, to avoid the return of checks at the Irish border.
The hardline European Research Group reacted immediately to the speech, in Belfast, saying: “Even if she doesn't mean what she said, we still do.”
Until now, Ms May has insisted three options were being considered – a time limit, an exit mechanism, or ill-defined” alternative arrangements” to the backstop.
However, she faced a backlash in Northern Ireland, where most residents and businesses support the guarantee as a way of avoiding a no-deal Brexit.
Asked how she could convince the people of Northern Ireland to accept a Brexit deal which was stripped of the backstop, Mrs May said: "I'm not proposing to persuade people to accept a deal that doesn't contain that insurance policy for the future.
“What parliament has said is that they believe there should changes made to the backstop.”
The prime minister reiterated her message when she was asked how business leaders could trust her after she “shafted them” over the backstop.
She replied: “You've used the term U-turn in your question: there is no suggestion that we are not going to ensure that, in the future, there is provision for this - it's been called an insurance policy, the backstop.”
Ms May said it would ensure that if a trade deal was “not in place by the end of the implementation period there will be arrangements in place to ensure that we deliver no hard border”.
But one prominent Brexiteer Tory, John Whittingdale, reacted to Ms May’s comments by pointing out she had set up a “working party” to explore ideas that “would not need the backstop”.
“That’s the kind of alternative that it is in the interest, not just of Northern Ireland, but the United Kingdom as a whole,” he said.
The prime minister will set out her ideas in Brussels on Thursday, where she will meet both Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, the presidents of the European Commission and Council respectively.
The prime minister also dismissed a threatened legal challenge against her Brexit deal by former Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, on the grounds the backstop would breach the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
"The attorney general [Geoffrey Cox] made clear in the House of Commons that we believe that, legally, the protocol that was negotiated with the European Union does respect all aspects of the Belfast Agreement,” she said.


Theresa May has urged MPs to back her plans or face the prospect of "no Brexit at all" before heading to Brussels for talks with Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.
Tory MPs lined up to demand the prime minister renegotiate parts of her Brexit deal during a fiery prime minister's questions session, where Ms May sought to sell the plan to her divided party.
Earlier, senior Tories including Amber Rudd and Damian Collins opened the door to a new referendum, as the prime ministers hopes of securing a parliamentary majority appeared to fade.
It also comes amid suggestions from Brussels that a summit to sign off on the draft withdrawal agreement on Sunday could be called off unless progress is made on finalising a political declaration on future relations.
If you want to follow events as they happened, see our live coverage below
Welcome to The Independent's politics liveblog, where we will be bringing you the latest updates throughout the day.
Theresa May heads to Brussels on Wednesday to meet Jean-Claude Juncker in a bid to hammer out the final details of the Brexit deal with the EU.
The prime minister’s visit comes days ahead of a European summit to sign off the agreement, but amid a heated row in her own party over whether it should be backed.
Read the story here: 
Tory MP Robert Halfon has issued a desperate plea to Larry, the Downing Street cat, to rid him of the mice plaguing his parliamentary office.
Amber Rudd has admitted “anything could happen” if Theresa May’s Brexit deal is defeated and suggested MPs will then prefer a Final Say referendum to crashing out of the EU.
The new work and pensions secretary undermined the prime minister’s threat of “my deal or no deal”, saying: “There isn’t a majority in the House of Commons to allow that to take place.
More here:
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell is making fresh overtures to business leaders today in a speech at ReutersLive.
My colleague Ben Kentish is in the audience.
Karen Bradley tells the Northern Ireland Committee that the controversial backstop plan could be resolved by alternative means, eg technological checks on the border.
The Northern Ireland Secretary is getting a bit of a hard time from the DUP during the session.
Jim Shannon, the MP for Strangford, said: "We are quite annoyed," by the PM's Brexit plans. He says he is a "team player" and has walked through the voting lobbies to support the government - as part of the confidence and supply agreement Theresa May has with the DUP.
However the backstop is a "red line" for his party.
Mr Shannon asks: "Why are you pursuing a policy that is at odds with the majority of MPs and why there's a need to pursue something that's so much against the confidence and supply agreement with my party?"
Ms Bradley says a hard border was unacceptable as it would break up the integrity of the UK.
She said: "The safeguards put in place, the reassurances given, the way that the EU dislike the backstop means as a legal construct, not as a person or country, there is no way that there will be a situation where we can be bound into the backstop indefinitely.
"The right thing to do is to accept the deal and to get the future relationship and make sure we never go into the backstop in any way."
She says the right thing to do is to accept the withdrawal agreement and make sure the UK never goes into the backstop. There would never have been an agreement without one, she says.
Mr Shannon says this is an insurance policy that you can't claim on and he fundamentally disagrees with her.
Jim Shannon accuses the NI Secretary of engaging in a "love-in" with businesses and says she is "only seeking the opinion you want".
“If you don’t cast your net wider and seek opinions of other people, and stop seeking opinion of one blinkered opinion then you’re going to get a very rude awakening."
Karen Bradley says she isn't happy with every element of the deal but it's better than leaving without a deal. This is No10 talking - offering May's deal or no deal.
Shannon says he cannot support this.
Bradley says they will have to agree to disagree - but talks up the benefits of this deal.
Labour Brexiteer Kate Hoey asks how she felt when Shailesh Vara resigned as Northern Ireland minister last week over Brexit.
Karen Bradley said she was sad but she respects his position. 
Hoey asks whether she raised it in cabinet but Ms Bradley refuses to comment on cabinet conversations.
She then moves onto the backstop, which starts to rile Bradley. She forcefully suggests that the backstop is subject to "mutual agreement" between the EU and the UK, and Northern Ireland cannot be split from the rest of the UK.
Hoey then cheekily refers to an interview Ms Bradley gave to the House, where she claimed she didn't know people in Northern Ireland voted on constitutional lines.
Bradley gets very cross and calls her "Miss Hoey".
Here's the piece we wrote on the row in September:
Kate Hoey says there is a perception that 'whatever the PM says you will go along with it', as part of a frosty exchange.
Bradley says she could take offence to the comments, and she has 'a brain in my head and I'm perfectly capable of thinking'.


Theresa May is set to make a major new compromise in Brexit talks in a bid to break the deadlock over the Irish border problem.
Under proposals to be brought forward by the UK government, Britain is expected to accept some checks taking place between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
The plans are likely to spark angry reaction from Brexiteers and the DUP, on whom the PM relies for a Commons majority, who have said that they will not accept any checks or different treatment for Northern Ireland.
The concession comes as Mrs May gave a tough-talking dinner speech to EU leaders in Salzburg in which she said the European Commission’s proposal “that I should assent for a legal separation of the United Kingdom into two customs territories is not credible”.
But the PM’s carefully-worded attack on the EU’s “backstop” notably left the door open to regulatory checks at Irish Sea ports, which are technically different but similar to customs checks.
The shift, combined with other moves by the EU to “de-dramatise” its own backstop plan, means there is now a real possibility that both sides could meet in the middle on the issue – which would allow them to prevent a hard border with Ireland and avoid a no-deal Brexit.
A senior UK government official speaking in the margins of the Salzburg summit said the government would bring forward new proposals for its own backstop, and indicated that regulatory checks on the Irish sea were now on the table.
“There are checks which take place already [between Northern Ireland and Great Britain] in relation to some agricultural products,” the official said.
“On the Irish backstop, we have put forward our proposal in relation to customs backstop. We’ve been having discussions on that with the EU for a number of months now.
“We’ve always said that we will need to bring forward further proposals in relation to the regulatory aspects of the backstop. That will happen.”
The official insisted that customs checks at ports would undermine the economic and constitutional integrity of the UK and would not be drawn on why the Government did not consider regulatory checks to do so as well.
Our only red line is that we are not treated any different from the rest of the United Kingdom
The looming concession by the UK comes after months of work by negotiators on both sides to decide which if any checks could be moved away from ports in a bid to "de-dramatise" them.Michel Barnier also softened the EU’s stance on Tuesday night, stating that “most checks can take place away from the border – at the company premises or in the markets”.
The Independent understands that some officials regard it as easier to move customs compliance checks away from ports, but not regulatory checks. The combination of concessions – with Britain accepting regulatory checks at ports and the EU moving some customs checks in-land – therefore appears to clear the path for a potential solution.
Whether the compromise backstop would get through the House of Commons is another matter. Mrs May has no majority without the DUP’s nine MPs, but the party’s leader, Arlene Foster, has said “our only red line is that we are not treated any different from the rest of the United Kingdom, that there are no trade barriers put up between Northern Ireland and our biggest market – which, of course, is Great Britain”.
Speaking of Mrs May over the summer, Ms Foster said: “I have confidence that she knows that she cannot bring forward anything that will breach that red line or we simply will not be able to support them.”
The movement in talks comes after Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, warned the UK publicly that the UK policy on Ireland, as well as the PM’s Chequers proposals on trade, needed to be reworked and further negotiated.
Solving the Irish border issue would remove the biggest stumbling block to a withdrawal agreement, though a host of other issues – such as whether the UK will continue to accept EU protected designations of origin and how the withdrawal agreement will be governed – are yet to be worked out.
Negotiators also want to come to an agreement about what Britain’s future relationship with the EU will look like, but with the Chequers trade proposals roundly rejected by the Commission and little hope of coming up with a detailed plan, there is disagreement about how much detail that statement should include.
Some member states say the plan should be permitted to be vague to help prevent a no-deal, while France and other member states argue it would be wrong to kick the trade talks can down the road.


Theresa May hopes of avoiding a chaotic Brexit face another blow from a House of Lords ambush that would stop the imposition of essential new trade rules.
The government is set to be defeated on Monday when peers rebel over ministers’ refusal to guarantee food safety, animal welfare and the power of parliament to block a free-for-all, The Independent has learned.
In an extremely rare move, the Lords is poised to vote to shelve the Trade Bill unless the government agrees to put flesh on the “skeleton” – something ministers have failed to do for 15 months.
Crucially, Liam Fox, the trade secretary, has admitted that preparations for a no-deal Brexit – by falling back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules – are impossible unless the bill passes.
“They need the Trade Bill for Brexit and we are extremely confident this vote will be successful, unless the government stops just saying ‘trust us’,” said a Lords source.
Under the plan, detailed scrutiny of the legislation will be abandoned until the government explains how future trade agreements will be agreed and scrutinised.
Ministers have stoked controversy about whether they would allow the import of chickens soaked in chlorine, beef fed with hormones and genetically modified crops, in the desperation for a US trade deal.
Last year, the prime minister, asked if parts of the NHS would be up “for sale”, said it was too early to judge what “requirements” the US would have in those post-Brexit talks.
Now the passage of the bill is in jeopardy with the potential derailing of an already extraordinarily tight timetable, with just 69 days until departure on 29 March.
Without the bill, the government cannot “roll over” 40 trade deals with other countries enjoyed through EU membership that will lapse if the UK leaves without a deal.
It will also be unable to sign up to the WTO’s general procurement agreement (GPA), in order to buy goods and services, presented by Brexiteers as the route to a no-deal future.
“Certainly, it wouldn’t be possible to have the UK membership of the GPA without the legislation of the trade bill going through,” Mr Fox told MPs last month.
Explaining the move, Baroness Smith, Labour’s leader in the Lords, said: “It’s nearly 15 months since the Trade Bill was introduced to parliament.
“With just 10 weeks until Brexit day, ministers must explain urgently how trade policy will work after Brexit, including how parliament will be engaged and the role of the devolved administrations.
“We also need to know whether or not the government will agree to our call for guarantees on workers’ rights and food safeguarding standards.”
If passed with the support of independent peers, Labour’s “procedural motion” would prevent the bill’s report stage starting on 25 February until a white paper – or similar detailed proposals – have been published.
It comes after a leaked memo from Mr Fox’s department revealed that the UK will not be close to finalising replacements for the EU’s 40 existing agreements with leading global economies by Brexit day.
Compiled by civil servants at the Department for International Trade, it warned that most would be lost without the planned 21-month transition period.
Mr Fox blamed the other countries, saying: “Our side is ready. It is largely dependent on whether other countries believe that there will be no deal, and are willing to put the work into the preparations.”
A Department for International Trade spokesperson said: “The aim of the Trade Bill is to ensure the continuity of our existing trading relationships and it is not an opportunity to renegotiate the terms of the EU’s agreements.
“We have been absolutely clear that we will maintain the UK’s high food standards in both our existing and future free trade agreements. To suggest that the Trade Bill will do otherwise is completely false.”


The head of the civil service has been urged to block the appointment of Brexit mastermind Dominic Cummings to a senior Downing Street role.
Boris Johnson’s decision to invite Mr Cummings to become a key No 10 adviser has sent shockwaves through Westminster, coming only months after he was found in contempt of parliament for refusing to give evidence to the Commons fake news inquiry.
The move also sparked fears among Tory moderates about the new prime minister’s Brexit approach, as Mr Cummings was the architect of Vote Leave’s Take Back Control slogan and the pledge to claw back £350m a week from the EU for the NHS.
The Liberal Democrats have written to Sir Mark Sedwill, the UK’s most senior mandarin, urging him to intervene as they warned the news should “send shivers down the spines” of the British public.
Layla Moran MP argued the Brexiteer’s conduct fell short of necessary Whitehall standards due to his admonishment for contempt and his involvement in Vote Leave’s “misleading” campaign about NHS funds.
She also pointed to the decision by Mr Cummings to leak a confidential Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee report, when he reportedly declared “f*** the charlatans embargo” before posting the document on his personal blog.
Ms Moran told The Independent: “The appointment of Dominic Cummings should send shivers down the spines of UK citizens. This is a man who has peddled lies and flouted the truth for sheer, cynical political gain.
“The dark arts that he proffers should have no place in government, and no place in Downing Street.
“If Boris Johnson is serious about uniting our country, then appointing one of the most divisive figures in politics is hardly the best start.
“Boris Johnson needs to act like a prime minister, and not be the puppeteer of someone who has so little respect for the British people.”
The intervention comes after Mr Johnson carried out the most dramatic cabinet reshuffle in modern history, installing Brexiteers in top posts and culling allies of Theresa May from the government.
He has also appointed old allies from Vote Leave and City Hall to key roles behind the scenes.
The new prime minister has already faced a row after it emerged his new digital adviser, Chloe Westley, described an ally of the far-right activist Tommy Robinson as a “hero”.
Mr Cummings, another Vote Leave veteran, has become one of the most senior political aides in Downing Street, alongside Mr Johnson’s former City Hall adviser Sir Edward Lister, who has been drafted in as a temporary chief of staff.
Mr Cummings is respected among Brexiteers as being instrumental to the success of the 2016 referendum campaign, but his vocal criticism of MPs and civil servants has ruffled feathers.
Since the referendum, Mr Cummings has described Brexit as a “train wreck”, and said triggering Article 50 too early was like “putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger”. He also branded David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, “thick as mince and lazy as a toad”, and described the Tory European Research Group as “useful idiots for Remain”.
The validity of his appointment was questioned in the Commons by Labour’s Valerie Vaz, who asked whether he would be allowed in parliament following the contempt ruling.
But he was defended by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the newly appointed leader of the Commons, who said: “Parliament did what it did. It passed its sentence; it did not use its ancient powers to imprison or fine the gentleman concerned, and it did not send him to the Clock Tower.
“Therefore, in effect, his conviction is spent, and I believe in the rehabilitation of offenders.”
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Dominic Cummings is a senior adviser to the prime minister. The prime minister’s entire team will work with the greatest respect for the role of parliament.”


A senior Tory MP has compared Conservative grassroots members to the Taliban and warned that MPs are afraid to speak out over Brexit due to fears of being deselected.
Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, argued that there was Conservative support for a second referendum but some MPs were reluctant to act following confidence motions against several pro-EU Tories.
Speaking at an event in London, Mr Grieve said Boris Johnson had been "radicalised" over Brexit, leaving a Final Say referendum as the only credible option to thwart a disorderly exit from the EU in the autumn.
His comments came after Mr Johnson told a leadership hustings that the Irish backstop proposal was "dead" and vowed to scrap it from any Brexit deal.
Mr Grieve, who has led a string of Brexit rebellions, said there was a "substantial number" of Conservative MPs for whom "no-deal is completely unacceptable" but admitted that there was a lot of "can-kicking" underway.
He told a People's Vote event: "They do exist. They sometimes have concerns about their own local associations and the fear of being deselected, I think there is absolutely no doubt about that.
"There has been a sort of Talibanisation of sections of the Conservative Party grassroots membership, with some vociferous minorities that are often capable of dominating meetings coming along trying to get rid of MPs, interestingly enough, who have been totally loyal but simply have indicated by the occasional expression of doubt that the purity of the ERG Brexit vision might be mistaken.
"They have been at the rough end of quite a lot of difficulty and I think that's one of the reasons why they tend to hide a little behind the parapet."
Mr Grieve is among several pro-EU Tories who have faced confidence votes over Brexit from their local associations, including Philip Lee, Sam Gyimah and David Gauke.
He raised the prospect that he will resign the Tory whip in the likely event that Mr Johnson becomes prime minister next week over concerns about his suitability to lead.
Mr Johnson's bid to become prime minister looks all but assured, with the results of the ballot of Tory members expected next week.
Mr Grieve said the Tory frontrunner's pledge to scrap the backstop were an example of how the leadership race has been "played to a tune of growing extremism".
He said: "When challenged and confronted he radicalised even further and excluded any possibility of trying to negotiate some way out of the backstop at all. It had to go in its totality.
"The consequence of that is make it the choices starker and starker."
Ex-Labour foreign secretary Margaret Beckett told the event that she was not surprised by Mr Johnson's backstop comments, adding: "I've thought for weeks, months, if it came to it they would be prepared to throw the Irish situation under a bus.
"That they should however take that point of view I think is quite terrifying, considering what we know and what the problems in Ireland have been in the past."
Both MPs were speaking at the launch of a cross-party study that warned all other routes out of the Brexit crisis - such as a general election or renegotiating Theresa May's deal - were doomed to fail.
The next prime minister would then be forced to suspend parliament to force through a no-deal but would face an immediate confidence vote, the report argues.


A Conservative MP has called for Brexit to be marked next week with a firework display that can be seen from France and a huge banner hanging from the White Cliffs of Dover.
Natalie Elphicke, the MP for Dover, has urged the UK to celebrate its exit from the European Union by hanging a banner displaying the words “We love the UK” on 31 January.
The newly elected Conservative has suggested the banner should replace a rival 150 sq m “We still love EU” banner which is being crowdfunded by Liberal Democrat MEP Antony Hook.
“Sadly, we can’t stop Brexit now, but we can send a strong message to the world that we still love Europe,” Mr Hook said in a statement announcing the proposal.
The crowdfunding campaign has raised nearly £14,000 and easily passed its £5,500 target to fund the pro-Europe banner.
Ms Elphicke has said her proposal is an opportunity to use the Brexit date “to share our positive message about Britain and the future we can make”.
“This is a moment where we can look forward with ambition to the Britain we can build in the decades to come,” the MP said.
“That’s why the message we should be beaming onto the White Cliffs is that ‘We love the UK’. Because we are proud to become an independent nation again.”
Mr Hook has promised to spend the surplus funds on “an exciting extra demonstration” for the date.
The Conservative politician’s call follows a failed attempt by pro-Brexit MPs to make Big Ben bong on Brexit day.
Boris Johnson, the prime minister, had suggested crowdfunding the £500,000 bill for restoring Big Ben to working order for the date, but his proposal backfired when parliamentary authorities said they could not accept money raised by the public.
“The House of Commons authorities have set out that there may be potential difficulties in accepting money from public donations,” a spokesperson for Mr Johnson said last week.
Instead, a clock counting down to the moment Britain leaves the EU will be projected onto the outside of No 10 and a light show will illuminate buildings around Whitehall.
The Independent has approached Ms Elphicke for further comment on her proposal.
The MP succeeded her husband, Charlie Elphicke, in the 2019 general election after he stepped down following allegations of sexual assault, which he has denied.


Angry backbench Conservative MPs have hit out at Theresa May over her extraordinary appeal to Labour and other parties to help her govern.
Desmond Swayne, a former minister, criticised “this new lovefest with the benches opposite” – urging the Prime Minister to approach Jeremy Corbyn with “a very long spoon”.
And Edward Leigh, a senior backbencher, called on her to listen to ideas put forward by fellow Conservatives, not to “useless Socialist” proposals.
The backlash came as Ms May prepares to relaunch her beleaguered premiership to face what she will call the new “reality” as a prime minister without a Commons majority.
In a speech on Tuesday, she will appeal for cross-party unity to drive through big changes in social care and to tackle abuses of workers’ rights in the so-called gig economy,
The Prime Minister will also appeal to Labour and other parties to “come forward” with their own ideas for policy and to “contribute, not just criticise”.
It marks a stunning change of tack from before the election, when a much stronger Ms May accused her opponents of trying to sabotage Brexit and vowed to crush them.
It has been prompted by growing talk of an attempt by Tory MPs to force her out of office over the summer, thought to be led by supporters of David Davis, the Brexit Secretary.
In the Commons, Ms May’s appeal for help was ridiculed and roundly rejected by Mr Corbyn, who hailed it as proof that she had “run out of steam”.
“The Government is apparently now asking other parties for their policy ideas,” the Labour leader said.
“If you would like it, I'm very happy to furnish you with a copy of our manifesto or better still, an early election so the people in this county can decide.”
Later, Mr Swayne said: “About this new lovefest with the benches opposite. Given the record of the leader of the opposition on the Counter Terrorism and Security Act, does she possess a very long spoon?”
Intervening in the statement on the G20 summit, Mr Leigh asked why Ms May was seeking ideas “from a man who tried to remove her from office”.
“Will she be prepared to take an idea from a friend who stood on a platform to keep her in office – and wants her to stay in office?”
In reply to Mr Swayne, Ms May suggested she did not expect support from Mr Corbyn when it comes to providing new powers to fight terrorism.
But she said: “I look forward to Labour MPs, and indeed others on the benches opposite in this House, coming forward and supporting those counter-terrorism measures.”
Earlier, at a press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Ms May declined to say if her appeal for cross-party help would extend to Brexit.
The Prime Minister also sought to face down a looming Conservative revolt over her plans to leave the European civil nuclear regulator, insisting she wanted a close relationship.
Euratom is not formally part of the EU but is under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – which Ms May has vowed will end with Brexit.
She insisted: “Membership of Euratom is inextricably linked with membership of the European Union.”
But the Government wanted to “ensure that we can maintain those relationships, that cooperation with Euratom, which enables the exchange of scientists, the exchange of material”.


Tory MPs expelled by Boris Johnson have joined with the opposition to demand the release of a raft of internal communications between his top advisers about his controversial suspension of parliament.
Included on the list of officials targeted are controversial adviser Dominic Cummings, director of communications Lee Cain and director of legislative affairs Nikki da Costa.
In an emergency debate in the Commons hours before it is shut down on Monday, the rebel MPs aim to secure a “humble address” to the Queen effectively resulting in an order from the monarch to release the material by the end of Wednesday.

They are demanding “all correspondence, whether formal or informal in both written and electronic form” relating to the prorogation sent since the day before Mr Johnson’s arrival in office on 24 July.
And their emergency motion makes clear this should include messages sent via the WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and Signal apps, by text or iMessage and from “private email accounts both encrypted and unencrypted”.
The MPs, who include former Tories Dominic Grieve, Sir Oliver Letwin, Justin Greening and Guto Bebb - all expelled by Mr Johnson after voting against the government - are also demanding the release of all documents relating to the Operation Yellowhammer preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
The release of such a volume of internal government communications on a matter of the highest political controversy would be unprecedented.
But Mr Johnson’s loss of his majority through the removal of the whip from 21 MPs and the defection of Phillip Lee to the Liberal Democrats have left him vulnerable to defeat even on so sensitive a vote.
Commons Speaker John Bercow must decide whether to give leave for the motion to be considered and MPs must approve it for debate before a vote can take place later on Monday.


Philip Hammond says Boris Johnson has no power to expel him from the Conservative Party over Brexit and has threatened “the fight of a lifetime” to save it from “entryists”.
The former chancellor condemned the “incomers and entryists” – led by Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s key aide – who were turning the party into “a narrow faction”.
And he poured scorn on Mr Johnson’s claim to be able to strike a fresh Brexit deal, saying: “There is no progress. There are no substantive negotiations going on.”
Mr Hammond also predicted victory for the rebels seeking to pass legislation to block a no-deal departure, adding: “There will be enough people for us to get this over the line.”
Local Tories in his Runnymede and Weybridge constituency have already reselected Mr Hammond – even with Mr Johnson’s threat to strip the party whip from him and other rebels.
Asked if No 10 had the power to reverse that decision, the leading Conservative rebel said: “I don’t believe they do and there would certainly be the fight of a lifetime if they tried to.”
That fight could “possibly” be taken the courts, he said, insisting he would not be joining some anti-Johnson Tories who had decided “enough, I’m going”.
“That is not going to be my approach. This is my party. I have been a member of this party for 45 years,” Mr Hammond said.
In a clear swipe at Mr Cummings, the former Vote Leave chief, he said: “I am going to defend my party against incomers, entryists, who are trying to turn it from a broad church to narrow faction.
“People who are at the heart of this government, who are probably not even members of the Conservative Party, who care nothing about the future of the Conservative Party.”
In an explosive interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Hammond – who was sacked in July – accused Mr Johnson of misleading the public by denying he wanted a snap election.
“Prime minister Johnson has always intended that there will be an election, despite what he says,” the former chancellor said.
But he urged Jeremy Corbyn to step back from giving the government the votes to trigger the election until legislation to block a no-deal Brexit was nailed down.
“Once the election is called, and parliament is dissolved, the prime minister has control over the election date,” Mr Hammond warned. “He can change the election date by proclamation.”


Jeremy Hunt has said that he is the Tory leadership candidate who can be trusted to get a Brexit deal with the EU, in an apparent swipe at rival Boris Johnson.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, the foreign secretary said that Tory voters must make a judgment on the contenders’ “personality” and warned that if the UK sent “someone where there’s no trust” to talks, there would be “no negotiation, no deal”.
Mr Hunt denied that he was questioning the trustworthiness of his predecessor as foreign secretary, who has frequently infuriated Brussels, but his comments will be seen as a warning that the former London mayor’s character may get in the way of a smooth and orderly Brexit.
They came as Labour voiced alarm over a promise from Mr Johnson to “reform” the NHS if he takes power next month.
In a video, obtained by The Guardian, of the leadership frontrunner answering a question about his NHS plans at a party event in Sutton Coldfield on Saturday, Mr Johnson can be heard saying: “It needs more money but where you are absolutely right is that it needs reform.
“We can’t just put more money in without also asking for productivity improvements as well. We have got to be careful and realise the pressures our doctors and nurses are under, but it’s not just a question of more money.”
Jon Ashworth, Shadow health secretary, said: “These comments are alarming but unsurprising given the hard right agenda Johnson has been putting forward.
“His tax plans will benefit the richest, he’s the biggest defender of the bankers who crashed the economy, and he’s been buddying up with Trump to sell off our NHS to US corporations.
“His comments to Tory Party members about his plans for the NHS need to be clarified immediately.”
After widespread allegations that Mr Johnson was “bottling” debate and a weekend dominated by reports of an altercation with his partner at their south London flat, the former foreign secretary embarked on what is promised to be a media blitz, with a series of radio interviews and a walkabout in Oxshott, Surrey.
It was also reported on Wednesday that Mr Johnson has hired Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, to reinvigorate his campaign following the constant media questions about his private life. Mr Duncan Smith, a fellow hardline Brexiteer, will be the campaign chairman.
Speaking to LBC radio, Mr Johnson refused to explain the events which led to police being called to partner Carrie Symonds’ home on Friday and dismissed “waste of time” questions about photos which later emerged of them smiling and holding hands in a countryside setting.
Mr Johnson backtracked on his widely-challenged plan for avoiding punishing tariffs after a no-deal Brexit, admitting he would be unable to do it “unilaterally”.
He acknowledged that Bank of England governor Mark Carney was right to say there had to be “agreement on both sides” before the UK and EU could take advantage of a procedure known as Gatt 24 to continue with existing zero-tariff arrangements in the event of no-deal.
On TalkRadio, he revealed that he relaxes by making models of buses out of wine crates
And he said that getting out of the EU by the deadline of 31 October was a “do or die, come what may” issue for him.
He later sent an open letter to Mr Hunt, urging his rival to match his pledge that the UK will leave the EU by Halloween, deal or no deal.
But Mr Hunt dismissed Halloween as a “fake deadline” and confirmed that he would be ready to extend negotiations again if it was clear there was a deal to be got.
He told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that Mr Johnson’s promise to leave by the end of October “come hell or high water” was “more likely to trip us into a general election before we’ve delivered Brexit, and that would hand the keys (to Downing Street) to Jeremy Corbyn and then we’d have no Brexit at all.”
Mr Hunt said he would not rule out a no-deal Brexit, but added: “If I did it, it would be with a heavy heart because businesses up and down the country would face a lot of destruction. I think it’d be very bad for the union with Scotland. I would do it though, but as a last resort.”
He said Tories must ask themselves which of the candidates would be able to persuade the EU to negotiate a different deal from the agreement reached with Theresa May last November.
“Both Boris and I want to change that deal, and the judgement is, who is the person we trust as PM to go to Brussels and bring back that deal?” he said.
“It’s about the personality of our PM. If you choose someone where there’s no trust, there’s going to be no negotiation, no deal. And quite possibly a general election which could mean we have no Brexit either. If you choose someone that the other side will talk to who’s going to be very tough, there will least be in negotiation and I believe this deal to be done.”
Asked if he was saying that Mr Johnson would be untrustworthy as a PM, he replied: “I would never make those comments about a fellow candidate ... I’m saying I am trustworthy and I do believe that I can be trusted to deliver this deal.”
After Sky News cancelled a planned TV debate because Mr Johnson refused to take part, Mr Hunt taunted his rival on social media as #BoJoNoShow.
The former health secretary repeated his assurance that as prime minister he would not legislate to reduce the maximum limit for abortion, after saying last week that he would prefer it to be 12 weeks after conception rather than the current 24.
But he told the BBC that if a backbench MP brought forward a private members’ bill on the issue, he would make his decision on which way to vote “a matter of conscience”.


The Tory party will not accept a “ghastly cabal” of pro-EU cabinet ministers stitching up a replacement for Theresa May, Iain Duncan Smith has warned.
The former Conservative leader declared war on senior ministers rumoured to be planning to topple the prime minister in favour of David Lidington, her de-facto deputy.
However, significantly, the arch-Brexiteer left open the “option” of backing Ms May’s deal if it returns for a third “meaningful vote”, for fear of a worse “alternative”.
Lashing out at media briefings of a “cabinet coup”, Mr Duncan Smith said: “I think that’s appalling, I think they should be censured and some of them should be sacked.
“And the idea of a cabal, a cabal that never wanted to leave the European Union, turning out to decide what should happen over our future would be unacceptable to my colleagues.”
Tom Bell
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he insisted: “If there is to be a leadership change, that leadership change has to be done through the correct process, with the membership out there deciding who will be their leader – not some ghastly five or six man and woman cabal that actually decides things internally.”
On suggestions of Mr Lidington as a stand-in leader, he said: “If the answer is a caretaker Mr Lidington, or someone else, what the hell is the question?”
The attack came as Mr Lidington attempted to stamp on the speculation, saying: “I don’t think that I’ve any wish to take over from the PM [who] I think is doing a fantastic job.
“I tell you this. One thing that working closely with the prime minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task.
The cabinet office minister said he was “not attracted by”, nor had time for plotting, adding: “I’ve learnt to take rumours in the papers with a bit of a pinch of salt over the years.”
Ms May has hinted she will not allow the third “meaningful vote”, after the Democratic Unionist Party read the last rites on it last Friday.
However, some Brexiteers fear “indicative votes” this week could pave the way for a softer Brexit or a longer delay to departure from the EU.
Asked if he could yet back the deal, given the opportunity, Mr Duncan Smith said: “I’m going to keep, and I recommend my colleagues do, keep their options open on this because we don’t know what’s happening this week.
“We’ve no idea what the alternatives are and whether people vote for this or not depends hugely on whether we are able to leave with no-deal or not or whether there is a change to this.”


The president of the European Commission has criticised the British political class for being more interested in ousting Theresa May than finding a solution to Brexit.
Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday, Jean-Claude Juncker said the withdrawal agreement could not be changed and was not open to negotiation by future Tory leaders.
“I don’t like what is happening ... I have the impression for months now that the main interest for the British political society was how to replace Theresa May and not how to find an arrangement with the European Union,” he told Politico in a live interview.
The commission president added: “We have concluded the withdrawal agreement: this is not a treaty between Theresa May and Juncker, it is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the European Union. It has to be respected.”
Mr Juncker’s comments echo a warning from a commission spokesperson earlier on Tuesday that a new prime minister would not be able to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. A spokesperson had told reporters at lunchtime in Brussels that “the election of a new prime minister will of course not change the parameters of what is on the table”.
The spokesperson added that Brussels was on a “Brexit break” and that it would also “refrain from any positions or opinions that would risk interfering with the ongoing leadership contest in the Conservative Party”.
Asked whether he had a favourite in the Tory leadership contest Mr Juncker simply responded: “No.” He later added: “It’s not our choice and nobody asked our opinion.”
“The withdrawal agreement will not be negotiated. It’s the decision of the Conservative Party to appoint the new prime minister. We have to work with the incoming prime minister like we did with the outgoing prime minister.”
He also explicitly ruled-out a time limit on the controversial Northern Irish backstop.
The intervention by Brussels comes as Tory leadership candidates pledge various strategies to change or circumvent the withdrawal agreement, which was rejected by parliament three times.
Back in Westminster, Boris Johnson had claimed he could withhold payment of the Brexit divorce bill in order to force the EU’s hand and change the deal. Michael Gove has said he would bring a “full stop” to the controversial Irish backstop plan, while Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid have also said they would renegotiate it.
Meanwhile Matt Hancock has said he would push for a time-limit on the policy, which the EU has also ruled out. Mark Harper has said he would replace the withdrawal agreement with the so-called Malthouse compromise, a plan cooked-up by Tory MPs that was met with derision in Brussels when it was first unveiled months ago.
Asked to give a firm prediction of whether Brexit would happen or not, Mr Juncker declined, stressing that he only had a “working assumption” that “the British will leave before 1 November 2019”.
In his wide-ranging interview on Tuesday, Mr Juncker also expressed sympathy for US president Donald Trump, stating: “I like him as a person.” He said Mr Trump “deserves respect because he’s the president of the US”, criticising “nasty comments coming from the European side”.
“When I went to Washington my wife was telling me, don’t kiss Donald Trump,” he added.
The commission president also revealed that he does not look at social media because “I don’t like to see day after day that I’m drunk, that I’m corrupt, that I’m a nobody”. He said he instead had colleagues summarise the best content for his direct consumption.


Voters should abandon “tribal loyalties” and cast their ballots tactically to block Brexit at the first December election for almost a century, former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has urged today.
In his regular column for The Independent, the ex-coalition cabinet minister has reluctantly suggested that in some constituencies it may be necessary for Lib Dem supporters to back a different party.
Preparing to contest his 11th general election, Sir Vince, who led his party between 2017 and 2019, said the upcoming vote will represent a “challenge for all of us in the political world” and the last chance to stop Brexit.
“I am very anxious to see my party fully recover from the depths of 2015 and 2017 and to build on our two successful elections – local and European – this year and make big gains at the expense of the two major parties,” Sir Vince wrote.
He added: “But I also want to save the country from Brexit. My ambition for the former will be tempered by the latter. Fortunately, these aims coincide in large parts of the country.
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“But they do not yet do so everywhere. Remain vs Leave is the new dividing line in British politics, along with the issues of identity that lie behind it. Voters are smart enough to get what they want.”
While his successor Jo Swinson has discussed pro-Remain pacts in certain constituencies at the general election, she has not gone as far to suggest potential Lib Dem supporters should tactically vote Labour in any areas.
Despite having just 20 MPs, Ms Swinson has claimed to be running to become the next prime minister, and has insisted both Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson are not fit to lead the country.
Sir Vince added: “Party leaders will, quite understandably, be appealing to tribal loyalties in the usual way: all three major party leaders are seeking a majority.”
His remarks come after the pro-EU Best for Britain group produced a new tool advising individuals how to vote tactically across constituencies in the UK in order to elect a Final Say supporter in each area to parliament.
Citing the research, the ex-Lib Dem leader claimed: “Without tactical voting, Johnson wins a clear majority in parliament to press ahead with his damaging ‘hard Brexit’.
“However, if 30 per cent of Labour, Lib Dems, Green and nationalist voters vote tactically in their constituencies, any majority for Johnson is wiped out and there is a majority for a people’s vote in the next parliament.”
Best for Britain’s research shows the Conservatives could emerge on 13 December with a 44-seat majority, with 346 MPs, compared with 189 for Labour and 23 for the Liberal Democrats.
If 30 per cent of British voters cast their ballot tactically it could swing the election to give pro-referendum parties a majority of four in the House of Commons, according to the seat-by-seat analysis of 46,000 people over September and October.
But the organisation was forced to defend its tool earlier this week after drawing criticism for advising voters to back the Lib Dems in some seats where the party trails behind Labour.
“The only person who benefits from this bogus advice is Boris Johnson and the vested interests he protects,” a Labour source told The Independent.
They added: “This false information makes Johnson’s sell-out Brexit deal more likely and its peddlers should be ashamed of themselves. A vote for the Lib Dems in almost every seat in the country helps put Johnson in Downing Street.”
But Best for Britain chief executive Naomi Smith said: “Our methodology is data driven. This data is from October 2019 and factored in responses from 46,000 Brits. There’s no organisation in the UK with such sophisticated seat-by-seat data.
“Criticism based on the 2017 general election, while understandable, is therefore outdated. As pollster Lewis Baston said, nearly a third of voters changed parties between 2015 and 2017. And it’s pretty well accepted that a lot has changed since then.”
Speaking on Saturday, as the election campaign entered its first weekend, Ms Swinson also acknowledged her party “didn’t get everything right” in its support of austerity during the Tory-Lib Dem coalition years.
“When it comes to having been in government, as Liberal Democrats we achieved significant successes – more money for the poorest pupils, taking people on low pay out of paying income tax and securing better rights such as same-sex marriage.
“We didn’t get everything right. I’ve been upfront about that and we need to learn from the things we didn’t get right. The bedroom tax would be an example of that. But I’m confident I’ve learned from experience.”


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James O'Brien
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After Jeremy Corbyn's huge victory in the Labour leadership election, James O'Brien calls on the media to change how it talks about him and respect the fact he is "the only alternative Prime Minister".
James opened his show reflecting on his own opinion of Corbyn and how it's changed since Saturday's win.
"The media, myself included, now have to stop talking about Jeremy Corbyn like he is some sort of pimple on the backside of British politics and start talking about him as the only alternative Prime Minister to Theresa May.
"That is what he is."
"I'm not going to lie to you. I've made a conscious personal and professional decision to leave the scepticism at the door and will now treat this party and this man as I treat all politicians - with a degree of cynicism but not as some sort of aberration.
"This is not a dream from which the Labour party is going to wake up, it's real. It's happening."
James queried why Corbyn's views had been spoken about so negatively by some: "Try this on for size. We spend far too much money on war and weapons and we should be spending that money on the poor.
"What's not to like about that?
"Why is that even controversial?"
The LBC presenter then reflected on the way he had spoken about the Labour leader himself: "I used to call it undergraduate, quasi-Marxist. Parking all that language, it's over, it's finished, it's meaningless.
"You begin to look for finer detail in the policy. You struggle at the moment to see it, but who comes up with a fully-fledged manifesto within a few weeks of being leader, or a year? He's not got an election to fight."
Praising the "degree of stength" Corbyn had shown while facing challenges from within his own party, O'Brien finished with a question: "You've got a leader who really does appear to represent a profound alternative to the notion of business as usual.
"Why has that been treated so negatively?"

The majority vote by Britons to leave the European Union was an act of raw democracy. Millions of ordinary people refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt by their presumed betters in the major parties, the leaders of the business and banking oligarchy and the media.
This was, in great part, a vote by those angered and demoralised by the sheer arrogance of the apologists for the "remain" campaign and the dismemberment of a socially just civil life in Britain. The last bastion of the historic reforms of 1945, the National Health Service, has been so subverted by Tory and Labour-supported privateers it is fighting for its life.
A forewarning came when the Treasurer, George Osborne, the embodiment of both Britain's ancient regime and the banking mafia in Europe, threatened to cut £30 billion from public services if people voted the wrong way; it was blackmail on a shocking scale.
Immigration was exploited in the campaign with consummate cynicism, not only by populist politicians from the lunar right, but by Labour politicians drawing on their own venerable tradition of promoting and nurturing racism, a symptom of corruption not at the bottom but at the top. The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East - irst Iraq, now Syria - are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the wilful destruction of Yugoslavia. Before that, there was the theft of Palestine and the imposition of Israel.
The pith helmets may have long gone, but the blood has never dried. A nineteenth century contempt for countries and peoples, depending on their degree of colonial usefulness, remains a centrepiece of modern "globalisation", with its perverse socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor: its freedom for capital and denial of freedom to labour; its perfidious politicians and politicised civil servants.
All this has now come home to Europe, enriching the likes of Tony Blair and impoverishing and disempowering millions. On 23 June, the British said no more.
The most effective propagandists of the "European ideal" have not been the far right, but an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes of the 21st century zeitgeist, even "cool". What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority. In their house paper, the Guardian, they have gloated, day after day, at those who would even consider the EU profoundly undemocratic, a source of social injustice and a virulent extremism known as "neoliberalism".
The aim of this extremism is to install a permanent, capitalist theocracy that ensures a two-thirds society, with the majority divided and indebted, managed by a corporate class, and a permanent working poor. In Britain today, 63 per cent of poor children grow up in families where one member is working. For them, the trap has closed. More than 600,000 residents of Britain's second city, Greater Manchester, are, reports a study, "experiencing the effects of extreme poverty" and 1.6 million are slipping into penury.
On the morning after the vote, a BBC radio reporter welcomed politicians to his studio as old chums. "Well," he said to "Lord" Peter Mandelson, the disgraced architect of Blairism, "why do these people want it so badly?" The "these people" are the majority of Britons.
The wealthy war criminal Tony Blair remains a hero of the Mandelson "European" class, though few will say so these days. The Guardian once described Blair as "mystical" and has been true to his "project" of rapacious war.  The day after the vote, the columnist Martin Kettle offered a Brechtian solution to the misuse of democracy by the masses. "Now surely we can agree referendums are bad for Britain", said the headline over his full-page piece. The "we" was unexplained but understood - just as "these people" is understood. "The referendum has conferred less legitimacy on politics, not more," wrote Kettle. " ... the verdict on referendums should be a ruthless one. Never again."
The kind of ruthlessness Kettle longs for is found in Greece, a country now airbrushed. There, they had a referendum and the result was ignored.  Like the Labour Party in Britain, the leaders of the Syriza government in Athens are the products of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, groomed in the fakery and political treachery of post-modernism. The Greek people courageously used the referendum to demand their government sought "better terms" with a venal status quo in Brussels that was crushing the life out of their country. They were betrayed, as the British would have been betrayed.
On Friday, the Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was asked by the BBC if he would pay tribute to the departed Cameron, his comrade in the "remain" campaign. Corbyn fulsomely praised Cameron's "dignity" and noted his backing for gay marriage and his apology to the Irish families of the dead of Bloody Sunday. He said nothing about Cameron's divisiveness, his brutal austerity policies, his lies about "protecting" the Health Service. Neither did he remind people of the war mongering of the Cameron government: the dispatch of British special forces to Libya and British bomb aimers to Saudi Arabia and, above all, the beckoning of world war three.
In the week of the referendum vote, no British politician and, to my knowledge, no journalist referred to Vladimir Putin's speech in St. Petersburg commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The Soviet victory - at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives and the majority of all German forces - won the Second World War.
Putin likened the current frenzied build up of Nato troops and war material on Russia's western borders to the Third Reich's Operation Barbarossa. Nato's exercises in Poland were the biggest since the Nazi invasion; Operation Anaconda had simulated an attack on Russia, presumably with nuclear weapons. On the eve of the referendum, the quisling secretary-general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, warned Britons they would be endangering "peace and security" if they voted to leave the EU. The millions who ignored him and Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Obama and the man who runs the Bank of England may, just may, have struck a blow for real peace and democracy in Europe.
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Labour members are annnouncing they will leave the Party after the decisive re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
Pictures have been posted on Twitter of red Labour membership cards cut into pieces alongside the hastag #GoodbyeLabour.
In a speech after his win, Mr Corbyn vowed to unite the party and claimed he and Owen Smith were part of the "same Labour family". He secured 61.8 per cent of the vote, compared to Mr Smith's 38.2 per cent.
Richard Wilson, who stood to be Labour's Parliamentary candidate for Guildford in 2015 posted a photo of his destroyed card and said: "The [Labour] Party has been captured by [the] hard left and fatally damaged."
 Alongside a photo of a membership card cut into pieces, one former Labour member cited concerns of Mr Corbyn's supporters engaging in anti-semitism, a scandal which has rocked the party.
Supporters from other parties capitalised on the hashtag – calling for disenchanted Labour voters to join their ranks.
The evening before the leadership election result was announced, "How to leave the Labour party" became the most searched for question about the party on Google.
Mr Corbyn now faces a battle to unify a party that has become fiercely split. He must decide whether to use his mandate to enforce direction or to strike a more concilatory tone.


The letter to Michel Barnier also outlines their disappointment that an agreement on the status of EU nationals has not yet been reached.
It has been sent from the Conservative leaders of of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Wandsworth, who are home to 80,000 EU nationals between them.
The letter states: ‘We were surprised and disappointed that a swift resolution of the issue was not reached over the summer.
‘Based on the conversations we have with our resident EU nationals, your negotiating team’s delay in settling outstanding matters seems unnecessary.
‘We believe that you should be seeking to reassure EU citizens - as they would wish – by reaching agreement with the UK on their status, and we would be grateful if you could act swiftly to allay their concerns and provide them with the certainty that they seek.’
The three councils are establishing residency and passport advisory services for EU citizens living in London.
The letter has been sent from cllr Nickie Aiken, leader of Westminster City Council, cllr Elizabeth Campbell, leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and cllr Ravi Govindia, leader of Wandsworth Borough Council.

The business advisory firm Deloitte commissioned Ipsos MORI to interview 1,099 UK citizens to assess how they see Brexit impacting public services and how they have been affected by austerity.
41% of respondents said leaving the EU will be bad for UK public services, including 20% who think they will be much worse.
Just 28% of those asked thought Brexit will be good for public services, and 26% thinks it will make no difference.
More than half (59%) expect that taxes will be higher as a result of Brexit, with 12% expecting much higher tax levels. Only 32% expect that public spending will be higher.
Respondents in London and Northern Ireland are the most pessimistic about the impact of Brexit on services.
When asked to list two or three policy areas that should be a priority for Government in the coming year, 57% of respondents cited the NHS, ahead of dealing with Brexit at 33%.
Education and schools (30%), the economy (24%) and immigration (22%) also ranked as top public priorities.
Devolution (2%), universities and higher education (5%) and deficit reduction (5%) were the lowest priorities.
‘A large proportion of the public, although mainly those more likely to have voted to remain, see Brexit as having a negative impact on UK public services,’ said Rebecca George, head of public sector at Deloitte.
‘On the other hand, groups who were more likely to vote leave, such as older people, were more likely to think that we will see no difference in service quality, while only around a quarter think Brexit will be positive for public services.
‘There will be some difficult years ahead for UK public services and the challenge on government is to maintain public services and continue their transformation, all while delivering the UK’s exit from the EU.’

The North’s three metro-mayors asked Brexit secretary David Davis for greater certainty over funding currently provided by Brussels and for it to be maintained at the current level for the next 10 years.
Mayors Andy Burnham of Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram of Liverpool City Region and Ben Houchen of Tees Valley asked for the new 'prosperity fund' to be put in local hands when they met Mr Davis in York.
They also raised concerns that the Government could pursue a 'London-centric Brexit'.
Mr Burnham said after the meeting: 'I’ve been saying to all the cabinet as I’ve met them that as politics at a national level becomes more and more mired in this debate they should let positive energy flow into the process of devolution and put some real drive behind their own policy.'
Mr Davis said: 'As we continue to make decisive steps towards our exit, we are committed to bringing all of the UK with us and ensuring that every region is able to flourish.
'The combined authorities play a crucial role in representing the priorities of our regions which is why I’m pleased that we are continuing to build a productive relationship with their mayors since their election in May.
'We will continue working closely with them to understand the potential challenges and opportunities that leaving the EU presents to each of the regions, building on the productive meeting we have held in York today.'

The capital’s future as a thriving economic powerhouse depends on being open to the rest of the world
ast week Nicola Sturgeon stole the headlines by firing the starting gun on another Scottish independence referendum, but it is London that stands to lose the most from Brexit. To borrow the Prime Minister’s favourite phrase, now is not the time for London to foot the bill for this hardest of all hard Brexits.
Sturgeon complained that the Government has ignored the wishes and interests of Scotland, leaving her with no choice but to push for independence. London’s economy is double the size of Scotland’s and there are almost twice as many people living in London as in Scotland, so why have the capital’s interests been totally sidelined and why isn’t London’s voice being heard?
Throughout history there have been great cities that are essentially also states in their own right — Rome, Athens, Singapore and Hong Kong. London — given its predominance in our economic, social and cultural national life — certainly fits the bill too.
What all great cities have in common is an ability to change with the times. If London is to retain its position as the pre-eminent global city we must recognise that this is not a Brexit that will work for the capital — this is a Brexit for the Europhobe hardliners on the Tory backbenches.
This Brexit at any cost, regardless of the consequences, will be absolutely catastrophic for London and our place in the world. But as things go pear-shaped, there is a way out of this and nothing should be off the table when it comes to protecting the strength and future prosperity of our capital.

Whitehall has begun the devolution of control over adult skills, criminal justice services and employment support to City Hall, but Brexit changes everything, so it is perfectly rational to consider more radical proposals than piecemeal devolution.
Let’s not forget that 60 per cent of Londoners voted to Remain. The referendum result sent a shock wave through the capital, but as the dust begins to settle, London finds itself increasingly constrained by — and at odds with — the policies and priorities of our central Government.
If Scotland can have another referendum on independence, then why can’t we have a well-overdue debate about London becoming more autonomous and independent from the rest of the country? If Brexit was a victory of smalltown conservatism, resurgent nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, then London’s status as the financial and cultural capital of Europe depends on resisting these shifts.
Earlier this year the London Finance Commission proposed a comprehensive London devolution package in light of Brexit, including additional control over the tax paid by Londoners and London businesses to bring us into line with our global competitors. New York keeps around 50 per cent of the taxes raised in the city and Tokyo keeps almost three quarters, so a comprehensive settlement to enable London to keep more of the taxes generated here would give the capital the tools we need to mitigate the impact of Brexit and stay ahead in the global race.
Take the issue of immigration. Huge swathes of our nation — including the ministers calling the shots around the Cabinet — view freedom of movement as a problem so severe that we must leave the single market in a desperate bid to reduce net immigration to the “tens of thousands”, regardless of how much it hurts our economy. But London would grind to a halt without European migrants coming to the capital to work, and separate visa arrangement will be essential to enable London to maintain access to the talent it needs to grow.
Fast forward a couple of years and London’s status as the world’s pre-eminent global city will be under threat. Our position as the financial services capital of Europe is at risk and could disappear overnight if there is a flight of capital and talent to cities on the Continent.
Over the course of the next two years as the reality of Brexit begins to bite, the economic, social and political cleavages between London and other parts of the country will become more pronounced. London’s status as a de facto city-state will become clearer and the arguments for a London city-state to forge a more independent path will become stronger.
London already accounts for just under a third of all UK tax revenue — up a quarter in real terms since 2005 — so it beggars belief that the interests of the capital have been completely overlooked when planning for Brexit. The Treasury is increasingly reliant on London to subsidise expenditure and investment in other regions so embarking on a course that will hurt London economically is bad for the whole country, not just the capital.
The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated the cost of Brexit at around £60 billion in additional borrowing over the next five years, and it is London that will foot the bill. We cannot afford a lost decade. We are already seeing London schools hit by huge cuts as money is shifted from the capital to the shires. Local authorities in the capital are already on their knees after seven years of swingeing austerity.
This is the last thing we need when urgent attention and huge investment is crucial to address the capital’s housing crisis and a deepening chasm between top earners and workless poor in many London boroughs. We can’t go back to the Seventies: needles strewn across our public parks; our schools falling apart; the National Front marching on our streets; political paralysis, civil unrest and economic turbulence.
What has become clear since June is that the Government will not fight London’s corner in the Brexit negotiations. The case for a London city-state has never been stronger. As Sturgeon told the SNP conference: we are not powerless, we can still decide which path we take. If you identify with London’s values, it’s time to fight for them.
David Lammy is Labour MP for Tottenham

The SNP leader’s renewed calls for a vote should not be considered until the terms of Brexit have been decided
ere’s my plan. Londoners voted decisively for Britain to remain part of the EU in last year’s referendum. The capital’s economy accounts for 22 per cent of the UK’s GDP and 30 per cent of its taxes. More than any other part of the country, it is radically interconnected with Europe, pluralistic and open.
Its voters have not been consulted about the specific question of the city’s institutional future since the 1998 referendum on the Labour government’s proposals for a Greater London Assembly and an elected mayor. In view of the dramatic changes that Brexit will bring — and the 19 years that have passed since the last such vote — are we not entitled to a second referendum, asking whether we would like London to secede from the UK and remain part of the EU? Or, failing that, could London at least be granted a special dispensation to stay in the single market?
None of this is going to happen, for the simple reason that our city is part of a nation that, for good or ill, voted last year to leave the EU. In spite of all the arguments to the contrary, that was always going to mean leaving the single market, too: though I fervently wish it were not so, the voters made it clear that they wished an end to freedom of movement, an integral part of the EU’s economic and commercial arrangements.
This is why Nicola Sturgeon’s intervention on Monday, for all its political drama, was constitutional drivel. Theresa May cannot possibly negotiate the UK’s future relationship with the EU — now with the explicit mandate of Parliament, please note — when the constitutional entity she represents is threatening to morph and fragment into something else. For the duration of the talks the UK must speak with one voice.
Furthermore, it is less than three years since the Scots had their “once-in-a-generation” referendum on independence, which they rejected. They did so in the knowledge that David Cameron had committed himself to an In-Out vote on Britain’s relationship with the EU after the general election. According to a YouGov poll in today’s Times, 57 per cent of them still do not wish to go it alone.

In practice, Sturgeon is playing a high-stakes game to squeeze concessions from the Prime Minister. On Monday she said that the Scots must have their second bite at the cherry “when the terms of Brexit are known, but before it is too late to choose our own course… between the autumn of next year, 2018, and the spring of 2019”. In other words, in the final, most demanding months of the UK-EU negotiations.
Yesterday, however, the Scottish First Minister added an all-important qualification: “The vote must take place within a time frame to allow an informed choice to be made — when the terms of Brexit are clear but before the UK leaves the European Union, or shortly afterwards.”
In other words, the demand shifted in 24 hours from an insistence that the referendum be held during the negotiations to a much weaker request for a vote in the immediate aftermath of Brexit. Sturgeon would not be a very good poker player.
Meanwhile, her deputy leader, Angus Robertson, told today’s Guardian that all this unpleasantness could still be avoided if the UK Government would only “come to a compromise agreement protecting Scotland’s place in Europe”. Behind this lurks the plan published in December by the SNP for Scotland to remain part of the UK — at least for the time being — but retain its access to the single market by joining the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the European Economic Area (EEA).
Again, this is a non-starter, as the four members of EFTA (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) have made clear. To join this particular trade organisation a nation has to be independent. You cannot have your haggis and eat it.
It has become instantly orthodox since the Sturgeon ambush to argue that May faces a colossal predicament. This is not so. Yes, if the Scottish Parliament endorses the request for a second referendum on independence, she will be subject to intense political pressure.
To deny the request outright would be to stoke the fires of Scottish nationalism. Her response will have to include some recognition of Scotland’s right to hold a vote on its future.
Distinct from this is the risk that Remainers will be emboldened by the SNP’s audacity to renew their own demands for a second UK-wide referendum on Brexit — probably on the terms of the deal, if one is struck. This is a neuralgic prospect for the PM’s allies. To adapt Kipling: they have no desire to send the bandaged finger wabbling back to the fire.
But this brings us to the heart of the matter: May is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, not the chairman of a polling organisation. She is not only entitled but obliged to tell the Scots that, as head of a government that represents three nations and the province of Northern Ireland, she can only negotiate the future of one union at a time.
The Scotland Act of 1998 requires an order in council before a referendum on independence may be held. The Prime Minister must make clear that no such order will be sought by the UK Government until the EU negotiations are complete, the process of Brexit well under way, and the pitch clear for a new constitutional wrangle — if the Scots still want it.
Until recently referendums were meant to be exceptional occurrences, a device deployed only very occasionally to settle great constitutional issues. The SNP’s demand anticipates a quite different system: namely, an iterative process in which successive plebiscites are held until the desired outcome is achieved (in this case independence). Therein lie the seeds of political folly, social irresponsibility and constitutional instability. The PM should stand her ground.

The World Economic Forum is a chance to stress to EU leaders that securing the right future is vital for them too
hen I was elected Mayor just over eight months ago I knew that our city faced big challenges. Many are similar to those faced by other global cities — such as the need to build thousands more genuinely affordable homes or urgently to tackle air pollution. However, it has become increasingly clear over the weeks and months that the single biggest challenge we now face as a city is how we manage Brexit.
Like many Londoners I passionately supported remaining in the European Union. I believe it was in the best interests of London, Britain and Europe. I am a proud Londoner and a patriotic Brit but I’m also a proud European and internationalist.
However, the British people made a different decision, and I respect their democratic will. As a Londoner I was proud that London voted to remain. But the main question facing our city and our country now is: what form should Brexit take?
Yesterday the Prime Minister laid out her vision for Britain’s future relationship with the EU. It was a vision of a so-called “hard Brexit”. A hardline approach to leaving may hold the Conservative Party together but it could rip Britain apart. And if we continue on this path we risk having to explain to future generations how and why we put their economy, their prosperity and their place on the world stage in such peril.
Since the referendum I’ve tried to persuade the Government to take the best possible path through the thicket of negotiations — and to work towards a deal that will benefit London and the whole country. That means an agreement which will enable London to retain its economic competitiveness, allowing our businesses to attract the best talent from around the world to work here and, crucially, retain privileged access to the single market.
The single market is the foundation of thousands of jobs in London and across Britain. The benefits of retaining privileged access are real and tangible. Having access to the single market could mean the difference between businesses thriving and growing or struggling to survive. And it could mean the difference between using the proceeds of growth to invest in more teachers, nurses and police officers — or the worst-case scenario of another decade of cuts to public services.
Today I’m at the World Economic Forum in Davos to send London’s message loud and clear to European business and political leaders, because the reality is that the result of our negotiations with the EU doesn’t just matter to the UK — it is the single biggest concern for countries across Europe too.
If we fail to get a good deal it won’t just be Britain that pays the price — it will be all of Europe. So I’m here to ask business leaders from across the continent to help London make our case to European leaders. A bad deal for London would be a very bad deal for Europe.
London is Europe’s financial, social and cultural capital. Our city is not only the beating heart of Britain’s economy but
critical for securing growth across Europe. A hard Brexit would cut Europe and European businesses off from the continent’s only truly global financial centre — and the financial firepower that goes with it. If European businesses lost their privileged access to the City of London it would disrupt the supply chains of tech companies and other sectors across the continent — a huge price for Europe to pay.
I’m also at the World Economic Forum to deliver a warning: that Brexit is not just about economics. I believe the referendum has revealed something deeper which has bubbled under the surface of our society for some time — the fact that too many people in our country feel left behind or sidelined by mainstream politics and economics. I respect the decision of those people who voted to leave the EU in the referendum — however, many did so because they feel uneasy about the change they’ve experienced in their lives and neighbourhoods over recent decades.
For too many people this change simply hasn’t worked in their favour. Large numbers feel they have missed out on the fruits of globalisation and, instead, suffered job losses, lower wages and growing inequality. At the same time a lack of focus on social integration means it has become harder for people from different backgrounds truly to understand one another’s lives — fuelling the politics of division.
This growing economic and social divide is not unique to Britain — it is happening across the West. It has given rise to new forms of populism — from the US to France — and without a concerted response it will spread further. This week, for example, the Edelman Trust Barometer — a European-wide survey — found that more than half of people believe the system has failed them.
One of the most crucial tasks for London and other cities now is to take the proactive steps necessary to build stronger and more integrated communities, and to ensure that everyone feels the benefits of our growing economy. This will be one of the 21st century’s defining challenges. And we must treat it with the urgency and seriousness it deserves — the alternative is more division, protectionism and isolationism.
Despite these challenges I’m taking a positive message to the World Economic Forum. I am confident that we will remain Europe’s leading business and economic capital. London has, and will continue to have, an unparalleled pool of talent. It will continue to have a world-renowned legal system. It will continue to have a complex commercial ecosystem that makes it the best place to do business. And London is, and will always be, open.

he Brexit process has started. The Prime Minister yesterday triggered negotiations that will last at least two years and whose outcome will have a profound impact on all Londoners, our city, Britain and Europe. There could not be more at stake - from the economic prosperity and standard of living that we enjoy, to our ability to keep Londoners safe, improve the quality of our air and protect workers’ rights.
Like the majority of Londoners, I did not vote for Brexit. I believed – and still do – that Britain’s economic and social interests are best served within the EU. This is not a day of celebration for me – far from it. But the British people were clear and we must respect their democratic will. The time for that debate has ended, just as the negotiations have started – now we must all focus on getting the best possible deal over coming period.
I remain optimistic though about London’s future. I’ve spent the last three days holding genuinely positive discussions with key European and EU leaders in Brussels and Paris – including the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, and the frontrunner for the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron.
These discussions have left me in no doubt that there is a good deal to be done – a deal that works for London, Britain and all of Europe. However, striking this deal will be an extraordinarily complicated and difficult process. It will depend on a vast number of intricately linked factors and it will rely on all sides approaching the talks in good faith to try and reach a deal that works for all. Furthermore, doing everything within two years is an extremely ambitious timeframe. But, like everyone in Britain today, I sincerely hope the negotiators succeed.
While in Brussels, I also discussed greater security co-operation post-Brexit with Sir Julian King, the EU's security commissioner, and other senior officials. In the light of the horrific terrorist attack on London last week, it is more important than ever that we work closely with our European neighbours on security and counter-terrorism. Europe has suffered from similar cowardly attacks over recent years in Paris, Nice, Berlin and elsewhere. We need our police and and intelligence services to be able to work as closely as possible with their EU counterparts on disrupting terrorists and tackling extremism - its crucial to keeping us safe. But under no circumstances should security cooperation be used as a negotiating tool - as the Prime Minister has intimated. People's safety is too important.

The Prime Minister had a huge opportunity to prove that her approach is one of goodwill and friendship by giving a cast-iron guarantee that all EU citizens currently living in Britain can remain in the country they call home. There are three million EU citizens living in Britain – a million in London alone. They are Londoners – they contribute hugely to our economic, cultural and social life. They have partners, friends and family in the UK. They deserve to be left in no doubt that they will be able to continue living here. The Prime Minister said securing their rights was an ‘early priority’ but stopped short here and now of offering a cast-iron guarantee. Equally, the EU should now offer the same guarantee to British citizens living on the continent. These are people – not bargaining chips.
As Mayor, I will always work with the government whenever it is in Londoners’ interests. In my monthly meetings with the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, David Davis, I have constantly stressed the issues that matter most to London – and highlighted the sectors of our economy that face a particular threat.
Of course, that does not mean I will shrink from criticising the Government when I think its approach risks damaging London. And I remain extremely concerned about the negotiating strategy the Government has laid out so far – ministers need to focus urgently on protecting Britain’s economy. That means securing the fullest possible access to the single market and customs union, ensuring British companies are still able to attract the most talented people from across Europe and prioritising an interim deal to provide economic security as the negotiations unfold.
At all costs we must avoid a ‘hard’ Brexit – which would cause unnecessary economic damage to London, Britain and the EU. There is a real risk that, if the negotiators fail to conclude a deal within two years, Britain would crash out of the EU and fall back on basic World Trade Organisation rules. This would instantly create tariffs on British goods sold in the EU and would put hugely damaging barriers up for services, hitting the City of London particularly hard. The Prime Minister’s assertion some months ago that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal for Britain’ is not necessarily true – and I was pleased to see her soften this hardline approach as she served Britain’s divorce papers on the EU yesterday. This is why I’m urging both sides to prioritise agreeing an interim deal which would remove the threat of a so-called ‘cliff edge’ and give London businesses the security they need to continue investing and growing over the next two years.
The Government urgently need to give more detail on how British businesses will access talented workers from across Europe after Brexit. Business leaders in every sector of London’s economy are unanimous about how important this is for their ability to grow and create jobs – from finance and tech, to the creative industries, housebuilding, hospitality, social services and the NHS. Even after yesterday, ministers have said little or nothing about their plans for the post-Brexit world – and this is already having an impact on our economy – with many employees making plans to return to their home countries. Of course we need to do more to skill up young Londoners for the jobs of tomorrow – but this will never fully replace access to a skilled EU workforce. The Government must now make this a priority.
There is still a huge amount of uncertainty about what the future holds in the aftermath of Brexit and we will face major challenges and big questions over the next two years. But I’m optimistic – London will still be the greatest city in the world and the best place to do business. As Mayor, I will do everything in my power to push the Government in the right direction, and ensure our city continues to thrive over the decades ahead.
History tends to be written by the winners. That statement might be a cliche, but it doesn’t make it any less true – or painful – for those who lost the EU referendum.
My book, Unleashing Demons, describes what it was like being at David Cameron’s side throughout the campaign, and why, despite having thrown everything at it, he lost and had to leave Downing Street.
The account, serialised in today’s Mail on Sunday, is based on my notes and a diary of being in key meetings with everyone from Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, to Boris Johnson and Theresa May. I didn’t expect to tell the story so soon – because I hoped we’d win.
None of the details have been changed, however hard it was for me to read them back. Some who have already read the book believe it will make for even harder reading for senior politicians, a few of whom remain in high office, and many who don’t. My intention isn’t to expose or embarrass them. I simply want to put on record what actually happened during one of biggest political storms this country has ever faced.
The title of the book, Unleashing Demons, comes from a conversation I had with Cameron in his armour-plated car on the way to a speech.
Both of us believed a decision over Britain’s membership of the European Union had been a slow train coming for a generation, and now it was arriving in the station on his watch.
The reasons were obvious: Nigel Farage’s Ukip was on the rise, not just doing well in the 2014 European elections, but actually winning them. And scores of Conservative MPs were rebelling on anything and everything to do with Europe.
When asked, more than half the country believed that there needed to be a vote, partly because you had to be close to 60 to have taken part in the 1975 referendum on the then Common Market.
To put it another way, the issue had become a giant boulder blocking the road for the Government. Cameron could have tried to ignore it, or work around it, but had he not promised a referendum, the Conservative Party would almost certainly have demanded a leadership election and replaced him with someone who would.
It seemed inevitable on that car journey – but I still asked him for one reason why he shouldn’t hold a referendum.
His answer was instant: ‘You could unleash demons of which ye know not.’ I thought it was a quote from Shakespeare or the Bible, but couldn’t find it anywhere when I looked it up.
Those words were prophetic. But even Cameron did not foresee the extent of the civil war we encountered, with blood-letting on an epic scale.
The referendum was not just the biggest political decision for this country since the Second World War – it became a career opportunity for people hoping to become Prime Minister.
Some were overt, others more subtle. It felt painfully obvious as people who were close colleagues, even supposedly friends, were prepared to question Cameron’s integrity, mislead the public, or do the bare minimum to help.
As the campaign continued, one journalist put his finger on it by writing: ‘It sometimes feels as if we are trapped inside the tortured mind of a party that has… succumbed to madness.’
I’m frank about the mistakes we made and take my full share of responsibility for my part in them. It’s important we have an honest discussion about what actually happened.
So what were those mistakes? The Remain campaign set too much store by what had become the closest thing to an iron law in politics – it’s the economy, stupid!
Those words were coined by Bill Clinton’s campaign manager James Carville during their first presidential campaign. They became a mantra for political parties around the world.
We were sincere in our belief, shared with countless experts, that the risk to the economy of leaving the EU should and would trump any other argument. We were wrong, and when the Leave campaign began to get real traction by focusing on immigration, we didn’t have enough of an answer.
More to the point, what we believed was our great strength was also a weakness. We assembled a vast coalition, ranging from most of the Conservative Government, through the Labour, Lib Dem and Green parties, all believing we should stay in. But the reasons for remaining were different, resulting in confused messages.
Worse, the current leaders of the Left – Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon – seemed at best equivocal and sometimes actively hostile to our campaign. We also listened to the legion of analysts who said millions of people who had not voted for years would stay at home again.
Nearly three million of these ‘non-voters’ turned out, almost all of them for Leave. It was more than enough to ensure we lost. We should have done more to understand their concerns and persuade them why leaving the EU would be bad for them.
I respect the result of the referendum and I do not believe there should be another. The people of this country voted to leave the EU by a clear margin on a high turnout.
As things stand, both sides are claiming they were right in their predictions about the impact of Brexit. Leavers say the economic disaster has been avoided, proven by some good economic news last week. Remainers point to the fact that our currency has lost ten per cent of its value, making things more expensive, and that business has pressed the pause button on investment.
We’ll have a better idea after the Chancellor’s autumn statement. But the true picture will only be clear after the two-year divorce process that begins when Theresa May applies to leave the EU next year.
I hope we were wrong – I want Britain to prosper – but remain seriously concerned. In the meantime, I’d like to provide a proper answer to the question: ‘What were they thinking?’
I also want to make clear that having made the Conservative Party electable again, David Cameron was a Prime Minister who was prepared to take on the big political issues of the age.
He formed a coalition government to provide economic security when the country desperately needed it and he presided over a ‘jobs miracle’, resulting in millions more people being in work.
He reformed our schools and changed welfare to help make work pay. Gay couples being allowed to marry and the National Citizen Service are other parts of his legacy.
And yes, he confronted the EU question, showing leadership in taking on something that divided not just the Conservative Party, but whole communities.
He also showed dignity in being prepared to resign in the way he did when things went wrong.
This book is my sincere eyewitness account of what actually happened – and how it felt.
 
The Electoral Commission has launched an investigation into the European referendum spending of Arron Banks' campaign group Leave.EU.
The elections watchdog said it was launching the probe following 'an assessment which concluded that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that potential offences under the law may have occurred'.
Mr Banks tonight insisted the campaign group would be 'vigorously defending' the allegations - and suggested they were 'politically motivated' by his interest in the Clacton election race. 
Leave.EU was an insurgent campaign backed financially by Mr Banks and supported by former Ukip leader Nigel Farage. It operated separately to the main Vote Leave campaign. 
An Electoral Commission spokesman said: 'The Electoral Commission has begun an investigation into Leave.EU's EU Referendum spending return.
'This followed an assessment which concluded that there were reasonable grounds to suspect that potential offences under the law may have occurred.
'The investigation is focused on whether one or more donations – including of services – accepted by Leave.EU was impermissible; and whether Leave.EU's spending return was complete.
'The time taken to complete an investigation varies on a case-by-case basis. Once the investigation is complete, the Commission will decide whether any breaches have occurred and, if so, what further action may be appropriate, in line with its Enforcement Policy.
'The outcome of concluded cases can be seen on the Commission's website.' 
Mr Banks tonight claimed the Electoral Commission's probe was 'politically motivated' and was linked to his interest in running to be MP for Clacton.
He tweeted: 'The electoral commission Allowed the government to spend £11m on a pack of remain lies. We will be vigorously defending their allegations.'
The £11million figure is a reference to the official Government leaflet which set out David Cameron's administration's recommendation that Britons vote to Remain. 
Leave.EU tried  failed to win the designation to be the official Leave campaign in last year's referendum, losing out to the Vote Leave group spearheaded by Boris Johnson and other prominent Conservatives.
The Electoral Commission has previously announced that it is investigating the spending returns of both Vote Leave and the official Remain campaign, Britain Stronger In Europe, as well as a number of other groups involved in the campaign.
Leave.EU declared spending of £693,022 - close to the legal limit of £700,000 for the non-official campaign groups.
 


David Cameron’s former director of communications, Craig Oliver — sorry, that’s now SIR Craig Oliver — has a complaint: ‘History tends to be written by the winners.’
So the man Cameron recruited from the higher echelons of the BBC to become his spin-doctor-in-chief has published an instant account of the recent EU referendum campaign — from the losers’ perspective. 
It amounts to an undisguised hatchet-job on those senior Conservatives who defied their Prime Minister over Brexit —and won the popular vote.
And it is hardly any more complimentary about Theresa May: for page after page she is accused of not pulling her weight for the Remain campaign.
Although this rushed-out volume does not carry an endorsement from David Cameron, it faithfully represents the former PM’s anger at the Brexiteers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove — and at the unenthusiastic Remainer Theresa May. 
Taken all in all, this is nothing less than the cry of rage by an ousted establishment.
Damage
The cry is of betrayal: this is Oliver’s essential charge against those three formidable Tories. But I imagine many party members will (if they care at all) regard this book as designed to damage the new Conservative Prime Minister, and as such, disreputable from a person who is himself a member of the party.
There is also the small matter of how someone in the service of the Crown for five years at 10 Downing Street is able to flog his fly-on-the-wall account immediately after buzzing off. 
Admittedly, Alastair Campbell produced a series of such books about his years spinning for Tony Blair —but not with such indecent haste.


Such matters usually come under the aegis of a civil service department which sets rules on when former senior crown servants — including ministers, but also someone of Oliver’s rank — can start racking up jobs where remuneration can be seen to be linked to what they knew as a result of being in government.
After all, the only reason publishers would pay large sums for Oliver’s diaries is because of the access he had in Downing Street and what he heard there: it is not as though he has the talent as a diarist of a Samuel Pepys or an Alan Clark.
The established rule is that such jobs cannot begin until at least three months have elapsed since the applicant’s departure from office.
Since Craig Oliver was in the service of the Crown until Cameron walked out of Downing Street on July 13, the form strongly suggests he must wait until October 13 before auctioning (let alone publishing) his insider’s account of the referendum campaign.
But that would not have been so lucrative. You see, the publishers would have wanted to launch this ahead of the first Conservative Party Conference under Mrs May’s leadership — which begins this weekend. I can only guess that Oliver, or his lawyers, managed to persuade his former employers that this was a one-off contract. All the same, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
It will not, however, have come as any sort of surprise to those ministers who had dealings with Oliver during his five years at Downing Street. As one said to me yesterday: ‘He was always scribbling things down in a notebook during meetings and we pretty soon worked out that this was for some sort of diary he wanted to write. It was quite irritating, no more than that; but I never thought he would publish so instantly.’
Theresa May might feel a little more strongly about it. Much more than the younger ministers around her in the Cameron administration, she put — and puts — a high value on discretion. 
In that sense, she is a more old-fashioned politician: no bad thing in the incontinently self-promoting age of Twitter.
Her reluctance to take to the airwaves at every opportunity was not a problem for David Cameron and Craig Oliver, of course, until the referendum campaign.
Furious
Up until then, they would have been delighted that Number 10 dominated the debate on Europe and immigration: Cameron, like most Prime Ministers, loved to hog the limelight and make all the big announcements on matters of the greatest public interest.
But once the referendum campaign opened, it suddenly became necessary for Cameron to have voluble support from as many senior cabinet colleagues as possible: the Conservatives were completely split on the issue and their leader needed to demonstrate that he represented mainstream opinion within the party.
This, in part, was why he was so furious when, after he came back from Brussels in February with a ‘new deal’ over British EU membership, first Michael Gove and then Boris Johnson said they could not support it and would campaign for Brexit.
Those two were at the time the most popular figures in the Conservative Party in the country. However, Craig Oliver’s line — that somehow these men had ‘betrayed’ the Prime Minister, or treated him very unfairly — is laughable.
Neither of them had ever pledged to support him on the Remain side of a referendum, unconditionally or otherwise.
Michael Gove, in particular, had never made any secret of his loathing for the institutions of the EU and his view that the United Kingdom would be the better for escaping their grip.
Moreover, up until the referendum campaign, David Cameron had never once — in his entire period as an MP — said anything positive about the EU: indeed, he had won the leadership of the party by parading his Eurosceptic credentials.
He therefore made himself look ridiculous during the referendum debate by suddenly professing the view that Britain’s leaving the EU would cause our economy to collapse and the peace of the world to be endangered.
Mrs May clearly felt uneasy at the tenor of Cameron’s campaign. Craig Oliver’s book criticises her ‘submarine’ silence during its many weeks: further, it lists 13 occasions on which she ‘failed to back’ the Prime Minister when he had asked her to speak out more vociferously for the Remain campaign.
Betrayal
His diary gives an especially pained account of what happened when Mrs May finally did make a speech arguing for Remain and sent it to Downing Street in advance: ‘When I read it, alarm bells begin to ring. There are phrases in it which are catnip to journalists suspecting she isn’t fully signed up. She does not want to “insult people’s intelligence by claiming that membership of the EU is wholly good, or that the sky will fall in if we vote to leave”. Not helpful.’
Well, Oliver — and Cameron — might not have considered this helpful; but it was a lot more sensible than the apocalyptic warnings from Downing Street which probably antagonised more voters than they persuaded.
And wasn’t Theresa May’s behaviour over all this in tune with what a great many Conservative Party members felt and feel?
She believed that she couldn’t actually campaign on the opposite side to her leader, the Prime Minister; but that she also couldn’t make claims for the absolute necessity of EU membership which she didn’t believe; and that now the British people have voted for Brexit, the Government must make the best possible job of delivering it.
This approach has turned out to be politically most astute, as Oliver acknowledges, melodramatically: ‘Amid the murder and betrayal of the campaign, one figure stayed very still at the centre of it all — Theresa May. Now she is the last one standing.’
But is Craig Oliver really the loser out of all this? He got an enhanced pay-off (awarded by Cameron against civil service advice) when leaving Downing Street, a doubtless fabulous fee from the publisher of his instant book — and a knighthood in the departing PM’s derided resignation honours list.
Not a bad return for being on the wrong side of history.
Will Brexit go the way of Boaty McBoatface? You might recall how earlier this year the Natural Environment Research Council invited the public to vote to choose the name of the country’s newest polar research vessel: after the former BBC radio presenter James Hand offered ‘Boaty McBoatface’, his inspired suggestion was backed overwhelmingly.
But the then Minister for Science, Jo Johnson, vetoed the public choice, on the grounds that it was silly, and instead the vessel was named RRS David Attenborough — though this suggestion had come in fifth, with fewer than 10 per cent of the number of votes for Boaty McBoatface.
It’s hard not to get the impression that many politicians and officials have the same attitude towards the public’s choice, in the referendum two months ago, to vote for Brexit: that this was as a result of stupidity and therefore can be ignored — even though the only purpose of the referendum was to allow the public to decide whether or not the UK should remain in or leave the European Union.
The sheer arrogance — of peremptorily dismissing as mere silliness and stupidity the views of the 17.4 million Britons who voted Leave — is astounding.  
While it may well be true that those voting for the name of a boat were having a laugh, when the public cast their ballots in the EU referendum, they were thinking seriously about the future of their families and of the country — Brexiters just as much as Remainers.
It is asserted by many of the latter — often in the most insulting terms — that those voting leave were ignorant about the matter at stake.
Obviously that will be true to a degree: but so it would have been on the other side.
How many of those who accuse the 17.4 million Brexiters of not knowing the facts have themselves ever bothered to read the Maastricht Treaty? Or the Lisbon Treaty? Or know the names of the EU’s five presidents and what each of them do? Or exactly how laws are made in Brussels? Or the composition of the European Court of Justice (which supersedes the Westminster Parliament)? Or how the Acquis Communautaire works?
Frankly, the thing will have been decided by gut instinct on both sides and neither has a superior claim to wisdom. The crucial point is that when such a vote is taken, the losers accept the result — just as, in a democracy, the same applies to a general election.
This should be obvious to politicians, whose careers depend on the legitimacy of the ballot box. But it is not obvious to Owen Smith, the Labour MP for Pontypridd now mounting a challenge to his party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The Welshman declared last week: ‘I will fight tooth and nail to keep us in the EU. Under my leadership we will vote in Parliament to block any attempt to invoke Article 50’ — this is the clause under which a member state formally notifies its intention to withdraw from the EU — ‘until Theresa May commits to a second referendum on whatever EU exit deal emerges’.
Leave aside the man’s bumptious impertinence, it’s clear Smith hopes the process of delaying the triggering of Article 50 will frustrate Brexit altogether.
As the lawyer David Allen Green observed: ‘The fact is that the longer the Article 50 notification is put off, the greater the chance it will never be made at all — the longer the delay, the more likely it will be that events will intervene or excuses will be contrived.’
A glimpse of this strategy in practice was provided at the weekend by the former Cabinet Secretary Lord O’Donnell.
The man once the country’s top civil servant told The Times that Brexit is ‘not inevitable’. He added: ‘Lots of people will say: “We’ve had the referendum, we’ve decided to go out, so that’s it.” But it very much depends what happens to public opinion and whether the EU changes.’
Those who want to overrule the result on June 23 had two hopes. The first was that those who voted Leave would immediately suffer ‘buyer’s remorse’ and en masse change their minds. That has simply not happened. The second was that the Remain campaign’s dire predictions of an immediate economic downturn — with tumbleweed whistling down deserted High Streets — would come true and thus the public would be forced to acknowledge their great collective error.
That, too, has not happened.
I got my first anecdotal evidence of the failure of these highly politicised economic forecasts when a month ago my neighbour, who has a business teaching people in companies large and small how to use computer software, told me his order book had grown rapidly after the referendum result: he couldn’t reconcile this with the bleak stuff he had been watching on the BBC, as it compiled report after report on the alleged inevitable downturn.
And now it’s more than anecdotal: yesterday the chairman of one of Britain’s largest recruitment firms, James Reed, told the Mail on Sunday: ‘A lot of economists were confounded by last week’s Office for National Statistics figures which showed unemployment continuing to fall during July.
‘But we were not surprised. Our data has shown the jobs market has continued to grow since the Brexit referendum with 30,000 more new jobs posted in the eight weeks since the vote than in the same period last year.’ 
This good news confounds the would-be leader of the Labour Party. Now Owen Smith — along with others unreconciled to the referendum outcome — will have to swallow another uncomfortable fact: Theresa May has just let it be known she will use executive power to invoke Article 50, rather than allow disaffected MPs the chance to obstruct its implementation.
A group of over 1,000 lawyers, led by the firm Mishcon de Reya, is threatening legal action against this, claiming the Government has no right to invoke Article 50 without consulting Parliament — and that the referendum was only ‘advisory’. That is nonsense and their litigation will fail.
At no point in the passing of the Referendum Bill in the Commons was it ever declared to be merely an advisory vote. Indeed, the then Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond (a Remainer) told MPs: ‘The decision about our membership should be taken by the British people, not by Whitehall . . . not even by Government ministers or parliamentarians in this chamber.’
They blocked Boaty McBoatface: but we will have Brexit.
For some years now, the authorities in Birmingham, West Sussex and South Yorkshire have been using lifelike baby dolls as part of their ‘teenage pregnancy prevention’ drive. The ‘Virtual Infant Parenting Programme’ involved supplying schoolgirls with a £1,000 doll that ‘cries’ when it needs to be fed or winded.
The so-called experts behind the scheme believed it would alert girls to the chores involved in having a baby and thus deter them from becoming pregnant.
But now a study carried out in Australia — where a similar programme has been used — shows that the girls who were part of the scheme were more likely to become pregnant than those who were not supplied with the dolls.
Well, of course! Had it not occurred to these local authorities that lifelike dolls which ‘cry’ and demand to be fed have for decades been bought by parents for their daughters?
And that such dolls actually encouraged the maternal instinct at an early age?
Obviously, the parents who bought them were not hoping their daughters became pregnant at the earliest opportunity.
But nor were they so lacking in common sense as to imagine these dolls would make their children baby-averse. And the ones from Mattel don’t cost £1,000, either.
Apparently it is news that an EasyJet flight from Gatwick to Belfast was delayed by an hour after two crew members had an argument and they were removed from the plane. OK, the bit about the flight-attendants’ tiff was certainly unusual. But the delay itself was normal for EasyJet: it would actually be news if one of its flights left exactly on time.
For example, our family’s flight back from Toulouse last Wednesday afternoon was delayed by an hour. The regular users of this particular flight treated it as completely normal. And the crew similarly, to the extent that they did not bother to give any explanation. Only as we landed, the main stewardess announced: ‘Thankyouforflyingwithuswe aresorryforthedelayandhope youwillflywithusagain’ gabbled so rapidly, it was clear she had said this 1,000 times before.
 
Embattled Theresa May is pleading for MPs to give her more time to overhaul her Brexit deal - as she faces a Labour ambush that could kill off her plans within weeks.  
An Opposition amendment being tabled for the latest round of high-stakes Brexit votes on Thursday would oblige the PM to bring her package back before MPs by February 26, even if she has not managed to get any more concessions from the EU. 
The move comes amid fears that Mrs May is engaged in a 'cynical' attempt to run down the clock and leave politicians with a stark choice between her deal or crashing out on March 29. 
But Mrs May is trying to calm a potential Tory mutiny by assuring her troops they will have another opportunity to vote by February 27, regardless of whether her renegotiation is complete. 
The political wrangling escalated as business leaders warned that the UK was now in the 'emergency zone of Brexit' with uncertainty damaging the economy. 
Meanwhile, Remainer MPs are trying another tactic to secure a second referendum - suggesting they could back Mrs May's plan in the Commons if she agrees to put it to the country afterwards. 
The PM has promised another 'meaningful vote' as soon as possible, but Labour is determined to reduce her wriggle room.
Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer told the Sunday Times: 'We have got to put a hard stop into this running down the clock.
'And that's what we want to do this week.'
Tony Blair stepped up his warnings on no-deal Brexit today saying it would be 'devastating' for Northern Ireland and breach the Good Friday Agreement.
The former PM said crashing out of the EU would inevitably lead to a 'really hard border' on the island of Ireland and cause a huge split within the UK.
Despite a series of setbacks for those campaigning for another Brexit referendum, Mr Blair said still hoped one might happen when people saw the 'true alternatives' the country faces. 
Former Labour leader Mr Blair heaped pressure on Mrs May this morning by issuing another dire warning about the consequences of leaving without a deal.
'No one could responsibly propose (a no-deal Brexit). It would be economically very, very dangerous for Britain, and for the peace process in Ireland it would potentially be devastating, ' he told Sky News' Sophy Ridge On Sunday.
Sir Keir accused the PM of 'pretending to make progress' when what she actually wanted to do was return to Parliament after an EU summit on March 21 and 22 and offer MPs a 'binary choice' - her deal or no deal.
On that timeline a vote would potentially only take place in the Commons on Tuesday March 26 - just 72 hours before the UK is due to leave. 
'We can't allow that to happen,' Sir Keir said. 'There needs to be a day when Parliament says that's it, enough is enough.'
On the BBC's Andrew Marr show today, Housing Secretary James Brokenshire refused to confirm that the vote on a deal would happen by the end of February.  
'If the meaningful vote has not happened, so in other words things have not concluded, then Parliament would have that further opportunity by no later than 27 February,' he said.
'I think that gives that sense of timetable, clarity and purpose on what we are doing with the EU - taking that work forward and our determination to get a deal - but equally knowing that role that Parliament very firmly has.'
In the interview Sir Keir described Mrs May's approach as 'reckless' and 'blinkered' and blamed her 'tunnel vision' for the devastating defeat suffered last month when MPs threw out her Brexit deal by a record 230 votes.
'It's this blinkered approach that's got us to where we are, with her never wanting to see where the real majority is in Parliament,' Sir Keir said.
However, Labour is facing its own deep splits on Brexit, with dozens of MPs furious with the leadership to failing to get behind a second referendum.
Jeremy Corbyn wrote to the Prime Minister last week setting out his demands for a deal he could support - but without mentioning the potential for another public vote.
Instead he appeared to be trying to outflank Mrs May by pitching to join forces with Tories who want a softer Brexit, calling for a customs union and close alignment to the single market.   
Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss refused to rule out quitting today if Mrs May shifted to a position of backing a customs union in order to get a Brexit deal through Parliament.
She told Sky News' Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I appreciate Jeremy Corbyn has come to the table but the reality is what he is proposing does not deliver on what we want as a country.'
Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss refused to rule out quitting today if Mrs May backs a permanent customs union in order to get a Brexit deal through Parliament.
Labour has demanded the concession from the PM and close single market alignment in return for supporting her package. 
But Ms Truss told Sky News' Sophy Ridge On Sunday: 'I appreciate Jeremy Corbyn has come to the table but the reality is what he is proposing does not deliver on what we want as a country.'
She added that she wants an 'independent trade policy' and questioned whether a customs union could command a majority in Parliament.
Asked if she could stay in office if that became government policy, she said: 'I absolutely do not think that should be our policy.' 
She added that she wants an 'independent trade policy' and questioned whether a customs union could command a majority in Parliament.
Asked if she could stay in office if that became government policy, she said: 'I absolutely do not think that should be our policy.' 
CBI Director General Carolyn Fairbairn highlighted the growing concerns about deadlock today.  
'It feels like the parliamentary process is in logjam, no way can be found through, so that prospect of no-deal feels much higher,' she told Sky News. 
'We really are in the emergency zone of Brexit now.' 
In a speech in Coventry, Mr Corbyn said Labour's plan 'could win the support of Parliament and bring the country together' but Mrs May has so far 'chosen the path of division'.
'If she is unable to adopt a sensible deal because it would split the Tories, then the answer is quite simple: there must be a general election,' Mr Corbyn said.
Mrs May survived a confidence motion in her government tabled by Mr Corbyn, which could have led to an election, after her Brexit deal was overwhelmingly rejected by MPs last month.
In a speech in Coventry yesterday, Mr Corbyn said that without an election 'we will keep all options on the table - as agreed in our conference motion - including the option of a public vote'.
In his letter to Mrs May, the Labour leader set out five demands, including a permanent customs union and close alignment with the single market.
Pro-Brexit lawyers have warned that EU states would demand more concessions in return for extending the Article 50 process beyond the end of March. 
In a report, Martin Howe QC said 'Spain is likely to demand permanent concessions over Gibraltar' in return for more time.
Meanwhile, Germany could try to 'lock in' the divorce deal regardless of whether a final agreement is reached,
'By asking for a favour when up against the clock, the UK would once again put itself in a very weak negotiating position,'Mr Howe wrote.
The move led to a backlash from pro-EU Labour MPs, but Sir Keir defended the approach and warned against a split in the party.
'When you go through something like Brexit, it is very important that you keep the opposition strong and united,' he said.
'We have to keep it together, because in the end, any chance of effective opposition goes if an opposition party starts to lose members from their team.'
Meanwhile, pro-Brexit lawyers have warned that EU states would demand more concessions in return for extending the Article 50 process beyond the end of March. 
In a report, Martin Howe QC said 'Spain is likely to demand permanent concessions over Gibraltar' in return for more time.
Meanwhile, Germany could try to 'lock in' the divorce deal regardless of whether a final agreement is reached,
'By asking for a favour when up against the clock, the UK would once again put itself in a very weak negotiating position,'Mr Howe wrote.
Valentine's Day 
MPs will hold another round of votes on Brexit.
They are not due to pass judgement on Theresa May's deal - instead debating a 'neutral' motion simply saying that they have considered the issue.
However, a range of amendments are set to be tabled. They could include proposals to delay the Brexit date beyond March 29. 
Labour is pushing a change that would force another 'meaningful vote' on the PM's Brexit deal by February 26, regardless of whether she has finished renegotiating the package with the EU.
February 24-25
Mrs May could have an opportunity to seal a new package with fellow EU leaders at a joint summit with the Arab League in Sharm el-Sheikh.
However, it is not clear how many will attend the gathering - or whether she will have completed the deal by then.
February 27
Downing Street is trying to head off a potential Tory Remainer mutiny by promising MPs will get another set of votes by this date regardless of whether there is a final deal.
March 21-22
The PM will attend a scheduled EU summit in Brussels that would effectively be the last opportunity to get agreement.
Some MPs fear that Mrs May is trying to delay for as long as possible, and might even try to hold a make-or-break vote in the Commons on March 26. That would be just 72 hours before Brexit, giving them a very stark deal-or-no-deal choice.
11pm, March 29
The UK is due to leave the EU with or without a deal, unless the Article 50 process is extended with approval from the bloc's leaders, or revoked to cancel Brexit altogether. 
So Brussels is determined to play hardball. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If it means we can now press on and deliver a real Brexit, all well and good. As Theresa May has said many times, no deal is better than a bad deal – and what the EU is trying to bully us into is very much a bad deal.
However, nothing in these talks is ever straightforward. The complete derailment of Brexit is still a real possibility and it is an outcome some of Britain’s own negotiators, led by Olly Robbins, may be unwittingly assisting. Worse than that, those same negotiators may be dangerously close to winning the Prime Minister’s approval.
It’s why Tory MPs who are determined to honour the result of the 2016 referendum must now warn Mrs May that we could never support that outcome in the Commons.
According to reports, EU negotiators have spurned all our proposals to avoid a hard border in Ireland. Those included a ‘customs partnership’ dreamt up by British officials to solve the impasse and ensure Mrs May keeps her promise to stay out of the customs union. The ingenious plan goes like this: the UK would indeed quit the customs union and be able to sign post-Brexit free-trade deals with countries around the globe.
As the Leave side promised in the referendum campaign, we would be free to set our own, lower tariffs on imports. But to avoid a hard Irish border, the UK would take on the role of the EU’s tax collector.
We would impose the full tariffs on products destined for the Continent and pass the money on to Brussels. Importers of goods staying in the UK would receive a rebate. Et voilà! No need for customs posts in Ireland and full steam ahead for post-Brexit free-trade deals.
But sadly, this is nothing more than a Byzantine scheme designed first to slow down Brexit and then to strangle it.
Some of the people proposing it know such an immensely complicated – and untried – arrangement is guaranteed to end in chaotic failure. At which point, they will conclude we have no choice but to rejoin the fully fledged EU customs union, with its inflexible tariffs, all overseen by the European Court of Justice.
Bang goes our independent trade policy and with it our independence. In effect, bang goes Brexit. We would no longer be members of the EU but in name only. There were reports last week that the EU has rejected the Irish border proposal. But in my view, and that of many fellow Conservative MPs, it is merely a negotiating ploy.
I suspect that Brexit Secretary David Davis’s wily Brussels counterpart, Michel Barnier, is simply preparing the ground for a grand ‘compromise’ in which, ever so reluctantly, the EU signs up to something it apparently did not want.
It is all part of the tortuous negotiation dance, a baroque ballet to befuddle the Brexiteers.
I tell the Prime Minister today that such a con trick on the British people cannot be countenanced.
I speak for many Tory MPs when I say that whatever the consequences, we could never vote for it. Far better for Britain simply to go – to leave the EU on open, honest terms.
Lions led by donkeys: nearly three years after the British people voted to take back control of our democracy, it is painfully obvious that the political class at Westminster doesn’t share the belief in our country that is shown by the people.
All too often it has looked as if the Establishment has wanted to negotiate a Brexit that looks shockingly like not leaving at all, even though the European Union has made it clear that a deep and open free trade agreement is there for the asking.
This is why the Prime Minister’s EU Withdrawal Agreement came so close to sinking back in January.
The agreement has some good points: it gives certainty to EU citizens in the United Kingdom and ours living on the continent; it tells businesses that contracts will continue to be honoured, and it gives a transition period during which a future free trade agreement could be negotiated.
But the agreement also contains a monumental bear trap.
The protocol that sets out to give reassurance that the Irish border would remain entirely open would have two damaging effects.
First, the so-called backstop would treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the United Kingdom, something that is anathema to anyone who believes in the Union; and second, it would carry the risk of trapping the whole of the UK in the EU customs union and therefore banned from making free trade deals with the faster-growing markets around the world.
This is not a time to make the best the enemy of the good, and most MPs are in a mood to compromise, but the danger of this backstop becoming permanent is a real one and it has to be tackled.
That is why I couldn’t vote for the agreement in its original form but also why I proposed an amendment at the end of January that showed the way to reach an acceptable compromise by seeking a legally binding guarantee that the Irish backstop could only be temporary.
My amendment won a majority in the House of Commons and proved wrong the doom-mongers who like to claim that there is no Brexit agreement that can possibly win the backing of Parliament.
In the month since my amendment was passed, there has been constant shuttle diplomacy – the Prime Minister, Brexit Secretary and Attorney General have been locked in daily discussions to find the binding guarantee that is needed.
Increasingly, the leaders of other EU countries have urged that a pragmatic solution should be found.
My conversations with senior diplomats and politicians from across Europe have given me cause for optimism that a breakthrough is near. Those who have pressed for delay or for No Deal to be taken off the table have weakened Theresa May’s hand and made a deal less likely, but I still believe a compromise is fundamentally in our interest and that of the EU.
We know what is needed to shift the log-jam. The Attorney General needs to give a legally binding guarantee that the backstop is temporary.
Once we have that, my colleagues in Parliament need to recognise the strength of feeling.
The whole country is tired of vacillation and delay.
When the right compromise is offered, we should pull together behind the Prime Minister and help her to deliver our exit from the European Union on March 29.
I was proud to serve in Theresa May’s Cabinet and work alongside her. We didn’t always agree on Brexit, but no one can deny her determination and integrity. She can be immensely proud of her record of service to the country she loves.
The contrast between Theresa May and the self-serving expediency of Jeremy Corbyn is stark. Corbyn has done everything he can to exploit Brexit for narrow political gain.
Last week, voters’ frustration with all the politicians who have failed to keep their promises on Brexit came to a head in the European elections.
We will learn the results tonight, but we can expect a reckoning with voters who feel betrayed – and worse to come, if we don’t heed the warning.
We can’t live in a country where politicians make promises to respect your vote in a referendum, and then junk them if they don’t like the verdict. 
The country feels stuck in the mud, humiliated by Brussels and incapable of finding a way forward. The Prime Minister has announced her resignation. It’s time for a new direction.
That is why I will put myself forward to lead the Conservative Party and our country. I will fight for a fairer deal on Brexit, a fairer deal for British workers, and a fairer society where every child can fulfil their potential.
To change the dynamic on Brexit will require leadership with conviction, a genuine belief that we can grasp the opportunities of leaving the EU. I believe I have the right plan to deliver Brexit, and honour our promises to voters.
We should keep the arm of friendship extended to our European neighbours. Over the long-term, both sides will want to build a new partnership.
But we must also calmly demonstrate unflinching resolve to leave when the extension to negotiations ends in October – at the latest.
I would prefer that we leave with a deal. There is still time to negotiate changes to the so-called backstop of EU laws, over which currently we would have no say. That is a reasonable, limited request and would work in all sides’ interests.
It is the only solution MPs have approved. But we will not be taken seriously in Brussels unless we are clear that we will walk away on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, if the EU doesn’t budge.
To deliver Brexit successfully will require focus, discipline and resolve. As a former Foreign Office lawyer and Brexit Secretary, I have the experience. And I am the only negotiator who Michel Barnier and Guy Verhofstadt complained pushed Brussels too hard.
I would put together a Cabinet with wide-ranging experience, reflecting different views from across my party.
This team would be united in the need to deliver Brexit by October 31, even if the EU refuses to move its position.
Next, I would bring forward a Brexit Budget, to boost UK businesses through this period of uncertainty. If we are forced by EU stubbornness to leave on WTO terms, we will be able to draw from the £39 billion budgeted for the Brexit deal, to help ease the transition.
We could manage the short-term risks of leaving on WTO terms – not least after another six months to prepare for it.
And, as the Institute for Government observed, it is ‘near impossible’ for MPs to stop a Prime Minister who is determined to leave in this way. I don’t want a WTO departure. 
But we must end this debilitating uncertainty – for businesses, and for trust in our democracy. Brexit is only the starting point for the change we need. 
We face the threat of a dangerous hard-Left Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn who threatens jobs, our security, and gives succour to virulent anti-Semitism.
The most potent antidote to Corbyn’s poisonous politics is an optimistic Conservative vision for the future – a fairer deal for Britain.
We need a fairer deal for workers. That means grasping the opportunities of Brexit through a more energetic approach to global free trade – to boost small businesses, stimulate productivity to raise workers’ wages, and ease the cost of living by cutting prices for UK consumers.
Next, we should cut taxes to give workers on low and middle incomes a pay rise, which many haven’t had for years. Raising the threshold for National Insurance to £12,500 and taking 1p off the basic rate of income tax will boost take-home pay for those on low incomes, saving the average worker £640 a year. 
We must also end consumer rip-offs, to deliver a fairer deal on everything from a student’s mobile phone contract to pensioners’ energy bills. And we must build a fairer society – to give the aspirational underdog in our country their shot in life. 
This is personal to me. My father came here as a refugee aged six with no English. Britain gave him sanctuary and opportunity, through a grammar school education and a great job at Marks & Spencer.
Neither of my parents went to university. Both enjoyed successful careers, bought their own home, raised a family and lived the British dream. Those opportunities have narrowed for young people today.
So we must renew our mission to break those glass ceilings, so every young person gets their chance to be a success, based on their abilities and hard work.
I would revive Young Apprenticeships for 14- to 16-year-olds, and expand degree apprenticeships, like the one offered by Jaguar Land Rover in partnership with Warwick University – giving young people all of the opportunity of university, but without the debt.
We must radically upgrade our ambition for building the homes young people and those on lower incomes can afford – overhauling stamp duty, releasing government- owned land and ramping up the delivery of homes for shared ownership. 
We should also recognise the generational shift in the way young families now work as a team. 
Last week, I was proud to work with Maria Miller, the chairman of Parliament’s Equalities Select Committee, on plans to protect new mums who return to work from losing their job.
We are also pressing for paternity leave reform. With two sons, aged six and four, I know how precious this can be. 
Paternity leave helps us dads bond with our children, and nurture a team ethic with our partners – one of the best ways to build more resilient families.
And giving dads more opportunity to take on childcare responsibilities helps working mums to pursue their careers. It’s about empowering couples by giving them more choice.
The next generation also cares passionately about the environment. The Luddite Labour Party won’t come up with credible solutions to climate change.
So Conservatives must harness the power of innovation and technology to reinforce UK energy policy so that it makes environmental and economic sense.
Great challenges lie ahead. But they are challenges we can rise to with an optimistic vision for post-Brexit Britain.
That’s why I am putting myself forward for the leadership of the Conservative Party.
That’s why I am fighting for a fairer deal for Britain – a fairer deal for workers, a fairer society, and a fairer deal from the EU.
Theresa May was nearly 20 minutes into Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday when the door of Andrea Leadsom’s grand Commons office swung open.
Out marched Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, shorn of his usual baritone joviality, followed by Environment Secretary Michael Gove, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss.
Last out was a pensive Ms Leadsom, who turned to Ms Truss as they filed down the wood-panelled corridor behind the Speaker’s Chair and said: ‘So that’s what to do. Let’s stay in touch on the WhatsApp’.
Later that evening, Ms Leadsom resigned as Commons Leader. It was the final plunge of the knife from the now notorious ‘pizza club’. The Mail on Sunday first revealed in November the cell of pro-Leave Cabinet Ministers which met in secret to try to stop Mrs May from diluting Brexit. Over boxes of takeaway pizzas, the group, which also included Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling and Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, would debate how to steer Mrs May towards a ‘purer’ Brexit – and whether to pull the plug on her premiership by resigning in concert. They even had their own WhatsApp group.
Until last week, they had largely pulled their punches, with the only resignation from a group member coming when Dominic Raab quit as Brexit Secretary.
But on Wednesday the mood was different. As the group sipped cups of tea and coffee, Ms Leadsom made clear her anger over Mrs May’s disastrous speech the previous day in which she had raised the prospect of holding a second referendum – an idea which was anathema to Brexiteer Ms Leadsom.
She told the group that the speech went further than what had been agreed in Cabinet and said she felt her position was untenable – although she stopped short of asking the others to follow her lead.
Ms Truss was also ‘spitting’, said sources: ‘The PM has reached the end of the road.’
Mr Gove made it clear that he thought Mrs May should abandon plans to make a final attempt to win Commons support for her Brexit deal. Mr Cox repeated the argument he had made in Tuesday’s Cabinet that the deal should never be put to a second referendum.
His views went down well in the room, but angered pro-Remain Ministers, with one saying: ‘This is the man who helped to push the PM towards striking a cross-party deal with Labour, which led us inevitably down the path to a “confirmatory” vote – and the man whose legal advice on the backstop helped to kill it.’
After Ms Leadsom’s resignation, and with backbenchers now in open mutiny, the Prime Minister realised the game was finally up, and started writing her resignation speech with her favoured adviser Keelan Carr.
It was as she prepared for the famous black door of No 10 to swing open to deliver her speech to the waiting media on Friday morning that Mrs May first broke into tears. Her appearance at the podium was delayed while aides helped her to recover her composure.
However, there was some joy for Mrs May’s team on the emotional morning. Since she had already made her decision to go, when Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the powerful 1922 Committee of backbenchers, paid a visit to Downing Street, it was no longer the expected showdown to demand her head. But it unexpectedly ended with Sir Graham losing his job as well.
Among the PM’s core team – including husband Philip, media adviser Robbie Gibb, chief of staff Gavin Barwell and party chairman Brandon Lewis – there had been suspicions that Sir Graham was ‘a little more devious’, according to a source, than his straight bat public persona. So when he signalled he could himself run to succeed Mrs May, they spotted their chance for revenge. ‘It was pointed out, as he should well have known as the apparent expert, that he’s technically the returning officer for the leadership contest, so if he was even thinking about running he should have recused himself immediately’, an insider said.
Sir Graham was shown to a side room to see if he would like to ‘have a think about his predicament’, but Mrs May’s team believe the fact he would have to stand down immediately came as a shock to him. He ended up being in the ante-room for close to an hour, before sheepishly putting out the contest timetable later that day in his deputy’s name. ‘There was a certain feeling of satisfaction to finally get one over on him,’ said a source.
Mrs May will spend the weekend brushing herself down at Chequers before heading to Brussels on Tuesday to meet her EU counterparts, including Angela Merkel.
While Mrs May’s relationship with France’s Emmanuel Macron has been at rock bottom since November, the two most powerful women in Europe have remained friendly.
Downing Street staff are also braced for drama during Donald Trump’s visit next month. Given his previous vocal support for both Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, No 10 expects major interventions from the President could spark an angry backlash from a ‘demob happy’ Mrs May.
She has previously expressed irritation with Mr Trump. During the 2017 G20 meeting in Hamburg, leaders and their aides were at loggerheads over climate change. Having squeezed into a tiny room to hammer out a compromise, it was an extremely stern ‘come on, Donald’ from a ‘headmistress-like’ Mrs May that finally got the President to back down. 
Theresa May could return to serve in a future Tory government, close allies insisted last night.
They said she would stay on as an MP until at least the next Election and was not ruling out another job in frontline politics.
The Prime Minister will also spend her final weeks in Downing Street on a policy blitz designed to fulfil her original pledge to tackle the nation’s ‘burning injustices’.
But she will distance herself from David Cameron by refusing to depart with an extensive resignation honours list.
Mrs May’s team led the chorus of condemnation in 2016 after her predecessor handed out peerages and gongs to 46 close aides, friends and financial backers in one of his final acts as Prime Minister.
Mr Cameron’s spree of honours drew unfavourable comparisons with Harold Wilson’s infamous 1976 ‘Lavender List’ that sparked uproar over awards that were given to a number of controversial businessmen.
But a close ally of Mrs May told The Mail on Sunday yesterday: ‘There will be none of that with Theresa. She came in pledging no more gongs for mates, so if she even does a list, it will be extremely pared back.’
The ally added that she was ‘not going to do a Cameron’, who quit politics just a few months after resigning as Prime Minister.
The friend said: ‘Theresa is not going to run away and she loves being a constituency MP.
‘She doesn’t need money so never say never to one day serving the country again.’
Mrs May’s closest aides, including her chief of staff Gavin Barwell, communications chief Robbie Gibb and long-term adviser JoJo Penn, have been conducting secret ‘legacy meetings’ in Downing Street since the Prime Minister signalled she would step down if MPs backed her Brexit deal.
After the failure of Mrs May to secure her flagship EU deal, aides are scrambling for domestic issues to champion in Mrs May’s final days in power. That is despite the fact that Trade Minister George Hollingbery, her former parliamentary aide, insisted on Friday that ‘this is not a Prime Minister who is worried about legacy’.
Government sources said there would now be a series of announcements before she left office in line with her original pledge on becoming Prime Minister in 2016 to tackle burning injustices.
A source said: ‘She has a few weeks before she goes to get some big announcements out there. There’s plenty in the drawer that has had to stay there for three years because of Brexit.’
That begins today with an announcement through Education Secretary Damian Hinds to get better value for university students’ tuition fees.
Mr Hinds will call for an end to so-called ‘low-value’ degrees which fail to give graduates enough future income and attacks those universities which prioritise ‘getting bums on seats’ over high-quality courses worth paying for. 
Theresa May can still convince MPs to back leaving the customs union, a minister claimed today amid reports the Prime Minister could back down.
Justice Secretary David Gauke said the Government could 'win' the argument amid growing belief among Remain supporters Parliament will force the issue.
If was claimed today Mrs May could surrender to a Remain 'stitch up' over the customs union in defiance of a Brexiteer revolt.
Brexit Secretary David Davis was said to be leading resistance to a U-turn on the policy amid claims it would be a 'betrayal'.
But Mr Gauke played the issue down today, ahead of a crucial symbolic vote of MPs on the customs union this week.  
Mr Gauke told BBC's The Andrew Marr Show: 'The job of those of us in Government is to persuade Parliament that the route going forward, leaving the customs union, but ensuring that we don't put in place unnecessary barriers to our trade with the European Union.
'We can make that case to Parliament. I think we can win that case. I think we have got to win that case and that is my determination.' 
The Brexit Secretary objects to plans by Downing Street to stay in a customs 'partnership' with the EU that would allow the UK to strike trade deals around the world – but collect import tariffs on behalf of Brussels.
Mr Davis is understood to have told No 10 that the idea is unworkable and would be greeted with fury by many Tory MPs. He is believed to be supported by other Cabinet Ministers, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. 
And Mr Davis is publicly backed today by one former Government Minister, who argues that the plan could lead to the 'complete derailment' of Brexit.
David Jones, who was a Brexit Minister under Theresa May, writes below that the idea is 'a Byzantine scheme designed first to slow down Brexit and then to strangle it'.
The 'partnership' customs plan is being pushed by Oliver Robbins, the Prime Minister's Brexit adviser at No 10, in an attempt to break a deadlock in negotiations with Brussels over the Irish border.
The British team has been struggling to find a way in which the UK can leave the EU customs union – as Mrs May has promised – without having a hard border in Ireland.
But Mr Jones said: 'I speak for many Tory MPs when I say that whatever the consequences, we could never vote for it.'
It was reported last week that the customs 'partnership' was one of several options already rejected by Brussels. However, Brexiteer Tory MPs fear this is just a negotiating device to force the UK to accept close customs ties after Brexit.
Mrs May will face further pressure on the issue this week when MPs debate a motion aimed at forcing a vote.
Three Tory Commons select committee chairs – Bob Neill, Nicky Morgan and Sarah Wollaston – are among the signatories to the motion, which urges the Government to 'include as an objective in negotiations... the establishment of an effective customs union'.
Last night, a spokesman for Mr Davis said: 'We have put sensible and practical solutions on the table and are working constructively towards getting this solved by October .' A source said: 'David knows that Boris, Gove and a large chunk of the party won't buy it. It's not even as if they are mad on it in Brussels – they find the idea of a third party collecting their tariffs distinctly odd.'
A senior Brussels source told The Mail on Sunday: 'The consensus EU view is that we won't move forward with the negotiations until we have a clear idea as to whether there is British parliamentary support for leaving the customs union.
'We don't think there is – that sentiment is changing and you will end up staying in.'
The customs union and single market have emerged as crucial battlegrounds in the struggle over Brexit.
The customs arrangements could decide the fate of the overall deal - as the UK has already said it will ensure there is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 
Here are the main options for what could happen after Britain leaves the bloc.
Staying in the EU single market
A Norway-style arrangement would be the deepest possible without formally staying in the EU.
The single market rules out tariffs, quotas or taxes on trade, and guarantees free movement of goods, services, capital and - controversially - people.
It also seeks to harmonise rules on packaging, safety and standards. 
Staying in the EU customs union
The customs union allows EU states to exchange goods without tariffs, and impose common tariffs on imports from outside the bloc.
But they also prevent countries from striking deals outside the union.
Theresa May has repeatedly made clear that the UK will be leaving the customs union.
Forging a new customs union
Some MPs and the Labour leadership have raised the idea of creating a new customs union with the EU.
This could be looser than the existing arrangements, but still allow tariff free trade with the bloc. 
However, many Eurosceptics believe it is impossible to be in a union without hampering the UK's ability to strike trade deals elsewhere.
They also complain that it would mean accepting the EU's 'protectionist' tariffs against other parts of the world in areas like agriculture.
The PM has also ruled out this option. 
A customs partnership
Less formal than a union, this proposal would seek to cherry pick the elements that facilitate tariff-free trade - without binding the UK's hands when it comes to deals with other countries.
One possibility could be keeping the UK and EU connected for trade in goods, but allowing divergence for the services sector.
The partnership option was floated by the government in a position paper last year.
'Highly streamlined' customs
This scenario would be a 'bare minimum' customs arrangement between the EU and UK.
New technology would be deployed alongside a simple agreement to minimise friction.
But there are fears that this could hit trade, and it is unclear how the system would work with a 'soft' Irish border. 
What is the customs union?
The EU customs union is a trade agreement comprising all 28 members plus Monaco. Members do not impose tariffs on each other's goods as they cross borders. They apply the same tariffs on imports from nations outside the union.
Why should we leave? 
Inside the customs union, the UK cannot negotiate its own trade deals with the third party countries. Taking back control of trade would mean huge economic advantages from doing deals with non-EU nations. We could also cut tariffs on goods we import to cut prices for consumers.
Why do Remainers argue for the customs union? 
Remainers say leaving would damage the economy because it would involve customs checks at ports, slowing down the passage of goods and potentially damaging industries which rely on quick movement of goods, such as car producers. They also say it's not possible to have a 'frictionless border' in Ireland if the UK leaves the customs union. 
Why does Ireland matter? 
Brussels argues that it is impossible to have no 'hard border' - involving customs checks between the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland if the UK leaves. As a result, the EU says the North must stay inside the customs union, in effect creating a customs border in the Irish Sea. Theresa May says this threatens our 'constitutional integrity' and is something she would never accept.
What are our options? 
Ministers have made two customs proposals. One is a highly streamlined set of arrangements involving trusted trader schemes and spot checks away from the border. The other involves the EU collecting tariffs on our behalf and vice versa with refunds paid to importers whose goods were destined for Britain if our tariffs are lower.
What do other countries do? 
Turkey is a customs union with the EU so is unable to negotiate its own trade deals. Switzerland is not, but it follows many EU rules and has slashed checks on its borders with EU countries, relying mostly on risk-based spot tests.
What happens next? 
Remainer MPs and peers are trying to force Britain to stay inside the customs union by amending the EU Withdrawal Bill. Eurosceptic Tories fear ministers are preparing to roll over, destroying one of the great benefits of Brexit. 
Gloomy treasury predictions about the impact of Brexit were wrong to the tune of £100 billion, a report finds today. 
The study by leading economist Timothy Congdon says the Treasury made a 'giant error' when it predicted Brexit would spark an immediate recession.
The withering report also accuses George Osborne of a 'gross miscarriage of government' for orchestrating the government's Project Fear campaign.
The then-Chancellor released a series of Doomsday predictions, backed by a 'Treasury analysis' to make the case against Brexit. But Mr Congdon, founder of the City firm Lombard Street Research, and a member of the Economists for Free Trade group, said Mr Osborne's predictions had proved woefully wrong.
'Instead of employment falling by hundreds of thousands, it has risen by hundreds of thousands,' he said. 'Instead of house prices going down, they have gone up.
'Instead of the public finances lurching more heavily into deficit, they have been better than at any time since the Great Recession. Above all, Osborne's scary rhetoric about a return of the Great Recession now looks preposterous.' The study, in today's edition of Standpoint magazine, states that the cumulative gap in gross domestic product between the Treasury's pre-referendum predictions and the economy's actual performance now stands at 4.6 per cent of GDP - equal to about £100 billion.
Project Fear predictions suggested the economy would shrink by 1.2 per cent by the middle of this year if Britain voted to leave. But Mr Congdon said official figures now suggested it would instead grow by 3.4 per cent.
Mr Congdon said it was unclear why Mr Osborne had got it so wrong. He said one possibility was that the chancellor had 'abused the authority of the Treasury to give substance to lies'.
But he said it was also possible Mr Osborne listened only to Establishment economists who were 'parroting each other'. He concluded there was 'a mixture of malice and ignorance, of wicked politics and trashy economics and that it was more cock-up than conspiracy.'
The Beast from the East sent a chill over Britain's economy in the first quarter, official figures are set to show.
Forecasters at the EY item club predict that GDP growth could be cut in half from 0.4 per cent in the fourth quarter to 0.2 per cent when the Office for National Statistics reveals data on Friday. The figures will reveal the cost of heavy snowfall that brought parts of the country to a standstill last month.
GDP is expected to bounce back to 0.5 per cent in the second quarter. However, for the year the item club expects GDP to grow by 1.6 per cent, down from an earlier forecast of 1.7 per cent. 
 
Theresa May was last night poised to mount a humiliating climbdown over a customs union as the price of winning Labour support for her Brexit deal.
According to senior sources, Tory negotiators have told Labour that the Government would accept UK membership of a customs union – a 'red line' for Brexiteers – but on condition that they 'call it something else' to avoid inflaming anger among Eurosceptic Conservatives.
It is understood that Jeremy Corbyn has also been offered a 'lock' mechanism, which would prevent any future pro-Brexit Prime Minister such as Boris Johnson from unravelling the deal by having it written directly into legislation.
The moves are certain to trigger fury among pro-Brexit Tory MPs.
The parties have also discussed offering MPs a vote on whether to hold a second referendum. Neither the Tory or Labour leadership want the public to vote again on Brexit, and they hope a Commons defeat will banish the idea forever.
A source in the cross-party talks said: 'It was offered with a nod and wink – if we unite to vote it down, a second referendum can be put to bed once and for all.'
With just four days to go until an emergency Brussels summit on whether to further delay Britain's exit:
According to sources close to the negotiations – which took place over the phone on Saturday rather than through face-to-face meetings – Labour have indicated they don't mind how the 'customs union' is described as long as it conforms to the World Trade Organisation definition of it being 'an arrangement with a common external tariff'.
Said one source: 'It must look like a duck and quack like a duck, but it doesn't have to be called a duck.'
A Labour insider pointed to the fact Mr Corbyn last week supported Commons amendments backing a customs union that failed to include the word 'union', insisting they are not 'wedded to language'.
Wording such as 'the benefits of a customs relationship' or a 'comprehensive customs arrangement' is understood to have been mooted for the agreement by Downing Street, but is unlikely to fool Tory MPs.
In what was seen as an overt display of goodwill towards the Labour Party, Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday used a visit to Romania to declare there were 'no red lines' in the talks.
And in a further sign of a breakthrough, Mr Hammond said he was 'optimistic that we will reach some form of agreement' and suggested that there would be an exchange of 'some more texts today'.
Downing Street insisted that this did not mean Mrs May's commitment to end freedom of movement was on the negotiating table, but markedly failed to reprimand Mr Hammond for his comments.
Last night, abortive efforts by loyalist Minister Rory Stewart to get MPs to sign a letter supporting Mrs May's climbdown were met with short shrift by furious colleagues. 
One backbencher said: 'Rory has asked us all to sign this brown-nosing letter. Everyone has told him to do one.'
Mr Stewart's letter read: 'We are writing to express our support for the Cabinet's decision to open Brexit discussions with the Opposition in the spirit of compromise,' adding, 'these are not normal times'. It is thought to have attracted few signatures.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi said the situation needed to be resolved quickly in order to avoid the 'existential threat' posed if the UK remained in the EU at the time of the European elections next month.
He said that 'telling our constituents why we haven't been able to deliver Brexit' would lead to a wipe out, adding: 'It would be, I think, a suicide note of the Conservative Party.' 
Speaking as the negotiations continued, Mrs May said: 'I want the UK to leave the EU in an orderly way as soon as possible and that means leaving in a way that does not disrupt people's lives.
'If we cannot secure a majority among Conservative and DUP MPs we have no choice but to reach out across the House of Commons.
'The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all. It would mean letting the Brexit the British people voted for slip through our fingers.
'I will not stand for that. It is essential we deliver what people voted for and to do that we need to get a deal over the line.'
The Royal Navy could be pressed into action to ferry vital supplies across the Channel in the event of a No Deal Brexit, Government sources have told The Mail on Sunday.
According to a secret contingency planning document which was circulating around Whitehall last week, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling has failed to increase the ferry capacity between the UK and France by the 20 per cent required to ‘avoid a threat to life and limb’.
Mr Grayling signed £108 million of contracts in December with new ferry companies in an attempt to ease the pressure on Dover if the UK leaves the EU without a deal and the main ports are too gridlocked for enough food, water and medical supplies to get through to the UK.
But the document states that his ferry contracts have only increased capacity by 8 per cent.
A Government source said: ‘Its not enough. We are particularly worried about radioactive isotopes for cancer treatments, which have a short half-life’.
It is understood that Mr Williamson, whose offer to provide military contingency planners to Mr Grayling was turned down last July, has said that he can provide whatever ships can be spared by the Navy to help Mr Grayling.
The MoD has four Point class roll-on/roll-off sealift ships available for use as substitute ferries – but only one is currently in UK waters. The others are in the Suez, the Mediterranean and the Falklands. Mr Williamson has also placed 3,000 military personnel on standby.
Earlier this year, Mr Grayling defended giving a ferry contract worth almost £14 million to Seaborne Freight, despite it never having run a Channel service. The firm was accused of copying part of its website from a takeaway firm’s.
Mr Grayling says that the plan would ‘take a little bit of pressure off the Channel ports in order to make sure that we can get essential supplies for organisations like the NHS into the country’ if there were jams at the ports in Kent.
He said: ‘I remain quite optimistic now that the flow of traffic through the Channel ports will carry on relatively normally even in a No Deal Brexit. But people would expect us to be ready’.
It comes as a senior Foreign Office source has described a mood of ‘disbelief and desperation’ in Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s department over Brexit preparations.
The source said: ‘There is a perception that because Ministers can’t travel and the PM is not really interested in world affairs, the UK is disappearing off the world stage… If only we had some clear guidance to work towards or a clear objective. But that is absolutely lacking.’
A Transport Department spokesman said: ‘The Government remains focused on securing an agreement with the EU, however it is only sensible that we prepare for all possible outcomes.’
Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, from the pro-EU Best For Britain group, said: ‘Chris Grayling cannot run a bath let alone make sure our vital transport infrastructure routes. He’s completely out of his depth.’
BORIS JOHNSON: We have wrapped a suicide vest around our constitution and handed the detonator to Brussels 
Why are they bullying us? How can they get away with it? It is one of the mysteries of the current Brexit negotiations that the UK is so utterly feeble.
We have a massive economy; the sixth largest in the world. We ought to be able to do that giant and generous free trade deal the Prime Minister originally spoke of. And yet it’s, ‘yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’.
At every stage in the talks so far, Brussels gets what Brussels wants. We have agreed to the EU’s timetable; we have agreed to hand over £39 billion, for nothing in return.
Now under the Chequers proposal, we are set to agree to accept their rules – forever – with no say on the making of those rules.
It is a humiliation. We look like a seven-stone weakling being comically bent out of shape by a 500 lb gorilla. And the reason is simple: Northern Ireland, and the insanity of the so-called ‘backstop’.
We have opened ourselves to perpetual political blackmail. We have wrapped a suicide vest around the British constitution – and handed the detonator to Michel Barnier.
We have given him a jemmy with which Brussels can choose – at any time – to crack apart the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
We have been so mad as to agree, last December, that if we can’t find ways of producing frictionless trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, then Northern Ireland must remain in the customs union and the Single Market: in other words, part of the EU. And that would mean a border down the Irish Sea.
That outcome is completely unacceptable, as the PM has said, to the majority in Northern Ireland and to the UK Government; and yet that is the threat – to the integrity of the UK – that we have allowed our partners to wield. That is why Barnier seems so confident. That is why they are pushing us around. And we are now trying to sort it out, with a solution that is if anything even more pathetic.
We are now proposing our own version of the backstop: that if we can’t find ways of solving the Irish border problem, then the whole of the UK must remain in the customs union and Single Market.
And as a so-called solution to that problem we are putting forward the Chequers plan which keeps us subject to EU rules for goods, for food, in practice for trade, and much else besides.
Either means agreeing to take EU rules, with no say on those rules. It means exposing UK business and entrepreneurs to potentially hostile regulation over which we have no control whatever. It means we can’t do any real free trade deals. It means we are a vassal state.
So we have managed to reduce the great British Brexit to two appalling options: either we must divide the Union, or the whole country must accept EU law forever.
You might suppose that the issue of frictionless trade in Ireland had been grossly inflated, in order to keep us in the orbit of Brussels. And you might well be right.
But what I can say for sure is that there are far better technical solutions than either of these hopeless ‘backstop’ arrangements. Around the world, authorities are finding ways of abolishing frontier checks – and doing them elsewhere. Why is that so unthinkable for Ireland?
The Irish currently use their ports and airports to check only one per cent of goods arriving from anywhere outside the EU, let alone the UK. We live in a world of smartphone apps and electronic forms and Authorised Economic Operator schemes. There is no need for any kind of friction at the border at all.
As Jon Thompson, the head of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, told the House of Commons: ‘We do not believe – and this has been our consistent advice to Ministers – we do not believe we require any infrastructure at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland under any circumstances.’
He is right. The tragedy is that the British Government has never consistently pushed for those projects to be developed, and that is because there has always been a secret agenda to keep the UK in the customs union and effectively in the Single Market.
In a weird semi-masochistic way we have created the means by which the EU can bully us. We have conspired in this threat to the Union. We have put our own heads deliberately on the block.
It is time to scrap the backstop, fix the borders for frictionless trade, and get back to the open and dynamic approach outlined in Theresa May’s original Lancaster House speech – with a big Canada-style free trade deal.
Otherwise, we should tell our friends they won’t get a penny.
JEREMY HUNT: Mrs May will hold the line and win the best deal for Britain. But she needs the country behind her 
Throughout the post-war era, no political issue has aroused greater strength of feeling than our relationship with Europe – and rightly so.
With crucial negotiations under way, and vital issues hanging in the balance, the Prime Minister needs the flexibility and room to negotiate the best deal for Britain.
As we enter the final approach to Brexit, the critical moment has arrived. In just over six months, Britain will leave the European Union. In the coming weeks the Prime Minister will seek an agreement that fulfils the letter and spirit of our national decision to withdraw from the EU.
She is better than anyone I know at holding the line in the face of intense pressure. But as a country we can help, too, because her efforts to achieve the best outcome for Britain will be greatly strengthened if we are united behind her.
Parliament will, of course, have the chance to debate and vote on any agreement. Until then, we should not rush to judgment on a deal that is still under negotiation.
Nor should we assume that unacceptable further concessions will ‘inevitably’ be made on the Chequers proposals. I know this Prime Minister and she would never recommend a deal inconsistent with what the country voted for.
In brief, our plan will take Britain out of the Single Market and the customs union, end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and halt the payment of vast sums into the EU budget. It will end freedom of movement and withdraw from the Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries policies.
The Government’s overarching aim is to restore Britain’s sovereign control over our borders, laws and money, while protecting jobs by ensuring our exporters can trade as freely as possible with the EU. We will also protect the peace in Northern Ireland and firmly resist attempts by some in Europe to divide our United Kingdom with customs posts down the Irish Sea.
Nobody else has a detailed plan that both delivers on the instruction of the British people and has a chance of succeeding in the negotiations. No country has ever left the EU before, so this is a journey without signposts. No negotiation is ever easy: I know that only too well having recently negotiated the NHS’s long-term funding settlement with a Chancellor who rightly guards the purse-strings of the British taxpayer with great care.
Yet all sides in this negotiation share a strong interest in achieving a smooth and orderly Brexit. Last year, total trade between Britain and the rest of the EU came to £615 billion – more than twice the corresponding flow between China and Japan. About three million jobs in Britain and six million in the EU depend on this trade. We would all lose from any disruption.
As it happens, I voted to ‘Remain’ in the referendum in 2016 but I have found my views changing since then. Since becoming Foreign Secretary in July, I have visited eight EU countries and met more than half of my European counterparts. This has led me to reach two conclusions.
Firstly, the concept of freedom of movement is an inescapable element of the EU project – and it has been firmly rejected by voters in Britain. Only by leaving the EU can we satisfy the emphatic desire in the country to control our own borders, voiced in the referendum and again in last year’s Election, when 82 per cent of the public voted for parties that pledged to stop free movement.
Secondly, because of our very different histories, the pooling of sovereignty for collective security is in the DNA of our European friends, whereas parliamentary sovereignty is in ours. Ending our membership of the EU is a vital way to restore British parliamentary sovereignty and respect a strong desire to ensure decisions are taken closer to the people they affect.
Both of these factors help to explain why more people voted to leave the EU than have ever voted for any political party in our country’s history. Nothing would be more damaging for our democracy than for the political establishment to try to unpick that decision.
Keeping faith with the British people also rules out certain alternatives to EU membership. Especially any option that would entail accepting freedom of movement would contradict the message of both the referendum and the Election.
In the end, democracy depends on respecting the power and legitimacy of the ballot box and accepting whatever the electorate decides.
However tough the negotiations, we must not and will not ignore the will of the British people. So this is the moment to back the Prime Minister who is determined to deliver on their instructions.
 
Jo Johnson's resignation is the 'Emperor's New Clothes' moment in the Brexit process. 
He has stated clearly what everybody knows: that the negotiations satisfy no one and that we are hurtling towards making the UK a vassal state.
Theresa May will understandably be dismayed by his resignation and by new reports that, in any case, there can be no progress this week for her preferred Chequers solution as Brussels will not accept it.
However, it is time for the Prime Minister to be true to her mantra that 'no deal is better than a bad deal'. It is also time for convinced Brexiteers like me to compromise.
So at this late hour in the negotiations, we would like to make a new, generous offer to break the deadlock, to achieve a 'No Deal Plus'.
It would cost us money but it would finally dispel the 'crash out' Project Fear nightmare scenarios.
It is true that with no withdrawal agreement at all, we legally owe the EU nothing – despite misguided claims from the Chancellor that we do.
But we should offer Brussels £20 billion to make our departure as amicable as possible.
Under it, we would leave on schedule on March 29.
However, for a 21-month transition period until the end of 2020, both sides would maintain a standstill with zero tariffs on either's goods and no additional barriers.
This would be until the end of the EU's current multi-annual financial framework.
In return, the UK would continue to make payments to the EU budget which are just under £10 billion a year, net.
In total, that is half what the Government is currently prepared to pay for a deal. We would continue to apply existing EU rules and the Common Commercial Policy until the end of 2020. 
This would provide both sides with time to prepare for a departure on to World Trade Organisation terms, or for the activation of the comprehensive free trade deal that the EU has offered.
The UK would be a third country, which would simplify the negotiations.
It would be a generous offer from the UK especially as it would be combined with the protection of the rights of nationals from EU member states legally living in the UK.
It would help the EU avoid a black hole in its budget and would avoid disruption to either side's trade.
Mrs May is known to be both an honest and dutiful person.
However, as the Brexit negotiations reach their denouement, her words and actions do not meet. This is particularly so regarding the recent stories in relation to a border in the Irish Sea and the vexed issue of fishing, where we hear the EU wishes to maintain their rights to our seas after Brexit.
These are not the only issues where words and deeds no longer match.
The implementation period, as the Prime Minister originally termed it, has evolved into a further time for negotiations.
There is also the even more important issue of the customs union. Remaining in it is proposed as the back-stop plan in case nothing else could be agreed.
However, it would prevent us from cutting tariffs, denying the nation one of Brexit's major benefits.
It would hit the least well-off the most by keeping the pricing of food, clothing and footwear higher than necessary to protect inefficient continental businesses.
The UK would also be prevented from making trade deals with other nations. It would also leave us more tied into the EU's customs union than we are today.
In reference to the Prime Minister's own words, it is hard to believe that someone who so clearly stated that she would take the UK out of the customs union could be about to agree to so abject a surrender.
The British have often admired noble failure but there is no nobility in this. It would not meet the requirements of the referendum for we would be more controlled by the EU, not less. 
It would cost billions of pounds for the privilege of servitude and further weaken trust in politicians.
When Pandora famously opened the box the last thing remaining was hope.
As the PM stubbornly refuses to accept the comprehensive free-trade deal offered by the EU, colloquially known as Super Canada, the final hope must be that when she said no deal is better than a bad deal, she actually meant it.
It goes without saying that, given both main parties have vowed to uphold the result of the 2016 referendum, holding a second would cheat the electorate.
So let us make the preparations now for as friendly and smooth a Brexit as possible.
In the local elections, many Conservative councillors lost their seats. I want to thank all of my colleagues for their tremendous hard work and dedication to public duty, and for all they did to improve the lives of the communities which they served.
I have been a councillor and I know what a rewarding and important job it is.
They did not deserve what happened and I am sorry.
It is clear that the voters delivered their judgment in large part based on what is happening – or not happening – at Westminster. And, as Prime Minister, I fully accept my share of the responsibility for that.
The voters expect us to deliver on the result of the referendum and, so far, Parliament has rejected the deal which I have put forward.
The March 29 exit date has been delayed, the public is frustrated – and I fully understand why.
Three years have passed now since the historic 2016 vote and people really do just want us to get on with it.
But the electorate delivered a message on Brexit to Labour, too. Labour also lost seats and councils which it has held for decades.
Clearly, the public is fed up with the failure of both of the two main parties to find a way to honour the result of the referendum, take the United Kingdom out of the European Union and to bring our country back together again.
There is no use trying to escape the facts, however uncomfortable they may be. I have tried, tried and tried again to deliver Brexit with the votes of Conservative MPs and our confidence and supply partners, the DUP.
I negotiated with the EU what I believe is a very good deal for the UK – a deal which allows us to genuinely take back control of our money and our laws.
The free movement of people will end – giving us control of our own borders for the first time in decades. However, I could not persuade enough of my colleagues to vote for the Withdrawal Agreement and, regrettably, I have to accept there is no sign of that position changing.
Meanwhile, the series of indicative votes which MPs held did not deliver any path forwards. Parliament said what it didn’t want – but not what it was prepared to vote for.
Since then, the Government has been in talks with the Opposition to try to find a unified, cross-party position. I understand many of my colleagues find this decision uncomfortable. Frankly, it is not what I wanted, either.
But, as elected politicians, who asked the public to give us an instruction on whether to leave the EU, we cannot now shrug our shoulders and say it’s all too difficult.
We have to find a way to break the deadlock – and I believe the results of the local elections give fresh urgency to this.
The talks with Labour so far have been serious. We don’t agree with the Opposition on lots of policy issues, but on Brexit there are areas we do agree on – leaving with a good deal that protects jobs and our security and ends free movement.
But there are also differences on precisely what the UK’s future relationship with the EU should look like, so reaching an agreement will require compromise from both sides.
We will keep negotiating, with more formal talks due to take place on Tuesday, and keep trying to find a way through.
Because the real thing that matters now is delivering Brexit and moving on to all the other issues people care about. The longer that takes, the greater the risk we will not leave at all. We need to get out of the EU and get a deal over the line.
To MPs, I would say this: if we are able to negotiate a cross-party agreement, this deal will be a stepping stone to a brighter future, outside the EU, where the UK can determine the road ahead.
This is because no parliament can bind its successor.
Some people would prefer a less close relationship with the EU in the future, while others would prefer a closer relationship.
The key point is, the ultimate decision-maker in everything we do is Parliament. So future parliaments, with a different party balance, will be able to decide whether they want a closer or more distant relationship with the EU.
I do sincerely believe that – more than 34 long months on from the referendum – what people want is for their politicians to come together in the national interest and get Brexit over the line.
And to the Leader of the Opposition, I say this: let’s listen to what the voters said in the local elections and put our differences aside for a moment. Let’s do a deal.
Theresa May has been warned that she is presiding over the ‘death of the Tory Party’ after a devastating poll revealed the immense scale of the grassroots revolt against her.
The exclusive Mail on Sunday survey shows that an astonishing 40 per cent of Conservative councillors are planning to vote for Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party in May’s European elections, in protest at the Prime Minister’s failure to conclude the UK’s exit from the EU.
Three-quarters of her own councillors want Mrs May to resign – and an overwhelming 96 per cent believe that the Tory Party has been damaged by the impasse.
Conservative MPs preparing to return to the Commons after the Easter break have been shaken by the strength of feeling in their local associations over Mrs May’s leadership, after she agreed to delay Brexit until the end of October if she cannot strike a deal.
Such is the scale of the anger that the party’s 1922 Committee of backbench MPs will convene on Tuesday to discuss changing the rules to allow a new vote of no confidence in her leadership. Mrs May is currently protected from a challenge until December following a failed coup last year.
The Tory group on Derbyshire County Council is so disillusioned that it has gone on ‘strike’ by refusing to take any part in next month’s European election campaign.
The Survation researchers were bombarded with vitriolic remarks by the hundreds of councillors they contacted for the MoS poll.
One said: ‘The Conservative Party is dead. It will take a strong leader to dredge it out of the mud’.
Another said: ‘For God’s sake get on with it [Brexit] – it is killing us on the doorstep.’
The turmoil engulfing the Government has made Jeremy Corbyn the most likely victor of the next General Election, according to a string of recent opinion polls, prompting Whitehall mandarins to ratchet up their preparations for a Labour Government.
As this newspaper reveals today, Mr Corbyn plans to ‘boycott’ Downing Street and remain living in his North London home if he becomes Prime Minister. Officials in charge of transition arrangements have made plans to allow that to happen. A source close to the Labour leader confirmed he is ‘seriously considering’ the idea – to the dismay of aides and police and security advisers.
Mr Farage only launched his Brexit Party earlier this month, but one poll last week put its support for the European Parliament elections at 27 per cent – well ahead of both Labour, on 22 per cent, and the Tories, who were stuck on 15 per cent. The new party is estimated to have already received more than £1.5 million in donations.
Our poll shows if Boris Johnson was Tory leader for the elections, the number of defectors to the Brexit Party would nearly halve.
Out of those Tory councillors who said they were certain to vote in the elections, 52 per cent said they would vote for their own party, while 40 per cent would vote for the Brexit Party.
If Mr Johnson was Prime Minister, the proportion voting Tory would rise to 65 per cent and 22 per cent would vote for Mr Farage.
Out of the 96 per cent of councillors who believe that the Brexit deadlock has damaged the Tories, 39 per cent believe it has done so ‘permanently’. A total of 76 per cent of the councillors want Mrs May to resign: of these, 43 per cent want her to go now while 33 per cent want her to go only after a deal has been reached.
A slew of rivals are preparing campaigns for the moment when Mrs May does step down as leader.
Mr Johnson tops the grassroots rankings on 23 per cent, ahead of Michael Gove on 14 per cent, Jeremy Hunt on 12 per cent, Sajid Javid on 11 per cent and Dominic Raab on 9 per cent.
But if Mr Farage is included as an option for Tory leader, he would beat everyone except Mr Johnson, who is on 19 per cent to Mr Farage’s 15 per cent.
The six-month Brexit extension granted to Mrs May has infuriated the Tory grassroots. Of the councillors questioned in our poll, 64 per cent voted Leave in 2016.
The language used by many of the councillors will shock Downing Street, with a number describing the current situation as ‘the end of the Conservative Party’.
Survation founder Damian Lyons Lowe said: ‘Conservative councillors are an influential and important indicator of the party’s grassroots support. Out of those who will cast a vote, almost half will not vote Conservative, underlining the deep divisions over Europe and the difficulty the party will have in getting out the vote for the forthcoming elections’.
l Survation questioned 781 Conservative councillors between April 17 and 19.
Boris Johnson’s strong performance in today’s poll for The Mail on Sunday is part of a double boost for the former Foreign Secretary as he waits for the leadership race to start.
Mr Johnson reinforces his reputation as the darling of Tory Party members by coming top of the poll rankings, well ahead of his main rivals Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab.
The main impediment to his long-harboured dream of becoming Prime Minister has always been his lack of popularity among Tory MPs, who decide which two of their colleagues are entered into the ‘run-off’ in a ballot of party members.
It has led supporters of both Mr Johnson and fellow Brexiteer Mr Raab to express the fear that they will be kept out of the final two by collusion between Mr Hunt and Mr Javid, both former Remainers who have tacked more towards Brexit as the contest has neared.
Now Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, which determines the rules governing the leadership contest, is under increasing pressure to reform the system to allow four names to go to the membership. If agreed, it would make it almost impossible for Mr Johnson’s rivals to keep him off the members’ ballot.
The comments made by many of the councillors in our survey suggest that he would then be on a clear path to No 10.
One told us: ‘May has done nothing but vacillate. Boris has at least been consistent and would be more electable.’ Another said: ‘They are so intent on infighting – except for Boris.’ 
By Miles Goslett for The Daily Mail
Who funds The Brexit Party? That question is likely to be asked with increased intensity if, as bookmakers predict, Nigel Farage’s new organisation wins seats at the European elections on May 23.
Party treasurer Phillip Basey agreed to open its books to me on Thursday. And having seen a raft of data, I can report that some-thing remarkable is going on.
On Basey’s computer screen at his Westminster office was the party PayPal account. Every few seconds I saw another donation come in from a member of the public. Then another. And another. It was dizzying.
‘Most money comes via PayPal but we’re being sent envelopes of cash as well,’ he said. ‘We’ve also had scores of cheques. Our local branch of Lloyds Bank say they haven’t seen so many cheques for years.’
Basey revealed that on April 12, when the party formally launched, it received £440,000. That’s £305 a minute on average. When I went in, that average was down to £200 a minute. By my calculations, The Brexit Party has taken about £1.5 million in total. ‘Correct,’ said Basey. ‘Almost all of it will go on campaigning, in line with official limits. Our overheads are lower than the Tories and Labour.’
The mainstream parties rely on big donations. But Basey said every contribution they get is small. Most give £25.
This allows someone to become a registered supporter and receive newsletters.
Some pledge only £5. More rarely, £500 is offered. One benefactor has given £200,000, the biggest donation to date.
‘The official campaigning period has not even begun in earnest,’ Basey pointed out. ‘Everything will be reported to the Electoral Commission in due course.’
By 4pm on Thursday, the party had 57,000 registered supporters. Typically, 1,200 to 1,500 new supporters join each day. The Tories and Labour could only dream of statistics like these.
Farage says he wants to start a political revolution. With this sort of public backing, he may just achieve it. 
A howl of rage from the shires: Heart and soul of the Tory party reveal their cries of exasperation and pain and demand to be listened to over Brexit crisis and Conservative leadership 
By Glen Owen Political Editor for The Daily Mail
Traditionally, Conservative councillors across Britain have been united in their sense of duty, spending long evenings and weekends on doorsteps or stuffing endless envelopes for the sake of their party.
Now, as British politics plunges further into crisis, The Mail on Sunday has asked 800 of these loyal foot soldiers just what they think of the disastrous Brexit stalemate – and of Theresa May’s leadership – as many of them face a fight for their seats in local elections on May 2.
And their verdict is damning – as these quotes from them vividly illustrate...
‘The Conservative Party is dead! Will take a strong leader to dredge it out of the mud.’
‘I am embarrassed to be a member at the moment. This will be a case study of (predictable) incompetence which has made our country and party a laughing stock around the world.’
‘It will be difficult to resolve all the problems that exist and I think it could be the end of the Conservative Party in its current format.’
‘The Conservative Party needs a proper shake up. There are too many Old Etonians who just give the party its bad, upper-class reputation.’
‘Breaking the manifesto pledge has damaged the party beyond repair.’
‘It has caused me to seriously consider my party allegiance. We local councillors have been very badly served by the MPs at Westminster and I fear a drubbing in the local elections.’
‘I have always maintained that I would give the Conservative Government the full course of this Parliament to meet the key manifesto commitment to leave the EU. However, holding EU elections in May is such anathema to me that I will register an unambiguous protest vote for the Brexit Party.’
‘It is an absolute affront to democracy to attempt to thwart the majority vote to leave. You [Mrs May] have lost my trust for ever.’
‘I will be resigning from the party and joining Change UK, who put the country ahead of party politics.’
‘I will not vote Conservative nationally again. I have been a lifetime supporter and a Conservative councillor for 33 years.’
‘The Conservative Party has become a joke on the doorstep.’
‘For God’s sake GET ON WITH IT – it is killing us on the doorstep!’
‘My re-election as a Conservative councillor next month is at risk, in an otherwise safe Tory ward, purely and simply because central Government has shredded the Conservatives’ reputation for competence through its gross mishandling of Brexit. The Government’s performance over the past three years has been truly shambolic, an embarrassing fiasco. We have now reached a point where I no longer believe a word May says.’
‘For Christ’s sake get on with it. You bloody idiots are causing damage to business, to our party and local election chances. Locally Conservatives are working well and working hard while our MPs continue to s*** on us.’
‘If we don’t get out of the EU before the local elections you can write off 60 per cent of Conservative councillors. May is perceived as a traitor.’
‘I feel dismayed, disappointed and betrayed by our MPs from all parties, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Theresa May and other Remainers have destroyed Conservatives from the inside. I have to explain at the door while canvassing that I feel just as let down, betrayed, disappointed as local people.’
‘As local councillors we do bins, not Brexit.’
‘Possibly the biggest shambles ever and likely to lose huge numbers of Conservative councillors their seats on May 2. A lot of Tory MPs are disloyal and selfish with total disregard for the will of the people and those of us at grassroots.’
‘We are suffering on the doorstep. If we do not get our act together we face wipeout in future elections.’
‘The Conservative Party no longer stands for anything – not even competence. [It] still has a strong, principled, patriotic membership – but its earnest wishes are being frustrated by a parliamentary party who don’t think much like the local members who fought to get them elected and who are, in large, careerist politicians more likely to default to the whip line than stand for anything. It’s a disgraceful situation. And if it goes uncorrected, the UK will get a Corbyn Government by default.’
‘I think we could be out of power for a decade with, God help us, J Corbyn able to wreck everything we’ve achieved.’
‘Theresa May is between a rock and a hard place. She is a person of great spirit and principles but she has been let down appallingly by weak-willed, easily led MPs who put their own interests before the needs of the nation. We are losing local party members because of their actions. They have done irreparable damage to the party and I fear we will not recover for decades to come.’
‘I am an admirer of Theresa May. However, her stance on Brexit has damaged her and the Conservatives. She needs to resign as soon as possible to ensure the party survives this disastrous debacle. How can I campaign for the UK Conservative Party when I now absolutely believe that Brexit needs to happen as soon as possible?’
‘To save her party she should stand down tomorrow. The longer she procrastinates, the more serious and long-term will be the damage to the Conservative Party.’
‘The Prime Minister has destroyed the Conservative Party. My worry is May has done so much damage to the reputation [of the party], and alienated so many core Tory voters, that any new leader will have a mountain to climb and too little time before the next Election to win over enough voters to stop Corbyn getting the keys to No 10. God help us if Corbyn gets into power.’
‘The Conservative Party is doomed until May goes.’
‘Just bloody get on with it and stop behaving like children (that is for all MPs, frankly).’
The Trotskyist, the ex-retail boss and the woman they call 'Boadicea': Who else is joining Annunziata Rees-Mogg in standing for Nigel Farage's new Brexit party? 
By Daily Mail Reporter 
Annunziata Rees-Mogg, the younger sister of Tory euroseptic Jacob and daughter of former Times editor Lord (William) Rees-Mogg, joined the Conservative Party at the age of five, and claimed she was out canvassing by the time she was eight. 
She has worked as a stockbroker and journalist, and formerly edited the European Journal owned by Brexiteer Tory MP Bill Cash who recently demanded Theresa May resign for ‘abject surrender’ to the EU. 
She twice failed to get elected as a Tory MP. David Cameron suggested she call herself ‘Nancy Mogg’ to sound less posh, but she refused. 
 
The DUP and Jacob Rees-Mogg's group of Brexiteers have united and vowed to vote down Theresa May's Brexit deal. 
Fifty-one Tories have already signed a pledge opposing Mrs May's Brexit proposals - with concerns a no-deal insurance plan will lead to a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Now, the DUP and The European Research Group of backbenchers, chaired by Mr Rees-Mogg, have released an extraordinary joint declaration that they will stop a Brexit deal getting through Parliament if the Union is threatened.
Steve Baker, the group's deputy chairman and Sammy Wilson, the DUP Brexit spokesman, wrote in The Sunday Telegraph: 'We share the Prime Minister's ambition for an EU free trade agreement, but not at any price and certainly not at the price of our Union. 
'If the Government makes the historic mistake of prioritising placating the EU over establishing an independent and whole UK, then regrettably we must vote against the deal.' 
They added: 'If Parliament is forced to reject the Government's deal, then we will once again have called the bluff of vested interest lobbyists and Whitehall scaremongers.' 
The extraordinary moves ramps up pressure on Mrs May as she battles to agree a deal with the EU that will be acceptable to a majority of MPs. 
Justin Greening last night joined the chorus speaking out against Mrs May's proposals, saying her potential deal represented 'the biggest giveaway of sovereignty in modern times' and demanded a second referendum.
She told The Observer: 'The parliamentary deadlock has been clear for some time. It's crucial now for parliament to vote down this plan, because it is the biggest giveaway of sovereignty in modern times. 
'Instead, the government and parliament must recognise we should give people a final say on Brexit. Only they can break the deadlock and choose from the practical options for Britain's future now on the table.'
Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer, however, vowed Labour would work with any willing MPs to prevent a no-deal outcome. He told The Sunday times: 'The national interest must come first. And Labour will work with all sides to defend it.'
Meanwhile, four Tory ministers are on the verge of resignation after rail minister Jo Johnson quit on Friday, the Sunday Times reported without naming them.
The newspaper also said that the European Union had rejected May's plan for an independent mechanism to oversee Britain's departure from any temporary customs arrangement it agrees.
Mrs May is trying to hammer out the final details of the British divorce deal but the talks have become stuck over how the two sides can prevent a hard border from being required in Ireland.
Britain has proposed a UK-wide temporary customs arrangement with the EU to resolve the issue but Brexiteers in her party want London to have the final say on when that arrangement would end, to prevent it from being tied indefinitely to the bloc.
A senior cabinet minister was quoted in the paper as saying: 'This is the moment she has to face down Brussels and make it clear to them that they need to compromise, or we will leave without a deal.'
An EU diplomat said earlier on Saturday that they were cautiously hopeful that an EU summit could happen in November to endorse the deal but that the volatile situation in Britain made it very difficult to predict.
Other EU diplomats said several issues remained unresolved.
Mrs May is expected to meet with her cabinet this week to set out her plans for the divorce deal. She was dealt a blow on Friday when junior minister Jo Johnston, who voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum, quit over her plan.
To add to the pressure, a leading member of a group of Brexiteer lawmakers in parliament joined with the Brexit spokesman for the small Northern Irish party that props up May's party in government to warn that they could not vote for the deal as it currently stands. 
A spokeswoman for Mrs May's Downing Street office said the talks were going down to the wire. 'The prime minister has always said these negotiations are tough and toughest in the final stages.
'The prime minister has told colleagues this week we should aim to conclude the withdrawal agreement as soon as possible but we will not do that at any cost.' 
On Friday the DUP, whose ten MPs prop up Mrs May's government, vowed to torpedo the government if she bows to EU demands on the Irish border 'backstop'.
The party's leader, Arlene Foster, urged Mrs May to reflect on her Brexit stance as she warned the DUP will oppose her current proposals if they go to a parliamentary vote.
She said 'no unionist' could back the apparent advocacy of a withdrawal treaty that includes a Northern Ireland specific backstop measure to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
In a letter to the DUP, which was leaked to the media, Mrs May insisted such a backstop would never come into force.
Mrs Foster said her party was fundamentally opposed to any divorce deal that saw Northern Ireland operate under a different regulatory arrangement to the rest of the UK.
Stormont's former first minister insisted there were 'many others' in the Conservative Party who could also not support the Prime Minister's proposals.
'We would not be able to support this if it came to Parliament in the form that it is in the letter,' the DUP leader said.
Give the EU £20bn to leave as friends, says Jacob Rees-Mogg writing for Mail on Sunday  
Jo Johnson's resignation is the 'Emperor's New Clothes' moment in the Brexit process. 
He has stated clearly what everybody knows: that the negotiations satisfy no one and that we are hurtling towards making the UK a vassal state.
Theresa May will understandably be dismayed by his resignation and by new reports that, in any case, there can be no progress this week for her preferred Chequers solution as Brussels will not accept it.
However, it is time for the Prime Minister to be true to her mantra that 'no deal is better than a bad deal'. It is also time for convinced Brexiteers like me to compromise.
So at this late hour in the negotiations, we would like to make a new, generous offer to break the deadlock, to achieve a 'No Deal Plus'.
It would cost us money but it would finally dispel the 'crash out' Project Fear nightmare scenarios.
It is true that with no withdrawal agreement at all, we legally owe the EU nothing – despite misguided claims from the Chancellor that we do.
But we should offer Brussels £20 billion to make our departure as amicable as possible.
Under it, we would leave on schedule on March 29.
However, for a 21-month transition period until the end of 2020, both sides would maintain a standstill with zero tariffs on either's goods and no additional barriers.
This would be until the end of the EU's current multi-annual financial framework.
In return, the UK would continue to make payments to the EU budget which are just under £10 billion a year, net. 
In total, that is half what the Government is currently prepared to pay for a deal. We would continue to apply existing EU rules and the Common Commercial Policy until the end of 2020. 
This would provide both sides with time to prepare for a departure on to World Trade Organisation terms, or for the activation of the comprehensive free trade deal that the EU has offered.
The UK would be a third country, which would simplify the negotiations.
It would be a generous offer from the UK especially as it would be combined with the protection of the rights of nationals from EU member states legally living in the UK.
It would help the EU avoid a black hole in its budget and would avoid disruption to either side's trade.
Mrs May is known to be both an honest and dutiful person.
However, as the Brexit negotiations reach their denouement, her words and actions do not meet. This is particularly so regarding the recent stories in relation to a border in the Irish Sea and the vexed issue of fishing, where we hear the EU wishes to maintain their rights to our seas after Brexit.
These are not the only issues where words and deeds no longer match.
The implementation period, as the Prime Minister originally termed it, has evolved into a further time for negotiations.
There is also the even more important issue of the customs union. Remaining in it is proposed as the back-stop plan in case nothing else could be agreed.
However, it would prevent us from cutting tariffs, denying the nation one of Brexit's major benefits.
It would hit the least well-off the most by keeping the pricing of food, clothing and footwear higher than necessary to protect inefficient continental businesses.
The UK would also be prevented from making trade deals with other nations. It would also leave us more tied into the EU's customs union than we are today.
In reference to the Prime Minister's own words, it is hard to believe that someone who so clearly stated that she would take the UK out of the customs union could be about to agree to so abject a surrender.
The British have often admired noble failure but there is no nobility in this. It would not meet the requirements of the referendum for we would be more controlled by the EU, not less. 
It would cost billions of pounds for the privilege of servitude and further weaken trust in politicians.
When Pandora famously opened the box the last thing remaining was hope.
As the PM stubbornly refuses to accept the comprehensive free-trade deal offered by the EU, colloquially known as Super Canada, the final hope must be that when she said no deal is better than a bad deal, she actually meant it.
It goes without saying that, given both main parties have vowed to uphold the result of the 2016 referendum, holding a second would cheat the electorate.
So let us make the preparations now for as friendly and smooth a Brexit as possible.
 Lord Bridges - Brexit differences
Lord Price - pursue other interests 
Baroness Anelay - health issues
Michael Fallon - conduct claims
Priti Patel - secret Israel meetings
Damian Green - conduct claims
John Hayes - to speak out on issues backbencher
Justine Greening - refused to be moved in reshuffle 
Amber Rudd - Misled MPs during Windrush row
 Philip Lee - Brexit
Greg Hands - To oppose Heathrow expansion
David Davis - Brexit 
Steve Baker - Brexit
Boris Johnson - Brexit
Guto Bebb - Brexit
Andrew Griffiths - conduct issue
Tracey Crouch - Gambling machine crackdown delay
Jo Johnson - Brexit
Brexit must happen. MPs need to deliver the referendum result and honour our promise to the electorate in 2017. It is tempting to think the easiest way to achieve this is to sit across the table from the Labour Party, do a deal and deliver Brexit. It sounds so simple and so reasonable, but it is destined to fail.
Even if Labour do a deal, break bread with the Prime Minister and announce that both parties have reached an agreement, it can only ever end in tears.
Why do I say this? Coming from a Labour-voting family, I grew up with a clear understanding of the tribal nature of Labour politics. The Labour Party does not exist to help the Conservative Party.
Jeremy Corbyn will do all he can to divide, disrupt and frustrate the Conservatives in the hope of bringing down the Government. His goal, and he has made no secret of it, is to bring about a General Election.
The Prime Minister needs to understand that she now is seen by many in the Conservative Party as negotiating with the enemy. There is a clue in their title: Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.
Their priority is to derail the Government. When push comes to shove, the Labour Party will do all they can to cause the Government to fail.
Even if we get to a point where Jeremy Corbyn agrees a deal with the Prime Minister, when it comes to detailed scrutiny of the votes, Labour will revert to form. It will be an almost unprecedented challenge to guide the necessary legislation through the House of Commons. Even if it passes the first few votes, it will fail later.
The initial thinking is that combining Labour and Conservative forces will easily pass any legislation, but there are some tough realities.
Numbers mean everything in the House of Commons. The Conservative Party will not march through the lobbies with the Prime Minister to back any old agreement, especially if it is far removed from the Brexit that was promised. If she is able to gain the support of the bulk of the Conservative parliamentary party, she will be doing exceptionally well, but in reality we could end up with a situation where she goes through the lobbies with less than half the Conservative MPs. The only people on whom she can depend are those on the payroll.
We then turn to Labour. Labour are as divided on the issue of Brexit as the Conservatives. There could potentially be up to 80 Labour MPs who are so committed to a second referendum, a so-called People’s Vote, that they will vote against any deal agreed by the Labour front bench. The Liberal Democrats, SNP and Change UK will all be voting against any deal she puts forward, because what they want is not to facilitate our exit from the EU, but to ensure that we stay.
This leaves us with a series of knife-edge votes, at which the Government will likely suffer a number of defeats.
Even if an agreement is voted through, by the time it has gone through both the House of Commons and House of Lords, it will be a very different bill to what was first proposed.
This is when Labour will finally kill it, if they have not done so already. Labour will be able to credibly say it is not what was originally agreed between them and the Prime Minister.
It is politically naive to go down this route. It will struggle to deliver the numbers for votes and it separates the Prime Minister from her own parliamentary party. And importantly, it has frustrated many of the people who voted Conservative in the 2017 General Election.
This creates enormous problems for the future and is something that should be avoided at all costs. The nation is expecting us to deliver Brexit and to move on. The Prime Minister needs to recognise that futile efforts to pull off this Labour deal are damaging us all.
It is a grave mistake for any Prime Minister to fail to recognise when a plan will not work and it is fatal to press on regardless. It is vital that imagination and boldness are now deployed, accepting that these Labour talks, which have gone on for weeks, are never going to provide the solution to the problem the Prime Minister faces.
The Conservative Party needs to be the party that delivers on its promises. If it is able to do this, it will flourish and be the party that voters know they can trust. We need to accept that these talks with Labour are fruitless and that not only will they not deliver the Brexit that people voted for, they are a betrayal of the direct instructions the people gave us in 2016 and 2017.
We are now at a crossroads and it is imperative the Prime Minister makes the right choice.
In order to deliver Brexit, there has to be a clear-sighted determination of what you are wanting to deliver, as opposed to delivering the lowest common denominator.
The only way to deliver anything is by ensuring you have your own tribe and your own people with you 100 per cent of the way.
This is what has to be delivered – not doing a deal with Labour. 
The anti-Brexit People’s Vote campaign, which is calling for a second referendum on Europe, is being ripped apart by bitter infighting, it was claimed last night.
One faction, including those who organised yesterday’s March For Change in Central London, are openly Remainers.
But the other camp – dominated by former Labour spin doctors Alastair Campbell and Tom Baldwin, along with former Cabinet Minister Lord Mandelson – want to concentrate on securing a second referendum, the original reason for setting up the campaign.
Emails leaked to The Mail on Sunday reveal a deep split. 
One source inside the coalition-style campaign claimed that regular meetings were being held behind the scenes by Baldwin and another official with Tony Blair and that the former Prime Minister had helped to raise between £2 million and £3 million.
In an angry email on April 25 sent by six leading campaigners, including journalist Baroness Wheatcroft, to the leadership of the People’s Vote, they expressed extreme concern that separate camps had emerged at its Millbank HQ. 
They said: ‘There is almost no sign of the co-operation and unity that have made the People’s Vote campaign one of the most successful efforts in recent British political history.’
Writing before the European elections in May, they described the campaign as ‘not fit for purpose’.
The email chain, shared to about a dozen key figures, then led to a hostile exchange on April 28 between former FT journalist Hugo Dixon and Mr Campbell.
Mr Dixon, a vice-chairman of the campaign, was clearly angry that neither he nor chairman, PR guru Roland Rudd, were consulted about the appointment of Campbell’s protege Tom Baldwin as director of communications. 
In typically blunt style, Campbell fired back: ‘Hugo – forgive me if I put your email into the “seeking to destroy others’ will to live” department.’
A People’s Vote spokesman said: ‘Mr Blair and senior figures from different parties have attended fundraising events for Open Britain, one of the organisations in the People’s Vote campaign. But the vast majority of our income comes from small donations online.’
A spokesman for Mr Blair said: ‘He has attended fundraising events but has not helped raise the amounts you suggest.’
Thousands joined yesterday’s march, compared to 700,000 for a People’s Vote last October.
Boris Johnson has been warned the Government’s chief law officer will resign if he does not write to Brussels to ask for a Brexit extension, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is understood to have conveyed the threat during a ‘heated’ exchange with the Prime Minister over the Government’s concession to a Scottish court last week that Mr Johnson would comply with the Commons’ order to ask for a delay if no deal is agreed by October 19.
The concession came despite Mr Johnson’s public assertion that he would rather ‘die in a ditch’ than make such a request.
The revelations come as EU sources revealed last night that an embattled Mr Johnson has been forced to cancel plans to meet Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s President Macron after they refused to change their diaries in order to see him. 
According to multiple sources, Friday’s Government submission to the Court of Session followed an animated encounter between Mr Johnson and his law officers – including Mr Cox and Lord Keen, Advocate General for Scotland – on Wednesday evening.
One source said that Mr Cox and Lord Keen told the Prime Minister that, if the Government did not make clear it would not break the law, the Prime Minister would face ‘resignations’, adding: ‘Boris was absolutely furious but he had to back down.’
When the submission was made public on Friday, Mr Johnson – who has dismissed rebel legislation to request an extension as ‘the Surrender Act’ – reacted by tweeting ‘New deal or No Deal’ and insisted he would ‘Get Brexit Done’.
Mr Cox is already regarded by many Conservatives as ‘the wrecker’ who sank Theresa May’s hopes of winning Commons’ support for her Brexit deal earlier this year. At the time, even Brexit hardliners were looking for reasons to support the deal. But the Attorney General spelt out in blunt terms that the UK had no legal way out of the hated backstop.
Reports of Mr Cox’s threat come as Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom today insists in The Mail on Sunday there is ‘cautious optimism’ that a deal is within reach – despite Brussels refusing to hold talks with the UK this weekend.
Writing opposite, Ms Leadsom says: ‘If we do get a deal at the European Council on October 17 and 18, we will move at pace to get it through Parliament before October 31.’
But last night, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte added to the sense of scepticism on the Continent, saying ‘important questions remain’ about Mr Johnson’s proposals.
Speaking after a phone call with Mr Johnson, he said: ‘There is a lot of work to be done ahead of October 17/18.’ The European Commission said yesterday EU members had agreed that Mr Johnson’s proposals – under which the backstop aimed at preventing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish republic would be replaced by a system whereby Northern Ireland would stay in the EU single market for goods but leave the customs union – ‘do not provide a basis for concluding an agreement’. It added that the UK would be given ‘another opportunity to present its proposals in detail’ tomorrow.
Downing Street said Mr Johnson will ‘continue to hit the phones’ over the coming days and ‘remains open to meetings with EU leaders’. Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay will travel to the Netherlands for talks later today. Mr Johnson’s chief negotiator David Frost is expected to return to Brussels tomorrow and his chief of staff, Sir Edward Lister, will travel to Dublin to try to persuade the Irish Government to drop their opposition.
No 10 regards October 16 – the day before the start of the crunch EU summit – as the final deadline for the EU to lift its opposition, giving Mr Johnson just nine days to find common ground with Brussels.
But after Mr Cox’s stand, Mr Johnson has spent this weekend holed up with advisers trying to thrash out which loophole could be used to obey the law while still sticking to his pledge that the UK will leave on October 31.
Government lawyers are trying to find a form of words for the letter which would comply with the Act, yet not persuade the EU to grant a delay. Aides are also still looking at ways of trying to ‘sabotage’ the EU from within, such as by refusing to appoint a British EU commissioner, to force them to kick us out.
During his encounter with Mr Johnson, Mr Cox is understood to have said the legal system would be destabilised if he did not comply with the so-called Benn Act, designed to force him to request an extension if no deal is done.
Mr Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings told advisers the extension letter was ‘Parliament’s letter, not the Prime Minister’s letter’ – suggesting there were way of complying with the Benn Act but delivering Brexit on time.
But a source told this newspaper that the Attorney General ‘thinks they can’t get round the Act’.
Mr Cox said last night that there was no ‘row’ when he met the Prime Minister. But asked if he had threatened to resign, he replied that he was ‘not at liberty’ to discuss any advice that he provided to the Prime Minister.
 NOW is the moment of truth in the United Kingdom’s long struggle to extricate itself from the European Union. For years many British people have suspected that the EU is not really interested in anything except more Europe.
It is almost impossible to negotiate departure from a body which has no real understanding that a member nation might wish to regain its independence, or any real belief that a such a nation should have that right.
Boris Johnson has put forward plans for a compromise which are sensible and thoughtful. He has taken account of the real worries of the Irish government and people about the revival of a new hard border with Northern Ireland.
These plans have growing support from all sides at Westminster, and are a realistic basis for a lasting compromise.
We shall now see what the EU’s superficially emollient and smiling leaders are really made of, when the chance of a civilised, negotiated parting is placed before them. 
By Harry Cole 
Chances of a Brexit breakthrough this month are low, but a glimmer of hope for Boris Johnson has emerged from Jean- Claude Juncker’s inner circle.
The outgoing European Commission President has told his closest aides that cutting an 11th-hour deal with Britain would cement his reputation as the ‘ultimate political fixer’.
Mr Juncker is due to step down on October 31, the day Britain is scheduled to leave the EU, meaning any delay – or a No Deal Brexit – would blight his legacy. EU sources say the outspoken Eurocrat made the remarks at a meeting of his most senior advisers last week.
However, they came before the EU widely panned Boris Johnson’s compromise offer, with hopes fading in London of a deal being cut before a possible General Election.
A source close to Guy Verhofstadt, the head of the EU’s Brexit Steering Group, said flatly last night: ‘Boris Johnson’s proposal does not have a chance. He seems to be gunning for no deal. Nothing is moving at all this weekend’.
A No10 source added: ‘Even if Juncker wanted to do a deal, it is slipping out of his control. Appointing Michel Barnier, France’s most unreasonable Frenchman, to lead the negotiations is coming home to roost.’
And yesterday, Britain’s former EU Commissioner Lord Hill said that the major roadblock to a deal was Dublin and compromise before the end of the month was a ‘stretch’. The Brussels expert told the BBC: ‘I spoke to an EU ambassador who said: “We don’t understand what the backstop is, we don’t care about the backstop, we would be perfectly happy for the Irish to drop it, but so long as they want it, we’re with the Irish,” and that’s the conundrum.’
On Friday, No10 enforcer Dominic Cummings warned colleagues that if Europe shows no signs of compromise next week, then ‘that’s it, we’re off’.
By Glen Owen 
Downing Street has ordered Britain’s trade negotiators to call a halt to talks with America over a post-EU deal – over fears that it might ‘spook’ Brussels and ruin the chance of a breakthrough in the Brexit impasse.
Officials at the Department for International Trade (DiT) have privately expressed their frustration that No 10 is not allowing them to close a deal with Washington in case it angers the EU in the run-up to the critical summit on October 17.
The DiT has hit back by arguing that securing deals with the US and other countries would help the talks by giving them ‘leverage’ for ‘the purposes of EU negotiations’.
International Trade Secretary Liz Truss says that the US, Japan, New Zealand and Australia are all ready to negotiate a free trade agreement with the UK post-Brexit, describing them as ‘very enthusiastic trading partners’ who are ‘very keen to get started’. In America’s case, it would be the largest free trade agreement the US has ever signed with another nation. Washington’s major priority is to cut UK tariffs on steel imports, while Ms Truss is determined to secure access to the US’s market for financial services.
Ms Truss said at last week’s Tory conference: ‘There are negotiations to go through first, but we are going to be tough negotiators. This is because we are in a very strong position, we’re striking our first trade deals in 45 years, we’re the fifth largest economy in the world. We have a lot of opportunities that those other nations want to access, though it’s got to be in our interest to strike a deal.’
Ms Truss travelled to New York last month to meet her opposite number, US trade boss Robert Lighthizer – and to insist the UK will not compromise on food standards or access to the NHS as part of the deal. London and Washington have provisionally agreed to aim for a deal to be struck by July 2020 – assuming Brexit has finally been secured before then.
 By Andrea Leadsom Business Secretary
After spending more than two turbulent years as Leader of the House of Commons, I have developed a pretty good sense of the mood of the House.
And the mood this week shifted to a tone of cautious optimism.
The reason for this seems clear to me.
After weeks of careful discussion, negotiation and compromise, the Prime Minister has provided a fair and reasonable offer to the EU. He has delivered on his promise to give them a proposal that addresses the problem of the backstop, but that protects the interests of the entire UK. The new deal will allow the United Kingdom to leave the EU on good and friendly terms. It meets the people’s priorities – of taking back control of our money, laws and borders. It allows us to leave the customs union and the single market.
And crucially, it protects the Irish peace process. Having recently met with some superb businesses in Belfast, to discuss Brexit readiness, I know how important it is for them to avoid friction at the border.
The offer is a compromise. It respects the integrity of the entire UK, but also of the EU’s single market. Vitally, it requires democratic consent for the special arrangements in Northern Ireland and ensures flexibility for all parties to deal with the land border between the UK and the EU.
We have always been clear that we would prefer to leave the EU with a deal, with minimum disruption and with a good UK-EU relationship. This new deal offers that, while respecting the result of the referendum.
The proposal is our opportunity to strike a deal with the EU before we leave on October 31. We will now work with Brussels in the time remaining to iron out the details. We hope they come to the table in the same spirit we have – with optimism, compromise and mutual respect.
If we do get a deal at the European Council on the 17th and 18th of October, we will move at pace to get it through Parliament before October 31.
If the EU do not want to work with us, we will have to leave anyway, without a deal. But to be clear, the worst-case scenario isn’t leaving the EU without a deal on October 31.
The worst-case scenario is postponing yet again, and prolonging the uncertainty, with our hands tied by Parliament. Expensive for businesses and totally frustrating for those who just want us to get on with it.
Delay is what Jeremy Corbyn wants. Having voted against a deal under the last Government, he then insisted he was so in favour of a deal that he was willing to delay leaving the EU.
He hampered our negotiating efforts in doing so, yet still we found a reasonable proposal – which he now refuses to accept. In fact, Corbyn rejected the deal so quickly – before the EU or Ireland had even had time to respond – that you might ask, with good reason, whether he’s actually read it!
This Government will get Brexit done so Parliament can focus on our bold domestic agenda and deliver on the people’s priorities.
I remain optimistic. I have spoken to many people on all sides of the House who welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement and his offer to meet with colleagues and discuss the proposal.
Boris Johnson has proved his detractors wrong. They chose not to take him at his word when he said he would work hard to find a deal. Now we have a proposal that the EU must engage with, he needs the backing of all MPs for the sake of the country.
I hope Parliament can recognise that we are on the cusp of a breakthrough – and their backing makes all the difference.
The public want to move on.
Businesses want to move on.
Parliament must move on.
There are many MPs who share the public’s frustration – that Brexit is like the boxset that never ends.
They agree that it’s time for the big finale, so we can move on to the next great series. And an increasing number agree that this is the sensible and workable proposal that will do just that.
Let’s get on with it!
After the overwhelming defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal last week, I hosted an impromptu meeting for like-minded Tory MPs at my London house. 
We were discussing over drinks the Commons’ decisive vote against a proposal that would have been damaging for this country.
However, there was no rejoicing at the scale of the Prime Minister’s defeat, no revelling in her humiliation. I would have preferred a smaller margin.
Yes, we were happy that a proposal that would not have delivered Brexit had been comprehensively finished off.
Yet Tuesday’s vote, large as it was, only closed off one course of action. It did not solve the key question of how we deliver Brexit and honour the verdict of the 2016 referendum.
It did not in one bound provide a satisfactory Brexit deal.
Mrs May reacted to her setback by opening talks with the Opposition parties to discuss possible changes to her proposals. That is a most statesmanlike approach.
 However, in my unequivocal view the answer to this crisis still remains largely within the Prime Minister’s own party. This is why.
As much as reaching out to Europhile Labour MPs may look attractive, only winning over her Tory rebels will get Mrs May over the line.
The simple arithmetic is that more than 110 Tory MPs and ten DUP MPs voted against Mrs May’s deal last week.
If they change sides, she wins.
Therefore, the energy of the negotiations to improve her deal must be with us and not with Labour MPs such as Yvette Cooper who cannot provide her with anything like the additional 115 MPs needed to reverse the result.
Then the question remains: what type of deal would we be willing to accept? What needs to be changed? The biggest obstacles within the Prime Minister’s current deal are the backstop and the £39 billion we currently propose to give to Brussels but for which we get nothing in return.
If Mrs May can persuade the EU to show flexibility on these, we could get the deal through the Commons.
Most people in Parliament want a deal.
There are very few MPs who have adopted no deal as an article of faith. I have never been among them.
Here I must stress that reports I have gone soggy on Brexit are, as they say, exaggerated to the point of untruth.
If I had to choose between no deal and Mrs May’s original accord, I would have no hesitation of opting for no-deal Brexit but even Mrs May’s deal would be better than not leaving at all.
Even at this very late stage, I believe that with commitment and effort we can avoid such a choice.
I hope that if Mrs May were prepared to compromise on her plans, she could win over her party, get a revised deal through the Commons and secure agreement from Brussels.
It is high time for the Tory Party to come together in the national interest.
 
Theresa May today warns her warring party that if they vote down her Brexit deal they risk handing the country to Jeremy Corbyn – and being stuck permanently in the EU.
The Prime Minister uses a powerful interview in today’s Mail on Sunday to plead directly with the dozens of Tory MPs who have threatened to rebel in Tuesday’s historic Commons vote on her Brexit deal.
Mrs May, who says she has received thousands of messages of personal support from voters, tries to avert the rebellion by ‘weaponising’ the prospect of Mr Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.
Such is the scale of the expected revolt – more than 100 Tories, by some estimates – that a growing number of senior Government figures are urging Mrs May to delay the vote and embark on a final bid to secure last-ditch concessions from Brussels this week.
A defeat of that magnitude would leave her facing a putsch by either a Commons vote of no confidence or from within her own party if she did not resign.
Mrs May tells this newspaper that Britain ‘would truly be in uncharted waters’ if the deal is voted down.
She says: ‘It would mean grave uncertainty for the nation with a very real risk of no Brexit. We have a leader of the Opposition who thinks of nothing but attempting to bring about a General Election, no matter what the cost to the country… I believe Jeremy Corbyn getting his hands on power is a risk we cannot afford to take.’
She tells her MPs: ‘If you want Brexit, make sure you get it, and that’s about this deal.’
But last night Mrs May suffered a blow when an aide to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson resigned.
Parliamentary Private Secretary Will Quince, a Brexiteer, handed in his notice saying that he was unable to vote for Mrs May’s deal.
Ahead of one of the most momentous weeks in post-war British politics:
Although there is a growing belief in Westminster that Mrs May could be forced to delay the vote, she last night insisted her Cabinet was united behind her. ‘I think we all recognise that this is a good deal,’ she said.
Tory MPs have been in open revolt over the fact that the deal risks keeping Britain locked into EU rules indefinitely due to the ‘backstop’ designed to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
But internal polling from Tory HQ obtained by this newspaper found that Conservative voters in Tory-held seats want their MPs to vote for the deal by a majority of more than two to one – suggesting that MPs who voted against the deal could be punished at the ballot box at the next Election. If Mrs May loses an immediate no-confidence vote on Tuesday, Parliament could have to sit on Christmas Day because the Fixed Term Parliament Act sets a deadline of 14 calendar days for a new Government to be formed, meaning December 25 would be the last chance for any coalition to try to win a Commons majority. It’s believed that the last time the Commons sat on Christmas Day was in 1656.
Labour MPs are privately urging Jeremy Corbyn to table a no-confidence motion against Mrs May if she loses the vote on her deal in the hope that it leads to a second referendum.
Asked whether Labour would push for a no-confidence vote, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We’ll judge when we see what happens on Tuesday.’
Mr Rees-Mogg said dodging a vote on her Brexit deal would be as damaging to Mrs May as losing it. He said: ‘The humiliation of avoiding a vote is as much a reason for her departure as defeat. It is her policy which has failed and for which she is accountable. And it would be much better if she left of her own accord rather than face a no-confidence motion.’
Mrs May’s allies argue that, if the deal crashes, it will not only lead to the end of her leadership but the suspension of Article 50, the triggering of an Election likely to lead to a Labour-SNP coalition Government, then a second referendum to try to reverse Brexit.
Mrs May, who refuses to say whether she will resign if she loses the vote on her Brexit deal, rules out a second referendum while she is leader, telling this newspaper: ‘We had a people’s vote. Let’s deliver on the first people’s vote.’
We had a people's vote. Let's deliver on it and get this done
Exclusive interview with Theresa May by Glen Owen 
If these are Theresa May’s final days in Downing Street, she seems remarkably sanguine about it.
Despite intense pressure from all sections of her party to cancel Tuesday’s momentous Commons vote – or risk a humiliating defeat which could sink her political career – the Prime Minister exudes a calm humour as she talks in her No 10 study.
Her allies say this is testament to her steely temperament and patriotic sense of duty; her detractors describe it as a stubborn refusal to change her mind in the face of overwhelming opposition.
As carol singers strike up in the street outside, Mrs May expresses the forlorn-sounding hope that she can bring the war with her party to a close in time to enjoy her traditional roast goose for Christmas.
Her determination finds an echo on her writing desk, which boasts a mug declaring that she is ‘proud to be a bloody difficult woman’ – and, more prosaically, a hole-punch which is labelled: ‘Please do not remove from office.’
In her exclusive and wide-ranging Mail on Sunday interview, Mrs May:
With the number of Tory MPs opposed to Mrs May’s Brexit deal now estimated to have reached triple figures, the Prime Minister tries to quell the rebellion by weaponising the threat of Mr Corbyn and his predominantly pro-EU party.
‘I’m not somebody who is normally a doom- monger [but] I genuinely am concerned that we would see greater division and greater uncertainty,’ said Mrs May.
‘The Labour Party see this as a way of trying to engineer a General Election. They are not looking at the national interest.
‘They are playing party politics for their own short-term political gain and frankly that would lead to long-term national pain.’
She tells her rebellious MPs: ‘If you want Brexit, make sure you get it, and that’s about this deal.
‘When I say if this deal does not pass we would truly be in uncharted waters, I hope people understand this is what I genuinely believe and fear could happen. It would mean grave uncertainty for the nation with a very real risk of no Brexit or leaving the European Union with no deal.
‘We have a leader of the Opposition who thinks of nothing but attempting to bring about a General Election, no matter what the cost to the country. As someone who cares passionately about my country and my party, I believe Jeremy Corbyn getting his hands on power is a risk we cannot afford to take’.
Although multiple sources say that a growing number of senior Government figures were urging Mrs May to delay the Commons vote until after another attempt to extract further concessions from Brussels, the Prime Minister was maintaining the line that her Cabinet was united behind the idea of holding the vote this week.
‘I have obviously talked to my Cabinet colleagues as well as I talk to other colleagues. I think we all recognise that this is a good deal’, she insisted.
Mrs May is privately furious that the Brexit ‘ultras’, including Jacob Ress-Mogg and Boris Johnson, are so determined to crash her deal that they will topple a line of dominos which could lead to a vote of no confidence, the end of Mrs May’s leadership, the suspension of Article 50, a General Election ushering in a Labour-SNP Government and a second referendum to attempt to reverse Brexit. As one ally says: ‘We would go to hell in a handcart’.
But while large sections of her Parliamentary party remain unconvinced by her deal and her determination to put it to a vote, Mrs May says she has been cheered by more than 3,000 personal messages of support from ordinary voters.
‘I’ve had a lot of letters, a lot of emails, a lot of support from people,’ she says. ‘It really has been encouraging. The overwhelming message from people is: let’s get this deal done and then we can focus on the future. People say, “look, we just wish you the best because we really want to see Brexit and we want to get on with this.”’
Mrs May – one of the most effective stonewallers in Westminster –deflects all questions about whether she will resign if she is defeated over the deal or go back to Brussels to demand more concessions.
But she is openly dismissive about moves by a cross-party group of MPs, led by Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, to call a second referendum – and withering about her predecessor Tony Blair’s call for one.
‘His view is that we should go for another referendum,’ she said. ‘We had a people’s vote, that’s what frustrates me when people talk about this, the second referendum being a people’s vote. We had a people’s vote, let’s deliver on the first people’s vote.’
The prospect of another General Election, particularly after last year’s fiasco, chills many Tory MPs, who argue that the party machine is not ready to fight a successful campaign, and that Mrs May is the wrong person to lead them into one. She isn’t exactly enthused by the idea either: ‘There isn’t going to be a General Election. As far as I’m concerned, the next General Election is 2022. Jeremy Corbyn is trying to engineer an Election but the last thing this country needs is the instability and uncertainty that would produce’.
Mrs May was delighted when former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke called her a ‘bloody difficult woman’, and she celebrates the epithet on her mug. But will she last longer in her office than her hole punch? 
Valiantly, Mrs May said she hoped the deal could be voted through by Christmas so she can enjoy that goose and ‘a nice glass of red’ chosen by Philip.
‘I think most people want us to do this, to get it done and get it all wrapped up by Christmas and actually focus on the future,’ she said.
How will she celebrate, assuming events allow it? ‘We like to have a quiet Christmas. We’ll have a couple of friends round on Christmas Day, and the churches in Maidenhead have a lunch for people who would otherwise be on their own and so I go up and have a glass of sherry with them. Then we go home and we have our dinner.’
The Mays will be sticking to their usual meal. ‘It’s always goose I’m afraid, yes. Most people always cook turkey, I always cook goose. With everything else that’s going on it’s tried and tested. I try to do a slightly different recipe every year. I saw one in a magazine the other day’.
Her devotion to Philip, who she married 38 years ago after meeting at Oxford, is obvious. The tight bond between the pair was forged in extremis when her father, an Oxfordshire vicar, died in a car accident a year after the wedding. Her mother died the following year and she does not have any siblings.
Mrs May praises Philip’s Christmas present choices, saying he is particularly ‘good at handbags; he does pick a good handbag’.
What is the best present she has got him? ‘I think he would look me in the eye and say, “You, darling!” ’
Even Mrs May’s fiercest critics admire her resilience in the face of what must be almost intolerable pressure, combined with official duties such as last weekend’s 14,000-mile round-trip to the G20 summit in Argentina.
It was former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke who delighted Mrs May by describing her as ‘a bloody difficult woman’.
But surely her husband must worry about the impact of the pressure on the diabetic, 62-year-old Prime Minister. ‘He is like any supportive partner is,’ she says. ‘He’s there and wants to help.’
She adds that she never takes out the strain on her staff. ‘I am not the sort of person who naturally loses their temper,’ she says, but confesses she does swear ‘sometimes’.
Does she ever wake up with nightmares? ‘If I woke up and went “aaagh!” I’d probably have several armed police officers coming into the bedroom,’ she replies.
The most unexpected moment of the interview comes when she reveals how she comforts herself after a gruelling day dealing with Jacob Rees-Mogg et al. ‘One of my little indulgences, I have to confess, is peanut butter. Either on toast, or just a spoon. But I don’t spend the entire day doing it.’
Food has always been a passion for Mrs May: the woman who has more than 150 cookbooks says she is currently enjoying Ottolenghi Simple, by Yotam Ottolenghi, the Israeli-British chef.
So although her workload means that she only sees ‘snatches’ of television programmes, she has enjoyed the ‘odd bit’ of the new Masterchef: The Professionals series: ‘They have been absolutely amazing, absolutely incredible.’
But she hasn’t been to the cinema since watching Skyfall six years ago.
Mrs May’s vicarage upbringing was imbued with the sense of public duty exemplified by her father’s work in the parish. ‘What my upbringing taught me was whatever you’re doing, put your whole self into it and do your best.
‘I am genuinely trying to do my best for the country. I suppose it is a sense of public service’.
Mrs May is keen not to strike a valedictory tone in the interview – but cites her work on modern slavery and establishing the National Crime Agency when Home Secretary as the greatest achievement of her political career.
And she laments the fact that Europe has suffocated the domestic agenda, with passions such as boosting technical education and her industrial strategy drowned out by the noise of Brexit.
But is she still the best person to lead the Conservative Party?
‘Yes I am’.
Boris Johnson last night accused Philip Hammond of 'gravely damaging' the national interest with his endless bids to frustrate Brexit, and warned that the former Chancellor would be responsible for a No Deal outcome.
The astonishing blast against Mr Johnson's fellow Tory came in a letter seen by The Mail on Sunday savaging Mr Hammond for urging the Prime Minister to rule out a No Deal exit.
Mr Johnson said it was 'plain as a pikestaff' that Mr Hammond was undermining the UK in negotiations with Brussels and making it harder for Britain to get a new deal with the EU.
On Tuesday, Mr Hammond and 20 other Tory MPs wrote to Mr Johnson to warn they would use every parliamentary tool they could find to unpick his 'do or die' pledge to leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal. 
It comes as Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay has signed a 'commencement order' that will trigger the end of the rule of EU law on October 31.
Sources told the Telegraph they were 'surprised and alarmed' Theresa May had not previously signed the order, which repeals the 1972 European Communities Act.
Mr Hammond added that he was 'very confident' MPs and peers could block No Deal, hinting he would bring down Mr Johnson's administration as a last resort.
But Mr Johnson has hit back, writing that 'any such Parliamentary campaign, any tricks of procedure or alliance of factions designed to derail Brexit, gravely damages the chances of our securing a deal.'
In a letter sent to Mr Hammond and his co-conspirators yesterday and leaked to this newspaper, Mr Johnson says: 'The EU can see the public debate among Parliamentarians and they have been told privately by some British politicians that Parliament will frustrate our exit on 31 October. 
'Some of you have said publicly that you are determined to try to stop us leaving the EU on that date if we cannot secure a deal.'
He adds: 'It is as plain as a pikestaff that Brussels – or the EU 27 – will simply not compromise as long as they believe there is the faintest possibility that Parliament can block Brexit on 31 October.'
And he warns 'the so-called efforts to prevent No Deal are in fact making No Deal more likely' as it was giving Brussels a false sense of hope that the UK will climb down.
The brutal warning came as Mr Johnson prepared to meet EU leaders for the first time since becoming Prime Minister. 
He will travel to Paris and Berlin ahead of next weekend's G7 summit and meetings are scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday with President Macron of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany.
However, last night Mr Johnson was not hopeful of either leader softening their position, after he demanded they drop the Irish border backstop before talks could begin.
He will tell his fellow European leaders that 'parliament will not, and cannot, cancel the referendum' but the terms of exit offered in the Withdrawal Agreement are 'totally unacceptable.'
Branding the backstop undemocratic, Mr Johnson is expected to point out 'it would be harder for us to exit the new arrangement than it is to leave the EU itself.' 
He will claim 'no EU leader would sign up to a deal like this on behalf of their own country and the PM will not do so on behalf of the UK'.
However the PM believes there can be no breakthrough on Brexit until he has survived a confidence vote from MPs, expected to be held when the Commons returns on September 3, and other bids to stop No Deal have been squashed.
Instead Downing Street is eyeing a four-week window for a renegotiation between Parliament breaking up again on September 20 and the planned EU Council on October 17-18.
Last night a Downing Street source said: 'Paris and Berlin have not engaged seriously with negotiations because they have told us people like Philip Hammond, Dominic Grieve and Tony Blair are telling them that Parliament will cancel the referendum in the first fortnight of September.
'Until they see this is wrong, there is no reason to think they will talk seriously.'
Speaking on the Good Morning Scotland radio show yesterday, Mr Grieve said he was ready to act as a caretaker PM but added that 'there are others more suitable for it than I am'.
Mr Johnson's declaration of war on Tory rebels came as:
Tory whips fear as many as 17 Tory MPs could vote against the Government in a confidence motion, but last night the tide was going out on Mr Corbyn's hopes of becoming a caretaker PM. 
Rebel ringleader Sir Oliver Letwin said he would not be able to support a bid to put the Labour leader in No 10, saying he did not think it was likely that a majority could be formed for the idea.
However he did not rule out supporting a no confidence motion to bring down the Government to prevent a No Deal – setting up a knife-edge showdown when the Commons returns, as more than a dozen Tory MPs still will not rule out voting down Mr Johnson.
It's understood that efforts have been launched to 'love bomb' independent former Tory and Labour MPs, hoping to encourage them to abstain from a confidence vote and dampen the pro-EU rebellion.
Sources said Ministers including Michael Gove were 'working' former Conservative MP Nick Boles and targeting Mr Corbyn's harshest Commons critics, such as Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Frank Field. 
Boris Johnson has been accused of planning to set the EU ‘on fire’ as the only way to keep his grip on power and hit next month’s Brexit deadline.
Amid fevered speculation in Whitehall that the Prime Minister could be on the brink of quitting, Mr Johnson’s advisers are this weekend plotting to thwart those MPs who voted last week to force Mr Johnson to seek a Brexit extension.
One plan is to be so disruptive to the EU that Brussels is obliged to eject us - while a second is to act on new legal advice from a senior QC which No.10 sources say gives them the authority to simply ignore the Commons’ order.
Mr Johnson has said he would ‘die in a ditch’ rather than obey the MPs, making his resignation seem inevitable if no alternative can be found, unless he breaks the law by simply ignoring the will of MPs.
Senior civil servants started making preparations on Friday for Mr Johnson to leave Downing Street as early as tomorrow - giving Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn the chance to form a rival administration.
But No.10 sources insist that Mr Johnson’s immediate resignation is not under consideration.
The Prime Minister will tomorrow make a second attempt to try to break the deadlock by asking the Commons to back a general election on October 15th, but with Labour’s opposition to a pre-Brexit poll meaning he is likely to fail one option being considered in Downing Street is for Mr Johnson to trigger a vote of no confidence in himself in order to trigger the election.
Under the new ‘kick us out strategy’ being finalised this weekend, if Brussels fails to strike an acceptable deal the UK Government will use legal chicanery to sabotage the Union from within.
However, last night a senior EU source close to Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier described the plan as ‘desperate’, while another likened Mr Johnson to a ‘drunk at a party’ and accused him of ‘trying to get thrown out by setting the whole house on fire’.
Under the disruption strategy, Mr Johnson’s allies believe that by refusing to appoint a UK Commissioner to Brussels beyond the end of October, from the start of November the EU will ‘no longer be legally constituted’ - unless they vote to reduce the number to 27. This process would then be vetoed by the UK, which his allies think the EU ‘cannot accommodate’ - and would therefore kick out the UK.
After a torrid week of high drama for the Prime Minister, in other developments;
On Friday, senior Whitehall mandarins started drawing up emergency plans to handle the consequences of Mr Johnson quitting as soon as tomorrow. Their contingency planning works on the assumption that there will be three Prime Ministers in the next eighteen months - Mr Johnson, an interim Prime Minister and whoever wins the subsequent general election.
But a senior Government source described as a ‘misconception’ that the Prime Minister faces two choices – to resign or to break the law by ignoring the Commons’ order, saying it was a ‘false choice’: ‘he will not resign, and he will not ask for an extension....is team in Downing Street are carefully plotting a course through the parliamentary sabotage they had always expected to witness when the Commons returned’.
On Friday evening Mr Cummings warned Government special advisers ‘we have a different interpretation of the legislation’ going even further than the Prime Minister, who said on Friday that the Bill only obliged the Government to delay our EU departure ‘in theory’.
He refused to share the details of this mystery legal advice, but said however ‘rough’ it got in the next five weeks, they would ultimately triumph an ‘trounce Corbyn’.
Mr Cummings also sought to scotch the growing rumours the Prime Minister could resign telling his team: ‘The bubble doesn’t have a clue, we are not going to extend and we are not going to resign.’
He also warned that their pro-EU critics ‘are going to go into meltdown and you are going to be cool’ in the face a growing outrage at the government’s hardline position.
‘I need you to be like Fonzie because Fonzie is cool,’ he added.
The source said that while Mr Corbyn was ‘hiding’ from an election, Downing Streetand CCHQ were ‘ramping up’ preparations ready for an election, including conversations with the civil service over election rules, the allocation of adviser to target seats.
Downing Street has begun official negotiations with executives from the BBC, ITV and Sky over live TV electoral events, including a live head-to-head between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn - the first time the two main parties leaders have gone head-to-head in a UK TV debate.
The source added that Brussels would only grant the UK a Brexit extension if the UK engaged in ‘sincere cooperation’ - which is not the plan
‘If we engage in obstructive behaviour it would lead to the undermining of EU interests and would leave them questioning the UK’s membership’, the source said.
Luisa Porritt MEP said: ‘Trying to get thrown out by setting the whole house on fire is inconsistent with the Government’s stated aim, which is to negotiate a deal. Boris Johnson increasingly resembles the drunk at the party. His reckless threats risk undermining future trade talks before they have even begun’.
The reference to a ‘drunk’ will anger No.10, given that Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, has a well-publicised fondness for alcohol.
The Government source added: ‘The EU has moved on and member states do not want the UK endlessly hanging around unable to get out the door. A delay only serves the interests of those who are set on upending the biggest democratic vote ever in the UK.
‘A deal is in the EU’s grasp if they are reasonable. It is up to them to take that opportunity. If they behave unreasonably we will obviously have to look to our own interests and we will have to approach ‘sincere cooperation’ in that context. But nobody should be in any doubt that we will leave on Oct 31”
Boris Johnson is considering using next month’s Queen’s Speech vote to ram through a Brexit deal – in an ambitious attempt to face down Tory rebels and Labour MPs at the same time.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal Downing Street is studying plans to tie together a ‘huge domestic package’ with any new agreement that can be forged with Brussels – lining up the prospect of a major Commons showdown.
The move would be a high-stakes gamble for the Prime Minister, who as we reported last week has compared himself to the Incredible Hulk. Losing a Queen’s Speech vote has traditionally been a resignation issue and could lead to a General Election.
The speech itself, during which the Government will set out its legislative agenda, is scheduled for October 14. Traditionally, it is followed by five days of Commons debate before a vote from MPs to back the measures.
That vote is pencilled in for October 21 – just days after a crunch meeting of EU leaders at which the Government will be pinning its hopes on securing a Brexit breakthrough. 
If such a breakthrough is achieved, spending measures to try to convince MPs to support it would then be included before a vote ‘in the round’.
A Downing Street source said combining the measures was their ‘best hope’ of winning over hardline Brexiteers as well as Labour MPs who want to leave the EU with a deal.
‘If they vote this down, they are voting down Brexit,’ one powerful Downing Street figure said. ‘And they can explain why they did that to their constituents at an Election soon enough.’
The domestic policy blitz to be included in the Queen’s Speech will be previewed at the forthcoming Conservative Party conference.
Under the theme of the ‘people’s priorities’, a new Cabinet sub-committee chaired by Chancellor Sajid Javid will be set up to focus on domestic matters. 
Ministers will be invited to present to the ‘star chamber’-style set-up for extra money from the Treasury for eye-catching domestic plans ahead of any Election.
The next few weeks are crucial to the prospects of the UK securing a deal. Mr Johnson flies to New York today to meet his European counterparts on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly currently under way.
The Mail on Sunday can also reveal that the PM’s chief of staff, Sir Eddie Lister, was sent on a secret negotiating mission to Dublin last week, and Mr Javid also used a visit to Ireland to ‘chip in’ on selling a compromise on the hated Irish border backstop.
In his two-day visit to America, Mr Johnson will hold talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. 
Senior EU officials including EC President Donald Tusk will also be involved.
Mr Johnson is expected to seek help from his fellow leaders, asking them to rule out a Brexit extension if a deal is within ‘touching distance’ when they next meet at the EU Council on October 17.
The EU ruling out a further delay would allow Mr Johnson to sidestep legislation passed by MPs demanding that he beg Brussels for a another extension – a law he could also challenge in court. 
In the run-up to the summit, the Government is preparing to make a major presentation to EU negotiators after the Tory conference which starts a week today. 
Despite last week’s war of words in Luxembourg, and Brussels pouring cold water on Mr Johnson’s compromise plans in a damaging leak on Friday, Downing Street insists a deal can be done.
Last night a source said: ‘Merkel, Macron and others are telling the Commission that our ideas must be explored. We have made more progress in the last 55 days than the previous government made in two years.
‘We have won agreement to re-open the Withdrawal Agreement, which everyone said was impossible. We are now discussing serious alternatives to the backstop, which everyone said was impossible. There are no guarantees there will be an agreement but everyone said just a few months ago it would be impossible to discuss these ideas yet here we are.’
Boris Johnson today wraps himself in the national flag as he pledges to change the Prime Minister's official title to add 'Minister for the Union'.
Setting out his vision for the United Kingdom – which he describes as 'the most successful political and economic union in history' – Mr Johnson takes aim at Theresa May, who has argued that a No Deal Brexit would risk fracturing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The tub-thumping 'Minister for the Union' moniker will be added alongside First Lord of the Treasury to the formal title of Prime Minister if, as expected, Mr Johnson wins his leadership battle against Jeremy Hunt.
Writing in today's Mail on Sunday, Mr Johnson says: 'Properly done, Brexit will not threaten the Union; a sensible Brexit will enhance the Union and protect it and make life more difficult for those who wish to destroy it.
'Now is the time therefore to be resolute, to get on with Brexit and to bring the whole country together.'
The Tory frontrunner describes the UK as a 'great global brand' and 'the soft-power superpower of the 21st Century'.
He adds: 'We members of this precious Union are therefore so obviously and so irrefutably more than the sum of our parts; and that is why I am a passionate believer in the Unions – all of them – and when you look at the scale of our collective achievement, I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to mutilate this country and to break it up.
'So if I am lucky enough to be elected in the next few weeks, I will do anything in my power to stop that disaster, and to bring this country together.'
Mr Johnson pledges to establish a special unit in No 10 to 'stress-test every policy for the results it may bring to the Union', concluding: 'I believe that the occupant of No 10 should be not just Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service. He or she should be Minister for the Union as well.'
His patriotic rallying call comes as:
Last night Mr Johnson also risked controversy by heaping praise on US President Donald Trump, saying he has 'many, many good qualities'.
He told a hustings for party members in Carlisle that Mr Trump 'is a guy who, when all is said and done, has got the US economy motoring along at about 3.6 per cent growth, he's put in capital allowances for business in a way I think we should be looking at here, he's cut regulations, he's cut taxes in a way that has driven growth in the US'.
He added: 'We Tories, we Conservatives, have for too long failed to talk up the agenda of free market economics and we've failed to be positive about it and we've spent an awfully long time really sounding as though we're pretty miserable about business and enterprise.'
Despite a muted response from party members, Mr Johnson said: 'I know that not everybody agrees with everything Donald Trump says or does, but on that he is having results and we should pay tribute to that.'
To understand the genius of this country, you sometimes need to see us through the eyes of others.
And having served as Foreign Secretary, I can tell you that across the world we are admired – sometimes even loved – far more than we realise.
When foreigners look at this country, they see a place that stands up for certain values and certain freedoms: democracy, the rule of law, human rights, free speech.
They see a country with fantastic Armed Forces and a globally trusted national broadcaster.
They see a place that has provided the world with its greatest explorers, scientists, inventors, poets, suffragettes and environmentalists.
And what is the name of that country? It isn't England, or Scotland, or Wales, or Northern Ireland.
It is Britain, or rather the UK: the whole composite – the most successful political and economic union in history.
It is the United Kingdom that is the great global brand, and the Union Flag that captures imaginations around the world – the amalgamated red, white and blue that sums up the soft-power superpower of the 21st Century, recently rated by one leading think-tank as the second most influential country on Earth – and only beaten by the United States, a country that is, when all is said and done, a part of the political and spiritual progeny of the UK.
It is the UK, and not its constituent components, that is defined by some of our greatest national glories: from our National Health Service to our sense of humour to the sports and games that we largely invented and codified and which help to bring the world together today. We members of this precious Union are therefore so obviously and so irrefutably more than the sum of our parts; and that is why I am a passionate believer in the unions – all of them – and when you look at the scale of our collective achievement I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to mutilate this country and to break it up.
SO IF I am lucky enough to be elected as leader of the Conservative Party in the next few weeks, I will do anything in my power to stop that disaster, and to bring this country together.
That does not mean reversing devolution. Of course not – and we should give due acknowledgment to the successes of that programme.
But devolution must not mean dissolution. Devolution should not mean decay of the vital bonds that hold us together.
We should accordingly be far more vocal in illustrating and explaining the success of the whole UK.
We will have a unit in No 10 to sense-test and stress-test every policy for the results it may bring to the Union.
When projects or funding are owed to UK investment – and not the devolved authority – we will be less bashful in claiming credit for the Government of the UK. We should actively campaign for a public understanding of the benefits of the Union, economic and strategic, for the people of all its component nations.
And why?
Because there are still passionate voices – especially in Scotland – that are campaigning night and day to break our Union up, to diminish our country. We cannot just leave the field to them, and refuse to engage in the argument.
And to protect the integrity of the whole UK, we need to get Brexit done. We need to fulfil the mandate of the people and come out of the EU, as instructed in the referendum of 2016. We need to get Brexit done sensibly and cleanly – because that is precisely the way to spike the guns of the SNP.
Think of their argument once the whole UK has left the EU.
What are the Scottish Nationalists going to say then?
Are they really going to propose to rejoin the EU as an independent Scotland? Are they going to use the euro in Scotland, to submit to Schengen rules on immigration for Scotland, and to make Scottish business and citizens bow to the full panoply of EU law – while the rest of the UK, Scotland's most important trading partner, seeks a different and more global destiny?
When the UK leaves the EU, Scotland will finally take back control of Scottish fisheries, which are among the richest in the northern hemisphere.
Are the Scottish Nationalists really going to campaign – post-Brexit – to throw that opportunity away? Will it seriously be their manifesto to hand back control of fisheries to Brussels? Of course not. Properly done, Brexit will not threaten the Union; a sensible Brexit will enhance the Union and protect it and make life more difficult for those who wish to destroy it.
Now is the time, therefore, to be resolute, to get on with Brexit and to bring the whole country together; with better infrastructure, and full fibre broadband, across all four nations.
We should be boosting Scottish fisheries; improving transport in Wales; and we should be restoring and protecting the governance of Northern Ireland, and insisting on the sovereignty of the UK – as upheld in the Good Friday Agreement.
NOW is a great opportunity to entrench and intensify our Union, and it should be an easy sell and an easy argument to make. The world can see our collective strength. We need to celebrate it ourselves, because we are the awesome foursome – far more together than we are apart.
To underscore the importance of these multiple partnerships that develop and grow richer with every year, I also propose a cost-free but symbolically important addition to the office I seek.
I believe that the occupant of No 10 should be not just Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service.
He or she should be Minister for the Union as well.
 
Nigel Farage has been condemned by his closest political ally for threatening to wreck Boris Johnson’s Election hopes by fielding a Brexit Party candidate in every seat.
Arron Banks, who campaigned with Mr Farage under the Leave.EU banner during the 2016 referendum, told The Mail on Sunday that the Brexit Party leader was risking the entire project by splitting the Tory vote.
He accused Mr Farage of being a ‘dog in the manger’ about Mr Johnson’s EU deal because he wanted to feature in the TV debates between the party leaders.
Mr Farage infuriated Downing Street with Friday’s vow that his party would stand in seats across the country unless the Prime Minister scrapped the withdrawal agreement he struck with Brussels.
Mr Farage also threatened to write to every British household accusing the Tories of a ‘sell-out’.
Mr Johnson has flatly ruled out forming any pact with Mr Farage, even though Tory strategists fear that votes lost to Mr Farage in tight marginals could deny Conservatives an overall majority on December 12.
Mr Banks, who was also a key donor to Ukip when Mr Farage was leader, said: ‘He is being very dog in the manger about it. Like everything in life, what is the point of doing something if you can’t win?
‘I don’t think he will go through with his threat, but if he does, it is the wrong thing to do. He risks splitting the vote in some seats and letting a Lib Dem through the middle to win – a party which wants to cancel Brexit altogether.’
Mr Banks believes it is better for the Tories to win a healthy majority in the Election so that MPs can pass Mr Johnson’s ‘imperfect’ agreement than risk staying in the EU for much longer.
He added: If Boris wins a decent majority, he will be in a position of strength to negotiate a good trade deal with the EU. I think Nigel is just playing the deck of cards he has in his hand because he wants to take part in the television debates. But I’m on the naughty step with Nigel. He knows I disagree with him on this.’
Mr Banks’s views were echoed by Catherine Blaiklock, the founder and first leader of the Brexit Party, who tweeted yesterday: ‘How can Boris cave into a public demand akin to blackmail. Step back and rethink. The deal offered is not perfect, but nothing is ever perfect. Help Boris win, step back and take the Marxists on, not the Tories.’
But Mr Farage remained defiant last night, telling the MoS: ‘I just want Brexit, and this is not it. It just kicks the can down the road for three years with conditions that mean we will never be free of EU rules. A reset makes sense.’
Mr Farage used the Westminster launch of the Brexit Party’s Election campaign on Friday to give Mr Johnson two weeks to drop his withdrawal agreement, saying they could build an alliance in about 150 seats in Labour Leave areas in Wales, the Midlands and the North, where the Tories should stand aside.
Mr Farage said of Mr Johnson’s EU deal: ‘He is trying to sell a second-hand car. He has polished up the bonnet but actually underneath nothing has changed. This is Mrs May’s appalling surrender treaty.
If he decides he can go on selling this as Brexit, then good luck to him, because I think by the time December 12 comes along, the country will understand it is not Brexit and we will make sure of that.’
Mr Farage made his threat after Donald Trump told him during an LBC radio phone-in that Mr Farage and Mr Johnson would be ‘an unstoppable force’ if they linked up during the Election and could do ‘something terrific’.
But when asked about the prospect, Mr Johnson said: ‘I want to be very, very clear that voting for any other party than this Government, this Conservative Government… is basically tantamount to putting Jeremy Corbyn in.’ 
By Glen Owen Political Editor For The Mail On Sunday

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Boris Johnson today tells Brussels that Britain will break out of its 'manacles' like The Incredible Hulk if a Brexit deal cannot be struck by October 31.
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, the Prime Minister says that if negotiations break down, he will ignore the Commons vote ordering him to delay the UK's departure, adding: 'The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets.'
Mr Johnson's bullish declaration comes ahead of a crunch meeting tomorrow with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
There has been cautious optimism that negotiations with the EU are edging closer to a breakthrough.
Boris Johnson today tells Brussels that Britain will break out of its 'manacles' like The Incredible Hulk if a Brexit deal cannot be struck by October 31
And in his interview, Mr Johnson reports 'real signs of movement' in Berlin, Paris and Dublin over ditching the backstop that would tie the UK or Northern Ireland to EU rules – the issue which proved fatal to Theresa May's deal.
'I think that… we will get there,' he says. 'I will be talking to Jean-Claude about how we're going to do it.
'I'm very confident. When I got this job everybody was saying there can be absolutely no change to the Withdrawal Agreement, the backstop was immutable, the arrangements by which the UK was kept locked in to the EU for ever, they said no one could change that.
'They have already moved off that and, as you know, there's a very, very good conversation going on about how to address the issues of the Northern Irish border. A huge amount of progress is being made.'
If he fails to strike a deal, Mr Johnson is adamant that he will not obey Parliament's order to ask the EU to extend Article 50. He has said that he would rather 'die in a ditch' than do so.
No 10 strategists say they have devised a secret plan, known only to the PM and three key advisers, which they claim will allow them to ignore the order without breaking the law – although most legal experts are sceptical that such a ruse could work.
Mr Johnson's bullish declaration comes ahead of a crunch meeting tomorrow with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker
Mr Johnson's remarks come after a torrid fortnight for the Government during which he stripped the whip from 21 of his own MPs for voting for the 'surrender bill' and suffered the resignations of his brother Jo Johnson, who was Universities Minister, and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd.
Last week a Scottish court added to his problems by ruling that his suspension of Parliament was illegal. In other developments last night:
Mr Johnson will travel to Luxembourg tomorrow to meet Mr Juncker over a lunch of snails, salmon and cheese.
The two men, who have spoken twice on the phone, are expected to be joined by Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier and the UK's chief negotiator Mr Frost.
In his MoS interview, Mr Johnson said that the UK would emulate Bruce Banner, the mild-mannered scientist who transformed into the Hulk when angry.
'Banner might be bound in manacles, but when provoked he would explode out of them,' he says. 'Hulk always escaped, no matter how tightly bound in he seemed to be – and that is the case for this country. We will come out on October 31 and we will get it done.'
In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, the Prime Minister says that if negotiations break down, he will ignore the Commons vote ordering him to delay the UK's departure, adding: 'The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets'
A No 10 source added: 'Parliament has failed the country – MPs have spent three years frustrating Brexit.
'All MPs can agree on is one delay after another. They want to send the PM to Brussels, cap doffed, begging for another pointless extension.
'Labour wants another delay, more talks, then another referendum in which they might vote against their own new deal – it's beyond a joke. Most people want this resolved, with a deal if possible but without if necessary, and this is what the Prime Minister is trying to do. Everyone said we would never get the Withdrawal Agreement opened. That has happened. We're making good progress.
'The PM will not negotiate a delay at the European Council on October 17 and 18. We expect a court battle afterwards and attempts to pass legislation revoking Article 50, which the Prime Minister will refuse to consider in any circumstances.'
Last night Mr Johnson added: 'Don't be fooled by Corbyn and the Remain ringleaders. On the one hand they say I don't want a deal. On the other they want to force me to extend.
'Both are wrong. I am straining to get a deal, but I will also end the uncertainty and take us out on October 31.'
Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
Theresa May could be ousted from No 10 within days after her Cabinet plotted to replace her with Michael Gove as a caretaker Prime Minister.
A senior Downing Street source told The Mail on Sunday last night that even Mrs May’s Chief Whip, Julian Smith, had advised her to set out her departure plans, with Environment Secretary Mr Gove emerging as the ‘consensus choice’ to succeed her.
Mr Gove is being championed by Cabinet Brexiteers who are furious about what they see as an attempted ‘coup’ by Remain-backing David Lidington, Mrs May’s de facto deputy.
A senior Government source said yesterday that there was now ‘complete unanimity’ in the Cabinet that Mrs May should step down as soon as possible.
In a number of astonishing, fast-moving developments, coming just days before a series of historic Commons votes:
The Cabinet’s move against Mrs May comes after a disastrous week in which she blamed MPs for the delay to Brexit in a live televised address, which left Mr Smith incandescent with rage. She was then humiliated by EU leaders at a summit which agreed that, if her deal is defeated again, then Parliament will have just two more weeks to find an alternative, or risk a no-deal Brexit on April 12.
A senior Government source said Mr Smith had ‘conveyed the message [that Mrs May’s Cabinet colleagues believe she should stand down] to the PM’.
A Downing Street spokesman said that they did not comment on private conversations.
The collapse in the Prime Minister’s authority has triggered rival Cabinet plots by Remainers and Brexiteers to seize power.
Pro-Remain Cabinet Ministers, led by Mr Hammond and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, have been backing Cabinet Office Minister Mr Lidington to take over as temporary Prime Minister.
But when pro-Brexit Cabinet Ministers, led by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss, found out that Mr Lidington was holding talks with Labour MPs about votes on ‘soft’ Brexit measures they moved quickly to stifle the plot by backing Mr Gove instead.
Under the plan, Mr Gove would see through Brexit as PM, before a full leadership contest in the summer.
One senior Cabinet Minister told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The public will never forgive us if in a time of historical crisis our answer is David Lidington. This is where it is going to get very scary, whatever you think about it’.
Last night Henry Newman, one of Michael Gove’s most loyal supporters and a former aide, said the Prime Minister’s ‘ill-judged’ speech blaming MPs for the Brexit crisis ‘united Labour and Tory critics against her’. He added: ‘ I think she will have to offer to step down to get her deal through.’
A series of so-called ‘indicative votes’ will be held next week to test which alternatives to Mrs May’s deal are likely to pass the Commons, including a Norway-style customs union or even cancelling Brexit.
One senior Minister warned rebel Tory MPs that, if they continued to vote down Mrs May’s deal, then they would be on ‘a conveyor belt to Norway – possibly with Jeremy Corbyn leading the way’.
The Minister added: ‘If we do not deliver Brexit we are so unbelievably f****d, not just as a party or a Government, but in a national way. Now is the time to be bold, a customs union is a cop-out – it’s the easiest solution for Parliament but the worst solution for the country.
‘It has to be Mrs May’s deal, or no deal. We cannot be allowed to drift into the worst position, but that is what David Lidington is manoeuvring us to – and there is no upside to it’.
Another Minister said that it was ‘a matter of arithmetic’ that Mrs May should set out her departure date: ‘Just look at the numbers of people saying they would back the deal if she sets out a timetable for her departure and add them up. Say no more.’
A series of senior Conservative figures warned Mrs May last week that she has lost the confidence of her party.
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the Conservatives’ 1922 Committee, visited the Prime Minister on Monday, where he told her that the number of colleagues calling for her to go was growing.
Mr Johnson also repeatedly challenged Mrs May to rule out leading the party into a General Election this year – which she has refused to do.
It is understood that all but one member of the Tory whips office think that her ‘time is up’. One, Paul Maynard, was in tears recently when he told the Prime Minister: ‘I’ve heard enough. When I was told that we would have to come over and talk to you I began to cry. I said I don’t want to go over and talk to that woman any more. She’s betrayed Brexit, destroying our party. I want her gone.’
Mrs May replied: ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’
Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi warned yesterday of a ‘political meltdown’ if Mrs May’s deal is rejected again. 
By Glen Owen and Harry Cole for The Mail on Sunday 
After a torturous 14 hours at the EU Council, the Prime Minister returned to the British residency in Brussels in the early hours of Friday morning and demanded a large whisky.
But back in Westminster, her closest Cabinet colleagues were preparing to hand Theresa May a revolver to go with it.
Senior Cabinet Ministers and allies are privately urging Mrs May to set a departure date to help get her beleaguered Brexit deal over the line as ‘a matter of arithmetic’.
But others have simply decided her time is up and have spent the last three days plotting how to oust her.
A senior Downing Street source told this newspaper: ‘Discussions about the Prime Minister’s future are ongoing.’
On Friday evening, David Lidington, the pro-EU Cabinet Office boss and de facto deputy PM, was said to be in the ‘advanced stages’ of a plot to force Mrs May from office and herald a long Brexit extension as an interim leader who could build a cross-party Brexit deal.
But as news of the plan leaked, it sparked a furious Cabinet backlash that saw Michael Gove emerge as a ‘consensus’ candidate who could bring the crucial backing of both Remainers and Brexiteers.
Cabinet sources have told The Mail on Sunday that Mr Lidington was initially ‘reluctant’ to step into the role of ‘caretaker’ but was told it would be a ‘four-month job with a three-pronged mandate: to negotiate a long extension, to oversee testing of what Parliament wants and to ensure a fair Tory leadership contest.’
A source said: ‘David is 60. It would be his last job in politics and what a way to go out. The key players are on board. It’s just a matter of when.’
The Mail on Sunday has learnt that Cabinet big beasts including Amber Rudd and Jeremy Hunt have urged Mr Lidington to ‘knock on the door and call time’ on Mrs May’s premiership.
In the febrile atmosphere in Westminster, there were even claims Michael Gove had initially supported Mr Lidington acting as caretaker, with one source claiming the plot was ‘far less factional than Brexit lines’.
However, as word of Mr Lidington’s manoeuvrings ripped through Westminster on Friday evening, Brexiteer Ministers were quick to brand the Cabinet politicking a ‘Remainer coup’, with former Vote Leave boss Mr Gove touted by Ministers and MPs for the job instead.
One senior Cabinet Minister told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The British public will never forgive us if, in a time of historical crisis, our answer is David Lidington.
‘This is where it is going to get very scary, whatever you think about it.
‘If we do not deliver Brexit, we are so unbelievably f*****, not just as a party or a government, but in a national way. Now is the time to be bold. A customs union is a cop out – it’s the easiest solution for Parliament but the worst solution for the country.
‘It has to be her deal, or no deal. We cannot be allowed to drift into the worst position and that is what David Lidington is manoeuvring us to – there is no upside to it.’
And another Cabinet Minister branded the plot ‘a f****** coup.’
Bookies last night slashed Michael Gove’s odds of being the next Prime Minister.
The Environment Secretary is now 5/1 joint favourite with his rival Boris Johnson to take the Tory crown.
Should Mr Gove secure the keys to No 10, it would be a remarkable turnaround after he stabbed Mr Johnson in the back during in the 2016 Tory leadership battle, when he withdrew his support for his fellow Brexit campaigner at the last minute so he could stand himself.
Having initially been sacked by the victorious Theresa May, Mr Gove was subsequently brought back into the Cabinet fold and has spent the last year being studiously loyal to the Prime Minister in public, as he sought to repair his reputation among the Tory grassroots. Although Mr Gove was touted as a ‘consensus caretaker’ last night, Mr Johnson will be wary of letting his nemesis become Tory leader without a fight.
Last night, a Ladbrokes spokesman said: ‘Money for Michael Gove in the past few days has left the firm with no choice but to cut his odds of becoming the next PM. Mr Gove continues to attract punters’ cash.’
 
Outside of the Cabinet, one Minister furiously rejected Mr Lidington stepping in, saying: ‘You might as well put the permanent secretaries in charge.’
They added: ‘This is a pipe dream for the bland brigade, who must be deluded if they think replacing uncertainty with more uncertainty is going to fix anything.’
The backlash also broke on to the airwaves and social media, as Tory MPs began openly discussing Mrs May standing down.
After it emerged Mr Lidington had discussed soft-Brexit plans with Labour MPs, Tory Brexiteer Michael Fabricant compared his pro-EU stance to that of Britain’s appeasing of Hitler in the 1930s.
The outspoken backbencher hit out: ‘With the PM acting like Chamberlain, we now have David Lidington freelancing and acting like Lord Halifax hoping to come to an accommodation with Labour. Enough is enough!’ Asked if the PM would still be in post by next month, fellow Tory Marcus Fysh told BBC2’s Newsnight: ‘I don’t know.’
‘We are starting to get to the stage where it really would have been good to have better negotiations going on,’ he added. And fellow Leaver James Duddridge, tweeted ‘#Resign’.
Tory peer Lord Gadhia said: ‘She may not survive to the end of the week.’ He added: ‘It is quite possible that she herself may decide “actually, look, I am an obstacle to a resolution of this process”. So we may have a very dramatic week.’
Leadership speculation is gripping all corners of the parliamentary Conservative party, with other Ministers privately accepting that a General Election under a new leader would be needed to achieve a fresh mandate from the public ahead of Round Two of EU negotiations over a trade deal.
And Brexiteer hardliners in the European Research Group are determined not to repeat their disastrous implosion during the 2016 leadership battle which allowed Mrs May, who had campaigned to Remain, to come through the divided Brexiteers.
Senior MPs in the ERG plan to hold their own leadership contest to unite around one candidate. They point out a Brexiteer only needs to come second, with 105 MPs behind them, to proceed to the final round – a vote of the overwhelmingly Eurosceptic party membership.
Last night a source close to Mr Lidington said the claims from his Cabinet colleagues were ‘nonsense’, adding: ‘David has not discussed anything of the sort. His focus is on getting the PM’s deal agreed’.
 
Prime Minister’s Questions was subdued last week. One MP described the atmosphere to me as ‘almost sombre’, as if MPs were pondering the huge political events of the next few weeks. They will be as momentous as any since the end of the War.
True, there has been plenty of cautious optimism about the prospects for a deal at this week’s summit of European leaders. But we cannot be certain. We have been here before, after all.
And if there is a deal, what sort of deal would that be? Can the Prime Minister be right to insist there is no alternative to her Chequers plan for Brexit?
Theresa May’s attempt to push it through in the teeth of serious opposition from her own party is a big gamble, one that could end up destroying the Government and breaking up the party in the process.
Many of her backbenchers are now hostile to the Chequers deal. Some Cabinet Ministers are threatening to resign.
This latest crisis goes back to July and a marathon Cabinet meeting at Chequers, her country home.
There, a new Brexit plan was agreed which envisaged that the UK and Europe would maintain close harmony for trade in goods; that the British courts would take European law into account in their rulings; and it suggested a complicated customs arrangement allowing the UK to apply different trade tariffs to goods bound for Britain and for Europe. Freedom of movement would be ended.
Yet there is clearly no majority in the House of Commons for Chequers or any similar deal. In fact, there is no majority for anything – for a Canada-style free trade agreement, for ‘no deal’, for a second referendum, or even for an Election. And faced with such chaos, the Prime Minister has decided the best course is to stick to Chequers, despite its clear lack of popularity.
Mrs May is sincere, of course. She believes her proposals provide continuity for business and are the only way to solve the Irish border issue.
Behind the scenes, the Government chief whip believes that the Conservative party will ultimately fall into line and back Chequers, particularly if the proposals gain the support of the other EU states . This is the Prime Minister’s gamble. But is it realistic? I am not so sure.
A significant number of her backbenchers believe that Chequers does not deliver what was promised in the referendum and that it leaves the UK too far under the influence of EU regulations and the European Court of Justice.
They also believe it will inhibit our ability to sign free trade agreements with other governments.
For many Conservatives, a more obvious and attractive option would be a free trade agreement of the type settled between the EU and Canada, but with some additional arrangements, notably for financial services. 
This would give us preferential access to the EU market and also allow us to sign trade deals with other parties.
Interestingly, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has repeatedly said that such a deal is on offer, but with the unacceptable proviso that it would not include Northern Ireland.
So here we come to a second major problem – the question of the Irish border and the crucial negotiating mistake that many MPs think the Government has made. In accepting the EU demand that we guarantee there will be no hard border between the north and the Republic until a trade agreement is reached – the so-called backstop – we have allowed the EU to rule out any deal that is not on the EU’s terms, including the ‘Canada’ proposal.
No one wants to undermine the Good Friday Agreement, which had nothing to do with the EU. No one wants to have a hard border.
Yet is the issue really so difficult? Why is the question of a border dividing northern and southern Ireland so different from Switzerland’s border with Germany, France, Italy or Austria? Switzerland is not in the EU, yet the border is barely noticed by the passing traffic.
These days, most customs and other checks are at warehouses, not borders, and 99 per cent of customs declarations are electronic.
To me, the so-called issue of the Irish border seems a ploy by the EU and Ireland to keep us in the customs union or half in the EU. Even so, the Prime Minister has ruled out ‘Canada-plus’ precisely because of it.
Had the Irish border not been made into such a problem, it is difficult to see how anyone could possibly have objected. Moreover, technology helping overcome these issues is advancing all the time.
I can sympathise with the Prime Minister having to negotiate on several fronts at once – in front of her with the EU and also behind her with her backbenchers. Then there is the Labour Party to take into account.
Hedging its bets, it is moving some way towards a second referendum, which could mean voting against a deal.
Mrs May is making an outward show of confidence. The Government chief whip insists that, if there is a Chequers-type deal agreed with the EU, they are confident they will be able to persuade their Conservative critics and win the day, perhaps with support from up to 25 Labour MPs. 
Yet opponents of the Chequers deal seem equally confident that they, too, have the numbers to prevail. Who is right?
Mark Harper MP, a former Tory chief whip, a former Remainer and a May loyalist, is particularly well-qualified to assess the mood of the Commons – and his answer is not good news for the Prime Minister. 
Chequers, he says, has ‘no prospect of success’ in getting through the House. The Prime Minister should ‘evolve’ her plans into a Canada-style agreement.
If Mark Harper’s judgment is right and the Government is defeated on the vote following whatever deal emerges from the negotiations, what would happen?
Conservative MPs are united in not wanting an Election and certainly don’t want to risk putting Corbyn in Downing Street by accident.
But it seems to me inevitable that, should the Government indeed be defeated, we will find ourselves heading for, at the very least, a period of crippling political uncertainty, which could ultimately lead to a General Election or a second referendum. It is not credible that a government should carry on after such a humiliating defeat.
That is why both sides within the Conservative debate – those backing Chequers and those against it – must be prepared to compromise. 
Personally, I wish the PM would indeed ‘evolve’ her proposals towards a Canada-style free trade agreement. She is taking a big gamble in not doing so.
But the Brexiteers, too, should be prepared to give some ground.
The stakes are high, after all. The public is exasperated. And, however much we like to reassure ourselves that he could never be elected, a government led by Jeremy Corbyn is not impossible at all, despite the horrors that would inevitably follow.
As the deadline for withdrawal approaches, it is now urgent that we face reality and reach a clear agreement – and so safeguard all our futures. 
Theresa May is today weighing up what one ally describes as ‘a menu of equally unpalatable options’ – any one of which could lead to the swift collapse of her stricken Government.
Her exhausted Downing Street operation is staring at an invidious choice if her deal is voted down again this week: either accept the likely bidding of MPs and keep the UK in a customs union – thus splitting her party down the middle – or turn her face against the Commons by calling a ‘kamikaze’ Election.
A further option – leaving the EU with No Deal – was heavily defeated when the Commons voted on it earlier this month.
Calls for the Prime Minister to trigger an Election immediately have been led by Mrs May’s Political Secretary Stephen Parkinson, who has argued that ‘events will lead to one anyway so we might as well be on the front foot’.
Opposition to a snap poll is being orchestrated by Chief Whip Julian Smith, who has said he is fighting it with ‘every sinew in his body’.
Even those advisers who lean towards calling an Election cannot decide if Mrs May should lead the campaign, or whether a leadership contest should be compressed into a few days and decided only by MPs at Westminster.
The Cabinet is equally divided, with Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Business Secretary Greg Clark all urging Mrs May to accept a customs union – with the implicit threat that they will resign if she does not.
But Cabinet Brexiteers, orchestrated by Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom, are implacably opposed and are likely to quit if Mrs May starts to negotiate membership of a customs union with the EU.
Ms Leadsom’s ‘pizza club’ – which she founded last year to discuss Brexit strategy over takeaways in her Commons room – agreed yesterday to block efforts to join a customs union.
A senior Government source said: ‘Theresa is trapped between aides and Ministers, all urging her with equal passion to do different things.’
The pressure has been ramped up by the letter sent by 170 Brexit-supporting Conservatives demanding the UK leaves the EU on April 12 ‘with or without a deal’, and asking for assurances that Mrs May will not commit the country to a long extension or participating in the European Parliament elections on May 23. 
Last night, there were reports that the letter was organised by Ms Leadsom, and also signed by other Cabinet Ministers including Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove. 
A source close to one of the letter’s signatories said last night: ‘The letter reaffirmed our commitment to the manifesto, and to the PM’s own determination to seek a short extension to Article 50 that avoids the EU elections.’
Option 1 - May calls Election this week
After her 2017 Election disaster that saw Jeremy Corbyn wipe out her majority, the PM would be incredibly wary about going to the country again. But she knows that without a change to the numbers, the House of Commons will remain deadlocked.
Option 2 - Confidence vote sparks Election 
If disgruntled Tories side with Labour in a vote of no confidence and Jeremy Corbyn is unable to form a government within 14 days, the country will be plunged into an Election anyway. Given that it looks inevitable, No 10 is split on whether to jump first.
Option 3 - PM accepts customs fudge 
If Parliament orders the UK to stay in the customs union, Mrs May could be forced to abandon a cherished ‘red line’. Accepting it would blow up her party as hundreds of Tory MPs loathe the idea, including six Cabinet Ministers.
Option 4 - Delay Brexit, change leader 
If Mrs May’s deal is defeated a fourth time, her political capital will be utterly spent and she will face a chorus of calls to quit. Brexit could be delayed for a new leader to be chosen and the Tories will go to the country with a fresh face in charge.
The Chief Whip’s opposition to an Election – which is shared by No 10 Chief of Staff Gavin Barwell – increased after he was briefed about Mr Corbyn’s plans to hit Mrs May with a ‘decapitation strategy’ if an Election is called.
Tory whips say Labour has drawn up plans to target a string of the party’s biggest stars – including Boris Johnson, Ms Rudd and ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith – and will pour thousands of activists into Tory seats in London and the South that are ‘vulnerable’.
One senior Tory MP in the South-East was overheard admitting at Westminster last week that ‘we’ve all had it’ if an Election was called soon. Labour is also ready to table a vote of no-confidence this week in Mrs May’s Government if it senses that Tory arch-Brexiteers will vote to bring down the Prime Minister.
However, Labour’s battle plan was last night dismissed as ‘bravado’ by one of its own Shadow Ministers, who claimed the party was simply not ready to fight an Election.
And party insiders also warn that Labour could lose all seven of its Scottish seats, effectively destroying any hopes Mr Corbyn has of getting a Commons majority.
Mrs May’s Election threats have sent a shiver down the spine of many Tory MPs in the South-East defending thin or vulnerable majorities. Top of Mr Corbyn’s attack list is Ms Rudd’s Hastings and Rye seat, where she is defending a wafer-thin 346 majority over Labour. Her role as Work and Pensions Secretary makes her doubly vulnerable, say Corbyn strategists.
But Labour boasts it can also claim the scalp of would-be party leader Mr Johnson in his Uxbridge seat in West London. He is defending a 5,034 majority but Labour’s vote locally has soared in recent years.
Also in the Labour firing line are former Education Secretary Justine Greening in Putney (majority just 1,554 over Labour) and Mr Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader. He is defending a majority of only 2,438 in Chingford and Woodford Green. One senior Labour MP said last night: ‘London is basically a Labour city and the enthusiasm for Corbyn is still running very high. All those top Tories are going to struggle to cling on if Mrs May does fire the Election starting gun any time soon.’
The party is also aiming to eject Labour defectors in the new Change UK independent group, including Chuka Umunna in Streatham, South London.
Some Labour figures scoffed at the ‘decapitation’ claims, with one warning any gains in the South would be ‘cancelled out’ by losses in the North. One said: ‘Now we’ve started openly backing a second referendum much more than before, we’re really losing Brexiteer votes in the North.
‘When and if the Election comes, it really will be a case of holding on to what we have rather than making gains.’ Labour has 245 seats against the Tories’ 314.
The Labour plans emerged as Mr Corbyn declared it was time for ‘the sensible people’ to take over talks with the EU – even though he sparked fury from many Brexit voters last week by ordering his MPs to vote down Mrs May’s deal.
Mr Corbyn also refused to say whether he would offer an option to remain in the EU during a second round of indicative votes in the Commons tomorrow.
Speaking in Newport, South Wales, ahead of this week’s by-election, he accused Mrs May of ‘bullying and threatening people’.
It was Labour MP Barry Gardiner who let the cat out of the bag. 
‘You, as a Brexit Minister, should understand,’ he snapped at Tory rival James Cleverly in the middle of the BBC’s local election night coverage. 
‘We are in there, trying to bail you guys out.’ That is, of course, not the public line. 
Jeremy Corbyn is supposed to be fighting with every fibre of his being to bring down the evil Theresa May regime and introduce a ‘jobs first Brexit’. But the reality is rather different.
A few months ago, the Labour leader spoke to one of his backbenchers who represents a solid Leave seat. 
‘He asked him if he would start to unofficially whip our other Brexit-supporting MPs to back May’s deal,’ a Shadow Minister privy to the approach tells me.
‘Jeremy wanted to move on from Brexit and thought the only way to do that was to get it over the line. But he couldn’t be seen to be helping dig a Tory Prime Minister out of a hole. So he said it all had to be done without it appearing he was behind it.’
The MP patiently explained that without the explicit endorsement of Corbyn and his team, there would be no way the plan could succeed. At which point it was quietly dropped and Britain’s Long Brexit Nightmare began.
This morning, Labour and the Tories are again thinking the unthinkable. In the wake of Thursday’s pummelling at the hands of the voters, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are seriously contemplating entering into an unholy Brexit alliance.
‘Brexit – sort it. Message received,’ tweeted Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell as the results were still coming in.
A Downing Street official concurred: ‘Both sides in the negotiations recognise we need to get this done now.’
For Labour, there is a simple rationale. Shunt Brexit to the margins and return to hammering the Tories on austerity and other ‘bread and butter’ issues.
‘For Jeremy’s team, it’s about getting back to the strategy that worked in the General Election,’ explains a Shadow Minister.
‘May wanted it to be all about Brexit. But we were successful in making it about cuts to public services and people’s pay packets. That’s the ground we need to be fighting on.’
For the Tories, it’s simply about damage limitation. Or normalisation. ‘The argument was that if we did a deal with Corbyn, it would split the party and everything would fall apart,’ explains a Minister. 
‘But the party is split and everything’s falling apart anyway. So the balance of opinion in the Cabinet is we might as well take the hit and move on.’
Despite that, there are still those in Downing Street who want to try to roll with the punch. According to one Cabinet Minister, ‘the idea is to try to find a way of limiting the level of Labour support required to get something through the House. 
If we can avoid it, we don’t want to be seen getting a deal through with the help of all the Labour MPs. We want to reach agreement with the sensible ones, rather than go walking through the lobbies with the nutcases’.
Whether such subterfuge will help slip a deal past an already enraged ERG and their followers is questionable. 
‘If May does this, the betrayal and deceit will be complete,’ warns one senior ERG member. ‘We will be leaving 17.4 million votes to be scooped up by Nigel Farage. He’ll be salivating at the thought.’
He may well be. But among a majority of Cabinet Ministers –even those who are themselves strong Brexiteers – patience with the ERG and their fellow travellers has all but run out.
‘We know Boris and Dominic Raab will be jumping all over this if we do a deal,’ says one Minister. ‘But they were warned that if they kept blocking Chequers, the only outcome would be a softer Brexit. If they hadn’t played their games we wouldn’t be here.’
Another says: ‘The fact is we now have two choices: do a deal with Corbyn or call an Election. And an Election is such a massive gamble.’
It is. But what would also be a massive gamble is the Conservative and Labour leaders sitting down to jointly force through a deal on the most contentious political issue in post-war British history, in direct opposition to the wishes of their MPs, supporters and the electorate as a whole.
For many months, the Westminster air has been thick with accusations of betrayal. But as the Brexit debate has become increasingly polarised, so the range of palatable options has narrowed. 
There are now essentially two Brexit camps: those who want a clean, hard departure from the European Union, versus those who want no departure at all.
And by preparing to utter the dreaded ‘c’ word – compromise – May and Corbyn might be preparing to commit the greatest act of treachery of them all.
Labour Remainers are threatening political retribution at their leader’s refusal to back a second referendum. 
Tory Brexiteers have already delivered it to a Prime Minister who failed to give them the March 29 Brexit she had promised them for so long. 
And it’s not clear where there is a constituency for a Brexit that splits the difference.
This morning, the nation is divided between the 52 per cent and 48 per cent. It could soon be united in antipathy towards two political leaders who have agreed to deliver a Brexit for the 0 per cent.
A Brexit requested by no one, voted for by no one and supported by no one.
We have heard much about betrayal over the past few months. But to a nation already riven by ideological division, the greatest betrayal of all may still be to come.
Was Gavin Williamson a victim of Operation Kowtow? 
Mystery shrouds the sacking of the former Defence Secretary, who continues to protest he was not the source of a leak of information from the ultra-secret National Security Council.
Downing Street insists he was the mole who released concerns over Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s 5G mobile network, but refuses to fully divulge the evidence against him. 
‘We don’t reveal the methods deployed in this sort of investigation,’ an official told me cryptically.
But what is certainly true is Williamson has been concerned for some time about what he regards as undue Chinese influence over UK policy-making. 
‘I think we need to be more robust in standing up to the Chinese,’ he told me in January. 
‘But the problem is we’re being ordered to stick with Operation Kowtow. Ever since George [Osborne] and David [Cameron] got into No 10, the policy towards China has been utterly craven.’
Two weeks after our meeting, Williamson announced he was ordering an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea, a move that enraged Beijing, and earned him a rebuke from No 10 and the Treasury. 
Now he’s gone, will Operation Kowtow continue?
A website aimed at parliamentary wives has been launched by Nevena Bridgen, opera singer and spouse of Theresa May critic Andrew Bridgen. 
Wives Of Westminster is committed to exploring ‘what it is to be a politician’s wife in modern-day Britain, in these times of political turbulence’, with Mrs Bridgen (pictured with her husband) pledging ‘a kind-spirited, open-minded, feelgood’ examination of life at the political coalface. 
No 10 will be hoping this message rubs off on her husband. 
'I'd rather be dead in a ditch than ask for a Brexit delay,' Boris Johnson warned last month.
And so this morning he finds himself staring into that ditch, hands tied behind his back, as Arlene Foster, Steve Baker and a small group of Labour and Tory MPs weigh up whether to despatch him beneath its cold, muddy waters.
Brexit has had its share of do- or-die moments. But we really have now reached the reckoning point. 
Time is up. Either a deal is agreed this week, or the chances of securing one evaporate for good. 
There can be no more open-ended extensions. No frantic letter-writing to the chairman of the 1922 Committee.
Those who want Britain to leave the European Union are out of options. They back the Prime Minister and his Thornton House pact, or Brexit dies.
For the allies of Boris, there is no sugar-coating the nature of the choice they now have to make.
The full details of Thursday's agreement remain shrouded in mystery, but one thing is clear. It was Britain, not Ireland or the EU, that made the most significant concessions. Boris may not have blinked completely, but he was compelled to flutter his eyelashes at Leo Varadkar.
Which leaves Arlene Foster and her DUP colleagues facing the toughest decision of all. They have already moved further than anyone thought possible by accepting the partition of Great Britain and Northern Ireland along the Irish Sea.
But now they will have to move again, and relinquish the veto that would have made that painful separation a temporary one.
The Spartans of the ERG will also have to swallow their pride, and sound the retreat. They will not have the No Deal Brexit they crave. Ugly, messy compromise, rather than a glorious charge, is now the only route out of the EU.
It's about to get ugly for Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit rebels as well. Last week 19 of them sent a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker urging him 'to work night and day, if required, to agree a deal so the UK Parliament can make a clear decision to close this chapter in the coming weeks'. He is complying with their request.
So a swarm of feral Corbynites and kamikaze Remainers is set to descend on these 'Red Tories' preparing to vote through a Conservative Brexit.
This also represents the final chance for the Conservative Party's own 21 prisoners of conscience. They have consistently said their goal is to stop a No Deal Brexit, not derail Brexit entirely. So they too face their moment of truth.
'It seems this is quite a hard Brexit they're pushing,' one Tory rebel told me on Friday. Perhaps it is. But they either support Boris now, or turn their backs on their party for ever.
For all those MPs who genuinely seek to deliver on the instruction given them in the referendum by the British people – as opposed to those who cynically trot out the mantra 'I respect the result but…' – there is no longer anywhere left to hide. The past week has seen to that. Downing Street has no 'secret plan' to be activated if the talks break down.
The moment a senior No 10 aide began briefing that Boris would defy the Queen and lecture her on how she was powerless to sack him in the event of a lost vote of no confidence, it became clear talk of legal challenges and multiple letter ruses to circumvent the Benn Act was simply braggadocio and bluster.
There are also signs the fall-back strategy of channelling anger at Parliament's intransigence into a bulldozing No Deal majority is failing to work.
A ComRes poll published on Friday revealed if the Prime Minister doesn't deliver on his pledge to leave by the 31st it would result in a hung Parliament, regardless of who the public blames.
The Brexiteers have to realise it really is now or never. There are not going to be any second chances. There is no Better Brexit waiting just over the horizon.
They either seize the day, or night envelopes them. Yes, there is some muttering about being let down. That Boris's deal is merely a pig sporting Theresa May's lipstick.
But the Prime Minister deserves more credit than that. The accusation he was negotiating in bad faith has been disproved. Yes, he has given ground. But so have the Irish and the EU.
Leo Varadkar vowed never to engage bilaterally with the UK. In the garden of Thornton House – much to the surprise of Mr Johnson's own team – he did. We were told repeatedly the Withdrawal Agreement would never be reopened. This weekend it has been.
But the opportunity this presents will not remain open for long. Brexit's opponents had the opportunity to sabotage the entire process, and blew it.
When the Supreme Court vetoed the prorogation, and dragged Boris back to the Commons, the Remainers had him at their mercy.
They could have moved in for the kill with a no confidence motion. They could have accelerated the timetable for an extension.
They could even have started laying the groundwork for a second referendum. But they squandered their opportunity in a self-indulgent squabble over who would lead the nation when Boris and Brexit fell.
They will not squander it again. You can sense their fear. 'If Boris Johnson gets a deal, it won't have a mandate without a people's vote,' David Lammy tweeted, as he and his colleagues began a desperate reverse ferret on their mantra that Parliament holds primacy over any 'advisory' referenda.
If Boris's deal is passed this week – first by Brussels, then by MPs in their historic Saturday session – it is over. In that instant our Brexit purgatory ends. And any party that tries to fight the subsequent Election on a platform of reopening this hellish Pandora's Box, and returning us to the chaos and paralysis of the past three years, will find themselves run out of town and out of politics.
This morning Arlene Foster, Steve Baker and the Labour and Tory rebels know what they have to do. They must untie Boris's hands, step away from the ditch and bring a nation and its Prime Minister back from the dead.
Westiminster's Extinction Rebellion protests are giving some MPs malign inspiration.
'This is the sort of stuff we should be doing to the Supreme Court Justices,' one ERG Spartan fumed to me.
 'Let's turn up outside their offices and see how they like a few eggs being thrown at their front door.' 
The sooner we get that deal done, the better. 
Hopes of a Brexit breakthrough are rising. But I understand that if the talks eventually collapse, Boris Johnson is thinking the unthinkable.
'Downing Street are working up plans for cutting a seat deal with Nigel Farage,' a Minister reveals.
'Dom Cummings opposes it, and thinks we should just neutralise the Brexit Party by writing a hard commitment to No Deal into the manifesto. 
But that would cause such a massive rebellion, Boris is wary of it. So he thinks the only other option might be to come to an arrangement with the Brexit Party.'
Brexit Party officials have confirmed to me they would be willing to consider a pact, but it would require a firm commitment to stand down in specific seats.
'A simple non-aggression deal wouldn't work,' a party insider says.
'In a lot of these seats, you could put a blue rosette on a gorilla and 30 per cent of the electorate would vote for it. 
'We'd need them to step back and give us a clear run.'
I'm told the seat that would prove the litmus test for a putative agreement would be Peterborough, where the Brexit Party came second in June's by-election.
'The key to the whole thing is Peterborough,' my source tells me. 'If they step aside for us there, we're in business.'
If Farage suddenly pops up in Peterborough's Laxton Square, you know the game's afoot.
I understand that one of new Sports Minister Nigel Adams's first requests was for some pictures of sporting World Cup winners Bobby Moore, Martin Johnson and Eoin Morgan to line the walls of his office. 
But the cost-conscious Civil Service bureaucracy meant the request was taking too long to process. 'It takes ages to get new private office spending through these days,' a colleague says. 
'In the end, Nigel just forked out and put them up himself.' Champion, Minister.        
The EU official opted not to speak in diplomatic code. ‘There are huge gaps in the UK offer. This just isn’t a serious solution. They are putting forward proposals that simply won’t work. Talk of a deal is spin and optimism going into overdrive.’
Boundless optimism is one of Boris Johnson’s greatest assets. And after the dour, grinding pragmatism of Theresa May, a more upbeat, confident demeanour from the Prime Minister is something to be welcomed. But this morning it’s time to park the optimism and face reality.
Britain and Europe are eyeball-to- eyeball over Brexit. And the EU is not going to blink. The impact on sales of BMWs and prosecco. The hammer-blow to the economy of the Irish Republic. In the view of the Brussels panjandrums, all these are prices worth paying to maintain the integrity of the European Union.
On Thursday, Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay tried again to soften them up. If they dug in and forced the UK into a No Deal Brexit, Europe would suffer medicine shortages, agriculture would be hit hard, and so would the tourism industry, he warned. I asked the EU official what he thought of that threat. ‘Well, it certainly raised a few eyebrows,’ he said, stifling a laugh.
This is the reality of where we are now. Europe is laughing at us. Not because they are cavalier about the impact of No Deal – though some Eurocrats clearly have little concern for how many Spanish manchego producers must be sacrificed on the altar of a glorious EU super-state. But because they find it comical that we still cannot see that, when they say there will be no more major concessions to the agreement they brokered with Mrs May, they really do mean it.
Even when they’re not laughing at us, they’re publicly humiliating us, like Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel did with his podium grandstanding on Monday.
Or issuing ultimatums of their own, as Emmanuel Macron did with Wednesday’s demand that Boris publish his Brexit plan in 12 days or else negotiations would end.
Or simply telling the unvarnished truth, as Irish Deputy PM Simon Coveney did on Friday, when he said: ‘Everyone needs a dose of reality,’ over the fiction we’re closing in on a deal.
The EU is not bluffing. And it is not folding.
However much people may have believed the spectre of a No Deal Brexit would finally force them into a major renegotiation, it is simply not going to happen.
Which leaves Boris facing a choice. He can put an end to the entire charade, call time on the negotiations and finally and unequivocally embrace a No Deal Brexit. Or he can broker a deal. But only if he – rather than the EU – chooses to blink first.
First, he would have to abandon his attempt to face down the European Union, pivot 180 degrees, and instead face down his own allies in the DUP and the ERG.
Having defied them – or stuffed their mouths with gold – he would then have to reach out to the 21 Tory MPs he unceremoniously expelled from his party, and beg them on bended knee to return and endorse his deal.
At which point he would have to hurriedly shift his attention to the other side of the political aisle, get down on both knees, and plead with 30 or so Labour MPs to abandon their own party, withstand the wrath of the fanatical Corbynites and Remainers, and endorse a Tory Brexit.
And in a final act of supplication, he would have to prostrate himself in front of the voters of the Brexit Party, implore them to ignore everything he’s been preaching about vassalage, collaboration and betrayal, abandon any hope of a ‘clean Brexit’ and line up alongside the deal he’s just cobbled together with Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker.
It’s a political fantasy. As one source close to the Tory rebels said: ‘We still really hope we can get a deal. But to get something through, Boris was always going to need to use his charms to persuade the ERG to back down.
And it’s almost too late for that now. There’s been too much tough talk thrown around.’
Over the past week it has become increasingly hard to discern what strategy Boris is actually pursuing.
But since his election as Prime Minister, the basic plan has been this. Present himself as the defender of a true Brexit, set himself against the political establishment, then carry that framing into a General Election.
But how will that plan look the day he returns from Brussels waving a piece of paper handed him by Angela Merkel pledging peace in our time.
What happens to the argument that the ‘surrender treaty’ has scuppered any chance of a deal? Or that our nefarious parliamentarians are crudely and cravenly silencing the voice of the British people?
Come to that, what would any of the past few months of madness actually have been about?
May’s defenestration. The prorogation crisis. The fracturing of the Tory Party. The destruction of the Government’s majority. What will it have been for if, by the end, all we are left with is the spectacle of Boris Johnson standing at the Despatch Box sporting Theresa May’s lipstick?
EU officials say they believe the Prime Minister is sincere about getting a deal. ‘We’re a cynical bunch,’ one insider told me, ‘but he’s convinced us he genuinely wants a solution.’
Maybe he does. But it’s too late. The fact is the Brexit clock has finally struck midnight.
Even if a deal could be hammered out in the time remaining, it would not be a politically viable deal for the Prime Minister. Unless the EU is prepared to make major concessions. And the lesson of the last week is that it is not.
Which leaves Boris facing a simple choice. He can embrace No Deal. Or he can blink.
But if he blinks, it will be his last act as Prime Minister.
As I predicted last week, Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to stamp his authority on the Labour Party conference has already backfired spectacularly with his humiliating climbdown over attempts to sack deputy Tom Watson.
But what is confusing many observers is the timing of this assault.
My understanding from Shadow Cabinet Ministers is that the key to understanding the bungled plot is the upcoming move to oust Prime Minister Boris Johnson and replace him with a Government of national unity. Corbyn has been told by leaders of the other minor parties and Tory rebels that they would not accept him as head of a national Government.
Corbyn’s team – headed by aides Seumas Milne and Karie Murphy – have urged him to override these objections and try to form a minority Labour administration.
But I’m told Corbyn has been contemplating ignoring them and stepping down as Labour leader, clearing the way for someone else to act as interim PM.
‘Jeremy’s family have told him that he should use this as the opportunity to get out, and he’s listening to them,’ a Shadow Minister tells me. Under Labour rules, if Corbyn steps aside, Watson automatically takes over. Which is why a second motion tabled by the anti-Watson plotters also called for Labour’s ruling NEC to appoint a temporary successor, rather than have the position pass to his deputy.
‘They think Jeremy might be getting ready to stand aside, and they couldn’t afford to have Tom replace him, even for a short time,’ another Shadow Minister tells me. With Watson surviving the assassination attempt, Boris couldn’t have had a better start to the Labour get-together.
Arts Minister Nigel Adams had a diary clash that was preventing him from attending last week’s Mercury Prize for the best album of the year.
He was finally persuaded to attend the prestigious bash by UK Music boss Michael Dugher. A friend of Adams told me: ‘Dugher told him it would be a great event for him to be at. So Nigel walks in and gets to his table, and what does he see? This rapper walking on to the stage with a model of Boris Johnson’s severed head in his hand.’
Upcoming discussions with Ministers over the EU’s Copyright Directive are going to be interesting.
There’s been a long-standing tradition of incoming Chancellors hanging a photo of their predecessor on the wall of the No 11 water closet. But I’m told Sajid Javid is about to shun convention. An ally informs me: ‘He won’t be hanging a photo of Philip Hammond in there.’ It’s one way of flushing away a political legacy.
Jacob Rees-Mogg emerged last night as Theresa May’s best hope to avert a snap General Election – or her forced departure from Downing Street by the spring.
In the wake of the Prime Minister’s crushing Commons defeat on her Brexit deal, a group of her most senior allies have ‘war-gamed’ a scenario in which Mrs May would sue for peace with her rebellious backbenchers by offering to resign by May – in exchange for them dropping their opposition.
It comes as the same allies are frantically selecting policies to include in a ‘short, sharp’ manifesto in the event that Mrs May is forced to call a snap Election.
But in a sign that the intensity of opposition could be lessening, Mr Rees-Mogg presents himself as a peacebroker committed to making Mrs May’s deal acceptable to her party.
The powerful chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs uses an article in today’s Mail on Sunday to say: ‘If I had to choose between no deal and Mrs May’s original accord, I would have no hesitation of opting for no-deal Brexit – but even Mrs May’s deal would be better than not leaving at all.’
Downing Street was rocked by their loss on Tuesday by 230 votes, which made history as the biggest-ever government defeat.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who infuriated No 10 by hosting a champagne party at his London townhouse to celebrate the loss, says: ‘The biggest obstacles within the Prime Minister’s current deal are the backstop [keeping Northern Ireland tied to EU rules] and the £39 billion we currently propose to give to Brussels but for which we get nothing in return.
‘If Mrs May can persuade the EU to show flexibility on these, we could get the deal through the Commons... It is high time for the Tory Party to come together in the national interest.’
Mrs May, who will hold a conference call with her warring Cabinet today on the ‘next steps’ for Brexit, is also offered an olive branch today by one of the EU’s most influential figures.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, writes in this newspaper that Mrs May would find ‘an open door’ if she wanted to make changes to the deal but ‘must act soon’. 
Advisers are drawing up an ‘incredibly short’ set of pledges in case of an early Election, said to be light on detail but big on vision. Here’s what it could look like......   
BREXIT
To emerge from Brexit a strong and united nation, able to take a lead in the world to defend Britain’s interests and forge new trade deals with the EU and the wider world.
ECONOMY
To make sure our economy stays strong and to bring prosperity to the whole of our country, and build a fairer immigration system with the end of free movement.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
To overcome social divisions by giving people real opportunity and making Britain the world’s Great Meritocracy and a country that works for everyone.
SOCIAL CARE
To restore the contract between the generations that provides security for older people while being fair to the young as well as continue to protect our world-leading National Health Service.
PROTECTING CITIZENS
To seize the opportunities of changing technology, while ensuring that our security and personal privacy – and the welfare of children and younger people – are still protected.
 He says that a request to delay Brexit would ‘be assessed in good faith’, but was unlikely to be allowed beyond July 1.
He adds: ‘It is time for British leaders to lead.’
Under the ‘May goes in May’ plan, the Prime Minister would offer to step down in time for a new leader to take over for the trade talks.
One ally said: ‘She would countenance going if it was the only way to protect her legacy.’
And a powerful MP who resigned from Government over the deal said: ‘Backstop or no backstop, if she promised to go in April, I would vote for the deal.’
In a separate development, The Mail on Sunday can also reveal Mrs May’s private polling strategist James Johnson has been testing Election narratives and messages in preparation for Britain having to go back to the polls to break the Brexit deadlock.
And the Director of No 10’s Policy Unit, James Marshall, has begun preliminary discussions about an ‘incredibly short and sharp’ manifesto after consulting with Government departments over what legislation they would seek to implement in a new Parliament.
Mrs May’s political policy advisers Richard Chew and Olivia Oates are also understood to be involved in preparations – despite public denials Mrs May is preparing to face voters again.
However, Downing Street last night insisted that a snap Election was not on the table.
A No 10 spokeswoman said: ‘Apart from anything else, there just wouldn’t be time before March 29.’
But a Downing Street source said: ‘No one wants it but if you plot through every route where we are, it is very difficult to see how you get out of this.’
The influential No 10 figure added: ‘I think we can get the deal through Parliament with a heck of a lot of luck but that’s not something we have had a huge supply of over the last two years, so it worries me.’
They added: ‘The biggest mistake we made last time was everyone was more prepared for an Election than the party that called one. So there is no point in burying our heads in the sand about this.’ Last night Tory MP for Battle Huw Merriman became the first Tory MP to call for an Election, saying: ‘When Parliament can’t pass laws, not just on Brexit but on other matters, and the Government cannot govern through that, then that’s normally when you have a General Election’.
Historic sketches of the 1879 Battle of Rorke’s Drift, drawn by the commander Lt John Chard, were shown round No 10 last week as part of plans to promote the treasures of the National Archives.
 Allies of Mrs May will hope that in her struggle to deliver Brexit against overwhelming odds, she draws inspiration from how 139 British soldiers fought off 4,000 Zulu warriors in a battle later immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu.  
He admitted to the BBC’s Sunday Politics South East that another Election would be ‘a total failure’, but added ‘but it won’t be the first time that we’ve had to do that’.
But Tory MPs have erupted over the prospect of a fresh ballot in a their private Whatsapp group, declaring the idea ‘dangerous’. In messages seen by The Mail on Sunday, Mark Francois vowed ‘never to stand for it’, while Zac Goldsmith raged: ‘Love to know what promises we would be standing on’, while John Howell said ‘we need this like a hole in the head’.
Maria Caulfield added: ‘My volunteers are on their knees and so fed up with the parliamentary party. They really can’t take much more.’
This week Mrs May faces a fresh battle with the House of Commons as Remainers led by Nick Boles and Dominic Grieve unleash a fresh bout of procedure warfare in a bid to wrestle control of Brexit policy from the Government.
In an incendiary development a leaked draft of a bill proposed by Mr Grieve would allow a minority of just 300 MPs to seize control of Commons business if it was passed and dictate what the Government must do, in a move one critic branded ‘constitutional arson.’
However, Labour whips have yet to decide if they will back the move to neuter the Government.
A source said: ‘We could be in power within months in a minority government, is this really the best time to rip up the rulebook?’
A Downing Street spokesman said it was ‘totally untrue’ that Mrs May’s allies had discussed a deal under which she would resign by May.
A spur of the moment champagne soirée at the £5.6 million Westminster townhouse of Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg was compared to ‘something out of The Great Gatsby’ as the party host was missing for most of the evening.
Just moments after inflicting a thundering defeat on Theresa May’s EU deal on Tuesday evening, the Brexit stalwart invited dozens of Tory colleagues to his home just 300 yards from the House of Commons to raise a glass, but they ended up raiding his kitchen.
And like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lavish anti-hero, who throws parties for his guests but stays mysteriously out of view, the North East Somerset MP was across the road at the BBC’s television studios giving interviews.
Instead it fell to Mr Rees-Mogg’s 11-year-old son Peter, dressed in the red breeches of his £15,000-a-year London prep school, to serve £45 bottles of Bollinger to jubilant MPs.
Invitations to the bash were sent via a WhatsApp messaging group for Leave-backing MPs, with the Who’s Who of the Tory Right –including former Cabinet Ministers Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith and John Whittingdale – attending.
The Mail on Sunday understands that as the champagne flowed, hungry guests raided the Rees-Mogg family fridge and even emptied his biscuit tin.
A source said: ‘Labour’s Kate Hoey [a Leave supporter], who was invited for all her hard work on Brexit, led the charge as people got a bit peckish and a bit more p****d and discovered a stash of digestives.’
Another MP present said ‘the good stuff was flowing’ at the six-bedroom, Grade-II listed home that Mr Rees Mogg purchased with a mortgage from the Queen’s bank Coutts & Co last year.
Mr Rees-Mogg insisted it ‘was a meeting with drinks’, adding: ‘We were chatting about what happened and having a drink at the same time.’
As The Mail on Sunday revealed last May, Mr Rees-Mogg’s Tory critics suspected that he would use the five-storey mansion as his ‘own No 10’ in the heart of Westminster in order to further his suspected leadership ambitions.
But he insisted he bought the 18th Century building ‘because I have six children’. Meanwhile, Tory Remainers were in similarly jubilant spirits, gathering on the House of Commons Terrace for their own celebration after the result sent shockwaves through Downing Street.
Pro-EU ringleader Dominic Grieve was seen sharing a pint of beer with Labour MPs after 118 Tory Brexiteers and Remainers united to give Mrs May the largest ever defeat for a government in parliamentary history, voting down her deal by 432 votes to 202.
We were discussing over drinks the Commons’ decisive vote against a proposal that would have been damaging for this country.
However, there was no rejoicing at the scale of the Prime Minister’s defeat, no revelling in her humiliation. I would have preferred a smaller margin.
Yes, we were happy that a proposal that would not have delivered Brexit had been comprehensively finished off.
Yet Tuesday’s vote, large as it was, only closed off one course of action. It did not solve the key question of how we deliver Brexit and honour the verdict of the 2016 referendum.
It did not in one bound provide a satisfactory Brexit deal.
Mrs May reacted to her setback by opening talks with the Opposition parties to discuss possible changes to her proposals. That is a most statesmanlike approach.
However, in my unequivocal view the answer to this crisis still remains largely within the Prime Minister’s own party. This is why.
As much as reaching out to Europhile Labour MPs may look attractive, only winning over her Tory rebels will get Mrs May over the line.
The simple arithmetic is that more than 110 Tory MPs and ten DUP MPs voted against Mrs May’s deal last week.
If they change sides, she wins.
Therefore, the energy of the negotiations to improve her deal must be with us and not with Labour MPs such as Yvette Cooper who cannot provide her with anything like the additional 115 MPs needed to reverse the result.
Then the question remains: what type of deal would we be willing to accept? What needs to be changed? The biggest obstacles within the Prime Minister’s current deal are the backstop and the £39 billion we currently propose to give to Brussels but for which we get nothing in return.
If Mrs May can persuade the EU to show flexibility on these, we could get the deal through the Commons.
Most people in Parliament want a deal.
There are very few MPs who have adopted no deal as an article of faith. I have never been among them.
Here I must stress that reports I have gone soggy on Brexit are, as they say, exaggerated to the point of untruth.
If I had to choose between no deal and Mrs May’s original accord, I would have no hesitation of opting for no-deal Brexit but even Mrs May’s deal would be better than not leaving at all.
Even at this very late stage, I believe that with commitment and effort we can avoid such a choice.
I hope that if Mrs May were prepared to compromise on her plans, she could win over her party, get a revised deal through the Commons and secure agreement from Brussels.
It is high time for the Tory Party to come together in the national interest.
 
Tory rebels are plotting to sabotage Boris Johnson’s Brexit by forcing a delay to the October 31 leaving date – even if the Prime Minister wins Commons support for a deal with the EU next weekend.
Former Cabinet Ministers Philip Hammond and Dominic Grieve are central to moves to compel Mr Johnson to send a letter to Brussels asking for an extension to the UK’s membership, regardless of the outcome of this week’s high-stakes Brexit diplomacy.
The plot, which threatens to throw the Prime Minister’s plans for a snap post-Brexit Election into disarray, caused fury in No 10, which last night accused Mr Hammond of trying to ‘sabotage’ Mr Johnson’s ‘do or die’ Halloween exit date.
The move came amid cautious optimism in Downing Street about the prospects of a last-minute breakthrough in negotiations this weekend over a new customs arrangement for Northern Ireland, which could be approved at Thursday’s critical EU summit in time for MPs to vote for it at Saturday’s historic Commons sitting.
Sources said that Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party and the Irish government in Dublin were ‘engaging’ with the idea of removing the need for a border with the Republic of Ireland by keeping the province inside the EU’s customs umbrella while allowing it to benefit from the UK’s post-Brexit trade deals.
However, Tory MPs in the hard-line ERG group and many Ministers remain in the dark about what exactly Mr Johnson has put on the table.
And last night, Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s Westminster leader, repeated his demand that Northern Ireland must leave the EU Customs Union with Great Britain, with No 10 seeking to reassure him by making private promises this was still a negotiation ‘red line’.
The Brexit plan is expected to be discussed by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over dinner in Paris this evening ahead of the Brussels summit.
But without a Commons majority, Mr Johnson will be forced to rely on both Labour rebels and the votes of many of the 21-strong group of former Tory MPs who lost the whip last month when they voted to block a No Deal Brexit.
The Mail on Sunday understands that the group, which includes former Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, is split over whether to vote for the deal – with one prominent member warning that it looked like a ‘pretty hard Brexit’ for Great Britain even if it amounted to a ‘very, very soft Brexit’ for Northern Ireland.
However, there is more of a consensus that Mr Johnson should be forced to delay Brexit, even if he wins MPs’ backing for the deal.
The delay faction, which includes Mr Hammond, argues that the Prime Minister should not be allowed to take the UK out of the EU at the end of the month without the Commons being given more time to examine the deal and pass the necessary legislation.
A source close to the former Chancellor said: ‘There is a distinction between Parliament “approving” the broad outline of a deal in a simple motion and Parliament legislating for a deal.
‘The fact is that the latter is not possible in the time remaining, so the Benn Act will come into force to allow some time to legislate and finalise the deal.’
The source added that the Benn Act – the law passed by pro-Remain MPs to compel Mr Johnson to request a Brexit delay if he had not secured a deal by October 19 – ‘has clearly forced the Prime Minister to finally devote time and energy into securing a deal’.
Last night, in response, a senior Government source said: ‘As Chancellor, Hammond sabotaged the negotiations and sabotaged preparations to leave – now he’s trying to sabotage leaving altogether.
‘His latest move shows that he is not trying to stop No Deal – he is trying to enforce a No Brexit’.
Even one fellow Conservative rebel described Mr Hammond as ‘totally paranoid’.
It is the make-or-break week that will decide the fate of Boris Johnson’s Brexit and maybe even of Brexit itself.
But the momentous seven days begin today with a crucial event he is not invited to – a meeting in Paris between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel.
Their dinner in the Elysee Palace this evening will go a long way to deciding how other EU leaders judge Mr Johnson’s ‘deal’ with Irish premier Leo Varadkar.
Tomorrow, Mr Johnson will hope the Queen’s Speech will give the country a vision of his post-Brexit UK as Her Majesty sets out the Government’s new programme of legislation.
But the glittering pomp of the state opening of Parliament will arguably be overshadowed in Brexit importance by a meeting in drab surroundings in Brussels.
There, Michel Barnier, EU chief Brexit negotiator, is due to brief EU ambassadors on the progress of talks.
On Tuesday, Ministers from across the EU are set to meet in Luxembourg where the overall outline of a deal must be agreed if it is to be signed off by the end of the week. 
Then on Wednesday Mr Macron and Ms Merkel will hold another ‘tete-a-tete’ ahead of a joint Franco-German cabinet meeting in Toulouse.
On Thursday Mr Johnson will join the Council of Ministers summit in Brussels to begin debating approval of the deal and/or a delay to the entire Brexit process.
Sometime on Friday the Prime Minister will know whether the EU has signed off his deal or read the last rites over it.
The week reaches its momentous climax with a Saturday sitting of Parliament – the first since the Falklands conflict.
If a deal has been agreed, Mr Johnson will seek to get the Commons to approve it.
If he has failed to get a deal, the PM will fight to get MPs to agree to his ‘do or die’ pledge to achieve Brexit by October 31 regardless.
In either case, Labour MPs and Tory rebels are threatening to combine to force him to accept a delay or a second referendum as the price of backing any deal. 
Late on Saturday, Mr Johnson and the country will find out just who has won. 
By Brendan Carlin 
The rebel ridiculed the former Chancellor, saying he wanted to vote for a delay to Brexit because he feared that Mr Johnson would try to introduce a No Deal Brexit ‘by the back door’ by ‘crashing’ the deal after the October 19 deadline stipulated by the Benn Act had expired.
But Mr Hammond’s stance was backed by Tory former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who insisted Mr Johnson would have to accept a delay even if his deal passed. Mr Grieve said: ‘He’s going to have to extend. I cannot see how he would be justified in trying to force through a major piece of constitutional legislation, the Withdrawal Agreement Act, in seven days. It’s improper.’
And former Cabinet Office Minister Sir David Lidington told BBC Radio 4's The Week In Westminster: ‘I’ve always felt there would at least need to be a time where technical legal details had to be hammered out and that was going to take us beyond the end of October.’
Sir David, who was Theresa May’s de facto deputy, also mocked Mr Johnson’s key advisor Dominic Cummings for making ‘Kevin the Teenager-style’ rants, adding: ‘When advisors become a story it’s usually a bad thing for the politician who’s hired them’.
Another of the Tory rebels said: ‘It’s hard to see how he [Mr Johnson] can get all of this done by October 31 realistically.
‘At a practical level, I think it would be extraordinary if the draft text could be finalised before then and you cannot begin to do the legislation until that’s been done.
‘I don’t see it’s feasible to leave on October 31. I can’t see how we could with confidence pass the necessary motion next Saturday which means that the Benn Act provisions do not apply,’ the rebel added.
‘It might be a technical extension but you still might require a couple of months just to have time to agree the legal text and take the legislation through. I think the letter [to delay] will still be needed.’
Mr Johnson’s Brexit negotiator David Frost was holed up in Brussels talks last night that will continue throughout today before his EU counterpart briefs member states on the progress of talks.
A senior Downing Street source told The Mail on Sunday that there was ‘medium’ hope of a breakthrough but insisted that ‘we’re not about to sell out our core principles’.
There are fears that reopening the Withdrawal Agreement to remove the hated Northern Irish backstop with Mr Johnson’s new customs plan will mean 11th hour demands from other EU countries when the UK is most vulnerable.
EU sources say Germany’s commissioner Gunther Oettinger has privately suggested hiking the UK’s £39 billion divorce bill in order to make Britain pay for Europe’s No Deal contingency planning. And there are also warnings that Spain could launch a fresh assault on winning concessions over Gibraltar.
If Mr Johnson fails to win a deal or MPs vote down his deal, pro-Remain MPs are discussing multipleoptions to delay Brexit – including legislating to give Speaker John Bercow the power to send the letter to Brussels or even appointing him as an interim PM by voting down the Queen’s Speech in the week starting October 21 and voting no confidence in the Government.
Brexit and War of the Wags collide: Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar joke, 'We got on better than Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy' as they reach a 'breakthrough' in top secret talks 
The anonymous sniping and briefings swirling between the UK and the EU at the beginning of last week would have made Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy blush.
Faceless No 10 aides tore chunks out of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, while EU Council President Donald Tusk took to Twitter to mock Boris Johnson in his beloved Latin.
But by Thursday the two biggest news stories of the week – Brexit and the War of the WAGs – collided in a wedding venue just outside Liverpool.
Mr Varadkar, who has been the pin-up baddie for Brexiteers over the past three years, broke the ice as he sat down with Boris Johnson in the wood-panelled reception room of 19th Century Thornton Manor on the Wirral.
‘You know this is where Coleen Rooney had her birthday party,’ he said.
‘Well, we get on better than those two,’ Mr Johnson quipped back, in a nod to the ongoing saga between Mrs Rooney and the wife of England footballer Jamie Vardy.
After exchanging small talk about their partners and Downing Street’s new dog Dilyn, the pair kicked out their aides and did not reappear for 90 minutes.
What they discussed remains a tightly guarded secret, but there has been a total change in the relationship between Mr Johnson and his Irish counterpart, compared to Mr Varadkar’s tense and scratchy dealings with Theresa May.
‘Boris finds Leo very impressive,’ says a source close to the PM. ‘They get on very well.’
The talks lasted long enough for both peckish Downing Street staff and their Merrion Street counterparts to put aside three years of tense talks and eat their bosses’ prepared lunch. They were putting away the smoked salmon and suitably European prosciutto sandwiches, pasta and a cheeseboard meant for the premiers when the two leaders called them back into the room for further talks.
‘It was instantly clear there had been a breakthrough,’ a Downing Street aide said. ‘We were hopeful that the moment Leo set foot in England we might have a chance, but their smiles took everyone back a bit.’
Extra lunch had to be ordered when the pair had finally finished further talks in the grounds of the manor, while aides hammered out a joint statement that neither side had expected to be so positive just hours earlier.
But in reality their meeting was the product of weeks of delicate diplomacy behind the scenes, even if pugnacious No 10 aide Dominic Cummings’ briefings against the EU garnered the most public attention.
Following a row over the leaking of details of a call with between Mr Johnson and Mrs Merkel on Tuesday, followed by a vicious briefing against Mr Varadkar’s intransigence on Wednesday, it looked like all hope of a deal was dead.
A 30-minute phone call between Chancellor Sajid Javid and his Irish counterpart Paschal Donohoe helped soothe tempers, but defenders of Mr Cummings insist there was ‘method to the madness’ and the hardline stance helped to ‘bring the Irish to our table’.
However two other key Downing Street figures have been singled out for making the Liverpool summit happen – Brexit negotiator David Frost and Chief of Staff Sir Edward Lister.
A Downing Street insider said: ‘There has been a lot of nonsense floating around for the last few weeks that we haven’t been trying to get a deal.
‘In reality Frosty has been working his b******s off in Brussels since August, and Eddie has diligently won over the Irish, flying back and forth to Dublin under the radar for weeks.
‘Three months ago Varadkar was saying no talks, no changes, nothing. But there he was, negotiating with the Brits in Britain.’
Tory leadership hopeful Esther McVey has accused MPs trying to prevent Brexit of 'tearing up 400 years of history', as she defended her right to prorogue Parliament to leave the EU without a deal if she became Prime Minister.
The former work and pensions secretary said it would not be her 'priority' to suspend sittings in the House of Commons in the run-up to the October 31 deadline, but said she would be willing to 'use all the tools at our disposal' if she won the race to replace Theresa May.
Speaking to The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One, she defended her plans to have a Cabinet full of only Brexiteers, saying there is limited time until October 31 and she cannot have people who are not 'committed' to leaving on that date in her top team, even if that means sacking numerous senior ministers.
Ms McVey also confirmed she had never taken Class A drugs after her rival in the Conservative contest Michael Gove admitted to using cocaine 'on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago'.
She said it should not be a bar to him becoming prime minister, saying she hopes 'people will actually judge him on how good he's been as a politician'.
On Brexit, she was asked about her previous comments that she would be willing to prorogue Parliament in order to stop MPs from blocking the UK from leaving in a no-deal scenario when the Article 50 period ends.
She said: 'That wouldn't be my priority, I wouldn't be looking to do that, no, what I've said is we would use all the tools at our disposal.
'What we have seen by MPs going against the democratic vote of the country, is they have torn up 400 years of history.
'They've ripped up the rule book, so it seems somewhat wrong to me that people wanting to frustrate the vote can rip up the rule book, yet should I want to use any tools at my disposal I would be seen as incorrect when I'm helping ensure the democratic will of the people.
'Can you see a conflict of thought in that process?'
Pressed on whether as PM she would go to the Queen and ask her to suspend Parliament, she simply said she would use 'every tool at my disposal'.
She added: 'The hypocrisy of people saying they would be ripping up the rule book and I would be using the laws.'
Asked if she would work with Nigel Farage given her views on Brexit are closely aligned with his, she rejected the idea, saying: 'What I would be doing is delivering Brexit so we don't need a Brexit Party once we've delivered Brexit.'
Ms McVey said if they originally voted Remain, but now agree we should leave by October 31, then they would be allowed to stay, and once the UK exits the EU 'anybody can be in the Cabinet'. 
The Conservative leadership race is ramping up ahead of nominations opening on Monday as the contenders continue to declare their credentials for the top job.
Here are the runners and riders:
- Boris Johnson
The former foreign secretary, who played a key role in the Vote Leave campaign at the 2016 referendum, is widely seen as the front-runner.
On Brexit, he has committed to keeping the October 31 deadline even if that means leaving without a deal and said he would step up no-deal preparations.
He also said he would refuse to pay the promised £39 billion to the European Union unless better Brexit terms are on offer.
Key quote: 'I truly believe only I can steer the country between the Scylla and Charybdis of Corbyn and Farage and on to calmer water.'
What he's said about drugs: Confessed to trying cocaine and smoking cannabis as a teenager at Oxford in a magazine interview in 2007.
Backers: James Brokenshire, Gavin Williamson, Steve Baker.
- Jeremy Hunt
The Foreign Secretary has ruled nothing out on Brexit, but insists that his experience as a negotiator in both business and politics means he could go to Brussels and secure a better deal.
He has said he would keep a no-deal Brexit on the table, but warned it could be 'political suicide' for the Conservatives as Parliament would force a general election.
He has called for a big increase in defence spending after Britain leaves the EU to counter rising global threats and has suggested slashing corporation tax to Irish levels of 12.5% to attract investment.
Key quote: 'We will absolutely be obliterated in an election if we haven't delivered Brexit.'
What he's said about drugs: Told The Times he had a 'cannabis lassi', a yoghurt-based drink, when he was backpacking through India in his youth.
Backers: Liam Fox, Greg Hands, Mark Field.
- Dominic Raab
The former Brexit secretary has set out an uncompromising approach in a bid to appeal to hardline Eurosceptics.
He wants Brussels to ditch the Irish backstop as part of a new agreement, but if the EU will not move on the issue, he will walk away without a deal on October 31 - and has not ruled out suspending Parliament to ensure that MPs cannot block the UK's exit.
He also wants to toughen up community sentences and has promised a shake-up of maternity care.
Key quote: 'We need to up our game, which means being less naive, and being absolutely resolute about our intention and our resolve to leave on October 31. It seems to me that I'm the only candidate in this race that is clear about that.'
What he's said about drugs: Has admitted taking cannabis as a student.
Backers: David Davis, Nadhim Zahawi, Maria Miller.
- Michael Gove
The Environment Secretary, who scuppered Mr Johnson's last leadership bid in 2016, is again positioning himself in opposition to the front-runner.
Unlike Mr Johnson, he has not ruled out seeking a further delay to Brexit - possibly for months beyond October 31 - if a deal is in reach, and warned pursuing a no-deal scenario could lead to a general election in which Jeremy Corbyn could enter Number 10.
He has set out a 'pro-business economic plan' to take on Mr Corbyn's 'Marxist message' and said he would replace VAT after Brexit with a 'lower, simpler' sales tax.
Key quote: 'If I am prime minister of this country I want to ensure it's the best place in the world to live, learn, raise a family, achieve your potential, and start and run a business.'
What he's said about drugs: Said he 'deeply regrets' taking cocaine 'on several occasions' two decades ago.
Backers: Mel Stride, Nicky Morgan, Ed Vaizey.
- Rory Stewart
The International Development Secretary has travelled around the country filming himself chatting to voters in a bid to raise his profile in the race.
A Remainer who now accepts the referendum vote, he has ruled out a no-deal Brexit and would establish a citizens' assembly to thrash out a new Brexit compromise.
He has also pledged to protect the Conservatives' 'reputation for economic competence', hitting out at the 'unfunded spending commitments' made by rivals.
Key quote: 'Candidates that are advocating a no-deal Brexit as well as tax cuts will - in one afternoon in October - lose us a reputation that we have spent 300 years building up.'
What he's said about drugs: Has apologised for smoking opium at a wedding in Iran.
Backers: David Gauke, Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames.
- Sajid Javid
The Home Secretary hopes to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement to remove the Irish backstop but does not want a delay beyond October 31.
He has set out a plan to tackle the Irish border issue by spending hundreds of millions on a technological solution, saying the UK has a moral duty to pay for measures at the border in an effort to secure a breakthrough.
Mr Javid has put forward a number of policy proposals, including cutting the top rate of income tax and establishing a £100 billion fund to invest in the UK's infrastructure.
Key quote: 'We will not beat the Brexit Party by becoming the Brexit Party.'
What he's said about drugs: Has denied ever taking drugs.
Backers: Ruth Davidson, Jeremy Wright, Chris Skidmore.
- Matt Hancock
The Health Secretary insists a no-deal Brexit is not a credible option and Parliament would never allow it.
He has set out a Brexit delivery plan to leave by October 31, including establishing an Irish border council, made up of UK and Irish officials, to prevent the return of a hard border and time-limiting the backstop.
He has also pledged to scrap business rates for small retailers and increase a tax on internet companies to 'level the playing field' for high streets, and has set out his vision for a foreign policy that boosts trade and 'resists protectionism', while also promising to 'uphold our values'.
Key quote: 'If in order to deliver Brexit we were to change who we are as a country we would have failed.'
What he's said about drugs: Is understood to have tried cannabis as a student but has not used drugs since university.
Backers: Damian Green, Tracey Crouch, Caroline Spelman.
- Andrea Leadsom
The former leader of the Commons, who ran against Mrs May for the party leadership in 2016, was another prominent member of the Vote Leave campaign.
She has set out a plan to scrap the Withdrawal Agreement and instead 'massively ramp up' preparations for a 'managed' exit without a full deal.
Mrs Leadsom has also promised to tackle climate change at home and abroad and establish a cross-party commission to find a solution to funding social care, and has warned that bold tax-cutting pledges could easily be blocked by Parliament.
Key quote: 'I truly believe in the bright future that awaits us once we leave the EU. And I think I have the best plan that I've seen for delivering a managed exit.'
What she's said about drugs: Told the Independent that she 'smoked weed at university and have never smoked it again since'.
Backers: Chris Heaton-Harris, Heather Wheeler, Derek Thomas
- Sam Gyimah
As the only contender open to a second referendum, the former universities minister is widely seen as a rank outsider.
His five-point plan would give MPs a 'final chance' to get a Brexit deal through Parliament while also preparing for a referendum if that failed.
The public would be offered a binding choice between a no-deal Brexit, a revised deal or remaining in the EU.
Key quote: 'The world won't wait for Westminster, no matter how loudly we shout, and no matter how damaging a prolonged Brexit process is for Britain.'
What he's said about drugs: Has denied taking any drugs.
Backers: Dominic Grieve, Guto Bebb, Phillip Lee
- Esther McVey
The committed Brexiteer has said she would fill her Cabinet with fellow believers.
She has called for the Tories to 'embrace' a no-deal Brexit in order to make sure the UK leaves on October 31.
Elsewhere, she has caused controversy with comments championing the right of parents to take their children out of lessons on same-sex relationships.
Key quote: 'I think you need to have people who believe in Brexit to deliver this by October 31.'
What she's said about drugs: A spokesman told The Telegraph she 'has never taken cocaine and never would'.
Backers: Pauline Latham, Phillip Davies, Andrew Lewer
- Mark Harper
A former Conservative chief whip and Remain supporter who now accepts the referendum result, Mr Harper acknowledges he is an underdog in the leadership race.
He has called for a 'short, focused' extension to allow for the deal to be renegotiated but said he would be prepared to leave with no deal if that is not possible.
He has claimed sticking to an undeliverable October 31 exit date could risk making Nigel Farage even stronger.
Key quote: 'I know what people want to hear but I am not going to tell people what they want to hear if I don't think it is credible.'
What he's said about drugs: Has denied taking any drugs.
Backers: William Wragg, Jackie Doyle-Price, Scott Mann.
 
David Davis today steals a march on Tory leadership rival Boris Johnson by setting out what will be seen as his manifesto for Downing Street – including adopting a much more militant attitude towards Brussels.
With both former Cabinet Ministers on high alert this weekend for the sudden triggering of a no-confidence vote in Theresa May, the former Brexit Secretary uses a trenchant article in today’s Mail on Sunday – below – to slam the Prime Minister for proposing to extend the transition period for withdrawing from the EU by a year.
Arguing that Mrs May has ‘managed to anger not just Leavers but ardent Remainers as well’, Mr Davis calls for a change in tactics to a more uncompromising approach.
And he uses fears that a no-deal exit from the EU could lead to planes being grounded as ammunition for his case.
In his article Mr Davis argues: ‘European flights would still need our airspace in order to fly to the USA. That should be enough to focus minds on a sensible outcome’.
Mr Davis also says that the temporary economic disruption of a no-deal withdrawal could be offset by fiscal policies, such as encouraging UK companies to spend a chunk of their £613 billion cash pile.
His intervention comes as he and Mr Johnson jockey for position, three months after they both resigned from the Cabinet over Mrs May’s Chequers plan to keep the UK close to Brussels’ rules on goods.
Supporters of Mr Johnson have been irritated by the surge in Mr Davis’s activity, arguing that his time as Brexit Secretary makes him complicit in the current crisis and that he would be ‘painfully out of his depth’ as Prime Minister.
But allies of Mr Davis are attempting a more conciliatory approach, suggesting that Mr Johnson could run as Mr Davis’s deputy on a joint ticket.
Both men signed an open letter last week saying that Mrs May would not be forgiven by the British people if Brexit was reduced to a ‘choreographed show of resistance followed by surrender’.
But when asked about the joint ticket idea yesterday, one pro-Boris MP said sarcastically: ‘How kind of them.’
Speculation about how close rebels are to triggering a no-confidence motion in Mrs May has been growing since the Prime Minister signalled she was prepared to extend the transition period of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
Under current rules, 15 per cent of Tory MPs must write to the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, to trigger the vote. That means 48 of the current 315 Tory MPs must take action.
One well placed Brexiteer, who has been keeping a list of who has written letters, put the figure in the early 40s at the start of last week. Two more letters were submitted on Thursday. A source close to the 1922 Committee said: ‘At this rate it won’t be long.’
If the 48 letters are received, Sir Graham would inform No 10 before ordering a secret ballot on whether Mrs May should stay as leader.
The Prime Minister could theoretically stay on if she won a simple majority, but realistically, if more than 100 Tory MPs failed to back her, then she would be under intense pressure to step down.
There would then be a leadership contest with candidates nominated and seconded by fellow MPs. If more than two contenders emerge, a series of ballots of MPs is then held, with the politician with the least votes removed at each stage.
When only two names remain, they are put to a vote among the wider party membership.
The contest usually takes three months, but members of the 1922 executive are understood to be looking at reducing it to under four weeks if it is called before Brexit, to allow the victor to take charge of the negotiations.
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who has sent a letter to Sir Graham, said yesterday: ‘It could all be done within two or three weeks by having digital hustings and fast-tracking the process’.
Brexit negotiations remain deadlocked over the problem of Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister explained to European leaders last week why she could not accept EU proposals for the Irish border, and they cancelled a planned summit for next month as ‘not enough progress had been achieved’ in the talks.
Cabinet Ministers are also growing increasingly alarmed about whether the country is prepared for a no-deal Brexit, and have said that ordinary citizens needed to make their own preparations, too. One Cabinet source cited the example of haulage drivers, who will have to start applying now for special ECMT permits if they want to drive on the continent after March. ‘They need to apply for them now – and there is a limited number of them.’
Labour MP Ian Murray, from the Best for Britain ‘soft’ Brexit group, said: ‘This is yet another burden facing truckers and businesses. The Government is creating a nightmare of red tape and extra burdens. They are writing a lot of reports and then not doing the practical things needed.
‘They are kicking the can down the road and we are running out of tarmac.’
An ally of Mr Davis said last night: ‘This is not a crisis of David’s making, but he is the right man to step into the breach and steer Britain through Brexit.’
DAVID DAVIS: We're throwing away a golden opportunity 
Even the most charitable verdict on last week’s Brexit talks in Brussels can hardly describe them as a success.
The outcome has managed to anger not just Leavers but ardent Remainers as well.
Why? Because the Prime Minister appeared to tacitly endorse the idea of extending the Brexit implementation period beyond December 2020. That, in effect, would delay Brexit by another year for no apparent gain.
There would remain a Northern Irish backstop undermining the integrity of the UK, we would have to pay billions more, and there will be no agreement on our future relationship with the EU.
This will severely challenge the Prime Minister’s statement at the Conservative Conference that austerity has ended.
The consequences of the extra costs on next week’s Budget and the nation’s finances would be immense and entirely unnecessary.
Two years ago, the British people voted to take back control and leave the EU. Any final deal must respect what people voted for: control of borders, control of laws, control of money, control of trade. All free of oversight from EU institutions.
The EU is not entitled to split up the UK. And the EU is not entitled to direct how we regulate our economy and govern ourselves after we leave. We should not allow ourselves to be bullied by the EU. Now is the time to stand up for the national interest and plot a better course.
Despite the flawed strategy to date, it is still possible to reset our path towards a proper free trade agreement. But we are running out of time, and we should not fear a ‘no deal’ outcome.
Given the EU’s continued intransigence, we should now step up such preparations.
The paradox is that the more we do, the less likely it becomes. Because if we do, the EU will strike a deal. We have many cards in our favour and the EU knows it. So do the nation states and their industrial leaders. The chief economist of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest bank, has said that outside the EU ‘the UK will do just as well or better…’ – not least because outside the eurozone, we have ‘flexible exchange rates’.
In the event of no deal, our currency would adjust, making EU goods such as German cars about one third more expensive than before 2016 – leading to a drop of German car sales to the UK of about a third.
Do we really think German industry is unaware of this? We should be accelerating already planned action to improve our ports, logistics and transport to ensure UK ports can cope with delays if any EU ports become deliberately difficult about handling freight coming to or from Britain.
The UK also should be taking world-class legal advice now. We already know that any aggressive threats of discrimination against our goods and services would be illegal under World Trade Organisation rules (and indeed Article 8 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty!)
There have been claims that planes will not fly between the UK and EU. This is extremely improbable as it would undermine the Spanish and other European tourism markets as well as Mediterranean property markets.
Furthermore, European flights would still need our airspace in order to fly to the USA. That should be enough to focus minds on a sensible outcome. Also, the Chicago Convention on international civil aviation will still exist and need to be applied and they are hardly going to flout that.
Many of these ‘threats’ are Project Fear Mk 2 when it has become patently clear that Project Fear Mk 1 was demonstrably incorrect.
And, of course, there are many countries outside the EU waiting to make free trade deals with us.
 
It was a proud moment in our history when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. But since that historic day, our Government has completely lost control of the negotiations and has been outmanoeuvred by the EU at every stage. Right from the start, we should never have agreed to the EU’s demand that we first agree the terms of our withdrawal before even starting to discuss our future relationship.
By doing so, we threw away one of our most valuable negotiating cards – our financial contribution – and lost six months of vital negotiating time.
Since then, we have become steadily more and more bogged down in endless talk about backstops, transition and implementation periods. It is hardly surprising that those who voted to leave are baffled by the apparent complexity of doing so.
However, they do understand that the longer it takes to leave the EU, the less control we will have over our country and the more money we will be forced to hand over to Brussels.
Already we have agreed that we will go on paying in over £39 billion of your money to the EU, for nearly two years after the date we cease to be a member without any guarantee that we will get a free trade deal.
So on March 29, 2019, we will leave and yet still be bound by all the EU rules, both current and future, without any ability to influence them.
And then the Prime Minister shocked us all by announcing the Government wanted to extend it.
The Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, said the extension might be for ‘three months or so’. But then on Monday in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister chose a different phrase – ‘well before the end of this Parliament’. That takes us all the way to June 2022.
And it has even been suggested that there will be no fixed date at all after which we will regain control of our laws and be free to negotiate trade deals around the world.
I fully understand the anger of my constituents who cannot understand why two years after they voted to leave we are still arguing about how to do so and have already agreed we will not properly deliver Brexit for at least four years.
And we are now talking about extending that for up to two more years. For them, four years is already too long; six years would be an anti-democratic shambles. While we are in this purgatory, we will go on being subject to EU rules and forced to pay tens of billions into their budget while we have no say over how our taxpayers’ money is spent.
We will have no representation in the European Parliament, the European Council of Ministers or the European Court of Justice and yet we will still be subject to the diktats of all three.
Alternatively, instead of extending the implementation period, it is now suggested that we might have to make use of the so-called Irish border backstop.
This proposal was dreamt up by those unwilling to look for solutions which would allow trade to continue to take place easily between Northern Ireland and the Republic without border and customs checks.
It would see the whole of the UK staying in a customs union with the EU indefinitely. Sledgehammers and nuts spring to mind.
Staying in a customs union would mean that we would not have any control over our own trade and regulatory policy and would not be able to agree free trade deals with non-EU countries.
In many ways it is a worse outcome than remaining a member of the EU.
And there would be no wish or incentive for the EU to bring it to an end by agreeing alternative arrangements.
These proposals would amount to never-ending, directionless and expensive EU membership for years to come. We must call time on these endless bridges to nowhere.
Instead, we should make clear three things. First, that we are determined to fulfil the mandate given by the people in the referendum and endorsed at the last election that we will leave the EU in full.
Second, that while we want to reach a deal, we will still leave with or without one – and no deal will also mean no cash.
And finally, let’s start now to negotiate a sensible outcome – let’s abandon the Chequers proposals which have little support and get on with negotiating a proper, Canada-style free trade deal which will truly deliver Brexit.
 
Boris Johnson is being told by a rival Tory leadership contender to ditch his Halloween Brexit deadline – or it will risk making Nigel Farage even stronger.
Former Tory Chief Whip Mark Harper claimed sticking to the undeliverable October 31 exit date would only boost the Brexit Party boss when it failed to materialise.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, he said that the only ‘credible’ plan was to postpone Brexit, fight for an agreement with Brussels but leave – deal or no deal – by May 2020 at the latest. Taking a swipe at leadership favourite Boris, Mr Harper added: ‘You don’t beat Nigel Farage by trying to be the Brexit Party, you don’t beat him by out-Faraging him – you beat him by governing and delivering on your promises.’
Mr Harper, former Chief Whip under David Cameron, claimed he alone of 11 declared candidates had a ‘credible’ Brexit plan involving a ‘short focused extension’ beyond October but with the promise that deal or no deal, the UK would leave before the May 2020 local elections.
He said: ‘One of the lessons of the European elections and Peterborough by-election is politicians should only make promises they can keep.
‘I know what people want to hear but I am not going to tell people what they want to hear if I don’t think it is credible.’
As well as Mr Johnson, fellow heavyweight Brexiteer leadership contender Dominic Raab insists the UK must leave by October 31 with or without a deal.
Mr Harper, who was sacked by Theresa May when she became Prime Minister in 2016, is a self-confessed ‘underdog’ in the leadership race. But he insisted he was in it to win and had the necessary eight Tory MP backers to enter the contest formally this week.
Last week, Mr Johnson moved to scotch claims he would support a second Brexit referendum.
He told a private hustings in Westminster on Wednesday: ‘The first referendum campaign was a pretty bruising experience. It was a tough experience for us all.’
He added: ‘I don’t want to see our country go through that again. It was deeply toxic. A second referendum is anti-democratic.’
Pro-EU campaigners have outraged Leave supporters by issuing a ‘where there’s death, there’s hope’ taunt that ageing Brexit voters’ mortality rates will soon hand Remain victory at a second EU referendum.
Arch-Europhile and top Labour Euro MP Richard Corbett goaded Brexiteers by boasting how younger pro-Brussels voters will within weeks be in a majority in the UK — simply because older anti-EU voters were dying off.
Mr Corbett, Labour’s leader in the European Parliament, suggested that this would hand victory to Remain if a second referendum was called, saying: ‘As someone joked to me the other day, where there’s death, there’s hope.’
The provocative remark came amid forecasts that January 19 will be Brexit ‘crossover day’ – the date when death rates mean pro-Brexit voters will be outnumbered by younger Remainers.
It also coincided with a letter signed by more than 50 business leaders calling for a second referendum, warning of the potential economic damage from ‘either a blindfold or destructive Brexit’.
Arch-Brexiteers reacted with fury to the ‘death and hope’ remark. Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘This remark is as tasteless as it is misguided.
‘In their zeal to defy democracy and overturn the verdict of the 2016 referendum, arch-Remainers wrongly assume that the clear majority for Leave is dwindling.
‘But that wilfully ignores the well-known fact that with age comes wisdom, and that many people who voted Remain now see they were wrong to do so in the first place.’
Up to 700,000 anti-Brexit campaigners marched through London last month to call for a second EU referendum.
Earlier this year, polling expert Peter Kellner predicted that the UK would shortly ‘switch from a pro-Brexit to an anti-Brexit’ country – based on the age profile of many Leave voters compared to the increasing number of younger, pro-European people coming on to the electoral register.
He wrote: ‘If not a single voter in the referendum two years ago changes their mind, enough mainly Leave voters will have died, and enough mainly Remain voters will have reached voting age, to wipe out the Leave majority achieved in June 2016.’
Using data from a YouGov survey, he said the 1.26 million Leave majority at the referendum was being eroded by 1,350 a day – even taking account of lower turn-out rates among younger voters.
And he named January 19 as ‘crossover day’ when anti-Brexit voters will start to outnumber Leavers – just 10 weeks before the UK formally quits the EU.
Brexit tensions deepened last night after Irish premier Leo Varadkar claimed it was undermining 20 years of peace in Northern Ireland. 
However, last week Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney more optimistically claimed a Brexit deal could be struck this month, saying ‘a lot of progress’ had been made on the vexed issue of the Northern Ireland border.
But last night, a cross-party alliance of arch-Brexiteer MPs at Westminster sought to head off a Brexit sell-out by insisting a so-called No Deal exit was now the best option for the country.
The coalition of three Tories – including Mr Bone – two Labour and one DUP urged people to realise that ‘No Deal is No Problem’.
Unless he rats again, by this time next week John Bercow’s ignominious tenure as Commons Speaker will be over.
But Tories should be wary of celebrating too much for fear of finding something worse.
I hear there is a plot afoot among Remainers and Labour to put Harriet Harman in the chair as the ‘continuity Bercow candidate’ – someone willing to tear up the rules to keep Boris Johnson and Brexit on the rack.
Most Conservative MPs are backing chummy Labour man Lindsay Hoyle or feisty Tory Brexiteer Eleanor Laing but worried whips have detected a growing movement toward the PC-brigade’s beloved ‘Harperson’ among Remainer Tory rebels and older women on the Government benches.
Hoyle’s supporters are confident he has the numbers, but were Labour to swing behind Harman en-masse, she could clinch the post.
And with Bercow vowing to quit as an MP as well within days, a further headache for No 10 is the Buckingham by-election.
Tory strategists had hoped to wrap it into the next Election – but given that is being blocked, a separate fight will likely be needed. With the controversial HS2 route ploughing through the countryside seat, and the Brexit Party revelling in delay, it will be a tasty battle.
March of the G&T brigade 
Campaigners for a second referendum did little to dispel the myth that they are a bunch of middle-class elitists at their march in London last weekend. 
The Marks and Spencer next to Green Park Tube station – which marked the halfway point of the route – sold out of posh cans of gin and tonic within minutes, as the empty shelves proved, while the tinnies of beer remained largely untouched. 
Well, the doomsday anti-Brexit campaigners did warn of empty shelves in supermarkets... 
It is all getting a bit much for Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay? In the hallowed Commons tea room last week, burly Steve spilled a pot of boiling water for his brew all over the counter. The staff cleaned it up and brought him another – only for him to spill it all over again, amid profuse apologies. When he finally managed to walk away with an unspoiled third pot, he left his bank card at the till.
 Slick PR man Roland Rudd has taken his ousting from the People’s Vote campaign in good humour. After The Mail on Sunday revealed the bitter internal civil war blighting the second referendum camp, the Guido Fawkes website ran an unflattering cartoon of Rudd having very girly fisticuffs with nemesis Alastair Campbell. I hear clubbable Rudd was quick on the blower to buy the original cartoon for £500 on Monday morning. He can hang it in one of the eight bathrooms in his Somerset pile...
A push by backbench Tories to make it illegal to undermine the Government negotiating with foreign powers is growing in support amid more Brexit delay.
After Remainers were accused of plotting with Brussels and Paris to stymie the referendum result, I hear the planned private member’s bill has a catchy nickname from its backers – BLAIR’S Law – short for British Legislation Against International Remainer Sabotage.
Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat, has not been seen in public for weeks.
His absence has sparked dark rumours among the photographers that loiter on Whitehall, who delighted in snapping him tussling with No10 neighbour Larry.
But I hear talk of the black-and-white moggy’s demise is currently wide of the mark. ‘He’s not dead, but he is very poorly,’ says a Foreign Office source, diplomatically.
I’m told Palmerston has gone to see out his days at the home of a senior official after a long and distinguished mouse- slaying career. 
Some vintage Sir Humphrey behaviour from circumspect officials at Highways England.
The quango’s pen-pushers were aghast when tiggerish Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Whitehall’s ‘XO’ No Deal planning committee that he wanted to hang scores of giant ‘get ready for Brexit’ banners along motorways across the country.
‘They tried every single trick in the book to kill it,’ says a weary aide, ‘including demanding special training for people to attach the signs.’
 
People who choose to go into politics do so to make the world a better place – I know that was certainly my aspiration.   
That might sound naive – and after the last week, it might sound implausible – but it’s the truth.
And in my role as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I feel I have the opportunity to do that – to cut our carbon emissions; to make the most of the fourth industrial revolution; to make our working environment better, and to use science to cure disease, to extend life and to improve communities.
These are all real goals that have real impacts on real people.
And, of course, I have another important goal too – to see us leave the EU, fulfil the will of the British people, and become a truly free, international-facing nation.
Last week was one of those weeks in politics where late nights met frustration and disappointment. In just a few short days, Jeremy Corbyn and a select group of MPs demonstrated their refusal to respect democracy and act on the will of the people.
A will that our Prime Minister has fought all summer to deliver.
As the former Leader of the Commons, I spent two years watching Parliament chip away at our negotiating hand. It was a role that gave me a unique and privileged insight into the mechanics of our political system – which is intricate, but has been forged over the centuries.
In the absence of a single written constitution, we follow a mix of precedent, convention and law. But that unwritten constitution still has rules, and it has people at its heart.
The people exercise their will through Parliament – a group of MPs, selected by them, to represent them and govern them. In return for power, MPs agree to respect the voice of the people. But last week, the House failed to do so.
By voting to extend Article 50 in the absence of a deal, the Opposition have destroyed the Government’s negotiating hand in Brussels – giving little incentive for the EU to give us the good deal we continue to fight for, and taking away the Prime Minister’s room to fight for the UK’s interests.
But, even more than this, they have changed the UK constitution.
There are people in Parliament whose roles are to understand the British constitution, and to protect it. One of those is the Leader of the Commons, working in the ‘engine room’ of the legislative machine. Another is the Speaker.
The Speaker is the senior officer of the House of Commons, and its highest authority. A politically impartial, independent umpire of proceedings, the Speaker is in place to protect the constitution and oversee the behaviour of the House.
As an MP, a Minister and a former Leader of the Commons, I fully respect and appreciate the role of the Speaker. But last week, the current Speaker failed us.
In allowing MPs to use Standing Order No 24 – an important procedure whereby MPs can debate urgent issues – as a route to taking over the Parliamentary timetable and giving power to the Opposition, the Speaker hasn’t just bent the rules, he has broken them. 
So it is right that the Conservatives will recognise this fact at the next General Election by standing our candidate against him in Buckingham
Parliamentary procedure is centuries old. The process of having a first, second and third reading is a tool to protect the public.
The time-consuming procedure ensures that each piece of legislation – which changes the laws of the country and in turn, people’s lives – is done in a very considered way, avoiding mistakes and maintaining the integrity of the Commons.
What we saw on Tuesday was a flagrant abuse of this process. 
The Standing Order No 24 that the Opposition proposed wasn’t appropriate for a Motion. 
It was intended to ram through legislation for purely political motives.
The use of Standing Order No 24 in this way will lead to the creation of bad laws.
It ignores the Government’s right to govern, abuses emergency debates and in this case has put EU negotiations into the hands of the Opposition.
It acts in complete disregard to the will of the people – not just on Brexit, but on whom they have chosen to govern them.
It adds insult to injury that in doing so, Labour have afforded themselves power without accountability – claiming to represent the people without asking their permission. 
This is a route to the diminution of our democracy, which is why the Prime Minister is now calling for a General Election.
Bring it on, I say, and bring back an impartial Speaker.     
The moment of national renewal has come. While spring is yet to sweep the chill from the air, fresh shoots of rejuvenation and regeneration are piercing through the cold earth.
The electorate, the British people, the most patient and forbearing in the world, will finally have their decisiveness rewarded and, thanks to the General Election result, we will have got Brexit done.
By unleashing a reviving wave of blue MPs to rehydrate the parched soil, the British people have set the scene for the biggest restoration of vitality and viridity* to our land in generations.
In Parliament, the thunderstorm has been blown away, calm has been restored and the serious job of legislating has recommenced. In both houses, scrutiny and debate have returned to the fore.
In the Commons, fresh-faced MPs line the green benches, determined that the new Parliament will be a better Parliament – a people’s Parliament focused on delivering on their priorities.
This comprehensive Conservative majority has allowed the Prime Minister’s deal with the European Union finally to pass all stages in Parliament and become law, getting Brexit done and shining through a bright sunbeam of certainty to end the long night of doubt.
With the deal done and the agreement in place, we will leave the EU in five days’ time. Independence restored, the Government will focus on unleashing the potential of this country.
It will be a Government acutely attuned to the will of the people. For that is the sine qua non* of our departure: Members of Parliament chosen by the people will decide the laws of the land. Those directly accountable representatives will have taken back control.
We will be free to chart our own course and we are reclaiming mastery of our policy decisions, from agriculture to trade, foreign policy to fisheries, employment law to immigration.
We can embark on this new age with confidence and excitement. Over two millenniums since mighty Augustus quelled the unrest and strife in ancient Rome and brought in a new golden age, our auriferous* Prime Minister is bringing in a new era of revitalisation to our nation.
These two great leaders sought unity where there had been division; they saw the importance of a public-supported police force and they recognised the power of infrastructure to bring great economic and social returns.
Under our Prime Minister, our police force is gaining an extra 20,000 recruits and powers to stop and search more effectively so we can begin to clamp down on the scourge of knife crime.
In the Boris Johnson era, we are embarking on the biggest rail modernisation since Victorian times. With £48 billion dedicated to delivering rail projects such as the new high-speed line between Manchester and Leeds and electrifying hundreds of miles of track, people across the country will be closer to each other than ever before.
We are investing in the future of talented workers with our ambitious plans for a dynamic, outward-looking economy. Outside the EU, our trade policies will be forged with the best interests of UK businesses in mind.
*Virdity - Naive innocence
*Sine qua non - essential condition (from the Latin 'without which not') 
*Auriferous - containing gold
*Fulgurate - flash (like lightning) 
At the forefront of our thoughts will be the tech sector. Britain has an illustrious history of technological development – from penicillin to the lawn mower, the World Wide Web to the light bulb, the steam train to the toothbrush. In the years ahead, we will deepen and broaden that remarkable record. The trail we have blazed in the past will continue to fulgurate* into the future.
National confidence in the years ahead can be drawn from the distinction of this island’s story and from the recognition of the strength of the new position.
The UK has one of the most flexible, agile and entrepreneurial workforces in the world. The capital city raises trillions of pounds of capital in every currency invented. English is the global language, the lingua franca of this age, that flows through boardrooms around the world.
By raising GDP still higher, taxpayers can support those public services on which people rely. The Conservatives are delivering the biggest cash boost in history to the NHS, with an additional £33.9 billion in frontline services every year by 2024, the largest and longest funding settlement in the history of the health service.
It will provide 40 new hospitals, 6,000 extra doctors and 50,000 more nurses. Tomorrow, we will vote to enshrine this commitment to the NHS in law, safeguarding it for future generations.
It is a new chapter in Parliament and a new chapter for the country. In July, the Prime Minister memorably encapsulated his pitch with the late 19th Century Americanism ‘dude.’ He promised to Deliver Brexit, Unite our nation, Defeat Jeremy Corbyn and Energise the country.
Corbyn is defeated. Brexit is on the cusp of being delivered. The stage is set for the nation to come back together. Energy exudes from every pore of this Government. It will not just be a year, but a decade of renewal.
Details of the alternative proposals that Tory Brexiteers drew up in response to Theresa May’s Chequers plan can today be revealed.
The ‘chuck Chequers’ policies drafted by the European Research Group (ERG) led by Jacob Rees-Mogg were due to be published in the coming days – but were dropped at the last minute following rows over how much detail to include.
The Eurosceptic MPs, who are deciding whether to unite behind a Boris Johnson leadership bid, were planning to call for the £39 billion Brussels divorce bill to instead be spent on a ‘Brexit income tax cut’, the NHS and even a renewed nuclear deterrent.
According to a version of the blueprint seen by this newspaper, the ERG was planning to call for a Canada-style free trade deal with the EU – and if Brussels refused to grant the deal they advocated falling back on a ‘hard Brexit’ governed by World Trade Organisation rules.
They called for a significant proportion of the £39 billion ‘divorce bill’ we have agreed to pay Brussels when we leave the EU to be ploughed into the NHS, and for £2 billion a year to be ringfenced for social care.
The MPs were going to pledge to ‘give everyone a Brexit bonus’ by cutting income tax, business rates, capital gains tax and stamp duty, while the UK’s ‘greater freedom to vary VAT’ after leaving the EU could be exploited by cutting the rates charged on female hygiene products, home insulation and domestic fuel.
Some of the ideas are likely to raise eyebrows, including the suggestion that ‘the UK needs a strong defence to protect these islands, which includes the insurance of a nuclear missile shield to deter aggression’.
Other plans for boosting our military forces include re-establishing an expeditionary force, so that the Army ‘can intervene decisively, usually with allies, where there are events like the invasion of the Falklands or Kuwait that require a swift and effective military response’.
The ERG paper dismisses the EU’s demand that there should be a ‘hard border’ in Northern Ireland if there is a hard Brexit.
Echoing Mr Johnson’s comments in this newspaper today, the manifesto argues in favour of an ‘invisible customs frontier’, with any checks carried out away from the border.
It also condemns Mrs May’s ‘backstop’ option on Northern Ireland, which would leave the province in the same customs jurisdiction as the rest of Ireland, as an ‘absolutely unacceptable’ solution as it would involve a customs frontier down the Irish Sea.
Mr Rees-Mogg said last night: ‘That was an early draft. The key thing which the papers will address is that there is nothing to be concerned about the UK trading with the EU on WTO terms.’
The Canada deal with the EU, known as CETA, removed 98 per cent of all Canadian duties EU firms had to pay, and boosted the ability of European companies to bid for public contracts.
It increased sales of EU cheese and wine in Canada, in return for Canadian beef hitting the shelves in Europe.
Under a hard Brexit, the UK would pay tariffs on goods and services it traded with the EU. These tariffs range from 32 per cent on wine to nine on cars.
Mr Rees Mogg claims that the UK would be able to enjoy ten tariff-free years while a free-trade agreement was negotiated.
Dominic Raab's vast colonial-era office overlooking St James's Park is the size of a tennis court – appropriate dimensions for the most athletic member of the Cabinet, with his black belt in karate and a ferocious boxing style modelled on his hero Muhammad Ali.
As he paces the length of the room towards his desk, the Foreign Secretary bristles with political machismo when he vows that Boris Johnson will be able to defy the 'Surrender Act' stipulating that he must ask for a delay to Brexit if he can't secure a deal.
Describing it as an Act 'which requires us basically to roll over to the most punitive conditions that Brussels could inflict on us', he says: 'It is a shoddy bit of legislation. The way it was put together was pretty ramshackle. It didn't have the scrutiny that you have with a Government Bill.'
His implication is clear: the Government is still confident that it can find a loophole in the legislation which will allow the Prime Minister to take us out of the EU on October 31 even if he has not secured a deal.
In his exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Raab even hinted at the prospect of EU law being employed – for the final time – to over-ride the Act, by using the legislation under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.
According to some Government lawyers, the Treaty – which enshrined the leaving date of October 31 – could be used to veto the Act passed by Labour MP Hilary Benn and fellow anti-Brexiteers.
Acknowledging the irony of the Government using EU law to leave the EU, Mr Raab, who has international law degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, says: 'EU law has direct effect – that's one of the reasons we're leaving.
'It's a question of carefully assessing the implications. There are multiple bits of legislation that will play out.'
Mr Raab, 45, was dispatched by Boris Johnson at an early stage of the summer's leadership contest, but his ideologically pure Brexiteer beliefs ensured that he landed the plum job in King Charles Street – and was additionally rewarded with being made First Secretary of State, the effective Deputy Prime Minister.
He is one of just four Ministers allowed to make keynote speeches at this week's party conference, and is likely to deputise for Mr Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons on Wednesday when Mr Johnson will be addressing the audience in Manchester. This means he will play a key role in trying to stabilise the party after another tumultuous week in which the Supreme Court ruled against the Government's suspension of Parliament and the Commons was in uproar over 'inflammatory' language.
Key to settling the nerves would be an 11th-hour breakthrough in the talks with Brussels in time for the crucial summit on October 17.
The former Brexit Secretary, who resigned over Theresa May's deal, insists that he is confident of progress, saying: 'We have given the EU a very clear ask, we want to remove the undemocratic backstop and we need to have a transition to a best-in-class free-trade deal.
'It now depends on the political will on the EU side. I'm confident the package we've got and that we put to the EU could pass through the House of Commons.'
He says the change of Prime Minister has led to a change in the negotiation dynamic.
'I think the Cabinet is united and I think you've got a Prime Minister who has just got this fizz of optimism coupled with a steely resolve that we are going to get this done.
'And so, for all the shambles in Parliament, I think the EU knows they are dealing with someone who means business. If they don't move, if they remain stubborn and intransigent, then we will leave at the end of October come what may.'
If all else fails, the Government hopes that Brussels might just kick us out anyway at the end of the month. Mr Raab argues that the pro-Remain MPs 'assume that the EU would want an extension... I think people like [French] President Macron and others are very worried about what would happen if there was another extension because they'd end up with the UK in opposition to all the EU business.
'Why would we play nice in that scenario? So we are absolutely clear we are not going to extend.
'But I don't think it's something that there is strong support for within the EU given the paralysis it would likely lead to for them.'
In his speech on Sunday, Mr Raab is expected to set out his vision of a post-Brexit 'global Britain' – including allowing the UK the freedom to set its own moral lines. Once out of the EU's sanctions rules, the UK will be able, for example, to seize British assets, including houses, bought by foreign nationals guilty of human rights abuses.
He says: 'If someone is responsible for gross human rights abuses, I don't think they should be able to syphon their money through British banks.
'If they have asset freezes on them I don't think they should come and do their Christmas shopping in Knightsbridge.
'I think that's a good way of morally anchoring this concept of global Britain, showing we can be a force for good in the world.'
Remainer MPs might have been dubbed the Rebel Alliance in honour of the heroes of the Star Wars films – but now ardent Brexiteer Dominic Raab has struck back.
During his Mail on Sunday interview, the Foreign Secretary revealed his love of the franchise in the hope of 'taking back control' of the Brexit analogy.
He said: 'My boys are starting to watch Star Wars so we went back and watched the original Star Wars trilogy so, of the three, I think I like Return Of The Jedi. The problem is my four-year-old now wants a Wookie for Christmas.'
In the 1983 sequel, the Galactic Empire, ruled by the ruthless Emperor Palpatine, is constructing a second Death Star in order to crush its opponents once and for all, but is thwarted by rebels including Luke Skywalker.
While Remainers such as former Chancellor Philip Hammond accepted the Rebel Alliance nickname for trying to block a No Deal Brexit, they are not the only ones laying claim to the mantle.
Earlier this month, Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney likened the European Parliament to the Death Star 'where national democracy comes to die' and said Guy Verhofstadt, its Brexit co-ordinator, was like villain Darth Vader.
 
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell was last night accused of plotting to 'sabotage' Brexit by planning to slow down preparations for the UK's departure from the EU next year.
He faced claims from Tory Brexiteers that Labour was seeking to 'frustrate' the exit process by delaying vital legislation. 
There were also claims that, if Jeremy Corbyn came to power in an Election between now and the spring, he would push Brexit day back from March 29, 2019. 
Labour dismissed the comments as a desperate Conservative ploy to try to distract attention from 'the mess' they were making of leaving the EU.
The rush to get the UK's laws ready for when the country is no longer subject to European legislation involves dozens of so-called 'statutory instruments' (SIs), not necessarily debated in full in the Commons chamber. 
They are used to make mainly technical legal changes but can involve major policy alterations – sparking fears they are a back-door way for the Government to pass laws quickly and without much scrutiny from MPs.
Last week, Mr McDonnell said: 'The SIs are now going through on a massive scale. Some are looking like major pieces of almost primary legislation.'
He said Labour wanted to get some of them debated 'on the floor of the House as much as we possibly can so that MPs can take a view, rather than just having them nodded through.'
Ardent Eurosceptic MP Philip Davies said: 'It is clear they are trying to sabotage the process to frustrate Brexit.'
Other Tory Brexiteers raised concerns too, saying that any attempts to interfere with parliamentary procedure would be unacceptable.
Mr McDonnell was unavailable for comment last night.
But Shadow Cabinet Minister Jon Trickett dismissed the Tory claims as 'nonsense'. He said: 'This is nothing more than a Tory ploy to distract attention from the mess they're making of Brexit.
'We have said we accept the Brexit referendum decision.'
Ministers have quietly restarted No Deal planning meetings amid fears trade talks with Brussels will collapse, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Whitehall's EU Exit Operations committee – dubbed XO and chaired by Michael Gove – met on Thursday to begin preparations for a 'disorderly December', should Brussels 'fail to grasp we really are going at the end of the year', said a Cabinet Minister who was present.
Our revelation comes after Dominic Cummings warned that Brussels has not yet 'woken up' to Britain's negotiating position – and would not for several weeks yet.
The top No 10 aide told Government advisers at a meeting on Friday evening: 'We are not bluffing on the no extension.'
The UK Government has insisted that the EU transition phase will end on December 31, but last week Ireland's EU Commissioner Phil Hogan said that time frame was impossible.
Fears are mounting that Brussels's intransigence and insistence on a settlement of fishing access rights before proper trade talks begin will push the negotiations to collapse.
In that scenario, the transition phase would end without new border rules in place – hence the Government's reactivation of emergency planning.
Referring to the Conservatives' resounding General Election win, Mr Cummings added that Europe would be wrong to think 'a big majority means a softening of our position'.
And he warned that Brussels has 'failed to grasp their judges will have no power and we are not interested in level playing fields'.
Mr Cummings's warnings were echoed yesterday by Sajid Javid, who offered business a stark reality check on what Brexit means.
The Chancellor told the Financial Times: 'There will not be alignment, we will not be a rule-taker, we will not be in the single market and we will not be in the customs union and we will do this by the end of the year.'
He added: 'We're ... talking about companies that have known since 2016 that we are leaving the EU.'
Previously Ministers had only privately conceded that there will be 'friction' at Dover and Calais as Britain is no longer seeking a close relationship with the EU.
Official trade talks with Brussels cannot start until next month – after Britain has formally left the bloc – with chief negotiator David Frost currently preparing the Government's formal 'red lines'.
In a bid to ratchet up pressure on Brussels, Downing Street will begin trade deal talks with the United States at the same time as negotiations get under way with the EU.
The Prime Minister has also tasked trade negotiators to start discussions with countries including Japan and Australia, alongside those with the US.
As Prime Minister she railed against the 'international elites' as 'citizens of nowhere', but Theresa May will tomorrow jet into Davos to mingle with the global super-rich.
The former premier will be addressing billionaires, bankers and world leaders at a private dinner at the World Economic Forum.
Sources said such an event could easily command a fee of £50,000 but last night Mrs May's aides declined to comment on how much she was being paid.
Her successor Boris Johnson has banned Ministers from jetting to the Swiss mountains for the annual event, instead only sending Chancellor Sajid Javid to represent the UK Government.
But there will be familiar faces for Mrs May, with fellow ex-PMs David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair all set to appear at the luxury resort this week.
US President Donald Trump and 17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg will also be among the 3,000 attendees.
The World Economic Forum was launched in the 1970s in a bid to 'improve the state of the world'. But after the 2009 financial crash, it was described as 'a family reunion for the people who broke the modern world'.
It has become a familiar ritual in Downing Street: photographers clamour to take pictures of elegant Cleo Watson as she strides towards the No 10 door with a dishevelled Dominic Cummings, the pair looking, as one wag put it, like 'a gazelle with a pit pony'.
They may be poles apart sartorially but Ms Watson, 31, has developed a strong working relationship with Boris Johnson's all-powerful, idiosyncratic adviser since they worked together on Vote Leave before the 2016 EU referendum.
Significantly, she is also close to the Prime Minister's girlfriend, Carrie Symonds, also 31. She accompanied her on a flight to Aberdeen last September when Mr Johnson had a formal audience and dinner with the Queen at Balmoral.
As the rather grandly titled head of the Prime Minister's priorities and campaigns, Ms Watson runs the special taskforce that will fast-track new Northern female Tory MPs from the 2019 intake into key government roles.
The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that the unit will focus on helping MPs including Dehenna Davison, 26, the first Conservative to represent the Bishop Auckland constituency since its creation in 1885.
Ms Davison and Ms Watson may share the same objective, but their backgrounds could hardly be more different.
The former was just 13 when she learned that her father had been killed in a pub fight and went on to marry a local councillor 35 years her senior. The latter grew up in Trebinshun House, a 400-year-old mansion in the Brecon Beacons National Park which her parents have now converted into an elite English language school.
As a sixth-former at a nearby girls' private school, Ms Watson wrote an article for The Spectator magazine, describing it as 'St Thinians' due to the prevalence of eating disorders. 'The signs of a proper, full-blown size-zero infection are easy to spot,' she observed. 'They include having a jug of water and nothing else for breakfast, always going into tea to see what cakes are on offer and then sitting down to watch hungrily as other people eat them, spending hours analysing every aspect of the appearance of celebrities, models and television stars…
'It's not a healthy look that the size-zero girls are after, remember – the aim is simply to be as tiny as possible…
'None would dream of confiding in their parents or their boyfriend. Boys our age seem totally oblivious to female psychology and, anyway, what girl would ever admit to starving themselves for a boy's benefit?'
After her time with the Vote Leave campaign, Ms Watson joined No 10 when Theresa May was Prime Minister.
She inadvertently played a crucial role in the frenzied build-up to the EU referendum. As Mr Johnson agonised over whether to back Leave or Remain, the world's media waited outside his London home for a decision. Suddenly, Ms Watson was spotted rushing inside carrying Vote Leave campaign material – and the secret was out. Aides describe her as a vital fixer, popular and keen to shun publicity.
Recently married to a financier called Tom, she is said to have 'strong personal chemistry' with Ms Symonds.
One former No 10 aide said: 'Everyone wants Cleo to accompany them to events. She is completely unflappable, even when acting as Dominic's minder to protect him from aggressive TV crews.
'It sounds cheesy, but she is as beautiful inside as she is outside.'
Boris Johnson will give his Cabinet Ministers 'marks out of ten' for their performance over the next month as he decides who to fire in a reshufffle planned for mid February.
The move is part of plans to re-energise his Government following criticism of his failure to set out a blueprint for power and accusations that he is dithering over big decisions.
And he has told No 10 officials to scale back his foreign travel plans so he can 'personally drive delivery' of his Election manifesto promises, which he will set out after Brexit Day on January 31.
It comes after Mr Johnson faced censure for failing to break his Caribbean holiday to deal with the Iran crisis and for being slow to make decisions on major issues such as the future of the HS2 line and whether Chinese telecoms company Huawei should be allowed to build the UK's 5G network.
One Minister has privately likened Mr Johnson to Labour's Gordon Brown, on the grounds that 'both spent their entire careers hungering for power, but didn't know what to do with it when they got it'.
But the drive to crank up No 10's operation led to a week of tears and tantrums in Whitehall as Downing Street moved to clamp down on leaks. Ministerial advisers suspected of passing information to the media were called in to No 10 and told that they were 'being watched' – one was said to have 'looked tearful' when told they were on a 'final warning'.
After details appeared in newspapers of Mr Johnson's announcement to Cabinet last week that he wanted to restore the Conservatives' reputation as the party of law and order by setting up a cross-Whitehall taskforce, enraged No 10 officials wrote formally to Ministers' private offices to warn them that they faced being interviewed over the leak.
And after a story appeared about multi-millionaire Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick being at loggerheads with his blue-collar deputy Esther McVey over which voters should be helped onto the housing ladder, the adviser blamed for the story was ordered to apologise to Mr Jenrick in person.
Mr Johnson's team are also planning to restructure the system of advisers to give them more control over media briefings – inviting comparisons with the draconian news management methods introduced by Tony Blair's administration, under the aegis of Alastair Campbell, after he won a landslide victory in the 1997 Election.
The Prime Minister is preparing to make a major set-piece speech in early February to set out his plans for life after Brexit.
He will then reshuffle his Cabinet – the most likely dates being either February 7 or 14, Valentine's Day – having assessed which members of his top team would be able to address the PM's policy priorities, such as health, law and order and 'levelling up' prosperity and opportunity across the country.
A No 10 source said that the Ministers would get 'effectively marks out of ten' based on their 'ability to deliver the PM's agenda' – and would lose marks if they were perceived to be more concerned with building up their own 'personal brand' by making appearances in broadcast studios.
The source said: 'The post-Brexit reshuffle will focus on rewarding competence. Delivery will be shown to matter more than profile raising.' The remarks show that Mr Johnson is keen to end the cult of 'celebrity politicians' such as Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg. 
He was a familiar fixture in the TV studios and on radio phone-ins until his remark, early in the Election campaign, which appeared to blame victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster for obeying the instructions of the fire services not to leave the building. Mr Rees-Mogg has since vanished from sight and is tipped to be moved in the reshuffle.
Mr Johnson is understood to have cooled on the idea of a 'Valentines Day massacre' of Ministers and radical reorganisation of Whitehall – as advocated by his adviser Dominic Cummings – on the grounds that it could be too destabilising.
As part of the new drive, Munira Mirza, head of the No 10 policy unit, is writing to each Secretary of State to outline the key policy priorities they are expected to deliver – and the criteria they will be judged by. A No 10 source said: 'The Prime Minister has been clear that this Government will reward competence and hard work.
'We've been impressed by Cabinet members and junior Ministers who have quietly got on with driving real change within their departments and delivering on the PM's priority to level up our country.'
Our Brexit deal for Britain seizes the moment to deliver the democratic decision of the British people and secure a bright new future for our country outside the European Union.
It restores our national sovereignty, so that it is our Government that decides who comes into our country, our Parliaments that make our laws and our courts that enforce them.
It puts an end to the vast membership subscriptions we pay to Brussels, delivering a Brexit dividend to support domestic priorities like our long-term plan for the NHS.
It grasps the opportunities of an independent trade policy, freeing us to forge new trade deals with allies across the world – including America, where President Trump has made it clear he wants a trade deal and is now confident we will be able to do it.
And it enables us to build the new economic and security partnerships we want to see with the European Union. Because Brexit isn’t about trading with other countries instead of trading with Europe, it is about doing both.
This is the scale of the opportunity before us and my message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize.
If we don’t, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all.
This is a time to be practical and pragmatic – backing our plan to get Britain out of the European Union on March 29 next year and delivering for the British people.
I know there are some who have concerns about the ‘common rule book’ for goods and the customs arrangements which we have proposed will underpin the new UK-EU free trade area.
I understand those concerns. But the legacy of Brexit cannot be a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland that unpicks the historic Belfast Agreement. It cannot be the breaking up of our precious United Kingdom with a border down the Irish Sea. And it cannot be the destruction of integrated supply chains and just-in-time processes on which jobs and livelihoods depend.
This means we have to have friction-free movement of goods, avoiding the need for customs and regulatory checks between the UK and the EU.
And this cannot happen if products have to go through different tests for different markets, or if customs declarations have to be made at the UK/EU border.
I am yet to see a workable alternative future trading arrangement that would deliver on our commitments to Northern Ireland, preserve the constitutional integrity of the UK and deliver on the result of the referendum.
But our Brexit deal for Britain achieves exactly this – and it can work. For the common rule book only covers industrial goods and agricultural products and only those rules which are necessary to ensure free flow at the border. The regulations that are covered are largely stable and supported by a large share of our manufacturing businesses. And there will always be a parliamentary lock to ensure that our Parliament has the sovereign ability to reject any new law or regulation, while recognising there would be proportionate implications for the operation of the future relationship, were they to do so.
So I believe we need to come together behind our plan.
As the Trade Bill returns to the Commons this week, there are some planning to vote for amendments that would tie us to a permanent customs union with the EU.
This would be the ultimate betrayal of the Brexit vote. It would remove our ability to have an independent trade policy at all, conceding Britain’s role on the global stage as a force for free trade and endangering people’s jobs and livelihoods. This Government will never stand for that.
There are others who are planning to try and bring down a Bill that is essential in enabling us to prepare for life outside the European Union. This would put at risk our ability to make the necessary preparations for a no deal.
And this could lead to a damaging and disorderly Brexit because without this Bill passing we would not be able to retain the benefits of more than 40 existing trade arrangements; and neither will we have the means to protect consumers, industries and workers from being undercut by unfairly traded goods in a post-Brexit Britain.
As I have said many times, we can get a good deal and that is what is best for Britain. But we should also prepare for no deal. Not to do so would be grossly irresponsible. So I urge Parliamentarians on all sides to consider this when they are voting.
Finally, some people have asked whether our Brexit deal is just a starting point from which we will regress. So let me be clear. Our Brexit deal is not some long wish-list from which negotiators get to pick and choose. It is a complete plan with a set of outcomes that are non-negotiable.
People voted to end free movement. So free movement will end. People voted to end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in our country; and we are going to deliver that too.
We will leave the Single Market and customs union, and get out of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. We will have that independent trade policy and a new UK-EU free trade area with a common rulebook for industrial goods and agricultural products.
We will maintain high standards in keeping with our values, so we continue to promote open and fair trade. We will have that parliamentary lock on all new rules and regulations. We will not tolerate a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland or between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
And we will maintain close co-operation with the EU on security to keep our people safe while ensuring we have our own independent foreign and trade policy. None of these things is up for debate.
So the negotiations with the European Union are not going to be easy for Brussels – and I don’t intend them to be. As President Trump has said, I’m a tough negotiator. And just as I made clear to him on Friday – I say to the British people today: I am not going to Brussels to compromise our national interest; I am going to fight for it. I am going to fight for our Brexit deal – because it is the right deal for Britain. 
Downing Street has launched a major investigation into alleged links between foreign governments and the MPs behind the 'Surrender Act' which could force Boris Johnson to delay Brexit, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Sources said No 10 took the unprecedented action after officials received intelligence that the MPs, including former Cabinet Minister Oliver Letwin, had received help drafting the Bill from members of the French Government and the European Union.
This newspaper has also learned that the rebel MPs have drawn up plans for a second Act which would allow Commons Speaker John Bercow to bypass the Prime Minister if he cannot strike a deal to leave the EU on October 31. 
The new law would allow Mr Bercow to personally ask Brussels for a further delay on behalf of the Commons.
The rebels have even discussed using the legislation to give Mr Bercow the power to appoint a new British commissioner to the EU, with pro-Remain former Home Secretary Amber Rudd mentioned as a candidate.
The Benn Act, passed earlier this month and controversially dubbed the 'Surrender Act' by No 10, states that if Mr Johnson fails to win a deal by the end of the next EU summit on October 18, he must write a letter to Brussels asking for the UK's departure to be delayed until January 31 – something which he says he will refuse to do.
Under the rebel plan, the Commons would sit on October 19 – the first Saturday sitting since the Falklands War in 1982 – to pass a new Bill giving Mr Bercow the power to write the letter. A senior Commons source said: 'The rebels say that, if Boris wants to play with nuclear weapons, then so will they'.
But last night No 10 hit back amid claims from senior sources that Mr Letwin had agreed the January 31 date in the first Benn Act with figures at the French Embassy in London.
Other members of the pro-Remain group – which includes former Chancellor Philip Hammond and ex-Attorney General Dominic Grieve – are suspected by Downing Street of having been assisted in drafting work by members of the European Commission.
Last night, a senior No 10 source said: 'The Government is working on extensive investigations into Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Hilary Benn [who tabled the Bill] and their involvement with foreign powers and the funding of their activities. Governments have proper rules for drafting legislation, but nobody knows what organisations are pulling these strings.
'We will demand the disclosure of all details of their personal communications with other states. The drafting of primary legislation in collusion with foreign powers must be fully investigated.'
However No 10 declined to discuss what evidence they had against the MPs or the exact scope of the probe.
A spokesman for Mr Hammond last night said it was 'categorically untrue' that he had drafted any legislation with the help of the EU. And Mr Grieve dismissed the allegations as 'ridiculous', adding: 'The tone of these statements comes across like the propaganda of a totalitarian state.'
The incendiary developments came as:
Sources say that the rebels' plans for 'Surrender Act 2' – as it has been called by Mr Cummings – includes a provision to thwart one of Mr Johnson's possible Brexit strategies.
The Prime Minister could have 'sabotaged' the EU by failing to appoint a British commissioner, with the hope that Brussels would then eject the UK from the union.
But the planned new Act would give the Commons, in the form of Mr Bercow, the power to appoint a commissioner directly. Names mentioned include Ms Rudd and former Business Secretary Greg Clark, another Remainer.
One source said: 'The Speaker is not part of the plot, but would do whatever the law of the land required him to do.
He will obey the direction of Parliament. He does not anticipate what Parliament will do, but will do what Parliament wants him to do'.
Another source added that there were divisions among the Remainer MPs, with Mr Benn and Mr Grieve wanting to delay Brexit in order to buy time to legislate for a second referendum, while Mr Letwin wanted time to reach a deal.
When The Mail on Sunday approached Mr Letwin last night about contact with foreign powers he said: 'I'm very sorry, I don't want to have a conversation about any of these things' – before terminating the conversation.
In his interview with this newspaper, Mr Raab hinted that EU law could – ironically – be used to veto the Benn Act
He said: 'The Surrender Act – which requires basically us to roll over to the most punitive conditions that Brussels could inflict on us – is a shoddy bit of legislation. The way it was put together was pretty ramshackle. It didn't have the scrutiny that you have with a Government Bill.'
Mr Raab confirmed that Ministers were examining whether they could deploy EU legislation under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – which enshrines Theresa May's delayed leaving date of October 31 – to over-ride the Benn Act.
He said 'EU law has direct effect, that's one of the reasons we're leaving.
'There are multiple bits of legislation that will play out.'
 
Leaving the European Union without a deal will pose no threat to public safety, the Security Minister has declared – as a new Mail on Sunday poll shows voters are becoming less concerned about the effects of a hard Brexit.
A total of 45 per cent agree that a No Deal scenario is 'nothing to fear' or would cause only 'short term problems' with 'few or no consequences for the UK'.
That compares with 30 per cent who believe that it would cause 'severe' problems, according to the Deltapoll research.
Those advocating for such a hard Brexit will be bolstered by Minister Ben Wallace's insistence today that such a result will have no major downside for national security.
He told The Mail on Sunday that the British intelligence community would be ready for such a situation 'because very little would change'.
The former Remain supporter, who ran Boris Johnson's 2016 leadership campaign, said while law enforcement tools such as the European Arrest Warrant could be affected 'sub-optimally' by a hard Brexit, there were mitigating benefits from walking away from Brussels. 
He insisted that 'our ability to protect ourselves increases, because unilaterally we can do things to defend our borders that we cannot currently do as members of the European Union'. 
Asked directly if public safety would be an issue in a No Deal Brexit, Mr Wallace stressed: 'I don't believe it would be significantly affected. 
'I think there will be some downsides to it – but every variant of the deal has some winners and losers.
'To give your readers some comfort, our European partners know that security is not a competition, it's a partnership.
'It's in both our interests to resolve security issues very quickly because it's not an economic advantage. 
'This is not about who's going to sell each other more cars, this is about helping each other. Our European partners have given us all the indications that when it comes to security, it's professional.'
His views were echoed by Brexit Minister James Cleverly, who said: 'As the Minister in charge of No Deal planning, let me assure you that we are much better prepared for a No Deal departure than some would have you believe.'
The leadership contender insisted that a hard Brexit was not his first choice, but added: 'Both businesses and the Civil Service have been working hard for more than two years, getting ready for this possibility.'
In a further development last night, Tory leadership rival Dominic Raab announced he would appoint a special 'Minister for No Deal' at Cabinet level if he became Prime Minister to toughen our negotiating stance with Brussels.
The former Brexit Secretary also set out his battle plan for dealing with the anticipated fallout if we leave the EU without a deal, including emergency COBRA meetings.
Mr Raab said: 'To give ourselves the best shot of a deal, we must be willing to walk away. 
'We will not be taken seriously in Brussels unless we are clear that we will leave on WTO [World Trade Organisation] terms if the EU doesn't budge.'
And he claimed fears that the Channel ports would grind to a halt were overstated as customs officers would not need to carry any more checks than they do currently. 
Mr Raab added that even if there were delays at ports, fewer than one in ten food items would be directly affected.
Today's Mail on Sunday poll also shows No Deal is now more popular in the country than the deal which Theresa May negotiated with Brussels.
If a second referendum were held tomorrow, just 28 per cent of voters would support her deal – lower than the 33 per cent who would leave on WTO terms.
The proportion wanting to Remain is 42 per cent.
The poll also indicates that Boris Johnson's stance on Brexit has boosted his chances of becoming Prime Minister. 
Of Tory voters, 35 per cent say his belief that the UK should leave the EU by the October 31 deadline, 'deal or no deal', has made them more likely to support him, compared with 30 per cent who said it made them less likely.
Polling also suggests that Jeremy Hunt has been damaged by his inconsistency. The Foreign Secretary has 'flip flopped' on No Deal, first saying that he was relaxed about it before describing it as 'political suicide'.  
A total of 31 per cent said that they were less likely to support him as a result of his vacillation, with just 14 per cent more likely to back him.
What is a hard Brexit? 
 Should Britain and the EU fail to secure a withdrawal agreement, they will trade with each other on World Trade Organisation terms.
This rules-based trading system involves 164 countries which guarantee to keep their markets open to all other members.
Every nation has a list of tariffs (taxes on the imports of goods) and quotas (limits on these goods which it applies across the board). 
How will it work?
A Under the WTO’s ‘most favoured nation’ rules, the UK cannot discriminate between members. If we lowered tariffs for the EU, or any specific country, we must do it for all nations – unless we agree a trade deal. While Britain would no longer be bound by EU rules, it would have to face the same tariffs on trade with the EU as any other external nation.
The Irish border issue remains unresolved, with the Government saying it does not intend to collect customs duties or have any other controls after a No Deal Brexit. 
How will it affect me?
A Under the WTO tariff regime, the price of some goods from countries such as China and the US would fall, with oranges, TVs and batteries all enjoying zero per cent tariffs. However, tariffs on EU goods like beef, Volkswagen cars and cheese would be introduced, hiking up prices. Mobile roaming charges in EU countries are likely to rise and pharmacists are advising patients to order medicines in advance. 
The changes mean Mr Johnson has opened up a commanding lead over his rivals, topping the poll for best Tory leader both among Conservative voters and the wider electorate. 
Mr Johnson has the backing of 39 per cent of Tory voters compared to 15 per cent for Mr Hunt and 13 per cent for Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
A total of 32 per cent of all voters say he would be best placed to succeed Mrs May – nearly three times the level of support of second-placed Mr Gove.
Of the rest of the field, Jeremy Hunt and Sajid Javid are tied in third place with nine per cent.
Dominic Raab, who is performing strongly among the Tory MPs who will decide which two candidates will be put forward to the party membership for a final decision, is on five per cent. 
Rory Stewart, the leadership contender most critical of No Deal, has the support of just one per cent of Tory voters, and four per cent amid the wider public.
Mr Johnson wins on every measure asked by the pollsters. Among all voters, he is regarded as three times as likeable as Mr Hunt, and also tops the measures for competence and trustworthiness.
The poll, which had a larger-than-usual sample size of 2,449, confirms the earthquake which has rocked the two-party system since Mrs May delayed Brexit beyond the end of March.
Labour are in the lead with 26 per cent, just ahead of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party on 24 per cent.
The Conservatives are in third on 20 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats, who have surged as a result of backing from Remain supporters, are on 16 per cent.
Deltapoll interviewed an online sample of 2,449 adults across Britain aged 18-plus on May 29-30. The results have been weighted to the profile of all adults.
Theresa May’s chief of staff has triggered a civil war in Downing Street by telling Cabinet Ministers that a second EU referendum is the only way to break the Brexit deadlock.
Gavin Barwell, the Prime Minister’s most powerful and influential adviser, is understood to have decided that plans should be drawn up for another public poll. But his incendiary suggestion has been greeted with fury from Brexiteers in the Cabinet.
Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Mrs May’s deputy, David Lidington has held a series of secret meetings with Labour MPs to build a ‘coalition of the willing’ to force a new EU vote.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister tried to distract attention from the splits in her Government by launching a blistering attack on Tony Blair, accusing him of undermining her negotiations by encouraging Brussels to think that the UK will opt for a second referendum if her deal falls. Mrs May said: ‘There are too many people who want to subvert the process for their own political interests rather than acting in the national interest. For Tony Blair to go to Brussels and seek to undermine our negotiations by advocating for a second referendum is an insult to the office he once held and the people he once served.
‘We cannot, as he would, abdicate responsibility for this decision. Parliament has a democratic duty to deliver what the British people voted for. I remain determined to see that happen. I will not let the British people down.’
No 10 is primed this weekend for an attempt by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to try to capitalise on Mrs May’s problems by calling a vote of no confidence in the Government before Christmas. If a majority of the 650 MPs of all parties in the Commons backed the motion, it could lead to a General Election.
Aides’ nerves were not calmed by a poll released last night giving Labour a three-point lead. The Populus poll put Labour on 40 per cent, the Conservatives on 37 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on seven per cent. The pivot towards a possible second referendum will enrage the pro-Brexit backbenchers who led last week’s failed attempt to topple Mrs May.
The Prime Minister was forced to pull the meaningful Commons vote on her Brexit deal after party whips told her she was likely to lose by a large margin, prompting backbenchers, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s hard-Brexit European Research Group (ERG), to force a vote of no confidence in her leadership of the Tory party. Mrs May won by 200 votes to 117.
The Prime Minister subsequently failed to persuade the EU to offer a compromise on the notorious Northern Ireland ‘backstop’, leaving aides to conclude that she is unlikely to win the Commons round to her deal. That leaves just three realistic options: a softer Norway-style Brexit, a No Deal exit or a second referendum.
With large sections of the Tory party adamantly opposed to Norway, and a majority of MPs set against No Deal, The Mail on Sunday understands that Mr Barwell is considering the second public poll.
Sources say that Mr Barwell has told the pro-Remain ‘gang of five’ Cabinet Ministers – Mr Lidington, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Justice Secretary David Gauke and Business Secretary Greg Clarke –that a second vote is ‘the only way out of this’.
But the idea is being fiercely opposed by pro-Brexit Cabinet ministers led by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who argue that it would be greeted with fury – and possibly civil disorder – by people who had voted for Brexit two years ago. And it puts Mr Barwell at loggerheads with the Prime Minister, who told this newspaper last week that the 2016 referendum was the only ‘people’s vote’ required.
However, Mrs May’s political capital has been damaged by the size of the vote against her on Wednesday. One senior source said: ‘The PM is just a hostage of the Cabinet and her feuding aides’.
Ms Rudd hinted heavily about her support for a second referendum yesterday when she said that MPs across the parties should try to ‘forge a consensus’ over Brexit.
She said: ‘We need to find a plan that a majority in Parliament can support. We need to try something different. Something that people do in the real world all the time, but which seems so alien in our political culture – to engage with others and be willing to forge a consensus’.
Before a second referendum could take place, there would be a bitter row over how it would work.
Some in No 10 see a chance to bypass Parliament and get public support for Theresa May’s deal by pitching it in a straight fight with No Deal.
But Remainers say there must be an option to stay in the EU on the ballot paper – a scenario we have imagined above – and would use the Commons to try force it.
However a three-way question would not produce a conclusive result and would probably fall foul of electoral law. Therefore there could even be multiple rounds of voting, like a French presidential, election that would see No Deal go head-to-head with Remain in round two, if Mrs May’s deal was rejected in a first vote.
Ministers are divided over whether Brexit could be delayed or stopped without new legislation. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told Cabinet a new Act would have to be passed, but secret Government legal advice says Mrs May could unilaterally halt our exit using Royal Prerogative.
Cabinet Office Minister Mr Lidington has led the secret efforts to drum up support for a second poll by meeting senior Labour figures such as former Europe Minister Chris Bryant. Other ‘back channels’ have been established between Tory former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and Labour’s Yvette Cooper and between Tory Anna Soubry and Labour leadership hopeful Chuka Ummuna.
But the discussions have revealed bitter differences over the wording of any referendum question, with No 10 indicating that it should be between Mrs May’s deal or No Deal. Labour MPs have made clear that the price of their support would be including Remain as an option.
Downing Street has been warned that some members of the ERG would be prepared to vote with Jeremy Corbyn in a Commons confidence motion, or abstain, rather than allow a second referendum.
Last night, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith described Mr Lidington’s manoeuvring as ‘utter madness’.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I don’t believe he has ever accepted we will leave. Doing deals with a Labour Party run by Jeremy Corbyn is literally madness, utter madness. All the polling says if there is a second referendum we will plunge at the next Election. We will not be re-elected if we do not deliver Brexit.’
Mr Duncan Smith said Mr Lidington’s actions encouraged the EU to play hardball in negotiations in the expectation that MPs would call a second referendum rather than risk No Deal.
‘They are making it very hard for the PM to negotiate,’ he said. ‘The EU just don’t believe we are willing to walk away.’
Meanwhile, Brexit supporting Cabinet Ministers such as Ms Leadsom and Ms Mordaunt are pushing for a ‘managed No Deal’ option. It would involve the UK paying up to £20 billion for a ‘standstill’ two years in which Britain would mirror all EU rules to allow both sides to prepare for a hard exit.
Mrs May’s allies accuse Mr Rees-Mogg’s ERG of making a second referendum more likely by sabotaging the Withdrawal Agreement.
One Brexiteer Minister described the anger in Government over the abortive coup: ‘They like to present them as Jesuitical true believers, but they are more like jihadists’.
The Populus poll, carried out for Best for Britain, a pro referendum group, found that while 74 per cent of Labour voters support a second referendum, a majority of Tory voters, 51 per cent, are against.
Theresa May won plaudits over her confrontation with EU President Jean-Claude Juncker last week, but privately she is also seething with French leader Emmanuel Macron and Ireland’s Leo Varadkar.
Mrs May holds the French President personally responsible for ‘trashing’ her Brexit deal after he threatened to use the controversial Northern Irish backstop to extract concessions from Britain over fishing.
His comments sparked uproar among MPs and were in direct contrast to the agreed ‘script’ to help Mrs May sell the Withdrawal Agreement to the Commons. No 10 believe that meant they ‘lost control of the narrative’, turning MPs against the deal. Aides have told Paris of their outrage.
May and Macron had a frosty private meeting on Friday morning in Brussels, just before a visibly furious Mrs May confronted Mr Juncker.
Relations with Mr Varadkar are also cold, with sources claiming Mrs May ‘loathes’ the Irish Taoiseach. The PM is said to have ‘outsourced’ communication with Dublin to her No 2, David Lidington, because the relationship is so chilly.
 
The Brexit debate is hotting up with public splits in the Cabinet and early signs that Brexit will have serious consequences: banks taking their jobs to the Continent; lengthening queues to cross national frontiers; rumblings in the dormant volcano of Ireland.
Both sides in the Brexit debate have claimed to offer a route to better living standards.
The Brexiteers used to tell us about the money that would be saved for the NHS and the jobs created through new trade agreements. Remainers warned that Brexit would be economically disastrous (albeit with an immediacy and exaggerated sense of drama that was probably counter-productive).
But there has been a subtle change. The Remain argument about economic damage is now largely accepted. Mounting evidence of a slowing economy and rising inflation give substance to earlier warnings. The issue has become one of how to minimise or postpone the damage. And instead of countering the arguments, more and more Brexiteers are embracing economic pain as a price worth paying for 'taking back control': almost as a badge of honour.
This attitude has reached worrying proportions. Press stories refer to 'martyrs for Brexit' based on a YouGov survey suggesting 61 per cent of the public would accept 'significant damage to the economy' from Brexit and 39 per cent 'don't mind losing their job'. These figures seem wildly implausible.
I don't encounter people running around saying 'please make me poorer' or 'please sack me'. These figures are also difficult to reconcile with polling which shows 66 per cent of voters wanting to remain inside the single market. But let us assume for the moment that the numbers are accurate.
To describe such masochism as 'martyrdom' is dangerous. We haven't yet heard about 'Brexit jihadis' but there is an undercurrent of violence in the language which is troubling. We have already had the most fervent of Brexiteers, such as Nigel Farage, warning of civil unrest if the 'will of the people' is frustrated.
Brexiteers may well be frustrated since the practical difficulties of Brexit, as well as the costs, could result in Brexit never happening.
But the last thing the UK needs is further polarisation. There is already more than enough bad-mouthing of opponents and questioning of the patriotism of those who criticise the Government.
Last week saw a sinister twist in Brexiteers' tactics. Hardliner Iain Duncan Smith called on some of Britain's parliamentary trade envoys to be sacked. Their crime? Daring to criticise aspects of our withdrawal from the European Union.
One of the envoys (all of whom are unpaid and do it to serve their country) targeted as a result of Duncan Smith's intemperate attack was Lord Janvrin, the Queen's former private secretary. An ex-Royal Navy submarine officer and distinguished public servant with no political ties, he was 'named and shamed' merely for wanting to protect the rights of EU nationals.
Labour MP Rushanara Ali, trade envoy to Bangladesh, was another in Duncan Smith's firing line. She has won praise from diplomats for her efforts to boost Anglo-Bangladeshi trade. And, with Bangladeshi roots, she is better placed than Mr Duncan Smith or one of his fellow white, male, middle-aged Brexiteers to win trade.
Outrageously, the Right-wing Brexit Central website that launched Duncan Smith's tirade quoted an unnamed Minister as accusing the envoys of 'talking down our country' and said 'others in the Government feel the same way'.
This is how McCarthyism started. At this rate, we will have Brexit thought crimes before long. Perhaps it is not surprising that the Brexiteers are becoming desperate.
Rather than closing down dissent, they might like to explain how Britain can possibly flourish if cut off from the world's largest single market after what senior civil servants have called a scandalously wasted year, with Ministers waging civil war rather than working out what they want from Brexit.
Another concern is that the self-declared martyrs may be planning to sacrifice other people rather than themselves. It is striking that the martyrs appear predominantly elderly (indeed the YouGov poll confirmed that fact). This is unsurprising since 64 per cent of over-65s voted Brexit in the referendum and 71 per cent of under-25s voted Remain.
In the campaign, I was struck by the heavily Remain sentiment in colleges and schools and the heavily Brexit mood of church-hall meetings packed with retired people.
The martyrdom of the old comes cheap, since few have jobs to lose. And even if the country were to become poorer, their living standards are largely protected by the 'triple lock' on the state pension and many can rely on occupational, final salary, pensions which are closed to younger people. When I joined the Coalition Cabinet in 2010, we took pride in the 'triple lock' to banish the scourge of pensioner poverty. But one of its unintended consequences has been a growing rift between generations.
Pensioners have suffered relatively little from the aftermath of the financial crisis – unless they were slow to shift savings from banks to shares or property. The burden of austerity has been carried by the working population. Young people suffer the additional disadvantage of prohibitive housing costs, growing job insecurity and limited career progression. The old have comprehensively shafted the young. And the old have had the last word about Brexit, imposing a world view coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past on a younger generation much more comfortable with modern Europe.
At the Election, the young took their revenge, or thought they had. They got behind Jeremy Corbyn, seeing in him a pro-European champion, and punished Theresa May's Tories for pursuing an extreme Brexit.
Little did they realise that Mr Corbyn detests the EU, believing it, and especially Margaret Thatcher's single market, to be a major obstacle to Britain embracing revolutionary socialism. And he is probably right about that.
Britain is now in a bizarre place with a Remain Prime Minister pursuing a hard, extreme Brexit and a Brexit leader of a Remain Opposition actively helping her. Only the Liberal Democrats are fighting to remain in the single market and customs union.
At the centre of government, meanwhile, there has been a shift in the balance of power.
The grown-ups, led by the Chancellor and Business Secretary, have been seeking to postpone Brexit for three years, keeping the full discipline of the single market, to give our companies time to adjust. Sensible enough, even though it is postponing pain rather than avoiding it. They appear to have lost the argument.
No 10 confirms that freedom of movement will end in 2019. Therefore, the single market ends. There will be no transition. The cliff edge draws closer. For the Brexit martyrs, paradise beckons.
No longer Project Fear but Project Near. After that it will be Project Here. 
 
Leading Remainers have vowed never to use or accept the government's new commemorative Brexit 50p coin.
Approximately three million of the coins are due to begin entering circulation on Friday as part of efforts to formally mark the UK's departure from the European Union. 
The coins, bearing the words 'peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations' as well as the Brexit date of January 31, 2020, have sparked a furious backlash among pro-EU campaigners. 
Lord Adonis, a Labour peer who has consistently fought to reverse Brexit, tweeted: 'I am never using or accepting this coin.' 
Meanwhile, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former spin doctor, echoed a similar sentiment as he said he will ask shops for alternatives to the coin if he is handed one in the future. 
He tweeted: 'I for one shall be asking shopkeepers for "two 20p pieces and a 10" if they offer me a 50p coin pretending that Brexit is about "peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations" given it puts all three at risk.' 
Some pro-EU social media users urged people to deface the coins with Remainer graffiti while others advocated keeping and never spending them in order to take them permanently out of circulation.
'If you're upset that the government is wasting money on minting commemorative Brexit 50p pieces, just cheerily scratch "Brexit is Fascism" in the gaps around the outside and put them back into circulation,' wrote one twitter user, 'That'll probably be seen by and upset more Brexiteers than your Tweets'.
Another posted a picture of a love-heart and the EU's initials drawn onto a 50p coin with permanent marker.
'Come on, all you need is a permanent marker,' she told supporters. 'Ten million in circulation would get the message across quite nicely.' 
A third social media user commented on how little progress had been made in four years, saying all citizens had seen was the loss of EU passports and a new 50p coin.
Some, however, suggested Britons should start hoarding the coins in case of economic meltdown shortly after January 31. 
'Keep the 50p pieces,' wrote one Twitter user, 'they'll be worth even more if Brexit screws up'.
And, evoking memories of Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe in the grips of hyperinflation, one social media user said: 'I think rather than a 50p coin for Brexit, they ought to have printed a lot of million-pound notes and made sure everyone has a wheelbarrow so they can buy bread.'
Several social media users couldn't fail to spot the similarity between the photo of Sajid Javid holding up the coin, and Gollum from Lord of the Rings holding up the 'one ring' inside an active volcano.
In the scene, Gollum celebrates catching the singular object before falling into a lake of lava below. The ring is destroyed.
Others suggested the creation of the coins would be beneficial for charities because many Remain-backers would rather give them away than keep them.
The coin was officially unveiled by Chancellor Sajid Javid. He had originally ordered production of the celebratory coins in advance of the original Brexit divorce date of October 31 last year. 
The Brexit delay meant about a million coins had to be melted down and the metal put aside until the new exit date was confirmed.
Mr Javid said: 'Leaving the European Union is a turning point in our history and this coin marks the beginning of this new chapter.'
Approximately three million Brexit coins will enter circulation across the UK on Friday with a further seven million to be rolled out later this year. 
Mr Javid, who is Master of the Mint, was given the first batch of coins, and will present one to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, this week.
As part of the launch of the coin, the Royal Mint will open its doors for 24 hours to let people strike their own commemorative Brexit coins.
The European Parliament is expected to vote to approve the Withdrawal Agreement on Wednesday, after the PM signed the treaty on Friday, paving the way for the UK to leave on January 31.
Philip Hammond would quit the Cabinet and take at least four Ministers with him if Theresa May tried to move towards a ‘no deal’ Brexit, Downing Street has been warned.
The Chancellor’s allies say that he and key colleagues would ‘walk’ if the Prime Minister reacted to losing next month’s crucial Commons vote by quitting the EU with no formal agreement about our future relationship.
They say Mr Hammond’s uncompromising stance is one reason why Mrs May has ‘downgraded’ her warnings about crashing out of the bloc with no deal and now tells her MPs there could be no Brexit at all if they reject the withdrawal agreement she has struck with Brussels.
The claims came as the Chancellor openly said the UK faced ‘economic chaos’ if MPs blocked the Prime Minister’s compromise and raised fears of ‘very serious’ consequences from a no-deal scenario, including job losses.
Mr Hammond leads a new ‘gang of five’ Cabinet ministers opposed to a hard Brexit, including Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Justice Secretary David Gauke.
The Mail on Sunday understands all five have been placed on ‘resignation watch’ by No 10 if Mrs May countenances no deal.
One Hammond ally predicted that the Chancellor would want no part of any no-deal exit because he believes it would be so catastrophic.
The ally said: ‘Philip would feel that the damage this would do to the country would be just too great. He wouldn’t want to be part of implementing this. Philip would say, “I have done my bit to avoid it.”
‘I just can’t see him sticking around to help make no deal possible. There would be such social unrest, with serious job losses in some regions.’
The ally added that other members of the gang of five would also walk on the grounds that pursuing a no-deal Brexit was ‘economic illiteracy’.
Yesterday Mr Hammond warned MPs thinking of voting against the deal in the Commons that ‘chaos will be unleashed’ if they did so.
He told the BBC: ‘If we were to leave the European Union without a deal I have no doubt that the consequences for the UK economy would be very serious indeed, very disruptive and very negative for jobs.’
The Mail on Sunday has been told that senior Downing Street aides have asked the Treasury to model the economic effect of the Prime Minister losing the ‘meaningful’ Commons vote, now pencilled in for December 12.
With No 10 fearing that up to 90 Tory MPs could vote against the deal, some advisers are privately pinning their hopes on a ‘second vote’ strategy. 
This assumes that if the vote is lost, the financial markets would be so spooked that the pound would plummet and stocks would crash.  
That, in turn, would persuade the Tory rebels and many Labour MPs to then back the deal in a second vote to avert lasting economic damage.
Downing Street aides draw parallels with the US Government’s financial bailout in 2008 following the sub-prime mortgage crisis. 
Then, the proposal was rejected by the House of Representatives, leading to the largest-ever one-day drop in the Dow Jones index. But shortly afterwards, it was reintroduced to the House and approved.
Secret talks are understood to have been taking place between Ministers and powerful Labour party grandees to work out how enough Labour MPs could be convinced to abstain on a second attempt to get the PM’s deal through the Commons.
The offer would potentially include asking the European Union to insert a new clause into the Withdrawal Agreement that would be a legally binding commitment by Britain to uphold all EU workers rights and employment legislation for ever.
One Minister said the message to Tory backbenchers was clear: ‘You may not like this deal, but you will hate what would be needed to get Labour support even more.’ 
Downing Street also hope that fears of a fresh ambush on their Trade Bill to force the UK to stay in the EU’s customs union will win over MPs who hate the controversial Northern Ireland backstop. 
When the Bill last passed through the Commons in July, the Government narrowly defeated a bid to lock the UK to EU trade laws for ever by just six votes.
But since then two Ministers – Jo Johnson and Guto Bebb – have quit, vowing to soften Brexit, and insiders fear up to four more could walk to back a fresh amendment to the Bill that is currently in the Lords.
Sunday: Deal agreed by Europe. Leaders of the 27 EU nations will meet European Council president Donald Tusk to sign off the Brexit deal, then will discuss future steps with Theresa May.
Week of December 3: Launch of immigration White Paper. The Government hopes to win over Tory Eurosceptics by showing Brexit deal can cut low-skilled migrants coming to the UK.
Week of December 10: The crucial Commons vote. With DUP allies opposed to it, along with as many as 90 Tories, Mrs May’s deal will struggle to get through.
December 13-14: Last plea to Brussels. A two-day European Council summit is scheduled and Mrs May could plead for last-minute concessions to get her deal past Tory rebels.
January 21: Parliament can take control. If no deal has been reached, the PM must make a Commons statement and MPs could try to force a second referendum or a General Election.
March 29: Brexit day. Britain will cease to be a member of the EU at 11pm, deal or no deal, although transition arrangements will continue for some time, as will talks on a future trade deal.
A senior No 10 source said possible rebels would be ill-advised to sabotage the Trade Bill, leading to permanent consequences, to avoid a short-lived backstop which would keep Northern Ireland aligned to some EU rules, and so avoid a hard Irish border, while a permanent solution was sought.
‘There is a tiny, tiny chance the UK gets stuck in the backstop for more than a couple of years, but there is a 100 per cent chance we lose a Trade Bill amendment if things are up in the air.’
The May ally added: ‘With everything we have negotiated it is almost impossible for us to get stuck in the backstop for ever, not least because the EU hate it.
‘We both have a legal obligation to find a solution to it, and that is enshrined in law.
‘The chances are tiny. Look at the numbers – there is a tiny chance of staying aligned to some customs union rules for more than a few years, or staying in the customs union for ever. Which is it to be?’
Last night, a source close to Mr Hammond insisted he had been fully ‘supportive’ of Mrs May and insisted that suggesting he could walk out over no deal was a ‘mischaracterisation of their relationship’.
‘He believes this deal delivers for the economy,’ the source added.
Mr Hammond is understood to have allocated an extra £500 million to help Government departments prepare for Brexit in the next financial year, which includes no deal preparation.
This is on top of the £1.5 billion already allocated for Brexit contingency planning that year.
A Cabinet Minister secretly plotted with the Commons authorities two weeks ago to kill off the idea of Big Ben bonging for Brexit, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
As public pressure started to mount for the historic clock to break its silence on the evening of January 31, the senior Minister begged: ‘We have to find a way of stopping this. It will be too divisive, Remainers will hate it.’
Earlier last week, the House of Commons Commission effectively vetoed the plan, claiming it would cost more than £500,000 to interrupt huge repair works now under way on the clock and the historic Elizabeth Tower that houses it. 
They also rejected offers of donations to meet the cost – to the fury of Brexiteers.
But the disclosure that a senior Minister had been plotting to achieve the same end reveals the scale of the chaos inside the Government over ‘bong-gate’.
Just days after the intervention, Boris Johnson openly backed the public appeal to raise the cash by suggesting people ‘bung a bob for a Big Ben bong’. 
Mr Johnson has now privately apologised to Downing Street staff for raising false hopes.
No 10 instead unveiled its own programme to mark Brexit Day, with the Prime Minister addressing the nation from within Downing Street as a clock counting down to the moment Britain leaves the EU at 11pm is projected on to the outside.
Buildings around Whitehall will be lit up and Union Flags flown in Parliament Square – but the totemic bongs will not sound. 
A senior Commons source said that it seemed the Government had been against the Big Ben scheme all along. They said: ‘In public, they might be trying to blame the Commons for being intransigent but in private, they’ve been trying to kill it off.’
The bell and tower are going through a four-year revamp which has involved encasing the structure in scaffolding and taking the bell out of commission for all but New Year’s Eve, Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.
The MoS can also reveal that MPs will shortly be warned that the cost of the works has rocketed from £60 million to almost £80 million. 
Last night, Downing Street sources confirmed Mr Johnson had now apologised to aides for his comments on the campaign. 
One said: ‘Boris was very contrite. He realises that if he hadn’t given this doomed idea the kiss of life last week, it’d have been put of its misery earlier.’
Asked to confirm that the bill had indeed soared, a Commons spokesman said no additional budget had yet been considered.
A Government spokesman said last night: ‘Downing Street has outlined plans for a special Cabinet, a PM address to the nation, and a light display to mark the UK leaving the EU. This is a significant moment in our history and a chance to bring the country together and reunite communities.’
Commons Speaker John Bercow secretly met Tory rebel Dominic Grieve just hours before throwing out centuries of tradition to allow the MP to scupper Theresa May’s Brexit plans.
The pair spoke in Mr Bercow’s grace-and-favour Commons apartment the day before the Speaker tore up the rule book to allow the former Attorney General to table an amendment to wrest control of Brexit from the Prime Minister, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Mr Grieve, who was last night accused of mounting a ‘stitch-up’ over the extraordinary events, refused to reveal what he had discussed with Mr Bercow but insisted: ‘Speakers make up their own minds.’
His amendment led to the Prime Minister’s second major Commons setback in 24 hours.
Now even No 10 is warning that the Prime Minister could be ousted as soon as Wednesday if she suffers another heavy defeat over her Brexit deal in this week’s crunch vote.
Downing Street said that a vote against her on Tuesday would plunge the country into chaos – with a General Election held within weeks, costing many Tories their seats.
The blood-curdling ‘Armageddon’ threats are part of last-ditch efforts to save the deal Mrs May struck with Brussels.
Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis said Britain was facing ‘Brexit paralysis’ if her plan was rejected by MPs.
Rebel Tories have been warned that forcing a defeat could lead to one of two ‘nightmare scenarios’. Either pro-Remain Tory MPs join forces with Labour to compel the UK to stay in a customs union with the EU; or Jeremy Corbyn moves to bring down Mrs May with an immediate vote of no confidence.
Either way, it could lead to a crushing General Election defeat within weeks unless they fall into line, whips say.
Mr Lewis told The Mail on Sunday that a ‘Brexit bunfight’ would ‘open up between those who want a second referendum, an extension of Article 50 or a Norway-plus deal’.
Mr Grieve was spotted leaving Mr Bercow’s Commons residence on Tuesday – the day before he joined forces with Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to defeat the Government.
The vote means Mrs May will now be forced to set out her ‘Plan B’ within days if her Brexit deal is rejected by the Commons, as widely expected.
Pro-Brexit MPs accused Mr Bercow of overriding the advice of his officials and ignoring his duty to be impartial.
Mr Grieve, who has described a No-Deal Brexit as ‘national suicide’, admitted visiting Mr Bercow on the eve of the drama but denied having ‘suborned’ the Speaker into accepting his amendment.
A spokeswoman for Mr Bercow confirmed he met Mr Grieve but declined to say what was discussed, saying: ‘The Speaker meets MPs from both sides of the House and from all parties on all manner of things. Meetings with parliamentarians are private and we do not comment on them.’ But the spokeswoman insisted that decisions on amendments were made ‘on the day of the business in question and released or announced that day’.
One pro-Brexit MP told The Mail on Sunday last night: ‘This is exactly as expected: a Remainer stitch-up by Bercow and Grieve.’
No 10 has been trying to manage expectations about Tuesday’s vote by claiming that any defeat by fewer than 100 votes would be counted as a good result.
The Mail on Sunday understands Mr Juncker and Mr Tusk will each send a separate letter designed to reassure MPs over the backstop tomorrow.
But the correspondence is likely to fall far short of the demands of Tory Brexit rebels, who want the EU to drop the contingency measure altogether.
Mr Juncker’s letter will vow to ‘expedite’ trade talks between the EU and the UK to try avoid the controversial ‘backstop’ measure ever being triggered.
Meanwhile, Mr Tusk will reiterate that the 27 other EU countries all have a ‘firm determination’ to have a new relationship with Britain in place by the end of 2020 to avoid the measure kicking in.
He will add that if the deal is not ready by that point, all European states will work to have it signed by 2021 at the latest – meaning the UK would only have to shadow EU trade and customs rules for an additional year.
On Tuesday, former Brexit Secretaries David Davis and Dominic Raab will put aside weeks of sniping and leadership rivalry to reaffirm their opposition to Mrs May’s deal in a joint rally in Westminster for the hard-Brexit Global Britain Group. 
On Tuesday: Grieve meets Bercow at his flat. Next day: Speaker accepts his killer vote
By Glen Owen for The Mail on Sunday 
Our front page revelation that Dominic Grieve secretly met John Bercow just hours before the Speaker allowed his killer amendment will add to the sense among Brexiteers that Mr Bercow is on a personal mission to thwart the UK’s departure from the EU.
And it will increase the pressure on Beaconsfield MP Grieve from his local association to stand down – with one member telling this newspaper last night he would ‘hurl rotten tomatoes at him’ if he tried to run for election again.
Seventeen Tory rebels, including Mr Grieve, joined Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to defeat the Government on the Grieve amendment by 308 votes to 297 on Wednesday – Mrs May’s second Commons defeat in 24 hours.
It means the Prime Minister will be forced to table a motion setting out her Brexit ‘Plan B’ within three sitting days of the expected rejection of her deal on Tuesday.
Outraged pro-Brexit MPs who accused Mr Bercow of overriding the advice of his officials – and ignoring his duty to be impartial – will be infuriated by the appearance of ‘collusion’ between the two men.
Mr Grieve, who has described a No Deal Brexit as ‘national suicide’, last night admitted visiting Mr Bercow in his Commons apartment on the eve of the drama, but denied having ‘suborned’ the Speaker into accepting his amendment.
The former Attorney General refused to say whether the two men had discussed how his controversial move would be handled in the Commons. He said: ‘He was aware of the motion but I don’t discuss private conversations.
‘I often speak to the Speaker about all sorts of things. We’re fellow Buckinghamshire MPs. But I am not in the business of suborning Speakers. They make up their own minds. I tabled my amendment without speaking to the Speaker.
‘How the Speaker decided to approach the amendment is a matter for him.’
Mr Grieve’s anti-Brexit campaigning has alienated many members in his local association.
One said last night that chairman Santokh Chhokar had been ‘bombarded’ with letters of complaint.
He added: ‘We don’t want him to stay as our MP. If he tries to stand again I would personally hurl rotten tomatoes at him.’
Asked if he had confidence in Mr Grieve, Mr Chhokar said all association matters were private.
1. Tables motion
On Tuesday, Dominic Grieve tables his amendment which would force the PM to set out within three sitting days what she will do next if the meaningful vote doesn’t pass this week. His aim is to empower MPs to tell the Government what they want to happen over Brexit.
2. Meets speaker
Later that day, Mr Grieve visits Speaker John Bercow in his grace-and-favour Commons apartment.
3. Vote called
On Wednesday, Mr Bercow causes uproar by calling the amendment, despite aides telling him it goes against constitutional precedent.
Shortly after the vote, Mr Grieve was involved in a furious bust-up with Tory vice-chairman Chris Philp. After Mr Philp accused him of being ‘irresponsible’ for tabling the amendment, a shaken Mr Grieve protested: ‘I am not changing the law of the land, I am changing procedure.’
Mr Bercow’s decision to allow the amendment also caused an angry row with the Government’s Chief Whip Julian Smith.
Mr Smith confronted the Speaker in his chair and told him that his behaviour was ‘totally out of order’. He said: ‘You are overturning precedent, defying the advice of the Clerk of the House and trying to overturn the referendum result.’
Mr Bercow responded by saying that he would not be ‘bullied’ by Mr Smith.
Mr Grieve’s local opponents talk openly about him ‘retiring’ to his holiday home in Brittany.
The spacious modern house is situated five minutes outside the fishing village of Lanildut.
Neighbour Aude Guillermit said Mr Grieve and his family were there over the Christmas break. ‘I spoke to them and Dominic said that “times were difficult for Britain and the Conservative Party”. Dominic’s mother was French and he is a bilingual English-French speaker. He is equally at ease in either language.
‘When Dominic is here, he spends a lot of time canoeing in the estuary and at sea, and he is also a very keen diver.’
Another neighbour, Helene Jaouen, said: ‘He speaks French fluently without an accent. He could be taken for a Frenchman.’
Mr Grieve said he was unaware of any calls by local Beaconsfield Tory association members for him to be deselected over his actions last week and denied that he plans to stand down at the next Election.
A spokesman for Mr Bercow confirmed he met Mr Grieve on Tuesday. She declined to say what was discussed, adding: ‘Meetings with parliamentarians are private and we do not comment on them.’
But she insisted that decisions on amendments were made ‘on the day of the business in question and released or announced that day’.
The Grieve family bolthole in France is a modern, purpose-built property at odds with its Breton surroundings, but it commands spectacular views across a local estuary. 
The house, which was completed seven years ago, comprises four buildings joined at the centre, with a glass-fronted section looking out on to a spacious lawn. Neighbours say Mr Grieve is a keen gardener. 
Bercow may as well have had 'B******* to Brexit' pinned on his puff-up chest
By David Morris, Tory MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale 
There are precious few occasions that can ever justify an MP challenging the Commons Speaker. But last week I sadly found myself doing just that. I still believe I was right to do so. ‘Publish it!’ I yelled at John Bercow.
I was challenging our Remain-voting Speaker to come clean on what advice he had received from the Commons Clerk before deciding to trash established procedure and allow a Brexit-defying vote to be taken.
I felt my rights had been eroded, along with those of my constituents and fellow MPs, whatever their political colour.
The Commons had yet to receive a written clarification from Mr Bercow, though he proclaimed he acted in our best interests by granting the amendment tabled by Dominic Grieve.
Mr Bercow was flouting time-honoured Commons precedents by creating a ‘one-off’ rule, abandoning constitutional convention and compromising his role as the impartial Speaker. He also ignored expert advice from Commons Clerk Sir David Natzler, who knows these rules intimately.
Why? Well, it appears that Mr Bercow wants to do everything he can to thwart the result of the referendum by enabling another humiliating defeat for the Government – without any warning.
Mr Bercow denies claims that his car displays a ‘B******s to Brexit’ sticker, saying the vehicle belongs to his wife. But it might as well be stuck firmly to his puffed-up chest on this occasion.
The Speaker is there to serve the elected Commons without prejudice. He should not override House business and act as our master. It’s like a cricket umpire who, halfway through the game, invents a new method of dismissal to suit the losing side – especially if the batsman happens to be Theresa May.
The Prime Minister is trying to secure a workable Brexit agreement in the full spirit of what the people called for in the referendum. We all know the polarised emotions and debates, but we as a nation voted Leave and that must be honoured and delivered.
It is what Mrs May is committed to doing and now is the time for the Speaker to uphold the set procedures of the Commons and not perform a ‘one-off’ to suit himself. His actions have done little to bring the country together and will be catastrophic if they are repeated.
This is a man who shed his Right-wing principles as a Tory MP to win the post of Speaker in 2009 largely on the back of Labour votes.
Judging from the cheers from the Opposition benches last week, it appeared he was repaying those Labour votes.
By tradition, Speakers give up their party affiliation to serve the whole House. At this important time for the nation, he should not only be apolitical, but also bring the MPs together.
Mr Bercow indicated in 2009 that he would serve for nine years. His self-imposed time has expired. Most of my colleagues feel he has betrayed his historic office and that the Prime Minister should deny him the traditional peerage offered to retiring Speakers. He can hardly object to breaking precedent after lecturing us last week that if past practice was never overturned, nothing would ever change.
By those same standards of creating a ‘one-off’, if Mr Bercow should again seek to stand as MP for Buckingham, he should be denied the traditional sitting Speaker’s privilege of not facing candidates from the main parties.
Should Mr Bercow seek to bend the rules again this week to appear to serve his own or the Opposition’s agenda, I will have no hesitation in standing up and protesting in the strongest manner.
I swore to uphold the wishes of my community and the people of our nation; a repeat of the Speaker’s actions will be seen as violation of my constituents’ rights.
But this time I suspect many Tory colleagues will stand with me to uphold our precious democracy and honour the interests of the people who voted for Brexit.
John Bercow faces the threat of a mass protest by Tory MPs if he repeats his ‘abuse of authority’ at this week’s crucial Brexit debate.
The Speaker was warned that more than 100 MPs would stand up to oppose him in a demonstration of ‘mass defiance’ of his authority.
Tory MPs also said that Mr Bercow should be denied the Speaker’s traditional peerage on retirement if he once again ‘bent’ time-honoured Commons rules.
In an article for this newspaper, Morecambe MP David Morris backed the peerage threat, saying: ‘Most of my colleagues now feel he has betrayed his historic office.’
Mr Bercow sparked extraordinary protests in the Commons last week when he was accused of shredding parliamentary procedure to allow a vote designed to tie Theresa May’s hands over Brexit. Amid furious scenes, the Speaker faced repeated accusations that he had ignored expert advice from the Commons Clerk, Sir David Natzler, to allow the vote to go ahead. The Government subsequent lost the vote.
Tory MPs are now threatening even stronger action if Mr Bercow repeats the tactics during this week’s vital final debates and vote on the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal. Sources said more than 100 were ready to stand up ‘en masse’ to protest if Mr Bercow shows what they called ‘blatant bias’ against the Government.
The threat raises the prospect of the entire debate having to be suspended.
Mr Morris, who last week stood and challenged Mr Bercow to publish the advice of Commons clerks that he was overriding, said he was ready to take part in the protest.
The MP – a Remain voter who now supports Brexit – said: ‘Should the Speaker again seek to bend the rules, I will have no hesitation in once again standing and protesting.’
Mr Morris compared him to a ‘cricket umpire, who halfway through the game, invents a new method of dismissal to suit the losing side’.
Remain voter Mr Bercow has insisted that he had behaved entirely properly and had always been ‘scrupulously fair to Brexiteers and Remainers alike’.
 
 
 
Six Cabinet plotters led by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt are holding secret Brexit ‘peace talks’ behind Theresa May’s back, The Mail on Sunday has learnt.
Aided by Brexiteer Ministers Chris Grayling and Liam Fox, Mr Hunt held an emergency meeting with Remainers David Gauke, Greg Clark and Amber Rudd last week, with more private talks planned for tomorrow evening.
The Cabinet has been split into Leave and Remain camps, but fears that No 10 is ‘dangerously close to losing its grip’ have brought Ministers from both sides together, said one source at the meetings.
The source said the talks were designed to find ‘common ground’ between the warring Cabinet groups, as well as to strengthen the Prime Minister’s hand by keeping a No Deal option on the table in talks with Brussels.
The Foreign Secretary has argued that ‘now is the time to hold that [No Deal] card’ but he is also looking for ways to satisfy Ministers who back a softer Brexit.
Our revelation that Mr Hunt is taking a prominent role in bypassing No 10 will reignite speculation of a leadership challenge amid claims he is hoping to cement his position as the frontrunner to succeed her as Tory leader.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet was told last week to ‘urgently review’ its legislative programme and ‘critically evaluate’ what laws can be delayed until the summer as Mrs May prepares to railroad her Brexit deal through the Commons.
All Secretaries of State have been ordered to ‘identify opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration’ to create ‘Super Bills’ for critical legislation in the coming months to free up the Commons timetable to pass Brexit legislation as quickly as possible.
However, Ministers have been warned there is a ‘preference for the avoidance of Bills’.
Privately, Downing Street insiders concede that a delay to Britain’s exit from the EU, scheduled for March 29, will be needed. But there are deep fears that diehard Brexiteers could vote with Labour in a motion of no confidence against the Government if the request to extend departure comes ahead of a crunch summit on March 21 when the European Council meets.
Downing Street still hopes to convene a special meeting of EU leaders later this month. But it is understood any extension to the Brexit deadline could be discussed at the Council, though it is seen as being held too late for a breakthrough on the hated Irish backstop.
One Cabinet source said: ‘Everyone knows they [Downing Street] are going to have to extend, but they fear that if they announce that before March 21, a dozen nutters will bring down the Government.’ 
Downing Street is braced for a fresh attempt this week from Remain MPs led by Labour’s Yvette Cooper to seize control of the Brexit process, but Mrs May’s team hope it can be diffused by the offer of more Commons votes.
The Prime Minister is due to report back to Parliament on her negotiations with the EU on Wednesday, with a further series of votes by MPs expected the next day.
Downing Street sources last night pleaded with Tory MPs not to ‘tie the hands’ of Mrs May on Thursday and promised that a third amendable motion would be put before the House by February 27.
Last week, Mrs May told Brussels that its hope of relying on Labour MPs to back a softer Brexit deal was not going to work and they could not rely on Jeremy Corbyn.
This can be a year when the United Kingdom turns a corner – when we draw on our enduring strengths to build a better future for our country. In every task we face – from growing an economy that provides opportunity for everyone, and sustaining the first-class public services we all rely on, to keeping everyone in our country safe – we can be inspired by those strengths.
That is certainly true when it comes to the most pressing matter facing us: Brexit. When MPs cast their vote on our withdrawal from the EU, they will determine the future course our country will take. A democratic process, begun when the Conservative Party won an overall majority in a General Election with a manifesto commitment to hold an in-or-out vote, continued through a keenly fought referendum, will culminate in the representatives of the people having their final say.
When they do so, MPs must ask themselves three things. Does the deal I have negotiated deliver on the result of the EU referendum by taking us out of the EU and restoring sovereign control over our borders, laws and money? Does it protect the jobs our constituents rely on to put food on the table for their families and the security co-operation that keeps each one of us safe? Does it provide the certainty that citizens and businesses have every right to expect from those who govern and represent them? I believe my deal does all of those things.
And no one else has an alternative plan that passes those three tests. There are some in Parliament who, despite voting in favour of holding the referendum, voting in favour of triggering Article 50 and standing on manifestos committed to delivering Brexit, now want to stop us leaving by holding another referendum. Others across the House of Commons are so focused on their particular vision of Brexit that they risk making a perfect ideal the enemy of a good deal.
Both groups are motivated by what they think is best for the country, but both must realise the risks they are running with our democracy and the livelihoods of our constituents.
Our genius for pragmatism is a defining British trait. At moments of profound challenge, we always find a way forward that commands the confidence and consent of the whole community. This is such a moment.
The approach of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership has been very different. Their Brexit policy is a cynical tissue of incoherence, designed to avoid difficult decisions. He did not even bother to read the deal before he came out against it. He tells one group he would keep the UK in the single market, while promising another an end to free movement. Throughout, he has provided the opposite of leadership, serving not our national interest but always his own political interest.
MPs of every party will face the same question when the division bell rings. It is a question of profound significance for our democracy and for our constituents. The only way to both honour the result of the referendum and protect jobs and security is by backing the deal that is on the table. MPs should approach that vote with confidence. The deal delivers on the issues that the British people care about.
Outside the EU, we will create a skills-based immigration system that everyone can have confidence in. Out of the Common Agricultural Policy, we will design support schemes for our farmers built around our needs. Out of the Common Fisheries Policy, we will decide ourselves who fishes in our waters. And as we retake our seat at the World Trade Organisation, we will be a champion of free trade and its potential to drive prosperity for everyone.
We will also redouble our efforts to improve the lives of the British people. Nowhere is that work more important than when it comes to our National Health Service. Just as in delivering Brexit we should be inspired by the strength of our democracy, so as we strengthen our most precious public service, we can be inspired by the values that set it apart. Our NHS has a simple premise: high-quality healthcare, free at the point of use, available to everyone on the basis of clinical need, never the ability to pay. On that rock-solid moral foundation, generations of dedicated NHS staff have built one of the best health services anywhere in the world.
Conservatives have made it a priority, protecting its budget and investing more in it every year. As a result, over the past eight years clinical outcomes have improved for almost every condition. But as the demands on our NHS increase, we need to act now to secure its future. That is what our NHS Long-Term Plan will do.
It is powered by a historic multi-year investment: £20.5 billion extra a year in real terms by 2023/24, with the money starting this year. Making this investment was a big decision. Even with the full control of our money that Brexit will deliver, this commitment means we will have less room for manoeuvre in other areas. But when I visit hospitals and meet the NHS staff who devote themselves unsparingly to the care of their patients, when I talk to people who owe their lives to the treatment they have received from their local hospital or GP, and when I reflect on the debt that I owe to an NHS that has helped me every step of the way as I live my life with Type 1 diabetes – I am in no doubt that it is was the right decision.
But money alone is insufficient – it has to be tied to a credible plan to improve care and an absolute focus on cutting waste right across the NHS, so that every penny of taxpayers’ money drives clinical improvements. Our aim is nothing less than to provide the best possible care for every major condition, from cradle to grave.
So we will drive up safety in maternity services and provide more support to new parents, so every baby can get the best start in life. We will give people more control over the care they receive throughout their lives by expanding the use of personal health budgets. And as we get older, the NHS will support us all to age well, bringing different teams together to make sure older people can remain independent for longer.
For every major physical health condition we will help people live longer, healthier lives through better prevention, detection, treatment and recovery. For the hundreds of thousands of people suffering with mental health problems, we will provide greater support than ever before at every stage.
We will achieve this by investing in our NHS’s greatest asset – its staff. That will mean tens of thousands more doctors, nurses and other health professionals – all enjoying a more fulfilling career with better training, support and progression. We will also make it easier for them to do their jobs by investing in new technology. With digital access to their GP, everyone will be able to make appointments, manage prescriptions and view their health records online.
Our plan builds on the NHS’s great strengths and secures it for the future. It shows what we can achieve with a strong economy and a focus on what matters most to the people we serve.
So this is my appeal to my party, to Parliament and our country: in this New Year let’s discover a new spirit of common purpose. Let’s agree a Brexit deal that moves us forward into a brighter future with confidence. Let’s secure the future of our NHS. And let’s make 2019 a year to be proud of.
 
Theresa May is to appeal to the Baltic states where British troops are stationed in a bid to break the Brexit ‘backstop’ deadlock.
Around 900 troops are based in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland as a bulwark against Russian aggression.
Now Downing Street hopes to convince these EU states to ‘break cover’ and urge Brussels to reopen the divorce agreement terms.
Last week Poland came close to demanding that meaningful talks recommence – to the fury of EU purists in France and Germany. Now behind-the-scenes appeals to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are planned for the coming days.
But the strategy risks a furious backlash if it is interpreted as Britain threatening to pull troops out, leaving Europe’s eastern border to the mercy of a Kremlin attack. 
The push comes as hopes the Netherlands will be a key ally in the UK’s attempt to dilute the controversial ‘backstop’ have faded – with Mrs May’s team believing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is positioning to be the next President of the EU Council and so less inclined to help a departing member state.
However EU unity was stretched on Friday when Spain’s Foreign Minister hinted at new talks and yesterday the EU’s central bank issued a stark warning that a No Deal would hurt the Eurozone.
No 10 has accepted it is the UK’s responsibility to come up with detailed proposals on overcoming the backstop impasse – and will only ‘dip a toe’ into direct contact with Brussels this week.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister will spend the next 11 days ‘shoring up’ the number of Labour rebels who voted with Mrs May or abstained against Brexit-blocking measures ahead of a fresh showdown on Valentine’s Day. 
MPs hellbent on delaying or stopping Brexit will resurrect their efforts to block a No Deal and seize control of the Commons agenda. But Mrs May is delighted at the collapse of the push for a second referendum. 
Last night she said: ‘This week the leaders of the campaign had the chance to put their plan before the Commons. But they recognised there is no majority in this Parliament to hold another vote. Indeed, I believe there never will be.’
Theresa May has emerged as the leading critic of Boris Johnson's 'brutal' decision to purge 21 Remainer rebels from the Tory benches, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The Prime Minister stunned Westminster by calling the bluff of those Conservatives who voted with the Opposition to try to force him to delay Brexit – sparking two formal complaints from his predecessor.
Mrs May has raised the issue directly with Party chairman James Cleverly and Chief Whip Mark Spencer on behalf of the group that includes former Chancellor Philip Hammond, ex-Justice Secretary David Gauke and Tory grandee Ken Clarke.
She approached Mr Cleverly behind the Speaker's Chair in the House of Commons on Wednesday evening to raise concerns about the legality of blocking any of the rebels from being candidates at the next Election. 
Last night a Tory source said: 'It was all very courteous and professional, but there are a lot of angry people and a lot of Chinese whispers doing the rounds about what is really happening.'
Allies of Mr Cleverly insist that no order has yet been given for associations to select new candidates in the seats belonging to the sacked rebels, hinting there could be a way back for some of them.
It is also understood that Mrs May made a separate complaint to Mr Spencer, urging reconciliation as quickly as possible. She also noticeably flanked Mr Clarke in the House of Commons in an open sign of defiance.
Last night former Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt added her voice to the calls for leniency. Mrs Mordaunt, who was sacked by Mr Johnson last month, told a gathering of so-called 'wets' at the Tory Reform Group chaired by Mr Clarke: 'We should give those MPs the chance of candidacy, if they can and will accept the platform and manifesto.'
In an emotional speech, she compared the situation to an incident in the 1990s when she was propositioned at the Conservative Party Conference by a rich donor and a senior Party staff member. 'I was so hurt,' she said.
'I remember looking down at my cheap shoes and feeling cheap. Humiliated. Hurt. It hurt that an organisation that I respect so much, that I wanted to be part of so much, that I had worked so hard for, could have so little care for me... I know there are a lot of people feeling that way this week, including some of my Parliamentary colleagues.'
She added: 'I urge you to do what I decided at that one event 23 years ago: to stay, to stand together and to fight.'
 
Theresa May plans to evoke the spirit of the famous 1951 Festival of Britain with a £120 million nationwide celebration after Brexit.
Scheduled for 2022, the event – also inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851 – will be used to project a proud post-Brexit Britain around the globe.
Speaking as the Tory conference opened in Birmingham, the Prime Minister boasted that the festival would showcase the best of the nation’s talent in business, technology, arts and sport to the rest of the world.
And, with events set to take place in every nation and region of the UK, Mrs May raised hopes that the celebration would generate billions of pounds of investment for Britain and Northern Ireland.
She said: ‘Almost 70 years ago, the Festival of Britain stood as a symbol of change. Britain once again stands on the cusp of a new future as an outward-facing, global trading nation.
‘And, just as millions of Britons celebrated their nation’s great achievements in 1951, we want to showcase what makes our country great today.’
The announcement may spark criticism that Mrs May is trying to distract from mounting disunity over Brexit in her own party, and speculation over whether she will still be in the post in 2022 – the date of the next General Election.
There are also suggestions that the idea has been hastily dreamt up, with Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright reportedly only asking Cabinet colleagues for their views on the festival just a few days ago.
But Mrs May hailed it as the chance ‘to mark this moment of national renewal with a once-in-a-generation celebration’. 
 It would also be an event that ‘strengthens our precious union and promotes the UK as the most creative and innovative nation in the world’.
To be known simply as ‘The Festival’, it will build on major events already taking place that year, including the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and the 75th anniversary of the Edinburgh International Festival. It would also coincide with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
A new delivery body will be set up to co-ordinate the event under a creative director, who will work alongside Mr Wright’s department.
Mrs May said that more than £120 million would be set aside in advance to plan the event, which is expected to generate billions for the UK economy. 
Her officials pointed to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which secured £28 billion of investment.
Mr Wright was quoted as telling colleagues the event would tell ‘a story about the UK’s unique strengths, particularly as a place to invest’.
The scars of war were still visible across our towns and cities when the Festival of Britain opened in 1951.
Built on a 27-acre site on London’s South Bank, it was designed to promote a sense of recovery and renewal after the Second World War.
It launched almost 100 years to the day of its illustrious predecessor, the Great Exhibition of 1851, opened by Queen Victoria.
The world’s first great trade fair, it showcased imperial Britain’s role as an industrial leader and had the UK’s first paid-for flushing toilets, where visitors spent one penny to experience a clean toilet seat.
More than eight million people attended the Festival of Britain during its five-month run, and the main Festival site featured what was the largest dome in the world at the time, at 93 feet tall and with a diameter of 365 feet.
Meanwhile, six million went to the Great Exhibition a century earlier, housed in a purpose-built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.
Theresa May has privately vowed to thwart any attempt by Boris Johnson to take the UK out of the EU without a deal, her allies have told The Mail on Sunday.
The disclosure comes as senior party figures told The Mail on Sunday that Mrs May had voted for ultra-Remainer Rory Stewart in Thursday's ballot of MPs, which led to a landslide victory for Mr Johnson.
Mrs May, who has vowed to stay on as an MP after she leaves Downing Street next month, has suggested she would join forces with pro-Remain Ministers such as Chancellor Philip Hammond and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd to try to stop Mr Johnson from leaving after the October 31 deadline 'Deal or No Deal'.
The scale of Mr Johnson's victory means that, barring a major Boris blow-up, the race has effectively turned into a battle for second place, with his vanquished opponents deciding whether to fight on or clamber aboard his bandwagon.
It is predicted that the Commons contest to whittle down the field of six to a final two will conclude as soon as Wednesday, after two more rounds of votes. 
Former Tory leadership contender Esther McVey has come out in support of Boris Johnson.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Ms McVey - who was eliminated in the first ballot of MPs - said Mr Johnson had agreed to back her agenda for 'blue collar Conservatism'.
'He has promised to deliver Brexit on October 31, deal or no deal, and has shown time and time again that he is a dynamic leader, capable of building a strong team around him that will deliver on his promises,' she wrote.
'Our country is crying out for strong, optimistic leadership and Boris is the man best equipped to take us out of the EU, to transform our country into an outward-looking, confident, self-governing nation, and to implement a policy agenda that will bring back the voters we have lost and ensure we don't allow Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto of economic carnage to plunge us back into the dark ages.'
The last two will then face an electorate of more than 160,000 Tory members, after a surge of new members who signed up ahead of the contest were deemed eligible to vote by party chiefs.
Last night Mr Johnson moved to scotch suggestions he wished to avoid a run-off, saying it was 'full steam ahead to a contest'.
Esther McVey, who came last with nine votes on Thursday, was the first former candidate to declare her intentions, saying that she would swing behind Mr Johnson and urging her eight supporters to do the same.
A source said: 'Boris has told Esther that he will give his backing to blue-collar Conservative policies, such as the need to invest in the Midlands and North'.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who pulled out on Friday, was last night on the brink of declaring, with friends saying that he was wavering between backing Mr Johnson or Michael Gove – although most expect ambitious Hancock to plump for the frontrunner.
'Matt would be a moderating influence on the likely PM and help unify the party,' the friend said.
In a further boost for Mr Johnson, it is expected that Mrs May's closest Commons aide, Aberdeenshire MP Andrew Bowie, will endorse him to help unify the Scottish party around Mr Johnson's banner. 
 Some of the most intense soul-searching was going on in second-placed Jeremy Hunt's team, with Ms Rudd – who until recently had been poised to form a blockbuster double act with Mr Johnson – angered by Mr Hunt's recent hardline remarks on abortion.
Her views are understood to be shared by Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who has also signed up to Mr Hunt's campaign but warned she would not defend his stance that the legal time limit for a termination should be reduced from 24 weeks to 12.
Yesterday Home Secretary Sajid Javid made an impassioned plea to stay in the race, saying it was not just the 'message that mattered, but the messenger too'.
The size of Mr Johnson's victory has also concentrated minds in the party over his Brexit strategy, and in particular his pledge to leave the EU without a deal if Brussels refuses to make changes to the Withdrawal Agreement.
Michael Gove
Declared himself the 'Chumbawumba candidate' following a decent showing in the first round of voting despite his cocaine revelations, in a reference to a 1997 hit by the anarchist band with the lyrics 'I get knocked down, I get back up again, you're never going to keep me down'. How familiar Tory members will be with the tune waits to be seen.
In the Sunday Times he put forth a proposal for a national housing fund paid for by 'Brexit bonds', with home designs to be approved by citizens juries - all of which which has been interpreted as a pitch for the election-battleground portfolio of Communities Secretary in a possible Johnson administration.
Mr Gove, who in 2016 said Mr Johnson was not up to the top job, scuppering his former ally's campaign, added: 'I would absolutely work with Boris in any way that he wanted to work with me. No question'
Sajid Javid
Declaring himself one of only two 'change' candidates in the race, along with Boris, the Home Secretary used an interview in the Sunday Times to point out all his rivals went to Oxford University, while he grew up above his parents' shop and was the first member of his family to go to university.
He said he was the leader who could 'look the British public in the eye' as a fellow consumer of state services.
In a possible bid to enter the door of Number 11 as Mr Johnson's neighbour, Mr Javid set out his economic credentials, outlining plans for an emergency 'no-deal budget'.
Rory Stewart
The International Development Secretary told the Sunday Telegraph: 'The other candidates aren't prepared to talk about how they're going to get Brexit done', adding: 'They're just basically saying, Brexit, deliver Brexit. When you say how, answer comes there none. Trust me I'm going to deliver Brexit.'
This morning he asked the BBC's Andrew Marr 'How is Boris going to deliver Brexit?'
He added: 'I don't even know what he believes. He won't talk to me, he won't talk to you, he won't talk to the public,' as it emerged the front-runner will be empty-chaired at tonight's Channel 4 debate.  
Dominic Raab
Mr Raab, the contest's other remaining hard-Brexiteer, this morning accused rivals of going 'weak at the knees' and defended his decision not to rule out suspending Parliament to push through a no deal Brexit if needs be.
He told Sky: 'We gave people a decision. Now Parliament is trying to steal it back away from them. When people voted, they voted to leave.'
He added: 'The big mistake we made in these negotiations was taking no-deal off the table. When we start ruling things out we only weaken our chances of getting a deal.' 
Jeremy Hunt 
The Foreign Secretary, who came second to Mr Johnson in last week's ballot of Tory MPs, announced an eye-catching policy of offering financial incentives to families who build accommodation for elderly relatives – to help ease the growing social care and childcare burden on the taxpayer. 
Mr Hunt, who was a distant second in the first round, insisted in the Mail on Sunday he had still not given up hope of winning in the final postal ballot of party members.
'I am the insurgent in this race,' he said. 'I am in it to win it because we have to give the country better choices given the crisis that we're in now.'
Today he said he would exhaust all options before contemplating No Deal.
'The difference between me and Boris is I would try for a deal,' he told the BBC's Andrew Marr show.
Boris Johnson
Mr Johnson remains tight-lipped as his team seeks to avoid doing or saying anything which could undermine their candidate's huge lead among MPs.
Mr Johnson was criticised yesterday for busting into a hustings event in London without taking questions from journalists - and sneaking out the back door afterwards.
By contrast his rivals stopped to talk to reporters. All six have agreed to take part in the Channel 4 show this evening - but Mr Johnson has made clear he will stay away.
 
It was Mrs May's failure to secure changes to the deal, and its subsequent rejection by MPs, which led to her downfall. But her allies say she has 'not budged' in her view that the UK should not leave the EU unless a deal has been struck and that to do otherwise would 'jeopardise the integrity of the Union'.
One said: 'She made little secret of the fact that she did not want Boris to succeed her, and if you study everything she has said it is clear where she now is on No Deal. The best hope is that Boris is bluffing as usual.'
Allies of the PM believe that she voted for Mr Stewart in order to 'keep the race interesting' despite claims in Westminster she was backing Jeremy Hunt. The Foreign Secretary's 43 votes match 43 public declarations, meaning one of his supporters was being publicly misleading about who they voted for, or Mrs May – who has never publicly expressed her intentions – must have backed someone else.
Mr Stewart was one of Mrs May's final appointments to her Cabinet and had been one of the most ferocious defenders of her Brussels deal. He has also said he would not seek major changes to Mrs May's Withdrawal Agreement that has been comprehensively rejected by the Commons three times.
Instead Mr Stewart has said he would seek to 'communicate' the deal in a better fashion, and, like Mrs May, has vowed to avoid a No Deal scenario at all costs. A senior Tory told The Mail on Sunday: 'At the end of the day Mrs May believes the only way to leave is with a deal and Rory is the only candidate really sticking to that.'
Another ally added: 'No one has asked her but she values loyalty, and while he was quick out the traps in saying he wanted to run, Rory spent most of the year defending her.' 
Theresa May’s future in Downing Street was last night hanging in the balance – as allies discussed openly whether she should resign to save her Brexit deal.
With just 19 days to go until Brexit, Mrs May is facing her second heavy Commons defeat on the deal when MPs vote on her plans on Tuesday – unless Brussels offers a dramatic last-minute concession on the hated ‘backstop’ to assuage the concerns of Brexiteers.
Cabinet Ministers, No 10 advisers and MPs increasingly believe that Mrs May will have to offer to resign as part of an ‘Ides of March’ blood deal with pro-Brexit MPs: they argue that the prospect of installing ‘one of their own’ in No 10 might be the only way to persuade the Brexiteers to accept her deal.
The ‘Ides of March’ – March 15 in the Roman Calendar – was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44BC at a meeting of the Senate.
One ally of the Prime Minister said: ‘If she has to make that sacrifice in order to secure her legacy, then I think she would.’ 
Another powerful Downing Street figure added: ‘The only way she would countenance going voluntarily is if it could get her deal over the line.’
The leading candidates to succeed Mrs May –- Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, his predecessor Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Sajid Javid – are all ready to launch immediate leadership bids. Other potential candidates – including Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss, who are on a joint trip to America this weekend – are ‘considering their options’.
Tense negotiations between the UK and the EU are expected to continue all weekend and until late tomorrow, with Ministers in London being updated on the progress by video-link.
Last night, a Downing Street source hinted that a dramatic breakthrough might still be possible by saying that RAF Northolt had put the PM’s plane on standby for a last-minute dash to Brussels.
The source said the Prime Minister was ‘intensely focused’ on making progress but ‘these are tough talks we are expecting to go right down to the wire’.
Nerves are still jangling in No 10 following the provocative offer on Friday by the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier of limiting the backstop – staying aligned to EU rules – to Northern Ireland only.
No 10 reminded Mr Barnier, who is today planning to be in Dublin for the France-Ireland Six Nations rugby clash, that the idea was first rejected a year ago because it would divide the UK.
On Friday, talks between EU and UK officials continued into the night. Mrs May was briefed in the early hours of yesterday on the limited progress.
Government sources said the current expectation was that Brussels would unveil a ‘small concession’ on the backstop – but not, they feared, one which would be sufficient to win over all the rebels.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, who is leading the efforts to alter the withdrawal agreement, tells today’s Mail on Sunday that he will ‘not put his name’ to any legal opinion which backs the EU’s proposals if there is any risk of us being indefinitely detained in the backstop.
‘My professional reputation is far more important to me than my reputation as a politician,’ Mr Cox says. 
The eminent QC reveals that he has been working on an arbitration mechanism which would ‘give us the unilateral right to trigger the process that would lead to our exit from the backstop’ and would dramatically alter the balance of power between UK and EU negotiators by putting ‘the onus on them to prove we can’t leave’.
Mr Cox adds: ‘It’s the reason why some EU officials don’t like it – it works.’
Tory whips have warned that the Government could lose the vote by a margin of between 50 and 150 if Mr Cox is unable to change his legal advice – seen as key to winning over Brexit hardliners and the DUP. One senior Cabinet Minister told The Mail on Sunday that Mrs May ‘does not have a hope in hell’ of winning the vote on Tuesday, with the expectation that ‘all hell would break loose’ after that.
Defeat on Tuesday would trigger a day of parliamentary drama on Wednesday, with MPs voting on whether to veto ‘No Deal’ and extend Article 50 – and even the possibility of another no confidence vote in the Prime Minister from Labour.
Downing Street is divided about whether to order Ministers to vote in favour of No Deal – which would risk mass resignations – or put down a motion which only rules out leaving the EU without a deal in March, not at some other point later in the year.
In the wake of a defeat, Mrs May’s allies expect pro-Remain MPs, led by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, to seize control of the process to both delay Brexit and ‘soften’ it by keeping the UK in a customs union.
They have been urging Tory MPs to ‘save Brexit’ by voting for the deal for fear of much worse.
But last night, Tory Brexiteer leader Jacob Rees-Mogg – chairman of the party’s European Research Group – denied that voting down the deal would hand control of the process to a Remain-dominated Commons. He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Brexit can only be blocked if the Government wants to do it. That would be a breach of all its commitments.
‘If the Government holds steady, Parliament cannot stop Brexit.’
The approach of the crunch vote has led to tensions spilling over in Cabinet meetings.
Last week, Home Secretary Sajid Javid clashed with Philip Hammond over the Chancellor’s plans to bail out the economy if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.
The Chancellor – who has been widely criticised within Government for failing to devote signifi-cant funds to No Deal planning – was rebuked by the Home Secretary for belatedly setting up a fund to jump-start the economy if talks with Brussels collapse.
Mr Javid told Mr Hammond at a meeting of Theresa May’s Brexit ‘doomsday committee’ last week that he didn’t think that he or his Treasury officials were ‘properly equipped’ to make such ‘commercial judgments’.
The 21-member EU exit and trade (preparedness) committee was established by Theresa May ‘to streamline the process to oversee the delivery of plans for an orderly exit from the EU’.
It has been dubbed the ‘doomsday’ committee because it is obliged to countenance the worst-case scenarios of a No Deal Brexit.
The committee was discussing Project Kingfisher, which The Mail on Sunday revealed last month was the codename for Mr Hammond’s secret bailout fund. It includes the establishment of a short-term fiscal stimulus package designed to prop up the UK’s manufacturing and industrial sectors, with Ministers ordered to draw up top-secret lists of specific firms and sectors they believe will most need the money.
Mr Javid is also overseeing his own No Deal disaster committee codenamed Operation Snow Bunting, designed to deal with civil unrest and rioting in the wake of a messy EU divorce.
Chancellor Philip Hammond will use his spring statement this week to pledge a £200 million, post-Brexit push to keep Britain as a scientific world leader – including the creation of a national super-computer in Edinburgh to aid medical, climate science and aerospace research.
Britain has a moral duty to pay half a billion pounds to Ireland to break the Brexit deadlock over the controversial Northern Ireland backstop, Sajid Javid has said.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, the Home Secretary and Tory leadership contender warned it will take ‘hundreds of millions of euros, no one really knows because it hasn’t been done before’.
But he said that a new border arrangement can be found and it is Britain’s job to pay for it as we are leaving the EU.
Mr Javid wants the cash to be used to set up new technology- driven border checks to avoid keeping Britain locked to Brussels rules.
He said: ‘I think it’s morally justified to pay for that because we both have signed the Good Friday Agreement, we are both absolutely committed to peace on the island of Ireland and –given that we voted to leave and that’s what’s changing the status quo on the island of Ireland – I think it’s morally right that we say, “look, we’ll pay because we’ve caused this”.’
But Mr Javid said the cost would be more than offset as, ‘if we get a Brexit deal in the next few months there will be a mini- economic boom, it will immediately have an economic impact.’
Mr Javid’s Brexit plan comes as he declared that the ‘darker side’ of his job as Home Secretary has made him ready to lead the nation.
‘It has certainly helped prepare me for being Prime Minister if that’s what happened, because it’s such a testing job, it’s 24/7,’ he said.
And he said running four departments has primed him to take over Downing Street. ‘Whether it’s Culture Secretary, it’s Business Secretary, it’s Housing Secretary, they’re all about the optimistic side of society, I think you’re trying to build more houses people can live in, promote our culture, encourage entrepreneurialism and it’s all that positive buzz you can build around them.’
But he added: ‘There’s no positive buzz around counter-terrorism, hostile state activity, you see the darker side of life in this job and you mustn’t let it get you down because I remember every day that that is what you need, someone needs to be focused on that to protect us.
‘So it’s a very different job and it is a job I’m very pleased I’ve done – it’s tested me a lot.’
Tory leadership hopeful Sajid Javid today predicted it could take just 'a couple of years' for alternative arrangements to be put in place on the Irish border as he suggested his status as an 'outsider' made him the best candidate for PM.
Mr Javid said he would offer to pay for the cost of technological solutions to prevent a hard border to convince the Irish government back the plan.
'The solution insists, we've done the homework,' he told Sophy Ridge on Sunday. 'Most people would understand you need cooperation on both sides of the border for this to happen.'
Many Tory MPs opposed Theresa May's Brexit deal because it included the Irish backstop - which would involve Northern Ireland staying in some parts of the customs union and single market to prevent a return to a hard border.
Mr Javid insisted he could succeed where Mrs May had failed, despite warnings that no technological solution to the Irish border was available and Brussels' refusal to put a time limit on the 'insurance policy' of the backstop.
'You don't need a magic solution for this, the solution exists. We've done the homework on this,' the Home Secretary, who has ministerial responsibility for the UK's borders, said.
'I will change the dynamic and I will do that by offering the money to pay for the border.
'It is justified that we do that because, economically, if that unlocks a deal we will have a mini economic boom in this country if we get a deal and that will pay for that.'
He said the policy of a Javid administration would be to leave the EU on October 31 and 'if I have to choose between no deal and no Brexit, I would pick no deal'.
Mr Javid said he was an outsider in the party both because of his race and his background but 'sometimes there's a strong case to have an outsider to actually become a leader to shake things up'.
'I think the country, not just the Conservative Party, is ready for leaders - including in politics and we have seen in other walks of life - from all sorts of backgrounds,' he said.
Mr Javid, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, has a background which is in stark contrast to rivals including Old Etonian Boris Johnson.
At school it was recommended that he should be a TV repairman.
'I was told that I couldn't study maths at O-level so I had to get my dad to pay for it.
'I was told that I could only study two A-levels when I was told that you had to have three to go to university, so I had to change schools and go to a local college.
'But these are struggles I don't want other people to have.'
He added: 'I think the country, not just the Conservative Party, is ready for leaders - including in politics and we have seen in other walks of life - from all sorts of backgrounds.'
He said he was an outsider in the party both because of his race and his background but 'sometimes there's a strong case to have an outsider to actually become a leader to shake things up'.
Mr Javid also said he would break from the austerity of the last nine years by slowing the pace of debt reduction to fund a multibillion-pound spending spree.
He said the move would still involve debt coming down but could free up to £25 billion a year for spending priorities, including a funding boost for education.
'I want to see a multi-year, multibillion-pound boost in investment and spending in schools, and really change the life chances of so many young people,' he told Miss Ridge.
The Conservative leadership race is ramping up ahead of nominations opening on Monday as the contenders continue to declare their credentials for the top job.
Here are the runners and riders:
- Boris Johnson
The former foreign secretary, who played a key role in the Vote Leave campaign at the 2016 referendum, is widely seen as the front-runner.
On Brexit, he has committed to keeping the October 31 deadline even if that means leaving without a deal and said he would step up no-deal preparations.
He also said he would refuse to pay the promised £39 billion to the European Union unless better Brexit terms are on offer.
Key quote: 'I truly believe only I can steer the country between the Scylla and Charybdis of Corbyn and Farage and on to calmer water.'
What he's said about drugs: Confessed to trying cocaine and smoking cannabis as a teenager at Oxford in a magazine interview in 2007.
Backers: James Brokenshire, Gavin Williamson, Steve Baker.
- Jeremy Hunt
The Foreign Secretary has ruled nothing out on Brexit, but insists that his experience as a negotiator in both business and politics means he could go to Brussels and secure a better deal.
He has said he would keep a no-deal Brexit on the table, but warned it could be 'political suicide' for the Conservatives as Parliament would force a general election.
He has called for a big increase in defence spending after Britain leaves the EU to counter rising global threats and has suggested slashing corporation tax to Irish levels of 12.5% to attract investment.
Key quote: 'We will absolutely be obliterated in an election if we haven't delivered Brexit.'
What he's said about drugs: Told The Times he had a 'cannabis lassi', a yoghurt-based drink, when he was backpacking through India in his youth.
Backers: Liam Fox, Greg Hands, Mark Field.
- Dominic Raab
The former Brexit secretary has set out an uncompromising approach in a bid to appeal to hardline Eurosceptics.
He wants Brussels to ditch the Irish backstop as part of a new agreement, but if the EU will not move on the issue, he will walk away without a deal on October 31 - and has not ruled out suspending Parliament to ensure that MPs cannot block the UK's exit.
He also wants to toughen up community sentences and has promised a shake-up of maternity care.
Key quote: 'We need to up our game, which means being less naive, and being absolutely resolute about our intention and our resolve to leave on October 31. It seems to me that I'm the only candidate in this race that is clear about that.'
What he's said about drugs: Has admitted taking cannabis as a student.
Backers: David Davis, Nadhim Zahawi, Maria Miller.
- Michael Gove
The Environment Secretary, who scuppered Mr Johnson's last leadership bid in 2016, is again positioning himself in opposition to the front-runner.
Unlike Mr Johnson, he has not ruled out seeking a further delay to Brexit - possibly for months beyond October 31 - if a deal is in reach, and warned pursuing a no-deal scenario could lead to a general election in which Jeremy Corbyn could enter Number 10.
He has set out a 'pro-business economic plan' to take on Mr Corbyn's 'Marxist message' and said he would replace VAT after Brexit with a 'lower, simpler' sales tax.
Key quote: 'If I am prime minister of this country I want to ensure it's the best place in the world to live, learn, raise a family, achieve your potential, and start and run a business.'
What he's said about drugs: Said he 'deeply regrets' taking cocaine 'on several occasions' two decades ago.
Backers: Mel Stride, Nicky Morgan, Ed Vaizey.
- Rory Stewart
The International Development Secretary has travelled around the country filming himself chatting to voters in a bid to raise his profile in the race.
A Remainer who now accepts the referendum vote, he has ruled out a no-deal Brexit and would establish a citizens' assembly to thrash out a new Brexit compromise.
He has also pledged to protect the Conservatives' 'reputation for economic competence', hitting out at the 'unfunded spending commitments' made by rivals.
Key quote: 'Candidates that are advocating a no-deal Brexit as well as tax cuts will - in one afternoon in October - lose us a reputation that we have spent 300 years building up.'
What he's said about drugs: Has apologised for smoking opium at a wedding in Iran.
Backers: David Gauke, Ken Clarke, Nicholas Soames.
- Sajid Javid
The Home Secretary hopes to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement to remove the Irish backstop but does not want a delay beyond October 31.
He has set out a plan to tackle the Irish border issue by spending hundreds of millions on a technological solution, saying the UK has a moral duty to pay for measures at the border in an effort to secure a breakthrough.
Mr Javid has put forward a number of policy proposals, including cutting the top rate of income tax and establishing a £100 billion fund to invest in the UK's infrastructure.
Key quote: 'We will not beat the Brexit Party by becoming the Brexit Party.'
What he's said about drugs: Has denied ever taking drugs.
Backers: Ruth Davidson, Jeremy Wright, Chris Skidmore.
- Matt Hancock
The Health Secretary insists a no-deal Brexit is not a credible option and Parliament would never allow it.
He has set out a Brexit delivery plan to leave by October 31, including establishing an Irish border council, made up of UK and Irish officials, to prevent the return of a hard border and time-limiting the backstop.
He has also pledged to scrap business rates for small retailers and increase a tax on internet companies to 'level the playing field' for high streets, and has set out his vision for a foreign policy that boosts trade and 'resists protectionism', while also promising to 'uphold our values'.
Key quote: 'If in order to deliver Brexit we were to change who we are as a country we would have failed.'
What he's said about drugs: Is understood to have tried cannabis as a student but has not used drugs since university.
Backers: Damian Green, Tracey Crouch, Caroline Spelman.
- Andrea Leadsom
The former leader of the Commons, who ran against Mrs May for the party leadership in 2016, was another prominent member of the Vote Leave campaign.
She has set out a plan to scrap the Withdrawal Agreement and instead 'massively ramp up' preparations for a 'managed' exit without a full deal.
Mrs Leadsom has also promised to tackle climate change at home and abroad and establish a cross-party commission to find a solution to funding social care, and has warned that bold tax-cutting pledges could easily be blocked by Parliament.
Key quote: 'I truly believe in the bright future that awaits us once we leave the EU. And I think I have the best plan that I've seen for delivering a managed exit.'
What she's said about drugs: Told the Independent that she 'smoked weed at university and have never smoked it again since'.
Backers: Chris Heaton-Harris, Heather Wheeler, Derek Thomas
- Sam Gyimah
As the only contender open to a second referendum, the former universities minister is widely seen as a rank outsider.
His five-point plan would give MPs a 'final chance' to get a Brexit deal through Parliament while also preparing for a referendum if that failed.
The public would be offered a binding choice between a no-deal Brexit, a revised deal or remaining in the EU.
Key quote: 'The world won't wait for Westminster, no matter how loudly we shout, and no matter how damaging a prolonged Brexit process is for Britain.'
What he's said about drugs: Has denied taking any drugs.
Backers: Dominic Grieve, Guto Bebb, Phillip Lee
- Esther McVey
The committed Brexiteer has said she would fill her Cabinet with fellow believers.
She has called for the Tories to 'embrace' a no-deal Brexit in order to make sure the UK leaves on October 31.
Elsewhere, she has caused controversy with comments championing the right of parents to take their children out of lessons on same-sex relationships.
Key quote: 'I think you need to have people who believe in Brexit to deliver this by October 31.'
What she's said about drugs: A spokesman told The Telegraph she 'has never taken cocaine and never would'.
Backers: Pauline Latham, Phillip Davies, Andrew Lewer
- Mark Harper
A former Conservative chief whip and Remain supporter who now accepts the referendum result, Mr Harper acknowledges he is an underdog in the leadership race.
He has called for a 'short, focused' extension to allow for the deal to be renegotiated but said he would be prepared to leave with no deal if that is not possible.
He has claimed sticking to an undeliverable October 31 exit date could risk making Nigel Farage even stronger.
Key quote: 'I know what people want to hear but I am not going to tell people what they want to hear if I don't think it is credible.'
What he's said about drugs: Has denied taking any drugs.
Backers: William Wragg, Jackie Doyle-Price, Scott Mann.
 
The sight of a downcast Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, returning to Britain after yet more failed talks with EU negotiator Michel Barnier was galling. 
If reports are to be believed, the EU has acted in bad faith and rejected his proposals for a simple but legally binding guarantee that the backstop – the agreement which prevents a hard border in Ireland – would not lock Britain in for ever.
And it is clear that unless there is such a guarantee, the backstop – which puts us in ‘temporary’ alignment with EU trade rules – is indeed a trap from which the UK might never escape.
The problem is that the Attorney General was sent to negotiate these changes without any leverage at all. And this is because from the end of 2017, the Government has made a series of fundamental mistakes.
Instead of approaching these long-running talks with Europe as a true negotiation based on ambitious hopes for Brexit, they have treated them as an exercise in damage limitation. This, in turn, has led the Government to sign up to a withdrawal deal that leaves us – as rule takers – £39 billion worse off, with Northern Ireland locked into the EU.
And now, to make matters still worse, there has been a damaging revolt by three Remainer Cabinet Ministers – Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke.
Astonishingly, they broke the vital rule of Cabinet collective responsibility and mounted a public attack on the Government’s clear position that No Deal would be better than a bad deal. This, remember, is the policy upon which all three had been elected. This reverberated around the EU Commission and undermined any final shred of power the Government still had.
Small wonder that when even a lawyer of the standing of Geoffrey Cox QC seeks the most reasonable and limited reassurances, the EU simply laughs in his face. The European negotiators are only too well aware that Britain’s position was dramatically weakened by the activities of these Ministers. One constituent angrily remarked to me that the trio had ‘betrayed the Prime Minister and made them “useful idiots” for the EU’. I had to agree.
That damage was plain to see. I am told the Cox talks had been progressing well until the start of last week when, unexpectedly, German- born Sabine Weyand, a key negotiator and Barnier’s deputy, suddenly dismissed the proposed arrangements out of hand.
Seemingly, she had no fear of the UK leaving without a deal – even though that should have been our main negotiating weapon. Had she been taking instructions from virulently anti-UK Martin Selmayr, Secretary-General of the European Commission?
Even now, I believe there is a way through this morass. Backed by a group of MPs from both sides of the argument – Leave and Remain – this is known as the Malthouse Compromise. Under these proposals, the terms of the backstop would be replaced by arrangements which would still guarantee an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
This would be a border without checks, and which would use existing customs procedures and new technology. Any ad hoc customs checks would be conducted away from the sensitive border itself. Even late last week, the Commons Northern Ireland committee endorsed this approach as the best way of resolving the impasse. Critically, it would mean that Northern Ireland remains a full member of the UK – dealing with the EU on exactly the same terms.
All that is required is a simple agreement between Europe and Britain to press ahead with these eminently workable proposals, with a firm date for implementation. After all, the EU knows the existing arrangements don’t work and have to change. It cannot be stated often enough that adopting the Malthouse compromise would make it much more likely that the Government’s deal would prosper.
Can the EU be persuaded to play its part and sign up to Malthouse? Sadly, I believe its true colours were on display in the discussions with Geoffrey Cox.
Having dismissed out of hand at the last moment Cox’s modest proposals, Barnier added insult to injury with an offensive tweet reinforcing his view that the only way for the UK to escape the backstop is to leave Northern Ireland bound in to the Customs Union – a position rejected by Britain a full year ago.
Most of us want Geoffrey Cox to succeed as he continues to negotiate for us to leave on March 29. Yet I cannot see the deal passing unless we can agree that the backstop no longer poses a threat to the UK’s sovereignty – or it is replaced.
Some argue that Brexit is at risk if the deal is rejected. I disagree.
As I have already pointed out, we are being asked to vote for an arrangement which both the EU and the UK Government know cannot be implemented. It forces the UK to be a rule taker – and for me, that is the biggest risk of all. No deal is most certainly better than that.
As it stands, Parliament passed legislation to leave the EU on March 29 in line with Article 50. And unless that legislation is revoked, that is exactly what we will do. 
Lying awake at 2am last Wednesday and unable to sleep for the third night in a row, I listened as footsteps crunched up and down the gravel outside my ground-floor flat. 
For one alarming moment I thought the police were preparing to storm through my front door and arrest me. I looked out of the curtains – but no one was there.
Paranoid? Hardly. A few hours later, Home Office Minister Nick Hurd stood in the House of Commons and refused to rule out deploying the 'full force of the state' to identify the person who leaked Sir Kim Darroch's embarrassingly undiplomatic cables about US President Donald Trump.
I am not the leaker – I am a young journalist – but I did play a critical role in the publication of a story that has reverberated on both sides of the Atlantic.
Tens of thousands of words have been devoted to speculation about the motivation behind the disclosure. Most have been wrong. 
Today I want to set the record straight and reveal the real story about how Sir Kim's diplomatic cables entered the public domain.
I am sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists but this was not a Brexiteer plot to topple Sir Kim, nor was it some devilish scheme to torpedo the independence of the Civil Service by installing a political appointee in Washington. Instead, it was simply an honest journalistic endeavour.
As a 19-year-old freelance journalist with a passion for politics, I was looking for a big project through which to develop my career.
I decided to aim big and investigate how the Civil Service has been preparing for Brexit, including what senior Government officials really think about our impending departure from the European Union.
There had been repeated reports claiming that Europhile mandarins have been quietly working to thwart the result of the referendum. I just wanted to discover the truth.
Over seven months, I spoke to a large number of Whitehall sources, including both retired and current civil servants. 
From that work I provided exclusive stories for national newspapers, including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun's website and The Mail on Sunday.
But last month, my investigation took an extraordinary turn when a trusted source read out to me an astonishing letter written by Sir Kim in June 2017 to Sir Mark Sedwill, Britain's national security adviser. In it, Sir Kim branded Trump's White House 'inept' and 'utterly dysfunctional'.
I was shocked by the brutal language from a supposedly impartial diplomat.
I knew this was a big story – but little did I know just how big.
I spent several days mulling over what to do before contacting Isabel Oakeshott, a highly experienced journalist with whom I have worked. 
We developed the story together before providing it to The Mail on Sunday. Given the possible controversy, we decided to leave my name out of it. 
I was having dinner in Pizza Express with a friend when Isabel informed me that our story would be on the front page the next morning. Like any journalist would be, I was excited and proud that my story was about to get such prominence.
But neither Isabel nor I expected it to have such a huge impact – but then why should we? 
After all, the Foreign Office, fully aware of the contents of the story ahead of its publication, had breezily brushed off the leak, saying in a statement that its Washington team's strong relations with the White House 'will withstand such mischievous behaviour'.
Of course this made great sense. Britain's special relationship with the US has endured for decades, despite many bumps in the road.
What changed everything was the volcanic rage that the leaked cables provoked from Donald Trump. In a series of fiery tweets, he branded Sir Kim a 'pompous fool', a 'very stupid guy', and declared that his administration would no longer work with him.
The Foreign Office was left reeling: Britain's man in Washington had been humbled and the diplomatic establishment in London left red-faced.
The story and its ramifications featured on the front pages for five consecutive days and continued to snowball. And this gets to the heart of why I have today decided to speak out.
No one can deny that this was an intensely embarrassing episode for the Government, but I challenge anyone to show how the publication of these cables and memos in any way imperilled national security – a point our likely future Prime Minister Boris Johnson made last week.
Indeed, as the latest crisis in the Gulf flared up, Trump went out of his way to stress the 'very close alliance with the UK'.
These cables did not contain any state secrets. Sir Kim was simply articulating what many in Washington and Whitehall have said about the President and his advisers since he took office.
Crucially, the publication of the cables gave readers a first-hand insight into how the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson launched a failed bid to persuade Mr Trump not to ditch the international nuclear deal with Iran.
The consequences of that decision are this weekend being dramatically played out with the seizure of a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.
I believe there is the greatest public interest in informing voters, decision-makers and ordinary people – including Britain's brave Servicemen and women – of the background to these events.
I was, therefore, astonished when Scotland Yard announced nine days ago that its counter-terrorism command had launched a criminal investigation. It was clear to me that they had given in to political pressure.
Nor could I believe the chilling threat from Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu to newspapers not to publish any leaked cables in future – or face prosecution. 
It was a statement that could have been written in North Korea. I think it is punitive, it's intrusive and it's an attack on free speech – something a raft of politicians from Jeremy Hunt to Matt Hancock and even Labour's John McDonnell agree with.
What had initially been treated by the Foreign Office as a bit of 'mischief' was now seen as a potential breach of the Official Secrets Act. 
Embarrassment has become rage but the draconian over-reaction has made me more determined than ever to continue my career as an investigative journalist.
The political storm in which I now find myself is a world away from where this began for me five years ago. I started posting videos about politics on YouTube when I was 14 and a student at a state school in Portsmouth.
The European election in 2014 had seen Nigel Farage's Ukip take 24 seats and 27 per cent of the popular vote. It was the first time since 1910 that a party other than Labour or the Tories had won the largest number of seats in a national election.
I was transfixed. I had not grown up in a political household and I have no family connections in Westminster, but my mum and sister are both pretty Left-wing and we would have lively debates. 
I became particularly interested in the cut and thrust of Prime Minister's Questions and began to edit silly videos of David Cameron having a go at Ed Miliband.
I then started interviewing journalists, commentators and politicians, from both the Left and Right of politics, and posting them on my YouTube channel. 
By Harry Cole, deputy political editor for the Mail On Sunday 
Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill plotted with the Metropolitan Police over an extraordinary attack on press freedom, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
After this newspaper published explosive diplomatic cables, the country's most powerful civil servant, pictured, had to be 'talked out' of sending a letter threatening prosecution.
Hours later, Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu publicly threatened to jail journalists for printing sensitive leaked documents. 
He added that the publication of such material was a breach of the Official Secrets Act and 'could also constitute a criminal offence', and demanded journalists hand over any documents that they were holding.
Mr Basu's statement sparked a furious backlash from across the political divide, led by leadership contenders Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, but Downing Street pointedly refused to condemn the menacing intervention.
Last Monday, neither No 10 nor Scotland Yard would comment on how the statement came about, but the MoS has been told Sir Mark and the Cabinet Office was in 'constant contact' with the Met and had implied their hardline would be backed up by the Government.
But a police source said Mr Basu had been 'left high and dry' after the Government rowed back on plans to attempt to silence this newspaper through the courts. 
It is understood Mr Basu's statement followed an intense debate at the top of Government about how to react to a fresh wave of leaks in last week's MoS.
A senior Government source said: 'The Cabinet Office wanted to send a letter directly threatening prosecution to The Mail on Sunday but was talked out of it by Ministers.'
It is understood that an injunction was discussed, but in the end it was decided the threat of prosecution was best made by the police rather than the Cabinet Office. 
And a senior Downing Street source said it was 'unfathomable' the Cabinet Office was not aware of what Mr Basu was planning on saying. 
However, the Prime Minister's official spokesman repeatedly refused to say exactly what contact there had been between Whitehall and Scotland Yard, insisting only that the statements were 'a matter for the Met'.
One Minister told the MoS that the Cabinet Office felt 'blindsided' at the scale of the leak, and 'were in a total panic about quantity'.
Police are continuing to hunt the source of the leak, but mandarins admit it is an uphill challenge. Foreign Office Permanent Secretary Sir Simon McDonald told MPs: 'Although all these emails and details originated from the Foreign Office… they were distributed across Whitehall so the readership was very wide.' 
An interview I did with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's ex-spin doctor, has had more than 28,000 views, while another with Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday columnist and commentator, has had more than 100,000.
After taking my A-levels at Bishop Luffa School in Chichester, I won a place at the London School of Economics but opted instead to make the most of my digital skills.
I worked first as a video journalist for a political website called Westmonster before stints as a digital strategist at the Taxpayers' Alliance and Leave Means Leave campaign. Since April, I have worked for the Brexit Party, helping run its social media feeds.
I appreciate that my CV – and my pro-Brexit views – will inevitably fuel the conspiracy theories but I want to be absolutely clear: the leak of Sir Kim's cables had absolutely nothing to do with the Brexit Party. 
I decided to start investigating the Civil Service in January completely on my own initiative.
I had recorded a video about the EU for my YouTube channel at the end of last year and was told that some civil servants were driving the negotiations with Brussels in a very pro-Remain way. It sparked my interest. 
I began speaking to current civil servants, ex-civil servants, politicians and journalists to get an understanding of what the role of the Civil Service has been during Brexit.
I had a list of questions that I wanted answered: how accountable are civil servants? How politicised is the Civil Service? How has Theresa May's leadership style impacted the role of the Civil Service in government? Does the Civil Service need reform?
I was shocked by what I was told about how some Whitehall departments are run – by the waste, the incompetence and the lack of accountability. I learnt of an atmosphere of fear gripping the Civil Service. 
This key pillar of the British establishment appears to be dominated by people who support Remain and those who have different views are targeted and singled out. One source broke down in tears as we spoke about what was going wrong.
Some of the most extraordinary things I learned involved the Foreign Office. One source told me about a reception in London with the ambassador of a close UK ally. 
During the event, a British diplomat was heard, by both his own colleagues and their counterparts from the foreign government, to loudly declare that the ambassador was a 'Tory w*****'.
Sir Kim's comments about Trump were jaw-dropping and suggested a lack of impartiality. 
It was clear to me as soon as the President tweeted that Sir Kim would have to resign. I took – and take – no pleasure in his downfall but nor did I feel particularly sad that he will soon be leaving his post. 
Nor do I regret my role in the story, although the events of the past fortnight have taken their toll. I have lost weight and struggled to sleep.
My parents know I have been working with Isabel on the story but I have not told them the details of my involvement.
Facing the possibility of arrest at any minute, I texted my father with a simple message on Thursday: 'Prepare for the worst.'
I have constantly tried to distract myself by working hard during the day and then immersing myself in music and movies when I am at home.
But the knowledge that the state's security apparatus is stretching every sinew to identify my source has left me suspicious of everything. I have been looking over my shoulder and on edge with anxiety.
Last week I was eating my lunch in Victoria Tower Gardens near the Houses of Parliament when I spotted a middle-aged man dressed as a tourist taking pictures of me.
He then furtively ducked behind a tree before, I think, getting into a white van.
Was it the security services? Am I being followed? I will probably never know. It is not hard, however, to see shadows everywhere when you know that police have ordered counter-terrorism specialists to arrest your source.
Isabel also believes she has evidence of state surveillance. One of her research assistants detected that his Snapchat account had been repeatedly accessed from a location near Gloucester. The GCHQ spy agency is in Cheltenham.
I am now braced for the inevitable backlash that will come from going public. I expect to come under political attack, I think surveillance on me will step up, and my life will be intruded on in multiple ways.
Do I expect to be arrested? I honestly don't know. I just hope that in the liberal, free society that Britain is meant to cherish, that police do not go around arresting journalists.
But there is one thing I know for certain: I won't tell anyone the name of my source – and never will.
The source did not have to speak to me – or to drop such a huge story in my lap. The source did not ask for, or receive, any money for speaking up. 
It was a brave and courageous action to take. I admire the chutzpah. And I am fully aware that while I am in a tricky situation, the source is in a far worse position.
I hope the public – and the police – will understand that I cannot betray that extraordinary trust. 
DAVID DAVIS: We must protect the free British press from state bullies 
BY DAVID DAVIS FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY 
Press freedom is the most vital freedom because it underpins all the others. When governments allow that freedom to be corroded they undermine the very foundations of our democracy. 
For that reason we need a new Official Secrets Act, and a general protection for press freedom against the rapidly developing intrusive powers of the modern State.
The events of the past few weeks have demonstrated only too clearly why this is necessary.
Indeed, when The Mail on Sunday published extracts of diplomatic telegrams from our ambassador in Washington criticising President Trump, it was threatened by the Metropolitan Police with an investigation using 'the full force of the State'.
Did the police then act on this threat? Did they trawl through journalists' phone records and spy on their social media accounts? Did they follow reporters and covertly photograph them?
The truth is that we simply cannot know. And, so far, the Government has refused to issue a denial – a truly disturbing state of affairs.
Nobody would take away from the State the right to protect its secrets, particularly those that affect the safety of the citizen.
However, too often in modern times, governments and State agencies have tried to use secrecy laws to protect themselves from embarrassment – or worse, punish those who have already embarrassed them.
The last time the Official Secrets Act was rewritten was after a British jury threw out the prosecution of Clive Ponting, a civil servant who revealed facts about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano.
The jury did this despite being instructed to convict by the judge, clearly because they thought this was a political prosecution rather than one designed to protect our nation.
Only six weeks ago, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland demolished a case brought by the Police Service of Northern Ireland against two journalists who had made a TV programme accusing the police of collusion and cover-up of the Loughinisland massacre carried out by loyalist terrorists 25 years ago.
The journalists were accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act and receiving stolen property because they used a leaked document that had been sent to them anonymously.
After the Lord Chief Justice ruled that the police search warrants had been unlawful, the case collapsed.
Had the police succeeded, every single investigative journalist in the country would have been crippled in their pursuit of the truth about government failures, incompetence or misdemeanours.
Most of us who served in government deplore leaks of diplomatic telegrams. They make the operation of the Foreign Office more difficult.
But the telegrams published by The Mail on Sunday were hardly the epitome of State secrets. 
They were the comments of a leading member of the mandarin class about an American administration they do not like.
Had they contained dangerous information – the identities of intelligence agents in hostile countries or details of a forthcoming Special Forces attack on IS – then the Government would have used the DSMA procedure (a warning from the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, previously known as a D-Notice) to stop publication.
That the Government made no attempt to do that – despite ample prior warning of publication – tells you that the information carried no risk of damaging our country. 
The report carried by The Mail on Sunday was of real and legitimate public interest and this newspaper is to be commended for standing up to a clumsy attempt at State bullying.
It is interesting, too, that Whitehall is quite so heavy-handed when the story clashes with the interests of the Establishment. 
When I was Secretary of State for Brexit there were numerous leaks of sensitive information that undermined our negotiating position and our national interest. 
There were the normal legal inquiries and, when the source of the leak was found, the person concerned lost their job.
But there was no suggestion of criminal charges against the individual who was the source of the leaks, and absolutely no suggestion that we should prosecute the newspapers that carried them. I would consider such an idea repulsive.
The trouble is that legislation such as the Official Secrets Act and other security statutes such as the Investigatory Powers Act (which allows the Government to obtain communications data) are deliberately written to be so complex and all-encompassing that whenever the State chooses to prosecute, it can.
For example, it is an offence under the Act to damage the nation's international relations – a power so vague and sweeping it would give the State an excuse to bring heavy-handed measures against newspapers like The Mail on Sunday in a variety of different circumstances.
I doubt any British jury would actually convict a journalist on such a basis. Nevertheless, the bullying and bluster of the State are corrosive of free speech and will certainly have a chilling effect on investigative journalism. As will the methods that may well have been used in recent days.
Checking of journalist phones can tell the police exactly where they have been, for example.
An analysis of the statistics generated by the phone will tell them to whom they have spoken or sent text messages.
Investigators don't even need to read the contents of intercepted messages to catch a journalist's sources.
Such an approach puts every public-spirited whistleblower at risk, which in turn means many stories that should be in the public domain will never see the light of day.
We urgently need a new Official Secrets Act, and we need an explicit statutory protection for journalists acting in the public interest. The treatment of The Mail on Sunday over the past few weeks demands nothing less. 
 
We have a massive task ahead of us over the next six months. We must leave the European Union, deal or no deal, by October 31. At the same time, we must unleash the dynamism and talent of Britain to make a huge success of our economy by taking full advantage of the new freedom we will have.
This task is not for the faint-hearted. It will take bravery and a strong platform of policies that can deliver. Boris Johnson is the person with the credibility and oomph to lead at this crucial time and bring Britain with us. I am proud to be working with Boris on a policy platform based on popular free-market conservatism that can take us through Brexit and beyond.
In recent years, we’ve lost confidence to make the argument that Conservative principles can change people’s lives. We’ve let Labour tell us that more red tape, public spending and higher taxes are inevitable. We’re told that the country is beset by misery, young people are all flag-waving revolutionaries, wealth creators are the enemy, and only the coming of Jeremy Corbyn’s Socialist utopia can solve our problems.
We need a leader who can fight Labour’s negative and destructive worldview head-on. Boris has proven he’s a winner, and now we need someone to win the battle of ideas. He’s on the side of the challenger, the start-up, the sole trader.
We share a deep optimism about the power of individual creativity and enterprise to deliver progress and prosperity. Only by standing up and making the case for popular, free-market conservatism will we have any hope of winning the next Election and leading Britain into the future.
To succeed, we must harness that enterprising spirit. By cutting taxes like stamp duty that hold back home ownership and growth, we can boost the economy to deliver more jobs and higher wages. 
Where business regulations are having little to no benefit, they should be scrapped and there should be a high bar for new regulations coming in. 
Likewise, we should embrace freeports and free planning zones – areas where firms can import raw materials, make finished goods and then export them, with none of the border taxes the rest of the country has to pay. 
They have the potential to create new hotbeds of economic growth in all corners of the UK.
Conservative mayors in Birmingham, Tees Valley and elsewhere have shown us how it’s done. By unleashing enterprise and building world-class infrastructure, we can make the UK a country of 20 global cities, not just a handful. From Bolton to Walsall, Plymouth to Inverness, our nation is full of pent-up economic potential.
We won’t make Britain greater by punishing high-growth business or regions. Instead, we need to raise every part of Britain up by giving them freedom to succeed.
To do that, we must make sure every person has the basic tools to lead a successful life. That means a good school, opportunity for a great degree or apprenticeship, better local roads and public transport, and ultra high-speed broadband for everyone. But it shouldn’t mean tax hikes. As Treasury Chief Secretary, I know there’s still waste to cut, and every pound wasted on a vanity project is a pound that cannot be spent on a classroom teacher or road upgrade. We need to be prepared to stand up to the vested interests who have come to rely on Government handouts, and if Boris has proven one thing, it’s that he doesn’t shy away from a fight.
Finally, I’m backing Boris because he’s the candidate who best represents the future of Britain. As someone who grew up in a Left-wing household, my first political act was rebellion. It’s why I’ve always believed people should be free to live their lives as they see fit, without being told what to think, how big their pizza should be, or what to view online.
If there’s one thing young people value more than ever, it’s their personal freedom in a world that has never been more open. Boris is a British freedom fighter. He’s the original champion of the social freedoms brought in by Conservatives since 2010. He’s the candidate to carry the Conservative torch to the next generation and win young people over to the cause of freedom in a world where people like Jeremy Corbyn want to take it away. As I’ve travelled the country talking to working people about public spending, they, by and large, tell me the same thing. They don’t want government to control every part of their lives or hand them everything on a plate. They want the opportunity of a good job, to keep more of their own money, to get from A to B without breaking the bank, and a good school place for their child. And they want reasons to be cheerful about the future of their country.
Boris Johnson, and the platform on which he stands, is the candidate who can deliver that. He has massive appeal to people in Britain who ask nothing more than for the opportunity to lead a better life.
He’s the leader who can get us out of the EU, but also give people hope and optimism about their future and the country’s future. There’s only one person for the job, and that’s why I’m backing Boris.
When I heard Theresa May had agreed to meet Jeremy Corbyn with a view to reaching a compromise over Brexit, my immediate response was that she had finally blown it.
If the Labour leader were a moderate and sensible person, no one could reasonably object to her sitting down with him at a moment of national crisis, and trying to hammer out a deal that might command the support of Parliament.
But Corbyn is neither moderate nor sensible. He is an extremist who has given succour to terrorists in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. He is almost certainly a Marxist, and has supported the madcap socialist regime in Venezuela, which has mired that once wealthy country in poverty.
Moreover, throughout the Brexit process he has thrown a spoke in Mrs May’s deal at every opportunity, opposing her not out of conviction — deep down, he is viscerally anti-EU — but because his overriding aim has been to finagle a general election.
So the thought of letting such a man shape the policy for leaving the European Union, and potentially gaining kudos in the process, filled me (and I’ve no doubt many millions of others) with fury and apprehension. That’s why my first thought was that the Prime Minister had lost the plot.
But then, when the dust had settled, I asked myself this question: what else, in the almost unbelievably dire circumstances in which she finds herself, can she do?
The epic seven-hour Cabinet meeting on Tuesday was faced with a choice between No Deal and trying to water down Mrs May’s deal so as to make it acceptable to Labour.
Although a majority in the Cabinet reportedly favoured No Deal, Mrs May resisted it, I believe rightly. Admittedly, it is tempting. Bullying and supercilious Eurocrats who address us as though we are a banana republic are driving many of us mad. How glorious it would be to escape their clutches.
But I’m afraid the short-term economic repercussions of No Deal might well be painful for millions of hard-pressed people. No responsible Prime Minister could take a risk with their livelihoods. 
We must ask ourselves why the range of possibilities has been reduced to an unappetising choice between No Deal and a version of Mrs May’s deal, which is reportedly being doctored by Jeremy Corbyn to include membership of the Customs Union.
I would argue it is chiefly because of the intransigence of the more blinkered members of the Tory European Research Group (ERG) and their even more pig-headed Northern Irish allies in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
Oh, I know the Prime Minister can rightly be blamed for her rotten negotiating skills and her terrible tactics as the EU’s feline Michel Barnier and his aides have danced rings around our leaden-footed and doubtless Remain-orientated emissaries.
Nonetheless, a deal of a sort, which did at least promise this country eventual independence from Brussels, was finally presented by Mrs May — and three times rejected by the ERG (albeit in gradually declining numbers), the DUP and a knot of equally obdurate Tory Remainers. And Labour, too, of course.
Flawed, yes. Disturbing, too, insofar as the so-called Irish backstop potentially locked this country into the Customs Union ad infinitum. But Mrs May’s deal was immeasurably more attractive to Tory Brexiteers than the compromise she discussed yesterday with Jeremy Corbyn in talks he said went ‘very well’.
Why in God’s name didn’t they accept a better deal when they could? It’s not as though they weren’t warned a thousand times that, to quote the Prime Minister, they might ‘lose Brexit altogether’.
It’s true that when her deal came back for the third time of asking, some Brexiteers — Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith — caved in, and reluctantly supported it. But they took so long to do so that there was no time to bring their more bone-headed colleagues on board. 
When the history of Brexit is eventually written by fair and dispassionate hands, I hope the failures of the extreme Brexiteers will not be glossed over. They told us the process would be quick and easy. It has proved the opposite.
Boris Johnson idiotically informed us that we could ‘have our cake and eat it’. As things have transpired, it looks as though we may end up with a smallish slice of something rather crumbly.
As is invariably the way with zealots, it never occurs to these people that they may bear even the tiniest degree of responsibility for what has gone wrong, or that they may have got their political calculations in a twist.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was at it again on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, blaming Mrs May for her ham-fisted negotiating skills, but disavowing all blame for having rejected a deal that would have largely honoured the outcome of the 2016 Referendum.
Both Rees-Mogg and Iain Duncan Smith have laid into the Prime Minister for agreeing to talk with Corbyn, and hard-line Brexiteers are lining up to excoriate her for the compromise they suspect she is hatching. It doesn’t enter their minds that she wouldn’t have had to meet the Labour leader if they had backed her deal when it mattered.
As for the DUP, they’re a cussed, selfish and narrow lot. All they care about is maintaining Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom — but not about the wider interests of that kingdom.
They aren’t greatly exercised by the prospect of the UK remaining in the Customs Union, since all that matters to them is enjoying exactly the same terms as the rest of the country.
Should the rest of us care about staying in the Customs Union? I am distinctly queasy. Leaving it was one of Theresa May’s ‘red lines’ for good reason. It would breach the 2017 Tory manifesto, though as she is in the process of falling on her sword she could probably live with that betrayal.
Unfortunately, if we remain in the Customs Union we will find ourselves subject to a stream of new trade rules over which we will have absolutely no control. As a major member of the EU, the United Kingdom was able to influence the bloc’s trade policy.
Continued involvement in the Customs Union would also mean this country would be unable to strike bilateral trade deals with other countries that would take account of our huge strengths in services. 
Some will reasonably wonder whether, if we sign up to the Customs Union, it is worth leaving the EU at all. It is certainly a thought that has been running through my mind.
On the other hand, Mrs May is reportedly determined to resist any idea Labour might have that we should stay part of the Single Market, and thereby lose control of our borders. But she may be forced to accept concessions on workers’ right that would prove expensive.
If a re-worked deal is agreed between the two leaders, there will be enormous Tory indignation and some Labour backbench unhappiness. Corbyn’s reputation will be enhanced. He will be a step closer to the door of No. 10.
The hard-line Brexiteers can blame Theresa May as much as they like for an increasingly botched outcome. But I’m afraid they are the worst culprits for having thrown out the best version of Brexit we were ever going to get.
 
After Marmite and other products were pulled from Tesco in a post-Brexit vote pricing row, this sobering infographic is a reminder that a handful of companies own almost all of the food and drink brands in the world.
Unilever, the world’s second largest grocery manufacturer, reportedly halted deliveries its products including Marmite, Flora, Pot Noodle and PG Tips after Tesco reportedly refused to pay more for them after the pound fell in value.
Unilever owns hundreds of brand including Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum, Coleman’s mustard, Lipton, Stork and Cornetto which were all not being sold online by Tesco. The crisis is now reportedly “resolved”.
According to Oxfam, Unilever is one of 10 companies that owns the vast majority of the global grocery industry - as evidenced by this infographic below.
The infographic, released in 2014, seems all the more pertinent as consumers realise that Unilever’s dispute with Tesco meant a lot more than just Marmite left be leaving our shelves while the dispute was unresolved.
When it released the infographic, Oxfam said: “It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s true: There really are 10 companies that control most of the food and drinks you’ll find in the grocery store. Between them, these giants—whose revenues add up to more than a billion dollars a day—own hundreds of common brands, from Cheerios to Odwalla to Tropicana.”
It released the image as part of its ‘Behind the Brands’ campaign calling on big businesses to be ethical.
The charity quoted a USA Today writer saying: “Why should these huge companies care about doing business responsibly? First, because their global operations touch countless lives. “These corporations are so powerful that their policies can have a major impact on the diets and working conditions of people worldwide, as well as on the environment.
“Second, because shoppers these days think about factors like fairness and sustainability—and we’re increasingly (and successfully) demanding that the brands we buy do the same. These food companies may be big, but no company is too big to listen to its customers.”
MelaniePhillips.com
Going wherever the evidence leads
There are now seven weeks to go until the UK is due to leave the EU, and things are getting messier and angrier by the day. Well, there’s a surprise.
Faced with Mrs May’s request from the British parliament to compromise on the Irish backstop, as a result of which it might then agree to a deal, the EU told the UK to go to hell.
Donald Tusk, the EU Council president, observed on Twitter: “I’ve been wondering what that special place in hell looks like, for those who promoted Brexit, without even a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely.”
To which the EU’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt added: “I doubt Lucifer would welcome them, as after what they did to Britain they would even manage to divide Hell.”
The European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said the backstop cannot be replaced; Martin Selmayr, chief of the EU civil service, said Mrs May’s request wasn’t even being considered.
Such arrogant and contemptuous bullying has enraged even some Remainers. Just who do they think they are, people are fuming. Well, this is what they are, and this is why the UK wants to leave the EU.
In accordance with their customary Mafia-style tactics, the Eurocrats believe they have made the UK an offer it cannot refuse. All that’s needed now is for Mrs May to wake up in Downing Street to find a dismembered leg in her bed shod in a leopard-print shoe.
This EU reaction was always entirely predictable. As Fraser Nelson says in today’s Telegraph, its leaders think they must demonstrate that leaving the EU entails unbearable agony. This is because they are all too aware that in several member states, more and more people are expressing a fervent desire to leave. To nip this in the bud, the EU cannot let the UK be seen to prosper from Brexit.
The inescapable implication of that, however, is that they know the UK will indeed prosper. Predictions by the Bank of England and other solidly Remainer institutions that a vote for Brexit would cause the economy to collapse have proved to date spectacularly wrong.
Now the Bank’s same forecasting geniuses have downgraded its growth forecast for 2019 from 1.7 per cent to 1.2 per cent. But although the Bank’s Governor, Mark Carney, repeatedly warns against a no-deal Brexit, he has acknowledged that the downgrade is due to a slowing global economy as well as Brexit uncertainty.
As he said: “The fog of Brexit is causing short-term volatility in the economic data and, more fundamentally, it’s creating a series of tensions.” And the Bank added: “The economic outlook will continue to depend significantly on the nature of EU withdrawal, in particular the new trading arrangements between the EU and the UK, whether the transition to them is abrupt or smooth, and how households, businesses and financial markets respond.”
Quite. The fact is that no-one knows what’s going to happen; and financial markets hate uncertainty above all else. But it stands to reason that, notwithstanding some unavoidable problems and shocks along the way, the world’s fifth largest economy will, when freed of its EU shackles, ultimately do well.
Only last month, Carney told the Commons Treasury Select Committee: “Financial stability risks around [the EU exit] process are greater on the continent than they are in the UK. There is a tremendous financial services capacity in Britain and even though there will be shortfalls at the point of leaving [depending on the exit arrangement], these are more likely to affect Europe”.
You bet. The EU is currently staring at its own increasing political and economic wreckage. The Eurozone has been given an economic downgrade. The German economy is poised at the edge of recession. In France, the self-styled heir to Napoleon and Jupiter, President Emmanuel Macron, has failed to quash the “yellow vests” uprising and is quarrelling with Italy and Germany. The upcoming EU elections may return a slew of eurosceptic commissioners and bring the agenda of “ever-closer union” to a juddering halt.
And Brexit could deliver in addition a possibly fatal wounding blow.
The Eurocrats’ strategy rests on their belief that the UK will be so frightened by leaving with no deal that at the last minute parliament will cave in and vote to support the deal the EU brokered with Mrs May.
Some believe that prospect has improved with the olive branch offered to Mrs May by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, in the form of a set of “compromise” conditions on the basis of which Labour would support her deal.
As has been widely observed, it’s hard to see how this could happen since he is sticking to Labour’s insistence that after Brexit there must be a customs union arrangement with the EU – which means not leaving EU control at all.
Some, though, think that enough “soft” Labour Brexiteers will want to accept this compromise, enabling Mrs May to isolate the true Brexiteers in parliament and thus get her deal through.
But that would mean Mrs May suddenly forgetting what she has understood all along in having made a customs union/single market her red lines. This is that Brexiteers know these options would clearly negate the referendum result; and then they would never vote Conservative again and the party might even break apart altogether.
As March 29 approaches, the British should have one thing in mind above all: that the EU are digging in like this because they are terrified of Brexit. And the reason for that is that if Britain leaves the EU, not through Mrs May’s Brexit-in-name-only-Remain-by-stealth deal but through a clear, undeniable, unequivocal departure, the EU knows this will accelerate its own disintegration while it watches the UK start to prosper.
Which is why it may then be forced to come cap-in-hand for a deal on British terms. Which is why it is ONLY by leaving with no deal that the UK has any prospect of gaining the whip hand in the negotiations that really matter – to establish a permanent trading relationship between the UK and the EU once Brexit has occurred.
Which is why MPs and the rest of the country must now screw their courage to the sticking place and keep their nerve.
NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
European attitudes towards Brexit have hardened in the six months since the referendum, according to a new report.
Support for Britain is declining ‘significantly’ because of the approach Theresa May has taken, the report suggests.
Research by a group of academics working on the UK in a Changing Europe initiative, warns that many in Europe regard the UK as ‘living on Fantasy Island’ over its hopes for its new relationship with the EU.
It’s believed the hostilities could lead to a ‘showdown’ following the tabling of Article 50 in March.
A crunch issue is likely to be the divorce bill expected to be presented to the UK by the European Commission, which reports suggest could be as much as £50 to £60 billion.
The new report’s authors predicted the demand would be ‘a considerable embarrassment’ politically for Theresa May and could result in a court battle which would drag on long after the expected date of UK withdrawal in 2019.
MORE : Woman sexually assaulted in her own home as her terrified children forced to listen
London School of Economics assistant professor Sara Hagemann said that Mrs May’s post-referendum tour of EU capitals ‘seems to have generated little support for the British cause’.
The prospect of Brexit has ‘united the EU27 to a degree rarely seen before’, with none of the remaining members ready to agree to an arrangement that looks attractive to eurosceptics in their own countries, she wrote.
‘While several of these countries first expressed the hope that a solution would be found to keep London “closely involved in EU affairs”, attitudes are now quite different,’ said Dr Hagemann.
‘The UK Government is seen as working opportunistically with only UK interests in mind and little consideration for wider European issues and priorities.
‘Therefore, support for the British has declined significantly even amongst London’s erstwhile friends.’
Adding: ‘The UK Government can take the tone and position of this small and like-minded ally as a signal of what is ahead when actual negotiations begin during 2017.’
The key moment in the Brexit negotiations is likely not to be Mrs May’s tabling of Article 50 – which triggers the two-year period of negotiations – but the EU’s response to it, said Dr Armstrong in the new report, entitled Brexit: Six Months On.
‘If the continental consensus is that the UK is still living on Fantasy Island, we could be heading for a showdown sooner than anyone expects,’ he wrote.
The EU response, expected within a few weeks of the invocation of Article 50, is likely to include the ‘divorce bill’ demand to cover UK contributions to the EU seven-year budget, which runs until 2020; existing commitments which will become due for payment in the years to 2023; the UK’s share of pensions for EU staff; and guarantees which could be called upon in the future.
Cambridge University EU law professor Catherine Barnard said any legal battle over the size of the payment could finally have to be settled by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which would take ‘years and years.
The court case would not necessarily derail the Article 50 talks, but the UK could have to leave the EU without knowing what the final size of the bill was going to be, she predicted.
The UK in a Changing Europe report said the UK Government’s response to the Brexit vote had been characterised by “massive shock and apparent inertia”, with ministers’ refusal to spell out their plans appearing “less like calmness and more like transfixion in the Article 50 headlights”.
Based on the few details which ministers have revealed, the authors assess that Mrs May is probably aiming to take Britain out of the single market – and possibly the customs union – and to seek a free trade deal for goods and sectoral agreements to allow as broad as possible access for services. Meanwhile, immigration would be brought “fully” under UK Government control, resulting in a “large fall” in EU migration to the country.
Although the Prime Minister has ruled out European Court of Justice jurisdiction over UK law, she has left open the option of the EFTA Court, which applies the same rulebook to Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, the report noted.
Not convinced? Find out more »
Ministers are being urged to sack Michael Heseltine as a government advisor after he put himself at the head of a rebel Tory campaign against the Brexit Bill in the House of Lords. 
The peer has vowed to defy orders by Conservative whips to not vote for a change to the legislation which would give Parliament a veto over the outcome of Mrs May's Brussels negotiations, including if she walks away without a deal.
Writing in today's Mail on Sunday, Lord Heseltine says: 'This is not a confrontation with the Government. It is to ensure the Commons can exercise its authority over the defining issue of our time.'
But Tory MP Michael Fabricant lashed out at the peer's 'disloyalty' and urged Communities Secretary Sajid Javid to drop the peer from the National Infrastructure Commission.
'Michael Heseltine is a serial killer of Eurosceptic legislation so no-one should be surprised by his latest disloyalty. Sajid needs to think long and hard about this,' he told MailOnline.
Aides to Mr Javid insisted appointments to the commission were the responsibility of the Treasury.
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Amber Rudd drew battle lines by insisting there is 'no possibility' of the government accepting changes to the Bill. 
'No – I don't think there is any possibility and I don't think there should be,' she told ITV's Peston show.
'The fact is the House of Commons, of which (Lord Heseltine) was such a fantastic member of in his time, did pass it by a big majority. I hope he will reconsider.'

The revolt comes at the same time as a separate campaign to force Mrs May to guarantee the rights of EU nationals in the UK to stay here – before talks even begin.
However, senior Ministers vowed to defeat both moves, claiming they would force Mrs May to enter Brexit talks 'with one hand behind her back'.
They denied reports that the Prime Minister was ready to grant concessions, and called Lord Heseltine and his supporters 'bad losers who are trying to wreck Brexit'.
Ardent pro-European Lord Heseltine, 83, will join forces with Labour, Lib Dem and fellow dissident Tory peers in a Brexit debate this week. 
If his move succeeds, up to 20 rebel Conservative MPs are threatening to inflict a similar defeat when the legislation returns to the Commons.
'The fight back starts here,' says the peer today. 'My opponents will argue that the people have spoken, the [Brexit] mandate secured and the future cast. My experience stands against this argument.' 
He said he would vote against the Conservative three-line whip with a heavy heart, having done so only three times in a parliamentary career stretching back more than 50 years.
Lord Heseltine explained why he felt justified in leading parliamentary 'opposition' to Mrs May despite her Brexit mandate from the EU referendum. 
Comparing it to his successful opposition to Left-wing laws put forward by the Labour Government in the 1960s, he said: 'We used parliamentary votes to challenge Bill after Bill despite their presence in the Government manifesto.'
Lord Heseltine also echoed calls for a second EU referendum if the Brexit talks end in disaster and there is evidence that voters have changed their mind.
'At the moment there is no evidence that public opinion has changed. The PM rides high in the polls. But what if this changes?'
He was backed by Lord Pannick, the lawyer who led the successful Supreme Court action to give MPs the right to vote on Article 50.
Lord Pannick told The Mail on Sunday that Mrs May's stance was inconsistent. 'She agrees Parliament should have the final say on the [EU] agreement at the end of Brexit negotiations,' he said.
'But she refuses to put this in the Brexit Bill or give the same commitment to allow Parliament to decide if the Government intends to leave the EU with no agreement.' He was confident peers and MPs would agree this had to be put right.  
Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Article 50 campaigner Gina Miller backed Tory peer Lord Heseltine's call for the EU Bill to be amended to include a provision for Parliament to debate the final exit deal.
'This is not about the vote for the people, this is about Parliament doing its sovereign duty,' she said. 
But responding to Ms Miller on the programme, Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie said her proposition risked 'unpicking the vote of the people'.  
Ms Miller fired back: 'Why are you so frightened of Parliament having this debate?'

But it has also effectively admitted that it is not really sure what that recession will look like, and cannot say with any certainty what is going to happen to the British economy going forward.
In research compiled by economists Jacob Nell and Melanie Baker, Morgan Stanley argues that the environment surrounding the British economy is so uncertain that trying to forecast exactly what the coming recession entails, saying that "high uncertainty means low confidence in forecast detail."
Here is the crucial extract from Morgan Stanley's "UK Macro Summer Outlook" note, circulated to clients this week (emphasis ours):
"Given pervasive uncertainty over how the UK's relationship with the EU will develop, the potential for major political repercussions and economic consequences,and the lack of a clear precedent, we have high confidence in the direction of our forecast and the central role of investment, but not in the depth of the slowdown or profile of the recovery."
Nell and Baker note that one of the biggest risks they see in terms of their forecasts being wrong, is that the coming slowdown in the UK economy — which will eventually turn into a recession — could actually come about slower than previously expected. That is an idea already put forward by the Bank of England, which on Wednesday argued that: "As yet, there was no clear evidence of a sharp general slowing in activity."
Here is more from Morgan Stanley:
"In particular, we see a risk that the slowdown could come through more slowly, e.g., if firms complete investment under way and only cut back on new investment more gradually, and that the recovery could also be more gradual, e.g., if the policy response is less robust or uncertainty persists."
While economic forecasts turning out to be wide of the mark isn't particularly rare — just look at the way IMF growth forecasts have consistently been revised downwards in recent years — what is rare, is an organisation admitting that it isn't particularly confident in what it says will happen. Morgan Stanley's lack of confidence in its own forecasts just shows how insanely uncertain things are in Britain right now.
Reset on:
UNIONS could undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda for change if they back a referendum on the EU exit deal, Mick Cash warned today.
The RMT leader said the labour movement should refuse to “line up” with Blairites and Tories in backing a “people’s vote.”
But delegates at TUC Congress voted to ratify a general council statement saying the option of a “final say” referendum should not be “ruled out.”
General union GMB has publicly backed a vote on the Brexit deal, but other unions would prefer to push for an early general election.
Backing the consensus position, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey told the hall: “I understand the argument for a so-called ‘people’s vote’ on the deal — not on leaving the EU. That people’s vote has already happened.”
He said the referendum option “must be left on the table,” arguing: “Let’s focus on the prize — sweeping this government away in a general election and giving a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn the chance to repair two wasted years of Tory wrangling.”
Mr Cash, whose union represents transport staff, seafarers and oil workers, said: “We need to understand those in the Westminster bubble are calling for a people’s vote for the sole reason of a second referendum on the EU. They are your Chuka Umunnas, your Chris Leslies, your Peter Mandelsons your Tony Blairs, the Lib Dems.”
He said these politicians “want us in the EU so that the EU can stop Jeremy Corbyn’s plans for nationalisation and for state aid and for workers’ rights.”
He stormed: “We, the trade union movement, will be lining up with people who are seeking to force the hand of Jeremy Corbyn and with people who want to attack the socialist leadership of the Labour Party and who want to attack socialist policies.”
But public sector union PCS leader Mark Serwotka argued: “We are not with Chuka Umunna, but neither are we with Jacob Rees-Mogg.
“We are an independent working-class movement.”
Addressing Congress earlier in the day, TUC leader Frances O’Grady described EU laws as “the rock that national laws and union agreements build on.”
She said the TUC would “throw its full weight behind a campaign” for a “popular vote” if the government “come back with a deal that doesn’t put workers’ first.”
Communication Workers Union general secretary Dave Ward said he wanted “a people’s government” rather than a “people’s vote,” warning: “We have got absolutely no reason to support a second referendum that re-runs the debate that divides our country at the moment.”
Royal College of Midwives policy director Jon Skewes suggested an election was unlikely, arguing: “They will change the guard rather than do that.”
At a fringe meeting, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union official Sarah Woolley said: “We need to embrace that the UK is leaving the EU. A decision was made and we need to be proactive and make sure that our members are protected.
"The only thing that is certain is that next April we won’t be a member of the EU.”
She said unions should threaten PM Theresa May with a general strike “if you are not going to do the deal we want.”
Mick Whelan, who leads train drivers’ union Aslef, told the same meeting that the EU Fourth Rail Package could enforce British-style privatisation across Europe.
“We don’t apologise for being protectionist about where we want to be for our railway,” he said.
And economist Costas Lapavitsas, a former Syriza member of the Greek legislature, said: “There’s a considerable ignorance in this country about what the European Union is.
“[The] Maastrict [treaty] basically created a union which is a neoliberal machine.
“We need an internationalist position on this ... but internationalism of labour is not the same as internationalism of capital.”
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Nissan has confirmed it will build both the new Qashqai and the X-Trail SUV at its Sunderland plant following government "support and assurances".
The Japanese company's commitment to Britain's biggest car plant had been in doubt following the EU referendum.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the government must make public any deals struck with the firm.
However, Business Secretary Greg Clark said there was "no question of financial compensation" for Nissan.
The company's decision comes as economic growth in the three months after the Brexit vote confounded expectations, increasing by 0.5% - slower than the 0.7% in the previous quarter but higher than analysts' estimates of about 0.3%.
Nissan's decision is the first major development for the car industry since the Brexit vote and secures 7,000 jobs.
"The support and assurances of the UK government enabled us to decide that the next-generation Qashqai and X-Trail will be produced at Sunderland," said Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's chief executive, adding that he welcomed Prime Minister Theresa May's "commitment to the automotive industry in Britain".
Last month, he warned that Nissan might not invest in the Sunderland plant unless the government guaranteed compensation for costs related to any new trade tariffs resulting from Brexit.
Mrs May described the announcement as "fantastic news", adding: "This vote of confidence shows Britain is open for business."
Mr Clark said: "The fact Nissan have not only made a long-term commitment to build the next generation Qashqai and X-Trail at Sunderland, but decided to upgrade their factory to a super-plant, manufacturing over 600,000 cars a year, is proof of the strength of the sector."
A Nissan spokesman said making the X-Trail at Sunderland could lead to hundreds of new jobs being created in the coming years. It will be the first time the model has been made outside Japan.
The production line was stopped at 11am on Thursday so workers could be told about the decision.
A senior Nissan Europe executive, Colin Lawther, said the company had received "no special deal".
"It's just a commitment from the government to work with the whole of the automotive industry to make sure the whole automotive industry in the UK remains competitive," he told the BBC.
"We would expect nothing for us that the rest of the industry wouldn't be able to have access to. We see this as a whole industry thing, not a Nissan thing."
We don't know the details of the "support and assurance" that Nissan extracted from the UK government. But it was clearly enough to secure a commitment from Nissan to build not one, but two new cars at the Sunderland plant.
The promise to shield Nissan from the impact of Brexit will not be lost on rival manufacturers, both those already in the UK as well as those that might be tempted to come.
Will other carmakers with big investment decisions to make now favour Britain? It's possible - but now only after securing a few government guarantees.
The UK car industry has been vocal in warning about the impact of an exit from the single market.
Although the cheaper pound makes their exports more attractive, a hard Brexit and the prospect of trade tariffs will add to their costs.
It seems likely that the government has now promised some sort of financial support to cushion Nissan against such an impact. That will be controversial, of course. But once outside the EU, it won't necessarily be illegal.
Building the X-Trail SUV is an unexpected addition to the model line-up at Sunderland, which makes almost one in three cars built in Britain and produced 475,000 vehicles last year - 80% of which were exported.
The Sunderland plant opened in 1986 and has produced almost nine million cars over the past three decades.
Production of the next Qashqai model is expected to begin in 2018 or 2019.
Mike Hawes, chief executive of industry body the SMMT, said Nissan's announcement was good news for the UK's automotive sector.
But he added: "We need government to provide public assurance to investors that our advantages will be maintained - namely, a competitive business environment, the ability to recruit talent from abroad and the continuation of all the benefits of the single market as we leave the EU."
Figures released by the SMMT on Thursday showed the UK's car industry is performing strongly, with almost 1.3 million vehicles produced in the nine months to September - a 10.5% increase on the same period last year.
Just over one million vehicles were produced for export markets.

A Welsh MP has called for an immediate stop to the £100 million ‘Get Ready for Brexit’ ad campaign, saying that it was nothing more than a “thinly veiled piece of political propaganda”.
The adverts claim that the UK is set to leave on the 31 October despite the Prime Minister having already written a letter to the European Union requesting an extension to Article 50.
The EU are expected to agree to a three month extension, until January, today.
Despite this, the UK Government has confirmed that the advertising campaign is still live and spending will continue.
Plaid Cymru MP for Arfon Hywel Williams said that the adverts should be pulled and that the money should be spent on services such as the NHS instead.
“Boris Johnson has made a career out of peddling dodgy figures – from £350 million for the NHS on the side of that big, red, Brexit bus, to his false-promise of a 31 October exit day,” he said. “You simply cannot trust him.
“It is disgraceful that the ‘Get Ready for Brexit’ adverts claiming that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October are still running even though the Prime Minister has asked for an extension.
“We have known for some time that this is nothing more than thinly veiled political propaganda that is costing the taxpayer £100 million. To borrow a phrase, we could have been spending this money on the NHS instead.
“These false adverts must now stop, before millions more in taxpayers’ money is wasted.
“Fundamentally, it’s campaigns like this that destroy public trust. This will inevitably lead to the public being evermore sceptical of future government information campaigns.”

Departure
Under a proposal circulated to EU27 governments on Sunday the EU would grant Britain’s request for a Brexit delay until the end of January, while leaving open the possibility for it to leave on December 1 2019 or on New Year’s Day if its withdrawal treaty has been ratified.
The plan, which is set to be discussed by national ambassadors in Brussels this morning, would also see EU leaders exclude any reopening of Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal, ruling out further negotiations on the terms of the UK’s departure.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had said in the past he would prefer to be “dead in a ditch” than miss the October 31 deadline.

I am trying to imagine the situation where a small business owner, a farmer, someone working in the third sector etc etc who somehow had been totally unware of what has been happpening for the last three years, would be driving along and see one of these posters and go ‘Oh, I didn’t know about all this, but I really ought to do something now before it is too late.’  And then would actually go to the website and gather some useful information…
Unfortunately that requires the imaginative  abilities of Charles Dickens or Margaret Attwoood.
Ah, that means you get the UK Gov. mails each weekend?
btw I received a new passport two weeks ago, with no European Union text on cover.
Thanks for the article. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had said in the past he would prefer to be “dead in a ditch” – It seems that him and his party is already “dead in a ditch”. …And England will follow if the voters don’t boot him and his now extremist party out. His group has booted out the more moderate centre-right (EPP supported). The greatest stability for Cymru Wales is to go our own way, with our own choices as an independent nation. …And this is all the more urgent. Nation.Cymru, Yes Cymru, and every section of our movement should… Great stuff!  Plaid should go for the positive message, as  in Scandia.
Finland, Sweden, Denmark all look forward to what Europe can become
A neighbour of England, or partner with Europe?
Visit any of Wales’ cathedrals: Llandaf, Aberhonddu, Tyddewi, Bangor, etc…
Propaganda using imagery is nothing new. It’s not going anywhere.

Emily Thornberry has called for any compromise deal reached between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn to be subject to a referendum, with the option either to accept the deal or remain in the European Union, in a letter to Labour MPs.
Thornberry, who for personal reasons was unable to attend tonight’s emergency meeting of the Shadow Cabinet, laid out her thinking in an email to every member of the parliamentary Labour party. It complicates any prospect that Labour will facilitate the passage of a Brexit deal, as May is an avowed opponent of a second referendum.
The full letter is below
Dear All,
I won’t be able to be at the Emergency Shadow Cabinet later. But assuming one of the main topics of discussion will be whether to insist that any proposed compromise deal we agree to support will be subject to a confirmatory public vote, with “Remain” as the other alternative. What I would have said is that if we look like reaching any other decision than confirmatory vote that would be in breach of the decision made unanimously by Conference in Liverpool and overwhelmingly supported by our members and it needs to be put to a vote‎ by the Shadow Cabinet.
The reason I think that is fundamental is that – if that is the outcome – those of us who oppose it can only take collective responsibility for the decision – and defend it in public and on the media – if we are having to go along with what was democratically agreed between us, whether we personally agreed or not, especially given the breach of our commitments to our members at conference.
The Tory Cabinet had that kind of vote yesterday after their eight-hour discussion yesterday so I think it is the least we should be doing after the one-hour discussion this evening.
And assuming all colleagues will agree with that principle, and given my absence, can I – in writing – confirm that my votes are that yes, any deal agreed by Parliament must be subject to a confirmatory public vote, and yes, the other option on the ballot must be Remain.
I hope the meeting goes well,
Emily

Theresa May's decision may age as badly as her decision not to go for an early election.
By
                    Stephen Bush
So, there won’t be another referendum on Scottish independence after all – at least, not yet. Theresa May has rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s proposed timetable for a referendum before the Brexit negotiations are complete. Is it the right call?
Well, as far as Scottish opinion is concerned, we don’t have as much data as I’d like, but all of it suggests that the answer to that question is “No”.
We’ve had three polls since Sturgeon’s announcement, two showing a spike in support for independence, one for the status quo, but both, crucially, within the margin of error of the 55 to 45 per cent result from the last referendum.
We also have a wealth of polling showing that Scottish voters, on the whole, don’t want another independence referendum, at least not yet. As you’d expect, a majority of people who voted No at the last referendum but also a sizable chunk of people who voted Yes have no appetite to rerun the contest just yet. But that polling also shows that people think that if the Scottish Parliament asks for a referendum, Westminster shouldn’t block it.
So it feels as if May has turned a negative for the SNP – revisiting a battle that people didn’t want to have – into a positive by blocking it.
She has made another gamble, too. If the referendum is held before Britain’s deal with the EU27 is known, the contest will be between one hypothetical relationship between the European Union and Britain, and the fixed pre-conditions of Scottish membership of the EU or the EEA.  If it is held after, it will be on the actual deal that Britain has got.
If that deal is a good one, that advantages May. But if Britain does get a bad deal or worse still leaves without one, May’s decision not to fight a second referendum may age as badly as her decision not to get her own mandate while Labour was flat on its back last summer.

By
                    Ben Gartside
On Friday, the breakaway Labour and Conservative MPs who had formed The Independent Group started the process of formally registering as a new political party with the Electoral Commission. The party applied to registered under the name Change UK, and former Conservative MP and “most expensive backbencher ever” Heidi Allen was anointed interim leader, with a permanent leader set to be elected by the party’s inaugural conference in September.
Allen’s appointment is part of a wider attempt by TIG to formalise their political party status ahead of what its MPs feel may be a potential political bonanza: the European elections that would result from a long Article 50 extension. Insiders described this process as “chaotic”, but add: “The Euros are too good an opportunity to miss”.
Allen is also deemed as important in being able to reach Westminster outsiders more easily: sources involved in the decision-making process have said that the party is enthusiastic to get “normal people” to stand as candidates, as opposed to politicos and obsessives from within the Westminster bubble.
The European elections are being described internally as a “second referendum before a second referendum”. Insiders believe that standing on an explicitly pro-EU platform will allow the party to win over protest voters, hoping they’ll be more likely to stay with the party in a general election as Labour and Conservatives struggle to decide how to treat the new party.
Allen is also seen as having a unique appeal to “shire Remainers”. She’s been favoured over current group spokesman Chuka Umunna on the grounds that having Change UK MEPs in multiple regions would be more impressive than good results in London and nowhere else.
Multiple sources refused to rule out an electoral pact between TIG and the Lib Dems in a European Election campaign, so as to unite the Pro-EU vote. It is however seen as unlikely, due to Lib Dem opposition to an agreement, and the lack of an existing party structure within TIG, which means it’s currently focused on cementing basic organisation.
One area in which the party believes it is prepared is funding. Insiders say that the party may actually have more money immediately available than the Tories do, thanks to success with what the party considers “smaller donors” (five figures or less), and a handful of large donors.
The new party is also hoping to recruit further MPs, with potential defectors split into three camps. In the first group, around half a dozen MPs have “mentally checked-out” from their parties, and are simply looking for an excuse to defect: depending on the MP, this may be a general election, a long Article 50 extension or no deal.
A second, larger group of around a dozen MPs are favourable to the party, but have opted to take a more strategic approach. While they are supportive of TIG, the prospect of a snap election or a continually uncertain political climate, preventing them from certainty of their political career continuing if they defect.
Thirdly are the already Independent MPs, who cannot currently join due to the political or social climate. Frank Field and Ian Austin, two former Labour MPs who support May’s deal, are touted as potential joiners once Brexit has come to a conclusion. Meanwhile, John Woodcock and Ivan Lewis, two former Labour MPs who left the party under the shroud of sexual harassment allegations, are very unlikely to join the party until it has a behavioural and compliance unit to decide their suitability.

The former deputy prime minister is playing a central role in the campaign to force a vote on the government's Brexit plans.
By
                    Serena Kutchinksy
After spending half a decade as a political pariah, Nick Clegg seems to be on his way to a comeback of sorts. The former Liberal Democrat leader has teamed up with his old political rival, Ed Miliband, and a small but significant group of Tory Remainers, to lead the call for there to be full parliamentary scrutiny of the government’s Brexit plan. Earlier this week, he found himself resoundingly cheered from the Labour benches as he demanded to know how the government could claim the right to know what Brexit means.
During today’s parliamentary debate on Brexit he went further, effectively accusing the Prime Minister of hypocrisy over her reluctance to allow parliamentary scrutiny, in an impressive speech which won plaudits from the twitterati.
As the former Deputy Prime Minister, Clegg understands the inner-workings of both the Tory party and Whitehall better than most politicians. He also has a firm grip on the intricacies of Brussels bureaucracy. Before becoming an MEP in 1999, he worked as European Commission trade negotiator.
Now the Brexit spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, he has been pushing the government to allow MPs a vote before Article 50 is triggered. The government has conceded a debate, but not a formal vote. Clegg says Theresa May and Brexit Secretary David Davis’ position is “based on multiple fallacies”.
Freed from the shackles of government, Clegg’s frustration with his former coalition partners is clear. He criticises May’s leadership style, accusing the Prime Minister of preferring to operate behind closed doors.
“She is treating parliament much the same as she treated the Home Office . . . it has a particular culture in the government system, it relies on secrecy and does not welcome scrutiny. A strong home secretary, as she was, therefore tends to adopt quite a ‘command and control’ way of running things, but that is not the right approach for something as important and complex as Brexit,” he said.
Clegg attacks the notion that the government thinks it has a mandate to impose whatever version of Brexit it chooses on the British public, including the 48 per cent who voted to stay in the EU. “The government thinks the terms of our exit are nothing more than a technical negotiating matter, when in reality they are of a profound constitutional significance,” he says. “Decisions such as whether you stay in the single market are not negotiating chips to be kept close to the government’s chest.”
But is this all sour grapes? Are Clegg and his europhile friends merely struggling to accept the referendum result and denying the democratic will of the British people? “That’s absurd,” snorts Clegg. His aim, and that of his cohorts, is not to “in any shape or form” seek to rerun the referendum, but rather to enforce accountability over a hugely important constitutional decision. He lays the blame for what he calls “this sputtering nonsense” firmly at the door of “people such as Iain Duncan Smith and the more frothy Tory press like the Daily Mail”.
These hardcore Brexiteers are lashing out, in his view, because the false promises made during the Leave campaign are coming back to haunt them. Nobody talks anymore about funding the NHS out of our contribution to the EU budget (the much-discussed £350m figure) or the perceived threat of Turkey’s potential EU membership.
“There was a dark cynicism in their [the Leave campaigners’] pitch to the British people – they persuaded people to take a leap of faith out of the EU and withheld their views about what this would mean in practice.”
He mocks the notion that the Brexit negotiations need to be kept under wraps in order not to prejudice any potential deal with the EU. “The Brexiteers sound like the agents of a Premier League footballer that they are trying to flog to another club. It’s not like that . . .  It’s hugely important that the early signals from Theresa May assert her view of what she thinks is in the national interest, but they also need to be politically intelligent in terms of how they are perceived across the continent.”
Clegg, who is a multi-linguist, confesses to a “geeky interest” in perusing the European press. His verdict is that the continent is currently looking at post-Brexit Britain with a mix of shock and bewilderment. “In France, Germany and Spain, the newspapers are not currently writing about David Davis’ clever negotiating tactics, they are saying ‘why on earth is there this outburst of apparent xenophobia in Britain’s public and political debate?’
“I wonder if David Davis has been spending too much time with Liam Fox, who, notably among the Three Brexiteers, does seem to operate on his own planet where Britain rules the seas, and we can rattle our sabre and all those pesky foreigners will fall in line,” he says. “It is astonishing to see British Tories who are prepared to ignore economics in favour of their own political fixations, who do not seem to understand that for other European leaders the same rules apply.”
Clegg has previously voiced the hope that a botched attempt at hard Brexit might trigger a desire for an alternative to Tory rule among the British people. For him personally, Brexit is the perfect issue upon which to position himself as a voice of reason. He has the experience, the gravitas and the passion to help win back some of the political credibility he lost during the dark days of the coalition and the tuition fees debacle. Whether he can ever fully lose the traitor tag remains to be seen, but his intervention on Brexit will be welcome among the 16.1 million people who didn’t vote for any kind of Brexit, let alone a hard one.


Vince Cable makes the liberal case for immigration controls.
By
                    Vince Cable
Article 50 and Brexit loom. “Taking back control” starts with immigration control, ending free movement inside the European Union. For the Remain resistance movement, that freedom has been a fundamental principle, to be defended to the last.
All my instincts are to defend the freedom to work, study and retire anywhere within the EU. I was (and am) a Remainer. I value diversity and have a diverse multi-ethnic family. I have spent half a century campaigning against anti-immigrant prejudice, from Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” to the Turkish “hordes” of the referendum campaign.
I spent five years as secretary of state battling the Tories’ foolish net immigration target and damaging restrictions on overseas students and workers. As a liberal economist, I welcome freer trade and globalisation in general; and as a political liberal I oppose attempts to fence people in. I naturally value the freedom to travel around Europe for business or pleasure with minimal restriction.
But I have serious doubts that EU free movement is tenable or even desirable. First, the freedom is not a universal right, but selective. It does not apply to Indians, Jamaicans, Americans or Australians. They face complex and often harsh visa restrictions. One uncomfortable feature of the referendum was the large Brexit vote among British Asians, many of whom resented the contrast between the restrictions they face and the welcome mat laid out for Poles and Romanians.
British opposition to immigration is mainly colour-blind. Until well into the 1990s “immigration” was code word for race. But in recent years concerns over immigration have been precisely that. The question has become: is unrestricted immigration – albeit from some countries only – desirable?
The economics are ambiguous. Seen globally, more migration is undeniably a positive. People moving from high unemployment, low productivity countries to areas of labour scarcity and higher productivity produce economic gains. But the benefits accrue mainly to migrants themselves (and business owners). For the receiving country, the benefits are less obvious: a bigger economy but not necessarily a richer one. Immigrants may be more productive than indigenous workers but they have dependents too. They are usually young people and therefore likely to be more flexible, more mobile and more likely to work contributing more in tax than they take out in benefits and subsidised services. But they grow older so these benefits are non-recurring.
There are also distributional effects. Critics complain that immigrant workers depress wages and reduce job opportunities for natives. Undoubtedly, this happens in some occupations, like building and taxi driving. But there are other areas where immigrants are not competing and bring complementary skills, creating jobs. When I was secretary of state I commissioned studies to evaluate this. The conclusions were sufficiently reassuring that the Home Office blocked my department’s wish to publish them. Losers, however, there undoubtedly are.
The economic arguments are not conclusive but, on balance, favour some net migration of younger, skilled workers. More liberal Brexiteers concede that point. It is also reasonable for Remainers to accept that there should be controls, as for non-EU migrants. That is also where public opinion is. Long-term social survey analysis suggests that the demand for effective immigration control coexists with greater tolerance of diversity.
There is no great argument of liberal principle for free EU movement; the economics is debatable; and the politics is conclusively hostile. The argument for free movement has become tactical: it is part of a package that also contains the wider economic benefits of the single market. Those benefits are real, which is why the government must prioritise single market access and shared regulation. Yet that may not be possible to reconcile with restrictions on movement. The second-best option is customs union status, essential for supply chain industries.
I do not see much upside in Brexit, but one is the opportunity for a more rational immigration policy. First, it will involve legitimising the position of EU nationals already here. It must involve a more sensible way of dealing with overseas students, who are not immigrants and benefit the UK. The permeability of the Irish border must lead to a united Ireland in Europe. And, not least, there can be a narrative in which control on labour movements is matched by control on capital – halting the takeovers that suffocate the innovative companies on which the country’s future depends.
This article appears in the 04 Jan 2017 issue of the New Statesman, Divided Britain

The former prime minister on Trump, Brexit, Corbyn and his return to public life in an attempt to revive “the progressive centre”. Will anyone listen?
By
                    Jason Cowley
Tony Blair enters the room at his London offices wearing a navy blue crew-neck sweater, an open-neck pale blue shirt, informal dark trousers and dark shoes. This relaxed, casual style is strikingly reminiscent of how he was dressed when he appeared alongside George W Bush during their first meeting at Camp David in February 2001, the beginning of a relationship that set Britain on the road to war in Iraq, the reverberations of which continue to destabilise the world and distort the legacy of Labour’s most electorally successful leader.
Protected by his personal security team, Blair travels incessantly, a habitué of the first-class lounge and the luxury international hotel, and on this damp, early Monday morning, he looks puffy-eyed and tired. He sits to my left, in a stiff-backed chair, leans forward, his legs slightly splayed, and asks for some coffee. There is a monitor mounted on the wall and several small bottles of water in a bucket of ice on a sideboard. The blinds are partially closed, lending our meeting a curious conspiratorial atmosphere.
Neither of us can recall the last time he was interviewed by the New Statesman. In his memoir, A Journey (2010), he wrote of this publication in a sly aside: “It used to be a serious magazine.” (The New Statesman has been resolute in its opposition to the Iraq War and took the side of the Brownites in Labour’s internal conflict.) “Did I say that?” he says, smiling. “It’s much more serious now, really very interesting.”
Blair, who in conversation is personable and animated, is not quite a fugitive in his own land but, because of the Iraq War and his extensive business operations since leaving office, as well as some of the dubious company he has kept among the global plutocracy, he is widely reviled, a fate that frustrates him but to which he is resigned. “I gave up a long time ago, worrying as to whether life’s treated you unfairly,” he says, when I mention his public image in Britain.
But these are turbulent new times and Blair is planning a fresh start and a renewed engagement with British politics. In September, he announced that he would “close down Tony Blair Associates and wind up the Firerush and Windrush structures”, two companies in the group through which the revenues flow. While he will keep some personal consultancies, Blair said that he will concentrate on his charitable and not-for-profit work. “The substantial reserves” – estimated to be around £8m – “that TBA has accumulated will be gifted to the not-for-profit work,” the Office of Tony Blair said in a press statement, which noted that his group of organisations employed 200 people in 20 countries. It was as if Blair was clearing the ground for a comeback. At the age of 63, his journey was far
from complete.
The day before our meeting, the Sunday Times reported that Blair was “positioning himself to play a pivotal role in shaping Britain’s Brexit deal”. He was also alleged by unnamed sources to have called Jeremy Corbyn a “nutter” and Theresa May a “lightweight”. The report irritated his aides and Blair alluded to it several times during our conversation, as if eager to correct any misunderstanding.
There has been speculation to the effect that he wants to set up a new political party. He says that he does not. Nor does he want a role in Brexit negotiations, or to lead the resistance to it. But he wants to participate in public life, engaging with new ideas and policy initiatives. He wants to be heard and to influence the wider debate – because, as he told me, the state of Western politics simultaneously dismays and motivates him. His dismay is motivating his re-engagement.
Blair hasn’t met Theresa May since she became Prime Minister but expects to before long. “I didn’t call her that [a lightweight],” he says. “This is completely not my view, by the way. I would not be rude and disrespectful in that way. I’ve not said that about her, I don’t think that about her. No, I think she’s a very solid, sensible person but she’s delivering Brexit. And she has to deliver it. Otherwise she will lose the support of that very strong right-wing media. And they’ll open up a rift in the Tory party again. It will be very difficult for her, and that’s why I don’t disrespect her at all. She’s got a very difficult political hand to play.”
As for Corbyn, he says: “I did not call Jeremy Corbyn ‘a nutter’. I don’t think he’s a nutter. I just think he is someone on the far left of politics and he’s been consistent for the last 35 years that I’ve known him, which is fine. I don’t think that’s an unprincipled position. I just don’t think it’s a position that is either correct or one from which he can win an election. But I may be wrong, so let’s wait and see.”
What is unambiguous is that Blair is determined once again to become an agent of influence in British politics, on issues from Brexit to reviving what he describes as the “progressive centre or centre left”.
His allies call for a new “muscular centre”. They are discussing how best to counter the populist surge on both the radical left and radical right. There are plans for a new think tank or organisation to generate policy initiatives, and for Blair to make more direct interventions. Jim Murphy, a former leader of Scottish Labour, is working as an associate on various projects.
“You’ve got to unpack, first of all, what bits of the so-called liberal agenda have failed and what bits haven’t,” Blair told me. “And you’ve got to learn the right lessons of Brexit, Trump and these popular movements across the Western world. Otherwise you’re going to end up in a situation where you seriously think that the populism of the left is going to defeat the populism of the right. It absolutely won’t.”
Our new emerging political order, he believes, is defined less by a conflict between left and right than by one between “open and closed”, and this is a theme he has been exploring since 2007.
“Open v closed is a really important debate today, because in a curious way the populism of the left and the populism of the right – at a certain point they meet each other. They tend to be isolationist. OK, the left is more anti-business, the right is more anti-immigrant, but they tend to be protectionist and they have an attitude to the process of globalisation that says this is a policy that is given by government and we can stop it and should stop it. Whereas my view about globalisation is that it’s a force essentially driven by people, by technological change, by the way the world has opened up. You’re not going to reverse that. The question is: how do we make that just and fair? That is the big question of our times. The centre left does not provide an answer to that, and we can and should.”
He does not want Labour to split, though he feels that the party is in a much weaker position than it was even in the 1980s. “It’s a tough business . . . The leadership has been captured by the far left for the first time in the party’s history, so we have to see. I hope that the Labour Party realises that it has a historic duty to try to represent people in this country who need our representation desperately. I hope it rediscovers the fact that the government that I led and that Gordon Brown led actually did a huge amount for the people who were left behind by the policies of the previous Conservative government.”
Blair knows that he is unpopular, especially with the left, and why. But does he feel misunderstood?
“Well, I think there was huge misunderstanding of what we were about and why we were about it. That’s partly one of the reasons I’m changing everything.”
Changing everything: the phrase is resonant and refers not only to Blair’s decision to close down most of his commercial and business interests, but also to his renewed sense of political engagement. “What I’m doing is to spend more time not in the front line of politics, because I have no intention of going back to the front line of politics, to correct another misunderstanding . . . but in trying to create the space for a political debate about where modern Western democracies go and where the progressive forces particularly find their place . . . I’m dismayed by the state of Western politics, but also incredibly motivated by it. I think in Britain today, you’ve got millions of effectively politically homeless people.”
He tilts forward. His voice quickens even as his body language betrays frustration. “I can’t come into front-line politics. There’s just too much hostility, and also there are elements of the media who would literally move to destroy mode if I tried to do that . . .”
So what can he do? Is there someone in whom he can invest his hopes? He says that his first priority is to “build a platform” that will allow people to debate ideas and formulate solutions, without the abuse or vilification that has become so prevalent in modern politics. “The best thing I can do is use [my] long experience, not just as prime minister – I’ve learned a huge amount being out in the world these past nine or ten years . . .”
The platform will be driven by technology. “One advantage of today’s social media is that you can build networks. Movements can begin at scale and build speed quickly. You’re not going to relate the answers to the challenges that we face by a Twitter exchange, so what I’m interested in doing is asking: what are the types of ideas that we should be taking forward? How do we provide a service to people who are in the front line of politics, so that we can provide some thinking and some ideas? The thing that’s really tragic about politics today is that the best ideas about politics aren’t in politics. I find the ideas are much more interesting in the technology sector, much more interesting ideas about how you change the world.”
***
Tony Blair believes that Brexit can be halted. “It can be stopped if the British people decide that, having seen what it means, the pain-gain cost-benefit analysis doesn’t stack up. And that can happen in one of two ways. I’m not saying it will [be stopped], by the way, but it could. I’m just saying: until you see what it means, how do you know?”
Attempting to secure access to the single market will be the defining negotiation. “Either you get maximum access to the single market – in which case you’ll end up accepting a significant number of the rules on immigration, on payment into the budget, on the European Court’s jurisdiction. People may then say, ‘Well, hang on, why are we leaving then?’ Or alternatively, you’ll be out of the single market and the economic pain may be very great, because beyond doubt if you do that you’ll have years, maybe a decade, of economic restructuring.”
But, I suggest, the Remain side made numberless dire economic forecasts during the long, dispiriting referendum campaign and they were ignored. The public understands well enough the risks of Brexit.
“But this is what I keep saying to people. This is like agreeing to a house swap without having seen the other house . . . You’ve got to understand, this has been driven essentially ideologically. You’ve got a very powerful cartel of the media on the right who provided the platform for the Brexiteers who allied themselves with the people in the Tory party who saw a chance to run with this. And, OK, they ended up in circumstances where there was a very brutal but not particularly enlightening campaign. They won that campaign.”
He pauses to reach for his coffee cup.
“But in the end, for a large number of the people, even those who voted Leave, they will look at this in a practical way, not an ideological way. And all I’m saying is: what shows you how ideological this is is that when I say, ‘Well, let’s just keep our options open,’ it’s condemned as treason. Why wouldn’t you keep your options open? Why wouldn’t you say, ‘We took this decision, we took it before we saw what its consequences are; now we see its consequences, we’re not so sure’?
“I think, in the end, it’s going to be about parliament and the country scrutinising the deal. So, for example, the deal that was done with Nissan” – to persuade the Japanese carmaker to expand its production in Sunderland after Brexit – “I don’t know what the terms of that deal are, but we should know. Because that will tell us a lot about what they’re prepared to concede in order to keep access to the single market.”
***
Blair says that he has never met Donald Trump, although last week he met his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the real estate multimillionaire who is part of the Trump transition team and is married to Ivanka Trump. Blair’s aides said that the encounter with Kushner was at Cipriani, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. Donald Trump was not present. “[Tony] knew a couple of people at the table and was invited to join them. However, the assertion that he was ‘angling for a role’ is complete nonsense.”
Trump’s venality, belligerence, isolationist rhetoric and narrow definition of the national interest has alarmed the Anglo-American foreign policy establishment, which considers the president-elect to be a clear and present danger to the rules-based liberal world order. The urgent challenge facing the West in an age of intensifying nationalism, great power rivalry and demagogic plutocracy will be to hold together the alliance structure that has defined the world for the past 70 years.
Under Trump’s presidency, the political scientist Robert Kagan has written, the US is likely to retreat into “national solipsism”. It could be much worse than that, but Blair’s response to Trump’s victory is to invoke realpolitik. He does not denounce the president-elect, but nor does he welcome his improbable triumph. Neither for nor against Trump – in public, at least – he wants to
understand and explain.
“Look, he’s been elected president of America and [I agree with] the comments that Barack Obama has made about working with him, trying to make sure that those things that people are worried about don’t materialise. That’s our obligation now. He’s the American president, duly elected through their electoral college system, and that’s it. He won because people want to change. Because there are various issues upon which the Republican platform was stronger than the Democrats’. And this is part of a general global movement, which is partly a reaction to globalisation and partly economic. But it is also a lot to do with culture and identity, and people’s feelings that the world is changing rapidly around them and that the left doesn’t get this.”
He believes that Trump’s preoccupation with questions of identity and belonging, as well as his appeal to people’s anxieties about immigration and Islamist terror, was fundamental to his appeal. “If you leave aside all the comments that Donald Trump made and you just look at the two platforms, on the issues that related to culture and identity, I could see why there would be Americans, even in the centre ground, who might be attracted by that [Trump’s] platform – even if, by the way, they weren’t attracted by the personality of the person who is the standard bearer. There’s got to be a lot of analysis as to why this happened.”
Blair’s response to the fragmentation of globalisation is not to reject but to reaffirm his commitment to it and to free market economics and the open society. In other words, he favours not less but more liberalism. “Against the received wisdom, I think the absolute essence is to revive the centre. Progressive forces, if they’re not coming at this from a strong centrist position, are likely to find themselves just enough off-centre on the debates around culture and identity, never mind the economy, where they’re going to be defeated by a populism of the right. And if you put a populism of the left against that, which is where some people want to go – it’s where the British Labour Party’s gone [and] many Democrats argue that, really, if we’d had Bernie Sanders, we’d have done better – if we go down that path, we’ll just get beaten bigger.”
***
So is this the beginning of Tony Blair’s second act in British public life? Will enough people be prepared to listen to him, or is the stain of the Iraq misadventure and subsequent pursuit of personal wealth too deep? The property portfolio that he and Cherie Blair own, which includes a main residence in Connaught Square in London and a country home in Buckinghamshire, is worth at least £27m, according to the Guardian. Blair’s total wealth may be at least twice that, according to media reports, though he said in 2014 that it was less than £20m.
“We are suffering a crisis of global leadership,” says one former ally and associate of Blair’s. “There’s an absence of a strong centrist foreign policy voice. We need someone to make the case for Nato and for the alliance system. Blair could do that. But it will be difficult for him, because he’s never found a way of acknowledging the mistakes he made. If he wants to talk about Brexit and Trump, he needs to do so with humility and not be so Manichaean about it. He has long spoken of the clash between Islamism and Western civilisation – now we have a problem with Western civilisation, don’t we?”
In his long Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in April 2016, Barack Obama discussed the moral limits of American power and articulated what he called his doctrine of “tragic realism”. Like the philosopher-theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whom he has read carefully, Obama acknowledges the existence of evil (as the more religious Blair does) in the world, but also the difficulties and dangers inherent in confronting it. Obama, who opposed the Iraq War, understood the risks of attempting to impose through violence Western values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. His foreign policy, unlike Blair’s, was defined by a sense of cautious “realism”. Great power carries the burden of responsibility and demands the necessity of restraint – perhaps far too much restraint, in the case of Obama and the Syrian tragedy.
“We cannot do good without also doing evil,” Niebuhr wrote in The Irony of American History. “We cannot defend what is dearest to us without running the risk of destroying what is even more precious than our life . . .”
In his response to the Chilcot inquiry, Blair accepted responsibility for the failures of post-invasion planning, but defended the original decision to invade and occupy Iraq. With his voice croaky and weakening, he was described as resembling a “broken man” by some commentators during the press conference at which he replied to Chilcot. Yet, in person, he seems anything but broken: he is alert, vigorous, optimistic about the prospects for globalisation, and determined to fight back against the waves of populism sweeping the West. He believes that the arc of history still bends towards progress and enlightenment.
Talking to him, I was reminded of the speech he gave at the 2001 Labour party conference, shortly after the 9/11 attacks. “The kaleidoscope has been shaken,” he suggested, and it was time to reorder the world. For Blair, 9/11 was a profound shock but also an opportunity. The catastrophe enabled him to find a public voice commensurate with the moment, a voice that George W Bush could not find, and he saw an opportunity to influence Bush and internationalise US foreign policy, drawing the world’s one essential nation away from hermit security and back into the world.
Trump’s “America First” isolationism is today an exaggerated caricature of Bush’s pre-9/11 positions on foreign policy. In the 2000 presidential debates with Al Gore, Bush said, “I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it’s got to be.” How incredible that now seems.
“Every American president I’ve ever dealt with, and I’ve dealt with three now, has always come to power with an essentially domestic programme,” Blair says now. “And all of them have ended up, because this is America’s inevitable role in the world, being highly engaged in global affairs. And even in relation to a President Trump and President Putin, let’s see what happens. Let’s see what happens when they actually have to negotiate.”
Asked about the threat posed by Russia to the West, Blair says: “It’s important in my view that we in the West stand up for our essential values. The language that President Putin understands is strength. He will take advantage of any weakness. We have got to be very clear . . . This concept of a sort of new authoritarianism, I think, is a real risk in the world as a whole, but again the best way of dealing with that is to respond to those people who want some authority and order. I mean the electorate, even in the West. There was a poll I saw in Le Monde, the other week, with an astonishing amount of people worried that democracy didn’t actually work. The answer to that is to have a centre ground that is strong and radical. And the centre ground has become flabby and managers of the status quo.”
With his flag planted firmly in the “progressive centre ground” and with opposition to the Tories so divided, Blair is preparing for his re-entry into public life, though his plans remain inchoate. It’s almost as if he believes he’s on an ethical mission, that he has unfinished business. But the ground beneath his feet is shifting violently.
What if America under Trump ceases to be the last best hope for the world and becomes something darker and more malevolent? This isn’t something that Blair wishes to contemplate. He and millions like him may feel “politically homeless”, but he remains, at heart, a liberal optimist. But is his optimism no more than misguided faith? What if history is not linear, as he believes, but cyclical, contingent and discontinuous?
“In a world of uncertainty, people want strength in their leaders,” Blair says. “It’s our job to make sure that that does not bleed across into authoritarianism. And that’s why, when we were in government, we introduced real reforms, not least around the Supreme Court, the European Convention on Human Rights being incorporated into British law . . . We had more devolution, more giving away of government power at the centre. But it was still a strong government, with a very clear sense of where it was going, and it had control of the political agenda. And this is not a lesson of politics that’s [only] relevant to this time but to any time. And if you look back at when progressive forces do well, they always do well when they are at the cutting edge of the future, and when they have sufficient strength that people feel there is real leadership taking the country forward. Now, I don’t doubt that the post-financial crisis world has made a significant difference, but . . . when you really look at, for example, the people supporting Brexit, the people supporting Trump, they’re not particularly anti-wealth. What they are is anti a system they think they’re paying into that other people aren’t.”
Trump, Brexit, Corbyn – Tony Blair keeps ending up on the losing side, though the years when he was winning sustain him in his convictions and extraordinary self-belief. He cautions against fatalism and he remains defiant. And he never doubts he’s on the right side of history.
“Of course, history has a direction,” he says, dismissing my scepticism. “There is progress, we are making progress, even in our own countries. If you think of the world your son is growing up in and the world my grandfather grew up in, if you think what he’s going to have and what my father had, I mean, come on! There’s a lot to celebrate. There is absolutely no reason to be pessimistic about the human condition. But there are people who will exploit the fears of people if we don’t root the hopes of people in realistic, sensible policies.”
Jason Cowley Are we entering a post-liberal era? If so, why are many people rejecting liberalism?
Tony Blair You’ve got to be really careful of what’s been rejected and what hasn’t been. And one of the things I find quite bizarre about the present debate is the number of voices on the progressive left who want to blame those of us who won elections for the defeats we’ve subsequently suffered. What would be more sensible would be also to analyse why we won and what’s changed and what hasn’t changed. And when people say that liberalism has been defeated, it depends what you mean by liberalism.
JC Trump won on a hostility to globalisation, open markets and freedom of movement of peoples, all of which are associated with what one might call the market globalisation of the past 25 years.
TB It’s true that there is a reaction against globalisation. The degree to which that means people have all gone against free trade, I think you’ve really got to watch that. These issues of culture and identity are far more important than this. And those feelings of culture and identity are bound to happen at a period of rapid change. The sensible thing is to deal with those issues and anxieties. And to deal with them by having strong, clear policy positions on them – that then allows you to make the sensible case for immigration, but for controls.
JC As well as ultra-economic liberalism, we also have identity liberalism, too – a rainbow coalition of identity interests, many of which Hillary Clinton attempted to appeal to. And Trump disregarded much of that rhetoric and agenda.
TB What is very instructive is to go look at the Democratic platform for that election and look at the Republican one – leave aside Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Just look at those two platforms and you’ll see what the problem is. For example, when it comes to a discussion of radical Islam and the Islamist threat, the Democrats felt that, for reasons I completely understand, that if you talked about it in that language, the general prevailing sense is that you were then stigmatising all Muslims. I don’t personally agree with that. I think that you’re perfectly able to distinguish between Islamists and Muslims. But there is a threat that is based on the perversion of religion, and you should acknowledge it as such in my view. Whereas the Republicans had a whole section that was all about that. Again, if you’re looking at America and how they feel about things, what they feel is that the liberal left is unwilling to have a discussion about these things.
JC What is the best-case scenario for a Trump presidency?
TB That the Trump who is a deal-maker and a non-ideologue comes through. But the only thing you can do is to wait and see.
JC Michael Portillo described David Cameron’s decision to hold the EU referendum as the greatest blunder ever made by a British prime minister. Do you agree?
TB I understand the reasons for it. As you may recall, I argued very strongly against it before the general election . . . but . . . I could’ve held one in 2005 and lost one. When we thought we were going to have to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, I thought that was a very, very open question as to whether we were going to win or not. What it shows you [is] that if you put this decision to people like this in a referendum, I think at any point in time in the last 30 years you could have got that result.
JC If the prime minister believed leaving the EU would be potentially so disastrous, why take the risk?
TB Jason, I  wouldn’t have done it myself, I’d be strongly against it. But I know what it’s like, so I’m more forgiving of people who hold the position of prime minister.
JC You’re interested in networks and their possibilities. Are you impressed by what Arron Banks pulled off by creating Leave.EU? And what do you think of Nigel Farage?
TB I think what the Leave campaign created was a really interesting machine. You should learn from that. One of the things you have got to be able to do in modern politics is to build that platform of connections and networks. On the other hand, never ever forget that it starts with the right policies.
JC In your view, Farage obviously doesn’t have the right policies, but he has the ability to communicate . . . Trump has even said he should be British ambassador to the United States.
TB I know we talk about this as a new thing, but many of us grew up with Enoch Powell. I mean, you remember the “rivers of blood” [speech], and black people were welcomed into the country and weren’t expelled, and that Britain was going to fall apart as a nation. I mean, these people are always on the wrong side of history, they always are, because that’s not the way the world is today. The world’s going to integrate more. It may integrate fast or slow, but it will integrate. Because technology, travel, migration, trade are bringing the world closer together. If you take a step back and you look at the broad sweep of history, this is actually a great time for humanity in many ways. You’ve had more people out of poverty than ever before in human history.
JC What do you think of Ed Balls on Strictly Come Dancing?
TB I have huge admiration for him, I have to say. I mean, that requires courage beyond . . .
JC Would you do it?
TB No, I absolutely would not dare to do that. I absolutely take my hat off to him and I think he’s been brilliant.
JC Have you watched it?
TB My family’s completely devoted to Strictly, so even if I didn’t want to watch it I’d be watching it.
One of the greatest political delusions of our age was the idea that holding a referendum on our EU membership would settle the argument once and for all.
Instead it has left us with a long drawn-out negotiation process, and a national argument that is becoming more heated, unreasonable and borderline abusive on both sides.
I have never sat on the fence about this. I was on the board of the Stronger In campaign, and I fought as hard as anyone for Britain to stay in. If the referendum was held next month I would argue the same case.
However we are not (thank God) going to have another referendum. If we did, and the result changed, what next? Best of three? We can’t ask the world to stop while we dither for a decade or so.
My side lost, and what depresses me is that some of my former campaign colleagues have become stuck at the stage of grief which involves denial. I think the way to serve the country is to make the best of the verdict. This means forming a friendly partnership with the other European countries, while becoming an even more outward-looking country with positive relations around the world. In particular we need the ability to trade freely. That’s how we will be a rich country in the future, as in the past.
What is not constructive is trying to reverse the referendum result by means of picking new fights. Personalities such as Sir Nick Clegg and even Tony Blair could be using their high-level contacts in other EU capitals to make sure the eventual deal is good for both sides. Using their talents to try to reverse the referendum result is both futile and damaging.
The negotiations were always going to be difficult, and we can now observe a regular pattern.
Between negotiating sessions Michel Barnier and the European Commission’s team issue blood-curdling threats about how the British ideas are impractical, and how the whole process is under threat. Here, politicians and journalists who want the process to fail announce this means we are all doomed. David Davis and Theresa May stay patient, and when the crunch point is reached a deal is done, and negotiations move on.
This happened throughout last year, and there is no reason to believe this year will be different.
The key phrase here is ‘a deal is done’. Doing a deal involves neither party getting their own way completely. We wanted a transition period after March 2019. We suggested two years, but the Commission wanted it to end in December 2020, because that’s when their new budget period starts. That’s a sensible compromise. Originally Mr Barnier said we would owe up to 100 billion euros. Some said we shouldn’t pay a penny. We have ended up at around 40 billion euros. Again, a sensible compromise.
So now we move on to this month’s ‘crisis’: whether we should stay in the Customs Union or not. I hate to remind my fellow Conservatives of the Election Manifesto we were all fighting on this time last year, because it did not prove an unalloyed success. But it is pretty clear on this point.
It says: ‘As we leave the European Union we will no longer be members of the single market or Customs Union but we will seek a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.’
What should this mean in practice? Of course I have not become a hard-line Brexiteer in the last two years and I want as close a relationship as possible with our neighbours. I want Britain to stay closely aligned to the EU on tariff rates, recognition of health and environment standards and the levels of border checks, because it is in Britain’s interest to do so.
Like everyone, I am concerned about the Irish border and the Good Friday Agreement, but as a Kent MP I am also concerned to keep lorries flowing freely through the Port of Dover and the Channel Tunnel. If they don’t, Kent becomes a lorry park and life for those of us who live there becomes very unpleasant.
It won’t be the Customs Union, but it will be a mutually beneficial customs arrangement. It will be another sensible compromise which will contribute to the success of the negotiations.
I would urge those who share my broad views on Britain and the EU to start contributing to the debate in more practical terms. Britain can thrive in the post-Brexit era, but maintaining close links with our neighbours will make a significant contribution to national success.
What would undoubtedly be a national disaster would be any political action which made it more likely that a hard-Left Corbyn Government came to power. That would not just wreck our economy, but, looking at the way dissident Labour MPs are being hounded and abused, damage our whole democracy.
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OPINION: Colin Baker - perplexing politics in Brexit’s aftermath
Any student of democracy in action examining British politics for the first time might well be more than a little perplexed by its contortions over the last few weeks.
We have had a referendum; it had been promised by the incoming Conservative government. There was a demonstrable public will to have the opportunity to vote on our membership of the European Union and David Cameron’s government duly delivered what the public had asked for.
He, of course, hoped that the result would go the other way and campaigned to remain, but I am at a loss to understand why the person we elected to lead our country failed to accept the decision of the referendum he enabled and declined to lead us through the turbulent waters of Brexit.
His reasons for ducking out of that responsibility have never been fully explained. So who has replaced him? A member of his cabinet who absolutely agreed with everything he did and similarly campaigned to remain a member of the European Union.
Logic would have suggested that someone who believed in the impending amputation might make a better fist of managing it, if the originator of the referendum exited unexpectedly stage right. But no, a like for like replacement (gender aside) has been preferred by the Conservative members of Parliament.
Conversely, the leader of the main opposition party has arrived in his position of power by a vote of party members outside parliament and allegedly has little or no support within the parliamentary party. He clearly therefore cannot lead them in any meaningful way but refuses to make way for someone who might be able to, although his tenacity unarguably renders his party unelectable.
Speaking locally, Our Wycombe MP was a prominent member of the Brexit faction within the Conservative party.
Although the constituency boundaries are slightly different, his constituents did not agree with his passionate commitment to Brexit.
Many MPs will have voted differently to the majority of their constituents and it remains to be seen whether in 2020 the constituency selection committees will remember that.
It is rare of course, once an MP is elected, for there to be an opportunity to compare their votes ‘in action’, as it were, with the will of the citizens they serve.
But it does highlight an interesting point of principle.
We now wait to see how the shenanigans of the Shakespearean co-conspirator Brexiteers pan out for them career-wise.
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EU leaders are set to delay their decision over how long a Brexit extension to offer the UK amid uncertainty over whether Boris Johnson will succeed in his attempt to call a snap election.
European ambassadors will meet in Brussels on Friday to consider how to respond to the Prime Minister's letter last weekend requesting a delay until 31 January at the latest.
However, a final verdict is now not expected until next week - after MPs vote on the Prime Minister's bid to hold an election on 12 December.
According to the Times, uncertainty over whether Labour will back the plan has contributed to the EU's decision to delay, with France seeking clarity on the situation at Westminster before deciding its position.
But Jeremy Corbyn has said the party will not make a decision until the EU has announced the length of Brexit extension it is willing to offer.
Amélie de Montchalin, France’s European affairs minister said: "If there are elections that are not just desired but announced, organised, well then we will be able to take decisions.
"We need facts in order to make a decision . . . we will not deal in political fiction.
"Our position is that simply giving more time — without political change, without ratification, without an election — would be useless.”
And a diplomatic source told the paper: “As a result of the Corbyn move it will be harder to achieve consensus. We will all lament the lack of clarity and not take a decision.
“There will be a lot of discussion over the weekend and potentially a decision on Monday or Tuesday.”
European Council president Donald Tusk is expected to update European leaders on the situation on Friday.
Boris Johnson challenged the Labour leader on Thursday to back a 12 December poll in exchange for more time to debate the Withdrawal Agreement Bill,
But it is far from certain whether he would be able to get the two-thirds majority he needs under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.
While Labour's position remains unclear, other opposition parties such as the SNP and Plaid Cymru have also said they could withhold support for a general election until a no-deal Brexit is completely ruled out.
An EU official said: “The danger of something going badly wrong for everyone is increasing. MPs need to really think it through. This is the territory of unintended consequences.”


Head of Sky News John Ryley said yesterday that British journalists were taken by surprise by the outcome of last year’s Brexit vote because of lack diversity in newsrooms.
And speaking at the National Council for the Training of Journalists skills conference, which was hosted by Sky yesterday, he described this year’s UK general election result  as a “rage against the machine” of journalism at Westminster.
He said: “To counter that, our newsrooms need to be populated by people who are in touch with what people are thinking.”
Opening the conference he said: “Pessimists look backwards to some mystical age of journalism. I say the golden age of journalism is now. It is a better time to be a journalist than ever before.
“Smartphones and tablets means news is non-stop, live and on-demand. The future of journalism is positive because great journalism has great value.”
He spoke as the NCTJ unveiled new research on journalism diversity which looked at government research about the 399,000 people who graduated from higher education in 2014/2015 who were working six months later.
According to the NCTJ, some 1,587 were working as journalists. Compared to the “all employment” level journalists were:
Read the NCTJ diversity report in full.
Other conference highlights:
Daily Mail assistant editor Neil Darbyshire (pictured below) explained how social media was changing the coverage of terrorism. He told the audience that in the minutes after the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013, while police didn’t confirm an incident was taking place, the attack was being live-Tweeted from a man watching the scene from a nearby block of flats. He said: “This was a watershed moment.”

News Associates managing editor James Toney told how trainees’ lessons in Manchester and London were abandoned to allow them to cover the Manchester arena attack, the Grenfell fire and Parsons Green bomb. He said felt pastoral support was needed not only for journalists sent to cover terrorist incidents but also those editing coverage in newsrooms.
In a panel discussion on how to make the most from social media, UNILAD’s editorial manager Ben Hayward and Buzzfeed News investigative reporter Jane Bradley said they both looked for all new hires to have NCTJ qualifications.
Both said they worried about an over-reliance on Facebook for their audiences. Telling the audience that UNILAD has 35 million followers on Facebook, Hayward said: “Facebook is a fantastic platform for reaching people but at the same time it is easy to become beholden to them.”

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As parliament dissolves and the date of the poll marches closer, parties of all colours are working up their manifestos. Rebecca Hill asks what they could, or should, have in store for tech.
Theresa May’s decision to call a snap general election has set the UK’s political parties’ electioneering wheels in motion, but so far the policy announcements have been light on digital.
It’s unlikely that the parties will offer expansive new digital policies in the short run-up to polling day, but previous announcements could hint at where their priorities lie, and there are pressing issues that relate to tech that can’t be ignored.
The issue dominating discussions is the UK’s vote to leave the European Union - whether that’s direct policies related to the strength or ‘flavour’ of Brexit the UK gets, or because of the knock-on effect the exit will have on the economy, public service delivery and legislation.
All parties will need to have policies that look to ensure a resilient economy after Brexit, perhaps drawing on the importance of the UK’s growing digital economy, but they will also need to prepare for the impact it will have on some of the most crucial digital systems.
Daniel Thornton, programme director at the Institute for Government, says that the parties will need to prioritise digitising and improving services like the right to reside and work in the UK and focus on seeing through upgrades to the customs system.
The existing system, known as CHIEF, records and automatically checks around 60 million declarations to customs of goods by land, air and sea electronically each year,. After Brexit the number of declarations is expected to increase by between 90 million to 390 million a year - and MPs have already raised concerns about HMRC’s ability to deliver the update in time.
Other priorities for the incoming government will be systems handling farming, fishing, immigration and border services, while experts have also urged parties to commit to break down silos across the whole of the public sector.
The association for local government IT professionals, Socitm, has called on councils to put digital and the forefront of health and social care integration, while Thornton says that digital services should be reorganised around citizens’ needs - which will call for common service and data standards across the public sector.
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Another recurring theme could be digital exclusion, as the people most likely to need government support are the same group least likely to be able to get online.
Boosting connectivity levels across the country could also be seen as a way to get rural communities on side, especially after the government last week rejected calls to set itself a more ambitious target for minimum broadband speeds in measures set out in the Digital Economy Bill, sticking instead to an “achievable” 10 Mbps.
In contrast, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last year pledged to boost broadband speeds across the UK to 1 Gbps, saying that it was “not fair” that people in London can get 4G anywhere, when in rural areas they “can’t even get single bar reception” - however the feasibility of, and budgeting for, the plan was questioned by experts.
Corbyn’s digital democracy manifesto was also criticised for lacking ambition and missing out on crucial areas of cyber security and public sector reform - both of which are areas Socitm wants to see addressed in the parties’ general election manifestos.
These were touched upon by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats ahead of the 2015 general election, with the former backing the principle of ‘open data by default’ and the latter calling for the digital by default agenda to extend to local government.
Of course, there have been changes in leadership and digital champions in both parties since then - the Lib Dems’ digital spokesperson Julian Huppert failed to regain his Cambridge seat in 2015 (although he is running again this time around), while Labour’s outspoken Chi Onwurah was moved from the digital brief to shadow industrial strategy.
However, Onwurah’s replacement Louise Haigh has provided effective opposition in the debates on the Digital Economy Bill and over the government’s much-delayed digital transformation strategy and the Lib Dems have spoken out against the government's Draconian rules on online pornography.
The Conservatives' manifesto, meanwhile, is likely to offer a continuation of the work the party has done in the past two years, which includes a series of strategies that sing digital’s praises - albeit without offering the specifics the sector sorely needs - and legislation that paves the way for increased data sharing within government and set out plans for a fully digital tax reform (although the latter didn't make it into the final legislation, they are likely to be picked up again if the party returns to government).
The party’s manifesto is also being drawn up by a team that includes minister for the Cabinet Office, Ben Gummer, who - although being a less forceful champion for digital government than his predecessor Francis Maude - does appear to understand the challenges and opportunities technology offers government, both inside and outside Whitehall.
Indeed, Matthew Trimming, founder of consultancy META and an adviser to the Government Digital Service, says that, should the Conservatives re-enter government after the election, they should recognise this work and keep Gummer in the role, along with cabinet secretary to the Treasury David Gauke.
“They are providing strong, joined-up Treasury and Cabinet Office leadership on transformation,” says Trimming. “Why change a strong, stable team?”
Thornton echoes Trimming’s call for effective leadership and support at a ministerial level, saying that parties should identify digital champions at a senior level, and both emphasise the importance of having a good understanding of the potential of data to improve public services.
This will include quickly appointing a chief data officer - a role that is expected to sit in the Cabinet Office under civil service chief executive John Manzoni, who has lately been an outspoken proponent of data - and ensuring that there is investment in training for civil servants.
Although it is unlikely that the parties’ manifestos will address all the demands, or go into the level of detail, that digital government watchers would like to see, it would be a disappointment if they did not make efforts to recognise and highlight the importance of digital, data and emerging technologies to the future of public service delivery.

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The government is to face a major legal challenge to its Brexit policy next week when ministers will be accused of bypassing democracy if it triggers Article 50 without parliamentary consent.
The Times newspaper has seen a draft legal argument which accuses the government of acting unconstitutionally by over-extending the use of royal prerogative, a power which enables ministers to make decisions without a vote in parliament.
It will be heard by the Lord Chief Justice in the High Court next Thursday, where Attorney-General Jeremy Wright will act as barrister for the government.
In the legal submission, lead plaintiff Gina Miller accuses the government of “undemocratic” behavior and argues the 2015 European Referendum Act clearly states the result of the Brexit vote was “as a matter of law, advisory.”
“Nowhere in the 2015 act does it specify the consequences that should follow from the referendum result,” the submission adds.
Miller, who manages … and is represented in court by Mishcon de Reya, told the Times: “This is not about trying to delay Brexit; it is about establishing legal certainty about the way the government acts.”
The government argues its ministers are acting within their constitutional powers.
“The country voted to leave the European Union. There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU. We do not believe this case has legal merit. The result should be respected,” Wright added.
Whatever the outcome of the case, it is likely the Supreme Court will have the final say.
The court has said it will fast-track the case so a decision is made in line with Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to trigger Article 50 by the end of March next year.
Via RT. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.
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Scottish Secretary David Mundell said his party was “certainly willing” to discuss that in talks with Jeremy Corbyn’s party - contrary to the Prime Minister’s previous stance that leaving the European Union would mean Britain coming out of both the customs unions and the single market.
He spoke after Mrs May managed to secure a second extension for the UK’s Article 50 process, which could see the UK stay in the EU until the end of October.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - who is a leading advocate for a People’s Vote - has insisted the UK must “not waste this time”.
She tweeted her “relief that thanks to the patience of the EU” the UK would not be “crashing out” under a no-deal Brexit on Friday.
And she stressed that “allowing people to decide if they still want to leave is now imperative”.
Mr Mundell refused to say if the prospect of a second Brexit referendum had been discussed in talks between the Government and Labour.
But he told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “The Government is certainly willing to discuss a customs union, but a customs union would require to command a majority of support in Parliament.
“A customs union has been put forward previously in Parliament and hasn’t commanded a majority, partly because we’ve had the usually politicking, the SNP who say they support a customs union then didn’t vote for it.
“So nothing that goes forward will actually be successful unless we can command majority support for it in Parliament.”
He insisted Mrs May could lead the Conservatives in a European election campaign, if Britain is required to take part in the May ballot.
But he also argued that the Prime Minister could still get her Withdrawal Agreement through the House of Commons in time to prevent this
Mr Mundell said: “Mrs May wants to deliver Brexit by June 30, indeed she wants to deliver Brexit by May 22 so we don’t have to have the European elections.”
He added that there was “still an opportunity to do that”, as the discussions with Mr Corbyn’s party “seem to be serious”.
If the Government could then “get some form of agreement with the Labour Party, then it would be possible to ratify the Withdrawal Agreement by May 22 and leave by then”, he said.
If the UK has to take part in European elections, he argued, Mrs May would “certainly” lead the Conservative Party into any campaign “because of the timescale of those elections”.
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How the EU negotiators must be laughing in Brussels, laughing so heartily I‘m surprised we can’t actually hear them. Michel Barnier and his team, together with the EU elite of Junker, Tusk and Verhofstadt – day after day, week after week, have humiliated Theresa May, David Davis and the rest of the cabinet.
The Prime Minister’s strategy of going out of her way to seek a trade deal, rather than starting from the position of how we could be economically successful without one (like many other prosperous trading nations) and focusing on transitional arrangements towards relying upon WTO rules, has left her at the mercy of the EU negotiators who have dictated her agenda and extracted compromises when none should have been necessary.
We have billions of assets tied up in European institutions such as European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank that are not being repatriated, but instead we are contributing at least £40bn to future EU budgets when we have no obligation to do so. And for what?
The concession of allowing border arrangements with Ireland to be settled before we know what any UK-EU trade deal would be – and therefore what would be required – has been especially wrong-headed and given the Irish Republic a veto on what is proposed. Instead of demonstrating the UK’s willingness to ensure there is no risk to the unrelated Belfast Agreement Theresa May’s gestures of help and friendship have been twisted by nationalists to escalate tensions and advance their agenda of breaking the UK from Northern Ireland.
No hard border is required for the current differences in taxes, duties or numerous regulations and so long as Ireland remains outside the Schengen agreement none is needed for the free movement of people within our islands. Given that accommodations are already in place on transport and standards for agriculture there will only be a “hard border” if the EU imposes one.
Yet we had last week the circus of the absurd when Theresa May and David Davis had a face-off about whether or not a backstop position on border arrangements that ties the UK into the Customs Union required a time limit. No sooner had the principle of a time limit been agreed – but without a date – when Michel Barnier simply dismissed this classic British fudge and went on to demand a border down the Irish Sea – a solution that has already been ruled out in the preliminary agreement signed off in December.
The reality has now dawned that, as I argued in this column last year, the Stage One agreement was a sham. The backstop should never have been conceded in the first place and Theresa May should have taken the EU on at that point and walked away, demonstrating an ability to play hardball.
Instead, all that was achieved was to show her willingness to fold and postpone the hard decisions until later – something Theresa May is still doing even now. It is no surprise therefore that a YouGov poll found universal dissatisfaction amongst the public – from both leavers and remainers – towards the UK government’s conduct of the negotiations. Boris Johnson was not wrong when he suggested Donald Trump would have been making a better fist of it.
The Prime Minister may yet be put out of her self-inflicted misery. Her unravelling negotiating position – too weak abroad because it is so divided at home – will be put to the test tomorrow and on Wednesday of this week. Then we shall witness the legislative denouement as the Lords amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill are considered – with the government’s need to reverse the 15 changes hanging in the balance. Failure to win could result in the government collapsing or a move to elect a new Conservative leader – which is effectively the same thing.
It may well be that the Lords amendments are removed, but with a possible 12 Tory rebels it may also be that new amendments, just as damaging, are suffered, making a mockery of the platforms the Conservative and Labour parties stood on during the general election a year ago.
For a Scottish example we have Paul Masterton, the Conservative member for East Renfrewshire, considering putting his own personal views before the manifesto his electors sent him to Westminster on. Any actions in rebelling against his Prime Minister put at risk not just her government but the future of Conservative members in Scottish coastal seats who owe much of their local support to their commitment of taking Britain out of the hated Common Fisheries Policy. The Tory members for Moray, Banff and Buchan, Gordon, West Aberdeenshire and Angus should all take Mr Masterton aside and leave him under no illusion that he, and he alone of Scottish Conservative MPs, is putting at risk the revival of the Conservatives as a credible unionist party.
For if Theresa May’s government cannot hold its nerve and deliver an orderly process to leave the EU’s economic institutions there is absolutely no prospect that it will have the wherewithal to extract us from the CFP – and if the Scottish Conservatives cannot deliver on their promise to take us out of the CFP then it will be marked up as the supreme betrayal by Ruth Davidson’s party and they will be as good as finished in the coastal seats, and probably elsewhere too.
As things stand we are now heading for the worst Brexit possible where the preparations made by government departments are in a shambles (with some intentionally dragging their feet), where little of benefit except concessions to the EU have been agreed, where we will take rules and accept administrative burdens without having a say in them and paying £40bn for the privilege. If that is not a bad deal I don’t know what is.
A victory for Theresa May could rejuvenate her premiership and give her the authority to negotiate from a stronger position.
Alternatively, if the Prime Minister cannot find the numbers to get her vision of Brexit passed in the Commons and show genuine leadership at last then she should tender her resignation and let someone else come forward who can.
It would need to be someone who believes in the positive opportunities that can come of Brexit and can command the House. Next week I may feel it necessary to discuss who that is.
The document is a setback to Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay who has been locked in negotiations with EU officials in Brussels.
Saturday 21 September 2019 13:26, UK
A leaked European Commission memo has said the latest draft proposals for a new Brexit deal "fall short of satisfying all the objectives of the Irish backstop".
But shortly after the leak, the UK government hit back, with a source telling Sky News the ideas are "serious and workable" and that "leaks from Brussels on Twitter are par for the course - you can set your watch by them".
Yesterday, in a UK exclusive interview with Sky's Sophy Ridge, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed he had been sent documents by Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlining the ideas for a new deal.
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However, the memo obtained by Sky News tonight said the proposals did not provide "legally operational solutions" to the controversial backstop.
It added that the draft failed to:
The UK government has made clear the documents sent to the EU this week are not formal indications of its position, but rather ideas for discussion.
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A source told Sky News: "The ideas that we've put forward to avoid a hard border are serious and workable.
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"As for the Commission, two months ago they said we couldn't reopen the withdrawal agreement and there was absolutely no alternative to the backstop. Now we are having detailed discussions.
"Leaks from Brussels on Twitter are par for the course. You can set your watch by them. What we're focused on is actually getting a deal in the room. We trust they'll do the same."
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Downing Street is expected in the coming weeks to come forward with formal alternatives to the backstop - an insurance policy to stop a hard border returning on the island of Ireland.
The memo from the European Commission to the European Council and European Parliament, comes as Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay continues talks in Brussels.
"We both recognise that a deal is in the interests of both sides," Mr Barclay said after his sit-down with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
He added that "no-one wants to see no-deal" but cautioned there was "still a lot of work to do" to avoid the scenario.
However Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that while the backstop had only ever been a "means to an end", "we haven't seen any proposals" that could replace it.
So is a deal suddenly within sight, thanks to Juncker's backing? The simple answer, I'm afraid, is no.
In his interview with Ridge - which took place before he read the latest proposals - Mr Juncker said a no-deal Brexit would have "catastrophic consequences" and that he was doing "everything to get a deal".
He said he did not have "an erotic relation" to the backstop, which he said he was prepared to remove from a withdrawal agreement, so long as "alternative arrangements [are put in place] allowing us and Britain to achieve the main objectives of the backstop. All of them".
Mr Johnson has vowed to take the UK out of the EU with or without a deal by 31 October but insists he is working hard towards getting a deal with Brussels.
The DUP leader's comments come after one of her MPs said the prime minister was guilty of a "total betrayal".
Friday 9 November 2018 22:08, UK
Arlene Foster has said the DUP cannot support a Brexit border plan that would separate Northern Ireland from Britain.
Her comments come after one of her MPs accused the prime minister of a "total betrayal".
Ms Foster, the DUP's leader, was talking to Sky News after leaked extracts of a letter she received from the PM were published in the Times.
The letter refers to EU demands for a proposed Brexit backstop that would create a border in the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland.
This would apply if a future EU-UK trade relationship failed to avert a hardening of the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
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Ms Foster told Sky News that would be "against the hope and desire to have future trading arrangements that work for the entire United Kingdom".
She said: "We have a legally binding document with a backstop that separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.... We cannot agree to something that hives off Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.
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"The letter sent to me by the prime minister essentially says the Northern Ireland-specific backstop is still in play and that's not something we as unionists can support."
The prime minister has been pushing to agree a UK-wide backstop arrangement, which would see the whole UK remain in an effective customs union with the EU, after rejecting Brussels' proposal of a Northern Ireland-only solution.
However, in the leaked letter, Mrs May says the EU is still also proposing a Northern Ireland-only backstop.
The PM wrote: "They want to maintain a Northern Ireland-only 'backstop to the backstop' in case the future negotiations are unsuccessful.
"I am clear that I could not accept there being any circumstances or conditions in which that 'backstop to the backstop', which would break up the UK customs territory, could come into force.
"That is why it is critical that the provision for a UK-EU joint customs territory is legally binding in the Withdrawal Agreement itself, so that no 'backstop to a backstop' is required."
The DUP have taken Mrs May's words to mean a Northern Ireland-only backstop arrangement will still be included in the legal text, despite her assurance she will not allow it to "come into force".
East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson told Sky News the prime minister was guilty of a "total betrayal" and had gone back on "the promises she made".
He added: "If a deal emerges shaped on the contents of the prime minister's letter, DUP MPs and our allies will not support it. The prime minister knows the consequences, she now needs to reconsider."
Ministers have been scrambling to offer assurance that there will definitely not be a customs border in the Irish Sea.
Jeremy Wright, a cabinet minister and former attorney general, tried to calm tensions with the minority government's partners.
Cabinet minister Jeremy Wright promises the UK will not accept a border down the Irish Sea."That’s the reassurance we can offer to the DUP and everyone else in this country who’d be concerned about that situation - were it ever to arise."He told Sky News: "There will not be a deal where we accept a border down the Irish Sea, and that's the reassurance we can offer to the DUP and frankly, everyone else in this country, who'd be concerned about that situation, were it ever to arise."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "The prime minister's letter sets out her commitment, which she has been absolutely clear about on any number of occasions, to never accepting any circumstances in which the UK is divided into two customs territories.
"The government will not agree anything that brings about a hard border on the island of Ireland."
In the leaked letter, the prime minister also told the DUP she "would not accept being kept in a backstop arrangement indefinitely", while it would be "totally unacceptable" for a time limit to the UK-wide backstop arrangement to then simply result in the Northern Ireland-only solution being adopted.
Guy Verhofstadt said his appearance on the campaign trail wasn't interfering because the UK hasn't left the EU yet.
By  Rebecca Taylor, news reporter
Monday 13 May 2019 10:27, UK
The European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator has declared himself a Liberal Democrat as he joined the party on the campaign trail in London.
Guy Verhofstadt said the Lib Dems offered an alternative to nationalism and predicted a surge for Remain support in the upcoming European elections.
He joined Vince Cable's party in Camden, north London, after they launched their European election manifesto "B******* to Brexit".
Mr Verhofstadt said: "I think it's important to show that the European liberals and democrats support Vince Cable.
"Support the Lib Dems in this difficult fight in Britain, in these European elections.
"Secondly, we want to show by coming here a message to the continent to say never repeat Brexit again.
"I'm a Lib Dem. It's natural that people are looking to the Lib Dems when it comes to European elections.
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"We want to be the alternative for nationalism and popularism.
"What I think is there will be a huge support for Remain.
"I'm not here as a Brexit negotiator, I'm here as the leader of the liberals and democrats for Europe to support the most pro-European party."
Earlier this week the government confirmed that the UK would have to hold the European Parliament elections as there is not enough time to get any deal through before being legally bound to return MEPs to Brussels.
Voters will cast their ballots on 23 May and the results will be announced on 26 May.
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Mr Verhofstadt rejected the idea his presence in London would be seen as interference, saying "this is Europe, it's all Europe".
Answering questions about other Remain supporting parties in the UK, he said: "There is no doubt about the fact that Vince Cable and the Lib Dems are most pro-EU party and are not from yesterday."
Mr Verhofstadt was also asked about reports Olly Robbins, the UK's chief Brexit negotiator, had enquired about how he could become a Belgian or EU citizen after Brexit.
Mr Verhofstadt said: "It was a joke, a joke, where is your British sense of humour? I hope in Brexit you don't lose it - the famous British humour."
He also said he wanted to send a warning to the rest of the EU that Brexit should not be repeated, and said it had already had a worse effect on Britain than had been predicted before the referendum.
Members of the Brussels club harden their language, amid signs they recognise the prime minister's power is on the wane.
Political editor
            @faisalislam
Friday 14 December 2018 09:12, UK
It was something of a midnight horror show for the absent prime minister - who had asked for a helping hand with a mutinous House of Commons just before the EU summit dinner.
Instead, at an extraordinary news conference, the presidents of the European Council and Commission confirmed no more negotiations.
Council President Donald Tusk said: "The union stands by this agreement and intends to proceed with its ratifications. It's is not open for renegotiation."
:: Fee for travelling to the EU after Brexit revealed
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This was repeated by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for good measure, who said: "We can issue some clarifications but there will be no renegotiations."
Devastating for a UK prime minister desperate to get her deal through the Commons.
And whereas the PM had played down expectations of a breakthrough arriving at the summit, just hours after having 117 of her own MPs vote to show no confidence in her leadership, she might not have expected a marked hardening of the language in the summit communique.
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The Spanish and Irish joined forces to delete a draft paragraph offering to work on extra reassurances for the UK that the backstop would be temporary.
But the real problem was that all this was after the PM had made her most heartfelt plea for reassurances to get this deal through the House of Commons and asked EU leaders to "hold nothing in reserve" to get it over the line.
Sky News established that while the meeting was happening, the PM floated the idea of setting not an expiry date to the backstop but a commencement date for the future relationship of 2022, in an effectively binding form.
:: EU sends "crystal clear" message to UK as May's hopes dashed
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But while the PM got sympathy, there was scepticism too from leaders who asked what exactly the UK wanted from a future trade deal to be agreed at such a time.
"There is no Plan B," one diplomatic source said afterwards.
Even more troubling was the judgement from some that the EU side could simply not offer concessions at this stage, when the PM had simply not even tested opinion in the House of Commons.
Can Theresa May deliver a majority in the House? There is one for a deal, she said, and this is the only deal.
There were also signs that leaders recognised her power on the wane.
Speaking to Sky News, Irish leader Leo Varadkar emphasised no concessions on the backstop, but instead appeared to directly appeal over the head of the government to MPs, pointing out the Commons had the power to pull Article 50.
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As leaders left for the night, "no-deal" preparations were being ramped up.
A slew of Brussels contingency documents are to be published next Wednesday to help members to prepare.
For good measure, Mr Juncker confirmed for the first time in public that Britons would be charged for visa-free travel to the EU post-Brexit.
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Expectations were low for this summit, but this was the last thing the prime minister needed.
Not quite as bad as the shock of Salzburg, but a considerable setback when she needed help.
Something bound to be watched carefully by MPs, denied their say so far.
Reports the EU has abandoned the prime minister's plan come amid increasing speculation over cabinet resignations.
By  Laura Bundock, political correspondent
Sunday 11 November 2018 06:43, UK
Theresa May is facing a battle to save her Brexit plan amid claims the European Union has rejected a key proposal.
Talks with Brussels have reportedly broken down over the PM's solution to the Irish backstop.
The current proposal would see the whole of the UK remaining in a temporary customs arrangement to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
To allay fears this would leave the UK trapped indefinitely in a customs union - Mrs May had drawn up a mechanism which would allow the UK to leave the backstop.
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Using the legal expertise of Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, it proposed using an independent arbitration panel.
But the EU has reportedly dismissed this plan, dubbed the "Cox compromise", insisting any arbitration must come from the European Court of Justice.
This would be a huge blow for the PM's hopes of reaching a deal with Brussels by the end of the month.
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Mrs May had also hoped her solution would bring together her divided cabinet at a meeting this week.
Meanwhile speculation grows over the possibility of other resignations, following the departure of transport minister Jo Johnson.
Mr Johnson warned Britain was "on the brink of the greatest crisis since the Second World War".
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Throwing his support behind a second referendum, he added it would be a "travesty" not to let voters have their say on the final deal.
Another four Remain MPs are said to be considering their positions.
Any more resignations could cost the government valuable votes when any deal comes before parliament.
Brexiteers and the DUP have joined forces warning they will vote down any deal which prioritises the EU over the UK.
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Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Tory backbenchers, and DUP Brexit spokesperson Sammy Wilson have said they would oppose any agreement "at the price of our union".
The Labour leadership says it is highly unlikely it will vote for the government's current plan.
Writing in the Sunday Times, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Kier Starmer says he will work with other parties to stop a no-deal scenario.
He said: "Labour will stick to its guns. Supporting a bad deal is not in the national interest. So, we have to be clear that if the prime minister's deal is rejected, parliament must take back control. There is no mandate for a no-deal."
Guy Verhofstadt says the delay is "too near for a substantial rethink of Brexit" and "too far away to prompt any action".
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Tuesday 16 April 2019 23:28, UK
A top EU figure has said he fears Britain will waste its latest Brexit reprieve and "run down the clock" once again.
European Parliament Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt told the European Parliament that the bloc's decision to grant a delay until the end of October risked prolonging the uncertainty.
He said the six-month extension to Article 50 is "too near for a substantial rethink of Brexit and at the same time too far away to prompt any action".
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"My fear is that with this decision, the pressure to come to a cross-party agreement disappears," Mr Verhofstadt said, referring to the talks between Labour and the Conservatives to try and find a Brexit compromise.
"And that both parties, the Conservatives and Labour, will again already what they did for months - run down the clock.
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"And the proof of this is that the first decision the House of Commons took after your decision was to go on holidays."
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Mr Verhofstadt said the prospect of both parties being "wiped out" in May's European Parliament elections at the hands of Nigel Farage's Brexit Party could be an unlikely solution.
"So really, I never thought I'd say this in my life here in this parliament, but maybe the only thing that can save us is Nigel Farage now," he said to applause in the chamber.
Mr Verhofstadt said his advice to both parties would be to come to an agreement to "in the coming days to avoid this imminent disaster".
Mr Farage predicted his party would "sweep the board" in the elections.
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He added: "There is only one way it can be stopped and that is if the governing party of Mrs May and the opposition of Mr Corbyn come together and agree to a permanent customs union, and indeed effectively membership of the single market."
Meanwhile, European Council President Donald Tusk said the UK cannot be treated as a "second category" member of the EU if it ends up taking part in the elections.
"One of the consequences of our decision is that the UK will hold European elections next month," he told the gathering in Strasbourg.
"We should approach this seriously, as UK Members of the European Parliament will be there for several months, maybe longer.
"They will be full Members of the Parliament, with all their rights and obligations.
"I am speaking about this today because I have strongly opposed the idea that during this further extension, the UK should be treated as a second-category member state.
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"No, it cannot. Therefore, I also ask you to reject similar ideas, if they were to be voiced in this House."
Mr Tusk said that the EU did not give into "fear and scaremongering" about the potential for the UK to be a disruptive force in the bloc during an extension.
He said: "I know that some have expressed fear that the UK might want to disrupt the EU's functioning during this time but the EU 27 didn't give in to such fear and scaremongering.
"In fact, since the very beginning of the Brexit process the UK has been a constructive and responsible EU member state and so we have no reason to believe that this should change."
Mr Tusk also said he still believed Brexit could be reversed, adding that he disagreed with one of the bloc's premiers who had said the EU should abandon hope of the UK changing its mind.
"During the European Council one of the leaders warned us not to be dreamers, and that we shouldn't think that Brexit could be reversed," he said.
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"I would like to say: at this rather difficult moment in our history, we need dreamers and dreams.
"We cannot give in to fatalism. At least I will not stop dreaming about a better and united Europe."
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also addressed MEPs, telling them that the EU is "ready" for the possibility of Britain leaving at the end of October with no deal.
But he said Brussels has "nothing to gain" from the "disruption" it would cause the UK.
Parliament is currently in recess for Easter, but cross-party talks between the government and Labour are expected to continue today at an official level.
Jeremy Corbyn said "there's no agreement yet" and the government "doesn't appear to be shifting the red lines".
The cabinet minister says it would still damage the economy, security and UK union, but insists the circumstances have changed.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Monday 15 July 2019 10:02, UK
Amber Rudd has dropped her opposition to a no-deal Brexit but vowed to fight any bid by the next prime minister to suspend parliament to force it through.
The work and pensions secretary admitted her mind had "changed" about trying to fight Britain leaving the EU on 31 October without a withdrawal agreement.
She had previously defied the Tory whip by abstaining on a vote to rule out no-deal in March, and warned in a joint article with two other ministers that "it would be better" to delay Brexit than "crash out of the EU".
But speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr show on Sunday, the Hastings MP said the circumstances had now changed because there was time to use the threat of no-deal to get a better deal.
"We now need to allow no-deal to be part of the leverage to make sure that people compromise more," she said. "I hope that the EU will compromise."
"I still think that no-deal would be bad for the economy, security and the union."
Ms Rudd, who is backing Jeremy Hunt in the Tory leadership race, took a stronger stance against the idea the next prime minister could prorogue parliament.
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She ruled out joining former prime minister John Major, who has threatened to take the government to court if it tries to pursue that route.
"I think that proroguing parliament would be a mistake," she said.
"I would use my own tactics to try and stop that happening, and I encourage anyone else to consider their own version as well."
Gina Miller, the lawyer who successfully won a court ruling forcing Theresa May to consult MPs on starting the countdown to Brexit, has threatened to challenge any decision to suspend parliament in a similar style.
She thinks it would be an "abuse of power" but denies she is trying to make a "political point".
"I think any form of Brexit would diminish us as a country," she told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
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"But that is completely separate - that is my own personal view... It is about the black and white letter of the law."
Tory MP Priti Patel, who is backing Boris Johnson to be the next prime minister, said Brexit should not be "sub-contracted out to the courts... telling elected governments what can and can't be done".
The prime minister, who is facing growing EU opposition to his Brexit demands, says the public "want us to deliver".
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Monday 29 July 2019 10:55, UK
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Boris Johnson has "absolutely" ruled out calling an election before Britain has left the EU, as the PM was warned he has put himself on a "collision course" with the bloc.
Ireland's deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, said Mr Johnson's comments in the Commons on Thursday - setting out his Brexit stance and opposition to the Irish border backstop - were "very unhelpful".
"He seems to have made a deliberate decision to set Britain on a collision course with the European Union and with Ireland in relation to the Brexit negotiations," Mr Coveney said.
"I think only he can answer the question as to why he is doing that."
The criticism from Mr Coveney came as Mr Johnson "absolutely" ruled out calling an election before Brexit is delivered.
"The British people voted in 2015, in 2016, in 2017," the PM said during a visit to a police training centre in Birmingham.
"What they want us to do is deliver on their mandate, come out of the EU on October 31.
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"They don't want another electoral event, they don't want a referendum, they don't want a general election. They want us to deliver."
In his first address to MPs as prime minister, Mr Johnson said the deal Theresa May agreed with the EU was dead.
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He reiterated his pledge to take Britain out of the bloc - deal or no deal - at the end of October.
And the PM demanded Brussels remove the controversial backstop - an insurance policy designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland - from the withdrawal agreement.
This was swiftly rejected by EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who said the demand was "unacceptable".
Mr Johnson repeated that message in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Downing Street said.
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"The purpose of the call was to congratulate the prime minister. They did discuss Brexit," a spokesman said.
"When the prime minister has these conversations with fellow leaders and the discussion moves on to Brexit, he will be setting out the same message which he delivered in the House of Commons yesterday.
"He wants to do a deal. He will be energetic in trying to seek that deal, but the withdrawal agreement has been rejected three times by the House of Commons. It is not going to pass.
"That means reopening the withdrawal agreement and securing the abolition of the backstop."
The Elysee Palace said the pair will "speak about Brexit in the coming weeks, in compliance with the requirements of the European Union".
Mr Macron has invited him to visit Paris in the coming weeks.
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The PM also spoke with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about Brexit and ties between London and Berlin.
Mrs Merkel has invited Mr Johnson to come to Berlin.
Meanwhile, France's Europe minister has voiced Paris's opposition to renegotiating the Brexit deal.
"We have to be very clear on that," Amelie de Montchalin told France 2.
"We've always said that if the UK wants to leave the EU, and if it wants to do it in an orderly manner, the best thing we have is the agreement."
She said the "divorce agreement" had not been "imposed on the British" but came about after painstaking negotiations.
If Brexit paralysis brings down Theresa May and her government, Boris Johnson is waiting, writes Sky's Beth Rigby.
Political editor
            @BethRigby
Saturday 19 January 2019 13:31, UK
Brexiteer rebel Boris Johnson travelled to JCB's headquarters in Staffordshire on Friday to dump some fresh dirt on Theresa May's Brexit deal.
The former foreign secretary, who quit her cabinet in protest over her Brexit blueprint plans last July, told an audience of factory workers that her deal with the EU was bad for Britain and that's why parliament had comprehensively voted her down.
He then went on to offer his boss some unsolicited advice about how to resolve the Brexit paralysis; Get back to Brussels and negotiate some more.
"If we hold our nerve, I believe we can deliver not a pseudo Brexit... but the Brexit people voted for," he said.
"It is time to go back fortified with the emphatic and conclusive mandate of parliament and demand real change to that backstop, and mean it this time so Britain can get out unilaterally and whatever they are saying I believe they will be flexible."
When I suggested to him he had come all the way to JCB's headquarters - at a moment of national crisis - to make his own leadership pitch in a bid to further undermine an already defenestrated prime minister, he insisted that he was only trying to "humbly and sincerely to offer a way forward".
But this was not a conciliatory speech. This was an audacious attempt to launch Mr Johnson as a credible Plan B as he sketched out the beginnings of an election manifesto, throwing out his thoughts on housing and hospitals, wages and taxation, crime and devolution.
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He might have bottled a run at the leadership in 2016, but this former mayor of London is still hopeful that one day he might take the crown.
Sky News unpicks what all the major players (and the factions vying for their attention) want
It is true that these days he is more a Marmite politician than a Heineken one. His starring role in the Brexit referendum campaign has left him loathed and loved in equal measure.
A couple of his colleagues have threatened to quit the Tories if he ever became leader, such is their dislike of this man.
And yet he remains top of Tory voters' and members' polls for who they'd like as the next Tory leader. Senior Brexiteers who also want a run at the job know he's the one to beat.
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Mr Johnson admitted this week that he regretted pulling out of the leadership race in 2016.
"If I had my time again I might have done things differently," he said.
"I've certainly have engaged in a lot of heart searching about it ever since."
There's no doubt - despite his detractors saying he's a busted flush - that he still believes he could one day take the top job and he has built quite an operation around him in recent months to help him get there.
He is still close to Sir Lynton Crosby, the election strategist who ran Mr Johnson's two successful mayoral campaigns in 2008 and 2012 before going on to work for David Cameron in the 2015 election and Theresa May in 2017.
Sir Lynton's company CTF Partners tells me Mr Johnson has not hired them. But there is clear activity between CTF and the former London mayor: recent records show the MP received a £20,000 interest-free loan from the company as well as a £3,000 donation from the firm for "office and staffing costs".
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Meanwhile, he has clearly got support from JCB founder and Tory donor Lord Bamford. He gave Mrs May £1m for her election war-chest; these days he's shutting down his shop floor to give Mr Johnson a stage - picking a winner some might say.
Of course, his rival Mrs May won a vote of confidence in her leadership in December and she cannot be challenged now for another 12 months.
But this Brexit paralysis may still bring her and her government down. And if it does, Mr Johnson is waiting.
The frontrunner in the race to become prime minister next week has pledged to leave the EU on 31 October "do or die".
By  Sam Coates, deputy political editor
Tuesday 16 July 2019 22:19, UK
Boris Johnson could send MPs home for up to two weeks in October under plans being considered by his campaign.
Insiders have confirmed they are looking at scheduling a Queen's speech to mark the start of a new parliamentary session in early November.
Parliament is usually prorogued for between one and two weeks ahead of a Queen's speech, meaning MPs would in effect be unavailable to stop a no-deal Brexit immediately before October 31.
Mr Johnson's campaign confirmed it was one option being looked at but stressed no decision has yet been made.
Some Tory MPs are already planning to try and stop a no-deal divorce with the EU in the knowledge they may no longer be coming to Westminster for the final two weeks in October.
Guto Bebb, a Tory MP who wants to stop no-deal and hold a second referendum, confirmed he had heard the plan and was trying to work out what to do.
He told Sky News: "I read consideration is being given in the Boris camp for proroguing parliament without a deal.
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"This is likely to be the case in the event a no-deal Brexiteer is in the whips' office."
A Johnson campaign source said: "A number of ideas are under consideration, including this one."
Some of those involved in transition planning in Whitehall have been told of the possible plan for Mr Johnson.
Critics say the idea could scupper any attempt for Mr Johnson to leave the EU with a deal, since parliament would not be sitting to pass the necessary legislation.
More MPs are considering following Mr Bebb by announcing they will stand down at the next election, freeing their hand to vote against the government in a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons.
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Mr Bebb warned that some of his colleagues have been complacent over attempts to stop a no-deal Brexit.
He told Sky News: "Individuals need to say when they are going to act. The Grand Old Duke of York strategy I'm sort of bored of.
"At some point they are going to need to make a stand and even then it could be too late."
It comes after Mr Johnson and his rival Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt ruled out accepting an idea floated to break the Brexit deadlock and get a deal through parliament.
They both refused to support putting a time limit on the Irish backstop - the insurance policy to prevent a hard border reforming on the island of Ireland.
Some Tory Brexiteers said they could support the policy to ensure the UK does not remain trapped in it indefinitely.
But Brussels has insisted its inclusion is non-negotiable, including the Irish finance minister who said on Tuesday: "We will not be changing the backstop."
Mr Johnson has pledged to leave the EU on 31 October "do or die", while Mr Hunt has signalled he could ask Brussels for another delay of a few weeks if getting a deal in that time frame is achievable.
The meetings come as the PM continues his bid to strike a new agreement with Brussels ahead of the Brexit deadline.
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Monday 16 September 2019 10:31, UK
Boris Johnson will hold Brexit talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and chief negotiator Michel Barnier next week.
The meeting with Mr Juncker on Monday will be the pair's first face-to-face meeting since Mr Johnson entered Downing Street in July.
A European Commission spokeswoman described the meeting between Mr Juncker and Mr Johnson as a "working lunch".
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At a speech in Rotherham an upbeat prime minister announced that he would also be meeting Mr Barnier, adding: "There is the rough shape of a deal to be done on Brexit.
"I am cautiously optimistic about a Brexit deal."
It comes as Mr Johnson continues his bid to strike a new agreement with the EU ahead of the currently scheduled exit day of 31 October.
Number 10 sources have played down hopes of an imminent breakthrough in the negotiations, saying there was still a "long way to go".
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And the European Commission spokeswoman said she was "not going to speculate" on what Mr Juncker hoped to achieve from the meeting.
Ireland's prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has warned that the gap between London and Brussels on the issue of the backstop remained "very wide".
"We have always said we would be willing to look at alternative arrangements, but what we're seeing falls far short," he told RTE radio.
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"We are exploring what is possible.
"The gap is very wide but we will fight for and work for a deal until the last moment, but not at any cost."
The backstop, which is part of the withdrawal agreement Theresa May negotiated with the EU, is an insurance policy designed to avoid the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland.
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Mr Johnson has called for it to be scrapped, but the EU has said its presence in the deal is not up for negotiation.
His talks with Mr Juncker are the latest in a round of meetings with top EU figures, including Mr Vardkar, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Tory leadership frontrunner will refuse to pay the UK's divorce bill unless better Brexit terms are on offer from the EU.
By  Lucia Binding, news reporter, and Greg Heffer, political reporter
Monday 10 June 2019 09:16, UK
Boris Johnson has come under fire from rival Conservative leadership candidates after claiming he would refuse to pay the £39bn Brexit divorce bill unless the EU offers better terms.
The former foreign secretary, who is the bookies' favourite to replace Theresa May as prime minister, used an interview with the Sunday Times to declare he would step up preparations to counter no-deal Brexit "disruption".
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He also claimed he was the only candidate who could see off the threat to the Tories of Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

But - commenting on Mr Johnson's stance to negotiations with the EU - International Development Secretary Rory Stewart claimed his leadership rival had "now adopted Farage's approach to Brexit".
He said: "So the choice for the members is now also clear - does our future lies with a Farage politics of rejection, or with getting a sensible Brexit deal done and then reaching out and unifying the country?"
Jeremy Hunt, who succeeded Mr Johnson as foreign secretary last year, also dismissed the chances of an "ultra hardline approach" to discussions with Brussels.
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"We will get an ultra hardline response back," he told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.
A source close to French President Emmanuel Macron warned that refusing to pay would amount to defaulting on sovereign debt.
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Mr Hunt also claimed delivering Brexit is "about the art of tough negotiation, not the art of empty rhetoric" as he also described Mr Johnson as a "Marmite character" among EU politicians when he was in government.
"There were other European foreign ministers who found him difficult to deal with because of his views on Brexit," Mr Hunt said.
In his newspaper inteview, Mr Johnson compared Mr Farage and Mr Corbyn to sea monsters from Greek mythology which troubled Odysseus.
He said: "I truly believe only I can steer the country between the Scylla and Charybdis of Corbyn and Farage and on to calmer water.
"This can only be achieved by delivering Brexit as promised on 31 October and delivering a One Nation Tory agenda."
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He said he would scrap the backstop - something the EU has so far refused to do - and would settle the Irish border issue only when Brussels is ready to agree to a future relationship.
Mr Johnson said the £39bn settlement would only be paid when there is "greater clarity" about the way forward.
"I always thought it was extraordinary that we should agree to write the entire cheque before having a final deal," he said.
"In getting a good deal, money is a great solvent and a great lubricant."
The former foreign secretary has received backing from prominent Brexiteer Steve Baker, and has also picked up endorsements from cabinet ministers James Brokenshire, Chris Grayling and Alun Cairns, and former international development secretary Priti Patel.
Former leadership candidate James Cleverly also offered his support to Mr Johnson.
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Setting out his own Brexit strategy, Mr Hunt revealed German Chancellor Angela Merkel told him this week that the EU "would be willing to negotiate" on the Brexit deal with a new prime minister and "would look at any solutions" the UK offers on the Irish border.
He claimed getting a Brexit deal through the House of Commons is the "only way" to avoid the "catastrophe" of a general election.
Meanwhile Home Secretary Sajid Javid's leadership campaign has received a boost with an endorsement from Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson.
Her decision to back Mr Javid came as he set out his own plan to tackle the Irish border issue by spending hundreds of millions on a technological solution.
Mr Javid said there is a moral duty on the UK to pay for measures at the Irish border in an effort to secure a Brexit breakthrough.
Mr Stewart's camp said he is the challenger best placed to take on Mr Johnson, pointing to polling by Opinium which puts the two leadership candidates neck-and-neck on the question of "would they make a good prime minister".
At least one manufacturer says the supplies are  "not unlimited" and border delays or panic buying could lead to shortages.
Chief political correspondent
            @joncraig
Wednesday 9 October 2019 12:44, UK
Brexiteers will say it is the ultimate in "project fear", but it's claimed the nation could be caught short by a scarcity of toilet roll after the UK leaves the European Union.
Remainers will insist it shows Brexit is going down the pan, but a manufacturer has suggested some toilet paper supplies might not withstand long-term border delays or panic buying in the event of no-deal.
The closet fears emerged after an MP, Plaid Cymru's Jonathan Edwards, asked a government minister for details on how long stocks of toilet paper will last after a no-deal Brexit.
Clearly flushed, Cabinet Office minister Simon Hart said the Government was working to ensure the "best possible preparation" to support the flow of goods.
"The government would prefer to leave the EU on October 31 with a deal," said Mr Hart. "If this is not possible, we will have to leave with no-deal.
"In the event of no-deal, the government will prioritise the flow of goods at the border while continuing to take a risk-based approach to controls and checks on goods to minimise additional friction."
He added: "We will continue to work to make sure we have the best possible preparation to support the flow of goods."
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But Mr Edwards suggested Mr Hart was guilty of a tissue of lies: "This is the farcical level we have descended to," he said.
"The British government can no longer even guarantee we have the necessary supplies of toilet paper in a crash-out Brexit.
"It's already said it's willing to flush the economy down the toilet, but now we won't have the paper to clean up after.
"As much as this revelation lends itself to toilet humour, it shows the serious damage a no-deal Brexit would do, even to our most basic of supplies."
The chain of parliamentary exchanges prompted Essity, which makes the Velvet and Cushelle toilet paper brands for the UK market, to say it was developing "robust contingency plans" across its supply chain to cope with no-deal, but warned that stocks were "not unlimited".
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An spokeswoman said: "As far as possible, Essity is developing robust contingency plans across the whole of our supply chain to mitigate any short-term risks following a 'no-deal' or 'hard' exit of the EU.
"However, stocks are not unlimited, and some will not withstand long-term border delays outlined by the government or in the event of consumer panic buying."
The company manufactures tissue in the UK and said it had built stocks of raw materials and spare parts to ensure supply in the event of short-term border delays.
It is also holding stocks of finished products that are imported or exported between the UK and EU.
Labour says the government is "open to moving forward in our direction", as the clock ticks down to the European elections.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Tuesday 30 April 2019 11:17, UK
Cross-party talks to break the Brexit deadlock have moved on to the "nuts and bolts" after the latest "positive" set of meetings.
Sue Hayman, Labour's shadow environment secretary, emerged from the Cabinet Office on Monday to declare the day's negotiations with senior government ministers as "very constructive".
There is still "a lot more to discuss", she added, but suggested the government had shown willingness to drop some of its red lines.
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"We've had a problem - the government hasn't been prepared to move, but now we're exploring how the government can move," Ms Hayman said, flanked by a contingent of other top Labour MPs.
"I believe the government is open to moving forward in our direction."
David Lidington, the de facto deputy prime minister, praised the "productive" meeting.
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In a rare update after the negotiations wound up for the day, he said: "We've been testing some ideas in the room, and there's more room to be taken place during the week."
But Mr Lidington refused to say how long the talks would continue, amid fears within the Conservatives about the looming European Parliament election.
"It's probably not sensible to set an absolutely hard and fast deadline - that then becomes a sort of cliff edge in itself that ramps up expectations," Mr Lidington cautioned.
Michel Barnier, the EU's Brexit negotiator, said during a speech in Belgium that "we are hoping to see the results of the cross-party talks this week".
The discussions have been going on since the start of April, sparked by Mrs May suffering the third defeat of her Brexit deal in parliament.
Still without the crucial backing of Brexiteer Tories and her confidence and supply partners the DUP, she called for a new approach of "national unity".
Mrs May and Mr Corbyn met several times, and have instructed senior shadow ministers and aides to hold talks in the weeks since.
But they were paused over recess - the week parliament winds down over Easter - amid claims by Labour that the government was refusing to budge much.
Pro-second referendum campaigner Rupa Huq MP told Sky News the prime minister "banged her head on the desk" when she challenged her to clarify what red lines she was willing to scrap.
Britain is now on course to leave the EU by 31 October, but will be forced out of the bloc with no-deal on 1 June if it refuses to elect a new cohort of MEPs at the end of May.
It comes as Theresa May asks for an extension until 30 June while Donald Tusk calls for a delay until March 2020.
Saturday 6 April 2019 11:16, UK
Labour has accused the government of failing to offer real change or compromise during talks to end the Brexit stalemate - as new exit dates are considered.
In a statement following more talks between the opposition and a team appointed by Theresa May to agree a way forward, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said: "So far, the government isn't proposing any changes to the deal. In particular, it's not countenancing any changes to the actual wording of the political declaration.
"Now obviously that's disappointing; compromise requires change.
"We want the talks to continue and we've written in those terms to the Government, but we do need change if we're going to compromise."
But Number 10 insists it has made "serious proposals" during the talks and is "prepared to pursue changes to the political declaration" and carry on with efforts over the weekend.
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Prisons minister Rory Stewart has said there is "quite a lot of life" left in the talks yet and that despite tensions, the two sides are "very, very close".
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It comes as the prime minister wrote to EU Council President Donald Tusk to ask to delay Brexit until 30 June this year so British MPs could agree a withdrawal deal.
However, Mr Tusk has been formally telling officials from member countries to endorse a much longer extension - until 31 March 2020.
Mr Tusk told officials that the only "reasonable" way out of the Brexit deadlock in parliament is to allow another year for talks.
However, the bloc could offer a clause to allow the UK to leave early if a deal is struck.
Speaking to Sky News, an EU source said Mr Tusk told officials: "The only reasonable way out would be a long but flexible extension. I would call it a 'flextension'.
"How would it work in practice? We could give the UK a year-long extension, automatically terminated once the withdrawal agreement has been accepted and ratified by the House of Commons.
"And even if this were not possible, then the UK would still have enough time to rethink its Brexit strategy. Short extension if possible and a long one if necessary.
"It seems to be a good scenario for both sides, as it gives the UK all the necessary flexibility, while avoiding the need to meet every few weeks to further discuss Brexit extensions."
Requesting a much shorter extension until the end of June, Mrs May wrote: "If the parties are able to ratify before this date, the government proposes that the period should be terminated early.
"The government will want to agree a timetable for ratification that allows the United Kingdom to withdrawal from the European Union before 23 May 2019 and therefore cancel the European parliament elections, but will continue to make responsible preparations to hold the elections should this not prove possible.
"It is frustrating that we have not yet brought this process to a successful and orderly conclusion."
The letters have sparked anger on both sides of the Channel, with other European leaders and some British MPs unhappy about a potential extension.
Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, said the latest request was "unsurprising but unsatisfactory".
Mrs Foster said: "Exiting the EU has become chaotic because of intransigence in Brussels and ineffectiveness in London.
Brexit jargon explained
"The United Kingdom fighting the European elections almost three years after a clear majority voted to leave the EU sums up the disorganised and slapdash approach taken to negotiations by the prime minister."
She added that the DUP wants a "sensible deal which protects the union and respects the referendum result" - and warned it was "foolish" from a strategic point of view to take no deal off the table.
Mrs Foster said: "The prime minister should not waste any extension by subcontracting the UK's future to Jeremy Corbyn."
Emmanuel Macron has said talks of further extension are "premature" and the French president wants a clear idea of the future plan by Tuesday.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the options to prevent no-deal are limited, adding the letter was not enough to give a further extension.
Sky News' Europe Correspondent Mark Stone said Mr Tusk's suggested "flextension" did not receive full backing at a meeting of ambassadors from the 27 remaining EU countries because of a tweet by Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Shortly before the meeting, Mr Rees-Mogg wrote: "If a long extension leaves us stuck in the EU we should be as difficult as possible.
"We could veto any increase in the budget, obstruct the putative EU army and block Mr Macron's integrationist schemes."
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Stone said the tweet was discussed at the ambassadors' meeting.
He added: "My sense is that ultimately the EU will grant the UK an extension. It may not be the short one that Mrs May wants to the end of June, but a longer one... but there is concern that the UK, over the course of this next year - if they get the extension - really could cause the EU trouble.
"As the French have been saying, it could infect the business of the EU as a bloc."
However, the Republic of Ireland's Leo Varadkar appeared to back Mr Tusk's suggestion, saying it would make more sense to offer a longer extension than a rolling one.
Mrs May had to set out future plans to the EU by this week, under the terms given by the bloc for the first Brexit extension, which is set to end at 11pm on 12 April.
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The South West of England may have to give formal notice for the European elections by 12 April, as the area includes Gibraltar, whose deadline is that day.
Other regions would have to publish notice by 15 April.
Tom Watson, Labour deputy leader, said the party has opened nominations for candidates for the European elections.
And Chuka Umunna, former Labour MP-turned The Independent Group member, confirmed his new group will also be preparing to field candidates in May elections.
He told Sky News: "In order to hold a people's vote we need a relatively long extension, so that is better from our point of view.
"We have now had two rounds of voting [indicative votes in the Commons] on each occasion a people's vote has topped the poll.
"We need to complete that voting, we've had group stages and we need the final stages."
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Mrs May is to spend the weekend at her country retreat Chequers, where she will continue working on a Brexit compromise.
Talking about the technical talks between Labour and the government, Sky News' deputy political editor Beth Rigby said: "The PM knows a long extension is likely to mean a softer Brexit, or none at all."
A Number 10 source reveals a call between the pair has dashed hopes of a deal - but the EU warns the PM of a "stupid blame game".
Political reporter
            @GregHeffer
Tuesday 8 October 2019 19:03, UK
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Boris Johnson a Brexit deal is "overwhelmingly unlikely", according to Downing Street.
The prime minister spoke with Ms Merkel for 30 minutes this morning, with Mr Johnson stressing that Brexit negotiations in Brussels "are close to breaking down", Number 10 said.
An EU-UK agreement is "essentially impossible not just now but ever" following the "clarifying" phone call, a Downing Street source added.
The government last week unveiled its proposals for a renegotiated Brexit deal, with the prime minister hoping this can be agreed before the current 31 October deadline.
During the call, Mr Johnson was said to have told Ms Merkel the plans - which would ditch the controversial Irish border backstop arrangement - represented a "reasonable offer", but that it was not apparent to him "there was any desire for negotiation from the EU".
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The prime minister also expressed his view that some in the EU are hoping a second referendum will reverse Brexit, but told Ms Merkel this won't happen.
Reacting to Number 10's account of the discussion, European Council President Donald Tusk warned Mr Johnson that "what's at stake is not winning some stupid blame game".
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In a tweet directed at the prime minister, Mr Tusk said: "At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. You don't want a deal, you don't want an extension, you don't want to revoke, quo vadis?"
Ireland's foreign minister Simon Coveney said it was "hard to disagree" with Mr Tusk's comments.
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He added on Twitter: "Reflects the frustration across EU and the enormity of what's at stake for us all. We remain open to finalize a fair #Brexit deal but need a UK Govt willing to work with EU to get it done."
Number 10's characterisation of the PM's call with Ms Merkel also prompted a new sell-off in sterling.
The pound was trading more than half a cent lower against both the dollar and the euro - at $1.22 and €1.11 - as a recent rally, on market hopes of a Brexit deal, evaporated.
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A Number 10 source said the call between Mr Johnson and Ms Merkel was a "very useful clarifying moment in all sorts of ways", with the result that "a deal is essentially impossible not just now but ever".
The backstop is designed as an insurance mechanism to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland, regardless of the future EU/UK trade relationship.
But Mr Johnson has branded the arrangement "undemocratic".
Brexiteers fear it could leave the UK trapped in the EU's customs union - limiting the capacity for new independent trade deals - as well as following EU rules but with no influence over them.
No British Government could ever accept Germany telling us that part of the UK has to stay in the EU. The choice now is clear: A clean break Brexit, or stay in a new militarised empire. Time to choose freedom.
The UK government’s attempt to shift the blame for the Brexit fiasco to anyone but themselves - today it’s Merkel - is pathetically transparent.
The Number 10 source said: "The call with Merkel showed the EU has adopted a new position.
"She made clear a deal is overwhelmingly unlikely and she thinks the EU has a veto on us leaving the customs union.
"Merkel said that if Germany wanted to leave the EU they could do it no problem, but the UK cannot leave without leaving Northern Ireland behind in a customs union and in full alignment forever.
"She said that Ireland is the government's special problem and Ireland must at least have a veto on Northern Ireland leaving.
"Merkel said that the prime minister should tell Northern Ireland that it must stay in full alignment forever, but that even this would not eliminate customs issues.
"It was a very useful clarifying moment in all sorts of ways. If this represents a new established position, then it means a deal is essentially impossible not just now but ever.
"It also made clear that they are willing to torpedo the Good Friday Agreement."
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A spokesperson for the German government confirmed Ms Merkel spoke on the phone with Mr Johnson, but said they would not discuss a "confidential conversation".
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer attacked "yet another cynical attempt by Number 10 to sabotage the negotiations".
He said: "Boris Johnson will never take responsibility for his own failure to put forward a credible deal. His strategy from day one has been for a no-deal Brexit."
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon criticised "pathetically transparent" attempts by Number 10 to "shift the blame for the Brexit fiasco to anyone but themselves".
And a source within the group of 21 former Conservative MPs - who were expelled from the party for rebelling against Mr Johnson on Brexit last month - claimed Number 10's focus "is not on negotiations, it's on blame".
"They want to drag the country into a no-deal Brexit - blaming the EU for not engaging with their 'deal'," the source said.
"But in reality there is no 'deal'."
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But DUP leader Arlene Foster suggested Mr Johnson's Brexit proposals had "flushed out Dublin's real intentions to trap Northern Ireland in the EU customs union forever".
She said: "For the UK to be asked to leave a part of its sovereign territory in a foreign organisation of which the UK would no longer be a part and over which we would have no say whatsoever is beyond crazy.
"No UK government could ever concede such a surrender."
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage tweeted: "No British government could ever accept Germany telling us that part of the UK has to stay in the EU.
"The choice now is clear: A clean break Brexit, or stay in a new militarised empire. Time to choose freedom."
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Mr Johnson's call with Ms Merkel follows a report in The Spectator magazine, in which a Number 10 official was quoted as warning EU countries that their support for a Brexit delay at a Brussels summit later this week "will be seen by this government as hostile interference in domestic politics".
The Downing Street official - widely speculated to be Mr Johnson's chief adviser Dominic Cummings - also reportedly claimed that EU member states who oppose a further extension to the Article 50 period "will go to the front of the queue for future cooperation", while those who support it will "go to the bottom of the queue".
"They think now that if there is another delay we will keep coming back with new proposals. This won't happen," the official told the magazine.
"We'll either leave with no deal on 31 October or there will be an election and then we will leave with no deal."
Following a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith tweeted: "I am clear that any threat on withdrawing security cooperation with Ireland is unacceptable.
"This is not in the interest of Northern Ireland or the Union."
I am clear that any threat on withdrawing security cooperation with Ireland is unacceptable. This is not in the interest of NI or the Union.
Former home secretary Amber Rudd, who quit Mr Johnson's government and the Conservatives last month, branded the comments "angry and desperate".
She posted on Twitter: "It shows that, far from having a coherent plan, No10 will simply beg the EU to say no to a delay.
"Our inability so far to strike a deal with the EU is the consequence of little genuine government effort going into getting one."
The Spectator memo is angry and desperate. It shows that, far from having a coherent plan, No10 will simply beg the EU to say no to a delay. Our inability so far to strike a deal with the EU is the consequence of little genuine government effort going into getting one.
Mr Johnson has previously vowed to take the UK out of the EU "do or die".
But legislation passed by opposition MPs last month compels him to seek a delay to Brexit if he hasn't secured a Brexit deal - or MPs have explicitly approved a no-deal Brexit - by 19 October.
After the prime minister's phone call with Ms Merkel, the government released a new "readiness report" ahead of a possible no-deal Brexit.
The Guardian published what was purported to be a leaked point-by-point rejection of the UK's new Brexit offer by the EU on Monday evening.
But a UK source said: "Rather than writing documents in order to leak them, the EU's time would be better spent on engaging with our sensible and fair proposals, so the UK can leave with a deal when we exit the EU on 31 October."
Earlier on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron told Mr Johnson that the EU could make a decision by the end of the week on the latest Brexit proposals.
Plans are underway to force the PM into seeking a Brexit delay, as well as moving towards a second EU referendum or an election.
Political reporter
            @GregHeffer
Friday 18 October 2019 15:43, UK
Boris Johnson will tomorrow present his "great new" Brexit deal to MPs ahead of what is likely to be a knife-edge House of Commons vote on the agreement he has struck with the EU.
However, MPs are already planning to derail the prime minister's Brexit strategy and force him into seeking a delay to the UK's departure from the EU beyond 31 October, as well as making moves towards a second EU referendum or a general election.
Mr Johnson will on Saturday put forward a motion to MPs asking them to approve the new withdrawal agreement and political declaration - setting out the framework of the future UK-EU relationship - that he has agreed with Brussels.
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However, MPs have already tabled a series of amendments to the prime minister's motion. So, what do they plan to do?
PM needs to hit a target of 320
The most serious threat to the prime minister's Brexit strategy is posed by some of those former Conservative MPs he expelled from the party.
Mr Johnson withdrew the Tory whip from 21 MPs last month after they voted in favour of legislation seeking to block a no-deal Brexit on 31 October, known as the Benn Act.
The prime minister, who has branded the law the "Surrender Act", has promised to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October "do or die".
He has also said he would rather "be dead in a ditch" than ask for another Brexit delay.
But the Benn Act will compel him to ask the EU for a three-month delay to Brexit if MPs fail to approve his deal - or explicitly approve a no-deal Brexit - tomorrow.
BREAKINGExiled Tory rebel @edvaizey tells @KayBurley at #Breakfast that colleague @oletwinofficial is planning to put forward a #BrexitDeal amendment that guarantees the UK cannot leave the EU until all legislation is completed. 📺501📱 Watch live https://t.co/cMHO7fsDYJ pic.twitter.com/ogvFClEMU4
In an amendment tabled to the prime minister's motion tomorrow - supported by former Conservatives Sir Oliver Letwin, David Gauke and Philip Hammond - a group of MPs are proposing the House of Commons withholds its approval for Mr Johnson's agreement until all the legislation needed to implement the deal is passed.
Even if Mr Johnson wins approval for his deal tomorrow, he will still have to introduce a Withdrawal Agreement Bill to put the deal into UK law.
Some MPs fear there's a risk not all the legislation will be passed by the 31 October Brexit deadline and could therefore result in a no-deal Brexit on that date; hence their tabling of the amendment.
If the amendment is successful, Mr Johnson is likely to have to comply with the Benn Act - by asking for a fresh extension to the Article 50 negotiating period - although a Brexit delay would only occur if he subsequently fails to pass the necessary legislation before 31 October.
Ed Vaizey, one of the 21 Tory MPs expelled last month, explained to Sky News he wants to support the prime minister's new deal but suggested he is likely to back the amendment to "guarantee that we don't leave the EU until all the legislation is passed"
He said: "Voting simply in favour of the deal on Saturday is just the beginning of the process.
"We have to pass the legislation and nobody wants to be in a position where the legislation somehow fails and we crash out the EU.
"I've always tried to stop a no-deal Brexit."
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The SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford has tabled an amendment that, if passed, would see MPs refuse to approve the Brexit deal and instead call on the prime minister to secure an Article 50 extension until at least 31 January next year in order to hold a general election.
He told Sky News: "Let's keep in mind that parliament did legislate to stop no-deal at the end of October, we passed the Benn Act.
"If we vote down this deal tomorrow, and I really hope that colleagues do, that there's that firm instruction that Boris Johnson must write the letter to the EU requesting that extension.
"I firmly believe that extension will be granted.
"As opposition parties we then have to take our responsibilities seriously. We've got to then - safe in the knowledge that we've got that extension - have a vote of no confidence to bring this government down.
"To put this back to the people in a general election.
SNP's @IanBlackfordMP tells @KayBurley at #Breakfast that if MPs do vote down the PM's #BrexitDeal an extension should be granted, followed by a vote of no confidence "to take down this government". #KayBurley 📺501📱 Watch live https://t.co/cMHO7fsDYJ pic.twitter.com/gOWqdcB1J2
"I'm confident that when we have that debate in an election in Scotland, that we will defeat those that support Brexit.
"It's up to those in other parties in other parts of the UK to do the same. There is no good that is going to come out of Brexit."
He added: "We don't want no deal, we don't want Brexit and it's within our hands to stop those things happening."
It had been suggested some MPs - perhaps with Labour's backing - would allow the Brexit deal to be approved, as long as it was attached to a so-called confirmatory referendum.
This would see the prime minister's deal put to a public vote against the option of remaining in the EU, and would likely require a delay to Brexit beyond 31 October.
However, Labour has shied away from backing such a move on Saturday and, so far, no such proposal has been tabled for tomorrow.
"I think he's played politics with our country and our economy." @johnmcdonnellMP says "numbers are going to be pretty close" but he doesn't think Labour MPs will vote in favour of @BorisJohnson's #BrexitDeal. Watch #KayBurley @#Breakfast 📺501📱 https://t.co/cMHO7fsDYJ pic.twitter.com/t2rvJJOBhl
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggested his party want so see a straight yes/no vote on the prime minister's deal tomorrow, but could return to the issue of a confirmatory referendum later this month when the subsequent Withdrawal Agreement Bill is put to the House of Commons.
He told Sky News: "As this legislation is brought forward there'll be opportunities - I'm sure - to attach, possibly, a people's vote to that as we debate the legislation itself.
"It's a matter, really, of having the debate on Saturday, making sure we can analyse the details of the proposals that have come forward.
"What we've seen so far is just an unacceptable deal - it's worse than Theresa May's.
"We can't vote for it. The government has to bring forward legislation to enact this deal and, therefore, the timing of any proposals and amendments is critical.
"I think there will be MPs who will want to see this attached to a people's vote.
"Others will say, actually, it's better to have a sensible deal that will go back to the people, alongside the option to Remain."

SNP MP Angus MacNeil has tabled an amendment to the prime minister's motion calling on him to revoke Article 50 - therefore cancelling Brexit - before 31 October.
However, his proposal is unlikely to attract much support in the House of Commons and may not even be put to a vote by Speaker John Bercow.
Brussels says it will make a decision on Boris Johnson's request for a delay to Britain's departure "in the coming days".
Political reporter
            @Alan_McGuinness
Tuesday 22 October 2019 17:18, UK
Brexit has been a "waste of time and energy" for the European Union, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has said.
Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Mr Juncker said it has "pained" him to have spent "so much" of his time in his role dealing with Britain's departure from the bloc.
"A waste of time and a waste of energy," he continued.
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"The commission has worked tirelessly to negotiate and renegotiate an agreement with the United Kingdom to respect the UK's decision to leave the European Union."
Mr Juncker said the EU could only ratify the Brexit deal that was agreed last week once it has been approved by British MPs.
"We need now to watch events in Westminster very closely, but it's not possible, not imaginable that this parliament would ratify the agreement before Westminster has ratified the agreement," Mr Juncker told MEPs.
"First London, then Brussels and Strasbourg."
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In Westminster, Boris Johnson is preparing for two key votes that will be likely to determine whether he will be able to meet his pledge to take the UK out of the EU at the end of this month.
They focus on the government's Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which the government wants to swiftly pass into law in time for the deadline.
The legislation aims to enshrine the Brexit deal into UK law.
Mr Johnson has issued an eleventh-hour appeal to MPs to back the bill, though there are complaints that he is trying to hurry it through without enough scrutiny.
Despite his efforts European Council President Donald Tusk said he was discussing a request for a delay to Brexit with other EU leaders.
A decision over the extension - which the government was forced into seeking - will be made "in the coming days".
The request should be treated "in all seriousness", he added.
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Mr Tusk continued: "It is obvious that the result of these consultations will very much depend on what the British parliament decides or doesn't decide.
"We should be ready for every scenario.
"But one thing must be clear. As I said to Prime Minister Johnson on Saturday, a no-deal Brexit will never be our decision."
The European Parliament's Brexit coordinator, meanwhile, has suggested that ratification of the deal there was not a foregone conclusion.
Guy Verhofstadt suggested "all problems faced by EU27 nationals in the UK need to be solved" first.
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He said his demands included no citizens being deported from Britain if they miss the deadline for settled status in order to prevent "another Windrush scandal".
Mr Johnson managed to secure a new Brexit deal with the EU at a summit last week, setting the stage for a vote on Saturday on his withdrawal agreement.
But MPs approved an amendment which saw them withhold support for the PM's deal, unless and until he has passed all necessary legislation to implement it.
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Having come to office pledging to deliver Brexit at the end of this month, Mr Johnson formally requested a three-month delay on Saturday.
He was legally required to request this delay under the so-called "Benn Act" - the legislation passed by opposition MPs in September to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
On Monday, Speaker John Bercow rejected the PM's attempt to stage a straight yes/no vote - a so-called "meaningful vote" - on the deal, as he cited a centuries-old convention.
Discussions on a package of measures to be included in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill are set to on Monday.
By  Sophy Ridge, Sky presenter and Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Monday 20 May 2019 10:35, UK
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Preparations for a no-deal Brexit should be brought forward "at pace" if MPs do not back the prime minister's deal, the Brexit secretary has warned.
The comments are likely to reignite the debate about whether the government should be prepared to take the UK out of the European Union with no-deal if - as expected - MPs fail to back the withdrawal agreement when it returns to the House of Commons in June.
Stephen Barclay told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "Members of Parliament do need to face facts, and if the deal were not to go through then there are only two alternatives - you either leave with a no-deal or you revoke.
"If parliament won't back a deal, I do think we need to bring forward our preparations to mitigate no-deal, because we will need to use the additional time we have, and we need to move at pace to do so."
The Brexit secretary was speaking on a visit to Quinn Industrial Holdings, a cement manufacturer with sites that straddle the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Lorries and employees at the firm are estimated to make more than 900 border crossings every day.
Asked whether the government has taken preparations for no-deal seriously enough, Mr Barclay said: "We need to do more and use the additional time that we have to prepare further.
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Conservative Party conference 2021: Lord Frost says UK 'cannot wait forever' for EU response amid Northern Ireland Protocol row
"There is no guarantee that the EU27 will grant an extension, that isn't a UK decision on 31 October, so we do need to prepare for a no deal and ensure that we use the time to prepare to mitigate any disruption as best we can."
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Parliament has repeatedly blocked the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.
However, with the Brexit Party topping the polls ahead of the European elections and Conservative MPs jostling for position ahead of a leadership contest, some Eurosceptics believe no deal should be back on the table.
Discussions on a package of measures to be included in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) to win over cross-party support will begin on Monday.
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Cabinet will then meet on Tuesday to consider plans for a series of "indicative votes" in the Commons which could command a majority in the House.
Theresa May has said she will make a "bold offer" to MPs to try and win support for her deal before its second reading vote in the first week of June.
Writing in the Sunday Times, she said: "I still believe there is a majority in Parliament to be won for leaving with a deal.
"When the Withdrawal Agreement Bill comes before MPs, it will represent a new, bold offer to MPs across the House of Commons, with an improved package of measures that I believe can win new support."
The measures are expected to include provisions of future customs arrangements with the EU, environmental protections, and on the Northern Ireland backstop - including the use of technology to avoid the need for border controls with the Republic.
It will not seek to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, however, after the EU repeatedly made it clear that could not be renegotiated.
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Amid the ongoing Brexit impasse, Mrs May has promised to set out a timetable for her departure in the coming weeks.
This has sparked a frenzy of speculation about who could succeed her, with a number of Tories throwing their hat into the ring.
When asked four times if he would be one of them, Mr Barclay did not dismiss the prospect.
"The good thing about my job is I have so much to do that I don't need to be posing in kitchens and doing things," he said, adding that his focus was on "getting the deal over the line".
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has emerged as the front-runner among the Tory grassroots.
Asked if the Brexit campaigner would make a good leader, Mr Barclay replied: "All of my colleagues have talents. It will be for others to weigh up which of those takes primacy."
The politicians co-sign a letter urging Labour's NEC to back a vote as part of the party's European election manifesto.
Sunday 28 April 2019 13:55, UK
Seventy-four Labour MPs and 14 of its MEPs have demanded the party officially backs a public vote on any Brexit deal.
The politicians have added their names to a letter urging Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) to throw its weight behind such a vote as part of the party's European election manifesto.
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It comes after Labour grassroots hit out over a leaked draft of a campaign leaflet on Thursday which made no mention of another referendum.
Instead, the mailshot pledges a Labour government would seek "a better deal with Europe" without mentioning the possibility that Brexit may still not happen.
Now, the Love Socialism, Hate Brexit group of MPs has decided to act, stressing that polls are clear that the European elections in late May are a two-horse race between Labour and Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.
The letter, co-signed by MPs including Hilary Benn, Angela Eagle and Owen Smith, outlines plans to defeat the former UKIP leader with "a message of hope and solidarity", ahead of a key NEC meeting on Tuesday.
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"Labour has already, rightly, backed a confirmatory public vote," the letter states.
"The overwhelming majority of our members and voters support this, and it is the democratically established policy of the party.
"We need a message of hope and solidarity, and we need to campaign for it without caveats."
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According to the group, polls suggest the overwhelming majority of Labour's members, supporters and potential voters want a public vote on any Brexit deal with an option to Remain, and failing to offer this risked the future of the Labour movement.
"To motivate our supporters, and to do the right thing by our members and our policy, a clear commitment to a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal must be part of our European election manifesto," the letter states.
"We understand the many different pressures and views within our movement, but without this clear commitment, we fear that our electoral coalition could fall apart."
Earlier this month, deputy Labour leader Tom Watson said the party must back a second referendum on Brexit in order to defeat Mr Farage's "backward-looking brand of politics".
Sir Vince will step down following the upcoming European Parliament election, with his successor expected to take over in July.
Digital politics editor
            @RaynerSkyNews
Monday 20 May 2019 13:31, UK
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable has said changing his party's policy from demanding a second referendum to outright revocation of Article 50 is "tempting" and could happen by the autumn.
In an exclusive interview with Sky News during a campaign visit to Gibraltar, Sir Vince said he believed a move to withdraw the UK's formal request to leave the bloc could be necessary unless steps to instigate a fresh vote were under way before 31 October.
He said: "If we get through to October and there hasn't been any agreement in parliament - and we haven't had a vote on the referendum, then we may be faced with that situation.
"We may be faced with a cliff-edge where we are back again to the risk of crashing out or revoking [Article 50], and we might have to do it."
But pressed on whether he would be able to make further headway in the European parliamentary elections with an immediate demand for "revoke", he said it was not yet the right moment.
"It's tempting, but I think as long as there is time to have a referendum, and I think there is, the only way of resolving this issue in a way that brings the country together, is to have a vote on it," he said.
"We got into this through a referendum and I think it's the only way we're going to get out of it."
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A poll in today's Times newspaper showed the Lib Dems winning a greater share of the vote than Labour ahead of the upcoming European parliamentary elections.
Sir Vince said he believed that was a "realistic objective", and claimed it was down to the "clarity" of his party's opposition to Brexit.
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But asked whether the surge in support for the Brexit Party made him question whether remain could win a second vote, he argued his own party was experiencing a surge too.
"We're seeing a massive surge in support for the Liberal Democrats and the cause of remain, I mean the country's polarised, there's no way of getting away from that, that's why it's so difficult to solve it," he said.
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The visit was part of the campaign to win seats for his party in the South West region, in which Gibraltar is included.
After being given a guided tour of the frontier with Spain by the deputy chief minister of Gibraltar, Sir Vince said there was no way to fully mitigate the impact of Brexit, even with a set of negotiated agreements between the UK and Spain being in place.
He said: "It depends on keeping the frontier open, that's a European principle, as long as we're in Europe we can continue to fight for that, but once we're out Gibraltar's pretty much on its own."
Sir Vince will step down following the upcoming European parliamentary vote, with his successor expected to take over as early as July.
The health secretary tells Sky News "we've got to get Brexit done" as the Conservative Party conference began in Manchester.
Political reporter
Sunday 29 September 2019 15:08, UK
Britain "may well" leave the EU without a deal, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has told Sky News.
He insisted "we've got to get Brexit done" on 31 October, repeating the Conservatives' key message at the start of their party conference in Manchester.
The cabinet minister admitted changing his mind on the scenario, having previously said when he was running for the Tory leadership that it was "not a policy option available to the next prime minister".
Opposition MPs are sitting in parliament during the Conservative Party conference after the Supreme Court ruled its suspension was unlawful.
The SNP's Drew Hendry told Sky News on Saturday that "the time is fast coming" for opposition MPs to try to oust Mr Johnson in a no-confidence vote.
Government whips are on alert for any fast manoeuvres from Labour trying to take advantage of the Conservatives being hundreds of miles away at their annual gathering of party faithful.
"Let's get Brexit done," is the tagline of this year's event and it was a message Mr Hancock was keen to repeat.
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"I think that the best way to leave is with a deal, absolutely, I've always thought that but we've got to get Brexit done so that we can get on to delivering on all the other things," he told Sophy Ridge on Sunday.
Mr Hancock also admitted a pledge to build 40 new hospitals only included immediate funding for six, with an additional £100m to cover the rest's proposals.
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"The rest of the money will come in the future," he said.
Labour's shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth hit back, saying: "Yet again a Boris Johnson health announcement has quickly unravelled as spin.
"Is it really too much to ask Boris Johnson to simply tell the truth for a change?"
The European Union would give Britain the unilateral right to leave the customs
union, but there is a catch.
By  Rob Powell, political reporter, and Ajay Nair, news reporter
Saturday 9 March 2019 10:57, UK
The UK has thrown out the EU's latest attempt to break the Brexit deadlock over the Irish backstop and accused Brussels of trying to "rerun old arguments".
It comes after the bloc's chief Brexit negotiator revealed the reassurances he offered Britain over the controversial Northern Ireland issue.
Michel Barnier said he proposed a "legally binding interpretation" of the Brexit deal. He said it would "give legal force" to commitments made by the EU that the Irish backstop will only ever be temporary.
The backstop is an insurance policy designed to keep the Irish border open after Brexit.
Mr Barnier said that the UK would be allowed to exit one main element of the backstop - the customs union - without the EU's permission.
However, he stipulated this could only happen if other elements of the backstop designed to ensure no hard border on the island of Ireland were maintained.
This would mean Northern Ireland abiding by different rules to the rest of the UK and could potentially lead to a border in the Irish Sea - something the prime minister has already publicly rejected.
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Responding to Mr Barnier's proposal, Brexit minister Stephen Barclay said: "With a very real deadline looming, now is not the time to rerun old arguments.
"The UK has put forward clear new proposals.
"We now need to agree a balanced solution that can work for both sides."
The divided parliament has yet to approve a Brexit deal and Prime Minister Theresa May has called on MPs to make "one last push" to break the deadlock.
She warned MPs earlier that Brexit may not happen at all if they reject her deal during another crunch vote on Tuesday.
The prime minister said "no one knows" what would happen in the aftermath of the Commons voting against her withdrawal agreement for a second time.
👇 I briefed EU27 Ambassadors and EP today on the ongoing talks with #UK. Following the EU-UK statement of 20 Feb, the EU has proposed to the UK a legally binding interpretation of the #Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. Most importantly:
2/5 The arbitration panel can already, under Article 178 WA, give UK the right to a proportionate suspension of its obligations under the backstop, as a last resort, if EU breaches its best endeavours/good faith obligations to negotiate alternative solutions.
3/5 EU ready to give legal force to all commitments from January letter of @eucopresident and @JunckerEU through joint interpretative statement. https://t.co/kCUbTk4nYA This will render best endeavour/good faith obligations even more actionable by an arbitration panel.
4/5 EU commits to give UK the option to exit the Single Customs Territory unilaterally, while the other elements of the backstop must be maintained to avoid a hard border. UK will not be forced into customs union against its will.
5/5 The EU will continue working intensively over the coming days to ensure that the UK leaves the EU with an agreement.
However, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) described Mr Barnier's offer as "neither realistic nor sensible".
Deputy leader Nigel Dodds said: "It disrespects the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom.
"This is an attempt to get ahead of a possible blame game and appear positive when in reality it is going backwards to something rejected a year ago.
"As the prime minister has said: no United Kingdom prime minister could sign up to an arrangement which annexes Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.
"Whilst the European Union has spoken often about their value of the peace process in Northern Ireland, this proposal demonstrates that they have a one-sided approach and a lack of understanding about the divisions in Northern Ireland.
"Just as nationalists and republicans oppose a new north-south border, unionists oppose any new east-west border which would place a new barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
"We need to work for a sensible deal which can work for everyone in Northern Ireland."
DUP sources: Barnier offer shows “no respect to the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom. It’s a non-starter.” #Brexit
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The DUP's 10 MPs prop up Theresa May's Tory government, which has no overall majority.
Mr Barnier's offer comes just three weeks before Britain is due to leave the EU on 29 March.
Speculation about further ministers quitting are swirling round Westminster as doubts grow over the PM's future in 10 Downing St.
By  Greg Heffer, political reporter
Thursday 15 November 2018 15:10, UK
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Two Leave-backing ministers - including the Brexit secretary - have resigned from the cabinet as Theresa May faces a growing backlash to her draft agreement for leaving the EU.
Dominic Raab quit as Brexit secretary on Thursday morning - delivering a significant blow to the prime minister's chances of getting her agreement with Brussels approved by parliament.
His departure was followed by the resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey - with two junior ministers and several ministerial aides also quitting their roles in protest.
Speculation of further resignations has been swirling around Westminster since, as doubts grow about Mrs May's future in 10 Downing Street.
Other cabinet Brexiteers gave no public comment on the draft deal, which had been discussed at a five-hour meeting on Wednesday.
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The turbulent developments shook financial markets, with the pound falling sharply and banking and housebuilding stocks also under pressure in early-day trading.
Despite the series of resignations from her government on Thursday, Mrs May attempted to face down criticism of her plans in a statement to the Commons - and subsequently answered dozens of questions from backbenchers.
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Conservative Party conference 2021: Lord Frost says UK 'cannot wait forever' for EU response amid Northern Ireland Protocol row
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She told MPs that her 585-page draft deal "delivers the Brexit the British people voted for", adding: "I choose to deliver for the British people. I choose to do what is in our national interest."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the prime minister that the document on the UK's withdrawal represents "a huge and damaging failure".
With his party having confirmed they will not support the draft agreement in a Commons vote, Mr Corbyn told Mrs May to "withdraw this half-baked deal".
:: We quit - Read each minister's resignation letter in full
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A more serious blow to the prime minister's chances of successfully securing MPs' backing for her draft agreement came as the DUP's Nigel Dodds delivered a scathing attack on Mrs May.
The Westminster leader of the Northern Irish party, which props up the Conservative minority government, said: "I could today stand here and take the prime minister through the list of promises and pledges she made to this House and to us, privately, about the future of Northern Ireland in the future relationship with the EU.
"But I fear it would be a waste of time since she clearly doesn't listen."
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Former Brexit minister Steve Baker told Mrs May her plans will be "ferociously opposed" by MPs as he urged the prime minister to trigger the government's "no-deal" Brexit plans he was previously responsible for.
Mrs May also faced a direct threat on her premiership, with Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg - who leads a faction of Conservative Brexiteers - set to submit a letter of no confidence in her leadership.
A spokesman for the prime minister has said Mrs May would fight a confidence vote should it be triggered by 48 Tory MPs submitting letters to 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady.
Anger at Mrs May's draft deal centred on its provisions for a backstop arrangement, which is aimed at preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland in the absence of an agreement on the future EU-UK relationship being ready by the end of the Brexit transition period in 2020.
This would see the UK remain in a customs union with the EU and abide by some EU rules, while Northern Ireland would follow a different regulatory regime.
In his resignation letter to the prime minister, Mr Raab told Mrs May he "cannot support an indefinite backstop arrangement" over which "the EU holds a veto over our ability to exit".
He wrote: "No democratic nation has ever signed up to be bound by such an extensive regime, imposed externally without any democratic control over the laws to be applied."
:: Aston Martin boss backs May's Brexit plan
Mr Raab also expressed fears that the draft Brexit deal "presents a very real threat to the integrity of the UK" over its provisions for Northern Ireland, while he added the backstop arrangement would now be taken as the starting point for negotiations on the future EU-UK relationship.
Ms McVey echoed Mr Raab's criticisms of Mrs May's plans, while Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara and Brexit minister Suella Braverman also rejected the draft deal as they resigned their government roles.
Anne Marie Trevelyan quit as a parliamentary private secretary, claiming the negotiations have seen the "UK trying to appease the EU", while fellow PPS Ranil Jayawardena also resigned his role.
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Despite the mounting criticism of her draft deal, Mrs May appeared determined to push on with her plans.
She was boosted earlier on Thursday when European Council president Donald Tusk confirmed EU leaders will gather for an emergency summit on 25 November in order to sign off on a Brexit deal.
However, he added the proviso the meeting, which will follow member states' analysis of the draft agreement, would only occur "if nothing extraordinary happens."
The business secretary says it would cause "incalculable damage", but the defence secretary says the UK will "succeed regardless".
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Thursday 10 January 2019 20:46, UK
Two of Theresa May's top ministers have contradicted each other over the likely impact of a "no-deal" Brexit, as tensions over the possibility of leaving the EU without an agreement broke into the open.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson told Sky News that Britain would "succeed regardless" of how the UK leaves the EU.
His comments were in stark contrast to Business Secretary Greg Clark, who said in an interview with Sky News Sunrise that leaving without a deal would cause "incalculable damage" to British industry.
The comments came as MPs continued to debate the prime minister's Brexit deal in the House of Commons ahead of a vote on her agreement next Tuesday.
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A defeat would ratchet up the chances of Britain leaving without a deal on 29 March, the day the UK officially leaves the EU.
The government's position is that it is confident of avoiding this, but is prudent to prepare for such a scenario just in case.
Theresa May has warned MPs the only way to avoid a no-deal Brexit is to support a deal, with hers the only deal on the table.
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However, some in Mrs May's party think her deal is so bad that Britain should make "no deal" the government's official policy and walk away.
Deal would threaten UK security, it is claimed
They say the country has little to fear from reverting to trading with Europe on World Trade Organisation rules - one of the immediate consequences of "no deal" - and would also have no need to pay the so-called £39bn "divorce bill" to the EU.
But opponents of "no deal" argue the consequences would be severe and wide-ranging, with disruption to supplies of food and medicine and chaos at Britain's ports among the issues.
Mr Clark is in this camp - and is reportedly prepared to resign from the cabinet if the PM opts to actively pursue leaving without a deal.
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When asked about the impact of "no deal", he told Sky News: "I think there is a substantial majority of MPs who recognise that to move from a trading relationship that is the closest in the world that we have between the UK and the rest of the European Union to the most rudimentary of terms within a matter of weeks would do incalculable damage to the industries that employ people."
He added that MPs have a responsibility to "current and future generations" to avoid leaving without a deal, something which "we would regret forever".
Mr Clark also wrote in an article for Politico, published on Thursday, that "no deal" would be a "disaster".
When asked about the business secretary's comments, Downing Street said the prime minister would not use such language to describe a no-deal Brexit.
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Mr Williamson later directly contradicted his cabinet colleague, although he stressed MPs should accept Mrs May's deal.
When asked if he agreed with Mr Clark's assessment, the defence secretary told Sky's Alistair Bunkall: "Not at all, Britain has always been a nation that will always achieve and always deliver.
"We can be optimistic and confident. Whatever is our future Britain will succeed and do incredibly well.
"But what the prime minister has achieved, she has actually been able to negotiate a deal that is able to deliver us so many of the benefits of the membership of the European Union but outside the European Union and that's what I hope will be passed."
When asked to further clarify his comments, Mr Williamson said: "Britain will succeed regardless because Britain is one of the most inventive and creative of nations.
"What we have is a deal with the European Union that we can accept and we can implement and that is what we should be doing."
The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a repeat of the debate on the four options defeated by MPs.
By  Jon Craig, chief political correspondent
Tuesday 2 April 2019 10:56, UK
Theresa May and her bitterly divided cabinet have started a crisis meeting in a desperate attempt to salvage her EU withdrawal agreement.
The meeting, expected to last around four hours, follows another rejection by MPs of four variations of a "soft Brexit".
With options including no deal, a general election and a second referendum on the table, ministers will hold a "political cabinet" without civil servants present and then discuss government business after that.
According to The Times, Philip Hammond, the chancellor, will tell the cabinet the government has to make its own compromise proposal or admit parliament has failed "and put it back to the people in a referendum" since the party and the country cannot afford an election.
Mr Hammond said on Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News last month that a second referendum was a "perfectly coherent proposition" that "deserves to be considered".
There is also speculation that Mrs May could bring back a vote on her deal to the Commons for a fourth time and link it with a confidence motion in the government, which many MPs believe would be a kamikaze move.
Kate McCann analysis the latest Brexit comings and goings in the Commons
Brexiteers Andrea Leadsom and Liam Fox are adamant that a no-deal exit would be preferable to a customs union and claim the support of more than half of Tory MPs, many of whom signed a letter to the PM.
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The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, a likely leadership contender to succeed Mrs May, has tweeted that a customs union might appear to be "some kind of soft comfort blanket", but was "in reality more of a straitjacket".
However, pro-Remain ministers including Amber Rudd and David Gauke, are determined to avoid a no-deal Brexit, and want Mrs May to seek a cross-party consensus.
Sky analysis finds populists could dominated the EU legislature after the May elections, threatening the progress of the project
The marathon cabinet showdown comes after another fraught day of Brexit debates in the Commons which ended with former minister Nick Boles, who proposed one of the four motions rejected, dramatically quitting as a Tory MP.
His voice trembling with emotion, Mr Boles told MPs: "I have given everything to an attempt to find a compromise that can take this country out of the European Union while maintaining our economic strength and our political cohesion.
"I accept I have failed. I have failed chiefly because my party refuses to compromise. I regret therefore to announce I can no longer sit for this party."
As Opposition MPs burst into applause, Mr Boles turned on his heels and walked out of the Commons chamber, prompting another Tory MP, Huw Merriman, to shout out to him: "Don't go, Nick!"
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Seconds earlier, the Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay told MPs the cabinet would meet in the morning to consider the results of the votes and how the government should proceed.
"The government continues to believe that the best course of action is to do so as soon as possible," said Mr Barclay. "If the House were to agree a deal this week it may still be possible to avoid holding European Parliamentary elections.
The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for a repeat of the debate on the four options defeated by MPs: a customs union, a Common Market 2.0, a confirmatory public vote and revoking Article 50.
"If it is good enough for the Prime Minister to have three chances at her deal then I suggest that possibly the House should have a chance to consider again the options that we had before us today, in a debate on Wednesday, so that the House can succeed where the Prime Minister has failed, in presenting a credible economic relationship with Europe for the future that prevents us crashing out with no deal," he said.

Ahead of the Cabinet meeting, former Tory leader William Hague claims the Conservative Party is in a "much worse" state than it was before Labour trounced it in 1997 and it risks becoming "a ruin" if Mrs May calls an election.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Lord Hague says there is an "immense danger" an election would tear the party apart, voters are much less loyal to parties than they were 20 years ago and could "switch rapidly to new brands" with more attractive policies on Brexit.
After the latest Commons votes, behind the scenes there were bitter recriminations, with MPs of rival parties blaming each other for the failure of any of the four motions to be win a majority.
Labour MPs were furious with SNP MPs, the independents and the Liberal Democrats for failing to back the customs union proposal spearheaded by Tory grandee and Father of the House Kenneth Clarke.
Pro-Remain MPs of all parties were angry that only 37 Tory MPs voted for Mr Clarke's customs union proposal and only 33 for Mr Boles' Common Market 2.0.
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The 37 Tories backing a customs union included high-profile ministers Robert Buckland, Rory Stewart, Sir Alan Duncan, Tobias Ellwood and Margot James, however.
Pro-Remain Labour MPs were incensed as Mr Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet allies Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett failed to vote for party policy and back a confirmatory referendum.
Only 15 Conservative MPs voted for a confirmatory referendum, with 253 against, in what supporters of the move claimed was an aggressive whipping operation by the government.
But 10 Tories - Guto Bebb, Nick Boles, Ken Clarke, Mark Field, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Richard Harrington, Phillip Lee, Antoinette Sandbach and Ed Vaizey - voted to revoke Article 50.
The ex-Brexit secretary tells Sky News that Boris Johnson is likely to get a Brexit deal through the House of Commons.
Political reporter
            @GregHeffer
Tuesday 15 October 2019 19:26, UK
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Former Brexit secretary David Davis has predicted a majority of MPs will support a Boris Johnson-negotiated EU exit deal as they know "this is the last play".
The ex-cabinet minister forecast that Conservative MPs who refused to support Theresa May's withdrawal agreement will back a deal secured by her successor.
Mr Davis quit Mrs May's government due to his opposition to her Brexit strategy.
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But, unlike 28 of his Tory Brexiteer colleagues, he did not hold out against her withdrawal agreement and ended up supporting the former prime minister's deal during a third House of Commons vote.
Mr Davis, who has repeatedly said an agreement would be struck at the last minute, said he thinks Mr Johnson will be able to secure a deal ahead of a European Council summit on Thursday and Friday.
"The likelihood is that we will get there," the former Brexit secretary told Sky News' political editor Beth Rigby. "It will be nip and tuck. It will be scary but it was always going to be scary."
And, in a message to the so-called Tory Brexit "Spartans" who held out against Mrs May's deal, he called on them to support a withdrawal agreement this time round.
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"Come together and support what we promised the electorate," Mr Davis told them.
"That's the point at the end of the day. A lot of people have drawn attention to the loss of faith in politics.
"Much of that at the moment is about the fact we haven't delivered on a referendum, which was the biggest democratic vote in the history of this country.
"It wasn't a slam dunk victory one way or the other, but it was a significant majority.
"We've got to deliver on it."
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Mr Davis predicted the "Spartans" would indeed back a deal secured by Mr Johnson.
Number 10 officials met with some of those 28 Tory MPs in Downing Street on Tuesday while others, such as Home Secretary Priti Patel and Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers, are now senior members of Mr Johnson's government.
"There's little doubt the deal we'll come up with this week will not be perfect from the point of view of people like me, or what you call the 'Spartans' or whatever," Mr Davis added.
"It won't be perfect from any of our point of view - it's more concessions then we would like to have made.
"Certainly on Northern Ireland and maybe in other ways too.
"But, nevertheless, we will probably vote for it because it's as close as we're going to get to what we promised the electorate."
Mr Davis also predicted the DUP, who refused to support Mrs May's deal due to its backstop arrangement for the Irish border, would also back an agreement secured by Mr Johnson.
"The DUP are quite rightly very concerned about retaining the integrity of the UK," he said.
"That's incredibly important to them - it's also incredibly important to the Conservative and Unionist Party.
"But they also know this is the last play.
"So they'll make the same balanced judgement that I will make, which is - is this good enough? Is this significantly better than no deal?
"I think it will be, I think it will be for them and I think it will be for the people you nicely call the Spartans."
He added: "The thing to remember is, at Thermopylae, the Spartans lost! We want a victory, not a defeat."
Earlier on Tuesday, EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier an agreement was "difficult" but "still possible this week".
Mr Davis took that as a sign a deal could be imminent, as he quipped: "That's as close to optimistic as you get with Michel."
The 27 leaders are deciding whether to opt for a January or November delay, while MPs will vote on a December general election.
Saturday 26 October 2019 10:44, UK
A senior EU official has told Sky News the bloc is "very unlikely" to decide on an extension to Brexit negotiations before Tuesday.
EU leaders are deciding whether to opt for an extension until January or a shorter November delay - thought to be favoured by French President Emmanuel Macron.
It was thought they would decide by Tuesday - two days before the latest official leaving date - but this is now looking unlikely, meaning Boris Johnson will be unable to fulfil his promise of leaving on 31 October "do or die".
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Latvia's foreign minister, Edgars Rinkevics, said on Saturday: "There has been unanimous agreement that we need to extend the Brexit discussion.
"There is a big discussion of what is the best deadline, and I wouldn't make drama out of it."
Weekend talks by the 27 leaders are likely to be influenced by a leaked document, seen by the Financial Times, that indicates the British government may want to diverge away from the bloc's rules on workers' rights and environmental protections after Brexit.
There are fears by some EU nations, especially Germany, that Mr Johnson is preparing to reform Britain into "Singapore-on-Thames" - a low-tax, lightly regulated economy on the edge of Europe - once it has left.
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Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said the story was "not correct", adding the UK "will maintain highest standards of workers rights and environmental standards when we leave the EU".
Mr Johnson is pressing on with calls for an election and will ask MPs to vote on Monday for a 12 December general election to give them more time to debate his Brexit deal.
The prime minister told Jeremy Corbyn on Friday to "man up" and face him after the Labour leader said he is waiting to see what the EU's decision is over extending the Article 50 negotiating period before clarifying whether he would tell his MPs to back a fresh poll.
Political opponents at Westminster had been holding out for an extension to be granted and so removing the imminent threat of a no-deal exit, before backing an election.
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The prime minister has said he would give MPs more time to consider his Brexit deal if they backed his call for a poll on 12 December.
He needs opposition votes in order to secure the two-thirds Commons majority required by law to hold a national ballot.
Everything you (may) need to know
In the face of being thwarted over his repeated pledge to leave the EU by 31 October, the PM sought to exploit Labour divisions over a pre-Christmas election.
"Time for Corbyn - man up. Let's have an election on December 12," he said.
While Mr Johnson insisted Britain could still leave the EU by the current Halloween deadline, he admitted the decision now lay with the EU, as a result of legislation agreed by parliament, which he again branded "the surrender act".
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He said: "Let's be clear, this parliament has been sitting now doing absolutely nothing but delay Brexit, pushing it out with delay after delay for three-and-a-half years.
"And I think for MPs across the House to have any credibility about delivering Brexit they now have to commit to an election 12 December. So that's what we're pushing for."
Mr Corbyn has said he will back a general election if the PM removes the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
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The Labour leader told ITV: "I've said all along - take no deal off the table, and we'll have the election."
But many of his MPs oppose a poll, seeing advantage in keeping the PM in political limbo, while also fearing confusion over the party's stance on Brexit could lose them votes.
Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said they wanted an "explicit commitment" a no-deal Brexit was off the table before they would be prepared to back an election.
Indicating they could require further legislation, she told the BBC: "The December day is a ludicrous day. We've not had a general election at Christmas for over a century, and there's good reasons for that."
Some MPs want a quick election, others do not
Earlier, Chancellor Sajid Javid told Sky News of the need to "put an end to this dysfunctional parliament".
On holding a December election, Mr Javid said: "It's highly unusual and not ideal but what's the alternative.
"If we don't have this election then we will continue with this zombie parliament."
Downing Street has also indicated it could effectively "work to rule" if it fails to get an election.
A spokesman for the PM said: "Nothing will come before parliament but the bare minimum.
"We will pursue a general election every day from then onwards and do everything we can to get it."
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Following the meeting of EU ambassadors on Friday, the European Commission's chief spokeswoman, Mina Andreeva, said: "The EU 27 have agreed to the principle of an extension and work will now continue in the coming days."
They are expected to meet again on Monday or Tuesday to finalise an agreement.
The prime minister was forced by parliament to write to Brussels requesting the delay after failing to win backing for the agreement he reached with Brussels at last weekend's special Saturday sitting.
Many MPs also argue his proposed election timetable, requiring them to approve the withdrawal legislation by 6 November when parliament would be dissolved, is still not long enough to allow proper scrutiny.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator tells the European Parliament there are "serious concerns" about Boris Johnson's proposals.
By  Aubrey Allegretti and Greg Heffer, political reporters
Wednesday 9 October 2019 20:28, UK
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The EU and UK are "not really in a position" to strike a Brexit deal, the bloc's chief negotiator has said.
Michel Barnier told the European Parliament on Wednesday there were "serious concerns" with Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals, which he revealed last week.
The EU official told MEPs in Brussels: "To put things very frankly... at this particular point we are not really in a position where we are able to find an agreement."
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Mr Johnson has unveiled new plans for the post-Brexit Irish border, having vowed to scrap the backstop arrangement agreed between Brussels and his predecessor Theresa May.
He hopes to strike a deal ahead of next week's summit of EU leaders, and before the 31 October Brexit deadline - the date on which he has vowed to take the UK out of the EU "do or die".
Mr Barnier, reiterating the EU's unhappiness with the prime minister's approach to the Irish border, added: "The proposal of the British government, as it stands, is not something we can accept.
"It replaces an operational, practical, legal solution by one which is simply a temporary solution."
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Mr Barnier also expressed concerns with Mr Johnson's approach to the future UK-EU relationship, which he said differed from Mrs May's.
But he stressed "an agreement is still possible" between the UK and EU, if there is "goodwill on both sides".
"In this moment where we are now, we will remain calm, we will remain vigilant and we will remain constructive and we will remain respectful of the UK and those who lead it," Mr Barnier said.
"That is our approach and we hope with this attitude on both sides we will be able to come to an agreement that works for everyone."
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also told MEPs he wouldn't rule out an agreement.
"Personally I don't exclude a deal," he said.
"Michel and myself are working on a deal and we are not accepting this blame game, which started in London."
David Sassoli, the president of the European Parliament, said the UK now had a choice between a no-deal Brexit or a delay to leaving the EU beyond 31 October.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage told fellow MEPs that a no-deal Brexit would prove popular with UK voters at the next election.
He said: "Your wretched treaty is off the table, support for a clean-break Brexit is growing and it will be the winning ticket at the next general election."
Mr Johnson has repeatedly stated he will not extend the Article 50 negotiating period, but legislation passed by MPs will compel him to seek an extension if he does not secure a Brexit deal - or MPs explicitly approve a no-deal Brexit - by 19 October.
Home Secretary Priti Patel insisted on Wednesday that "nothing is over yet" and negotiations are about to enter an "important phase".
The prime minister will meet with his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar on Thursday for Brexit talks in the North West.
Downing Street said the private meeting would "allow both leaders and their teams to have detailed discussions".
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Mr Varadkar insisted after a phone call with Mr Johnson on Tuesday that he would not accept a deal at "any cost".
"There are some fundamental objectives that haven't changed for the past three years and we need them guaranteed," he told RTE news.
"I think it is going to be very difficult to secure an agreement by next week, quite frankly.
"Essentially what the UK has done is repudiate the deal that we negotiated in good faith with Prime Minister May's government over two years and sort of put half of that now back on the table, and are saying: 'That's a concession.'
"And of course it isn't really."
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The government is planning to hold an historic sitting of parliament by calling MPs to Westminster on 19 October, which falls on a Saturday, the day after the EU summit.
It will be the first time MPs have sat on a Saturday since the Falkland Islands invasions.
Jeremy Corbyn will confirm the Labour position on a snap election when the EU's extension is announced.
By  Rebecca Taylor, news reporter, and Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Friday 25 October 2019 11:29, UK
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Chancellor Sajid Javid has told Sky News an election is needed to "put an end to this dysfunctional parliament" as the EU considers granting a further Brexit delay.
While admitting a December poll was "not ideal", the Tory cabinet minister argued it was needed to focus minds at Westminster on the UK's withdrawal.
Boris Johnson wants an election on 12 December, offering parliamentary time until 6 November to allow MPs to consider his Brexit deal.
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Political opponents are holding out for an extension to be granted and so removing the imminent threat of a no-deal exit, before backing an election.
However, there have been signals that Labour is raising the bar and could seek a further guarantee that the UK would not leave without an agreement, including through legislation.
This could enable the party, divided over going to the polls, to withhold support.
Labour votes in the Commons are needed for Mr Johnson to secure the two-thirds majority required by law to go the country.
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Sky's Brussels correspondent Adam Parsons said consensus was building around an extension which would be until 15 November, but could automatically continue until the end of January if the Withdrawal Agreement is not ratified by parliament.
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However, there could be a fresh deadlock, with parliament waiting to see what the EU will offer while some in Brussels want to hold out for a decision on an election.
Brussels' chief negotiator Michel Barnier declined to comment as he left a meeting of EU ambassadors on Friday.
Meanwhile, with the existing 31 October deadline still in place, no-deal preparations continue with plans to shut one side of the main motorway to the Port of Dover to general traffic on Monday morning and reserve it for lorries.
The scheme, known as Operation Brock, aims to tackle queues on the M20 caused by delays at the Dover-Calais crossing.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Javid said: "In the first instance, let's get Brexit done... but at the same time let's agree to have a general election to put an end to this dysfunctional parliament, let the British people decide."
He added: "We need a deadline. Having an election, which means you would have to dissolve parliament on 6 November, will absolutely focus minds in parliament to get Brexit done. That's the priority right now."
On holding a December election, he said: "It's highly unusual and not ideal but what's the alternative.
"If we don't have this election then we will continue with this zombie parliament."
Mr Javid also said the Government would push "again and again" for a poll.
Downing Street has indicated it could effectively "work to rule" if it fails to get an election.
A spokesman for the PM said: "Nothing will come before parliament but the bare minimum.
"We will pursue a general election every day from then onwards and do everything we can to get it."
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: "Take no-deal off the table and we absolutely support a general election.
"But no-deal must be taken off the table."
Looks certain that Boris ‘do or die by Oct 31’ Johnson has broken his solemn vow. He must now face the electorate. But this election will be about more than Brexit. It’s about building a new country
But shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said they wanted an "explicit commitment" a no-deal Brexit was off the table before they would be prepared to back an election.
Indicating they could require further legislation, she told the BBC: "The December day is a ludicrous day. We've not had a general election at Christmas for over a century, and there's good reasons for that."
Lib Dem Jo Swinson said: "The Liberal Democrats will not support any election until it is clear that we can avoid crashing out with no-deal, and that needs an extension from the EU."
SNP spokesman Pete Wishart said his party would only back the election when a Brexit delay had been "secured" and added it "must be long enough to protect us from the cliff-edge of a no-deal Brexit".
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The PM is due to present his election plan in the Commons on Monday.
Under Mr Johnson's planned timetable, parliament would be dissolved on 6 November.
"We have had three years, we have been reasonable, if you want more time you can have it but we must all agree to go for an election on 12 December," Mr Johnson said.
If he succeeds, it would be the first December election since 1923.
The House of Commons is told a vote in favour of extending Article 50 does not necessarily rule out a no-deal Brexit.
By  Greg Heffer, political reporter
Friday 15 March 2019 18:02, UK
The UK must put forward a clear plan for what happens next if there is to be a delay to Brexit, EU leaders have warned.
Despite MPs voting in favour of extending the Article 50 negotiating period on Thursday night, the House of Commons has been told this does not necessarily rule out a no-deal Brexit.
Instead, MPs will either have to approve Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal agreement, which they have already rejected twice, or come up with another proposal for breaking the deadlock at Westminster.
An official in French President Emmanuel Macron's office said on Friday: "Without clarity - an adoption of the withdrawal agreement or a clear alternative - a no-deal would prevail."
This stance was supported in Berlin, with Germany's justice minister Katarina Barley stressing that "giving more time alone will produce no solution".
She told local radio: "I think the EU would be willing to give more time, but there must be some sort of a plan about what should happen in this time."
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: "If they want a delay the British need to explain how they plan to ensure a different outcome."
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There were also suggestions that the EU would not countenance extending Article 50 if it merely pushed the prospect of a no-deal Brexit just a few months further down the line.
Irish finance minister Paschal Donohoe told Bloomberg TV: "What is really important to us and to the EU is that ... we are all clear what that extension period is for and that the availability of that extension period doesn't in any way heighten the kind of economic risk that we are trying to avoid at the moment."
Ahead of next week's gathering of EU leaders in Brussels, European Council president Donald Tusk is appealing to member states to be "open to a long extension if the UK finds it necessary to rethink its Brexit strategy and build consensus around it".
It has been reported the EU is ready to tell Mrs May she must hold a second referendum or opt for a "softer" Brexit in exchange for a delay to the UK's departure of longer than three months.
Click here to check how every MP voted on delaying Brexit - including yours
Following this week's series of dramatic votes in the Commons - during which MPs rejected leaving the EU with no deal as well as backing a delay - the prime minister now appears likely to put her Brexit deal to the House of Commons for a third time next week.
Under her plan, which was backed by MPs on Thursday night, if the Commons approves her withdrawal agreement by Wednesday then she will ask the EU for a delay to Brexit until 30 June.
This would allow the government the time to pass necessary legislation to put the Brexit deal into UK law.
However, if MPs again reject her deal, the prime minister has warned the EU would then only consider a much longer delay to Brexit, with the length of any extension to Article 50 to be decided by Brussels.
This would also likely mean the UK taking part in elections to the European Parliament in May, the prime minister has claimed.
Asked if a third defeat for Mrs May's deal next week might mean an extension of a year or more, the prime minister's de facto deputy David Lidington told the BBC: "Those are the indications which the Brussels institutions of the EU - the [European] Commission, the Council secretariat and certain member state governments - have been giving to us."
The pressure is now back on the PM to get her deal through parliament at the third attempt
The DUP held talks in the Cabinet Office on Friday with senior members of the government, including Chancellor Philip Hammond and and Mr Lidington.
Nigel Dodds, the Northern Ireland party's deputy leader, hailed a "constructive dialogue" after their discussions, with talks to continue on how their 10 MPs could end up reversing their opposition to the withdrawal agreement.
"We want to get a deal, we have always been in that frame of mind, we don't want to leave without a deal," he said.
"But a lot will depend on what the government is able to do in terms of providing those guarantees that are necessary to assuage our concerns."
Mr Dodds suggested the government was "very focussed" on the issue of the Irish border backstop - the part of Mrs May's deal to which they are vehemently opposed.
He denied the presence of Mr Hammond at the talks meant the DUP had been discussing increased money for Northern Ireland with the government.
"We're not discussing cash in these discussions, this is about Brexit and how we protect the future of the UK and protect Northern Ireland's economic and political future," he said.
Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has written to other parties in parliament inviting them to meet with him and shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer to try and find a way to break the impasse.
Businesses also joined those calling for a clear plan from MPs should Brexit be delayed.
A Honda spokesman said: "We are now looking to the government to deliver a clear, legally certain, path forward to avoid no deal.
"Any extension... must be purposeful and long enough to give business stability."
Ursula von der Leyen, the German defence minister, is set to replace Jean-Claude Juncker.
Wednesday 3 July 2019 13:40, UK
The EU is set to get its first female commission president amid a shake-up of top jobs within the bloc - with an Italian socialist elected the new head of the European Parliament.
David-Maria Sassoli received 345 votes in the 667-strong assembly, well over the 50% required, after a second round of voting.
He takes the chair from Antonio Tajani, and as president of the European Parliament he has the job of keeping order in a chamber that this week saw protests from both the UK's Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrat group.
He will also preside over a further vote on 15 July to decided whether Ursula von der Leyen, the German defence minister, should be approved as president of the commission, replacing Jean-Claude Juncker.
Meanwhile, Christine Lagarde, who is currently head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), will take charge of the European Central Bank and the euro, replacing Mario Draghi.
In other proposed changes, the job of the EU Council president, currently held by Donald Tusk, is tipped to go to Belgian prime minister Charles Michel.
Mr Michel, who surprised Prime Minister Theresa May with a football jersey ahead of their countries' football World Cup clash last year, would be in charge of meetings where EU heads of government thrash out agreements on the UK's future relationship.
The potential appointment of Ms von der Leyen is significant for the UK because the German, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, would have a major role in shaping the relationship between the EU and the UK after Brexit.
The Commission is responsible for supervising trade negotiations in any potential deal before or after Brexit, and any no-deal contingencies.
Ms von der Leyen will also have the difficult job of supervising EU budgets in an increasingly populist and anti-bloc European political landscape.
If her appointment is ratified, it will be the first time two of the top five EU jobs are held by women.
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The other female nominee for a top job, Ms Lagarde, will be responsible for keeping the eurozone on track.
She joined the IMF at a time of crisis. The effects of the great recession were being felt widely around the world and the IMF had to step in to support several European countries, including Greece, Portugal and Ireland.
She recently told The Daily Show in the US that her being given the role in 2011 could have been intended to put her on a "glass cliff", but "whenever the situation is really, really bad, you call in the woman".
Ed Conway, Sky News' economics editor, said Ms Lagarde's move opened the way for Bank of England governor Mark Carney to succeed her when his current job ends in January.
The nominations were criticised by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who, before Mr Sassoli's election, accused leaders of EU countries of a "classic... stitch-up".
He told Sky News: "It's a classic Franco-German stitch-up.
"The French and Germans have got all the top jobs with one lobbed in for Belgium, so nothing really changes.
"The south of Europe has been completely shut out of everything."
However, speaking in the House of Commons, Theresa May said: "This is primarily a matter for the remaining EU 27 states," and she added: "This was a package supported by the UK."
Elsewhere, Spanish politician Josep Borrell Fontelles has been nominated as high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. His nomination to replace Federica Mogherini will also have to be approved.
The nominations were agreed after an unusually long three-day summit.
Mr Tusk admitted it had taken "longer than planned" but that "nobody was against" the final line-up and he wished them "all the best".
The Brexit secretary warns MPs and says the government "remains committed" to "delivering a deal that respects the referendum".
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Tuesday 22 January 2019 15:29, UK
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MPs seeking to delay Brexit have been warned by a government minister that the European Union may not necessarily agree to it.
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Sky News the option of extending Article 50 - the legal mechanism triggered by Theresa May in March 2017 to begin the negotiations - is not a "unilateral decision" for Britain to take.
The prospect has been raised by opponents of a "no-deal" Brexit as a way of avoiding this scenario, which they fear will cause widespread disruption as Britain quickly moves from one set of rules and regulations to another.
A number of MPs have tabled amendments in the Commons in an attempt to block a no-deal departure.
A number of amendments to Theresa May's plan B motion are expected to be tabled
Once Article 50 is activated, a country has two years to negotiate the terms of its exit and get the agreement signed off by its parliament.
If no agreement is in place at the end of this period they revert to trading with the EU under World Trade Organisation rules.
But in comments that will likely be seen as an attempt to corral MPs into backing the PM's deal and ensuring Britain leaves with an agreement, Mr Barclay said there was an assumption "that everyone in Brussels would want to extend".
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"What's clear from the conversations we've had with figures in Brussels is that they wouldn't want to extend if there wasn't a deal, if there wasn't clarity as to why we were extending," he said.
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He stressed the government "remains committed" to "delivering a deal that respects the referendum result" and the "best way" of avoiding the risk of no-deal is to "have a negotiated deal".
Extending Article 50 would simply "defer the uncertainty", Mr Barclay said.
As the clock ticks ever closer to exit day, Mrs May is coming under increasing pressure to rule out leaving without a deal.
But the PM has said the only ways to avoid this are for a deal to be approved or for Article 50 to be revoked.
The latter option has been rejected by the prime minister because she says it would reverse Brexit.
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Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has reportedly warned the PM that dozens of ministers could quit if they are prevented from voting to stop no-deal.
It has been claimed that 25 to 40 members of the government want to vote for an amendment drafted by Labour's Yvette Cooper and Tory backbenchers Sir Oliver Letwin and Nick Boles.
Ms Rudd is said to be telling Number 10 that it should offer a free vote on the issue.
The Cooper-Boles amendment wants to give MPs a vote to prevent a no-deal scenario.
It would give Mrs May until 26 February to get a deal approved. If not, then MPs would be given a vote on whether to extend Article 50 by nine months.
Tory MP Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general, has put forward an amendment which would see MPs take control of Commons business.
He has said this would allow them to stage a series of "indicative votes" on Brexit alternatives, such as a "soft" Norway-style deal or a second referendum, to show what would command the support of a majority of MPs.
Speaking to Sky News, Mr Grieve accused the government of trying to "close down debate".

Labour has tabled its own amendment, which calls for a vote on its plan for a customs union with the EU and whether to legislate to "hold a public vote on a deal or a proposition" that is supported by a majority of MPs.
The motion has been seen by campaigners for a second referendum as a shift towards Jeremy Corbyn backing the idea.
But shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey has told Sky News the party's "priority" remains its own Brexit deal. She said the amendment aims to "widen debate" and put "all options" on the table to avoid no-deal.
Ms Long-Bailey acknowledged there was "no guarantee" a majority of MPs would vote in favour of a second referendum, describing the issue as "so divisive".
MPs forced Mrs May to return to the Commons on Monday to outline her next steps on Brexit in the wake of her deal being defeated last week.
They will now be able to table amendments in a bid to influence the Brexit process, with votes due to take place on the amendments selected by Commons Speaker John Bercow next Tuesday.
He sends the message to "my British friends" as MPs appear close to supporting a pre-Christmas election.
Political reporter
Tuesday 29 October 2019 18:39, UK
The latest Brexit delay to 31 January 2020 "may be the last one", an outgoing EU chief has warned.
Donald Tusk, who is stepping down as EU Council president at the end of November, intervened as MPs appear close to agreeing a pre-Christmas election.
"Please make the best use of this time," he tweeted on Tuesday afternoon.
"I also want to say goodbye to you as my mission here is coming to an end," the former Polish prime minister wrote in a message addressed "to my British friends".
"I will keep my fingers crossed for you."
He added the formal decision to offer a three-month delay to avoid no-deal had been rubber stamped.
Mr Tusk has been a major figure in the Brexit negotiations, in charge of convening all major summits of EU leaders to sign off on delays requested by Britain and the deals secured with Theresa May and Boris Johnson.
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His message echoes a similar theme from April, when a Brexit delay until 31 October was handed down from Brussels.
"Please do not waste this time," he implored.
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Jean-Claude Juncker, his EU Commission counterpart, recently claimed that Brexit had been "a waste of time and a waste of energy".
Parliament is due to vote for the fourth time on Tuesday on holding a general election before the end of the year.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tried unsuccessfully three times to get a snap poll, but has fallen far short of the two-thirds support in the Commons he needed.
He is trying a different approach which only needs a simple majority to pass, and if it does Britons would head to the polls on Thursday 12 December.
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party have said they support a pre-Christmas election because the imminent threat of no-deal has been pushed into the new year.
The Commission president says its objectives must still be achieved, and warns the risk of no-deal is "palpable".
Wednesday 18 September 2019 19:59, UK
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One of the EU's most senior figures has said he has "no emotional attachment" to the part of the Brexit deal Britain is trying to get Brussels to remove.
But European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker insisted he would "stand by the objectives" of the Irish backstop - the insurance policy to prevent a hard border forming on the island of Ireland.
It comes as Nigel Farage hit out at the "pipsqueak" prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, accusing him of trying to "ritually humiliate" the UK for going ahead with a planned news conference without Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
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Meanwhile, Mr Johnson held talks with a series of EU leaders on Wednesday.
It was also confirmed that European Parliament President David Sassoli has accepted an invitation from the PM to visit him in London.
Addressing MEPs, Mr Juncker repeated a call for Mr Johnson to make "concrete, operational, textual proposals" on alternatives to replace the Irish backstop.
No-deal on 31 October is a "palpable risk", he added, saying he did not believe "any real progress has been achieved" to getting a withdrawal agreement both sides are happy with.
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Opening a debate in the European Parliament, Mr Juncker declared that "this house is open and in action, and not prorogued", apparently in reference to the prime minister shutting down the UK parliament for five weeks and the subsequent legal battle being fought in the Supreme Court.
He revealed his talks with Mr Johnson in Luxembourg on Monday were "friendly, constructive and - in part - positive".
Mr Juncker moved on to insist no-deal would "never be the preferred option of the EU" but accepted Mr Johnson's word that he plans to deliver Brexit "do or die" on 31 October.
"I told Boris Johnson that I have no emotional attachment to the backstop," he declared.
"But I made clear that I do have an intimate commitment to its objectives.
"I invited the prime minister to make concrete, operational, textual proposals on alternative ways in which backstop goals can be met."
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His words were followed by the EU's Brexit negotiator delivering a sterner ultimatum.
"The UK government has outlined aspects of the backstop it doesn't like," said Michel Barnier.
"That is not enough. We need a legally operable solution. We are open to any proposal and will work day and night."
Mr Barnier also warned the prime minister should "not be pretending to negotiate", amid concerns by some MPs he is not trying hard enough to get a new withdrawal agreement.
Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament's Brexit coordinator, also weighed in to the debate to dispute Mr Johnson likening Britain to the Incredible Hulk breaking free of the bloc.
"'Boris Johnson likes to compare himself to movie characters," he said.
We explain simply what all the terms to do with Brexit actually mean
"Concerning citizens' rights - instead of playing the angry Hulk, I think he should inspire himself by another character - the caring nanny in the film of Mrs Doubtfire."
Mr Farage later said it sounded like the EU was "very close to a deal on the backstop being agreed".
He said the bloc had shown no "good faith" because of Mr Bettel's treatment of Mr Johnson, who had "set out to ritually humiliate a British prime minister in the most astonishing way only to be greeted like a hero by [French] President Macron at the Elysee Palace yesterday".
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Mr Johnson held talks with European leaders on Wednesday evening, including Mr Juncker.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "This afternoon the prime minister spoke to European Commission President Juncker, European Parliament President Sassoli, Cypriot President Anastasiades, and Latvian Prime Minister Karins.
"The prime minister and President Juncker discussed the positive and constructive conversation they had in Luxembourg on Monday and their shared determination to reach a deal.
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"The prime minister updated the other European leaders on the progress of the Brexit talks to date and reiterated that, when the UK leaves the EU on October 31, his preference is that we do so with a deal.
"He spoke about the work that was under way to find an alternative to the backstop that protects both the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and the integrity of the single market."
Downing Street said earlier this week Mr Johnson remains confident he can "reach a deal with the backstop removed, that UK parliamentarians could support".
It added discussions with the EU will "intensify" and now occur daily.
The health secretary says Boris Johnson is the best candidate - in what will be a blow to the other Tory leadership hopefuls.
By  Jon Craig, chief political correspondent
Monday 17 June 2019 09:40, UK
Boris Johnson has won the much sought-after endorsement of former Tory leadership candidate Matt Hancock, despite being attacked by his rivals for snubbing the first TV debate.
Shortly after the debate ended, the health secretary - who dropped out of the race on Friday - announced he would be backing Mr Johnson in the next round of voting by MPs on Tuesday.
"It's time to unite," Mr Hancock tweeted.
The race for the Conservative Party leadership is hotting up after the first round of voting by MPs
"I'm backing Boris to be the next PM on a pro-enterprise One Nation ticket."
And writing in The Times, he added: "Having considered all the options, I'm backing Boris Johnson as the best candidate to unite the Conservative Party, so we can deliver Brexit and then unite the country behind an open, ambitious, forward-looking agenda, delivered with the energy that gets stuff done."
Mr Hancock also wrote: "Boris is emphatic in public and in private that he wants to be a one nation prime minister and bring the country together around an optimistic vision for the future. I will hold him to that."
Mr Hancock's endorsement for Mr Johnson comes less than three weeks after he launched an outspoken attack against him, condemning him for saying "f*** business" during Brexit negotiations.
But the health secretary's backing is a major boost for Mr Johnson and will be a crushing blow for Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Sajid Javid, who had all hoped to win his support.
However, it is not clear if all of the 20 MPs who backed Mr Hancock in the first ballot of MPs will now row in behind him and support Mr Johnson.
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One of them, East Renfrewshire MP Paul Masteron, has revealed he will vote for International Development Secretary Rory Stewart.
During the TV debate, Mr Johnson was taunted about his absence by Mr Hunt, who said it raised questions about his ability to take on the job of prime minister.
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"Where is Boris?" said Mr Hunt.
"If his team won't allow him out with five fairly friendly colleagues, how is is he going to deal with 27 European countries?"
The other significant post-debate endorsement, from the pro-Remain digital minister Margot James, went to Mr Stewart, who will feel he performed well in the TV debate which Mr Johnson chose to snub.
As Mr Stewart, along with Mr Javid, Mr Gove and arch-Brexiteer Dominic Raab scramble for votes in a battle to stay in the race this week, next up for the candidates is hustings with political journalists at Westminster later this morning.
That will be followed by the second TV debate, which Mr Johnson has said he will attend.
But that will take place after the next round of voting by MPs and there will be fewer candidates taking part.
Sky News is planning to host a live leadership debate between the final two contenders to replace Theresa May as Conservative leader, and you could be in the audience.
Mr Johnson is also unveiling new policies, including a pledge to provide fast internet for every home by 2025 and eliminate the "digital divide" if he becomes prime minister.
Writing in his Daily Telegraph column, Mr Johnson says it is "a disgrace that this country should suffer from a deep digital divide and that so many rural areas are simply left behind".
The former foreign secretary and Brexit cheerleader says closing this divide is part of his "moral mission to unite Britain".
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Nicky Morgan said the impact on her family was the driver behind her deciding not to seek re-election in December.
News reporter
Wednesday 30 October 2019 21:33, UK
Nicky Morgan has announced she will not stand again as an MP.
Mrs Morgan, who is currently the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, has represented Loughborough since the 2010 election.
In a letter to her constituents she said she could not continue to make sacrifices required of being an MP without parliament doing "what it is supposed to do".
She says being the MP for the area has been "the greatest privilege of my life".
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But she adds: "The clear impact on my family, and the other sacrifices involved in and the abuse for, doing the job of a modern MP, can only be justified if ultimately parliament does what it is supposed to do - represent those we serve in all areas of policy, respect votes cast by the electorate, and make decisions in the overall national interest."
Mrs Morgan is the first sitting cabinet minister to announce they won't be seeking re-election in December.
It is incredibly rare for a minister to decide not to continue as an MP.
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In a post on Twitter, she said: "For the first time in 18 years I won't be a candidate in the next General Election. I've loved being #Loughborough's voice in Westminster since 2010 & being DCMS Secretary - & I look forward to supporting the PM, Government, Conservative Party and my successor in the future."
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The letter added: "After nearly a decade as Loughborough's MP and over 15 years as a local campaigner here I have made the very difficult decision that I can't commit to another 5 year term and now is the time for me to stand aside and be at home far more."
Mrs Morgan was elected in 2010 and became minister for women in 2014. Later the same year she was appointed secretary of state for education.
Before becoming an MP, she was a solicitor in corporate law.
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She's the latest in a long list of Conservative MPs who are not seeking re-election this time around, including people like Sir Michael Fallon and Jo Johnson.
She's another MP who has cited abuse as a reason for stepping down. Heidi Allen, a former Conservative MP who defected to the Liberal Democrats, also said the impact abuse had on her life was "dehumanising".
In her letter Ms Allen said: "Nobody in any job should have to put up with threats, aggressive emails, being shouted at in the street, sworn at on social media, nor have to install panic alarms at home.
"Of course public scrutiny is to be expected, but lines are all too often regularly crossed and the effect is utterly dehumanising."
Former de facto Conservative deputy prime minister Sir David Lidington also said the "heavy cost" of politics on his family life was behind his decision to stand down.
Mrs Morgan had a majority of about 4,000 in the 2017 election.
Brexiteers want the agreement renegotiated, but if it is there will be ample opportunity for Spain to resurrect the issue.
International Affairs Editor
            @DominicWaghorn
Friday 1 February 2019 18:34, UK
"Colony" is a loaded word, guaranteed to raise hackles. It implies the subjugation of natives, the transplanting of settlers, convict ships, slaves and all the rest.
And Spain has insisted on its insertion into an otherwise dull and sterile EU document, proposed legislation on visa free travel.
"Gibraltar is a colony of the British crown", says a footnote.
Cue diplomatic eruptions up the road from the EU Commission at the British embassy in Brussels.
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If British diplomats thought they had laid the Gibraltar row to rest during Brexit negotiations they were sorely mistaken.
To be a colony, an overseas territory must be controlled by some distant power and colonised by it.
Britain insists Gibraltar's sovereignty was ceded under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and its residents have twice voted for British sovereignty in referendums.
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The Spanish say it is not as simple as that.
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They claim Gibraltarians were settled by the British after the rock's original Spanish inhabitants left after 1704 and Madrid has pressed for joint sovereignty.
The footnote's insertion may seem deliberately provocative and it threatens to reignite a point of friction at the heart of Brexit negotiations.
It also highlights the dangers of reopening the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Brexiteers want the agreement renegotiated, but if it is there will be ample opportunity for Spain to resurrect the issue or other countries to do the same with their own causes celebres.
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Likewise if Article 50 is extended.
The danger for Britain and Gibraltar is clear.
If the "colony" reference is not expunged from the document it will be enshrined in EU law.
But as Britain exits the European Union that is a jeopardy we may need to get used to.
European nations will choose language and legislation suiting their own interests and Britain will not be in the room able to stop them.
The business secretary tells Sky News the government has a "responsibility to protect people's livelihoods in this country".
By  Beth Rigby, political editor
Friday 12 July 2019 10:25, UK
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Many thousands of jobs will be lost across the UK if Theresa May's successor triggers a no-deal Brexit, the business secretary has warned.
Greg Clark told Sky News in an exclusive interview he was certain jobs would go in no-deal as he implored colleagues to "strain every sinew to avoid that".
Asked how many jobs could be lost, he replied: "It's many thousands of jobs. Everyone knows that".
"I think that every person who considers the evidence that companies have given, whether it's in the automotive sector, whether it's in the food sector, whether it's in aerospace, whether it's in industries up and down the country.
"You know if you become less efficient and your ability to trade is impeded then of course losing your competitiveness means that there will be jobs that will be lost."
Mr Clark said this was why it was "hugely important" to negotiate a deal rather than leave without one and said the government had a "responsibility to protect people's livelihoods in this country".
He said: "In talking to businesses one of the things that most strikes me talking to men and women on the shop floor, working on production lines, their incomes and their livelihoods and those of their families depends on [a deal].
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"Everyone accepts this is a very difficult challenge. When the country voted to leave the EU of course there is a requirement to implement that but I think we need to do it in a way that takes full account of the impact on real people's lives and do everything we can to ensure it doesn't visit harm on them."
However, Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the eurosceptic ERG group, told Sky News he believed the economic risk of a no-deal exit "had been exaggerated" and said the political imperative to leave the EU on 31 October "could not be clearer".
"[The public] made a decision which was we should leave," he said.
"If we don't keep our word, if we kick the can down the road again, how can we expect them to believe anything else we say ever again? I believe that on the morning of 1 November the sun will rise on a free country and I intend to stay up to see it happen."
In what could be his final interview as business secretary, Mr Clark didn't pull punches about the damage a no-deal could do., writes Beth Rigby
Mr Clark, together with Justice Secretary David Gauke and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, has been one of the most vocal opponents of a no-deal Brexit and told Sky News that he wasn't going to change his tune with the change of leadership.
"I have always been consistent that we need to leave with a deal," he said, when asked if he would sit in a cabinet where backing no deal as a policy was required.
"I am not going to trim and chop and change my views given that they are based on the evidence that men and women up and down this country running businesses, working in businesses, have made it crystal clear to me what that means and I will always represent them.
"A no-deal Brexit would be enormously damaging and I will do everything I can to persuade my colleagues to avoid that and get a good deal.
"My responsibility at all times is to advance what I know is to be the truth. We must have a deal that allows us to move on to settle this debate and negotiation."
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Mr Clark's vocal opposition to a no-deal Brexit makes it almost certain that he will be returning to the backbenches with colleagues Mr Gauke and chancellor Philip Hammond, given that Boris Johnson has made it clear that anyone who serves in his cabinet must accept that leaving with no-deal remains a policy option.
On Thursday Ms Rudd ditched her opposition to no-deal in a bid to stay on, saying that she now accepted no-deal is "party of the armoury going forward".
Mr Clark also acknowledged that parliament alone could not stop a no-deal Brexit.
"Parliament has not entirely taken if off the table because it requires the EU to agree to it so it is a fact. I'd rather it wasn't. I think we have to have a deal," he said.
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"I think it would have hugely negative consequences for our economy and our society if we leave without a deal but even someone who is absolutely passionate about getting a deal, it is a fact that if we don't reach an agreement that is what will happen."
The PM is playing a potentially dangerous game for both herself and the country as she tries to rescue her Brexit deal.
International Affairs Editor
            @DominicWaghorn
Tuesday 11 December 2018 19:38, UK
There have been smiles, handshakes, kisses and hugs for Theresa May as she has toured European capitals in a desperate bid to save the withdrawal deal.
A certain amount of respect too and no doubt pity. But nothing that is going to help her, not yet.
Not so far as we know. Quite the opposite.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker took the lead early on, ruling out any renegotiation of a deal he said was the best possible; nay, rather the only possible.
As the prime minister sat down for breakfast with her Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, France, Germany and Austria were saying the same, others to follow later.
On to Berlin and an awkward moment, the prime minister apparently locked in the back of her limo keeping Angela Merkel waiting, before being sprung free.
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But, liberation from her Brexit predicament looks far more challenging.
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The prime minister needs a substantial shift from Europe to have any chance of getting the withdrawal agreement through parliament. Europeans have ruled that out.
So there is dismay, confusion and bafflement here about what Mrs May is up to. Her ministers have tried to provide an answer.
Brexit minister Lord Callanan said Mrs May "wants additional legal reassurances that the UK cannot be permanently trapped in the Irish backstop".
That's been the issue all along and the issue at the heart of the concerns expressed by many MPs.
It would require legally-binding reassurances and that sounds a lot like renegotiation. Good luck with that, you might say.
But is the prime minister's strategy about something else?
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The suspicion forming is the prime minister is playing for time rather than seriously expecting significant concessions from Europe.
Is she letting the clock run out, raising the stakes?
When she finally brings the withdrawal agreement, amended or not, to the House Commons, the choice for MPs will be starker because the risk of a 'no-deal' Brexit all the more real.
It also might concentrate minds in Brussels where no one wants a no-deal outcome.
That might increase the chances of last-minute concessions. Or it might well not. If it does not and if the vote then fails, the UK is facing a no-deal Brexit with little time to avert it.
If that is the prime minister's game, it is a potentially dangerous one for her and the country.
Richard Burgon criticised parties with one aim of stopping Brexit as he said Labour would not walk away lightly from talks.
By  Rebecca Taylor, news reporter
Friday 10 May 2019 14:50, UK
Labour "doesn't exist to stop Brexit" according to an ally of Jeremy Corbyn, as election campaigning gets under way.
Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon said the real divide in the UK is between workers and the wealthy, not Leave and Remain.
Mr Burgon was speaking on BBC's Newsnight amid continuing tensions between two wings in Labour, those who support a second referendum on Brexit and those who are less keen.
He said: "The Labour Party doesn't exist to stop Brexit.
"Other parties have been formed that think that is their only purpose politically."
Labour has been divided in its position on a second referendum, with party deputy leader Tom Watson one of the most vocal supporters in the shadow cabinet.
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Talks between Labour and the Conservatives are set to continue on Monday, and Mr Burgon said the opposition would not "walk away lightly" from them.
He said he is getting "more and more concerned that actually negotiating with this prime minister isn't as straightforward as some might hope because she is actually negotiating with her own side continually".
He called for a "traditional British compromise".
The UK will be taking part in the European Parliament elections on 23 May as there is not enough time to get any deal through the Commons in time to avoid them.
Theresa May has indicated she may bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons before MPs break for Whitsun recess on 24 May.

Amber Rudd, work and pensions secretary, also told Newsnight: "The only way that we are going to get a successful Brexit deal through Parliament is either the Conservative MPs who voted against it previously changing their minds - there's 34 of them - or doing a deal with Labour.
"So we need Labour to step up, to deliver what they have said they will do which is potentially do a compromise deal with us.
"I have confidence that those talks will continue, I hope they will deliver the outcome we all expect, but it's going to be a political decision, slightly, for Labour, I fear."
The Labour leader says he will discuss options to break the current deadlock, but will not talk about a second referendum.
By  Jon Craig, chief political correspondent
Thursday 21 February 2019 15:16, UK
Jeremy Corbyn is in Brussels for talks with EU leaders, claiming he will work with other political parties to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
The talks take place 24 hours after Theresa May's latest meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
During his visit the Labour leader, who has accused Mrs May of trying to blackmail MPs, met the Commission's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, secretary general Martin Selmayr and the European Parliament's Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt.
Mr Corbyn said in advance he planned to discuss options for breaking the Brexit deadlock and to make clear to the Brussels team that there is no majority in the Commons for a no-deal outcome.
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But to the dismay of pro-Remain MPs campaigning for a second referendum, including the eight Labour MPs who left the party this week, Mr Corbyn had no plans to discuss the prospect of a so-called People's Vote.
Accompanied by the shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti and the shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, he said they would discuss Labour's proposals for finding a way through the Brexit deadlock.
"The Conservative government is running down the clock in an attempt to blackmail parliament into accepting Theresa May's bad deal over a chaotic no-deal," said Mr Corbyn ahead of the trip.
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"We are saying loud and clear that there is no majority for no-deal, and Labour will be working with politicians across the house to prevent a no-deal outcome which would be so damaging to our economy and communities.
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"Labour respects the result of the referendum, but we do not support the Prime Minister's damaging approach which is focused more on appeasing factions of her party than finding a sensible solution that works for the whole country.
"With just 37 days until Brexit, Theresa May must accept that her historic defeats in parliament and complete failure to reach a new deal mean her approach has failed.
"She should abandon her damaging red lines and finally work with Labour to reach a deal which works for our country."
The Labour leader wants to oust Boris Johnson so he can head a "strictly time-limited" caretaker government.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter, and Sanya Burgess, news reporter
Thursday 15 August 2019 11:58, UK
Jeremy Corbyn plans to block a no-deal Brexit by appealing to Conservative MPs to install him as "temporary" prime minister.
With less than 80 days to go until the 31 October deadline, the Labour leader is urging parties across parliament to oust Boris Johnson in a vote of no confidence.
If he is successful, those who voted against the PM could form a government of national unity.
Mr Corbyn vowed that - if he ascends to power - he will delay Brexit, call a snap general election and campaign for another referendum with the option to Remain.
He likely hopes the promise of a "time-limited" government will be enough to secure the support of his critics.
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The Labour leader said he would "immediately" seek an extension to Article 50, saying: "It's hard to say how long that [extention] would be, but obviously long enough to have a general election and for the new parliament to have be able to legislate for the future. "
He added: "I hope that that parliament would legislate so that the people would have a choice between the no-deal Brexit that Boris Johnson is offering or remaining in the EU. But there has to be a popular decision on this."
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Mr Corbyn is certain that should Mr Johnson fall to a vote of no confidence that he will take up the reigns of power, saying: "Under all normal parliamentary processes in Britain, the leader of the opposition takes over when the government collapses.
"So that seems to me absolutely in line with all the norms of the unwritten British constitution."
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The move comes as MPs plot how to take on Mr Johnson and his pledge to deliver Brexit "do or die" on Halloween.
Downing Street and Brussels are in a stalemate after the new prime minister demanded the EU renegotiates the withdrawal agreement it drew up with Theresa May, which the trading bloc has refused to do.
Mr Corbyn revealed his plan to launch a no-confidence vote "at the earliest opportunity when we can be confident of success" in a letter sent on Wednesday night to opposition party leaders in Westminster and three Tory MPs critical of no deal: Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Caroline Spelman.
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Labour's shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey claimed it was "constitutionally right" that Mr Corbyn should seek to lead a temporary government, which would not attempt to put in place the party's favoured policies.
She told Sky News: "We're not looking to implement Labour Party policy, that should be for a general election, for the public to determine who the next government should be and we'll campaign quite vigorously on that.
"Jeremy is the leader of Her Majesty's official opposition - the next biggest party in Westminster apart from the government.
"It seems constitutionally right and sensible that Jeremy should lead that caretaker government."
But Mr Corbyn's letter was immediately rejected by some of the major figures the Labour leader hopes - and needs - to win over.
Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said he was "not the person who is going to be able to build even a temporary majority" in parliament.
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She claimed his letter was not a "serious attempt to find the right solution", adding: "It is a nonsense."
Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party, confirmed she would vote against Mr Johnson in a no-confidence vote.
However, she said holding a general election before a referendum was "the wrong way round" - and warned Mr Corbyn's proposal "does not guarantee that the people are given the final say on Brexit".
Plaid Cymru leader Liz Saville Roberts said it was "disappointing" that Mr Corbyn "cannot bring himself to take the best possible pro-European position".
But Ian Blackford, head of the SNP in Westminster, was more supportive - saying he would be "pleased" to "work together" with Mr Corbyn.
Anna Soubry, the leader of The Independent Group for Change, complained she did not receive the letter, saying that fact and Mr Corbyn's "preference" for an election over a referendum made her believe it was "nothing more than a stunt".
Conservative former minister Alistair Burt was among a group of 21 Tory MPs who this week wrote to Mr Johnson to urge him to steer away from a no-deal Brexit.
Asked if he would support Mr Corbyn as a caretaker prime minister in order to avoid the UK leaving the EU without a deal, Mr Burt told Sky News: "I'm sure there is a very long answer to this but the short answer is no."
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Challenged as to how he would respond to MPs who don't want him to become prime minster, Mr Corbyn said: "Well I think they should work with us to ensure there is no to no-deal."
In response to the Labour leader's plans, a Number 10 spokesman said: "There is a clear choice: either Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister who will overrule the referendum and wreck the economy, or Boris Johnson as prime minister who will respect the referendum and deliver more money for the NHS and more police on our streets.
"This government believes the people are the masters and votes should be respected, Jeremy Corbyn believes that the people are the servants and politicians can cancel public votes they don't like."
Sky News has also seen a ruling from the UK's most senior civil servant - Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill - to a question by Mr Corbyn about whether Mr Johnson could try to force Brexit through by calling an election just after Halloween, legally forcing parliament to shut down.
Mr Sedwill did not rule out the possibility, but added MPs and the EU were in charge of the Brexit date.
Mr Johnson has previously insisted the "last thing" he wants is to call an election.
The Labour leader uses his party conference speech in Brighton to attack Boris Johnson over his unlawful suspension of parliament.
By  Greg Heffer, political reporter, in Brighton
Wednesday 25 September 2019 09:20, UK
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Jeremy Corbyn has used his Labour conference speech to repeat his call for "unelected" Boris Johnson to resign and become the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.
The Labour leader told party members that the UK faces an "extraordinary and precarious moment" following the Supreme Court's ruling that Mr Johnson's suspension of parliament was unlawful.
Mr Corbyn's keynote speech in Brighton was brought forward to Tuesday following the unanimous verdict of 11 judges at the UK's highest court - as MPs are now going to be returning to Westminster on Wednesday.
MPs will return to the House of Commons after the bombshell judgment - Sky News looks at what is likely to happen next.
Addressing the ruling, which has sent shockwaves through UK politics, Mr Corbyn claimed the prime minister "will never shut down our democracy or silence the voices of the people".
As Labour members chanted "Johnson out", the Labour leader said: "Boris Johnson has been found to have misled the country. This unelected prime minister should now resign."
Quoting the Supreme Court's conclusion that Mr Johnson's five-week prorogation of parliament was "unlawful, null and of no effect and should be quashed", Mr Corbyn quipped: "They've got the prime minister down to a tee."
Mr Corbyn declared the Brexit crisis at Westminster "can only be settled with a general election", but stuck to his stance that the country should only go to the polls once a no-deal Brexit on 31 October has been prevented - and the UK's exit from the EU has been delayed once again.
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This month, opposition parties have twice rejected Mr Johnson's demand for a snap general election in House of Commons votes.
Attacking both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats - who used their own party conference to vow they would revoke Article 50 if they win power - Mr Corbyn said: "We need to get Brexit sorted and do it in a way that doesn't leave our economy or our democracy broken.
"The Tories want to crash out without a deal and the Liberal Democrats want to cancel the country's largest ever democratic vote with a parliamentary stitch-up."
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Labour's conference has been dominated by rows over the party's own Brexit policy, with senior figures calling for Mr Corbyn to adopt an unequivocal pro-Remain stance.
An effort to push Mr Corbyn and Labour into campaigning to stay in the EU in a second referendum was defeated in controversial circumstances, allowing the party leader to retain his neutral position.
In his conference speech, Mr Corbyn told critics his party's Brexit policy was "not complicated", despite criticism that it is too ambiguous.
The Labour leader repeated his promise that, within three months of entering 10 Downing Street, he would agree a new Brexit deal with the EU.
He vowed to then put a Labour-negotiated deal to a referendum vote with Remain as the other option.
Mr Corbyn said: "As a Labour prime minister I pledge to carry out whatever the people decide.
"Only a vote for Labour will deliver a public vote on Brexit. Only a Labour government will put the power back into the hands of the people.
"We can bring our country and our people together. Let's stop a no-deal Brexit and let the people decide."
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In his speech's major policy announcement, Mr Corbyn promised a Labour government would create a publicly owned generic drugs manufacturer to supply cheaper medicines to the NHS.
Mr Corbyn said Labour would also tell "drugs companies that if they want public research funding then they'll have to make their drugs affordable for all".
The Labour leader described how he met Luis Walker, a nine-year-old with cystic fibrosis, who is unable to obtain the drug Orkambi.
He said: "Luis is denied the medicine he needs because its manufacturer refuses to sell the drug to the NHS for an affordable price."
A Labour spokesperson didn't provide a figure on how much creating a publicly-owned drugs manufacturer would cost, but said the party's policy would save the NHS money in the long-term.
Mr Corbyn also attacked the bosses of collapsed travel firm Thomas Cook - alleging executives "were able to fill their pockets with unearned bonuses, while their workers face redundancy and 150,000 holidaymakers are stranded because of their failure".
Promising to be a "different kind of prime minister", Mr Corbyn said he would not enter 10 Downing Street "from a sense of born-to-rule entitlement", adding: "Certainly not there for some personal power trip."
Concluding his speech, Mr Corbyn told his party: "The tide is turning. The years of retreat and defeat are coming to an end.
"Together, we'll take on the privileged, and put the people in power."
Responding to Mr Corbyn's speech, Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly said: "Jeremy Corbyn's offer is clear - more pointless delay and a wrecked economy, leaving the country with higher taxes and fewer jobs.
"He can't even lead his own party, let alone the country.
"Corbyn has repeatedly blocked the country having its say in an election, because he doesn't trust the people and won't deliver the change they voted for."
Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Tom Brake said: "Labour supporters will once again be disappointed that Jeremy Corbyn has failed to show leadership and commit a Labour government to opposing Brexit.
"The reality is Corbyn's public spending commitments mean nothing while the country is facing yet more economic uncertainty through either a blue Brexit or a red one."
Despite Mr Corbyn and other Labour MPs returning to Westminster on Wednesday, Labour's conference will still run into its final day.
Labour sources said deputy leader Tom Watson's speech, originally scheduled for Tuesday, had been switched with Mr Corbyn's and would now be given on Wednesday.
But Mr Watson, who survived having his position abolished in a fierce row at the start of Labour's conference, effectively cancelled his own speech by revealing that he would also be returning to Westminster on Wednesday.
He posted on Twitter: "It's right that Jeremy's speech has been moved to this afternoon.
"I will be with all Labour colleagues in parliament tomorrow. I'll have to save the speech until the next conference."
Labour will not vote in favour of a parliamentary recess until Mr Johnson has secured a further extension to the Article 50 negotiating process, thereby delaying Brexit, from the EU.
Sky News understands the government is looking at tabling motion on Wednesday for a parliamentary recess in order to free up Conservative MPs to attend their own party conference in Manchester next week.
Jeremy Corbyn says he is ready for an election and prepared to take on new PM Boris Johnson.
Monday 29 July 2019 10:48, UK
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Jeremy Corbyn will campaign for the UK to remain in the EU if Boris Johnson tries to implement a no-deal Brexit.
The Labour leader told Sky News that he would back a second referendum which would put the Brexit deal against no deal, and promised that any Labour-negotiated deal would also go to the people for a vote.
But he failed to commit to campaigning to remain if Labour brought a deal to a referendum.
He told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday: "No deal we'll oppose and we think people should have a final choice on it. They can have a vote then between Remain and whatever option Boris Johnson decides to put to them at that time.
"If we are in power, yes of course, the same thing would apply because I want to make sure we get to the end of this process where we have a fixed position in this country.
"What we said is in the event of a no-deal Brexit we will campaign to remain."
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The opposition leader also said he is "absolutely" preparing to take on new Prime Minister Mr Johnson in a general election, but won't commit to calling a confidence vote in the new prime minister.
Speaking in Mansfield, a Nottinghamshire town that was represented by the Labour Party for almost a century before it elected its first Conservative MP in 2017, he said: "I've got my summer campaign plan in place, we've got most of our candidates selected in all our marginal constituencies.
"We have many other policy announcements in place, particularly the ones on the Green Industrial Revolution and the Green New Deal that we're putting forward, and working out more details on our health and social care policies.
"But fundamentally it's about reducing inequality in Britain and about investing in good quality sustainable jobs for the future through the Green Energy Revolution."
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Asked about whether he would do what he could to trigger an election by calling a confidence vote in the government, Mr Corbyn said he would "look at the situation" when parliament reconvenes in September.
He added: "But it's also up to the prime minister and what he decides to do as well, because if he is trying to take us out on a no-deal Brexit at the end of October we will oppose that."
He said Labour would choose when to call the confidence motion, and did not guarantee it would be before Britain leaves the EU.
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His words come just days after Mr Johnson took over leadership of the Conservative Party, replacing Theresa May.
Since he became prime minister, Mr Johnson has pledged to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers and promised a high-speed rail link between Manchester and Leeds, as well as better broadband connectivity.
The emphasis on the domestic agenda has fuelled speculation he is keeping his options open for a snap general election, despite his strong denials.
The new PM has been given a boost after a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times put the Tories on 31%, up six points on a previous poll, while Mr Corbyn's party was on 21%, a rise of two points.
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When asked if he was worried about competing with Mr Johnson at the next election, Mr Corbyn said: "Not in the slightest.
"We'll go out there and we'll make our case.
"I don't get involved in personal abuse, I don't make any personal abuse, I don't do personal, as far as I'm concerned the issues are too serious.
"We live in a country that is more unequal than almost any other in Europe, that is becoming more unequal, that in many parts of the country there has been no real investment since the end of the miners' strike. Where we are today in Mansfield is an example of that.
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"We have to have a change of approach and it has to be about investment, it has to be about real opportunities for young people so they don't go into university and come out with debt. They do get the choice - a real choice - of an apprenticeship or a university education."
Marginal seats such as Mansfield could decide the next election, but despite speculation there could be an election soon, new members of the government have denied there are plans in place.
Chief secretary to the treasury Rishi Sunak told Sophy Ridge there are no plans for an election, and that the government remains focused on delivering Brexit.
He said: "We are certainly not planning [for an election].
"We are committed to getting the EU to renegotiate the undemocratic backstop, and if they won't, then leaving the EU on 31 October.
"That is the priority focus of this government.
"We don't need any more elections, we certainly don't need more referendums."
Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson say they would refuse to take Britain out of the EU with a time-limited Irish border backstop.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Tuesday 16 July 2019 15:25, UK
Both Tory leadership contenders have made a dramatic pivot towards a no-deal Brexit after they ruled out accepting a potential key concession from Brussels.
Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson said they would refuse to take Britain out of the EU with a tweaked version of the Irish border backstop that included a time limit built into it.
The move has inflamed the fury of a Tory MP who called it a "very dangerous step" and a Irish MEP who warned it would lead to a "crash out exit".
The backstop is an insurance policy to prevent a hard border reforming and was the most controversial element of Prime Minister Theresa May's withdrawal agreement.
Brussels has insisted its inclusion is non-negotiable.
Some Tory Brexiteers said they could support the policy if there was a time limit put it, to ensure the UK does not remain trapped in it indefinitely.
But Mr Johnson signalled he would not accept an altered version which would set a time limit on how long the UK would have to follow some EU import standards and rules.
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"No to time limits or unilateral escape hatches or all these elaborate devices, glosses, codicils and so on that you could apply to the backstop," he told a debate hosted by The Sun on Monday.
Mr Hunt agreed, adding: "The backstop, as it is, is dead ... I don't think tweaking it with a time limit will do the trick, we've got to find a new way."
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Some politicians said the commitment from both candidates, one of whom will be announced as prime minister next Tuesday, was tantamount to committing to no-deal.
Simon Hoare, the Tory MP who chairs the Northern Ireland affairs committee in parliament and is a Hunt supporter, called the comments "worrying and depressing".
"Both of the candidates yesterday moved the goalposts," he told Sky News, adding: "All I can hope is that this is prose caught up in the heat of an election campaign.
"It is not good for the union - this is a very dangerous step that both men seem to have taken."
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Martina Anderson, an MEP for Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, said it amounted to a "crash out exit".
"No backstop = no withdrawal agreement = no future relationship," she tweeted.
David Bannerman, a Brexiteer former Conservative MEP who quit in May, also wrote the current Brexit deal was "dead" and it was "time for" a no-deal divorce.
Despite the pivot towards leaving the EU on 31 October with no withdrawal agreement, some MPs are manoeuvring to try to block such a scenario.
Sky News revealed earlier this month that thirty Tory MPs led by Chancellor Philip Hammond are plotting to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The informal group of rebels, mostly serving ministers, have held numerous meetings recently about how to prevent it happening.
The former PM says proroguing parliament - which Mr Johnson has not ruled out - would drag the Queen into a constitutional crisis.
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Wednesday 10 July 2019 13:52, UK
Former prime minister Sir John Major has said he would be willing to go to court to try and stop Boris Johnson suspending parliament.
He said the move - which Mr Johnson has not ruled out in order to pursue a no-deal exit from the EU if he becomes PM - would drag the Queen into a constitutional crisis.
Sir John, who was in Downing Street from 1990 to 1997, said such a course of action would be "utterly and totally unacceptable".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "In order to close down parliament the prime minister would have to go to Her Majesty the Queen and ask for her permission to prorogue [another term for suspending parliament].
"If her first minister asks for that permission it is almost inconceivable that the Queen will do anything other than grant it.
"She is then in the midst of a constitutional controversy that no serious politician should put the Queen in the middle of.
"If that were to happen there would be a queue of people who would seek judicial review.
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"I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review."
Mr Johnson, who is battling Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to take over from Theresa May in Downing Street, has promised to take Britain out of the EU on 31 October "do or die".
He has expressed confidence about being able to get changes to the Brexit deal Mrs May managed to negotiate with Brussels, but has made clear he would be willing to leave without a deal if necessary.
Mr Johnson's commitment to the October deadline has raised questions about what he would do if the deadlock at Westminster continues.
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A number of votes in parliament have indicated that a majority of MPs are against a no-deal Brexit, because they fear it would cause disruption in numerous areas of British life and hit the economy.
Amid this climate the idea of proroguing parliament - which would bring the current session to an end - has emerged.
The theory goes that if MPs are not sitting, they cannot stop a PM going for no deal.
However, opponents say it would be a startling overreach given Britain is a parliamentary democracy.
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Sir John, who is backing Mr Hunt in the leadership race, said: "There is no conceivable justification, wherever we are, in closing down parliament to bypass its sovereignty.
"I seem to recall that the Brexiteers, led by Mr Johnson, actually campaigned in the referendum for the sovereignty of parliament... They can't be concerned for the sovereignty of parliament except when it is inconvenient to Mr Johnson."
But critics accused Sir John of hypocrisy, given the fact that he prorogued parliament ahead of the 1997 general election, which stopped a report on the cash for questions scandal being considered by MPs.
He said "we carried the election until almost the very last date" and it was an "absurd charge".
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On a campaign visit to a pub in London Mr Johnson dismissed the comments.
He said: "What we are going to do is deliver Brexit on October 31, which is what I think the people of this country want us to get on and do.
"I think everybody is fed up with delay and I think the idea of now consecrating this decision to the judiciary is really very, very odd indeed.
"What we want is for Parliament to take their responsibilities, get it done as they promised that they would.
"They asked the British people whether they wanted to leave in 2016, the British people returned a very clear verdict so let's get it done."
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Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt clashed on the issue in a TV debate on Tuesday.
The latter issued a stark warning about the prospect of suspension.
"When that has happened in the past, when parliament has been shut down against its will, we actually had a civil war," Mr Hunt said.
But Mr Johnson said: "I'm not going to take anything off the table, any more than I'm going to take no-deal off the table.
"I think it's absolutely bizarre at this stage in the negotiations for the UK - yet again - to be weakening its own position."
Under the plan, the whole of the United Kingdom leaves the EU Customs Union, in a big and important win for the prime minister.
By  Sam Coates, deputy political editor
Saturday 12 October 2019 11:36, UK
Downing Street appears to have a credible Brexit proposal after a week which began with a Number 10 aide calling a deal "essentially impossible".
The proposal thrashed out between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar, in theory, deals with the main of the outstanding intractable issues.
The nascent plan, revealed by leaks to Sky News and others, appears clever because it creates the illusion of victory for both sides on the most difficult issue of all - customs.
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Under the plan, the whole of the United Kingdom leaves the EU customs union, in a big and important win for Boris Johnson.
However, the EU tariff regime will continue to be applied on the whole of the island of Ireland.
This means that the tariffs charged in Great Britain could be different to those in Northern Ireland.
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But under the compromise agreement, all businesses in Northern Ireland will be able to benefit from UK tariffs by offering a rebate on goods sold, if the UK tariff is lower than the EU one.
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This plan allows Europe to say the island of Ireland is in one customs zone.
Which is a win for them.
This plan also allows Mr Johnson to say the whole of the UK has left the customs union and Northern Ireland can - like the rest of Great Britain benefit from trade deals, which is a win for him.
This compromise comes in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, which allowed for competing interpretations of one set of rules to allow peace in Northern Ireland.
Though, in truth, Britain has probably compromised more than the EU in this process.
Putting together the various compromises offered by Mr Johnson, Northern Ireland will, under Mr Johnson's plan, now be in the same regulatory and agricultural zone and subject to the same tariffs as the rest of the EU.
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There will be a regulatory and agrifoods border in the Irish Sea and potentially some customs checks too, albeit while ensuring that Northern Ireland businesses do not lose out financially from the arrangement.
Some have compared the plan to a version of Theresa May's Chequers deal, but for Northern Ireland.
Others call it a Northern Ireland backstop - rejected decisively by MPs time and again - in all but name.
Number 10 will reject both labels and probably call it a free trade zone.
There will also be the option for Northern Ireland - either via Stormont or another mechanism - to vote on the plan in a few years, details of which are yet to be spelt out.
Only Mr Johnson could have compromised like this, and - as of now - still appear to keep both the DUP and Brexiteers on side.
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However, the government is not home and dry.
They need to convince the rest of the EU, and there may be reservations about whether the UK post-Brexit can be trusted to administer the EU external border, and whether they are prepared to tolerate the risk of smuggling.
Then they also need to convince parliament.
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Mr Johnson does not have a majority and, since he expelled a number of Tories who were voting to block no-deal, his numbers have been going backwards.
Several have joined the Lib Dems, while others who support a second referendum are not minded to support Mr Johnson either.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson's Brexit plan paves the way for Great Britain to be subject to the hardest possible Brexit, potentially allowing for a reworking of the entire economic and social model towards low-tax low-regulation states with small safety nets, such as Singapore.
This makes it harder for Labour MPs to support.
This battle is not over yet.
Opponents warn uncertainty over the PM's future threatens securing an agreement because of fears her successor could tear it up.
Monday 6 May 2019 09:32, UK
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The Conservatives and Labour are "very, very close" on Brexit and so it would be "surprisingly easy" to broker a deal, cabinet newcomer Rory Stewart has told Sky News.
But the International Development Secretary, speaking on Sophy Ridge On Sunday, said it depended on whether Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn wanted to reach an agreement.
At the same time, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage told Sky News that a deal brokered between the two sides threatened a "coalition of politicians against the people".
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He also challenged Jeremy Corbyn to a debate ahead of the Euro elections and dismissed UKIP, the party he once led, as now "past its sell-by date".
With Mrs May urging the Labour leader to work with the government to agree a compromise deal and end the Brexit impasse, Mr Stewart said: "I think a deal can be done, a lot of this rests on, to be honest, one man: whether Jeremy Corbyn really wants to deliver a Brexit deal.
"But I think if he wants to do it it will be actually surprisingly easy to do because our positions are very, very close."
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Mr Stewart also warned that if the Tories tried to "outdo" Mr Farage then it could lose four million Conservative Remain-supporting voters.
The prime minister has faced renewed calls from within her own party to quit, following last week's drubbing at the local elections, blamed on her handling of Brexit.
But Mr Stewart said: "I think that this idea that somehow it's all to do with an individual is naive. This is about Brexit.
"She's put a very courageous effort in trying to get something through a divided parliament, without a majority and with a very split country.
"Honestly I don't think anybody doing that role, I don't think if some sort of superhero turned up, George Clooney suddenly became prime minister, I don't think he'd be able to charm his way through this problem.
"It's not the individual, the problem is Brexit."
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Meanwhile, Mr Farage warned a deal struck between the two parties involving a customs union would be a "coalition of politicians against the people".
He told Sophy Ridge On Sunday: "I think millions of people would give up on both Labour and the Conservatives. This would be the final betrayal."
Calling on Mr Corbyn to debate ahead of the European elections later this month, he said: "There are five million voters out there, Labour voters, who voted to leave, particularly in the Midlands, the North, and South Wales.
"I would love between now and polling to have a debate with Jeremy Corbyn about this because people are very confused about what Labour are standing for."
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said he does not trust the prime minister, as he accused her acting in "bad faith" over the talks.
He told Sky News: "The Conservative party now is so unstable we've got problems.
"How long is Theresa May going to be there, she looks like she may not survive beyond June.
The big parties wanted the elections to be about bins, not Brexit - but Brexit has dominated UK politics for three years
"The second thing is the prospective leadership candidates all of them have undermined the deal, a number of them are threatening that they wouldn't support elements the Theresa May has put forward.
"That's our real problem. It's about negotiating a deal that will protect jobs and the economy but also it's ensuring a deal will survive beyond Theresa May and it's very difficult to see that now."
Frontbencher Rebecca Long-Bailey tells Sky News there needs to be "hard and fast" progress in talks, which continue this week.
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Sunday 28 April 2019 14:32, UK
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There appears to be no end to the Brexit deadlock in sight, with Labour again accusing the government of refusing to budge on its red lines in cross-party talks.
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Shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey told Sky News there needed to be "hard and fast" progress in the discussions, which will continue this week.
She also denied suggestions from the Conservatives that her party was stalling, saying "we're certainly not dragging our heels".
Ms Long-Bailey told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "Honestly I think the discussions so far have been productive, they've gone into a lot of detail, there seems to be a willingness on both sides to move towards some form of consensus.
"But as yet we haven't seen the government move on any of their red lines, we're having further discussions this week and hopefully we'll see some movement."
She added: "At the moment we are focusing on the detail, where we stand in relation to our relevant positions, and where potentially we could move to.
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"But we want to see hard and fast movement on those red lines as quickly as possible."
Theresa May's decision to reach out to Labour and offer cross-party talks in a bid to break the impasse had sparked a debate within Jeremy Corbyn's party as to whether he should insist on a second referendum as a "red line".
The question divides opinion in the party.
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When asked if another public vote was something the party would be insisting upon in the discussions, Ms Long-Bailey said Labour was "not being hugely prescriptive on the minute detail of specific elements because we are willing to compromise and we are willing to be flexible".
Quizzed on whether the party would sign off on a deal without a referendum if it met all of its criteria, Ms Long-Bailey refused to say, but added that if they were not met then "all options are on the table which includes campaigning for a public vote".
Put to her that this sounded like a second referendum was not a red line for Labour, she replied: "No, a public vote in the event of the situation that I've just outlined has always been our party policy, now we have to be flexible in where we move on, we've got to keep all options on the table and that's what we're doing.
"Until we find out out what the final deal vote will be, we are of course pushing the government to consider the policy option that we have which is a public vote to avoid a damaging no-deal Brexit or a bad deal, and they are considering that."
Shadow communities secretary Andrew Gwynne told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "Our manifesto [for the European elections] is going to be agreed by the National Executive Committee on Tuesday.
"I expect the NEC will endorse Labour's policy that came out of the conference."
Mr Gwynne added: "I want to ensure that we avoid a bad Tory Brexit or a no-deal scenario.
"In those circumstances, yes, I think that wasn't on the ballot paper in 2016, we should then perhaps ask the people 'is this actually what you want, a confirmatory vote, do you support what the Government's proposition is?'.
"But let's see what comes out of these talks because I hope that the government can move on some of these red lines so that we can get a more sensible approach towards Brexit going forwards."
Labour's Brexit spokesman makes the declaration as UK and EU negotiators hold talks in a bid to thrash out a deal.
Political reporter
            @Alan_McGuinness
Saturday 12 October 2019 18:15, UK
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If Boris Johnson succeeds in getting a Brexit deal, Labour will demand it be put to a referendum, the party's Brexit spokesman has said.
Sir Keir Starmer made the declaration as negotiators from the UK and EU hold talks this weekend in a bid to thrash out a deal.
Sky News understands Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proposed a compromise in an attempt to break the deadlock ahead of a crucial EU summit next week.
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A government source said there had "clearly been some movement on both sides" but there was still a "way to go".
The rhetoric marks a change in tone from earlier this week, when Downing Street said a deal was "essentially impossible".
Reacting to these latest developments, Sir Keir said: "If Boris Johnson does manage to negotiate a deal then we will insist that it is put back to the people in a confirmatory vote."
Speaking at the Co-operative Party conference in Glasgow, he added that Labour was unlikely to support the kind of deal that has been mooted in recent days.
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Sir Keir said it appeared any agreement would be "even worse" than Theresa May's deal, which was rejected three times by MPs.
"No level playing field protections. No customs union. A green light to deregulate. That kind of deal can never be one Labour supports," he said.
Sir Keir also pledged that Labour would do "whatever it takes" to stop a no-deal Brexit at the end of the month.
He said that if the PM is unable to get a deal at the EU summit, he must comply with legislation passed by opposition parties which compels him to seek a delay to Britain's EU exit.
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"If he can't - or I should say won't - get a deal we will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent our country crashing out of the EU without a deal," Sir Keir told the conference.
"If no deal is secured by this time next week, Boris Johnson must seek and accept an extension. That's the law. No ifs, no buts.
"And if he doesn't, we'll enforce the law - in the courts and in parliament.
"Whatever it takes, we will prevent a no-deal Brexit."
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He dismissed suggestions Mr Johnson could circumvent the law by making clear to the EU that he did not really want another extension.
The PM's new proposal would replace the controversial backstop, the insurance policy aimed at avoiding a hard Irish border, which has proved to be the sticking point in negotiations.
Northern Ireland would continue to administer EU tariffs despite leaving the bloc's customs union.
This would remove the need for customs checks but also allow businesses north of the border to benefit from new UK trade deals by applying for a rebate from the government.
The EU's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, has said talks are intensifying "in a constructive spirit" and that Brussels "will do everything it can for an agreement, fully in line with our principles".
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Ambassadors from the 27 remaining EU nations will meet on Sunday to discuss progress in the talks ahead of a leaders' summit on Thursday.
MPs will scrutinise any deal agreed with Brussels in a special sitting of the Commons next Saturday.
A government source said there was "certainly a possibility" there could be a vote next weekend on any new deal, but added they were currently a long way from that point.
Downing Street is confident that if the EU and MPs approve an agreement in the next week, there will still be enough time to pass the legislation needed to leave on 31 October.
But MPs calling for another referendum are drawing up plans to amend any vote brought back by the government.
Mr Varadkar says stopping an extension of Brexit would do harm to Ireland and to other EU countries.
Sunday 7 April 2019 06:39, UK
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Any EU 27 country that vetoed the UK's request to delay Brexit "wouldn't be forgiven", the Irish prime minister has said.
Leo Varadkar said if a country vetoed an extension it would cause hardship to Ireland and other EU countries.
The UK is set to leave the EU on 12 April without a deal, because Westminster has been unable to agree the withdrawal agreement put forward by Prime Minister Theresa May.
Mrs May has asked the EU for an extension to 30 June as she tries to thrash out a deal with Labour which she hopes she can get through parliament.
Any extension has to be agreed unanimously by EU leaders of each member country.
The prime minister wants more time to sort out a Brexit deal, but she'll have to get 27 other nations to approve.
Mr Varadkar told Irish broadcaster RTE: "If one country was to veto an extension and, as a result, impose hardship on us, real problems for the Dutch and Belgians and French as neighbouring countries ... they wouldn't be forgiven for it and they would know they might find themselves on the other end of that veto power in the future - so it is extremely unlikely that I could see any country vetoing it."
Suggesting his own preference would be for a longer extension than the 30 June date proposed by the UK, Mr Varadkar said the European Council was working unanimously to agree Brexit and a veto is rarely exercised.
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But he said there was increasing frustration in some EU countries that Brexit continues to dominate the agenda.
He said: "Because nobody wants a no deal, I think the likelihood is an extension. But what we want to avoid is an extension that just allows for more indecision and more uncertainty.
"So I'd prefer to see a longer extension during which the United Kingdom has more time to decide really what future relationship it wants to have with the European Union, rather than the alternative, which could be rolling extensions every couple of weeks, or every couple of months."
In a no-deal scenario, Mr Varadkar said the "logical" way to ensure a free-flowing border between the Republic and Northern Ireland would be for regulatory checks to take place at sea ports in Belfast and Larne.
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Asked how likely it is one country could veto an extension, he said: "To wield the veto is something that is rarely done.
"I'm nearly two years now representing Ireland at the European Council and I have never seen the veto used once."
European Council president Donald Tusk has recommended a longer postponement of one year, with a break clause in case of earlier ratification in a so-called "flextension" deal.
France has demanded a plan from Mrs May that has "clear and credible political backing".
Mrs May already obtained one extension to the Article 50 process, postponing the date of Brexit from 29 March to 12 April.
Following on from the backlash at the polls in England, Mrs May and Mr Corbyn reaffirmed their commitment to delivering Brexit.
Monday 6 May 2019 09:36, UK
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have acknowledged that voters want an end to the Brexit stalemate after the two main parties suffered damaging losses in the local elections.
Voters forced out more than 1,300 Conservative councillors during a bruising round of local elections in England - causing the Tories to lose control of 49 local authorities.
It was the worst performance by a governing party in local elections since 1995.
Mrs May faced anger from her own party as the results became clear on Friday, with the prime minister admitting the outcome was "very difficult" for the Tories.
:: Voters tell Labour and Tories: This is a plague on both of your houses
She was confronted by a heckler as she began speaking at the Conservatives' Welsh conference, with one aggrieved party member shouting: "Why don't you resign? We don't want you."
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The election results were also disappointing for Labour after Mr Corbyn failed to make the inroads that might have been expected of an opposition leader eyeing up 10 Downing Street.
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With all 248 councils in England having declared, Labour has lost six councils and 86 seats.
After losing over 1,000 seats, Theresa May says the local elections were always going to be difficult "nine years into a government" and insists that "it wasn't a good night for Labour either"Find out how your local area voted: https://t.co/aSVycpiBnI pic.twitter.com/jtC1kPTWv9
The Liberal Democrats were the big winners from Thursday's vote - gaining 12 councils and 704 councillors. The Greens and independent candidates also enjoyed success.
Sir Vince Cable's party gave the strongest sign yet they are recovering at a local level from their near-wipeout in 2015.
Three councils to go. Tory losses 1,300 seats (beyond worst predictions). As for Labour, net losses of 80, 9 years in & no gains from Tories. This is staggeringly bad. Too early to tell if beg of the end of 2-party system (2014 all over) or Brexit blipEU elex set to be bloodbath pic.twitter.com/poxUCAbaVh
Over in Northern Ireland, 819 candidates have been standing for 462 seats across 11 council areas.
The Democratic Unionist Party's first openly gay election candidate has been elected, while voters in Antrim and Newtonabbey re-elected a former DUP mayor despite his recent conviction for drink-driving.
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Following on from the backlash at the polls in England, Mrs May and Mr Corbyn reaffirmed their commitment to delivering Brexit.
Both acknowledged that the impasse in parliament over the referendum result had an impact on their fortunes.
The prime minister told Sky News: "I'm sorry that good councillors have lost their seats through no fault of their own.
"These were always going to be difficult elections for us, nine years into a government, and there's the added dimension of having not got the Brexit deal over the line."
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Mrs May and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt tried to divert attention to Labour's results - insisting that the opposition's "significant losses" were evidence that voters are frustrated with both main parties.
The Labour leader said there were a "number of reasons" why Labour did not do as well as usual in its traditional heartlands, and admitted that Brexit was one of them.
Mr Corbyn explained: "Some of them were local factors and some of them were people probably disagreeing with both parties on attitudes towards the EU.
"Our policy is that we are the only party that seeks to appeal to people however they voted in 2016 and to ensure that we try to defend jobs and working conditions in this country."
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Labour has also suffered from infighting - with Blackadder star Sir Tony Robinson sensationally announcing he has quit the party because of its "continued duplicity on Brexit", poor handling of the antisemitism row and "complete s***" leadership.
Mrs May and Mr Corbyn have stressed that cross-party talks will continue in a bid to reach an agreement on a Brexit deal, but shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry has suggested that the government appeared unwilling to compromise during recent discussions.
Ms Thornberry told Sky News that Labour would back a second referendum if there was no breakthrough, and joined Mr Corbyn in reiterating her desire for a general election.
"We need to go back to the people because it can't go on like this," she added.
Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said the results were evidence that public opinion on Brexit had indeed shifted since the referendum in June 2016.
His party gained hundreds of new councillors across Leave and Remain-voting areas - by far the largest gains of a single party - and the Green Party also enjoyed its best ever local election results.
Sir Vince said: "Voters have sent a clear message that they no longer have confidence in the Conservatives, but they are also refusing to reward Labour while the party prevaricates on the big issue of the day: Brexit."
He also declared: "Three-party politics is back."
Polling stations are expected to open yet again for the European elections on 23 May, when two new parties will also enter the fray: Nigel Farage's Brexit Party, and the pro-EU Change UK.
UKIP, Mr Farage's former home, lost 145 council seats on Thursday - although spoiled ballot papers suggested that the Brexit Party would have enjoyed some support if it had participated in the local elections.
One region's allocation works out at £9 per person per year, in a move unlikely to help the PM out of a tight spot on Brexit.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Monday 4 March 2019 13:28, UK
Theresa May's offer of a cash boost for pro-Brexit towns has been dismissed as a "failure" and "embarrassing".
Key MPs the prime minister needs to win over to get an EU deal through parliament called the amount on offer "derisory", as Mrs May was accused of bribery.
Downing Street unveiled a "Stronger Towns Fund" for less prosperous parts of England on Sunday - with £1bn divided between the regions and a further £600m available for bidding by local authorities.
But the amount of allocated, which will be distributed over the next six financial years, has been criticised.
The West Midlands was awarded the second highest sum of £212m, which works out at £9 per person per year.
Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, whose Stoke-on-Trent North constituency is in the region and voted overwhelmingly to Leave in the 2016 referendum, said local spending cuts far outweighed the amount on offer.
"If Mrs May was trying to bribe Labour MPs then she's failed miserably," Ms Smeeth told Sky News.
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"This is not the conversation that needs to be had about community renewal, which is what I thought we were about to have in terms of a post-Brexit dividend."
Ms Smeeth called it a "derisory amount of money" that would not "make up for the fact that my own city alone has lost more than they are pledging to the entire West Midlands".
She added: "It doesn't even actually make up for the money we've lost from the local economy with the roll out of Universal Credit. It's obscene."
Anna Turley, the Labour MP for Redcar, also told Sky News areas like hers had been "left behind and held back by lack of investment" for decades.
"The idea that they can now just throw this as a last-ditch desperate attempt to cross the floor and vote for Theresa May's deal is embarrassing and shambolic and really undermines democracy," she said.
Under the new scheme, the funding breakdown for English regions is:
:: North West - £281m:: West Midlands - £212m:: Yorkshire and the Humber - £197m:: East Midlands - £110m:: North East - £105m:: South East - £37m:: South West - £35m:: East of England - £25m
The government says it will also seek to ensure towns across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will benefit from new funding.
Jonathan Edward, Plaid Cymru's treasury spokesperson, said Wales "must get its fair funding share".
He added: "If there is money to be invested in communities that have been left behind, it should go to those communities, regardless of whether it will buy votes for the prime minister's dodgy Brexit deal or not."
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Mrs May has already gifted Northern Ireland an extra £1bn in return for the Democratic Unionist Party's support to get crucial Brexit legislation passed in parliament.
Communities secretary James Brokenshire said: "This is absolutely not some sort of bribe, I reject that completely.
"It's about sharing prosperity."Communities secretary @JBrokenshire rejects accusations that a post-Brexit fund for deprived towns is a bribe to get MPs to support Theresa May's deal. Read the full story here: https://t.co/qkRLbGJmzJ pic.twitter.com/6gQmaH19c1
"It is actually following through on what the prime minister's mission has been, about seeing that we have a country that works for everyone, that all parts and all places feel that as we go through Brexit."
Mrs May's spokesperson said she had always said prosperity had been unfairly spread across Britain for "too long".
The prime minister lost a vote on her EU withdrawal agreement by 200 votes last month, as Tory Remainers and Brexiteers joined forces to condemn it.
She may rely on the help of Labour MPs to help push it through in a second vote expected to take place in the next two weeks.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU on 29 March by default with or without a deal.
Sam Gyimah labelled negotiations over the Galileo satellite system a "foretaste of what's to come" under the PM's Brexit deal.
By  Sanya Burgess, news reporter
Saturday 1 December 2018 12:30, UK
Theresa May's universities and science minister has resigned in protest over the prime minister's "naive" Brexit deal after she announced the UK is pulling out of the Galileo project.
Sam Gyimah, who has been tipped as a future leader for the Tory party, said any deal struck with Brussels will be "EU first".
The East Surrey MP, who is the 10th minister to resign after the Chequers plan in July, said he was resigning after Mrs May confirmed on Friday that the UK was pulling out of the EU's Galileo satellite-navigation project.
Writing on his Facebook page, the "rising star" in the Conservative Party, said: "After careful consideration and reflection, I cannot support the government's deal and as such, I have tended my resignation as universities and science minister."

Mr Gyimah, who campaigned for Remain but represents a Leave constituency, labelled negotiations over Galileo, the EU's strategic satellite navigation system, "a foretaste of what's to come under the government's Brexit deal".
The 42-year-old added: "Having surrendered our voice, our vote and our veto, we will have to rely on the 'best endeavours' of the EU to strike a final agreement that works in our national interest.
"As minister with the responsibility for space technology, I have seen first-hand the EU stack the deck against us time and time again, even while the ink was drying on the transition deal.
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"Galileo is a clarion call that it will be 'EU first', and to think otherwise - whether you are a Leaver or Remainer - is at best incredibly naive."
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Mr Gyimah said Theresa May - who is in Argentina for the G20 summit - should not rule out a second referendum.
He conceded that Mrs May's deal "has been hard won", but said "at its heart, all the big decisions in the political declaration that will shape our future in Europe, and the world, are yet to be agreed".
He added: "It is a deal in name only. And we will be relying on the good faith of the EU to deliver the bespoke deal we have been led to expect."
The Oxford-educated MP argued in his statement the "sensible compromise Brexit deal" will leave the UK "poorer, less secure and weaker in the pursuit of our national interests".
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He suggested alternatives include a second referendum, saying: "We shouldn't dismiss out of hand the idea of asking the people again what future they want, as we all now have a better understanding of the potential paths before us."
He ended his statement with a compliment for the PM - before confirming that he is unable to back her any longer.
"The grit and determination demonstrated by the prime minister should be an inspiration to us all," he said.
"I am saddened, as an early and vocal backer of her leadership, to have reached a cross-roads where I cannot support her on this crucial issue."
Senior ministers have briefed the prime minister on a secret plan amid fears MPs will vote down her withdrawal deal.
By  Kate McCann, political correspondent
Saturday 10 November 2018 08:07, UK
Cabinet ministers have presented Theresa May with a detailed plan for a "no-deal" Brexit amid increasing fears MPs will vote down her deal in the House of Commons.
The plan emerged after Jo Johnson, a transport minister, resigned from the government over Brexit and vowed to vote against Mrs May's deal in the Commons.
A group of senior ministers briefed the prime minister on the secret plan earlier this month.
It could be deployed in a bid to avoid a chaotic exit if no agreement can be reached or if a deal is voted down.
The scheme would see the UK pay £18bn and continue to follow EU rules for a further 18-24 months after leaving in March with no deal, effectively as a third-party nation.
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It would only be triggered if politicians fail to agree to the terms of a deal struck by the prime minister and Brussels, expected to be announced later this month.
The cabinet ministers believe the plan - which has not been seen in Brussels - would allow the UK to sign international trade deals, negotiate a new trading relationship with the EU without having to sign up to a Northern Ireland backstop and ensure a fixed end date.
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They also believe it would be easier to negotiate a new relationship with Europe and could cut the cost of leaving by slicing £20bn off the so-called divorce bill by only paying EU membership fees up until 2021.
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It is designed to ease fears that leaving the union without a deal would mean ports would be shut, planes would be grounded and the British economy would face a shock. And to ease the UK's exit having been unable to agree a formal withdrawal agreement.
Mrs May is said to have told Brexiteers the plan was "not needed yet" but it received a "surprisingly warm" response from Chancellor Philip Hammond, a senior source told Sky News.
A cabinet minister said leader of the pro-Brexit European Reform Group Jacob Rees-Mogg also supports the plan, while other Brexiteers said it could be worth exploring in more detail.
It has gathered support in recent weeks amid increasingly strained relations between Number 10 and the Democratic Unionist Party, who fear Mrs May could agree to a backstop demanded by the EU which could cut Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK in the event of no deal.
If the prime minister agreed to such a plan, DUP MPs would vote against the deal in parliament, senior members of the party have warned, making it almost impossible for Mrs May to win enough support for it to pass.
Mrs May has also come under fire from her own MPs and cabinet ministers, who have demanded legal advice on the final terms of the UK's exit to ensure the EU cannot keep Britain inside the customs union indefinitely.
A cabinet minister said the plan has been developed to ensure the worst elements of a no-deal Brexit could be eased, but they also pointed out it could be beneficial to the UK in the long run.
Downing Street said on Friday evening it would not agree to a second referendum vote under any circumstances and reiterated a promise not to sign the UK up to any deal which could return a hard border to Northern Ireland.
But a cabinet source said: "No deal is looking more and more likely every day, so this is no deal but a managed deal."
The PM says talks with Labour's leader are aimed at finding "the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for".
By  Jon Craig, chief political correspondent
Wednesday 3 April 2019 07:39, UK
Theresa May is facing a bitter backlash from Tory MPs after calling for national unity and offering talks with Jeremy Corbyn to agree a Brexit plan.
She is likely to face an onslaught from Conservative Brexiteers at Prime Ministers Questions this afternoon after her controversial proposal to negotiate with the Labour leader.
Ominously for the PM, Boris Johnson has joined the Brexiteer backlash, which has seen some Tory MPs urge cabinet ministers to stage a mutiny and move to oust her immediately.
With some Conservative MPs now fearing Brexit is in jeopardy, the former party leader Iain Duncan Smith told Sky News: "This is an utter disaster. We are just about to legitimise Corbyn. It's appalling."
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Unveiling her new direction after a marathon seven-hour Cabinet meeting, the PM said: "This is a difficult time for everyone. Passions are running high on all sides of the argument.
"But we can and must find the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for. This is a decisive moment in the story of these islands. And it requires national unity to deliver the national interest."
The PM's national unity move comes amid claims that at the Cabinet meeting 14 ministers backed a no-deal Brexit, with 10 against, but she chose to talk to Mr Corbyn instead.
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Responding to Mrs May's statement, the Labour leader says he would be happy to meet the prime minister and is pleased she has indicated she will accept the will of parliament and is prepared to reach out.
"We hold in reserve our right to bring a motion of no confidence in the government if it proves it is incapable of commanding a majority in the Commons: time will tell on that," he said.
"Our priority is to make sure we don't crash out and is to make sure we have a government that does command a majority in the House and does indeed command the majority support across the country. At the moment we don't have that."
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Mr Corbyn says his demands in his talks with the PM will include:::  A customs union with the EU and access to markets::  Protecting consumer and environmental standards and workers' rights:: Guaranteeing the Good Friday Agreement
But pro-Remain Labour MPs - backed by deputy leader Tom Watson and shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer - are also demanding a referendum on the Brexit deal.
On the Tory back benches, the PM's offer to Mr Corbyn has inflamed the party's civil war.
Speaking after a meeting of the European Research Group (ERG) that MPs present told Sky News was "tempestuous", leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said: "I think getting the support of a known Marxist is not likely to instil confidence in Conservatives.
"This approach to government is an unsuccessful one and it also lacks democratic legitimacy.
"People did not vote for a Corbyn-May coalition government - they voted for a Conservative government, which became a confidence and supply with the DUP.
"This is a deeply unsatisfactory approach - it's not in the interests of the country, it fails to deliver on the referendum result and history doesn't bode well for it."
Mr Johnson, who is campaigning for the Tory leadership, said: "It is very disappointing that the cabinet has decided to entrust the final handling of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party."
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And Tory MP Henry Smith tweeted: "Theresa May represents a monumental failure of British leadership, a betrayal of the majority who voted to leave the EU and Conservative Party membership.
"I called for her to go last year, incredibly she has descended further still. I cannot countenance her Corbyn/Brexit process."
Another senior ERG member Daniel Kawczynski told Sky News: "Somebody has to take the first step now and say 'I voted against the withdrawal agreement on three occasions but now I'll back the PM, because I can see us losing Brexit'.
"And if we were to lose Brexit the electorate would pass judgement on the Conservative Party."
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There was also a hostile reaction from the Democratic Unionist Party, whose MPs said in a statement: "The prime minister's lamentable handling of the negotiations with the EU means she has failed to deliver a sensible Brexit deal that works for all parts of the United Kingdom.
"That is why she has not been able to get it through parliament. Her announcement therefore tonight comes as little surprise.
"Though it remains to be seen if sub-contracting out the future of Brexit to Jeremy Corbyn, someone whom the Conservatives have demonised for four years, will end happily.
"We want the result of the referendum respected, and just as we joined the common market as one country we must leave the EU as one country.
"We will continue to use our position within parliament and with the government to argue strongly the case for Northern Ireland and the integrity of the United Kingdom.
"We remain consistent in judging all Brexit outcomes against our clear unionist principles."

But defending the Prime Minister on Sky News, environment secretary Michael Gove insisted the Conservative Party was not going to split over her latest decision.
"I don't think we're splitting," he said. "I think what we're doing is ensuring everybody is focused on making sure we leave the EU at the earliest possible point."
On the DUP saying it could not back the current deal, Mr Gove said: "We want the DUP to support our approach. I think it's important we leave the EU as one UK."
And on his own leadership ambitions, Mr Gove added: "I'm concentrating on making sure we leave the EU, that is front and centre of my mind and everything else is secondary."
The shelving of emergency planning includes the dismantling of Operation Brock on the M20 in Kent to deal with lorry tailbacks.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Friday 12 April 2019 16:04, UK
Operational planning for a no-deal Brexit is being wound down by the government "with immediate effect", according to Sky sources.
In an email obtained by Sky News, the permanent secretary of a frontline Brexit department thanked staff for their work in preparing for a no-deal divorce from the EU.
But they added that "in common with the rest of government, we have stood down our no-deal operational planning with immediate effect".
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The letter goes on to say: "[On Thursday] morning, at a meeting chaired by the cabinet secretary, we agreed that the objective is to ensure we wind down our no-deal planning in a careful, considered and orderly way."
That implies that the winding down of no-deal planning is taking place across government and is being co-ordinated from the highest levels.
Over the past two years, the government has spent £2bn on Brexit preparations and redeployed thousands of civil servants away from their normal jobs to work in no-deal related work.
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It allocated a total of £4.2bn to plan for "Brexit preparations", dealing with all scenarios, not just no-deal. Some of this work includes post-Brexit matters which will exist whether there is a deal or not, like customs changes and EU settled status.
Sky News understands these civil servants will be gradually returned to their home departments after the Easter break.
Staff working on no-deal contingencies have been instructed to leave their work in good order should it need to be resumed.
This revelation goes against the grain of comments from government ministers, including the Conservative Party's deputy chairman James Cleverley.
Hours earlier, he had tweeted: "I'm going to keep working on our no-deal preparations in case we have to leave without one."
A government spokesperson said: "As a responsible government, we've been preparing for over two years to minimise any disruption in the event of no deal.
"In light of this week's developments, departments will make sensible decisions about the timing and pace at which some of this work is progressing given that the date we leave the EU has changed, but we will absolutely continue to make all necessary preparations."
Political reaction from Brexiteers who wanted the government to use the Article 50 extension to October to step up no-deal preparations has been furious.
Of course, no deal never happening would have probably always been the case. But in the meantime the govt has spent £2bn on preparation which will never be needed on a bluff no-one believed, mainly just to please a few dozen Tory backbenchers. That’s about £60 per taxpayer.
Steve Baker, the eurosceptic deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs, tweeted: "Sheer spite, I regret to say. Very sad. Officials have worked exceptionally hard to deliver our preparedness and deserve better."
Owen Paterson, the former environment secretary, described the move as "beyond stupid".
And Crispin Blunt, the senior Tory backbencher, even said the matter might even provoke him to vote against the government in a no confidence vote.
The shelving of emergency planning for a no-deal Brexit includes the dismantling of Operation Brock on the M20 in Kent to deal with potential lorry tailbacks from Dover caused by new customs checks.
That decision was taken on Thursday at a meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, according to an email seen by Sky News.
The message - said to have been sent to all civil servants in an unnamed "front line Brexit department" - said the suspension was taking place with "immediate effect".
It comes after Theresa May granted MPs two weeks of Easter recess, telling them to "reflect on the issues" in the hope they come back and pass a Brexit deal.
The prime minister told the Commons it had a "national duty" to pass a withdrawal agreement.
She promised that parallel compromise talks with Labour would be pursued in a "constructive and positive fashion" as officials from both parties continued their negotiations in Westminster.
Downing Street also hinted a Brexit deal could be put to vote imminently after MPs return to Westminster on 23 April.
Asked if Mrs May was preparing to bring back a meaningful vote on a Brexit deal soon, her spokesman told journalists at a briefing: "I think that's a good way of describing our intentions."
Meanwhile Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP, headed to Brussels to pledge that its opposition to the withdrawal agreement "won't diminish".
As recess begins, the clock continues to tick down to European Parliament elections being held one month later.
Contingency plans have already been implemented for Britons to re-elect over 70 MEPs to the chamber in Strasbourg.
The Conservative Party has also declared it will field candidates in the election.
Negotiating a future trade deal will not be easy if the UK leaves the bloc without a divorce settlement, warns the top eurocrat.
Friday 27 September 2019 11:58, UK
Failure to reach a Brexit deal would be the sole responsibility of the UK, the president of the European Commission has said.
Jean-Claude Juncker insisted he and the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier were doing all they could to secure an agreement because it would be a catastrophe for both Britain and Europe if there was no divorce settlement in place.
He also warned that negotiating a future trade deal would not be easy in the event of a no-deal.
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Mr Juncker's comments, made in an interview with a German newspaper, come as Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Mr Barnier meet in Brussels in the latest attempt to make progress towards an agreement.
Downing Street has acknowledged there are still "significant obstacles" to reaching an agreement ahead of the 31 October deadline but say "progress has been made".

A key sticking point in the talks remains agreeing an alternative to the Irish backstop - an insurance policy to stop a hard border returning on the island of Ireland.
Mr Juncker has previously told Sky News that he was prepared to ditch the controversial contingency plan, but only on condition that "alternative arrangements [are put in place] allowing us and Britain to achieve the main objectives of the backstop."
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Speaking to the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, Mr Juncker said: "Our chief negotiator Michel Barnier and I are doing everything possible to get an agreement.
"But if we don't succeed in the end, the responsibility would lie exclusively on the British side."
He added: "We will want to and need to seal a free trade agreement.
"But that won't happen just like that, as some in Britain imagine.
"Some of the trade deals we sealed in my term of office took many years to reach."
The 64-year-old, who spent nearly two decades as the prime minister of Luxembourg, became president of the commission five years ago.
His term finishes on 31 October, the same day that the United Kingdom is due to leave the EU.
Sky's Faisal Islam examines the document leaked about "Operational Yellowhammer", the code name for "no-deal" planning.
Political editor
            @faisalislam
Thursday 6 September 2018 20:08, UK
It's been another first for Brexit.
The recent two-day "no deal" meeting of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat appears to be the first time official Whitehall apparatus to deal with planning for emergencies and disasters has been used in anticipation of actual government policy.
It was one of the revelations about "Operation Yellowhammer", the code name for no-deal contingency planning, included in a government document inadvertently leaked on Thursday.
Carried out of the Cabinet Office by Treasury minister John Glen, the paper was snapped by photographer Steve Back.
The Civil Contingencies Secretariat, which services the COBRA emergency committee and is designed for "emergencies and disasters", was created in 2001 during the foot and mouth crisis and in the aftermath of disruptive fuel protests.
The government would argue its involvement in no-deal Brexit planning is a sensible precaution, while Brexiteers might suggest it is necessary for a credible strategy to leave the EU without an agreement.
On the other hand, as Remainers have suggested, the deployment of the government's civil planning system for emergencies and disasters was not exactly the promise of the Leave campaign during the EU referendum.
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The detail of the Treasury memo is quite revealing in and of itself.
The Treasury is playing hardball with the £3bn earmarked for Brexit contingencies, encouraging departments to find funding for no deal plans from existing budgets first.
The same day as the revelation of the document, Health Secretary Matt Hancock disclosed taxpayer funds might be required to reimburse pharmaceutical companies for some no-deal costs.
The document also reveals what the Treasury thinks is obvious, but is a view not necessarily shared elsewhere in government; that there will be a no-deal Brexit impact on "aviation and rail access to the EU".
Its briefing paper states all departments need to come up with "consistent planning assumptions" for the disruption to traffic.
And the Treasury also sought to "remind departments of the need to consider the financial [robustness] of commercial firms that play a role in their [no-deal Brexit] contingency plans".
This suggests concerns about the share prices and financial liquidity of key transport and logistics operators, in the event of no-deal.
The work of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat also raises questions about whether there are plans to deploy the Civil Contingencies Act, which gives central government emergency powers over local government and agencies.
Last month, Sky News revealed local councils are planning for a range of Brexit impacts from social care problems to social unrest.
Already there are concerns emergency police powers will be required to force lorry traffic to take certain routes under the no-deal Brexit traffic plan, named Operation Brock, to turn a 13-mile stretch of the Dover-bound M20 motorway into a lorry park.
Mrs May says the Commons is running out of road in its ability to navigate Brexit - she may now end up going back to the people.
Political editor
            @BethRigby
Saturday 30 March 2019 13:05, UK
Friday 29 March was meant to be Brexit Day and pro-Leave supporters descended on parliament in their thousands to voice their frustration that their "independence day" has been delayed.
But if they came to Parliament Square in the hope that their presence might persuade parliamentarians to resolve the Brexit crisis by backing Theresa May's divorce deal, they were to be disappointed: the prime minister was defeated for the third time by 58 votes: 28 of her own eurosceptic MPs voting with Labour and opposition MPs to reject her withdrawal treaty, and with it the certainty of leaving the EU with a deal on 22 May.
They perhaps hoped that by rejecting the deal, Britain will leave with no deal on 12 April - the date the UK is scheduled to leave the EU with or without an agreement.
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But ministers from the cabinet downwards believe that this ship has sailed.
As the prime minister herself said at the dispatch after her defeat: "The House has been clear it will not permit to leaving without a deal, so we have to find a way forward."
Describing the implications of the decision to vote her down as "grave", the prime minister went on to say "we are reaching the limits of this process on this House".
Everyone read one thing only into that remark; the prime minister could be paving the way for a general election to break the impasse.
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Less than an hour after Mrs May was defeated, her party chairman Brandon Lewis tweeted a new social media post - "Labour just voted to stop Brexit" - which looked very much like a general election slogan.
The Conservatives are deeply opposed to a second referendum or a "confirmatory vote" on Mrs May's deal, but the routes out of the Brexit impasse are narrowing.
And as they do, Number 10 might feel it has no option other than to gear up for an election that pits the Tories as the party of Brexit and Labour as the party of Remain. A second referendum by proxy.
Speaking to ministers and government insiders on Friday afternoon, it was clear that confusion reigned as to what the prime minister should do next.
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On Monday, MPs will vote again on up to eight different Brexit options, testing to see if there is a parliamentary majority for a second referendum or a softer Brexit, as opposed to Mrs May's deal.
As MPs vote on other options, Mrs May's team are assessing whether the prime minister can bring back her deal for the fourth time - should the Speaker allow it.
The government could perhaps position it as a run-off between the successful alternative of the indicative votes and Mrs May's deal, but government sources admit it will be "hard to bring back with the Speaker".
This is why the options are narrowing. Mrs May has stuck rigidly to her Plan A for months in a war of attrition with her party. She has reduced the opposition from 230 to 58 votes, but still can't get it across the line.
Now parliament is determined to have its say.
But even as MPs prepare to try to force a softer Brexit upon the prime minister - in the form of some form of customs union or single market deal - ministers are privately warning that such an alternative simply can't be adopted by the prime minister.
"If she goes for a customs union Brexit and a long extension, half her cabinet will threaten resign. If she ignores the will of parliament, the other half of her cabinet will threaten to resign. Either way her government becomes untenable."
Britain has been plunged deeper into Brexit uncertainty after Theresa May lost a last-ditch bid to get her divorce deal through parliament.
Cabinet sources think the most likely option now is that the prime minister will have to return to Brussels for an emergency summit on 10 April and request that Brexit be delayed beyond 12 April.
This then tips the UK into having to participate in the EU parliamentary elections - an anathema to Mrs May and the majority of the party.
At that point, the prime minister might announce her departure to make way for a successor and a possible general election.
The truth of it is as MPs travel home for the weekend, no one really knows what the next chapter in the UK's Brexit saga holds, and it won't be resolved on Monday.
But what Friday's defeat amplified yet again, is the limits of a divided parliament and a minority government to get anything through. And we all know what follows from that.
The PM is due to lay down his plan in the House of Commons on Monday - but he will need two-thirds of MPs to support it.
Political reporter
Thursday 24 October 2019 21:47, UK
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Boris Johnson has declared he will launch a fresh bid to hold a general election on 12 December to "get Brexit done".
The prime minister is due to lay down his plan in the House of Commons on Monday - but he will need two-thirds of MPs to support it.
Labour said it will not back him until "no-deal Brexit is off the table".
Speaking after a meeting of senior cabinet ministers on Thursday, Mr Johnson vowed to act on MPs' concerns he had given them too little time to scrutinise the EU Withdrawal Bill, which writes into UK law the deal he secured with Brussels.
"We are going to give them all the time they want, between now and the dissolution of parliament to do scrutiny," he said.
Under Mr Johnson's planned timetable, parliament would be dissolved on 6 November.
"We have had three years, we have been reasonable, if you want more time you can have it but we must all agree to go for an election on 12 December," Mr Johnson said.
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That is the same date as the next gathering of EU leaders in Brussels, and would be the first December election since 1923.
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Mr Johnson said he had been governing "for a long time" without a majority - it is currently under minus 40 - and called on opposition parties to support the election proposal.
He added that it "looks as though" the EU will respond to his forced request to delay Brexit "by having an extension".
Labour, the Lib Dems and SNP have withheld their backing on a snap election for weeks, promising to vote for a snap poll when the imminent threat of no-deal is removed by the EU.
Mr Corbyn said: "Take no-deal off the table and we absolutely support a general election.
"I've been calling for an election ever since the last one because this country needs one to deal with all the social injustice issues - but no-deal must be taken off the table."
Plaid Cymru said they would not back it, while the Lib Dems reiterated their support for a second referendum.
Jo Swinson said: "The Liberal Democrats will not support any election until it is clear that we can avoid crashing out with no deal, and that needs an extension from the EU."
During an interview in Downing Street, Mr Johnson said: "It's time, frankly, for the opposition to summon the nerve to submit themselves to the judgement of our collective boss, the people."
He added in a letter directly to Mr Corbyn: "It is our duty to end this nightmare and provide the country with a solution as soon as we reasonably can."
Jon Trickett, Labour's shadow Cabinet Office minister, said Mr Johnson "must now face the electorate", adding: "But this election will be about more than Brexit. It's about building a new country."
Sky News has all the key moments from the countdown to 31 October
But shadow Commons leader Valerie Vaz said Labour would only back an election once no-deal was "ruled out" and if an as-yet unconfirmed extension from the EU "allows".
The SNP's constitution spokesperson Pete Wishart said his party would only back the election when a Brexit delay had been "secured" and added it "must be long enough to protect us from the cliff-edge of a no-deal Brexit".
A Treasury source confirmed that the Budget, which was planned for 6 November, would be postponed.
The source said: "Parliament has voted for a delay. We're calling for an election, so we won't be delivering the Budget on November 6."
Labour MP Mary Creagh also reveals she had privately called for the party to show "full-throated support" for a People's Vote.
By  Emily Mee, news reporter
Monday 24 June 2019 09:38, UK
Hilary Benn has urged the Labour Party to come out "loud and clear" in support of a second referendum.
Speaking at the launch of People's Vote North, Mr Benn described the Brexit campaign as a "fantasy" and said the UK's withdrawal has been a "complete and utter mess".
The pro-Remain Labour MP joined celebrities, sports stars and other politicians at a rally at New Dock Hall in Leeds, the first of 15 similar events planned across Britain this summer.
Mr Benn told crowds: "So let's say it clearly, let the party that I joined at 17 years of age say it loud and clear - we want a People's Vote."
He continued: "We know, to use the technical term, that Brexit is a complete and utter mess.
"I have never spoken on a People's Vote platform before, but I too have come to the conclusion that the only way out of this mess is now to give the people a final say."
The MP also claimed that Brexit would make the UK and the North poorer, saying Leave voters were fed false promises.
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"What was promised in 2016 by the Leave campaign does not exist," he said.
Sunday marks exactly three years since the UK voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.
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A number of events are being held to drum up support for the public getting a final say on Brexit, culminating with a march in London on 12 October.
Former England players John Barnes and Peter Reid also spoke at the event in Leeds, with Mr Barnes describing how the country stands "on the edge of a cliff".
Labour MP Mary Creagh revealed she had called for her party to show "full-throated support" for a second referendum, while Tony Blair's former spokesperson Alastair Campbell said there was "no mandate" for a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Campbell, who was recently expelled from the Labour Party, told the crowd: "It is time to revoke the long-held media myth that the North is this mass of angry, decrepit Brexiteers."
An informal group of rebel MPs led by the Chancellor is said to have held three meetings over the past month.
By  Tamara Cohen, political correspondent, and Sam Coates, deputy political editor
Friday 5 July 2019 20:49, UK
Thirty Tory MPs led by Chancellor Philip Hammond are plotting to stop a no-deal Brexit in October in a move which would raise the chance of a second referendum, Sky News understands.
The informal group of rebels, mostly serving ministers, have held three meetings since Theresa May announced her departure a month ago, about how to prevent the UK crashing out on 31 October.
Two sources said the group's key aim is to secure - within the next three weeks before parliament rises for the summer - a date in October on which MPs will control the agenda and can force through legislation.
Along with other Tories who are currently on the backbenches, it is expected that the overall bloc of MPs opposing no deal will range from 25 to 45 depending on the methods used.
If they are successful and Britain is still in the EU on 1 November without a new, more acceptable deal from the EU, the move is likely to boost the chances of a second referendum.
One Tory MP said: "At this point there are only three options - pushing through a version of the Withdrawal Agreement with the help of the ERG, which seems unlikely, a general election which would be catastrophic for the Tories or a second referendum which suddenly looks more appealing. Some ministers explicitly see this ending in a second referendum."
The meetings are understood to have been held in the Chancellor's Commons office, with Mr Hammond increasingly vocal about the risks to the economy and UK union.
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Cabinet ministers David Lidington and David Gauke, who are widely expected to lose their jobs in the next government over their opposition to a no-deal Brexit, are active in the group.
The last time MPs took control of the agenda was in early April, when Yvette Cooper and Oliver Letwin led a successful attempt to force the prime minister to extend the Brexit deadline from mid-April to June.
One MP told Sky News: "There will be another Cooper Letwin-style attempt to try and stop no-deal.
"We don't know what the vehicle is yet but the first aim is to get a date. It will be in October, when minds are focused on leaving without a deal."
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This could involve amending no deal legislation or regulations or other "vital" laws which will be needed by the new administration.
Another Conservative familiar with the discussions said the group would be making its presence felt in the same way as the hard Brexiteer "Spartans" who refused to vote for the prime minister's deal, saying: "They are looking at the way the ERG played hardball."
However another Tory MP on the backbenches cautioned not to overestimate the bravery of those who are currently ministers but will lose their job when the new PM comes into office.
"I just wonder if they realise how hard it is to stand firm. They've all been very protected as ministers," said the sceptical MP.
It has been suggested the future prime minister could even be helped by the threat of parliament blocking a no-deal Brexit, as a way to convince hard Brexiteer MPs into voting for a revamped version of the withdrawal deal.
Justice Secretary David Gauke has said he has no doubt "a way will be found" to prevent the UK leaving without an agreement in place, but ruled out voting no-confidence in the government.
However, speaking at a Hustings event in Darlington on Friday, Mr Johnson said no-deal planning needed to be stepped back up after preparations "slid off" following the previous 29 March deadline.
The Chancellor has used his final weeks in the job to rail against the economic damage which would be wreaked by a no-deal.
He told MPs at Treasury questions this week it "will be bad for the UK, bad for the British economy, bad for the British people", even suggesting he might vote with Labour to prevent it.
Mr Hammond has also attacked the spending plans of both Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt, saying there would be no "headroom" left for giveaways if there is a no-deal on 31 October.
MPs hoping to stop a no-deal suffered a blow earlier this week as an expected showdown in parliament was blocked by the Speaker John Bercow.
Rebel Tory Dominic Grieve and Labour's Margaret Beckett tried to secure a controversial amendment to cut off funding to government departments if there is a no-deal Brexit, but the speaker refused to grant it.
An aide to the Chancellor said: "He regularly speaks to colleagues on all sides of the argument."
Theresa May hints that Britain may leave the single market as part of Brexit saying the UK cannot hold on to "bits of membership".
Monday 9 January 2017 03:02, UK
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Theresa May has told Sky News her Government is not suffering from "muddled thinking" over Brexit.
The Prime Minister was responding to criticism from Sir Ivan Rogers, who resigned as Britain's ambassador to the EU.
In her first TV interview of the year, Mrs May said she will set out her plans for Brexit over the coming weeks but has given her strongest hint yet that the UK will leave the single market.
Speaking to Sky's Sophy Ridge, the Prime Minister said: "I'm ambitious for what we can get for the UK in terms of our relationship with the European Union because I also think that's going to be good for the European Union.
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"Our thinking on this isn't muddled at all.
"Yes, we have been taking time. I said we wouldn't trigger Article 50 immediately, some said we should."
Mrs May said, at the point when she became PM, no plans had been made in the event of a vote to leave the EU so it was important for the Government to first look at the complexity of the issues it faces.
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And she reasserted that Article 50, the beginning of the formal process to leave the EU, will be triggered by the end of March this year.
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The PM told Sky's new Sunday morning politics show Sophy Ridge on Sunday she does not see the decision between trade and immigration during Brexit talks "as a binary issue".
"We will, outside the European Union, be able to have control of immigration and be able to set our rules for people coming to the UK from member states of the European Union," she said.
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"We also, as part of that Brexit deal, will be working to get the best possible deal in the trading relationship with the European Union.
"Anybody who looks at this question of free movement and trade as a sort of zero-sum game is approaching it in the wrong way."
Mrs May added that she remains confident the UK will get a good deal on both issues but said that Britain could not hang on to "bits of EU membership".
Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer told Sky News the PM should have been clearer over her plans for Brexit.
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He said: "It was very telling I think that she had one question put to her three times and still didn't answer it, which is: 'Are you prioritising immigration over access to the single market'.
"I think now, 10-11 weeks from the triggering of Article 50 and the most important negotiations for a generation, we need more clarity than that and we haven't got it."
Earlier, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon warned Mrs May that she is not "bluffing" on the promise of a second independence referendum if Scotland is neglected during Brexit talks.
"They will be making a big mistake if they think that I'm in any way bluffing," Ms Sturgeon told BBC's Andrew Marr.
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"We voted to stay in the EU, we were told voting 'no' was the only way to stay in the EU and we now face being taken out of it. That creates a much more fundamental question for Scotland."
Leading leavers have welcomed the Prime Minister's comments which some are interpreting as meaning that the country is heading for what they call a clean Brexit.
Tory MP Steve Baker said: "This is welcome clarification of a sensible position by the PM. We won't be clinging on to bits of EU membership.
"The best outcome for the UK is an ambitious trade deal plus control over our laws, trade policy and borders. The PM's interview is great news for the UK."
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But Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the Prime Minister's comments suggest she is taking us towards what he calls "a disastrous hard Brexit".
He said: "Reckless plans to leave the single market would deal a huge blow to jobs, investment and the public finances, meaning less funding for services like the overstretched NHS.
"In all this she has Labour holding her hand on the path to Brexit and failing to provide a decent opposition."
Esther McVey positions herself to replace Theresa May as a bloc of 60 MPs team up to oppose leaving the EU without an agreement.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Monday 20 May 2019 20:58, UK
A Conservative leadership hopeful has declared she would take Britain out of the EU with no deal - despite up to 60 Tory MPs being ready to block any candidate planning to do so.
Esther McVey, the former work and pensions secretary, said it was "essential" that Brexit happens by the next deadline of 31 October.
She warned there would be "no more backsliding" and confirmed that "if it means without a deal, we'll be out".
But, earlier, Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames announced dozens of Conservative MPs were ready to try and stop a no-deal candidate replacing Theresa May.
No formal leadership contest has yet been announced, but a series of MPs have announced their intention to stand as pressure grows on the prime minister to resign sooner than she plans.
Speaking at the launch of her "Blue Collar Conservatism" campaign in the House of Commons, Ms McVey - who has already stated her intent to replace Mrs May - said delivering Brexit on time would neutralise the threat from Nigel Farage's Brexit Party.
She told Sky News the new leader "has to be a Brexiteer".
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"It has to be someone who believes, who's got the passion to drive it forward," said Ms McVey, who quit the cabinet over the PM's Brexit deal with Brussels.
Other Leave-supporting MPs who may throw their hat into the ring and have suggested they could support a no-deal divorce include former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab and ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson.
But a counter-initiative is being launched by a group of "One Nation Conservatives" - including Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and Treasury select committee chair Nicky Morgan.
It is threatening to team up to block a no-deal advocate becoming Tory leader after Mrs May.
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Sir Nicholas Soames, who is part of the group, told Sky News it has 60 members, adding: "I don't think we will want to vote for anyone who is going to propagate a no-deal situation.
"We're not all going to vote for one candidate, that's just not going to happen.
"But we will try and recommend to our colleagues and friends in One Nation who we believe to most likely to represent the interests and principles and values of One Nation Conservatism."
Ms Morgan said at the launch that those who will "actively rush towards a no-deal Brexit would find it very difficult for that position to sit with the values of this group".
While digital minister Margot James, who is part of the group, said it would be "difficult for a candidate who let the country leave without a deal to subscribe to quite a lot of [our] values".
It comes after a minister vented his frustration with Conservative colleagues jockeying to become prime minister, urging them to focus on getting Brexit "across the line" first.
Tobias Ellwood told Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "Let's have some loyalty, let's have some commitment, let's have some discipline."
Boris Johnson's Scotland problem may deepen as Ruth Davidson refuses to back a no deal exit from the EU on 31 October.
By  Rebecca Taylor, news reporter
Monday 29 July 2019 07:25, UK
The Scottish Conservatives leader has said she will back Boris Johnson - but not a no-deal Brexit.
Ruth Davidson, who leads the Conservatives in the devolved Scottish Parliament, said in her weekly column for the Scottish Mail on Sunday that the government should not be pursuing a no-deal Brexit.
It comes after Michael Gove said the cabinet is now working on the assumption of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
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Boris Johnson, who makes his first visit to Scotland as PM on Monday, has pledged to take the UK out of the EU by Halloween "do or die".
However, his inability to get Ms Davidson on board could be costly, as the party has mixed success in Scotland, and Mr Johnson is not popular there.
Ms Davidson wrote in the Mail on Sunday: "I hope beyond measure that the new Prime Minister is successful in getting an agreement with the EU so that he can go back to the House of Commons and get the majority backing he needs.
"He has my full support in those efforts," she added, before explaining: "Where I differ with the UK government is on the question of a no-deal Brexit.
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"When I was debating against the pro-Brexit side in 2016, I don't remember anybody saying we should crash out of the EU with no arrangements in place to help maintain the vital trade that flows uninterrupted between Britain and the European Union.
"I don't think the UK government should pursue a no-deal Brexit, and if it comes to it, I won't support it.
"I wrote to tell the former prime minister Theresa May that last year and I confirmed my position to her successor when I spoke to him last week.
"As leader of the party in Scotland, my position exists independently of government. I don't have to sign a no-deal pledge to continue to serve."
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Mr Johnson has struggled with his reputation in Scotland since at least 2004, when as editor of The Spectator, he published a poem which called for the "extermination" of the "verminous Scottish race". The poet said it was written in jest.
Mr Johnson's comments on the formula by which Scotland receives funding from the UK have not helped, once calling the Barnett formula a multi-million pound present from England to Scotland.
Earlier this week, Ms Davidson told The New Statesman she had been "open and honest" with the new leader, including that she had not voted for him, backing Jeremy Hunt.
The new prime minister has installed a cabinet made up mostly of Brexiteers after sacking many of his detractors.
SNP MP Stephen Gethins said Ms Davidson's position as Scottish Tory leader is "untenable".
"It's time for Ruth Davidson to find a backbone and join the SNP in meaningfully opposing Boris Johnson's disastrous Brexit plans - instead of always rolling over," Mr Gethins said.
"She says she will support Mr Johnson but not a no-deal Brexit - but the fact is you can't do both. Her position is untenable and weak.
"As the European elections showed, the Tories' support for Brexit is damaging them in Scotland - and they will face an electoral backlash if they drag Scotland out of the EU against our will."
The chancellor says the Conservatives don't "need" an electoral pact with anyone, as the government's majority drops to minus 45.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Sunday 8 September 2019 14:01, UK
Sajid Javid has refused to rule out a pact with Nigel Farage's Brexit Party at the next election.
The chancellor refused to answer directly five times when quizzed the day before Boris Johnson is expected to launch his second bid to get parliament to back a snap poll.
He did insist the Conservative Party does not "need" electoral alliances.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson ruled out an electoral alliance during the Tory leadership race.
Speaking in the wake of Amber Rudd's resignation, which has brought the government's majority down to minus 45, Mr Javid said the country does need a general election "now", despite the "sad" timing.
He was then asked repeatedly on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show to publicly rule out a pact with Brexit Party.
"We don't need an electoral alliance with anyone," Mr Javid said. "We can stand on our own two feet, put our message across.
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"The picture our opponents are painting of us, of course they would paint a false picture. We are a proud centre-right, moderate, one-nation party.
"There is nothing extremist about wanting to meet the will of the British people on a simple question which was 'Do you want to leave the EU or not?'
"We are not in an election yet. I am clear we do not need an alliance with anyone."
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Mr Johnson said in July that he did not think the Conservative Party "should do deals with any other parties".
When pressed whether he could rule out a pact with the Brexit Party completely, he said: "Yes. I rule it out."
But Mr Farage has piled pressure on the prime minister by saying he would stand down candidates against the Conservatives if Mr Johnson backs no-deal in an upcoming election.
He warned that if the prime minister fails to deliver Brexit on 31 October then he would "die politically".
Any MPs who support the PM should not be allowed to stand as Labour candidates at the next election, say members of Labour's NEC.
By  Greg Heffer, political reporter
Friday 18 October 2019 15:44, UK
Labour MPs who back Boris Johnson's Brexit deal should be replaced before the next general election, two members of the party's ruling body have said.
The prime minister will tomorrow present his "great new" deal to MPs ahead of what is likely to be a knife-edge House of Commons vote on the agreement he has struck with the EU.
With the DUP opposing his deal, Mr Johnson is likely to have to rely on some Labour MPs to support his deal if he is to secure approval.
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However, senior Labour figures are warning that any of the party's MPs who back the deal should not be allowed to stand as Labour candidates at the next election.
Jon Lansman, the chair of the influential Momentum group and a member of Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC), posted on Twitter: "Johnson's deal will be a wrecking ball through the lives & well-being of ordinary people across Britain.
"Labour MPs cannot and must not vote for it.
"If they do, the NEC will have no choice but to replace them with a new, socialist Labour candidate at the next election."
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His fellow NEC member, Huda Elmi, also tweeted: "It's pretty basic. Being a Labour MP means opposing the Tories when they try to destroy our country.
"This reckless sell out deal is even worse than Theresa May's, and any Labour MP that sides with Boris Johnson has no right to stand at the next election."
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The NEC members' warnings strike a different tone to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who earlier this week said he favoured "the power of persuasion, rather than the power of threat".
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A senior Labour insider told Sky News that Mr Lansman's move to expel Labour MPs who vote for the Brexit deal "would have as much chance of success" as a recent attempt to remove Tom Watson as the party's deputy leader.
"Zero, without Jeremy's support," they added.
"I think he's played politics with our country and our economy." @johnmcdonnellMP says "numbers are going to be pretty close" but he doesn't think Labour MPs will vote in favour of @BorisJohnson's #BrexitDeal. Watch #KayBurley @#Breakfast 📺501📱 https://t.co/cMHO7fsDYJ pic.twitter.com/t2rvJJOBhl
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell this morning refused to say whether Labour MPs who back Mr Johnson's deal would have the party whip withdrawn, effectively expelling them.
He said such issues were a matter for the party's chief whip, Nick Brown.
But Mr McDonnell added to Sky News: "A three-line whip will apply and we will expect Labour MPs to vote against this deal because it's such a poor deal.
"I don't think Labour MPs will want to vote for something that will… sell us out basically.
"It will undermine workers' rights and make our constituents poorer."
Mr McDonnell will tomorrow address a rally in Westminster in favour of a second EU referendum.
A staff member for one of Labour's Leave-supporting MPs claimed Mr Corbyn has given assurances that those who vote for the Brexit deal will not lose the party's whip.
They said: "This stuff about taking the whip is nonsense, a number of MPs met with Jeremy Corbyn earlier this week and he was clear that they wouldn't."
Mr McDonnell warned the country could be in a "critical situation" if an "extremist Brexiteer" takes over from Theresa May.
Sunday 26 May 2019 14:45, UK
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Labour will "work with anyone to block a no-deal" Brexit, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has told Sky News.
The senior Labour MP appeared on Sophy Ridge on Sunday where he warned against Tory Brexit "extremists" such as Boris Johnson trying "to push us over the edge of a no-deal" if they succeed Theresa May.
Labour is facing pressure from its own members to fully commit to a second referendum on Brexit.
Deputy leader Tom Watson says the party must "find some backbone" and come out unambiguously in favour of a new vote to have any chance of winning the next general election.
Pressed by Ridge on whether Mr Watson was right, Mr McDonnell said that they would be willing to have a second referendum "if necessary" - but only as a last resort.
"Well we've always worked through what our conference policy was, which was to try to secure a deal if we can, block a no-deal certainly, block a bad deal, try to secure a deal if we possibly can, then if we can't do that... then seek a general election or failing that, yes, go back to the public," he said.

He added the responsibility is on opposition parties to come together to block a no-deal, "and if that means going back to the people then yes lets go back to the people".
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Mr McDonnell also warned the country could be in a "critical situation" if the new leader of the Conservatives is a staunch Brexiteer.
"We cannot allow a Brexiteer extremist like Boris Johnson or any other candidates in this grand national race that has been set off in the Tory party, to push us over the edge of a no-deal. It will impact upon peoples livelihoods."
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"To block a no-deal, we'll work with anyone," he said. "We want to see the opposition parties, we want to have that conversation within our own party and with some of those Conservative MPs who have said, like us, they will not vote for a no-deal Brexit."
Mr McDonnell said he understood Mr Watson's frustration, but that the party had been right to "tread a really difficult road" of trying to bring Leave and Remain supporters back together.
He admitted Labour "most probably will get a good kicking" in the EU elections because of its lack of clarity over a second vote, but that his party "had to do the responsible thing".
He said it "would have been easy to go to one side, go to the Remain side and ignored all those people who voted Leave - that's not the nature of our party".
Mr Watson described the party's stance on a second referendum as "a deliberate, self-defeating attempt to triangulate between different groups".
Ahead of the European elections, Jeremy Corbyn saw off an attempt by pro-EU members to commit the party to a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal.
The party's ruling National Executive Committee agreed that its manifesto would instead stick to the wording of a motion passed by Labour conference last year, which keeps a public vote on the table as a last option.
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The PM will hold talks aimed at breaking the Brexit deadlock with top EU figures during a summit with Arab leaders in Egypt.
By  Jon Craig, chief political correspondent
Wednesday 20 February 2019 19:07, UK
Theresa May is to fly 2,500 miles this weekend in a bid to strike a "deal in the desert" on Brexit at a summit in the luxury Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh.
The prime minister will hold talks aimed at breaking the Brexit deadlock with top European leaders, including Germany's Angela Merkel, during an EU summit with Arab leaders.
The 5,000-mile round trip, a five-hour flight each way, will come after Mrs May meets European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in Brussels and ahead of more Brexit votes in the House of Commons next week.
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The prime minister was not initially planning to attend the two-day summit in the resort, which is between the desert of the Sinai Peninsula and the Red Sea and known for its sheltered sandy beaches, clear waters and coral reefs.
But now that more than 20 European leaders have signed up for the summit she plans to use the occasion to press her demands for an alternative to the Brexit backstop in her EU withdrawal agreement.
This is aimed at preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland in the event such a scenario is not averted by a future EU-UK trade relationship.
But many MPs fear it could leave the UK permanently trapped in a customs union with the EU.
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Following Mrs May's talks with Mr Juncker, her Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox will hold talks with the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
Announcing the prime minister's trip to Sharm-el-Sheikh, known as "the pearl of the Red Sea", a senior government official said: "This is not a meeting about Brexit. The prime minister is not seeking to turn it into one."
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But the official added: "At summits the prime minister always holds a series of bilateral meetings and conversations and she will continue to engage with fellow leaders in relation to Brexit.
"This is not a European Council. It's not a summit at which European Council decisions are going to be made."
The four issues on the agenda for the EU-Arab League summit are security, migration, trade and investment, which the UK government describes as "important shared challenges".
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Friday 17 May 2019 23:19, UK
Crisis talks to broker a Brexit deal between the government and Labour have collapsed.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the negotiations had "gone as far as they can" because "we have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us".
He complained that as a leadership race kicks off in the Conservative Party, the "position of the government has become ever more unstable and its authority eroded".
But Prime Minister Theresa May blamed the collapse in talks on "the fact that there is no common position in Labour about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum which could reverse it."
Mr Corbyn insisted the talks so far had been "detailed" and "constructive", adding that Labour would consider any new proposals made to break the Brexit deadlock.
But he confirmed the party would be voting against the law paving the way for Mrs May's Brexit deal next month if it remains unchanged.
Mrs May said MPs now face "a stark choice" - to "vote to deliver on the referendum; to vote to deliver Brexit or to shy away again from delivering Brexit with all the uncertainty that that would leave".
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Downing Street confirmed there were no more talks planned with Labour after Mr Corbyn's statement.
The prime minister's spokesman said she still believed MPs had a duty to find a way to deliver Brexit and added the government is considering its next steps.
A new set of binding "indicative votes" are now likely, having been promised by the prime minister.
But they would need to be scheduled speedily as parliament is due to wind down next Thursday for nearly two weeks.
When they return, MPs will vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill - the legislation that would convert the Brexit deal into a legally-binding treaty.
The compromise talks were convened six weeks ago, when Mrs May lost the third vote in parliament on her EU withdrawal agreement.
She called for a "national unity" approach to deliver Brexit after being forced to delay Britain's departure date twice.
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Reacting to news of the breakdown in talks, Tory MP Simon Clarke said: "Thank God. They ought never to have happened."
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: "Jeremy Corbyn was never going to come to an agreement on this. Why would he help the Tory Party?"
Former international development secretary Priti Patel tweeted: "Many of us did question the judgment of the cabinet when they approved those talks."
The CBI said MPs should cancel their end of May holiday plans to resolve the Brexit deadlock.
CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn said: "Another day of failed politics, another dispiriting day for British business.
"Six wasted weeks while uncertainty paralyses our economy."
The pound has fallen half a cent against the US dollar to its lowest level since January, just above the $1.27 mark.
It was also at its lowest point versus the euro since February at just over €1.14.
The prime minister is facing a "battle" with Scottish Tory MPs and the DUP, as Brexit negotiations go down to the wire.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Friday 9 November 2018 14:07, UK
Theresa May could face fresh a fresh rebellion of Tory MPs over reported EU demands for access to UK fishing waters after Brexit.
Senior Brussels diplomats were quoted in The Telegraph saying EU fishing fleets must be granted access in exchange for a UK-wide customs union forming part of the backstop deal.
They reportedly want to "extract a high price" for the concession if a trade deal is not reached before the expected transition period ends in December 2020.
The claims have raised anger from Brexit supporters.
Sammy Wilson, Brexit spokesman for the minority government's partner the Democratic Unionist Party, said Mrs May must face down the demand and keep her promises to the electorate.
He added allowing EU fishing vessels access to UK waters was "going to raise the ire of Scottish MPs".
"She just doesn't have a battle with the DUP, she has a battle with a substantial number of her own party," Mr Wilson told Sky News.
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Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage also claimed that "fishing is the acid test of Brexit".
"We must take back control of our waters from Brussels," he announced.
Niels Wichmann, chief executive of the Danish fishermen's association, told The Guardian last week that "the issue of access to waters is part of the trade negotiations".
"That is what we have said from the start," he said.
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"We discussed this with [the EU's chief Brexit negotiator] Michel Barnier when he came to Denmark. And he confirmed that this was also his position."
Environment Secretary Michael Gove promised last month that the UK would "take back control of our waters" after Brexit.
"The Common Fisheries Policy has damaged the UK's fishing industry and our precious fish stocks," he said.
"The Fisheries Bill will deliver a sustainable fishing industry, with healthy seas and a fair deal for UK fishermen."
Sky News' political editor looks at what awaits Theresa May after a historic week in the Commons capped by a Brexit delay.
Political editor
            @faisalislam
Friday 15 March 2019 12:10, UK
After a historic week in the Commons that saw MPs reject a no-deal Brexit, the bookend move to formally back a delay may have seemed a little less dramatic.
But the impact of that final vote will be far more profound.
It is no longer government policy to leave the EU on 29 March - a date described in hallowed rhetoric up until a week ago that is now no longer the target Brexit date.
Because the government will now seek an extension at least until the end of June.
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The only way it will not happen is if the EU27 decide to inflict a no-deal divorce on a country that has asked to rule it out.
Once EU leaders agree a date, all that would be required to confirm the change is for a UK minister to update current legislation to include it.
It will require a statutory instrument - a specific technical change to a law - approved by a simple Commons majority.
Thursday's vote starting that process was passed by a majority of 211.
Less noticed was that, at the start of the debate, the prime minister's de-facto deputy David Lidington announced a detailed set of preparations being made for another, longer type of extension.
Should Theresa May's withdrawal agreement pass, she will ask for a short extension until 30 June to complete the process of ratification.
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But if no deal has been signed off by that stage she will seek an open-ended extension, with space for "indicative votes" on different Brexit options over the first two weeks in April.
She would also have to approve by 12 April whether Britain will participate in the European Parliament elections in May.
Once an extension is approved, there is no reason too why the prime minister might not continue testing MPs' support for her deal.
The absolute hard deadline for her deal will be in under a month's time - just before this session of the European Parliament ends.
But in the first instance Mrs May has the Brexiteers where she wants them.
They face a choice - of either Brexit on the prime minister's terms within days or a softer Norway-style Brexit forced by the Commons' indicative votes, participation in the European Parliament elections, and the chance of a referendum.
What could save her is the chance of redrafted legal advice from Attorney General Geoffrey Cox.
But getting here has led to a breaking of the promise to leave on 29 March.
The detail of the votes on Thursday was simply astonishing: Eight Cabinet ministers voting against their prime minister in a free vote.
Theresa May's choice of an extension only passing on opposition votes, three in every 5 Tory MPs voting against her.
The Brexit Secretary himself, who will enact this policy, selling it to the Commons, commending his statement to the House, and then immediately voting against it.
There was some relief in government that it did not lose control of the order paper to rebels led by Hilary Benn - though only by two votes.
And at the thumping defeat of the TIG's sheepish attempt to get a referendum on the agenda, against the advice of the People's Vote campaign.
Respite beats humiliation, but Thursday was just a timeout on the parliamentary difficulties.
The Cooper-Boles-Letwin-Benn rebels are now a whisker away from winning. They will hang further amendments from next week's anticipated efforts to pass the meaningful vote.
The Speaker is even toying with the idea of refusing these repeated rounds of retrying the prime minister's Brexit deal in the Commons.
Undoubtedly the clock has not yet been reset - it is subject to the EU's help at the summit later next week
The size of the challenge has not, also.
Ultimately passing motions of this week's importance on opposition votes against several of your Cabinet is unstable and unsustainable.
But it has created a platform for one last throw of the dice.
Theresa May is preparing for a huge week, with her withdrawal agreement set to go before parliament yet again.
Sunday 10 March 2019 09:00, UK
Theresa May has been warned another brutal Commons defeat over her Brexit deal is "inevitable" without late changes to the Northern Ireland backstop.
The prime minister is preparing for a huge week in Westminster, with the withdrawal agreement she struck with Brussels set to go before parliament yet again.
She has been trying to secure legally binding changes to the unpopular backstop to convince MPs that the UK cannot be tied indefinitely to EU rules against its wishes, which she hopes would be enough to get the deal through.
But the likelihood of that happening appears remote as the clock continues to tick down, and further doubt has been cast over her chances by sceptical Brexiteers who she has been trying to win over.
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Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, and DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds have described the situation as "grim".
In a joint article for The Sunday Telegraph, the pair said: "An unchanged withdrawal agreement will be defeated firmly by a sizeable proportion of Conservatives and the DUP if it is again presented to the Commons."
They predict that a "three-figure majority" will reject the deal in its current state, with it having already been voted down by 230 MPs back in January.
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It had been speculated that Mrs May could try to secure a third meaningful vote if she loses by less than 50 on Tuesday, but a loss as predicted by Mr Baker and Mr Dodds would make that prospect unlikely.
Should she indeed lose, the prime minister would be primed to give MPs the chance to vote against departing the EU without a deal and to request an extension of Article 50, which would delay the current 29 March leaving date.
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Both prospects have some cross-party support, with several cabinet ministers having indicated that they would be prepared to support a motion to prevent no deal.
Mr Baker and Mr Dodds warned any delay to Brexit would do "incalculable" damage to public trust in politics.
"For some, democracy would be effectively dead," they said.
There have also been reports that some in the cabinet have told Mrs May she may have more luck getting her deal approved by parliament if she agrees to stand down by June.
She has previously pledged not to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but that is not until 2022.
Meanwhile, her Brexit secretary Steve Barclay has become embroiled in an acrimonious Twitter exchange with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
As officials on both sides continued to discuss the backstop stalemate in Brussels, Mr Barclay accused the bloc of trying to "rerun old arguments" as the two men rowed online.
It came amid a renewed warning from Sinn Fein that the backstop - an insurance policy designed to prevent post-Brexit physical checks on the Irish border - must not be removed from the withdrawal agreement.
Party president Mary Lou McDonald said the divorce should not wreck the Irish economy or the Good Friday Agreement and urged the Irish government to "stay strong" on the issue.
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Regarding the British government, she said: "We see indecision and a reckless approach from that government with absolute indifference to Ireland or Irish interests.
"Michel Barnier's position is consistent with ours. If Britain wishes to Brexit who are we to stop them?
"But they won't take Northern Ireland with them and they are not going to wreck the Irish economy and upend our peace process. That's the bottom line."
In the seemingly unlikely event that Mrs May does get her deal over the line, it has been reported that an RAF plane is on standby to fly her to Brussels to clinch it.
But if she fails, the vote to prevent a no-deal is set to go ahead on Wednesday.
By offering MPs a vote on no-deal and delaying Brexit if her deal fails, the PM appears to have given herself breathing space.
By  Kate McCann, political correspondent
Tuesday 26 February 2019 21:52, UK
The prime minister is getting good at making statements she does not want to make on issues she does not necessarily agree with.
After all, Theresa May is the leader who will take the UK out of the European Union after campaigning for exactly the opposite.
And it seems the practice has paid off, at least for the moment, as once again she looks to have avoided ministerial resignations and given herself yet more time to find a way through the Brexit talks.
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Announcing her decision to put the next steps into the hands of Parliament, a packed House of Commons listened intently to her plan.
If a vote on her new deal fails in March, MPs will be forced to decide whether to leave the union without a deal or extend Article 50 and prolong the process.
"It must have been a very difficult statement for the prime minister to make," Nicky Morgan offered afterwards. Mrs May just about avoided rolling her eyes.
For a leader so focused on delivering Brexit - she refers to it in private as a sacred duty - handing over control to MPs was the one thing she really wanted to avoid.
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In reality, her hand was forced by a group of senior cabinet ministers, who this morning were teetering on the brink of walking out of her government in a bid to avoid no-deal.
But the decision to give MPs the power and responsibility to decide what happens if they do not back her deal could yet work out in her favour.
There is no real majority for anything in parliament except for avoiding no-deal, and lots of deeply entrenched views on the alternatives held by smaller groups - often overlapping party lines.
At some point MPs will have to decide on something, even if they have to hold their noses to do it.
Offering a real choice if her deal fails is likely to focus minds.
For those who want to leave the EU the prospect of a delay without the threat of no-deal could be a risk too far.
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That is the group Mrs May has consistently tried to win over because she knows with them on board she has a majority and a chance of holding her fragile party together.
The DUP appear increasingly to favour a deal and one MP this morning said "it won't take much" in terms of changes to the deal to secure their support in the House.
Others in the European Research Group want to find a way to salvage an agreement and move on to talks about the future relationship where they have been promised more control.
Even Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP whose amendment could have been the vehicle for a cabinet revolt, appeared open to Mrs May's plan if she could secure a promise it would be binding.
MPs want to move forward but trust is in short supply and time is running out.
Will giving parliament control strengthen Mrs May's hand or leave her without a deal and facing the prospect of an extension with nothing left to negotiate?
The suggestion that parliament could be suspended to push through Brexit is slammed as "ridiculous" and "scandalous" by critics.
Monday 17 June 2019 13:01, UK
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Conservative leadership hopeful Dominic Raab has warned the party will be "toast" unless it delivers Brexit by the 31 October deadline.
Speaking on Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, the former Brexit secretary also defended his refusal to rule out suspending parliament in order to ensure the UK's withdrawal, arguing that the EU needed to know that Britain was "serious".
However, in an interview with Ridge, Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd branded the suggestion of shutting down the Commons as "absolutely outrageous", while Labour chairman of the Brexit select committee Hilary Benn said such a move would be "scandalous".
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In what will be seen as a thinly veiled attack on the race favourite Boris Johnson, Ms Rudd also criticised the "do or die approach" being taken by some of the leadership candidates towards Brexit.
She said promising Brexit by the end of October was misleading as it was not in Mr Johnson's "gift" and would need the backing of a majority of MPs.
Pointing out Commons Speaker John Bercow was an "activist", she added: "There will be a way of stopping it."
Ms Rudd said she was "still thinking very carefully about any lifts home from Boris".
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This was a reference to a barbed remark Ms Rudd, a Remainer, made during the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign when she described Mr Johnson as the "life and soul of the party" but "not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening".
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Mr Johnson has also faced criticism over his reluctance to face media scrutiny, with concerns among his campaign team that he could throw away his clear lead.
He has made clear he will not take part in the first television debate being staged on Sunday by Channel 4.
However, he has indicated he will be at a BBC debate on Tuesday when the field of candidates will have been further whittled down in the second round of voting.
Sky News is planning to host a live leadership debate between the two final contenders.
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As the second week of the campaign got under way, Mr Raab told Ridge: "The Tory Party will be toast unless we are out by the end of October. The Conservatives cannot win an election unless we have delivered Brexit."
Although it was very unlikely that parliament would be suspended over Brexit, he refused to rule it out.
Mr Raab said: "What is really scandalous here is the way that people are trying to sabotage the will of the people and break their promises left, right and centre to get us out of the EU.
"The big mistake we made in these negotiations was taking no-deal off the table. When we start ruling things out we only weaken our chances of getting a deal.
"All those candidates that are going weak at the knees and saying 'I'm not sure about this and that', they are sending a message to the EU that they can take us for a ride. We have had three years of that. It is time to get this done.
"We gave people a decision. Now parliament is trying to steal it back away from them. When people voted, they voted to leave."
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But Ms Rudd dismissed the proroguing of parliament as "the most extraordinary idea I've ever heard" and a "ridiculous suggestion".
The cabinet minister, who is backing Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the contest said: "My concern is that some candidates are approaching Brexit with a sort of do or die approach and not considering the consequences to people's jobs."
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Meanwhile, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart has said Boris Mr Johnson's plans for Brexit will come "off the rails" once it is subject to scrutiny.
"How is Boris going to deliver Brexit? He keeps saying, 'I am going to deliver it'. I don't even know what he believes. He won't talk to me. He won't talk to you. He won't talk to the public," he told BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show.
Mr Hunt, who came a distant second in the first round, insisted he was the alternative to Mr Johnson.
He told Marr: "The difference between me and Boris, is that I would try for a deal.
"I am not going to create a set of circumstances that makes it all but impossible to get a deal because I think we should be offering the country some better choices."
The Conservatives face poor results in the upcoming elections as voters criticise the government's failure to deliver Brexit.
Political editor
            @BethRigby
Sunday 28 April 2019 13:59, UK
These days there's no safe ground for a Conservative campaigner.
An undelivered Brexit makes for bleak local election terrain, and that's before we even get to the European elections on 23 May.
A week out from polling day and chairman Brandon Lewis is out knocking on doors in Yate, near Bristol.
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This is soft Leave territory - 53% of voters in this South Gloucestershire constituency voted to leave - and one of the very few places that swung to the Conservatives in the 2017 snap election.
It has a very different feel to the hard Brexit country the Tories targeted in the wake of the 2016 EU referendum - Coventry, Chester, Wolverhampton, Wirral West.
In the last set of local elections in 2018, Mr Lewis took me for on a visit to Dudley, where the Tories were trying to win control of a council they hadn't held for 14 years.
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The Conservatives didn't quite win that council, but it did take it out of Labour's hands and into no overall control, picking up six seats on the back of UKIP's collapse.
But the days in which the Tories could try and flex their Brexit credentials to turn Labour, or UKIP-backing Vote Leave areas blue, are over.
We are now touring territory the Tories are trying to defend rather than seats they are trying to win.
This is a defensive play in a set of elections in which the Tories are defending a high watermark from the 2015 local poll, when they gained more than 500 seats.
Nearly 60% of the 8,425 seats up for grabs across 248 councils next week are Conservative, with a quarter held by Labour.
But it is equally true that the party is fighting these local elections in the worst possible of circumstances.
Because for all the chat on the doorstep about the local park-and-ride, bin collections and pot holes, the theme of Brexit betrayal is never far from the surface as we tour the small bungalows of retirees in Yate.
And the sentiment from those we canvass on the doorstep, and those who I interview in a local cafe, is one of frustration and disillusionment.
One gentleman tells me he thinks people won't bother to vote in the upcoming local elections because they are so fed up about Brexit and "being lied to".
Another lady tells me that she thinks the Tories will be punished at the ballot box for failing to get on with Brexit or anything much else.
An elderly gentleman, chatting to Mr Lewis on his doorstep, tells us that he isn't going to vote Conservative this time around as he lays into former prime minister David Cameron for calling a referendum and then quitting the scene to let others sort it out.
Brexit, he says, is giving his wife tremendous headaches.
It is poised to hurt the Tories too, who are facing both the local elections and a national poll - the EU elections - in the coming for weeks.
Theresa May's decision to delay Brexit again earlier this month means the UK is now poised to fight the EU elections on 23 May - to the fury of party members and voters.
Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party is already topping polls ahead of next month's EU elections with 27% of the vote.
The Tories are in third position, behind Labour, with 15% of the vote as supporters jump ship in protest at Mrs May's "Brexit betrayal".
The spectre of the Tories being trounced a month from now in a national election by their old nemesis is not just demoralising for local activists and MPs, but frightening.
The failure to deliver on a referendum that three years ago stopped Mr Farage in his tracks has now brought him back to life with a vengeance.
Many Conservative Party members are vowing to neither vote for the Tories in the EU elections nor campaign for them.
A ConHome poll of grassroots members this week revealed that 62% of party members intend to vote for the Brexit Party, with less than one in four respondents opting to vote for their own party.
Mr Lewis says he's an optimist and thinks the UK still has a chance of avoiding holding the poll by passing a Brexit deal through parliament before 23 May.
"If parliament can look at making sure they are delivering on the referendum, there is still time and the potential to avoid fighting these elections," he tells me.
"But parliament has got to come together and agree it is going to vote to leave the EU."
He is also working on a plan B - holding elections for new MEPs three years after the UK voted to leave.
"I make no apologies for the fact as chairman of the Conservative Party I have also got to make sure we are prepared for any elections.
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"If we have those European elections, we have selected our candidates and we will be prepared and we will fight them."
Having to contest these elections will be disastrous for Mrs May's Conservatives who have been scrambling around to try to avoid the poll on 23 May.
But many of her advisers and ministers are quietly resigned to holding these elections as hopes fade of getting a Brexit deal through parliament.
The prime minister wants to ask MPs to vote on the key piece of legislation to take the UK out of the European Union as she tries to shoehorn Brexit through, but has dropped a plan to introduce it to parliament next week.
However, Mr Lewis suggested its return was still very much on the cards in the coming days.
He told Sky News he was hopeful the government will be able to bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), which enshrines Mrs May's Brexit plan into UK law back to parliament to avoid the EU elections.
Those familiar with No 10's thinking told Sky News the government would load the WAB with trinkets for different parliamentary factions in order to have at least a glimmer of hope that it might pass through the second reading.
Two sources told us that the government is planning to add reassurances on workers' rights into the domestic legislation in order to try to win support from Labour MPs representing leave seats such as Rosie Cooper, Lisa Nandy and Gareth Snell.
One Conservative source said that there were 22 Labour MPs in this grouping who might vote for the WAB if the reassurances were baked into the bill.
Downing Street is also planning to add reassurances on the use of alternative technological solutions to solve the Irish border questions in the hope it will convince some of the European Research Group Brexiteers to vote for the deal.
"There is a way you can get this through," said one senior source.
But first the Tories have to get the local elections out of the way.
Voters will get a chance to mete out their punishment not once, but twice, at the ballot box next month.
The Conservatives are bracing for dismal results, and perhaps the end of May.
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The PM says the UK will be in "uncharted territory" if MPs vote down her agreement - but critics warn attitudes have "hardened".
By  Greg Heffer, political reporter
Monday 7 January 2019 01:17, UK
Theresa May has been told "nothing has changed" despite the prime minister beginning a fresh New Year bid to deliver her Brexit deal.
With the House of Commons due to vote on her EU exit agreement in the next 10 days, Mrs May warned MPs the country would be in "uncharted territory" if they voted down her deal.
The parliamentary showdown is expected on 14 or 15 January, with the prime minister preparing to set out "assurances and measures" over the next few days as she tries to convince sceptical MPs.
These include specific measures relating to Northern Ireland, plans for a greater role for parliament in Brexit decision-making, and further assurances from the EU amid concerns about the so-called backstop arrangement for the Irish border.
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However, Tory MPs opposed to Mrs May's deal told Sky News on Sunday they had heard nothing to prompt them to change their minds.
One Brexiteer suggested MPs attitudes had recently "hardened" towards a belief leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement would be "absolutely okay".
And the DUP, who prop up the minority Conservative government at Westminster, signalled their opposition to the deal had not weakened.
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Having pulled a pre-Christmas vote on her deal due to the prospect of a significant defeat, Mrs May insisted the vote will now "definitely" go ahead in mid-January.
"If the deal is not voted on at this vote that is coming up, then actually we are going to be in uncharted territory," she told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.
"I don't think anybody can say exactly what will happen in terms of the reaction we will see in parliament."
Mrs May sidestepped questions about whether she could keep putting her deal back to MPs if it is rejected a first time round.
She also attacked those campaigning for a second EU referendum for "disrespecting" Leave voters, while she accused Labour - who will vote against her deal - of "playing politics" in order to create the "greatest chaos".
In a message also issued to her own party's Brexiteer MPs, Mrs May said: "We have got people who are promoting a second referendum in order to stop Brexit, and we have got people who want to see their perfect Brexit.
"I would say don't let the search for the perfect become the enemy of the good because the danger there is that we end up with no Brexit at all."
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The prime minister repeated her mantra that "no deal was better than a bad deal", but stressed her agreement meant "what we have on the table is a good deal".
"I am continuing to listen to colleagues and will continue to talk to colleagues about this and we are continuing to talk with the EU about the further assurances that can give MPs the confidence of knowing that they can support this deal," she said.
Having survived a confidence vote among her MPs, Mrs May would not answer whether she would remain as Tory leader for months or years.
But, she said: "I was clear before Christmas with my colleagues on two things: one, I'm not going to call a snap election and secondly that I'm not going to be leading the party into the 2022 general election."
ANALYSIS: No change as PM offers same arguments
Commenting on Mrs May's TV interview, Sky News' political editor Faisal Islam said: "There's basically been no change over Christmas other than the hope her MPs will have seen her light in the Christmas skies and have been persuaded by local voters to come into line.
"She repeated the same essential arguments that were not persuasive to parliament last month.
"It's difficult to find many MPs who say that Christmas has changed much.
"Also, the scale and depth of any reassurances that may come from Brussels look likely to fall short of anything requiring a further summit or that would subsequently change the attorney general's legal advice on the backstop."
He also predicted "at some point" in 2019, the UK "will be going back to some sort of national poll of some description".
"The reason I say that, is, you have this fundamental impasse, which is that there is a majority in parliament that just does not want to see a no-deal Brexit - but it's no doubt that it's the default option."
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Despite the prime minister's fresh plea to MPs, there were signs she is still on course for a damaging reverse.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds suggested Mrs May had yet to win his party's backing for her agreement.
He said: "A number of commitments and promises were made when the meaningful vote was pulled.
"We have engaged with the government in an attempt to move forward towards a deal which can command support in the House of Commons.
"So far, the fundamental problems which make this a bad deal appear not to have changed."
He added the backstop "remains the poison" in Mrs May's deal as he urged her government to show it's "made of the right stuff" in coming days.
Leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was at the forefront of efforts to oust Mrs May last month, told the Sunday Express that MPs critical of Mrs May's deal "have not gone soft over Christmas".
He still expects more than 100 Tory MPs to vote against Mrs May's agreement.
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Fellow Brexiteer Peter Bone, commenting on whether MPs may have changed their minds over their Christmas break, told Sky News' Sophy Ridge: "If there's been any change, it's hardened the attitude of MPs towards what's called a 'no-deal'.
"Because, the more and more information about the 'no-deal', it's clear that it's absolutely okay to do it."
And North East Derbyshire MP Lee Rowley claimed the prime minister's latest plea had not convinced him to reverse his opposition to her deal.
"I understand the prime minister has got a very difficult job, I know that this is a difficult time, I know a lot of people just want to move on from Brexit as do many of us, but the reality is that the deal doesn't work," he told Sky News.
"It doesn't work for many of us in parliament but more importantly doesn't seem to work for many people out there and I haven't heard anything today or over Christmas that changes my view that I should vote against it when it does eventually come into parliament in the next few days."
Senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper also claimed it "seems like nothing has changed since before Christmas", while the SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford said there was "nothing new" from the prime minister following her TV interview.
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Meanwhile, Labour's own divisions over Brexit risked deepening after shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry suggested the People's Vote campaign for a second EU referendum is a means by which to "slap the Labour Party around".
"I've said this to them myself, that it is a perfectly legitimate campaign for them to be involved in," she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
"What I would like them to particularly be focussing on is taking the arguments as to why we should remain in the EU to those people who voted to Leave and to try and change some hearts and minds, rather than using it, as some people I think do, as an opportunity to attack the Labour Party and the leadership of the Labour Party."
Many prominent Labour MPs, including Streatham MP Chuka Umunna, are supporters of the People's Vote campaign.
Mr Umunna admitted to Sky News' Sophy Ridge he would not be "disingenuous and pretend" there is yet a majority of MPs in support of a second EU referendum.
But, he added "what happens now and how people feel now will be very different" once the Commons vote on Mrs May's deal has been held.
Shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner suggested Labour could offer a second Brexit referendum, once a "new incoming Labour government" had negotiated their own deal with Brussels.
"At that stage it makes sense to go to the country and say 'here we are, this is what we have managed to negotiate, this is the deal that we have managed to conclude because we don't have the same red lines as Theresa May, we think it's a better way forward'," he told Sky News' Sophy Ridge.
"And it seems to me, at a personal level, what I would then say is that is the time when we would then say to people 'now take a decision on what we have managed to conclude'."
The foreign secretary sounds upbeat about UK-US trade after meeting President Trump at the White House.
Thursday 8 August 2019 06:57, UK
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President Trump has a "huge appetite" to sign a free trade deal with the UK, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has said.
During a visit to the White House to see Vice President Mike Pence, Mr Raab had an unscheduled meeting with Donald Trump too.
"He called me into the Oval Office," Mr Raab said, adding that the president was "effusive in his warmth for the United Kingdom".
The foreign secretary said that achieving a free trade deal would require a lot of work, but "there's a huge appetite on both sides to achieve that".
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He and Mr Trump also discussed "all the range of security issues that we share in common", Mr Raab added.
His meeting with the president may be seen as a sign that Mr Trump is keen to repair relations with the UK following a diplomatic row over former ambassador Sir Kim Darroch.
Sir Kim resigned after memos in which he was critical of Mr Trump were leaked to a newspaper.
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The foreign secretary also met his opposite number, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
During a news conference, Mr Pompeo said: "However Brexit ultimately shakes out, we'll be on the doorstep, pen in hand, ready to sign a new free trade agreement at the earliest possible time."
Mr Raab's trip to America is intended to "fire up" trade with Britain's non-EU partners.
After meeting Mr Pompeo, Mr Raab said: "On defence, security and intelligence our countries trust each other more deeply. We work together more closely than any others.
"We in the UK really prize that relationship. We value it enormously."
A government source says the UK is "showing them [the EU] the papers", but "the difference is we are not leaving them with them".
By  Alan McGuinness, political reporter
Tuesday 17 September 2019 21:28, UK
The UK has put forward ideas to end the Brexit impasse, but is stopping Brussels from keeping hold of written details due to fears the proposals will be leaked, it is understood.
As the clock ticks down to exit day on 31 October, the EU has so far said that no "concrete" proposals to replace the Irish backstop have been forthcoming.
However, British sources cited by the Press Association have insisted that papers setting out Prime Minister Boris Johnson's position have been shown to the European Union, even though they were taken back at the end of meetings.
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It was "the nature of the Brussels system" that any documents shared with the bloc would also be sent to EU member states.
Mr Johnson held talks with the EU's Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday, with the bloc again insisting afterwards that it was up to the UK to come up with alternative options to the backstop.
"We are showing them papers," the government source said.
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"The difference is we are not leaving them with them."
London has produced a version of the withdrawal agreement - the deal negotiated by Theresa May and rejected three times by MPs - with the backstop removed to show the EU what sort of changes the PM wants.
The UK has also shown the bloc some of its proposals to replace the backstop, an insurance policy in the withdrawal agreement designed to avoid the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Mr Johnson wants to scrap the arrangement, which is opposed by many Conservatives and Northern Ireland's DUP.
The PM agreed with Mr Juncker to step up the Brexit talks when they met on Monday, with a mix of technical and political talks expected this week.
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Daily meetings could begin next week, led by the PM's Europe adviser David Frost, with the EU's Taskforce 50.
It is anticipated that the UK will not produce a formal submission until it can be sure that the EU will not "trash it".
Mr Johnson is expected to hold talks with European Council President Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York next week.
The formal submission may not come until after the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, which finishes on 2 October.
This would leave a short time frame before a crucial European Council summit on 17 October, at which the PM hopes he can strike a new deal.
Many are crying foul over Xavier Bettel's move, but others will see the empty podium moment as evidence of the PM running scared
As well as talks with Mr Juncker on Monday, Mr Johnson also met Luxembourg's Xavier Bettel.
The trip ended in acrimonious circumstances amid a row between the two sides over a joint press conference.
The PM pulled out of the event because of the likelihood of anti-Brexit protesters disrupting proceedings, but Mr Bettel went ahead.
He launched an attack on Mr Johnson's Brexit strategy, prompting claims that the PM had been ambushed.
Cabinet minister Robert Buckland told the BBC that it was an "unfortunate media stunt".
Asked if Mr Johnson shared this view, his official spokesman said: "I will leave it for others to reach their own judgement on what took place."
He pointed to remarks from Mr Bettel, who said he wanted a "good, friendly relationship with the UK going forward".
Meanwhile, cabinet minister Michael Gove has been asked to explain to MPs differences between documents detailing the potential impact of a no-deal Brexit.
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A secret Whitehall dossier outlining the disruption the UK could face in such a scenario, known as Operation Yellowhammer, was released by the government last week after being forced to by MPs.
Labour's Hilary Benn, chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Exiting the EU, said the papers his committee received were called "reasonable worst case scenario", while a version leaked to the Sunday Times was called "base scenario".
Mr Benn has now urged Mr Gove, in his role as the minister in charge of no-deal preparations, to explain these differences to MPs.
The new Brexit Secretary says Britain will pay its £39bn divorce bill on condition of the EU "fulfilling its side of the bargain".
Sunday 22 July 2018 12:54, UK
Britain could refuse to pay its divorce bill to Brussels if it does not get a trade deal, the new Brexit Secretary has warned.
Dominic Raab, who replaced David Davis after he quit the role earlier this month, said "some conditionality between the two" was needed.
He added that the Article 50 mechanism used to trigger Britain's exit from the European Union provided for new deal details.
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He told the Sunday Telegraph: "Article 50 requires, as we negotiate the withdrawal agreement, that there's a future framework for our new relationship going forward, so the two are linked.
"You can't have one side fulfilling its side of the bargain and the other side not, or going slow, or failing to commit on its side.
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"So, I think we do need to make sure that there's some conditionality between the two."
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He added: "Certainly it needs to go into the arrangements we have at international level with our EU partners.
"We need to make it clear that the two are linked."
Mr Raab has accused the EU of "irresponsibly" ramping-up pressure in withdrawal negotiations.
Asked about comments from Brussels that a no-deal scenario would mean there would be no specific arrangements in place for UK citizens living on the continent, or for EU migrants in Britain, Mr Raab told the BBC's Andrew MarrShow:
"Well, I think that's a rather irresponsible thing to be coming from the other side.
"We ought to be trying to reassure citizens on the Continent and also here.
"There is obviously an attempt to try and ramp-up the pressure."
The government has sent mixed signals so far on the divorce bill.
Prime Minister Theresa May agreed in December to a financial settlement of £39bn that ministers said depended on agreeing future trade ties.
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But cabinet members have since cast doubt on the position.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said shortly afterwards that he found it "inconceivable" Britain would not pay its bill, which he described as "not a credible scenario".
The UK is set to leave the EU on March 30 next year, but the two sides want to strike a divorce agreement by late October in order to give parliament enough time to endorse a deal.
Mr Raab said critics were mistaken to think Mrs May would not walk away without a deal if she had to.
"They're wrong. No bluffing," he told the Sunday Telegraph.
"The ball is now in the EU's court, and don't get me wrong, there will be plenty more negotiations, I've made that clear, but if they show us the same level of ambition, energy, pragmatism, this deal gets done in 12 weeks."
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Sky News political correspondent Lewis Goodall said Mr Raab has been keen to assert his authority in his new role.
"He wants to show his Brexiteer colleagues that he is still a Brexiteer at heart, he won't be messed around, he means business and that he's on top of his brief," he said.
"But it makes it no easier for Theresa May because Brussels is already getting impatient with all the shenanigans that have been going on in Westminster over the past 10 days, and his comments will do nothing to lighten the mood."
Meanwhile, a new YouGov poll published by the Sunday Times shows 12% of people backed Mrs May's Chequers agreement as "good" for Britain while 43% thought they were "bad".
The poll also found that 16% of voters think Mrs May is handling negotiations well, while 34% believe former foreign secretary Boris Johnson would do a better job.
By  Aubrey Allegretti, political reporter
Friday 29 March 2019 22:23, UK
Britain has been plunged deeper into Brexit uncertainty after Theresa May lost a last-ditch bid to get her divorce deal through parliament.
MPs voted by 344 to 286 against her withdrawal agreement, secured with Brussels back in November after 18 months of negotiations.
The prime minister took the unusual step of only asking parliament to vote on one half of her deal after suffering two historic defeats on the full package.
But it was not enough for opposition MPs, ardent Brexiteer Tories and the government's confidence and supply partner the Democratic Unionist Party.
Under the terms of the Brexit delay Mrs May secured from the EU last week, the UK is on course to leave the bloc on 12 April.
The other deadline - 22 May - would only have applied if MPs passed the withdrawal agreement today.
There are now two options for Brexit.
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Either the UK falls out of the EU without a deal in two weeks' time.
Or Mrs May, or whoever is prime minister when the time comes, heads to Brussels to ask for another delay.
She said the vote today means Britons will "almost certainly" elect MEPs to the European Parliament in elections taking place from 23-26 May.
EU Council President Donald Tusk has announced he is calling a summit with other leaders on 10 April.
The only other certainty is that MPs will get a series of non-binding votes again on different Brexit scenarios, in a bid to find out what a majority in parliament would support.
That chance will come on Monday, and comes after a similar exercise on Wednesday.
The prime minister tried to shift her MPs over the line to supporting the deal by promising to stand down if it passed.
She vowed to let someone else take over to lead the second major phase of negotiations on the future relationship, so long as Brexit happened on 22 May.
But with that deadline now seemingly scrapped, it is unclear what she plans to do next.
She hinted that the process of asking MPs to support the deal was reaching its "limit", with some suggesting a general election could be in the offing.
Some Tory MPs clearly want Mrs May to step down immediately, but the path to forcibly removing her is fraught.
They have to wait until December to hold a no confidence vote in her just through the party, after she survived the first attempt four months ago, giving her a year's immunity.
The only other option is to hold a no confidence vote through the House of Commons, on which every MP is eligible to vote.
But Conservative rules mean if they did so they would lose the whip and therefore likely their seat in parliament at the election.
If Mrs May does step down, the 1922 committee of Tory MPs in Westminster will decide on the timeline for holding another leadership contest.
However, the race is already under way, given Mrs May's promise to stand down if her deal passes.
Second acts in British politics are vanishingly rare these days and Liam Fox, restored to the cabinet by Theresa May, is determined to make the most of his. We meet at his central London flat at half-past four on Sunday afternoon and even then the International Trade Secretary is beavering away: preparing for his meetings at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva the following day and finishing off his conference speech. He offers us a drink — red wine? pink champagne? — but pours a cup of tea for himself.

Fox, as ever, is full of fizz. He clearly loves being back at the centre of things, and immediately starts contrasting Theresa May’s premiership with that of David Cameron. ‘We think similarly,’ he says. He enthuses about her ‘meritocratic’ agenda and how she is handling the job: ‘Her whole approach to government is much more methodical.’ Fox is a former GP and says she ‘fits in with what I like to think of as the “doctor test”. First of all, let’s see what the problem is. Secondly, a proper analysis. Thirdly, let’s look at the options. And fourthly, let’s work through them to see what’s the best.’

Another difference is that May includes the cabinet and its many committees in her decision-making. ‘The average reading for any of these big committees is now a full four or five hours the night before,’ he says. He admits that ‘the meetings are longer, everything’s longer’, and his ministerial red box is ‘considerably heavier’ than it was under Cameron. But this, he explains, is because arguments get played out. ‘It’s not a question of everyone having a say, it’s everyone being in the debate.’

Knowing how sensitive No. 10 is on the subject, Fox is careful not to get into too many Brexit specifics. He says he’s relaxed about when to trigger Article 50, the two-year notice period (‘it’s more important to get a good future model than to get it quickly’), but he does predict that Britain will have ‘left the EU before we get to a general election’. He’s dismissive of George Osborne’s idea of waiting until after the German elections next September to trigger Article 50. ‘If you don’t want to leave, you can always find reasons not to do it,’ Fox says. He points out that European electorates will have more to worry about than Brexit when they go to the polls. ‘The Germans have got a lot more to think about in their election than that. I think that the migrant crisis, French economic crisis, potential Italian banking crisis will be much further up their agenda.’ Fox is almost certainly right about that, but you can imagine the embassy in Berlin swallowing hard at such straight talk.

A few weeks ago, his straight talk to a private meeting of Conservative MPs made the headlines. Just 11 per cent of British companies export, he told them, and he wondered aloud if this country and its businesses had become ‘too lazy and too fat’. His critics thought he was talking Britain down and being rude to business. He sees it as the administering of hard truths. ‘As a country, we have become too easy with the idea that the world owes us a living. The world doesn’t owe us a living. And we’ve just now got to probe all the areas where we could be making changes. Government, the financial sector, culture, all of them will have to play a part. Because one thing’s for sure, we can’t continue with the trajectory we’ve got now, falling behind with exports as a proportion of our GDP.’ Ministers should be able to make such points to MPs, he says, without being accused of verbal treason. ‘It may well be that from now on all politicians simply use prepared remarks and we don’t do spontaneous,’ he says. ‘And the press will be poorer for it and our public discourse will be poorer for it.’

Many Brexiteers think it’s obvious that Britain would use its freedom to cut tariffs, quotas and trade barriers, but many Tories are worried about the effect of cheap imports. How does he feel when he sees Conservative MPs pressing Theresa May to keep tariffs up to protect British farmers?

He pauses. ‘Protectionism never works in the long term. Never. It always ends up disadvantaging the most vulnerable. The Tory party does not need a lesson in this: look at the Corn Laws. The party almost tore itself apart by taking the side of working people against the big farmers on the basis that it would create inequality in society, it would be protectionist and it would keep on pushing prices of basic foodstuffs up.’

The Tories will maintain farming incomes, he says. But with a caveat: ‘Whether you maintain them primarily as agricultural management and stewardship is a different matter.’

Even if Britain hadn’t voted for Brexit, Fox says, our exporting problem and the massive trade deficit would have to be confronted. ‘That’s even before you take into account the potential effect of the contagion we might get from say, a couple of Italian banks going down.’

And that’s not all. The European Union, he says, is in terrible shape. ‘The architecture is beginning to peel away. It’s going to sacrifice at least one generation of young Europeans on the altar of the single currency, and you can only rip out the social fabric from so much of Europe before it starts imploding. That’s the problem with the European Union. And with Britain out of it, they’re still going to have to confront exactly the same problems.’

It’s undeniable, he says, that reformers in the EU will struggle without Britain. ‘I guess Germany worries, because we were their main allies in bringing some economic rigour to the system. If I were a German politician I would be worried that, without Britain, Germany has the potential to become the greatest ATM in global history.’

With such turbulence abroad, he says, Theresa May is perfect for Downing Street. ‘You couldn’t have someone at a time like this going into No. 10 who didn’t have any experience of the security services or any experience of the dangers of the world outside. This is not a time to learn on the job.’ He says he admires May for her certainty, thoroughness — and something else. ‘One of Theresa’s great strengths is discretion,’ he says with a smile. ‘I’m hoping to learn it.’
Fraser Nelson is the editor of The Spectator. He is also a columnist with The Daily Telegraph, a member of the advisory board of the Centre for Social Justice and the Centre for Policy Studies.

Much has been made of the Brexit Party’s insurgency amongst people in Leave-voting communities, who have been subject to disparaging and patronising establishment contempt ever since they dared to vote the ‘wrong’ way in the EU referendum. But far less attention is given to the minority of Leave voters who work and live in the professions and other areas where support for Remain is the default position.


One woman who approached the Brexit Party stall in Chester last week told me his:





“I am a solicitor; my friend here is a physiotherapist and we are both fed up of being shunned by colleagues because we voted Leave. I just don’t tell people anymore.”



She speaks for millions. Maybe it is because I am part of the media/ policy intelligentsia circle (or, at least, I was until I became an apostate and decided to stand as an MEP), but over the past three years I have come across a wide range of Secret Brexiteers who dare not admit they voted Leave.


This is how it goes: when I speak at universities, literary festivals, science festivals and arts gigs on a wide variety of topics, and mention in passing I support Brexit, one or two people always sidle up at the end and whisper – yes, whisper – “I agree with you, but I am not ‘out’ at work”. I have no intention of outing anyone here, but here are a few examples of the phenomenon.


Jane Robins and Julie Burchill wrote a fictionalised take on the topic in their witty and insightful play People Like Us. It is the story of a fall-out in a book group once the literary set discover that some lovers of literature didn’t love the EU and voted Leave. I attended the play with a friend from the world of publishing who explained her colleagues could never conceive that anyone educated would vote Leave, so have assumed – wrongly – she was part of their Remain gang. She admitted she now hates her job because she can’t divulge an important principle she believes in and is always on her guard about what she says about politics.


An artist mate confessed it was easier to come out as gay to his Christian family than coming out as a Brexiteer in the Federation of Creative Arts.


A leading medic tells how he nervously chastised colleagues for the disparaging way they were discussing 17.4 million voters as “racist fools”, reminding them that “they are our own patients. Maybe we should have more respect.” As all eyes turned on him, glowering and seething, he backed off, adding: “Not that I think they voted the right way.” He did, but he couldn’t fess up.


These are groups that often pride themselves on their tolerance and their commitment to social justice, working for organisations that expend oodles of energy and spend millions of pounds on access schemes to involve the disenfranchised “hard to reach”.


So, it’s extraordinary that when those same communities have the temerity to use their voice in a way that goes against the received opinion of the bien pensants, they are howled down. And how extraordinary that professionals can be shamed and marginalised for admitting they were on the winning side of a national referendum, that they agree with the majority of their fellow citizens about how the UK should be governed.


I am particularly disappointed that this closed-minded groupthink is so prevalent in education. At a pre-Oxbridge debate dinner two years ago, a Lib Dem student on one side of me and a self-described “socialist feminist” on the other both admitted to voting Leave in hushed tones. They only found out about each other’s views when I revealed all.


At an Oxford college event, an international relations student had to pretend to be smoking with me afterwards to admit he agreed with me, and physically jumped when his tutor walked past:





“I don’t trust he won’t mark me down if he knows – he is a virulent Remainer.”



Numerous sixth formers, from both state and private schools, have confided to me that they felt bullied by teachers because their families actively campaigned on the Leave side in the referendum. One said she would probably have voted to stay in the EU, but was upset that her sixth-form head had described Vote Leave as full of “neanderthal xenophobes” and was at pains to point out her Mum wasn’t racist:





“She’s lovely. What my teacher said really upset me.”



This might seem rather like youthful paranoia, but two articles that have appeared in the Guardian – anonymously – make the same point. One Secret Teacher column penned by a Labour-supporting comprehensive school teacher in June 2017 noted:





“I have watched teachers react incredulously – almost to the point of tears – when colleagues have tried floating a reasonable case for Brexit.”



One dreads to think of what the environment for critical thinking and debate culture is like for pupils if teachers are so partisan.


In September 2017, one university lecturer wrote:





“I voted for Brexit – why do academic colleagues treat me like a pariah?”



The author admits that although universities are supposed to be founded on traditions of freedom of thought and expression, too many in higher education “leave tropes about respecting diverse opinions in the seminar room. In more informal collegiate settings, dissent can easily be met with passive aggression… I worry that admitting I voted for Brexit might harm my prospects.”


There is a whiff of McCarthyism. I know senior news broadcasters on three different channels who have told me it would be “professional suicide” if anyone knew they voted to leave the EU. No wonder there is growing disillusion with the tone emanating from mainstream media outlets. Two people I know have recently been asked to stand down from professional associations for supporting the Brexit Party. (I hope they will tell their own stories in due course.)


The crime seems less being a Leaver than breaking some sacred pact. Certain views have become verboten in polite society’s echo chambers. Perhaps those in powerful positions are unused to having their views and values challenged. Having forgotten how to persuade and argue, they resort to lashing out at those outside their own comfortable, self-reinforcing tribes.


The good news is that the mood is changing. The Brexit Party has done a great job in selecting a diverse crowd of people representing all professions. In the North West, where I am standing, we have a dentist, a doctor, a lawyer, a manufacturer and an IT businessman as candidates. This means voters can see they are not alone and are beginning to come out “loud and proud”. My two Chester professional women returned to the stall after shopping and picked up car stickers and window flags. “Why should we be ashamed of being democrats?” Indeed.

Claire Fox is a Brexit Party candidate for the North West
Leading Remainers have said far worse things than Boris Johnson has.
The House of Commons completely lost the plot last night, as Remainer MPs blasted Boris Johnson for using the word ‘surrender’, in relation to the Benn Act that aims to stop Britain leaving the EU without a deal. Hysterical MP after hysterical MP stood up and said Johnson’s language of ‘betrayal’ and ‘surrender’ was putting their lives at risk.
But a cursory Google search, or a memory longer than the last week, reveals that many of these people have said far worse things about their political opponents. Take Labour MP Jess Phillips, who today will ask an urgent question in parliament about the PM’s ‘toxic’ language. In 2015, she said that, when the time came to oust Jeremy Corbyn as leader, she would knife him ‘in the front not the back’.
Labour MP Jess Phillips says she would "knife" Jeremy Corbyn "in the front not the back" https://t.co/cpNTJ2uD1z pic.twitter.com/VHYowsoJl5
— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 14, 2015

Lib Dem Ed Davey also led the condemnation of Johnson’s language last night. Well, in June, he said Remainer parties should unite to ‘decapitate that blond head in Uxbridge and South Ruislip’ – a pretty violent metaphor, you might say, for an electoral pact aimed at beating Boris Johnson, who is MP there, at the next election.
How to stop Boris and stop Brexit? I have a plan, writes @EdwardJDavey https://t.co/9yrcKq4dgT pic.twitter.com/tqYxrIzYdc
— Red Box (@timesredbox) June 25, 2019

Davey later apologised. But others have been less contrite about using, or being seen to endorse, violent language against their opponents. Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell has long refused to recant a speech he gave in 2014, in which he repeated calls from activists to have then DWP minister Esther McVey ‘lynched’, to big laughs.
Here's the Daily Mail's recording of John McDonnell joking about lynching Esther McVey: pic.twitter.com/w0SD0WoHob https://t.co/D4IewbhygV
— John Stevens (@johnestevens) January 14, 2018

There was a lot of talk last night about the unfair portrayal of one’s opponents as ‘traitors’ (even though Johnson has never used such language). But what then should we think about this chestnut from David Lammy MP. When asked on The Andrew Marr Show if he wanted to take back a comparison he had made between the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group and the Nazis, he said that, if anything, his comments were ‘not strong enough’.
Comparing ERG to Nazis 'not strong enough', says David Lammy https://t.co/m0qXhbrSIk
— The Guardian (@guardian) April 14, 2019

So, in sum, using the word ‘surrender’ to describe an act of parliament is apparently mad and dangerous. But talking about knifing, decapitating and lynching one’s opponents is fine. Suggesting that Remainers are enemies of democracy when they try to, er, thwart democracy is inflammatory and toxic. But saying that pro-Brexit MPs are actual fascists is, if anything, a little on the cautious side. Gotcha.
Shaming politicians, whatever their position or party, for using colourful language is ridiculous and censorious. You have to have a pretty low view of ordinary people to think that a few fighting words from MPs is enough to turn voters to political violence and murder. We should argue back, not take offence. But it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that many of the MPs saying Johnson’s language is dangerous don’t actually believe it.
How could they? Many of them have said far worse things themselves.

In order to prevent No Deal ‘chaos’, establishment Remainers are now threatening to bring about... chaos.
For three years, Remoaners in the political establishment have been issuing dire and ever-more hysterical warnings about life as we know it coming to a standstill if there is a No Deal Brexit. So they have come up with a plan to stall and thwart a No Deal Brexit by… bringing the country to a standstill.
Yes, their latest wheeze – and it’s a wheeze that exposes the undiluted hypocrisy that motors so many of these anti-democratic agitators against the referendum result of 2016 – is to offset the alleged chaos of a No Deal Brexit by generating their own kind of chaos. This is how determined they are to trash the votes of millions of people and maintain the status quo that vast numbers of us made it clear we want to change.
The plan, being proposed by Tory arch Remainer Dominic Grieve and Labour arch Remainer Margaret Beckett, is to make it impossible for the government to fund everyday life in the UK. These two, backed by other Brexit-haters in parliament, have tabled amendments to the system that authorises government spending, which would prevent four government departments – education, housing and local government, work and pensions, and international development – from using their budgets in the event of a Boris-backed No Deal.
In short, if Boris Johnson becomes PM and tries to push through a No Deal Brexit – something he occasionally hints at – then Remoaner wreckers would aim to bring about a government shutdown that would make vast areas of people’s daily lives a misery.
Schooling, housing issues, the oversight of local community life, issues to do with the payment of pensions, buses, bin collections, the payment of home helps who assist house-bound elderly people – so much of life could potentially be impacted upon by this cynical block on certain departments’ ability to spend money.
What makes it even worse is that these opponents of Brexit know that their actions wouldn’t necessarily stop a No Deal Brexit from going through, but they hope, in the words of a sympathetic New Statesman, that it would ‘make a No Deal Brexit still more chaotic’. All their blather about not wanting Britain to be plunged into chaos by Brexit, and now they will happily plunge Britain into chaos in order to prevent Brexit.
This plan – even the fact that elite Remoaners are contemplating it – is very revealing. First, it confirms that these people are not, as they constantly claim, merely worried about the wellbeing of ordinary people in Brexit Britain. Rather, their overarching, obsessive aim is the same as it has been for three years: to stop Brexit from happening. It’s all they care about.
Secondly, it utterly explodes all their fear-mongering and politicised hysteria about No Deal Brexit. It confirms that was all just propaganda designed to scare Brits out of their commitment to Brexit. That these people are now contemplating the very scenario they said us Brexiteers would bring about – government mayhem – shows that for them ‘chaos’ is just a political tool to be wielded against Brexit.
And thirdly, it shows what those of us who believe in democracy are up against. We are up against a political class that will stop at nothing to prevent the UK from making a clean, full break with the European Union. They will bring about hardship, hamper essential government activity, and trash democracy itself, all in pursuit of propping up a rotten status quo that the people have clearly rejected. These people are serious about trampling all over the democratic will – supporters of democracy must get serious too.

Conservative Remainers are now considering backing a fresh referendum on whether we'll actually leave the EU
TORY MPs today warned they could back a second referendum on Brexit - in a last-ditch bid to save Theresa May's deal.
Remainers are now considering teaming up with opposition leaders to force through a co-called "people's vote" which could overturn the 2016 referendum.
The referendum would give the public a choice between leaving with the PM's deal, or staying in the EU permanently.
Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson have drawn up an amendment calling for a referendum which they hope to put to a vote as soon as possible.
The pair have been meeting with Conservative backbenchers to lobby for their support.
After seeing Mr Kyle this morning, Tory MP Huw Merriman tweeted: "If MPs will not back the deal then I am asking myself if #KyleWilson is the only option left to deliver #BrexitDeal."
Last night Antoinette Sandbach, another loyalist who has previously opposed a second referendum, also hinted she could change her mind.
She blasted: "Having voted for the deal twice and been labelled a 'traitor' for doing so I am coming round to the argument we should see if reality lives up to the promises made to the electorate."
Always good to see @peterkyle. I voted for the PM’s deal, against extending Art50 and against taking no deal off table. If MPs will not back the deal then I am asking myself if #KyleWilson is the only option left to deliver #BrexitDeal. https://t.co/4JXteKtKfu
I think this argument has force. Having voted for the deal twice and been labelled a “traitor” for doing so I am coming round to the argument we should see if reality lives upto the promises made to the electorate https://t.co/VH4QFAjQ7C
Other Tory MPs are understood to be considering coming out in support of a second referendum.
One Remain-supporting backbencher told The Sun they could abandon the PM's deal after hardline Brexiteers repeatedly refused to vote for it.
A source from the People's Vote campaign confirmed that they are trying to win over more Tories in a bid to pass the Kyle/Wilson amendment as soon as this week.
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Conservative Remainers are now considering backing a fresh referendum on whether we'll actually leave the EU
TORY MPs today warned they could back a second referendum on Brexit - in a last-ditch bid to save Theresa May's deal.
Remainers are now considering teaming up with opposition leaders to force through a co-called "people's vote" which could overturn the 2016 referendum.
The referendum would give the public a choice between leaving with the PM's deal, or staying in the EU permanently.
Labour MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson have drawn up an amendment calling for a referendum which they hope to put to a vote as soon as possible.
The pair have been meeting with Conservative backbenchers to lobby for their support.
After seeing Mr Kyle this morning, Tory MP Huw Merriman tweeted: "If MPs will not back the deal then I am asking myself if #KyleWilson is the only option left to deliver #BrexitDeal."
Last night Antoinette Sandbach, another loyalist who has previously opposed a second referendum, also hinted she could change her mind.
She blasted: "Having voted for the deal twice and been labelled a 'traitor' for doing so I am coming round to the argument we should see if reality lives up to the promises made to the electorate."
Always good to see @peterkyle. I voted for the PM’s deal, against extending Art50 and against taking no deal off table. If MPs will not back the deal then I am asking myself if #KyleWilson is the only option left to deliver #BrexitDeal. https://t.co/4JXteKtKfu
I think this argument has force. Having voted for the deal twice and been labelled a “traitor” for doing so I am coming round to the argument we should see if reality lives upto the promises made to the electorate https://t.co/VH4QFAjQ7C
Other Tory MPs are understood to be considering coming out in support of a second referendum.
One Remain-supporting backbencher told The Sun they could abandon the PM's deal after hardline Brexiteers repeatedly refused to vote for it.
A source from the People's Vote campaign confirmed that they are trying to win over more Tories in a bid to pass the Kyle/Wilson amendment as soon as this week.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Switcher Tory MP James Gray is urging Eurosceptics in Leave areas to support Theresa May’s EU deal - to avoid wrecking Brexit
EUROSCEPTICS  in Leave areas were last night urged to support Theresa May’s EU deal - to avoid wrecking Brexit.
Switcher Tory MP James Gray is urging colleagues to back the PM “with our fingers crossed and holding our noses at its stench”.
Writing for The Sun on Sunday, he said:  “It’s not how we wanted it to be, but it is now the only option available to us.”  He said he will now be voting for the deal “warts and all”.
He added:  “We must leave the EU. This is our only chance. The chance of a lifetime to achieve something for which I have longed for all of my political life.”
Many are concerned that ‘no deal’ has effectively been taken off the table combined with the EU offering a long extension if the exit plan isn’t passed.
Many Tories who are so far refusing to back the deal are in areas who overwhelmingly backed to leave the European Union.
Eurosceptic Andrew Bridgen has also voted against the deal twice despite 60.7 per cent in North west Leicestershire wanting to leave in June 2016.
John Baron, whose represents Basildon, Essex, where 68.6 per cent were fed up with Brussels, said he would “await developments next week” before making up his mind.
Dr Julian Lewis, who has also refused to back the deal, represents the New Forest, Hampshire, where 57.8 per cent voted to leave.
'Campaigning to leave the EU has taken up a vast chunk of my political life.
The majority of the country clearly agreed with me – as we found out in June 2016.
Theresa May has offered MPs a route out of these institutions with an exit deal.
I despise many aspects of the deal that the PM has proposed.
I’ve spoken out at length against it since the agreement was struck at Chequers last summer.
Make no bones about it, it’s a bad deal and I am opposed to many aspects of it.
But the Remainers in Parliament last week voted to take the option of a ‘No Deal’ -which in many ways I support - off the table.
Not only that, but they voted to extend Article 50 so that we will not leave on 29 March as we had all hoped.
Those votes have forced me to change my stance on the matter.
We must leave the EU. This is our only chance. The chance of a lifetime to achieve something for which I have longed for all of my political life.
So I have now concluded that the only way we can escape from the EU’s despicable clutches is to support the Deal, which many of us detest.
We must now come together, support the deal, albeit with our fingers crossed and holding our noses at its stench. If we do that we will leave on 29 March or soon thereafter.
It’s not how we wanted it to be, but it is now the only option available to us. So warts and all, I shall be supporting the third vote on the PM’s Deal next Tuesday.'
Switcher Tory MP James Gray is urging Eurosceptics in Leave areas to support Theresa May’s EU deal - to avoid wrecking Brexit
EUROSCEPTICS  in Leave areas were last night urged to support Theresa May’s EU deal - to avoid wrecking Brexit.
Switcher Tory MP James Gray is urging colleagues to back the PM “with our fingers crossed and holding our noses at its stench”.
Writing for The Sun on Sunday, he said:  “It’s not how we wanted it to be, but it is now the only option available to us.”  He said he will now be voting for the deal “warts and all”.
He added:  “We must leave the EU. This is our only chance. The chance of a lifetime to achieve something for which I have longed for all of my political life.”
Many are concerned that ‘no deal’ has effectively been taken off the table combined with the EU offering a long extension if the exit plan isn’t passed.
Many Tories who are so far refusing to back the deal are in areas who overwhelmingly backed to leave the European Union.
Eurosceptic Andrew Bridgen has also voted against the deal twice despite 60.7 per cent in North west Leicestershire wanting to leave in June 2016.
John Baron, whose represents Basildon, Essex, where 68.6 per cent were fed up with Brussels, said he would “await developments next week” before making up his mind.
Dr Julian Lewis, who has also refused to back the deal, represents the New Forest, Hampshire, where 57.8 per cent voted to leave.
'Campaigning to leave the EU has taken up a vast chunk of my political life.
The majority of the country clearly agreed with me – as we found out in June 2016.
Theresa May has offered MPs a route out of these institutions with an exit deal.
I despise many aspects of the deal that the PM has proposed.
I’ve spoken out at length against it since the agreement was struck at Chequers last summer.
Make no bones about it, it’s a bad deal and I am opposed to many aspects of it.
But the Remainers in Parliament last week voted to take the option of a ‘No Deal’ -which in many ways I support - off the table.
Not only that, but they voted to extend Article 50 so that we will not leave on 29 March as we had all hoped.
Those votes have forced me to change my stance on the matter.
We must leave the EU. This is our only chance. The chance of a lifetime to achieve something for which I have longed for all of my political life.
So I have now concluded that the only way we can escape from the EU’s despicable clutches is to support the Deal, which many of us detest.
We must now come together, support the deal, albeit with our fingers crossed and holding our noses at its stench. If we do that we will leave on 29 March or soon thereafter.
It’s not how we wanted it to be, but it is now the only option available to us. So warts and all, I shall be supporting the third vote on the PM’s Deal next Tuesday.'
SO Philip Hammond thinks that a No Deal Brexit would be a betrayal of the decision taken by the British people in the 2016 referendum?
This is a spectacular irony, given that no one else in government has done more to undermine that decision by the people than the ex-Chancellor.
For example, in March 2018 the Treasury stopped the Government briefing small businesses on how to deal with European customs in the event of No Deal.
Had we carried out this briefing, the small business sector would have had a whole year to prepare for No Deal in March 2019?
So it is a bit rich for the former Chancellor to complain that the United Kingdom is not ready for No Deal when his own department actively prevented preparation.
Of course, this was not the only way in which the Treasury — and the Bank of England — acted to undermine our negotiating position.
And they are not alone.
It is a bit rich for the former Chancellor to complain that the United Kingdom is not ready for No Deal when his own department actively prevented preparation.
Only this week we have seen any number of shabby little manoeuvres aimed at undermining our Prime Minister and even replacing him in a last desperate bid to stop Brexit ever happening.
We are even seeing former Tory ministers agreeing to have discussions with Jeremy Corbyn, and some even appearing to countenance bringing down the Government and replacing it with one led by Mr Corbyn.
Corbyn himself claims that this will only be temporary, while he negotiates an extension to our membership before having a General Election.
Well, believe that if you will.
In practice the cold, calculating ­advisers who surround Mr Corbyn know that such action would associate Labour with stopping Brexit in the eyes of their own voters, an action for which they would be severely punished.
So in the event that Parliament puts Mr Corbyn into power, we should expect something different.
Most likely is a blizzard of the sort of socialist nonsense that has done so much to damage our economy in the past.
Typically we would see lots of measures whose benefits come today, but whose prices are paid tomorrow.
The calculation would be that this would get Labour through a General Election before people realise the cost of their actions.
So I say to my Remainer Tory colleagues including Philip, Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Guto Bebb: Be careful what you wish for.
And if you deliver a Corbyn government, do not expect to be a Tory MP after the next election.
There are others, of course, who are plotting to install a “government of national unity”.
Since the overall aim would be to stop Brexit, and thereby betray the people who voted to leave Europe, this would in practice deliver nothing but national disunity.

What is happening is that the Remainers are panicking because they realise that PM Boris Johnson is deadly serious about delivering Brexit on ­October 31, come hell or high water.
They realise that Boris understands the need for a tough and unflinching negotiating stance to get any sense out of Europe.
They also realise that Boris does not believe the torrent of negative propaganda that we have had in the last year about the dangers of No Deal.
The PM understands that a great and innovative country like the United Kingdom can succeed and prosper ­without the help of the European ­Commission.
Remainers are panicking because they realise that PM Boris Johnson is deadly serious about delivering Brexit on ­October 31, come hell or high water.
And he understands — and I have spoken to him at great length about this — that the United Kingdom is much better prepared to deal with all flavours of Brexit than the Government has been willing to admit in the last year.
Just ask any minister in the Brexit department who has had to deal with the 300 projects set up more than two years ago to deliver a good outcome in all circumstances.
But above all, Boris understands that the European powers are far more nervous about No Deal than we need to be.
Their own calculations imply the worst-case outcome may cost us 12,000 jobs, but will cost them 400,000 jobs.
And to put this in context we cut unemployment by 74,000 last year, whereas the European economy is looking distinctly fragile.
Furthermore we will have lots of policy options to help all sectors of our economy once we are free of Europe. They do not.
So Boris should go to the G7 ­conference — the meeting of the most advanced economies in the world — later this month in a confident mood.

No doubt France’s President Macron will be grandstanding as usual, and the international media will big that up.
But where it matters — in the backroom conversations — we will get a lot of support. America, Canada and Italy will all be onside.
Germany’s Angela Merkel will be working to bridge the gap.
She knows that, distracted by domestic issues, she slipped up when she let the Irish backstop become the dominant issue in the December before last. She will want to put that right.
But, above all, this will be our PM’s first venture on to the international stage since the adoption of our new and more forceful negotiating strategy.
It will be the first step towards the United Kingdom’s new role in the wider world.
It will be a step towards a promising and exciting future, a future that Boris will grasp confidently with both hands.

GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
SO Philip Hammond thinks that a No Deal Brexit would be a betrayal of the decision taken by the British people in the 2016 referendum?
This is a spectacular irony, given that no one else in government has done more to undermine that decision by the people than the ex-Chancellor.
For example, in March 2018 the Treasury stopped the Government briefing small businesses on how to deal with European customs in the event of No Deal.
Had we carried out this briefing, the small business sector would have had a whole year to prepare for No Deal in March 2019?
So it is a bit rich for the former Chancellor to complain that the United Kingdom is not ready for No Deal when his own department actively prevented preparation.
Of course, this was not the only way in which the Treasury — and the Bank of England — acted to undermine our negotiating position.
And they are not alone.
It is a bit rich for the former Chancellor to complain that the United Kingdom is not ready for No Deal when his own department actively prevented preparation.
Only this week we have seen any number of shabby little manoeuvres aimed at undermining our Prime Minister and even replacing him in a last desperate bid to stop Brexit ever happening.
We are even seeing former Tory ministers agreeing to have discussions with Jeremy Corbyn, and some even appearing to countenance bringing down the Government and replacing it with one led by Mr Corbyn.
Corbyn himself claims that this will only be temporary, while he negotiates an extension to our membership before having a General Election.
Well, believe that if you will.
In practice the cold, calculating ­advisers who surround Mr Corbyn know that such action would associate Labour with stopping Brexit in the eyes of their own voters, an action for which they would be severely punished.
So in the event that Parliament puts Mr Corbyn into power, we should expect something different.
Most likely is a blizzard of the sort of socialist nonsense that has done so much to damage our economy in the past.
Typically we would see lots of measures whose benefits come today, but whose prices are paid tomorrow.
The calculation would be that this would get Labour through a General Election before people realise the cost of their actions.
So I say to my Remainer Tory colleagues including Philip, Ken Clarke, Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Guto Bebb: Be careful what you wish for.
And if you deliver a Corbyn government, do not expect to be a Tory MP after the next election.
There are others, of course, who are plotting to install a “government of national unity”.
Since the overall aim would be to stop Brexit, and thereby betray the people who voted to leave Europe, this would in practice deliver nothing but national disunity.

What is happening is that the Remainers are panicking because they realise that PM Boris Johnson is deadly serious about delivering Brexit on ­October 31, come hell or high water.
They realise that Boris understands the need for a tough and unflinching negotiating stance to get any sense out of Europe.
They also realise that Boris does not believe the torrent of negative propaganda that we have had in the last year about the dangers of No Deal.
The PM understands that a great and innovative country like the United Kingdom can succeed and prosper ­without the help of the European ­Commission.
Remainers are panicking because they realise that PM Boris Johnson is deadly serious about delivering Brexit on ­October 31, come hell or high water.
And he understands — and I have spoken to him at great length about this — that the United Kingdom is much better prepared to deal with all flavours of Brexit than the Government has been willing to admit in the last year.
Just ask any minister in the Brexit department who has had to deal with the 300 projects set up more than two years ago to deliver a good outcome in all circumstances.
But above all, Boris understands that the European powers are far more nervous about No Deal than we need to be.
Their own calculations imply the worst-case outcome may cost us 12,000 jobs, but will cost them 400,000 jobs.
And to put this in context we cut unemployment by 74,000 last year, whereas the European economy is looking distinctly fragile.
Furthermore we will have lots of policy options to help all sectors of our economy once we are free of Europe. They do not.
So Boris should go to the G7 ­conference — the meeting of the most advanced economies in the world — later this month in a confident mood.

No doubt France’s President Macron will be grandstanding as usual, and the international media will big that up.
But where it matters — in the backroom conversations — we will get a lot of support. America, Canada and Italy will all be onside.
Germany’s Angela Merkel will be working to bridge the gap.
She knows that, distracted by domestic issues, she slipped up when she let the Irish backstop become the dominant issue in the December before last. She will want to put that right.
But, above all, this will be our PM’s first venture on to the international stage since the adoption of our new and more forceful negotiating strategy.
It will be the first step towards the United Kingdom’s new role in the wider world.
It will be a step towards a promising and exciting future, a future that Boris will grasp confidently with both hands.

GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
The PM said she'll even the negotiations even if there's no agreement
THERESA May slapped a seven-day deadline on talks with Labour for a Brexit deal as a fresh row broke out between Tory and Labour chiefs.
The PM told her Cabinet that she will draw stumps on the five week-long talks with Jeremy Corbyn by next Wednesday whether there in a cross party agreement or not.
The new time limit came as fresh hopes for progress were dashed when John McDonnell lashed out at Jeremy Hunt.
The Foreign Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme “I very much hope we don’t” sign up to a customs union – a Labour red line demand.
Tory leadership hopeful Mr Hunt also warned about the move: “There is a risk you would lose more Conservative MPs than you could gain Labour MPs”.
But the Shadow Chancellor leaped on his remarks to brand them “hardly a helpful or constructive intervention”.
The public do want to see forward movement. We want to get on with this, everybody wants to get on with it.
Labour’s economy boss tweeted: “It does not inspire confidence that if a deal is agreed it would be successfully entrenched and last any longer than the next Tory leadership election”.
The PM and her senior ministers resolved yesterday to press on with trying to pass the landmark Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the Commons next month.
After yesterday morning’s Cabinet meeting, a No10 source said: “By the middle of next week we’ll know one way or another which way this is going.
“This was communicated to Cabinet and Cabinet was agreed on this need for talks to come to a head.”
The PM’s official spokesman added: “Further talks will now be scheduled in order to bring the process toward a conclusion.
“The public do want to see forward movement. We want to get on with this, everybody wants to get on with it.”
Mr Hunt also warned yesterday that a second EU referendum is now the most likely outcome if MPs refuse to pass a Brexit deal again.
The Foreign Secretary said the “central argument” now facing the Commons is whether to break the Brexit deadlock with a compromise deal in Parliament or by going back to the people.
Warning voters were becoming enraged by “a Brexit paralysis affecting their jobs and businesses”, Mr Hunt added: “The central argument is do we resolve this issue by having a rerun, as some in the Labour Party would like, or do we resolve this by delivering Brexit and then bringing the country together by showing the 48 per cent who voted Remain that this is not the Brexit of their worst nightmares”.
The PM said she'll even the negotiations even if there's no agreement
THERESA May slapped a seven-day deadline on talks with Labour for a Brexit deal as a fresh row broke out between Tory and Labour chiefs.
The PM told her Cabinet that she will draw stumps on the five week-long talks with Jeremy Corbyn by next Wednesday whether there in a cross party agreement or not.
The new time limit came as fresh hopes for progress were dashed when John McDonnell lashed out at Jeremy Hunt.
The Foreign Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme “I very much hope we don’t” sign up to a customs union – a Labour red line demand.
Tory leadership hopeful Mr Hunt also warned about the move: “There is a risk you would lose more Conservative MPs than you could gain Labour MPs”.
But the Shadow Chancellor leaped on his remarks to brand them “hardly a helpful or constructive intervention”.
The public do want to see forward movement. We want to get on with this, everybody wants to get on with it.
Labour’s economy boss tweeted: “It does not inspire confidence that if a deal is agreed it would be successfully entrenched and last any longer than the next Tory leadership election”.
The PM and her senior ministers resolved yesterday to press on with trying to pass the landmark Withdrawal Agreement Bill through the Commons next month.
After yesterday morning’s Cabinet meeting, a No10 source said: “By the middle of next week we’ll know one way or another which way this is going.
“This was communicated to Cabinet and Cabinet was agreed on this need for talks to come to a head.”
The PM’s official spokesman added: “Further talks will now be scheduled in order to bring the process toward a conclusion.
“The public do want to see forward movement. We want to get on with this, everybody wants to get on with it.”
Mr Hunt also warned yesterday that a second EU referendum is now the most likely outcome if MPs refuse to pass a Brexit deal again.
The Foreign Secretary said the “central argument” now facing the Commons is whether to break the Brexit deadlock with a compromise deal in Parliament or by going back to the people.
Warning voters were becoming enraged by “a Brexit paralysis affecting their jobs and businesses”, Mr Hunt added: “The central argument is do we resolve this issue by having a rerun, as some in the Labour Party would like, or do we resolve this by delivering Brexit and then bringing the country together by showing the 48 per cent who voted Remain that this is not the Brexit of their worst nightmares”.
A revised Remainer plot would see a new law rapidly passed that allows Parliament to order the Government to ask for an Article 50 extension in the case of a No Deal
TORY Remainer ministers are to demand Theresa May gives MPs a chance to enforce a delay to Brexit in two weeks time as their price to support her.
The PM will try to convince the Commons on Tuesday to give her another fortnight’s grace for talks with Brussels for changes to the Irish backstop.
She faces a fresh vote on Thursday for Parliament to authorise her plan to offer MPs another say on February 27 if there is still no deal.
But with just 45 days to go until Brexit day, angry ministers – who met in secret on Monday – will tell No10 that is not enough.
Instead, in a new revolt, they want the PM to promise to hand over Parliamentary time to backbenchers at the end of the month if there is no progress then to allow a bill to pass that will enforce an extension to the Article 50 talks.
One minister told The Sun: “Just kicking this down the road another two weeks to give us another vote on February 27 is not going to be enough.
“It’s too late for that.”
The latest rebellion has been devised by former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin.
Under his plan, rebel Remainer Nick Boles will agree not to re-table his amendment with senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper for a Brexit delay to avoid No Deal on Thursday.
Their revised plot would see a new law rapidly passed that allows Parliament to order the Government to ask for an Article 50 extension, the length to be determined by the PM but approved by the Commons.
Another of the Tory plotters added: “We want to secure a specific commitment from the PM for parliamentary time to make sure February 27 really is high noon.
“If we get it, then there will still time be time to get the Cooper/Boles bill Royal Assent by mid-March, so we won’t need to press a vote on it this week.”
Around 25 Tory ministers who have vowed to block a no-deal Brexit met in secret in the Commons on Monday afternoon to agree a joint line ahead of the showdown.
None pledged to resign on Thursday if their demand is refused, with most still considering their positions.
But Industry Minister Richard Harrington is one who is still determined to resign then if Mrs May hasn’t offered the reassurance, telling allies that it’s now “a matter of personal credibility” for him.
A group of six Cabinet ministers from both sides of the bitter Tory divide also met again in secret last night in a bid to hammer out a compromise over the deadlock.
It emerged the meetings to avoid major Cabinet walkouts are the idea of Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s help.
The pair reached out to Remainers David Gauke, Greg Clark and Amber Rudd last week.
The fresh drama emerged as new Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay tried to open new negotiations on the Brexit deal with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier over a dinner in Brussels tonight.
Mr Barclay pressed for legally binding changes to the Irish backstop to ensure it is temporary.
But ahead of the pair’s first meeting, Mr Barnier sparked hope by saying the EU is “ready to give all necessary explanations and guarantees” on the Withdrawal Agreement to reassure distrusting MPs.
But he added: “We consider that the work done on the Withdrawal Agreement, on the organisation of the separation, cannot be reopened’.
A revised Remainer plot would see a new law rapidly passed that allows Parliament to order the Government to ask for an Article 50 extension in the case of a No Deal
TORY Remainer ministers are to demand Theresa May gives MPs a chance to enforce a delay to Brexit in two weeks time as their price to support her.
The PM will try to convince the Commons on Tuesday to give her another fortnight’s grace for talks with Brussels for changes to the Irish backstop.
She faces a fresh vote on Thursday for Parliament to authorise her plan to offer MPs another say on February 27 if there is still no deal.
But with just 45 days to go until Brexit day, angry ministers – who met in secret on Monday – will tell No10 that is not enough.
Instead, in a new revolt, they want the PM to promise to hand over Parliamentary time to backbenchers at the end of the month if there is no progress then to allow a bill to pass that will enforce an extension to the Article 50 talks.
One minister told The Sun: “Just kicking this down the road another two weeks to give us another vote on February 27 is not going to be enough.
“It’s too late for that.”
The latest rebellion has been devised by former Tory minister Sir Oliver Letwin.
Under his plan, rebel Remainer Nick Boles will agree not to re-table his amendment with senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper for a Brexit delay to avoid No Deal on Thursday.
Their revised plot would see a new law rapidly passed that allows Parliament to order the Government to ask for an Article 50 extension, the length to be determined by the PM but approved by the Commons.
Another of the Tory plotters added: “We want to secure a specific commitment from the PM for parliamentary time to make sure February 27 really is high noon.
“If we get it, then there will still time be time to get the Cooper/Boles bill Royal Assent by mid-March, so we won’t need to press a vote on it this week.”
Around 25 Tory ministers who have vowed to block a no-deal Brexit met in secret in the Commons on Monday afternoon to agree a joint line ahead of the showdown.
None pledged to resign on Thursday if their demand is refused, with most still considering their positions.
But Industry Minister Richard Harrington is one who is still determined to resign then if Mrs May hasn’t offered the reassurance, telling allies that it’s now “a matter of personal credibility” for him.
A group of six Cabinet ministers from both sides of the bitter Tory divide also met again in secret last night in a bid to hammer out a compromise over the deadlock.
It emerged the meetings to avoid major Cabinet walkouts are the idea of Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s help.
The pair reached out to Remainers David Gauke, Greg Clark and Amber Rudd last week.
The fresh drama emerged as new Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay tried to open new negotiations on the Brexit deal with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier over a dinner in Brussels tonight.
Mr Barclay pressed for legally binding changes to the Irish backstop to ensure it is temporary.
But ahead of the pair’s first meeting, Mr Barnier sparked hope by saying the EU is “ready to give all necessary explanations and guarantees” on the Withdrawal Agreement to reassure distrusting MPs.
But he added: “We consider that the work done on the Withdrawal Agreement, on the organisation of the separation, cannot be reopened’.
MR Johnson ruled out an election pact with Nigel Farage to stop his Brexit Party destroying the Tories.
The frontrunner said there will be no need to do a deal if he leads Britain out of the EU on time – and comes up with a “great programme” for the future.
He added: “Everyone should be very, very optimistic about our agenda.
“People say why don’t you do a deal with this or that other party? I see no point in that. We’ve got to believe in our own party.
“As Nigel Farage will tell you, there was a historic meeting 25 years or so ago in a pub when he tried to recruit me and I tried to recruit him. It didn’t get anywhere and we went our separate ways.
“We are going to deliver Brexit and that’s what I hope Sun on Sunday readers will recognise. We’re the only party that can keep out Jeremy Corbyn – all the Brexit Party or Lib Dems can do is let him in.”
The hot favourite for the Tory leadership admitted he will make a “different sort” of PM — avoiding a repeat of Theresa May’s cautious approach for a more swashbuckling style.
In an interview with The Sun on Sunday, he insisted he will be batting for Britain with “maximum energy” and fighting to win.
Mr Johnson said: “For the last three years, quite frankly, we’ve had nothing but a diet of miserabilism. We can’t do this, we can’t do that. You know, ‘Computer says no’. And it’s really wretched.
“I think probably I’m going to be a different sort of Prime Minister in the sense that throughout my political career, I’ve tended to go for my shots.
“Sometimes I get out and sometimes I hit some runs. So let’s knock it out of the park. Well, I think, at least have a go.”
MR Johnson ruled out an election pact with Nigel Farage to stop his Brexit Party destroying the Tories.
The frontrunner said there will be no need to do a deal if he leads Britain out of the EU on time – and comes up with a “great programme” for the future.
He added: “Everyone should be very, very optimistic about our agenda.
“People say why don’t you do a deal with this or that other party? I see no point in that. We’ve got to believe in our own party.
“As Nigel Farage will tell you, there was a historic meeting 25 years or so ago in a pub when he tried to recruit me and I tried to recruit him. It didn’t get anywhere and we went our separate ways.
“We are going to deliver Brexit and that’s what I hope Sun on Sunday readers will recognise. We’re the only party that can keep out Jeremy Corbyn – all the Brexit Party or Lib Dems can do is let him in.”
The hot favourite for the Tory leadership admitted he will make a “different sort” of PM — avoiding a repeat of Theresa May’s cautious approach for a more swashbuckling style.
In an interview with The Sun on Sunday, he insisted he will be batting for Britain with “maximum energy” and fighting to win.
Mr Johnson said: “For the last three years, quite frankly, we’ve had nothing but a diet of miserabilism. We can’t do this, we can’t do that. You know, ‘Computer says no’. And it’s really wretched.
“I think probably I’m going to be a different sort of Prime Minister in the sense that throughout my political career, I’ve tended to go for my shots.
“Sometimes I get out and sometimes I hit some runs. So let’s knock it out of the park. Well, I think, at least have a go.”
The endless delays to Article 50 are becoming a shameful ritual - let’s keep faith with the Brits who voted for Brexit
PEOPLE are watching proceedings in Parliament with bewilderment and anger.
17.4 million people voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum in the biggest act of democracy in our country’s history. And yet, almost three years later, MPs are flailing around making a complete hash of this simple instruction.
Whether they voted to leave or to remain, Conservative or Labour, people feel that their votes are being ignored, their voices unheard and that the political antics are paralysing their lives and UK industry. We must not let this national humiliation for our country, the Conservative Party and the government continue.
And I’m afraid this comes down to leadership. The Prime Minister has always seen the result of the 2016 referendum as a problem to be resolved, not as a magnificent opportunity to be embraced.
That’s why the Withdrawal Agreement is such a bad deal, because we’ve been bending over backwards to accommodate everything that Brussels wants rather than robustly representing British interests. This has got to stop.
In the Commons this week, MPs rightly voted against us staying in the EU Customs Union. Doing so would scupper any chance of us having our own independent trade policy and, frankly, it is insulting to people’s intelligence to suggest that staying inside the EU Customs Union is compatible with us leaving the EU.
Yet instead of listening to this majority in Parliament, the government has instead chosen to invite a Marxist into No10 to shape their Brexit policy for them. I don’t remember telling voters in our 2017 Conservative Manifesto that we would leave the Customs Union and Single Market unless Jeremy Corbyn insisted otherwise.
The public wants MPs to compromise and agree a way forward. But they already have done, twice.
First, an overwhelming majority voted to trigger Article 50 so that we could leave the EU on 29th March 2019 with or without a deal. Second, the “Brady amendment”, passed in January, asked the Prime Minister to return to the EU to replace the “backstop” with “alternative arrangements” so that her deal could get through the House of Commons.
MPs have been persistently sidelined by No10’s bunker mentality, which is why we’re in such a mess. It baffles me as to why we are allowing this embarrassing pantomime to continue.
It’s time for our country to hold firm and for our Government to deliver what the House of Commons voted for. The EU must be left in no doubt that we either achieve meaningful, legally-binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, removing the backstop, or we walk away with no agreement. The ball is in the EU’s court.
Negotiations with the EU always conclude in the final hours and things were always going to get tough. “Nothing is agreed until everything’s agreed” used to be our philosophy. So we must not cave in, buckle under the strain or give up on the vital task of delivering the referendum result. And we must certainly not take the easy route out and sub-contract our governance to Jeremy Corbyn.
The only way to regain our independence whilst enjoying a positive relationship with the EU, to restore trust in our democracy, to bring an end to the paralysing uncertainty and to become an example to the world of what a beacon of free global trade can achieve, is to stand tall and deliver what the people and Parliament voted for.
The endless and meaningless delays to Article 50 are becoming a shameful ritual. Let’s keep faith with the voting public, our activists and our members. We need to re-focus on our values and start showing some vision and optimism for the successful nation we can become once we’ve left.
If we don’t the whole country will pay the price when Jeremy Corbyn sweeps into No10, this time for good.
The endless delays to Article 50 are becoming a shameful ritual - let’s keep faith with the Brits who voted for Brexit
PEOPLE are watching proceedings in Parliament with bewilderment and anger.
17.4 million people voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum in the biggest act of democracy in our country’s history. And yet, almost three years later, MPs are flailing around making a complete hash of this simple instruction.
Whether they voted to leave or to remain, Conservative or Labour, people feel that their votes are being ignored, their voices unheard and that the political antics are paralysing their lives and UK industry. We must not let this national humiliation for our country, the Conservative Party and the government continue.
And I’m afraid this comes down to leadership. The Prime Minister has always seen the result of the 2016 referendum as a problem to be resolved, not as a magnificent opportunity to be embraced.
That’s why the Withdrawal Agreement is such a bad deal, because we’ve been bending over backwards to accommodate everything that Brussels wants rather than robustly representing British interests. This has got to stop.
In the Commons this week, MPs rightly voted against us staying in the EU Customs Union. Doing so would scupper any chance of us having our own independent trade policy and, frankly, it is insulting to people’s intelligence to suggest that staying inside the EU Customs Union is compatible with us leaving the EU.
Yet instead of listening to this majority in Parliament, the government has instead chosen to invite a Marxist into No10 to shape their Brexit policy for them. I don’t remember telling voters in our 2017 Conservative Manifesto that we would leave the Customs Union and Single Market unless Jeremy Corbyn insisted otherwise.
The public wants MPs to compromise and agree a way forward. But they already have done, twice.
First, an overwhelming majority voted to trigger Article 50 so that we could leave the EU on 29th March 2019 with or without a deal. Second, the “Brady amendment”, passed in January, asked the Prime Minister to return to the EU to replace the “backstop” with “alternative arrangements” so that her deal could get through the House of Commons.
MPs have been persistently sidelined by No10’s bunker mentality, which is why we’re in such a mess. It baffles me as to why we are allowing this embarrassing pantomime to continue.
It’s time for our country to hold firm and for our Government to deliver what the House of Commons voted for. The EU must be left in no doubt that we either achieve meaningful, legally-binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, removing the backstop, or we walk away with no agreement. The ball is in the EU’s court.
Negotiations with the EU always conclude in the final hours and things were always going to get tough. “Nothing is agreed until everything’s agreed” used to be our philosophy. So we must not cave in, buckle under the strain or give up on the vital task of delivering the referendum result. And we must certainly not take the easy route out and sub-contract our governance to Jeremy Corbyn.
The only way to regain our independence whilst enjoying a positive relationship with the EU, to restore trust in our democracy, to bring an end to the paralysing uncertainty and to become an example to the world of what a beacon of free global trade can achieve, is to stand tall and deliver what the people and Parliament voted for.
The endless and meaningless delays to Article 50 are becoming a shameful ritual. Let’s keep faith with the voting public, our activists and our members. We need to re-focus on our values and start showing some vision and optimism for the successful nation we can become once we’ve left.
If we don’t the whole country will pay the price when Jeremy Corbyn sweeps into No10, this time for good.
The Commons Speaker enraged Brexiteers by refusing to put forward an amendment backed by 127 MPs
A FURIOUS row erupted last night after John Bercow refused to allow a vote on ruling out a second EU referendum for good.
The Commons Speaker ignited fury by refusing to select the amendment tabled by Brexiteers – even though it was backed by a 127 MPs.
Mr Bercow left Brexiteers seething as he picked a rival amendment calling for a second referendum even though it has less support.
Furious MPs rounded on the Speaker – who has admitted he voted Remain –accusing him of flouting centuries-old tradition that he remains strictly impartial.
In angry clashes on the floor of the Commons, Tory MPs accused Mr Bercow of being biased, and “sucking up to Labour to keep his job”.
The shock decision came despite it attracting cross party support from DUP and Labour MPs too.
But senior Tory backbencher Sir Bernard Jenkin openly accused Mr Bercow of pro-Remain bias, saying: “What are we to conclude from your own views on these matters?”
Tory Brexiteer Mark Francois angrily demanded to know why it had not been selected when “it therefore had far more signatories than any other amendment on the order paper”.
Mr Bercow told livid Tories that said it didn’t have enough support across different parties in the House, saying: “Members do have to take the rough with the smooth”.
And he angrily told his critics that they should not “conclude anything” about his views.
One livid Tory MP added: “The little man will do anything Labour wants to hold on to his job. It’s corrupt and pathetic.”
The controversy will heap yet more pressure on Mr Bercow, who has faced growing demands to quit from his powerful post.
He had originally promised to stand down last year, but has hung on so he can oversee the Brexit debates.
But Brexiteers have accused him of flouting the strict rules of impartiality he is meant to stick to.
His family’s car has a “b****cks to Brexit” sticker stuck on it, although he insisted that it was his wife Sally’s car.
And he has faced angry demands to resign after being accused of bullying Commons staff. He strongly denies the allegations.
While a damning report into sexual harassment in Westminster by Dame Laura Cox found that a toxic culture of deference allowed bullying to run rife.
Mr Bercow has also faced criticism for using his generous taxpayer-funded expenses account to splash out on chauffeur-driven cars, trips abroad and throwing parties for foreign dignitaries.
Speaker John Bercow came close to getting a deciding vote on handing Parliament Brexit control.
The Benn amendment was defeated by just two votes — 312 to 314.
If there had been a tie, Mr Bercow would have been forced to vote.
The Speaker is known to have a Remain bias and is likely to have voted for the amendment, allowing MPs to vote on the next steps.
The Commons Speaker enraged Brexiteers by refusing to put forward an amendment backed by 127 MPs
A FURIOUS row erupted last night after John Bercow refused to allow a vote on ruling out a second EU referendum for good.
The Commons Speaker ignited fury by refusing to select the amendment tabled by Brexiteers – even though it was backed by a 127 MPs.
Mr Bercow left Brexiteers seething as he picked a rival amendment calling for a second referendum even though it has less support.
Furious MPs rounded on the Speaker – who has admitted he voted Remain –accusing him of flouting centuries-old tradition that he remains strictly impartial.
In angry clashes on the floor of the Commons, Tory MPs accused Mr Bercow of being biased, and “sucking up to Labour to keep his job”.
The shock decision came despite it attracting cross party support from DUP and Labour MPs too.
But senior Tory backbencher Sir Bernard Jenkin openly accused Mr Bercow of pro-Remain bias, saying: “What are we to conclude from your own views on these matters?”
Tory Brexiteer Mark Francois angrily demanded to know why it had not been selected when “it therefore had far more signatories than any other amendment on the order paper”.
Mr Bercow told livid Tories that said it didn’t have enough support across different parties in the House, saying: “Members do have to take the rough with the smooth”.
And he angrily told his critics that they should not “conclude anything” about his views.
One livid Tory MP added: “The little man will do anything Labour wants to hold on to his job. It’s corrupt and pathetic.”
The controversy will heap yet more pressure on Mr Bercow, who has faced growing demands to quit from his powerful post.
He had originally promised to stand down last year, but has hung on so he can oversee the Brexit debates.
But Brexiteers have accused him of flouting the strict rules of impartiality he is meant to stick to.
His family’s car has a “b****cks to Brexit” sticker stuck on it, although he insisted that it was his wife Sally’s car.
And he has faced angry demands to resign after being accused of bullying Commons staff. He strongly denies the allegations.
While a damning report into sexual harassment in Westminster by Dame Laura Cox found that a toxic culture of deference allowed bullying to run rife.
Mr Bercow has also faced criticism for using his generous taxpayer-funded expenses account to splash out on chauffeur-driven cars, trips abroad and throwing parties for foreign dignitaries.
Speaker John Bercow came close to getting a deciding vote on handing Parliament Brexit control.
The Benn amendment was defeated by just two votes — 312 to 314.
If there had been a tie, Mr Bercow would have been forced to vote.
The Speaker is known to have a Remain bias and is likely to have voted for the amendment, allowing MPs to vote on the next steps.
DOMINIC Cummings has said that MPs are "out of touch" with the huge public anger building as they continue to block Brexit - and Brexit is going to be a "walk in the park".
In his first public appearance since starting his new role at No10, the ex-Vote Leave strategist said he found it "odd" that MPs who caused the impasse were shocked at the furious response of voters.
Mr Cummings said that he wasn't worried about the current battles going on in Parliament, adding: "We are going to win, don't worry".
"To put your mind absolutely at rest on that, we are not under pressure at all," he said.
"The referendum was pressure, the referendum was difficult. This is a walk in the park compared to that."
He insisted Boris was right to use words like "surrender".
"A lot of people have become really, really badly disconnected from what people in the real world and what England outside central London think," he stressed.
"The MPs said we will have a referendum and we will respect the result.
"Then they spent three years swerving all over the shop. It is not surprising that some people are angry about it. I find it very odd that these characters are complaining that people are unhappy about their behaviour now and they also say that they want a referendum.
"What do they think? How does that compute for them?
"For me it says that fundamentally a lot of people in Parliament are more of out of touch with the country now than they were in summer 2016."
And this morning he admitted for the first time that the Government are hunting for a loophole in the so-called "surrender bill".
"We'll see what we do about the Benn Act when we get to the right date," he told Sky News last night.
"I don't have a master plan."
And he even claimed: "Everyone at home should not watch the news, because it's almost all b******t."
It comes after a fuming Labour MP had a public-bust up with Boris Johnson's Brexit chief in Parliament yesterday.
Karl Turner confronted Dominic Cummings about language used by the Prime Minister, including calling a law demanding he extend the Brexit talks if no deal is secured the "Surrender Act".
Mr Turner, a shadow transport minister, saw Mr Cummings in Portcullis House, a building across the road from Parliament where most MPs have their offices.
In a video filmed by a member of his staff, he confronted him about the perceived death threats he had received.
The MP said: “I’ve had death threats overnight, should be dead” but Mr Cummings, leaning on a post, replied: “Get Brexit done.”
But Mr Turner appeared incensed by his response and continued: “It’s a disgrace.
“Get Brexit done? I’ve had three opportunities to get Brexit done. If I could have voted for it, I would have voted for it. Don’t tell me to get Brexit done."
The exchange ended when Mr Cummings said “I don't know who you are” and Mr Turner replied “I’m an MP” and walked off.
Last week John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, described Mr Turner, as “the noisiest member of the house” and said that he “tends to yell at the government”.
 
Mr Johnson has been criticised for his use of the word "surrender" to describe an act of Parliament - which will force him to get another extension from the EU.
And he's also under fire for shrugging off concerns about threats from Labour's Paula Sheriff as "humbug".
That caused fury among MPs facing a barrage of threats and abuse.
Boris has refused to stop using the word "surrender" but has admitted that the "temper" of political debate needs to "come down".
Boris is visiting a hospital today to plug his pledge for more money for the NHS and cancer screening machines.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
DOMINIC Cummings has said that MPs are "out of touch" with the huge public anger building as they continue to block Brexit - and Brexit is going to be a "walk in the park".
In his first public appearance since starting his new role at No10, the ex-Vote Leave strategist said he found it "odd" that MPs who caused the impasse were shocked at the furious response of voters.
Mr Cummings said that he wasn't worried about the current battles going on in Parliament, adding: "We are going to win, don't worry".
"To put your mind absolutely at rest on that, we are not under pressure at all," he said.
"The referendum was pressure, the referendum was difficult. This is a walk in the park compared to that."
He insisted Boris was right to use words like "surrender".
"A lot of people have become really, really badly disconnected from what people in the real world and what England outside central London think," he stressed.
"The MPs said we will have a referendum and we will respect the result.
"Then they spent three years swerving all over the shop. It is not surprising that some people are angry about it. I find it very odd that these characters are complaining that people are unhappy about their behaviour now and they also say that they want a referendum.
"What do they think? How does that compute for them?
"For me it says that fundamentally a lot of people in Parliament are more of out of touch with the country now than they were in summer 2016."
And this morning he admitted for the first time that the Government are hunting for a loophole in the so-called "surrender bill".
"We'll see what we do about the Benn Act when we get to the right date," he told Sky News last night.
"I don't have a master plan."
And he even claimed: "Everyone at home should not watch the news, because it's almost all b******t."
It comes after a fuming Labour MP had a public-bust up with Boris Johnson's Brexit chief in Parliament yesterday.
Karl Turner confronted Dominic Cummings about language used by the Prime Minister, including calling a law demanding he extend the Brexit talks if no deal is secured the "Surrender Act".
Mr Turner, a shadow transport minister, saw Mr Cummings in Portcullis House, a building across the road from Parliament where most MPs have their offices.
In a video filmed by a member of his staff, he confronted him about the perceived death threats he had received.
The MP said: “I’ve had death threats overnight, should be dead” but Mr Cummings, leaning on a post, replied: “Get Brexit done.”
But Mr Turner appeared incensed by his response and continued: “It’s a disgrace.
“Get Brexit done? I’ve had three opportunities to get Brexit done. If I could have voted for it, I would have voted for it. Don’t tell me to get Brexit done."
The exchange ended when Mr Cummings said “I don't know who you are” and Mr Turner replied “I’m an MP” and walked off.
Last week John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, described Mr Turner, as “the noisiest member of the house” and said that he “tends to yell at the government”.
 
Mr Johnson has been criticised for his use of the word "surrender" to describe an act of Parliament - which will force him to get another extension from the EU.
And he's also under fire for shrugging off concerns about threats from Labour's Paula Sheriff as "humbug".
That caused fury among MPs facing a barrage of threats and abuse.
Boris has refused to stop using the word "surrender" but has admitted that the "temper" of political debate needs to "come down".
Boris is visiting a hospital today to plug his pledge for more money for the NHS and cancer screening machines.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock believes the loyal Tories will switch to backing the Norway option once the PM's deal is defeated a third time
MORE THAN 100 Tories currently “held prisoner” by Theresa May are ready to back a Norway style Brexit – its supporters claim.
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock said he believed a large number of loyal Tories – including Ministers “on the payroll” will switch to backing the Norway option once her deal is defeated a third time.
Mr Kinnock pointed out that 113 Tories voted for an extension to Brexit talks to avoid a No Deal.
He said: “We have already had very productive conservations with the leader of the opposition.
“And we feel that once Theresa May’s deal has fallen, we can win a large enough number of Conservative members to gain a parliamentary majority.”
It came as former Fisheries Minister George Eustice said he believed a majority of MPs would “get behind a variant of the Norway option”.
And sources claimed the SNP were being courted in the hope the Scottish Nationalists could at least ‘abstain’ on the idea tomorrow when the House is expected to be given the chance to vote on other plans.
The Norway/EEA membership model pushed by Mr Kinnock and Tories Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin would see Britain pay for access to the single market and accept free movement of immigration.
But Ministers could set their own rules on agriculture, fisheries and opt out of certain justice and home affairs legislation.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has repeatedly claimed Britain should go into the EEA for five years and negotiate a long-term trade deal with the EU from that position.
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock believes the loyal Tories will switch to backing the Norway option once the PM's deal is defeated a third time
MORE THAN 100 Tories currently “held prisoner” by Theresa May are ready to back a Norway style Brexit – its supporters claim.
Labour’s Stephen Kinnock said he believed a large number of loyal Tories – including Ministers “on the payroll” will switch to backing the Norway option once her deal is defeated a third time.
Mr Kinnock pointed out that 113 Tories voted for an extension to Brexit talks to avoid a No Deal.
He said: “We have already had very productive conservations with the leader of the opposition.
“And we feel that once Theresa May’s deal has fallen, we can win a large enough number of Conservative members to gain a parliamentary majority.”
It came as former Fisheries Minister George Eustice said he believed a majority of MPs would “get behind a variant of the Norway option”.
And sources claimed the SNP were being courted in the hope the Scottish Nationalists could at least ‘abstain’ on the idea tomorrow when the House is expected to be given the chance to vote on other plans.
The Norway/EEA membership model pushed by Mr Kinnock and Tories Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin would see Britain pay for access to the single market and accept free movement of immigration.
But Ministers could set their own rules on agriculture, fisheries and opt out of certain justice and home affairs legislation.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has repeatedly claimed Britain should go into the EEA for five years and negotiate a long-term trade deal with the EU from that position.
Since well before the EU existed we have traded with and fought alongside allies around the world, and that won’t end when we leave next March, say Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Home Secretary Sajid Javid
AT Chequers on Friday, the Cabinet agreed a collective plan to deliver on the next stage of Brexit.
A plan that will allow us to take back control of our laws, money and borders, and protect British jobs in everything from fishing to manufacturing to financial services.
It will end freedom of movement, restore the supremacy of UK courts and stop us sending vast sums to Brussels each year, with a Brexit dividend worth billions for domestic priorities like our long-term NHS plan.
Our UK-EU free trade area, with a commitment to maintaining a common rule book for goods and agricultural products, will mean frictionless trade, protecting jobs and honouring our commitments in Northern Ireland.
And our business-friendly customs model enables the UK to secure trading opportunities around the world, meaning more and better jobs in places like the Midlands and the North.
The UK would have its own seat at the World Trade Organisation, be able to set trade tariffs and secure deals with other countries.
Crucially, it will be elected MPs who decide whether UK laws and regulations should change, with consequences for market access if we choose a different approach from the EU.
It will make Britain truly sovereign, while also allowing us to continue co-operating closely with our friends in Europe.
It is a generous offer and, from one Union to another, we expect the EU to now show movement in their position too.
And it won’t just make Britain more prosperous – it will keep our citizens safe too.
Our security services, police and judiciary have an extremely close working relationship with their counterparts across the EU.
In the past 12 months, GCHQ has helped break up terrorist plots in at least four European countries.
And we have extradited more than 10,000 suspects using European Arrest Warrants.
Of course, it is not all one way – we regularly receive evidence on criminals here or intent on travelling to Britain.
Europe’s security is our security, and we are unconditionally committed to maintaining it.
So under our plan, we will continue to participate in EU security agencies such as Europol and Eurojust.
We will aim to remain part of all the EU tools and measures that the UK uses today.
With the UK having full control of immigration, it will be harder for foreign criminals to come here, and easier for us to kick them out if they do. Of course, our security interests don’t begin and end at our borders, or even at the edge of Europe.
Whether it’s Russia, Syria, Afghanistan or beyond, threats continue to emerge and develop around the world.
After we leave the EU we will be free to pursue a truly independent foreign policy but that does not mean we will isolate ourselves from our neighbours.
Under our proposals, we will continue to consult and co-operate with our EU partners on global issues.
We will work with the EU on sanctions like those recently imposed on Russia, including co-ordinating them where it’s in our interests to do so.
Our joint work on defence capability and space will continue. And we will decide where our armed forces and foreign aid could be used alongside the EU.
Brexit has never been about turning our backs on Europe, pulling down the shutters and keeping ourselves to ourselves.
Since well before the EU existed we have traded with and fought alongside allies around the world, and that won’t end when we leave next March.
There’s still a lot of negotiating to be done. But our ambitious, effective proposal for a smooth customs arrangement and continued security co-operation is a huge step forward.
It’s a good deal for Europe, and a good deal for Britain.
Since well before the EU existed we have traded with and fought alongside allies around the world, and that won’t end when we leave next March, say Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Home Secretary Sajid Javid
AT Chequers on Friday, the Cabinet agreed a collective plan to deliver on the next stage of Brexit.
A plan that will allow us to take back control of our laws, money and borders, and protect British jobs in everything from fishing to manufacturing to financial services.
It will end freedom of movement, restore the supremacy of UK courts and stop us sending vast sums to Brussels each year, with a Brexit dividend worth billions for domestic priorities like our long-term NHS plan.
Our UK-EU free trade area, with a commitment to maintaining a common rule book for goods and agricultural products, will mean frictionless trade, protecting jobs and honouring our commitments in Northern Ireland.
And our business-friendly customs model enables the UK to secure trading opportunities around the world, meaning more and better jobs in places like the Midlands and the North.
The UK would have its own seat at the World Trade Organisation, be able to set trade tariffs and secure deals with other countries.
Crucially, it will be elected MPs who decide whether UK laws and regulations should change, with consequences for market access if we choose a different approach from the EU.
It will make Britain truly sovereign, while also allowing us to continue co-operating closely with our friends in Europe.
It is a generous offer and, from one Union to another, we expect the EU to now show movement in their position too.
And it won’t just make Britain more prosperous – it will keep our citizens safe too.
Our security services, police and judiciary have an extremely close working relationship with their counterparts across the EU.
In the past 12 months, GCHQ has helped break up terrorist plots in at least four European countries.
And we have extradited more than 10,000 suspects using European Arrest Warrants.
Of course, it is not all one way – we regularly receive evidence on criminals here or intent on travelling to Britain.
Europe’s security is our security, and we are unconditionally committed to maintaining it.
So under our plan, we will continue to participate in EU security agencies such as Europol and Eurojust.
We will aim to remain part of all the EU tools and measures that the UK uses today.
With the UK having full control of immigration, it will be harder for foreign criminals to come here, and easier for us to kick them out if they do. Of course, our security interests don’t begin and end at our borders, or even at the edge of Europe.
Whether it’s Russia, Syria, Afghanistan or beyond, threats continue to emerge and develop around the world.
After we leave the EU we will be free to pursue a truly independent foreign policy but that does not mean we will isolate ourselves from our neighbours.
Under our proposals, we will continue to consult and co-operate with our EU partners on global issues.
We will work with the EU on sanctions like those recently imposed on Russia, including co-ordinating them where it’s in our interests to do so.
Our joint work on defence capability and space will continue. And we will decide where our armed forces and foreign aid could be used alongside the EU.
Brexit has never been about turning our backs on Europe, pulling down the shutters and keeping ourselves to ourselves.
Since well before the EU existed we have traded with and fought alongside allies around the world, and that won’t end when we leave next March.
There’s still a lot of negotiating to be done. But our ambitious, effective proposal for a smooth customs arrangement and continued security co-operation is a huge step forward.
It’s a good deal for Europe, and a good deal for Britain.
Lord Bridges has joined a growing movement against the PM after she admitted Britain could stayed tied to the EU for another 12 months
THERESA May faces a growing revolt over her plan to lead Britain out of the EU - with an ex-Brexit minister calling it "dead on arrival".
Lord Bridges has joined a growing revolt against the PM after she admitted Britain could stayed tied to the EU for another 12 months.
It could mean abiding by all Brussels rules until December 2021 at the earliest, 12 months longer than No10’s current transition plan.
Her concessions have enraged Remainers and Leave voters - and she now faces a make-or-break week.
Lord Bridges, who served in the Brexit department between July 2016 and June 2017, is the latest in a growing number joining a chorus of anger.
The Times reports a growing number of MPs are plotting to install David Davis as interim PM.
Leave-backing Tory MPs met on Wednesday to discuss issuing letters of no confidence in the PM, the paper reports.
It would need 48 letters to trigger a challenge.
A senior Conservative source said the “current was flowing” against the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, groups representing more than 100 Tory Remainers had their own meeting to discuss how to block a no-deal Brexit.
Nick Boles, former skills minister, accused May of trying to "run down the clock" and said the Conservatives were “close to despair”.
May also failed to dispute claims by Ireland’s Europe minister, Helen McEntee, that she had scrapped demands for a fixed end date on her plan.
The concession could mean continuing free movement of all migrants, as well as the UK having to fork out another £9bn into EU coffers in fees, while having no say in any Brussels decision making.
Mrs May left yesterday's dinner in Brussels after a half-hour speech, as the other 27 leaders enjoyed a meal of turbot cooked in beer.
But Tory MPs lined up to slap down her suggestions just minutes later.
Andrea Jenkyns agreed, told ITV's Peston: "It’s ludicrous that it’s two years on and we haven’t got a deal. Extending [the transition] just kicks it into the long grass."
Nigel Farage added: "This is another betrayal of Brexit... I don't think she can survive this."
He speculated it could mean British taxpayers having to pay an extra £20BILLION to the EU.
But Tory Deputy Chairman James Cleverly played down the suggestion of extending the transition period - pointing out that it was only a proposal from the EU.
 
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Lord Bridges has joined a growing movement against the PM after she admitted Britain could stayed tied to the EU for another 12 months
THERESA May faces a growing revolt over her plan to lead Britain out of the EU - with an ex-Brexit minister calling it "dead on arrival".
Lord Bridges has joined a growing revolt against the PM after she admitted Britain could stayed tied to the EU for another 12 months.
It could mean abiding by all Brussels rules until December 2021 at the earliest, 12 months longer than No10’s current transition plan.
Her concessions have enraged Remainers and Leave voters - and she now faces a make-or-break week.
Lord Bridges, who served in the Brexit department between July 2016 and June 2017, is the latest in a growing number joining a chorus of anger.
The Times reports a growing number of MPs are plotting to install David Davis as interim PM.
Leave-backing Tory MPs met on Wednesday to discuss issuing letters of no confidence in the PM, the paper reports.
It would need 48 letters to trigger a challenge.
A senior Conservative source said the “current was flowing” against the Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, groups representing more than 100 Tory Remainers had their own meeting to discuss how to block a no-deal Brexit.
Nick Boles, former skills minister, accused May of trying to "run down the clock" and said the Conservatives were “close to despair”.
May also failed to dispute claims by Ireland’s Europe minister, Helen McEntee, that she had scrapped demands for a fixed end date on her plan.
The concession could mean continuing free movement of all migrants, as well as the UK having to fork out another £9bn into EU coffers in fees, while having no say in any Brussels decision making.
Mrs May left yesterday's dinner in Brussels after a half-hour speech, as the other 27 leaders enjoyed a meal of turbot cooked in beer.
But Tory MPs lined up to slap down her suggestions just minutes later.
Andrea Jenkyns agreed, told ITV's Peston: "It’s ludicrous that it’s two years on and we haven’t got a deal. Extending [the transition] just kicks it into the long grass."
Nigel Farage added: "This is another betrayal of Brexit... I don't think she can survive this."
He speculated it could mean British taxpayers having to pay an extra £20BILLION to the EU.
But Tory Deputy Chairman James Cleverly played down the suggestion of extending the transition period - pointing out that it was only a proposal from the EU.
 
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They also signalled Brexit could be extended again if no agreement is reached by October 31, giving 'Great Britain a chance and enough time to make some final decision'
CROWING EU leaders boasted how the six-month Brexit delay allows Britain to hold a second referendum - and stay in the bloc.
It came as Eurocrats signalled Brexit could be extended AGAIN if no agreement is reached by the new October 31 deadline.
Speaking yesterday Czech PM Adrej Babis said his “personal wish” for Brits to use this time to change their mind.
He said: “Me personally I hope you will stay in the EU finally. Maybe you will have elections and a second referendum.
“It’s for the British people to think about the future of their country.”
Slovakian PM Peter Pellegrini added he believed the extra time would give Britain the time to arrange a new poll. He said: “I think now we gave Great Britain a chance and enough time to make some final decision.”
EU Council chief Donald Tusk late on Wednesday night told Polish media he hoped the UK could now remain – before adding quickly it was his “personal, quiet dream”.
Speaking immediately after the new extension was agreed, he also admitted that while most hoped the new date of October 31 was final, another extension was not impossible.
Sources claim the EU left itself enough room for a fresh six month delay to March 2020 if required.
And Mr Tusk said: “Our wish and our hope is the UK will be ready with the final solution at the end of October.
“But I’m too old to exclude another scenario.”
People’s Vote supporters in Parliament seized on the leaders’ comments yesterday and said a second referendum was the only way to break the deadlock.
Labour Remainer David Lammy saying: “Britain has changed its mind. Poll after poll shows the people of this country want to be given a vote on any form of Brexit before it goes ahead.
”The Government and Parliament must accept this shift in opinion and use an extension to break the impasse, by giving the people the final say on Brexit.”
 
They also signalled Brexit could be extended again if no agreement is reached by October 31, giving 'Great Britain a chance and enough time to make some final decision'
CROWING EU leaders boasted how the six-month Brexit delay allows Britain to hold a second referendum - and stay in the bloc.
It came as Eurocrats signalled Brexit could be extended AGAIN if no agreement is reached by the new October 31 deadline.
Speaking yesterday Czech PM Adrej Babis said his “personal wish” for Brits to use this time to change their mind.
He said: “Me personally I hope you will stay in the EU finally. Maybe you will have elections and a second referendum.
“It’s for the British people to think about the future of their country.”
Slovakian PM Peter Pellegrini added he believed the extra time would give Britain the time to arrange a new poll. He said: “I think now we gave Great Britain a chance and enough time to make some final decision.”
EU Council chief Donald Tusk late on Wednesday night told Polish media he hoped the UK could now remain – before adding quickly it was his “personal, quiet dream”.
Speaking immediately after the new extension was agreed, he also admitted that while most hoped the new date of October 31 was final, another extension was not impossible.
Sources claim the EU left itself enough room for a fresh six month delay to March 2020 if required.
And Mr Tusk said: “Our wish and our hope is the UK will be ready with the final solution at the end of October.
“But I’m too old to exclude another scenario.”
People’s Vote supporters in Parliament seized on the leaders’ comments yesterday and said a second referendum was the only way to break the deadlock.
Labour Remainer David Lammy saying: “Britain has changed its mind. Poll after poll shows the people of this country want to be given a vote on any form of Brexit before it goes ahead.
”The Government and Parliament must accept this shift in opinion and use an extension to break the impasse, by giving the people the final say on Brexit.”
 
REMAINER MPs are plotting a Commons push to "revoke" Brexit by the end of July – amid fears Boris Johnson is now odds-on for PM.
Change UK said the nuclear option was being considered along with a fresh push for a second referendum as a way of stopping a No Deal exit in October.
New leader Anna Soubry is understood to be in talks with Plaid Cymru and the SNP about “forcing the pace” on stopping a cliff-edge Brexit before the summer recess.
One insider said they believe Labour and Tory MPs would cross the floor to back Revoke if it meant preventing a No Deal.
They added the ringing endorsement for Boris Johnson from Oliver Dowden this morning showed the former Foreign Secretary was now all-but guaranteed to make the final two.
Mr Dowden – David Cameron’s former deputy chief of staff and a Tory moderate – backed Boris alongside Treasury Secretary Robert Jenrick and widely-respected Rishi Sunak, Communities Minister.
Both Mr Jenrick and Sunak backed Mr Gove in 2016.
Chris Leslie told The Sun: “We must force a vote on revoking Article 50 to create space for a People’s Vote on Brexit before the end of July.
“This is a make or break in the next few weeks.”
It came as Welsh Labour formally shifted its stance on Brexit – and said it would primarily argue for the UK to stay in the EU.
The push by Change UK comes a day after its six of its 11 MPs quit to stand as “independents” – sparking rumours they’ll join the Lib Dems.
 
Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston told their former colleagues last week that Change UK should be “dissolved” following their disastrous performance at the Euro Elections.
On Twitter yesterday Ms Wollaston said: “I don’t think it would be right for Change UK to stand candidates at a General Election.
“I think it’s better to listen to feedback and work in cooperation with other parties and help shape rather than split the centre ground.”
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REMAINER MPs are plotting a Commons push to "revoke" Brexit by the end of July – amid fears Boris Johnson is now odds-on for PM.
Change UK said the nuclear option was being considered along with a fresh push for a second referendum as a way of stopping a No Deal exit in October.
New leader Anna Soubry is understood to be in talks with Plaid Cymru and the SNP about “forcing the pace” on stopping a cliff-edge Brexit before the summer recess.
One insider said they believe Labour and Tory MPs would cross the floor to back Revoke if it meant preventing a No Deal.
They added the ringing endorsement for Boris Johnson from Oliver Dowden this morning showed the former Foreign Secretary was now all-but guaranteed to make the final two.
Mr Dowden – David Cameron’s former deputy chief of staff and a Tory moderate – backed Boris alongside Treasury Secretary Robert Jenrick and widely-respected Rishi Sunak, Communities Minister.
Both Mr Jenrick and Sunak backed Mr Gove in 2016.
Chris Leslie told The Sun: “We must force a vote on revoking Article 50 to create space for a People’s Vote on Brexit before the end of July.
“This is a make or break in the next few weeks.”
It came as Welsh Labour formally shifted its stance on Brexit – and said it would primarily argue for the UK to stay in the EU.
The push by Change UK comes a day after its six of its 11 MPs quit to stand as “independents” – sparking rumours they’ll join the Lib Dems.
 
Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston told their former colleagues last week that Change UK should be “dissolved” following their disastrous performance at the Euro Elections.
On Twitter yesterday Ms Wollaston said: “I don’t think it would be right for Change UK to stand candidates at a General Election.
“I think it’s better to listen to feedback and work in cooperation with other parties and help shape rather than split the centre ground.”
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Politicians from the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru have written to the Labour boss begging him to move a motion of no confidence in Theresa May
REMAINERS who want a second Brexit vote are trying to twist Jeremy Corbyn's arm and get him on side.
Politicians from the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru have written to the Labour boss begging him to move a motion of no confidence in Theresa May.
They think that will help pave the way for a second referendum on Brexit.
Yesterday a desperate Mrs May pulled the vote on Brexit, admitting she would suffer a humiliating defeat if it went ahead.
She told MPs she would now go back to Brussels to fight for more assurances.
Today she's flying around Europe for crunch meetings with Angela Merkel and EU bosses to see whether she can change their minds.
Remainers say that the time to try and oust her is now because the Government don't have a working majority.
But even if all the other parties in Westminster teamed up, there still wouldn't be enough votes to bring the Government down unless some Tories or the DUP voted with them.
The Northern Irish party has said they will support the PM in a confidence vote at the moment.
Yesterday Mr Corbyn chickened out of the bid to force Mrs May out of office, amid the day's Brexit chaos.
The Labour boss won't bring forward a vote of no confidence forward until she comes back to the House of Commons with changes, which he thinks will mean nothing to MPs.
The party don't want to act prematurely in case they lose and end up accidentally keeping her in office.
Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon also called on Mr Corbyn to oust the PM and go for a second vote, saying it was the "only way" to resolve the impasse in the Commons.
Meanwhile the odds on a second Brexit vote have been cut again.
Dear Jeremy


Today, the Shadow Cabinet is meeting at a time of constitutional and national crisis.  

The Government’s inability to pass its Brexit deal through Parliament, as witnessed by Theresa May’s withdrawal of her own motion in Parliament yesterday, leaves no option for us as leaders of opposition parties but to call for a motion of no confidence to be put on the floor of the House of Commons.

Labour’s annual conference in September voted for a policy that commits your party to oppose a bad Brexit deal, seek a General Election and, if that does not succeed, campaign for a People’s Vote. Today is your opportunity to begin fulfilling that policy by joining the Westminster Parliamentary leaders of the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales) and the Green Party in supporting a motion of no confidence in the Government.

We believe a motion of no confidence must be brought forward at the earliest possible opportunity, to ensure there is enough time to pursue another course. Therefore we want to emphasise again that you will have our full support if you put down a motion of no confidence.

Today, we ask that you, together with your Shadow Cabinet, agree as Her Majesty’s Leader of the Opposition to bring forward a motion with us to enable confidence in this government to be tested before it is too late and to put parliament back in charge of this process.  

We intend to hold a joint press conference today at the IET in Central London where we will discuss this further.

Yours sincerely
 
 
Ian Blackford MP – Leader of the Scottish National Party (Westminster)
Liz Saville Roberts MP – Westminster Group Leader, Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales)
Caroline Lucas MP – Green Party
Rt Hon Sir Vince Cable MP – Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party.
Remain campaigners will hold a press conference later today making their case for another vote.
But yesterday Mrs May slapped them down yet again, saying holding a second vote would only lead to calls for a THIRD one in future.
She told MPs in the Commons when asked about another vote by Caroline Lucas: "Does she honestly think that If we were to have another referendum and it came out with a different result, people wouldn't say we should have a third referendum to find out what the result was?"
And she added: "I wonder if it came out with the same result, she would still be asking for another vote."
Several MPs used her Commons appearance to demand a so-called 'People's Vote' on another deal.
But Mrs May slapped them down, saying she genuinely believed that the people's first say should be respected and Brexit MUST be delivered.
Mrs May said: "I believe that as a country we should meet those obligations."
"I think those people, many of whom voted for the first time when they voted in the referendum in 2016, will indeed question why should we vote in future if this Parliament does not deliver on that result," she stressed.
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Politicians from the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru have written to the Labour boss begging him to move a motion of no confidence in Theresa May
REMAINERS who want a second Brexit vote are trying to twist Jeremy Corbyn's arm and get him on side.
Politicians from the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru have written to the Labour boss begging him to move a motion of no confidence in Theresa May.
They think that will help pave the way for a second referendum on Brexit.
Yesterday a desperate Mrs May pulled the vote on Brexit, admitting she would suffer a humiliating defeat if it went ahead.
She told MPs she would now go back to Brussels to fight for more assurances.
Today she's flying around Europe for crunch meetings with Angela Merkel and EU bosses to see whether she can change their minds.
Remainers say that the time to try and oust her is now because the Government don't have a working majority.
But even if all the other parties in Westminster teamed up, there still wouldn't be enough votes to bring the Government down unless some Tories or the DUP voted with them.
The Northern Irish party has said they will support the PM in a confidence vote at the moment.
Yesterday Mr Corbyn chickened out of the bid to force Mrs May out of office, amid the day's Brexit chaos.
The Labour boss won't bring forward a vote of no confidence forward until she comes back to the House of Commons with changes, which he thinks will mean nothing to MPs.
The party don't want to act prematurely in case they lose and end up accidentally keeping her in office.
Scottish First minister Nicola Sturgeon also called on Mr Corbyn to oust the PM and go for a second vote, saying it was the "only way" to resolve the impasse in the Commons.
Meanwhile the odds on a second Brexit vote have been cut again.
Dear Jeremy


Today, the Shadow Cabinet is meeting at a time of constitutional and national crisis.  

The Government’s inability to pass its Brexit deal through Parliament, as witnessed by Theresa May’s withdrawal of her own motion in Parliament yesterday, leaves no option for us as leaders of opposition parties but to call for a motion of no confidence to be put on the floor of the House of Commons.

Labour’s annual conference in September voted for a policy that commits your party to oppose a bad Brexit deal, seek a General Election and, if that does not succeed, campaign for a People’s Vote. Today is your opportunity to begin fulfilling that policy by joining the Westminster Parliamentary leaders of the Scottish National Party, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales) and the Green Party in supporting a motion of no confidence in the Government.

We believe a motion of no confidence must be brought forward at the earliest possible opportunity, to ensure there is enough time to pursue another course. Therefore we want to emphasise again that you will have our full support if you put down a motion of no confidence.

Today, we ask that you, together with your Shadow Cabinet, agree as Her Majesty’s Leader of the Opposition to bring forward a motion with us to enable confidence in this government to be tested before it is too late and to put parliament back in charge of this process.  

We intend to hold a joint press conference today at the IET in Central London where we will discuss this further.

Yours sincerely
 
 
Ian Blackford MP – Leader of the Scottish National Party (Westminster)
Liz Saville Roberts MP – Westminster Group Leader, Plaid Cymru (The Party of Wales)
Caroline Lucas MP – Green Party
Rt Hon Sir Vince Cable MP – Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party.
Remain campaigners will hold a press conference later today making their case for another vote.
But yesterday Mrs May slapped them down yet again, saying holding a second vote would only lead to calls for a THIRD one in future.
She told MPs in the Commons when asked about another vote by Caroline Lucas: "Does she honestly think that If we were to have another referendum and it came out with a different result, people wouldn't say we should have a third referendum to find out what the result was?"
And she added: "I wonder if it came out with the same result, she would still be asking for another vote."
Several MPs used her Commons appearance to demand a so-called 'People's Vote' on another deal.
But Mrs May slapped them down, saying she genuinely believed that the people's first say should be respected and Brexit MUST be delivered.
Mrs May said: "I believe that as a country we should meet those obligations."
"I think those people, many of whom voted for the first time when they voted in the referendum in 2016, will indeed question why should we vote in future if this Parliament does not deliver on that result," she stressed.
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The 14 rebels include former minister Caroline Flint who was branded a 'deviant Blairite' and John Mann who shrugged off the abuse
LABOUR MPs who backed the PM’s Brexit plan have been bombarded with abuse from hardline party activists.
They have been labelled “poisonous snakes” and “Tory scum” by furious Corbyn supporters.
The 14 MPs were targeted in a vicious online hate campaign after they voted in the national interest to stop Britain’s EU departure from being delayed.
Former minister Caroline Flint was branded a “traitor”, a “disgrace” and a “deviant Blairite”.
Even Left-wing veteran Dennis Skinner was targeted by the hate mob who told him to “f*** off and join the Tories”.
One Twitter post called for him to be deselected and another labelled him a “Tory scab”.
Labour’s top man in the EU, Richard Corbett MEP, listed the names of Labour MPs who voted with the government and called them “disgraceful”.
Matthew Zarb-Cousin, a former adviser to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, posted: “They’re getting deselected”.
Fellow Corbyn cheerleader Paul Mason said they had made it easier to expel them from the party “and select socialists instead of xenophobes”.
In one social media post, John Mann and Kate Hoey were dubbed a “vile pair of hypocrites”.
But last night Mr Mann shrugged it off and said: “Most of this abuse is coming from the angry middle-classes who are really worried that the oiks might win.
“I’ve had lots of them hurling insults. One said ‘I hope you starve yourself to death.’”
Mr Mann has also come under fire for accepting a “bribe” from Theresa May in return for backing her Brexit deal.
The PM has offered to splash the cash in Labour heartlands, which prompted the Bassetlaw MP to quip: “Show me the money.”
Yesterday he defended his position saying that there was nothing wrong with attracting much-needed investment in his constituency.
He added: “I’ve had the most amazing response from people on the street today – Remainers saying thank you for bringing the country together and Leavers happy that we’re helping to deliver Brexit.
“We are using the Prime Minister’s need for our support on Brexit to try to get a better deal for our constituencies – and I will not apologise for that.”
The 14 rebels include former minister Caroline Flint who was branded a 'deviant Blairite' and John Mann who shrugged off the abuse
LABOUR MPs who backed the PM’s Brexit plan have been bombarded with abuse from hardline party activists.
They have been labelled “poisonous snakes” and “Tory scum” by furious Corbyn supporters.
The 14 MPs were targeted in a vicious online hate campaign after they voted in the national interest to stop Britain’s EU departure from being delayed.
Former minister Caroline Flint was branded a “traitor”, a “disgrace” and a “deviant Blairite”.
Even Left-wing veteran Dennis Skinner was targeted by the hate mob who told him to “f*** off and join the Tories”.
One Twitter post called for him to be deselected and another labelled him a “Tory scab”.
Labour’s top man in the EU, Richard Corbett MEP, listed the names of Labour MPs who voted with the government and called them “disgraceful”.
Matthew Zarb-Cousin, a former adviser to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, posted: “They’re getting deselected”.
Fellow Corbyn cheerleader Paul Mason said they had made it easier to expel them from the party “and select socialists instead of xenophobes”.
In one social media post, John Mann and Kate Hoey were dubbed a “vile pair of hypocrites”.
But last night Mr Mann shrugged it off and said: “Most of this abuse is coming from the angry middle-classes who are really worried that the oiks might win.
“I’ve had lots of them hurling insults. One said ‘I hope you starve yourself to death.’”
Mr Mann has also come under fire for accepting a “bribe” from Theresa May in return for backing her Brexit deal.
The PM has offered to splash the cash in Labour heartlands, which prompted the Bassetlaw MP to quip: “Show me the money.”
Yesterday he defended his position saying that there was nothing wrong with attracting much-needed investment in his constituency.
He added: “I’ve had the most amazing response from people on the street today – Remainers saying thank you for bringing the country together and Leavers happy that we’re helping to deliver Brexit.
“We are using the Prime Minister’s need for our support on Brexit to try to get a better deal for our constituencies – and I will not apologise for that.”
EU capitals say the UK must accept key EU laws, as well as granting fishing rights, as part of a border compromise
BRUSSELS will look to use a UK-wide fudge on the Irish border to tie Britain into a permanent customs union after Brexit, The Sun can reveal.
European capitals believe there must be a clear “link” between what is agreed for the backstop solution and the terms of the future trade deal.
They say the UK must accept a “level playing field” binding it to follow key EU laws, as well as granting fishing rights, as part of a border compromise.
Member States believe legal constraints and the effort required to patch together a customs union at such short notice mean it should be long-lasting.
A senior diplomatic source told The Sun: “Whatever we do UK-wide there has to be a link with what will be the future relationship.
“You can’t say we do a customs union for two to three years and then they have an escape clause and can simply terminate it.”
Asked if capitals expect Britain to sign up to a similar customs arrangement in the political declaration on trade, they replied: “Yes, indeed.”
A second EU diplomat questioned why London would seek a UK-wide customs solution if it weren’t to be the bedrock for the future relationship.
They said: “The idea is the Customs Union is of such quality and sufficient enough assurances to obviate the need for the backstop.
“That can only be if it’s enduring, not time-limited, and therefore at least a baseline for the Political Framework.”
A third diplomat added: “If you have this UK-wide backstop, it very much the link to the future relationship, so this complicates discussions right now.”
The revelations are likely to infuriate Brexiteers and raise fears that a backstop fudge will keep Britain permanently in the bloc’s trade policies.In a customs union the UK would be unable to sign its own deals and would be bound by the terms of any FTAs Brussels agreed without our say.
Westminster would also have to agree to follow a large chunk of EU law in areas covering state aid, the environment and workers’ rights.
A fourth source said: “It is important that Britain would not undercut our own products on our own market in the all-UK Irish backstop.”
Irish PM Leo Varadkar yesterday insisted that instability in Westminster meant the bloc cannot compromise on its Brexit stance.
Speaking in Helsinki, he said: “The difficulties that happen in the UK can’t allow us in any way to soften our position in my view.”
Meanwhile the Austrian press reported EU officials are upbeat that a Brexit deal can be sealed “in the next few days”.
Diplomats admit to The Sun that the terms of the “Irish backstop” which Theresa May’s Cabinet is poised to back would then be deployed to lock us in its grip permanently.
Forget those trade deals with America, China, India, Canada or anywhere else.
All would be banned.
Despite us voting for Brexit. Despite MPs voting to leave the customs union.
Despite all the Prime Minister’s ambitious speeches about a global Britain.
To get a post-Brexit trade deal, we would have to swallow crippling conditions the EU does not impose on others.
Absurdly, it would retain control over the trading policy of the world’s fifth largest economy — by then a non-EU member. And, according to Ireland’s cocky PM Leo Varadkar, we would have to stick to all EU rules. Permanently.
Can the Tories really sign up to this?
Or will they stand and fight?
Some believe we can get out of it all once we have left, next March 29.
We’re not convinced. Even if Britain could, when have we ever done anything but stick slavishly to every letter of our international obligations?
We are not French, let’s face it.
EU capitals say the UK must accept key EU laws, as well as granting fishing rights, as part of a border compromise
BRUSSELS will look to use a UK-wide fudge on the Irish border to tie Britain into a permanent customs union after Brexit, The Sun can reveal.
European capitals believe there must be a clear “link” between what is agreed for the backstop solution and the terms of the future trade deal.
They say the UK must accept a “level playing field” binding it to follow key EU laws, as well as granting fishing rights, as part of a border compromise.
Member States believe legal constraints and the effort required to patch together a customs union at such short notice mean it should be long-lasting.
A senior diplomatic source told The Sun: “Whatever we do UK-wide there has to be a link with what will be the future relationship.
“You can’t say we do a customs union for two to three years and then they have an escape clause and can simply terminate it.”
Asked if capitals expect Britain to sign up to a similar customs arrangement in the political declaration on trade, they replied: “Yes, indeed.”
A second EU diplomat questioned why London would seek a UK-wide customs solution if it weren’t to be the bedrock for the future relationship.
They said: “The idea is the Customs Union is of such quality and sufficient enough assurances to obviate the need for the backstop.
“That can only be if it’s enduring, not time-limited, and therefore at least a baseline for the Political Framework.”
A third diplomat added: “If you have this UK-wide backstop, it very much the link to the future relationship, so this complicates discussions right now.”
The revelations are likely to infuriate Brexiteers and raise fears that a backstop fudge will keep Britain permanently in the bloc’s trade policies.In a customs union the UK would be unable to sign its own deals and would be bound by the terms of any FTAs Brussels agreed without our say.
Westminster would also have to agree to follow a large chunk of EU law in areas covering state aid, the environment and workers’ rights.
A fourth source said: “It is important that Britain would not undercut our own products on our own market in the all-UK Irish backstop.”
Irish PM Leo Varadkar yesterday insisted that instability in Westminster meant the bloc cannot compromise on its Brexit stance.
Speaking in Helsinki, he said: “The difficulties that happen in the UK can’t allow us in any way to soften our position in my view.”
Meanwhile the Austrian press reported EU officials are upbeat that a Brexit deal can be sealed “in the next few days”.
Diplomats admit to The Sun that the terms of the “Irish backstop” which Theresa May’s Cabinet is poised to back would then be deployed to lock us in its grip permanently.
Forget those trade deals with America, China, India, Canada or anywhere else.
All would be banned.
Despite us voting for Brexit. Despite MPs voting to leave the customs union.
Despite all the Prime Minister’s ambitious speeches about a global Britain.
To get a post-Brexit trade deal, we would have to swallow crippling conditions the EU does not impose on others.
Absurdly, it would retain control over the trading policy of the world’s fifth largest economy — by then a non-EU member. And, according to Ireland’s cocky PM Leo Varadkar, we would have to stick to all EU rules. Permanently.
Can the Tories really sign up to this?
Or will they stand and fight?
Some believe we can get out of it all once we have left, next March 29.
We’re not convinced. Even if Britain could, when have we ever done anything but stick slavishly to every letter of our international obligations?
We are not French, let’s face it.
If the PM is unable to solve a row with the EU over customs and the Irish border and present a deal to the Cabinet within the next 48 hours, then there is no chance of a November EU summit
THERESA May was last night 48 HOURS from having to trigger hundreds of millions-worth of No Deal projects as Brexit talks entered deadlock.
The UK’s Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins held yet another round of intense talks with the EU’s Sabine Weyand yesterday to try and solve a row over customs and the Irish border.
But Whitehall sources warned the chances of a deal being ready to present to Cabinet meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday morning were drifting away.
They admitted if the PM is unable to put a withdrawal agreement before the Cabinet in 48 hours the chances of a November summit with the EU are OFF.
This means having to authorise No Deal projects for new IT systems and projects to protect Britain’s borders. November 15 is the deadline for Ministers to place an order for ships to bring in necessary supplies – and to put plans in place to stockpile medicines – in a cash of a chaotic No Deal.
One source said: “It’s going down to the wire. If it doesn’t happen this week it will have to be a December summit – and it all gets much tighter.”
The deadlock centres on a ‘mechanism’ by which the UK could leave a post-Brexit customs union designed to avoid a Hard Border in Ireland. But the EU is insisting the European Court of Justice has the final say whether the UK can go.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom yesterday warned the PM she has no chance of getting a Brexit deal through the Commons unless Britain can unilaterally pull out of the customs pact.
In a striking intervention she said: “I don’t think something that trapped the UK in any arrangement against our will would be sellable to members of Parliament”. Separately Education Secretary Damian Hinds admitted it was “very, very unlikely” that the withdrawal agreement would provide for the UK’s “unilateral exit” or give “fixed, hard end date” for when the temporary customs union would end.
Eurosceptics want Britain to leave the customs union with the EU so Britain can strike free trade deals with the rest of the world.
The Government is today just 48 hours from having to trigger its first full-scale contingency plans for a No Deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, a deeply divided Cabinet will meet to discuss Theresa May’s increasingly messy Brexit proposals.
If they do not back her, then a No Deal Brexit will edge closer. And, even if the Cabinet sign it off, it is likely that MPs in Parliament will block it anyway.
Mrs May’s mantra has always been that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
So, what happened, PM?
The Government’s failure to properly plan for a No Deal Brexit has greatly weakened our negotiating position.
Instead, Mrs May has continually caved in to EU demands. EU chief Michel Barnier is more interested in forcing us to reverse the Referendum result than negotiating in good faith.
The EU’s refusal to accept Britain’s proposal to stay in a Customs Union temporarily is just the latest example.
Indeed, the prospect of indefinitely remaining in a Customs Union, with the European Court of Justice overseeing it, would be a humiliating capitulation.
It would stop us from ever being able to trade freely around the world, killing the economic case for Brexit.
Why has the Government lost confidence that Britain can thrive outside the bloc? We are the world’s fifth largest economy and attracted the second highest levels of investment this year.
A No Deal Brexit would, at least, involve the UK properly leaving the EU rather than remaining as a vassal state.
One hundred years ago, we saw what Britain could achieve if we stood united and steadfast.
We desperately need some of that British grit today, PM.
Brexit champion Jacob Rees Mogg yesterday backed for “No Deal Plus” compromise first revealed in the Sun on Saturday.
Under the plan Britain would leave the EU without a deal on March 29 – but pay £20 billion to keep ties with the bloc as they are until December 2020 to either plan for a No Deal or buy more time to negotiate a new trading relationship. Mr Rees Mogg said: “It would cost us money, but it would finally dispel the ‘crash out’ Project Fear nightmare scenarios.”
No.10 last night said it was not willing to strike a deal with the UK “at any cost”.
If the PM is unable to solve a row with the EU over customs and the Irish border and present a deal to the Cabinet within the next 48 hours, then there is no chance of a November EU summit
THERESA May was last night 48 HOURS from having to trigger hundreds of millions-worth of No Deal projects as Brexit talks entered deadlock.
The UK’s Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins held yet another round of intense talks with the EU’s Sabine Weyand yesterday to try and solve a row over customs and the Irish border.
But Whitehall sources warned the chances of a deal being ready to present to Cabinet meeting on Tuesday or Wednesday morning were drifting away.
They admitted if the PM is unable to put a withdrawal agreement before the Cabinet in 48 hours the chances of a November summit with the EU are OFF.
This means having to authorise No Deal projects for new IT systems and projects to protect Britain’s borders. November 15 is the deadline for Ministers to place an order for ships to bring in necessary supplies – and to put plans in place to stockpile medicines – in a cash of a chaotic No Deal.
One source said: “It’s going down to the wire. If it doesn’t happen this week it will have to be a December summit – and it all gets much tighter.”
The deadlock centres on a ‘mechanism’ by which the UK could leave a post-Brexit customs union designed to avoid a Hard Border in Ireland. But the EU is insisting the European Court of Justice has the final say whether the UK can go.
Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom yesterday warned the PM she has no chance of getting a Brexit deal through the Commons unless Britain can unilaterally pull out of the customs pact.
In a striking intervention she said: “I don’t think something that trapped the UK in any arrangement against our will would be sellable to members of Parliament”. Separately Education Secretary Damian Hinds admitted it was “very, very unlikely” that the withdrawal agreement would provide for the UK’s “unilateral exit” or give “fixed, hard end date” for when the temporary customs union would end.
Eurosceptics want Britain to leave the customs union with the EU so Britain can strike free trade deals with the rest of the world.
The Government is today just 48 hours from having to trigger its first full-scale contingency plans for a No Deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, a deeply divided Cabinet will meet to discuss Theresa May’s increasingly messy Brexit proposals.
If they do not back her, then a No Deal Brexit will edge closer. And, even if the Cabinet sign it off, it is likely that MPs in Parliament will block it anyway.
Mrs May’s mantra has always been that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
So, what happened, PM?
The Government’s failure to properly plan for a No Deal Brexit has greatly weakened our negotiating position.
Instead, Mrs May has continually caved in to EU demands. EU chief Michel Barnier is more interested in forcing us to reverse the Referendum result than negotiating in good faith.
The EU’s refusal to accept Britain’s proposal to stay in a Customs Union temporarily is just the latest example.
Indeed, the prospect of indefinitely remaining in a Customs Union, with the European Court of Justice overseeing it, would be a humiliating capitulation.
It would stop us from ever being able to trade freely around the world, killing the economic case for Brexit.
Why has the Government lost confidence that Britain can thrive outside the bloc? We are the world’s fifth largest economy and attracted the second highest levels of investment this year.
A No Deal Brexit would, at least, involve the UK properly leaving the EU rather than remaining as a vassal state.
One hundred years ago, we saw what Britain could achieve if we stood united and steadfast.
We desperately need some of that British grit today, PM.
Brexit champion Jacob Rees Mogg yesterday backed for “No Deal Plus” compromise first revealed in the Sun on Saturday.
Under the plan Britain would leave the EU without a deal on March 29 – but pay £20 billion to keep ties with the bloc as they are until December 2020 to either plan for a No Deal or buy more time to negotiate a new trading relationship. Mr Rees Mogg said: “It would cost us money, but it would finally dispel the ‘crash out’ Project Fear nightmare scenarios.”
No.10 last night said it was not willing to strike a deal with the UK “at any cost”.
Ireland has no power to prevent British planes flying overhead despite the threat from the country's Prime Minister
DOWNING Street said Ireland had no power to stop British planes flying over Ireland - in a furious rebuke to the Irish PM’s threat.
Leo Varadkar issued the extraordinary warning amid growing fears of a no-deal Brexit.
But a spokesman for Theresa May shot back this morning - saying he was ill-informed.
In a fiery slap-down, a Downing Street spokesman said: “It’s wrong to claim that Ireland could simply stop the UK from flying over its land as a result of Brexit.
“The reason why we say that is because over flight rights are not guaranteed by the EU - rather by the multilateral treaty which both ourselves and Ireland are signed up to.”
"It’s something that’s agreed by a treaty and regardless of it we think we will secure a deal which will maintain our aviation access.”
Mr Varadkar said his air ban would be a tit-for-tat action in the event of Mrs May cutting Irish fishermen’s access to our waters.
But Ireland could only block British planes by quitting the treaty.
The UK and Ireland also have a deal that RAF jets will intervene in a doomsday scenario.
Because the Irish do not have fast fighter jets, they would rely on UK planes in the event of a Russian attack or terror hijack.
Responding to The Sun’s front page story on his threat yesterday, Mr Varadkar said: “I don’t get bothered about what appears in British tabloids.
“I am always of the view that if somebody engages in name calling it is probably because they don’t want to talk about the substance.
“I am not the slightest bit concerned about some of that language that we are seeing coming out of London.
“What matters really is what happens between the Governments - the 27 Governments of the EU, the institutions (and the UK).
“That is all very grown up and civilised.
“Of course there are going to be twists and turns along the way but we are all working very hard to come up with a solution.”
Varadkar did though insist he thought a solution was still possible after Theresa May’s speech this week in Belfast.
He said: “I am very confident that we will avoid a ‘no deal’ hard Brexit scenario.
“Nevertheless, we must prepare for that possibility no matter how remote it is.
“But if we are going to come up with a solution, a withdrawal agreement with a transition period with a framework for a new relationship with a back-stop (for Northern Ireland), time is short.
“Really people need to get on with it - it is welcome that after two years of waiting we do now have a position from the British Government as to what they want the future relationship to look like.”
“What they have put forward is an evolution from their previous position.”
“It is not a solution but I do think it can input into talks.”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
Ireland has no power to prevent British planes flying overhead despite the threat from the country's Prime Minister
DOWNING Street said Ireland had no power to stop British planes flying over Ireland - in a furious rebuke to the Irish PM’s threat.
Leo Varadkar issued the extraordinary warning amid growing fears of a no-deal Brexit.
But a spokesman for Theresa May shot back this morning - saying he was ill-informed.
In a fiery slap-down, a Downing Street spokesman said: “It’s wrong to claim that Ireland could simply stop the UK from flying over its land as a result of Brexit.
“The reason why we say that is because over flight rights are not guaranteed by the EU - rather by the multilateral treaty which both ourselves and Ireland are signed up to.”
"It’s something that’s agreed by a treaty and regardless of it we think we will secure a deal which will maintain our aviation access.”
Mr Varadkar said his air ban would be a tit-for-tat action in the event of Mrs May cutting Irish fishermen’s access to our waters.
But Ireland could only block British planes by quitting the treaty.
The UK and Ireland also have a deal that RAF jets will intervene in a doomsday scenario.
Because the Irish do not have fast fighter jets, they would rely on UK planes in the event of a Russian attack or terror hijack.
Responding to The Sun’s front page story on his threat yesterday, Mr Varadkar said: “I don’t get bothered about what appears in British tabloids.
“I am always of the view that if somebody engages in name calling it is probably because they don’t want to talk about the substance.
“I am not the slightest bit concerned about some of that language that we are seeing coming out of London.
“What matters really is what happens between the Governments - the 27 Governments of the EU, the institutions (and the UK).
“That is all very grown up and civilised.
“Of course there are going to be twists and turns along the way but we are all working very hard to come up with a solution.”
Varadkar did though insist he thought a solution was still possible after Theresa May’s speech this week in Belfast.
He said: “I am very confident that we will avoid a ‘no deal’ hard Brexit scenario.
“Nevertheless, we must prepare for that possibility no matter how remote it is.
“But if we are going to come up with a solution, a withdrawal agreement with a transition period with a framework for a new relationship with a back-stop (for Northern Ireland), time is short.
“Really people need to get on with it - it is welcome that after two years of waiting we do now have a position from the British Government as to what they want the future relationship to look like.”
“What they have put forward is an evolution from their previous position.”
“It is not a solution but I do think it can input into talks.”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
A top watchdog says that Britain could be held to ransom if EU negotiations turn sour
BRUSSELS could hold Britain to ransom by demanding billions to keep planes in the sky in the event of a bitter No Deal – a top watchdog claimed yesterday.
National Audit Office (NAO) chief Sir Amyas Morse warned it was entirely possible that a Brexit stand-off with the EU could turn sour.
And he said that if the UK got “tough” by withholding the entire £39 billion divorce bill, Brussels could seek revenge by refusing to sign “mutual” agreements to keep airlines in the sky.
He told MPs: “It’s not implausible. It is not impossible, and it could happen by mistake rather than deliberately.
“Agreements will require mutual goodwill and if we take a very tough attitude, and say take us to court for whatever money, it’s not impossible to think of scenarios where people may not be terribly well disposed to us.”
The warning came as the NAO chief predicted chaos at the border if Britain crashes out of the EU in March without a deal.
He said it was inevitable there would be “points of failure” across Government. And he warned Chris Grayling’s Department for Transport was underestimating the risks of a No Deal.
He said there was a worry the DfT believed the situation was “less risky than it actually is”.
Speaking to the cross-party Brexit Select Committee, the government watchdog said ‘No Deal’ preparations had improved dramatically in recent months. But he said Parliament would likely to have force MPs to sit throughout the night to pass a wave of necessary legislation before Brexit day.
And he hit out at the “secrecy” of Brexit talks – saying many civil servants had been forced to rely on reading NAO reports on Government departments to find out what has been happening.
Last month, France’s Minister for European Affairs said Eurostar trains may stop running in the event of a chaotic Brexit.
Nathalie Loiseau said there was a real possibility of France turning away trains and planes.
A top watchdog says that Britain could be held to ransom if EU negotiations turn sour
BRUSSELS could hold Britain to ransom by demanding billions to keep planes in the sky in the event of a bitter No Deal – a top watchdog claimed yesterday.
National Audit Office (NAO) chief Sir Amyas Morse warned it was entirely possible that a Brexit stand-off with the EU could turn sour.
And he said that if the UK got “tough” by withholding the entire £39 billion divorce bill, Brussels could seek revenge by refusing to sign “mutual” agreements to keep airlines in the sky.
He told MPs: “It’s not implausible. It is not impossible, and it could happen by mistake rather than deliberately.
“Agreements will require mutual goodwill and if we take a very tough attitude, and say take us to court for whatever money, it’s not impossible to think of scenarios where people may not be terribly well disposed to us.”
The warning came as the NAO chief predicted chaos at the border if Britain crashes out of the EU in March without a deal.
He said it was inevitable there would be “points of failure” across Government. And he warned Chris Grayling’s Department for Transport was underestimating the risks of a No Deal.
He said there was a worry the DfT believed the situation was “less risky than it actually is”.
Speaking to the cross-party Brexit Select Committee, the government watchdog said ‘No Deal’ preparations had improved dramatically in recent months. But he said Parliament would likely to have force MPs to sit throughout the night to pass a wave of necessary legislation before Brexit day.
And he hit out at the “secrecy” of Brexit talks – saying many civil servants had been forced to rely on reading NAO reports on Government departments to find out what has been happening.
Last month, France’s Minister for European Affairs said Eurostar trains may stop running in the event of a chaotic Brexit.
Nathalie Loiseau said there was a real possibility of France turning away trains and planes.
I AM standing to be the Leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister to provide the decisive leadership that will deliver our exit from the EU, and seize the bright future that awaits us.
I campaigned passionately for Leave in the 2016 referendum and share the frustration of millions that the promise made three years ago has not been kept.
It is vital that we leave the EU by October 31, without any further extension to that deadline.
The EU tell us they will not reopen the Withdrawal Agreement. I take them at their word - so on that basis the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is dead.
Instead, I have a pragmatic three-step plan - a plan to deliver Brexit in a way that protects citizens of the UK and the EU, delivers certainty to businesses, and maintains the integrity of our United Kingdom.
No more prevaricating. No more fearmongering. And no more limbo. Just compassionate and decisive action that demonstrates leadership.
My first step will be to take sensible measures to enshrine certain agreements into law, and to protect our people.
I will immediately introduce key legislation to address this.
First, I will introduce a citizens’ rights bill. EU citizens who have built lives here, and UK citizens who have made their homes in the EU must have the weight of uncertainty lifted from their shoulders.
Second, I will introduce a bill that locks in the mutually beneficial measures that have already been agreed between the UK and EU.
This will cover areas like citizens’ rights in Gibraltar, our sovereign bases overseas, security and intelligence-sharing relationships, transport, data, and medicines.
It is in everyone’s interest to put these agreed arrangements in place, and I believe many MPs would support this, regardless of how they voted in the referendum.
The second step is to give businesses and industry the confidence and certainty they need to plan for a managed exit. I want them to be able to invest, hire, and innovate with renewed optimism.
So we will ramp up preparations for our managed exit, focusing efforts on delivering alternative arrangements for the Northern Ireland border with the EU.
Our continued strong bond with Northern Ireland will be protected.
There are some sensitive sectors that rely upon ‘just-in-time’ supply chains, like automotive and aerospace. I know how important these are, and we will propose specific regulatory agreements with the EU for these.
For other industries, like medicines and agri-foods, we will seek specific customs agreements on tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This will protect trade in the most vital goods and services but allow us to embrace new free trade deals around the world.
At the core of this work will be open communication to Parliament, the public, and EU colleagues about progress, to build an environment of confidence and certainty. Parliament will receive regular updates, and households and businesses will receive communication from government that provides clear information about our managed exit.
Transparency will be at the heart of everything I do - it’s what parliament expects, and it’s what the public deserves.
The third step will be to lead a delegation of UK Ministers to meet with the EU Council and the proposed new EU Commissioners, to talk directly about the wide-ranging preparations we are making for a managed exit on October 31.
Discussions will culminate in a UK/EU summit, in September, in Belfast and Dublin, where the EU Council and proposed Commission will be invited to agree which measures we will all accept, to ensure a properly managed exit.
As Prime Minister, I will not advocate an extension of any kind, and it will be clear that in all circumstances the UK will leave the EU at the end of October. With comprehensive arrangements in place, we will be prepared for any eventuality.
We owe it to the country, and to our strong democratic tradition, to fulfil the instruction that our voters gave us.
I am a passionate, pragmatic and positive believer in Brexit, and with my three-step plan, we can decisively leave the EU. We can demonstrate to the world that the UK remains a beacon for opportunity, fairness and democratic leadership. We can restore that vital trust between politics and the people.
It’s not too late to take advantage of the opportunities we hoped for in voting Leave. It’s time to look forward; we have an incredibly bright future ahead of us.
I AM standing to be the Leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister to provide the decisive leadership that will deliver our exit from the EU, and seize the bright future that awaits us.
I campaigned passionately for Leave in the 2016 referendum and share the frustration of millions that the promise made three years ago has not been kept.
It is vital that we leave the EU by October 31, without any further extension to that deadline.
The EU tell us they will not reopen the Withdrawal Agreement. I take them at their word - so on that basis the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is dead.
Instead, I have a pragmatic three-step plan - a plan to deliver Brexit in a way that protects citizens of the UK and the EU, delivers certainty to businesses, and maintains the integrity of our United Kingdom.
No more prevaricating. No more fearmongering. And no more limbo. Just compassionate and decisive action that demonstrates leadership.
My first step will be to take sensible measures to enshrine certain agreements into law, and to protect our people.
I will immediately introduce key legislation to address this.
First, I will introduce a citizens’ rights bill. EU citizens who have built lives here, and UK citizens who have made their homes in the EU must have the weight of uncertainty lifted from their shoulders.
Second, I will introduce a bill that locks in the mutually beneficial measures that have already been agreed between the UK and EU.
This will cover areas like citizens’ rights in Gibraltar, our sovereign bases overseas, security and intelligence-sharing relationships, transport, data, and medicines.
It is in everyone’s interest to put these agreed arrangements in place, and I believe many MPs would support this, regardless of how they voted in the referendum.
The second step is to give businesses and industry the confidence and certainty they need to plan for a managed exit. I want them to be able to invest, hire, and innovate with renewed optimism.
So we will ramp up preparations for our managed exit, focusing efforts on delivering alternative arrangements for the Northern Ireland border with the EU.
Our continued strong bond with Northern Ireland will be protected.
There are some sensitive sectors that rely upon ‘just-in-time’ supply chains, like automotive and aerospace. I know how important these are, and we will propose specific regulatory agreements with the EU for these.
For other industries, like medicines and agri-foods, we will seek specific customs agreements on tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This will protect trade in the most vital goods and services but allow us to embrace new free trade deals around the world.
At the core of this work will be open communication to Parliament, the public, and EU colleagues about progress, to build an environment of confidence and certainty. Parliament will receive regular updates, and households and businesses will receive communication from government that provides clear information about our managed exit.
Transparency will be at the heart of everything I do - it’s what parliament expects, and it’s what the public deserves.
The third step will be to lead a delegation of UK Ministers to meet with the EU Council and the proposed new EU Commissioners, to talk directly about the wide-ranging preparations we are making for a managed exit on October 31.
Discussions will culminate in a UK/EU summit, in September, in Belfast and Dublin, where the EU Council and proposed Commission will be invited to agree which measures we will all accept, to ensure a properly managed exit.
As Prime Minister, I will not advocate an extension of any kind, and it will be clear that in all circumstances the UK will leave the EU at the end of October. With comprehensive arrangements in place, we will be prepared for any eventuality.
We owe it to the country, and to our strong democratic tradition, to fulfil the instruction that our voters gave us.
I am a passionate, pragmatic and positive believer in Brexit, and with my three-step plan, we can decisively leave the EU. We can demonstrate to the world that the UK remains a beacon for opportunity, fairness and democratic leadership. We can restore that vital trust between politics and the people.
It’s not too late to take advantage of the opportunities we hoped for in voting Leave. It’s time to look forward; we have an incredibly bright future ahead of us.
My own colleagues must not hold Theresa May to ransom at such a critical point, and instead, we must hold our nerve and push through
WHAT gets you out of bed in the morning? This is a question I’m often asked as a politician.
It tends to be closely followed by a dozen other questions about what I’ll do in “x” scenario, or whether I’ll resign if “y” happens.
But the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is the same thing that drove me into national politics nearly a decade ago — and that is to help the UK become an even greater force for good in the world.
We can only achieve that with a strong and united government which collectively seeks to deliver on the ­referendum and trusts in the path we set out.
I believed in 2016, as I strongly believe now, that we have a bright future of independence ahead of us.
Like so many other people in the UK, I took the chance offered to us in a ­single ­question: Should we leave the European Union or remain within it?
Following a great deal of thought and thorough analysis, the answer I arrived at was: “Yes, we should leave the EU.”
Like so many of my ­generation and those younger, I have spent most of my life in the EU and my instincts were naturally for reform from within.
I believed in a number of the EU’s core values — the promotion of peace, global trading opportunities and the ­values of freedom and democracy.
These are areas in which our great country leads the world.
But with the good came the bad and the ugly — the bureaucracy, the waste, the ever-closer union, the diminishing of our own sovereign power.
In co-founding the Fresh Start Project, I spent the years preceding the referendum up close and personal with the EU.
I saw first-hand the things that worked and the things that didn’t, and the project team delivered a manifesto for change to then-Prime Minister David Cameron, suggesting ways to fundamentally reform the EU for the better and reverse the road we were going down.
His renegotiation was finalised three years ago almost to the day — and it’s safe to say that despite his best efforts, the reforms proposed were deeply ­disappointing, with a real lack of ­ambition.
So when the EU’s denial of the need for reform and their intransigence to the PM’s reasonable proposals became clear, the decision I should take was made blindingly obvious to me. We should leave the EU and forge a new path in the world.
It was put to a referendum and the rest, as they say, is history.
For some, though, the result of the ­referendum is not history. It’s something they are desperate to re-run.
Calls for an extension, a delay or even a second referendum are persistent — but so too is my
determination, and the ­determination of this Government, to deliver on the will of the first one.
Democracy is not about trying again until you get the result you want.
It’s about compromise and accepting that while we might disagree with each other, we should respect each other’s views.
That need for compromise is precisely why we continue to negotiate with the EU. The Prime Minister is fighting hard to make sure we leave with a good deal on March 29.
Democracy is not about trying again until you get the result you want
That determination is the reason I believe that the Conservative Party is the only party delivering in the national interest.
The Prime Minister has made clear through her actions that whether you voted Leave or Remain, the deal she seeks will look to bring everyone back together.
Whether you are someone who can’t wait to see us leave the EU, or whether you wish the result of the referendum had been different — we all, each of us, just want the best for the UK.
We have a bright future ahead and one in which the UK will continue to grow as a force for good in the world.
The pressure isn’t all on Parliament.
The EU needs to come to the table in the spirit of compromise too.
It would be the most illogical act of senseless harm if the EU refuses to accept that the UK Parliament will not be trapped in a backstop and instead pushes us to leave with No Deal, thereby ­creating the exact problem with the Northern Ireland border they claim they want to avoid.
As far as our current ­negotiation is concerned, we are well into extra time.
As Leader of the House, I am responsible for passing the legislation necessary for our exit from the EU.
We have a lot to do before March 29 but I remain confident that if we resolve the backstop, we will be able to pass the Meaningful Vote and crack on with that vital ­legislation.
We are so close to the ­finishing line, so my plea to politicians here and in ­Brussels is: Please don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The EU must lift its eyes and look beyond the current frustrations and towards the close friendship we all want in the future.
The Labour Party must carry out the wishes of the majority of its own ­voters, who wanted to leave the EU.
And my own colleagues on the ­Conservative benches must not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Don’t hold the PM to ­ransom at such a critical point.
Instead, we must hold our nerve and push through.
 
 
We must hold fast to the reality of the PM’s deal — that it delivers us a clean exit from the EU and all of its ­institutions while at the same time ­offering a close trading and security partnership that addresses the hopes and aspirations of many in our country who voted Remain.
So the prize is great — and it’s all of our futures.
Let’s come together and, with one final heave, we can get the PM’s deal over the line and begin to look ­forward, not ­backward.
My own colleagues must not hold Theresa May to ransom at such a critical point, and instead, we must hold our nerve and push through
WHAT gets you out of bed in the morning? This is a question I’m often asked as a politician.
It tends to be closely followed by a dozen other questions about what I’ll do in “x” scenario, or whether I’ll resign if “y” happens.
But the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning is the same thing that drove me into national politics nearly a decade ago — and that is to help the UK become an even greater force for good in the world.
We can only achieve that with a strong and united government which collectively seeks to deliver on the ­referendum and trusts in the path we set out.
I believed in 2016, as I strongly believe now, that we have a bright future of independence ahead of us.
Like so many other people in the UK, I took the chance offered to us in a ­single ­question: Should we leave the European Union or remain within it?
Following a great deal of thought and thorough analysis, the answer I arrived at was: “Yes, we should leave the EU.”
Like so many of my ­generation and those younger, I have spent most of my life in the EU and my instincts were naturally for reform from within.
I believed in a number of the EU’s core values — the promotion of peace, global trading opportunities and the ­values of freedom and democracy.
These are areas in which our great country leads the world.
But with the good came the bad and the ugly — the bureaucracy, the waste, the ever-closer union, the diminishing of our own sovereign power.
In co-founding the Fresh Start Project, I spent the years preceding the referendum up close and personal with the EU.
I saw first-hand the things that worked and the things that didn’t, and the project team delivered a manifesto for change to then-Prime Minister David Cameron, suggesting ways to fundamentally reform the EU for the better and reverse the road we were going down.
His renegotiation was finalised three years ago almost to the day — and it’s safe to say that despite his best efforts, the reforms proposed were deeply ­disappointing, with a real lack of ­ambition.
So when the EU’s denial of the need for reform and their intransigence to the PM’s reasonable proposals became clear, the decision I should take was made blindingly obvious to me. We should leave the EU and forge a new path in the world.
It was put to a referendum and the rest, as they say, is history.
For some, though, the result of the ­referendum is not history. It’s something they are desperate to re-run.
Calls for an extension, a delay or even a second referendum are persistent — but so too is my
determination, and the ­determination of this Government, to deliver on the will of the first one.
Democracy is not about trying again until you get the result you want.
It’s about compromise and accepting that while we might disagree with each other, we should respect each other’s views.
That need for compromise is precisely why we continue to negotiate with the EU. The Prime Minister is fighting hard to make sure we leave with a good deal on March 29.
Democracy is not about trying again until you get the result you want
That determination is the reason I believe that the Conservative Party is the only party delivering in the national interest.
The Prime Minister has made clear through her actions that whether you voted Leave or Remain, the deal she seeks will look to bring everyone back together.
Whether you are someone who can’t wait to see us leave the EU, or whether you wish the result of the referendum had been different — we all, each of us, just want the best for the UK.
We have a bright future ahead and one in which the UK will continue to grow as a force for good in the world.
The pressure isn’t all on Parliament.
The EU needs to come to the table in the spirit of compromise too.
It would be the most illogical act of senseless harm if the EU refuses to accept that the UK Parliament will not be trapped in a backstop and instead pushes us to leave with No Deal, thereby ­creating the exact problem with the Northern Ireland border they claim they want to avoid.
As far as our current ­negotiation is concerned, we are well into extra time.
As Leader of the House, I am responsible for passing the legislation necessary for our exit from the EU.
We have a lot to do before March 29 but I remain confident that if we resolve the backstop, we will be able to pass the Meaningful Vote and crack on with that vital ­legislation.
We are so close to the ­finishing line, so my plea to politicians here and in ­Brussels is: Please don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The EU must lift its eyes and look beyond the current frustrations and towards the close friendship we all want in the future.
The Labour Party must carry out the wishes of the majority of its own ­voters, who wanted to leave the EU.
And my own colleagues on the ­Conservative benches must not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Don’t hold the PM to ­ransom at such a critical point.
Instead, we must hold our nerve and push through.
 
 
We must hold fast to the reality of the PM’s deal — that it delivers us a clean exit from the EU and all of its ­institutions while at the same time ­offering a close trading and security partnership that addresses the hopes and aspirations of many in our country who voted Remain.
So the prize is great — and it’s all of our futures.
Let’s come together and, with one final heave, we can get the PM’s deal over the line and begin to look ­forward, not ­backward.
THE Lib Dems launched an unashamedly two-word election pledge to hoover up the Remain vote by unveiling their 'Stop Brexit' slogan.
Leader Jo Swinson targeted Remainer votes in Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’s seats by driving an anti-Brexit poster van that toured their constituencies.
The pro-Remain party are hoping to exploit Labour's chaotic Brexit stance and the Conservative's pro-Brexit policy by winning swathes of Remainers in London and university towns.
Launching her party's campaign poster, Ms Swinson said: "This General Election is about the direction of our country for the next generation.
"The Liberal Democrats are the strongest party of Remain and we are ready to take the fight to Boris Johnson & Jeremy Corbyn.
They are stuck in the past and the Liberal Democrats represent a brighter future.
"We want to stop Brexit and ensure that we can build a brighter future for our United Kingdom."
 
THE Lib Dems launched an unashamedly two-word election pledge to hoover up the Remain vote by unveiling their 'Stop Brexit' slogan.
Leader Jo Swinson targeted Remainer votes in Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’s seats by driving an anti-Brexit poster van that toured their constituencies.
The pro-Remain party are hoping to exploit Labour's chaotic Brexit stance and the Conservative's pro-Brexit policy by winning swathes of Remainers in London and university towns.
Launching her party's campaign poster, Ms Swinson said: "This General Election is about the direction of our country for the next generation.
"The Liberal Democrats are the strongest party of Remain and we are ready to take the fight to Boris Johnson & Jeremy Corbyn.
They are stuck in the past and the Liberal Democrats represent a brighter future.
"We want to stop Brexit and ensure that we can build a brighter future for our United Kingdom."
 
Once Theresa May's letter triggering Article 50 is delivered to EU Council president Donald Tusk at 12.30pm there is no going back
IT’S finally here . . . the most momentous day in Britain’s modern history.
Today, Theresa May will officially tell the EU: We’re off.
Once the PM’s letter triggering Article 50 is delivered to EU Council president Donald Tusk at 12.30pm there is no going back.
Brexit will be under way, and with it our tricky two-year extrication from Brussels’ grip and the plotting of a new course towards a better, more prosperous future.
As a paper that has railed against EU excesses for so long, helped keep Britain out of the disastrous euro and campaigned fiercely for Leave last year, The Sun is of course delighted.
We have enormous optimism about our country, controlling our own laws and borders and trading independently with the vast and fast-growing nations of the wider world for the first time since the 1970s.
But we have no illusions that negotiating our exit will be easy.
Nor do we expect the sneering, divisive rage of hardcore Remainers to subside once Article 50 is irreversibly served. But we say this to them:
Mrs May voted Remain too.
But she has rightly pledged to fulfil the majority’s democratic verdict, now overwhelmingly backed by MPs, and faces the hardest task of any PM since Winston Churchill in 1940.
Yet she is assailed round the clock by opposition parties and lobby groups making absurd demands as they clamour for attention or relevance.
The Scottish Parliament has backed a new independence referendum. The Northern Ireland assembly has collapsed.
Labour has six conditions they insist Mrs May must meet.
Brussels has already dismissed the biggest as impossible.
Ukip, self-styled “guard dogs of Brexit”, have their own demands (but no MPs).
FERRY passengers cheered and waved as The Sun made the White Cliffs of Dover shine with British pride last night.
Lorry driver Luke Blackburn, 28, of Basildon, Essex, said: “It’s a massive message for a massive moment in British history. Trust The Sun to come up with such a cheeky stunt.”
Ex-pharmaceuticals worker Geoffrey Woodward, 75, of Milton Keynes, said: “It just goes to show some people still have something Britain nearly lost — national pride.”
James Dowrish, 22, saw our 30m by 20m light display from the beach and said: “It’s a smart way to say goodbye.”
The diehard Remainers of the Open Britain group have theirs too — bizarrely pretending Mrs May runs Vote Leave instead of a Government seeing through the referendum in the only meaningful way, by leaving the single market and customs union.
Some Remainers, their apocalyptic rhetoric at a comical crescendo, still believe Brexit can be stopped.
After 12.30 they are howling at the moon.
Is any of this conducive to the PM getting the best deal for Britain?
Isn’t that what we all should want?
Politicians must not spend two years talking our chances down, leaping on every snippet of bad news and screaming abuse and threats at our PM and negotiators.
It will only embolden the EU’s and damage our prospects.
It is vital we get behind Mrs May as she holds constructive negotiations leading to a mutually prosperous friendship with our former EU partners.
We are not leaving Europe, merely Brussels’ trading club.
We will still be friends, neighbours, workmates, tourists to each other’s lands.
Increasing numbers abroad admire ­Britain for backing Brexit.
So far we have mainly heard threats from Brussels.
They will need far more maturity for talks to work.
That may only happen when national leaders take over.
And in 2019, politicians WE elect will control our future.
If the Government says immigration needs to fall it will be more able to cut it.
If we need more migrants with certain skills, it can make that happen.
That was the point, to “take back control”.
Today it begins for real — and we can’t wait.


Once Theresa May's letter triggering Article 50 is delivered to EU Council president Donald Tusk at 12.30pm there is no going back
IT’S finally here . . . the most momentous day in Britain’s modern history.
Today, Theresa May will officially tell the EU: We’re off.
Once the PM’s letter triggering Article 50 is delivered to EU Council president Donald Tusk at 12.30pm there is no going back.
Brexit will be under way, and with it our tricky two-year extrication from Brussels’ grip and the plotting of a new course towards a better, more prosperous future.
As a paper that has railed against EU excesses for so long, helped keep Britain out of the disastrous euro and campaigned fiercely for Leave last year, The Sun is of course delighted.
We have enormous optimism about our country, controlling our own laws and borders and trading independently with the vast and fast-growing nations of the wider world for the first time since the 1970s.
But we have no illusions that negotiating our exit will be easy.
Nor do we expect the sneering, divisive rage of hardcore Remainers to subside once Article 50 is irreversibly served. But we say this to them:
Mrs May voted Remain too.
But she has rightly pledged to fulfil the majority’s democratic verdict, now overwhelmingly backed by MPs, and faces the hardest task of any PM since Winston Churchill in 1940.
Yet she is assailed round the clock by opposition parties and lobby groups making absurd demands as they clamour for attention or relevance.
The Scottish Parliament has backed a new independence referendum. The Northern Ireland assembly has collapsed.
Labour has six conditions they insist Mrs May must meet.
Brussels has already dismissed the biggest as impossible.
Ukip, self-styled “guard dogs of Brexit”, have their own demands (but no MPs).
FERRY passengers cheered and waved as The Sun made the White Cliffs of Dover shine with British pride last night.
Lorry driver Luke Blackburn, 28, of Basildon, Essex, said: “It’s a massive message for a massive moment in British history. Trust The Sun to come up with such a cheeky stunt.”
Ex-pharmaceuticals worker Geoffrey Woodward, 75, of Milton Keynes, said: “It just goes to show some people still have something Britain nearly lost — national pride.”
James Dowrish, 22, saw our 30m by 20m light display from the beach and said: “It’s a smart way to say goodbye.”
The diehard Remainers of the Open Britain group have theirs too — bizarrely pretending Mrs May runs Vote Leave instead of a Government seeing through the referendum in the only meaningful way, by leaving the single market and customs union.
Some Remainers, their apocalyptic rhetoric at a comical crescendo, still believe Brexit can be stopped.
After 12.30 they are howling at the moon.
Is any of this conducive to the PM getting the best deal for Britain?
Isn’t that what we all should want?
Politicians must not spend two years talking our chances down, leaping on every snippet of bad news and screaming abuse and threats at our PM and negotiators.
It will only embolden the EU’s and damage our prospects.
It is vital we get behind Mrs May as she holds constructive negotiations leading to a mutually prosperous friendship with our former EU partners.
We are not leaving Europe, merely Brussels’ trading club.
We will still be friends, neighbours, workmates, tourists to each other’s lands.
Increasing numbers abroad admire ­Britain for backing Brexit.
So far we have mainly heard threats from Brussels.
They will need far more maturity for talks to work.
That may only happen when national leaders take over.
And in 2019, politicians WE elect will control our future.
If the Government says immigration needs to fall it will be more able to cut it.
If we need more migrants with certain skills, it can make that happen.
That was the point, to “take back control”.
Today it begins for real — and we can’t wait.
 
0344 499 1000
Better Call Paul on DAB, the talkRADIO app, or talkradio.co.uk


Mr Barnier gave his upbeat assessment to diplomats in a meeting behind closed doors
MICHEL Barnier told EU countries behind closed doors that a Brexit breakthrough is now “very close” after fresh compromise from Britain.
The usually stubborn Frenchman's team sent the Pound soaring yesterday after an upbeat assessment of the state of the talks at a closed meeting with diplomats from national capitals - despite public doom and gloom.
Hopes of progress have been fuelled by expectations that Theresa May has come forward with a compromise solution to the Irish border.
The PM will propose keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union as a final fallback but allowing Northern Ireland to stick to EU regulations.
But any checks in the Irish Sea will be fiercely opposed by her DUP partners, with leader Arlene Foster saying she will stick to her "blood red" line.
However on EU diplomat told The Sun that the role of the ECJ in governing the Withdrawal Agreement also remains a major sticking point.
And they warned progress is still slow on a framework for the future trade deal which is needed to get the pact through both parliaments.
Another potential stumbling block is the UK's tough stance on geographical indications, which effectively copyright iconic food and drink products.
The rules state that the likes of Parmesan cheese and Champagne can only be labelled as such if they are made in a specific region.
EU ambassadors met in Luxembourg last night amid a renewed sense of optimism a deal can be sealed at the next leaders' summit, which starts on October 17th.
Afterwards a second EU diplomat told The Sun: "We have reasons to remain confident concerning a deal.”
On the backstop, they added: "The Brits showed a new willingness to move and this is promising."
Last night a government spokesman said: "We will continue to work at pace to conclude these negotiations in the Autumn.
"As the PM has said, we will set out our alternative proposals to preserve the integrity of the UK.
"This will be in line with the commitments we made back in December."
An EU source told told The Sun that the two negotiating teams will engage in "very intensive" talks over the next few days.
Mr Barnier is expected to meet with Italian PM Antonio Conte on Monday before visiting Northern Ireland on Tuesday.
 
Mr Barnier gave his upbeat assessment to diplomats in a meeting behind closed doors
MICHEL Barnier told EU countries behind closed doors that a Brexit breakthrough is now “very close” after fresh compromise from Britain.
The usually stubborn Frenchman's team sent the Pound soaring yesterday after an upbeat assessment of the state of the talks at a closed meeting with diplomats from national capitals - despite public doom and gloom.
Hopes of progress have been fuelled by expectations that Theresa May has come forward with a compromise solution to the Irish border.
The PM will propose keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union as a final fallback but allowing Northern Ireland to stick to EU regulations.
But any checks in the Irish Sea will be fiercely opposed by her DUP partners, with leader Arlene Foster saying she will stick to her "blood red" line.
However on EU diplomat told The Sun that the role of the ECJ in governing the Withdrawal Agreement also remains a major sticking point.
And they warned progress is still slow on a framework for the future trade deal which is needed to get the pact through both parliaments.
Another potential stumbling block is the UK's tough stance on geographical indications, which effectively copyright iconic food and drink products.
The rules state that the likes of Parmesan cheese and Champagne can only be labelled as such if they are made in a specific region.
EU ambassadors met in Luxembourg last night amid a renewed sense of optimism a deal can be sealed at the next leaders' summit, which starts on October 17th.
Afterwards a second EU diplomat told The Sun: "We have reasons to remain confident concerning a deal.”
On the backstop, they added: "The Brits showed a new willingness to move and this is promising."
Last night a government spokesman said: "We will continue to work at pace to conclude these negotiations in the Autumn.
"As the PM has said, we will set out our alternative proposals to preserve the integrity of the UK.
"This will be in line with the commitments we made back in December."
An EU source told told The Sun that the two negotiating teams will engage in "very intensive" talks over the next few days.
Mr Barnier is expected to meet with Italian PM Antonio Conte on Monday before visiting Northern Ireland on Tuesday.
 
Mr Barnier wants to check goods on ferries travelling back and forth between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, calming fears of creating a border in the Irish Sea
MICHEL Barnier’s new plan to break the deadlock over the Irish border was last night rubbished by the DUP as “null and void” window dressing.
The EU’s chief negotiator wants British officials to police goods travelling between Belfast and the rest of the UK to “de-dramatise” internal UK checks.
Eurocrats are trying to calm fears their backstop proposal will create an Irish Sea border by using technological solutions pinched from Brexiteers.
But Unionists said they will continue to reject any plan that keeps just Northern Ireland in the Customs Union and parts of the Single Market.
Their opposition to the new proposal effectively kills it stone dead because Theresa May wouldn’t be able to get in through parliament.
The DUP’s sole representative in Brussels, Diane Dodds, questioned whether the new plan “represents a serious departure from the EU’s dogmatic stance”.
She told The Sun: “The DUP remains firmly opposed to the core tenet of the original plan published by Michel Barnier, which would see Northern Ireland remain tied to EU rules and cut adrift from the rest of the United Kingdom post-Brexit.
“We will not countenance anything which affects the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the Union, creates barriers to and within the UK internal market or erects barriers in customs or regulation.”
Under the EU’s new plan, which is being cooked up to “de-dramatise” the backstop, Max Fac style technology would be deployed in the Irish Sea.
Mr Barnier has said it would be easier to carry out checks on ferries than at the land border, where both sides have committed to no new infrastructure.
Brussels recently asked for internal UK trade data that it hoped would strengthen its case.
However, the figures show 45% of all goods travelling between Great Britain and the island of Ireland go through Belfast.
They also reveal that far less trade between the two islands is done by big businesses than Brussels had hoped, limiting the effectiveness of technology.
Mrs Dodds said: “Suggestions that the EU is now considering technology-based solutions are a positive if belated development.
“However this will become null and void if based only on the EU goal of ensuring Northern Ireland remains in a common regulatory and customs areas inside the EU.
“Equally we are unconvinced by political and economic arguments which suggest that a technological border in the Irish Sea is more deliverable than on the land border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.”
A senior EU diplomat insisted: “One way or the other there have to be checks, so let’s make them as seamless as possible.”
Top Brussels figures also insisted last night that the PM must water down her Chequers plan further before they’ll change their own negotiating position.
Sources said there was no suggestion yet that EU leaders are prepared to loosen the instructions they gave to Mr Barnier at a key October summit.
Member States have also hardened their resolve on how detailed the political declaration on trade should be after Michael Gove suggested the UK could ditch Chequers after Brexit.
A senior diplomat said: “There’s still a lot of movement necessary from the UK side before we can actually reach agreement, and that has mostly to do with the political framework for the future relationship.”
And a top French official insisted the declaration on trade cannot leave any “ambiguity” that can be exploited by the UK, adding: “The length is not important, we think its main point is that it must be clear.”
A UK Government spokesman said: “We are clear that any backstop proposal would have to preserve the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK.”
Mr Barnier wants to check goods on ferries travelling back and forth between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, calming fears of creating a border in the Irish Sea
MICHEL Barnier’s new plan to break the deadlock over the Irish border was last night rubbished by the DUP as “null and void” window dressing.
The EU’s chief negotiator wants British officials to police goods travelling between Belfast and the rest of the UK to “de-dramatise” internal UK checks.
Eurocrats are trying to calm fears their backstop proposal will create an Irish Sea border by using technological solutions pinched from Brexiteers.
But Unionists said they will continue to reject any plan that keeps just Northern Ireland in the Customs Union and parts of the Single Market.
Their opposition to the new proposal effectively kills it stone dead because Theresa May wouldn’t be able to get in through parliament.
The DUP’s sole representative in Brussels, Diane Dodds, questioned whether the new plan “represents a serious departure from the EU’s dogmatic stance”.
She told The Sun: “The DUP remains firmly opposed to the core tenet of the original plan published by Michel Barnier, which would see Northern Ireland remain tied to EU rules and cut adrift from the rest of the United Kingdom post-Brexit.
“We will not countenance anything which affects the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the Union, creates barriers to and within the UK internal market or erects barriers in customs or regulation.”
Under the EU’s new plan, which is being cooked up to “de-dramatise” the backstop, Max Fac style technology would be deployed in the Irish Sea.
Mr Barnier has said it would be easier to carry out checks on ferries than at the land border, where both sides have committed to no new infrastructure.
Brussels recently asked for internal UK trade data that it hoped would strengthen its case.
However, the figures show 45% of all goods travelling between Great Britain and the island of Ireland go through Belfast.
They also reveal that far less trade between the two islands is done by big businesses than Brussels had hoped, limiting the effectiveness of technology.
Mrs Dodds said: “Suggestions that the EU is now considering technology-based solutions are a positive if belated development.
“However this will become null and void if based only on the EU goal of ensuring Northern Ireland remains in a common regulatory and customs areas inside the EU.
“Equally we are unconvinced by political and economic arguments which suggest that a technological border in the Irish Sea is more deliverable than on the land border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.”
A senior EU diplomat insisted: “One way or the other there have to be checks, so let’s make them as seamless as possible.”
Top Brussels figures also insisted last night that the PM must water down her Chequers plan further before they’ll change their own negotiating position.
Sources said there was no suggestion yet that EU leaders are prepared to loosen the instructions they gave to Mr Barnier at a key October summit.
Member States have also hardened their resolve on how detailed the political declaration on trade should be after Michael Gove suggested the UK could ditch Chequers after Brexit.
A senior diplomat said: “There’s still a lot of movement necessary from the UK side before we can actually reach agreement, and that has mostly to do with the political framework for the future relationship.”
And a top French official insisted the declaration on trade cannot leave any “ambiguity” that can be exploited by the UK, adding: “The length is not important, we think its main point is that it must be clear.”
A UK Government spokesman said: “We are clear that any backstop proposal would have to preserve the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK.”
STEVE Barclay has warned Michel Barnier he will be held responsible for No Deal - as political talks on revamping the backstop resume today.
The Brexit Secretary said the Commission will cop the blame for "crystallising" a crash out if it sticks to its "rigid" approach.
Speaking in Madrid after meetings with Spanish officials, he said the Irish border fix is unacceptable for four reasons and "has to go".
And he warned eurocrats are imperilling future UK-EU relations "because of a lack of flexibility, creativity and indeed pragmatism".
Mr Barclay stormed: "Great political leaders have always respected the need to take risk.
"A refusal by the Commission to accept any risk would be a failure of statecraft. Leadership requires more than remaining within a safety net."
He added: "We risk being trapped in a zero sum game, which will lead to zero outcomes, which I do not want.
"The EU risks continuing to insist on a test that the UK cannot meet and that the UK Parliament has rejected three times.
"What we need now is a genuine negotiation with creative and flexible solutions from both sides.
"A rigid approach now – at this point – is no way to progress a deal. The responsibility sits with both sides to find a solution."
Mr Barclay also said the backstop is "inconsistent" with the Good Friday Agreement because it doesn't have the "consent of both communities".
Responding to the remarks, an EU Commission spokeswoman said Brussels would not be drawn into a "blame game" with Britain.
She said: "Our role is to be constructive, to move forward the negotiations and to make progress so as to allow reaching the joint aim of having a deal."
Eurocrats also batted away Mr Barclay's suggestion that they are not ready for No Deal, insisting EU states are "fully prepared".
Both the Commission and No 10 confirmed yesterday that Britain has tabled written proposals on replacing the backstop for the first time.
The UK side yesterday put forward a series of informal discussion papers containing over its ideas to revamp the border fix.
The dossier covers parts of Britain's aim for a "three tier" replacement to the backstop which would involve some checks on the island of Ireland.
It includes agreeing an all-island agri-food zone, under which Northern Ireland continues to follow EU rules on farming and food standards.
This would be coupled by replacing alignment in other areas with alternative arrangements and agreeing a Stormont Lock for Northern Irish consent.
Under the plan the whole of the UK would leave the EU's customs union and single market.
Teams of officials from Brussels and Britain met yesterday and will get together again today to discuss the technical details of the proposal.
The revelation came as two Labour MPs leading a cross-party group for a deal told Mr Barnier up to 30 of their colleagues are ready to rebel against Jeremy Corbyn.
Stephen Kinnock and Caroline Flint were invited to Brussels by the EU chief negotiator so he could grill them on the latest parliamentary arithmetic.
Some EU officials have expressed regret that they have focussed too much attention on hardline Remainers rather than moderates.
Ms Flint said he had probed them on what "pressure" they could bring to bear on the two main parties and discussions surrounding the Benn bill.
She insisted: "There’s still a majority in parliament, cross-party, who would like to get a deal through.
"I think we better reflect the public. People want us to try and find a way through this."
Mr Kinnock said the Frenchman told them he was "not hung up on the language and the way in which absolute assurances are given" the backstop won't be permanent.
He said of his grouping: "Different parts of the coalition are looking for different things but we really are now at the last roll of the dice.
"We made the point that the more the debate has radicalised and polarised, the closer you get to No Deal.
"Everybody that’s tried to reverse Brexit, to not accept anything that doesn’t pass various purity tests, has played directly into the hands of the No Dealers."
Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar yesterday said the "rhetoric and mood music" surrounding the talks has improved and there's "a lot of energy and a lot of positivity".
But he warned: "The difficulty is that when it comes to the substance of the issue that needs to be resolved, the gaps are still very wide."
His deputy Simon Coveney, who met MPs from parliament's Brexit committee in Dublin yesterday, also warned the two sides are a long way apart.
He said: “There is a significant gap between what the British Government has been asking about in their approach, and what the EU is able to accept."
Mr Coveney added that France and Finland agreeing a September 30 deadline for new UK plans showed "the growing frustration and concern within the EU”.
Asked about the ultimatum, the Commission said that "every day counts" and that "the sooner we make progress the better".
A French official said: "If we don't get the proposals before the end of September, we will not have enough time to discuss them before the summit in October."
Yesterday a report by the OECD warned Ireland is set to be the worst hit EU country if there's No Deal - but Britain would suffer even more.
The Paris-based think tank said the country's economic growth would be cut by 1.5 per cent next year and in 2021, compared with a 2% hit for the UK.
 
STEVE Barclay has warned Michel Barnier he will be held responsible for No Deal - as political talks on revamping the backstop resume today.
The Brexit Secretary said the Commission will cop the blame for "crystallising" a crash out if it sticks to its "rigid" approach.
Speaking in Madrid after meetings with Spanish officials, he said the Irish border fix is unacceptable for four reasons and "has to go".
And he warned eurocrats are imperilling future UK-EU relations "because of a lack of flexibility, creativity and indeed pragmatism".
Mr Barclay stormed: "Great political leaders have always respected the need to take risk.
"A refusal by the Commission to accept any risk would be a failure of statecraft. Leadership requires more than remaining within a safety net."
He added: "We risk being trapped in a zero sum game, which will lead to zero outcomes, which I do not want.
"The EU risks continuing to insist on a test that the UK cannot meet and that the UK Parliament has rejected three times.
"What we need now is a genuine negotiation with creative and flexible solutions from both sides.
"A rigid approach now – at this point – is no way to progress a deal. The responsibility sits with both sides to find a solution."
Mr Barclay also said the backstop is "inconsistent" with the Good Friday Agreement because it doesn't have the "consent of both communities".
Responding to the remarks, an EU Commission spokeswoman said Brussels would not be drawn into a "blame game" with Britain.
She said: "Our role is to be constructive, to move forward the negotiations and to make progress so as to allow reaching the joint aim of having a deal."
Eurocrats also batted away Mr Barclay's suggestion that they are not ready for No Deal, insisting EU states are "fully prepared".
Both the Commission and No 10 confirmed yesterday that Britain has tabled written proposals on replacing the backstop for the first time.
The UK side yesterday put forward a series of informal discussion papers containing over its ideas to revamp the border fix.
The dossier covers parts of Britain's aim for a "three tier" replacement to the backstop which would involve some checks on the island of Ireland.
It includes agreeing an all-island agri-food zone, under which Northern Ireland continues to follow EU rules on farming and food standards.
This would be coupled by replacing alignment in other areas with alternative arrangements and agreeing a Stormont Lock for Northern Irish consent.
Under the plan the whole of the UK would leave the EU's customs union and single market.
Teams of officials from Brussels and Britain met yesterday and will get together again today to discuss the technical details of the proposal.
The revelation came as two Labour MPs leading a cross-party group for a deal told Mr Barnier up to 30 of their colleagues are ready to rebel against Jeremy Corbyn.
Stephen Kinnock and Caroline Flint were invited to Brussels by the EU chief negotiator so he could grill them on the latest parliamentary arithmetic.
Some EU officials have expressed regret that they have focussed too much attention on hardline Remainers rather than moderates.
Ms Flint said he had probed them on what "pressure" they could bring to bear on the two main parties and discussions surrounding the Benn bill.
She insisted: "There’s still a majority in parliament, cross-party, who would like to get a deal through.
"I think we better reflect the public. People want us to try and find a way through this."
Mr Kinnock said the Frenchman told them he was "not hung up on the language and the way in which absolute assurances are given" the backstop won't be permanent.
He said of his grouping: "Different parts of the coalition are looking for different things but we really are now at the last roll of the dice.
"We made the point that the more the debate has radicalised and polarised, the closer you get to No Deal.
"Everybody that’s tried to reverse Brexit, to not accept anything that doesn’t pass various purity tests, has played directly into the hands of the No Dealers."
Ireland's PM Leo Varadkar yesterday said the "rhetoric and mood music" surrounding the talks has improved and there's "a lot of energy and a lot of positivity".
But he warned: "The difficulty is that when it comes to the substance of the issue that needs to be resolved, the gaps are still very wide."
His deputy Simon Coveney, who met MPs from parliament's Brexit committee in Dublin yesterday, also warned the two sides are a long way apart.
He said: “There is a significant gap between what the British Government has been asking about in their approach, and what the EU is able to accept."
Mr Coveney added that France and Finland agreeing a September 30 deadline for new UK plans showed "the growing frustration and concern within the EU”.
Asked about the ultimatum, the Commission said that "every day counts" and that "the sooner we make progress the better".
A French official said: "If we don't get the proposals before the end of September, we will not have enough time to discuss them before the summit in October."
Yesterday a report by the OECD warned Ireland is set to be the worst hit EU country if there's No Deal - but Britain would suffer even more.
The Paris-based think tank said the country's economic growth would be cut by 1.5 per cent next year and in 2021, compared with a 2% hit for the UK.
 
A PLOT to stop a No Deal Brexit by cutting off schools spending came to grief when the Speaker rejected the move.
It was the second failed attempt in a fortnight to use Parliamentary mechanisms to block the ­possibility.
But Remainer MPs will try the same ruse today, putting forward another amendment that would cut-off funding for government departments in charge of pensions, housing and local government.
Yesterday’s move, by leading Tory Remainer Dominic Grieve and Labour grandee Dame Margaret Beckett, would have stopped crucial money going to schools if No Deal went ahead.
But in a surprise move, pro-Remain John Bercow ditched the amendments.
But Remainers are hoping he allows similar amendments today.
If Labour back the move, the vote on the measure tonight will be on a knife-edge after several Tory Remainers vowed to back the move.
Under the amendment, funding for pensions, housing and local government would only continue after Brexit if Parliament has ratified a deal with Brussels or MPs have voted to leave with no deal.
The PM’s spokesman warned that the move would be a “grossly irresponsible course of action”.
A PLOT to stop a No Deal Brexit by cutting off schools spending came to grief when the Speaker rejected the move.
It was the second failed attempt in a fortnight to use Parliamentary mechanisms to block the ­possibility.
But Remainer MPs will try the same ruse today, putting forward another amendment that would cut-off funding for government departments in charge of pensions, housing and local government.
Yesterday’s move, by leading Tory Remainer Dominic Grieve and Labour grandee Dame Margaret Beckett, would have stopped crucial money going to schools if No Deal went ahead.
But in a surprise move, pro-Remain John Bercow ditched the amendments.
But Remainers are hoping he allows similar amendments today.
If Labour back the move, the vote on the measure tonight will be on a knife-edge after several Tory Remainers vowed to back the move.
Under the amendment, funding for pensions, housing and local government would only continue after Brexit if Parliament has ratified a deal with Brussels or MPs have voted to leave with no deal.
The PM’s spokesman warned that the move would be a “grossly irresponsible course of action”.
TORIES blasted Remainers for stitching them up with a "dirty backroom deal" today as the Liberal Democrats won the Brecon by-election this morning.
A 12 per cent swing saw Jane Dodds romp to victory in the Welsh seat - a huge blow for Boris whose majority has now been slashed to just one.
She secured 43.46 per cent of the vote in Brecon and Radnorshire - ahead of disgraced Tory MP Chris Davies on 38.98 per cent.
But Tory Chairman James Cleverly told the BBC this morning: "The Lib Dems with their dirty backroom deal, with Plaid and the Greens and others, threw the kitchen sink at this and got a narrow win.
"That is disappointing."
He told the BBC the Lib Dems had "scraped a win" and the Tory candidate was "very close to being elected".
And he added in a plea to Brexiteers: "If you vote for the Brexit Party, you will make it harder [to deliver Brexit]."
After topping the poll by 1,425 votes, winner Ms Dodds said: "The people of this constituency have chosen hope over fear. We demand better."
And encapsulating the threat to Brexit her victory poses, Ms Dodds added that her first act as an MP will be to demand a "no-deal" exit is ruled out.
She said: "People are desperately crying out for a different kind of politics.
"There is no time for tribalism when our country is faced with a Boris Johnson government and the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
"So my very first act as your MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Mr Boris Johnson wherever he is hiding and tell him loud and clear: 'Stop playing with the future of our communities and rule out a no-deal Brexit now'."
Lib Dem sources said this morning: "It's a simple rule of politics - if you stop listening, you lose touch and get punished.
"No doubt there is more of that to come."
The by-election was called following the sacking of Mr Davies, 51, last month after more than 10,000 voters signed a recall petition.
He had been convicted of submitting a false expenses claim - but was still chosen to fight to reclaim his seat by his local party.
There were hopes that the "Boris bounce" in the polls could save the Tories from losing the Leave-voting mid-Wales constituency.
But the defeat in Boris' first election test - only 11 days after he took office, a record for a new PM - will be a headache for Number 10.
The Tories now only have a majority of one - creating a fatal threat to PM Boris' Brexit plan as it is steered through parliament.
On his visit to Wales on Tuesday, Boris Johnson had warned: "A vote for any party other than Conservatives pushes the Liberal Democrats one step closer to cancelling the referendum result."
Now, just one MP deciding to abandon the party and join the Opposition could completely scupper efforts to deliver Brexit by October 31.
Boris is also heavily reliant on the 10 votes of the Conservatives' Northern Irish allies, the DUP, too.
With the DUP's votes counted, the PM now has the support of 319 MPs - while opposition parties have 318.
It was also a humiliating defeat for Labour - who narrowly avoided losing their deposit.
Candidate Tom Davies limped behind in a dismal fourth place with just 5.3 per cent - beating only the Monster Raving Loony Party and UKIP.
Support for Jeremy Corbyn's party collapsed by 12.5 per cent - with Labour voters swarming to the Lib Dems and Brexit Party, who came third.
But Jeremy Corbyn brushed it off on a visit to Scarborough this morning, saying it was "obviously disappointing" but they'd only won because Remainers teamed up.
He added: "The Liberal Democrats won it after doing a deal with Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
"I think that a lot of voters were determined to get rid of the Conservative, and they voted accordingly. So we were squeezed, but it's a place we have not held for a very long time. The area has changed a bit."
UKIP were pummelled into last place with just 242 votes - even losing out to the fifth-place Monster Raving Loony Party.
Turnout was at 59.7 per cent - the highest for a by-election in 22 years since Winchester in November 1997.
Ms Dodds - the party's leader in Wales - had been the bookies' favourite going into the vote.
She was helped by a pact with Plaid Cymru and the Green Party who decided not to contest the seat as part of a pro-Remain alliance.
Following the by-election result, newly-elected Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said: "Boris Johnson's shrinking majority makes it clear that he has no mandate to crash us out of the EU."
She added:  "Voters don’t have to settle for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn - there is another positive alternative."
Conservative candidate Mr Davies said his party had run a "clean and positive" campaign, adding: "Sadly, a few of our competitors have led a dirty campaign."
Ms Dodds said earlier her priorities are to stand up for Welsh farmers and oppose Tory cuts.
She added: "This by-election is, therefore, a choice between change with the Liberal Democrats or the same old broken politics with the Tories."
The recall petition was triggered after Mr Davies was convicted in March for submitting two false expenses invoices.
They were nine photographs costing £700 to decorate his new office.
A TORY MP is threatening to completely wipe out Boris Johnson's majority in Parliament by considering switching parties.
Phillip Lee, a Remainer Tory who wants a second referendum, said he'd be thinking hard about his political future over the summer break.
Last night Boris lost one of his Tory MPs as the Lib Dems won the Brecon and Radnorshire seat in Wales, slashing his majority down.
Mr Lee told a political podcast this week:
"The party I joined was the party of John Major and John Major, I think, is probably feeling like this judging by his contributions in recent weeks,' he said.
"I'm really not comfortable about my party pushing for no-deal Brexit without proper consent of the public.
"Purely on the national interest, I think it's wrong to do this. But party politically I think it's narrowing our base in a way that I don't see how we win elections.
"I'm sort of sitting here, looking on and - yeah - I'm going to spend the summer thinking a lot."
He was fined £1,500, ordered to pay £2,500 towards legal costs and told to carry out 50 hours of community service.
But Mr Davies was later selected again by the Conservative Party - who wanted to portray his expenses rap as an honest mistake.
He had represented the seat for the Conservatives since 2015 - and his majority in 2017 was 8,038.
 

TORIES blasted Remainers for stitching them up with a "dirty backroom deal" today as the Liberal Democrats won the Brecon by-election this morning.
A 12 per cent swing saw Jane Dodds romp to victory in the Welsh seat - a huge blow for Boris whose majority has now been slashed to just one.
She secured 43.46 per cent of the vote in Brecon and Radnorshire - ahead of disgraced Tory MP Chris Davies on 38.98 per cent.
But Tory Chairman James Cleverly told the BBC this morning: "The Lib Dems with their dirty backroom deal, with Plaid and the Greens and others, threw the kitchen sink at this and got a narrow win.
"That is disappointing."
He told the BBC the Lib Dems had "scraped a win" and the Tory candidate was "very close to being elected".
And he added in a plea to Brexiteers: "If you vote for the Brexit Party, you will make it harder [to deliver Brexit]."
After topping the poll by 1,425 votes, winner Ms Dodds said: "The people of this constituency have chosen hope over fear. We demand better."
And encapsulating the threat to Brexit her victory poses, Ms Dodds added that her first act as an MP will be to demand a "no-deal" exit is ruled out.
She said: "People are desperately crying out for a different kind of politics.
"There is no time for tribalism when our country is faced with a Boris Johnson government and the threat of a no-deal Brexit.
"So my very first act as your MP when I arrive in Westminster will be to find Mr Boris Johnson wherever he is hiding and tell him loud and clear: 'Stop playing with the future of our communities and rule out a no-deal Brexit now'."
Lib Dem sources said this morning: "It's a simple rule of politics - if you stop listening, you lose touch and get punished.
"No doubt there is more of that to come."
The by-election was called following the sacking of Mr Davies, 51, last month after more than 10,000 voters signed a recall petition.
He had been convicted of submitting a false expenses claim - but was still chosen to fight to reclaim his seat by his local party.
There were hopes that the "Boris bounce" in the polls could save the Tories from losing the Leave-voting mid-Wales constituency.
But the defeat in Boris' first election test - only 11 days after he took office, a record for a new PM - will be a headache for Number 10.
The Tories now only have a majority of one - creating a fatal threat to PM Boris' Brexit plan as it is steered through parliament.
On his visit to Wales on Tuesday, Boris Johnson had warned: "A vote for any party other than Conservatives pushes the Liberal Democrats one step closer to cancelling the referendum result."
Now, just one MP deciding to abandon the party and join the Opposition could completely scupper efforts to deliver Brexit by October 31.
Boris is also heavily reliant on the 10 votes of the Conservatives' Northern Irish allies, the DUP, too.
With the DUP's votes counted, the PM now has the support of 319 MPs - while opposition parties have 318.
It was also a humiliating defeat for Labour - who narrowly avoided losing their deposit.
Candidate Tom Davies limped behind in a dismal fourth place with just 5.3 per cent - beating only the Monster Raving Loony Party and UKIP.
Support for Jeremy Corbyn's party collapsed by 12.5 per cent - with Labour voters swarming to the Lib Dems and Brexit Party, who came third.
But Jeremy Corbyn brushed it off on a visit to Scarborough this morning, saying it was "obviously disappointing" but they'd only won because Remainers teamed up.
He added: "The Liberal Democrats won it after doing a deal with Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
"I think that a lot of voters were determined to get rid of the Conservative, and they voted accordingly. So we were squeezed, but it's a place we have not held for a very long time. The area has changed a bit."
UKIP were pummelled into last place with just 242 votes - even losing out to the fifth-place Monster Raving Loony Party.
Turnout was at 59.7 per cent - the highest for a by-election in 22 years since Winchester in November 1997.
Ms Dodds - the party's leader in Wales - had been the bookies' favourite going into the vote.
She was helped by a pact with Plaid Cymru and the Green Party who decided not to contest the seat as part of a pro-Remain alliance.
Following the by-election result, newly-elected Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson said: "Boris Johnson's shrinking majority makes it clear that he has no mandate to crash us out of the EU."
She added:  "Voters don’t have to settle for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn - there is another positive alternative."
Conservative candidate Mr Davies said his party had run a "clean and positive" campaign, adding: "Sadly, a few of our competitors have led a dirty campaign."
Ms Dodds said earlier her priorities are to stand up for Welsh farmers and oppose Tory cuts.
She added: "This by-election is, therefore, a choice between change with the Liberal Democrats or the same old broken politics with the Tories."
The recall petition was triggered after Mr Davies was convicted in March for submitting two false expenses invoices.
They were nine photographs costing £700 to decorate his new office.
A TORY MP is threatening to completely wipe out Boris Johnson's majority in Parliament by considering switching parties.
Phillip Lee, a Remainer Tory who wants a second referendum, said he'd be thinking hard about his political future over the summer break.
Last night Boris lost one of his Tory MPs as the Lib Dems won the Brecon and Radnorshire seat in Wales, slashing his majority down.
Mr Lee told a political podcast this week:
"The party I joined was the party of John Major and John Major, I think, is probably feeling like this judging by his contributions in recent weeks,' he said.
"I'm really not comfortable about my party pushing for no-deal Brexit without proper consent of the public.
"Purely on the national interest, I think it's wrong to do this. But party politically I think it's narrowing our base in a way that I don't see how we win elections.
"I'm sort of sitting here, looking on and - yeah - I'm going to spend the summer thinking a lot."
He was fined £1,500, ordered to pay £2,500 towards legal costs and told to carry out 50 hours of community service.
But Mr Davies was later selected again by the Conservative Party - who wanted to portray his expenses rap as an honest mistake.
He had represented the seat for the Conservatives since 2015 - and his majority in 2017 was 8,038.
 
 
EUROPEAN capitals have concluded that Boris Johnson’s backstop plan was “drafted to be rejected” and isn’t a serious effort to negotiate a Brexit deal.
They believe his insistence the dossier be kept secret is an effort to disguise the fact it is designed to set up a “blame game” with Brussels.
Officials and diplomats who have been briefed on the 44-page legal text tabled by the UK side said it contains a number of undeliverable demands.
The Government has barred Michel Barnier’s team from sharing it with Member States to prevent leaks.
But the move has angered EU countries and strengthened their suspicions the negotiations are a sham, according to a diplomatic note seen by The Sun.
It says: “Increasingly capitals have the impression this document was drafted to be rejected and was never meant as a basis for discussion.”
Earlier today an MP from Emmanuel Macron’s party described Britain’s proposals as “not a genuine offer” and “almost like a joke”.
Bruno Bonnell told the BBC: “This is clearly a political manipulation to put the responsibility of a no deal Brexit on the EU’s side.
“Presenting a last-minute deal with a ‘take it or leave it’ is not acceptable on the EU side in my point of view.”
The legal text proposes binding the EU to never impose checks or build infrastructure at the Irish border even if Stormont vetos the new fix.
It also says alternative arrangements to be thrashed out during the transition will only be “broadly inspired” by Brussels’ customs regulations.
This has led EU negotiators to conclude the bloc will “not know whether all its rules will be followed”, leading to huge uncertainty.
Eurocrats also believe the proposal would force them to keep sensitive crime databases open to Northern Irish authorities under all circumstances.
An EU diplomat told The Sun: “This is not a give and take solution - it’s take and keep.
“If London wanted this to serve as a basis it would have consulted EU capitals.”
A senior EU source told The Sun: “The legal text raises many questions that in many ways would only be answered during the transition.”
THE Remainer alliance descended into bitter splits yesterday on how to block a No Deal Brexit.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has demanded Opposition parties install him as caretaker PM if they oust Boris Johnson in a no confidence vote.
Lib Dem chief Jo Swinson said not enough MPs back him and blasted him for refusing to let someone else lead a so-called national unity government.
She raged: “The biggest block to stopping a No Deal Brexit will be Jeremy Corbyn himself.”
But SNP boss Nicola Sturgeon said the matter of who leads “is not the key issue”.
Capitals have set Mr Johnson a deadline of the end of this week to table what they see as a workable plan or there won’t be a deal at this month’s summit.
The Sun understands that as few as four Member States now want Britain to stay in the EU amid growing Brexit fatigue.
During recent internal Brussels talks only Ireland, Lithuania, and Bulgaria have openly expressed hopes the UK will reverse its decision.
EUROPEAN capitals have concluded that Boris Johnson’s backstop plan was “drafted to be rejected” and isn’t a serious effort to negotiate a Brexit deal.
They believe his insistence the dossier be kept secret is an effort to disguise the fact it is designed to set up a “blame game” with Brussels.
Officials and diplomats who have been briefed on the 44-page legal text tabled by the UK side said it contains a number of undeliverable demands.
The Government has barred Michel Barnier’s team from sharing it with Member States to prevent leaks.
But the move has angered EU countries and strengthened their suspicions the negotiations are a sham, according to a diplomatic note seen by The Sun.
It says: “Increasingly capitals have the impression this document was drafted to be rejected and was never meant as a basis for discussion.”
Earlier today an MP from Emmanuel Macron’s party described Britain’s proposals as “not a genuine offer” and “almost like a joke”.
Bruno Bonnell told the BBC: “This is clearly a political manipulation to put the responsibility of a no deal Brexit on the EU’s side.
“Presenting a last-minute deal with a ‘take it or leave it’ is not acceptable on the EU side in my point of view.”
The legal text proposes binding the EU to never impose checks or build infrastructure at the Irish border even if Stormont vetos the new fix.
It also says alternative arrangements to be thrashed out during the transition will only be “broadly inspired” by Brussels’ customs regulations.
This has led EU negotiators to conclude the bloc will “not know whether all its rules will be followed”, leading to huge uncertainty.
Eurocrats also believe the proposal would force them to keep sensitive crime databases open to Northern Irish authorities under all circumstances.
An EU diplomat told The Sun: “This is not a give and take solution - it’s take and keep.
“If London wanted this to serve as a basis it would have consulted EU capitals.”
A senior EU source told The Sun: “The legal text raises many questions that in many ways would only be answered during the transition.”
THE Remainer alliance descended into bitter splits yesterday on how to block a No Deal Brexit.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has demanded Opposition parties install him as caretaker PM if they oust Boris Johnson in a no confidence vote.
Lib Dem chief Jo Swinson said not enough MPs back him and blasted him for refusing to let someone else lead a so-called national unity government.
She raged: “The biggest block to stopping a No Deal Brexit will be Jeremy Corbyn himself.”
But SNP boss Nicola Sturgeon said the matter of who leads “is not the key issue”.
Capitals have set Mr Johnson a deadline of the end of this week to table what they see as a workable plan or there won’t be a deal at this month’s summit.
The Sun understands that as few as four Member States now want Britain to stay in the EU amid growing Brexit fatigue.
During recent internal Brussels talks only Ireland, Lithuania, and Bulgaria have openly expressed hopes the UK will reverse its decision.
BORIS Johnson will refuse to quit if he loses a showdown with deadlocked Parliament - and will dare MPs to vote down his new laws ahead of a winter general election.
A total of seven new bills from the Queen’s Speech will be introduced to Parliament today, covering voter-friendly subjects from the environment to sentencing and broadband.
The PM is also pressing ahead with pushing his entire new legislative agenda - unveiled by the monarch yesterday - to a crunch vote on Tuesday next week.
No10 admits Boris faces an uphill battle to pass any of it with the Brexit battles last month leaving him 45 MPs short of a majority.
But they insisted yesterday that the PM would refuse to resign even if he lost the Queen’s Speech vote, traditionally seen as a no-confidence issue.
Laying down the gauntlet, the PM’s spokesman said: “If MPs choose to vote against the Queen’s Speech, it will be for them to explain to public why they’re voting against greater support for public services, including the police, schools and hospitals”.
Mr Johnson also declared yesterday: “People are tired of stasis, gridlock and waiting for change”.
The seven different bills being introduced today are entitled Telecommunications Infrastructure, Environment, Animal Welfare, Prisoners Disclosure of Information, Divorce, Dissolution and Separation, Pension Schemes and the Health Service Safety Investigations Bill.
The Environment Bill – nicknamed the new clean air act – will set up new legally binding targets to curb toxic air pollutants for the first time.
A framework to put long-term legal targets in place on water quality and plastic pollution will also be laid out.
And a new watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection, will scrutinise laws, investigate complaints and take enforcement action against public authorities to uphold standards.
Under the Pension Schemes Bill, reckless bosses who plunder pension schemes will face up to seven years in jail.
It will bring in a new sentence of up to seven years in prison for bosses who run their pension schemes into the ground or plunder them to line their own pockets.
The Labour leader dismissed the 22 new bills in the Queen’s Speech as an election gimmick.
Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons: “The Prime Minister promised that this Queen’s Speech would dazzle us - on closer inspection it turns out to be nothing more than fool’s gold”.
BORIS Johnson will refuse to quit if he loses a showdown with deadlocked Parliament - and will dare MPs to vote down his new laws ahead of a winter general election.
A total of seven new bills from the Queen’s Speech will be introduced to Parliament today, covering voter-friendly subjects from the environment to sentencing and broadband.
The PM is also pressing ahead with pushing his entire new legislative agenda - unveiled by the monarch yesterday - to a crunch vote on Tuesday next week.
No10 admits Boris faces an uphill battle to pass any of it with the Brexit battles last month leaving him 45 MPs short of a majority.
But they insisted yesterday that the PM would refuse to resign even if he lost the Queen’s Speech vote, traditionally seen as a no-confidence issue.
Laying down the gauntlet, the PM’s spokesman said: “If MPs choose to vote against the Queen’s Speech, it will be for them to explain to public why they’re voting against greater support for public services, including the police, schools and hospitals”.
Mr Johnson also declared yesterday: “People are tired of stasis, gridlock and waiting for change”.
The seven different bills being introduced today are entitled Telecommunications Infrastructure, Environment, Animal Welfare, Prisoners Disclosure of Information, Divorce, Dissolution and Separation, Pension Schemes and the Health Service Safety Investigations Bill.
The Environment Bill – nicknamed the new clean air act – will set up new legally binding targets to curb toxic air pollutants for the first time.
A framework to put long-term legal targets in place on water quality and plastic pollution will also be laid out.
And a new watchdog, the Office of Environmental Protection, will scrutinise laws, investigate complaints and take enforcement action against public authorities to uphold standards.
Under the Pension Schemes Bill, reckless bosses who plunder pension schemes will face up to seven years in jail.
It will bring in a new sentence of up to seven years in prison for bosses who run their pension schemes into the ground or plunder them to line their own pockets.
The Labour leader dismissed the 22 new bills in the Queen’s Speech as an election gimmick.
Jeremy Corbyn told the Commons: “The Prime Minister promised that this Queen’s Speech would dazzle us - on closer inspection it turns out to be nothing more than fool’s gold”.
BRUSSELS now believes there is an 80 per cent chance Boris Johnson will lead Britain out with No Deal on October 31 amid growing alarm over his campaign pledges.
Eurocrats are bracing for an ugly split after concluding the Tory leadership contender has boxed himself in so tightly an “accident” is almost inevitable.
They said member states may even have considered an unprecedented last minute offer on the backstop had he not ruled out any realistic compromise.
And they warned if there is No Deal the bloc will attach harsher conditions to any standstill trade agreement than those contained in the backstop.
A senior EU official questioned whether Mr Johnson is serious about getting a deal or his claim that crashing out is a “one in a million” chance.
They told The Sun: “We’re a bit puzzled. He’s closed a lot of doors. He’s closing down each and every possibility.
“Even those whereby you could think OK, the Europeans haven’t accepted this, may not accept it, but you never know before the abyss.
“Even those things he is closing down, which makes it really hard to create an opening.”
They pointed out Mr Johnson has said a backstop time-limit, unilateral exit clause or more legal pledges on Alternative Arrangements wouldn’t be enough.
The official said: “So he has ruled out a lot of things. Even the things that were not on offer he has ruled them out, so what’s left?”
Brussels fears his campaign rhetoric and pledges on the backstop and leaving on October 31 “do or die” have made a compromise solution near impossible.
They are now bracing for ill-tempered talks with the new PM over the summer - and having to “shoot down” ideas already tested and discarded by Mrs May.
Member States now expect an EU Council summit on October 17 to become all about crisis planning for a crash out at the end of the month.
Eurocrats warned any attempt from the next PM to take talks to the wire and try to squeeze a compromise directly from leaders at the gathering will fail.
A senior diplomatic source said: “This isn’t something you invent on a small piece of paper on the corner of a table at 3am.
“If we’re in a deal making mood this will have to be presented and discussed way ahead.”
Officials also dismissed Mr Johnson’s bid to seek a tariff and quota free “standstill” trading arrangement with the EU in the event on No Deal.
Instead, they said the new PM would have to negotiate similar market access terms to those contained in the backstop, only on a “worse basis”.
 
BRUSSELS now believes there is an 80 per cent chance Boris Johnson will lead Britain out with No Deal on October 31 amid growing alarm over his campaign pledges.
Eurocrats are bracing for an ugly split after concluding the Tory leadership contender has boxed himself in so tightly an “accident” is almost inevitable.
They said member states may even have considered an unprecedented last minute offer on the backstop had he not ruled out any realistic compromise.
And they warned if there is No Deal the bloc will attach harsher conditions to any standstill trade agreement than those contained in the backstop.
A senior EU official questioned whether Mr Johnson is serious about getting a deal or his claim that crashing out is a “one in a million” chance.
They told The Sun: “We’re a bit puzzled. He’s closed a lot of doors. He’s closing down each and every possibility.
“Even those whereby you could think OK, the Europeans haven’t accepted this, may not accept it, but you never know before the abyss.
“Even those things he is closing down, which makes it really hard to create an opening.”
They pointed out Mr Johnson has said a backstop time-limit, unilateral exit clause or more legal pledges on Alternative Arrangements wouldn’t be enough.
The official said: “So he has ruled out a lot of things. Even the things that were not on offer he has ruled them out, so what’s left?”
Brussels fears his campaign rhetoric and pledges on the backstop and leaving on October 31 “do or die” have made a compromise solution near impossible.
They are now bracing for ill-tempered talks with the new PM over the summer - and having to “shoot down” ideas already tested and discarded by Mrs May.
Member States now expect an EU Council summit on October 17 to become all about crisis planning for a crash out at the end of the month.
Eurocrats warned any attempt from the next PM to take talks to the wire and try to squeeze a compromise directly from leaders at the gathering will fail.
A senior diplomatic source said: “This isn’t something you invent on a small piece of paper on the corner of a table at 3am.
“If we’re in a deal making mood this will have to be presented and discussed way ahead.”
Officials also dismissed Mr Johnson’s bid to seek a tariff and quota free “standstill” trading arrangement with the EU in the event on No Deal.
Instead, they said the new PM would have to negotiate similar market access terms to those contained in the backstop, only on a “worse basis”.
 
TORY grandees have acted to prevent Boris Johnson being kicked out by his own MPs for his first year in No.10.
Party bosses on the 1922 Committee have tweaked party rules to protect the next PM from being challenged in a vote of no confidence.
The 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers “clarified” rules to bar any confidence motion being staged in the next PM until at least July 23 next year.
Tory MP Nigel Evans, executive chairman of the 1922, said: “When they’ve been elected by the membership the new leader should be given at least a 12 month run before any challenges.”
They acted as the Tory Party descended into bitter civil war over the prospect of a No-Deal Brexit.
Some rebel Tories are threatening to go nuclear and join Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in trying to topple BoJo Government to stop a no-deal Brexit.
While around a dozen ministers are considering quitting before they are sacked by the next PM to join the rebels on the backbenches.
In an astonishing move, Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday threatened to bring down a Boris government.
TORY grandees have acted to prevent Boris Johnson being kicked out by his own MPs for his first year in No.10.
Party bosses on the 1922 Committee have tweaked party rules to protect the next PM from being challenged in a vote of no confidence.
The 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers “clarified” rules to bar any confidence motion being staged in the next PM until at least July 23 next year.
Tory MP Nigel Evans, executive chairman of the 1922, said: “When they’ve been elected by the membership the new leader should be given at least a 12 month run before any challenges.”
They acted as the Tory Party descended into bitter civil war over the prospect of a No-Deal Brexit.
Some rebel Tories are threatening to go nuclear and join Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in trying to topple BoJo Government to stop a no-deal Brexit.
While around a dozen ministers are considering quitting before they are sacked by the next PM to join the rebels on the backbenches.
In an astonishing move, Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday threatened to bring down a Boris government.
BORIS Johnson plans to threaten the US and EU with high tariffs to speed up post-Brexit trade deals.
The Prime Minister is discussing plans with the Cabinet to use tariffs on goods as "leverage" in trade negotiations this week.
It means some goods - such as French cheese and German cars - could see sky-high hikes of up to 30 per cent, The Times reports.
Boris hopes the move will pile pressure on the EU to agree to a quota-free trade agreement without forcing the UK to follow Brussels' rules.
In the EU Exit Strategy (XS) Committee meeting held on Thursday, ministers agreed the tariffs should be put out for consultation.
It is likely the UK will mostly replicate the EU tariff schedule, which will be published and lodged at the World Trade Organisation.
MPs have also agreed to prioritise Japan, US, Australia and New Zealand as "tier one" countries in negotiations.
Other countries where deals are predicted to take longer will become "tier two".
It comes as The Sun revealed how Boris wants to strike Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal with Japan, and before the end of the year, so others will jump on board.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aides have told No10 he wants a deal as soon as possible after initially being cold about Brexit.
THE EU is the UK's largest trading partner, according to a January 2019 House of Commons briefing paper.
In 2017, the EU accounted for 53 per cent of imports and 44 per cent of UK exports.
But the share of all UK imports from the EU has fallen from a high of 58 per cent in 2002.
These are the goods were imported in 2017:
Boris now hopes to strike the deal ahead of one with the US and EU to show how quickly Brexit Britain can move.
The XS committee meets again next Thursday to thrash out tricky details of the negotiations, such as how flexible the UK is prepared to be on agricultural products.
And Boris will set out the negotiating plan in the first week of February - with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin saying yesterday he wants to conclude a trade deal with Britain this year.
The PM yesterday signed Britain's EU divorce deal - officially bringing an end to the Brexit saga.
He declared it a "fantastic moment" as he put pen to paper to seal the deal at Downing Street.
Boris added he hoped it "brings to an end to far too many years of argument and division" after the Withdrawal Agreement finally passed through parliament this week.
The leaders of the EU's top two institutions also signed the papers as the UK prepares to divorce Europe.
And almost four years after Brits voted for Brexit, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill formally became a law after the Queen gave it Royal Assent.
It ends one of the most bitter sagas in British politics — a battle over the shape of the exit deal that has raged since Theresa May triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017.
BORIS Johnson plans to threaten the US and EU with high tariffs to speed up post-Brexit trade deals.
The Prime Minister is discussing plans with the Cabinet to use tariffs on goods as "leverage" in trade negotiations this week.
It means some goods - such as French cheese and German cars - could see sky-high hikes of up to 30 per cent, The Times reports.
Boris hopes the move will pile pressure on the EU to agree to a quota-free trade agreement without forcing the UK to follow Brussels' rules.
In the EU Exit Strategy (XS) Committee meeting held on Thursday, ministers agreed the tariffs should be put out for consultation.
It is likely the UK will mostly replicate the EU tariff schedule, which will be published and lodged at the World Trade Organisation.
MPs have also agreed to prioritise Japan, US, Australia and New Zealand as "tier one" countries in negotiations.
Other countries where deals are predicted to take longer will become "tier two".
It comes as The Sun revealed how Boris wants to strike Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal with Japan, and before the end of the year, so others will jump on board.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aides have told No10 he wants a deal as soon as possible after initially being cold about Brexit.
THE EU is the UK's largest trading partner, according to a January 2019 House of Commons briefing paper.
In 2017, the EU accounted for 53 per cent of imports and 44 per cent of UK exports.
But the share of all UK imports from the EU has fallen from a high of 58 per cent in 2002.
These are the goods were imported in 2017:
Boris now hopes to strike the deal ahead of one with the US and EU to show how quickly Brexit Britain can move.
The XS committee meets again next Thursday to thrash out tricky details of the negotiations, such as how flexible the UK is prepared to be on agricultural products.
And Boris will set out the negotiating plan in the first week of February - with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin saying yesterday he wants to conclude a trade deal with Britain this year.
The PM yesterday signed Britain's EU divorce deal - officially bringing an end to the Brexit saga.
He declared it a "fantastic moment" as he put pen to paper to seal the deal at Downing Street.
Boris added he hoped it "brings to an end to far too many years of argument and division" after the Withdrawal Agreement finally passed through parliament this week.
The leaders of the EU's top two institutions also signed the papers as the UK prepares to divorce Europe.
And almost four years after Brits voted for Brexit, the Withdrawal Agreement Bill formally became a law after the Queen gave it Royal Assent.
It ends one of the most bitter sagas in British politics — a battle over the shape of the exit deal that has raged since Theresa May triggered Article 50 on March 29, 2017.
BORIS Johnson plans to push through a new Brexit deal in a 10-day blitz, says Number 10.
The Prime Minister and MPs will work round the clock during late-night and weekend sittings to thrash out an agreement before the October 31 deadline.
The Financial Times said that hopes to fast-track a new Brexit deal are being sparked by Johnson's team, which has compiled plans to help the PM get a deal at a Brussels summit from October 17-18 with the European Union.
Number 10 believes Johnson could then quickly pursue the new withdrawal deal through parliament.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that he will take Britain out of the EU at the end of October, and that he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for an extension.
He could break the ongoing Brexit deadlock if he gets the bloc to ditch its red line of no-checks on the island of Ireland.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay has drawn up three tests the Government must meet before it formally asks to renegotiate the deal — and has passed two of them.
He told a key Cabinet committee this week that solutions have been found to avoid infrastructure on the border with Ireland, and a way to protect the integrity of the EU’s single market.
But there is no solution yet to the third test ­— to avoid goods checks on the island of Ireland.
Mr Johnson must convince EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to move on its red line.
He flies to Luxembourg on Monday to meet him for the first time since becoming PM.
Meanwhile Tory former Brexit secretary David Davis suggested the Government might have a "legal strategy" to avoid extending Britain's EU membership beyond October 31, despite the so-called Benn Act to avoid a no-deal.
The legislation, which received royal assent earlier this week, would require the PM to seek an extension unless a divorce deal is approved or Parliament agrees to leaving the EU without a deal by October 19.
"I think there may well be a legal strategy - I've no idea what it is.
"But I think that may well be the way through, to effectively legally kill off the Benn Bill and then find a way of coming back to the negotiations with a real sword of Damocles over them, the Europeans, rather than over us," Mr Davis told BBC Radio 4's The Week In Westminster.
BORIS Johnson plans to push through a new Brexit deal in a 10-day blitz, says Number 10.
The Prime Minister and MPs will work round the clock during late-night and weekend sittings to thrash out an agreement before the October 31 deadline.
The Financial Times said that hopes to fast-track a new Brexit deal are being sparked by Johnson's team, which has compiled plans to help the PM get a deal at a Brussels summit from October 17-18 with the European Union.
Number 10 believes Johnson could then quickly pursue the new withdrawal deal through parliament.
The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that he will take Britain out of the EU at the end of October, and that he would rather be "dead in a ditch" than ask for an extension.
He could break the ongoing Brexit deadlock if he gets the bloc to ditch its red line of no-checks on the island of Ireland.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay has drawn up three tests the Government must meet before it formally asks to renegotiate the deal — and has passed two of them.
He told a key Cabinet committee this week that solutions have been found to avoid infrastructure on the border with Ireland, and a way to protect the integrity of the EU’s single market.
But there is no solution yet to the third test ­— to avoid goods checks on the island of Ireland.
Mr Johnson must convince EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to move on its red line.
He flies to Luxembourg on Monday to meet him for the first time since becoming PM.
Meanwhile Tory former Brexit secretary David Davis suggested the Government might have a "legal strategy" to avoid extending Britain's EU membership beyond October 31, despite the so-called Benn Act to avoid a no-deal.
The legislation, which received royal assent earlier this week, would require the PM to seek an extension unless a divorce deal is approved or Parliament agrees to leaving the EU without a deal by October 19.
"I think there may well be a legal strategy - I've no idea what it is.
"But I think that may well be the way through, to effectively legally kill off the Benn Bill and then find a way of coming back to the negotiations with a real sword of Damocles over them, the Europeans, rather than over us," Mr Davis told BBC Radio 4's The Week In Westminster.
The former Foreign Secretary plans to use the time to reset the negotiations deadlock with Brussels
BORIS Johnson has told senior Tories he would delay Brexit by at least six months if he can topple Theresa May to become PM.
The former Foreign Secretary wants to use the pause to reset stalled negotiations with the EU.
The mop haired Tory’s plan has surfaced after he began privately setting out his leadership stall to some Cabinet ministers in a bid to win them over, The Sun can reveal.
Boris is convinced Britain needs more time to prepare for a no deal scenario to regain the upper hand as endgame begins with Brussels on the two year-long Brexit talks.
But the move risks angering Leave voters, as the UK will not exit the EU under his plan until the end of October 2019 at the earliest.
One Cabinet minister that Boris has confided in said: “People will not put up with us delaying Brexit by a single day, so I’ve told Boris I don’t think his plan works.
“We're in a bugger’s muddle alright, but it won’t be any better in six months time so we have to tough it out with the EU now”.
The revelation comes as Boris is set to hijack all attention at the Tories’ annual conference in Birmingham.
Mr Johnson will headline an anti-Chequers rally with a tub thumping speech at the party’s annual gathering.
But he has also suffered a withering backlash from Brexiteer and Remainer Tories alike after they accused him of trying to destabilise the PM by branding her soft Brexit blueprint “deranged”.
Another Cabinet minister accused Boris of misjudging Tory activists’ mood at the conference.
The minister told The Sun: “Boris is self-destructing at the moment. Everything he has said is badly miscalculated, because he is a man in a desperate hurry and it’s looking over the top and desperate.
“It’s a sad sight really, because he has so much potentially talent.”
Other Tory MPs were openly seething with him.
Boris’s successor in the seat of Henley, John Howell MP, told The Sun: “As far as I’m concerned, Boris can just f*** off””.
Balding former Cabinet minister and May loyalist Damian Green was equally scathing.
He told activists yesterday that he will miss the “annual Boris performance” today as “sadly I’m washing my hair”.
Boris is still favourite to succeed Theresa May as leader among Tory activists, scooping 30% of their support in the latest survey of members by the ConHome website. Though he has lost some ground to second placed Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who is now on 19%.
 
The former Foreign Secretary plans to use the time to reset the negotiations deadlock with Brussels
BORIS Johnson has told senior Tories he would delay Brexit by at least six months if he can topple Theresa May to become PM.
The former Foreign Secretary wants to use the pause to reset stalled negotiations with the EU.
The mop haired Tory’s plan has surfaced after he began privately setting out his leadership stall to some Cabinet ministers in a bid to win them over, The Sun can reveal.
Boris is convinced Britain needs more time to prepare for a no deal scenario to regain the upper hand as endgame begins with Brussels on the two year-long Brexit talks.
But the move risks angering Leave voters, as the UK will not exit the EU under his plan until the end of October 2019 at the earliest.
One Cabinet minister that Boris has confided in said: “People will not put up with us delaying Brexit by a single day, so I’ve told Boris I don’t think his plan works.
“We're in a bugger’s muddle alright, but it won’t be any better in six months time so we have to tough it out with the EU now”.
The revelation comes as Boris is set to hijack all attention at the Tories’ annual conference in Birmingham.
Mr Johnson will headline an anti-Chequers rally with a tub thumping speech at the party’s annual gathering.
But he has also suffered a withering backlash from Brexiteer and Remainer Tories alike after they accused him of trying to destabilise the PM by branding her soft Brexit blueprint “deranged”.
Another Cabinet minister accused Boris of misjudging Tory activists’ mood at the conference.
The minister told The Sun: “Boris is self-destructing at the moment. Everything he has said is badly miscalculated, because he is a man in a desperate hurry and it’s looking over the top and desperate.
“It’s a sad sight really, because he has so much potentially talent.”
Other Tory MPs were openly seething with him.
Boris’s successor in the seat of Henley, John Howell MP, told The Sun: “As far as I’m concerned, Boris can just f*** off””.
Balding former Cabinet minister and May loyalist Damian Green was equally scathing.
He told activists yesterday that he will miss the “annual Boris performance” today as “sadly I’m washing my hair”.
Boris is still favourite to succeed Theresa May as leader among Tory activists, scooping 30% of their support in the latest survey of members by the ConHome website. Though he has lost some ground to second placed Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who is now on 19%.
 
When I talk to my friends and colleagues about why they might vote for this humiliating deal with the EU, they offer a groan of despair - as they're aware we would be handing over £39billion for nothing in return
WHEN I talk to my friends and colleagues about why they might vote for this humiliating deal with the EU, they offer a groan of despair.
There is only one reason, they say.
They know that we would be handing over a colossal £39billion for nothing in return.
They know that we would be locked in the worst of all worlds – unable to do proper free trade deals, and unable to control our own trade policy.
They know we would become a vassal state of the EU.
Everyone can see the hideous choice that this deal imposes on this country: to accept law from Brussels, over a huge range of policy – and yet with no say over those laws – or else to accept the break up of the UK and the sundering of Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
And they know – worst of all – that Brussels would have a veto over our exit from the Northern Ireland “backstop” arrangement.
This veto would give the EU the power to bully us till kingdom come.
We would not be able to end our colony status – and achieve real independence - unless and until we had satisfied the demands of all 27 member states.
The Spanish would make another play for Gibraltar. The French would come for our fish and our banks. The Germans would want concessions on EU immigration.
Other countries would want more money.
It would be a nightmare negotiation. So why do my friends think they must vote for it?
Because they believe that there is no alternative: that we may not like what has happened – but that we have run out of time and run out of road.
It is crucial to understand that this pessimism is just flat wrong.
If this deal is voted down on Tuesday – and I devoutly hope it is - we need to do two big things.
First we need to change the Withdrawal Agreement, keeping all the sensible things that have been agreed on citizens’ rights, but getting rid of the “backstop” agreement on the Northern Irish border.
We should use the so-called transition period both to negotiate a big and generous zero tariff zero quota free trade deal, and to solve the technical problems posed by the Northern Ireland border.
There is no reason why we should not use that time – almost two years – to put in place the systems that will allow our whole country to come out of both the customs union and the single market, which is what the people were promised both at the referendum and the general election.
We should be clear that we will keep back at least half of the £39billion until the free trade deal is done.
And second it is time now to show our EU friends that we mean business.
This should be a take it or leave it offer – and so show that we mean business we must be able to walk away.
This is a great country, capable of rising to immense challenges – and I believe the people of this country are fed up to the back teeth of being told by their government that they are simply incapable of managing the logistical problems of Brexit, when for two and a half years this government has studiously and deliberately failed to address those logistical problems.
It is that failure and that lack of resolve that has so weakened our hand in the talks.
Now is the time to get on with it – and remember, if we have to go down this route, we will have the entire £39billion to spend on it.
We need to get our ports ready, hire the staff, ensure that the planes can fly and that companies are helped to transfer their data under any circumstances.
I don’t believe for a moment that our EU friends and partners want such an outcome.
They have a £95 billion surplus with us in goods alone.
They don’t want barriers to trade.
They want a deal as much as we do.
Do you really think that the people of the Calais region would be grateful if the Paris government took steps to block commercial traffic from the UK?
Have you seen what is going on in France?
No one wants disruption of any kind – and the way to avoid it is to get ready to manage it now, with energy and conviction.
We can still get a great deal, and I am sure we will. But the best way to get a great deal is to prepare for no deal.
When I talk to my friends and colleagues about why they might vote for this humiliating deal with the EU, they offer a groan of despair - as they're aware we would be handing over £39billion for nothing in return
WHEN I talk to my friends and colleagues about why they might vote for this humiliating deal with the EU, they offer a groan of despair.
There is only one reason, they say.
They know that we would be handing over a colossal £39billion for nothing in return.
They know that we would be locked in the worst of all worlds – unable to do proper free trade deals, and unable to control our own trade policy.
They know we would become a vassal state of the EU.
Everyone can see the hideous choice that this deal imposes on this country: to accept law from Brussels, over a huge range of policy – and yet with no say over those laws – or else to accept the break up of the UK and the sundering of Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
And they know – worst of all – that Brussels would have a veto over our exit from the Northern Ireland “backstop” arrangement.
This veto would give the EU the power to bully us till kingdom come.
We would not be able to end our colony status – and achieve real independence - unless and until we had satisfied the demands of all 27 member states.
The Spanish would make another play for Gibraltar. The French would come for our fish and our banks. The Germans would want concessions on EU immigration.
Other countries would want more money.
It would be a nightmare negotiation. So why do my friends think they must vote for it?
Because they believe that there is no alternative: that we may not like what has happened – but that we have run out of time and run out of road.
It is crucial to understand that this pessimism is just flat wrong.
If this deal is voted down on Tuesday – and I devoutly hope it is - we need to do two big things.
First we need to change the Withdrawal Agreement, keeping all the sensible things that have been agreed on citizens’ rights, but getting rid of the “backstop” agreement on the Northern Irish border.
We should use the so-called transition period both to negotiate a big and generous zero tariff zero quota free trade deal, and to solve the technical problems posed by the Northern Ireland border.
There is no reason why we should not use that time – almost two years – to put in place the systems that will allow our whole country to come out of both the customs union and the single market, which is what the people were promised both at the referendum and the general election.
We should be clear that we will keep back at least half of the £39billion until the free trade deal is done.
And second it is time now to show our EU friends that we mean business.
This should be a take it or leave it offer – and so show that we mean business we must be able to walk away.
This is a great country, capable of rising to immense challenges – and I believe the people of this country are fed up to the back teeth of being told by their government that they are simply incapable of managing the logistical problems of Brexit, when for two and a half years this government has studiously and deliberately failed to address those logistical problems.
It is that failure and that lack of resolve that has so weakened our hand in the talks.
Now is the time to get on with it – and remember, if we have to go down this route, we will have the entire £39billion to spend on it.
We need to get our ports ready, hire the staff, ensure that the planes can fly and that companies are helped to transfer their data under any circumstances.
I don’t believe for a moment that our EU friends and partners want such an outcome.
They have a £95 billion surplus with us in goods alone.
They don’t want barriers to trade.
They want a deal as much as we do.
Do you really think that the people of the Calais region would be grateful if the Paris government took steps to block commercial traffic from the UK?
Have you seen what is going on in France?
No one wants disruption of any kind – and the way to avoid it is to get ready to manage it now, with energy and conviction.
We can still get a great deal, and I am sure we will. But the best way to get a great deal is to prepare for no deal.
AFTER decades of campaigning, three years of arguments and seemingly endless months of pointless delay, it is now just 25 days until the UK’s membership of the EU ends.
We will be packing our bags and walking out on October 31.
The only question is whether Brussels cheerily waves us off with a mutually agreeable deal, or whether we will be forced to head off on our own.
I’ve been clear from the start that, while it is prudent to prepare for the possibility of a No Deal Brexit, it would be best for everyone if we could reach an agreement that is acceptable to both sides.
This week we put forward our ideas to make that happen. It’s a practical compromise that gives ground where necessary while still protecting the UK’s interests and delivering the Brexit this country voted for.
Our proposals get rid of the anti-democratic “backstop” while avoiding any infrastructure or checks at the Irish border. Our plan respects the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday agreement.
It gives farmers and other businesses on both sides of the Irish border the assurances they need. And it gets the UK out of the EU and its customs union, allowing us to take back control of our trade policy and do free trade deals with friends around the world.
In short, it gets Brexit done on October 31.
Yes, we have made compromises, and I’m sure that not everyone will be happy with that. But this is a negotiation and achieving the deal we all want inevitably requires some give and take on both sides.
The way I see it, the proposals published this week represent we in the UK jumping to the island in the middle of the river. If we’re to leave with a deal, we need the EU to jump over from its side and join us there, showing its own willingness to do a deal that the UK Parliament can support.
He has fashioned a credible Brexit offer that could win a Commons majority, confounding critics who insisted he only wanted No Deal.
His compromise has been carefully crafted so it is palatable to MPs from all sides who genuinely want a deal.
But as he says on these pages, it only works if the EU are willing to show they want one too.
With his customary optimism, the PM says: “The British public wants to move on. Most MPs want to move on. And I honestly believe the EU wants to move on too.”
The trouble is Parliament’s Rem-ainers have already given the EU a get-out with the Benn “Surrender Act”.
And Brussels seems happy to sit back and let the wreckers do their worst to prevent ANY deal.
With time running out, the Eurocrats must abandon their stubborn posturing and meet the PM halfway — or explain to businesses why they are risking their futures.
But don’t hold your breath.
If his deal is rejected at the EU summit in a fortnight Boris is still determined to leave without one on the 31st.
You can’t blame him for keeping his tactics secret, but it will take some very fancy footwork to stay within the law AND avoid an extension.
What the Remainers and Brexit- wreckers on all sides of the Commons need to ask themselves is this:
Would you bet against BoJo?
Regrettably, there are some MPs — led, unsurprisingly, by that serial wannabe Brexit-wrecker Jeremy Corbyn — who have said they will oppose this deal in any circumstances.
It doesn’t matter what the EU say or how negotiations pan out between now and the end of the month – they don’t want to deliver Brexit full stop, so will reject any and every attempt at finding a way forward. They say they’re against No Deal, but actually favour no Brexit.
But speaking to my fellow Parliamentarians, I was really encouraged to discover that not all are so recalcitrant.
MPs from every wing of my own Conservative party, from Northern Ireland’s DUP, even from Jeremy Corbyn’s own ranks have said our proposed deal looks like one they can get behind.
Where the previous Withdrawal Agreement, backstop and all, drove an almighty wedge through the heart of Parliament, I have heard positive noises from across the House.
And I salute the spirit of compromise from MPs on all sides who have looked at what’s on the table, reflected on what’s best for their constituents, and decided they are willing to put aside their personal beliefs and back the deal that they know will get Brexit done.
They know if I go to Brussels armed with a set of proposals MPs support, it is much more likely the EU will accept our outstretched hand and make that leap on to the island.
The British public wants to move on. Most MPs want to move on. And I honestly believe the EU does, too.
So I say to our European friends: grasp the opportunity our new proposal provides. Join us at the negotiating table in a spirit of compromise and co-operation. And let’s make Brexit work for both sides.
We are leaving in 25 days. We can do it with a deal if the EU is willing. But they should be under no illusions or misapprehensions. There will be no more dither or delay. On October 31 we are going to get Brexit done.
 
AFTER decades of campaigning, three years of arguments and seemingly endless months of pointless delay, it is now just 25 days until the UK’s membership of the EU ends.
We will be packing our bags and walking out on October 31.
The only question is whether Brussels cheerily waves us off with a mutually agreeable deal, or whether we will be forced to head off on our own.
I’ve been clear from the start that, while it is prudent to prepare for the possibility of a No Deal Brexit, it would be best for everyone if we could reach an agreement that is acceptable to both sides.
This week we put forward our ideas to make that happen. It’s a practical compromise that gives ground where necessary while still protecting the UK’s interests and delivering the Brexit this country voted for.
Our proposals get rid of the anti-democratic “backstop” while avoiding any infrastructure or checks at the Irish border. Our plan respects the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday agreement.
It gives farmers and other businesses on both sides of the Irish border the assurances they need. And it gets the UK out of the EU and its customs union, allowing us to take back control of our trade policy and do free trade deals with friends around the world.
In short, it gets Brexit done on October 31.
Yes, we have made compromises, and I’m sure that not everyone will be happy with that. But this is a negotiation and achieving the deal we all want inevitably requires some give and take on both sides.
The way I see it, the proposals published this week represent we in the UK jumping to the island in the middle of the river. If we’re to leave with a deal, we need the EU to jump over from its side and join us there, showing its own willingness to do a deal that the UK Parliament can support.
He has fashioned a credible Brexit offer that could win a Commons majority, confounding critics who insisted he only wanted No Deal.
His compromise has been carefully crafted so it is palatable to MPs from all sides who genuinely want a deal.
But as he says on these pages, it only works if the EU are willing to show they want one too.
With his customary optimism, the PM says: “The British public wants to move on. Most MPs want to move on. And I honestly believe the EU wants to move on too.”
The trouble is Parliament’s Rem-ainers have already given the EU a get-out with the Benn “Surrender Act”.
And Brussels seems happy to sit back and let the wreckers do their worst to prevent ANY deal.
With time running out, the Eurocrats must abandon their stubborn posturing and meet the PM halfway — or explain to businesses why they are risking their futures.
But don’t hold your breath.
If his deal is rejected at the EU summit in a fortnight Boris is still determined to leave without one on the 31st.
You can’t blame him for keeping his tactics secret, but it will take some very fancy footwork to stay within the law AND avoid an extension.
What the Remainers and Brexit- wreckers on all sides of the Commons need to ask themselves is this:
Would you bet against BoJo?
Regrettably, there are some MPs — led, unsurprisingly, by that serial wannabe Brexit-wrecker Jeremy Corbyn — who have said they will oppose this deal in any circumstances.
It doesn’t matter what the EU say or how negotiations pan out between now and the end of the month – they don’t want to deliver Brexit full stop, so will reject any and every attempt at finding a way forward. They say they’re against No Deal, but actually favour no Brexit.
But speaking to my fellow Parliamentarians, I was really encouraged to discover that not all are so recalcitrant.
MPs from every wing of my own Conservative party, from Northern Ireland’s DUP, even from Jeremy Corbyn’s own ranks have said our proposed deal looks like one they can get behind.
Where the previous Withdrawal Agreement, backstop and all, drove an almighty wedge through the heart of Parliament, I have heard positive noises from across the House.
And I salute the spirit of compromise from MPs on all sides who have looked at what’s on the table, reflected on what’s best for their constituents, and decided they are willing to put aside their personal beliefs and back the deal that they know will get Brexit done.
They know if I go to Brussels armed with a set of proposals MPs support, it is much more likely the EU will accept our outstretched hand and make that leap on to the island.
The British public wants to move on. Most MPs want to move on. And I honestly believe the EU does, too.
So I say to our European friends: grasp the opportunity our new proposal provides. Join us at the negotiating table in a spirit of compromise and co-operation. And let’s make Brexit work for both sides.
We are leaving in 25 days. We can do it with a deal if the EU is willing. But they should be under no illusions or misapprehensions. There will be no more dither or delay. On October 31 we are going to get Brexit done.
 
Across the country I find people who — whatever they voted two years ago — just want us to get on and do it
IT WAS two years ago today that the people of this country stunned the world.
They defied the experts. They stuck up two fingers to the gloom merchants. They disobeyed the warnings of every major political party.
They politely refused to be cowed by the miserablist predictions of everyone from Barack Obama to Eddie Izzard to Polly Toynbee.
We were told we couldn’t do it. We were told we wouldn’t do it. Above all we were told we shouldn’t do it.
We did it.
We voted to leave the bosomy lavender scented embrace of the European Union after 45 years of membership.
In a heroic act of national self belief we decided to take back control of our laws, our borders, and all the cash that we send to Brussels (a gross figure that is not unadjacent, as I never tire of saying, to £350m a week and rising to over £400m by 2021).
And in the 24 months that have passed we have seen that confidence vindicated. the doomsters have been routed.
We were told that if we voted leave then unemployment would rise by half a million.
We were told the stock market would collapse.
We were told that this country would become a global leper shunned by investors and shorn of influence.
And what has really happened?
Unemployment has fallen by 250,000 to a new low of 4.2 per cent while record numbers of jobs have been created - including no fewer than 8 for the former chancellor and chief architect of project fear who has become a glorious living rebuttal of his own preposterous warnings.
The FTSE index is UP by over 1200 points since the referendum. Exports are up by £70 billion if you compare 2017 with 2016.
Foreign direct investment continues to pour in. As for British influence - look at how the world responded to the attempted murder of the Skripals.
In an unprecedented act of diplomatic sympathy 28 countries expelled Russian spies in protest at the callous use of novichok nerve agent in Salisbury.
And they said Britain would be isolated. They said we would have no friends. They said we would lose our nerve.
What did they really know about this county and its spirit?
That is spirit of the new Global Britain that we are building - confident, open, internationalist, free trading, - in the government led by Theresa May.
Across the country I find people who - whatever they voted two years ago - just want us to get on and do it.
They don’t want a half-hearted Brexit. They don’t want some sort of hopeless compromise, some perpetual pushme-pullyou arrangement in which we stay half in and half out in a political no mans land - with no more ministers round the table in Brussels and yet forced to obey EU laws.
They don’t want some bog roll Brexit - soft, yielding and seemingly infinitely long.
They want this government to fulfil the mandate of the people - and deliver a full British Brexit.
This week the Prime Minister showed how she intends to honour a key pledge of the Leave campaign.
As she made clear on Monday at least some of the extra funding for the NHS will come from the Brexit dividend - the cash that we will recoup on our EU contributions when we finally leave.
But Brexit is about much more than that.
As she spelled out in her Mansion House speech Theresa May has a vision for a country that leads and campaigns for free trade and that will be able to do new deals with the growth economies of the world.
Yes of course we will remain close to our friends and partners over the channel. We are a great European power. We will remain a great European power.
Indeed by some predictions the UK will be the biggest economy in Europe by 2050 - but just not in the EU.
We will have the freedom to bust out of the corsets of EU regulation and rules - to do things our way, to make the most of British leadership in the growth sectors of tomorrow.
We are the dominant European economy not just in financial services but in tech and bio-science and e commerce, to say nothing of the growing UK lead in the arts, culture, media and academia.
Brexit is the chance to turbo charge those capabilities and to lengthen our lead.
If we get it right then that will mean much more than just more cash for hospitals or sensible controls at borders - important though those are.
It will mean a nimble and dynamic Britain able to respond swiftly and in our own way to all the opportunities of the global economy.
And that will mean new and fulfilling jobs in sectors that are being held back - or may not even exist - because of the one size fits all model of the EU.
Of course I recognise that there are some people who still think it won’t happen.
There are some who are still intent on watering Brexit down. There are some who would be content if we ended up with the worst of both worlds - out of the EU but still largely run by the EU.
That is because they secretly want to reduce Brexit to an absurdity and then campaign to take the UK back in.
And they are still trotting out the same old project fear stuff that we ignored two years ago.
They were wrong then and they are wrong now.
They have underestimated this country. They have underestimated the courage and determination of Theresa May.
Two years ago the people of this country recorded a verdict about themselves: that they had the guts to believe in Britain.
They were right and they will be proved right in the decades ahead.
It is time to take back control.
Across the country I find people who — whatever they voted two years ago — just want us to get on and do it
IT WAS two years ago today that the people of this country stunned the world.
They defied the experts. They stuck up two fingers to the gloom merchants. They disobeyed the warnings of every major political party.
They politely refused to be cowed by the miserablist predictions of everyone from Barack Obama to Eddie Izzard to Polly Toynbee.
We were told we couldn’t do it. We were told we wouldn’t do it. Above all we were told we shouldn’t do it.
We did it.
We voted to leave the bosomy lavender scented embrace of the European Union after 45 years of membership.
In a heroic act of national self belief we decided to take back control of our laws, our borders, and all the cash that we send to Brussels (a gross figure that is not unadjacent, as I never tire of saying, to £350m a week and rising to over £400m by 2021).
And in the 24 months that have passed we have seen that confidence vindicated. the doomsters have been routed.
We were told that if we voted leave then unemployment would rise by half a million.
We were told the stock market would collapse.
We were told that this country would become a global leper shunned by investors and shorn of influence.
And what has really happened?
Unemployment has fallen by 250,000 to a new low of 4.2 per cent while record numbers of jobs have been created - including no fewer than 8 for the former chancellor and chief architect of project fear who has become a glorious living rebuttal of his own preposterous warnings.
The FTSE index is UP by over 1200 points since the referendum. Exports are up by £70 billion if you compare 2017 with 2016.
Foreign direct investment continues to pour in. As for British influence - look at how the world responded to the attempted murder of the Skripals.
In an unprecedented act of diplomatic sympathy 28 countries expelled Russian spies in protest at the callous use of novichok nerve agent in Salisbury.
And they said Britain would be isolated. They said we would have no friends. They said we would lose our nerve.
What did they really know about this county and its spirit?
That is spirit of the new Global Britain that we are building - confident, open, internationalist, free trading, - in the government led by Theresa May.
Across the country I find people who - whatever they voted two years ago - just want us to get on and do it.
They don’t want a half-hearted Brexit. They don’t want some sort of hopeless compromise, some perpetual pushme-pullyou arrangement in which we stay half in and half out in a political no mans land - with no more ministers round the table in Brussels and yet forced to obey EU laws.
They don’t want some bog roll Brexit - soft, yielding and seemingly infinitely long.
They want this government to fulfil the mandate of the people - and deliver a full British Brexit.
This week the Prime Minister showed how she intends to honour a key pledge of the Leave campaign.
As she made clear on Monday at least some of the extra funding for the NHS will come from the Brexit dividend - the cash that we will recoup on our EU contributions when we finally leave.
But Brexit is about much more than that.
As she spelled out in her Mansion House speech Theresa May has a vision for a country that leads and campaigns for free trade and that will be able to do new deals with the growth economies of the world.
Yes of course we will remain close to our friends and partners over the channel. We are a great European power. We will remain a great European power.
Indeed by some predictions the UK will be the biggest economy in Europe by 2050 - but just not in the EU.
We will have the freedom to bust out of the corsets of EU regulation and rules - to do things our way, to make the most of British leadership in the growth sectors of tomorrow.
We are the dominant European economy not just in financial services but in tech and bio-science and e commerce, to say nothing of the growing UK lead in the arts, culture, media and academia.
Brexit is the chance to turbo charge those capabilities and to lengthen our lead.
If we get it right then that will mean much more than just more cash for hospitals or sensible controls at borders - important though those are.
It will mean a nimble and dynamic Britain able to respond swiftly and in our own way to all the opportunities of the global economy.
And that will mean new and fulfilling jobs in sectors that are being held back - or may not even exist - because of the one size fits all model of the EU.
Of course I recognise that there are some people who still think it won’t happen.
There are some who are still intent on watering Brexit down. There are some who would be content if we ended up with the worst of both worlds - out of the EU but still largely run by the EU.
That is because they secretly want to reduce Brexit to an absurdity and then campaign to take the UK back in.
And they are still trotting out the same old project fear stuff that we ignored two years ago.
They were wrong then and they are wrong now.
They have underestimated this country. They have underestimated the courage and determination of Theresa May.
Two years ago the people of this country recorded a verdict about themselves: that they had the guts to believe in Britain.
They were right and they will be proved right in the decades ahead.
It is time to take back control.
BORIS Johnson has laughed off President Trump's broadside to Theresa May today, insisting he agrees that the PM's Brexit has been a disaster.
The Brexiteer and front-runner to become the next Tory PM refused to criticise his ally when pressed on whether the US President was right to attack her on Twitter.
When he had tweets read out of Trump calling May's Brexit a "disaster" he chuckled and said: "I find it hard to disagree".
The President branded her "foolish" for not taking his advice and going her "own way" with the EU.
Boris has branded Mrs May's deal as terrible on several occasions and voted against it twice before finally backing it on the final go - but it still didn't pass.
In an interview with Politico he said: "When it comes to the context of what the president has said about the Brexit deal, I find it hard to disagree.
"If you ask me whether I think the Brexit negotiations have been brilliantly handled, I don’t think so."
But he did distance himself from some of the President's other remarks, saying he doesn't want "anybody telling us what to do".
The President also blasted the US ambassador Sir Kim Darroch, who quit his role yesterday, calling him "wacky" and "pompous".
Some of his cables between the UK and US were leaked over the weekend, where he called Trump's government "inept".
Boris joked: "If Donald Trump can make friends with Kim Jong Un, then he can make friends with Kim Da-roch."
He was yesterday blamed for Sir Kim's dramatic resignation, but told The Sun he didn't throw him under the bus at all.
Pals of Sir Kim said he'd  decided to quit after seeing Boris refuse to guarantee he would keep him in post if he becomes PM later this month.
But others insisted he's already made up his mind before then, after being barred from events in America.
During the same interview Boris revealed that he and Meghan Markle share the same favourite £180-a-bottle red wine.
He said he prefers the red stuff to beer and he's particularly partial to a make called Tignanello.
And he added: "It's extraordinary stuff, but I mean it was delicious.
"I discovered later that it was the favourite wine of Meghan Markle."
Meghan named her now-deleted lifestyle blog The Tig after her favourite red wine.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
BORIS Johnson has laughed off President Trump's broadside to Theresa May today, insisting he agrees that the PM's Brexit has been a disaster.
The Brexiteer and front-runner to become the next Tory PM refused to criticise his ally when pressed on whether the US President was right to attack her on Twitter.
When he had tweets read out of Trump calling May's Brexit a "disaster" he chuckled and said: "I find it hard to disagree".
The President branded her "foolish" for not taking his advice and going her "own way" with the EU.
Boris has branded Mrs May's deal as terrible on several occasions and voted against it twice before finally backing it on the final go - but it still didn't pass.
In an interview with Politico he said: "When it comes to the context of what the president has said about the Brexit deal, I find it hard to disagree.
"If you ask me whether I think the Brexit negotiations have been brilliantly handled, I don’t think so."
But he did distance himself from some of the President's other remarks, saying he doesn't want "anybody telling us what to do".
The President also blasted the US ambassador Sir Kim Darroch, who quit his role yesterday, calling him "wacky" and "pompous".
Some of his cables between the UK and US were leaked over the weekend, where he called Trump's government "inept".
Boris joked: "If Donald Trump can make friends with Kim Jong Un, then he can make friends with Kim Da-roch."
He was yesterday blamed for Sir Kim's dramatic resignation, but told The Sun he didn't throw him under the bus at all.
Pals of Sir Kim said he'd  decided to quit after seeing Boris refuse to guarantee he would keep him in post if he becomes PM later this month.
But others insisted he's already made up his mind before then, after being barred from events in America.
During the same interview Boris revealed that he and Meghan Markle share the same favourite £180-a-bottle red wine.
He said he prefers the red stuff to beer and he's particularly partial to a make called Tignanello.
And he added: "It's extraordinary stuff, but I mean it was delicious.
"I discovered later that it was the favourite wine of Meghan Markle."
Meghan named her now-deleted lifestyle blog The Tig after her favourite red wine.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
Taking Orwellianism to dizzy new heights, this new political group poses as 'independent' while aiming to overturn the largest democratic vote in British history
SO now we know what the so-called Independent Group is really all about.
It is about stopping Brexit. It is about preventing the enactment of the largest democratic vote in British history and frustrating the British people’s vote for independence from the European Union.
Yes, taking Orwellianism to dizzy new heights, this new political group poses as “independent” while seeking to overthrow the public’s desire to make Britain a properly independent nation again.
Of course many of us suspected this the minute the Independent Group (IG) was unveiled by seven disgruntled Labour MPs, including Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and Luciana Berger, who has been subjected to vile anti-Semitic abuse by some prejudiced Corbynistas. And yet much of the discussion about IG has focused on its founding members’ disappointment with the direction
Labour has taken under Jeremy Corbyn’s weird leadership. So people could be forgiven for thinking this group was born of Labour’s internal strife rather than of the Brexit issue per se.
You can’t be forgiven for thinking that any more. Three Tory MPs, three Tory turncoats, have abandoned Theresa May’s Conservative Party and thrown their lot in with the Independent Group: Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen.
What do these three Tories share in common? They despise Brexit. Their cosying up to Chuka and Co confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt IG is a movement against Brexit and against democracy.
If this group becomes a new party, it will be a party against the people.
How much do IG’s new Tory members hate Brexit? Soubry devotes an extraordinary amount of moral and political energy to raging against it and the idiots, as she sees us, who voted for it.
She says we were “tricked, lied to, and conned”, as if we were wide-eyed children rather than adults who can make up our own minds about Britain’s future.
Soubry, like the seven Labourites who founded IG, of course wants a second referendum. Or a “People’s Vote”, as they dishonestly call it, overlooking the fact we had a People’s Vote in June 2016, the largest people’s vote in UK history, in which Brexit won convincingly.
Like many Remoaners, Soubry initially said she’d accept the referendum result. Yet now she’s gone back on that. Why would anyone trust such a flip-flopping politician?
Sarah Wollaston, the MP for Totnes, is even worse. In the run-up to the referendum she initially campaigned for Leave but then she defected to the Remain camp. But after the referendum she said MPs’ job is “to actually implement” the result. Parliament was given a “clear instruction” by the people, she said: leave the EU.
Fast forward nearly three years and Wollaston is refusing to implement our “clear instruction”. Instead she’s agitating for a second referendum. She says Brexit won because Leave campaigners “play[ed] on people’s fears”. Wollaston’s shift captures why so many people no longer trust politicians. With politicians like her, the IG is not going to win many hearts and minds.
Heidi Allen, MP for South Cambridgeshire, is another second referendum agitator. And she is explicit about the need to include the option of staying in the EU in any so-called “People’s Vote”. So a second vote wouldn’t, as some Remoaners dishonestly claim, simply put May’s final deal to the public. It would be about forcing the public to this time obey our political masters by voting to stay in the EU.
The arrival of these three Tories into the arms of IG confirms what this group is all about. It is a new party of the elite. It is a political outfit for snobs and authoritarians. It is a space for hypocrites and anti-democrats. It is a group that will devote itself to one thing: waging war against the greatest act of democracy in UK history.
Don’t believe the hype about the three Tory defectors taking a stand against the “hard right” in their former party or the seven Labour MPs seeking to offer an alternative to Corbynism.
The only thing these people will take a stand against is you and me and the millions of other people who voted to leave the EU. This is something new and really worrying: a political party that doesn’t want to stir up the democratic spirit but to suppress it.
Taking Orwellianism to dizzy new heights, this new political group poses as 'independent' while aiming to overturn the largest democratic vote in British history
SO now we know what the so-called Independent Group is really all about.
It is about stopping Brexit. It is about preventing the enactment of the largest democratic vote in British history and frustrating the British people’s vote for independence from the European Union.
Yes, taking Orwellianism to dizzy new heights, this new political group poses as “independent” while seeking to overthrow the public’s desire to make Britain a properly independent nation again.
Of course many of us suspected this the minute the Independent Group (IG) was unveiled by seven disgruntled Labour MPs, including Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and Luciana Berger, who has been subjected to vile anti-Semitic abuse by some prejudiced Corbynistas. And yet much of the discussion about IG has focused on its founding members’ disappointment with the direction
Labour has taken under Jeremy Corbyn’s weird leadership. So people could be forgiven for thinking this group was born of Labour’s internal strife rather than of the Brexit issue per se.
You can’t be forgiven for thinking that any more. Three Tory MPs, three Tory turncoats, have abandoned Theresa May’s Conservative Party and thrown their lot in with the Independent Group: Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen.
What do these three Tories share in common? They despise Brexit. Their cosying up to Chuka and Co confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt IG is a movement against Brexit and against democracy.
If this group becomes a new party, it will be a party against the people.
How much do IG’s new Tory members hate Brexit? Soubry devotes an extraordinary amount of moral and political energy to raging against it and the idiots, as she sees us, who voted for it.
She says we were “tricked, lied to, and conned”, as if we were wide-eyed children rather than adults who can make up our own minds about Britain’s future.
Soubry, like the seven Labourites who founded IG, of course wants a second referendum. Or a “People’s Vote”, as they dishonestly call it, overlooking the fact we had a People’s Vote in June 2016, the largest people’s vote in UK history, in which Brexit won convincingly.
Like many Remoaners, Soubry initially said she’d accept the referendum result. Yet now she’s gone back on that. Why would anyone trust such a flip-flopping politician?
Sarah Wollaston, the MP for Totnes, is even worse. In the run-up to the referendum she initially campaigned for Leave but then she defected to the Remain camp. But after the referendum she said MPs’ job is “to actually implement” the result. Parliament was given a “clear instruction” by the people, she said: leave the EU.
Fast forward nearly three years and Wollaston is refusing to implement our “clear instruction”. Instead she’s agitating for a second referendum. She says Brexit won because Leave campaigners “play[ed] on people’s fears”. Wollaston’s shift captures why so many people no longer trust politicians. With politicians like her, the IG is not going to win many hearts and minds.
Heidi Allen, MP for South Cambridgeshire, is another second referendum agitator. And she is explicit about the need to include the option of staying in the EU in any so-called “People’s Vote”. So a second vote wouldn’t, as some Remoaners dishonestly claim, simply put May’s final deal to the public. It would be about forcing the public to this time obey our political masters by voting to stay in the EU.
The arrival of these three Tories into the arms of IG confirms what this group is all about. It is a new party of the elite. It is a political outfit for snobs and authoritarians. It is a space for hypocrites and anti-democrats. It is a group that will devote itself to one thing: waging war against the greatest act of democracy in UK history.
Don’t believe the hype about the three Tory defectors taking a stand against the “hard right” in their former party or the seven Labour MPs seeking to offer an alternative to Corbynism.
The only thing these people will take a stand against is you and me and the millions of other people who voted to leave the EU. This is something new and really worrying: a political party that doesn’t want to stir up the democratic spirit but to suppress it.
They have even stirred up hysteria about an epidemic of super-gonorrhoea if we crash out of the EU
THEY’RE back. Like those horror movie monsters that keep rising from the grave, the Project Fear lobby have staggered back to life.
We thought we had done away with them during the referendum in June 2016, when 17.4million of us ignored their warnings of doom and voted to leave the EU anyway. But here they come once more, these ashen-faced prophets of woe, to terrify us yet again about how awful life outside the EU will be.
Be afraid, very afraid — it’s Project Fear: The Sequel. Only like most sequels, this one is naff and utterly unconvincing. The star of this B-movie version of politics is the Chancellor Philip Hammond.
The moaniest of the Cabinet’s Remoaners, Hammond has used his political clout to whip up dread about the impact Brexit will have on our economy. This week he slyly torpedoed Dominic Raab’s cool analysis of what will happen if there is a No-Deal Brexit.
Raab, the Brexit Secretary, gave an upbeat speech about how Britain will cope if we fail to reach a deal with the EU before exit day on March 29 next year. It was the speech Britons needed to hear. For too long, Brexit-bashing fearmongers have dominated the debate. Cranky Europhiles have weaved tall tales about how we will run out of food and medicine if there is no deal.
They have even stirred up hysteria about an epidemic of super-gonorrhoea if we crash out of the EU. Hunger, sickness, pestilence . . . what next — plagues of locusts? What a relief to hear Raab shoot down these apocalyptic scare stories.
Yes, there will be practical problems if we leave without a deal, he admitted. For example, we would have to pay to access the EU’s databases on crime. The removal of the EU’s ban on credit and debit card surcharges would probably increase the cost of shopping. Customs changes will mean firms having to buy new software in order to continue exporting and importing.
And British citizens who live in Europe might have difficulty accessing their pensions. But we can find solutions to these things, he said. And what’s more, the sticky aspects of No Deal will be outweighed by the instant benefits.
Like not having to pay the extortionate £39billion divorce bill Brussels is demanding. And having immediate control over laws and borders. And being able to sign new trade deals. Take that, Single Market.
Many Brexit voters will have cheered Raab’s speech. Here was a politician behaving like a grown-up. He was straight about the challenges of No Deal, while sweetening that pill by reminding us why we voted for Brexit — to win back democratic control over our trade, laws and borders.
Yet no sooner had Raab reassured the nation than Hammond was trying to freak us out again. Like a political Eeyore, he chose the day of Raab’s speech to send a letter to the Treasury about the “large fiscal consequences” of leaving with no deal. It was petulant behaviour — one Cabinet minister undermining another.
And to the fury of Theresa May, it seems. The PM reportedly did not know about Hammond’s plans to scupper Raab’s positivity. This is all that Remoaners have left: The politics of fear. They seem to have forgotten one small fact, that Project Fear failed first time round.
During the referendum, then Chancellor George Osborne tried to panic us into voting Remain by saying that leaving the EU would cause “severe economic shocks” and wipe £36billion a year from public finances. We ignored him — and we were right to. Last year, analysis by the National Audit Office found that many of Osborne’s claims made were flat-out wrong.
What these anti-Brexit panic-mongers fail to appreciate is that the majority of us did not vote Brexit for economic reasons.
Survey after survey has found people voted to leave the EU because they wanted to take back control, to breathe life back into British sovereignty. From the Ashcroft polls on referendum day, to the Centre For Social Investigation’s survey published this year, the evidence shows voters were motivated by a belief that “decisions about the UK should be made in the UK”.
They voted out of principle. Because they believe in something — democracy. Their motivation was not money or GDP or fear — it was HOPE. Hope that if they pushed aside Brussels bureaucrats, they might finally have a greater democratic say in Britain’s future.
To quote Oscar Wilde, Remainers such as Hammond know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Us Brexit voters, on the other hand, know you cannot put a price on something as valuable as democracy.
They have even stirred up hysteria about an epidemic of super-gonorrhoea if we crash out of the EU
THEY’RE back. Like those horror movie monsters that keep rising from the grave, the Project Fear lobby have staggered back to life.
We thought we had done away with them during the referendum in June 2016, when 17.4million of us ignored their warnings of doom and voted to leave the EU anyway. But here they come once more, these ashen-faced prophets of woe, to terrify us yet again about how awful life outside the EU will be.
Be afraid, very afraid — it’s Project Fear: The Sequel. Only like most sequels, this one is naff and utterly unconvincing. The star of this B-movie version of politics is the Chancellor Philip Hammond.
The moaniest of the Cabinet’s Remoaners, Hammond has used his political clout to whip up dread about the impact Brexit will have on our economy. This week he slyly torpedoed Dominic Raab’s cool analysis of what will happen if there is a No-Deal Brexit.
Raab, the Brexit Secretary, gave an upbeat speech about how Britain will cope if we fail to reach a deal with the EU before exit day on March 29 next year. It was the speech Britons needed to hear. For too long, Brexit-bashing fearmongers have dominated the debate. Cranky Europhiles have weaved tall tales about how we will run out of food and medicine if there is no deal.
They have even stirred up hysteria about an epidemic of super-gonorrhoea if we crash out of the EU. Hunger, sickness, pestilence . . . what next — plagues of locusts? What a relief to hear Raab shoot down these apocalyptic scare stories.
Yes, there will be practical problems if we leave without a deal, he admitted. For example, we would have to pay to access the EU’s databases on crime. The removal of the EU’s ban on credit and debit card surcharges would probably increase the cost of shopping. Customs changes will mean firms having to buy new software in order to continue exporting and importing.
And British citizens who live in Europe might have difficulty accessing their pensions. But we can find solutions to these things, he said. And what’s more, the sticky aspects of No Deal will be outweighed by the instant benefits.
Like not having to pay the extortionate £39billion divorce bill Brussels is demanding. And having immediate control over laws and borders. And being able to sign new trade deals. Take that, Single Market.
Many Brexit voters will have cheered Raab’s speech. Here was a politician behaving like a grown-up. He was straight about the challenges of No Deal, while sweetening that pill by reminding us why we voted for Brexit — to win back democratic control over our trade, laws and borders.
Yet no sooner had Raab reassured the nation than Hammond was trying to freak us out again. Like a political Eeyore, he chose the day of Raab’s speech to send a letter to the Treasury about the “large fiscal consequences” of leaving with no deal. It was petulant behaviour — one Cabinet minister undermining another.
And to the fury of Theresa May, it seems. The PM reportedly did not know about Hammond’s plans to scupper Raab’s positivity. This is all that Remoaners have left: The politics of fear. They seem to have forgotten one small fact, that Project Fear failed first time round.
During the referendum, then Chancellor George Osborne tried to panic us into voting Remain by saying that leaving the EU would cause “severe economic shocks” and wipe £36billion a year from public finances. We ignored him — and we were right to. Last year, analysis by the National Audit Office found that many of Osborne’s claims made were flat-out wrong.
What these anti-Brexit panic-mongers fail to appreciate is that the majority of us did not vote Brexit for economic reasons.
Survey after survey has found people voted to leave the EU because they wanted to take back control, to breathe life back into British sovereignty. From the Ashcroft polls on referendum day, to the Centre For Social Investigation’s survey published this year, the evidence shows voters were motivated by a belief that “decisions about the UK should be made in the UK”.
They voted out of principle. Because they believe in something — democracy. Their motivation was not money or GDP or fear — it was HOPE. Hope that if they pushed aside Brussels bureaucrats, they might finally have a greater democratic say in Britain’s future.
To quote Oscar Wilde, Remainers such as Hammond know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Us Brexit voters, on the other hand, know you cannot put a price on something as valuable as democracy.
The former Ukip boss has pledged support for the Brexit Party founded by Catherine Blaiklock
A NEW "Brexit Party" backed by Nigel Farage has raised £1million in three weeks, it was claimed today.
The party's founder said she has 200 potential candidates lined up - and threatened to challenge the Tories if they sell out Brexit.
Former City trader Catherine Blaiklock has insisted she is serious about turning the Brexit Party into a major political force.
The party was registered three weeks ago, and received public backing from ex-Ukip boss Mr Farage in The Sun.
Ms Blaiklock told the Telegraph she has already received "seven-figure pledges" from supporter.
She said backers include top lawyers and successful business figures who have never previously dabbled in politics.
She added: "If we did go for the European Parliament elections and we would be looking for 70 candidates, I think we would triple that already.
"If we get BRINO - Brexit In Name Only - then there becomes an issue about whether that this a satisfactory result and now bad that result is."
Ms Blaiklock said her party would take on the Conservatives to try and force a harder version of Brexit.
Mr Farage has vowed to stand in the European Parliament elections if our EU exit is delayed beyond the scheduled polls in May.
Britain is due to be out by then - which would mean we won't take part in the pan-European elections.
But if Brexit gets postponed by more than a few weeks, the UK could have to stand candidates in the polls.
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The former Ukip boss has pledged support for the Brexit Party founded by Catherine Blaiklock
A NEW "Brexit Party" backed by Nigel Farage has raised £1million in three weeks, it was claimed today.
The party's founder said she has 200 potential candidates lined up - and threatened to challenge the Tories if they sell out Brexit.
Former City trader Catherine Blaiklock has insisted she is serious about turning the Brexit Party into a major political force.
The party was registered three weeks ago, and received public backing from ex-Ukip boss Mr Farage in The Sun.
Ms Blaiklock told the Telegraph she has already received "seven-figure pledges" from supporter.
She said backers include top lawyers and successful business figures who have never previously dabbled in politics.
She added: "If we did go for the European Parliament elections and we would be looking for 70 candidates, I think we would triple that already.
"If we get BRINO - Brexit In Name Only - then there becomes an issue about whether that this a satisfactory result and now bad that result is."
Ms Blaiklock said her party would take on the Conservatives to try and force a harder version of Brexit.
Mr Farage has vowed to stand in the European Parliament elections if our EU exit is delayed beyond the scheduled polls in May.
Britain is due to be out by then - which would mean we won't take part in the pan-European elections.
But if Brexit gets postponed by more than a few weeks, the UK could have to stand candidates in the polls.
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MICHEL Barnier today branded Boris Johnson's pledge to scrap the backstop "unacceptable" and slammed his "combative" first Commons speech.
The EU's chief negotiator insisted he will only entertain requests "compatible with" Theresa May's deal in a brutal slap down to the new PM.
In an email to ambassadors from the 27 Member States he also said the Brexiteer's vow to ramp up No Deal planning is an attempt to break EU unity.
He wrote: "PM Johnson has stated that if an agreement is to be reached it goes by way of eliminating the backstop. This is of course unacceptable.
"While he has declared that he will only engage with the EU on this basis we are on our side ready to work constructively within our own mandate.
"But as suggested by his rather combative speech we have to be ready for a situation where he gives priority to planning for No Deal, partly to heap pressure on the unity of the EU27."
The Frenchman said No Deal "will never be the EU's choice" but that "we all have to be ready for all scenarios".
And he pledged to "remain available throughout the summer for talks with the UK" if they are requested by Mr Johnson.
Mr Barnier also noted there had been "many strong reactions to the speech in the Commons" in a reference to the angry opposition his plan encountered.
And he said this meant the EU "must follow carefully the further political and economic reactions and developments in the UK" in response to it.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "It's day one, the PM has said that he wants a deal and he's going to be energetic in the pursuit of that.
"The fact remains however that the Withdrawal Agreement has been rejected three times by this Parliament and it's clearly not acceptable to the current UK Parliament."
Mr Johnson was due to speak with chief Jean-Claude Juncker on the phone tonight as he kicked off his bid to renegotiate Mrs May's agreement.
Responding to the new PM's remarks, a Commission spokeswoman said the EU was working towards the "best outcome" of Britain leaving with a deal.
She said: "When it comes to No Deal this is a significant disruption for citizens, for businesses and would have a serious economic impact that would be proportionally much greater to the UK than in the EU27 member states.
"So again, a point why the Withdrawal Agreement should be the best deal possible for both sides."
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MICHEL Barnier today branded Boris Johnson's pledge to scrap the backstop "unacceptable" and slammed his "combative" first Commons speech.
The EU's chief negotiator insisted he will only entertain requests "compatible with" Theresa May's deal in a brutal slap down to the new PM.
In an email to ambassadors from the 27 Member States he also said the Brexiteer's vow to ramp up No Deal planning is an attempt to break EU unity.
He wrote: "PM Johnson has stated that if an agreement is to be reached it goes by way of eliminating the backstop. This is of course unacceptable.
"While he has declared that he will only engage with the EU on this basis we are on our side ready to work constructively within our own mandate.
"But as suggested by his rather combative speech we have to be ready for a situation where he gives priority to planning for No Deal, partly to heap pressure on the unity of the EU27."
The Frenchman said No Deal "will never be the EU's choice" but that "we all have to be ready for all scenarios".
And he pledged to "remain available throughout the summer for talks with the UK" if they are requested by Mr Johnson.
Mr Barnier also noted there had been "many strong reactions to the speech in the Commons" in a reference to the angry opposition his plan encountered.
And he said this meant the EU "must follow carefully the further political and economic reactions and developments in the UK" in response to it.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "It's day one, the PM has said that he wants a deal and he's going to be energetic in the pursuit of that.
"The fact remains however that the Withdrawal Agreement has been rejected three times by this Parliament and it's clearly not acceptable to the current UK Parliament."
Mr Johnson was due to speak with chief Jean-Claude Juncker on the phone tonight as he kicked off his bid to renegotiate Mrs May's agreement.
Responding to the new PM's remarks, a Commission spokeswoman said the EU was working towards the "best outcome" of Britain leaving with a deal.
She said: "When it comes to No Deal this is a significant disruption for citizens, for businesses and would have a serious economic impact that would be proportionally much greater to the UK than in the EU27 member states.
"So again, a point why the Withdrawal Agreement should be the best deal possible for both sides."
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Allies claim that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered Theresa May last minute help after saying the EU could grant extra concessions if MPs shoot down her deal
THERESA May will try to force a second vote on her Brexit deal despite facing a catastrophic defeat on it, allies have revealed.
It has emerged that the PM has been given fresh hope of eventual success from a last minute offer of help from Angela Merkel.
She will tell her divided Cabinet when it meets for a fiery discussion on Plan B this morning that the German leader suggested the EU could grant extra concessions once the troubled agreement is shot down.
And that could include persuading Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to agree to an end date to the hated Irish backstop – which the DUP and dozens of Tory MPs have demanded as their price.
A senior Government figure said the PM and Mrs Merkel agreed there needs to be “a blood-letting moment” first.
Dubbing the pair’s phone call on Sunday morning as “very positive”, the source added: “Merkel believes there is more the EU can do once the vote is over as no deal would be a disaster for everyone, and they agreed to talk after it”.
Government whips were still predicting Mrs May’s deal will be defeated by a triple figure majority when the meaningful vote is held from 7pm.
The PM's plan for a second vote on her deal will be bitterly opposed by Remain members of the Cabinet, such as Amber Rudd.
The Work and Pensions Secretary told allies she will instead call on the PM again to “reach across the House” for a different Brexit deal that carries Labour MPs’ support.
No10 fear it could still be the biggest defeat ever inflicted on a serving government, passing the current record of 166 set by the minority Labour government of 1924.
With just 73 days to go until Brexit itself takes place, the defeat will plunge British politics into its worse crisis since World War Two.
Loyal Tories were urging No10 to throw its weight behind a ‘kill amendment’ and torpedo their own deal in a bid to hide the devastating true scale of MPs’ opposition to it, amid fears a defeat of 200 could force the PM to resign.
One is an amendment tabled by loyalist senior Tory Andrew Murrison, which makes Parliament’s approval of the deal dependent on the EU agreeing the backstop must end after 12 months, by December 31 2021.
Also on the eve of the momentous vote:
In a final meeting with all Tory MPs last night, the Prime Minister made a thinly veiled warning that the future of the party was at stake in today’s vote.
One in the room said the PM had “reflected on her 22 years in Parliament and how divisive the European issue had been for the party and the country”, urging her MPs to “think carefully about the longer term rather than the heat of tomorrow night”.
The PM also begged all MPs to “take a second look” at the deal, saying: “No it is not perfect. And yes it is a compromise”.
She added: “When the history books are written, people will look at the decision of this House tomorrow and ask: did we deliver on the country’s vote to leave the European Union?”
But she also angered Brexiteers by refusing to categorically rule out delaying Brexit yesterday despite repeated pleas to.
It also emerged last night that EU diplomats in Brussels have also began discussions about how to tweak the Political Declaration that accompanies the divorce deal to make it more palatable to MPs.
Leaders are also looking at calling a new emergency Brexit summit soon.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox became the first senior minister to admit the prospect of defeat, saying: “I think it’s unlikely we will win the vote tomorrow to be frank”.
Parliament will be besieged today by supporters and opponents of Brexit.
Hundreds of extra police have been drafted in to keep the peace as tensions soar.
The People’s Vote campaign will screen the debate and vote live from Parliament Square, which it has booked for the whole evening from 4pm.
Pro-second referendum MPs will also address the crowd.
 
Allies claim that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has offered Theresa May last minute help after saying the EU could grant extra concessions if MPs shoot down her deal
THERESA May will try to force a second vote on her Brexit deal despite facing a catastrophic defeat on it, allies have revealed.
It has emerged that the PM has been given fresh hope of eventual success from a last minute offer of help from Angela Merkel.
She will tell her divided Cabinet when it meets for a fiery discussion on Plan B this morning that the German leader suggested the EU could grant extra concessions once the troubled agreement is shot down.
And that could include persuading Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to agree to an end date to the hated Irish backstop – which the DUP and dozens of Tory MPs have demanded as their price.
A senior Government figure said the PM and Mrs Merkel agreed there needs to be “a blood-letting moment” first.
Dubbing the pair’s phone call on Sunday morning as “very positive”, the source added: “Merkel believes there is more the EU can do once the vote is over as no deal would be a disaster for everyone, and they agreed to talk after it”.
Government whips were still predicting Mrs May’s deal will be defeated by a triple figure majority when the meaningful vote is held from 7pm.
The PM's plan for a second vote on her deal will be bitterly opposed by Remain members of the Cabinet, such as Amber Rudd.
The Work and Pensions Secretary told allies she will instead call on the PM again to “reach across the House” for a different Brexit deal that carries Labour MPs’ support.
No10 fear it could still be the biggest defeat ever inflicted on a serving government, passing the current record of 166 set by the minority Labour government of 1924.
With just 73 days to go until Brexit itself takes place, the defeat will plunge British politics into its worse crisis since World War Two.
Loyal Tories were urging No10 to throw its weight behind a ‘kill amendment’ and torpedo their own deal in a bid to hide the devastating true scale of MPs’ opposition to it, amid fears a defeat of 200 could force the PM to resign.
One is an amendment tabled by loyalist senior Tory Andrew Murrison, which makes Parliament’s approval of the deal dependent on the EU agreeing the backstop must end after 12 months, by December 31 2021.
Also on the eve of the momentous vote:
In a final meeting with all Tory MPs last night, the Prime Minister made a thinly veiled warning that the future of the party was at stake in today’s vote.
One in the room said the PM had “reflected on her 22 years in Parliament and how divisive the European issue had been for the party and the country”, urging her MPs to “think carefully about the longer term rather than the heat of tomorrow night”.
The PM also begged all MPs to “take a second look” at the deal, saying: “No it is not perfect. And yes it is a compromise”.
She added: “When the history books are written, people will look at the decision of this House tomorrow and ask: did we deliver on the country’s vote to leave the European Union?”
But she also angered Brexiteers by refusing to categorically rule out delaying Brexit yesterday despite repeated pleas to.
It also emerged last night that EU diplomats in Brussels have also began discussions about how to tweak the Political Declaration that accompanies the divorce deal to make it more palatable to MPs.
Leaders are also looking at calling a new emergency Brexit summit soon.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox became the first senior minister to admit the prospect of defeat, saying: “I think it’s unlikely we will win the vote tomorrow to be frank”.
Parliament will be besieged today by supporters and opponents of Brexit.
Hundreds of extra police have been drafted in to keep the peace as tensions soar.
The People’s Vote campaign will screen the debate and vote live from Parliament Square, which it has booked for the whole evening from 4pm.
Pro-second referendum MPs will also address the crowd.
 
Theresa May today begged Jeremy Corbyn to do a deal with her
NIGEL Farage has warned that a soft-Brexit stitch-up would be the "final betrayal" of Brits who voted to Leave.
The Brexit Party boss also revealed that 85,000 people have signed up and given £25 to his new venture - raising a whopping £2million already.
And he's got his sights firmly on Labour votes for the upcoming EU elections on May 23, where the major parties are set for another drubbing.
Mr Farage told the Sunday Telegraph: "If the Tories do a deal with Labour on the customs union they will be going into coalition with the Opposition against the people."
The news comes as it was revealed that a Brexit deal with Labour could be on the cards within days after both parties got a kicking in the polls this week.
Mrs May told Mr Corbyn today in an article for the Mail on Sunday: "Let’s listen to what the voters said in the local elections and put our differences aside for a moment.
"Let's do a deal.
"I do sincerely believe that – more than 34 long months on from the referendum – what people want is for their politicians to come together in the national interest and get Brexit over the line."
But the former Ukip boss added that if there was such a deal, anger in the country would "explode" under them.
He told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday this morning: "I think millions of people would give up on both Labour and the Conservatives.
"This would be the final betrayal.
"If May signs up to this, I can't see the point of the Conservative party existing."
This would be the final betrayal.
His party are on track to storm the European Parliament elections later this month after Mrs May decided for the second time to delay Brexit and extend Article 50 until October.
The Tories and Labour got a hammering in Thursday's local elections over the failure to get Brexit done.
But today John McDonnell threatened to collapse the talks by saying he didn't trust the PM to deliver a good deal and she was negotiating in "bad faith" by allowing her officials to brief the newspapers.
The Sunday Times reported the PM was set to offer Mr Corbyn three major concessions - a temporary customs arrangement until the next election, aligning with EU rules on goods, and pandering to European laws on workers' rights.
Mrs May warned today that no PM can bind the hands of its successor, but Labour wants to ensure that the next Tory leader can't undo a deal.
Mr McDonnell told the Andrew Marr Show: "It's trying to enter into a contract with a company that's going into administration and the people who are going to take over are not willing to fulfil that contract."
An agreement could involve a second referendum, and he added: "We think a deal can be done."
Scots Tory boss Ruth Davidson added: "We're getting closer and closer to where that middle ground might be."
New International Development Secretary Rory Stewart told Pienaar's Politics today that the party splitting could be worth it to deliver Brexit.
He said: "I think to get Brexit done and to move this country on is worth an enormous amount and you’re right, we may have to take some short term pain to do that but it's got to be right to."
He urged Mrs May not to try and "outdo Nigel Farage" because they would certainly lose the 4million Remain voters who backed the Tories.
And it wouldn't change with a different leader, he stressed.
"I don't think anybody [who is Prime Minister], George Clooney... I don't think he'd be able to charm through this problem," he said.
But furious grassroots Tories attacked the idea of doing a soft Brexit deal with Labour and said it would rip their party apart.
Sam Smith, chairman of Gedling Conservative Association in Nottingham, said: “The prime minister’s botched Brexit deal already suffered the biggest defeats on record because it doesn’t deliver the referendum result.
"And now we’re allowing the Marxist, Jeremy Corbyn, to put the finishing touches to it. We must change course rapidly or the party will implode."
Mr Farage today challenged Jeremy Corbyn to an official debate ahead of the poll because "people are very confused about what Labour is standing for".
The leftie leader has tried in vain to keep both sides of his warring party happy by promising to campaign for another Brexit vote - but only to stop a Tory deal.
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Theresa May today begged Jeremy Corbyn to do a deal with her
NIGEL Farage has warned that a soft-Brexit stitch-up would be the "final betrayal" of Brits who voted to Leave.
The Brexit Party boss also revealed that 85,000 people have signed up and given £25 to his new venture - raising a whopping £2million already.
And he's got his sights firmly on Labour votes for the upcoming EU elections on May 23, where the major parties are set for another drubbing.
Mr Farage told the Sunday Telegraph: "If the Tories do a deal with Labour on the customs union they will be going into coalition with the Opposition against the people."
The news comes as it was revealed that a Brexit deal with Labour could be on the cards within days after both parties got a kicking in the polls this week.
Mrs May told Mr Corbyn today in an article for the Mail on Sunday: "Let’s listen to what the voters said in the local elections and put our differences aside for a moment.
"Let's do a deal.
"I do sincerely believe that – more than 34 long months on from the referendum – what people want is for their politicians to come together in the national interest and get Brexit over the line."
But the former Ukip boss added that if there was such a deal, anger in the country would "explode" under them.
He told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday this morning: "I think millions of people would give up on both Labour and the Conservatives.
"This would be the final betrayal.
"If May signs up to this, I can't see the point of the Conservative party existing."
This would be the final betrayal.
His party are on track to storm the European Parliament elections later this month after Mrs May decided for the second time to delay Brexit and extend Article 50 until October.
The Tories and Labour got a hammering in Thursday's local elections over the failure to get Brexit done.
But today John McDonnell threatened to collapse the talks by saying he didn't trust the PM to deliver a good deal and she was negotiating in "bad faith" by allowing her officials to brief the newspapers.
The Sunday Times reported the PM was set to offer Mr Corbyn three major concessions - a temporary customs arrangement until the next election, aligning with EU rules on goods, and pandering to European laws on workers' rights.
Mrs May warned today that no PM can bind the hands of its successor, but Labour wants to ensure that the next Tory leader can't undo a deal.
Mr McDonnell told the Andrew Marr Show: "It's trying to enter into a contract with a company that's going into administration and the people who are going to take over are not willing to fulfil that contract."
An agreement could involve a second referendum, and he added: "We think a deal can be done."
Scots Tory boss Ruth Davidson added: "We're getting closer and closer to where that middle ground might be."
New International Development Secretary Rory Stewart told Pienaar's Politics today that the party splitting could be worth it to deliver Brexit.
He said: "I think to get Brexit done and to move this country on is worth an enormous amount and you’re right, we may have to take some short term pain to do that but it's got to be right to."
He urged Mrs May not to try and "outdo Nigel Farage" because they would certainly lose the 4million Remain voters who backed the Tories.
And it wouldn't change with a different leader, he stressed.
"I don't think anybody [who is Prime Minister], George Clooney... I don't think he'd be able to charm through this problem," he said.
But furious grassroots Tories attacked the idea of doing a soft Brexit deal with Labour and said it would rip their party apart.
Sam Smith, chairman of Gedling Conservative Association in Nottingham, said: “The prime minister’s botched Brexit deal already suffered the biggest defeats on record because it doesn’t deliver the referendum result.
"And now we’re allowing the Marxist, Jeremy Corbyn, to put the finishing touches to it. We must change course rapidly or the party will implode."
Mr Farage today challenged Jeremy Corbyn to an official debate ahead of the poll because "people are very confused about what Labour is standing for".
The leftie leader has tried in vain to keep both sides of his warring party happy by promising to campaign for another Brexit vote - but only to stop a Tory deal.
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Tory MP Grieve is working with Labour rebels to try and block the UK leaving the EU on March 29 without an agreement with Brussels
A GANG of rebel Remain MPs led by Tory Dominic Grieve is plotting to seize control of Brexit while trying to stop a No Deal result, it has been reported.
The group is planning to introduce a new amendment that would allow parliament to take the reins of the exit process, according to reports.
Europhile Grieve is working with other Remainers, including Labour rebels, to try and block the UK leaving the EU on March 29 without an agreement with Brussels.
They plan to put their motion to a vote in Parliament which if backed by 300 MPs could spark legislation to extend or revoke Article 50.
That would be considered highly controversial as it would challenge the unwritten constitution that only an elected majority government can control UK policy.
This bill would likely be backed by a majority in the Commons as most members of the house are against leaving the bloc without a deal.

The rebel group are set to meet on Monday to finalise their plot which allies of the Prime Minister have branded a “very British coup”.
A senior parliamentary source told Buzzfeed the plotters were attempting to overturn the historic referendum result.
They said: "This is another example of centuries of procedure being overturned to suit an agenda that denies the referendum result.”
This comes as Theresa May is set to reveal her Brexit Plan B next week – after her original withdrawal agreement was crushed in Parliament by a record-breaking 230 votes.
Rebel ringleader Grieve was among the 400 MPs who shot down the PM's deal with Brussels saying they wouldn't back it.
It meant May suffered the worst defeat in British political history - and the massive defeat sees the PM's rivals scrambling to take advantage.
This week, Grieve wrote in the Evening Standard: "As a strong believer that Brexit is a very damaging mistake that becomes more obvious every day, I see sound democratic reasons for asking the electorate to confirm what it wants to do.
"But in doing so I entirely accept that if the choice is to leave the EU then we must do so, and both choices are now implementable."
More than 50 MPs have publicly backed another Brexit vote, including former Tory ministers Justine Greening and Jo Johnson.
Earlier in the debate, Grieve hit out at Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, who asked MPs not backing the deal: "What are you playing at? What are you doing?"
Grieve replied: "Entertaining as it was … it filled me with a slight sense of gloom to see that the government had got to such a pass that it had to rely on the skills of a criminal defence advocate to get it out of its difficulties."
EU's Donald Tusk says Britain should scrap Brexit because a deal is now "impossible".
The Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1, 2009, as the culmination of the EU's eight-year quest to make the organisation "more democratic, more transparent and more efficient".

It set out a number of rules and posts including the introduction of the EU Presidency, redistribution of voting weights of member states and Article 50.
Article 50 sets out the process of leaving the EU and states: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."
It then goes on to say that a state wishing to withdraw will let the European Council know it intends to leave, which will "trigger" the article.
At this point, the Treaties that bound Britain to EU rules cease to apply and the terms of leaving will begin to be negotiated.
The law is not totally clear on wether it can be reversed once activated, but there are a few issues that could leave some wiggle room.
One primarily being if a "transitional" deal is not secured with the EU to temporarily cover the country's EU trade relations while the final deal is being brokered.
If the EU is unwilling to give the UK this deal, it would be an advantage for Mrs May to withdraw her request and then trigger it again - buying another two years of negotiations.
But Justice Secretary Liz Truss has said of Article 50 that it is her understanding "that it is irrevocable", while the UK Supreme Court said once the article is given "it cannot be withdrawn".
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Tory MP Grieve is working with Labour rebels to try and block the UK leaving the EU on March 29 without an agreement with Brussels
A GANG of rebel Remain MPs led by Tory Dominic Grieve is plotting to seize control of Brexit while trying to stop a No Deal result, it has been reported.
The group is planning to introduce a new amendment that would allow parliament to take the reins of the exit process, according to reports.
Europhile Grieve is working with other Remainers, including Labour rebels, to try and block the UK leaving the EU on March 29 without an agreement with Brussels.
They plan to put their motion to a vote in Parliament which if backed by 300 MPs could spark legislation to extend or revoke Article 50.
That would be considered highly controversial as it would challenge the unwritten constitution that only an elected majority government can control UK policy.
This bill would likely be backed by a majority in the Commons as most members of the house are against leaving the bloc without a deal.

The rebel group are set to meet on Monday to finalise their plot which allies of the Prime Minister have branded a “very British coup”.
A senior parliamentary source told Buzzfeed the plotters were attempting to overturn the historic referendum result.
They said: "This is another example of centuries of procedure being overturned to suit an agenda that denies the referendum result.”
This comes as Theresa May is set to reveal her Brexit Plan B next week – after her original withdrawal agreement was crushed in Parliament by a record-breaking 230 votes.
Rebel ringleader Grieve was among the 400 MPs who shot down the PM's deal with Brussels saying they wouldn't back it.
It meant May suffered the worst defeat in British political history - and the massive defeat sees the PM's rivals scrambling to take advantage.
This week, Grieve wrote in the Evening Standard: "As a strong believer that Brexit is a very damaging mistake that becomes more obvious every day, I see sound democratic reasons for asking the electorate to confirm what it wants to do.
"But in doing so I entirely accept that if the choice is to leave the EU then we must do so, and both choices are now implementable."
More than 50 MPs have publicly backed another Brexit vote, including former Tory ministers Justine Greening and Jo Johnson.
Earlier in the debate, Grieve hit out at Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, who asked MPs not backing the deal: "What are you playing at? What are you doing?"
Grieve replied: "Entertaining as it was … it filled me with a slight sense of gloom to see that the government had got to such a pass that it had to rely on the skills of a criminal defence advocate to get it out of its difficulties."
EU's Donald Tusk says Britain should scrap Brexit because a deal is now "impossible".
The Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1, 2009, as the culmination of the EU's eight-year quest to make the organisation "more democratic, more transparent and more efficient".

It set out a number of rules and posts including the introduction of the EU Presidency, redistribution of voting weights of member states and Article 50.
Article 50 sets out the process of leaving the EU and states: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."
It then goes on to say that a state wishing to withdraw will let the European Council know it intends to leave, which will "trigger" the article.
At this point, the Treaties that bound Britain to EU rules cease to apply and the terms of leaving will begin to be negotiated.
The law is not totally clear on wether it can be reversed once activated, but there are a few issues that could leave some wiggle room.
One primarily being if a "transitional" deal is not secured with the EU to temporarily cover the country's EU trade relations while the final deal is being brokered.
If the EU is unwilling to give the UK this deal, it would be an advantage for Mrs May to withdraw her request and then trigger it again - buying another two years of negotiations.
But Justice Secretary Liz Truss has said of Article 50 that it is her understanding "that it is irrevocable", while the UK Supreme Court said once the article is given "it cannot be withdrawn".
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BORIS Johnson has let rip at Philip Hammond today - saying Remainers like him are in a 'terrible collaboration' with the EU to derail Brexit.
In his first 'People's PMQs' session this afternoon he answered questions from the public live on Facebook.
Boris accused him of working together with the EU to stop Brexit after the former Chancellor accused Mr Johnson of ruining any chance of a new deal with Brussels.
Mr Hammond also declared Parliament can and will stop No Deal by delaying Brexit yet again.
His comments shattered a three-week Tory truce ahead of a titanic showdown over Brexit when the Commons returns in three weeks.
The PM hit back to accuse Mr Hammond and other senior Tory rebels of sabotaging any renegotiation
He said: "There's a terrible kind of collaboration going on between people who think they can block Brexit in Parliament and our European friends.
"They are still sticking with every letter and comma of the withdrawal agreement because they still think Brexit can be blocked in Parliament."
There's a terrible kind of collaboration going on between people who think they can block Brexit
He said that the longer this stalemate goes on, "the more likely it is that we will be forced to leave with a No Deal Brexit" - even though that's not what he wants.
MPs and Brussels bosses should realise Brits now want us to just get on with leaving, he added.
In a 15-minute long address to the nation on Facebook this afternoon he fielded several questions from the public - the first such session for a PM.
An EU diplomat told The Sun: “The EU can’t do a deal if the UK doesn’t want one. If this is about preservation of the Tory party then nothing but No Deal will do.
“Everything else will keep the Brexit Party alive and play straight into the hands of Nigel Farage.”
But a UK source told The Sun: “We prefer a deal and are very willing to talk about what needs to be done to achieve that.”
Boris vowed to restore trust in politics by finally getting us out before the end of October, invest in forgotten towns and cities, and improve education and tackle knife crime.
Mr Hammond has said this morning that he was "very confident" that Parliament would succeed in its latest attempt to betray millions of Leave voters.
Despite the fact that Boris has only been in No10 for three weeks, Mr Hammond said he was determined to wreck his plan to take us out of the EU no matter what happens.
Boris has staked his entire premiership on vowing to exit the bloc no matter what happens, even if that means with No Deal.
But today Mr Hammond told Radio 4: "I am very confident that the means exist for Parliament to make its voice heard and to pass legislation to give effect to the clear view of Parliament."
And when he was asked whether that means new laws to block No Deal or postpone Brexit Day for a THIRD time, he said: "Yes."
If MPs were to take control of the Parliamentary agenda they could propose their own laws to throw a spanner in Boris' plans.
I am very confident that the means exist for Parliament to make its voice heard
Philip Hammond
Mr Hammond, who was Chancellor for three years under Theresa May but quit before Boris Johnson could sack him, added that Speaker John Bercow would be able to help him stop Brexit.
He added: "It's very clear to me, and I think the Speaker of the House of Commons has also been very clear, that if a majority of Members of Parliament want to go down a certain route, a means will be delivered to allow that to happen."
Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith hit back immediately at his gloomy predictions about No Deal, saying he was the one who committed the "crime" of not preparing to leave.
He told the BBC: "By not preparing to leave with No Deal, they made it certain we had to swallow everything the European Union gave us... we were taken to the cleaners by the EU."
Yes, the human sleeping pill is back, continuing the work that so endeared him to the country during the three years he spent in the Treasury: undermining our negotiations in Brussels, attaching ludicrous conditions to the 2016 Referendum and talking the country down.
A nation yesterday sighed in unison as he mounted another assault on the possibility of Britain leaving the EU with a clean break. Plague and pestilence, imminent recession, everything short of the apocalypse itself. He morphs ever more into a 21st century Grim Reaper with every passing day.
The former Chancellor’s failure to prepare for No Deal in the Treasury is, more than anything else, the very reason that we’re still stuck in Brexit limbo.
Brussels knew that with him holding the country’s financial levers, there was no way we’d be ready to leave with a clean break. So they pushed, and pushed, and pushed Theresa May until she was forced to accept a terrible deal and the hated backstop.
For those who think our judgment harsh, we are confident that history will be even punchier.
And now, with a Government that actually believes Britain can prosper outside the EU, he’s back to blow up another attempt at negotiations.
Brussels will be watching his Eeyore act and calculating that Parliament will be able to stop No Deal. The odious toad of a Speaker John Bercow is sure to help out, as he confirmed yesterday.
The Eurocrats will gamble they don’t need to renegotiate the deal, and British Remainers — like the former Chancellor — will push for the Second Referendum they’ve wanted from the off.
It takes some political skill to sabotage two different Governments in the space of a couple of years, but Hammond seems keen to see if he can manage it. If he’s successful this time, he risks a historic constitutional crisis and Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
The sooner he moves on from public life the better.
Boris became the first PM to announce a policy on a streaming platform when he revealed plans to tear up visa rules for foreign scientists in the UK last week.
During the clip he announced that under his new policy boffins will be given a fast-track visa even if they don’t have a job offer.
Ministers will also abolish the cap on the number of visas dished out to scientists.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
 
 
BORIS Johnson has let rip at Philip Hammond today - saying Remainers like him are in a 'terrible collaboration' with the EU to derail Brexit.
In his first 'People's PMQs' session this afternoon he answered questions from the public live on Facebook.
Boris accused him of working together with the EU to stop Brexit after the former Chancellor accused Mr Johnson of ruining any chance of a new deal with Brussels.
Mr Hammond also declared Parliament can and will stop No Deal by delaying Brexit yet again.
His comments shattered a three-week Tory truce ahead of a titanic showdown over Brexit when the Commons returns in three weeks.
The PM hit back to accuse Mr Hammond and other senior Tory rebels of sabotaging any renegotiation
He said: "There's a terrible kind of collaboration going on between people who think they can block Brexit in Parliament and our European friends.
"They are still sticking with every letter and comma of the withdrawal agreement because they still think Brexit can be blocked in Parliament."
There's a terrible kind of collaboration going on between people who think they can block Brexit
He said that the longer this stalemate goes on, "the more likely it is that we will be forced to leave with a No Deal Brexit" - even though that's not what he wants.
MPs and Brussels bosses should realise Brits now want us to just get on with leaving, he added.
In a 15-minute long address to the nation on Facebook this afternoon he fielded several questions from the public - the first such session for a PM.
An EU diplomat told The Sun: “The EU can’t do a deal if the UK doesn’t want one. If this is about preservation of the Tory party then nothing but No Deal will do.
“Everything else will keep the Brexit Party alive and play straight into the hands of Nigel Farage.”
But a UK source told The Sun: “We prefer a deal and are very willing to talk about what needs to be done to achieve that.”
Boris vowed to restore trust in politics by finally getting us out before the end of October, invest in forgotten towns and cities, and improve education and tackle knife crime.
Mr Hammond has said this morning that he was "very confident" that Parliament would succeed in its latest attempt to betray millions of Leave voters.
Despite the fact that Boris has only been in No10 for three weeks, Mr Hammond said he was determined to wreck his plan to take us out of the EU no matter what happens.
Boris has staked his entire premiership on vowing to exit the bloc no matter what happens, even if that means with No Deal.
But today Mr Hammond told Radio 4: "I am very confident that the means exist for Parliament to make its voice heard and to pass legislation to give effect to the clear view of Parliament."
And when he was asked whether that means new laws to block No Deal or postpone Brexit Day for a THIRD time, he said: "Yes."
If MPs were to take control of the Parliamentary agenda they could propose their own laws to throw a spanner in Boris' plans.
I am very confident that the means exist for Parliament to make its voice heard
Philip Hammond
Mr Hammond, who was Chancellor for three years under Theresa May but quit before Boris Johnson could sack him, added that Speaker John Bercow would be able to help him stop Brexit.
He added: "It's very clear to me, and I think the Speaker of the House of Commons has also been very clear, that if a majority of Members of Parliament want to go down a certain route, a means will be delivered to allow that to happen."
Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith hit back immediately at his gloomy predictions about No Deal, saying he was the one who committed the "crime" of not preparing to leave.
He told the BBC: "By not preparing to leave with No Deal, they made it certain we had to swallow everything the European Union gave us... we were taken to the cleaners by the EU."
Yes, the human sleeping pill is back, continuing the work that so endeared him to the country during the three years he spent in the Treasury: undermining our negotiations in Brussels, attaching ludicrous conditions to the 2016 Referendum and talking the country down.
A nation yesterday sighed in unison as he mounted another assault on the possibility of Britain leaving the EU with a clean break. Plague and pestilence, imminent recession, everything short of the apocalypse itself. He morphs ever more into a 21st century Grim Reaper with every passing day.
The former Chancellor’s failure to prepare for No Deal in the Treasury is, more than anything else, the very reason that we’re still stuck in Brexit limbo.
Brussels knew that with him holding the country’s financial levers, there was no way we’d be ready to leave with a clean break. So they pushed, and pushed, and pushed Theresa May until she was forced to accept a terrible deal and the hated backstop.
For those who think our judgment harsh, we are confident that history will be even punchier.
And now, with a Government that actually believes Britain can prosper outside the EU, he’s back to blow up another attempt at negotiations.
Brussels will be watching his Eeyore act and calculating that Parliament will be able to stop No Deal. The odious toad of a Speaker John Bercow is sure to help out, as he confirmed yesterday.
The Eurocrats will gamble they don’t need to renegotiate the deal, and British Remainers — like the former Chancellor — will push for the Second Referendum they’ve wanted from the off.
It takes some political skill to sabotage two different Governments in the space of a couple of years, but Hammond seems keen to see if he can manage it. If he’s successful this time, he risks a historic constitutional crisis and Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
The sooner he moves on from public life the better.
Boris became the first PM to announce a policy on a streaming platform when he revealed plans to tear up visa rules for foreign scientists in the UK last week.
During the clip he announced that under his new policy boffins will be given a fast-track visa even if they don’t have a job offer.
Ministers will also abolish the cap on the number of visas dished out to scientists.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
 
 
The Government will run out of time to bring in a dozen exit laws if they stall and begin in November, risking being left in 'legal limbo land'
CABINET ministers have privately admitted Britain will be plunged into a legal abyss if a Brexit deal is not cut with Brussels by October, The Sun can reveal.
A crisis meeting between the Brexit Department and Leader of the House of Commons concluded the Government will run out of time to bring in a dozen vital exit laws before exit day next March if they wait until November to start.
If and when a deal is struck with Brussels and Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill will be needed to bring it in force, as well as other new laws to get Britain Brexit ready.
If it is not ready then Britain will be left in a “legal limbo land” and out of the EU without a deal.
But Commons timetabling boss Andrea Leadsom warned they will take months to travel through Parliament and face wrecking attempts from die-hard Remainers.
She warned fellow ministers that with only a wafer thin working majority the Government would be unlikely to be able to use special Expedited Legislation measures that can speed things up in an emergency.
A source said the meeting on Tuesday “was real doomsday stuff, that left Brexit ministers in no doubt that time is really running out.”
And she has warned that even if the Commons sat through the night for days on end, they would still run out of time unless they start in October.
However, as James Forsyth reveals in his Sun column today, Theresa May’s closest allies believe a deal with Brussels will not be done until November.
The fresh headache comes as angry backbencher Remainers accused hardline Brexiteers of “hijacking” the PM as bitter public sniping continued over Mrs May refusal to grant them a veto on a “no deal” exit.
The Government provoked the anger of Tory Remainers on Thursday with proposals which they say fall well short of the truly meaningful vote they are seeking on the way forward if Parliament rejects the agreement obtained by Mrs May with Brussels or if no deal is reached by January 21.
And after successfully averting rebellion earlier this week, Mrs May is now facing a mega-showdown with Rebels when the issue returns to the Commons next Wednesday.
Last night rebel Antoinette Sandbach blamed David Davis for forcing Mrs May to take a headline, saying: “What seems to have happened is very late in the day that DExEU got involved and it looks like the process was hijacked.”
But friends of the Brexit Secretary hit back to ridicule the idea they would not have a central role in shaping the Withdrawal Bill that is the responsibility of their department.
A Government spokesperson said: "While we share with the EU the intention to agree a deal by October, we are ready for all scenarios".
The Government will run out of time to bring in a dozen exit laws if they stall and begin in November, risking being left in 'legal limbo land'
CABINET ministers have privately admitted Britain will be plunged into a legal abyss if a Brexit deal is not cut with Brussels by October, The Sun can reveal.
A crisis meeting between the Brexit Department and Leader of the House of Commons concluded the Government will run out of time to bring in a dozen vital exit laws before exit day next March if they wait until November to start.
If and when a deal is struck with Brussels and Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill will be needed to bring it in force, as well as other new laws to get Britain Brexit ready.
If it is not ready then Britain will be left in a “legal limbo land” and out of the EU without a deal.
But Commons timetabling boss Andrea Leadsom warned they will take months to travel through Parliament and face wrecking attempts from die-hard Remainers.
She warned fellow ministers that with only a wafer thin working majority the Government would be unlikely to be able to use special Expedited Legislation measures that can speed things up in an emergency.
A source said the meeting on Tuesday “was real doomsday stuff, that left Brexit ministers in no doubt that time is really running out.”
And she has warned that even if the Commons sat through the night for days on end, they would still run out of time unless they start in October.
However, as James Forsyth reveals in his Sun column today, Theresa May’s closest allies believe a deal with Brussels will not be done until November.
The fresh headache comes as angry backbencher Remainers accused hardline Brexiteers of “hijacking” the PM as bitter public sniping continued over Mrs May refusal to grant them a veto on a “no deal” exit.
The Government provoked the anger of Tory Remainers on Thursday with proposals which they say fall well short of the truly meaningful vote they are seeking on the way forward if Parliament rejects the agreement obtained by Mrs May with Brussels or if no deal is reached by January 21.
And after successfully averting rebellion earlier this week, Mrs May is now facing a mega-showdown with Rebels when the issue returns to the Commons next Wednesday.
Last night rebel Antoinette Sandbach blamed David Davis for forcing Mrs May to take a headline, saying: “What seems to have happened is very late in the day that DExEU got involved and it looks like the process was hijacked.”
But friends of the Brexit Secretary hit back to ridicule the idea they would not have a central role in shaping the Withdrawal Bill that is the responsibility of their department.
A Government spokesperson said: "While we share with the EU the intention to agree a deal by October, we are ready for all scenarios".
DIANE Abbott and John McDonnell believe they persuaded Jeremy Corbyn to switch Labour to opposing Brexit but their bid was thwarted by his aides.
The hard-Left Labour leader’s two longest-standing political confidantes have spent weeks trying to convince him to embrace Remain, it has emerged.
With the party’s poll ratings having plummeted, the Shadow Chancellor and Home Secretary fear they now stand just a slim chance of seizing No10 in a snap general election without the pivot.
But Mr Corbyn’s circle of domineering senior advisers – dubbed “the Three Ms” because of their surnames – then talked Mr Corbyn out of it.
The trio are communications boss Seumas Milne, chief of staff Karie Murphy and policy guru Andrew Murray.
They were also yesterday accused of keeping Mr Corbyn “captive”, as the civil war between them and the Shadow Cabinet deepens.
A Labour frontbencher and long standing Corbyn ally told The Sun: “It’s crystal clear for all to see what the Lib Dems are doing to our vote. We have to be for Remain now.
“Just when we think we’ve got Jeremy over the line, the Three Ms talk him out of it again. They are in his face all the time, he cannot escape.”
Mr McDonnell also heaped public pressure on the Opposition boss yesterday to declare Labour’s compromise position to push for a soft Brexit “has not worked” and he now “would want to campaign for Remain”.
Warning that the new Tory PM might call a general election in September, he added: “We need to get to a position sooner rather than later”.
The new revelation comes ahead of another crunch week for Mr Corbyn that will see him under siege on Brexit as well as anti-Semitism.
This once great party is now run by a rabble of apologists for anti-Semitism, Marxists and bullies.
They think nothing of spending their members’ cash on expensive law firms in an attempt to throttle the free press.
And when it comes to policy, their combination of two-faced doublespeak on Brexit and a cripplingly expensive nationalisation programme would send the UK economy into a nosedive it might never recover from.
Yet still there are decent MPs on those Labour backbenches who think the tide will turn, that even if Corbyn was to enter Downing Street he could somehow be managed. Codswallop.
It’s put up or shut up time for them.
Labour’s most senior backbench MP, Parliamentary shop steward John Cryer also last night said Labour had “run out of options” on Brexit, adding: “I’d rather see us go for a second referendum than just heading out of the exit on the basis of No Deal.
“I think we’re moving into a territory where we’re going to end up supporting a second referendum as a point of policy and principle.”
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis said: “Labour should do as they promised, join us in being clear we will and we must leave the EU and deliver on what people voted for, as they promised they would”.
DIANE Abbott and John McDonnell believe they persuaded Jeremy Corbyn to switch Labour to opposing Brexit but their bid was thwarted by his aides.
The hard-Left Labour leader’s two longest-standing political confidantes have spent weeks trying to convince him to embrace Remain, it has emerged.
With the party’s poll ratings having plummeted, the Shadow Chancellor and Home Secretary fear they now stand just a slim chance of seizing No10 in a snap general election without the pivot.
But Mr Corbyn’s circle of domineering senior advisers – dubbed “the Three Ms” because of their surnames – then talked Mr Corbyn out of it.
The trio are communications boss Seumas Milne, chief of staff Karie Murphy and policy guru Andrew Murray.
They were also yesterday accused of keeping Mr Corbyn “captive”, as the civil war between them and the Shadow Cabinet deepens.
A Labour frontbencher and long standing Corbyn ally told The Sun: “It’s crystal clear for all to see what the Lib Dems are doing to our vote. We have to be for Remain now.
“Just when we think we’ve got Jeremy over the line, the Three Ms talk him out of it again. They are in his face all the time, he cannot escape.”
Mr McDonnell also heaped public pressure on the Opposition boss yesterday to declare Labour’s compromise position to push for a soft Brexit “has not worked” and he now “would want to campaign for Remain”.
Warning that the new Tory PM might call a general election in September, he added: “We need to get to a position sooner rather than later”.
The new revelation comes ahead of another crunch week for Mr Corbyn that will see him under siege on Brexit as well as anti-Semitism.
This once great party is now run by a rabble of apologists for anti-Semitism, Marxists and bullies.
They think nothing of spending their members’ cash on expensive law firms in an attempt to throttle the free press.
And when it comes to policy, their combination of two-faced doublespeak on Brexit and a cripplingly expensive nationalisation programme would send the UK economy into a nosedive it might never recover from.
Yet still there are decent MPs on those Labour backbenches who think the tide will turn, that even if Corbyn was to enter Downing Street he could somehow be managed. Codswallop.
It’s put up or shut up time for them.
Labour’s most senior backbench MP, Parliamentary shop steward John Cryer also last night said Labour had “run out of options” on Brexit, adding: “I’d rather see us go for a second referendum than just heading out of the exit on the basis of No Deal.
“I think we’re moving into a territory where we’re going to end up supporting a second referendum as a point of policy and principle.”
Tory chairman Brandon Lewis said: “Labour should do as they promised, join us in being clear we will and we must leave the EU and deliver on what people voted for, as they promised they would”.
BORIS Johnson has been warned he faces court action from Labour if he pushes through a No Deal Brexit against Parliament’s wishes.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party would do “whatever it takes” to stop the UK leaving the EU without an agreement at the end of the month.
The shadow Brexit secretary said the PM has a legal duty to comply with the so-called Benn Act by sending a letter to Brussels seeking an extension to the departure date.
He said: “If he can’t - or I should say won’t - get a deal we will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent our country crashing out of the EU without a deal.
“If no deal is secured by this time next week, Boris Johnson must seek and accept an extension. That’s the law. No ifs, no buts.
“And if he doesn’t, we’ll enforce the law - in the courts and in Parliament. Whatever it takes, we will prevent a no-deal Brexit.”
He also mocked suggestions a second letter could be sent to the EU saying Mr Johnson didn’t actually want an extension.
Speaking in Glasgow, he said: “That’s the equivalent of attaching a post-it note to divorce papers saying ‘Only kidding’. It’s a ridiculous idea.”
He also said any deal struck by Mr Johnson must be subject to a second EU ballot.
He said: “If Boris Johnson does manage to negotiate a deal then we will insist that it is put back to the people in a confirmatory vote,” he said.
BORIS Johnson has been warned he faces court action from Labour if he pushes through a No Deal Brexit against Parliament’s wishes.
Sir Keir Starmer said the party would do “whatever it takes” to stop the UK leaving the EU without an agreement at the end of the month.
The shadow Brexit secretary said the PM has a legal duty to comply with the so-called Benn Act by sending a letter to Brussels seeking an extension to the departure date.
He said: “If he can’t - or I should say won’t - get a deal we will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent our country crashing out of the EU without a deal.
“If no deal is secured by this time next week, Boris Johnson must seek and accept an extension. That’s the law. No ifs, no buts.
“And if he doesn’t, we’ll enforce the law - in the courts and in Parliament. Whatever it takes, we will prevent a no-deal Brexit.”
He also mocked suggestions a second letter could be sent to the EU saying Mr Johnson didn’t actually want an extension.
Speaking in Glasgow, he said: “That’s the equivalent of attaching a post-it note to divorce papers saying ‘Only kidding’. It’s a ridiculous idea.”
He also said any deal struck by Mr Johnson must be subject to a second EU ballot.
He said: “If Boris Johnson does manage to negotiate a deal then we will insist that it is put back to the people in a confirmatory vote,” he said.
Eurocrats told nervy capitals the UK has signed up to unprecedented demands and that they got 'almost everything' they wanted in key areas
BRUSSELS has told Member States that Theresa May's Brexit deal will tie Britain into following the EU's rules and courts for years to come.
Eurocrats reassured nervy capitals the UK has signed up to unprecedented demands and that they got "almost everything" they wanted in key areas.
They said concessions over the role of the ECJ in the withdrawal agreement were "limited" and the same governance model will be applied to a trade deal.
And they reassured coastal states angered it doesn't include fishing that they will have even more "leverage" over the UK in the next round of talks.
The revelations come from diplomatic minutes of a presentation by Commission officials in November to address Member State concerns over the deal.
They say that:

The Commission was called on to offer reassurances after a number of Member States raised concerns Michel Barnier had given too much away to Britain.
EU27 capitals were especially worried about the UK-wide backstop, which they saw as a concession that surrendered vital leverage in future trade talks.
But eurocrats insisted they had got a good deal by getting Britain to tie its hands over following EU rules before negotiations have even begun on an FTA.
The note says: "The Commission says that what the UK has accepted in terms of the Level Playing Field has never been adopted in an FTA before.
"It's without precedent when it comes to dynamic alignment, dispute settlement and the possibility to issue autonomous measures in case of non-compliance.
"Moreover, the outline of the political declaration makes it explicit that the future Level Playing Field must build on these Level Playing Field aspects."
At the meeting, which took place the week before leaders signed off on the deal, eurocrats also reassured EU ambassadors over the role of euro judges.
According to the note they admitted making a "limited concession" on the ECJ, whose remit in the withdrawal pact only extends to policing areas of EU law.
But they add the governance model will form the basis for the future relationship, raising the spectre of an ongoing role for the court in British affairs.
Eurocrats told capitals they can't be forced to sign a trade deal with the UK despite a "best endeavours" clause to negotiate one as quickly as possible.
They said the arbitration panel set up to police the deal can never impose decisions on Member States by making them agree to an FTA.
But they warned warned fines could be issued or parts of the deal revoked if capitals breach the terms of the pact.
The Commission was also confronted about fisheries by coastal states unhappy that the UK-wide customs union does not include a pledge on access to waters.
Officials argued Britain would never accept current EU quotas and that the deal means current arrangements won't change until at least 2021.
The note says: "The UK is just as unhappy as the fishery member states, which makes the Commission conclude it did the right thing."
Elsewhere, the dossier details how there will still be checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain under the backstop.
But eurocrats don't want to spell out what they will be in detail for fear of further enraging the DUP and Westminster.
The document emerged as Mrs May looked set to suffer a record Commons defeat in tomorrow's [Tues] meaningful vote on the deal.
Mutjaba Rahman, from the Eurasia Group, predicted EU capitals might be willing to "amend" the backstop after the PM loses the vote.
He said: "More Member States are getting nervous about risk and implications of a no-deal for which the EU isn’t ready.
"There’s more flexibility in the EU position than leaders' public statements suggest."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Eurocrats told nervy capitals the UK has signed up to unprecedented demands and that they got 'almost everything' they wanted in key areas
BRUSSELS has told Member States that Theresa May's Brexit deal will tie Britain into following the EU's rules and courts for years to come.
Eurocrats reassured nervy capitals the UK has signed up to unprecedented demands and that they got "almost everything" they wanted in key areas.
They said concessions over the role of the ECJ in the withdrawal agreement were "limited" and the same governance model will be applied to a trade deal.
And they reassured coastal states angered it doesn't include fishing that they will have even more "leverage" over the UK in the next round of talks.
The revelations come from diplomatic minutes of a presentation by Commission officials in November to address Member State concerns over the deal.
They say that:

The Commission was called on to offer reassurances after a number of Member States raised concerns Michel Barnier had given too much away to Britain.
EU27 capitals were especially worried about the UK-wide backstop, which they saw as a concession that surrendered vital leverage in future trade talks.
But eurocrats insisted they had got a good deal by getting Britain to tie its hands over following EU rules before negotiations have even begun on an FTA.
The note says: "The Commission says that what the UK has accepted in terms of the Level Playing Field has never been adopted in an FTA before.
"It's without precedent when it comes to dynamic alignment, dispute settlement and the possibility to issue autonomous measures in case of non-compliance.
"Moreover, the outline of the political declaration makes it explicit that the future Level Playing Field must build on these Level Playing Field aspects."
At the meeting, which took place the week before leaders signed off on the deal, eurocrats also reassured EU ambassadors over the role of euro judges.
According to the note they admitted making a "limited concession" on the ECJ, whose remit in the withdrawal pact only extends to policing areas of EU law.
But they add the governance model will form the basis for the future relationship, raising the spectre of an ongoing role for the court in British affairs.
Eurocrats told capitals they can't be forced to sign a trade deal with the UK despite a "best endeavours" clause to negotiate one as quickly as possible.
They said the arbitration panel set up to police the deal can never impose decisions on Member States by making them agree to an FTA.
But they warned warned fines could be issued or parts of the deal revoked if capitals breach the terms of the pact.
The Commission was also confronted about fisheries by coastal states unhappy that the UK-wide customs union does not include a pledge on access to waters.
Officials argued Britain would never accept current EU quotas and that the deal means current arrangements won't change until at least 2021.
The note says: "The UK is just as unhappy as the fishery member states, which makes the Commission conclude it did the right thing."
Elsewhere, the dossier details how there will still be checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain under the backstop.
But eurocrats don't want to spell out what they will be in detail for fear of further enraging the DUP and Westminster.
The document emerged as Mrs May looked set to suffer a record Commons defeat in tomorrow's [Tues] meaningful vote on the deal.
Mutjaba Rahman, from the Eurasia Group, predicted EU capitals might be willing to "amend" the backstop after the PM loses the vote.
He said: "More Member States are getting nervous about risk and implications of a no-deal for which the EU isn’t ready.
"There’s more flexibility in the EU position than leaders' public statements suggest."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
THE Tories will collapse if Britain ends up holding a snap election before Brexit, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt both warned today.
Both candidates to be PM ruled out calling an early General Election as they clashed for the last time at a debate hosted by The Sun and talkRADIO.
It came as the two Tory rivals appeared to kiss and make up after a bruising campaign, cracking a string of gags in front of an audience of Sun readers at our London HQ.
In a revealing clash:

The candidates were asked nine questions by Sun readers in a debate broadcast live on this website and talkRADIO.
Asked by host Tom Newton Dunn if he’d rule out a snap election, Mr Johnson replied: “Absolutely.”
He added: "I think it would be the height of folly. I think the people of this country are utterly fed up with politicians coming back to them offering referendums or elections.”
Mr Hunt tore into his rival for rigidly sticking to the October 31 Brexit deadline - warning it could backfire spectacularly.
He said: "We have got to be very careful. If we get this wrong we will trip ourselves into an accidental General Election long before October 31.
"And we might well give the keys to Downing Street to somebody who will never deliver Brexit. And that will be the biggest betrayal."
The pair both admitted that getting a change to the Irish backstop would not be enough to save Theresa May’s doomed Brexit deal.
Mr Hunt said: "I don't believe a time limit will do the trick. We have got to find a new way.
"But the thing we must do is give a cast iron commitment to the Republic of Ireland that we will not have border infrastructure."
BoJo added: “I’m not attracted to time limits or unilateral escape hatches.”
The two men, who have been running an increasingly bitter campaign, took a few personal jabs at each other during the debate.
Boris took aim at Mr Hunt’s admission that he would consider delaying Brexit by a few weeks in order to finalise a deal.
He blasted: “I’m just anxious that we don’t send out a signal to the rest of the Eu that we’re willing to contemplate another delay.
“I think it’s absolutely absurd – we said on March 29 we were going to delay until April 8, there turned out to be a delay of another six months, I’m hearing that Jeremy might delay for a few days.
“Well how many days? Is that three days, is that six days? You’ve said you’d be prepared to wait until Christmas, which Christmas is it?”
In his own swipe at his rival, Mr Hunt said: "Boris will put a smile on your face and he does it better than anyone.
"But if you want the detailed delivery of Brexit you have got to have a plan....People want calm leadership and delivery."
But overall it was much better-natured than previous encounters as the pair joked together.
BORIS Johnson was accused of “betraying” the Brexit vote after failing to commit to cutting sky-high net migration if he becomes Prime Minister.
In an astonishing move, the former Vote Leave champion refused to say he would bring numbers down if he replaces Theresa May.
Speaking at the Sun/talkRADIO debate, he said: “What I want to see with immigration is control.
“I’m not going to get into numbers with you.”
Rival Jeremy Hunt, who as Health Secretary, called for looser immigration rules for doctors and nurses, immediately countered that Brexit voters would feel let down.
And he insisted the Tories were duty bound to find a way of cutting migration. He said: “They [voters] voted with an expectation that net migration will come down.
What I want to see with immigration is control. I’m not going to get into numbers with you.
“And I think that people will think we are betraying the spirit of that referendum if we didn’t find a way of bringing down the numbers.
“The way you do that is by training people in this country so we don’t need to bring in people.”
Theresa May famously committed to bringing net migration below the “tens of thousands” as Home Secretary in 2010.
But the Tories have never once hit the target as EU immigration spiralled to record levels. Official figures in May revealed net migration in 2018 hit 258,000 after a rise in immigration from OUTSIDE the EU.
When the pair agreed that the backstop was not needed to protect the Irish border, Mr Johnson said: “I like the way Jeremy is talking now, this new spirit of optimism!”
Mr Hunt joked, “Join my cabinet!” - prompting the reply from BoJo: “I wouldn’t be so impertinent as to use this opportunity to lobby you for a job.”
Mr Johnson said his priority on tax would be raising the level at which people start paying National Insurance contributions– lifting it from the current £8,632 threshold to the personal insurance level of £12,500.
He defended his much-derided pledge to take middle income earners out of the higher rate of income tax by raising the level at which people pay the 40p threshold to £80,000.
Mr Johnson said it was “odd there’s been so much controversy” over the policy, saying it would lift the incomes of police interceptors, school heads of departments and said “wherever possible peoples should spend their own money without the deprivations of the taxman”.
He added: “We should be lifting people on middle incomes out of the higher rate of tax.”
The pair – who both went to elite public schools - defended their privileged upbringing, with Mr Johnson saying the public wouldn’t care “whatever background we come from” as long as Brexit is done.
He said too many people in Government “posh, self-serving or otherwise” had ”basically sat around in Westminster dithering or dickering around” over Brexit.
Mr Hunt said the party had “not done enough to show we’ve got the broad background of people”.

The debate was broadcast live on The Sun Online and across our social media channels as well as TalkRADIO.
BORIS Johnson furiously condemned Donald Trump race row tweets – branding them “totally unacceptable.”
The US President sparked uproar by telling four ethnic minority US congresswomen to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came”.
And as the global condemnation mounted and the pressure mounted on the candidates to issue a firm response, Mr Johnson joined Theresa May in condemning the extraordinary Twitter rant.
The wannabe PM said: “If you the leader of a multiracial multicultural country, you simply cannot use that kind of language about sending people to where they came from.
“That went out decades and decades ago and thanks heavens.”
Speaking at a debate hosted by The Sun & talkRADIO at our London Bridge HQ, he added: “It is totally unacceptable in a modern multiracial country that you are trying to lead.”
If you the leader of a multiracial multicultural country, you simply cannot use that kind of language
His rival Jeremy Hunt also condemned the US President’s extraordinary outburst.
He said: “I have three Chinese children and they are British citizens born on the NHS.
“And if anybody had said to them go back to China I would be utterly appalled.
“It is totally unbritish to do that. I would hope that would never happen in this country.”
Both men refused to say the tweet was racist - but Mr Hunt pointedly said he can “understand why” others would brand them racist.
THE Tories will collapse if Britain ends up holding a snap election before Brexit, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt both warned today.
Both candidates to be PM ruled out calling an early General Election as they clashed for the last time at a debate hosted by The Sun and talkRADIO.
It came as the two Tory rivals appeared to kiss and make up after a bruising campaign, cracking a string of gags in front of an audience of Sun readers at our London HQ.
In a revealing clash:

The candidates were asked nine questions by Sun readers in a debate broadcast live on this website and talkRADIO.
Asked by host Tom Newton Dunn if he’d rule out a snap election, Mr Johnson replied: “Absolutely.”
He added: "I think it would be the height of folly. I think the people of this country are utterly fed up with politicians coming back to them offering referendums or elections.”
Mr Hunt tore into his rival for rigidly sticking to the October 31 Brexit deadline - warning it could backfire spectacularly.
He said: "We have got to be very careful. If we get this wrong we will trip ourselves into an accidental General Election long before October 31.
"And we might well give the keys to Downing Street to somebody who will never deliver Brexit. And that will be the biggest betrayal."
The pair both admitted that getting a change to the Irish backstop would not be enough to save Theresa May’s doomed Brexit deal.
Mr Hunt said: "I don't believe a time limit will do the trick. We have got to find a new way.
"But the thing we must do is give a cast iron commitment to the Republic of Ireland that we will not have border infrastructure."
BoJo added: “I’m not attracted to time limits or unilateral escape hatches.”
The two men, who have been running an increasingly bitter campaign, took a few personal jabs at each other during the debate.
Boris took aim at Mr Hunt’s admission that he would consider delaying Brexit by a few weeks in order to finalise a deal.
He blasted: “I’m just anxious that we don’t send out a signal to the rest of the Eu that we’re willing to contemplate another delay.
“I think it’s absolutely absurd – we said on March 29 we were going to delay until April 8, there turned out to be a delay of another six months, I’m hearing that Jeremy might delay for a few days.
“Well how many days? Is that three days, is that six days? You’ve said you’d be prepared to wait until Christmas, which Christmas is it?”
In his own swipe at his rival, Mr Hunt said: "Boris will put a smile on your face and he does it better than anyone.
"But if you want the detailed delivery of Brexit you have got to have a plan....People want calm leadership and delivery."
But overall it was much better-natured than previous encounters as the pair joked together.
BORIS Johnson was accused of “betraying” the Brexit vote after failing to commit to cutting sky-high net migration if he becomes Prime Minister.
In an astonishing move, the former Vote Leave champion refused to say he would bring numbers down if he replaces Theresa May.
Speaking at the Sun/talkRADIO debate, he said: “What I want to see with immigration is control.
“I’m not going to get into numbers with you.”
Rival Jeremy Hunt, who as Health Secretary, called for looser immigration rules for doctors and nurses, immediately countered that Brexit voters would feel let down.
And he insisted the Tories were duty bound to find a way of cutting migration. He said: “They [voters] voted with an expectation that net migration will come down.
What I want to see with immigration is control. I’m not going to get into numbers with you.
“And I think that people will think we are betraying the spirit of that referendum if we didn’t find a way of bringing down the numbers.
“The way you do that is by training people in this country so we don’t need to bring in people.”
Theresa May famously committed to bringing net migration below the “tens of thousands” as Home Secretary in 2010.
But the Tories have never once hit the target as EU immigration spiralled to record levels. Official figures in May revealed net migration in 2018 hit 258,000 after a rise in immigration from OUTSIDE the EU.
When the pair agreed that the backstop was not needed to protect the Irish border, Mr Johnson said: “I like the way Jeremy is talking now, this new spirit of optimism!”
Mr Hunt joked, “Join my cabinet!” - prompting the reply from BoJo: “I wouldn’t be so impertinent as to use this opportunity to lobby you for a job.”
Mr Johnson said his priority on tax would be raising the level at which people start paying National Insurance contributions– lifting it from the current £8,632 threshold to the personal insurance level of £12,500.
He defended his much-derided pledge to take middle income earners out of the higher rate of income tax by raising the level at which people pay the 40p threshold to £80,000.
Mr Johnson said it was “odd there’s been so much controversy” over the policy, saying it would lift the incomes of police interceptors, school heads of departments and said “wherever possible peoples should spend their own money without the deprivations of the taxman”.
He added: “We should be lifting people on middle incomes out of the higher rate of tax.”
The pair – who both went to elite public schools - defended their privileged upbringing, with Mr Johnson saying the public wouldn’t care “whatever background we come from” as long as Brexit is done.
He said too many people in Government “posh, self-serving or otherwise” had ”basically sat around in Westminster dithering or dickering around” over Brexit.
Mr Hunt said the party had “not done enough to show we’ve got the broad background of people”.

The debate was broadcast live on The Sun Online and across our social media channels as well as TalkRADIO.
BORIS Johnson furiously condemned Donald Trump race row tweets – branding them “totally unacceptable.”
The US President sparked uproar by telling four ethnic minority US congresswomen to “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came”.
And as the global condemnation mounted and the pressure mounted on the candidates to issue a firm response, Mr Johnson joined Theresa May in condemning the extraordinary Twitter rant.
The wannabe PM said: “If you the leader of a multiracial multicultural country, you simply cannot use that kind of language about sending people to where they came from.
“That went out decades and decades ago and thanks heavens.”
Speaking at a debate hosted by The Sun & talkRADIO at our London Bridge HQ, he added: “It is totally unacceptable in a modern multiracial country that you are trying to lead.”
If you the leader of a multiracial multicultural country, you simply cannot use that kind of language
His rival Jeremy Hunt also condemned the US President’s extraordinary outburst.
He said: “I have three Chinese children and they are British citizens born on the NHS.
“And if anybody had said to them go back to China I would be utterly appalled.
“It is totally unbritish to do that. I would hope that would never happen in this country.”
Both men refused to say the tweet was racist - but Mr Hunt pointedly said he can “understand why” others would brand them racist.
JEAN-CLAUDE Juncker’s designated successor has said the EU should delay Brexit again if the next PM asks for more time to find a way out of the impasse.
Ursula von der Leyen said another extension could be granted “if good reasons are provided” - such as holding a general election or second referendum.
In a letter to MEPs she vowed to build an “ambitious and strategic partnership” with Britain when she takes over the reins in November.
But she insisted Theresa May’s withdrawal pact won’t be renegotiated and "is the best and only possible deal for an orderly withdrawal".
Her remarks will provide a boost to Remainer MPs who need the EU's help in their bid to block the next PM taking us out with No Deal on October 31.
Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson has vowed to take us out of the bloc on that date "do or die".
The German defence minister, 60, said she "very much regrets" Brexit but that she "fully respects this decision" made by Brits.
She wrote: "Brexit creates uncertainty for citizens’ rights, for economic and territorial actors, and for the stability and peace on the Island of Ireland.
“If elected I am ready to pave the way to the ambitious and strategic partnership we want to build with the United Kingdom.
"Should more time be required, and should there be good reasons provided, I will support a further extension."
Mrs von der Leyen has been proposed by Member States to become the next Commission chief but faces a knife-edge vote of MEPs tomorrow to secure the job.
EU leaders have said that they will only consider another delay to provide time for a snap election or second referendum.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar said there's "huge frustration" among capitals that "Brexit is taking up so much of our agenda" three years after the referendum.
He said: "The kind of sense I'd have from my colleagues around the table is that a further extension would only be contemplated for a realistic purpose.
"So say for example an election happened in the UK, say for example there's a decision made by them, not by us, to have a second referendum.
"But what wouldn't be contemplated is a further extension for another round of negotiations because negotiations are closed, or a set of indicative votes because they've already had them."
Emmanuel Macron has led a group of hardliners within the EU who are hostile to granting Britain any further delay.
An Elysee source said: "Giving more time to the UK on Brexit is not the best strategy.
"First of all, it's disrespectful to the British people. In any case, telling them to re-vote until they vote correctly is stupid."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
JEAN-CLAUDE Juncker’s designated successor has said the EU should delay Brexit again if the next PM asks for more time to find a way out of the impasse.
Ursula von der Leyen said another extension could be granted “if good reasons are provided” - such as holding a general election or second referendum.
In a letter to MEPs she vowed to build an “ambitious and strategic partnership” with Britain when she takes over the reins in November.
But she insisted Theresa May’s withdrawal pact won’t be renegotiated and "is the best and only possible deal for an orderly withdrawal".
Her remarks will provide a boost to Remainer MPs who need the EU's help in their bid to block the next PM taking us out with No Deal on October 31.
Tory leadership frontrunner Boris Johnson has vowed to take us out of the bloc on that date "do or die".
The German defence minister, 60, said she "very much regrets" Brexit but that she "fully respects this decision" made by Brits.
She wrote: "Brexit creates uncertainty for citizens’ rights, for economic and territorial actors, and for the stability and peace on the Island of Ireland.
“If elected I am ready to pave the way to the ambitious and strategic partnership we want to build with the United Kingdom.
"Should more time be required, and should there be good reasons provided, I will support a further extension."
Mrs von der Leyen has been proposed by Member States to become the next Commission chief but faces a knife-edge vote of MEPs tomorrow to secure the job.
EU leaders have said that they will only consider another delay to provide time for a snap election or second referendum.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar said there's "huge frustration" among capitals that "Brexit is taking up so much of our agenda" three years after the referendum.
He said: "The kind of sense I'd have from my colleagues around the table is that a further extension would only be contemplated for a realistic purpose.
"So say for example an election happened in the UK, say for example there's a decision made by them, not by us, to have a second referendum.
"But what wouldn't be contemplated is a further extension for another round of negotiations because negotiations are closed, or a set of indicative votes because they've already had them."
Emmanuel Macron has led a group of hardliners within the EU who are hostile to granting Britain any further delay.
An Elysee source said: "Giving more time to the UK on Brexit is not the best strategy.
"First of all, it's disrespectful to the British people. In any case, telling them to re-vote until they vote correctly is stupid."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
BORIS Johnson has laid out his four red lines for Brexit, insisting the  transition period must last “not a second more” than two years.
All his demands  go further than the agreed Cabinet position, hammered out after a summer of infighting.
The Foreign Secretary also used a pre-Tory conference interview with The Sun to reflect Leave voters’ anger over the transition period during which the UK will still be governed by all  the EU’s rules.
But his fresh Brexit intervention will anger Theresa May and risks reopening the  feud among her senior ministers.
The PM used her speech in Florence last week to call for a changeover period from March 2019  to break the Brexit talks’ deadlock and win businesses time to adapt. There is no Cabinet agreement  on  how long it should last, with Mrs May  suggesting “around two years”.
But Boris last night said anything longer than 24 months — effectively to March 30, 2021 — would be a mistake that would leave Brexit voters feeling betrayed.
Talking to The Sun in his vast  room in the Foreign Office, overlooking St James’s Park, the 53-year-old Tory big beast said: “I got that from my own talking to people. Very strongly.
“What that teaches me is that  really is it. Rien ne va plus. Finito la musica. Then we come out. There can be no monkeying around.
1) The transition period post-Brexit must be a maximum of 2yrs.. and not a second more.
2) UK must refuse to accept new EU or ECJ  rulings during transition.
3) No payments for single market access when  transition ends.
4) UK must not agree to shadow EU rules to gain access to market.
“Am I impatient about it, do I want to get it done as fast as possible? Yes, absolutely. Do I want the delay to go on longer than two years? Not a second more.”
Quizzed on whether a status quo transition meant agreeing to new Brussels diktats, BoJo argued: “You heard the Prime Minister say very clearly in Florence that she envisages the transition period being run under existing arrangements — that was the phrase she used, ‘The existing rules’.”
Boris explained: “What I have always said is that we will pay  for things that are reasonable, scientific programmes.
“But when it comes to paying for access to the market, that won’t happen any more than we would expect them to pay us for access to our market.”
Brexit is going to be great. Ain’t no stopping us now!
The Foreign Secretary called the internet giants’ free speech defence for not taking down extremist content an excuse to make more money.
Boris called their behaviour contemptible, adding: “They don’t pay any tax.
“They are facilitating terror. It is unbelievable. They need to be punished.”
His outburst backs Theresa May’s global push to clamp down on the California-based internet giants.
They have ignored dem-ands to do more to stop terrorists using their sites.
It comes after an investigation by The Sun last week revealed Amazon is selling the parts required to build a nail bomb, and without proper security checks.
BoJo insisted: “There is no point in coming out of the EU and then remaining in  rotational orbit around it. That is the worst of both worlds. You have  to be able to have control of your regulatory framework.”
He conceded that a transition was  also necessary for the Government, as some departments may not be ready to deal with Brexit on March 30, 2019, the day the UK formally leaves the EU.
He admitted: “I am afraid the truth is that there are government departments that, at the current rate of fire, are going to need to get ready.”
The Foreign Secretary, whose brother Jo is the Universities Minister, said: “The question is, how do you help young people to manage their debts? We have to address that, and we will.”
Students in England now graduate with average debts of more than £50,000 after interest rates on loans were hiked to 6.1 per cent.
While the Tories bombed with under-40s, more than 60 per cent of younger voters backed Labour’s pledge to scrap tuition fees.
Theresa May is expected to announce action at their conference next week.
She said last night: “The next generation should always have it better than the last.”
But by laying down fresh demands, Boris will again be seen as establishing himself as the defender of the true Brexit faith.
It emerged yesterday that he was the top choice among Conservative  members to succeed Theresa May.
WAGE BOOST Boris Johnson wants PM to deliver public sector pay rise – funded by layoffs
A YouGov poll  of activists showed he was back in favour after being seen  to challenge Mrs May’s authority, with  his  4,300-word article laying out his  Brexit vision.
But BoJo insisted it was not a pitch for party leadership, saying  speculation about his intentions had been “massively” overdone.
Instead, he issued a slapdown to Brexit doubters, saying: “The crucial thing I want to get over to Sun readers about Brexit is that it is going to be great and we need to believe in ourselves and believe we can do it. It is unstoppable. Ain’t no stopping us now.
“There is a disjuncture between the debate in Westminster and the London bubble and where a lot of people are in the country.
“Most people can’t understand what this conversation is all about. We left. We voted for that last year — so let’s get on with it.”
But last night Ruth Davidson blasted Boris for being too positive about Brexit.
And in a dig at her Westminster colleagues, the Scots Tory boss said it was time "serious people" took charge of exit talks.
As he recites lines from Kipling’s Mandalay in Myanmar, the envoy whispers: “Not appropriate.” It was filmed by a Channel 4 documentary crew.
The poem is considered offensive in Myanmar.
 
BORIS Johnson has laid out his four red lines for Brexit, insisting the  transition period must last “not a second more” than two years.
All his demands  go further than the agreed Cabinet position, hammered out after a summer of infighting.
The Foreign Secretary also used a pre-Tory conference interview with The Sun to reflect Leave voters’ anger over the transition period during which the UK will still be governed by all  the EU’s rules.
But his fresh Brexit intervention will anger Theresa May and risks reopening the  feud among her senior ministers.
The PM used her speech in Florence last week to call for a changeover period from March 2019  to break the Brexit talks’ deadlock and win businesses time to adapt. There is no Cabinet agreement  on  how long it should last, with Mrs May  suggesting “around two years”.
But Boris last night said anything longer than 24 months — effectively to March 30, 2021 — would be a mistake that would leave Brexit voters feeling betrayed.
Talking to The Sun in his vast  room in the Foreign Office, overlooking St James’s Park, the 53-year-old Tory big beast said: “I got that from my own talking to people. Very strongly.
“What that teaches me is that  really is it. Rien ne va plus. Finito la musica. Then we come out. There can be no monkeying around.
1) The transition period post-Brexit must be a maximum of 2yrs.. and not a second more.
2) UK must refuse to accept new EU or ECJ  rulings during transition.
3) No payments for single market access when  transition ends.
4) UK must not agree to shadow EU rules to gain access to market.
“Am I impatient about it, do I want to get it done as fast as possible? Yes, absolutely. Do I want the delay to go on longer than two years? Not a second more.”
Quizzed on whether a status quo transition meant agreeing to new Brussels diktats, BoJo argued: “You heard the Prime Minister say very clearly in Florence that she envisages the transition period being run under existing arrangements — that was the phrase she used, ‘The existing rules’.”
Boris explained: “What I have always said is that we will pay  for things that are reasonable, scientific programmes.
“But when it comes to paying for access to the market, that won’t happen any more than we would expect them to pay us for access to our market.”
Brexit is going to be great. Ain’t no stopping us now!
The Foreign Secretary called the internet giants’ free speech defence for not taking down extremist content an excuse to make more money.
Boris called their behaviour contemptible, adding: “They don’t pay any tax.
“They are facilitating terror. It is unbelievable. They need to be punished.”
His outburst backs Theresa May’s global push to clamp down on the California-based internet giants.
They have ignored dem-ands to do more to stop terrorists using their sites.
It comes after an investigation by The Sun last week revealed Amazon is selling the parts required to build a nail bomb, and without proper security checks.
BoJo insisted: “There is no point in coming out of the EU and then remaining in  rotational orbit around it. That is the worst of both worlds. You have  to be able to have control of your regulatory framework.”
He conceded that a transition was  also necessary for the Government, as some departments may not be ready to deal with Brexit on March 30, 2019, the day the UK formally leaves the EU.
He admitted: “I am afraid the truth is that there are government departments that, at the current rate of fire, are going to need to get ready.”
The Foreign Secretary, whose brother Jo is the Universities Minister, said: “The question is, how do you help young people to manage their debts? We have to address that, and we will.”
Students in England now graduate with average debts of more than £50,000 after interest rates on loans were hiked to 6.1 per cent.
While the Tories bombed with under-40s, more than 60 per cent of younger voters backed Labour’s pledge to scrap tuition fees.
Theresa May is expected to announce action at their conference next week.
She said last night: “The next generation should always have it better than the last.”
But by laying down fresh demands, Boris will again be seen as establishing himself as the defender of the true Brexit faith.
It emerged yesterday that he was the top choice among Conservative  members to succeed Theresa May.
WAGE BOOST Boris Johnson wants PM to deliver public sector pay rise – funded by layoffs
A YouGov poll  of activists showed he was back in favour after being seen  to challenge Mrs May’s authority, with  his  4,300-word article laying out his  Brexit vision.
But BoJo insisted it was not a pitch for party leadership, saying  speculation about his intentions had been “massively” overdone.
Instead, he issued a slapdown to Brexit doubters, saying: “The crucial thing I want to get over to Sun readers about Brexit is that it is going to be great and we need to believe in ourselves and believe we can do it. It is unstoppable. Ain’t no stopping us now.
“There is a disjuncture between the debate in Westminster and the London bubble and where a lot of people are in the country.
“Most people can’t understand what this conversation is all about. We left. We voted for that last year — so let’s get on with it.”
But last night Ruth Davidson blasted Boris for being too positive about Brexit.
And in a dig at her Westminster colleagues, the Scots Tory boss said it was time "serious people" took charge of exit talks.
As he recites lines from Kipling’s Mandalay in Myanmar, the envoy whispers: “Not appropriate.” It was filmed by a Channel 4 documentary crew.
The poem is considered offensive in Myanmar.
 
He said they are messing with the ‘wrong Prime Minister’, and blasted Donald Tusk for his mocking social media post, saying the Brussels boss was not acting ‘statesmanlike’
THE BREXIT Secretary has hit out at EU for having “no coherent explanation” for why they rebuffed Theresa May’s Chequers plan.
Dominic Raab said they have chosen to mess with the “wrong Prime Minister” as she prepared to deliver a statement in response to being ambushed in Salzburg yesterday.
The minister also blasted Donald Tusk for his mocking social media post, saying the Brussels boss was not acting “statesmanlike”.
The EU Council leader had published on Instagram a picture of himself offering Mrs May some cake, with the caption “sorry, no cherries”.
This was a reference to claims the PM is asking in the negotiations for something which cannot be offered, but sparked fury among Brexiteers.
It led Mr Raab to suggest there is a "serious question mark" about whether the EU is taking the talks seriously, adding there was a “computer says no” attitude from them.
His comments come after a pro-EU former Cabinet minister said the way the leaders “belittled” Mrs May is driving even Remainers to accept a “no deal” Brexit.
Stephen Crabb says the way they “sought to put down the Prime Minister yesterday” will push Brits to think “the quicker we're out of this circus, the better”.
The ex-Work and Pensions Secretary said it“represented everything that is bad and unattractive about the EU”.
And he said Mrs May “can't back down”, and the “spectacle” in Austria left his fellow Remainers “feeling the quicker we’re out of this the better”.
But Mr Crabb said the PM must not panic, saying: “One of the outcomes the EU leaders wanted from yesterday was for Britain to go away, push the panic button and re-think.
“But the Prime Minister needs to stick to her guns.
"I actually think the Chequers proposal is not perfect but broadly represents the kind of compromising package that protects Britain's industrial base, that protects agriculture and represents a positive position to take into the negotiations."
The Pembrokeshire MP took aim at the EU leaders, saying: "The manner in which they did it yesterday took many of us by surprise.
"The problem with the position the EU took yesterday is it pushes people like me further into the camp of those who say to me, as they were doing last night, ‘look, Stephen, we told you so. There is no compromise or flexibility to be found on the EU side’."
Mr Crabb added: "It pushes us more into a position where we say the quicker we are out of this circus the better."
Asked if he was no moving more towards to the hard-Brexit group the ERG, who want to ditch Chequers, he said: “We come away having seen what happened yesterday, having more sympathy for the kind of language that they’ve been speaking.”
His thoughts were echoed by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who said the EU leaders had “got personal”.
Speaking to the Guardian he said: “Monsieur Macron is not only out of order, he's completely wrong.
“The EU is doing their classic case of trying to bully the UK in a variety of ways into taking a different position.”
It comes after the French President described leaders of the Brexit campaign who told British voters it would be easy to get a deal after we left as "liars".
At the summit the European Commission tried to get Mrs May to accept a backstop proposal for Northern Ireland to remain within the EU customs area after Brexit.
But the PM flatly rejected it, arguing this would draw a border down the Irish Sea, and today one of her Cabinet ministers said there are no changes "on the table at the moment".
Leave-backing Transport Secretary Chris Grayling insisted Britain is "preparing hard" for a no-deal Brexit, although he predicted a "sensible agreement" will be reached with Brussels.
And another member of the Cabinet, James Brokenshire, has insisted it's Chequers or no deal, calling it a “workable, credible deal to meet our ambitions”.
The Housing Secretary told BBC Radio 4: "The easy thing for the Prime Minister to do would be to go with one of those two options that are being proffered.
"EEA, which does not deliver on what the people voted for in the EU referendum on freedom of movement, or Canada, which would effectively break up the UK.”
He added: “They have said that it's about the integrity of the single market and we believe the Chequers deal responds to that, and it's for the EU to engage with what's on the table."
He said they are messing with the ‘wrong Prime Minister’, and blasted Donald Tusk for his mocking social media post, saying the Brussels boss was not acting ‘statesmanlike’
THE BREXIT Secretary has hit out at EU for having “no coherent explanation” for why they rebuffed Theresa May’s Chequers plan.
Dominic Raab said they have chosen to mess with the “wrong Prime Minister” as she prepared to deliver a statement in response to being ambushed in Salzburg yesterday.
The minister also blasted Donald Tusk for his mocking social media post, saying the Brussels boss was not acting “statesmanlike”.
The EU Council leader had published on Instagram a picture of himself offering Mrs May some cake, with the caption “sorry, no cherries”.
This was a reference to claims the PM is asking in the negotiations for something which cannot be offered, but sparked fury among Brexiteers.
It led Mr Raab to suggest there is a "serious question mark" about whether the EU is taking the talks seriously, adding there was a “computer says no” attitude from them.
His comments come after a pro-EU former Cabinet minister said the way the leaders “belittled” Mrs May is driving even Remainers to accept a “no deal” Brexit.
Stephen Crabb says the way they “sought to put down the Prime Minister yesterday” will push Brits to think “the quicker we're out of this circus, the better”.
The ex-Work and Pensions Secretary said it“represented everything that is bad and unattractive about the EU”.
And he said Mrs May “can't back down”, and the “spectacle” in Austria left his fellow Remainers “feeling the quicker we’re out of this the better”.
But Mr Crabb said the PM must not panic, saying: “One of the outcomes the EU leaders wanted from yesterday was for Britain to go away, push the panic button and re-think.
“But the Prime Minister needs to stick to her guns.
"I actually think the Chequers proposal is not perfect but broadly represents the kind of compromising package that protects Britain's industrial base, that protects agriculture and represents a positive position to take into the negotiations."
The Pembrokeshire MP took aim at the EU leaders, saying: "The manner in which they did it yesterday took many of us by surprise.
"The problem with the position the EU took yesterday is it pushes people like me further into the camp of those who say to me, as they were doing last night, ‘look, Stephen, we told you so. There is no compromise or flexibility to be found on the EU side’."
Mr Crabb added: "It pushes us more into a position where we say the quicker we are out of this circus the better."
Asked if he was no moving more towards to the hard-Brexit group the ERG, who want to ditch Chequers, he said: “We come away having seen what happened yesterday, having more sympathy for the kind of language that they’ve been speaking.”
His thoughts were echoed by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who said the EU leaders had “got personal”.
Speaking to the Guardian he said: “Monsieur Macron is not only out of order, he's completely wrong.
“The EU is doing their classic case of trying to bully the UK in a variety of ways into taking a different position.”
It comes after the French President described leaders of the Brexit campaign who told British voters it would be easy to get a deal after we left as "liars".
At the summit the European Commission tried to get Mrs May to accept a backstop proposal for Northern Ireland to remain within the EU customs area after Brexit.
But the PM flatly rejected it, arguing this would draw a border down the Irish Sea, and today one of her Cabinet ministers said there are no changes "on the table at the moment".
Leave-backing Transport Secretary Chris Grayling insisted Britain is "preparing hard" for a no-deal Brexit, although he predicted a "sensible agreement" will be reached with Brussels.
And another member of the Cabinet, James Brokenshire, has insisted it's Chequers or no deal, calling it a “workable, credible deal to meet our ambitions”.
The Housing Secretary told BBC Radio 4: "The easy thing for the Prime Minister to do would be to go with one of those two options that are being proffered.
"EEA, which does not deliver on what the people voted for in the EU referendum on freedom of movement, or Canada, which would effectively break up the UK.”
He added: “They have said that it's about the integrity of the single market and we believe the Chequers deal responds to that, and it's for the EU to engage with what's on the table."
BORIS Johnson believes the EU will do a Brexit deal with him to save Ireland, but only at the last minute.
The PM now expects Brussels to wait for the outcome of Parliament’s efforts to delay or reverse Brexit next month before engaging with him, a No10 source said.
Boris blames Remain MPs’ plots for the delay in any renegotiation of the backstop in Theresa May’s deal with the EU.
But close confidantes say he is convinced Europe’s leaders will budge over the key issue if MPs fail, because otherwise “Ireland is f*****”, they insist.
One Cabinet minister, a long standing Boris ally, told The Sun: “The EU will give us a better deal, because if they don’t Ireland is f*****. No Deal will destroy it.
“No deal hurts us, the EU and Ireland - but it hurts Ireland the most.
“A lot of Irish trade goes to Britain, and much of the rest comes through us to Europe.”

The Cabinet minister added of Ireland’s taoiseach: “Varadkar has overplayed his hand. He’s in deep trouble and needs a way out”.
Britain is Ireland’s second biggest export market after the US, taking 12% of all its goods sold abroad.
Trade with EU countries accounts for half of all of Ireland’s exports, and 64% of its imports.
A No10 source added: “The EU are sitting back and waiting to see what Parliament does.
“So if there is to be a deal, it will come very late now. That is because of all the noise coming from the Remain side, but it’s also the history of the EU, it’s always last minute.”
Downing Street has also identified September 9 as a date when a cross-party coalition of Remain MPs may mount a Commons bid to force another Article 50 extension.
The date, a week after MPs return from their summer break, is likely to see a debate on Northern Ireland as the Government must hold one by law five days after reporting to Parliament on September 4.
Mr Johnson may also meet key EU leaders Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to discuss Brexit just ahead of the G7 summit in Biarritz.
But he will not see Ireland’s PM Leo Varadkar until after the summit.
Turning up the pressure on Labour yesterday, Boris tweeted: “Jeremy Corbyn wants to cancel the referendum and argue about Brexit for years. I am committed to leading our country forward and getting Britain out of the EU by October 31st #LeaveOct31”.
 
BORIS Johnson believes the EU will do a Brexit deal with him to save Ireland, but only at the last minute.
The PM now expects Brussels to wait for the outcome of Parliament’s efforts to delay or reverse Brexit next month before engaging with him, a No10 source said.
Boris blames Remain MPs’ plots for the delay in any renegotiation of the backstop in Theresa May’s deal with the EU.
But close confidantes say he is convinced Europe’s leaders will budge over the key issue if MPs fail, because otherwise “Ireland is f*****”, they insist.
One Cabinet minister, a long standing Boris ally, told The Sun: “The EU will give us a better deal, because if they don’t Ireland is f*****. No Deal will destroy it.
“No deal hurts us, the EU and Ireland - but it hurts Ireland the most.
“A lot of Irish trade goes to Britain, and much of the rest comes through us to Europe.”

The Cabinet minister added of Ireland’s taoiseach: “Varadkar has overplayed his hand. He’s in deep trouble and needs a way out”.
Britain is Ireland’s second biggest export market after the US, taking 12% of all its goods sold abroad.
Trade with EU countries accounts for half of all of Ireland’s exports, and 64% of its imports.
A No10 source added: “The EU are sitting back and waiting to see what Parliament does.
“So if there is to be a deal, it will come very late now. That is because of all the noise coming from the Remain side, but it’s also the history of the EU, it’s always last minute.”
Downing Street has also identified September 9 as a date when a cross-party coalition of Remain MPs may mount a Commons bid to force another Article 50 extension.
The date, a week after MPs return from their summer break, is likely to see a debate on Northern Ireland as the Government must hold one by law five days after reporting to Parliament on September 4.
Mr Johnson may also meet key EU leaders Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to discuss Brexit just ahead of the G7 summit in Biarritz.
But he will not see Ireland’s PM Leo Varadkar until after the summit.
Turning up the pressure on Labour yesterday, Boris tweeted: “Jeremy Corbyn wants to cancel the referendum and argue about Brexit for years. I am committed to leading our country forward and getting Britain out of the EU by October 31st #LeaveOct31”.
 
SNEERING Brussels boss Guy Verhofstadt has accused Boris Johnson of "false promises, pseudo-patriotism, and foreigner bashing" in a bitter personal attack.
The EU Parliament Brexit negotiator lashed out, calling the Tory frontrunner "a man who continues to dissemble, exaggerate, and disinform the public".
In the extraordinary rant he mocked eurosceptics' vision of a Global Britain, bragging the EU will overshadow the UK on the world stage.
The ex-Belgian PM also claimed Mr Johnson will struggle to deliver on many of his key Brexit promises, especially getting a better deal from Brussels.
He jibed: “To those of us watching from the outside, the debate between the candidates confirms that they have learned nothing whatsoever from the past two years of negotiations with the EU.
"Though Johnson will most likely soon find himself in a position where he must make good on his promises, he continues to spread untruths.
"Chief among them is the myth that Britain can tear up the withdrawal agreement that May negotiated with the EU, withhold its financial commitments to the bloc, and simultaneously start negotiating free-trade deals.
"To Johnson’s followers, however, he is more prophet than politician. Only he can deliver a mythical 'true Brexit' that will deliver the prosperity promised during the referendum campaign."
He continues to spread untruths
His attack represents a departure from the approach by fellow EU chiefs, who take a more diplomatic line towards the man most likely to be Britain's next PM.
Mr Verhofstadt also rapped the former Vote Leave chief for his claims during the referendum over £350million a week for the NHS and Turkey's membership hopes.
And he laid into Global Britain, saying Mr Johnson would "drag the country down a path strewn with uprooted trade ties and substantial new barriers to commerce".
Referring to Brussels' progressing trade talks with the South American bloc Mercosur, he boasted: "The real global trading power, of course, is the EU.
"With Johnson likely taking power in late July, Europe will have offered still more proof that Brexit is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to Britain’s economic interests.
"The 'buccaneering' Brexiteers might then finally have to explain what it is they’re still complaining about."
Mr Verhofstadt has regularly attacked Mr Johnson, sparking outrage on one occasion by comparing him to an executed leader of the French Revolution.
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SNEERING Brussels boss Guy Verhofstadt has accused Boris Johnson of "false promises, pseudo-patriotism, and foreigner bashing" in a bitter personal attack.
The EU Parliament Brexit negotiator lashed out, calling the Tory frontrunner "a man who continues to dissemble, exaggerate, and disinform the public".
In the extraordinary rant he mocked eurosceptics' vision of a Global Britain, bragging the EU will overshadow the UK on the world stage.
The ex-Belgian PM also claimed Mr Johnson will struggle to deliver on many of his key Brexit promises, especially getting a better deal from Brussels.
He jibed: “To those of us watching from the outside, the debate between the candidates confirms that they have learned nothing whatsoever from the past two years of negotiations with the EU.
"Though Johnson will most likely soon find himself in a position where he must make good on his promises, he continues to spread untruths.
"Chief among them is the myth that Britain can tear up the withdrawal agreement that May negotiated with the EU, withhold its financial commitments to the bloc, and simultaneously start negotiating free-trade deals.
"To Johnson’s followers, however, he is more prophet than politician. Only he can deliver a mythical 'true Brexit' that will deliver the prosperity promised during the referendum campaign."
He continues to spread untruths
His attack represents a departure from the approach by fellow EU chiefs, who take a more diplomatic line towards the man most likely to be Britain's next PM.
Mr Verhofstadt also rapped the former Vote Leave chief for his claims during the referendum over £350million a week for the NHS and Turkey's membership hopes.
And he laid into Global Britain, saying Mr Johnson would "drag the country down a path strewn with uprooted trade ties and substantial new barriers to commerce".
Referring to Brussels' progressing trade talks with the South American bloc Mercosur, he boasted: "The real global trading power, of course, is the EU.
"With Johnson likely taking power in late July, Europe will have offered still more proof that Brexit is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to Britain’s economic interests.
"The 'buccaneering' Brexiteers might then finally have to explain what it is they’re still complaining about."
Mr Verhofstadt has regularly attacked Mr Johnson, sparking outrage on one occasion by comparing him to an executed leader of the French Revolution.
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NIGEL Farage has said the UK is "too big to bully" into a second Brexit referendum as he and his fellow MEPs waved British flags to celebrate finally leaving the bloc.
During the last European Parliament session today with Britain as a member, the Brexit Party boss was cheered by his peers for his part in the campaign to leave.
And he vowed: "Once we have left, we are never coming back!"
It came just before the EU Parliament backed Boris Johnson’s Brexit by 621 votes to 49 this afternoon.
Tearful remainer MEPs staged a final protest moments after the vote, linking arms and singing Auld Lang Syne.
As the three-minute rendition ended to whoops and applause, three Tory Eurosceptics cracked open a bottle of champagne in the chamber to celebrate.
Some Remainers broke down in tears at the UK’s last ever session — but Brexiteers chanted “Hip-hip-hooray” and marched out waving Union Jack flags.
Addressing MEPs in Brussels Mr Farage insisted Boris has said there will be no sticking by EU rules after we leave, and this is the "point of no return".
And he took his final chance to blast unaccountable EU bosses who "cannot be held to account".
He added: "You are very good at making people vote again... but the British are too big to bully, thank goodness!"
Mr Farage said there would be "no more European Court of Justice, no more being talked down to, no more being bullied... even no more Guy Verhofstadt!"
The pack of Brexit Party MEPs waved British flags - against the rules in the European Parliament - and was told off by officials.
"That's it, it's all over!" he exclaimed.
He was told to "take the flags with you" after his stunt.
The British are too big to bully, thank goodness!
 
Following the emotional rendition of Robert Burns' poem, Green MEP Molly Scott Cato broke down as she said she hoped she would be back in the EU Parliament.
As her voice broke, she said: "We must keep the dream alive.
"I hold in my heart the knowledge I will be back in this chamber, celebrating our return to the heart of Europe."
Some of her other colleagues were seen visibly crying too.
EU boss Ursula Von der Leyen stressed again the "trade off" Britain would have to make to get good access to EU markets after we leave.
"The precondition is - British businesses continue to compete on a level playing field.
"We will not expose our countries to unfair competition. It's very clear, the trade off is simple."
If Britain sticks close to EU rules it will get a "unique" deal, she added.
They tell Leavers not to be overtly triumphant. That the country must unite.
On balance, we agree.
But then publicity-hungry TV has-beens launch vile, deranged rants against Brexit supporters, cheered on by like-minded bigots convinced THEY are the nice, open-hearted liberals.
In fairness, plenty of other Remainers just want Brexit done too. The election proved that. So does the latest poll giving the Tories 49 per cent. But many more are still angry.
Unity requires Leavers and Remainers to make Brexit work together. That will happen only when both sides denounce hate-filled Remoaner “celebrities” as the poisonous, divisive extremists they are.
Sadly, that still seems a long way off.
But the PM has already vowed to diverge from the bloc's rules after we leave to finally take advantage of leaving.
Negotiations with the bloc are set to begin in weeks, after Britain officially quits the bloc on Friday night.
Former EU Parliament boss Guy Verhofstadt said he wass “sad to see a country leaving that twice liberated us”. He expressed hopes the UK will rejoin, adding: “This vote is not an adieu, this vote is only an au revoir.”
But he also warned the other MEPs that now was the time to learn the lessons of Brexit.
"Brexit is also a failure of the union," he admitted.
"We have to recognise that there is a lesson to learn about it.
"We have to deeply reform the union, make it a real union."
Michel Barnier, who will lead negotiations with Britain, added: “I would really and sincerely like to wish the UK well.”
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NIGEL Farage has said the UK is "too big to bully" into a second Brexit referendum as he and his fellow MEPs waved British flags to celebrate finally leaving the bloc.
During the last European Parliament session today with Britain as a member, the Brexit Party boss was cheered by his peers for his part in the campaign to leave.
And he vowed: "Once we have left, we are never coming back!"
It came just before the EU Parliament backed Boris Johnson’s Brexit by 621 votes to 49 this afternoon.
Tearful remainer MEPs staged a final protest moments after the vote, linking arms and singing Auld Lang Syne.
As the three-minute rendition ended to whoops and applause, three Tory Eurosceptics cracked open a bottle of champagne in the chamber to celebrate.
Some Remainers broke down in tears at the UK’s last ever session — but Brexiteers chanted “Hip-hip-hooray” and marched out waving Union Jack flags.
Addressing MEPs in Brussels Mr Farage insisted Boris has said there will be no sticking by EU rules after we leave, and this is the "point of no return".
And he took his final chance to blast unaccountable EU bosses who "cannot be held to account".
He added: "You are very good at making people vote again... but the British are too big to bully, thank goodness!"
Mr Farage said there would be "no more European Court of Justice, no more being talked down to, no more being bullied... even no more Guy Verhofstadt!"
The pack of Brexit Party MEPs waved British flags - against the rules in the European Parliament - and was told off by officials.
"That's it, it's all over!" he exclaimed.
He was told to "take the flags with you" after his stunt.
The British are too big to bully, thank goodness!
 
Following the emotional rendition of Robert Burns' poem, Green MEP Molly Scott Cato broke down as she said she hoped she would be back in the EU Parliament.
As her voice broke, she said: "We must keep the dream alive.
"I hold in my heart the knowledge I will be back in this chamber, celebrating our return to the heart of Europe."
Some of her other colleagues were seen visibly crying too.
EU boss Ursula Von der Leyen stressed again the "trade off" Britain would have to make to get good access to EU markets after we leave.
"The precondition is - British businesses continue to compete on a level playing field.
"We will not expose our countries to unfair competition. It's very clear, the trade off is simple."
If Britain sticks close to EU rules it will get a "unique" deal, she added.
They tell Leavers not to be overtly triumphant. That the country must unite.
On balance, we agree.
But then publicity-hungry TV has-beens launch vile, deranged rants against Brexit supporters, cheered on by like-minded bigots convinced THEY are the nice, open-hearted liberals.
In fairness, plenty of other Remainers just want Brexit done too. The election proved that. So does the latest poll giving the Tories 49 per cent. But many more are still angry.
Unity requires Leavers and Remainers to make Brexit work together. That will happen only when both sides denounce hate-filled Remoaner “celebrities” as the poisonous, divisive extremists they are.
Sadly, that still seems a long way off.
But the PM has already vowed to diverge from the bloc's rules after we leave to finally take advantage of leaving.
Negotiations with the bloc are set to begin in weeks, after Britain officially quits the bloc on Friday night.
Former EU Parliament boss Guy Verhofstadt said he wass “sad to see a country leaving that twice liberated us”. He expressed hopes the UK will rejoin, adding: “This vote is not an adieu, this vote is only an au revoir.”
But he also warned the other MEPs that now was the time to learn the lessons of Brexit.
"Brexit is also a failure of the union," he admitted.
"We have to recognise that there is a lesson to learn about it.
"We have to deeply reform the union, make it a real union."
Michel Barnier, who will lead negotiations with Britain, added: “I would really and sincerely like to wish the UK well.”
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The PM summoned seven hardline Tory leaders to Chequers in an attempt to thrash out an eleventh hour end to their six month-long deadlock
AN agreement between Theresa May and senior Brexiteers to pass her EU deal was last night on “a knife-edge” - after it was demanded she set a date to quit.
The PM summoned seven hardline Tory leaders to Chequers yesterday in an attempt to thrash out an eleventh hour end to their six month-long deadlock.
Mrs May gave the figures - including Boris Johnson and four other ex-Cabinet ministers - 24 hours to decide whether to support her Brexit deal, as she laid out ways to turbo charge work on alternative arrangements to replace the Irish backstop.
If they don’t, the PM warned them that Remainer MPs will succeed in their bid to seize control of Brexit’s timetable and shape from Wednesday.
In turn, former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith and arch Eurosceptic group boss Jacob Rees-Mogg insisted only a promise from her to resign in weeks would get the deal over the line.
One senior Tory at the three hour long meeting told The Sun last night a deal was “on a knife-edge”, with another adding: “Things are very delicate”.
The source added: “The Brexiteers have some very big decisions to make overnight”.
But a Brexiteer also at the Chequers meeting yesterday instead claimed: “If she agrees to go, the deal would pass. That was made clear”.
Another there added: “The PM’s future was the elephant in the room today. It’s the elephant in every room these days”.
The showdown in the grand 17th house in the Chilterns came ahead of a massive week that will see the shape of Brexit decided, as well as the PM’s fate.
Also yesterday as Westminster prepares to reach breaking point;
Mrs May refused to discuss resigning with the group, who want a Brexiteer to replace her in No10 to negotiate the next phase, a free trade deal.
Downing Street aides also said she has never discussed quitting with them, and only husband Philip May would know her real thoughts.
But Mrs May signalled to hardliners that if they agreed to back her deal, it will be put to the Commons tomorrow in a third and final Meaningful Vote.
Senior ally ministers with the PM in Chequers – including Environment Secretary Michael Gove and party chairman Brandon Lewis – warned the Brexiteers that it may be their last chance to stave off meltdown.
Rebel Tory backbenchers will ally with Labour today to force a vote to take decision making powers from the Government to Parliament – and Chief Whip Julian Smith told the gathering at the PM’s country retreat that they will win.
A fledgling coup to oust Mrs May for a caretaker collapsed yesterday when the two candidates tipped for the job – her de facto deputy David Lidington and Mr Gove - both ruled themselves out of it.
Mr Lidington said: “If there’s one thing working closely with the Prime Minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task”.
The coup attempt was blamed on Mr Gove’s supporters.
Chancellor Philip Hammond attacked the plotters as “self-indulgent”.
And IDS added: “They should be apologising and they should shut up, for god’s sake. That’s the last thing we want”.
Meanwhile, a small handful of senior ministers who remain loyal to the PM have urged her to declare she will take the UK out of the EU on April 12 with no agreement if the third and final meaningful vote fails this week.
The bid is being lead by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and party chairman Brandon Lewis.
One senior minister told The Sun: “Pivoting to No Deal is the only way to keep the party on side.
“If she agrees to do a customs union, she will lose half her MPs and be in Ramsay Macdonald territory.”
Brexiteer backbenchers were bitterly divided on what to do yesterday, and fighting broke out on their WhatsApp group.
Former London mayor candidate Zac Goldmsith lashed out at diehard Tory MP Anne Marie Morris: “When you are asked, as you will be, why you opted for years of paralysis, division and the inevitable death of Brexit when you COULD have stopped the madness, what will you say?
“Yes, but my principles??”
Ms Morris replied: “My conscience is clear. I will vote against her deal and any extension”.
Another Brexiteer MP switcher, Nadine Dorries, then chimed in to back Mr Goldsmith: “God, I want to cut my wrists. How many ways to leave the EU your way? Just one. The one Parliament votes for next week in the indicative votes.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg arrived at Chequers with his 12 year-old son Peter.
Boris wasn’t wearing a seatbelt as he turned down the mansion’s driveway, behind the wheel of his family people carrier.
IDS arrived at the wheel of an open top vintage sports car, wearing a baseball cap.
No10 remained tight-lipped about the Chequers meeting.
A Downing Street spokesman would only say: “The PM and a number of Government Ministers met today at Chequers for lengthy talks with senior colleagues about delivering Brexit.
“The meeting discussed a range of issues, including whether there is sufficient support in the Commons to bring back a Meaningful Vote this week.”
The PM summoned seven hardline Tory leaders to Chequers in an attempt to thrash out an eleventh hour end to their six month-long deadlock
AN agreement between Theresa May and senior Brexiteers to pass her EU deal was last night on “a knife-edge” - after it was demanded she set a date to quit.
The PM summoned seven hardline Tory leaders to Chequers yesterday in an attempt to thrash out an eleventh hour end to their six month-long deadlock.
Mrs May gave the figures - including Boris Johnson and four other ex-Cabinet ministers - 24 hours to decide whether to support her Brexit deal, as she laid out ways to turbo charge work on alternative arrangements to replace the Irish backstop.
If they don’t, the PM warned them that Remainer MPs will succeed in their bid to seize control of Brexit’s timetable and shape from Wednesday.
In turn, former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith and arch Eurosceptic group boss Jacob Rees-Mogg insisted only a promise from her to resign in weeks would get the deal over the line.
One senior Tory at the three hour long meeting told The Sun last night a deal was “on a knife-edge”, with another adding: “Things are very delicate”.
The source added: “The Brexiteers have some very big decisions to make overnight”.
But a Brexiteer also at the Chequers meeting yesterday instead claimed: “If she agrees to go, the deal would pass. That was made clear”.
Another there added: “The PM’s future was the elephant in the room today. It’s the elephant in every room these days”.
The showdown in the grand 17th house in the Chilterns came ahead of a massive week that will see the shape of Brexit decided, as well as the PM’s fate.
Also yesterday as Westminster prepares to reach breaking point;
Mrs May refused to discuss resigning with the group, who want a Brexiteer to replace her in No10 to negotiate the next phase, a free trade deal.
Downing Street aides also said she has never discussed quitting with them, and only husband Philip May would know her real thoughts.
But Mrs May signalled to hardliners that if they agreed to back her deal, it will be put to the Commons tomorrow in a third and final Meaningful Vote.
Senior ally ministers with the PM in Chequers – including Environment Secretary Michael Gove and party chairman Brandon Lewis – warned the Brexiteers that it may be their last chance to stave off meltdown.
Rebel Tory backbenchers will ally with Labour today to force a vote to take decision making powers from the Government to Parliament – and Chief Whip Julian Smith told the gathering at the PM’s country retreat that they will win.
A fledgling coup to oust Mrs May for a caretaker collapsed yesterday when the two candidates tipped for the job – her de facto deputy David Lidington and Mr Gove - both ruled themselves out of it.
Mr Lidington said: “If there’s one thing working closely with the Prime Minister does is cure you completely of any lingering shred of ambition to want to do that task”.
The coup attempt was blamed on Mr Gove’s supporters.
Chancellor Philip Hammond attacked the plotters as “self-indulgent”.
And IDS added: “They should be apologising and they should shut up, for god’s sake. That’s the last thing we want”.
Meanwhile, a small handful of senior ministers who remain loyal to the PM have urged her to declare she will take the UK out of the EU on April 12 with no agreement if the third and final meaningful vote fails this week.
The bid is being lead by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and party chairman Brandon Lewis.
One senior minister told The Sun: “Pivoting to No Deal is the only way to keep the party on side.
“If she agrees to do a customs union, she will lose half her MPs and be in Ramsay Macdonald territory.”
Brexiteer backbenchers were bitterly divided on what to do yesterday, and fighting broke out on their WhatsApp group.
Former London mayor candidate Zac Goldmsith lashed out at diehard Tory MP Anne Marie Morris: “When you are asked, as you will be, why you opted for years of paralysis, division and the inevitable death of Brexit when you COULD have stopped the madness, what will you say?
“Yes, but my principles??”
Ms Morris replied: “My conscience is clear. I will vote against her deal and any extension”.
Another Brexiteer MP switcher, Nadine Dorries, then chimed in to back Mr Goldsmith: “God, I want to cut my wrists. How many ways to leave the EU your way? Just one. The one Parliament votes for next week in the indicative votes.”
Jacob Rees-Mogg arrived at Chequers with his 12 year-old son Peter.
Boris wasn’t wearing a seatbelt as he turned down the mansion’s driveway, behind the wheel of his family people carrier.
IDS arrived at the wheel of an open top vintage sports car, wearing a baseball cap.
No10 remained tight-lipped about the Chequers meeting.
A Downing Street spokesman would only say: “The PM and a number of Government Ministers met today at Chequers for lengthy talks with senior colleagues about delivering Brexit.
“The meeting discussed a range of issues, including whether there is sufficient support in the Commons to bring back a Meaningful Vote this week.”
BORIS Johnson has no plans to meet EU leaders for a charm offensive this summer - unless they say they will be willing to re-open Brexit talks.
Instead he will give them the cold shoulder for up to a month as he dramatically ramps up preparations to leave the EU without a deal in October.
France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Angela Merkel have issued invitations for the PM to visit them and talk Brexit, but nothing is in the diary as of yet.
Boris has spoken to them both on the phone - along with EU boss Jean Claude Juncker.
But a senior Government source said Boris had no plans to visit Brussels, Paris or Berlin in the hope of re-opening discussions.
They told the Daily Mail: "I wouldn't expect to see the Prime Minister doing the ritual tour of European capitals this summer for the sake of it.
"If they want to take the backstop out, then great, let's get round the table.
"If they don't - and at the moment it seems they don't - then OK, we will crack on and prepare for No Deal.
"We won't be going to them."
Theresa May repeatedly spent hours jetting around Europe for various summits and showdown talks with EU leaders.
When asked this morning whether Boris has any plans to visit EU capitals over the coming weeks, Dominic Raab would only say a meeting was on the cards in a month.
Boris is scheduled to attend his first G7 summit of world leaders at the end of August, and the next Brussels summit isn't until October 17.
And he said that unless something changed, there would be no reason to resume talks.
Speaking to Radio 4 he said: "I don’t think you can just airbrush the fact that the last deal was defeated by the biggest margin in parliamentary history and has led to the resignation of a prime minister.
"It is not just going to revert to where we left off the last negotiations."
No10 has said repeatedly that "change" is needed from the EU, and Boris wants them to throw out the hated Northern Ireland backstop all together.
Today Boris and his team announced they would significantly ramp up preparations for us to leave without a deal, in a huge shift in Government policy.
They will chair daily and weekly war-Cabinet style meetings until the end of October to get as ready as possible.
Up to £1billion of new cash is set to be injected into planning, and a Brexit Budget is also on the cards for the first week of October too.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
 
BORIS Johnson has no plans to meet EU leaders for a charm offensive this summer - unless they say they will be willing to re-open Brexit talks.
Instead he will give them the cold shoulder for up to a month as he dramatically ramps up preparations to leave the EU without a deal in October.
France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Angela Merkel have issued invitations for the PM to visit them and talk Brexit, but nothing is in the diary as of yet.
Boris has spoken to them both on the phone - along with EU boss Jean Claude Juncker.
But a senior Government source said Boris had no plans to visit Brussels, Paris or Berlin in the hope of re-opening discussions.
They told the Daily Mail: "I wouldn't expect to see the Prime Minister doing the ritual tour of European capitals this summer for the sake of it.
"If they want to take the backstop out, then great, let's get round the table.
"If they don't - and at the moment it seems they don't - then OK, we will crack on and prepare for No Deal.
"We won't be going to them."
Theresa May repeatedly spent hours jetting around Europe for various summits and showdown talks with EU leaders.
When asked this morning whether Boris has any plans to visit EU capitals over the coming weeks, Dominic Raab would only say a meeting was on the cards in a month.
Boris is scheduled to attend his first G7 summit of world leaders at the end of August, and the next Brussels summit isn't until October 17.
And he said that unless something changed, there would be no reason to resume talks.
Speaking to Radio 4 he said: "I don’t think you can just airbrush the fact that the last deal was defeated by the biggest margin in parliamentary history and has led to the resignation of a prime minister.
"It is not just going to revert to where we left off the last negotiations."
No10 has said repeatedly that "change" is needed from the EU, and Boris wants them to throw out the hated Northern Ireland backstop all together.
Today Boris and his team announced they would significantly ramp up preparations for us to leave without a deal, in a huge shift in Government policy.
They will chair daily and weekly war-Cabinet style meetings until the end of October to get as ready as possible.
Up to £1billion of new cash is set to be injected into planning, and a Brexit Budget is also on the cards for the first week of October too.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
 
DITHERING Jeremy Corbyn will reportedly let his MPs campaign for Remain and Leave in another referendum.
The Labour leader has given up trying to unite his warring party around a single position.
He has privately agreed to give his shadow cabinet a free vote, BBC’s Newsnight reported.
The move means Labour will go into the next election promising to negotiate a deal which many shadow ministers will campaign to reject.

Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell and Barry Gardiner have all said they will campaign against a Labour Brexit deal if there is another vote.
Labour’s Brexit civil war was reignited yesterday when party deputy Tom Watson broke ranks to call for a second referendum before an election, and to demand Labour backs Remain.
Speaking in London, he said there is “no such thing as a good Brexit deal”.
Mr Corbyn, on a trip to the Midlands, hit back: “It’s Tom’s view — I don’t accept it, I don’t agree with it.
“Our priority is to get an election in order to give the people a chance to elect a government that cares for them, not themselves.”
HARD-left firebrand John McDonnell last night declared he wants to slap the City with a new £2billion tax.
The Shadow Chancellor wants to extend Labour’s plans for a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial trading so it hits more transactions.
He is pushing for it to be in the next manifesto but risks a backlash from moderates who fear it could drive away lucrative business.
Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan called financial taxes “madness” and warned they may hit the economy.
 
Labour Brexit boss Keir Starmer said the party has been “making the case for a deal that protects jobs and supports manufacturing”.
He added: “Of course – ‘remain’ should – and it will – be on the ballot paper, along with a credible option to leave.
“We need to ask the public whether they are prepared to leave on the terms on offer, or whether they would prefer to remain.”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
DITHERING Jeremy Corbyn will reportedly let his MPs campaign for Remain and Leave in another referendum.
The Labour leader has given up trying to unite his warring party around a single position.
He has privately agreed to give his shadow cabinet a free vote, BBC’s Newsnight reported.
The move means Labour will go into the next election promising to negotiate a deal which many shadow ministers will campaign to reject.

Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell and Barry Gardiner have all said they will campaign against a Labour Brexit deal if there is another vote.
Labour’s Brexit civil war was reignited yesterday when party deputy Tom Watson broke ranks to call for a second referendum before an election, and to demand Labour backs Remain.
Speaking in London, he said there is “no such thing as a good Brexit deal”.
Mr Corbyn, on a trip to the Midlands, hit back: “It’s Tom’s view — I don’t accept it, I don’t agree with it.
“Our priority is to get an election in order to give the people a chance to elect a government that cares for them, not themselves.”
HARD-left firebrand John McDonnell last night declared he wants to slap the City with a new £2billion tax.
The Shadow Chancellor wants to extend Labour’s plans for a so-called Robin Hood tax on financial trading so it hits more transactions.
He is pushing for it to be in the next manifesto but risks a backlash from moderates who fear it could drive away lucrative business.
Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan called financial taxes “madness” and warned they may hit the economy.
 
Labour Brexit boss Keir Starmer said the party has been “making the case for a deal that protects jobs and supports manufacturing”.
He added: “Of course – ‘remain’ should – and it will – be on the ballot paper, along with a credible option to leave.
“We need to ask the public whether they are prepared to leave on the terms on offer, or whether they would prefer to remain.”
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
The EU will rather see all sides suffer than watch a post-Brexit Britain succeed and find an outcome that works
IT should be a no-brainer. Is the EU really going to give up on an orderly Brexit for the sake of a backstop Dublin, London and Brussels all insist they don’t want or expect to come into force anyway?
Will Eurocrats cause needless ­disruption just to make a point? Would they rather see all sides suffer than watch a post-EU Britain succeed?
If so, what would it say about the ­organisation we are leaving?
Let’s take a moment to recap.
Immediately after the referendum, EU officials declared they would not talk to Britain about a long-term relationship until we first agreed withdrawal terms, including a “divorce payment”, rights for EU citizens and the Irish border.
Britain foolishly agreed. It was ­particularly silly to discuss Ireland before the main trade talks, since the obvious way to prevent a hard border on the island is through a deep and ­comprehensive trade agreement between the UK and the EU as a whole.
That, though, would have given Ireland a strong incentive to get the best possible terms for the UK, and for itself.
So instead, at the end of 2017, the EU suddenly came up with the idea of an “Irish backstop”.
It wanted Britain to promise that, unless it came up with a long-term ­trading ­relationship that satisfied ­Brussels, it would stay in the customs union and leave Northern Ireland under EU regulations.
Stupidly, British negotiators accepted the backstop. Wisely, our MPs did not.
The backstop would mean Brussels continued to control Britain’s trade deals with non-European countries after we left.
It would mean placing part of our country under permanent EU jurisdiction.
MPs threw the deal out. Then something sensible happened.
Leavers and Remainers began to talk directly to each other and hammered out a deal that both sides could live with.
There were lots of aspects of the ­withdrawal agreement that Eurosceptics resented.
They didn’t like being non- voting members for another 21 months.
They didn’t like Euro judges continuing to rule here even after we had left.
They didn’t like forking out more than 39billion quid in exchange for the better part of bugger all.
But they were ready to make ­compromises. If the Irish ­backstop were removed, they’d swallow the rest of the withdrawal terms.
On Tuesday, the House of Commons adopted this position. The EU responded with a theatrical snort of indignation.
“We stand by the agreement that we have negotiated,” said Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s negotiator.
“The withdrawal agreement is not ­renegotiable,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission.
But hang on. Juncker is simultaneously telling us that if we alter our red lines — by, for example, agreeing to a ­permanent customs union — then the agreement could indeed be reopened.
So there is plainly no technical or legal reason why the backstop could not be removed or at least time-limited.
Nor, by the way, is anyone still ­pretending that, without the backstop, there will be checkpoints in Londonderry and Crossmaglen.
The Irish government has confirmed that, if there is no deal, it will not place any infrastructure at the border.
The British Government has been saying the same all along.
Barnier says there would be ways to carry out necessary checks away from the frontier.
In other words, the whole row is about a border that no one is going to build anyway.
It’s ­surreal. There is plainly no way the House of Commons is going to accept the backstop.
It also became clear on ­Tuesday there is no majority for a ­second ­referendum, because the last thing Jeremy Corbyn wants is to have to come down on one side or the other.
That leaves only two options. Either the backstop is dropped but everything else is agreed, or the backstop is lost and so is everything else.
From the EU’s point of view, it must surely be preferable to agree the bulk of the Withdrawal Agreement, including reciprocal citizens’ rights and the ­£39billion payment, while finding an alternative way to guarantee the Irish border stays open.
From Dublin’s point of view, the logic is even stronger.
Insisting on the backstop risks, if not a hard border, certainly more dislocation between the Republic of Ireland and the UK — the very thing the backstop is ­supposed to prevent.
The EU has calculated the cost will be worse for Britain than for ­Continental states, since cross-Channel trade is ­proportionately more important for us.
But, by that measure, it is more ­important still for Ireland.
In private, some Continental politicians are pushing for a pragmatic outcome — one that minimises disruption and ­preserves the long-term alliance between the UK and its neighbours.
You especially hear these arguments in countries that trade heavily with Britain, such as Denmark and the Netherlands.
You also hear them from governments that want to ensure the rights of their citizens in Britain are guaranteed.
But for Eurocrats, in particular the anti-British Martin Selmayr who has seized control of negotiations, this isn’t about finding an outcome that works.
If it were, the EU could have signed a continuity deal with Britain easily.
The truth is many Euro-fanatics are happy to inflict pain on the EU 27 ­provided they inflict even more on us.
If their view prevails over that of the pragmatists, then Britain has no option but to leave without an agreement. It is never sensible to give into blackmail.
If the choice is between No Deal and surrendering part of our country, we will choose No Deal.
The only surprise is that anyone in Brussels is surprised.
The EU will rather see all sides suffer than watch a post-Brexit Britain succeed and find an outcome that works
IT should be a no-brainer. Is the EU really going to give up on an orderly Brexit for the sake of a backstop Dublin, London and Brussels all insist they don’t want or expect to come into force anyway?
Will Eurocrats cause needless ­disruption just to make a point? Would they rather see all sides suffer than watch a post-EU Britain succeed?
If so, what would it say about the ­organisation we are leaving?
Let’s take a moment to recap.
Immediately after the referendum, EU officials declared they would not talk to Britain about a long-term relationship until we first agreed withdrawal terms, including a “divorce payment”, rights for EU citizens and the Irish border.
Britain foolishly agreed. It was ­particularly silly to discuss Ireland before the main trade talks, since the obvious way to prevent a hard border on the island is through a deep and ­comprehensive trade agreement between the UK and the EU as a whole.
That, though, would have given Ireland a strong incentive to get the best possible terms for the UK, and for itself.
So instead, at the end of 2017, the EU suddenly came up with the idea of an “Irish backstop”.
It wanted Britain to promise that, unless it came up with a long-term ­trading ­relationship that satisfied ­Brussels, it would stay in the customs union and leave Northern Ireland under EU regulations.
Stupidly, British negotiators accepted the backstop. Wisely, our MPs did not.
The backstop would mean Brussels continued to control Britain’s trade deals with non-European countries after we left.
It would mean placing part of our country under permanent EU jurisdiction.
MPs threw the deal out. Then something sensible happened.
Leavers and Remainers began to talk directly to each other and hammered out a deal that both sides could live with.
There were lots of aspects of the ­withdrawal agreement that Eurosceptics resented.
They didn’t like being non- voting members for another 21 months.
They didn’t like Euro judges continuing to rule here even after we had left.
They didn’t like forking out more than 39billion quid in exchange for the better part of bugger all.
But they were ready to make ­compromises. If the Irish ­backstop were removed, they’d swallow the rest of the withdrawal terms.
On Tuesday, the House of Commons adopted this position. The EU responded with a theatrical snort of indignation.
“We stand by the agreement that we have negotiated,” said Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s negotiator.
“The withdrawal agreement is not ­renegotiable,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission.
But hang on. Juncker is simultaneously telling us that if we alter our red lines — by, for example, agreeing to a ­permanent customs union — then the agreement could indeed be reopened.
So there is plainly no technical or legal reason why the backstop could not be removed or at least time-limited.
Nor, by the way, is anyone still ­pretending that, without the backstop, there will be checkpoints in Londonderry and Crossmaglen.
The Irish government has confirmed that, if there is no deal, it will not place any infrastructure at the border.
The British Government has been saying the same all along.
Barnier says there would be ways to carry out necessary checks away from the frontier.
In other words, the whole row is about a border that no one is going to build anyway.
It’s ­surreal. There is plainly no way the House of Commons is going to accept the backstop.
It also became clear on ­Tuesday there is no majority for a ­second ­referendum, because the last thing Jeremy Corbyn wants is to have to come down on one side or the other.
That leaves only two options. Either the backstop is dropped but everything else is agreed, or the backstop is lost and so is everything else.
From the EU’s point of view, it must surely be preferable to agree the bulk of the Withdrawal Agreement, including reciprocal citizens’ rights and the ­£39billion payment, while finding an alternative way to guarantee the Irish border stays open.
From Dublin’s point of view, the logic is even stronger.
Insisting on the backstop risks, if not a hard border, certainly more dislocation between the Republic of Ireland and the UK — the very thing the backstop is ­supposed to prevent.
The EU has calculated the cost will be worse for Britain than for ­Continental states, since cross-Channel trade is ­proportionately more important for us.
But, by that measure, it is more ­important still for Ireland.
In private, some Continental politicians are pushing for a pragmatic outcome — one that minimises disruption and ­preserves the long-term alliance between the UK and its neighbours.
You especially hear these arguments in countries that trade heavily with Britain, such as Denmark and the Netherlands.
You also hear them from governments that want to ensure the rights of their citizens in Britain are guaranteed.
But for Eurocrats, in particular the anti-British Martin Selmayr who has seized control of negotiations, this isn’t about finding an outcome that works.
If it were, the EU could have signed a continuity deal with Britain easily.
The truth is many Euro-fanatics are happy to inflict pain on the EU 27 ­provided they inflict even more on us.
If their view prevails over that of the pragmatists, then Britain has no option but to leave without an agreement. It is never sensible to give into blackmail.
If the choice is between No Deal and surrendering part of our country, we will choose No Deal.
The only surprise is that anyone in Brussels is surprised.
HERE’S the Conservative quandary. We can’t face the electorate before leaving the EU.
But we might not be able to leave the EU without an election.
There is no getting around that dilemma. All the potential ­leadership contenders privately understand it, as do growing numbers of MPs.
The question is whether they are brave enough to place such an unpopular truth before party members.
When I predicted six weeks ago that the Conservative Party was headed for a single-figures vote in the European election unless it ditched Theresa May, there was much scoffing.
Yes, I was told, things would be bad, but not that bad. Well, on Thursday, we secured 9.1 per cent.
If we break that vote down by constituency, every single Tory MP loses.
The first-past-the-post system is capricious. It protects you until, all of a sudden, it eliminates you.
Just ask Scottish Labour.
As long as our political debate revolves around Brexit, people are likely to vote for the most hardline pro and anti-Brexit parties.
Indeed, the longer this wretched argument goes on, the more radicalised both sides become. Voters identify as Remain or Leave rather than according to their old party alignments.
The polarisation has come since the result, and it has become worse with every passing week
Three years ago, at the time of the referendum campaign, it was still a civil conversation rather than a civil war.
The polarisation has come since the result, and it has become worse with every passing week.
Most Leavers now want No Deal. Most Remainers want another referendum.
The moment when both sides might have accepted a compromise — ideally a Swiss-type solution that would have taken us out of the EU’s political structures while retaining close economic links — has probably passed.
So whose fault is it that we are in this situation? Hardliners on both sides must take their share of the blame.
Those Remainers who promised to respect the result but then worked to frustrate it have done terrible damage to our politics.
Those Leavers who, forgetting everything they said during the campaign, now insist that anything short of No Deal is a betrayal, have likewise destroyed trust in the system.
But the chief responsibility lies with Theresa May.
It was she who dug in on the wrong issues while conceding on the wrong issues, who mulishly insisted that it was all about immigration, who managed to convince both sides that she was secretly working for the other, who so aggravated EU leaders that, by the end, they were predisposed to reject anything she asked for because it was she who was doing the asking.
Worst of all, she called and then lost the 2017 election. From that moment, it was clear that our Parliament was prepared to frustrate Brexit.
The EU got the message and started making deliberately absurd and vindictive demands, culminating in the Irish backstop which, incredibly, Theresa May accepted.
We now face withdrawal terms so disadvantageous that they are worse than either staying or quitting — exactly as Michel Barnier intended.
Which brings us back to the Catch-22.
Parliament does not intend to allow any government to leave the EU with No Deal, and the Commons Speaker has made clear that he is prepared to bend the rules in any way necessary to secure that end.
In normal times, a Conservative leader would go to the country saying: “Give me the mandate I need. If Brussels knows we are ready for No Deal, we will get a good deal. We just need the numbers in Parliament.
“Do you want me in charge, or a Marxist nostalgic who refuses to have a position on Brexit?”
In normal times, such a leader would win comfortably. But these are not normal times.
A large chunk of the electorate is now disposed to blame the Conservatives for the impasse rather than the parties that have actually been voting against Brexit.
Nigel Farage has confirmed that he plans to contest every seat at the next election. The idea that he might stand aside in certain constituencies in order to stop Corbyn is based on a misunderstanding of how he operates.
He is back at the head of a populist insurgent party.
The last thing he wants is to have that party’s grievance addressed and so put himself out of business.
Is there any solution? Possibly.
It may be that Parliament cannot in fact block a No Deal Brexit. It may be that, if forced to choose, MPs will baulk at voting to revoke Article 50.
It may be that France, or another EU state, vetoes any extension beyond October 31 — though that is unlikely.
Or it may be that the Tories could, in fact, win a general election.
Perhaps I am wrong about Farage’s motivations, and he will agree to an electoral pact, fighting Labour in the North while standing aside in the South.
Or maybe there’s another way out of the jam, one I can’t think of.
But what cannot be denied is that the dilemma exists.
There is no point in saying, “Just leave!” or “I’ll get us a better deal!” unless you are clear about how you intend to do it.
The trouble is that, in the current mood, those are precisely the slogans that many Tory activists want to hear.
The candidate who levels with them, who sets out the dilemma honestly and outlines a proposed route out of it, may become unelectable. As I say, Catch-22.
HERE’S the Conservative quandary. We can’t face the electorate before leaving the EU.
But we might not be able to leave the EU without an election.
There is no getting around that dilemma. All the potential ­leadership contenders privately understand it, as do growing numbers of MPs.
The question is whether they are brave enough to place such an unpopular truth before party members.
When I predicted six weeks ago that the Conservative Party was headed for a single-figures vote in the European election unless it ditched Theresa May, there was much scoffing.
Yes, I was told, things would be bad, but not that bad. Well, on Thursday, we secured 9.1 per cent.
If we break that vote down by constituency, every single Tory MP loses.
The first-past-the-post system is capricious. It protects you until, all of a sudden, it eliminates you.
Just ask Scottish Labour.
As long as our political debate revolves around Brexit, people are likely to vote for the most hardline pro and anti-Brexit parties.
Indeed, the longer this wretched argument goes on, the more radicalised both sides become. Voters identify as Remain or Leave rather than according to their old party alignments.
The polarisation has come since the result, and it has become worse with every passing week
Three years ago, at the time of the referendum campaign, it was still a civil conversation rather than a civil war.
The polarisation has come since the result, and it has become worse with every passing week.
Most Leavers now want No Deal. Most Remainers want another referendum.
The moment when both sides might have accepted a compromise — ideally a Swiss-type solution that would have taken us out of the EU’s political structures while retaining close economic links — has probably passed.
So whose fault is it that we are in this situation? Hardliners on both sides must take their share of the blame.
Those Remainers who promised to respect the result but then worked to frustrate it have done terrible damage to our politics.
Those Leavers who, forgetting everything they said during the campaign, now insist that anything short of No Deal is a betrayal, have likewise destroyed trust in the system.
But the chief responsibility lies with Theresa May.
It was she who dug in on the wrong issues while conceding on the wrong issues, who mulishly insisted that it was all about immigration, who managed to convince both sides that she was secretly working for the other, who so aggravated EU leaders that, by the end, they were predisposed to reject anything she asked for because it was she who was doing the asking.
Worst of all, she called and then lost the 2017 election. From that moment, it was clear that our Parliament was prepared to frustrate Brexit.
The EU got the message and started making deliberately absurd and vindictive demands, culminating in the Irish backstop which, incredibly, Theresa May accepted.
We now face withdrawal terms so disadvantageous that they are worse than either staying or quitting — exactly as Michel Barnier intended.
Which brings us back to the Catch-22.
Parliament does not intend to allow any government to leave the EU with No Deal, and the Commons Speaker has made clear that he is prepared to bend the rules in any way necessary to secure that end.
In normal times, a Conservative leader would go to the country saying: “Give me the mandate I need. If Brussels knows we are ready for No Deal, we will get a good deal. We just need the numbers in Parliament.
“Do you want me in charge, or a Marxist nostalgic who refuses to have a position on Brexit?”
In normal times, such a leader would win comfortably. But these are not normal times.
A large chunk of the electorate is now disposed to blame the Conservatives for the impasse rather than the parties that have actually been voting against Brexit.
Nigel Farage has confirmed that he plans to contest every seat at the next election. The idea that he might stand aside in certain constituencies in order to stop Corbyn is based on a misunderstanding of how he operates.
He is back at the head of a populist insurgent party.
The last thing he wants is to have that party’s grievance addressed and so put himself out of business.
Is there any solution? Possibly.
It may be that Parliament cannot in fact block a No Deal Brexit. It may be that, if forced to choose, MPs will baulk at voting to revoke Article 50.
It may be that France, or another EU state, vetoes any extension beyond October 31 — though that is unlikely.
Or it may be that the Tories could, in fact, win a general election.
Perhaps I am wrong about Farage’s motivations, and he will agree to an electoral pact, fighting Labour in the North while standing aside in the South.
Or maybe there’s another way out of the jam, one I can’t think of.
But what cannot be denied is that the dilemma exists.
There is no point in saying, “Just leave!” or “I’ll get us a better deal!” unless you are clear about how you intend to do it.
The trouble is that, in the current mood, those are precisely the slogans that many Tory activists want to hear.
The candidate who levels with them, who sets out the dilemma honestly and outlines a proposed route out of it, may become unelectable. As I say, Catch-22.
Brussels has spelt out with brutal clarity, the only change will be that Britain loses its Commissioner, its MEPs and its vote in Council
LET’S try a little thought experiment. Can you imagine a Brexit outcome so appalling that Leavers would rather stay in than accept it, and Remainers would rather leave cleanly than accept it?
It’s quite a challenge, but let’s have a go.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Britain ended up with all the costs and obligations of European Union membership, but with no voice, no vote and no veto.
Suppose we had to accept all the EU’s rules — on technical standards, on environmental protection, on labour law — but no longer had any say over what those rules should be. Suppose we had to submit to a trade and tariff regime designed solely to benefit the other 27.
I hope both sides could agree that such an outcome would be the worst of all possible worlds. And yet, that is where we appear to have ended up.
First, under the transition, we shall explicitly be non-voting members for two years.
As Brussels has spelt out with brutal clarity, the only change will be that Britain loses its Commissioner, its MEPs and its vote in Council.
Then, under the backstop, that status, or something very like it, will be imposed on us in semi-perpetuity.
Surely no one — Remain or Leave — can favour such an outcome.
I have been arguing since polling day for moderation.
I was prepared to accept any compromise, including European Free Trade Association and including Chequers, provided it restored the supremacy of our laws.
But the purgatory that now beckons is surely, by any definition, worse than either staying or leaving.
How have we come to this point? Through cowardice and lack of vision, I’m afraid.
From the start, our objective was simply to reach a deal — any deal.
Our negotiators, shell-shocked by the referendum result, approached the talks in a spirit of damage limitation.
They never seriously contemplated walking away, and the other side smelt their desperation.
To be fair, our officials were not helped by the noises coming out of Westminster.
How would you expect EU negotiators to react when senior British politicians urge them to hang tough and force a second referendum?
We might view Tony Blair, John Major and Nick Clegg as has-beens but, believe me, they are seen in Brussels as men of influence.
So we fell into a pattern. Britain would make some new concession in the hope of unlocking a deal.
Then Brussels would pocket the concession and demand more; and — incredibly — British Remainers would cheer.
The UK agreed to hand over more money than was due; accepted the EU’s absurd and illogical sequencing; made an unconditional security guarantee; offered to copy EU standards; and promised not to be more competitive than its neighbours.
Each time, the EU brusquely demanded “more movement”. Each time, Britain rushed to comply.
Which brings us to where we are — facing colonial rule from Brussels, of the sort the EU imposed on Bosnia following the Yugoslav war.
I am not one of those Brexiteers who half-favoured no deal all along.
On the contrary, I was proposing moderation even before the vote, and have repeated that call many times since.
But, paradoxically, our reluctance to countenance no deal has made such an outcome likelier.
We have reached the point where the terms on offer are less attractive than either a World Trade Organization-based Brexit or a second referendum. This last point is critical.
I suspect that two contradictory arguments will now be wheeled out before wavering MPs.
Europhiles will be told that the deal, backstop and all, is better than “crashing out” on WTO terms.
Conversely, Eurosceptics will be told that if they don’t approve the deal, Parliament might vote to extend Article 50, thus imperilling Brexit.
These two lines of argument can’t both be true, of course; and, in reality, neither of them is.
We’re invited to believe that if Boris Johnson and Jo Johnson, from opposite ends of the Brexit spectrum, both oppose the deal, it can’t be too bad. In fact, both Johnsons oppose it because it is a lamentable failure of statecraft.
Boris was no Brexit headbanger: He came out for Leave only after the EU refused to give David Cameron any powers back.
And Jo is no Remoaner: He has spent two years in Government trying to deliver a reasonable Brexit. If neither of them will back the deal, that tells us something.
There is still time — just — to recover our position.
As things stand, the backstop has no legal force.
The moment it finds its way into a treaty, it will be binding. If any MPs oppose the current approach, now is their chance to act. There won’t be another.

Brussels has spelt out with brutal clarity, the only change will be that Britain loses its Commissioner, its MEPs and its vote in Council
LET’S try a little thought experiment. Can you imagine a Brexit outcome so appalling that Leavers would rather stay in than accept it, and Remainers would rather leave cleanly than accept it?
It’s quite a challenge, but let’s have a go.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Britain ended up with all the costs and obligations of European Union membership, but with no voice, no vote and no veto.
Suppose we had to accept all the EU’s rules — on technical standards, on environmental protection, on labour law — but no longer had any say over what those rules should be. Suppose we had to submit to a trade and tariff regime designed solely to benefit the other 27.
I hope both sides could agree that such an outcome would be the worst of all possible worlds. And yet, that is where we appear to have ended up.
First, under the transition, we shall explicitly be non-voting members for two years.
As Brussels has spelt out with brutal clarity, the only change will be that Britain loses its Commissioner, its MEPs and its vote in Council.
Then, under the backstop, that status, or something very like it, will be imposed on us in semi-perpetuity.
Surely no one — Remain or Leave — can favour such an outcome.
I have been arguing since polling day for moderation.
I was prepared to accept any compromise, including European Free Trade Association and including Chequers, provided it restored the supremacy of our laws.
But the purgatory that now beckons is surely, by any definition, worse than either staying or leaving.
How have we come to this point? Through cowardice and lack of vision, I’m afraid.
From the start, our objective was simply to reach a deal — any deal.
Our negotiators, shell-shocked by the referendum result, approached the talks in a spirit of damage limitation.
They never seriously contemplated walking away, and the other side smelt their desperation.
To be fair, our officials were not helped by the noises coming out of Westminster.
How would you expect EU negotiators to react when senior British politicians urge them to hang tough and force a second referendum?
We might view Tony Blair, John Major and Nick Clegg as has-beens but, believe me, they are seen in Brussels as men of influence.
So we fell into a pattern. Britain would make some new concession in the hope of unlocking a deal.
Then Brussels would pocket the concession and demand more; and — incredibly — British Remainers would cheer.
The UK agreed to hand over more money than was due; accepted the EU’s absurd and illogical sequencing; made an unconditional security guarantee; offered to copy EU standards; and promised not to be more competitive than its neighbours.
Each time, the EU brusquely demanded “more movement”. Each time, Britain rushed to comply.
Which brings us to where we are — facing colonial rule from Brussels, of the sort the EU imposed on Bosnia following the Yugoslav war.
I am not one of those Brexiteers who half-favoured no deal all along.
On the contrary, I was proposing moderation even before the vote, and have repeated that call many times since.
But, paradoxically, our reluctance to countenance no deal has made such an outcome likelier.
We have reached the point where the terms on offer are less attractive than either a World Trade Organization-based Brexit or a second referendum. This last point is critical.
I suspect that two contradictory arguments will now be wheeled out before wavering MPs.
Europhiles will be told that the deal, backstop and all, is better than “crashing out” on WTO terms.
Conversely, Eurosceptics will be told that if they don’t approve the deal, Parliament might vote to extend Article 50, thus imperilling Brexit.
These two lines of argument can’t both be true, of course; and, in reality, neither of them is.
We’re invited to believe that if Boris Johnson and Jo Johnson, from opposite ends of the Brexit spectrum, both oppose the deal, it can’t be too bad. In fact, both Johnsons oppose it because it is a lamentable failure of statecraft.
Boris was no Brexit headbanger: He came out for Leave only after the EU refused to give David Cameron any powers back.
And Jo is no Remoaner: He has spent two years in Government trying to deliver a reasonable Brexit. If neither of them will back the deal, that tells us something.
There is still time — just — to recover our position.
As things stand, the backstop has no legal force.
The moment it finds its way into a treaty, it will be binding. If any MPs oppose the current approach, now is their chance to act. There won’t be another.

The Brexit Parliament is going for is not the Brexit the British people voted for
THE Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement has been voted down three times. It’s had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra.
Even now we are told that it is not dead yet. There is speculation there may well be a showdown next week between the PM’s deal and an insistence that the UK remains in the customs union.
I’ve made my position clear. The PM’s deal was a bad deal. It left the UK under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
It threatened the integrity of the United Kingdom through the Northern Ireland backstop.
And it effectively meant the UK handed over £39billion of taxpayers’ money with nothing in return.
Despite this I voted for it twice but with great reluctance as the alternative is so much worse.
If unreconciled Remainers in Parliament are allowed to hijack negotiations, we will get Brexit in name only, or no Brexit at all.
It’s a terrible state of affairs and I wish the Government had had the courage to maintain the possibility of a No Deal exit.
It would have given leverage to our negotiating position and delivered a better deal.
Frankly what we face now is a crisis of democracy. Record numbers of Britons voted in their droves to leave the EU.
Subsequently both the main parties and others, too, promised at the 2017 General Election that we would leave on time and exit the single market and customs union.
Now that is threatened. Those who wish to thwart Brexit have captured Parliament and will exert a terrible price by forcing the UK to remain in the customs union in complete contradiction of their election manifestos.
Deal has had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra
This is the worst possible Brexit policy choice for the UK. Being in an EU customs union means surrendering an independent trade policy. It could mean surrendering some aspects of the control of our NHS and other public services to the EU, whilst having no voice.
The only other country that is outside of the EU but a member of its customs union is Turkey.
Turkey has no seat at the table when the common external tariff is set, nor when EU trade agreements are negotiated.
So, in the customs union the great prize of Brexit — the ability to make dynamic trade deals with the rest of the world — is lost. The next step would be to reduce us to being a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.
We would serve the whims of Brussels in a servile relationship. This is not the Brexit the British people voted for.
We simply have to stop this defeatism. We need to regain our self-confidence, start afresh and actively pursue the best options for the UK.
The EU has always made clear it is prepared to negotiate a Canada-style agreement in the next phase. That is something worth striving for.
We could then look to make similar deals with the US, China, India, Singapore and others.
I respect the PM. By stating that she will step down and let somebody else pursue the next stage of negotiations she has put country ahead of self.
Now we have the opportunity to move on and reset our position.
First, we must face down those who will not accept the result of the referendum, the naysayers and the nihilists.
We will not let them steal Brexit and sabotage democracy. Then we must return to the EU and state clearly and boldly that one way or another we will leave.
So, the choice is theirs. We are prepared to leave without a deal if need be. There is still time to agree a better deal if we use our leverage in this way. Still time to honour the vote of the British people, to restore trust to politics and Parliament.
History will look unkindly on those who sought to usurp the will of the people.
It will be much kinder to those who, even now at this 11th hour, do the right thing by our country and our people.
 
The Brexit Parliament is going for is not the Brexit the British people voted for
THE Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement has been voted down three times. It’s had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra.
Even now we are told that it is not dead yet. There is speculation there may well be a showdown next week between the PM’s deal and an insistence that the UK remains in the customs union.
I’ve made my position clear. The PM’s deal was a bad deal. It left the UK under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.
It threatened the integrity of the United Kingdom through the Northern Ireland backstop.
And it effectively meant the UK handed over £39billion of taxpayers’ money with nothing in return.
Despite this I voted for it twice but with great reluctance as the alternative is so much worse.
If unreconciled Remainers in Parliament are allowed to hijack negotiations, we will get Brexit in name only, or no Brexit at all.
It’s a terrible state of affairs and I wish the Government had had the courage to maintain the possibility of a No Deal exit.
It would have given leverage to our negotiating position and delivered a better deal.
Frankly what we face now is a crisis of democracy. Record numbers of Britons voted in their droves to leave the EU.
Subsequently both the main parties and others, too, promised at the 2017 General Election that we would leave on time and exit the single market and customs union.
Now that is threatened. Those who wish to thwart Brexit have captured Parliament and will exert a terrible price by forcing the UK to remain in the customs union in complete contradiction of their election manifestos.
Deal has had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra
This is the worst possible Brexit policy choice for the UK. Being in an EU customs union means surrendering an independent trade policy. It could mean surrendering some aspects of the control of our NHS and other public services to the EU, whilst having no voice.
The only other country that is outside of the EU but a member of its customs union is Turkey.
Turkey has no seat at the table when the common external tariff is set, nor when EU trade agreements are negotiated.
So, in the customs union the great prize of Brexit — the ability to make dynamic trade deals with the rest of the world — is lost. The next step would be to reduce us to being a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.
We would serve the whims of Brussels in a servile relationship. This is not the Brexit the British people voted for.
We simply have to stop this defeatism. We need to regain our self-confidence, start afresh and actively pursue the best options for the UK.
The EU has always made clear it is prepared to negotiate a Canada-style agreement in the next phase. That is something worth striving for.
We could then look to make similar deals with the US, China, India, Singapore and others.
I respect the PM. By stating that she will step down and let somebody else pursue the next stage of negotiations she has put country ahead of self.
Now we have the opportunity to move on and reset our position.
First, we must face down those who will not accept the result of the referendum, the naysayers and the nihilists.
We will not let them steal Brexit and sabotage democracy. Then we must return to the EU and state clearly and boldly that one way or another we will leave.
So, the choice is theirs. We are prepared to leave without a deal if need be. There is still time to agree a better deal if we use our leverage in this way. Still time to honour the vote of the British people, to restore trust to politics and Parliament.
History will look unkindly on those who sought to usurp the will of the people.
It will be much kinder to those who, even now at this 11th hour, do the right thing by our country and our people.
 
The Chancellor is attempting to frighten the ­population into imagining the most ­terrible consequences of leaving the European Union without a deal
WHEN the world suffered enormous financial crisis in 2008, the Queen asked simply: “Why did no one see it coming?”
Of course, she was right to ask.
Not a single public authority predicted the biggest crash in modern history — not the Bank of England, not the ­Treasury, and certainly not the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Then in 2016 they did it again. Project Fear forecast dramatic downturns in the economy if the people were so unwise as to vote for Brexit. Wrong again.
Since then, we have had record levels of employment, huge investments from the likes of Google, Microsoft, SoftBank and a long list of other companies.
They demonstrated their confidence in the future of this great country in the best way possible — with their money.
This time round the wise insight came from Andy Haldane, the best economist at the Bank of England.
Ruefully he said “economic forecasting is having a Michael Fish moment”.
Michael Fish was the weather forecaster who completely mispredicted the huge 1987 storm that struck Britain.
If only economic forecasters were even as good as weather forecasters, we would be a lot better off. But they are not, and they are at it again.
This week Chancellor Philip Hammond predicted the Treasury would need to raise an extra £80billion in 15 years’ time in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
This from the Treasury that has trouble forecasting deficits even 12 months ahead.
And yet the Chancellor insists on ­trotting out yet another bogus forecast, on the very day that my successor as Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, is ­presenting the first set of preparation for no deal.
Coincidence? I do not think so.
The great departments of state are very careful about what they put in the public domain, and exactly when.
For nobody is this more true than the Treasury, which has to judge the public perception of everything it does, if only because of its effect on the markets. So this was either spectacularly incompetent, or deliberate. I know what I think.
It was an attempt to frighten the ­population into imagining the most ­terrible consequences of leaving the European Union without a deal.
And even more disgraceful, by doing so it will undermine the Government’s hand in striking a deal with the EU.
If they do not think we dare walk away, then they will give us the worst deal they can think of. Bear in mind that the Chequers deal already concedes enormous amounts to the EU.
It would not be long before our world-leading position in life sciences, gene technology, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and a whole range of other modern industries would be being actively undermined by the Europeans.
As for being out of reach of the ­European Court, pull the other one.
But now the Treasury is beginning to fear that even these spectacular concessions the Government has made in the Chequers deal will not deliver agreement from the European Commission — or if it does, the Commons will turn it down.
In that event you can expect attempts by the Remainers in Parliament to try to scupper our departure by delaying it beyond the General Election, or offer some other enormous raft of concessions to give back control of the EU.
This is why we are seeing Project Fear Mark 3, 4 or 5 — I have lost count — ­trying to terrorise the public into ­believing they will be denied food, ­medicines and even their pensions.
Hence the ridiculous suggestion that the Army would be used to move food around the country.
Why? What conceivable aspect of European policy would handicap British hauliers moving British products from Kent to Cumbria?
None of course, but it was just the bogus nonsense some of our Remainer media is only too happy to carry ­completely uncritically. Similarly, we have heard suggestions of all sorts of shortages, based it seems mostly on the idea that the French might impede the flow of goods between Calais and Dover.
It would not be the first time we had dealt with such issues. We had about 30 days of such delays in 2015. I remember queues of lorries, but I do not remember shortages of food or medicines.
And on other issues, are the Europeans really going to pick a fight on data with the biggest IT power on the continent, on banking are they going to refuse to cooperate with the greatest financial ­centre in the world?
Are the Greeks, Italians and Spaniards going to disadvantage the UK residents on whom many of their local economies depend? Or stop tourism? I think not.
I suspect we are quite likely to have the odd hiccup when we leave the EU, but we will be able to cope, which is what Dominic Raab was demonstrating this week. And any problems we have will be over in months not years.
So in 15 years’ time, far from worrying about Mr Hammond’s £80billion bill, the country will have trouble remembering what all the fuss was about.
The biggest question will be whether we have made the most of the opportunities created by Brexit.
And that is what we should worry about today, creating the circumstances where this great country can take its proper place in the world. We will only be able to do that if we allow ourselves the freedoms a clean Brexit will deliver.
So my advice to all my old colleagues in Cabinet is simple: Ignore the misery merchants of the Treasury, stop fearing things that will never happen, and start planning for the real opportunities that this great country can grasp when it sets its mind to it.
The Chancellor is attempting to frighten the ­population into imagining the most ­terrible consequences of leaving the European Union without a deal
WHEN the world suffered enormous financial crisis in 2008, the Queen asked simply: “Why did no one see it coming?”
Of course, she was right to ask.
Not a single public authority predicted the biggest crash in modern history — not the Bank of England, not the ­Treasury, and certainly not the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Then in 2016 they did it again. Project Fear forecast dramatic downturns in the economy if the people were so unwise as to vote for Brexit. Wrong again.
Since then, we have had record levels of employment, huge investments from the likes of Google, Microsoft, SoftBank and a long list of other companies.
They demonstrated their confidence in the future of this great country in the best way possible — with their money.
This time round the wise insight came from Andy Haldane, the best economist at the Bank of England.
Ruefully he said “economic forecasting is having a Michael Fish moment”.
Michael Fish was the weather forecaster who completely mispredicted the huge 1987 storm that struck Britain.
If only economic forecasters were even as good as weather forecasters, we would be a lot better off. But they are not, and they are at it again.
This week Chancellor Philip Hammond predicted the Treasury would need to raise an extra £80billion in 15 years’ time in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
This from the Treasury that has trouble forecasting deficits even 12 months ahead.
And yet the Chancellor insists on ­trotting out yet another bogus forecast, on the very day that my successor as Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, is ­presenting the first set of preparation for no deal.
Coincidence? I do not think so.
The great departments of state are very careful about what they put in the public domain, and exactly when.
For nobody is this more true than the Treasury, which has to judge the public perception of everything it does, if only because of its effect on the markets. So this was either spectacularly incompetent, or deliberate. I know what I think.
It was an attempt to frighten the ­population into imagining the most ­terrible consequences of leaving the European Union without a deal.
And even more disgraceful, by doing so it will undermine the Government’s hand in striking a deal with the EU.
If they do not think we dare walk away, then they will give us the worst deal they can think of. Bear in mind that the Chequers deal already concedes enormous amounts to the EU.
It would not be long before our world-leading position in life sciences, gene technology, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and a whole range of other modern industries would be being actively undermined by the Europeans.
As for being out of reach of the ­European Court, pull the other one.
But now the Treasury is beginning to fear that even these spectacular concessions the Government has made in the Chequers deal will not deliver agreement from the European Commission — or if it does, the Commons will turn it down.
In that event you can expect attempts by the Remainers in Parliament to try to scupper our departure by delaying it beyond the General Election, or offer some other enormous raft of concessions to give back control of the EU.
This is why we are seeing Project Fear Mark 3, 4 or 5 — I have lost count — ­trying to terrorise the public into ­believing they will be denied food, ­medicines and even their pensions.
Hence the ridiculous suggestion that the Army would be used to move food around the country.
Why? What conceivable aspect of European policy would handicap British hauliers moving British products from Kent to Cumbria?
None of course, but it was just the bogus nonsense some of our Remainer media is only too happy to carry ­completely uncritically. Similarly, we have heard suggestions of all sorts of shortages, based it seems mostly on the idea that the French might impede the flow of goods between Calais and Dover.
It would not be the first time we had dealt with such issues. We had about 30 days of such delays in 2015. I remember queues of lorries, but I do not remember shortages of food or medicines.
And on other issues, are the Europeans really going to pick a fight on data with the biggest IT power on the continent, on banking are they going to refuse to cooperate with the greatest financial ­centre in the world?
Are the Greeks, Italians and Spaniards going to disadvantage the UK residents on whom many of their local economies depend? Or stop tourism? I think not.
I suspect we are quite likely to have the odd hiccup when we leave the EU, but we will be able to cope, which is what Dominic Raab was demonstrating this week. And any problems we have will be over in months not years.
So in 15 years’ time, far from worrying about Mr Hammond’s £80billion bill, the country will have trouble remembering what all the fuss was about.
The biggest question will be whether we have made the most of the opportunities created by Brexit.
And that is what we should worry about today, creating the circumstances where this great country can take its proper place in the world. We will only be able to do that if we allow ourselves the freedoms a clean Brexit will deliver.
So my advice to all my old colleagues in Cabinet is simple: Ignore the misery merchants of the Treasury, stop fearing things that will never happen, and start planning for the real opportunities that this great country can grasp when it sets its mind to it.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis says UK negotiations with the EU are in a sorry state and Theresa May's attempt to move things on has failed
THE Prime Minister was concerned the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker called her ‘nebulous’.
Nebulous or credulous? Either way UK negotiations with the EU are in a sorry state. In plain English we’ve hit a dead end.
Theresa May’s attempt to move things again following this week’s Westminster turmoil has failed. The EU has knocked her back once again.
Parliament had already firmly indicated the Government’s proposed deal will never be passed.
So what now? This is not the time to roll over. It is time to stand up to the Europeans, be confident and start again. There is still time and there is an
alternative.
Last week we launched the first chapter of an alternative EU deal, written by renowned trade experts Shanker Singham, Robert MacLean and Hans Maessen.
It plots a way forward which would deliver the real prizes of Brexit such as global free trade deals and regaining control for the British people.
It solves the problem of the Irish backstop which has so plagued negotiations. It preserves a transition period and prepares the way for a Canada style free trade agreement between the UK and the EU. It solves the backstop problem by making use of existing streamlined customs procedures already in use across the world.
These are the same arrangement which Michel Barnier would have been happy to impose when he suggested a customs border in the Irish Sea.
It avoids a hard border, respects the Good Friday Agreement and removes the challenge to the territorial integrity of the UK. It enables a smooth UK withdrawal and avoids an attempt to exercise jurisdiction in the territory of a non-Member State by the EU.
This means the UK takes back control of borders, laws and money as the British people were promised.
It proposes a better deal for the UK and a better deal for the EU. Any failure by the EU to reach a deal acceptable to its nearest neighbour, closest ally and largest third-country market will have significant adverse political and economic consequences, within the EU and around the world.
Believe me as somebody who stared into the eyes of EU negotiators, they do not want the UK to leave without a deal, any more than we do.
So, we have an alternative Withdrawal Agreement ready and waiting on the shelf. I strongly advise the Government to present this to the EU immediately, along with a clear framework of a Trade Agreement.
Since this proposal builds on what has already been offered, there is very little reason for the EU to reject it. We need to show people across the EU that we have momentum and are moving towards a satisfactory solution.
This proposal is anything but nebulous! Frankly, future generations will not forgive us if we fail them.
Other solutions just will not wash. Some talk of a Norway deal as if it’s an easy middle way and a fashionable alternative. It’s not!
A Norway Deal could mean the EU controls 75 per cent of our laws.
At present Norway pays a financial contribution to the EU which is only slightly lower per capita than the UK’s EU membership contribution and they have largely given up control over immigration.
Even the Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg says, “the EEA is probably not a good solution for Britain.” A Norway style path with continued free movement would not respect the result of the referendum and would be bad for Britain.
A second Referendum too is a non-starter. What message would it send to ignore the decisive verdict of the British people in the 2016 Referendum.
There is already huge suspicion of EU institutions and scheming politicians.
Making people vote again until they reach the verdict a self-appointed establishment desire is a sickening prospect and wrong.
The irony is that every last person pushing the so-called “People’s Vote” are doing so because thy hate the result of the first People’s Vote.
The British people delivered their view in the 2016 Referendum and that should now be honoured. Whatever happens we will depart the EU on March 29 because that is written in primary legislation.
So we have to make it work and we owe the British people our utmost efforts to do the best we can.
That’s why I want to step up No deal preparations in case such an exit is necessary. Plans for such an exit are already more advanced than some
acknowledge.
A great deal of work has been done in Whitehall to prepare for all contingencies, but progress was delayed in March when the Treasury and Number 10 blocked the public phase of preparation.
This has put the programme behind by some months, but it can be recovered.
We should seek to secure bilateral arrangements with the EU on a ‘bare bones’ basis for aviation, data management, and the like as a matter of urgency.
In addition the Government can look at measures on VAT, hospitals, financial services, and farming to ensure we are ready.
We also need to guarantee funding for science and innovation to keep the UK’s competitive advantage and to complement the work done on programmes such as Horizon 2020.
Europe is itself making some changes spontaneously: only this week it approved its banks to use British Clearing Houses, because that was the only way to protect the European financial networks.
Such an approach actually makes obtaining a deal more likely as the EU realise more and more that we are serious. They know that a World Trade Organisation deal will enable the UK to strike Free Trade Agreements around the world.
Freed from alignment with the EU, the UK will be able to pursue trade deals with countries like Australia, New Zealand, India, China, the United States, Singapore and Japan who have a combined GDP of 40.9 trillion dollars.
All of these countries say they want trade deals with the UK. On Friday, Switzerland committed to a free trade deal in all circumstances.
There is a credible alternative to the present shambles. Quite literally, if the UK has the will there is a way. Then we can seize the Brexit prize.
Let’s take it and give the people of Britain the future they deserve.
Former Brexit Secretary David Davis says UK negotiations with the EU are in a sorry state and Theresa May's attempt to move things on has failed
THE Prime Minister was concerned the European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker called her ‘nebulous’.
Nebulous or credulous? Either way UK negotiations with the EU are in a sorry state. In plain English we’ve hit a dead end.
Theresa May’s attempt to move things again following this week’s Westminster turmoil has failed. The EU has knocked her back once again.
Parliament had already firmly indicated the Government’s proposed deal will never be passed.
So what now? This is not the time to roll over. It is time to stand up to the Europeans, be confident and start again. There is still time and there is an
alternative.
Last week we launched the first chapter of an alternative EU deal, written by renowned trade experts Shanker Singham, Robert MacLean and Hans Maessen.
It plots a way forward which would deliver the real prizes of Brexit such as global free trade deals and regaining control for the British people.
It solves the problem of the Irish backstop which has so plagued negotiations. It preserves a transition period and prepares the way for a Canada style free trade agreement between the UK and the EU. It solves the backstop problem by making use of existing streamlined customs procedures already in use across the world.
These are the same arrangement which Michel Barnier would have been happy to impose when he suggested a customs border in the Irish Sea.
It avoids a hard border, respects the Good Friday Agreement and removes the challenge to the territorial integrity of the UK. It enables a smooth UK withdrawal and avoids an attempt to exercise jurisdiction in the territory of a non-Member State by the EU.
This means the UK takes back control of borders, laws and money as the British people were promised.
It proposes a better deal for the UK and a better deal for the EU. Any failure by the EU to reach a deal acceptable to its nearest neighbour, closest ally and largest third-country market will have significant adverse political and economic consequences, within the EU and around the world.
Believe me as somebody who stared into the eyes of EU negotiators, they do not want the UK to leave without a deal, any more than we do.
So, we have an alternative Withdrawal Agreement ready and waiting on the shelf. I strongly advise the Government to present this to the EU immediately, along with a clear framework of a Trade Agreement.
Since this proposal builds on what has already been offered, there is very little reason for the EU to reject it. We need to show people across the EU that we have momentum and are moving towards a satisfactory solution.
This proposal is anything but nebulous! Frankly, future generations will not forgive us if we fail them.
Other solutions just will not wash. Some talk of a Norway deal as if it’s an easy middle way and a fashionable alternative. It’s not!
A Norway Deal could mean the EU controls 75 per cent of our laws.
At present Norway pays a financial contribution to the EU which is only slightly lower per capita than the UK’s EU membership contribution and they have largely given up control over immigration.
Even the Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg says, “the EEA is probably not a good solution for Britain.” A Norway style path with continued free movement would not respect the result of the referendum and would be bad for Britain.
A second Referendum too is a non-starter. What message would it send to ignore the decisive verdict of the British people in the 2016 Referendum.
There is already huge suspicion of EU institutions and scheming politicians.
Making people vote again until they reach the verdict a self-appointed establishment desire is a sickening prospect and wrong.
The irony is that every last person pushing the so-called “People’s Vote” are doing so because thy hate the result of the first People’s Vote.
The British people delivered their view in the 2016 Referendum and that should now be honoured. Whatever happens we will depart the EU on March 29 because that is written in primary legislation.
So we have to make it work and we owe the British people our utmost efforts to do the best we can.
That’s why I want to step up No deal preparations in case such an exit is necessary. Plans for such an exit are already more advanced than some
acknowledge.
A great deal of work has been done in Whitehall to prepare for all contingencies, but progress was delayed in March when the Treasury and Number 10 blocked the public phase of preparation.
This has put the programme behind by some months, but it can be recovered.
We should seek to secure bilateral arrangements with the EU on a ‘bare bones’ basis for aviation, data management, and the like as a matter of urgency.
In addition the Government can look at measures on VAT, hospitals, financial services, and farming to ensure we are ready.
We also need to guarantee funding for science and innovation to keep the UK’s competitive advantage and to complement the work done on programmes such as Horizon 2020.
Europe is itself making some changes spontaneously: only this week it approved its banks to use British Clearing Houses, because that was the only way to protect the European financial networks.
Such an approach actually makes obtaining a deal more likely as the EU realise more and more that we are serious. They know that a World Trade Organisation deal will enable the UK to strike Free Trade Agreements around the world.
Freed from alignment with the EU, the UK will be able to pursue trade deals with countries like Australia, New Zealand, India, China, the United States, Singapore and Japan who have a combined GDP of 40.9 trillion dollars.
All of these countries say they want trade deals with the UK. On Friday, Switzerland committed to a free trade deal in all circumstances.
There is a credible alternative to the present shambles. Quite literally, if the UK has the will there is a way. Then we can seize the Brexit prize.
Let’s take it and give the people of Britain the future they deserve.
A MAJOR split tonight opened up among Tory Eurosceptics over whether to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
While some senior members of the hardline European Research Group declared they were ready to back the PM’s new customs partnership plan for Northern Ireland, others began speaking out to blast it.
Former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson became the first senior MP to denounce the fledgling deal in public.
In a blow for No10, the ex-Northern Ireland Secretary dubbed it “absurd” and “unacceptable” in an interview with The Sun.
Mr Johnson is facing a knife edge vote in the Commons to pass any deal he agrees in Brussels, and must slash the number of Tory rebels to single figures.
When would any other country ever give up part of its territory as part of trade talks?
But while calling Boris’s talks with Ireland boss Leo Varadkar as “encouraging”, Mr Paterson said: “Concerns remain that the EU will seek to trap Northern Ireland permanently in the EU Customs Union by trying to reheat the failed ideas of customs partnerships or single customs territories that proved so disastrous for Theresa May.
“We await the full details of the new deal to see exactly how they address the objections to the dead Theresa May deal, but dual-tariff systems like this would be, as Priti Patel has said, unacceptable.”
He added: “When would any other country ever give up part of its territory as part of trade talks? It would be particularly absurd for Northern Ireland.
“It would shatter the Belfast Agreement’s Principle of Consent and completely undermine Northern Ireland’s status as an integral part of the UK. We must not go down this route.”
Mr Paterson also signed the “Brexit Pledge” on Tuesday night, a campaign calling on all MPs to agree to leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith was also said by other MPs to also be unhappy, and is reported to have “exploded” at senior No10 officials over how the PM has kept almost everyone in the dark over the negotiation.
But IDS last night hit back to insist he hadn’t lost his temper during the No10 talks, but had remonstrated with officials over the legal grounding of the PM’s proposals.
Sir Bill Cash was also said to be “worried” about how much sovereignty the province would have to surrender to the EU over the plan.
But ERG chairman Steve Baker struck a positive note after emerging from his briefing in No10, dubbing the proposal “a tolerable deal that I will be able to vote for.”
After addressing a tense, hour-long meeting of the group in the Commons on Tuesday night, Mr Baker added: “I absolutely can rely on Boris Johnson to take us out of the European Union.
“The mood of the Eurosceptics meeting here tonight was that we do, we can and we must trust the PM.”
A MAJOR split tonight opened up among Tory Eurosceptics over whether to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
While some senior members of the hardline European Research Group declared they were ready to back the PM’s new customs partnership plan for Northern Ireland, others began speaking out to blast it.
Former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson became the first senior MP to denounce the fledgling deal in public.
In a blow for No10, the ex-Northern Ireland Secretary dubbed it “absurd” and “unacceptable” in an interview with The Sun.
Mr Johnson is facing a knife edge vote in the Commons to pass any deal he agrees in Brussels, and must slash the number of Tory rebels to single figures.
When would any other country ever give up part of its territory as part of trade talks?
But while calling Boris’s talks with Ireland boss Leo Varadkar as “encouraging”, Mr Paterson said: “Concerns remain that the EU will seek to trap Northern Ireland permanently in the EU Customs Union by trying to reheat the failed ideas of customs partnerships or single customs territories that proved so disastrous for Theresa May.
“We await the full details of the new deal to see exactly how they address the objections to the dead Theresa May deal, but dual-tariff systems like this would be, as Priti Patel has said, unacceptable.”
He added: “When would any other country ever give up part of its territory as part of trade talks? It would be particularly absurd for Northern Ireland.
“It would shatter the Belfast Agreement’s Principle of Consent and completely undermine Northern Ireland’s status as an integral part of the UK. We must not go down this route.”
Mr Paterson also signed the “Brexit Pledge” on Tuesday night, a campaign calling on all MPs to agree to leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan-Smith was also said by other MPs to also be unhappy, and is reported to have “exploded” at senior No10 officials over how the PM has kept almost everyone in the dark over the negotiation.
But IDS last night hit back to insist he hadn’t lost his temper during the No10 talks, but had remonstrated with officials over the legal grounding of the PM’s proposals.
Sir Bill Cash was also said to be “worried” about how much sovereignty the province would have to surrender to the EU over the plan.
But ERG chairman Steve Baker struck a positive note after emerging from his briefing in No10, dubbing the proposal “a tolerable deal that I will be able to vote for.”
After addressing a tense, hour-long meeting of the group in the Commons on Tuesday night, Mr Baker added: “I absolutely can rely on Boris Johnson to take us out of the European Union.
“The mood of the Eurosceptics meeting here tonight was that we do, we can and we must trust the PM.”
News Corp is a network of leading companies in the worlds of diversified media, news, education, and information services.
Some 20 ERG members have told whips they will carry out 'vote strikes' — a move that would push Mrs May’s minority Government to the verge of collapse
HARDLINE Tory Brexiteers have threatened Theresa May they will go on strike if she carries out her vow to delay Brexit by a year.
No10 on Monday set a deadline of late on Tuesday for MPs to agree the PM’s exit deal before Thursday’s European summit.

But instead of buckling to the pressure, diehard Tory MP Leavers raised the stakes back on the PM with a pledge to withdraw their cooperation.
As many as 20 members of the hardline European Research Group have told whips they will carry out “vote strikes” – a move that would push Mrs May’s minority government to the verge of collapse.
On another dramatic day in Westminster:
As Conservative tensions over Brexit reached boiling point around the PM’s ultimatum strategy, one senior Tory backbencher told The Sun: “If she tried to go ahead with a long extension, there will be vote strikes on all Government legislation.
“She will lose us, and lose us permanently if she goes ahead with this, and that has been made crystal clear to her.”
Staring down Mrs May in the ultra-high stakes game of bluff, ERG member Lee Rowley added: “The Prime Minister is going to have to reflect very carefully over the next few days.
“I don’t think she wants to be a PM who has failed to get a deal through, and then has to enforce a two-year extension.
“That won’t look very good.”
A Brexiteer former Cabinet minister added: “The party would simply not stand for a long delay to Brexit. It would finish her”.
Boris Johnson faced a bitter backlash from supporters on Monday by declaring he will vote down the PM’s divorce agreement unless the EU agrees to more changes.
One ally minister branded the former Foreign Secretary “deluded”.
While winning favour with the Eurosceptic party membership, his continuing defiance will further alienate Tory MPs who pick the final two candidates for a nationwide party vote, the ally warned, adding: “He is crap at politics. He will end up outside the two”.
Another Tory Brexiteer MP said: “Boris seems to be forgetting that many of our members are councillors, and they face a wipe out on May 2 if we’re still in the EU for years.
“That will not engender him to them.”
A WhatsApp group for Tory Brexiteers was rife on Monday with speculation that the PM will next week accept a bid by Labour MP Peter Kyle to hold a second referendum on her deal as a way out of her galling dilemma.
Maria Caulfield warned on it: “Moderates are being tempted by Kyle et al as they don’t believe ERG will ever accept anything but WTO”.
ERG chair Jacob Rees-Mogg went public with his jitters over continuing to vote down Mrs May’s deal on Monday.
The Tory MP for Somerset North said: “No deal is better than a bad deal, but a bad deal is better than remaining in the European Union, in the hierarchy of worst options.
“The debate is really, is No Deal still realistic?”
Mrs May told at least one MP that her controversial chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins will “go as soon as the deal is through” in a bid to curry favour – but civil service pals insisted he wanted to move on anyway.
Putting a brave face on the mess, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there were “cautious signs for encouragement”.
One hardline Brexiteer said he’d told the Prime Minister on the phone that there was no chance of him backing her deal this week.
He said: “I think she rang me as a last ditch effort. I told her I won’t budge on it, I’m not going to change my mind and I reiterated that in conversation – and told her a lot of other people are going to do that. She accepted my position and signalled she will pull the vote for this week.
“Her best bet is to cancel the vote this week, tell the EU the Commons won’t wear it and tell they they’ll need to come back with something on the backstop. If she does then great, if not then she comes back and says she’s tried her best.
“Extension is better than signing up to this Withdrawal Agreement – we’ll still be in the EU with full voting rights and we can make life extremely difficult for them and use that as leverage.”


Some 20 ERG members have told whips they will carry out 'vote strikes' — a move that would push Mrs May’s minority Government to the verge of collapse
HARDLINE Tory Brexiteers have threatened Theresa May they will go on strike if she carries out her vow to delay Brexit by a year.
No10 on Monday set a deadline of late on Tuesday for MPs to agree the PM’s exit deal before Thursday’s European summit.

But instead of buckling to the pressure, diehard Tory MP Leavers raised the stakes back on the PM with a pledge to withdraw their cooperation.
As many as 20 members of the hardline European Research Group have told whips they will carry out “vote strikes” – a move that would push Mrs May’s minority government to the verge of collapse.
On another dramatic day in Westminster:
As Conservative tensions over Brexit reached boiling point around the PM’s ultimatum strategy, one senior Tory backbencher told The Sun: “If she tried to go ahead with a long extension, there will be vote strikes on all Government legislation.
“She will lose us, and lose us permanently if she goes ahead with this, and that has been made crystal clear to her.”
Staring down Mrs May in the ultra-high stakes game of bluff, ERG member Lee Rowley added: “The Prime Minister is going to have to reflect very carefully over the next few days.
“I don’t think she wants to be a PM who has failed to get a deal through, and then has to enforce a two-year extension.
“That won’t look very good.”
A Brexiteer former Cabinet minister added: “The party would simply not stand for a long delay to Brexit. It would finish her”.
Boris Johnson faced a bitter backlash from supporters on Monday by declaring he will vote down the PM’s divorce agreement unless the EU agrees to more changes.
One ally minister branded the former Foreign Secretary “deluded”.
While winning favour with the Eurosceptic party membership, his continuing defiance will further alienate Tory MPs who pick the final two candidates for a nationwide party vote, the ally warned, adding: “He is crap at politics. He will end up outside the two”.
Another Tory Brexiteer MP said: “Boris seems to be forgetting that many of our members are councillors, and they face a wipe out on May 2 if we’re still in the EU for years.
“That will not engender him to them.”
A WhatsApp group for Tory Brexiteers was rife on Monday with speculation that the PM will next week accept a bid by Labour MP Peter Kyle to hold a second referendum on her deal as a way out of her galling dilemma.
Maria Caulfield warned on it: “Moderates are being tempted by Kyle et al as they don’t believe ERG will ever accept anything but WTO”.
ERG chair Jacob Rees-Mogg went public with his jitters over continuing to vote down Mrs May’s deal on Monday.
The Tory MP for Somerset North said: “No deal is better than a bad deal, but a bad deal is better than remaining in the European Union, in the hierarchy of worst options.
“The debate is really, is No Deal still realistic?”
Mrs May told at least one MP that her controversial chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins will “go as soon as the deal is through” in a bid to curry favour – but civil service pals insisted he wanted to move on anyway.
Putting a brave face on the mess, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there were “cautious signs for encouragement”.
One hardline Brexiteer said he’d told the Prime Minister on the phone that there was no chance of him backing her deal this week.
He said: “I think she rang me as a last ditch effort. I told her I won’t budge on it, I’m not going to change my mind and I reiterated that in conversation – and told her a lot of other people are going to do that. She accepted my position and signalled she will pull the vote for this week.
“Her best bet is to cancel the vote this week, tell the EU the Commons won’t wear it and tell they they’ll need to come back with something on the backstop. If she does then great, if not then she comes back and says she’s tried her best.
“Extension is better than signing up to this Withdrawal Agreement – we’ll still be in the EU with full voting rights and we can make life extremely difficult for them and use that as leverage.”


She fears pinning down the date before her deal approved by the Commons would see her Brexiteer critics dig in
THERESA May is refusing to set a firm resignation date as she is convinced it would make it impossible to pass her Brexit deal.
The reasoning behind the PM’s defiance in her stand-off with party grandees is revealed today by the chairman of the 1922 Committee of all Tory backbenchers.
Pinning down her departure date before a deal is approved by the Commons would only see her Brexiteer critics dig in and wait for it rather than vote for her EU agreement, she fears.
But despite the PM’s refusal so far, Sir Graham Brady is still insisting Mrs May fulfils his demand for a timetable to leave No10 no matter what at her showdown meeting with his executive team next Thursday.
Turning up the pressure on Mrs May further today, Sir Graham also said “it would be strange” if she didn’t do that.
The most powerful Tory backbencher told BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster: “I do understand the reticence about doing it.
We have asked a question. She’s coming, I assume, to answer it
“I don’t think it’s about an intention for staying indefinitely as Prime Minister or leader of the Conservative Party.
“I think the reticence is the concern that by promising to go on a certain timetable, it might make it less likely she would secure Parliamentary approval for the Withdrawal Agreement, rather than more likely.”
But Sir Graham added: “It is also the case that the 1922 executive has asked her to give that clarity. She’s offered to come and meet with the executive, and it would be strange for that not to result in a clear understanding at the end of the meeting.
“We have asked a question. She’s coming, I assume, to answer it.”
The latest thinking in Downing Street – revealed by James Forsyth in his Sun column today – would see Mrs May give the grandees a far smaller concession.
Under the plan, the PM would pledge to the executive to resign as party leader as soon as her Brexit deal is passed, triggering a long summer leadership contest.
After MPs whittle down the array of candidates to a final two, they would then tour the country to meet members for weeks.
Unlike Theresa May, he or she needs to be determined to exit the EU with no deal if necessary — AND sell it to MPs.
That may look the tallest of tall orders.
But civil service preparations have made huge strides. The worst effects can be mitigated. Many Remainer MPs still spread panic about it, knowing only that they are meant to.
The new Tory leader must back No Deal, or use the genuine threat of it to improve Mrs May’s deal with the EU.
It is indeed the party’s only chance.
The final debate between them would come at the Tories’ annual conference in October.
Voting would then take place among the 150,000 members, with the new PM taking over in late October or November.
Mrs May’s biggest Tory critics have threatened to try again next week to change the party’s rules to call a snap vote of confidence in herif she fails to offer up a firm departure timetable.
Tanaiste Simon Coveney spoke out as Brexiteer backbenchers plot to oust Theresa May and replace her with a diehard Leaver who would rip up the unpopular Irish border backstop
But Mr Coveney said their plan was doomed to fail as the EU would not accept any plan that hasn’t been tried and tested.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “These realities don’t change. It is not a personality-based issue, it is an evidence-based issue.
“We have to move forward on the basis of knowing that we’re not going to see the kind of damage done on the island of Ireland that the imposition of a border would result in.”
Brexiteers hate the Irish backstop, enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement, as it could keep the UK tied to the EU for years.
She fears pinning down the date before her deal approved by the Commons would see her Brexiteer critics dig in
THERESA May is refusing to set a firm resignation date as she is convinced it would make it impossible to pass her Brexit deal.
The reasoning behind the PM’s defiance in her stand-off with party grandees is revealed today by the chairman of the 1922 Committee of all Tory backbenchers.
Pinning down her departure date before a deal is approved by the Commons would only see her Brexiteer critics dig in and wait for it rather than vote for her EU agreement, she fears.
But despite the PM’s refusal so far, Sir Graham Brady is still insisting Mrs May fulfils his demand for a timetable to leave No10 no matter what at her showdown meeting with his executive team next Thursday.
Turning up the pressure on Mrs May further today, Sir Graham also said “it would be strange” if she didn’t do that.
The most powerful Tory backbencher told BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster: “I do understand the reticence about doing it.
We have asked a question. She’s coming, I assume, to answer it
“I don’t think it’s about an intention for staying indefinitely as Prime Minister or leader of the Conservative Party.
“I think the reticence is the concern that by promising to go on a certain timetable, it might make it less likely she would secure Parliamentary approval for the Withdrawal Agreement, rather than more likely.”
But Sir Graham added: “It is also the case that the 1922 executive has asked her to give that clarity. She’s offered to come and meet with the executive, and it would be strange for that not to result in a clear understanding at the end of the meeting.
“We have asked a question. She’s coming, I assume, to answer it.”
The latest thinking in Downing Street – revealed by James Forsyth in his Sun column today – would see Mrs May give the grandees a far smaller concession.
Under the plan, the PM would pledge to the executive to resign as party leader as soon as her Brexit deal is passed, triggering a long summer leadership contest.
After MPs whittle down the array of candidates to a final two, they would then tour the country to meet members for weeks.
Unlike Theresa May, he or she needs to be determined to exit the EU with no deal if necessary — AND sell it to MPs.
That may look the tallest of tall orders.
But civil service preparations have made huge strides. The worst effects can be mitigated. Many Remainer MPs still spread panic about it, knowing only that they are meant to.
The new Tory leader must back No Deal, or use the genuine threat of it to improve Mrs May’s deal with the EU.
It is indeed the party’s only chance.
The final debate between them would come at the Tories’ annual conference in October.
Voting would then take place among the 150,000 members, with the new PM taking over in late October or November.
Mrs May’s biggest Tory critics have threatened to try again next week to change the party’s rules to call a snap vote of confidence in herif she fails to offer up a firm departure timetable.
Tanaiste Simon Coveney spoke out as Brexiteer backbenchers plot to oust Theresa May and replace her with a diehard Leaver who would rip up the unpopular Irish border backstop
But Mr Coveney said their plan was doomed to fail as the EU would not accept any plan that hasn’t been tried and tested.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “These realities don’t change. It is not a personality-based issue, it is an evidence-based issue.
“We have to move forward on the basis of knowing that we’re not going to see the kind of damage done on the island of Ireland that the imposition of a border would result in.”
Brexiteers hate the Irish backstop, enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement, as it could keep the UK tied to the EU for years.
The Sun can reveal that Tory backbencher Dr Sarah Wollaston is in talks with Labour and SNP MPs to lead the push for a People’s Vote
PRO-EU MPs are preparing to formally call for a second referendum as early as Tuesday in a “Doctor’s Amendment”.
The Sun can reveal that Tory backbencher Dr Sarah Wollaston is in talks with colleagues from Labour and the SNP to lead the push for a People’s Vote.
The formal call will come in the form of an amendment to Theresa May’s ‘Plan B’ motion to be debated next Tuesday, January 29.
If selected by the Speaker it would see MPs vote on a new poll.
Ms Wollaston told The Sun: “It’s all about informed consent. You wouldn’t opt for surgery if you didn’t know the operation you were having. And here, Theresa May is the surgeon.”
Other lead signatories are understood to include Tory ex-Minister Dr Philip Lee and Labour’s Dr Paul Williams and Dr Philippa Whitford of the SNP, a breast surgeon.
It comes despite People’s Vote insiders admitting privately that only 150-180 MPs in the Commons currently back a People’s Vote – nowhere near a majority.
A group of Conservative and Labour second referendum backers including Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry met Theresa May’s de-facto deputy PM David Lidington for confidential talks about a new poll yesterday.
They are believed to have warned that a second vote could keep the union together given the strength of the ‘Remain’ vote in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Dr Philip Lee, who quit as Justice Minister last year over Brexit, warned on Monday that both Scotland and Northern Ireland could quit the union unless the PM grants a People’s Vote.
He warned the PM’s “Brexit at all costs” strategy would spark a clamour for a second Independence vote in Scotland and a unity poll in Northern Ireland. Both voted ‘Remain’ in 2016.
Dr Lee said: “Time is running out to get a deal that works for the whole of the UK. The only way to find a way through the political deadlock is to let the people decide on how the country should proceed, by giving them a Final Say.”
 
 
The Sun can reveal that Tory backbencher Dr Sarah Wollaston is in talks with Labour and SNP MPs to lead the push for a People’s Vote
PRO-EU MPs are preparing to formally call for a second referendum as early as Tuesday in a “Doctor’s Amendment”.
The Sun can reveal that Tory backbencher Dr Sarah Wollaston is in talks with colleagues from Labour and the SNP to lead the push for a People’s Vote.
The formal call will come in the form of an amendment to Theresa May’s ‘Plan B’ motion to be debated next Tuesday, January 29.
If selected by the Speaker it would see MPs vote on a new poll.
Ms Wollaston told The Sun: “It’s all about informed consent. You wouldn’t opt for surgery if you didn’t know the operation you were having. And here, Theresa May is the surgeon.”
Other lead signatories are understood to include Tory ex-Minister Dr Philip Lee and Labour’s Dr Paul Williams and Dr Philippa Whitford of the SNP, a breast surgeon.
It comes despite People’s Vote insiders admitting privately that only 150-180 MPs in the Commons currently back a People’s Vote – nowhere near a majority.
A group of Conservative and Labour second referendum backers including Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry met Theresa May’s de-facto deputy PM David Lidington for confidential talks about a new poll yesterday.
They are believed to have warned that a second vote could keep the union together given the strength of the ‘Remain’ vote in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Dr Philip Lee, who quit as Justice Minister last year over Brexit, warned on Monday that both Scotland and Northern Ireland could quit the union unless the PM grants a People’s Vote.
He warned the PM’s “Brexit at all costs” strategy would spark a clamour for a second Independence vote in Scotland and a unity poll in Northern Ireland. Both voted ‘Remain’ in 2016.
Dr Lee said: “Time is running out to get a deal that works for the whole of the UK. The only way to find a way through the political deadlock is to let the people decide on how the country should proceed, by giving them a Final Say.”
 
 
I am struck by how many Remain voters — let alone Leavers — now just want to see Brexit done
THIS week, MPs voted down the Government’s proposed Brexit deal with the EU.
There’s still time to secure the reasonable changes in Brussels to pass a deal in Parliament — but we Conservatives must keep our promise to leave the EU on March 29.
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn tabled and lost a vote of no confidence in the Government. The margin was higher than expected because some Labour MPs abstained, highlighting deep unease in the party about its leader’s fitness for high office.
In contrast, even after a sobering setback, Theresa May signalled her determination to seek further concessions from Brussels.
Mr Corbyn rebuffed the Prime Minister’s offer of talks unless she ruled out leaving with No Deal. If only he took such an uncompromising stance towards terrorists and despots. In reality, Jeremy Corbyn has no idea what Labour’s policy on Brexit would be.
The path ahead is set in law. The UK will leave the EU in 68 days’ time — preferably with a deal, if not on World Trade Organisation terms.  If Labour wants to reverse that legislation, it will require government backing — and the PM has made clear she won’t support it.
The EU has asked to hear what alternatives the UK would accept. So this is a moment of truth, a test for the EU. Are they serious about a deal?
The Government must seek two essential changes. First, a mechanism so we can exit from the backstop — an interim regime of rules.
Otherwise we risk being stuck in an indefinite limbo of laws, with no UK say over them.
Second, we want a future relationship based on a free trade agreement so we are free to strike deals with other countries, from Latin America to Asia, to create jobs and cut prices in UK shops.
If the EU won’t budge, we should keep our pledge to leave on WTO terms. That way, we can mitigate the risks of some short-term disruption.
Dissident MPs are firing blanks. The Norway option means more concessions, including giving up UK control over immigration.
A second referendum would create more uncertainty, the last thing business wants, and trigger a backlash from the majority who would feel cheated by the rejection of the 2016 result. Pushing back the exit date would just prolong the anguish of this tortuous haggle with Brussels.
None look capable of ­mustering support from a majority of MPs. I am struck by how many Remain voters — let alone Leavers — now just want to see Brexit done.
It’s time for politicians to re-focus on boosting jobs, easing the cost of living and ensuring high-quality schools and NHS services. But the British people won’t move on from Brexit until their ­politicians keep their promises on Brexit.
We’ve argued long enough. It’s time for some national self-belief.  People heard the risks and, yes, we need to manage them. But voters also expect their politicians to offer a more optimistic vision of post-Brexit Britain and grasp the opportunities.
We will control our laws and our immigration policy. We will continue to trade in Europe, but broaden our global horizons — which is good for creating jobs, boosting wages, and offering UK consumers cheaper goods and wider choice.
We should put rocket boosters up the economy by cutting business taxes and raise the threshold of National Insurance employee contributions to save workers more than £400 each year.
While we’re at it, a more robust pro-competition policy at home would give small businesses the opportunity to break into markets, end consumer rip-offs and offer customers better deals.
Enough wrangling. It’s time to leave the EU and deliver a better post-Brexit UK economy for workers, small businesses and consumers.

I am struck by how many Remain voters — let alone Leavers — now just want to see Brexit done
THIS week, MPs voted down the Government’s proposed Brexit deal with the EU.
There’s still time to secure the reasonable changes in Brussels to pass a deal in Parliament — but we Conservatives must keep our promise to leave the EU on March 29.
Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn tabled and lost a vote of no confidence in the Government. The margin was higher than expected because some Labour MPs abstained, highlighting deep unease in the party about its leader’s fitness for high office.
In contrast, even after a sobering setback, Theresa May signalled her determination to seek further concessions from Brussels.
Mr Corbyn rebuffed the Prime Minister’s offer of talks unless she ruled out leaving with No Deal. If only he took such an uncompromising stance towards terrorists and despots. In reality, Jeremy Corbyn has no idea what Labour’s policy on Brexit would be.
The path ahead is set in law. The UK will leave the EU in 68 days’ time — preferably with a deal, if not on World Trade Organisation terms.  If Labour wants to reverse that legislation, it will require government backing — and the PM has made clear she won’t support it.
The EU has asked to hear what alternatives the UK would accept. So this is a moment of truth, a test for the EU. Are they serious about a deal?
The Government must seek two essential changes. First, a mechanism so we can exit from the backstop — an interim regime of rules.
Otherwise we risk being stuck in an indefinite limbo of laws, with no UK say over them.
Second, we want a future relationship based on a free trade agreement so we are free to strike deals with other countries, from Latin America to Asia, to create jobs and cut prices in UK shops.
If the EU won’t budge, we should keep our pledge to leave on WTO terms. That way, we can mitigate the risks of some short-term disruption.
Dissident MPs are firing blanks. The Norway option means more concessions, including giving up UK control over immigration.
A second referendum would create more uncertainty, the last thing business wants, and trigger a backlash from the majority who would feel cheated by the rejection of the 2016 result. Pushing back the exit date would just prolong the anguish of this tortuous haggle with Brussels.
None look capable of ­mustering support from a majority of MPs. I am struck by how many Remain voters — let alone Leavers — now just want to see Brexit done.
It’s time for politicians to re-focus on boosting jobs, easing the cost of living and ensuring high-quality schools and NHS services. But the British people won’t move on from Brexit until their ­politicians keep their promises on Brexit.
We’ve argued long enough. It’s time for some national self-belief.  People heard the risks and, yes, we need to manage them. But voters also expect their politicians to offer a more optimistic vision of post-Brexit Britain and grasp the opportunities.
We will control our laws and our immigration policy. We will continue to trade in Europe, but broaden our global horizons — which is good for creating jobs, boosting wages, and offering UK consumers cheaper goods and wider choice.
We should put rocket boosters up the economy by cutting business taxes and raise the threshold of National Insurance employee contributions to save workers more than £400 each year.
While we’re at it, a more robust pro-competition policy at home would give small businesses the opportunity to break into markets, end consumer rip-offs and offer customers better deals.
Enough wrangling. It’s time to leave the EU and deliver a better post-Brexit UK economy for workers, small businesses and consumers.

An exclusive Sun on Sunday poll has revealed two in five voters would find any postponement unacceptable while 26 per cent say the PM should deliver Brexit on time as promised
BREXIT broker Geoffrey Cox has cranked up the pressure on EU chiefs by warning them: “The future of Europe is in both our hands.”
The dogged law chief has held nothing back in his bid to clinch a last-gasp deal that will win the backing of MPs.
He bluntly told chief Brussels negotiator Michel Barnier failure to deliver a clean departure would have devastating consequences for the whole continent.
His straight-talking seemed to be paying off as Brussels gave the clearest sign yet of a willingness to break the deadlock.
He signalled Brussels is ready to give Britain further “guarantees, assurances and clarifications” the hated Irish backstop will only be temporary.
With 26 days to go to Brexit, it raised a glimmer of hope Mr Cox could return with a deal in time to avoid a damaging delay to our departure date.
The revelation came as an exclusive Sun on Sunday poll revealed two in five voters would find any postponement unacceptable. Three in four blame bickering MPs for the Brexit chaos and many say MPs trying to thwart the process are a “complete and utter disgrace”.
Brexiteer Mr Cox, dubbed Mufasa after the Lion King character by fellow ministers because of his booming voice, spent most of last week locked in talks with Mr Barnier.
During a brief return to London, the Attorney General told pals both sides were fully aware of the consequences of failure.
A Tory source said: “Geoffrey said he keeps hammering home the message that intransigence will be the road to disaster for both Britain and the EU.
“He said he had told Michel Barnier the future not only of the UK but the whole of Europe was in their hands and they had to find a way to end the stalemate for the sake of many millions of people.”
In a sign that talks were going amicably, Mr Cox also revealed: “It’s all done in a friendly but business-like manner. They are not monsters.”
Mr Cox is trying to find a legally-binding solution to ease Brexiteer fears that the backstop is a trap to keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
In an interview with German newspaper Die Welt yesterday, Mr Barnier said: “We know there are misgivings in Britain that the backstop could keep Britain forever connected to the EU.
“This is not the case. And we are ready to give further guarantees, assurances and clarifications that the backstop should only be temporary.”
If the pair break the deadlock, Theresa May could bring her deal back to the Commons before the scheduled date on March 12.
Allies of the PM say there are signs that hardline Eurosceptics may now be willing to rally behind it to avoid the threat of Brexit-wrecking MPs voting down a No Deal Brexit and opting for a delay which could pave the way for a second referendum.
5 5
But even if the deal goes through, a “technical extension” of up to two months may be needed to pass all the legislation required for withdrawal.
Mrs May has said that if her deal is rejected by Parliament, MPs will be able to vote on whether the UK can leave in a No Deal scenario, and if that is rejected, the Commons can decide on whether to extend Article 50 and delay Brexit for a limited period.
Most people believe Mrs May’s decision to give Brexit-wrecking MPs the chance to vote for a delay is a “complete and utter betrayal”, according to a OnePoll survey for The Sun on Sunday.
Some 26 per cent say the PM should deliver Brexit on time as promised, even if it means leaving without a deal.
Only 17 per cent believe a short delay of two or three months is acceptable — but only if she is able to improve her deal. And 13 per cent think a delay is a ploy to prolong the process for a second referendum or another way of keeping Britain in the EU.
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, a supporter of Brexit-backing group Change Britain, said: “These MPs are not only frustrating the votes of 17.4million people, they’re also betraying the wishes of their own constituents.
"A politician’s job is to represent the views of voters, not to ignore them because they think the public got it wrong.”
MPs’ handling of the process is described as a “complete and utter disgrace” by 46 per cent of voters and a further 29 per cent say most of them don’t believe in Brexit and are trying to frustrate the referendum result.
Only 11 per cent believe MPs are doing their best in difficult circumstances.
OK, I hold my hands up. I voted Remain in 2016.
But once the votes were cast and the clear result was Leave, I knew it was my duty as an MP to follow the people’s instruction. It was Parliament’s duty to do that.
The Conservative manifesto on which we were elected in 2017 contained a commitment to leave the EU and I have followed that commitment, voting for Article 50 and opposing a second referendum.
Remaining true to that democratic commitment is also the reason I voted against Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement in January. That deal seemed designed to keep Britain in a dark treacle of EU bureaucracy.
It established a separation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. And it presented hard-pressed taxpayers with a £39billion bill — for the privilege of this divisive and never-ending backstop.
Now, with the Brexit clock ticking perilously close to midnight, I have decided to vote FOR the deal Theresa May will soon bring back to Parliament.
I do not believe there is any betrayal in my decision. It is one, I believe, that will be shared by many of the MPs who also voted down the deal just weeks ago.
No Deal would be disastrous for the UK and Europe. Big businesses would survive but many of the UK’s hundreds of thousands of small businesses would not.
They are the backbone of our successful economy. We have an overriding duty as Conservatives to protect them and the jobs they provide from No Deal.
I am in no doubt that the public are increasingly anxious about the catastrophic consequences of No Deal. This week, a waitress in my constituency asked me whether, post-Brexit, her family would be able to pay their household bills.
It was one of countless similar conversations among individuals, families and their communities.
Many are terrified about their futures and their country’s. It is our duty as politicians to act and speak responsibly to calm such fears.
None of this means those who voted to leave Brussels have changed their minds. They want a Brexit which works for everyone and which does not needlessly risk jobs and living standards.
Should Brexit not happen, voters will feel cheated and disenfran- chised by Parliamentary manoeuvres which frustrate the Referendum and keep the UK in the EU.
Such an outcome would spark a political crisis, potential civil unrest and political extremism, which has no place in British politics.
MPs know that if they again vote down the PM’s deal, with any positive changes it may contain, they will hugely increase the likelihood of Britain remaining in the EU.
Of course, most reasonable people will accept a postponement of a few weeks to the March 29 Brexit date.
But it seems far more likely that any delay to Article 50 would be much longer.
This would give time for the Remainers to force through a Second Referendum — based on a fudged question denying voters the clear-cut choice on which they voted in 2016.
So I believe a vote for the Prime Minister’s deal is now the only responsible option.
The alternatives are horrendous.
No deal risks economic chaos and plummeting living standards. Opening the door to remaining in the EU, or having another vote, will cause an unprecedented political crisis.
I believe our future relationship with Europe should involve Britain becoming part of Common Market 2.0.
This would mean our joining the European Free Trade Association alongside successful countries such as Norway and Switzer- land.
The UK would be out of the EU, out of the political union, the ECJ, the Common Fisheries and Farming Policies. We would have brakes on freedom of movement and much more.
But as EFTA members we would be part of the European Economic Area, safeguarding our businesses and jobs.
That though is for the next round of negotiations during the necessary transition period which will follow Brexit Day.
In the meantime, it is our responsibility as MPs and democrats to make sure we exit the EU on the terms of the deal which the PM brings back to Parliament.
Voting it down a second time will leave us all facing the stark choice of either the economic disaster of a no deal, or the political disaster of a Second Referendum.
Either option would be a betrayal of democracy for which the political classes would be damned by voters with devastating consequences.
An exclusive Sun on Sunday poll has revealed two in five voters would find any postponement unacceptable while 26 per cent say the PM should deliver Brexit on time as promised
BREXIT broker Geoffrey Cox has cranked up the pressure on EU chiefs by warning them: “The future of Europe is in both our hands.”
The dogged law chief has held nothing back in his bid to clinch a last-gasp deal that will win the backing of MPs.
He bluntly told chief Brussels negotiator Michel Barnier failure to deliver a clean departure would have devastating consequences for the whole continent.
His straight-talking seemed to be paying off as Brussels gave the clearest sign yet of a willingness to break the deadlock.
He signalled Brussels is ready to give Britain further “guarantees, assurances and clarifications” the hated Irish backstop will only be temporary.
With 26 days to go to Brexit, it raised a glimmer of hope Mr Cox could return with a deal in time to avoid a damaging delay to our departure date.
The revelation came as an exclusive Sun on Sunday poll revealed two in five voters would find any postponement unacceptable. Three in four blame bickering MPs for the Brexit chaos and many say MPs trying to thwart the process are a “complete and utter disgrace”.
Brexiteer Mr Cox, dubbed Mufasa after the Lion King character by fellow ministers because of his booming voice, spent most of last week locked in talks with Mr Barnier.
During a brief return to London, the Attorney General told pals both sides were fully aware of the consequences of failure.
A Tory source said: “Geoffrey said he keeps hammering home the message that intransigence will be the road to disaster for both Britain and the EU.
“He said he had told Michel Barnier the future not only of the UK but the whole of Europe was in their hands and they had to find a way to end the stalemate for the sake of many millions of people.”
In a sign that talks were going amicably, Mr Cox also revealed: “It’s all done in a friendly but business-like manner. They are not monsters.”
Mr Cox is trying to find a legally-binding solution to ease Brexiteer fears that the backstop is a trap to keep the UK tied to the EU indefinitely.
In an interview with German newspaper Die Welt yesterday, Mr Barnier said: “We know there are misgivings in Britain that the backstop could keep Britain forever connected to the EU.
“This is not the case. And we are ready to give further guarantees, assurances and clarifications that the backstop should only be temporary.”
If the pair break the deadlock, Theresa May could bring her deal back to the Commons before the scheduled date on March 12.
Allies of the PM say there are signs that hardline Eurosceptics may now be willing to rally behind it to avoid the threat of Brexit-wrecking MPs voting down a No Deal Brexit and opting for a delay which could pave the way for a second referendum.
5 5
But even if the deal goes through, a “technical extension” of up to two months may be needed to pass all the legislation required for withdrawal.
Mrs May has said that if her deal is rejected by Parliament, MPs will be able to vote on whether the UK can leave in a No Deal scenario, and if that is rejected, the Commons can decide on whether to extend Article 50 and delay Brexit for a limited period.
Most people believe Mrs May’s decision to give Brexit-wrecking MPs the chance to vote for a delay is a “complete and utter betrayal”, according to a OnePoll survey for The Sun on Sunday.
Some 26 per cent say the PM should deliver Brexit on time as promised, even if it means leaving without a deal.
Only 17 per cent believe a short delay of two or three months is acceptable — but only if she is able to improve her deal. And 13 per cent think a delay is a ploy to prolong the process for a second referendum or another way of keeping Britain in the EU.
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, a supporter of Brexit-backing group Change Britain, said: “These MPs are not only frustrating the votes of 17.4million people, they’re also betraying the wishes of their own constituents.
"A politician’s job is to represent the views of voters, not to ignore them because they think the public got it wrong.”
MPs’ handling of the process is described as a “complete and utter disgrace” by 46 per cent of voters and a further 29 per cent say most of them don’t believe in Brexit and are trying to frustrate the referendum result.
Only 11 per cent believe MPs are doing their best in difficult circumstances.
OK, I hold my hands up. I voted Remain in 2016.
But once the votes were cast and the clear result was Leave, I knew it was my duty as an MP to follow the people’s instruction. It was Parliament’s duty to do that.
The Conservative manifesto on which we were elected in 2017 contained a commitment to leave the EU and I have followed that commitment, voting for Article 50 and opposing a second referendum.
Remaining true to that democratic commitment is also the reason I voted against Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement in January. That deal seemed designed to keep Britain in a dark treacle of EU bureaucracy.
It established a separation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. And it presented hard-pressed taxpayers with a £39billion bill — for the privilege of this divisive and never-ending backstop.
Now, with the Brexit clock ticking perilously close to midnight, I have decided to vote FOR the deal Theresa May will soon bring back to Parliament.
I do not believe there is any betrayal in my decision. It is one, I believe, that will be shared by many of the MPs who also voted down the deal just weeks ago.
No Deal would be disastrous for the UK and Europe. Big businesses would survive but many of the UK’s hundreds of thousands of small businesses would not.
They are the backbone of our successful economy. We have an overriding duty as Conservatives to protect them and the jobs they provide from No Deal.
I am in no doubt that the public are increasingly anxious about the catastrophic consequences of No Deal. This week, a waitress in my constituency asked me whether, post-Brexit, her family would be able to pay their household bills.
It was one of countless similar conversations among individuals, families and their communities.
Many are terrified about their futures and their country’s. It is our duty as politicians to act and speak responsibly to calm such fears.
None of this means those who voted to leave Brussels have changed their minds. They want a Brexit which works for everyone and which does not needlessly risk jobs and living standards.
Should Brexit not happen, voters will feel cheated and disenfran- chised by Parliamentary manoeuvres which frustrate the Referendum and keep the UK in the EU.
Such an outcome would spark a political crisis, potential civil unrest and political extremism, which has no place in British politics.
MPs know that if they again vote down the PM’s deal, with any positive changes it may contain, they will hugely increase the likelihood of Britain remaining in the EU.
Of course, most reasonable people will accept a postponement of a few weeks to the March 29 Brexit date.
But it seems far more likely that any delay to Article 50 would be much longer.
This would give time for the Remainers to force through a Second Referendum — based on a fudged question denying voters the clear-cut choice on which they voted in 2016.
So I believe a vote for the Prime Minister’s deal is now the only responsible option.
The alternatives are horrendous.
No deal risks economic chaos and plummeting living standards. Opening the door to remaining in the EU, or having another vote, will cause an unprecedented political crisis.
I believe our future relationship with Europe should involve Britain becoming part of Common Market 2.0.
This would mean our joining the European Free Trade Association alongside successful countries such as Norway and Switzer- land.
The UK would be out of the EU, out of the political union, the ECJ, the Common Fisheries and Farming Policies. We would have brakes on freedom of movement and much more.
But as EFTA members we would be part of the European Economic Area, safeguarding our businesses and jobs.
That though is for the next round of negotiations during the necessary transition period which will follow Brexit Day.
In the meantime, it is our responsibility as MPs and democrats to make sure we exit the EU on the terms of the deal which the PM brings back to Parliament.
Voting it down a second time will leave us all facing the stark choice of either the economic disaster of a no deal, or the political disaster of a Second Referendum.
Either option would be a betrayal of democracy for which the political classes would be damned by voters with devastating consequences.
Sabine Weyand condemned MPs for lack of knowledge on what is in the Withdrawal Agreement and confessed technological solutions to the Irish backstop do not exist
A TOP Brussels negotiator accused Britain of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” and insisted the EU won’t be budging on the backstop.
Michel Barnier’s deputy, Sabine Weyand, accused MPs of ignorance about what is in the Brexit deal and said tech solutions to the border don’t exist.
In a series of outspoken remarks that will cause consternation in No 10 she also blamed Theresa May’s secrecy for the unpopularity of the agreement.
Speaking at an event in Brussels, the German eurocrat raised the possibility the EU will still insist on the backstop even if Britain opts for no deal.
And she warned there is now a “very high risk of a crash out not by design but by accident” given the paralysis gripping Parliament.
She said: “It’s quite a challenge to see how you can construct, out of the diversity of opposition, a positive majority for a deal.
“The result of the negotiation has been very much shaped by the UK negotiators, much more than they actually get credit for.
“This is a bit like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
In a swipe at MPs she said much of the debate in the UK “is uninhibited by any knowledge of what is actually in the Withdrawal Agreement”.
And she added that amendments to be voted on about time-limiting or giving Britain a unilateral exit from the backstop were “like Groundhog Day”.
Ms Weyand said: “This has been extensively discussed at the negotiating table amongst the EU27.
“The EU27 were unanimous a time limit to the backstop defeats the purpose of the backstop. We’re not going to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement.”
She also revealed the EU had been “reassured” a UK-wide backstop, seen as a major concession by Brussels, would be enough to get the deal over the line.
And she said British negotiators had been unable to explain how technological solutions could replace the EU’s border solution “because they don’t exist”.
She said: “We looked at every border on this earth, every border the EU has with a third country. There’s simply no way you can do away with checks and controls.”
But she added: “We’re not wedded to our backstop. We’re open to any alternative suggestions from the UK. The problem is there weren’t any.
“It’s difficult to see how the future relationship can take care of the Irish border issue given the UK has decided not only to leave the EU but also the Single Market and the Customs Union.”
Ms Weyand added the EU’s current plan is the only workable fix to the border and “you could imagine a no deal scenario with the backstop being discussed”.
She also contrasted the Commission’s decision to regularly debrief national capitals and MEPs on the talks with Mrs May’s less open approach.
In a pointed barb at the PM and her close team, she said: “You can’t lead a negotiation like that in secrecy.
“We’ve seen that on the UK side the fact that this was handled in a very small circle is now a big handicap.”
Asked about an Article 50 extension, the German eurocrat said EU leaders would require proof there’s a majority in parliament for a way forward.
And she also said she was confident the bloc “can handle” the fallout from no deal but she was “less sure” the UK would be able to.
 
Sabine Weyand condemned MPs for lack of knowledge on what is in the Withdrawal Agreement and confessed technological solutions to the Irish backstop do not exist
A TOP Brussels negotiator accused Britain of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” and insisted the EU won’t be budging on the backstop.
Michel Barnier’s deputy, Sabine Weyand, accused MPs of ignorance about what is in the Brexit deal and said tech solutions to the border don’t exist.
In a series of outspoken remarks that will cause consternation in No 10 she also blamed Theresa May’s secrecy for the unpopularity of the agreement.
Speaking at an event in Brussels, the German eurocrat raised the possibility the EU will still insist on the backstop even if Britain opts for no deal.
And she warned there is now a “very high risk of a crash out not by design but by accident” given the paralysis gripping Parliament.
She said: “It’s quite a challenge to see how you can construct, out of the diversity of opposition, a positive majority for a deal.
“The result of the negotiation has been very much shaped by the UK negotiators, much more than they actually get credit for.
“This is a bit like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
In a swipe at MPs she said much of the debate in the UK “is uninhibited by any knowledge of what is actually in the Withdrawal Agreement”.
And she added that amendments to be voted on about time-limiting or giving Britain a unilateral exit from the backstop were “like Groundhog Day”.
Ms Weyand said: “This has been extensively discussed at the negotiating table amongst the EU27.
“The EU27 were unanimous a time limit to the backstop defeats the purpose of the backstop. We’re not going to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement.”
She also revealed the EU had been “reassured” a UK-wide backstop, seen as a major concession by Brussels, would be enough to get the deal over the line.
And she said British negotiators had been unable to explain how technological solutions could replace the EU’s border solution “because they don’t exist”.
She said: “We looked at every border on this earth, every border the EU has with a third country. There’s simply no way you can do away with checks and controls.”
But she added: “We’re not wedded to our backstop. We’re open to any alternative suggestions from the UK. The problem is there weren’t any.
“It’s difficult to see how the future relationship can take care of the Irish border issue given the UK has decided not only to leave the EU but also the Single Market and the Customs Union.”
Ms Weyand added the EU’s current plan is the only workable fix to the border and “you could imagine a no deal scenario with the backstop being discussed”.
She also contrasted the Commission’s decision to regularly debrief national capitals and MEPs on the talks with Mrs May’s less open approach.
In a pointed barb at the PM and her close team, she said: “You can’t lead a negotiation like that in secrecy.
“We’ve seen that on the UK side the fact that this was handled in a very small circle is now a big handicap.”
Asked about an Article 50 extension, the German eurocrat said EU leaders would require proof there’s a majority in parliament for a way forward.
And she also said she was confident the bloc “can handle” the fallout from no deal but she was “less sure” the UK would be able to.
 
EU negotiator Michel Barnier performed the screeching U-turn after Tory Eurosceptics argued for months that tech could rule out the need for other measures
BRUSSELS yesterday backtracked on threats of a Hard Border in Ireland – saying “new ways” could be found to carry out customs checks.
The EU’s Brexit chief negotiator Michel Barnier performed a screeching U-turn and vowed the EU would look at ways to check goods away from the frontier.
The comments were seized upon by Tory Eurosceptics who have argued for months that technology could be used to avoid a Hard Border.
Mr Barnier said: “If we’re facing a no deal...we’ll have to find an operational way of carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border.”
His remarks came just 24 hours after the Commission’s chief spokesman had said it was “obvious” no deal could lead to a hard border.
Mr Barnier also said Parliament had to prove there was a “stable majority” for a closer future relationship before Brussels would agree to extend the Article 50 negotiating deadline beyond March 29.
It was separately claimed Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned aides that the Republic may have to accept its border checks being carried out in Calais or Holland.
He has told opposition leaders Ireland would have to be treated “as one bloc” with the UK by the EU to avoid a Hard Border.
Speaking in Brussels yesterday, Mr Barnier revealed he now expects MPs to take control of Brexit and keep Britain in the Single Market and Customs Union.
The EU’s chief negotiator said there was a “readiness in London” to soften the UK’s red lines in a dig at Theresa May’s waning authority.
The Frenchman made the remarks after MEPs’ Brexit chief, Guy Verhofstadt, said he was now paying as much attention to MPs’ views on Brexit as the PM’s.
EU diplomats have said it will make their life “much easier” if the Commons backs an amendment formally ruling out no deal.
And speaking to European newspapers Mr Barnier said the best way to overcome the backstop deadlock was for the UK to stay close to the EU.
He said: “We’re ready to be more ambitious if the British decide to shift their red lines, for example by remaining in a customs union, or participating in the single market.
“I believe there is a readiness in London for that. That would make the question of the backstop less prominent.”
But Mr Barnier later warned MPs that they can only stop no deal if they can decide what kind of future relationship with the EU they want.
Speaking in Brussels, he said: “Leaving the EU without a deal is a default scenario.
“There appears to be a majority in the Commons to oppose no deal, but opposing no deal will not stop no deal from happening at the end of March.
“To stop no deal a positive majority for another solution will need to emerge.”
His intervention came as fellow Eurocrats predicted Britain’s exit from the bloc will now be delayed.
French commissioner Pierre Moscovici said prolonging Article 50 was a “possible scenario” but “we need to know why, what for, what is the plan”.
Pascal Cagni, France’s ambassador for international investment, added: “I think it will be postponed.”
Meanwhile, Angela Merkel said the UK had never really fit in with the rest of the EU.  She said: “The relationship of Great Britain with Europe was always very patchy.
“They have always said ‘we are an island, we want more independence’. For them Europe was always about, or mainly about, the free trade of goods.
“I care now that we and Britain divorce in a good process so that afterwards we can still work closely together in the areas where we must cooperate.
“On defence, domestic security, policing, combating terrorism and on trade too, and so Britain can take part in our research projects if they want.”
EU negotiator Michel Barnier performed the screeching U-turn after Tory Eurosceptics argued for months that tech could rule out the need for other measures
BRUSSELS yesterday backtracked on threats of a Hard Border in Ireland – saying “new ways” could be found to carry out customs checks.
The EU’s Brexit chief negotiator Michel Barnier performed a screeching U-turn and vowed the EU would look at ways to check goods away from the frontier.
The comments were seized upon by Tory Eurosceptics who have argued for months that technology could be used to avoid a Hard Border.
Mr Barnier said: “If we’re facing a no deal...we’ll have to find an operational way of carrying out checks and controls without putting back in place a border.”
His remarks came just 24 hours after the Commission’s chief spokesman had said it was “obvious” no deal could lead to a hard border.
Mr Barnier also said Parliament had to prove there was a “stable majority” for a closer future relationship before Brussels would agree to extend the Article 50 negotiating deadline beyond March 29.
It was separately claimed Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has warned aides that the Republic may have to accept its border checks being carried out in Calais or Holland.
He has told opposition leaders Ireland would have to be treated “as one bloc” with the UK by the EU to avoid a Hard Border.
Speaking in Brussels yesterday, Mr Barnier revealed he now expects MPs to take control of Brexit and keep Britain in the Single Market and Customs Union.
The EU’s chief negotiator said there was a “readiness in London” to soften the UK’s red lines in a dig at Theresa May’s waning authority.
The Frenchman made the remarks after MEPs’ Brexit chief, Guy Verhofstadt, said he was now paying as much attention to MPs’ views on Brexit as the PM’s.
EU diplomats have said it will make their life “much easier” if the Commons backs an amendment formally ruling out no deal.
And speaking to European newspapers Mr Barnier said the best way to overcome the backstop deadlock was for the UK to stay close to the EU.
He said: “We’re ready to be more ambitious if the British decide to shift their red lines, for example by remaining in a customs union, or participating in the single market.
“I believe there is a readiness in London for that. That would make the question of the backstop less prominent.”
But Mr Barnier later warned MPs that they can only stop no deal if they can decide what kind of future relationship with the EU they want.
Speaking in Brussels, he said: “Leaving the EU without a deal is a default scenario.
“There appears to be a majority in the Commons to oppose no deal, but opposing no deal will not stop no deal from happening at the end of March.
“To stop no deal a positive majority for another solution will need to emerge.”
His intervention came as fellow Eurocrats predicted Britain’s exit from the bloc will now be delayed.
French commissioner Pierre Moscovici said prolonging Article 50 was a “possible scenario” but “we need to know why, what for, what is the plan”.
Pascal Cagni, France’s ambassador for international investment, added: “I think it will be postponed.”
Meanwhile, Angela Merkel said the UK had never really fit in with the rest of the EU.  She said: “The relationship of Great Britain with Europe was always very patchy.
“They have always said ‘we are an island, we want more independence’. For them Europe was always about, or mainly about, the free trade of goods.
“I care now that we and Britain divorce in a good process so that afterwards we can still work closely together in the areas where we must cooperate.
“On defence, domestic security, policing, combating terrorism and on trade too, and so Britain can take part in our research projects if they want.”
BORIS Johnson has vowed to take Britain out of the EU by Halloween if he becomes Prime Minister - while Jeremy Hunt promised to deliver Brexit before an election.
The Tory heavyweights were grilled onstage in Birmingham as they at the first Conservative Party leadership hustings.
Boris doubled down on his claim that he would be able to waive tariffs on EU goods after a No Deal Brexit - even though the idea has been repeatedly dismissed by officials on both sides of the Channel.
And Jeremy Hunt promised to "deliver Brexit and send Corbyn packing" - before vowing to make the Tories attractive to young people again.
He said: "I promise you two things - when we go back to the British people, we will get more young people.
"We cant be the party of aspiration if the most aspirational people aren't supporting us and we're gonna get them back.
I will never provoke a general election before we've left EU
"And the second thing I will never provoke a general election before we've left EU. I am champing at the bit."
Boris spoke publicly for the first time this afternoon after concerned neighbours called 999 over raised voices at his South London home - but brushed it off by saying: "I don't think they want to hear that kind of thing".
The spat between Johnson, 55, and girlfriend Carrie Symonds, 31, led to senior Tories voicing concerns Johnson had ruined his chances to get into No10 over the row.
While visibly squirming, Johnson protested: "I think what people have come here for today - the seductive interviewer though you are - I don't think they want to hear about that kind of thing, unless I'm wrong.
Jeremy Corbyn is a Hamas supporting anti-Semitic condoning apologist
"I think what they want to hear is my plans for this party and this country."
Instead, he spoke of his intention to get Britain out of the EU by October 31, bring in more police, and tackle county lines drugs gangs.
The PM hopeful, and Sky - broadcasting the event - faced an awkward moment when an audience member uttered the word "f***" in a question about a remark he made in the past.
But he bounced back to nail his colours to the mast by declaring the "awesome foursome" of education, investment, infrastructure and the use of technology would "take Britain forward" and bring the country back together.
Love rat Boris Johnson has been married twice - and  had a string of  infamous affairs.
He wed first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 after meeting her at Oxford University.
But they were divorced six years later after he had  an affair with lawyer Marina Wheeler.
He married Marina but was caught out over his affair with society writer Petronella Wyatt.
She was one of Mr Johnson’s columnists when he was editor of the Spectator.
He denied reports of the affair as nothing more than an “inverted pyramid of piffle”.
However, Petronella later revealed she had an abortion and suffered a miscarriage.
Pals claimed their romance overlapped with an affair with Times Educational Supplement journalist Anna Fazackerley.
Then, a year after he became Mayor of London in 2008, his love life blew up again when he fathered a child with arts consultant Helen Macintyre.
Rumours about  his latest love Carrie Symonds first circulated when his  separation with Marina was announced last year.
Johnson, who was pictured apparently wearing inside out socks, also dubbed Jeremy Corbyn a "Hamas supporting anti-Semitic condoning apologist" as he issued a final rallying cry of "let's keep Corbyn out".
Earlier today Hunt called Johnson a "bottler" in an attitude-filled letter posted on Twitter - saying he's timed his live debate appearances for after party members have cast their crucial votes.
This afternoon the pair made their case at the first of 16 hustings, as they tried to convince Tory members they are the right man to fill Theresa May's shoes.
Carrie today appeared to make light of the row by liking a tweet made late last night that urged her to "please just carry on" due to a need for more entertainment in No10.
After news of the row broke, odds on Hunt becoming the next PM were slashed by half - coming in to 4-1 from 8-1.
Johnson has spoken this afternoon in the first of 16 hustings
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BORIS Johnson has vowed to take Britain out of the EU by Halloween if he becomes Prime Minister - while Jeremy Hunt promised to deliver Brexit before an election.
The Tory heavyweights were grilled onstage in Birmingham as they at the first Conservative Party leadership hustings.
Boris doubled down on his claim that he would be able to waive tariffs on EU goods after a No Deal Brexit - even though the idea has been repeatedly dismissed by officials on both sides of the Channel.
And Jeremy Hunt promised to "deliver Brexit and send Corbyn packing" - before vowing to make the Tories attractive to young people again.
He said: "I promise you two things - when we go back to the British people, we will get more young people.
"We cant be the party of aspiration if the most aspirational people aren't supporting us and we're gonna get them back.
I will never provoke a general election before we've left EU
"And the second thing I will never provoke a general election before we've left EU. I am champing at the bit."
Boris spoke publicly for the first time this afternoon after concerned neighbours called 999 over raised voices at his South London home - but brushed it off by saying: "I don't think they want to hear that kind of thing".
The spat between Johnson, 55, and girlfriend Carrie Symonds, 31, led to senior Tories voicing concerns Johnson had ruined his chances to get into No10 over the row.
While visibly squirming, Johnson protested: "I think what people have come here for today - the seductive interviewer though you are - I don't think they want to hear about that kind of thing, unless I'm wrong.
Jeremy Corbyn is a Hamas supporting anti-Semitic condoning apologist
"I think what they want to hear is my plans for this party and this country."
Instead, he spoke of his intention to get Britain out of the EU by October 31, bring in more police, and tackle county lines drugs gangs.
The PM hopeful, and Sky - broadcasting the event - faced an awkward moment when an audience member uttered the word "f***" in a question about a remark he made in the past.
But he bounced back to nail his colours to the mast by declaring the "awesome foursome" of education, investment, infrastructure and the use of technology would "take Britain forward" and bring the country back together.
Love rat Boris Johnson has been married twice - and  had a string of  infamous affairs.
He wed first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 after meeting her at Oxford University.
But they were divorced six years later after he had  an affair with lawyer Marina Wheeler.
He married Marina but was caught out over his affair with society writer Petronella Wyatt.
She was one of Mr Johnson’s columnists when he was editor of the Spectator.
He denied reports of the affair as nothing more than an “inverted pyramid of piffle”.
However, Petronella later revealed she had an abortion and suffered a miscarriage.
Pals claimed their romance overlapped with an affair with Times Educational Supplement journalist Anna Fazackerley.
Then, a year after he became Mayor of London in 2008, his love life blew up again when he fathered a child with arts consultant Helen Macintyre.
Rumours about  his latest love Carrie Symonds first circulated when his  separation with Marina was announced last year.
Johnson, who was pictured apparently wearing inside out socks, also dubbed Jeremy Corbyn a "Hamas supporting anti-Semitic condoning apologist" as he issued a final rallying cry of "let's keep Corbyn out".
Earlier today Hunt called Johnson a "bottler" in an attitude-filled letter posted on Twitter - saying he's timed his live debate appearances for after party members have cast their crucial votes.
This afternoon the pair made their case at the first of 16 hustings, as they tried to convince Tory members they are the right man to fill Theresa May's shoes.
Carrie today appeared to make light of the row by liking a tweet made late last night that urged her to "please just carry on" due to a need for more entertainment in No10.
After news of the row broke, odds on Hunt becoming the next PM were slashed by half - coming in to 4-1 from 8-1.
Johnson has spoken this afternoon in the first of 16 hustings
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REMAINER Speaker John Bercow held a secret meeting with an EU chief who said Brussels will back a Brexit extension if voters get another referendum.
David Sassoli said the pair “fully agreed” when they held their chummy talks in London – enraging Brexiteers who called the meeting “disgraceful”.
Mr Bercow – who once had a B******s sticker on his car – is an ardent Remainer and has repeatedly vowed to help anti-Brexit MPs stop No Deal.
Mr Sassoli, whose job is the equivalent of the Speaker, said he "set out my view that any request for an extension should allow the British people to give its views in a referendum or an election.
"Speaker Bercow and I were very much on the same wavelength on the importance of the respective roles of our parliaments in managing Brexit.”
The European Parliament President added: “ There is also a common awareness that a disorderly exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union would be against the interests of British and European citizens.”
Brexit Party boss Nigel Farage was furious that the Speaker – who is supposed to remain impartial – held the meeting.
He fumed: “Here in Brussels, new Euro parl President David Sassoli confirms a meeting with John Bercow in which they agreed to work to prevent a clean break Brexit.
"What right does the Speaker have to do this? Disgraceful!"
While chairman Richard Tice said he was “gobsmacked”.
He tweeted: “Here in Brussels new President Sassoli admits in chamber that he has bypassed the UK PM and Govt and is now in direct discussions with Bercow about Brexit negotiations."
Let me be very clear Mr Sassoli, you have no right to go and speak with the UK Speaker having conversations that are directly interfering into our domestic politics
Brexit Party MEP Belinda de Lucy accused Mr Sassoli of “interfering” with British politics.
She said: “Let me be very clear Mr Sassoli, you have no right to go and speak with the UK Speaker having conversations that are directly interfering into our domestic politics.
“It exposes your intentions to intervene at all levels to stop Brexit, it is immoral, shame on you.”
"He refused to take my urgent question on what authority they had to have these discussions."
Mr Sassoli’s talks with the Speaker come after he met Boris Johnson yesterday.
The EU chief said it was “painful” to think that a No Deal Brexit is a possibility.
He told Sky News: “There could be problems with economy, security… there could also be a catastrophe.
”We don't know that. And that's why I invited PM Johnson to feel this responsibility."
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REMAINER Speaker John Bercow held a secret meeting with an EU chief who said Brussels will back a Brexit extension if voters get another referendum.
David Sassoli said the pair “fully agreed” when they held their chummy talks in London – enraging Brexiteers who called the meeting “disgraceful”.
Mr Bercow – who once had a B******s sticker on his car – is an ardent Remainer and has repeatedly vowed to help anti-Brexit MPs stop No Deal.
Mr Sassoli, whose job is the equivalent of the Speaker, said he "set out my view that any request for an extension should allow the British people to give its views in a referendum or an election.
"Speaker Bercow and I were very much on the same wavelength on the importance of the respective roles of our parliaments in managing Brexit.”
The European Parliament President added: “ There is also a common awareness that a disorderly exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union would be against the interests of British and European citizens.”
Brexit Party boss Nigel Farage was furious that the Speaker – who is supposed to remain impartial – held the meeting.
He fumed: “Here in Brussels, new Euro parl President David Sassoli confirms a meeting with John Bercow in which they agreed to work to prevent a clean break Brexit.
"What right does the Speaker have to do this? Disgraceful!"
While chairman Richard Tice said he was “gobsmacked”.
He tweeted: “Here in Brussels new President Sassoli admits in chamber that he has bypassed the UK PM and Govt and is now in direct discussions with Bercow about Brexit negotiations."
Let me be very clear Mr Sassoli, you have no right to go and speak with the UK Speaker having conversations that are directly interfering into our domestic politics
Brexit Party MEP Belinda de Lucy accused Mr Sassoli of “interfering” with British politics.
She said: “Let me be very clear Mr Sassoli, you have no right to go and speak with the UK Speaker having conversations that are directly interfering into our domestic politics.
“It exposes your intentions to intervene at all levels to stop Brexit, it is immoral, shame on you.”
"He refused to take my urgent question on what authority they had to have these discussions."
Mr Sassoli’s talks with the Speaker come after he met Boris Johnson yesterday.
The EU chief said it was “painful” to think that a No Deal Brexit is a possibility.
He told Sky News: “There could be problems with economy, security… there could also be a catastrophe.
”We don't know that. And that's why I invited PM Johnson to feel this responsibility."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
LABOUR has given up on plans to get a new Brexit deal and would back a version of Theresa May’s hated Withdrawal Agreement, John McDonnell has dramatically revealed.
McDonnell said Labour would hold a second referendum on one of the deals already discussed by Parliament – such as May’s or the Norway option.
The latter would see Britain out of the EU but remaining in the single market, meaning goods, services and people could continue to enjoy free movement.
Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly promised to go back to Brussels to thrash out a new “jobs first” Brexit if he seizes power - vowing to protect Britain's industry and boost the economy.

But in a sign of yet more Labour Brexit chaos, his close ally and shadow chancellor waved the white flag of defeat.
McDonnell told Andrew Marr: “We’ve got to get to a situation now where we accept what the offer is.
“I think it’s a matter of confirming what the offer would be – then it has to go back to the people again.
We’ve got to get to a situation now where we accept what the offer is. I think it’s a matter of confirming what the offer would be – then it has to go back to the people again.
“I was in negotiations for six weeks with the Conservatives and there were a whole range of issues there that were addressed - and from the indications that we were getting from the European Union - that we might be able to get some shift on.
“So you can see an offer consolidating that would then go back to the people – we believe the people should have the final decision.
“There were a range of positions that the EU was sympathetic to.
“It’s a matter of saying, ‘this is what the offer is that is the reality of the EU is willing to agree to’.
“The alternative is to Remain.”

Theresa May’s loathed soft Brexit deal – including the controversial Northern Irish backstop – was voted down by MPs three times.
Boris Johnson has repeatedly stated his desire for a new agreement with Brussels chiefs, but warned we will be leaving the EU “do or die” by October 31.
Last week a law was passed demanding the PM go begging to the bloc for a Brexit extension – but Boris said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than do so.
Bo-Jo has instead called for a snap election on October 15 and blasted Labour boss Corbyn as a “chicken” and a “big girl’s blouse” for dodging a national poll.
But McDonnell said Labour and other parties cannot trust the PM to stick to his word by holding the new vote before Britain is due to leave the EU at the end of the month.
He said: “Until we've ruled a no deal off the agenda, I can't risk, with Boris Johnson being in power, that he wouldn't somehow impose that on the country.
"So we can get no deal off the agenda, then I'd like a general election and part of that would be saying let's have a referendum."
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LABOUR has given up on plans to get a new Brexit deal and would back a version of Theresa May’s hated Withdrawal Agreement, John McDonnell has dramatically revealed.
McDonnell said Labour would hold a second referendum on one of the deals already discussed by Parliament – such as May’s or the Norway option.
The latter would see Britain out of the EU but remaining in the single market, meaning goods, services and people could continue to enjoy free movement.
Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly promised to go back to Brussels to thrash out a new “jobs first” Brexit if he seizes power - vowing to protect Britain's industry and boost the economy.

But in a sign of yet more Labour Brexit chaos, his close ally and shadow chancellor waved the white flag of defeat.
McDonnell told Andrew Marr: “We’ve got to get to a situation now where we accept what the offer is.
“I think it’s a matter of confirming what the offer would be – then it has to go back to the people again.
We’ve got to get to a situation now where we accept what the offer is. I think it’s a matter of confirming what the offer would be – then it has to go back to the people again.
“I was in negotiations for six weeks with the Conservatives and there were a whole range of issues there that were addressed - and from the indications that we were getting from the European Union - that we might be able to get some shift on.
“So you can see an offer consolidating that would then go back to the people – we believe the people should have the final decision.
“There were a range of positions that the EU was sympathetic to.
“It’s a matter of saying, ‘this is what the offer is that is the reality of the EU is willing to agree to’.
“The alternative is to Remain.”

Theresa May’s loathed soft Brexit deal – including the controversial Northern Irish backstop – was voted down by MPs three times.
Boris Johnson has repeatedly stated his desire for a new agreement with Brussels chiefs, but warned we will be leaving the EU “do or die” by October 31.
Last week a law was passed demanding the PM go begging to the bloc for a Brexit extension – but Boris said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than do so.
Bo-Jo has instead called for a snap election on October 15 and blasted Labour boss Corbyn as a “chicken” and a “big girl’s blouse” for dodging a national poll.
But McDonnell said Labour and other parties cannot trust the PM to stick to his word by holding the new vote before Britain is due to leave the EU at the end of the month.
He said: “Until we've ruled a no deal off the agenda, I can't risk, with Boris Johnson being in power, that he wouldn't somehow impose that on the country.
"So we can get no deal off the agenda, then I'd like a general election and part of that would be saying let's have a referendum."
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EU BOSS Guy Verhofstadt has insisted the next generation of Brits WILL rejoin the bloc again after Brexit.
The Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, who is in town for talks with Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, claimed there will be a group who "want to come back" into the EU after leaving.
He told Radio 4 this morning: "I think that will happen.
"There will be a generation who will say 'what have we done?' and want to come back.
"Maybe I will not see it in my life, but it will happen."
It comes as the PM and EU prepare to begin trade talks within weeks, as Britain storms towards the January 31 exit.
Mr Verhofstadt said he'd received assurances from the Brexit Secretary after meetings yesterday that EU citizens would have a "grace period" after Brexit where they would not be deported - even if they failed to register as a settled citizen in time.
All of them will be able to access paperwork proving their right to stay too, he revealed.
Maybe I will not see it in my life, but it will happen
Brits should be able to apply to keep their EU citizenship as well, even after we leave, he added.
"I [was] in favour of this from day one," he said, opening the door to people with links to Europe to keep the benefits of staying in the bloc.
"The EU citizenship has to be possible for a European living somewhere else in the world," he added.
"Citizenship is not limited to a territorial definition."
The former European Parliament boss said today that it would be "difficult" to have a huge trade deal in place by the end of 2020 - even though the PM has said he will not extend the transition period any further.
Yesterday Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel warned the bloc had to see Brexit as a "wake up call" and must change to survive.
Today Mr Verhofstadt added: "If there is one positive thing of Brexit, there's a feeling on the continent of 'oh no, we don't want to collapse the EU in a world dominated by China, and India'."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
EU BOSS Guy Verhofstadt has insisted the next generation of Brits WILL rejoin the bloc again after Brexit.
The Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, who is in town for talks with Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, claimed there will be a group who "want to come back" into the EU after leaving.
He told Radio 4 this morning: "I think that will happen.
"There will be a generation who will say 'what have we done?' and want to come back.
"Maybe I will not see it in my life, but it will happen."
It comes as the PM and EU prepare to begin trade talks within weeks, as Britain storms towards the January 31 exit.
Mr Verhofstadt said he'd received assurances from the Brexit Secretary after meetings yesterday that EU citizens would have a "grace period" after Brexit where they would not be deported - even if they failed to register as a settled citizen in time.
All of them will be able to access paperwork proving their right to stay too, he revealed.
Maybe I will not see it in my life, but it will happen
Brits should be able to apply to keep their EU citizenship as well, even after we leave, he added.
"I [was] in favour of this from day one," he said, opening the door to people with links to Europe to keep the benefits of staying in the bloc.
"The EU citizenship has to be possible for a European living somewhere else in the world," he added.
"Citizenship is not limited to a territorial definition."
The former European Parliament boss said today that it would be "difficult" to have a huge trade deal in place by the end of 2020 - even though the PM has said he will not extend the transition period any further.
Yesterday Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel warned the bloc had to see Brexit as a "wake up call" and must change to survive.
Today Mr Verhofstadt added: "If there is one positive thing of Brexit, there's a feeling on the continent of 'oh no, we don't want to collapse the EU in a world dominated by China, and India'."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
The Le Shuttle operator says his deals are also a 'unilateral breach' of Britain’s concession agreement with the firm
CHRIS Grayling faced fresh humiliation yesterday after Eurotunnel said his £103 million Brexit contracts with ferry firms broke state aid rules.
And the Le Shuttle operator said the deals were also a “unilateral breach” of Britain’s concession agreement with the firm.
In a leaked letter, Eurotunnel chief Jacques Gounon storms: “It is with serious concern that we have read details of agreements between HMG and certain ferry operators.
“I must bring to your attention the distortionary and anti-competitive effects of such an action.”
He separately revealed the Department for Transport had been in talks with the business about “running additional rail freight trains”.
The Sun revealed on Wednesday that the DfT had been in negotiations with foreign-owned freight firms DB Cargo and GB Railfreight about running extra services at night to relieve pressure on Dover.
The DfT has denied it could hit commuters who use the Southeastern high-speed line.
In a blistering letter Mr Gounon says: “Our staff are ready to operate additional missions, assuming that HMG will bear any additional costs.
“Another option we are working on - as you know - is running additional freight trains.
He adds “Eurotunnel remains prepared to deliver additional capacity” but that it must be under “equivalent contracts” to those signed with the ferry operators.
“With the shortest journey time available in the market, Le Shuttle is the most efficient way to supply vital goods into the UK.
“This will remain the case even if delays occur due to the introduction of new border procedures by (UK and France) or through a lack of sufficient public officials to operate them.”
The ferry contracts have sparked outrage in Westminster given a £14 million deal has gone to Seaborne Freight – a company which has no vessels under its control and no usable harbour at Ramsgate.
Britanny Ferries and DFDS have also bagged deals to put on extra services between the UK and smaller Dutch and German ports.
Unite today demanded Chris Grayling resign for ignoring Eurotunnel in its Brexit planning.
Harish Patel, Unite’s rail industry national officer, said: “These revelations reveal new levels of incompetency at the department and demonstrate that it is simply incapable of undertaking the most basic planning exercise.
“This latest fiasco underlines that the entire transport industry has lost all confidence in Chris Grayling and he should resign immediately.”
The Le Shuttle operator says his deals are also a 'unilateral breach' of Britain’s concession agreement with the firm
CHRIS Grayling faced fresh humiliation yesterday after Eurotunnel said his £103 million Brexit contracts with ferry firms broke state aid rules.
And the Le Shuttle operator said the deals were also a “unilateral breach” of Britain’s concession agreement with the firm.
In a leaked letter, Eurotunnel chief Jacques Gounon storms: “It is with serious concern that we have read details of agreements between HMG and certain ferry operators.
“I must bring to your attention the distortionary and anti-competitive effects of such an action.”
He separately revealed the Department for Transport had been in talks with the business about “running additional rail freight trains”.
The Sun revealed on Wednesday that the DfT had been in negotiations with foreign-owned freight firms DB Cargo and GB Railfreight about running extra services at night to relieve pressure on Dover.
The DfT has denied it could hit commuters who use the Southeastern high-speed line.
In a blistering letter Mr Gounon says: “Our staff are ready to operate additional missions, assuming that HMG will bear any additional costs.
“Another option we are working on - as you know - is running additional freight trains.
He adds “Eurotunnel remains prepared to deliver additional capacity” but that it must be under “equivalent contracts” to those signed with the ferry operators.
“With the shortest journey time available in the market, Le Shuttle is the most efficient way to supply vital goods into the UK.
“This will remain the case even if delays occur due to the introduction of new border procedures by (UK and France) or through a lack of sufficient public officials to operate them.”
The ferry contracts have sparked outrage in Westminster given a £14 million deal has gone to Seaborne Freight – a company which has no vessels under its control and no usable harbour at Ramsgate.
Britanny Ferries and DFDS have also bagged deals to put on extra services between the UK and smaller Dutch and German ports.
Unite today demanded Chris Grayling resign for ignoring Eurotunnel in its Brexit planning.
Harish Patel, Unite’s rail industry national officer, said: “These revelations reveal new levels of incompetency at the department and demonstrate that it is simply incapable of undertaking the most basic planning exercise.
“This latest fiasco underlines that the entire transport industry has lost all confidence in Chris Grayling and he should resign immediately.”
BUSINESS chiefs are on a ‘go-slow’ mentality over a no-deal preparations, a Cabinet Minister has warned.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay says planning needs to be ramped-up as senior colleagues continue to undermine government efforts.
He says there must be a “step change” in ensuring firms and the public are ready for the legal default exit date of October 31.
It follows MPs backing a bid to stop the next PM suspending Parliament to force through a no-deal scenario.
Four Cabinet Ministers including Philip Hammond and 17 Tory MPs abstained in the vote to suspend Parliament
Mr Barclay said: “Until we have passed a deal, it’s crucial that the government continues to prepare for a no deal Brexit.
“It has been under-priced by many, and a step change in communicating this needs to be one of the first priorities of the new Prime Minister.
“It’s the responsibility of the Government to prepare for everything it can control, but it is equally important that businesses and third parties ensure they are ready for any potential changes they may need to adapt to.
“The new Prime Minister needs to urgently ramp up the Government’s communications effort with a national drive to explain any changes to minimise disruption.”
The comments echoed Tory leadership hopeful Boris Johnson’s comments at his last debate with Jeremy Hunt.
Speaking at The Sun and talkRadio debate, he said: “The sad thing about the last three years is that you’ve had people in the UK government, senior figures, saying that a no deal Brexit would be such a catastrophe, that business hasn’t even really begun preparing for it.
He added: “They keep hearing from the Treasury that a no deal Brexit is completely unthinkable. The more we prepare, the better our preparations, the smoother Brexit under any circumstances.”
BUSINESS chiefs are on a ‘go-slow’ mentality over a no-deal preparations, a Cabinet Minister has warned.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay says planning needs to be ramped-up as senior colleagues continue to undermine government efforts.
He says there must be a “step change” in ensuring firms and the public are ready for the legal default exit date of October 31.
It follows MPs backing a bid to stop the next PM suspending Parliament to force through a no-deal scenario.
Four Cabinet Ministers including Philip Hammond and 17 Tory MPs abstained in the vote to suspend Parliament
Mr Barclay said: “Until we have passed a deal, it’s crucial that the government continues to prepare for a no deal Brexit.
“It has been under-priced by many, and a step change in communicating this needs to be one of the first priorities of the new Prime Minister.
“It’s the responsibility of the Government to prepare for everything it can control, but it is equally important that businesses and third parties ensure they are ready for any potential changes they may need to adapt to.
“The new Prime Minister needs to urgently ramp up the Government’s communications effort with a national drive to explain any changes to minimise disruption.”
The comments echoed Tory leadership hopeful Boris Johnson’s comments at his last debate with Jeremy Hunt.
Speaking at The Sun and talkRadio debate, he said: “The sad thing about the last three years is that you’ve had people in the UK government, senior figures, saying that a no deal Brexit would be such a catastrophe, that business hasn’t even really begun preparing for it.
He added: “They keep hearing from the Treasury that a no deal Brexit is completely unthinkable. The more we prepare, the better our preparations, the smoother Brexit under any circumstances.”
BORIS Johnson has ordered MPs to “get on and deliver” Brexit as Tory rebels and Labour plan a coup over No Deal.
The PM said remainers were standing in the way of "what this country voted for” after reports Labour could create a constitutional crisis.
Speaking while visiting a Science centre in Abingdon, Johnson said: “We are going to leave the European Union on October 31 which is what the people of this country voted for, it's what MPs voted for, and that's what I think parliamentarians of this country should get on and do.
"I think that MPs should get on and deliver on what they have promised over and over and over again to the people of this country, they will deliver on the mandate of 2016 and leave the EU on October 31."

Boris has repeatedly refused to entertain opposition demands to hold a general election before October 31.
However, No 10 aides have indicated polling could take place just days later if he is forced to go to the country by a no-confidence vote by MPs.
I think that MPs should get on and deliver on what they have promised over and over and over again to the people of this country, they will deliver on the mandate of 2016 and leave the EU on October 31
But this would suit Tory brexiteers as it means remainers would not be able to stand in the way of No Deal if negotiations break down with Brussels.
A senior No10 official said: "We can't stop them forcing an election but we control the timetable so we will force the date after October 31.
"If there must be a general election, then it will be days after October 31."

Johnson’s call to MPs came after John McDonnell threatened to drag the Queen into a constitutional crisis over Brexit.
Threatening a coup, the Shadow Chancellor said Labour would “take over” if Boris Johnson refused to quit in the wake of a no confidence vote.
And his party would send leader Jeremy Corbyn to Buckingham palace “in a cab”.
I don’t want to drag the Queen into this but I would be sending Jeremy Corbyn in a cab to Buckingham Palace to say we’re taking over.
He also threatened to jail Tory MPs over benefits cuts if the party ever comes to power.
McDonnell said: “I don’t want to drag the Queen into this but I would be sending Jeremy Corbyn in a cab to Buckingham Palace to say we’re taking over.”
Former Tory leader Iain ­Duncan Smith told the Daily Telegraph: “They will effectively arrive toting their guns. It’s ­basically a coup.”
Mr McDonnell was last night quizzed over his threat to jail Tories after previously declaring: “One day, I warn you, we will try them.”
They will effectively arrive toting their guns. It’s ­basically a coup.
Pressed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by host Iain Dale on what law he might use to prosecute them, he replied: “I might want to invent it.”
Tory MP and party vice chairman Paul Scully responded: “It comes as little surprise McDonnell wants to invent laws to silence opponents.
“This is a man with a sinister history, who has called for a female MP to be lynched, ‘direct action’ against opposing MPs and praised the bombs and ­bullets of the IRA.”
But despite facing an uncertain future at No10 - the Tories are still enjoying a Boris Bounce two weeks after he became Prime Minister.
Johnson’s party are enjoying a comfortable 33 per cent lead over Labour, who on 22 per cent, According to You Gov.
Meanwhile the Lib Dems have risen in popularity with from 19 to 21 per cent under new leader, Jo Swinson.
The Brexit Party have also enjoyed a boost rising to 14 per cent under the leadership of Nigel Farage.
But it’s bad news for the greens which dropped from eight to seven per cent.
 
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BORIS Johnson has ordered MPs to “get on and deliver” Brexit as Tory rebels and Labour plan a coup over No Deal.
The PM said remainers were standing in the way of "what this country voted for” after reports Labour could create a constitutional crisis.
Speaking while visiting a Science centre in Abingdon, Johnson said: “We are going to leave the European Union on October 31 which is what the people of this country voted for, it's what MPs voted for, and that's what I think parliamentarians of this country should get on and do.
"I think that MPs should get on and deliver on what they have promised over and over and over again to the people of this country, they will deliver on the mandate of 2016 and leave the EU on October 31."

Boris has repeatedly refused to entertain opposition demands to hold a general election before October 31.
However, No 10 aides have indicated polling could take place just days later if he is forced to go to the country by a no-confidence vote by MPs.
I think that MPs should get on and deliver on what they have promised over and over and over again to the people of this country, they will deliver on the mandate of 2016 and leave the EU on October 31
But this would suit Tory brexiteers as it means remainers would not be able to stand in the way of No Deal if negotiations break down with Brussels.
A senior No10 official said: "We can't stop them forcing an election but we control the timetable so we will force the date after October 31.
"If there must be a general election, then it will be days after October 31."

Johnson’s call to MPs came after John McDonnell threatened to drag the Queen into a constitutional crisis over Brexit.
Threatening a coup, the Shadow Chancellor said Labour would “take over” if Boris Johnson refused to quit in the wake of a no confidence vote.
And his party would send leader Jeremy Corbyn to Buckingham palace “in a cab”.
I don’t want to drag the Queen into this but I would be sending Jeremy Corbyn in a cab to Buckingham Palace to say we’re taking over.
He also threatened to jail Tory MPs over benefits cuts if the party ever comes to power.
McDonnell said: “I don’t want to drag the Queen into this but I would be sending Jeremy Corbyn in a cab to Buckingham Palace to say we’re taking over.”
Former Tory leader Iain ­Duncan Smith told the Daily Telegraph: “They will effectively arrive toting their guns. It’s ­basically a coup.”
Mr McDonnell was last night quizzed over his threat to jail Tories after previously declaring: “One day, I warn you, we will try them.”
They will effectively arrive toting their guns. It’s ­basically a coup.
Pressed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by host Iain Dale on what law he might use to prosecute them, he replied: “I might want to invent it.”
Tory MP and party vice chairman Paul Scully responded: “It comes as little surprise McDonnell wants to invent laws to silence opponents.
“This is a man with a sinister history, who has called for a female MP to be lynched, ‘direct action’ against opposing MPs and praised the bombs and ­bullets of the IRA.”
But despite facing an uncertain future at No10 - the Tories are still enjoying a Boris Bounce two weeks after he became Prime Minister.
Johnson’s party are enjoying a comfortable 33 per cent lead over Labour, who on 22 per cent, According to You Gov.
Meanwhile the Lib Dems have risen in popularity with from 19 to 21 per cent under new leader, Jo Swinson.
The Brexit Party have also enjoyed a boost rising to 14 per cent under the leadership of Nigel Farage.
But it’s bad news for the greens which dropped from eight to seven per cent.
 
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REMAINER MPs have pleaded with Brussels to push Britain into another extension - to sabotage Boris Johnson’s deal and force a second referendum.
A group led by arch-europhile Tory rebel Dominic Grieve held talks with senior French, Dutch and Irish diplomats plus EU Parliament negotiators.
They begged eurocrats not to help the PM speed a deal through the Commons before the 31st - claiming to do so would be “very dangerous”.
Instead they said a technical extension should be provided so that Parliament can vote for a second referendum on staying in the bloc.
Mr Grieve said the agreement being thrashed out “bears no resemblance to what was being promoted in the 2016 referendum at all.”
The senior Tory MP said: “It’s clear that a final Brexit deal will not be agreed this week.
“We made clear that extension must be of a sufficient length to organise for the people to have the final say and resolve the Brexit crisis.”
The gang included Labour’s David Lammy, ex Lib Dem leader Vince Cable, Green MP Caroline Lucas, the SNP’s Peter Grant and Plaid Cymru chief Liz Saville Roberts.
Their last minute eurostar dash to Brussels was condemned by eurosceptics who branded the group “arch plotters” and “snakes on a train”.
Tory MP Nigel Evans told The Sun those involved were “not only anti-Brexit, they’re now anti-democracy”.
He said: “Some of them said we need a deal, and all of sudden they’re now panicking and flapping like crazy because there will be a deal.
“It is grabbing the last train to try and derail it. They don’t care. All they want to do is stop Brexit.
“With some politicians they try and hide - it these guys are the absolute reverse of that. They’re got to be stopped. Bring on a General Election.
“I’m sure the EU and Brussels will reward them for their loyalty but the British voters certainly will have a different prize for them.”
Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney added: “Remainer MPs will stop at nothing to derail the democratic will of the people. It will long be remembered.”
EU chiefs have said that a lengthy extension will only be granted if the UK justifies it by holding a General Election or Second Referendum.
JUST as Remainer MPs arrive in Brussels, shamefully hoping to sabotage knife-edge negotiations, a landmark poll destroys their case for a second referendum.
The “People’s Vote” mob have repeatedly told the world that Britain has changed its mind and is itching to reverse Brexit. It is Grade A cobblers.
The biggest, most definitive survey in three years shows 50 per cent back Leave (30 for a deal, 20 for No Deal) with 42 Remain and eight “don’t knows”.
But by an even bigger margin, 54 to 32, the public wants the 2016 result enacted.
Which might also explain why the Tories are 15 points ahead in another poll and Boris Johnson leads as “best PM” in every single region, class and age category including even the 18-24s.
A second referendum would inflict catastrophe on our divided country.
Those MPs who champion it out of myopic loyalty to Remain will, we hope, be kicked out whenever an election comes.
Good riddance to the lot.
 
REMAINER MPs have pleaded with Brussels to push Britain into another extension - to sabotage Boris Johnson’s deal and force a second referendum.
A group led by arch-europhile Tory rebel Dominic Grieve held talks with senior French, Dutch and Irish diplomats plus EU Parliament negotiators.
They begged eurocrats not to help the PM speed a deal through the Commons before the 31st - claiming to do so would be “very dangerous”.
Instead they said a technical extension should be provided so that Parliament can vote for a second referendum on staying in the bloc.
Mr Grieve said the agreement being thrashed out “bears no resemblance to what was being promoted in the 2016 referendum at all.”
The senior Tory MP said: “It’s clear that a final Brexit deal will not be agreed this week.
“We made clear that extension must be of a sufficient length to organise for the people to have the final say and resolve the Brexit crisis.”
The gang included Labour’s David Lammy, ex Lib Dem leader Vince Cable, Green MP Caroline Lucas, the SNP’s Peter Grant and Plaid Cymru chief Liz Saville Roberts.
Their last minute eurostar dash to Brussels was condemned by eurosceptics who branded the group “arch plotters” and “snakes on a train”.
Tory MP Nigel Evans told The Sun those involved were “not only anti-Brexit, they’re now anti-democracy”.
He said: “Some of them said we need a deal, and all of sudden they’re now panicking and flapping like crazy because there will be a deal.
“It is grabbing the last train to try and derail it. They don’t care. All they want to do is stop Brexit.
“With some politicians they try and hide - it these guys are the absolute reverse of that. They’re got to be stopped. Bring on a General Election.
“I’m sure the EU and Brussels will reward them for their loyalty but the British voters certainly will have a different prize for them.”
Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney added: “Remainer MPs will stop at nothing to derail the democratic will of the people. It will long be remembered.”
EU chiefs have said that a lengthy extension will only be granted if the UK justifies it by holding a General Election or Second Referendum.
JUST as Remainer MPs arrive in Brussels, shamefully hoping to sabotage knife-edge negotiations, a landmark poll destroys their case for a second referendum.
The “People’s Vote” mob have repeatedly told the world that Britain has changed its mind and is itching to reverse Brexit. It is Grade A cobblers.
The biggest, most definitive survey in three years shows 50 per cent back Leave (30 for a deal, 20 for No Deal) with 42 Remain and eight “don’t knows”.
But by an even bigger margin, 54 to 32, the public wants the 2016 result enacted.
Which might also explain why the Tories are 15 points ahead in another poll and Boris Johnson leads as “best PM” in every single region, class and age category including even the 18-24s.
A second referendum would inflict catastrophe on our divided country.
Those MPs who champion it out of myopic loyalty to Remain will, we hope, be kicked out whenever an election comes.
Good riddance to the lot.
 
Brexit-backing Graham Stringer compared rebel MPs to workers who demand a raise even though they'll never go on strike
A SENIOR Labour Brexiteer has compared Jeremy Corbyn’s support for delaying Brexit to “kindergarten” children because of his “fundamental misunderstanding” of how negotiations work.
Graham Stringer said his party’s decision to back Yvette Cooper’s amendment was “dangerous” because “nobody would know who was in control” of Brexit.
He also ridiculed Mr Corbyn’s call to rule out a No Deal Brexit – comparing it to a trade union boss telling managers that “whatever you do, we won’t go on strike”.
Mr Stringer - a veteran Eurosceptic on Labour's backbenches  - threw his weight behind No Deal if Theresa May’s deal fails – saying: “It just means complete freedom. So I’m not bothered about no deal."
Appearing as a special guest at the Tory Eurosceptic Bruges Group, Mr Stringer said: "Often in discussing the European Union my colleagues use kindergarten language - they say 'they're our friends, how could they not have our interests at heart?'.
"I think it misunderstands that actually the bureaucrats in Brussels are a self-interested group of people - self-interested in their own survival and perpetuating their growing power and influence across the whole of the European continent."
“It also misunderstands the fact that the European Union do negotiate but they usually come to agreements at the last minute – the 11th hour.
“And that is possible which is why it’s important to send the Prime Minister back to Brussels over the next fortnight because I think that the European Union – one can’t be certain – actually want to come to a deal.”
In an ominous warning for his party he predicted Labour would lose "a lot of seats" if it continued to frustrate Brexit.
And there would be "electoral peril" for the party if Labour officially backed a second referendum, the MP added.
Mr Corbyn is under pressure to sack a number of Labour frontbenchers who defied his order to back the bid to delay Brexit.
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Brexit-backing Graham Stringer compared rebel MPs to workers who demand a raise even though they'll never go on strike
A SENIOR Labour Brexiteer has compared Jeremy Corbyn’s support for delaying Brexit to “kindergarten” children because of his “fundamental misunderstanding” of how negotiations work.
Graham Stringer said his party’s decision to back Yvette Cooper’s amendment was “dangerous” because “nobody would know who was in control” of Brexit.
He also ridiculed Mr Corbyn’s call to rule out a No Deal Brexit – comparing it to a trade union boss telling managers that “whatever you do, we won’t go on strike”.
Mr Stringer - a veteran Eurosceptic on Labour's backbenches  - threw his weight behind No Deal if Theresa May’s deal fails – saying: “It just means complete freedom. So I’m not bothered about no deal."
Appearing as a special guest at the Tory Eurosceptic Bruges Group, Mr Stringer said: "Often in discussing the European Union my colleagues use kindergarten language - they say 'they're our friends, how could they not have our interests at heart?'.
"I think it misunderstands that actually the bureaucrats in Brussels are a self-interested group of people - self-interested in their own survival and perpetuating their growing power and influence across the whole of the European continent."
“It also misunderstands the fact that the European Union do negotiate but they usually come to agreements at the last minute – the 11th hour.
“And that is possible which is why it’s important to send the Prime Minister back to Brussels over the next fortnight because I think that the European Union – one can’t be certain – actually want to come to a deal.”
In an ominous warning for his party he predicted Labour would lose "a lot of seats" if it continued to frustrate Brexit.
And there would be "electoral peril" for the party if Labour officially backed a second referendum, the MP added.
Mr Corbyn is under pressure to sack a number of Labour frontbenchers who defied his order to back the bid to delay Brexit.
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JEREMY Hunt opened the door to another lengthy Brexit delay yesterday after refusing to name an absolute deadline for leaving the EU.
The Foreign Secretary, who yesterday won the backing of chief Remainer Amber Rudd and leading Brexiteer Penny Mordaunt, said he would “try very, very hard” to get a deal by October 31.
But he warned that the new PM might not even be able to start renegotiating with the EU until November 1 because its new Commission only starts then.
Mr Hunt, who campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum, attacked his Brexiteer leadership rivals who have pledged to leave by Halloween come what may.
He said leaving without a deal on October 31 would trigger a General Election in which the Tories would be “annihilated”.
In a pointed swipe at Boris Johnson he said the Tory party needs to “get real” on Brexit, adding: “A serious moment calls for a serious leader.”
But winning the backing of Ms Rudd sparked fears he was going soft on Brexit.
One MP told The Sun: “Amber has picked Hunt because she believes he will wimp on Brexit.”
I’ve always said I would be prepared to leave without a deal if there was a straight choice between no deal and no Brexit
Mr Hunt hit back by insisting he would be prepared to take Britain out of the EU without a deal but would not do so if he believed he could pass a deal.
But he repeatedly refused to put a date on how long he would extend Article 50 for.
Launching his leadership contest in central London, Mr Hunt said: “I’ve always said I would be prepared to leave without a deal if there was a straight choice between no deal and no Brexit.
“But I would do so with a heavy heart because of the risks to businesses and the union.
“And I would not do so if a deal that commands the support of parliament was in sight.
Explaining why pledging to leave without a deal in October would risk booting the Tories out of power, Mr Hunt said: “Without a deal, any Prime Minister who promised to leave by a certain date would have to call a general election to change the parliamentary arithmetic.
“And that is an election we would lose badly.
“If we fight an election before delivering Brexit we will be annihilated.
“Squeezed by the Brexit Party on the right and the Lib Dems on the left. We will simply allow Labour through the middle.
“And, if that happened nationally it would be the end of Brexit.”
Meanwhile Mr Hunt was left red-faced last night after rowing back on comments that he had never broken the law.
He was asked the question in light of Michael Gove’s cocaine admission, and replied: “I’m just really racking my brain at the moment, but the answer is no.”
But just five hours later Mr Hunt was forced to clarify his remarks, telling Buzzfeed News that he had once breached his own Government’s anti-money laundering laws last year.
A spokesman said he had “accepted these mistakes were his responsibility” and they were a “genuine oversight”.
Last year MR Hunt failed to declare to Companies House his 50 per cent interest in a property firm used to purchase seven luxury flats.
JEREMY Hunt opened the door to another lengthy Brexit delay yesterday after refusing to name an absolute deadline for leaving the EU.
The Foreign Secretary, who yesterday won the backing of chief Remainer Amber Rudd and leading Brexiteer Penny Mordaunt, said he would “try very, very hard” to get a deal by October 31.
But he warned that the new PM might not even be able to start renegotiating with the EU until November 1 because its new Commission only starts then.
Mr Hunt, who campaigned for Remain in the 2016 referendum, attacked his Brexiteer leadership rivals who have pledged to leave by Halloween come what may.
He said leaving without a deal on October 31 would trigger a General Election in which the Tories would be “annihilated”.
In a pointed swipe at Boris Johnson he said the Tory party needs to “get real” on Brexit, adding: “A serious moment calls for a serious leader.”
But winning the backing of Ms Rudd sparked fears he was going soft on Brexit.
One MP told The Sun: “Amber has picked Hunt because she believes he will wimp on Brexit.”
I’ve always said I would be prepared to leave without a deal if there was a straight choice between no deal and no Brexit
Mr Hunt hit back by insisting he would be prepared to take Britain out of the EU without a deal but would not do so if he believed he could pass a deal.
But he repeatedly refused to put a date on how long he would extend Article 50 for.
Launching his leadership contest in central London, Mr Hunt said: “I’ve always said I would be prepared to leave without a deal if there was a straight choice between no deal and no Brexit.
“But I would do so with a heavy heart because of the risks to businesses and the union.
“And I would not do so if a deal that commands the support of parliament was in sight.
Explaining why pledging to leave without a deal in October would risk booting the Tories out of power, Mr Hunt said: “Without a deal, any Prime Minister who promised to leave by a certain date would have to call a general election to change the parliamentary arithmetic.
“And that is an election we would lose badly.
“If we fight an election before delivering Brexit we will be annihilated.
“Squeezed by the Brexit Party on the right and the Lib Dems on the left. We will simply allow Labour through the middle.
“And, if that happened nationally it would be the end of Brexit.”
Meanwhile Mr Hunt was left red-faced last night after rowing back on comments that he had never broken the law.
He was asked the question in light of Michael Gove’s cocaine admission, and replied: “I’m just really racking my brain at the moment, but the answer is no.”
But just five hours later Mr Hunt was forced to clarify his remarks, telling Buzzfeed News that he had once breached his own Government’s anti-money laundering laws last year.
A spokesman said he had “accepted these mistakes were his responsibility” and they were a “genuine oversight”.
Last year MR Hunt failed to declare to Companies House his 50 per cent interest in a property firm used to purchase seven luxury flats.
The party big guns want the Chancellor and the PM's deputy to deliver a political death warrant to 10 Downing Street
A HIT squad of Cabinet veterans is being lined up to tell Theresa May it is time to go.
Tory big guns want Chancellor Philip Hammond and the PM’s deputy David Lidington to deliver their political death warrant to 10 Downing Street.
The pair have been asked to carry out the cruel deed because most other ministers want to step into her shoes.
But they may be beaten to the famous black door by a delegation of six backbench MPs who also want to tell the PM her time is up.
A Cabinet source said: “Her position is fading fast. It’s pitiful to watch.
“Somehow she just doesn’t seem to get the message that it’s all over.
“So we’ve decided that somebody will have to tell her it’s in everyone’s best interests for her to step down.”
Embattled Mrs May faces the most perilous week for all as she tries to get her deal through the Commons and stop MPs hijacking the process.
Tearful government whips told her a
It’s pitiful to watch. Somehow she just doesn’t seem to get the message that it’s all over.
few days ago that the only way to get it over the line was to promise she would go afterwards.
A source revealed: “They weren’t the first people to give her advice to find it had fallen on deaf ears.”
Up to eight Cabinet ministers are among those jostling to launch a leadership campaign the moment Mrs May decides to go.

But none is prepared to confront her because they fear that whoever wields the knife never wears the crown.
In a tense Cabinet meeting last week, Mrs May eyeballed stunned colleagues and bluntly told them: “I know most of you are after my job.”
They have now decided that Mr Hammond and Mr Lidington – who are not eyeing the big prize – are key to easing her out.
MPs are powerless to remove the PM after last December’s failed no-confidence vote guaranteed her safety for a full year.
Cabinet ministers believe it could now fall for them to tell her to go if she fails to get her deal through this week.
They fear the Tory party will be torn apart if they are forced to delay Brexit – scheduled to happen for 11pm on Friday – and take part in EU elections at a cost of £108 million.
One source said: “We don’t have much time to waste if we are to find a new leader in time to take us out of the EU by May and have some credibility to chart a way forward.”
A minister said: “The sooner she leaves, the more chance she has of going with her dignity intact.
“If she goes now, she can save Brexit, save her party and save face.”
Downing Street responded last night: “This is not about the future of the PM. It’s about the future of the country.
“She wants MPs to back the deal not because they want her to quit but because it’s the right thing to do in the national interest.”
Insiders say the crown will go to a candidate who can unite the party with a credible Brexit position and has what it takes to beat Jeremy Corbyn.
The party big guns want the Chancellor and the PM's deputy to deliver a political death warrant to 10 Downing Street
A HIT squad of Cabinet veterans is being lined up to tell Theresa May it is time to go.
Tory big guns want Chancellor Philip Hammond and the PM’s deputy David Lidington to deliver their political death warrant to 10 Downing Street.
The pair have been asked to carry out the cruel deed because most other ministers want to step into her shoes.
But they may be beaten to the famous black door by a delegation of six backbench MPs who also want to tell the PM her time is up.
A Cabinet source said: “Her position is fading fast. It’s pitiful to watch.
“Somehow she just doesn’t seem to get the message that it’s all over.
“So we’ve decided that somebody will have to tell her it’s in everyone’s best interests for her to step down.”
Embattled Mrs May faces the most perilous week for all as she tries to get her deal through the Commons and stop MPs hijacking the process.
Tearful government whips told her a
It’s pitiful to watch. Somehow she just doesn’t seem to get the message that it’s all over.
few days ago that the only way to get it over the line was to promise she would go afterwards.
A source revealed: “They weren’t the first people to give her advice to find it had fallen on deaf ears.”
Up to eight Cabinet ministers are among those jostling to launch a leadership campaign the moment Mrs May decides to go.

But none is prepared to confront her because they fear that whoever wields the knife never wears the crown.
In a tense Cabinet meeting last week, Mrs May eyeballed stunned colleagues and bluntly told them: “I know most of you are after my job.”
They have now decided that Mr Hammond and Mr Lidington – who are not eyeing the big prize – are key to easing her out.
MPs are powerless to remove the PM after last December’s failed no-confidence vote guaranteed her safety for a full year.
Cabinet ministers believe it could now fall for them to tell her to go if she fails to get her deal through this week.
They fear the Tory party will be torn apart if they are forced to delay Brexit – scheduled to happen for 11pm on Friday – and take part in EU elections at a cost of £108 million.
One source said: “We don’t have much time to waste if we are to find a new leader in time to take us out of the EU by May and have some credibility to chart a way forward.”
A minister said: “The sooner she leaves, the more chance she has of going with her dignity intact.
“If she goes now, she can save Brexit, save her party and save face.”
Downing Street responded last night: “This is not about the future of the PM. It’s about the future of the country.
“She wants MPs to back the deal not because they want her to quit but because it’s the right thing to do in the national interest.”
Insiders say the crown will go to a candidate who can unite the party with a credible Brexit position and has what it takes to beat Jeremy Corbyn.
The Chancellor was attacked by his party after the slur on Brexit supporters
PHILIP Hammond has issued an unprecedented apology over his Brexit “extremists” slur – and called on the party to come together.
Challenged by The Sun, the Chancellor tonight said his barb was “not intended to cause any offence”.
And he insisted he was committed to “trying to ensure Brexit is delivered”.
It came amid a withering backlash to the Chancellor’s incendiary comment yesterday that the confidence vote in Theresa May would “flush out the extremists”.
The remark incensed Brexiteers – and led some to demand a personal assurance from Theresa May that the attacks “on her own MPs” would stop.
She is believed to have criticised the comments in her make or break confrontation with MPs last night.
Earlier yesterday ex-Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith demanded the Chancellor “moderate your language”.
Mr Hammond said: “My comments yesterday were not intended to cause any offence to the vast majority of colleagues whether originally Remain or Leave supporters, who, like me, are trying to ensure Brexit is delivered, while protecting our jobs and our economy.
“We all need to compromise and come together to find a way forward – because divided countries are not successful countries.”
Amid fears of a deepening civil war in the bitterly split party, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay had earlier admitted Mr Hammond’s remark contained “phraseology I would not have used”.
Eurosceptic Tory Simon Clarke stormed: “The obvious disdain with which the Chancellor views a large number of us is pretty offensive and unsustainable.”
Allies said Mr Hammond had spoken individually to certain Tories upset over his comment. One said: “The Chancellor wasn’t looking to pick a fight with anyone – just to find a way forward.”
Brexiteers have long viewed the Chancellor as their biggest enemy – accusing him of steering Theresa May towards a ‘soft’ Brexit and dragging his heels on spending money on No Deal preparation.
The Sun earlier this month revealed Mr Hammond was allocating £2billion to government departments to help tool up for a No Deal.
PHILIP Hammond’s “extremists” jibe at Brexit-supporting Tory backbenchers was reckless and stupid.


If anything is likely to hasten a catastrophic split in the Tories it’s the Chancellor of a minority Government declaring war on scores of his own MPs.

But it also displayed staggering ­contempt for politicians committed to honouring the referendum and the election manifesto on which they stood.

Politics has been debased by charlatans making promises they dump as soon as it’s convenient. It is in a critical state if NOT doing so is “extreme”.

If there are extremists in Parliament besides the obvious, Corbyn and McDonnell, it is those playing roulette with national stability by attempting to stage a second referendum before the verdict of the first is carried out.

It is incredible that it is considered mainstream, noble even, of these MPs to renege on promises they made and votes they cast — and to refuse to honour the majority’s will because the losing minority must have their “final say”.

All while performing intellectual ­contortions to justify what, deep down, they know is unjustifiable: imposing their will over the public’s.

That is a far more extreme position than anything on the Tory backbenches.

“Everyone knows who won,” says ­Benedict Cumberbatch in the trailer for Channel 4’s upcoming Brexit movie.

We do. Some MPs have forgotten.
 
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The Chancellor was attacked by his party after the slur on Brexit supporters
PHILIP Hammond has issued an unprecedented apology over his Brexit “extremists” slur – and called on the party to come together.
Challenged by The Sun, the Chancellor tonight said his barb was “not intended to cause any offence”.
And he insisted he was committed to “trying to ensure Brexit is delivered”.
It came amid a withering backlash to the Chancellor’s incendiary comment yesterday that the confidence vote in Theresa May would “flush out the extremists”.
The remark incensed Brexiteers – and led some to demand a personal assurance from Theresa May that the attacks “on her own MPs” would stop.
She is believed to have criticised the comments in her make or break confrontation with MPs last night.
Earlier yesterday ex-Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith demanded the Chancellor “moderate your language”.
Mr Hammond said: “My comments yesterday were not intended to cause any offence to the vast majority of colleagues whether originally Remain or Leave supporters, who, like me, are trying to ensure Brexit is delivered, while protecting our jobs and our economy.
“We all need to compromise and come together to find a way forward – because divided countries are not successful countries.”
Amid fears of a deepening civil war in the bitterly split party, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay had earlier admitted Mr Hammond’s remark contained “phraseology I would not have used”.
Eurosceptic Tory Simon Clarke stormed: “The obvious disdain with which the Chancellor views a large number of us is pretty offensive and unsustainable.”
Allies said Mr Hammond had spoken individually to certain Tories upset over his comment. One said: “The Chancellor wasn’t looking to pick a fight with anyone – just to find a way forward.”
Brexiteers have long viewed the Chancellor as their biggest enemy – accusing him of steering Theresa May towards a ‘soft’ Brexit and dragging his heels on spending money on No Deal preparation.
The Sun earlier this month revealed Mr Hammond was allocating £2billion to government departments to help tool up for a No Deal.
PHILIP Hammond’s “extremists” jibe at Brexit-supporting Tory backbenchers was reckless and stupid.


If anything is likely to hasten a catastrophic split in the Tories it’s the Chancellor of a minority Government declaring war on scores of his own MPs.

But it also displayed staggering ­contempt for politicians committed to honouring the referendum and the election manifesto on which they stood.

Politics has been debased by charlatans making promises they dump as soon as it’s convenient. It is in a critical state if NOT doing so is “extreme”.

If there are extremists in Parliament besides the obvious, Corbyn and McDonnell, it is those playing roulette with national stability by attempting to stage a second referendum before the verdict of the first is carried out.

It is incredible that it is considered mainstream, noble even, of these MPs to renege on promises they made and votes they cast — and to refuse to honour the majority’s will because the losing minority must have their “final say”.

All while performing intellectual ­contortions to justify what, deep down, they know is unjustifiable: imposing their will over the public’s.

That is a far more extreme position than anything on the Tory backbenches.

“Everyone knows who won,” says ­Benedict Cumberbatch in the trailer for Channel 4’s upcoming Brexit movie.

We do. Some MPs have forgotten.
 
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Chief negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted the EU's offer over the Irish backstop in an attempt to avoid looking responsible for the breakdown
ELEVENTH hour Brexit deal negotiations last night descended into an ugly Twitter spat as British and EU chiefs exchanged online blows.
The slanging match exploded after a day of simmering tension between London and Brussels over who’s to blame for the collapse in talks.
The stand-off over legal changes to the Irish backstop continues into a fourth day today, despite just four days left until Theresa May’s final Commons showdown vote.
Hitting back at the PM’s warning that the EU will sink her deal on Tuesday without a climb down, riled EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said: "We’re not interested in the blame game. We’re interested in the result."
The Frenchman then took the unprecedented step of tweeting out the EU’s offer over the backstop in a bid to avoid looking responsible for the break down.
He offered a new legal document to guarantee the backstop would only be temporary, as well as a unilateral exit clause for Great Britain from the border fix.
But in a provocative move, the plan would see Northern Ireland forced to stay in it – enraging Ulster politicians.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay hit back on Twitter to tell Mr Barnier that he should stick to the UK’s “clear new proposals”, adding: “With a very real deadline looming, now is not the time to rerun old arguments."
The Barnier offer won’t allow Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to change his legal advice and declare the backstop is no longer an indefinite trap.
Seething DUP Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds dubbed Mr Barnier’s offer as “an attempt to get ahead of a possible blame game and appear positive when in reality it is going backwards”.
Earlier, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt lashed out at EU chiefs to say: “If this ends in acrimony, people will say the EU got this one wrong."
Irish PM Leo Varadkar hit back to demand “a change of approach by the UK government”.
Officials will continue with technical talks in Brussels through out the weekend in a desperate final bid to bridge the gap.
The PM will work through the weekend, hitting the phone with calls to EU leaders to press her case.
She talked to the leaders of Bulgaria, Denmark and Portugal on Thursday night.
If this ends in acrimony, people will say the EU got this one wrong.
But No10 aides have all but given up hope of winning the race against time to win enough backstop changes by Tuesday.
One said: “We’ll know by Monday morning if there’s any point in continuing with this process.”
If the deal is voted down a second time, Mrs May faces disaster with Remainer Tories allying with Labour to seize control to significantly soften Brexit.
Meanwhile the Government’s internal divisions over Brexit has been blamed for undermining negotiations with Brussels.
A damning report by the Commons EU Scrutiny committee found conflicting policies developed by No10 and the Brexit department had “left the Government vulnerable to internal division”.
This had “compromised the British position” and limited the UK’s ability to secure its fundamental negotiating objectives.
The Commons Northern Ireland Committee today finds that a technical solution to the Irish border conundrum “is possible and that it could be designed, trialled and piloted within the 21 month implementation period".
It would not be a simple quick-fix, but would constitute a highly sophisticated “world first”.
But trust and goodwill in Brussels is currently holding it back.
WHO’S to blame for the Brexit deal shambles? Almost everyone. But some MPs have at least behaved with honour.
Our Government of Remainers negotiated ineptly. The EU, meanwhile, focused solely on ­forcing us to vote again. It has soured relations for a generation.
Remainer MPs have been a disgrace, initially promising to respect the referendum then plotting to reverse it, openly colluding with Brussels against Britain.
And next week comes the killer blow.
Remainers from the Cabinet down will vote to end any chance of No Deal and to postpone Brexit, perhaps long enough for a second referendum — apparently unaware of the electoral catastrophe
poised to engulf the Tories.
The rogue Speaker Bercow will help.
Backbench Brexiteers, by contrast, stuck both to the logic of the Brexit result — leaving the single market, customs union and ECJ control — and the repeated promises politicians made to
Leavers.
We admire that. We are as angry as they are at all the rest. But there is only one way now to prevail over them and begin to honour those 17.4million votes:
To back the one imperfect deal that at least secures Brexit before it’s too late.
All other roads lead to political disaster.
Chief negotiator Michel Barnier tweeted the EU's offer over the Irish backstop in an attempt to avoid looking responsible for the breakdown
ELEVENTH hour Brexit deal negotiations last night descended into an ugly Twitter spat as British and EU chiefs exchanged online blows.
The slanging match exploded after a day of simmering tension between London and Brussels over who’s to blame for the collapse in talks.
The stand-off over legal changes to the Irish backstop continues into a fourth day today, despite just four days left until Theresa May’s final Commons showdown vote.
Hitting back at the PM’s warning that the EU will sink her deal on Tuesday without a climb down, riled EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said: "We’re not interested in the blame game. We’re interested in the result."
The Frenchman then took the unprecedented step of tweeting out the EU’s offer over the backstop in a bid to avoid looking responsible for the break down.
He offered a new legal document to guarantee the backstop would only be temporary, as well as a unilateral exit clause for Great Britain from the border fix.
But in a provocative move, the plan would see Northern Ireland forced to stay in it – enraging Ulster politicians.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay hit back on Twitter to tell Mr Barnier that he should stick to the UK’s “clear new proposals”, adding: “With a very real deadline looming, now is not the time to rerun old arguments."
The Barnier offer won’t allow Attorney General Geoffrey Cox to change his legal advice and declare the backstop is no longer an indefinite trap.
Seething DUP Deputy Leader Nigel Dodds dubbed Mr Barnier’s offer as “an attempt to get ahead of a possible blame game and appear positive when in reality it is going backwards”.
Earlier, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt lashed out at EU chiefs to say: “If this ends in acrimony, people will say the EU got this one wrong."
Irish PM Leo Varadkar hit back to demand “a change of approach by the UK government”.
Officials will continue with technical talks in Brussels through out the weekend in a desperate final bid to bridge the gap.
The PM will work through the weekend, hitting the phone with calls to EU leaders to press her case.
She talked to the leaders of Bulgaria, Denmark and Portugal on Thursday night.
If this ends in acrimony, people will say the EU got this one wrong.
But No10 aides have all but given up hope of winning the race against time to win enough backstop changes by Tuesday.
One said: “We’ll know by Monday morning if there’s any point in continuing with this process.”
If the deal is voted down a second time, Mrs May faces disaster with Remainer Tories allying with Labour to seize control to significantly soften Brexit.
Meanwhile the Government’s internal divisions over Brexit has been blamed for undermining negotiations with Brussels.
A damning report by the Commons EU Scrutiny committee found conflicting policies developed by No10 and the Brexit department had “left the Government vulnerable to internal division”.
This had “compromised the British position” and limited the UK’s ability to secure its fundamental negotiating objectives.
The Commons Northern Ireland Committee today finds that a technical solution to the Irish border conundrum “is possible and that it could be designed, trialled and piloted within the 21 month implementation period".
It would not be a simple quick-fix, but would constitute a highly sophisticated “world first”.
But trust and goodwill in Brussels is currently holding it back.
WHO’S to blame for the Brexit deal shambles? Almost everyone. But some MPs have at least behaved with honour.
Our Government of Remainers negotiated ineptly. The EU, meanwhile, focused solely on ­forcing us to vote again. It has soured relations for a generation.
Remainer MPs have been a disgrace, initially promising to respect the referendum then plotting to reverse it, openly colluding with Brussels against Britain.
And next week comes the killer blow.
Remainers from the Cabinet down will vote to end any chance of No Deal and to postpone Brexit, perhaps long enough for a second referendum — apparently unaware of the electoral catastrophe
poised to engulf the Tories.
The rogue Speaker Bercow will help.
Backbench Brexiteers, by contrast, stuck both to the logic of the Brexit result — leaving the single market, customs union and ECJ control — and the repeated promises politicians made to
Leavers.
We admire that. We are as angry as they are at all the rest. But there is only one way now to prevail over them and begin to honour those 17.4million votes:
To back the one imperfect deal that at least secures Brexit before it’s too late.
All other roads lead to political disaster.
Brexit risks being killed off by the very MPs who claim to love it the most
WAKE up, MPs! Smell the coffee. Get with the programme.
Brexit is slipping away.
It risks being killed off entirely by the very MPs who claim to love it the most — Conservative backbench Eurosceptics still chasing ­fantasy Brexits.
Since last week, the options have changed.
First, Parliament voted to rule out No Deal. Then MPs backed a Brexit delay.
It’s as if the House of Commons is ­following Tony Blair’s step-by-step guide to overturning the 2016 referendum.
A No Deal Brexit will only happen in nine days’ time if the EU refuses an ­extension. That is unlikely.
Theresa May will beg for a delay, whatever the conditions.
EU members will not want to be blamed for a messy No Deal outcome.
From next week, MPs could start voting on their preferred Brexit options through so-called indicative votes. Spoiler alert — they will not end up backing a harder exit.
I know there are Leave voters who do not like Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
But if you do not like her deal, look at the alternative options for softer Brexits, which would be far worse for the country.
If you think this deal risks the UK ­getting stuck in a customs union, just wait till you see what the deal would look like with Labour’s “permanent” customs union glued on top.
Better to have an imperfect route to controlling our own trade policy than no route at all.
If you do not like the fact that, under the PM’s deal, we would have to keep existing EU goods and agricultural rules, imagine staying in the Single Market or, as it is rebranded, Common Market 2.0. We would lose the veto over goods rules which we have in the backstop, and be forced to follow rules on services too.
Even in a worst-case scenario, Theresa May’s deal lets us escape the EU’s “ever closer union” political project and seize control of our own immigration policy.
We would be in control of almost all our economy and not have to pay a penny for it on an ongoing basis.
It is far better than most critics will admit. Thanks to changes secured at Strasbourg last week, we have new protections.
The EU can no longer do what French President Macron arrogantly threatened. It will not be able to use the backstop as a “trap” to demand access to UK fishing waters.
The EU cannot just say “non” to every sensible idea for resolving the Irish border issues. The so-called Star Chamber of MPs were quick to reject the Strasbourg changes.
But they should listen to the Irish opposition party.
Their Brexit spokesperson said: “We have come a long way” from a “bullet-proof, rock-solid, cast-iron backstop”.
Or how about top barrister Lord ­Pannick? He is the QC who won the case for Gina Miller against the Government.
He argues that in some circumstances the UK could terminate the deal through the so-called Vienna Convention.
Conservative Eurosceptic big beasts, from ex-leader Michael Howard to former Chancellor Norman Lamont, have all weighed in behind the deal.
David Davis, who resigned over ­Chequers, is now onside.
Lord Trimble, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Good Friday Agreement, has backed it. If he can live with the backstop, that should count for something.
But some Eurosceptic back- benchers still refuse to support the PM’s deal.
Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, they would prefer a harder deal. But face facts. There is no harder Brexit on offer.
With No Deal out of reach, there is no incentive for the EU to provide any more concessions.
That means the choices are this deal or a softer Brexit. Or no Brexit at all.
And be sure that the Speaker, John Bercow, will bend every possible rule to frustrate Brexit.
So, do not expect a long delay to offer a better answer.
Anyway, the choice on our future could be made soon.
There is no time to lose to save Brexit. Even a snap General Election offers no easy salvation. It would mean Theresa May leading the Tories into another campaign on a manifesto of her deal — precisely what her critics want to avoid. And of course, the Conservatives could lose any path to power at all, kissing goodbye to any Brexit.
Brexit would never have happened if it had not been for Boris Johnson.
Now he has a crucial opportunity to save the whole project.
He can show how he can be a ­statesman, by compromising in the national interest.
And he can demonstrate the sort of leadership that won him so much praise as Mayor of London.
If the Government can persuade the DUP to vote for the deal, backbenchers including Dominic Raab, Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Mark Harper should follow suit.
Otherwise, they risk being remembered as the MPs who wrecked Brexit, along with Labour MPs who helped trigger ­Article 50 and then opposed both No Deal and the current deal.
Theresa May also needs to recognise that backbenchers want someone else to take forward the next stage of the negotiations.
If she tries to cling to power, critics on both sides of the Brexit divide may never back her deal.
Whereas if she pledges to step down on getting her deal through, she can step down as a hero who delivered Brexit against the odds.
MPs should know that politics is about taking the world as you find it, not as you would like it to be.
And leadership is about taking decisions, even when all the choices are unpalatable.
It is fine to stick to principle, but not if that means emulating King Canute’s stand against the waves.
If Brexit does not happen it will be a ­national democratic calamity.
As the party in power, the Conservatives will be punished.
That means risking ­letting Jeremy Corbyn — a leader who can not even deal with anti-Semitism in his own party — seize control of the country.
The stakes simply could not be higher. If this chance is squandered we will likely never get another moment.
Right across Europe, critics of Brussels will think “even Britain couldn’t break free”.
For the sake of the country and for the future of the oldest and most successful political party in history, Tory MPs must, indeed, all hang together. Or most assuredly they shall all hang separately.
Henry Newman is director of the Open Europe think tank.
Brexit risks being killed off by the very MPs who claim to love it the most
WAKE up, MPs! Smell the coffee. Get with the programme.
Brexit is slipping away.
It risks being killed off entirely by the very MPs who claim to love it the most — Conservative backbench Eurosceptics still chasing ­fantasy Brexits.
Since last week, the options have changed.
First, Parliament voted to rule out No Deal. Then MPs backed a Brexit delay.
It’s as if the House of Commons is ­following Tony Blair’s step-by-step guide to overturning the 2016 referendum.
A No Deal Brexit will only happen in nine days’ time if the EU refuses an ­extension. That is unlikely.
Theresa May will beg for a delay, whatever the conditions.
EU members will not want to be blamed for a messy No Deal outcome.
From next week, MPs could start voting on their preferred Brexit options through so-called indicative votes. Spoiler alert — they will not end up backing a harder exit.
I know there are Leave voters who do not like Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
But if you do not like her deal, look at the alternative options for softer Brexits, which would be far worse for the country.
If you think this deal risks the UK ­getting stuck in a customs union, just wait till you see what the deal would look like with Labour’s “permanent” customs union glued on top.
Better to have an imperfect route to controlling our own trade policy than no route at all.
If you do not like the fact that, under the PM’s deal, we would have to keep existing EU goods and agricultural rules, imagine staying in the Single Market or, as it is rebranded, Common Market 2.0. We would lose the veto over goods rules which we have in the backstop, and be forced to follow rules on services too.
Even in a worst-case scenario, Theresa May’s deal lets us escape the EU’s “ever closer union” political project and seize control of our own immigration policy.
We would be in control of almost all our economy and not have to pay a penny for it on an ongoing basis.
It is far better than most critics will admit. Thanks to changes secured at Strasbourg last week, we have new protections.
The EU can no longer do what French President Macron arrogantly threatened. It will not be able to use the backstop as a “trap” to demand access to UK fishing waters.
The EU cannot just say “non” to every sensible idea for resolving the Irish border issues. The so-called Star Chamber of MPs were quick to reject the Strasbourg changes.
But they should listen to the Irish opposition party.
Their Brexit spokesperson said: “We have come a long way” from a “bullet-proof, rock-solid, cast-iron backstop”.
Or how about top barrister Lord ­Pannick? He is the QC who won the case for Gina Miller against the Government.
He argues that in some circumstances the UK could terminate the deal through the so-called Vienna Convention.
Conservative Eurosceptic big beasts, from ex-leader Michael Howard to former Chancellor Norman Lamont, have all weighed in behind the deal.
David Davis, who resigned over ­Chequers, is now onside.
Lord Trimble, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Good Friday Agreement, has backed it. If he can live with the backstop, that should count for something.
But some Eurosceptic back- benchers still refuse to support the PM’s deal.
Led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, they would prefer a harder deal. But face facts. There is no harder Brexit on offer.
With No Deal out of reach, there is no incentive for the EU to provide any more concessions.
That means the choices are this deal or a softer Brexit. Or no Brexit at all.
And be sure that the Speaker, John Bercow, will bend every possible rule to frustrate Brexit.
So, do not expect a long delay to offer a better answer.
Anyway, the choice on our future could be made soon.
There is no time to lose to save Brexit. Even a snap General Election offers no easy salvation. It would mean Theresa May leading the Tories into another campaign on a manifesto of her deal — precisely what her critics want to avoid. And of course, the Conservatives could lose any path to power at all, kissing goodbye to any Brexit.
Brexit would never have happened if it had not been for Boris Johnson.
Now he has a crucial opportunity to save the whole project.
He can show how he can be a ­statesman, by compromising in the national interest.
And he can demonstrate the sort of leadership that won him so much praise as Mayor of London.
If the Government can persuade the DUP to vote for the deal, backbenchers including Dominic Raab, Iain Duncan Smith, Theresa Villiers and Mark Harper should follow suit.
Otherwise, they risk being remembered as the MPs who wrecked Brexit, along with Labour MPs who helped trigger ­Article 50 and then opposed both No Deal and the current deal.
Theresa May also needs to recognise that backbenchers want someone else to take forward the next stage of the negotiations.
If she tries to cling to power, critics on both sides of the Brexit divide may never back her deal.
Whereas if she pledges to step down on getting her deal through, she can step down as a hero who delivered Brexit against the odds.
MPs should know that politics is about taking the world as you find it, not as you would like it to be.
And leadership is about taking decisions, even when all the choices are unpalatable.
It is fine to stick to principle, but not if that means emulating King Canute’s stand against the waves.
If Brexit does not happen it will be a ­national democratic calamity.
As the party in power, the Conservatives will be punished.
That means risking ­letting Jeremy Corbyn — a leader who can not even deal with anti-Semitism in his own party — seize control of the country.
The stakes simply could not be higher. If this chance is squandered we will likely never get another moment.
Right across Europe, critics of Brussels will think “even Britain couldn’t break free”.
For the sake of the country and for the future of the oldest and most successful political party in history, Tory MPs must, indeed, all hang together. Or most assuredly they shall all hang separately.
Henry Newman is director of the Open Europe think tank.
The PM's deal does everything Eurosceptics wanted and with a legal change on the backstop it deserves to pass
BREXIT is at risk. It’s under attack from all sides.
Jeremy Corbyn is offering Parliament a path to overturn the referendum through a so-called People’s Vote.
A cross-party group of MPs are desperate to postpone Brexit.
And passionate Eurosceptics risk ­letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Ever since the Prime Minister lost the Conservative majority in June 2017, it has been squeaky bum time for Brexiteers.
If we are not careful we could lose Brexit altogether, with a long extension leading to eventual reversal. That would be a democratic disaster.
Yes, this Government has made a catalogue of errors from triggering Article 50 with no plan, to letting Brussels decide the sequencing of Brexit talks.
But at this stage, with the clock ticking towards midnight, there is no time for “coulda woulda shoulda” about what went wrong when.
Sun readers knew all along that in a negotiation there’s always give and take.
You can’t get everything you want.
And although the Prime Minister’s deal has flaws, it’s actually far better than many critics will admit.
Those same critics can also be wildly unrealistic about the actual alternatives on offer now.
The most likely alternative is in fact a far softer Brexit, which leaves Britain with less not more control.
Imagine if David Cameron had won from Brussels a deal that took back control of immigration, let us set our rules covering the key services sector, and allowed us to scrap the wasteful Common Agricultural Policy.
Let’s suppose it gave us control of our fishing waters, let us choose environmental and employment laws as long as we kept to certain general standards, and which got us out of the EU’s political project. He would have been a hero.
Yet that is precisely what Theresa May has secured. Even in a worse-case scenario — if we end up in the backstop — we will have achieved all those things and will get a veto over new EU directives.
We wouldn’t have to pay a single penny of membership costs.
I’m not pretending the deal is flawless. We need to improve it to know we can’t be trapped in the backstop forever, and to ensure the EU can’t impose different rules in Northern Ireland from the rest of our country.
But it sometimes seems that the Prime Minister’s critics cannot see the wood for the trees.
Eurosceptics used to say what we wanted was to turn off the tap of endless new European laws, to stop the ratchet where the answer to every question seemed to be “more Brussels”, and to go back to a trading relationship. That’s ­literally what this deal does.
So why did her deal suffer such a ­historic defeat last month?
Some MPs have deeply held concerns, particularly about the backstop, that the Government is rightly trying to address. Some are pursuing perfection. Others — especially in the Labour Party — are just playing politics.
But there’s also a group for whom the real issue is personal as well as the policy.
They just don’t have faith in the Prime Minister. This is no big secret.
More than a third of Tory MPs — 117 of them — voted against her leadership back in December. To get through that, Theresa May had to promise she wouldn’t lead the party into the next election. But now she may have to go further.
I’ve heard senior backbenchers on all sides of the Conservative Party say that their concern about voting for the deal, is that it could mean the Prime Minister stays in place to negotiate our future relationship with the EU.
They want someone else to take forward the next phase.
Politics is unfair.
If Theresa May manages to agree a deal — and I think she ultimately can — she will have achieved Mission Impossible.
But to scrape that deal through the Commons she might, as Sun columnist James Forsyth has suggested, have to throw the kitchen sink at it by agreeing to step aside.
Downing Street aides privately acknowledge that she doesn’t want to “go on and on”. They know she faces another inevitable and painful leadership challenge by the end of the year — they want to see her leave with her dignity intact.
It’s likely Brussels will eventually give some reassurance on the backstop.
This might not quite be the full ­open-heart surgery changes to the deal some want.
But the test should be whether the legal position changes. If it does, then the deal deserves to pass.
And then, come the end of March, we can stop endlessly re-running referendum arguments about whether we should or shouldn’t leave the EU.
We can get on with arguing about what sort of country we want to be after Brexit.
We can discuss what we want to do with our newly won ­freedoms.
And as a country we can start to move on together.
The PM's deal does everything Eurosceptics wanted and with a legal change on the backstop it deserves to pass
BREXIT is at risk. It’s under attack from all sides.
Jeremy Corbyn is offering Parliament a path to overturn the referendum through a so-called People’s Vote.
A cross-party group of MPs are desperate to postpone Brexit.
And passionate Eurosceptics risk ­letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Ever since the Prime Minister lost the Conservative majority in June 2017, it has been squeaky bum time for Brexiteers.
If we are not careful we could lose Brexit altogether, with a long extension leading to eventual reversal. That would be a democratic disaster.
Yes, this Government has made a catalogue of errors from triggering Article 50 with no plan, to letting Brussels decide the sequencing of Brexit talks.
But at this stage, with the clock ticking towards midnight, there is no time for “coulda woulda shoulda” about what went wrong when.
Sun readers knew all along that in a negotiation there’s always give and take.
You can’t get everything you want.
And although the Prime Minister’s deal has flaws, it’s actually far better than many critics will admit.
Those same critics can also be wildly unrealistic about the actual alternatives on offer now.
The most likely alternative is in fact a far softer Brexit, which leaves Britain with less not more control.
Imagine if David Cameron had won from Brussels a deal that took back control of immigration, let us set our rules covering the key services sector, and allowed us to scrap the wasteful Common Agricultural Policy.
Let’s suppose it gave us control of our fishing waters, let us choose environmental and employment laws as long as we kept to certain general standards, and which got us out of the EU’s political project. He would have been a hero.
Yet that is precisely what Theresa May has secured. Even in a worse-case scenario — if we end up in the backstop — we will have achieved all those things and will get a veto over new EU directives.
We wouldn’t have to pay a single penny of membership costs.
I’m not pretending the deal is flawless. We need to improve it to know we can’t be trapped in the backstop forever, and to ensure the EU can’t impose different rules in Northern Ireland from the rest of our country.
But it sometimes seems that the Prime Minister’s critics cannot see the wood for the trees.
Eurosceptics used to say what we wanted was to turn off the tap of endless new European laws, to stop the ratchet where the answer to every question seemed to be “more Brussels”, and to go back to a trading relationship. That’s ­literally what this deal does.
So why did her deal suffer such a ­historic defeat last month?
Some MPs have deeply held concerns, particularly about the backstop, that the Government is rightly trying to address. Some are pursuing perfection. Others — especially in the Labour Party — are just playing politics.
But there’s also a group for whom the real issue is personal as well as the policy.
They just don’t have faith in the Prime Minister. This is no big secret.
More than a third of Tory MPs — 117 of them — voted against her leadership back in December. To get through that, Theresa May had to promise she wouldn’t lead the party into the next election. But now she may have to go further.
I’ve heard senior backbenchers on all sides of the Conservative Party say that their concern about voting for the deal, is that it could mean the Prime Minister stays in place to negotiate our future relationship with the EU.
They want someone else to take forward the next phase.
Politics is unfair.
If Theresa May manages to agree a deal — and I think she ultimately can — she will have achieved Mission Impossible.
But to scrape that deal through the Commons she might, as Sun columnist James Forsyth has suggested, have to throw the kitchen sink at it by agreeing to step aside.
Downing Street aides privately acknowledge that she doesn’t want to “go on and on”. They know she faces another inevitable and painful leadership challenge by the end of the year — they want to see her leave with her dignity intact.
It’s likely Brussels will eventually give some reassurance on the backstop.
This might not quite be the full ­open-heart surgery changes to the deal some want.
But the test should be whether the legal position changes. If it does, then the deal deserves to pass.
And then, come the end of March, we can stop endlessly re-running referendum arguments about whether we should or shouldn’t leave the EU.
We can get on with arguing about what sort of country we want to be after Brexit.
We can discuss what we want to do with our newly won ­freedoms.
And as a country we can start to move on together.
Brexiteers could rally behind the PM if she can persuade EU chiefs to ditch the hated Irish backstop
THERESA May’s hated Brexit deal was branded “a load of b*****ks” by Iain Duncan Smith on Saturday.
But the former Tory leader admitted a few tweaks could swiftly turn it into “the dog’s b*****ks”.
He signalled that Brexit-backing MPs could rally behind the PM if she can persuade EU chiefs to ditch the dreaded backstop.
Senior Tories have given Mrs May a fresh glimmer of hope ahead of her another crunch Commons vote this week.
Rebels who helped inflict a humiliating defeat a fortnight ago are ready to back an MP’s bid to strengthen her arm when she goes into battle in Brussels.
They will back an amendment by Sir Graham Brady stating they will support the deal if the backstop – which could keep the UK locked indefinitely in the Customs Union and unable to strike its own trade deals - is swapped for “alternative arrangements”.
In a further boost, the DUP is preparing to throw its weight behind the move – giving Mrs May and the EU an opening to break the deadlock.
Mr Duncan Smith, who has held private talks with the PM, said: “Many people now think she has got to go back to the EU and seek changes to her agreement.
“The most important one will be to replace the backstop with an alternative protocol that will not damage the UK’s chances of striking trade deals with non-EU countries.
“That’s the position of many Brexiteers right now. But we wonder if that’s where the PM is.”
Brexit deal can go from 'load of b*****ks' to 'the dog's b*****ks' with a few tweaks
He added: “Her deal is a load of b*****ks but with a few decent tweaks she could turn it into the dog’s b*****ks.
“I was opposed to the Prime Minister’s deal for very good reason. The question for me now is what does SHE want?
“It’s not clear how sure the government is about delivering on the referendum. That would mean leaving the door open to No Deal and going back to the EU and demanding significant changes. If she does then that’s great. If not, then all the discussions of the past few weeks have been pointless.
In a second boost, Cabinet sources said the government now believes the EU is about to blink first on the backstop.
It has become increasingly clear it is the main sticking point and with 61 days until Brexit, its removal would provide a life-saver for Mrs May, a solution for Brussels and a face-saving climbdown for Brexiteers and Leavers alike.
About 15 to 20 Brexit hardliners are said to be looking for a “ladder” to end their stand against the deal – amid fears Remainers could force Britain to stay in the EU.
But the powerful European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, has privately warned the PM she must set out exactly what concessions she will seek from the EU if she is to win back their full support.
They insist she doesn’t need to extend Article 50 as we have agreed to a two-year implementation period.
On Saturday she was given a further boost as the Irish government’s insistence on the need for a backstop collapsed into chaos.
Dublin’s Europe minister Helen McEntee was forced to take to the airwaves promising never to erect a hard border hours after her PM Leo Varadkar warned troops could be deployed to man crossings in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Britain’s former Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson said: “The Irish government is clearly in disarray over the backstop.
“They have stirred up hysteria over the border as a mechanism to bully us into staying. There is no need for any infrastructure on the border if they listen to experienced voices from Northern Ireland like David Trimble and cooperate constructively on our proposals to use existing customs techniques and processes within existing EU customs law.”
Brexiteers could rally behind the PM if she can persuade EU chiefs to ditch the hated Irish backstop
THERESA May’s hated Brexit deal was branded “a load of b*****ks” by Iain Duncan Smith on Saturday.
But the former Tory leader admitted a few tweaks could swiftly turn it into “the dog’s b*****ks”.
He signalled that Brexit-backing MPs could rally behind the PM if she can persuade EU chiefs to ditch the dreaded backstop.
Senior Tories have given Mrs May a fresh glimmer of hope ahead of her another crunch Commons vote this week.
Rebels who helped inflict a humiliating defeat a fortnight ago are ready to back an MP’s bid to strengthen her arm when she goes into battle in Brussels.
They will back an amendment by Sir Graham Brady stating they will support the deal if the backstop – which could keep the UK locked indefinitely in the Customs Union and unable to strike its own trade deals - is swapped for “alternative arrangements”.
In a further boost, the DUP is preparing to throw its weight behind the move – giving Mrs May and the EU an opening to break the deadlock.
Mr Duncan Smith, who has held private talks with the PM, said: “Many people now think she has got to go back to the EU and seek changes to her agreement.
“The most important one will be to replace the backstop with an alternative protocol that will not damage the UK’s chances of striking trade deals with non-EU countries.
“That’s the position of many Brexiteers right now. But we wonder if that’s where the PM is.”
Brexit deal can go from 'load of b*****ks' to 'the dog's b*****ks' with a few tweaks
He added: “Her deal is a load of b*****ks but with a few decent tweaks she could turn it into the dog’s b*****ks.
“I was opposed to the Prime Minister’s deal for very good reason. The question for me now is what does SHE want?
“It’s not clear how sure the government is about delivering on the referendum. That would mean leaving the door open to No Deal and going back to the EU and demanding significant changes. If she does then that’s great. If not, then all the discussions of the past few weeks have been pointless.
In a second boost, Cabinet sources said the government now believes the EU is about to blink first on the backstop.
It has become increasingly clear it is the main sticking point and with 61 days until Brexit, its removal would provide a life-saver for Mrs May, a solution for Brussels and a face-saving climbdown for Brexiteers and Leavers alike.
About 15 to 20 Brexit hardliners are said to be looking for a “ladder” to end their stand against the deal – amid fears Remainers could force Britain to stay in the EU.
But the powerful European Research Group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, has privately warned the PM she must set out exactly what concessions she will seek from the EU if she is to win back their full support.
They insist she doesn’t need to extend Article 50 as we have agreed to a two-year implementation period.
On Saturday she was given a further boost as the Irish government’s insistence on the need for a backstop collapsed into chaos.
Dublin’s Europe minister Helen McEntee was forced to take to the airwaves promising never to erect a hard border hours after her PM Leo Varadkar warned troops could be deployed to man crossings in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Britain’s former Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson said: “The Irish government is clearly in disarray over the backstop.
“They have stirred up hysteria over the border as a mechanism to bully us into staying. There is no need for any infrastructure on the border if they listen to experienced voices from Northern Ireland like David Trimble and cooperate constructively on our proposals to use existing customs techniques and processes within existing EU customs law.”
DONALD Trump today throws his weight behind Boris Johnson to be Britain’s next PM — and reveals other Tory leadership hopefuls have also begged for his backing.
The US President spoke glowingly of the ex-Foreign Secretary in a world exclusive interview with The Sun ahead of his three-day state visit to London, starting on Monday.
His bombshell intervention into the Conservatives’ contest — just a few days before MPs start voting — is a major breach of protocol.
It risks sparking a full-blown diplomatic rift between London and Washington if the mop-haired former London mayor fails to take the Tory crown.
While stopping short of offering his full endorsement, Mr Trump told The Sun: “It’s something that I find very interesting.
“I actually have studied it very hard. I know the different players.
“But I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent.”
The President added: “I like him. I have always liked him. I don’t know that he is going to be chosen, but I think he is a very good guy, a very talented person.
“He has been very positive about me and our country.”
His intervention — and his other outspoken opinions today — mean his visit is set to be the most controversial by a serving US leader.
It was his second interview with The Sun within 12 months, having spoken to us last July ahead of his first visit to Britain in office.
Also during the exclusive interview:
Mr Trump, 72, also insisted that Boris’s well-known philandering scandals should not halt him from winning.
Asked whether he thought Mr Johnson’s extra-marital affairs and love child mattered, the President replied: “Well, it always matters, but I think that it’s certainly not what it was 20 years ago, and not certainly what it was 50 years ago. I think today it matters much less.”
Mr Trump spoke to The Sun from behind his desk in the Oval Office, the White House inner sanctum which all US presidents have used since 1909.
In more explosive remarks, he also claimed that he could have a big impact on the race for No10 — currently being fought by 12 different candidates.
And he claimed that several other contenders had also approached him for his public help.
He said: “Other people have asked me for an endorsement too. I have been asked for endorsements”.
Quizzed on who, Mr Trump replied: “Well, I don’t want to say who but other people have asked me for endorsements, yes”.
He added: “I could help anybody if I endorse them. I mean, we’ve had endorsement where they have gone up for forty, fifty points at a shot.
“Now that is here, but I understand over there would be a great endorsement.”
Mr Trump’s disclosure that others have approached him is likely to trigger a Westminster hunt for their identities.
He also revealed to The Sun that he looks favourably on Jeremy Hunt too, saying of the Foreign Secretary: “Yup. Like him”.
The President heaped praise on a recent leadership race offer from Mr Hunt to significantly increase UK defence spending to well above the two per cent minimum Nato target if he becomes PM. Mr Trump said: “I think that’s great. I love it”.
I don’t imagine any other US president was closer to your great land
Asked if he would like all the candidates to make the same pledge on military spending, he added: “I think it’s a good thing.
“I think it’s great for the UK, and it would be part of trade.
“We make the greatest military equipment in the world.
“The UK should be able to defend themselves. It’s a great and very special place.” The President made reference to golf courses he owns on this side of the Atlantic.
He said: “As you know, OK, so, I own Turnberry, it’s a great place, one of the most beautiful.
DONALD Trump has claimed he is “loved” in Britain and fears of protests over his state visit are overblown.
The Metropolitan Police are mounting a huge ­security operation in London ahead of his arrival on Monday.
But despite that, he insisted he is actually very popular with Brits.
And he claimed no US leader has ever been better disposed to the UK than him, with his mother’s Scottish roots and the three golf courses he owns in Scotland and Ireland.
He said: “I don’t im­agine any US president was ever closer to your great land.”
He said: “You know, there was a time quite a while ago, six or seven years ago, when a group of people came out against me in some form.
“They were totally over-ridden by another group of people that was far larger and everybody said, ‘Let’s take a pass’.
“Now I think I am really — I hope — I am really loved in the UK. I certainly love the UK.”
He added: “I have a mother born in Scotland.
“And as you know, Stornoway is serious Scotland.
“My mother loved Scotland. My mother also loved the Queen.”
“And in Ireland I own Doonbeg, OK, and my mother was born in Stornoway. OK, so that’s a lot of representation for a US president.
“I don’t imagine any other US president was closer to your great land.”
But Mr Trump also had some harsh words for another Tory leadership front-runner, Environment Secretary Michael Gove. He last week accused Mr Trump of “sabre rattling” over his aggressive policy towards Iran.
Having pulled the US out of the international nuclear deal with Tehran last year, the President recently dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf to retaliate against what America claimed were new direct threats to its interests in the region.
Mr Trump said of Mr Gove’s criticism: “Well, I’m just trying to help him and it’s not costing him anything.
“I’m trying to make it so that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Very simple. And I can’t think of anybody other than us that would benefit more than the UK, so he should be all for that.
“Nuclear weapons is the single biggest problem that the world has and we can’t allow them to proliferate. We just can’t allow it.”
Asked if Mr Gove was one of the candidates who had asked for his endorsement, Mr Trump said firmly: “No he wasn’t”.
By Tom Newton Dunn, Political Editor in Washington DC

IT was one of those days in Trump’s Washington DC.
That morning, special counsel Robert Mueller had suggested the President be impeached for obstructing justice.
Then, a few hours before our appointed 20-minute slot with him, a man set himself on fire and burned himself to death on a lawn 200 metres from the Oval Office.
But by 5pm, there seemed to be only one thing on POTUS’s mind.
“I have a question for you,” said Donald Trump, as he sat down behind the Oval Office’s famous Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria.
“Tell me, what is going on? Who’s it going to be?”, and our interview started with a few minutes’ gossip on who’d win the Tory leadership race.
Whatever his critics say about his command of world affairs, one thing the 45th President of the United States does understand, and is intrigued by, is the pursuit of power.
Trump’s West Wing is far from the frantic hive of activity you see in the TV box sets.
Maybe it was the time of day, but it was striking how calm and quiet it was throughout our time inside it.
An air of unchallenged control pervades it. It’s far smaller than you imagine too.
We waited for 40 minutes in an ante corridor, lined with deep sofas that could have been the drawing room of an English country house, complete with piles of heavy coffee table books.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka, one of his closest advisers, was one of the few to walk past us, saying “hello” with a polite smile, until an aide announced the President was ready for us.
For a few moments, we were alone in the Oval Office with his no-nonsense Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
Trump then emerged from a door that leads into his private den, which is lined – they say – with a lot of TV screens for him to cheer/shout at.
A man known not to be fond of reading long briefs, President Trump is either good at hiding irritation or was genuinely unaware of an awful lot of the slants doled out to him in Britain, be they from Jeremy Corbyn or Meghan Markle.
Perhaps that’s how they keep it so peaceful in the West Wing these days.
 
DONALD Trump today throws his weight behind Boris Johnson to be Britain’s next PM — and reveals other Tory leadership hopefuls have also begged for his backing.
The US President spoke glowingly of the ex-Foreign Secretary in a world exclusive interview with The Sun ahead of his three-day state visit to London, starting on Monday.
His bombshell intervention into the Conservatives’ contest — just a few days before MPs start voting — is a major breach of protocol.
It risks sparking a full-blown diplomatic rift between London and Washington if the mop-haired former London mayor fails to take the Tory crown.
While stopping short of offering his full endorsement, Mr Trump told The Sun: “It’s something that I find very interesting.
“I actually have studied it very hard. I know the different players.
“But I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent.”
The President added: “I like him. I have always liked him. I don’t know that he is going to be chosen, but I think he is a very good guy, a very talented person.
“He has been very positive about me and our country.”
His intervention — and his other outspoken opinions today — mean his visit is set to be the most controversial by a serving US leader.
It was his second interview with The Sun within 12 months, having spoken to us last July ahead of his first visit to Britain in office.
Also during the exclusive interview:
Mr Trump, 72, also insisted that Boris’s well-known philandering scandals should not halt him from winning.
Asked whether he thought Mr Johnson’s extra-marital affairs and love child mattered, the President replied: “Well, it always matters, but I think that it’s certainly not what it was 20 years ago, and not certainly what it was 50 years ago. I think today it matters much less.”
Mr Trump spoke to The Sun from behind his desk in the Oval Office, the White House inner sanctum which all US presidents have used since 1909.
In more explosive remarks, he also claimed that he could have a big impact on the race for No10 — currently being fought by 12 different candidates.
And he claimed that several other contenders had also approached him for his public help.
He said: “Other people have asked me for an endorsement too. I have been asked for endorsements”.
Quizzed on who, Mr Trump replied: “Well, I don’t want to say who but other people have asked me for endorsements, yes”.
He added: “I could help anybody if I endorse them. I mean, we’ve had endorsement where they have gone up for forty, fifty points at a shot.
“Now that is here, but I understand over there would be a great endorsement.”
Mr Trump’s disclosure that others have approached him is likely to trigger a Westminster hunt for their identities.
He also revealed to The Sun that he looks favourably on Jeremy Hunt too, saying of the Foreign Secretary: “Yup. Like him”.
The President heaped praise on a recent leadership race offer from Mr Hunt to significantly increase UK defence spending to well above the two per cent minimum Nato target if he becomes PM. Mr Trump said: “I think that’s great. I love it”.
I don’t imagine any other US president was closer to your great land
Asked if he would like all the candidates to make the same pledge on military spending, he added: “I think it’s a good thing.
“I think it’s great for the UK, and it would be part of trade.
“We make the greatest military equipment in the world.
“The UK should be able to defend themselves. It’s a great and very special place.” The President made reference to golf courses he owns on this side of the Atlantic.
He said: “As you know, OK, so, I own Turnberry, it’s a great place, one of the most beautiful.
DONALD Trump has claimed he is “loved” in Britain and fears of protests over his state visit are overblown.
The Metropolitan Police are mounting a huge ­security operation in London ahead of his arrival on Monday.
But despite that, he insisted he is actually very popular with Brits.
And he claimed no US leader has ever been better disposed to the UK than him, with his mother’s Scottish roots and the three golf courses he owns in Scotland and Ireland.
He said: “I don’t im­agine any US president was ever closer to your great land.”
He said: “You know, there was a time quite a while ago, six or seven years ago, when a group of people came out against me in some form.
“They were totally over-ridden by another group of people that was far larger and everybody said, ‘Let’s take a pass’.
“Now I think I am really — I hope — I am really loved in the UK. I certainly love the UK.”
He added: “I have a mother born in Scotland.
“And as you know, Stornoway is serious Scotland.
“My mother loved Scotland. My mother also loved the Queen.”
“And in Ireland I own Doonbeg, OK, and my mother was born in Stornoway. OK, so that’s a lot of representation for a US president.
“I don’t imagine any other US president was closer to your great land.”
But Mr Trump also had some harsh words for another Tory leadership front-runner, Environment Secretary Michael Gove. He last week accused Mr Trump of “sabre rattling” over his aggressive policy towards Iran.
Having pulled the US out of the international nuclear deal with Tehran last year, the President recently dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf to retaliate against what America claimed were new direct threats to its interests in the region.
Mr Trump said of Mr Gove’s criticism: “Well, I’m just trying to help him and it’s not costing him anything.
“I’m trying to make it so that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Very simple. And I can’t think of anybody other than us that would benefit more than the UK, so he should be all for that.
“Nuclear weapons is the single biggest problem that the world has and we can’t allow them to proliferate. We just can’t allow it.”
Asked if Mr Gove was one of the candidates who had asked for his endorsement, Mr Trump said firmly: “No he wasn’t”.
By Tom Newton Dunn, Political Editor in Washington DC

IT was one of those days in Trump’s Washington DC.
That morning, special counsel Robert Mueller had suggested the President be impeached for obstructing justice.
Then, a few hours before our appointed 20-minute slot with him, a man set himself on fire and burned himself to death on a lawn 200 metres from the Oval Office.
But by 5pm, there seemed to be only one thing on POTUS’s mind.
“I have a question for you,” said Donald Trump, as he sat down behind the Oval Office’s famous Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria.
“Tell me, what is going on? Who’s it going to be?”, and our interview started with a few minutes’ gossip on who’d win the Tory leadership race.
Whatever his critics say about his command of world affairs, one thing the 45th President of the United States does understand, and is intrigued by, is the pursuit of power.
Trump’s West Wing is far from the frantic hive of activity you see in the TV box sets.
Maybe it was the time of day, but it was striking how calm and quiet it was throughout our time inside it.
An air of unchallenged control pervades it. It’s far smaller than you imagine too.
We waited for 40 minutes in an ante corridor, lined with deep sofas that could have been the drawing room of an English country house, complete with piles of heavy coffee table books.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka, one of his closest advisers, was one of the few to walk past us, saying “hello” with a polite smile, until an aide announced the President was ready for us.
For a few moments, we were alone in the Oval Office with his no-nonsense Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.
Trump then emerged from a door that leads into his private den, which is lined – they say – with a lot of TV screens for him to cheer/shout at.
A man known not to be fond of reading long briefs, President Trump is either good at hiding irritation or was genuinely unaware of an awful lot of the slants doled out to him in Britain, be they from Jeremy Corbyn or Meghan Markle.
Perhaps that’s how they keep it so peaceful in the West Wing these days.
 
The former Foreign Secretary praised the PM but repeatedly dodged questions about whether he was gearing up for another Tory leadership bid as party prepares for its annual conference
BORIS Johnson has refused four times to rule out standing against Theresa May if she won’t dump her Chequers plan for Brexit.
The former Foreign Secretary praised the Prime Minister but repeatedly dodged questions about whether he was gearing up for another Tory leadership bid.
It comes as he blasted Mrs May’s Brexit blueprint and outlined his own “Super Canada” arrangement in today's Telegraph.
Meanwhile the party prepares for its annual conference, with a host of senior figures on manoeuvres to try and dislodge Mrs May amid anger about how the negotiations with the EU are going.
Mr Johnson, the bookies' favourite to take over, is doing just one fringe event this week - but it is set to be one of the standout moments of the gathering in Birmingham..
Ahead of that he spoke to the BBC, whose political editor accused him of using his article to “stir up trouble”, saying the piece “is really about your own ambition”.
He denied this was the case before Ms Kuenssberg said he could end the speculation he was planning another tilt at the top job by ruling out a leadership bid.
Mr Johnson swerved the question and responded: “I'm doing this, I want to be absolutely clear, I'm doing this because, I resigned from her Cabinet because I could not see how I could not see how I could support an arrangement I don’t think is in this country's economic or political interest.”
But she, pressed him, asking: “Would you rule out a bid for the leadership would you rule out challenging Theresa May?”
Again failing to answer directly, he said: “What I want, and I think I speak for the overwhelming majority of my parliamentary colleagues in this,  what I want is to see the Prime Minister our prime minister get back to the ideas that she outlined at Lancaster House and which are still part of her vision.”
She gave it a third try, asking: “If she doesn’t budge do you rule out challenging her?”
Mr Johnson replied: “My job is to speak up for what I believe in and the vision that I’ve set out today and I believe in it very very sincerely and you know, I'm going to keep going for as long as it takes.”
Ms Kuenssberg tried one last time, saying: “People hear though, you not ruling out challenging her if she doesn’t’ change her mind??”
However the ex-Mayor of London would not tackle the question directly, instead answering: “The Prime Minister will go on.
“What she as she said to us herself, and as she said to the country. She’s a remarkable person, she will go on for as long as, as she feels it necessary.”
Elsewhere in the interview though he did not say that he would definitely vote down the PM’s Chequers deal if it was brought back from Brussels for sign off by Parliament,
Mr Johnson said: “We will have to see. At the moment, I cannot see how I can support Chequers.”
It comes after one of his former Foreign Office colleagues, the Europe Minister Alan Duncan, delivered damning criticism of his attempts to be PM.
He told the Spectator: “Publicity is his cocaine. He needs a regular fix. And he equates getting publicity with having political power and authority and respect.
“But I think what he doesn’t realise is that whereas he used to be an electoral asset, that is now waning.”
Of the suggestion he could win a leadership contest, Mr Duncan raged: “Total, total rubbish. This is a fiction of journalistic imagination.
“And it’s simply not true. It’s just not borne out amongst any colleagues you talk to, when they sort of talk to the activists. It’s just a total myth.”
The minister also said his job was to “make sure that the Conservative party is not turned into the mutant child of Ukip”, which he said was where the ERG group of hard Brexiteers led by Jacob Rees-Mogg was taking it.
He said over the last 25 years “you will find innumerable instances of things I was supposed to have said, blurted out, infelicities of expression, political incorrectitude of one kind or another”.
But speaking to Sky News he claimed for every single one “I’m trying to say something radically different from what people impute, and what I would ask your viewers to do is actually to go and look at the articles concerned.”
Pushed about calling those who ear a full face veil “bank robbers” and “letter boxes”, he added:  “As I say I stand by what I wrote.
“I urge my friends and colleagues to look carefully at what I wrote.
“I think you’ll find invariably that there is an element of confected indignation about things that I’ve said that are wrenched out of context and in this particular context.”
In the interview he also said he stood by his description of Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan as “wrapping a suicide vest wrapped around Britain”.
The former Foreign Secretary praised the PM but repeatedly dodged questions about whether he was gearing up for another Tory leadership bid as party prepares for its annual conference
BORIS Johnson has refused four times to rule out standing against Theresa May if she won’t dump her Chequers plan for Brexit.
The former Foreign Secretary praised the Prime Minister but repeatedly dodged questions about whether he was gearing up for another Tory leadership bid.
It comes as he blasted Mrs May’s Brexit blueprint and outlined his own “Super Canada” arrangement in today's Telegraph.
Meanwhile the party prepares for its annual conference, with a host of senior figures on manoeuvres to try and dislodge Mrs May amid anger about how the negotiations with the EU are going.
Mr Johnson, the bookies' favourite to take over, is doing just one fringe event this week - but it is set to be one of the standout moments of the gathering in Birmingham..
Ahead of that he spoke to the BBC, whose political editor accused him of using his article to “stir up trouble”, saying the piece “is really about your own ambition”.
He denied this was the case before Ms Kuenssberg said he could end the speculation he was planning another tilt at the top job by ruling out a leadership bid.
Mr Johnson swerved the question and responded: “I'm doing this, I want to be absolutely clear, I'm doing this because, I resigned from her Cabinet because I could not see how I could not see how I could support an arrangement I don’t think is in this country's economic or political interest.”
But she, pressed him, asking: “Would you rule out a bid for the leadership would you rule out challenging Theresa May?”
Again failing to answer directly, he said: “What I want, and I think I speak for the overwhelming majority of my parliamentary colleagues in this,  what I want is to see the Prime Minister our prime minister get back to the ideas that she outlined at Lancaster House and which are still part of her vision.”
She gave it a third try, asking: “If she doesn’t budge do you rule out challenging her?”
Mr Johnson replied: “My job is to speak up for what I believe in and the vision that I’ve set out today and I believe in it very very sincerely and you know, I'm going to keep going for as long as it takes.”
Ms Kuenssberg tried one last time, saying: “People hear though, you not ruling out challenging her if she doesn’t’ change her mind??”
However the ex-Mayor of London would not tackle the question directly, instead answering: “The Prime Minister will go on.
“What she as she said to us herself, and as she said to the country. She’s a remarkable person, she will go on for as long as, as she feels it necessary.”
Elsewhere in the interview though he did not say that he would definitely vote down the PM’s Chequers deal if it was brought back from Brussels for sign off by Parliament,
Mr Johnson said: “We will have to see. At the moment, I cannot see how I can support Chequers.”
It comes after one of his former Foreign Office colleagues, the Europe Minister Alan Duncan, delivered damning criticism of his attempts to be PM.
He told the Spectator: “Publicity is his cocaine. He needs a regular fix. And he equates getting publicity with having political power and authority and respect.
“But I think what he doesn’t realise is that whereas he used to be an electoral asset, that is now waning.”
Of the suggestion he could win a leadership contest, Mr Duncan raged: “Total, total rubbish. This is a fiction of journalistic imagination.
“And it’s simply not true. It’s just not borne out amongst any colleagues you talk to, when they sort of talk to the activists. It’s just a total myth.”
The minister also said his job was to “make sure that the Conservative party is not turned into the mutant child of Ukip”, which he said was where the ERG group of hard Brexiteers led by Jacob Rees-Mogg was taking it.
He said over the last 25 years “you will find innumerable instances of things I was supposed to have said, blurted out, infelicities of expression, political incorrectitude of one kind or another”.
But speaking to Sky News he claimed for every single one “I’m trying to say something radically different from what people impute, and what I would ask your viewers to do is actually to go and look at the articles concerned.”
Pushed about calling those who ear a full face veil “bank robbers” and “letter boxes”, he added:  “As I say I stand by what I wrote.
“I urge my friends and colleagues to look carefully at what I wrote.
“I think you’ll find invariably that there is an element of confected indignation about things that I’ve said that are wrenched out of context and in this particular context.”
In the interview he also said he stood by his description of Theresa May’s Chequers Brexit plan as “wrapping a suicide vest wrapped around Britain”.
In 2016, 17.4million British voters called on us to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade from the EU and to transform our country - yet we have failed to achieve the full Brexit we voted for
In 2016, 17.4 million British voters called on us to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade from the EU and to transform our country into a self-governing, free-trading nation, once again.
Yet since then we have failed to achieve the full Brexit we voted for.
This is because we have conducted the negotiation as though we were engaged in a slow capitulation. We have failed to stand up to Barnier and his negotiators and at every twist and turn we have offered more concessions.
First, they demanded we negotiate and sign a “withdrawal agreement”, setting out the terms under which we leave the EU on March 29, 2019, before we discuss the trading relationship we want after Brexit.
At first we said we wouldn’t accept such a demand, this was because the Conservative Manifesto during the last General Election promised that the withdrawal agreement and our future trading relationship with the EU would be discussed at the same time.
This was for a good reason, most of what the EU wants from us are in the withdrawal agreement and without them we would have little leverage to negotiate a trade deal, something even a child in the playground would understand.
Yet despite our red lines, we caved in last December. That’s when, forgetting about our commitment to the British people at the election, we fell into the EU trap.
UK Commitments on defence, intelligence and security – just given away. Then we agreed to leave but abide by the rules of the customs Union and single market in an ‘implementation phase’ and when they demanded money, we gave away £39billion.
Finally we made perhaps the greatest mistake of all; we agreed that if we didn’t get a trade deal with the EU then Northern Ireland would remain in the EU customs Union and some parts of the Single market.
In effect, we were handing the power to the EU to break up the union of the United Kingdom, we gave it away.
Now as insult piles on to insult, we hear our Government is prepared to extend the implementation phase by another year, beyond 2020.
I ask why would anyone do this? It is without rhyme or reason. It would mean we would be under the control of the EU for much longer and we would have to pay around £15bn more, on top of £39billion.
This would be a disaster. After all, just imagine what we could do with that extra money; for every £1bn we could get 10,000 more doctors and 23,000 more nurses or 20,000 more police officers, the list goes on.
Now just imagine what we could do with £15billion, we could fund things like Universal Credit properly, schools, hospitals and other public services. Instead it looks like we will just give it away. Remember when we used to say no deal is better than a bad deal.
After all, if the EU doesn’t get our money, it would face real, financial difficulties It would have to cancel projects, or insist on securing more money out of the other member states of the EU.
That’s why we must not pay something for nothing why, they haven’t even discussed a trade deal with us.
And talking of trade deals, the 2017 Conservative Manifesto also said that we would implement a “deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.”
The EU agreed one with Canada and Japan and it has told us repeatedly that it wants one.
So why aren’t we telling the EU that we will not agree any of these so called damaging commitments and we will only sit down with them when they stop messing us around and discuss future trade.
Our country is full of extraordinarily talented, innovative and hardworking people.
We really can forge an exciting, strong and prosperous future outside the EU. Yet at the moment government negotiators have no self-belief.
As Mrs Thatcher once said of a colleague, their backbone doesn’t seem to meet their brain.
Time to bin the Northern Irish backstop and stand up for British democracy and freedom or we will leave and they won’t get their money, their security, intelligence or defence help.
At this rate, no deal with these European bully boys is better than this bad deal making us vassals of the EU.
As the song has it, Britons never, never, never will be slaves.
In 2016, 17.4million British voters called on us to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade from the EU and to transform our country - yet we have failed to achieve the full Brexit we voted for
In 2016, 17.4 million British voters called on us to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade from the EU and to transform our country into a self-governing, free-trading nation, once again.
Yet since then we have failed to achieve the full Brexit we voted for.
This is because we have conducted the negotiation as though we were engaged in a slow capitulation. We have failed to stand up to Barnier and his negotiators and at every twist and turn we have offered more concessions.
First, they demanded we negotiate and sign a “withdrawal agreement”, setting out the terms under which we leave the EU on March 29, 2019, before we discuss the trading relationship we want after Brexit.
At first we said we wouldn’t accept such a demand, this was because the Conservative Manifesto during the last General Election promised that the withdrawal agreement and our future trading relationship with the EU would be discussed at the same time.
This was for a good reason, most of what the EU wants from us are in the withdrawal agreement and without them we would have little leverage to negotiate a trade deal, something even a child in the playground would understand.
Yet despite our red lines, we caved in last December. That’s when, forgetting about our commitment to the British people at the election, we fell into the EU trap.
UK Commitments on defence, intelligence and security – just given away. Then we agreed to leave but abide by the rules of the customs Union and single market in an ‘implementation phase’ and when they demanded money, we gave away £39billion.
Finally we made perhaps the greatest mistake of all; we agreed that if we didn’t get a trade deal with the EU then Northern Ireland would remain in the EU customs Union and some parts of the Single market.
In effect, we were handing the power to the EU to break up the union of the United Kingdom, we gave it away.
Now as insult piles on to insult, we hear our Government is prepared to extend the implementation phase by another year, beyond 2020.
I ask why would anyone do this? It is without rhyme or reason. It would mean we would be under the control of the EU for much longer and we would have to pay around £15bn more, on top of £39billion.
This would be a disaster. After all, just imagine what we could do with that extra money; for every £1bn we could get 10,000 more doctors and 23,000 more nurses or 20,000 more police officers, the list goes on.
Now just imagine what we could do with £15billion, we could fund things like Universal Credit properly, schools, hospitals and other public services. Instead it looks like we will just give it away. Remember when we used to say no deal is better than a bad deal.
After all, if the EU doesn’t get our money, it would face real, financial difficulties It would have to cancel projects, or insist on securing more money out of the other member states of the EU.
That’s why we must not pay something for nothing why, they haven’t even discussed a trade deal with us.
And talking of trade deals, the 2017 Conservative Manifesto also said that we would implement a “deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.”
The EU agreed one with Canada and Japan and it has told us repeatedly that it wants one.
So why aren’t we telling the EU that we will not agree any of these so called damaging commitments and we will only sit down with them when they stop messing us around and discuss future trade.
Our country is full of extraordinarily talented, innovative and hardworking people.
We really can forge an exciting, strong and prosperous future outside the EU. Yet at the moment government negotiators have no self-belief.
As Mrs Thatcher once said of a colleague, their backbone doesn’t seem to meet their brain.
Time to bin the Northern Irish backstop and stand up for British democracy and freedom or we will leave and they won’t get their money, their security, intelligence or defence help.
At this rate, no deal with these European bully boys is better than this bad deal making us vassals of the EU.
As the song has it, Britons never, never, never will be slaves.
Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the compromise mechanism – that is likely to involve a joint committee – as a 'a betrayal of the Brexit vote'
SENIOR Brexiteers have claimed Theresa May’s plan to farm out a decision on when Britain can leave the customs union is swelling a backbench rebellion against her.
A joint arbitration mechanism on how to end the UK’s participation in the Irish backstop is being drawn up by No10 and EU officials in Brussels to break a talks deadlock.
Ireland and the EU refused the PM’s initial demand that the UK be allowed to walk out of the arrangement to keep the border open after a set period of time if no trade deal is done.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the compromise mechanism – that is likely to involve a joint committee – “a betrayal of the Brexit vote”.
And as word of it spreads among backbench Tory MPs, the boss of the hardline European Research Group said it was acting as a recruiting tool to bolster his 40-strong alliance of backbenchers who have vowed to vote down Mrs May’s softer Brexit deal.
Mr Rees Mogg told The Sun: “It is completely absurd. Brexit means we can already leave the Customs Union when we want to, why should we give that up? It is a breach of faith with the electorate to stay in it under the authority of a third party.”
The North East Somerset MP added: “We are already seeing evidence that this arbitration mechanism is building our numbers.
“One colleague who is wavering about what to do has approached me in the last 24 hours to say he will vote with us if Mrs May goes ahead with this.”
ERG vice chair Mark Francois added: “Referring to some kind of third party arbitration procedure means, in simple terms, that we are no longer in command of our own destiny and the ERG would therefore oppose it”.
The PM faces a titanic battle to get any deal through Parliament, with just a tiny majority and only around 15 Labour MPs indicating they will back it.
Cabinet ministers were told by No10 that the arbitration mechanism will take several more days’ work, and they will not be called together to sign it off until Monday at the earliest now.
The DUP also said it was ready to bring down Mrs May’s Government if need be rather than accept any Northern Ireland division from the UK.
The unionist party’s chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: “I’m happy to go to the people of Northern Ireland. We’re not afraid of a general election”.
But Labour grandee Andy Burnham gave the PM a small boost by signalling he may back her EU deal.
The Manchester mayor and former Cabinet minister would not rule out campaigning for it when asked, and hinted his support may come in exchange for more devolved powers.
Mr Burnham told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “It’s in everyone’s interests to get a good deal”.
 
Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the compromise mechanism – that is likely to involve a joint committee – as a 'a betrayal of the Brexit vote'
SENIOR Brexiteers have claimed Theresa May’s plan to farm out a decision on when Britain can leave the customs union is swelling a backbench rebellion against her.
A joint arbitration mechanism on how to end the UK’s participation in the Irish backstop is being drawn up by No10 and EU officials in Brussels to break a talks deadlock.
Ireland and the EU refused the PM’s initial demand that the UK be allowed to walk out of the arrangement to keep the border open after a set period of time if no trade deal is done.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg branded the compromise mechanism – that is likely to involve a joint committee – “a betrayal of the Brexit vote”.
And as word of it spreads among backbench Tory MPs, the boss of the hardline European Research Group said it was acting as a recruiting tool to bolster his 40-strong alliance of backbenchers who have vowed to vote down Mrs May’s softer Brexit deal.
Mr Rees Mogg told The Sun: “It is completely absurd. Brexit means we can already leave the Customs Union when we want to, why should we give that up? It is a breach of faith with the electorate to stay in it under the authority of a third party.”
The North East Somerset MP added: “We are already seeing evidence that this arbitration mechanism is building our numbers.
“One colleague who is wavering about what to do has approached me in the last 24 hours to say he will vote with us if Mrs May goes ahead with this.”
ERG vice chair Mark Francois added: “Referring to some kind of third party arbitration procedure means, in simple terms, that we are no longer in command of our own destiny and the ERG would therefore oppose it”.
The PM faces a titanic battle to get any deal through Parliament, with just a tiny majority and only around 15 Labour MPs indicating they will back it.
Cabinet ministers were told by No10 that the arbitration mechanism will take several more days’ work, and they will not be called together to sign it off until Monday at the earliest now.
The DUP also said it was ready to bring down Mrs May’s Government if need be rather than accept any Northern Ireland division from the UK.
The unionist party’s chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said: “I’m happy to go to the people of Northern Ireland. We’re not afraid of a general election”.
But Labour grandee Andy Burnham gave the PM a small boost by signalling he may back her EU deal.
The Manchester mayor and former Cabinet minister would not rule out campaigning for it when asked, and hinted his support may come in exchange for more devolved powers.
Mr Burnham told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “It’s in everyone’s interests to get a good deal”.
 
We are a free and independent country and will prosper if given a proper chance
IT’S time to chuck Chequers.
How in the world did we get here? After the British people voted to leave the European Union we were told “Brexit means Brexit” and that critical “red lines” would guide our negotiations with the EU. So far, so good.
Fast forward to today and we live in a different world. The so-called Chequers Agreement crosses all those red lines.
We are dancing the hokey cokey with the Customs Union and Single Market, which means restricting our freedom for new free trade agreements.
These, of course, are critical to the national economic success of Brexit. European regulations will remain in force — with no input from the UK. So we stay under the rule of European courts and provide a back door for continued freedom of movement for EU nationals into Britain.
Our laws and courts will not be supreme as Chequers would leave us being run by remote control from Brussels.To frighten us into submission we are spoon-fed a daily diet of tales of food shortages, soldiers in the streets and tailbacks from Dover to Land’s End.
But the political graveyards are full of people who underestimated the good sense of the British people, the very people who want to be in command of their own destiny and who don’t want to be taken advantage of by the EU.
And don’t forget that despite Project Fear in the referendum, the majority still voted to Leave and the fear-mongering was proven false.
So false that the fear of recession and job losses was met by a growing economy, UK manufacturing output growing at its fastest rate in a decade, exports to the US in 2016 exceeding £100billion — more than twice as much as exports to any other country — and the fact that our economy is worth more than £2trillion and is the sixth largest in the world.
Project Fear was proven false and so will this latest version of fear, which speaks volumes about what the Government thinks of voters — sheep to frighten into the right pen. But sheep we are not.
I’ve spent the past few weeks meeting party activists, businesses and the public, supporters of Leave and Remain from across the country and the view is that Chequers will give us neither our economic nor political freedom.
Their concerns are simple. There can be no halfway house, where Britain continues to be out of Europe in name but is still run by Europe.
There can be no halfway house when it comes to rule-taking and law-making from the EU, and there is an overwhelming sense of frustration that Britain is being taken advantage of by the EU.
And across the heartlands of the UK this matters, as these people are the ones who have been left behind and who are desperate to take back control of our laws, our borders and our money. There will also be long-term consequences if the largest democratic vote in British history is frustrated.
We will face a crisis of democracy in which ordinary people will utterly lose their faith and trust in politics and in politicians. The implications for political parties at the polls when they fail to deliver is clear, the public will stop voting for them. We cannot ignore the people.
The Conservative Party could throw away hard-won gains in pro-Leave constituencies across the North East and Midlands if we continue to compromise on the referendum and concede ground to Brussels.
Across Europe we have seen political parties and governments do exactly that and the result is a wave of terrifying extreme forms of nationalism and populism. That is not the British way because when our governments deliver, they deliver for our country and our people.
The time has come for our political leaders to believe in Britain and in the British people. They should abandon the weak-kneed approach and instead play to our strengths. Britain wants to secure a trade deal with the EU and seeks to establish a “strong and special partnership” with them.
Talk of no deal really means no trade deal, and if the EU fails to reach a free trade agreement with Britain, in the long term we can thrive under World Trade Organisation rules. The UK exports to 111 countries under WTO rules and over the past 23 years this grew at a rate which was three times faster than those exporting to the major EU nations.
We also know that the European Commission, thanks to the many political problems across the European Union, desperately needs British taxpayers to foot the “exit payment” of £39billion to balance its budget.
And 1.2million EU jobs depend on selling goods to Britain, with London providing much-needed financing to EU businesses. Brexit will not be easy.
There is hard work to do but we are up to the task. We are a free and independent country and will prosper if given a proper chance.
But to let the British lion roar again the first step is to chuck Chequers.
PRITI Patel fires the latest salvo in the Tory civil war on this very page.


She is right that Brexit has to genuinely mean Brexit, or voters will never forgive the party. And at some point the crunch will come.

The Prime Minister assures us freedom of movement will end and that we’ll be able to do trade deals. Others, including former Cabinet ministers such as Ms Patel, believe otherwise.

It is time for the Prime Minister to sell the Chequers deal directly to the country.
We are a free and independent country and will prosper if given a proper chance
IT’S time to chuck Chequers.
How in the world did we get here? After the British people voted to leave the European Union we were told “Brexit means Brexit” and that critical “red lines” would guide our negotiations with the EU. So far, so good.
Fast forward to today and we live in a different world. The so-called Chequers Agreement crosses all those red lines.
We are dancing the hokey cokey with the Customs Union and Single Market, which means restricting our freedom for new free trade agreements.
These, of course, are critical to the national economic success of Brexit. European regulations will remain in force — with no input from the UK. So we stay under the rule of European courts and provide a back door for continued freedom of movement for EU nationals into Britain.
Our laws and courts will not be supreme as Chequers would leave us being run by remote control from Brussels.To frighten us into submission we are spoon-fed a daily diet of tales of food shortages, soldiers in the streets and tailbacks from Dover to Land’s End.
But the political graveyards are full of people who underestimated the good sense of the British people, the very people who want to be in command of their own destiny and who don’t want to be taken advantage of by the EU.
And don’t forget that despite Project Fear in the referendum, the majority still voted to Leave and the fear-mongering was proven false.
So false that the fear of recession and job losses was met by a growing economy, UK manufacturing output growing at its fastest rate in a decade, exports to the US in 2016 exceeding £100billion — more than twice as much as exports to any other country — and the fact that our economy is worth more than £2trillion and is the sixth largest in the world.
Project Fear was proven false and so will this latest version of fear, which speaks volumes about what the Government thinks of voters — sheep to frighten into the right pen. But sheep we are not.
I’ve spent the past few weeks meeting party activists, businesses and the public, supporters of Leave and Remain from across the country and the view is that Chequers will give us neither our economic nor political freedom.
Their concerns are simple. There can be no halfway house, where Britain continues to be out of Europe in name but is still run by Europe.
There can be no halfway house when it comes to rule-taking and law-making from the EU, and there is an overwhelming sense of frustration that Britain is being taken advantage of by the EU.
And across the heartlands of the UK this matters, as these people are the ones who have been left behind and who are desperate to take back control of our laws, our borders and our money. There will also be long-term consequences if the largest democratic vote in British history is frustrated.
We will face a crisis of democracy in which ordinary people will utterly lose their faith and trust in politics and in politicians. The implications for political parties at the polls when they fail to deliver is clear, the public will stop voting for them. We cannot ignore the people.
The Conservative Party could throw away hard-won gains in pro-Leave constituencies across the North East and Midlands if we continue to compromise on the referendum and concede ground to Brussels.
Across Europe we have seen political parties and governments do exactly that and the result is a wave of terrifying extreme forms of nationalism and populism. That is not the British way because when our governments deliver, they deliver for our country and our people.
The time has come for our political leaders to believe in Britain and in the British people. They should abandon the weak-kneed approach and instead play to our strengths. Britain wants to secure a trade deal with the EU and seeks to establish a “strong and special partnership” with them.
Talk of no deal really means no trade deal, and if the EU fails to reach a free trade agreement with Britain, in the long term we can thrive under World Trade Organisation rules. The UK exports to 111 countries under WTO rules and over the past 23 years this grew at a rate which was three times faster than those exporting to the major EU nations.
We also know that the European Commission, thanks to the many political problems across the European Union, desperately needs British taxpayers to foot the “exit payment” of £39billion to balance its budget.
And 1.2million EU jobs depend on selling goods to Britain, with London providing much-needed financing to EU businesses. Brexit will not be easy.
There is hard work to do but we are up to the task. We are a free and independent country and will prosper if given a proper chance.
But to let the British lion roar again the first step is to chuck Chequers.
PRITI Patel fires the latest salvo in the Tory civil war on this very page.


She is right that Brexit has to genuinely mean Brexit, or voters will never forgive the party. And at some point the crunch will come.

The Prime Minister assures us freedom of movement will end and that we’ll be able to do trade deals. Others, including former Cabinet ministers such as Ms Patel, believe otherwise.

It is time for the Prime Minister to sell the Chequers deal directly to the country.
The UK voted to leave the EU so we could become an outward-facing, free-trading country while being proud of our European heritage after Brexit
In 2016, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU.  It was the biggest vote for anything in our history but it was a close result and Parliament is divided. We must move on.
We all want certainty that we will be leaving the EU on 29th March.  That would enable us all to plan for life beyond Brexit and lead to a period of political calm.
The Government’s deal has been rejected by Parliament.  Therefore, leavers and remainers need to come together to develop a new plan so that we can deliver the referendum result and ensure that we flourish outside the EU.
This is exactly what we have tried to do with the help of Kit Malthouse. Nicky Morgan, Robert Buckland and Stephen Hammond were on different sides to me and Steve Baker during the referendum.  But we have decided to put our differences aside and unite to publish a new proposal on how we should leave the EU.
Leavers rejected the Government’s EU deal because the backstop would have stopped us from agreeing trade deals. So, we have suggested replacing the backstop with a new protocol that solves the concerns people have about the Irish border and which protects the Union of the United Kingdom.
Remainers want a guaranteed Implementation Period – a period which allows us all to adjust to life beyond the EU.  Our plan offers a smooth transition with an additional year of the Implementation Period, making it last until no later than the end of December 2021.
Parliament, our country and the 27 member states of the EU are united in wanting a deal and this proposal can pass through Parliament and restore Government unity, purpose and direction.
If the EU ignores this consensus, we have proposed a Plan B – a “triple safety net” to protect us.  It includes cooperation on security, a guarantee by the UK of zero tariffs, no quantitative restrictions and no new trading barriers, along with a generous offer to pay our financial contributions in return for an Implementation Period.
These proposals would allow everyone to prepare fully for the UK leaving the EU and gives us the space to have proper trade talks so that we can develop a close trading relationship  – which, after all, is what Brexit was supposed to be about.
Millions of people voted to leave the EU so that we could become an outward- looking, strong, free-trading nation.
They also wanted us to maintain the closest of friendships with our allies on the continent, to continue to trade closely with our European counterparts and to let EU citizens - who have become our friends and neighbours and made the UK their home - feel welcome here.
We can still be proud of our shared European heritage after leaving the EU but we must do this as an independent nation.
This plan gives us a way of doing this and we invite everyone across the House of Commons and the country to support us as we forge a deal that brings the whole country together.
The UK voted to leave the EU so we could become an outward-facing, free-trading country while being proud of our European heritage after Brexit
In 2016, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU.  It was the biggest vote for anything in our history but it was a close result and Parliament is divided. We must move on.
We all want certainty that we will be leaving the EU on 29th March.  That would enable us all to plan for life beyond Brexit and lead to a period of political calm.
The Government’s deal has been rejected by Parliament.  Therefore, leavers and remainers need to come together to develop a new plan so that we can deliver the referendum result and ensure that we flourish outside the EU.
This is exactly what we have tried to do with the help of Kit Malthouse. Nicky Morgan, Robert Buckland and Stephen Hammond were on different sides to me and Steve Baker during the referendum.  But we have decided to put our differences aside and unite to publish a new proposal on how we should leave the EU.
Leavers rejected the Government’s EU deal because the backstop would have stopped us from agreeing trade deals. So, we have suggested replacing the backstop with a new protocol that solves the concerns people have about the Irish border and which protects the Union of the United Kingdom.
Remainers want a guaranteed Implementation Period – a period which allows us all to adjust to life beyond the EU.  Our plan offers a smooth transition with an additional year of the Implementation Period, making it last until no later than the end of December 2021.
Parliament, our country and the 27 member states of the EU are united in wanting a deal and this proposal can pass through Parliament and restore Government unity, purpose and direction.
If the EU ignores this consensus, we have proposed a Plan B – a “triple safety net” to protect us.  It includes cooperation on security, a guarantee by the UK of zero tariffs, no quantitative restrictions and no new trading barriers, along with a generous offer to pay our financial contributions in return for an Implementation Period.
These proposals would allow everyone to prepare fully for the UK leaving the EU and gives us the space to have proper trade talks so that we can develop a close trading relationship  – which, after all, is what Brexit was supposed to be about.
Millions of people voted to leave the EU so that we could become an outward- looking, strong, free-trading nation.
They also wanted us to maintain the closest of friendships with our allies on the continent, to continue to trade closely with our European counterparts and to let EU citizens - who have become our friends and neighbours and made the UK their home - feel welcome here.
We can still be proud of our shared European heritage after leaving the EU but we must do this as an independent nation.
This plan gives us a way of doing this and we invite everyone across the House of Commons and the country to support us as we forge a deal that brings the whole country together.
THE Brexit prize is in sight. Just as on July 14 when 30,000 spectators packed Lord’s cricket ground with eight million more watching across the nation, the UK is poised with victory within its grasp.
This is the final super over. Only six balls remain to be played with Britain’s star batsman standing at the crease — Boris Johnson.
England’s World Cup triumph was achieved against the odds and so the passage of our nation towards Brexit has been a slog.
However, the PM, unflappable and unflinching in the face of sledging from all sides, has been transformative in reshaping our fortunes.
Now he stands before us with something the doubters, despoilers and delayers thought he could never achieve — a workable proposal that both delivers on the referendum and takes into account the legitimate concerns on the Irish border.
Under Boris’s deal the UK would leave the EU’s customs union and the single market.
It would restore the supremacy of British law over EU law and free the country from the intrusion of the meddling European Court of Justice.
It would allow free trade deals to be agreed with friends and partners across the world, reinvigorating global relationships with allies old and new.
It would end the payment of vast sums of hard-earned taxpayers’ money and deliver the Brexit that the British people were promised.
MPs across Parliament are already starting to show that they are prepared to put partisan differences to one side to unite behind the deal.
Now it is time for the rest of the EU to do the same, to put an end to the toing and froing, the talks and the emergency summits, the snail filled — and snail-paced — diplomatic dinners and take the path out of this cul-de-sac which has now been cleared for them by Boris Johnson.
Brexit was always a means to an end, not an end in itself. The chance for the British people to decide how they wish to be governed.
We stand on the brink of an historic month, where all sides have the chance to prove they can put statecraft above squabbling, consensus above conflict, and diplomacy above division. With Boris at the helm and calm heads all round, success is at our fingertips.
 
THE Brexit prize is in sight. Just as on July 14 when 30,000 spectators packed Lord’s cricket ground with eight million more watching across the nation, the UK is poised with victory within its grasp.
This is the final super over. Only six balls remain to be played with Britain’s star batsman standing at the crease — Boris Johnson.
England’s World Cup triumph was achieved against the odds and so the passage of our nation towards Brexit has been a slog.
However, the PM, unflappable and unflinching in the face of sledging from all sides, has been transformative in reshaping our fortunes.
Now he stands before us with something the doubters, despoilers and delayers thought he could never achieve — a workable proposal that both delivers on the referendum and takes into account the legitimate concerns on the Irish border.
Under Boris’s deal the UK would leave the EU’s customs union and the single market.
It would restore the supremacy of British law over EU law and free the country from the intrusion of the meddling European Court of Justice.
It would allow free trade deals to be agreed with friends and partners across the world, reinvigorating global relationships with allies old and new.
It would end the payment of vast sums of hard-earned taxpayers’ money and deliver the Brexit that the British people were promised.
MPs across Parliament are already starting to show that they are prepared to put partisan differences to one side to unite behind the deal.
Now it is time for the rest of the EU to do the same, to put an end to the toing and froing, the talks and the emergency summits, the snail filled — and snail-paced — diplomatic dinners and take the path out of this cul-de-sac which has now been cleared for them by Boris Johnson.
Brexit was always a means to an end, not an end in itself. The chance for the British people to decide how they wish to be governed.
We stand on the brink of an historic month, where all sides have the chance to prove they can put statecraft above squabbling, consensus above conflict, and diplomacy above division. With Boris at the helm and calm heads all round, success is at our fingertips.
 
“SO much to do, so little time.” This famous quotation is the reality facing the new Prime Minister, which if the opinion polls are to be believed is going to be Boris Johnson. What will he need to do in the time available?
The first task is dealing with Brexit and ensuring we leave on October 31. Failure to do so would damage the Conservative Party and make it unelectable.
But, more seriously, it would harm the country not only by leaving us humiliated and weak but by denying us the opportunity of future prosperity outside the EU. As it would also increase the risk of allowing Jeremy Corbyn to become PM, the danger for the UK is severe.
It is widely accepted it would be sensible to leave with an agreement and that will be the right ambition for a Johnson government.
The current withdrawal agreement is defunct and there can be no question of any iteration of the Irish Backstop. This proposal would have left the UK subject to EU laws and regulations for an indeterminate period — which would be the epitome of a vassal state.
Instead, the aim should be for a free trade agreement, a generous settlement of citizens’ rights and the payment of such debts as we genuinely owe but with an absolute cap.
If the EU continues with its self-imposed insistence that it will not discuss trade until after we have left, then an interim agreement drawing on the principles of the GATT Article 24 could be necessary.
To achieve such an agreement the Government must be tougher than its predecessor — which means preparing for No Deal at full pelt and reassuring sectors of the economy that could be hit that the £39billion saved by not making a payment to the EU would be used to help them.

The sheep farmers and fishermen who could face high tariffs, for example, might need some assistance as would EU industries if we responded in kind. The nearly £100billion trade deficit we have with the EU means a number of European regions are dependent on their trade with us.
We could use tariffs tactically to squeeze the most exposed EU industries while lowering barriers to the rest of the world.
The World Trade Organisation requires that each country must be treated alike, so if the current tariff on wine were reduced it would help non-EU countries which face high imposts but affect EU ones who currently pay zero.
Roman military strategist Vegetius said: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Likewise, if you want an agreement, prepare for no agreement.
Yet policy must evolve beyond Brexit. This may well start with trade negotiations with well- disposed countries. There must be a good opportunity to come to an agreement with Australia and the US.
This is about global prosperity and economic advancement and it boosts living standards at home. Some of the most highly protected areas in the EU are food, clothing and footwear which hit the least well-off the most. An outward looking, internationalist approach will have beneficial consequences at home.
Similarly immigration policy must not be about shutting the door but deciding what talents and skills we need and then being welcoming to those people. It is about taking back control. On top of this, there is so much domestic action to be taken.
Housing is a particular difficulty with first-time buyers unable to get on the bottom rung and high stamp duty preventing the elderly from stepping down a rung or two. Social care is a worry and an unsupportable burden to many — especially those who have to cope with dementia.  The Green Paper on this subject has been gathering dust for months on end.
Crime is rising and more police are needed.  Boris has to negotiate a deal by really meaning No Deal. He must engage with the world and cope with a housing crisis, an unfair social care muddle and rising crime. To do this he must peddle optimism as if he were a steroid-boosted cyclist trying to win the Tour de France.
“SO much to do, so little time.” This famous quotation is the reality facing the new Prime Minister, which if the opinion polls are to be believed is going to be Boris Johnson. What will he need to do in the time available?
The first task is dealing with Brexit and ensuring we leave on October 31. Failure to do so would damage the Conservative Party and make it unelectable.
But, more seriously, it would harm the country not only by leaving us humiliated and weak but by denying us the opportunity of future prosperity outside the EU. As it would also increase the risk of allowing Jeremy Corbyn to become PM, the danger for the UK is severe.
It is widely accepted it would be sensible to leave with an agreement and that will be the right ambition for a Johnson government.
The current withdrawal agreement is defunct and there can be no question of any iteration of the Irish Backstop. This proposal would have left the UK subject to EU laws and regulations for an indeterminate period — which would be the epitome of a vassal state.
Instead, the aim should be for a free trade agreement, a generous settlement of citizens’ rights and the payment of such debts as we genuinely owe but with an absolute cap.
If the EU continues with its self-imposed insistence that it will not discuss trade until after we have left, then an interim agreement drawing on the principles of the GATT Article 24 could be necessary.
To achieve such an agreement the Government must be tougher than its predecessor — which means preparing for No Deal at full pelt and reassuring sectors of the economy that could be hit that the £39billion saved by not making a payment to the EU would be used to help them.

The sheep farmers and fishermen who could face high tariffs, for example, might need some assistance as would EU industries if we responded in kind. The nearly £100billion trade deficit we have with the EU means a number of European regions are dependent on their trade with us.
We could use tariffs tactically to squeeze the most exposed EU industries while lowering barriers to the rest of the world.
The World Trade Organisation requires that each country must be treated alike, so if the current tariff on wine were reduced it would help non-EU countries which face high imposts but affect EU ones who currently pay zero.
Roman military strategist Vegetius said: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Likewise, if you want an agreement, prepare for no agreement.
Yet policy must evolve beyond Brexit. This may well start with trade negotiations with well- disposed countries. There must be a good opportunity to come to an agreement with Australia and the US.
This is about global prosperity and economic advancement and it boosts living standards at home. Some of the most highly protected areas in the EU are food, clothing and footwear which hit the least well-off the most. An outward looking, internationalist approach will have beneficial consequences at home.
Similarly immigration policy must not be about shutting the door but deciding what talents and skills we need and then being welcoming to those people. It is about taking back control. On top of this, there is so much domestic action to be taken.
Housing is a particular difficulty with first-time buyers unable to get on the bottom rung and high stamp duty preventing the elderly from stepping down a rung or two. Social care is a worry and an unsupportable burden to many — especially those who have to cope with dementia.  The Green Paper on this subject has been gathering dust for months on end.
Crime is rising and more police are needed.  Boris has to negotiate a deal by really meaning No Deal. He must engage with the world and cope with a housing crisis, an unfair social care muddle and rising crime. To do this he must peddle optimism as if he were a steroid-boosted cyclist trying to win the Tour de France.
This political paralysis around Brexit and the customs union can’t last for ever, writes James Forsyth
THERESA MAY is stuck. She is in a Brexit hole – and there aren’t enough MPs who are prepared to pull her through.
The Westminster Brexit talks have so far yielded no breakthrough.
As one source laments: “People with entrenched positions came to tell us about their entrenched positions.”
But this political paralysis can’t last for ever. By March 29, one of three seemingly impossible things needs to happen.
Either a deal passes the House of Commons, the Government goes for No Deal and Parliament doesn’t stop it or Article 50 is extended or revoked.
Immediately after the Government’s crushing defeat on Tuesday night, a slew of Cabinet ministers thought it inevitable that Mrs May would have to make some kind of concession on the customs union to get a deal through Parliament. But this option has run into two obstacles.
GENERAL ELECTION

The PM will face a no confidence vote today. But the DUP have already vowed to back her in it.
So it's pretty unlikely it will pass, leaving Labour red-faced yet again.
GOING SOFT
A cross-party group of MPs are frantically pushing an alternative Soft Brexit plan which could replace Mrs May's deal.
It would be welcomed by big business - but Brexit voters would be unhappy because it would mean Britain accepting open borders, and following European rules without a say.
HARD AS NAILS
Most of the Tory Brexiteers who oppose the PM's deal want her to return to Brussels and strike a tougher line.
But Eurocrats currently insist it's impossible to re-open negotiations.
REFERENDUM RE-RUN
Dozens of MPs are hell-bent on forcing Mrs May to hold a second referendum so Britain can stay in the EU.
Yet without the support of the Government it's unlikely the second vote could become a reality.
DEAL OR NO DEAL?
If Mrs May cannot pass a deal, the legal default is that we will leave the EU without a deal on March 29.
Despite the legal position, the majority of MPs insist they will take any measure necessary to rule out No Deal.
MAY TRIUMPHS - EVENTUALLY
Cabinet ministers remain adamant that a version of Theresa May's plan will eventually pass the Commons, even after losing last night.
They believe sceptical MPs will lose their nerve as Brexit Day approaches - terrified of either No Deal or a second referendum.
First, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell aren’t playing ball. Without their blessing, there is no way you could get 116 Labour MPs to vote with a Tory PM.
As one of those doing the maths on this tells me: “She can’t do a deal without them.”
Secondly, it has become clear that agreeing to a customs union would not only split the Tory party and lead to at least one Cabinet resignation, it would also — according to one senior Cabinet minister — lose the support of 40 MPs who voted for the deal on Tuesday night.
Mrs May is not keen on the idea either. She thinks having an independent trade policy is one of the main economic benefits of Brexit.
For these reasons, she is emphasising to Tory MPs that she doesn’t want to give way on the customs union.
One minister tells me: “The penny is dropping with her about what the effect on the party and membership would be of going for a customs union. It is potentially devastating.”
I am told Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer is becoming more isolated on the issue within the Shadow Cabinet. There is also less pressure than expected from MPs on Jeremy Corbyn to back a so-called People’s Vote. Just 71 of Labour’s 256 MPs have broken ranks to endorse the idea.
John McDonnell, who previously sounded open to a second referendum, is now more interested in “Norway Plus” as an alternative Brexit position.
Without the Labour leadership’s support, a second referendum will have no chance of getting a majority in the House of Commons.
So what’s the plan? Well, the hope is Tory Brexiteers will realise the whole thing could be stopped and all but a hard core of them will come round.
“The Brexiteers are now looking for solutions,” one Secretary of State tells me.
This would leave the Government needing the support of 30 to 40 Labour MPs. This would be difficult but potentially doable.
One Cabinet minister who has had discussions with Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks there is a growing chance that with some progress on the backstop, he could be persuaded to back the deal. That would give cover to a lot of other Tory MPs who voted against the deal on Tuesday to do the same.
But there is a growing view among those close to this week’s discussions that Article 50 may well be extended. In other words, the UK would not leave on March 29.
It had always been the view that the EU would only agree to an extension if it was clear where that would lead. But ministers believe there are now signs the EU would be prepared to grant an extension, albeit with conditions. They reason that the EU would not want to be responsible for triggering No Deal.
But simply extending Article 50 with no idea of what to do next would only delay the issue, not resolve it.
What is certain is that Cabinet divisions over what to do next will only grow.
Ministers who want to stop No Deal have formed their own group, which meets to plot strategy. At the same time, other Cabinet ministers and No10 are becoming increasingly irate with them.
One member of Mrs May’s circle dismisses them, saying: “These people are Remainers inside the Cabinet.”
While one exasperated Cabinet insider complains: “Do they just not get the politics of this?”
These arguments will only get more heated as the clock ticks down to March 29.
A GROWING group of Cabinet ministers think we are heading for an election, as this might be the only way to break the Brexit logjam.
One obvious problem for the Tories is what their Brexit policy would be in the event of a poll.
And as one Cabinet minister warns: “You can’t deselect half the party. That’s ridiculous.”
For this reason, the Tories couldn’t simply run on Theresa May’s deal. But if their plan was for Mrs May’s deal but with a clearer exit mechanism on the backstop, most Tory MPs could support it.
Interestingly, some Cabinet ministers are optimistic that an early election could see the Tories win back their majority.
Gove’s speech impressed many of the 2015 and 2017 intakes of Tory MPs, who have never seen a parliamentary performance quite like it. It revealed a Tory problem, though.
It wasn’t so much a case for having confidence in this Government but for having no confidence in Corbyn.
When the next election comes, the Tories will need a positive message too.
Ringing round this week, I was told “Labour would struggle in a pure Brexit election” and “Corbyn is less of an unknown quantity now” than he was at the last election. Others are more sceptical, though.
One cautions: “As a Conservative, you have to ask yourself who wants an election. That’s why it is not a good idea.”
No10 is keen to stamp on the idea.
One source tells me it is “not something anybody wants to do”, warning that: “The public wouldn’t thank us for it.”
THE Tory Party needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. It needs to develop a domestic agenda at the same time as sorting out Brexit.
But too few Tories are thinking about what comes after Brexit. This is a mistake that could open the door to a Corbyn government.
Something nearly always beats nothing.
Liz Truss is one of the few Tories thinking about what does come next.
In a speech next week, she will urge her party not to abandon young voters to Corbyn. She will argue their desire for control over their own lives makes them natural Tories.
So how do the Tories show they are down with the kids?
Truss’s answer: Take on vested interests and advocate “lifestyle freedom”.
This political paralysis around Brexit and the customs union can’t last for ever, writes James Forsyth
THERESA MAY is stuck. She is in a Brexit hole – and there aren’t enough MPs who are prepared to pull her through.
The Westminster Brexit talks have so far yielded no breakthrough.
As one source laments: “People with entrenched positions came to tell us about their entrenched positions.”
But this political paralysis can’t last for ever. By March 29, one of three seemingly impossible things needs to happen.
Either a deal passes the House of Commons, the Government goes for No Deal and Parliament doesn’t stop it or Article 50 is extended or revoked.
Immediately after the Government’s crushing defeat on Tuesday night, a slew of Cabinet ministers thought it inevitable that Mrs May would have to make some kind of concession on the customs union to get a deal through Parliament. But this option has run into two obstacles.
GENERAL ELECTION

The PM will face a no confidence vote today. But the DUP have already vowed to back her in it.
So it's pretty unlikely it will pass, leaving Labour red-faced yet again.
GOING SOFT
A cross-party group of MPs are frantically pushing an alternative Soft Brexit plan which could replace Mrs May's deal.
It would be welcomed by big business - but Brexit voters would be unhappy because it would mean Britain accepting open borders, and following European rules without a say.
HARD AS NAILS
Most of the Tory Brexiteers who oppose the PM's deal want her to return to Brussels and strike a tougher line.
But Eurocrats currently insist it's impossible to re-open negotiations.
REFERENDUM RE-RUN
Dozens of MPs are hell-bent on forcing Mrs May to hold a second referendum so Britain can stay in the EU.
Yet without the support of the Government it's unlikely the second vote could become a reality.
DEAL OR NO DEAL?
If Mrs May cannot pass a deal, the legal default is that we will leave the EU without a deal on March 29.
Despite the legal position, the majority of MPs insist they will take any measure necessary to rule out No Deal.
MAY TRIUMPHS - EVENTUALLY
Cabinet ministers remain adamant that a version of Theresa May's plan will eventually pass the Commons, even after losing last night.
They believe sceptical MPs will lose their nerve as Brexit Day approaches - terrified of either No Deal or a second referendum.
First, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell aren’t playing ball. Without their blessing, there is no way you could get 116 Labour MPs to vote with a Tory PM.
As one of those doing the maths on this tells me: “She can’t do a deal without them.”
Secondly, it has become clear that agreeing to a customs union would not only split the Tory party and lead to at least one Cabinet resignation, it would also — according to one senior Cabinet minister — lose the support of 40 MPs who voted for the deal on Tuesday night.
Mrs May is not keen on the idea either. She thinks having an independent trade policy is one of the main economic benefits of Brexit.
For these reasons, she is emphasising to Tory MPs that she doesn’t want to give way on the customs union.
One minister tells me: “The penny is dropping with her about what the effect on the party and membership would be of going for a customs union. It is potentially devastating.”
I am told Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer is becoming more isolated on the issue within the Shadow Cabinet. There is also less pressure than expected from MPs on Jeremy Corbyn to back a so-called People’s Vote. Just 71 of Labour’s 256 MPs have broken ranks to endorse the idea.
John McDonnell, who previously sounded open to a second referendum, is now more interested in “Norway Plus” as an alternative Brexit position.
Without the Labour leadership’s support, a second referendum will have no chance of getting a majority in the House of Commons.
So what’s the plan? Well, the hope is Tory Brexiteers will realise the whole thing could be stopped and all but a hard core of them will come round.
“The Brexiteers are now looking for solutions,” one Secretary of State tells me.
This would leave the Government needing the support of 30 to 40 Labour MPs. This would be difficult but potentially doable.
One Cabinet minister who has had discussions with Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks there is a growing chance that with some progress on the backstop, he could be persuaded to back the deal. That would give cover to a lot of other Tory MPs who voted against the deal on Tuesday to do the same.
But there is a growing view among those close to this week’s discussions that Article 50 may well be extended. In other words, the UK would not leave on March 29.
It had always been the view that the EU would only agree to an extension if it was clear where that would lead. But ministers believe there are now signs the EU would be prepared to grant an extension, albeit with conditions. They reason that the EU would not want to be responsible for triggering No Deal.
But simply extending Article 50 with no idea of what to do next would only delay the issue, not resolve it.
What is certain is that Cabinet divisions over what to do next will only grow.
Ministers who want to stop No Deal have formed their own group, which meets to plot strategy. At the same time, other Cabinet ministers and No10 are becoming increasingly irate with them.
One member of Mrs May’s circle dismisses them, saying: “These people are Remainers inside the Cabinet.”
While one exasperated Cabinet insider complains: “Do they just not get the politics of this?”
These arguments will only get more heated as the clock ticks down to March 29.
A GROWING group of Cabinet ministers think we are heading for an election, as this might be the only way to break the Brexit logjam.
One obvious problem for the Tories is what their Brexit policy would be in the event of a poll.
And as one Cabinet minister warns: “You can’t deselect half the party. That’s ridiculous.”
For this reason, the Tories couldn’t simply run on Theresa May’s deal. But if their plan was for Mrs May’s deal but with a clearer exit mechanism on the backstop, most Tory MPs could support it.
Interestingly, some Cabinet ministers are optimistic that an early election could see the Tories win back their majority.
Gove’s speech impressed many of the 2015 and 2017 intakes of Tory MPs, who have never seen a parliamentary performance quite like it. It revealed a Tory problem, though.
It wasn’t so much a case for having confidence in this Government but for having no confidence in Corbyn.
When the next election comes, the Tories will need a positive message too.
Ringing round this week, I was told “Labour would struggle in a pure Brexit election” and “Corbyn is less of an unknown quantity now” than he was at the last election. Others are more sceptical, though.
One cautions: “As a Conservative, you have to ask yourself who wants an election. That’s why it is not a good idea.”
No10 is keen to stamp on the idea.
One source tells me it is “not something anybody wants to do”, warning that: “The public wouldn’t thank us for it.”
THE Tory Party needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. It needs to develop a domestic agenda at the same time as sorting out Brexit.
But too few Tories are thinking about what comes after Brexit. This is a mistake that could open the door to a Corbyn government.
Something nearly always beats nothing.
Liz Truss is one of the few Tories thinking about what does come next.
In a speech next week, she will urge her party not to abandon young voters to Corbyn. She will argue their desire for control over their own lives makes them natural Tories.
So how do the Tories show they are down with the kids?
Truss’s answer: Take on vested interests and advocate “lifestyle freedom”.
With no ­agreement on the Irish border, there can be no deal — but the PM must avoid a choice between staying in a customs union or no deal
THE EU and UK are engaged in a very dangerous game of chicken over the Irish border.
There has been almost no progress on this issue over the summer — and without an ­agreement on it, there can’t be a deal.
One of those involved in the negotiations on the British side tells me the EU “believes we will blink first”. But the British won’t do that.
One Brexit red line that Theresa May is adamant that she will never cross is her insistence that no British PM could sign the EU’s proposed text on the Irish border, which would see Northern Ireland become part of the customs territory of the EU.
But the two sides need to sort this issue out. For the alternative is no deal, a scenario that neither side is prepared for.
One Cabinet minister tells me that “no deal would be almost a state of economic war” between the UK and the EU.
This is an exaggeration. But it does show the tensions it would lead to. No deal would also result in the kind of Irish border that both sides say they are keen to avoid.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, is prepared to ­produce a de-dramatised ­version of the backstop.
This would concentrate on the 16 areas where the EU thinks there would need to be checks between Britain and Northern Ireland.
The hope is that the dry, technical nature of this ­document will make it less controversial.
But the UK will still struggle to sign up to this backstop.
Why? Because it would still leave the threat of a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country. The Government COULD accept some regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. But it COULD NOT accept Northern Ireland being part of a different customs territory to the rest of the country.
Senior figures on the UK side are instead mulling an approach where the checks are split three ways between the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Their thinking is that the point of the backstop is to keep the Irish border as it is today but not to create a back door into the EU for goods.
If the responsibility for that was split three ways with the UK doing regulatory checks on goods going into Northern Ireland and the Republic taking care to ensure that all goods from the North exported via its ports are properly declared, then you would have a solution that was acceptable to the UK.
The EU will be very wary of this idea. It doesn’t want the Irish to have to carry out any additional checks.
It also wants to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU, and the Northern Ireland question helps them in their attempt to do this.
But the UK should point out that if disagreement over the Irish border prevents any kind of deal, then there will have to be a hard border.
The Government is hopeful of making some progress on a deal with the EU at the Salzburg summit later this month. One of those closely involved in the negotiations tells me: “Salzburg won’t be dramatic. But look for a shifting of the plates. They need to give her something to stand up and point to.”
What May must avoid is being faced at the end of the negotiations with a choice between staying in a customs union or no deal.
A customs union would send Britain out into the world with one hand tied behind its back while no deal would cause real problems in the short-term.
BORIS Johnson has received multiple ­communications from the Tory inquiry into his newspaper column on the burka.
I understand that the former Foreign Secretary received an initial letter asking him if he wished to say anything in his defence. Those with knowledge of the inquiry say that he responded to that with a vigorous defence of free speech and the need for politicians to be able to take part in these debates.
Johnson’s response was met with a further ­communication from the party asking him if he wanted to say anything about his particular ­comments about people wearing the burka ­looking like letter boxes and bank robbers. My information is that Johnson has not responded to this letter. The Tory inquiry simply says that it does not ­comment on ongoing investigations.
In truth, this absurd exercise should be dropped. The Tories having an inquiry into the newspaper column of a backbench MP is ridiculous. If it is still dragging on by conference, it could become yet another thing that causes trouble there.
Of course, the reason so much attention is paid to Boris Johnson is his status as the members’ favourite to be the next Tory leader. Since quitting over Chequers, he has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity with the party rank and file.
Oddly, though, his status as favourite might help Theresa May if a vote of confidence in her was called. As one Cabinet minister explains: “At the moment, there’s a majority against Boris having the top job. So you have to vote for Theresa as you can’t risk him being in the final two.”
IN the event of no deal there would be 12 weeks of disruption at the border, ministers will be told on Thursday.
Ministers will be summoned to Number 10 for a two-hour Cabinet meeting on no-deal planning.
Originally, it had been expected that this meeting would take place at Chequers. But it was then pointed out that this would look like a crisis summit and the idea was shelved.
It will be emphasised to ministers that no deal means no deals. In other words, don’t expect a series of workarounds to be agreed between Britain and the EU to keep things ticking over.
At best, the Government is hoping for a couple of bilateral deals in areas that are of overwhelming importance to the EU. If no deal does become the most likely scenario, I am told no-deal readiness will become pretty much the sole activity of the civil service.
Ministers will also get to discuss a Treasury forecast of the short-term economic impact of no deal. But, rather absurdly, these papers won’t be circulated until Tuesday.
THE police and intelligence work that has enabled two Russian operatives to be identified as the lead suspects for the Salisbury attack is impressive.
But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this public exposure will put a stop to Russian mischief.
The very decision to use Novichok in the attacks shows that Moscow really didn’t care if it was traced back to Russia.
I AM told that the Budget this autumn will not be a dramatic affair.
With better than expected tax receipts, Chancellor Philip Hammond should be able to fund an increase in NHS spending without raising the headline rates of tax.
However, other tax changes – including to the Enterprise Investment Scheme – are being discussed.
With no ­agreement on the Irish border, there can be no deal — but the PM must avoid a choice between staying in a customs union or no deal
THE EU and UK are engaged in a very dangerous game of chicken over the Irish border.
There has been almost no progress on this issue over the summer — and without an ­agreement on it, there can’t be a deal.
One of those involved in the negotiations on the British side tells me the EU “believes we will blink first”. But the British won’t do that.
One Brexit red line that Theresa May is adamant that she will never cross is her insistence that no British PM could sign the EU’s proposed text on the Irish border, which would see Northern Ireland become part of the customs territory of the EU.
But the two sides need to sort this issue out. For the alternative is no deal, a scenario that neither side is prepared for.
One Cabinet minister tells me that “no deal would be almost a state of economic war” between the UK and the EU.
This is an exaggeration. But it does show the tensions it would lead to. No deal would also result in the kind of Irish border that both sides say they are keen to avoid.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, is prepared to ­produce a de-dramatised ­version of the backstop.
This would concentrate on the 16 areas where the EU thinks there would need to be checks between Britain and Northern Ireland.
The hope is that the dry, technical nature of this ­document will make it less controversial.
But the UK will still struggle to sign up to this backstop.
Why? Because it would still leave the threat of a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country. The Government COULD accept some regulatory checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. But it COULD NOT accept Northern Ireland being part of a different customs territory to the rest of the country.
Senior figures on the UK side are instead mulling an approach where the checks are split three ways between the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Their thinking is that the point of the backstop is to keep the Irish border as it is today but not to create a back door into the EU for goods.
If the responsibility for that was split three ways with the UK doing regulatory checks on goods going into Northern Ireland and the Republic taking care to ensure that all goods from the North exported via its ports are properly declared, then you would have a solution that was acceptable to the UK.
The EU will be very wary of this idea. It doesn’t want the Irish to have to carry out any additional checks.
It also wants to keep the UK in a customs union with the EU, and the Northern Ireland question helps them in their attempt to do this.
But the UK should point out that if disagreement over the Irish border prevents any kind of deal, then there will have to be a hard border.
The Government is hopeful of making some progress on a deal with the EU at the Salzburg summit later this month. One of those closely involved in the negotiations tells me: “Salzburg won’t be dramatic. But look for a shifting of the plates. They need to give her something to stand up and point to.”
What May must avoid is being faced at the end of the negotiations with a choice between staying in a customs union or no deal.
A customs union would send Britain out into the world with one hand tied behind its back while no deal would cause real problems in the short-term.
BORIS Johnson has received multiple ­communications from the Tory inquiry into his newspaper column on the burka.
I understand that the former Foreign Secretary received an initial letter asking him if he wished to say anything in his defence. Those with knowledge of the inquiry say that he responded to that with a vigorous defence of free speech and the need for politicians to be able to take part in these debates.
Johnson’s response was met with a further ­communication from the party asking him if he wanted to say anything about his particular ­comments about people wearing the burka ­looking like letter boxes and bank robbers. My information is that Johnson has not responded to this letter. The Tory inquiry simply says that it does not ­comment on ongoing investigations.
In truth, this absurd exercise should be dropped. The Tories having an inquiry into the newspaper column of a backbench MP is ridiculous. If it is still dragging on by conference, it could become yet another thing that causes trouble there.
Of course, the reason so much attention is paid to Boris Johnson is his status as the members’ favourite to be the next Tory leader. Since quitting over Chequers, he has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity with the party rank and file.
Oddly, though, his status as favourite might help Theresa May if a vote of confidence in her was called. As one Cabinet minister explains: “At the moment, there’s a majority against Boris having the top job. So you have to vote for Theresa as you can’t risk him being in the final two.”
IN the event of no deal there would be 12 weeks of disruption at the border, ministers will be told on Thursday.
Ministers will be summoned to Number 10 for a two-hour Cabinet meeting on no-deal planning.
Originally, it had been expected that this meeting would take place at Chequers. But it was then pointed out that this would look like a crisis summit and the idea was shelved.
It will be emphasised to ministers that no deal means no deals. In other words, don’t expect a series of workarounds to be agreed between Britain and the EU to keep things ticking over.
At best, the Government is hoping for a couple of bilateral deals in areas that are of overwhelming importance to the EU. If no deal does become the most likely scenario, I am told no-deal readiness will become pretty much the sole activity of the civil service.
Ministers will also get to discuss a Treasury forecast of the short-term economic impact of no deal. But, rather absurdly, these papers won’t be circulated until Tuesday.
THE police and intelligence work that has enabled two Russian operatives to be identified as the lead suspects for the Salisbury attack is impressive.
But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this public exposure will put a stop to Russian mischief.
The very decision to use Novichok in the attacks shows that Moscow really didn’t care if it was traced back to Russia.
I AM told that the Budget this autumn will not be a dramatic affair.
With better than expected tax receipts, Chancellor Philip Hammond should be able to fund an increase in NHS spending without raising the headline rates of tax.
However, other tax changes – including to the Enterprise Investment Scheme – are being discussed.
THE new Prime Minister isn’t even in No10 yet. But the effort to hobble him has already begun.
On Tuesday, Dominic Grieve, a Tory second referendum advocate, and Margaret Beckett, the former Foreign Secretary, will attempt to take the budgets of various government departments hostage.
They want no money to go to four departments if the UK leaves the EU on October 31, unless Parliament has explicitly approved that.
If they succeeded and a new Prime Minister took the UK out without a deal anyway, the elderly would not get their pensions or the unemployed their benefits. The scheme is extreme. It is an attempt to import into British politics the American tactic of shutting down the government.
The good news is that it probably won’t work. The bad news is that it won’t be the last effort to tie the new Prime Minister’s hands.
What is so frustrating about this is that at a time when European governments are trying to find back channels to Boris Johnson to discuss what possible changes might make a deal acceptable to him, there are Parliamentarians trying to remove a key part of his negotiating leverage: The ability to walk away.
Those most opposed to No Deal think they will get the numbers in the end to block the Prime Minister.
They believe Boris Johnson’s rule that to serve in his government you’ll have to be signed up to leaving the EU on October 31, come what may, will swell their numbers.
“You’re going to have dumped on to the back benches a whole bunch of opponents of No Deal,” says one of those consulted on tactics.
Some of those advising Boris, though, think there is little that opponents of No Deal can do unless they are prepared to bring down the Government in a confidence vote. They point out the Government is not obliged to give Labour any more opposition day debates between now and October 31 and there is no vehicle to pass a law compelling the Prime Minister to seek an extension.
This analysis does not, however, take into account what John Bercow might do. Bercow is an activist Speaker and it isn’t hard to imagine him turning the rules of the House on their head to give MPs a chance to block No Deal.
What those seeking to block No Deal should remember is they might cause the very outcome they are so keen to avoid. The Commons won’t pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal. It’s already rejected it three times.
So, if you want a withdrawal agreement to pass, you need the EU to make some concessions which make the deal more palatable.
But the UK is never going to get those concessions unless it is prepared to walk away.
Many of those trying to stop No Deal really just want to stop Brexit altogether.
They should remember there’s no majority for a second referendum in the Commons and setting up a No Deal versus Revoke vote could rebound on them. The reality is that if you want a deal that can pass Parliament, then No Deal needs to be an option.
ONE of the biggest decisions Boris Johnson will have to make is who will be his go-between with Europe – who will scurry round Brussels and European capitals seeing what kind of deal can be done?
I understand the front runner for this role is David Frost. No, not the David Frost. The David Frost who was a Johnson special adviser when he was Foreign Secretary and knows both Whitehall and Europe well – having been a civil servant for decades, including a stint as Europe director at the Foreign Office.
One of the things preoccupying the Boris team is just how much they will have to get done in their first 100 days in office.
This is why a premium is being placed on knowledge of Whitehall, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden – who played vital roles preparing David Cameron for power – working closely with Boris Johnson’s old City Hall chief of staff, Eddie Lister, on the transition.

DAVID Cameron held a big party for his old political friends this week.
The bash at Dartmouth House in Mayfair, where summer parties start at £99 per guest, was peppered with conversations about the Tory leadership race.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, chairman of Jeremy Hunt’s leadership campaign, was there and I’m told the room was “pretty split between Boris and Jeremy”.
Guests included George Osborne – who got ribbing for his support for Boris Johnson in the leadership race – as well as William Hague, and most of Cameron’s political and civil service teams from his time in No10.
THE last Cabinet photo of Theresa May’s premiership was an odd affair.
There was a normal photo taken and then those on the back row were told to leave a gap so the absent Scottish Secretary David Mundell could be Photoshopped in.
Ministers were told they could choose a photo with Mundell in it, or one without.
They were puzzled as to why the photo wasn’t taken after the Cabinet meeting, by which time Mundell would have been there.
Ministers were left wondering whether Mundell was paying the price for being one of the first Cabinet members to make clear his displeasure with May’s willingness to allow a vote on a second referendum.
“WE’RE not going to let up on attacking Boris because we know it is cutting through,” declares one of Jeremy Hunt’s campaign confidants.
The Hunt camp point to polling in the last few days showing he has a bigger advantage over Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson and that the public prefer Hunt to Johnson as Prime Minister.
This may be, and Hunt – who is far less well known than Boris – may be benefiting from some kind of novelty factor. But it is Tory members who pick the next party leader, not the general public.
The savvier of Hunt’s MP supporters admit he still trails badly with this group.
I understand from one of those crucial to Boris Johnson’s victory in the parliamentary stages that the campaign’s own polling tallies with public surveys suggesting he is ahead by a close to two- to-one margin with Tory members.
One of Johnson’s leading backers tells me 60 per cent is the benchmark for success; that a victory by a 20-point margin would give him momentum going into No10 and help establish his authority with the parliamentary party.
Boris’s backers have been infuriated by how hard Hunt has gone in this contest. They concede that party unity dictates they’ll have to offer him a Cabinet job. But one tells me that Hunt is currently in “Leader of the House territory”. This source asks: “Can you have a Foreign Secretary who has called the Prime Minister a coward?”
Hunt won’t let up in the next few weeks. There is, though, a risk for him that his attacks alienate the very people whose votes he needs in this contest: Tory members.
There are signs many of them are unhappy at just how blue-on-blue Hunt is going.
Hunt’s decision to go negative means he’ll need a strong showing in this contest to guarantee himself a big job in any Boris government.

 
THE new Prime Minister isn’t even in No10 yet. But the effort to hobble him has already begun.
On Tuesday, Dominic Grieve, a Tory second referendum advocate, and Margaret Beckett, the former Foreign Secretary, will attempt to take the budgets of various government departments hostage.
They want no money to go to four departments if the UK leaves the EU on October 31, unless Parliament has explicitly approved that.
If they succeeded and a new Prime Minister took the UK out without a deal anyway, the elderly would not get their pensions or the unemployed their benefits. The scheme is extreme. It is an attempt to import into British politics the American tactic of shutting down the government.
The good news is that it probably won’t work. The bad news is that it won’t be the last effort to tie the new Prime Minister’s hands.
What is so frustrating about this is that at a time when European governments are trying to find back channels to Boris Johnson to discuss what possible changes might make a deal acceptable to him, there are Parliamentarians trying to remove a key part of his negotiating leverage: The ability to walk away.
Those most opposed to No Deal think they will get the numbers in the end to block the Prime Minister.
They believe Boris Johnson’s rule that to serve in his government you’ll have to be signed up to leaving the EU on October 31, come what may, will swell their numbers.
“You’re going to have dumped on to the back benches a whole bunch of opponents of No Deal,” says one of those consulted on tactics.
Some of those advising Boris, though, think there is little that opponents of No Deal can do unless they are prepared to bring down the Government in a confidence vote. They point out the Government is not obliged to give Labour any more opposition day debates between now and October 31 and there is no vehicle to pass a law compelling the Prime Minister to seek an extension.
This analysis does not, however, take into account what John Bercow might do. Bercow is an activist Speaker and it isn’t hard to imagine him turning the rules of the House on their head to give MPs a chance to block No Deal.
What those seeking to block No Deal should remember is they might cause the very outcome they are so keen to avoid. The Commons won’t pass Theresa May’s Brexit deal. It’s already rejected it three times.
So, if you want a withdrawal agreement to pass, you need the EU to make some concessions which make the deal more palatable.
But the UK is never going to get those concessions unless it is prepared to walk away.
Many of those trying to stop No Deal really just want to stop Brexit altogether.
They should remember there’s no majority for a second referendum in the Commons and setting up a No Deal versus Revoke vote could rebound on them. The reality is that if you want a deal that can pass Parliament, then No Deal needs to be an option.
ONE of the biggest decisions Boris Johnson will have to make is who will be his go-between with Europe – who will scurry round Brussels and European capitals seeing what kind of deal can be done?
I understand the front runner for this role is David Frost. No, not the David Frost. The David Frost who was a Johnson special adviser when he was Foreign Secretary and knows both Whitehall and Europe well – having been a civil servant for decades, including a stint as Europe director at the Foreign Office.
One of the things preoccupying the Boris team is just how much they will have to get done in their first 100 days in office.
This is why a premium is being placed on knowledge of Whitehall, with Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden – who played vital roles preparing David Cameron for power – working closely with Boris Johnson’s old City Hall chief of staff, Eddie Lister, on the transition.

DAVID Cameron held a big party for his old political friends this week.
The bash at Dartmouth House in Mayfair, where summer parties start at £99 per guest, was peppered with conversations about the Tory leadership race.
Sir Patrick McLoughlin, chairman of Jeremy Hunt’s leadership campaign, was there and I’m told the room was “pretty split between Boris and Jeremy”.
Guests included George Osborne – who got ribbing for his support for Boris Johnson in the leadership race – as well as William Hague, and most of Cameron’s political and civil service teams from his time in No10.
THE last Cabinet photo of Theresa May’s premiership was an odd affair.
There was a normal photo taken and then those on the back row were told to leave a gap so the absent Scottish Secretary David Mundell could be Photoshopped in.
Ministers were told they could choose a photo with Mundell in it, or one without.
They were puzzled as to why the photo wasn’t taken after the Cabinet meeting, by which time Mundell would have been there.
Ministers were left wondering whether Mundell was paying the price for being one of the first Cabinet members to make clear his displeasure with May’s willingness to allow a vote on a second referendum.
“WE’RE not going to let up on attacking Boris because we know it is cutting through,” declares one of Jeremy Hunt’s campaign confidants.
The Hunt camp point to polling in the last few days showing he has a bigger advantage over Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson and that the public prefer Hunt to Johnson as Prime Minister.
This may be, and Hunt – who is far less well known than Boris – may be benefiting from some kind of novelty factor. But it is Tory members who pick the next party leader, not the general public.
The savvier of Hunt’s MP supporters admit he still trails badly with this group.
I understand from one of those crucial to Boris Johnson’s victory in the parliamentary stages that the campaign’s own polling tallies with public surveys suggesting he is ahead by a close to two- to-one margin with Tory members.
One of Johnson’s leading backers tells me 60 per cent is the benchmark for success; that a victory by a 20-point margin would give him momentum going into No10 and help establish his authority with the parliamentary party.
Boris’s backers have been infuriated by how hard Hunt has gone in this contest. They concede that party unity dictates they’ll have to offer him a Cabinet job. But one tells me that Hunt is currently in “Leader of the House territory”. This source asks: “Can you have a Foreign Secretary who has called the Prime Minister a coward?”
Hunt won’t let up in the next few weeks. There is, though, a risk for him that his attacks alienate the very people whose votes he needs in this contest: Tory members.
There are signs many of them are unhappy at just how blue-on-blue Hunt is going.
Hunt’s decision to go negative means he’ll need a strong showing in this contest to guarantee himself a big job in any Boris government.

 
Key Cabinet ministers will only be happy if the escape clause gives the UK a genuine opportunity to leave the EU
THERESA MAY has one route to a Brexit deal that can avoid irrevocably splitting her party and bringing down her government.
She needs to persuade the European Union to replace the Northern Ireland backstop with a UK-wide one and to accept an escape clause to show that the UK won’t be trapped in a customs union with the EU ­forever.
Influential Cabinet ministers expect the Government to decide on the escape clause it will propose to Brussels in the coming days.
The Brexit negotiations will then resume with the EU in the second half of next week.
Key Cabinet ministers have one test for the escape clause: Is it legally meaningful. In other words, will it give the UK a genuine opportunity to leave.
Just putting the word temporary in front of the phrase ­”customs union” — a solution favoured by some at the heart of Government — won’t be enough for these Secretaries of State.
One tells me that it has “got to be legally binding and enforceable. Something that is vague and not enforceable won’t get through Parliament”. All of this makes the newest face at the Cabinet table, the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, absolutely crucial.
Cox is a Brexiteer and one of the finest dozen legal brains in the country. Ministers will defer to him on whether this escape clause is worth the paper it’s written on.
As one of those helping to ­coordinate the Brexiteers in government tells me, Cox values his reputation too much to try to spin ministers a line. They are confident he will give them an honest assessment of the escape clause’s worth.
“Anything will have to go through the AG,” I’m told by one Government source.
Cox’s influence will run throughout this process. I understand that the bulk of the Pizza Club of Cabinet ministers who met on Monday night have agreed not to back the final Brexit deal until they have seen the legal advice.
I am told that Michael Gove made clear at Cabinet this week that he couldn’t back any Northern Irish backstop until he had been shown “clear, ­written legal advice” on it.
This insistence on seeing the legal advice is meant to prevent a repeat of what happened last December when No10 gave Brexiteer Cabinet ­ministers assurances about what the backstop meant which were not borne out by events.
So, the question becomes: Will the EU be prepared to engage with the UK or will Michel Barnier simply say “non, non”?
Well, there is a cautious ­optimism in No10 that the political will to do a deal is beginning to be there on the European side. There is a realisation that if the EU rejects everything May proposes, there will be no agreement reached — and that will mean a hard border in Ireland, which is what everyone is trying to avoid.
Interestingly, there is also a sense that if agreement can be reached on the backstop, then the deal has a better chance of passing through Parliament than
previously thought.
One of those who has read the draft political declaration tells me that the UK/EU future relationship is more to the taste of Tory Brexiteers than expected.
May must find a way to get the EU to accept an escape clause, for without that she’ll lose more Cabinet Ministers and her position will be even more vulnerable.
It’d leave her dependent on an unrealistically large number of Labour votes to get a Brexit deal through the Commons.

GAVIN BARWELL, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, had the Government’s junior ministers in on Tuesday. He wanted to talk them through Theresa May’s domestic agenda as outlined in her conference speech.
He wanted to emphasise that the Government would prioritise its domestic agenda as soon as the meaningful vote on Brexit was through the Commons.
Barwell’s comments fit with an expectation in Cabinet that Mrs May will attempt to relaunch her premiership with a domestic focus as soon as the Commons has voted on her Brexit deal.
The aim is to create a rationale for keeping May on as Prime Minister after Brexit day. Influential Cabinet ministers are also expecting Mrs May to reshuffle her Cabinet at that point.
The thinking is that a freshened-up Cabinet would give the Government a new, post-Brexit feel without a need to replace the Prime Minister. But the chances of Mrs May staying on long after Brexit day in March 2019 have lowered significantly in the past few days.
Before this week, some Tory MPs argued that Mrs May should stay until the Brexit transition was done in December 2020. They said this would mean that a new leader would be able to come in as a fresh face after Brexit and in time for the next General Election.
However, the news that the transition could be extended cuts against that argument, as the transition could take you to months away from the next election.
Privately, Tories from the Cabinet down acknowledge that if the transition can be extended, then the case for keeping Mrs May until the end of it is weaker.
Rather, it would be better to get a new leader soon after March 2019 to give them a chance to make an impact on both Brexit and domestic policy before the 2022 General Election.
THE European Union likes to say that an Irish backstop is needed to protect the Good Friday agreement.
But what that ignores is that by changing the nature of Northern Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the UK without consent, the backstop risks being in breach of that agreement.
THERESA MAY’S declaration in her party conference speech that austerity is over has raised expectations of big pay rises across the public sector.
At Cabinet this week, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, was keen to hose down this idea. She emphasised that public sector pay deals should be based on retention – eg. how many staff were leaving because the pay isn’t good enough, geographic factors and helping the lowest paid most.
I’m told that Mrs Truss told the Cabinet that: “Some pay review bodies have ignored affordability requirements.”
I understand Mrs May agreed the Government should get away from the idea of a single figure for public sector pay. Meanwhile, preparations for the Budget continue.
This is meant to be a small Budget yet one ­Government source warns it is going to be “bloody contentious”.  Why? Because it will set the baseline for departmental spending ahead of next year’s spending review.

THE biggest risk of a leadership challenge to Theresa May comes from cock-up, not conspiracy.
The danger for her is not that Brexit ultras organise 48 letters and send them in simultaneously, forcing a confidence vote in her, but that enough despairing Tory
MPs send in their letters and the party stumbles into a vote on Mrs May’s future. One of those involved in discussions about whether to try to remove Mrs May tells me the Brexit ultras “are not as organised as you might think”.
If there was a confidence vote, Mrs May would probably survive it. But after this week, it would be closer than it would have been before.

Key Cabinet ministers will only be happy if the escape clause gives the UK a genuine opportunity to leave the EU
THERESA MAY has one route to a Brexit deal that can avoid irrevocably splitting her party and bringing down her government.
She needs to persuade the European Union to replace the Northern Ireland backstop with a UK-wide one and to accept an escape clause to show that the UK won’t be trapped in a customs union with the EU ­forever.
Influential Cabinet ministers expect the Government to decide on the escape clause it will propose to Brussels in the coming days.
The Brexit negotiations will then resume with the EU in the second half of next week.
Key Cabinet ministers have one test for the escape clause: Is it legally meaningful. In other words, will it give the UK a genuine opportunity to leave.
Just putting the word temporary in front of the phrase ­”customs union” — a solution favoured by some at the heart of Government — won’t be enough for these Secretaries of State.
One tells me that it has “got to be legally binding and enforceable. Something that is vague and not enforceable won’t get through Parliament”. All of this makes the newest face at the Cabinet table, the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, absolutely crucial.
Cox is a Brexiteer and one of the finest dozen legal brains in the country. Ministers will defer to him on whether this escape clause is worth the paper it’s written on.
As one of those helping to ­coordinate the Brexiteers in government tells me, Cox values his reputation too much to try to spin ministers a line. They are confident he will give them an honest assessment of the escape clause’s worth.
“Anything will have to go through the AG,” I’m told by one Government source.
Cox’s influence will run throughout this process. I understand that the bulk of the Pizza Club of Cabinet ministers who met on Monday night have agreed not to back the final Brexit deal until they have seen the legal advice.
I am told that Michael Gove made clear at Cabinet this week that he couldn’t back any Northern Irish backstop until he had been shown “clear, ­written legal advice” on it.
This insistence on seeing the legal advice is meant to prevent a repeat of what happened last December when No10 gave Brexiteer Cabinet ­ministers assurances about what the backstop meant which were not borne out by events.
So, the question becomes: Will the EU be prepared to engage with the UK or will Michel Barnier simply say “non, non”?
Well, there is a cautious ­optimism in No10 that the political will to do a deal is beginning to be there on the European side. There is a realisation that if the EU rejects everything May proposes, there will be no agreement reached — and that will mean a hard border in Ireland, which is what everyone is trying to avoid.
Interestingly, there is also a sense that if agreement can be reached on the backstop, then the deal has a better chance of passing through Parliament than
previously thought.
One of those who has read the draft political declaration tells me that the UK/EU future relationship is more to the taste of Tory Brexiteers than expected.
May must find a way to get the EU to accept an escape clause, for without that she’ll lose more Cabinet Ministers and her position will be even more vulnerable.
It’d leave her dependent on an unrealistically large number of Labour votes to get a Brexit deal through the Commons.

GAVIN BARWELL, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, had the Government’s junior ministers in on Tuesday. He wanted to talk them through Theresa May’s domestic agenda as outlined in her conference speech.
He wanted to emphasise that the Government would prioritise its domestic agenda as soon as the meaningful vote on Brexit was through the Commons.
Barwell’s comments fit with an expectation in Cabinet that Mrs May will attempt to relaunch her premiership with a domestic focus as soon as the Commons has voted on her Brexit deal.
The aim is to create a rationale for keeping May on as Prime Minister after Brexit day. Influential Cabinet ministers are also expecting Mrs May to reshuffle her Cabinet at that point.
The thinking is that a freshened-up Cabinet would give the Government a new, post-Brexit feel without a need to replace the Prime Minister. But the chances of Mrs May staying on long after Brexit day in March 2019 have lowered significantly in the past few days.
Before this week, some Tory MPs argued that Mrs May should stay until the Brexit transition was done in December 2020. They said this would mean that a new leader would be able to come in as a fresh face after Brexit and in time for the next General Election.
However, the news that the transition could be extended cuts against that argument, as the transition could take you to months away from the next election.
Privately, Tories from the Cabinet down acknowledge that if the transition can be extended, then the case for keeping Mrs May until the end of it is weaker.
Rather, it would be better to get a new leader soon after March 2019 to give them a chance to make an impact on both Brexit and domestic policy before the 2022 General Election.
THE European Union likes to say that an Irish backstop is needed to protect the Good Friday agreement.
But what that ignores is that by changing the nature of Northern Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the UK without consent, the backstop risks being in breach of that agreement.
THERESA MAY’S declaration in her party conference speech that austerity is over has raised expectations of big pay rises across the public sector.
At Cabinet this week, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liz Truss, was keen to hose down this idea. She emphasised that public sector pay deals should be based on retention – eg. how many staff were leaving because the pay isn’t good enough, geographic factors and helping the lowest paid most.
I’m told that Mrs Truss told the Cabinet that: “Some pay review bodies have ignored affordability requirements.”
I understand Mrs May agreed the Government should get away from the idea of a single figure for public sector pay. Meanwhile, preparations for the Budget continue.
This is meant to be a small Budget yet one ­Government source warns it is going to be “bloody contentious”.  Why? Because it will set the baseline for departmental spending ahead of next year’s spending review.

THE biggest risk of a leadership challenge to Theresa May comes from cock-up, not conspiracy.
The danger for her is not that Brexit ultras organise 48 letters and send them in simultaneously, forcing a confidence vote in her, but that enough despairing Tory
MPs send in their letters and the party stumbles into a vote on Mrs May’s future. One of those involved in discussions about whether to try to remove Mrs May tells me the Brexit ultras “are not as organised as you might think”.
If there was a confidence vote, Mrs May would probably survive it. But after this week, it would be closer than it would have been before.

The return of Farage has already led to Tory MPs taking a second look at Boris Johnson
EVEN by the standards of our politically volatile times, it is remarkable.
The Brexit Party launched just over a week ago. Yet it is now leading in the UK polls for the European elections and is favourite to win them.
Its meteoric rise is testament to both public anger at the delays to Britain leaving the European Union and to Nigel ­Farage’s skill as a campaigner.
But would the Brexit Party winning the European Parliament elections actually change anything?
There are three ways in which it would have an impact.
First, it will make some MPs more wary of a second referendum. Support for this has grown in Parliament in recent months, in part because more MPs have become confident that Remain would come out on top.
But if the Brexit Party wins the European elections, it will show that another referendum would be anything but a cakewalk for Remain. This might make some of these MPs more inclined to compromise.
One group whom a Farage victory won’t make more inclined to compromise are the Brexiteer holdouts against May’s deal. They’ll argue that his ­success proves that the public supports No Deal.
But I suspect that what it would show more than anything else is voters’ frustration that Brexit hasn’t happened yet.
It is the delay — that these MPs must take their share of the blame for — which is so infuriating the public.
Success for the Brexit Party will come at the expense of the Tories more than any other party.
Debate will quickly shift to how the Tories can win these voters back, and that will boost the chances of the ­Brexiteer leadership contenders. Indeed, the return of Farage has already led to Tory
MPs taking a second look at Boris Johnson. The other great question is, what effect will a win for the Brexit Party have on Labour?
The cross-party Brexit talks will resume next week, but those close to them hold out little hope of success.
The sense is that they will, in the words of one source, “drag on for a while” but it is “unlikely they will reach agreement”.
But if the Brexit Party is ­taking votes from Labour in its traditional heartlands, it will strengthen the hand of those in the party who just want to get a Brexit deal done so the issue is off the stocks before the next election.
Some in government admit that this is unlikely to happen, as doing a deal with Theresa May on Brexit would cause bitter divisions in Labour’s ranks.
They do hold out hope, though, that it might lead to more Labour MPs being ­prepared to back the deal — a mere five Labour MPs voted for the withdrawal agreement last month.
But with the DUP and hardcore Brexiteers determined not to back the deal, it would require 30 or more Labour MPs to come over — which is a hard ask — for the deal to pass.
Perhaps the most significant consequence of a Brexit Party triumph is that it would finish off Farage’s old party, Ukip.
Ukip’s flirtation with Tommy Robinson street thuggery and YouTube stars who make light of rape has been a disaster for the party.
The electorate will simply have no truck with such extremist nonsense and so Ukip won’t be the beneficiaries of the public’s anger at the Brexit delays.

IF any government needed a reboot, it is this one. But the problem for Theresa May is that doing that requires a Queen’s Speech, and that could bring down her government.
Ministers worry that any Queen’s Speech would have to include within it the Brexit deal. After all, that would be the biggest piece of ­legislation going through Parliament in the ­coming session.
But if it did, the Queen’s Speech may well be voted down. Labour and Tory Brexit rebels could get together to defeat the Government.
As one source at the heart of government points out: “If you haven’t got the votes for the deal, why would you have the votes to pass the Queen’s Speech?”
A Queen’s Speech would also require the ­Government to do another deal with the DUP – the current agreement only lasts for this session of Parliament.
Given the way the two party leaderships have fallen out over Brexit, this won’t be easy.
One ­Cabinet minister tells me that the Tory/DUP ­relationship needs “completely resetting” and that it will be a “pretty fraught negotiation”. But if the Government doesn’t do a Queen’s Speech, it will become embarrassingly obvious that it is in office but NOT IN POWER.
The Commons won’t have any government ­legislation to discuss. Rather, it will have to fill its time with pointless general debates.
As one ­secretary of state frets: “What legislation do we have to keep bringing forward?”
The Tories need to show that despite the Brexit impasse, they do have ideas on domestic ­policy – and that is going to require a Queen’s Speech.
DON’T hold your breath for any Tory leadership dream tickets.
A growing number of Cabinet ministers think that any contest is now six months away and therefore don’t want to commit to backing a candidate now.
One minister close to the efforts to broker a dream ticket tells me: “Everything could look very different in October, so what’s the point in ­signing up now?”
So all those ­waiting to see if Amber Rudd teams up with Boris Johnson or Michael Gove are going to have to keep on waiting.
WITH the Tories in existential crisis, where was the party ­chairman? Pakistan.
Ministers were incredulous at the fact that with the party trying to prevent catastrophic losses in both local and European elections, and grassroots activists threatening a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, Brandon Lewis was off to Pakistan.
Allies of the chairman point out that he was only there for 24 hours and that the trip was part of a Tory effort to strengthen ­community ties.
It’s right that the Tories should want to speak to British Pakistanis more.
But Lewis would surely be better off doing that here rather than leaving the country with his party in crisis.
BREXIT Britain should reach for the stars. We need to put rocket boosters under our space programme.
As research from the think tank Policy Exchange’s new Space Policy Unit highlights, the UK spends ­considerably less on space than every other permanent member of the UN Security Council.
With space’s strategic importance only going to grow in the coming years, this needs to change if the UK is not to be left behind.
The good news is we have the technical expertise we need in this country.
We now just need the Government to get behind a space ­programme and ensure that the UK doesn’t get left at the starting line in this new and more important race.
The return of Farage has already led to Tory MPs taking a second look at Boris Johnson
EVEN by the standards of our politically volatile times, it is remarkable.
The Brexit Party launched just over a week ago. Yet it is now leading in the UK polls for the European elections and is favourite to win them.
Its meteoric rise is testament to both public anger at the delays to Britain leaving the European Union and to Nigel ­Farage’s skill as a campaigner.
But would the Brexit Party winning the European Parliament elections actually change anything?
There are three ways in which it would have an impact.
First, it will make some MPs more wary of a second referendum. Support for this has grown in Parliament in recent months, in part because more MPs have become confident that Remain would come out on top.
But if the Brexit Party wins the European elections, it will show that another referendum would be anything but a cakewalk for Remain. This might make some of these MPs more inclined to compromise.
One group whom a Farage victory won’t make more inclined to compromise are the Brexiteer holdouts against May’s deal. They’ll argue that his ­success proves that the public supports No Deal.
But I suspect that what it would show more than anything else is voters’ frustration that Brexit hasn’t happened yet.
It is the delay — that these MPs must take their share of the blame for — which is so infuriating the public.
Success for the Brexit Party will come at the expense of the Tories more than any other party.
Debate will quickly shift to how the Tories can win these voters back, and that will boost the chances of the ­Brexiteer leadership contenders. Indeed, the return of Farage has already led to Tory
MPs taking a second look at Boris Johnson. The other great question is, what effect will a win for the Brexit Party have on Labour?
The cross-party Brexit talks will resume next week, but those close to them hold out little hope of success.
The sense is that they will, in the words of one source, “drag on for a while” but it is “unlikely they will reach agreement”.
But if the Brexit Party is ­taking votes from Labour in its traditional heartlands, it will strengthen the hand of those in the party who just want to get a Brexit deal done so the issue is off the stocks before the next election.
Some in government admit that this is unlikely to happen, as doing a deal with Theresa May on Brexit would cause bitter divisions in Labour’s ranks.
They do hold out hope, though, that it might lead to more Labour MPs being ­prepared to back the deal — a mere five Labour MPs voted for the withdrawal agreement last month.
But with the DUP and hardcore Brexiteers determined not to back the deal, it would require 30 or more Labour MPs to come over — which is a hard ask — for the deal to pass.
Perhaps the most significant consequence of a Brexit Party triumph is that it would finish off Farage’s old party, Ukip.
Ukip’s flirtation with Tommy Robinson street thuggery and YouTube stars who make light of rape has been a disaster for the party.
The electorate will simply have no truck with such extremist nonsense and so Ukip won’t be the beneficiaries of the public’s anger at the Brexit delays.

IF any government needed a reboot, it is this one. But the problem for Theresa May is that doing that requires a Queen’s Speech, and that could bring down her government.
Ministers worry that any Queen’s Speech would have to include within it the Brexit deal. After all, that would be the biggest piece of ­legislation going through Parliament in the ­coming session.
But if it did, the Queen’s Speech may well be voted down. Labour and Tory Brexit rebels could get together to defeat the Government.
As one source at the heart of government points out: “If you haven’t got the votes for the deal, why would you have the votes to pass the Queen’s Speech?”
A Queen’s Speech would also require the ­Government to do another deal with the DUP – the current agreement only lasts for this session of Parliament.
Given the way the two party leaderships have fallen out over Brexit, this won’t be easy.
One ­Cabinet minister tells me that the Tory/DUP ­relationship needs “completely resetting” and that it will be a “pretty fraught negotiation”. But if the Government doesn’t do a Queen’s Speech, it will become embarrassingly obvious that it is in office but NOT IN POWER.
The Commons won’t have any government ­legislation to discuss. Rather, it will have to fill its time with pointless general debates.
As one ­secretary of state frets: “What legislation do we have to keep bringing forward?”
The Tories need to show that despite the Brexit impasse, they do have ideas on domestic ­policy – and that is going to require a Queen’s Speech.
DON’T hold your breath for any Tory leadership dream tickets.
A growing number of Cabinet ministers think that any contest is now six months away and therefore don’t want to commit to backing a candidate now.
One minister close to the efforts to broker a dream ticket tells me: “Everything could look very different in October, so what’s the point in ­signing up now?”
So all those ­waiting to see if Amber Rudd teams up with Boris Johnson or Michael Gove are going to have to keep on waiting.
WITH the Tories in existential crisis, where was the party ­chairman? Pakistan.
Ministers were incredulous at the fact that with the party trying to prevent catastrophic losses in both local and European elections, and grassroots activists threatening a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister, Brandon Lewis was off to Pakistan.
Allies of the chairman point out that he was only there for 24 hours and that the trip was part of a Tory effort to strengthen ­community ties.
It’s right that the Tories should want to speak to British Pakistanis more.
But Lewis would surely be better off doing that here rather than leaving the country with his party in crisis.
BREXIT Britain should reach for the stars. We need to put rocket boosters under our space programme.
As research from the think tank Policy Exchange’s new Space Policy Unit highlights, the UK spends ­considerably less on space than every other permanent member of the UN Security Council.
With space’s strategic importance only going to grow in the coming years, this needs to change if the UK is not to be left behind.
The good news is we have the technical expertise we need in this country.
We now just need the Government to get behind a space ­programme and ensure that the UK doesn’t get left at the starting line in this new and more important race.
All the polls indicate the Brexit Party will win the Euro elections - showing how voters are annoyed at Tories for Brexit delay
ON Thursday, voters will go to the polls and deliver a massive wake-up call to Parliament.
They will vote in their droves for a party that was launched only a month ago and has no MPs.
All the polls indicate the Brexit Party will win the ­European elections — and it will be a sign of how fed up the electorate is that Brexit hasn’t happened.
But MPs look set to ignore this wake-up call. There is no sign of Parliament coming together to get Brexit done, as the collapse of the Labour/Tory talks shows.
Some Brexit ultras are quick to say that the success of Nigel Farage’s new party shows the public are furious about Theresa May’s deal.
But that’s a misreading of the situation. The Tory poll rating stayed remarkably steady as the PM tried — and failed — to get her deal passed.
What sent the party into freefall was the Brexit delay.
Mrs May has said she will bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons when Parliament returns from its Whitsun holiday in June.
Ministers tell me this vote is pencilled in for Friday June 7.
But even those tasked with steering it through the ­Commons are not optimistic about its chances.
One tells me, “It would be a miracle if they got within the 58 votes they did last time,” and gloomily predicts, “It is going to be the biggest ever second-reading defeat for a government.”
If the bill goes down, Brexit is in great danger.
The rules of Parliament mean the legislation to take ­Britain out of the EU with a deal could be passed only in a new session of Parliament. That would require a Queen’s Speech but it is hard to
see where the majority for that would come from — the Tories rely on the DUP for their ­Commons majority but that relationship is in deep trouble.
But if this country looks set to leave the EU without a deal, the majority of MPs who oppose that outcome would try to stop it.
Already, 191 of them have voted to simply revoke Article 50 to avoid No Deal.
The other problem is that, with the Commons opposed to No Deal, it would be very hard to make a success of it.
Even if Boris Johnson became the new Tory leader and ­committed to a full-on Brexit, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party would still stand
MPs might simply not back the reforms that would be needed to help the country regain its competitiveness.
It is tempting to say that what is needed, in order to break the deadlock, is a General Election under a new Tory leader.
But the problem with that is the Brexit vote would be split in any election.
Even if Boris Johnson became the new Tory leader and ­committed to a full-on Brexit, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party would still stand.
Farage would say the past three years have shown you cannot trust the Tories to take this country out of the EU.
The Brexit Party’s standing would splinter the Leave vote and let Labour in through the middle.
The best way to be sure of Brexit happening is for Parliament to vote for the deal next month.
But it won’t, so we are in for even more uncertainty.
THERESA MAY really is coming to the end of her premiership. As one Cabinet minister puts it: “The question is whether she goes before or after August.”
If, as looks likely, the Commons defeats her Withdrawal Agreement Bill, she’ll be out of options.
Number 10 sources argue she has not ­actually promised to go if the bill is voted down – they know that would be an incentive for some Tory MPs. Rather, they say she has just committed to meeting with the chairman of the 1922 ­Committee, which represents the Tory parliamentary party.
But if the second reading is voted down, Mrs May will be told her time is up  – both by her MPs and her activists, and they will stage a vote of no confidence in her on June 15. It is crucial that the Tory leadership contest is quick. The new Prime Minister will walk into a political crisis on their first day in the job.
They need as much time as possible to ­prepare for the next Brexit deadline, at the end of October.
I understand that even with a large number of leadership candidates – and there could be as many as 17 – the parliamentary stages could be done in two weeks. Then the voting on the final two would go to the party ­membership.

Given that they were not given a vote last time round, and how badly things have turned out, the members will be insistent that they get a choice this time.
But this part of the contest should be done in a month. There’s talk of a need for hustings in every region of the country. Televising them, however, would let a wider audience see them and mean the candidates would not have to go everywhere.
I understand Conservative Campaign Headquarters have ruled out electronic balloting. They fear it might disenfranchise some members.
But when the Tory party board meets on ­Monday, they should agree any contest would be over by the end of July.
This would give the incoming Prime Minister the summer to prepare their Brexit strategy, run the rule over the state of No Deal planning and ready a domestic agenda to take on Jeremy Corbyn.
There’s no time to waste.
WHO does Theresa May want to ­succeed her?
Well, one secretary of state tells me: “She used to want Hunt. But his defence spending thing properly p***ed her off. That collective responsibility lecture in Cabinet was aimed at him.”
And one May confidant says the Cabinet ministers who are running to succeed her have not – with the exception of Andrea Leadsom – had the courtesy to tell her they are doing so.
TORIES who live in Kensington and Chelsea can have a glass of wine with a party leadership ­­contender pretty much every week.
Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock and Rory Stewart are all coming to drinks parties for ­members in this most well-heeled of ­constituencies.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt is ­launching the campaign for a directly elected mayor for ­Hammersmith and Fulham, which makes a change from discussing the risks of an Iran-US war in the ­Persian Gulf.
BORIS JOHNSON is now the man to beat in the Tory leadership race.
Ministers and MPs who weren’t even considering him a few months ago are now turning to him as the person to win back the votes the Tories are losing to the Brexit party.
One minister leaning towards Boris says: “As it gets more ­desperate, Boris becomes more appealing.”
Dominic Raab’s supporters are still convinced they have more firm pledges than Johnson.
But the momentum is definitely moving towards the former London Mayor.
On the other side of the contest, Michael Gove is picking up support.
I understand that on Tuesday night he had dinner with 50 MPs in a Chelsea pub.
Gove is benefiting from a sense that, after the Theresa May experience, the next leader needs to be a Brexiteer.
Jeremy Hunt might still have the most backers but he has had a slightly tricky week.
I understand the new Defence Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, whose support Hunt would like, was not best pleased he did not tell her before calling for the UK to increase spending on the military.
All the polls indicate the Brexit Party will win the Euro elections - showing how voters are annoyed at Tories for Brexit delay
ON Thursday, voters will go to the polls and deliver a massive wake-up call to Parliament.
They will vote in their droves for a party that was launched only a month ago and has no MPs.
All the polls indicate the Brexit Party will win the ­European elections — and it will be a sign of how fed up the electorate is that Brexit hasn’t happened.
But MPs look set to ignore this wake-up call. There is no sign of Parliament coming together to get Brexit done, as the collapse of the Labour/Tory talks shows.
Some Brexit ultras are quick to say that the success of Nigel Farage’s new party shows the public are furious about Theresa May’s deal.
But that’s a misreading of the situation. The Tory poll rating stayed remarkably steady as the PM tried — and failed — to get her deal passed.
What sent the party into freefall was the Brexit delay.
Mrs May has said she will bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to the Commons when Parliament returns from its Whitsun holiday in June.
Ministers tell me this vote is pencilled in for Friday June 7.
But even those tasked with steering it through the ­Commons are not optimistic about its chances.
One tells me, “It would be a miracle if they got within the 58 votes they did last time,” and gloomily predicts, “It is going to be the biggest ever second-reading defeat for a government.”
If the bill goes down, Brexit is in great danger.
The rules of Parliament mean the legislation to take ­Britain out of the EU with a deal could be passed only in a new session of Parliament. That would require a Queen’s Speech but it is hard to
see where the majority for that would come from — the Tories rely on the DUP for their ­Commons majority but that relationship is in deep trouble.
But if this country looks set to leave the EU without a deal, the majority of MPs who oppose that outcome would try to stop it.
Already, 191 of them have voted to simply revoke Article 50 to avoid No Deal.
The other problem is that, with the Commons opposed to No Deal, it would be very hard to make a success of it.
Even if Boris Johnson became the new Tory leader and ­committed to a full-on Brexit, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party would still stand
MPs might simply not back the reforms that would be needed to help the country regain its competitiveness.
It is tempting to say that what is needed, in order to break the deadlock, is a General Election under a new Tory leader.
But the problem with that is the Brexit vote would be split in any election.
Even if Boris Johnson became the new Tory leader and ­committed to a full-on Brexit, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party would still stand.
Farage would say the past three years have shown you cannot trust the Tories to take this country out of the EU.
The Brexit Party’s standing would splinter the Leave vote and let Labour in through the middle.
The best way to be sure of Brexit happening is for Parliament to vote for the deal next month.
But it won’t, so we are in for even more uncertainty.
THERESA MAY really is coming to the end of her premiership. As one Cabinet minister puts it: “The question is whether she goes before or after August.”
If, as looks likely, the Commons defeats her Withdrawal Agreement Bill, she’ll be out of options.
Number 10 sources argue she has not ­actually promised to go if the bill is voted down – they know that would be an incentive for some Tory MPs. Rather, they say she has just committed to meeting with the chairman of the 1922 ­Committee, which represents the Tory parliamentary party.
But if the second reading is voted down, Mrs May will be told her time is up  – both by her MPs and her activists, and they will stage a vote of no confidence in her on June 15. It is crucial that the Tory leadership contest is quick. The new Prime Minister will walk into a political crisis on their first day in the job.
They need as much time as possible to ­prepare for the next Brexit deadline, at the end of October.
I understand that even with a large number of leadership candidates – and there could be as many as 17 – the parliamentary stages could be done in two weeks. Then the voting on the final two would go to the party ­membership.

Given that they were not given a vote last time round, and how badly things have turned out, the members will be insistent that they get a choice this time.
But this part of the contest should be done in a month. There’s talk of a need for hustings in every region of the country. Televising them, however, would let a wider audience see them and mean the candidates would not have to go everywhere.
I understand Conservative Campaign Headquarters have ruled out electronic balloting. They fear it might disenfranchise some members.
But when the Tory party board meets on ­Monday, they should agree any contest would be over by the end of July.
This would give the incoming Prime Minister the summer to prepare their Brexit strategy, run the rule over the state of No Deal planning and ready a domestic agenda to take on Jeremy Corbyn.
There’s no time to waste.
WHO does Theresa May want to ­succeed her?
Well, one secretary of state tells me: “She used to want Hunt. But his defence spending thing properly p***ed her off. That collective responsibility lecture in Cabinet was aimed at him.”
And one May confidant says the Cabinet ministers who are running to succeed her have not – with the exception of Andrea Leadsom – had the courtesy to tell her they are doing so.
TORIES who live in Kensington and Chelsea can have a glass of wine with a party leadership ­­contender pretty much every week.
Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock and Rory Stewart are all coming to drinks parties for ­members in this most well-heeled of ­constituencies.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt is ­launching the campaign for a directly elected mayor for ­Hammersmith and Fulham, which makes a change from discussing the risks of an Iran-US war in the ­Persian Gulf.
BORIS JOHNSON is now the man to beat in the Tory leadership race.
Ministers and MPs who weren’t even considering him a few months ago are now turning to him as the person to win back the votes the Tories are losing to the Brexit party.
One minister leaning towards Boris says: “As it gets more ­desperate, Boris becomes more appealing.”
Dominic Raab’s supporters are still convinced they have more firm pledges than Johnson.
But the momentum is definitely moving towards the former London Mayor.
On the other side of the contest, Michael Gove is picking up support.
I understand that on Tuesday night he had dinner with 50 MPs in a Chelsea pub.
Gove is benefiting from a sense that, after the Theresa May experience, the next leader needs to be a Brexiteer.
Jeremy Hunt might still have the most backers but he has had a slightly tricky week.
I understand the new Defence Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, whose support Hunt would like, was not best pleased he did not tell her before calling for the UK to increase spending on the military.
The leaders have mishandled Brexit so badly and are now dealing with the after effects
THERESA MAY and Jeremy Corbyn are experimenting with hazardous materials.
They are seeing if they can create a Tory/Labour Brexit compound without blowing up their own parties.
Those in the talks are more optimistic than ever about ­getting some kind of agreement, if not a finalised deal.
But they know that things are very volatile.
One senior figure tells me things are “much better than people think, but could blow up at any time”.
What is causing this Downing Street optimism is a sense that there is beginning to be pressure on Labour to do a deal.
Look at the council seats they lost in Leave-voting areas and the progress Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is making in ­Labour regions ahead of this month’s European elections.
I understand that the ­compromise being drawn up goes as follows.
The UK would initially enter into a “comprehensive customs arrangement” with the European Union.
This would be very similar to a customs union.
But the two parties would then commit, and hope to persuade the EU to do the same, to there being two choices for the future — either an independent trade policy under a scheme similar to the facilitated customs arrangement that May proposed at Chequers or a customs union with a UK say over future trade deals, which is Labour’s policy.
The irony of this is that the EU has not said that it will accept either of these options.
Getting Brussels to include them in the political declaration will not be easy.
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, has told Tory MPs that about half the stuff that Labour has asked for in the talks — on subjects such as co-operation with EU agencies and crime — are things the Government has already tried to get from the EU.
There would also be a separate bill that would put the UK on course to remain in “dynamic alignment” with the EU on workers’ rights. I am told that the bill will be “more dramatic” than Tory MPs would like.
The big risk May is running in trying to cut this deal is how her own party will react to an arrangement with Labour.
One senior Cabinet minister has told colleagues that he fears co-operating with Corbyn ­legitimises the Labour leader and that he would rather resign than back a deal.
Those close to this secretary of state argue that in these ­circumstances, it would be ­better for the Tories to argue for a new deal with the new EU ­Commission, which will take office in November.
But others in Cabinet think that without a General Election — which the Tories are in no ­position to fight — there is no way to deliver Brexit without a deal with Labour.
One calculates that while many Tory MPs would not vote for it, they would not cause a permanent split in the party over it.
On the Labour side there are, perhaps, even more ­substantial obstacles to a deal.
A huge number of Labour MPs, including pretty much the whole whips office, want a ­second referendum.
If Britain’s MEPs are not to take their seats in the new EU parliament, the Withdrawal Agreement bill will have to be introduced to the Commons in the next two weeks.
This is, I understand, Downing Street’s deadline for these cross-party talks to reach a conclusion.
A Labour/Tory agreement would require both May and Corbyn to be prepared to risk splitting their parties.
This may seem unlikely BUT this week’s elections show that both parties are paying a price for failing to get Brexit done.
WHAT’S the main lesson from this week’s local elections?
Neither major party could be confident of how they’d do in a General Election.
The result for both the Tories and Labour was poor.
If this had been a national election, both would have got less than 30 per cent of the vote.
Remarkably, these numbers flatter the two ­parties. The Tories – in particular – benefited from the fact that the Brexit Party weren’t standing in these elections.
But the results also indicate something else: Everything is to play for in British politics.
The Tories have clearly exasperated voters with their handling of Brexit.
But Jeremy Corbyn’s ­Labour hasn’t sealed the deal yet either.
The task for the next Tory leader is clear.
They need to get Brexit done to halt Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and they need to persuade those affluent voters ­backing the Liberal Democrats that a vote for ­anyone but them at the next election is a vote for Corbyn and the higher taxes he represents.
SAJID JAVID told a private meeting of Tory MPs on Wednesday evening that his top ­priority for the coming spending review is to secure more money for the police.
Javid’s mission is a recognition that police cuts – and the sense that crime and anti-social behaviour are rising as a result – is hurting the Tories.
I am told that in focus groups, traditional Labour voters say they worry that Corbyn is soft on crime.
But they think the Tories aren’t any better, so there’s no point changing their vote on the issue.
If Javid wants to show the Tories that he’s the right man to take on Corbyn as a future PM, then winning back the party’s reputation on crime would be the way to do it.
I UNDERSTAND that Conservative Campaign Headquarters indulged in some serious arm-twisting to try to stop a grassroots vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s leadership.
Association chairmen who were backing the push but also want to be Conservative candidates were told in no uncertain terms that this would hurt their prospects.
But this was not enough to stop the challenge.
It is a reminder that the current situation with Theresa May only saying that she will go when a Brexit deal passes is not tenable.
Number 10 has argued that May couldn’t provide more details on her departure plans before the local elections.
But now they are out of the way, she should.
I understand that one member of the Tory parliamentary party’s ruling executive – the 1922 Committee – has already told colleagues that he has changed his mind and would now favour a rule change to allow a challenge to May if she does not do so in the next three weeks.
THE Peterborough by-election on June 6 will be the most important one since the country voted for Brexit.
This is a Labour/Tory marginal with a 61 per cent Leave vote.
Neither of the main parties are in a good position to fight it.
Labour are damaged by the fact the by-election has been caused by the criminal conviction of its ousted MP, Fiona Onasanya.
The Tories by their Brexit failure.
The Brexit party are having a big rally in Peterborough on Tuesday and will not announce their ­candidate for the by-election before that.
But they expect to have one in place by the end of next week.
If there is a cross-party deal on Brexit by June, this by-election could be the first significant test of public opinion on it – and whether a deal deflates the Brexit Party or gives it more oxygen.
-  James Forsyth is Political Editor of The Spectator.
The leaders have mishandled Brexit so badly and are now dealing with the after effects
THERESA MAY and Jeremy Corbyn are experimenting with hazardous materials.
They are seeing if they can create a Tory/Labour Brexit compound without blowing up their own parties.
Those in the talks are more optimistic than ever about ­getting some kind of agreement, if not a finalised deal.
But they know that things are very volatile.
One senior figure tells me things are “much better than people think, but could blow up at any time”.
What is causing this Downing Street optimism is a sense that there is beginning to be pressure on Labour to do a deal.
Look at the council seats they lost in Leave-voting areas and the progress Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party is making in ­Labour regions ahead of this month’s European elections.
I understand that the ­compromise being drawn up goes as follows.
The UK would initially enter into a “comprehensive customs arrangement” with the European Union.
This would be very similar to a customs union.
But the two parties would then commit, and hope to persuade the EU to do the same, to there being two choices for the future — either an independent trade policy under a scheme similar to the facilitated customs arrangement that May proposed at Chequers or a customs union with a UK say over future trade deals, which is Labour’s policy.
The irony of this is that the EU has not said that it will accept either of these options.
Getting Brussels to include them in the political declaration will not be easy.
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, has told Tory MPs that about half the stuff that Labour has asked for in the talks — on subjects such as co-operation with EU agencies and crime — are things the Government has already tried to get from the EU.
There would also be a separate bill that would put the UK on course to remain in “dynamic alignment” with the EU on workers’ rights. I am told that the bill will be “more dramatic” than Tory MPs would like.
The big risk May is running in trying to cut this deal is how her own party will react to an arrangement with Labour.
One senior Cabinet minister has told colleagues that he fears co-operating with Corbyn ­legitimises the Labour leader and that he would rather resign than back a deal.
Those close to this secretary of state argue that in these ­circumstances, it would be ­better for the Tories to argue for a new deal with the new EU ­Commission, which will take office in November.
But others in Cabinet think that without a General Election — which the Tories are in no ­position to fight — there is no way to deliver Brexit without a deal with Labour.
One calculates that while many Tory MPs would not vote for it, they would not cause a permanent split in the party over it.
On the Labour side there are, perhaps, even more ­substantial obstacles to a deal.
A huge number of Labour MPs, including pretty much the whole whips office, want a ­second referendum.
If Britain’s MEPs are not to take their seats in the new EU parliament, the Withdrawal Agreement bill will have to be introduced to the Commons in the next two weeks.
This is, I understand, Downing Street’s deadline for these cross-party talks to reach a conclusion.
A Labour/Tory agreement would require both May and Corbyn to be prepared to risk splitting their parties.
This may seem unlikely BUT this week’s elections show that both parties are paying a price for failing to get Brexit done.
WHAT’S the main lesson from this week’s local elections?
Neither major party could be confident of how they’d do in a General Election.
The result for both the Tories and Labour was poor.
If this had been a national election, both would have got less than 30 per cent of the vote.
Remarkably, these numbers flatter the two ­parties. The Tories – in particular – benefited from the fact that the Brexit Party weren’t standing in these elections.
But the results also indicate something else: Everything is to play for in British politics.
The Tories have clearly exasperated voters with their handling of Brexit.
But Jeremy Corbyn’s ­Labour hasn’t sealed the deal yet either.
The task for the next Tory leader is clear.
They need to get Brexit done to halt Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and they need to persuade those affluent voters ­backing the Liberal Democrats that a vote for ­anyone but them at the next election is a vote for Corbyn and the higher taxes he represents.
SAJID JAVID told a private meeting of Tory MPs on Wednesday evening that his top ­priority for the coming spending review is to secure more money for the police.
Javid’s mission is a recognition that police cuts – and the sense that crime and anti-social behaviour are rising as a result – is hurting the Tories.
I am told that in focus groups, traditional Labour voters say they worry that Corbyn is soft on crime.
But they think the Tories aren’t any better, so there’s no point changing their vote on the issue.
If Javid wants to show the Tories that he’s the right man to take on Corbyn as a future PM, then winning back the party’s reputation on crime would be the way to do it.
I UNDERSTAND that Conservative Campaign Headquarters indulged in some serious arm-twisting to try to stop a grassroots vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s leadership.
Association chairmen who were backing the push but also want to be Conservative candidates were told in no uncertain terms that this would hurt their prospects.
But this was not enough to stop the challenge.
It is a reminder that the current situation with Theresa May only saying that she will go when a Brexit deal passes is not tenable.
Number 10 has argued that May couldn’t provide more details on her departure plans before the local elections.
But now they are out of the way, she should.
I understand that one member of the Tory parliamentary party’s ruling executive – the 1922 Committee – has already told colleagues that he has changed his mind and would now favour a rule change to allow a challenge to May if she does not do so in the next three weeks.
THE Peterborough by-election on June 6 will be the most important one since the country voted for Brexit.
This is a Labour/Tory marginal with a 61 per cent Leave vote.
Neither of the main parties are in a good position to fight it.
Labour are damaged by the fact the by-election has been caused by the criminal conviction of its ousted MP, Fiona Onasanya.
The Tories by their Brexit failure.
The Brexit party are having a big rally in Peterborough on Tuesday and will not announce their ­candidate for the by-election before that.
But they expect to have one in place by the end of next week.
If there is a cross-party deal on Brexit by June, this by-election could be the first significant test of public opinion on it – and whether a deal deflates the Brexit Party or gives it more oxygen.
-  James Forsyth is Political Editor of The Spectator.
While they may not be that far apart, their parties are and a deal would require not one but BOTH of them to be prepared to split their parties, writes James Forsyth
THE truth is that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are not that far apart on Brexit.
They might use different ­language but what they want is really quite similar.
But DON’T THINK that this means a Brexit deal will be done between them.
While they may not be that far apart, their parties are. A deal would require not one but BOTH of them to be prepared to split their parties.
The Tories have been arguing about Europe for 40 years.
The reason that Theresa May has been forced into these talks with someone she has regularly derided as a threat to national security is because too many of her own MPs won’t support her.
If May was to soften her deal to try to get Labour support, she would exacerbate the divide within her own party.
I am told that in the talks, the Government has tried to point out to Labour that the deal does, in the backstop, effectively include a customs union. But Labour has been ­insistent that the phrase ­“permanent customs union” must be used in any deal.
Why? Because they know that by removing ambiguity on this point, they divide the Tories.
One figure close to the talks tells me that Labour has two objectives in these discussions — to maximise Tory divisions and minimise Labour ones.
There is concern among ­Cabinet ministers that Labour’s aim in this process is to flush out just how much the May government is prepared to ­concede then walk away.
When political opponents negotiate, such suspicions are inevitable. But there is a huge risk for Corbyn in agreeing any deal with the Government.
The chances of finding one leader prepared to split their party in the national interest is not that high.
If Corbyn helps usher in Brexit — even a soft version — the pro-second referendum forces in the ­Labour Party will never forgive him. In these ­circumstances, he would almost ­certainly lose more MPs.
The simplest way for Corbyn to justify ushering a Brexit deal through would be if the ­alternative to it was No Deal.
He could argue that he had to act to prevent the UK ­leaving without a deal.
He could say that No Deal would cost manufacturing jobs and lead to the Tories cutting ­regulation and corporate taxes.
But with the EU likely to offer the UK an extension of up to a year, this argument doesn’t work — a year is enough time to hold either a General Election or second referendum.
One other option being ­discussed is the idea that there might be a separate Commons vote on a second referendum.
Labour would whip in favour of it, but because of Tory ­opposition and Labour rebels, it would not pass. Corbyn could say he had tried but the ­numbers just weren’t there.
But that approach is unlikely to wash with the more fanatical Labour second-referendum types. They know that there aren’t the votes in Parliament for a second referendum on its own, and so want it to be part of any overall agreement.
Now, I can hear you ­screaming: What about the good of the country? But the problem is that Nick Clegg’s experience with going into coalition proves that doing the right thing doesn’t prevent you suffering political damage.
The chances of finding one leader prepared to split their party in the national interest is not that high. But the chance of finding two is, well, pretty darn low.
THERESA MAY has asked for an extension to the UK’s EU membership until June 30. The EU isn’t going to grant this request, though.
Instead, it is likely to offer the UK a year-long extension but say that if the UK can ratify the ­withdrawal agreement then it can leave earlier than that.
So what should the UK do with this year-long extension?
Well, one highly influential Brexiteer tells me that in these circumstances, May must go. There’s no mechanism for removing the PM as Tory leader before December, but this figure argues: “If we let May stay for another nine months, Corbyn will just walk in at the end of it.”
He warns that however messy the process of ­forcing May out might be, the “alternative is to leave the worst PM ever facing a national emergency with Corbyn gaining ever more ground”.
The nightmare for the Tories is we don’t deliver Brexit and we get ­Corbyn.
The new leader, the case goes, should then go for a massive domestic policy blitz. There should be a truly radical budget, the most significant this century, designed to show how the UK will prosper in this new era.
May’s successor should then fight a General Election on this domestic policy platform and ending free movement. This approach, given ­Corbyn’s weaknesses, might just yield a majority.
Armed with a majority, the new Prime Minister would be in a stronger position with both ­Parliament and the EU.
There is no doubt that this is a high-risk strategy. But there aren’t any good options left for the Tories. As this figure warns: “The nightmare for the Tories is we don’t deliver Brexit and we get ­Corbyn.”
TORY tensions are running high over what Jeremy Hunt did, or did not, say at Cabinet this week.
Several of Hunt’s senior ­colleagues insist that in the ­morning’s political Cabinet, he was leaning into No Deal. But that in the afternoon ­session, he took a softer line.
One Cabinet minister accuses Hunt of “trying to play both ends”.
Another says that the ­Cabinet is divided between those who are positioning themselves politically and the grown-ups in the room.
They added that “Sajid [Javid] chose to be a grown-up, Hunt positioned”.
Another Secretary of State quips that “if there had been a third ­meeting, he’d have taken a third position”.
But allies of Hunt are furious about this briefing. They say it is a deliberate misrepresentation of what he said.
They claim that in the morning meeting Hunt was arguing that to get the deal through, the Government needed to present a choice between its deal and No Deal, and that there was no inconsistency between that and what he said later on.
The row, though, shows how Cabinet meetings are becoming weaponised in the Tory leadership contest.
I understand that Theresa May has taken to rolling her eyes when something is said that is obviously designed to be briefed out later.
Hunt is, currently, the front- runner in the Tory leadership contest. But for that reason, he needs to watch his back.
PHILIP Hammond is not going to let Theresa May ­forget the mistakes that cost the Tories their majority.
When the political Cabinet discussed an early election on Tuesday, I am told that Hammond emphasised that there must not be a repeat of what happened in 2017 – when the manifesto was forced on the Cabinet at the last minute, with them only seeing the whole document at its launch, THREE WEEKS into the campaign.
It was, of course, the ­manifesto’s disastrous social care policy that began the Tory slide in the polls. I am told that May looked thoroughly weary as ­Hammond made his point.
THIS is the “Blue Peter” Cabinet, in the words of one minister.
Why? Because ministers go in for hours of discussion, then Theresa May comes out at the end of the meeting with a policy she made ­earlier.
While they may not be that far apart, their parties are and a deal would require not one but BOTH of them to be prepared to split their parties, writes James Forsyth
THE truth is that Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are not that far apart on Brexit.
They might use different ­language but what they want is really quite similar.
But DON’T THINK that this means a Brexit deal will be done between them.
While they may not be that far apart, their parties are. A deal would require not one but BOTH of them to be prepared to split their parties.
The Tories have been arguing about Europe for 40 years.
The reason that Theresa May has been forced into these talks with someone she has regularly derided as a threat to national security is because too many of her own MPs won’t support her.
If May was to soften her deal to try to get Labour support, she would exacerbate the divide within her own party.
I am told that in the talks, the Government has tried to point out to Labour that the deal does, in the backstop, effectively include a customs union. But Labour has been ­insistent that the phrase ­“permanent customs union” must be used in any deal.
Why? Because they know that by removing ambiguity on this point, they divide the Tories.
One figure close to the talks tells me that Labour has two objectives in these discussions — to maximise Tory divisions and minimise Labour ones.
There is concern among ­Cabinet ministers that Labour’s aim in this process is to flush out just how much the May government is prepared to ­concede then walk away.
When political opponents negotiate, such suspicions are inevitable. But there is a huge risk for Corbyn in agreeing any deal with the Government.
The chances of finding one leader prepared to split their party in the national interest is not that high.
If Corbyn helps usher in Brexit — even a soft version — the pro-second referendum forces in the ­Labour Party will never forgive him. In these ­circumstances, he would almost ­certainly lose more MPs.
The simplest way for Corbyn to justify ushering a Brexit deal through would be if the ­alternative to it was No Deal.
He could argue that he had to act to prevent the UK ­leaving without a deal.
He could say that No Deal would cost manufacturing jobs and lead to the Tories cutting ­regulation and corporate taxes.
But with the EU likely to offer the UK an extension of up to a year, this argument doesn’t work — a year is enough time to hold either a General Election or second referendum.
One other option being ­discussed is the idea that there might be a separate Commons vote on a second referendum.
Labour would whip in favour of it, but because of Tory ­opposition and Labour rebels, it would not pass. Corbyn could say he had tried but the ­numbers just weren’t there.
But that approach is unlikely to wash with the more fanatical Labour second-referendum types. They know that there aren’t the votes in Parliament for a second referendum on its own, and so want it to be part of any overall agreement.
Now, I can hear you ­screaming: What about the good of the country? But the problem is that Nick Clegg’s experience with going into coalition proves that doing the right thing doesn’t prevent you suffering political damage.
The chances of finding one leader prepared to split their party in the national interest is not that high. But the chance of finding two is, well, pretty darn low.
THERESA MAY has asked for an extension to the UK’s EU membership until June 30. The EU isn’t going to grant this request, though.
Instead, it is likely to offer the UK a year-long extension but say that if the UK can ratify the ­withdrawal agreement then it can leave earlier than that.
So what should the UK do with this year-long extension?
Well, one highly influential Brexiteer tells me that in these circumstances, May must go. There’s no mechanism for removing the PM as Tory leader before December, but this figure argues: “If we let May stay for another nine months, Corbyn will just walk in at the end of it.”
He warns that however messy the process of ­forcing May out might be, the “alternative is to leave the worst PM ever facing a national emergency with Corbyn gaining ever more ground”.
The nightmare for the Tories is we don’t deliver Brexit and we get ­Corbyn.
The new leader, the case goes, should then go for a massive domestic policy blitz. There should be a truly radical budget, the most significant this century, designed to show how the UK will prosper in this new era.
May’s successor should then fight a General Election on this domestic policy platform and ending free movement. This approach, given ­Corbyn’s weaknesses, might just yield a majority.
Armed with a majority, the new Prime Minister would be in a stronger position with both ­Parliament and the EU.
There is no doubt that this is a high-risk strategy. But there aren’t any good options left for the Tories. As this figure warns: “The nightmare for the Tories is we don’t deliver Brexit and we get ­Corbyn.”
TORY tensions are running high over what Jeremy Hunt did, or did not, say at Cabinet this week.
Several of Hunt’s senior ­colleagues insist that in the ­morning’s political Cabinet, he was leaning into No Deal. But that in the afternoon ­session, he took a softer line.
One Cabinet minister accuses Hunt of “trying to play both ends”.
Another says that the ­Cabinet is divided between those who are positioning themselves politically and the grown-ups in the room.
They added that “Sajid [Javid] chose to be a grown-up, Hunt positioned”.
Another Secretary of State quips that “if there had been a third ­meeting, he’d have taken a third position”.
But allies of Hunt are furious about this briefing. They say it is a deliberate misrepresentation of what he said.
They claim that in the morning meeting Hunt was arguing that to get the deal through, the Government needed to present a choice between its deal and No Deal, and that there was no inconsistency between that and what he said later on.
The row, though, shows how Cabinet meetings are becoming weaponised in the Tory leadership contest.
I understand that Theresa May has taken to rolling her eyes when something is said that is obviously designed to be briefed out later.
Hunt is, currently, the front- runner in the Tory leadership contest. But for that reason, he needs to watch his back.
PHILIP Hammond is not going to let Theresa May ­forget the mistakes that cost the Tories their majority.
When the political Cabinet discussed an early election on Tuesday, I am told that Hammond emphasised that there must not be a repeat of what happened in 2017 – when the manifesto was forced on the Cabinet at the last minute, with them only seeing the whole document at its launch, THREE WEEKS into the campaign.
It was, of course, the ­manifesto’s disastrous social care policy that began the Tory slide in the polls. I am told that May looked thoroughly weary as ­Hammond made his point.
THIS is the “Blue Peter” Cabinet, in the words of one minister.
Why? Because ministers go in for hours of discussion, then Theresa May comes out at the end of the meeting with a policy she made ­earlier.
Theresa May's meetings in Brussels next week appear more important than ever, writes James Forsyth
WHEN Theresa May goes to Brussels next week to bat for changes to the backstop, she will do so with a large crack in her bat.
The symbolic defeat that MPs inflicted on her Brexit plan on Thursday night has significantly weakened her negotiating position.
The EU doesn’t want to make significant changes to the backstop. It repeats endlessly that the withdrawal agreement is closed and that it isn’t going to reopen it.
When the Brady amendment passed the House of Commons, saying Parliament would accept the deal if the backstop was replaced, the EU responded by saying they didn’t think this Parliament majority was “stable”.
Thursday night’s vote helps them make that argument.
As one No10 source laments: “We don’t want to give the Europeans a chance not to engage with us.”
I understand that when the Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, dined in Brussels this week Sabine Weyand — the EU’s deputy negotiator — spent her time telling him that a customs union was the only major change available to the backstop.
The EU think that Corbyn’s support for it means that a customs union could pass Parliament. I am told Barclay attempted to disabuse them of this idea.
Mrs May can’t entirely escape blame for this week’s fiasco.
No10 should have made sure that its own MPs were happy with the wording before publishing the motion.
“She’s like a football team that can’t string two wins together,” complains one minister.
But the Tory Brexit ultras should have paid more heed to the real-world consequences of their actions.
Another effect of Thursday night’s defeat for the Government is that it increases the chances of the Cooper amendment passing on February 27.
This would compel the Government to seek an extension to Article 50 if Mrs May hasn’t won Parliament’s support for an exit deal by March 13.
One Cabinet minister, with close links to several of the ministers who might quit to ensure this amendment goes through, tells me it is now “much more likely” to pass.
This Secretary of State complains that the Government’s defeat “makes it harder to make the argument that we should hold our nerve” as “the best evidence for holding your nerve was that the outcome would be the same as when the Brady amendment went through”.
Another minister warns: “If she doesn’t come back with something cooking by the 27th, there’ll be trouble.”
I understand those around Mrs May know they need to have shown progress by the 27th.
One insider tells me: “If the Government doesn’t want Parliament to take control, they need to have a plan.
They can’t just sit there for two weeks.”
Other Cabinet ministers aren’t so sure Cooper will pass.
One tells me: “I don’t think the ministers will resign, and if they don’t resign, then it doesn’t pass.”
If Cooper does go through, politics will enter into an even more unpredictable phase. One May Cabinet ally is predicting a general election if this happens.
But it is hard to see how a general election could end in anything other than disaster for the Tories in these circumstances.
If Mrs May is forced to ask the EU for an extension but with no Parliamentary agreement in sight, the EU is more likely to offer a long extension than a short one.
I understand the view in several EU capitals is that the longer the extension, the more likely it is that the political dynamics in the UK will change.
But a long extension would prolong this damaging, political uncertainty.
This Government, and this Parliament’s, job is to get Brexit done. Time is running short. Both Parliament and the Government need to get their act together.
WHAT explains the fall in Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings and Labour’s position in the polls?
There are a whole host of explanations for this put forward.
Some say it is down to his Brexit position, others to Labour’s failure to deal with anti-Semitism.
But it may well be because the NHS – traditionally Labour’s strongest suit – is not the most important issue in politics right now.
Last winter, 73 per cent of voters regarded the health service as one of the most important issues facing the country.
But that number is down to 51 per cent this winter, according to the pollster Ipsos Mori.
Tellingly, Labour devoted its party political broadcast this week to the NHS to try to push the issue up the agenda.
The question now is whether the Tory decision to spend an extra £20billion a year on the health service by 2023 leads to a decline in public concern.
But in January A&E departments recorded their worst waiting times since the figures started being collected in 2010.
It is clear that health could soon shoot back up the political agenda.
The Tory plan to spend more money on the NHS will only work if this money is spent effectively.
If it is, then there is a chance it could begin to address public worries.
Matt Hancock, the new Health Secretary, is setting up a new NHS-X unit to try to bring the health service into the digital era, which would help the NHS to better use its resources.
There are many things the Tories have to do to win the next election – not least, deliver Brexit – but they must also reassure voters on the NHS.
THE lives of British servicemen nor diplomatic personnel should not be risked to bring back so-called jihadi brides to the United Kingdom.
But if they can be returned they should be subject to the full force of the law.
They should be investigated and prosecuted if there is sufficient evidence.
Justice must be done and must be seen to be done.
JOHN McDONNELL saying that he regards Winston Churchill as a “villain” is revealing; and shows how far outside the mainstream Labour tradition he is.
Churchill wouldn’t have been Prime Minister but for the Labour Party’s willingness to serve in a government led by him.
When it came to the crucial decision to fight on in 1940, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, two Labour members of the War Cabinet, were more solid than some of Churchill’s Tory colleagues.
But Attlee and Greenwood came from a very different Labour tradition to McDonnell: They weren’t Marxists or Trotskyists.
McDonnell and Corbyn don’t come from the mainstream of the traditional Labour Party and that is why a Labour split after Brexit is inevitable.
There are some Labour MPs who are just not prepared to try to put into power people who are so outside the traditional bounds of the party.
This is another reminder of just how crowded the field is going to be when Mrs May goes.
One minister likens the coming Tory leadership race to the 1967 Grand National, when a crowded field led to a pile-up at the 23rd fence and the victory of the 100-1 outsider Foinavon.
Theresa May's meetings in Brussels next week appear more important than ever, writes James Forsyth
WHEN Theresa May goes to Brussels next week to bat for changes to the backstop, she will do so with a large crack in her bat.
The symbolic defeat that MPs inflicted on her Brexit plan on Thursday night has significantly weakened her negotiating position.
The EU doesn’t want to make significant changes to the backstop. It repeats endlessly that the withdrawal agreement is closed and that it isn’t going to reopen it.
When the Brady amendment passed the House of Commons, saying Parliament would accept the deal if the backstop was replaced, the EU responded by saying they didn’t think this Parliament majority was “stable”.
Thursday night’s vote helps them make that argument.
As one No10 source laments: “We don’t want to give the Europeans a chance not to engage with us.”
I understand that when the Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, dined in Brussels this week Sabine Weyand — the EU’s deputy negotiator — spent her time telling him that a customs union was the only major change available to the backstop.
The EU think that Corbyn’s support for it means that a customs union could pass Parliament. I am told Barclay attempted to disabuse them of this idea.
Mrs May can’t entirely escape blame for this week’s fiasco.
No10 should have made sure that its own MPs were happy with the wording before publishing the motion.
“She’s like a football team that can’t string two wins together,” complains one minister.
But the Tory Brexit ultras should have paid more heed to the real-world consequences of their actions.
Another effect of Thursday night’s defeat for the Government is that it increases the chances of the Cooper amendment passing on February 27.
This would compel the Government to seek an extension to Article 50 if Mrs May hasn’t won Parliament’s support for an exit deal by March 13.
One Cabinet minister, with close links to several of the ministers who might quit to ensure this amendment goes through, tells me it is now “much more likely” to pass.
This Secretary of State complains that the Government’s defeat “makes it harder to make the argument that we should hold our nerve” as “the best evidence for holding your nerve was that the outcome would be the same as when the Brady amendment went through”.
Another minister warns: “If she doesn’t come back with something cooking by the 27th, there’ll be trouble.”
I understand those around Mrs May know they need to have shown progress by the 27th.
One insider tells me: “If the Government doesn’t want Parliament to take control, they need to have a plan.
They can’t just sit there for two weeks.”
Other Cabinet ministers aren’t so sure Cooper will pass.
One tells me: “I don’t think the ministers will resign, and if they don’t resign, then it doesn’t pass.”
If Cooper does go through, politics will enter into an even more unpredictable phase. One May Cabinet ally is predicting a general election if this happens.
But it is hard to see how a general election could end in anything other than disaster for the Tories in these circumstances.
If Mrs May is forced to ask the EU for an extension but with no Parliamentary agreement in sight, the EU is more likely to offer a long extension than a short one.
I understand the view in several EU capitals is that the longer the extension, the more likely it is that the political dynamics in the UK will change.
But a long extension would prolong this damaging, political uncertainty.
This Government, and this Parliament’s, job is to get Brexit done. Time is running short. Both Parliament and the Government need to get their act together.
WHAT explains the fall in Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings and Labour’s position in the polls?
There are a whole host of explanations for this put forward.
Some say it is down to his Brexit position, others to Labour’s failure to deal with anti-Semitism.
But it may well be because the NHS – traditionally Labour’s strongest suit – is not the most important issue in politics right now.
Last winter, 73 per cent of voters regarded the health service as one of the most important issues facing the country.
But that number is down to 51 per cent this winter, according to the pollster Ipsos Mori.
Tellingly, Labour devoted its party political broadcast this week to the NHS to try to push the issue up the agenda.
The question now is whether the Tory decision to spend an extra £20billion a year on the health service by 2023 leads to a decline in public concern.
But in January A&E departments recorded their worst waiting times since the figures started being collected in 2010.
It is clear that health could soon shoot back up the political agenda.
The Tory plan to spend more money on the NHS will only work if this money is spent effectively.
If it is, then there is a chance it could begin to address public worries.
Matt Hancock, the new Health Secretary, is setting up a new NHS-X unit to try to bring the health service into the digital era, which would help the NHS to better use its resources.
There are many things the Tories have to do to win the next election – not least, deliver Brexit – but they must also reassure voters on the NHS.
THE lives of British servicemen nor diplomatic personnel should not be risked to bring back so-called jihadi brides to the United Kingdom.
But if they can be returned they should be subject to the full force of the law.
They should be investigated and prosecuted if there is sufficient evidence.
Justice must be done and must be seen to be done.
JOHN McDONNELL saying that he regards Winston Churchill as a “villain” is revealing; and shows how far outside the mainstream Labour tradition he is.
Churchill wouldn’t have been Prime Minister but for the Labour Party’s willingness to serve in a government led by him.
When it came to the crucial decision to fight on in 1940, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, two Labour members of the War Cabinet, were more solid than some of Churchill’s Tory colleagues.
But Attlee and Greenwood came from a very different Labour tradition to McDonnell: They weren’t Marxists or Trotskyists.
McDonnell and Corbyn don’t come from the mainstream of the traditional Labour Party and that is why a Labour split after Brexit is inevitable.
There are some Labour MPs who are just not prepared to try to put into power people who are so outside the traditional bounds of the party.
This is another reminder of just how crowded the field is going to be when Mrs May goes.
One minister likens the coming Tory leadership race to the 1967 Grand National, when a crowded field led to a pile-up at the 23rd fence and the victory of the 100-1 outsider Foinavon.
The PM isn't going to get much of Brussels for now as they're fed-up with her after signing off a deal she assured them could get through the Commons
THERESA MAY is not going to get much out of Brussels until after Valentine’s Day.
There are two reasons for this. First, EU leaders are fed up with her.
She signed off on a deal with them, assured them it could get through the Commons then lost by a record margin.
They are now sceptical when the British indicate that this or that change could get the deal through Parliament.
Despite the passing of the Brady amendment — saying the Commons would ratify the withdrawal agreement if the so-called backstop was replaced by alternative arrangements to prevent a hard border — the EU remains doubtful as to whether this is really the case.
No 10 acknowledges that things are not easy between Mrs May and EU leaders at the moment.
One member of her circle tells me they are “waiting for the anger to subside” before they head to Brussels.
A well-placed European source tells me there will be “nothing tangible in two weeks”.
But there is another reason, beyond their irritation, why the EU are holding off from engaging with Mrs May.
They want to see what happens when the Commons next votes on Brexit, on Valentine’s Day of all days.
It is expected that Yvette Cooper will bring back her amendment which would force the Government to seek an extension to Article 50 if it can not agree a deal with the EU.
If Cooper is passed, then the EU could be certain that Parliament would not allow the UK to leave the EU without a deal.
At that point, the EU would have little reason to offer up a significant concession.
They would know there was no danger of either short-term No Deal disruption, which would be particularly badly timed for the EU given the slow-down in the eurozone economy, or of the UK ending up pursuing a radically different economic course after Brexit.
However, if the Cooper amendment failed again, the EU would have to confront the fact that this process really might result in No Deal.
They could lose a withdrawal agreement that is good for them, and the backstop would have created the very thing it is meant to avoid — the need for a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
In these circumstances, and with time ticking down, the EU would become more creative in its thinking.
The hunt would be on for face-saving ways to try to salvage the agreement.
This would not mean the EU would suddenly drop the backstop entirely.
But it would be more open to, say, a time limit on it.
With this change, the deal would stand a very decent chance of passing the Commons.
I understand there is a growing body of opinion in the ERG, the most powerful Brexiteer bloc in the Tory party, that a three-year time limit for the backstop — which could be extended to five in exceptional circumstances — could be acceptable.
Not all members of the ERG would take this.
But enough of them probably would to make up the missing numbers with Labour MPs.
Senior figures in the Government were encouraged by how many Labour MPs either abstained or voted against Cooper.
They believe these MPs can be persuaded to back a deal.
“There is a pool of Labour votes — and it is growing,” one Government source tells me.
Getting 30 Labour votes for a deal now seems doable.
Ministers and MPs must hang tight.
Now would be the worst moment to weaken the UK’s negotiating position.
“I DON’T know who has got any idea,” one leading Cabinet minister tells me when I ask what Theresa May’s plan is.
The precise direction of the Government’s Brexit policy is still being debated. I am told “there is no set course”.
Inside the Cabinet, the arguments are far from over.
There are four Cabinet ministers – David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and Philip Hammond – who won’t even contemplate No Deal.
They are becoming increasingly outspoken in their warnings about it.
This group has no intention of piping down.
However, another set of Cabinet ministers are more worried about no Brexit than No Deal.
One of them tells me: “The most disastrous thing for us as a party is if Brexit doesn’t happen.”
Another minister tells me: “The battle is only going to intensify.”
But this gang of four is not as influential as they once were.
The key figure from the formerly Remain wing of the Cabinet is David Lidington, effectively May’s deputy.
“Liders is in the engine room. Hammond and Rudd are shouting from the sidelines,” one Tory insider tells me.
Lidington is, I understand, of the view that the cross-party talks could yield something on customs.
The idea would be that the UK would leave the common commercial policy, allowing it to do its own trade deals, but seek to develop a customs arrangement with the EU that would replicate other parts of the customs union.
If there is a deal, the big question is how does it get through the Commons?
One Cabinet minister tells me that they think Mrs May should make clear before the next vote that if her deal is defeated she would request a six-month extension to Article 50.
This Secretary of State believes it would squeeze the Tory Brexit ultras, making them choose between Mrs May’s deal and a Brexit delay.
THE Labour Party is about to embark on a series of ideologically driven deselections – which is all the more reason for the Tories not to do the same.
Political parties must be broad churches to succeed and if the Tories set about deselecting everyone who takes a different view on how to achieve Brexit, they will risk turning themselves into an overly narrow faction.
For this reason, local Tories should stop thinking about deselecting Nick Boles.
He is wrong on ruling out No Deal, but he is right on housing and a whole host of other issues the Conservatives need to do more on.
TENSIONS are mounting inside Government about the role of Olly Robbins, the PM’s chief Brexit adviser.
Robbins was, I’m told, deeply irritated by reports about potential changes to the UK negotiating team.
But, as one insider points out to me, there is a problem with Robbins going back to Brussels.
His professional pride means he is highly sceptical about whether there’s a better deal to be done.
The second problem is that this is now all about what deal will get through Parliament.
But Robbins, as a civil servant, understandably doesn’t have a finger-tip feel for that.
Mrs May should be relying on politicians to do this most delicate of renegotiations.
CHILDREN should not spend more than two hours at a time on social media, according to Government advice to be issued on Thursday.
In response to a request from the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, the Chief Medical Officer has drawn up the first Government guidelines on social media usage.
This advice is clearly sensible.
If these social media companies want to demonstrate some responsibility, they should start introducing a two-hour cut-off for all users under 18.
The PM isn't going to get much of Brussels for now as they're fed-up with her after signing off a deal she assured them could get through the Commons
THERESA MAY is not going to get much out of Brussels until after Valentine’s Day.
There are two reasons for this. First, EU leaders are fed up with her.
She signed off on a deal with them, assured them it could get through the Commons then lost by a record margin.
They are now sceptical when the British indicate that this or that change could get the deal through Parliament.
Despite the passing of the Brady amendment — saying the Commons would ratify the withdrawal agreement if the so-called backstop was replaced by alternative arrangements to prevent a hard border — the EU remains doubtful as to whether this is really the case.
No 10 acknowledges that things are not easy between Mrs May and EU leaders at the moment.
One member of her circle tells me they are “waiting for the anger to subside” before they head to Brussels.
A well-placed European source tells me there will be “nothing tangible in two weeks”.
But there is another reason, beyond their irritation, why the EU are holding off from engaging with Mrs May.
They want to see what happens when the Commons next votes on Brexit, on Valentine’s Day of all days.
It is expected that Yvette Cooper will bring back her amendment which would force the Government to seek an extension to Article 50 if it can not agree a deal with the EU.
If Cooper is passed, then the EU could be certain that Parliament would not allow the UK to leave the EU without a deal.
At that point, the EU would have little reason to offer up a significant concession.
They would know there was no danger of either short-term No Deal disruption, which would be particularly badly timed for the EU given the slow-down in the eurozone economy, or of the UK ending up pursuing a radically different economic course after Brexit.
However, if the Cooper amendment failed again, the EU would have to confront the fact that this process really might result in No Deal.
They could lose a withdrawal agreement that is good for them, and the backstop would have created the very thing it is meant to avoid — the need for a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
In these circumstances, and with time ticking down, the EU would become more creative in its thinking.
The hunt would be on for face-saving ways to try to salvage the agreement.
This would not mean the EU would suddenly drop the backstop entirely.
But it would be more open to, say, a time limit on it.
With this change, the deal would stand a very decent chance of passing the Commons.
I understand there is a growing body of opinion in the ERG, the most powerful Brexiteer bloc in the Tory party, that a three-year time limit for the backstop — which could be extended to five in exceptional circumstances — could be acceptable.
Not all members of the ERG would take this.
But enough of them probably would to make up the missing numbers with Labour MPs.
Senior figures in the Government were encouraged by how many Labour MPs either abstained or voted against Cooper.
They believe these MPs can be persuaded to back a deal.
“There is a pool of Labour votes — and it is growing,” one Government source tells me.
Getting 30 Labour votes for a deal now seems doable.
Ministers and MPs must hang tight.
Now would be the worst moment to weaken the UK’s negotiating position.
“I DON’T know who has got any idea,” one leading Cabinet minister tells me when I ask what Theresa May’s plan is.
The precise direction of the Government’s Brexit policy is still being debated. I am told “there is no set course”.
Inside the Cabinet, the arguments are far from over.
There are four Cabinet ministers – David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and Philip Hammond – who won’t even contemplate No Deal.
They are becoming increasingly outspoken in their warnings about it.
This group has no intention of piping down.
However, another set of Cabinet ministers are more worried about no Brexit than No Deal.
One of them tells me: “The most disastrous thing for us as a party is if Brexit doesn’t happen.”
Another minister tells me: “The battle is only going to intensify.”
But this gang of four is not as influential as they once were.
The key figure from the formerly Remain wing of the Cabinet is David Lidington, effectively May’s deputy.
“Liders is in the engine room. Hammond and Rudd are shouting from the sidelines,” one Tory insider tells me.
Lidington is, I understand, of the view that the cross-party talks could yield something on customs.
The idea would be that the UK would leave the common commercial policy, allowing it to do its own trade deals, but seek to develop a customs arrangement with the EU that would replicate other parts of the customs union.
If there is a deal, the big question is how does it get through the Commons?
One Cabinet minister tells me that they think Mrs May should make clear before the next vote that if her deal is defeated she would request a six-month extension to Article 50.
This Secretary of State believes it would squeeze the Tory Brexit ultras, making them choose between Mrs May’s deal and a Brexit delay.
THE Labour Party is about to embark on a series of ideologically driven deselections – which is all the more reason for the Tories not to do the same.
Political parties must be broad churches to succeed and if the Tories set about deselecting everyone who takes a different view on how to achieve Brexit, they will risk turning themselves into an overly narrow faction.
For this reason, local Tories should stop thinking about deselecting Nick Boles.
He is wrong on ruling out No Deal, but he is right on housing and a whole host of other issues the Conservatives need to do more on.
TENSIONS are mounting inside Government about the role of Olly Robbins, the PM’s chief Brexit adviser.
Robbins was, I’m told, deeply irritated by reports about potential changes to the UK negotiating team.
But, as one insider points out to me, there is a problem with Robbins going back to Brussels.
His professional pride means he is highly sceptical about whether there’s a better deal to be done.
The second problem is that this is now all about what deal will get through Parliament.
But Robbins, as a civil servant, understandably doesn’t have a finger-tip feel for that.
Mrs May should be relying on politicians to do this most delicate of renegotiations.
CHILDREN should not spend more than two hours at a time on social media, according to Government advice to be issued on Thursday.
In response to a request from the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, the Chief Medical Officer has drawn up the first Government guidelines on social media usage.
This advice is clearly sensible.
If these social media companies want to demonstrate some responsibility, they should start introducing a two-hour cut-off for all users under 18.
James Glancy, who is standing for the Brexit Party, says it's vital we stand up to the EU super-state
I AM proud to be British and have been willing to risk my life to defend our values of tolerance, diversity and the rule of law.
But our greatest asset — our free and tolerant democracy — is under threat.
The failure of our politicians to listen to the people — and their complete lack of leadership — has compelled me to take a stand.
I am standing for the Brexit Party on the single issue of democracy. We have assembled a diverse group of candidates from across the political spectrum, from former Tory Ann Widdecombe to left-wing grandee Claire Fox.
We are all unified in our desire to pressure Westminster to deliver what the people instructed.
It is vital we restore parliamentary democracy. Through my service with the Royal Marines and the Special Boat Service, I witnessed the Arab Spring first-hand and saw the horrors suffered by a people with no representation in their political system.
I never thought our political class would deliberately undermine the people.
But they have done so by failing to deliver on the 2016 referendum. This after the 2018 General Election manifestos of the Conservative and Labour parties clearly pledged to honour the result.
Voters on all sides have been betrayed. The final straw for me was seeing the men who sent me to a questionable war in Afghanistan — Tony Blair, Lord Adonis and Alastair Campbell — conspiring to undermine the people.
They have been colluding with other governments in Europe to stop Brexit.
It is vital we stand up against the damage this hardcore group who want to create an EU super-state are inflicting on British democracy.
It is deeply saddening to see the divisions across our country. People voted to Remain and Leave for a range of legitimate reasons.
We are in this position due to John Major and Tony Blair’s arrogance in not consulting the
people on the treaties that embedded us in the EU — Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon.
The public should have been consulted on these major transfers of power from Parliament towards the supranational structures of the EU.
We are now left with this political mess as their legacy.
One of the greatest testaments to Britain is that so many people are willing to take huge risks to come and live here, to be free and prosperous.
My ancestors came to the UK from Ireland in the 19th century to escape famine and persecution. They settled in Greenock in the Scottish Lowlands.
I am deeply disturbed that Brexit has now come to focus on identity and immigration, instead of on democracy and who runs our country.
A vote for the Brexit Party will send shockwaves across Westminster, reminding them that the people are in charge.
We should celebrate immigrants as the heroes who want to be British and part of the national ­success story. Brexit is not a right-wing project. Five million Labour voters and a third of ethnic-minority voters backed Leave.
Yet from some of the rhetoric spouted, you would think that Brexit voters are all ignorant racists.  The result is that the Leave voters feel patronised, insulted and ignored. Look at the 203 Labour MPs — many of whom represent Leave-voting constituencies — who voted for a second referendum to overturn the first.
The contempt they show for the ordinary people who put their faith in the democratic process is breathtaking.
If politicians fail to deliver the result of the referendum, they will be guilty of selling out the people and undermining Britain’s international credibility as a stable and free liberal democracy.
The backlash from the public would be unthinkable.
Beyond Brexit, I see an opportunity to implement the strongest animal welfare and environmental legislation in the world. It is a chance to reset our relationship with nature, away from the Common Agricultural Policy.
I strongly disagree with those who want to weaken environmental policy.
Yet the beauty of an accountable liberal democracy is that those decisions can be made in our own Parliament.
A vote for the Brexit Party will send shockwaves across Westminster, reminding them that the people are in charge.
James Glancy, who is standing for the Brexit Party, says it's vital we stand up to the EU super-state
I AM proud to be British and have been willing to risk my life to defend our values of tolerance, diversity and the rule of law.
But our greatest asset — our free and tolerant democracy — is under threat.
The failure of our politicians to listen to the people — and their complete lack of leadership — has compelled me to take a stand.
I am standing for the Brexit Party on the single issue of democracy. We have assembled a diverse group of candidates from across the political spectrum, from former Tory Ann Widdecombe to left-wing grandee Claire Fox.
We are all unified in our desire to pressure Westminster to deliver what the people instructed.
It is vital we restore parliamentary democracy. Through my service with the Royal Marines and the Special Boat Service, I witnessed the Arab Spring first-hand and saw the horrors suffered by a people with no representation in their political system.
I never thought our political class would deliberately undermine the people.
But they have done so by failing to deliver on the 2016 referendum. This after the 2018 General Election manifestos of the Conservative and Labour parties clearly pledged to honour the result.
Voters on all sides have been betrayed. The final straw for me was seeing the men who sent me to a questionable war in Afghanistan — Tony Blair, Lord Adonis and Alastair Campbell — conspiring to undermine the people.
They have been colluding with other governments in Europe to stop Brexit.
It is vital we stand up against the damage this hardcore group who want to create an EU super-state are inflicting on British democracy.
It is deeply saddening to see the divisions across our country. People voted to Remain and Leave for a range of legitimate reasons.
We are in this position due to John Major and Tony Blair’s arrogance in not consulting the
people on the treaties that embedded us in the EU — Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon.
The public should have been consulted on these major transfers of power from Parliament towards the supranational structures of the EU.
We are now left with this political mess as their legacy.
One of the greatest testaments to Britain is that so many people are willing to take huge risks to come and live here, to be free and prosperous.
My ancestors came to the UK from Ireland in the 19th century to escape famine and persecution. They settled in Greenock in the Scottish Lowlands.
I am deeply disturbed that Brexit has now come to focus on identity and immigration, instead of on democracy and who runs our country.
A vote for the Brexit Party will send shockwaves across Westminster, reminding them that the people are in charge.
We should celebrate immigrants as the heroes who want to be British and part of the national ­success story. Brexit is not a right-wing project. Five million Labour voters and a third of ethnic-minority voters backed Leave.
Yet from some of the rhetoric spouted, you would think that Brexit voters are all ignorant racists.  The result is that the Leave voters feel patronised, insulted and ignored. Look at the 203 Labour MPs — many of whom represent Leave-voting constituencies — who voted for a second referendum to overturn the first.
The contempt they show for the ordinary people who put their faith in the democratic process is breathtaking.
If politicians fail to deliver the result of the referendum, they will be guilty of selling out the people and undermining Britain’s international credibility as a stable and free liberal democracy.
The backlash from the public would be unthinkable.
Beyond Brexit, I see an opportunity to implement the strongest animal welfare and environmental legislation in the world. It is a chance to reset our relationship with nature, away from the Common Agricultural Policy.
I strongly disagree with those who want to weaken environmental policy.
Yet the beauty of an accountable liberal democracy is that those decisions can be made in our own Parliament.
A vote for the Brexit Party will send shockwaves across Westminster, reminding them that the people are in charge.
THIS great country has a proud trading record. For more than 300 years the best of Britain has been sold around the world.
It’s made Brits wealthier and boosted our standing. From Pakistan to Poland, Israel to Ireland and South Africa to Switzerland, people enjoy the best of British.
But there is undoubtedly more to do to turbocharge trade. That’s why we are guaranteeing that under our leadership, Britain will never join a permanent customs union and instead seek to negotiate a comprehensive Canada-style free trade deal.
This means Britain will enjoy a fully independent trade policy to compete with the world’s biggest players.
It is simply not good enough for a country as productive as ours to hand over its trade policy to the European Union.
We intend to leave the EU with optimism and confidence. Britain can walk tall in the world with the lowest corporation taxes to attract business, a £15billion boost for our armed forces and a competitive free trade policy.
We will have political leadership at the heart of our team from the start of the negotiation with the EU.
We want to be a truly Global Britain and this cannot be done on the cheap
This will include the best and brightest, like world class negotiator Crawford Falconer. And there will be no need for a Department for Exiting the European Union.
So we will fold these resources into a beefed-up Department for International Trade and Digital Enterprise.
We want to be a truly Global Britain and this cannot be done on the cheap. We need to be competitive so we will increase our trade footprint overseas by doubling the International Trade department budget.
So we must wrap up Brexit as quickly as possible. It’s an urgent priority and that will be our unrelenting focus until it is done.
We both voted three times to leave the EU and if others had done the same we would have left by now. We don’t see Brexit as a problem to be solved but as the most amazing opportunity for our country.
It is a task which will require confidence, craft, vision and attention to detail. It will require the promotion of some relationships and the resetting of others.
And let us make one other thing clear: that team will never include the Labour front bench, which is hell bent on blocking Brexit.
There are a few other things about our Brexit plan that readers should know. If we leave without a deal – not an ideal outcome but one that must remain an option – the full £39billion divorce payment will not be handed over.
We will not pay a penny more than is legally required. Anyone who thinks we are going to write a blank cheque to the EU is sorely mistaken. To leave we need an experienced deal maker.
Perhaps one who delivered a smooth Olympic Games in 2012. Perhaps a deal maker who delivered £350million a week for the NHS after winning a battle with the Treasury.
 
Perhaps a deal maker who is already around the table with European leaders as Foreign Secretary.
So today our solemn promise is this: We must be able to demonstrate real progress with the EU by the middle of October. If no agreement is in sight by then we will press ahead with No Deal.
No one sensible wants this outcome, but if it’s a choice between no Brexit or No Deal then we will never betray the democratic mandate that Brexit won in 2016.
THIS great country has a proud trading record. For more than 300 years the best of Britain has been sold around the world.
It’s made Brits wealthier and boosted our standing. From Pakistan to Poland, Israel to Ireland and South Africa to Switzerland, people enjoy the best of British.
But there is undoubtedly more to do to turbocharge trade. That’s why we are guaranteeing that under our leadership, Britain will never join a permanent customs union and instead seek to negotiate a comprehensive Canada-style free trade deal.
This means Britain will enjoy a fully independent trade policy to compete with the world’s biggest players.
It is simply not good enough for a country as productive as ours to hand over its trade policy to the European Union.
We intend to leave the EU with optimism and confidence. Britain can walk tall in the world with the lowest corporation taxes to attract business, a £15billion boost for our armed forces and a competitive free trade policy.
We will have political leadership at the heart of our team from the start of the negotiation with the EU.
We want to be a truly Global Britain and this cannot be done on the cheap
This will include the best and brightest, like world class negotiator Crawford Falconer. And there will be no need for a Department for Exiting the European Union.
So we will fold these resources into a beefed-up Department for International Trade and Digital Enterprise.
We want to be a truly Global Britain and this cannot be done on the cheap. We need to be competitive so we will increase our trade footprint overseas by doubling the International Trade department budget.
So we must wrap up Brexit as quickly as possible. It’s an urgent priority and that will be our unrelenting focus until it is done.
We both voted three times to leave the EU and if others had done the same we would have left by now. We don’t see Brexit as a problem to be solved but as the most amazing opportunity for our country.
It is a task which will require confidence, craft, vision and attention to detail. It will require the promotion of some relationships and the resetting of others.
And let us make one other thing clear: that team will never include the Labour front bench, which is hell bent on blocking Brexit.
There are a few other things about our Brexit plan that readers should know. If we leave without a deal – not an ideal outcome but one that must remain an option – the full £39billion divorce payment will not be handed over.
We will not pay a penny more than is legally required. Anyone who thinks we are going to write a blank cheque to the EU is sorely mistaken. To leave we need an experienced deal maker.
Perhaps one who delivered a smooth Olympic Games in 2012. Perhaps a deal maker who delivered £350million a week for the NHS after winning a battle with the Treasury.
 
Perhaps a deal maker who is already around the table with European leaders as Foreign Secretary.
So today our solemn promise is this: We must be able to demonstrate real progress with the EU by the middle of October. If no agreement is in sight by then we will press ahead with No Deal.
No one sensible wants this outcome, but if it’s a choice between no Brexit or No Deal then we will never betray the democratic mandate that Brexit won in 2016.
In a letter obtained by The Sun, the Labour boss was applauded for going into talks with the PM to try and thrash out a deal, but warned against going for another divisive referendum
JEREMY Corbyn must cut a Brexit deal with Theresa May or he'll sell out his own voters, 25 of his Labour MPs have told him.
In a letter obtained by The Sun, the Labour boss was applauded for going into talks with the PM to try and thrash out a deal, but warned against going for another divisive referendum.
Earlier this week the PM shocked Westminster when she revealed she wanted to work together with Mr Corbyn to get her Brexit agreement over the line.
Furious Tories immediately lashed out and slammed her for turning to the Marxist leftie for help.
But some of Mr Corbyn's own MPs have been more supportive.
The group, many of whom represent Leave-voting areas in the North, wrote: "We feel if compromise is necessary to achieve this deal and avoid fighting the European elections, we should go the extra step to secure this.
"Our policy, agreed by members, accepts that the public voted to leave the EU and seeks a deal that secures jobs and rights and work."
However, they risked re-opening the party splits over a second referendum once more, as they deemed that a confirmatory referendum on any deal was NOT necessary.
Polling shows more support for No Deal than for Remain in every area outside of London, they said.
"Delaying for many months in the hope of a second referendum, will simply divide the country further and add uncertainty for businesses."
They said it would be "exploited by the far right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our changes of winning a general election".
Signatures include Dennis Skinner, Ruth Smeeth, Lisa Nandy and Kevin Barron.
It also includes five current shadow ministers - such as Jim McMahon and Gloria De Piero.
Many of them have voted against a second referendum when it came to votes in the House of Commons in recent weeks.
The Labour boss and Mrs May held two hours of talks yesterday on working together over Brexit.
Mr Corbyn described the chats as "useful but inconclusive" and vowed to continue them.
And the pair's team held talks without them today to try and hammer out some more detail.
A spokesperson said this evening: "Today both sets of negotiating teams met for four and a half hours in the Cabinet Office for detailed technical discussions.
"These talks are continuing and the teams are planning to meet again."
And Downing Street added that they hope talks will continue tomorrow.
A spokesman said: "Today both sets of negotiating teams met for four and a half hours of detailed and productive technical talks in the Cabinet Office, supported by the civil service.
"The Government and the Opposition hope to meet again tomorrow for further work to find a way forward to deliver on the referendum, mindful of the need to make progress ahead of the forthcoming European Council."
No10 are desperate to get a plan in place in the coming days before Mrs May has to head to the EU for a special Brexit summit on Monday.
She's already said she will be asking them for a delay to our EU exit - and it could be a long one.
Philip Hammond said yesterday she'll be seeking an extension of up to a year with the option to cut it if a deal is done.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
In a letter obtained by The Sun, the Labour boss was applauded for going into talks with the PM to try and thrash out a deal, but warned against going for another divisive referendum
JEREMY Corbyn must cut a Brexit deal with Theresa May or he'll sell out his own voters, 25 of his Labour MPs have told him.
In a letter obtained by The Sun, the Labour boss was applauded for going into talks with the PM to try and thrash out a deal, but warned against going for another divisive referendum.
Earlier this week the PM shocked Westminster when she revealed she wanted to work together with Mr Corbyn to get her Brexit agreement over the line.
Furious Tories immediately lashed out and slammed her for turning to the Marxist leftie for help.
But some of Mr Corbyn's own MPs have been more supportive.
The group, many of whom represent Leave-voting areas in the North, wrote: "We feel if compromise is necessary to achieve this deal and avoid fighting the European elections, we should go the extra step to secure this.
"Our policy, agreed by members, accepts that the public voted to leave the EU and seeks a deal that secures jobs and rights and work."
However, they risked re-opening the party splits over a second referendum once more, as they deemed that a confirmatory referendum on any deal was NOT necessary.
Polling shows more support for No Deal than for Remain in every area outside of London, they said.
"Delaying for many months in the hope of a second referendum, will simply divide the country further and add uncertainty for businesses."
They said it would be "exploited by the far right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our changes of winning a general election".
Signatures include Dennis Skinner, Ruth Smeeth, Lisa Nandy and Kevin Barron.
It also includes five current shadow ministers - such as Jim McMahon and Gloria De Piero.
Many of them have voted against a second referendum when it came to votes in the House of Commons in recent weeks.
The Labour boss and Mrs May held two hours of talks yesterday on working together over Brexit.
Mr Corbyn described the chats as "useful but inconclusive" and vowed to continue them.
And the pair's team held talks without them today to try and hammer out some more detail.
A spokesperson said this evening: "Today both sets of negotiating teams met for four and a half hours in the Cabinet Office for detailed technical discussions.
"These talks are continuing and the teams are planning to meet again."
And Downing Street added that they hope talks will continue tomorrow.
A spokesman said: "Today both sets of negotiating teams met for four and a half hours of detailed and productive technical talks in the Cabinet Office, supported by the civil service.
"The Government and the Opposition hope to meet again tomorrow for further work to find a way forward to deliver on the referendum, mindful of the need to make progress ahead of the forthcoming European Council."
No10 are desperate to get a plan in place in the coming days before Mrs May has to head to the EU for a special Brexit summit on Monday.
She's already said she will be asking them for a delay to our EU exit - and it could be a long one.
Philip Hammond said yesterday she'll be seeking an extension of up to a year with the option to cut it if a deal is done.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
EU chiefs are “tearing their hair out” with Labour’s “mad” Brexit policy and regret forming an alliance with Jeremy Corbyn.
Brussels are stunned at Corbyn’s plans to negotiate a deal and then campaign to stay in the bloc and now feel they “made mistakes” by cozying up to lefty labour boss.
An EU source, close to Brexit negotiations, told the Times: “They want us to negotiate a ‘credible’ deal and then they will campaign against it in a referendum?
“That is mad. How can we negotiate with people like that?”
“Their divisions and magical thinking are as bad as anything the Conservatives produced — perhaps worse.”
They want us to negotiate a ‘credible’ deal and then they will campaign against it in a referendum? That is mad. How can we negotiate with people like that?”
It is believed that EU officials now regret relationships with Remainer Labour grandees like Sir Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit Secretary, former PM Tony Blair and Lord Mandleson.
They believe Sir Keir in particular has contributed to Brexit chaos in Westminster that impacted the bloc on getting a deal with Theresa May.
The ex-PM’s loathed Withdrawal Agreement was defeated three times in the Commons by MPs.

Labour's blast from EU chiefs come after Boris Johnson has been holding crunch talks over the Northern Irish backstop.
The backstop, the most controversial element of May’s deal, has been a constant stumbling block in Brexit negotiations.
Bo-Jo told a People’s PMQ’s session that he “would not accept” any form of backstop in talks with the bloc because it “simply doesn’t work for the UK”.
The PM was handed a boost this week when Phil Hogan, a nominee for EU trade commissioner, said the “penny had dropped” after he suggested an “all-Ireland” farming market after our divorce from the bloc.
He later told RTE: "I also note that the British prime minister has moved away from his position…where he's now prepared to look at divergence of certain rules and regulations on the island of ireland vis-a-vis the United Kingdom.
But crucially we will not accept either a Northern Ireland only Backstop that simply doesn’t work for United Kingdom. I’m on your side were trying to sort this out, we will, we work very for a deal and we’re making great progress.
"So I think there's movement happening on both sides."
Under the plan, Northern Ireland would match Irish and EU rules in certain sectors after Brexit to avoid the need for a hard border.
The idea mimics a compromise offer The Sun revealed European capitals were brainstorming - where the province would mirror Brussels on animal and plant health.
It threatens to enrage Ulster unionists by effectively putting a virtual border down the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland.
But during his Q&A, live-streamed on Facebook today, the PM ruled out an "all Ireland" border.
He told Brits: “The UK will not accept the current Withdrawal Agreement.
“But crucially we will not accept either a Northern Ireland only Backstop that simply doesn’t work for United Kingdom.
“I’m on your side were trying to sort this out, we will, we work very for a deal and we’re making great progress.
“I had some very good talks with Leo Varadkar in Dublin. I’ve talked to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel and the mood is changing, the ice flows are cracking.
“We can do this thing absolutely, but we what cannot dot is fail to honour the commitment that parliamentarians made to British people – and that’s to come out of the EU and not extend Article 50.
“Once Brexit is done we can get on with taking the country forward.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
EU chiefs are “tearing their hair out” with Labour’s “mad” Brexit policy and regret forming an alliance with Jeremy Corbyn.
Brussels are stunned at Corbyn’s plans to negotiate a deal and then campaign to stay in the bloc and now feel they “made mistakes” by cozying up to lefty labour boss.
An EU source, close to Brexit negotiations, told the Times: “They want us to negotiate a ‘credible’ deal and then they will campaign against it in a referendum?
“That is mad. How can we negotiate with people like that?”
“Their divisions and magical thinking are as bad as anything the Conservatives produced — perhaps worse.”
They want us to negotiate a ‘credible’ deal and then they will campaign against it in a referendum? That is mad. How can we negotiate with people like that?”
It is believed that EU officials now regret relationships with Remainer Labour grandees like Sir Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit Secretary, former PM Tony Blair and Lord Mandleson.
They believe Sir Keir in particular has contributed to Brexit chaos in Westminster that impacted the bloc on getting a deal with Theresa May.
The ex-PM’s loathed Withdrawal Agreement was defeated three times in the Commons by MPs.

Labour's blast from EU chiefs come after Boris Johnson has been holding crunch talks over the Northern Irish backstop.
The backstop, the most controversial element of May’s deal, has been a constant stumbling block in Brexit negotiations.
Bo-Jo told a People’s PMQ’s session that he “would not accept” any form of backstop in talks with the bloc because it “simply doesn’t work for the UK”.
The PM was handed a boost this week when Phil Hogan, a nominee for EU trade commissioner, said the “penny had dropped” after he suggested an “all-Ireland” farming market after our divorce from the bloc.
He later told RTE: "I also note that the British prime minister has moved away from his position…where he's now prepared to look at divergence of certain rules and regulations on the island of ireland vis-a-vis the United Kingdom.
But crucially we will not accept either a Northern Ireland only Backstop that simply doesn’t work for United Kingdom. I’m on your side were trying to sort this out, we will, we work very for a deal and we’re making great progress.
"So I think there's movement happening on both sides."
Under the plan, Northern Ireland would match Irish and EU rules in certain sectors after Brexit to avoid the need for a hard border.
The idea mimics a compromise offer The Sun revealed European capitals were brainstorming - where the province would mirror Brussels on animal and plant health.
It threatens to enrage Ulster unionists by effectively putting a virtual border down the Irish Sea between Britain and Northern Ireland.
But during his Q&A, live-streamed on Facebook today, the PM ruled out an "all Ireland" border.
He told Brits: “The UK will not accept the current Withdrawal Agreement.
“But crucially we will not accept either a Northern Ireland only Backstop that simply doesn’t work for United Kingdom.
“I’m on your side were trying to sort this out, we will, we work very for a deal and we’re making great progress.
“I had some very good talks with Leo Varadkar in Dublin. I’ve talked to Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel and the mood is changing, the ice flows are cracking.
“We can do this thing absolutely, but we what cannot dot is fail to honour the commitment that parliamentarians made to British people – and that’s to come out of the EU and not extend Article 50.
“Once Brexit is done we can get on with taking the country forward.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
JEREMY Corbyn opened up the prospect of backing an SNP and Lib Dem pact to back a December 5 election.
The two smaller anti-Brexit parties joined forces to try to bounce Labour into backing their plan for an earlier poll in order to kill-off Boris Johnson's Brexit deal bill.
It is the latest date they would support an election before next year.
It has been chosen because it would mean breaking up Parliament by the end of next week - giving the Government no time to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) to deliver Brexit.
SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford insisted a December 5 election "would be an awful lot easier" for the nation because "people are obviously looking at nativity plays, Christmas parties, the unavailability of halls and schools and all the rest of it." And yesterday Mr Corbyn said he was open to the idea of one "maybe before December 12th".
Opposition parties are confident that if a cross-party pact agreed to a December 5 election then No10 would have no choice but to go for it.
The PM is currently on course to lose Monday's motion calling for a December 12 election if he still insists on passing the WAB first.
But if he has no prospect of getting his way then he may have to ditch plans to bring back the WAB and go for the December 5 election in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock.
Mr Corbyn also said he was opposed to the December 12 election date because it was too close to Christmas.
He told ITV's This Morning show: “The 12th December date is really odd for many reasons. It’s so near Christmas, it’s after universities have ended their terms etc.”
JEREMY Corbyn opened up the prospect of backing an SNP and Lib Dem pact to back a December 5 election.
The two smaller anti-Brexit parties joined forces to try to bounce Labour into backing their plan for an earlier poll in order to kill-off Boris Johnson's Brexit deal bill.
It is the latest date they would support an election before next year.
It has been chosen because it would mean breaking up Parliament by the end of next week - giving the Government no time to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) to deliver Brexit.
SNP's Westminster leader Ian Blackford insisted a December 5 election "would be an awful lot easier" for the nation because "people are obviously looking at nativity plays, Christmas parties, the unavailability of halls and schools and all the rest of it." And yesterday Mr Corbyn said he was open to the idea of one "maybe before December 12th".
Opposition parties are confident that if a cross-party pact agreed to a December 5 election then No10 would have no choice but to go for it.
The PM is currently on course to lose Monday's motion calling for a December 12 election if he still insists on passing the WAB first.
But if he has no prospect of getting his way then he may have to ditch plans to bring back the WAB and go for the December 5 election in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock.
Mr Corbyn also said he was opposed to the December 12 election date because it was too close to Christmas.
He told ITV's This Morning show: “The 12th December date is really odd for many reasons. It’s so near Christmas, it’s after universities have ended their terms etc.”
The PM’s decision to compromise with Labour for a softer Brexit that will pass the Commons split the Conservative Party down the middle
THERESA May was last night struggling to hold her Government together as two ministers quit in protest at her “national unity” Brexit talks with Jeremy Corbyn - with 15 more ready to go.
The PM’s decision to compromise with Labour for a softer Brexit that will pass the Commons split the Conservative Party down the middle yesterday.
While loyalists defended the plan – that also delays Brexit until at least to May 22 - as the only way to guarantee Britain does leave the EU, Leavers accused her of bitter betrayal.
The Sun has been told that 15 Brexiteer ministers are “on the edge” of also walking out - 10 junior ministers, five in the Cabinet.
One of those ministers said: “Many, many colleagues in government are just seething and a lot of us are on the edge now – some over a customs union, others over European Parliament elections.
“What’s for sure is if she asks for a long extension next week it will mean mass resignations.”
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox signalled last night he is one ready to quit if Mrs May watered down her red lines, telling MPs he is prepared to dump “none” of the party’s manifesto promises.
A large group of Brexiteer ministers – known as the Pizza Club - met twice yesterday, including late last night in the Commons, to try to plot a way to stop Mrs May from softening Brexit further.
Among them were Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom - who hosted the meeting - Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Wales minister Nigel Adams quit at 9am yesterday, accusing Mrs May of “a grave error”.
In a seething resignation letter to the PM, Mr Adams added: “It now seems that you have decided a deal - cooked up by a Marxist who has never put British interests first - is better than no deal”.
Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris then walked out in the middle of the Mrs May’s two hours of talks with Jeremy Corbyn yesterday afternoon, telling her he “cannot support any further extension to Article 50”.
Many, many colleagues in government are just seething
Mr Heaton-Harris - who was in charge of No Deal planning – said the PM’s decision not to leave without a deal “makes my job in Government irrelevant”.
Issuing an incendiary allegation, the MP for Daventry also accused senior civil servants of withholding key information from her.
He added in his resignation letter: “Unfortunately, I do not believe the briefings you have received on these matters recently have reflected all they have achieved or the preparations our European partners have made”.
The two departures brought the total of unfilled posts in Government to six, with No10 failing to fill resigning ministers places for the past three weeks.
Mrs May was also hit by a fresh Cabinet revolt after a new split emerged between her and her Brexit Secretary over how long a new Brexit delay she should ask the EU for.
While no final decision has been made, No10 say Mrs May is expected to request a long delay of nine months during an emergency new EU summit next week – but with a break clause, to deliver on her promise of an earlier exit by May 22 as soon as a deal is passed by MPs.
But Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay made it clear to MPs yesterday that the Cabinet only reluctantly signed off a delay of a few more weeks, saying: “There has been no Cabinet agreement for an extension beyond 22 May”.
Mr Barclay also piled the pressure on Mrs May not to request a lengthy extension – telling MPs that she is “on record” saying she won’t seek one beyond June.
An extraordinary bid was also drawn up by some livid Tory MPs to try to fine the PM and the Cabinet ministers that backed her plan half their annual salaries, via an official censure motion put before the House of Commons.
But it was unlikely to pass.
Defending Mrs May’s controversial unity talks, and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox also warned Tory MPs they must now be prepared to rip up some Tory manifesto red lines just to get Brexit over line.
Brexit campaigner Mr Cox said: “I don’t want to see a customs union, let me make that clear.
“But if it is a choice between leaving and a customs union, then I will take leaving every single time.
“Leaving is the priority. Other matters, important though they are, are of a lesser significance.”
He also insisted that eurosceptics like ex-Tory boss Iain Duncan Smith “would have bitten off the arm of the Prime Minister” to get a soft Brexit deal.
Mr Cox added: “A customs union is not some kind of sell-out. Even if it were to be negotiated, it still involves a massive repatriation of sovereign power to this country”.

But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox opened a huge Cabinet divide last night by telling Tory MPs he wasn’t ready to “compromise”.
Sources claimed he was challenged at a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee about which red line he would wave in talks with Labour – a second referendum, single market or customs union – he replied: "None of them."
Challenged by the Sun as he left the meeting whether he would still be able to strike trade deals in the future, Mr Fox said: “What’s it say in our manifesto?”
A giant 10 second-long clap of thunder just as Mrs May and Mr Corbyn met yesterday afternoon sparked graveyard humour across Parliament.
Despite Mr Corbyn’s negative readout from it, a Downing Street spokesman said: “Today’s talks were constructive, with both sides showing flexibility and a commitment to bring the current Brexit uncertainty to a close.
“We have agreed a programme of work to ensure we deliver for the British people, protecting jobs and security.”
Earlier, the PM was panned by five Tories for her opening the door to Mr Corbyn in a stormy PMQs.
Caroline Johnson demanded the PM explain whether a No Deal was really riskier than “ushering in a Marxist, anti-Semite led Government”.
The PM insisted she was trying to deliver for voters and “deliver Brexit as soon as possible”. David Jones, the former Brexit Minister, asked whether it remained the PM’s position that Mr Corbyn was “not fit to govern”.
Mrs May said the two leaders had different opinions on a number of issues – and panned the Labour leader for “believing Vladimir Putin” over the UK’s spooks following the Salisbury attack.
But earlier she insisted herself and Mr Corbyn agreed on wanting to deliver a deal, protecting jobs, ensuring an end to free movement.
“We want to find a way forward that can command the support of this House, to deliver on Brexit and the result of the referendum, and to ensure that people can continue to have trust in their politicians doing what they ask us to do.”
The PM signalled her confidence a deal was possible - by comparing herself to childhood hero Geoffrey Boycott. Responding to a question about devolution in Yorkshire from a fellow cricket fan John Grogan she said: “one thing that I have always admired about Geoffrey Boycott is that he stayed at the crease, kept going and got his century in the end.”
In a stunning outburst last night, newly independent Remainer MP Nick Boles – who resigned as a Tory on Monday – accused the PM’s chief spinner of trying to sabotage her bid for a deal with Labour.
Mr Boles tweeted: “I am no longer a member of the Conservative Party, so I can be blunt where previously I might have been discreet.
“The PM’s head of communications Robbie Gibb is a hard Brexiter who wants to destroy the PM’s new search for a cross party compromise.
“The Prime Minister would do well to tell Mr Gibb to get back in his box.”
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The PM’s decision to compromise with Labour for a softer Brexit that will pass the Commons split the Conservative Party down the middle
THERESA May was last night struggling to hold her Government together as two ministers quit in protest at her “national unity” Brexit talks with Jeremy Corbyn - with 15 more ready to go.
The PM’s decision to compromise with Labour for a softer Brexit that will pass the Commons split the Conservative Party down the middle yesterday.
While loyalists defended the plan – that also delays Brexit until at least to May 22 - as the only way to guarantee Britain does leave the EU, Leavers accused her of bitter betrayal.
The Sun has been told that 15 Brexiteer ministers are “on the edge” of also walking out - 10 junior ministers, five in the Cabinet.
One of those ministers said: “Many, many colleagues in government are just seething and a lot of us are on the edge now – some over a customs union, others over European Parliament elections.
“What’s for sure is if she asks for a long extension next week it will mean mass resignations.”
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox signalled last night he is one ready to quit if Mrs May watered down her red lines, telling MPs he is prepared to dump “none” of the party’s manifesto promises.
A large group of Brexiteer ministers – known as the Pizza Club - met twice yesterday, including late last night in the Commons, to try to plot a way to stop Mrs May from softening Brexit further.
Among them were Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom - who hosted the meeting - Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
Wales minister Nigel Adams quit at 9am yesterday, accusing Mrs May of “a grave error”.
In a seething resignation letter to the PM, Mr Adams added: “It now seems that you have decided a deal - cooked up by a Marxist who has never put British interests first - is better than no deal”.
Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris then walked out in the middle of the Mrs May’s two hours of talks with Jeremy Corbyn yesterday afternoon, telling her he “cannot support any further extension to Article 50”.
Many, many colleagues in government are just seething
Mr Heaton-Harris - who was in charge of No Deal planning – said the PM’s decision not to leave without a deal “makes my job in Government irrelevant”.
Issuing an incendiary allegation, the MP for Daventry also accused senior civil servants of withholding key information from her.
He added in his resignation letter: “Unfortunately, I do not believe the briefings you have received on these matters recently have reflected all they have achieved or the preparations our European partners have made”.
The two departures brought the total of unfilled posts in Government to six, with No10 failing to fill resigning ministers places for the past three weeks.
Mrs May was also hit by a fresh Cabinet revolt after a new split emerged between her and her Brexit Secretary over how long a new Brexit delay she should ask the EU for.
While no final decision has been made, No10 say Mrs May is expected to request a long delay of nine months during an emergency new EU summit next week – but with a break clause, to deliver on her promise of an earlier exit by May 22 as soon as a deal is passed by MPs.
But Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay made it clear to MPs yesterday that the Cabinet only reluctantly signed off a delay of a few more weeks, saying: “There has been no Cabinet agreement for an extension beyond 22 May”.
Mr Barclay also piled the pressure on Mrs May not to request a lengthy extension – telling MPs that she is “on record” saying she won’t seek one beyond June.
An extraordinary bid was also drawn up by some livid Tory MPs to try to fine the PM and the Cabinet ministers that backed her plan half their annual salaries, via an official censure motion put before the House of Commons.
But it was unlikely to pass.
Defending Mrs May’s controversial unity talks, and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox also warned Tory MPs they must now be prepared to rip up some Tory manifesto red lines just to get Brexit over line.
Brexit campaigner Mr Cox said: “I don’t want to see a customs union, let me make that clear.
“But if it is a choice between leaving and a customs union, then I will take leaving every single time.
“Leaving is the priority. Other matters, important though they are, are of a lesser significance.”
He also insisted that eurosceptics like ex-Tory boss Iain Duncan Smith “would have bitten off the arm of the Prime Minister” to get a soft Brexit deal.
Mr Cox added: “A customs union is not some kind of sell-out. Even if it were to be negotiated, it still involves a massive repatriation of sovereign power to this country”.

But International Trade Secretary Liam Fox opened a huge Cabinet divide last night by telling Tory MPs he wasn’t ready to “compromise”.
Sources claimed he was challenged at a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee about which red line he would wave in talks with Labour – a second referendum, single market or customs union – he replied: "None of them."
Challenged by the Sun as he left the meeting whether he would still be able to strike trade deals in the future, Mr Fox said: “What’s it say in our manifesto?”
A giant 10 second-long clap of thunder just as Mrs May and Mr Corbyn met yesterday afternoon sparked graveyard humour across Parliament.
Despite Mr Corbyn’s negative readout from it, a Downing Street spokesman said: “Today’s talks were constructive, with both sides showing flexibility and a commitment to bring the current Brexit uncertainty to a close.
“We have agreed a programme of work to ensure we deliver for the British people, protecting jobs and security.”
Earlier, the PM was panned by five Tories for her opening the door to Mr Corbyn in a stormy PMQs.
Caroline Johnson demanded the PM explain whether a No Deal was really riskier than “ushering in a Marxist, anti-Semite led Government”.
The PM insisted she was trying to deliver for voters and “deliver Brexit as soon as possible”. David Jones, the former Brexit Minister, asked whether it remained the PM’s position that Mr Corbyn was “not fit to govern”.
Mrs May said the two leaders had different opinions on a number of issues – and panned the Labour leader for “believing Vladimir Putin” over the UK’s spooks following the Salisbury attack.
But earlier she insisted herself and Mr Corbyn agreed on wanting to deliver a deal, protecting jobs, ensuring an end to free movement.
“We want to find a way forward that can command the support of this House, to deliver on Brexit and the result of the referendum, and to ensure that people can continue to have trust in their politicians doing what they ask us to do.”
The PM signalled her confidence a deal was possible - by comparing herself to childhood hero Geoffrey Boycott. Responding to a question about devolution in Yorkshire from a fellow cricket fan John Grogan she said: “one thing that I have always admired about Geoffrey Boycott is that he stayed at the crease, kept going and got his century in the end.”
In a stunning outburst last night, newly independent Remainer MP Nick Boles – who resigned as a Tory on Monday – accused the PM’s chief spinner of trying to sabotage her bid for a deal with Labour.
Mr Boles tweeted: “I am no longer a member of the Conservative Party, so I can be blunt where previously I might have been discreet.
“The PM’s head of communications Robbie Gibb is a hard Brexiter who wants to destroy the PM’s new search for a cross party compromise.
“The Prime Minister would do well to tell Mr Gibb to get back in his box.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
The Labour leader had 'detailed discussions' with Tories Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin
JEREMY Corbyn met Tory Remainers yesterday as he stepped up his bid to force Theresa May to adopt a soft Brexit alternative.
He agreed to pursue further talks with Tory and Labour MPs over finding a compromise between his plan to stay in the Customs Union and their “Norway-Plus” style Brexit that would keep Britain in the Single Market.
Mr Corbyn’s spokesman said they held “detailed discussions” with Tory MPs Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin and Labour MPs Lucy Powell and Stephen Kinnock over their plans for a Common Market 2.0.
Labour said in a statement afterwards: “They discussed how to build greater support on areas of agreement between Labour’s alternative plan and Common Market 2.0 and find possible areas of compromise.”
But separate talks with anti-Brexit parties broke down after he watered down his commitment to a second referendum.
He met Westminster leaders of anti-Brexit parties the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens over their campaign for a People’s Vote - and snubbed their invitation to join a rally calling for one on Saturday.
Lib Dem boss Sir Vince Cable said of the meeting: “There are unfortunately absolutely fundamental disagreements. He won’t support a People’s Vote if it’s involves voting on the Government’s deal versus remain, and since that’s the only deal available it means they don’t support a referendum in practice.
"Basically the labour party is still in the territory of trying to find a form of Brexit.
“Sadly he won’t be joining us on the march on Saturday - he’s good at these rallies and I think he would enjoy it but it was a definite no to that.”
The Labour leader had 'detailed discussions' with Tories Nick Boles and Sir Oliver Letwin
JEREMY Corbyn met Tory Remainers yesterday as he stepped up his bid to force Theresa May to adopt a soft Brexit alternative.
He agreed to pursue further talks with Tory and Labour MPs over finding a compromise between his plan to stay in the Customs Union and their “Norway-Plus” style Brexit that would keep Britain in the Single Market.
Mr Corbyn’s spokesman said they held “detailed discussions” with Tory MPs Nick Boles and Oliver Letwin and Labour MPs Lucy Powell and Stephen Kinnock over their plans for a Common Market 2.0.
Labour said in a statement afterwards: “They discussed how to build greater support on areas of agreement between Labour’s alternative plan and Common Market 2.0 and find possible areas of compromise.”
But separate talks with anti-Brexit parties broke down after he watered down his commitment to a second referendum.
He met Westminster leaders of anti-Brexit parties the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and the Greens over their campaign for a People’s Vote - and snubbed their invitation to join a rally calling for one on Saturday.
Lib Dem boss Sir Vince Cable said of the meeting: “There are unfortunately absolutely fundamental disagreements. He won’t support a People’s Vote if it’s involves voting on the Government’s deal versus remain, and since that’s the only deal available it means they don’t support a referendum in practice.
"Basically the labour party is still in the territory of trying to find a form of Brexit.
“Sadly he won’t be joining us on the march on Saturday - he’s good at these rallies and I think he would enjoy it but it was a definite no to that.”
ARCH-BREXITEERS are demanding a place in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet to provide a “ring of steel” against ‘Remain’ Tories and civil servants.
Sources claim Steve Baker is pushing to be Brexit Secretary and other Eurosceptics are lobbying Boris for key jobs amid fears he will wobble and water down his ‘Do or Die’ pledge to leave by October 31.
It comes as Brexiteer Tories worry that the bookies’ odds-on leadership favourite will only make minor changes to the make-up of the existing Cabinet.
And they fear Boris has done “nowhere near enough” planning for how he plans to enter pivotal negotiations with the EU.
One Eurosceptic told The Sun: “There needs to a Praetorian Guard – a ring of steel - around Boris so he doesn’t fold when faced with Whitehall.”
They added: “People are worried. There’s all this talk of Sajid (Javid) being made Chancellor, Liz going into Business. They’re born again Brexiteers – remember they both voted Remain.
“Boris needs to remember who’s got him here in the first place.”
The comments threaten to reignite the growing split in ‘Team Boris’ as Mr Johnson tries to keep different wings of the party together. Health
Secretary Matt Hancock shifted to supporting Boris after insisting a No Deal wasn’t an option.
But the self-styled ‘Spartans’ such as Steve Baker and Mark Francois have argued for a managed No Deal – or ‘clean’ Brexit.
Insiders suggested Boris will run out of places to put arch Eurosceptics in his Cabinet given the need to keep different factions on side.
Ex-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is said to be pushing for Northern Ireland Secretary. Boris is also expected to promote long-time ally Ben
Wallace to Defence, but keep Penny Mordaunt in the Cabinet.
He is also under pressure to find posts for Oliver Dowden – David Cameron’s former deputy chief of staff – and upcoming Tories such as Rishi Sunak.
Pensions Minister Alok Sharma is said to be keen on moving to Housing.
Liz Truss played down speculation she’s demanding a move to Chancellor - saying she would happy to simply help unleash the economy.
Sources claim she will become Business Secretary.
Steve Baker declined to comment.
 
ARCH-BREXITEERS are demanding a place in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet to provide a “ring of steel” against ‘Remain’ Tories and civil servants.
Sources claim Steve Baker is pushing to be Brexit Secretary and other Eurosceptics are lobbying Boris for key jobs amid fears he will wobble and water down his ‘Do or Die’ pledge to leave by October 31.
It comes as Brexiteer Tories worry that the bookies’ odds-on leadership favourite will only make minor changes to the make-up of the existing Cabinet.
And they fear Boris has done “nowhere near enough” planning for how he plans to enter pivotal negotiations with the EU.
One Eurosceptic told The Sun: “There needs to a Praetorian Guard – a ring of steel - around Boris so he doesn’t fold when faced with Whitehall.”
They added: “People are worried. There’s all this talk of Sajid (Javid) being made Chancellor, Liz going into Business. They’re born again Brexiteers – remember they both voted Remain.
“Boris needs to remember who’s got him here in the first place.”
The comments threaten to reignite the growing split in ‘Team Boris’ as Mr Johnson tries to keep different wings of the party together. Health
Secretary Matt Hancock shifted to supporting Boris after insisting a No Deal wasn’t an option.
But the self-styled ‘Spartans’ such as Steve Baker and Mark Francois have argued for a managed No Deal – or ‘clean’ Brexit.
Insiders suggested Boris will run out of places to put arch Eurosceptics in his Cabinet given the need to keep different factions on side.
Ex-Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is said to be pushing for Northern Ireland Secretary. Boris is also expected to promote long-time ally Ben
Wallace to Defence, but keep Penny Mordaunt in the Cabinet.
He is also under pressure to find posts for Oliver Dowden – David Cameron’s former deputy chief of staff – and upcoming Tories such as Rishi Sunak.
Pensions Minister Alok Sharma is said to be keen on moving to Housing.
Liz Truss played down speculation she’s demanding a move to Chancellor - saying she would happy to simply help unleash the economy.
Sources claim she will become Business Secretary.
Steve Baker declined to comment.
 
MANY tears were shed on the other side of EU Parliament as I waited for the vote on Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement earlier this week.
Never have I heard so much drivel, principally from long serving left liberal UK MEPs who have been on the Brussels gravy train for years.
Read our Brexit day live blog for all the latest news and updates
Amazingly, many of them voted against us leaving - and declare we will be back!
Beware Britons, the forces of the establishment have not given up. The EU bureaucracy are still at work and determined to bring us back into their fold.
They have even tried to ban national flags on the desks of MEPs - something all nationalities have been keen to avoid.
But several MEPs couldn't resist one final pop at the establishment and sneaked them in anyway.
It is a symptom of the overarching EU Superstate that they are even intimidated by little flags, and that the love of country must be crushed.
Thankfully Britain will be able to fly free once again from tonight at 11pm.
This week's speeches showed that the EU have learnt nothing from Brexit.
They still don't understand why we're leaving, and can't see why on earth we're going through with it.
The word from Brussels is only sadness, sorrow and shame - but those in power are determined to do nothing to grow from their mistakes.
When even Guy Verhofstadt's warnings that the EU must change or die are ignored, there's little hope left for this failed project.
But as soon as the benefits of finally breaking free begin being realised - hopefully from February 1 - perhaps they will see the light.
Trade deals, even with the EU, are merely the cherry on the icing on the Brexit cake - most of the benefits of Brexit are in our gift
Trade deals, even with the EU, are merely the cherry on the icing on the Brexit cake.
Most of the benefits of Brexit - from being able to set our own laws, to striking out our own free path - are in our own gift.
We can remove tariffs, and remove costs for ordinary Brits.
We can take back control of our money, and use the contributions we send everyday to the EU off to the regions instead.
We can reduce taxes, and boot the economy too.
Britain will once again be able to be a beacon of liberty, leading the way for others to follow.
And who knows, perhaps another EU nation might one day join us, after we chart the path for them? I'll remain hopeful on that.
The future is bright, the future is Brexit.
The next stage will be no walk in the park, but it will be worth it.
The EU will play hard. We should be equally hard and be prepared to simply walk away if necessary at the end of 2020.
Demonstrating the freedom we have fought for for the last three and a half years, and being unafraid of going alone.
The EU had better watch out - they will be the ones to lose out if we do.
Tonight I'll be ignoring dry January and celebrating... as I have done all week.
As we drank English Sparkling wine the Parliament sang Auld Langsyne and the officials didn’t quite know what to do.
Glass half full I would say.
John Longworth is an MEP, former chairman of Leave means Leave, and former Director General at the British Chambers of Commerce
MANY tears were shed on the other side of EU Parliament as I waited for the vote on Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement earlier this week.
Never have I heard so much drivel, principally from long serving left liberal UK MEPs who have been on the Brussels gravy train for years.
Read our Brexit day live blog for all the latest news and updates
Amazingly, many of them voted against us leaving - and declare we will be back!
Beware Britons, the forces of the establishment have not given up. The EU bureaucracy are still at work and determined to bring us back into their fold.
They have even tried to ban national flags on the desks of MEPs - something all nationalities have been keen to avoid.
But several MEPs couldn't resist one final pop at the establishment and sneaked them in anyway.
It is a symptom of the overarching EU Superstate that they are even intimidated by little flags, and that the love of country must be crushed.
Thankfully Britain will be able to fly free once again from tonight at 11pm.
This week's speeches showed that the EU have learnt nothing from Brexit.
They still don't understand why we're leaving, and can't see why on earth we're going through with it.
The word from Brussels is only sadness, sorrow and shame - but those in power are determined to do nothing to grow from their mistakes.
When even Guy Verhofstadt's warnings that the EU must change or die are ignored, there's little hope left for this failed project.
But as soon as the benefits of finally breaking free begin being realised - hopefully from February 1 - perhaps they will see the light.
Trade deals, even with the EU, are merely the cherry on the icing on the Brexit cake - most of the benefits of Brexit are in our gift
Trade deals, even with the EU, are merely the cherry on the icing on the Brexit cake.
Most of the benefits of Brexit - from being able to set our own laws, to striking out our own free path - are in our own gift.
We can remove tariffs, and remove costs for ordinary Brits.
We can take back control of our money, and use the contributions we send everyday to the EU off to the regions instead.
We can reduce taxes, and boot the economy too.
Britain will once again be able to be a beacon of liberty, leading the way for others to follow.
And who knows, perhaps another EU nation might one day join us, after we chart the path for them? I'll remain hopeful on that.
The future is bright, the future is Brexit.
The next stage will be no walk in the park, but it will be worth it.
The EU will play hard. We should be equally hard and be prepared to simply walk away if necessary at the end of 2020.
Demonstrating the freedom we have fought for for the last three and a half years, and being unafraid of going alone.
The EU had better watch out - they will be the ones to lose out if we do.
Tonight I'll be ignoring dry January and celebrating... as I have done all week.
As we drank English Sparkling wine the Parliament sang Auld Langsyne and the officials didn’t quite know what to do.
Glass half full I would say.
John Longworth is an MEP, former chairman of Leave means Leave, and former Director General at the British Chambers of Commerce
JOHN McDonnell furiously compared Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit policy to a “slow-moving car crash” as the party’s bitter civil war reignited.
The Labour leader sparked uproar among his shadow cabinet by delaying a decision on whether to fully back a second referendum and campaign for Remain.
Furious backbenchers accused the Labour leader of taking his orders from pro-Brexit union baron ‘Red Len’ McCluskey.
While sparks flew at a shadow cabinet showdown yesterday – with shadow ministers queuing up to slam Mr Corbyn’s Brexit dithering.
Emily Thornberry angrily stormed that “this is about leadership”, while Tom Watson and Keir Starmer warned Labour members are mutinying.
While shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said Labour must have “the courage of our socialist convictions” and campaign to stay in the EU.
The shadow cabinet had expected to fully back a second referendum in all circumstances at yesterday’s meeting.
But instead, Mr Corbyn kicked the decision back another two weeks so he can hold more meetings.
The backpedalling came just a day after he held crunch talks with union bosses.
Labour MP Neil Coyle – who backs another referendum – raged: “Members are furious about the leadership’s broken promise that they would be in charge of policy, instead being shut out of debate.
“Members know which union leader is the block to our movement better reflecting their views and values and are fed up with the backroom deal.
“Thousands have left the party as a result and thousands more voted for other parties in recent elections.
“The situation is unsustainable and risks harming Labour in future elections.”
Labour has been torn apart by the Brexit civil war.
Many of the party’s MPs are desperate for the party to back a second referendum in all circumstances and campaign for Remain.
But other MPs in the party’s heartlands have warned they will be slaughtered at the ballot box if Labour tries to block Brexit.
Another Labour source told The Sun that unions could get Mr Corbyn to change “but it looks like they don’t want to”.
 
JOHN McDonnell furiously compared Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit policy to a “slow-moving car crash” as the party’s bitter civil war reignited.
The Labour leader sparked uproar among his shadow cabinet by delaying a decision on whether to fully back a second referendum and campaign for Remain.
Furious backbenchers accused the Labour leader of taking his orders from pro-Brexit union baron ‘Red Len’ McCluskey.
While sparks flew at a shadow cabinet showdown yesterday – with shadow ministers queuing up to slam Mr Corbyn’s Brexit dithering.
Emily Thornberry angrily stormed that “this is about leadership”, while Tom Watson and Keir Starmer warned Labour members are mutinying.
While shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said Labour must have “the courage of our socialist convictions” and campaign to stay in the EU.
The shadow cabinet had expected to fully back a second referendum in all circumstances at yesterday’s meeting.
But instead, Mr Corbyn kicked the decision back another two weeks so he can hold more meetings.
The backpedalling came just a day after he held crunch talks with union bosses.
Labour MP Neil Coyle – who backs another referendum – raged: “Members are furious about the leadership’s broken promise that they would be in charge of policy, instead being shut out of debate.
“Members know which union leader is the block to our movement better reflecting their views and values and are fed up with the backroom deal.
“Thousands have left the party as a result and thousands more voted for other parties in recent elections.
“The situation is unsustainable and risks harming Labour in future elections.”
Labour has been torn apart by the Brexit civil war.
Many of the party’s MPs are desperate for the party to back a second referendum in all circumstances and campaign for Remain.
But other MPs in the party’s heartlands have warned they will be slaughtered at the ballot box if Labour tries to block Brexit.
Another Labour source told The Sun that unions could get Mr Corbyn to change “but it looks like they don’t want to”.
 
Housing Minister Kit Malthouse explains why he's the best candidate to lead Britain through Brexit
THERE is a yearning for change out there.
This leadership campaign cannot be about the same old faces, scarred by the wars that have split the Tory Party over the last three years.
I believe I’m the new face, with fresh new ideas, from a new and talented generation.
And with that, I have two decades of front line political experience -leading overseas trade missions, putting my arms around the families of knife crime victims and building homes for young people.
We need to end the Brexit paralysis, and while I voted to leave the EU, I know that without unity across the UK we can’t get a deal over the line.
That’s why I brought together MPs from different sides of the party to hammer out a plan dubbed the Malthouse Compromise, uniting Conservatives on Europe for possibly the only time in our history.
With some adjustments, my plan still holds.
It’s time for a new generation to lead the charge into our future with boldness and vision
But while we agonise over Brexit, we must recognise that people’s lives are changing.
If the Conservative Party is the only thing that stands still, we will struggle for relevance. It’s time for a new generation to lead the charge into our future with boldness and vision.
We must strengthen our Union, and the people we serve need a new social contract. A good job, a secure home and a brilliant school are the nuts and bolts of a happy life.
As Housing Minister, it’s been my mission to build more high-quality homes as fast as we can, and numbers are looking good but there is much more work to do. We must pledge to offer these essentials to everyone: Job, House, School.
I’ve run my own company for more than two decades, and weathered some really tough times, so I understand the opportunities and challenges small businesses face.
We must revolutionise our economy, freeing a new generation of entrepreneurs to take risks and build businesses, creating jobs and wealth.
And crucially we must spread that wealth with radical policies that make it easier for employees to own a stake in the business they work for, and to own shares generally. Everyone should have a piece of the national balance sheet.
The Conservative Party must become the party of children, with their welfare, protection and future at the heart of everything we do.
All of us have only one chance at childhood. It’s the foundation of our hopes, aspirations and character. There must be an all-out assault on child poverty, and we need to make the lives of parents easier.
I’ve had political responsibility for a challenging social services department and London’s police force.
As Prime Minister I would make ours the party of well-funded schools, investing in the future of each and every child
Four years focused on a terrifying surge in youth violence – and getting it under control – confirmed my view that education is the only social policy that consistently works.
It is an escape route from a dead end, and the bedrock of social mobility. It’s also the reason I, and millions like me, got where we are.
As Prime Minister I would make ours the party of well-funded schools, investing in the future of each and every child.
Besides improving children’s lives, we’ve got to secure their future.
That means investing heavily in science to tackle climate change and disease.
As the chair of London Hydrogen, I promoted the green, British hydrogen fuel cell, and I founded the life sciences hub MedCity. I’ve led the debate on science in Parliament, and green tech would be central to my mission.
Unity, a viable Brexit plan and a compelling domestic agenda will secure a bright future for our remarkable country
We won’t get the chance to take on these and other pressing challenges unless we first work together to get Brexit completed.
These steps - unity, a viable Brexit plan and a compelling domestic agenda - will secure a bright future for our remarkable country.
I got into politics to get things done. As Deputy Mayor for Policing in the capital I drove action to cut teen killings by 70% and devised our first ever violence against women and girls strategy.
I would bring this experience of fighting crime to being Prime Minister. As a councillor I led the effort that halved rough sleepers in central London, and now I’m building houses for the young.
I’m a Northern boy who built a business in the Midlands and now represents a stunning part of Hampshire.
My granddad was a Yorkshire wagon driver, my grandma a teacher, and my Mum and Dad were the first in their families to go to university.
My family’s story is one of education, hard work and opportunity, and that’s what I want for everyone.
Housing Minister Kit Malthouse explains why he's the best candidate to lead Britain through Brexit
THERE is a yearning for change out there.
This leadership campaign cannot be about the same old faces, scarred by the wars that have split the Tory Party over the last three years.
I believe I’m the new face, with fresh new ideas, from a new and talented generation.
And with that, I have two decades of front line political experience -leading overseas trade missions, putting my arms around the families of knife crime victims and building homes for young people.
We need to end the Brexit paralysis, and while I voted to leave the EU, I know that without unity across the UK we can’t get a deal over the line.
That’s why I brought together MPs from different sides of the party to hammer out a plan dubbed the Malthouse Compromise, uniting Conservatives on Europe for possibly the only time in our history.
With some adjustments, my plan still holds.
It’s time for a new generation to lead the charge into our future with boldness and vision
But while we agonise over Brexit, we must recognise that people’s lives are changing.
If the Conservative Party is the only thing that stands still, we will struggle for relevance. It’s time for a new generation to lead the charge into our future with boldness and vision.
We must strengthen our Union, and the people we serve need a new social contract. A good job, a secure home and a brilliant school are the nuts and bolts of a happy life.
As Housing Minister, it’s been my mission to build more high-quality homes as fast as we can, and numbers are looking good but there is much more work to do. We must pledge to offer these essentials to everyone: Job, House, School.
I’ve run my own company for more than two decades, and weathered some really tough times, so I understand the opportunities and challenges small businesses face.
We must revolutionise our economy, freeing a new generation of entrepreneurs to take risks and build businesses, creating jobs and wealth.
And crucially we must spread that wealth with radical policies that make it easier for employees to own a stake in the business they work for, and to own shares generally. Everyone should have a piece of the national balance sheet.
The Conservative Party must become the party of children, with their welfare, protection and future at the heart of everything we do.
All of us have only one chance at childhood. It’s the foundation of our hopes, aspirations and character. There must be an all-out assault on child poverty, and we need to make the lives of parents easier.
I’ve had political responsibility for a challenging social services department and London’s police force.
As Prime Minister I would make ours the party of well-funded schools, investing in the future of each and every child
Four years focused on a terrifying surge in youth violence – and getting it under control – confirmed my view that education is the only social policy that consistently works.
It is an escape route from a dead end, and the bedrock of social mobility. It’s also the reason I, and millions like me, got where we are.
As Prime Minister I would make ours the party of well-funded schools, investing in the future of each and every child.
Besides improving children’s lives, we’ve got to secure their future.
That means investing heavily in science to tackle climate change and disease.
As the chair of London Hydrogen, I promoted the green, British hydrogen fuel cell, and I founded the life sciences hub MedCity. I’ve led the debate on science in Parliament, and green tech would be central to my mission.
Unity, a viable Brexit plan and a compelling domestic agenda will secure a bright future for our remarkable country
We won’t get the chance to take on these and other pressing challenges unless we first work together to get Brexit completed.
These steps - unity, a viable Brexit plan and a compelling domestic agenda - will secure a bright future for our remarkable country.
I got into politics to get things done. As Deputy Mayor for Policing in the capital I drove action to cut teen killings by 70% and devised our first ever violence against women and girls strategy.
I would bring this experience of fighting crime to being Prime Minister. As a councillor I led the effort that halved rough sleepers in central London, and now I’m building houses for the young.
I’m a Northern boy who built a business in the Midlands and now represents a stunning part of Hampshire.
My granddad was a Yorkshire wagon driver, my grandma a teacher, and my Mum and Dad were the first in their families to go to university.
My family’s story is one of education, hard work and opportunity, and that’s what I want for everyone.
Charles de Gaulle stopped the UK from entering the Common Market,  now Macron won't let us leave and Brexit must not be deterred by the antics of French mediocrity or Macron's delusions of grandeur
THE Battle of Waterloo in 1815 largely ended French aggression towards Britain for more than two centuries.
But now a new form of Gallic hostility has emerged, menacing our path to national independence from EU rule.
In recent days, as talks with Brussels reach a crucial phase, it is our neighbour across the Channel that has become the biggest threat to Brexit.
The stubbornness of the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, a veteran French politician, is bad enough.
But even worse than this abominable no-man is the jumped-up French President Emmanuel Macron, whose epic self-importance is not matched by either his physical stature or his political authority.
With his vain delusions of grandeur, Macron — a man who once spent 26,000 euros in three months on make-up — fancies himself as a modern version of Napoleon, ready to dominate Europe by hammering the British.
His government’s determination to make trouble over Brexit is ever more apparent.
Only this week, Macron’s Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau solemnly declared that “no deal would be better than” Theresa May’s Chequers plan.
Last month, in an extraordinary outburst at the Salzburg summit, Macron himself called Brexit campaigners “liars” as he orchestrated the EU’s opposition to May’s proposal.
It is richly ironic that in the Sixties Charles de Gaulle, the French President and one of Macron’s historical heroes, repeatedly denied Britain entry into the Common Market.
Yet today, Macron is trying to thwart Britain’s exit from the European bloc.
There are two goals behind his increasingly negative stance.
The first is to crank up the pressure on Britain to such a level that May’s government will feel compelled to offer the public a second referendum, thereby reversing the 2016 decision.
The second is that, in the absence of a second vote, Britain must be made to pay dearly for daring to leave.
Last week, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was told by a senior EU figure that the French President intends to “punish” Britain.
In this brutal narrative, Brexit is turned into such a humiliating failure that we will come crawling back to Brussels in a few years, begging for any kind of re-entry to EU jurisdiction.
That is our nightmare and Macron’s Europhile fantasy.
In all his Napoleonic pomposity, he likes to pose as the guardian of the EU’s integrity.
As a true believer in the dogma of federal integration, he regards Brexit as a dangerous form of heresy.
After all, France has always been the driving force behind the project of European unity, conceived soon after the war, partly as a barrier against German warmongering and partly as a protector of the French economy.
In his self-appointed role as keeper of the federalist flame, Macron is also desperate to challenge the nationalist and populist movements sweeping through Italy, Austria and the Visegrad states of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
He hopes that by hurting Brexit Britain, he will send a tough message to any other potential rebels against the EU’s orthodoxy. But there are also cynical domestic reasons for his anti-British antagonism.
Since his landslide Presidential victory last year, when he captured 65 per cent of the vote, he has been sliding dramatically in popularity.
The latest two polls put his approval ratings at just 28 and 29 per cent, even lower than those of his despised predecessor, the Socialist Francois Hollande, at the same point in his presidency.
In a further sign of his weakening grip, he has been hit by three Cabinet resignations in as many months.
The last of them occurred this week, when the veteran interior minister Gerard Collomb left after complaining of Macron’s arrogant style of governance.
Even more scathing was the verdict of Frederique Dumas, a parliamentary deputy who recently quit as a member of Macron’s En Marche Party.
“You have the feeling you’re on the Titanic,” she said.
Macron thinks that through his attacks on Britain he can avoid the iceberg.
On another level, he is terrified that Brexit could be a tremendous success, boosting the dynamism of our economy and promoting our global trade.
This would further expose the sluggish weakness of France, with its vast public sector, heavy taxation and excessive state regulations.
So far, despite some vigorous rhetoric, Macron has miserably failed to reform the anti-enterprise culture.
“Gauls are resistant to change,” he wailed last week on a visit to Copenhagen.
Unfortunately, France has quite a few weapons in its arsenal to disrupt Brexit.
Passport checks for British arrivals at harbours, airports and the Channel Tunnel could be made much more intrusive, causing huge queues.
Just as disturbingly, British trade through France could be paralysed if, as Macron’s government suggests, post-Brexit Britain is denied “third country status” with the EU.
Without such status, it would be illegal to export any food to Europe — and Macron’s France would lead the way on ruthless enforcement.
But two can play at that game. France would also suffer from a politically inspired breakdown in the cross-channel relationship.
The country exports more to Britain than it imports from us.
There are around 300,000 French nationals living here, while French companies are major investors in Britain.
Indeed, much of our railway network and energy market is French-owned, a tribute to British openness.
If, in response to Macron’s posturing, the Government was to pull out of its lucrative deal with French electricity giant EDF to build the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station, EDF would immediately be plunged into crisis.
Similarly, French ports would suffer badly if British trade were switched up the coast to Holland and Belgium.
Brexit will be a historic turning point for Britain, a moment for democratic renewal.
Our nation must not be deterred by the antics of a French mediocrity obsessed with his own image and federalist integration.
Almost 30 years ago, in 1990, the President of the EU Jacques Delors, another French federalist, set out his vision for a united Europe.
“Up yours, Delors”, this paper heroically responded.
The same words should be applied today to Macron.
Leo McKinstry is a historian and author.
Charles de Gaulle stopped the UK from entering the Common Market,  now Macron won't let us leave and Brexit must not be deterred by the antics of French mediocrity or Macron's delusions of grandeur
THE Battle of Waterloo in 1815 largely ended French aggression towards Britain for more than two centuries.
But now a new form of Gallic hostility has emerged, menacing our path to national independence from EU rule.
In recent days, as talks with Brussels reach a crucial phase, it is our neighbour across the Channel that has become the biggest threat to Brexit.
The stubbornness of the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier, a veteran French politician, is bad enough.
But even worse than this abominable no-man is the jumped-up French President Emmanuel Macron, whose epic self-importance is not matched by either his physical stature or his political authority.
With his vain delusions of grandeur, Macron — a man who once spent 26,000 euros in three months on make-up — fancies himself as a modern version of Napoleon, ready to dominate Europe by hammering the British.
His government’s determination to make trouble over Brexit is ever more apparent.
Only this week, Macron’s Europe minister Nathalie Loiseau solemnly declared that “no deal would be better than” Theresa May’s Chequers plan.
Last month, in an extraordinary outburst at the Salzburg summit, Macron himself called Brexit campaigners “liars” as he orchestrated the EU’s opposition to May’s proposal.
It is richly ironic that in the Sixties Charles de Gaulle, the French President and one of Macron’s historical heroes, repeatedly denied Britain entry into the Common Market.
Yet today, Macron is trying to thwart Britain’s exit from the European bloc.
There are two goals behind his increasingly negative stance.
The first is to crank up the pressure on Britain to such a level that May’s government will feel compelled to offer the public a second referendum, thereby reversing the 2016 decision.
The second is that, in the absence of a second vote, Britain must be made to pay dearly for daring to leave.
Last week, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was told by a senior EU figure that the French President intends to “punish” Britain.
In this brutal narrative, Brexit is turned into such a humiliating failure that we will come crawling back to Brussels in a few years, begging for any kind of re-entry to EU jurisdiction.
That is our nightmare and Macron’s Europhile fantasy.
In all his Napoleonic pomposity, he likes to pose as the guardian of the EU’s integrity.
As a true believer in the dogma of federal integration, he regards Brexit as a dangerous form of heresy.
After all, France has always been the driving force behind the project of European unity, conceived soon after the war, partly as a barrier against German warmongering and partly as a protector of the French economy.
In his self-appointed role as keeper of the federalist flame, Macron is also desperate to challenge the nationalist and populist movements sweeping through Italy, Austria and the Visegrad states of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
He hopes that by hurting Brexit Britain, he will send a tough message to any other potential rebels against the EU’s orthodoxy. But there are also cynical domestic reasons for his anti-British antagonism.
Since his landslide Presidential victory last year, when he captured 65 per cent of the vote, he has been sliding dramatically in popularity.
The latest two polls put his approval ratings at just 28 and 29 per cent, even lower than those of his despised predecessor, the Socialist Francois Hollande, at the same point in his presidency.
In a further sign of his weakening grip, he has been hit by three Cabinet resignations in as many months.
The last of them occurred this week, when the veteran interior minister Gerard Collomb left after complaining of Macron’s arrogant style of governance.
Even more scathing was the verdict of Frederique Dumas, a parliamentary deputy who recently quit as a member of Macron’s En Marche Party.
“You have the feeling you’re on the Titanic,” she said.
Macron thinks that through his attacks on Britain he can avoid the iceberg.
On another level, he is terrified that Brexit could be a tremendous success, boosting the dynamism of our economy and promoting our global trade.
This would further expose the sluggish weakness of France, with its vast public sector, heavy taxation and excessive state regulations.
So far, despite some vigorous rhetoric, Macron has miserably failed to reform the anti-enterprise culture.
“Gauls are resistant to change,” he wailed last week on a visit to Copenhagen.
Unfortunately, France has quite a few weapons in its arsenal to disrupt Brexit.
Passport checks for British arrivals at harbours, airports and the Channel Tunnel could be made much more intrusive, causing huge queues.
Just as disturbingly, British trade through France could be paralysed if, as Macron’s government suggests, post-Brexit Britain is denied “third country status” with the EU.
Without such status, it would be illegal to export any food to Europe — and Macron’s France would lead the way on ruthless enforcement.
But two can play at that game. France would also suffer from a politically inspired breakdown in the cross-channel relationship.
The country exports more to Britain than it imports from us.
There are around 300,000 French nationals living here, while French companies are major investors in Britain.
Indeed, much of our railway network and energy market is French-owned, a tribute to British openness.
If, in response to Macron’s posturing, the Government was to pull out of its lucrative deal with French electricity giant EDF to build the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station, EDF would immediately be plunged into crisis.
Similarly, French ports would suffer badly if British trade were switched up the coast to Holland and Belgium.
Brexit will be a historic turning point for Britain, a moment for democratic renewal.
Our nation must not be deterred by the antics of a French mediocrity obsessed with his own image and federalist integration.
Almost 30 years ago, in 1990, the President of the EU Jacques Delors, another French federalist, set out his vision for a united Europe.
“Up yours, Delors”, this paper heroically responded.
The same words should be applied today to Macron.
Leo McKinstry is a historian and author.
The Labour Party pledged in its 2017 manifesto that 'freedom of movement will end' after Britain leaves the EU - those words have proved hollow
JEREMY CORBYN’S pose as the honest man of British politics was always phony. But on Brexit, he has plumbed new depths of treacherous hypocrisy.
Through his destructive cynicism, he has not only helped to plunge Britain into chaos, but he has also undermined democracy and betrayed his own voters in Labour’s heartlands.
At the last General Election in 2017, his manifesto proclaimed that Labour “accepts the result of the referendum”. Yet by his actions, he constantly thwarts the will of the people and blocks the road to genuine British independence.
In a typical manoeuvre this week during further votes in the Commons, he ordered his MPs to support the so-called Common Market 2.0 option, which represents the softest possible EU withdrawal.
Effectively, this option would keep Britain under Brussels’ domination by locking our country in the European single market. The bureaucracy of the EU would still be in charge, dishing out its rules and cash demands.
But even worse, the plan — also known as Norway Plus — would mean the continuation of uncontrolled immigration from the EU.
Our borders would remain open, the very opposite of what voters were promised with Brexit. Indeed, the Labour Party itself gave a solemn pledge in its 2017 manifesto that “freedom of movement will end” after Britain leaves the EU. Now those words have proved hollow.
Corbyn’s move is a kick in the teeth for Leave supporters. One of the main reasons that 17.4million people voted for Brexit was because of disillusionment with soaring rates of immigration, which have imposed a social revolution on our country without any mandate.
Remain voters in the metropolitan chattering classes welcomed the massive influx, both as a source of cheap foreign labour and as a means to display their self-righteous political virtue. But large numbers of Leavers, especially in the working class, were fed up with the experience of seeing their own wages undercut, their public services over-stretched and their solidarity eroded.
In part, Brexit was a bitter, justified cry of anger from those who had been left behind by the wealthy elite’s obsession with globalisation. These are the marginalised, hard-working people that the Labour Party was originally created to represent.  But now, in thrall to the fashionable dogma of mass immigration, Corbyn’s gang has badly let them down.
Leavers wanted our Government to put a foot on the brakes of upheaval. The Labour leader is seeking to press down the accelerator.  His betrayal on freedom of movement is just the latest stage in Labour’s drive to prevent the return of real sovereignty.
Only last month their trade spokesman, Barry Gardiner, claimed that “Labour is not a Remain party”.  Yet Corbyn’s mob is certainly acting like one as it keeps inventing new obstacles to an orderly withdrawal.
Ever since the referendum result in 2016, Corbyn has indulged in creative ambiguity about Labour’s stance on Brexit.
The hardline Brexiteers in the Tory Party rightly get a lot of stick for their stubbornness in their uncompromising pursuit of a clean departure from the EU. But at least they are motivated by principle.
In contrast, all Labour seeks is narrow, short-term political advantage. The party cares nothing about the national interest or honouring the referendum result. It simply wants to create as much turmoil as possible in order to force a General Election, which would bring a Corbyn regime to power.
Its ruthless opposition to Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement is a classic example of this damaging approach. Labour has no real objection to her deal, which fits exactly with Corbyn’s demand for a sensible compromise. Yet, in order to foment Parliamentary anarchy and bring down the Government, Labour refuses to back it.
That is no way for a responsible movement to behave. Labour MPs keep telling us that they do not want a No Deal departure. Well, the best way to avoid No Deal is to vote for the only deal on the table. But that is exactly what Labour refuses to do.
Typical of this intransigence is Yvette Cooper MP, the anti-Brexit cause’s hand-wringing high priestess, who has created a procedural quagmire in the Commons with her antics. Only yesterday, she called for a special Commission on Brexit. That would be a recipe for yet more delays and navel-gazing, which is exactly what she wants.
Ever since the referendum result in 2016, Corbyn has indulged in creative ambiguity about Labour’s stance on Brexit. He has tried to appeal simultaneously to both the army of Leave voters and the pro-EU brigade who make up the bulk of the party’s membership.
But now the mask has truly slipped. By his decision this week, Corbyn has shown that he sides with the Remainers. In Labour’s battle for supremacy, the affluent metropolitan progressives have won against the traditional working class of the North and the Midlands. That should hardly be a surprise given how London-centric the top ranks of Labour really are.
Every single one of Labour’s big guns on the front bench, including John McDonnell, Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott, represents a London seat. But the victory for the Labour Brexit blockers is a tragedy for our country. Corbyn’s gang is helping to wreck the chance for freedom.
Labour thinks the present chaos at Westminster is playing into the party’s hands — reflected in a recent opinion poll that put them five points ahead of the Tories. But their negative strategy could backfire disastrously.
If there is a long delay or, indeed, no Brexit at all, Leave voters will not be forgiving. Electoral carnage, not advance, could beckon.
There are at least 72 Labour seats where support for Leave at the referendum was estimated to be more than 55 per cent — such as the 69.3 per cent in Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford where Yvette Copper, who campaigned for Remain, is MP.
Many seats could be lost — and it would be no more than Labour deserves for its shallow, Remoaner-led dishonesty.
The Labour Party pledged in its 2017 manifesto that 'freedom of movement will end' after Britain leaves the EU - those words have proved hollow
JEREMY CORBYN’S pose as the honest man of British politics was always phony. But on Brexit, he has plumbed new depths of treacherous hypocrisy.
Through his destructive cynicism, he has not only helped to plunge Britain into chaos, but he has also undermined democracy and betrayed his own voters in Labour’s heartlands.
At the last General Election in 2017, his manifesto proclaimed that Labour “accepts the result of the referendum”. Yet by his actions, he constantly thwarts the will of the people and blocks the road to genuine British independence.
In a typical manoeuvre this week during further votes in the Commons, he ordered his MPs to support the so-called Common Market 2.0 option, which represents the softest possible EU withdrawal.
Effectively, this option would keep Britain under Brussels’ domination by locking our country in the European single market. The bureaucracy of the EU would still be in charge, dishing out its rules and cash demands.
But even worse, the plan — also known as Norway Plus — would mean the continuation of uncontrolled immigration from the EU.
Our borders would remain open, the very opposite of what voters were promised with Brexit. Indeed, the Labour Party itself gave a solemn pledge in its 2017 manifesto that “freedom of movement will end” after Britain leaves the EU. Now those words have proved hollow.
Corbyn’s move is a kick in the teeth for Leave supporters. One of the main reasons that 17.4million people voted for Brexit was because of disillusionment with soaring rates of immigration, which have imposed a social revolution on our country without any mandate.
Remain voters in the metropolitan chattering classes welcomed the massive influx, both as a source of cheap foreign labour and as a means to display their self-righteous political virtue. But large numbers of Leavers, especially in the working class, were fed up with the experience of seeing their own wages undercut, their public services over-stretched and their solidarity eroded.
In part, Brexit was a bitter, justified cry of anger from those who had been left behind by the wealthy elite’s obsession with globalisation. These are the marginalised, hard-working people that the Labour Party was originally created to represent.  But now, in thrall to the fashionable dogma of mass immigration, Corbyn’s gang has badly let them down.
Leavers wanted our Government to put a foot on the brakes of upheaval. The Labour leader is seeking to press down the accelerator.  His betrayal on freedom of movement is just the latest stage in Labour’s drive to prevent the return of real sovereignty.
Only last month their trade spokesman, Barry Gardiner, claimed that “Labour is not a Remain party”.  Yet Corbyn’s mob is certainly acting like one as it keeps inventing new obstacles to an orderly withdrawal.
Ever since the referendum result in 2016, Corbyn has indulged in creative ambiguity about Labour’s stance on Brexit.
The hardline Brexiteers in the Tory Party rightly get a lot of stick for their stubbornness in their uncompromising pursuit of a clean departure from the EU. But at least they are motivated by principle.
In contrast, all Labour seeks is narrow, short-term political advantage. The party cares nothing about the national interest or honouring the referendum result. It simply wants to create as much turmoil as possible in order to force a General Election, which would bring a Corbyn regime to power.
Its ruthless opposition to Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement is a classic example of this damaging approach. Labour has no real objection to her deal, which fits exactly with Corbyn’s demand for a sensible compromise. Yet, in order to foment Parliamentary anarchy and bring down the Government, Labour refuses to back it.
That is no way for a responsible movement to behave. Labour MPs keep telling us that they do not want a No Deal departure. Well, the best way to avoid No Deal is to vote for the only deal on the table. But that is exactly what Labour refuses to do.
Typical of this intransigence is Yvette Cooper MP, the anti-Brexit cause’s hand-wringing high priestess, who has created a procedural quagmire in the Commons with her antics. Only yesterday, she called for a special Commission on Brexit. That would be a recipe for yet more delays and navel-gazing, which is exactly what she wants.
Ever since the referendum result in 2016, Corbyn has indulged in creative ambiguity about Labour’s stance on Brexit. He has tried to appeal simultaneously to both the army of Leave voters and the pro-EU brigade who make up the bulk of the party’s membership.
But now the mask has truly slipped. By his decision this week, Corbyn has shown that he sides with the Remainers. In Labour’s battle for supremacy, the affluent metropolitan progressives have won against the traditional working class of the North and the Midlands. That should hardly be a surprise given how London-centric the top ranks of Labour really are.
Every single one of Labour’s big guns on the front bench, including John McDonnell, Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott, represents a London seat. But the victory for the Labour Brexit blockers is a tragedy for our country. Corbyn’s gang is helping to wreck the chance for freedom.
Labour thinks the present chaos at Westminster is playing into the party’s hands — reflected in a recent opinion poll that put them five points ahead of the Tories. But their negative strategy could backfire disastrously.
If there is a long delay or, indeed, no Brexit at all, Leave voters will not be forgiving. Electoral carnage, not advance, could beckon.
There are at least 72 Labour seats where support for Leave at the referendum was estimated to be more than 55 per cent — such as the 69.3 per cent in Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford where Yvette Copper, who campaigned for Remain, is MP.
Many seats could be lost — and it would be no more than Labour deserves for its shallow, Remoaner-led dishonesty.
EMMANUEL Macron has said Britain should be kicked out of the EU with or without a deal on October 31 - unless it agrees to a radical rethink.
The French President said our current exit date should be the “final, final deadline” in a boost to Brexiteer PM hopefuls like Boris Johnson.
But he added holding a second referendum or a devising a “totally new scheme” on the future relationship could justify another extension.
Speaking in Paris, Mr Macron warned the next British PM that trying to renegotiate the backstop would be a “non-starter”.
He said: “I think this is the final, final deadline because I don’t want to have the new Commission deal with this.
“I think it is a big mistake to procrastinate. I do believe we now have to implement the British people’s decision.”
But on a further delay, he then added: “Except if the British people themselves decide something else.
“It’s feasible if we have the perspective of either a new referendum or a totally new scheme which would be acceptable for the 27 and our negotiator.”
His remarks came as EU chiefs called for more “realism” in the Tory leadership race - and urged candidates to stop promising a renegotiated deal.
Ireland’s Europe minister Helen McEntee tore into the cast of hopefuls to be the next PM, warning the backstop “cannot change”.
She made the intervention after Sajid Javid said the backstop could be renegotiated because European leaders regret pushing Britain too far.
Ms McEntee, who is close to Leo Varadkar, said a “bit of realism is needed” about what any new PM will be able to achieve in fresh talks with Brussels.
She fumed: “The mood had not changed. The Withdrawal Agreement will not change. The backstop cannot change.
“Much of what is in the Withdrawal Agreement was asked for by the UK. They were not bystanders in the two years it took to negotiate.”
The EU Commission said it agreed with her assessment, adding in a statement that “the Withdrawal Agreement will not be renegotiated”.
Their interventions came after Member States dismissed the suggestion that a new PM could secure changes to the backstop.
A senior EU diplomat said eurocrats would reopen talks with Britain’s next leader - but only to tweak the non-binding future trade blueprint.
And they insisted the election of a Brexiteer like Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab would make capitals even more determined to hold their firm line.
They told The Sun: “A time limit to the backstop has been ruled out for a very good reason.
“It would be a crazy situation, refusing it to May but giving it to someone less responsible than her.
WE have to laugh at the irony of Ireland lecturing Tory leadership wannabes about the need for “realism” over the Brexit deal.
Dublin insists it cannot be altered. Not the agreement, not the toxic “backstop”.
Much of it was “asked for by the UK”.
Can’t they see the problem? It was asked for by a PM who is quitting this Friday specifically because that deal failed. It is not Britain’s agreed position.
If the EU still wants a deal, it MUST change. Or our MPs must grit their teeth and get us out anyway.
That’s also now President Macron’s view.
Will Leo Varadkar face this new reality?
“Rewarding populists would be mad as others like Salvini and Le Pen would be watching across Europe.”
They added: “Even if the next PM could bully the Commission, the Commission would need to sell it to us 27.
“And we’re not in the room, so we can’t be bullied. The contenders don’t understand the system.”
EMMANUEL Macron has said Britain should be kicked out of the EU with or without a deal on October 31 - unless it agrees to a radical rethink.
The French President said our current exit date should be the “final, final deadline” in a boost to Brexiteer PM hopefuls like Boris Johnson.
But he added holding a second referendum or a devising a “totally new scheme” on the future relationship could justify another extension.
Speaking in Paris, Mr Macron warned the next British PM that trying to renegotiate the backstop would be a “non-starter”.
He said: “I think this is the final, final deadline because I don’t want to have the new Commission deal with this.
“I think it is a big mistake to procrastinate. I do believe we now have to implement the British people’s decision.”
But on a further delay, he then added: “Except if the British people themselves decide something else.
“It’s feasible if we have the perspective of either a new referendum or a totally new scheme which would be acceptable for the 27 and our negotiator.”
His remarks came as EU chiefs called for more “realism” in the Tory leadership race - and urged candidates to stop promising a renegotiated deal.
Ireland’s Europe minister Helen McEntee tore into the cast of hopefuls to be the next PM, warning the backstop “cannot change”.
She made the intervention after Sajid Javid said the backstop could be renegotiated because European leaders regret pushing Britain too far.
Ms McEntee, who is close to Leo Varadkar, said a “bit of realism is needed” about what any new PM will be able to achieve in fresh talks with Brussels.
She fumed: “The mood had not changed. The Withdrawal Agreement will not change. The backstop cannot change.
“Much of what is in the Withdrawal Agreement was asked for by the UK. They were not bystanders in the two years it took to negotiate.”
The EU Commission said it agreed with her assessment, adding in a statement that “the Withdrawal Agreement will not be renegotiated”.
Their interventions came after Member States dismissed the suggestion that a new PM could secure changes to the backstop.
A senior EU diplomat said eurocrats would reopen talks with Britain’s next leader - but only to tweak the non-binding future trade blueprint.
And they insisted the election of a Brexiteer like Boris Johnson or Dominic Raab would make capitals even more determined to hold their firm line.
They told The Sun: “A time limit to the backstop has been ruled out for a very good reason.
“It would be a crazy situation, refusing it to May but giving it to someone less responsible than her.
WE have to laugh at the irony of Ireland lecturing Tory leadership wannabes about the need for “realism” over the Brexit deal.
Dublin insists it cannot be altered. Not the agreement, not the toxic “backstop”.
Much of it was “asked for by the UK”.
Can’t they see the problem? It was asked for by a PM who is quitting this Friday specifically because that deal failed. It is not Britain’s agreed position.
If the EU still wants a deal, it MUST change. Or our MPs must grit their teeth and get us out anyway.
That’s also now President Macron’s view.
Will Leo Varadkar face this new reality?
“Rewarding populists would be mad as others like Salvini and Le Pen would be watching across Europe.”
They added: “Even if the next PM could bully the Commission, the Commission would need to sell it to us 27.
“And we’re not in the room, so we can’t be bullied. The contenders don’t understand the system.”
Earlier this week Macron had said the EU should stick to their hardline stance on Brexit - but now the Europhile wants to include the UK in his new vision for the continent
EMMANUEL Macron is said to be pushing other EU leaders to agree to a close relationship with Britain after Brexit.
The French president wants to to spell out his vision for a new structure for Europe which includes the UK, The Times reports.
The paper said it would based on having the EU and the euro at its core and Britain in a second ring.
He wants to use a summit in Salzberg next month to lay out his plans, but says they would depend on an amicable Brexit.
The decision suggests he is softening opposition to the prime minister’s Chequers proposals, which he had previously distanced himself from.
On Monday Macron urged EU countries to stick to their hardline stance on Brexit amid signs some are softening towards Britain’s proposals.
The French president warned a trade deal with the UK “can’t come at the expense of the EU’s integrity” as he spelled out his vision for a European superstate.
But diplomats have now reportedly said he was concerned a “no deal” departure would shatter European ties.
A source said: “He sees a no-deal scenario as something that would break links and poison relations at a time when Europe needs to be united beyond the EU."
But there are fears his plan could open up rifts among European leaders by dividing the bloc in two.
Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel think tank, said: “There are two significant problems. The first problem is that it creates a hierarchy with the inner circle more important than outer circles.
"The second most important problem is that you have to assume the inner circle is united. That is not reality.”
Yesterday the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier boosted hopes of a deal by saying he wanted to offer Britain an unprecedented trade deal that would “be as close as possible” to the bloc.
His comments gave the pound a sharp boost, with Sterling rising to more than $1.30 against the dollar for the first time in weeks.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
Earlier this week Macron had said the EU should stick to their hardline stance on Brexit - but now the Europhile wants to include the UK in his new vision for the continent
EMMANUEL Macron is said to be pushing other EU leaders to agree to a close relationship with Britain after Brexit.
The French president wants to to spell out his vision for a new structure for Europe which includes the UK, The Times reports.
The paper said it would based on having the EU and the euro at its core and Britain in a second ring.
He wants to use a summit in Salzberg next month to lay out his plans, but says they would depend on an amicable Brexit.
The decision suggests he is softening opposition to the prime minister’s Chequers proposals, which he had previously distanced himself from.
On Monday Macron urged EU countries to stick to their hardline stance on Brexit amid signs some are softening towards Britain’s proposals.
The French president warned a trade deal with the UK “can’t come at the expense of the EU’s integrity” as he spelled out his vision for a European superstate.
But diplomats have now reportedly said he was concerned a “no deal” departure would shatter European ties.
A source said: “He sees a no-deal scenario as something that would break links and poison relations at a time when Europe needs to be united beyond the EU."
But there are fears his plan could open up rifts among European leaders by dividing the bloc in two.
Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel think tank, said: “There are two significant problems. The first problem is that it creates a hierarchy with the inner circle more important than outer circles.
"The second most important problem is that you have to assume the inner circle is united. That is not reality.”
Yesterday the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier boosted hopes of a deal by saying he wanted to offer Britain an unprecedented trade deal that would “be as close as possible” to the bloc.
His comments gave the pound a sharp boost, with Sterling rising to more than $1.30 against the dollar for the first time in weeks.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
The Brexiteer insisted that plans to show no-deal as a disaster for Britain were making us look incompetent and being 'utterly unrealistic'
THERESA May is making Britain look weak and incompetent by refusing to prepare properly for a no-deal Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg has blasted.
The Brexiteer slammed the Prime Minister for trying to frighten voters into more compromises from the EU to secure a deal.
Last night Leave-backing MPs accused her of trying to panic MPs, the public and business into accepting her bum Chequers deal.
It followed reports the army could be put on standby to deliver medicines, fuel and food if the EU fails to agree a Brexit deal with Britain.
The plans would involve ferrying in supplies via army helicopter and truck in case of medical emergency - just like they would in any civil crisis.
But today Downing Street completely refuted the claims, insisting there were no specific Brexit plans in place.
But Mr Rees-Mogg said not preparing properly for any outcome made Britain look like it was running scared.
The Chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs said: "The PM has said for a long time that no deal is better than a bad deal.
"If the Government cannot now show that it can deliver a workable deal based on WTO terms then it is not competent.

Government sources said a series of technical notes on what will happen in the event of no deal are to be released later this month to maximise the impact - rather than dripped out over the summer.
Mrs May was also accused of taking a "kamikaze" approach by deliberately highlighting the negative consequences for the UK.
The Daily Telegraph said the reports didn't include the downsides for the EU for no-deal either - which could have given Mrs May more leverage in talks.
Sources within DexEU - the department for leaving the European Union - said they had never previously discussed this option as part of No deal planning and branded it “scaremongering”.
The source said: “It looks like what they are going to do is frighten everybody and dump them all on a single day.
“It seems pretty clear they are trying to force parliament into a position where people will agree it’s either the Chequers deal or Remain.”
Last night former Brexit minister Steve Baker said he was “alarmed and worried” the Government was “seeking to discredit proposals for exiting” without a deal in place.
Mr Baker – who quit over the Chequers deal – told The Sun: “I am alarmed to see what looks like civil contingencies being trailed instead of the coherent plan which I had expected to reinforce the credibility and feasibility of the unwanted scenario of exiting with nothing agreed.
“With Government planning to drop all the technical notices on a single day, I can’t help worrying the Government is seeking to discredit proposals for exiting with nothing agreed.”
Government sources played down the accusations of Project Fear and a "kamikaze approach" to Brexit.
One said: "This is not Project Fear. This is a very pragmatic look at things that need to be done if we arrive at a certain outcome."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
The Brexiteer insisted that plans to show no-deal as a disaster for Britain were making us look incompetent and being 'utterly unrealistic'
THERESA May is making Britain look weak and incompetent by refusing to prepare properly for a no-deal Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg has blasted.
The Brexiteer slammed the Prime Minister for trying to frighten voters into more compromises from the EU to secure a deal.
Last night Leave-backing MPs accused her of trying to panic MPs, the public and business into accepting her bum Chequers deal.
It followed reports the army could be put on standby to deliver medicines, fuel and food if the EU fails to agree a Brexit deal with Britain.
The plans would involve ferrying in supplies via army helicopter and truck in case of medical emergency - just like they would in any civil crisis.
But today Downing Street completely refuted the claims, insisting there were no specific Brexit plans in place.
But Mr Rees-Mogg said not preparing properly for any outcome made Britain look like it was running scared.
The Chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs said: "The PM has said for a long time that no deal is better than a bad deal.
"If the Government cannot now show that it can deliver a workable deal based on WTO terms then it is not competent.

Government sources said a series of technical notes on what will happen in the event of no deal are to be released later this month to maximise the impact - rather than dripped out over the summer.
Mrs May was also accused of taking a "kamikaze" approach by deliberately highlighting the negative consequences for the UK.
The Daily Telegraph said the reports didn't include the downsides for the EU for no-deal either - which could have given Mrs May more leverage in talks.
Sources within DexEU - the department for leaving the European Union - said they had never previously discussed this option as part of No deal planning and branded it “scaremongering”.
The source said: “It looks like what they are going to do is frighten everybody and dump them all on a single day.
“It seems pretty clear they are trying to force parliament into a position where people will agree it’s either the Chequers deal or Remain.”
Last night former Brexit minister Steve Baker said he was “alarmed and worried” the Government was “seeking to discredit proposals for exiting” without a deal in place.
Mr Baker – who quit over the Chequers deal – told The Sun: “I am alarmed to see what looks like civil contingencies being trailed instead of the coherent plan which I had expected to reinforce the credibility and feasibility of the unwanted scenario of exiting with nothing agreed.
“With Government planning to drop all the technical notices on a single day, I can’t help worrying the Government is seeking to discredit proposals for exiting with nothing agreed.”
Government sources played down the accusations of Project Fear and a "kamikaze approach" to Brexit.
One said: "This is not Project Fear. This is a very pragmatic look at things that need to be done if we arrive at a certain outcome."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
Labour have floated the possibility of backing a second referendum but won't commit to the policy
JEREMY Corbyn is today under fire for his shambolic Brexit policy as he refuses to explain whether or not he'll back a second referendum.
Labour has tabled a motion which could see the party supporting a so-called "people's vote".
But the party's muddle continued today when one of Mrs Corbyn's top allies insisted the amendment DOESN'T mean Labour is now keen to cancel Brexit.
Critics have ridiculed the leftie leader for "playing politics" and refusing to take a position on Britain's biggest issue.
Labour's official policy is to seek a General Election and reopen Brexit talks with Brussels.
If that fails, the party says "all options" should be explored, including a second referendum.
The Commons amendment tabled by the party last night suggests ministers "legislating to hold a public vote on a deal".
But Shadow Brexit Secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said today: "The amendment is very specifically worded to allow for the debate of the options.
"It is not stating that the party supports a second referendum in any way and indeed if it was passed, the amendment, and it went to a vote on the specific issues, then that would be a decision for the party to take at the time."
Mr Corbyn has been accused of being deliberately vague to avoid alienating MPs and voters on either side of the debate.
Jeremy Hunt today blasted: "To play politics in a hung Parliament is a total betrayal of ordinary voters."
He added: "Their objective is not to have a deal but to have a crisis, and what a betrayal of ordinary families that is."
Lib Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson said: "The Labour leadership has been riding both horses for far too long.
"They can either make Brexit happen or Labour can stop Brexit. The time for decision is upon us."
Labour Remainers suggested Mr Corbyn was on the path towards backing a second referendum.
GOING SOFT

A cross-party group of MPs are frantically pushing an alternative Soft Brexit plan which could replace Mrs May's deal.
It would be welcomed by big business - but Brexit voters would be unhappy because it would mean Britain accepting open borders, and following European rules without a say.
HARD AS NAILS
Most of the Tory Brexiteers who oppose the PM's deal want her to return to Brussels and strike a tougher line.
But Eurocrats currently insist it's impossible to re-open negotiations.
REFERENDUM RE-RUN
Dozens of MPs are hell-bent on forcing Mrs May to hold a second referendum so Britain can stay in the EU.
Yet without the support of the Government it's unlikely the second vote could become a reality.
DEAL OR NO DEAL?
If Mrs May cannot pass a deal, the legal default is that we will leave the EU without a deal on March 29.
Despite the legal position, the majority of MPs insist they will take any measure necessary to rule out No Deal.
MAY TRIUMPHS - EVENTUALLY
Cabinet ministers remain adamant that a version of Theresa May's plan will eventually pass the Commons, even after losing last week.
They believe sceptical MPs will lose their nerve as Brexit Day approaches - terrified of either No Deal or a second referendum.
David Lammy said: "It is absolutely legitimate to work through the options - and the amendment sets out those options - before you arrive at the place on a people's vote."
But in a sign of the splits in the party, shadow minister Melanie Onn insisted she'd quit if the leadership ended up opposing Brexit.
The party's manifesto last year stated that Labour respected the result of the 2016 referendum and wanted Britain to leave the EU.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Labour have floated the possibility of backing a second referendum but won't commit to the policy
JEREMY Corbyn is today under fire for his shambolic Brexit policy as he refuses to explain whether or not he'll back a second referendum.
Labour has tabled a motion which could see the party supporting a so-called "people's vote".
But the party's muddle continued today when one of Mrs Corbyn's top allies insisted the amendment DOESN'T mean Labour is now keen to cancel Brexit.
Critics have ridiculed the leftie leader for "playing politics" and refusing to take a position on Britain's biggest issue.
Labour's official policy is to seek a General Election and reopen Brexit talks with Brussels.
If that fails, the party says "all options" should be explored, including a second referendum.
The Commons amendment tabled by the party last night suggests ministers "legislating to hold a public vote on a deal".
But Shadow Brexit Secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said today: "The amendment is very specifically worded to allow for the debate of the options.
"It is not stating that the party supports a second referendum in any way and indeed if it was passed, the amendment, and it went to a vote on the specific issues, then that would be a decision for the party to take at the time."
Mr Corbyn has been accused of being deliberately vague to avoid alienating MPs and voters on either side of the debate.
Jeremy Hunt today blasted: "To play politics in a hung Parliament is a total betrayal of ordinary voters."
He added: "Their objective is not to have a deal but to have a crisis, and what a betrayal of ordinary families that is."
Lib Dem deputy leader Jo Swinson said: "The Labour leadership has been riding both horses for far too long.
"They can either make Brexit happen or Labour can stop Brexit. The time for decision is upon us."
Labour Remainers suggested Mr Corbyn was on the path towards backing a second referendum.
GOING SOFT

A cross-party group of MPs are frantically pushing an alternative Soft Brexit plan which could replace Mrs May's deal.
It would be welcomed by big business - but Brexit voters would be unhappy because it would mean Britain accepting open borders, and following European rules without a say.
HARD AS NAILS
Most of the Tory Brexiteers who oppose the PM's deal want her to return to Brussels and strike a tougher line.
But Eurocrats currently insist it's impossible to re-open negotiations.
REFERENDUM RE-RUN
Dozens of MPs are hell-bent on forcing Mrs May to hold a second referendum so Britain can stay in the EU.
Yet without the support of the Government it's unlikely the second vote could become a reality.
DEAL OR NO DEAL?
If Mrs May cannot pass a deal, the legal default is that we will leave the EU without a deal on March 29.
Despite the legal position, the majority of MPs insist they will take any measure necessary to rule out No Deal.
MAY TRIUMPHS - EVENTUALLY
Cabinet ministers remain adamant that a version of Theresa May's plan will eventually pass the Commons, even after losing last week.
They believe sceptical MPs will lose their nerve as Brexit Day approaches - terrified of either No Deal or a second referendum.
David Lammy said: "It is absolutely legitimate to work through the options - and the amendment sets out those options - before you arrive at the place on a people's vote."
But in a sign of the splits in the party, shadow minister Melanie Onn insisted she'd quit if the leadership ended up opposing Brexit.
The party's manifesto last year stated that Labour respected the result of the 2016 referendum and wanted Britain to leave the EU.
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European capitals foresee a crucial summit on March 21 as a make or break moment when a last ditch compromise package will be sewn up
BRUSSELS is ready to help Theresa May drag out Brexit negotiations until the end of March before offering her small legally binding assurances on the backstop.
European capitals foresee a crucial summit on March 21 as a make or break moment when a last ditch compromise package will be sewn up.
Leaders are mulling a two-pronged approach which would combine a "beefed up" backstop review clause with adding extra legal weight to the trade blueprint.
New wording could also be inserted into the Withdrawal Agreement making stronger pledges to come up with tech solutions to the border.
While the changes would make it harder to use the backstop for any length of time, they would not amount to the time-limit or exit clause demanded by MPs.
Brexit secretary Steve Barclay told EU negotiator Michel Barnier at a meeting in Strasbourg yesterday the UK still wants changes to the border fix.
He said: "We're being very clear with European leaders that what Parliament needs to see is a legally binding change to the backstop."
But diplomats dismissed this week's reopening of negotiations as "smoke and mirrors" designed to run the clock down and heap pressure on parliament.
One told The Sun: "This is nothing but delay tactics mostly focussed on the UK itself.
"It's all pushing it into March. March is going to be frantic, then come March 21 this is when things need to culminate."
They said a compromise could include a commitment to review the need for the backstop every six months with "more weight given to tech advances".
The diplomat said: "Then May could argue she's introduced a possibility that could curb the backstop to one or two years."
Officials would perform a "surgical keyhole operation" on the Withdrawal Agreement to add the extra wording as a protocol, making it legally binding.
But the diplomat warned: "We really wouldn't accept a backstop which in essence or practice would be time-limited."
An EU official told The Sun a clarification of the review clause is one of a number of avenues being explored by British and European negotiators.
Tweaking that part of the text would allow new legal guarantees to be added "without tearing up the whole Withdrawal Agreement".
But the two sides disagree over what new wording would be added, with the UK still holding out for a time limit or unilateral exit clause.
They said: "The problem is on the substance. We disagree on the content. The EU can't give what the UK is requesting in terms of a limit."
The official added Brussels is gearing up for a showdown at the summit in late March after Theresa May put back an update to MPs until February 26.
Even if a deal was signed then, officials anticipate a short extension of Article 50 would be needed to allow time for ratification by both sides.
Alongside changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, member states are also mulling how they can give the much-derided Political Declaration more legal force.
Sources said options under consideration include turning it into a legal instrument or depositing it at the UN.
Mrs May could then argue Brussels was bound to pursue a trade deal by the end of the transition that would mean the backstop was never needed.
The official said the plan could be made "more committal" but can "never have the value of a treaty" because it deals with events after the UK has left.
But they stressed the text is already "the most solemn political commitment you can get" and a "bottom line offer we're not going to climb down from".
The diplomat explained: "That's the package you could agree to on March 21. I cannot see the leaders going beyond that."
Yesterday MEPs' Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt said the Political Declaration could be "easily strengthened" and made "more binding" to convince MPs.
He said: "There are certainly several possibilities to do so and one way certainly to strengthen the wording that is used.
"To upgrade the Political Declaration is certainly a way forward but let’s be honest you can only do that when you have a position by the UK on this."
Meanwhile Maltese Finance Minister Edward Scicluna warned no deal "would be like an atomic bomb for everybody".
He said: "Brinkmanship can never be forecast and it’s very uncertain one could slip and then it’s history.
"You really can’t unfortunately predict what the outcome is going to be, it could go both ways and that’s what’s bad about it now."
European capitals foresee a crucial summit on March 21 as a make or break moment when a last ditch compromise package will be sewn up
BRUSSELS is ready to help Theresa May drag out Brexit negotiations until the end of March before offering her small legally binding assurances on the backstop.
European capitals foresee a crucial summit on March 21 as a make or break moment when a last ditch compromise package will be sewn up.
Leaders are mulling a two-pronged approach which would combine a "beefed up" backstop review clause with adding extra legal weight to the trade blueprint.
New wording could also be inserted into the Withdrawal Agreement making stronger pledges to come up with tech solutions to the border.
While the changes would make it harder to use the backstop for any length of time, they would not amount to the time-limit or exit clause demanded by MPs.
Brexit secretary Steve Barclay told EU negotiator Michel Barnier at a meeting in Strasbourg yesterday the UK still wants changes to the border fix.
He said: "We're being very clear with European leaders that what Parliament needs to see is a legally binding change to the backstop."
But diplomats dismissed this week's reopening of negotiations as "smoke and mirrors" designed to run the clock down and heap pressure on parliament.
One told The Sun: "This is nothing but delay tactics mostly focussed on the UK itself.
"It's all pushing it into March. March is going to be frantic, then come March 21 this is when things need to culminate."
They said a compromise could include a commitment to review the need for the backstop every six months with "more weight given to tech advances".
The diplomat said: "Then May could argue she's introduced a possibility that could curb the backstop to one or two years."
Officials would perform a "surgical keyhole operation" on the Withdrawal Agreement to add the extra wording as a protocol, making it legally binding.
But the diplomat warned: "We really wouldn't accept a backstop which in essence or practice would be time-limited."
An EU official told The Sun a clarification of the review clause is one of a number of avenues being explored by British and European negotiators.
Tweaking that part of the text would allow new legal guarantees to be added "without tearing up the whole Withdrawal Agreement".
But the two sides disagree over what new wording would be added, with the UK still holding out for a time limit or unilateral exit clause.
They said: "The problem is on the substance. We disagree on the content. The EU can't give what the UK is requesting in terms of a limit."
The official added Brussels is gearing up for a showdown at the summit in late March after Theresa May put back an update to MPs until February 26.
Even if a deal was signed then, officials anticipate a short extension of Article 50 would be needed to allow time for ratification by both sides.
Alongside changes to the Withdrawal Agreement, member states are also mulling how they can give the much-derided Political Declaration more legal force.
Sources said options under consideration include turning it into a legal instrument or depositing it at the UN.
Mrs May could then argue Brussels was bound to pursue a trade deal by the end of the transition that would mean the backstop was never needed.
The official said the plan could be made "more committal" but can "never have the value of a treaty" because it deals with events after the UK has left.
But they stressed the text is already "the most solemn political commitment you can get" and a "bottom line offer we're not going to climb down from".
The diplomat explained: "That's the package you could agree to on March 21. I cannot see the leaders going beyond that."
Yesterday MEPs' Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt said the Political Declaration could be "easily strengthened" and made "more binding" to convince MPs.
He said: "There are certainly several possibilities to do so and one way certainly to strengthen the wording that is used.
"To upgrade the Political Declaration is certainly a way forward but let’s be honest you can only do that when you have a position by the UK on this."
Meanwhile Maltese Finance Minister Edward Scicluna warned no deal "would be like an atomic bomb for everybody".
He said: "Brinkmanship can never be forecast and it’s very uncertain one could slip and then it’s history.
"You really can’t unfortunately predict what the outcome is going to be, it could go both ways and that’s what’s bad about it now."
Phrases such as 'crashing out' and 'going over the cliff' have been used by BBC presenters who are meant to be neutral
AS soon as the Prime Minister ­presented her proposed EU deal, it was obvious that she was headed for trouble.
Her plan didn’t just give a bit of ground here and there to smooth the way to an agreement, the little niggles of a ­negotiation.
It crossed the red lines of many of the MPs she relies on for her wafer-thin ­Commons majority.
She is fighting on in the hope of getting it through at the last minute, but the fact is that her deal is bogged down.
She can’t bring it to a vote because she expects it would be rejected, so instead she searches for a way forward.
All the while, the clock to Brexit Day ticks down.
As much as some politicians — what a surprise, almost all Remainers — talk about delaying our escape from the EU or try to spin the line that they deserve a second go at winning a referendum, this country has committed itself to honour the biggest vote in our history.
That means we are leaving on March 29 next year, as Parliament voted to do when it authorised Article 50.
So we are on a fixed timetable, and a continued stand-off over May’s bad deal makes a No Deal Brexit more likely.
As that possibility grows, the language used to describe a No Deal Brexit becomes ever more over-the-top.
Phrases such as “crashing out” and “going over the cliff” have been used by BBC presenters, who are meant to be neutral and should know better than to use such biased terms.
As ex-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said yesterday, the £39billion Britain would no longer have to give the EU in a No Deal scenario could be used to cut business taxes. Such a move, he added, would help those most at risk from a No Deal Brexit “to boost them as they transition”.
We’re told in a doomsday No Deal ­scenario that all planes will be grounded and the country will be sold no medicines from abroad.
It’s even claimed that our food exports will rot in lorries queued up at Dover, while we starve because no food is being imported via Calais, both of which seem unlikely to happen at the same time.
To listen to some campaigners, you’d think there are only three kinds of ­relationship with the EU: Membership, paying the massive bills and swallowing endless laws from Brussels; a big, one-size-fits-all deal; or a smouldering ruin, cut off completely from trade or co-operation.
It might be in their interests to pretend so, because they want to try to frighten us into accepting a poor deal or scare us into abandoning the idea of taking back control altogether. But it isn’t true.
Most of the world aren’t EU members, after all, and many countries don’t have trade deals with the EU.
Brussels’ rule-by-committee means that trade negotiations with the bloc are slow and have to satisfy a dizzying list of ­special interests.
Of the deals that countries have struck with the EU, 42 different types have been hammered out.
Anyone who claims there is no flexibility in how we manage our relationship after Brexit is not telling the whole story.
But even beyond that, among the many countries who trade with the EU without a deal, the reality does not match up to the black-and-white claim that the choice is either full deal or No Deal.
In real life, most countries are quite practical and have the power to reach a whole range of smaller agreements with one another that fall short of a trade deal but still bring benefits.
They recognise each other’s driving licences or doctors’ qualifications, allow mutual access to their air space, or agree to trust each other’s safety tests on goods rather than hold them up for costly extra testing at their ports.
Why do they do it? Because it is in both sides’ interests for trade, tourism and life in general to flow as easily as possible.
The US does it, the EU does it, every normal state does it — and there’s no ­reason why we and the EU couldn’t do it, too, if it isn’t possible to reach a larger agreement for life after Brexit right now.
As Theresa May is finding out, some issues might simply be too difficult or controversial for the UK or the EU to give ground on in the next few weeks.
But that should not stop us from ­shaking hands on hundreds of other side deals that both sides could agree quite simply, and which would help both sides to square away.
That’s what’s called a “managed no deal” — it might not be either our or their dream outcome but it would make life easier while work continues on overcoming the really difficult sticking points.
What’s shocking is the way in which this practical approach has been widely ignored for political reasons.
Some of the much-touted “worst-case scenario” forecasts for the supposed cost of Brexit rely on the ridiculous assumption that Brussels and Westminster would do literally nothing to reduce any potential problems from No Deal.
We’ve been told repeatedly from some quarters that it is simply impossible for the EU to show any flexibility at all with a non-member, even though it has done so in various cases.
At long last, that lie is being exposed. Just as the UK has released its No Deal preparations, the EU is this week ­publishing details of how it would ­handle that situation.
And guess what? Brussels wants to strike mutual side deals in which we both agree to respect various aspects of each other’s rights in order to limit ­disruption and costs.
It turns out there is a practical way ­forward after all, and the doom-mongers’ predictions should be taken with a hefty fistful of salt.
Of course a good, wide-ranging, lasting deal is still desirable, and we should keep working to agree one.
But there are things we can and should do in the meantime.
Better that than be rushed into a ­permanent bad deal.
Phrases such as 'crashing out' and 'going over the cliff' have been used by BBC presenters who are meant to be neutral
AS soon as the Prime Minister ­presented her proposed EU deal, it was obvious that she was headed for trouble.
Her plan didn’t just give a bit of ground here and there to smooth the way to an agreement, the little niggles of a ­negotiation.
It crossed the red lines of many of the MPs she relies on for her wafer-thin ­Commons majority.
She is fighting on in the hope of getting it through at the last minute, but the fact is that her deal is bogged down.
She can’t bring it to a vote because she expects it would be rejected, so instead she searches for a way forward.
All the while, the clock to Brexit Day ticks down.
As much as some politicians — what a surprise, almost all Remainers — talk about delaying our escape from the EU or try to spin the line that they deserve a second go at winning a referendum, this country has committed itself to honour the biggest vote in our history.
That means we are leaving on March 29 next year, as Parliament voted to do when it authorised Article 50.
So we are on a fixed timetable, and a continued stand-off over May’s bad deal makes a No Deal Brexit more likely.
As that possibility grows, the language used to describe a No Deal Brexit becomes ever more over-the-top.
Phrases such as “crashing out” and “going over the cliff” have been used by BBC presenters, who are meant to be neutral and should know better than to use such biased terms.
As ex-Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said yesterday, the £39billion Britain would no longer have to give the EU in a No Deal scenario could be used to cut business taxes. Such a move, he added, would help those most at risk from a No Deal Brexit “to boost them as they transition”.
We’re told in a doomsday No Deal ­scenario that all planes will be grounded and the country will be sold no medicines from abroad.
It’s even claimed that our food exports will rot in lorries queued up at Dover, while we starve because no food is being imported via Calais, both of which seem unlikely to happen at the same time.
To listen to some campaigners, you’d think there are only three kinds of ­relationship with the EU: Membership, paying the massive bills and swallowing endless laws from Brussels; a big, one-size-fits-all deal; or a smouldering ruin, cut off completely from trade or co-operation.
It might be in their interests to pretend so, because they want to try to frighten us into accepting a poor deal or scare us into abandoning the idea of taking back control altogether. But it isn’t true.
Most of the world aren’t EU members, after all, and many countries don’t have trade deals with the EU.
Brussels’ rule-by-committee means that trade negotiations with the bloc are slow and have to satisfy a dizzying list of ­special interests.
Of the deals that countries have struck with the EU, 42 different types have been hammered out.
Anyone who claims there is no flexibility in how we manage our relationship after Brexit is not telling the whole story.
But even beyond that, among the many countries who trade with the EU without a deal, the reality does not match up to the black-and-white claim that the choice is either full deal or No Deal.
In real life, most countries are quite practical and have the power to reach a whole range of smaller agreements with one another that fall short of a trade deal but still bring benefits.
They recognise each other’s driving licences or doctors’ qualifications, allow mutual access to their air space, or agree to trust each other’s safety tests on goods rather than hold them up for costly extra testing at their ports.
Why do they do it? Because it is in both sides’ interests for trade, tourism and life in general to flow as easily as possible.
The US does it, the EU does it, every normal state does it — and there’s no ­reason why we and the EU couldn’t do it, too, if it isn’t possible to reach a larger agreement for life after Brexit right now.
As Theresa May is finding out, some issues might simply be too difficult or controversial for the UK or the EU to give ground on in the next few weeks.
But that should not stop us from ­shaking hands on hundreds of other side deals that both sides could agree quite simply, and which would help both sides to square away.
That’s what’s called a “managed no deal” — it might not be either our or their dream outcome but it would make life easier while work continues on overcoming the really difficult sticking points.
What’s shocking is the way in which this practical approach has been widely ignored for political reasons.
Some of the much-touted “worst-case scenario” forecasts for the supposed cost of Brexit rely on the ridiculous assumption that Brussels and Westminster would do literally nothing to reduce any potential problems from No Deal.
We’ve been told repeatedly from some quarters that it is simply impossible for the EU to show any flexibility at all with a non-member, even though it has done so in various cases.
At long last, that lie is being exposed. Just as the UK has released its No Deal preparations, the EU is this week ­publishing details of how it would ­handle that situation.
And guess what? Brussels wants to strike mutual side deals in which we both agree to respect various aspects of each other’s rights in order to limit ­disruption and costs.
It turns out there is a practical way ­forward after all, and the doom-mongers’ predictions should be taken with a hefty fistful of salt.
Of course a good, wide-ranging, lasting deal is still desirable, and we should keep working to agree one.
But there are things we can and should do in the meantime.
Better that than be rushed into a ­permanent bad deal.
Amid Brexit extension uproar, the PM gave the biggest hint yet she is edging closer to a customs union pact with Labour which could help Britain leave the EU before Halloween
ZOMBIE Theresa May stared down furious calls to resign – and insisted soft Brexit talks with Labour could stop Britain being stuck in the EU until Halloween.
Amid uproar over new Brexit delay, the PM gave the biggest hint yet that she is edging closer to a customs union pact with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in a desperate bid to break the logjam.
Speaking in the Commons, she told MPs there was “more agreement” between the two on a post-Brexit customs arrangement than many believed.
And referring to the cross-party talks she said: “We are sitting down seriously to find a way that enables this House to ensure that there is a deal that commands a majority so that we can leave the European Union.”
The PM met Jeremy Corbyn again for 20 minutes – and a number of Tory Ministers are expected to meet their Labour ‘Shadows’.
But mutinous Tory Eurosceptics used a Commons debate to demand she quit over her “abject surrender” to Brussels on Wednesday night – where she signed up to a six month Brexit extension to avoid a No Deal departure.
It means Britain could be stuck in the EU until at least October 31.
In a fractious Commons debate, Eurosceptic Tory veteran Bill Cash said the PM should “resign” and DUP’s Sammy Wilson accused the PM of having “rolled over” to Brussels.
Arch Brexiteer Mark Francois directly challenged the PM by saying “perseverance is a virtue, but sheer obstinacy is not.”
One veteran Tory added: “Nothing has changed, she’s kicking the can down the road. It’s the same old scorched earth strategy.”
The Sun can separately reveal that backbench Tory bosses separately scheduled a crunch meeting of the 1922 Committee for after recess on April 24 to “consider her position”.
One senior Tory said: “I think about David Cameron after the 2013 local elections – there was lot of speculation how long he could last as leader.
“Theresa May is in a far weaker position than he was.”
Separately, sources claimed as many as twelve Brexit backing ministers are in discussions about resigning in fury at the prospect of a super-soft Brexit – and European Elections.
Hitting back in the Commons, Mrs May said she realised the new extension would cause “deep frustration” many in Parliament and across the country.
But she insisted she had secured a break clause from EU leaders that meant the UK can still leave the EU before European Elections on May 23 if Parliament acts “in the national interest” and passes a deal.
Sending MPs on an 11-day Easter break – the PM urged them to “reflect” on the decisions they will need to take when they come back to “find a way through this impasse” and honour the 2016 Referendum.
She added that if talks with Labour failed – she would present Parliament with “indicative votes” in a desperate bid to find a majority.
I think that the British people expect their politicians to do just that when the national interest demands it
Sources claimed these votes would most likely come in the first week of May – before an EU summit in Romania.
The PM once more said the Government was firmly against a second referendum – telling MPs they had yet to act on the “first” one.
Mrs May also countered claims she had “betrayed” Brexit by insisting she had voted to leave – unlike Eurosceptics in her own party.
She said: “The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear.
“I believe we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest.”
“I profoundly believe that in this unique situation where the House is deadlocked it is incumbent on both front benches to seek to work together to deliver what the British people voted for.
“I think that the British people expect their politicians to do just that when the national interest demands it.”
Mrs May opened the door to a cross-party deal earlier this month after her Brexit deal suffered a third thumping defeat in the Commons.
She has repeatedly ruled out a permanent post-Brexit customs union with the EU because of the need for Britain to have its own trade policy.
The PM reiterated the need to retain trade independence.

But a series of influential Tory backbenchers backed her approach in the Commons – and urged her to stare down the “bullies” in the Eurosceptic wing of the party.
Tory MP Andrew Murrison said: “Can we now put the idea of a Northern Ireland backstop out of its misery and work on mitigating an up-front customs union if a customs union is the price of Labour
support for getting something approximating Brexit over the line?”
Mrs May spent part of an hour long discussion with EU leaders on Wednesday explaining the “significance” of cross-party talks in Britain – given that coalitions are far more common on the Continent.
Sources claimed French President Emmanuel Macron had initially been bemused by the importance given to the talks as he moaned that the Brexit process felt “endless”.
Jeremy Corbyn attacked the PM for leaving Britain in limbo by “sticking rigidly to a flawed plan”
But he conceded: “I welcome that the Prime Minister finally decided to reach out of the opposition last week and open talks to try to find a breakthrough.”
Tories on Wednesday night told The Sun they feared the long extension meant Brexit had now been killed for good.
Former diplomat Lord Kerr, who penned the Article 50 clause used to trigger the UK’s exit from the EU, yesterday said it was to think about holding a general election.
The crossbench peer said: “When parliamentary democracy is struck, one should be consulting the people.
“What’s wrong with having a general election with a view to getting a government that can take decision and get them through the House of Commons.”
 
Amid Brexit extension uproar, the PM gave the biggest hint yet she is edging closer to a customs union pact with Labour which could help Britain leave the EU before Halloween
ZOMBIE Theresa May stared down furious calls to resign – and insisted soft Brexit talks with Labour could stop Britain being stuck in the EU until Halloween.
Amid uproar over new Brexit delay, the PM gave the biggest hint yet that she is edging closer to a customs union pact with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in a desperate bid to break the logjam.
Speaking in the Commons, she told MPs there was “more agreement” between the two on a post-Brexit customs arrangement than many believed.
And referring to the cross-party talks she said: “We are sitting down seriously to find a way that enables this House to ensure that there is a deal that commands a majority so that we can leave the European Union.”
The PM met Jeremy Corbyn again for 20 minutes – and a number of Tory Ministers are expected to meet their Labour ‘Shadows’.
But mutinous Tory Eurosceptics used a Commons debate to demand she quit over her “abject surrender” to Brussels on Wednesday night – where she signed up to a six month Brexit extension to avoid a No Deal departure.
It means Britain could be stuck in the EU until at least October 31.
In a fractious Commons debate, Eurosceptic Tory veteran Bill Cash said the PM should “resign” and DUP’s Sammy Wilson accused the PM of having “rolled over” to Brussels.
Arch Brexiteer Mark Francois directly challenged the PM by saying “perseverance is a virtue, but sheer obstinacy is not.”
One veteran Tory added: “Nothing has changed, she’s kicking the can down the road. It’s the same old scorched earth strategy.”
The Sun can separately reveal that backbench Tory bosses separately scheduled a crunch meeting of the 1922 Committee for after recess on April 24 to “consider her position”.
One senior Tory said: “I think about David Cameron after the 2013 local elections – there was lot of speculation how long he could last as leader.
“Theresa May is in a far weaker position than he was.”
Separately, sources claimed as many as twelve Brexit backing ministers are in discussions about resigning in fury at the prospect of a super-soft Brexit – and European Elections.
Hitting back in the Commons, Mrs May said she realised the new extension would cause “deep frustration” many in Parliament and across the country.
But she insisted she had secured a break clause from EU leaders that meant the UK can still leave the EU before European Elections on May 23 if Parliament acts “in the national interest” and passes a deal.
Sending MPs on an 11-day Easter break – the PM urged them to “reflect” on the decisions they will need to take when they come back to “find a way through this impasse” and honour the 2016 Referendum.
She added that if talks with Labour failed – she would present Parliament with “indicative votes” in a desperate bid to find a majority.
I think that the British people expect their politicians to do just that when the national interest demands it
Sources claimed these votes would most likely come in the first week of May – before an EU summit in Romania.
The PM once more said the Government was firmly against a second referendum – telling MPs they had yet to act on the “first” one.
Mrs May also countered claims she had “betrayed” Brexit by insisting she had voted to leave – unlike Eurosceptics in her own party.
She said: “The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear.
“I believe we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest.”
“I profoundly believe that in this unique situation where the House is deadlocked it is incumbent on both front benches to seek to work together to deliver what the British people voted for.
“I think that the British people expect their politicians to do just that when the national interest demands it.”
Mrs May opened the door to a cross-party deal earlier this month after her Brexit deal suffered a third thumping defeat in the Commons.
She has repeatedly ruled out a permanent post-Brexit customs union with the EU because of the need for Britain to have its own trade policy.
The PM reiterated the need to retain trade independence.

But a series of influential Tory backbenchers backed her approach in the Commons – and urged her to stare down the “bullies” in the Eurosceptic wing of the party.
Tory MP Andrew Murrison said: “Can we now put the idea of a Northern Ireland backstop out of its misery and work on mitigating an up-front customs union if a customs union is the price of Labour
support for getting something approximating Brexit over the line?”
Mrs May spent part of an hour long discussion with EU leaders on Wednesday explaining the “significance” of cross-party talks in Britain – given that coalitions are far more common on the Continent.
Sources claimed French President Emmanuel Macron had initially been bemused by the importance given to the talks as he moaned that the Brexit process felt “endless”.
Jeremy Corbyn attacked the PM for leaving Britain in limbo by “sticking rigidly to a flawed plan”
But he conceded: “I welcome that the Prime Minister finally decided to reach out of the opposition last week and open talks to try to find a breakthrough.”
Tories on Wednesday night told The Sun they feared the long extension meant Brexit had now been killed for good.
Former diplomat Lord Kerr, who penned the Article 50 clause used to trigger the UK’s exit from the EU, yesterday said it was to think about holding a general election.
The crossbench peer said: “When parliamentary democracy is struck, one should be consulting the people.
“What’s wrong with having a general election with a view to getting a government that can take decision and get them through the House of Commons.”
 
Theresa May's DUP allies have joined with opposition parties threatening to start contempt charges against the Govt if the Attorney General withholds the advice
THERESA May today faces a cross-party ambush to force her to publish the full legal advice she has been given on her Brexit deal.
Leaked details of the highly sensitive advice from the Government's top law officer has privately warned the Cabinet that the Brexit deal would trap Britain "indefinitely" in the EU's customs union if we are forced into the contentious backstop arrangement.
The PM's DUP allies have joined with Labour and all other opposition parties threatening to start contempt charges against the Government unless Attorney General Geoffrey Cox publishes the full advice.
The Times reports that the DUP would even abandon Mrs May in any no-confidence vote against her should her Brexit deal fail to be passed by Parliament.
The loss of the DUP's support would leave the Conservatives without a Commons majority.
But the Government is desperate to avoid publishing the details of the advice because they fear it will deter even more Tory MPs from voting for the PM's Brexit deal in the crunch Commons vote next week.
One source said: "The Chief whip is arguing against publishing because it's awful and will sink the vote."
But Mrs May's deputy, David Lidington, is keener to publish because failing to comply with the wishes of Parliament risks triggering contempt charges being brought against him.
That could even see him suspended from Parliament for an initial five days - and then a further 21 days if the Government continues to refuse publishing the advice.
Labour's Brexit chief Sir Keir Starmer warned the PM she will spark a "historic constitutional row" unless she orders the release of the legal advice on her deal.
The DUP is understood to be ready to sign a joint letter with other parties to Speaker John Bercow on Monday unless ministers back down.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
Theresa May's DUP allies have joined with opposition parties threatening to start contempt charges against the Govt if the Attorney General withholds the advice
THERESA May today faces a cross-party ambush to force her to publish the full legal advice she has been given on her Brexit deal.
Leaked details of the highly sensitive advice from the Government's top law officer has privately warned the Cabinet that the Brexit deal would trap Britain "indefinitely" in the EU's customs union if we are forced into the contentious backstop arrangement.
The PM's DUP allies have joined with Labour and all other opposition parties threatening to start contempt charges against the Government unless Attorney General Geoffrey Cox publishes the full advice.
The Times reports that the DUP would even abandon Mrs May in any no-confidence vote against her should her Brexit deal fail to be passed by Parliament.
The loss of the DUP's support would leave the Conservatives without a Commons majority.
But the Government is desperate to avoid publishing the details of the advice because they fear it will deter even more Tory MPs from voting for the PM's Brexit deal in the crunch Commons vote next week.
One source said: "The Chief whip is arguing against publishing because it's awful and will sink the vote."
But Mrs May's deputy, David Lidington, is keener to publish because failing to comply with the wishes of Parliament risks triggering contempt charges being brought against him.
That could even see him suspended from Parliament for an initial five days - and then a further 21 days if the Government continues to refuse publishing the advice.
Labour's Brexit chief Sir Keir Starmer warned the PM she will spark a "historic constitutional row" unless she orders the release of the legal advice on her deal.
The DUP is understood to be ready to sign a joint letter with other parties to Speaker John Bercow on Monday unless ministers back down.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
The ban was put in place after the Mad Cow disease outbreak in 1996, but after several discussions Japanese health officials assured imports would be reestablished
BRITISH beef and lamb will be sold in Japan after a 23 year trade ban is finally scrapped.
The breakthrough, worth £127million to British farmers over the next five years, is announced as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets Theresa May in Downing Street.
The ban was put in place after the Mad Cow disease outbreak in 1996.
Health officials in Japan said after discussions and inspections imports would be able to restart.
Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox welcomed the ditching of the ban saying it would boost farmers and food producers right across the UK.
He said: “It is great news that British beef and lamb will be available on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus for the first time in more than 20 years.
“The UK and Japan are among the strongest champions of free trade and we look forward to an even closer trading relationship as we leave the European Union.”
Shinzo Abe is also expected to urge Theresa May to avoid a no-deal Brexit in talks at Downing Street tomorrow.
The country has more to fear than most from a disorderly UK withdrawal, with around 1,000 Japanese companies operating in the country, and many using it as a gateway to European markets.
Major manufacturers like Nissan, Toyota and Honda have warned a no-deal Brexit could cost their UK operations millions in additional tariffs and disrupt the “just-in-time” supply chains on which they rely, sparking concerns they might reconsider their presence in the country.
Setting off for his trip to Europe, which also takes in the Netherlands, Mr Abe said: “World attention is focused on the UK’s exit from the EU.
“Precisely because of this problem, it is very meaningful for me to visit the UK and exchange opinions. I want to properly convey Japan’s thinking.”
Japanese companies invest more than £40 billion a year in the UK and employ more than 150,000 workers here.
Trade between the UK and Japan totalled £28 billion last year, up 5 per cent on the previous year.
Speaking ahead of the visit, Mrs May said: “The UK and Japan are natural partners. We face many of the same challenges. But also the same immense opportunities.
“By agreeing to forge a new, dynamic partnership, we not only back some of the most cutting-edge sectors in our economy, but will also improve people’s lives and shape the 21st century for the better.”
Agreements are also expected on increased UK involvement in defence including the deployment of Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose to Japan in early 2019, to enforce sanctions against North Korea.
As part of the deal Vincent Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers painting will be displayed in Japan for the first time alongside other artworks in 2020, set to coincide with he Olympic Games being held in Tokyo.
 
The ban was put in place after the Mad Cow disease outbreak in 1996, but after several discussions Japanese health officials assured imports would be reestablished
BRITISH beef and lamb will be sold in Japan after a 23 year trade ban is finally scrapped.
The breakthrough, worth £127million to British farmers over the next five years, is announced as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets Theresa May in Downing Street.
The ban was put in place after the Mad Cow disease outbreak in 1996.
Health officials in Japan said after discussions and inspections imports would be able to restart.
Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox welcomed the ditching of the ban saying it would boost farmers and food producers right across the UK.
He said: “It is great news that British beef and lamb will be available on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus for the first time in more than 20 years.
“The UK and Japan are among the strongest champions of free trade and we look forward to an even closer trading relationship as we leave the European Union.”
Shinzo Abe is also expected to urge Theresa May to avoid a no-deal Brexit in talks at Downing Street tomorrow.
The country has more to fear than most from a disorderly UK withdrawal, with around 1,000 Japanese companies operating in the country, and many using it as a gateway to European markets.
Major manufacturers like Nissan, Toyota and Honda have warned a no-deal Brexit could cost their UK operations millions in additional tariffs and disrupt the “just-in-time” supply chains on which they rely, sparking concerns they might reconsider their presence in the country.
Setting off for his trip to Europe, which also takes in the Netherlands, Mr Abe said: “World attention is focused on the UK’s exit from the EU.
“Precisely because of this problem, it is very meaningful for me to visit the UK and exchange opinions. I want to properly convey Japan’s thinking.”
Japanese companies invest more than £40 billion a year in the UK and employ more than 150,000 workers here.
Trade between the UK and Japan totalled £28 billion last year, up 5 per cent on the previous year.
Speaking ahead of the visit, Mrs May said: “The UK and Japan are natural partners. We face many of the same challenges. But also the same immense opportunities.
“By agreeing to forge a new, dynamic partnership, we not only back some of the most cutting-edge sectors in our economy, but will also improve people’s lives and shape the 21st century for the better.”
Agreements are also expected on increased UK involvement in defence including the deployment of Royal Navy frigate HMS Montrose to Japan in early 2019, to enforce sanctions against North Korea.
As part of the deal Vincent Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers painting will be displayed in Japan for the first time alongside other artworks in 2020, set to coincide with he Olympic Games being held in Tokyo.
 
The President launched a vicious attack on the leaders of the leave campaign in the 2016 referendum today - hours after the EU tore apart Theresa May's Chequers plans
EMMANUEL Macron launched an extraordinary attack on Brexiteers today - where he branded them "liars".
In a vicious rant the French President hit out at the leaders of the leave campaign, just hours after the EU tore apart Theresa May's Chequers plans.
Speaking at the end of the EU Salzburg summit this afternoon, he sneered: "Brexit has shown us one thing - and I fully respect British sovereignty in saying this - it has demonstrated that those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well, that it is easy and there will be lots of money, are liars.
"This is all the more true because they left the next day, so they didn't have to manage it."
And he added that leaving the EU was the "choice pushed by certain people who predicted easy solutions" - in a swipe clearly aimed at Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
At the press conference he also made clear he wanted more detail on any future Brexit plans, adding that he won't accept a "blind deal" which would leave our trading relationship to be decided later.
And he demanded that the PM come up with yet more new proposals in the next three weeks.
"We all agreed on this today, the proposals in their current state are not acceptable, especially on the economic side of it," he blasted.
"The Chequers plan cannot be take it or leave it..
His vicious words came after Donald Tusk issued a withering take-down of Mrs May.
He said her Chequers plans "won't work" and made it clear the bloc thinks they will undermine their rules.
A visibly fuming Mrs May said afterwards that her plan was still the only credible one on offer, and would continue to push for it.
But she also made clear she wasn't afraid of leaving without a deal.
 
 
The President launched a vicious attack on the leaders of the leave campaign in the 2016 referendum today - hours after the EU tore apart Theresa May's Chequers plans
EMMANUEL Macron launched an extraordinary attack on Brexiteers today - where he branded them "liars".
In a vicious rant the French President hit out at the leaders of the leave campaign, just hours after the EU tore apart Theresa May's Chequers plans.
Speaking at the end of the EU Salzburg summit this afternoon, he sneered: "Brexit has shown us one thing - and I fully respect British sovereignty in saying this - it has demonstrated that those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well, that it is easy and there will be lots of money, are liars.
"This is all the more true because they left the next day, so they didn't have to manage it."
And he added that leaving the EU was the "choice pushed by certain people who predicted easy solutions" - in a swipe clearly aimed at Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.
At the press conference he also made clear he wanted more detail on any future Brexit plans, adding that he won't accept a "blind deal" which would leave our trading relationship to be decided later.
And he demanded that the PM come up with yet more new proposals in the next three weeks.
"We all agreed on this today, the proposals in their current state are not acceptable, especially on the economic side of it," he blasted.
"The Chequers plan cannot be take it or leave it..
His vicious words came after Donald Tusk issued a withering take-down of Mrs May.
He said her Chequers plans "won't work" and made it clear the bloc thinks they will undermine their rules.
A visibly fuming Mrs May said afterwards that her plan was still the only credible one on offer, and would continue to push for it.
But she also made clear she wasn't afraid of leaving without a deal.
 
 
BORIS Johnson unveils a bold ­manifesto to unite divided Britain by getting a good Brexit, boosting police numbers and keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of No10.
He outlines his dream of a prosperous, confident, forward-looking nation — a vision he describes as “tailor-made for Sun readers and all their concerns”.
Boris, front-runner in the race for No10, also pledges to close the “opportunity gap” between haves and have-nots.
Writing in The Sun, he vows to fund 20,000 new police officers, an increase of a sixth.
The former Foreign Secretary and London Mayor also promises to:
Boris, 55, writes: “If the Brexit vote taught us anything, it is that too many parts of the UK feel left behind — that they do not get the chance to compete or to show off their potential.
“I have a unique plan to bring this country together, and to unite our society in the way that I was able to unite London.”
Boris’s promise to boost police numbers by 20,000 by 2022 will mean replacing all the officers cut since 2010.
Taking their number back up to above 140,000 will cost the country £1.1billion.
But Boris did not say how he planned to pay for the costly pledge.
Boosting the police is a policy taken directly from former leadership challenger Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary. Boris had hoped to get Mr Javid to endorse his drive to be Tory leader and PM.
Mr Javid was yesterday refusing to say whether he would be backing Boris.
But Boris did win the endorsement of the majority of Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners last night – 12 of a total of 20.
No1o favourite Boris writes directly to Sun readers...
IT is an incredible fact that this country is set to become the most prosperous economy in Europe — right up there with Germany — by the middle of this century.
We lead the world in so many of the key sectors of the 21st century. We beat all comers in bioscience. We have the biggest and most exciting tech scene anywhere this hemisphere.
It is the UK that can boast the most world-class universities, the biggest financial centre, the most creative TV producers — and British pop stars outsell everyone else in the global charts.
We should be bursting with confidence in our country and its future. London and the South East are the most economically productive regions in the whole of Europe — beating even Lombardy or North-Rhine Westphalia.
And yet that economic dynamism and success are not shared equally by the whole of the UK.
If the Brexit vote taught us anything, it is that too many parts of the UK feel left behind — that they do not get the chance to compete or to show off their potential.
They don’t get the investment they need, and if you are a young kid growing up in a left-behind town you may have all the talent in the world — but you don’t have the opportunities you deserve.
We need to close that opportunity gap. And the reason I am standing for the post of leader of the Conservative Party — and therefore Prime Minister — is that I have a unique plan to bring this country together, and to unite our society in the way that I was able to unite London.
This is a plan tailor-made for Sun readers and all their concerns.
People forget it now, but when I became Mayor of our capital more than ten years ago, they talked of a tale of two cities — the rich and the poor.
Kick the can and we kick the bucket. And by the way, I think it is time we had someone who campaigned for Brexit — and who really understands and believes in the project — to get us out properly.

We had four of the six poorest boroughs in the whole of the UK. When I stepped down at the end of two terms I am proud to say that we had none of the poorest 20.
The whole city had got richer and more prosperous — but it  was the poorest quartile that  had seen the biggest growth in  life expectancy.
We lifted up and we levelled up — by bringing down crime sharply, by investing massively in transport infrastructure, and building high-quality homes on brownfield sites.
By cutting the murder rate 50 per cent, we helped the families whose kids were more likely to be victims of gun or knife crime.
By increasing public transport capacity, and cutting delays by 30 per cent, we helped people on modest incomes to commute easily to the opportunity areas and to get good jobs.
And that same transport infrastructure enabled us to build more than 100,000 affordable homes without destroying the green belt.
Now we can use roughly the same approach to level up across the whole of the UK.
We need to end the current crime wave across the country just as we ended it in London — rounding up the leaders of the “county lines” drugs gangs, backing the police to do proper stop and search.
That is why I today pledge another 20,000 police officers — because I back the police and I will give them the political top cover to do the jobs they signed up to do.
Yes, some people say stop and search is discriminatory. I say nonsense. Talk to the mums of kids who get sucked into the gangs.
They know the kindest and most loving thing we can do is take the knives off the streets, just as we took 11,000 knives off the streets of London in about 18 months.
But the best solution to most social evils is the prospect of a good job, and that means we must now do much more for education.
I pledge if elected to increase per-pupil funding both for primary and secondary schools, so that spending resumes its pre-2015 trajectory.
And we should close the unfair funding gap that has been allowed to appear across the country.
We should also boost funding for further education. We need to do far more to unleash the practical talent in this country.
We should be unlocking jobs and growth with new and better transport infrastructure. I want to be the PM who does with NPR — the Crossrail of the North — what I did in London with Crossrail.
I want to give the whole of the West Midlands the type of mass transit connections that make London so successful — and to help West Midlands Mayor Andy Street with his visionary agenda.
We should be doing far more in Wales and the West Country, and across the whole of the UK.
It is an absolute disgrace that the people of Spain now have 85 per cent coverage of full fibre broadband, while in this country — where we pioneered the very idea of the world wide web — we have only seven per cent coverage.
We are going to turbo-charge that project, accelerate it by eight years — and bring Britain together.
We need to rediscover our belief in the simple idea at the heart of modern Conservatism — that you need a dynamic and creative ­market economy to pay for great public services: the infrastructure, the health service, the education system and social services.
And in turn you need great ­public services to act as the bedrock on which business can have the confidence to grow and invest.
It is basic common sense; it is by far the best way for our economy to succeed and grow.
There is one man who simply doesn’t get it — and whose plans would mean ruin for this country — and that is Jeremy Corbyn and the modern Labour Party.
He would be a political and strategic disaster for this country.
Look at how he seems to sympathise with the mullahs of Tehran rather than the US, our most important ally, when it comes to Iranian disruptive behaviour in the Gulf.
Look at the way he tried  to obfuscate the guilt of the Kremlin when it came to the poisonings in Salisbury.
But in his handling of the UK economy he would be positively catastrophic, with new high taxes on business, on pensions, on  inheritance, on gardens, on financial transactions and just about everything else. He cannot and must not be allowed anywhere near Downing Street.
And in case anyone has forgotten, the last time I had to fight a representative of that weird semi-Marxist cabal known as the London Labour left, I beat him when the Conservative party trailed Labour by some 17 points.
We won then, and we can win again — but before then there is one crucial thing we must get done.
If we want to prevent the horror of a Corbyn government, we need to recapture those many thousands of voters who have despaired of the Tory Party and gone off either to the Brexit Party or the Liberal Democrats. There is only one way to rebuild trust in politics, and that is to get Brexit done.
We must come out of the EU by October 31. We must deliver on the will of the people, or we Conservatives will face extinction.
Kick the can and we kick the bucket. And by the way, I think it is time we had someone who campaigned for Brexit — and who really understands and believes in the project — to get us out properly.
I believe we can get a great deal — but the only way to do that is to prepare to leave without one.
This is a very great country, the fifth biggest economy in the world, and the people of this country are fed up with being told that they can’t do this or that, or that we are not up to it.
We need to get Brexit done by October 31, and then use the opportunities that Brexit provides.
For new low-tax free ports and economic zones, for free trade deals around the world, for better and less intrusive regulation, for democratically accountable rules  on immigration.
The opportunities are immense. All that is required is for our country to recover its sense of self-belief and can-do.
This is not the biggest or most powerful country on Earth.
We do not have the most nuclear missiles or the largest standing army. But we can be the greatest place on Earth — the greatest place to live, to bring up a family, to have a job, with the cleanest environment, the most beautiful countryside and the highest standards for animal welfare.
We have a fantastic future — but first we need to get Brexit done by October 31, begin the great work of uniting our country, while making sure that we get ready to defeat Jeremy Corbyn and the London left.
I know in my heart I am the man for the job, and I hope I can count on Sun readers’ support.'
BORIS Johnson unveils a bold ­manifesto to unite divided Britain by getting a good Brexit, boosting police numbers and keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of No10.
He outlines his dream of a prosperous, confident, forward-looking nation — a vision he describes as “tailor-made for Sun readers and all their concerns”.
Boris, front-runner in the race for No10, also pledges to close the “opportunity gap” between haves and have-nots.
Writing in The Sun, he vows to fund 20,000 new police officers, an increase of a sixth.
The former Foreign Secretary and London Mayor also promises to:
Boris, 55, writes: “If the Brexit vote taught us anything, it is that too many parts of the UK feel left behind — that they do not get the chance to compete or to show off their potential.
“I have a unique plan to bring this country together, and to unite our society in the way that I was able to unite London.”
Boris’s promise to boost police numbers by 20,000 by 2022 will mean replacing all the officers cut since 2010.
Taking their number back up to above 140,000 will cost the country £1.1billion.
But Boris did not say how he planned to pay for the costly pledge.
Boosting the police is a policy taken directly from former leadership challenger Sajid Javid, the Home Secretary. Boris had hoped to get Mr Javid to endorse his drive to be Tory leader and PM.
Mr Javid was yesterday refusing to say whether he would be backing Boris.
But Boris did win the endorsement of the majority of Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners last night – 12 of a total of 20.
No1o favourite Boris writes directly to Sun readers...
IT is an incredible fact that this country is set to become the most prosperous economy in Europe — right up there with Germany — by the middle of this century.
We lead the world in so many of the key sectors of the 21st century. We beat all comers in bioscience. We have the biggest and most exciting tech scene anywhere this hemisphere.
It is the UK that can boast the most world-class universities, the biggest financial centre, the most creative TV producers — and British pop stars outsell everyone else in the global charts.
We should be bursting with confidence in our country and its future. London and the South East are the most economically productive regions in the whole of Europe — beating even Lombardy or North-Rhine Westphalia.
And yet that economic dynamism and success are not shared equally by the whole of the UK.
If the Brexit vote taught us anything, it is that too many parts of the UK feel left behind — that they do not get the chance to compete or to show off their potential.
They don’t get the investment they need, and if you are a young kid growing up in a left-behind town you may have all the talent in the world — but you don’t have the opportunities you deserve.
We need to close that opportunity gap. And the reason I am standing for the post of leader of the Conservative Party — and therefore Prime Minister — is that I have a unique plan to bring this country together, and to unite our society in the way that I was able to unite London.
This is a plan tailor-made for Sun readers and all their concerns.
People forget it now, but when I became Mayor of our capital more than ten years ago, they talked of a tale of two cities — the rich and the poor.
Kick the can and we kick the bucket. And by the way, I think it is time we had someone who campaigned for Brexit — and who really understands and believes in the project — to get us out properly.

We had four of the six poorest boroughs in the whole of the UK. When I stepped down at the end of two terms I am proud to say that we had none of the poorest 20.
The whole city had got richer and more prosperous — but it  was the poorest quartile that  had seen the biggest growth in  life expectancy.
We lifted up and we levelled up — by bringing down crime sharply, by investing massively in transport infrastructure, and building high-quality homes on brownfield sites.
By cutting the murder rate 50 per cent, we helped the families whose kids were more likely to be victims of gun or knife crime.
By increasing public transport capacity, and cutting delays by 30 per cent, we helped people on modest incomes to commute easily to the opportunity areas and to get good jobs.
And that same transport infrastructure enabled us to build more than 100,000 affordable homes without destroying the green belt.
Now we can use roughly the same approach to level up across the whole of the UK.
We need to end the current crime wave across the country just as we ended it in London — rounding up the leaders of the “county lines” drugs gangs, backing the police to do proper stop and search.
That is why I today pledge another 20,000 police officers — because I back the police and I will give them the political top cover to do the jobs they signed up to do.
Yes, some people say stop and search is discriminatory. I say nonsense. Talk to the mums of kids who get sucked into the gangs.
They know the kindest and most loving thing we can do is take the knives off the streets, just as we took 11,000 knives off the streets of London in about 18 months.
But the best solution to most social evils is the prospect of a good job, and that means we must now do much more for education.
I pledge if elected to increase per-pupil funding both for primary and secondary schools, so that spending resumes its pre-2015 trajectory.
And we should close the unfair funding gap that has been allowed to appear across the country.
We should also boost funding for further education. We need to do far more to unleash the practical talent in this country.
We should be unlocking jobs and growth with new and better transport infrastructure. I want to be the PM who does with NPR — the Crossrail of the North — what I did in London with Crossrail.
I want to give the whole of the West Midlands the type of mass transit connections that make London so successful — and to help West Midlands Mayor Andy Street with his visionary agenda.
We should be doing far more in Wales and the West Country, and across the whole of the UK.
It is an absolute disgrace that the people of Spain now have 85 per cent coverage of full fibre broadband, while in this country — where we pioneered the very idea of the world wide web — we have only seven per cent coverage.
We are going to turbo-charge that project, accelerate it by eight years — and bring Britain together.
We need to rediscover our belief in the simple idea at the heart of modern Conservatism — that you need a dynamic and creative ­market economy to pay for great public services: the infrastructure, the health service, the education system and social services.
And in turn you need great ­public services to act as the bedrock on which business can have the confidence to grow and invest.
It is basic common sense; it is by far the best way for our economy to succeed and grow.
There is one man who simply doesn’t get it — and whose plans would mean ruin for this country — and that is Jeremy Corbyn and the modern Labour Party.
He would be a political and strategic disaster for this country.
Look at how he seems to sympathise with the mullahs of Tehran rather than the US, our most important ally, when it comes to Iranian disruptive behaviour in the Gulf.
Look at the way he tried  to obfuscate the guilt of the Kremlin when it came to the poisonings in Salisbury.
But in his handling of the UK economy he would be positively catastrophic, with new high taxes on business, on pensions, on  inheritance, on gardens, on financial transactions and just about everything else. He cannot and must not be allowed anywhere near Downing Street.
And in case anyone has forgotten, the last time I had to fight a representative of that weird semi-Marxist cabal known as the London Labour left, I beat him when the Conservative party trailed Labour by some 17 points.
We won then, and we can win again — but before then there is one crucial thing we must get done.
If we want to prevent the horror of a Corbyn government, we need to recapture those many thousands of voters who have despaired of the Tory Party and gone off either to the Brexit Party or the Liberal Democrats. There is only one way to rebuild trust in politics, and that is to get Brexit done.
We must come out of the EU by October 31. We must deliver on the will of the people, or we Conservatives will face extinction.
Kick the can and we kick the bucket. And by the way, I think it is time we had someone who campaigned for Brexit — and who really understands and believes in the project — to get us out properly.
I believe we can get a great deal — but the only way to do that is to prepare to leave without one.
This is a very great country, the fifth biggest economy in the world, and the people of this country are fed up with being told that they can’t do this or that, or that we are not up to it.
We need to get Brexit done by October 31, and then use the opportunities that Brexit provides.
For new low-tax free ports and economic zones, for free trade deals around the world, for better and less intrusive regulation, for democratically accountable rules  on immigration.
The opportunities are immense. All that is required is for our country to recover its sense of self-belief and can-do.
This is not the biggest or most powerful country on Earth.
We do not have the most nuclear missiles or the largest standing army. But we can be the greatest place on Earth — the greatest place to live, to bring up a family, to have a job, with the cleanest environment, the most beautiful countryside and the highest standards for animal welfare.
We have a fantastic future — but first we need to get Brexit done by October 31, begin the great work of uniting our country, while making sure that we get ready to defeat Jeremy Corbyn and the London left.
I know in my heart I am the man for the job, and I hope I can count on Sun readers’ support.'
Graham Brady's idea is to approve the Prime Minister’s original Brexit deal, but with the 'backstop' removed and vote simply for 'alternative arrangements', writes Nick Timothy
IT is squeaky bum time in Westminster, as the clock ticks and we get closer to March 29, the date Britain is due to leave the EU.
With the deadlock among MPs still not broken, nobody knows for sure what will happen.
Theresa May says Brexit must go ahead on time. But she also says Britain will not leave the EU without a deal.
And her deal — the only one on the table at this late stage — was defeated in the House of Commons by a record majority just two weeks ago.
Tonight’s Brexit votes are not quite the final shoot-out between the different factions in Parliament. The Government has promised that MPs will vote soon on a new plan.
Remainers and soft Brexit supporters in government are pushing to hold that vote as soon as possible.
And MPs — backed by a Speaker who will rewrite any Commons rules to soften or stop Brexit — will force more votes on what happens next.
Nevertheless, tonight’s votes do matter.
One proposal comes from Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP.
Her Yorkshire constituents voted to leave the EU by more than two to one and, during the election, she promised them she would “not vote to block Brexit.”
Yet that is what her plan does:      if MPs vote for her   amendment, they will be able to stop Brexit happening this year.
Cooper has the support of several rebel Tories, so if Jeremy Corbyn whips his MPs to vote for it, she stands a good chance of getting her way.
Caroline Spelman and Jack Dromey, Conservative and Labour, have an amendment that calls on the Government to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Dominic Grieve wants MPs to control the Commons timetable, allowing Parliament to vote on different ways of watering Brexit down.
Labour want to present MPs with options that include, predictably, a second referendum.
Despite drafting a manifesto saying “Labour accepts the referendum result”, the Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer says in a second referendum he would campaign to overturn the result of the first.
It is possible that none of these amendments might pass.
Remainers and soft Brexiteers are divided about what should happen.
Some want to delay Brexit, some want to tie us to European rules and regulations, and others want another referendum to stop it altogether.
Even if no proposal wins a Commons majority, the votes cast by MPs will probably demonstrate that there is a majority to water down Brexit one way or another.
For Brexit supporters, this is very dangerous indeed.
Some believe they simply need to run down the clock and, in 59 days, we can leave without a deal.
Remainers and soft Brexiteers are divided about what should happen. Some want to delay Brexit, some want to tie us to European rules and regulations, and others want another referendum to stop it altogether.
For Leavers who want a negotiated departure, this feels like a serious risk.
But Leavers who favour no deal need to ask themselves, can they really be so sure they will get what they want?
With several Cabinet ministers, many more junior ministers and a Commons majority against no deal, it seems increasingly likely that MPs will ultimately find a way of stopping no deal.
When they do, Brexit will only get softer and softer.
This is why the amendment proposed by Graham Brady, a senior Conservative, is so important.
His idea is to approve the Prime Minister’s original Brexit deal, but with the “backstop” removed.
The backstop is hated by unionists, because to prevent barriers to trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland, it creates new barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
And it is hated by Leavers, because it ties the UK to the EU’s customs union, and Northern Ireland to EU single market rules.
Brady wants MPs to vote simply for “alternative arrangements” to the backstop.
By avoiding a specific proposal, he hopes the amendment can win a Commons majority and, in doing so, demonstrate to Brussels that the deal they struck with Theresa May can be ratified — but only without the backstop.
 Leavers who favour no deal need to ask themselves, can they really be so sure they will get what they want?
Critics, largely Remainers, say this is impossible.
But in the past week or so, Angela Merkel has questioned whether the backstop is such a good idea after all.
The Polish foreign minister has suggested it should expire after five years. And the European Commission effectively conceded that in the event of no deal, they would use policy and technology to prevent a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
In other words, they proposed solutions they once dismissed as “unicorns” and “magical thinking” when they were suggested by the British — and which could render the backstop unnecessary.
But this is not all. Some European officials have floated, in private, a more inventive solution: that the UK and Ireland should form a British Isles customs zone, with Britain compensating Ireland for any new friction in their trade with Europe.
So it is clear: whatever Remainers claim, alternatives to the backstop are technically and politically feasible.
Recognising this, the Brady amendment would give the Government one last chance to negotiate something better.
Yet Tory Brexiteers say they might not vote for it. They fear the ambiguity of “alternative arrangements” could allow ministers to negotiate an even worse deal, perhaps tying the whole of the UK to the EU’s customs union and single market rules for good.
They do not trust May, her advisers, or most of her Cabinet and demand a specific time limit on the backstop.
But if they vote down the Brady amendment, they will not get what they want, and are more likely to get what they fear.
As the clock ticks on and bottoms get even squeakier, MPs will coalesce around a plan to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The EU will have no reason to compromise, and Parliament will soften our departure by aligning us with more and more European laws.
If Leavers vote against Brady, they will be shooting themselves not in one foot, and not even in both feet, but in the head.
As the Commons debates the proposals today, Leavers need to start compromising with reality.
 
Graham Brady's idea is to approve the Prime Minister’s original Brexit deal, but with the 'backstop' removed and vote simply for 'alternative arrangements', writes Nick Timothy
IT is squeaky bum time in Westminster, as the clock ticks and we get closer to March 29, the date Britain is due to leave the EU.
With the deadlock among MPs still not broken, nobody knows for sure what will happen.
Theresa May says Brexit must go ahead on time. But she also says Britain will not leave the EU without a deal.
And her deal — the only one on the table at this late stage — was defeated in the House of Commons by a record majority just two weeks ago.
Tonight’s Brexit votes are not quite the final shoot-out between the different factions in Parliament. The Government has promised that MPs will vote soon on a new plan.
Remainers and soft Brexit supporters in government are pushing to hold that vote as soon as possible.
And MPs — backed by a Speaker who will rewrite any Commons rules to soften or stop Brexit — will force more votes on what happens next.
Nevertheless, tonight’s votes do matter.
One proposal comes from Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP.
Her Yorkshire constituents voted to leave the EU by more than two to one and, during the election, she promised them she would “not vote to block Brexit.”
Yet that is what her plan does:      if MPs vote for her   amendment, they will be able to stop Brexit happening this year.
Cooper has the support of several rebel Tories, so if Jeremy Corbyn whips his MPs to vote for it, she stands a good chance of getting her way.
Caroline Spelman and Jack Dromey, Conservative and Labour, have an amendment that calls on the Government to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Dominic Grieve wants MPs to control the Commons timetable, allowing Parliament to vote on different ways of watering Brexit down.
Labour want to present MPs with options that include, predictably, a second referendum.
Despite drafting a manifesto saying “Labour accepts the referendum result”, the Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer says in a second referendum he would campaign to overturn the result of the first.
It is possible that none of these amendments might pass.
Remainers and soft Brexiteers are divided about what should happen.
Some want to delay Brexit, some want to tie us to European rules and regulations, and others want another referendum to stop it altogether.
Even if no proposal wins a Commons majority, the votes cast by MPs will probably demonstrate that there is a majority to water down Brexit one way or another.
For Brexit supporters, this is very dangerous indeed.
Some believe they simply need to run down the clock and, in 59 days, we can leave without a deal.
Remainers and soft Brexiteers are divided about what should happen. Some want to delay Brexit, some want to tie us to European rules and regulations, and others want another referendum to stop it altogether.
For Leavers who want a negotiated departure, this feels like a serious risk.
But Leavers who favour no deal need to ask themselves, can they really be so sure they will get what they want?
With several Cabinet ministers, many more junior ministers and a Commons majority against no deal, it seems increasingly likely that MPs will ultimately find a way of stopping no deal.
When they do, Brexit will only get softer and softer.
This is why the amendment proposed by Graham Brady, a senior Conservative, is so important.
His idea is to approve the Prime Minister’s original Brexit deal, but with the “backstop” removed.
The backstop is hated by unionists, because to prevent barriers to trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland, it creates new barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
And it is hated by Leavers, because it ties the UK to the EU’s customs union, and Northern Ireland to EU single market rules.
Brady wants MPs to vote simply for “alternative arrangements” to the backstop.
By avoiding a specific proposal, he hopes the amendment can win a Commons majority and, in doing so, demonstrate to Brussels that the deal they struck with Theresa May can be ratified — but only without the backstop.
 Leavers who favour no deal need to ask themselves, can they really be so sure they will get what they want?
Critics, largely Remainers, say this is impossible.
But in the past week or so, Angela Merkel has questioned whether the backstop is such a good idea after all.
The Polish foreign minister has suggested it should expire after five years. And the European Commission effectively conceded that in the event of no deal, they would use policy and technology to prevent a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
In other words, they proposed solutions they once dismissed as “unicorns” and “magical thinking” when they were suggested by the British — and which could render the backstop unnecessary.
But this is not all. Some European officials have floated, in private, a more inventive solution: that the UK and Ireland should form a British Isles customs zone, with Britain compensating Ireland for any new friction in their trade with Europe.
So it is clear: whatever Remainers claim, alternatives to the backstop are technically and politically feasible.
Recognising this, the Brady amendment would give the Government one last chance to negotiate something better.
Yet Tory Brexiteers say they might not vote for it. They fear the ambiguity of “alternative arrangements” could allow ministers to negotiate an even worse deal, perhaps tying the whole of the UK to the EU’s customs union and single market rules for good.
They do not trust May, her advisers, or most of her Cabinet and demand a specific time limit on the backstop.
But if they vote down the Brady amendment, they will not get what they want, and are more likely to get what they fear.
As the clock ticks on and bottoms get even squeakier, MPs will coalesce around a plan to stop a no-deal Brexit.
The EU will have no reason to compromise, and Parliament will soften our departure by aligning us with more and more European laws.
If Leavers vote against Brady, they will be shooting themselves not in one foot, and not even in both feet, but in the head.
As the Commons debates the proposals today, Leavers need to start compromising with reality.
 
The Prime Minister is surrounded by pro-EU campaigners, staunch Leavers, MPs who want to renegotiate her current deal, others who want to negotiate a totally different deal but the upshot of all this is that we're in for massive constitutional mayhem
THERESA MAY’S late decision to call off the Brexit vote shows what a massive mess she finds herself in.
The clock is ticking. We are due to leave the EU on March 29 next year, deal or no deal — and Parliament cannot agree what to do.
Some MPs want the PM to go back to Brussels and negotiate something better. Others want to negotiate a different deal altogether. Labour wants an election. Die-hard Remainers want another referendum. Many Leavers just want to get out without a deal.
And Mrs May insists her deal is the right one, despite knowing it is so unpopular that she couldn’t put it to a vote in the Commons.
Whoever gets their way, it is time to strap on our seatbelts and brace ourselves for an almighty crash. However things end, we are heading for multiple constitutional crises that risk smashing our political system to pieces.
Yesterday Mrs May promised more assurances from Brussels about her deal’s so-called “backstop”, in which we will be trapped in a customs union with the EU, and Northern Ireland will be trapped inside the single market.
Game of chicken is more high-risk
But it is completely implausible that she will be able to negotiate an end to the backstop or the right to simply withdraw from it in future.
So convinced was the PM that she could not win this argument with Brussels, she did not propose it during the original talks. The Europeans insist they will not make any legally binding commitments about how the backstop might end.
So the only effect of delaying the vote is to take up even more time before March 29. In other words, the game of chicken between ministers and rebel MPs will get more and more high-risk.
The time for MPs to prevent a no-deal Brexit will be cut short, the chances of no deal will increase and ministers — because they want to bully Parliament into accepting their deal — will continue to refuse to prepare properly for no deal.
And remember what the PM’s deal involves. For nearly two years — but maybe longer — we will pay into the EU budget, accept free movement and respect all European laws.
Then, when there is no agreement on the future relationship, we will find ourselves in the backstop. Northern Ireland will effectively be annexed by Brussels. British goods heading for Ulster will be stopped and checked, European goods will be waved through. The EU will decide how other countries can trade with Britain, without our say and regardless of the effects on British jobs. And we will be forced to follow the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
Our constitution says Parliament is sovereign: Nothing is more powerful than an Act of Parliament, debated and approved by elected representatives.
What’s more, no Parliament can “bind its successors”: One generation of MPs cannot dictate what future generations can and cannot decide.
Yet the PM’s deal subordinates Parliament to the EU, and does so permanently, with no legal right for Britain to escape its punishing terms. It would leave us as a colony: A country dismembered and incapable of democratic self-government.
The remaining options are just as dangerous. Many pro- Europeans want Britain to join the European Economic Area and form a customs union with the EU.
Norway Plus, as their plan is now known, would mean Britain accepting even more European laws than the PM proposes, without any say over what they are. For that reason, coupled with the knowledge that it does not avoid the backstop, Norway Plus is even worse than Theresa May’s deal.
Yet the “Norwegians” inside the Conservative Party persist. They know there is no majority among Tory MPs for their model but they have a plan.
If Mrs May’s deal is rejected and they win a majority for Norway Plus with support from Labour MPs, they can install a caretaker prime minister to deliver it.
With a Commons majority for Norway Plus, they believe the Queen would be obliged to appoint their man — David Lidington, perhaps — as PM.
The risk to the monarchy of embroiling the Queen in a political controversy of such magnitude seems not to matter to them.
 
Buckle up and adopt the brace position
One other option, pushed by a handful of Conservatives and many Labour MPs, is to re-run the referendum. Their goal is to remain in the EU after all.
The possibility they might lose, the effects on public confidence in our democracy and the instability caused by a narrow remain victory do not matter.
For these Europhiles, staying in the EU is more important than the damage they might do to Parliament and to the party system our democracy relies upon.
The default option, however, if Parliament rejects the PM’s deal, is a no-deal Brexit. That was decided when Parliament passed the Withdrawal Act earlier this year. To override that Act, Parliament must do more than hold a single vote, and the Government must do more than negotiate something else.
Parliament must amend the Withdrawal Act or pass another Act to set us on a different path. If there is any ambiguity, the Supreme Court — whose president, Baroness Hale, has challenged the sovereignty of Parliament in the past — might again play a controversial role.
While the Commons is divided, we know a majority of MPs are determined to stop a no-deal Brexit at almost any cost. Some senior Tories say they will vote against the Government in a confidence motion — risking the election of Jeremy Corbyn — if it means they can stop leaving without a deal.
It is probable we are heading for Norway Plus or another referendum. Whatever happens, the constitutional consequences are likely to be profound.
The power of the courts, the party system, Parliamentary sovereignty, the future of the Union, even the monarchy, might come under scrutiny. Whatever happens will be controversial and further divide the country. But something has to give.
So buckle your seatbelts and adopt the brace position. We are heading for a constitutional smash.
Nick Timothy is former chief of staff to Theresa May.
The Prime Minister is surrounded by pro-EU campaigners, staunch Leavers, MPs who want to renegotiate her current deal, others who want to negotiate a totally different deal but the upshot of all this is that we're in for massive constitutional mayhem
THERESA MAY’S late decision to call off the Brexit vote shows what a massive mess she finds herself in.
The clock is ticking. We are due to leave the EU on March 29 next year, deal or no deal — and Parliament cannot agree what to do.
Some MPs want the PM to go back to Brussels and negotiate something better. Others want to negotiate a different deal altogether. Labour wants an election. Die-hard Remainers want another referendum. Many Leavers just want to get out without a deal.
And Mrs May insists her deal is the right one, despite knowing it is so unpopular that she couldn’t put it to a vote in the Commons.
Whoever gets their way, it is time to strap on our seatbelts and brace ourselves for an almighty crash. However things end, we are heading for multiple constitutional crises that risk smashing our political system to pieces.
Yesterday Mrs May promised more assurances from Brussels about her deal’s so-called “backstop”, in which we will be trapped in a customs union with the EU, and Northern Ireland will be trapped inside the single market.
Game of chicken is more high-risk
But it is completely implausible that she will be able to negotiate an end to the backstop or the right to simply withdraw from it in future.
So convinced was the PM that she could not win this argument with Brussels, she did not propose it during the original talks. The Europeans insist they will not make any legally binding commitments about how the backstop might end.
So the only effect of delaying the vote is to take up even more time before March 29. In other words, the game of chicken between ministers and rebel MPs will get more and more high-risk.
The time for MPs to prevent a no-deal Brexit will be cut short, the chances of no deal will increase and ministers — because they want to bully Parliament into accepting their deal — will continue to refuse to prepare properly for no deal.
And remember what the PM’s deal involves. For nearly two years — but maybe longer — we will pay into the EU budget, accept free movement and respect all European laws.
Then, when there is no agreement on the future relationship, we will find ourselves in the backstop. Northern Ireland will effectively be annexed by Brussels. British goods heading for Ulster will be stopped and checked, European goods will be waved through. The EU will decide how other countries can trade with Britain, without our say and regardless of the effects on British jobs. And we will be forced to follow the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
Our constitution says Parliament is sovereign: Nothing is more powerful than an Act of Parliament, debated and approved by elected representatives.
What’s more, no Parliament can “bind its successors”: One generation of MPs cannot dictate what future generations can and cannot decide.
Yet the PM’s deal subordinates Parliament to the EU, and does so permanently, with no legal right for Britain to escape its punishing terms. It would leave us as a colony: A country dismembered and incapable of democratic self-government.
The remaining options are just as dangerous. Many pro- Europeans want Britain to join the European Economic Area and form a customs union with the EU.
Norway Plus, as their plan is now known, would mean Britain accepting even more European laws than the PM proposes, without any say over what they are. For that reason, coupled with the knowledge that it does not avoid the backstop, Norway Plus is even worse than Theresa May’s deal.
Yet the “Norwegians” inside the Conservative Party persist. They know there is no majority among Tory MPs for their model but they have a plan.
If Mrs May’s deal is rejected and they win a majority for Norway Plus with support from Labour MPs, they can install a caretaker prime minister to deliver it.
With a Commons majority for Norway Plus, they believe the Queen would be obliged to appoint their man — David Lidington, perhaps — as PM.
The risk to the monarchy of embroiling the Queen in a political controversy of such magnitude seems not to matter to them.
 
Buckle up and adopt the brace position
One other option, pushed by a handful of Conservatives and many Labour MPs, is to re-run the referendum. Their goal is to remain in the EU after all.
The possibility they might lose, the effects on public confidence in our democracy and the instability caused by a narrow remain victory do not matter.
For these Europhiles, staying in the EU is more important than the damage they might do to Parliament and to the party system our democracy relies upon.
The default option, however, if Parliament rejects the PM’s deal, is a no-deal Brexit. That was decided when Parliament passed the Withdrawal Act earlier this year. To override that Act, Parliament must do more than hold a single vote, and the Government must do more than negotiate something else.
Parliament must amend the Withdrawal Act or pass another Act to set us on a different path. If there is any ambiguity, the Supreme Court — whose president, Baroness Hale, has challenged the sovereignty of Parliament in the past — might again play a controversial role.
While the Commons is divided, we know a majority of MPs are determined to stop a no-deal Brexit at almost any cost. Some senior Tories say they will vote against the Government in a confidence motion — risking the election of Jeremy Corbyn — if it means they can stop leaving without a deal.
It is probable we are heading for Norway Plus or another referendum. Whatever happens, the constitutional consequences are likely to be profound.
The power of the courts, the party system, Parliamentary sovereignty, the future of the Union, even the monarchy, might come under scrutiny. Whatever happens will be controversial and further divide the country. But something has to give.
So buckle your seatbelts and adopt the brace position. We are heading for a constitutional smash.
Nick Timothy is former chief of staff to Theresa May.
Theresa May must call on her deepest reserves of defiance and stand up to the European Union like our ancient queen rose up against the Roman Empire
“WE need the PM to discover her inner Boudicca,” a friend said as we discussed Brexit recently.
I could see where he was going with this. After all, as we remember from school, this ancient British queen rose up against the Roman Empire, winning battles, slaughtering enemies and forcing the Romans to contemplate leaving Britain all together.
“But, hang on,” I replied. “Wasn’t Boudicca eventually defeated?”
Whatever the details, my friend was right. It is time for Theresa May to call on her deepest reserves of defiance and stand up to the European Union.
Brussels has rejected her Brexit proposals, insulted us at the recent Salzburg summit and wants to dismember the United Kingdom by effectively annexing Northern Ireland for itself.
Theresa May’s respect towards the EU has been met consistently with contempt for Britain. She has wished Brussels every success, while they wish us nothing but failure and decline. She has suggested solutions while they point out problems. And she has taken her Government to the brink by proposing a future relationship that is hated by many of her own MPs and supporters.
It is time, now, to stop.
Her Chequers plan already goes too far. It would tie us to European laws, over which we would have no say, and force us to accept the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
It would prevent us from taking our own decisions and making our economy more competitive. And it almost certainly stops us from striking our own trade deals.
Worse still, if the Government persists with Chequers, we will end up with something even worse: Chequers Minus, which could mean making annual payments to Brussels, complying with more EU laws and accepting liberal immigration rules that amount to continued free movement.
The longer we pretend Chequers can survive, the worse the outcome will be. As we negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, Britain should be seeking watertight assurances about our future relationship. Without them, we will sign away a £40billion divorce payment without any confidence we will get a fair deal for the future.
But the crisis the Prime Minister described to Parliament yesterday, and which the Cabinet will discuss today, is not about Chequers, but the so-called “backstop” — what should happen to Northern Ireland if there is no eventual agreement on the future relationship.
The EU’s proposition is an outrage. If there is no deal on the future relationship, they expect Northern Ireland to remain inside the Customs Union and, in effect, the single market.
That would mean, in trying to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, we would create a hard border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. That’s right, a border within our own country to avoid having one with another.
The backstop would mean politicians in the Republic have a say over laws in Northern Ireland, while politicians in Belfast and London would have none. And it effectively breaches the Good Friday Agreement, which demands that Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom is respected unless a majority of Northern Irish people vote for the reunification of Ireland.
The one concession the EU seems willing to make is that the whole of the United Kingdom can remain inside the Customs Union, not just Northern Ireland.
But it insists there can be no time limit, and no right for the UK to unilaterally withdraw from the backstop.
In other words, we would be trapped inside the Customs Union — following laws over which we have no say, letting Brussels grant trading access to our market for other countries and leaving us unable to agree trade deals of our own — for ever.
This, of course, has always been the EU’s game. They have cynically used the Northern Irish peace process to try to tie the whole of the United Kingdom to the EU’s rules and regulations. And in their naivety, our negotiators have walked straight into the trap.
The PM needs to tell the EU to get stuffed. And she must go back to the drawing board. She must replace Chequers with an ambitious, Canada Plus, free trade agreement between the UK and the EU. She must insist that the Northern Irish solution lies with technology and policy that avoid checks at the border. And she must tear up the backstop.
One alternative, still a compromise for Brexiteers like me, is to agree that the UK will remain inside the Customs Union for a period of up to five years while the appropriate systems are put into place.
Critics will say the EU will never agree. But if they cannot accept a trade deal consistent with their principles and which respects the integrity of their single market, we know they seek only a damaging deal for Britain, or no deal at all.
Others will say the Government could not get this kind of plan through the Commons. But it stands a better chance than Chequers Minus.
This was, in fact, the plan Theresa May first set out at Lancaster House in January 2017.
There, she warned against a Chequers-style deal, saying: “We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave” and “we will not have truly left if we are not in control of our own laws”.
And she warned against what the backstop demands. She insisted on creating “no new barriers to living and doing business within our own Union”, and warned against “an unlimited transitional status”, which she called a “kind of permanent political purgatory”.
Instead, she sought “a comprehensive free trade agreement” and the freedom for “Britain to negotiate its own trade agreements” with other countries.
In other words, she described the Canada Plus agreement that is prepared and drafted but gathering dust inside the Brexit Department.
Many years ago, The Sun advised us to say “up yours, Delors” to a meddling European Commissioner. Today, the PM needs to find her inner Boudicca and say: “On your way, Barnier.”
We know what we want, and it is time to get it. Britain has had enough of being pushed around.
Theresa May must call on her deepest reserves of defiance and stand up to the European Union like our ancient queen rose up against the Roman Empire
“WE need the PM to discover her inner Boudicca,” a friend said as we discussed Brexit recently.
I could see where he was going with this. After all, as we remember from school, this ancient British queen rose up against the Roman Empire, winning battles, slaughtering enemies and forcing the Romans to contemplate leaving Britain all together.
“But, hang on,” I replied. “Wasn’t Boudicca eventually defeated?”
Whatever the details, my friend was right. It is time for Theresa May to call on her deepest reserves of defiance and stand up to the European Union.
Brussels has rejected her Brexit proposals, insulted us at the recent Salzburg summit and wants to dismember the United Kingdom by effectively annexing Northern Ireland for itself.
Theresa May’s respect towards the EU has been met consistently with contempt for Britain. She has wished Brussels every success, while they wish us nothing but failure and decline. She has suggested solutions while they point out problems. And she has taken her Government to the brink by proposing a future relationship that is hated by many of her own MPs and supporters.
It is time, now, to stop.
Her Chequers plan already goes too far. It would tie us to European laws, over which we would have no say, and force us to accept the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
It would prevent us from taking our own decisions and making our economy more competitive. And it almost certainly stops us from striking our own trade deals.
Worse still, if the Government persists with Chequers, we will end up with something even worse: Chequers Minus, which could mean making annual payments to Brussels, complying with more EU laws and accepting liberal immigration rules that amount to continued free movement.
The longer we pretend Chequers can survive, the worse the outcome will be. As we negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, Britain should be seeking watertight assurances about our future relationship. Without them, we will sign away a £40billion divorce payment without any confidence we will get a fair deal for the future.
But the crisis the Prime Minister described to Parliament yesterday, and which the Cabinet will discuss today, is not about Chequers, but the so-called “backstop” — what should happen to Northern Ireland if there is no eventual agreement on the future relationship.
The EU’s proposition is an outrage. If there is no deal on the future relationship, they expect Northern Ireland to remain inside the Customs Union and, in effect, the single market.
That would mean, in trying to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, we would create a hard border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. That’s right, a border within our own country to avoid having one with another.
The backstop would mean politicians in the Republic have a say over laws in Northern Ireland, while politicians in Belfast and London would have none. And it effectively breaches the Good Friday Agreement, which demands that Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom is respected unless a majority of Northern Irish people vote for the reunification of Ireland.
The one concession the EU seems willing to make is that the whole of the United Kingdom can remain inside the Customs Union, not just Northern Ireland.
But it insists there can be no time limit, and no right for the UK to unilaterally withdraw from the backstop.
In other words, we would be trapped inside the Customs Union — following laws over which we have no say, letting Brussels grant trading access to our market for other countries and leaving us unable to agree trade deals of our own — for ever.
This, of course, has always been the EU’s game. They have cynically used the Northern Irish peace process to try to tie the whole of the United Kingdom to the EU’s rules and regulations. And in their naivety, our negotiators have walked straight into the trap.
The PM needs to tell the EU to get stuffed. And she must go back to the drawing board. She must replace Chequers with an ambitious, Canada Plus, free trade agreement between the UK and the EU. She must insist that the Northern Irish solution lies with technology and policy that avoid checks at the border. And she must tear up the backstop.
One alternative, still a compromise for Brexiteers like me, is to agree that the UK will remain inside the Customs Union for a period of up to five years while the appropriate systems are put into place.
Critics will say the EU will never agree. But if they cannot accept a trade deal consistent with their principles and which respects the integrity of their single market, we know they seek only a damaging deal for Britain, or no deal at all.
Others will say the Government could not get this kind of plan through the Commons. But it stands a better chance than Chequers Minus.
This was, in fact, the plan Theresa May first set out at Lancaster House in January 2017.
There, she warned against a Chequers-style deal, saying: “We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave” and “we will not have truly left if we are not in control of our own laws”.
And she warned against what the backstop demands. She insisted on creating “no new barriers to living and doing business within our own Union”, and warned against “an unlimited transitional status”, which she called a “kind of permanent political purgatory”.
Instead, she sought “a comprehensive free trade agreement” and the freedom for “Britain to negotiate its own trade agreements” with other countries.
In other words, she described the Canada Plus agreement that is prepared and drafted but gathering dust inside the Brexit Department.
Many years ago, The Sun advised us to say “up yours, Delors” to a meddling European Commissioner. Today, the PM needs to find her inner Boudicca and say: “On your way, Barnier.”
We know what we want, and it is time to get it. Britain has had enough of being pushed around.
NIGEL Farage has arrived at No10 to deliver his Brexit demands to Theresa May on her last day in office as leader.
The Brexit Party boss - despite losing the Peterborough by-election last night - said his party was serious about delivering our EU exit and demanded to help.
The letter, which has also been sent to the leadership candidates too, lays out what he wants to do to get Brexit done.
It said they campaigned on three simple messages on the election, which they should be allowed to carry out:

"We should firstly review the state of the No Deal preparations, and help advance them as required, to give confidence to the nation that we will be fully ready," he demanded.
And it said the country should not have to "beg for another delay beyond October 31."
Appearing alongside his fellow MEP Richard Tice, he said this morning on the steps of Downing Street it was time to get really ready for No Deal.
Mr Farage said: "While the Government work out who the next prime minister is, we've only got less than five months until we're meant to leave the EU.
"We would love to start helping now.
"We want responsibility, we want to get involved."
Earlier he warned Tory voters today they MUST back his Brexit party or Jeremy Corbyn will sneak into No10 by accident.
It comes hours after his party failed to win its first seat in Parliament by just 600 votes, leaving Labour to secure the seat of Peterborough.
He told BBC Breakfast: "If a few more cons had realised If you want Brexit and you want to stop Jeremy Corbyn, in seats like this, unless you vote for the Brexit party, Labour are going to win.
"That will be a theme of politics going on from here."
And he added on Radio 4: "If you voted Conservative, you are going to finish up and see a Corbyn government.
"The danger is that, in seats like this, the Conservatives split the Leave vote."
"What you have seen from this result last night is that British politics has fundamentally changed, it is no longer just two parties contesting," he said.
Labour won 10,484 votes to the Brexit Party's 9,801, with the Tories on 7,243.
If the Leave vote for the Tories and Brexit Party had combined and rallied around one candidate then they would have comfortably won.
It shows a chilling story of what could happen across the country and lead to the Labour boss in Downing Street when the next election comes around.
Tory leadership hopefuls Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab warned today that failing to deliver Brexit will "risk delivering Jeremy Corbyn by the backdoor."
But Jeremy Hunt insisted "we will be back" after the Tories deliver our exit.
Jeremy Corbyn said it was a "great win" and represented a rejection of the Conservatives' "disastrous" handling of Brexit.
However, their share of the vote tumbled by 17 percentage points since Fiona Onasanya won the seat for Labour in 2017.
Commiserations to the excellent @Paulbristow79 who did not deserve to come third in #Peterborough. Conservatives must deliver Brexit by 31st October or we risk Brexit Party votes delivering Corbyn to No10.
Last night’s result shows yet again that we must get on and deliver Brexit by the end of October. Failure to do so would not only break our promise to voters, it risks delivering Jeremy Corbyn by the backdoor.
Incredibly disappointing that our brilliant candidate for Peterborough @paulbristow79 was not successful. No future for our party until we deliver Brexit - any elections before then will just allow Corbyn to sneak through the middle. But when the UK has Brexited, we will be back!
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
 
NIGEL Farage has arrived at No10 to deliver his Brexit demands to Theresa May on her last day in office as leader.
The Brexit Party boss - despite losing the Peterborough by-election last night - said his party was serious about delivering our EU exit and demanded to help.
The letter, which has also been sent to the leadership candidates too, lays out what he wants to do to get Brexit done.
It said they campaigned on three simple messages on the election, which they should be allowed to carry out:

"We should firstly review the state of the No Deal preparations, and help advance them as required, to give confidence to the nation that we will be fully ready," he demanded.
And it said the country should not have to "beg for another delay beyond October 31."
Appearing alongside his fellow MEP Richard Tice, he said this morning on the steps of Downing Street it was time to get really ready for No Deal.
Mr Farage said: "While the Government work out who the next prime minister is, we've only got less than five months until we're meant to leave the EU.
"We would love to start helping now.
"We want responsibility, we want to get involved."
Earlier he warned Tory voters today they MUST back his Brexit party or Jeremy Corbyn will sneak into No10 by accident.
It comes hours after his party failed to win its first seat in Parliament by just 600 votes, leaving Labour to secure the seat of Peterborough.
He told BBC Breakfast: "If a few more cons had realised If you want Brexit and you want to stop Jeremy Corbyn, in seats like this, unless you vote for the Brexit party, Labour are going to win.
"That will be a theme of politics going on from here."
And he added on Radio 4: "If you voted Conservative, you are going to finish up and see a Corbyn government.
"The danger is that, in seats like this, the Conservatives split the Leave vote."
"What you have seen from this result last night is that British politics has fundamentally changed, it is no longer just two parties contesting," he said.
Labour won 10,484 votes to the Brexit Party's 9,801, with the Tories on 7,243.
If the Leave vote for the Tories and Brexit Party had combined and rallied around one candidate then they would have comfortably won.
It shows a chilling story of what could happen across the country and lead to the Labour boss in Downing Street when the next election comes around.
Tory leadership hopefuls Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab warned today that failing to deliver Brexit will "risk delivering Jeremy Corbyn by the backdoor."
But Jeremy Hunt insisted "we will be back" after the Tories deliver our exit.
Jeremy Corbyn said it was a "great win" and represented a rejection of the Conservatives' "disastrous" handling of Brexit.
However, their share of the vote tumbled by 17 percentage points since Fiona Onasanya won the seat for Labour in 2017.
Commiserations to the excellent @Paulbristow79 who did not deserve to come third in #Peterborough. Conservatives must deliver Brexit by 31st October or we risk Brexit Party votes delivering Corbyn to No10.
Last night’s result shows yet again that we must get on and deliver Brexit by the end of October. Failure to do so would not only break our promise to voters, it risks delivering Jeremy Corbyn by the backdoor.
Incredibly disappointing that our brilliant candidate for Peterborough @paulbristow79 was not successful. No future for our party until we deliver Brexit - any elections before then will just allow Corbyn to sneak through the middle. But when the UK has Brexited, we will be back!
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
 
The Development Secretary issued her demand ahead of a Cabinet meeting to urge for the need of a Plan B if May's deal is voted down by MPs
CABINET Brexiteer Penny Mordaunt broke ranks to demand Theresa May opens no deal Brexit talks with the EU now.
In a clear challenge to the PM’s authority, the Development Secretary insisted the UK should ask Brussels for a stand alone transition period that would allow no deal to take place without damaging the economy.
A “managed glidepath” of up to two years will mean any future trading relationship will be ok for businesses – including WTO terms - she will argue.
Ms Mordaunt issued her demand ahead of a potentially explosive Cabinet meeting about the need for a Plan B if Mrs May deal falls in the Commons next month.
Panic is growing among the PM’s most senior ministers over her insistence in pressing on with trying to win Commons support for her deal without making any back up plan.
The Sun can also reveal that four of her most senior Cabinet ministers – Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clarke - asked to see Mrs May to try to persuade her to hold an ‘indicative vote’.
The foursome held a meeting in No10 with the PM to push for non- binding vote in the Commons to discover if an alternative type of Brexit would win a majority.
But No10 publicly slapped the move down, insisting that there were “no plans” for it.
Ms Mordaunt has already given her private backing to a Brexiteer plan to agree a transition of around two years with the EU in exchange for £20bn - half the current divorce bill - and then leave on WTO terms.
Delivering the annual Ronald Reagan Lecture, Ms Mordaunt said: “What do people mean by no deal? Do they mean no trade deal agreed?
“Or do they mean no arrangement in place for us continuing to operate as we have been at the borders?
“The chief concern businesses have in my constituency about no deal would be the absence of a smooth and managed glidepath to future trading relationships.
“It’s in our interest, and the interest of every member state of the EU, that we have a smooth transition and that is what we should be focusing on in the immediate future.”
Ms Rudd even went as far as signalling a second EU referendum must remain an option if the PM’s Brexit deal is voted down.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said “all options” should remain on the table if Mrs May’s agreement is rejected in the New Year.
She said: “After that we need to find out the will of Parliament is, where the majority of MPs will vote in Parliament and nothing should be off the table.
“We should consider all options.”
But Brexit-backing Ministers vowed to demand the PM would slap down the suggestion when Cabinet meets.
One ally of Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said: “Andrea’s worried that Brexit is under threat.
“And she is quite clear that a second referendum will only ever happen over her dead body – it’s an absolute red line for her.”
Ms Leadsom is expected to urge the PM to amend her Brexit deal to give Parliament an annual veto on the ‘backstop’.
The PM hit out at ministers for going public to freelance on their preferred alternative Brexit outcomes.
She told the Commons: “I know that there are a range of very strongly held personal views on this issue across the House. And I respect all of them.
“But expressing our personal views is not what we are here to do.
“We asked the British people to take this decision.
“Now we must honour our duty to finish the job.”
 
The Development Secretary issued her demand ahead of a Cabinet meeting to urge for the need of a Plan B if May's deal is voted down by MPs
CABINET Brexiteer Penny Mordaunt broke ranks to demand Theresa May opens no deal Brexit talks with the EU now.
In a clear challenge to the PM’s authority, the Development Secretary insisted the UK should ask Brussels for a stand alone transition period that would allow no deal to take place without damaging the economy.
A “managed glidepath” of up to two years will mean any future trading relationship will be ok for businesses – including WTO terms - she will argue.
Ms Mordaunt issued her demand ahead of a potentially explosive Cabinet meeting about the need for a Plan B if Mrs May deal falls in the Commons next month.
Panic is growing among the PM’s most senior ministers over her insistence in pressing on with trying to win Commons support for her deal without making any back up plan.
The Sun can also reveal that four of her most senior Cabinet ministers – Philip Hammond, Amber Rudd, David Gauke and Greg Clarke - asked to see Mrs May to try to persuade her to hold an ‘indicative vote’.
The foursome held a meeting in No10 with the PM to push for non- binding vote in the Commons to discover if an alternative type of Brexit would win a majority.
But No10 publicly slapped the move down, insisting that there were “no plans” for it.
Ms Mordaunt has already given her private backing to a Brexiteer plan to agree a transition of around two years with the EU in exchange for £20bn - half the current divorce bill - and then leave on WTO terms.
Delivering the annual Ronald Reagan Lecture, Ms Mordaunt said: “What do people mean by no deal? Do they mean no trade deal agreed?
“Or do they mean no arrangement in place for us continuing to operate as we have been at the borders?
“The chief concern businesses have in my constituency about no deal would be the absence of a smooth and managed glidepath to future trading relationships.
“It’s in our interest, and the interest of every member state of the EU, that we have a smooth transition and that is what we should be focusing on in the immediate future.”
Ms Rudd even went as far as signalling a second EU referendum must remain an option if the PM’s Brexit deal is voted down.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said “all options” should remain on the table if Mrs May’s agreement is rejected in the New Year.
She said: “After that we need to find out the will of Parliament is, where the majority of MPs will vote in Parliament and nothing should be off the table.
“We should consider all options.”
But Brexit-backing Ministers vowed to demand the PM would slap down the suggestion when Cabinet meets.
One ally of Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom said: “Andrea’s worried that Brexit is under threat.
“And she is quite clear that a second referendum will only ever happen over her dead body – it’s an absolute red line for her.”
Ms Leadsom is expected to urge the PM to amend her Brexit deal to give Parliament an annual veto on the ‘backstop’.
The PM hit out at ministers for going public to freelance on their preferred alternative Brexit outcomes.
She told the Commons: “I know that there are a range of very strongly held personal views on this issue across the House. And I respect all of them.
“But expressing our personal views is not what we are here to do.
“We asked the British people to take this decision.
“Now we must honour our duty to finish the job.”
 
BDI, Germany's biggest industry group and Spain's tourism chief were shocked at the results of new study showing the economic impact of Britain crashing out of the EU
PANICKED German and Spanish businesses have heaped pressure on Brussels to compromise after warning a no deal Brexit would spark a “massive crisis” across Europe.
Industry chiefs in Berlin and Madrid called for a breakthrough within two weeks as capitals get the jitters over the economic impact of a crash out.
Germany’s biggest industry group, the BDI, intervened after a bombshell study showed the huge hit the country’s economy faces from no deal.
And Spain’s tourism chief in the UK said such a scenario would be a “disaster” for popular holiday destinations causing significant job losses.
BDI chief Joachim Lang said: “The next EU summit in two weeks must bring a breakthrough in the talks.
“Otherwise, Europe is in danger of sliding into a disorderly Brexit.
The result would be a massive crisis.”
His warning was echoed by Javier Pinanes, head of Spain’s tourist office in London, who said a crash out would be a “really big problem” for Madrid.
He warned Brits would shun EU countries in favour of other holiday destinations if there are problems with flights and visas.
On a no deal Brexit, he said: “It would have a very big impact. For Spain it’s decisive. The UK is our main market.
“We have lots of connectivity between the most important cities in the UK and the most important cities and destinations in Spain. It would be a disaster.”
Meanwhile, a new report concluded that EU exports to Britain could plunge by 50% if there’s no deal.
The IW economic institute in Cologne said German trade with the UK may free fall by 57% with the country’s iconic car industry particularly badly hit.
And Spain could be affected even more badly, with sales to Britain collapsing to just 40% of pre-Brexit levels. Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Romania, France, Malta, Slovakia, Cyprus, and Ireland would all also face their exports to the UK being halved or worse.
Meanwhile sales from Britain to the continent could drop by around 47% compared to the status quo, the report states.
Author Markus Jung said: “A hard Brexit, especially if it occurs abruptly as a result of a collapse of negotiations, will be associated with considerable costs.
“This applies in the sense of the above mentioned lose-lose situation for both sides, especially for the UK and Germany.”
He added: “This horror scenario should push policy makers into constructive action.”
The trio of warnings came as EU and British negotiators entered a series of intense talks known as “the tunnel” ahead of next week’s crunch summit.
Jean-Claude Juncker’s deputy, Martin Selmayr, briefed senior eurocrats yesterday about the bloc’s no deal planning.
 
spokesman said the top German official had stressed the “importance for all stakeholders to prepare for all outcomes at all levels”.
BDI, Germany's biggest industry group and Spain's tourism chief were shocked at the results of new study showing the economic impact of Britain crashing out of the EU
PANICKED German and Spanish businesses have heaped pressure on Brussels to compromise after warning a no deal Brexit would spark a “massive crisis” across Europe.
Industry chiefs in Berlin and Madrid called for a breakthrough within two weeks as capitals get the jitters over the economic impact of a crash out.
Germany’s biggest industry group, the BDI, intervened after a bombshell study showed the huge hit the country’s economy faces from no deal.
And Spain’s tourism chief in the UK said such a scenario would be a “disaster” for popular holiday destinations causing significant job losses.
BDI chief Joachim Lang said: “The next EU summit in two weeks must bring a breakthrough in the talks.
“Otherwise, Europe is in danger of sliding into a disorderly Brexit.
The result would be a massive crisis.”
His warning was echoed by Javier Pinanes, head of Spain’s tourist office in London, who said a crash out would be a “really big problem” for Madrid.
He warned Brits would shun EU countries in favour of other holiday destinations if there are problems with flights and visas.
On a no deal Brexit, he said: “It would have a very big impact. For Spain it’s decisive. The UK is our main market.
“We have lots of connectivity between the most important cities in the UK and the most important cities and destinations in Spain. It would be a disaster.”
Meanwhile, a new report concluded that EU exports to Britain could plunge by 50% if there’s no deal.
The IW economic institute in Cologne said German trade with the UK may free fall by 57% with the country’s iconic car industry particularly badly hit.
And Spain could be affected even more badly, with sales to Britain collapsing to just 40% of pre-Brexit levels. Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Romania, France, Malta, Slovakia, Cyprus, and Ireland would all also face their exports to the UK being halved or worse.
Meanwhile sales from Britain to the continent could drop by around 47% compared to the status quo, the report states.
Author Markus Jung said: “A hard Brexit, especially if it occurs abruptly as a result of a collapse of negotiations, will be associated with considerable costs.
“This applies in the sense of the above mentioned lose-lose situation for both sides, especially for the UK and Germany.”
He added: “This horror scenario should push policy makers into constructive action.”
The trio of warnings came as EU and British negotiators entered a series of intense talks known as “the tunnel” ahead of next week’s crunch summit.
Jean-Claude Juncker’s deputy, Martin Selmayr, briefed senior eurocrats yesterday about the bloc’s no deal planning.
 
spokesman said the top German official had stressed the “importance for all stakeholders to prepare for all outcomes at all levels”.
The move would hugely damage our economy by squeezing the crucial Dover-Calais trade route
FRANCE could wreak massive damage on Britain’s economy by closing down Calais under a no deal Brexit, the Cabinet was warned.
If negotiations fail and Theresa May refuses to pay the UK’s £39bn divorce bill, it is feared Paris could immediately retaliate by creating chaos with cross-channel trade.
As the nation’s only major roll-on roll-off ferry hub, the Dover-Calais crossing has been identified by DexEU officials as Britain major strategic weak point.
France has the power to spark huge delays for UK-bound lorries importing factory parts for ‘just in time’ supply chains such as car factories.
And French customs officials would draw a halt to a large chunk of Britain’s food exports from entering France.
Brussels has the power to refuse to grant the UK approval to export animal products such as meat, poultry and dairy to the EU - trade worth £3.5bn a year - as well as organic food for as long as SIX months.
Theresa May’s top table was told that the drastic moves would see British factories forced to be mothballed, and leave food produce rotting – driving smaller firms and some farmers out of business within a few weeks.
Despite urgent no deal preparations that have been sped up by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, The Sun has been told that several senior Cabinet ministers now believe the Government would fail to control the ensuing chaos caused by a Calais shutdown.
They include Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
In his own presentation to an earlier Cabinet meeting, Mr Javid also revealed that French border guards could cause hours of tailbacks by simply insisting on asking drivers for their reason for travel.
On one side, Irish PM Leo Varadkar is more a comedian than he is a statesman, though it’s not a high bar to clear.
On the other, Emmanuel Macron, a Napoleon tribute act whose stature is matched only by his collapsing poll ratings ­— and who is using tough talk on Brexit to distract from trouble at home.
But Mini Manu’s threats ring hollow.
Does he honestly think French businesses will thank him if he brings a huge chunk of the £70billion-plus trade between our two countries to a halt?
Does he honestly think French consumers are so annoyed about our decision to leave that they’ll want lorries blocking their motorways and supermarket shelves empty?
We have no desire for our Government to enter a trade war.
But Macron’s desire to wreak havoc on the UK economy as a Brexit punishment betrays the Continent’s fear that an unleashed Britain would leave the EU in the dust.
If Britain goes without a deal — and there’s every chance — then we will show Europe what they’re missing with tax cuts and a red tape bonfire that will supercharge the economy.
A sensible French leader would welcome a deal that works for both sides.
Time for l’enfant terrible to grow up.
That alone would add an average of 50 seconds to the usual 25 second passage through checks per vehicle.
An average of 10,000 lorries pass through Dover every day and are typically processed within two minutes.
The Port of Dover estimates that a delay of just 2 extra minutes to check and process each lorry would cause queues of over 17 miles.
A Cabinet minister told The Sun: “We can spend whatever we want to prepare on our side of the channel, but we are completely powerless to compel the French to do the same, and that is a very serious vulnerability for us.
“There is simply no alternative to Dover for just-in-time manufacturers or food exporters, and they together support a significant number of jobs.
“It would do northern French a lot of damage too, and really decimate Ireland, but we expect President Macron will initially attempt some heavy disruption in Calais to turn the screw on us to pay up.”
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said this week that alternatives to Calais such as Harwich and Felixstowe could replace Calais if France is difficult.
But another Cabinet source hit back to say no other British port in the south east is either deep enough or has the surrounding infrastructure to handle the size of Dover’s trade.
The source added: “Grayling is talking b******s, he literally doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is no workaround to Dover, and rail or air freight is offers nowhere near the same capacity either”.
The revelation comes as No10 also revealed the Cabinet will now get weekly updates on the no deal planning from Mr Raab, to show Brussels that Britain is getting ready for the worst.
The Financial Time also reported last night that the Cabinet was briefed yesterday on plans to charter ships to bring in emergency food and medicines to other ports under a no-deal Brexit if Calais get clogged up.
But Mrs May told the meeting: “The government’s priority is to secure a deal”.
The move would hugely damage our economy by squeezing the crucial Dover-Calais trade route
FRANCE could wreak massive damage on Britain’s economy by closing down Calais under a no deal Brexit, the Cabinet was warned.
If negotiations fail and Theresa May refuses to pay the UK’s £39bn divorce bill, it is feared Paris could immediately retaliate by creating chaos with cross-channel trade.
As the nation’s only major roll-on roll-off ferry hub, the Dover-Calais crossing has been identified by DexEU officials as Britain major strategic weak point.
France has the power to spark huge delays for UK-bound lorries importing factory parts for ‘just in time’ supply chains such as car factories.
And French customs officials would draw a halt to a large chunk of Britain’s food exports from entering France.
Brussels has the power to refuse to grant the UK approval to export animal products such as meat, poultry and dairy to the EU - trade worth £3.5bn a year - as well as organic food for as long as SIX months.
Theresa May’s top table was told that the drastic moves would see British factories forced to be mothballed, and leave food produce rotting – driving smaller firms and some farmers out of business within a few weeks.
Despite urgent no deal preparations that have been sped up by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, The Sun has been told that several senior Cabinet ministers now believe the Government would fail to control the ensuing chaos caused by a Calais shutdown.
They include Home Secretary Sajid Javid, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Environment Secretary Michael Gove.
In his own presentation to an earlier Cabinet meeting, Mr Javid also revealed that French border guards could cause hours of tailbacks by simply insisting on asking drivers for their reason for travel.
On one side, Irish PM Leo Varadkar is more a comedian than he is a statesman, though it’s not a high bar to clear.
On the other, Emmanuel Macron, a Napoleon tribute act whose stature is matched only by his collapsing poll ratings ­— and who is using tough talk on Brexit to distract from trouble at home.
But Mini Manu’s threats ring hollow.
Does he honestly think French businesses will thank him if he brings a huge chunk of the £70billion-plus trade between our two countries to a halt?
Does he honestly think French consumers are so annoyed about our decision to leave that they’ll want lorries blocking their motorways and supermarket shelves empty?
We have no desire for our Government to enter a trade war.
But Macron’s desire to wreak havoc on the UK economy as a Brexit punishment betrays the Continent’s fear that an unleashed Britain would leave the EU in the dust.
If Britain goes without a deal — and there’s every chance — then we will show Europe what they’re missing with tax cuts and a red tape bonfire that will supercharge the economy.
A sensible French leader would welcome a deal that works for both sides.
Time for l’enfant terrible to grow up.
That alone would add an average of 50 seconds to the usual 25 second passage through checks per vehicle.
An average of 10,000 lorries pass through Dover every day and are typically processed within two minutes.
The Port of Dover estimates that a delay of just 2 extra minutes to check and process each lorry would cause queues of over 17 miles.
A Cabinet minister told The Sun: “We can spend whatever we want to prepare on our side of the channel, but we are completely powerless to compel the French to do the same, and that is a very serious vulnerability for us.
“There is simply no alternative to Dover for just-in-time manufacturers or food exporters, and they together support a significant number of jobs.
“It would do northern French a lot of damage too, and really decimate Ireland, but we expect President Macron will initially attempt some heavy disruption in Calais to turn the screw on us to pay up.”
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said this week that alternatives to Calais such as Harwich and Felixstowe could replace Calais if France is difficult.
But another Cabinet source hit back to say no other British port in the south east is either deep enough or has the surrounding infrastructure to handle the size of Dover’s trade.
The source added: “Grayling is talking b******s, he literally doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There is no workaround to Dover, and rail or air freight is offers nowhere near the same capacity either”.
The revelation comes as No10 also revealed the Cabinet will now get weekly updates on the no deal planning from Mr Raab, to show Brussels that Britain is getting ready for the worst.
The Financial Time also reported last night that the Cabinet was briefed yesterday on plans to charter ships to bring in emergency food and medicines to other ports under a no-deal Brexit if Calais get clogged up.
But Mrs May told the meeting: “The government’s priority is to secure a deal”.
While negotiating a deal with the EU is preferable, the No Deal scenarios of food shortages and lack of medicines, put forward by Project Fear doom-mongers, are preposterous
HYSTERICAL Project Fear doom-mongers claim Britain faces collapse under a No Deal Brexit. The preposterous scenario of food shortages, deaths from lack of medicines and jets unable to fly is put forward at every opportunity.
But No Deal would be more bearable and beneficial than they say. Trade lawyer Shanker Singham, dubbed The Brexiteer’s Brain, explains why.
"NO Deal’s perils are greatly exaggerated — Project Fear writ large.
Bank of England and Treasury analyses assume we will not change anything.
But we should. And will. The one striking gap in the debate is any acknowledgement that we’re dealing with a journey to a destination as much as the destination itself.
We need a strategy that we should have used from the start. That means aiming for the best deal by laying out the alternatives to the EU — and being ready to negotiate on this basis.
We should also lay before it a framework for a trade deal and full text in due course.
No Deal would be very bad for the EU. Its agricultural exporters could lose access to our markets overnight. So it is in their interests to play ball.
In addition, the EU would not get much of our £39billion agreed exit payment.
And mucking up the EU’s relationship with the City of London would hurt member states.
It could raise their capital costs, scuppering deals and piling pressure on fragile economies.
Play our cards right and I believe they will come to the table. But continue to show weakness and they will continue to believe they can batter us into a bad deal.
Strength means showing readiness for No Deal. In such a scenario, these are the changes we would make . . .
Shanker Singham is director of the International Trade and Competition Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Pharmacy shelves would lie bare, doom-mongers claim.
However, this hysterical suggestion assumes that we will do nothing ourselves to make access to medicines easier.
The key here — as even government Brexit department No Deal briefings state — is that we will allow EU-produced products to enter our markets by unilaterally recognising EU regulations of medicines and processes.
That will make it easy for EU products to come into the UK.
Assuming our customs agents work promptly — something within our control, provided we prepare for customs upgrading — there is no reason that the UK should be deprived of medicines.
If the EU insists on levying tariffs on medicines imported from us and applying full controls, it is their shelves that will not be stocked.
Project Fear also claims that border disruptions would hold up the supply chain. Ministers stoked the flames by asking companies to start stockpiling — despite the inherent problems of such a ploy.
Many medications need proper refrigeration — such as vaccines and insulin, for example. Others, for diseases such as cancer, would have too short a shelf life.
If nothing is done at all, then clearly aircraft will not fly as we will not have negotiated landing rights on both sides.
But does anyone believe — with the number of Brits flying regularly to EU destinations and Euro tourists coming this way — that we would be unable to agree landing rights for UK and EU airlines?
The UK and US already have a deal to let flights continue between the countries in the event of no other arrangement being in place.
Our European Aviation Safety Agency membership would allow us to agree air safety certificates and air traffic rights.
It would be difficult for the EU to turn down the world’s third largest aviation area — especially when non-EU countries such as Georgia are members.
And many aircraft leaving mainland Europe need our airspace to get to their destinations.
Indeed, you may remember Irish PM Leo Varadkar trying to play this card against us in summer when he said No Deal would bar UK flights from his country’s airspace.
We have a lot of leverage here beyond the size of our market.
No surprise then that last night it looked as though Brussels was preparing to offer PM Theresa May a deal.
Dover has been singled out as a likely chaos flashpoint as it handles 17 per cent of our global trade.
In addition, 99 per cent of freight vehicles it handles originate in the EU. These take two minutes to process while non-EU ones take 20.
But there is no reason why limited checks on UK-EU trade should not be agreed by customs agencies in the UK and France — as is the case with Dover.
Xavier Bertrand, head of the region covering Calais, denies his country would deliberately slow UK trade.
He said less than one per cent of UK lorries would face checks. He does not want to lose this trade to other ports as that would hurt Calais.
Mr Bertrand knows that UK ferries could opt for Dutch ports. Customs clearance is not the only reason for delays.
We cope with French haulier strikes. Just-in-time deliveries can be hit by weather, traffic and other things that make a few minutes at customs look like small beer. But to keep trade flowing, we must hike our customs capability. Cash has been set aside for this but it hasn’t happened.
It should have been a responsible Government’s first task. The only reason not to is if you believe we would end up in a customs union.
Would a No Deal Brexit see Brits heading to Europe facing a mountain of obstacles?
It has been suggested that Brussels’ fresh demands could include new driving licences, new health insurance cards and pet passports.
All these issues need regulatory recognition. But that can be agreed outside the framework of a fully fledged trade agreement. In other words, we can and will sort it all out piecemeal.
If we leave on World Trade Organisation terms, we can expect a number of piecemeal deals like this to be done as we exit. Many are being developed now.
But they don’t have to be part of an all-singing, all-dancing free trade agreement.
The EU will want simple reciprocal arrangements as otherwise it complicates things for its citizens.
Brussels’ thinking on No Deal planning seems to be to unilaterally keep things as they are for six to nine months. That shows how important such recognition is to the EU. It has said it expects the UK to reciprocate. And we will.
Bear in mind too that other issues such as the proposed visa fee Brits might face could be reciprocated.
However, the EU is making many of these threats to add to fears being stoked up over No Deal.
The idea that food would soon vanish from supermarket shelves under a No Deal is nonsense.
There is no reason to suppose prices will go up as we will not apply tariffs to EU agriculture.
In fact, if we ditched import quotas, allowing non-EU countries to access the UK, prices should fall.
If we did nothing and imposed the Common External Tariff on all countries, including the EU — which could see up to 87 per cent on agricultural products — then prices would rise, perhaps substantially. But we will not.
To control food inflation we would either not apply a tariff on certain foodstuffs for all countries, which would lower prices.
Alternatively, we would open up our import quotas to all countries, including those in the EU — again pushing prices down.
That would be good for UK food processors and consumers as we would welcome in produce such as Argentinian beef. The only exporters who would be hurt by this would be inefficient ones.
They have benefited from having the UK as a captive market behind a high tariff wall.
Examples are the Irish industry, which supplies up to 70 per cent of our beef, French farmers and Bavarian dairy producers.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
While negotiating a deal with the EU is preferable, the No Deal scenarios of food shortages and lack of medicines, put forward by Project Fear doom-mongers, are preposterous
HYSTERICAL Project Fear doom-mongers claim Britain faces collapse under a No Deal Brexit. The preposterous scenario of food shortages, deaths from lack of medicines and jets unable to fly is put forward at every opportunity.
But No Deal would be more bearable and beneficial than they say. Trade lawyer Shanker Singham, dubbed The Brexiteer’s Brain, explains why.
"NO Deal’s perils are greatly exaggerated — Project Fear writ large.
Bank of England and Treasury analyses assume we will not change anything.
But we should. And will. The one striking gap in the debate is any acknowledgement that we’re dealing with a journey to a destination as much as the destination itself.
We need a strategy that we should have used from the start. That means aiming for the best deal by laying out the alternatives to the EU — and being ready to negotiate on this basis.
We should also lay before it a framework for a trade deal and full text in due course.
No Deal would be very bad for the EU. Its agricultural exporters could lose access to our markets overnight. So it is in their interests to play ball.
In addition, the EU would not get much of our £39billion agreed exit payment.
And mucking up the EU’s relationship with the City of London would hurt member states.
It could raise their capital costs, scuppering deals and piling pressure on fragile economies.
Play our cards right and I believe they will come to the table. But continue to show weakness and they will continue to believe they can batter us into a bad deal.
Strength means showing readiness for No Deal. In such a scenario, these are the changes we would make . . .
Shanker Singham is director of the International Trade and Competition Unit at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Pharmacy shelves would lie bare, doom-mongers claim.
However, this hysterical suggestion assumes that we will do nothing ourselves to make access to medicines easier.
The key here — as even government Brexit department No Deal briefings state — is that we will allow EU-produced products to enter our markets by unilaterally recognising EU regulations of medicines and processes.
That will make it easy for EU products to come into the UK.
Assuming our customs agents work promptly — something within our control, provided we prepare for customs upgrading — there is no reason that the UK should be deprived of medicines.
If the EU insists on levying tariffs on medicines imported from us and applying full controls, it is their shelves that will not be stocked.
Project Fear also claims that border disruptions would hold up the supply chain. Ministers stoked the flames by asking companies to start stockpiling — despite the inherent problems of such a ploy.
Many medications need proper refrigeration — such as vaccines and insulin, for example. Others, for diseases such as cancer, would have too short a shelf life.
If nothing is done at all, then clearly aircraft will not fly as we will not have negotiated landing rights on both sides.
But does anyone believe — with the number of Brits flying regularly to EU destinations and Euro tourists coming this way — that we would be unable to agree landing rights for UK and EU airlines?
The UK and US already have a deal to let flights continue between the countries in the event of no other arrangement being in place.
Our European Aviation Safety Agency membership would allow us to agree air safety certificates and air traffic rights.
It would be difficult for the EU to turn down the world’s third largest aviation area — especially when non-EU countries such as Georgia are members.
And many aircraft leaving mainland Europe need our airspace to get to their destinations.
Indeed, you may remember Irish PM Leo Varadkar trying to play this card against us in summer when he said No Deal would bar UK flights from his country’s airspace.
We have a lot of leverage here beyond the size of our market.
No surprise then that last night it looked as though Brussels was preparing to offer PM Theresa May a deal.
Dover has been singled out as a likely chaos flashpoint as it handles 17 per cent of our global trade.
In addition, 99 per cent of freight vehicles it handles originate in the EU. These take two minutes to process while non-EU ones take 20.
But there is no reason why limited checks on UK-EU trade should not be agreed by customs agencies in the UK and France — as is the case with Dover.
Xavier Bertrand, head of the region covering Calais, denies his country would deliberately slow UK trade.
He said less than one per cent of UK lorries would face checks. He does not want to lose this trade to other ports as that would hurt Calais.
Mr Bertrand knows that UK ferries could opt for Dutch ports. Customs clearance is not the only reason for delays.
We cope with French haulier strikes. Just-in-time deliveries can be hit by weather, traffic and other things that make a few minutes at customs look like small beer. But to keep trade flowing, we must hike our customs capability. Cash has been set aside for this but it hasn’t happened.
It should have been a responsible Government’s first task. The only reason not to is if you believe we would end up in a customs union.
Would a No Deal Brexit see Brits heading to Europe facing a mountain of obstacles?
It has been suggested that Brussels’ fresh demands could include new driving licences, new health insurance cards and pet passports.
All these issues need regulatory recognition. But that can be agreed outside the framework of a fully fledged trade agreement. In other words, we can and will sort it all out piecemeal.
If we leave on World Trade Organisation terms, we can expect a number of piecemeal deals like this to be done as we exit. Many are being developed now.
But they don’t have to be part of an all-singing, all-dancing free trade agreement.
The EU will want simple reciprocal arrangements as otherwise it complicates things for its citizens.
Brussels’ thinking on No Deal planning seems to be to unilaterally keep things as they are for six to nine months. That shows how important such recognition is to the EU. It has said it expects the UK to reciprocate. And we will.
Bear in mind too that other issues such as the proposed visa fee Brits might face could be reciprocated.
However, the EU is making many of these threats to add to fears being stoked up over No Deal.
The idea that food would soon vanish from supermarket shelves under a No Deal is nonsense.
There is no reason to suppose prices will go up as we will not apply tariffs to EU agriculture.
In fact, if we ditched import quotas, allowing non-EU countries to access the UK, prices should fall.
If we did nothing and imposed the Common External Tariff on all countries, including the EU — which could see up to 87 per cent on agricultural products — then prices would rise, perhaps substantially. But we will not.
To control food inflation we would either not apply a tariff on certain foodstuffs for all countries, which would lower prices.
Alternatively, we would open up our import quotas to all countries, including those in the EU — again pushing prices down.
That would be good for UK food processors and consumers as we would welcome in produce such as Argentinian beef. The only exporters who would be hurt by this would be inefficient ones.
They have benefited from having the UK as a captive market behind a high tariff wall.
Examples are the Irish industry, which supplies up to 70 per cent of our beef, French farmers and Bavarian dairy producers.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
BRUSSELS last night threatened it will block any UK trade deal this year if the PM does not give in on fishing rights.
Eurocrats hardened their position on demanding continued access to our waters after Boris Johnson vowed not to extend the transition period beyond December 31.
The EU said talks on fisheries will now have a “direct link” to thrashing out tariff and quota free trade on goods.
Previously, the EU had stated access for its vessels would be secured “within the context of the overall economic partnership”.
But Mr Johnson’s insistence the UK will quit the transition come what may at the end of this year has sparked concern in Brussels.
Eurocrats believe only a “bare bones” trade deal on goods will be done by then and want to play hardball over fishing for maximum leverage.
In a briefing to EU27 diplomats, Michel Barnier’s team said any deal on “reciprocal” access would be of “unprecedented scale and scope”.
The pact would include agreements on quotas that European fishermen can land in our waters and a clause to protect their livelihoods.
EU negotiators want to get it done by July 1 this year — the date by which the UK must say whether or not it plans to extend the transition.
EU trade chief Phil Hogan has suggested fishing rights may be secured in a “trade-off” with the UK over market access for the City of London.
Eurocrats argue access for EU boats cannot be separated from tariff-free terms for British fish products on EU markets.
The PM has vowed to take back control of UK fishing waters when the transition period ends.
Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen warned the PM he won't be able to “have his cake and eat it” in trade talks.
 
BRUSSELS last night threatened it will block any UK trade deal this year if the PM does not give in on fishing rights.
Eurocrats hardened their position on demanding continued access to our waters after Boris Johnson vowed not to extend the transition period beyond December 31.
The EU said talks on fisheries will now have a “direct link” to thrashing out tariff and quota free trade on goods.
Previously, the EU had stated access for its vessels would be secured “within the context of the overall economic partnership”.
But Mr Johnson’s insistence the UK will quit the transition come what may at the end of this year has sparked concern in Brussels.
Eurocrats believe only a “bare bones” trade deal on goods will be done by then and want to play hardball over fishing for maximum leverage.
In a briefing to EU27 diplomats, Michel Barnier’s team said any deal on “reciprocal” access would be of “unprecedented scale and scope”.
The pact would include agreements on quotas that European fishermen can land in our waters and a clause to protect their livelihoods.
EU negotiators want to get it done by July 1 this year — the date by which the UK must say whether or not it plans to extend the transition.
EU trade chief Phil Hogan has suggested fishing rights may be secured in a “trade-off” with the UK over market access for the City of London.
Eurocrats argue access for EU boats cannot be separated from tariff-free terms for British fish products on EU markets.
The PM has vowed to take back control of UK fishing waters when the transition period ends.
Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen warned the PM he won't be able to “have his cake and eat it” in trade talks.
 
BRUSSELS has already rebuffed Boris Johnson’s plan for Brexit — after Steve Barclay was sent to test the waters with senior Eurocrats.
The Brexit Secretary demanded the backstop be scrapped and insisted Theresa May’s deal is “dead” five times during a tense meeting with Michel Barnier, according to a diplomatic note.
Mr Barclay met the Frenchman on Tuesday for talks about protecting citizens’ rights under No Deal and progress on tech solutions to the Irish border.
But EU sources said he treated the occasion “like a job interview” for a place in Mr Johnson’s cabinet and was sounding out the Brexiteer’s key positions.
They described the meeting as not constructive and said Mr Barnier had been left “unimpressed” by the Brexit Secretary’s approach.
Afterwards the chief negotiator’s deputy, Stephanie Riso, sent out a downbeat memo to Member States describing the talks as deadlocked.
One EU source said: “Things are going nowhere. If that’s what Boris is going to come out and say, then we’re in real trouble.”
During the meeting Mr Barclay also angered his EU counterpart by warning of the impact No Deal would have on European economies, especially Ireland.
And describing the reaction to his request to scrap the backstop in favour of alternative arrangements, a second EU source said: “We told him no way.”
British officials insisted Mr Barclay was just laying out the likely positions of the next British Government given statements made by Mr Johnson and Jeremy Hunt in Tory hustings.
A UK source said it was clear to the EU changes to the non-binding trade plan alone “won’t cut it” and Mrs May’s deal “will not go through the House”.
They said: “We need to explore what is a shared desire from TaskForce 50 and the UK Government to find an outcome that delivers a deal.
“Discussions need to be within the context of where the UK Parliament is. There’s a desire and recognition within the EU that No Deal is undesirable.
“It will be for the new PM to test whether there is appetite for changes that are sufficient for the UK parliament.”
It has also emerged Jean-Claude Juncker’s time as EU chief could be extended to the end of the year to cover fresh Brexit talks or the fallout from No Deal.
An EU official said the “working assumption” was still that he will leave his post on October 31 to make way for German successor Ursula von der Leyen.
BRUSSELS has already rebuffed Boris Johnson’s plan for Brexit — after Steve Barclay was sent to test the waters with senior Eurocrats.
The Brexit Secretary demanded the backstop be scrapped and insisted Theresa May’s deal is “dead” five times during a tense meeting with Michel Barnier, according to a diplomatic note.
Mr Barclay met the Frenchman on Tuesday for talks about protecting citizens’ rights under No Deal and progress on tech solutions to the Irish border.
But EU sources said he treated the occasion “like a job interview” for a place in Mr Johnson’s cabinet and was sounding out the Brexiteer’s key positions.
They described the meeting as not constructive and said Mr Barnier had been left “unimpressed” by the Brexit Secretary’s approach.
Afterwards the chief negotiator’s deputy, Stephanie Riso, sent out a downbeat memo to Member States describing the talks as deadlocked.
One EU source said: “Things are going nowhere. If that’s what Boris is going to come out and say, then we’re in real trouble.”
During the meeting Mr Barclay also angered his EU counterpart by warning of the impact No Deal would have on European economies, especially Ireland.
And describing the reaction to his request to scrap the backstop in favour of alternative arrangements, a second EU source said: “We told him no way.”
British officials insisted Mr Barclay was just laying out the likely positions of the next British Government given statements made by Mr Johnson and Jeremy Hunt in Tory hustings.
A UK source said it was clear to the EU changes to the non-binding trade plan alone “won’t cut it” and Mrs May’s deal “will not go through the House”.
They said: “We need to explore what is a shared desire from TaskForce 50 and the UK Government to find an outcome that delivers a deal.
“Discussions need to be within the context of where the UK Parliament is. There’s a desire and recognition within the EU that No Deal is undesirable.
“It will be for the new PM to test whether there is appetite for changes that are sufficient for the UK parliament.”
It has also emerged Jean-Claude Juncker’s time as EU chief could be extended to the end of the year to cover fresh Brexit talks or the fallout from No Deal.
An EU official said the “working assumption” was still that he will leave his post on October 31 to make way for German successor Ursula von der Leyen.
MICHEL Barnier tonight insisted the new British PM will not be allowed to reopen Theresa May’s deal or secure better terms on the backstop.
The EU’s chief negotiator said the current divorce package is the “only one possible” and different leadership in the UK “will not change” anything.
He said the new PM has a choice of accepting Mrs May’s deal, opting for No Deal or cancelling Brexit altogether.
Speaking at a conference in Slovakia, the Frenchman said: “In any case, a new prime minister will not change the problem.
“The problem is there and the new prime minister will have the responsibility with us to solve this problem.
“We are ready to engage with him and his team. We are ready to work once again for an orderly Brexit.”
Mr Barnier added that the EU and UK are “not sure to succeed” in finding alternative arrangements to replace the backstop in the future.
Appearing alongside him, Slovakia’s foreign minister vowed European capitals will not grant another extension to a British PM trying to reopen the deal.
Miroslav Lajčák insisted a General Election or a second referendum were the only reasons that would justify a further delay.
He said: “If there’s a request for another extension just for the sake of repetition of the same this might spoil the mood in some countries.
“If there has to be another extension it has to be with a very good reason like elections, the second referendum.
“Definitely not because someone has given a promise to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement.
“We’ve said many times and we will say many times that this is closed, it’s not going to be reopened.”
And he expressed anger at Tory leadership hopefuls promising to renegotiate Mrs May’s deal, saying any attempts will be rebuffed.
He said: “Some of them are already promising that they will force the EU to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement. It will not happen.
“The new leader will inherit the same divided country, the same parliament which has rejected all the possible deals so far and will inherit the same arrangement.”
“I would caution against too high expectations. Don’t expect that there will be a miraculous solution out of the blue.”
MICHEL Barnier tonight insisted the new British PM will not be allowed to reopen Theresa May’s deal or secure better terms on the backstop.
The EU’s chief negotiator said the current divorce package is the “only one possible” and different leadership in the UK “will not change” anything.
He said the new PM has a choice of accepting Mrs May’s deal, opting for No Deal or cancelling Brexit altogether.
Speaking at a conference in Slovakia, the Frenchman said: “In any case, a new prime minister will not change the problem.
“The problem is there and the new prime minister will have the responsibility with us to solve this problem.
“We are ready to engage with him and his team. We are ready to work once again for an orderly Brexit.”
Mr Barnier added that the EU and UK are “not sure to succeed” in finding alternative arrangements to replace the backstop in the future.
Appearing alongside him, Slovakia’s foreign minister vowed European capitals will not grant another extension to a British PM trying to reopen the deal.
Miroslav Lajčák insisted a General Election or a second referendum were the only reasons that would justify a further delay.
He said: “If there’s a request for another extension just for the sake of repetition of the same this might spoil the mood in some countries.
“If there has to be another extension it has to be with a very good reason like elections, the second referendum.
“Definitely not because someone has given a promise to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement.
“We’ve said many times and we will say many times that this is closed, it’s not going to be reopened.”
And he expressed anger at Tory leadership hopefuls promising to renegotiate Mrs May’s deal, saying any attempts will be rebuffed.
He said: “Some of them are already promising that they will force the EU to reopen the Withdrawal Agreement. It will not happen.
“The new leader will inherit the same divided country, the same parliament which has rejected all the possible deals so far and will inherit the same arrangement.”
“I would caution against too high expectations. Don’t expect that there will be a miraculous solution out of the blue.”
The Elysee Palace said this afternoon that France is fully behind EU's chief negotiator - and there's no negotiation happening tomorrow
EMMANUEL Macron has poured cold water on Theresa May's plans to bypass EU boss Michel Barnier in Brexit talks.
The Prime Minister is set to cut her holiday short to visit the French President at his holiday home on the Riviera tomorrow to try and make a fresh bid for her Chequers Brexit plans.
But today an Elysee Palace spokesperson said he won't be persuaded to bypass the EU's Michel Barnier, who is charge of talks.
They insisted that tomorrow's talks are "not a negotiation" - in comments which could sink the PM's plans to get him on side.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab is in Paris today for talks to try and lay the groundwork ahead of tomorrow's summit.
Mrs May will hold afternoon talks and then have dinner with Mr Macron and their partners at Fort Bregancon, his retreat near Toulon.
But Lord Ricketts, the ex-head of the Diplomatic Service, also played down expectations that she will be able to get the French to "break rank".
He said: "First of all, he does not believe in softening it. He is a passionate pro-European.
"Secondly, he is the last person to want to break ranks with what has been quite an impressively disciplined EU side. We have got to accept we have got to do the hard yards of negotiating in Brussels."
The trip is part of her summer bid to try and get EU leaders on board with her Brexit plans - which so far the bloc have slapped down.
Firmly backed by Paris, the EU’s chief negotiator and veteran French politician Michel Barnier sparked fresh turmoil by last week throwing out Mrs May’s compromise plan to collect EU customs tariffs.
In a bid to step up the pressure, the Foreign Secretary told French officials earlier this week that the EU boss is badly misjudging Britain’s pluck over the spiralling stand off.
Jeremy Hunt insisted that the UK will not be bullied into submission by eurocrats’ hardline stance.
On a visit to Paris, Mr Hunt said that unless Brussels softens its objections to Mrs May’s new softer Brexit plan agreed at Chequers, “there is real chance of No Deal by accident”.
The Sun revealed this week that France is refusing to budge on its hardline attitude to Brexit - despite becoming more and more isolated among frustrated member states.
Other member states have become exasperated by Paris constantly vetoing any compromises based on the UK's proposals.
The bloc's hard line on financial services is being led by Emmanuel Macron, who is trying to capitalise on Brexit and poach business from Britain.
 
The Elysee Palace said this afternoon that France is fully behind EU's chief negotiator - and there's no negotiation happening tomorrow
EMMANUEL Macron has poured cold water on Theresa May's plans to bypass EU boss Michel Barnier in Brexit talks.
The Prime Minister is set to cut her holiday short to visit the French President at his holiday home on the Riviera tomorrow to try and make a fresh bid for her Chequers Brexit plans.
But today an Elysee Palace spokesperson said he won't be persuaded to bypass the EU's Michel Barnier, who is charge of talks.
They insisted that tomorrow's talks are "not a negotiation" - in comments which could sink the PM's plans to get him on side.
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab is in Paris today for talks to try and lay the groundwork ahead of tomorrow's summit.
Mrs May will hold afternoon talks and then have dinner with Mr Macron and their partners at Fort Bregancon, his retreat near Toulon.
But Lord Ricketts, the ex-head of the Diplomatic Service, also played down expectations that she will be able to get the French to "break rank".
He said: "First of all, he does not believe in softening it. He is a passionate pro-European.
"Secondly, he is the last person to want to break ranks with what has been quite an impressively disciplined EU side. We have got to accept we have got to do the hard yards of negotiating in Brussels."
The trip is part of her summer bid to try and get EU leaders on board with her Brexit plans - which so far the bloc have slapped down.
Firmly backed by Paris, the EU’s chief negotiator and veteran French politician Michel Barnier sparked fresh turmoil by last week throwing out Mrs May’s compromise plan to collect EU customs tariffs.
In a bid to step up the pressure, the Foreign Secretary told French officials earlier this week that the EU boss is badly misjudging Britain’s pluck over the spiralling stand off.
Jeremy Hunt insisted that the UK will not be bullied into submission by eurocrats’ hardline stance.
On a visit to Paris, Mr Hunt said that unless Brussels softens its objections to Mrs May’s new softer Brexit plan agreed at Chequers, “there is real chance of No Deal by accident”.
The Sun revealed this week that France is refusing to budge on its hardline attitude to Brexit - despite becoming more and more isolated among frustrated member states.
Other member states have become exasperated by Paris constantly vetoing any compromises based on the UK's proposals.
The bloc's hard line on financial services is being led by Emmanuel Macron, who is trying to capitalise on Brexit and poach business from Britain.
 
PM is surviving on a knife edge and no one can predict how the winding tale will end, writes ex-Chancellor
MOST Brits will give an ­exasperated sigh when they realise Parliament is back ­tomorrow – facing exactly the same Brexit deadlock as before Christmas.
It is an unprecedented situation — a Prime Minister and Government ­surviving on a knife edge, frustrated on a measure of massive historical importance by a large minority of its own backbench supporters.
No one knows how this will end. Will it be a General Election, a second referendum, the Government’s deal or a “no deal” exit?
My guess is that the last two are the most likely.
Theresa May’s tactic is to run down the clock until MPs feel they have no option but to back the Government’s deal and avoid a no-deal departure.
The Government has been blitzing constituencies to put pressure on MPs via their supporters.
But a recent poll indicated that 57 per cent of Conservative constituency workers think a no-deal Brexit would be better than the PM’s deal.
So that tactic hasn’t worked, and a nasty Commons confrontation looms.
It is not surprising that David Davis, the former Brexit Secretary, has suggested the PM should postpone the vote for a second time.
It is the Irish backstop, that tortuous measure which binds Northern Ireland closely to EU regulations, which has caused the most difficulty, particularly as the Government is dependent on DUP votes for its survival.
To the DUP it is unacceptable that there should, in effect, be a border down the Irish Sea. To Conservative MPs there is also the danger of being locked into the backstop indefinitely and that, having already agreed to accept £39billion, the EU would have no incentive to move on and negotiate a decent Free Trade agreement.
If the PM could somehow get firm assurances from the EU that would guarantee the backstop was definitely a temporary measure then that might persuade MPs, including the DUP, to change their minds.
After all, if the backstop is only temporary, all the things that are objectionable in the backstop, such as the inability to sign new trade deals, are also only temporary.
It is not impossible that there could be a concession on these lines. But if the Government is defeated in the Commons, what then?
In some ways the PM’s hand might be strengthened and she could say to Brussels that it is absolutely clear the present deal cannot get through ­Parliament.
The EU will maintain that its offer is final, but this would not be the first time the EU has said that, only for a new offer to then appear.
Opponents of Brexit cling to the hope that defeat in the Commons will lead either to a second referendum or a General Election. But neither will happen automatically.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, a General Election can only be held if Parliament votes for one or the Government loses a vote of ­confidence.
The DUP don’t want Jeremy Corbyn as PM and as long as Mrs May’s deal has not passed, the DUP will continue to support the Government.
A second referendum could only happen if the Government introduced legislation for one. No Conservative PM would survive doing that.
The remaining option is the so- called no-deal Brexit, which really means trading on World Trade ­Organisation terms with both the EU and the rest of the world.
This is how much of world trade is conducted and how many countries outside the EU trade with the EU.
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a no-deal Brexit.
There would be many side deals covering administrative areas that are not strictly trade, such as health regulations, safety, aviation, transportion of animals and so on.
No one is claiming there would be no problems. Inevitably there will be some, but they would essentially be short term, and we would not face a bill of £39billion.
Leaving without a deal is feared by some large businesses anxious that integrated manufacturing supply chains might be interrupted. But Britain imports manufacturing components already from many non-EU areas of the world. These issues are solvable.
Roberto Azevedo, Director General of the World Trade Organisation, has said there is no reason why trading on WTO terms should lead to disruption.
He presumably knows what he is talking about.
But the Government seems unable to make up its mind about a no-deal Brexit.
Originally the PM boldly declared: “No deal is better than a bad deal”. Presumably she meant it.
But recently the Government has launched Project Fear Mark 3, highlighting the alleged disaster of a no-deal Brexit in a lurid way.
This campaign provoked a civil servant to write a remarkable anonymous article in a national ­newspaper declaring that “the civil ­service was ready for no-deal”, advanced preparations had been made and she accused the Government of deliberately concealing the work that had been done in order to pressurise MPs to swallow the ­Government’s “disastrous deal”.
It seems probable that the Government will not be able to get the PM’s deal through Parliament and so will have to go back to Brussels, not just once, but maybe several times.
If the EU refuses to budge, the automatic legal position is that the UK will leave on March 29, even if there is no deal and stalemate in Parliament.
There is very little that Parliament can do to stop that now. It is what Parliament has voted for in the past.
My guess is that the EU may well come up with some concession, perhaps a legally binding clarification, and that there will be a lot of arguing, probably right up to midnight on March 28.
But whatever happens, the next day we will leave.

 
PM is surviving on a knife edge and no one can predict how the winding tale will end, writes ex-Chancellor
MOST Brits will give an ­exasperated sigh when they realise Parliament is back ­tomorrow – facing exactly the same Brexit deadlock as before Christmas.
It is an unprecedented situation — a Prime Minister and Government ­surviving on a knife edge, frustrated on a measure of massive historical importance by a large minority of its own backbench supporters.
No one knows how this will end. Will it be a General Election, a second referendum, the Government’s deal or a “no deal” exit?
My guess is that the last two are the most likely.
Theresa May’s tactic is to run down the clock until MPs feel they have no option but to back the Government’s deal and avoid a no-deal departure.
The Government has been blitzing constituencies to put pressure on MPs via their supporters.
But a recent poll indicated that 57 per cent of Conservative constituency workers think a no-deal Brexit would be better than the PM’s deal.
So that tactic hasn’t worked, and a nasty Commons confrontation looms.
It is not surprising that David Davis, the former Brexit Secretary, has suggested the PM should postpone the vote for a second time.
It is the Irish backstop, that tortuous measure which binds Northern Ireland closely to EU regulations, which has caused the most difficulty, particularly as the Government is dependent on DUP votes for its survival.
To the DUP it is unacceptable that there should, in effect, be a border down the Irish Sea. To Conservative MPs there is also the danger of being locked into the backstop indefinitely and that, having already agreed to accept £39billion, the EU would have no incentive to move on and negotiate a decent Free Trade agreement.
If the PM could somehow get firm assurances from the EU that would guarantee the backstop was definitely a temporary measure then that might persuade MPs, including the DUP, to change their minds.
After all, if the backstop is only temporary, all the things that are objectionable in the backstop, such as the inability to sign new trade deals, are also only temporary.
It is not impossible that there could be a concession on these lines. But if the Government is defeated in the Commons, what then?
In some ways the PM’s hand might be strengthened and she could say to Brussels that it is absolutely clear the present deal cannot get through ­Parliament.
The EU will maintain that its offer is final, but this would not be the first time the EU has said that, only for a new offer to then appear.
Opponents of Brexit cling to the hope that defeat in the Commons will lead either to a second referendum or a General Election. But neither will happen automatically.
Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, a General Election can only be held if Parliament votes for one or the Government loses a vote of ­confidence.
The DUP don’t want Jeremy Corbyn as PM and as long as Mrs May’s deal has not passed, the DUP will continue to support the Government.
A second referendum could only happen if the Government introduced legislation for one. No Conservative PM would survive doing that.
The remaining option is the so- called no-deal Brexit, which really means trading on World Trade ­Organisation terms with both the EU and the rest of the world.
This is how much of world trade is conducted and how many countries outside the EU trade with the EU.
Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a no-deal Brexit.
There would be many side deals covering administrative areas that are not strictly trade, such as health regulations, safety, aviation, transportion of animals and so on.
No one is claiming there would be no problems. Inevitably there will be some, but they would essentially be short term, and we would not face a bill of £39billion.
Leaving without a deal is feared by some large businesses anxious that integrated manufacturing supply chains might be interrupted. But Britain imports manufacturing components already from many non-EU areas of the world. These issues are solvable.
Roberto Azevedo, Director General of the World Trade Organisation, has said there is no reason why trading on WTO terms should lead to disruption.
He presumably knows what he is talking about.
But the Government seems unable to make up its mind about a no-deal Brexit.
Originally the PM boldly declared: “No deal is better than a bad deal”. Presumably she meant it.
But recently the Government has launched Project Fear Mark 3, highlighting the alleged disaster of a no-deal Brexit in a lurid way.
This campaign provoked a civil servant to write a remarkable anonymous article in a national ­newspaper declaring that “the civil ­service was ready for no-deal”, advanced preparations had been made and she accused the Government of deliberately concealing the work that had been done in order to pressurise MPs to swallow the ­Government’s “disastrous deal”.
It seems probable that the Government will not be able to get the PM’s deal through Parliament and so will have to go back to Brussels, not just once, but maybe several times.
If the EU refuses to budge, the automatic legal position is that the UK will leave on March 29, even if there is no deal and stalemate in Parliament.
There is very little that Parliament can do to stop that now. It is what Parliament has voted for in the past.
My guess is that the EU may well come up with some concession, perhaps a legally binding clarification, and that there will be a lot of arguing, probably right up to midnight on March 28.
But whatever happens, the next day we will leave.

 
The idea would only be publicly proposed when all else fails
CABINET ministers are planning for Britain to join an EU halfway house with Labour rebels’ help after giving up hope that Theresa May’s Brexit deal will pass.
The Sun can reveal that Amber Rudd and Michael Gove have formed a cross-Brexit alliance to push for membership of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The move by the Remainer Work and Pensions Secretary and Leave campaign boss Environment Secretary is a last-ditch solution to end an impending national crisis if Parliament fails to agree any Brexit outcome.
The wider European arrangement gives members full access to the single market, but freedom from agriculture and fishing rules, as well as the European Court of Justice.
The four current members of EFTA are Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland.
Under the idea – dubbed ‘Norway Plus’ - the UK would join EFTA to maintain economic stability for a temporary period of a few years while the Government negotiates a full free trade deal from a stronger position.
But the ministers will only publicly propose it as a final fallback when all else fails to be sure of enough Labour support for it.
That would mean after the PM loses the meaningful vote next month, and once Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to force a general election and an expected backbench bid for a second referendum also all fails.
Hopes are fast fading among Mrs May’s top table of success for her deal, after a total of 94 of her own Tory MPs had spoken out against it last night.
One senior Government minister told The Sun: “It’s failing away from us now. The opposition seems so strong that Theresa is going to really struggle to turn this around now.
“EFTA will be our default option when all else fails. Amber and Michael are already on board, and quite a few of the others in Cabinet are not far behind them.
“We’ll need the help of Labour MPs, so they will need to be seen to have done their duty to their party first.”
In June, 76 Labour MPs voted in a failed Commons bid for Britain to remain in the EEA (European Economic Area), which EFTA membership delivers.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is also believed to be ready to back the EFTA plan.
The Cabinet’s other two key members, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Home Secretary Sajid Javid, are also said by sources to be “warming” to the idea, but have reservations about freedom of movement – which would continue under EFTA rules unless the UK can persuade bosses to pull an emergency brake on immigration.
The EFTA plan is being championed by former Tory minister Nick Boles.
Mr Boles MP said: “In the absence of another plan that can avoid no deal Brexit, there is a potential for a Parliamentary majority for it.
“We’re only going to bring this forward if the PM’s plan fails.
“It offers something to everyone.”
In a boost for the plan’s backers, DUP leader Arlene Foster said yesterday that her party might accept EFTA as an option as long as it applied to the whole of the UK.
EFTA would also end any need for the hated Irish backstop, which divides the UK into different regulatory areas.
But the Government would face a challenge persuading current members to accept the UK, as Norway has already ruled out the move.
 
The idea would only be publicly proposed when all else fails
CABINET ministers are planning for Britain to join an EU halfway house with Labour rebels’ help after giving up hope that Theresa May’s Brexit deal will pass.
The Sun can reveal that Amber Rudd and Michael Gove have formed a cross-Brexit alliance to push for membership of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
The move by the Remainer Work and Pensions Secretary and Leave campaign boss Environment Secretary is a last-ditch solution to end an impending national crisis if Parliament fails to agree any Brexit outcome.
The wider European arrangement gives members full access to the single market, but freedom from agriculture and fishing rules, as well as the European Court of Justice.
The four current members of EFTA are Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland.
Under the idea – dubbed ‘Norway Plus’ - the UK would join EFTA to maintain economic stability for a temporary period of a few years while the Government negotiates a full free trade deal from a stronger position.
But the ministers will only publicly propose it as a final fallback when all else fails to be sure of enough Labour support for it.
That would mean after the PM loses the meaningful vote next month, and once Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to force a general election and an expected backbench bid for a second referendum also all fails.
Hopes are fast fading among Mrs May’s top table of success for her deal, after a total of 94 of her own Tory MPs had spoken out against it last night.
One senior Government minister told The Sun: “It’s failing away from us now. The opposition seems so strong that Theresa is going to really struggle to turn this around now.
“EFTA will be our default option when all else fails. Amber and Michael are already on board, and quite a few of the others in Cabinet are not far behind them.
“We’ll need the help of Labour MPs, so they will need to be seen to have done their duty to their party first.”
In June, 76 Labour MPs voted in a failed Commons bid for Britain to remain in the EEA (European Economic Area), which EFTA membership delivers.
Chancellor Philip Hammond is also believed to be ready to back the EFTA plan.
The Cabinet’s other two key members, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Home Secretary Sajid Javid, are also said by sources to be “warming” to the idea, but have reservations about freedom of movement – which would continue under EFTA rules unless the UK can persuade bosses to pull an emergency brake on immigration.
The EFTA plan is being championed by former Tory minister Nick Boles.
Mr Boles MP said: “In the absence of another plan that can avoid no deal Brexit, there is a potential for a Parliamentary majority for it.
“We’re only going to bring this forward if the PM’s plan fails.
“It offers something to everyone.”
In a boost for the plan’s backers, DUP leader Arlene Foster said yesterday that her party might accept EFTA as an option as long as it applied to the whole of the UK.
EFTA would also end any need for the hated Irish backstop, which divides the UK into different regulatory areas.
But the Government would face a challenge persuading current members to accept the UK, as Norway has already ruled out the move.
 
TORY toff Sir Oliver Letwin was a political outcast last night after he tripped up Boris Johnson within touching distance of the Brexit finishing line.
The former minister left MPs spitting with rage as he cynically blocked the PM’s attempt to win Parliament’s approval for his hard-won EU departure deal.
Sir Oliver fronted a Remainer plot to hijack the deal, just as Mr Johnson was convinced he had enough support to get it through.
He launched a procedural ploy that rendered any vote on the deal meaningless and forced the Government to delay Brexit again.
His phone lit up with angry texts and calls from Leavers and Remainers after his amendment was voted through by the rabble alliance of Brexit-wreckers.
One senior Tory said: “Letwin has gone and f***ed it again.”
Another added: “He’s either set out deliberately to wreck Brexit or, if as he insists, this is a genuine attempt to help it along, then he’s a prize c**k.”
Eton and Cambridge-educated Sir Oliver, 63, was once seen as a rising Tory party star but had the whip removed last month and now sits as an Independent.
He had earlier fallen from grace after a string of mishaps that would put Mr Bean to shame.
He championed the poll tax which led to Margaret Thatcher’s downfall and devised the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which created the zombie Parliament partly to blame for the Brexit deadlock.
He once fell victim to a conman who knocked on the door of his South London home in the early hours and asked to use his loo.
The Dorset West MP, who is standing down at the next election, dressed in pyjamas and dressing gown, let him in — only to find his credit cards had been stolen.
Sir Oliver also went into hiding during the 2001 election after he denied being the source for a newspaper story about the Tories’ £20billion spending cuts plan.
Official documents from 1985, released five years ago, revealed that Sir Oliver recommended Mrs Thatcher “use Scotland as a trail-blazer” for the poll tax before potentially rolling it out nationwide.
Is the deal dead?: No. Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs yesterday the Government would hope to give them another meaningful vote on Mr Johnson’s Brussels deal as early as tomorrow.
Downing Street has said the legislation — the Withdrawal Agreement Bill — will be introduced this week. Treasury Minister Simon Clarke insisted: “We will get this done next week.”
Are we going to crash out with No Deal?: MPs backing the Letwin amendment say it offers an insurance policy against leaving the EU without a deal on October 31.
However, it does cast doubt over leaving by the October 31 deadline as scrutiny of the ­legislation drags on.
Will the EU agree to an extension?: All 27 EU states will decide on what extension to offer but it could be either shorter or longer than the three-month one envisaged by the Benn Act.
They could respond to the letter but wait to see if the Government can get its withdrawal legislation through next week. It could lead to an EU emergency summit on October 28.
And during a night fuelled by takeaway pepperoni pizza, Sir Oliver, along with Labour and Lib Dem representatives, set up a new Press regulator in response to the Leveson inquiry.
Sir Oliver’s career stalled further when he had the Tory whip removed — forcing him to sit as an independent — for voting for Labour MP Hilary Benn’s Bill to make the PM beg the EU for a delay if he was unable to clinch a deal.
Cries of “what a surprise” echoed around the Commons chamber when Remainer Speaker John Bercow announced he had chosen Sir Oliver’s amendment to be voted on.
But the MP’s ploy in forcing the PM to seek a delay when he already had a deal were seen by many as the final straw.
Former Tory co-chairman Lord Ashcroft rounded on Sir Oliver and his Tory partner-in-crime Dominic Grieve asking: “Is there any problem that Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve cannot make more difficult?”
A leading Brexiteer said: “Oliver is like a modern-day James I. He’s the wisest fool in Christendom.
“He regards himself as a bit of an intellectual but he’s got absolutely no common sense.
“He’s a prize buffoon who has been privately educated beyond his own intelligence.”
One minister responded: “Oliver has a very high opinion of himself but his actions today have only gone to prove what many of us have believed for some time — that he’s a complete dork.”
Labour MP Caroline Flint said Sir Oliver’s underhand manoeuvre had exposed the real intention of those fighting to block No Deal — to stop Brexit altogether.
She said it was a panic measure in reaction to the PM securing a deal which would ensure Britain’s departure in 11 days.
Ms Flint said: “It is because they had no idea or confidence that a deal would be before us today which would allow those in this House who want to secure a deal so we can move on and leave the EU by October 31 would happen.
“As a result, by today’s measures, in voting for the amendment by Sir Oliver Letwin, we will be forced, even if a deal is approved, to seek an extension to January 31, underlying that the sponsors of the Benn Act had only one motivation, to delay Brexit and stop it.”
Tory MP Lucy Allan responded: “Well done Caroline Flint for speaking up for people up and down our country.
“The elite playing games with our democracy at the expense of the people is so deeply shameful.”
Fellow Conservative Damian Collins added: “The Letwin amendment is another of those Brexit ideas which is too clever by half. It effectively renders today’s Saturday sitting of Parliament meaningless, at a time when the country and the EU needs to know whether Parliament accepts the new withdrawal deal or not.”
However, the Letwin amendment was given the thumbs-up from Independent MP Dominic Grieve.
He said: “I am very pleased with the result of today’s vote. It prevents us from crashing out with no deal, which the Government provided no reassurance it wasn’t going to do.”
At the European Commission, chief spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said it had noted the outcome of the vote and urged the Government “to inform us about the next steps as soon as possible”.
SNP MP Joanna Cherry said she would pursue the PM through the courts to ask for an extension under the terms of the Benn Act.
She said: “We’re back in court on Monday morning and it will be possible then to secure the court’s assistance if the Prime Minister has flouted the law and the promises he gave to the court.”
TORY toff Sir Oliver Letwin was a political outcast last night after he tripped up Boris Johnson within touching distance of the Brexit finishing line.
The former minister left MPs spitting with rage as he cynically blocked the PM’s attempt to win Parliament’s approval for his hard-won EU departure deal.
Sir Oliver fronted a Remainer plot to hijack the deal, just as Mr Johnson was convinced he had enough support to get it through.
He launched a procedural ploy that rendered any vote on the deal meaningless and forced the Government to delay Brexit again.
His phone lit up with angry texts and calls from Leavers and Remainers after his amendment was voted through by the rabble alliance of Brexit-wreckers.
One senior Tory said: “Letwin has gone and f***ed it again.”
Another added: “He’s either set out deliberately to wreck Brexit or, if as he insists, this is a genuine attempt to help it along, then he’s a prize c**k.”
Eton and Cambridge-educated Sir Oliver, 63, was once seen as a rising Tory party star but had the whip removed last month and now sits as an Independent.
He had earlier fallen from grace after a string of mishaps that would put Mr Bean to shame.
He championed the poll tax which led to Margaret Thatcher’s downfall and devised the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which created the zombie Parliament partly to blame for the Brexit deadlock.
He once fell victim to a conman who knocked on the door of his South London home in the early hours and asked to use his loo.
The Dorset West MP, who is standing down at the next election, dressed in pyjamas and dressing gown, let him in — only to find his credit cards had been stolen.
Sir Oliver also went into hiding during the 2001 election after he denied being the source for a newspaper story about the Tories’ £20billion spending cuts plan.
Official documents from 1985, released five years ago, revealed that Sir Oliver recommended Mrs Thatcher “use Scotland as a trail-blazer” for the poll tax before potentially rolling it out nationwide.
Is the deal dead?: No. Jacob Rees-Mogg told MPs yesterday the Government would hope to give them another meaningful vote on Mr Johnson’s Brussels deal as early as tomorrow.
Downing Street has said the legislation — the Withdrawal Agreement Bill — will be introduced this week. Treasury Minister Simon Clarke insisted: “We will get this done next week.”
Are we going to crash out with No Deal?: MPs backing the Letwin amendment say it offers an insurance policy against leaving the EU without a deal on October 31.
However, it does cast doubt over leaving by the October 31 deadline as scrutiny of the ­legislation drags on.
Will the EU agree to an extension?: All 27 EU states will decide on what extension to offer but it could be either shorter or longer than the three-month one envisaged by the Benn Act.
They could respond to the letter but wait to see if the Government can get its withdrawal legislation through next week. It could lead to an EU emergency summit on October 28.
And during a night fuelled by takeaway pepperoni pizza, Sir Oliver, along with Labour and Lib Dem representatives, set up a new Press regulator in response to the Leveson inquiry.
Sir Oliver’s career stalled further when he had the Tory whip removed — forcing him to sit as an independent — for voting for Labour MP Hilary Benn’s Bill to make the PM beg the EU for a delay if he was unable to clinch a deal.
Cries of “what a surprise” echoed around the Commons chamber when Remainer Speaker John Bercow announced he had chosen Sir Oliver’s amendment to be voted on.
But the MP’s ploy in forcing the PM to seek a delay when he already had a deal were seen by many as the final straw.
Former Tory co-chairman Lord Ashcroft rounded on Sir Oliver and his Tory partner-in-crime Dominic Grieve asking: “Is there any problem that Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve cannot make more difficult?”
A leading Brexiteer said: “Oliver is like a modern-day James I. He’s the wisest fool in Christendom.
“He regards himself as a bit of an intellectual but he’s got absolutely no common sense.
“He’s a prize buffoon who has been privately educated beyond his own intelligence.”
One minister responded: “Oliver has a very high opinion of himself but his actions today have only gone to prove what many of us have believed for some time — that he’s a complete dork.”
Labour MP Caroline Flint said Sir Oliver’s underhand manoeuvre had exposed the real intention of those fighting to block No Deal — to stop Brexit altogether.
She said it was a panic measure in reaction to the PM securing a deal which would ensure Britain’s departure in 11 days.
Ms Flint said: “It is because they had no idea or confidence that a deal would be before us today which would allow those in this House who want to secure a deal so we can move on and leave the EU by October 31 would happen.
“As a result, by today’s measures, in voting for the amendment by Sir Oliver Letwin, we will be forced, even if a deal is approved, to seek an extension to January 31, underlying that the sponsors of the Benn Act had only one motivation, to delay Brexit and stop it.”
Tory MP Lucy Allan responded: “Well done Caroline Flint for speaking up for people up and down our country.
“The elite playing games with our democracy at the expense of the people is so deeply shameful.”
Fellow Conservative Damian Collins added: “The Letwin amendment is another of those Brexit ideas which is too clever by half. It effectively renders today’s Saturday sitting of Parliament meaningless, at a time when the country and the EU needs to know whether Parliament accepts the new withdrawal deal or not.”
However, the Letwin amendment was given the thumbs-up from Independent MP Dominic Grieve.
He said: “I am very pleased with the result of today’s vote. It prevents us from crashing out with no deal, which the Government provided no reassurance it wasn’t going to do.”
At the European Commission, chief spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said it had noted the outcome of the vote and urged the Government “to inform us about the next steps as soon as possible”.
SNP MP Joanna Cherry said she would pursue the PM through the courts to ask for an extension under the terms of the Benn Act.
She said: “We’re back in court on Monday morning and it will be possible then to secure the court’s assistance if the Prime Minister has flouted the law and the promises he gave to the court.”
BREXITEERS have been given the green light to hold a huge party in Parliament Square to mark leaving the EU on January 31, it's been confirmed today.
Organisers expect 15,000 to flood the streets in Westminster to celebrate Britain finally exiting the European Union in just over two weeks' time.
Brexit Party boss Nigel Farage said today: "Great news! It is a big moment in the history of this nation to celebrate."
Sources said they were now looking at trying to set off fireworks to mark the momentous event - but need the Port of London Authority to give permission first to ensure safety of any boats on the Thames.
The event is set to include music and high-profile speakers too.
Brexit Party MEP Richard Tice told The Sun: "We are delighted. It's such a huge moment in our nation's history.
"We'll have a great time."
And campaigners are still trying and get Big Ben to bong at 11pm to see us into the new era.
This morning Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he would support the call - but it's reported to have to cost up to £500,000 and would set back reparations works on the block.
The bell is still in the process of being repaired, and at the moment only bongs to mark in the New Year and Remembrance Sunday.
Mr Farage said it would be a "national humiliation" if the bell doesn't ring in Brexit.
"The whole world, when we leave at 11 o'clock, will be expecting Big Ben to ring," he told LBC.
House of Commons chiefs yesterday turned down 60 pro-Brexit MPs’ pleas to reconnect the clock’s bells for Brexit — on grounds of spiralling cost.
Commons chiefs insisted they would need to give contractors two working weeks to reconnect and then test the bells — meaning Brexiteers have until next Monday morning to raise the necessary cash.
Yesterday Boris Johnson suggested the huge sum could be crowd-funded - and Brexiteers were quick to pledge their support to the cause.
The PM said: “We’re working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong, because everybody knows Big Ben is being refurbished, they seemed to have taken the clapper away.
Mr Farage told The Sun: “Big Ben must bong. If the Government aren’t prepared to pay the cost, then the people will.”
Politicians are urging people to cough up a few quid to make it happen.
One source added: "None of us know it'll cost as much as £500,000 - I think that's just a grungy civil servant with an anti-Brexit attitude trying to stop a good idea."
BREAKING Leave Means Leave have been given approval to hold an event in Parliament Square on 31st January. Great news!It is a big moment in the history of this nation to celebrate. Register now at https://t.co/rVfGTMWOTn
The exact timings of the Brexit evening celebration are yet to be determined.
The PM's official spokesperson said yesterday: “If the public wants Big Ben to bong and the money is raised then that is great. We will make sure that — whatever happens in regard to Big Ben’s bongs — January 31 is properly marked.”
It's also been reported that cash could be dished out to encourage councils to fly the Union flag to mark the day Britain leaves.
BREXITEERS have been given the green light to hold a huge party in Parliament Square to mark leaving the EU on January 31, it's been confirmed today.
Organisers expect 15,000 to flood the streets in Westminster to celebrate Britain finally exiting the European Union in just over two weeks' time.
Brexit Party boss Nigel Farage said today: "Great news! It is a big moment in the history of this nation to celebrate."
Sources said they were now looking at trying to set off fireworks to mark the momentous event - but need the Port of London Authority to give permission first to ensure safety of any boats on the Thames.
The event is set to include music and high-profile speakers too.
Brexit Party MEP Richard Tice told The Sun: "We are delighted. It's such a huge moment in our nation's history.
"We'll have a great time."
And campaigners are still trying and get Big Ben to bong at 11pm to see us into the new era.
This morning Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he would support the call - but it's reported to have to cost up to £500,000 and would set back reparations works on the block.
The bell is still in the process of being repaired, and at the moment only bongs to mark in the New Year and Remembrance Sunday.
Mr Farage said it would be a "national humiliation" if the bell doesn't ring in Brexit.
"The whole world, when we leave at 11 o'clock, will be expecting Big Ben to ring," he told LBC.
House of Commons chiefs yesterday turned down 60 pro-Brexit MPs’ pleas to reconnect the clock’s bells for Brexit — on grounds of spiralling cost.
Commons chiefs insisted they would need to give contractors two working weeks to reconnect and then test the bells — meaning Brexiteers have until next Monday morning to raise the necessary cash.
Yesterday Boris Johnson suggested the huge sum could be crowd-funded - and Brexiteers were quick to pledge their support to the cause.
The PM said: “We’re working up a plan so people can bung a bob for a Big Ben bong, because everybody knows Big Ben is being refurbished, they seemed to have taken the clapper away.
Mr Farage told The Sun: “Big Ben must bong. If the Government aren’t prepared to pay the cost, then the people will.”
Politicians are urging people to cough up a few quid to make it happen.
One source added: "None of us know it'll cost as much as £500,000 - I think that's just a grungy civil servant with an anti-Brexit attitude trying to stop a good idea."
BREAKING Leave Means Leave have been given approval to hold an event in Parliament Square on 31st January. Great news!It is a big moment in the history of this nation to celebrate. Register now at https://t.co/rVfGTMWOTn
The exact timings of the Brexit evening celebration are yet to be determined.
The PM's official spokesperson said yesterday: “If the public wants Big Ben to bong and the money is raised then that is great. We will make sure that — whatever happens in regard to Big Ben’s bongs — January 31 is properly marked.”
It's also been reported that cash could be dished out to encourage councils to fly the Union flag to mark the day Britain leaves.
Cabinet Brexiteers won the crucial backing of Mr Javid on their EU customs proposal, leaving Theresa May and her supporters outnumbered
SAJID Javid last night sank Theresa May’s Brexit customs plans by siding with Leavers in the Cabinet.
The Home Secretary, who was appointed only on Monday, stunned the PM.
He declared he was “the new kid on the block” as he shredded her customs partnership proposal at a three-hour meeting of her Brexit committee.
The ex-Remain supporter tipped the balance of the 11- strong team — leaving Mrs May “visibly shocked to have lost the room” according to one insider.
Mrs May was lobbying for a customs partnership solution where the UK collects duty on behalf of the EU.
Mr Javid said the plan would hinder Brexit Britain trading around the world — to the delight of Brexiteers.
Last night No10 sources admitted Mrs May’s preferred plan could not go forward in its current form. She tasked her officials with going back to the drawing board and “refining” how Britain’s customs and trade relationship will work with the EU and avoid a hard border with Ireland.
Cabinet Brexiteers David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Michael Gove favour a “Max Fac” proposal where smart cameras and pre- registration are used to monitor goods crossing the Irish border.
They won the crucial backing of Mr Javid and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who also had “grave concerns” about Mrs May’s solution.
That left the PM, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley outnumbered.
It is understood that Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington also sided with the PM.
Downing Street suggested the PM had also been backed in the meeting by Chief Whip Julian Smith.
But angry Brexiteers left her red-faced by pointing out that the Tory enforcer was not even on the exit planning team.
Mrs May was earlier branded a “corpse” by Eurosceptic Tories who said a betrayal over EU customs would spark demands for a leadership contest.

Cabinet Brexiteers won the crucial backing of Mr Javid on their EU customs proposal, leaving Theresa May and her supporters outnumbered
SAJID Javid last night sank Theresa May’s Brexit customs plans by siding with Leavers in the Cabinet.
The Home Secretary, who was appointed only on Monday, stunned the PM.
He declared he was “the new kid on the block” as he shredded her customs partnership proposal at a three-hour meeting of her Brexit committee.
The ex-Remain supporter tipped the balance of the 11- strong team — leaving Mrs May “visibly shocked to have lost the room” according to one insider.
Mrs May was lobbying for a customs partnership solution where the UK collects duty on behalf of the EU.
Mr Javid said the plan would hinder Brexit Britain trading around the world — to the delight of Brexiteers.
Last night No10 sources admitted Mrs May’s preferred plan could not go forward in its current form. She tasked her officials with going back to the drawing board and “refining” how Britain’s customs and trade relationship will work with the EU and avoid a hard border with Ireland.
Cabinet Brexiteers David Davis, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Michael Gove favour a “Max Fac” proposal where smart cameras and pre- registration are used to monitor goods crossing the Irish border.
They won the crucial backing of Mr Javid and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, who also had “grave concerns” about Mrs May’s solution.
That left the PM, Chancellor Philip Hammond, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley outnumbered.
It is understood that Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington also sided with the PM.
Downing Street suggested the PM had also been backed in the meeting by Chief Whip Julian Smith.
But angry Brexiteers left her red-faced by pointing out that the Tory enforcer was not even on the exit planning team.
Mrs May was earlier branded a “corpse” by Eurosceptic Tories who said a betrayal over EU customs would spark demands for a leadership contest.

After the Tory conference in Birmingham the PM has begun secret talks already and feels freer to make controversial compromises, senior government figures say
THERESA May will today begin a frantic ten-day diplomatic push to nail down a Brexit divorce deal in time for an EU summit deadline.
The PM will start phoning leaders across Europe’s capitals this morning in a bid to close gaping gaps.
Now that the high risk moment of the Tories’ annual conference in Birmingham is over, senior government figures say she is freer to make more potentially controversial compromises.
Despite Mrs May’s demand for Brussels to end the new impasse after the Salzburg summit disaster, The Sun can also reveal that secret talks have already reopened.
The PM’s chief negotiator Olly Robbins has been in Brussels this week to try to hammer out a backstop plan to ensure no Irish border.
One Cabinet minister involved in the process told The Sun: “We need some very fancy footwork to get the Withdrawal Agreement wrapped up by the October council.
“But deadlines always concentrate minds.
The PM will be hitting the phone hard and we think it’s just about doable.”
The EU announced last night that its 27 leaders will meet to discuss Brexit over dinner on October 17, the night before the next summit starts.
But Britain has been told that the pieces for a divorce deal must be in place by the start of that week for national capitals to then consider them.
The UK’s new proposal involves “spreading the pain” over where Ireland’s future customs and regulatory borders lie three ways, between the EU, the UK and Ireland.
The EU’s plan for a border down the Irish Sea has been firmly rejected by Mrs May.
And her bid to collect the EU’s tariffs and keep Britain within a close customs arrangement has been ruled out by Brussels, along with any infrastructure on the Irish border.
No10 wants to agree the full divorce deal at the summit on October 18-19, but hold back from writing it into legal text.
A further intensive four week negotiation will then take place before another Brexit summit in November to agree the future framework for a UK-EU trade deal, before both are then signed at the same time.
Of all the 27 EU leaders, French president Emmanuel is still seen as the hardest and most important nut to crack, as German boss Angela Merkel is still too distracted by her unstable coalition government in Berlin.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar will touch down in Brussels today for talks with chief negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Council president Donald Tusk.
EU diplomats are also increasingly hopeful of achieving a major breakthrough on the thorny border issue within two weeks.
One EU diplomat told The Sun: "Perhaps it's one of the elements where we can move.
"I'm more optimistic than I have been for months that a deal is possible."
 
But they cautioned against overinflated expectations, adding: "Don't be too hopeful of having white smoke.
"October is important but it's about trying to get some feel good back into the talks and seeing whether there is indeed land in sight."
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab is then expected to go to the Belgian capital next week.

After the Tory conference in Birmingham the PM has begun secret talks already and feels freer to make controversial compromises, senior government figures say
THERESA May will today begin a frantic ten-day diplomatic push to nail down a Brexit divorce deal in time for an EU summit deadline.
The PM will start phoning leaders across Europe’s capitals this morning in a bid to close gaping gaps.
Now that the high risk moment of the Tories’ annual conference in Birmingham is over, senior government figures say she is freer to make more potentially controversial compromises.
Despite Mrs May’s demand for Brussels to end the new impasse after the Salzburg summit disaster, The Sun can also reveal that secret talks have already reopened.
The PM’s chief negotiator Olly Robbins has been in Brussels this week to try to hammer out a backstop plan to ensure no Irish border.
One Cabinet minister involved in the process told The Sun: “We need some very fancy footwork to get the Withdrawal Agreement wrapped up by the October council.
“But deadlines always concentrate minds.
The PM will be hitting the phone hard and we think it’s just about doable.”
The EU announced last night that its 27 leaders will meet to discuss Brexit over dinner on October 17, the night before the next summit starts.
But Britain has been told that the pieces for a divorce deal must be in place by the start of that week for national capitals to then consider them.
The UK’s new proposal involves “spreading the pain” over where Ireland’s future customs and regulatory borders lie three ways, between the EU, the UK and Ireland.
The EU’s plan for a border down the Irish Sea has been firmly rejected by Mrs May.
And her bid to collect the EU’s tariffs and keep Britain within a close customs arrangement has been ruled out by Brussels, along with any infrastructure on the Irish border.
No10 wants to agree the full divorce deal at the summit on October 18-19, but hold back from writing it into legal text.
A further intensive four week negotiation will then take place before another Brexit summit in November to agree the future framework for a UK-EU trade deal, before both are then signed at the same time.
Of all the 27 EU leaders, French president Emmanuel is still seen as the hardest and most important nut to crack, as German boss Angela Merkel is still too distracted by her unstable coalition government in Berlin.
Irish PM Leo Varadkar will touch down in Brussels today for talks with chief negotiator Michel Barnier and EU Council president Donald Tusk.
EU diplomats are also increasingly hopeful of achieving a major breakthrough on the thorny border issue within two weeks.
One EU diplomat told The Sun: "Perhaps it's one of the elements where we can move.
"I'm more optimistic than I have been for months that a deal is possible."
 
But they cautioned against overinflated expectations, adding: "Don't be too hopeful of having white smoke.
"October is important but it's about trying to get some feel good back into the talks and seeing whether there is indeed land in sight."
Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab is then expected to go to the Belgian capital next week.

IF ever you expected events to bring the Conservative Party to its senses, it should be now.
We have just experienced the worst national election results in our long and successful electoral history after a cataclysmic series of polls since Theresa May and her entire Cabinet broke their promise - which they made on over one hundred occasions - to leave the EU on 29th March.
Voters in the country are rightly angry at broken promises by the Conservative leadership about leaving on time, about leaving the single market, and about leaving the customs union.
They witnessed with disbelief as the Cabinet supported Theresa May negotiating with the most left-wing leader of the Labour Party in its history in a bizarre attempt to agree a sordid deal which would have betrayed the country’s vote for a genuine Brexit.
Conservative Party members have witnessed first-hand the level of public distrust and anger during the recent local government elections.
Hard working Councillors and candidates lost seats because of the failings of this Cabinet and through no fault of their own.
Now they rightly expect their Conservative MPs to get their act together and elect a Leader who will break the mould of the same old broken politics of the Westminster blob and take us out of the EU and make the Conservative Party Conservative again.
There is a common denominator in the above examples of bad faith and incompetence. That is the Cabinet.
It is not only Theresa May who let down Conservative Party voters, members and supporters.
She was abetted and supported by her Cabinet. In this country we operate a system of collective responsibility and it is not good enough for Cabinet members now to claim they held a different view or would have done things differently.
How can it be right that Cabinet Ministers, who were complicit with the failed Brexit polices of Chequers, the Withdrawal Agreement and the subsequent betrayal of Brexit, credibly seek to claim they are an acceptable choice for this role?
They were sat around the top table when decisions were made and must take responsibility for them.
I would sup with a very long spoon indeed with those who are complicit but now claiming they can offer the Party new leadership and direction.
The British public are not stupid and our Party members know what they are voting for.
They wont be fooled by those born-again ‘Leavers’, who trumpet their devotion to Brexit even though they have done nothing for the last three years to advance the return of British sovereignty.
The British public and our long suffering Party members know where the responsibility for the greatest breach of trust in our democratic institutions lies.
After three years of being repeatedly told that ‘nothing has changed’, the time has come for ‘everything to change’.
The British people are desperate for our country to leave the EU on 31st October. They are crying out for leadership which will put the country and our people first.
The European Elections clearly reflect that and anybody who has knocked on doors or engaged the public in recent times knows that.
We simply must move on and move out of the EU and fast.
And in doing so we must move into a trade negotiation as has been outlined through numerous proposals over the last 12 months.
Unfortunately Theresa May’s Cabinet showed themselves unwilling to listen to detailed proposals which would have a delivered the genuine Brexit the public voted for.
So now the priority is to exit the European Union and move forward to negotiating a future relationship with protects British interests and keeps open the global prizes and benefits of Brexit which the British people voted for.
Ministers who claim they are pro-brexit have failed to stand up for the 17.4 million who voted to leave and make that robust case to deliver the referendum mandate.
Theresa May’s Cabinet showed themselves unwilling to listen to detailed proposals which would have a delivered the genuine Brexit the public voted for.
The people were promised we would have left the EU months ago and that ‘no deal was better than a bad deal’.
Having danced to the tune of the tune of the EU, spent billions of pounds on ‘no deal’ preparations, our country must just get on and leave the EU.
Too many people in our political class lack confidence in our country and trust in the public. They have sought the comfort of the EU making our laws rather than making the decisions themselves. No wonder the British people feel betrayed.
They expected the UK to leave the EU on 29th March as they were promised. Every day longer we remain in the EU adds salt to that wound.
The governing class has broken trust in our politics.
The British people voted to take back control and for Britain to be free, independent and self-governing again. Our destiny is as a global beacon of free trade, not a satellite of the EU.
The Conservative Party must quit the navel-gazing and stop the rot of this Brexit betrayal.
Those of us who believe in our Country and people, who respect our democratic and political freedoms, will continue to stand up for our liberty to make sure the days of betrayal are over.

IF ever you expected events to bring the Conservative Party to its senses, it should be now.
We have just experienced the worst national election results in our long and successful electoral history after a cataclysmic series of polls since Theresa May and her entire Cabinet broke their promise - which they made on over one hundred occasions - to leave the EU on 29th March.
Voters in the country are rightly angry at broken promises by the Conservative leadership about leaving on time, about leaving the single market, and about leaving the customs union.
They witnessed with disbelief as the Cabinet supported Theresa May negotiating with the most left-wing leader of the Labour Party in its history in a bizarre attempt to agree a sordid deal which would have betrayed the country’s vote for a genuine Brexit.
Conservative Party members have witnessed first-hand the level of public distrust and anger during the recent local government elections.
Hard working Councillors and candidates lost seats because of the failings of this Cabinet and through no fault of their own.
Now they rightly expect their Conservative MPs to get their act together and elect a Leader who will break the mould of the same old broken politics of the Westminster blob and take us out of the EU and make the Conservative Party Conservative again.
There is a common denominator in the above examples of bad faith and incompetence. That is the Cabinet.
It is not only Theresa May who let down Conservative Party voters, members and supporters.
She was abetted and supported by her Cabinet. In this country we operate a system of collective responsibility and it is not good enough for Cabinet members now to claim they held a different view or would have done things differently.
How can it be right that Cabinet Ministers, who were complicit with the failed Brexit polices of Chequers, the Withdrawal Agreement and the subsequent betrayal of Brexit, credibly seek to claim they are an acceptable choice for this role?
They were sat around the top table when decisions were made and must take responsibility for them.
I would sup with a very long spoon indeed with those who are complicit but now claiming they can offer the Party new leadership and direction.
The British public are not stupid and our Party members know what they are voting for.
They wont be fooled by those born-again ‘Leavers’, who trumpet their devotion to Brexit even though they have done nothing for the last three years to advance the return of British sovereignty.
The British public and our long suffering Party members know where the responsibility for the greatest breach of trust in our democratic institutions lies.
After three years of being repeatedly told that ‘nothing has changed’, the time has come for ‘everything to change’.
The British people are desperate for our country to leave the EU on 31st October. They are crying out for leadership which will put the country and our people first.
The European Elections clearly reflect that and anybody who has knocked on doors or engaged the public in recent times knows that.
We simply must move on and move out of the EU and fast.
And in doing so we must move into a trade negotiation as has been outlined through numerous proposals over the last 12 months.
Unfortunately Theresa May’s Cabinet showed themselves unwilling to listen to detailed proposals which would have a delivered the genuine Brexit the public voted for.
So now the priority is to exit the European Union and move forward to negotiating a future relationship with protects British interests and keeps open the global prizes and benefits of Brexit which the British people voted for.
Ministers who claim they are pro-brexit have failed to stand up for the 17.4 million who voted to leave and make that robust case to deliver the referendum mandate.
Theresa May’s Cabinet showed themselves unwilling to listen to detailed proposals which would have a delivered the genuine Brexit the public voted for.
The people were promised we would have left the EU months ago and that ‘no deal was better than a bad deal’.
Having danced to the tune of the tune of the EU, spent billions of pounds on ‘no deal’ preparations, our country must just get on and leave the EU.
Too many people in our political class lack confidence in our country and trust in the public. They have sought the comfort of the EU making our laws rather than making the decisions themselves. No wonder the British people feel betrayed.
They expected the UK to leave the EU on 29th March as they were promised. Every day longer we remain in the EU adds salt to that wound.
The governing class has broken trust in our politics.
The British people voted to take back control and for Britain to be free, independent and self-governing again. Our destiny is as a global beacon of free trade, not a satellite of the EU.
The Conservative Party must quit the navel-gazing and stop the rot of this Brexit betrayal.
Those of us who believe in our Country and people, who respect our democratic and political freedoms, will continue to stand up for our liberty to make sure the days of betrayal are over.

Ex-Cabinet minister Priti Patel says Theresa May's attempts to secure a good deal have resolutely failed
YOU cannot fault the Prime Minister for her tireless efforts at securing a deal with the EU.
In January 2017, she brought the Conservative party and country together with her Lancaster House speech.
She sought to heal the divisions from the referendum campaign and to honour the wishes of the 17.4million people who voted to leave.
And she outlined a clear vision for the UK’s future outside the EU - one of equal partners with a special relationship based on a trade agreement, mutual co-operation and respect.
Nothing in the withdrawal agreement demonstrates an “equal partnership”. It’s a one-sided deal weighted heavily in favour of the EU and it represents a complete capitulation by the Prime Minister.
It doesn’t serve our long-term national interest, it fails to deliver Brexit, puts our country in grave danger and breaches the clear promises made by the Government and in the Conservative party manifesto.
Despite our commitments that the UK would not be in a customs union with the EU, the withdrawal agreement would bind Britain into a “single customs territory”, forcing us to abide by EU tariffs. It also gives the EU a veto over our attempts to negotiate new international agreements and trade partnerships with other countries.
This would prevent us from lowering trade barriers to help poorer countries and block us from establishing new trade deals with the USA, our friends in the Commonwealth, and growing markets across the world. And it would harm our ability to deliver exports, trade-led economic growth and jobs.
We would have to refrain “from any action or initiative” which the EU deems to be prejudicial to its interests and the UK is explicitly frozen out of participating in the work of international organisations unless “exceptionally invited” by the EU.
No self-respecting country - especially one with our clout and proud history - should sign up to a proposal that surrenders the power to veto our foreign and trade policy to another entity.
The EU court, which has done so much to undermine our law-making and democracy, will still cast a shadow over us. This makes a mockery of us taking back control of our laws.
And the proposal would leave our precious Union in a fragile state: Northern Ireland would be treated differently to the rest of the UK and we would have to seek the EU’s permission to leave the backstop mechanism. Members of the Conservative and Unionist party should never contemplate imperiling our Union in this way.
The EU is tightening its grip on us and we get nothing - certainly no trade deal - in return. And all this costs us £39billion!
Our negotiators have capitulated, undermining our freedom, sovereignty and our place in the world. We will forever be dancing like puppets to the EU’s tune, with Brussels pulling our strings even more firmly than before.
The British people voted to take back control of our borders, trade, money and laws. They chose a bright future as a free, independent and sovereign country. This agreement effectively means that the EU has taken back control.
This is not what the country voted for. If our Government is of the view that this proposal is consistent with the result of the referendum, it is not in our nation's interests for them to see it through.
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Ex-Cabinet minister Priti Patel says Theresa May's attempts to secure a good deal have resolutely failed
YOU cannot fault the Prime Minister for her tireless efforts at securing a deal with the EU.
In January 2017, she brought the Conservative party and country together with her Lancaster House speech.
She sought to heal the divisions from the referendum campaign and to honour the wishes of the 17.4million people who voted to leave.
And she outlined a clear vision for the UK’s future outside the EU - one of equal partners with a special relationship based on a trade agreement, mutual co-operation and respect.
Nothing in the withdrawal agreement demonstrates an “equal partnership”. It’s a one-sided deal weighted heavily in favour of the EU and it represents a complete capitulation by the Prime Minister.
It doesn’t serve our long-term national interest, it fails to deliver Brexit, puts our country in grave danger and breaches the clear promises made by the Government and in the Conservative party manifesto.
Despite our commitments that the UK would not be in a customs union with the EU, the withdrawal agreement would bind Britain into a “single customs territory”, forcing us to abide by EU tariffs. It also gives the EU a veto over our attempts to negotiate new international agreements and trade partnerships with other countries.
This would prevent us from lowering trade barriers to help poorer countries and block us from establishing new trade deals with the USA, our friends in the Commonwealth, and growing markets across the world. And it would harm our ability to deliver exports, trade-led economic growth and jobs.
We would have to refrain “from any action or initiative” which the EU deems to be prejudicial to its interests and the UK is explicitly frozen out of participating in the work of international organisations unless “exceptionally invited” by the EU.
No self-respecting country - especially one with our clout and proud history - should sign up to a proposal that surrenders the power to veto our foreign and trade policy to another entity.
The EU court, which has done so much to undermine our law-making and democracy, will still cast a shadow over us. This makes a mockery of us taking back control of our laws.
And the proposal would leave our precious Union in a fragile state: Northern Ireland would be treated differently to the rest of the UK and we would have to seek the EU’s permission to leave the backstop mechanism. Members of the Conservative and Unionist party should never contemplate imperiling our Union in this way.
The EU is tightening its grip on us and we get nothing - certainly no trade deal - in return. And all this costs us £39billion!
Our negotiators have capitulated, undermining our freedom, sovereignty and our place in the world. We will forever be dancing like puppets to the EU’s tune, with Brussels pulling our strings even more firmly than before.
The British people voted to take back control of our borders, trade, money and laws. They chose a bright future as a free, independent and sovereign country. This agreement effectively means that the EU has taken back control.
This is not what the country voted for. If our Government is of the view that this proposal is consistent with the result of the referendum, it is not in our nation's interests for them to see it through.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
People voted to leave the EU because they wanted change - they voted to take back control of our laws, money, borders and trade
NEXT week is crunch time for the UK and the British Government.
As the Prime Minister heads into the most significant EU summit, she must secure the Brexit promised to the ­British public.
Now is the time to deliver for the United Kingdom on the Conservatives’ 2017 General Election manifesto promise to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade.
When we went to the polls, my party pledged that we would take back control of our borders by leaving the European single market. We pledged that we would take back control of trade. That trade deals would be made in Britain rather than Brussels. To do this, we would leave the EU’s Customs Union.
It does not get clearer than the pledge: “We will no longer be members of the single market or customs union.”  Our manifesto also promised that our laws would be made in the UK and interpreted by judges here, not in Europe. That’s why the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposal was not right.
Under such a deal, we would be required to follow EU laws under the EU rule book and we would still be subject to the European Court of Justice.
We would be out of Europe, yet still run by Europe. Any proposal that is brought forward and put to Parliament needs to take back control of our laws and make sure the European Court has no say over us.  So what should Theresa May do? The answer, once again, is set out clearly in the 2017 Conservative manifesto.
It says: “We will seek a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free-trade and customs agreement.”  That’s why the Prime Minister should move on from her Chequers proposal and seek an advanced free-trade deal with the EU. A comprehensive free-trade deal, like the EU’s free-trade deals with Canada and Japan, is what our manifesto promises require.
Such a deal would ensure we take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade. It would honour the referendum mandate. It would be in line with our manifesto commitments. And it would work for the EU too. The Government’s objection to this is the supposed difficulty of keeping an open border in Northern Ireland.
For this reason, Government figures claim we cannot seek a trade deal with the EU unless this problem is solved. This is nonsense.
Clear proposals have been set out by two former Northern Ireland Secretaries as to how a frictionless border can be maintained under a free-trade agreement. These proposals have been endorsed by former Brexit Secretary David Davis and Good Friday Agreement architect Lord Trimble.
Moreover, former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith has set out how we can build on the system of joint border controls at Dover to avoid delays or friction at the UK’s borders — including in Ireland. This would work for the EU’s rules and ensure a positive future relationship going forward.
Yet instead of taking forward these proposals, the Government is stubbornly clinging to the so-called Irish Backstop. They say we must pay up £40billion and stay in Europe in all but name until the problem is solved. That would not be Brexit. We would be writing a huge cheque in order to stay in the EU.
This approach is not simply a bad use of taxpayers’ money. It breaks another manifesto pledge.
For our 2017 manifesto says “it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside our withdrawal, reaching agreement on both within two years” of our serving notice to leave the EU. In other words, by the end of March next year.
So it is wrong for the Government to agree withdrawal terms without sorting out the full detail of our future relationship. A temporary fix does not honour the referendum mandate, it does not keep our manifesto promise and it certainly fails to look after our hard-earned money.
Moreover, would this temporary fix really be temporary? Just ask the people of Norway how such a deal turned out for them. In 1992 they signed the European Economic Area Agreement. They were told by the EU their sovereignty would be respected. Yet 26 years later, this “temporary” arrangement has become permanent.
Meanwhile, the cost has increased ten-fold and nearly 12,000 EU directives and regulations have been implemented through Norway’s EEA agreement.
Our Government should fear to tread such a dangerous path. Voters will not tolerate any “temporary” arrangement becoming permanent. They would see it as a betrayal. People voted to leave the EU because they wanted change. They believed in Britain and the land of opportunity we can build. They voted to take back control of our laws, money, borders and trade.
The Conservative manifesto promised that we would leave the EU altogether. That we would seek a free-trade deal and a new national future.
Now is the time for the Government to honour the referendum mandate and the Conservative manifesto by seeking a free­-trade deal with the EU that enables Britain to become an economic powerhouse in the decades to come.
People voted to leave the EU because they wanted change - they voted to take back control of our laws, money, borders and trade
NEXT week is crunch time for the UK and the British Government.
As the Prime Minister heads into the most significant EU summit, she must secure the Brexit promised to the ­British public.
Now is the time to deliver for the United Kingdom on the Conservatives’ 2017 General Election manifesto promise to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade.
When we went to the polls, my party pledged that we would take back control of our borders by leaving the European single market. We pledged that we would take back control of trade. That trade deals would be made in Britain rather than Brussels. To do this, we would leave the EU’s Customs Union.
It does not get clearer than the pledge: “We will no longer be members of the single market or customs union.”  Our manifesto also promised that our laws would be made in the UK and interpreted by judges here, not in Europe. That’s why the Prime Minister’s Chequers proposal was not right.
Under such a deal, we would be required to follow EU laws under the EU rule book and we would still be subject to the European Court of Justice.
We would be out of Europe, yet still run by Europe. Any proposal that is brought forward and put to Parliament needs to take back control of our laws and make sure the European Court has no say over us.  So what should Theresa May do? The answer, once again, is set out clearly in the 2017 Conservative manifesto.
It says: “We will seek a deep and special partnership including a comprehensive free-trade and customs agreement.”  That’s why the Prime Minister should move on from her Chequers proposal and seek an advanced free-trade deal with the EU. A comprehensive free-trade deal, like the EU’s free-trade deals with Canada and Japan, is what our manifesto promises require.
Such a deal would ensure we take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade. It would honour the referendum mandate. It would be in line with our manifesto commitments. And it would work for the EU too. The Government’s objection to this is the supposed difficulty of keeping an open border in Northern Ireland.
For this reason, Government figures claim we cannot seek a trade deal with the EU unless this problem is solved. This is nonsense.
Clear proposals have been set out by two former Northern Ireland Secretaries as to how a frictionless border can be maintained under a free-trade agreement. These proposals have been endorsed by former Brexit Secretary David Davis and Good Friday Agreement architect Lord Trimble.
Moreover, former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith has set out how we can build on the system of joint border controls at Dover to avoid delays or friction at the UK’s borders — including in Ireland. This would work for the EU’s rules and ensure a positive future relationship going forward.
Yet instead of taking forward these proposals, the Government is stubbornly clinging to the so-called Irish Backstop. They say we must pay up £40billion and stay in Europe in all but name until the problem is solved. That would not be Brexit. We would be writing a huge cheque in order to stay in the EU.
This approach is not simply a bad use of taxpayers’ money. It breaks another manifesto pledge.
For our 2017 manifesto says “it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside our withdrawal, reaching agreement on both within two years” of our serving notice to leave the EU. In other words, by the end of March next year.
So it is wrong for the Government to agree withdrawal terms without sorting out the full detail of our future relationship. A temporary fix does not honour the referendum mandate, it does not keep our manifesto promise and it certainly fails to look after our hard-earned money.
Moreover, would this temporary fix really be temporary? Just ask the people of Norway how such a deal turned out for them. In 1992 they signed the European Economic Area Agreement. They were told by the EU their sovereignty would be respected. Yet 26 years later, this “temporary” arrangement has become permanent.
Meanwhile, the cost has increased ten-fold and nearly 12,000 EU directives and regulations have been implemented through Norway’s EEA agreement.
Our Government should fear to tread such a dangerous path. Voters will not tolerate any “temporary” arrangement becoming permanent. They would see it as a betrayal. People voted to leave the EU because they wanted change. They believed in Britain and the land of opportunity we can build. They voted to take back control of our laws, money, borders and trade.
The Conservative manifesto promised that we would leave the EU altogether. That we would seek a free-trade deal and a new national future.
Now is the time for the Government to honour the referendum mandate and the Conservative manifesto by seeking a free­-trade deal with the EU that enables Britain to become an economic powerhouse in the decades to come.
The PM said ministers had been having chats with Labour about a soft Brexit
THERESA May has hinted that Britain COULD stay in a customs union after Brexit where we would be tied to the EU forever - and that it's almost impossible to leave with No Deal.
The Prime Minister refused to rule out a softer Brexit agreement as she admitted talks with Labour had been "constructive" and could produce a result.
She's opened up discussions with Jeremy Corbyn's party to try and come to an agreement which can sway over Labour MPs to vote for her deal.
But after weeks of talks they still haven't been able to seal anything yet.
Mrs May told MPs on the powerful liaison committee this afternoon: "One of the discussions we have been having, is the whole question of customs arrangements."
And she hinted that it could be called something different instead.
"Various terms are used. Sometimes people mean different terms to mean the same thing, sometimes it’s different approaches," she admitted.
The PM was asked three times whether her plans with Labour involved a customs union - which the Opposition are pushing for - but she dodged the question.
And she said Parliament would likely block a No Deal if it was set to happen, too.
"I think is that Parliament will act to insist the UK Government is not willing to leave without a deal," she said.
However, going for a soft Brexit in the form of a customs union, is sure to rip her warring party in two and cause irreparable damage to it.
Brexiteers will never forgive her for watering down our exit and tying us to EU rules for years to come.
And even more moderate Tories have slammed her for trying to do a deal with Mr Corbyn, who the party has repeatedly warned its voters to stay away from.
Britain shouldn't stay in the EU indefinitely, she added, and we must not revoke Article 50 either.
She said he hopes "a deal can be done" to find a way to break through the Brexit deadlock.
"There are differences on issues but on many of the key areas - particularly on the Withdrawal Agreement - there is common ground.
"We know that we need to end this uncertainty and do it as soon as possible and I hope a deal can be done. We certainly approach this with an open mind."
It was reported overnight that some Government ministers thought it would be better to do a deal with Labour than to not deliver Brexit at all.
If she can't come to a deal by next week, the PM has plans for a series of votes in the Commons to see what MPs want her to do.
But this plan has already failed in the past as NO single plan got a majority of MPs behind it before.
Britain has until the end of October to cobble together an arrangement or we could leave with No Deal at all.
The PM said she didn't think No Deal would happen, however.
She told MPs that the only real choice was still to pass a deal.
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The PM said ministers had been having chats with Labour about a soft Brexit
THERESA May has hinted that Britain COULD stay in a customs union after Brexit where we would be tied to the EU forever - and that it's almost impossible to leave with No Deal.
The Prime Minister refused to rule out a softer Brexit agreement as she admitted talks with Labour had been "constructive" and could produce a result.
She's opened up discussions with Jeremy Corbyn's party to try and come to an agreement which can sway over Labour MPs to vote for her deal.
But after weeks of talks they still haven't been able to seal anything yet.
Mrs May told MPs on the powerful liaison committee this afternoon: "One of the discussions we have been having, is the whole question of customs arrangements."
And she hinted that it could be called something different instead.
"Various terms are used. Sometimes people mean different terms to mean the same thing, sometimes it’s different approaches," she admitted.
The PM was asked three times whether her plans with Labour involved a customs union - which the Opposition are pushing for - but she dodged the question.
And she said Parliament would likely block a No Deal if it was set to happen, too.
"I think is that Parliament will act to insist the UK Government is not willing to leave without a deal," she said.
However, going for a soft Brexit in the form of a customs union, is sure to rip her warring party in two and cause irreparable damage to it.
Brexiteers will never forgive her for watering down our exit and tying us to EU rules for years to come.
And even more moderate Tories have slammed her for trying to do a deal with Mr Corbyn, who the party has repeatedly warned its voters to stay away from.
Britain shouldn't stay in the EU indefinitely, she added, and we must not revoke Article 50 either.
She said he hopes "a deal can be done" to find a way to break through the Brexit deadlock.
"There are differences on issues but on many of the key areas - particularly on the Withdrawal Agreement - there is common ground.
"We know that we need to end this uncertainty and do it as soon as possible and I hope a deal can be done. We certainly approach this with an open mind."
It was reported overnight that some Government ministers thought it would be better to do a deal with Labour than to not deliver Brexit at all.
If she can't come to a deal by next week, the PM has plans for a series of votes in the Commons to see what MPs want her to do.
But this plan has already failed in the past as NO single plan got a majority of MPs behind it before.
Britain has until the end of October to cobble together an arrangement or we could leave with No Deal at all.
The PM said she didn't think No Deal would happen, however.
She told MPs that the only real choice was still to pass a deal.
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LISTEN hard enough and you may hear it on the breeze: The noise of low, thrashing moans, wails of “Nooo!” and the thud of skulls thumping Whitehall office walls.
That, my friends, is the sound of the elite’s neck-clutching horror that Boris Johnson looks well on his way to becoming the next Conservative leader.
The Establishment is appalled, astonished, aghast.
PM Boris? They would sooner contemplate boiled skunk innards for their tea.
Boris is, they scream, “a rat”, “an eel”, “adulterer”, “serial liar” and “sordid opportunist”.
They shake their heads in despair that we ill-washed ­voters are unable — not clever enough — to share their view. How DARE he be so popular?
What is it about Boris ­Johnson that ignites such ­ferocious loathing in our ­ruling class?

Envy? Disapproval of his marital record? Or terror that he might prove them wrong?
Loathe him they most ­certainly do. They slander him as “the British Trump”,  not realising that many Brits quite admire the convention-smashing Donald Trump and the way he has rattled the powerful.
A few days ago a posh military man strode up to me and exploded about Boris.
This former Sandhurst big- shot, a friend of the Royal Family and church-going pillar of the shires, erupted with swear words no self-respecting corporal would have used.
Had he ever met Mr Johnson? Er, no.
But the sheer thought of “that little s**t” becoming premier had sent him tonto. “I’m never going to vote Conservative again!” he yelled.
There are plenty like this. Sir Max Hastings, in his time a great newspaper editor, has thundered that he will emigrate to foreign shores if Boris becomes PM.
Actually, I bet he won’t. His gun dogs would miss the English climate.
But Sir Max, who employed Boris in his reporter days, is boiling with crossness about his former protégé’s success.
The odd thing is that, Brexit aside, their moderate-Tory views are pretty similar.
The anti-Boris brigade cleave to their hatred even though he is their best bet for survival.
Opinion polls say he is the only Tory who can beat both Corbyn and Farage.
And yet there was an “Anyone But Boris” movement among Tory MPs and for months it looked as if they would succeed.
He was the one best placed to save their seats but they still wanted to snub him.
The only reason he has now gone through to the final two in the leadership contest is that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has frightened the wits out  of them.
Opposition MPs can get away with absurd claims about Boris and not be challenged.
In the Commons on Wednesday, the Scots Nats’ Ian Blackford alleged that he was a racist. Total rubbish.
Boris is many things — an adulterer, a gourmand, as fly as a bluebottle — but he is  no racist.
Commons Speaker John Bercow allowed this slander to stand. Why? Because Bercow hates Boris, too.
With its TV debate this week, the BBC abandoned any pretence of impartiality and tried to screw Boris by inviting contributions from people with anti-Tory agendas.
Quangocrats have been mobilising, too. The Guardian newspaper wheeled out a UN biodiversity expert to blame Boris for pollution in the world’s oceans.
What, all of them?
Former chief scientist David King moaned that Boris was  a one-man danger to the environment — days after Boris had gone out of his way to bang the drum for a cleaner, greener Britain.
Boris Johnson is liberal on social issues. He was one of the first top Tories to support gay rights.
That did not stop Channel 4  broadcasting false claims he was a homophobe.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a smear, guys.
When two-term mayor of London, Boris presided benevolently over one of the most multi-racial cities in the world. He is laid back about family values — he needs to be, given his trouser-dropping — and had a good record on knife-crime when he was in charge of the capital.   He may have gone to  Eton but he  is about as approachable as you can get.
All these things, surely, are positives.
So why do Tory centrists including Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke — and Theresa May, for that matter — want to destroy him?
The first reason is Europe. These Remainers have still not accepted the result of the 2016 referendum.
Boris could become the first properly Eurosceptic Prime Minister we have had in the modern era, and that worries them because they know the power a PM has to steer official policy.
Another reason: Envy, not just of what Boris has but also of what he has not had to do.
Yes, he earns a lot (£275,000 from his weekly newspaper column alone), he has the  gift of the gab, and has hosted TV shows.
At an age when some blokes find their virility drooping, he still plainly has some lead  in his pencil, with a new  and much-younger girlfriend.
Older dingoes in public life see all this and they growl, wishing they were so blessed.
And Boris has done all this without surrendering to the low-ranking drudgery most politicians must accept in the early years.
Boris was never a junior minister. He was never a ministerial bag-carrier.
He has swanned through life breaking the rules, laughing and bonking. That INFURIATES them!
But the biggest reason of all for their hatred is that they, and the EU, fear he may succeed.
Imagine if he delivers Brexit and the economy prospers instead of nose-diving as they forecast.  Imagine if his political optimism lifts the country’s morale.
It would then be glaringly clear that our political class, with its insistent, pro- Brussels defeatism, had been completely wrong.
National success, for these snoots, would be a terrible defeat. And so they want to kill off the one man who may save us.
LISTEN hard enough and you may hear it on the breeze: The noise of low, thrashing moans, wails of “Nooo!” and the thud of skulls thumping Whitehall office walls.
That, my friends, is the sound of the elite’s neck-clutching horror that Boris Johnson looks well on his way to becoming the next Conservative leader.
The Establishment is appalled, astonished, aghast.
PM Boris? They would sooner contemplate boiled skunk innards for their tea.
Boris is, they scream, “a rat”, “an eel”, “adulterer”, “serial liar” and “sordid opportunist”.
They shake their heads in despair that we ill-washed ­voters are unable — not clever enough — to share their view. How DARE he be so popular?
What is it about Boris ­Johnson that ignites such ­ferocious loathing in our ­ruling class?

Envy? Disapproval of his marital record? Or terror that he might prove them wrong?
Loathe him they most ­certainly do. They slander him as “the British Trump”,  not realising that many Brits quite admire the convention-smashing Donald Trump and the way he has rattled the powerful.
A few days ago a posh military man strode up to me and exploded about Boris.
This former Sandhurst big- shot, a friend of the Royal Family and church-going pillar of the shires, erupted with swear words no self-respecting corporal would have used.
Had he ever met Mr Johnson? Er, no.
But the sheer thought of “that little s**t” becoming premier had sent him tonto. “I’m never going to vote Conservative again!” he yelled.
There are plenty like this. Sir Max Hastings, in his time a great newspaper editor, has thundered that he will emigrate to foreign shores if Boris becomes PM.
Actually, I bet he won’t. His gun dogs would miss the English climate.
But Sir Max, who employed Boris in his reporter days, is boiling with crossness about his former protégé’s success.
The odd thing is that, Brexit aside, their moderate-Tory views are pretty similar.
The anti-Boris brigade cleave to their hatred even though he is their best bet for survival.
Opinion polls say he is the only Tory who can beat both Corbyn and Farage.
And yet there was an “Anyone But Boris” movement among Tory MPs and for months it looked as if they would succeed.
He was the one best placed to save their seats but they still wanted to snub him.
The only reason he has now gone through to the final two in the leadership contest is that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has frightened the wits out  of them.
Opposition MPs can get away with absurd claims about Boris and not be challenged.
In the Commons on Wednesday, the Scots Nats’ Ian Blackford alleged that he was a racist. Total rubbish.
Boris is many things — an adulterer, a gourmand, as fly as a bluebottle — but he is  no racist.
Commons Speaker John Bercow allowed this slander to stand. Why? Because Bercow hates Boris, too.
With its TV debate this week, the BBC abandoned any pretence of impartiality and tried to screw Boris by inviting contributions from people with anti-Tory agendas.
Quangocrats have been mobilising, too. The Guardian newspaper wheeled out a UN biodiversity expert to blame Boris for pollution in the world’s oceans.
What, all of them?
Former chief scientist David King moaned that Boris was  a one-man danger to the environment — days after Boris had gone out of his way to bang the drum for a cleaner, greener Britain.
Boris Johnson is liberal on social issues. He was one of the first top Tories to support gay rights.
That did not stop Channel 4  broadcasting false claims he was a homophobe.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a smear, guys.
When two-term mayor of London, Boris presided benevolently over one of the most multi-racial cities in the world. He is laid back about family values — he needs to be, given his trouser-dropping — and had a good record on knife-crime when he was in charge of the capital.   He may have gone to  Eton but he  is about as approachable as you can get.
All these things, surely, are positives.
So why do Tory centrists including Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke — and Theresa May, for that matter — want to destroy him?
The first reason is Europe. These Remainers have still not accepted the result of the 2016 referendum.
Boris could become the first properly Eurosceptic Prime Minister we have had in the modern era, and that worries them because they know the power a PM has to steer official policy.
Another reason: Envy, not just of what Boris has but also of what he has not had to do.
Yes, he earns a lot (£275,000 from his weekly newspaper column alone), he has the  gift of the gab, and has hosted TV shows.
At an age when some blokes find their virility drooping, he still plainly has some lead  in his pencil, with a new  and much-younger girlfriend.
Older dingoes in public life see all this and they growl, wishing they were so blessed.
And Boris has done all this without surrendering to the low-ranking drudgery most politicians must accept in the early years.
Boris was never a junior minister. He was never a ministerial bag-carrier.
He has swanned through life breaking the rules, laughing and bonking. That INFURIATES them!
But the biggest reason of all for their hatred is that they, and the EU, fear he may succeed.
Imagine if he delivers Brexit and the economy prospers instead of nose-diving as they forecast.  Imagine if his political optimism lifts the country’s morale.
It would then be glaringly clear that our political class, with its insistent, pro- Brussels defeatism, had been completely wrong.
National success, for these snoots, would be a terrible defeat. And so they want to kill off the one man who may save us.
This former Attorney General’s campaign against Brexit will next week see him and a minority of MPs attempt to remove law-making from the elected Government... the possible upshots for our democratic system are terrifying
FOR most of his career, Dominic Grieve has enthused about democratic “rules-based” systems, insisting that legal form, minted by elected authorities under the Crown and cobwebbed  by time, was essential for political stability.
You could say he quacked on about it, for there was something duck-like about this bespectacled lawyer’s metallic-sounding voice.
Maybe his parents should have called him Donald when he first popped blinking into the light of day in 1956.
But his mother was French and Dominic sounded more Gallic. Ah, oui, Dominique. Not as British as you might think, Grieve.
Which may explain why he  is now doing such terrible damage to our national interest and to the future of our parliamentary system by trying to block Brexit. Over the two decades since he became an MP in 1997, this pukka, posh-suited, punctilious figure has been a pedantic regular in House of Commons debates.
He would crook one of his little fingers at an angle, give his neck muscles a creaky tweak and insist, with a shot of the cuffs and a shuffle of minimal notes, that ministers and officials must always comply with statute and precedent and time-honoured procedure.
When giving these lectures — they were seldom short — he would touch the rim of his glasses, give a little mallard-style cough and allow a patronising smile to inhabit his broadening bill.
He would explain that raw political instinct and passion, of the sort voiced by the Nigel Farages and Jeremy Corbyns of this world,  were not by themselves good enough in politics. He looked down on such things.
Politicians whose demagogic brio reflected the public’s molten anger? Puh-lease, how vulgar. They did not accord with Grieve’s gods of logic.
“With respect,” he would say — and it is one of the older truths of Westminster that when people say “with respect” they mean the sneery opposite — “with respect, we have to do things according to the rules, for that is the way this Parliament works and those are the sort of people we are.”
I paraphrase him but that was very much Grieve’s position. He was a creature of propriety.
He could cite legal sub-section and addendum and annex and codicil that proved, we were told, the unarguable merits of his position.
With Monsieur half-French Grieve, the ancient principles of English law were our majesty. Our mainstay!
Plenty of us clocked that Grieve was a bit of a prune, an oddball, the fogeyish son of privilege. His dad Percy, wouldn’t you know it, had also been a Tory MP of the gusset-and-sock-suspenders old school.
Percy once worked as a liaison officer for French wartime hero Charles de Gaulle, who hated the British (even though Churchill gave him shelter in London when the Germans occupied France). It was said that Old Man Grieve agreed with de Gaulle.
“The trouble with Percy  is that he likes foreigners  a great deal better than his own people,” concluded an acquaintance.
Dominic, in childhood, worshipped his father and once won a school oratory contest by making an admiring speech about de Gaulle.
Does “Dominique”, too, like continentals better than his fellow countrymen? It sure looks that way. In June 2016, in one of the greatest thumpings our elite was ever given by the people, we voted to leave the EU. Dominic Grieve, newly decorated with France’s Legion d’honneur for his political work, was horrified.
Indignant. You could even say he was ag-Grieved. And so he touched the rims of his glasses, did some ducky quacking and set to work to block Brexit.
The trouble, as has often been pointed out to him, was that the democratic vote had gone against him.
At first he said, through gritted teeth (if ducks have teeth), that he would respect the result of the referendum.
In 2017 he was re-elected as MP for prosperous Beaconsfield, Bucks,  on a Tory manifesto which said exactly that.
Every Tory MP promised to get us out of the customs union and single market.
Labour MPs also promised to honour the referendum result. What lying bastards these people are. When the new Government started to get into political difficulties, the once-principled Grieve saw his chance. He stopped saying he would respect the referendum result. He wanted us to stay in the customs union. He wanted a second referendum.
All along, it seems, his loyalties were not to a rules-based system but to the blue flag of a European Union that is now, increasingly, our rival and our deadly threat.
Most startling of all, he plotted to bypass all those rules and time-honoured procedures he used to say were so vital for our political safety.
After a secret meeting with the appallingly biased John Bercow, Grieve got that anti-Brexit Commons Speaker to chuck out centuries of accepted debating rules.
Propriety was smashed like plates at a Greek wedding. Legal advice was ignored.
This former Attorney General’s campaign against Brexit, which will next week see him and a minority of MPs attempt to remove law-making from the elected Government, took on a wild, crazed aspect.
The possible upshots for our democratic system are terrifying. When MPs stop even bothering to pretend they will honour their election promises, why should anyone vote?
Why not just seize power by force? It’s a recipe for anarchy on the streets.
At the moment, Corbyn’s Labour Party is going along with Grieve and Bercow but Corbyn will surely eventually realise that warping parliamentary rules to stop an elected Government from governing will do him no favours if he himself becomes Prime Minister.  It always takes time for the penny to drop with dozy Corbyn.
Meanwhile, we are left  with the bizarre spectacle of one-time legal details nerd Dominic Grieve going back  on everything he ever stood for, overturning ancient parliamentary conventions.
All along, it seems, his loyalties were not to a rules-based system but to the blue flag of a European Union that is now, increasingly, our rival and our deadly threat.
This former Attorney General’s campaign against Brexit will next week see him and a minority of MPs attempt to remove law-making from the elected Government... the possible upshots for our democratic system are terrifying
FOR most of his career, Dominic Grieve has enthused about democratic “rules-based” systems, insisting that legal form, minted by elected authorities under the Crown and cobwebbed  by time, was essential for political stability.
You could say he quacked on about it, for there was something duck-like about this bespectacled lawyer’s metallic-sounding voice.
Maybe his parents should have called him Donald when he first popped blinking into the light of day in 1956.
But his mother was French and Dominic sounded more Gallic. Ah, oui, Dominique. Not as British as you might think, Grieve.
Which may explain why he  is now doing such terrible damage to our national interest and to the future of our parliamentary system by trying to block Brexit. Over the two decades since he became an MP in 1997, this pukka, posh-suited, punctilious figure has been a pedantic regular in House of Commons debates.
He would crook one of his little fingers at an angle, give his neck muscles a creaky tweak and insist, with a shot of the cuffs and a shuffle of minimal notes, that ministers and officials must always comply with statute and precedent and time-honoured procedure.
When giving these lectures — they were seldom short — he would touch the rim of his glasses, give a little mallard-style cough and allow a patronising smile to inhabit his broadening bill.
He would explain that raw political instinct and passion, of the sort voiced by the Nigel Farages and Jeremy Corbyns of this world,  were not by themselves good enough in politics. He looked down on such things.
Politicians whose demagogic brio reflected the public’s molten anger? Puh-lease, how vulgar. They did not accord with Grieve’s gods of logic.
“With respect,” he would say — and it is one of the older truths of Westminster that when people say “with respect” they mean the sneery opposite — “with respect, we have to do things according to the rules, for that is the way this Parliament works and those are the sort of people we are.”
I paraphrase him but that was very much Grieve’s position. He was a creature of propriety.
He could cite legal sub-section and addendum and annex and codicil that proved, we were told, the unarguable merits of his position.
With Monsieur half-French Grieve, the ancient principles of English law were our majesty. Our mainstay!
Plenty of us clocked that Grieve was a bit of a prune, an oddball, the fogeyish son of privilege. His dad Percy, wouldn’t you know it, had also been a Tory MP of the gusset-and-sock-suspenders old school.
Percy once worked as a liaison officer for French wartime hero Charles de Gaulle, who hated the British (even though Churchill gave him shelter in London when the Germans occupied France). It was said that Old Man Grieve agreed with de Gaulle.
“The trouble with Percy  is that he likes foreigners  a great deal better than his own people,” concluded an acquaintance.
Dominic, in childhood, worshipped his father and once won a school oratory contest by making an admiring speech about de Gaulle.
Does “Dominique”, too, like continentals better than his fellow countrymen? It sure looks that way. In June 2016, in one of the greatest thumpings our elite was ever given by the people, we voted to leave the EU. Dominic Grieve, newly decorated with France’s Legion d’honneur for his political work, was horrified.
Indignant. You could even say he was ag-Grieved. And so he touched the rims of his glasses, did some ducky quacking and set to work to block Brexit.
The trouble, as has often been pointed out to him, was that the democratic vote had gone against him.
At first he said, through gritted teeth (if ducks have teeth), that he would respect the result of the referendum.
In 2017 he was re-elected as MP for prosperous Beaconsfield, Bucks,  on a Tory manifesto which said exactly that.
Every Tory MP promised to get us out of the customs union and single market.
Labour MPs also promised to honour the referendum result. What lying bastards these people are. When the new Government started to get into political difficulties, the once-principled Grieve saw his chance. He stopped saying he would respect the referendum result. He wanted us to stay in the customs union. He wanted a second referendum.
All along, it seems, his loyalties were not to a rules-based system but to the blue flag of a European Union that is now, increasingly, our rival and our deadly threat.
Most startling of all, he plotted to bypass all those rules and time-honoured procedures he used to say were so vital for our political safety.
After a secret meeting with the appallingly biased John Bercow, Grieve got that anti-Brexit Commons Speaker to chuck out centuries of accepted debating rules.
Propriety was smashed like plates at a Greek wedding. Legal advice was ignored.
This former Attorney General’s campaign against Brexit, which will next week see him and a minority of MPs attempt to remove law-making from the elected Government, took on a wild, crazed aspect.
The possible upshots for our democratic system are terrifying. When MPs stop even bothering to pretend they will honour their election promises, why should anyone vote?
Why not just seize power by force? It’s a recipe for anarchy on the streets.
At the moment, Corbyn’s Labour Party is going along with Grieve and Bercow but Corbyn will surely eventually realise that warping parliamentary rules to stop an elected Government from governing will do him no favours if he himself becomes Prime Minister.  It always takes time for the penny to drop with dozy Corbyn.
Meanwhile, we are left  with the bizarre spectacle of one-time legal details nerd Dominic Grieve going back  on everything he ever stood for, overturning ancient parliamentary conventions.
All along, it seems, his loyalties were not to a rules-based system but to the blue flag of a European Union that is now, increasingly, our rival and our deadly threat.
Brussels feel understandably insecure about the future of the federal EU project after Britain voted in favour of Brexit
SOME people are in a tizzy after Donald Tusk, president of the ­European Council, said a special ­corner of hell should be reserved for buccaneering Brexiteers.
Tusk’s remark had diplomats ­practically needing the Heimlich manoeuvre to ­dislodge Ferrero Rocher chocolates stuck in their gullets. Quick, the ambassador has had a seizure!
Had Herr President Tusk, at this most delicate of moments, really told the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to go to hell? Yes, pretty much.
I know we are supposed to take ­mortal offence. I know we are meant to fan our faces and ask Nurse to bring us something to soothe our nerves after that nasty man uttered such a frightful insult.
But I couldn’t help laughing at toothless Tusk’s tirade.
At last, a European Union bigshot has blurted out his contempt for British voters.
That’s surely preferable to all those smarmy smiles and fake phrases about “respect for each other’s values” and how we hope to work with “our European friends and partners”. Real friends don’t nick £39billion off you.
There are two things worth knowing about Donald Tusk. The first is that in his youth he was a bit of a brawler.
The ­second is that five years ago he resigned as Polish prime minister to take up his current cushy number in ­Brussels.
Born in 1957, Tusk grew up in the city of Gdansk, when Poland was a grimy ­colony of the USSR. His family had ­German roots and his dad, a carpenter, died when Donald was 14. It can’t have made for an easy youth.
Gdansk gave rise to the Solidarity trade union ­movement which protested against Iron Curtain suppression.
Tusk has recalled that in his youth he was “a typical hooligan” who would ­saunter along the streets in a gang, ­“cruising for a bruising”.
In some ways, who can blame him? They were edgy days and young men will do what young men have done since time immemorial: Defend themselves if under attack. Communism was (and remains — just ask the people of Venezuela) a ­stinking and ruinous creed.
Decent Poles bravely reasserted their national sovereignty after too many decades of being governed by ideological bureaucrats who couldn’t give a fig about the electorate.
Er, remind you of anything, Mister ­Eurocrat?
That colourful background in the Gdansk of the 1970s and 1980s made it all the odder when, in 2014, Tusk quit the premiership of his country to become an EU grand fromage.
He had been Poland’s PM for seven years and the country had done well.
Yet he chucked that in so that he could succeed shrivelling nonentity ­Herman Van Rompuy as president of the European Council.
The job is less important than it sounds. Its occupant basically acts as a collector of opinions from EU heads of government and acts as their representative at ­international shindigs.

That it was held by such a blinky-eyed vole as Van Rompuy was a measure of its significance. Yet Tusk chucked in the prime ministership of his country for it!
Brussels may offer wonderful pensions, top-trough brasseries and as many rides in the back of a BMW 7 Series as you could wish, but had Tusk gone mad?
The answer to that question is “not ­necessarily”. He saw that under EU rules, national governments are now increasingly junior to the federal superpower.
The real power in Brussels lies not with Tusk, nor even with boozy European ­Commission president Jean-Claude ­Juncker, but with the backroom officials such as Martin Selmayr and Sabine ­Weyand. Both of them, you may notice, are ­German. This shift in powers has ­happened slowly over decades and ­electorates have taken a while to notice.
But now the voters are copping on and are at last making their ­displeasure plain.
The British Leave vote was the first (but probably by no means the last) great expression of that anger.
All of which helps to explain why ­unelected EU officials have been so ­spittingly angry with the British public for voting Leave. We have busted the dam.
That is why Tusk snarled at us on Wednesday. He and his sort feel badly threatened by Brexit.
They feel understandably insecure about the future of the federal EU project.
The Tusks of this world regard the ­peoples of Europe as an inconvenience.
They were appalled with David Cameron for letting the referendum happen and they are now appalled with our MPs for not stopping Brexit.
Shortly before his “hell” remark on Wednesday, Tusk expressed his disbelief that Theresa May was insisting on ­pressing ahead with Brexit, and his ­disappointment that Remainers at ­Westminster had not succeeded in blocking our departure from the EU.
At that point I must confess I shouted something rude at the television in my office. “It’s because we had a f***ing ­referendum and we voted to leave!” I cried.
Shouting at a TV set: Uh-oh, I may have been driven as mad by Brexit as dotty Tory Europhile Anna Soubry. Tusk’s ­outburst was similar. Everyone’s losing it!
The teenage Donald Tusk — the one who used to tour the streets of Gdansk with his gang — would, I think, have ­understood. I am not recommending ­violence but politically this is certainly a time we could all do with clenching our knuckles and looking out for our interests.
Cruising for a bruising, a young lad in Gdansk might once have said.
Brussels feel understandably insecure about the future of the federal EU project after Britain voted in favour of Brexit
SOME people are in a tizzy after Donald Tusk, president of the ­European Council, said a special ­corner of hell should be reserved for buccaneering Brexiteers.
Tusk’s remark had diplomats ­practically needing the Heimlich manoeuvre to ­dislodge Ferrero Rocher chocolates stuck in their gullets. Quick, the ambassador has had a seizure!
Had Herr President Tusk, at this most delicate of moments, really told the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to go to hell? Yes, pretty much.
I know we are supposed to take ­mortal offence. I know we are meant to fan our faces and ask Nurse to bring us something to soothe our nerves after that nasty man uttered such a frightful insult.
But I couldn’t help laughing at toothless Tusk’s tirade.
At last, a European Union bigshot has blurted out his contempt for British voters.
That’s surely preferable to all those smarmy smiles and fake phrases about “respect for each other’s values” and how we hope to work with “our European friends and partners”. Real friends don’t nick £39billion off you.
There are two things worth knowing about Donald Tusk. The first is that in his youth he was a bit of a brawler.
The ­second is that five years ago he resigned as Polish prime minister to take up his current cushy number in ­Brussels.
Born in 1957, Tusk grew up in the city of Gdansk, when Poland was a grimy ­colony of the USSR. His family had ­German roots and his dad, a carpenter, died when Donald was 14. It can’t have made for an easy youth.
Gdansk gave rise to the Solidarity trade union ­movement which protested against Iron Curtain suppression.
Tusk has recalled that in his youth he was “a typical hooligan” who would ­saunter along the streets in a gang, ­“cruising for a bruising”.
In some ways, who can blame him? They were edgy days and young men will do what young men have done since time immemorial: Defend themselves if under attack. Communism was (and remains — just ask the people of Venezuela) a ­stinking and ruinous creed.
Decent Poles bravely reasserted their national sovereignty after too many decades of being governed by ideological bureaucrats who couldn’t give a fig about the electorate.
Er, remind you of anything, Mister ­Eurocrat?
That colourful background in the Gdansk of the 1970s and 1980s made it all the odder when, in 2014, Tusk quit the premiership of his country to become an EU grand fromage.
He had been Poland’s PM for seven years and the country had done well.
Yet he chucked that in so that he could succeed shrivelling nonentity ­Herman Van Rompuy as president of the European Council.
The job is less important than it sounds. Its occupant basically acts as a collector of opinions from EU heads of government and acts as their representative at ­international shindigs.

That it was held by such a blinky-eyed vole as Van Rompuy was a measure of its significance. Yet Tusk chucked in the prime ministership of his country for it!
Brussels may offer wonderful pensions, top-trough brasseries and as many rides in the back of a BMW 7 Series as you could wish, but had Tusk gone mad?
The answer to that question is “not ­necessarily”. He saw that under EU rules, national governments are now increasingly junior to the federal superpower.
The real power in Brussels lies not with Tusk, nor even with boozy European ­Commission president Jean-Claude ­Juncker, but with the backroom officials such as Martin Selmayr and Sabine ­Weyand. Both of them, you may notice, are ­German. This shift in powers has ­happened slowly over decades and ­electorates have taken a while to notice.
But now the voters are copping on and are at last making their ­displeasure plain.
The British Leave vote was the first (but probably by no means the last) great expression of that anger.
All of which helps to explain why ­unelected EU officials have been so ­spittingly angry with the British public for voting Leave. We have busted the dam.
That is why Tusk snarled at us on Wednesday. He and his sort feel badly threatened by Brexit.
They feel understandably insecure about the future of the federal EU project.
The Tusks of this world regard the ­peoples of Europe as an inconvenience.
They were appalled with David Cameron for letting the referendum happen and they are now appalled with our MPs for not stopping Brexit.
Shortly before his “hell” remark on Wednesday, Tusk expressed his disbelief that Theresa May was insisting on ­pressing ahead with Brexit, and his ­disappointment that Remainers at ­Westminster had not succeeded in blocking our departure from the EU.
At that point I must confess I shouted something rude at the television in my office. “It’s because we had a f***ing ­referendum and we voted to leave!” I cried.
Shouting at a TV set: Uh-oh, I may have been driven as mad by Brexit as dotty Tory Europhile Anna Soubry. Tusk’s ­outburst was similar. Everyone’s losing it!
The teenage Donald Tusk — the one who used to tour the streets of Gdansk with his gang — would, I think, have ­understood. I am not recommending ­violence but politically this is certainly a time we could all do with clenching our knuckles and looking out for our interests.
Cruising for a bruising, a young lad in Gdansk might once have said.
After her surrender to Brussels and Jeremy Corbyn this week, May's name will rank alongside those of the worst eels in Western history - and she deserves it
WHEN Mohandas Gandhi won independence for India in 1947 he was called the Mahatma, which means “Great Soul”.
In 1980 Lech Walesa, an electrician at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, put down his tool box and led fellow workers in overthrowing their Soviet rulers.
Walesa, now 75, is revered in Poland and throughout former Iron Curtain countries which, after his brave stand, were released from communist tyranny.
Those two heroes were loved — yes, genuinely adored — for risking their personal safety in the pursuit of liberty.
Gandhi would pay for it with his life a year later, when he was assassinated.
And yet his legend lives, for good reason.
Freedom is the most human of yearnings. We hate to be chained.
We want to control our destinies and feel the wind run through our hair.
It is an instinct understood by slaves and oppressed peoples from history’s first light.
That acclaim earned by Gandhi and Walesa will never belong to Theresa May.
Lips will curl at her very name for decades to come.
It will be spat to the floor in balls of green-gob spittle, hissed, sworn at with the sort of language we must not print in a popular newspaper.
She will be called a traitor, with plenty of adjectives attached. And she will deserve it.
This is a terrible thing to say about any person, let alone a church-going diabetic who has been our Prime Minister for two years.
I take no pleasure in levelling the charge of treachery at a Tory leader who secured 42 per cent of the vote in the 2017 General Election.
We all want our Prime ­Ministers to be honourable and to improve the lot of our land.
But after her surrender this week to Brussels and to Jeremy Corbyn, May’s name will rank alongside those of the worst eels in Western history.
In the past, when trying to describe national moral collapse, we have perhaps spoken of Quisling, Nazi Germany’s Norwegian political puppet, or Neville Chamberlain, who also appeased Hitler, or Jimmy Carter, whose inertia and incompetence on Iran was a low-point for the US ­presidency.
Theresa May’s leadership of our country will be placed alongside those shameful ­episodes.
She has wriggled. She has lied. She has concealed and dithered and caved. She is a freaking disaster.
The tragedy is that it need not have been like this.
Even on Tuesday afternoon, while she was having that ­seven-hour meeting with her Cabinet, she could have saved herself and our country.
No Deal would have served our children’s interests because we would not have had to pay £39billion to Europe and because we would have been able to forge our own way in the world
“No Deal is better than a bad deal,” May used to say about Brexit.
It was meant to make the European Commission offer us decent divorce terms.
But Brussels did not believe her because they sensed, from her clunkiness and from sly Philip Hammond’s refusal to fund No Deal preparations, that she did not mean it. She was a useless bluffer.
On Tuesday night, when May effectively ruled out a No Deal Brexit, we saw that the ­Eurocrats had her measure as accurately as a tailor has your inside leg.
All that “No Deal is better than a bad deal” stuff had merely been an inept lie.
And yet No Deal could have been brilliant.
It could have secured us our independence from a European Union that now is sucking us back into its prison.
No Deal would have served our children’s interests because we would not have had to pay £39billion to Europe and because we would have been able to forge our own way in the world.
The ensuing instability might only have lasted a few weeks, if that.
Mrs May would not consider it. She collapsed like over- watered jelly, listening to dodgy Whitehall chief Sir Mark Sedwill and his (leaked) alarmist tales about what No Deal might do to our economy.
Now Mrs May is hopping into bed — it’s a horrible image, sorry — with Anglophobe, terrorist-supporting, Russia-loving commie Corbyn.
She has asked the Labour leader to give her some ideas about how she can get her withdrawal agreement through the Commons.
The deal is already a feeble compromise but Corbyn’s pals will make it even more pathetic. Yes, lean-fingered Corbyn will have his wicked way with May much as he once did with Diane Abbott.
Any Brexit will now likely be so weak that we will not even have control of our own trade policy.
We will have to do what we are told and send our money to Brussels. We will be ­shackled ­captives.
Remember the TV slave drama Roots? Well, Theresa May has made a right Kunta Kinte of herself — and, damn it, the rest of us.
Few in public life have come out of this disgusting saga with credit.
The broadcast media, and, sadly, some newspapers have been blinkered cheerleaders for our European gang- masters.
Those who spoke up for our kingdom’s independence were attacked as “extremists”.
Is it really “extreme” to want to have a say over how you are taxed and governed?
Senior figures in the law, the arts, charities and big business have spouted EU ­propaganda.
Worst of all has been our parliament, where Remainer MPs and peers and a blatantly biased Speaker have actively sought to block the ­referendum verdict of 17.4million voters — a verdict they had repeatedly promised to respect.
As for the most ardent Brexiteers at Westminster, they became so doped up on publicity, so daftly entrenched in their enmity to common sense, that they failed to grab our best chance of escaping the EU.
What morons. Hoofed the ball into their own net.
Same with the Democratic Unionists, whose intransigence now looks like making sure that our next Prime Minister is a man with a soft spot for the IRA.
The stuff of nightmares? If only it were merely a dream.
After her surrender to Brussels and Jeremy Corbyn this week, May's name will rank alongside those of the worst eels in Western history - and she deserves it
WHEN Mohandas Gandhi won independence for India in 1947 he was called the Mahatma, which means “Great Soul”.
In 1980 Lech Walesa, an electrician at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk, put down his tool box and led fellow workers in overthrowing their Soviet rulers.
Walesa, now 75, is revered in Poland and throughout former Iron Curtain countries which, after his brave stand, were released from communist tyranny.
Those two heroes were loved — yes, genuinely adored — for risking their personal safety in the pursuit of liberty.
Gandhi would pay for it with his life a year later, when he was assassinated.
And yet his legend lives, for good reason.
Freedom is the most human of yearnings. We hate to be chained.
We want to control our destinies and feel the wind run through our hair.
It is an instinct understood by slaves and oppressed peoples from history’s first light.
That acclaim earned by Gandhi and Walesa will never belong to Theresa May.
Lips will curl at her very name for decades to come.
It will be spat to the floor in balls of green-gob spittle, hissed, sworn at with the sort of language we must not print in a popular newspaper.
She will be called a traitor, with plenty of adjectives attached. And she will deserve it.
This is a terrible thing to say about any person, let alone a church-going diabetic who has been our Prime Minister for two years.
I take no pleasure in levelling the charge of treachery at a Tory leader who secured 42 per cent of the vote in the 2017 General Election.
We all want our Prime ­Ministers to be honourable and to improve the lot of our land.
But after her surrender this week to Brussels and to Jeremy Corbyn, May’s name will rank alongside those of the worst eels in Western history.
In the past, when trying to describe national moral collapse, we have perhaps spoken of Quisling, Nazi Germany’s Norwegian political puppet, or Neville Chamberlain, who also appeased Hitler, or Jimmy Carter, whose inertia and incompetence on Iran was a low-point for the US ­presidency.
Theresa May’s leadership of our country will be placed alongside those shameful ­episodes.
She has wriggled. She has lied. She has concealed and dithered and caved. She is a freaking disaster.
The tragedy is that it need not have been like this.
Even on Tuesday afternoon, while she was having that ­seven-hour meeting with her Cabinet, she could have saved herself and our country.
No Deal would have served our children’s interests because we would not have had to pay £39billion to Europe and because we would have been able to forge our own way in the world
“No Deal is better than a bad deal,” May used to say about Brexit.
It was meant to make the European Commission offer us decent divorce terms.
But Brussels did not believe her because they sensed, from her clunkiness and from sly Philip Hammond’s refusal to fund No Deal preparations, that she did not mean it. She was a useless bluffer.
On Tuesday night, when May effectively ruled out a No Deal Brexit, we saw that the ­Eurocrats had her measure as accurately as a tailor has your inside leg.
All that “No Deal is better than a bad deal” stuff had merely been an inept lie.
And yet No Deal could have been brilliant.
It could have secured us our independence from a European Union that now is sucking us back into its prison.
No Deal would have served our children’s interests because we would not have had to pay £39billion to Europe and because we would have been able to forge our own way in the world.
The ensuing instability might only have lasted a few weeks, if that.
Mrs May would not consider it. She collapsed like over- watered jelly, listening to dodgy Whitehall chief Sir Mark Sedwill and his (leaked) alarmist tales about what No Deal might do to our economy.
Now Mrs May is hopping into bed — it’s a horrible image, sorry — with Anglophobe, terrorist-supporting, Russia-loving commie Corbyn.
She has asked the Labour leader to give her some ideas about how she can get her withdrawal agreement through the Commons.
The deal is already a feeble compromise but Corbyn’s pals will make it even more pathetic. Yes, lean-fingered Corbyn will have his wicked way with May much as he once did with Diane Abbott.
Any Brexit will now likely be so weak that we will not even have control of our own trade policy.
We will have to do what we are told and send our money to Brussels. We will be ­shackled ­captives.
Remember the TV slave drama Roots? Well, Theresa May has made a right Kunta Kinte of herself — and, damn it, the rest of us.
Few in public life have come out of this disgusting saga with credit.
The broadcast media, and, sadly, some newspapers have been blinkered cheerleaders for our European gang- masters.
Those who spoke up for our kingdom’s independence were attacked as “extremists”.
Is it really “extreme” to want to have a say over how you are taxed and governed?
Senior figures in the law, the arts, charities and big business have spouted EU ­propaganda.
Worst of all has been our parliament, where Remainer MPs and peers and a blatantly biased Speaker have actively sought to block the ­referendum verdict of 17.4million voters — a verdict they had repeatedly promised to respect.
As for the most ardent Brexiteers at Westminster, they became so doped up on publicity, so daftly entrenched in their enmity to common sense, that they failed to grab our best chance of escaping the EU.
What morons. Hoofed the ball into their own net.
Same with the Democratic Unionists, whose intransigence now looks like making sure that our next Prime Minister is a man with a soft spot for the IRA.
The stuff of nightmares? If only it were merely a dream.
MPs are refusing to obey the clear instructions given from British voters: get us out of the EU
SEEING Big Ben used to give me a tremendous jolt of patriotism.
That mighty tower with its clock-face and booming bell was an embodiment of Britishness.
Hearing its chimes made me tingle with pride.
This was Parliament Square in London, capital of a settled kingdom dutifully governed in the name of a sovereign ­people.
Other countries had goose-stepping military parades or flag-waving national days.
We British had soggy sandwiches, the Queen with her corgis, and good old Big Ben. But no longer.
In recent months Big Ben has stood silent. Officially, it has been muted for repairs but you could not be blamed for wondering if there was a different reason.
Has this most resonant symbol of parliamentary democracy been gagged — had its clacker nicked — while our appalling, promise-shredding, treasonous politicians plot to overturn the 2016 referendum’s whacking vote to leave the European Union?
Almost three years ago the voters gave MPs a clear instruction: Get us out of the EU. Unbelievably, the MPs are refusing to obey.
Whatever tricksy waffle they spout, be in no doubt about this. The parliamentary class is telling voters to get stuffed.
The last 36 hours have seen British politics sink to a new, squalid, guttering low.
In clear daylight the express will of the people is being violated.
Democratic honesty is being casually abandoned by a knot of pro-Brussels obsessives who think they can do whatever they like. And they suppose we won’t notice!
Cabinet ministers yesterday tarted their Remainer consciences like dollybirds flashing their bits on Blackpool beach.
Led by Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, they threatened to resign if Theresa May did not do their bidding and delay our departure date from Europe.
Oooh, look at us, their blatant behaviour said. Look at our importance and our Europhile goodness. All this while they accused pro-Brexit MPs of being “extremists”.
Is it really extremist to respect the biggest vote in British history?
In any normal circumstances, a Prime Minister would have turned to Rudd and her fellow drama queens Greg Clark and David Gauke and said: “OK, resign. If you won’t support the Government, you can kiss goodbye to your six-figure salary, your free limos and all the other perks.”
But Mrs May, pitiably weak, tolerated their rebellion and trotted off to the Commons to accept Brexit may be delayed.
It wasn’t just Rudd, non- entity Gauke and Clark, a former SDP supporter who has resented the Leave vote from day one.
A trio of lower-ranking ministerial numpties put their names to a newspaper article saying they would quit unless Mrs May obeyed their pro-EU agenda.
These connivers included an insufferably moist specimen called Richard Harrington, who is barely a familiar name in his Watford constituency let alone in national politics.
Even a premier as puny as Mrs May should have had the backbone to tell Harrington to fetch his coat. But no. He was allowed to keep his job.
May is as weak as a woodwormed deckchair. Under Europhile pressure — rrrrrrrrip — she collapses.
Things are just as bad in the Labour party, where ­Jeremy Corbyn has casually scrapped his 2017 manifesto promise to respect the result of the EU referendum.
Now he says he wants a second referendum. You thought the one thing loonytunes Corbyn had going for him was that he said what he believed?
Think again. The guy is as untrustworthy as Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson.
A manifesto should matter. It should be a solemn undertaking to the voters about what politicians will do.
But Corbyn, supposed beardie prophet of ethics, now snootily thinks we voted the wrong way in the referendum and must capitulate to the European empire, ditching the national independence 17.4million voters demanded.
Why the hell are these people in politics if they think so little of the voters (many of them Labour supporters) who opted for Leave?
How dare they call themselves democrats?
Theirs is the behaviour of a tyrannous clique whose “delay” to our departure helps only their fellow technocrats in the European Commission.
And that’s what it’s all about. They feel a greater kinship with their fellow elitists on the Continent than they do with working-class British voters.
The likes of Greg Clark and Amber Rudd and their slippery pal Philip Hammond looked smug yesterday when Mrs May announced the possibility of a delay to Brexit.
For them, it’s a game, a ploy, a bid to show that they — and not the unwashed electorate — run the show.
Can they not see the dangers? Respect for Westminster, already whacked by the expenses scandal, will take another terrible hit. People will look at the wriggling and the grand- standing and the lies and procrastinating blether of the last day and a half and will conclude that our Parliament is now a place that scorns its electors.
Some of you may have greater faith.
Some of you may say: “Brexit will prevail in the end”, albeit in diluted form.
But even if that is true, what are we to think in future of the House of Commons?
Things have reached the stage, I am truly sorry to say, that I now find I hate the very sight of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster.
It is no longer, for me, the proud cockpit of our national life.
It has become a nest of aggressive, desperate elitists prepared to do anything to save their greasy grasp on public opinion.
They lie. Deceive. Betray. Dissemble. They can delay Brexit if they want but there will be no rebuilding the country’s trust. Not for years.
MPs are refusing to obey the clear instructions given from British voters: get us out of the EU
SEEING Big Ben used to give me a tremendous jolt of patriotism.
That mighty tower with its clock-face and booming bell was an embodiment of Britishness.
Hearing its chimes made me tingle with pride.
This was Parliament Square in London, capital of a settled kingdom dutifully governed in the name of a sovereign ­people.
Other countries had goose-stepping military parades or flag-waving national days.
We British had soggy sandwiches, the Queen with her corgis, and good old Big Ben. But no longer.
In recent months Big Ben has stood silent. Officially, it has been muted for repairs but you could not be blamed for wondering if there was a different reason.
Has this most resonant symbol of parliamentary democracy been gagged — had its clacker nicked — while our appalling, promise-shredding, treasonous politicians plot to overturn the 2016 referendum’s whacking vote to leave the European Union?
Almost three years ago the voters gave MPs a clear instruction: Get us out of the EU. Unbelievably, the MPs are refusing to obey.
Whatever tricksy waffle they spout, be in no doubt about this. The parliamentary class is telling voters to get stuffed.
The last 36 hours have seen British politics sink to a new, squalid, guttering low.
In clear daylight the express will of the people is being violated.
Democratic honesty is being casually abandoned by a knot of pro-Brussels obsessives who think they can do whatever they like. And they suppose we won’t notice!
Cabinet ministers yesterday tarted their Remainer consciences like dollybirds flashing their bits on Blackpool beach.
Led by Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, they threatened to resign if Theresa May did not do their bidding and delay our departure date from Europe.
Oooh, look at us, their blatant behaviour said. Look at our importance and our Europhile goodness. All this while they accused pro-Brexit MPs of being “extremists”.
Is it really extremist to respect the biggest vote in British history?
In any normal circumstances, a Prime Minister would have turned to Rudd and her fellow drama queens Greg Clark and David Gauke and said: “OK, resign. If you won’t support the Government, you can kiss goodbye to your six-figure salary, your free limos and all the other perks.”
But Mrs May, pitiably weak, tolerated their rebellion and trotted off to the Commons to accept Brexit may be delayed.
It wasn’t just Rudd, non- entity Gauke and Clark, a former SDP supporter who has resented the Leave vote from day one.
A trio of lower-ranking ministerial numpties put their names to a newspaper article saying they would quit unless Mrs May obeyed their pro-EU agenda.
These connivers included an insufferably moist specimen called Richard Harrington, who is barely a familiar name in his Watford constituency let alone in national politics.
Even a premier as puny as Mrs May should have had the backbone to tell Harrington to fetch his coat. But no. He was allowed to keep his job.
May is as weak as a woodwormed deckchair. Under Europhile pressure — rrrrrrrrip — she collapses.
Things are just as bad in the Labour party, where ­Jeremy Corbyn has casually scrapped his 2017 manifesto promise to respect the result of the EU referendum.
Now he says he wants a second referendum. You thought the one thing loonytunes Corbyn had going for him was that he said what he believed?
Think again. The guy is as untrustworthy as Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson.
A manifesto should matter. It should be a solemn undertaking to the voters about what politicians will do.
But Corbyn, supposed beardie prophet of ethics, now snootily thinks we voted the wrong way in the referendum and must capitulate to the European empire, ditching the national independence 17.4million voters demanded.
Why the hell are these people in politics if they think so little of the voters (many of them Labour supporters) who opted for Leave?
How dare they call themselves democrats?
Theirs is the behaviour of a tyrannous clique whose “delay” to our departure helps only their fellow technocrats in the European Commission.
And that’s what it’s all about. They feel a greater kinship with their fellow elitists on the Continent than they do with working-class British voters.
The likes of Greg Clark and Amber Rudd and their slippery pal Philip Hammond looked smug yesterday when Mrs May announced the possibility of a delay to Brexit.
For them, it’s a game, a ploy, a bid to show that they — and not the unwashed electorate — run the show.
Can they not see the dangers? Respect for Westminster, already whacked by the expenses scandal, will take another terrible hit. People will look at the wriggling and the grand- standing and the lies and procrastinating blether of the last day and a half and will conclude that our Parliament is now a place that scorns its electors.
Some of you may have greater faith.
Some of you may say: “Brexit will prevail in the end”, albeit in diluted form.
But even if that is true, what are we to think in future of the House of Commons?
Things have reached the stage, I am truly sorry to say, that I now find I hate the very sight of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster.
It is no longer, for me, the proud cockpit of our national life.
It has become a nest of aggressive, desperate elitists prepared to do anything to save their greasy grasp on public opinion.
They lie. Deceive. Betray. Dissemble. They can delay Brexit if they want but there will be no rebuilding the country’s trust. Not for years.
Dominic Raab has formally written to Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer demanding the Labour party clarifies it's position of a second referendum
LABOUR was accused of trying to take Britain “back to square one” by delaying Brexit in a blistering attack by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab.
The Cabinet Minister formally wrote to Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer to demanded Labour “clarify” its position over a second Referendum.
He said that a string of remarks from senior figures gave the impression that Labour wanted to suspend negotiations with the EU altogether.
It came as it emerged 125 constituency Labour parties (CLPs) – one in five – were backing calls for a so-called People’s Vote.
The huge support means a debate on a second Referendum is almost certain to take place at Labour party conference next week.
Momentum – the hard-left ‘Corbynista’ campaign group – separately said it would not use its power to block a debate on Brexit from taking place.
In his letter, Mr Raab stormed: “More than two years on from the referendum the vast majority of British people will see that instead of trying to make Brexit a success, Labour are only interested in trying to frustrate the process.
“It’s vital that the British people have clarity and honesty from their elected representatives.”
Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan at the weekend suggested “deferring” Brexit in order to hold a second Referendum.
Mr Raab said the remarks followed comments from Sir Keir, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn himself leaving the door open to another vote.
Labour accused Mr Raab of “wasting time” and demanding he get on with the job of negotiating for Britain.
A senior source added: “Labour respects the result of the referendum and is not calling for a second Referendum.”
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell earlier this week said the option of a second Referendum was “on the table”.
Dominic Raab has formally written to Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer demanding the Labour party clarifies it's position of a second referendum
LABOUR was accused of trying to take Britain “back to square one” by delaying Brexit in a blistering attack by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab.
The Cabinet Minister formally wrote to Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer to demanded Labour “clarify” its position over a second Referendum.
He said that a string of remarks from senior figures gave the impression that Labour wanted to suspend negotiations with the EU altogether.
It came as it emerged 125 constituency Labour parties (CLPs) – one in five – were backing calls for a so-called People’s Vote.
The huge support means a debate on a second Referendum is almost certain to take place at Labour party conference next week.
Momentum – the hard-left ‘Corbynista’ campaign group – separately said it would not use its power to block a debate on Brexit from taking place.
In his letter, Mr Raab stormed: “More than two years on from the referendum the vast majority of British people will see that instead of trying to make Brexit a success, Labour are only interested in trying to frustrate the process.
“It’s vital that the British people have clarity and honesty from their elected representatives.”
Labour’s London Mayor Sadiq Khan at the weekend suggested “deferring” Brexit in order to hold a second Referendum.
Mr Raab said the remarks followed comments from Sir Keir, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn himself leaving the door open to another vote.
Labour accused Mr Raab of “wasting time” and demanding he get on with the job of negotiating for Britain.
A senior source added: “Labour respects the result of the referendum and is not calling for a second Referendum.”
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell earlier this week said the option of a second Referendum was “on the table”.
Former Brexit Secretary says Theresa May's deal keeps us tied to the EU's rules on trade and employment without having a say over them and no escape plan.
AFTER months of negotiation, the UK and EU have settled the terms of a Brexit deal.
Despite the unquestionable stamina of our Prime Minister, it is a bad deal for the country and Parliament should reject it.
In settling our accounts and paving the way for a future trade agreement, the UK government offered the EU £39 billion. The British people will rightly expect a good return on that money.
Yet, when it comes to taking back democratic control over our laws, the final terms are worse than membership of the EU.
We would still be bound indefinitely by EU-imposed rules on customs, trade, employment, social policy and tax – with no say over those rules, and no ability to exit the regime.
The government rightly resisted pressure to accept Free Movement of people from EU countries, to allow us to regain control over our immigration policy.
But, the current deal leaves it open for the EU to refuse a permanent trade deal unless we cave in during the second phase of negotiations, after March.
As for the dream of a global Britain trading more energetically from Asia to Latin America, the EU has tied our hands, hobbling those ambitions.
This suffocates one of the great opportunities of Brexit – to use free trade to create better paid jobs, and cut prices in the shops to ease the cost of living for working Britons.
Much has been made of the Northern Ireland Protocol. No-one wants to see a return to the hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
But, with smart deployment of technology and goodwill on all sides, that could easily be avoided.
Instead, the EU’s real game is to try to prise Northern Ireland away from Great Britain, aligning its laws with the EU – a direct threat to the integrity of the UK.
Scenting weakness, the EU is now threatening to exclude Gibraltar from a future trade deal.
We are being blackmailed and bullied into a flawed deal. The EU has used the negotiations to stifle the opportunities and optimism that fired people up to vote Leave in 2016.
In truth, there are risks in any course of action we take now. But, by far the gravest is to succumb to the EU’s terms, stay tethered to Brussels, and accept a deal that prevents us from becoming masters of our own destiny.
Over the long term, that would drain the strength of our economy, when Brexit should be a boost for workers and consumers. And those who voted Leave would feel cheated, shredding trust in our democracy.
Of course, the EU were never going to welcome Brexit. Some sour grapes were inevitable. That’s why we worked hard to leave on positive terms, extending the arm of friendship.
In return, the EU has taken every concession and gesture of goodwill as a chance to try to bully and control us – at times treating our Prime Minister, and our country, with outright disdain.
We need to be honest about the situation: there are risks in a No Deal scenario.
But, they can be mitigated and managed by the government - if it exercises grip and demonstrates political will. So, let us steel ourselves, and reject this miserly deal.
We should make our best final offer to Brussels, then ready ourselves to leave the EU on 29 March - whatever their response.That way, we can deliver on the verdict of the people, and grasp the opportunities of Brexit. It is time to stand tall in the world, not tremble at the EU’s feet.
Dominic Raab is the MP for Esher & Walton.
Former Brexit Secretary says Theresa May's deal keeps us tied to the EU's rules on trade and employment without having a say over them and no escape plan.
AFTER months of negotiation, the UK and EU have settled the terms of a Brexit deal.
Despite the unquestionable stamina of our Prime Minister, it is a bad deal for the country and Parliament should reject it.
In settling our accounts and paving the way for a future trade agreement, the UK government offered the EU £39 billion. The British people will rightly expect a good return on that money.
Yet, when it comes to taking back democratic control over our laws, the final terms are worse than membership of the EU.
We would still be bound indefinitely by EU-imposed rules on customs, trade, employment, social policy and tax – with no say over those rules, and no ability to exit the regime.
The government rightly resisted pressure to accept Free Movement of people from EU countries, to allow us to regain control over our immigration policy.
But, the current deal leaves it open for the EU to refuse a permanent trade deal unless we cave in during the second phase of negotiations, after March.
As for the dream of a global Britain trading more energetically from Asia to Latin America, the EU has tied our hands, hobbling those ambitions.
This suffocates one of the great opportunities of Brexit – to use free trade to create better paid jobs, and cut prices in the shops to ease the cost of living for working Britons.
Much has been made of the Northern Ireland Protocol. No-one wants to see a return to the hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
But, with smart deployment of technology and goodwill on all sides, that could easily be avoided.
Instead, the EU’s real game is to try to prise Northern Ireland away from Great Britain, aligning its laws with the EU – a direct threat to the integrity of the UK.
Scenting weakness, the EU is now threatening to exclude Gibraltar from a future trade deal.
We are being blackmailed and bullied into a flawed deal. The EU has used the negotiations to stifle the opportunities and optimism that fired people up to vote Leave in 2016.
In truth, there are risks in any course of action we take now. But, by far the gravest is to succumb to the EU’s terms, stay tethered to Brussels, and accept a deal that prevents us from becoming masters of our own destiny.
Over the long term, that would drain the strength of our economy, when Brexit should be a boost for workers and consumers. And those who voted Leave would feel cheated, shredding trust in our democracy.
Of course, the EU were never going to welcome Brexit. Some sour grapes were inevitable. That’s why we worked hard to leave on positive terms, extending the arm of friendship.
In return, the EU has taken every concession and gesture of goodwill as a chance to try to bully and control us – at times treating our Prime Minister, and our country, with outright disdain.
We need to be honest about the situation: there are risks in a No Deal scenario.
But, they can be mitigated and managed by the government - if it exercises grip and demonstrates political will. So, let us steel ourselves, and reject this miserly deal.
We should make our best final offer to Brussels, then ready ourselves to leave the EU on 29 March - whatever their response.That way, we can deliver on the verdict of the people, and grasp the opportunities of Brexit. It is time to stand tall in the world, not tremble at the EU’s feet.
Dominic Raab is the MP for Esher & Walton.
BORIS Johnson is braced for “the mother of all battles” with Remainer MPs - to stop a secret plot to block Brexit forever.
The PM believes the “rabble alliance” is drawing up emergency laws to overturn the referendum result or ask the courts to do it for them.
But he has told aides the “zombie” Parliament is broken and will be unable to agree anything but a further delay.
Defiant Mr Johnson will spell out his determination to leave - deal or no deal - on October 31 when he meets EU chiefs in Luxembourg on Monday.
He will accuse Brexit-wrecking MPs of “peddling a myth” that he has no intention of striking a deal and will insist he is “straining” to clinch one.
The PM is expected to tell European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker: “Don’t be fooled by Corbyn and the ringleaders.
“On the one hand they say I don’t want a deal. On the other, they want to force me to extend. Both are wrong. I am straining to get a deal, but I will also end the uncertainty and take us out on October 31.”
Mr Johnson and his Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay will meet Mr Juncker and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier with just 45 days left until the deadline.
Over a lunch of snails, salmon and cheese, he will warn he will not seek, negotiate nor accept a further delay.
He will warn them bluntly: “There should be no doubt about my determination to take us out on October 31.
“I will not ask for an extension. I absolutely believe that our friends in Europe want an orderly exit so now is the time for serious talks.”
Mr Johnson aims to give the EU a wake-up call and demonstrate they must reach a deal fast to secure an orderly exit.
The PM is prepared for crazy action by Labour MPs and “kamikaze” Tories when he defies their “Surrender Act” forcing him to seek a delay.
He believes their next step after he refuses to seek a further extension will be the “nuclear option” of revoking Article 50 – and killing Brexit stone dead.
Such a move would prove widely-held suspicions that their constant dither and delay was an excuse to keep Britain locked in the EU for ever.
It sets the scene for a dramatic High Noon climax to the most turbulent and unpredictable period in modern political history.
Polls show that 30 per cent of the country want to stop Brexit but more than 52 per cent think the 2016 referendum result must be honoured.
A Downing Street source said: “We expect there to be a major court battle after October 19 and attempts to pass legislation revoking Article 50, which the Prime Minister will refuse to consider in any circumstances.
“Conservative MPs who want another delay don’t understand that this would probably destroy the party and put Corbyn into No10.”
Our Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, has been travelling between European capitals negotiating to get us the deal we’ve been working for since Boris became Prime Minister.
We’ve been making real progress. The chances of getting a deal are rising. That’s because EU leaders can see we want a deal. And they can see that if we don’t get a deal, we’re ready to leave without one.
We will be leaving the EU on October 31 whatever the circumstances. No ifs, no buts. We must respect the referendum result. We would prefer to leave with a deal and we are working in an energetic and determined way to get one.
The Prime Minister will go to the crucial EU summit on October 17 and strive to get an agreement in the national interest.
Meanwhile, Corbyn and Labour MPs are undermining our chances of leaving – with or without a deal. Their Brexit position changes by the week. Last week, Richard Burgon, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, explained to a baffled interviewer on BBC News that in Government, Labour would renegotiate a Brexit deal only to campaign against it in a second referendum.
And last Thursday, Labour’s shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, confirmed that she too would campaign against any Brexit deal her party was able to come up with. Confronted with the blatant contradiction between this and her party’s manifesto commitment to respect the referendum result, she simply nodded along. This doesn’t escape the public’s attention - they spot the duplicity.
This is the same Emily Thornberry, by the way, who last year said that overturning the result would effectively be telling voters ‘we think you’re wrong, you made the wrong decision, we’re going to do something else.’
Corbyn and his democracy-denying friends have now forced through a law that would force us to beg the EU for a delay - frustrating 17.4 million Brexit voters.
And Corbyn has form when it comes to breaking his promises. Having campaigned on a promise to write-off student debt, he subsequently said he didn’t mean it. Having pledged to respect the referendum result he now wants to overturn it. And despite having called for a general election at least 35 times since 2017, he decided against it when given the opportunity to have one.
This means more delay and more uncertainty for our economy, which means peoples’ priorities would be ignored – priorities like the NHS, police and schools - the areas the PM is delivering on.
We must give people an opportunity to tell the political establishment one last time: we had a referendum, you promised to act, now get this done.
That’s why we are making the necessary preparations to be ready to fight an election and win it - putting Conservative HQ on a war footing, and ensuring our staff in the field are ready to fight the ground campaign that will come - despite Corbyn’s best efforts to hide from voters.
Sun on Sunday readers will remember that Corbyn ran away. That he tried to stop an election happening. That he’s trying to stop Brexit – and without letting voters judge his actions at the ballot box.
But an election will come, and voters will remember. And while he runs, we’ll continue working to get a deal and deliver on the referendum result.
BORIS Johnson is braced for “the mother of all battles” with Remainer MPs - to stop a secret plot to block Brexit forever.
The PM believes the “rabble alliance” is drawing up emergency laws to overturn the referendum result or ask the courts to do it for them.
But he has told aides the “zombie” Parliament is broken and will be unable to agree anything but a further delay.
Defiant Mr Johnson will spell out his determination to leave - deal or no deal - on October 31 when he meets EU chiefs in Luxembourg on Monday.
He will accuse Brexit-wrecking MPs of “peddling a myth” that he has no intention of striking a deal and will insist he is “straining” to clinch one.
The PM is expected to tell European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker: “Don’t be fooled by Corbyn and the ringleaders.
“On the one hand they say I don’t want a deal. On the other, they want to force me to extend. Both are wrong. I am straining to get a deal, but I will also end the uncertainty and take us out on October 31.”
Mr Johnson and his Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay will meet Mr Juncker and the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier with just 45 days left until the deadline.
Over a lunch of snails, salmon and cheese, he will warn he will not seek, negotiate nor accept a further delay.
He will warn them bluntly: “There should be no doubt about my determination to take us out on October 31.
“I will not ask for an extension. I absolutely believe that our friends in Europe want an orderly exit so now is the time for serious talks.”
Mr Johnson aims to give the EU a wake-up call and demonstrate they must reach a deal fast to secure an orderly exit.
The PM is prepared for crazy action by Labour MPs and “kamikaze” Tories when he defies their “Surrender Act” forcing him to seek a delay.
He believes their next step after he refuses to seek a further extension will be the “nuclear option” of revoking Article 50 – and killing Brexit stone dead.
Such a move would prove widely-held suspicions that their constant dither and delay was an excuse to keep Britain locked in the EU for ever.
It sets the scene for a dramatic High Noon climax to the most turbulent and unpredictable period in modern political history.
Polls show that 30 per cent of the country want to stop Brexit but more than 52 per cent think the 2016 referendum result must be honoured.
A Downing Street source said: “We expect there to be a major court battle after October 19 and attempts to pass legislation revoking Article 50, which the Prime Minister will refuse to consider in any circumstances.
“Conservative MPs who want another delay don’t understand that this would probably destroy the party and put Corbyn into No10.”
Our Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, has been travelling between European capitals negotiating to get us the deal we’ve been working for since Boris became Prime Minister.
We’ve been making real progress. The chances of getting a deal are rising. That’s because EU leaders can see we want a deal. And they can see that if we don’t get a deal, we’re ready to leave without one.
We will be leaving the EU on October 31 whatever the circumstances. No ifs, no buts. We must respect the referendum result. We would prefer to leave with a deal and we are working in an energetic and determined way to get one.
The Prime Minister will go to the crucial EU summit on October 17 and strive to get an agreement in the national interest.
Meanwhile, Corbyn and Labour MPs are undermining our chances of leaving – with or without a deal. Their Brexit position changes by the week. Last week, Richard Burgon, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, explained to a baffled interviewer on BBC News that in Government, Labour would renegotiate a Brexit deal only to campaign against it in a second referendum.
And last Thursday, Labour’s shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, confirmed that she too would campaign against any Brexit deal her party was able to come up with. Confronted with the blatant contradiction between this and her party’s manifesto commitment to respect the referendum result, she simply nodded along. This doesn’t escape the public’s attention - they spot the duplicity.
This is the same Emily Thornberry, by the way, who last year said that overturning the result would effectively be telling voters ‘we think you’re wrong, you made the wrong decision, we’re going to do something else.’
Corbyn and his democracy-denying friends have now forced through a law that would force us to beg the EU for a delay - frustrating 17.4 million Brexit voters.
And Corbyn has form when it comes to breaking his promises. Having campaigned on a promise to write-off student debt, he subsequently said he didn’t mean it. Having pledged to respect the referendum result he now wants to overturn it. And despite having called for a general election at least 35 times since 2017, he decided against it when given the opportunity to have one.
This means more delay and more uncertainty for our economy, which means peoples’ priorities would be ignored – priorities like the NHS, police and schools - the areas the PM is delivering on.
We must give people an opportunity to tell the political establishment one last time: we had a referendum, you promised to act, now get this done.
That’s why we are making the necessary preparations to be ready to fight an election and win it - putting Conservative HQ on a war footing, and ensuring our staff in the field are ready to fight the ground campaign that will come - despite Corbyn’s best efforts to hide from voters.
Sun on Sunday readers will remember that Corbyn ran away. That he tried to stop an election happening. That he’s trying to stop Brexit – and without letting voters judge his actions at the ballot box.
But an election will come, and voters will remember. And while he runs, we’ll continue working to get a deal and deliver on the referendum result.
Britain is prepared for a No Deal Brexit and cabinet ministers are already bidding for shares of a £2billion budget set aside by the Chancellor
PHILIP Hammond will open his chequebook this week to prevent border disorder in a ‘no deal’ Brexit outcome, we can reveal.
The Chancellor is poised to give the Home Office up to £500million to help stop chaos if Britain leaves the EU without an agreement.
Cabinet Ministers have been bidding for a share of £2billion of funding to be doled out across Whitehall as preparations are stepped up.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid will be given around a quarter of the new cash for projects including manning the borders over security and trade issues.
A cross-government Border Delivery Group will be given an additional £25 million to improve IT systems and customs checks.
A total of £4.2billion has been earmarked so far for EU exit preparations. Ministers have already spent £530million from £1.5billion allocated for 2018/19.
Senior Tories will urge Theresa May to make No Deal planning a priority on Tuesday with just over 100 days to go until the UK leaves the EU in March next year.
Javid, Treasury number two Liz Truss, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom and International Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt will make the demand.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove will be given around £400million to spend across this round for 2019/20.
Cash will be spent on projects including protecting our fisheries and allowing for crucial chemicals to be imported from the EU to ensure clean drinking water.
Beneficiaries will also includ International Trade Secretary Liam Fox who will be given more than £100 million which will help recruit more trade negotiators around the world.
The UK is currently by law due to leave the EU on March 29 next year if a withdrawal agreement isn’t passed by Parliament.
Mr Hammond also revealed earlier this month that extra cash will be handed out to deal with “civil contingency costs” if no agreement is reached.
Money will also be directed towards transport, healthcare, energy, law enforcement and security as No Deal planning is ramped up.
UP to 750,000 jobs would be put at risk by No Deal, a study reveals.
About 1,700 would be thrown out of work in Theresa May’s constituency in Maidenhead, Berks.
And 950 jobs would go in North East Somerset, where Brexit champion Jacob Rees-Mogg is MP.
Labour’s Jo Stevens said the research, from UK Trade Policy Observatory, shows a hard Brexit would be a “jobs destroyer”.
She added: “It would leave communities starved of work.”
Britain is prepared for a No Deal Brexit and cabinet ministers are already bidding for shares of a £2billion budget set aside by the Chancellor
PHILIP Hammond will open his chequebook this week to prevent border disorder in a ‘no deal’ Brexit outcome, we can reveal.
The Chancellor is poised to give the Home Office up to £500million to help stop chaos if Britain leaves the EU without an agreement.
Cabinet Ministers have been bidding for a share of £2billion of funding to be doled out across Whitehall as preparations are stepped up.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid will be given around a quarter of the new cash for projects including manning the borders over security and trade issues.
A cross-government Border Delivery Group will be given an additional £25 million to improve IT systems and customs checks.
A total of £4.2billion has been earmarked so far for EU exit preparations. Ministers have already spent £530million from £1.5billion allocated for 2018/19.
Senior Tories will urge Theresa May to make No Deal planning a priority on Tuesday with just over 100 days to go until the UK leaves the EU in March next year.
Javid, Treasury number two Liz Truss, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom and International Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt will make the demand.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove will be given around £400million to spend across this round for 2019/20.
Cash will be spent on projects including protecting our fisheries and allowing for crucial chemicals to be imported from the EU to ensure clean drinking water.
Beneficiaries will also includ International Trade Secretary Liam Fox who will be given more than £100 million which will help recruit more trade negotiators around the world.
The UK is currently by law due to leave the EU on March 29 next year if a withdrawal agreement isn’t passed by Parliament.
Mr Hammond also revealed earlier this month that extra cash will be handed out to deal with “civil contingency costs” if no agreement is reached.
Money will also be directed towards transport, healthcare, energy, law enforcement and security as No Deal planning is ramped up.
UP to 750,000 jobs would be put at risk by No Deal, a study reveals.
About 1,700 would be thrown out of work in Theresa May’s constituency in Maidenhead, Berks.
And 950 jobs would go in North East Somerset, where Brexit champion Jacob Rees-Mogg is MP.
Labour’s Jo Stevens said the research, from UK Trade Policy Observatory, shows a hard Brexit would be a “jobs destroyer”.
She added: “It would leave communities starved of work.”
REBEL MP Dominic Grieve has backed down after a furious backlash to his plans to talk to Jeremy Corbyn to stop a No Deal Brexit.
The Remainer Tory insisted today he will not facilitate getting the Labour boss into No10 after his colleagues warned they could boot him out of the Tories - or even lose his seat.
Today Mr Grieve appeared to distance themselves from the idea.
He wrote in a letter seen by the New Statesman said he was "not about to facilitate Jeremy Corbyn's arrival in Downing Street".
Last night senior Tory rebels including Mr Grieve and Sir Oliver Letwin agreed to meet Jeremy Corbyn - after he wrote to them asking for their support as a caretaker PM if he manages to topple Boris.
Caroline Spelman, one of the other Tories who was involved, made it clear she would not vote against Boris in a vote of no confidence.
Former justice secretary Mr Gauke, another likely Remainer rebel, added: "If anyone thinks the answer is Jeremy Corbyn, I think they’re probably asking the wrong question."
Insiders told the Daily Telegraph last night that Philip Hammond could even face a vote of no confidence - they would need 50 association members to sign up to do so.
One said: "There are people in the association ... in the executive committee, who are not best pleased with some of the things that Philip has said."
Echoing their comments, a second source said: "There is a reasonably sized group who believe in hard Brexit and are not too chuffed with the route Philip has chosen.
"I have no doubt they will be expressing those opinions during the course of September."
This week the ex-chancellor launched a seething attack on the current PM, who has only been in the job for three weeks.
He said leaving with No Deal would be a "betrayal" of the people and he was "very confident" that MPs would be able to team up and stop it in the weeks ahead.
Tories hit back and accused him of undermining Britain's negotiating position, and for making it even more likely the EU would give us nothing.
And one Tory, Guto Bebb, said that "a short term Jeremy Corbyn government is less damaging... than a No Deal Brexit."
A source at Sir Oliver’s West Dorset Conservative Association said: “We are completely at odds with our MP over this.”
In Mr Grieve's constituency, association chairman Jackson Ng said he'd been inundated with irate calls from members - and said his behaviour was "un-Conservative".
"Should he entertain the idea of siding with Jeremy Corbyn or any other Government other than the existing Conservative Government currently being led by Boris Johnson, he will leave us no choice at all as an Association," he warned.
Tory MP Steve Double added earlier: "Does anyone actually think once Jeremy Corbyn was in No10 he will be easy to remove? He would have all the machinery of government behind him & would fight an election as PM. Remember no one thought he would win the Labour leadership. This is a dangerous game some are playing."
And Assembly Member Gareth Bacon added: "Unbelievable. Any Conservative MP that signs up to putting Jeremy Corbyn in No.10 should instantly have the whip removed, be de-selected by their Association and be expelled from the Conservative Party."
Does anyone actually think once Jeremy Corbyn was in No10 he will be easy to remove? He would have all the machinery of government behind him & would fight an election as PM. Remember no one thought he would win the Labour leadership. This is a dangerous game some are playing.
Unbelievable. Any Conservative MP that signs up to putting Jeremy Corbyn in No.10 should instantly have the whip removed, be de-selected by their Association and be expelled from the Conservative Party https://t.co/6RCt32R92l
If anyone thinks the answer is Jeremy Corbyn, I think they’re probably asking the wrong question.
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for your letter.
We agree that our common priority should be to work together in Parliament to prevent No Deal Brexit and welcome your invitation to discuss the different ways that this might be achieved.
We would be happy to meet with you as well as colleagues from other opposition parties whenever convenient in the weeks before Parliament returns.
Yours sincerely
Nick Boles
Dominic Grieve
Oliver Letwin
Caroline Spelman
 
Iain Duncan Smith told The Sun it was "contemptuous" for Tories to be even talking to Mr Corbyn.
And Michael Fabricant said they should be thrown out of the party.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
REBEL MP Dominic Grieve has backed down after a furious backlash to his plans to talk to Jeremy Corbyn to stop a No Deal Brexit.
The Remainer Tory insisted today he will not facilitate getting the Labour boss into No10 after his colleagues warned they could boot him out of the Tories - or even lose his seat.
Today Mr Grieve appeared to distance themselves from the idea.
He wrote in a letter seen by the New Statesman said he was "not about to facilitate Jeremy Corbyn's arrival in Downing Street".
Last night senior Tory rebels including Mr Grieve and Sir Oliver Letwin agreed to meet Jeremy Corbyn - after he wrote to them asking for their support as a caretaker PM if he manages to topple Boris.
Caroline Spelman, one of the other Tories who was involved, made it clear she would not vote against Boris in a vote of no confidence.
Former justice secretary Mr Gauke, another likely Remainer rebel, added: "If anyone thinks the answer is Jeremy Corbyn, I think they’re probably asking the wrong question."
Insiders told the Daily Telegraph last night that Philip Hammond could even face a vote of no confidence - they would need 50 association members to sign up to do so.
One said: "There are people in the association ... in the executive committee, who are not best pleased with some of the things that Philip has said."
Echoing their comments, a second source said: "There is a reasonably sized group who believe in hard Brexit and are not too chuffed with the route Philip has chosen.
"I have no doubt they will be expressing those opinions during the course of September."
This week the ex-chancellor launched a seething attack on the current PM, who has only been in the job for three weeks.
He said leaving with No Deal would be a "betrayal" of the people and he was "very confident" that MPs would be able to team up and stop it in the weeks ahead.
Tories hit back and accused him of undermining Britain's negotiating position, and for making it even more likely the EU would give us nothing.
And one Tory, Guto Bebb, said that "a short term Jeremy Corbyn government is less damaging... than a No Deal Brexit."
A source at Sir Oliver’s West Dorset Conservative Association said: “We are completely at odds with our MP over this.”
In Mr Grieve's constituency, association chairman Jackson Ng said he'd been inundated with irate calls from members - and said his behaviour was "un-Conservative".
"Should he entertain the idea of siding with Jeremy Corbyn or any other Government other than the existing Conservative Government currently being led by Boris Johnson, he will leave us no choice at all as an Association," he warned.
Tory MP Steve Double added earlier: "Does anyone actually think once Jeremy Corbyn was in No10 he will be easy to remove? He would have all the machinery of government behind him & would fight an election as PM. Remember no one thought he would win the Labour leadership. This is a dangerous game some are playing."
And Assembly Member Gareth Bacon added: "Unbelievable. Any Conservative MP that signs up to putting Jeremy Corbyn in No.10 should instantly have the whip removed, be de-selected by their Association and be expelled from the Conservative Party."
Does anyone actually think once Jeremy Corbyn was in No10 he will be easy to remove? He would have all the machinery of government behind him & would fight an election as PM. Remember no one thought he would win the Labour leadership. This is a dangerous game some are playing.
Unbelievable. Any Conservative MP that signs up to putting Jeremy Corbyn in No.10 should instantly have the whip removed, be de-selected by their Association and be expelled from the Conservative Party https://t.co/6RCt32R92l
If anyone thinks the answer is Jeremy Corbyn, I think they’re probably asking the wrong question.
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for your letter.
We agree that our common priority should be to work together in Parliament to prevent No Deal Brexit and welcome your invitation to discuss the different ways that this might be achieved.
We would be happy to meet with you as well as colleagues from other opposition parties whenever convenient in the weeks before Parliament returns.
Yours sincerely
Nick Boles
Dominic Grieve
Oliver Letwin
Caroline Spelman
 
Iain Duncan Smith told The Sun it was "contemptuous" for Tories to be even talking to Mr Corbyn.
And Michael Fabricant said they should be thrown out of the party.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
SENIOR Cabinet ministers yesterday confronted Boris Johnson to call on him to overturn his expulsion of 21 rebel Conservative MPs as the insurrection against the PM grew.
No Deal chief Michael Gove lead the charge from a series of senior figures during a tense meeting of the Cabinet in No10 yesterday.
Pleading for Boris to relent on his tough punishment, they insisted he offer the expelled rebels “a way back” so they can rejoin the Parliamentary party.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock also questioned the controversial decision during the tense Cabinet meeting, and asked the PM to spell out how the rebels could “find redemption”.
Northern Ireland Secretary and ex-chief whip Julian Smith, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd also spoke out.
One Cabinet minister told The Sun: “We have to offer them a way back, as we must remain a broad church”.
A No10 source said the PM told the Cabinet ministers he “has sympathy” for their argument but held firm, insisting the rebels would “not support our manifesto” in a snap general election.
But in a sign of the growing pressure, ex-deputy PM Damien Green published an open letter on behalf of the Tory ‘One Nation’ group which includes a number of Cabinet members demanding the whip be restored to the Tory rebels.
Mr Green – whose group claims to be supported by 100 Tory MPs – said: “We cannot support the removal of the whip from principled, hard-working and dedicated colleagues.”
It came in an extraordinary day of Westminster drama…

The PM carried out his threat to withdraw the whip from the 21 Remainer rebels – including eight former Cabinet ministers - on Tuesday night when they backed a bid to delay Brexit yet again.
The group, that includes Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames and ex-Chancellor Ken Clarke, are also banned from standing as Tory MPs again.
The pressure intensified on Boris as a 22nd senior Tory MP joined the rebellion yesterday.
Dame Caroline Spelman voted for the cross-party bill to delay Brexit by three months when it was passed by the Commons yesterday.
Downing Street sources said she would not lose the whip as Tuesday’s rebellion was a ‘confidence issue’ which transferred parliamentary power to Labour and opposition parties.
Brexiteer backbench Tory MPs also called on Mr Johnson to change his mind yesterday as tension spiralled.
In more trouble for the PM, he was challenged by several Tory MPs as he addressed a packed meeting of the 1922 Committee yesterday afternoon.
Leave backer Tim Loughton told the PM that “purges never ended well in Roman times” and he should “get them back in”.
And another Tory MP, Daniel Kawczynski, was booed during the tense meeting for attacking the suspended rebels.
But under fire Boris repeatedly said he “can’t undermine the chief”, a reference to the Chief Whip who carried out his order.
In a fig leaf to the rebels, Caroline Spelman was allowed to keep the Tory whip yesterday despite her vote against the government.
But doubling down last night party chiefs issued an edict to local Conservative associations for the expelled rebel MPs – demanding they pick a new candidate for the seat as soon as possible.
In an email to local party members in Philip Hammond’s Runnymede and Weybridge seat, the local association said: “Last night, Philip Hammond had the Conservative whip removed by the chief whip.
“This means that he is no longer a Conservative MP and will not be eligible to stand as the Conservative candidate for Runnymede and Weybridge.
“A new Conservative candidate will be selected by the membership in due course.”
And Neil Clarke, chair of Ken Clarke’s Rushcliffe Conservatives association, said he was in talks with the party to get somebody in place “pretty damn quick”.
Other Tories also demanded Mr Johnson fire controversial top aide Dominic Cummings, holding him responsible for the aggressive strategy.
Grandee MP Sir Roger Gale said: “I think it’s been handled appallingly. I think the fact that you have at the heart of Number 10, as the Prime Minister’s senior adviser, an unelected, foul-mouthed oaf throwing his weight around is completely unacceptable”.
Former Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson tweeted: “How, in the name of all that is good and holy, is there no longer room in the Conservative Party for @NSoames?”
Members of the Young Conservatives also protested the decision outside the Tories’ Westminster HQ yesterday evening.
In yesterday’s charged No Deal Commons debate, the Tory rebels sacked from the party on Tuesday night launched a passionate defence of their actions.

Ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond said he would rather “boil my head” than hand power to Jeremy Corbyn – and insisted it was the PM who was heightening the risk of a Labour government.
An emotional Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson, claimed it was Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers “serial disloyalty” under Theresa May that proved the rebels’ inspiration.
He said: “I have always believed that the referendum result must be honoured and indeed I voted for the Withdrawal Agreement on every occasion, which is more than can be said for the Prime Minister, the Leader of the House and several members of the Cabinet, whose serial disloyalty has been such an inspiration to so many of us.”
And Sir Alistair Burt, Theresa May’s former Foreign Minister, warned other Tories they could be next to be “purged” by Downing Street.
He earned applause from opposition benches as he defended his rebellion on Tuesday and said: “I leave here looking at the sky, rather than down at my shoes”.
Earlier Labour’s Hilary Benn insisted his bill to block No Deal was nothing more than an attempt to prevent a “crash out” Brexit – and buy Britain more time to negotiate a deal.
Speaking in the House, he said: “If someone says you can jump off a cliff in a couple of weeks’ time or we could put it off a few months the sensible course of action is to put it off.
“I accept we need to find a way forward, but that is not the purpose of that today.”
But Tory MPs lined up to demand he be “honest” with the public about his intentions.
Conservative backbencher Steve Double stormed: “Can we be clear – this Bill does not stop No Deal, it simply prolongs how long we take to leave.
“If you want to stop Brexit, revoke Article 50 and be honest with the country.”
We’re all for a Tory Party with a range of opinions on most issues. Brexit is different. It must be delivered. With no deal Parliament will back, No Deal it is.
How could the PM hand back the whip to those who crashed his Government? How could they stand on a new manifesto with No Deal in it?
Consider, too, their demeanour since defeating their PM: Smirking on TV, branding ex-colleagues “extremists”, vowing to fight them at election time.
What rehabilitation do they deserve?
And Labour ‘leaver’ Caroline Flint – the MP for Don Valley - said her Europhile Labour colleagues bore as much blame for the “crisis” in the country as arch Tory Brexiteers.
Referring the 2016 Referendum vote, Ms Flint said: “A decision we delegated to the British people has been dominated by a lack of compromise.
“Hardline Leavers and hardline Remainers have turned this into a crisis and are eroding the trust of the British people.”
Former Attorney General Jeremy Wright also hit back at his former colleagues – insisting that while Vote Leave hadn’t campaigned for a No Deal in the Referendum, “neither was it put to the electorate that we would only leave if there was a deal with the EU”.
He added: “The truth is that Parliament set out the rules for the referendum in the referendum act and we stressed it was the public’s decision to make.
“I’m afraid on this fundamental point I cannot agree that we do not have a mandate for no deal.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
SENIOR Cabinet ministers yesterday confronted Boris Johnson to call on him to overturn his expulsion of 21 rebel Conservative MPs as the insurrection against the PM grew.
No Deal chief Michael Gove lead the charge from a series of senior figures during a tense meeting of the Cabinet in No10 yesterday.
Pleading for Boris to relent on his tough punishment, they insisted he offer the expelled rebels “a way back” so they can rejoin the Parliamentary party.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock also questioned the controversial decision during the tense Cabinet meeting, and asked the PM to spell out how the rebels could “find redemption”.
Northern Ireland Secretary and ex-chief whip Julian Smith, Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd also spoke out.
One Cabinet minister told The Sun: “We have to offer them a way back, as we must remain a broad church”.
A No10 source said the PM told the Cabinet ministers he “has sympathy” for their argument but held firm, insisting the rebels would “not support our manifesto” in a snap general election.
But in a sign of the growing pressure, ex-deputy PM Damien Green published an open letter on behalf of the Tory ‘One Nation’ group which includes a number of Cabinet members demanding the whip be restored to the Tory rebels.
Mr Green – whose group claims to be supported by 100 Tory MPs – said: “We cannot support the removal of the whip from principled, hard-working and dedicated colleagues.”
It came in an extraordinary day of Westminster drama…

The PM carried out his threat to withdraw the whip from the 21 Remainer rebels – including eight former Cabinet ministers - on Tuesday night when they backed a bid to delay Brexit yet again.
The group, that includes Winston Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames and ex-Chancellor Ken Clarke, are also banned from standing as Tory MPs again.
The pressure intensified on Boris as a 22nd senior Tory MP joined the rebellion yesterday.
Dame Caroline Spelman voted for the cross-party bill to delay Brexit by three months when it was passed by the Commons yesterday.
Downing Street sources said she would not lose the whip as Tuesday’s rebellion was a ‘confidence issue’ which transferred parliamentary power to Labour and opposition parties.
Brexiteer backbench Tory MPs also called on Mr Johnson to change his mind yesterday as tension spiralled.
In more trouble for the PM, he was challenged by several Tory MPs as he addressed a packed meeting of the 1922 Committee yesterday afternoon.
Leave backer Tim Loughton told the PM that “purges never ended well in Roman times” and he should “get them back in”.
And another Tory MP, Daniel Kawczynski, was booed during the tense meeting for attacking the suspended rebels.
But under fire Boris repeatedly said he “can’t undermine the chief”, a reference to the Chief Whip who carried out his order.
In a fig leaf to the rebels, Caroline Spelman was allowed to keep the Tory whip yesterday despite her vote against the government.
But doubling down last night party chiefs issued an edict to local Conservative associations for the expelled rebel MPs – demanding they pick a new candidate for the seat as soon as possible.
In an email to local party members in Philip Hammond’s Runnymede and Weybridge seat, the local association said: “Last night, Philip Hammond had the Conservative whip removed by the chief whip.
“This means that he is no longer a Conservative MP and will not be eligible to stand as the Conservative candidate for Runnymede and Weybridge.
“A new Conservative candidate will be selected by the membership in due course.”
And Neil Clarke, chair of Ken Clarke’s Rushcliffe Conservatives association, said he was in talks with the party to get somebody in place “pretty damn quick”.
Other Tories also demanded Mr Johnson fire controversial top aide Dominic Cummings, holding him responsible for the aggressive strategy.
Grandee MP Sir Roger Gale said: “I think it’s been handled appallingly. I think the fact that you have at the heart of Number 10, as the Prime Minister’s senior adviser, an unelected, foul-mouthed oaf throwing his weight around is completely unacceptable”.
Former Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson tweeted: “How, in the name of all that is good and holy, is there no longer room in the Conservative Party for @NSoames?”
Members of the Young Conservatives also protested the decision outside the Tories’ Westminster HQ yesterday evening.
In yesterday’s charged No Deal Commons debate, the Tory rebels sacked from the party on Tuesday night launched a passionate defence of their actions.

Ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond said he would rather “boil my head” than hand power to Jeremy Corbyn – and insisted it was the PM who was heightening the risk of a Labour government.
An emotional Sir Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill’s grandson, claimed it was Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers “serial disloyalty” under Theresa May that proved the rebels’ inspiration.
He said: “I have always believed that the referendum result must be honoured and indeed I voted for the Withdrawal Agreement on every occasion, which is more than can be said for the Prime Minister, the Leader of the House and several members of the Cabinet, whose serial disloyalty has been such an inspiration to so many of us.”
And Sir Alistair Burt, Theresa May’s former Foreign Minister, warned other Tories they could be next to be “purged” by Downing Street.
He earned applause from opposition benches as he defended his rebellion on Tuesday and said: “I leave here looking at the sky, rather than down at my shoes”.
Earlier Labour’s Hilary Benn insisted his bill to block No Deal was nothing more than an attempt to prevent a “crash out” Brexit – and buy Britain more time to negotiate a deal.
Speaking in the House, he said: “If someone says you can jump off a cliff in a couple of weeks’ time or we could put it off a few months the sensible course of action is to put it off.
“I accept we need to find a way forward, but that is not the purpose of that today.”
But Tory MPs lined up to demand he be “honest” with the public about his intentions.
Conservative backbencher Steve Double stormed: “Can we be clear – this Bill does not stop No Deal, it simply prolongs how long we take to leave.
“If you want to stop Brexit, revoke Article 50 and be honest with the country.”
We’re all for a Tory Party with a range of opinions on most issues. Brexit is different. It must be delivered. With no deal Parliament will back, No Deal it is.
How could the PM hand back the whip to those who crashed his Government? How could they stand on a new manifesto with No Deal in it?
Consider, too, their demeanour since defeating their PM: Smirking on TV, branding ex-colleagues “extremists”, vowing to fight them at election time.
What rehabilitation do they deserve?
And Labour ‘leaver’ Caroline Flint – the MP for Don Valley - said her Europhile Labour colleagues bore as much blame for the “crisis” in the country as arch Tory Brexiteers.
Referring the 2016 Referendum vote, Ms Flint said: “A decision we delegated to the British people has been dominated by a lack of compromise.
“Hardline Leavers and hardline Remainers have turned this into a crisis and are eroding the trust of the British people.”
Former Attorney General Jeremy Wright also hit back at his former colleagues – insisting that while Vote Leave hadn’t campaigned for a No Deal in the Referendum, “neither was it put to the electorate that we would only leave if there was a deal with the EU”.
He added: “The truth is that Parliament set out the rules for the referendum in the referendum act and we stressed it was the public’s decision to make.
“I’m afraid on this fundamental point I cannot agree that we do not have a mandate for no deal.”
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
The left-wing party are eyeing up a number 10 take over should MPs vote down the only Brexit deal on offer
LABOUR has boasted that Jeremy Corbyn could force his way into Number 10 on Wednesday if MPs reject Theresa May's Brexit deal.
A spokesperson for the party claimed they would "take the country forward" and "reset" negotiations with Brussels - should Mrs May fall, Sky News reported.
The Brexit deal on offer has caused uproar in the House of Commons over the issues of the Irish backstop.
At the moment it is estimated that around 100 Tory MPs are set to reject the deal, although Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said it "is a strong deal" and was confident in winning the vote.
Some MPs think if Mrs May loses the vote by such a large margin it suggests she no longer has the support of her party and would therefore struggle to get anything else through parliament.
Labour's Jon Trickett told Sky New's Sophy Ridge on Sunday that there should be a general election should Mrs May loose the vote on Tuesday.
If it is approved:

An EU withdrawal agreement will be introduced in early 2019.
If the withdrawal agreement is also passed by parliament then the European parliament will have their own vote on it.
If the deal receives a majority of votes in Brussels it will then need to be approved by the European Council - the ruling body of the EU made up of heads of government.
On March 29 2019 the UK will leave the EU.
The transition phase will then last until December 2020.
If it is rejected:
The Conservative government have 21 days to put forward a new deal.
Any new agreement would need to be renegotiated with Brussels.
Where it goes from here is not clear, there are a number of options.
The UK could end up leaving the EU with no deal on its future relationship with the block.
Alternatively there could be another General Election to give the British public a say on which party they think should negotiate the Brexit storm.
Or there could be a second EU referendum to get out of the impasse
He said: "Our preferred option, very, very strongly, is that we refresh the parliament.
"Though we are ready to form a minority government should that be necessary - and it could happen on Wednesday morning - and to begin to reset the negotiation and take the country forward in a much better direction."
Their statement comes after Conservative MPs Ester McVey and Boris Johnson brazenly threw their hats into the ring to replace the PM if she is outed in a few days.
But Mrs May has urged rebel Tories to back her or face loosing Brexit and the keys to No 10.
The PM told them: "If you want Brexit, make sure you get it.
"When I say if these deal does not pass we would truly be in uncharted waters, I hope people understand that this is what I genuinely believe and fear could happen."
Mrs May signed off on a Brexit deal with Brussels last month after weeks on intense negotiation and has told MPs the only other option is a no deal Brexit - which would bring unknown consequences.
Her agreement will end free movement of people and allow Britain to strike it's own trade deals.
However the issues of a customs boarder between Norther Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has sown discord with MPs.
The backstop is intended to prevent a hard boarder between the two countries but could result in Britain staying in the customs union until another solution is found.
However, the deal is backed by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt who has described it as the "best deal for British people".
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
The left-wing party are eyeing up a number 10 take over should MPs vote down the only Brexit deal on offer
LABOUR has boasted that Jeremy Corbyn could force his way into Number 10 on Wednesday if MPs reject Theresa May's Brexit deal.
A spokesperson for the party claimed they would "take the country forward" and "reset" negotiations with Brussels - should Mrs May fall, Sky News reported.
The Brexit deal on offer has caused uproar in the House of Commons over the issues of the Irish backstop.
At the moment it is estimated that around 100 Tory MPs are set to reject the deal, although Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said it "is a strong deal" and was confident in winning the vote.
Some MPs think if Mrs May loses the vote by such a large margin it suggests she no longer has the support of her party and would therefore struggle to get anything else through parliament.
Labour's Jon Trickett told Sky New's Sophy Ridge on Sunday that there should be a general election should Mrs May loose the vote on Tuesday.
If it is approved:

An EU withdrawal agreement will be introduced in early 2019.
If the withdrawal agreement is also passed by parliament then the European parliament will have their own vote on it.
If the deal receives a majority of votes in Brussels it will then need to be approved by the European Council - the ruling body of the EU made up of heads of government.
On March 29 2019 the UK will leave the EU.
The transition phase will then last until December 2020.
If it is rejected:
The Conservative government have 21 days to put forward a new deal.
Any new agreement would need to be renegotiated with Brussels.
Where it goes from here is not clear, there are a number of options.
The UK could end up leaving the EU with no deal on its future relationship with the block.
Alternatively there could be another General Election to give the British public a say on which party they think should negotiate the Brexit storm.
Or there could be a second EU referendum to get out of the impasse
He said: "Our preferred option, very, very strongly, is that we refresh the parliament.
"Though we are ready to form a minority government should that be necessary - and it could happen on Wednesday morning - and to begin to reset the negotiation and take the country forward in a much better direction."
Their statement comes after Conservative MPs Ester McVey and Boris Johnson brazenly threw their hats into the ring to replace the PM if she is outed in a few days.
But Mrs May has urged rebel Tories to back her or face loosing Brexit and the keys to No 10.
The PM told them: "If you want Brexit, make sure you get it.
"When I say if these deal does not pass we would truly be in uncharted waters, I hope people understand that this is what I genuinely believe and fear could happen."
Mrs May signed off on a Brexit deal with Brussels last month after weeks on intense negotiation and has told MPs the only other option is a no deal Brexit - which would bring unknown consequences.
Her agreement will end free movement of people and allow Britain to strike it's own trade deals.
However the issues of a customs boarder between Norther Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has sown discord with MPs.
The backstop is intended to prevent a hard boarder between the two countries but could result in Britain staying in the customs union until another solution is found.
However, the deal is backed by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt who has described it as the "best deal for British people".
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
 
The plan is being masterminded by Labour's Yvette Cooper and Tory veteran Oliver Letwin
REMAINER MPs today vowed to seize control of the Government and wreck Theresa May's Brexit plans.
A group of senior backbenchers pledged to act like an alternative Cabinet in order to stop Britain leaving the EU without a deal.
Top Tory Oliver Letwin claimed the move was necessary to avoid the "terrifying" prospect of a No Deal outcome.
But their threat to delay Brexit will anger Leave-supporting MPs who want to see Brexit happen on March 29 as scheduled.
Speaking in the Commons today, Sir Oliver laid out a plan to take No Deal off the table by extending the Article 50 process.
He said the rebel group would push their proposal through in two weeks if Mrs May doesn't strike a deal by then.
Sir Oliver admitted the proposal - where the Commons rather than the Government would be dictating the path of Brexit - would be unprecedented.
He said: "This is a remarkable condition for Parliament and Government and the country to find itself in.
"It has never previously been the practice for this house to have to take control and to direct Government policy by legislation, that is an extraordinary turn of events.
"When this house comes to that situation we will be as it were a Cabinet... we will actually be making a decision about the future of this country.
"We will have in effect to take on, for this period, for this purpose, the government of this country."
We will have in effect to take on the government of this country
Sir Oliver said the proposed vote on February 27 would be "high noon" for MPs who are desperate to rule out No Deal.
Yvette Cooper, who is leading the revolt, told the Commons: "If we don't do something sensible like this it's like we're just all living in a fantasy world in which we talk about alternative arrangements.
"We say something is going to come along and sort it out and it just doesn't.
"It's as if we're all standing around admiring the finery of the Emperor's new clothes and actually the Emperor is running around stark naked and everyone is laughing at us - or at least they would be if it wasn't so sad."
The amendment would see Mrs May being set a deadline of mid-March to sign off on a Brexit deal.
If she failed, MPs would then vote to delay our leaving date, giving the Government more time to get a new agreement.
The PM insists that No Deal must remain an option or her negotiating position will be fatally undermined.
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The plan is being masterminded by Labour's Yvette Cooper and Tory veteran Oliver Letwin
REMAINER MPs today vowed to seize control of the Government and wreck Theresa May's Brexit plans.
A group of senior backbenchers pledged to act like an alternative Cabinet in order to stop Britain leaving the EU without a deal.
Top Tory Oliver Letwin claimed the move was necessary to avoid the "terrifying" prospect of a No Deal outcome.
But their threat to delay Brexit will anger Leave-supporting MPs who want to see Brexit happen on March 29 as scheduled.
Speaking in the Commons today, Sir Oliver laid out a plan to take No Deal off the table by extending the Article 50 process.
He said the rebel group would push their proposal through in two weeks if Mrs May doesn't strike a deal by then.
Sir Oliver admitted the proposal - where the Commons rather than the Government would be dictating the path of Brexit - would be unprecedented.
He said: "This is a remarkable condition for Parliament and Government and the country to find itself in.
"It has never previously been the practice for this house to have to take control and to direct Government policy by legislation, that is an extraordinary turn of events.
"When this house comes to that situation we will be as it were a Cabinet... we will actually be making a decision about the future of this country.
"We will have in effect to take on, for this period, for this purpose, the government of this country."
We will have in effect to take on the government of this country
Sir Oliver said the proposed vote on February 27 would be "high noon" for MPs who are desperate to rule out No Deal.
Yvette Cooper, who is leading the revolt, told the Commons: "If we don't do something sensible like this it's like we're just all living in a fantasy world in which we talk about alternative arrangements.
"We say something is going to come along and sort it out and it just doesn't.
"It's as if we're all standing around admiring the finery of the Emperor's new clothes and actually the Emperor is running around stark naked and everyone is laughing at us - or at least they would be if it wasn't so sad."
The amendment would see Mrs May being set a deadline of mid-March to sign off on a Brexit deal.
If she failed, MPs would then vote to delay our leaving date, giving the Government more time to get a new agreement.
The PM insists that No Deal must remain an option or her negotiating position will be fatally undermined.
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REMAIN-backing Justice Secretary David Gauke is facing a no-confidence vote over his “wilful obstruction” of delivering the 2016 Brexit vote.
The Remainer is under fire from his branch of local Tories. Despite backing Theresa May’s Brexit deal THREE times, he has called for a customs union with the EU and helped to take No Deal off the table.
A vote by members this month will take place on whether Mr Gauke has stuck to his “commitments” made at the 2017 general election.
His response to the letter sent by his agent Jeremy Page in the South West Hertfordshire constituency was with a ‘face palm emoji’ on Twitter.
The party pledged to exit the single market and customs union but seek a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.
It also stated that no deal was better than a bad deal for the UK.
The move follows fellow Tory MP and arch-Remainer Dominic Grieve who is now facing a de-selection battle in his Beaconsfield, south Bucks, constituency.
His members voted on Friday night he must apply for re-adoption as the candidate for the next election.
Constituency chair Jackson Ng said there were feelings of “disappointment, anger and frustration” over his views on Brexit. Grieve is calling for a second referendum.
But Tory party chair Brandon Lewis last night said: “They’re not actually facing deselection, that’s not what’s happening.”
He added that the votes don’t have any “direct meaning”.
.@DavidGauke voted 3 times for May’s Brexit deal, it would’ve taken us out the EU on 29 March in a measured & pragmatic way respecting referendum result whilst trying to minimise any potential negative impact. He’s a sensible hardworking parliamentarian & a good guy. 👇this is 🤦‍♀️ https://t.co/QzJsWnBQlK
REMAIN-backing Justice Secretary David Gauke is facing a no-confidence vote over his “wilful obstruction” of delivering the 2016 Brexit vote.
The Remainer is under fire from his branch of local Tories. Despite backing Theresa May’s Brexit deal THREE times, he has called for a customs union with the EU and helped to take No Deal off the table.
A vote by members this month will take place on whether Mr Gauke has stuck to his “commitments” made at the 2017 general election.
His response to the letter sent by his agent Jeremy Page in the South West Hertfordshire constituency was with a ‘face palm emoji’ on Twitter.
The party pledged to exit the single market and customs union but seek a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement.
It also stated that no deal was better than a bad deal for the UK.
The move follows fellow Tory MP and arch-Remainer Dominic Grieve who is now facing a de-selection battle in his Beaconsfield, south Bucks, constituency.
His members voted on Friday night he must apply for re-adoption as the candidate for the next election.
Constituency chair Jackson Ng said there were feelings of “disappointment, anger and frustration” over his views on Brexit. Grieve is calling for a second referendum.
But Tory party chair Brandon Lewis last night said: “They’re not actually facing deselection, that’s not what’s happening.”
He added that the votes don’t have any “direct meaning”.
.@DavidGauke voted 3 times for May’s Brexit deal, it would’ve taken us out the EU on 29 March in a measured & pragmatic way respecting referendum result whilst trying to minimise any potential negative impact. He’s a sensible hardworking parliamentarian & a good guy. 👇this is 🤦‍♀️ https://t.co/QzJsWnBQlK
THE Remainer Alliance is plotting to ask the Queen to sack Boris Johnson as PM in a DAY if he refuses to beg Brussels for a Brexit extension.
Opposition parties plan to use a Humble Address – a direct call from Parliament to the monarch – to fire Boris if he does not go cap in hand to EU chiefs by October 19.
The Alliance, led by Lib Dem boss Jo Swinson, also wants to use the address to force the government to produce documents on its Brexit plans.
However, a Cabinet minister told Bloomberg News that No10 had taken legal advice and was confident a Humble Address could not be used to boot Boris out of Downing Street.
The move comes after the Alliance ruled out a No Confidence vote in Mr Johnson as MPs plot ways to force the PM into begging the bloc for an early Brexit extension.
Ms Swinson said the group were not holding a vote because it would “play into” Boris’ hands.
Anna Soubry - MP for Independent Group for Change - later said there would not be "contentious votes" this week for "all sorts of reasons".
When questioned why,  Remainer Ms Soubry told Sky News it was because Speaker John Bercow had "just told us so".
Ms Swinson met Labour boss Jeremy Corbyn, Ian Blackford, the SNP Westminster leader, and representatives of Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Independent Group for Change in Westminster this afternoon.
Under the Benn Act – the Brexit-blocking legislation pushed through the Commons last month – Mr Johnson is legally obliged to ask for an extension by October 19.
But the Remainer group are worried this does not leave enough time for a legal bid to block No Deal - before we leave the EU on October 31 - despite the Act stopping just that.
The Alliance believe the government could use its legal team to find a way to get past this and leave us crashing out the bloc without a Withdrawal Agreement by the Halloween deadline.
Mr Blackford said his party would “back anything that tries to close down his [the PM’s] ability” to defy the Benn Act.
We are looking at every mechanism and additional legal safeguard against no deal.
While a senior Labour source told the Telegraph: “We are looking at every mechanism and additional legal safeguard against no deal.”
The Alliance’s plot to push the extension will not please rebel Tories who want to ensure that Boris has enough time to get a deal at the EU Council summit on October 17.
It is believed the PM will be targeted this week with a wave of dirty tricks by Remainer MPs desperate to stop Brexit.
They have declared him “a marked man” as they plot a relentless campaign to weaken or destroy him.
One Europhile MP admitted: “If we can get Boris, we can stop Brexit. He has become its human embodiment and has to be stopped.
“We’re going to throw everything at bringing him down.”
He faces an ambush as he speaks at the Tory conference in Manchester this week.
Scottish Nationalists and Labour could table a confidence vote with the aim of installing a stand-in PM.
Mr Corbyn still insists he should get first bite at leading a government of national unity if Mr Johnson is toppled.
It comes after Mr Johnson was denied a recess to hold the conference as opposition parties claimed it was too soon after his Parliament shutdown.
MPs returned to the chamber  last week after the PM’s suspension of Parliament - originally meant to be five weeks - was ruled to be unlawful by 11 Supreme Court judges.
The case had been brought to the highest court in the land in a legal challenge by Remainer lawyer Gina Miller and former Tory PM, Sir John Major.
Mr Johnson had argued that he suspended Parliament to push through a new domestic legislative agenda with a Queen's Speech.
But Remainer MPs said it was to avoid scrutiny over his Brexit plans - in particular No Deal.
A humble address is a direct call from the House of Commons to the Sovereign to request the government produce documents.
According Parliamentary Practice, a rulebook published in the 19th Century, the humble address is more binding than a simple opposition motion.
That is because it is an appeal to the head of state, rather than to the government who could otherwise choose to ignore it.
Speaker of the House John Bercow said such motions were “traditionally regarded as binding or effective”.
It was used by Labour in November 2017 to force the government to publish 58 studies on Brexit.
The research had been commissioned for ministers who had fiercely opposed them being made public — leading opponents to believe they may contain information embarrassing to the government.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
THE Remainer Alliance is plotting to ask the Queen to sack Boris Johnson as PM in a DAY if he refuses to beg Brussels for a Brexit extension.
Opposition parties plan to use a Humble Address – a direct call from Parliament to the monarch – to fire Boris if he does not go cap in hand to EU chiefs by October 19.
The Alliance, led by Lib Dem boss Jo Swinson, also wants to use the address to force the government to produce documents on its Brexit plans.
However, a Cabinet minister told Bloomberg News that No10 had taken legal advice and was confident a Humble Address could not be used to boot Boris out of Downing Street.
The move comes after the Alliance ruled out a No Confidence vote in Mr Johnson as MPs plot ways to force the PM into begging the bloc for an early Brexit extension.
Ms Swinson said the group were not holding a vote because it would “play into” Boris’ hands.
Anna Soubry - MP for Independent Group for Change - later said there would not be "contentious votes" this week for "all sorts of reasons".
When questioned why,  Remainer Ms Soubry told Sky News it was because Speaker John Bercow had "just told us so".
Ms Swinson met Labour boss Jeremy Corbyn, Ian Blackford, the SNP Westminster leader, and representatives of Plaid Cymru, the Greens and the Independent Group for Change in Westminster this afternoon.
Under the Benn Act – the Brexit-blocking legislation pushed through the Commons last month – Mr Johnson is legally obliged to ask for an extension by October 19.
But the Remainer group are worried this does not leave enough time for a legal bid to block No Deal - before we leave the EU on October 31 - despite the Act stopping just that.
The Alliance believe the government could use its legal team to find a way to get past this and leave us crashing out the bloc without a Withdrawal Agreement by the Halloween deadline.
Mr Blackford said his party would “back anything that tries to close down his [the PM’s] ability” to defy the Benn Act.
We are looking at every mechanism and additional legal safeguard against no deal.
While a senior Labour source told the Telegraph: “We are looking at every mechanism and additional legal safeguard against no deal.”
The Alliance’s plot to push the extension will not please rebel Tories who want to ensure that Boris has enough time to get a deal at the EU Council summit on October 17.
It is believed the PM will be targeted this week with a wave of dirty tricks by Remainer MPs desperate to stop Brexit.
They have declared him “a marked man” as they plot a relentless campaign to weaken or destroy him.
One Europhile MP admitted: “If we can get Boris, we can stop Brexit. He has become its human embodiment and has to be stopped.
“We’re going to throw everything at bringing him down.”
He faces an ambush as he speaks at the Tory conference in Manchester this week.
Scottish Nationalists and Labour could table a confidence vote with the aim of installing a stand-in PM.
Mr Corbyn still insists he should get first bite at leading a government of national unity if Mr Johnson is toppled.
It comes after Mr Johnson was denied a recess to hold the conference as opposition parties claimed it was too soon after his Parliament shutdown.
MPs returned to the chamber  last week after the PM’s suspension of Parliament - originally meant to be five weeks - was ruled to be unlawful by 11 Supreme Court judges.
The case had been brought to the highest court in the land in a legal challenge by Remainer lawyer Gina Miller and former Tory PM, Sir John Major.
Mr Johnson had argued that he suspended Parliament to push through a new domestic legislative agenda with a Queen's Speech.
But Remainer MPs said it was to avoid scrutiny over his Brexit plans - in particular No Deal.
A humble address is a direct call from the House of Commons to the Sovereign to request the government produce documents.
According Parliamentary Practice, a rulebook published in the 19th Century, the humble address is more binding than a simple opposition motion.
That is because it is an appeal to the head of state, rather than to the government who could otherwise choose to ignore it.
Speaker of the House John Bercow said such motions were “traditionally regarded as binding or effective”.
It was used by Labour in November 2017 to force the government to publish 58 studies on Brexit.
The research had been commissioned for ministers who had fiercely opposed them being made public — leading opponents to believe they may contain information embarrassing to the government.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368 . You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock will call on colleagues to increase preparations for a No Deal Brexit amid fears that supplies of crucial medicine could be affected by border mayhem
THERESA MAY’s Government plunged into utter disarray over Brexit just 48 hours before a crunch Cabinet meeting over Britain’s future.
Aides of Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed he would call on colleagues on Tuesday to dramatically accelerate No Deal planning given the deadlock over the PM’s Brexit deal.
The Sun can reveal he ‘activated’ the NHS’ own plans last week – amid spiralling fears key medicines could be caught up in chaos at the border.
One ally said: “He doesn’t want no deal but thinks it’s essential that we prepare for it as a possible outcome.”
It came as Justice Secretary David Gauke threatened to resign if the PM puts Britain on a course to leave the EU without a deal.
He said: “I couldn’t support a conscious decision to crash out at the end of March and I don’t think there are many who could.”
But Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted Britain could “flourish and prosper” if it walks away from the EU with No Deal.
He separately said he’d love a “crack” at being the next Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, allies of International Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt revealed she would back the idea of a ‘managed’ No Deal at a key speech today.
And Trade Secretary Liam Fox became the first Brexit-backing Cabinet Minister to say it may be an idea to allow the Commons an ‘indicative vote’ on alternative Brexit plans such as Norway Plus or a second referendum.
He argued this would show there was no majority in the House for these- and it would be better to back the PM’s deal.
Previously only pro-EU Ministers such as Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark had backed the idea of ‘indicative votes’.
One Cabinet Minister told The Sun: “It’s chaos. We’re roughly 100 days away and there is no clear idea really of how we’re going to solve this.”
“What we really need to hear is what the Prime Minister wants to do.
“We just can’t have another Cabinet where we all spend three hours running through our own beliefs.
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson weighed in by saying in The Telegraph a second referendum would cause "instant, deep feelings of betrayal" among the public.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told ministers that Mrs May must be removed after Brexit so others could renegotiate the deal, The Daily Telegraph claimed. But a spokesman for Cox denied this.
The Prime Minister will desperately attempt to placate furious MPs in the Commons today with a statement about last week’s shambolic EU Council – where she failed to get a legal guarantee from Brussels over the hated backstop. She will seek to kill off calls for a second Referendum – saying it would cause “irreparable damage” to the integrity of British politics.
But privately, senior Tories admit that the odds of a so-called People’s Vote are tumbling because of the deadlock in the Commons.
The Government plans to put the PM’s deal back before the House in early January.
But Tory chiefs admit they have little chance of securing a majority without meaningful change on the backstop- where we would be tied to EU customs rules if we fail to strike a trade deal by 2020.
And insiders fear Commons Speaker John Bercow will side with any attempt to use Commons procedure to force a second Referendum on the Government.
Mr Fox yesterday insisted he believed there was also no clear majority in the House for a second referendum – or Britain seeking membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) in a Norway-style Brexit.
And speaking on the BBC Andrew Marr show he said he was in favour of the House voting on other options – to show they had less clear support than the PM’s deal.
He said: “I wouldn’t have a huge problem with Parliament as a whole having a say on what the options were, because it wasn’t the government that was given an instruction by the referendum it was parliament.
“Parliament said in the referendum we can’t make a decision, we’re going to subcontract our sovereignty to the people and they gave us an instruction. It’s time Parliament carried that out.”
He added that if Remain narrowly won a second Referendum he would have no hesitation in demanding “best of three”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday once more refused to say whether his party would seek to cash in on the chaos by moving a vote of No Confidence in the Government.
Speaking as he arrived at a private event on poverty, he said: “You’ll hear the news when I announce it.”
But Shadow Communities Secretary Andrew Gwynne confirmed it was almost certain to come in the New Year – because Labour wanted the PM to lose her Brexit vote first. He said: “We can’t move to the next stage until Parliament has decided whether not to back the Prime Minister’s deal.
“Because we want to make sure that parliament has its say on what is a catastrophically bad deal for this country.”
Labour veteran Dame Margaret Beckett said the idea of a so-called People’s Vote was being discussed not just in Westminster but in the corridors of power in Whitehall too.
She said: “The case for the public being given the final say is becoming so overwhelming that people from all parties and of none now recognise that this is the best way forward for our country.
“A new public vote would be different from the referendum in 2016 because we now know more about what Brexit means.
“It is vital that leaders who care about the national interest begin preparations for a People’s Vote that can sort out the Brexit mess, give our politics the clarity it needs to move forward and our country the opportunity to move on from the bitter divisions of the past three years.”
Sources claimed the SNP would push to table a No Conference vote in Theresa May's Government to humiliate Labour. It may not approved by Parliamentary authorities because such votes are only supposed to come from the official opposition.
PRIME MINISTER’S DEAL: Chances of success look slim. She needs the EU to agree to Britain’s early exit from the so-called backstop for the Irish border tying us to customs rules.
NO DEAL: Technically Britain is heading for a No Deal on March 29 the moment MPs vote down the PM’s deal. But the Commons will almost certainly find a way to block it.
MANAGED NO DEAL: UK leaves with No Deal after a small transition period in which we strike side deals in some key areas to avoid chaos. Idea is gaining traction among Brexiteers.
NORWAY: Super soft Brexit would see Britain stay in the customs union and single market. But we would have to agree to unlimited EU immigration and other Brussels diktats.
CANADA: Brexit-backing MPs are pushing the PM to reopen talks with the EU on a Canada-style trade deal. The EU insists it does not solve the Irish border problem.
SECOND REFERENDUM: A growing number of MPs on all sides favour going back to the people — but could shatter the public’s faith in democracy after the 2016 vote.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock will call on colleagues to increase preparations for a No Deal Brexit amid fears that supplies of crucial medicine could be affected by border mayhem
THERESA MAY’s Government plunged into utter disarray over Brexit just 48 hours before a crunch Cabinet meeting over Britain’s future.
Aides of Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed he would call on colleagues on Tuesday to dramatically accelerate No Deal planning given the deadlock over the PM’s Brexit deal.
The Sun can reveal he ‘activated’ the NHS’ own plans last week – amid spiralling fears key medicines could be caught up in chaos at the border.
One ally said: “He doesn’t want no deal but thinks it’s essential that we prepare for it as a possible outcome.”
It came as Justice Secretary David Gauke threatened to resign if the PM puts Britain on a course to leave the EU without a deal.
He said: “I couldn’t support a conscious decision to crash out at the end of March and I don’t think there are many who could.”
But Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted Britain could “flourish and prosper” if it walks away from the EU with No Deal.
He separately said he’d love a “crack” at being the next Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, allies of International Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt revealed she would back the idea of a ‘managed’ No Deal at a key speech today.
And Trade Secretary Liam Fox became the first Brexit-backing Cabinet Minister to say it may be an idea to allow the Commons an ‘indicative vote’ on alternative Brexit plans such as Norway Plus or a second referendum.
He argued this would show there was no majority in the House for these- and it would be better to back the PM’s deal.
Previously only pro-EU Ministers such as Chancellor Philip Hammond and Business Secretary Greg Clark had backed the idea of ‘indicative votes’.
One Cabinet Minister told The Sun: “It’s chaos. We’re roughly 100 days away and there is no clear idea really of how we’re going to solve this.”
“What we really need to hear is what the Prime Minister wants to do.
“We just can’t have another Cabinet where we all spend three hours running through our own beliefs.
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson weighed in by saying in The Telegraph a second referendum would cause "instant, deep feelings of betrayal" among the public.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told ministers that Mrs May must be removed after Brexit so others could renegotiate the deal, The Daily Telegraph claimed. But a spokesman for Cox denied this.
The Prime Minister will desperately attempt to placate furious MPs in the Commons today with a statement about last week’s shambolic EU Council – where she failed to get a legal guarantee from Brussels over the hated backstop. She will seek to kill off calls for a second Referendum – saying it would cause “irreparable damage” to the integrity of British politics.
But privately, senior Tories admit that the odds of a so-called People’s Vote are tumbling because of the deadlock in the Commons.
The Government plans to put the PM’s deal back before the House in early January.
But Tory chiefs admit they have little chance of securing a majority without meaningful change on the backstop- where we would be tied to EU customs rules if we fail to strike a trade deal by 2020.
And insiders fear Commons Speaker John Bercow will side with any attempt to use Commons procedure to force a second Referendum on the Government.
Mr Fox yesterday insisted he believed there was also no clear majority in the House for a second referendum – or Britain seeking membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) in a Norway-style Brexit.
And speaking on the BBC Andrew Marr show he said he was in favour of the House voting on other options – to show they had less clear support than the PM’s deal.
He said: “I wouldn’t have a huge problem with Parliament as a whole having a say on what the options were, because it wasn’t the government that was given an instruction by the referendum it was parliament.
“Parliament said in the referendum we can’t make a decision, we’re going to subcontract our sovereignty to the people and they gave us an instruction. It’s time Parliament carried that out.”
He added that if Remain narrowly won a second Referendum he would have no hesitation in demanding “best of three”.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday once more refused to say whether his party would seek to cash in on the chaos by moving a vote of No Confidence in the Government.
Speaking as he arrived at a private event on poverty, he said: “You’ll hear the news when I announce it.”
But Shadow Communities Secretary Andrew Gwynne confirmed it was almost certain to come in the New Year – because Labour wanted the PM to lose her Brexit vote first. He said: “We can’t move to the next stage until Parliament has decided whether not to back the Prime Minister’s deal.
“Because we want to make sure that parliament has its say on what is a catastrophically bad deal for this country.”
Labour veteran Dame Margaret Beckett said the idea of a so-called People’s Vote was being discussed not just in Westminster but in the corridors of power in Whitehall too.
She said: “The case for the public being given the final say is becoming so overwhelming that people from all parties and of none now recognise that this is the best way forward for our country.
“A new public vote would be different from the referendum in 2016 because we now know more about what Brexit means.
“It is vital that leaders who care about the national interest begin preparations for a People’s Vote that can sort out the Brexit mess, give our politics the clarity it needs to move forward and our country the opportunity to move on from the bitter divisions of the past three years.”
Sources claimed the SNP would push to table a No Conference vote in Theresa May's Government to humiliate Labour. It may not approved by Parliamentary authorities because such votes are only supposed to come from the official opposition.
PRIME MINISTER’S DEAL: Chances of success look slim. She needs the EU to agree to Britain’s early exit from the so-called backstop for the Irish border tying us to customs rules.
NO DEAL: Technically Britain is heading for a No Deal on March 29 the moment MPs vote down the PM’s deal. But the Commons will almost certainly find a way to block it.
MANAGED NO DEAL: UK leaves with No Deal after a small transition period in which we strike side deals in some key areas to avoid chaos. Idea is gaining traction among Brexiteers.
NORWAY: Super soft Brexit would see Britain stay in the customs union and single market. But we would have to agree to unlimited EU immigration and other Brussels diktats.
CANADA: Brexit-backing MPs are pushing the PM to reopen talks with the EU on a Canada-style trade deal. The EU insists it does not solve the Irish border problem.
SECOND REFERENDUM: A growing number of MPs on all sides favour going back to the people — but could shatter the public’s faith in democracy after the 2016 vote.
If we vote Theresa May's deal down a second time we will face either the economic disaster of a No Deal or the political disaster of a Second Referendum
OK, I hold my hands up. I voted Remain in 2016.
But once the votes were cast and the clear result was Leave, I knew it was my duty as an MP to follow the people’s instruction. It was Parliament’s duty to do that.
The Conservative manifesto on which we were elected in 2017 contained a commitment to leave the EU and I have followed that commitment, voting for Article 50 and opposing a second referendum.
Remaining true to that democratic commitment is also the reason I voted against Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement in January. That deal seemed designed to keep Britain in a dark treacle of EU bureaucracy.
It established a separation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. And it presented hard-pressed taxpayers with a £39billion bill — for the privilege of this divisive and never-ending backstop.
Now, with the Brexit clock ticking perilously close to midnight, I have decided to vote FOR the deal Theresa May will soon bring back to Parliament.
I do not believe there is any betrayal in my decision. It is one, I believe, that will be shared by many of the MPs who also voted down the deal just weeks ago.
No Deal would be disastrous for the UK and Europe. Big businesses would survive but many of the UK’s hundreds of thousands of small businesses would not. They are the backbone of our successful economy.
We have an overriding duty as Conservatives to protect them and the jobs they provide from No Deal.
I am in no doubt that the public are increasingly anxious about the catastrophic consequences of No Deal. This week, a waitress in my constituency asked me whether, post-Brexit, her family would be able to pay their household bills.
We must protect jobs and business from No Deal catastrophe.
It was one of countless similar conversations among individuals, families and their communities.
Many are terrified about their futures and their country’s. It is our duty as politicians to act and speak responsibly to calm such fears.
None of this means those who voted to leave Brussels have changed their minds. They want a Brexit which works for everyone and which does not needlessly risk jobs and living standards.
Should Brexit not happen, voters will feel cheated and disenfranchised by Parliamentary manoeuvres which frustrate the Referendum and keep the UK in the EU.
Such an outcome would spark a political crisis, potential civil unrest and political extremism, which has no place in British politics. MPs know that if they again vote down the PM’s deal, with any positive changes it may contain, they will hugely increase the likelihood of Britain remaining in the EU.
Of course, most reasonable people will accept a postponement of a few weeks to the March 29 Brexit date.
But it seems far more likely that any delay to Article 50 would be much longer.
This would give time for the Remainers to force through a Second Referendum — based on a fudged question denying voters the clear-cut choice on which they voted in 2016.
So I believe a vote for the Prime Minister’s deal is now the only responsible option.
No deal risks economic chaos and plummeting living standards. Opening the door to remaining in the EU, or having another vote, will cause an unprecedented political crisis.
I believe our future relationship with Europe should involve Britain becoming part of Common Market 2.0.
Any delay to Article 50 would give time for the Remainers to force through a Second Referendum.
This would mean our joining the European Free Trade Association alongside successful countries such as Norway and Switzerland. The UK would be out of the EU, out of the political union, the ECJ, the Common Fisheries and Farming Policies.
We would have brakes on freedom of movement and much more. But as EFTA members we would be part of the European Economic Area, safeguarding our businesses and jobs.
That though is for the next round of negotiations during the necessary transition period which will follow Brexit Day.
In the meantime, it is our responsibility as MPs and democrats to make sure we exit the EU on the terms of the deal which the PM brings back to Parliament.
Voting it down a second time will leave us all facing the stark choice of either the economic disaster of a no deal, or the political disaster of a Second Referendum.
Either option would be a betrayal of democracy for which the political classes would be damned by voters with devastating consequences.

If we vote Theresa May's deal down a second time we will face either the economic disaster of a No Deal or the political disaster of a Second Referendum
OK, I hold my hands up. I voted Remain in 2016.
But once the votes were cast and the clear result was Leave, I knew it was my duty as an MP to follow the people’s instruction. It was Parliament’s duty to do that.
The Conservative manifesto on which we were elected in 2017 contained a commitment to leave the EU and I have followed that commitment, voting for Article 50 and opposing a second referendum.
Remaining true to that democratic commitment is also the reason I voted against Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement in January. That deal seemed designed to keep Britain in a dark treacle of EU bureaucracy.
It established a separation between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. And it presented hard-pressed taxpayers with a £39billion bill — for the privilege of this divisive and never-ending backstop.
Now, with the Brexit clock ticking perilously close to midnight, I have decided to vote FOR the deal Theresa May will soon bring back to Parliament.
I do not believe there is any betrayal in my decision. It is one, I believe, that will be shared by many of the MPs who also voted down the deal just weeks ago.
No Deal would be disastrous for the UK and Europe. Big businesses would survive but many of the UK’s hundreds of thousands of small businesses would not. They are the backbone of our successful economy.
We have an overriding duty as Conservatives to protect them and the jobs they provide from No Deal.
I am in no doubt that the public are increasingly anxious about the catastrophic consequences of No Deal. This week, a waitress in my constituency asked me whether, post-Brexit, her family would be able to pay their household bills.
We must protect jobs and business from No Deal catastrophe.
It was one of countless similar conversations among individuals, families and their communities.
Many are terrified about their futures and their country’s. It is our duty as politicians to act and speak responsibly to calm such fears.
None of this means those who voted to leave Brussels have changed their minds. They want a Brexit which works for everyone and which does not needlessly risk jobs and living standards.
Should Brexit not happen, voters will feel cheated and disenfranchised by Parliamentary manoeuvres which frustrate the Referendum and keep the UK in the EU.
Such an outcome would spark a political crisis, potential civil unrest and political extremism, which has no place in British politics. MPs know that if they again vote down the PM’s deal, with any positive changes it may contain, they will hugely increase the likelihood of Britain remaining in the EU.
Of course, most reasonable people will accept a postponement of a few weeks to the March 29 Brexit date.
But it seems far more likely that any delay to Article 50 would be much longer.
This would give time for the Remainers to force through a Second Referendum — based on a fudged question denying voters the clear-cut choice on which they voted in 2016.
So I believe a vote for the Prime Minister’s deal is now the only responsible option.
No deal risks economic chaos and plummeting living standards. Opening the door to remaining in the EU, or having another vote, will cause an unprecedented political crisis.
I believe our future relationship with Europe should involve Britain becoming part of Common Market 2.0.
Any delay to Article 50 would give time for the Remainers to force through a Second Referendum.
This would mean our joining the European Free Trade Association alongside successful countries such as Norway and Switzerland. The UK would be out of the EU, out of the political union, the ECJ, the Common Fisheries and Farming Policies.
We would have brakes on freedom of movement and much more. But as EFTA members we would be part of the European Economic Area, safeguarding our businesses and jobs.
That though is for the next round of negotiations during the necessary transition period which will follow Brexit Day.
In the meantime, it is our responsibility as MPs and democrats to make sure we exit the EU on the terms of the deal which the PM brings back to Parliament.
Voting it down a second time will leave us all facing the stark choice of either the economic disaster of a no deal, or the political disaster of a Second Referendum.
Either option would be a betrayal of democracy for which the political classes would be damned by voters with devastating consequences.

There is so much to be optimistic about — we have nothing to fear from a No Deal Brexit, writes Sir Rocco Forte
EVERY day we are bombarded with claims that a No Deal Brexit would spell disaster.
But those predicting doom are talking our country into a crisis that is no more real than the one we were told would happen the day after we voted Leave.
What we are not being told by the harbingers of doom is that inward investment into the UK in the first half of 2018 was the second highest in the world after China, but ahead of the US and Germany.
We are not told that 94 per cent of businesses in this country are not trading in Europe.
Only five per cent of GDP is involved in cross-border trade in goods with EU countries and only 12 per cent overall if you include services.
The majority of our trade is with the rest of the world. And as this carries on day in, day out, we see no nightmare queues of lorries backed up at our ports.
In fact, there is no friction at all at the borders even though much of the “just in time” delivery we depend on comes from outside the European Union.
We are not told the Civil Service is ready and prepared to handle a No Deal Brexit. This plan is being withheld from MPs and the British people in order to push Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement, which could bind us to EU control indefinitely.
Make no mistake, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs are ready for a No Deal Brexit. All computer systems will be ready by January 19 and businesses have been advised about “Trusted Trader Schemes” to keep trade flowing.
The EU has announced plans for visa-free travel and aviation rights.
The French have installed high-tech scanners at Calais to keep both trade and tourism flowing.
Friendly “Open Skies” agreements have been signed with our most important partners outside the EU — the US and Canada. We have agreed transitional trade agreements with Switzerland.
There is so much to be optimistic about.
As for our trade with the EU, that will not stop even if extra tariffs are slapped on our exports.
The EU has a trade surplus of £95billion with the UK.
In 2017, European countries sold £341billion-worth of goods to us — that’s a lot of cars, food and wine they want to go on selling us.
It is strongly in Europe’s interests to cut a deal.
There are so many advantages of a No Deal Brexit. Number one, we keep our £39billion — the cost of Theresa May’s deal. That is taxpayers’ money that can be used to boost British businesses.
We will be free to enter into new trade deals. We are the fifth largest economy in the world. The suggestion that we are too small to cut trade deals is nonsense.
Australia, a much smaller economy than ours, negotiated deals with China, South Korea and Japan in just 18 months.
Iceland has an agreement with China and its economy is tiny compared to ours. We would be free to run our economy as we wish, slashing red tape and burdensome regulation.
Our friendships across the world with Commonwealth and other English-speaking countries can be re-energised. We have nothing to fear.
The risks of staying in the EU, by contrast, are great.
The EU has not been an economic success. Its love affair with bureaucracy and heavy taxation hold it back.
Its growth rates since the financial crisis have been much lower than ours. Levels of unemployment are so high in some EU countries, no wonder young people there come to the UK where, at four per cent, we have the lowest level of unemployment for 40 years.
As a hotelier, I can say without exception, it is much more difficult to do business in Europe than it is in the UK.
The EU’s high corporate taxes, complex labour laws and tricky legal system make Britain’s low taxes and fair laws very appealing.
There are so many reasons to be cheerful about our future outside the European Union.
But Remainers are not able to provide any positive arguments for staying in.
That is why they scaremonger with Project Fear. They won’t listen to the British people.
They want to reverse the result of the referendum by almost any means.
No one should believe their blinkered view and this country should not be held hostage by it.
Britain has always been a world leader. We should not doubt that we always will be.
A No Deal Brexit is the only way of ending the uncertainty and allowing us to get on with our lives as a successful, independent nation.

There is so much to be optimistic about — we have nothing to fear from a No Deal Brexit, writes Sir Rocco Forte
EVERY day we are bombarded with claims that a No Deal Brexit would spell disaster.
But those predicting doom are talking our country into a crisis that is no more real than the one we were told would happen the day after we voted Leave.
What we are not being told by the harbingers of doom is that inward investment into the UK in the first half of 2018 was the second highest in the world after China, but ahead of the US and Germany.
We are not told that 94 per cent of businesses in this country are not trading in Europe.
Only five per cent of GDP is involved in cross-border trade in goods with EU countries and only 12 per cent overall if you include services.
The majority of our trade is with the rest of the world. And as this carries on day in, day out, we see no nightmare queues of lorries backed up at our ports.
In fact, there is no friction at all at the borders even though much of the “just in time” delivery we depend on comes from outside the European Union.
We are not told the Civil Service is ready and prepared to handle a No Deal Brexit. This plan is being withheld from MPs and the British people in order to push Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement, which could bind us to EU control indefinitely.
Make no mistake, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs are ready for a No Deal Brexit. All computer systems will be ready by January 19 and businesses have been advised about “Trusted Trader Schemes” to keep trade flowing.
The EU has announced plans for visa-free travel and aviation rights.
The French have installed high-tech scanners at Calais to keep both trade and tourism flowing.
Friendly “Open Skies” agreements have been signed with our most important partners outside the EU — the US and Canada. We have agreed transitional trade agreements with Switzerland.
There is so much to be optimistic about.
As for our trade with the EU, that will not stop even if extra tariffs are slapped on our exports.
The EU has a trade surplus of £95billion with the UK.
In 2017, European countries sold £341billion-worth of goods to us — that’s a lot of cars, food and wine they want to go on selling us.
It is strongly in Europe’s interests to cut a deal.
There are so many advantages of a No Deal Brexit. Number one, we keep our £39billion — the cost of Theresa May’s deal. That is taxpayers’ money that can be used to boost British businesses.
We will be free to enter into new trade deals. We are the fifth largest economy in the world. The suggestion that we are too small to cut trade deals is nonsense.
Australia, a much smaller economy than ours, negotiated deals with China, South Korea and Japan in just 18 months.
Iceland has an agreement with China and its economy is tiny compared to ours. We would be free to run our economy as we wish, slashing red tape and burdensome regulation.
Our friendships across the world with Commonwealth and other English-speaking countries can be re-energised. We have nothing to fear.
The risks of staying in the EU, by contrast, are great.
The EU has not been an economic success. Its love affair with bureaucracy and heavy taxation hold it back.
Its growth rates since the financial crisis have been much lower than ours. Levels of unemployment are so high in some EU countries, no wonder young people there come to the UK where, at four per cent, we have the lowest level of unemployment for 40 years.
As a hotelier, I can say without exception, it is much more difficult to do business in Europe than it is in the UK.
The EU’s high corporate taxes, complex labour laws and tricky legal system make Britain’s low taxes and fair laws very appealing.
There are so many reasons to be cheerful about our future outside the European Union.
But Remainers are not able to provide any positive arguments for staying in.
That is why they scaremonger with Project Fear. They won’t listen to the British people.
They want to reverse the result of the referendum by almost any means.
No one should believe their blinkered view and this country should not be held hostage by it.
Britain has always been a world leader. We should not doubt that we always will be.
A No Deal Brexit is the only way of ending the uncertainty and allowing us to get on with our lives as a successful, independent nation.

We have a Prime Minister who voted remain and every time she goes back to Brussels she gives more and more away
DO you remember the morning of June 24, 2016? A lovely morning. We had just voted to leave the European Union.
And amid all the euphoria, I remember saying to my wife: “They won’t let it happen. Somehow, they’ll stop it.” I don’t think I was alone in reckoning that.
It’s looking very much like that at the moment, isn’t it? We’re 43 days away from deadline time, March 29. But what do you reckon the likelihood is of the deadline being put back? I’ll bet it is.
Olly Robbins thinks it’s likely. He’s a civil servant and the Prime Minister’s chief negotiator to the EU. He was overheard jabbering about the whole business in a bar in Brussels. And he said if there WERE a delay, it would most likely be a long one.
We’ll probably all be here this time next year, then, in exactly the same position.
By which time the deal will be so watered down, the whole point will have been lost. It’s pretty close to that stage right now.
Why has this happened? Because our establishment do not want us to leave. And while they may pay lip service to “respecting the voice of the people”, they don’t remotely mean it. They never did.
And so, on the one hand we have establishment voices — Blair, Mandelson, Heseltine — and a growing number of current politicians demanding we must have another vote. Because we got it wrong last time.
The European Union has a history of ignoring popular votes and getting countries to run the vote again, after a slew of propaganda about why the people were so wrong.
Then, on the other hand, we have a Prime Minister who voted Remain leading our negotiations. And at every stage of the process more and more has been given away.
We started from a position of weakness by allowing the EU to dictate the order of the negotiations. So they got to demand things from us — such as extortionate amounts of money — before we even got down to talking about our trading relationship.
And at every stage the deal has got weaker. Every time she came back from Brussels, something more had been given away. Until we reach today’s position, where the deal before us isn’t really leaving the EU at all.
We’ll still be tied to the customs union for the foreseeable future. We will still have the horrible European Court of Justice telling us what we can and can’t do for another two years.
And there are plenty of people who believe that the famous issue of the Northern Ireland backstop is simply an attempt to get us to remain, for ever, inside the customs union.
Here’s what I think will happen.
Brexit will, in the end, be delayed. And by the time a deal is put before us again — months down the line — it will bear no real resemblance to “leaving the European Union”.
And so those of us who have no trust in our liberal establishment, because we know what scant respect it has for democracy, will be able to say: “Told you so. They were never going to let it happen.”

Congratulations to young Hartlepool lad Michael Rice for becoming our entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest.
He’s singing a ditty called Love Is Really Lovely or something, and will come third from last, just above Kosovo and France.
Michael Rice will represent the UK at Eurovision but will probably come third from lastBut bless him, at least he’ll be going.
Far left, anti-Semitic bullies have been demanding we boycott the extravaganza because it’s in Israel.
A bunch of C-list celebs wrote a letter (to The Guardian, natch) insisting we pull out.
They said nothing when the contest was held in the repressive Islamic state of Azerbaijan.
Good luck, Michael. And enjoy lovely Tel Aviv.
In future, eight per cent of people in BBC programmes must be gay.
That’s a new target the corporation has set itself.
The BBC is trying to represent the country with gay quotas but perhaps they could do better with BrexitYes, I know what you’re thinking. The current number is somewhere in the region of 72 per cent.
But still, this is just the BBC trying hard to represent the country as it is, and we shouldn’t complain.
In fact, here’s a few more areas where they might try to better represent the country as it is.
Pro-Brexit people on political programmes.
A majority voted to leave. But remainers outnumber leavers on Question Time and Any Questions by two to one, according to a report by the Institute for Economic Affairs.
So how about it, BBC? More leavers on air please – and they can be as camp as a row of tents for all I care.
A beautiful – and very rare – African black leopard has just been caught on film in Kenya.
They haven’t been photographed for more than 100 years.
It's time to stop trophy hunters from bagging rare wild animalsIf I were the leopard, I’d keep my head down a bit.
Some smirking gimp from Butthole, Texas, will be out with a gun trying to blow its brains out. In the past week there have been two more horrible, distressing photos of American big-game hunters standing over some poor animal they’ve just shot.
One scumbag was looking proud as punch having murdered a baby elephant. Another one shot an extremely rare horned goat. It’s time we sorted these people out.
I know what my wife is getting me for Valentine’s Day. I’ve seen it. It’s a bloody exercise bike.
It’ll probably come with a sweet little Valentine verse:
Roses are red, violets are blue
Lose a few stone and you might get a . . .
One year my dad bought my mum an iron for Valentine’s Day.
She didn’t speak to him for days
So, the smirking Pole Donald Tusk wonders what the special place reserved in Hell will look like for British Brexiteers.
Donald Tusk was rebutted by the Greek finance minster attacking the monetary unionA great response to this puffed-up EU goblin from former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. He said: “Probably very similar to the place reserved for those who designed a monetary union without a proper banking union.
“And when the financial crisis hit, cynically transferred the bankers’ gigantic losses on to the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers.”
I see Katie Price was paid to turn up to dance at some gig. But there were no punters. Nobody interested. I think that lass is going to have to reinvent herself again.

I suppose it’s sad to see someone slip out of the public eye when they are so desperate to be in it. Although I don’t care THAT much, to be honest.
Apparently, people are their most happy when they’re 16 years old – and 70.
That’s according to a new study. I can see that.
At 16 you think you know everything. And you’re dumb enough to think that you’ve got all those years to change the world and make it a nicer place. And that’s exciting.
While at 70, you pretty much DO know everything. And it’s too late to do anything about it. And that’s relaxing.
Got to agree with my mate Ally Ross. Has there been a more stupid series in the history of television than Icons?
Marylin Monroe would have topped the the current subjects of the TV series IconMuch as I admire Tanni Grey-Thompson, Virginia Woolf and so on, in what possible way are they more iconic figures than Marilyn Monroe? Or Churchill? Or for that matter, Hitler?
 
The 20th century wasn’t very nice – and so it would have been entirely fitting if Adolf had fought out the final with Uncle Joe Stalin, much as he did in 1941. But as ever, the Beeb made a bad idea even worse through political correctness.
And no Beatles. Computer genius Alan Turing won. In the end it’s a surprise the title didn’t go to Clare Balding.
We have a Prime Minister who voted remain and every time she goes back to Brussels she gives more and more away
DO you remember the morning of June 24, 2016? A lovely morning. We had just voted to leave the European Union.
And amid all the euphoria, I remember saying to my wife: “They won’t let it happen. Somehow, they’ll stop it.” I don’t think I was alone in reckoning that.
It’s looking very much like that at the moment, isn’t it? We’re 43 days away from deadline time, March 29. But what do you reckon the likelihood is of the deadline being put back? I’ll bet it is.
Olly Robbins thinks it’s likely. He’s a civil servant and the Prime Minister’s chief negotiator to the EU. He was overheard jabbering about the whole business in a bar in Brussels. And he said if there WERE a delay, it would most likely be a long one.
We’ll probably all be here this time next year, then, in exactly the same position.
By which time the deal will be so watered down, the whole point will have been lost. It’s pretty close to that stage right now.
Why has this happened? Because our establishment do not want us to leave. And while they may pay lip service to “respecting the voice of the people”, they don’t remotely mean it. They never did.
And so, on the one hand we have establishment voices — Blair, Mandelson, Heseltine — and a growing number of current politicians demanding we must have another vote. Because we got it wrong last time.
The European Union has a history of ignoring popular votes and getting countries to run the vote again, after a slew of propaganda about why the people were so wrong.
Then, on the other hand, we have a Prime Minister who voted Remain leading our negotiations. And at every stage of the process more and more has been given away.
We started from a position of weakness by allowing the EU to dictate the order of the negotiations. So they got to demand things from us — such as extortionate amounts of money — before we even got down to talking about our trading relationship.
And at every stage the deal has got weaker. Every time she came back from Brussels, something more had been given away. Until we reach today’s position, where the deal before us isn’t really leaving the EU at all.
We’ll still be tied to the customs union for the foreseeable future. We will still have the horrible European Court of Justice telling us what we can and can’t do for another two years.
And there are plenty of people who believe that the famous issue of the Northern Ireland backstop is simply an attempt to get us to remain, for ever, inside the customs union.
Here’s what I think will happen.
Brexit will, in the end, be delayed. And by the time a deal is put before us again — months down the line — it will bear no real resemblance to “leaving the European Union”.
And so those of us who have no trust in our liberal establishment, because we know what scant respect it has for democracy, will be able to say: “Told you so. They were never going to let it happen.”

Congratulations to young Hartlepool lad Michael Rice for becoming our entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest.
He’s singing a ditty called Love Is Really Lovely or something, and will come third from last, just above Kosovo and France.
Michael Rice will represent the UK at Eurovision but will probably come third from lastBut bless him, at least he’ll be going.
Far left, anti-Semitic bullies have been demanding we boycott the extravaganza because it’s in Israel.
A bunch of C-list celebs wrote a letter (to The Guardian, natch) insisting we pull out.
They said nothing when the contest was held in the repressive Islamic state of Azerbaijan.
Good luck, Michael. And enjoy lovely Tel Aviv.
In future, eight per cent of people in BBC programmes must be gay.
That’s a new target the corporation has set itself.
The BBC is trying to represent the country with gay quotas but perhaps they could do better with BrexitYes, I know what you’re thinking. The current number is somewhere in the region of 72 per cent.
But still, this is just the BBC trying hard to represent the country as it is, and we shouldn’t complain.
In fact, here’s a few more areas where they might try to better represent the country as it is.
Pro-Brexit people on political programmes.
A majority voted to leave. But remainers outnumber leavers on Question Time and Any Questions by two to one, according to a report by the Institute for Economic Affairs.
So how about it, BBC? More leavers on air please – and they can be as camp as a row of tents for all I care.
A beautiful – and very rare – African black leopard has just been caught on film in Kenya.
They haven’t been photographed for more than 100 years.
It's time to stop trophy hunters from bagging rare wild animalsIf I were the leopard, I’d keep my head down a bit.
Some smirking gimp from Butthole, Texas, will be out with a gun trying to blow its brains out. In the past week there have been two more horrible, distressing photos of American big-game hunters standing over some poor animal they’ve just shot.
One scumbag was looking proud as punch having murdered a baby elephant. Another one shot an extremely rare horned goat. It’s time we sorted these people out.
I know what my wife is getting me for Valentine’s Day. I’ve seen it. It’s a bloody exercise bike.
It’ll probably come with a sweet little Valentine verse:
Roses are red, violets are blue
Lose a few stone and you might get a . . .
One year my dad bought my mum an iron for Valentine’s Day.
She didn’t speak to him for days
So, the smirking Pole Donald Tusk wonders what the special place reserved in Hell will look like for British Brexiteers.
Donald Tusk was rebutted by the Greek finance minster attacking the monetary unionA great response to this puffed-up EU goblin from former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. He said: “Probably very similar to the place reserved for those who designed a monetary union without a proper banking union.
“And when the financial crisis hit, cynically transferred the bankers’ gigantic losses on to the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers.”
I see Katie Price was paid to turn up to dance at some gig. But there were no punters. Nobody interested. I think that lass is going to have to reinvent herself again.

I suppose it’s sad to see someone slip out of the public eye when they are so desperate to be in it. Although I don’t care THAT much, to be honest.
Apparently, people are their most happy when they’re 16 years old – and 70.
That’s according to a new study. I can see that.
At 16 you think you know everything. And you’re dumb enough to think that you’ve got all those years to change the world and make it a nicer place. And that’s exciting.
While at 70, you pretty much DO know everything. And it’s too late to do anything about it. And that’s relaxing.
Got to agree with my mate Ally Ross. Has there been a more stupid series in the history of television than Icons?
Marylin Monroe would have topped the the current subjects of the TV series IconMuch as I admire Tanni Grey-Thompson, Virginia Woolf and so on, in what possible way are they more iconic figures than Marilyn Monroe? Or Churchill? Or for that matter, Hitler?
 
The 20th century wasn’t very nice – and so it would have been entirely fitting if Adolf had fought out the final with Uncle Joe Stalin, much as he did in 1941. But as ever, the Beeb made a bad idea even worse through political correctness.
And no Beatles. Computer genius Alan Turing won. In the end it’s a surprise the title didn’t go to Clare Balding.
The way Brexit is heading doesn't resemble what we meant when we voted for Leave with a second referendum
SO – with every long day that passes the UK is shunted closer and closer to a Brexit deal which is a travesty of what we meant by “Leave”. Or towards a second referendum. Or a delay in leaving altogether.
You can tell what side the House of Commons is on, can’t you?
The one thing slipping away from our grasp is “No Deal”. They won’t let it happen. The Commons would vote against that by a majority of two to one.
And yet that is what we meant when we voted Leave. For months now the Remainer politicians and the BBC have been telling us about all sorts of disasters that will befall us if we leave with no deal.
The Beeb even managed to dig up a kebab shop owner in Gloucester who reckons people aren’t buying his kebabs because they fear a No Deal Brexit.
Yeah, I can just imagine. You’re walking along and think: “Oooh, I really fancy a nice doner kebab. Bit of chilli sauce and a crisp salad. But hang on a minute, what about Brexit? Oh well, better have a cheeseburger instead, then.” I mean, WTF?
We’ve been told we’ll all have incurable venereal disease if we leave the EU with no deal. Nope, not kidding. That report came from the Evening Standard. There will be no Mars bars. Planes will fail to take off. Perhaps they will drop out of the sky too because the laws of physics will no longer work.
Every time a business announces it will move elsewhere, the BBC tells us that Brexit is the cause.
Look, we know how you voted. But this is for your own good, you ghastly little people. You don’t want to die of venereal disease while being stung by a killer bee and without even a kebab for comfort, do you?
Despite the fact that in the case of our car manufacturers, for example, and Dyson, Brexit has nothing whatsoever to do with their decisions to relocate.
And it’s this constant stream of laughable propaganda that has got nutters stocking up on dried food at the local supermarkets. Worried that we’ll all starve after March 29.
Listen, I have few doubts that there might be one or two inconveniences in the first month or so after we leave with No Deal.
But to listen to the Chicken Lickens from Remain you’d imagine that not only was the sky going to fall in, but plagues of killer bees would be unleashed on us all.
This has been the softening up exercise to beat them all.
The message has been: Hammer the dumb b****rds over the head with the most fantastic b****cks imaginable.
And then we can step in and say — look, we know how you voted. But this is for your OWN good, you ghastly little people. You don’t want to die of venereal disease while being stung by a killer bee and without even a kebab for comfort, do you?
We’ll sort it out for you — or maybe, here’s an idea, you’d like to have another go at voting? Because you kinda got it wrong last time.
It’s a plan which looks very much like it’s going to work. From where I’m sitting, I don’t see us leaving the EU properly, if at all. And where, then, does that leave the people’s trust in democracy?
The UK is one of the least racist countries on the planet, according to a new study.
What’s more, there has been no noticeable rise in racism since we voted to leave the European Union.
You wouldn’t think this if you watched the BBC or read the liberal newspapers. Or listened to an embittered remain voter going on about how we’re all horrible xenophobes.
Truth is, this is an incredibly tolerant country with virtually no animosity directed at immigrants.
Which is one of the reasons, I suppose, why they all want to come here.
Meanwhile, the Indians and Pakistanis are having a go at each other again.
Shooting down each other’s jets over the disputed Kashmir region.
There’s always a danger, with those two, that it will spill into a major conflict. The countries have a few hundred nukes between them.
India an Pakistan are at it again and they both have nukes but lets hope we leave the EU before they drop themIndia’s first successful nuclear bomb test was codenamed the “Smiling Buddha”, which I think is a lovely name.
It would be awful if the world came to an end before we left the EU, wouldn’t it?
No sooner had seven MPs left the Labour Party because of its anti-Semitism than one keen Corbyn-supporting MP said they may have been funded by Israeli money.
Then Labour objected to the Jew-hating genocidal terrorists Hezbollah being named an . . . uh . . . terrorist group.
A day later a senior Corbyn ally said that his party had “backed off” too much over anti-Semitism.
Everywhere you look within that foul party, hatred of Jewish people is present.
And they are still in a state of denial about it.
The snowflakes are afraid of the nice weather exemplified in a recent Guardian articleThe sunshine this week really lifted my spirits.
Out walking with the dog, everybody I passed had a smile on their face.
But that’s probably because I wasn’t out walking anywhere near The Guardian’s offices. “Am I The Only One Who’s Terrified By The Warm Weather?” was one of the headline this week.
They can even find misery and injustice in a nice winter’s day. And the answer to the question?
You’re terrified of the warm weather – because you’re a snowflake.
Another one wants to come back. This time it’s a pharmacist, a bloke called Mohammed Anwar Miah.
He left Britain illegally to work as a medic for the Islamic State.
His argument is that he should be allowed back because instead of chopping heads off he was handing out Nurofen.
Nope, Mo. You made your bed, you lie in it.
You’ve let it be known that your sympathies are with the most savage, repulsive, primitive terrorists ever to walk this earth. You illegally aid their cause. Why should we have you back here?
Poor old Stacey Dooley has been out to Uganda doing the old slebs-go-to-Africa routine. Posing with a cute little boy. Watching very large women dancing, etc. All slebs have to do this, I think.
It’s written in their contracts.
But Stacey has fallen foul of a group called “No White Saviours”.
They hate it when whitey comes visiting because it suggests their countries are uniformly useless and they can’t look after themselves.
Anyway, Stacey refused to meet the group and now they are haranguing her and other white slebs.
One group of chippy dimbos in pursuit of another.
The way Brexit is heading doesn't resemble what we meant when we voted for Leave with a second referendum
SO – with every long day that passes the UK is shunted closer and closer to a Brexit deal which is a travesty of what we meant by “Leave”. Or towards a second referendum. Or a delay in leaving altogether.
You can tell what side the House of Commons is on, can’t you?
The one thing slipping away from our grasp is “No Deal”. They won’t let it happen. The Commons would vote against that by a majority of two to one.
And yet that is what we meant when we voted Leave. For months now the Remainer politicians and the BBC have been telling us about all sorts of disasters that will befall us if we leave with no deal.
The Beeb even managed to dig up a kebab shop owner in Gloucester who reckons people aren’t buying his kebabs because they fear a No Deal Brexit.
Yeah, I can just imagine. You’re walking along and think: “Oooh, I really fancy a nice doner kebab. Bit of chilli sauce and a crisp salad. But hang on a minute, what about Brexit? Oh well, better have a cheeseburger instead, then.” I mean, WTF?
We’ve been told we’ll all have incurable venereal disease if we leave the EU with no deal. Nope, not kidding. That report came from the Evening Standard. There will be no Mars bars. Planes will fail to take off. Perhaps they will drop out of the sky too because the laws of physics will no longer work.
Every time a business announces it will move elsewhere, the BBC tells us that Brexit is the cause.
Look, we know how you voted. But this is for your own good, you ghastly little people. You don’t want to die of venereal disease while being stung by a killer bee and without even a kebab for comfort, do you?
Despite the fact that in the case of our car manufacturers, for example, and Dyson, Brexit has nothing whatsoever to do with their decisions to relocate.
And it’s this constant stream of laughable propaganda that has got nutters stocking up on dried food at the local supermarkets. Worried that we’ll all starve after March 29.
Listen, I have few doubts that there might be one or two inconveniences in the first month or so after we leave with No Deal.
But to listen to the Chicken Lickens from Remain you’d imagine that not only was the sky going to fall in, but plagues of killer bees would be unleashed on us all.
This has been the softening up exercise to beat them all.
The message has been: Hammer the dumb b****rds over the head with the most fantastic b****cks imaginable.
And then we can step in and say — look, we know how you voted. But this is for your OWN good, you ghastly little people. You don’t want to die of venereal disease while being stung by a killer bee and without even a kebab for comfort, do you?
We’ll sort it out for you — or maybe, here’s an idea, you’d like to have another go at voting? Because you kinda got it wrong last time.
It’s a plan which looks very much like it’s going to work. From where I’m sitting, I don’t see us leaving the EU properly, if at all. And where, then, does that leave the people’s trust in democracy?
The UK is one of the least racist countries on the planet, according to a new study.
What’s more, there has been no noticeable rise in racism since we voted to leave the European Union.
You wouldn’t think this if you watched the BBC or read the liberal newspapers. Or listened to an embittered remain voter going on about how we’re all horrible xenophobes.
Truth is, this is an incredibly tolerant country with virtually no animosity directed at immigrants.
Which is one of the reasons, I suppose, why they all want to come here.
Meanwhile, the Indians and Pakistanis are having a go at each other again.
Shooting down each other’s jets over the disputed Kashmir region.
There’s always a danger, with those two, that it will spill into a major conflict. The countries have a few hundred nukes between them.
India an Pakistan are at it again and they both have nukes but lets hope we leave the EU before they drop themIndia’s first successful nuclear bomb test was codenamed the “Smiling Buddha”, which I think is a lovely name.
It would be awful if the world came to an end before we left the EU, wouldn’t it?
No sooner had seven MPs left the Labour Party because of its anti-Semitism than one keen Corbyn-supporting MP said they may have been funded by Israeli money.
Then Labour objected to the Jew-hating genocidal terrorists Hezbollah being named an . . . uh . . . terrorist group.
A day later a senior Corbyn ally said that his party had “backed off” too much over anti-Semitism.
Everywhere you look within that foul party, hatred of Jewish people is present.
And they are still in a state of denial about it.
The snowflakes are afraid of the nice weather exemplified in a recent Guardian articleThe sunshine this week really lifted my spirits.
Out walking with the dog, everybody I passed had a smile on their face.
But that’s probably because I wasn’t out walking anywhere near The Guardian’s offices. “Am I The Only One Who’s Terrified By The Warm Weather?” was one of the headline this week.
They can even find misery and injustice in a nice winter’s day. And the answer to the question?
You’re terrified of the warm weather – because you’re a snowflake.
Another one wants to come back. This time it’s a pharmacist, a bloke called Mohammed Anwar Miah.
He left Britain illegally to work as a medic for the Islamic State.
His argument is that he should be allowed back because instead of chopping heads off he was handing out Nurofen.
Nope, Mo. You made your bed, you lie in it.
You’ve let it be known that your sympathies are with the most savage, repulsive, primitive terrorists ever to walk this earth. You illegally aid their cause. Why should we have you back here?
Poor old Stacey Dooley has been out to Uganda doing the old slebs-go-to-Africa routine. Posing with a cute little boy. Watching very large women dancing, etc. All slebs have to do this, I think.
It’s written in their contracts.
But Stacey has fallen foul of a group called “No White Saviours”.
They hate it when whitey comes visiting because it suggests their countries are uniformly useless and they can’t look after themselves.
Anyway, Stacey refused to meet the group and now they are haranguing her and other white slebs.
One group of chippy dimbos in pursuit of another.
The ex-Foreign Secretary insisted there's still time to get a better Brexit deal from the EU
DESPERATE Theresa May handed over a whole "Christmas list" of goodies to the EU because she was terrified of a No Deal Brexit, Boris Johnson blasted tonight.
The top Tory insisted it IS still possible to get a better deal than the PM's fudge - as long as Britain stands firm.
Boris predicted that if the UK prepares for No Deal, Brussels will take us more seriously and offer improved terms.
And he mocked the idea that the EU's rules are as inflexible as ancient tribes - pointing out that Eurocrats are used to "horse trading and back room compromises".
Mrs May has told MPs they have a choice between her deal or No Deal, or a second referendum on Brexit.
And EU bosses have publicly said they won't reopen negotiations on the withdrawal agreement signed off last month.
Those who say that it’s impossible to get a better deal from the EU than Theresa May’s deal - that the EU has rules as immutable as those of the Medes and the Persians - have obviously never seen the horse trading and back room compromises that characterise every EU summit 1/4
But in a Twitter storm this evening, the former Foreign Secretary said both sides were bluffing and predicted talks will restart if MPs vote down the PM's deal in nine days' time.
Boris wrote: "Those who say that it’s impossible to get a better deal from the EU than Theresa May’s deal - that the EU has rules as immutable as those of the Medes and the Persians - have obviously never seen the horse trading and back room compromises that characterise every EU summit.
"What is different about this negotiation is one simple fact: the EU believed that despite her ‘No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal’ rhetoric, Theresa May was desperate for a deal at any price.
"Once those with whom you are negotiating believe that, then it simply becomes a matter of how long they want to make their Christmas list.
"Once the EU realises that they have overplayed their hand & Parliament won’t wear this shameful surrender, they will be faced with a choice: do a proper & equitable deal or split without a deal - a prospect that they don’t relish, not least as they lose all leverage over us."
Boris is helping to lead the revolt against Mrs May's deal which will come to a vote in Parliament on December 11.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
The ex-Foreign Secretary insisted there's still time to get a better Brexit deal from the EU
DESPERATE Theresa May handed over a whole "Christmas list" of goodies to the EU because she was terrified of a No Deal Brexit, Boris Johnson blasted tonight.
The top Tory insisted it IS still possible to get a better deal than the PM's fudge - as long as Britain stands firm.
Boris predicted that if the UK prepares for No Deal, Brussels will take us more seriously and offer improved terms.
And he mocked the idea that the EU's rules are as inflexible as ancient tribes - pointing out that Eurocrats are used to "horse trading and back room compromises".
Mrs May has told MPs they have a choice between her deal or No Deal, or a second referendum on Brexit.
And EU bosses have publicly said they won't reopen negotiations on the withdrawal agreement signed off last month.
Those who say that it’s impossible to get a better deal from the EU than Theresa May’s deal - that the EU has rules as immutable as those of the Medes and the Persians - have obviously never seen the horse trading and back room compromises that characterise every EU summit 1/4
But in a Twitter storm this evening, the former Foreign Secretary said both sides were bluffing and predicted talks will restart if MPs vote down the PM's deal in nine days' time.
Boris wrote: "Those who say that it’s impossible to get a better deal from the EU than Theresa May’s deal - that the EU has rules as immutable as those of the Medes and the Persians - have obviously never seen the horse trading and back room compromises that characterise every EU summit.
"What is different about this negotiation is one simple fact: the EU believed that despite her ‘No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal’ rhetoric, Theresa May was desperate for a deal at any price.
"Once those with whom you are negotiating believe that, then it simply becomes a matter of how long they want to make their Christmas list.
"Once the EU realises that they have overplayed their hand & Parliament won’t wear this shameful surrender, they will be faced with a choice: do a proper & equitable deal or split without a deal - a prospect that they don’t relish, not least as they lose all leverage over us."
Boris is helping to lead the revolt against Mrs May's deal which will come to a vote in Parliament on December 11.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Eurosceptics have pledged to support Theresa May until her Brexit deal Commons vote, with the DUP also promising to support her if Labour submits a formal no-confidence motion against the Government
TORY BREXITEERS yesterday gave Theresa May a critical three more weeks to thrash out a deal with the EU in a shock Christmas truce.
Arch Eurosceptics vowed to gift her a “period of tranquillity” over Christmas as she announced a new date of the week beginning January 14 for the Commons vote on her Brexit deal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg shocked the Commons by saying he had “confidence” in the PM – just days after trying to force her out.
It came as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last night tabled a motion of no confidence in the PM over her refusal to allow the Commons a ‘Meaningful Vote’ this week.
Opposition parties last night put down an amendment to make it a full blown confidence in the Government rather than simply Mrs May.
But last night Tory Brexiteers and the DUP vowed to support the PM even if Labour followed up with a formal no confidence vote against the Government as a whole.
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds told The Sun: “Now’s not the time to be playing parliamentary games.”
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon fumed: “Labour tabling a motion just in the PM rather than in entire government begs the question – which Tory do they want to see as PM?”
Tory Eurosceptic sources claimed the marked change in tone towards the PM was a recognition of the fact she had survived last week’s no confidence vote from Tory MPs by 200 to 117 votes.
But they added with every passing day, they were closer to achieving a clean break from the EU on March 29 in a managed ‘No Deal’.
In a marathon Brexit debate yesterday, previously arch opponent Edward Leigh told the PM he could still vote for her deal if she secures a meaningful concession from the EU on the ‘backstop’.
Mr Rees Mogg then tweeted a video of his supportive comments in the Commons, with the words: “At Christmas, it is wrong to be a dog in the manger, that is where a baby belongs.”
Addressing the House yesterday, Mrs May insisted she could still win legal promises from the EU to make the hated Irish backstop palatable to MPs.
Mrs May told the House: “Discussions with my EU partners - including Presidents Tusk, Juncker and others - have shown that further clarification following the Council’s conclusions is in fact possible”.
The PM also insisted that EU leaders told her last week they “do not want to use the backstop”, and there is therefore “no plot to keep us in the backstop”
Mrs May also admitted to the Commons that her bust up in Brussels last week with Euro boss Jean Claude Juncker saw some “robust” exchanges.
But she added: “I make no apology for standing up for the interests of this house, and the whole of the United Kingdom”.
But the EU itself cast serious doubt on Mrs May’s claim that fresh discussions for the backstop assurances have already begun with Brussels officials.
An EU Commission spokesman said: “The deal that is on the table is the best and the only deal possible. We will not reopen it.
“So no further meetings with the UK are foreseen.”
There was fury with the PM from MPs on all sides for still refusing to put her deal to a vote this week.
Former Cabinet minister Justine Greening dubbed it “a constitutional crisis”.
Tory ally Jonathan Djanogly warned her she was “haemorrhaging” support among business leaders and the City.
The SNP also slammed Mrs May’s delays.
Its Westminster leader Ian Blackford thundered: “It is time to call time on this Government. Parliament needs to take control of this situation”.
“We thought the PM had reached rock bottom but she is still digging.”
Eurosceptics have pledged to support Theresa May until her Brexit deal Commons vote, with the DUP also promising to support her if Labour submits a formal no-confidence motion against the Government
TORY BREXITEERS yesterday gave Theresa May a critical three more weeks to thrash out a deal with the EU in a shock Christmas truce.
Arch Eurosceptics vowed to gift her a “period of tranquillity” over Christmas as she announced a new date of the week beginning January 14 for the Commons vote on her Brexit deal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg shocked the Commons by saying he had “confidence” in the PM – just days after trying to force her out.
It came as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last night tabled a motion of no confidence in the PM over her refusal to allow the Commons a ‘Meaningful Vote’ this week.
Opposition parties last night put down an amendment to make it a full blown confidence in the Government rather than simply Mrs May.
But last night Tory Brexiteers and the DUP vowed to support the PM even if Labour followed up with a formal no confidence vote against the Government as a whole.
DUP Westminster leader Nigel Dodds told The Sun: “Now’s not the time to be playing parliamentary games.”
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon fumed: “Labour tabling a motion just in the PM rather than in entire government begs the question – which Tory do they want to see as PM?”
Tory Eurosceptic sources claimed the marked change in tone towards the PM was a recognition of the fact she had survived last week’s no confidence vote from Tory MPs by 200 to 117 votes.
But they added with every passing day, they were closer to achieving a clean break from the EU on March 29 in a managed ‘No Deal’.
In a marathon Brexit debate yesterday, previously arch opponent Edward Leigh told the PM he could still vote for her deal if she secures a meaningful concession from the EU on the ‘backstop’.
Mr Rees Mogg then tweeted a video of his supportive comments in the Commons, with the words: “At Christmas, it is wrong to be a dog in the manger, that is where a baby belongs.”
Addressing the House yesterday, Mrs May insisted she could still win legal promises from the EU to make the hated Irish backstop palatable to MPs.
Mrs May told the House: “Discussions with my EU partners - including Presidents Tusk, Juncker and others - have shown that further clarification following the Council’s conclusions is in fact possible”.
The PM also insisted that EU leaders told her last week they “do not want to use the backstop”, and there is therefore “no plot to keep us in the backstop”
Mrs May also admitted to the Commons that her bust up in Brussels last week with Euro boss Jean Claude Juncker saw some “robust” exchanges.
But she added: “I make no apology for standing up for the interests of this house, and the whole of the United Kingdom”.
But the EU itself cast serious doubt on Mrs May’s claim that fresh discussions for the backstop assurances have already begun with Brussels officials.
An EU Commission spokesman said: “The deal that is on the table is the best and the only deal possible. We will not reopen it.
“So no further meetings with the UK are foreseen.”
There was fury with the PM from MPs on all sides for still refusing to put her deal to a vote this week.
Former Cabinet minister Justine Greening dubbed it “a constitutional crisis”.
Tory ally Jonathan Djanogly warned her she was “haemorrhaging” support among business leaders and the City.
The SNP also slammed Mrs May’s delays.
Its Westminster leader Ian Blackford thundered: “It is time to call time on this Government. Parliament needs to take control of this situation”.
“We thought the PM had reached rock bottom but she is still digging.”
A BREXIT Party MEP has risked euro chiefs’ fury by pinching the European Parliament’s Union Jack as his final act in Strasbourg.
Martin Daubney “liberated” the national flag as Britain’s representatives left the parliament for the final time on Thursday, ahead of Brexit in two weeks time.
It had hung alongside the 27 other members states’ colours in the building’s entrance.
Revealing the act to The Sun, Mr Daubney, 49, said he was retaliating over a ban imposed by euro chiefs on miniature flags on members’ desks in the chamber.
The West Midlands MEP said: “So much anger welled up inside me over the flag ban that we decided to liberate our flag. We called it Operation Liberate Jack."
“Nobody tried to stop me. I expect I’ll get a slap on the wrist somehow, but it will be a price worth paying.”
Mr Daubney, a former editor of men’s magazine Loaded, added: “I’m happy to make a donation to a charity of their choice for its cost, but I’m not going to return it."
“Jack belongs in Britain, Jack will not be going back to Strasbourg.”
The MEP has taken the flag back to his London home and laid it on his bed.
He plans to unfurl it on the stage of a rally in Parliament Square organised by Brexit Party chief Nigel Farage, on the night of January 31 to mark the moment of Brexit, at 11pm.
While anti-EU MEPs celebrated the end of the final Strasbourg plenary session for Brits, pro-EU parliamentarians mourned the moment.
Labour MEP Seb Dance dubbed Britain’s EU exit only “a sabbatical”, adding: “One day British MEPs will get to sit here again and represent our interests and work with our neighbours to solve common problems”.
The European Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator Guy Verhofstadt, 66, yesterday declared Britain would rejoin the EU one day, but added: “Maybe I will not see it in my life”.
A BREXIT Party MEP has risked euro chiefs’ fury by pinching the European Parliament’s Union Jack as his final act in Strasbourg.
Martin Daubney “liberated” the national flag as Britain’s representatives left the parliament for the final time on Thursday, ahead of Brexit in two weeks time.
It had hung alongside the 27 other members states’ colours in the building’s entrance.
Revealing the act to The Sun, Mr Daubney, 49, said he was retaliating over a ban imposed by euro chiefs on miniature flags on members’ desks in the chamber.
The West Midlands MEP said: “So much anger welled up inside me over the flag ban that we decided to liberate our flag. We called it Operation Liberate Jack."
“Nobody tried to stop me. I expect I’ll get a slap on the wrist somehow, but it will be a price worth paying.”
Mr Daubney, a former editor of men’s magazine Loaded, added: “I’m happy to make a donation to a charity of their choice for its cost, but I’m not going to return it."
“Jack belongs in Britain, Jack will not be going back to Strasbourg.”
The MEP has taken the flag back to his London home and laid it on his bed.
He plans to unfurl it on the stage of a rally in Parliament Square organised by Brexit Party chief Nigel Farage, on the night of January 31 to mark the moment of Brexit, at 11pm.
While anti-EU MEPs celebrated the end of the final Strasbourg plenary session for Brits, pro-EU parliamentarians mourned the moment.
Labour MEP Seb Dance dubbed Britain’s EU exit only “a sabbatical”, adding: “One day British MEPs will get to sit here again and represent our interests and work with our neighbours to solve common problems”.
The European Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator Guy Verhofstadt, 66, yesterday declared Britain would rejoin the EU one day, but added: “Maybe I will not see it in my life”.
BULLISH Boris Johnson is willing to take the nuclear option of resigning and risk a Jeremy Corbyn government rather than delay Brexit.
Opposition parties yesterday agreed to reject any fresh bid for an October election.
But sources said Mr Johnson — who tussled with a bull during a visit to Scotland to see the Queen — would rather quit than extend negotiations with the EU into November.
If he resigns, Jeremy Corbyn would have an obligation to try to form a government.
Tory chiefs then hope they could force an election if he has delayed Brexit beyond October 31.
One source told Sun columnist James Forsyth: “The public increasingly realise that MPs and Jeremy Corbyn want to delay Brexit and Boris wants to get this done. That’s good for us and bad for them.”
No10 advisers are in talks to try to find a “third way” — or “any other way” — out of the deadlock.
The Bill ruling out No Deal passed the House of Lords and should gain Royal Assent on Monday — forcing Mr Johnson to ask Brussels for an extension.
But James Forsyth reveals the PM, who last night arrived at Balmoral with girlfriend Carrie Symonds, would never write the letter.
He also says Mr Johnson could ask the Queen not to approve the Bill — and dare MPs to bring him down.
Another option is to phrase the demand for an extension in a way that is bound to be refused.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was under pressure last night to abandon his Brexit strategy and "come up with a plan B", The Times reports.
The revelations came as:
Mr Corbyn spoke with the leaders of the main opposition parties yesterday to agree to resist any Tory call for an early poll before the risk of a No Deal on October 31 is eliminated.
They are all understood to be planning to vote against or abstain any fresh bid for an election under the Fixed-Term Parliament Act.
No10 had hoped to force an election to give them a clear Brexit mandate before the EU Council on October 17.
THE PM took a bull by the horns yesterday — and pledged to invest in Britain.
Boris cajoled the beast across a field on a trip to Aberdeenshire where he unveiled a £50million boost for Scottish farmers.
At Peterhead fish market his spending was limited to a winning £185 bid for a box of cod.
After mud and smelly stands, he joked he might need a quick change of clothes before last night’s visit to the Queen at Balmoral.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said he was “desperate for an election”, but it could not be until an extension to Article 50 was secured.
He said: “It’s not just about our own party interests, it’s about our collective national interests.
"So we are prepared to work with others to make sure we get the timing right, but the timing right on the basis of securing that extension to Article 50.”
But Mr Blackford did anticipate that an election would be successfully called “over the course of these weeks”.
Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts added: “We have the Prime Minister on the run. Boris is broken.
"We have an opportunity to bring down Boris, to break Boris and to bring down Brexit.”
Speaking on his visit to Scotland yesterday, Mr Johnson once more said it defied belief the opposition had not agreed to an election to try to force out the Government.
The Tories last night revealed a list of the 35 times Mr Corbyn has publicly called for an election since 2017.
In January he said an election was the “most practical and democratic option” to break the Brexit deadlock.
And in July he demonstrated outside Parliament to “demand” a vote.
Mr Johnson said: “I think it’s a most sensational paradox that the Opposition is given the chance to have an election and have it turned down.
“Clearly there’s a contest going on to make sure we come out on October 31st.
"There are people in Parliament who plainly want to block that — Jeremy Corbyn and the SNP.
"I think they’re wrong, the people want us to get on and do it.”
Labour MPs said they were desperate to make Mr Johnson “stew”.
He was also attacked again over the axing of 21 Tory moderates for voting against No Deal.
But the PM warned rebel MPs: “I will go to Brussels, I’ll get a deal and I’ll make sure we will come out on October 31.”
 
BULLISH Boris Johnson is willing to take the nuclear option of resigning and risk a Jeremy Corbyn government rather than delay Brexit.
Opposition parties yesterday agreed to reject any fresh bid for an October election.
But sources said Mr Johnson — who tussled with a bull during a visit to Scotland to see the Queen — would rather quit than extend negotiations with the EU into November.
If he resigns, Jeremy Corbyn would have an obligation to try to form a government.
Tory chiefs then hope they could force an election if he has delayed Brexit beyond October 31.
One source told Sun columnist James Forsyth: “The public increasingly realise that MPs and Jeremy Corbyn want to delay Brexit and Boris wants to get this done. That’s good for us and bad for them.”
No10 advisers are in talks to try to find a “third way” — or “any other way” — out of the deadlock.
The Bill ruling out No Deal passed the House of Lords and should gain Royal Assent on Monday — forcing Mr Johnson to ask Brussels for an extension.
But James Forsyth reveals the PM, who last night arrived at Balmoral with girlfriend Carrie Symonds, would never write the letter.
He also says Mr Johnson could ask the Queen not to approve the Bill — and dare MPs to bring him down.
Another option is to phrase the demand for an extension in a way that is bound to be refused.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was under pressure last night to abandon his Brexit strategy and "come up with a plan B", The Times reports.
The revelations came as:
Mr Corbyn spoke with the leaders of the main opposition parties yesterday to agree to resist any Tory call for an early poll before the risk of a No Deal on October 31 is eliminated.
They are all understood to be planning to vote against or abstain any fresh bid for an election under the Fixed-Term Parliament Act.
No10 had hoped to force an election to give them a clear Brexit mandate before the EU Council on October 17.
THE PM took a bull by the horns yesterday — and pledged to invest in Britain.
Boris cajoled the beast across a field on a trip to Aberdeenshire where he unveiled a £50million boost for Scottish farmers.
At Peterhead fish market his spending was limited to a winning £185 bid for a box of cod.
After mud and smelly stands, he joked he might need a quick change of clothes before last night’s visit to the Queen at Balmoral.
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said he was “desperate for an election”, but it could not be until an extension to Article 50 was secured.
He said: “It’s not just about our own party interests, it’s about our collective national interests.
"So we are prepared to work with others to make sure we get the timing right, but the timing right on the basis of securing that extension to Article 50.”
But Mr Blackford did anticipate that an election would be successfully called “over the course of these weeks”.
Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts added: “We have the Prime Minister on the run. Boris is broken.
"We have an opportunity to bring down Boris, to break Boris and to bring down Brexit.”
Speaking on his visit to Scotland yesterday, Mr Johnson once more said it defied belief the opposition had not agreed to an election to try to force out the Government.
The Tories last night revealed a list of the 35 times Mr Corbyn has publicly called for an election since 2017.
In January he said an election was the “most practical and democratic option” to break the Brexit deadlock.
And in July he demonstrated outside Parliament to “demand” a vote.
Mr Johnson said: “I think it’s a most sensational paradox that the Opposition is given the chance to have an election and have it turned down.
“Clearly there’s a contest going on to make sure we come out on October 31st.
"There are people in Parliament who plainly want to block that — Jeremy Corbyn and the SNP.
"I think they’re wrong, the people want us to get on and do it.”
Labour MPs said they were desperate to make Mr Johnson “stew”.
He was also attacked again over the axing of 21 Tory moderates for voting against No Deal.
But the PM warned rebel MPs: “I will go to Brussels, I’ll get a deal and I’ll make sure we will come out on October 31.”
 
The Government has promised that 40 EU free trade deals with 70 countries will still apply under a No-Deal Brexit
TRADE boss Liam Fox is scrambling to sign promise letters for trade deals in the future as it emerges just six will be done in time for Brexit.
The government has promised to rollover 40 current EU free trade deals with 70 different countries, so they will still apply to the UK under a no deal Brexit.
But a secret tally leaked to The Sun has revealed that just a handful will be ready in time when the UK leaves on March 29.
Instead, the International Trade Secretary is battling to persuade dozens of other countries to carry out an exchange of “letters of understanding”.
A minister told The Sun: “We’re not going to get many of the deals over the line in time now.
“What we hope to have instead is letters of understanding with all the remaining countries, which will go some way to reassuring business.”
The current tally drawn up by the Department for International Trade lists progress of the 40 deal rollovers in four colour-coded tables.
Only six are in green table, signifying they will be done by March 29.
They are the four already agreed, with Switzerland – signed on Monday - Chile, an Eastern and Southern African block, and the Faroe Islands.
In addition, deals with Israel and the Palestinian Authority are “on track”.
Amber warnings are given to nine countries - including major agreements with economic powerhouses South Korea and Canada – which are dubbed: “Deliverability by March 29 as off-track”.
And red and black warnings are given to 23 other EU deals, including big trading partners Japan, Turkey and Mexico, which are given no chance of being completed by Brexit Day.
They are classed either “significantly off-track” or “not possible to be completed by March 2019”.
Dr Fox tried to play down his chances of success this week, insisting the number of trade deals was “not a numbers game”, but instead the focus should be on the “proportion of trade we can maintain”.
A spokesman for the Department for International Trade last night would not deny the leaked tally’s grim prognosis.
But he added: “This does not reflect the whole picture: in 2018, around 12% of UK trade took place under EU Trade Agreements in force.
“We have already signed a number of agreements including with Switzerland, the largest of these. We continue to work to replicate as many of these as possible, until exit day, to ensure the maximum continuity of UK trade.
“Of course, the best way to ensure that all existing agreements continue to apply is to pass the Withdrawal Agreement.”
The Government has promised that 40 EU free trade deals with 70 countries will still apply under a No-Deal Brexit
TRADE boss Liam Fox is scrambling to sign promise letters for trade deals in the future as it emerges just six will be done in time for Brexit.
The government has promised to rollover 40 current EU free trade deals with 70 different countries, so they will still apply to the UK under a no deal Brexit.
But a secret tally leaked to The Sun has revealed that just a handful will be ready in time when the UK leaves on March 29.
Instead, the International Trade Secretary is battling to persuade dozens of other countries to carry out an exchange of “letters of understanding”.
A minister told The Sun: “We’re not going to get many of the deals over the line in time now.
“What we hope to have instead is letters of understanding with all the remaining countries, which will go some way to reassuring business.”
The current tally drawn up by the Department for International Trade lists progress of the 40 deal rollovers in four colour-coded tables.
Only six are in green table, signifying they will be done by March 29.
They are the four already agreed, with Switzerland – signed on Monday - Chile, an Eastern and Southern African block, and the Faroe Islands.
In addition, deals with Israel and the Palestinian Authority are “on track”.
Amber warnings are given to nine countries - including major agreements with economic powerhouses South Korea and Canada – which are dubbed: “Deliverability by March 29 as off-track”.
And red and black warnings are given to 23 other EU deals, including big trading partners Japan, Turkey and Mexico, which are given no chance of being completed by Brexit Day.
They are classed either “significantly off-track” or “not possible to be completed by March 2019”.
Dr Fox tried to play down his chances of success this week, insisting the number of trade deals was “not a numbers game”, but instead the focus should be on the “proportion of trade we can maintain”.
A spokesman for the Department for International Trade last night would not deny the leaked tally’s grim prognosis.
But he added: “This does not reflect the whole picture: in 2018, around 12% of UK trade took place under EU Trade Agreements in force.
“We have already signed a number of agreements including with Switzerland, the largest of these. We continue to work to replicate as many of these as possible, until exit day, to ensure the maximum continuity of UK trade.
“Of course, the best way to ensure that all existing agreements continue to apply is to pass the Withdrawal Agreement.”
BORIS Johnson is set to meet Donald Trump three times in just 100 days as he fights to deliver his “do or die” Brexit pledge.
The newly elected Tory leader, who will officially takeover from Theresa May today, wants to build on the UK’s “special relationship” with the US.
Boris, 55, is expected to make a visit to the US one of his first priorities as he will be hoping to kick-start a trade deal as soon as possible.
After Boris’ leadership win yesterday, Trump voiced his confidence that “tough” BoJo will “get it done” as the October 31 Brexit deadline looms.
The two leaders are expected to meet next month, but the location is yet to be confirmed, The Telegraph reported.
Then they will likely sit down for talks at the G7 in Biarritz, France, and the UN General Assembly in New York in September.
This means the pair will have three rounds of talks before the UK leaves the EU in 100 days.
The closeness of the relationship will be in strong contrast to that of Trump and May.
The former British Prime Minister was nowhere near the top of his list as he spoke to world leaders following his election success in November 2016.
And when the pair finally met at the White House in 2017, despite some awkward hand-holding, a state visit by Trump to the UK didn't materialise for another two and a half years.

Trump said Boris and Nigel Farage will do "tremendous things together" after BoJo was crowned Tory leader.
He took less than half an hour to log onto Twitter to lavish Boris with praise after he was elected as leader of the Conservatives at midday.
Trump tweeted at 12.29pm British time: "Congratulations to Boris Johnson on becoming the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He will be great!"
And later on at a rally he added: "A really good man is going to be the PM of the UK now. Boris Johnson. He’s good and he’s tough...
"They call him Britain's Trump.
"That's what they need. He'll get it done. Boris is good."
He also used the rally to praise his pal Farage, saying they would work well together.
Farage has urged the new PM to call for a General Election and form a pact with his Brexit Party - a plan he says Trump supports.
He told The Times: "He [Mr Trump] thinks a Johnson-Farage alliance would be unstoppable and would deliver Brexit. He sees it very clearly.
"I have said my levels of trust in Boris and the Conservative Party are very low, but if he really means it and is absolutely determined to deliver a clean break Brexit then of course I'd talk to him."
The President's daughter Ivanka also tweeted her congratulations to Boris.
Newt Gingrich, the former US Speaker of the House, said Boris would be "the Donald Trump of Britain" and urged everyone to "put on your seat belt and prepare for a wild ride".
"Think Margaret Thatcher with wild hair," he added.
The President has previously said Boris would make a good PM, and heaped praise on him when he came to visit the UK earlier this month.
But in the past few weeks the special relationship has turned sour following the leaking of cables from the UK ambassador to the UK.
Sir Kim Darroch's cables describing President Trump's administration as "inept" and dysfunctional were revealed and splashed over the front pages of the newspapers.
The President labelled him "very stupid" and Sir Kim later resigned his post.
And he hit out at Theresa May too, saying on Twitter she was "foolish" for not listening to his advice on Brexit.
Boris didn't meet with the US President during his trip to Britain, but the pair did talk on the phone.
They appear to have a good relationship and Team Boris will be hoping they can repair any damage to US-UK links when he gets into No10.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
BORIS Johnson is set to meet Donald Trump three times in just 100 days as he fights to deliver his “do or die” Brexit pledge.
The newly elected Tory leader, who will officially takeover from Theresa May today, wants to build on the UK’s “special relationship” with the US.
Boris, 55, is expected to make a visit to the US one of his first priorities as he will be hoping to kick-start a trade deal as soon as possible.
After Boris’ leadership win yesterday, Trump voiced his confidence that “tough” BoJo will “get it done” as the October 31 Brexit deadline looms.
The two leaders are expected to meet next month, but the location is yet to be confirmed, The Telegraph reported.
Then they will likely sit down for talks at the G7 in Biarritz, France, and the UN General Assembly in New York in September.
This means the pair will have three rounds of talks before the UK leaves the EU in 100 days.
The closeness of the relationship will be in strong contrast to that of Trump and May.
The former British Prime Minister was nowhere near the top of his list as he spoke to world leaders following his election success in November 2016.
And when the pair finally met at the White House in 2017, despite some awkward hand-holding, a state visit by Trump to the UK didn't materialise for another two and a half years.

Trump said Boris and Nigel Farage will do "tremendous things together" after BoJo was crowned Tory leader.
He took less than half an hour to log onto Twitter to lavish Boris with praise after he was elected as leader of the Conservatives at midday.
Trump tweeted at 12.29pm British time: "Congratulations to Boris Johnson on becoming the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He will be great!"
And later on at a rally he added: "A really good man is going to be the PM of the UK now. Boris Johnson. He’s good and he’s tough...
"They call him Britain's Trump.
"That's what they need. He'll get it done. Boris is good."
He also used the rally to praise his pal Farage, saying they would work well together.
Farage has urged the new PM to call for a General Election and form a pact with his Brexit Party - a plan he says Trump supports.
He told The Times: "He [Mr Trump] thinks a Johnson-Farage alliance would be unstoppable and would deliver Brexit. He sees it very clearly.
"I have said my levels of trust in Boris and the Conservative Party are very low, but if he really means it and is absolutely determined to deliver a clean break Brexit then of course I'd talk to him."
The President's daughter Ivanka also tweeted her congratulations to Boris.
Newt Gingrich, the former US Speaker of the House, said Boris would be "the Donald Trump of Britain" and urged everyone to "put on your seat belt and prepare for a wild ride".
"Think Margaret Thatcher with wild hair," he added.
The President has previously said Boris would make a good PM, and heaped praise on him when he came to visit the UK earlier this month.
But in the past few weeks the special relationship has turned sour following the leaking of cables from the UK ambassador to the UK.
Sir Kim Darroch's cables describing President Trump's administration as "inept" and dysfunctional were revealed and splashed over the front pages of the newspapers.
The President labelled him "very stupid" and Sir Kim later resigned his post.
And he hit out at Theresa May too, saying on Twitter she was "foolish" for not listening to his advice on Brexit.
Boris didn't meet with the US President during his trip to Britain, but the pair did talk on the phone.
They appear to have a good relationship and Team Boris will be hoping they can repair any damage to US-UK links when he gets into No10.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
The Tory top table ducked out of a confrontation with the PM over last week’s Salzburg summit debacle during their weekly meeting, with no appetite to 'throw the PM under the bus' just six days before the start of the Tories’  conference
THERESA May’s Cabinet  have given her troubled Chequers plan a two-week stay of execution to make progress —   or face a final demand to dump it.
The Tory top table ducked out of a confrontation with the PM over last week’s Salzburg summit debacle  during their weekly meeting  yesterday.
Brexiteers claimed Mrs May would be ambushed with an ultimatum to switch to asking for a Canada-style free trade deal.
But every minister stayed silent during her update on how EU leaders ripped up her softer  plan in front of her at the Austrian summit.
There was no appetite to “throw the PM under the bus” just six days before the start of the Tories’ annual conference, Cabinet sources said.
Instead,  the revolt will take place at the first Cabinet meeting afterwards — if Brussels still hasn’t ceded significant ground.
One Cabinet minister told The Sun: “There was a feeling  that the PM did well on Friday with her No10 statement on Brexit, and she has earned some breathing space.
“But we are still left with the fact that the EU has said no to Chequers, and that is a problem that is not going to go away. So we will have to move on from Chequers if there is no movement from Barnier in two weeks.”
Mrs May  left the Salzburg update to the very end of the  two-hour meeting, which had already overrun.
One minister said: “We just wanted to get out by then.”
During her pitch, Mrs May told them that “a critical point” was always going to come in the negotiations. But she implored: “Now is the time to hold our nerve”.
The PM was backed by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab straight after the meeting, who dubbed it “a good, healthy discussion”.
He added: “The Prime Minister made clear we are going to keep our calm and press the EU on some of the criticisms  they have made. But also to be clear that there are no credible alternatives  the EU has come up with.”
Over the weekend, Mr Raab joined Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to cast doubt on the Chequers plan by suggesting there are alternatives.5
Over the weekend, Mr Raab joined Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to cast doubt on the Chequers plan by suggesting there are alternativesSources close to Mr Hunt yesterday said he has “intellectual sympathy” with a Canada-style free trade deal.
But No10 insists the Cabinet has always fully backed Chequers “and that continues to be the case”.
Downing Street also made it clear that the PM was expecting the EU to come up with a solution to the deadlock by the next  summit on October 18.
Her official spokesman said: “We are now waiting for the EU to evolve its position.”
TWO thirds of Brexit voters just want to leave the EU and do not care how.
A poll found 66 per cent who backed Leave are “not interested in the details and just want those responsible to get on with it”.
The ORB poll of 2,000 found 82 per cent  are “fed up with some pro-Brexit and pro-Remain politicians claiming they speak for everyone who voted in the referendum”.
The poll was commissioned by the Brexit Delivery Group, Tory backbenchers pushing for a softer Brexit.
Leader Simon Hart said: “This shows voters are much more realistic and pragmatic than MPs. It’s time to put ideology to one side and listen.”
But  pro-EU Tory MPs  stepped up their calls for an alternative Brexit plan at the same time as hardline Brexiteer Tories did. Mrs May’s former policy chief George Freeman joined ex-minister Nick Boles to call for Britain to be part of the European Free Trade association  so it can keep single market access.
Mr Freeman said: “There’s a Brexit solution waiting on the shelf. We should take it.”
The Tory top table ducked out of a confrontation with the PM over last week’s Salzburg summit debacle during their weekly meeting, with no appetite to 'throw the PM under the bus' just six days before the start of the Tories’  conference
THERESA May’s Cabinet  have given her troubled Chequers plan a two-week stay of execution to make progress —   or face a final demand to dump it.
The Tory top table ducked out of a confrontation with the PM over last week’s Salzburg summit debacle  during their weekly meeting  yesterday.
Brexiteers claimed Mrs May would be ambushed with an ultimatum to switch to asking for a Canada-style free trade deal.
But every minister stayed silent during her update on how EU leaders ripped up her softer  plan in front of her at the Austrian summit.
There was no appetite to “throw the PM under the bus” just six days before the start of the Tories’ annual conference, Cabinet sources said.
Instead,  the revolt will take place at the first Cabinet meeting afterwards — if Brussels still hasn’t ceded significant ground.
One Cabinet minister told The Sun: “There was a feeling  that the PM did well on Friday with her No10 statement on Brexit, and she has earned some breathing space.
“But we are still left with the fact that the EU has said no to Chequers, and that is a problem that is not going to go away. So we will have to move on from Chequers if there is no movement from Barnier in two weeks.”
Mrs May  left the Salzburg update to the very end of the  two-hour meeting, which had already overrun.
One minister said: “We just wanted to get out by then.”
During her pitch, Mrs May told them that “a critical point” was always going to come in the negotiations. But she implored: “Now is the time to hold our nerve”.
The PM was backed by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab straight after the meeting, who dubbed it “a good, healthy discussion”.
He added: “The Prime Minister made clear we are going to keep our calm and press the EU on some of the criticisms  they have made. But also to be clear that there are no credible alternatives  the EU has come up with.”
Over the weekend, Mr Raab joined Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to cast doubt on the Chequers plan by suggesting there are alternatives.5
Over the weekend, Mr Raab joined Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to cast doubt on the Chequers plan by suggesting there are alternativesSources close to Mr Hunt yesterday said he has “intellectual sympathy” with a Canada-style free trade deal.
But No10 insists the Cabinet has always fully backed Chequers “and that continues to be the case”.
Downing Street also made it clear that the PM was expecting the EU to come up with a solution to the deadlock by the next  summit on October 18.
Her official spokesman said: “We are now waiting for the EU to evolve its position.”
TWO thirds of Brexit voters just want to leave the EU and do not care how.
A poll found 66 per cent who backed Leave are “not interested in the details and just want those responsible to get on with it”.
The ORB poll of 2,000 found 82 per cent  are “fed up with some pro-Brexit and pro-Remain politicians claiming they speak for everyone who voted in the referendum”.
The poll was commissioned by the Brexit Delivery Group, Tory backbenchers pushing for a softer Brexit.
Leader Simon Hart said: “This shows voters are much more realistic and pragmatic than MPs. It’s time to put ideology to one side and listen.”
But  pro-EU Tory MPs  stepped up their calls for an alternative Brexit plan at the same time as hardline Brexiteer Tories did. Mrs May’s former policy chief George Freeman joined ex-minister Nick Boles to call for Britain to be part of the European Free Trade association  so it can keep single market access.
Mr Freeman said: “There’s a Brexit solution waiting on the shelf. We should take it.”
There is no such thing as a 'soft Brexit' and 'fulfilling the vote' now requires preparing for a clean break and counteracting the inevitable short-term disruption, writes Steve Hilton
I HAVE a sticker on my laptop which was given to me by the founder of The Federalist, a Washington DC-based conservative website.
It says: “Consider the possibility we are led by idiots.”
When you look at the shambles Brexit has become, as far as Britain is concerned it’s not a possibility but a downright certainty.
Let’s review the idiocy.
It began with David Cameron stomping off in the biggest and most ruinous huff in history, leaving a sleep-deprived and shell-shocked Tory party scrambling to find a new leader overnight.
Then Boris Johnson and Michael Gove threw away a golden opportunity as potential PM and deputy to achieve the vision of a positive, outward-looking, go-getting, post-Brexit Britain.
Over a bizarre few days they stabbed each other in the back, shot themselves in the foot and indulged in whatever other self- (and nation-) harming metaphor you can think of.
Their antics landed us with hapless and hopeless Theresa May, so desperate to prove she could deliver Brexit despite opposing it that she rushed into announcing the end-point without the faintest idea how to get there.
More misguided Remainer pandering came from then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd, with her ludicrous plan to force businesses to list their foreign workers.
This offensive announcement alienated Remain voters who might have given Brexit a chance and helped set in stone the horrible divisiveness of the past two years.
As Foreign Secretary, Boris made one gaffe after another, starting with the most heinous: Sticking to his silly remark about having your cake and eating it — guaranteed to wind up the EU bigwigs and make them even more determined to give Britain a rotten deal.
On and on the idiocy has gone — from Philip Hammond trying to prove his discredited Project Fear predictions were right all along by being the most anti-business
Conservative Chancellor anyone can remember, to Matt Hancock’s hysterical claims about people dying from a lack of medicines if we leave the EU without a deal. He is the Health Secretary, for God’s sake. Why doesn’t he get the medicines, instead of issuing stupid threats?
At least Michael Gove’s pitiful descent into Project Fear ignominy, with his own Hancockian warning about running out of drinking water, turns out to be fake news — or so I’m told.
And where has all this left us?
With a Brexit “deal” that is not really a deal and doesn’t actually deliver Brexit. The transition period leaves Britain subject to most EU rules, and there is no agreement on what comes next — just an agenda for more negotiations.
How dare Mrs May say last Sunday, “The British people don’t want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. They want a good deal that fulfils the vote”?
Her plan guarantees years more “arguing about Brexit” and obviously doesn’t fulfil the vote. I know politicians spin everything but this is in a different league. It’s not spin, Prime Minister — what you are saying is a bare-faced lie, and you know it.
It is also disgraceful that the civil service is helping push out this lying propaganda at taxpayers’ expense with its Cabinet Office “Project Vote” operation.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. The senior civil service has catastrophically mishandled Brexit all along, finally exposing as self-serving fiction the idea that it is the professional, reliable guardian of the national interest, there to save the nation from the half-baked schemes of here today, gone tomorrow politicians.
Yes indeed: “Consider the possibility we are led by idiots.”
But now what, you might say. It’s easy to criticise — what would you do?
Well, I’ve said it before (first in October 2016): Pursuing a “deal” with the EU is a waste of time. Of course you can’t stay in the single market but regain control of immigration. Of course you can’t stop paying membership fees but still set the rules. And as President Trump noted, of course you can’t strike new trade deals unless you fully leave.
There is no such thing as a “soft Brexit”. There is Brexit, without adjectives — or staying in the EU in some form. “Fulfilling the vote” now requires two things: Preparing for a clean break and counteracting the inevitable short-term disruption.
Disgracefully, and cynically, the Government refused to prepare for a clean break over the past two years, so now we are behind. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it — it just means an all-out effort must be made, and if necessary the exit date pushed back.
However solid the preparations, though, there is bound to be economic turbulence. But here too, we can be proactive. The Government could almost instantly make Britain the world’s top destination for business and investment.
Slash corporation tax and regulations. Roll out the red carpet for entrepreneurs, scientists, investors. Commit to building the world’s most modern infrastructure and best-trained workforce.
Business hates uncertainty more than anything. That is why Theresa May’s deal is a disaster — it prolongs uncertainty.
A clean break and a radical pro-enterprise agenda would end uncertainty and counteract the short-term shock of departure.
Once we have left, and shown how dynamic post-Brexit Britain can be, we will have much more leverage to negotiate a trade deal with the EU.
Objectors will say: This is fantasy — there is no majority in Parliament for a clean break. But there is no majority for anything else either, and in any case, with a clean-break scenario the EU Withdrawal Act does not require a vote that binds the Government.
But perhaps the biggest question is: Who can make this happen?
My idea of bringing back Cameron went down like a lead balloon. After the Rees-Mogg rebellion flopped, we are stuck with Mrs May — even if she loses on December 11. No one can see a way out.
There is only one answer. Pro-Brexit MPs, inside and outside Cabinet, must develop a spine, step up and unite to offer a positive alternative. Unite to get rid of Theresa
May, then make the case with passion and conviction for a clean break and a radical pro-enterprise programme.
Right now, Britain needs leaders. Not idiots.
There is no such thing as a 'soft Brexit' and 'fulfilling the vote' now requires preparing for a clean break and counteracting the inevitable short-term disruption, writes Steve Hilton
I HAVE a sticker on my laptop which was given to me by the founder of The Federalist, a Washington DC-based conservative website.
It says: “Consider the possibility we are led by idiots.”
When you look at the shambles Brexit has become, as far as Britain is concerned it’s not a possibility but a downright certainty.
Let’s review the idiocy.
It began with David Cameron stomping off in the biggest and most ruinous huff in history, leaving a sleep-deprived and shell-shocked Tory party scrambling to find a new leader overnight.
Then Boris Johnson and Michael Gove threw away a golden opportunity as potential PM and deputy to achieve the vision of a positive, outward-looking, go-getting, post-Brexit Britain.
Over a bizarre few days they stabbed each other in the back, shot themselves in the foot and indulged in whatever other self- (and nation-) harming metaphor you can think of.
Their antics landed us with hapless and hopeless Theresa May, so desperate to prove she could deliver Brexit despite opposing it that she rushed into announcing the end-point without the faintest idea how to get there.
More misguided Remainer pandering came from then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd, with her ludicrous plan to force businesses to list their foreign workers.
This offensive announcement alienated Remain voters who might have given Brexit a chance and helped set in stone the horrible divisiveness of the past two years.
As Foreign Secretary, Boris made one gaffe after another, starting with the most heinous: Sticking to his silly remark about having your cake and eating it — guaranteed to wind up the EU bigwigs and make them even more determined to give Britain a rotten deal.
On and on the idiocy has gone — from Philip Hammond trying to prove his discredited Project Fear predictions were right all along by being the most anti-business
Conservative Chancellor anyone can remember, to Matt Hancock’s hysterical claims about people dying from a lack of medicines if we leave the EU without a deal. He is the Health Secretary, for God’s sake. Why doesn’t he get the medicines, instead of issuing stupid threats?
At least Michael Gove’s pitiful descent into Project Fear ignominy, with his own Hancockian warning about running out of drinking water, turns out to be fake news — or so I’m told.
And where has all this left us?
With a Brexit “deal” that is not really a deal and doesn’t actually deliver Brexit. The transition period leaves Britain subject to most EU rules, and there is no agreement on what comes next — just an agenda for more negotiations.
How dare Mrs May say last Sunday, “The British people don’t want to spend any more time arguing about Brexit. They want a good deal that fulfils the vote”?
Her plan guarantees years more “arguing about Brexit” and obviously doesn’t fulfil the vote. I know politicians spin everything but this is in a different league. It’s not spin, Prime Minister — what you are saying is a bare-faced lie, and you know it.
It is also disgraceful that the civil service is helping push out this lying propaganda at taxpayers’ expense with its Cabinet Office “Project Vote” operation.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. The senior civil service has catastrophically mishandled Brexit all along, finally exposing as self-serving fiction the idea that it is the professional, reliable guardian of the national interest, there to save the nation from the half-baked schemes of here today, gone tomorrow politicians.
Yes indeed: “Consider the possibility we are led by idiots.”
But now what, you might say. It’s easy to criticise — what would you do?
Well, I’ve said it before (first in October 2016): Pursuing a “deal” with the EU is a waste of time. Of course you can’t stay in the single market but regain control of immigration. Of course you can’t stop paying membership fees but still set the rules. And as President Trump noted, of course you can’t strike new trade deals unless you fully leave.
There is no such thing as a “soft Brexit”. There is Brexit, without adjectives — or staying in the EU in some form. “Fulfilling the vote” now requires two things: Preparing for a clean break and counteracting the inevitable short-term disruption.
Disgracefully, and cynically, the Government refused to prepare for a clean break over the past two years, so now we are behind. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it — it just means an all-out effort must be made, and if necessary the exit date pushed back.
However solid the preparations, though, there is bound to be economic turbulence. But here too, we can be proactive. The Government could almost instantly make Britain the world’s top destination for business and investment.
Slash corporation tax and regulations. Roll out the red carpet for entrepreneurs, scientists, investors. Commit to building the world’s most modern infrastructure and best-trained workforce.
Business hates uncertainty more than anything. That is why Theresa May’s deal is a disaster — it prolongs uncertainty.
A clean break and a radical pro-enterprise agenda would end uncertainty and counteract the short-term shock of departure.
Once we have left, and shown how dynamic post-Brexit Britain can be, we will have much more leverage to negotiate a trade deal with the EU.
Objectors will say: This is fantasy — there is no majority in Parliament for a clean break. But there is no majority for anything else either, and in any case, with a clean-break scenario the EU Withdrawal Act does not require a vote that binds the Government.
But perhaps the biggest question is: Who can make this happen?
My idea of bringing back Cameron went down like a lead balloon. After the Rees-Mogg rebellion flopped, we are stuck with Mrs May — even if she loses on December 11. No one can see a way out.
There is only one answer. Pro-Brexit MPs, inside and outside Cabinet, must develop a spine, step up and unite to offer a positive alternative. Unite to get rid of Theresa
May, then make the case with passion and conviction for a clean break and a radical pro-enterprise programme.
Right now, Britain needs leaders. Not idiots.
PM said she was working round the clock for ‘every eventuality’ and people should be comforted by that – and her Chancellor agrees it is a ‘responsible thing for a government to do’
THERESA MAY told Brits ‘Don’t Panic’ about stockpiling for a No Deal Brexit- saying they should “take comfort” from the preparations.
Speaking yesterday the PM said it was “sensible” to be ready for “every eventuality” despite her confidence of striking a good deal with the EU.
It came a day after new Health Secretary Matt Hancock said his department was working up options for stockpiling medicines and blood products.
The Sun earlier this month revealed Ministers had drawn up secret plans to stockpile processed food in case of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit in March – where Britain would leave the EU without a trade agreement in place.
Challenged by Channel 5 yesterday if Brits should be “worried” about the plans, the Prime Minister rejected the suggestion anyone should be alarmed.
She said: “Well, far from being worried about preparations that we’re making, I would say that people should take reassurance and comfort from the fact that the government is saying that we’re in a negotiation working for a good deal.
“I believe we can get a good deal.
“But actually it’s right that we say because we don’t know what the outcome is going to be, we think it’s going to be a good one, we’re working for a good one but let’s prepare for every eventuality.”
Pressed on the issue Mrs May added: “Look, this is not just about stockpiling that concept, what it is about making sure that we’ll be able to continue to do things that are necessary once we’ve left the EU, if we leave without a deal.
“Now I think people should take reassurance from the fact that this is a government that’s saying you know what we’re going to be responsible about this we’re going to be sensible about this.”
The PM was backed by the Chancellor yesterday who said No Deal preparations were the “responsible thing for a government to do” during a visit to Northern Ireland.
Ministers on Tuesday announced the recruitment of nearly 100 new officials for the Brexit Department to help prepare for a No Deal.
New Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab promised to issue a series of technical notices which would explain the work being done to “mitigate the risks” in a “responsible and reassuring way”.
PM said she was working round the clock for ‘every eventuality’ and people should be comforted by that – and her Chancellor agrees it is a ‘responsible thing for a government to do’
THERESA MAY told Brits ‘Don’t Panic’ about stockpiling for a No Deal Brexit- saying they should “take comfort” from the preparations.
Speaking yesterday the PM said it was “sensible” to be ready for “every eventuality” despite her confidence of striking a good deal with the EU.
It came a day after new Health Secretary Matt Hancock said his department was working up options for stockpiling medicines and blood products.
The Sun earlier this month revealed Ministers had drawn up secret plans to stockpile processed food in case of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit in March – where Britain would leave the EU without a trade agreement in place.
Challenged by Channel 5 yesterday if Brits should be “worried” about the plans, the Prime Minister rejected the suggestion anyone should be alarmed.
She said: “Well, far from being worried about preparations that we’re making, I would say that people should take reassurance and comfort from the fact that the government is saying that we’re in a negotiation working for a good deal.
“I believe we can get a good deal.
“But actually it’s right that we say because we don’t know what the outcome is going to be, we think it’s going to be a good one, we’re working for a good one but let’s prepare for every eventuality.”
Pressed on the issue Mrs May added: “Look, this is not just about stockpiling that concept, what it is about making sure that we’ll be able to continue to do things that are necessary once we’ve left the EU, if we leave without a deal.
“Now I think people should take reassurance from the fact that this is a government that’s saying you know what we’re going to be responsible about this we’re going to be sensible about this.”
The PM was backed by the Chancellor yesterday who said No Deal preparations were the “responsible thing for a government to do” during a visit to Northern Ireland.
Ministers on Tuesday announced the recruitment of nearly 100 new officials for the Brexit Department to help prepare for a No Deal.
New Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab promised to issue a series of technical notices which would explain the work being done to “mitigate the risks” in a “responsible and reassuring way”.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and former Cabinet minister Priti Patel slam the EU Council that gave Theresa May the cold shoulder this week
ON Thursday, the EU comprehensively dismissed the UK Government’s Chequers plan.
For some time I have said that was a very poor plan because the UK would have become rule takers, which was not what we voted for.
However, nothing else shows the British people why we need to leave the EU as soon as possible than the dictatorial, pompous and hectoring tone of the unelected EU Council president Donald Tusk and the “Polly Pocket” Napoleon, President Macron of France, as they gleefully stuck the boot into Theresa May.
The Prime Minister in reply made a statement on Friday setting out her new demands. Gone, (for good I hope) was the mantra that there is no alternative to the Chequers proposal, which so angered all of us who have campaigned for Brexit.
Yet instead, two things emerged. The first that the Prime Minister was clearly angered by their treatment of her.
Regardless of their views on Chequers, she has the right to believe that as the UK has always treated the EU with respect, so EU leaders should show the UK the same respect in return.
Second is what I and others have been saying, that the best and most workable relationship after we leave is one based on a comprehensive free trade agreement between the UK and the EU.
However, if we are to reach such an agreement, the EU must recognise that they will have to get rid of the demands for a Northern Irish border backstop, which blocks such a deal.
The EU demand that either the UK as a whole stay in the Customs Union or that Northern Ireland is separated from the UK by a customs border is unacceptable and would harm our Union.
In fact, a recent publication by two ex-Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland shows that there does not need to be a “hard” border with checkpoints or gates, and instead we could have a practical solution where goods flow freely between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
In fact, such a system should be employed at all our borders around the UK, as this would greatly reduce the likelihood of customs problems at ports from Zeebrugge to Calais.
So after months of manoeuvring, and poor advice from advisers in No10, now the choice is at least — and at last — crystal clear.
The UK wants a comprehensive trade deal with the EU but they need to cease demands about the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Failing that, the UK will leave under terms which govern trade between nations around the world.
No trade deal is better than a bad trade deal, so the ball is firmly in the EU’s court.
By Priti Patel, Tory former Cabinet minister
OUTRAGEOUS, insulting and immature sums up the EU’s appalling behaviour to the UK and to our Prime Minister.
These shenanigans from an out-of-touch EU elite serve to demonstrate why Britain was right to vote leave.
Who wants to remain in a club where its senior unelected figures mock our great and proud country and shamefully ambush our PM?
Not only has Britain bankrolled the EU for the past 45 years, the freedoms and liberties enjoyed by the Continent have been secured by our Armed Forces and the sacrifices Britain made in two world wars.
While we want to maintain strong, friendly and cordial relations with our friends and partners in Europe, Donald Tusk belittles the PM on social media and President Macron brands those who back Brexit as “liars”.
Macron’s undiplomatic comments are an insult not only to the 17.4million people who backed Brexit but to the entire country.
Their aim is simple. To reverse the result of the referendum and put Brussels back in charge.
The British people deserve better than the EU humiliating and insulting us.
We are a proud nation and will not stand for a Government that surrenders to unreasonable demands from Europe’s unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. This Government has already gone too far, with Chequers offering the EU control over large parts of our law-making.
The sad fact about the position the Government is now in is that it was advised to “chuck Chequers” and pursue an alternative course of free and open trade.
However, this is not the moment to cower and compromise further.
Salzburg should mark the moment when we decide as a country to press ahead with taking back full control over our destiny.
Our generous overtures of a £40billion divorce payment, remaining an EU rule taker and compromise have been spurned and the EU is resorting to insults.
So it’s time the Government realised this and “got real” on Brexit.
Britain must take back control of these negotiations and send the EU a signal it will understand loud and clear.
We must take the £40billion off the table and remind the EU there are serious consequences to their appalling behaviour and this will hit them hard.
If they want to negotiate then we should offer them a take-it-or-leave-it, Canada-plus-style free trade deal, which is an economic prize for the UK and our trading partners.
We leave the EU in six months and instead of wasting time accommodating its belligerent attitude, now is the time to unite the nation, believe in Britain and let the EU know that Brexit really does mean Brexit.
 
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and former Cabinet minister Priti Patel slam the EU Council that gave Theresa May the cold shoulder this week
ON Thursday, the EU comprehensively dismissed the UK Government’s Chequers plan.
For some time I have said that was a very poor plan because the UK would have become rule takers, which was not what we voted for.
However, nothing else shows the British people why we need to leave the EU as soon as possible than the dictatorial, pompous and hectoring tone of the unelected EU Council president Donald Tusk and the “Polly Pocket” Napoleon, President Macron of France, as they gleefully stuck the boot into Theresa May.
The Prime Minister in reply made a statement on Friday setting out her new demands. Gone, (for good I hope) was the mantra that there is no alternative to the Chequers proposal, which so angered all of us who have campaigned for Brexit.
Yet instead, two things emerged. The first that the Prime Minister was clearly angered by their treatment of her.
Regardless of their views on Chequers, she has the right to believe that as the UK has always treated the EU with respect, so EU leaders should show the UK the same respect in return.
Second is what I and others have been saying, that the best and most workable relationship after we leave is one based on a comprehensive free trade agreement between the UK and the EU.
However, if we are to reach such an agreement, the EU must recognise that they will have to get rid of the demands for a Northern Irish border backstop, which blocks such a deal.
The EU demand that either the UK as a whole stay in the Customs Union or that Northern Ireland is separated from the UK by a customs border is unacceptable and would harm our Union.
In fact, a recent publication by two ex-Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland shows that there does not need to be a “hard” border with checkpoints or gates, and instead we could have a practical solution where goods flow freely between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
In fact, such a system should be employed at all our borders around the UK, as this would greatly reduce the likelihood of customs problems at ports from Zeebrugge to Calais.
So after months of manoeuvring, and poor advice from advisers in No10, now the choice is at least — and at last — crystal clear.
The UK wants a comprehensive trade deal with the EU but they need to cease demands about the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
Failing that, the UK will leave under terms which govern trade between nations around the world.
No trade deal is better than a bad trade deal, so the ball is firmly in the EU’s court.
By Priti Patel, Tory former Cabinet minister
OUTRAGEOUS, insulting and immature sums up the EU’s appalling behaviour to the UK and to our Prime Minister.
These shenanigans from an out-of-touch EU elite serve to demonstrate why Britain was right to vote leave.
Who wants to remain in a club where its senior unelected figures mock our great and proud country and shamefully ambush our PM?
Not only has Britain bankrolled the EU for the past 45 years, the freedoms and liberties enjoyed by the Continent have been secured by our Armed Forces and the sacrifices Britain made in two world wars.
While we want to maintain strong, friendly and cordial relations with our friends and partners in Europe, Donald Tusk belittles the PM on social media and President Macron brands those who back Brexit as “liars”.
Macron’s undiplomatic comments are an insult not only to the 17.4million people who backed Brexit but to the entire country.
Their aim is simple. To reverse the result of the referendum and put Brussels back in charge.
The British people deserve better than the EU humiliating and insulting us.
We are a proud nation and will not stand for a Government that surrenders to unreasonable demands from Europe’s unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. This Government has already gone too far, with Chequers offering the EU control over large parts of our law-making.
The sad fact about the position the Government is now in is that it was advised to “chuck Chequers” and pursue an alternative course of free and open trade.
However, this is not the moment to cower and compromise further.
Salzburg should mark the moment when we decide as a country to press ahead with taking back full control over our destiny.
Our generous overtures of a £40billion divorce payment, remaining an EU rule taker and compromise have been spurned and the EU is resorting to insults.
So it’s time the Government realised this and “got real” on Brexit.
Britain must take back control of these negotiations and send the EU a signal it will understand loud and clear.
We must take the £40billion off the table and remind the EU there are serious consequences to their appalling behaviour and this will hit them hard.
If they want to negotiate then we should offer them a take-it-or-leave-it, Canada-plus-style free trade deal, which is an economic prize for the UK and our trading partners.
We leave the EU in six months and instead of wasting time accommodating its belligerent attitude, now is the time to unite the nation, believe in Britain and let the EU know that Brexit really does mean Brexit.
 
Labour MPs were furious at the U-turn as he ordered them to vote for a soft divorce known as Common Market 2.0
LABOUR abandoned their pledge to end free movement of people – enraging Brexit supporters.
Jeremy Corbyn sparked fury among many of his MPs by ordering them to vote for a soft Brexit, known as Common Market 2.0.
The plan would keep Britain locked in an EU single market and customs union.
But furious backbenchers tore into their leader for abandoning the manifesto pledge he ran on just two years ago.
Labour MP Kevin Barron tweeted a link to the Labour manifesto stating “free movement will end when we leave the European Union”.
He angrily added: “Small reminder of the manifesto that all Labour MPs were elected on in 2017. Clearly states that we will end freedom of movement when we leave the EU.
If we adopt his CM2/Norway option freedom of movement will stay the same. I won’t vote for it
“That is not compatible with supporting Common Market 2.0.”
Labour MP Caroline Flint also lashed the leadership.
She said: “Pledges are important. Below is what Labour said in the GE2017 Manifesto and so did I.
“If we adopt his CM2/Norway option freedom of movement will stay the same. I won’t vote for it.”
Last week, Mr Corbyn urged his MPs to back the plan – but did not impose a formal whip.
Some 42 MPs voted against it while 58 more abstained – including shadow cabinet ministers Barry Gardiner and Dawn Butler.
The astonishing departure in policy came just a day after Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry warned the Common Market 2.0 plan raised issues because of its immigration rules.
Mr Corbyn also ordered his MPs to back a second referendum in a move which is likely to spark more anger among voters in the Labour heartlands.
A Labour spokesman insisted: “We aren’t changing policy.”
He added: “We’re supporting motions to keep options on the table to prevent a damaging Tory deal or no deal, build consensus across the House to break the deadlock.”
Mr Corbyn wrote to all Labour MPs to desperately try to reassure them amid fury at his decision.
He wrote: “In order to break the deadlock and find the consensus necessary to force a change to the red lines of the Prime Minister’s rejected deal, I also ask you to support motions that reflect aspects of Labour’s Alternative Plan, including a Customs Union and for Common Market 2.0.”
But in a fresh sign of Brexit splits at the heart of Labour, he said the party only backs a second referendum on a Tory Brexit or to stop a no deal.
His deputy, Tom Watson, has said any deal should be put to another public vote.
Mr Corbyn wrote: “Further to that, we have also been clear, should we be unable to win support for our deal, and if Parliament does not give sufficient support to a similar proposition, we will keep all options on the table, including campaigning for a public vote to prevent a No Deal exit or a damaging Tory Brexit.”
The Common Market 2.0 plan was narrowly voted down last night – losing by 282 to 261 – a majority of 21.
Some 25 Labour MPs defied their leader and voted against the plan, and 33 Labour MPs voted against it – killing it off.
Meanwhile, the plan for a second referendum was rejected by 292 votes against 280 - a majority of 12. It came after 24 Labour MPs voted against it, while 16 abstained.
Labour MPs were furious at the U-turn as he ordered them to vote for a soft divorce known as Common Market 2.0
LABOUR abandoned their pledge to end free movement of people – enraging Brexit supporters.
Jeremy Corbyn sparked fury among many of his MPs by ordering them to vote for a soft Brexit, known as Common Market 2.0.
The plan would keep Britain locked in an EU single market and customs union.
But furious backbenchers tore into their leader for abandoning the manifesto pledge he ran on just two years ago.
Labour MP Kevin Barron tweeted a link to the Labour manifesto stating “free movement will end when we leave the European Union”.
He angrily added: “Small reminder of the manifesto that all Labour MPs were elected on in 2017. Clearly states that we will end freedom of movement when we leave the EU.
If we adopt his CM2/Norway option freedom of movement will stay the same. I won’t vote for it
“That is not compatible with supporting Common Market 2.0.”
Labour MP Caroline Flint also lashed the leadership.
She said: “Pledges are important. Below is what Labour said in the GE2017 Manifesto and so did I.
“If we adopt his CM2/Norway option freedom of movement will stay the same. I won’t vote for it.”
Last week, Mr Corbyn urged his MPs to back the plan – but did not impose a formal whip.
Some 42 MPs voted against it while 58 more abstained – including shadow cabinet ministers Barry Gardiner and Dawn Butler.
The astonishing departure in policy came just a day after Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry warned the Common Market 2.0 plan raised issues because of its immigration rules.
Mr Corbyn also ordered his MPs to back a second referendum in a move which is likely to spark more anger among voters in the Labour heartlands.
A Labour spokesman insisted: “We aren’t changing policy.”
He added: “We’re supporting motions to keep options on the table to prevent a damaging Tory deal or no deal, build consensus across the House to break the deadlock.”
Mr Corbyn wrote to all Labour MPs to desperately try to reassure them amid fury at his decision.
He wrote: “In order to break the deadlock and find the consensus necessary to force a change to the red lines of the Prime Minister’s rejected deal, I also ask you to support motions that reflect aspects of Labour’s Alternative Plan, including a Customs Union and for Common Market 2.0.”
But in a fresh sign of Brexit splits at the heart of Labour, he said the party only backs a second referendum on a Tory Brexit or to stop a no deal.
His deputy, Tom Watson, has said any deal should be put to another public vote.
Mr Corbyn wrote: “Further to that, we have also been clear, should we be unable to win support for our deal, and if Parliament does not give sufficient support to a similar proposition, we will keep all options on the table, including campaigning for a public vote to prevent a No Deal exit or a damaging Tory Brexit.”
The Common Market 2.0 plan was narrowly voted down last night – losing by 282 to 261 – a majority of 21.
Some 25 Labour MPs defied their leader and voted against the plan, and 33 Labour MPs voted against it – killing it off.
Meanwhile, the plan for a second referendum was rejected by 292 votes against 280 - a majority of 12. It came after 24 Labour MPs voted against it, while 16 abstained.
If you thought the Civil Service was impartial and upheld core values of honesty, impartiality, integrity and objectivity, you'd be sorely mistaken, according to this senior Civil Servant
THE four core values of the civil service are honesty, impartiality, integrity and objectivity.
Before joining the service I had believed, naively, that these values would be upheld unconditionally. I quickly came to learn that, in relation to Brexit, nothing could be further from the truth.
Unfortunately, I must remain anonymous for fear of the backlash I would receive at my place of work.
However, I can reveal I am a senior policy professional within the service and work closely with a number of government departments.
There are a number of extremely dangerous myths regarding civil servants that I must dispel because of the impact they are having on the Brexit process.
MYTH 1: The civil service is independent. The civil service was founded on the pillars of political neutrality.
Civil servants are meant to ensure that their own political persuasions do not affect their work. Crucially, they should accept those from all political leanings and points of view.
It has become clear to me that the vast majority of civil servants support Remain.
From my observations I would estimate this number to be well over 90 per cent.
This is worrying in itself and far from representative of the 52 per cent of the people who voted for Brexit.
Most horrifying, however, is the sheer disdain and utter contempt that my colleagues display towards people who voted to Leave.
I have lost count of the number of insulting and derogatory terms that are used in my own department and elsewhere to refer to the 17.4million people who voted for Brexit: “Racist”, “stupid”, “uneducated”.
Anti-Brexit jokes and snide remarks are dropped casually into everyday office con-versations. I live in fear that my colleagues will discover through a slip of my tongue that I am a Brexiteer.
Were this to happen, I believe that most would refuse to talk to me again and I might even lose my job.
This entire culture creates a thickening cloud of negativity towards Brexit that shades all areas of the civil service. I have witnessed first-hand civil servants doing everything within their power, subtly and under the surface, to frustrate Brexit and talk it down at every opportunity.
This can only seriously undermine our efforts to be in the strongest position possible on leaving the EU.
MYTH 2: Civil servants are experts in their field.
One would like to think the individuals making decisions that affect our entire nation would have some level of skill or experience.
If only that were true.
For example, I know of one stand-alone “expert” policy team leading our preparations for Brexit.
You can imagine my disbelief when I discovered none of its members had worked on anything remotely related to the EU before. In fact, I have discovered over time that the vast majority of “experts” within the service have no expertise whatsoever.
In many cases the “portfolio” you take on when you join the service is dictated by the one held by your predecessor.
As a result, you have new civil servants inheriting politically sensitive and highly important work without the faintest clue about what they are dealing with.
Civil servants who are seriously underperforming will usually have a new job title and position created for them somewhere else in the organisation instead of being sacked or performance-managed — they become someone else’s problem then.
Given the influence that civil servants are exerting over the Brexit process, this is truly concerning.
MYTH 3: The civil service does not engage in scaremongering.
I had hoped that civil servants, even in times of crisis, would be able to remain calm and level-headed in pursuit of ensuring the best outcomes for our country.
And yet it is not uncommon for me to receive emails from colleagues promoting Brexit scare stories that are nothing more than lies and speculation. Recently, things have become so panicked that various “Brexit contingency” plans have been set up throughout the organisation. This is to prepare for the “national public transport breakdown”, “surge in criminality” and “widespread public unrest” that is going to follow after we leave.
These plans also involve collecting the personal details of certain civil servants to put in place a 24-hour, on-call rota for the “emergency” that is looming. This scare-mongering, created and whipped up by civil servants, is having a marked impact on the confidence and well-being of ordinary citizens.
For example, one acquain-tance of mine is so terrified by the speculative threats put out by the service they have started to stockpile large quantities of their medication. This needs to stop.
MYTH 4: Ministers are in charge.
When I was outside the civil service looking in, I always believed civil servants were there simply to advise their ministers, who, as elected representatives of the people, would make the ultimate decision. However, I have come to realise that ministers are often mere puppets, with civil servants pulling ferociously at their strings.
The level of bureaucracy is unimaginable.
In my experience parlia-mentary briefings go through — at a minimum — five stages of internal clearance, with crucial information being amended or deleted at every stage on the whim of that individual civil servant.
The power and competence of our ministers is, I’m afraid, a facade.
They are nothing more than a megaphone for the views of biased civil servants who lurk behind them in the shadows.
I am a supporter of the Leave campaign.
To go against the will of the people expressed in the 2016 referendum would be the ultimate act of betrayal.
The Government MUST allow us to take back control by leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. If the people are betrayed, I may have no choice but to resign.
Honesty, impartiality, integrity and objectivity. We will soon discover, once and for all, whether our politicians embody these values.
 
If you thought the Civil Service was impartial and upheld core values of honesty, impartiality, integrity and objectivity, you'd be sorely mistaken, according to this senior Civil Servant
THE four core values of the civil service are honesty, impartiality, integrity and objectivity.
Before joining the service I had believed, naively, that these values would be upheld unconditionally. I quickly came to learn that, in relation to Brexit, nothing could be further from the truth.
Unfortunately, I must remain anonymous for fear of the backlash I would receive at my place of work.
However, I can reveal I am a senior policy professional within the service and work closely with a number of government departments.
There are a number of extremely dangerous myths regarding civil servants that I must dispel because of the impact they are having on the Brexit process.
MYTH 1: The civil service is independent. The civil service was founded on the pillars of political neutrality.
Civil servants are meant to ensure that their own political persuasions do not affect their work. Crucially, they should accept those from all political leanings and points of view.
It has become clear to me that the vast majority of civil servants support Remain.
From my observations I would estimate this number to be well over 90 per cent.
This is worrying in itself and far from representative of the 52 per cent of the people who voted for Brexit.
Most horrifying, however, is the sheer disdain and utter contempt that my colleagues display towards people who voted to Leave.
I have lost count of the number of insulting and derogatory terms that are used in my own department and elsewhere to refer to the 17.4million people who voted for Brexit: “Racist”, “stupid”, “uneducated”.
Anti-Brexit jokes and snide remarks are dropped casually into everyday office con-versations. I live in fear that my colleagues will discover through a slip of my tongue that I am a Brexiteer.
Were this to happen, I believe that most would refuse to talk to me again and I might even lose my job.
This entire culture creates a thickening cloud of negativity towards Brexit that shades all areas of the civil service. I have witnessed first-hand civil servants doing everything within their power, subtly and under the surface, to frustrate Brexit and talk it down at every opportunity.
This can only seriously undermine our efforts to be in the strongest position possible on leaving the EU.
MYTH 2: Civil servants are experts in their field.
One would like to think the individuals making decisions that affect our entire nation would have some level of skill or experience.
If only that were true.
For example, I know of one stand-alone “expert” policy team leading our preparations for Brexit.
You can imagine my disbelief when I discovered none of its members had worked on anything remotely related to the EU before. In fact, I have discovered over time that the vast majority of “experts” within the service have no expertise whatsoever.
In many cases the “portfolio” you take on when you join the service is dictated by the one held by your predecessor.
As a result, you have new civil servants inheriting politically sensitive and highly important work without the faintest clue about what they are dealing with.
Civil servants who are seriously underperforming will usually have a new job title and position created for them somewhere else in the organisation instead of being sacked or performance-managed — they become someone else’s problem then.
Given the influence that civil servants are exerting over the Brexit process, this is truly concerning.
MYTH 3: The civil service does not engage in scaremongering.
I had hoped that civil servants, even in times of crisis, would be able to remain calm and level-headed in pursuit of ensuring the best outcomes for our country.
And yet it is not uncommon for me to receive emails from colleagues promoting Brexit scare stories that are nothing more than lies and speculation. Recently, things have become so panicked that various “Brexit contingency” plans have been set up throughout the organisation. This is to prepare for the “national public transport breakdown”, “surge in criminality” and “widespread public unrest” that is going to follow after we leave.
These plans also involve collecting the personal details of certain civil servants to put in place a 24-hour, on-call rota for the “emergency” that is looming. This scare-mongering, created and whipped up by civil servants, is having a marked impact on the confidence and well-being of ordinary citizens.
For example, one acquain-tance of mine is so terrified by the speculative threats put out by the service they have started to stockpile large quantities of their medication. This needs to stop.
MYTH 4: Ministers are in charge.
When I was outside the civil service looking in, I always believed civil servants were there simply to advise their ministers, who, as elected representatives of the people, would make the ultimate decision. However, I have come to realise that ministers are often mere puppets, with civil servants pulling ferociously at their strings.
The level of bureaucracy is unimaginable.
In my experience parlia-mentary briefings go through — at a minimum — five stages of internal clearance, with crucial information being amended or deleted at every stage on the whim of that individual civil servant.
The power and competence of our ministers is, I’m afraid, a facade.
They are nothing more than a megaphone for the views of biased civil servants who lurk behind them in the shadows.
I am a supporter of the Leave campaign.
To go against the will of the people expressed in the 2016 referendum would be the ultimate act of betrayal.
The Government MUST allow us to take back control by leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. If the people are betrayed, I may have no choice but to resign.
Honesty, impartiality, integrity and objectivity. We will soon discover, once and for all, whether our politicians embody these values.
 
BRUSSELS is ready to grant a request from an overwhelmed Ireland to be allowed to waive EU checks at the border in the immediate aftermath of No Deal.
Eurocrats say Dublin will be given a grace period of “maximum a few months” to organise itself before being told to “plug the gaps” at the frontier.
A senior EU official told The Sun: “If we end up in the No Deal scenario the Irish will look at the EU first for how can we help them.
“There’s some understanding of the immediate problems and the fact they may not be as of day one capable of ensuring the principles of the Single Market.”
An EU diplomat said Dublin would be given “maximum a few months leeway” by other capitals and the Commission before being told to impose all checks.
They said: “After that they and others like France will have to plug the gaps if they want to keep unfettered access to the Single Market.”
A second EU official added there won’t be “much scope for leeway” and Dublin must “put in place the necessary mechanisms for checks” straight away.
They said these would include controls on food, animal products, livestock and medicines, plus customs arrangements to collect EU tariffs.
Brussels sources said Leo Varadkar’s admission that No Deal would involve checks, in a report on contingency measures this month, was a step forward.
But the Irish PM is still holding back the extent of preparedness plans over fears it will encourage Tory MPs pressing for a tech solution to the border.
An EU official said: “At least there was a recognition that there would be checks and controls.
“How they would be organised and how they should be structured, that’s the discussion that we need to have with them.
“They’re reluctant to talk about that now because the Brits would jump on this and say see, under No Deal we can tackle the border so what’s the problem.
“They don’t want to be pulled in a suboptimal solution by basically starting to go public on solutions that may be necessary under a No Deal scenario.”
Eurocrats are drawing up a multi-billion euro finance package to help Ireland’s most vulnerable companies weather No Deal.
They said a package of measures designed to protect the country’s beef industry could be replicated for other sectors particularly exposed to Brexit.
WHAT motivates the Labour and Lib Dem MPs and hysterical Remainer pundits as they compete to denounce Boris Johnson with increasingly ridiculous insults? Fear.
Remainers see their dream of a second referendum, or cancelling Brexit, dying.
Labour and its media cheerleaders are terrified that this Tory leader could rip them apart. One Labour MP predicts Boris will “wipe the floor” with Corbyn.
Panic has set in with Irish leader Leo Varadkar too, ramping up his rhetoric now we have a PM who means business.
No Deal will cause Dublin such chaos that the EU intends to let them waive border checks. So much for the “backstop” being vital to avoid a hard border. In the end they’ll just make checks away from the border, as Eurosceptics said.
Our new Cabinet, meanwhile, fizzes with energy and resolve. Long may it last.
And while a suicide squad of Tory Remoaners may still fancy forcing an election to avoid No Deal, that threat looks far less potent than a week ago.
But any funding would be linked to Dublin agreeing frameworks for distributing the cash so that it doesn’t distort competition within the Single Market.
France could also be allowed to wave through some trucks to “avoid upheaval” in and around Calais in the days and weeks after a crash out, diplomats said.
But Eurocrats insisted the port is ready with tech, flying customs brigades, separate lanes and parking infrastructure” in place to minimise disruption.
BRUSSELS is ready to grant a request from an overwhelmed Ireland to be allowed to waive EU checks at the border in the immediate aftermath of No Deal.
Eurocrats say Dublin will be given a grace period of “maximum a few months” to organise itself before being told to “plug the gaps” at the frontier.
A senior EU official told The Sun: “If we end up in the No Deal scenario the Irish will look at the EU first for how can we help them.
“There’s some understanding of the immediate problems and the fact they may not be as of day one capable of ensuring the principles of the Single Market.”
An EU diplomat said Dublin would be given “maximum a few months leeway” by other capitals and the Commission before being told to impose all checks.
They said: “After that they and others like France will have to plug the gaps if they want to keep unfettered access to the Single Market.”
A second EU official added there won’t be “much scope for leeway” and Dublin must “put in place the necessary mechanisms for checks” straight away.
They said these would include controls on food, animal products, livestock and medicines, plus customs arrangements to collect EU tariffs.
Brussels sources said Leo Varadkar’s admission that No Deal would involve checks, in a report on contingency measures this month, was a step forward.
But the Irish PM is still holding back the extent of preparedness plans over fears it will encourage Tory MPs pressing for a tech solution to the border.
An EU official said: “At least there was a recognition that there would be checks and controls.
“How they would be organised and how they should be structured, that’s the discussion that we need to have with them.
“They’re reluctant to talk about that now because the Brits would jump on this and say see, under No Deal we can tackle the border so what’s the problem.
“They don’t want to be pulled in a suboptimal solution by basically starting to go public on solutions that may be necessary under a No Deal scenario.”
Eurocrats are drawing up a multi-billion euro finance package to help Ireland’s most vulnerable companies weather No Deal.
They said a package of measures designed to protect the country’s beef industry could be replicated for other sectors particularly exposed to Brexit.
WHAT motivates the Labour and Lib Dem MPs and hysterical Remainer pundits as they compete to denounce Boris Johnson with increasingly ridiculous insults? Fear.
Remainers see their dream of a second referendum, or cancelling Brexit, dying.
Labour and its media cheerleaders are terrified that this Tory leader could rip them apart. One Labour MP predicts Boris will “wipe the floor” with Corbyn.
Panic has set in with Irish leader Leo Varadkar too, ramping up his rhetoric now we have a PM who means business.
No Deal will cause Dublin such chaos that the EU intends to let them waive border checks. So much for the “backstop” being vital to avoid a hard border. In the end they’ll just make checks away from the border, as Eurosceptics said.
Our new Cabinet, meanwhile, fizzes with energy and resolve. Long may it last.
And while a suicide squad of Tory Remoaners may still fancy forcing an election to avoid No Deal, that threat looks far less potent than a week ago.
But any funding would be linked to Dublin agreeing frameworks for distributing the cash so that it doesn’t distort competition within the Single Market.
France could also be allowed to wave through some trucks to “avoid upheaval” in and around Calais in the days and weeks after a crash out, diplomats said.
But Eurocrats insisted the port is ready with tech, flying customs brigades, separate lanes and parking infrastructure” in place to minimise disruption.
In an exclusive interview, Theresa May blasts saboteurs at home for 'playing politics' with Britain's future by trying to derail her Brexit plans
DEFIANT Theresa May has told of her determination to deliver Brexit with or without a deal and vowed: “I’m not bluffing.”
In an exclusive interview with The Sun on Sunday, the PM warned stubborn EU chiefs she will do everything in her power to get her Chequers blueprint agreed.
She blasted saboteurs at home for “playing politics” with Britain’s future by trying to derail her plan for their own ambitions.
But she insisted she won’t flinch from quitting empty-handed if her efforts are blocked by any of the forces lined up against her. Mrs May declared: “I’m serious about it when I say No Deal is better than a bad deal.
“It is very important that people realise I am not bluffing about this.
“I believe that we can get a deal. I believe we can get a good deal and that’s what we are working for. But nobody should be in any doubt.”
Mrs May is gearing up for her toughest Tory conference yet in Birmingham, with grassroots Leavers, Remainers and Cabinet members lined up against her plan.
But with just 180 days until Brexit, she swore nobody would be allowed to rob her of that “historic moment”.
The PM is fighting for her Chequers deal — that would tie the UK to EU rules for goods.
And it could give Brussels the right to annexe Northern Ireland economically if rules change — as part of a backstop to protect a frictionless border with Ireland.
In a thinly-veiled attack on “chuck Chequers cheerleader” Boris Johnson she accused many opponents of “playing politics” with Britain’s future.
Sitting in her study at 10 Downing Street, she said: “It is absolutely crucial that we deliver on the vote of the British people.
“They were given a choice, they chose and it’s our duty, it’s our job, to deliver. This is about voters being able to trust their politicians to deliver for them.
“This isn’t about me or anyone else. It is about making sure that we’re really battling for Britain.”
In a patriotic red, white and blue jacket by Paris designer Paule Ka — which can cost up to £1,345 — she brushed off BoJo’s rival plan.
He wants a Canada-plus free trade agreement and plans to launch it at the Tories’ rally on Tuesday.
And she appeared to rule out a return to Cabinet for BoJo once Brexit has been finalised.
With a wry smile, Mrs May said: “Look, Boris is an entertaining figure. I’m sure it will be a lively event. But I’m focusing on what is important and ensuring that we are working in the national interest and delivering for the country.
“Sometimes people ask me about Cabinet reshuffles.
“But I have a Cabinet who want to see the right result for the UK, and that’s what we are taking forward.”
Can she make it to March 29 without a second referendum?
And can we bet the house on her Chequers deal being accepted?
With a steely glare, she replied: “We WILL leave the European Union on March 29, 2019.
“We had the people’s vote in June 2016. It was a referendum and people voted to leave the EU.
“As it happens, I’m not really a betting woman, but what I would say is I’m confident that we can get a deal, and a good deal.
“We are in the final straits of the negotiation. It was always going to be the toughest part and I think there is a genuine desire for a deal on both sides. There is still time.”
Mrs May blasted Labour for shifting its position on trade, free movement, and a second referendum despite promising to respect the original result.
She said: “They break their promises and are playing politics with peoples’ lives. It’s more important to work in the national interest. The Chequers plan is the only one on the table at the moment that does all the things I’ve set out.
“It protects jobs, brings an end to free moment, the jurisdiction of the European Court here, an end to vast payments to the EU every year and ensures we don’t have a hard border in Ireland.”
Mrs May stressed that she is upbeat about Britain’s future outside the EU despite being a Remainer during the Referendum campaign.
She insisted she wasn’t running a “damage limitation exercise” over Brexit. The PM said: “Yes, things will be different after Brexit.
“We will be able to work with other countries on trade deals that bring jobs and prosperity to the UK.
“It’s important that we set the UK at the forefront of key issues — AI and data, clean growth, the future of mobility, the ageing populations.
“We are addressing those challenges and putting in place the building blocks that really take this country forward.”
She added: “I genuinely believe there is a real opportunity for the UK post-Brexit and I feel it is an optimistic future.
“This is a great country. We have great people and I think our best days are ahead of us.
“But our future is in our hands. It is for us to grasp that. My message to people is that at this historic moment it is important for us to come together in the national interest.”
Mrs May also insisted her stance against Russia over the Salisbury poisonings has been vindicated.
The PM said: “It’s important not just that we stood up to it, but that many countries stood alongside us.”

THE Cabinet has lots of bounce – because they are a team of Tiggers, boasts Theresa May.
She admits that she often chuckles at her ministers’ quirks, and said their enthusiasm reminded her of the Winnie the Pooh character.
Chancellor Philip Hammond’s downbeat Brexit predictions has led to him being likened to Pooh’s miserable donkey pal Eeyore. The PM retorted: “I think I’ve got a Cabinet of Tiggers.
“Everybody is really keen on making sure we get a good deal from Europe and make the best of Brexit and make a real success of it.”

CHILDREN who survived the Grenfell tragedy have been given pride of place in the PM’s study with a display of their artwork.
Mrs May has kept some of the colourful creations they made during a visit to mark the first anniversary of the London tower block blaze which claimed 72 lives.
She said: “We had some children from Grenfell and the surrounding area to an event we put on in the garden. Their finished work was so lovely, I’ve decided to keep it behind my desk.
“It really does cheer me up.”
The artwork includes a crown, stars in a jar, a mask and paper flowers.
In the largest vote ever recorded in Britain, we chose to leave the Brussels racket.
And as she reveals in our exclusive interview on these pages, Theresa May is determined to tell the world that we are getting out, no ifs, no buts.
Tory Conference this week will be testy. There remain serious splits in the party over Brexit but on one thing they must be united: nothing can imperil our exit.
But while the PM is right that a second referendum is for the birds, the country is constantly holding a referendum on her leadership.
On domestic issues it is Labour that seems to have an answer to everything — even if those easy solutions rely on made-up money and would be disastrous in practice.
Governments cannot just promise the world in airy-fairy speeches but, faced with an Opposition full of empty promises, the Tories must be radical. They cannot just deliver watered-down versions of whatever Jeremy Corbyn has cooked up.
There are plenty of brains in the Tory party. Let’s hear their ideas and a real vision of what Britain can be.
THE dreaded lurgy which plagued Mrs May’s last conference has struck again.
With just three days to go before she makes her big speech in Birmingham, the PM is fighting off a stinking cold.
She has been taking medication and will have some early nights to avoid a repeat of last year when she had a coughing fit during her keynote address.
It was also marred by letters falling off the stage set and a comedian invading the platform to hand her a mock P45.
Asked if she felt under the weather, Mrs May quipped: “It’s all the hard work of preparing for the interview with you, Dave.” The PM had just returned from a gruelling trip to the United Nations in New York.
She sniffled: “I’m not sure it is actually coming out as a proper cold. I’ve been over to the States and I think on the long flight you get a bit sort of... you know...”
Her diary has been planned “slightly differently” this year to ensure she keeps in tip-top condition for her speech.
And she joked that extra supplies of superglue had been ordered to ensure the conference slogan stays firmly in place.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
 
In an exclusive interview, Theresa May blasts saboteurs at home for 'playing politics' with Britain's future by trying to derail her Brexit plans
DEFIANT Theresa May has told of her determination to deliver Brexit with or without a deal and vowed: “I’m not bluffing.”
In an exclusive interview with The Sun on Sunday, the PM warned stubborn EU chiefs she will do everything in her power to get her Chequers blueprint agreed.
She blasted saboteurs at home for “playing politics” with Britain’s future by trying to derail her plan for their own ambitions.
But she insisted she won’t flinch from quitting empty-handed if her efforts are blocked by any of the forces lined up against her. Mrs May declared: “I’m serious about it when I say No Deal is better than a bad deal.
“It is very important that people realise I am not bluffing about this.
“I believe that we can get a deal. I believe we can get a good deal and that’s what we are working for. But nobody should be in any doubt.”
Mrs May is gearing up for her toughest Tory conference yet in Birmingham, with grassroots Leavers, Remainers and Cabinet members lined up against her plan.
But with just 180 days until Brexit, she swore nobody would be allowed to rob her of that “historic moment”.
The PM is fighting for her Chequers deal — that would tie the UK to EU rules for goods.
And it could give Brussels the right to annexe Northern Ireland economically if rules change — as part of a backstop to protect a frictionless border with Ireland.
In a thinly-veiled attack on “chuck Chequers cheerleader” Boris Johnson she accused many opponents of “playing politics” with Britain’s future.
Sitting in her study at 10 Downing Street, she said: “It is absolutely crucial that we deliver on the vote of the British people.
“They were given a choice, they chose and it’s our duty, it’s our job, to deliver. This is about voters being able to trust their politicians to deliver for them.
“This isn’t about me or anyone else. It is about making sure that we’re really battling for Britain.”
In a patriotic red, white and blue jacket by Paris designer Paule Ka — which can cost up to £1,345 — she brushed off BoJo’s rival plan.
He wants a Canada-plus free trade agreement and plans to launch it at the Tories’ rally on Tuesday.
And she appeared to rule out a return to Cabinet for BoJo once Brexit has been finalised.
With a wry smile, Mrs May said: “Look, Boris is an entertaining figure. I’m sure it will be a lively event. But I’m focusing on what is important and ensuring that we are working in the national interest and delivering for the country.
“Sometimes people ask me about Cabinet reshuffles.
“But I have a Cabinet who want to see the right result for the UK, and that’s what we are taking forward.”
Can she make it to March 29 without a second referendum?
And can we bet the house on her Chequers deal being accepted?
With a steely glare, she replied: “We WILL leave the European Union on March 29, 2019.
“We had the people’s vote in June 2016. It was a referendum and people voted to leave the EU.
“As it happens, I’m not really a betting woman, but what I would say is I’m confident that we can get a deal, and a good deal.
“We are in the final straits of the negotiation. It was always going to be the toughest part and I think there is a genuine desire for a deal on both sides. There is still time.”
Mrs May blasted Labour for shifting its position on trade, free movement, and a second referendum despite promising to respect the original result.
She said: “They break their promises and are playing politics with peoples’ lives. It’s more important to work in the national interest. The Chequers plan is the only one on the table at the moment that does all the things I’ve set out.
“It protects jobs, brings an end to free moment, the jurisdiction of the European Court here, an end to vast payments to the EU every year and ensures we don’t have a hard border in Ireland.”
Mrs May stressed that she is upbeat about Britain’s future outside the EU despite being a Remainer during the Referendum campaign.
She insisted she wasn’t running a “damage limitation exercise” over Brexit. The PM said: “Yes, things will be different after Brexit.
“We will be able to work with other countries on trade deals that bring jobs and prosperity to the UK.
“It’s important that we set the UK at the forefront of key issues — AI and data, clean growth, the future of mobility, the ageing populations.
“We are addressing those challenges and putting in place the building blocks that really take this country forward.”
She added: “I genuinely believe there is a real opportunity for the UK post-Brexit and I feel it is an optimistic future.
“This is a great country. We have great people and I think our best days are ahead of us.
“But our future is in our hands. It is for us to grasp that. My message to people is that at this historic moment it is important for us to come together in the national interest.”
Mrs May also insisted her stance against Russia over the Salisbury poisonings has been vindicated.
The PM said: “It’s important not just that we stood up to it, but that many countries stood alongside us.”

THE Cabinet has lots of bounce – because they are a team of Tiggers, boasts Theresa May.
She admits that she often chuckles at her ministers’ quirks, and said their enthusiasm reminded her of the Winnie the Pooh character.
Chancellor Philip Hammond’s downbeat Brexit predictions has led to him being likened to Pooh’s miserable donkey pal Eeyore. The PM retorted: “I think I’ve got a Cabinet of Tiggers.
“Everybody is really keen on making sure we get a good deal from Europe and make the best of Brexit and make a real success of it.”

CHILDREN who survived the Grenfell tragedy have been given pride of place in the PM’s study with a display of their artwork.
Mrs May has kept some of the colourful creations they made during a visit to mark the first anniversary of the London tower block blaze which claimed 72 lives.
She said: “We had some children from Grenfell and the surrounding area to an event we put on in the garden. Their finished work was so lovely, I’ve decided to keep it behind my desk.
“It really does cheer me up.”
The artwork includes a crown, stars in a jar, a mask and paper flowers.
In the largest vote ever recorded in Britain, we chose to leave the Brussels racket.
And as she reveals in our exclusive interview on these pages, Theresa May is determined to tell the world that we are getting out, no ifs, no buts.
Tory Conference this week will be testy. There remain serious splits in the party over Brexit but on one thing they must be united: nothing can imperil our exit.
But while the PM is right that a second referendum is for the birds, the country is constantly holding a referendum on her leadership.
On domestic issues it is Labour that seems to have an answer to everything — even if those easy solutions rely on made-up money and would be disastrous in practice.
Governments cannot just promise the world in airy-fairy speeches but, faced with an Opposition full of empty promises, the Tories must be radical. They cannot just deliver watered-down versions of whatever Jeremy Corbyn has cooked up.
There are plenty of brains in the Tory party. Let’s hear their ideas and a real vision of what Britain can be.
THE dreaded lurgy which plagued Mrs May’s last conference has struck again.
With just three days to go before she makes her big speech in Birmingham, the PM is fighting off a stinking cold.
She has been taking medication and will have some early nights to avoid a repeat of last year when she had a coughing fit during her keynote address.
It was also marred by letters falling off the stage set and a comedian invading the platform to hand her a mock P45.
Asked if she felt under the weather, Mrs May quipped: “It’s all the hard work of preparing for the interview with you, Dave.” The PM had just returned from a gruelling trip to the United Nations in New York.
She sniffled: “I’m not sure it is actually coming out as a proper cold. I’ve been over to the States and I think on the long flight you get a bit sort of... you know...”
Her diary has been planned “slightly differently” this year to ensure she keeps in tip-top condition for her speech.
And she joked that extra supplies of superglue had been ordered to ensure the conference slogan stays firmly in place.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
 
Our plan after Chequers will ensure Brussels can no longer control us after we leave the European Union
TWO years ago, the people of the UK spoke in greater numbers than ever before when they voted to leave the European Union.
Since then, my number one priority has been to give this country the Brexit it called for — and, with the plan being published on Thursday, we’re taking the next step towards doing just that.
Since the plan was agreed at Chequers last week, there’s been a lot of talk about what it all means.
When I think about the people I’ve spoken with over the past two years, and The Sun’s coverage of its readers’ concerns on Brexit, it’s clear to me that three questions come up more than any others.
Does it mean an end to freedom of movement? Will we be able to sign our own trade deals? And will the UK be outside the jurisdiction of the European Court?
I’m very pleased to say the answers are very simple: yes, yes and yes.
First, it will mean a genuine end to freedom of movement.
No longer will people be allowed to arrive here from across Europe on the off-chance that they might find a job.
We will always welcome the skilled professionals who help our country thrive, from doctors and nurses to engineers and entrepreneurs but for the first time in decades, we will have full control of our borders.
And it will be the UK, not Brussels, that decides who should be allowed to live and work here.
Second, we will have our own completely independent trade policy, our own seat at the World Trade Organisation and the ability to set tariffs and strike trade deals with whoever we please.
British goods and services are in huge demand internationally, so it’s no surprise that countries are queuing up to make trade deals with us after we leave the EU.
We are having good discussions with countries we would aim to sign trade deals with, including the US, as I will discuss with President Trump when he arrives in the UK on Thursday.
Third, our plan will take back control of our laws.
We will no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union, instead, British judges in British courts will rule on our laws.
And while we will commit to have common rules with the EU on things like exhaust emissions and food safety, Parliament will have to agree these rules.
Put simply, such EU rules will no longer automatically and directly apply in the UK — Parliament will have a say.
It’s clear to me that this is the right Brexit deal for Britain, although there are, of course, some alternatives.
The EU’s preferred option — a standard, off-the-shelf trade deal for Great Britain with Northern Ireland in the customs union and parts of the single market — would break up our country.
The other option the EU suggests, a combination of EEA membership with continued membership of the customs union, would not be Brexit at all.
We would have no control over immigration, no ability to strike our own trade deals, and would still be liable for vast annual payments to Brussels.
And while we must prepare for the possibility of leaving without a deal, I’m clear that the best outcome — for both the UK and the EU — is a deal based on the ideas we are setting out on Thursday.
As for Labour, they are opening the door to a second referendum — ignoring the decision taken by the country and making it harder to get a good deal.
Only our Brexit deal for Britain truly respects the will of the British people.
And, as Prime Minister, it is the Brexit I am determined to deliver.
Our plan after Chequers will ensure Brussels can no longer control us after we leave the European Union
TWO years ago, the people of the UK spoke in greater numbers than ever before when they voted to leave the European Union.
Since then, my number one priority has been to give this country the Brexit it called for — and, with the plan being published on Thursday, we’re taking the next step towards doing just that.
Since the plan was agreed at Chequers last week, there’s been a lot of talk about what it all means.
When I think about the people I’ve spoken with over the past two years, and The Sun’s coverage of its readers’ concerns on Brexit, it’s clear to me that three questions come up more than any others.
Does it mean an end to freedom of movement? Will we be able to sign our own trade deals? And will the UK be outside the jurisdiction of the European Court?
I’m very pleased to say the answers are very simple: yes, yes and yes.
First, it will mean a genuine end to freedom of movement.
No longer will people be allowed to arrive here from across Europe on the off-chance that they might find a job.
We will always welcome the skilled professionals who help our country thrive, from doctors and nurses to engineers and entrepreneurs but for the first time in decades, we will have full control of our borders.
And it will be the UK, not Brussels, that decides who should be allowed to live and work here.
Second, we will have our own completely independent trade policy, our own seat at the World Trade Organisation and the ability to set tariffs and strike trade deals with whoever we please.
British goods and services are in huge demand internationally, so it’s no surprise that countries are queuing up to make trade deals with us after we leave the EU.
We are having good discussions with countries we would aim to sign trade deals with, including the US, as I will discuss with President Trump when he arrives in the UK on Thursday.
Third, our plan will take back control of our laws.
We will no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union, instead, British judges in British courts will rule on our laws.
And while we will commit to have common rules with the EU on things like exhaust emissions and food safety, Parliament will have to agree these rules.
Put simply, such EU rules will no longer automatically and directly apply in the UK — Parliament will have a say.
It’s clear to me that this is the right Brexit deal for Britain, although there are, of course, some alternatives.
The EU’s preferred option — a standard, off-the-shelf trade deal for Great Britain with Northern Ireland in the customs union and parts of the single market — would break up our country.
The other option the EU suggests, a combination of EEA membership with continued membership of the customs union, would not be Brexit at all.
We would have no control over immigration, no ability to strike our own trade deals, and would still be liable for vast annual payments to Brussels.
And while we must prepare for the possibility of leaving without a deal, I’m clear that the best outcome — for both the UK and the EU — is a deal based on the ideas we are setting out on Thursday.
As for Labour, they are opening the door to a second referendum — ignoring the decision taken by the country and making it harder to get a good deal.
Only our Brexit deal for Britain truly respects the will of the British people.
And, as Prime Minister, it is the Brexit I am determined to deliver.
The PM vows that she's dedicated to bringing back control of how our money is spent, borders, laws and protecting jobs in negotiations with the EU
TURN on the TV most days and you’ll find someone speculating about what the Brexit talks mean for Theresa May.
Has it been a good day or a bad day for me? Am I up or down?
“How are YOU doing Prime Minister?” one journalist asked me recently. I didn’t reply at the time but I’m going to give Sun readers the answer now – and it’s very simple.
None of this is about me. It’s all about you.
That’s why, when I’m confronted with tough choices during the Brexit negotiations, I don’t think about what the implications are for me. Instead, I ask myself what it means for you, for your family and for the whole of the United Kingdom.
Am I bringing back control of your money, your borders and your laws?
Am I protecting your jobs and making sure nothing gets in the way of our brilliant entrepreneurs and small businesses?
Am I protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom?
And, above all, am I delivering the Brexit that the people of this country so clearly voted for?
I need to be able to answer “Yes” to every one of these questions.
And if that means there are some difficult days in Brussels, well that’s just something I have to deal with.
Because the Brexit talks are not about me or my personal fortunes. They’re about the national interest – and that means making the right choices, not the easy ones.
Inevitably, that will take time. Brexit is the UK’s biggest constitutional change for generations. Unpicking more than 40 years of treaties, agreements and laws would be a challenge under any circumstances and, as no country has ever left the EU before, it’s not as if there’s an instruction manual for those either side of the negotiating table to follow.
I know it can seem like the talks are never-ending, and that many of you have been frustrated by the endless back and forth on technical points – I certainly feel that way sometimes too.
But with five months to go until we leave the EU, we have already reached agreement on the vast majority of our exit deal.
What became clear at last week’s meeting in Brussels is that the very last stages of the talks are going to be the hardest of all.
This includes dealing with the so-called “backstop”: making sure that, no matter what our new relationship with Europe looks like, there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
I’ve been very clear that this must be achieved without creating any kind of border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK – doing so would undermine our precious Union and put at risk the hard-won peace.
So I am working closely with my counterparts in Europe to explore every possible solution to the border issue.
Does that mean I think this negotiation will get tougher before we reach our goal? Yes
Do I have some long and difficult days ahead? I’m sure I do.
But what I’m thinking about is not how hard it all is today.
I’m thinking about the prize that lies before us tomorrow; about the great opportunities the Government will help open up for you once we clear the last few hurdles.
As we enter the final, crucial phase of the talks there will undoubtedly be some unexpected challenges to which we must rise.
But the finish line is in sight. And I am more determined than ever that we will get there together, with a Brexit deal that’s right for you, right for your family and right for our country.


The PM vows that she's dedicated to bringing back control of how our money is spent, borders, laws and protecting jobs in negotiations with the EU
TURN on the TV most days and you’ll find someone speculating about what the Brexit talks mean for Theresa May.
Has it been a good day or a bad day for me? Am I up or down?
“How are YOU doing Prime Minister?” one journalist asked me recently. I didn’t reply at the time but I’m going to give Sun readers the answer now – and it’s very simple.
None of this is about me. It’s all about you.
That’s why, when I’m confronted with tough choices during the Brexit negotiations, I don’t think about what the implications are for me. Instead, I ask myself what it means for you, for your family and for the whole of the United Kingdom.
Am I bringing back control of your money, your borders and your laws?
Am I protecting your jobs and making sure nothing gets in the way of our brilliant entrepreneurs and small businesses?
Am I protecting the integrity of the United Kingdom?
And, above all, am I delivering the Brexit that the people of this country so clearly voted for?
I need to be able to answer “Yes” to every one of these questions.
And if that means there are some difficult days in Brussels, well that’s just something I have to deal with.
Because the Brexit talks are not about me or my personal fortunes. They’re about the national interest – and that means making the right choices, not the easy ones.
Inevitably, that will take time. Brexit is the UK’s biggest constitutional change for generations. Unpicking more than 40 years of treaties, agreements and laws would be a challenge under any circumstances and, as no country has ever left the EU before, it’s not as if there’s an instruction manual for those either side of the negotiating table to follow.
I know it can seem like the talks are never-ending, and that many of you have been frustrated by the endless back and forth on technical points – I certainly feel that way sometimes too.
But with five months to go until we leave the EU, we have already reached agreement on the vast majority of our exit deal.
What became clear at last week’s meeting in Brussels is that the very last stages of the talks are going to be the hardest of all.
This includes dealing with the so-called “backstop”: making sure that, no matter what our new relationship with Europe looks like, there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
I’ve been very clear that this must be achieved without creating any kind of border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK – doing so would undermine our precious Union and put at risk the hard-won peace.
So I am working closely with my counterparts in Europe to explore every possible solution to the border issue.
Does that mean I think this negotiation will get tougher before we reach our goal? Yes
Do I have some long and difficult days ahead? I’m sure I do.
But what I’m thinking about is not how hard it all is today.
I’m thinking about the prize that lies before us tomorrow; about the great opportunities the Government will help open up for you once we clear the last few hurdles.
As we enter the final, crucial phase of the talks there will undoubtedly be some unexpected challenges to which we must rise.
But the finish line is in sight. And I am more determined than ever that we will get there together, with a Brexit deal that’s right for you, right for your family and right for our country.


Business Minister Richard Harrington, Health Minister Steve Brine and Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt left Theresa May's top team so they could vote against the Government
THREE ministers have quit this evening so they could vote to give MPs control of the Brexit process.
Business Minister Richard Harrington, Health Minister Steve Brine and Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt left Theresa May's top team so they could vote against the Government.
Mr Harrington previously said he would be prepared to resign as a minister to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
They stepped down in order to vote for Oliver Letwin's amendment which wrestled control from Theresa May and puts it in the hands of MPs.
The weakened Prime Minister's authority is shot tonight after 30 of her own Tories indicated they didn't trust her promises and voted to defy her.
Other high profile Tories to rebel included Ken Clarke, Nicky Morgan, Justine Greening, Andrew Mitchell, Sam Gyimah, Damian Green, Alberto Costa and Dominic Grieve, plus Damian Collins, chairman of the Culture Committee.
But eight Brexiteer Labour MPs voted with the PM to oppose Sir Oliver's cunning plan.
Business minister Mr Burt, who has long been rumoured to be on the verge of quitting, said to Mrs May in his resignation letter: "I regret that the Government's approach to Brexit is playing roulette with the lives and livelihoods of the vast majority of people in this country who are employed by or depend on business.
"I have decided that I resign from the Government to do all I can to prevent [a No Deal Brexit] from happening.
"I hope you will now act in the national interest and enable Parliament this week to find a consensus which we can use as our negotiating position moving forward."
This evening I wrote to the PM to offer her my resignation pic.twitter.com/Z0QU5lbeJ1
Mr Burt was with the PM just yesterday as she gathered Brexiteer MPs in Chequers for one last push to sway them over to her deal.
He sat on her side of the table to try and win over Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson, but tonight he opted to leave her Government and vote against his ally.
Other MPs warned that more ministerial resignations could be on the cards in days if a way through the Brexit chaos is not found soon.
Guto Bebb MP, leading supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said tonight: "The scale of the Government’s defeat and the principled resignations of ministers Richard Harrington, Alistair Burt and Steve Brine tonight are more nails in the coffin of a Brexit deal that very few in the country or Parliament have ever wanted."
For the past few months I have had the deep honour of being occasionally allowed to pass a note or carry a bag for @AlistairBurtUK - one of the most caring and honourable politicians I know.   Truly committed to making the world a better place. V v sorry he has left his place.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Business Minister Richard Harrington, Health Minister Steve Brine and Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt left Theresa May's top team so they could vote against the Government
THREE ministers have quit this evening so they could vote to give MPs control of the Brexit process.
Business Minister Richard Harrington, Health Minister Steve Brine and Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt left Theresa May's top team so they could vote against the Government.
Mr Harrington previously said he would be prepared to resign as a minister to prevent a no-deal Brexit.
They stepped down in order to vote for Oliver Letwin's amendment which wrestled control from Theresa May and puts it in the hands of MPs.
The weakened Prime Minister's authority is shot tonight after 30 of her own Tories indicated they didn't trust her promises and voted to defy her.
Other high profile Tories to rebel included Ken Clarke, Nicky Morgan, Justine Greening, Andrew Mitchell, Sam Gyimah, Damian Green, Alberto Costa and Dominic Grieve, plus Damian Collins, chairman of the Culture Committee.
But eight Brexiteer Labour MPs voted with the PM to oppose Sir Oliver's cunning plan.
Business minister Mr Burt, who has long been rumoured to be on the verge of quitting, said to Mrs May in his resignation letter: "I regret that the Government's approach to Brexit is playing roulette with the lives and livelihoods of the vast majority of people in this country who are employed by or depend on business.
"I have decided that I resign from the Government to do all I can to prevent [a No Deal Brexit] from happening.
"I hope you will now act in the national interest and enable Parliament this week to find a consensus which we can use as our negotiating position moving forward."
This evening I wrote to the PM to offer her my resignation pic.twitter.com/Z0QU5lbeJ1
Mr Burt was with the PM just yesterday as she gathered Brexiteer MPs in Chequers for one last push to sway them over to her deal.
He sat on her side of the table to try and win over Jacob Rees-Mogg, Iain Duncan Smith and Boris Johnson, but tonight he opted to leave her Government and vote against his ally.
Other MPs warned that more ministerial resignations could be on the cards in days if a way through the Brexit chaos is not found soon.
Guto Bebb MP, leading supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said tonight: "The scale of the Government’s defeat and the principled resignations of ministers Richard Harrington, Alistair Burt and Steve Brine tonight are more nails in the coffin of a Brexit deal that very few in the country or Parliament have ever wanted."
For the past few months I have had the deep honour of being occasionally allowed to pass a note or carry a bag for @AlistairBurtUK - one of the most caring and honourable politicians I know.   Truly committed to making the world a better place. V v sorry he has left his place.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
FRANCE vowed to defy Boris Johnson over his Brexit deadline saying the EU would take up to three years to negotiate a trade deal with him.
Emmanuel Macron's top Europe adviser Amelie de Montchalin came out swinging as Brussels chief Ursula von der Leyen urged the PM to ditch his red lines.
The French EU minister said trade talks would be "a major arm twisting game" and the UK had more to lose from leaving without a deal.
She declared: "If Boris Johnson says it must end in 11 months from now and we need 15, 24, or 36 months, the EU27 will take their time."
Her remarks came as part of mounting calls from across Europe for Mr Johnson to U-turn on his vow not to extend the transition.
The transition period, during which nothing changes as Britain continues to follow all EU rules, ends on December 31, but can be extended by two years.
Brussels attempted to ramp up pressure on the PM yesterday with Mrs von der Leyen pushing him to rethink his aim of a basic trade deal.

The EU Commission chief insisted the bloc still wants to "explore" the possibility of a soft Brexit including ongoing free movement of people.
Her remarks came despite the PM telling her in a face-to-face meeting this week that he wants a Canada-style free trade agreement.
Speaking in Croatia, she said: "It is now time to explore the room – how close or distant the UK wants to be to the EU, its rules, and the Single Market.
"We're very open to it. We want a strong and good partnership."
British officials have already started trawling through the bloc's free trade agreements with other countries, including Canada and Japan, picking out the best bits.
They are also adding elements from the EU's negotiating mandates for deals with Australia and New Zealand into their own package of demands.
Yesterday Eurocrats tried to put the squeeze on Britain further by preparing to offer the City of London a bare-bones banking package.
The Commission will offer the UK access to the continent based on equivalence, which can be unilaterally revoked with just 30 days' notice.
Eurocrats warned in a meeting with EU diplomats yesterday that this would leave the UK facing a "large gap with the Single Market".
FRANCE vowed to defy Boris Johnson over his Brexit deadline saying the EU would take up to three years to negotiate a trade deal with him.
Emmanuel Macron's top Europe adviser Amelie de Montchalin came out swinging as Brussels chief Ursula von der Leyen urged the PM to ditch his red lines.
The French EU minister said trade talks would be "a major arm twisting game" and the UK had more to lose from leaving without a deal.
She declared: "If Boris Johnson says it must end in 11 months from now and we need 15, 24, or 36 months, the EU27 will take their time."
Her remarks came as part of mounting calls from across Europe for Mr Johnson to U-turn on his vow not to extend the transition.
The transition period, during which nothing changes as Britain continues to follow all EU rules, ends on December 31, but can be extended by two years.
Brussels attempted to ramp up pressure on the PM yesterday with Mrs von der Leyen pushing him to rethink his aim of a basic trade deal.

The EU Commission chief insisted the bloc still wants to "explore" the possibility of a soft Brexit including ongoing free movement of people.
Her remarks came despite the PM telling her in a face-to-face meeting this week that he wants a Canada-style free trade agreement.
Speaking in Croatia, she said: "It is now time to explore the room – how close or distant the UK wants to be to the EU, its rules, and the Single Market.
"We're very open to it. We want a strong and good partnership."
British officials have already started trawling through the bloc's free trade agreements with other countries, including Canada and Japan, picking out the best bits.
They are also adding elements from the EU's negotiating mandates for deals with Australia and New Zealand into their own package of demands.
Yesterday Eurocrats tried to put the squeeze on Britain further by preparing to offer the City of London a bare-bones banking package.
The Commission will offer the UK access to the continent based on equivalence, which can be unilaterally revoked with just 30 days' notice.
Eurocrats warned in a meeting with EU diplomats yesterday that this would leave the UK facing a "large gap with the Single Market".
There is a fear the democracy deniers of the British establishment are creating the perfect conditions for the rise of the nutters
HE British people are starting to realise that the fix is in.
Brexit looks like it is never going to happen because the British establishment are simply not going to allow it.
Brexit will be blocked by a majority in the House of Commons, our elected representatives, who smile, bow, scrape and promise us anything and lie through their teeth when they want our votes.
And it will be blocked by the House of Lords, the Civil Service and by every living ex-Prime Minister, including Tony Blair, the bottom of the sewer, whose treacherous collaboration with a hostile foreign force would have seen him banged up in wartime.
And it will be blocked by the Labour Party, former defenders of the working man, erstwhile champions of the working class, who now view all Labour supporters who voted for Brexit as thick, racist bigots.
And Brexit will be crippled by the BBC, our licence-funded state broad-caster, which can never quite stop the anti-Brexit sneers from breaking through.
Can you imagine sitting in the canteen at Broadcasting House and revealing that you had voted for Brexit? They would all choke on their avocado focaccia.
And Brexit will be blocked by the great embodiment of British fair play and neutrality, John Bercow, the House of Commons Speaker, who probably has “B******s to Brexit” tattooed on his flabby little buttocks.
It is a powerful coalition! The full might of the British establishment has joined forces to overthrow the biggest democratic vote in our history.
Together, they have strived to stop this country becoming truly independent once more. They have fought with the passion of true, eye-swivelling believers to keep us shackled to Brussels.
And if Theresa May sees her deal voted down on Tuesday — and it looks like she is on course to suffer a defeat of historic proportions — they will take a great leap forward to achieving their goal.
Oh, it will be dressed up and prettified to pretend that democracy still functions in this country.
There will be much prattle about “going back to the people” with another referendum. There will be talk about a “delay” in leaving the EU. It will all be meaningless flannel.
The British elite wants to keep us inside the European Union. They are succeeding. Jolly well done, chaps.
Never mind that a British Prime Minister, the coward David Cameron, looked us in the eye and told us our decision in the referendum was final.
Never mind that the over- whelming majority of MPs in the House of Commons voted to trigger Article 50 and take us out of the EU.
Never mind that at the General Election, both the major political parties stood on manifestos that promised to honour the result of the referendum.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
Parliament is breaking with the people. Brexit is being stopped by the elite. The masters are taking back control of a people’s rebellion.
But should we not all reflect for a moment on the consequences of Parliament’s break with the people?
There is currently no platform for political extremists in this country, not the way that there is in European nations such as Germany, Spain, France and Greece.
Historically, the British have never cared for the loony fringe extremism that has flourished — and frequently ruled — in other European nations.
But I fear the democracy deniers of the British establishment are creating the perfect conditions for the rise of the nutters.
WE DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN THAT KIND OF COUNTRY.
There were ugly scenes outside Westminster this week. Name calling, bullying and aggression. All of us should be striving to see it does not get far worse.
The 17.4million who voted for Brexit are not — and never have been — the knuckle-dragging morons of myth.
Deny Brexit and they will not suddenly become violent thugs. But there are lunatics on the margins of our society who will feel enabled by an arrogant establishment recklessly and openly breaking with the democratic will of the British people.
How can you not fear for our country’s future?
“LONDON is open,” preened London Mayor Sadiq Khan in his lavish, pro-Brussels fireworks display on New Year’s Eve.
Yes, Sadiq – open for violence, open for gangs, open for murder.
Two weeks into 2019, London has already had four murders, including the killing of Jaden Moodie, a boy of 14 who was rammed off a moped, then repeatedly stabbed by three men.
London had 134 murders in 2018, many of them teenagers.
Khan needs to stop posing and start getting some effective policing on the streets of our capital.
Or London will remain open for the mindless slaughter of children.
THERE is one thing I truly don’t understand about the malcontents who spend their lives flying balloons, waving flags and raising their voices around Parliament Square.
The UK employment rate is now at 75.6 per cent, an all-time high. Unemployment is at 4.2 per cent, the lowest since the Seventies.
Don’t the flag-wavers outside Westminster have a job to go to?
When I wrote the scene, the idea seemed far-fetched, the kind of dark fantasy that thriller writers are paid to come up with. But on the same week that Girl On Fire was published, 200 flights at Heathrow were cancelled after a drone was reported near a runway.
The chaos happened just 18 days after drone sightings shut Gatwick.
We need automatic jail time for anyone caught using a drone anywhere near an airport. Or my fiction will become an unimaginably horrible reality.
COUNTDOWN star Rachel Riley has received a torrent of online abuse after criticising Jeremy Corbyn’s craven tolerance of anti-Semitism in the new Labour Party.
“Surely you can have compassion and fight for the Palestinian cause without sharing your bed with Holocaust deniers and virulent anti-Semites,” Rachel, who is Jewish, told Channel 4 News.
“Corbyn’s giving a legitimate voice to Holocaust deniers. It is a sad state of affairs when you have to be brave to speak out against anti-Semitism.”
Anyone who thought that Rachel was just a TV cutie smiling bravely while she spelled out words like “orgasmed”, “gobshite” and “bumhole” (all magical Countdown moments) has seriously underestimated her.
Rachel Riley has courage, grace and eloquence. And she is not afraid of anyone.

OLIVIA Colman is a national treasure.
We have all loved her since Peep Show and will raise a glass on the happy day she is named a Dame.
But I can’t help worrying that Olivia is just a teeny-weeny bit over-exposed.
Colman is everywhere.
Picking up a Golden Globe for her role as Queen Anne in The Favourite. About to be seen on Netflix as Queen Elizabeth in series three and four of The Crown.
As Madame Thénardier in the BBC’s adaptation of Les Miserables.
Fronting UNICEF charity appeals and popping up in British Airways safety videos. Everywhere.
I do hope Olivia wins Best Actress for The Favourite at the Academy Awards. When she has an Oscar, fewer people will be able to afford her.
As a child he survived the massacre that claimed 17 lives at Dunblane Primary School.
As an adult, he has battled crippling injuries. To see him in tears in Melbourne, announcing that a hip injury means he might soon be forced into retirement, was heart-wrenching.
Even if he does not make one more Wimbledon, Murray will always be an inspiration.
LOOKING just like one of the “gilets jaunes” – yellow vests – who rampage up and down the Champs-Elysees every weekend, Bella Hadid wears a hi-vis sleeveless jacket.
Apparently, Bella’s yellow vest cost £800. She should protest about that.
IT was a relief to hear from Olivia Newton-John that she is not at death’s door as has falsely been reported, but is alive, kicking and feeling good.
Apparently, the confusion arose when it started getting about that the star of Grease had gone.
They meant John Travolta’s hair.
There is a fear the democracy deniers of the British establishment are creating the perfect conditions for the rise of the nutters
HE British people are starting to realise that the fix is in.
Brexit looks like it is never going to happen because the British establishment are simply not going to allow it.
Brexit will be blocked by a majority in the House of Commons, our elected representatives, who smile, bow, scrape and promise us anything and lie through their teeth when they want our votes.
And it will be blocked by the House of Lords, the Civil Service and by every living ex-Prime Minister, including Tony Blair, the bottom of the sewer, whose treacherous collaboration with a hostile foreign force would have seen him banged up in wartime.
And it will be blocked by the Labour Party, former defenders of the working man, erstwhile champions of the working class, who now view all Labour supporters who voted for Brexit as thick, racist bigots.
And Brexit will be crippled by the BBC, our licence-funded state broad-caster, which can never quite stop the anti-Brexit sneers from breaking through.
Can you imagine sitting in the canteen at Broadcasting House and revealing that you had voted for Brexit? They would all choke on their avocado focaccia.
And Brexit will be blocked by the great embodiment of British fair play and neutrality, John Bercow, the House of Commons Speaker, who probably has “B******s to Brexit” tattooed on his flabby little buttocks.
It is a powerful coalition! The full might of the British establishment has joined forces to overthrow the biggest democratic vote in our history.
Together, they have strived to stop this country becoming truly independent once more. They have fought with the passion of true, eye-swivelling believers to keep us shackled to Brussels.
And if Theresa May sees her deal voted down on Tuesday — and it looks like she is on course to suffer a defeat of historic proportions — they will take a great leap forward to achieving their goal.
Oh, it will be dressed up and prettified to pretend that democracy still functions in this country.
There will be much prattle about “going back to the people” with another referendum. There will be talk about a “delay” in leaving the EU. It will all be meaningless flannel.
The British elite wants to keep us inside the European Union. They are succeeding. Jolly well done, chaps.
Never mind that a British Prime Minister, the coward David Cameron, looked us in the eye and told us our decision in the referendum was final.
Never mind that the over- whelming majority of MPs in the House of Commons voted to trigger Article 50 and take us out of the EU.
Never mind that at the General Election, both the major political parties stood on manifestos that promised to honour the result of the referendum.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
Parliament is breaking with the people. Brexit is being stopped by the elite. The masters are taking back control of a people’s rebellion.
But should we not all reflect for a moment on the consequences of Parliament’s break with the people?
There is currently no platform for political extremists in this country, not the way that there is in European nations such as Germany, Spain, France and Greece.
Historically, the British have never cared for the loony fringe extremism that has flourished — and frequently ruled — in other European nations.
But I fear the democracy deniers of the British establishment are creating the perfect conditions for the rise of the nutters.
WE DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN THAT KIND OF COUNTRY.
There were ugly scenes outside Westminster this week. Name calling, bullying and aggression. All of us should be striving to see it does not get far worse.
The 17.4million who voted for Brexit are not — and never have been — the knuckle-dragging morons of myth.
Deny Brexit and they will not suddenly become violent thugs. But there are lunatics on the margins of our society who will feel enabled by an arrogant establishment recklessly and openly breaking with the democratic will of the British people.
How can you not fear for our country’s future?
“LONDON is open,” preened London Mayor Sadiq Khan in his lavish, pro-Brussels fireworks display on New Year’s Eve.
Yes, Sadiq – open for violence, open for gangs, open for murder.
Two weeks into 2019, London has already had four murders, including the killing of Jaden Moodie, a boy of 14 who was rammed off a moped, then repeatedly stabbed by three men.
London had 134 murders in 2018, many of them teenagers.
Khan needs to stop posing and start getting some effective policing on the streets of our capital.
Or London will remain open for the mindless slaughter of children.
THERE is one thing I truly don’t understand about the malcontents who spend their lives flying balloons, waving flags and raising their voices around Parliament Square.
The UK employment rate is now at 75.6 per cent, an all-time high. Unemployment is at 4.2 per cent, the lowest since the Seventies.
Don’t the flag-wavers outside Westminster have a job to go to?
When I wrote the scene, the idea seemed far-fetched, the kind of dark fantasy that thriller writers are paid to come up with. But on the same week that Girl On Fire was published, 200 flights at Heathrow were cancelled after a drone was reported near a runway.
The chaos happened just 18 days after drone sightings shut Gatwick.
We need automatic jail time for anyone caught using a drone anywhere near an airport. Or my fiction will become an unimaginably horrible reality.
COUNTDOWN star Rachel Riley has received a torrent of online abuse after criticising Jeremy Corbyn’s craven tolerance of anti-Semitism in the new Labour Party.
“Surely you can have compassion and fight for the Palestinian cause without sharing your bed with Holocaust deniers and virulent anti-Semites,” Rachel, who is Jewish, told Channel 4 News.
“Corbyn’s giving a legitimate voice to Holocaust deniers. It is a sad state of affairs when you have to be brave to speak out against anti-Semitism.”
Anyone who thought that Rachel was just a TV cutie smiling bravely while she spelled out words like “orgasmed”, “gobshite” and “bumhole” (all magical Countdown moments) has seriously underestimated her.
Rachel Riley has courage, grace and eloquence. And she is not afraid of anyone.

OLIVIA Colman is a national treasure.
We have all loved her since Peep Show and will raise a glass on the happy day she is named a Dame.
But I can’t help worrying that Olivia is just a teeny-weeny bit over-exposed.
Colman is everywhere.
Picking up a Golden Globe for her role as Queen Anne in The Favourite. About to be seen on Netflix as Queen Elizabeth in series three and four of The Crown.
As Madame Thénardier in the BBC’s adaptation of Les Miserables.
Fronting UNICEF charity appeals and popping up in British Airways safety videos. Everywhere.
I do hope Olivia wins Best Actress for The Favourite at the Academy Awards. When she has an Oscar, fewer people will be able to afford her.
As a child he survived the massacre that claimed 17 lives at Dunblane Primary School.
As an adult, he has battled crippling injuries. To see him in tears in Melbourne, announcing that a hip injury means he might soon be forced into retirement, was heart-wrenching.
Even if he does not make one more Wimbledon, Murray will always be an inspiration.
LOOKING just like one of the “gilets jaunes” – yellow vests – who rampage up and down the Champs-Elysees every weekend, Bella Hadid wears a hi-vis sleeveless jacket.
Apparently, Bella’s yellow vest cost £800. She should protest about that.
IT was a relief to hear from Olivia Newton-John that she is not at death’s door as has falsely been reported, but is alive, kicking and feeling good.
Apparently, the confusion arose when it started getting about that the star of Grease had gone.
They meant John Travolta’s hair.
IF you want to suck up to the establishment in this country, then you better back Brussels.
If you want to be a well-paid talking head at the BBC, or climb the greasy ladder in Westminster and Whitehall, then you must say that only thick racist peasants who will all soon be dead voted to leave the European Union.
Even when warbling Land Of Hope And Glory at the Last Night Of The Proms, you should sport a blue EU beret and wave the EU flag as though you would die for it.
Want to get ahead? Then bend the knee to Brussels.
Because backing Brexit has always been the anti-establishment belief.
The real rebels are not grey old men like John Major. The true dissenting voices are the millions of ordinary, working-class patriots who believe — and it is such a simple belief — that we can be a free and independent nation once more.
Remain could not win the argument at the polling booths. Even today Remainers are running from a general election. But Remain may yet win in
Parliament and the Supreme Court — those comfy, pro-Remain safe spaces for the British establishment. In the Supreme Court and Parliament, they can’t hear the people scream.
And yet David Cameron seems to truly believe that Boris Johnson backed Brexit only as a cynical career move.
“The conclusion I am left with is that he (Boris) risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his career,” Cameron told ITV’s Tom Bradby.
But the idea that backing the Leave side is a cunning career move is stark raving bonkers. If all you cared about was your career, then Remain has always been the only sensible option.
From the House of Commons to the House of Lords, from Whitehall to Broadcasting House, from every living ex-Prime Minister to the President of the United States, from the head of the IMF to every stand-up comedian looking for a gig on TV panel shows, from the presenter of Match Of The Day to Dame Emma Thompson and every luvvie in luvvieland, the might of the establishment has always been fanatically in favour of the UK remaining in the EU.
The rich, the powerful, the famous, the educated, the elite. And if all Boris Johnson cared about was his career, he would have sided with them.
Cameron is quite right to suggest that it was the Leave side that appealed to the Tory heartlands — “so loaded with images of patriotism, independence and romance,” Dave sighed, with a touch of what sounded like envy.
But it is still crackers to assert that Boris helped his career by taking on the Brussels-loving establishment.
Far from being a cynical career move, backing Leave could have seen Boris Johnson’s political career end in catastrophic failure. And it still might.
When the PM promises to deliver Brexit “do or die,” the “die” bit is a distinct possibility. Rich Remainers have failed to persuade the people that
Brexit is bad so they seek to persuade Supreme Court judges to make Brexit go away.
One day you may wake up to discover that a law has been passed or a High Court ruling made declaring that Brexit is illegal. On that day, democracy is dead here.
Whatever happens to Brexit — if it is banned, delivered, cancelled, or if we end up with some token Brexit in name only — the lasting legacy of these toxic times will be that the establishment dismissed the largest vote for anything in our country’s history.
A British Prime Minister — David Cameron — looked us in the eye and told us that whatever we decided, our decision was final.
Parliament has placed itself above the people. The courts place themselves above democracy. MPs shun a general election. Our freedoms are betrayed by an elite who think they always know best.
For over three years, the establishment has treated our people with an unfettered, sneering contempt.
Whatever slippery ruse they come up with next to abort Brexit — from arcane Parliamentary procedures to sombre Supreme Court rulings, to ducking a general election to collaborating with Brussels — their apocalyptic arrogance will never be forgiven or forgotten.
The bitter national debate that has torn our country apart has never been about Remain versus Leave.
It has always been about the establishment versus the people.
And guess who is winning?
THE Guardian newspaper, the font of left-wing compassion, sneered that David Cameron had only suffered “privileged pain” at the death of his seriously disabled son, Ivan, in 2009.
The mind reels at the twisted notion that ANYONE who loses a child does not have their heart ripped out. That this sickening tripe can be printed in a national newspaper defies belief.
Adventurer Ben Fogle, who had a stillborn baby with his wife Marina in 2014, responded on Instagram with words that came straight from a broken heart.
“There is no privilege in holding your dead son in your arms,” wrote Ben. “There is no privilege in holding my tearful wife once a year as she sobs uncontrollably on his birthday. You have made me feel such rage that I want to punch the editor in the face.”
Only The Guardian could have written about the Camerons’ lost son in such heartless terms.
It is the dehumanising, lefty world view that allowed Labour’s John McDonnell to say that Esther McVey should be “lynched”.
It is the twisted perspective that sees Tories portrayed as “scum” by Jeremy Corbyn’s fan club.
There is no bully quite like a caring, compassionate, left-wing bully.
ONE statistic has stayed constant in polls about voting intentions in a second EU referendum. The number of “don’t knows” is steady at 21 per cent.
What’s fascinating is that, on the great issue of our age, the leader of the Labour Party is proud to call himself a “don’t know”.
You haven’t got a bloody clue, have you, Jeremy?
STRICTLY bosses are making the show eco-friendly.
The plans range from sustainable materials for the spangly costumes, to green hotel certification for all the overnight stays, to reusable water bottles in the rehearsal studios.
Celebs and pro dancers are also being encouraged to share late-night taxis.
But haven’t they been sharing taxis for years?
Pasha Kovalev and Rachel Riley. Kristina Rihanoff and Ben Cohen. Kevin Clifton and Stacey Dooley. Strictly has a long and noble tradition of celebrities and dancers sharing late-night cabs to save the planet.
Although I am not sure it ever cut down on emissions.
“I SHOULD have known better then but I didn’t and I am deeply sorry,” said Justin Trudeau when a photograph emerged of him blacked up as Aladdin at an Arabian Nights party.
OK, Justin – we forgive you. Just about! Even though you were 29 at the time. Hardly a crazy mixed-up kid.
But now more images are revealed of the world’s most right-on leader in blackface, including Trudeau in an Afro wig crooning The Banana Boat Song.
Justin Trudeau seems to have spent his entire youth and young manhood in blackface.
Even Prince Harry only dressed up as a Nazi once.

“THE world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries,” shouted Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament’s Brexit Co ordinator, at the Lib Dem conference.
“It is a world order that is based on empires. We European and you British can only defend our way of life by doing it together in a European framework and in the European Union.”
Then Guy posed with a “B*****ks to Brexit” T-shirt.
Verhofstadt is premature in pronouncing the death of the nation state. Millions of people, and not just the British, have a profound love for their country. Patriotism is a basic human instinct.
And Verhofstadt seems oblivious to the fact that no empire lasts for ever. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union – every empire fades into history.
So why do the old men in Brussels always imagine that their European Union empire will last for ever?
CONTROVERSY erupts over Amanda Holden straddling a motorbike in a mini skirt and red spike heels. Imagine the fuss if she had actually been riding the thing!
ARIANA GRANDE flew her pet dogs Myron, a handsome pitbull cross, and Toulouse, a cheeky chihuahua cross, into Glasgow airport in their own private jet.
We all love Ariana in this country. But I do hope she has planted a few trees back in America.
Just to offset Myron and Toulouse’s carbon paw-print.
 
IF you want to suck up to the establishment in this country, then you better back Brussels.
If you want to be a well-paid talking head at the BBC, or climb the greasy ladder in Westminster and Whitehall, then you must say that only thick racist peasants who will all soon be dead voted to leave the European Union.
Even when warbling Land Of Hope And Glory at the Last Night Of The Proms, you should sport a blue EU beret and wave the EU flag as though you would die for it.
Want to get ahead? Then bend the knee to Brussels.
Because backing Brexit has always been the anti-establishment belief.
The real rebels are not grey old men like John Major. The true dissenting voices are the millions of ordinary, working-class patriots who believe — and it is such a simple belief — that we can be a free and independent nation once more.
Remain could not win the argument at the polling booths. Even today Remainers are running from a general election. But Remain may yet win in
Parliament and the Supreme Court — those comfy, pro-Remain safe spaces for the British establishment. In the Supreme Court and Parliament, they can’t hear the people scream.
And yet David Cameron seems to truly believe that Boris Johnson backed Brexit only as a cynical career move.
“The conclusion I am left with is that he (Boris) risked an outcome he didn’t believe in because it would help his career,” Cameron told ITV’s Tom Bradby.
But the idea that backing the Leave side is a cunning career move is stark raving bonkers. If all you cared about was your career, then Remain has always been the only sensible option.
From the House of Commons to the House of Lords, from Whitehall to Broadcasting House, from every living ex-Prime Minister to the President of the United States, from the head of the IMF to every stand-up comedian looking for a gig on TV panel shows, from the presenter of Match Of The Day to Dame Emma Thompson and every luvvie in luvvieland, the might of the establishment has always been fanatically in favour of the UK remaining in the EU.
The rich, the powerful, the famous, the educated, the elite. And if all Boris Johnson cared about was his career, he would have sided with them.
Cameron is quite right to suggest that it was the Leave side that appealed to the Tory heartlands — “so loaded with images of patriotism, independence and romance,” Dave sighed, with a touch of what sounded like envy.
But it is still crackers to assert that Boris helped his career by taking on the Brussels-loving establishment.
Far from being a cynical career move, backing Leave could have seen Boris Johnson’s political career end in catastrophic failure. And it still might.
When the PM promises to deliver Brexit “do or die,” the “die” bit is a distinct possibility. Rich Remainers have failed to persuade the people that
Brexit is bad so they seek to persuade Supreme Court judges to make Brexit go away.
One day you may wake up to discover that a law has been passed or a High Court ruling made declaring that Brexit is illegal. On that day, democracy is dead here.
Whatever happens to Brexit — if it is banned, delivered, cancelled, or if we end up with some token Brexit in name only — the lasting legacy of these toxic times will be that the establishment dismissed the largest vote for anything in our country’s history.
A British Prime Minister — David Cameron — looked us in the eye and told us that whatever we decided, our decision was final.
Parliament has placed itself above the people. The courts place themselves above democracy. MPs shun a general election. Our freedoms are betrayed by an elite who think they always know best.
For over three years, the establishment has treated our people with an unfettered, sneering contempt.
Whatever slippery ruse they come up with next to abort Brexit — from arcane Parliamentary procedures to sombre Supreme Court rulings, to ducking a general election to collaborating with Brussels — their apocalyptic arrogance will never be forgiven or forgotten.
The bitter national debate that has torn our country apart has never been about Remain versus Leave.
It has always been about the establishment versus the people.
And guess who is winning?
THE Guardian newspaper, the font of left-wing compassion, sneered that David Cameron had only suffered “privileged pain” at the death of his seriously disabled son, Ivan, in 2009.
The mind reels at the twisted notion that ANYONE who loses a child does not have their heart ripped out. That this sickening tripe can be printed in a national newspaper defies belief.
Adventurer Ben Fogle, who had a stillborn baby with his wife Marina in 2014, responded on Instagram with words that came straight from a broken heart.
“There is no privilege in holding your dead son in your arms,” wrote Ben. “There is no privilege in holding my tearful wife once a year as she sobs uncontrollably on his birthday. You have made me feel such rage that I want to punch the editor in the face.”
Only The Guardian could have written about the Camerons’ lost son in such heartless terms.
It is the dehumanising, lefty world view that allowed Labour’s John McDonnell to say that Esther McVey should be “lynched”.
It is the twisted perspective that sees Tories portrayed as “scum” by Jeremy Corbyn’s fan club.
There is no bully quite like a caring, compassionate, left-wing bully.
ONE statistic has stayed constant in polls about voting intentions in a second EU referendum. The number of “don’t knows” is steady at 21 per cent.
What’s fascinating is that, on the great issue of our age, the leader of the Labour Party is proud to call himself a “don’t know”.
You haven’t got a bloody clue, have you, Jeremy?
STRICTLY bosses are making the show eco-friendly.
The plans range from sustainable materials for the spangly costumes, to green hotel certification for all the overnight stays, to reusable water bottles in the rehearsal studios.
Celebs and pro dancers are also being encouraged to share late-night taxis.
But haven’t they been sharing taxis for years?
Pasha Kovalev and Rachel Riley. Kristina Rihanoff and Ben Cohen. Kevin Clifton and Stacey Dooley. Strictly has a long and noble tradition of celebrities and dancers sharing late-night cabs to save the planet.
Although I am not sure it ever cut down on emissions.
“I SHOULD have known better then but I didn’t and I am deeply sorry,” said Justin Trudeau when a photograph emerged of him blacked up as Aladdin at an Arabian Nights party.
OK, Justin – we forgive you. Just about! Even though you were 29 at the time. Hardly a crazy mixed-up kid.
But now more images are revealed of the world’s most right-on leader in blackface, including Trudeau in an Afro wig crooning The Banana Boat Song.
Justin Trudeau seems to have spent his entire youth and young manhood in blackface.
Even Prince Harry only dressed up as a Nazi once.

“THE world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries,” shouted Guy Verhofstadt, the EU Parliament’s Brexit Co ordinator, at the Lib Dem conference.
“It is a world order that is based on empires. We European and you British can only defend our way of life by doing it together in a European framework and in the European Union.”
Then Guy posed with a “B*****ks to Brexit” T-shirt.
Verhofstadt is premature in pronouncing the death of the nation state. Millions of people, and not just the British, have a profound love for their country. Patriotism is a basic human instinct.
And Verhofstadt seems oblivious to the fact that no empire lasts for ever. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Soviet Union – every empire fades into history.
So why do the old men in Brussels always imagine that their European Union empire will last for ever?
CONTROVERSY erupts over Amanda Holden straddling a motorbike in a mini skirt and red spike heels. Imagine the fuss if she had actually been riding the thing!
ARIANA GRANDE flew her pet dogs Myron, a handsome pitbull cross, and Toulouse, a cheeky chihuahua cross, into Glasgow airport in their own private jet.
We all love Ariana in this country. But I do hope she has planted a few trees back in America.
Just to offset Myron and Toulouse’s carbon paw-print.
 
Their plan is a policy of abject, unconditional surrender
DO Theresa May and new best mate Jeremy Corbyn really want to turn this great country into a banana republic with no bananas?
Apparently, that is the big idea being cooked up behind closed doors by the odd couple. But taking us out of the EU while keeping us in a customs union — their cunning plan, God help us — would not be a pragmatic compromise to unite our divided country.
Keeping us in a customs union would be a grotesque act of national self-harm. Keeping us in a customs union would render the UK a forelock-tugging colony of the EU for ever. Taking us out of the EU while locking us in a customs union with the EU would be the worst of all possible worlds.
It would prevent us from striking our own trade deals around the world — the great shining dream of Brexit — while leaving us beholden to the whims, wishes and interests of the EU. We would be instantly diminished.
The country that has not been invaded for 1,000 years would be brought to its knees by mediocre politicians.  Just to be totally clear — taking us out of the EU while keeping us in a customs union would be STARK RAVING MAD.
If we remain in a customs union while leaving the EU — a pitiful Brexit in name only, a pathetic excuse for Brexit — then we lose our voice without gaining our freedom. We could have no independent trade policy of our own.
Leaving the EU while remaining in a customs union would not be a compromise. It would be national suicide

With us out yet still shackled, the EU would be run totally for the benefit of others — for the faltering car industry of Germany, for the greedy farmers of France — and there will be bugger all that we can do about it. Apart from suck it up.
Just how stupid are Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn? Very, very stupid. Their plan is a policy of abject, unconditional surrender.
If we leave the EU but stay in a customs union then the EU will be free to offer the world access to the UK’s 65million consumers without the UK getting ANYTHING in return. The EU would become Britain’s pimp. Three countries in the world have a customs union with the EU without being members of the European Union — Turkey, San Marino and Andorra.
With all due respect to Turkey, San Marino and Andorra — do May and Corbyn really think so little of the UK?
We are the fifth largest economy on the planet. We are the oldest parliamentary democracy! We are a military superpower. We deserve infinitely better than the future that Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have planned for us.
Whatever way you voted in the EU referendum, and whatever your feelings now, a customs union is not the way forward. A customs union would be ­infinitely worse than either leaving or staying. It would mean our trade policy is determined in Brussels without British interests ever being considered.
Personally, I have given up on the lying muppets of Westminster ever delivering Brexit. If it was going to happen, then it would have ­happened by now.

The British establishment — the House of Commons, House of Lords, big business in the shape of the CBI, a pro-Brussels civil service and our state broadcaster, the BBC — were all against this country leaving the European Union.
Together, this powerful alliance has overruled the largest vote for anything in our history.  What that means for our democracy nobody knows.
But leaving the EU while remaining in a customs union would not be a compromise. It would be national suicide.
We would be infinitely better staying in the European Union. Or truly leaving.
We all want to end the Brexit deadlock.
But leaving the EU while staying in a customs union is like treating a migraine by putting a bullet in your brain.
THE conclusion of the local election results that punished both of the major parties is — a pox on both your houses.
Labour and the Tories have treated the public like mugs, thick peasants who should not be allowed anywhere near a polling booth.
Now they will reap the whirlwind.
FOR her snogging crimes on the last series of Strictly, Katya Jones is said to have been demoted to substitute dancer on the next series, deemed too hot to handle some ageing boy band member on the skids, or ambitious TV presenter, or comedian you have never heard of.
Shame. Katya is a great dancer and choreographer and  the air of sexual abandon around Strictly is one of the things that makes the show a success.
True, sleaze will never be good for what is allegedly wholesome prime-time family entertainment.
But do we really want to kill all possibility of romance blossoming during all those long, sweaty rehearsals?
Don’t you want to believe that some of the passion on the dance floor is not being faked?  Shouldn’t some deep needs and feelings be stirring inside that skin-tight Lycra?
It’s a dance show, not Songs Of Praise. And Strictly needs the naughty likes of Katya Jones.
Peter played Chewie in all those fabulous early films – A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return Of The Jedi (1983), and came back for Revenge Of The Sith (2005) and The Force Awakens (2015).
Chewie never had much dialogue apart from the odd roar, but there will be many middle-aged souls who will recall every Chewbacca scene.
For Chewbacca was the greatest sidekick in movie history.  Fearless, loyal, impossibly heroic and very hairy.  It is hard to imagine Han Solo without Chewie at his side.
Chewbacca lit up the childhood of a generation, including my Star Wars-obsessed son, who went to bed with his plastic lightsaber every night for years.
Peter Mayhew was rarely seen.  But few actors were ever more loved.
LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan said recently that it would take ten years to stop London’s soaring murder rate.
But that is only true if London’s Mayor spends his days blowing hot air into ­Donald Trump blimps.
The Met reports that over the last year a rise in stop and search led to a major drop in violent crime.
A 30 per cent increase of stopping and searching in London resulted in a 15 per cent ­reduction in stabbings among the under-25s, bucking the national trend.
The brutal truth is that kids are less likely to carry a blade if they are more likely to get stopped and searched.
Sadiq Khan can face up to that hard truth and actually DO SOMETHING.  Or he can ­continue saving his breath for Donald Trump balloons.
THE London Marathon was spoiled this year by staff who were clearing the course abusing the slower runners. Jack Glenny, 24, finished in just over seven hours.
“One of the proudest moments of my life was  tarnished,” says Jack. “We were berated and told, ‘run, fat boy, run.’ It’s disgraceful.”
Who were these creeps? It would be interesting to see what they look like after ­running 26 miles while dressed as a chicken.
JUDE LAW looked blissfully happy coming out of Marylebone Town Hall  with his new bride, Dr Phillipa Coan, an academic who is 14 years younger than Jude with legs that are apparently 14 inches longer than his own.
It is true what they say. You should marry your second wife first.
THE Prime Minister sacked her Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, for allegedly leaking details of a National Security Council meeting to a journalist.
Williamson strenuously denies the accusation, swearing “on his children’s life” that he did not leak details about Chinese tech giant Huawei being invited to build the UK’s 5G network.
They can’t both be telling the truth, can they?
But whatever Williamson did or didn’t tell a journalist, he does seem to have been slightly overpromoted as Defence Secretary.
Gavin “Mad Dog” Williamson was always ludicrously keen on talking tough.
He suggested our fighting forces tackle their equipment crisis by fitting tractors with guns.
It was Mad Dog who suggested defending Gibraltar by firing paintballs at the Spanish navy.  And Mad Dog who told the Russians to “go away and shut up”.
Russia lost 25million people defeating Nazi Germany.
They were unlikely to be intimidated by Gavin Williamson.
Penny Mordaunt becomes Britain’s first female Defence Secretary.
The daughter of a paratrooper, a Royal Navy reservist and veteran of reality TV show Splash!, the mighty Mordaunt will be a huge improvement on Williamson.
But then Orville the Duck would make a better Defence Secretary than Mad Dog.
GRUMPY boxing fans are disappointed that Anthony Joshua is fighting roly-poly Andy Ruiz rather than Tyson Fury,  Deontay Wilder or, you know, somebody actually quite good.
We are informed that Ruiz has “fast hands”.
At the buffet?
Their plan is a policy of abject, unconditional surrender
DO Theresa May and new best mate Jeremy Corbyn really want to turn this great country into a banana republic with no bananas?
Apparently, that is the big idea being cooked up behind closed doors by the odd couple. But taking us out of the EU while keeping us in a customs union — their cunning plan, God help us — would not be a pragmatic compromise to unite our divided country.
Keeping us in a customs union would be a grotesque act of national self-harm. Keeping us in a customs union would render the UK a forelock-tugging colony of the EU for ever. Taking us out of the EU while locking us in a customs union with the EU would be the worst of all possible worlds.
It would prevent us from striking our own trade deals around the world — the great shining dream of Brexit — while leaving us beholden to the whims, wishes and interests of the EU. We would be instantly diminished.
The country that has not been invaded for 1,000 years would be brought to its knees by mediocre politicians.  Just to be totally clear — taking us out of the EU while keeping us in a customs union would be STARK RAVING MAD.
If we remain in a customs union while leaving the EU — a pitiful Brexit in name only, a pathetic excuse for Brexit — then we lose our voice without gaining our freedom. We could have no independent trade policy of our own.
Leaving the EU while remaining in a customs union would not be a compromise. It would be national suicide

With us out yet still shackled, the EU would be run totally for the benefit of others — for the faltering car industry of Germany, for the greedy farmers of France — and there will be bugger all that we can do about it. Apart from suck it up.
Just how stupid are Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn? Very, very stupid. Their plan is a policy of abject, unconditional surrender.
If we leave the EU but stay in a customs union then the EU will be free to offer the world access to the UK’s 65million consumers without the UK getting ANYTHING in return. The EU would become Britain’s pimp. Three countries in the world have a customs union with the EU without being members of the European Union — Turkey, San Marino and Andorra.
With all due respect to Turkey, San Marino and Andorra — do May and Corbyn really think so little of the UK?
We are the fifth largest economy on the planet. We are the oldest parliamentary democracy! We are a military superpower. We deserve infinitely better than the future that Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have planned for us.
Whatever way you voted in the EU referendum, and whatever your feelings now, a customs union is not the way forward. A customs union would be ­infinitely worse than either leaving or staying. It would mean our trade policy is determined in Brussels without British interests ever being considered.
Personally, I have given up on the lying muppets of Westminster ever delivering Brexit. If it was going to happen, then it would have ­happened by now.

The British establishment — the House of Commons, House of Lords, big business in the shape of the CBI, a pro-Brussels civil service and our state broadcaster, the BBC — were all against this country leaving the European Union.
Together, this powerful alliance has overruled the largest vote for anything in our history.  What that means for our democracy nobody knows.
But leaving the EU while remaining in a customs union would not be a compromise. It would be national suicide.
We would be infinitely better staying in the European Union. Or truly leaving.
We all want to end the Brexit deadlock.
But leaving the EU while staying in a customs union is like treating a migraine by putting a bullet in your brain.
THE conclusion of the local election results that punished both of the major parties is — a pox on both your houses.
Labour and the Tories have treated the public like mugs, thick peasants who should not be allowed anywhere near a polling booth.
Now they will reap the whirlwind.
FOR her snogging crimes on the last series of Strictly, Katya Jones is said to have been demoted to substitute dancer on the next series, deemed too hot to handle some ageing boy band member on the skids, or ambitious TV presenter, or comedian you have never heard of.
Shame. Katya is a great dancer and choreographer and  the air of sexual abandon around Strictly is one of the things that makes the show a success.
True, sleaze will never be good for what is allegedly wholesome prime-time family entertainment.
But do we really want to kill all possibility of romance blossoming during all those long, sweaty rehearsals?
Don’t you want to believe that some of the passion on the dance floor is not being faked?  Shouldn’t some deep needs and feelings be stirring inside that skin-tight Lycra?
It’s a dance show, not Songs Of Praise. And Strictly needs the naughty likes of Katya Jones.
Peter played Chewie in all those fabulous early films – A New Hope (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return Of The Jedi (1983), and came back for Revenge Of The Sith (2005) and The Force Awakens (2015).
Chewie never had much dialogue apart from the odd roar, but there will be many middle-aged souls who will recall every Chewbacca scene.
For Chewbacca was the greatest sidekick in movie history.  Fearless, loyal, impossibly heroic and very hairy.  It is hard to imagine Han Solo without Chewie at his side.
Chewbacca lit up the childhood of a generation, including my Star Wars-obsessed son, who went to bed with his plastic lightsaber every night for years.
Peter Mayhew was rarely seen.  But few actors were ever more loved.
LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan said recently that it would take ten years to stop London’s soaring murder rate.
But that is only true if London’s Mayor spends his days blowing hot air into ­Donald Trump blimps.
The Met reports that over the last year a rise in stop and search led to a major drop in violent crime.
A 30 per cent increase of stopping and searching in London resulted in a 15 per cent ­reduction in stabbings among the under-25s, bucking the national trend.
The brutal truth is that kids are less likely to carry a blade if they are more likely to get stopped and searched.
Sadiq Khan can face up to that hard truth and actually DO SOMETHING.  Or he can ­continue saving his breath for Donald Trump balloons.
THE London Marathon was spoiled this year by staff who were clearing the course abusing the slower runners. Jack Glenny, 24, finished in just over seven hours.
“One of the proudest moments of my life was  tarnished,” says Jack. “We were berated and told, ‘run, fat boy, run.’ It’s disgraceful.”
Who were these creeps? It would be interesting to see what they look like after ­running 26 miles while dressed as a chicken.
JUDE LAW looked blissfully happy coming out of Marylebone Town Hall  with his new bride, Dr Phillipa Coan, an academic who is 14 years younger than Jude with legs that are apparently 14 inches longer than his own.
It is true what they say. You should marry your second wife first.
THE Prime Minister sacked her Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, for allegedly leaking details of a National Security Council meeting to a journalist.
Williamson strenuously denies the accusation, swearing “on his children’s life” that he did not leak details about Chinese tech giant Huawei being invited to build the UK’s 5G network.
They can’t both be telling the truth, can they?
But whatever Williamson did or didn’t tell a journalist, he does seem to have been slightly overpromoted as Defence Secretary.
Gavin “Mad Dog” Williamson was always ludicrously keen on talking tough.
He suggested our fighting forces tackle their equipment crisis by fitting tractors with guns.
It was Mad Dog who suggested defending Gibraltar by firing paintballs at the Spanish navy.  And Mad Dog who told the Russians to “go away and shut up”.
Russia lost 25million people defeating Nazi Germany.
They were unlikely to be intimidated by Gavin Williamson.
Penny Mordaunt becomes Britain’s first female Defence Secretary.
The daughter of a paratrooper, a Royal Navy reservist and veteran of reality TV show Splash!, the mighty Mordaunt will be a huge improvement on Williamson.
But then Orville the Duck would make a better Defence Secretary than Mad Dog.
GRUMPY boxing fans are disappointed that Anthony Joshua is fighting roly-poly Andy Ruiz rather than Tyson Fury,  Deontay Wilder or, you know, somebody actually quite good.
We are informed that Ruiz has “fast hands”.
At the buffet?
THEY really don’t get it, do they?
Our MPs increasingly resemble those moronic Extinction Rebellion activists who looned on top of a Tube train in London’s rush hour.
See them cavort and preen! See them faff and fart about!
See the witless prats kick the Brexit can down the road one more time!
Like commuters prevented from going to work, out in the real world millions glare up at their stupid, self-indulgent antics, wanting nothing more than to get on with our lives.
And still these democratically-elected dullards vote for more dithering, delay and unimaginable damage to our economy.
All that stuff about simply wanting to prevent No Deal?
Lies, lies and more lies. They lie to us all the time. One day there will be a mighty reckoning for all their mealy-mouthed lies. But not on Saturday.
There is a great deal on the table. On Saturday, MPs defecated on the table. Classy!
Saturday was the chance for MPs to get down from the roof of the stalled Tube train that is Brexit.
Saturday was the day to put the country out of its misery.
Saturday was a chance to end the national paralysis.
Here at long last, shining like a heavenly light, was an exit door out of purgatory. Finally, after all these wretched years, there was an opportunity to get Brexit done.
And the House of Commons blew it. Once more, they placed Parliament above the people. We will never forgive or forget this treachery.
They had a chance to end the divisions that have divided friends, colleagues and family.
To stop our country stumbling like a drooling zombie and to start walking tall and strong as an open, optimistic free-trading global nation.
And oh yes — a chance to honour the result of a referendum that produced the largest vote for anything ever in the oldest democracy in the world.
And they voted for more faffing about. More paralysis. More zombie. How dare they?
Because for the very first time, here was a Brexit that was actually worthy of the name. For all of Theresa May’s hard work, honourable intentions and humiliations she was forced to endure, she never offered a Brexit that was worth having.
Theresa May brought back a Brexit in name only, a Brexit that would have reduced us to a colony, a Brexit that would have effectively kept the UK within the EU while silencing our voice.
But Boris Johnson offered a real Brexit deal and oh, how they squirmed on Saturday, all those eye-swivelling Remaniacs who have fibbed for so long that all they ever wanted was to prevent No Deal.
And they have the nerve to call Boris a liar!
Those democracy-deniers, who dismiss 17.4million of their countrymen and women as thick racist bigots, never looked so woefully out of touch with the mood of the nation as they did on Saturday.
Business wants to back Boris’s deal! Workers want it! The head of the Bank of England wants it! Sun readers want it! Figures as wildly diverse as Stuart Rose, who chaired the Remain campaign, and Arron Banks, founder of the hardcore Leave.EU campaign, all want it!
And still they couldn’t bring themselves to do it.
Common sense screamed that there is no better Brexit than the one that was on offer on Saturday.
And still they could not summon the common sense, the common decency, to back this Prime Minister.
But make no mistake, there was far more than Brexit on the line. By blocking the Boris deal, the damage to our democracy has been immeasurable.
But it is not Boris Johnson who will be blamed for this insult. It is not Boris Johnson and his increasingly united Tories who will be punished when Jeremy Corbyn finally stops wetting his incontinence pants and summons the courage for a General Election.
For too long, the largest vote for anything in British history had been thwarted and frustrated at every turn.
So Saturday was no real surprise.
They have sought to block Brexit with the propaganda of Project Fear.
They have tried to thwart Brexit in the courts.
They have tried to block Brexit by smearing this Prime Minister.
Saturday was just the latest roadblock. Frustrating but, hey, no big deal.
The 17.4million has not gone away. And Brexit will not go away.
And neither will this tousle-haired Prime Minister.
Is the message finally getting through? WE WANT THIS THING OVER.
Saturday was time to move on. They kicked Brexit in the shins. But do the fools really think they killed it?
The DUP, who believe the Boris deal would cut them off from the rest of the UK, have done the Union no favour by siding with Remainers.
The DUP are denying the realities of geography.
Northern Ireland shares a border with the Republic of Ireland. If there is to be no border on the island of Ireland then common sense dictates that there has to be a border SOMEWHERE.
The Boris solution — sticking an invisible border somewhere in the Irish sea — seems ingenious.
It allows free trade to flow in Ireland while allowing Northern Ireland to benefit from the future free trade deals struck around the world by the UK.
If they were of a naturally sunnier disposition, the DUP might even believe they were getting the best of both worlds.
And you couldn’t help reflecting that the socially conservative DUP are very happy to be separate from mainland Britain when it suits them on gay rights, abortion and same sex marriage. Nothing in recent years has weakened the union like the DUP’s thunder-faced opposition to the Brexit that Boris Johnson offered.
For this was the real deal.
And all those who defied it — because they can see no further than the end of their own prejudices, because they care about their career more than their country, because they were afraid of being kneecapped by John McDonnell, because they simply can’t accept Brexit — were woefully out of touch with the mood of our nation.
It turns the stomach that MPs have scorned this wonderful chance to get Brexit done. But Saturday’s lost battle just makes winning the war all the more inevitable. When the opposition work up the guts to face a General Election, Saturday’s institutional treachery guarantees Boris a landslide.
Brexit now has an historic inevitability about it.
In the end we have no choice but to leave the EU — whatever the cost in friendships, family ties and gold, whatever it does to what Boris Johnson calls the “awesome foursome” of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Because the EU dream of ever-closer union will never be the aspiration of the British.
Once David Cameron had called the referendum, the oldest democracy in the world was bound to honour its result.
Brexit will happen because Brexit has to happen.
This country will never be just another state in a federal Europe.
And ultimately this country will never ignore a democratic vote, or tell its people to have another referendum because they got the answer wrong the first time.
The political pygmies in Westminster have slowed Brexit. But they will never stop it.
The bitter taste of Saturday’s betrayal will fade. The future is still unwritten.
The confederacy of fools in Westminster can’t kick the can down the road forever.
And for this great country, the world awaits.
THEY really don’t get it, do they?
Our MPs increasingly resemble those moronic Extinction Rebellion activists who looned on top of a Tube train in London’s rush hour.
See them cavort and preen! See them faff and fart about!
See the witless prats kick the Brexit can down the road one more time!
Like commuters prevented from going to work, out in the real world millions glare up at their stupid, self-indulgent antics, wanting nothing more than to get on with our lives.
And still these democratically-elected dullards vote for more dithering, delay and unimaginable damage to our economy.
All that stuff about simply wanting to prevent No Deal?
Lies, lies and more lies. They lie to us all the time. One day there will be a mighty reckoning for all their mealy-mouthed lies. But not on Saturday.
There is a great deal on the table. On Saturday, MPs defecated on the table. Classy!
Saturday was the chance for MPs to get down from the roof of the stalled Tube train that is Brexit.
Saturday was the day to put the country out of its misery.
Saturday was a chance to end the national paralysis.
Here at long last, shining like a heavenly light, was an exit door out of purgatory. Finally, after all these wretched years, there was an opportunity to get Brexit done.
And the House of Commons blew it. Once more, they placed Parliament above the people. We will never forgive or forget this treachery.
They had a chance to end the divisions that have divided friends, colleagues and family.
To stop our country stumbling like a drooling zombie and to start walking tall and strong as an open, optimistic free-trading global nation.
And oh yes — a chance to honour the result of a referendum that produced the largest vote for anything ever in the oldest democracy in the world.
And they voted for more faffing about. More paralysis. More zombie. How dare they?
Because for the very first time, here was a Brexit that was actually worthy of the name. For all of Theresa May’s hard work, honourable intentions and humiliations she was forced to endure, she never offered a Brexit that was worth having.
Theresa May brought back a Brexit in name only, a Brexit that would have reduced us to a colony, a Brexit that would have effectively kept the UK within the EU while silencing our voice.
But Boris Johnson offered a real Brexit deal and oh, how they squirmed on Saturday, all those eye-swivelling Remaniacs who have fibbed for so long that all they ever wanted was to prevent No Deal.
And they have the nerve to call Boris a liar!
Those democracy-deniers, who dismiss 17.4million of their countrymen and women as thick racist bigots, never looked so woefully out of touch with the mood of the nation as they did on Saturday.
Business wants to back Boris’s deal! Workers want it! The head of the Bank of England wants it! Sun readers want it! Figures as wildly diverse as Stuart Rose, who chaired the Remain campaign, and Arron Banks, founder of the hardcore Leave.EU campaign, all want it!
And still they couldn’t bring themselves to do it.
Common sense screamed that there is no better Brexit than the one that was on offer on Saturday.
And still they could not summon the common sense, the common decency, to back this Prime Minister.
But make no mistake, there was far more than Brexit on the line. By blocking the Boris deal, the damage to our democracy has been immeasurable.
But it is not Boris Johnson who will be blamed for this insult. It is not Boris Johnson and his increasingly united Tories who will be punished when Jeremy Corbyn finally stops wetting his incontinence pants and summons the courage for a General Election.
For too long, the largest vote for anything in British history had been thwarted and frustrated at every turn.
So Saturday was no real surprise.
They have sought to block Brexit with the propaganda of Project Fear.
They have tried to thwart Brexit in the courts.
They have tried to block Brexit by smearing this Prime Minister.
Saturday was just the latest roadblock. Frustrating but, hey, no big deal.
The 17.4million has not gone away. And Brexit will not go away.
And neither will this tousle-haired Prime Minister.
Is the message finally getting through? WE WANT THIS THING OVER.
Saturday was time to move on. They kicked Brexit in the shins. But do the fools really think they killed it?
The DUP, who believe the Boris deal would cut them off from the rest of the UK, have done the Union no favour by siding with Remainers.
The DUP are denying the realities of geography.
Northern Ireland shares a border with the Republic of Ireland. If there is to be no border on the island of Ireland then common sense dictates that there has to be a border SOMEWHERE.
The Boris solution — sticking an invisible border somewhere in the Irish sea — seems ingenious.
It allows free trade to flow in Ireland while allowing Northern Ireland to benefit from the future free trade deals struck around the world by the UK.
If they were of a naturally sunnier disposition, the DUP might even believe they were getting the best of both worlds.
And you couldn’t help reflecting that the socially conservative DUP are very happy to be separate from mainland Britain when it suits them on gay rights, abortion and same sex marriage. Nothing in recent years has weakened the union like the DUP’s thunder-faced opposition to the Brexit that Boris Johnson offered.
For this was the real deal.
And all those who defied it — because they can see no further than the end of their own prejudices, because they care about their career more than their country, because they were afraid of being kneecapped by John McDonnell, because they simply can’t accept Brexit — were woefully out of touch with the mood of our nation.
It turns the stomach that MPs have scorned this wonderful chance to get Brexit done. But Saturday’s lost battle just makes winning the war all the more inevitable. When the opposition work up the guts to face a General Election, Saturday’s institutional treachery guarantees Boris a landslide.
Brexit now has an historic inevitability about it.
In the end we have no choice but to leave the EU — whatever the cost in friendships, family ties and gold, whatever it does to what Boris Johnson calls the “awesome foursome” of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Because the EU dream of ever-closer union will never be the aspiration of the British.
Once David Cameron had called the referendum, the oldest democracy in the world was bound to honour its result.
Brexit will happen because Brexit has to happen.
This country will never be just another state in a federal Europe.
And ultimately this country will never ignore a democratic vote, or tell its people to have another referendum because they got the answer wrong the first time.
The political pygmies in Westminster have slowed Brexit. But they will never stop it.
The bitter taste of Saturday’s betrayal will fade. The future is still unwritten.
The confederacy of fools in Westminster can’t kick the can down the road forever.
And for this great country, the world awaits.
Many pointed the finger at 28 hardline members of the European Research Group who sided with Remainers to block Theresa May’s departure deal
FURIOUS Tories turned on each other last night as tempers frayed over the Brexit deadlock.
Rival factions traded insults over who was to blame for failing to take Britain out of the EU on time.
Many pointed the finger at 28 hardline members of the European Research Group who sided with Remainers to block Theresa May’s departure deal.
One senior Brexiteer said: “They have lost the plot. They are no longer behaving rationally.
Their passion for a perfect Brexit has now turned into a kamikaze mission and they are in danger of killing off the whole project — and the Conservative Party with it.”
But ERG zealots hit back at their accusers, branding them “traitors” and “cowards”. The blue-on-blue warfare erupted yesterday on what should have been Britain’s first day outside the EU.
The PM’s deal was sunk hours before the two-year deadline expired, triggering a wave of bitter recriminations.
Senior Brexiteers — including Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab — swung behind the deal as it dawned it was better than losing Brexit altogether.
I could tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river
But the ERG diehards refused to budge and have now been accused of running a “renegade army”.
One member of the group who voted for the deal said last night: “There is a hardcore of members who have become increasingly emotional and macho about Brexit.
“They seem to have lost all sense of reason or tactical nous. Their language is now littered with angry phrases and their position seems to be irreconcilable.”
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker and ex-defence minister Mark Francois are “manning the barricades” as self-appointed leaders since Mr Rees-Mogg gave up his resistance to the deal. Mr Francois has boasted: “I wouldn’t vote for the deal if they put a shotgun in my mouth.” At a gathering in a Commons meeting room last week Mr Baker admitted he was “consumed with ferocious rage”.
His voice cracking with emotion, he branded those who supported the deal “fools, knaves and cowards”. And he declared: “I could tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river.”
Mrs May has ruled out the UK leaving without a deal — and the Remainer-­dominated Commons has vowed to block it if she tried.
Her first bid to get a deal through Parliament was opposed by 110 ERG members. At the third attempt on Friday, it had dwindled to 28 — but it was still enough to stop Britain leaving.
While the majority now back the deal, the ERG resistance movement is holding firm. Diehards include Priti Patel, Owen Paterson, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Suella Braverman. Another ERG member, who is now backing the deal, said: “The group appears to be in the hands of a hardcore group of angry and reckless extremists. I decided to back the deal because it has become increasingly clear we may end up with a much less favourable Brexit, or no Brexit at all.
“It is clear the Prime Minister and the Commons will not allow us to leave the EU with no deal, which is what these insurgents are holding out for.
“They are saying some barmy things. All this talk of sticking guns in their mouths and bulldozing Parliament is really not helpful.”
ERG chairman Mr Rees-Mogg said last night: “The normal phlegmatic approach is the one I prefer to take.
“The overwhelming bulk of the ERG members have come to the conclusion that this deal was the least worst option.
“Some have decided that they need to carry on in the hope of getting no deal, which they did for honourable reasons, but ones with which I do not agree.”
But one Cabinet minister described the defiant ERG faction as “idiots”. He declared: “The ‘Spartans’ are irreconcilable. There is no team spirit. That’s over.”
One Tory MP added: “Instead of advancing their cause, the likes of Mark Francois are helping the Remain campaign no end. It’s like they’re sleeper agents for staying in the EU. You couldn’t make it up.”
A senior ERG member, who is backing the deal now, said: “I too would prefer to leave the EU without a deal than support the Prime Minister’s deal. But the reality is that No-Deal is off the table now. The PM won’t wear it and neither will the Commons. They would prefer a much softer Brexit or no Brexit at all.
“What this dug-in faction of the ERG have yet to explain is how they get to No-Deal with a Parliament stuffed full of Remainers who don’t want to leave the EU.”
Many pointed the finger at 28 hardline members of the European Research Group who sided with Remainers to block Theresa May’s departure deal
FURIOUS Tories turned on each other last night as tempers frayed over the Brexit deadlock.
Rival factions traded insults over who was to blame for failing to take Britain out of the EU on time.
Many pointed the finger at 28 hardline members of the European Research Group who sided with Remainers to block Theresa May’s departure deal.
One senior Brexiteer said: “They have lost the plot. They are no longer behaving rationally.
Their passion for a perfect Brexit has now turned into a kamikaze mission and they are in danger of killing off the whole project — and the Conservative Party with it.”
But ERG zealots hit back at their accusers, branding them “traitors” and “cowards”. The blue-on-blue warfare erupted yesterday on what should have been Britain’s first day outside the EU.
The PM’s deal was sunk hours before the two-year deadline expired, triggering a wave of bitter recriminations.
Senior Brexiteers — including Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith and Dominic Raab — swung behind the deal as it dawned it was better than losing Brexit altogether.
I could tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river
But the ERG diehards refused to budge and have now been accused of running a “renegade army”.
One member of the group who voted for the deal said last night: “There is a hardcore of members who have become increasingly emotional and macho about Brexit.
“They seem to have lost all sense of reason or tactical nous. Their language is now littered with angry phrases and their position seems to be irreconcilable.”
Former Brexit minister Steve Baker and ex-defence minister Mark Francois are “manning the barricades” as self-appointed leaders since Mr Rees-Mogg gave up his resistance to the deal. Mr Francois has boasted: “I wouldn’t vote for the deal if they put a shotgun in my mouth.” At a gathering in a Commons meeting room last week Mr Baker admitted he was “consumed with ferocious rage”.
His voice cracking with emotion, he branded those who supported the deal “fools, knaves and cowards”. And he declared: “I could tear this place down and bulldoze it into the river.”
Mrs May has ruled out the UK leaving without a deal — and the Remainer-­dominated Commons has vowed to block it if she tried.
Her first bid to get a deal through Parliament was opposed by 110 ERG members. At the third attempt on Friday, it had dwindled to 28 — but it was still enough to stop Britain leaving.
While the majority now back the deal, the ERG resistance movement is holding firm. Diehards include Priti Patel, Owen Paterson, Sir Bernard Jenkin and Suella Braverman. Another ERG member, who is now backing the deal, said: “The group appears to be in the hands of a hardcore group of angry and reckless extremists. I decided to back the deal because it has become increasingly clear we may end up with a much less favourable Brexit, or no Brexit at all.
“It is clear the Prime Minister and the Commons will not allow us to leave the EU with no deal, which is what these insurgents are holding out for.
“They are saying some barmy things. All this talk of sticking guns in their mouths and bulldozing Parliament is really not helpful.”
ERG chairman Mr Rees-Mogg said last night: “The normal phlegmatic approach is the one I prefer to take.
“The overwhelming bulk of the ERG members have come to the conclusion that this deal was the least worst option.
“Some have decided that they need to carry on in the hope of getting no deal, which they did for honourable reasons, but ones with which I do not agree.”
But one Cabinet minister described the defiant ERG faction as “idiots”. He declared: “The ‘Spartans’ are irreconcilable. There is no team spirit. That’s over.”
One Tory MP added: “Instead of advancing their cause, the likes of Mark Francois are helping the Remain campaign no end. It’s like they’re sleeper agents for staying in the EU. You couldn’t make it up.”
A senior ERG member, who is backing the deal now, said: “I too would prefer to leave the EU without a deal than support the Prime Minister’s deal. But the reality is that No-Deal is off the table now. The PM won’t wear it and neither will the Commons. They would prefer a much softer Brexit or no Brexit at all.
“What this dug-in faction of the ERG have yet to explain is how they get to No-Deal with a Parliament stuffed full of Remainers who don’t want to leave the EU.”
SIR John Major was branded “bonkers” as he sparked an extraordinary Tory bust-up by threatening to sue Boris Johnson if he tries to suspend Parliament.
In an incredible intervention, the former PM said he would mount a judicial review to stop the future PM proroguing the Commons to force through a No Deal later this October.
He said shutting Westminster down would be “utterly and totally unacceptable.”
Boris dismissed the threat as “very odd” as senior Tories hit back by branding Sir John “bonkers” and slamming the BBC Today programme for airing his “clear Remain bias.”
One veteran said: “Major’s been driven completely mad by Brexit.”
But others rallied to Sir John’s defence with International Aid Secretary Rory Stewart vowing he too would go to court to stop a prorogation.
Mr Johnson refused once more in Tuesday’s night leadership debate to rule out suspending Parliament to force through a No Deal – saying he had to keep every option on the table.
Sir John stormed into Boris yesterday – saying “national leaders must put the interests of the country first – not themselves.”
He said: “I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review to prevent Parliament being bypassed.
“There is no conceivable justification, wherever we are, in closing down Parliament to bypass its sovereignty.
“I seem to recall that the Brexiteers, led by Mr Johnson, actually campaigned in the referendum for the sovereignty of Parliament... They can’t be concerned for the sovereignty of Parliament except when it is inconvenient to Mr Johnson.”
Sir John separately blasted claims he had prorogued Parliament as “absurd.”
He was challenged over the timing of his decision to close down Parliament ahead of the 1997 general election, which prevented a report on the cash for questions scandal being considered by MPs.
Sir John said “we carried the election until almost the very last date” and it was an “absurd charge.”
SIR John Major was branded “bonkers” as he sparked an extraordinary Tory bust-up by threatening to sue Boris Johnson if he tries to suspend Parliament.
In an incredible intervention, the former PM said he would mount a judicial review to stop the future PM proroguing the Commons to force through a No Deal later this October.
He said shutting Westminster down would be “utterly and totally unacceptable.”
Boris dismissed the threat as “very odd” as senior Tories hit back by branding Sir John “bonkers” and slamming the BBC Today programme for airing his “clear Remain bias.”
One veteran said: “Major’s been driven completely mad by Brexit.”
But others rallied to Sir John’s defence with International Aid Secretary Rory Stewart vowing he too would go to court to stop a prorogation.
Mr Johnson refused once more in Tuesday’s night leadership debate to rule out suspending Parliament to force through a No Deal – saying he had to keep every option on the table.
Sir John stormed into Boris yesterday – saying “national leaders must put the interests of the country first – not themselves.”
He said: “I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review to prevent Parliament being bypassed.
“There is no conceivable justification, wherever we are, in closing down Parliament to bypass its sovereignty.
“I seem to recall that the Brexiteers, led by Mr Johnson, actually campaigned in the referendum for the sovereignty of Parliament... They can’t be concerned for the sovereignty of Parliament except when it is inconvenient to Mr Johnson.”
Sir John separately blasted claims he had prorogued Parliament as “absurd.”
He was challenged over the timing of his decision to close down Parliament ahead of the 1997 general election, which prevented a report on the cash for questions scandal being considered by MPs.
Sir John said “we carried the election until almost the very last date” and it was an “absurd charge.”
The ex-Foreign Secretary has been working on a manifesto for his first months as PM
BORIS Johnson has drawn up a secret blueprint for power to convince doubting Tories to back his leadership bid.
He will try to win over waverers with a wad of initiatives to boost NHS funding, tackle violent crime, ease the housing crisis and improve transport links.
But the hot favourite believes his biggest appeal is that he is a proven winner – who can see of both Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage at a stroke.
In a series of meetings with jittery MPs, Bojo has been driving home the message that only he has the X-factor which can save them at the next general election.
He told one hesitant colleague: “I’m could be your lifeline. I’m the only candidate in this contest who can defeat both Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn.
“I’ve beaten Labour’s hard-Left twice in the London mayoral elections – and know I can do it on the national stage, too.
“We also need to deliver a proper Brexit to make sure we get all those people back who drifted off to the Brexit party.
“It’s not enough to beat one just Corbyn. We must defeat Nigel Farage, too, if we are to retain power.”
To show he means business, Mr Johnson has spent the past few months drawing up a detailed manifesto for his first months as PM.
It is packed with policies that he believes are clear vote-winners to prove he is more than a mere political showman.
He has also held a series of drinks meetings with MPs at which he constantly reminds them of his popular appeal to ordinary voters.
Bojo toppled former Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2008 to become Mayor of Labour-leaning London. He then gave “Red” Ken a second drubbing to be re-elected four years later.
One MP said: “Boris acknowledges that Ken is a far better political operator than Jeremy Corbyn.
“Having seen him off twice, he’d have not trouble taking on Jezza. He firmly believes he would smash him at a general election – and I think he’s right.”
MPs backing Mr Johnson also believe he has the charisma, intellect and communication skills to see off Nigel Farage and his fledgling Brexit party.
More than 100,000 people have become paid-up supporters of the new movement and its soaring popularity could cost Tories enough seats at the next election to hand Mr Corbyn the keys to Number 10.
Mr Johnson has learned the lessons of his failed last leadership bid when he was knifed by Cabinet colleague Michael Gove for being too disorganised – giving Theresa May a clear run for the top job.
He knows that despite being front-runner, he needs to win over his natural enemies and Remainers opposed to his plan for a no-deal Brexit if all else fails. And he has put in the hard graft over his time on the back benches.
Funding the NHS will be a key battleground at the next election – and BoJo has put extra funding at the heart of his pitch for power.
It will also deliver on a referendum promise when the Leave campaign bus said £350million a week sent to the EU could be used to fund the NHS instead.
An admirer said: “Boris is absolutely convinced that as a party that we are putting money into the NHS.
“But more importantly, we have got to make sure that the overwhelming majority of it goes straight into frontline services.
BETS worth close to £500,000 have been placed on Boris Johnson becoming Britain’s next Prime Minister.
Punters put on individual bets of £3,000 and £2,000 on BoJo in the hours after Theresa May announced her departure.
The odds with Betfair Exchange have Boris at 6/5, Dominic Raab, right, at 6/1, followed by Michael Gove at 10/1. The bookies have seen a total of £1.3million bet so far.
Betfair spokeswoman Katie Baylis said:  “We’ve seen plenty of action on the next leader market, with 35 per cent bet on Boris.
“Those numbers should massively increase over the next few weeks.”
THREE leadership candidates could steal a march on rivals — after bagging invites to the state banquet with Donald Trump.
Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Penny Mordaunt will be at Buckingham Palace for the June 3 event hosted by the Queen.
It’s not clear if the US leader will meet any other contenders. Sources have downplayed suggestions of a meeting with Boris Johnson.
Ex-Brexit minister David Jones said: “If the president can meet those likely to be our next PM it could be good for both countries.”
Jeremy Corbyn has refused to attend the dinner, saying the UK “should not honour a president who uses racist and misogynist rhetoric”.
But he is willing to meet Trump.
Mr Trump and wife Melania flew into Japan yesterday to meet its new emperor.
“He is determined that people will be able to see a real difference in GP surgery waiting rooms and hospital waiting rooms. A clear promise on the NHS will be right at the top of his list of priorities for swift action and delivery.”
Mr Johnson was calling MPs to ask for support within 30 minutes of Theresa May’s tearful announcement on the steps of Downing Street on Friday.
He said he was convinced he can negotiate a new Brexit deal with EU chiefs.
The former Foreign Secretary told one MP: “A new leader will have the chance to do things differently. A new administration would bring fresh momentum.”
Brexit is top of Mr Johnson’s agenda, but he believes he can deliver it within three months of seizing the keys to Number 10.
Unlike Theresa May, he would adopt a tougher negotiating position, prepare properly for no-deal and be ready to leave the EU whatever the outcome on October 31.
His blueprint will be packed with “red meat” policies to appeal to all wings of the Tory party – even Remainers who fear his “hard” Brexit stance.
He has drawn up a raft of proposals to tackle violent street crime – again pointing out that he has a proven track record in this field.
Knife crime offences fell for three years in a row when he was London Mayor – down from 14,000 to just over 9,500 between 2011 and 2015.
He is expected to back a return to stop and search and no truck with street mobs. And he wants tougher sentences for violent offenders.
BORIS Johnson will consider the future of the third Heathrow runway in his leader bid.
The ex-Foreign Secretary opposes the £14billion plan after vowing to “lie down...in front of those bulldozers”.
MPs formally chose the expansion in June last year - but Boris missed the vote to go on an official Afghanistan trip.
The Government backed the third runway at Heathrow after ruling out extending existing runways there or building a second runway at Gatwick.
Johnson wanted a new airport in the Thames Estuary.
One supporter said: “One thing that has impressed me more about Boris is his determination to be strong on law and order. That is where the Tory party needs to be more than ever.
“He’s expressed a desire to do something about the length of time repeat violent offenders spend behind bars – including a reform of how much of a sentence is actually served. All this will go down well with the voters.”
Tax cuts is high on the Bojo agenda – but he will be careful to ensure they are targeted to help the poorest
Mr Johnson will not risk being accused of lining the pockets of the rich or cutting benefits or public services to fund an extravagant giveaway.
A massive house-building blitz is being kept under wraps as one of the eye-catching “big projects” to be unveiled at his leadership launch.
But there will be a review of two major infrastructure plans – the HS2 high-speed rail link and Heathrow’s third runway.
MPs believe he will not slam the brakes on the rail link as it is so far advanced but with opinions divided in the party, Mr Johnson is keeping his options open.
Amber Rudd:

WORK and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said she has worked well with Boris before and could again.
But she also said during the referendum campaign that she would not like him to drive her home.
Chance: Fair
Michael Gove:
ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove wielded the knife against Boris in the last leadership contest despite being his campaign chief.
But he has told MPs to “face facts” over a No Deal Brexit.
Chance: Unlikely
Sajid Javid:
ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove wielded the knife against Boris in the last leadership contest despite being his campaign chief.
But he has told MPs to “face facts” over a No Deal Brexit.
Chance: Unlikely
Migrants can expect a much more less inhibiting regime than under Theresa May. Bojo is a social liberal who will be keen to keep Britain’s doors open for business – with a welcome mat for hard-working or talented people from around the world.
He believes we need brilliant computer scientists and doctors from all corners of the globe to come here to fuel our economy and bolster our public services.
But he will deliver the strong message that post-Brexit it is Britain that is making the decisions on who can come here to work.
HOW refreshing to hear big ideas from Tory leadership hopefuls after years of political stagnation under Theresa May.
Boris Johnson, Dominic R­aab and Matt Hancock are staking big claims with pledges to shake up tax, launch big infrastructure projects and tackle rising crime.
Hancock is right to warn that the Tories must wake up and appeal to disaffected younger voters who want to see a proper vision for their future.
The country has been crying out for fresh ideas, but ultimately Brexit will define this leadership election, just as it has dominated our politics for the past three years.
The Tory grassroots want a clear, decisive message from able candidates on the biggest issue facing Britain.
Yet at the moment it looks like a cavalry charge of up to FIFTEEN runners, bulked out with no-hopers and some of the biggest wannabes since the Spice Girls.
Already the Tory Remainer ranks are plotting a Stop Boris campaign and among potential candidates six back No Deal, four reject it and three are in-between.
It is another sign of the size of this Tory crisis that such an absurdly large field of candidates is tolerated.
You would think a party grandee like Sir Graham Brady would be just the sort of old hand to help sort out this mess.
But he seems ready to add to it by throwing his own large-size hat into the ring.
The Tories have no divine right to government and they need to get a grip fast.
This contest is too important for petty ambitions and if they cock this up the voters will never forgive them.
BORIS Johnson could become the first PM to wed while serving in Downing Street for 250 years.
The Sun on Sunday revealed last year, right, that twice married Mr Johnson is dating conservationist Carrie Symonds.
The ex-Foreign Secretary is currently the front-runner to win the Tory leadership contest in July.
Carrie, 30, left, has been at his side in recent months and attended a speech he delivered at the JCB head office in Staffordshire back in January.
Boris and wife Marina announced they were divorcing last September.
The last sitting PM to wed was Augustus FitzRoy, the third Duke of Grafton.
He served as PM from 1768 until 1770. He wed Elizabeth Wrottesley in 1769.
 
The ex-Foreign Secretary has been working on a manifesto for his first months as PM
BORIS Johnson has drawn up a secret blueprint for power to convince doubting Tories to back his leadership bid.
He will try to win over waverers with a wad of initiatives to boost NHS funding, tackle violent crime, ease the housing crisis and improve transport links.
But the hot favourite believes his biggest appeal is that he is a proven winner – who can see of both Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage at a stroke.
In a series of meetings with jittery MPs, Bojo has been driving home the message that only he has the X-factor which can save them at the next general election.
He told one hesitant colleague: “I’m could be your lifeline. I’m the only candidate in this contest who can defeat both Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn.
“I’ve beaten Labour’s hard-Left twice in the London mayoral elections – and know I can do it on the national stage, too.
“We also need to deliver a proper Brexit to make sure we get all those people back who drifted off to the Brexit party.
“It’s not enough to beat one just Corbyn. We must defeat Nigel Farage, too, if we are to retain power.”
To show he means business, Mr Johnson has spent the past few months drawing up a detailed manifesto for his first months as PM.
It is packed with policies that he believes are clear vote-winners to prove he is more than a mere political showman.
He has also held a series of drinks meetings with MPs at which he constantly reminds them of his popular appeal to ordinary voters.
Bojo toppled former Mayor Ken Livingstone in 2008 to become Mayor of Labour-leaning London. He then gave “Red” Ken a second drubbing to be re-elected four years later.
One MP said: “Boris acknowledges that Ken is a far better political operator than Jeremy Corbyn.
“Having seen him off twice, he’d have not trouble taking on Jezza. He firmly believes he would smash him at a general election – and I think he’s right.”
MPs backing Mr Johnson also believe he has the charisma, intellect and communication skills to see off Nigel Farage and his fledgling Brexit party.
More than 100,000 people have become paid-up supporters of the new movement and its soaring popularity could cost Tories enough seats at the next election to hand Mr Corbyn the keys to Number 10.
Mr Johnson has learned the lessons of his failed last leadership bid when he was knifed by Cabinet colleague Michael Gove for being too disorganised – giving Theresa May a clear run for the top job.
He knows that despite being front-runner, he needs to win over his natural enemies and Remainers opposed to his plan for a no-deal Brexit if all else fails. And he has put in the hard graft over his time on the back benches.
Funding the NHS will be a key battleground at the next election – and BoJo has put extra funding at the heart of his pitch for power.
It will also deliver on a referendum promise when the Leave campaign bus said £350million a week sent to the EU could be used to fund the NHS instead.
An admirer said: “Boris is absolutely convinced that as a party that we are putting money into the NHS.
“But more importantly, we have got to make sure that the overwhelming majority of it goes straight into frontline services.
BETS worth close to £500,000 have been placed on Boris Johnson becoming Britain’s next Prime Minister.
Punters put on individual bets of £3,000 and £2,000 on BoJo in the hours after Theresa May announced her departure.
The odds with Betfair Exchange have Boris at 6/5, Dominic Raab, right, at 6/1, followed by Michael Gove at 10/1. The bookies have seen a total of £1.3million bet so far.
Betfair spokeswoman Katie Baylis said:  “We’ve seen plenty of action on the next leader market, with 35 per cent bet on Boris.
“Those numbers should massively increase over the next few weeks.”
THREE leadership candidates could steal a march on rivals — after bagging invites to the state banquet with Donald Trump.
Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove and Penny Mordaunt will be at Buckingham Palace for the June 3 event hosted by the Queen.
It’s not clear if the US leader will meet any other contenders. Sources have downplayed suggestions of a meeting with Boris Johnson.
Ex-Brexit minister David Jones said: “If the president can meet those likely to be our next PM it could be good for both countries.”
Jeremy Corbyn has refused to attend the dinner, saying the UK “should not honour a president who uses racist and misogynist rhetoric”.
But he is willing to meet Trump.
Mr Trump and wife Melania flew into Japan yesterday to meet its new emperor.
“He is determined that people will be able to see a real difference in GP surgery waiting rooms and hospital waiting rooms. A clear promise on the NHS will be right at the top of his list of priorities for swift action and delivery.”
Mr Johnson was calling MPs to ask for support within 30 minutes of Theresa May’s tearful announcement on the steps of Downing Street on Friday.
He said he was convinced he can negotiate a new Brexit deal with EU chiefs.
The former Foreign Secretary told one MP: “A new leader will have the chance to do things differently. A new administration would bring fresh momentum.”
Brexit is top of Mr Johnson’s agenda, but he believes he can deliver it within three months of seizing the keys to Number 10.
Unlike Theresa May, he would adopt a tougher negotiating position, prepare properly for no-deal and be ready to leave the EU whatever the outcome on October 31.
His blueprint will be packed with “red meat” policies to appeal to all wings of the Tory party – even Remainers who fear his “hard” Brexit stance.
He has drawn up a raft of proposals to tackle violent street crime – again pointing out that he has a proven track record in this field.
Knife crime offences fell for three years in a row when he was London Mayor – down from 14,000 to just over 9,500 between 2011 and 2015.
He is expected to back a return to stop and search and no truck with street mobs. And he wants tougher sentences for violent offenders.
BORIS Johnson will consider the future of the third Heathrow runway in his leader bid.
The ex-Foreign Secretary opposes the £14billion plan after vowing to “lie down...in front of those bulldozers”.
MPs formally chose the expansion in June last year - but Boris missed the vote to go on an official Afghanistan trip.
The Government backed the third runway at Heathrow after ruling out extending existing runways there or building a second runway at Gatwick.
Johnson wanted a new airport in the Thames Estuary.
One supporter said: “One thing that has impressed me more about Boris is his determination to be strong on law and order. That is where the Tory party needs to be more than ever.
“He’s expressed a desire to do something about the length of time repeat violent offenders spend behind bars – including a reform of how much of a sentence is actually served. All this will go down well with the voters.”
Tax cuts is high on the Bojo agenda – but he will be careful to ensure they are targeted to help the poorest
Mr Johnson will not risk being accused of lining the pockets of the rich or cutting benefits or public services to fund an extravagant giveaway.
A massive house-building blitz is being kept under wraps as one of the eye-catching “big projects” to be unveiled at his leadership launch.
But there will be a review of two major infrastructure plans – the HS2 high-speed rail link and Heathrow’s third runway.
MPs believe he will not slam the brakes on the rail link as it is so far advanced but with opinions divided in the party, Mr Johnson is keeping his options open.
Amber Rudd:

WORK and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said she has worked well with Boris before and could again.
But she also said during the referendum campaign that she would not like him to drive her home.
Chance: Fair
Michael Gove:
ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove wielded the knife against Boris in the last leadership contest despite being his campaign chief.
But he has told MPs to “face facts” over a No Deal Brexit.
Chance: Unlikely
Sajid Javid:
ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove wielded the knife against Boris in the last leadership contest despite being his campaign chief.
But he has told MPs to “face facts” over a No Deal Brexit.
Chance: Unlikely
Migrants can expect a much more less inhibiting regime than under Theresa May. Bojo is a social liberal who will be keen to keep Britain’s doors open for business – with a welcome mat for hard-working or talented people from around the world.
He believes we need brilliant computer scientists and doctors from all corners of the globe to come here to fuel our economy and bolster our public services.
But he will deliver the strong message that post-Brexit it is Britain that is making the decisions on who can come here to work.
HOW refreshing to hear big ideas from Tory leadership hopefuls after years of political stagnation under Theresa May.
Boris Johnson, Dominic R­aab and Matt Hancock are staking big claims with pledges to shake up tax, launch big infrastructure projects and tackle rising crime.
Hancock is right to warn that the Tories must wake up and appeal to disaffected younger voters who want to see a proper vision for their future.
The country has been crying out for fresh ideas, but ultimately Brexit will define this leadership election, just as it has dominated our politics for the past three years.
The Tory grassroots want a clear, decisive message from able candidates on the biggest issue facing Britain.
Yet at the moment it looks like a cavalry charge of up to FIFTEEN runners, bulked out with no-hopers and some of the biggest wannabes since the Spice Girls.
Already the Tory Remainer ranks are plotting a Stop Boris campaign and among potential candidates six back No Deal, four reject it and three are in-between.
It is another sign of the size of this Tory crisis that such an absurdly large field of candidates is tolerated.
You would think a party grandee like Sir Graham Brady would be just the sort of old hand to help sort out this mess.
But he seems ready to add to it by throwing his own large-size hat into the ring.
The Tories have no divine right to government and they need to get a grip fast.
This contest is too important for petty ambitions and if they cock this up the voters will never forgive them.
BORIS Johnson could become the first PM to wed while serving in Downing Street for 250 years.
The Sun on Sunday revealed last year, right, that twice married Mr Johnson is dating conservationist Carrie Symonds.
The ex-Foreign Secretary is currently the front-runner to win the Tory leadership contest in July.
Carrie, 30, left, has been at his side in recent months and attended a speech he delivered at the JCB head office in Staffordshire back in January.
Boris and wife Marina announced they were divorcing last September.
The last sitting PM to wed was Augustus FitzRoy, the third Duke of Grafton.
He served as PM from 1768 until 1770. He wed Elizabeth Wrottesley in 1769.
 
Tensions are rising within Theresa May's top table as Government attempts to secure trade deals and agree immigration policies
A DEEP new Cabinet split has opened up over Theresa’s May new Brexit compromises – as it also emerged Michael Gove physically tore up her customs plan.
The irate Environment Secretary stunned officials by ripping a document he disliked in two at a meeting this week.
The dramatic scene came as tensions around the PM’s top table spiral again ahead of a showdown at Chequers where Britain’s demands for a future EU relationship will finally be thrashed out next Friday.
Downing Street are desperate to make big new offers to the EU in a bid to restart stalled Brexit talks.
With the clock ticking down fast, No10 are desperate not to see Mrs May boxed into having to walk out of talks if her new blueprint is turned down.
But in a major negotiating strategy clash, Brexiteer ministers instead insist the PM wait for an “inevitable” last minute climb down by EU leaders themselves in October, when panic about no deal sets in.
One Leave backing Cabinet minister told The Sun: “Ireland is desperate for a deal, their economy is totally screwed without one. Belgium will see 4% lopped off its GDP too.
“Of course they will do a deal with us. But everything happens at the last minute with the EU, so we must not be afraid to hold our nerve”.
But a senior No10 source argued: “We may only have one shot left at getting the 27 leaders to re-engage so our offer must be solid and attractive”.
Under the PM’s concession plans, Britain will stay aligned to all EU single market rules on goods, but not services.
While most of the Brexiteer ministers are ready to reluctantly agree the move, there is a mounting row over how binding the alignment pledge should be.
No10 also want to offer Brussels a form of free movement for European workers.
But that is being bitterly opposed by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who insists any new immigration policy must be “evidence-based” and a card held back until the Autumn.
In his Sun column today, James Forsyth reveals Mr Gove was left livid at a meeting on Wednesday of the Cabinet working group on Mrs May’s preferred border plan for trade, the new customs partnership.
The former Leave campaign boss opposes the model - would see the UK collecting tariffs on the EU’s behalf even after Brexit – as bureaucratic and unworkable.
But a summary document of the group’s six week-long discussions downplayed his fears “to almost nothing” and implied the plan had his approval, so he ripped it up in front of them in a flash of anger.
It emerged yesterday that Cabinet ministers have been warned they cannot Chequers without a final agreement - even if it means going without sleep deep into the night.
The Government’s latest compromise is to agree to stay in the single market for goods. To which the EU’s Michel Barnier will inevitably reply: “No. It’s full single market membership, including free movement of migrants, or nothing.”
Then what? What else has No10 got?
There are red lines Theresa May must not cross: free movement, independent trade deals, our courts’ supremacy. She won’t survive conceding on any of them.
We weep for Downing Street’s tactics.
They seem ­terrified that the PM might have to walk out of talks. Why? If the EU continues to demand everything on its terms, she must do exactly that.
They’ll call back.
A former Brexit minister yesterday warned the Cabinet that Brexit negotiations could become “a rout” by the EU if they don’t settle their feuds and agree soon, meaning “‘the game will be up”.
An Ipsos Mori pol yesterday found only 30% think Mrs May will get good Brexit deal now.
Mrs May was warned that any more compromises will not be accepted by Brexiteer Tories.
Quizzed on if the PM’s red lines need to be softened again, senior backbencher Crispin Blunt said: “I don’t think they can be. “We can’t find ourselves in a position where we have rules dictated to us by the European Union.
“It’s about time we relied on the strength of our negotiating position.”
Tensions are rising within Theresa May's top table as Government attempts to secure trade deals and agree immigration policies
A DEEP new Cabinet split has opened up over Theresa’s May new Brexit compromises – as it also emerged Michael Gove physically tore up her customs plan.
The irate Environment Secretary stunned officials by ripping a document he disliked in two at a meeting this week.
The dramatic scene came as tensions around the PM’s top table spiral again ahead of a showdown at Chequers where Britain’s demands for a future EU relationship will finally be thrashed out next Friday.
Downing Street are desperate to make big new offers to the EU in a bid to restart stalled Brexit talks.
With the clock ticking down fast, No10 are desperate not to see Mrs May boxed into having to walk out of talks if her new blueprint is turned down.
But in a major negotiating strategy clash, Brexiteer ministers instead insist the PM wait for an “inevitable” last minute climb down by EU leaders themselves in October, when panic about no deal sets in.
One Leave backing Cabinet minister told The Sun: “Ireland is desperate for a deal, their economy is totally screwed without one. Belgium will see 4% lopped off its GDP too.
“Of course they will do a deal with us. But everything happens at the last minute with the EU, so we must not be afraid to hold our nerve”.
But a senior No10 source argued: “We may only have one shot left at getting the 27 leaders to re-engage so our offer must be solid and attractive”.
Under the PM’s concession plans, Britain will stay aligned to all EU single market rules on goods, but not services.
While most of the Brexiteer ministers are ready to reluctantly agree the move, there is a mounting row over how binding the alignment pledge should be.
No10 also want to offer Brussels a form of free movement for European workers.
But that is being bitterly opposed by Home Secretary Sajid Javid, who insists any new immigration policy must be “evidence-based” and a card held back until the Autumn.
In his Sun column today, James Forsyth reveals Mr Gove was left livid at a meeting on Wednesday of the Cabinet working group on Mrs May’s preferred border plan for trade, the new customs partnership.
The former Leave campaign boss opposes the model - would see the UK collecting tariffs on the EU’s behalf even after Brexit – as bureaucratic and unworkable.
But a summary document of the group’s six week-long discussions downplayed his fears “to almost nothing” and implied the plan had his approval, so he ripped it up in front of them in a flash of anger.
It emerged yesterday that Cabinet ministers have been warned they cannot Chequers without a final agreement - even if it means going without sleep deep into the night.
The Government’s latest compromise is to agree to stay in the single market for goods. To which the EU’s Michel Barnier will inevitably reply: “No. It’s full single market membership, including free movement of migrants, or nothing.”
Then what? What else has No10 got?
There are red lines Theresa May must not cross: free movement, independent trade deals, our courts’ supremacy. She won’t survive conceding on any of them.
We weep for Downing Street’s tactics.
They seem ­terrified that the PM might have to walk out of talks. Why? If the EU continues to demand everything on its terms, she must do exactly that.
They’ll call back.
A former Brexit minister yesterday warned the Cabinet that Brexit negotiations could become “a rout” by the EU if they don’t settle their feuds and agree soon, meaning “‘the game will be up”.
An Ipsos Mori pol yesterday found only 30% think Mrs May will get good Brexit deal now.
Mrs May was warned that any more compromises will not be accepted by Brexiteer Tories.
Quizzed on if the PM’s red lines need to be softened again, senior backbencher Crispin Blunt said: “I don’t think they can be. “We can’t find ourselves in a position where we have rules dictated to us by the European Union.
“It’s about time we relied on the strength of our negotiating position.”
The PM came to power saying 'Brexit means Brexit' - but could never make it happen
THERESA May entered office three years ago declaring "Brexit means Brexit".
But now she's been forced to quit before managing to take Britain out of the EU - the one task she set herself at the very beginning.
Mrs May, 62, is admired across the political spectrum for her sense of duty and her dedication to the public good.
No one doubted her desire to do the right thing on Brexit and the "burning injustices" of British society.
But in the end she suffered the worst election campaign and the worst Commons revolt in history. And she's likely to be remembered as one of the worst Prime Ministers of recent decades.
And many of the qualities most admired in her - her stubborn nature, her refusal to play Westminster games - eventually proved her downfall.
Mrs May's life was scarred with tragedy at a young age as she lost both her parents within a short period in her 20s.
The double sadness brought her closer to husband Philip - who has always been by far her most important confidant.
From her time at Oxford, the future PM was known as fiercely ambitious and she has admitted she was aiming for No10 from the very start.
After a career in banking, Mrs May became MP for Maidenhead in 1997, serving on the frontbench under William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.
She rose to public fame in 2002, when as Tory chair, she admitted that many voters saw them as "the nasty party".
David Cameron made her his Home Secretary, a job she held for six years to widespread acclaim.
Mrs May was known for staying out of the political horse race, unlike the master manipulator George Osborne.
She backed Remain ahead of the 2016 referendum - but spoke at barely any events, meaning she was never closely identified with the pro-EU cause.
That meant she was perfectly placed to swoop in after David Cameron's resignation, leaving rivals such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove humiliated.
Mrs May vowed: "Brexit is Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it."
She sacked Mr Gove and Mr Osborne - telling the Chancellor he needed to get to know the party better.
The PM struck a tough line on Brexit, vowing to withdraw from the EU's single market and customs union and insisting: "No Deal is better than a bad deal."
She was hailed as the new "Iron Lady" as supporters welcomed her tough rhetoric towards Brussels.
Mrs May triggered Article 50 - the legal process taking Britain out of the EU - in March 2017. But when talks with the EU started it became clear she had never worked out a coherent position on how to leave, nor had she gathered a Commons majority for her Brexit vision.
And despite her No Deal rhetoric - which drove Remain voters away - Brussels never really believed she was willing to walk away from the talks.
Things were made even worse by the 2017 snap election, called when Mrs May had a 20-point lead in the polls.
The campaign was laser-focused on her personality, so her wooden style alienated voters and in the end she lost her majority.
Things went from bad to worse over the next two years: Brexiteers were alienated by every fudge, while Remainers started campaigning ever more loudly for a second referendum. Rather than uniting both camps, it seemed neither group really trusted her.
And despite her warning to George Osborne, it emerged that Mrs May's refusal to get involved in the Westminster gossip circuit meant she was out of touch with her MPs and had little support base to fall back on.
More than 30 ministers ended up quitting the Government, more than under any previous PM in such a short time.
Mrs May finally agreed a Brexit deal with the EU in November last year. Although it always looked tricky, the Prime Minister put up a tough fight and in many ways grew in the eyes of the public.
But while some admired her resilience and dedication, others criticised her for refusing to contemplate any way forward other than pushing ahead with the withdrawal agreement.
The first "meaningful vote" was the worst defeat suffered by any Prime Minister in history, with more than 100 Tories rebelling against her.
For most of her own MPs, the last straw came when she agreed to delay Brexit following the third defeat of her deal in the Commons. They accused her of bowing to Remainers in the Cabinet who are desperate to block No Deal, and sucking up to Labour by opening talks with Jeremy Corbyn.
And this week dealt the final death knell to Mrs May's career. She wanted to give her deal a last push - but instead MPs made it clear she should go as soon as possible.
Her time in office was so consumed with Brexit that she wasn't able to push through much significant action in other areas.
But despite that, she could never actually deliver Brexit.
Even Tory MPs now say that Mrs May will forever be remembered as one of the worst Prime Ministers ever.
A sense of duty was never enough to make up for her lack of vision - and failure to lead.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
The PM came to power saying 'Brexit means Brexit' - but could never make it happen
THERESA May entered office three years ago declaring "Brexit means Brexit".
But now she's been forced to quit before managing to take Britain out of the EU - the one task she set herself at the very beginning.
Mrs May, 62, is admired across the political spectrum for her sense of duty and her dedication to the public good.
No one doubted her desire to do the right thing on Brexit and the "burning injustices" of British society.
But in the end she suffered the worst election campaign and the worst Commons revolt in history. And she's likely to be remembered as one of the worst Prime Ministers of recent decades.
And many of the qualities most admired in her - her stubborn nature, her refusal to play Westminster games - eventually proved her downfall.
Mrs May's life was scarred with tragedy at a young age as she lost both her parents within a short period in her 20s.
The double sadness brought her closer to husband Philip - who has always been by far her most important confidant.
From her time at Oxford, the future PM was known as fiercely ambitious and she has admitted she was aiming for No10 from the very start.
After a career in banking, Mrs May became MP for Maidenhead in 1997, serving on the frontbench under William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard.
She rose to public fame in 2002, when as Tory chair, she admitted that many voters saw them as "the nasty party".
David Cameron made her his Home Secretary, a job she held for six years to widespread acclaim.
Mrs May was known for staying out of the political horse race, unlike the master manipulator George Osborne.
She backed Remain ahead of the 2016 referendum - but spoke at barely any events, meaning she was never closely identified with the pro-EU cause.
That meant she was perfectly placed to swoop in after David Cameron's resignation, leaving rivals such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove humiliated.
Mrs May vowed: "Brexit is Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it."
She sacked Mr Gove and Mr Osborne - telling the Chancellor he needed to get to know the party better.
The PM struck a tough line on Brexit, vowing to withdraw from the EU's single market and customs union and insisting: "No Deal is better than a bad deal."
She was hailed as the new "Iron Lady" as supporters welcomed her tough rhetoric towards Brussels.
Mrs May triggered Article 50 - the legal process taking Britain out of the EU - in March 2017. But when talks with the EU started it became clear she had never worked out a coherent position on how to leave, nor had she gathered a Commons majority for her Brexit vision.
And despite her No Deal rhetoric - which drove Remain voters away - Brussels never really believed she was willing to walk away from the talks.
Things were made even worse by the 2017 snap election, called when Mrs May had a 20-point lead in the polls.
The campaign was laser-focused on her personality, so her wooden style alienated voters and in the end she lost her majority.
Things went from bad to worse over the next two years: Brexiteers were alienated by every fudge, while Remainers started campaigning ever more loudly for a second referendum. Rather than uniting both camps, it seemed neither group really trusted her.
And despite her warning to George Osborne, it emerged that Mrs May's refusal to get involved in the Westminster gossip circuit meant she was out of touch with her MPs and had little support base to fall back on.
More than 30 ministers ended up quitting the Government, more than under any previous PM in such a short time.
Mrs May finally agreed a Brexit deal with the EU in November last year. Although it always looked tricky, the Prime Minister put up a tough fight and in many ways grew in the eyes of the public.
But while some admired her resilience and dedication, others criticised her for refusing to contemplate any way forward other than pushing ahead with the withdrawal agreement.
The first "meaningful vote" was the worst defeat suffered by any Prime Minister in history, with more than 100 Tories rebelling against her.
For most of her own MPs, the last straw came when she agreed to delay Brexit following the third defeat of her deal in the Commons. They accused her of bowing to Remainers in the Cabinet who are desperate to block No Deal, and sucking up to Labour by opening talks with Jeremy Corbyn.
And this week dealt the final death knell to Mrs May's career. She wanted to give her deal a last push - but instead MPs made it clear she should go as soon as possible.
Her time in office was so consumed with Brexit that she wasn't able to push through much significant action in other areas.
But despite that, she could never actually deliver Brexit.
Even Tory MPs now say that Mrs May will forever be remembered as one of the worst Prime Ministers ever.
A sense of duty was never enough to make up for her lack of vision - and failure to lead.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
WANNABE PM Rory Stewart plans to ask Boris Johnson a killer question in Tuesday’s BBC leadership debate: “How will you get a Halloween Brexit through Parliament?”
Faced with diehard Remainer MPs and a Brussels brick wall, he can’t answer. Yet delay, followed by fudge, is a prescription for certain Tory death.
Boris’s only option, which he cannot reveal and his closest pals will not discuss, is the biggest second referendum of all . . . a final, conclusive once-and-for-all Brexit general election.
A new Prime Minister faced with extinction by Nigel Farage’s irregulars has no option but to stand by the 2016 Referendum verdict and fight. And only Boris can win that fight for the Tories.
As this column has frequently pointed out, more than half the country — 17.4million voters — backed Leave in 2016. They have not gone away. They have simply been driven by Theresa May into the arms of Nigel Farage.
Most of those who switched to his Brexit Party in last month’s EU elections were angry Tories. Boris can win them back.
If the latest poll is to be believed, nearly half of ALL voters rate him as the candidate who can lead his party to victory.
Boris' debut revealed a transformation from tousled stand-up to articulate statesman
Whatever Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove’s great qualities might be, they just aren’t in that race.
Boris Johnson has plugged into the national mood. His debut last week as a candidate revealed a transformation from tousled stand-up to articulate statesman. This was a self-confident force of nature whose optimism for Britain’s prospects eclipsed all others.
Voters might not want to buy a used car off him but nobody seems to care about his many indiscretions. His self-inflicted “BoJo the Buffoon” image is as much guise as Dame Edna Everage is to Barry Humphries.
Last week he emerged for the first time as Prime Minister in waiting. He must keep up the momentum or risk stalling. Brexit must be sorted soon, before Nigel Farage gets his feet under the table.
Tory Remainers need to understand voters will not give them another chance. Unless Britain leaves the European Union, this time on schedule, their party is over.
Remarkably, this shambolic Government has strong cards to play. For all George Osborne’s miserable tosh, the economy is growing, wages are up and the jobs market is booming. Nobody seriously believes this will come to an abrupt end once we leave.
But the Tories’ greatest election asset of all is “Ooh Jeremy Corbyn”. Under almost any other leader, Labour would be strolling to victory. Instead, Her Majesty’s Opposition is in meltdown.
At a moment of national crisis, and despite Theresa May’s worst efforts, Labour can only manage level pegging.
Corbyn’s tolerance of anti-semitism, his rude D-Day treatment of American President Donald Trump and his support for Iran over the Gulf tanker blasts are merely the latest evidence of his anti-Western sympathies.
A lifelong communist sympathiser, he embraces IRA and Hamas terrorists as “friends” and defends Putin’s Russia against charges of poisoning innocent citizens on the streets of Britain.
It is hard for us to believe or imagine someone like Corbyn could be elected Prime Minister
As a result, Trump has publicly refused to share intelligence with a Corbyn-led UK government.
“We find this guy very strange,” a senior Washington intelligence figure told me yesterday. “It is hard for us to believe or imagine someone like this could be elected Prime Minister.”
Millions of voters feel the same way. Support has drained from Labour. It is gasping for money. On Brexit, Labour is emerging — suicidally — as the Remain party, shedding voters along the way.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a third general election in four years will strike terror into bloodless Tories. Margaret Thatcher’s careerist successors have none of her courage.
They have surrendered to the metropolitan elite and adopted a “pre-emptive cringe” in the face of the screaming leftie mob.
Like the proverbial frogs in a saucepan, they are scared of jumping to safety in case they fall short.
Unless they go with Boris, fight an election and sort out Brexit once and for all, they will be boiled alive.
Many will go to jail rather than pay the £154.40 licence fee for the first time in many years.
The sight of police frogmarching elderly martyrs on Zimmer frames into court will focus long-overdue attention on this iniquitous viewing tax.
And mark the beginning of the end of a once-great public broadcaster.
 
WANNABE PM Rory Stewart plans to ask Boris Johnson a killer question in Tuesday’s BBC leadership debate: “How will you get a Halloween Brexit through Parliament?”
Faced with diehard Remainer MPs and a Brussels brick wall, he can’t answer. Yet delay, followed by fudge, is a prescription for certain Tory death.
Boris’s only option, which he cannot reveal and his closest pals will not discuss, is the biggest second referendum of all . . . a final, conclusive once-and-for-all Brexit general election.
A new Prime Minister faced with extinction by Nigel Farage’s irregulars has no option but to stand by the 2016 Referendum verdict and fight. And only Boris can win that fight for the Tories.
As this column has frequently pointed out, more than half the country — 17.4million voters — backed Leave in 2016. They have not gone away. They have simply been driven by Theresa May into the arms of Nigel Farage.
Most of those who switched to his Brexit Party in last month’s EU elections were angry Tories. Boris can win them back.
If the latest poll is to be believed, nearly half of ALL voters rate him as the candidate who can lead his party to victory.
Boris' debut revealed a transformation from tousled stand-up to articulate statesman
Whatever Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove’s great qualities might be, they just aren’t in that race.
Boris Johnson has plugged into the national mood. His debut last week as a candidate revealed a transformation from tousled stand-up to articulate statesman. This was a self-confident force of nature whose optimism for Britain’s prospects eclipsed all others.
Voters might not want to buy a used car off him but nobody seems to care about his many indiscretions. His self-inflicted “BoJo the Buffoon” image is as much guise as Dame Edna Everage is to Barry Humphries.
Last week he emerged for the first time as Prime Minister in waiting. He must keep up the momentum or risk stalling. Brexit must be sorted soon, before Nigel Farage gets his feet under the table.
Tory Remainers need to understand voters will not give them another chance. Unless Britain leaves the European Union, this time on schedule, their party is over.
Remarkably, this shambolic Government has strong cards to play. For all George Osborne’s miserable tosh, the economy is growing, wages are up and the jobs market is booming. Nobody seriously believes this will come to an abrupt end once we leave.
But the Tories’ greatest election asset of all is “Ooh Jeremy Corbyn”. Under almost any other leader, Labour would be strolling to victory. Instead, Her Majesty’s Opposition is in meltdown.
At a moment of national crisis, and despite Theresa May’s worst efforts, Labour can only manage level pegging.
Corbyn’s tolerance of anti-semitism, his rude D-Day treatment of American President Donald Trump and his support for Iran over the Gulf tanker blasts are merely the latest evidence of his anti-Western sympathies.
A lifelong communist sympathiser, he embraces IRA and Hamas terrorists as “friends” and defends Putin’s Russia against charges of poisoning innocent citizens on the streets of Britain.
It is hard for us to believe or imagine someone like Corbyn could be elected Prime Minister
As a result, Trump has publicly refused to share intelligence with a Corbyn-led UK government.
“We find this guy very strange,” a senior Washington intelligence figure told me yesterday. “It is hard for us to believe or imagine someone like this could be elected Prime Minister.”
Millions of voters feel the same way. Support has drained from Labour. It is gasping for money. On Brexit, Labour is emerging — suicidally — as the Remain party, shedding voters along the way.
Meanwhile, the prospect of a third general election in four years will strike terror into bloodless Tories. Margaret Thatcher’s careerist successors have none of her courage.
They have surrendered to the metropolitan elite and adopted a “pre-emptive cringe” in the face of the screaming leftie mob.
Like the proverbial frogs in a saucepan, they are scared of jumping to safety in case they fall short.
Unless they go with Boris, fight an election and sort out Brexit once and for all, they will be boiled alive.
Many will go to jail rather than pay the £154.40 licence fee for the first time in many years.
The sight of police frogmarching elderly martyrs on Zimmer frames into court will focus long-overdue attention on this iniquitous viewing tax.
And mark the beginning of the end of a once-great public broadcaster.
 
PUFFED-UP Leo Varadkar feels snubbed because Boris Johnson kept him waiting a week before phoning for their first chat about Brexit.
However, as far as Boris is concerned it will be the last time unless the Taoiseach scraps the deal-breaking Northern Ireland backstop.
The fallout has sent tremors from Dublin to Brussels and Berlin. EU chiefs may finally begin to understand Boris means business . . .  their mega-billion-euro export business.
Britain WILL leave the European Union on October 31 “come what may” unless Brussels rips up Theresa May’s thrice-rejected Withdrawal Agreement and starts again.
Boris has exposed the backstop for what it is — a voodoo spell to bewitch and befuddle the feeble minded.
It was invented by Theresa May as a sneaky customs union which would continue to bind Britain to Brussels’ rules.
It was grabbed by Varadkar and EU negotiator Michel Barnier as a stick to beat the Brexiteers.
Without it, we would create a hard border between Ireland and the UK, damage the integrity of European trade and risk the fragile Northern Ireland peace process.
Within it, as Belgian officials boasted in a BBC film, we would surrender our sovereignty and be reduced to a third-rate “colony” outside the EU. Far from “taking back control”, we would have no say at all in the rules that govern Britain.
Now, like witchcraft exposed to bright sunlight, the backstop myth is fading like fog over the Irish Sea.
New technology is the answer, tracking of goods by remote control right down to a smuggled packet of fags or a dodgy food product.
So why is Varadkar so stubborn? His aim is to use the Brexit fallout in his long-term goal of reuniting Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic and breaking up the United Kingdom.
His gamble has backfired with the sacking of Theresa May and the election of a Brexiteer PM and a united No Deal Cabinet.
Ireland would be the greatest casualty of a No Deal Brexit, with tens of thousands of lost jobs and a sharp cut in economic growth.
Britain is Ireland’s biggest trading partner. The bulk of Irish trade to Europe goes through British ports.
Polls show Irish voters, once keen to humiliate their old oppressor Britain, are losing faith in a leader who seems ready to gamble with their prosperity.
Even his cross-party support in the Irish parliament is beginning to crumble, with Fianna Fail MP Timmy Dooley accusing the Taoiseach of putting the economy in peril.
“The stand-off with our nearest neighbour is a direct result of Varadkar’s failure to engage in basic diplomacy over the last two years,” says Dooley.
“The government’s lack of experience and arrogance will hurt Ireland in the coming months.”
So the tables have turned. It is now Varadkar who is seen as risking a hard border with Northern Ireland. It’s the Taoiseach himself who is putting the Good Friday Agreement in peril.
And it is Varadkar who is gambling with EU trade and prosperity.
Will Chancellor Angela Merkel put Germany’s stricken car giants at risk to save this posturing creature?
The EU has shown flexibility before. For example, by allowing goods to cross the Green Line in the Republic of Cyprus.
EU chiefs, always flexible when forced, now admit that “alternative arrangements” might work after all, just as Brexiteers have argued from the start.
Instead of creating an artificial border down the Irish Sea and cutting off Northern Ireland from the UK, we can use tried and tested technology.
On his election as Tory leader, Boris Johnson — less often called BoJo these days, you’ll notice — compared the border problem with Apollo 11’s safe return from the moon landing 50 years ago. “If they could use hand-knitted computer code to make a frictionless re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere in 1969,” he said, “we can solve the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border.”
He’s right. Frictionless trade without customs posts operate smoothly on the borders of Canada and the US and between Sweden and Norway.

The backstop, effectively slicing Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK, was invented to block unauthorised goods crossing the border once Britain had left the EU.
Brussels, backed by noisy British Remainers, claimed it was vital to prevent smuggling and enforce EU regulations against goods such as chlorinated chicken.
In fact it is just another move to lock Britain indefinitely into EU rules under the supervision of the European courts — Brexit In Name Only. We would have to swallow whatever new rules were dished out by Brussels. Yet remote-control customs tech already operates smoothly here in Britain.
Vast quantities of goods from across the planet are shipped daily into the port of Felixstowe, in Suffolk, without a customs officer in sight. The freight is checked electronically before it leaves its “trusted origins”.
Emerging economies such as Brazil, hardly a beacon of free trade, is saving billions with state-of-the-art technology.
Shanker Singham, from the Prosperity UK Alternative Arrangements Commission, has just completed a months-long investigation into frictionless global trade. “While we agonise, other countries are moving rapidly towards seamless borders,” he says.
“Track-and-trace technology already exists so that every packet of cigarettes has a unique barcode, allowing you to identify exactly what its route to market has been.
“This can be used to support food standard checks away from the border.”
So much for Irish smugglers and dodgy chicken.
PUFFED-UP Leo Varadkar feels snubbed because Boris Johnson kept him waiting a week before phoning for their first chat about Brexit.
However, as far as Boris is concerned it will be the last time unless the Taoiseach scraps the deal-breaking Northern Ireland backstop.
The fallout has sent tremors from Dublin to Brussels and Berlin. EU chiefs may finally begin to understand Boris means business . . .  their mega-billion-euro export business.
Britain WILL leave the European Union on October 31 “come what may” unless Brussels rips up Theresa May’s thrice-rejected Withdrawal Agreement and starts again.
Boris has exposed the backstop for what it is — a voodoo spell to bewitch and befuddle the feeble minded.
It was invented by Theresa May as a sneaky customs union which would continue to bind Britain to Brussels’ rules.
It was grabbed by Varadkar and EU negotiator Michel Barnier as a stick to beat the Brexiteers.
Without it, we would create a hard border between Ireland and the UK, damage the integrity of European trade and risk the fragile Northern Ireland peace process.
Within it, as Belgian officials boasted in a BBC film, we would surrender our sovereignty and be reduced to a third-rate “colony” outside the EU. Far from “taking back control”, we would have no say at all in the rules that govern Britain.
Now, like witchcraft exposed to bright sunlight, the backstop myth is fading like fog over the Irish Sea.
New technology is the answer, tracking of goods by remote control right down to a smuggled packet of fags or a dodgy food product.
So why is Varadkar so stubborn? His aim is to use the Brexit fallout in his long-term goal of reuniting Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic and breaking up the United Kingdom.
His gamble has backfired with the sacking of Theresa May and the election of a Brexiteer PM and a united No Deal Cabinet.
Ireland would be the greatest casualty of a No Deal Brexit, with tens of thousands of lost jobs and a sharp cut in economic growth.
Britain is Ireland’s biggest trading partner. The bulk of Irish trade to Europe goes through British ports.
Polls show Irish voters, once keen to humiliate their old oppressor Britain, are losing faith in a leader who seems ready to gamble with their prosperity.
Even his cross-party support in the Irish parliament is beginning to crumble, with Fianna Fail MP Timmy Dooley accusing the Taoiseach of putting the economy in peril.
“The stand-off with our nearest neighbour is a direct result of Varadkar’s failure to engage in basic diplomacy over the last two years,” says Dooley.
“The government’s lack of experience and arrogance will hurt Ireland in the coming months.”
So the tables have turned. It is now Varadkar who is seen as risking a hard border with Northern Ireland. It’s the Taoiseach himself who is putting the Good Friday Agreement in peril.
And it is Varadkar who is gambling with EU trade and prosperity.
Will Chancellor Angela Merkel put Germany’s stricken car giants at risk to save this posturing creature?
The EU has shown flexibility before. For example, by allowing goods to cross the Green Line in the Republic of Cyprus.
EU chiefs, always flexible when forced, now admit that “alternative arrangements” might work after all, just as Brexiteers have argued from the start.
Instead of creating an artificial border down the Irish Sea and cutting off Northern Ireland from the UK, we can use tried and tested technology.
On his election as Tory leader, Boris Johnson — less often called BoJo these days, you’ll notice — compared the border problem with Apollo 11’s safe return from the moon landing 50 years ago. “If they could use hand-knitted computer code to make a frictionless re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere in 1969,” he said, “we can solve the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border.”
He’s right. Frictionless trade without customs posts operate smoothly on the borders of Canada and the US and between Sweden and Norway.

The backstop, effectively slicing Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK, was invented to block unauthorised goods crossing the border once Britain had left the EU.
Brussels, backed by noisy British Remainers, claimed it was vital to prevent smuggling and enforce EU regulations against goods such as chlorinated chicken.
In fact it is just another move to lock Britain indefinitely into EU rules under the supervision of the European courts — Brexit In Name Only. We would have to swallow whatever new rules were dished out by Brussels. Yet remote-control customs tech already operates smoothly here in Britain.
Vast quantities of goods from across the planet are shipped daily into the port of Felixstowe, in Suffolk, without a customs officer in sight. The freight is checked electronically before it leaves its “trusted origins”.
Emerging economies such as Brazil, hardly a beacon of free trade, is saving billions with state-of-the-art technology.
Shanker Singham, from the Prosperity UK Alternative Arrangements Commission, has just completed a months-long investigation into frictionless global trade. “While we agonise, other countries are moving rapidly towards seamless borders,” he says.
“Track-and-trace technology already exists so that every packet of cigarettes has a unique barcode, allowing you to identify exactly what its route to market has been.
“This can be used to support food standard checks away from the border.”
So much for Irish smugglers and dodgy chicken.
IF the polls are right – always a big “if” – Boris Johnson is our next Prime Minister. In which case we are heading for a third general election in four years and perhaps another Tory victory.
With support for Theresa May’s government at rock bottom this might sound wildly delusional.
But if last month’s EU elections prove anything, it is the heartfelt desire of British voters for a party committed to Brexit.
If the Tories are to survive, this cannot be Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
The next PM needs to kill this insurgency stone dead and deliver the 2016 instructions of 17.4 million voters.
Latest opinion polls suggest Boris hits the spot, winning against his rivals even among non-Tory voters on every measure including, perhaps surprisingly, competence and trustworthiness.
In the words of American President Donald Trump to this newspaper: “Boris would do a very good job.”
BoJo is rated by voters of ALL parties not just as “best fun in a pub” but as best Tory leader, with more votes than his four closest rivals combined.
This is because the twice-Mayor of London has publicly vowed to take Britain out of the EU with or without a deal by October 31.
It might upset Tory Remainers but for most of the country, hardened by Project Fear scaremongering, it would finally deliver the promise broken by Theresa May on March 29.
Deltapoll say 45 per cent feel they have “nothing to fear” from No Deal, while any problems would be “short term”.
Only 30 per cent think it would cause “severe” problems.
Labour is in even worse strife, riven with dissent over Brexit, anti-semitism and sexual misconduct claims
Barring last-minute Brussels concessions, which are likely under real pressure, this suggests a showdown with Brexit-hating ministers, MPs and the blatantly partisan Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Any PM determined to meet the autumn deadline would have to call a decisive In-Out election.
Boris could — and should — win it. Indeed, it might be the Tories’ last best chance.
But time is against them. Farage is gathering pace, mopping up disenchanted Tories and perhaps scoring his first MP in this Thursday’s Peterborough by-election.
Once entrenched, he will be hard to shift. There is one bright spot for the Tories.
Labour is in even worse strife, riven with dissent over Brexit, anti-semitism and sexual misconduct claims.
Jew-baiting Labour figures and alleged sex pests close to Jezza, like John Prescott’s son David, are treated with kid gloves while Blairite Alastair Campbell is booted out for voting Lib Dem.
In a bombshell move, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has ordered an official probe into Labour anti-semitism.
Jezza and sinister Stalinist guru Seumas Milne are locked in battle with once-close Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and half the Shadow Cabinet, amid calls for Milne to be sacked.
Over lunch in a posh restaurant, a friend who knows Milne well told me: “Seumas is a bad man. He would shoot everyone in this room.”
This political landscape offers rich pickings for a bold, charismatic new Brexiteering Prime Minister determined to leave as promised on October 31
I’m not sure he was joking. Meanwhile, a rabble of Labour, Tory and Lib Dems who voted Remain last time and lost are pressing for a second referendum but with different questions.
The 52 per cent who voted Leave in 2016 have not gone away. They’ve just shifted to where they feel welcome.
This huge electorate, more than half the nation, is bigger than any majority commanded by any British government in post-war history.
Theresa May threw that majority away by offering a botched BRINO — Brexit In Name Only.
This political landscape offers rich pickings for a bold, charismatic new Brexiteering Prime Minister determined to leave as promised on October 31. That rules out flip-flopping Foreign Secretary
Jeremy Hunt and dithering Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
It narrows the chances of Dominic Raab, despite the best performance so far by a declared candidate.
Michael Gove, who wants an extra year to negotiate with Brussels, will struggle to win over Tory members who have the final say.
Which, by my reckoning, just leaves Boris. And, with apologies to Brenda of Bristol, an autumn election.
“I’m ashamed of my country for what it has done,” he told his audience in Verona. “I am sick to death of Brexit. I am a European. I am not a stupid, colonial, imperialist English idiot.”
A reader writes: “How can such people be so stupid and blind? Perhaps their lifestyle has rotted their brains. It is the EU, not Britain, that is colonialist and imperialist.”
IF the polls are right – always a big “if” – Boris Johnson is our next Prime Minister. In which case we are heading for a third general election in four years and perhaps another Tory victory.
With support for Theresa May’s government at rock bottom this might sound wildly delusional.
But if last month’s EU elections prove anything, it is the heartfelt desire of British voters for a party committed to Brexit.
If the Tories are to survive, this cannot be Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
The next PM needs to kill this insurgency stone dead and deliver the 2016 instructions of 17.4 million voters.
Latest opinion polls suggest Boris hits the spot, winning against his rivals even among non-Tory voters on every measure including, perhaps surprisingly, competence and trustworthiness.
In the words of American President Donald Trump to this newspaper: “Boris would do a very good job.”
BoJo is rated by voters of ALL parties not just as “best fun in a pub” but as best Tory leader, with more votes than his four closest rivals combined.
This is because the twice-Mayor of London has publicly vowed to take Britain out of the EU with or without a deal by October 31.
It might upset Tory Remainers but for most of the country, hardened by Project Fear scaremongering, it would finally deliver the promise broken by Theresa May on March 29.
Deltapoll say 45 per cent feel they have “nothing to fear” from No Deal, while any problems would be “short term”.
Only 30 per cent think it would cause “severe” problems.
Labour is in even worse strife, riven with dissent over Brexit, anti-semitism and sexual misconduct claims
Barring last-minute Brussels concessions, which are likely under real pressure, this suggests a showdown with Brexit-hating ministers, MPs and the blatantly partisan Commons Speaker John Bercow.
Any PM determined to meet the autumn deadline would have to call a decisive In-Out election.
Boris could — and should — win it. Indeed, it might be the Tories’ last best chance.
But time is against them. Farage is gathering pace, mopping up disenchanted Tories and perhaps scoring his first MP in this Thursday’s Peterborough by-election.
Once entrenched, he will be hard to shift. There is one bright spot for the Tories.
Labour is in even worse strife, riven with dissent over Brexit, anti-semitism and sexual misconduct claims.
Jew-baiting Labour figures and alleged sex pests close to Jezza, like John Prescott’s son David, are treated with kid gloves while Blairite Alastair Campbell is booted out for voting Lib Dem.
In a bombshell move, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has ordered an official probe into Labour anti-semitism.
Jezza and sinister Stalinist guru Seumas Milne are locked in battle with once-close Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and half the Shadow Cabinet, amid calls for Milne to be sacked.
Over lunch in a posh restaurant, a friend who knows Milne well told me: “Seumas is a bad man. He would shoot everyone in this room.”
This political landscape offers rich pickings for a bold, charismatic new Brexiteering Prime Minister determined to leave as promised on October 31
I’m not sure he was joking. Meanwhile, a rabble of Labour, Tory and Lib Dems who voted Remain last time and lost are pressing for a second referendum but with different questions.
The 52 per cent who voted Leave in 2016 have not gone away. They’ve just shifted to where they feel welcome.
This huge electorate, more than half the nation, is bigger than any majority commanded by any British government in post-war history.
Theresa May threw that majority away by offering a botched BRINO — Brexit In Name Only.
This political landscape offers rich pickings for a bold, charismatic new Brexiteering Prime Minister determined to leave as promised on October 31. That rules out flip-flopping Foreign Secretary
Jeremy Hunt and dithering Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
It narrows the chances of Dominic Raab, despite the best performance so far by a declared candidate.
Michael Gove, who wants an extra year to negotiate with Brussels, will struggle to win over Tory members who have the final say.
Which, by my reckoning, just leaves Boris. And, with apologies to Brenda of Bristol, an autumn election.
“I’m ashamed of my country for what it has done,” he told his audience in Verona. “I am sick to death of Brexit. I am a European. I am not a stupid, colonial, imperialist English idiot.”
A reader writes: “How can such people be so stupid and blind? Perhaps their lifestyle has rotted their brains. It is the EU, not Britain, that is colonialist and imperialist.”
The PM  is about to sit down with EU hustlers for the final round of high-stakes Brexit and last week’s Commons victory over Remainers has given her a strong hand to play for Britain
POKER-FACED Theresa May is about to sit down with EU hustlers for the final round of high-stakes Brexit.
Last week’s Commons victory over Remainers — a surprise to everyone including the PM herself — has given her a strong hand to play for Britain.
The PM has the unexpected authority of Parliament to scrub the hated Northern Ireland backstop. Her squabbling party has called a temporary truce. And nobody, including the EU, wants Jeremy Corbyn to take control.
Even Labour MPs are rallying behind her — at a price. And working-class voters have given the Tories a healthy seven-point lead. They might even win a snap election.
Played skilfully, this could win a deal that satisfies both Remainers and Leavers.
Yet there are fears Mrs May will use it to revive her wretched Chequers plan, which sparked the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis, or the botched deal thrown out last month by a 230-vote margin.
She has made a worrying start by apparently binning the No Deal card — the only one that truly scares the EU. Mrs May has no intention of playing this ace — and never had.
There are other worrying signs.
This showdown with EU hardliners requires fresh thinking and shrewd advice from seasoned players. Crawford Falconer, an ex-World Trade Organisation ambassador, was recruited by the Brexit department for precisely these skills.
Indeed, he is the ONLY person in the Government machine who has ever negotiated a trade deal.
Yet bafflingly, Mrs May is keeping this star player on the sidelines.
Instead, she will fly to Brussels with Whitehall mandarin Olly Robbins, the pro-EU fanatic who plunged Britain into the backstop trap she is now under pressure to escape from.
Robbins hates Brexit and has privately warned the PM this is Mission Impossible.
Mrs May — herself a Remainer who has never grasped the case for Brexit — will be joined by trusted “deputy PM” David Lidington, a dyed-in-the-wool Brussels worshipper.
In such company, even the inclusion in her team of a thundering Brexiteer Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox is only mildly reassuring.
Mrs May is notoriously stubborn. She can also be devious.
After nearly three years, even her closest political colleagues — who can be counted on one hand with a couple of missing digits — have no idea what her Brexit might look like.
Voters are increasingly irritated by this foot-dragging.
Why should we remain part of an organisation that wants to punish us by stealing Gibraltar, Northern Ireland and our car industry?
Nobody who watched the brutal humiliation of poor little Greece will be surprised. This tragic and insolvent nation should never have been admitted to the EU, still less the Eurozone.
Only with the assistance of US banking giant Goldman Sachs — “The Vampire Squid” — got them in under the wire. Once inside, they launched a borrowing and spending binge which ended in tears in the 2008 crash.
Greece might have flourished as a cheap but lovely tourist economy. Instead, it is now being cruelly tormented by Brussels and lumbered with multi-billion euros debts it can never repay.
Greece symbolises all that is wrong with arrogant Brussels — the catastrophic Euro, inflexible economic policies and mass unemployment for under-25s.
Above all, there is the sneering contempt of unsackable Eurocrats for the 500million people they rule from subsidised ivory towers.
Theresa May is a poor negotiator who never truly believed No Deal is better than a bad deal.
Without this implicit threat, Brussels will give little and demand much in return. It would be a pleasure to eat my words and watch Mrs May play a blinder.
She can use her good luck to land a historic victory. Or she can blink and condemn Britain to colony status, paying billions more into EU coffers while being led by the nose on trade deal promises that never materialise.
In which case, forget about that snap election fantasy.
The Conservative Party would never be forgiven by the 17.4million voters who voted Brexit — or those who wish they had.
SECURITY CHIEFS are dusting off Cold War plans anticipating a Soviet nuclear strike to whisk the Queen to safety in the event of . . .  er . . . a No Deal Brexit.
Presumably The Mall will be cleared of traffic and used as a landing strip to fly Her Maj out before revolutionary Remainers string her up for supporting Brexit.
The only question is whether she will go quietly.
The royals refused to leave London even after Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Second World War.
This Project Fear nonsense is even more insane than the idea that thousands will die of fruit shortages.
To quote Corporal Jones: “Don’t panic!!”
The PM  is about to sit down with EU hustlers for the final round of high-stakes Brexit and last week’s Commons victory over Remainers has given her a strong hand to play for Britain
POKER-FACED Theresa May is about to sit down with EU hustlers for the final round of high-stakes Brexit.
Last week’s Commons victory over Remainers — a surprise to everyone including the PM herself — has given her a strong hand to play for Britain.
The PM has the unexpected authority of Parliament to scrub the hated Northern Ireland backstop. Her squabbling party has called a temporary truce. And nobody, including the EU, wants Jeremy Corbyn to take control.
Even Labour MPs are rallying behind her — at a price. And working-class voters have given the Tories a healthy seven-point lead. They might even win a snap election.
Played skilfully, this could win a deal that satisfies both Remainers and Leavers.
Yet there are fears Mrs May will use it to revive her wretched Chequers plan, which sparked the resignations of Boris Johnson and David Davis, or the botched deal thrown out last month by a 230-vote margin.
She has made a worrying start by apparently binning the No Deal card — the only one that truly scares the EU. Mrs May has no intention of playing this ace — and never had.
There are other worrying signs.
This showdown with EU hardliners requires fresh thinking and shrewd advice from seasoned players. Crawford Falconer, an ex-World Trade Organisation ambassador, was recruited by the Brexit department for precisely these skills.
Indeed, he is the ONLY person in the Government machine who has ever negotiated a trade deal.
Yet bafflingly, Mrs May is keeping this star player on the sidelines.
Instead, she will fly to Brussels with Whitehall mandarin Olly Robbins, the pro-EU fanatic who plunged Britain into the backstop trap she is now under pressure to escape from.
Robbins hates Brexit and has privately warned the PM this is Mission Impossible.
Mrs May — herself a Remainer who has never grasped the case for Brexit — will be joined by trusted “deputy PM” David Lidington, a dyed-in-the-wool Brussels worshipper.
In such company, even the inclusion in her team of a thundering Brexiteer Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox is only mildly reassuring.
Mrs May is notoriously stubborn. She can also be devious.
After nearly three years, even her closest political colleagues — who can be counted on one hand with a couple of missing digits — have no idea what her Brexit might look like.
Voters are increasingly irritated by this foot-dragging.
Why should we remain part of an organisation that wants to punish us by stealing Gibraltar, Northern Ireland and our car industry?
Nobody who watched the brutal humiliation of poor little Greece will be surprised. This tragic and insolvent nation should never have been admitted to the EU, still less the Eurozone.
Only with the assistance of US banking giant Goldman Sachs — “The Vampire Squid” — got them in under the wire. Once inside, they launched a borrowing and spending binge which ended in tears in the 2008 crash.
Greece might have flourished as a cheap but lovely tourist economy. Instead, it is now being cruelly tormented by Brussels and lumbered with multi-billion euros debts it can never repay.
Greece symbolises all that is wrong with arrogant Brussels — the catastrophic Euro, inflexible economic policies and mass unemployment for under-25s.
Above all, there is the sneering contempt of unsackable Eurocrats for the 500million people they rule from subsidised ivory towers.
Theresa May is a poor negotiator who never truly believed No Deal is better than a bad deal.
Without this implicit threat, Brussels will give little and demand much in return. It would be a pleasure to eat my words and watch Mrs May play a blinder.
She can use her good luck to land a historic victory. Or she can blink and condemn Britain to colony status, paying billions more into EU coffers while being led by the nose on trade deal promises that never materialise.
In which case, forget about that snap election fantasy.
The Conservative Party would never be forgiven by the 17.4million voters who voted Brexit — or those who wish they had.
SECURITY CHIEFS are dusting off Cold War plans anticipating a Soviet nuclear strike to whisk the Queen to safety in the event of . . .  er . . . a No Deal Brexit.
Presumably The Mall will be cleared of traffic and used as a landing strip to fly Her Maj out before revolutionary Remainers string her up for supporting Brexit.
The only question is whether she will go quietly.
The royals refused to leave London even after Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Second World War.
This Project Fear nonsense is even more insane than the idea that thousands will die of fruit shortages.
To quote Corporal Jones: “Don’t panic!!”
The British Lion is a toothless kitten and we are the laughing stock of Europe unless the PM is stopped by her Cabinet, MPs or Parliament
FOR two nail-biting years, wide-eyed optimists like me have put our trust in Theresa May’s promise: “Brexit means Brexit”. This week, there is a whiff of betrayal in the air.
As negotiations flicker to a halt, it seems Brexit actually means abject surrender, taking orders from Brussels and standing mute as the Council of Europe assumes control of our economy. We risk being sold down the river.
Barring a last-minute revolt by Tory Brexiteers, Brussels has won and we have lost. The world’s sixth-largest economy will not just be worse off outside the EU, but reduced to a powerless political pawn on its margins — and paying for it.
Sniggering can be heard across the capitals of Europe, with France guffawing loudest. The British Lion is a toothless kitten and we are the laughing stock of Europe.
Unless stopped by her Cabinet, her MPs or by Parliament itself, this Prime Minister seems to be leading us to the greatest defeat since the Norman Conquest in 1066, the last time we capitulated to a foreign power.
The ransom demanded for our degrading humiliation — £40BILLION of taxpayers’ money — is merely a down payment. The botched Chequers deal will bind this country in subordination to Europe.
Forget about becoming a sovereign, free-trading nation. We will accept EU rules indefinitely while having no say at all in their terms or conditions. In effect, our economy will be run by Brussels, not by our democratically elected government.
For an example of missed opportunities and failed leadership, this beats even last year’s election disaster, which wasted the first Tory majority for 26 years and put Marxist Labour within grasp of power.
Worse, it now seems the PM’s apparent last-ditch capitulation was stitched up months ago behind closed doors after a dodgy threat by car giants to leave the UK.
Now the Tory party is in uproar, with cries for a leadership contest. Downing Street is stupidly threatening a snap election. Nobody buys that except Jeremy Corbyn, who is licking his lips at the scent of power. Ministers, like frogs in a pot, are sizing up whether to jump or stew. Careers will be made or broken.
At least three — and maybe six — are threatening to quit at tomorrow’s Cabinet unless Theresa blinks. Tory MPs are close to triggering a leadership fight, with sketchy plans for a quick and ruthless contest. “We have the numbers,” says one Tory MP.
“If anything the mood is hardening, not softening.”
Ex-Brexit secretary David Davis, the first rebel to quit Cabinet, will certainly run, infuriating Boris Johnson, who thinks it should be him. Once the gun is fired, half the Cabinet and plenty of hopefuls will join in.
Everyone deserves blame, including Brexiteers who assumed the game was over after their victorious out vote and abandoned the field. Remainers are at fault for refusing to accept the will of the people — and the shortcomings of their beloved EU.
But it is Downing Street, and Theresa May personally, who must take responsibility. Mrs May has dreamed of being Prime Minister since she was a child.
It’s a tough job. It means leading from the front, making swift decisions and rallying the country with confidence and authority in difficult times.
Instead, Mrs May’s team talk like defeatists about parliamentary “arithmetic”. How can she push through a difficult Brexit against ferocious opposition without a commanding Commons majority? But who was responsible for that parliamentary arithmetic?
It was Theresa May alone who decided to call an unforced election and it was she who single-handedly blew it. Her only task was to deliver the referendum mandate handed to her by 17.4million voters. She blew that, too.
People knew the risks. They did not vote for us to stay half-in, half-out or to see our sovereignty handed over to foreign powers. To govern is to decide. Mrs May made a career out of being the strong and silent type.
Many of her MPs worry she is actually weak, vacillating and inarticulate.
THE blood-curdling torture, murder and dissection of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is shocking but no surprise.
We are becoming accustomed to ruthless “wet jobs” by authoritarian tyrannies such as Russia, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China, many of them “friends” of Jeremy Corbyn.
But Saudi Arabia has always revelled in public and private bloodshed. When it comes to terrorism, all roads lead back to Riyadh.
A respectable MP, who does not joke about such matters, tells me the Saudi Embassy in London once had a torture chamber in the basement.
I wonder if it still does?
The British Lion is a toothless kitten and we are the laughing stock of Europe unless the PM is stopped by her Cabinet, MPs or Parliament
FOR two nail-biting years, wide-eyed optimists like me have put our trust in Theresa May’s promise: “Brexit means Brexit”. This week, there is a whiff of betrayal in the air.
As negotiations flicker to a halt, it seems Brexit actually means abject surrender, taking orders from Brussels and standing mute as the Council of Europe assumes control of our economy. We risk being sold down the river.
Barring a last-minute revolt by Tory Brexiteers, Brussels has won and we have lost. The world’s sixth-largest economy will not just be worse off outside the EU, but reduced to a powerless political pawn on its margins — and paying for it.
Sniggering can be heard across the capitals of Europe, with France guffawing loudest. The British Lion is a toothless kitten and we are the laughing stock of Europe.
Unless stopped by her Cabinet, her MPs or by Parliament itself, this Prime Minister seems to be leading us to the greatest defeat since the Norman Conquest in 1066, the last time we capitulated to a foreign power.
The ransom demanded for our degrading humiliation — £40BILLION of taxpayers’ money — is merely a down payment. The botched Chequers deal will bind this country in subordination to Europe.
Forget about becoming a sovereign, free-trading nation. We will accept EU rules indefinitely while having no say at all in their terms or conditions. In effect, our economy will be run by Brussels, not by our democratically elected government.
For an example of missed opportunities and failed leadership, this beats even last year’s election disaster, which wasted the first Tory majority for 26 years and put Marxist Labour within grasp of power.
Worse, it now seems the PM’s apparent last-ditch capitulation was stitched up months ago behind closed doors after a dodgy threat by car giants to leave the UK.
Now the Tory party is in uproar, with cries for a leadership contest. Downing Street is stupidly threatening a snap election. Nobody buys that except Jeremy Corbyn, who is licking his lips at the scent of power. Ministers, like frogs in a pot, are sizing up whether to jump or stew. Careers will be made or broken.
At least three — and maybe six — are threatening to quit at tomorrow’s Cabinet unless Theresa blinks. Tory MPs are close to triggering a leadership fight, with sketchy plans for a quick and ruthless contest. “We have the numbers,” says one Tory MP.
“If anything the mood is hardening, not softening.”
Ex-Brexit secretary David Davis, the first rebel to quit Cabinet, will certainly run, infuriating Boris Johnson, who thinks it should be him. Once the gun is fired, half the Cabinet and plenty of hopefuls will join in.
Everyone deserves blame, including Brexiteers who assumed the game was over after their victorious out vote and abandoned the field. Remainers are at fault for refusing to accept the will of the people — and the shortcomings of their beloved EU.
But it is Downing Street, and Theresa May personally, who must take responsibility. Mrs May has dreamed of being Prime Minister since she was a child.
It’s a tough job. It means leading from the front, making swift decisions and rallying the country with confidence and authority in difficult times.
Instead, Mrs May’s team talk like defeatists about parliamentary “arithmetic”. How can she push through a difficult Brexit against ferocious opposition without a commanding Commons majority? But who was responsible for that parliamentary arithmetic?
It was Theresa May alone who decided to call an unforced election and it was she who single-handedly blew it. Her only task was to deliver the referendum mandate handed to her by 17.4million voters. She blew that, too.
People knew the risks. They did not vote for us to stay half-in, half-out or to see our sovereignty handed over to foreign powers. To govern is to decide. Mrs May made a career out of being the strong and silent type.
Many of her MPs worry she is actually weak, vacillating and inarticulate.
THE blood-curdling torture, murder and dissection of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is shocking but no surprise.
We are becoming accustomed to ruthless “wet jobs” by authoritarian tyrannies such as Russia, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China, many of them “friends” of Jeremy Corbyn.
But Saudi Arabia has always revelled in public and private bloodshed. When it comes to terrorism, all roads lead back to Riyadh.
A respectable MP, who does not joke about such matters, tells me the Saudi Embassy in London once had a torture chamber in the basement.
I wonder if it still does?
With Philip Hammond's lack of No Deal preparations and Brexiteers themselves stabbing each other in the back this whole process has humiliated Great Britain
EX-EU President Herman Van Rompuy is savouring revenge after once being derided as a “damp rag and low-grade bank clerk” by Nigel Farage.
The Ukip leader correctly identified the jumped-up functionary as a “danger to nation states”.
Nigel scored 1.6million YouTube hits for his hilarious performance.
But Van Rompuy is enjoying the last laugh.
Describing Britain’s Brexit nightmare, he says: “We have them with their backs to the wall, facing the abyss and with a knife to their throat. We are almost there.”
And he’s right.
In the sneering words of ex-Whitehall panjandrum John Kerr, who devised the Hotel California-style check-out-but-never-leave rules for Brexit, Britain has “come to heel”.
Whatever emerges from the ashes of this week’s Commons votes, nothing can conceal the humiliation this country has suffered under Theresa May’s lock-jawed leadership.
The PM has tarnished one of the jewels in the British crown — respect for this once-great nation in the eyes of the world.
Thanks to her, a clutch of faceless EU bureaucrats and their feckless Tory allies have shredded the UK’s reputation for statesmanship and cool diplomacy. Great Britain — the world’s fifth-largest economy, nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council — has been reduced to an object of international pity.
Allies across the Commonwealth, America and even our erstwhile EU partners (France apart) are embarrassed to watch a great democracy grovelling before the unelected Burghers of Brussels.
Even if Attorney General Geoffrey Cox returns today with his famous cod-piece bulging, it’s lose-lose for Brexit.
He might persuade enough Tory MPs to vote Mrs May’s botched and rebadged Chequers Deal through Parliament. But it will be at enormous cost.
Barring an unlikely last- minute face-saver, Remainers have won this battle and the 17.4million people who voted for Brexit have been comprehensively whipped.
We can blame conspirators such as Tony Blair and ex-Chancellor George Osborne. We can point the finger at the BBC, Whitehall and a clutch of Cabinet plotters.
We can blame the Brexiteers themselves for tripping over while stabbing each other in the back.
And we can certainly blame Phil Hammond for blocking preparations for No Deal — our sole trump card in Brexit negotiations.
But in the end, responsibility for this carnage lies with Mrs May. Indeed, thanks to her, Spreadsheet Phil can now bribe MPs with the £20billion he saved by selling us down the river.
If his chicanery succeeds, there is a remote chance Parliament will support Chequers and sign up to Brino — Brexit In Name Only. It will be a sour “victory”.
History might be kind to Mrs May’s decency and her sense of public duty. But it will not ignore the catastrophic blunders which risk condemning this country to permanent vassal status.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt correctly warns Europe has just as much to lose. “This is a moment of change in our relationship between the UK and the EU and history will judge both sides very badly if we get this wrong,” he says.
“We want to remain the best of friends. That means getting this agreement through in a way that doesn’t poison our relations for many years to come.”
Stubborn as she is, Mrs May must know her days as PM are numbered.
Losing three babies in quick succession is an unimaginable tragedy in any circumstances.
In Shamima Begum’s case it underlines the recklessness of bringing children into the world of terrorist anarchy. Nothing Home Secretary Sajid Javid could have done in the few weeks since she emerged in public is likely to have saved her innocent child.
The responsibility lies entirely with Shamima and her jihadi husband, Dutchman Yago Riedijk.
There is no chance of her surviving what threatens to be disastrous spring council elections.
Certainly there is no question of leading the Government into the next round of EU negotiations, still less risk another general election meltdown.
Countless Tory supporters will risk letting Jeremy Corbyn in rather than vote for another May-led government.
There is a deal to be had with pro-Brexit MPs who are threatening to inflict a final defeat on Chequers tomorrow.
The consequences are unpredictable.
If she promises to go by mid-summer, they will vote for her deal. If that works, she will at least be able to claim victory of a kind.
It’s a long shot. The alternative is to go down with a sinking ship.
With Philip Hammond's lack of No Deal preparations and Brexiteers themselves stabbing each other in the back this whole process has humiliated Great Britain
EX-EU President Herman Van Rompuy is savouring revenge after once being derided as a “damp rag and low-grade bank clerk” by Nigel Farage.
The Ukip leader correctly identified the jumped-up functionary as a “danger to nation states”.
Nigel scored 1.6million YouTube hits for his hilarious performance.
But Van Rompuy is enjoying the last laugh.
Describing Britain’s Brexit nightmare, he says: “We have them with their backs to the wall, facing the abyss and with a knife to their throat. We are almost there.”
And he’s right.
In the sneering words of ex-Whitehall panjandrum John Kerr, who devised the Hotel California-style check-out-but-never-leave rules for Brexit, Britain has “come to heel”.
Whatever emerges from the ashes of this week’s Commons votes, nothing can conceal the humiliation this country has suffered under Theresa May’s lock-jawed leadership.
The PM has tarnished one of the jewels in the British crown — respect for this once-great nation in the eyes of the world.
Thanks to her, a clutch of faceless EU bureaucrats and their feckless Tory allies have shredded the UK’s reputation for statesmanship and cool diplomacy. Great Britain — the world’s fifth-largest economy, nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council — has been reduced to an object of international pity.
Allies across the Commonwealth, America and even our erstwhile EU partners (France apart) are embarrassed to watch a great democracy grovelling before the unelected Burghers of Brussels.
Even if Attorney General Geoffrey Cox returns today with his famous cod-piece bulging, it’s lose-lose for Brexit.
He might persuade enough Tory MPs to vote Mrs May’s botched and rebadged Chequers Deal through Parliament. But it will be at enormous cost.
Barring an unlikely last- minute face-saver, Remainers have won this battle and the 17.4million people who voted for Brexit have been comprehensively whipped.
We can blame conspirators such as Tony Blair and ex-Chancellor George Osborne. We can point the finger at the BBC, Whitehall and a clutch of Cabinet plotters.
We can blame the Brexiteers themselves for tripping over while stabbing each other in the back.
And we can certainly blame Phil Hammond for blocking preparations for No Deal — our sole trump card in Brexit negotiations.
But in the end, responsibility for this carnage lies with Mrs May. Indeed, thanks to her, Spreadsheet Phil can now bribe MPs with the £20billion he saved by selling us down the river.
If his chicanery succeeds, there is a remote chance Parliament will support Chequers and sign up to Brino — Brexit In Name Only. It will be a sour “victory”.
History might be kind to Mrs May’s decency and her sense of public duty. But it will not ignore the catastrophic blunders which risk condemning this country to permanent vassal status.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt correctly warns Europe has just as much to lose. “This is a moment of change in our relationship between the UK and the EU and history will judge both sides very badly if we get this wrong,” he says.
“We want to remain the best of friends. That means getting this agreement through in a way that doesn’t poison our relations for many years to come.”
Stubborn as she is, Mrs May must know her days as PM are numbered.
Losing three babies in quick succession is an unimaginable tragedy in any circumstances.
In Shamima Begum’s case it underlines the recklessness of bringing children into the world of terrorist anarchy. Nothing Home Secretary Sajid Javid could have done in the few weeks since she emerged in public is likely to have saved her innocent child.
The responsibility lies entirely with Shamima and her jihadi husband, Dutchman Yago Riedijk.
There is no chance of her surviving what threatens to be disastrous spring council elections.
Certainly there is no question of leading the Government into the next round of EU negotiations, still less risk another general election meltdown.
Countless Tory supporters will risk letting Jeremy Corbyn in rather than vote for another May-led government.
There is a deal to be had with pro-Brexit MPs who are threatening to inflict a final defeat on Chequers tomorrow.
The consequences are unpredictable.
If she promises to go by mid-summer, they will vote for her deal. If that works, she will at least be able to claim victory of a kind.
It’s a long shot. The alternative is to go down with a sinking ship.
With Brexiteers bracing themselves for a humiliating UK surrender, a new leader could put national interest ahead of naked personal ambition
MINISTERS fear they are being set up by Theresa May for a “take it or leave it” deal which lands Britain in a BRINO trap – Brexit In Name Only.
The half-in, half-out scheme would lock Britain into a customs union which prevents outside trade deals and leaves our £39billion divorce bill as just a down payment.
Or so it seems from a series of whispered Downing Street leaks.
Theresa May is so secretive she could yet surprise us all with a terrific deal for Britain.
In the meantime, Brexiteers are bracing themselves for a humiliating UK surrender.
Ironically, fears of a botched treaty coincide with signs of growing dismay among EU member states over the shoddy treatment of a long-standing and respected ally.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier has been rebuked publicly by EC President Jean-Claude Juncker for the way he has handled talks.
Britain’s biggest non-EU allies — America, Japan and Commonwealth countries such as Australia — report “signs of panic” in the capitals of Europe.
These focus not just on trade with Britain but on potent issues such as joint defence, intelligence and security.
They come at a time of mounting EU anxiety over the disintegration of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s authority, challenges to the euro from Italy and the rise of right-wing nationalists.
Italy’s lethal threat to EU economic rules will come to a head just as we are due to leave next March.
French President Emmanuel Macron warns Europe faces the worst instability since World War One.
Yet far from capitalising on EU disarray, Mrs May appears ready to leave Britain stranded in what may turn out to be the ruins of the European Project.
Her sop to Brexiteers — applying customs checks at factories, not borders — has backfired.
“It means they were bluffing about a hard border with Northern Ireland all along,” says one.
By taking us into a customs union, even temporarily, Mrs May will turn her back on allies eager for trade deals — led by American President Donald Trump.
He planned to make it the highlight of next year’s state visit to the UK.
World leaders are shocked by Britain’s cringing, long-winded and cackhanded negotiating style.
“Just say you are leaving — and mean it,” says one. “That will get them to the table.”
Alarm over “crashing out” is dismissed as scare stories.
There is overwhelming confidence the world’s fifth largest economy will thrive outside the EU.
Ministers will be given a first glimpse of the plot stitched up between Barnier, the PM and Whitehall’s increasingly exhausted Olly Robbins.
Mrs May will present them with a stark choice between a done deal and a Marxist Corbyn government.
After two humiliating years of fumbled negotiation, this is a dismal prospect indeed.
But there is another choice — a new leader ready to put the national interest ahead of naked personal ambition.
It won’t be careerist Andrea Leadsom, nor Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
Sajid Javid is damaged goods.
Brexit supremo Dominic Raab wants Philip Hammond’s job as Chancellor.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt could seize the initiative, but he won’t act alone.
So the hopes of many Tories are pinned on Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC, the breezy Brexiteer who torpedoed Mrs May’s first botched attempt to seal a deal.
It was Cox who compared her Chequers blueprint to purgatory — the “second circle of Hell”.
He is now marking her homework.
Ministers want him to have the final say on the PM’s secret new deal — and for his views to be published.
Cox is an eminent lawyer and constitutionalist.
He is also a politician who has only recently sniffed the sweet scent of political success.
He has subsequently been tipped as a dark horse leadership contender.
Having seen him in action at the Old Bailey, I think the national interest will come first.
The 17.4million who voted for British sovereignty will hope I’m right.
“BORED” David Cameron, a nice man with poor judgment, is smarting from abuse over his dream of a peerage and a job as Foreign Secretary.
Most blame him for Brexit.
But his really unforgivable error was to see “Thatcher” as a dirty word and dodgy Tony Blair as The Master.
As a result, he failed to win an outright majority in 2010 and happily shacked up with treacherous Lib Dem Nick Clegg.
He bet on another cosy coalition in 2015, only to land a majority and the unwelcome obligation to deliver his promised referendum.
Keep chillaxing, Dave.
With Brexiteers bracing themselves for a humiliating UK surrender, a new leader could put national interest ahead of naked personal ambition
MINISTERS fear they are being set up by Theresa May for a “take it or leave it” deal which lands Britain in a BRINO trap – Brexit In Name Only.
The half-in, half-out scheme would lock Britain into a customs union which prevents outside trade deals and leaves our £39billion divorce bill as just a down payment.
Or so it seems from a series of whispered Downing Street leaks.
Theresa May is so secretive she could yet surprise us all with a terrific deal for Britain.
In the meantime, Brexiteers are bracing themselves for a humiliating UK surrender.
Ironically, fears of a botched treaty coincide with signs of growing dismay among EU member states over the shoddy treatment of a long-standing and respected ally.
EU negotiator Michel Barnier has been rebuked publicly by EC President Jean-Claude Juncker for the way he has handled talks.
Britain’s biggest non-EU allies — America, Japan and Commonwealth countries such as Australia — report “signs of panic” in the capitals of Europe.
These focus not just on trade with Britain but on potent issues such as joint defence, intelligence and security.
They come at a time of mounting EU anxiety over the disintegration of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s authority, challenges to the euro from Italy and the rise of right-wing nationalists.
Italy’s lethal threat to EU economic rules will come to a head just as we are due to leave next March.
French President Emmanuel Macron warns Europe faces the worst instability since World War One.
Yet far from capitalising on EU disarray, Mrs May appears ready to leave Britain stranded in what may turn out to be the ruins of the European Project.
Her sop to Brexiteers — applying customs checks at factories, not borders — has backfired.
“It means they were bluffing about a hard border with Northern Ireland all along,” says one.
By taking us into a customs union, even temporarily, Mrs May will turn her back on allies eager for trade deals — led by American President Donald Trump.
He planned to make it the highlight of next year’s state visit to the UK.
World leaders are shocked by Britain’s cringing, long-winded and cackhanded negotiating style.
“Just say you are leaving — and mean it,” says one. “That will get them to the table.”
Alarm over “crashing out” is dismissed as scare stories.
There is overwhelming confidence the world’s fifth largest economy will thrive outside the EU.
Ministers will be given a first glimpse of the plot stitched up between Barnier, the PM and Whitehall’s increasingly exhausted Olly Robbins.
Mrs May will present them with a stark choice between a done deal and a Marxist Corbyn government.
After two humiliating years of fumbled negotiation, this is a dismal prospect indeed.
But there is another choice — a new leader ready to put the national interest ahead of naked personal ambition.
It won’t be careerist Andrea Leadsom, nor Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
Sajid Javid is damaged goods.
Brexit supremo Dominic Raab wants Philip Hammond’s job as Chancellor.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt could seize the initiative, but he won’t act alone.
So the hopes of many Tories are pinned on Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC, the breezy Brexiteer who torpedoed Mrs May’s first botched attempt to seal a deal.
It was Cox who compared her Chequers blueprint to purgatory — the “second circle of Hell”.
He is now marking her homework.
Ministers want him to have the final say on the PM’s secret new deal — and for his views to be published.
Cox is an eminent lawyer and constitutionalist.
He is also a politician who has only recently sniffed the sweet scent of political success.
He has subsequently been tipped as a dark horse leadership contender.
Having seen him in action at the Old Bailey, I think the national interest will come first.
The 17.4million who voted for British sovereignty will hope I’m right.
“BORED” David Cameron, a nice man with poor judgment, is smarting from abuse over his dream of a peerage and a job as Foreign Secretary.
Most blame him for Brexit.
But his really unforgivable error was to see “Thatcher” as a dirty word and dodgy Tony Blair as The Master.
As a result, he failed to win an outright majority in 2010 and happily shacked up with treacherous Lib Dem Nick Clegg.
He bet on another cosy coalition in 2015, only to land a majority and the unwelcome obligation to deliver his promised referendum.
Keep chillaxing, Dave.
BARRING a political earthquake, Boris Johnson will be living his dream as Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland a week tomorrow.
The only point of his expected premiership is to deliver Brexit. Pundits give him an agonising 100 days from next Tuesday to honour that promise.
In fact, we will know in an instant if Brexit — and Boris — will live or die.
The moment will come, perhaps on his first day, as he names the man or woman to prise the Treasury from the cold, dead hands of Chancellor Philip Hammond.
If Boris picks Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock or Liz Truss — or anyone else who voted Remain — 17.4million Brits can kiss goodbye to their dream of leaving the European Union.
We will end up with a just another bodged version of Theresa May’s BRINO sell-out — Brexit in Name Only. It will be the beginning and the end of King BoJo the First.
There will be no second chances. The next Chancellor of the Exchequer must be a proven Brexiteer in word and deed if Boris has a chance of surviving his 100 days.
The Treasury is the most powerful and implacable enemy of Brexit. “The new Chancellor needs three key qualities,” says a source close to Boris.
“They must have a Brexit pedigree, absolute loyalty to Boris and the intellectual self-confidence to take on Whitehall and the Treasury.”
Qualities such as these are scarce in the present Cabinet. The final choice is likely to surprise everyone, especially Remainers.
Some names mentioned to me would, to say the least, offer a bracing challenge to pro-EU establishment fanatics who spent the past three years sabotaging the 2016 referendum.
Unless the new Chancellor takes them head-on, those forces will crush both Boris and Brexit. Observers have identified the tank traps and sniper nests facing the new PM.
If Boris Johnson has one proven gift, it is for winning against the odds
He is up against a Remain-dominated Parliament aided by slippery Speaker Bercow, an army of civil service mandarins skilled in the machinery of government and covering fire from BBC propagandists.
In the face of such overwhelming odds, a pro-Leave PM is surely doomed to fail. Not so. Despite appearances, Boris has a plan.
He will fly immediately to Brussels with a genuine bid to reopen Theresa May’s botched withdrawal agreement.
He would seek a clear path out of the EU customs union, single market and European Court jurisdiction, plus a sensible solution to the Northern Ireland border issue.
The alternative will be for Britain to leave the EU on October 31 with No Deal. Unless much has changed, Brussels will say: “Non!” Boris will announce he has no option but to call a snap “No Deal” election.
Remainers are appalled at the idea, and for good reason. Poll after poll suggests No Deal Boris would win with an outright majority — at their expense.
The public is sick to the back teeth with Theresa May’s dreary defeatism and Brussels’ bullying. Remain voters want this sorted, too.
Elections are always risky. But a Tory Party still dithering and paralysed on the biggest issue of the age is the greatest risk of all. Right now, the omens are promising. Labour is committing ritual suicide, shedding voters in droves.
Millions of Tory defectors would flock back to a party committed to a final, irreversible Brexit taking us past the October 31 dead-line and sucking support from Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party.
In the intervening weeks, a Boris regime could recruit voters abandoned by both major parties over crime, low pay, high taxes and housing.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, blue- collar voters on less than £20,000 a year, are “up for grabs like never before”.
If Boris Johnson has one proven gift, it is for winning against the odds. In fact, despite gloom-mongers, the odds could not be better.
To quote Boris, there is an appetite among voters for optimism . . .  stepping off the “hamster wheel of doom”. So brace yourselves for an early general election, folks — and round two of King BoJo.
In a PC world gone mad, this is surely the moment to bring in the men/women/gender non-specific folk in white coats.
People now risk losing their livelihoods for invented “hate crimes” on transgender bullying, Islamic extremism or mass immigration.
Now Theresa May is transiting into Big Brother by threatening to punish newspapers who publish embarrassing leaks.
It is George Orwell’s nightmare novel 1984 brought terrifyingly to life.
BARRING a political earthquake, Boris Johnson will be living his dream as Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland a week tomorrow.
The only point of his expected premiership is to deliver Brexit. Pundits give him an agonising 100 days from next Tuesday to honour that promise.
In fact, we will know in an instant if Brexit — and Boris — will live or die.
The moment will come, perhaps on his first day, as he names the man or woman to prise the Treasury from the cold, dead hands of Chancellor Philip Hammond.
If Boris picks Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock or Liz Truss — or anyone else who voted Remain — 17.4million Brits can kiss goodbye to their dream of leaving the European Union.
We will end up with a just another bodged version of Theresa May’s BRINO sell-out — Brexit in Name Only. It will be the beginning and the end of King BoJo the First.
There will be no second chances. The next Chancellor of the Exchequer must be a proven Brexiteer in word and deed if Boris has a chance of surviving his 100 days.
The Treasury is the most powerful and implacable enemy of Brexit. “The new Chancellor needs three key qualities,” says a source close to Boris.
“They must have a Brexit pedigree, absolute loyalty to Boris and the intellectual self-confidence to take on Whitehall and the Treasury.”
Qualities such as these are scarce in the present Cabinet. The final choice is likely to surprise everyone, especially Remainers.
Some names mentioned to me would, to say the least, offer a bracing challenge to pro-EU establishment fanatics who spent the past three years sabotaging the 2016 referendum.
Unless the new Chancellor takes them head-on, those forces will crush both Boris and Brexit. Observers have identified the tank traps and sniper nests facing the new PM.
If Boris Johnson has one proven gift, it is for winning against the odds
He is up against a Remain-dominated Parliament aided by slippery Speaker Bercow, an army of civil service mandarins skilled in the machinery of government and covering fire from BBC propagandists.
In the face of such overwhelming odds, a pro-Leave PM is surely doomed to fail. Not so. Despite appearances, Boris has a plan.
He will fly immediately to Brussels with a genuine bid to reopen Theresa May’s botched withdrawal agreement.
He would seek a clear path out of the EU customs union, single market and European Court jurisdiction, plus a sensible solution to the Northern Ireland border issue.
The alternative will be for Britain to leave the EU on October 31 with No Deal. Unless much has changed, Brussels will say: “Non!” Boris will announce he has no option but to call a snap “No Deal” election.
Remainers are appalled at the idea, and for good reason. Poll after poll suggests No Deal Boris would win with an outright majority — at their expense.
The public is sick to the back teeth with Theresa May’s dreary defeatism and Brussels’ bullying. Remain voters want this sorted, too.
Elections are always risky. But a Tory Party still dithering and paralysed on the biggest issue of the age is the greatest risk of all. Right now, the omens are promising. Labour is committing ritual suicide, shedding voters in droves.
Millions of Tory defectors would flock back to a party committed to a final, irreversible Brexit taking us past the October 31 dead-line and sucking support from Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party.
In the intervening weeks, a Boris regime could recruit voters abandoned by both major parties over crime, low pay, high taxes and housing.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, blue- collar voters on less than £20,000 a year, are “up for grabs like never before”.
If Boris Johnson has one proven gift, it is for winning against the odds. In fact, despite gloom-mongers, the odds could not be better.
To quote Boris, there is an appetite among voters for optimism . . .  stepping off the “hamster wheel of doom”. So brace yourselves for an early general election, folks — and round two of King BoJo.
In a PC world gone mad, this is surely the moment to bring in the men/women/gender non-specific folk in white coats.
People now risk losing their livelihoods for invented “hate crimes” on transgender bullying, Islamic extremism or mass immigration.
Now Theresa May is transiting into Big Brother by threatening to punish newspapers who publish embarrassing leaks.
It is George Orwell’s nightmare novel 1984 brought terrifyingly to life.
In a world exclusive interview with The Sun, the US President said Theresa May had ignored his advice by opting for a soft Brexit strategy
DONALD Trump today accuses the PM of wrecking Brexit — and warns she may have killed off any chance of a vital US trade deal.
The US President delivers his incendiary verdict on her negotiating strategy in a world exclusive interview with The Sun.
In an extraordinary intervention timed to coincide with his UK visit, Mr Trump said Theresa May ignored his advice by opting for a soft Brexit strategy.
And he warned her any attempts to maintain close ties with the EU would make a lucrative US trade deal very unlikely.
Mr Trump said: “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.”
His comments, damaging to the Prime Minister, come as he delivers his most brutally honest verdict yet on Britain in which he also:

Mr Trump’s remarks come as he prepares to meet the PM for a working lunch at Chequers.
He will then board a helicopter for Windsor Castle to meet the Queen before flying up to Scotland for a private two-day visit.
Thousands of people are expected to take part in a series of protests during his stay in the UK.
THERESA May’s new soft Brexit blueprint would “kill” any future trade deal with the United States, Donald Trump warns today.
Mounting an extraordinary attack on the PM’s exit negotiation, the President also reveals she has ignored his advice on how to toughen up the troubled talks.
Instead he believes Mrs May has gone “the opposite way”, and he thinks the results have been “very unfortunate”.
His fiercest criticism came over the centrepiece of the PM’s new Brexit plan — which was unveiled in full yesterday.
It would stick to a common ­rulebook with Brussels on goods and agricultural produce in a bid to keep customs borders open with the EU.
But Mr Trump told The Sun: “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.
“If they do that, then their trade deal with the US will probably not be made.”
Mr Trump made the bombshell intervention during a world exclusive interview with The Sun — the only British media outlet he spoke to before his arrival in the UK for his first visit as President.
It will pour nitroglycerine on the already raging Tory Brexiteer revolt against the PM.
And in more remarks that will set off alarm bells in No10, Mr Trump also said Mrs May’s nemesis Boris Johnson — who resigned over the soft Brexit blueprint on ­Monday — would “make a great Prime Minister”.
A big US-UK trade deal, long promised by Mr Trump, is cherished by Leave campaigners as Brexit’s biggest prize.
But the President said Mrs May’s plan “will definitely affect trade with the United States, unfortunately in a negative way”.
He explained: “We have enough difficulty with the European Union.
“We are cracking down right now on the European Union because they have not treated the United States fairly on trading.
“No, if they do that I would say that that would probably end a major trade relationship with the United States.”
Questioned on Boris’s comments at a private dinner two weeks ago that Mr Trump “would go in bloody hard” if he was negotiating Brexit, the President swiftly replied: “He is right.”
He added: “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me.
“She wanted to go a different route.
“I would actually say that she probably went the opposite way. And that is fine.
“She should negotiate the best way she knows how. But it is too bad what is going on.”
Asked if that meant he would be prepared to walk away from the negotiating table, Trump replied: “Oh, absolutely. I think what is going on is very unfortunate. Too long.
“You know, deals that take too long are never good ones. When a deal takes so long, they never work out very well.”
Mr Trump also went even further in questioning whether Mrs May’s new Brexit plan upholds the referendum result — which he claimed he predicted two years ago. He said: “The deal she is striking is a much ­different deal than the one the people voted on.
“It was not the deal that was in the referendum. I have just been hearing this over the last three days. I know they have had a lot of resignations. So a lot of people don’t like it.”
Despite the withering criticism of Mrs May’s Brexit strategy, Trump insisted he still thinks she is “a very good person”.
He also denied claims that she bores him.
Asked about a report in The Washington Post that he thinks of Mrs May as “a bossy schoolteacher”, Mr Trump said: “No, no, no, no. I never said anything bad about her.
“That is fake news. I think she is a nice person. I get along with her very nicely. The Washington Post is totally fake. They are just a lobbyist for Amazon.”
Recalling a visit to one of his luxury golf resorts in Scotland two years ago, Mr Trump said: “I predicted Brexit.
“I was cutting a ribbon for the opening of Turnberry — you know they totally did a whole renovation, it is beautiful — the day before the Brexit vote.
“I said, ‘Brexit will happen’. The vote is going to go positive, because people don’t want to be faced with the horrible immigration problems that they are being faced with in other countries.
“You remember that Barack Obama said that there is no way it is going to happen, and the UK will get to the back of the line if it ever does, right? I said Brexit will happen, and I was right.”
At a press conference in Brussels yesterday at the end of a summit of Nato leaders, Mr Trump again cast doubt on whether the PM’s soft Brexit plan was true to the referendum result.
He said: “I don’t know if that’s what they voted for.”
Downing Street was left shell-shocked by the criticism.
Mrs May rushed out her own statement to hit back at the President’s claim.
The PM insisted: “We have come to an agreement at the proposal we’re putting to the European Union which absolutely delivers on the Brexit people voted for.
They voted for us to take back control of our money, our law and our borders and that’s exactly what we will do.”
DONALD Trump praised Boris Johnson as a future Prime Minister.
The US President described the former Foreign Secretary as “a very talented guy”, adding: “I like him a lot.”
He said: “I have a lot of respect for Boris. He obviously likes me, and says very good things about me.
“I was very saddened to see he was leaving government and I hope he goes back in at some point. I think he is a great representative for your country.”
Asked if the ex-minister could be in No 10 one day, he replied: “Well I am not pitting one against the other. I am just saying I think he would be a great Prime Minister. I think he’s got what it takes.”
BRITAIN’S fury over the Salisbury nerve agent attack will not stop Donald Trump from bonding with Vladimir Putin next week.

The President flies from the UK to a summit with the Russian leader in Helsinki on Monday.
Quizzed on whether the Novichok attack made him reconsider, he said: “I think getting along with China, getting along with Russia, is a good thing.”
He suggested Mrs May’s plans for a soft Brexit was a hostile move towards the US because “the European Union is very bad to the United States on trade”.
Theresa May has urged Mr Trump to tackle Mr Putin on Novichok and other international outrages, including cyber attacks.
DONALD Trump today claims Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is responsible for the terror attacks on the British capital.
The Labour heavyweight has “done a very bad job on terrorism” by allowing so many migrants to come to the city, the President controversially argues.
The incendiary remarks are the most vicious in the White House boss’s long-running feud with London’s first Muslim mayor.
It began more than two years ago during Trump’s US presidential election campaign when Mr Khan attacked his vow to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering America.
Deepening the duo’s bitter war of words again, Mr Trump told The Sun in an exclusive interview ahead of his arrival in Britain: “I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.
“I look at cities in Europe, and I can be specific if you’d like. You have a mayor who has done a terrible job in London. He has done a terrible job.
“Take a look at the terrorism that is taking place. Look at what is going on in London. I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism.
“I think he has done a bad job on crime, if you look, all of the horrible things going on there, with all of the crime that is being brought in.”
London was hit by four terror attacks last year — including in Westminster, London Bridge, Parsons Green Tube station and Finsbury Park’s mosque.
Speaking to The Sun inside the US Embassy in Brussels, the US President also revealed he thinks Mr Khan has shown a lack of respect to America by attacking him personally.
Mr Trump added: “I think he has not been hospitable to a government that is very important. Now he might not like the current President, but I represent the United States.
“I also represent a lot of people in Europe because a lot of people from Europe are in the United States.”
Mr Trump also clashed with Mr Khan after last June’s van and knife rampage on London Bridge and Borough Market — mocking the mayor for his appeal to Londoners to stay calm.
The President tweeted: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”
Mr Khan described the tweet as “ill-informed”.
A source close to Mr Khan last night pointed out that the Home Office is in charge of immigration policy for London and the whole country and not those in City Hall.
Meanwhile, a Tory MP faced calls to be suspended yesterday after being accused of Islamophobia over a picture he tweeted of Mr Khan.
Michael Fabricant posted an image with the London Mayor’s head on an inflatable pig that is being mounted by a second pig along with Mr Trump laughing.
The tweet is thought to be in response to Mr Khan’s decision to allow a 20ft “Trump Baby” blimp to be flown over London during the President’s visit.
Mr Fabricant deleted the image and claimed he did not see that it featured Mr Khan’s face, saying: “My fault was not checking it closer on my iPhone first.”
But Labour’s Luke Pollard said: “Tweeting racism is not a good look for a Conservative MP when there is a real problem with Islamophobia in the Tory party.”
DONALD Trump says London is in the middle of a crimewave — and blasted Sadiq Khan for failing to tackle the problem.

He said the mayor has “done a bad job on crime”.
It follow suggestions by the President earlier this year that gangs in the capital were getting round our strict gun laws by stabbing people instead.
Mr Trump said: “Yes that’s right — they don’t have guns, they have knives.”
More than 50 Londoners have been killed with knives this year. Nine people have been shot.
In 2017, there were at least 115 murder probes with 80 deaths the result of stabbings.
ONE British hospital is so bad that it has “blood all over the walls”, the President has claimed.
Recalling an article he read recently, Mr Trump said: “They had a story in one of the major New York newspapers recently about your hospital. You know about that story? I’m sure you’ve seen it.
“What they say is, it is worse than any hospital they have ever seen in a war zone.
“It is right in the middle of London. I guess it used to be the ultimate and now there is, you know, there is blood all over the walls, all over the floors.
“It was a very major story and I have heard it from others, too, so I think it is very sad. Very sad.”
It is the second time the US leader has attacked the hospital, which he has not named.
It is believed to be the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London, where a record 702 stabbing victims were treated last year.
Trump dubbed it “a war zone” during a speech in May to the National Rifle Association about the spiralling danger posed by knife crime.
Leading Royal London trauma surgeon Dr Martin Griffiths later said he would be “happy to invite Mr Trump to my prestigious hospital”.

BRITAIN and the rest of Europe is “losing its culture” because of immigration, Donald Trump says.
The wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa is permanently changing the continent for the worse, the 72 year-old president argued.
And he claimed the situation pains him personally as the son of two EU countries.
Mr Trump told The Sun: “I have great love for countries in Europe.
“Don’t forget, essentially I’m a product of the European Union, between Scotland and Germany.
“Right? My father Germany, my mother Scotland.
But in a controversial outburst, he added: “I think what has happened to Europe is a shame.
“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame.
“I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.
“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.
“I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”
Mr Trump made tackling illegal US immigration one of the planks of his 2016 election campaign.
“MR President, these gentlemen are from The Sun,” an aide formally announced as we were ushered into the Trump inner sanctum.
Entering the court of an emperor, it pays to bring a gift.
We presented him with an England shirt when we interviewed him at the US Embassy in Brussels on Wednesday, ahead of the Nato summit.
“Oh wow. I love gifts,” he said, happily obliging our photographer Paul Edwards by holding the personalised top up with a trademark grin.
“You don’t hear the word England as much as you should,” he continued.
“I think England is a beautiful name.”
Two things about him struck me most.
First, Trump has total power. Nobody on his White House staff tells him what to say, or questions him when he says it.
When Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced our scheduled ten-minute slot was almost up, the President swiftly interjected: “No, give them a little bit more.”
We stayed for 28 minutes, with no more prompts to go.
Secondly, he is a very sensitive man, constantly saying how much various people like him. It clearly pains him today that he is not being welcomed to Britain as a hero and our most important ally.
On our way out, we met Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly. The former US Marine Corps general took me aside and said: “I read The Sun every day. I love Britain.”
DONALD Trump has admitted he “feels unwelcome” in London as a major ­security operation was launched for his arrival in the UK yesterday.
But the tycoon insists real British people “love the President of the United States”.
Mr Trump told The Sun he will be largely staying away from the capital to avoid huge street protests of up to 200,000 today.
But he blamed them on politicians — singling out his nemesis, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.
Revealing he has been told of the 20ft “Trump Baby” blimp that will be flown above Parliament Square today, he said: “I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London.
“I used to love London as a city. I haven’t been there in a long time. But when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?
“And when I say that I am talking about government because the ­people of the UK agree with me.”
Mr Trump let his true feelings slip during an exclusive interview with The Sun hours before Air Force One touched down at Stansted Airport at 2pm yesterday.
Of his four-day visit, he added: “Many people are delighted. I get thousands of notifications from people in the UK that they love the President of the United States.”
He described a West London pub being renamed The Trump Arms for the duration of the trip as “wonderful”, adding: “I love those people. Those are my people.”
Mr Trump added: “You know, a poll just came out that I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party — 92 per cent. Beating Lincoln. I beat our Honest Abe.
“But the people of the UK, and I’ll bet if you had an honest poll, I’d be very strong. They want the same thing I want. I love the UK.”
His trip is a lower key working visit rather than the full state visit that the Queen invited him on 18 months ago.
Asked why he has failed to visit Britain as President until now, Mr Trump said: “Well, you know the United States has been very busy. We have been doing very well.”
Theresa May hosted a dinner with 150 business bosses at Winston Churchill’s birthplace Blenheim Palace for Mr Trump last night.
The Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards’ bands opened the event with a military ceremony in the Great Court.
Mr Trump and wife Melania are travelling everywhere in his Marine One helicopter to avoid demonstrations — including in and out of last night’s accommodation at the US Ambassador’s residence, Winfield House in Regents Park.
Protesters outside mounted a “Keep Trump Awake” rally — banging pots, pans and drums and blowing vuvuzelas from 8pm.
But when an estimated 200,000 protesters meet for the “Together Against Trump March” in central London at 2pm today, he will be at Chequers for talks with Mrs May.
The Trumps then fly to Scotland to spend the weekend at his golf resorts in Turnberry and Aberdeen.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attacked Mrs May for inviting Mr Trump to Britain while “his dangerous and inhumane policies are putting the lives and wellbeing of millions of people at risk”.
DONALD Trump described the Queen as “a tremendous woman” ahead of their first meeting today.

The US President and wife Melania were due to have tea with the 92-year-old monarch at Windsor Castle this afternoon.
He told The Sun he was not nervous about it — but was in awe of Her Majesty’s flawless public service.
Mr Trump said: “She is a tremendous woman. I really look forward to meeting her. I think she represents her country so well.
“If you think of it, for so many years she has represented her country, she has really never made a mistake. You don’t see, like, anything embarrassing. She is just an incredible woman.
“My wife is a tremendous fan of hers. She has got a great and beautiful grace about her.”
Mr Trump’s Scottish-born mum Mary was an obsessive fan of the Queen, he said.
He added: “My mother loved the Queen. Any time the Queen was on television, my mother wanted to watch it.” Her Majesty will meet Mr Trump and the First Lady at the dais in the Quadrangle of the historic royal residence in Berkshire.
A guard of honour, comprised of the Coldstream Guards, will give a royal salute and US anthem The Star-Spangled Banner will be played.
Mr Trump and the Queen will then inspect the guard of honour and watch the soldiers march past.
Afterwards, The President and First Lady will join the Queen for tea inside the castle.
Her Majesty has met with previous White House couples including Barack and Michelle Obama, George W and Laura Bush, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
THERESA May must listen to her generals and hike defence spending to keep the Special Relationship intact, said Mr Trump.
His Secretary of Defense asked the UK Government to go significantly above Nato’s minimum target of 2 per cent of GDP in funding for its military as the US’s major ally.
The President told The Sun he agrees with Jim Mattis “100 per cent”.
He added: “Two per cent isn’t enough. The US pays 4.2 per cent of a much larger GDP.
“I’m very impressed that Jim sent that letter. I think that is an exact right letter.”
Mr Trump defended himself against allies’ charges of blackmail over his demand for rapid rises in all 29 Nato member states’ defence budgets.
Asked if he was a bully, he said: “I’ll tell you what, we’ve had 40 years of presidents saying the same thing in a nicer way and they got nothing, so call it what you want.
“They’re taking ad­vantage of the United States. I’m not going to let it happen.”
Mr Trump caused panic by implying he could pull the US out of Nato if other countries did not hike their contributions.
He was asked at a Brussels press conference if he had threatened to withdraw and replied: “I told people I’d be very unhappy if they didn’t up their commitment. Yesterday I let them know I was extremely unhappy.”
He insisted nations had finally agreed to increase expenditure, adding: “Everyone in the room thanked me.”
But French President Emmanuel Macron de­nied Nato allies had agreed a spending rise.
The US wants its Nato allies to share more of the financial burden on defence.
In 2014 Nato nations committed to moves toward reaching the 2 per cent of GDP figure within 10 years.
Nato estimated just 15 members will meet the aim by 2024 based on current trends.
THE £30million security operation to support Donald Trump’s visit was put to the test soon after he arrived when demonstrators gathered where he was staying.

Mr Trump’s plane Air Force One touched down at Stansted Airport in Essex before a helicopter took him and First Lady Melania to the US ambassador’s residence, Winfield House, in London’s Regent’s Park.
Around 400 protesters were gathered there to stage a Wall of Noise demo, banging pots and pans and blowing whistles.
The property had been surrounded by a specially built 9ft-high steel fence with concrete bollards.
Turnstiles and metal detectors were at the building’s entrances, guarded by US Secret Service agents all wearing earpieces and shades.
Cops were in the minaret of the nearby Regent’s Park mosque overlooking the residence, while armed officers patrolled its perimeter.
And US agents on golf buggies patrolled the park as amazed tourists and office workers looked on.
Last night, Mr Trump and Melania flew in the President’s Marine One helicopter for a black tie dinner hosted by PM Theresa May and hubby Philip at Winston Churchill’s Oxfordshire birthplace Blenheim Palace.
Meanwhile, as many as 100,000 are expected to gather in central London in a protest today called by organisers Together Against Trump.
But with around 10,000 cops on duty in an operation codenamed Manifold, tight security means he and Melania will be kept well away from any demonstrators.
Mr Trump had said he was “fine” with planned protests. He said: “I think they like me a lot in the UK.”
THE UK-US trade deal is dead. Nato is a rip-off, the NHS is a shambles and ­London’s Mayor is terrible. Agree with him or not, Donald Trump at least speaks plainly and means it.

We wish we could say the same of our Government.
Theresa May insists her Brexit “red lines” will all be fulfilled. That may even be technically true. But she is in danger of blurring each one so much that their true meaning is lost.
Take the proposed new trade deals with giant non-EU economies which she has made pivotal to our future.
Trump tells The Sun that Mrs May has already killed the biggest, with America, by tying us to EU rules on food and farming. Those same restrictions will make it extremely hard to do ANY deals.
That’s madness. And it is disingenuous to talk up Britain repeatedly as an independent global trading power while knowingly binding our hands.
No10 claims we are taking back control of our laws too. But the ECJ will still in effect have a final say if we are bound to EU rules.
Mrs May says free movement will end. But her proposed immigration policy still doesn’t seem to give us complete control over EU migrants.
How about our payments to Brussels? They will no longer be “vast”, she says.
OK. But will they still be “big”?
Even if the EU agrees to all this, Tory backbench Brexiteers say they’ll vote it down in the Commons.
We have every sympathy. But where will that leave us? It’s the only plan on offer. The PM won’t harden it up. And Parliament won’t sanction “no deal”.
Our future is in the balance here. The Cabinet cannot surely now be thinking about taking summer holidays. Time is running out — and it’s stalemate.
Only one thing is making progress . . . Tory poll numbers, slowly heading south.
In a world exclusive interview with The Sun, the US President said Theresa May had ignored his advice by opting for a soft Brexit strategy
DONALD Trump today accuses the PM of wrecking Brexit — and warns she may have killed off any chance of a vital US trade deal.
The US President delivers his incendiary verdict on her negotiating strategy in a world exclusive interview with The Sun.
In an extraordinary intervention timed to coincide with his UK visit, Mr Trump said Theresa May ignored his advice by opting for a soft Brexit strategy.
And he warned her any attempts to maintain close ties with the EU would make a lucrative US trade deal very unlikely.
Mr Trump said: “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.”
His comments, damaging to the Prime Minister, come as he delivers his most brutally honest verdict yet on Britain in which he also:

Mr Trump’s remarks come as he prepares to meet the PM for a working lunch at Chequers.
He will then board a helicopter for Windsor Castle to meet the Queen before flying up to Scotland for a private two-day visit.
Thousands of people are expected to take part in a series of protests during his stay in the UK.
THERESA May’s new soft Brexit blueprint would “kill” any future trade deal with the United States, Donald Trump warns today.
Mounting an extraordinary attack on the PM’s exit negotiation, the President also reveals she has ignored his advice on how to toughen up the troubled talks.
Instead he believes Mrs May has gone “the opposite way”, and he thinks the results have been “very unfortunate”.
His fiercest criticism came over the centrepiece of the PM’s new Brexit plan — which was unveiled in full yesterday.
It would stick to a common ­rulebook with Brussels on goods and agricultural produce in a bid to keep customs borders open with the EU.
But Mr Trump told The Sun: “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.
“If they do that, then their trade deal with the US will probably not be made.”
Mr Trump made the bombshell intervention during a world exclusive interview with The Sun — the only British media outlet he spoke to before his arrival in the UK for his first visit as President.
It will pour nitroglycerine on the already raging Tory Brexiteer revolt against the PM.
And in more remarks that will set off alarm bells in No10, Mr Trump also said Mrs May’s nemesis Boris Johnson — who resigned over the soft Brexit blueprint on ­Monday — would “make a great Prime Minister”.
A big US-UK trade deal, long promised by Mr Trump, is cherished by Leave campaigners as Brexit’s biggest prize.
But the President said Mrs May’s plan “will definitely affect trade with the United States, unfortunately in a negative way”.
He explained: “We have enough difficulty with the European Union.
“We are cracking down right now on the European Union because they have not treated the United States fairly on trading.
“No, if they do that I would say that that would probably end a major trade relationship with the United States.”
Questioned on Boris’s comments at a private dinner two weeks ago that Mr Trump “would go in bloody hard” if he was negotiating Brexit, the President swiftly replied: “He is right.”
He added: “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me.
“She wanted to go a different route.
“I would actually say that she probably went the opposite way. And that is fine.
“She should negotiate the best way she knows how. But it is too bad what is going on.”
Asked if that meant he would be prepared to walk away from the negotiating table, Trump replied: “Oh, absolutely. I think what is going on is very unfortunate. Too long.
“You know, deals that take too long are never good ones. When a deal takes so long, they never work out very well.”
Mr Trump also went even further in questioning whether Mrs May’s new Brexit plan upholds the referendum result — which he claimed he predicted two years ago. He said: “The deal she is striking is a much ­different deal than the one the people voted on.
“It was not the deal that was in the referendum. I have just been hearing this over the last three days. I know they have had a lot of resignations. So a lot of people don’t like it.”
Despite the withering criticism of Mrs May’s Brexit strategy, Trump insisted he still thinks she is “a very good person”.
He also denied claims that she bores him.
Asked about a report in The Washington Post that he thinks of Mrs May as “a bossy schoolteacher”, Mr Trump said: “No, no, no, no. I never said anything bad about her.
“That is fake news. I think she is a nice person. I get along with her very nicely. The Washington Post is totally fake. They are just a lobbyist for Amazon.”
Recalling a visit to one of his luxury golf resorts in Scotland two years ago, Mr Trump said: “I predicted Brexit.
“I was cutting a ribbon for the opening of Turnberry — you know they totally did a whole renovation, it is beautiful — the day before the Brexit vote.
“I said, ‘Brexit will happen’. The vote is going to go positive, because people don’t want to be faced with the horrible immigration problems that they are being faced with in other countries.
“You remember that Barack Obama said that there is no way it is going to happen, and the UK will get to the back of the line if it ever does, right? I said Brexit will happen, and I was right.”
At a press conference in Brussels yesterday at the end of a summit of Nato leaders, Mr Trump again cast doubt on whether the PM’s soft Brexit plan was true to the referendum result.
He said: “I don’t know if that’s what they voted for.”
Downing Street was left shell-shocked by the criticism.
Mrs May rushed out her own statement to hit back at the President’s claim.
The PM insisted: “We have come to an agreement at the proposal we’re putting to the European Union which absolutely delivers on the Brexit people voted for.
They voted for us to take back control of our money, our law and our borders and that’s exactly what we will do.”
DONALD Trump praised Boris Johnson as a future Prime Minister.
The US President described the former Foreign Secretary as “a very talented guy”, adding: “I like him a lot.”
He said: “I have a lot of respect for Boris. He obviously likes me, and says very good things about me.
“I was very saddened to see he was leaving government and I hope he goes back in at some point. I think he is a great representative for your country.”
Asked if the ex-minister could be in No 10 one day, he replied: “Well I am not pitting one against the other. I am just saying I think he would be a great Prime Minister. I think he’s got what it takes.”
BRITAIN’S fury over the Salisbury nerve agent attack will not stop Donald Trump from bonding with Vladimir Putin next week.

The President flies from the UK to a summit with the Russian leader in Helsinki on Monday.
Quizzed on whether the Novichok attack made him reconsider, he said: “I think getting along with China, getting along with Russia, is a good thing.”
He suggested Mrs May’s plans for a soft Brexit was a hostile move towards the US because “the European Union is very bad to the United States on trade”.
Theresa May has urged Mr Trump to tackle Mr Putin on Novichok and other international outrages, including cyber attacks.
DONALD Trump today claims Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is responsible for the terror attacks on the British capital.
The Labour heavyweight has “done a very bad job on terrorism” by allowing so many migrants to come to the city, the President controversially argues.
The incendiary remarks are the most vicious in the White House boss’s long-running feud with London’s first Muslim mayor.
It began more than two years ago during Trump’s US presidential election campaign when Mr Khan attacked his vow to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering America.
Deepening the duo’s bitter war of words again, Mr Trump told The Sun in an exclusive interview ahead of his arrival in Britain: “I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.
“I look at cities in Europe, and I can be specific if you’d like. You have a mayor who has done a terrible job in London. He has done a terrible job.
“Take a look at the terrorism that is taking place. Look at what is going on in London. I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism.
“I think he has done a bad job on crime, if you look, all of the horrible things going on there, with all of the crime that is being brought in.”
London was hit by four terror attacks last year — including in Westminster, London Bridge, Parsons Green Tube station and Finsbury Park’s mosque.
Speaking to The Sun inside the US Embassy in Brussels, the US President also revealed he thinks Mr Khan has shown a lack of respect to America by attacking him personally.
Mr Trump added: “I think he has not been hospitable to a government that is very important. Now he might not like the current President, but I represent the United States.
“I also represent a lot of people in Europe because a lot of people from Europe are in the United States.”
Mr Trump also clashed with Mr Khan after last June’s van and knife rampage on London Bridge and Borough Market — mocking the mayor for his appeal to Londoners to stay calm.
The President tweeted: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”
Mr Khan described the tweet as “ill-informed”.
A source close to Mr Khan last night pointed out that the Home Office is in charge of immigration policy for London and the whole country and not those in City Hall.
Meanwhile, a Tory MP faced calls to be suspended yesterday after being accused of Islamophobia over a picture he tweeted of Mr Khan.
Michael Fabricant posted an image with the London Mayor’s head on an inflatable pig that is being mounted by a second pig along with Mr Trump laughing.
The tweet is thought to be in response to Mr Khan’s decision to allow a 20ft “Trump Baby” blimp to be flown over London during the President’s visit.
Mr Fabricant deleted the image and claimed he did not see that it featured Mr Khan’s face, saying: “My fault was not checking it closer on my iPhone first.”
But Labour’s Luke Pollard said: “Tweeting racism is not a good look for a Conservative MP when there is a real problem with Islamophobia in the Tory party.”
DONALD Trump says London is in the middle of a crimewave — and blasted Sadiq Khan for failing to tackle the problem.

He said the mayor has “done a bad job on crime”.
It follow suggestions by the President earlier this year that gangs in the capital were getting round our strict gun laws by stabbing people instead.
Mr Trump said: “Yes that’s right — they don’t have guns, they have knives.”
More than 50 Londoners have been killed with knives this year. Nine people have been shot.
In 2017, there were at least 115 murder probes with 80 deaths the result of stabbings.
ONE British hospital is so bad that it has “blood all over the walls”, the President has claimed.
Recalling an article he read recently, Mr Trump said: “They had a story in one of the major New York newspapers recently about your hospital. You know about that story? I’m sure you’ve seen it.
“What they say is, it is worse than any hospital they have ever seen in a war zone.
“It is right in the middle of London. I guess it used to be the ultimate and now there is, you know, there is blood all over the walls, all over the floors.
“It was a very major story and I have heard it from others, too, so I think it is very sad. Very sad.”
It is the second time the US leader has attacked the hospital, which he has not named.
It is believed to be the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London, where a record 702 stabbing victims were treated last year.
Trump dubbed it “a war zone” during a speech in May to the National Rifle Association about the spiralling danger posed by knife crime.
Leading Royal London trauma surgeon Dr Martin Griffiths later said he would be “happy to invite Mr Trump to my prestigious hospital”.

BRITAIN and the rest of Europe is “losing its culture” because of immigration, Donald Trump says.
The wave of migrants from the Middle East and Africa is permanently changing the continent for the worse, the 72 year-old president argued.
And he claimed the situation pains him personally as the son of two EU countries.
Mr Trump told The Sun: “I have great love for countries in Europe.
“Don’t forget, essentially I’m a product of the European Union, between Scotland and Germany.
“Right? My father Germany, my mother Scotland.
But in a controversial outburst, he added: “I think what has happened to Europe is a shame.
“Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame.
“I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.
“So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.
“I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.”
Mr Trump made tackling illegal US immigration one of the planks of his 2016 election campaign.
“MR President, these gentlemen are from The Sun,” an aide formally announced as we were ushered into the Trump inner sanctum.
Entering the court of an emperor, it pays to bring a gift.
We presented him with an England shirt when we interviewed him at the US Embassy in Brussels on Wednesday, ahead of the Nato summit.
“Oh wow. I love gifts,” he said, happily obliging our photographer Paul Edwards by holding the personalised top up with a trademark grin.
“You don’t hear the word England as much as you should,” he continued.
“I think England is a beautiful name.”
Two things about him struck me most.
First, Trump has total power. Nobody on his White House staff tells him what to say, or questions him when he says it.
When Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced our scheduled ten-minute slot was almost up, the President swiftly interjected: “No, give them a little bit more.”
We stayed for 28 minutes, with no more prompts to go.
Secondly, he is a very sensitive man, constantly saying how much various people like him. It clearly pains him today that he is not being welcomed to Britain as a hero and our most important ally.
On our way out, we met Trump’s Chief of Staff John Kelly. The former US Marine Corps general took me aside and said: “I read The Sun every day. I love Britain.”
DONALD Trump has admitted he “feels unwelcome” in London as a major ­security operation was launched for his arrival in the UK yesterday.
But the tycoon insists real British people “love the President of the United States”.
Mr Trump told The Sun he will be largely staying away from the capital to avoid huge street protests of up to 200,000 today.
But he blamed them on politicians — singling out his nemesis, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.
Revealing he has been told of the 20ft “Trump Baby” blimp that will be flown above Parliament Square today, he said: “I guess when they put out blimps to make me feel unwelcome, no reason for me to go to London.
“I used to love London as a city. I haven’t been there in a long time. But when they make you feel unwelcome, why would I stay there?
“And when I say that I am talking about government because the ­people of the UK agree with me.”
Mr Trump let his true feelings slip during an exclusive interview with The Sun hours before Air Force One touched down at Stansted Airport at 2pm yesterday.
Of his four-day visit, he added: “Many people are delighted. I get thousands of notifications from people in the UK that they love the President of the United States.”
He described a West London pub being renamed The Trump Arms for the duration of the trip as “wonderful”, adding: “I love those people. Those are my people.”
Mr Trump added: “You know, a poll just came out that I am the most popular person in the history of the Republican Party — 92 per cent. Beating Lincoln. I beat our Honest Abe.
“But the people of the UK, and I’ll bet if you had an honest poll, I’d be very strong. They want the same thing I want. I love the UK.”
His trip is a lower key working visit rather than the full state visit that the Queen invited him on 18 months ago.
Asked why he has failed to visit Britain as President until now, Mr Trump said: “Well, you know the United States has been very busy. We have been doing very well.”
Theresa May hosted a dinner with 150 business bosses at Winston Churchill’s birthplace Blenheim Palace for Mr Trump last night.
The Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards’ bands opened the event with a military ceremony in the Great Court.
Mr Trump and wife Melania are travelling everywhere in his Marine One helicopter to avoid demonstrations — including in and out of last night’s accommodation at the US Ambassador’s residence, Winfield House in Regents Park.
Protesters outside mounted a “Keep Trump Awake” rally — banging pots, pans and drums and blowing vuvuzelas from 8pm.
But when an estimated 200,000 protesters meet for the “Together Against Trump March” in central London at 2pm today, he will be at Chequers for talks with Mrs May.
The Trumps then fly to Scotland to spend the weekend at his golf resorts in Turnberry and Aberdeen.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attacked Mrs May for inviting Mr Trump to Britain while “his dangerous and inhumane policies are putting the lives and wellbeing of millions of people at risk”.
DONALD Trump described the Queen as “a tremendous woman” ahead of their first meeting today.

The US President and wife Melania were due to have tea with the 92-year-old monarch at Windsor Castle this afternoon.
He told The Sun he was not nervous about it — but was in awe of Her Majesty’s flawless public service.
Mr Trump said: “She is a tremendous woman. I really look forward to meeting her. I think she represents her country so well.
“If you think of it, for so many years she has represented her country, she has really never made a mistake. You don’t see, like, anything embarrassing. She is just an incredible woman.
“My wife is a tremendous fan of hers. She has got a great and beautiful grace about her.”
Mr Trump’s Scottish-born mum Mary was an obsessive fan of the Queen, he said.
He added: “My mother loved the Queen. Any time the Queen was on television, my mother wanted to watch it.” Her Majesty will meet Mr Trump and the First Lady at the dais in the Quadrangle of the historic royal residence in Berkshire.
A guard of honour, comprised of the Coldstream Guards, will give a royal salute and US anthem The Star-Spangled Banner will be played.
Mr Trump and the Queen will then inspect the guard of honour and watch the soldiers march past.
Afterwards, The President and First Lady will join the Queen for tea inside the castle.
Her Majesty has met with previous White House couples including Barack and Michelle Obama, George W and Laura Bush, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
THERESA May must listen to her generals and hike defence spending to keep the Special Relationship intact, said Mr Trump.
His Secretary of Defense asked the UK Government to go significantly above Nato’s minimum target of 2 per cent of GDP in funding for its military as the US’s major ally.
The President told The Sun he agrees with Jim Mattis “100 per cent”.
He added: “Two per cent isn’t enough. The US pays 4.2 per cent of a much larger GDP.
“I’m very impressed that Jim sent that letter. I think that is an exact right letter.”
Mr Trump defended himself against allies’ charges of blackmail over his demand for rapid rises in all 29 Nato member states’ defence budgets.
Asked if he was a bully, he said: “I’ll tell you what, we’ve had 40 years of presidents saying the same thing in a nicer way and they got nothing, so call it what you want.
“They’re taking ad­vantage of the United States. I’m not going to let it happen.”
Mr Trump caused panic by implying he could pull the US out of Nato if other countries did not hike their contributions.
He was asked at a Brussels press conference if he had threatened to withdraw and replied: “I told people I’d be very unhappy if they didn’t up their commitment. Yesterday I let them know I was extremely unhappy.”
He insisted nations had finally agreed to increase expenditure, adding: “Everyone in the room thanked me.”
But French President Emmanuel Macron de­nied Nato allies had agreed a spending rise.
The US wants its Nato allies to share more of the financial burden on defence.
In 2014 Nato nations committed to moves toward reaching the 2 per cent of GDP figure within 10 years.
Nato estimated just 15 members will meet the aim by 2024 based on current trends.
THE £30million security operation to support Donald Trump’s visit was put to the test soon after he arrived when demonstrators gathered where he was staying.

Mr Trump’s plane Air Force One touched down at Stansted Airport in Essex before a helicopter took him and First Lady Melania to the US ambassador’s residence, Winfield House, in London’s Regent’s Park.
Around 400 protesters were gathered there to stage a Wall of Noise demo, banging pots and pans and blowing whistles.
The property had been surrounded by a specially built 9ft-high steel fence with concrete bollards.
Turnstiles and metal detectors were at the building’s entrances, guarded by US Secret Service agents all wearing earpieces and shades.
Cops were in the minaret of the nearby Regent’s Park mosque overlooking the residence, while armed officers patrolled its perimeter.
And US agents on golf buggies patrolled the park as amazed tourists and office workers looked on.
Last night, Mr Trump and Melania flew in the President’s Marine One helicopter for a black tie dinner hosted by PM Theresa May and hubby Philip at Winston Churchill’s Oxfordshire birthplace Blenheim Palace.
Meanwhile, as many as 100,000 are expected to gather in central London in a protest today called by organisers Together Against Trump.
But with around 10,000 cops on duty in an operation codenamed Manifold, tight security means he and Melania will be kept well away from any demonstrators.
Mr Trump had said he was “fine” with planned protests. He said: “I think they like me a lot in the UK.”
THE UK-US trade deal is dead. Nato is a rip-off, the NHS is a shambles and ­London’s Mayor is terrible. Agree with him or not, Donald Trump at least speaks plainly and means it.

We wish we could say the same of our Government.
Theresa May insists her Brexit “red lines” will all be fulfilled. That may even be technically true. But she is in danger of blurring each one so much that their true meaning is lost.
Take the proposed new trade deals with giant non-EU economies which she has made pivotal to our future.
Trump tells The Sun that Mrs May has already killed the biggest, with America, by tying us to EU rules on food and farming. Those same restrictions will make it extremely hard to do ANY deals.
That’s madness. And it is disingenuous to talk up Britain repeatedly as an independent global trading power while knowingly binding our hands.
No10 claims we are taking back control of our laws too. But the ECJ will still in effect have a final say if we are bound to EU rules.
Mrs May says free movement will end. But her proposed immigration policy still doesn’t seem to give us complete control over EU migrants.
How about our payments to Brussels? They will no longer be “vast”, she says.
OK. But will they still be “big”?
Even if the EU agrees to all this, Tory backbench Brexiteers say they’ll vote it down in the Commons.
We have every sympathy. But where will that leave us? It’s the only plan on offer. The PM won’t harden it up. And Parliament won’t sanction “no deal”.
Our future is in the balance here. The Cabinet cannot surely now be thinking about taking summer holidays. Time is running out — and it’s stalemate.
Only one thing is making progress . . . Tory poll numbers, slowly heading south.
Mr Tusk said the 'Canada-style' agreement is an unprecedented offer in trade an security and a 'true sign of respect'
BRUSSELS boss Donald Tusk last night sided with hard Brexiteers as he piled more pressure on Theresa May to chuck Chequers in favour of a Canada-style deal.
In a stark message the EU Council chief warned time was running out fast to strike an agreement and the PM needed to “get down to business”.
He said Britain should accept the bloc’s offer of an unprecedented trade and security pact, calling it a “true sign of respect”.
His remarks were met with jubilation by eurosceptics including ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said they proved the PM’s soft Brexit plan was now a dead duck.
The Polish eurocrat told Mrs May she has just two weeks to seal an exit package after holding talks with Irish leader Leo Varadkar in Brussels yesterday.
He said: “From the very beginning, the EU offer has been not just a Canada deal, but a Canada plus plus plus deal.
“Much further-reaching on trade, on internal security and on foreign policy cooperation.
“This is a true measure of respect.
And this offer remains in place.
The EU is serious about getting the best possible deal.”
Mr Tusk said the EU needs to see “maximum progress” at a summit starting on October 17 if the two sides are to reach a deal.
He added: “Now the Tory party conference is over we should get down to business.”
A key stumbling bloc to a Canada-style deal is the requirement the UK accepts a backstop that carves Northern Ireland out of its customs and regulatory sphere.
But senior eurosceptics still leapt on the EU chief’s remarks and warned Mrs May she will end up with no deal at all if she perseveres with Chequers.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said: “Tusk’s Canada plus plus plus offer shows there is a superb way forward that can solve the Irish border problem and deliver a free trade based partnership that works well for both sides of the Channel - as I set out last week in my plan for a better Brexit.”
Ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis added that it showed Downing Street was “wrong” to claim there is “no alternative to Chequers”.
Referring to Mr Tusk, ex Ukip leader Nigel Farage implored the PM: “Please Mrs May, bite his hand off.”
EU officials told The Sun that Mrs May will be given the chance to deliver a make-or-break pitch to leaders before they discuss Brexit over dinner.
Speaking alongside the Council chief, Irish PM Leo Varadkar called for “a trading relationship with the UK after Brexit that’s as close as possible”.
But just hours after his meeting with Mr Tusk the Irish PM appeared to pour cold water on the idea of a Canada-style trade deal.
He said: “I don’t know what Canada plus plus plus means.
It’s just a concept at this stage.
And we’re not surprised. This patronising plonker misses no opportunity to insult our Prime Minister.
He knows full well that we will not accept a deal which splits up the UK.
And he also knows his comments yesterday make life more difficult for Mrs May — who he pretends to “respect”.
And spare us the faux outrage about Jeremy Hunt’s comments. At least the Foreign Secretary is elected by voters, not bureaucrats.
Tusk is a walking and talking reminder that we’re better off out.
“There is a possibility that an agreement of that nature, which would be unique, will take more than the transition period to do.”
Mr Varadkar also demanded that Britain comes up with a new backstop proposal “well in advance” of the next Council summit.
And he dismissed a key possible compromise that Mrs May could offer to keep the whole of the UK in the customs union as a fallback option.

Mr Tusk said the 'Canada-style' agreement is an unprecedented offer in trade an security and a 'true sign of respect'
BRUSSELS boss Donald Tusk last night sided with hard Brexiteers as he piled more pressure on Theresa May to chuck Chequers in favour of a Canada-style deal.
In a stark message the EU Council chief warned time was running out fast to strike an agreement and the PM needed to “get down to business”.
He said Britain should accept the bloc’s offer of an unprecedented trade and security pact, calling it a “true sign of respect”.
His remarks were met with jubilation by eurosceptics including ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who said they proved the PM’s soft Brexit plan was now a dead duck.
The Polish eurocrat told Mrs May she has just two weeks to seal an exit package after holding talks with Irish leader Leo Varadkar in Brussels yesterday.
He said: “From the very beginning, the EU offer has been not just a Canada deal, but a Canada plus plus plus deal.
“Much further-reaching on trade, on internal security and on foreign policy cooperation.
“This is a true measure of respect.
And this offer remains in place.
The EU is serious about getting the best possible deal.”
Mr Tusk said the EU needs to see “maximum progress” at a summit starting on October 17 if the two sides are to reach a deal.
He added: “Now the Tory party conference is over we should get down to business.”
A key stumbling bloc to a Canada-style deal is the requirement the UK accepts a backstop that carves Northern Ireland out of its customs and regulatory sphere.
But senior eurosceptics still leapt on the EU chief’s remarks and warned Mrs May she will end up with no deal at all if she perseveres with Chequers.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson said: “Tusk’s Canada plus plus plus offer shows there is a superb way forward that can solve the Irish border problem and deliver a free trade based partnership that works well for both sides of the Channel - as I set out last week in my plan for a better Brexit.”
Ex-Brexit Secretary David Davis added that it showed Downing Street was “wrong” to claim there is “no alternative to Chequers”.
Referring to Mr Tusk, ex Ukip leader Nigel Farage implored the PM: “Please Mrs May, bite his hand off.”
EU officials told The Sun that Mrs May will be given the chance to deliver a make-or-break pitch to leaders before they discuss Brexit over dinner.
Speaking alongside the Council chief, Irish PM Leo Varadkar called for “a trading relationship with the UK after Brexit that’s as close as possible”.
But just hours after his meeting with Mr Tusk the Irish PM appeared to pour cold water on the idea of a Canada-style trade deal.
He said: “I don’t know what Canada plus plus plus means.
It’s just a concept at this stage.
And we’re not surprised. This patronising plonker misses no opportunity to insult our Prime Minister.
He knows full well that we will not accept a deal which splits up the UK.
And he also knows his comments yesterday make life more difficult for Mrs May — who he pretends to “respect”.
And spare us the faux outrage about Jeremy Hunt’s comments. At least the Foreign Secretary is elected by voters, not bureaucrats.
Tusk is a walking and talking reminder that we’re better off out.
“There is a possibility that an agreement of that nature, which would be unique, will take more than the transition period to do.”
Mr Varadkar also demanded that Britain comes up with a new backstop proposal “well in advance” of the next Council summit.
And he dismissed a key possible compromise that Mrs May could offer to keep the whole of the UK in the customs union as a fallback option.

Ms Leadsom questioned the customs fudge in talks with pro-Brexit ministers
COMMONS Leader Andrea Leadsom has accused Europhile Cabinet colleagues of living in a “parallel universe” to the Tory party over Brexit.
She hit out after warnings from Tory chiefs that a deal with Labour is the only way of getting a deal through Parliament.
Chief whip Julian Smith told Cabinet on Tuesday that Ministers may have to accept a customs fudge with Labour.
Ms Leadsom questioned the idea at a meeting of the so-called ‘Pizza Club’ of Brexit-backing Ministers later that night.
One insider said: “She couldn’t believe it and wondered what parallel universe the Cabinet are living in to the rest of the party – and the country.”
The revelation came as Rory Stewart, the new International Aid Secretary, toasted his appointment to Cabinet by saying the Government “has to reach out to Labour”.
He told the BBC: “We need a Brexit deal and we’re not getting it through the Conservative side.”
Separately Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative Leader, said the PM had to be willing to compromise on her Brexit deal.
Speaking on the eve of a speech by Theresa May to the Scottish Tory conference, Ms Davidson said: “There are conversations going on between Labour and the Conservatives in London.
"The mood music that is coming out of that room is that there may well be a breakthrough this week and I really want to see it.
“My view through all of this is that we’re going to have to meet somewhere in the middle – between the people who want to overturn the referendum and re-run it and those who want a No Deal Brexit.”
 
Ms Leadsom questioned the customs fudge in talks with pro-Brexit ministers
COMMONS Leader Andrea Leadsom has accused Europhile Cabinet colleagues of living in a “parallel universe” to the Tory party over Brexit.
She hit out after warnings from Tory chiefs that a deal with Labour is the only way of getting a deal through Parliament.
Chief whip Julian Smith told Cabinet on Tuesday that Ministers may have to accept a customs fudge with Labour.
Ms Leadsom questioned the idea at a meeting of the so-called ‘Pizza Club’ of Brexit-backing Ministers later that night.
One insider said: “She couldn’t believe it and wondered what parallel universe the Cabinet are living in to the rest of the party – and the country.”
The revelation came as Rory Stewart, the new International Aid Secretary, toasted his appointment to Cabinet by saying the Government “has to reach out to Labour”.
He told the BBC: “We need a Brexit deal and we’re not getting it through the Conservative side.”
Separately Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative Leader, said the PM had to be willing to compromise on her Brexit deal.
Speaking on the eve of a speech by Theresa May to the Scottish Tory conference, Ms Davidson said: “There are conversations going on between Labour and the Conservatives in London.
"The mood music that is coming out of that room is that there may well be a breakthrough this week and I really want to see it.
“My view through all of this is that we’re going to have to meet somewhere in the middle – between the people who want to overturn the referendum and re-run it and those who want a No Deal Brexit.”
 
David Davis has warned the Tories will suffer a 1997-style defeat if the UK is still under the backstop at the time of the next election
DAVID DAVIS has warned the Brexit inner Cabinet that if the UK is still “suffering” under the backstop at the time of the next election, then the Tories will suffer a 1997-style defeat.
The Brexit Secretary argued passionately that this risk meant  the UK had to keep control of the backstop — which would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU and having to follow all of Brussels’ rules on goods. It had to be able to choose when to end it.
But Davis lost this argument with the Prime Minister.
The proposal that the UK sent to the European Commission this week only indicates when the UK would like the backstop to end.
However, No10 has assured Brexiteer Cabinet Ministers that the UK will be out from under the yoke by the time of the next election in 2022.
I am told  Theresa May is hopeful  the new customs arrangement can be nailed down by the end of the transition in 2020, and by 2021 at the latest.
But this seems massively over-optimistic.
HMRC has already warned it will take three to five years to implement new customs arrangements — and when was the last time you heard of a government project being delivered early?
Equally, will the EU — which Theresa May privately admits wants to keep the UK in a customs union — rush to sign off on these arrangements?
But if this country is still stuck in the backstop at the time of the next election, Davis is surely right that the Tories will pay a heavy electoral price.
Those voters who are backing them to deliver Brexit will feel bitterly let down.
This week, the Government came far closer than most people realise to collapsing.  Both David Davis and Boris Johnson are becoming increasingly angry at No10’s approach to Brexit.
The two, who have previously not been close, are now coordinating. They both pushed back heavily against Mrs May’s initial backstop proposal.
One close friend of the Brexit Secretary tells me  “the whole thing is shambolic” and that “he would go, if he thought it was the right thing to do”.
I’m told  the eventual language of the backstop proposal was something  Davis’s office had suggested earlier in the week — only to have it rejected.
I understand  he and other Brexiteer Cabinet ministers have also been given assurances that there will  be an end to  attempts to bounce them into accepting things by only circulating proposals shortly before meetings.
But in a sign of the tensions in the Cabinet, Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned the Brexit inner Cabinet that the consequences of a “car crash” at the EU June summit would be huge and “would put the economy in danger”.
He said  the UK must show the EU  there had been a “significant shift” in our position.
But EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s objection to the UK’s backstop proposal, saying it must only apply to Northern Ireland, is a reminder of how difficult doing any kind of deal with the EU will be.
Barnier is determined to keep on salami-slicing the UK position until this country is left with almost none of the benefits of Brexit.
This is why the Government should have rigorously prepared for no deal.
Its failure to do so has left the UK in a dangerously weak negotiating position.
THERESA MAY has told the Brexit inner Cabinet that the EU won’t engage properly with any of the UK’s customs proposals until they see “that Parliament would not support the UK staying in a customs union”.
This is the backdrop to the House of Commons votes on the EU withdrawal bill on Tuesday and Wednesday.
If the Government can’t overturn the House of Lords’ amendments that seek to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU and try to take no deal off the table, Britain’s negotiating position will be weakened still further.
In these circumstances, the EU will offer Britain the most unappealing choice of all: “No deal” or a customs union with membership of the European Economic Area, an arrangement that would effectively make us a non-voting member of the EU.
The Government, however, is confident of winning next week’s vote on the customs union.
The promise to bring the trade bill back before the summer recess, which would allow MPs to have their say on this matter again, appears to have been enough to win round several of the rebels. One source close to the chief whip tells me:  “A lot of the heat has gone out of it.”
The Government is also confident of knocking back the so-called “meaningful vote” amendment thanks to Labour abstentions.
Even if the Government wins all the contested votes next week, though, it won’t be until the trade bill comes through without a customs union amendment that the EU will start to engage properly with the UK’s proposals.
 
Well, he has been telling colleagues  it all depends on his relations with the Prime Minister and whether they offer him Washington or not. So is it DD for DC? After 2019, will he head across the pond and become British Ambassador to the United States?
Well, friends say he was joking rather than being serious and that  he has  also pointed out that  Mrs Davis would prefer Bridgetown, Barbados,  or Kingston, Jamaica.
But as the saying has it, there’s many a true word spoken in jest.
If Davis stays on terms with the Prime Minister he may well end up as our man in Washington.
DONALD TRUMP’S decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium from Canada and the EU is dominating this weekend’s G7 summit.
At Cabinet this week, Chancellor Philip Hammond told ministers that when he had asked his US opposite number Steve Mnuchin what Trump was trying to achieve with these tariffs, he had been “completely unable to respond”.
But the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson had a clear explanation for what Trump was up to.
He said  the real issue was the President’s annoyance with Germany.
He said Trump thought the Germans didn’t pull their weight on defence spending, they spend way less on their military than the Nato minimum of two  per cent of GDP, and had an unfair advantage on cars. He warned that if this wasn’t resolved, Trump’s anger about low levels of defence spending could spread to other European countries.
Theresa May clearly shares some of this analysis. She warned ministers  they needed to be very careful about trans-Atlantic relations in the run-up to the Nato summit next month.
She pointed out that while Britain had persuaded Trump to make a statement of support for the alliance early on in his presidency, he was still complaining bitterly  about how other members of Nato were not doing their bit.
Trump might be wrong on tariffs. But he is right that European countries can’t keep on expecting America to bear nearly  all the cost of defending them.
 James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator
David Davis has warned the Tories will suffer a 1997-style defeat if the UK is still under the backstop at the time of the next election
DAVID DAVIS has warned the Brexit inner Cabinet that if the UK is still “suffering” under the backstop at the time of the next election, then the Tories will suffer a 1997-style defeat.
The Brexit Secretary argued passionately that this risk meant  the UK had to keep control of the backstop — which would keep the UK in a customs union with the EU and having to follow all of Brussels’ rules on goods. It had to be able to choose when to end it.
But Davis lost this argument with the Prime Minister.
The proposal that the UK sent to the European Commission this week only indicates when the UK would like the backstop to end.
However, No10 has assured Brexiteer Cabinet Ministers that the UK will be out from under the yoke by the time of the next election in 2022.
I am told  Theresa May is hopeful  the new customs arrangement can be nailed down by the end of the transition in 2020, and by 2021 at the latest.
But this seems massively over-optimistic.
HMRC has already warned it will take three to five years to implement new customs arrangements — and when was the last time you heard of a government project being delivered early?
Equally, will the EU — which Theresa May privately admits wants to keep the UK in a customs union — rush to sign off on these arrangements?
But if this country is still stuck in the backstop at the time of the next election, Davis is surely right that the Tories will pay a heavy electoral price.
Those voters who are backing them to deliver Brexit will feel bitterly let down.
This week, the Government came far closer than most people realise to collapsing.  Both David Davis and Boris Johnson are becoming increasingly angry at No10’s approach to Brexit.
The two, who have previously not been close, are now coordinating. They both pushed back heavily against Mrs May’s initial backstop proposal.
One close friend of the Brexit Secretary tells me  “the whole thing is shambolic” and that “he would go, if he thought it was the right thing to do”.
I’m told  the eventual language of the backstop proposal was something  Davis’s office had suggested earlier in the week — only to have it rejected.
I understand  he and other Brexiteer Cabinet ministers have also been given assurances that there will  be an end to  attempts to bounce them into accepting things by only circulating proposals shortly before meetings.
But in a sign of the tensions in the Cabinet, Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned the Brexit inner Cabinet that the consequences of a “car crash” at the EU June summit would be huge and “would put the economy in danger”.
He said  the UK must show the EU  there had been a “significant shift” in our position.
But EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s objection to the UK’s backstop proposal, saying it must only apply to Northern Ireland, is a reminder of how difficult doing any kind of deal with the EU will be.
Barnier is determined to keep on salami-slicing the UK position until this country is left with almost none of the benefits of Brexit.
This is why the Government should have rigorously prepared for no deal.
Its failure to do so has left the UK in a dangerously weak negotiating position.
THERESA MAY has told the Brexit inner Cabinet that the EU won’t engage properly with any of the UK’s customs proposals until they see “that Parliament would not support the UK staying in a customs union”.
This is the backdrop to the House of Commons votes on the EU withdrawal bill on Tuesday and Wednesday.
If the Government can’t overturn the House of Lords’ amendments that seek to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU and try to take no deal off the table, Britain’s negotiating position will be weakened still further.
In these circumstances, the EU will offer Britain the most unappealing choice of all: “No deal” or a customs union with membership of the European Economic Area, an arrangement that would effectively make us a non-voting member of the EU.
The Government, however, is confident of winning next week’s vote on the customs union.
The promise to bring the trade bill back before the summer recess, which would allow MPs to have their say on this matter again, appears to have been enough to win round several of the rebels. One source close to the chief whip tells me:  “A lot of the heat has gone out of it.”
The Government is also confident of knocking back the so-called “meaningful vote” amendment thanks to Labour abstentions.
Even if the Government wins all the contested votes next week, though, it won’t be until the trade bill comes through without a customs union amendment that the EU will start to engage properly with the UK’s proposals.
 
Well, he has been telling colleagues  it all depends on his relations with the Prime Minister and whether they offer him Washington or not. So is it DD for DC? After 2019, will he head across the pond and become British Ambassador to the United States?
Well, friends say he was joking rather than being serious and that  he has  also pointed out that  Mrs Davis would prefer Bridgetown, Barbados,  or Kingston, Jamaica.
But as the saying has it, there’s many a true word spoken in jest.
If Davis stays on terms with the Prime Minister he may well end up as our man in Washington.
DONALD TRUMP’S decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium from Canada and the EU is dominating this weekend’s G7 summit.
At Cabinet this week, Chancellor Philip Hammond told ministers that when he had asked his US opposite number Steve Mnuchin what Trump was trying to achieve with these tariffs, he had been “completely unable to respond”.
But the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson had a clear explanation for what Trump was up to.
He said  the real issue was the President’s annoyance with Germany.
He said Trump thought the Germans didn’t pull their weight on defence spending, they spend way less on their military than the Nato minimum of two  per cent of GDP, and had an unfair advantage on cars. He warned that if this wasn’t resolved, Trump’s anger about low levels of defence spending could spread to other European countries.
Theresa May clearly shares some of this analysis. She warned ministers  they needed to be very careful about trans-Atlantic relations in the run-up to the Nato summit next month.
She pointed out that while Britain had persuaded Trump to make a statement of support for the alliance early on in his presidency, he was still complaining bitterly  about how other members of Nato were not doing their bit.
Trump might be wrong on tariffs. But he is right that European countries can’t keep on expecting America to bear nearly  all the cost of defending them.
 James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator
SPEAKER John Bercow has been accused of running a “majoritarian dictatorship" in the House of Commons after a scathing attack on Boris Johnson.
The EU-loving Remainer sparked a furious backlash from MPs and voters after comparing the PM to a bank robber for refusing to delay Brexit again.
Bercow, 56, has promised to use "creativity" in Parliament to stop a No Deal Brexit - but was today blasted for his "biased" views.
Senior Tory Sir Bernard Jenkin warned the Speaker - who is meant to be unbiased - he had become "irretrievably politicised and radicalised."
Taking aim at the outgoing Remainer, who is quitting after 10 years on October 31, he proposed a radical shake-up in the Commons to limit the Speaker's powers.
He said the current position of Speaker allowed "unregulated and untrammelled power".
And he blasted Bercow for running "a kind of majoritarian dictatorship position."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Tory MP Sir Bernard also accused him of launching a "personal attack" on the Prime Minister - which would have been "unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago."
Conservative MP Michael Fabricant also weighed in on Twitter, blasting: "His [Bercow's] bias has brought the office of Speaker into disrepute."
One frustrated voter said the Speaker had "bent every possible constitutional rule in the book" to get Brexit stopped with "gusto".
The growing outrage against Bercow comes amid his escalating war with No.10, where he has warned the PM against disobeying the law by not asking for a Brexit delay.
MPs passed legislation on September 2 making a "No Deal" exit from the EU illegal.
Addressing the suggestion Boris Johnson would simply "ignore" the bill, Bercow said extra "procedural creativity" in Parliament would be used to thwart any attempt to leave the EU without a deal on October 31.
He said MPs must back the method of Britain's exit.
In a speech in London on Wednesday, Bercow compared any attempt to shun the law over the extension with a bank robber excusing their crime by giving their loot to charity.
He said: "It would be the most terrible example to set to the rest of society.
"One should no more refuse to request an extension of Article 50 because of what one might regard as the noble end of departing from the EU as soon as possible, than one could possibly excuse robbing a bank on the basis that the cash stolen would be donated to a charitable cause immediately afterwards."
If the Government comes close to disobeying the Act, the MP said that Parliament "would want to cut off such a possibility and do so forcefully".
"If that demands additional procedural creativity in order to come to pass, it is a racing certainty that this will happen, and that neither the limitations of the existing rule book nor the ticking of the clock will stop it doing so."
Bercow, accused of dropping water in his eyes during a teary resignation speech to MPs, has proved a stubborn thorn in the side of Brexiteers.
He has sparked fury from the Commons and voters who believe he has constantly tired to block our exit from the bloc.
His wife even has a 'B*****ks to Brexit' sticker on her car.
But his behaviour has seen him become the first Commons Speaker to have his peerage blocked in 230 years.
Ministers are said to have moved to punish him for “bias” during Brexit debates.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
SPEAKER John Bercow has been accused of running a “majoritarian dictatorship" in the House of Commons after a scathing attack on Boris Johnson.
The EU-loving Remainer sparked a furious backlash from MPs and voters after comparing the PM to a bank robber for refusing to delay Brexit again.
Bercow, 56, has promised to use "creativity" in Parliament to stop a No Deal Brexit - but was today blasted for his "biased" views.
Senior Tory Sir Bernard Jenkin warned the Speaker - who is meant to be unbiased - he had become "irretrievably politicised and radicalised."
Taking aim at the outgoing Remainer, who is quitting after 10 years on October 31, he proposed a radical shake-up in the Commons to limit the Speaker's powers.
He said the current position of Speaker allowed "unregulated and untrammelled power".
And he blasted Bercow for running "a kind of majoritarian dictatorship position."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Tory MP Sir Bernard also accused him of launching a "personal attack" on the Prime Minister - which would have been "unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago."
Conservative MP Michael Fabricant also weighed in on Twitter, blasting: "His [Bercow's] bias has brought the office of Speaker into disrepute."
One frustrated voter said the Speaker had "bent every possible constitutional rule in the book" to get Brexit stopped with "gusto".
The growing outrage against Bercow comes amid his escalating war with No.10, where he has warned the PM against disobeying the law by not asking for a Brexit delay.
MPs passed legislation on September 2 making a "No Deal" exit from the EU illegal.
Addressing the suggestion Boris Johnson would simply "ignore" the bill, Bercow said extra "procedural creativity" in Parliament would be used to thwart any attempt to leave the EU without a deal on October 31.
He said MPs must back the method of Britain's exit.
In a speech in London on Wednesday, Bercow compared any attempt to shun the law over the extension with a bank robber excusing their crime by giving their loot to charity.
He said: "It would be the most terrible example to set to the rest of society.
"One should no more refuse to request an extension of Article 50 because of what one might regard as the noble end of departing from the EU as soon as possible, than one could possibly excuse robbing a bank on the basis that the cash stolen would be donated to a charitable cause immediately afterwards."
If the Government comes close to disobeying the Act, the MP said that Parliament "would want to cut off such a possibility and do so forcefully".
"If that demands additional procedural creativity in order to come to pass, it is a racing certainty that this will happen, and that neither the limitations of the existing rule book nor the ticking of the clock will stop it doing so."
Bercow, accused of dropping water in his eyes during a teary resignation speech to MPs, has proved a stubborn thorn in the side of Brexiteers.
He has sparked fury from the Commons and voters who believe he has constantly tired to block our exit from the bloc.
His wife even has a 'B*****ks to Brexit' sticker on her car.
But his behaviour has seen him become the first Commons Speaker to have his peerage blocked in 230 years.
Ministers are said to have moved to punish him for “bias” during Brexit debates.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
BRITAIN'S new Foreign Secretary says he is to step up trade negotiations with the US - in a clear message to the EU.
Dominic Raab is to fly to Washington in the coming weeks to "pave" the way for a future trade deal with President Donald Trump.
In an interview with the Times, he said: "We want a strong relationship with our European friends and partners.. but we also want to raise our horizons.
"Brussels isn't the only game in town."
Boris Johnson's new deputy then revealed he had already spoken to Mike Pompeo, who is the US Secretary of State.
The two world leaders used their first phone call to discuss the "unparalleled" opportunities Brexit will bring to the Special Relationship.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: "This evening the Prime Minister spoke to President Trump, who congratulated him on his new role.
"They discussed the important relationship between our countries and the President’s successful State Visit to the UK last month.
"They agreed that Brexit offers an unparalleled opportunity to strengthen the economic partnership between the UK and United States.
"The leaders both expressed their commitment to delivering an ambitious free trade agreement and to starting negotiations as soon as possible after the UK leaves the EU.
"The Prime Minister and the President also discussed the current tensions with Iran and the need to work together and with partners to address their destabilising behaviour in the Gulf.
"They ended by looking forward to seeing each other at the G7 Summit in Biarritz next month."
The pair have met previously when Boris was Foreign Secretary, and the pair have chatted on the phone multiple times in the last month.
It's expected that the new PM will make visiting his friend in the US one of his top priorities to kick-start a bumper trade deal for after we leave the EU.
The call comes after US Ambassador Woody Johnson said Trump and Johnson will have a "sensational" relationship.
He said: "The new relationship between your new Prime Minister and our President... it's going to be sensational. He shows a lot of leadership, it's very positive.
"Their leadership has a lot in common. Both have their own style but similarities - a clear vision of what they want to accomplish."
Britain will be at the "front of the line" for a new trade deal with the US after we officially leave the EU, he added.
"The President is going to try and move the ball forwards - the UK is our most important ally in security and prosperity, he knows that."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
BRITAIN'S new Foreign Secretary says he is to step up trade negotiations with the US - in a clear message to the EU.
Dominic Raab is to fly to Washington in the coming weeks to "pave" the way for a future trade deal with President Donald Trump.
In an interview with the Times, he said: "We want a strong relationship with our European friends and partners.. but we also want to raise our horizons.
"Brussels isn't the only game in town."
Boris Johnson's new deputy then revealed he had already spoken to Mike Pompeo, who is the US Secretary of State.
The two world leaders used their first phone call to discuss the "unparalleled" opportunities Brexit will bring to the Special Relationship.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: "This evening the Prime Minister spoke to President Trump, who congratulated him on his new role.
"They discussed the important relationship between our countries and the President’s successful State Visit to the UK last month.
"They agreed that Brexit offers an unparalleled opportunity to strengthen the economic partnership between the UK and United States.
"The leaders both expressed their commitment to delivering an ambitious free trade agreement and to starting negotiations as soon as possible after the UK leaves the EU.
"The Prime Minister and the President also discussed the current tensions with Iran and the need to work together and with partners to address their destabilising behaviour in the Gulf.
"They ended by looking forward to seeing each other at the G7 Summit in Biarritz next month."
The pair have met previously when Boris was Foreign Secretary, and the pair have chatted on the phone multiple times in the last month.
It's expected that the new PM will make visiting his friend in the US one of his top priorities to kick-start a bumper trade deal for after we leave the EU.
The call comes after US Ambassador Woody Johnson said Trump and Johnson will have a "sensational" relationship.
He said: "The new relationship between your new Prime Minister and our President... it's going to be sensational. He shows a lot of leadership, it's very positive.
"Their leadership has a lot in common. Both have their own style but similarities - a clear vision of what they want to accomplish."
Britain will be at the "front of the line" for a new trade deal with the US after we officially leave the EU, he added.
"The President is going to try and move the ball forwards - the UK is our most important ally in security and prosperity, he knows that."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. You can WhatsApp us on 07810 791 502. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.
Jeremy Hunt defended the PM claiming the only reason Brexit talks are in trouble is that she is so tough
THERESA May faces a rebellion from furious Tory MPs after her "capitulation" to Brussels over the Brexit transition period.
Brexiteers called on the PM to "get some steel" - and warned they will block any attempt to pay in more to the EU's budget.
But Mrs May's ally Jeremy Hunt stood up for her - claiming the only reason Brexit talks are in trouble is because of her firm negotiating strategy.
The PM said yesterday that she would consider keeping Britain tied to the EU for an extra year in order to reach a Brexit deal.
But Brexit backers in her own party have responded with anger to the plans for extending the transition period until the end of 2021.
Iain Duncan Smith told the BBC: "I couldn't understand why we would offer to extend the transition period when we still haven't got anything back in return.
"By extending the backstop we are likely to fall straight into the next budget of the EU which will mean tens of billions of pounds extra to be paid across to the EU.
"We are in a negotiation but at the moment it begins to look more like a capitulation than a negotiation.
"We have got to get some steel in our backbone."
Brexiteers are threatening to use a Commons vote to block any extra money going to the EU beyond the £39billion already promised.
They want to amend the Finance Bill to ban ministers from handing additional cash to Brussels without the permission of Parliament.
Andrea Jenkyns told the Daily Express: "It's absurd that there is to be a Budget before the final Brexit deal.
"That is effectively writing a blank cheque to the EU and that leaves the danger that Article 50 may be extended with full funding."
And Priti Patel urged Mrs May to channel the spirit of Margaret Thatcher by refusing to fork over any money to the EU budget if Eurocrats continue to stonewall.
Mr Hunt insisted the PM's tough stance is working - because she has refused to fold to the EU's demands.
He told the BBC today: "The reason why this week has been difficult is because Theresa May has not buckled. She has held firm. She has stuck to her principles.
"It is precisely because she has not capitulated that we have not concluded this agreement.
"The one thing I would say to my colleagues is that the great strength of the EU in these negotiations is that the 27 EU nations have remained united.
"We now need to do the same behind Theresa May to maximise her negotiating leverage in Brussels and make sure she does come back with that deal that honours the letter and spirit of the referendum decision."
But Mrs May faces opposition from within her own Cabinet - Scotland Secretary David Mundell told No10 yesterday he won't accept a longer transition period.
Scottish Tories are angry at the prospect of Britain signing up to the Common Fisheries Policy for another year.
The EU's Brexit envoy Michel Barnier today said a deal is "90 per cent" done.
But he added: "I’m convinced a deal is necessary, I’m still not sure we’ll get one."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
Jeremy Hunt defended the PM claiming the only reason Brexit talks are in trouble is that she is so tough
THERESA May faces a rebellion from furious Tory MPs after her "capitulation" to Brussels over the Brexit transition period.
Brexiteers called on the PM to "get some steel" - and warned they will block any attempt to pay in more to the EU's budget.
But Mrs May's ally Jeremy Hunt stood up for her - claiming the only reason Brexit talks are in trouble is because of her firm negotiating strategy.
The PM said yesterday that she would consider keeping Britain tied to the EU for an extra year in order to reach a Brexit deal.
But Brexit backers in her own party have responded with anger to the plans for extending the transition period until the end of 2021.
Iain Duncan Smith told the BBC: "I couldn't understand why we would offer to extend the transition period when we still haven't got anything back in return.
"By extending the backstop we are likely to fall straight into the next budget of the EU which will mean tens of billions of pounds extra to be paid across to the EU.
"We are in a negotiation but at the moment it begins to look more like a capitulation than a negotiation.
"We have got to get some steel in our backbone."
Brexiteers are threatening to use a Commons vote to block any extra money going to the EU beyond the £39billion already promised.
They want to amend the Finance Bill to ban ministers from handing additional cash to Brussels without the permission of Parliament.
Andrea Jenkyns told the Daily Express: "It's absurd that there is to be a Budget before the final Brexit deal.
"That is effectively writing a blank cheque to the EU and that leaves the danger that Article 50 may be extended with full funding."
And Priti Patel urged Mrs May to channel the spirit of Margaret Thatcher by refusing to fork over any money to the EU budget if Eurocrats continue to stonewall.
Mr Hunt insisted the PM's tough stance is working - because she has refused to fold to the EU's demands.
He told the BBC today: "The reason why this week has been difficult is because Theresa May has not buckled. She has held firm. She has stuck to her principles.
"It is precisely because she has not capitulated that we have not concluded this agreement.
"The one thing I would say to my colleagues is that the great strength of the EU in these negotiations is that the 27 EU nations have remained united.
"We now need to do the same behind Theresa May to maximise her negotiating leverage in Brussels and make sure she does come back with that deal that honours the letter and spirit of the referendum decision."
But Mrs May faces opposition from within her own Cabinet - Scotland Secretary David Mundell told No10 yesterday he won't accept a longer transition period.
Scottish Tories are angry at the prospect of Britain signing up to the Common Fisheries Policy for another year.
The EU's Brexit envoy Michel Barnier today said a deal is "90 per cent" done.
But he added: "I’m convinced a deal is necessary, I’m still not sure we’ll get one."
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online politics team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368. We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours
The Japanese car giant said it would now produce its X-Trail vehicle in Asia instead despite a post-Brexit pledge
BUSINESS Secretary Greg Clark admitted to a body blow on Sunday as Nissan confirmed it had reversed a decision to build a new SUV in Sunderland.
The Japanese car giant went back on a post-Brexit pledge to make its next-generation X-Trail diesel motor at the flagship plant.
No jobs will go as a result of yesterday’s decision.
And Nissan insisted that - separately - production on a new Qashqai would begin as expected in 2020.
But Tory MPs admitted the decision was a setback for No 10 given Nissan’s pledge in late 2016 was hailed as vindication of Theresa May’s Brexit vision.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Clark said: “Nissan’s announcement is a blow to the sector and the region, as this was to be a further significant expansion of the site and the workforce.”
Unions and Labour warned the PM that more investment would leave Britain unless the PM took the threat of a No Deal off the table.
In a message to staff yesterday Nissan chairman Gianluca de Ficchy said “business reasons” lay behind the company’s decision.
But he added: “Clearly the uncertainty around the UK’s future relationship with the EU is not helping companies like ours to plan for the future.”
Nissan’s announcement is a blow to the sector and the region
Eurosceptic Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg said he believed this was a “fake issue” and the collapse of the diesel market was the main driver for Nissan’s u-turn.
Nissan was due to announce its decision later on Monday but the news leaked after Nissan informed Greg Clark on Friday.
The X-Trail is already made in Japan and the US.
Ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn decided to use Sunderland for the car in late 2016 after seeking assurances on Britain’s Brexit plan. At the time, the PM labelled the decision “fantastic news”.
Mr Ghosn is now languishing in a Toyko jail on allegations of tax evasion and financial irregularities.
Japan’s free-trade deal with the EU – which will gradually lower tariffs on car imports from the Far-East- came into force last week.
Car sales in the UK plunged 7 per cent to a five year low in 2018. Diesel made up less than a third of the total – two years after parity with petrol cars.
Unite acting national officer Steve Bush said: “The government’s mishandling of the transition away from diesel - allied to the continuing uncertainty around our future trading relationship with the EU - are extremely unhelpful.”
Treasury minister Liz Truss dismissed claims that Nissan’s decision was as a result of Brexit.
She said: “This is everything that is normal, that happens.
“Speculation about industry has been pushed into the Brexit story. I don’t think that is fair.”
 
The Japanese car giant said it would now produce its X-Trail vehicle in Asia instead despite a post-Brexit pledge
BUSINESS Secretary Greg Clark admitted to a body blow on Sunday as Nissan confirmed it had reversed a decision to build a new SUV in Sunderland.
The Japanese car giant went back on a post-Brexit pledge to make its next-generation X-Trail diesel motor at the flagship plant.
No jobs will go as a result of yesterday’s decision.
And Nissan insisted that - separately - production on a new Qashqai would begin as expected in 2020.
But Tory MPs admitted the decision was a setback for No 10 given Nissan’s pledge in late 2016 was hailed as vindication of Theresa May’s Brexit vision.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Clark said: “Nissan’s announcement is a blow to the sector and the region, as this was to be a further significant expansion of the site and the workforce.”
Unions and Labour warned the PM that more investment would leave Britain unless the PM took the threat of a No Deal off the table.
In a message to staff yesterday Nissan chairman Gianluca de Ficchy said “business reasons” lay behind the company’s decision.
But he added: “Clearly the uncertainty around the UK’s future relationship with the EU is not helping companies like ours to plan for the future.”
Nissan’s announcement is a blow to the sector and the region
Eurosceptic Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg said he believed this was a “fake issue” and the collapse of the diesel market was the main driver for Nissan’s u-turn.
Nissan was due to announce its decision later on Monday but the news leaked after Nissan informed Greg Clark on Friday.
The X-Trail is already made in Japan and the US.
Ex-Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn decided to use Sunderland for the car in late 2016 after seeking assurances on Britain’s Brexit plan. At the time, the PM labelled the decision “fantastic news”.
Mr Ghosn is now languishing in a Toyko jail on allegations of tax evasion and financial irregularities.
Japan’s free-trade deal with the EU – which will gradually lower tariffs on car imports from the Far-East- came into force last week.
Car sales in the UK plunged 7 per cent to a five year low in 2018. Diesel made up less than a third of the total – two years after parity with petrol cars.
Unite acting national officer Steve Bush said: “The government’s mishandling of the transition away from diesel - allied to the continuing uncertainty around our future trading relationship with the EU - are extremely unhelpful.”
Treasury minister Liz Truss dismissed claims that Nissan’s decision was as a result of Brexit.
She said: “This is everything that is normal, that happens.
“Speculation about industry has been pushed into the Brexit story. I don’t think that is fair.”
 
Steven Edginton, 19, says that young people need to seize control of their future and calls on them to join an epic march from Sunderland to London to do so
I’ve always believed Brexit is the greatest opportunity young people will encounter in the 21st century - it's the first time in recent history that the people beat the elite and I'm planning on walking 270 miles to make sure it happens.
To be 19 and believe in Brexit is deemed wholly unfashionable - I have been called an ‘age traitor’,  a ‘fat nosed c***’ and been trolled online, just for my political stance.
Yet what baffles me is why it seems so many other people my age are content with the un-elected, unaccountable stale, pale male EU bureaucrats making decisions for us, without our best interests at heart.
Being anti-establishment and embracing the revolutionary spirit which refuses to accept the rules laid down by our predecessors and wanting to promote a positive, new vision for the future is a core part of growing up.
We young people have a history of rebelling against the elite in power, whether that was marching against Tony Blair’s disastrous Iraq war or coming out in droves against David Cameron’s rise in tuition fees.
Young people should once again be shouting about the fact we could save the £10bn a year that we send to Brussels, which could be spent on young people’s priorities like housing and education.
Trying to get on the housing ladder is a gigantic issue for people my age. Wouldn't the money be better spent trying to tackle that woeful situation than being wrapped up in European bureaucracy?
For decades the European Union has taken away power from the people, whilst we pay them billions of pounds every year for the privilege.
But I, and millions of other young people, have had enough.
It’s time to rebel. It's the time for my generation to rise up against the establishment in Brussels and Westminster and call for a truly global Britain.
We want a nation which isn't restricted by the protectionist EU, where we can sign free trade deals with whoever we like and reduce tariffs on countries around the world.
It is a Britain where we are outwards-looking and ready to engage with developing economies and not bound by the EU commission making decisions for us.
I’m fighting back by taking part in the March to Leave, an epic journey to tell those in power we want to take back control.
From March 16 to 29, a great march from Sunderland to London will take place, featuring politicians, celebrities and ordinary people like you and me to show those in power we will not let them betray Brexit.
Last week Nigel Farage, Esther McVey, Richard Tice and John Longworth announced they would be launching the 270 mile march. Other big figures are coming out in support too, such as Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin. We young people should be joining them.
Those on the march will be walking about 15 miles every day.
I've made sure I am going to the gym more often and bought a new pair of walking boots to make sure I'm ready.
Marching from Sunderland - the area which was first to declare the leave vote - to London will show politicians that we want to just leave. No second referendum, no delay - it’s time to trade on World Trade Organisation rules, which deals with global trade between 164 countries and each member sets their own tariffs on goods coming from abroad.
We'll be setting off from Sunderland with a bang and beginning in the North, where people overwhelmingly voted to leave, we expect to be cheered on as heroes.
However coming closer to London, where more voted to remain, our presence may be less welcome.
But on the final day, on the 29th of March, outside of Parliament, there will be a seismic rally of Brexiteers in the heart of remain territory to tell our leaders we must leave the EU and deliver on the Brexit result.
That last day will go down in history as either the day we finally left the EU or the day the elite betrayed Brexit, so I expect thousands of leave voters to be there.
Britain has suffered almost three humiliating years of infighting, weak leadership and giving away constant concession to the EU.
This March to Leave is finally a chance to reinvigorate the Brexit debate by showing the establishment the 17.4 million demand we must leave, with or without a deal.
Leaving with No Deal is the best option for Britain and my generation.
A WTO Brexit offers amazing new opportunities for young people to travel to new places, have cheaper food and alcohol prices at home and save us taxpayers billions by not having to give away our money to the EU.
Join me, and many other young people in telling the establishment we will not sit by while they betray Brexit.
Steven Edginton is Chief Digital Strategist at Leave Means Leave, the organisation behind March to Leave. 
Steven Edginton, 19, says that young people need to seize control of their future and calls on them to join an epic march from Sunderland to London to do so
I’ve always believed Brexit is the greatest opportunity young people will encounter in the 21st century - it's the first time in recent history that the people beat the elite and I'm planning on walking 270 miles to make sure it happens.
To be 19 and believe in Brexit is deemed wholly unfashionable - I have been called an ‘age traitor’,  a ‘fat nosed c***’ and been trolled online, just for my political stance.
Yet what baffles me is why it seems so many other people my age are content with the un-elected, unaccountable stale, pale male EU bureaucrats making decisions for us, without our best interests at heart.
Being anti-establishment and embracing the revolutionary spirit which refuses to accept the rules laid down by our predecessors and wanting to promote a positive, new vision for the future is a core part of growing up.
We young people have a history of rebelling against the elite in power, whether that was marching against Tony Blair’s disastrous Iraq war or coming out in droves against David Cameron’s rise in tuition fees.
Young people should once again be shouting about the fact we could save the £10bn a year that we send to Brussels, which could be spent on young people’s priorities like housing and education.
Trying to get on the housing ladder is a gigantic issue for people my age. Wouldn't the money be better spent trying to tackle that woeful situation than being wrapped up in European bureaucracy?
For decades the European Union has taken away power from the people, whilst we pay them billions of pounds every year for the privilege.
But I, and millions of other young people, have had enough.
It’s time to rebel. It's the time for my generation to rise up against the establishment in Brussels and Westminster and call for a truly global Britain.
We want a nation which isn't restricted by the protectionist EU, where we can sign free trade deals with whoever we like and reduce tariffs on countries around the world.
It is a Britain where we are outwards-looking and ready to engage with developing economies and not bound by the EU commission making decisions for us.
I’m fighting back by taking part in the March to Leave, an epic journey to tell those in power we want to take back control.
From March 16 to 29, a great march from Sunderland to London will take place, featuring politicians, celebrities and ordinary people like you and me to show those in power we will not let them betray Brexit.
Last week Nigel Farage, Esther McVey, Richard Tice and John Longworth announced they would be launching the 270 mile march. Other big figures are coming out in support too, such as Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin. We young people should be joining them.
Those on the march will be walking about 15 miles every day.
I've made sure I am going to the gym more often and bought a new pair of walking boots to make sure I'm ready.
Marching from Sunderland - the area which was first to declare the leave vote - to London will show politicians that we want to just leave. No second referendum, no delay - it’s time to trade on World Trade Organisation rules, which deals with global trade between 164 countries and each member sets their own tariffs on goods coming from abroad.
We'll be setting off from Sunderland with a bang and beginning in the North, where people overwhelmingly voted to leave, we expect to be cheered on as heroes.
However coming closer to London, where more voted to remain, our presence may be less welcome.
But on the final day, on the 29th of March, outside of Parliament, there will be a seismic rally of Brexiteers in the heart of remain territory to tell our leaders we must leave the EU and deliver on the Brexit result.
That last day will go down in history as either the day we finally left the EU or the day the elite betrayed Brexit, so I expect thousands of leave voters to be there.
Britain has suffered almost three humiliating years of infighting, weak leadership and giving away constant concession to the EU.
This March to Leave is finally a chance to reinvigorate the Brexit debate by showing the establishment the 17.4 million demand we must leave, with or without a deal.
Leaving with No Deal is the best option for Britain and my generation.
A WTO Brexit offers amazing new opportunities for young people to travel to new places, have cheaper food and alcohol prices at home and save us taxpayers billions by not having to give away our money to the EU.
Join me, and many other young people in telling the establishment we will not sit by while they betray Brexit.
Steven Edginton is Chief Digital Strategist at Leave Means Leave, the organisation behind March to Leave. 
BORIS Johnson insists he will not “bottle Brexit” while vowing to “turbocharge” Britain after our exit from the European Union.
The Tory leadership contender, 55, used his £250K-a-year Telegraph column to once again promise that the UK will leave the EU by October 31.
He did not however mention the “plate-smashing scandal” which reportedly erupted at his girlfriend Carrie Symond’s house on Thursday night.
Boris instead stated his case for being the next Prime Minister insisting "it is absolutely vital that we keep our eyes on the prize” as Brexit continues to dominate the political discourse.
The former Foreign Secretary wrote: “We are just over four months away from the date on which, by law, we must leave the EU; and this time we are not going to bottle it. We are not going to fail.”
BoJo writes that Britain’s exit from the bloc will spark “a revival in the Conservative party” which has been ripped apart by the government’s inability to pass a withdrawal agreement through parliament.
He continues: “Most important of all, we can begin a new and exciting agenda for post Brexit Britain – and begin to turbocharge the most innovative economy in Europe.”
It is absolutely vital that we keep our eyes on the prize
Mr Johnson, who is still the bookies favourite to succeed Theresa May as PM, insists that after October 31 his government will begin the “great work of bringing the country together.”
The twice-married MP, who is facing current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the run-off for the Tory leadership, then discusses areas of the UK economy which he feels need investment.
He talks about pouring money into education, boosting transport links in the north of England and the Midlands before promising to invest in super-fast full fibre broadband across the country.
Boris briefly discusses his two terms as Mayor of London, from 2008 until 2016, claiming he helped revitalise some of the capital’s poorest boroughs.
He then finishes his column by blasting Jeremy Corbyn who he says would be an  “utter catastrophe for this country.”
The Eton-educated former journalist claims the Labour leader “has no interest in business” while slamming his proposal to raise taxes.
He adds: “We can win this argument big time – but first we must leave on October 31.”
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BORIS Johnson insists he will not “bottle Brexit” while vowing to “turbocharge” Britain after our exit from the European Union.
The Tory leadership contender, 55, used his £250K-a-year Telegraph column to once again promise that the UK will leave the EU by October 31.
He did not however mention the “plate-smashing scandal” which reportedly erupted at his girlfriend Carrie Symond’s house on Thursday night.
Boris instead stated his case for being the next Prime Minister insisting "it is absolutely vital that we keep our eyes on the prize” as Brexit continues to dominate the political discourse.
The former Foreign Secretary wrote: “We are just over four months away from the date on which, by law, we must leave the EU; and this time we are not going to bottle it. We are not going to fail.”
BoJo writes that Britain’s exit from the bloc will spark “a revival in the Conservative party” which has been ripped apart by the government’s inability to pass a withdrawal agreement through parliament.
He continues: “Most important of all, we can begin a new and exciting agenda for post Brexit Britain – and begin to turbocharge the most innovative economy in Europe.”
It is absolutely vital that we keep our eyes on the prize
Mr Johnson, who is still the bookies favourite to succeed Theresa May as PM, insists that after October 31 his government will begin the “great work of bringing the country together.”
The twice-married MP, who is facing current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the run-off for the Tory leadership, then discusses areas of the UK economy which he feels need investment.
He talks about pouring money into education, boosting transport links in the north of England and the Midlands before promising to invest in super-fast full fibre broadband across the country.
Boris briefly discusses his two terms as Mayor of London, from 2008 until 2016, claiming he helped revitalise some of the capital’s poorest boroughs.
He then finishes his column by blasting Jeremy Corbyn who he says would be an  “utter catastrophe for this country.”
The Eton-educated former journalist claims the Labour leader “has no interest in business” while slamming his proposal to raise taxes.
He adds: “We can win this argument big time – but first we must leave on October 31.”
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DAVID DAVIS has urged the Prime Minister to tear up her Brexit White Paper and “start again” in an explosive interview in which he lays bare the inside story of Britain’s fraught negotiations with the EU.
David Davis defends his resignation as Brexit Secretary
In his first newspaper interview since standing down as EU exit secretary, the Tory veteran reassures Sunday Express readers that it is not too late to save Brexit.He calls on Theresa May to accelerate no-deal preparations, insisting leaving on World Trade Organisation terms is “not the end of the world”. With unprecedented candour, the former leadership contender lays bare the details of his short telephone conversation with the Prime Minister after his resignation and reveals how Doreen, his wife of 45 years, persuaded him to leave. Describing the Chequers compromise as “trapping Britain’s fingers in the mangle”, he claims the EU will agree to a better deal as it comes under increasing pressure from the other 27 member states in the autumn.Unleashing an attack on the Treasury for orchestrating “Project Fear Mark III”, he lays into the Whitehall establishment, accusing it of believing in “nonsensical forecasts” and “patronising” voters.Vowing to “fight very hard from the outside” for the Brexit 17.4 million people wanted, the former SAS-trained soldier believes the UK would vote 60-40 to leave if there was a second referendum tomorrow.He also boasts that Dominic Raab, his successor at the Department for Exiting the European Union (Dexeu), is in constant contact, describing him as “my boy”.In this political interview of the year, he reveals in his own words the inside story of Brexit and what really happened at that dramatic Chequers meeting.
Is the Brexit White Paper “dead”?We’re going to have to do a reset and come back and look at it all again. What we mustn’t do is leave everything on the table and offer something else on top.One of the traditional tactics of the EU is to say: “OK, but not enough” and pocket what they’ve already been given. We can’t allow that. We’ll have to say: “Sorry, if that deal’s not enough then it’s no longer available.”I think when we get to the autumn, if we are in the situation where we don’t have any degree of agreement, we’re going to have to start again.What should the Prime Minister do next?I want the Prime Minister to publish a particular project. This was always in my mind as a reserve parachute, what we do if we don’t get a deal.And basically what we do is take all of the deals that the European Union has struck with Canada, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand – a whole series of them – and composite the best bits. From both sides, by the way, not just our side.We produce a 40-page document but then get international lawyers to turn it into a treaty so it would go from 40 pages to hundreds and hundreds of pages, if not thousands.So that’s on the shelf, come the autumn and if the current arrangements don’t work out, we say: “OK, we’ll retreat from that, we’re asking for a bit less, this is what we’re asking for, every single line of this has been given to somebody else in some treaty somewhere else in the world.”So that’s what I would call Canada plus, plus, plus.Because this is a thousand moving parts, it is impossible to tell you the individual way through, there will be half a dozen possibilities. People’s minds change in accordance with the pressure that’s put on them and the more high pressure the negotiation is, the more they’ll look around for other options.Today, I wouldn’t expect the Government to be particularly welcoming of Canada plus, plus, plus – but I think, come the autumn, we’ll be in a different position.
Is it too late to save Brexit?It’s not too late but we’re going to have to fight very hard from outside to influence the way the Government goes. Through September and October it’s going to be a very high intensity argument, I think. It’s a terribly self-serving comment but I am reminded of one letter I got from one of the whips commiserating, saying: “I’m very sorry you’re going, etc etc,” and lots of flattering stuff, but the last paragraph said: “But it strikes me you might be more powerful where you are than where you have been before.”There’s a big hearts-and-minds exercise to do, both with the party in the House and other parties, the DUP, and the Labour members and so on.At the end of the day, the most testing vote last week was in or out of the customs union and we won it on five votes, thanks to those Labour MPs – and that’s how tight the battle’s going to be.One of the arguments put after my departure and Boris’s was, well they don’t have an alternative – which is sort of bonkers since we spent seven weeks creating the alternative.I take the view that leaving on WTO terms will be uncomfortable in the short term but actually perfectly good in the long term – but all of the options, other than the Chequers one, are good in the long term and what we are arguing about is how much short-term discomfort you have.
Should we fear “no deal”?It’s not the best outcome, although people get terribly frightened about it as if it’s the end of the world – it’s nothing like that.You have the two extremes, you have the utopians and the dystopians. At one end you expect Mel Gibson to walk on stage, at the other it’s all fine, nothing will happen.If we go to WTO it will be if the negotiations break down, so there will be a degree of hostility. You might see some quite deliberate problems but they won’t last for ever, they’re likely to last months rather than years. It could be weeks or months, who knows? But not very long is the answer.Why do I say this? Well cast your mind back. What’s the indicator of the problem at Dover? It’s Operation Stack, lorries down the M20. The first thing that tells you is this is not a frictionless border – it gets problems for other reasons.Sometimes the reasons have been quite long-lasting – 74 times in 20 years. So much for a frictionless border. The last big one was 2015 when there were 31 days of Operation Stack. Nobody liked it, no one would allow it to happen if you could avoid it but we managed to get past it. That’s the first thing to understand.The people of Kent were quite properly in uproar but nevertheless, it didn’t bring the country to a halt.Secondly, if this was done deliberately it would be a massive piece of self-harm because if you block the channel port one way, you block it both ways.It’s a sort of continual circuit so from that point of view, it’s not likely to last very long because you are going to have French farmers in uproar.The next thing to bear in mind, because people worry most about Dover, is that you can move up to 40 per cent of traffic to other ports. Zeebrugge, Antwerp, Rotterdam all want more trade and they are preparing for this already.In this world of ours, people never seem to report Brexit good news. There was an NAO [National Audit Office] report recently that the customs software was all on target.
Are we prepared enough for no deal?Not yet. They need to accelerate. In my view what is currently a “consult and cajole” operation has got to turn into a “command and control” system and I think you’ll see under Dominic [Raab] far more centralisation of control over the course of the summer with Dexeu taking the lead.By the end of the summer it should be plain we are making proper preparations for this. Frankly if we get to October and it’s not looking good, we should accelerate again – more money, more resources and so on.I think there’s a fair amount of fear of no deal around the EU. I’ve talked to the politicians in some of the major ports and they’re very concerned. Only this week, Xavier Bertrand, the man who runs Hauts-de-France, which includes Calais and Dunkirk, he said we have to get on with the bilateral planning and he’s saying to the [European] Commission: “You can’t stop us talking to the UK customs authorities any longer.”So there’s pressure for that already. And I think if we get beyond October, other countries will start to really fear no deal. The Netherlands and Belgium and Ireland will all suffer really quite badly for different reasons. So they won’t want to do it, Sweden won’t want to do it, Spain won’t want to do it.You go around and each of the member states have their own reasons and they are rational reasons, so I think the pressure on the negotiations will suddenly increase dramatically and the Commission will not be able to stick by its ideological lines.So far, the Commission sticking by ideological lines hasn’t really cost them very much.They think they’ve got their money, we think we’ve got our implementation period, we’ve got the citizenship issue sorted out but there’s been no threat to the countries.If we get to the EU Council meeting and we haven’t got any progress, the threat of no deal will suddenly get very real and I think that’s the point where new ideas will play.
David Davis blasts EU for being 'slow and ineffective'
Will the EU eventually do a deal with Britain?Yes, eventually. But the countries will deal. The Commission will always be the hardliners in this exercise. We did an exercise in March where I did 18 countries in two weeks and it worked – it had an effect on the Council and you could see the results. I often tell the story – many years ago, when I was the Europe minister, there was one particular treaty change which nobody really liked, driven by the French and Germans.I had the Spanish, Italian and the Danish foreign secretaries all saying to me: “David, you must veto this.” And I said: “Use your own bloody veto! Why should I veto it?” They all said: “You can stand up to the Franco-German axis, we can’t” and that used to be the issue, that France, Germany and the Commission were this sort of unbeatable trio.We were the only people who would take them on. We’d use our veto and argue and people would sort of stand behind us. Now we’re not there to stand behind and some countries are beginning to become a bit more willing to talk about their own interests.On the Northern Ireland border issue:It’s not mythical but it’s certainly heavily misunderstood. The point that people forget is that there’s a border there already.There’s a VAT border, there’s an excise border, there’s a currency border, there’s a legal border and it’s managed perfectly well as it stands by the Irish and the British customs and police authorities together.One of the problems we have with the Commission is that they don’t trust anybody. It was one of the things that bridled with me early on when [EU negotiator Michel] Barnier said: “You have to earn trust.” And I thought, this country has been earning trust for a long time, it stands by its responsibilities more than most.With a decent amount of interaction between our agencies and the Irish agencies, it’s manageable. The problem was that in December the Irish government insisted on this phrase “full alignment” and are now trying to use it as a lever.Of course there are two understandings of full alignment. Our understanding is clear – it’s full alignment of outcomes. That doesn’t create a barrier down the Irish sea. What we can’t say suddenly is, “Oh, it’s going to be in the single market”. That’s an affront to the integrity to the Kingdom.
When did you decide to resign and what was the Prime Minister’s reaction?She first told me about her plans on the Monday and I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea. I got a written copy about Wednesday lunchtime and fired off a letter back, going through why I thought it was not viable.I don’t get angry. I’m not an emotional person on these things. I had won most of my arguments but this time I thought, “This can’t work. This can’t fly”.Then we drafted my speech for Chequers, which started with the words, written across it in my handwriting: “I’m going to be the odd man out, Prime Minister”. I went through why it was wrong in my view, why it couldn’t work because of the phrase I use all the time: “It traps our fingers in the mangle.” And they’ll keep turning the mangle and we’ll never get out, we’ll never get away.I’ve famously resigned twice, which is obviously excessive, but when I make a big decision I always put two days’ cooling off period in my own mind. So I slept on it for two nights. When I resigned over the civil liberties, the 42 days, I spent a whole weekend sitting in the drawing room of my house in Yorkshire, playing Mozart and drawing out all the possible outcomes, you know, like logic trees on a big piece of paper.There was nothing quite so complicated needed for this. I didn’t do logic trees for this, it wasn’t necessary. The big things in my mind were: “One: can I stand at the despatch box and say this? And tell the truth?” And the answer’s no. Another thing was: “Other people are depending on my judgment on this.”I talked it over with my wife and her advice was: “Leave.” Mind you, she’s had to put up with the workload and the absence really.I don’t talk politics at home much but I did about this. I talked to her, I talked to my chairman on the phone because he was abroad and I talked to my president. I spent an hour with him going through the permutations and he just said: “I’m surprised you waited this long.”I spoke to the Prime Minister late on Sunday night. She said she was disappointed. She said that twice. It was quite a short conversation really, there was no point stringing it out.
Were you relieved?No, no, no. Although there was a series of internal battles about things, I stuck with it for so long because it’s an incredibly important task.Who was the biggest thorn in your side, civil servant Olly Robbins or Chancellor Philip Hammond?Well I don’t think of it that way. You’ve got a Whitehall establishment which putting it mildly, is not an enthusiast for the project. And certainly at the Treasury, which believes all these nonsensical forecasts. Project Fear Mark III, I think it is now.The Treasury in total believes this stuff and I don’t. I simply think this is mathematical mumbo jumbo.These are the forecasts which didn’t foresee the banking crisis, that got completely wrong the effect of the referendum.If you believe the forecasts you tend to get rather frightened of this or that outcome. I think they’re too mechanistic and don’t take into account the way people behave.You hear a lot of businesses complaining. Fair enough, they’ve got their issues to defend, but a lot are saying: “Where are the opportunities in this, where are we going? Where’s our next export market?” And you can’t model that. You can’t even guess it, frankly.So you’ve got inevitably a civil service and some of the ministers as well whose primary instinct is to defend what we have. But if we’d spent the last 10 centuries of our history defending what we have, we’d be a very much poorer country if that precludes things that can make us into a great country. We’re going to have a massive growth in services, we are one of the world’s lead service exporters.Under the Chequers proposal, the rules for those things are going to be written in Brussels. How can you have the rules for your best industries, your future, your champions, written somewhere else?And how will they write those rules? Well go ask James Dyson. They wrote the rules deliberately to disadvantage him.Or go and ask the somebody who has got a diesel car that’s not worth very much now because they rigged the rules to suit the German car industry.
Michel Barnier: We need to be prepared for Brexit no deal
Do you want to be the next PM?I’ve just given up my job, I don’t want another one! We’ve got to get through the next six months, we don’t have time for a leadership contest.You were accused of being “asleep at the wheel”, “not across the detail” and “lazy”:Ha! They should talk to my wife!On Dominic Raab, his successor as Brexit Secretary:We’ve obviously had conversations. Bear in mind I recruited him into politics in the first place. He’s my boy, as it were and he’s doing the right things.He’s very clever but he’s also very tough. He’s the best possible replacement for me.On the PM:Much more than her predecessor, she takes Cabinet government really seriously – but we’ve got a Cabinet that’s three-quarters Remain.I actually think she’s a good Prime Minister, she’s well intentioned. When we’ve got a decision or an issue to deal with, she takes her time over it, she reads all the papers, she takes all of the views, consults with everybody and then makes a decision.The problem with this issue is it’s so complex you’re going to have to trust somebody’s judgment and she chose to trust somebody’s judgment other than mine.
On Boris:He uses more flowery language than me but he makes the same point. I’ve no idea [if I could back him again]. I did last time. He was the person who I gave my first support for and I was very disappointed when he didn’t run. With a bit of luck, it will be after I’m gone. I intend to stand at the next election, but who knows?On Michael Gove’s theory that he can “rescue” Brexit in March:I think it misses the fundamental point which is the Union always uses the agreements it has to expand, not reduce, its power.If you are a subscriber to “get it done, then fix it later”, what you are really subscribing to is fixing it in 20 years time when the amount of trade we do with Europe is so small it won’t matter any more.In 20 years we’ll be down to 20 per cent trade with Europe but I didn’t sign up to this to create a 20-year timetable of exit. In a way it’s a self-deception – it’s people trying to rewrite their bit of history to make it sound better than it is.
On the Remain campaign to reverse the referendum result:All that continued assault on the outcome is just bogus, patronising nonsense, it really is. And that’s why I think they’ve lost a chunk of the pragmatic Remainer vote.About a month ago I went for a bicycle ride into Selby, not very far from me. There was a man running, doing his exercise. I stopped to check where I was and he said: “Are you who I think you are?” And I said: “Probably”. He said: “Well, good luck, I’m a Remainer and I cannot stand the way that some of the Remainers are behaving.“London Remainers are so patronising about us, as though somehow we’ve got a lower IQ than them.”If there was another referendum tomorrow, would Leave win?I think they would. I think it would be about 60-40 and there are a number of reasons for it.Number one, the behaviour of the Commission. One of the tactics I adopted was to be as reasonable as possible, just to make plain we’re not the ones causing trouble. That’s come across.The second reason is the pragmatic Remainers who don’t like the behaviour of attempting to reverse the referendum. The third... a recent survey saying something like 51 per cent wanted a no deal. This is a sort of annoyance, a “Who do you think you are?” type response.The trouble with having a second referendum is that it changes the negotiating dynamic, it makes the other side want to give us a harder deal so we’ll stay in.
BRITAIN could be forced to stay under EU rule permanently if the final part of a “Remainer trap” passes through Parliament on Monday.
Brexit: Protesters call for Theresa May to RESIGN
Ministers believe the Government will be unable to stop Parliament forcing the UK to stay in a customs union in a move which will strip away the benefits of Brexit and force a long delay to departure. It comes as at least 170 Tory MPs - two thirds of the parliamentary party - have signed a letter telling Theresa May she has to take Britain out of the European Union within weeks even if it means leaving with no deal. The letter, authored by Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris, has been signed by at least 10 cabinet ministers and comes as fed-up Conservative MPs have indicated they are prepared to bring down her Government if she does not deliver Brexit.
Despite this latest blow to her authority, Mrs May has let it be known that she will refuse to go through with a pledge to quit unless she gets her deal through Parliament on a possible fourth attempt next week.In what could be a red letter day in Parliament tomorrow, former Tory minister Oliver Letwin, a leading Remainer, is set to bring forward so-called indicative votes again allowing MPs to try to find a preferred option.Mr Letwin is set to be aided by Speaker John Bercow who has faced fierce criticism for abandoning his neutrality and consistently trying to allow Parliament’s Remainer majority to thwart Brexit.A senior cabinet source told the Sunday Express: “We are not sure yet but there is a chance that these votes could be legally binding.“There may be some jiggery pokery to try to get round them but it will be very hard to ignore the will of Parliament.”
Another senior Government source added: “While Monday’s vote is indicative it is likely that it will be brought back for legislation on Wednesday.“We have an activist Speaker who we can guess will allow Parliament to take control of this process.“So Brexiteers have to realise that time and numbers are against them. We are in a Remainer trap. There is a big Remainer majority in Parliament and they will not get no deal but Parliament can in effect get a customs union agreement.“That means we cannot have free trade deals with the rest of the world, we will have to accept freedom of movement and all the reasons people voted for Brexit will be lost.”Sources close to Mrs May say that she will try to bring back her deal for a fourth time if the Speaker allows it.A cabinet minister told this newspaper that colleagues demanding no deal are “living in cloud cuckoo land.”
The senior minister said: “We are just not ready for no deal. We are not even close, it would be a disaster.”A source close to the Prime Minister added that her promise to quit as leader at the meeting of Tory MPs last week is “completely conditional on her deal being passed.”Failing that she plans to stay on until at least November when Conservative MPs can hold another vote of confidence in her leadership to trigger a contest.The customs union threats infuriated Tory MPs who warned that Mrs May risks the collapse of her Government.Jacob Rees-Mogg, who reluctantly joined Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab in voting for the deal on Friday, said: “Downing Street could stop it [a customs union] if it had any gumption but does not, so will not.”Two ministers have told this newspaper they would resign under these circumstances.
Brexit: Jacob Rees-Mogg defends decision to back May's deal
Former Brexit minister David Jones said: “For a customs union bill to pass into law there would need to be a money resolution which can only be introduced by the Government and cannot be introduced by a backbencher.“So it would be a positive choice by the Prime Minister, not something she could not control.“I personally would not vote with Labour to bring down the Government but I know many of my colleagues have said they would.”Veteran Tory MP Peter Bone said: “The idea that the Government is powerless in this situation is ridiculous.“The Prime Minister needs to carry out the promises we made in the manifesto and leave the EU either through a deal or a no deal.”North West Leicestershire MP Andrew Bridgen, one of the 170 MPs to sign the letter, said: “She [Mrs May] has got to go.“The party and parliament cannot carry on like this.
Brexit: Theresa May's deal rejected for third time by MPs
“But it’s clear to me, and I think it's clear to most people in the country, whether you're a Leaver or Remainer, that the European Union were never going to offer us a deal that is acceptable."To deliver on the mandate we've been given, to leave the EU, we have to leave without a deal.“It’s obvious this customs union line is an attempt to bully MPs into backing the Prime Minister’s bad deal.”Another Conservative MP said: “If she tries to stay on colleagues will literally go on strike. The Government won’t be able to get any business through.”Another added: “The only thing she can threaten is to withdraw the whip but a lot of us are beyond caring about that.“When you have cabinet ministers keeping their jobs after voting against the Government then what is the point of the party whip.”
The revelation that Mrs May will not quit if she does not get her deal through will also come as a blow to a number of senior Tories who have started their leadership campaigns to replace her.It is understood that in the cabinet Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Matt Hancock, Andrea Leadsom, Liz Truss and Gavin Williamson all have leadership teams.Mr Williamson, the defence secretary has been taking MPs up in his plane to persuade them to back him, according to sources.Meanwhile outside the cabinet Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Kit Malthouse and Tom Tugendhat are all being discussed as contenders.Writing in the Sunday Express today Mr Cleverly has urged MPs to stop looking for “no change or perfection” with Brexit but to look beyond the issue to address what sort of country the party wants Britain to be.Meanwhile, Mrs Patel, who on Friday became the banner bearer of the no deal opponents to Mrs May’s deal, has urged the party to adopt a vision where Britain can become “a beacon of free global trade.”
THE verdict of the referendum was clear – the people of the UK want our future to be outside the European Union. But behind the record number of votes cast lie many different views about exactly what that future should look like.
Theresa May: The only way to avoid no deal is to have a deal
The same is true of Parliament. The vast majority of MPs want to respect the result of the referendum, which is why nearly all of us voted to trigger Article 50 two years ago. But there is far less of a consensus about the manner of our departure from the EU. This week, I have seen more than 200 MPs from different parties who want to rule out No Deal. I have debated with MPs who want a Second Referendum as well as those who want to pursue what they believe to be the perfect deal which for them means no deal at all.
And I have spoken with business and union leaders worried about jobs who want the certainty that comes from a smooth and orderly transition to our future relationship with the EU.As Prime Minister, it is my duty to navigate a path through this complex web of views. That is why, since 2016, I have been working tirelessly to pull together the huge variety of options and opinions into a Brexit that works for the whole of the UK.And, after negotiating hard, standing up for the UK, and winning concessions many said were impossible to achieve, that is what I have done. The deal I have secured delivers for our whole country. It takes back control of our borders by ending free movement once and for all. It takes back control of our laws by ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in the UK.
And it takes back control of our money by ending the vast sums that we send to Brussels each year, so we can invest more in domestic priorities like the long-term plan for our NHS. The deal gives us an unprecedented economic relationship with our European neighbours, one that no other major country enjoys, protecting British jobs.But it also takes back control of our trade policy, so for the first time in 40 years we can seize the exciting opportunity to forge new trade deals with partners all around the world – just this week, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Downing Street to talk about future trade ties.And by getting us out of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Commons Fisheries Policy, our deal will also make Britain an independent coastal state once again, with full control over our waters.
And the deal keeps us safe with the broadest security relationship in the EU’s history, and ensures the integrity of our precious United Kingdom – all essential if we are to move on from what has become a corrosive public debate and instead begin the process of bringing our country back together.On Tuesday, your MP will be asked to vote on this deal and with it, your future.It is the biggest and most important decision that any MP of our generation will be asked to make. So they must decide what really matters.It is not a debating contest with prizes handed out for ideological purity of position. In Jeremy Corbyn I face a Labour leader who is more concerned with playing politics than acting in the best interests of our country.
Brexit: May delaying UK's exit is 'possible' says EU ambassador
Rather than trying to deliver what people voted for and bring the country together, he wants to try and force a general election - recklessly sowing the seeds of division in a bid to boost his own career.But if Parliament does not come together and back this deal in our national interest we risk leaving with no deal, with all the uncertainty for jobs and security that will bring.Or, with MPs unwilling to face the uncertainty of no deal and with no other offer on the table, we will risk not leaving the European Union at all.You, the British people, voted to leave. And then, in the 2017 General Election, 80 per cent of you voted for MPs who stood on manifestos to respect that referendum result.
You have delivered your instructions. Now it is our turn to deliver for you.When you turned out to vote in the referendum, you did so because you wanted your voice to be heard. Some of you put your trust in the political process for the first time in decades. We cannot – and must not– let you down.Doing so would be a catastrophic and unforgivable breach of trust in our democracy. So my message to Parliament this weekend is simple: it is time to forget the games and do what is right for our country.
A HARDCORE group of Remainers in the Cabinet will “do everything they can to stop Brexit”, a senior minister has warned.
Jeremy Corbyn responds to May’s no confidence win
It is part of a Remainer plot to betray Brexit and either trap Britain under EU rule in a customs union or force a second referendum. Tory Brexiteers have said they will vote or abstain to bring down the Government if there is a “betrayal” of the 2016 referendum result. However, a series of wrecking measures have been put in place by Remainers in cahoots with the Labour Party to force the Government to hold another vote on Britain’s membership of the EU.
In the Lords, the Labour group along with Remainer allies are deliberately delaying statutory instruments. These are some of the legal rules which need to go through to allow Britain to leave with no deal on March 29, and the Remainers’ efforts are designed to ensure the country will not be ready.Meanwhile, Tory Remainer Dominic Grieve has reportedly made plans which would allow 300 MPs – a minority – to seize control of the Brexit process and force a referendum through another amendment.Sources have said that “a majority in the Cabinet” back a customs union solution to end the deadlock which would stop Britain from having its own free trade deals.Remainers hope that a rushed through referendum could be held as early as May 23 when the European Parliament elections are due to be held.Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission has put in contingency plans for Britain to take part in European Parliament elections because of the increasing likelihood that Parliament will seek to suspend Article 50 and delay Brexit.A senior cabinet minister said that work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd, justice secretary David Gauke and business secretary Greg Clark are the hardcore group of Remainers who back a second referendum.
The minister said: “They would do anything to stop Brexit.”However, with shadow business secretary Keir Starmer strongly hinting that Labour will back a second referendum as mandated by a motion at the party conference, the minister added: “The fear is that Labour will pivot to supporting a second referendum.”The minister also accused Brexiteers of “overplaying their hand” and warned that the likelihood is that Parliament and the Government will “go for something softer.”The minister went on: “I think if there is a majority view in the cabinet it is that we commit to a customs union of some sort and I suspect that is where we will end up. “[International trade secretary] Liam [Fox] will be very unhappy because of what that means for his department but we are where we are.“The Cabinet in some ways reflects the party over not being clear which way to go except we don’t have any [Brexiteer] hardliners any more. Penny [Mordaunt] and Andrea [Leadsom] are much more pragmatic Brexiteers.“The point is that we have legislation which will have to go through and that can be amended to stop no deal and to have a second referendum.”
Tory members of the powerful Brexiteer European Research Group (ERG) last night said that if the Government agreed to either a customs union solution or second referendum they would not support Mrs May’s government in a no confidence motion brought by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.One said: “Our representatives were told by the Prime Minister that both these things were off the table so if they are not she was lying.“I think you would find a large number of us sitting on our hands and abstaining in a confidence vote.”Another said: “I could not tolerate that sort of betrayal and I would have to vote against the government in those circumstances.”But last night Downing Street sort to reassure people that Mrs May will not accept a customs union or second referendum.A Downing Street source described suggestions that Ms Rudd, Mr Clark and Mr Gauke want to stop Brexit as “deeply unfair” adding that they are “working to find an acceptable deal.”The source pointed out that Mrs May believes that respecting the result means taking back control of Britain’s laws, money and borders but also being able to have free trade deals with the rest of the world.Meanwhile, the source attacked Labour peers and Tory Remainers for trying to derail Brexit.
“It is utterly irresponsible to play fast and loose with legislation in these circumstances and block the clear will of the British people.”The campaign to slow down statutory instruments in parliament - legal measures to transfer EU law into British law - was begun by Labour Remainer peers Lord Foulkes and Lord Adonis gaining support from crossbencher Lord Winston, Labour peers Baroness Kingsmill and Baroness Golding, and former Tory cabinet minister Lord Deben.On Wednesday the wrecking campaign was backed by the entire Labour group in the Lords and with hundreds of SIs needing to go through parliament it could mean that the UK leaves with no deal on 29 March but without the legal framework needed to protect pensions, the environment, energy supplies and other key areas.Defending the action, Lord Foulkes admitted that the intent was to “make a no deal impossible.”He added: “These SIs are also a waste of time and money so we are challenging them.”Tory peer and former Brexit minister Baroness Anelay of St Johns described the guerilla tactics as “disgraceful”.She said: “It is a privilege for us peers to be here but we are unelected and Lord Foulkes and Adonis are trying to subvert the will of the British people.“They are also potentially putting Britain in a dangerous place if we do leave without a deal.”
Meanwhile, in a sign that Labour is about to back a second referendum, Sir Keir Starmer told the Fabian Society new year conference this morning that Labour is in ‘phase three’ of their conference commitment, which he went on to spell out as supporting “all options remaining on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”.In a move to back Tory Remainers in the Commons and Lords former Prime Minister John Major, a leading Remainer campaigner, tried to put pressure on Mrs May to allow a free vote on Brexit in Parliament.In a further move leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg denied that his comments saying that Mrs May’s deal is better than no Brexit were an indication that the ERG , which he leads, may support the deal after rebelling last week.He told the Sunday Express: “The Withdrawal Agreement is not something I could support and would strongly favour no deal if that were the alternative.”
BRUSSELS will offer a “substantial concession” to ensure a Brexit deal with the UK after the crucial vote on February 14, Euro insiders said last night – as long as Theresa May survives and holds her nerve.
Theresa May: Only way to avoid no deal is to agree a deal
With EU elections looming, any counter-offer would have to be substantial enough to avoid any more “back and forth”, allowing members states to focus on their number one concern: immigration. The favourite option today is to support a recent Polish compromise of placing a time limit – possibly five years – on the Irish backstop, it was claimed. The mood within the European Commission is frosty, with many exasperated that Mrs May failed to deliver the deal she had promised to get through Parliament.
However, privately, many European diplomats express personal admiration for the Prime Minister’s tenacity and ability to survive.And there is a realisation that her “Teflon” shell may well see her fend off the Cooper amendment – aimed at forcing the Government to seek an extension to Article 50 if it cannot agree a deal with the EU.If that happens, it would leave Brussels with the real prospect of a no-deal within just five weeks unless compromise can be found. While France may be leading the hardest charge for no quarter given, cracks are showing within the so-called Franco- German axis.In Berlin, pressure is mounting among parliamentarians in the Bundestag to avoid the economic shocks a no-deal would cause, and it is this message that is being listened to by Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“We have a responsibility to pursue this separation process responsibly so that in 50 years, people won’t shake their heads and say ‘Why weren’t they able to find a compromise?’,” she told members of her Christian Democrats Party at an event in Rostock.“To the last day, I will work towards finding a treaty-based solution for a deal for the UK’s exit, and I will work towards having the best kind of relations afterward.”One German diplomat in Brussels last night echoed her mood. He said: “Is there room for manoeuvre? To that question I would answer yes, though it will take much political effort on our part. It’s for this reason there will be no movement before the Parliamentary vote on February 14.”Though there would be scope for extending Article 50 to July, when MEP’s resume Parliament after May’s elections, there is a mounting impatience.
“There is a realisation that a five-year limit, as proposed by Polish foreign minster[Jacek] Czaputowicz, may be acceptable in London,” added the diplomat.“It’s important to find something that Prime Minister May can get through. For our part, we really require this matter to be resolved.“This may surprised people in Britain but Brexit is not the EU’s main priority.”Senior UK sources agreed. “We are determined to get the deal through, though as a responsible government we are making preparations for a no deal,” said a foreign office source.
“My sense is that, although people talk about a deadline, there is still time to talk this through if we are determined to see this happen. One thing we hear is the concern about making concessions and going back again. Our sense is they don’t want to get into a back and forth, so it really has to be quite decisive.”This was echoed by a highly-placed UK political source in Brussels.“I will bet my house the EU will come back with a substantively better offer after the Valentine’s Day vote. That’s certainly what they’re telling me,” he said.“They want to use the time to put pressure on us. They want to see what happens when she goes back to Westminster and it’s worth it for them to wait.
“If she breaks through that unscathed, they will be ready because, as they tell me, neither side wants a no-deal. So they’re already reviewing options, and the frontrunner seems to be the idea of a time limit on the backstop.”He added: “We now know that when Juncker’s chief spokesman said a no-deal would mean a hard border, it was a shot across the bows of Ireland.“Leo Varadkar’s bullishness plays well at home, but it isn’t helpful to Brussels. I’m told Barnier’s statement the following day that a no-deal would not mean a hard border is reflective of what the EU negotiating team feel.“And Ireland is all too aware of the real possibility that the EU may decide just to quarantine the whole island, by putting checks at Calais for Irish goods, too. This would be nightmare for Dublin.”
Brexit: Juncker 'withdrawal agreement is the ONLY deal'
Italian MEP Raffaello Fitto said: “It’s difficult to know how much further the EU can go.”There are also many other issues, like the inclusion this week of a footnote referring to Gibraltar as a “colony” in meetings to ratify visa-free travel for Britons should the UK walk away without a deal.A British diplomat source said: “Gibraltar’s sovereignty is not up for discussion and it is inappropriate to refer to the Rock as a colony.“Unfortunately distractions like these are par for the course in this climate.”
BORIS Johnson has warned Tory MPs that the government is planning a Brexit “stitch up” amid revelations that ministers will stop Brexiteer rebels from forcing a “no deal” with the EU.
Boris Johnson: It's time to chuck Chequers
Tensions in the Conservative Party were mounting this weekend as sources close to the Prime Minister vowed to “fight Brexiteer rebels to the death” if they try to trigger a vote of no confidence in Mrs May.The fears that Mrs May is now planning to sell-out Brexit were heightened after the Sunday Express was told that her chief of staff Gavin Barwell is set to meet Remainer Tory MPs who are pushing for a second referendum to undo Brexit.Mr Barwell’s meeting diaried for Wednesday is set to include former cabinet minister Justine Greening and others who are involved in the so-called People’s Vote campaign.The growing fears over the outcome of the negotiations led Mr Johnson earlier this week to tell fellow Brexiteers in Parliament that there will be “a stitch up” as he urged them to prepare to “resist” a deal that leaves Britain as a “colony of the EU.”
But a senior Government source has indicated that there are already moves to ensure a “no deal” with the EU is the least likely option after a week where Mrs May has already mooted extending the transition period before leaving the EU.Mocking Tory backbenchers, the source close to the Prime Minister said: “What they [Brexiteer Tory rebels] don’t realise is that a no deal is the least likely thing to happen if they vote down a deal.“Having another election, extending Article 50 and other options are much more likely to happen. There almost certainly won’t be no deal.”Meanwhile, the Sunday Express has also learnt that relations between members of the pro-Brexit European Research Group of Tory MPs and Downing Street are breaking down.A senior member of the group has revealed that many Brexiteer MPs are now “turning down” invitations for dinner at Downing Street with Mrs May’s senior advisers to discuss a deal with the EU.The MP said: “We found in the past that MPs were being used for propaganda and now there is nothing to discuss.”The ERG has stated that up to 80 MPs are likely to vote down a deal based on Mrs May’s Chequers proposal and 40 of them will not be budged on the issue.
Mark Francois, the vice chairman of the ERG, said: “I’m a former whip so I know the tricks of the whips but we're sure even with that they will only be able to whittle down the numbers to 40. That means Chequers cannot get through parliament.”He added: “Any attempt to extend Article 50 or the transition period and delay Brexit would be bonkers. They just won’t get it through.”There are also now understood to be 40 of the 48 letters needed from Tory MPs to trigger a vote of confidence in the leader.But allies of Mrs May made it clear that they believe she is now safe because the Brexiteers failed to act before the summer break after Mr Johnson and former Brexit secretary David Davis resigned.The senior source said:  “We will fight them to the death. Every week that goes by we get stronger and they get weaker.”There also a view that once a deal with the EU is agreed, even if it fails to deliver Brexit properly, Tory MPs will be forced to support it.
A Downing Street source said: “When not if we get a deal the dynamic will completely change.“Then they will have to explain to their constituents why they are putting their jobs at risk just for the concept of a clean Brexit. People didn’t vote for that and they will not forgive them.”A cabinet minister and close ally of Mrs May added: “Boris’ mistake was not to push a no confidence vote before the summer.“Then it would have been like the end of Margaret Thatcher about how many MPs voted against her, now if the Prime Minister wins it is enough and they have failed.“It’s too late to push that button now.”Already some Brexiteer and Remainer Tory MPs have expressed concerns that a proposal led by former Home Secretary Amber Rudd and former minister Nick Boles for a so-called Norway option will be adopted by the government.Remainer Tory MP Phillip Lee said: “It would be a disaster. We would have all the disadvantages of being in the EU but have no control of decisions made for us.
Theresa May accepts that time is running out says Stephen Martin
“The Brexiteers agree with me on this but I fear it is what it is what is going to be foisted on us all.”Another MP attacked Ms Rudd’s support for the option was to do with personal ambition.He said: “She (Rudd) sees this as a quick way back into the cabinet.”There are also signs of divisions among Brexiteers over tactics with some already expressing anger that Mr Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg refused to pull the trigger on a leadership challenge before the summer.One MP said: “We are still waiting for the great and the good to give us the thumbs up. I fear they have left it too late.”Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who has been collecting letters of no confidence, said that some of her colleagues have held back because “they are afraid we will be locked into a thre month leadership contest.”But Shipley MP Philip Davies said that voters who want the Tories to deliver Brexit are now losing confidence in the government.He said: “What worries me is how it is going down with our voters and it’s going down very badly.”
THE UK could plunge into a full-blown constitutional crisis next week, with MPs plotting to take control of the Brexit process and potentially reverse the referendum result of 2016.
Remainer MP says he is prepared to lose his seat to stop Brexit
The conspirators are thought to be planning to seize control of the House of Commons timetable, allowing non-Government MPs to table motions. The move could see laws passed preventing a hard-Brexit, or indeed any departure from the EU. A majority of MPs are opposed to quitting the EU without a deal.
According to The Sunday Times, a senior Government figure said: “This could be game over for Brexit.”Another told the paper: “This sounds like a very British coup - and one that has profound implications for democracy.”The Prime Minister and her top aides are thought to be “shellshocked” by the development.The plot is being organised by a cross-party group of MPs, including former Tory Government Ministers.They are reportedly planning to table an amendment giving motion proposed by backbench MPs priority over those put forward by the Government, in a move which would radically change how Parliament functions.MAY WRITES FOR THE EXPRESS: 'FORGET THE GAMES AND DO WHAT IS RIGHT'
Parliament could then pass a law making it illegal for the Government to push ahead with a no-deal Brexit, or even stopping the UK leaving the EU altogether.Senior Conservative backbencher Nick Boles confirmed yesterday he is working to pass a law to stop a no-deal EU exit.He told The Sunday Times: “We have a mechanism which will give Parliament control over the Brexit negotiations and ensure we do not leave the EU without a deal on March 29.“To change a law you need to pass a law.“I am working on ways to achieve that outcome.”The success of the plot is likely to depend on the actions of Commons Speaker John Bercow, who will decide whether the rebel motion comes before the House.
Brexit: Lord Lawson slams Grieve over no-deal fear mongering
House of Commons sources suggest Mr Bercow, who has a tense relationship with the Government, would select the motion for a vote.According to the Mail on Sunday, Mr Bercow met anti-Brexit Tory MP Dominic Grieve just hours before the speaker controversially allowed an amendment increasing pressure on the Government to come to a vote on Wednesday.The amendment, which was passed with the help of Brexit sceptic Tory MPs including Mr Grieve, means the Government will have to come before Parliament within three sitting days to explain its Brexit ‘Plan B’ should its exit deal be voted down on Tuesday.Mr Bercow’s decision to allow a vote on the amendment went against Parliamentary protocol, and the advice of his most senior aide, leading to accusations of bias against the Speaker.The Sun on Sunday claims Sir David Natzler, Clerk of the House of Commons, argued against the decision but was bluntly overruled by the Speaker.A source said: “He tried more than once to explain why he was wrong, but the Speaker told him he was not interested in what a gaggle of clerks had to say.“He finally managed to get part of his message across in private and handed over a note he had written from which he had quoted one or two points to help the Speaker. But that not was taken away and destroyed.”A spokesman for the Speaker’s office refused to confirm or deny the reports.He commented: “Any meetings the Speaker has with the clerks are private and we never divulge what was discussed.”With both Conservatives’ DUP allies and dozens of backbencher Tory MPs vowing to reject the Governments deal it looks unlikely to pass the Commons on Tuesday.If it fails the Labour Party has indicated it plans to call for a vote of no-confidence in the Government, in a bid to force a General Election, potentially as soon as Wednesday.
NO NEED to give credit to negotiators, I think, because it’s not a good deal.
Brexit: Theresa May is confident UK has achieved the 'best deal'
These are not the words of a fierce Brexiteer or an opponent of Theresa May. It is the private view of the CBI, an organisation that is supposed to stand up for business but instead likes to suck up to government. If even the arch toadies recognise that it is not a good deal, it must be almost indefensible.
Its failure is that it does not deliver on Brexit and, instead of taking back control, in some areas it will leave the United Kingdom with even less control than it currently has: the vassal state. The Withdrawal Agreement is declared to be superior law and is designed to be an international treaty that would override UK law, exactly as membership of the EU does. Law is at the heart of taking back control, the promise given in the referendum. Who makes the rules? Is it decided democratically dependent upon the votes of British people or is it to be made by a range of nations and bureaucrats in Brussels? The withdrawal treaty contains powers that would not return to the UK and specifically states that the Court of Justice of the European Union will be the final arbiter whenever the treaty connects with European law. It does not recognise, nor does the political agreement, any equivalent for UK judges on our laws. 
Not only will the UK’s ability to set its own laws be compromised but so will taxation.The treaty allows the EU to set the UK’s tariffs as part of the backstop provisions. It would be illegal for them to be reduced, so taxation without representation is a feature of this agreement. This denies the UK a key benefit of leaving: the possibility to have lower prices for food, clothing and footwear. Yet the constitutional principle of consent for taxation from Parliament on behalf of the people is more important than the loss of a future opportunity. It shows a wanton disregard for good governance. This is also true of the Irish question. Our fellow citizens in Northern Ireland are going to face regulation from Dublin which they have historically rejected rather than from their own democracy. The full EU customs rulebook would apply without their consent and it requires that Northern Ireland follows 291 EU regulations. The rest of the UK would not be bound by these but would have to impose an internal border within our own country if we were to exercise our basic democratic rights. 
Superior EU law, taxation without representation and a divided nation... that is what the Government proposes to buy with £39billion of taxpayers’ money. In return, there is a political declaration that offers warm words to us but odd specifics for the EU. Once again, the EU is to have its court recognised as superior and, peculiarly, the obscure cost of droit de suite is specifically preserved. The UK has also agreed to a level playing field but this is code for adopting EU inefficiencies. In an ideal world, trade would be fair and governments would not seek to subsidise national champions but the EU is less concerned about this than the UK becoming a more sensibly regulated market. This is not a question of wholesale de-regulation but of allowing free markets to prosper. 
Jacob Rees Mogg: Treasury is trying to BLOCK Brexit
As Sir James Dyson has exposed in his recent legal action on vacuum cleaner regulations, some rules are merely there to help German industry – while the scandal over diesel emissions proved the same point. A level playing field must not become a sticky wicket. This approach to policy-making is made in Downing Street. Many Conservatives have begged the Government to change course and to deliver on the promises made in our election manifesto. Keeping faith with the electorate is essential if there is to be trust in politics. Sadly, the Prime Minister has not done this, which is why, in spite of her many virtues and great dutifulness, I can no longer support her leadership. In return, I have been compared to Captain Mainwaring, which I take as a compliment. He may have had his idiosyncrasies but he took his patriotic duties seriously and did his best. There was always something stoically admirable about him. At the conclusion of Dad’s Army he spoke of preserving freedom, saying “there are thousands of us all over Great Britain who’ll stand together when their country needs them”. There still are. 
IT was the biggest act of democracy in our country’s history when 17.4 million people voted to leave the European Union.
Jeremy Corbyn: It's time for Labour to take over
Never has there been a clearer instruction to the political establishment that something had to change. We promised to renew our politics and to take back control of our laws, borders, money and trade. Yet, shamefully, we still haven’t delivered.
We should already be celebrating having left the EU and having re-gained our independence, and trade talks with the EU should already be underway. Instead, we’ve endured months of humiliation at the hands of Brussels and we’ve now got the Marxist Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, in No.10 determining what the terms of Brexit should be.Parliament has already outlined what it wants so we don’t need Corbyn’s ideas to poison anything, let alone Brexit. In 2017, four fifths of MPs voted to trigger Article 50 so that the UK would leave the EU on 29th March. In January, a majority of MPs asked the Prime Minister to remove the “backstop” from her deal and earlier this week, MPs rejected the idea of staying in the EU Customs Union. For some reason the Prime Minister is ignoring all this.Belonging to the Customs Union means allowing the EU to determine the tariffs, regulations and rules that govern our businesses. Failing to take back control over our trade policy is not compatible with leaving the EU. Worse still, being inside it whilst leaving the EU would be the worst of all worlds as we would have no legal right whatsoever to change or even influence the rules that affect UK businesses.Yet Jeremy Corbyn, who wants this, is in Downing Street shaping the government’s Brexit policy. It is a sickening sight to see an anti-semitic, business-bashing Marxist in No.10, conspiring with our Prime Minister at this pivotal moment in our history.
The 2017 Conservative Manifesto promised that we would leave the Customs Union and Single Market, and for years the Prime Minister has reinforced that pledge. We cannot break yet another promise.Something has to give. This national humiliation must come to an end. It’s time to stand tall and deliver what the people and MPs asked for. However people voted they want us to stop bickering and simply deliver the referendum result - they do not want a Communist in No.10 pulling the strings.Every time we beg the EU for yet another extension, we are emboldening the hardliners that want to give us a terrible deal. And each delay is creating more and more uncertainty for businesses and individuals who want this political paralysis to end.The country is ready to leave. Our excellent civil service has prepared us for change. There must be no more extensions, Prime Minister, no European elections and we certainly don’t need to adopt Jeremy Corbyn’s silly Customs Union plan.Legitimising this dangerous man’s anti-semitic, economically incompetent ways puts at risk a whole lot more than Brexit. Having him anywhere near the levers of power will do severe harm to our country and destroy the confidence voters showed when they put their trust and faith in our democracy and the Conservative Party.     
THE liberal Left has been radicalised by politicians and a media who paint all their opponents as Nazis or fascists. Will it all end in tragedy? Five weeks ago, I took the biggest risk of my life when I decided to stand as an MEP for the Brexit Party.
Brexit Party MEP slams TV host for not 'letting him get a word in'
My dad had advised against it, saying "You'll get death threats". Ever the optimist - and a proud Brexiteer determined to serve my country - I stood up. On Sunday, I was elected. It should have been the proudest moment of my life. Instead, I find myself sickened to the core by the level of hatred that has been hurled at the Brexit Party. It has left some in genuine fear of their lives.
Let's be clear: the Brexit Party is not a "far-Right" party as our mindless critics claim - let alone are we fascists or Nazis. I'm a lifelong Labour voter; both my grandads fought actual fascists in the Second World War, and my great uncle, a Lancaster bomber tail gunner, was shot down and killed by Nazis in 1941.Other Brexit Party candidates are former communists, plus centrists and Conservatives. We're a broad church. Anybody deemed "far-Right" would never have made it through the door.Yet these smears are never far from the lips of our desperate, terrified political opponents – and they have toxic, real-world effects.As an investigation proves, Brexit Party candidates have been subjected to vile anti-Semitic hate crimes.We've been attacked and abused. There have been two attempts to run down our activists by enraged motorists.Lance Foreman, a Jewish Brexit Party MEP whose father survived the Holocaust, had a 30ft swastika daubed on to his premises.Both our leader Nigel Farage and 81-year old Paratrooper veteran Don MacNaughton had milkshakes thrown at them. Some despicable trolls said they wished it had been acid, or bricks, prompting police investigations.
Farage said these Remainers had been "radicalised" – and he was right.But by whom?Perhaps surprisingly, we've directly witnessed it from Greens and Liberal Democrats.But mostly, it comes from Labour's hard Left.This poison comes from the top, then trickles downwards.Last week, Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson said Farage "represents the creep of fascism across Europe".But the chief pot-stirrer is Jeremy Corbyn – his party is currently under investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for persistent anti-Semitism.On the Andrew Marr show two weeks ago, Corbyn lied when he said: "Nigel Farage has spent his whole campaign attacking minorities that have come to make their homes in this country, trying to divide our society and attacking European nationals."I publicly challenge Mr Corbyn to go through every single interview, every rally and press conference – all of which were live streamed and are still available to view – to find any evidence of a single such "attack".He won't: it doesn't exist.Is it cynical deflection from his own party's racism turmoil?Next, Corbyn's bile seeps down to some of his more cynical rank and file members.I witnessed this despicable behaviour first hand on Sunday in Birmingham, shortly after I'd been voted in as an MEP for the West Midlands, when Labour MEP Neena Gill took to the stage.Disgustingly, she compared the Brexit Party to a "fascist regime" – and she was justifiably drowned out by boos.One of the West Midlands Brexit Party candidates in attendance, a Jewish immigrant, had had both grandparents shot by Nazis.They were buried in a mass grave. To call her a fascist was unimaginably wicked.
Neena next doubled down, calling us "racists", which came as a surprise to the Brexit Party's Vishal Khatri, the proud son of an Indian immigrant, who'd spent the campaign visiting Sikh festivals and a Hindu temple, attracting strong black and ethnic minority votes.But it gets worse. Somebody (we don't know who, there is no video evidence) cried out "go home - you lost!" Amazingly, Gill then twisted this into an attack on her as a British-Asian Sikh: that "go home" was in reference to her race, a disgusting fabrication.This is what we are dealing with: a poisoned politics, where any baseless smear is deployed to inflict collateral damage. Three years of Brexit turmoil has not only broken British politics, it's destroyed civil discourse.We must call a truce. We justifiably recall the hideous murder of Jo Cox as a low point in British political history. We must never sink that low again. The hatred must stop, from both Left and Right.When politicians and the media continually smear Brexiteers as fascists, Nazis or racists it has two effects. Firstly, we've seen it legitimises hatred and violence towards us.But here's the kicker: it does something far more powerful. By smearing 17.4 million decent Brexiteers as fascists, you will righteously empower us to rise up against you – and march to the polling booths, to vote for the Brexit Party; to help change British politics for good.• Martin Daubney is Brexit Party MEP
THERESA MAY has been warned that the Tory party will lose control of councils across the country next month as Ukip returns from the “dead” amid public anger over Brexit delay.
Brexit: UK in EU elections a 'suicide note' says Nadhim Zahawi
Council leaders have said they are preparing for heavy losses in local elections as voters are turning on the Tories after failing to leave the EU on time, according to The Sunday Times. Concerns have grown after last week’s Newport West by-election, which saw the two main political parties suffer losses with Ukip’s votes quadrupling. Ukip candidate and former Tory MP Neil Hamilton declared the result a “success in itself” adding that it marked a “new era” for the party. Tory councils in Brexit-voting areas which include Peterborough and Southed-on-Sea have warned they will be fighting for “survival” and could see their majorities being wiped out next month.
Education minister Nadhim Zahawi warned Mrs May on Saturday she would be signing the “suicide note” of the Tory party if the European elections take place in May.Mr Zahawi said further delay posed an “existential threat” to the party and would result in a political shift where voters would abandon the party for the hard-left or far-right.He said: ”If we do not deliver Brexit we would be unleashing forces that I think could get this country, and indeed the rest of Europe, into a very bad place.”Tory MEP David C Bannerman agreed with Mr Zahawi’s comments and said MPs and councillors were seeing anger on the doorstep which has not been seen since Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax.Mr Bannerman added: “I know places in Norwich, York, the East of England, where councillors have given up canvassing due to the angry, quite aggressive reactions from Conservative voters.“These are our people. I really think it could be awful for a lot of hard-working councillors.”It comes as a letter circulating around Tory association chairs has warned that Mrs May’s decision to enter into cross-party talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is the “last straw”.The letter, which is addressed to Conservative Party chairman Brandon Lewis, claims that the decision to make a deal with Mr Corbyn has left council candidates “fearful we will be decimated” in the local elections.
Brexit: Rees-Mogg on how UK can cause ‘inconvenience’ for EU
The letter also urges the Prime Minister to “step aside as soon as possible”.It states: “Corbyn is being made to look like the statesman he is not. How do we defend this on the doorstep?“We consider that this latest step is a step too far, which will destroy our party and result in the worst of all worlds for our country.”
MINISTERS are to dramatically accelerate preparations for a no-deal Brexit as the crunch Commons vote on Theresa May's EU withdrawal plan looms, a senior Tory frontbencher will reveal on Thursday.
Brexit: Barclay confirms government is preparing for No Deal
In an exclusive article for the Daily Express, EU Exit Secretary Stephen Barclay reveals that a new publicity blitz urging the public to be ready for a sudden break with Brussels will be launched next week. He also warns MPs the Prime Minister's plan is "the only workable deal that delivers on the democratic choice of the British people". His forthright message comes as Westminster is braced for parliamentary hostilities over Brexit to reopen next week ahead of the so-called “meaningful vote” scheduled for the week beginning January 14.
"We are preparing for all scenarios," the Cabinet minister says, adding: "As 2019 begins, we will accelerate our no deal planning further." Mr Barclay's article today is expected to be seen as a fresh warning to Brussels of the need for further concessions in the row over the "backstop" border mechanism.UK negotiators are understood to have quietly resumed talks with their EU counterparts in recent days in the push to win assurances "with legal force" that the backstop will not keep the UK indefinitely trapped in a customs union with Brussels.Mr Barclay says that, with the Commons still bitterly divided, the Government will take a series of further steps in the coming days to ensure the country is prepared for failure to reach a deal with Brussels.
"There is obviously division in Parliament over the PM’s Brexit deal. It’s not a perfect deal. But it’s the only workable deal that delivers on the democratic choice of the British people. And it’s the best way to avoid no deal."As we return to Parliament, MPs must consider the alternative," the EU Exit Secretary writes. He says new Government measures to prepare for no deal will include:New information from the Department of Transport setting out plans for ensuring flights are not disrupted.Updated guidance from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on guaranteeing medical standards.New advice from the Home Office on the need for UK citizens planning travel to the continent on checking their passports are up to date.A public information campaign to be launched next week on radio and social media to raise awareness about the need to be ready for a no -deal Brexit.
In an appeal to MPs to unite behind Mrs May's Bexit plans, Mr Barclay adds: "People did not vote for the disruption and uncertainty of no deal."The pace and intensity of the work we are doing reflects the potential scale of this disruption to people and businesses across the UK."No deal will be far more likely if MPs reject the PM’s Brexit deal later this month."My colleagues in Parliament must put the national interest first and vote for this deal so we can get on with delivering Brexit and building the UK’s prosperous future as an outward-looking global trading nation, outside the EU."
Another Cabinet minister on Wednesday insisted the Prime Minister can "find a way" to win the "meaningful vote" on her Brexit plans later this month.Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Eurosceptic Tory MPs could get "absolutely everything we want" by backing her deal."We have a clear opportunity to leave the EU on 29th March," he said during a visit to Singapore. "It has the vast majority of things that people wanted, not absolutely everything."The question is, can we turn this into something that gives us absolutely everything we wanted, and I believe we can.
"There will be some tough negotiations to follow in the years ahead but I think getting this clearer language on the backstop will help to get it through Parliament."Mr Hunt also warned of "devastating social consequences" if a second EU referendum was triggered.And he confirmed the UK Government was continuing to try to change details of the backstop within the Withdrawal Agreement.He said: "Theresa May has been very clear this isn't just about words but about text which has legal force.
"She has also been very straightforward about this - the EU has agreed the backstop is temporary and that's a word they have agreed."So what we're saying, very simply, is we're not asking for anything new but we are asking you to define what temporary means so we can have confidence we're not going to be trapped in the customs union for ever against the wishes of the British people."But Eurosceptic Tory MPs were last night refusing to back down in their opposition to the Prime Minister's plans.Jacob Rees-Mogg, chairman of the Tory backbench European Research Group, said there was "no sign at all" that the tide of opinion in the Commons was turning.
"I think it was based on the false premise that when at home in our constituencies people would tell us to back the deal," he said."Instead, as far as I can tell, the message is stand firm against a bad deal."Fellow Tory MP Sir Bill Cash said: "My New Year's resolution - not to vote for the PM's Withdrawal Agreement this January."Parliament exists to make our laws. This Agreement lets the 27 EU countries impose laws on the UK as never before in our history- behind closed doors with no transcript and no UK at the meeting."
YOU, the British people voted to leave the European Union and that is what we are going to do.
I will not be derailed from my duty to deliver your democratic decision.Amid all the noise this Government is getting on with the job.We are looking ahead with optimism as we secure a smooth and orderly Brexit while taking back control of our borders, money and laws once again.And we are seizing the opportunity to build a Britain fit for the future.Last week marked a watershed as the European Parliament and the European Council agreed we have made sufficient progress to move to the next stage of negotiations.
First, we have reached agreement to protect citizens’ rights.I was clear from the outset that I wanted to protect the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.But I was equally clear that we had to protect the rights of UK citizens living in EU countries too.This was not a choice – we needed both and that is what we got. Second, talks will begin immediately to agree the implementation period that I proposed.This will give millions of families and businesses the time and certainty they need to prepare for the changes required by our future partnership with the EU.
Theresa May: This is an important step towards delivering Brexit
Third, we will begin to build that new, deep and special partnership.This is the exciting part of the negotiations and there is no limit on our ambition and creativity.We want a new economic partnership which will support generations of jobs for our people.And we want a new security relationship that can help to keep families safe here in Britain and across the continent.But this Government is about more than making a success of Brexit.
And the Referendum was about more than a vote to leave the EU.We are determined to tackle the way too many people in our country are being left behind.So we are building a stronger and fairer economy, with a modern industrial strategy that will support the creation of high quality, well paid jobs in every community of our country.We are building a fairer society, putting social mobility at the heart of our education system and restoring the dream of home ownership.
I want everyone in Britain to have the chance to make the most of their potential, regardless of where they’ve come from.And as Global Britain we are also playing our full part in the greatest international challenges of our time – from terrorism to migration – and we will continue to offer this leadership on the world stage as we leave the EU.Put simply, this is a Government with a full agenda that is bold and ambitious about the future of our country.And we will stick to our task until we have secured the best possible Brexit deal and built that stronger, fairer and ever more global Britain that truly works for everyone.
WHAT terrors will arise on the morning of the 30th March if the United Kingdom does not accept the Prime Ministers Withdrawal Agreement and nothing else is on offer?  
I do NOT believe in a 'losers vote' says Jacob Rees-Mogg
The terminology used of “crashing out” is designed to make the flesh creep in the hope of bullying people into accepting a bad deal. Expensive, with a price tag of £39 billion, while ineffective, for the backstop could leave us shackled to the European Union for a generation. The Government hoped that as those fears fructified so Members of Parliament who opposed the proposal would soften under the influence of local party members.
Those who want Brexit would be afraid that the risks of leaving without a deal would prevent any exit at all while those who want to remain were to fear the “cliff edge”.Fortunately, Conservative Association members are made of sterner stuff. The Party in the country at large is not especially ideological and is usually loyal to its leader.There is no Momentum-style movement but in the dozens of associations I have addressed I meet people who tend to be involved in other good causes.In rural areas this is often the village fete or the local Women’s Institute whereas in more urban parts it is more likely to be the larger charities.
Members of Parliament listen to them because they are sensible, have no desire to lobby for a particular interest except sometimes for defence and are more driven by an ideal of public service than a policy precept.This sense of duty makes them sympathetic to Theresa May but not slave-ish to her agreement.Indeed, a startling figure from a recent survey of members is that 57% prefer No Deal to 23% for the Withdrawal Agreement and 15% who still want to remain.This is in spite of all the threatened terrors and the dire warnings issued.
The majority of Conservative members must either think that these fears are exaggerated or that is a price worth paying for leaving the shackles of the European Union.It also shows a fundamental belief in democracy for voters in the referendum were given a choice and decided to leave and not subject themselves to a half-way house that would leave us a vassal state.This strength of feeling ought to be responded to by the leadership of the party and not stamped upon.Reports that Conservative Central Office has threatened some Associations with special measures and is trying to stop Brexiteers becoming candidates must are troubling for it is improper for the Party to try to impose ideological uniformity on Associations.
Brexit: James Gray labels no deal fears ‘total nonsense’
Tories believe in individual responsibility and effort not central planning and control.The centre is the creature of the localities not the other way round so it would be a perverse abnegation of our basic principles and would mean attempting to run the Party the way the Socialists seek to run the Country.It is long been under appreciated how fortunate the Tory party is to have the membership it has. The mainstay of their local communities, hardworking activists who take on chores because they believe it is the right thing to do. MPs are elected because of their efforts and countless councils are run by such noble spirits.They are repositories of good sense and decent patriotism and a proof of Conservative values.
They accept the democratic norms but in return deserve to be listened to. Even the thought that they are being pressurised to change their minds would be counterproductive.They are not lightweight flibberty-gibbets but pillars of their communities who cannot be pushed around.Likewise the MPs, who are their standard bearers, will be more rather than less determined.During the recess I read reports that I could be open to supporting the Withdrawal Agreement and that I was even “a work in progress”.
It was at this time that it was reported that MPs when outside the Westminster bubble could be persuaded to back the deal.This never seemed likely and in my own case was wishful thinking, the backstop on its own is an intolerable failure of the negotiations.If this attempt were supposed to be bolstered by subtle or not so subtle pressure on Associations it is bound to fail and 57% of members clearly have titanium plated backbones.
This Brexit deal is no representation of the promises that were made at Lancaster House last year.
Maria Caulfield and Ben Bradley QUIT over May's Brexit plan
That was a plan that respected leave voters and the referendum result. This deal is neither remain nor leave, an unending state of purgatory that represents the worst of all worlds. It does not deliver on the promise to take back control of our money, as we give away £39bn in exchange for not much at all. It doesn’t deliver on trade, as the backstop ties us in to a customs union that limits our freedom to make meaningful deals with the rest of the world, and which we cannot leave without the EU’s permission.
It does not deliver on the promise to take back control of our laws, as the European Courts will continue to hold sway over ours in a number of areas for many years, including adjudicating on compliance with the deal itself.It does not deliver on the promises made to the DUP on the Irish border, opening up a Pandora’s Box of issues around the future of the Union, and the SNP now arguing for divergence of their own.It also creates huge political problems for many MPs like myself representing Leave voting areas. Let’s be clear, Labour have no answers at all here.They would seek to tie us in to Eu institutions forever, or to have a second vote that betrays the trust of leave voters.I do not fear a swing to Labour in a seat like mine.They might be let in by the back door though if people who supported the Conservatives in places like Mansfield in 2017 choose UKIP or other pro-Brexit parties next time.Over 11,500 people in Mansfield voted UKIP in 2015.In the last election that fell to just 2,500 and the Conservative vote nearly doubled.
It is absolutely clear that it is leave voters that tipped me, and by extension this Government, over the line in 2017 and they had expectations.Many voted for us for the first time, and they will not do so again if we renege on our promises to them.I’m not under the illusion that most people have a detailed view of precisely what customs arrangements they wanted to see.It never dominated most people’s lives in the same way it does for us in Westminster.In places like Mansfield though I do think that leave really did mean leave.It meant not being a part of EU institutions, not having to stick to their rules, not paying in to their budget.A leave vote was for a clean break, and for many people actually it was a vote for ‘no deal’. Those 11,500 UKIP voters in particular almost certainly held that view, and it is them that will likely decide the outcome of the next election in seats like Mansfield.There is a way forward though if the PM is willing to accept that her plan cannot succeed.
She can go back and show some strength in the national interest, offer up the clear evidence of these last weeks to show that this won’t work, and instead return to what she promised at Lancaster House.That kind of free trade agreement is what Monsieur Barnier claims he wanted in the first place and she should hold him to that, or she should walk away.We should have nothing to fear in walking away either.Despite all the scaremongering, working towards as smooth a path as possible on World Trade Organisation rules might just be the most realistic way forward at this point.We could try to agree a transition period, or at least maximise efforts to prepare given the increasing likelihood of this outcome, but only if we accept that this deal has failed.Acceptance of that now would give businesses the certainty they need to plan for the future. What the nation needs now is strong leadership that does not bury its head in the sand, and that will change course to deliver on what was promised before it is too late.
Britain is leaving the European Union, and the great and good in Brussels are on edge. The move could be "the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety", Donald Tusk warned just before the referendum. Jean-Claude Juncker was more restrained after the vote to leave, but conceded that "there are splits out there and often fragmentation".
The EU is in crisis, and its leaders know that Britain's departure could be the bloc's breaking point. Mr Tusk and his fellow Eurocrats know that many citizens are unhappy with the way things are going, and so could be inspired by Britain if it can show that a better future awaits outside of the EU. A successful Brexit could in effect be the start of a stampede of member states towards the exit door that could see the EU crumble.
So they will find little to rejoice in new research out today from think-tank Demos, which sheds light on how many European citizens are feeling as averse towards the bloc as British people are.
Britons are most keen for their country to be out of the European Union, with 45 per cent saying it should be its "long-term" aim. This remains higher than the proportion who want Britain to remain in the EU (39 per cent). Fewer people in France (22 per cent) and Germany (16 per cent) feel their country's destiny is outside of the bloc - although many more of them want to see the its powers curtailed (33 per cent in French and 23 in Germany). This latent Euroscepticism is remarkable enough given that these two countries have been the linchpin of the European Union.
This research may, if anything, present too rosy a picture of how Europeans feel about the EU's future. A survey by the University of Edinburgh found that 33 per cent of French people would vote to leave the bloc in a referendum, not too far behind the 40 per cent that would vote to remain. It wouldn't be hard for a "Frexit" movement to make their case to voters given that - according to the Pew Research Center - over 60 per cent of French people feel unfavourably about the EU.
France isn't unique as a hot-bed of pro-Leave sentiment, as Ipsos found that a similar proportion - 33 per cent- of of citizens in the European nations it surveyed would vote to get out of the EU. Nearly half (48 per cent) thought that other countries would end up following Britain out of the exit door, so the Brexit process is being watched by Eurosceptics across the continent.
France and Germany's leaders have consistently sought to defend the EU and further its powers, but many of their citizens feel the enterprise is pointless, or should at least be cut back. They have been making their feelings known at the ballot box by voting for far-right anti-EU parties like the Front National and the Alternative for Germany. They are not alone in their Euroscepticism, as YouGov found that 32 per cent of those in Poland, 31 per cent in Spain and 32 per cent in Sweden want the EU's wings to be clipped.
EU leaders are for now pledging to stick together in response to Brexit in order to keep the bloc alive, but they should be worried as many Europeans are feeling the same disaffection and anxieties that drove Britons to vote for Brexit.
YouGov finds palpable concern in its polling for Demos among voters across the continent about the impact of immigration - an issue many Britons voted to leave the EU over - and multiculturalism on European society.
Nearly half of those polled in France said that their society had changed "for the worse" by becoming "more ethnically and religiously diverse", 40 per cent of those say in the same in Poland, as do 37 per cent in Germany. Border control, is not solely a British concern.
Europeans don't just feel ignored by their leaders over issues like immigration, but worry that they aren't leading them towards a better future.
Almost half (47 per cent) of the French people surveyed thought things would get worse over for Europe over the next year, with fractionally more (53 per cent) thinking their same about their own country. Similar pessimism is rife among the other European nations, as 45 per cent in Germany think the next year will only see things get worse across the continent, and 43 per cent say the same in Sweden. The most optimistic country is Spain, where just over a third (36 per cent) of those polled feel things will improve in Europe and at home (32 per cent) in the next year.
Voters love to give their national leaders a kick, but the European Union fares little better in Demos' research. Nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) of those in France say they have low trust in the Commission and 66 per cent in the European Parliament. If the EU can't enthuse citizens in one of the countries at the heart of its creation, something has gone deeply awry.
Mr Tusk and his fellow Eurocrats are itching to ostracise Britain after its vote to leave the European Union, but their desperate rush to tar it as a pariah is a sign of something more: panic. The EU's leaders know that Britain's exit could inspire many European citizens who have little but scorn for the bloc, so are rushing to put them off getting any ideas.
The EU is in a parlous state as it is, so Britain's exit will unsettle it even further. If the bloc was a grenade, Brexit could be the pin. That's why the Eurocrats are terrified about it.

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Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has warned Theresa May that paying the Brexit “divorce bill” is non-negotiable and there will be “legal consequences” if it is not paid in full.
Mr Barnier said any attempt by the UK to avoid “clearing its accounts” could have “explosive” consequences.
In a clear swipe at the Prime Minister, Mr Barnier, setting out the EU’s initial negotiating position, said that Brexit would be “painful” and that anyone who said there were no consequences to leaving the EU was “not telling the truth”.
He also told Theresa May, like him a keen hill-walker, that she would have to watch her step on the “steep and rocky path” ahead to avoid “accidents”, and that she had to “keep looking at the summit”.
He was speaking after David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, suggested that Britain could walk away without paying a penny of the Brexit bill, which has now risen to £84 billion, according to one report.
On April 29 representatives of the 27 other EU member states met to discuss their negotiating stance for the Brexit talks, which Mr Barnier set out to explain.
Mr Barnier said Britain would not be “punished” for leaving the EU but had to “settle its accounts”, the cost of which should be “incontestable”.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Mr Barnier said the UK would have to "close the account" in a "single financial settlement" which "will cover all the financial relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union. All the commitments entered into as a member of the union".
If Britain did not pay the bill, he said, there could be “political and legal problems”.
He added: "This is not a punishment, nor is it an exit tax of some kind. The union and the United Kingdom have mutual commitments. They have committed to financing projects and programmes together. We decided these programmes together. We benefit from them together, and we finance them together.
"Basically, we have to close the account, and it is no more and no less. No punishment. There is no Brexit bill."
The figure will include not only UK commitments to fund the EU's 2014-20 budget, but also EU programmes of support for countries like Turkey and the Ukraine, he said.
"This all has to be totted up," he said. "We have entered into rigorous and objective work which should be incontestable and which will have to take account of the commitments.
"I can't understand why here and there I hear mentions of punishment (regarding) the exit bill...that is not the case. Commitments have been made and these commitments have to be honoured, these responsibilities have to be honoured.
"We have to be rigorous in our approach to clearing these accounts, because otherwise the situation might be explosive, if we have to stop programmes. Can you imagine the political problems which might arise?"
Mr Barnier declined to put a figure on the expected size of the exit bill, but fiercely rejected suggestions that Brussels was demanding a "blank cheque" from London.
"I cannot accept the term 'blank cheque'," he said. "All we are asking for is for accounts to be cleared, for the honouring of commitments which the UK has entered into. But you cannot count on me to give you any figures, because they will develop.”
Mr Barnier echoed the words of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week when he said some people “have created the illusion that Brexit will have no material impact on our lives, that negotiations can be concluded painlessly. That is not the truth”.
He said: "There will be consequences... there are human consequences, there are social consequences, there are economic consequences, there are technical consequences, financial, legal consequences. You are unwinding 43 years or so of a relationship.
"We need sound solutions, we need legal precision and this will take time."
Asked whether an emphatic Conservative victory in the upcoming election would weaken his hand in negotiations, Mr Barnier said: "A new government following the elections which Theresa May called early ... will have a certain longevity and stability for five years, which is not the case for the current Government."
He added: "These elections will not change anything as regards the position and determination of the European Union ... Without any aggresivity or naivety, we will defend the interests of the 27 member states of the European Union and the single market. That is my role."
The EU was ready to start substantive talks "as soon as the UK is ready to come to the table", he said. There had been 10 months of uncertainty and it was "high time" to start negotiations because "the clock is ticking".
Mr Barnier repeated the EU’s stance that the Brexit bill, migrants’ rights and the land border with Ireland all had to be settled before trade talks could begin.
He said: "The UK must put a great deal of energy and effort into these three issues over the next weeks and months and that will increase the chances of making a deal."
On another contentious point, he said the European Court of Justice would "quite clearly" be the right body to adjudicate on the rights of EU citizens "well after the date of the withdrawal of the UK". Theresa May, however, says the Supreme Court should rule on such matters.
He said he hoped to be in a position by October or November this year to reach a judgment on whether sufficient progress has been made in withdrawal negotiations to trigger the start of trade talks.
In order to move to the next phase, the EU would need "clear commitments", rather than "window dressing" from the UK on the financial settlement, expatriates' rights and borders.
"We shouldn't start the second phase in a climate of mistrust and uncertainty," said Mr Barnier.
Mr Barnier attended last week's Downing Street dinner with Mrs May and Jean-Claude Juncker following which Mr Juncker, the European Commission president, reportedly remarked that the Prime Minister was "in a different galaxy" on Brexit.
Characterising the meeting as "cordial", Mr Barnier said he hoped to build "an entente cordiale" between the UK and EU "which will last well beyond Brexit".
"Of course the positions between us are different - sometimes very different," he said. "That is no surprise to anyone. That is why we need negotiations and why we have to start these negotiations as soon as possible."
Mr Barnier said last week's dinner was the first time he had met Mrs May and was an opportunity for them to discuss their "shared passion" of rambling and hiking in the mountains.
And in a barely-veiled warning to the Prime Minister, he drew a parallel between the perils of mountain-walking and the negotiations ahead of her.
"if you like walking in the mountains, you have to learn a certain number of rules," said Mr Barnier.
"You have to learn to put one foot in front of the other, because sometimes you are on a steep and rocky path. You also have to look at what accidents might befall you – falling rocks. You have to be very careful to keep your breath, you have to have stamina because it could be a lengthy path. And you have to keep looking at the summit, the outcome. That's what I learnt when mountain-walking."
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Tricky things, trade deals. The outcome of Britain’s referendum can be interpreted in two ways; either as a nation that is retreating in on itself, or to the contrary as one which constrained and imprisoned by the EU has determined to open itself up to the world even more.
If the UK is going to make an economic success of Brexit, it is vital that the second of these two interpretations prevails. Fortunately, this does indeed seem largely to be the new government’s intention, witness the likely unencumbered acquisition by a foreign company of the jewel in the crown of Britain’s technology sector, ARM, something that would be unimaginable in many other European countries.
Reconciling this approach with those who thought they were voting for a closed shop Britain – with those, in other words, whose vote to leave was a scream of protest against globalisation – is going to require considerable political skill.
Yet the more immediate, practical challenge is that of winning compensatory trade deals with the world outside Europe that actually mean something tangible, as opposed to those which are mere political window dressing, or simply an excuse for overseas junketing by government ministers and their officials.
I don’t want to rain on the Brexiteers’ parade, but cheerleading optimism about the future – now widely thought of as some kind of patriotic duty – is no substitute for hard-headed realism, and there is regrettably much wishful, even delusional, thinking on the whole issue of free trade outside the EU. Time for a reality check.
It is unfortunately a matter of fact that Britain’s bid for a greater share of international trade comes at a time of growing protectionism in global markets, or what some have called “the end of globalisation”.
The liberalising forces seen since the late 1970s, in cross-border movement of capital, goods, services and people, are fast giving way, in a world of impaired demand, to inward looking and blinkered pursuit of supposed national self interest. With monotonous regularity, G20 meetings commit themselves to open markets and trade liberalisation, only for ministers to return home and practice the reverse.
As everyone knows, international trade makes nations richer, yet in large parts of the world, from Russia to India, and Nigeria to great swathes of Latin America, policies that promote import substitution in preference to open borders are now the order of the day, with increasingly stringent local content stipulations, standards and other forms of discriminatry regulation. Multinationals are routinely encouraged to invest in countries rather than export to them.
As Liam Fox, the new trade secretary, is about to find out, countries willing to contemplate genuinely free trade arrangements with Britain, or anyone else for that matter, are lamentably few in number and largely confined to the so-called Anglo-sphere.

The UK is up against a world in which the old “Washington Consensus” is fast being assigned to the dustbin of history.
Whether it is wholly down to these trends, or there are other factors at work, growth in world trade has ground to a halt across the whole panoply of product groups and service industries, the first time this has happened in living memory outside periods of global recession or war.
In any case, Simon Evenett, Professor of international trade and economic development at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, cautions strongly against “quickie” trade deals, despite the pressures on Dr Fox to demonstrate to voters that Brexit can deliver immediate results.
“Meaningful trade deals take a long time to negotiate unless one side rolls over and agrees something which is not really in their interests”, he says. “Certainly, opening up service industries to free trade, which must be a priority for Britain, won’t happen in any quickly negotiated deal”.
Nor is it likely that Britain will simply be allowed to adopt the free trade agreements or World Trade Organisation terms the EU has already negotiated with other parts of the world - a so-called “delete and replace” exercise. “Remember”, says Prof Evenett, “these deals are on the basis of a European market of more than 500m people. Everyone will be looking for further concessions from smaller markets.”
The more you look at it, Dr Geoff Raby, former Australian Ambassador to China and the World Trade Organisation, this week told a Policy Exchange seminar entitled “How should Britain negotiate trade deals post Brexit?”, the more complicated it all seems. The Government's mooted 300 new trade negotiators will not be nearly enough. In any case, nothing is likely to happen quickly.
A more promising approach would be bilateral arrangements with like-minded nations where templates already exist. But again, we need to be very careful what we are signing up to.
The Australian/US free trade agreement of 2004, negotiated in double quick time, was so bad for Australia that officials refused to recommend it to parliament. John Howard, then Australia’s Prime Minister, had to be forceably reminded by George W Bush of their close ties, security arrangements and friendship to persuade him to sign it into law. “Where’s the beef?” he was repeatedly chided afterwards by political opponents, in reference to the FTA’s failure to generate extra beef exports.
Ann Capling, an Australian academic who specialises on trade finds the idea that an FTA with Australia would be a significant boost to UK exports simply laughable. As it is, there are few impediments to UK trade with Australia, the country is a small market in a far away place, and these days Australia looks to East Asia and North America, not the former imperial power, for its main trading partners.
Other “quickie” trade deals, such as Switzerland’s FTA with China, negotiated in double quick time in an effort to be the first European economy to sign up with the People's Republic, may not have been as obviously damaging to the smaller country, but by common agreement, have frequently been not particularly helpful either.
When Swiss officials complained about the continued imposition of tariffs on exports of luxury watches, the Chinese negotiator answered pointedly, “You have the watches, we have the time”, by which he meant take it or leave it.
As for India - protectionist by nature, not just of its own borders, but on a state-by-state basis as well - forget any kind of meaningful deal.
And America? Without European labour, environmental and human rights concerns to bog things down, an FTA with the US may prove a little easier than the EU has found it, but if concerned about the encroachments of EU law on British sovereignty, just try the unaccountable and secretive supranational organisations that preside over US FTAs on governance, drug pricing, intellectual property, dispute arbitration and much else besides. You might find the EU has something to commend it after all.
The brutal truth is that the only FTAs that have a lot of impact in terms of trade and investment flows are those between geographically proximate partners. The most important of these are NAFTA and the EU. Those between distant countries tend to be far less effective.
Let’s have more trade with the rest of the world by all means, but best not to be naïve about it; there is no pot of gold at the end of the free trade rainbow.

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Theresa May has committed the ultimate political sin: it turns out that when she campaigned for a Remain vote in this year’s EU referendum, she meant it.
Oh yes. She wasn’t, as some have claimed, a lily-livered lacklustre fifth columnist for the Leave side, hiding her true feelings behind enemy lines, secretly hoping the Leavers would win, thus forcing the prime minister, David Cameron, to vacate Downing Street and open up a tasty vacancy for the then Home Secretary.
That scenario seems to be the one which, rather counter-intuitively, was oddly acceptable to those still in the Remain camp and who are fighting a rear-guard action against the stupid, uneducated racists they perceive as having sold Britain’s glorious EU future down the river. May was infuriatingly low-key and kept her head down during the campaign, they say, making her ultimate victory in the Tory leadership election all the more likely. This was unfortunate and cynical, but what can you do, eh?
But in an audio tape now in the hands of the media, revelations that make Donald Trump’s youthful (sixty-ish) indiscretions sound positively feminist are set to rock May’s premiership to its foundations. The Watergate tapes reveal nothing more sinister than a president trying to keep communications with his opponents open compared with the dynamite disclosure that Theresa May actually did vote Remain.
Were ours a US-type culture and political system, impeachment proceedings would already be underway. Surely it’s unacceptable that a politician who has never denied being a Remain supporter should now be exposed as… er, a Remain supporter?
That’s certainly the view of arch pro-EU propagandist Hugo Dixon, who tweeted this morning:
Theresa May should never have become PM given what she believed about Brexit risks pre referendum https://t.co/oPXIveQksN
And it’s true that her warnings were of the direst variety. Britain would be better off as part of a market of 500 million people, she told the assembled enthralled power suits at Goldman Sachs on May 26. Foreign companies might look elsewhere, perhaps to mainland Europe, if Britain were to leave the EU, she intoned with the gravitas of the longest serving Home Secretary for a century.
If any of that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it was the standard line peddled day after day, week after week, by the Remain camp in the run-up to polling day on June 23.
But there are other charges to be laid against the Prime Minister. On April 25, exactly a month before her Goldman Sachs speech, May made similar comments in a speech as part of the Remain campaign. It’s a fairly balanced tour of the pros and cons of EU membership. But it also makes the argument that within the EU, especially after the completion of the Single Market, the UK would be in line for a significant boost in economic growth. She warns against ten per cent tariffs on cars exported to the EU, of the threat to the Union from a Brexit vote. She explores some of the arguments for Leave too, to be sure, but her balanced arguments cannot obscure the fact that the speech is an articulate and enthusiastic endorsement of Britain within the EU.
Why does Dixon, and no doubt other excitable Remainers who imagine they’ve seen the first chink of light in the darkness that descended on the nation on June 24, believe that the prime minister’s April comments, warning of economic challenges in the event of a Leave vote, present no disqualification to her becoming the leader of her party, yet her comments a month later do? Perhaps it’s the fact that the Goldman Sachs event was not open to the media and is therefore, by definition, suspect in some way.
Whichever way one looks at the suggestion that Theresa May should not have succeeded Cameron, it’s a strange one. Do the Remainers now believe that the new occupant of Number 10 should have been a stalwart of the Leave campaign? Boris? Gove? Leadsom, perhaps? Or, perhaps more likely, given Dixon’s similarity to the legendary Japanese warrior still fighting the South Pacific war years after Hiroshima, he would have preferred a replacement who was determined either to ignore or to reverse the democratic decision of the electorate?
All this latest revelation means is that Theresa May has once again created more blue water between her and the Leader of the Opposition, who officially campaigned for the Remain side but who, given his life-long opposition to the EU, may or may not have actually voted Leave. May never estimated her own enthusiasm for the EU at “seven and a half out of ten”; she was completely on board.
The real frustration of Remainers, the real threat to their ambitions to preserve something of the European Project, is that May represents a significant proportion of Remain voters. She believed Brexit would be damaging and was unnecessary. She voted accordingly. She found she was on the losing side and, like many, many voters, shrugged away her disappointment and decided to make the best of it. Even after this “revelation”, I suspect voters will not change their views on her; they will see in May a pragmatic politician to whom they have given a task to perform.
She seems to be getting on with it. If she looks and sounds like she’s enjoying herself a bit too much when she talks about Brexit and Article 50 and the end of freedom of movement, maybe it’s because she understands that a job, if it’s to be done, must be done well or not at all.

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When Andrea Leadsom came on the phone yesterday afternoon I could tell from her voice that she’d been crying. After what had happened, the last thing she wanted was to talk to another journalist, but she agreed, with great trepidation, to speak to me as we’d planned.
Following what she thought was a friendly, professional meeting with a Times reporter on Friday, she found herself accused in a banner headline of saying that, as a mother she had the “edge” over the childless Theresa May in the race to be prime minister.
“I absolutely said, what I specifically said, is that motherhood should not play a part in the campaign,” says Leadsom. “I was pressed to say how my children had formed my views. I didn’t want it to be used as an issue. Having children has no bearing on the ability to be PM. I deeply regret that anyone has got the impression that I think otherwise.”
When I ask if she would like to apologise to Mrs May, she says: “I’ve already said to Theresa how very sorry I am for any hurt I have caused and how that article said completely the opposite of what I said and believe.”
She refuses to say how the message was conveyed to the Home Secretary, but she admits she has felt “under attack, under enormous pressure. It has been shattering.”
She doesn’t need to tell me. The lovely, confident, sparky woman I met on Friday sounds like the life force has drained out of her. Genuinely (a favourite Leadsom word), I feel for her.  Politics at the highest level is a brutal game. And, as Bob Yerbury, Leadsom’s boss for 10 years at fund manager Invesco Perpetual, said when defending her last week from allegations that she had inflated her CV: “I would never, ever doubt her honesty. Andrea doesn’t play games.”
Well, she’s going to have to learn, and fast. According to one Cabinet minister, Leadsom now has to “prove she can take the heat or get back to the kitchen” where she loves to make a Sunday roast for her husband Ben and their three children. By her own admission, Leadsom is “guilty of naivety”. Hardly surprising. On June 29, she was still in talks to be chancellor in a Boris Johnson-Michael Gove government.
Having failed to get the agreed letter from Boris (probably the most tragic missing missive since Angel Clare’s note slid under the carpet in Tess of the D’Urbevilles) Leadsom declared she would run herself, capitalising on her lively, down-to earth performance in the referendum television debates.
She can hardly have dreamt that Boris and Gove would mutually self-destruct and she, a junior minister who has never held a Cabinet position, would be the last Brexiteer left standing. “I think it’s a great tragedy that Boris didn’t stand,” she says. “I really wanted him to stand.”
After that, things moved fast. Too fast. “Andrea basically had six days to come to terms with an entirely new world in the spotlight,” says her spokesman Bill Clare.
Even someone as amiable and decent as the aptly named energy minister was caught up in this crazy, post-referendum summer with its free-floating hatred and bitterness. I have no doubt whatsoever that Leadsom became the target of a brutal and sustained character assassination.
In no particular order, she has been called dangerous, implausible, a “religious maniac” (or Christian as it used to be known), dishonest, “Trump Lite”, the kind of mummy “who gives her kids ice cream for breakfast” (GQ), ghastly woman, “thick as pigs---”, “loathsome Leadsom” and those are just the printable names.
Who is throwing all this ordure at the previously blameless MP for South Northamptonshire, and why are they hurling it with such force?
According to Iain Duncan Smith, she is the victim of disgusting “black ops” by the Tory establishment. They are scared stiff that the warm and engaging Mrs Leadsom, who shares the traditional values of the Conservative rank and file who overwhelmingly voted Leave, could beat the more experienced and lukewarm Remainer, Mrs May.
“So long as my conscience is clear,” Leadsom says brightly as I scooted after her in a multistorey car park in Milton Keynes. (Brisk walker is Andrea, no wonder she’s so enviably slim and fit.) “My husband knows who I am. My friends, my family, they know I would never lie. If my conscience is clear then I don’t see the problem.”
But there was a problem. Theresa May’s team had been able to prepare for six months; by contrast, the Leadsom camp was making it up as they went along. On Friday, I was supposed to be meeting Andrea at 9.30am in Westminster. At 7.35am, I got a text saying, sorry, but Andrea is at home in Northamptonshire.
When I finally caught up with her at midday in Milton Keynes, and asked for a quiet place to talk, we ended up driving round in Andrea’s Golf till we found a Travelodge.
“We can’t take a room or people will jump to the wrong conclusion,” said Andrea with a mischievous smile. (I’m quite sure the party faithful would be more shocked we were in a Travelodge than by any lesbian extramaritals.)
So we ended up perching on a pair of plastic chairs in the smallest foyer in the world next to a fitfully groaning drinks machine. It felt like something out of I’m Alan Partridge, not an interview with someone who could be prime minister in 60 days. When I ask if she thinks the new leader of the Tory party should have campaigned for Brexit, she says carefully: “I do think the ideal leader would be somebody who truly believes in the opportunities of leaving the EU, yes.”
So can Theresa May be trusted to take us out of the EU? “Theresa has said she will deliver Brexit so I’m absolutely prepared to believe that.” We can take that as a maybe, then.
Leadsom is invariably depicted as a classic Right-winger, but she frequently confounds that image. I had read that she is anti-abortion (another smear), but she says she is “absolutely pro-choice” while “keeping an eye on scientific progress which makes foetuses viable earlier”.
She hopes Hillary beats Trump. She is passionate about child development and founded a charity which helps vulnerable mothers to bond with their babies. When she and Ben first met on a Barclays bank training course, every month they would take a bunch of disadvantaged kids on an outward-bound weekend. The memory lingers of a little boy who got badly stung when he tried to pick a blackberry. “He didn’t know what nettles were and he’d never seen a blackberry,” she recalls. “We wanted kids like him to just have a bit of childhood.”
I wonder how many Cameron modernisers, who fancy themselves enlightened compared with the “dangerous reactionary” Leadsom, have taken such a hands-on approach to their much-hyped sense of “social justice”. Unlike May, Leadsom has guaranteed that any EU migrant who is living here legally, and not a criminal, will have the right to stay.  “Frankly, I think it is utterly awful to do other than that. There are people who have married here, have jobs here, you simply can’t leave their lives in limbo.”
If she becomes PM, she says the UK would continue to abide by free movement “until such time as we’ve left the EU. But at that point I would implement an arrangement whereby you could still come, but you would not have your right to stay here guaranteed.”
In a time of unprecedented turmoil, though, don’t we need a leader of proven stature like May? Isn’t there part of Leadsom that knows she’s a lightweight?
She hotly disputes it. “I definitely do not accept that. Theresa absolutely has the experience of government that I don’t have, but I have years of experience in the economy, working with teams big and small, and building things. I’ve set up businesses, I’ve set up charities, I have actually done the work myself.”
Only once does Leadsom’s trademark sunny smile turn into a frown, when I point out she’s been called “Ukip in a skirt”.  “Could not be further from the truth,” she says, the low, mellifluous voice rising. “I don’t work with Ukip, they don’t advise me. I’ve never met Arron Banks [the millionaire party donor and founder of Leave:EU)].” She “absolutely would rule out giving Nigel Farage a job”.
But if Leadsom doesn’t much care for Ukip, Ukip really likes Leadsom. On Sunday, Banks told the Andrew Marr Show that, if Leadsom failed to win the leadership, he was prepared to put a fortune into founding a new Brexit party. Of the two female candidates, it looks like Leadsom is the only one who could bring almost four million Ukip voters back into the fold because they believe she will serve up the full English Brexit rather than some Continental fudge.
“My biggest hope,” she admits, “is that by delivering a good exit for us from the EU, Ukip will become a thing of the past.”  Andrea Jacqueline Salmon was born on May 13 1963. The middle one in a trio of sisters, her parents divorced when she was four, leaving her redoubtable mother, Judy, to take care of three little girls under five. Times were tough. They lived in a two and half-bedroomed house and “ate a lot of pilchards on toast”. Judy had trained as a children’s nurse, but she found work in a shop by day and a pub at night to keep the family afloat.
“We were never on benefits,” says Leadsom.  Andrea and her sisters were looked after by a lodger. I gather from the way she averts her eyes when she says that she wore glasses and was “very insecure” that there was a lot of unhappiness, but Leadsom insists “there is no sob story here. We had the most brilliant, supportive mum all the way through”.  Judy was a brilliant dressmaker and the girls won first prize in the beauty contest at the village fête wearing contrasting dresses their mum had sewn out of orange curtains.  Like Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music?
“Exactly, but don’t say that because that’s a bit of a sob story, too.” How interesting, in this X Factor age of epic self-pity, to find someone so reluctant to reveal themselves, so insistent that “private” should mean private. Judy remarried and the family moved to Kent where Andrea attended Tonbridge Grammar School (“fabulous”) and her parents set up a furniture shop. Andrea’s stepfather was a Labour man while her mother was a staunch Tory.
At the dinner table, she got a taste for politics.  “At the time we had very high taxes on the self-employed and my mum was part of a campaign for what was then the National Federation for the Self-Employed to resist these massive taxes.” She remembers her parents writing a cheque for their taxes on the side of a wardrobe. “It was a rebellion,” she says proudly.
She knew she wanted to be a politician when she was 13. “I was really worried about a nuclear war. It was at the time that CND was very strong and I felt that we needed our independent nuclear deterrent and Britain had to stand up and be counted.”  Forty years later, she still wants us to stand up and be counted, no matter what attacks they make on her.  She says she wants to sign Theresa May’s Clean Campaign Pledge “because I have said that I will only act with the highest integrity and deal with honourable people”.
Forty years later, she still wants us to stand up and be counted, no matter what attacks they make on her. She says she wants to sign Theresa May’s Clean Campaign Pledge “because I have said from the start that I will only act with the highest integrity and deal with honourable people.”
It’s been a brutally hard week which makes you wonder why anyone would go into politics. On the phone, I asked Andrea Leadsom when she last cried. There is a pause. “Twenty minutes ago,” she admits with a wobble. But, don’t worry, it’s not a sob story. She doesn’t believe in those. Meanwhile, she’s off to make a roast chicken stretch for the children’s friends who just turned up unexpectedly. “Lots of roast potatoes.”
Putting on a brave face, making the best of things, and soldiering on, she is much like swathes of Tory voters up and down the land. Will they really ignore her, as all the pundits predict, when it comes to the ballot in September? Not everything has to end in tears.
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Jeremy Corbyn has been accused by nearly half the female MPs in his party of failing to stop the "disgusting and totally unacceptable" abuse of women by his supporters.
In a letter to the Labour leader, 45 female MPs say his response to the intimidation has been “inadequate” and tell him: “Jeremy, this is being done in your name.”
The MPs demand he signs a three-part pledge to do more to stop the “rape threats, death threats, smashed cars and bricks through the windows” seen in recent weeks.
They also suggest Mr Corbyn failed in his duty of care by opposing a secret ballot for a crucial party board vote despite the pleas of women colleagues receiving intimidating messages.
I've written to Jeremy Corbyn re ongoing abuse aimed at women MPs asking him to take tangible action #ActionNotWords pic.twitter.com/vTxZfQRJqS
The list of signatories includes 10 former shadow cabinet ministers, seven of whom were serving under Mr Corbyn until last month.
It comes after Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, suggested intelligence services posing as Corbyn backers are responsible for the abuse of Labour MPs on social media.
Mr McCluskey, a key Corbyn ally, suggested MI5 could be stirring up "trouble” for the Labour leader by posing as his supporters and harassing rebel MPs.
On Thursday, former leadership contender Angela Eagle told The Telegraph that Mr Corbyn had “contributed” to the hostile atmosphere after she was told to stop holding open constituency meetings. A brick was thrown threw her office’s window recently and she has faced death threats .
Mr Corbyn rejected the criticism on Friday, saying he was “absolutely not” responsible and adding he “deeply regrets” Ms Eagle’s comments.
“I’ve set out a very clear code of conduct of how I will behave [and] how my supporters will be asked to behave during this election process,” he said.
However Owen Smith, his leadership rival, said a “culture of bullying” had been allowed to develop under Mr Corbyn’s leadership the likes of which have “we’ve never seen before” in Labour.
“We can’t deny the facts. This wasn’t something that we saw in the Labour Party before Jeremy Corbyn became leader and it’s now become common place,” he said.
Concerns about the safety of MPs have increased after Labour MP Jo Cox was brutally murdered in her constituency in June.
In their letter to Mr Corbyn, the female Labour MPs warn say it is “abundantly clear” that politicians are “targets of threats, undue vilification, intimidation, abuse and violent rhetoric”.
They add: “Rape threats, death threats, smashed cars and bricks through windows are disgusting and totally unacceptable in any situation.
“This is acknowledged by all factions, yet the simple words of condemnation offered in response are inadequate. We expect swift and tangible action against those who commit such acts.”
They criticise his opposition to the party’s National Executive Committee holding a secret ballot on whether he needed MP backing to run for the leadership despite warnings some present had faced intimidation over the decision.
They also say John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor and Corbyn ally, has addressed rallies where demonstrations outside MPs offices have been “either actively encouraged or quietly condemned”.
“The culture of hatred and division that is being sown does not benefit anybody, not the party, not the leader, and certainly not the British people,” they say.
“We hope that a significant shift takes place within the Labour Party regarding the way we deal with future incidents.”
Signatories include seven of Mr Corbyn’s former shadow cabinet ministers: Heidi Alexander, Shabana Mahmood, Gloria De Piero, Luciana Berger, Lilian Greenwood, Catherine McKinnell and Nia Griffith.
The three pledges they want Mr Corbyn to back include an “unequivocal” statement condemning campaigning outside offices, a promise to “actively challenge” abusive supporters and make senior figures “accountable” for attending events where abusive behaviour appears.
A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: "No demonstrations outside MPs' offices or surgeries will be tolerated, nor will abuse of any kind.
"Anyone with evidence of abuse or threats should inform both the police and Jeremy, and he will personally ensure that it is properly investigated by the party."
A spokesman for Mr McDonnell said: “John has not attended such meetings and in fact has specifically called for people not to protest outside MPs offices on more than one occasion.”
In a separate development, a Labour whip claimed Mr Corbyn wanted to use a Labour MP's father to "bully" him into "submission".
Conor McGinn said the Labour leader threatened to contact his father, a former Sinn Fein councillor, after he gave a critical interview. Mr Corbyn's team denied the claims.

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Do you accept that Britain voted to leave the European Union in June? Many of those who wanted the country to stay in the bloc have accepted defeat and got on with their lives, but some are still struggling with the referendum result.
Call them Bremoaners, or simply people in Brenial; these voters remain passionate in their reluctance for Britain to leave the EU. So they might just jump at the chance to vote for a new unashamedly pro-EU party that campaigned to thwart the process.
The idea has been doing the rounds since July, as Europhile Tories considered whether it was time to ditch their Brexit-friendly leaders and shack up with moderate Labour MPs. And it will get a new lease of life from polling carried out by YouGov which found that nearly 26 per cent of those surveyed would back a "Stop Brexit" party.
Such a result seems stunning, as it suggests that the anti-Brexit brigade would come in second place to the Tories in a general election, effectively making it Her Majesty's Official Opposition. Just imagine the names that could be part of such a Europhile super-group:  Anna Soubry, George Osborne, Tony Blair and Chuka Umunna.
Tim Farron could send some of his fellow Liberal Democrats in too for the cause.  If you thought Hilary Benn could provide some scrutiny of Brexit at the head of his own select committee, an entire party could increase it tenfold.
But there are major problems that would stop the Stop Brexit bandwagon rolling, as I discussed with pollster Keiran Pedley and analyst Leo Barasi. Starting a new party is far from easy, especially for politicians who are already part of the main parties.
Many would prefer to stay a player in their current party than risk being a martyr over one particular issue. They can console themselves with the usual reminder that parties are broad churches in terms of opinion.
Still, let's assume some mavericks Europhiles take the plunge and cut ties to their former parties to go it alone in the fight against Brexit. They would stumble into a deeper problem: having to offer voters more than just a hatred of Brexit.
Ukip – the closest we have to a "Start Brexit" party – has been wrestling with this question from the moment Britain voted to leave the European Union. The Conservatives have taken up their distinctive policies on issues like grammar schools, leaving them little left in the policy cupboard to offer voters. The anti-Brexiteers would face a similar struggle, as they would no doubt coalesce around a liberal agenda, but would be unlikely to offer anything that isn't already espoused by the bigger parties. They would at least serve as an outlet to express displeasure with Brexit.
The chances of a "Stop Brexit" pitch resonating with voters rest on Britain's departure becoming a cause for popular dissent. YouGov has also been looking at whether a range of ominous events could cause Leave voters to rethink their views on Brexit. A significant rise in unemployment was found to be most likely to shake their resolve, as 20 per cent of those surveyed said it would give them second thoughts. Such an event would prove politically fertile ground for the anti-Brexit movement, but that assumes the doom Remainers warned of actually happens. If it doesn't, what would they have to rise up against?
Britain's economy has so far seemed to defy their gloomy expectations. The Treasury predicted during the campaign that it would shrink by at least 0.1 per cent in the three months after the referendum, and as much as 1 per cent. But the Office for National Statistics has revealed today that it actually expanded by 0.5 per cent. "There is little evidence of a pronounced effect in the immediate aftermath of the vote," its chief economist said. So Europhiles hoping for people to cry out for a "Stop Brexit" party will be waiting a long time.
Anti-Brexiteers may not go as far as setting up their own party, but they'll fight against the referendum result as hard as they can in their current parties. The pro-EU demos and mawkish "Marches for Europe" won't just be a flash in the pan. The polls show many Remain voters still want to stop Britain leaving, so these politicians will do all they can to reach out to them. But Jeremy Corbyn's muddled stance on Brexit means Labour has left a vacuum, which the Lib Dems have sought to exploit by trying to claim the pro-EU mantle for themselves.
Tim Farron's party nearly took Witney off the Tories by pushing their anti-Brexit credentials, and could be about to go one step further and do it in Richmond Park. The Lib Dems know many voters in these seats voted Remain during the referendum, so will be sorely tempted to vote for them as a way to show their unease about Brexit. If it means they can win a few more seats, they'll Bremoan for as long as it takes.

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Angela Eagle, the Labour MP who challenged Mr Corbyn for the leadership, has been told by police to stop holding open surgeries with her constituents over concerns for her safety.
The former shadow business secretary was told by Merseyside Police instead to get constituents to make an appointment if they wanted to see her.
It comes after a man was arrested for threatening to kill Ms Eagle and her local party was suspended amid allegations of bullying.
All Labour MP will be forced to get reselected by their local party before the new general election, Jeremy Corbyn has said, in a move that could effectively allow the Labour leader to sack some of his most prominent critics.
The Labour leader said after the boundary review concludes in 2018 there will be a “full selection process in every constituency” to see who stands for Parliament.
He said the Party is "stronger" with him as leader and he was "proud" of what has been achieved in the last ten months.
Mr Corbyn said he was holding out a "hand of friendship" to opponents and critics.
"This party is going places, " he told the audience. "This party is strong, this party is capable of winning a general election."
Launching his campaign to see off a challenge from former shadow cabinet minister Owen Smith, the Labour leader said that after the election result is declared, it will be "the job, the duty, the responsibility" of every Labour MP to "get behind the party".
He added that he "of course" hopes his rival Mr Smith will come back into his shadow cabinet if he remains leader.
Mr Corbyn told journalists he finds it "hard to believe" that some Labour MPs "don't like me personally, but apparently there are."
He launched his campaign with a vow to tackle discrimination in the workplace by forcing firms to publish details of the pay and conditions of workers.
When asked if he would publish his own office audit, he simply replied that the rules would apply to all employers.
Owen Smith has hit out at Jeremy Corbyn after he suggested there should be a “full selection process in every constituency” in 2018.
"It didn't seem very friendly or kind or gentle to me," he told the BBC.
“It’s not much of an employer that says, you know, work for me and work harder or I’m going to sack you all – which is effectively what he’s doing today,” he said.
“I don’t think he feels he can bring the party back together, that’s why he’s talking about re-selections because I think he is reconciled, I think he is fatalistic about the prospect of the party splitting apart and being destroyed.
“He just wants to control the Labour Party.”
Angela Eagle, the Labour MP who challenged Mr Corbyn for the leadership, has been told by police to stop holding open surgeries with her constituents over concerns for her safety.
The former shadow business secretary was told by Merseyside Police instead to get constituents to make an appointment if they wanted to see her.
It comes after a man was arrested for threatening to kill Ms Eagle and her local party was suspended amid allegations of bullying.
I just bumped into Angela Eagle. She says police have advised her not to do her constituency surgeries for her own safety. What a disgrace.
Wallasey MP Angela Eagle 'advised by police to postpone constituency surgeries' according to her spokesman.
UPDATE: Merseyside Police statement on Eagle surgery advice https://t.co/ZjDNJfAJcE pic.twitter.com/88mabm7je5
Jeremy Corbyn has told LBC there shuld "of course" be a snap general election becasue Theresa May was not elected with a mandate from the public.
He said: "Of course there should be a general election. We have a new Prime Minister without a mandate, we have Brexit negotiations that are being undertaken without any authority other than the referendum which said people wanted ultimately to leave the European Union.
"And we are putting forward a different agenda on that, which is about maintaining workers’ rights, human rights, maintaining the EU investment levels, which are very high, £400m due to go into the south west alone over the next four years, and bringing about some kind of market access to Europe.
"That’s a huge area of debate, now I think the public ought to be involved in that."
The Labour leader has given an interview with Newsnight, which will be aired tonight, in which he says politicians should respect the result of the referendum.
"I think you have to respect the result of the referendum, whether you welcome it or not, and respect the result which was, unfortunately a vote to leave."
When challenged in his previous suggestion that Article 50 needs to be published now, he says:
I may not have put that as well as I should have done. My view was, and is, that at some point A50 is going to be invoked, obviously, it has to be.
On the issue of immigration he says:
I have made the point all along that the single market does include free movement of labour and if you go away from that you’re not in the single market, Germany’s made that very clear.
So the point I was making throughout the referendum campaign was that the posted workers directive would prevent the undercutting of, would prevent the grotesque level of exploitation, that in turn will have a reduction effect.
Asked if he would serve in an Owen Smith cabinet, he said:
Owen smith has offered me unopposed election to a job that doesn’t exist – [would you want to be president of the party?] – no.
I don’t want to be president of the party, I’m not even sure we should have a president of the party, what’s a president for, it sounds a bit like a director of football.
So no. It was a very strange thing to offer because he offered that after he had decided to resign from the shadow cabinet, having earlier on told me he was happy to serve in the shadow cabinet, now that’s up to him that’s fine, he’s got every right to do that.
But the creation of a position of president of the party would require a rule change, a consituttional change, it’s not in his gift to offer unopposed election to anything, unless he has some control over the whole electorate that I haven’t been told about.
Asked if he was a Blairite he said:
I don’t go round calling people Blairites actually because Tony Blair stopped being PM in 2007, it’s quite  a long time ago.
The huge surge in new members signing up to join Labour ahead of the party's leadership election has stunned Westminster.
In the space of just 48 hours more than 183,000 paid the £25 fee required to become registered members with a vote in the leadership contest.
The numbers easily exceed the 112,000 who joined last summer - when subscription was just £3 - and they will clearly have a huge impact on the outcome of the election.
Conventional wisdom has it that the beneficiary will again be Jeremy Corbyn who was propelled to an overwhelming victory in last year's contest with the support of the £3 members.
Bookmakers William Hill responded by slashing their odds of another Corbyn victory from 4/11 to 1/8.
"The odds suggest that Jeremy has an almost 90 per cent chance of retaining the Labour party leadership and we think that the price will only shorten," said spokesman Rupert Adams.
Lisa Nandy speech at IPPR. Labour's response to Brexit has been to condemn voters as stupid or racist, proving Labour is still not listening
LIsa Nandy "We must have the opportunity to endorse the terms of our exit from the EU".
Why should anyone want to save Labour when it clearly doesn't want to save itself? asks Jane Merrick.
To whom does the Labour Party belong? Is it the leader, whose most ardent followers are exhibiting symptoms of a cult?
I can see why so many frontbenchers resigned in the wake of the Brexit vote and following Hilary Benn’s sacking. But in hindsight, this coup, however well-intentioned, has been a disaster.
Nobody could have foreseen Corbyn’s stubborn and arrogant refusal to resign, but nevertheless Labour is in a deeper mess today than it was the morning after the referendum vote.
It is said that Smith will lessen the electoral disaster that awaits Labour in 2020 if Corbyn remains as leader, but I am not so sure. I have grudgingly paid my £25, but I cannot vote with any enthusiasm for Smith.
MPs have chosen the wrong opponent to challenge the wrong leader. I cannot be the only traditional Labour voter thinking right now: why should I save Labour if it cannot save itself?
Read the full piece here
Setting up for @EvanHD interview for #Newsnight with Jeremy Corbyn - what should we ask? pic.twitter.com/0bINTgNVYf
A spokesman for the Owen Smith campaign has questioned Jeremy Corbyn’s account of Owen Smith's resignation from the shadow cabinet.
The spokesman told the Guardian Mr Smith went to see Corbyn with Lisa Nandy, John Healey, Nia Griffith and Kate Green when they were all still shadow cabinet members.
They said:
They had hoped to leave that meeting with the confidence to continue to support the leadership in bringing the Labour party together from within the shadow cabinet.
During the course of the meeting it became apparent that this would not be possible.
At the end of the meeting it was clear that Jeremy Corbyn would not and could not respond to their concerns with a concrete plan and commitment to unite the party.
It was evident they were not happy with Jeremy’s response and proposals. Immediately following this they resigned.
Team Corbyn say Labour leader not threatening Labour MPs with de-selection but setting out existing party procedures for re-selection.
To de-select or not to de-select ? Mr Corbyn's critics think that is exactly what he is threatening them with - whatever Team Corbyn say.
Am told the number of registered supporters in Labour leadership contest likely to be nearer 140,000 - not 183000
Labour MPs  must crush Jeremy Corbyn, or be crushed, writes Asa Bennett.
There are many different options for Labour moderates. They could form a new party - 172 MPs would be more than enough to overshadow the 40 MPs who still expressed confidence in Mr Corbyn's leadership.
Jeremy Corbyn's followers aren't pulling their punches, as they know this contest will decide the future of an already fracturing Labour Party.
Labour MPs could even use the PLP's internal positions to form a "party within a party" that could humiliate Mr Corbyn by stopping him representing Labour in the Commons.
Moderates have yet to fully realise this and have to agree on an action plan, as if they can't oust Jeremy Corbyn, they're going to feel the real meaning of his "kinder politics".
Read Asa's full article here
More from Ben Riley-Smith, who was attending Mr Cobryn’s leadership launch.
Jeremy Corbyn has attacked his Labour leadership rival Owen Smith for failing to vote against Tory welfare cuts and his previous job lobbying for a pharmaceutical company.
Despite promising to run a clean fight for the leadership, Mr Corbyn took a thinly veiled swipe at Mr Smith as he criticised those “unsure” about voting against a £12bn welfare cut last summer.
Mr Smith, who has put his opposition to Tory welfare cuts at the front of his leadership pitch, initially abstained in line with party policy in a vote while Harriet Harman was interim Labour leader.
Mr Corbyn also challenged Mr Smith to say he supports a “fully public” NHS as he criticised the role of Pfizer – the pharmaceutical company Mr Smith use to work for – plays in medical research .
Ben Riley-Smith, our political correspondent, was at Mr Corbyn's leadership launch and has this on a change in stance on mandatory reselection.
He writes that every Labour MP will be forced to get reselected by their local party before the new general election, Jeremy Corbyn has said in a move that could effectively sack some of his most prominent critics.
The Labour leader said after the boundary review concludes in 2018 there will be a “full selection process in every constituency” to see who stands for Parliament.
That means moderates who have openly opposed his leadership will have to gain the approval of local parties which have swelled with new pro-Corbyn members in the last year.
Angela Eagle, the former shadow business secretary who triggered the leadership contest, faced a motion of no confidence from her constituency party this month before it was blocked by senior figures.
Other leading critics have said their local parties have doubled or tripled since Mr Corbyn took over as left-wingers rejoined Labour after his victory last September, leaving them exposed.
Previously Mr Corbyn has opposed mandatory re-selection, ruling out the move last year as concerns were raised about how he would treat moderates in the party under his leadership.
However last week Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union and one of Mr Cobryn’s most influential backers, formally adopted support for mandatory reselection at a policy conference.
Labour moderates have been shocked by his comments, believing it will increase the chances of a party split if Mr Corbyn wins the leadership again in September.
However they are holding out hope that the party’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee, would block the move if Mr Corbyn attempted to put it into action.
It came just minutes after Mr Corbyn promised to hold out the “hand of friendship” to rebels and allow his leadership rival Owen Smith to return to the shadow cabinet if he wins the contest.
Earlier this year, The Independent found that some of Mr Corbyn’s biggest critics are likely to be affected by the boundary review including Hilary Benn, Chuka Umunna, Tristram Hunt, Chris Leslie, Emma Reynolds, Liam Byrne, and Stella Creasy.
Corbyn on mandatory reselection:
“There’s going to be, as you know, a total boundary review which the first report will be out this autumn and it will finally be implemented in 2018.
“If this parliament runs to full term then the new boundaries will be the basis on which selections take place. On that case there would be a full selection process in every constituency.
“But the sitting MP for any part or any substantial part of the new boundary would have an opportunity to put their name forward.
“So there will be a full and open process for every constituency Labour Party throughout the whole of the UK and we’ll know the first draft of the boundary review this year.”
Jeremy Corbyn says that all Labour MP must be reselected for their seats after 2018 boundary review.
He says that once the outcome of a review of constituency boundaries is known, "there will be a full and open selection process for every constituency Labour Party".
He tells our political correspondent Ben Riley- Smith  that he "of course" hopes Owen Smith will come back into his shadow cabinet and he "hope he does".
He says it will be "the job, the duty, the responsibility" of every Labour MP to "get behind the party" and take on the Conservative Government.
Corbyn suggests Owen Smith will be offered shadow cabinet job if he wins. "Of course" he can return, Corbyn says.
Jeremy Corbyn has told journalists he finds it "hard to believe" that some Labour MPs "don't like me personally, but apparently there are."
The Labour leader has said he is "holding out the hand of friendship'" to critics in the Party.
"This party is going places, " he says. "This party is strong, this party is capable of winning a general election."
Mr Corbyn said: "I say to Labour MPs quite simply this - I've been in Parliament a very long time. I've seen lots of leaders. I've seen them come and I've seen them go.
"And I hope that those that may not agree with me politically, may not even like me personally - I find that hard to believe, but there are some people apparently who don't like me - I hold out the hand of friendship to them all.
"It's the job, it's the duty, it's the responsibility of every Labour MP to get behind the party at that point and put it there against the Tories about the different, fairer kind of Britain that we can build together.
"I appeal to them to work together to put that case forward, because we owe it to the people that founded this party, that support this party, the half-million who give their money and their time to help this party survive and strengthen and grow.
"I hope they will recognise that and come on board."
Corbyn: "I think the polls will change. They will improve for us"
Jeremy Corbyn is asked by Sky News if he will publish a gender pay audit of his office.
The Labour leader fails to directly answer this question about his own office, he just says he hopes a gender pay audit will be carried out by all employers.
He also says that anyone who has recently joined the Labour party to vote for him in this contest must share their values.
He says he hopes that process is enforced.
Labour is stronger now he is leader, Jeremy Corbyn says as he launches his leadership bid in central London.
"I’m proud of what we have achieved in the last ten months", he says.
"Labour is stronger - we have won every parliamentary by-election we have faced - three of them with greatly increased majorities."
Weirdly, Jeremy Corbyn enters his own leadership campaign launch to total silence. It's like PMQs in here
He says: "Every single plank of George Osborne’s failed and destructive economic programme is being torn up.
"From a year ago, when Labour was too cautious in criticising cuts.
"Now, you’re hard-pressed to find even a Tory to defend it, as one fiscal target after another has been ditched, first by Osborne, and now by Theresa May. The long-term economic plan is dead."
Corbyn is up. New slogan for his campaign revealed: "The people's voice". pic.twitter.com/alC586VZyk
The Labour leader insists he is bringing in a “kinder, gentler politics”.
However, referring to John McDonnell, he jokes: "The kinder, gentler stuff is still a work in progress."
His new policy announcement is that companies with more than 21 staff will be required to publish equality pay.
Corbyn jokes of John McDonnell: "The kinder, gentler stuff is still a work in progress."
He said a Labour administration would require firms to publish the new equality pay audits "detailing pay, grade and hours of every job ... alongside data on recognised equality characteristics".
"It is not only women who face workplace discrimination but disabled workers, the youngest and oldest workers, black and ethnic minority workers," he said.
"Young workers are institutionally discriminated against, not entitled to the full minimum wage, not entitled to equal rates of housing benefit and so many are now saddled with huge student debts."
Labour's Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, refused to be drawn on who he was backing in the leadership race.
"What's really important is that Labour selects a candidate at the end of the process who gives us a better chance of winning the next general election," he said.
"Both Owen and Jeremy have got lots and lots of pros and strengths and I'm looking forward to a good, clean contest."
This is what happens when you call your colleagues "f***ing useless" John #kinderpolitics pic.twitter.com/Ijiv3cRvAU
Diane Abbott, the shadow health secretary and close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, has hit out at Owen Smith's background as a lobbyist.
Ms Abbott said Corbyn's leadership was not going to “enthuse the base” with his employment history.
“Party members will look at this issue", she said.
There are many reasons to vote for a change of Labour leadership. Not having Diane Abbott on the radio every morning is just one of them...
"I know Owen Smith says technically he wasn’t a lobbyist, but for practical purposes he was and party members will look at this issue because there is no issue closer to party members hearts than the NHS.
“He wasn’t a scientist, he was a lobbyist. I mean the Tories have had a former PR man-stroke-lobbyist as their leader, David Cameron. They’ve now moved beyond that.
"Owen Smith is a great bloke and so on, but I don’t believe that someone whose history is having been a special adviser and a pharmaceutical company lobbyist is going to enthuse the base.”
Gisela Stuart, Labour MP and Brexit campaigner, has said this morning that she is not sure she will even vote in the Labour leadership contest.
Speaking to the Today programme, she said: “I seriously have to think about it, and if people like me are in that position that tells you that we have a problem at the Labour party.
"I think I would seriously say to Owen Smith: you offered the potential of a second referendum.
"I think you ought to consider that and say we’ve had a referendum and we now need to do the best for the country.”
She also said the Labour Party had to accept the results of the referendum and thought it was wrong for leadership contenders to promise a second vote.
“For people like me, I need to have conversations with Owen Smith and say: a second referendum is not the answer", she told the programme.
"And the Labour party collectively at the moment is almost like Bertolt Brecht when he said ‘would it therefore not be better for the government to dismiss the people and elect another one’.
“We’ve got to stop looking at ourselves inside the M25 belt and as a party and realise that to be back in government we have to actually reflect what our voters want.”
In a speech in a rally last night Jeremy Corbyn said he wasn't going to get "into the gutter".
183k Registered Supporters signed up in 48 hrs to vote in Labour leadership. I hope they all become full members & help us beat the Tories
"You may have noticed that I have received one or two criticisms over the last 10 months. But I don’t really have time to read all of those; I’m very busy", he told the crowd.
"But it’s quite important that we don’t reply in the same terms, because I’m not going to get in the gutter with anybody."
Diane Abbott has blamed "the way Labour MPs behave at PMQs" for Jeremy Corbyn weak performance in the Commons yesterday.
"If Owen Smith wants Jeremy to score over Theresa May at Prime Minister's Questions he needs to talk to his colleagues," she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
Diane Abbott moaning that we don't support Jeremy in chamber at #PMQs. Would help if we were given something to cheer. No more pretending.
"They refuse to cheer, they sit on their hands, they sulk, they chat among themselves. Some of these Labour MPs need to understand it is not about supporting Jeremy as a person, it is about going into the chamber for Prime Minister's Questions and supporting your party.
"When Theresa May came in she got huge cheers from the Tory benches. When Jeremy came in there was silence. If your own side isn't behind you, it is really difficult to hit your stride."
Diane Abbott blames sulking backbench Labour MPs for Corbyn's inability to score points at #PMQs #r4today
Ms Abbott warned that Mr Smith's history as a lobbyist for US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer would count against him when it came to the ballot of party members which will decide the leadership contest.
"There is no issue closer to party members' hearts than the NHS. I don't believe that someone whose history is having been a special adviser and a pharmaceutical company lobbyist is going to enthuse the base," she said.
Diane Abbott yet again! so few willing to go on media & defend Jeremy @BBCr4today
"People find the link between lobbyists and politics very distasteful and having been a former pharmaceutical company lobbyist will not help Owen Smith."
Asked what will happens if Mr Corbyn wins teh leadership contest again, she says: "He'll have won twice."
The former frontbencher Chris Leslie has written an article for Politics Home this morning in which he calls for a select committee to hold the government to account as we leave the EU.
He writes:
“Every Government department is mirrored by a select committee in the Commons, so the new ‘DEEU’ Ministers should face in depth scrutiny as well.
“There is a mountain of policy preparation to establish the UK’s negotiating position, vital dialogue with the devolved administrations, regions and localities about the questions that now follow, and the risks and pitfalls of extricating ourselves from EU membership will need to be navigated with dexterity.”
"Changes to the machinery of government can often see Parliament lagging behind and taking months to catch up.
“In this case, there’s no time to lose. I don’t have enough confidence in the handful of ministers that have been appointed so far to grapple with this enormous priority now facing the country.
“The Commons needs to play its role properly, probing, challenging and working constructively too.
That’s why I’ll continue arguing for urgent changes to our select committee structure straight away.”
Owen Smith, who is running for the position of Labour Leader, has said Jeremy Corbyn is “just not up to the job”.
“We have become, in many corners of the country, with our voters, a laughing stock, and we have got to change that,” the former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary told the Guardian.
“And unfortunately, with Jeremy at the helm, we will not change it.”
Commenting on Mr Corbyn's performance at PMQs yesterday, Mr Smith said: “I was more than frustrated: I was furious that we were sitting there with a Tory government that has imposed swingeing cuts on public services, on tax credits, on universal credit, that has smashed women and public sector workers the length and breadth of Britain, and we are taking lectures from them about social justice and economic fairness.
“It makes my blood boil to see us so useless at saying to them: ‘How dare you have the temerity to make these claims, to make these arguments.’
“Jeremy is just not up to the job of taking them on at the dispatch box. I don’t think he enjoys it; I don’t think he’s robust enough at arguing Labour’s case.”
Jeremy Corbyn will launch his fight to hold on to the Labour leadership this morning with a vow to tackle discrimination in the workplace by forcing firms to publish details of the pay and conditions of workers.
He believes he can win the Labour leadership by a landslide as it emerged that more than 180,000 people have paid £25 to vote in the contest.
Allies of Mr Corbyn were left jubilant by the late surge, predicting the vast majority were Corbyn backers and claiming his rival Owen Smith would be left “crying his eyes out” at the news.
Moderates had attempted to shut down the chances of new joiners by upping the price from £3 and restricting registration to a 48-hour period, but people signed up at the remarkable rate of one a second.
There were also signs last night that some Labour supporters were cooling on Mr Corbyn’s leadership, with a Guardian survey of 100 constituencies drawing some critical comments.
However Mr Corbyn’s backers believe the race is increasingly looking “done and dusted” before it has barely begun with polls already showing Mr Smith had significant ground to make up.
They are now openly speculating that Mr Corbyn could win by a bigger margin than last summer, when he took almost 60 per cent of the vote despite facing three other candidates.
Some believe focus will begin to turn on establishing Mr Corbyn’s authority in Parliament within weeks unless Mr Smith makes drastic gains in polls.
There was speculation yesterday that senior figures who quit the front bench after the EU referendum in protest at Mr Corbyn’s leadership could return if he wins.
Asked whether Mr Corbyn was confident of winning the contest, a senior Labour source said: “He is not complacent in anyway, but he was elected with a landslide a year ago.
“By a lot of measures his support has increased among Labour party members and activists and supporters and there is every reason to think he will be re-elected.”
In a separate development, sources close to Mr Corbyn said he could be open to a second EU referendum on the terms of the Brexit renegotiation if workers’ rights are eroded.
The result of the head-to-head contest will be announced on September 24.
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Wednesday October 31, 1956, was an altogether too exciting day in world affairs. Britain and France launched Operation Musketeer, the plan to seize the Suez Canal. In Russia, the Communist party’s Politburo decided to intervene militarily to crush the revolution in Hungary and restore Soviet rule. I do not remember either of these events, as I was busy being born, in Hastings.
This week, I received my senior railcard, which gets me a third off all railway journeys after 9.30am. Being almost 60, I find myself asking if my country today is in a better place in the world than on the day I was born.
It would not be hard to make a negative case. The decline of Britain’s imperial power, which the failure of Suez so clearly signalled, continued long afterwards. It was a necessary experience for us, but not usually a pleasant one.
The legacy has been problematic. The foundation documents of Islamist extremism were written in Egypt and in the Indian sub-continent under the shadow of the British Empire. Some of their followers now try to live – and a few to die – by these writings in the country they declaredly hate. It is no fun for the rest of us.
The half-memory of empire supplies a narrative of grievance which long outlasts our actual rule. Who in the 1950s would have imagined that the Labour Party would become Britain’s chief repository of anti-Semitism today? Yet under Jeremy Corbyn, it is so. The cause which binds his socialism together is not the advancement of the workers but the belief that any exertion of white Western power is wrong. In this account, bolstered by angry Muslims, the state of Israel is not a pioneer, egalitarian nation, but a tool of imperialism. In fevered imaginations, the Jews play the part of scheming tricksters which anti-Semitism has always assigned to them.
The wider Western civilisation to which Britain belongs is looking weaker too. Dr Henry Kissinger, now 93, believes that, for the first time in 400 years, Europe has become marginal in global strategic calculations. Its history and culture, he laments, are no longer taught systematically to its citizens.
In the 1960s, Kenneth Clark presented the most famous television series about art and culture ever made. It was called Civilisation and was almost solely concerned with the classical and Christian West. No mainstream channel would dare commission such a thing today. Pride in our traditions and achievements has been gradually redefined as racism.
The United States nowadays does much less to renew the civilisation of the old world. The young Kissinger, a refugee from Hitler, helped liberate a concentration camp in 1945 and wrote home to tell his parents how proud he was to do so as “a free American soldier”. Barack Obama, however, has followed a foreign policy of political and cultural retreat, seeing Europe (though not the European Union, which he likes) as “someone else’s dream”.
So Britain today is a not very powerful island on the edge of a not very powerful and increasingly geriatric continent. Instability and terrorism are imported by mass migration. Our main strategic alliance, Nato, is mocked by Russia.
Yet I feel that Britain is edging towards a better place in the world than 60 years ago. Why?
First – one must not neglect the obvious – the collapse of Soviet Communism is a continuing triumph for our way of life. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 produced many complications, but it was the greatest peaceful assertion of the desire for freedom ever seen. When the Soviet Union rolled back into Hungary and killed thousands in 1956, just as were making fools of ourselves in Suez, they seemed to be winning. Not till the 1980s did it become obvious that Communism would lose. In the second half of my life, the sum of human possibilities has hugely increased.
Second is something which is harder to describe. In my youth, British politicians suffered from the error which lies behind Dean Acheson’s endlessly used phrase about Britain having lost an empire and failed to find a role. They kept asking what that role should be.
It was a mistake to search so hard. A role emerges from what a country is and does. It cannot be invented. In 1960s and 1970s, remarkably little credence was given to the idea that we could solve many economic problems if only we let people do so. We were constantly told that government had to “save” heavy industry, that wages and prices must be controlled by law, that business and trade unions must run the economy through government-brokered agreements, that the pound must have a fixed value.
The plans for these things were often grandiose, but behind them lay a feeling of hopelessness. In conversation, my elders and betters often used to say “Britain is finished”. This applied to foreign policy too. My generation was too young to remember the greatness: we were made to feel we would have to live littler lives.
For many of our leaders, “Europe” came to the rescue. Here was our new role. We could learn better labour relations from the Germans, better diplomatic finesse from the French. Here was a continuation, by other means, of our large place in the world. Here was our “seat at the top table”. That phrase was a telling one. Seats at the top table are of great importance to politicians and ambassadors, but mean much less to people in general. It is a grossly inadequate metaphor for an entire nation.
From 1979, we gradually learnt we could do pretty well without exchange controls, nationalisation, the Price Commission, the closed shop, and a hundred like bodies, rules and interferences. The economic impact of this discovery was beneficial, but the Margaret Thatcher effect went wider. Our power was increasing because we were increasing our own efforts and overcoming our own fears. The idea began to grow – I can remember it growing at the very time that Jacques Delors started pushing us in the opposite direction – that our country could do better the more independent it became.
In Britain, this was not a new thought, but an old one which had gone to sleep. It is not an isolationist idea: free trade has been our dominant view since the repeal of the Corn Laws. It is a democratic one. As our system of government developed over centuries, we did not ask ourselves “What should our role in the world be?” We asked a much more primary question – “Who should rule us, and by what right?” The almost boringly obvious answer is “Ourselves, by the consent of our people.”
Our post-imperial rulers, longing for a world role, neglected this point. But, as we discovered this summer, 17.4 million voters did not. After many European disappointments, we have rediscovered the key to our national success, which is not imperial, but parliamentary. If we persist, our role in the world will emerge, almost inadvertently.
Lest you doubt, listen carefully to Tony Blair, 63, who popped up again yesterday. He had just been talking to Francois Hollande (there’s a name to drop just now!), he told us, and the French President had made it clear that leaving will be awfully awkward for Britain. Ah, that top table again, with Tony trying to get his feet back under it. No, it’s adieu to all that.

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A wild hysteria seems to have gripped our colleagues in universities. How else to explain Paul Nurse, former president of the Royal Society, describing the vote to take back control of our country as “the biggest threat [to science] in living memory”? Or a Cambridge economics don attending a faculty meeting and using her naked body as a billboard to protest against Brexit?
The truth is that British research need not suffer once we leave the EU, because like Switzerland or Israel – which has more listed start-ups on the Nasdaq than the EU combined – we shall still have access to the EU’s Horizon 2020 funding competitions. Great Britain will also have the heft to obtain special associate status on our terms as Europe’s leading research nation and will also remain a member of all the key international intergovernmental research and technology co-operation organisations – from the European Space Agency to the G8 Research Council – which have nothing to do with the EU .
Brexit simply offers a far brighter future for research and education, and not just because we will regain sovereign control of government grant-making with our tax money. The vote also means that we shall escape deeply detrimental present and planned expansions of the EU’s power.
The EU Clinical Trials Directive is a grim case that had disastrous consequences for academic research. It destroyed innovative new approaches and treatments overnight and, according to one Cambridge professor of pharmacology, was the cause of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Too little, too late, it is being rewritten. In one case it halted, overnight, major cell therapy immunology-based research – the £5 million plus cost of compliance was simply too expensive for the charity funding the study. In consequence, this therapy is starting to become mainstream 10 years later than necessary.
There are other examples where EU directives have directly damaged patient care. The Working Time Directive obstructs and reduces high-quality specialist training. The president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Clare Marx, confirms that abandoning it will improve patient safety. The college calculates that it costs trainee surgeons 3,000 hours of precious experience. Miss Marx rightly adds the potentially and actually fatal dangers to patients from lax EU medical language requirements and inadequate standards for clinical instruments. This is concrete evidence that the NHS will be safer out of the hands of the EU. In understated words, Miss Marx says that Brexit is “quite an opportunity”.
In the humanities, we escape the EU’s intensifying indoctrination of students in “EU studies” mandated under Article 126 of the Maastricht Treaty, which jemmied open the window into national control of education by giving the EU Executive Agency for Education a role in “policy co-ordination”. That dangerously bland term gives powers to “evaluate educational outcomes” – and hence shape curricula. So through Brexit we have escaped future programmes to brainwash our children.
Likewise, British universities will no longer be obliged to acquire an “Erasmus Charter for Higher Education” – under which inspectors will make “quality assessment” of “co-operation” as a condition of receiving funding. Safely named a “partner country” Britain’s higher education institutions will not be required to have this ideological imprimatur.
Finally we can ditch the most flexible propaganda instrument in the humanities, which is the award of “Jean Monnet Chairs” – posts for university professors, as they are described, “to deepen teaching in EU Studies ... mentor the young generation of researchers in EU Studies ... and organise activities … targeting to policymakers local, regional, national.”
For it is simply not true, as Paul Nurse has said, that Brexit will impede the movement of qualified researchers. In fact, on a global stage, the opposite will be the case. British universities, like their American counterparts, will be able to lift their eyes from the continental to the global stage, with no bias towards students or staff from one area or another.
Instead, they will freely be able to attract and recruit the finest minds from across the planet. These minds will prove the entrepreneurs and employers of the future. At the moment we are turning them away.
From our combined research experience of over 80 years, may we make the basic point about academic life? It is that productive intellectual collaboration and especially path-breaking insights, depend on individuals – on Crick with Watson; on James Lovelock; on Erasmus writing In Praise of Folly to Thomas More. They do not depend on ideologically charged institutions like the EU.

Professor Angus Dalgleish is Foundation Professor of Oncology at St Georges University of London; Professor Gwythian Prins is Emeritus Research Professor at the London School of Economics
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There are two nations in Britain today, but they are not quite the ones that Benjamin Disraeli had in mind. On the one hand we have the optimists, Brexiteers as well as ex-Remainers, who are gradually coming together in their embrace of our new future, reuniting in their determination to make the most of the next few years to reform and improve our country. On the other, we have the pessimists, a shrinking but still extraordinarily vocal group: to them, the outlook is so unbearably gloomy that they cannot bring themselves to think constructively about a country they no longer recognise.
The good news is that, after a few difficult weeks, the optimists are finally in the ascendant. Theresa May is now their official leader, as well as our Prime Minister: she didn’t back Brexit but is going to implement it with gusto. Her strong leadership is exactly what was needed: it is no surprise that it is proving infectious.
Support for the now officially pro‑Brexit Tories has jumped to 40 per cent, according to YouGov; consumer spending is holding up, according to the Bank of England’s regular regional survey; and a growing number of institutions are starting to propose helpful, constructive ideas to make the most of Brexit.
Take the President of the Royal College of Surgeons: she has urged the NHS to “seize the moment” and use Brexit to tear up red tape that damages patient safety, including rules that prevent hospitals from demanding a proper mastery of English and working-time laws that mean surgeons don’t undergo enough training. One leading regulator has told me privately that leaving the EU would allow a much more robust pro-competition policy; Siemens, a pro-Remain company, now insists that it is fully committed to Britain and that it would build a “huge manufacturing place… in a heartbeat” if it receives enough orders for its train carriages.
The list is growing visibly longer by the day. Ineos, the giant chemicals maker, is relocating its headquarters and senior management back to the UK from Switzerland; SoftBank, one of Japan’s biggest companies, is making the largest-ever Asian investment in the UK, arguing explicitly that it believes in a post-Brexit Britain. A number of companies have also agreed to rent or commission new offices in the City since the referendum.
The optimists are not deluded: they know the going will be tough, that Brexit has crystallised long-standing structural weaknesses in the economy, that many big companies are scared, and that it will take hard work to sign trade deals and negotiate the right exit from the EU. There will be costs as well as benefits from Brexit. But they relish the challenge and are convinced that we now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change our country and economy for the better, or simply to continue making money in one of the largest, most prosperous economies in the world.
Then there are the pessimists. Some are Remainers who still believe Brexit to be an epoch-defining catastrophe, who continue to plot and scheme to overturn the result, who cling to the deranged, insulting notion that those of us who voted Leave are either stupid, racist or evil, who scour the news for every negative data point and who, in a few isolated and extreme cases, would actually like a recession “to prove them right”.
You also have some Leavers in this pessimistic camp who believe that nothing will ever change, either because we won’t actually leave the EU or because they feel that the political classes will return to business as usual. This latter group often hail from deprived communities; they voted Brexit in part to give the London establishment a kicking but fear that they will continue to be ignored.
The challenge for the optimists is to reunite the two Britains. They need to inspire and assuage the angry Remainers, showing all but the most die-hard that the future can be rosy; and they must reach out to those Leavers who feel that they haven’t benefited enough from globalisation.
All groups in society have a responsibility to take part in this project to rebuild Britain for a post-Brexit 21st century. Entrepreneurs and firms need to propose the reforms they believe are required to allow our economy to prosper outside of the EU: we need to hear solutions, not whining, from business. The same is true of other professionals, from university administrators to architects to the police forces, as well as from the charitable sector. Britain needs a “can‑do” revolution, with as many positive ideas as possible from all quarters and perspectives. The question is no longer whether or not to Brexit – it’s how to make it work as well as possible for the whole country.
The Government, for its part, needs to unveil a three-fold programme to woo the sceptics. The first pledge should be to turn Britain into the nation that is the most open to trade of any Western economy in five years’ time. To reach this target, the Government would seek to limit the reimposition of tariff or non-tariff barriers with the EU, while urgently pursuing as many free-trade deals as possible with faster-growing economies worldwide.
The second pledge should be to make the UK the most entrepreneur-friendly country in the West by 2020. This would include tearing up red tape, cutting tax, making it easy for tech firms to continue to hire skilled migrant talent, and encouraging universities to become incubators for start-ups.
Last but not least, the Government should make an explicit promise to Britain’s poorer groups and regions that their opportunities will drastically improve. The free school programme should be turbo-charged by allowing for-profit companies to open new ones, starting in the north of England and Wales before being rolled out nationally; new selective schools should be opened, as part of an extension of parent choice; much more land should be made available for building in the south of England; and expensive green energy rules should be ditched. Britain is also in desperate need of several low-tax, low-regulation new enterprise zones near universities in poor parts of the North and Wales, with a vision and management structure similar to London’s Canary Wharf.
It’s been almost a month since the referendum and the optimists, thanks in large part to May’s steadying hand, are finally on the rise again. They must now begin the long, slow process of reuniting the country. That is the mission on which they will ultimately be judged.
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Britain's €20bn Brexit divorce bill offer is "peanuts", the President of the European Parliament has warned.
Antonio Tajani said the situation was "not good" and "we need to know what the UK wants to do" as he restated Brussels' demands for a financial settlement which could be as high as £53 billion.
In comments that will anger Eurosceptic MPs, Mr Tajani said the UK Government was "not realistic" in its approach to the financial settlement and echoed Margaret Thatcher's language when she secured the British rebate.
Speaking to BBC's Newsnight, he said: "We need our money back, as Mrs Thatcher said 30 or 40 years ago. This is important for us.
"We need not one euro more, not one euro less."
The figure of around £18 billion (20 billion euro) that Mrs May was offering is "peanuts", he said, with "the real situation" being a sum of around £45- £53 billion (50-60 billion euro).
Mr Tajani added: "In the Conservative Party there are different positions. This is not good for good work in the next months."
It comes after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said talks about Britain leaving the EU in March 2019 were deadlocked. He added there was "disturbing deadlock" over the size of Britain's divorce bill.
Last night one of the City’s most senior figures warned that France and Germany risk starting a new financial crisis if they try to use Brexit to dismantle the London-based heart of the global economy “just to make a political point."
Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group, says European leaders who demanded tighter global regulation after the 2008 financial crisis are now threatening to “fragment” those same standards to punish Britain for Brexit.
Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Rolet calls on the Bank of England and regulatory bodies in Europe to speed up talks on regulation to ensure that the carefully constructed system of global regulation developed to stop unexpected risks emerging does not collapse.
He calls for an "update" on the progress of these talks to reassure international financial firms.
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It is a familiar scene in action movies when every participant in a deadly fight kills each other, leaving the heroine standing alone, unharmed and victorious, with bodies strewn around her. While this happens every day at the cinema, it is unprecedented in a modern party leadership election. The leading candidates who had fought on the Leave side of the referendum insisted that one of their number should be prime minister, but each in turn took action which made that impossible.
The early collapse of the contest has denied Theresa May the added legitimacy of an endorsement from the party membership, but awarded her a compensating advantage from the outset of her leadership: that her opponents demonstrated rather spectacularly that uniting the party was not something they were presently equipped to do. Yet she will now take the highest office with many people feeling they have not had time or chance to come to know her, and what they should expect her to be like.
The first thing to know about Theresa is that she is tough. There is no point, internally as a minister, or externally as a foreign country, thinking that in a negotiation with her you are going to gain ground easily.
I remember US officials complaining to me in 2012 about her refusal to extradite Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker with Asperger’s syndrome accused of hacking into the Pentagon. “This was a decision made by the Home Secretary after considering all the facts,” I said, as a weary look came over them. “Mrs May is known in government for going into things thoroughly,” I went on, “but she is not known for changing her mind once she has made a decision. When she’s decided something, my advice is to accept that’s the end of it.”
The disgruntled Americans rolled their eyes knowingly. They did indeed grudgingly accept that there was nothing further they could do. When it comes to getting people to desist from an argument, it helps enormously if they know the person they are dealing with has consistency and resolve. Theresa May has those attributes.
The second thing to know about her is that she has built up experience of a far wider range of government activities than most people who become prime minister. I was the leader who first promoted her to the shadow cabinet, in 1999. She had been in the Commons only two years, and such rapid advancement was unusual then – long before Jeremy Corbyn started appointing people he had barely heard of himself. In the 17 years since, she has never been off the Tory front bench, covering employment, education, transport, women’s rights and the party chairmanship. And then she’s been the longest serving Home Secretary since the 19th century.
I have heard it said that she is difficult to get to know. If that were true, it would not necessarily be a disadvantage in a prime minister – the most successful in our history have often been respected more than they have been loved. But the third aspect of our new leader that people need to know about is that she is entirely capable of personal warmth.
My own experience of her in government was of someone who went out of her way to maintain a personal friendship as well as discussing deadly serious co-operation in frustrating this country’s enemies. And she never tried to use that friendship for the internal plotting that some aspiring leaders fondly – and usually wrongly – imagine will help them get to the top.
Her task now, stepping into No 10 sooner than she would have imagined 24 hours ago, is to use these and other qualities to the immediate advantage of the country. In doing so, she should bear in mind that these particular circumstances mean she has time to employ her favoured habit of thinking carefully about a decision before moving to defending it trenchantly. What is expected of a prime minister taking office in July at little notice is different from what would have been sought from one arriving in September after two months’ campaigning in the country.
Taking power now means she can work the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office to the bone in preparing a full assessment of the options for negotiating Britain’s certain exit from the European Union. When Parliament reconvenes from the summer in early September, and the Tory conference meets at the beginning of October, she will need to be able to say decisively what her approach will be: when Article 50 will be invoked, what the future relationship will look like, when the UK should have completed its withdrawal. But she need not feel under pressure to do so within days of forming the new government.
As she forms her Cabinet she should use her customary resolve to make clear that those who wish to serve in the government should accept the jobs she offers them. This is not a matter for deals or negotiation. Of course, the new Cabinet must have in senior roles members who were on opposite sides of the referendum campaign, including big figures in charge of the EU negotiations and heading up a new Department of Trade. But anyone who quibbles should be out – there are plenty more willing to serve.
Her often unsuspected skills in forming personal connections will need to be used to the very maximum in developing friendships with some of the leaders of other nations who will be on the phone within minutes of her arrival in No 10. Britain faces a massive diplomatic task, and the relationships at the top really matter.
As for her broad experience of so many aspects of public policy, the moment will now have arrived to turn that into a coherent vision of the future of our economy and society – the biggest task of all. Her speech on Monday, before the collapse of the election, showed a recognition of the need to address alienation among many voters. It will be crucial to craft an economic plan which includes those feeling disconnected and disenfranchised, while also ensuring that the UK is the best place on earth to set up and run a business.
Theresa May faces the most massive task for any prime minister in a generation. At least today, the Conservative Party and the country can be assured that it will be taken on by someone with the inherent qualities to do it.

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A storm’s a-brewin’. The very fabric of this united kingdom is tearing at the edges, thanks to the latest blow to the devolution settlement. It’s hard to believe the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of those involved, the desperate lengths they will go to in order to get their own way.
Theresa May is being perfectly reasonable, of course. She has a mandate for her policies from the voters of England, and they have decided that grammar schools must be reintroduced throughout the whole of the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Yet astonishingly, Nicola Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones and Arlene Foster have unanimously insisted that education is a devolved issue and that therefore the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast must have the freedom to pursue their own policies.
Outrageous. Undemocratic. Brinkmanship.
Okay, so that didn’t happen. But something very similar is happening with Brexit right now.
Before that, though, let’s go back a few years – to 1997, in fact, and the dawn of New Labour and the publication of the White Paper, “Scotland’s Parliament”. Designed and promoted by the new Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, the paper carefully listed all the matters that, post-devolution, would be reserved to the UK parliament. Among these areas were international treaties and foreign affairs, including the UK’s relationship with the EU.
It was all crystal clear. No one demurred from the principle that as long as Scotland remained in the UK, there would be an agreed dividing line between reserved matters (the responsibility of the UK parliament acting on behalf of everyone) and devolved matters (the responsibility of devolved ministers acting on behalf of voters living in those areas).
Such was the consensus over this new arrangement that Labour and the SNP campaigned together for a double Yes vote in the pre-legislative referendum on devolution in September 1997. The new constitutional furniture was overwhelmingly approved by Scots (and very narrowly by the Welsh; Northern Ireland has a somewhat different devolution history). And 17 years later, a clear majority of Scots, in another referendum, rejected independence in favour of continuing with UK governance on reserved issues.
Those who campaigned long and hard for devolution, and many who have since come round to the idea, are understandably very protective of the devolved parliaments and assemblies. That is particularly true of Holyrood. Whenever the UK government has sought to legislate on a devolved matter, it has only ever done so at the express request and agreement of the Scottish Parliament (civil partnerships and the Proceeds of Crime Act being two such occasions).
Thus a robust convention has emerged that each parliament – Westminster and Holyrood – stays out of each other’s business. Until now.
The views of the 55 per cent of Scots who voted to continue the Act of Union between Scotland and the rest of the UK are now to be dismissed. As are the views of the 74 per cent of Scots who voted in 1997 in support of the White Paper, with its clear and unambiguous delineation of reserved and devolved matters. Now, following June’s EU referendum – a decision that could only have been taken by the whole of the UK – Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is insisting that the Scottish Parliament must have a veto over Brexit – in other words, over reserved matters as well as devolved ones.
The Institute for Government, a think tank, has today also waded into the row with a portentous and pretentious briefing paper, Four Nation Brexit. Although the UK had the legal and constitutional right to negotiate Brexit without the explicit consent of the devolved administrations (a generous concession, I’m sure we can all agree) such a course of action would “run contrary to convention and to the spirit of devolution, which recognises the right of the three devolved nations to determine their own form of government.”
Which displays a pretty shallow understanding and experience of devolution. One of the core elements, the foundation, of devolution is the separation of devolved and reserved powers and the respect for the right to wield those powers that must be maintained by each of the players. The Trident submarine base is physically based in Scotland, despite nearly half of Scottish voters supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament. But defence is reserved to the UK government, so that’s that.
A bizarre and paradoxical sense of victimhood has been fostered in the devolved nations since Dewar published his White Paper nearly 20 years ago. The institutions, while growing more confident about their own powers and how to use them, and constantly demanding more powers on top of them, have at the same time become defensive and bitter about the UK government having any role at all in the lives of their citizens. Yet it was those citizens who expressly voted (twice, in Scotland’s case) for that to be the case.
Theresa May, the UK government and parliament at Westminster are legally and constitutionally obliged, by acts of parliament, to take the final decisions as to what shape Brexit should take. And there is no legal or constitutional reason to allow any of the devolved administrations a veto over it.
Those who say otherwise might believe they’re defending the integrity of the devolution settlement; in fact they’re undermining it. But then, perhaps that’s their aim.

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Universities should stop complaining about Brexit because it is the ‘catalyst we all need’, the chair of the Russell Group has said.
Sir David Greenaway, who represents some of Britain’s most elite universities, has argued a world where the UK is no longer part of the EU will give universities the freedom they need to exceed expectations.
In the run up to the referendum vote in June universities had warned EU students would be put off studying at British institutions.
They have also warned academic cooperation could become more difficult in the case of tighter border controls. But these fears are yet to materialise.
Writing for The Telegraph, Sir David said: “Did you know an astonishing 90 per cent of the Higher Education community voted for remain? Compared with the Leave campaign’s winning margin of only 4 per cent, it’s a position of relative unity that would make many people blush. Yet it fills me with a slight unease.
“Why? Because it suggests either the academic world knows something the electorate doesn’t or we’re hopelessly out of touch.
“While we deal with this sense of loss and disconnect there's a risk that the opportunities presented by Brexit are overshadowed.
“As our future becomes more closely determined by trade and forging new global links, all universities, and not just those in the Russell Group, have a lot to share with Whitehall.”
Sir David, who is also vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham, added: “You may think Nottingham too small to think like this, compared with the Londons and Manchesters of this world.
“In fact, we’re the ninth largest city in the fifth biggest economy in the world. Nottingham University has partnerships with Rolls-Royce, Boots, and GSK and we were the first foreign university to set up a campus in China.
He added: “The spirit of endeavour that took us there was the same spirit that took me from a Glasgow tenement as a child to Vice Chancellor of this university and I’m keen to rediscover that sense of breaking free and exceeding expectations all over again. We all can.
“Brexit might be the catalyst we all need.”
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The Queen is facing a million-pound black hole in her estates’ finances after Brexit which has caused consternation among royal aides, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
Sandringham Estate, the Queen’s country retreat in Norfolk, will lose close to £700,000 a year when EU farming subsidies end while the farms near Windsor Castle will be around £300,000 down.
Prince Charles’s estates are also facing a funding cut from Brexit of £100,000 a year while the Crown Estate – which manages Royal land – will also be hit.
A source familiar with Buckingham Palace’s finances said there had been concerns since before the EU referendum about the impact of losing the grants.
While people were not “throwing their hands in the air in despair” there was anxiety about how the current level of EU farming grants will be sustained, the source said.
They added that the Keeper of the Privy Purse, who looks after the Queen’s finances, would likely be sounding out Government figures – though no meetings are known to have taken place.
Ministers are now under pressure to break their refusal to provide commitments for post-Brexit Britain and publicly say the payments will be continued.
Estates and country houses across Britain as well as farmers benefit from Common Agricultural Policy [CAP] payments – the EU’s system of rural support.
The billions of pounds of subsidies will end when Britain leaves the EU, which on current timescales will be in spring 2019.
Ministers have sought to reassure the farming community by guaranteeing payments until 2020, but have refused to make commitments beyond that.
Analysis by The Sunday Telegraph has revealed the full extent to which royal estates benefit from the subsidies, totalling more than £1 million last year.
In 2015, Sandringham received £665,000, the Royal Farms in Windsor got £298,000, the Duchy of Cornwall was given £129,000 and the Crown Estate got £350,000.
A source familiar with the Royal finances warned the loss of funding had caused concern before and after the EU referendum.
“I don’t think it was a budget-busting concern, it wasn’t something people were losing sleep over. But it was something people were conscious of as a post-referendum impact,” the source said.
“I think that they were interested to see what the Government’s view was on what the replacement mechanism would be for the CAP domestically.”
The source added: “The question is are you losing £700,000 or is there a successor mechanism in place domestically that offsets the Brussels package?”
It comes amid wider fears about how the Crown Estate, which looks after Royal land, is being impacted by Brexit.
It is understood there were concerns about whether demand for stores on Regent’s Street and other parts of London owned by the Crown would drop after a vote for Brexit.
All revenue made by the Crown Estate goes to the Treasury, with 15 per cent of the taking shared to the Royal Family through a yearly Sovereign Wealth Fund.
However a Crown Estate source said last night: “Businesses are still queuing round the block to take retail space on Regent’s Street and St James’s.”
Sir Gerald, a Tory former defence minister who backed Brexit, said: “What we all said during the Leave campaign was that all those currently in receipt of so-called EU money will continue to receive the same money because we will be saving £20bn every year.”
“We must reassure the recipients – whether it’s Her Majesty or farmers – that they will continue to benefit from the current arrangements.”
“What Brexit does is to give the United Kingdom the chance to fashion a farm price support mechanism designed exclusively for the benefit of British farmers.”
Dickie Arbiter, a former Buckingham Palace press secretary, said: “After Brexit Her Majesty would fall in line with everyone else currently entitled to CAP and would not wish to be considered a special case or  come in for special treatment.”
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “Subsidies are open to all farmers; and like others with agricultural interests, subsidies are received on The Queen's private estates.
"We would not comment beyond the detail that is already in the public domain as a matter of record.”
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The EU has been plotting for weeks to thwart Theresa May’s plans to secure a deal for British expats in Europe and migrants in the UK, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, is reported to have been “astonished” by Mrs May’s demand that an agreement be reached by the end of next month.
But documents seen by this newspaper disclose that Mrs May made exactly the same demand to Donald Tusk, the European Council president, at a meeting three weeks earlier.
The EU had privately decided to block any deal, leaked documents show, but did not want to reveal such a move publicly.
EU leaders were accused of playing a “stupid game” and being more concerned about securing a financial deal than securing the rights of EU and British citizens.
The negotiating strategy emerged after a German newspaper reported leaked details of last week’s meeting between Mr Juncker and Mrs May. Mr Juncker is said to have left Downing Street saying he felt “10 times more sceptical” about a deal than before, and to have told Angela Merkel that the Prime Minister was “deluded”.
Mrs May hit back by dismissing the account as “Brussels gossip”.
In an article for the Western Morning News ahead of a visit to the West Country, she will reinforce the message that the UK needs a tough negotiator, saying: “Across the table from us sit 27 European member states who are united in their determination to do a deal that works for them. We need that same unity of purpose.”
At Mrs May’s meeting last Wednesday with Mr Juncker and the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, she is said to have told the two men she saw no reason why Britain should pay a bill of up to £50 billion.
Mr Juncker is said to have told her “the EU is not a golf club” that members can leave at any time.
But what is said to have surprised Mr Juncker the most was Mrs May’s belief that a deal on citizens’ rights could be agreed by the end of June.
However, The Telegraph has established that Mrs May said the same thing to Mr Tusk on April 6.
Diplomatic records show that at a meeting on April 11 Piotr Serafin, chief of staff to Mr Tusk, briefed all the officials present from the EU 27 that Mrs May had made clear the UK would seek a deal on expat rights “probably as early as June”.
He added that this was probably
“not feasible” but a source with direct knowledge of the meeting said: “Serafin warned everyone present that it was very important not to give the impression that the EU was blocking an early agreement on citizens’ rights.”
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said: “It’s clear and obvious that Juncker briefed this story with the sole intention of making himself look good.
“This is all part of his self-aggrandisement and if nothing demonstrates that the vote last year to leave was a good decision it is this miserable and rude action of the president of the EU.”
The EU wants Mrs May to guarantee all rights of its citizens, including free healthcare, pension rights and legal rights to appeal immigration decisions.
British officials say they are willing to rapidly grant those rights via UK law.
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Most leaders start out by promising to heal the political rifts of the day. Few deliver.
President Obama can arguably be used as a warning example. Due to his faithfulness to the narrative of the progressive metropolitan elite, he has certainly appealed to his political tribe.
However, he has failed miserably in reaching out to those doubting that his yes-we-can idealism actually delivers results. To no small degree Trumpism can be seen as a counter-reaction not only to this failure but to armchair do-gooders who talk down to voters despite little or no real-life experience.
David Cameron has been better at reaching out. Far more grounded, he promised a referendum over an issue that had notoriously put numerous voters at odds with the establishment.
This promise helped him to a sensational victory in the 2015 general election.
Just as sensationally, he lost the referendum after losing his nerve and choosing to side unequivocally with the EU apologists, despite having been refused everything of substance during the referendum negotiations.
The lesson for the new government? After too many disappointments voters no longer put faith only in eloquent words.
Results are now needed and for good reason numerous voters have lost patience with an EU project which is now working well only in the heads of its apologists.
In practice it is failing in every way: democratically, economically and as a source of European stability.
So what then of the moral panic now surrounding Brexit? The ranks of cosmopolitan liberals who are screaming that this is the end of everything?
Is this panic not evidence that "good people" need to strive to stay as close as possible to the EU? Not at all. A major power centre has been challenged and almost by definition power centres have some control over the public narrative.
For decades EU apologists have wielded their immense budget and nomination powers to promote people with the "right" attitude and projects with the "right" purpose.
Simultaneously a highly skewed PR narrative has been dished out so incessantly (complimentary of unaware taxpayers) that numerous voters now confuse this narrative with the truth.
This is why so many EU apologists genuinely seem to perceive the EU as a force for everything worthwhile, and every EU-critic as either dumb, a xenophobic throwback or misled by the PR-narrative of the other side.
Add to this the greatly underestimated element of narcissism among those making themselves heard. Few voters have time to penetrate the ins and outs of the political issues of the day, meaning much of the debate will come across as fuzzy.
However, few want to jump into the same bed as the "baddies". The latter explains why so many metropolitan trendsetters compete to signal righteousness by simply backing the political norms in vogue (in the capital); louder than others when attempting to dress up a lack of independent thought as an act of bravery.
This is perfectly illustrated by the attitude of some Bremainers: those who clearly relish moral posturing but cannot be bothered to really find out why more than 17 million Brits voted to leave the EU.
Should the indignation of these people be allowed to guide the future course of the country? Absolutely. By concluding that the EU is exercising far too much (emotional) control over far too many voters.
This is worth bearing in mind during the Brexit negotiations. When these are initiated, the new government will be hammered by a fresh wave of one-eyed EU apologist bullying from EU public servants, French diplomats, numerous "experts" within the EU web of vested interests, UK civil servants (subtly) as well as thousands of social media narcissists conditioned to treat every EU criticism as outrageous.
Meaning just about everyone who has predicted that Armageddon will follow a Brexit. Still, now as always in the history of much-needed reform, moving forward means ignoring the misguided pomposity and prophecies of the establishment status quo champions.
The stakes could hardly be higher. If Theresa May does not hold her nerve, and gives in by diluting the mandate for a clear break, the current period of political stalemate and economic limbo will continue.
The rift between the establishment and the people will not be healed, which means a British version of Trumpism is finally likely to gain ground also in Westminster. However, if she does stay the course mandated by voters, she can lead not only the UK but Europe out of its current period of idealist megaproject misery.
The splendid irony is that bunow finally dismantling the EU, Europe could at long last (re)create the free trade and live-and-let-live international framework that the European project was supposed to be about.
Mark Brolin is the author of “A State of Independence: Why the EU is the Problem not the Solution”

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The NHS wasn’t on the Brexit ballot. But it often felt as if it was. Emblazoned on the Battlebus, both Leave and Remain wrapped themselves in the mantle of a strong and better funded health service.
This was curious, as on the NHS there is no overriding need to 'take back control’. We already make the big decisions about our health system largely as we please, as do the Germans, the French and the rest.
But if the referendum result revealed a country divided, on the NHS it confirmed a nation united – by deep pride and genuine concern for our most important social institution.
Would Brexit liberate £350 million a week for the NHS? Or would it dent the public finances just as health service needs more public money? And how best to manage immigration, without inadvertently triggering hospital and care home closures, relying for years on 130,000 European nurses, doctors and other staff?
These questions matter profoundly, but the challenges facing the health service go far wider. They require bold and broad reforms.
First, if you’re concerned about life chances you need to act on prevention and health inequalities. While smoking explains half the difference in longevity between rich and poor, obesity is the new smoking: poor diet is now our biggest avoidable cause of ill health.
Piling on the pounds around our children’s waistlines is piling on billions in future NHS costs. We now spend more on obesity than on the police and fire service combined.
We urgently need an activist child obesity strategy, with comprehensive action on food reformulation, promotions and advertising.
Second, how NHS care is provided needs a major overhaul. Access to GPs was a repeated public concern during the referendum campaign. We make 300 million visits to GP practices each year, compared to fewer than 25 million A&E attendances. So if GP services fail the NHS fails.
Yet headlines about hospital deficits obscure the fact that over the past decade their share of funding has grown rapidly at the expense of primary care, and hospital consultant numbers have expanded three times faster than GPs.
Every part of the country is now getting on with the NHS’ Five Year Forward View. It’ll mean better joined-up GP and hospital services, better links with social care, earlier cancer diagnosis, and streamlined access to urgent and emergency care – seven days a week.
And as Theresa May pointed out last week, mental health is the poor relation. Today we publish a blueprint showing how a million more people will get the specialist help they need each year. It sets out chapter and verse on better mental health for young people and new mothers, seven day crisis care to keep people out of the criminal justice system, and far wider help for depression, anxiety and other common conditions.
Third, many patients arrive each day for their GP or hospital appointment in what are – can we speak frankly? – overcrowded and clapped-out buildings in need of a makeover, if not a bulldozer. Yet to help balance the books, the NHS is currently switching billions of pounds of capital investment into day-to-day running costs.
When you’ve got lemons, make lemonade. UK government borrowing costs are now the lowest they’ve been since the Napoleonic wars. Instead of inflexibly expensive PFI, howabout a substantial NHS 70th Birthday Public Fund for Infrastructure? It’d create optimism across the NHS, unleash major efficiencies, turbocharge the construction industry, and be welcomed in across the country.
Fourth, as the largest employer in Europe, the NHS needs to do a better job training and looking after our own staff. New apprenticeships can help many “left-behind” communities alienated from modern Britain.
Even then we’re still going to need committed professionals from abroad. Australian-style immigration points systems all admit nurses, doctors and other skilled experts. It should be completely uncontroversial to provide early reassurance to international NHS employees about their continued welcome in this country.
Fifth, while the NHS is the world’s cheapest high-quality health system, there are still major efficiencies to be had. Care is variable, procurement fragmented, assets used ineffectively. This year will see decisive action to get hospital finances back on an even keel, with last year’s deficit cut dramatically.
The most immediate need is social care. If home care disappears and care homes close, A&Es are quickly overwhelmed. We need creative solutions. Give retirees more personal control over how care, health and benefits funds are together spent on their behalf? Expand the so-called 'triple lock’ on pensions to encompass care costs? LET councils take back democratic control over earmarked social care funding increases?
The need for radical change is now. We know what needs doing. Let’s get on with it.
Simon Stevens is Chief Executive of NHS England

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It was one of the running themes of David Cameron’s negotiation with the EU last February that if only the prime minister could get the “grown-ups in the room” then a deal on EU immigration to keep Britain in the Union could be done.
The idea - which persisted right up the 11th hour - was that once the decks had been cleared of the lawyers and the “theologians” of the European Commission the 27 political leaders of Europe Union would agree on a politically pragmatic course.
That turned out to be a grave miscalculation. Instead, Mr Cameron won cosmetic concessions on paying in-work benefits to EU workers, but on the major issue of free movement of people, Europe held firm: there was no "emergency brake", no caps or quotas and no last-minute intervention by Berlin.
As she heads to Brussels this morning for her first European Council meeting as Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May should reflect on her predecessor’s misjudgments as she draws up plans for next year’s Brexit negotiations.
Above all else, there is an urgent need to be realistic about the choices that lie ahead – realistic both with her European counterparts, but just as importantly, with her own party and the British public.
Talking tough, as Mr Cameron discovered, will not deliver results. Starting with his January 2013 speech at Bloomberg, Mr Cameron spectacularly failed to manage expectations about what was possible. As a result his deal was politically dead on arrival when he returned to London last February.
Mrs May, particularly if she doesn’t rein in some of the more gung-ho members of her cabinet currently second-guessing her decisions, risks repeating the same mistake and opening negotiations in an unnecessarily hostile environment.
As Donald Tusk, the European Council president said last week in a slight mixing of British metaphors, there will be no "cake and eat it" in this deal, only "salt and vinegar" – for both sides. That also means - if Mrs May is realistic - there are shared economic interests on both sides that point the way to a workable deal.
The second point on which Mrs May needs to level with her party and the public is that a deal is precisely that – a piece of give-and-take between two separating parties who now have a number of competing interests, but also (lest we forget amid the current fog of mutual recriminations) still plenty of shared ones too.
The reality of the Article 50 process is that Europe holds the whip-hand and – as David Cameron discovered even at a time when the UK had the leverage of threatening to leave – they are not going to change their minds about defending free movement as a defining principle of their Union.
Mrs May appears to have implicitly accepted this by her decision to seek a ‘bespoke’ agreement with Europe, but not the concomitant reality that installing a work permit system for EU workers will seriously curtail UK access to the single market, with significant economic consequences.
This will no doubt be presented by some in Britain as EU petulance and “punishment” but if Mrs May wants to keep the talks from boiling over and eke out as much access as possible, she will need to accept publicly that the European side has as much right to guard their interests as the UK does.
It might also be worth acknowledging, that, on balance, the EU27 also has more power to protect its interests in these negotiations than Britain does – both politically (via the mechanics of the Article 50 process) and, if it comes down to a nasty fight, ultimately economically, given the asymmetrical nature of UK-EU trade.
As the head of the confederation of German equivalent of the CBI made clear on a recent visit to London, the lobbying power of industry has its very clear limits. German car makers and French wine producers do not have the clout to demand a sweetheart deal.
So while it is true, for example, that 7.5 per cent of German exports go to the UK, Angela Merkel has been clear that Europe will accept a reduction in that trade to defend the cohesion of Europe’s economic Union.
This is not "punishment", merely a logical, Germanic calculation of long-term economic self-interest that the priority must be to protect the stability of the European markets where the bulk of the other 92.5 per cent of German exports end up.
It is true also that trading globally will be a part of Britain’s new future, but given the British economy’s reliance on services, that transition to a new trading mix will be a long-term process.
British negotiations must be predicated on a realistic assessment of what a renewed effort on global trade can deliver – by some estimates trade with the rest of the world would have to increase by 37 per cent by 2030 to offset a ‘hard’ Brexit.
There are other reason why Mrs May will need Europe’s good will when talks begin.
On a practical level, the European parliament will have to ratify any Brexit deal and – almost certainly – the 27 EU nations will have to approve any subsequent Free Trade Agreement which Britain hopes will include access for UK services as well as goods. The hold-ups over the current EU-Canada deal show just how difficult and drawn out a process that could become.
As a result, given the two-year time frame for the immediate Brexit plan, transitional arrangements will be vital to avoid the legal vacuum that would follow a cliff-edge Brexit that would inflict maximum damage on the UK economy.(Consider that Britain has not imposed duties on goods from Europe since 1992. To do so again will require a massive expansion of infrastructure on both sides of the Channel where facilities in some ports, like Dover, are currently almost non-existent.)
So, to achieve the best trade deal possible, even within the constraints of EU ‘red lines’, the reality is that Mrs May will need to manage expectations at home and seek political good will from the European side – and sooner than is popularly understood.
Business and investors need certainty, and are already seeking a commitment on transitional arrangements at the outset of the negotiations next year. Many banks and big businesses say they simply cannot wait until the conclusion of talks in the spring of 2019; by then many will have already begun re-orientating away from the UK.
As things stand – and to judge by the responses of Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Jean-Claude Juncker to the Conservative Party conference – the current attitude towards Britain is one of chilly resignation that a "hard" Brexit cannot be avoided.
But that is in neither side’s interest.  If Boris Johnson is to be proved correct that Britain will end up with a deal of that is ultimately of “greater value” than that of the single market, reaching that place a decade from now will not be aided by a disorderly divorce from the EU.
In Brussels Mrs May needs to reassure her European counterparts, who were rattled by the rhetoric of the Conservative Party conference, that she really understands that.

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Theresa May’s proposal for a customs partnership is a “broken compromise” that risks “pleasing no one”, a Cabinet source has warned as they claimed that Downing Street may have got its numbers wrong on support for remaining in the customs union.
An unnamed Cabinet minister has claimed that the Government’s fears over support for a customs union has forced Mrs May and her team to draft proposals that they believe MPs can be persuaded to vote for.
However, the source argues that support for a customs union has been overstated, and that Mrs May should instead focus her efforts on a light touch arrangement, such as the maximum-facilitation (max-fac) proposal.
It comes after a Cabinet split over the two options last week, with leading Brexiteers Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and David Davis said to have rejected the customs partnership amid concerns that it would prevent a clean break from the EU and stop the UK from having an independent trade policy.
Brexiteers also argue the customs partnership - under which the UK would collect tariffs for the EU after Brexit - is unworkable, while Remain-supporters claim the max-fac proposal is untested and unlikely to be accepted by Brussels.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson risked a potential stand-off with Number 10 last night when he described the customs proposal as “crazy”, adding that it would make it “very difficult to do free trade deals”.
Mrs May has now been forced to return to the drawing board, and is currently developing the options to make them more palatable to her ministers.
However, speaking to the website Conservative Home, a Cabinet source has claimed that Mrs May should abandon the customs partnership altogether.
They point to the large number of Labour MPs who represent Leave-supporting constituencies as evidence that the Government can still command a majority if it changes tact.
The source said: “Personally I am not convinced of a CU majority. I think we can burn off a few of ours [rebels] plus get a few Labour votes and, equally important, abstentions.
“We have managed to let this narrative establish that the Commons doesn’t support Customs Union exit and frankly we have only ourselves to blame.
“I think we will need to vote on it, and we have a very decent chance of winning, but it will be tight. The danger is that Number 10 will take a bigger gamble by avoiding the inevitable, and you end up pleasing no-one by trying to get a broken compromise.”
They also cited a recent article by Labour MP Caroline Flint in The Telegraph, in which she claimed that Parliament should carry out the will of the people and leave both the single market and customs union.
Brexiteers have seized on her comments as evidence that Labour MPs will feel pressured to vote according to their constituents’ views, tilting the odds back in their favour.
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Theresa May has been accused of silencing Eurosceptics while allowing her pro-European Business Secretary to resurrect "Project Fear" over plans for a post-Brexit customs partnership with the EU.
Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, suggested that 3,500 jobs at Toyota could be at risk if the Prime Minister bowed to pressure from other members of her Cabinet and dropped the plans.
Eurosceptic ministers thought they had "killed off" the plans after a meeting of the Brexit wars Cabinet last week amid concerns that it will lead to Britain staying in the Customs Union.
However, Mr Clark said it was still "on the table", adding that he feels "very strongly" and is "clear-eyed" about the need to protect jobs after Brexit.
He also suggested that a transition period on customs could be extended until 2024. Within minutes of his comments the CBI group of business leaders, which is campaigning for Britain to stay in the Customs Union, sent out supportive comments.
Amber Rudd, the former Home Secretary, and Justine Greening, the former Education Secretary - who are both pro-European - also offered Mr Clark their support for his comments.
His intervention prompted a furious backlash from Eurosceptics, who said that Mr Clark's intervention had been "licensed" by Downing Street.
They accused No 10 of double-standards, highlighting the fact that Eurosceptics opposed to the Customs Partnership plan like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and David Davis are unable to make their opposition publicly.
Downing Street denied orchestrating Mr Clark's intervention. A No 10 spokesman said: "The idea that Downing Street deliberately put Greg Clark up to fly the flag for a customs partnership is absolute nonsense."
A Eurosceptic Cabinet source said: "It's Project Fear all over again, it's not going to work. These tired old arguments were all trotted out during the referendum and the electorate wholeheartedly rejected them.
"It's time we stopped fighting the battles of the past and went for a true Brexit. No 10 is silencing Brexiteers while unsubtly putting forward the Business Secretary to make the case for staying in the customs partnership."
David Cameron and the Remain campaign were accused of using "Project Fear" during the EU referendum, with dire warnings that up to 500,000 people would lose their jobs because of the economic damage of Brexit.
David Jones, a former Brexit minister, told The Daily Telegraph: "There's no doubt Greg Clark has been licenced to say what he has said by No 10. They ought to understand that the customs partnership is dead and finished and they should give up.
"It's Project Fear 2.0, it's not what we expect now. We want a Government that understands the way the wind has blown and delivers what people voted for. The Customs Union lite will not be acceptable.
"If a Eurosceptic minister had spoken out, in the same way, they would have been hauled in front of No 10. It's disgraceful."
Mr Clark denied that he was close to tears in Cabinet as he made the case for a customs partnership last week but said: "I have never been so clear-eyed in my life about this. I feel very strongly. It is absolutely right we should be leaving the Customs Union, but what we replace it with is of huge importance."
He said Toyota had “a choice” on whether to develop future engines at its plant on Deeside in North Wales or on the continent.
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The first European Council meeting since the EU referendum was marred with the indignity of the European leaders snubbing Theresa May. Leaving her to wait until the waiters were standing by to clear for the night before letting her speak.
Greeting her short, functional speech with a planned stony silence. It was petty. It was designed to humiliate. It looked rather like a bunch of schoolboy louts ganging up and bullying.
And for someone like me who initially regretted my vote to Leave, it could not have been more calculated to remind me why I chose to get out. Indeed, I feel, for the first time since the vote, that I did the right thing. That bunch of codgers trying to insult Theresa May made my head echo, on her behalf and our own behalf, with a resounding "screw you".
It felt like all those times when I was starting in the very old-guard male world of the law, and I'd be in rooms full of middle aged lawyers in grey suits who'd been complacently under-performing for years, telling me I didn't know what I was talking about, telling me I couldn't be successful as a single mother, or with a new legal argument, or a new law firm with a new way of doing things, until I beat the hell out of them, again and again, in business and in court, and then they had to console themselves with sniping behind my back.
So I can imagine how May feels. But I hope she doesn't let those old muckers get her down. Things have been run by bitchy old men protecting their patch for far too long. And what a remarkable PR own-goal for the EU club – to turn May from Cruella de Ville into Boadicea overnight is an achievement that Blair's finest spin doctors could only have dreamt of.
Don't get me wrong: I'm still not happy about the way the referendum was fought, about the untruths that flew hither and thither, the drumming up of hatred and contempt by both sides. I still can't help feeling it was all so casual for such a big decision, and wish the threshold for leaving had been higher (in a global economy, our stability has a high value).
I still wish, too, that people had really known what they were voting for – that there had been any way of asking Leave voters what kind of Brexit we actually wanted, what price we would put on controlling our borders versus staying in the single market.
I even wish young people had been more organised, that our system of voting was not so slanted towards older people used to plodding down to the post office in person rather than doing everything on their phones.
But this week the EU reminded me what a millstone, what an albatross around our necks, it always was. It has allowed a trade deal between Canada and the EU, seven years in the making, to founder in the Walloon-Flemish tensions of Belgium – apparently Wallonia thought Canada wasn't socialist enough to do a trade deal, or the trade deal wasn't socialist enough, or something wasn't socialist enough.
It's a tyranny of incompetence and vested interests. Nobody can get anything done. It is, as the Canadian Foreign Minister pointed out, hopeless.
Because the EU's herd of bad-tempered cats can't get their act together, the entire trade deal is off. Because, of course, the EU blocks all member countries from conducting negotiations or deals on their own account. Fortress Europe brooks no side deals.
Instead, all the EU's power is concentrated in the Commission, and the Commission is a bunch of bureaucrats who have been given massive power over the lives of the ordinary people of Europe.
They trashed Greece. They're trashing Italy. They've started to mutter about trashing Malta. They're trying to run Ireland's taxation policy. They're even planning to set up their own army. Jean-Claude Juncker is drunk on power that no one meant to give him.
Am I worried about rising racism in Britain? Yes, just as I worry about it in the US, in France, in Austria, throughout the Middle East. There are a lot of reasons why racism and tribalism is on the rise, and Brexit is not any sort of root cause, even if the vilest and basest elements of our politics have tapped into Brexit as a rallying cry.
Equally, a few of those who advocated Brexit did tap into this racism and xenophobia, but the racism was created in the first place by a poverty and by a failure to invest in communities.
Ironically though, this failure was partly rooted in the EU's own ban on state aid to national industries – even if Remainers would prefer to blame it purely on the Tories.
So yes, of course I'm worried about the pound dropping below what can be seen as a useful readjustment helpful to our manufacturing industries. Of course I am worried about European talent leaving Britain, and about bankers bailing on us, and about credit flowing out.
I'm worried that the Commission is too egotistical and too stubborn to give us any sort of free trade deal. I am worried sick about all of these things.
But God, this week, through all the worrying, I remembered that I voted Leave because I felt strongly that it was our one chance to get out from under an increasingly powerful yet perennially ridiculous superstate marching us forward to a decaying hegemony of paper-pushers armed with tanks and tax control and more competing agendas than a series of Celebrity Big Brother.
For the first time since the sick feeling I had when Boris folded and the Brexit leadership crumbled, I am bloody, righteously glad we're getting out from under that bunch of offensive, mediocre, self-exonerating old buzzards. And I pray that the other nations, the other peoples of the Europe I really do love and passionately want to be part of, get out from under them too.

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The UK's Brexit trade deal with the EU will not be finalised before exit day, Guy Verhofstadt has warned.
Instead there will be an "annex" inside the withdrawal agreement which will set out what a future relationship might look like, to be thrashed out during the transitional period while current rules remain in place.
The Prime Minister has previously ruled out such a situation, stating instead that a new trade deal must be agreed while negotiations to leave the union take place so the UK can be ready to forge new trade deals around the world in 2019.
The European Parliament's Brexit coordinator also warned that the right of EU citizens to move freely must remain throughout the interim period, despite Theresa May's pledge that anyone coming to the UK after Brexit would be subject to a new arrangement.
And he said that if British MPs veto the final agreement between the two sides it could lead to a political collapse, another general election and possibly a new Government.
Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr Mr Verhofstadt said: "I think what is possible by the 29th of March of next year, if everybody agrees with it, the British parliament, European Parliament, will be the withdrawal agreement. Inside that withdrawal agreement also an agreement on the transition.
"The transition for example of two years, at the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. And the third thing that will be possible is an annex, a political declaration describing, more or less in detail I should say, the future – what the future relationship will be.
"And then we will use the transition period to clarify this political declaration in an international agreement."
His comments fly in the face of Mrs May's own plan for the UK's exit.
The Prime Minister has previously said everything must be agreed in one go and her spokesman said last year: "Everyone has always been clear that we are looking to wrap all this up in one single go. Everything will be agreed at the same time."
Mr Verhofstadt, who is opposed to the UK's decision to leave the union, also claimed there can be no competition between British financial services and European states and warned that Britain must pay the price of leaving if it wants to forge ahead alone. But he claimed such a decision is not punitive because it was the UK's decision to leave.
#marr: What happens if @UKParliament votes down the #Brexit deal?@guyverhofstadt: UK leaves EU without any arrangements, a crisis in British politics and we enter "unknown territory." pic.twitter.com/dXjjK625ZT
He said a bespoke arrangement is not possible, adding: "No. The outcome will be – there can be not a type of saying ‘oh this is interesting, that we like, this is not interesting for us, we dislike and we don’t want it.’
"What will be in that part of the association agreement we will see. Financial passports will not be there anymore because that’s the actual system.
"You need to be part of the Single Market to have – to have that. So that will be a far more difficult negotiation than simply to say, ‘oh, we like financial service and we put it in, we don’t like this sector and we put it out.’ But then that is for the – that it will be for the future. That will be not now."
He added: "What we don’t want is that with this whole agreement we establish a type of a financial centre that is competing with the Continent in, not in a serious way. By every time lowering taxes, lowering the type of rules so that we create a competitive disadvantage for the European financial services."
Ahead of a series of Brexit speeches by British ministers in the next few weeks, Mr Verhofstadt appeared to pile pressure on the next round of talks and suggested if MPs vote against the deal Jeremy Corbyn could be elected.
He also appeared to hint that if Labour was in charge there would be "a new position of that new government on Brexit", adding it would be "unknown territory".
He said: "If that is happening for example, the UK parliament voting down the deal, there will be, I presume, a crisis in British politics. I presume maybe an election. Maybe after that election a new government."
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The scene is Bute House, Edinburgh, official residence of Scotland’s First Minister. A Scottish Cabinet is in progress, and there is excitement in the air. The EU referendum has delivered what the SNP wanted from the start: a different outcome north of the Border to that across the whole of the UK. Surely the prospect of Scotland being removed from the EU “against its will” is the necessary trigger for the much-anticipated second independence referendum?
Spirits are high. Scenarios are discussed in great detail. There is laughter. The atmosphere is light.
And then John Swinney, the minister responsible for education, clears his throat. The laughter dies and the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, eyes narrowing, asks in a low voice: “Yes, John? Any other business?”
“Yes, Nicola,” says Swinney, determinedly. “It’s about…” Everyone around the table knows what’s coming next. They smile knowingly to each other. Some roll their eyes.
“It’s about education. Specifically on attainment gaps.” Swinney has to raise his voice when speaking this last sentence so he can be heard above the groans and tutting from his ministerial colleagues. Why must we talk about actual policy, is the view of the Cabinet. That’s not why we came into politics…
An unfair scenario, of course. SNP politicians might well care as much about education, health and transport as much as any other politician. It’s just that sometimes they make it very easy for their opponents to suggest otherwise.
Last year Ms Sturgeon invited Scotland to judge her on her record on closing the nation’s education attainment gap. It is indeed a serious problem: 17 years after devolution was launched, pupils from more affluent backgrounds are twice as likely to gain at least one Higher (Scottish equivalent to A-level) as those from a poorer background.
The situation extends into higher education. A Scottish university applicant from a deprived background has less chance of going to university than her counterparts of a similar background in any of the other nations of the UK. Frustratingly for the SNP, this isn’t an area where blame can be laid at the door of the hated UK government.
The First Minister’s actual words last year were: “My priority for my time as First Minister – and let me be clear I want to be judged on this – is that every young person should have the same advantage that I had when I was growing up in Ayrshire.” I could point out that, as a product of a secondary education in Ayrshire myself, I might see this as a threat rather than as a promise, but we’ll let that one slide.
So where are we, nearly three months into Ms Sturgeon’s first full term as first Minister? How is that crusade for school standards going?
There is no doubt that John Swinney is one of the most conscientious and hard working ministers in Edinburgh, and he will be working hard for reform, perhaps aware that it is he, not his boss, who will be judged in the event of failure. But as he slogs away, he must also be aware that the public perception is that once more, as with all previous SNP administrations, it’s the constitution, not public policy, that is the priority.
Every Scottish newspaper regularly reports on Ms Sturgeon’s unceasing attempts to attract attention, first, over her carefully rehearsed indignation at the EU referendum result and, subsequently, her “It’s so unfair!” tour of EU capitals.
The battle is joined at Westminster too, where the SNP’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, who really should know better (and does), called for the Scottish Government to remove Trident from Faslane after the Commons voted for renewal while all but one Scottish MP voted no (this is forgivable on Mr Robertson’s part: he’s experienced enough to know the difference between reserved and devolved matters, but he’s in a tense fight for the deputy leadership of his party right now, so cut him some slack).
To most people, Trident is about defence, international relations, Britain’s place in the world. To the SNP, it’s about finding another excuse to raise the constitution. The perception, based at least in part on reality, is that during the interminable three-year-long campaign leading up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, ministers took their eye off the ball somewhat, sidelining vital public service delivery in order to focus on the Prize Above All Others. The evidence suggests the same is happening again.
Sturgeon says the views of the 1.6 million Scots who voted Remain in June must have their wishes respected. Except that none of those 1.6 million voted for Scotland to remain in the EU; they voted for the UK to remain in the EU. And they were outnumbered by citizens taking part in what no one suggested was anything other than a UK-wide vote.
More importantly, if the Scottish government considers the people to be sovereign, why is she so committed to defending the voice of those 1.6 million, yet is blatantly disregarding the votes of the two million-plus who voted for Scotland to remain in the UK? The contradiction is even more pronounced given that June’s plebiscite – the one considered so important by the SNP – was called by the hated UK Tory government, while the 2014 vote was the brainchild of Sturgeon and her predecessor, Alex Salmond.
Meanwhile, school children in deprived areas and disappointed university applicants will just have to console themselves with the hope that, perhaps, by the time their own children leave school, Scottish politicians will finally have started to focus on them.

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All revolutions begin with a rejection of the old order, and the elites and institutions which preside over it. But then they can head off in wildly different directions. At one extreme lies the tradition of the French and Russian revolutions – seismic events where the world is turned on its head with often disastrous consequences.
At the other lies the profound but quiet change epitomised by Britain’s very own “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. Such events can be no less ground breaking in their long term impact. The Glorious Revolution marked the start of Britain’s ascent in the world. It established the supremacy of parliament, it made Britain into Europe’s dominant naval power, and it led to a great outpouring of financial innovation which both funded imperial expansion and eventually sparked transformational industrial change. Yet paradoxically, it was also a revolution that emphasised continuity and stability over upheaval. The established institutions of state were bolstered, not torn down.
Brexit doesn’t match either of these two models. It is of altogether smaller magnitude. But as an act of rebellion against established elites, with their apparent attachment to the integrationist ambitions of the European Union, it is an historical rupture none the less, and could still go either way. Will it conform to the benign idea of revolution represented by 1688, or as the historian Harold James put it in a lecture to the Wincott Foundation this week, will it conclude like Hamlet, with the political stage littered with corpses?
If we think of Brexit as a revolutionary force, then few seem better to embody the ancien regime than Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England. As a former managing director of Goldman Sachs who is as comfortable in the world of high finance as he is international policy making, he has “global elite” written all over him.
In the run up to the referendum, he produced a report extolling the benefits of membership of the EU, and during the campaign itself, he was provoked into saying there could be a technical recession if Britain left. As it turns out, Britain’s 0.5 per cent growth rate in the third quarter is likely to have been one of the best in the developed world. Brexit Jacobins would gladly send Mr Carney to the guillotine, if only as punishment for being so badly wrong-sided over Brexit.
Yet it’s not just about the referendum. After eight years of ultra-low interest rates and so-called “quantitative easing”, central banks find their omnipotence under attack as rarely before. In Germany, the Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has blamed the European Central Bank’s low interest rate policies for the rise of the populist party Alternative für Deutschland.
And in the United States Donald Trump has pledged to sack Janet Yellen, chair of the US Federal Reserve, for alleged politicisation of monetary policy. For choice, he would abolish the Fed altogether.
The backlash against central bankers, now widely portrayed as part of a phalanx of discredited technocratic “experts“ who have been proved wrong about almost everything, is in full swing. Even our Prime Minister has joined in, complaining of “bad side-effects“ from low rates. In doing so, she promised; “a change has got to come and we are going to deliver it”.
Fortunately, markets do not yet feel inclined to believe that Bank of England independence is under serious threat. Yet the situation is precarious. In the space of less than a month, we have moved from a situation where Mr Carney seemed to be more than happy to serve the final three years of his eight year term to one where he is apparently considering his position. And nothing is more guaranteed to turn today’s relatively benign sterling devaluation into a destructive rout than Britain being seen to push the Governor of the Bank of England out of office.
In this respect, the Governor’s membership of the “global elite” has its upsides, for Mr Carney is hugely respected internationally and is therefore vital to the thin veneer of credibility that supports the nation’s ever more precarious finances. Let it not be forgotten that this week is the fortieth anniversary of Britain’s shameful, Greek style bailout by the International Monetary Fund. Back then, the national debt was less than 50 per cent of GDP; today it is closer to 100 per cent.
Of course Carney and the Bank are not blameless. Since the financial crisis, monetary policy has entered uncharted waters which were never anticipated when governments surrendered vitally important tools of economic management to the discretion of central banks. Unconventional monetary policy has unintentionally taken the Bank of England into areas that might more properly belong to the political sphere. In the words of Mrs May: “People with assets have got richer. People without them have suffered.” What she didn’t mention is that two thirds of these gains have gone to the over-65s, the very cohort that tends to complain most vociferously about ultra-low interest rates.
And therein lies the danger of revolutions – that a political narrative takes over that denigrates established forms of authority and ignores awkward facts and counter arguments for populist ends. Since 1992, inflation in the UK has bounced around a bit, but has averaged 2.1 per cent a year, almost exactly what the Bank of England is mandated to achieve . It is indeed hard to think of any other institution that has so perfectly met the target politicians have set for it.
It’s true that the Bank didn’t see the financial crisis coming, but that was part of a collective failure in which the body politic was equally culpable. Imagine the uproar there would have been if the Bank had dared to jack up interest rates to stem the credit bubble. Today, we’d now all much prefer higher rates, but nobody has a strategy for delivering them that doesn’t involve pole-axing jobs and growth.
Great care needs to be taken. Mr Carney's defenestration would not only be pointless, it would be positively dangerous. Well handled, Brexit has the capacity to deliver another glorious revolution. But if the zealots get the upper hand there’s no telling where it might end.

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page.
Well, that was a highly successful three-month campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. There’s nothing like spending all summer on a project that proves worthwhile and repays the effort.
If Angela Eagle and Owen Smith were generals in a medieval army, they would report back to their commander: “We fired incessantly for three months and have brought such damage to our opponent’s army they now have 100,000 more soldiers than when we started, sir. And I’m not sure how, but although we’re fighting in Belgium, we seem to have given them Wales.”
Corbyn should ask them to do it every year; by 2025 he’d be crowned King of Europe.
Even more impressive was the way the plotters all agreed, after the result, that “this shows the lessons Jeremy needs to learn, and he has to reach out”.
Next they’ll ask Owen Smith to fight Tyson Fury, and as Owen is dragged away by paramedics, Stephen Kinnock will announce: “This shows the lessons Tyson has to learn. From now on he needs to look more skinny and wear glasses and reach out if he knows what’s good for him”.
This is an exciting development in democracy, that the side who won the least number of votes decides what the lessons are that have to be learned. Maybe this is how the anti-Corbyn section of Labour hopes to govern after a general election. They’ll say to the Tories: “As you won a majority of 190, you have to learn to reach out and fill your cabinet with me and my mates”.
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Even so, the plotters made an important point: that Corbyn must reach out to those who already tried to unite the party by calling him a moronic pitiful unelectable pile of steaming goat sick for the last year.
Instead of being divisive, as he was last time by offering them jobs in the shadow Cabinet from which they resigned, he should let them pick their own jobs, and if they don’t fancy doing them one day, let them bring in games.
All the plotters agreed on the need for unity, and many of them displayed that straight away by not turning up to Corbyn’s speech. But Corbyn himself ruined the unity by turning up to it himself, rather than uniting with his colleagues by saying he couldn’t be bothered to say anything so he was popping down the pub.
Some MPs will soon resume their commitment to unity by insisting Corbyn is hopeless, on every TV station, one by one through the news channels, the cartoon channels and the GOD channels. Then on a porn channel, John Mann will knock on a door to say: “Hope you’ll be voting Labour in the council by-election”. But a woman in rubber will reply: “I certainly won’t be voting for you”, so he’ll say: “I suppose that’s because we’ve been very, very bad and chosen an unelectable leader”, then lay down and scream: “We’ve been so irresponsible by saying we’ll renationalise the Royal Mail!” while getting thrashed on the arse with an egg whisk.










Others will prove their loyalty as they did before, by texting helpful snippets of information to journalists from meetings, such as: “OMG! Apparently Corbyn wants to abolish the army and replace it with a salad”.
The other demand from the side celebrating its achievement of getting fewer votes than someone they say is unelectable is there can be no threats of deselection. There should be no half measures with this; if Jess Phillips announces: “I’d rather vote for Donald Trump than Corbyn, that’s why I broke into his house and poisoned his fish”, that’s her right as a loyal party member and any talk of deselection would be divisive.
The next issue Corbyn must address now he’s been humbled by winning the election is the problem of all these new members. For example, an investigation into Liverpool Riverside complains there has been “an explosion in membership” which now “meets several times a month”.
That sounds sinister, because when has there ever been any need to do two things in a month?
And what are they all doing, joining like that? No wonder proper Labour members are suspicious. They should have to pass a test, clambering across an assault course, or swimming through piranhas.
As any business leader will confirm, there’s nothing more damaging to an enterprise than an explosion in people demanding your product. This is why Bill Gates always insists, when a new version of Microsoft Windows comes out, that anyone who asks for one is told they can’t have it as they’re almost certainly a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
One MP grumbled: “It’s all right these new people joining, but will they go knocking on doors at the election?” We can’t know the answer to that, which is why the best way to ensure they’re enthusiastic enough to knock on doors is to tell them they’re all infiltrating scum and they can sod off somewhere else with their several meetings a month.
If they still join, they should have to prove their loyalty by not only knocking on doors, but when someone answers, say: “Our leader’s unelectable so I don’t know why I’m bothering”.
But most importantly, not one of the plotters has fallen into the trap of accepting they may have made the odd mistake, and perhaps shouldn’t have all resigned to get rid of their elected leader, or whined too many people have joined their party, or gone to court to ban their own voters, or insisted people supported Corbyn because they’d had their arm twisted by Trotskyists, because it’s obviously Corbyn that needs to learn the lessons from the result.


The Queen supported Brexit and asked why the UK could not just 'get out' of the EU, it was dramatically claimed yesterday.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the monarch had apparently made her views clear at a private lunch before the referendum in June.
According to Miss Kuenssberg's contact, the Queen told guests at the lunch: 'I don't see why we can't just get out. What's the problem?'
Scroll down for video 
The claim was made on another day of positive news for the economy six months after the referendum vote, including:
Miss Kuenssberg's extraordinary claim follows a report in The Sun newspaper nine months ago, under the headline 'Queen backs Brexit'. Last night, Buckingham Palace said it had nothing more to add to the statement it issued in March, in response to the Sun report, which said the Queen was ‘politically neutral’.
Miss Kuenssberg said she did not run the story at the time because she had only one source. But her claims will re-ignite the debate over what the Queen’s private views about the EU are.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday, Miss Kuenssberg said her ‘jaw hit the floor’ when an unnamed contact told her that the Queen had told a private lunch that she could not see why Britain could not simply leave the bloc.
She said: ‘In a casual chat with one of my contacts, they said, “Do you know what? At some point this is going to come out, and I’m telling you now and I don’t know if the BBC would touch it, but the Queen told people at a private lunch that she thinks that we should leave the EU.
‘Apparently at this lunch, she said “I don’t see why we can’t just get out. What’s the problem?” ’
She added: ‘My jaw hit the floor. Very sadly, I only had one source. I spent the next few days trying to prove it. I couldn’t find the evidence.
‘Lo and behold, a couple of months later, someone else did. Of course, then ensued a huge row between that newspaper and the Palace over what had really been said or not said.’
Jean-Claude Juncker was accused of being in denial yesterday after suggesting the best way to fight terror was to keep the borders between EU countries open.
The European Commission president said it was now impossible to prevent terrorists crossing borders on the continent. But he insisted that the answer was not a clampdown on free movement and the restoration of passport checks – but a greater effort at an EU level to spot potential security threats.
Mr Rees-Mogg said last night: ‘Perhaps Mr Juncker has had too much sherry in his Christmas pudding. He and others like him in Brussels are so sheltered from reality that they have become muddled in their thinking.’

The Sun always stood by its piece, saying it had two sources for the claim that the Queen had ‘let rip’ at then deputy prime minister Nick Clegg over Europe at a lunch at Windsor Castle in 2011. Mr Clegg has named then justice secretary Michael Gove as a source, but Mr Gove has never confirmed the allegation. It is not known whether Miss Kuenssberg’s source is the same as one of The Sun’s, or whether it is the same lunch. A BBC spokesman said last night that neither the corporation nor Ms Kuennssberg would comment.
Last night Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said: ‘It’s not really a surprise that the Queen is in favour of a sovereign constitutional monarchy.
‘All the time we were campaigning for Leave, we said we were doing it for Queen and Country. The Queen is 90 years old and she knows full well how great Britain was before we joined the European Union, and how things are now. She is well qualified to offer an opinion, although she keeps these opinions to herself.’
Fellow Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘It would not be a surprise if the Queen felt this way, given that joining the European Union was a great betrayal of the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth is close to her heart.
‘The Queen is more in touch with the feelings of the British people than many politicians. She has a much better understanding of the national mood than many in public life.’  

Owners of Scarborough’s Grand Hotel must be held to account – The Yorkshire Post says
Meet the Yorkshire villagers who have raised over £250,000 to re-open their local pub for the first time in 13 years
The Government wanted Britain to remain in the EU, the establishment wanted Britain to remain in the EU and most MPs wanted Britain to remain in the EU. Yet the majority of Conservative members (and voters) wanted Britain to leave the EU, and they helped to win one of the biggest victories of all time.
Theresa May was not on the same side as the vast majority of Conservative Party members in the debate. I did not vote for her to become the next Prime Minister and I am sorry that members of the party have been denied their chance to choose their next leader.
However, Theresa May is not only the new leader of the Conservative Party but also our new Prime Minister and she has said that Brexit means Brexit.
Given her stance during the referendum she will be especially keen to show Party members and the public that she can deliver what they have overwhelmingly voted for.
I am delighted that she has appointed no-nonsense Yorkshire MP David Davis to lead the Brexit negotiations and Liam Fox to develop new trade deals around the world.
Leaving the EU means us getting back control of our country – of our finances, our borders and our laws.
Brexit will only be a Brexit that is acceptable to the country if this is achieved and, for the avoidance of doubt, this means there can be no free movement of people as part of a deal with the EU. Theresa May has told me that this is her position and I am sure she will stick to it.
It will not be in any way acceptable to the country having voted to leave the EU only to rejoin it by stealth or to effectively agree to keep all the things that were wrong with it in return for trade just without actually officially being a member of the EU.
We also need her leadership to ensure we get out of the EU as soon as possible. The Government said in one of the series of EU documents they published before the referendum: “The Prime Minister made clear to the House of Commons that ‘if the British people vote to leave, there is only one way to bring that about, namely to trigger Article 50 of the Treaties and begin the process of exit, and the British people would rightly expect that to start straight away.’”
The process should start now and the whole of Government should be working now towards life post-Brexit. These plans can be made right now regardless of the negotiations – and the negotiations do not need to drag on.
Either the EU is prepared to do trade deals with us without any free movement of people or they are not. If they are we just need to get on with it. If not we can explore our other options.
We can also be making Britain a very attractive country to do business with – this is a golden opportunity to deregulate without the tentacles of the EU getting in the way. We can develop lower tax options and give people back more control of their lives.
A pro-Britain and pro-business campaign needs to start in earnest and we need to be starting to pave the way for trade deals with the rest of the world – the world really is our oyster.
After Theresa May has achieved a successful Brexit and we have got a grip of European foreign criminals as part of the Brexit strategy, there are other things I would like to see her tackle. Scrapping the Human Rights Act would be a very welcome development in the right direction and popular with Conservative members and voters alike.
The Prime Minister should also resist the temptation to engineer a snap General Election.
The Labour Party are in chaos and, by the admission of many of their Mps, would be wiped out in a sudden election and so Theresa May could easily be tempted.
However, we have just had a national election where over 33 million people voted and given the Government a clear instruction and the Government should now focus on that and, as such, leaving the EU is obviously the number one item on the political agenda.
I believe getting out of the EU and ensuring it is a huge success needs to be at the top of all political in-trays – and that is where the issue should stay until this has been achieved.
Philip Davies is Conservative MP for Shipley
Thieves used £20,000 'Game Boy' device to unlock and steal cars in Yorkshire, court hears
Developer warns residents after submitting plan to build 130 homes on farmland in North Yorkshire village
She has been wasting her time if
she thinks eternal reasonableness will get you anywhere with the EU. With their inferiority complex vis-à-vis
he UK, there is nothing its Franco-German bosses and their lackeys lke better than to take a rise out
fus.
The Yorkshire Post says: David Davis raises Brexit stakes by urging Ministers to revolt against Theresa May
Never forget that, in her relentless battle to reduce Britain’s excessive contribution to the then EC budget, Margaret Thatcher got only two-thirds of a loaf. In spite of her efforts. the EU remains a protectionist club.
They took not a blind bit of notice when she warned against the very movement that has brought Brexit – sinking member-nations in a European super-state.
And Mrs Thatcher never set out to be nice but to be effective.
Now the decent vicar’s daughter, Mrs May, is in a terrible fix. She has no natural majority in the Commons. Her party is not merely split, but her Government rebellious to the point of resignation over Brexit. She has a Civil Service that seems to be Europhile in spite of the referendum.
The Opposition’s policy is without principle. Whatever the PM comes away with Labour will vote against it, with the enthusiastic support of the hypocritical SNP. William Wallace: No deal on Brexit may well mean the end of the UK. Here’s why
Every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to be promising Armageddon if we leave the EU without a deal as “Project Fear” gets a new lease of life thanks to this week’s crunch talks in Brussels.
This is not to mention the Irish
border which seems to be much ado about nothing, given the facility with which trade moves across the Channel. Irish cross-border traffic is nobbut a basketful compared with the volume of trade through our ports.
And the Northern Irish might be glad of a hard border if it becomes a backdoor for illegal immigrants.
Mrs May is reduced to pleading with moderate Labour MPs, mostly with
anti-EU electorates, to back her – or pave the way for a Jeremy Corbyn government that would ditch them at the earliest opportunity.
She is also relying on ardent Tory Brexiteers to support her lest they let in the dreaded Corbyn.
Having thus analysed her plight, I would, were I her Press secretary, also prescribe an escape. This is the note I would put before her before she leaves London:
1. This summit is billed as concentrating on migration and internal security. Brexit is supposed to be discussed at dinner. I say “proposed” because you know the EU has an unrivalled record for procrastination over difficult issues.
2. Assuming it faces up to Brexit for a change, your tenure as PM is not just at stake but so is Britain’s future as a reasonably prosperous, freedom-loving democracy – not the totalitarian wreck that Corbyn virtually guarantees.
3. This means that the very least you can return to London with is an indisputable exit with the UK intact and a stated date for the end of any transition period no later than December 31, 2020.
Britain has to be clear what it is voting for at the next election, due 2022. Only a clear return of sovereignty and independence with freedom to trade with the wide world will do.
4. Given that the EU wishes to keep us tied to its apron strings pour encourager les autres, you will have to chuck Chequers, preferably dramatically, and tell them in no uncertain terms that if they want continued stability in Europe to which the UK is essential they had better deliver. Corbyn offers only chaos.
5. Not a penny of our ridiculous £39bn exit fee will be paid without a free trade agreement.
6. Without any hesitation, you can promise that, if your minimum
demands are met, they can count on your Government – and your Government alone – playing a constructive role in European defence and Western affairs.
7. You must make sure that they understand very clearly that they have got themselves in very bad odour in Britain by their pettiness and negativism. Remind them that the British want to leave because they think their federalism is unviable and dangerous.
8. If they hum and ha you must, for once, get very nasty indeed. It may be against you nature, but anything else could be misinterpreted as weakening.
Be strong. Britain – and your tenure – depend on it. Serve the people. They have spoken and said “Out”.
Owners of Scarborough’s Grand Hotel must be held to account – The Yorkshire Post says
Meet the Yorkshire villagers who have raised over £250,000 to re-open their local pub for the first time in 13 years
Former Minister Caroline Flint said opposing any withdrawal agreement would risk handing a no deal exit to the likes of Boris Johnson, as she described Labour’s six tests for deciding how to vote as “disingenuous” for suggesting the UK could enjoy the “exact same benefits” of the single market.
She also claimed voting the deal down will not force an election, as envisaged by Mr Corbyn, and that MPs like her were wrongly coming under “huge amounts of pressure” to oppose it to try and force the Tories out.
Nigel Farage says Theresa May is the worst Prime Minister of his lifetime ahead of Harrogate 'Save Brexit' rally
Ms Flint stressed to force an election Labour would have to win a no confidence vote in the Government, which she would back “without hesitation”.
But Tories and DUP would not as “that would be Turkeys voting for Christmas”, she said.
The Yorkshire Post says: Brexit backstops. Theresa May's weakness could be a strength
Ms Flint told The Yorkshire Post: “There are a number of Labour MPs who feel if there’s a reasonable deal on the table, if you’re going to say no you need some bloody good reasons why if we’re going to end up with no deal.
“We had 15 vote against the EEA, the Norway option, I think you could double or triple the number of MPs who have concerns.”
William Wallace: No deal on Brexit may well mean the end of the UK. Here’s why...
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Mr Corbyn said: "We're confident that those figures are inaccurate and we don't recognise them. Obviously it depends on what we are actually talking about, we don't know what this deal is and I don't know if the Government does either."
The spokesman stressed that Labour had not decided yet how to instruct its MPs to vote as "we don't yet know what the deal is going to be, the Government is still negotiating with itself probably more than it's negotiating with the European Union, but if and when that deal is made we will judge it in Parliament against the six tests that were laid down by the Labour Party".
He added: "If it doesn't meet those tests we will be voting against it."
The spokesman also insisted that the choice in the vote would not be between deal or no deal and said Labour had set out a "clear" Brexit plan.
Read the full interview in Saturday's edition of The Yorkshire Post.
“Some within the party – particularly within the ERG – are really holding firm”
Senior MP tells i
Tory Eurosceptic rebels have warned Theresa May that they will only support her Brexit blueprint this week if she sets out plans for her departure from Downing Street.
i understands the ultimatum was delivered personally to the Prime Minister by a senior figure in the anti-EU European Research Group (ERG) of Tory MPs.
Mrs May is preparing a third attempt to win a Commons majority for her withdrawal agreement, but Tory whips are making slow progress in their efforts to overturn last week’s 149-vote defeat for her deal.
Ministers are also holding talks with DUP leaders in a final attempt to persuade the Northern Ireland party to swing behind her proposals.
Brexiteers are making plain that her promised resignation would be the price for their support in their support in the vote expected on Tuesday.
“They want it confirmed. Otherwise it seems to me that she isn’t going to get the deal,” a senior MP told i.
“Getting the DUP on board won’t be enough. Some within the party – particularly within the ERG – are really holding firm.”
Tory Eurosceptics argue that a new leader is essential for the second phase of the talks following Britain’s withdrawal which will focus on the future UK-EU trading relationship.
They were livid that Mrs May only managed last week to push through plans for a delay to Brexit with Labour support, with a majority of Conservative MPs voting in a different lobby from Mrs May.
The Dover MP, Charlie Elphicke, told the BBC he would support the agreement if there was “a change of leadership, and a new face and a new team to take us forward to the future relationship”.
The MPs she needs to win over
A similar call was made by the former Tory chairman, Grant Shapps, who supported Remain but is now “backing Brexit all the way” .
He said: “The next stage of the negotiations around Britain’s future partnership with the EU will require a complete change of the negotiating team from bottom to top.”
Andrew Bridgen, the North West Leicestershire MP, said he had been told by party whips that Mrs May was willing to announce her resignation in return for getting through the withdrawal agreement. His claim was denied by Downing Street.
Philip Hammond also dropped a veiled hint that he believed the Prime Minister’s days were numbered.
Asked on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show whether she would quit if she believed it would help, the Chancellor replied: “She is the kind of person who will always do what she thinks is in the best interests of the country.”
Unless the 149-vote humiliation can be reversed, Mrs May would be forced to seek a lengthy extension to the Article 50 process, with the UK required to elect MEPs in May, Chancellor Philip Hammond said.
The Prime Minister herself has warned of what Westminster insiders have dubbed a “Hotel California” Brexit where the UK can never leave.
It would be a “potent symbol of Parliament’s collective political failure” if a delay to Brexit meant the UK was forced to elect MEPs in May almost three years after voting to leave, Mrs May said in a Sunday Telegraph article.
Theresa May has warned that Britain’s political leaders run the risk of not delivering on Brexit as she prepared to make a major concession to Labour over membership of a customs union.
The Government is aiming to relaunch talks with Jeremy Corbyn’s team on Monday at the beginning of a crucial week for Brexit.
Mrs May will have to convince European Union leaders meeting in Brussels on Wednesday that she can produce a stable Commons majority for a withdrawal plan to avoid a no-deal Brexit on Friday.
She told Eurosceptic Tory MPs and activists angry that Britain would remain closely tied to the EU under her plan that Brexit could be lost altogether if she did not give further ground in the search for a political consensus.
Mrs May is expected to ask for Labour, which has accused her of not making significant concessions so far, to endorse a close customs link between the UK and EU, but not to label it a “customs union”.
She is also reported to have raised the idea of a “lock” mechanism to prevent any potential future Conservative leader, such as Boris Johnson, from “ripping up” any compromise plan.
Her appeal for realism came amid warnings of insurrection on her backbenches, fury among Tory activists and a backlash among voters in the event of Britain remaining in a customs union.
Mrs May said in a video message recorded at her Chequers country retreat that talks with Labour would mean “compromise on both sides”.
She said: “There are lots of things on which I disagree with the Labour Party on policy issues.
“But on Brexit I think there are some things we agree on: ending free movement, ensuring we leave with a good deal, protecting jobs, protecting security.
“And so we are talking. Can we find a way through this that ensures that we can get a good deal and a deal agreed through Parliament?
“It will mean compromise on both sides but I believe that delivering Brexit is the most important thing for us.”
In the short film, Mrs May indicated that she would not attempt to call a fourth vote on her Brexit blueprint and appeared to rule out a no-deal withdrawal.
She said the Commons had already rejected her divorce proposals three times and “as things stand, I can’t see them accepting it”.
She warned that the choice facing political leaders was now between leaving the EU with an agreement “or not leaving at all”.
Striking a similar note, the Brexiteer Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom said Mrs May’s deal was a “type of customs arrangement”.
She told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: “We can’t be purist about it. We’re now at the point of Brexit slipping away altogether. We have to face what’s in front of us.”
Shadow Business Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, said of the Tory-Labour talks: “The sad thing is at the moment we haven’t seen overall any real changes to [Mrs May’s] deal.”
Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy came crashing down around him when the highest court in the UK ruled his decision to suspend Parliament was unlawful, triggering calls for him to resign and apologise to the Queen.
In a stinging and unprecedented rebuke to the Prime Minister, Supreme Court president Lady Hale said the 11 judges had ruled unanimously that the five-week prorogation stopped Parliament from carrying out its constitutional duties “without reasonable justification”.
As he prepared to fly back to the UK from New York, where he had been attending the UN General Assembly, Mr Johnson was defiant over the ruling, insisting he would not resign or apologise for his actions and claimed that the case was part of a plot to stop Brexit.
Speaking in New York, where he was attending the UN General Assembly, Mr Johnson said he “strongly disagrees” with the ruling of the Supreme Court and threatened to prorogue Parliament again.
The Prime Minister hit back at the findings from the justices, claiming there are a lot of people who want to “stop this country from leaving the EU”.
In a pooled interview in New York, the PM said: “Obviously this is a verdict that we will respect and we respect the judicial process. I have to say that I strongly disagree with what the justices have found. I don’t think that it’s right but we will go ahead and of course parliament will come back.”
PM added: “I do think there’s a good case for getting on with a Queen’s speech anyway and we will do that.”
And in an act of defiance, he said; “It is perfectly usual to have a Queen’s speech that is what we want to do but more importantly let’s be in no doubt there are a lot of people who want to frustrate Brexit. There are a lot of people who want to stop this country coming out of the EU.”
Told the court found the prorogation unlawful and democratic, the PM said: “I’m not certain that the justices did say that. I think that they certainly thought that the prorogation we chose was not something they could approve of. It’s an unusual judgment to come to.”
The PM attempted to take charge of the political and constitutional crisis by chairing a conference call with Cabinet ministers before departing the US. As the prorogation has been ruled null and void, Parliament will resume its sitting at 11.30am, today, Speaker John Bercow said.
According to officials, Mr Johnson is unlikely to be back in time for the resumption of the Commons at 11.30am but he could be expected to give a statement to the House.
Lady Hale sent shock waves through Westminster and the Prime Minister’s circle in New York when she announced shortly after 10.30am that the judges had found in favour of Gina Miller, the businesswoman who brought an appeal against prorogation. The court also upheld the Scottish Court of Session’s finding earlier this month that the suspension was unlawful and that the Queen had been misled.
“The effect on the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme,” Lady Hale said, adding: “The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification.”
MPs called back to Parliament early with Commons to resume at 11.30 on Wednesday
The announcement triggered calls from across politics for Mr Johnson to resign, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Liberal Democrat chief Jo Swinson and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. In a troubling sign for Mr Johnson, the veteran Conservative former Cabinet minister Lord Young called for Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg to be sacked for leading the delegation to the Queen to request a prorogation.
Lord Young told BBC News that Mr Johnson had to “rebuild trust with Parliament”.
Downing Street has yet to come up with its strategy as to whether it will seek to stage a second prorogation, but Mr Johnson has made clear he wants a Queen’s Speech in order to bring forward a new legislative agenda.
Since 28 August when ministers first requested the suspension, the Government’s position has been that it was nothing to do with Brexit, but to enable a Queen’s Speech. Yet in his response, Mr Johnson appeared to contradict this line by claiming the court case had been about “people who want to frustrate Brexit”.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote to Tory members Friday evening pledging to break the law that will require him to seek an extension of Article 50, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Mr Johnson has few remaining options after leaders of the opposition refused to agree to a snap general election until a Brexit delay has been obtained.
The “rebel alliance”, including Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson, have pledged to block a no-deal Brexit, and will not support the government in a second vote on Monday designed to trigger an early election.
Mr Johnson said: “They just passed a law that would force me to beg Brussels for an extension to the Brexit deadline. This is something I will never do.”
Boris Johnson ‘held hostage’ as Jeremy Corbyn and all opposition leaders unite agree to block early election

“I will not. I don’t want a delay,” he added.
If Mr Johnson does not carry out the will of Parliament, he could face legal proceedings. The Telegraph reports that if a judge then ordered him to obey Parliament, he risks being held in contempt and possibly jailed if he refused.
As Parliament is scheduled to be suspended by next Thursday at the latest, it seems unlikely the Prime Minister will be successful in forcing an election before 31 October unless he resigns.

Sir Nicholas Soames labels Jacob Rees-Mogg an ‘absolute fraud’

Mr Duncan Smith said: “This is about Parliament versus the people. Boris Johnson is on the side of the people, who voted to leave the EU.
“The people are sovereign because they elect Parliament. But Parliament wants to stop the will of the people.”
However, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, Liz Saville Roberts, who was involved in the rebel talks, said her party intends to hold Mr Johnson to account.
“We need to make sure that we get past 31 October, and an extension to Article 50. We have an opportunity to bring down Boris, to break Boris, and to bring down Brexit – and we must take that,” she said.

Boris Johnson says ‘powers of persuasion’ will be enough to solve Brexit impasse

Speaking in Scotland on Friday, the Prime Minister said he would not ask for any delay. Whilst visiting a farm near Banchory, Aberdeenshire, where he met a prize bull called Keene, he said: “We’ve spent a long time trying to sort of fudge this thing and I think the British public really want us to get out. They don’t want more dither and delay.”
He added he would secure a new deal at the EU summit on 17 October “by powers of persuasion”.
However, Tory rebel David Gauke, who lost the party whip this week for supporting Benn’s bill, said Mr Johnson had minimal options.
Gauke said: “During both the leadership election and subsequently, he has just boxed himself in, again and again and again. Just this week he is now saying there are no circumstances in which he will seek an extension. But if the law requires him to seek an extension, he either has to comply with the law, or resign. Surely he must comply with the law?”
Mr Johnson’s letter follows a chaotic week in which he suspended 21 Tory MPs, his younger brother Jo Johnson resigned and more senior Tories announced their retirement.
He claimed he promised to “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
However with his hopes of a no-deal Brexit seemingly disintegrating, the Prime Minister faces pressure to achieve a renegotiated deal with Brussels. On Friday the cross-party group “MPs for a deal” was launched, including Labour’s Stephen Kinnock and Caroline Flint, Liberal Democrat Norman Lamb, and former Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart.
In a joint statement “MPs for a deal” said: “Even at the eleventh hour it’s not too late to agree a deal to ensure an orderly exit from the European Union.
“The media focus has been on the short extension proposed by the Benn bill. However, we believe that Boris Johnson’s response to the bill should be to ensure he secures a deal with the EU27.”
MPs have lined up a legal team and are willing to go to court to enforce the legislation requiring Mr Johnson ask for an extension.
The Government is set to encourage councils and community groups to fly the Union flag to celebrate Brexit on 31 January.
Ministers are preparing a package of announcements to mark the moment Britain leaves the EU at the end of this month, which could include a commemorative coin and Big Ben ringing out.
One of the items is likely to be a fund from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to help local councils and other groups buy and display the Union flag, i understands. A Westminster source said: “It’s prompted by Brexit but is also meant to celebrate national identity more broadly.”
The move has been promoted by senior Tory backbencher Sir John Hayes, who said in the House of Commons last week that flying the UK flag from public buildings “would be a fitting tribute to the decision the British people made to leave the European Union”. Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay replied: “Any opportunity to do so is one that he and I would always celebrate.”


Strident Brexiteer Mark Francois is leading efforts to get the bell restarted. Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has said he would back the scheme as long as MPs voted in favour, while pro-Brexit businessman Lord Ashcroft has offered to foot the £120,000 cost.
A Downing Street spokesman insisted that no final decisions had been made on how 31 January will be marked. Some in the Government are nervous about holding too many flashy events in case it alienates people who voted Remain.


Nigel Farage is backing a “Brexit Celebration” event hosted by Leave Means Leave in Parliament Square which is expected to attract thousands of supporters and will feature speechs by senior Brexiteers.
The original date on which Britain was scheduled to leave the EU, 29 March 2019, saw two rallies outside the House of Parliament – one featuring mainstream politicians and the other organised by the far right and starring Tommy Robinson, which ended up with clashes between police and protesters.
The Treasury is expected to announce it will mint a commemorative coin to mark 31 January. It would be the third time the Royal Mint, overseen by the Chancellor, has announced a special Brexit coin.
First Philip Hammond promised a souvenir £10 coin, with 10,000 copies due to be minted in time for 29 March before the first delay to Brexit.
Next his predecessor Sajid Javid ordered the Mint to work on a 50p piece to go into mass circulation, bearing the motto “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” alongside the revised Brexit date of 31 October.
After Britain’s departure was postponed again, thousands of the coins had to be melted down – any which survived would be hugely valuable to collectors. Some Brexit supporters have called on the Royal Mail to follow suit by producing a set of commemorative stamps, but the company has refused.
At 11pm on Friday 31 January the United Kingdom will formally be leaving the European Union.
It’s a moment that as recently as 15 years ago most of us would have thought unimaginable: back then the cause of withdrawal from the EU – the word Brexit was at that juncture yet to be coined – was deeply unfashionable. It was not championed by a single Westminster MP, and anyone favouring it was cast by the political establishment to the fringes of British politics.
Yet a decade later, despite having earlier labelled the one political party then backing withdrawal from the EU (Ukip) as a bunch of “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly”, Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to deliver on his manifesto pledge of an In/Out referendum on our membership of the EU after unexpectedly winning that overall majority at the 2015 General Election.
And on 23rd June the following year, the voice of the British people was heard loud and clear as 17,410,742 of us cast our vote to take back control of our laws, our money, our borders and our trade policy as an independent sovereign nation state once again. More people voted for Brexit on that day than have ever voted for anyone or anything in British electoral history.
Yet it has taken no fewer than 1,317 days from that hopeful, optimistic June day until today for our departure from the EU to be delivered. And that is mainly because, despite the democratic mandate of the referendum and the fact that most Remain voters did accept the referendum result, a small clutch of politicians, lawyers and commentators could not bring themselves to recognise the decision that had been made by their fellow citizens.
The undermining of the May Government’s negotiating position by some of her own ministers was nothing short of shameful. The parliamentary shenanigans of last year which sought entirely to scupper Brexit (in the name of blocking No Deal) were equally outrageous. And Labour’s flagrant reversal of its 2017 manifesto pledge to accept the referendum result turned out to be the most enormous act of self-harm.
Take it from a Brexit supporter: this is how to win a campaign to rejoin the EU

So the decision is made, the die is cast: with both the British Parliament and European Parliament having now endorsed the Withdrawal Agreement, there really is no turning back. The victory we thought had been sealed at the referendum is now complete and beyond question.
As we mark this historic moment tonight, let us celebrate not only our independence, but a victory for democracy and the ability of we, the people, to determine our own nation’s destiny.
Jonathan Isaby is editor of BrexitCentral
British MEPs were accused of being “petty” and “childish” in the European Parliament as chaotic scenes of protests marked the opening day of the new term in Strasbourg.
The MEPs representing Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party stood and turned their backs on the Parliament during a rendition of the EU anthem Ode To Joy.
And the Liberal Democrats posed in the parliamentary chamber wearing bright yellow protest T-shirts calling for Brexit to be stopped.
Tuesday morning marked the opening of the new five-year session of the parliament and was the first opportunity for newly-elected MEPs to make their political opinions known in Strasbourg.
The Brexit Party and Lib Dems – each with opposing views on leaving the EU – came first and second respectively in the EU Parliamentary Elections back in May.
The newly-elected Brexit Party candidates took part in the protest because, they said, they did not recognise the EU as a “nation state”.
Others in the parliament refused to stand at all as the song, composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1824, was played live by a jazz ensemble.
Mr Farage, the former leader of Ukip, led the same protest in 2014 when in parliament with MEPs from his previous party.
He told Sky News: “They played the anthem and we didn’t stand up as the others did – all ramrod straight to attention. We sat and the president of the parliament, Mr Tajani, said it is polite to stand up when the anthem of another nation is playing.
“He called this place a nation. So we obeyed his instructions and we did stand up, but we faced the other way.”
Outgoing speaker Antonio Tajani had told MEP’s: “Rising to your feet is a matter of respect. It does not mean that you necessarily share the views of the European Union. Even when you listen to the anthem of another country you rise to your feet.”
But Mr Farage denied that the move was disrespectful and instead argued: “What is disrespectful is to take the ancient nation states of Europe and without asking anyone’s permission turn it into a country, because that’s what the president of the parliament called it this morning.
“That’s really disgraceful and I am not going to stand to attention for this anthem – no way. I’ll show respect for any anthem of any other country in the world, but not a false creation like this and I think we did the right thing.”
Brexit Party MEPs turning their backs on Europe, as they do their best to isolate the UK from the world. This is petty, small minded little England at its worst. These plonkers do a proud and open nation a disservice. Shame on them. pic.twitter.com/Lbg1b9Gcbg
— David Lammy (@DavidLammy) July 2, 2019
The move prompted criticism online from many, including Labour MP David Lammy who described the MEP’s gesture as “petty [and] small minded”.
Meanwhile the Brexit Party’s political opponents, the Lib Dems, made their own pro-Remain feelings known by wearing bright yellow t-shirts adorned with their “Bollocks to Brexit” slogan.
After our massive success at the European elections, can you guess the number one priority for our new Lib Dem MEPs? pic.twitter.com/jeMyiNc3Qr
— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) July 2, 2019
Luisa Porritt, Deputy Leader of the Lib Dems in Europe, was among several members to tweet that she was wearing the protest t-shirt tho show that she intends to “stop Brexit […] because the UK must lead not leave the EU”.
Irina von Wiese, Lib Dem MEP for London, tweeted: “We’ve sent a clear message at the first plenary session of the European Parliament: bollocks to Brexit!”
Martin Daubney, MEP for West Midlands, who participated in the Brexit Party protest of facing the wrong way, said the Lib Dem protest was: “Childish, 6th form nonsense.”
But the British politicians were not the only ones using the first day to protest against European policy and agenda.
There were demonstrations outside by Catalan nationalists, whose MEPs are barred from taking up their seats, and in defence of a German ship captain being held in Italy in a row over migrant rights.
Hundreds of demonstrators protested that three separatist figures, including Ex-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, were unable to take their seats because they fled to Brussels after a banned independence referendum, and then failed to attend a swearing-in ceremony in Madrid.
Inside the chamber, fellow MEPs placed photos of the missing two plus another separatist leader, Oriol Junqueras, who is on trial in Spain, on their desks.
Although this is the start of a new five-year session of the parliament, it is not yet clear how long the UK will remain involved.
UK MEPs may sit in the parliament until the country formally leaves the EU which is currently scheduled for 31 October, though this could be extended if a deal is not found by then.
A bill designed to block the Government from forcing through a no-deal Brexit on 31 October will become law after receiving the approval of the House of Lords.
Peers passed the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill, or Benn bill, at its third reading without a formal vote on Friday afternoon.
The legislation, spearheaded by Brexit Select Committee chairman Hilary Benn and Tory former Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt, requires Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ask for an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond 31 October unless a withdrawal agreement is approved or Parliament agrees to leaving the EU without one by 19 October.
What is Royal Assent?
Royal assent is a formality. It means getting the monarch’s agreement to make the bill into an Act of Parliament, or law.
The bill made its way through the House of Commons successfully on Wednesday but there had been fears the legislation would stall in the Lords with Eurosceptic peers using the technique of filibustering to delay its progress.
But the strategy was abandoned when the Government admitted defeat over the bill.
After swiftly moving through its final stages in the Lords without amendment, it is now expected to receive Royal Assent on Monday, thereby completing all stages required to become law.
There has been pressure on Parliament to pass the law before prorogation begins next week.
Closing the debate in the Lords on Friday, Brexit minister Lord Martin Callanan said the bill undermined the Government’s efforts to negotiate a withdrawal agreement. However he assured peers the legislation would be presented for Royal Assent.
Earlier the Lords rejected a bid, by 268 votes to 47, to remove an amendment tabled by Labour MP Stephen Kinnock in the House of Commons, paving the way for MPs to debate Theresa May’s final withdrawal deal during a Brexit extension to next January.
Lord Callanan said the amendment was “confusingly drafted”, contradictory to the aims of the legislation and “legally inoperable”.
But Labour peer Lord Peter Goldsmith said it did no harm to keep it in the Bill as there was no time to send it back to the Commons for further consideration due to the “guillotine of prorogation imposed by the Prime Minister”.
Figures opposed to a no-deal Brexit praised the progress of the Benn bill.
“I am pleased that this vital bill has now cleared the House of Lords – a hugely important moment in the fight to stop a catastrophic no-deal Brexit,” tweeted Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. “The Bill must now receive Royal Assent on Monday and the Government must agree to abide by it.”
The group of Liberal Democrat Lords said the passage of the bill in the chamber was “a key step in preventing a disastrous no-deal Brexit”.
Some have expressed concern about whether Mr Johnson will comply with the legislation, having previously labelled it the “surrender bill” and claiming it takes away control of the UK’s negotiations with the EU.
On Thursday, he said he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask the EU for a further Brexit delay.
Ministers are to make a last-ditch effort to persuade the DUP to drop their opposition to Boris Johnson’s Brexit blueprint.
The fierce opposition of the party’s 10 MPs to the deal – which they argue would erode the links between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK – means he faces an uphill struggle to win critical Commons votes this week on the agreement.
However, the DUP, led by Arlene Foster, insists that changes are still possible to his agreement and are holding talks to try to wring concessions out of the Government.
They are pressing for changes to the proposal for a ‘consent mechanism’ which would allow a majority of the Stormont Assembly to vary Northern Ireland’s customs arrangements. The DUP wants any such alterations to be approved by a majority of both unionists and nationalists, effectively giving it a veto.
They say ministers have so far offered nothing which would persuade them to drop their opposition to Mr Johnson’s withdrawal plans.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the party’s chief whip, said that he supported Brexit, but “cannot emphasise enough” the importance to unionists of the principle of consent under the Good Friday Agreement.
He also criticised the speed at which the Government plans to rush through the Commons the Bill enshrining the withdrawal agreement in law.
Abortion and same-sex marriage to become law in Northern Ireland as Westminster rules come into force
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Discussions with the DUP will continue as you would expect because they are the Government’s confidence and supply partners.”
Talks between the Northern Ireland party and ministers will continue on Tuesday in the run-up to a second reading vote on Mr Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
The DUP’s potential influence on the outcome of close Commons votes was underlined on Saturday when they were supported an amendment to withhold approval of Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal until legislation to implement it was in place.
Had they voted the other way, the Prime Minister would have won his so-called “meaningful vote” on his plans instead of being forced to write to Brussels requesting a delay to his planned Brexit day of 31 October.
The DUP last week protested that Mr Johnson’s plan would drive a “coach and horses through the professed sanctity of the Belfast Agreement”.
It said: “It is our view that these arrangements would not be in Northern Ireland’s long-term interests.”
France will block any attempt to further delay Brexit unless the UK can overcome its internal political turmoil, the country’s foreign minister has warned.
Fresh legislation designed to prevent Boris Johnson from forcing through a no deal exit from the European Union is due to become law on Monday, as MPs battle the Prime Minister over his Brexit stance.
It had been suggested that senior former Cabinet members, who were last week expelled from the parliamentary Tory party, had received private assurances that an extension to Article 50 would be granted.
But Jean-Yves Le Drian, a senior member of Emanuel Macron’s cabinet, ruled out any further delays due to the ongoing political upheaval in the UK.
“In the current circumstances, it’s no. We are not going to go through this every three months,” Mr Le Drian said.
The threat dramatically increases the chances of the UK leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October as all 27 EU countries must sign up to any extension.
French President Mr Macron has been by the most hardline among the EU 27 when it comes to agreeing extensions to the Brexit deadline, as he is eager to push on with his reforms to the EU which will see ever closer relations between the countries.
On Sunday, former work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd quit her government role and the party after criticising Mr Johnson for doing very little to try and secure a Brexit deal.
Her comments were echoed by Mr Le Drian, who said there had been no proposals put forward by Number 10 to solve the UK’s misgivings with the Irish backstop.
“The [British] say that they want to put forward other solutions, alternative arrangements so that they can leave,” Mr Le Drian said.
“But we have not seen them and so it is ‘no’ – let the British authorities tell us the way forward.”
And he added: “Let them take responsibility for their situation, they have to tell us what they want.”
The Prime Minister is due to travel to Dublin on Monday to try to seek alternatives to the Irish backstop.
Brexit bill: block on no-deal passes Parliament as House of Lords give their approval
But in a damning assessment of the Government’s efforts to secure a fresh Brexit deal, Ms Rudd said there was “no evidence of a deal”.
Stopping short of accusing Mr Johnson of lying, Ms Rudd to the Andrew Marr Show: “I believe he is trying to get a deal with the EU, I am just saying what I have seen in government is that there is this huge machine preparing for no-deal.
“You might expect in the balance between getting a deal and no-deal 50/50 in terms of work but it’s not that, it’s like 80 per cent to 90 per cent of government time going into preparing for no-deal and the absence of trying to get a deal has driven 21 of my colleagues to rebel, and I need to join them.”
Britain must continue to pay in to the EU’s budget even if we leave without a deal, one of Brussels’ top officials warned.
Gunther Oettinger, the European budget commissioner, said the UK was signed up to contribute until the end of 2020 regardless of the outcome of Brexit.
Eurosceptic politicians responded with anger to the claim and to the revelation that the European Parliament’s president has met John Bercow to discuss how a no-deal outcome could be blocked.
Mr Oettinger, who oversees the EU’s income and spending, suggested that in a no-deal Brexit Britain could be forced to pay in too the budget as a condition of starting talks on a free-trade agreement.
He said: “In the 2020 draft budget, the UK is a full partner with all rights and obligations in terms of monies paid and monies received, and that is how we understand the law because the MFF (multi-annual financial framework) to the end of 2020 was agreed with the UK.
“If the British are not prepared to pay, we are sure we will get the money at a later stage, but not immediately.”
The UK’s contribution to the European budget is roughly £15.5bn, although currently much of that money returns to Britain. Boris Johnson has previously said he would refuse to pay in to the budget in the event of no-deal.
Iain Duncan Smith, one of the Prime Minister’s closest allies, told i Mr Oettinger’s claims were “not correct” and added: “There was no agreement.”
David Sassoli, the president of the European Parliament, revealed he had met Mr Bercow to discuss how the Commons could end up blocking no-deal Brexit. He said: “John Bercow and I fully agreed on the important role that our parliaments play in the Brexit process.
“There is also a common awareness that a disorderly exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union would be against the interests of British and European citizens.”
Arch-Brexiteer Steve Baker accused the Commons Speaker of plotting to stop Brexit altogether, saying: “Opposition to our democratic decision to get Brexit done has become fanatical. Is there no constitutional principle they will not overthrow?”
During the heated European Parliament debate, outspoken former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt suggested Mr Johnson is a “traitor” because of his Brexit plans.
He said: “The real reason why this is all happening is very simple. It’s a blame game. A blame game against everybody. A blame game against the union, against Ireland, against Mrs Merkel, against the British judiciary system, against Labour, against the Lib Dems, even against Mrs May. The only one who is not being blamed is Mr Johnson himself apparently, but all the rest are the source of our problems.”
“All those who are not playing his game are traitors, or collaborators, or surrenderers. Well, in my opinion the real traitor is he or she who would risk bringing disaster upon his country, its economy, its citizens by pushing Britain out of the European Union. That is, in my opinion, a traitor.”
As part of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by Theresa May, Britain has agreed to pay the EU billions of pounds to avoid a shortfall in its annual budget.
The so-called “divorce bill” – originally estimated at £39bn – is also part of Boris Johnson’s revised deal.
But if the UK leaves without a deal, the size of its financial obligations are not clear. A 2017 House of Lords report concluded that the commitment is political rather than legal, meaning Brussels would have no power to enforce the payments.
However, some experts think that ministers’ repeated promises to contribute after Brexit mean the EU could take Britain to court over the issue.
Senior Cabinet members are talking to Labour backbenchers in a bid to drum up support for the Government’s Brexit proposals.
Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay revealed discussions were ongoing with MPs from across Parliament to try to secure support for the Prime Minister’s plans ahead of a crunch week in the Brexit negotiations.
“We are talking to Members of Parliament across the House because I think many Members of Parliament want to avoid no-deal,” Mr Barclay told the BBC.
“And particularly those Members of Parliament in Leave constituencies who have voted against no deal and voted against a deal three times, then they will need to be able to address this issue when they return to their electorate.”
Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who represents Leave-backing Wigan, admitted earlier that talks were taking place between backbenchers who are eager to vote for a Brexit deal but have yet to be convinced by Boris Johnson’s latest proposals.
The Government is under pressure to offer further concessions to Brussels in order to enter into detailed negotiations in an attempt to secure a fresh Brexit deal before 31 October.
Ms Nandy said there were around 40 Labour MPs who have been working to “achieve a deal and there are still discussions going on”.
Although she said she was not personally involved in the talks, she said Labour MPs were talking to senior Cabinet ministers about a potential route forward.
But Ms Nandy warned she would not be able to support Mr Johnson’s plans as they currently stand, which she branded as a “pre-election party political broadcast”.
“What we’ve got is a proposal which stands virtually no chance of being accepted by the EU which creates two borders on the island of Ireland which is completely incompatible with existing international law and which rips up the workers’ rights and protections and the environmental protections that we spent several months at the start of this year negotiating with the former prime minister,” she said.
“I would vote for a deal, but this is not a deal. This is a pre-election party-political broadcast from the Prime Minister, and the truth is that for all of the talk about getting Brexit done, we are further away from achieving a deal than we were two months ago when he became Prime Minister.”
Mr Johnson will engage in a series of talks with EU leaders in the coming days, while Mr Barclay will travel to the Netherlands in an attempt to press the case for the Brexit proposals.
Theresa May faced a Cabinet backlash after she refused to bow to demands from senior ministers to rule out a no-deal Brexit.
Divisions around the top table were once again laid bare ahead of votes next week in which rival groups of MPs will try to shape the future direction of Brexit.
Amber Rudd, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has called for MPs to have a free vote on a move to delay Brexit, which is due to take place on 29 March, if the Commons fails to endorse Mrs May’s plans by the end of next month.
In Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Ms Rudd insisted the government should exclude no-deal as an option because of the potential economic damage.
She was backed by the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, who raised fears that the government appeared to be “sleepwalking towards no-deal and sleepwalking towards economic disaster”.
However, Mrs May said ministers were bound by collective responsibility which leaves no-deal on the table.
She was supported by several ministers including Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Environment Secretary Michael Gove and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt.
Mrs May faced pressure on a second front as ministers called for her to back moves to introduce a time limit on the backstop plan to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
Mr Hunt argued that the government should back parliamentary moves to introduce a “sunset clause” into the backstop proposal and tell Brussels that the concession would enable the deal to pass through the Commons.
He is understood to be backed by Ms Mordaunt and the Commons leader Andrea Leadsom.
Meanwhile the Solicitor General Robert Buckland told Radio 4’s PM programme that he would support MPs being granted free votes on Brexit issues if it became clear it was impossible to reach a consensus for a deal.
Jeremy Corbyn should be given the first chance to try to form an interim government to stop a no-deal Brexit before an alternative caretaker prime minister is found, Harriet Harman believes.
The former Labour deputy leader’s name has been proposed by Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson as the head of a government of national unity if Boris Johnson is defeated in a confidence vote next month.
Ken Clarke, who has also been suggested by Ms Swinson, said he would be willing to head an interim government.
Both veteran MPs are willing to step forward if they can command enough cross-party support to wrest control of Mr Johnson’s Government and extend Article 50 to prevent no deal.
Yet Ms Harman believes that, as leader of the opposition, Mr Corbyn has the right to go first to try to form an interim government, the i understands.
If he cannot command the confidence of the House, then it is for whoever can do so, and that the most important thing is to stop a no-deal Brexit, her allies say.
This position is a further blow to Ms Swinson, who initially rejected the Labour leader’s cross-party appeal on Thursday to open talks about a caretaker government as “nonsense” before backtracking on Friday and agreeing to have talks with Mr Corbyn.
The Labour leader took a swipe at his Lib Dem counterpart’s rejection of his caretaker bid, saying: “It’s not up to Jo Swinson to choose candidates, it’s not up to Jo Swinson to decide who the next prime minister is going to be.
“Surely she must recognise she is a leader of one of the opposition parties who are apparently opposed to this Government, and apparently prepared to support a motion of no confidence.”
He said Ms Swinson and other politicians should allow “normal precedent” to take place and give him the first opportunity to form a new government.
But former Tory Cabinet Minister Mr Clarke said he would be happy to take on the role.
He told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: “If it was the only way in which majority of Commons opposed to no-deal could find a way forward, I wouldn’t object.
“Government of national unity is not inconceivable. We are in a similar situation to 1931 and the two World Wars.”
He later told the BBC he was “happy to follow Harriet, happy to follow Yvette [Cooper, another senior Labour backbencher]”.
Mr Clarke added there was “an awful lot to be gone through” before a government of national unity could be brought together.
He said an interim administration would be a “single issue, short-term government” with a remit to “sort out Brexit”.
He added: “I haven’t been taking part in any talks with anybody for the last fortnight. I’ve been on the phone to one or two people in the last couple of days just to find out what the devil’s going on.”
But he said Mr Corbyn would have to stand aside and let somebody else lead it because that is the “only way to get a multi-party group to come together”.
The Labour leader is considering using legislation to extend Article 50 to prevent no deal Brexit, if a no confidence bid fails. Mr Corbyn also had talks with the SNP over how to pull together legislation to delay the UK’s departure from the EU.
The Labour leader is also preparing to hold talks with a handful of rebel Conservative MPs who want to stop no-deal Brexit. They believe Mr Corbyn remains a divisive figure but are willing to open up talks as start of a process.
Cross-party talks between Labour and the Government are rumoured to be on the brink of breaking down as neither side has been able to reach a compromise Brexit deal.
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn agreed to take part in discussions back in April after the Prime Minister’s deal was repeatedly rejected by the Commons, forcing her to seek Labour’s help with securing another exit strategy.
There was hope that Mrs May would be able to meet enough of Labour’s demands to win over the majority of opposition MPs and get a Brexit deal through parliament.
But, with less than two weeks to go until the UK takes to the polls to vote in the EU elections, reports have suggested that Cabinet ministers have lost faith with the plan to strike a cross-party deal and urged the Prime Minister to seek an alternative option.
Mrs May previously said that, if she was unable to reach an agreement with Labour, she would hold another set of Commons votes similar to the indicative votes last month.


The method involves votes by MPs on a series of non-binding options and is a means of testing the will of the House of Commons on different ideas all relating to one issue.
Holding indicative votes on different Brexit options was suggested as a way of finding out what plan would gather the most support in the Commons after it had repeatedly rejected various strategies.
In this instance, MPs were given the option of:
But no majority was produced for any of the options, meaning all were rejected, exposing again the lack of majority for any particular form of Brexit. (See the full results of the last set of votes here.)
When she announced she was inviting Labour to join cross-party talks, the Prime Minister said that if a compromise was not reached she would put “a number of options for the Future Relationship” agreed between her and Mr Corbyn “that we could put to the House in a series of votes to determine which course to pursue”.
And speaking to the Today programme on Monday, Housing Secretary James Brokenshire described these as “definitive votes”.
He said talks with Labour were “very serious” and added he “very much want[s] to see them concluding positively because ultimately we need to carry a vote in Parliament to see that we leave”.
But when asked what Plan B would be if the talks failed, he said: “The Prime Minister has been very clear that if we’re unable to find that space of compromise then the next step would be to go back to Parliament.”
He went on: “To have almost not a series of indicative votes but actually a series of definitive votes to seek to get to a place of where that sense of where Parliament is, to be able to pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, to be able to have that vote to see that we leave – that’s the next stage, that would be the next phase.”
Despite the slightly different terminology used by Mr Brokenshire to describe the votes, it is expected that they would work in a similar way to the April indicative votes.
This would mean MPs would be asked to vote on a series of Brexit options, outlined by the Government. They would be able to express their support or disapproval for each individual motion and could choose to support more than one motion.
This, however, could mean more than one option commands a majority in the House, and it is unclear how either Parliament or the Government would proceed if this happened.
It is also possible that no option would gain a majority among MPs like last time.
European elections 2019: who to vote for today, whether you support Brexit or Remain

This could mean that some kind of preferential system is used in which MPs would rank in order of preference the various outcomes.
The Government is not legally bound by the results of these votes but Mrs May said that she was ready to abide by the conclusion as long as Jeremy Corbyn agreed to do the same.
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Former attorney general Dominic Grieve has warned that while MPs may not be able to block a no-deal Brexit, they could topple a Tory Government trying to take the UK out of the EU without a deal.
The Conservative MP acknowledged that blocking a no-deal Brexit is “technically” difficult but sounded a warning to both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt that whoever inherits Number 10 will face a significant rebellion in the Tory Party.
Both of the candidates for party leadership has said they are prepared to leave the UK without a deal, with front runner Mr Johnson hardening his position during a debate on Monday night, warning that he wants major changes to the withdrawal agreement. This has been ruled out on numerous occasions by European officials.
But Mr Grieve warned that any attempts to give up on negotiations and pursue a no-deal exit would prompt a number of senior Tory MPs to vote against their own Government in a confidence motion, that could mean the end of their time in office.
Mr Grieve said that blocking a no-deal Brexit in Parliament is “technically” difficult but added that: “if a government persists in trying to carry out a no-deal Brexit, I think that administration is going to fall.”
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme that a purge of pro-EU ministers from the cabinet under a new leader will further boost the ranks of those prepared to rebel.
“By the end of next week there are going to be more Conservatives who have indicated very clearly that no-deal is unacceptable and I notice that many of them will no longer be on the front bench,” he said.
Whoever will take over the helm of the Tory Party inherits a slender single-digit Parliamentary majority propped up by Northern Irish Party the DUP, making them vulnerable to any confidence motion by opposition parties.
This threat could be deepened by a by-election in Brecon and Radnorshire in the first weeks of their time in office.
Mr Johnson, who is the bookies favourite to replace Theresa May next week, upped the stakes on Monday night during a debate, describing the Irish backstop as an “instrument of incarceration” that must be removed from the withdrawal agreement.
The backstop is a set of measures to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland by keeping the UK inside the Customs Union and the Northern Ireland aligned with EU regulations.
Mr Grieve said the comments that were echoed by Mr Hunt mean that compromise had been effectively been ruled out.
He said: “I think it is significant because I have in the past heard it suggested, and not just in this country, but actually elsewhere and in the EU, that there might be some possibility of compromise by the backstop being tweaked.
“On the face of it, this entirely rules it out, which is always what I thought would happen.”
Former attorney general Dominic Grieve has sent a thinly veiled threat to Boris Johnson that MPs would be willing to bring down the government in the event of a no deal Brexit.
Mr Grieve insisted a large number of Tory MPs would mobilise to prevent a no-deal Brexit in the autumn and remove Mr Johnson as prime minister, should he win the Tory leadership contest.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If the new prime minister announces taking the country on a magical mystery tour towards an October 31 crash-out, I don’t think that prime minister is going to survive very long.
“Of course, the prime minister could exercise his absolute right of then going to the country and having a general election. But that is likely to be catastrophic for the future of the Conservative Party.”
Asked if he could vote against the Government in a no-confidence motion in order to try and prevent a no-deal exit from the EU, Mr Grieve said, “then I am pretty sure that there are a large number of Conservative MPs who will object to that happening.”


Pressed on whether the Queen would then need to get involved, Mr Grieve said: “It is worth bearing in mind that if an administration falls on a vote of no confidence, there is 14 days to set up a new one.”

Donald Tusk says the UK is ‘wasting time’ with Brexit delay

“There has to be a confidence vote in those circumstances. If that were to happen under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, the person who is prime minister, their tenure in office comes to an end and a new administration can be formed in that period.
“And it might concentrate minds wonderfully on the need to have an administration run by somebody who has a tenable policy.”
Mr Johnson has said he supports leaving the EU on 31 October regardless of the situation. In a debate on BBC One he appeared to row back, however, saying it was “eminently feasible”, which was seen by some as a softening of his position.
Jeremy Hunt has also said he supports leaving without a deal if necessary.
Additional reporting by Press Association.
Pushing back the date of Brexit will cost the UK an additional £1bn a month, Dominic Raab claimed this morning in a bid to kill off the looming Commons rebellion.
The Foreign Secretary warned Britain is at a “crossroads” with the Government’s Brexit policy at risk of collapsing if Tory backbenchers vote to seize control of Parliament’s timetable.
Rebel MPs want to pass a bill forcing a three-month delay to Britain’s EU departure if Boris Johnson fails to secure a revised Withdrawal Agreement.
Calling on Conservatives to reject the legislation, Mr Raab told the BBC’s Today programme: “It would create paralysing uncertainty, it’s craftily designed not just for one extension but to try and allow serial extensions.
“It would immediately force the UK to accept any EU conditions, however punitive, and regardless of those conditions the price tag for the taxpayer would be £1billion each month.
“It scuppers the very positive progress we’ve had with the EU to get a deal we can all accept.”
If the UK stays in the European Union beyond 31 October, the Treasury will have to continue paying in to the bloc’s budget for as long as it remains a member.
But that would also reduce the size of the ‘divorce bill’, previously estimated at £39bn, because it is based on the UK’s previous commitments to the five-year EU budget.
Mr Raab defended the Government’s threat to deselect MPs – including former Cabinet ministers – who support the anti-no-deal rebellion.
He said: “We do need to focus our minds on the reality of this crossroads week for the country. We want to get out of this rut we’re in, the Brexit rut we’ve been in for three years.”
The minister claimed parliamentary “shenanigans” were undermining the Government by raising hopes in Brussels that Brexit could be delayed or cancelled.
Brussels has rebuffed Britain’s latest attempt to resolve the Brexit deadlock, contradicting ministers’ claims that steady progress is being made in talks with the European Union.
It warned that fresh proposals to identify an alternative to the Irish backstop fell short of European Union demands and lacked crucial detail.
The European Commission reportedly believes that the process is going backwards as the UK plans do not contain the essential elements needed to clinch an agreement.
Its mood of pessimism followed a meeting between Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator.
In a note to EU ambassadors, the Commission said the UK suggestions “fall short of satisfying all the objectives of the backstop”, describing them as not legally operational. It also noted the UK is yet to table concrete plans to be the basis of formal talks.
Mr Barclay said his meeting involved “serious detailed discussions” and that Dublin, London and Brussels were “moving forward with momentum”.
Mr Barnier said the work would continue with “full respect” to the UK, “our partner and ally”.
He added: “The EU will remain vigilant and continue to apply all EU principles and values.”
Earlier, Dublin warned a “wide gap” remained. Simon Coveney, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, played down chances of an early breakthrough, as the scheduled date of the UK’s departure from the EU approaches.
Mr Johnson is flying to the United Nations summit in New York early so that he can meet European leaders and hold talks over a fresh Brexit deal.
The Prime Minister had been expected to fly out to the general assembly on Monday, but Downing Street has brought forward the trip by 24 hours to find more time to hold talks on Brexit.
Mr Johnson has lined up a series of bilateral meetings with EU leaders, such as Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Leo Varadkar as optimism is beginning to grow around the Brexit talks. He will later meet the European Council president Donald Tusk, who is also expected to hold talks with the German Chancellor and the Taoiseach.
While Mr Johnson’s meeting with the French President and Ms Merkel is being billed as an “E3” meeting to designed primarily to discuss the attacks on the Aramco oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, Brexit is expected to be up for discussion.
“What this gives the PM an opportunity to do is talk to them at leader level about what some of our proposals are,” a senior government official said. Brexit talks have ramped up over the last few days after the UK Government sent a dossier outlining how the Irish border could be managed without the backstop.
The documents shared with the EU, described by No 10 as “non-papers”, lay out plans to bind Northern Ireland into a shared economic zone with the EU on agricultural trade, food and limited checks on goods.
Government divisions were laid bare in the Commons after the Brexit Secretary joined seven other Cabinet ministers to rebel against the Prime Minister and reject a delay to the UK laving the EU.
Stephen Barclay voted against a Government motion calling for a short extension of Article 50 until the end of June, to allow more time to agree a deal before the official leave date.
Just an hour earlier he had stood at the dispatch box and wound up the debate on a delay, saying that a “realistic” extension was in the national interest.
But, in a bizarre turn of events, he then walked through the lobby to vote against the Government motion.
The motion had proposed that, if the House of Commons approves her Brexit deal by March 20, Theresa May would seek a “one-off extension” until 30 June to allow time for necessary legislation to be passed.
It was approved by MPs by 412 to 202. But 188 Conservative MPs – more than half the parliamentary party – voted against it.
These included Mr Barclay, Wales secretary Alun Cairns, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson.
The Government’s Chief Whip, Julian Smith, was one of 11 Tories who did not vote.
Winding up the debate, Mr Barclay had said: “The Government will make our statement under section 13.4 tomorrow setting out how the Government proposes to proceed in relation to negotiation.
“And so there will be the option of an amendable motion no later than Monday, March 25.”
He finished by saying: “It is time for this House to act in the National Interest, it’s time to put forward an extension that is realistic.”
Under current rules the UK is due to leave the bloc by 29 March, regardless of whether a deal is agreed.
But following another resounding defeat of her Brexit deal, and MPs’ rejection of a no deal, Mrs May agreed to put forward the motion to authorise her to request an extension.
She plans to hold another vote on her deal and, if it is approved, request what is known as a short “technical extension” to allow time for ratification.
But Mrs May warned if a deal was not agreed the UK would have to request a longer extension from the EU.
The motion added that, if the Prime Minister cannot win support for her deal by 20 March, it would be “highly likely” that the EU will require the UK to set out a “clear purpose” before granting any extension.
It also noted that any delay beyond the end of June would result in the UK taking in May’s elections to the European Parliament. Under Article 50 rules, the UK must request any extension and it has to be unanimously supported by EU states.
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Anti-Brexit parties are finalising their plans to field “Remain Alliance” candidates in seats that could otherwise be won by the Conservatives, the Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price has said.
He said his party is holding “positive discussions” with the Liberal Democrats and Green Party over standing down candidates for each other to maximise the pro-Remain vote in the general election.
The talks are understood to be focusing on up to 60 seats, although firm moves have only so far been announced in two constituencies.
The Lib Dems have said they would step aside in favour of the Greens in Brighton Pavilion, held by the former Green leader Caroline Lucas, and the Isle of Wight, a key target for the party.
Meanwhile the arrangement in Lib Dem-held Brecon and Radnorshire, which was not contested by the Greens or Plaid Cymru in August’s parliamentary by-election, looks certain to continue.
Other potential deals could be struck in Lib Dem target seats Richmond Park and St Albans, while Plaid will be keen for a free run in Ceredigion, although the Lib Dems are its closest challenger in the ultra-marginal West Wales seat.
The three parties could stand down to help Anna Soubry, the former Tory who now leads the Independent Group for Change.
General election 2019: What matters most for the Liberal Democrats in the next five weeks is getting noticed
Speaking at Plaid’s election launch in Menai Bridge, Anglesey, Mr Price said: “We’ve had extensive discussions, very positive discussions, over many, many weeks and months.
“We hope to be able to reach an agreement but obviously we are still consulting with our local parties etc and we hope to make an announcement, if we’re able to do so, very soon.
“In principle, we’re very much supportive of the idea of trying to maximise the number of MPs from pro-Remain parties that are elected from Wales and indeed, of course, there are similar discussions between the Greens and the Liberal Democrats in England.”
He added: “In principle, putting the public interest, the national interest, before our narrow party interest really is the right thing to do.”
Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, has not denied a claim that a pact could be struck in as many as 60 seats.
“The specifics of announcements will be made in due course but it’s well understood that these discussions have been taking place,” she said.
“I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the numbers are accurate. ithink it’s fair to say that in the vast majority of constituencies the party of Remain that is going to be best-placed to win that seat will be the Liberal Democrats.”
It is a sign of the strange times we live in that Theresa May’s Brexit deal is still viewed by many as the most likely route through to securing the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Despite suffering the heaviest defeat in parliamentary history last week, when a majority of 230 MPs roundly rejected the withdrawal agreement, the Prime Minister is expected to make only tweaks to the deal.
In truth, much will hinge on which of the amendments to the motion get voted through.
An amendment tabled by the former attorney general Dominic Grieve and the cross-bench bid led by Tory Nick Boles will see Parliament wrestle for control of the Brexit process out of Mrs May’s hands.
Should that happen then a softer Brexit – or even no Brexit at all – becomes much more likely. Brexiteers within the Tory ranks may then be tempted to hold their noses and wave through the Prime Minister’s divorce deal.
As with much of this tortuous journey, all roads lead to the Democratic Unionist Party. If they are convinced by her renewed offer then her deal has a strong chance of being voted through as Tory Eurosceptics are likely to fall in behind.
But Mrs May will be keenly aware that whatever move she makes will alienate factions within her own party. Pressing on with a revamped version of her Brexit plans will mean those in favour of a softer exit or a second referendum will vote against.
The Commons is roughly split into four groups: the no deal zealouts, supporters of May’s deal, backers of a Norway-style Brexit and the second referendum crowd. Each has the potential to derail the Prime Minister’s plans making her task of securing a majority almost impossible.
But as one Cabinet source pointed out last week, there is no majority for any of these Brexit end games so consensus and compromise must be hammered out.
I’ve been grieving about Brexit for a long time. A big part of the job as a political journalist is to listen to what politicians think and use that to explain the strategies they pursue. The private arguments made to me by both pro-Europeans in Labour’s Shadow Cabinet and Eurosceptics on the Tory backbenches in 2014 were that the British people would reject the European project if it were put to a referendum.
Tony Blair, at the peak of his popularity, had been unable to persuade the United Kingdom of the wisdom of the euro. His successor, Gordon Brown, judged that the political toxicity of the Lisbon Treaty,the constitutional underpinning of the modern European Union, was too great to sign it in the company of his fellow leaders, preferring to do so in private later.
I didn’t see how Brown’s successor, David Cameron, for all his political skills, could keep the UK in the EU after six, seven or eight years of austerity, if and when he decided to honour his pledge to hold a vote on membership.
I wish that I could pretend that I had a particularly sophisticated policy argument about why I’m so attached to our membership of the EU, but the reality is that it is an emotional, not rational, feeling.
‘My attachment in the present day is solely emotional. The plain truth is that wherever you have borders, you have to enforce them with fences and guards’
I do agree that the very deep trading links between the nations of the EU has helped to bury the divisions of the Second World War. Anyone who disputes this needs to come up with a plausible reason why, everywhere else in the world, advanced democracies are still bitterly divided over their wartime conflicts.  As we speak, South Korea and Japan are still flirting with a trade war due to unresolved arguments about the treatment of Korean women during the Second World War, yet here in Europe, France and the United Kingdom have one of the deepest security partnerships in the world, while Germany remains an essential ally to both.
But that is very much an argument for the past value of EU membership in the 20th century. It’s both an argument in favour of the EU’s achievements in the past and a proof that its legacy will endure after Brexit.
Boris Johnson’s biggest ally in taking us out was Emmanuel Macron, and the two men’s alliance on security and climate change, will continue to be hugely important after Brexit. That benefit of membership wouldn’t have happened without the EU, but I don’t think it will disappear if the EU were to fade away now.
My attachment in the present day is solely emotional. The plain truth is that wherever you have borders, you have to enforce them with fences and guards, you have a measure of family separation, and I prefer to reduce the number of those things, not erect more.
At a shamefully geeky level, as with Scottish independence, I have to admit my inner Star Trek fan dislikes anything which takes us further away from the United Federation of Planets.
Back then, I wasn’t the only one who thought the referendum couldn’t be won. Douglas Alexander, who was at the time Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, and Chuka Umunna, then Labour’s shadow business secretary, fought a rearguard action against those in Labour who wanted to match David Cameron’s referendum pledge, and a central plank of their case was that a vote would not be won.
The only hope for anyone who wanted to preserve the United Kingdom’s EU membership was to prevent David Cameron from returning to Downing Street, and for Ed Miliband to do so instead.
Nick Clegg, then Cameron’s deputy, was undergoing a similar journey. During the 2015 campaign, he became convinced that a vote on membership would be lost, and resolved that would mean that he would be unable to negotiate a second coalition with the Conservatives, as he would never be able to bring himself to allow a referendum on the question. It’s not true to say that I spent every day between Thursday 7 May 2015, when Britain gave Cameron his majority, and 23 June 2016, convinced that we would leave.
I had plenty of days when I managed to tell myself that perhaps it wouldn’t happen. While Vote Leave had some of the sharpest campaign strategists behind the scenes, the Remain campaign had some of the most effective active politicians, from Cameron himself to Nicola Sturgeon, which meant there were plenty of rallies, interviews and set-piece events that provided false comfort. But most of the time, on most of the days, I never escaped the feeling of despair I felt the day after the general election as far as the Brexit question was concerned.
That meant that, to be honest, my overwhelming reaction on the night we voted to leave was relief that the looming sense of imminent dread I had carried since the 2015 election had gone.
While there were a number of absurd claims made by Leavers during the referendum – the claim that Turkey, which has a better chance of putting a man on Mars than joining the EU any time soon, was on the brink of joining, was particularly egregious, as was the contention that we would spend an extra £350m on the NHS – I’m afraid I have never bought the idea that the EU referendum was particularly mendacious compared to any other contest in any other democracy.
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What was clear to me as late as 2017, when I wrote here in the i that the referendum result had to be upheld, was that the political echoes of not carrying through the referendum would linger for a long time. I fear and expect that the economic consequences of carrying it through will be large, but it is far more difficult for governments to repair lost political trust than it is to repair economic damage.
That’s not to say that I am reconciled to it. In the three elections – the 2017 election, the European election and the 2019 election – held since the referendum, I voted for parties promising to junk Brexit every time.
It’s one thing to think that Brexit should happen but quite another, in my view, to think that just because a majority of people have voted for something you think is terrible that you have to vote for it as well.
I am, in a way, as crushed by the fact of our departure today as I was back in May 2015. But I am, in a small way, relieved that I am at last free of six years of gloom about the prospect of our exit from the EU. Now I can move on to be being depressed about the overall state of politics instead.
Stephen Bush is political editor of the New Statesman
The Brexit drama is being watched with anxiety and apprehension in the rest of the EU, with leaders straining to interpret how each new episode will fit into the existing narrative. Yet they have remained remarkably consistent, insisting that whatever the whims of the British body politic, the other EU countries are not going to fold.
This is particularly important for Ireland. MPs at Westminster voted to remove the so-called Irish backstop – the guarantee of no hard border between the Republic and Northern Ireland – from Theresa May’s painfully negotiated Withdrawal Agreement. But the vote said nothing about how to replace it, other than with unspecified “alternative arrangements”. When the Prime Minister said that she would take this vague demand back to Brussels, the response from across the EU was a thundering “no”.
Even before last week’s vote, when she called the European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, to tell him about the planned amendment to drop the backstop, he replied that the deal could not be reopened and that any trip to Brussels based on that expectation would be “pointless”.
EU solidly behind Ireland
This message has come not just from Brussels and Dublin, but from Berlin, Paris and other capitals. However, it may be ignored in London – and not for the first time. British sources insist that since it is in the broader economic interest of the EU27 to avoid a no-deal Brexit, they should drop their insistence on keeping open the Irish border. Ministers and MPs have indicated that they see Ireland as a weak link, and that they expect the EU to lean on Dublin.
Ireland, indeed, has much to lose if there is a no-deal Brexit. In terms of trade, the country exports around 25 per cent more agricultural products to the UK than it does to the rest of the EU, although when it comes to overall goods, Ireland exports 20 per cent more to the EU. There is enormous pressure on the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, to avert this worst-case scenario. Yet the pressure is not from his partners in the rest of the EU. Leaders and officials have been at pains to underline their solidarity with the Irish.
The German position is crucial. Last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government nearly halved its 2019 economic growth forecast from 1.8 per cent to 1 per cent, citing Brexit as the first among key reasons for the slowdown. And Mrs Merkel has suggested a “creative” approach to Brexit talks could see outstanding backstop questions resolved. Yet she and other German officials have consistently reaffirmed their support for Ireland. As for the suggestion by the Polish foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, of a time-limited backstop of five years, it was swiftly and roundly dismissed by his EU colleagues.
There are other signs of support. Last week, the European Investment Bank said it would ramp up financial aid for Ireland with €300m in soft loans to help the country prepare for Brexit. And even in the US, there is backing: a resolution opposing the return of a hard border in Northern Ireland was introduced in the US Congress last week.
Tomorrow, Mr Varadkar will be in Brussels for Brexit talks with Mr Juncker and the European Council president, Donald Tusk. He can expect to receive words of support – and much more so than Mrs May, who is due to visit on Thursday
Why Ireland matters
There are a number of reasons why the EU is sticking behind Ireland. The first is to do with the actual text. The backstop was not an EU trick foisted on to Britain. It was proposed by the UK and negotiated by both sides because no other alternative could be found to the conundrum of keeping the border open and keeping Northern Ireland within the UK. It was part of Mrs May’s deal back in December 2017 – a commitment to keep the border open no matter what happens – and no technological solutions before or since have been able to replace it.
The second is the Northern Ireland peace process, in which the EU played a critical role by bolstering cross-border co-operation. Indeed, the UK and Ireland’s EU membership was arguably the glue held together the Good Friday peace accord.
The third is to do with Ireland’s position in the EU. Everyone in the EU respects its rights as a member state and no one is suggesting sacrificing the Irish just to get a better Brexit deal. EU solidarity means much more than British cynics would like to believe.
A fourth is to do with the nature of the EU itself. Its single market is arguably its greatest achievement, and officials fear that any weakening of this would undermine the entire European project.
Yes, a no-deal scenario would hurt, which is why the EC and EU states have ramped up contingency planning. But they will not pay any price to head off a no-deal Brexit.
The rest of the EU does not see Brexit in these crude economic terms. Leaders would much sooner let Britain crash out than allow Brexit to forsake its principles, its treaties and the interests of its member states to fit an undefined motion from a quixotic House of Commons.
Patience running thin
Sam Lowe, of the London-based Centre for European Reform, says patience and goodwill are running thin. “The EU is growing tired of Brexit, and increasingly views it as an opportunity cost, pulling resources away from other important business,” he says. “The EU needs the UK to decide whether it wants to leave with a deal that looks substantially like the one already on the table, leave without one, or call the whole thing off.”
There is still a chance that the two sides could forge an agreement without scrapping the backstop. While Brussels refuses to renegotiate, it is open to talking. There could be codicil to the Withdrawal Agreement, and the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, says there is flexibility in the Brexit text on future EU-UK relations. But the EU is not going to abandon Ireland.
Night blindness is a specific condition where someone struggles to see well at night or in poor light, which affects about 3 per cent of British people.
Fovargue blindness is a generalised condition that affects almost everyone at Westminster, and is particularly strong among people who want to stay in the European Union. It is where you cannot see Yvonne Fovargue, and other Labour MPs like her, whether that be at night, in poor light or broad daylight, for that matter.
Yvonne Fovargue is the Labour MP for Makerfield. She is, in many ways, the archetypal Labour MP. Before being elected, she had a successful career working in public service (in her case for Citizens Advice).
Two things set her apart from the average Labour MP, however: she is a woman and she is opposed to a second referendum. Both of those things are not as rare as you might think.
‘Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to commit Labour to backing a second referendum is a bit like Corbyn committing to giving you a million pounds. It’s a lovely idea, but he doesn’t have a million pounds’
If Labour wins a majority at the next election, then half of its MPs will be women. While the number of Labour MPs who are opposed to a second referendum is nowhere near that crossover point, it is large enough to mean that without a major rebellion by pro-European Tory MPs (one double the size of any outbreak of dissent from that quarter so far), there is no serious hope or prospect of the House of Commons opting to put the Brexit question back to the people again. This group includes many MPs who will vote against another referendum no matter what their party leadership says.
The close cousin of Fovargue blindess is Boles deafness. That is an odd condition where people can see that Nick Boles, the Conservative MP for Grantham, exists. They can see that he rebels against the Government whip on Brexit from time to time to make Brexit softer or to prevent a calamitous no-deal Brexit – the economic and political equivalent of walking out on your job without a new one in place, which may be a good idea if you are very wealthy or spectacularly lucky but will end poorly for most of us.
But they cannot hear Boles when he says that he will under no circumstances back a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. They are similarly afflicted when his fellow Conservative rebels say the same.
Added together, the afflictions of Fovargue blindness and Boles deafness allow you to believe one impossible thing: that a Parliament which has no inclination to stop Brexit will vote to give us a second chance to vote on our membership of the EU.
As a result, Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to commit Labour to backing a second referendum is a bit like Corbyn committing to giving you a million pounds out of his own pocket. It’s a lovely idea but it falls down for one important reason: Corbyn does not have a million pounds lying around to spare, and he cannot create a parliamentary majority to stop Brexit. So why has he promised to do it?
Well, just as if Corbyn promised to give you a million pounds you would probably like him more, it comes down to the question of Labour’s electoral viability. Labour is not looking in as healthy a position as it once was , for a variety of reasons.
In England, it is being menaced by the creation of a new party, the Independent Group, and in Scotland and Wales it faces losing votes and seats to the two nations’ pro-EU and pro-independence parties, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
So the important question about Corbyn’s Brexit position is not “what does it mean for Brexit?” (a question to which the answer is “nothing at all whatsoever”). The important question is “will it make Labour more popular and see off the threat of TIG, SNP and Plaid Cymru?”
Unlike promising to give you a million pounds (I think that no matter your views on Corbyn, you have to agree that you would be a little bit more disposed to him if he turned up at your house with several suitcases full of used notes), the benefits and costs of promising a second referendum are not as easy to predict one way or another.
It is a frequent misread to talk of Labour constituencies in northern England that voted Leave and Labour areas in London that voted Remain. Across the country, most Labour MPs’ voters are more likely than not to have backed a Remain vote than a Leave one, but all Labour MPs will have a sizable chunk of their electorate that wanted out of the EU.
Take Ashfield, a heavily pro-Leave constituency in Nottinghamshire that Labour held by just 441 votes, and Kensington, a heavily pro-Remain seat that the party won from the Conservatives by just 20 votes. There are considerably more than 441 people who voted Remain and for Labour in Ashfield, and considerably more than 20 who voted Leave and for Labour in Kensington. Lose sufficient quantities of either and the party is in trouble – lose both and it is in serious jeopardy.
Will it? The big hope of TIG is that its message isn’t just about Brexit, but a broader one that politics is in a mess and needs a refit – and that part of the problem is politicians, like those in Labour, who have said a number of contradictory things to keep various people on side.
And whether that message rings true or not is much harder to answer than the simple question of whether there are enough MPs willing to keep us in the EU.
Stephen Bush is political editor of the New Statesman. Twitter: @stephenkb
Labour unity is under intense strain amid new claims that MPs disillusioned with Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on Brexit are preparing to quit the party whip and form a new parliamentary grouping.
According to one report, the first defection could come as early as 14 February, immediately after the next round of Commons votes on Brexit.
Mr Corbyn will also face a fresh challenge on Monday over his handling of anti-Semitism allegations within the party at what is expected to be a fractious meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
At least six MPs are said to be contemplating a breakaway, with the move led by backbenchers dismayed by their leader’s opposition to a second referendum on Brexit.
Sir Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat leader, said his party had been in talks with Labour MPs – as well as Tories – over how to thwart Brexit. “When the Brexit issue is resolved one way or another, I think they will reconsider their position in the Labour Party,” he said.
“I can’t predict exactly what will happen but I think there’s a real chance of a significant group breaking away,” he told Sky News.
Long-standing rumours of a new centrist grouping have grown at Westminster as the parliamentary skirmishing over Brexit intensifies ahead of next month’s scheduled departure date. Several wealthy benefactors are said to be on stand-by to bankroll the group, particularly if it manages to attract Conservative as well as Labour MPs.
At Monday’s PLP session, MPs will urge Mr Corbyn to prove that the leadership has got to grips with the anti-Semitism row which has dogged the party for more than two years.
A motion will give him a week to set out how he is addressing the allegations.
Deputy leader Tom Watson suggested last year that Labour’s general secretary,  should step down if the anti-Semitism row had not been dealt with by Christmas.
He said Ms Formby had “staked” her career on dealing with anti-Semitism in Labour, after taking over from Iain McNicol in April 2018.
Tory MP Dr Sarah Wollaston said: “I’ve made it clear for many weeks that I would not remain in a party that planned to inflict No Deal on its people. Rather than her current coercive approach, the PM could and should take this off the table.”
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has pledged he will do all he can to stop a “no-deal crash out” from the European Union.
On Saturday, Mr Corbyn said that if Mr Johnson forces a no-deal Brexit on October 31 in spite of the law passed by Parliament, opposition parties would work together to hold the government to account for its “irresponsible behaviour.”
He said: “Opposition parties have worked very closely on this.
“We will do all we can to prevent that no-deal crash-out because of all the damage that will do to jobs, living standards, supply chains, food supplies and medicine supplies, and if it happens we’re absolutely determined to bring this government to account to make them answer for their irresponsible behaviour.”
Mr Corbyn continued: “I personally, and my party, will have no truck with this sweetheart trade deal with the USA which would lead to intervention by American companies into our health service, into our public services.”
The Labour leader was addressing a rally of workers and trade unionists in Kirkcaldy, Fife.
Elsewhere on Saturday, the former chief of the Brexit department warned that claims a no-deal Brexit would mean a clean break with the European Union is “nonsensical”.
In an interview with The Guardian, Philip Rycroft, the former permanent secretary at the Department for Exiting the EU, argued a no-deal exit from the EU would trigger complex negotiations.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats’ party leader Jo Swinson is hoping to convince members to back a policy of scrapping Brexit without another referendum.
Ms Swinson believes the party’s anti-Brexit message should be “unequivocal” in a general election campaign.
In other Brexit developments, cabinet minister Nicky Morgan was accused of “putting career progression before conscience” after she admitted she would vote to remain in the EU in a second referendum.
The Culture Secretary insisted she did not support holding another poll and believed the original result needed to be “fulfilled”.
Asked directly how she would vote in a new Brexit referendum in an interview with BBC Breakfast, she replied: “I would vote to Remain.”
Additional reporting by Press Association
Jeremy Corbyn has softened his stance on freedom of movement after Brexit and also gave warmer support to calls for a second referendum on European Union membership.
The Labour leader has been accused of sending out mixed messages to voters over Brexit ahead of this week’s European Union elections. But he insisted on Sunday that he had no regrets in seeking to appeal to Remainers and Leavers alike in an attempt to bridge divisions opened by the 2016 referendum.
Labour pledged at the last election to end freedom of movement. Disquiet over large numbers of EU workers coming to the UK is widely viewed as a key factor in the Leave vote.
However, Mr Corbyn moderated the party’s position on Sunday, telling BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show he was “not staunchly against freedom of movement”.
Asked if Labour would keep free movement outside the EU, he replied: “It would be open for negotiation.”
Theresa May makes final – but likely doomed – attempt to win support for Brexit deal
He also appeared more sympathetic to growing demands from Labour MPs and activists for him to endorse a second referendum.
“What we fought the general election on was to respect the result of the referendum, and to try to get a deal which guarantees trade and relations with Europe in the future,” he said.
“If we can get that through Parliament, then I think it would be reasonable to have a public vote to decide on that.”
He said he did not believe another referendum would be “disastrous” but stressed it would have to be “an opportunity for public debate and public discussion”.
Labour sources played down the significance of his remarks, declaring that the party’s position had not changed since it was agreed at its conference in September.
Divisions within the Labour over its Brexit stance deepened on Sunday after a prominent Shadow Cabinet member said the party may campaign to leave the EU should it secure a strong new Brexit deal from Brussels.
Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey said a decision would be made on how the party will campaign after a deal is struck.
This is despite her colleague Diane Abbott stating last week she would campaign to remain regardless of the Brexit agreement negotiated with the EU.
It comes after Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary Dawn Butler revealed she appears in her election leaflets dressed as the European Union flag.


“We will make an assessment of the deal at the time. We will try and get the best that we possibly can.”
They would seek a customs union, close single market alignment and protection of workers’ rights and environmental standards, and then discuss the deal with party members, she said.
Pressed on whether Labour could then pursue Leave, she said: “We will have to make that judgment at the time based on the deal that we manage to garner at from the European Union.
“Ultimately underpinning our final decision is how good that deal is.”
Last week, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said she intended to tell her voters that she would be backing staying in the EU regardless of the outcome of the special conference.
“I am going to say I am a Remainer, I represent a solid Remain constituency and when we have that People’s Vote I want to campaign for Remain,” she said.
Pro-Remain MPs are increasingly concerned the party’s stance on Brexit will hurt them on the doorstep and ultimately at the ballot box.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has refused to spell out how he would campaign in any such referendum, but insisted the party’s Brexit policy “isn’t that complicated”.
Mr Corbyn is expected to give a speech on the country’s departure from the EU tomorrow (Tuesday) in a prominent Leave-voting constituency.
The party’s confused Brexit position has left it open to attack, with Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrats’ Brexit spokesman stating: “It is beyond outrageous that almost three and a half years on from the referendum the Labour Party leadership will not be honest with the British public about where they stand.
“Time and time again Labour have tried to pull the wool over the electorate’s eyes as they dither as a result of the schisms within their party.”
Pro-Brexit Labour rebel Caroline Flint says she would be prepared to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans.
26 Labour MPs from Leave-voting constituencies signed a joint letter to party leader Jeremy Corbyn on Wednesday, urging him to resist pressure to throw the party’s weight behind remaining in the EU via a second referendum.
Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, the MP for Don Valley said the group are prepared to break with their party and back Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
She said: “I think those people who signed the letter would like to still have the opportunity to vote on the deal.
“Don’t forget, when Theresa May was forced to stand down, we were in discussions about what the withdrawal agreement would be like.”
“Anybody who’s going to be Tory leader should think about how they reach out to people like myself.”
Caroline Flint
Ms Flint was one of just three Labour MPs who rebelled in favour of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, but she insisted the number “will go up” in future votes.
Asked whether she would engage with Boris Johnson, she said: “I would talk to anybody to stop no deal, from any party.
“Whoever becomes Tory leader, the truth is they need to get behind a deal and they need a Parliamentary majority, whether it’s Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt.
“I think we are at the stage now where the health of the nation needs us to agree a deal and move on.
“Anybody who’s going to be Tory leader should think about how they reach out to people like myself and the 25 people who signed that letter, and to the Labour Party.”
Ms Flint also said the pro-Brexit faction within Labour would block attempts to hold a second referendum.
She said: “I think that is pretty clear. We do believe that it’s not democratic to ask Leave voters to ask twice to prove themselves. We also have to respect democracy and bring the country together.
“Outside Westminster and the buzz of the media, there are both leave and remain voters who want to see progress being made.”
Jeremy Corbyn says Labour will back a second Brexit referendum on ‘any deal’ but falls short of demanding Remain is an option
Ms Flint added: “I believe the only way to stop no deal is to support a deal, and to have an orderly Brexit.
“Despite everything that is going on, I am optimistic and hopeful that Parliament will do the job.
The 26 Labour MPs who put their names to the letter is a slight increase from the 24 who voted to oppose a second referendum when Parliament held indicative votes on the issue in April.
On that occasion, Parliament rejected a public vote by 292 votes to 280, with much of Theresa May’s cabinet abstaining.
Tory Cabinet minister Liz Truss refused to rule out quitting her role if Theresa May accepted Labour demands for the UK to join a permanent customs union with the European Union.
The Treasury Chief Secretary Liz Truss twice ducked the question of whether she would step down raising the prospect of Cabinet resignations among Brexiteers should the Prime Minister opt for a softer Brexit.
She told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge On Sunday: “I appreciate Jeremy Corbyn has come to the table but the reality is what he is proposing does not deliver on what we want as a country.”
Ms Truss said the UK must have an “independent trade policy” and questioned whether a customs union could command a majority in Parliament.
Asked if she could stay in office if the Government backed a customs union she said: “I absolutely do not think that should be our policy.”
Ms Truss also rejected calls for Brexit to be delayed to allow further time for negotiations.
“As the deadline approaches, minds get focused and a deal gets done,” she said.

“I think by extending the deadline that doesn’t create any new information, all that does is delay things and I think that would be a very bad idea.”
Last week, the Labour leader set out five key demands he wants from the Government in order to offer his party’s support for a Brexit deal.
Among them is the UK joining a permanent customs union and close ties to the single market, including many of the agencies and programmes within it, such as the European Arrest Warrant and Europol.
The olive branch from Mr Corbyn sparked fury among Labour backbenchers who are in favour of a second referendum, and prompted Owen Smith to hint he would quit the party.
Mr Ashworth told Sky News that accepting Labour’s demands would make Theresa May’s agreement “our deal”.
Shadow Health Secretary John Ashworth said the Prime Minister choosing to accept Labour’s demand would mean the Brexit deal secured would be Labour’s.
“If Theresa May can meet the demands that Jeremy Corbyn has set out then Theresa May is essentially backing our deal,” Mr Ashworth said.
“If that is what is on the table, then we would. Because that is the logic of our position.
“But we believe that position will command support in Parliament. We believe it can bring a very divided country together. And we think the European Union would be prepared to renegotiate on that basis.”
MPs have rejected an amendment calling for another Brexit referendum if Article 50 is extended.
The Commons held a series of votes on whether to delay Brexit after MPs dramatically rejected Theresa May’s deal and also voted down the prospect of leaving the EU without an agreement.
An amendment was tabled by Independent Group MP Sarah Wollaston which sought to extend Article 50 to stage a second referendum, with Remain as well as Parliament’s preferred Brexit option on the ballot paper.
But the amendment was overwhelmingly voted down by 334 to 85.
Labour’s lack of support for the amendment was labelled a “betrayal” of its voters by MPs supporting another referendum.
The party had previously said that it would support an amendment calling for another public vote but the party has since distanced itself from such a plan.
Its MPs abstained from the vote meaning there was no real hope that the pro-referendum amendment could succeed.
But 25 Labour MPs rebelled against their party leadership by voting for the amendment, including David Lammy, Owen Smith, Ian Murray, Stella Creasy and Meg Hillier.
And 18 Labour MPs rebelled in a different way – by choosing to vote but opposing the motion.
I've resigned from Labour's front bench this evening in order to vote against a second referendum. This was a difficult decision but I have a duty to support the will of my constituents. We need to leave, and leave with a deal that works for the Potteries https://t.co/yOtP1jWsmS
— Ruth Smeeth (@RuthSmeeth) March 14, 2019
Ruth Smeeth, the parliamentary private secretary to deputy leader Tom Watson, resigned from the frontbench after voting against a second referendum rather than abstaining.
The People’s Vote organisation, the campaign group calling for a second referendum, also said that this vote 15 days before Brexit was not at “the right time”.
Campaign supporters appeared to backpedal after the amendment was tabled, saying they wanted any new public referendum to be a choice between an agreed deal, once one has been accepted by the Commons, and remaining in the EU.
BREAKING: our cross party @TheIndGroup amendment calling for an Art 50 extension for a #PeoplesVote HAS been selected for debate and will be voted on later this afternoon. To show you support, add your name to our petition here https://t.co/t8CZJjR4jx and pls RT https://t.co/4PY34cQkKa
— ChukaUmunna (@ChukaUmunna) March 14, 2019
Labour earlier announced it was not supporting the amendment, arguing that it was not the time to focus on pushing for a second referendum.
This was despite agreeing at its party conference in autumn that Labour would explore all Brexit options, including the possibility of another public vote.
Voting for a #PeoplesVote. Where is the rest of the Labour Party? A few notable exceptions but… pic.twitter.com/pSP9C6wJDW
— Layla Moran ???? (@LaylaMoran) March 14, 2019
It has tabled its own amendment to the motion, requiring Mrs May to seek an extension to avoid exiting the EU on March 29 without a deal and to “provide Parliamentary time for this House to find a majority for a different approach”.
Brexit spokesperson for Independent Group, Anna Soubry said: “This is a betrayal of Labour Party members and voters, Labour MPs, Labour’s conference policy and, most importantly, the British public.
“The Labour Party leadership are determined to deliver Brexit, which would harm our country.
“But The Independent Group will not give up. We will keep up the pressure for a People’s Vote on the final Brexit deal. We’ll keep holding the Government to account and providing the real opposition our country needs. The British people deserve the final say on Brexit.”
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Brexiter group the European Research Group (ERG) will vote against any form of the Withdrawal Agreement, even if Boris Johnson succeeds in persuading the EU to remove the Irish backstop, Tory MP Mark Francois claimed.
The ERG have set out tough red lines just days into the new Prime Minister’s time in office.
Mr Johnson set out his own position in the Commons on Thursday, arguing that a deal is only possible through the “abolition of the backstop,” which is a measure to keep the Northern Irish border free of customs checks, and is a key part of the existing Withdrawal Agreement.
But Mr Francois told BBC’s Newsnight: “If there were any attempt to revive the Withdrawal Agreement, even without the backstop, the ERG would vote against it.”
“He said many times during the campaign that the Withdrawal Agreement is dead. I believe him,” Mr Francois said, adding that he believed Brussels would “blink” and agree to talks on a free trade deal instead.
The ERG, which has a membership of around 80 MPs, many of whom worked on the official Vote Leave campaign in the run-up to the 2016 referendum. It was founded in 1993 by Micheal Spicer and plays a powerful role in the current Parliament, where Mr Johnson rules by only a handful of votes.
The backstop proposals aim to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic by matching UK rules to those of the customs union, if no trade deal is agreed that can deliver the same objective by the end of the transition period.
Speaking in the Commons on Thursday, Mr Johnson said: “No country that values its independence, and, indeed, its self-respect, could agree to a treaty which signed away our economic independence and self-government as this backstop does.
“A time limit is not enough if an agreement is to be reached it must be clearly understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.”
This claim was branded “unacceptable” by EU negotiator Michel Barnier in a strongly worded letter to officials from the EU 27 on Thursday.
Mr Johnson also assured MPs that he plans to leave the EU on the 31 October having said the pledge was “do or die” on the campaign trail.
Tory MP Steve Baker, the deputy chair of the ERG, rejected a ministerial job saying he did not want a repeat of the “powerlessness” he felt as a junior Brexit minister under Theresa May, with the work all being done by the Cabinet Office.
He insisted he had “total confidence” in the Prime Minister to deliver on his commitment to meet the October 31 Brexit deadline, but added ominously that: “Disaster awaits otherwise.”
The Health Secretary has warned Theresa May’s successor that they must not call a general election until after Brexit.
Matt Hancock said an early poll could see Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister which would risk “killing Brexit altogether”.
He said it was essential the Conservatives delivered on the 2016 referendum result in the current parliament before going back to the country.
His intervention came as a poll of grassroots Tories made Boris Johnson the clear front runner to succeed Mrs May after she bowed to pressure to agree a timetable at the start of next month to elect a new leader.
A YouGov survey for The Times of party members – who will have the final say in the contest – put the former foreign secretary on 39 per cent, three times the 13 per cent for former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab.
Of the others, Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Environment Secretary Michael Gove were both on nine per cent, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt on eight per cent and Mr Hancock on just one per cent.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the Health Secretary, a Remainer in the referendum, warned that whoever gained the Tory crown had to deliver on Brexit before considering a general election.
“I think a general election before we’ve delivered Brexit would be a disaster. People don’t want it. I’m with Brenda from Bristol. We need to take responsibility for delivering on the referendum result,” he said.
“Who knows what the outcome of a general election would be under these circumstances? A general election before that not only risks Jeremy Corbyn, but it risks killing Brexit altogether.
“We’ve got to deliver Brexit in this parliament, then we can move forward.”
Mrs May is set to make one final attempt to get her Brexit deal through Parliament when she introduces the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) in the Commons in the first full week of June.
But following the final collapse of cross-party talks with Labour on Friday, few at Westminster give her much chance of success.
Whatever the result, Mrs May has agreed to meet the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady following the second reading vote to agree a timetable for the election of her successor.
But defeat will almost certainly see a ratcheting up of pressure from Conservative MPs for her early swift departure from No 10.
Meanwhile Mr Corbyn is set to issue a rallying call to Labour supporters in the European elections, insisting only his party can halt the rise of the “far right”.
In a speech in Merseyside, the Labour leader will say that years of neglect had “opened the door” to the far right in communities hit by cuts.
He will argue that only a Labour Party which rejected the “failed economic system” and was committed to tackling inequality could roll back the threat.
It follows criticism from Labour MPs that the party has been trying to face both ways on Brexit, with a confused message over the circumstances in which it would back a second referendum.
Addressing a rally in Bootle, Mr Corbyn will seek to set aside such differences with a return to more-traditional Labour ground.
“Years of neglect of our communities has opened the door to the far right. It’s up to Labour to stand up to that threat,” he will say.
“Politics as usual won’t defeat them. We need Labour’s radical programme to transform our country and turn the tide of inequality by ending austerity and investing in our communities and people.”
Additional reporting from Press Association
Michael Gove declared that he was “in it to win it” as he dismissed accusations that his leadership bid was in crisis because of his past cocaine use.
His campaign has faltered over the disclosure that he took the class A substance several times as a journalist 20 years ago – and wrote articles calling for tough action against drug abuse.
He has the backing of around 34 Tory MPs, including Cabinet ministers Damian Hinds and Karen Bradley, as well as influential backbenchers Sir Oliver Letwin and Nicky Morgan.
However, the Environment Secretary has failed to win fresh endorsements in the last 48 hours and appears to have lost ground to his leadership rival Jeremy Hunt.
In an upbeat campaign launch he attempted to put the controversy behind him and predicted he would reach the two-name shortlist which will be presented to party activists.


Michael Gove’s breathtaking drugs hypocrisy brings contempt as pure as the cocaine
Mr Gove said he had expressed his regret about past mistakes. And when he was asked if he should call it a day, he responded: “I’m in it to win it.”
He repeated that he would be prepared to delay Britain’s departure from the European Union for a few weeks beyond the current deadline of 31 October if that was required to finalise a Brexit deal.
He said that one of the reasons why Britain had still not left the EU was because some of those involved in the negotiations had not really believed in Brexit.
“I think some of them felt this was a problem to be managed rather than an opportunity to be grasped.


“One of my concerns when I was out of government and on the backbenches is that we triggered Article 50 without a proper plan for Brexit. I have a proper plan to deliver Brexit.”
The race is underway to select the next Prime Minister after Theresa May stood down as Conservative party leader on 7 June.
Who’s up? Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Dominic Raab, Andrea Leadsom, Matt Hancock, Esther McVey, Sajid Javid, Rory Stewart and Mark Harper all accrued enough support to enter the race to Number 10.
How does it work? Under new rules each candidate needed the backing of eight MPs to stand in the race. A series of secret ballots will be held over the course of several weeks in which Tory MPs will whittle the candidates down. They must win at least five per cent of the votes (17 MPs) in the first round and 10 per cent to make it through the second round.
The remainder of the ballots will be held as normal – meaning the candidate with the lowest number of votes ruled out on each round until there are just two remaining. These will then be voted on by the wider party membership in a postal ballot.
What are the key issues? So far the race has been dominated by Mr Gove’s cocaine admission, Mr Johnson’s controversial tax pledge and, of course, Mr Stewart’s new hobby of filming himself having awkward chats with “the public”.
Bre…: But yes, the main problem the candidates must tackle is how to solve Brexit. Here are their plans, explained.
When will know the result? We can expect to know who the next PM will be by the end of July.
Meanwhile Mrs May?: Is still acting Prime Minister because, basically, we need to have one. She will stop being PM when a new candidate is announced and asked by the Queen to form a government.
Nigel Farage has been accused by Conservatives of putting Brexit at risk with his plans to run candidates in more than 600 constituencies in the general election.
The Brexit Party leader has promised to hurt Labour in “the most extraordinary way” in the 12 December poll.
But Jacob Rees-Mogg has warned Mr Farage was in danger of snatching “defeat from the jaws of victory” if he persists with his plan.
He insisted Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU was a “complete Brexit” and that Mr Farage should recognise the time had come to “retire from the field”.
“I think he would be well-advised to recognise that that battle he won. He should be really proud of his political career,” Mr Reese-Mogg told LBC radio.
“It would be a great shame if he carries on fighting after he has already won to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Nigel Farage rules out standing as an MP in the general election
Mr Farage – who was previously the leader of Ukip – said that his “number one target” would be Labour Leave voters who had been “completely betrayed” by their party.
“I led Ukip into the 2015 general election. I had all the same stuff, all the same arguments. The Tory tribe screaming and shouting, ‘Don’t take our votes’,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“We are going to hurt the Labour Party in the most extraordinary way. We’ll do it in South Wales, we’ll do it in the Midlands, we’ll do it in the north of England.
”Those Labour voters have been completely betrayed by the Labour Party. They are my number one target. I got those votes in 2015, I’ll do it again.“
Boris Johnson last week rejected Mr Farage’s offer of a pact with the Tories if he dropped his Brexit deal.
Mr Farage, who even won support from US president Donald Trump for his proposal of and alliance, argued the Prime Minister’s agreement with Brussels did not represent a true break with the EU.
Mr Farage has also come under fire from Steve Baker, the leader of the pro-Brexit Tory European Research Group, who warned he risked another hung parliament through ”dogmatically pursuing purity“.
”That’s the irony of Nigel Farage. He risks being the man who hands Boris a weak and indecisive parliament, and bringing about, therefore, his own worst fears,“ Mr Baker told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Farage, who is set to unveil his party’s candidates at an event on Monday in London, defended his decision not to stand himself in the election.
”I did have a serious go in 2015. I finished up spending way too much of my time in that constituency and not out around the country. I’m not making that mistake again,“ he said.
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has suggested that a no-deal Brexit could happen even if MPs vote to block it and bring down the government.
Mr Cox, the government’s chief legal adviser and a key member of the Boris Johnson cabinet, weighed in ahead of a likely showdown between Mr Johnson and Parliamentarians on the issue.
According to The Times, the attorney general believes that MPs are not able to block a no-deal Brexit from happening on 31 October, even if Mr Johnson loses a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons and the government collapses.
He believes a no-deal Brexit could even occur partway through an snap election campaign, according to the newspaper.
David Cameron’s former attorney general Dominic Grieve, an outspoken opponent of no-deal Brexit, spoke out against the suggestion.
He told The Times: “There is a long-established convention that once a general election has been called no government should take anything other than caretaker decisions.
“No important policy decisions should be taken which could fetter the freedom of an incoming government. No greater fetter could exist than if we irrevocably withdraw from a major treaty.
“Therefore any government once the purdah period has kicked in must seek to preserve the status quo by asking the EU for an extension until sometime after the election.”
Mr Johnson has a majority of just two in Parliament, which is likely to fall further if the party loses the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election on 1 August.
A number of Tory MPs have already indicated they could be willing to bring down the government if it seeks a no-deal Brexit.
This is what happens if the UK leaves the EU without a deal
Mr Grieve said earlier this month: “If we get to a point where a prime minister is intent on doing [a no-deal Brexit] the only way of stopping that prime minister would be to bring down that prime minister’s Government.
“And I simply have to say here and now and I will not hesitate to do that if that is what is attempted, even if it means my resigning the whip and leaving the party.”
Mr Johnson will face multiple lawsuits if he attempts to bypass Parliament and bring about a no-deal Brexit without support from MPs.
Former Prime Minister John Major, businesswoman Gina Miller and a cross-party group of MPs and peers have all signalled plans to bring legal action if he follows through on a threat to prorogue Parliament to force a no-deal Brexit.
Senior Brexiteers have warned Boris Johnson against entering into any leadership pact with Amber Rudd, branding the Remainer Cabinet member “toxic”.
Mr Johnson is currently the clear favourite among Tory members to succeed Theresa May as the next leader of the party due to his strong pro-Brexit credentials.
But the former foreign secretary is eager to expand his appeal among his fellow MPs in order to make it down to the final two candidates who will be chosen by the party’s rank and file membership.
It has prompted suggestions that the flamboyant Brexiteer is courting Ms Rudd to back him for leader in return for her becoming the future Chancellor on what is being dubbed as the “Bamber” ticket.
Hardline Eurosceptics in the party told i they would be opposed to Mr Johnson wooing the Work and Pensions Secretary, who is viewed as one of the biggest Cabinet opponents to a no deal Brexit.
“Boris would not run a leadership battle with her [Ms Rudd] because she is just so toxic,” the Brexiteer said. “Having spoken to Boris’s team there is nothing to the rumours and it is Amber’s lot who have been putting it about.”
Ms Rudd was joined by around 30 MPs to launch the “One Nation” caucus of moderate Tories on Monday night, with the express plan to prevent hard Brexiteers, such as Esther McVey or Dominic Raab from becoming the next leader.
But tellingly the group of largely Remain-voting MPs did not rule out Mr Johnson from taking the helm.
For his part, the leadership frontrunner openly backed the One Nation group’s manifesto, tweeting: “Agree with all of this. One Nation values have never been more important.”
MPs with marginal seats are coming around to the idea of the party being led by Mr Johnson as he is increasingly being seen as the one leadership contender who could win a general election.
Chancellor Philip Hammond on Tuesday launched a stinging attack on contenders to replace Mrs May who advocate a no deal Brexit.
“To advocate for no deal is to hijack the result of the referendum, and in doing so, knowingly to inflict damage on our economy and our living standards,” Mr Hammond told a dinner at the CBI.
At least two dozen Tory MPs are believed to be in the running for the Tory leadership, with Brexit the key dividing line within the party.
British workers could lose their jobs if there is a no-deal Brexit, Amber Rudd admitted on Tuesday.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said there were “no guarantees about jobs, in or out, under any economic circumstances”, but that a no-deal Brexit would be “far worse than a deal Brexit”.
Ms Rudd said that the Government was focused on getting a deal, but that it had to be prepared to exit the bloc without a deal on the Halloween deadline day.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the government is preparing for a no-deal Brexit to ensure the UK leaves the EU on 31 October.
Speaking on ITV News, Ms Rudd said: “A no-deal Brexit is definitely going to be a challenge for the economy, which is why the Government is putting together so much preparation should it come to that, and we are very clearly focused as a Government that we want to get a deal.”
Ms Russ was asked about previous comments about such an outcome, which she made in March, when she said a no-deal Brexit would cause “generational damage to the economy”.
She added: “I can tell that a no-deal Brexit would be far worse than a deal Brexit, which is why the Government is so focused on trying to get that.
“But we are also putting in place a lot of preparation to make sure that, should it come to that, we will have done all we can to mitigate against any difficulties.”
When questioned about whether she stood by her previous comments she acknowledged: “I still think it will be a challenge.”
Michael Gove begins no deal Brexit PR drive with plan to tackle ‘fake news’

What Government has to do is to make it as straightforward and as conducive to good employment as possible, and that is what, the statistics show today, we have been able to do.”
The remarks come a day after newly appointed Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland, admitted that a no-deal Brexit could be “chaos”.
When Mr Buckland was presented with his previous comments where he argued against no-deal on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he said: “Well, I’ve consistently argued that point and I still do that.”
The main anti-Brexit campaign will be unable to take part in the general election after being torn apart by a row, insiders fear.
Staff at the People’s Vote coalition are in open revolt against Roland Rudd, chairman of the Open Britain group which is its biggest member, after he sacked the director and communications chief.
They have refused to work under the new director he has appointed and accuse him of overstepping his authority by firing James McGrory and Tom Baldwin, former spin doctors for Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband respectively.
Disgruntled employees sent a detailed briefing note, seen by i, which laid out a list of complaints and claimed People’s Vote will have to cancel its plans for the election, which were designed to push up the number of pro-Remain candidates returned to the House of Commons.
The document said: “The key tenets of the PV campaign – including tactical voting – have ground to a halt.”
It appealed to anti-Brexit officials from the political parties to join the coup against Mr Rudd, brother of ex-Home Secretary Amber, in order to rescue the campaign. He insists his actions were necessary to professionalise the organisation and prepare for a second referendum.
People’s Vote has organised a succession of large marches through the centre of London to put pressure on politicians and show support for a rerun of the 2016 referendum on EU membership.
But in recent months it has been riven by infighting over whether to come out explicitly in favour of Remain, or stay neutral on the outcome of a second Brexit vote.
Leaders of the coalition are also divided on whether it should be controlled by veteran politicians such as Peter Mandelson or business figures who are less well-known but also less likely to be rejected by large parts of the UK population.
The chair of Parliament’s Brexit committee, Hilary Benn, has said that Article 50 should be revoked if the only alternative is a no-deal Brexit.
The Labour MP spoke out on Sunday amid reports of a Cabinet plot to oust Prime Minister Theresa May, warning that political chaos must not facilitate a no-deal Brexit.
Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, he said: “I think we’re probably seeing the final stages of the current Prime Minister’s leadership, but frankly what matters more is the crisis that is still facing the country.
“The first priority is to ensure there is not a no-deal Brexit.”
Mr Benn, who chairs the Commons Brexit select committee, warned: “No-deal Brexit has been rejected by Parliament twice now, and that’s absolutely clear (…) we must ensure we do not  leave without a deal.”
“Our number one priority is to avoid a no-deal Brexit.”
Hilary Benn
EU leaders have only agreed to delay Brexit until 12 April in the event that Parliament rejects May’s deal for a third time, and leaders have signalled that any further extension is unlikely.
The MP indicated that he would be prepared to support the revocation of Article 50, the process by which Britain is leaving the EU, if there is no possible extension and the only alternative is crashing out without a deal.


“I’m absolutely clear our number one priority is to avoid a no-deal Brexit. If they refuse to give us an extension, then Parliament would be faced with a choice about whether to use that particular method.
“But we’ve got to do our job, and the government’s failure to do its job is why Parliament [must act]. This is MPs doing their job as the public would expect us to do, to try and find an alternative way forward.”
Mr Benn also said that if any compromise is agreed by Parliament through an expected series of indicative votes, the plan should be put to a second referendum opposite a remain option.
He said: “I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever deal Parliament is prepared to put forward should go back to the British people, giving the crisis that we’re in.”
The MP compared the prospect of a second referendum to the government’s plan to hold repeated meaningful votes on Theresa May’s deal.
He said: “We’re told that that is democratic, in an attempt to get us as MPs to change our minds. Can someone please explain to me why it is undemocratic to ask the British people whether, on reflection, they would like to change their mind?”
Hilary Benn says he would only consider supporting revoking Article 50 to avoid a no-deal Brexit if, in three weeks, the EU does not give the UK an extension #Ridge pic.twitter.com/cn5iKpHPcS
— Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) 24 March 2019
Mr Benn continued: “The point about a confirmatory referendum, is, it says ‘we’re prepared that whatever deal Parliament can agree with the European Union, put that to the people. If that’s carried, we leave on that basis (…) and if that is rejected, the alternative is that we would remain in the European Union.
“What other way is there of getting a final decision, other than to go back to the British people?
“In the end, I think you need people’s consent, because we’re now nearly three years’ on, and the truth about the last three years is that the fantasies presented by Leave campaigners have collided with reality.”
Sadiq Khan has called for Article 50 to be revoked and reissued at a later date.
The Mayor of London said he believed former Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50 too early for political gain.
He argued that the country needed to make adequate negotiations and preparations ahead of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.
Following this, the British public should be allowed a “final say” on whether they accept the terms of the exit.
Appearing on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, he said: “The mistake made by Theresa May, because of her personal interest and political interest, was serving Article 50 before understanding the terms we were going to negotiate with the European Union, what we want from the European Union.
“Nobody sensible would serve notice to quit on their accommodation before they’ve found new digs. Nobody would quit a job before they’d found a new job.”
“We are a remain party”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan calls for Article 50 to be revoked and for a #PeoplesVote#Brexit #Marr https://t.co/o9uFqCcV6o pic.twitter.com/OaU63XMMX5
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) September 15, 2019

Boris Johnson says he will ignore no-deal Brexit law as he compares leaving the EU to Incredible Hulk

“Whether it’s a no-deal Brexit, whether it’s the deal negotiated by Theresa May, whether it’s an improvement a Labour government may achieve, that’s far less preferable than the option of staying in the EU.”
“We’re a Remain party. We should give the British public a final say. Now that we know the terms of exiting from the EU, that should be one of the options on the ballot paper, with the other option of staying in the EU.”
Asked if he was undermining Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn‘s efforts to offer the British public both the option to leave or remain, he added: “Jeremy Corbyn deserves huge credit for the movement over the past two years. Putting aside political interest, in regards to having a general election and working with other parties to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
“I support the position of the party which is, on the ballot paper to have a credible leave option and, in my view the best option, to remain in the EU.”
He also called on the party to campaign to remain within the EU.
Chancellor Sajid Javid is to unveil a £16.6 billion guarantee to compensate UK businesses, universities and charities in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Javid told the Daily Mail that the money would make up for lost grants from the European bloc.
The sum, which includes £4.3 billion for the coming year, is one of “many mechanisms and processes” that Mr Javid says the Conservative Party is implementing to mitigate for a no-deal Brexit.
Mr Javid said that a no-deal departure was “very much on the table” and spoke of his fears for “the fabric” of society should the 31 October deadline not be honoured.
“I just fear we tear that fabric in a way that we might not be able to stitch it up again,” he told the paper.
“I don’t pretend for a second that there won’t be challenges,” he added.
“There will be some disruptions here because we can’t control what the EU do in a no deal situation? Of course not.
“But we are putting in place many mechanisms and processes to handle no deal and eventually, I also believe that we will come out and be stronger as a country.”
The UK chancellor added that the disruption of a no deal would not be as bad as remaining in the EU, stating that the best way for the country to unite and “heal” would be to deliver on Brexit.
“We can’t have this debate going on. We’ve had the referendum, it was the biggest democratic exercise in the history of our country. And we have to honour it,” he said.
The guarantee follows the Scottish Government’s £52 million request to Westminster in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
Holyrood’s finance secretary, Derek Mackay, demanded that the UK Government cover any additional costs incurred as a result of a delay to the 31 October deadline.
Westminster has said that money from the EU Exit Operational Contingency Fund will be made available in the event Scotland faces disproportionate costs.
The October 31 date is the working deadline for Britain to leave the European Union, although a law now obligates Boris Johnson to seek a further extension should no agreement be reached at October’s European Council meeting.
Former chancellor Philip Hammond has described the current Conservative Party as “unrecognisable”.
Mr Hammond was one of 21 MPs who had the Conservative whip withdrawn after voting against the Government on legislation to block a no-deal Brexit.
“The time available means that the only deal with any prospect of delivering that outcome (to be out by 31 October) is the deal that they have already rejected and that many of them have voted against,” he wrote in The Times.
“So let me make an equally stark prediction: we will not be leaving the EU on 31 October.”
“If we don’t pull ourselves together, the next election could lock our great party out of power for a generation”
Sajid Javid
The Conservatives are increasingly seen as a divided party by voters and risk being locked out of power “for a generation” at the next general election, Sajid Javid has said.
In a stark warning to MPs and activists, the Home Secretary admitted that failing to ensure that the UK left the EU on 29 March had seriously damaged the party’s credibility with the electorate.
He also identified problems communicating with voters and the fact that the Tories had now been in power for almost a decade as two other key risks to the party’s future in government.
In what will be interpreted as a sign that he is preparing to run for the Tory leadership, Mr Javid used a speech to the Scottish Conservative conference to address the party’s wider woes.
He warned delegates in Aberdeen that the next general election was going to be “tough” and there was “no point sugar-coating” the serious challenges it faced to remain in power.
Nicola Sturgeon would act as a “ready and willing accomplice” to help Jeremy Corbyn win power through a coalition deal if Labour did not secure an overall majority, he said.
“If we don’t pull ourselves together, and see off this threat with an energetic and unifying agenda, the next election could lock our great party out of power for a generation,” he added.
“So it’s up to our generation, right here and now, to make damn sure that doesn’t happen.”
Mr Javid said the Tories now had a serious “issue with trust” after putting the Brexit date at the heart of its manifesto ahead of the 2017 election, before failing to deliver on it.
He also warned that the next election could come “well before 2022”, making the importance of uniting the party after the fallout over Brexit ever more urgent.
“We are seen as a divided team. A divided party cannot unite a divided nation. The only winner from that is Corbyn. If we are divided, he will rule,” he added.
“Voters don’t reward any of these things. So we’d better find a way to renew in government, to deliver on Brexit, and to come together as a team.”
The Home Secretary also said the SNP was ready to form a “socialist-separatist alliance” with Labour at the next election, which he claimed would pose a threat to national security.
He added that such a scenario could first bankrupt the UK and then cause its breakup, with Ms Sturgeon likely to seek a second independence referendum as the price for her party’s support.
“Given the reins of power, this socialist-separatist alliance would threaten our national security, bankrupt our economy, break our democracy, and break up our country,” he said.
The word “hardline” has been creeping into descriptions of MPs who are pro-Brexit for a year or so now. After hearing it in a BBC news bulletin this week, I wrote in to complain.
Jonathan Munro, head of newsgathering for the BBC, replied:
We do take great care in our language on Brexit. I’m sorry you were unhappy with the scripting of our early evening bulletin on Sunday. The term ‘hardliner’ is in use across the media, including most newspapers, generally to distinguish the views of members of the European Research Group from their Conservative colleagues who support Brexit, but have indicated they are more flexible about the terms the Prime Minister is negotiating.
Our headline referred to ‘Tory hardliners’ and the introduction to the report made clear the term was being used in the context of the debate over the Northern Ireland backstop.
I hope this answers your concerns.
No, Jonathan, it doesn’t. The BBC received £3.8bn from licence fee payers last year. Unlike other media, it has a special duty, as defined in its charter, to be scrupulously impartial. Munro’s argument that it is following where other media lead is therefore not an excuse. It’s an abrogation of the BBC’s duty to the British public.
‘Not only were Leavers painted as xenophobes – they were now home-wreckers, too’
The Corporation was warned about its biased use of language about the EU in 2005, when the referendum was first mooted. Lord Wilson of Dinton conducted an independent inquiry into bias claims, which concluded that the BBC was “not succeeding” in being impartial in its coverage of Europe.
The BBC promised to do better but the sloppy and loaded approach has become worse since the referendum. First came the phrases “hard” and “soft” Brexit. This painted those who wanted a clean break with Brussels as hard and unyielding, and those who did not as cuddly and reasonable.
Another term picked up by BBC journalists to describe leaving the EU was “divorce”.  Jean-Claude Juncker frequently refers to the EU as a “family”, and in 2016 began referring to Brexit as a “divorce”. By autumn 2017 a survey by News-Watch, which searches for BBC bias in coverage of the EU, showed BBC presenters and correspondents using “divorce” as the core definition of what Leavers wanted.
Not only were Leavers xenophobes – they were now home-wreckers, too.
‘The word ‘Brexiteer’ is another biased description used routinely by the BBC’
The term “hardline” has been used by BBC journalists to describe President Trump’s immigration policies and a vicious wartime Japanese governor. It is clearly not intended as a compliment. News-Watch surveyed the coverage on Radio 4’s Today programme of Parliament’s defeat of the Withdrawal Deal. Only a handful of the 111 contributors were firm supporters of implementing the referendum result. And the main one – Steve Baker, spokesman for the ERG group – was introduced as – surprise! – “hardline”, a term never applied to figures such as David Lammy or Dominic Grieve, who are “hardline” in trying to thwart leaving the EU.
The word “Brexiteer” – with its echoes of “mutineer” – is another biased description used routinely by the BBC. The Financial Times manages to use the more neutral “Brexiters” – you’d think a supposedly impartial news organisation would do the same. I’m not surprised if people are questioning paying their licence fee.
Kate Hoey is MP for Vauxhall and co-chair of Labour Leave
Theresa May has finally managed to unite her party around a Brexit position. The only problem is that it’s a deal that doesn’t currently exist.
Ahead of the vote on the various Brexit amendments to the Prime Minister’s plan, a number of MPs had hoped it would serve as an opportunity to soften Brexit following the historic defeat on the government’s Brexit deal last month. Instead, it did close to the opposite and actually boosted the Brexiteer cause.
Yvette Cooper’s much-hyped plan to prevent a no deal by forcing the government to extend Article 50 failed to garner enough support. Instead, a rival no deal amendment which simply declared that no deal was a bad outcome passed.
Given that it only has political force – and the government isn’t compelled to act on it – Number 10 won’t be too fussed by the result. Meanwhile, amendments calling for indicative votes on options including a second referendum failed to gain enough support.
The big ray of light for Theresa May, however, is that the amendment the government supported did pass. Sir Graham Brady’s amendment to replace the Irish backstop with an alternative arrangement won support from Conservative MPs from across the Brexit divide – and the DUP.
However, before aides at Number 10 crack open the champagne, it’s worth remembering that there is one big flaw to this plan. As of yet, Brussels is yet to agree to it and all the signs so far suggest they won’t – at least in full. In order to get to this point, May had to say she would move to reopen the withdrawal agreement – something EU negotiators just this week insisted they would not do.
She also promised to consider a Brexit plan dubbed the ‘Malthouse Compromise’. That plan has two parts to it but in plain terms it wants to replace the backstop with an alternative arrangement that involves technology – something Brussels has previously said no to.
What is the Brexit backstop? Here’s why the Irish border is so crucial to any deal
Should May fail to win that substantial change, it’s likely that the support of Brexiteer MPs in the European Research Group will drop away.
However, last night’s vote gives May a boost at least in the short term. After May’s deal was defeated by 230 votes, Brussels officials took it as a sign that May would now have to pivot to a softer Brexit. Following the success of the Brady amendment, May can now argue that this not the case.
Instead, she can say the problem is the backstop. So long as that’s dealt with, a deal can pass the Commons. There’s a chance they might listen.
Katy Balls is deputy political editor at The Spectator. @katyballs
Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to win over MPs, who have so far voted against her Brexit deal with the threat that the only other option is a long delay to leaving the EU.
The fear of a Brexit delay or a second referendum is winning some support but so far, not by the numbers needed to turn last week’s defeat into this week’s victory.
Backbencher Daniel Kawczynski, MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, is among the few rebels who say they will now back the Prime Minister.
Mr Kawczynski said Mrs May’s deal was now the “only game in town”.
“Do we continue to obstruct and risk no Brexit? I doubt I can take that risk,” he said after talks with local Tories, farmers and businesses.
Former cabinet minister Esther McVey, who resigned over the Brexit deal, suggested she and other MPs could now back it, even though it was “rubbish”.
North Wiltshire MP James Gray appealed to fellow members of the hardline Brexit European Research Group (ERG) to get the “obnoxious” deal over the line.
He said it was “the only way we can achieve anything which even vaguely resembles the Brexit that 17.4 million people voted for”.
But the number of Tories publicly switching positions, so far, is nowhere near the 149 votes she lost by on Tuesday.
The prospect of the UK leaving the European Union on 29 March 29 has receded after MPs authorised Mrs May to seek an extension to the Article 50 Brexit process.
Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics suggested a delay of up to two years could be required if MPs continue to reject the Brexit deal.
“Number one priority would be the deal that is reached is passed,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today.
“If it is not the case what we need is clear vision from the UK Government, how much time the UK needs to come up with new proposals, new ideas how we proceed. In that case it’s not a couple of months, I believe then we are talking about maybe one or two years.”
European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans indicated that any extension to Article 50 could be a two-stage process, initially limited to a few weeks unless Mrs May could set out what she wanted to achieve with the extra time.
Addditional reporting from Press Association
The news that Theresa May’s deal was defeated by nearly 150 votes came as little surprise to anyone in government. Despite optimism early on in the day that a majority of MPs could be won around, the Attorney General’s legal opinion went unchanged – leaving No. 10 aides to believe they were once again on course to a heavy defeat.
The atmosphere in the Chamber when the vote was announced was not one of frustration but inevitability. The problem is no one – not even those in Downing Street – know what this defeat means.
This is the week aides believe May will lose control of Brexit, but what it then becomes is anyone’s guess.
In the statement immediately after the vote, May attempted to get on the front foot – confirming that MPs would get the votes she had previously promised on trying to rule out no deal, and then potentially trying to delay Brexit. The Wednesday vote on on no deal will be a free vote – thereby giving up any pretence that this is a government in control.
The hope in No. 10 is that May can salvage a third meaningful vote on her Brexit deal. If the Commons votes to extend Article 50 and the terms of that extension are undesirable, MPs may begin to look at her deal in a new light.
The small ray of light for May is that a number of influential Brexiteers changed their mind and voted for her deal at the last minute. Former Brexit Secretary David Davis was among them. Other leading Brexiteers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, voted against but he did say this could change if Brexit looked in peril. This means May’s deal passing in future cannot be ruled out.
There is an expectation, however, that MPs pushing for a softer Brexit will move to stop such a plan in its tracks – and instead take control of proceedings. Remain-leaning politicians from across the parties will now try to team up and put down an amendment to force the government’s hand – and try to get to a point where they can instruct May to negotiate a softer Brexit. Were they to succeed, all bets are off.
There are May allies who believe such a situation, in which the Prime Minister was merely a puppet in the negotiations, is worse than nearly any other scenario. This is why Conservative MPs are talking about the prospect of a public vote – whether it’s a general election or second referendum. Just because May is about to lose control doesn’t mean she can’t help shape the fall out.
Senior Conservatives will tell Theresa May this week she faces a fresh bid to oust her if she fails to give a clear timetable for her resignation.
The Prime Minister is under growing pressure to spell out her departure date, while her attempts to solve the Brexit impasse with the help of Labour has provoked fury among her own MPs.
Talks between Labour and the Conservatives on a possible Brexit agreement are set to resume later today following an appeal over the weekend from Mrs May to Jeremy Corbyn to “do a deal”.
But Tory backbenchers will warn the Prime Minister they will try a second time to change party rules if she ploughs on with plans for a softer Brexit.
Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives, is expected to pay a visit to Mrs May this week to inform her of the growing unrest among MPs over her leadership and push her once again for a resignation date.
Nigel Evans, joint executive secretary of the 1922 Committee, confirmed to i the Prime Minister will be told party rules will be looked at once again and he believed MPs would back the changes if given the chance.
“I think any prevarication [on her resignation] will make it more likely,” Mr Evans said. “Brexit has been kicked down the road [but] her departure will not follow that pattern, especially with threats of a BRINO [Brexit In Name Only] cobbled together by Corbyn and her.
“She should offer a proper Brexit without the backstop and put the blame squarely on Labour if he doesn’t support it,” he added.
Last month, the 1922 executive rejected demands for the Tory party rulebook to be rewritten following two days of meetings.
Mrs May had survived a bid to topple her via a vote of no confidence in December, and under current rules the Prime Minister cannot face another challenge for 12 months.
But MPs could now seek once again to change the rules to reduce the time limit from 12 months to six, meaning she could face another crunch vote as early as June.
Adding his voice to calls for Mrs May to step down, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said yesterday the Prime Minister should announce a “road map” for her departure after the European elections set for May 23.
“We are now having to face the prospect of European elections which none of us wanted to face. They are going to happen,
“And, I would have thought that fairly soon after that would be time for her to think about setting a schedule to find her successor.
“That is regardless of whether there is a deal on offer or not. We should move on as Conservatives,” he told the BBC.
Mrs May has said she will step down if her Withdrawal Agreement is ratified, but – with the deadline for Brexit extended to the end of October – has not made clear how long she intends to stay if no deal is reached.
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A majority of Tory Party members, who are due to choose the UK’s next Prime Minister, would prefer to see the break up of the union, damage to the economy and the destruction of their own party, rather than Brexit being cancelled, according to a new poll by YouGov.
Members of what is officially the Conservative and Unionist Party were surveyed by the pollsters between the 11 -14 of June and the results indicate members are willing to make great sacrifices to deliver Brexit.
The results showed that 63 percent of the 892 members surveyed would want to see Brexit delivered even if it meant Scotland left the UK, while 59 percent would do the same if Northern Ireland left the Union.
Around 61 percent would also countenance significant damage to the UK economy as a price for delivering Brexit, with 54 percent saying they would accept the Conservative Party being destroyed rather than rowing back on the UK’s decision to leave the EU made in the 2016 referendum.
However, a slim majority of party members said they would rather cancel Brexit that allow Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister with 51 percent saying that would be too high a cost, compared with 39 percent saying it would be worth it.
Just over half of those surveyed said that they think failing to leave the EU would permanently damage the centuries-old party’s chances of leading a Government, with an additional 29 percent believing it would keep the party out of power for multiple general elections.
With the second round of votes taking place on Tuesday afternoon, Tory MPs are whittling down the candidates in a process that will culminate in two hopefuls being voted on by the party membership.
Many are keen to avoid a coronation such as the election of Theresa May in 2016, where she never faced the party membership and scrutiny that would bring, after her main competitor Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the race.
The second ballot will be held on Tuesday between 3pm and 5pm, with the result expected at 6pm. In this round, the six remaining candidates will need to secure 10 per cent of the vote, that of 33 MPs, to continue in the contest.
Boris Johnson, a vocally pro-Brexit figure, secured 114 votes in the first round and has picked up support from former rivals Mr Hancock and Ms McVey since then.
The former Foreign Secretary has said the UK must leave the EU “with or without a deal” on the 31 October.
US ambassador to the UK Woody Johnson has suggested the roll out of chlorinated chicken in Britain.
While the UK is currently aligned to the EU’s strict food hygiene standards, campaigners fear that post-Brexit trade deals will lead to the adoption of lower standards from the US – where chickens can be raised in less hygienic conditions before being washed in chlorine and disinfectants to remove bacteria.
Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers made clear earlier this month that chlorine-washed chicken would not be allowed into the UK as part of the prospective trade deal with the United States.
But in a letter to The Sunday Times, Woody Johnson insisted the issue should be kept on the table during the talks.
The ambassador dismissed fears over the use of chlorine washes, which he claims are “the most effective and economical way to fight food-borne illness.”
He wrote: “Your own Food Standards Agency has already approved antimicrobial washes to stop food poisoning in prewashed salads sold across the UK. Perhaps it should recommend including chicken in this treatment.
“Millions of Britons visit America every year and I would wager most eat chicken while there. Ask them and I am sure they will tell you that American agricultural products are safe, nutritious and delicious.”
Mr Johnson continued: “These products should absolutely be included in a US-UK free trade agreement that will create new markets for farmers from both countries and offer more choices to British and American consumers.”
The ambassador’s letter publicly contradicting the stance of the UK government comes at a time of unusually strained relations between the two countries on multiple fronts.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration threatened to place tariffs on British car exports if Chancellor Sajid Javid proceeds with a plan to tax the UK-based revenue of tech giants.
The UK and US governments have also publicly clashed over plans for Chinese tech company Huawei to construct the UK’s 5G mobile network.
Further complicating the relationship, the Trump administration has refused the UK’s request for the extradition of US intelligence officer’s wife Anne Sacoolas, who faces death by dangerous driving charges over the crash that killed British teen Harry Dunn near a security base in Northamptonshire.
Boris Johnson and Donald Trump spoke about many of the issues in a call on Saturday.
A Downing Street spokesperson said: “They discussed a range of issues, including cooperation to ensure the security of our telecommunications networks.
“The Prime Minister raised the tragic case of Harry Dunn, and the need to secure justice for Harry’s family. He reiterated the need for the individual involved to return to the UK.”
Jeremy Corbyn’s  bid to oust Boris Johnson and become a caretaker Prime Minister is yet to convince voters, according to new polling from YouGov.
The poll found that 38 per cent of Brits believe that leaving the EU without a deal would be an acceptable outcome for Brexit.
However, support for no-deal rises to 48 per cent when pitched directly against the alternative of  Mr Corbyn becoming Prime Minister and holding a second referendum on EU membership.
Just 35 per cent of Brits would prefer Mr Corbyn to become PM and call a second referendum, and only 64 per cent of Remain voters.
Despite Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson appearing to rule out a pact to prop up a Corbyn-led government, the polling found that 69 per cent of Liberal Democrat voters would prefer a second referendum under a Corbyn-led government to a no-deal exit under Boris Johnson.
Ms Swinson warned that “the numbers don’t stack up” for Mr Corbyn to win a majority in the Commons because he is “divisive,” instead calling for Ken Clarke or Harriet Harman to take the role of a caretaker Prime Minister.
Conservative rebels Dominic Grieve, David Gauke and Sir Oliver Letwin have already ruled out voting to bring about a Corbyn-led government, as has Change UK leader Anna Soubry.
The failure of MPs to coalesce around a unity candidate could spell trouble for Mr Corbyn’s plot, given the narrow margin within Parliament.
Despite the unpopularity of Mr Corbyn’s plan, however, YouGov’s polling did find support for a softer form of Brexit.
44 per cent of voters now say the prospect of leaving the EU with the deal negotiated by Theresa May would be acceptable, six points higher than for a no-deal Brexit.
What is a no-deal Brexit? Consequences of the UK leaving the EU without a deal

The most popular outcome is an alternative deal that would see the UK remain in the single market and the customs union, which attracts the support from 54 per cent of voters, including half of Conservatives.
I’ve been a Labour Party member for more than 30 years but last week, I sent in my letter of resignation.
In some ways, resigning was a difficult decision. But it has been increasingly clear that the UK stands at a crossroads in which we all face a new choice. It is no longer about left vs right, or Labour vs Tories – it’s not even about Remain vs Leave. British politics in 2019 is about whether or not we want to stand up for democracy itself.
MPs in both the main parties have made it clear that they are prepared to overturn the clear mandate of the people that the UK should leave the EU.
This Brexit snooze button will leave each camp more entrenched than ever
On the one hand we have Tory MPs who have supported Theresa May’s humiliating withdrawal agreement and, when that failed, acceded to her insistence that Brexit be “delayed” rather than allow us to leave without a formal deal.
And then we have Labour. It has been hard enough watching the Party officially endorse the idea of the UK staying in a permanent Customs Union once we have left the EU. Under that setup, we would be giving politicians from other countries the right to decide UK trade policy. Even worse, when the EU agrees a trade deal with a third party country like Japan, we could be committed to accepting tariff-free imports from that country while they would be under no obligation to do the same for us. It is a policy stance that is both politically and economically illiterate, almost as if the party was trying to destroy UK jobs.
But last month, Labour MPs were whipped to vote in favour of a so-called “confirmatory referendum”.
Now, there were good arguments on both sides of the 2016 referendum. I disagreed with those who voted to Remain but it was a respectable position. Likewise, if people want to campaign for the UK to re-join the EU after we have left, I won’t agree, but it will be a legitimate debate. But to campaign for a referendum aimed at overturning the democratic mandate of 2016 before it has even been implemented is to follow the path of despots and dictators.
What is being proposed by the likes of Tom Watson is not even a re-run of the first referendum. Rather, they want voters to be given a choice between Theresa May’s Brexit-in-name-only withdrawal agreement and staying in the EU. Put another way, it will be remain vs remain. If the Labour Party really believes that is the way to win back the trust of ordinary voters, there really is no hope.
I am no longer prepared to be a member of a party actively trying to overturn the democratic mandate of the British people. So I have resigned from Labour and will be supporting the Brexit Party in the European Elections on 30 May.
‘It is no surprise that people of left and right are uniting around the Brexit Party as the only mainstream party fully committed to respecting democracy’
Nigel Farage may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this is not about him. Labour and Conservatives promised to respect the referendum result but we now know they were lying. It is no surprise that people of left and right are uniting around the Brexit Party as the only mainstream party fully committed to respecting democracy.
Some 35 per cent of Labour voters supported Leave. Many more recognise that, although they would have preferred to remain, it is vital now that we implement the 2016 result. Given the breadth and diversity of the Brexit Party candidates announced so far, the threat posed to Labour by the Brexit Party is not an empty one.
And now we have the farcical situation of Labour Remainers lobbying the leadership (apparently successfully) to re-draft European Parliamentary Election leaflets to back another referendum. It is hard to see how the Party can ever again regain its democratic credentials.
There are many people still in the Labour Party who respect democracy, including both Leavers and some who supported Remain in 2016. I understand their reasons for staying. But when you get Lord Adonis telling Labour leave supporters that they should not vote Labour without the slightest rebuke from the leadership, it is hard to see how the Party can ever again regain its democratic credentials.
The Labour Party was founded on the premise of widening the franchise to ordinary men and women. It is a tragedy that its current leaders and MPs have made the deliberate decision to abandon basic democratic principles. But having done so, like the Tories, the Labour Party must now pay the price at the ballot box.
Professor David Paton holds the Chair of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School and is a member of the Economists for Free Trade
More than half of British holidaymakers could ditch European mini-breaks as a result of Brexit, according to new research.
Some 56 per cent would be put off by potential negative effects caused by the UK leaving the EU.
In a survey of 2,000 Brits, comparison site Finder.com said that an increase in flight costs would mean four in 10 people went on fewer EU mini-breaks after Brexit.
Uncertain exchange rates were also an issue, with 33 per cent of respondents claiming a devaluation of the pound after Brexit would deter them from taking trips to Europe.
Meanwhile, 19 per cent of those aged 18-38 were anxious about mobile phone costs, saying they would be less keen to travel to EU countries if data roaming charges are reintroduced.
This age demographic is the most concerned about the impact of Brexit on their European travel plans – 67 per cent were worried they would have to reconsider European breaks.
Regionally, those in Northern Ireland and the North East of England are most concerned that their travel plans will be affected by Brexit (65 and 64 per cent respectively).
Many Brits are also concerned about the prospect of longer passport queues, with 25 per cent saying they would travel less to the EU because of it.
A third of those in Scotland and 31 per cent of those in the North East believe it would be a major factor in decision-making when it comes to planning European short breaks.
Loss of the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) would drive 21 per cent of UK travellers to take fewer European trips too.
“Finder’s research has shown that the stability of GBP is a big concern for many Brits and a major factor when booking holidays,” said Jon Ostler, CEO (UK) of finder.com.
“We advise British holidaymakers to keep an eye on the exchange rate before planning going on holiday in order to plan their spending appropriately.”
He added: “It’s understandable that higher costs may influence people to opt for more staycations, but it’s surprising that roaming charges, health insurance and passport queues have such a bearing on the choice of destination.”
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